Sin Nombre is the kind of meticulously crafted and confident film you’d expect from a seasoned director; you might, then, be surprised to learn that it is actually the debut feature from filmmaker Cary Fukunaga. This is an auspicious beginning for Fukunaga; a combination of equal parts road trip movie, immigration story, and tale of gang violence, Sin Nombre is rich and complex, strikingly shot with a haunting, precise eye that finds a balance between the beauty and the harsh, ugly reality of the world it captures.
Casper is a member of the feral, vicious Mara Salvatrucha gang. We meet him as he brings his young ward, Smiley, to gang headquarters for initiation, a thirteen second gang-beating that nevertheless feels relentless in spite of its brief duration. Is he a gang member by choice? We never learn but it’s very easy to imagine that Casper’s own induction into the “family” of Mara Salvatrucha wasn’t willing. We do, however, learn that his entire life doesn’t revolve around the gang; he has a beautiful girlfriend with whom we get to spend some brief periods of time, which are the only moments in the film where Casper ever seems to truly be at peace. Then one day, his girlfriend seeks to discover what it is Casper does, and tragedy strikes.
As Casper’s story is told, we are simultaneously introduced to Sayra, who along with her uncle and her father is preparing to journey across the border into the US. Father has already been there; he started another family in New Jersey, and having been deported, he wishes to return with his brother and his other daughter in tow. When Casper, Smiley, and gang leader Lil’ Mago attack the train that Sayra’s family sneaked aboard, Casper’s and Sayra’s lives become irrevocably intertwined and a relationship blossoms.
But this isn’t just a retelling of any staple tale of forbidden love, wound up in a gritty, grim package of immigration woes and gang violence. These are not star-crossed lovers, destined to be together no matter the cost and no matter what obstacles lie in their paths, but rather kindred spirits. Both Sayra and Casper wish to escape from their lives; there seems to be nothing for either of them where they live, and any future, even an uncertain one, would be better than living out the rest of their days in crushing poverty (for Sayra) and senseless brutality (for Casper). Both of them have family issues. Casper doesn’t have a family in a traditional sense, but he has, as Lil’ Mago puts it, thousands of brothers in the form of Mara Salvatrucha foot soldiers. Sayra on the other hand does have a brother, and a father, and a family in Jersey, but she does not know her father, and she does not know the family in Jersey. “They’re your family, not mine,” she tells father bluntly. Theirs is a bond of trust, something that is invaluable where they come from, acting almost as a kind of shield against the cruelty of their world. Is there some kind of sexual tension between them? Perhaps, but that’s not the point of their union, which is tender and familial as opposed to lustful and sensual.
Édgar Flores and Paulina Gaitan play their respective characters marvelously; Casper’s resignation to his fate clashes against Sayra’s hope and optimism, and the mismatched pair work well off of one another. Perhaps more impressive than them is Kristian Ferrer’s turn as Smiley, whose existence seems to comment on how children without a barrier guarding them from the influence and effects of gang violence are just as prone to die as a result of it as they are to fall in love with the myth of the lifestyle and buy into the macho bravado touted by its adherents. There is a harrowing moment where Smiley casually talks about killing someone with other children, and we realize that countless children just like him are absorbed by gangs like Mara Salvatrucha every single day.
Fukunaga seems to have had two main goals in mind when making Sin Nombre. The first is eschewing popular modern approaches to shooting a film in favor of more traditional ones. Sin Nombre is captured on 35mm film instead of, for example, HD video; it’s filmed with a steady and assured eye instead of with shaky, flashy, chaotic angles and movements. This shouldn’t suggest to anyone that the film is simple or unimaginative in how it is filmed– cinematographer Adriano Goldman knows how to artfully frame and compose his shots, and his touch lends a haunting kind of beauty to each location the movie shows us. But primarily the cinematography keeps Fukunaga appropriately removed from the proceedings, allowing the camera to focus on his actors and his scenery rather than on himself. The lack of vanity makes for a refreshing change of pace, and definitely sets him apart from his contemporaries.
The director’s other goal seems to be establishing a sense of verisimilitude. The greatest strength of Sin Nombre lies in how it is utterly convincing in its portrayal of the lives of the gang members and the lives of the immigrants. Fukunaga put a great deal of effort researching his subjects before filming, and it shows. He spent time with members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, and shot the film mostly on location (though they did build a set for the Mara gang’s house). Locals volunteered to appear in the film as extras. Fukunaga himself spent a period of a few days riding trains with immigrants as well. All of this grants a staggering level of authenticity to the film without ever letting it feel exploitative or disingenuous.
What Fukunaga has successfully done is interpret and translate the experiences of these people to the screen, telling their stories for them instead of simply telling them for himself. It’s hard not to admire a director whose ego is kept entirely out of the equation in his art, and Fukunaga is exactly that kind of director: He is not using the stories of the immigrants and gang members for his benefit, but for theirs and ours as well.
We can look back over even just a decade of film and be impressed by how many advances have been made in the special effects field. We can also smile with amusement over how the state-of-the-art effects of yesteryear now look obvious and crummy by today’s standards; this shouldn’t be a big surprise, as the passing of time has not only improved the quality of effects, but has also given us as viewers the chance to better train our eyes and change the way that we (literally) look at films. Certainly effects have changed, but I think it’s worth thinking about how audience perception has changed alongside those FX improvements. The result? An increased demand for photo-realism in special effects on the behalves of both filmmakers and audiences alike.
What got me thinking about all this? So as not to give too much away, feast your eyes on the clip below and then read on:
This is only a commercial for the company Saturn, a consumer electronics chain from Germany (it’s related to European electronics giant MediaMarkt). It’s also a really, really captivating piece of commercial pop art; at only 1 minute and 14 seconds long it could have just been a gimme, but there’s actually a story being told here. It’s a history of technology, sure– the voice-over specifically talks on the broad subject of technology in a broader sense– but taken out of context it’s also a pretty brilliant summation of the history of special effects. Yes, it’s all relayed to us through CGI, but it’s not hard to imagine this as the story of how filmmakers went from stop-motion animating King Kong to using computers to create “photo real” depictions of humans and fantastical creatures alike.
Of course, that clip doesn’t say anything that doesn’t already speak for itself. As technology gets better and becomes more available, special effects will also get better. Filmmakers love their toys and tech as much as anyone else– that’s just the way it goes. But that hardly matters; at the very least, the entire commercial is tightly put together and immensely entertaining and, aesthetically, impressive to look at. For my part, the clip got me thinking about where special effects are going to end up a couple of years from now. 3D technology is all the rage, and Avatar is likely to cause a big spike in interest over the format. (Granted, if it fails magnificently enough– which is at least somewhat likely given the enormous bar it has set for itself– it could also kill the trend almost single-handedly.) When the hubbub over 3D dies down, what’s next? And while we’re at it, do we even need photo-realism in our films? Are we that unwilling to suspend disbelief that we need technology present in our films that completely shatters it?
I don’t have satisfactory answers to these questions, but maybe we can come up with some together. What do you think about the evolution of special effects? Feel free to chime in.
Alright, imagine that in the 80’s, the US government sanctioned the implementation of an Army regiment trained using New Age hippie tactics and placing emphasis on the paranormal. These soldiers were taught the art of remote viewing (the ability to gather information about unseen or far away targets through extra-sensory perception), and it was hoped that they ultimately could learn how to turn invisible and walk through solid matter, making them powerful psychic spies, Jedi warriors, warrior monks, and so on. Got all that? Good. Now imagine that what I just wrote out is actually based in reality. Are you still with me?
The Men Who Stare at Goats purports to tell the story of the New Earth Army, a group of soldiers trained with the goal of becoming supernatural soldiers for the United States of America. And while it is grounded in something close to fact, it’s hard to tell how much the movie embellishes upon the ideas and information yielded by its source material, a book of the same name by Welsh-born Gonzo journalist Jon Ronson. (According to the book, it was absolutely believed that these soldiers could learn to not only walk through walls with the correct preparation of mind, but also, as the title references, kill goats by staring at them.)
We’re introduced to the wide world of paranormal military tactics by a cast including audience stand-in Ewan McGregor, the ubiquitous George Clooney, slimeball Kevin Spacey, and the incomparable Jeff Bridges. Recapping, we have an incredible cast telling a story with a premise so batty and off-the-wall that it would be gleefully bonkers even if it wasn’t based on something relatively factual. So the question is, is it any good?
Surprisingly, no.
The Men Who Stare at Goats isn’t a truly terrible movie; it’s pointedly mediocre. For any other movie this wouldn’t so much be a problem, but in the case of a film with such potential as this one, it’s sort of a crime. The concept alone is pure gold, and the cast is rock solid; aspects of the story are somewhat timely given current world affairs. So where does the film go wrong? In truth it’s hard to determine which symptom is the root cause of its inadequacy, as the film is so jumbled and unpolished that it would be easy to argue that one element is to blame as much as the next.
The film follows around McGregor’s spineless milquetoast journalist Bob as he goes off to be an imbedded journalist in the Iraq war to prove to his ex-wife that he has chutzpah (though why he even thinks she’ll care is never explained). By delightful coincidence, he runs into Lynn Cassady (Clooney), a retired member of the previously mentioned unit of psychic soldiers; Cassady has been “reactivated”, and is heading to Iraq. He chooses to keep the former detail hidden from Bob, and brings the hapless writer with him into a war zone as the film begins to cut between their journey together and Cassady’s training days at Fort Bragg.
Just when the movie seems like it’s going pick up, it sags. Bob and Lynn setting out together is the point at which the movie should gathers steam and barrels forward, but The Men Who Stare at Goats stalls out between uninspired and tired moments where Bob boggles at Lynn’s numerous eccentricities and flashbacks that are saturated with dense, unnecessary exposition. In a way this sort of betrays the excellent cast first-time feature film director Grant Heslov has at his disposal; there is no need for Clooney, Bridges, or Spacey to illustrate any articulate emotion when everything that they’re feeling is spoon-fed to us through voice-over.
But this dances around the real problem at the heart of film; the heroes are on a journey, ultimately, for no appreciable or palatable reason, and with no final end goal in mind. Bob is ostensibly there to win back his wife from his one-armed editor, and Lynn is there to fulfill his duties as a solder in the New Earth Army. Both of these stories are so shoddily established that for the better part of the film’s duration, these men are simply wandering in Iraq for the heck of it. There isn’t an over-arching conflict drawn early on in the story to give their travels even superficial meaning; when that desperately needed drama finally unveils itself in the last third of the movie, it’s much too late, though admittedly the climactic hijinx provide a fair amount of amusement.
At the center of this about-nothing film is a pretty stellar foursome; of these men, it is Bridges who receives the most fleshed-out arc and does the most with his character. Bill Django starts as a rough, gruff soldier and veteran of the Vietnam War, and becomes a hippie shaman, and ultimately ends up being reduced to almost nothing. Bridges brings a special level of characterization to Django at each phase of his life; the transformation from soldier, to New Age monk, to nobdoy at all very nearly becomes poignant, and provides some level of commentary on how wars change the people who fight them. For Bridges, this is a minor role, but he breathes life into it in a way that helps keep the film afloat whenever he’s present.
Clooney and McGregor are surprisingly dross in the leading roles. I never thought that Clooney could be boring, but Cassady might just be the kind of character that smothers the charisma of a man like Clooney. Clooney plays the straight man with smoldering but quiet intensity (Michael Clayton); he can play the oddball wacko with unfathomable levels of charm (let’s say Burn After Reading). Cassady is neither such character, and at many times it’s plain to see Clooney struggle with him. He certainly nails it perfectly in some moments (Lynn showing Bob how to use the New Earth Army’s weapon of choice is particularly hysterical), but for the most part the poor guy seems kind of lost. And as much as I’m a fan of McGregor, I will never understand the fascination with forcing him to do an American accent; to give credit where credit is due, he is not nearly as awkward here as he is in Big Fish (where he sounds like he’s imitating Foghorn Leghorn). But if he’s not as grating in The Men Who Stare at Goats, he’s certainly less engaging and captivating.
The Men Who Stare at Goats, in all, isn’t a huge cinematic offense taken in context. Outside of itself, however, it’s a shame to see such a great idea wasted alongside such a strong cast. Being fair, this is Heslov’s first time directing a feature-length picture, but even taking that into account, how does anyone squander this much potential? Sadly, I think this will end up being one of those “coulda” pictures; with a more seasoned director at the helm, this might have turned out to be something truly memorable and special.
November is a time of year to ruminate on all the things that we’re thankful for, and as we close in on the end of 2009, I find myself with a list containing innumerable pieces of my life that I’m grateful of. I have a wonderful fiancée with whom I have a fulfilling relationship; I have a good home which I share with her and our two mischievous cats. I’ve got friends who care about me and family that loves me. And in our uncertain job market, I have a solid and stable job, which in turn lends me the financial stability that so many people in our country have been bereft of. In short, I’m happy and comfortable and secure; if that’s not reason enough to be thankful, I don’t know what is.
But of course, you don’t read this blog because you’re terribly interested in how great my life is; this is a blog about movies, and that’s ostensibly what you’re here for. You see, while thinking about those personal elements of my life, I got to thinking about my passion for the cinema, which in turn got me reflecting on the films that I’m thankful for, the movies that have influenced or affected my love for all things cinematic directly or in more clandestine ways. And so, keeping with the theme of this month’s holiday, I wound up putting together a list of ten such films for your reading pleasure.
As a note, this is not supplementary reading for my top ten list; it’s also not a generic “top X most influential films” list, though in some cases it is precisely the influence of the film in question that I appreciate. That appreciation will only be examined on a personal level– as much as some of these movies have had broad and far-reaching impact on cinema as a whole, here I’m only interested in how they have effected films that have specific significance to me. These aren’t necessarily the movies that I could watch from start to finish any day of the week, any time of day, but rather the movies that helped shape and change my perception of cinema. So with that in mind, please enjoy!
Shiri/Swiri– Shiri (spelled Swiri inside Korea) is often credited as 
being the film that jump-started the Korean New Wave back in 1999. While under even distant examination this isn’t totally the case, Shiri‘’s success did much to cause a resurgence in interest toward Korean cinema; as the film became an instant smash, local companies became more willing to risk their money on genre films with larger budgets, and the sales of Korean films overseas increased. On its own it’s a tight and energetic espionage thriller about a North Korean terrorist plot to target and destroy South Korean landmarks, but in the broader context of South Korean cinema, Shiri’s existence may largely be responsible for the boom the SK film industry has enjoyed since its release– and therefore, films like Oldboy might never have been made without it.
Watchmen– I wasn’t one hundred percent enthused by Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel (read my review here), but it’s hard for me not to crack an appreciative smile when I sit back and think about it in retrospect. Watchmen is a crackling, pulsing, 
living and breathing piece of glorious pop-art, flawed for certain but also filled with crackling performances and eye-popping attention to detail. It’s also a challenge to other super hero movies to attempt to achieve similar faithfulness to their source material. Watchmen is also the kind of against-the-mainstream property that one would never expect a major studio to back, and yet that’s precisely what Warner Brothers did. It wasn’t a box office winner, but it also hasn’t added up to a total failure for the studio just yet (thanks to the ancillary market), and if anything its existence should give the movie geeks faith in the studios; if Watchmen can get made, anything can get made. But most of all, even if the end result wasn’t as good as it should have been, I’m just happy that someone had the chutzpah to even attempt to translate this “unadaptable” story to the big screen.
The 40 Year Old Virgin– The Judd Apatow train got its start with the TV series Freaks and Geeks, but it picked up the most steam upon the release of this 2005 hit comedy. Since then, it’s helped shape the face of
American comedy, leading films to place greater emphasis on character and plot development instead of leaving those elements to the wayside in favor of more fart jokes; it’s this focus on heart and story in addition to belly laughs (which leads to more robust and fulfilling comedies) that makes Virgin’s existence so richly deserving of our gratitude. Of course, no one does it better than the master himself; the best comedies of the last half a decade have come out of the Apatow camp, and no imitators have come close to replicating what makes those films great. (Though amusingly enough, many of those seeming imitators are actually part of the Apatow family, as Judd’s arm has grown so long that he has his hands in untold numbers of contemporary comedies.) And aside from being a comedy game-changer, Virgin is responsible for helping establish Steve Carell’s presence as a leading man, as well as introducing actors like Romany Malco and Seth Rogen to wider audiences; if that’s not enough reason to tip your hat to it, then I don’t know what is.
Kikujiro– From my experience, filmmakers like Japanese auteur Takeshi Kitano get an unfair rap in the US for working in very narrow and specific genres of cinema. Here, Kitano is popularly thought of as a director of crime thrillers, and while I can understand why– much of his creative output that has reached the States consists of gangster films like Brother, Sonatine, and Hana-bi– the reputation is grossly unjust 
given his comedic roots and surprising penchant for the poignant. During my years in college, I found myself defending Kitano against just such accusations from my friend; the argument ended when I popped Kitano’s 1999 film Kikujiro in my DVD player. I’ll always be grateful for this film’s existence as a counter-point against the idea that Kitano, as a filmmaker, knows only violence; here, he tells a story that’s artful and moving and entirely relatable despite examining its themes through a specific cultural lens. The movie follows the journey of a young boy as he travels across Japan to find his mother; Kitano plays the gruff, curmudgeonly eponymous character who accompanies the child on his quest. It’s a colorful and beautifully shot movie that’s perhaps more touching than Kitano’s better-known gangster films are violent, a road movie that closely explores isolation and alienation in Japanese society.
Shaun of the Dead– As a foreign property, Shaun of the Dead introduced me (and many, many others) to a bevy of English talent: Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, Jessica Hynes and Nick Frost. Wright, Hynes, and Pegg had worked together prior to Shaun on the wonderful TV series, Spaced, while Frost had starred on his program Danger! 5000 Volts! (wherein he advised his audience on how to best handle volcanic eruptions and hippo attacks). For this alone, I’m indebted to 
the film; the fact that it not only schooled me on these fantastic talents but also surprised me by turning out to be one of the best zombie movies of all time was icing on the cake. Or perhaps it’s the other way around? Either way, Shaun of the Dead makes up for decades of terrible imitations and blatant rip-offs of the films of Romero and Fulci and also stands up to them in sheer quality (I honestly believe that Shaun’s script might be one of the best scripts written in the last decade). The film’s secret to success? Shaun can be described as a zombie parody or an homage to the films of the greats, but the truth is that it eschews the chance to be cute, coy, and tongue-in-cheek and instead chooses to stand on its own as an honest-to-God zombie movie filled with laughter, fantastic effects and make-up, and a whole lot of heart. Like Virgin (both films are, after all, tastemakers in their respective genres), many films have tried to imitate what makes Shaun work, and none have succeeded; it’s a wholly unique film, something that can’t be replicated, and that makes it truly special and worthy of adulation.
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What films are you thankful for? What are the movies that you appreciate in a broader context outside of their individual quality? Feel free to share your thoughts here. Enjoy the season, everyone!
There are probably specific expectations some might impose upon a film whose lead is a famous and popular porn star; for example, the promise of erotic visuals, the thrill of the voyeurism inherent to watching porn, and of course, chief of them all, the guarantee of smoldering on-screen sex. Why else would you hire Sasha Grey, an adult film star whose body of work includes 161 titles (none of which I can offer here), as the lead in your film about a woman living her life as a high-class escort in New York? Surely, the reasons for doing so are entirely superficial, and the need for such an actress on set comes back to the need for a very genuine depiction of carnal lust.
So it should be said immediately that watching Steven Soderbergh’s film The Girlfriend Experience with such expectations in mind will inevitably lead to disappointment and frustration; this is a sexless film, though not one that is lacking any form of sensuality. Grey is never shown in any explicit, compromising positions. There is only the suggestion of sex to come, coupled with brief glimpses of full-frontal nudity. This may sound somewhat ridiculous on the surface, but Soderbergh’s interest in Grey as his protagonist has more to do with her mind than with her body: Grey is a successful young woman who owns her own agency through which she manages other actresses, and she considers who she is separate from what she does for a living. She approaches sex, and her willingness to exhibit her sexuality for money, with intelligence and business savvy.
So in other words, she’s just like Christine/Chelsea, the young lady who the film focuses on. Chelsea, we learn, also works in the business of selling sex, yes, but as the title infers she provides so much more than just the chance for a physical connection. She gives her clients the illusion of being in a relationship, the opportunity to live out the fantasy of being one half of a complete, functioning couple; it’s as much about the experience of having a girlfriend as it is about feeling like a boyfriend. The clients talk with her; she kids back with them and teases them, and listens to their stories and their advice on who to vote for or how to invest her money. She smiles at their jokes and nods understandingly at their worldly observations. Chelsea does not peddle cheap pleasures, but instead allows her clients to feign something more substantial. Indeed, the thrill of sex appears to be sort of icing on the cake, or at least something like a cover-up that allows her clients to keep from having to state that really, they’re just isolated or lonely and simply want someone to talk to.
If the men she sees mask their real intentions for hiring her, then so too does Chelsea put up her own guards throughout the film. Even when she’s alone with her boyfriend, Chris, a personal trainer who wants to market himself as much as Chelsea does, we’re never given much indication that we’re seeing the real Chelsea. (It’s easy to wonder if Chris is a very drawn-out boyfriend experience; they don’t have chemistry together that is any more meaningful than that which she shares with her clients.) When Chelsea is interviewed by real-life journalist Mark Jacobson, he wonders the same thing: Who is Chelsea, honestly? He’s not even sure if he’s seeing the real Chelsea as he sits across a table from her in one of Tom Colicchio’s swank Craft brand restaurants. And of course, Chelsea isn’t cluing him in on whether he’s seeing her real self or the version of herself that she markets– she sidesteps his questions with grace and ease, always answering them without actually having to do so.
At one point in the film, Chelsea is contacted by a new client visiting the city for the weekend. There is almost an instant connection between the two as they talk over the phone. It’s the first time that we actually get a chance to see the truth of this young woman, and the transformation between the Chelsea we’ve seen previously and the Chelsea that surfaces around this particular client is rather remarkable. Here Grey makes Chelsea vulnerable and human; when she laughs at an anecdote that the man relates to her, she is not feigning emotion for her company’s benefit. When she receives an intentionally negative review of her services on an Internet message board (whose author does not engage her services), she all but breaks down in front of him. Her mask finally slips.
Grey is not be ready for the broader world of acting yet, but describing her performance as unrefined would belie just how perfect she is for the role. She strikes a balance between her persona as a self-made business woman and entrepreneur and someone who, like her clients, wants to have a genuine girlfriend experience of her own. Grey projects confidence and self-assuredness combined with emotional appeal and plays the character so captivatingly well that it’s natural to suppose that she’s self-allegorizing.
This is a challenging and urgent, immediate movie. This is not so much due to how Chelsea treats sexuality as a commodity, and more because of how the film speaks to how we all sell ourselves no matter who we are. At the end of the day, Chelsea, her boyfriend, and even her clients are trying to project an image; the moments where Chelsea wears her emotions openly are not just her only genuine moments, they’re the film’s only genuine moments. Taking place in the midst of one of the worst economic crises of America’s history, The Girlfriend Experience isn’t just about the lengths we go to to fend off our own loneliness, it’s also about the defenses we harness to protect ourselves from outside harm.
Why do bad things happen to good people? It’s a basic if somewhat cliched question, true, but knowing the answer is essential to how you will perceive the latest dark opus of the Coen brothers, A Serious Man. The film’s prologue, a shtetl tale involving a husband, a wife, and a rabbi (who may or may not be possessed by a wandering malicious spirit called a dybbuk), asks the audience whether they believe that the events of our life are the machinations of a higher power with a master plan for us in mind, or if they believe that said events are merely part of living in a random and amoral universe where the best-intentioned of us can end up at the bottom of a burgeoning mountain of woes.
Larry, the film’s hero, struggles to answer that very question almost immediately after we’re introduced to him. Things start off cheerfully enough; he’s in good health, he seems to have clinched his tenure spot, and his son is about to be bar mitzvahed. But no sooner do we meet him than the rug is pulled out from under him, and in no time his once-ordered life begins to unravel around him as the Coens’ cruel comedy begins: Primarily, his wife wants to divorce him (and remarry the grandiloquent Sy Abelman, a close family friend), but Larry’s troubles don’t stop there. His son smokes pot and listens to the radio in school, his daughter steals from him (ostensibly to fund a nose job operation), his brother lives on his couch and attracts the attention of the police for gambling, a student attempts to both bribe and blackmail him, and his shot at tenure is threatened when the tenure committee receives anonymous letters defaming his character.
And that’s just the short list of Larry’s worries.
Larry, finding himself under assault on all fronts by either an undeserved streak of bad luck or a vengeful deity, seeks solace and assistance in combating his problems from a succession of rabbis, each as unhelpful as the last. From young, to older, to oldest, his spiritual leaders reliably fail to provide the guidance Larry so desperately needs; the first rabbi is too inexperienced to truly counsel Larry, the second relates a (seemingly) irrelevant parable about a Jewish dentist, his Goyish patient, and a message carved into the patient’s teeth, and the third turns him away. At first it appears that the Coens want to examine religion’s role in society under a harsh light by criticizing its inability to articulate why a man like Larry should suffer the endless ignominies of his life, and while that’s certainly the point it’s not the entire point. If the advice of the rabbis is obtuse, it’s at least sound– sometimes the best thing to do when reflection of life’s mysteries yields no explanation is to shrug and move on.
That’s not good enough for Larry. “But I haven’t done anything,” is his prevailing battle cry throughout the film; he has been wronged by the universe and he can find no relief until he understands why. That “why” is the central question of A Serious Man, and as is to be expected the Coens leave it up to the audience to answer the film’s challenge. Is Larry’s misfortune the work of an incensed god, or is it all just part of the human condition? Or is Larry himself responsible, at least partially, for his own misery? Yes, Larry hasn’t done anything wrong to warrant the tragedies that befall him; but at the same time that’s exactly the problem. He hasn’t done anything; he has not asserted himself in his own life and addressed, among other things, his marital problems or the situation with his couch potato brother. Then again it’s hard to imagine that Larry could possibly have brought the entire roof down on his own head, so to speak. So really, A Serious Man is as much about the inadequacies of the divine as it is about human uncertainty; nobody, not even the wise, can genuinely discern why bad unfortunate events happen to us.
At the eye of the film’s storm of moral decisions is Larry, brought to over-stressed life by Michael Stuhlbarg, an actor I’ve never heard of prior to seeing this film, and I’ll henceforth keep my eyes peeled for project he’s attached to; the man is truly brilliant here. Stuhlbarg’s depiction of Gopnik is nothing short of hapless, over-anxious genius; he appears almost permanently unkempt and harried, wide-eyed and alert as though he’s always on the look-out for where the next ordeal is coming from. It’s natural that we should feel sympathetic towards Larry and his plight, but Stuhlbarg doesn’t just ride on token goodwill for his character; Larry is the kind of man who would comfort his brother (the wonderful Richard Kind) in his own time of need, and he succeeds where any of the film’s religious advisers would fail. Stuhlbarg strikes a perfect balance between the layers of Larry’s humanity and his confounded, neurotic exterior. This is a truly sterling performance, and one that the actor is sure to be remembered for years from now.
And if this is a shining gem in Stuhlbarg’s career (he is primarily, as I understand it, a stage actor), then so too is it a new high in the Coens’ body of work. A Serious Man might be their most polished and nuanced film yet; it is a jaded portrayal an angry god’s terrible vengeance upon the least-deserving person in the entire movie, an examination of the indiscriminate nature of the universe we exist in, or a portrait of a man who has brought all of the film’s misery unwittingly upon himself. If 2007’s No Country for Old Men felt bleak to you, then A Serious Man will likely feel downright austere, or perhaps more akin to a cruel prank than anything else: Comfort is offered, but only for so long before it is utterly smothered, a mean reversal at the end of a mean film to be sure but without a doubt the kind of maneuver we’ve come to expect from the Coens. The abrupt ending, and the perceived attacks on tradition, will certainly turn many away from this film, but it is undoubtedly their blackest gem yet, and also their most finely crafted and refined. With A Serious Man, the brothers have once again out-done themselves at charting the grim and the hopeless.
Tomorrow is All Hallow’s Eve. All Saints Eve. Samhain. You know–Halloween, the time of year when youngsters take to the streets in costume and seek out to reap a huge candy windfall from neighbors participating in the spooky celebration of ghouls, ghosts, gremlins, and other such unsavory creatures of the night. For some, it’s an excuse to eat candy; for others, an excuse to party and drink all night long; for others still, as good a reason to get up to mischief and mayhem as any. And for people like me, this holiday is defined by sitting in front of the TV and watching horror movies of all kinds– hardcore to campy, scary to silly– with a group of friends.
But when the candy has been put out for the ravenous hordes of trick-or-treaters, and the jack-o-lanterns have been lit to ward off the various denizens of the dark that may otherwise haunt your doorstep, what do you watch? If you aren’t sure what films should find their way into rotation on your DVD player, here are a few recommendations to get you started:
Halloween– Let’s get the obvious one out of the way. This is one of the most iconic horror movies of all time, a terrifying look at raw and inexplicable evil as it emerges from where you least expect it to. Admittedly the film’s only real tie to the holiday is that the events of the movie unfold on the last day of October, but really what Halloween exemplifies is our fear of being stalked by the dark shape, the kind of faceless and indescribable terror that, ages ago, people believed could walk the earth on this particular day. Michael Myers is the blank, expressionless, and utterly evil embodiment of that fear made manifest; he should be a mainstay at any All Hallows screening party.
Trick ‘r Treat– You perhaps have read, in this very blog that you are reading now, about this little gem of a horror flick. My review isn’t even a month old, so I will try to rehash it as little as I can here, but whereas Halloween occurs on the holiday, Trick ‘r Treat lifts it up and gives proper love to it. This film is a pure celebration of Halloween and is chock-full of passion for the various traditions that have come to make up the holiday that we know and love today. It’s creepy, atmospheric, and more than a little mean, with some black humor thrown in for good measure. It hasn’t had time to prove itself, but one viewing should be all it takes for this film to become an instant holiday classic for Halloween lovers everywhere.
Night of the Demons– Here we have what I consider a film that falls comfortably in between the former two; on Halloween, a group of kids decide to throw a party at a local mortuary that was abandoned years ago after the family that owned it was slaughtered by the family patriarch. Always a good idea. What happens when you don’t pay proper respect to the myths and tall tales (or are they?) that inevitably get told on the scariest night of the year? Night of the Demons has the answers (the shorthand version– all of your friends are gruesomely slaughtered and then possessed by demons). A great example of the “kids go to [location] to party, kids get dead,” horror archetype, and a great entry in sleazy 80’s horror.
The Midnight Hour– So it’s Halloween, and you and your friends are itching to find something fun and exciting to do. But you’re tired of TP’ing your neighbors’ lawns, you’re too old to trick-or-treat, and you don’t have any booze money. What do you do? Obviously, you steal artifacts and outfits from your town’s local historic museum and unwittingly unleash a curse that sets the wandering dead loose upon the town, led by a vampire who just so happens to be your friend’s great-grandmother. Oops! Well, at least you’re not drinking underage. The Midnight Hour sounds kind of hokey, but what we have here is a really fun and energetic Halloween horror film, filled with creeps and chills and boasting a pretty great dance number (really). After all, you need some silliness to really fill out your Halloween experience, don’t you?
The Evil Dead series (Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness)– How could I complete this list without mentioning the series that yielded the first horror movie I ever watched? Granted, on the Horror Spectrum, Army of Darkness is the gloriously campy entry in the series; it gets more hardcore as you backtrack to Evil Dead 2 and then finally to Evil Dead. But these films have held a special place in my heart and my DVD collection, and while including them here may be somewhat obvious, the series from start to finish perfectly encapsulates what people should look for in their Halloween movie-watching experience, running the entire gamut of Halloween requirements on its own. Laughs? Check. Gore? Check check. Scares? You betcha. Bruce Campbell? Yeah baby.
Mad Monster Party– And now we come to the last entry in the list, a Rankin/Bass stop-motion animated gem and a smorgasbord of classic Hollywood monsters engaging in over-the-top hijinx and numerous musical numbers– so in short, don’t pick this one up if your evening’s billing is in need of some real scares. Doctor Frankenstein (voiced by the legendary Boris Karloff) decides that it’s time to retire, and he leaves his work and legacy in the hands of his bumbling and good-hearted nephew, and he makes his announcement at a party to which all the most noteworthy monsters have been invited– the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Invisible Man, the Wolfman, Dracula, the Mummy, and more. Of course, they’re not happy about the change in management, and as to be expected chaos and hilarity soon follows. This is a film of uninhibited zaniness and exuberance, and a real tribute to the greatest screen monsters of all time; if nothing else, it’s worth catching for the excellent stop-motion animation.
Take ‘em or leave ‘em, these are the kinds of films I’d want in my DVD player on Halloween, providing me with all the boos and chuckles that I need to make my holiday a great one. If you check any of them out, let me know what you think! Happy haunting folks– I’ll see you next month!
Sometimes, a movie comes into your life at the most opportune time possible.In my case, I’m taking my relationship with my girlfriend of the last five years to the next level– exactly a year from now, we’re getting married. I’m running high on elation at the notion of committing myself to someone I love and cherish so deeply; at the same time we both have to deal with the innumerable considerations that planning a wedding entails, and so it goes without saying that this is a busy, but exciting, time in our lives. Of course, in quieter moments we talk about our future and our life together after marriage, because inevitably we have to think about the steps that follow the wedding and the honeymoon, too. We’re moving forward with our relationship and still looking ahead at what’s coming up on the horizon.
Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) find themselves in a similar situation in Sam Mendes‘ film Away We Go, albeit their impetus for progressing their own relationship comes in the form of an unexpected bun in the oven. Upon learning the news, the couple decides to travel the country in order to discover the perfect location for raising their child together; what follows is a road movie unlike other such films, one that is sweet and romantic but cuts out the saccharine in favor of something more genuine and truthful.
A lot has been said by many critics about Burt and Verona in regards to their alleged snobbish superiority; just as much has been said in response to these criticisms, chief among them being the idea that if they act superior, it’s only because they’re truly superior. (What a concept!) Here we have a thoughtful pair of educated adults with good jobs who have found that even into their 30’s they just don’t have an appreciable reason to assume the mantle of adulthood (as is their privilege and their responsibility). They aren’t actively rebelling against that notion, they’re just waiting for the right reason to move on with their lives. It’s this attitude towards growing up that winds up making their story feel wholly refreshing, and bestows upon the couple a necessary empathy. It’s tough to face the idea of advancing toward the next phase of your life, certainly, and it’s very easy to relate to Burt and Verona as they confront and accept their own adulthood while simultaneously admiring their pluck and courage as they face their situation head-on.
Maybe to others, that aforementioned superiority is firmly rooted in the interactions that Burt and Verona have with other couples both before and during their jaunt around the country. An invitation to supper with Burt’s folks (Catherine O’Hara and Jeff Daniels) actually provides the catalyst for the decision to move; the elder Farlanders announce that they are moving to Antwerp, a month before the baby is due in fact. They aren’t terrible people, but certainly they’re self-concerned, unacceptably so. Burt and Verona, it seems, stayed in Colorado to be near them (Verona’s parents are deceased). After the initial frustration with their selfish decision, the parents-to-be decide to start looking around other parts of the country; we meet foul and vulgar Lily, her subdued husband Lowell (Allison Janney and Jim Gaffigan), and their near-catatonic kids in Arizona, new-age radical parents Ellen (spelled “LN”) and Roderick (Maggie Gyllenhaal and Josh Hamilton) in Wisconsin (though I strongly suspect they come from another planet entirely), and happy-but-heartbroken couple Tom and Munch (Chris Messina and Melanie Lynskey) in Montreal, who we learn have not successfully conceived a child of their own and instead have adopted their children.
Each couple provides less reassurance than the last; even Tom and Munch, who at least yield the appearance of being happy despite the obvious pain bubbling just under the surface of their relationship, present a discomforting pair, and the series of meetings lead Burt and Verona to question their ideas of love and family further as they search for a place to call home. They fear, at the film’s start, that they are screw-ups, and to them it seems parenthood represents some way to rectify the mistakes they perceive they’ve made– but their friends just represent the ways that they could really bungle their life together. The families they visit put up defenses against one another, or keep too many walls down; they try to suppress their own distress at their respective situations. Even Burt’s brother (Paul Schneider) is of little assistance to them, but what they see in the other parents they meet only galvanizes their resolve to raise their family as best as they can.
And that choice resonates universally; how many of us grow up and resolve to learn from the mistakes made during our own childhood? Ultimately, Burt’s and Verona’s journey is one of discovery as they come to understand what family really means to them, but it’s also a quest to be better parents than the other parents in their life– Burt’s mother and father, Lily and Lowell, LN and Rod. Our leading couple don’t want to end up as screw-ups– and they don’t want to end up like their friends and family. It’s a journey of self improvement as much as it’s a search for a place they can settle down in.
But more than that it’s a simple, tender movie about two people passionately in love moving into a new stage of their life, without artificial sweeteners mixed in to make the end product too unbearably candied. This is a rare treat in a day and age of over-wrought romantics that sugarcoat the difficult nature of maintaining a relationship and glaze over the struggles that couples tend to go through as their relationships develop and mature. Gentle, romantic, and full of heart, Away We Go is a stand-out relationship movie that succeeds on all levels; it’s often funny and even troubling, but it never loses sight of its good spirit. As to the accusations of smugness? Bull. Take away Burt and Verona’s specific trappings and traits and you have a story that’s very much about the average committed couple– and if that’s too above you, then the problem, quite frankly, likely does not lie with the movie.
Children’s movies today are generally crafted contradictions. On one hand, they’re often saturated with pop culture references aimed at the adult portion of the audience, resulting in innumerable moments that go over the heads of the target demographic. On the other hand, the elements of the film that are actually written for kids operate under the notion that children are incapable of processing or understanding art on their own; I’m not saying that each child secretly possesses the tools needed to analyze and critique the works of Shakespeare down to their basic elements, but treating children as though they don’t have creative and imaginative tendencies is incorrect. Kids are much smarter than we as adults tend to give them credit for; with rare exceptions*, most children’s entertainment practically refuses to acknowledge this.
Where the Wild Things Are is just such a departure from the norm. Spike Jonez has not so much adapted the classic children’s novelby Maurice Sendak as he has expanded it for the screen. This is, at its heart, the same story that has captivated readers for forty years and change, but yet entirely different. The book is stripped down and straightforward; the movie is no more convoluted, but it boasts a great deal more rumpuses as well as more thorough reflections of the nature of childhood and the fleeting fantasies that children concoct (and must ultimately abandon). Think of this film as the Extended Version of the book; it’s rich and detailed and chock full of elements missing from its source material, yet it keeps the heart and spirit of the book completely intact. Here, you get the additional scenes of rumpusing the book didn’t have, as well as more footage of our hero confronting his emotions, topped off with the truly scary prospect of being eaten by a large, angry monster that sounds like Tony Soprano.
Max (Max Records) commiserates with Carol (James Gandolfini)
We’re introduced to the aforementioned beast by way of Max (Max Records), a young lad with a raucous streak in him a mile wide; the film kicks off in a truly rattling fashion with Max chasing his family dog through the house, dressed in a wolf costume and barking like a lunatic. Of course, Max isn’t a real terror– at heart, he’s a good kid, but a good kid who acts out out of loneliness. Max is an outsider in his own home, which he shares with his older sister and his mother (Max’s parents, we quickly realize, are divorced); big sister is interested in hanging out with her friends, and mom (Catherine Keener) is tied up with her work. One night, Max goes too far over the line, and after getting riled up and biting his mother in front of company, he runs away from home and sails to a strange, far-off land inhabited by the Wild Things, giant and strange monsters that constitute a troubled pseudo-family of their very own. Naturally, they try to eat him at first; Max commands them to be still, and after a brief debate, they crown him their king. Much rumpusing follows.
From here, the two works part ways. Jonez’s film at this point becomes an examination of Max’s life and personal struggles, as he struggles to keep the Wild Things together as a big, furry family by building a fort with them and engaging in even more rumpusing with them. There’s an obvious parallel between Max’s situation as the Wild Things’ king (he’s more akin to a parent figure, which they apparently need much more than a king in the first place) and his mother’s, and the film is quietly peppered with a myriad of personal reflections of Max’s character, mirrored by the child-like Wild Things. They are afraid of being abandoned and separated; they worry that no one listens to them; they run out of ways to express themselves vocally and act out with violence. Max’s most prominent beastly foil, Carol (James Gandolfini), may well embody all of these traits, but in a brilliant move by Jonez, neither Carol nor any of the other Wild Things are specifically restricted to represent any one particular emotion or characteristic. In doing so, Jonez appears to be acknowledging that Max’s problems are universal ones that many children grow up dealing with, and as the Wild Things themselves are essentially top-heavy and furry (and feathered) children, it is only sensible that they have similarly shared aspects and emotions.
The clear distinctions drawn between Max’s personal experiences and the experiences of the Wild Things could very easily have been totally overwhelming in their heavy-handedness. When we see Carol rage at Max for failing to fulfill his many promises as their king, we immediately call to mind the frustrations that Max has with his own mother, and while the connection is there, it never feels forced or shoe-horned in. Jonez took a deft hand to how the world of the Wild Things mirrors Max’s, and never at any point does it feel like he is winking knowingly at the audience from behind his camera to acknowledge his own cleverness. Instead of injecting his omniscient eye into the proceedings, Jonez lets his characters do the talking.
And let’s face it– for many people, the characters (read: the monsters) are the movie’s real draw, and for good reason. After several years (or two decades, depending on how you look at it; development on a Where the Wild Things Are film started as early as the 80’s), a great deal of hemming and hawing, and a studio threat to have the entire film reshot, Jonez managed to secure both the extra funding and (most importantly) time that he needed to perfect his vision and bring the eponymous creatures to life– which may be a true understatement. The Wild Things here are a perfect marriage of Henson-engineered man-in-suit puppetry, CGI (which was used to perfect the beasts’ facial expressions), and incredible voice acting; they look totally alive in a way that wholly CGI creations never do, and the voices provided by the cast help complete that illusion. The personae of the Wild Things run the gammut; there’s the thoughtful Ira (Forest Whitaker), quick-witted Judith (Catherine O’Hara), insecure and attention-craving Alexander (Paul Dano), voice of reason Douglas (Christopher Cooper), and mother-figure KW (Lauren Ambrose). They’re a well-rounded if highly dysfunctional family; they show affection by bashing their fellow Wild Things with fallen tree trunks, or jumping on their bodies, and they all sleep together in a giant pile. The Wild Things are a testament to the power and effectiveness of practical effects, and the film is the latest in a recent rash of releases that emphasize the practical over the computer-animated (for example, the recent works of Guillermo del Toro).
The puppetry would be hollow, however, without the heart given to it by the cast who truly breathe life into these behemoths. While each actor is strong in their own right, giving individual personalities to each monster and making them into fully-realized characters, special mention has to be given to Gandolfini for his work as Carol. Carol is, in short, Max’s avatar in the fantasy world that is the monsters’ island– desperate to keep his family unit whole and intact, he is quick-tempered and frequently lashes out in anger (and even violence) toward those he loves in his attempts to bring them together. Gandolfini provides the appropriate amount of ferocity to Carol’s tantrums, and he imbues the monster with enormous vulnerability. Carol is scared, and he’s unable to express that fear other than by turning it into anger; he’s afraid of losing his loved ones, of pushing everyone away from him, and most of all, of the fact that he might just be as out of control as other Wild Things suggest he is. Gandolfini’s work here is note-perfect– you wouldn’t think it at first but his deep, New Jersey Italian mafia don rumblings actually make sense coming from a furry monster like Carol– and totally heart-breaking.
This review wouldn’t be complete without, of course, mention of the film’s protagonist, young Max. The difficulty in describing Records’ performance is that in everything Max (the character**) does, it’s hard to actually find the performance, because the boy doesn’t seem to be acting at all in each scene. Instead, he’s just being a kid. This is one of the rare moments when the concept of an actor’s performance simply dissolves and gives way to something that feels too genuine to be an illusion; it’s easy to overlook the fact that you’re watching a child perform when Records charges through the woods with his new-found monstrous family and friends.
Where the Wild Things Are is a true knockout in this Fall’s cinematic line-up; you may not see a movie this season that boasts greater imagination or creativity than the vision that Jonez has successfully brought to life here by plumbing the depths of a ten-sentence story and surfacing with a powerful exploration of the many facets of childhood. But more than that, it’s a film that is about that state of being coming to an end, and how children work through their issues in the process of growing up and moving on to the next stage of their young lives. As a result, I can’t in good conscience recommend Where the Wild Things Are to kids that are under the age of 7 or 8 (and 7 may even be pushing it), but for children that are of the right age, as well as their parents, this film will definitely resonate.
*Pixar comes to mind.
**The hero had to have the same name as the actor portraying him, didn’t he.
I’m not a Hollywood insider. I’m not even a film insider. I have no contacts that exist in any realm of the cinematic world. I have never visited a set, or been given the opportunity to interview an actor or a director in regards to their latest anticipated film. So maybe my opinion on Wes Anderson’s approach to directing his new, upcoming movie, the Roald Dahl adapted, stop motion animated Fantastic Mr. Fox, can be taken with a grain of salt– but you’re reading this blog, and at this point you should know what you’re getting.
Anderson, perhaps best known for 1998’s breakout hit Rushmore, has recently been the subject of intense discussion regarding his on-set presence filming Fox, or more precisely his lack thereof. Sources across web and print journals alike are reporting that Anderson spirited himself away to Paris upon commencement of principal photography, where he has stayed for the duration of the shoot. Why? By the director’s own admission, he just didn’t feel like being at the studio for that long a period of time. It shouldn’t be surprising that this attitude has engendered a certain degree of hostility from his put-upon crew. (In the link found below, his DP refers to him as a sociopath. Nice!) From an article in the LA Times:
The move did little to endear Anderson to his subordinates. “It’s not in the least bit normal,” director of photography Tristan Oliver observed at the production’s East London set last spring, when production on “Mr. Fox” was about three-quarters complete. “I’ve never worked on a picture where the director has been anywhere other than the studio floor!”
Moreover, Anderson had no idea that his ignorance of stop-motion (the animation technique in which a stationary object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames) and exacting ideas concerning the film’s look would so exasperate his crew.
“Honestly? Yeah. He has made our lives miserable,” the film’s director of animation, Mark Gustafson, said during a break in shooting. He gave a weary chuckle. “I probably shouldn’t say that.”
(Source.)
For me, this tactic leaves me feeling cold towards Anderson. A while back I published a piece about 3D technology and the directors championing it as part of cinema’s evolution. While researching for that particular essay, I found myself endlessly impressed by the level of involvement people like Cameron and Jackson commit themselves to when it comes to the nuts and bolts of making movies, even so far into their careers. (Jackson, in particular, is a constant presence on his sets, or at least the extensive behind-the-scenes footage available for Lord of the Rings and King Kong seem to suggest as much.) While I came to something of an ambiguous conclusion on the subject (the shorthand version– I think 3D has potential but I’m still not 100% convinced it’s not just a cool gimmick), what really struck me about my research is the obvious passion that both directors have for making films; these men are hungry to create and build and share their visions with the world at large. It’s hard not to find oneself overflowing with respect for directors who are so active in the film making process, especially when both Jackson and Cameron are at points in their respective careers where they could very easily sit back and simply pass on their instructions and commands to cast and crew through their subordinates*.
If it isn’t already obvious what this has to do with Anderson, it should be: Anderson, in sequestering himself in Paris during principal, has done the exact opposite as other great contemporary directors, and removed himself from the actual process of creating the film. It’s hard to believe that the guy has that much passion for his craft when he’s so willing to distance himself from his latest project. But is it really fair to write Anderson off for making the choice to remain off-set?
There are ostensibly some good reasons for Anderson to remain mostly uninvolved in the making of Fox (and to be truthful, the article is somewhat hazy about exactly how much time Anderson has spent away from the set in the first place). The most obvious reason is that Anderson is totally uninitiated in the stop-motion animation process, and it could easily be argued that this alone is reason enough for Anderson to make his presence scarce on the set; given his inexperience with the medium, it’s likely that he’d be a hindrance to his crew as much as he’d be helpful to them. Even ignoring this potential scenario, there’s the possibility that Anderson just doesn’t need to be on set while the animators work; if you ask Fox’s producer, Allison Abbate, it’s actually quite common for directors to work from off-set on stop-motion animation pictures due to the nature of the medium. From the same LA Times article:
Not everyone on-set was ruffled by the notion of an absentee director. “Mr. Fox’s” unflappable producer Allison Abbate is a veteran of many stop-motion productions, including Selick’s epochal “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and Tim Burton’s Oscar-nominated “Corpse Bride.” She pointed out that it wasn’t unusual in the genre to issue directions from off-set.
“Tim wasn’t here that much during ‘Corpse Bride,’ ” Abbate said at Three Mills Studio last spring. “He doesn’t need to be. Making stop-motion is like watching paint dry.”
This contention certainly contradicts Tristan Oliver’s suggestion that Anderson’s behavior is anything but the norm. If Abbate speaks the truth, then what are the crew getting so rancorous about?
Anderson, despite being new to stop-motion, has a list of demands of his crew that at best are eccentric and at worst cruel and unusual. (My feeling: Eccentric all the way, and maybe even wholly unnecessary though I won’t be able to say for sure until I see the film.) For me, the most out-there item on the list is the decision to use real animal fur, which is something that stop-motion animators haven’t used for ages since coming to the consensus that it just plain doesn’t work on film. (It makes the actual animation more obvious, for one thing. Just watch 1933’s King Kong if you don’t believe me.) More broadly, Anderson has eschewed the use of most modern technology, disallowing use of computers and CGI to add images into shots in post (this year’s Coraline, also stop-motion animated, made liberal use of both). In short, Anderson has disarmed his crew of the current tools that they need to make their job as stress-free as possible, and promptly made their process more intensive inherently.
This is actually okay; Anderson is going for a specific look and feel and I understand that. (Though again, it’ll take the film’s release to determine whether or not his vision is cohesive and aesthetically pleasing.) But if you want to give Anderson hell for not showing up on the set, then this is the real reason why. Not being present on the set of your stop-motion animation film is one thing; not being present when you’ve relayed a number of very specific and highly work-intensive demands to your crew is something else entirely. Call it a gut feeling, but I can only imagine that the Fox crew would be much less disgruntled if Anderson had shown his face, even if only once. (Though apparently Oliver and Anderson have patched things up between each other, and may work together again.) If directors remaining off-set for stop-motion shoots is the norm, that’s fine, but taking away the equipment that a crew working on such a film would typically employ changes the playing field in a huge way. At that point, the process no longer fits into conceptions of “the norm”, and with that in mind it only makes sense for Anderson to acknowledge that particular reality and go above and beyond what’s expected of him. Bottom line, Wes should have been there. It’s not like traveling between Paris and London is that grueling in the first place, and I’m sure that he had some time to spare since he has no other projects in place and only went to Paris, it seems, to canoodle about while shooting took place.
This doesn’t negate or even reduce my anticipation for the film any; other sources, in shying away from the behind-the-scenes kerfuffle, simply highlight the elements of the film that make it an exciting entry in 2009’s Fall releases. But it does make me raise my eyebrow at Anderson, someone who I once thought to be a truly passionate auteur; ultimately, while he can be defended for being absent during shooting, it’s hard to muster up a whole lot of respect for the director upon learning that he foisted these requirements upon his crew without even appearing on his set.
