Guillermo del Toro is probably my favorite living director. It’s an absolute shame that he wasn’t able to continue on The Hobbit or At the Mountains of Madness. As demonstrated in Pan’s Labyrinth, the guy can direct the crap out of movies that require imagination and emotional intelligence. And he can make some of the scariest monsters you’ll ever see. The Pale Man scene is among the most terrifying scenes of all time. His herky jerky motion (all praises go to Doug Jones) and extremely creepy design just get to me. But he is not the greatest villain of the film. No, that honor belongs to Sergi López’s Captain Vidal. He’s a very real person and yet so evil that his facial disfigurement seems like an inevitability. Like many other great horror films, Pan’s Labyrinth features a young child as our hero, or, in this case, heroine. Ivana Baquero plays Ofelia with a mix of wonder and fear of the fantasy world and the real world that really makes this movie tick. In a movie where a homicidal man is your new stepfather and your only source of escape is an equally dangerous fantasy land the horror comes from all sides.
Notes:
The movie is, like all other GdT films, gorgeous. His camera never really stops moving, adding to the fairy-tale nature of the story. The music, too, is super great. I’ve found myself humming the lullaby around the house. Creepy.
Sunshine isn’t 2001. It isn’t Alien. It’s not Solaris or even Children of Men. It owes a lot to a couple of these films and others (even Event Horizon deserves some credit) but it is a great film in its own right. I saw it in a theater and the intensity of the sun is fully realized both aurally and visually. It’s as visceral a film as I have seen, an aspect of filmmaking that Danny Boyle is particularly good at. In addition to the directorial prowess, Sunshine boasts superb acting by a few of my favorite young-ish actors: Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, and Chris Evans all give great, human performances. There’s often a tendency to disregard creating actual characters for sci-fi films because most of them end up dead but there’s a lot in the script to build theses into real people in little lines. Early on there’s a big almost-dinner table scene which serves to build the characters and get all the information we need for the rest of the movie to happen. It’s really well done. And then there’s the last third. Some people hate the final third of this movie. I think it works not only technically but thematically. The entire movie is about the power and near religious nature of something as big as the sun and the third act twist just plays that up to its logical end. And the final five minutes or so are nearly transcendent (much like his latest film, 127 Hours). So, watch it but don’t hate me if you don’t like the ending. You’re the broken one, not the film.
Notes:
I don’t like that sci-fi and fantasy are joined in this topic. Maybe I’ll put a bonus pick at the end of this series so you can see why REDACTED is my favorite fantasy film.
The sound is key to this film and the score is at once beautiful and dangerous. Like the sun!
Here’s a nice romance for you and your loved one to watch on a Friday night. Or not. It basically amounts to an Adam Sandler movie if his childish characters lived in the real world instead of his normal, highly stylized habitat. That’s not to say the movie isn’t stylish, of course. This is a PTA film (yes, the third on this list) and his eye for cinematic flair is not lost on this smaller film. Along with Jon Brion’s nearly overbearing score, every frame is composed to make you feel along with Sandler. He does his long takes again (this time we see Sandler talking on a phone-sex line for several uninterrupted minutes) and his camera is never quite settled. But this is a romance! Emily Watson plays the girl that gives Sandler a reason to live when all else seems to have failed him. “I have a love in my life,” he says to his nemesis (played expertly by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in that slimy way he does), “it makes me strong than anything you can imagine.” Here’s a movie where going to Hawaii in pursuit of a girl works out. How is that not romantic?
Notes:
This is basically a four person movie. Joining Sandler, Watson, and Hoffman is PTA favorite Louis Guzmán.This guy is always a bunch of fun. He brings the lightness that is sometimes lacking in the rest of the characters.
This film is proof that Sandler can really act. PTA likes doing that with his actors (Tom Cruise in Magnolia, Mark Whalberg in Boogie Nights).
Is there a character more iconic than Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones? You’d be hard pressed to find one, I think. There’s something about his cavalier method of handling the tight spots he gets himself in that just makes you want to be him. The guy that just shoots the master swordsman and throws a Nazi off a blimp, explaining he had “No ticket,” is probably the coolest guy ever. On top of the superb character work, the direction of this movie is impeccable. Spielberg gets the grandeur of the archaeological dig and the near slapstick fight scenes and the sly dialogue all pitch perfect. There’s not a sour note in the film. It also holds up remarkably well. There’s something about its adherence to classical storytelling styles and ideas that just works. Unlike, say, Star Wars, it’s not trying to be anything other than a roaring good time. There’s nothing about good and evil to clog it up. It’s just a guy going after an artifact and a girl.
Notes:
Han Solo may have been Ford’s breakout role but I think Indiana Jones is what he should be remembered for. It plays to his strength’s perfectly.
The fourth film in the series is not the abomination that some would have you believe. If you think that surviving an atom bomb in a fridge is any sillier than the Holy Ghost melting your face off or grabbing your heart out of your chest or a cup that keeps you alive for centuries you have another thing coming. Crystal Skull is made in the exact same spirit as the other three films.
“We named the dog Indiana.” Later movie but I still love it.
Trailer! How can you not love it? The music, the dead guys on sticks. 30 years ago or today, this movie is great.
Based on a BBC TV series, In the Loop is a hilarious look at the behind-the-scenes politics leading up to a war in the Middle East. With players from the U.K. and the U.S., and some working for the war while others work against it the film can be a bit hard to follow at the beginning until you figure out where everybody fits in and their relationships to each other but once you do the laughs don’t stop. Peter Capaldi is the standout in this film; his facility with the English language and its swearing potential is quite a thing to behold. The script, too, is outstanding (it was nominated for the Oscar and probably should have won). There are so many quotable lines and they really speak for the film way better than I could. “’Climbing the mountain of conflict’? You sounded like a Nazi Julie Andrews!” “I can't stand to see a woman bleed from the mouth. It reminds me of that Country & Western music which I cannot abide.” “Y'know, I've come across a lot of psychos, but none as fucking boring as you. You are a real boring fuck. Sorry, sorry, I know you disapprove of swearing so I'll sort that out. You are a boring F, star, star, CUNT!” If you like your films sweary and smart, In the Loop will not do you wrong.
While I think a lot of the current group of Frat Pack films are funny enough I don’t love any of them. So no Anchorman or I Love You, Man or anything like that on the shortlist.
This movie often filp flops with There Will Be Blood as my favorite movie of all time. Where TWBB is a focused study of a man grabbing at whatever he can to get rich, Magnolia pulls back and looks at a dozen or so LA denizens and how their lives weave in and out of each other’s. It’s not the first movie to do such a thing and it owes a lot of debt to Robert Altman’s Short Cuts in both its form and function. But there’s a kind of craziness that underlies everything. This being PTA’s third film he is mostly allowed to go all out on the filmmaking front. There’s a couple of multi-minute-long shots, the characters take a break in the middle of the film to have a cosmic sing-along, and then there’s the ending. It’s a pretty audacious piece of work but what makes it my favorite drama film is the characters. Like I said earlier there are about a dozen characters and all of the directorial trickery works to make you care about each and every one of them. From Tom Cruise’s woman-hating public speaker to John C. Reilly’s well meaning police officer to Melora Walters’ junkie caught between love and addiction, each of the characters has a full life which we glimpse for only a day. It is one of the best combinations of script, direction, and acting I have ever seen and it never fails to get my tear ducts working. Sometimes it’s Cruise’s confession at his dying father’s bedside or the heartbreaking date between Reilly and Walters that ends with this line, “Now that I've met you, would you object to never seeing me again?” or the final, redemptive scene of the film; they knit together to create a dazzling and desperately human work of art.
Notes:
I have, for some reason, only seen this film twice. I feel like I should go out and buy it right now. I’ve talked myself into it.
As hard as it was for me to not turn this into a Borzage-fest, it will be just as hard to keep all of PTA’s films off the list. There may or may not be another one coming up soon.
Here we go. If you didn’t already hate me for disliking Aliens be prepared to quit reading in disgust.
When I was young my mother purchased me the VHS box set of the original trilogy. I watched these films over and over and over again. They were some kind of wonderful. Then the re-done versions came to theaters and I saw all of them. It should have been magical but I don’t recall any of it. When The Phantom Menace came out I loved it. My friend and I (both 11) returned after a Friday night showing and busted out the broomsticks to play at being Jedi and Sith. Because The Phantom Menace was so awesome. What I’m saying is that I was young and stupid. I mostly stopped watching Star Wars after Episode III arrived (and I thought that one was pretty good, too). I returned to the original series recently and, while there are moments of greatness (“I know.”) it’s mostly just poorly written nonsense for kids. Now, let me be clear, there are plenty of movies ostensibly made for kids that are great in their own right; Where the Wild Things Are and the majority of Disney and Pixar films are still great to this 23 year old, among others. But Star Wars is just stupid. From the annoying main character to the horrible dialogue and the silly robot characters, everything is just too dumb for me to enjoy. If this movie wasn't so well loved I’d just be indifferent to it. But if I tell somebody that I don’t like Star Wars they’ll get all red faced and try to punch me. It’s happened. I really hope that as the generation of people that saw it as a kid in the theater dies out it will be recognized as mostly bad.
Notes:
That’s not to say nothing good came from Star Wars. Knights of the Old Republic is a terrific video game and there are some books I recall liking in the Expanded Universe (of course, I was a kid when I read those, too).
Most of the reason why Indiana Jones is better than Star Wars is that it’s directed by Spielberg instead of Lucas and Lucas didn’t actually write the scripts. As Harrison Ford said about Lucas’s dialogue, “You can write this shit, George, but you can’t say it.” Agreed.
Dear readers, I don’t know if you know this about me but I am a teenage wizard. I was chosen from birth to destroy the most evil wizard in all of history. It’s a burden I can only bear with the help of my friends. All of this is probably not true. What is true is that this is the first movie in the series where the kids go out into the real (wizarding) world. Outside the relative safety of Hogwarts Harry, Ron, and Hermione must deal with real issues (the biggest being maintaining their friendship during difficult times) and have a mission to accomplish. My life now consists of trying to find a job and keeping connected to friends. No, I’m not destroying evil or anything but leaving the bubble of college to make my own way is my connection to the guy with the dorky glasses. Also, I have dorky glasses.
I thought Harry Potter was one of the best films of last year. This year’s conclusion (one month away!) could be the best movie of the year. David Yates has made the final four HP films really awesome.
Check the trailer for the next film in the series. It's close to the best thing ever.
In 2006 I had never seen an Atlman film before. I’d never listened to the radio show this movie is based on. I didn’t really know who most of these actors were (this was towards the beginning of my movie education). On top of all of that it’s a movie about a faux-old-timey radio show getting shut down. There was nothing in this movie for me to like. But I loved it. There’s a kind of ease that permeates the film. Yes, these people are losing their jobs (and the end makes it seem more like they’re dying, which is practically the same thing) but they’re so comfortable with each other that they know everything is going to be fine. In later years I saw more Altman and more movies with these performers and I learned to appreciate that everything has the potential to be good. Even a quasi-musical staring Lindsay Lohan and Garrison Keillor.
Notes:
The performances in this movie are all great. They do the typical Altman overlapping dialogue which is fun but the more low-key aspect distinguishes it from some of his other stuff (Short Cuts, for example, is way more manic, I think).
It’s kind of fitting that this is Altman’s last movie. It feels like it. The end of a performance and the end of an era. That final diner scene is just fantastic. If there is a heaven I would like it to be like that.
This song is freaking hilarious. It's not exactly indicative of the rest of the film but it is super great.
I have a guilty genre. I will watch anything with animals that eat people. These animals may or may not be genetically modified, released from melting ice caps, or used as metaphors for genocide. I don’t care as long as they eat people. The pinnacle of these films is, obviously, Anaconda. Not only does it star a bunch of pretty ok actors that act in a pretty ok way (JLo! Ice Cube! Eric Stoltz! Danny Trejo! Owen Wilson!) it also has a big, silly CGI anaconda (voiced by master animal noise maker Frank Welker)! And a guy gets stung by a super wasp in the throat! It’s the silliest of movies and therefore I love it. And let nobody forget the supreme absurdity of Jon Voight’s performance. Is he Cajun? Russian? Martian? I don’t know, I don’t care. The scene where he is eaten by the snake and then regurgitated only to taunt JLo some more is one of the best scenes in movie history. Some genius on IMDb put up this quote from Voight, “Eet wraps eetz COILS around yooo... .TIGHTAH zan anny luvvah.” If that’s not a guilty pleasure I don’t know what is.
Notes:
I could have also picked Deep Blue Sea very easily. Smart sharks! The best Sam Jackson performance! LL Cool J! A parrot! An ending stolen directly from Jaws!
Anacondas: the Hunt for the Blood Orchid is almost as good as the first film. It doesn't have the star cast but thesnake orgy at the end makes up for it. Ball of snakes!
Can I choose Aliens again? No? Ok, Avatar it is. Take all of the problems I outlined in Aliens and fix none of them and you get Avatar. I don’t even care that it’s not original because, for the most part, nothing is. If the dialogue was even remotely good I’d forgive the trite plot. The visuals are cool, yes, but they serve anything. I don’t need subtlety in my movies but I do require something that respects my intelligence. You want a good action film? Go to Die Hard or the Bourne films. Avatar has nothing outside looking cool (and even that isn’t really all that special. It’s fantasy plus neon.) and making a lot of money. It is so thoroughly mediocre for a movie that should be amazing. That’s the real problem. James Cameron can create cool looking things but he has trouble getting me to care about them. The Abyss is his only film that I can truly claim to enjoy without reservation since even T2 has the same annoying-child-actor-problem that hurts Aliens. For a guy that can do pretty much anything he wants he doesn’t seem to want to do anything of actual import. It’s a damn shame that people like Guillermo del Toro and Terry Gilliam can’t get the proper funding for their films but Cameron’s utterly boring films rake in the dough.
Notes:
It seems like Michael Bay would be an obvious choice here but I like a lot of his movies. The Rock is fantastic and The Island and Armageddon both have some things going for them. Also, I really like the looks of Transformers: Dark of the Moon or whatever it’s called.
James Cameron is probably better than most directors but it is his lack of ambition that gives him his spot here. I never expect a Paul W.S. Anderson movie or a Uwe Boll film to be anything but crap. Cameron could be so much better!
Margaret Sullavan isn’t one of the super famous actresses from the ‘30s but she’s in four of my favorite films of the era. The Shop Around the Corner (later remade as You’ve Got Mail) is the only of these four not directed by Frank Borzage but since I probably shouldn’t pick his films for everything on this list I decided to go for this Ernst Lubitsch romance. The chemistry between Sullavan and Jimmy Stewart is the real draw of this film. Sullavan has a quality about her that is both ethereal and grounded. She seems like an angel and a flawed human being at the same time. See also: Three Comrades and Little Man, What Now?
Notes:
Borzage’s The Mortal Storm came out in the same year as The Shop Around the Corner. It also stars Sullavan and Stewart and Frank Morgan (AKA The Wizard of Oz). It’s a much heavier movie than this one because of the whole Nazi thing. It is quite awesome.
Also, The Shop Around the Corner is a way better Christmas movie than It's a Wonderful Life (which is very good).
This scene shows the greatness of Margaret Sullavan quite well:
Henry Fonda has been in roughly a billion great movies. The better known 12 Angry Men, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Lady Eve all boast really great Fonda performances. His lesser known films like Young Mr. Lincoln, Fort Apache, and My Darling Clementine are just as good. While John Wayne is known as John Ford’s muse, Fonda was also in a bunch of his movies. My Darling Clementine is a Ford western telling the story of the shootout at the OK Corral. Fonda plays Wyatt Earp as a more relaxed guy and sells the titular romance well. It’s not all that far off from his normal roles (for that you can go to The Lady Eve and OUATITW) but his normal roles are what I like so much about him. He’s not a superhero, he’s just a guy trying to do good in the world.
Notes:
Ward Bond is also in MDC. If I could pick another guy for this day it might be him. He seems to be in every movie made between 1930 and 1960.
Check out this clip (it's kind of long but worth it) to see some awesome Ward Bond-ness, Henry Fonda dancing and John Ford community building.
The 30 Day Film Challenge is a fun little project that I started doing over at The Reelists website. That website is shutting down so I'll be continuing it here. The idea is to pick a movie based on certain criteria for each day of the month. First up are the 6 movies already posted there. I'll just put them here for completion's sake. Later today I'll post Day 7.
If there’s one thing that Paul Thomas Anderson is good at it’s examining the way broken people deal with the broken world they live in. There Will Be Blood is the epitome of that idea. Daniel Plainview (played perfectly by Daniel Day-Lewis) will tell you that he is an oil man and you will have to agree. The problem is that he is single minded in his quest for oil. His nemesis Eli Sunday (Paul Dano’s performance has been maligned but I think he does a good job of being the sniveling opposite of Day-Lewis’s towering inferno of a show) is similarly broken, leaning on religion as a way to exploit the small town people he purports to lead. The movie is deeply serious on first viewing but after multiple exposures the dark comedy comes to the fore. It’s a great example of what movies can do and the technical craft is second-to-none.
How can I hate Aliens, you might ask. Let me count the ways. It’s a sequel that completely changes the tone and world of the original film (which is a masterpiece, by the way). Instead of a smart and scary thriller we get a dumb and explosion-y action film with nothing horrifying in the 137 minute run time. Remember the characters in Alien? They had depth and a purpose. The sequel gave us people that spout one-liners like they were going out of style and lacked anything resembling nuance. And then the creatures. One alien was enough to kill the entire crew of the Nostromo but a hundred aliens left three survivors (thankfully killed in the superior third film)? The increase in numbers did not lead to an increase in scariness. And there’s a boss fight! A freaking boss fight. Aliens, you did what every other sequel does but for some reason people love you and condemn the rest. Not I! Boo, Aliens, Boo.
Sure, Jurassic Park has a few people dying in it. And it’s not exactly a carefree romp or anything. But it is super fun and fulfills the promise of cinema to the fullest extent. The great thing about movies is that you can see and hear things that don’t exist. It’s limited only by imagination and the craftiness of the artists behind the scenes. In the case of Jurassic Park the imagination is great and the craftiness greater. Like most young boys I was fascinated by dinosaurs. They were so big and there were so many kinds. And thanks to Steven Spielberg and Stan Winston I could finally see real live (or real clever use of CGI and giant puppets) dinosaurs. And that’ll make me happy any day of the week.
The great thing about Hoop Dreams is that it’s a documentary about two kids that are chasing a dream. The terrible thing about Hoop Dreams is that they fail. It’s a 3 hour movie about people struggling against the system and themselves and losing. Not exactly what I would call uplifting. The two kids aspire to go to a good basketball school and transition into the NBA. While not the easiest goal to meet it certainly seems doable to young William Gates and Arthur Agee. But when one pushes his schooling to the side and the other’s body starts to fail him already the dreams begin to disappear. There are moments of joy sprinkled in there – Arthur’s mother getting her nursing assistant certificate made me cry – but most of it is utterly depressing. It is on my list of 100 greatest movies but I’d never watch it unless I wanted to be super sad.
Those of you that know me might be surprised that this is the first Frank Borzage film from me. Many of you might not have seen a film from Mr. Borzage. Allow me to explain. My final semester in college I took a film class that focused solely on the films of Frank Borzage. He’s an old Hollywood director that nobody else seems to care about. But my professor, Bob Smith, really loved him. His appreciation was infectious and by the end of my time in his class I, too, had become a huge Borzage fan. Liliom is not a typical Borzage movie. It’s got a lot of flaws (mostly in the whole spousal abuse element and some of the acting choices) but those flaws serve only to highlight the spectacular look and feel of the film. To quote another Borzage film, “Everywhere… in every town, in every street… we pass unknowingly, human souls made great by love and adversity.” I’d like to thank Bob Smith for introducing me to Frank Borzage and for being the best teacher I’ve ever had.
How can a movie remind me of a place that doesn’t exist? It’s just that good at the world-building aspect of film. Peter Jackson took J.R.R. Tolkien’s base novels and planted them firmly in the already otherworldly land of New Zealand. The combination leads to a place that doesn’t really exist outside of the frame of the film but within that frame it’s as real as anywhere. It takes a special film to make me nostalgic for a place I’ve only experienced through books and movies. The Fellowship of the Ring is that movie. I would live in a hobbit hole in a second and even listening to that flute piece that plays seemingly throughout the time spent in the Shire is enough to bring me back to that place I’ve never been and will never go to.
The Name of the Wind owes a lot to Harry Potter. There's the school for learning magic, the dead parents, the snooty aristocrat arch rival, the wandering Big Bad enemy, the teacher with a grudge against our hero and the teacher with loopy but seemingly knowledgeable insights, and there's the girl that is kinda strange but makes a connection with Kvothe, the hero of the tale. Yes, there's a lot of overlap there but what The Name of the Wind does with these characters and ideas (which I recognize weren't exactly invented for the Harry Potter universe but the popular girl get's all the dirty looks, I guess) makes it a great story. This, the first book in the Kingkiller Chronicle series does a lot of heavy lifting as we hear about the first 15 years of Kvothe's (pronounced like "quoth") life. The framing story is a clever conceit in this tale because the Kvothe we know in the present is quite different from the Kvothe at the beginning of his life (and he doesn't even come close to old Kvothe's melancholy by the end of this book, the first day of his recitation of his life). We know Kvothe will end up as an innkeeper and bartender somewhere in the middle of nowhere hiding from his previous life as a hero but as of the end of this book he's still riding pretty high. Only at the end of the book do we get a hint of what happened to him to turn him against the world when his two audience members - one a faerie and the other an author recording Kvothe's tale of woe - have a midnight conversation about how sad Kvothe has become in his later years. It's a telling scene and told well as we get some talk of masks that would please Oscar Wilde.
The book moves at a quick pace (I finished the 672 pages in around a week and a half) and is well written, though there are a few issues. At this point in the story young Kvothe is a little too good at everything. Much of the middle of the book throws a bunch of seemingly minor issues at him which he solves quite easily. Part of his myth is that he can do everything and I guess that is on display here but it makes for a kind of uninteresting story at points. There's a lot of wheel spinning without much meaning outside of a couple of great scenes in the middle bits (the fire in the workshop and Kvothe's performance of a long and complicated song stand out as being particularly great). The last 100-150 pages, though, are stellar.
Perhaps the element that separates The Name of the Wind from Harry Potter the most is the love interest. I never really got anything from Harry's various romantic entaglements and in fact I thought he probably should have hooked up with Luna Lovegood because she was clearly the coolest of the girls hanging around Hogwarts. Kvothe's object of desire is Denna and she is a perfect match for him. They meet early on but the relationship only really gets going in the middle of the book. Denna, like Kvothe, has a mysterious past and nobody to rely on for food or money or shelter. Where these circumstances propelled Kvothe to become a master arcanist (magician, basically) they pushed Denna to a largely nomadic lifestyle, living off the attention she gets from men of all ages while never getting close to anybody for too long. She's an incredible alluring character and whenever she's around Kvothe can't help but admire her and the reader will likely follow his lead. The end of the book concerns a possible attack by the creatures that killed Kvothe's entire troupe of traveling performers. This drives Kvothe to the scene of a wedding day massacre where he finds that Denna is the only survivor. There's a lot of fun interaction between the two as they spend more time with each other than either has spent with another person for quite a while. The relationship grows as they find out why the Chandrian attacked this particular group of people and what attention they have brought on the little town. It's one big setpiece which includes a dragon and a harvest-time celebration. It's supremely well written and gives me hope for the next books in the series. Let's hope they spend more time on heroic antics rather than finding enough money to pay for another semester at school. One of these things is way more exciting and, though the other is important background information, I hope it has come to an end. This is a series with epic inclinations and if it can capitalize on those it could end up being one of the best series in the genre, if not the modern era.
In his film Young Mr. Lincoln, John Ford creates a version of the American hero that is, for the most part, detached from the rest of the world. Ford loves the idea of community but how can you have a genuine hero in a place and a film that revolves around community? Henry Fonda’s Abe Lincoln is this kind of hero. There are visual clues that Ford uses to demonstrate that the only kind of hero that a community can use is one that isn’t part of the community. These clues come from the framing and the use of fences in those frames. Through these ideas Ford makes a clear case for the lonely and distinct hero.
We’ll start with the framing of Abe throughout the film. Right through the film Lincoln is visually separated from other people by Ford’s use of “hero shots”, the juxtaposition of one shots and two-plus shots, and other miscellaneous framing devices. Let’s first look at the hero shot. Generally, a hero shot is a one shot from a low (as in below the torso) perspective looking up towards the character within the shot. The character will take up most of the frame and will therefore be very imposing and intimidating. John Ford uses this kind of shot on Lincoln during several key scenes to drive home the fact that Lincoln is worthy of the hero title. Our second shot of Lincoln comes in the form of a hero shot. He’s giving a speech on a porch in his small hometown. He’s not particularly imposing at this point but he does carry himself well and his speech, which is all given in the duration of this shot with the reactions saved for after his speech is over, is a good one. However, at this point Lincoln hasn’t become who he will be and is not as important or well developed yet. As such the hero shot is not very dramatic. It’s almost indistinguishable from what a normal mid shot would look like, save for the fact that we see a bit the wall above the door behind him which wouldn’t be visible in a normal mid shot.
The next hero shot of Lincoln comes at what may be the most important moment in the entire film, if not his life. It is during the celebrations at his new town and Lincoln is the sole judge of the pie contest. We get a camera angle that is probably from the audience’s perspective and, since Lincoln is on an elevated platform to perform his sacred duties, we see a much more dramatic version of the hero shot as he struggles to decide between the two obviously delicious pies. But don’t let a little jesting fool you, this shot really is important to developing the themes of the film through the hero shot. Abe has previously recognized that the law and deciding what’s right and what’s wrong is an important concept to him and this pie eating contest gives him the opportunity to exercise that concept in a relatively unimportant venue. At this point Lincoln is building his career as a lawyer and the ability to distinguish right from wrong is a valuable tool in his belt as we see later in the film. It’s this discriminating characteristic that both separates Lincoln and turns him into the hero that the community needs. And the pies are tasty.
The next three hero shots go a long way to distinguish Lincoln as a moral and just hero which is important for Ford to do so that the audience sympathies are firmly in his camp. They all accomplish a similar goal and I’ll therefore group them together and talk about them as a whole, for the most part. The first is at the jailhouse as Lincoln reigns in the mob that wants to lynch the two suspected murderers (who just happen to be Lincoln’s first clients), the second comes after he proves his clients’ innocence and the final is the last shot of the movie as Lincoln stands on a hill during a thunderstorm. This last one isn’t a typical hero shot and is actually more of a wide shot but as he is on a hill and super tall, I think it works for what I’m talking about here. These three shots are used to firmly establish Lincoln as an undeniable hero. First he turns the mob of people away from the jailhouse in order to get the two boys a fair trial. The moral high ground here is definitely Lincoln’s. Again, the shot is likely from the perspective of his audience, a theme which runs through these hero shots. The next one, as he leaves the courthouse to wild applause, is a similar situation and accomplishes similar things. Now he has a legitimacy from finding the real killer and proving his two clients innocent and the hero title is definitely deserved. The last shot of him on the hill sets Lincoln up as the national hero that everybody knows from history books and who pays the ultimate sacrifice for bringing his community together.
Now that I’ve established that Lincoln is clearly a hero, I’d like to point out how he is defined as separate from the community through the framing and set up of the shots throughout the film. Ford consistently frames Lincoln in one shot while almost every other shot has multiple people in them. This constant visual separation sets Lincoln apart from the community he is trying to build and defend. Let’s look at some specific examples.
The first example is also from the mob scene where Lincoln diffuses the crowd’s overreaction to the murder. He is framed throughout the scene in one shots either from the side or straight on (including the hero shot mentioned above). The rest of the town is framed together to emphasize how they are of a unified mind. They all think the same thing and are therefore visually equated within the scene by being shown in two-plus shots. Lincoln, who isn’t a part of this mob and knows that their point of view is incorrect, is shown separately from them to emphasize his severance from the community. Here Lincoln recognizes that the town requires him to stand and make a difference but he also knows that he can’t do it and still be a part of the community. This dichotomy is what Ford is trying to express throughout the movie and in this scene.
Similarly, Lincoln is shown as separate from a community in the trial scene, though this time it isn’t the community as a whole that he is separate from but the judicial system. As the prosecutor begins his opening arguments Lincoln goes over to a bookshelf and begins to read one of the law books on display there. He is shown in a one shot here, too, while the rest of the trial happens in another shot that contains the judge and jury and prosecutor and everybody else. Lincoln is again established as an outsider that will eventually save the legitimacy of the court and the two innocent men’s lives. The court works as it is supposed to where both sides get a chance to argue innocence and guilt which is then finally decided by the jury, but Lincoln undermines the rules that are set up when he feels that they are irrelevant. This separation from the normal and accepted rules for the greater good is again echoed in the visual separation shown in the framing of him apart from the courtroom and with the law books that he will use when they fit him and ignore when they don’t. This dedication to the ideals of the law but not the sometimes unnecessary practices is another example of Lincoln being the necessarily separate hero.
The way Lincoln is framed when he is shown in shots with other people is also a key to understanding how his character operates within the film. He is often shown to be separate from the others even in shots that show him interacting with them. Lincoln is usually shown to be either above or below the rest of the characters in the shot. When he is below them he is trying to be humble to people that are better than him, either in terms of class or moral stature. When he is above them he is trying to bend them to his own goal, that of bringing the community together. Lincoln was physically imposing but it is surprising how little Ford chooses to capitalize on his height. This, of course, means that when he does decide to emphasize Lincoln’s height he does so for a reason.
Lincoln is shown in the bottom of the frame in three key scenes. The first comes when he goes to the 4th of July celebration and sits with the big wigs of the town. He feels uncomfortable here and decides to sit on the platform instead of in the chairs that the high class people are sitting in. He is a tiny figure in the bottom left of the frame when compared to these “better” people. Here Lincoln recognizes that he’s not a part of this community and is separated visually because of that. Later he pulls a similar stunt but for an entirely different purpose. Here he is meeting with the mother of his two clients at her house out in the country. This is the type of house he grew up in, and he tells them that he’s more comfortable there than in the rest of the town. He still, however, sits down on the porch floor instead of in a chair like the mother. He really respects the family he represents and is therefore humbled that they would let him be their representation in the court case. His humble nature compels him to position himself below the mother and therefore low in the frame. He is again the smaller character within the frame, a hard thing to pull off with a person like Lincoln. Finally, in the court case itself he is shown over and over again in the bottom of the frame. At the beginning it seems to be because he’s out of his league. He stretches out as we have seen him do throughout the movie and puts his feet up on the table so he takes up the entirety of the bottom of the frame. He seems unimpressed by the whole proceeding, or perhaps nervous about his first big court case. He isn’t conducting himself in the way that the prosecutor and the rest of the people in the trial are, with the pomp and ceremony that is normally associated with such an occasion. But later we see him again sitting on a kind of platform: the steps up to the jury box area. Here he’s below the jury, the witness, the prosecutor, and pretty much everybody else in the frame and courtroom. But he’s in charge here. He’s playing a role in order to fool the room so that his revelation will surprise them. When he does finally pounce he stands up and becomes the tall, impressive figure we expect from Lincoln.
In fact, it is later in this scene that he is shown above the rest of the community in the frame. It doesn’t happen often so when it does it makes an impact. The most important scene where he is above the rest of the characters in the frame comes when he questions Jack Cass, the supposed eye witness to the murder. He knows something is fishy with Cass’s story and because of this he is framed to be taller than Cass. Lincoln hovers over him and makes him admit to the murder and conspiracy to implicate the two boys instead of him. Here Lincoln is in charge and has the moral high ground, so he is in the top of the frame. He’s powerful now, and he knows it. This difference in framing is only exacerbated when Cass gets off the stand to run out of the court room. He’s even smaller in comparison to Lincoln now that he knows he is busted. One other example comes much earlier in the film, right after his first speech on the porch. He is offered some books as a form of payment and when he first opens the barrel of them he is below all of the characters around him in the frame. Once he realizes that they’re law books he steps forward to practically fill the same frame. He’s taller than everybody else at this point and it is all because he has found his true passion in life: law. I’ve already discussed how the idea of right and wrong shaped Lincoln’s future and this scene is the impetus for that change. When he discovers the law he fills the frame and becomes larger than everybody else, indicating how important an event it is. He is now going to be an educated man, a lawyer, which automatically distinguishes him from the rest of the community who seem to be generally uneducated.
Fences are not normally a large part of the framing of a film, but in this case they play an important role in showing the separation between Lincoln and the rest of the community. I’ll walk you through the way Ford uses fences to cut Lincoln off in the remaining part of this essay beginning now.
From the first there is almost always a fence of some sort within the frame of this film. This alone should be evidence enough that fences are important, but I’ll elaborate a bit more to better explain why they are important. The first critical fence comes when Lincoln and his first love Ann meet at the river side where Lincoln is reading one of his law books. They begin to walk along the river and as they do there is a fence running along the bottom of the frame. It’s presence in the foreground and the river’s presence in the background creates a path that the two characters walk down. The nature of this path means that there is no way to go but forwards. When the finally stop walking there seems to be a break in the fence. This allows Lincoln and Ann to be on seemingly equal footing. And their characters would seem to match this equality. They both love each other and want only the best. However, the camera then cuts to a wider shot and we see that Ann had moved to the other side of the fence at the beginning of the conversation. The fence hadn’t disappeared, it just got lower for a bit. When the camera shows that they were separated by the fence for the end of the conversation the audience realizes that something isn’t quite right. There is, of course, a reason that they were separated by the fence. Ann is convinced that nobody – even Lincoln – can love her. She is also dead by the next scene. Lincoln goes to visit her grave (predictably separated from the rest of nature by a fence) and there he decides to become a lawyer. Ann is the impetus for the rest of the film but even she is separated from him by a fence.
Jumping forwards a bit and over a couple of minor fence scenes, the next important fence surrounds the clearing where the murder takes place. Not only does the fence fail at containing the violence (the mob later rushes out of a hole in the fence proving its worthlessness in its actual duties) but it also allows Lincoln to observe the entire happening. When the community comes to the clearing they all enter through a hole in the fence. Lincoln goes up to the fence but decides to stay back. He leans on the fence and watches what happens as the community turns into a mob. The fence allows for impartiality by way of separation. It is likely that if Lincoln had entered the clearing like everybody else did he, too, would have been wrapped up in the excitement of a hanging and joined the mob. Instead he watches from a distance and sees how foolishly the community acts. This visual representation of separation in the form of a fence allows Lincoln to fulfill one of the key components of law: objectivity. In these shots Lincoln is not only separated by distance but also by the fence on which he leans.
Mary Todd, Lincoln’s future wife, isn’t much of a character within this film, but she does play an important role in a scene involving one of the most creative fences on film. Lincoln is invited to a high class party and as he enters there is a big John Ford dance scene going on. When we first see him the camera angle comes from within the big dance area facing the hallway where Lincoln enters and talks to some old guys. The dance is still going on and at this point the dancers are all linked arm in arm and skipping around the circumference of the room. As they dance by the camera their bodies and clasped hands form an unbroken fence between the camera and Lincoln who stands in the background. This living fence blocks a clear view of the hero. The camera takes a side here, and it is the side of the rich. It’s within the walls of the dance hall where all the rich guys dance and intermingle. The rich even create a fence within the already extravagant walls to keep out the less desirable elements, which Lincoln clearly thinks he is a part of. He is hesitant to enter the formal area and dance with Mary Todd. In the end she practically forces him into dancing with her, and Lincoln isn’t the greatest of dancers. He seems out of place, which makes his separation at the beginning of this scene by the dancing fence all the more important. It establishes that Lincoln isn’t a part of this crowd. Earlier we saw that he wasn’t a part of the community at large, either, so he’s effectively an outsider to everybody. Yet when he saves the day he is welcomed into the masses as a hero. He epitomizes that separate hero and no more is this in evidence than in the courtroom scene.
Again we return to the scenes that take place within the courtroom. Here there are several fences to separate Lincoln from everybody else. The first separates him from the rest of the community by keeping them in the back of the room and him and the prosecutor and other people actually involved in the trial in the front. There is a small fence (which some would call a railing) that can be seen in nearly every courtroom scene in film and real life separating the community and the trail participants. This isn’t a super important fence until the end of the trial scene when Cass, the true murderer, tries to escape Lincoln’s questioning by leaving through a small door in the fence. When he moves to the other side of the fence the community begins to close in on him, and the mob that he wanted to incite earlier is turned against him. Still, Lincoln is separated from him and the rest of them by the fence. He’s proven Cass’s guilt and now he’ll let him get what’s coming to him, but Lincoln won’t have any part in it. After not trusting himself and almost losing the trial he seems happy to have gotten his clients off. He still doesn’t need or perhaps he isn’t able to join the community at large. He’s the hero they needed but he doesn’t really need them, nor do they particularly care about him. Still, his part is performed and now the community is whole again.
But we aren’t finished with those darn fences yet. As he says goodbye to the family he saved they leave along a road lined with a fence. He, too, leaves by way of this road. When he reaches the top of the hill there is a fence on his side. The fences seem to have been guiding him all along, from the river scene with Anne to the final scene on the hill the fences have done more than just separate Lincoln from the rest of the community. They are like the law, unwaveringly steady. They are used to impose order and boundaries on the world, much like the law is used to impose order and boundaries on people and the community. They are a tool used to make clear delineations, a vital part of any life, but especially crucial to Lincoln, a man who must necessarily be separate from others in order to help them. The fences and framing of Young Mr. Lincoln clearly show that Abe must be severed to some degree from those that he wants to save. He is successful but at the price of being integrated into a community. It’s a theme that runs through John Ford’s films and is perhaps most important in the story of Abe Lincoln’s early career.
As photographers Bill Cunningham and I could not be any more opposite each other. Where he takes pictures of people in New York City from the streets to high fashion shows in order to capture trends and patterns in the world of clothing I focus on nature and the way the world works with itself. Where Cunningham is widely respected and works for the Gray Lady I wallow in obscurity and have never sold a photograph. Cunningham seemingly has no care for composition, his NYT spreads often seem like a cluttered mishmash of people with little to no context outside of a couple of words and the detail that he is focusing on in any given collection. I would dare to say that most of Cunningham's collections would not be found on the walls of anybody's homes. They work quite well in the context of his weekly spreads highlighting certain trends on the streets of NYC or the fashion of charitable galas or the wearability of fashion show clothes but few of them are "great" photos of their own accord. Bill's photos might not be "art" but he is certainly an artist.
It's telling that there is a documentary about Bill Cunningham. What he does is, as one of the talking heads points out, practically war journalism. Instead of taking pictures of the ravages of war Bill focuses his camera on the ordinary (low hanging jeans and knee length skirts) and the extraordinary (strange high heels and even stranger patterns) in the urban jungle. He just looks at things, all things, and finds what people are wearing in any given week. It's a talent and a skill and an essential part of his voice as an artist. Everybody in the fashion scene, from designers to magazine moguls, knows and loves Bill because he notices what's working almost instantly. In a telling segment of the film he sits on the side of a fashion runway in Paris and we see him begin to lift his camera only to put it down again when he recognizes that nobody would possibly wear a piece on a real street. If real people aren't wearing the clothes he's not interested. It is this singular focus that makes Bill a true artist. It matters little if the photos are singularly meritorious, it's what he does with his entire oeuvre that's the key.
Now that we've established why Bill works as a documentary subject and an artist let's talk about the film itself. It mimics, in its way, Bill's own approach. We see all the kinds of things that Bill does from walking/riding through the streets of NYC to attending galas (his method of choosing which of the myriad galas to shoot comes down to which charity he deems best) to deciding which pictures to use and pestering his art director/assistant as they work on the layout of the spreads. Each aspect shows us a bit more about Bill and confirming what we've learned before. At the beginning we see a nice older man who grew up in the 60s and 70s New York art scene and has found himself as a kind of establishment still. Then we learn about his steadfast policy of not taking payment or even free food while he's working in order to keep absolutely unencumbered. We then find that he is one of the last few remaining tenants of the Carnegie Hall studios which at one time housed people like Marlon Brando and Leonard Bernstein and now gives roof to a few old eccentrics (Editta Sherman has been living there for 58 years and is one of the more interesting interview subjects in the film) who are reluctant to leave. Each new segment shows a bit more of Bill and the life he has built, but all is not happiness and sunshine.
In bits and pieces we see that Cunningham is, perhaps, not exactly happy with his religion and at the end of the film the director asks him two questions point blank: how have sex and religion shaped your life? Bill answers the first part deftly, asking whether the real question is if he is gay or straight and manages to not really give an answer until he is asked the second part. There he pauses and looks down at his lap. There is real humanity in this moment and I give great credit to Richard Press (the director) for asking the question and letting it play out in a medium shot. A lesser director might cut to a close up or a different angle but Press keeps the entire interview in an off centered medium shot that allows Cunningham the space to be himself. The little coda after this moment in the film just returns to Bill's exploration of the streets. We see him from a distance and as he observes the world we observe him, knowing more and yet still not everything about the man. What was just a guy taking pictures at the beginning of the film has transformed into an artist creating and defining the world through his own lens. In that way he can serve as an inspiration to any artist. Even if we don't share subjects or techniques or values there is still so much to learn from Bill Cunningham. He's a man who takes pictures of clothes and the people who wear them yet has no pretense of being fashionable himself. His blue workman jacket is more function than form and that dichotomy between subject and artist is the defining element of the film. Bill's modesty only serves to highlight the extravagance of the fashion world and the "exotic birds of paradise" whom he captures on film reveal the true nature of the man behind the camera.
I've been away from this blog for almost two months. I've been reading Freedom for about half of that time, on and off. After a fantastic beginning where we get a brief sketch of the Berglund family of St. Paul, Minnesota the book slows down and investigates seemingly every little detail in the lives of Walter and Patty (the husband and wife), Joey (the son) and Richard Katz (the college friend and third side of the central love triangle). It is firmly entrenched in the every day of modern families and their first-world problems. If this isn't interesting to you or if you can't connect with the characters this book just won't work for you. However, if you can see a bit of yourself in each of these people there's a lot to get out of this book.
Depression is a specter that looms large over all of the characters here. After a bit of post-game reading it seems that Franzen himself has battled with depression and his particular insight to this aspect lends quite a bit of depth to the characters' individual problems. We see all kinds of depression and the ways that it embroils itself in each of the characters is slightly different. Patty's love for her husband crossed with her passion for his best friend. Walter's love for his wife crossed with the knowledge that he won't ever be enough for her and his firmly held beliefs about overpopulation. Joey's morals clashing with his need to get rich at the age of twenty. These are all very real people with very real problems and that tinge of depression colors the mood of the entire book.
That isn't to say that there aren't some bits of cleverness. Particularly enjoyable elements include the opening and closing chapters where we see the Berglund family from the outside. The opening chapter sheds some light on Patty who, according to the neighbors, would never call anybody something worse than "weird", though later we see that she has the capacity for a lot more than that. The final chapter sees the Berglunds not as a family desperate to hold together but rather a family torn apart by things left unsaid and things too readily said. It's all very sad but there is an element of hope. Joey and Jessica (the daughter who doesn't get much to say in this whole thing) seem to have learned from their parents' mistakes and their own. At one point we learn about Walter's father and grandfather and we begin to understand that a lot of the problems the Berglunds have come because they are trying to fix the mistakes that their parents made with them. Of course, this just leads to making even worse mistakes. It is, perhaps, not a new insight but it is well told and vividly detailed.
There are, of course, some things that aren't so great. For a book so cleverly and carefully constructed there are some parts that overstay their welcome. After that corker of an opening there's a hundred or so pages of Patty's autobiography. No other sections go on as long as this one and, though it is important and there's not a whole ton that could be cut out or trimmed up, I got a little tired of it. And there's another problem with that section: I don't think it is differentiated enough in terms of style from the rest of the book. It still seems like the narrator and not a character's personal recollection. Late in the book the autobiography is revisited and that additional bookending device is clever and makes sense (and is thankfully shorter than the first segment) but I wish there was a greater separation between the two storytelling aspects. It's almost as if Franzen is afraid to write in a "lower" style for a character who wouldn't be as good as writer as he is. Franzen's writing isn't particularly hard to read and I rarely had to go back and reread a sentence or paragraph for lack of understanding on the first pass. It's all very easy to read, which is good, but there were also very few sentences that stood out to me as beautifully constructed. I guess that's kind of the point, these people are normal and the writing reflects that. I just generally like a bit more flavor in my reading.
This brief review can't possibly capture all of the intricacies of the book. And I won't profess to fully understand all of the implications of the book right now or in the future. However, coming relatively soon I will be talking about the book with my friend, John, on our new podcast, Canon Fodder. There we'll likely talk about all of these elements and more (I'm particularly interested in the construction of the book and the fact that, besides the autobiography, we only get male-driven sections) and the potential lasting impact of the book. Should it be considered part of the New Canon? At this point, I don't know. I will post a link on this blog whenever we record that podcast for your perusal and pleasure.
Imagine a world where kids are picked at random to compete in an all out fight to the death which is engineered and broadcast by the government. Imagine an arena that is booby trapped and filled with implements of death with which the young contestants can maim and kill and monitored by hundreds of cameras. If you're thinking of Battle Royale you aren't wrong. However much The Hunger Games borrows from the concept of that novel/manga/movie - and it borrows a lot - it totally works on its own right. The idea isn't original at this point but it is supremely well executed and hits all of the right emotional buttons.
Don't think, though, that Battle Royale is the only influence here. There are heavy dystopian future elements with a government that forces its people from each of the 12 districts to play by their rules both in and out of the arena. One of the best elements of this book is the sense of hunger that Collins conjures throughout. Obviously in the beginning we see Katniss outside in her daily life where she must illegally hunt just to feed her family and the hunger is right there on the surface. As the story goes on and Katniss learns how to survive in the arena the hunger becomes something different. It's a hunger to survive and get back to her family while trying to maintain her sense of humanity. It's this central conflict between survival and her human nature which drives the story and kept me reading raptly as Katniss tries to win and subvert the rules at the same time.
Of course, there's a twist. Each district sends two contestants, one male and one female. Peeta, Katniss' counterpart, is also a really interesting character. He seems to be in love with her but it might just be a strategy to win the game. As these are two young people thrown together by circumstance and under intense pressure some kind of attraction must arise. What it means to each of them drives the second half of this book and Collins brings them through quite a few interesting circumstances. The emotions are very real and complex, an element I didn't expect from such a book.
This book is, of course, very violent. There are all kinds of death and destruction and gore which makes the events seem very real. The deaths are emotional and thrilling at the same time. It's being filmed soon and is aiming for a PG-13 rating. I don't know how they're going to do some of the more intense sequences unless they really push the ratings like the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (and probably Part 2). I hope they stay true to the intensity and if we must sacrifice some of the blood I guess that's alright. The book is one of the most exciting books I've read in a while and I look forward to reading the remaining books in the trilogy.
