Black Swan

It was immensely beneficial for me to have watched The Wrestler for the first time a couple weeks ago before going into this. They're flip sides to the cinema of personal holocaust gender coin with The Wrestler wallowing in a lunkheaded "can't teach an old dog new tricks" masculinity and Black Swan pulverizing the audience with its visceral feminine emotional instability rooted in crippling body image and self worth issues. Aronofsky is clearly coming into his own as an individualistic auteur with these films, but I don't know if I find them as emotionally devastating or technically fascinating as PI or Requiem for a Dream. The less said about The Fountain, the better. What I'm getting at, is that judging by the critical acclaim and box office his last 2 films have garnered, Aronofsky is moving beyond the precocious, blistering genius of his early work into a stately, masterful confidence. He's attaining a most impressive level of consistency and clarity of vision. Whereas that makes his work more palatable, in my estimation, it also makes it more predictable, and therefore, less interesting.

Don't get me wrong, Black Swan is a masterpiece and certainly one of the best films of the year (definitely the best horror film of the year... more on that later). The pitch perfect casting pays off earth shaking dividends with uniformly excellent performances, especially from surefire Oscar winner Portman. The music, cinematography and costume design are all beyond reproach. It's just..... well, I guess I was expecting something more. It says a great deal how spoiled we as cinema enthusiasts are with the likes of Aronofsky, Edgar Wright, Fincher and the Coen Brothers all putting out a film every year or so that I could conceivably be let down by such a well made piece of art. Perhaps it was due to the proximity of my viewing of The Wrestler which gave it a sense of well fashioned redundancy. Perhaps it was because I recently watched my Criterion collection bluray of The Red Shoes and could see where the narrative framework was laid 62 years ago. During Black Swan, I kept flashing back to The Red Shoes and wondering why it is that film makers of a bygone era would tell an eerily similar story with a comparably sinister tone, yet imbue it with so much magic and wonder, while its modern counterpart would be mired in such oppressive mental illness. I also kept flashing to the Craig Scheffer starring Hellraiser Inferno with its constant lapsing into waking nightmare imagery and familiar "is THIS reality?" territory, and that, my friends, is no film to be brought to mind during a screening of an awards season darling.

In any case, I will gladly state that Black Swan is the single greatest horror film of 2010. It reaches a ferocious fever pitch of spine chilling malevolence for the last third that refuses to release you from its death grip. You feel positively violated and worn out by the end and that is surely the signifier of a great film. A great film, but not necessarily an interesting one. After having my eyeballs and intellect raped by Gulliver's Travels two nights prior, it was a welcome respite from slapdash storytelling and shitty, murky 3-D. I was pleased to see this in a mainstream theater with crisp, stunning projection and a harrowing sound system punishing me for the duration. I can no longer abide art house theaters with their sub-par accommodations and over priced tickets. Judging from how well Black Swan, The Fighter and True Grit are performing in the face of Focker failure and Jack Black's box office belly flop, this appears to be a refreshing trend we can look forward to further capitalizing on. Who knows, maybe in a couple of months I'll be sitting down to an IMAX screening of Tetsuo: Bulletman. Probably not, but a misanthrope can dream can't he?

Antichrist

I just finished watching the Criterion Collection Bluray of Lars VonTrier's Antichrist. I read the Ian Christie essay and watched most of the supplementary features contained within the sterling set to round out my understanding and appreciation of this work of art. For over a year now, I've been hearing tall tales of what an endurance test the film was and how unrelenting its concerted effort to shock and punish whatever audience was brave or self-flagellating enough to watch it. I've heard a great deal about its misogyny and misdirected hatefulness. Let me say, as someone with a strong stomach and consistently well fed appetite for disturbing cinema, all these hushed warnings and hyperbolic accusations are nothing more than reactionary balderdash.

Antichrist is a complicated film that challenges everyone who views it in a fashion unique to that particular individual based on their gender, relationship history, religious beliefs and ability to confront their own prejudices and pre-conceived notions. This is PRECISELY the function of art and the fact that VonTrier exorcised his own demons of anxiety and depression while crafting such an exquisitely beautiful and fascinating film makes his achievement all the more impressive and worthy. That it's reduced in reviews to "the movie with the genital mutilation scene" is indicative of the prurient streak in highbrow film criticism and the salacious nonsense of online blowhards (of whose ranks I suppose I must admit membership).

I detest plot recapping and infer those bothering to read this have seen it, so I'll just get to it. I find it hilarious that anyone can call a film this thoughtful misogynous with the glut of regressive romantic comedies and teen male wish fulfillment crowding screens both big and small. Women in America are ceaselessly objectified, degraded and dismissed on sitcoms, commercials, music videos and print ads without given the benefit of having a voice. Antichrist explores the roots of such ingrained disgust and conflicted lust. It shows how such a pervasive atmosphere of animosity can infect a woman's mind and reprogram it to hate and destroy.

The film turns the generally accepted parable of mother as the anthropomorphic representation of natures bounty into an inverse Edenic holocaust with Satan as the lord of the earth and progenitor of feminine fury. It's a terrifying and discomforting proposition to the men of the audience and Gainsbourg does indeed become an unstoppable villain by the end of the film. Her assault on his power totem with a wood block and subsequent proxy rape and binding of his leg are deep seated male fears, fully realized in a fashion both urgently potent and deceptively subtle. She strips him of his power in a bloody sexual assault and shackles him to prevent escape, something most men attempt when threatened by the ferocity of a woman's emotion. I, as I'm sure most men watching, felt genuine fear for the unpredictability of Dafoe's predicament and sensed a very real, very palpable threat from his jilted, mercurial counterpart.

This is testing the men in the audience to confront their castration fears, which are at the root of all male fear. It's the fear of loss of potency, the fear of imprisonment, the fear of imposed stagnation: it's the fear of death, plain and simple. It also forces us to confront our belief that women are overly emotional and preternaturally sensitive beings that we can somehow control and "put into a place". Dafoe's confident psychologist thinks he has all the answers and will set his injured birds wing so that she may fly again. But the damage is beyond his ken, as its roots are in the millenia of mistreatment and misdiagnosis at the hands of men such as him.

The women who see this film will no doubt have an entirely different take on it than I, so I won't even pretend to interpret it from their perspective. Perhaps I can encourage my wife to give it a viewing and glean from her her thoughts and impressions. There's so many possibilities and permutations, I feel this film will be dissected for years to come and my thoughts will grow and evolve with the passage of time and repeated viewings. One thing will never change though: This film is beauty of the highest order. There are sequences of unsettling violence to be sure, but there is also painterly use of slow motion photography so stunning and arresting I will never get the images out of my head. In time, I will have more to say, but for now, this brief missive must suffice. I needed to get the initial thoughts out of my head in an effort to begin processing the film and making room for more interpretations. So yeah, don't believe the hype, but in a good way.

Tron:Legacy

As you can probably tell if you read my last post, I've been hotly anticipating the release of Tron:Legacy in IMAX 3-D. I'm a sucker for monstrously expensive popcorn entertainment, especially the variety that envelops you in a fantastical world and manages to be emotionally satisfying (well, at least in a moderate sense) while also being visually thrilling. At this jaded stage in my life, it's of the utmost importance that when I spend 30$ for my son and myself to see a 4PM showing, I feel something. I want my breath to be taken away once or twice. I want to genuinely laugh. I want to grow to truly like characters and become invested in the success of their (admittedly ill defined) endeavors. I want tears to well up in my eyes at the overpowering sound and fury of the climax. I want to leave the theater feeling wrung out, yet wanting more. Tron:Legacy delivered on all these criteria.

I mean, I'll go sit through a Transformers movie, or any of these middling superhero properties Marvel is throwing at the back of the theater wall to see which will stick. I just probably won't like them due to the callous manner in which they ingratiate with blustery origin stories, crass, regressive humor and predictable iconography. I enjoy being entertained as much as I enjoy subtext hunting and navel gazing. Hell, I loved Prince of Persia and found Clash of the Titans to be a rollicking, shiny good time. I just need films like this to maintain a sense of wonder and relish in being transported to a time when I was young and wanted to be swept away in such fanciful stories. I'm a father now and the main joy of film for me is imparting the appreciation of it to my son as my father did with me. I'll never forget sitting next to my dad as the likes of Dune, T2, Predator, Robocop and a million others unspooled before my wide eyes. Seeing Tron with my son brought back those memories and fulfilled the next chapter in my cinematic circle of life.

I won't make this a review that endlessly, self-righteously complains about the incoherency of the script or hypothesizes about where the rewrites and re shoots came into play. I will say that I bought the Daft Punk soundtrack a week before the film came out and my son and I listened to it over and over, talking about our favorite tracks and guessing where they would feature in the movie. It was a great primer for the sleek, digital world of the film and it was an invaluable tool to open up the world of cinema to my son so he could understand that movies were a multi layered art form that brought to bear the talents of many artists, all working toward a shared goal utilizing their specific talents. The soundtrack is brilliant. On the IMAX it rumbled and pulsated and glided through my synapses and nervous system. It is the cold, detached funky heartbeat that gives the film life. I suppose I could be either congratulated or condemned that my 9 year old leaned over and whispered to me his recognition of the Daft Punk cameo and quietly enthused how cool that was to him! This is the foundation of film geek building. He's seeing beyond the instantaneous gratification of the finished product to the intricate world behind its creation. One day, he can cultivate a successful marriage of those two fascinations, as I feel I have. Considering my ability to read spoiler and invective filled reviews of Tron:Legacy, yet still react to it with the excitement of a child, I think I'm capable of weathering the storm of Internet conjecture and fanboy entitlement and coming out on the other side relatively unscathed.

It's not hard with a film as flat out cool and fun as Tron:Legacy. The action is breathtaking, the 3-D works to create a fully realized world as opposed to post conversion money grab gimmick and the visual palette is clearly realized without becoming stale and repetitive. Simply put, this was a world I wanted to live in, and like Lynch's Arrakis before it, I look forward to revisiting and getting lost in it again in the future. The performances were all great. I thoroughly enjoyed Hedlund as the lead, he was charismatic and easy to root for. Olivia Wilde is as energetic and likable as she is unnaturally beautiful and Jeff Bridges is as he always is. Pure gold. He plays Flynn as we want him to play him. He's the dude, but when an emotional moment is required, he steps up to the plate and knocks it out of the park. His last minute onscreen is mesmerizing. Through sheer force of his talent and craft, he is able to find the core of the films father and sons life lesson and wordlessly overpower millions of dollars of effects work to make this fantastical story relatably human. I was, in a word, devastated.

So yeah, don't listen to 24 year old misanthropes in their moms basement telling you how the studio system works. Some very talented artists were given a ton of money to produce some mind blowing art. Go give it a chance and allow yourself to be caught up in your youthful naivete and childish exuberance for the possibilities of film.

Happy Chrimbus!

Am I an idiot for being a 33 year old man who is so excited about Tron: Legacy he can barely contain himself? I have so thoroughly bought into the hype surrounding this film that I've actually purchased the Daft Punk soundtrack. I've never given a shit about this band before in my life. But as I listen to it on my Ipod while typing this admission of regressive enthusiasm, my already considerable anticipation is growing exponentially. It sounds huge and sweeping, cold and detached, imperial and fascistic. It brings to mind the work Toto did on Dune and Vangelis did on Blade Runner. I've taken the entire week of the 20th off work to hang with my son during his Christmas break and plan on seeing the film in Imax 3-D with him more than once.

I've taken a bit of a blogging break due to increased responsibilities at work and home. I think I've been putting far too much effort into this stuff and it kind of burned me out. I'll just post when I feel the inclination and am in possession of the time. The theaters have been a barren wasteland since Scott Pilgrim's ignominious run. The Zach Snyder owl movie looked nice, Mega Mind and Tangled were fun and Skyline gave my and my wife's eyeballs a good rolling workout.

I've been primarily hunkering down with the classics on bluray. Good lord do I love my TV, 5.1 surround and bluray player! I completely understand the money argument. But if you're a self professed film fanatic who has the means and refuses to upgrade to bluray, you are full of shit. I've mostly been watching old films. Apocalypse Now, City of the Living Dead, Maniac, The Untouchables, Halloween, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Texas Chainsaw Massacre to name a few. I suppose I have dark taste in film. Not that I'm some deep dude or anything, I just prefer more serious films with a mature tone and subdued aesthetic. I can not for the life of me understand how people can waste their time on schlocky Roger Corman garbage, brain dead slashers or that atrocious Syfy channel afterbirth. I'm a pompous ass I guess, but give me Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Tetsuo: the iron man and Hardware over piranha 3-D any day of the fucking week. I'm a grown ass man and I can no longer be entertained by juvenile ephemera. Except for Tron: Legacy.

And can we talk about how awful The Walking Dead is please? Jesus Harold Christ on a pair of rubber crutches is that some predictable garbage. Boring too. Boiler plate social commentary with CGI gore, clunky scripts and wildly inconsistent acting. How's this for an idea, have Michael Rooker show up for one episode, set the screen ablaze, then disappear him for the rest of the season?!?!?!?!?!? And that Halloween opener? Snooze fest. I expected better from Darabont and AMC.

In closing, everyone give Profondo Cinema a listen. It's the best podcast going today! I'm hoping to give Antichrist a viewing coming up soon here. That should yield some interesting thoughts. Black Swan is out, True Grit and Tron coming up, things are looking up. All that and I have the Criterion blu of Night of the Hunter on my Christmas wish list! Happy Chrimbus everyone!