Enter the Void (2009)

     In a pulsating phantasmagoria of acid-tripped title cards, Noe introduces his latest feature atop a pulse-pounding electronic heartbeat hyped on amphetamines.  There is no doubt that many, many narcotics are to come.  If the endless neon lights of Tokyo side streets weren’t clue enough the POV DMT hit seals the deal.  This is a drug movie.  One that resists the ethical considerations surrounding their use and instead gets strung out on life, death, and sex.  There are no moral debates to the aforementioned topics, unlike Irreversible; Noe doesn’t delve into ethical implications.  Rather, he inhales the intoxicating fumes of Dimethyltryptamine and trips through death in the labyrinthine Tokyo streets.  The viewer must be willing, or equally intoxicated, to join the ride.
    Our point of view is through the eyes of Oscar, a twentysomething American living in Tokyo.  He is also a heavy drug user, a literal motherf*cker, and a prospective spiritualist.  He takes a few hits of DMT, the same chemical released when one is about to die, and disappears into a psychedelic stream…  From the hands of his friend, Alex, comes The Tibetan Book of the Dead.  It tells of the afterlife.  They discuss this existence, explained by the book, as a cycle where the spirit is absorbed into light sources to higher and higher levels.  The concepts are nominally intangible yet conceptually akin to someone accustomed to different plains of consciousness.  As the pair walks the carnival-like streets to The Void we experience every footstep, every blink, nearly every sensory input Oscar receives.  He enters the neon bar, black lights illuminating the darkness like a synthetic Pandora.  Seconds later he is in the bathroom frantically dumping pills into the ground level Japanese toilet.  He hurriedly scrapes them from amongst the cigarette butts and unclean tile.  A bullet rips through his chest; his fingers fumble in the warm blood.  Oscar dies on the disgusting bathroom floor, the only cinematic locale to rival Trainspotting. 
    The remaining two hours are a beautiful nightmare, one in which he watches over his stripper sister; seeing both conception and abortion of her baby.  He drifts through walls, passing countless, rooms, stairways, and endless partitions.  There is a renowned sense of freedom not even possible during the heaviest trips.  He cycles, passing through glowing orbs in the environment before starting again with the events that carry on after his death.  More walls, more lights, more sounds textures and luminescent voids.  Until finally, as dreamed of before death, he floats through a hotel filled with friends.  He glides above room after room of copulating couples and passionate threesomes; a sexual cornucopia that fuses Eyes Wide Shut and 2001 A Space Odyssey into a relentless foray until he becomes, almost perfectly, the starchild.
    Gasper Noe’s style is very much intact.  The opening title cards, perhaps seizure inducing, introduce the strobing, neon color space in which the entire film exists.  Oscar’s room is illuminated heavily by blinking advertisements from outside, shifting from green to purple to red and yellow.  White, it seems, does not exist.  Nearly every shot is from behind his eyes.  The single exception may be his initial DMT hit that slowly floats above even him; but it is still clearly his point of view.  We are treated to the unreal trip sequences as otherworldly shapes intertwine and morph between colors, sometimes resembling dendrites or caterpillars or mind-tunnels to other dimensions.  Present too, in amplified color swirling accents, is raw, uncensored, pornographic exploits.  Where Irreversible teetered between violence and sex, Enter the Void dissolves the former for heavy doses of the latter.
    The film may be the new ultimate trip, clearly influenced by Kubrickian obsessions.  It, too, runs a little long for the conventional viewer yet is fully motivated by its content.  And more than many filmmakers today, Noe has created an experience, one fraught with visual and audible stimulus and intending an experience beyond the typical drama.  In this case, a psychedelic melodrama.

Posters. Posters. Posters.

A giant haul of awesome posters.  No talk just look.

Mash-Ups

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/26/the-best-movie-poster-mas_n_587649.html#s92928&title=undefined

Minimalist

http://www.listal.com/list/minimalist-posters

Alternate Universe

http://hartter.blogspot.com/2009/11/misc.html

Check 'em all out.

Irreversible (2002)

            The first frames are credit roll.  Last names only and backwards E’s, N’s, and R’s.  The words are at first cryptic and stream by in blood red capitals before slowly titling sideways and finally spinning out of control.  This flows naturally into the first shots of the film; tilted, off-angle exteriors with flashing lights and brick walls.  The camera twists and turns out of control, unencumbered by the formal expectations of feature film viewership.  Through the S&M nightclub, The Rectum, Marcus searches for le Tenia (the tapeworm), the man who raped and abused his girlfriend.  He falls victim instead, his arm broken backwards before his friend Pierre smashes the man’s face with a fire extinguisher.  The blows are relentless, the camera-eye unflinching, the metal body unyielding.  The man is left with only his lower jaw and a pile of mush where his face and skull used to be.

            Noe’s film is relentless; a series of long takes playing in reverse chronology that follow a man seeking revenge and the irreversible consequences that take place during a night of extreme violence.  Yet these first few minutes, complete with infrasound at 28Hz, while indeed disturbing and horrific are nothing compared to the inciting incident that takes place in an underpass below the Parisian streets.  Noe is clearly asking if the violence we are introduced to initially is justified by the ungodly time spent in hell; a red lined tunnel converging in the distance, void of any earthly familiarity.

            I’d be inclined to say yes, if the man Pierre obliterated had in fact been le Tenia.  Instead, le Tenia looked on amusedly knowing the pair will soon be arrested and his crime will go unpunished.  The complete lack of consequence with which Tenia observes the murder foreshadows the complete lack of humanity with which he commits his own crime.  If anything, the man’s unrecognizable face is a reminder of earlier in the night.

            It cannot go unquestioned how images like Noe’s can be put on film.  The weight of what they represent and the vérité in which they are presented leave a considerable impression on the viewer’s mind.  It is one that is immediately shocking and unendingly disturbing.  They serve as warning, as cautions, as artistic testaments to the evils of mankind.  Yet we can still wonder why Noe chooses to show what he does; why he wants his audiences to be uncomfortable both physiologically and emotionally.  Is this exploitation cinema or are they raw warnings?  For me, the jury is still out but both remain plausible explanations.

Buried (2010)

            The simplicity of this film’s plot is equaled only by its absurdity; a guy wakes up in a coffin buried beneath the earth and spends the rest of the movie trying to get out.  For many, the premise is immediately laughable and quickly extinguished.  Can one really expect to carry and audience for and hour and a half stuck in a single, solitary, claustrophobic location?  And what’s more, will anyone care to try?

            From a production standpoint this film is genius; one on-screen actor, one location, how they sank $3 million into it its beyond me.  I could have filmed the entire thing in my backyard.  From a writing standpoint it would be a great experiment in MacGyver-esque problem solving with extreme limitations and very few opportunities.  From an acting standpoint it's the chance for an intense and varied one-man-show; you have to carry the whole movie.  And from an audience standpoint, especially one with increasingly critical eyes, it's a chance to see just how well the publicity stunt comes off.  (Why didn’t Criss Angel star?)

            This film could not have existed before the digital age (except of course the period when coffins had a pulley system with an above ground bell because people were afraid of being buried alive, estimated running time- 2 minutes).  A guy wakes up buried; he panics, and then dies.  The importance of a cell phone is beyond words as a literal and physical lifeline.  Is this a plot necessity or a comment on our culture’s incessant need and craving for the devices?  A plot necessity of course!  Before time and air run out (built-in suspense) our protagonist, Paul, must find out where he is and how someone can get him out.  Turns out he is in Iraq and being held ransom by terrorists.  I haven’t decided if this is efficient terrorist stratagem or not.  You don’t need to hide a body because you already did yet neither does your opponent.  Luckily, he finds a few various tools, which nearly all give light.  With these, we are able to share the confined experience as he fumbles endlessly with phone calls to the outside world he (SPOILER ALERT) will never see again. 

            The film is immediately gimmicky and makes no point in going anywhere else.  It can’t.  Yet for mindlessly simple set-up it manages, despite expectations, to hold on for nearly the entirety of hits running-time.  The visuals are varied enough between the different colored light sources and changes in composition that the eyes are not instantly tired.  If anything, the film could have developed its claustrophobic intents a bit stronger by resisting long pullouts.  Without a doubt the concept is flawed from the beginning but if we lend the freedom, it manages it well.  That is until a snake finds he way in and out of his pants and he proceeds to attempt setting it on fire inside of a tiny box.  I don’t know if he realized he was also in this tiny box.  Regardless, these extreme moments are few and if anything the film should be commended on its success at fulfilling what it set out to do.

            That is, bury a man, and follow him for the hour and a half (SPOILER ALERT) leading up to his death.  We can argue all day about plot holes and inconsistencies, not limited to talking on the phone upside down.  But this would miss the few points that the film tries to make or the comments it offers on our culture.  There are so many pressures from uncounted sources that we literally feel trapped and we don’t know how we got there.  Or, that one must literally think-outside-the-box to save his life.  Or that studios are always confining artistic freedom within an acceptable box to the point that it crushes the artist.  Or that the War in Iraq was such a waste; we were literally burying people alive.  Or…

They Live (1988)

     I’ll preface by saying that this 1988 John Carpenter sci-fi film is up for a remake in the next year or two and the sunglasses will be absent.  Granted, this small fact will mean nothing if one has not seen the film in which aliens are cloaked in human form along with their subconscious commercialism brainwashing.  The hidden intergalactic race and their signs to buy more and obey orders are hidden to the human eye without the aid of oversized 80’s sunglasses.  In short, the entire premise of the movie relies on the glasses, as does its relevance as a late 1980’s artifact.
    Nada (nothing in Spanish) is also oversized and, should Mickey Rourke die sometime soon, be perfect for a biopic.  He’s a loner that finds a job in construction, befriends Keith David, and is introduced to a community of cooperative slum life where his handyman knowledge is much valued.  But if this film was composed entirely of a thick-necked loose-footed real-life pro-wrestler it would be about seven minutes long and conclude with him being crowned king of a small group of metal-sided shacks in the middle of a Los Angeles neighborhood.  Instead, an invisible species of aliens, conveniently shaped exactly like humans, inhabit human form and litter our world with simple messages of consumerism.  The most instantly recognizable is that with the instruction to obey.  Shepard Fairey would later construct the most successful street art campaign by pairing it with a stenciled Andre the Giant.  Conveniently enough, both Andre and Roddy Piper inhabit the pro-wrestling circuit.

    Our star happens upon a group of citizens aware of the secret alien race and blessed with the ability to see their disgusting faces, which resemble alien baby.  Life imitating art.  Naturally, a battle ensues as the knowers try to convince everyone else of the aliens controlling their money spending.  Unfortunately, the aliens have law enforcement on their side.  Fortunately, the humans have Nada.  In his best salute to Rambo he guns down alien after alien.  His mannerisms may be a bit reserved but he lets his fists do the talking.
    Carpenter is making some rather strong and obvious stabs at the state of consumerism in the late 80’s.  A society made of money hungry consumers who care more for their individual happiness than the health of their world does indeed warrant a rather alien feeling.  At the same time, keeping the aliens hidden recalls the marketing techniques employed that aim to promote a society of spenders.  Only when you can truly see what is in front of your eyes can you act any different towards the world around you, and hopefully more responsibly.  So a remake ditching the retro shades would be both disappointing and unwarranted.  A make-over seem more appropriate.
    But does this movie warrant a remake?  On the one hand no, it is just fine as is.  Some remakes are obviously just trying to cash in on something that has already worked without putting up too much money for something new to be written.  On the other hand, yes.  It is an awesome sci-fi film indicative of its time period that could be reworked for a modern audience; an audience that clearly has neither seen the original nor learned anything since its release.  Of course, we have seen this message before and most people don’t react positively when they perceive messages to be rammed down their throats.  My only hope is that they reenact the 5mintue and 20 second fight scene in a back alley that in no way propels the plot yet remains deliciously fun for any cult film fan. 

Little Fockers (2010)

    This movie was a piece of shit.  Ok, now that that’s out of the way, let me acknowledge my embarrassment at discussing such a film.  Let me also acknowledge my embarrassment at having seen such a film, let alone on Christmas Day.  I shamefully joined the ranks of wide-waisted Americans sitting smugly for two hours as the cream-of-the-crap rolled by in trailers. Each of which, in its own terms, appropriately introduced this serial shitstorm.  It should be clearly noted that the only reason this writing exists is to express my dismay that the theater was full, the crowds were fat and jolly, and no one seemed to care that their hard-earned dollars were thrown away on complete and utter bull-plop.
    The fact that this is the third of three installments (so far…) is ample indication of the current cinematic state.  It is, both to filmdom and audience alike, insulting and degrading.  One would think, or at least hope, that certain entries of the Cinematic Canon would be untouchable, The Godfather and Jaws come to mind.  But I guess the presence of legendary Robert DeNiro is permission enough to desecrate any former artistic enterprise.  And I would have thought that his career was solid enough not to descend to such depths.  But alas, and this certainly isn’t new, cinema is doomed.  I, and ten of my family members, cast our vote for the studios to continue pumping out juvenile sequels to films that were both overrated and unwarranted.
    The existence of this movie says more than the film itself.  The grandparents come back, trouble ensues, genital jokes, who gives a flying fudge.  Certainly not anyone watching.  The credits roll as characters continue interacting on-screen.  The audience is nonetheless oblivious to this fact.  Instead, they respond to the credit-roll by evacuating the theater as if they just woke up from a long winters nap.  No one really cares what just happened, nor should they.
    It’s embarrassing to be infatuated with movies when most of what people flock to is comparable to what my dog leaves in the backyard.  It’s hard to tell just who the little f*ckers are; the people who keep making the films or the people that keep seeing them.  I sincerely hope this story ends in a trilogy but I might be the only one.  At least Jessica Alba was in it.

Rare Exports (2010)

     A new holiday traditions begins this year.  It is not the feel-good-beyond-belief classicism of Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life or the immortal childhood classics like Home Alone and A Christmas Story.  And it is by no means the brass commercialism of the fat, jolly Santa.  This Finnish export re-imagines the entire fairy tale behind St. Nick in a dark and rebellious tone that is, ironically, more in tune with the absurdity of an old man sneaking into houses during the midnight hours.  Somehow, this always gets overlooked.
     On the Russian side of the Russian/Finnish border stands an imposing mountain.  Only the greedy American businessman, looking very Scrooge-like, knows it to be the giant tomb of a frozen Santa.  He leads the excavation and subsequent robbing of earth’s most important grave.  In the meantime, schoolboys Juuso and Pietari witness the explosive activities.  Soon thereafter the local reindeer population, their fathers’ main source of income, is slaughtered by what Pietari knows to be the escaped Father Christmas.  Juuso and the rest of the town’s children disappear leaving Pietari to fear for his life in the wake of late night study sessions on the truly sinister origins of Santa as sadistic child-boiler.  A short time later, Pietari’s father captures old Kris Kringle in a punji pit designed for wolves and baited with a severed pig’s head.
     The old man is like no other cinematic interpretation of Father Christmas imagined thus far.  His old decrepit body is scrawny and malnourished.  He is bleeding from the stomach having been pierced by a punji stake.  His withered body is adorned with a wispy, dirty beard and the eyes bore deep.  The most animated his body becomes is when his nostrils twitch and Pietari’s smell drifts through his nose.  His hangs from a chain and is wrapped in plastic bags above the cold cement floor.  His captors munch gingerbread and look on in amazement at the evil-eyed old man
     The absurdity in this movie knows no end.  From the epic and moving score to Pietari dangling heroically from a helicopter; there are things not even the veteran cinephile has ever seen.  This genre mixing Xmas horror has an all male cast a la The Thing and a Santa logo suspiciously similar to District 9.  It mixes sweeping vistas with a grizzly slaughterhouse and explosive actions sequences with midnight movie madness.  It can only be presumed that this sure-to-be cult hit will find its place on the Christmas dinner table for years to come.  Highly recommended for its deliciously entertaining escapist fare and critique on the hyper-commercialization of modern Santa.

Valhalla Rising (2009)

    Nicolas Winding Refn strips his world down to the bare essentials; Earth and Death.  In the mist of the Scottish Highlands is caged a mute, one-eyed animal.  The beast is taken out for regular bouts of carnage, both in the vein of jugular tearing and skull-bashing.  The collar and leash that confine his movements are but minor disadvantages with mortal benefits.  One-Eye’s graying beard and neatly contained crop of lengthy hair quickly become matted in the mud of his battleground.  The only reward he receives for his kill count is a ladle of watery soup from the hands of a young, androgynously blond-haired boy.
    This child becomes his mouth; speaking more in a single word than the mute does from start to finish.  One-Eye talks with his eyes and with his body.  His red-saturated hallucinatory premonitions provide his escape.  In a matter of seconds he breaks his collar and slays his captors, making habitual use of a diving leg smash and finishing his opponent whence they have fallen to the earth.  The mute ties his final captor, as if to crucify, to a large rock only to disembowel the living man.  He continues through the thin air being tailed by the child.
    The unlikely, almost affectionately paired duo arrives at the aftermath of crusading Christian Vikings.  The small village’s men are slaughtered, the naked women chained, the huts burned.  One-Eye and the boy join the Vikings as they return to Jerusalem; a journey guided by God through the fog covered waters of the ocean.  Their faith in God will surely return them to the Holy Land.
    The river they abruptly find themselves in, and the land they soon set foot on, is surely more Hell than Heaven.  The first Viking is killed by an obsidian arrowhead of unknown origin; the first sign of primal inhabitants.  The open-air burials on raised scaffolding display withered and decaying bodies.  The forests have no end.  The mud is thick.  Their world is a wicked hallucination.  The Christians continue to delude themselves with visions of grandeur in building their New Jerusalem devoid of women or food.
    Valhalla Rising finds Refn at his most meditative and, despite my unrelenting adoration for Bronson (2009), perhaps his most masterful.  The savage brutality and violent masculinity is echoed yet is stripped of its societal incarnations and individual motivations.  Here, it is survival at its purest.  It is no small fact that One-Eye is both caged and collared and tied to a post like a dog.  He is fed from a bowl without spoon and used only for fighting.  And he doesn't talk. Unlike the violent nature of Bronson, One-Eye’s violence is not spurred on by challenging authority and immortalizing identity but by prolonging the physical life. 
    It is a life born from the earth and never separated from it.  His cage, the only time he is ever inside, is an extension of a massive boulder.  His battleground is but a textured and dirty mess of mud.  The rock cairn he erects on the edge of the water where he commits his final cleansing comes tandem with the bloodstained premonitions of his body beaten to death on a rocky outcrop.  While he bathes his body for the last time, the final Christian leader does the same, only to be penetrated by three arrows that leave his body floating in the dark water.
    It is unclear just what One-Eye has sacrificed in the final chapter.  Nor is it certain that he didn't lead the Christians astray, as he was accused.  It is certain that no New Jerusalem is to be formed in the primordial land. 
    Refn’s Death Trip is written in six chapters that suggest an easy reading but do not provide a concrete solution.  The child is all that remains after One-Eye is beaten by natives covered in dry mud who would undoubtedly admire their victim’s martial talents, enduringness, and affection for dirt.  The Christian faith is darkly portrayed and leaves very little reason to believe in God.  It is not surprising that Refn has exhausted himself with a pair of violent films soaked in masculinity and seeks explorations entirely surrounded my women.  Likewise, it should be noted that the film at hand demands multiple viewings.

Rembrant's J'Accuse...! (2008)

    Peter Greenaway’s most recent feature length documentary finds him opinionated and cynical.  The subjects of his dissatisfaction are the visually illiterate (re: Generation Y anyone?) who have not the skills to navigate complex paintings nor, as he would likely agree, the desire.  His argument centers around Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, which should come as no surprise to anyone that has at least seen a still from any of his most well-known features.
    From a little box superimposed over much of the film, Greenaway staunchly explicates his mastery of the painting under discussion.  There is no arguing with his authority on the subject matter nor in his deconstruction of the 34 mysteries embedded within the painting.  His affection for the painting, as well as what it represents, is clear.  Why he finds the need to float atop its beauty as a disembodied talking head is still unclear.  Perhaps from this vantage point we are less liable to disagree with our host.  Regardless of his questionable presence, snobbishly looking down his nose at the audience, his argument is sound and convincing.
    A two-hour discussion about a single frame may seem overkill for any tech savvy rug-rat born this side of the 1970’s.  The mass onslaught of images has long ago oversaturated our visual palette and left us partially desensitized to its power.  This is what the film is really about; yet leave it to Greenaway to support his argument with obsessive deconstruction of a truly complex and multi-faceted work of art.
    The visually decadent style we are used to in Greenaway’s fictional narrative finds its well-known source.  He restages the painting and excavates particular elements both in live action and animated cutouts.  The visual intricacies are managed one by one, slowly but surely revealing a larger story.  As the fourth most famous painting in history, the time spent with it is justified.  Needless to say, the shear intrigue Greenaway reveals justifies itself.  Rembradnt’s lauded use of light, the ambiguous and gender-ambiguous details, the x-rays that reveal edits by the artist, and the use of looks to tell the audience a story all contribute to the complexity of this 1642 masterpiece.
    Despite Greenaway’s unnecessarily scolding demeanor, his thoughts are justified.  The modern looker has lost a degree of skill in reading the painted image while at the same time compensated for it with literacy in other areas, say, motion picture.  And regardless of the director’s unending presence, the film is fascinating, entertaining, and endlessly intriguing in the complexity it reveals.  Highly recommended to those interested.

Justification.

  
“When people think they’ve seen enough of something, but there’s more, no change of shot, then they act in a curiously livid way.  They think there must be some justification for it, but it never occurs to them that the fact that you happen to like whatever is in the shot is sufficient justification.  They imagine that there has to be some other reason…”

                                                                                   -Wim Wenders (1971)

     Thank you, Wim Wenders, for stating my very own opinion, albeit 35 years before it would ever occur to me.  The main difference is of course glaring; Wenders holds significant prestige in the film-making world whereas I hold none.

    It would be naïve to suggest, yet innocent enough, that the documentary film is easier to justify as a social/cultural artifact.  An apparent truth automatically raises its supposed relevance and importance as a creative document.  I often wonder just how Michael Bay sleeps at night knowing his millions of dollars result in a hyperactive mess of explosions.  Does the shear existence of a Michael Bay film exhibit enough cultural relevance that it self-justifies as a document of the current cultural state of things?

    I’ll call it art for art’s sake, yet refrain from any attempt at proving why.  If it itself is visually pleasing is that not enough of a justification for its persistence, as Wenders argues?  Is not, then, Bays love of explosions and their powerfully uncontrollable nature not enough of an excuse to keep blowing things up?

    How will history look back on our still very young art form?  We may hope that each and every piece, even confessional YouTube bullshit, represents a distinct and telling insight into the way our society works and grows.  This likely will not be the case, as how many numbers of endless reincarnations do we need to understand the significance of, say, the Bill of Rights?  And only with certain cases does the individual matter.  History cares not about each and every person but about the collective actions of the species.  It is a very mathematical way to look at something that, at times, appears out of control.

    It is only because of this need to categorize and organize that we separate the documentary from the fiction film.  As a medium ages and evolves so does our way of classifying it.  Now more than a century of films to pull from and recent acceptance of film nerds as skilled filmmakers has meant an increase in cross-pollination betwixt genres, styles, techniques, and expectations.  The spectrums on which we classify films have melted into one another and become wholly indistinguishable.  And for good reason.

    No answers have been given here, only questions.