midsommar
august 2019Ari Aster’s follow up to his grief drenched horror film Hereditary begins on a similar note of familial tragedy. But while Hereditary explores how grief can tear a family apart from the inside—all while being prayed on by pagan demon worshippers—Midsommar may have broader questions about the nature of community, care, isolation, and abandonment.
Florence Pugh stars as Dani, a college student living with anxiety who’s mental health is pushed the the brink when her sister kills their parents, and herself. Dani’s boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor), who has already expressed doubts regarding his commitment to their relationship stays with Dani out of obligation, fear, and laziness after the death of her family. Months later Dani, Christian, and Christian’s friends Josh (William Jackson Harper), Mark (Will Poulter) and Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) embark on a summer research trip come vacation to Halsingland, Sweden They stay at the Harga commune where Pelle grew up. Once with the Harga, what appears as a sun soaked mushroom trip, lightly peppered with ethnographic intrigue, soon becomes a creeping, fatalistic nightmare as its revealed that each of the “outsiders” have been brought to the commune to be sacrificed in their Midsommar festival. The film ends with each of the characters artfully mutilated bodies being burned in a ceremonial temple. Christian is paralyzed, stuffed inside a bear carcass and burned alive. Dani, the commune’s newly crowned May Queen, cries—then laughs—in unison with the Harga villagers.
Visually, the pre Harga portions of the film bear a striking resemblance to Hereditary, the frame is full of dark blues, muted, dirty pastels, and artfully exhausted faces. The camera movement too is familiar, cutting through doors, walls and ceilings. It oscillates between slow pans, floating tracking shots and swift pivots and lifts. These sudden changes often mirror the state of Dani’s anxiety. A relatively positive conversation between Pelle and Dani causes her to have one of her many anxiety attacks after he mentions her family. As she rushes to the bathroom, breathing heavy, the camera follows, transitioning from a standard two shot, to a fast paced tracking shot that jumps over the bathroom door as Dani slams it behind her. Once the group arrives in Halsingland the film’s visual style changes significantly, favouring slow observational movement, and glaringly bright, over-saturated colours. In a flourish that may call a little too much attention to itself, the camera does a complete somersault as our characters drive down the road, crossing the threshold into Halsingland.
Perhaps the most remarked upon theme of Midsommar is that of the fraught power dynamics of heterosexual relationships and the complications that extreme trauma imposes upon our obligations to one and other. It is quickly established that if Christian is not an outright terrible boyfriend, then he is at least an incredibly lazy one. It is clear from the beginning of the film that he wants out of this relationship. But Dani already struggles with anxiety and leans on Christian before the horrors of the film’s extended prologue. When the film skips ahead a few months it demonstrates just what kind of shitty boyfriend Christian is. He turns arguments around, making Dani apologize for being upset when he has done something to rightfully upset her. He tells the kinds of white lies (like that his friends would love for her to join their trip to Sweden!) that are intended to spare Dani, but ultimately lead her into an uncomfortable experience that she does not feel ready for. All of this is important regarding what happens at the end of the film, when Dani chooses to have Christian burned alive. On some level the ending does seem to be intended to be read as a kind of triumphant moment for Dani. However, it is not without ambiguity.
Christian is a terrible boyfriend, and as we learn when he attempts to steal his friend Josh’s thesis topic, he is also a pretty bad friend. In fact none of this group of curious young Americans are very good to each other, they are all ready to throw each other under the bus at a moments notice and when they witness the ritual suicide of the Harga elders, they utterly fail to comfort or effectively communicate with each other. In other words, there is no real community among the foreign travellers, and this lack of solidarity is foregrounded in relation to the commune. As budding anthropologists and obnoxious tourists, their encounter with the Harga is not one of cultures meeting and forging relationships—it is one of exploitative distance, either for the sake of individual hedonism or clinical study. The heterosexual couple and its ultimate failure is only the most prominent of the film’s study of inadequate relations of mutual aid and community. Despite Ari Aster’s description of Midsommar as a break up film (though it certainly is that) it may be about something more. To put it in Pelle’s words, it is about what happens when you don’t feel held, and what kinds of community can start to feel attractive when those feelings of isolation and abandonment are pushed to the brink.
One of the films greatest successes is in rendering the Harga commune perversely attractive. Much of this is done at the level of filmmaking. The light, colours, and clothes of the Harga are gorgeous. And even the effects of the mandated psychedelics—the breathing flowers, and skin rooted grass—are equal parts beautiful and unsettling. But the most clear indication of what the Harga offer Dani that her home life does not arises when she feels most abandoned. After she believes she’s witnessed Christian cheating on her in a strange mating ritual (in reality he has been sexually assaulted), Dani breaks down. As she wails in agony, the one life line she held onto ripped away, the Harga women wail beside her. Their moans accompany and guide Dani’s. This scene is in stark contrast to one earlier in the film. Directly after the death of her family Dani screams in despair in the arms of a silent and terrified Christian. The Harga women provide no explanation for what Dani has just seen. They offer no words of comfort, other than to echo and project her pain. This performance of affective solidarity is enough to make Dani feel rooted in the Harga community, like the grass she sees growing from her hands and feet.
The decoupling of Christian and Dani, and her subsequent—though uncertain—place within the Harga community is reminiscent of a narrative arc described by Kelly Steinmetz in relation to post-war Italian cinema. As Steinmetz observes regarding the ending of Nights of Cabiria, after being abandoned yet again by her lover—her chances of forming a heterosexual bourgeoise couple thwarted—she wanders through the woods back to town. As she walks, tears streaming down her face, she becomes surrounded by a parade young people—dancing, singing, embracing each other in costume. As she becomes surrounded by bohemians, Cabiria begins to smile, looking directly into the camera. Steinmetz writes that the ending of Fellini’s film displays, “the central couple’s union being thwarted, but the film’s final gestures move away from the limitations of a couple and towards the possibilities of more expansive collectives.” (Steinmetz, 23). The finale of Midsommar bears a striking resemblance to this description, though it carries much darker implications.
Dani’s break from heterosexual coupledom is far more traumatic, and the relations she is left entangled in are far more sinister. While we should not overstate the violence of the Harga community in relation to the violence of patriarchal romantic relations, the community that Dani is left with remains one of stringent gender roles, racial purity, and eugenic breeding. In opposition to Cabiria’s potentiality of building community outside of the limiting relations of the couple, Dani is left smiling and triumphant, but still trapped, barely able to move in her enormous flower dress.
While Aster’s ambitious second feature is successful in many ways, it carries with it some avoidable flaws which may prove fatal for some viewers. The script is uneven, and while the tragic-comedic tone of the last two thirds of the film work, the weight of the first act feels too heavy to balance the tone of the film’s subsequent acts. On a thematic level, the film fails to address the question of race. Josh’s presence in the all white, meticulously bred Swedish commune is conspicuous and his position as ethnographer raises some interesting questions and contradictions that the film seems utterly uninterested in exploring. Finally, Midsommar’s use of a character named Ruben who has mental and physical disabilities is its most frustrating flaw. The character is purposely inbred by the commune and acts as its prophet. This is meant to demonstrate the horror of Harga customs, and it does, but the film also shoots Ruben as a source of horror for the audience. This is a tired horror trope in a movie filed with homages to film’s like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Wicker Man, but Aster can’t have his cake and eat it too. By invoking the trope of a scary disabled character, the film perpetuates stigmas and cultural narratives surrounding differences of ability, bodily appearance, and deviance. Furthermore, Ruben plays a relatively ancillary role in the plot, leaving little room for genuine engagement of the difficulties people with disabilities face while adding to the feeling that his utilization by Aster is unnecessary. Overall I found the film deeply affecting, open, and thought provoking, not to mention visually bold, all of which makes its flaws all the more disappointing
her smell
april 2019
Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell is your average self-destructive artist story, but its presented with enough visual, stylistic, and narrative boldness to set it apart. The film stars Elizabeth Moss as Becky Something, the erratic, selfish, substance abusing front woman of the fictional 90s rock band Something She. It adheres to a strict five act structure. Each act is a pivotal moment in the fall and tentative rise of Something She—from the early days of the band’s drug fuelled decline, to their eclipsing by younger, fresher talent, and Becky’s eventual and precarious adjustment to sobriety.
To those accustomed to a more conventional biopic, the film’s five act structure can also take some adjustment, but it plays an important role in forging the film’s unique rhythm, its excruciating combination of breakneck pace and drawn out dread. The dialogue is both rambling and precise. The characters verbal idiosyncrasies—like Becky’s tendency to spell out the last word in a sentence—change meaning as circumstances change. What appears as coked out machine gun fired syllables is later understood to be something central to Becky’s character, to her playful, creative, and spontaneous way of being.
Moss handles both the mania and razors edge calm brilliantly. Its a performance that would be guaranteed and oscar nom if Becky Something had been based on a real troubled musical genius. She plays off the completely scripted dialogue with both style and off the cuff naturalism, just as a highly practiced and highly self conscious performer would. She throws away cutting witticisms like still lit cigarette butts that she can’t be bothered to stomp out. And while the centrality of Moss’s Becky Something does leave other characters neglected, the dynamics and relations between the characters remain clear. Her bandmates—played by Agness Deyn and Gayle Rankin—convey the appropriate amount of fed up and affection and have their own distinct way of expressing these emotions.
Plenty of music biopics (for lack of a better term) feature charismatic and flashy lead performances—and Moss’s may be among the best—but Her Smell’s distinguishing factor is its viscerally felt synchronization of style and substance. During Becky’s downward spiral the cuts are fast and relentless and accelerating to the point where you hope the scene ends before Becky does something truly unforgivable to herself or others. The score—crunching, pounding, and scraping—sounds like cancer metastasizing through a megaphone. Its offbeat rhythm and relatively high volume over the dialogue contribute to a feeling of chaos, as if all kinds of uncontrollable things are happening below the surface. Even in the film’s moments of stillness, it is not a calm stillness, but one that at any moment could erupt into a storm. Struggling with sobriety, Becky is unsure if she can live out in the world as anything other than the wild and volatile persona of Becky Something. And the film’s final scene seems to leave some ambiguity as to how successful Becky’s attempt has been.
Despite all of the elements that make the film unique, it remains a story about a troubled artist falling from grace and rising from the ashes. And while the more visceral moments of the film are truly gripping, the more conventional elements still feel deeply conventional, including the semi-triumphant group sing-a-long finale, and the relationship with the band’s well intentioned but frustrated manager. Some of these conventions are subverted by way of gender swap. Dan Stevens as the responsible and nagging ex-husband is refreshing. And Becky’s early absent relationship with her daughter, and struggle to connect later in life is something we’ve seen from male characters countless times. But perhaps the most significant way the film subverts this narrative of hardship and growth is how that growth is related to notions of authenticity imposed by the world of rock music itself.
In many films like this, including last year’s A Star is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody there are moments where a musical deviation in genre or style is meant to be indicative of the artists deviation from some true authentic self. Its Ally on SNL, or Freddy going solo. In Her Smell something like the opposite of this takes place. In the film’s early acts, Becky is the one fiercely monitoring the borders of genre and authenticity. She refuses to go on tour with former friend and rival Zelda E. Zekiel (Amber Heard) out of a prideful refusal to serve as her opening act. She justifies this decision as a taste judgment on the increasingly Pop-y, mainstream status of Zelda’s music. Zelda serves as a polished and palatable foil to Becky’s hard to swallow, unvarnished aesthetic and attitude. But it becomes clear that Becky’s tough, wild child act is just as much about performance as Zelda’s hats and costume changes.
Becky is obsessed with mythologizing herself and her band. She imposes protege status on up and coming band The Akergirls, and later has a camera crew follow her around as she spews rock star guru platitudes and asks, “Did you get that?”. Becky seems to think her ironic, self-conscious distance from the performance of authenticity makes her all the more real, and all the more rock n’ roll. But as she grows as a person, her relationship to music changes as well. When asked by her daughter to play a song that reminds her of her, she sings Bryan Adam’s Heaven. The song choice feels like an acknowledgment that emotional or affective authenticity cares very little about who is a poseur or who is too mainstream. This internal realization coincides with Becky’s ability to write music again, unencumbered by the pressures of living up to some “authentic” rock star image.
hearts beat loud
march 2019I can’t figure out if Hearts Beat Loud is incredibly timely, or out of place. The 2018 film about an aging hipster (Nick Offerman) coming to terms with his daughter leaving for college, and the related financial squeeze hits some familiar notes for those who have seen a few indie darlings of the 2000s. Directed by Brett Haley and written by Brett Haley and Marc Basch, the film comes off as a glossier, more commercial iteration of something by Noah Baumbach or the mumble core trend ushered in by the Duplass brothers.
Frank Fisher (Offerman) has always wanted to be a professional musician, but he doesn’t quite have the chops. His song writing is just adequate and his voice pitchy. Instead he owns a fledgling record store in Red Hook. His pre-med daughter on the other hand is a natural, and when Frank can drag her away from her books for a jam sesh she produces song lyrics that reflect genuine emotion and sings them with a powerful and distinct voice. Despite her talent, the film itself often struggles to make the visualization of their songwriting very interesting. This is an admittedly difficult task, but the slow zooms of a sad Frank fiddling with his guitars and effects pedals during what is supposed to be a particularly emotionally fraught point in the film does little to incite any real pathos.
There are some really nice visual moments, but these often centre around Frank’s daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons) and her budding relationship with Rose, played by American Honey star Sasha Lane. Their scenes together are shot with an increasing warmth and intimacy throughout the film. From the late evening walk where they have their first kiss, to a conversation in bed where they navigate the messier aspects of getting to know a new partner, and finally when Rose teaches Sam how to ride a bike, sunlight bouncing off their skin as the camera holds tight on Sam’s face in the anticipatory moments before she glides off.
Unlike Sam and Rose’s matter of factly queer relationship, Frank’s mid life tribulations and undefined relationship with his attractive “landlady” Leslie (Toni Collette) feel like something I could have potentially been made to invest in in the early 2010s, but not in 2019. This is demonstrative of a few things. One is that the kind of masculinity that Frank represents is far less tolerable now than during the rise of the Brooklyn hipster. His musical prescriptions for Leslie and his man-childish jealousy don’t make him complicated, they just make him unsympathetic. This is also true of his oblivious urging of Sam to hold off on med school for their burgeoning musical project, and his relationship with fellow hipster burnout and bar owner Dave, played here by the great Ted Danson. In some ways this isn't the film’s fault. Any illusions that hipsterdom was ever inherently progressive or even aesthetically interesting seem to have faded today. If the category is even applicable anymore is highly questionable. The kind of aggressively asserted taste making and faux iconoclastism of an older, male-er brand of hipster has given way to Sam’s less self conscious, more syncretic mix of interests and ambitions. As James Murphy might say, Frank is losing his edge.
This new brand of youthful artistic self expression is mimicked in the music that Frank and Sam make together. At the beginning of the movie Frank watches a Wilco set on YouTube, and later Sam watches Mitski perform her brilliant Your Best American Girl at the urging of Rose. However, the music they perform in the film’s conclusion doesn’t resemble either of these artists. Their songs range from piano fluttering love songs and indie synth pop, to a finale which blends tropical house, chillwave, and the The Chainsmokers to create a sound which at this point can adequately be described as “Spotify music”. Its the kind of hooky, up beat, but low key music that writers like Liz Pelly and Rob Horning have identified as being the product of a specific configuration of industrial and consumptive conditions—exasperated by feedback loops of data collection and curated selections. Here the film feels timely again, but like the form of hipsterdom that Frank represents, this more recent trend in streaming influenced musical monogenre feels like it represents nothing more than the optimization of various aesthetics in order to produce something generically likeable, but with an alternative sheen. Words that could also be used to describe the film itself. Spotify also works to incite the action of the film. When Frank hears their song in a coffee shop after uploading it to Spotify, he becomes convinced of their potential. By the time a record exec offers them a deal, the film has fully bought in to the dream making power of the streaming giant.
All of this makes for a film watching experience that left a gulf between the emotions the film desperately wants to elicit, and the comparatively cold feeling I was left with. Its imitation of the real life emotional and moral messiness that many of its indie predecessors became known for comes up short. In the end, Frank does shut down his record store after their triumphant performance. He now works at Dave’s bar, and has rekindled the beginnings of a relationship with Leslie. After some Rose related doubts, Sam go to college, but will continue to make and share music with and without her Dad. I would have liked to see more of Sam’s internal deliberation regarding her new relationship with Rose and her decision to move across the country for school, and less of Frank’s mid-life crisis. Clemons is a real talent, and my problems with Offerman’s character do not extend to his performance. But the film ultimately feels like a Spotify ad in which an old hipster falls in love with his land lord. Then again, maybe that is all too timely.
unbreakable
january 2019
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan and released in 2000, Unbreakable opens with text explaining the immense popularity of comic books across the globe—information that would probably prove quaint by today’s standards. For Elijah Price—played here with a perfect combination of menace, mystery, and intelligence by Samuel L. Jackson—stories were quite literally his way of accessing the world. Born with a rare disease that causes his bones to break far easier than most, Price grew up afraid of the outside, afraid of his own body conspiring against him, and of the teasing he would suffer from kids in the school yard. In order to encourage him to leave the safety of his home, Price’s mother promises him a comic book for every time he is brave enough to venture out of the house. As an adult Price runs an art gallery which exclusively features rare comic sketches and illustrations, though this occupation is secondary to his life’s mission, to find a man who’s as as indestructible as he is fragile. That man is Bruce Willis’ David Dunn, utilizing his talents in portraying the kind of cinematic “everyman” who wears a traditional style of no frills masculinity, complete with short gruff sentences and Rocky style basement workouts. The film’s inciting incident involves a freak train derailment that kills all of the passengers inside. All that is, except for David Dunn.
As a director, this may be Shyamalan’s most precise, dynamic, and restrained film. The camera follows Dunn’s movements closely and kinetically while creeping slowly around Price. The characters are often framed between doors, stairwells, and passenger seats, mimicking the effect of comic book panels. Shyamalan takes other cues from the medium that helped inspire the picture, using colour and costume as trademarks of the central characters.
Before the accident, Dunn’s life has gone stale. He describes waking up each morning feeling a deep and persistent sadness. He gave up a promising football career in college and now works as a security guard at the school’s stadium. His home life has suffered too, slowly filled with resentment for his wife and distance from his young son Jonah. Dunn’s wife Audrey—played by Robin Wright—is grossly underserved here. She functions as little more than an indicator of how the accident and Dunn’s newly discovered superpowers may be able to turn his life around. After his ostensible brush with death she is forced to reconsider their failing marriage. But its the introduction of Price—like a purple velvet upholstered runaway train—that really brings about change in Dunn’s life.
Price has spent his life looking for a foil. He speaks in terms of life’s plots, holes, and arcs. Of Dunn, Price says, “We are connected, we are on the same curve”. The film’s Shyamalan-esque twist is that Price has indeed set this plot in motion, blowing up a plane and burning down a hotel in order to find a real life superhero to match his very real villainy. The reveal brings to mind some of the work of Don Delillo who has explored the role of the terrorist as a moulder of cultural narratives much more thoughtfully in books like Mao II and Libra. But in Unbreakable the terrorist has not simply replaced the writer, he is a writer. A man who conflates life and fiction, who has more knowledge of popular culture than people skills. This connection between pop-culture obsession, dangerously isolated and resentful individuals, and violent acts can feel darkly prophetic in 2019.
The film is also interesting to consider as a post Cold War/pre 9/11 narrative. Price’s determination to find a force to oppose, even if that means becoming the villain, and Dunn’s dissatisfaction with the humdrum of his life feel like textbook “end of history” cultural tendencies. Furthermore after 9/11, “acts of terrorism” like the ones Price commits would be largely coded as foreign or outside threats. Terrorism would become something that other cultures inflicted on Americans, not something born from American culture itself. It would take much more recent atrocities committed in the name of home grown white supremacy and tangled conspiracies (more “plots”) for this understanding to be questioned, even if the latter was the case all along.
Prominent during these years are stories in which a lack of clear outward conflict is actually the inciting incident for more internal struggles. The monotony of white collar work or domestic life (Office Space, Fight Club, American Beauty), and the yearning for an enemy, even if that means creating one, become popular and relatable tropes. David Dunn could be considered a less neurotic, more masculine, meathead iteration of any of the above films’ protagonists. He just needs the introduction of a character more desperate to find meaning in his life than he is to show him what he has wanted all along. As Price says to Audrey, “These are mediocre times”. His thesis is not that extraordinary times call for extraordinary hero’s (as many traditional superhero narratives suggest) but that the sheer mediocrity of their times call for the manufacturing of a devastating conflict, even if it means the death of countless people. But Dunn’s eventual excitement and relief at what he accepts as his new calling begs a question that is often relevant when considering Hollywood products: who’s fantasy is this?
However, while the character’s fantasy maybe one of an extraordinary struggle which brings meaning to his life, the film to its credit has more humble ambitions. In our age of relentless superhero fatigue, in which Marvel has imposed an all encompassing super-universe, it is genuinely refreshing to see how ordinary the world Shamalan has created is. The film’s climax involves Dunn rescuing two children from a murderer who has already killed their parents. The rescue is almost foiled when Dunn is pushed into a tarp covered pool. Water is Dunn’s only weakness, and his efforts to free himself from the tangled tarp before downing is both tense and wonderfully banal. The film’s grounding in reality makes the superpowered moments fun and satisfying in a way that is rarely matched by today’s comic inspired fare.
The movie is not overly wrought with darkness, grimness, or grittiness a la the DC Universe either. And for at least half of the picture its grounding in reality allows the miraculous feats that Dunn is capable of to spark real wonder. The weightlifting scene with his son is really good, and recalls the early scenes of Sam Raimi’s Spider-man where Peter Parker is having so much fun discovering his new abilities. Its can be hard today to decipher what makes a good popular movie with mass appeal, and what is just refreshing by comparison. But while Unbreakable may not be a masterpiece, watching it for the first time in 2019 and thinking about it as a product of its time felt surprisingly worth while.
bohemian rhapsody
november 2018Tact on to the beginning of Bohemian Rhapsody is a message. Over slick graphics, Rami Malek thanks audiences—“fans”—for coming to the theatre to see the film. Unfortunately directed by alleged sexual predator Bryan Singer, and completed by Dexter Fletcher (who also directs the upcoming Elton John biopic), Bohemian Rhapsody is the kind of big, populist movie that appeals to a wide audience in a manner rarely seen in a non-comic book related context. Its this wide appeal and commitment to big emotions, big performances, and big musical moments that contributes to its charm, as much as its banality.
Outside of this industrial context, Bohemian Rhapsody is mostly unremarkable. This is with the exception of Malek’s performance, which exudes a physicality he has rarely been given the opportunity to display. Not to mention his face, which is made for the big screen and adeptly carries the depth, mystery and charisma of Freddie Mercury. Contrary to the singularity of Malek’s visage, the film’s aesthetic is as airbrushed and sanitized as its content. The colours are bright, the faces are smooth, and the hair, unshakable. Even the rural farmhouse where the band records the titular album feels too clean, constructed, and sterile. Most of the film’s supporting performances can be described the same way, though Allen Leech, playing Mercury’s manipulative manager is able to exude menace with a pop of his hip. Veteran comedian Mike Myers has a small part as Ray Foster, a record exec who makes the big mistake of trying to contain the band’s more eccentric ambitions. The character is one we are meant to laugh at, but this has little to do with Myers’ performance beyond the superficial glee of recognizing the actor.
The movie’s wide appeal does come at a price. While there is much rock n’ roll, the film is void of any sex, and its gestures towards drug use go little further than displays of empty bottles lining table tops. All this functions to blunt the emotional edge of some of the lower points of Mercury’s life and career. We are told he is burning the candle at both ends, that he needs to slow down—and we understand—but we don't feel it the way we should. Partly because of this, when AIDS enters the picture, it feels rushed, brushed over, as if the film is almost as invested as Mercury appears to be in suppression or denial. This being said, the PG-13 rating does seem appropriate, as Queen’s music does have a certain appeal to significantly younger audiences. Whether its the stomping and clapping of “We Will Rock You”, or the fluttering falsettos of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, the band’s catalog is hugely appealing to children, and the film is not afraid to invite the audience to sing along. This is to its credit. The final performance at Live Aid in London is depicted in its entirety and the film does a good job approximating the unfettered joy of being at such a show—though you could always just watch the actual performance on YouTube.
As a character, Mercury proves curious. It becomes difficult to parse how Mercury sees issues of self creation, sexuality, and success, and how the film sees these same subjects. Fitting to the late 70s/early 80s period setting, Mercury is depicted as a kind of entrepreneur of the self who’s talent, artistry, and dedication transcend his classification as immigrant, queer man, or person of colour. This might be appropriate seeing as every member of the band appears to come from privileged positions in terms of class and education. The film’s neoliberal ethos is perhaps unsurprising given the messaging of some of Queen’s music. “We Are the Champions’” talk of “winners” and “losers” might as well have been written by Maggie Thatcher herself. But sadly Mercury’s tragic death from AIDS related complications at 45 years old show that no amount of individual talent, determination, or self-fashioning can free oneself from the consequences of power structures which are indifferent or hostile to who you are.
*Addendum: I’m honestly shocked at the awards praise this movie has been getting. As a crowd pleaser its success made sense, but much of the film making is flat out bad, not to mention the baggage of Singer and the not insignificant manipulation of the timeline of Mercury’s life. The film’s chasteness when it comes to Mercury’s sexuality, and its veneration of the living band members feels mostly like a way to allow Classic Rock Dads to still enjoy a story about a brown gay man. All of this has since made me feel that my initial thoughts were far too sympathetic to what is really just a below average music biopic directed by a dirtbag and slightly elevated by a good lead performance.
easy rider
spring 2017
“We blew it.”, Wyatt says to Billy towards the end of Easy Rider. Despite the film’s apparent depiction of countercultural figures traversing the desert in search of freedom, individuality and the American dream, the politics of Easy Rider are perhaps not as progressive as the film’s experimental style. The first stop Wyatt and Billy make is to fix a flat tire at a man’s ranch. Wyatt repeatedly assures the rancher of his admiration of his situation: living off the land with a Catholic wife who’s quiet, makes dinner every night, and produces children. Of all the versions of American life the pair come across, none earn as much appreciation as this first encounter. They never quite take the commune seriously, and Billy, despite looking the most subversive, often responds with laughter and dismissal when presented with stark alternatives to the status quo. The film depicts a kind of discrimination, but in light of the struggles of women, people of color, and the LGBTQ communities during this time, the trials and tribulations of white men with long hair can come off as somewhat inconsequential. Furthermore, the film seems to present at least an ambivalence towards the merits of the counterculture. During his LSD trip Wyatt has an anguished conversation with his mother, and Mary, the prostitute’s, name suggests the Virgin Mary of the Bible. These are not the only instances in the film which signal a yearning for more traditional familial and religious authorities. George Hansen’s plea that America used to be a great country, and the fetishism of the old West indicate not a lamenting for a more progressive change of the guard, but a nostalgia for a simplicity and order which had been lost somewhere between the proliferation of the 1950s “organization man”, and the rise of the hippie counterculture. With this in mind it seems more likely that what they “blew” refers to the loss of traditional American values, including gender roles, family structures, and the role of religion in their lives. Wyatt seems to suspect that straying further from these values will only cause them to crash and burn. This feeling is also exhibited in the bordello where religious imagery and sexuality are juxtaposed, and we see a flash of the explosion to come.
midnight cowboy
spring 2017
Don Delilo’s novel White Noise depicts an America in which the incessant hum of sounds and images from television, advertising, and radio have encroached on the lives of individuals to such an extent that they are largely defined by their associations to these images. Jack, the novel’s protagonist, can only view reality through this framework. Midnight Cowboy’s Joe Buck suffers a similar existence throughout the film. He is an empty cypher, filled with the myths and assertions of America by advertisements, his security blanket radio, and perhaps first and foremost films of the old West.But there are early signs that something is wrong with Joe’s cowboy story. He travels East to New York, further away from the Western frontier which is so central to those classic films. Perhaps not unlike Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy depicts a country in which the American dream always seems to be located elsewhere. Texas, New York, Florida. Joe arrives in New York, hoping to hustle his way to success the only way he’s knows how, by selling his body, selling human connection. In a landscape saturated by messages selling one thing and promising something greater, Joe can do nothing but think of himself as something to be sold in his own entrepreneurial project of the self. Joe’s America is one of empty promises. The images he’s been sold: New York, the old west, the American dream, they all turn out to be like the chewing gum he insists on buying despite his poverty. It’s chewed like food, it’s flavoured like food, but it can provide no sustenance. The only real sustenance he finds is through his connection with Ratso. Ratso could be seen as a version of Joe’s life further down the line. He is not as naïve as Joe but still sees the promise of a better life in the orange advertisements he hangs on his walls, a promise which he follows to his death. While transactional at first, Joe and Ratso’s relationship becomes the only instance of human connection in the film which is not bought or sold. As with many other films of the late 1960’s, the ending is ambiguous. Joe’s disposal of his cowboy clothes and proclamation that he will try to get a real job may hint towards a better future. But he remains as he did at the start, alone on a bus full of people, now with the twisting feeling of loss lodged in his stomach—as if he had swallowed an enormous wad of chewing gum.
little big man
spring 2017
Throughout Jack Crabb’s long life he explores many of the staples of American life, various keys to versions of the American dream. He has a religious period, a period as a snake oil hustler, a gunfighter, and a period as an entrepreneur. But each of these roles ends with revelations of hypocrisy and pain which suggests there may be something rotten at the center of some of America’s guiding principles. Mr. Merriweather can’t succeed in business without losing parts of himself, and despite a peaceful lifestyle change Wild Bill Hickok’s years of violence catch up with him. Mrs. Pendrake embodies the expectations and contradictions of the virgin-whore dichotomy imposed on women, although like many of the women in films of this period, she’s not depicted very favorably. Of Jack’s many disillusionments the one that takes the longest to be fully realized is his praising of General George Armstrong Custer. According to the dominant myths about civilization, the frontier, and manifest destiny, Custer is the ultimate American hero. Custer, and his conquests of the Native Americans seem to represent the films primary concern, how narratives, myths, and arrogance functioned to prop up the logic which perpetuated the Vietnam War. The scene where Custer’s army invades the Native lands and kill Jack’s wife were particularly reminiscent of images of Vietnam, as was the blatant disobedience which reduced the “spare women and children rule” to the level of farce. One particular shot of one of Sunshine’s sisters running out of her tee-pee, naked, with a flaming buffalo skin on her back is almost prophetic of Nick Ut’s photo of Kim Phuc which would invade the nations consciousness two years later in 1972. The film calls into question the values, beliefs, myths which propels the leaders who incite colonial and neo-colonial wars like the one in Vietnam. It may also be worth noting that the film’s depiction of General Custer—arrogant, ignorant, and wielding and unpredictable and backwards sense of logic—resembles a more contemporary yellow haired, crimson tied American leader.
jaws
spring 2017While Jaws is often credited as one of the first blockbusters it is nonetheless deeply rooted in the anxieties and politics of 1970s America. At the time of Jaws’ release in 1975 the US had only recently pulled out of Vietnam. The resistance to, and loss of the war in Vietnam led to a questioning of the nation’s morals, and might. In this context Jaws can be read as a reassuring revision of the events of Vietnam, where men overcome their fears for the “greater good”, and vanquish a morally unambiguous evil, a killer of women and children. It is also notable that Jaws features a fight against the forces of nature, embodied in the great white shark. Vietnam is also often framed as a war of men and technology against an indigenous people who are closer to nature—and against the hostile environment of Vietnamese jungle itself. In Jaws, Hopper, Brody, and Quint are able to defeat the seemingly insurmountable forces of nature while forging a homosocial bond, and in Brody’s case, becoming a “better man”. In fact, the film contains many of the same justifications and myths of the more uncritical of American war films. The violence and death in the film function only to set the men upon their heroic trajectory. Once aboard, it would be easy to forget that the purpose of their mission is the protection of the public, as it becomes more and more about their own conflict with a vengeful enemy. This conflict allows Brody to face his fear of the water, and bond with the physically and mentally capable Hooper, while Quint’s older form of masculinity is brought to the limits of its utility, and then disposed of. As in stories of wars which make life worth living, never mind those who die in the process, it is likely if one were to ask Brody or Hooper if this ordeal and the lives lost were worth it, they would have to answer in the affirmative. Jaws seems to be example of Julian Smith’s notion of “looking away”, before the public was quite ready to deal with the reality of Vietnam. Many of what are considered the more hard-hitting films to deal with the war directly wouldn’t be released until the late 70s and 1980s (Apocalypse Now, 1979, Platoon, 1986, Full Metal Jacket, 1987). But Jaws functions as a way to indirectly deal with many of the issues that war raises in the American imagination—masculinity, duty, transcendence through combat—while also ending in a way which is much more affirmative and reassuring than that war actually did. Furthermore, while the film undoubtably performs ideological work, it is not explicitly political. This means that even those opposed to the war in Vietnam or war in general may be able to cheer on our heroes without contradiction. This apolitical surface likely contributes to Jaws’ blockbuster status, and points to an emerging trend of releasing films which are largely uncontroversial in the name of audience inclusivity.
blow out
spring 2017
Brian De Palma’s Blow Out functions on multiple levels. It’s a paranoid conspiracy thriller, at times commenting on paranoid conspiracy thrillers, as well as the process of movie making in general. Its ending is dark and downbeat, characteristic of many of the paranoid conspiracy films of the early 1970’s but the film also seems to be aware of the fact that these kinds of films are not what is selling in the early 1980s. As a frustrated Jack Terry says, “Doesn’t anybody care about conspiracies?”. This same question may apply to the industry at the time. Audiences want to be affirmed that Jaws is dead and E.T. is alive, not that the man can’t control nature, or that the government would experiment on innocent and friendly aliens in secret. The “morning in America” rhetoric of the Reagan era means everybody is more concerned with the parade than the cover up killing on the roof top. Just as democracy and liberty are being celebrated, an act is being carried out which undermines the very notion of American democracy. An election has been fixed, the people’s candidate killed for political gain, but everyone wants to keep marching along. There is however an interesting difference between Blow Out and some of the other conspiracy films of the 70s. While there was a real conspiracy which involved a team of political actors working to tarnish the reputation of the favoured candidate, the killing and much of the mayhem that followed was almost solely the result of the actions of Burke. He’s a renegade agent who may be hired by official authorities, but he plays by his own rules. One could draw parallels between Burke, and the romanticized “renegade agents” who save the day in films featuring Rambo or Dirty Harry. He’s a psychopathic iteration of a character often depicted as a hero, willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done—and in turn—revealing the psychopathy of similar, more celebrated characters. But the film is also especially concerned with the craft of film making. De Palma’s frequent use of the split diopter hints at a fascination with the techniques and technologies of filmmaking. Numerous shots focus on the gears and wheels, spools and splices which make films possible. The final scene, where Jack dubs Sally’s real scream of terror into a schlocky horror movie, could be seen as Jack’s ultimate defeat. But it could also be read as a comment on how all films, and maybe art more generally, unavoidably contain some deeply personal part of those who create them. But the film’s focus on a sound technician also hints at an appreciation for the many craftsmen who have to come together to make a film work, even in a film which stylistically suggests the work of an auteur. It draws attention to the fact that movies are collaborative culminations of the personal lives, affects, and efforts of a multitude and not an individual.
back to the future
spring 2017
In Rober Zemekis’ Back to the Future, the reassertion of the masculinity and aggression of the father is framed as the key to success in Reagan’s America. The film begins with the proposition that sometime in America’s history—and the history of Marty’s family and town—something went wrong. The streets are dirty, homeless men sleep on benches, and the local cinema is playing the timeless classic, Orgy: American Style. There is a sense of both moral and material decay in 1985’s Hill Valley. When we meet Marty’s father, George, he is being berated by the more physically imposing Biff. Like Marty, the audience is supposed to see George as pathetic. He is an impotent “yes man” who gets stepped on by anyone who is willing to raise their voice louder than his. His soft bodied diplomatic approach to negotiating with Biff brings to mind perceptions of then previous President, Jimmy Carter. By the end of the 1970s, post Watergate, oil crisis, and Vietnam, many American’s likely looked at their country and asked the same question that might have come to Marty’s mind when looking at his father, “How did you get like this?”. How did America go from the ideal consumer paradise of the 1950s (at least for a select demographic) to the economic and social insecurity of the late 70s? And perhaps more importantly, how would they be pulled out from this slump? The film offers an answer in the relationship between George and Lorraine in 1955. Lorraine wants a man who is strong, brave, and capable of protecting her. Juxtaposed with the obnoxious assertiveness of Biff and the cool confidence of Marty, its only by channelling male aggression, violence, and what’s framed as a male instinct toward protecting women that George can prove himself. 1985 Marty recognizes this and sets up a plan to fake George’s moment of triumph. But “authentic” masculinity can’t be faked, and luckily Biff gives George the opportunity to actually bring out the man in him by representing real and immediate danger to Lorrain. George’s masculine “instincts” kick in. He punches Biff and woos Lorrain, all while gaining a new confidence in himself. This reassertion of the father’s masculinity, his ability to protect, mirrors perceptions of the election of Ronald Reagan. Reagan represented a strong father figure for America, capable of keeping the country safe and protecting so called traditional American values, using violence if necessary. When Marty returns to 1985 it becomes clear that not only did he keep his parents together, but the reassertion of his father’s manhood brought upon material success. They now live in a beautiful modern home, George is confident and virile as he interacts with Lorrain, and is a successful author. In Back to the Future and potentially for a portion of the American population during the 1980s, the rise of a strong, masculine father figure, who both embodies and protects mythical 1950s values, gender roles, and plenitude is the key to America’s success, and to individual material success within consumer capitalism. What is largely left out—save for some weak and now infamous attempts to recognize racial inequalities—is the impact of upholding this 1950s white male ideal on those who are not included in this mythic vision of American life, which never really existed in the first place.