The Face Knife

Night Watch plays like an entire season of Angel condensed into less than two hours and minus all the great characters of Joss Whedon’s series, or maybe a grim retelling of Ghostbusters. Even still, it’s pretty entertaining, although a bit lacking in hot vampire on vampire action for my taste. It’s a bit far-fetched to compare it to Bulgakov, as Hoberman does in the the Voice, or to Stalker, as I’ve seen somewhere (there’s one scene reminiscent of the deserted buildings of the Zone, but then the Vampire with the terrifying alias “The Hairdresser” and his girlfriend pop up).

Probably the most interesting thing about the film is the way it pre-empts the inevitable cross-over with the video game world by offering a scene in which the head baddie (whose power is apparently to remove his spine and use it as a sword. FATALITY.) hones his reflexes for the final conflict by gaming it out on a PS2. Maybe the whole film was story-boarded as a Machinima, which might explain the odd use of props (flashlights?). Hopefully, the remaining episodes in the series will take a bit more advantage of the Moscow location, particularly the “Stalin Gothic” skyscrapers that would look great being destroyed by the Sta-Puffed marshmallow man.

Sometimes, cinema conspires to send you the right signal at the right time. Turner Classic Movies is running a “31 Days of Oscar” promotion, and I’ve been recording a lot of films I’ve never seen that I think I should probably watch. Rocky was one of those, and yesterday, on my 30th Birthday, I picked it out from the queue to watch, quite randomly.

With Sylvester Stallone being such a joke now, it might be hard for some people to recognize that this film is in fact very good. But the oddest thing about the film is how much I identified with Rocky. Here’s a lug, 30 years old, going nowhere, who is attracted to this:

for Christ’s sake, Adrian looks like a hipster. And she’s kind of a spazz. That’s pretty fucking close to my own “type.”

As the film went on, I became convinced that this year someone would give me MY title shot. Rocky is a very inspiring film in that way. And as luck would have it, today I saw an ad in the paper for Carl Weathers’s Stage Fighting Workshop….

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.

Maybe it’s just because as of late my business card happens to read both “Whitey” and “The Man” , but I’m finding it harder and harder to get properly exercised about the supposedly criminal lifestyle choices of the international Bourgeoisie. The effort of filmmakers like Lars Von Trier and Michael Haneke to expose the plush, tasteful underbelly of mainstream Liberals may actually be a decent and essential goal in the service of international liberation, and sometimes they come close to convincing me (like, I really hated that Paul Bettany character in Dogville) but I’m far too out of shape to become a street-fighting man without spending a fortune on pilates lessons, which requires a decent paying job, you know?

Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche) are a prosperous middle class couple who begin receiving anonymous, affectless (though as beautifully composed as a Mondrian painting, though that may be the result of the eminently tasteful architecture of their flat) surveillance videotapes of their house, seemingly taken at all hours from the alley directly facing it. Sometimes, the tapes are accompanied by a sanguineous crayon drawing. Naturally, this state of affairs leads to escalating paranoia and the facade of the life they’ve built for themselves begins to crumble as events from the past surface and frayed nerves are rubbed.

While it’s tempting to add Caché (Hidden) to my long list of films from 2005 that concern the ultimately futile attempt of a solipsist to come to a communion with the “Other”, what’s really been hidden about the film is the total lack of critical comparison to another formally daring expos? on the French Bourgeoisie, Godard’s Week-end. The big difference, aside from the fact that one of these films is far better than the other, is the static set-up of the “surveillance” shots of Caché as compared to Godard’s berzerk and breathtaking use of tracking shots. I would almost say that Caché has to be an ‘answer’ film to Week-end, if one that totally dispenses with the savage humor of the 60s film.

The difference between the “despicable” protagonists of the films is that the couple on the run in Godard’s film has nothing in the way of self-reflection or self-consciousness, whereas the “hunted” couple of Caché has nothing but that. Both films are the wish fulfillment fantasies of their protagonists. Caché is the ultimate Liberal guilt-trip fantasy film. It is the dark fantasy of the politically “responsible” (though not actually engage? ) that they will somehow, sometime, be taken to account for their failings, even if their deepest, darkest, evilest acts occurred when they were perhaps six years old, or more to the point, what they would consider their evilest acts.

Indeed, the narcissism -the infantilism- of Georges’s persecution fantasy is made clear in the drawings that accompany the videotapes. The most pathetic scene occurs when Georges watches the videotape that apparently was filmed right after his initial confrontation with Majid - the extended tape of the old Algerian crying. Naturally, Georges feels awful. Poor Frenchman! He made the sub-altern weep! Look how evil and powerful he must be, even in his most unconsidered moments!

Georges’s construction of the Other becomes even more absurd in the fantasy of Majid slicing his own throat as some sort of penance. (and I maintain it was probably a fantasy, given the lack of police response, etc. ) Only a true narcissist would think that his actions could cause another to take his own life in such a way.

The attribution of the tapes is a total act of projection - Georges tries to generalize from his own experience and from pieces of media he consumes (it’s not for nothing that his job is on TV, or that his home is virtually filled with media) the inner lives of the Other, what their motivations and drives might be, and succeeds only in exposing the loathing he feels for himself and his lifestyle, and a metaphysical need to somehow be held responsible for his situation.

Ultimately, there is no one attempting to hold Georges responsible for anything - just as there is no one who will hold us responsible for our failings. Georges wishes there were someone who would either punish him or reassure him for leading an okay life, like the power he has over his child, Pierrot. When Pierrot starts to rebel, Georges is faced with an uncomfortable mirror that does not reflect, a reminder of his own place as a radically free and radically alone agent in a world without a hidden order.

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.

Maybe it’s just because he’s the only crime fiction writer I’m really versed in, but I couldn’t help but thinking of On Dangerous Ground in terms of Jim Thompson’s moral universe, even though as far as I know he had nothing to do with the film. Robert Ryan is Jim Wilson, a big city cop who is just a little too brutal for his superior’s comfort. It’s hard to tell if Wilson is a sociopath or really just a man who is pushed too far, like he claims. When given a forced vacation upstate, he’s confronted with the naked rage of a farmer whose daughter had been murdered by a psychopath, a jagged mirror of his own drives for revenge and justice.

Their pursuit of the suspect leads them to the home of a blind woman, who is obviously hiding something, but for some reason believes Wilson when he says he will not harm the person she is protecting. The juxtaposition of the physical disability, blindness, and the moral and ethical injuries that deform the characters of Wilson and the father is text book Thompson. Would that Ray had taken the sickness of the Thompson world the whole way and come to a thoroughly horrifying end, this movie could have been a masterpiece. Instead, it ends on a redemptive note - but an odd one. The blind woman is blind, but perhaps her sight can be restored by a doctor. The treatment of the disability in this case near to that the club foot in High Sierra, where the handicapped person is treated as completely out of bounds of normal life, even if their mental and emotional health is completely normal. In order for the flawed “heroes” of these films to accept the very pretty, very young girls, they have to be perfectly physically intact. Of course, the healing the girl in High Sierra doesn’t work out exactly the way Roy wishes, so maybe a non-blind Myrna Loy in the universe of this film would be a sufficiently twisted character to torment Wilson in the way that would make everything right the wrong way in the world.

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.