Weekend Retreat

     Hooray for weekends and their abundance of free time (for once). Spent the weekend watching movies and came across two disparate films. Vincent Ward's 1998 Academy Award winning film What Dreams May Come was a visual delight and an ideology suck up, whereas Wes Anderson's "simple, yet elegant" 2001 feature The Royal Tenenbaums falls more into a category E film, leaving the audience with an ambiguous feeling.
     What Dreams May Come is a story about family values and the afterworld. One family is broken by death, first that of the children, then that of the father, and it's up to the father to figure out how to get them back together in heaven. Heaven is uniquely crafted as the most beautiful thing we admire on earth, manifested for us in Heaven. Since Robin Williams' character Chris Nielsen was an admirer of art (specifically paintings) his heaven is a world made of paint. The film won its Oscar for best visual effects, and it makes sense why. Cuba Gooding Jr. was nominated for an Oscar in his role as Nielsen's spirit guide.

     Not surprisingly, though, the film plays heavily into the dominant ideology: a whole family (One father, mother, daughter and son unit) is the goal, the father is the person who needs to bring the family together, there is a heaven and we can all get to it, all the money in the world didn't buy Nielsen and his wife happiness after they lost their children. At the end of the movie, the ideology is nearly ruined when Chris suggests that he be reborn, but resolves that issue by saying he can make it back to heaven and everything will be the same... (sorry for the elusiveness there, I'm trying not to spoil it for you).

     On the other hand, The Royal Tenenbaums appears to be a movie about family, and how it's broken, but also how death can bring the family together. Royal Tenenbaum, the father of the misfit, broken family, wants what he can't have, and currently his wife is about to marry another man, and thus he wants her to be his again. Pretending that he's dying, Royal makes his way into his wife's life, and she calls her children who have spread far and wide, each having their own life problems, and they gather around dad as he dies... But he's not dying, and when the word gets out, things go a little haywire for him and everyone involved. It's up to good ol' family values to bring them all together.
     True to the style of Wes Anderson's Oeuvre, the film puts a lot of emphasis on moving shots, whip pans, and odd color pallet. Well-chosen music plays throughout the film, asking the audience to consider not only the visuals, the story, the rhythm, or the lyrics, but also the production of the songs. Although Michale Kamen (who scored What Dreams May Come) has created beatiful music that works for Ward's film, Anderson's music seems more appropriate, and less of an extra than a complement.

   The two films tend to share similar themes, but the box office reports that maybe Dreams is a bit too sappy, and something more lighthearted is necessary to portray the family of today. What Dreams May Come had a budget of 85 million dollars and earned a measly 55 million, whereas The Royal Tenenbaums only cost $21 million and made $52 million. Take your pick.

Following

We could easily describe Nolan’s black and white debut feature as the epitome of student films. It has the street energy of the French New Wave, the youthful vigor and attitude of Aronofsky’s Pi, a $6,000 dollar budget, and is clearly made with an experimental innocence. And it should come as no surprise, given the popular names among his oeuvre, (i.e. all of them) that Nolan’s first film marks his arrival as a legitimate filmmaking force.

We don’t have to look too closely to find evidence of his first film in those that follow. The altered chronology of Memento found its introduction here. Acquisition of the Batman franchise seems natural with the films momentary visual reference. The psychological exploration and uncertainty of Insomnia, The Prestige, and perhaps Inception, are actually nothing new. Having seen the director’s entire body of work, and viewing his first film last, it only makes sense that the black and white introduction would in no way be a muted commencement.

A writer in London follows unsuspecting citizens, aroused by curiosity and maintained by obsession. Yet in a matter of no time, one of his subjects calls him out, introduces himself, and in a matter of minutes takes the young man on as partner in crime. The houses they burgle, inspired by Nolan’s own experience with invasion, are staked out, studied, and carefully chosen. But the young man’s inexperience, naivety, and relative insecurity make him the perfect victim for an experienced criminal. We could almost predict that the storyline turn inward on us, the thief being but a figment of the young man’s troubled and creative imagination. Fortunately, that is not the case. When the writer returns to the crime scenes, in attempt to evaluate the victims’ reactions, he is met with an interest that trumps his initial trials in following.

The 1998 film exhibits the energy inherent in it’s low budget production. And to it’s benefit, feels much more natural and invigorating than a multimillion-dollar attempt would be. The twisting and confined stairways, shoddy buildings, textured back-alleys, and lively streets are far more suited to the passive and observant eye than to the imposing and intrusive demands that come along with big productions. At the same time, the inexperience of the actors and the occasional uncertainty of the filmmaker are combated by the perceived experimentation, by the established sense of learning, and by the achieved verisimilitude of what might or might not be a far-fetched scenario. We can almost see the struggling filmmaker, working week by week for a year, in the worried yet learning eyes of the young man. Where he is learning his new craft of deviance, so is Nolan learning his craft of storytelling.

Following, despite its simple premise, or perhaps because of it, is nothing short of great. It is an easily enviable inauguration into the world of filmmaking by a director that has since earned his place. The film also proves that Nolan has the ability to manipulate and create the story, or more precisely his telling of it, regardless of how many dollars he has to do so. Inception will come out in July of next year, you will certainly hear more about it soon.

Revisited: Armageddon

I have not seen Michael Bay’s 1998 film since theatres with my cousin and aunt as a naïve and wide-eyed child. The past few years have had me plagued with a curious desire to rewatch the movie that I remember as epic and amazing. Imagine my disappointment. Granted, the past 11 years have seen my film education multiply infinitely but regardless of such fact, this film, er movie, would fail miserably.

In the vein of Bay’s previous film, The Rock, it is a hard-hitting and implausible adventure. However, this time the entire world is on the line and the only people to save it are an amalgamated list of A and B stars who all suffer from bad acting. Not that much more should be expected. And much akin to Bay’s feature length epic-music video set on Alcatraz, it is a nauseating and flamboyantly disorganized experiment in what David Bordwell might call hyper-intensified continuity. If the camera doesn't move that we hardly see the cut long enough to decipher such. And if nothing is exploding or ticking down or going wrong, or even if it is, then it will likely be basked in a cold blue or green light. And if the shot isn’t of the entire city being wiped out by a meteor chunk than its someone’s cringing faces as something else goes wrong. This movie’s pace slows not, even for tender moments between father and daughter as he is about to save the world from the inevitable Texas sized meteor.

I really hate to call Bay an auteur because it suggests an artistically and tonally motivated appearance of his oeuvre, but fast cuts, flying cameras, silhouetted helicopters, and ridiculous plots are evident in practically all his films. I can’t wait to see what the next Untitled Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay project entails. But lets reflect on the one hint of possible quality of this film; the belief that we as humans have the ability to save ourselves from extra-cosmic events far beyond the scale of our strengths. Giant meteor? Nuke it. The film almost tries to deal with the inevitability of death and human place among the stars but falls to the commercial explosions, action, and patriotism. It’s surprising that the bomb wasn't painted as an American Flag.

What’s wrong with this movie? Its like watching an exhausting and poorly constructed trailer for over two hours and coming away with even less of a message than could be packed into a two minute teaser. The biggest event of mankind is played off like another Roland Emmerich movie. I should clarify that I was not disappointed with this movie; I certainly didn't want to like it. So if anything it should be complete satisfaction. At least in a way.