The Face Knife

Jacques Rivette’s Out 1 begins with a shot of colorfully-dressed five person theatre troupe facing away from the camera with their asses in the air and their heads tucked under their shoulders. These quite limber actors right themselves and begin stretching their bodies as if they were prepping for some sadistic Tae-Bo-esque workout. It’s a very funny scene and it prepares the audience mentally for the upending of cinema conventions about to ensue, not to mention the pre-occupation with the body and the forces that have power over it that is one of the sub-texts of the film. Unfortunately, at this point the film does not pause for a corresponding calisthenics intermission, as it sure would behoove the audience to make sure that their bodies are warmed-up so as to endure with as little soreness or fidgeting as possible the grueling, 8 episode, 12+ hour marathon (split over two days) that awaits. Particularly the first two episodes. For those I could have used a full-body massage as an overture.

Out 1 is one of the most famous films maudit of all time - the head curator of the Museum of the Moving Image here in Astoria, New York, said that this weekend (Dec. 9-10) was only the sixth public screening of the film, and there was only one print in existence*. Naturally, I had been greatly anticipating checking this one off my list. Of course, I was also hoping for much more than a big ?ol notch in my New Wave belt. I was hoping for some revelatory experience, a moment of transcendence, the out of body experience that the best movies can give us. Out 1, like most movies, failed to live up to that promise. Perhaps it was just a function of my expectations (or a function of my chair), but I would have to number Out 1, to use a supercilious expression of the sharply drawn douchebag from this film, ?minor Rivette. ?

In a way, all of Rivette?s films are ?minor,? and in the same way, Out 1 contains all of Rivette yet exceeds none of it. It is a small, centerless film blown out of all proportion, an experiment in theatrical staging, a clash of acting methods, a study in free-floating paranoia and a series of interlocking games and puzzles where the purpose is not to ?win.? An attempt to sum up or ?solve? Out 1 would similarly miss the point, and I?m not going to attempt it, particularly because there are several other of Rivette?s films that interest me more and I would rather be defeated by (Duelle, Le pont du nord and the incredibly opaque and Kabuki-esque Noroit, of the ones I?ve seen. Even the similarly flawed L?Amour Fou has some indelible moments).

I’m going to try to make a few small notes about the film and what interests me in it. In the notes MoMI distributed at the showing (from Jonathan Rosenbaum’s out-of-print Rivette collection) is a quite dense Rivette interview I haven’t yet properly digested - although, unfortunately that alimentation may not prove possible as he refers to several films I have not seen and don’t think I’ll get the chance to any time soon. Besides, I’m probably only writing this piece for the aforementioned public belt-notching. N.B. You may not want to read below if you plan on attending one of the upcoming screenings or if you’re already disgusted with the way I’m treating this film. And this piece will end arbitrarily, kind of like the film.

I’m having a hard time starting this sentence without using the words “plot”, “structure”, “organized” or “story”, all of which would be misleading for reasons mentioned above, so I will say that the film is centered around a few separate groups and individual characters**.
(1)The aforementioned upside-down theatre group, led by red-head Lili, (Michele Moretti) is rehearsing a humorously noisy version of Aeschylus’s “Seven Against Thebes.”
(2) Another theatre group, planning a version of Aeschylus’s “Prometheus,” using rehearsal methods that could double as CIA torture techniques. This group is led by Thomas (Michael Lonsdale), who proves to be intimately involved with nearly every other character in the film.
(3) Colin (Jean-Pierre Leaud), a (faux) deaf-mute who plays the harmonica and receives bizarre messages which he deduces to reveal the existence of a secret society. He’s pretty greasy looking.
(4) Frederique, (Juliet Berto) a marginal street kid who likes to pickpocket, swindle, etc.
(5) Pauline/Emilie, (Bulle Ogier) owner of hippie hang-out. One of several characters with multiple names.
(6) There are two other “characters” in this film who are prime movers of the story as such but who never actually appear (to my knowledge - it may be possible that Pierre appears in one of the first two episodes, unremarked upon, as one of Colin’s “victims” - this is a completely unfounded theory, but I like it). As I am becoming a seasoned moviegoer and I am well aware of some of the stock though nonetheless moving pleasures of the form, I thought that Pierre-this or Igor-that would lead up to a Harry Lime or Ringo Kid-esque appearance in the 7th or 8th episode, but alas, they remain unearthly powers. At least Juan in Paris Belongs To Us has the decency to be definitively dead, if still the topic of every fucking conversation.

Both groups of theatre folk are in a constant state of transition- nothing is ever finished or settled upon. The rehearsal scenes of Out 1 are not as satisfying as those in Rivette’s previous filmL’Amour Fou, which uses a similar schemata. In L’Amour Fou the text of the source play (Racine’s Andromache) becomes doubled or tripled or quadrupled in meaning while the words stay exactly the same, through repetition (to the point that the audience themselves is rehearsed for the scene) who is delivering the lines and where they are delivering them. I prefer that type of “play” with the text to what Rivette does in Out 1, where both troupes more or less jettison their texts right away (The Thebes group plans to have a character appear onstage who never appears in the play (sort of the opposite of Out 1’s Pierre), and the Prometheus group actually starts with multiple texts in multiple languages (but by the end of the film Thomas is saying that Prometheus is entirely missing from the play)) and approach the problem of interpretation from a much more abstract and even mythical angles.

The two troupes have entirely different philosophies, however, but it’s easy to differentiate between them, even though they both center around the movement and position of the body. The Thebes group approaches Aeschylus through autonomous actors moving against each other with dynamic forces. They are also taking a disturbing though humorous choral approach to the play, using un-musical screeching as counterpoint to the action. When one of the actresses tells the music director that she cannot perform a difficult musical run without taking a breath, the music director tells her not to worry because everyone else will be making noise. The group in this case functions to maintain the individual. When one of the actors wins the lottery and announces that he will share the windfall with the group, the collectivism of this sentiment is too much to take - one of the other actors runs off with the money, selfishly, thereby maintaining the individual boundaries. Lili, it is revealed, has a sideline of providing fake “papers” to people of nebulous origin - and while the slant of her business was unclear to me, it is possible to read the service she provides as being aligned with the individual against the state - providing free passage and open borders in defiance of the restrictions placed on travel and residency.

In contrast, Thomas’s group is all about the submission of the body to the collective. You can picture his acting workshops by imagining the 60s bohemian version of the “trust-fall” at corporate retreats. The notorious first appearance of this Promethean group consists of a 45 minute scene of the actors rolling in the primordial muck, babbling, biting each other and constructing and destroying a red idol made out of a dress-maker’s dummy. Another rehearsal scene involves a young woman laying absolutely still and expressionless on the stage while the other members of the troupe do things like slam a chair next to her face.

Thomas, himself, though, is inviolate. One of the most interesting scenes of rehearsal involves Thomas as a wounded Prometheus, where the sometimes-used subtitle of the film “Noli Me Tangere” in invoked (though in French “ne [me] touchez pas”) where the actors coming in supplication to Prometheus are barred from touching him. Thomas seems to be allowed to paw anyone he wants to at any time, and indeed, his function as a connector in the film is primarily erotic (he has past or present relationships with 4 of the women in the film, and even convinces two of them to engage in a menage a trois with him). Apparently, in the four hour Spectre version of the film Thomas is even more important, but even in this version I think he is one of the more sharply drawn characters, a hierophantic troll who nonetheless radiates a powerful magnetism on those in his orbit.

The actions of Thomas, as an eventually revealed member of the Thirteen, gives an inkling as to what “The Companions of Duty” are about. I’m not going to delve to deeply into Conspiracy Theory theory here, as I’m bored with that and trust my readers are familiar with the Eco or Pynchon or whom have you’s versions, but the corollary to the (very reductive and almost banal idea) that “everything is connected and nothing is connected” there’s the more practical question of Power and the threat of power. Secret forces can exert power by whisking you away in the night, or maneuvering behind the scenes to prevent your expose from being published or merely the idea that these things could happen cause those not a member of elite to give up power, whether it is power over their bodies and how they can use them or power over what is permissible or not permissible to think or imagine. The struggle against the people making use of these forces is anti-Fascism.

As the one member of the cast who eventually engages in an armed struggle against the forces of evil (though, perhaps she does so as the result of a pun - “Les Compagnon de Devoir
(the Companions of Duty)” for “Les Compagnon de D?vorer” (the Companions of Devouring))- Juliet Berto gives an embryonic version of her immensely entertaining performance in Celine and Julie Go Boating, but that’s exactly what is - an embryonic version of that performance. The physical cues that make up the later character are all but absent here. The failure of her character to play any game properly be it chess or (and incidentally, if I see another movie where a metaphor about playing chess with yourself is thrown up onscreen, I just want it to be a joke about ‘polishing the bishop,’ knowwhatmsayin’?) blackmail or conspiracy is the result of the actress’s failure to create a convincing character - and thus she simply has to die.

Jean-Pierre Leaud fares a little better, as he is responsible for the one transcendent cinematic moment of the film, where he chants verse from Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark” while a handheld camera is in his face, walking down a street. His Colin is a marginal figure, refusing to work, instead haunting the cafes running penny-ante scams (more or less annoying people - for cash!).

It has been mooted that the failure of the groups and ideas of Out 1 to cohere are a metaphor for the death of the 60s following May ‘68, but the political content of this film is much less overt than it is in other Rivette’s (and even, for example, in Paris nous appartient and Le Pont du nord, where it is still more alluded to than actually made manifest). All the tuckered-out, jam-loving hippies in the world aren’t enough to make that point, and the French cinema would have to wait a few more years for a film that shares some of the same cast as Out 1, Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore, for an autopsy of that generation. As you will have to wait for my essay on that film. It’s been in progress for quite some time. Wait for it.

Related and Elsewhere:
Aaron Hillis at The Reeler
Keith Uhlich at The House Next Door
At Critical Culture, links to all 8 episodes of Out 1 (no subtitles, apparently)
Reverse Shot
Screengrab

If anyone else posts a review to a blog, I’d love to read it.

*There will be another screening March 3-4. Tickets are available via the link above. I believe there may be a showing in the offing in LA, as well
**and if I had half a brain, it would have occurred to be PRIOR TO THE FOURTH FUCKING EPISODE to make a flow chart of these relationships. Maybe that will be what March is for. Maybe.

Rage Against the Machine, Brooklyn Style
Recently, a friend of mine was trying to get me to argue with her about which is cooler, believing in free will or believing in determinism. Not that my opinion about what’s cool is so great, mind you - the request was directed at a number of people, most of whom are probably way more equipped to answer this question, and I can only be considered cool in so far as that I can come off as monosyllabic and aloof on most social occasions. Or is that being a creep? I forget. Anyway, not being long on style, I, as is my nature, avoided the question by flippantly observing that I only believe in over-determinism. Causes are multiple and of varying magnitudes, and end up limiting possible outcomes in ways that are unforeesable to you but totally fucking transparent to all your smart friends. No matter how much you whine about it, you’re probably just going to keep doing what you’ve been doing, whether it’s working some stupid cubicle job or writing badly proofread movie reviews or smoking crack in the elementary school bathroom.

Half Nelson is about a school teacher (Ryan Gosling) with a passion for dialectics, girls’ basketball and some of that “other stuff,” as his dealer calls it, (you and I call it crack). It’s also a film about the dissolution of idealism when the idealist can no longer reconcile his passion to change the world with the multiple and seemingly contradictory ways the world presents itself. His relationship with one of his students, Drey, (Shareeka Epps), whose world is a daily play of unstable oppositions, is the prism through which the light of idealism is hopelessly split. I guess the crack is a factor, too, though at first it seems like the only real side effect is forgetting to shave. But later in the film his cat dies! I don’t think the cat smokes crack, though. At least not on camera. Maybe feline crack smoking is implied. The cat thing is probably the part of the film I disliked the most, and if something as small as that is the largest hole I can poke, it should be obvious that I recommend this film.

There seems to be a critical consensus that when the film limits its portrayal of inner city school life to basketball matches and such it is succesful, while the interjection of overtly political material that’s not directly related to the narrative as such is a bad thing. I don’t think that’s necessarily true - I prefer to think of the interludes with the kids staring directly at the camera reciting factoids about Salvador Allende or whatever being as being a resurrection of the Brecht/Godard alienation effect, here placed strategically in a film with more mainstream, traditional virtues like strong characters, excellent acting and a decent if amorphous plot. Yeah, it’s sort of embarrassing, in the sense that I can embarrassed for anyone so earnest, but that’s a problem all of us very cool people (I lied, earlier) seem to have.

The discussions about dialectics are another issue. Gosling’s character talks about incremental change, that forces are always in conflict but that change is possible and even inevitable given enough time. Um, no. If this film has a moral message, it’s that we are all part of the machine, we are trapped in the superstructure and that the values that the “good” people of the world try to uphold have just as a tenuous relationship to the everyday experience of life as the values we impute to the “bad” people. Dialectics can be seen as the process of humankind’s alienation from and reconciliation to the material world through the creations of institutions like religion, prisons, schools, and while it’s nice to believe that historical materialism is inevitable perhaps it’s best not to do so when all you can think about is getting high. Or if some of my college roommates are any evidence, maybe it is.

While theoretically the world is spiralling ever upwards through the process of teleological change, one inescapable fact of life gives the lie to that. Say hello, mom and dad. Half Nelson shares with 2006’s mediocre junkie flick Sherrybaby a familial party sequences where some unresolved issues are revealed, but while Sherrybaby’s scene of paternal malfeasance is a melodramatic shocker that immediately drives her back into the arms of heroin (or more to the point, drives heroin back into her arms), Half Nelson’s scene is more a slow-burner, with the now-morbid 60s style liberalism of his parents turning into a hypocrisy that threatens to undermine everything they ever staged a sit-in against, if those gains hadn’t already been swallowed up by corporatism and the other unstoppable institutions that are crushing my, excuse me, our lives.

Like the character, the film “bottoms out” leaving us with a sense that things could go either way, for him, Drey, Brooklyn or the world. The future of Gosling, Epps and filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden seems not so dim, however. I look forward to their next projects and hope that some of the more radical elements of their filmmaking and politics are not recuperated by the kudos Half Nelson has received. The experimental and political parts of the film, while modest by some standards, are to be encouraged and not dismissed as half measures.

On the margins/in revisions/where we both first made our livings/in an alcove/full of sawdust/there a new light shone upon us
Although many prominent film critics (and Face Knife favorites) such as David Thomson and Jonathan Rosenbaum count Jacques Rivette among the “masters” of cinema, Rivette’s films, particularly those of the 60s and 70s, are difficult to see, being barely if at all available on video, and that’s not even touching the quasi-mythic Out One: Noli Me Tangere, which was perhaps the most famous film maudit before its recent resurrection. Rosenbaum, in the review linked above, compares Rivette’s ouerve to that of Thomas Pynchon in terms of shared themes and pre-occupations, but while I was watching Paris the author I repeatedly flashed back to was William Gaddis, and his debut novel The Recognitions. In all likelihood it was the bohemian party that launches the protagonist (if one could call her that - she’s more of a dogged stumbler) on the “quest” that passes for the plot that reminded me of a similar, hilarious though sometimes harrowing scene in Gaddis, but I think the resonances go even deeper.

Girish posted today about Manny Farber’s infamous “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art” , and although in Negative Space there is no extended treatment of Rivette he is often name-checked and praised in the highest terms as someone who is creating “termite” art. Even more so than the dudes mentioned above, I hold Manny Farber in high esteem not only because I think he’s a rad stylist but also because the dude’s a pretty excellent painter (there was a great Franklin Bruno article about him in The Believer a few years back, before I even started writing about film or even really watching it), like the two main things on my self-actualization wishlist.

It’s sort of odd to think of Rivette or Gaddis as being on the termite side of the line, as both have almost exclusively created work where duration is the key word. Somewhere along the line, duration or length has come to signify “masterpiece art,” where as I would say that Rivette and Gaddis (and I have not near exhausted either’s body of work) are not producers of masterpieces. Each of their works is a chunk of a larger work, or a probe launched at related concerns, and it certainly not a hermeticly sealed universe unto itself.

Termite art is all about the porousness of certain boundaries (to crib from another influence), and although Paris Nous Appartient is nearly claustrophobic (made more so because the bootleg DVD I watched resembled an over-inked screenprint) in its evocation of a system of connections that exists right below our every day lives the narrative is constantly offering other ways to opt out, even though the pull of oppressive order is almost inexorable. The orphans, atheists and nomads who create and populate Termite art may end up fucked-up and doomed, but at least they end up there because they have explicitly rejected the burden of changing art or changing the world. It can make for a frustrating viewing experience and I’d imagine a sore back and not a few worn welcomes, but when the quotidien feels like a trap it’s good to be reminded that there are options if you only know where to look.

But let’s hope there will still be places to look in the future. The final paragraph of Gaddis’s novel, and epitaph of sorts for one of his fictional alter-egos, a composer who perishes in an organ-driven church collapse, could equally apply to Rivette: “…most of his work was recovered too, and it is still spoke of, when it is noted, with high regard, though seldom played.”

the Museum of the Moving Image will allegedly hold a Rivette retrospective in November, with a screening of Out One: Noli Me Tangere. Anthology Film Archives just concluded a mini-retro, of which I was unlucky enough to catch only one, Noro?t.

The “title” for this entry is a lyric from The Mendoza Line’s “Catch a Collapsing Star”

No Sympathy for Little Miss Vengeance
Since I’m a great fan of what we in the pre-random subway search days used to call “due process,”¹ endorsements of vigilantism tends to rub me the wrong way, particularly when the film in question feels the need to exculpate the underage Bronson (Ellen Page) in question by rigging the plot so that the viewer can go home without any messy questions of justice to lose sleep over. It helps to have a pretty despicable villain on tap, too.

Lucky for us, then, that the perp (Patrick Wilson) in Hard Candy does not only have excellent modern taste in interior design but is also by profession a photographer, two perennial signifiers of shifty if not outright villainous characterization. Much like how the cinematic scientist is usually an over-reaching god-mocker⁴, the cinematic photographer always has something to hide, and while sometimes that secret happens to be the power to crawl up walls and shoot webs from your wrists, most of the time it’s something pretty pervy. ²

The photographer in Hard Candy is, natch, a pedophile, and at first it seems our precocious Punisher’s task is to figure out exactly which level pedo he is in order to mete out the appropriate level of punishment. This happens through a lot of talking and a little bit of shake-the-camera search-the-house . The talking, although sometimes veering into weird Gilmore Girls gone gritty territory, is a lot better than the shaking, although towards the end of the film neither method of ratcheting up the tension makes much aesthetic sense³. Hard Candy, whatever the theme of the film is, is a classic “stand-off” situation where characters are withholding information from each other in a limited setting. The current gold-standard of this kind of film is Reservoir Dogs, which uses the position of the characters and the camera within the confined space so effectively as to nearly obviate the appearance of cutting, except when it comes to important things, like amputation. Which Hard Candy does have, in the form of a radical orchidectomy.

Only, not really. Page’s pre-emptive torture/strike/whatever turns out to have been merely shock and awe enabled by a stagily placed TV monitor and a VHS copy of “Castration Jams ‘05″, a bravura performance put on in order to convince the pedo to….what, exactly? The error of his ways? At this point, the plot becomes hopelessly contrived as it tries to rehabilitate the psycho-leaning Page and irrevocably damn Wilson, who may have been effective in “duping” some in the audience with his psychoanalytical rationales for his behavior. I suppose that’s necessary, because we don’t want sympathetic pedophiles in our movies, unless Todd Solondz is responsible, and even then…yech.

The ending “reveal” is just useless, and the way justice is finally done elides any questions by making it happen at the hand of villain. Though I guess the hanging modality of the execution does bring to mind the spectre of lynching.

Maybe I have a problem with this rough justice only because I serendipitously watched Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936)the same morning, which was a specifically pro-due process film and quite effective at it (if equally narratively implausible as Hard Candy) or maybe, you know, it’s the Zeitgeist even though the blogosphere told me that Bordwell banned that word or whatever. But fuck, what is this movie for? Is it an empowerment fantasy? If so, empowerment for whom? I know that the proliferation of camera-phones has made the world an even less understanding place for subway flashers, and good for them, but um, do we want our middleschool students taking time out to cut off some creep’s cock? Or even fantasizing about it, for that matter?

Coming Next Week: The Face Knife Summer Movie Comparison Chart 2006 (2005),(2003)

¹Except in the case of vampire-hunting, but only because there’s no good legal recourse for that problem yet. Constitutional Amendment, people!
² See my upcoming review of The Notorious Bettie Page for more on this
³ Though, when do micro-second handheld shots edited together ever make sense?
⁴ Since I wrote this entry, this Slate slideshow about cinema’s Scientists was published.

I can’t say whether or not Match Point is a “return to form” for Woody Allen, serious artiste, because I’ve never seen any of his non-comedic films. I can say that I enjoyed the film more than I think I should have, given the flimsiness of the “philosophical” grounding of it. Stapling some banalities on chance to Doestevski isn’t doing nihilism any favors. I’m not going to bother to engage with the film on that level because I simply don’t buy into it.

Rather than a “metaphysical” work I prefer to see Match Point as an effective thriller with excellent performances from the leads. Matthew Hewett is great as the fop of a brother, Brian Cox properly avuncular as the father, and Emily Mortimer so very, very sweet as Chloe. After a period of quiet disdain which I’m sure had her devastated, I’m back on the Scarlett Johansson droolwagon. And Jonathan Rhys Meyer plays Chris Wilton so convincingly that it’s actually a shock when it turns out that, yes, indeed, we are watching a sociopath at work, as I imagine would be the case in real life.

Which brings me to my great idea for Mr. Allen. Why not make a series of films starring the same cast, since they’re so great together, cataloging the sure to be escalating crimes of Wilton until he finally gets caught. Play up the “Ripley”-esque portions of the narrative and drop the Doestoevski. It would be a lot more entertaining, and I would love to see more of the world of the Hewetts - the opera box, the galleries, the Gherkin. .

Admittedly, my lack of knowledge of opera bars me from commenting on the use of music, which I’m sure is some sort of clever counterpoint to the plot, so maybe the film has even more going for it than I care to admit.

The most satisfying thing about Grizzly Man was the realization that the tone of voice, the verbal tics, the odd concerns and methods of expressing them of Timothy Treadwell were pitched so closely to those of an Andy Dick creation that our favorite bisexual drug-casualty comedian would not be able to add anything to the comic absurdity of Treadwell’s life were he to distill the film into a satirical sketch. After receiving this epiphany about half-way through the film, it was impossible to watch the rest of the movie without Dick on my mind. I think this actually made me enjoy the film more than if I had tried to engage it on the terms I suspect it was intended.

Werner Herzog ends Grizzly Man with a look at Treadwell’s unexceptional nature footage and a rumination that although there may not be an inner world or an inner nature of bears that is accessible or unalien to human beings, Treadwell’s life and “work” can illuminate the human condition. I don’t think that Herzog was being ironic, but that’s the only way I could take that statement. Treadwell was very clearly a disturbed man whose existance was predicated about making huge category errors - not that he’s alone in that - but he’s clearly not an example of normal human drives in behavior except in an extremely negative way.

Like a lot of people interested in the arts I can get wrapped up in stories of the obsessive or borderline personalities that inhabit the worlds of genius, but I don’t think that their examples can tell us anything about anything except for themselves. Treadwell was not a genius - nowhere near a genius - just a sad, possibly exploited man who had the misfortune of acquiring a video camera and a taste for nature.

During the last half of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady, I must have fallen asleep at least a dozen times during the three sessions in which I tried to finish watching the movie. Each time, I started from the fracture point again, where the narrative spins out into the jungle and into some essential dream-time. I don’t think that Weerasethakul would be insulted if he heard about the sopoforic effect his film had on me, and I certainly don’t mean it as an insult. In fact, perhaps this could be by design - perhaps one is intended to watch the film while slipping in and out of hypnagogic reveries. Maybe that’s how the shaman/beast devours you… I’m reminded of a book a friend of mine lent me a few years ago, The Arabian Nightmare by Robert Irwin. That book, which is much more interesting than the title may seem to indicate, concerns a malady that either causes you to fall into an eternal, horrific dream-sleep, or maybe it causes you to believe that you have contracted a malady that causes you to fall into an eternal, horrific dream-sleep, or maybe there’s no such thing as the malady. It’s a maddening puzzle of a book, and it’s hard to keep the layers of “reality” in order when you’re reading it, and when I first started reading it, I kept drifting off into disturbed sleep.

I think Tropical Malady may be a film about memory, and what memory means in terms of love but that’s sort of an idee fixe for me so I may well be far off base. The first part of the film, which reminds me a lot of a Jia Zhangke film in the way it’s shot, the youth of the protagonists and the use of pop music and references, concerns the friendship and then romantic relationship between two Thais, one a soldier and the other a young man struggling to find his place. As the soldier is recalled to his unit in the jungle, things change greatly. A tiger, the spirit of a long-dead shaman, is bound to the woods and haunts and perhaps kills intruders. The soldier and the tiger begin a hunt, though it is often unclear who is the hunter and who is the hunted. The soldier receives clarification from a Hanuman-y monkey, who tells him that he must either kill the Tiger and release him from the spirit world, or be devoured by him and join him in that world.

The hunt of the Tiger - the nearly hour long sequence in which I hit the aforementioned sack a dozen or so times - is a tour de force of under used techniques. The soundtrack is entirely bare of music, so that the sounds that do emerge - a shot in the dark, static from a radio, the chirp of the monkey are all that more effective. Much of the hunt takes place at night, with the soldier’s flashlight illuminating jungle vines inches at a time. It’s gorgeous and I don’t think I’ve ever seen “night” done quite like this in a film. The blacks are not the jagged shards of coal from a noir; they’re more like the the blacks of a goya painting, rich and warm and enveloping. It’s a cozy feeling, sort of, until you snap back awake to realize that the face of a tiger now fills the screen, watching you with patient eyes.

I’m hoping Weerasethakul’s other feature, 2002’s Blissfully Yours is released on DVD here soon. There’s also apparently a hybrid documentary called Mysteries Object at Noon, based loosely on an exquisite corpse premise (and you know, all things based on the avant garde excite me), and a film, unscreened in the US so far, called “The Adventure of Iron Pussy,” which Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek describes as “a heartfelt adventure-musical about a transvestite action hero.” Given the way the awards season is shaping up, perhaps some distributer will snap that one up as some Oscar bait. Here’s hoping.

Gus Van Sant’s Last Days is best understood as a period piece. As when watching a film set during the French Revolution, the Great Depression or the Roman Occupation of Jerusalem, it helps for the viewer to have some prior knowledge about the milieu in which the action is taking place. Society in the early 90s had a number of endearing yet annoying quirks. For instance, it was once considered very proper for the very wealthy not to flaunt their largesse in the form of conspicuous consumption. Likewise, the superiority of older technology, like the LP record, was taken for granted. Sharing your feelings with even your most intimate friends was gauche. It was even quite appropriate to eat highly sugared breakfast cereal for every meal. And that’s not even getting into the headgear.

Like most period pieces, Last Days is three things simultaneously: It’s a comedy of manners, a commentary on class relations, and a lens to look at, as the Grey Lady would say, ‘how we live now.’

Michael Pitt (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) plays Blake, or, as he will be known for the remainder of this review, FakeCobain (or FC), a rock star living in remote, decaying house whose peeling paint and general squalor make it the sister-school to Fight Club University. Various hangers-on float through the house and environs, but the master has strangely absented himself, preferring solitude.

The period piece lives and dies by the level of care taken in evoking the past, and from our first glimpse of old-timey grungewear you can almost smell the 90s. The raggedy sweaters, the pajama bottoms, the undershirts, the hospital bracelet that FakeCobain wears look like the spitting image of the clothes Real Cobain wore in various publicity shots, and if you were a teen during the early 90s like me, at least part of your brain is ticking off the Cobains that pass through the movie - ‘Oh, that’s “Sliver” Cobain,’ ‘That was from SPIN’, etc. The cigarette burns in FakeCobain’s t-shirt were obviously applied by a master technician, and someone probably rolled around in real, live dirt to get his clothes so filthy.

This is a problem, and it’s an ironic problem insofarasmuch as it’s directly related to the problem that led Real Cobain to his death. No, I’m not saying that the costumers on the film were all bipolar junkies. It’s the problem of Authenticity and what it means to be authentic. Part of the Cobain Problem is feeling like a phony, and being pulled into a world that wouldn’t know if you were indeed a phony from a world that is arguably more ‘real.’

And the realism of Van Sant’s film comes not from purely cinematic sources like camera placement and moving (which is actually pretty expressionist, or against what passes for realism these days) but from the meticulous recreation of setting. It’s like the still photos of the era, up to and including the infamous Chuck-Taylors-on-the-floor-of-the-greenhouse shot, have come to life. You can tell great care was taken in choosing locations and wardrobe. Too much care. This kind of ostentatious realism, like filming a movie in Aramaic and Latin, is a cheap special effect. It’s a child’s conception of what it means to be authentic and faithful to a source. It’s a poseur’s conception. There’s this conversation in the film between a private detective and a grunge hanger-on about replicas of Stonehenge and London Bridge and it’s so fucking ironic because that’s what this movie is: It’s fake Stonehenge. Maybe Van Sant knows it; I don’t think he does.

The only ‘real’ moments in the film come from the no doubt improvised dialogue of the supporting actors, which injects some humor and surrealism into the low mumble of the film. Harmony Korine talking about how Jerry Garcia is a great Dungeon Master, now THAT’s evoking a time and place. The strength in the film comes in these accidental moments - FakeCobain dropping the sauce packet in the boiling water while making Mac and Cheese, watching Boys II Men on the TV. It’s no coincidence that these moments are also funny. There’s a lot of humor in the Cobain Problem if you know where to look for it.

Unfortunately, despite the Van Sant’s avowed naturalism, he loads up the film, especially at the beginning, with fatuous metaphorical moments - FakeCobain pissing the river, FakeCobain trying to figure out which path to take in the woods, FakeCobain not taking the stairs down the steep incline and tumbling instead, FakeCobain tripping over the exact same spot twice*, cutting between the Mormon’s talking about Jesus and FakeCobain. Etc. And the truly atrocious scene where the spirit of NakedFakeCobain climbs out of real Cobain’s corpse had most of the audience giggling.

There are things to be said for the film - for one, there’s a lot to talk about, and I’ve barely touched on class issues or the difference between interpersonal relationships 90s-style and those of today (see Me and You and Everyone We Know) . The camera work is exceptional and a lot is done with what would be considered “bad” shots - blown-out windows, reflections in glass - to make me admire the DP. There’s a great woodland tracking shot that while not coming close to the one in Week-End made me think about it and sort of put the FakeCobain character in the same dead-end position as these self-cannibalizing outlaw revolutionaries, which is a pretty appropriate metaphor for the failure of 90s alternative culture.

The film could have been a lot worse - and while I think it’s sort of pussy to say that I really wanted to like it and then slag it off, I really did want to like it. I do have one thing to be greatful for in this too sacred handling of one of my own personal sacred cows: At least Cameron Crowe didn’t make it.

*Though, there a few other repeated moments in this film that sort of evoke Bunuel’s Exterminating Angel. Maybe Cobain was caught in a trap of grunge mannerisms and couldn’t get out….I like that idea. Maybe I’ll make that film. Combined with the doorbell that keeps ringing and inviting disruptive guests (mormons, yellow page salesman, kim gordon…)

First off, the infamous octopus eating scene? Really cool. I’m not some sort of raw food iconoclast and I don’t self-identify with Renfield or anything but I can see that after a decade and a half of fried dumplings, one would want to eat something fresh, you know what I mean? I suppose the symbolism of the octopus has to be linked with the other being that protagonist Oh-Dae Su promises to eat alive - his tormenter, the guy who kept him imprisoned for 15 years without explanation and who must have metaphorical tentacles in every corner of Oh-Dae Su’s life, but just as Oh-Dae Su chokes on the octopus, he….

Let’s stop here for a second. Part of the tendancy I like to call creeping Fincherism, beside the over-fondness for sick greens and mauves in the production design and the desire to move the camera like a spastic playing a car racing video game, is the purposeful insertion of plot “spoilers” (to use the geek argot) that preclude any serious discussion of why or why not a film works, story-wise, unless you want to give the game away to potential viewers. On the one hand, placing the viewer on the same epistemological level as the protagonist (various levels of ignorance) is, you know, in line with certain of my modernist sympathies, but on the other hand, how many times can one’s fictional world get TURNED UPSIDE down before the gesture becomes rote and meaningless? There is a certain kind of nihilism evident in this tendancy - that the agent in the world of the film will never, ever know anything until it’s too late - never know who is controlling their fate, why their fate is being controlled, and just how extensive fate is being controlled. As far as that goes, it’s sort of baby-grade existentialist, but then the conventions of narrative filmmaking require that the plot MUST be explained, and heck, its the work of a superheroically intelligent and/or rich individual WHO FUCKS WITH YOUR REALITY, man, and I can’t abide by that. There’s no DUDE like that, just like you don’t like in God’s potemkin village. The “reveal” is philosophically and cinematically meaningless, and as such these films more or less suck. There’s no need to treat your audience like children in order to build “suspense.” I’m firmly on the side of dramatic irony, where the audience knows more or less what’s going to happen to the protagonist but is forced to look on in horror as he tries and fails to avoid his fate. THAT’s suspense.

So what do you get from Oldboy besides this Fincherism? Not a whole lot. The plot, as such, doesn’t make a lick of sense, unless you buy that there are people out there who really CAN control you and have the whim to do it. The violence can be excrutiating, and the denouement, well, is totally expected and gruesome. It’s a well made film, within the context of it’s genre, but I certainly don’t think it’s a very good film.

I still don’t know if I can forgive Todd Solondz for Happiness or Storytelling, but Palindromes is really an excellent film, his best by many miles. Stylistically and morally, Solondz has opened himself up, going beyond the closed universe of sitcom style set-ups and misanthropy that characterised his earlier work. Solondz will still never be accused of being a great stylist - can you think of a Solondz shot that doesn’t involve Philip Seymour Hoffman’s semen - but there are some great, lyrical moments in Palindromes, particularly the Night of the Hunter-inspired river escape.

Palindromes is a comedy about teen pregnancy and abortion, but it’s not a particularly topical movie, which is something I think confuses critics. They see these hot button topics (also pedophilia) and think the film is *about* these things - how could it not be - but, in the case of Palindromes (and again, I’m not going to defend Solondz’s earlier films - not a fan), they’re really metaphors for a larger message about how human beings stumble towards intimacy (not the sexual kind) with each other in a world that causes us to mistrust and hate our neighbors and ourselves. Solondz’s characters are constantly making the wrong choice, but for the right reason, and that’s what makes them ultimately lovable, their infinite fallibility. Just when you think they can’t make a worse choice, they do. In the past, Solondz seemed to dwell on this aspect of life, to mistake it for all life, all human experience, especially in the context of Suburbia, and his films often mocked the characters for their mistakes. They were cruel films, but Palindromes is uncommon in its sensitivity and gentleness, without being ever sentimental, a particularly difficult thing to do when children and childhood are part of the project. I’m tempted to revisit his earlier films, but my memories of them are too strong and too negative, so instead I’ll just look forward to his next project. Hopefully, it will be even more influence by the surrealism of Bunuel, because I think their respective humanisms have a lot in common. Both are interested in the malfunction of human desire and the way that one cannot change one’s innate drives without repression and horrible consequences*. A full-blown surreal Solondz film I think would be a revelation.

* in the vernacular, “you can’t unfry things. you can’t change who you are” (Strangers with Candy).