Visual Collision in Ménilmontant

The following is a paper I wrote for a film class I am taking this semester. Academic writing requires more patience than journalistic writing, both for the reader and the writer. In this case, my aim was to deconstruct a few scenes from a film while also presenting a readable, mildly amusing argument connecting all the film theory jargon. The film in question is called Ménilmontant, a little-known and silent avant-garde film by Soviet-French director Dimitri Kirsanoff. You can watch this beautiful, 37-minute film in full on YouTube.

Stuck in a Nightmare You Can't Get Out of:

Visual Collision in Dimitri Kirsanoff's Ménilmontant

For all the romantic analogies between dreams and movies, is it not rare for us to even remember our dreams? In Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, Georges Méliès nods to a young boy in his studio and says, “If you’ve ever wondered where your dreams come from, you look around … this is where they’re made.” Most of us have difficulty recalling the specifics of our most recent ‘sweet’ dream. Less problematic, however, is reliving our nightmares (Suddenly, Méliès’ quote transforms into a creepy omen). The fragmentary structure of nightmares, as we piece them together after the fact, lends itself to film well and has undoubtedly influenced countless filmmakers. One of them is Dimitri Kirsanoff, the Soviet-French director of the 1926 masterpiece Ménilmontant. The silent Ménilmontant stresses filmic storytelling through its montage editing à la Sergei Eisenstein, yet also warps the gap between cuts with an innovative use of protracted dissolves and double exposure. The eminence of colliding images, whether adjacent or superimposed, makes for a very visual, dreamlike editing technique.

The scenes in Ménilmontant that prescribe to a strict Soviet montage style may follow an established set of cinematic rules, but they use this framework to build an intimate series of images aimed at arousing intense emotion from the viewer. The film opens with a brutal struggle: An unknown, and practically unseen, man brandishing an axe hacks the protagonists’ mother and father to death. Those protagonists are two sisters — the younger, more prominent one played by Nadia Sibirskaïa and Yolande Beaulieu as the older, ancillary sister — frolicking in the forest down the road, giggling as a cat scales a tall tree. Thus, their parents’ horror proves a stark juxtaposition; Kirsanoff likely wielded montage editing for this reason. Eisenstein asked the question, “What characterizes montage and, consequently, its embryo, the shot?” and answered it with, “Collision” (21). “Conflict lies at the basis of every art,” he declared (21). This concept takes on social dimensions when imbued with the Marxist class struggle he and his pro-Soviet intellectuals preached (before Kirsanoff left the U.S.S.R., that is). But, for the aesthetic and apolitical analysis of this essay, the Soviet montage method generates action, tone and meaning.

Ménilmontant opens with a close-up of a cottage door and its glass shattering from an unseen force. This shot orients at about 45 degrees from the door’s parallel, and cuts to a perpendicular view of the door and the violence behind it (with a continuity error of the glass intact). We see very little besides a blur of faces and hands. Cut to the doorknob twisting, back to the door, back to the knob — cut to the wife opening and running out the door as the assailant grabs her hair, with the camera framing her face in a startling close-up. Cut then to the husband opening the door (in another apparent continuity error), and the killer following him as he walks out. It then cuts to a strange low angle shot of the wife stumbling out the door, with her white dress covering the screen for a seamless natural wipe into a shot about 180 degrees around, of the killer’s and wife’s feet stepping forward out of frame. In yet another continuity issue, the next shot frames the attacker in a blurry close-up with the open door behind him and the couple completely absent. The husband has his back against a wall in the next shot, while the subsequent shot cuts back to the killer shaking his head side to side in a vigorous, rabid motion. One of the more unforgettable images follows, with the wife jutting into the frame from its left side, only to be pulled in and out of it by the man who is messily murdering her. After two more shots of this repeated action, we see the axe propped against a log and cut to a reverse eyeline match of the husband who recognizes its presence. So does the killer, as Kirsanoff cuts to him in a grinning close-up. The two men wrestle in the next shot, which then cuts on action to the husband’s hand reaching for the weapon in a close-up of the axe. About four more back-and-forth shots like this repeat, and then we see the bloodied wife in a close-up, reaching out her hand and pleading for her life. The most memorable image — the extreme close-up of the husband and his agape gaze of terror — soon follows, as does a still, high contrast image of the axe held high in the air. We then see the killer hack away, only to disappear through the bottom of the frame where our imagination finishes the rest.

This all times in at right under 40 seconds, with 34 shots, making an average shot length of 1.17 seconds. The swift editing overwhelms the viewer with the power of these images, while the increasing acceleration of cuts builds tension. Kirsanoff communicates ideas both simple and profound through the “assembly of [the] elements” “of montage” (20). Cutting back and forth, multiple times, from door to doorknob demonstrates the time it takes to open the door; the escalating speed of these cuts, as well as the confused swirl of limbs behind the windowpane, instills in the viewer the desperation this husband and wife must have felt. With the exception of the quick still image of the raised axe, the editing in the opening sustains its invisibility and only seeks to communicate a subjective perspective of a violent event, in hopes that this scene will arrest the viewer. Technical limitations may have stripped dissolves and double exposure from the opening, but the disjointed barrage of this opening scene (rife with perhaps purposeful continuity errors) infuses a nightmarish quality that is achieved through its montage style above all other factors.

But just as some dreams frighten us with confusion and speed, others wring us of energy through lingering images and sensations. Kirsanoff inverts the montage technique in several key scenes, placing one image over another. These overlaps span a breath of time to numerous seconds, with the intent to convey internal character struggle. There are a few, more stylistic touches in this vein, such as when the girls leave home and head for the city: A continued shot of a long, tree-studded dirt road holds steady while the subject — the girls — of the image transports down the road in a series of jump cuts masked by long dissolves. The same technique casts the younger sister and her rapist across his apartment in an effort to expedite narrative and establish an unsettling mood to his abode. 

Multiple pre-Vertov city montages with a liberal use of superimposition occur throughout Ménilmontant; the most powerful sequence would be when the younger sister walks by the river with her illegitimate child. An unsettling point of view shot drifting alongside a concrete sidewalk barrier, focusing on its sharp edges before panning left to reveal the lethal tides just yards away, commences this series. Kirsanoff cuts to a reaction shot of the girl, who keeps on staring into the inviting waters as seen through POV pans down the stream and distorted close-ups of the waves. A shot of the water then lays over a close-up of the girl throughout a lengthy dissolve; as she closes her eyes, the frame becomes solely hers once more. Her exact immoral fantasy remains unclear, — Does she want to throw herself into the water? Her baby? — but the potential of utilizing the river weighs down on her, quite literally, through editing. As her baby wails and she puts her ear to the child in a vain attempt for comprehension, the city begins to meld into her torment. Double (and often greater) exposure centers a close-up of the girl in the frame as blurs of cars and faceless pedestrians layer over. An even closer shot of the girl seamlessly follows as the frenetic metropolitan superimposition continues. Kirsanoff goes so far as to take the girl out of the frame completely and let us see and — through Paul Mercer’s eerie music — hear her agony, one steeped by rape, murder, betrayal and abandonment. An innocuous establishing shot of a bridge now deforms into an indictment of modernity and the toll it takes on the innocent and vulnerable. The girl walks dejectedly through the city as these thoughts continue to wash over and fight within her. What is a nightmare to us cements as a cold, harsh reality to this girl. She wants to wake up from it all but cannot, for the only escape is ending herself, once and for all.

In Ménilmontant, Kirsanoff balances his homeland’s established editing school with a new one very much his own. The “collision” of moving images rooted in Soviet theory creates a bloody collision of axe and human skin, as well as all the victims’ fears piling up until that final point. Superimposition of disparate visual icons expresses one young girl’s inner pain and its underlying cause. Despite colliding these techniques not only in the same film but also often in the same scene, Kirsanoff builds a consistent, surreal mystique to the whole film. Ménilmontant hits so close to home, so often, that the dreamlike feel teeters on raw realism. When that sick awareness creeps upon you, however, it is wise to pinch yourself and be thankful you have the option to walk out of the theater.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower Review

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Directed by Stephen Chbosky
Released in 2012

You either ‘get’ The Perks of Being a Wallflower or you don’t. But if you do, it gets you, too. Ever since the source novel was first published 13 years ago, many have compared Stephen Chbosky’s coming-of-age tale to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. The association makes sense, as both novels derive their power from empathy and resonate strongest with the creatures most demanding of it: teenagers. Not everyone connects with these stories — not because of class, race or age as much as a certain sensibility. Perks, as it is affectionately called, speaks to those with a curiosity unfulfilled by a school curriculum, those with a romantic streak marked by spells of sadness, those who crank up Bowie’s “Heroes” while driving with the top down and windows open because, hell, that’s life right there.

Set in Pittsburgh circa the early ‘90s, Perks tells the story of Charlie (Logan Lerman), who narrates from a series of letters he sends to an anonymous acquaintance. Charlie is a shy, troubled and brilliant kid entering his freshman year of high school. Suicide took away his one good friend just months before, and the violent death of his Aunt Helen (Melanie Lynskey) — his “favorite person in the whole world” — on his seventh birthday haunts him still. Struggling alone with remnants of severe depression, Charlie finds the transition more difficult than most. There’s that one girl who calls him a “faggot” for his neat stationary; other bullies join her when they learn he aces papers and completes them early. Perhaps you need to suspend some disbelief to buy that a guy who looks like Lerman can get this much flak, but think back to the dull ones in high school who saw beauty in conformity and disorder in everything else.

With nachos in his hands and nowhere to sit at the football game, Charlie summons a few words to engage Patrick (Ezra Miller), the goofy senior in his freshman shop class. Patrick’s half-sister, Sam (Emma Watson), joins them and Charlie is instantly smitten — I say “instantly” because of the angelic close-up that introduces her, with her face eclipsing the Friday night lights like a halo. After the game, Sam and Patrick welcome Charlie to the “Island of Misfit Toys,” Sam’s too-perfect title for their eclectic group of friends, which also includes “punk Buddhist” Mary Elizabeth (Mae Whitman), kleptomaniac Alice (Erin Wilhelmi) and stoner Bob (Adam Hagenbuch). These are the creative and inquisitive types, some from happy families and others from abusive ones. If you fall under Perks’ purview, you will overlap in some way with one or more of these characters. They scrap the past in favor of the present, bonding over car rides, gifts, dancing, study sessions, movies, marijuana, LSD, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, “Come on Eileen,” The Smiths and lots of mixtapes.

Most teenage movies fall apart after these introductions, devolving into hedonism or empty moralizing. Perks is not like most teenage movies. In a rare sign of trust, producers handed directing and writing duties to the most capable hands possible: Stephen Chbosky himself. He expands the characters he created with simple but undoubtedly filmic elements (there’s grain on the image!). Soft light diffracts about the theater during a Rocky Horror reenactment the friends stage before a packed midnight screening. Their dance moves bring down the house, despite slip-ups here and there. These kids might as well be you or me during those times we stepped out of our comfort zones with a little help from our friends. Perks appeals to those moments of belonging — when “we are infinite,” as Charlie says — and asks us to cherish the love we get.

Love, in its oh-so-many forms, unites these characters and tears them apart. Sam eventually returns Charlie’s affection, in a romance with many ups and downs. Patrick carries on a secret relationship with the school’s football star despite growing homophobic pressures. Charlie tortures himself with the burden of his aunt’s death, for she died in a car crash after giving him a special birthday present. Charlie’s supportive English teacher, Mr. Anderson (Paul Rudd), finds an answer for all the pain the most positive of emotions seems to carry: “We accept the love we think we deserve.”

The cast (which, by the way, includes our very own Julie Leon ’15 as an extra in the first Mr. Anderson scene) dodges the histrionic pitfalls littered about these roles. Lerman delivers a quietly powerful performance that may be tough to watch for those who share or have shared his timid or depressive traits. As for Watson, not once did I think about the Harry Potter films when she was on screen. Far from an overachieving bookworm (it is Charlie who helps her study for the SATs), Sam suffered childhood abuse that left her damaged, and Watson nails the subtleties. And Miller, who terrified as the child from hell in We Need to Talk About Kevin, does an about face here, stealing the best and funniest lines. His role also demands a few potent scenes, whereupon he taps into that familiar melancholy.

I guess you can look at all this and still consider Perks to be routine, or contrived, or stereotypical. Come on, Zach, I’ve seen this all before, you say. You have, yes, and you’ve also heard, smelled, tasted and felt these moments before. Those memories rattle around your brain to this day. Therein lies your power. 

Consider life itself. So much of it abides by routine: We start with the developmental rites of passage mostly out of our control — our first hairs, teeth, steps, words, ‘potty.’ We grow up with ‘play dates,’ television programs and coloring books with shapes that have already been drawn. We begin to process what is going on, how others view us and how we view them. Bam! Acne hits, voices crack and organs grow. We feel miserable. We don’t ask for the purpose of life but for the purpose of living. We grow outward. We begin to notice a pattern. We are surrounded by people playing this same cosmic game. We realize we don’t have the answers to life but everyone else does. We ignore that they actually don’t, because we are having too much fun. We laugh, gossip, cry, fight, kiss, have sex and children. We grow old and settle in routine once more — there are bills to pay. We relax and watch our children start all over, and then their children. We die. What’s the point? Who knows. But we do know the time was worth it when we’re with those we love. We exchange jokes, secrets and mixtapes. And we watch a movie like The Perks of Being a Wallflower and think, “Huh, someone else gets it.”

Final Verdict:

4.5 Stars Out of 5

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

This is Not a Film Review

This is Not a Film
Directed by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb
Released in 2011

On Sept. 24, news broke that Iran would withdraw its entries from the 2013 Academy Awards in protest of the anti-Islam video Innocence of Muslims. As we know, American-Iranian tensions run high, but this ill-timed move impedes Iran’s recent cultural breakthrough into the West. Asghar Farhadi won the country its first Best Foreign Language Film Oscar only six months ago for his masterpiece A Separation. He delivered an important speech that night, praising his country’s “glorious culture, a rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics.”

These politics have tried to hide filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who in 2010 was slapped a six-year prison sentence and 20-year ban on making movies for, among other things, “assembly [of] propaganda against the Islamic Republic.” Panahi’s work, which includes The White Balloon and Crimson Gold, portrays hardships afflicting men and *gasp* women in Iranian society, similar in style and intent to post-war Italian neorealism. This fearless artist, activist and human refuses to be silenced and has drafted a stunning statement with This is Not a Film, which he smuggled into the 2011 Cannes Film Festival on a USB flash drive hidden inside a cake.

This is Not a Film is some sort of miracle — of what, I am not sure. We are assured this is not a film, as the title declares with Magritte-esque mischief (his ban specifies “film-making,” so this exercise must be fine, right?). This is a portrait of an artist — not a document, for Pahani directs, writes (whatever that entails) and edits, granting him illicit control over this work. After beginning with a few static (and immaculately composed) tripod shots of him eating breakfast and feeding his iguana, Igi, in his apartment, Panahi hands the camera to his friend and co-director Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, who serves as a prophylactic separating the artist from the art. The meat here has Mirtahmasb to thank, not so much for his cinematic contributions but for his humbling comments. “You are not directing. It’s an offense,” he reminds Panahi when told to “cut.” “So, I’m not the director anymore,” Panahi replies with a laugh. His smile turns cold processing the thought.

The key set piece in This is Not a Film, if it has one, considers these ramifications. On his living room carpet, Panahi places strips of masking tape in a box, outlining a room where his next film would have taken place. He reads from his script, using his hands and feet to visualize ideas for shots and blocking. These concepts prove potent — Panahi lowers his hand from a ceiling fan, covers a few feet of air, describes an inexistent rope and moves a chair underneath. He need not mention suicide. Panahi breaks down upon realizing, “If we could tell a film, then why make a film?” Frantic to validate his art, Panahi then scans through DVDs of his past work to highlight a scene inCrimson Gold when amateur actor Hossain Emadeddin (a real-life schizophrenic) did “the directing on [him].” Emadeddin’s performance was unpredictable — emotion without ego — and “leads you to how you explain the film.” That Panahi champions actors over other filmic devices like editing and directing speaks to his humanism and respect for his colleagues — untapped qualities when holed in an apartment alone. “The film must first be made for us to be able to explain it later,” Panahi concludes in a statement so banal it grazes wisdom.

Pondering that quote, I realize I am analyzing This is Not a Film like a film. There are some beautiful shots here that could not possibly be framed without an eye for aesthetics and mind for meaning. It is safe to consider this a “film” when examining its construction, which is purposeful even if likely derived from chance encounters. Fellow Iranian director Rakhshan Bani-E’temad calls Panahi as the latter sits on a couch, perusing his laptop. While the two speak about their peers’ support for Panahi’s plight, Igi the iguana crawls on a sofa across the room. Just as Bani-E’temad says, “Everyone is getting scared off,” Panahi looks at the iguana and cuts to a shot of it hiding in a bookcase. Too clever for coincidence, I’d say. He lets the iguana direct him, but he ultimately directs the audience.

At the end, Panahi finally wields the camera and exits the apartment in a brilliant sequence I would rather not spoil. Earlier, however, there is an analogous moment that commanded my attention. Gunshots outside his apartment interrupt one of his monologues, and he opens up a window to inspect. His ears register the violence and a hint of sadness stains his face. He looks down, in despair, we think. Nope: He pulls out his iPhone to record the sounds and images for all else to see. This is Not a Film is not a plea for help but rather a display of defiance against unjust forces. In any other movie, the hero picks up a pistol or an AK-47. Here, Jafar Panahi picks up his camera and shoots away.

Final Verdict:
5 Stars Out of 5

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

Looper Review

Looper

Directed by Rian Johnson

Released in 2012

Looper is a very good sci-fi movie with a very cool premise. Like Inception, sometimes that premise gets in the way of the story, and like Prometheus, sometimes that story takes one turn too many. But for a film centered on time travel, Looper does its best to remain sober, introducing its made-up rules and paradoxes without obsessing over them. Director and screenwriter Rian Johnson even finds a way to fuse all the fake science with the film’s message and direction. At the very least, it makes for a stunning first act that tapers into a solid but lesser final act upon the introduction of a woman and child (Remember I Am Legend?).

The year is 2074. Time travel is invented and immediately ruled illegal. Naturally, a seedy criminal syndicate manipulates it to kill undesirables. For some reason (DNA tracking?), disposing of bodies is next to impossible in the future, so the target is draped in a hood, strapped with a slate of silver bars (it’s a strange image to describe) and blasted 30 years into the past. In 2044, a “looper” awaits the poor chap to apparate (spellcheck tells me this is not a real word, which makes me sad) out of thin air, at which instant he blasts a hole through the target’s chest with a “blunderbuss” shotgun. It is about as impersonal a murder as one could carry out within such close proximity: Learn French with Rosetta Stone as you wait, listen for the thwap of space-time being breached and pull the trigger before the hit can make a peep.

That is how Joe Simmons (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) conducts his business, at least. When not a heartless killing machine, Joe roams the decrepit streets of Kansas City, pumped with normalizing drugs administered through eye drops. He is numb to the world’s poverty and violence, in a daze not unlike Ed Norton’s character in Fight Club. Seth (a reliably flustered Paul Dano) could be considered his friend, but Joe makes a crucial decision that negates even that. The time comes when Joe must face himself — literally. Part of the deal with being a looper is “closing the loop”: unknowingly shooting your future self when the syndicate cuts your contract. The hitman then has 30 years to live in peace, until the gangsters come after you to take you out ... which they already did (time travel is confusing, huh?). Joe’s problem, however, is that his future self (Bruce Willis) appears without a hood, staring him right in the face. Young Joe hesitates, allowing Old Joe to escape.

Johnson wrings this first encounter for more suspense than seems possible, given how this scene serves as the hook for all the movie’s trailers. An economic sequence cuts between a slowly zooming-in shot of an unnerved Young Joe and the rippling vinyl tarp that awaits his next victim. When Old Joe finally materializes, we see him from Young Joe’s distant point of view, followed by an extreme close-up of his eyes and then Young Joe’s eyes. It is filmic storytelling that would make Hitchcock proud (the scene is revisited later with a single, quiet long shot, parodying the earlier tension). A little troubling, however, is the heavy makeup applied on Gordon-Levitt’s lips, eyes and nose, in order to achieve a greater likeness to Willis. The effect is uncanny, in the disconcerting way; I often thought, “Hey, that’s JGL wearing makeup.”

But back to Hitchcock. The crime goons — called “Gat Men,” after the comically oversized revolvers they wield — pursue both Joes after Old Joe gets away, and Looper uses the classic Hitchcock “wrong man accused” trope in regards to Young Joe. But what if the “right” man is the “wrong” man? And what if one person is two different people? The movie sits the two Joe’s across from each other in a diner booth, rivaling the famous Pacino/DeNiro scene from Heat. What would you say to your younger self? Old Joe is downright hostile, scolding Young Joe’s drug addiction and reckless indifference. A sensible path forward would pair the two together, yet Old Joe retreats back into the dark in order to avenge a death, while Young Joe moves toward the light in inverse of Old Joe’s reprehensible actions. Due to some temporal overlap best not overanalyzed, Young Joe can scar or tattoo himself to communicate with his old self; the implications of this loophole are maximized to terrifying effect early in the movie, when an older version of a character literally falls apart while his younger self is tortured (it’s a brilliant scene worthy of your nightmares). The communication between the two Joes plays with (‘pains’ is also valid) your mind and posits life as a constant flux.

Unfortunately, a lot of this magic dissipates in the final 45 minutes, when the subject pivots to Sara (Emily Blunt, surprisingly) and her son, Cid (Pierce Gagnon). The two live by themselves in a rural Kansas farmhouse, which Sara fiercely defends with a rock salt shotgun. She also, naturally, serves as a love interest for Young Joe and allows him to spill open his deep-seated torment. The pace slows down during these scenes, which is fine, and Gagnon’s performance as the troubled child never succumbs to (though it may verge on) camp. But the bond between Young and Old Joe ceases to consider the abundance of existential conflicts the script initially flirted with, and Young Joe’s diminishing screen time robs his final decisions of their allotted impact. Instead, the story focuses on the standard “killing baby Hitler” paradox and throws in telekinesis (lifting things with your mind) as an excuse for lame special effects. Johnson works hard to make time travel appear plausible and seems to joke in the beginning that a genetic mutation has granted 10-percent of humans the ability to suspend quarters in mid-air. The subsequent about face — with the expectation for us to take this paranormal ability seriously — contradicts prior expectations and reverts the final act into a capable but far more ordinary film when compared to the preceding brilliance.

A lack of humor could be culpable for these tonal and narrative inconsistencies. Johnson introduces his world’s quirks early and efficiently, but poking fun at their logical gaps could have secured a defense against all but the most myopic sci-fi geeks. Indeed, the film’s funniest joke is also a grim one: When Young Joe tells crime boss Abe (Jeff Daniels) that he’s learning French because he wants to visit France, Abe replies in a monotone, “I’m from the future. You should go to China.” Ok, maybe not wholesome laughs, but Looper could have at least afforded a lace of sarcasm, right? The Gordon-Levitt voiceover is set, the Kansas City streets are caked in crime and cynicism is practically a pre-existing condition. It all sounds like a film noir, which Johnson and Gordon-Levitt exercised in their 2006 hit Brick. Perhaps our era’s rampant flippancy will erode into abject despair by 2044. I’ll arrange for a time warp with the loopers when that day comes.

Final Verdict:

3.5 Stars Out of 5

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

The Master Review

The Master

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Released in 2012

“I’m finished” are the final words of director Paul Thomas Anderson’s last picture, There Will Be Blood. It is not a spoiler, for those of you who have yet to see it, because the line drops almost as a non-sequitur when preceded by the momentous climax. Those two words grant a sense of closure to a great, ambitious film — one with an epic yet straightforward narrative. Anderson’s newest work, The Master, has no such neat ends. It is a mammoth: towering and gorgeous, yet uncanny in its thin disconnect from reality. It is a vexing character study that churns over themes of freewill, sexuality and the self. Upon viewing its opening shot of crystal blue water foaming in a WWII battleship’s wake, I thought of Tarkovsky’s 1972 sci-fi classic Solaris and its brewing ocean planet. The Master is a puzzle for those who love capital-f Film.

Known shorthand as the “L. Ron Hubbard Movie,” The Master does indeed base its title character, Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), off of the Scientology founder and blasts the groupthink of such a cult. The verbal fireworks between Dodd and a dissenter (Christopher Evan Welch) during Dodd’s introspective “processing” (called “auditing” in Scientology) of an elderly woman make those intentions clear — not to mention quite entertaining. But Anderson aims higher than just criticizing some religion or cult. He asks questions that we all dodge: Are we a product of nature or nurture? Do those around us naturally create us? We could be so much more, couldn’t we? “The master” of the title translates to at least three meanings: 1) one with a preeminent grasp on a subject, 2) one who controls another through orders and 3) one who controls another without orders.

Lancaster Dodd is “The Master,” beloved by those who follow his spiritual guidance within his Scientology-like belief system, The Cause, and exalted above all others by Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), who Dodd calls his “guinea pig and protégé.” Quell drifts across the world after the Pacific Theater of World War II left him erratic, violent and depraved. He furiously gropes a woman carved out of sand on the beach and only sees genitalia when subjected to a Rorschach test. It is no surprise that he boozes to cope with his torment; a little unexpected, however, is his homemade brand of moonshine, mixed with gasoline and paint thinner. Quell accidentally incapacitates — maybe kills — an old man with the concoction and escapes by squatting on a ship bound for New York City. The ship belongs to Dodd, who sees potential — for what is the question — in this malleable, broken soul. He also enjoys Quell’s poison and a two-way relationship between them grows.

The chemistry between Phoenix and Hoffman spells future Oscars (Lead and Supporting, respectively, I think) and, more importantly, keeps the balance of power between the two characters in constant flux. Dodd and his wife, Peggy (Amy Adams), make a mission of healing Quell back to proper mental health through their inquisitive methods. As tempting it is to label Dodd a snake oil merchant and nothing more, the film steps back to study the results of repeating simple questions (“What is your name?”) and sense-based exercises (describing the feeling, the essenceof a wall compared to a window) on Quell. The Cause treatment really has no effect, medically at least, but the final verdict remains inconclusive. The film seems to honor The Cause as much as Quell, an awe that never seems to wane.

For all of Hoffman’s softly lit close-ups and monologues, however, the screen belongs to Joaquin Phoenix. Quell’s flared nostrils, squinted eyes, scarred lip and hands on his hips betray a damaged man always on the offensive — what else did war teach him? As his tantrums subside along with his reliance on Dodd, he takes back the wheel of his own life, though we are not sure if that makes him better off. His powerful kinship with Dodd (possibly sexual, but what does that really matter?) brought a sense of purpose to his life. They both saw their true selves in each other, but what purpose does truth serve for a charlatan like Lancaster Dodd? With Hoffman’s gravitas, you would think truth means everything. It is impressive that the performances are this incredible, considering Anderson’s work bears the signature of a perfectionist. Think back to auteurs like Kubrick, Malick and Hitchcock, who often stifle their acting talent with endless nuances and demands. Here, Anderson constructs an exacting cinematic construction that expresses its meaning through acting as well as direction.

The Master is unlike any film I have ever seen. Some of its power comes from what we do see, in all its rich 70mm cinematography, tailored by Mihai Malaimare Jr. The rest is in what we feel. Anderson often navigates the temporal space of his sets from a distance — The Shining’s long hallways come to mind. This technique, along with the film’s slow-paced editing and character-driven narrative, allows for our eyes to wander and pick up on the details of the mise-en-scene. The score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood (he also composed for There Will Be Blood) does not underline plot points or memorable lines but just slips under your skin along with every other element. Surreal fantasies creep in without warning, and the power of The Cause starts to seem plausible.

I am curious as to how history will judge this film. There is a chance, upon closer analysis, that the academic verdict of The Master will deem it symbolically empty and hopelessly vague. I believe my first viewing offered enough validation of its merits, and what we have here will rise to a Great film. As the credits rolled, I could not escape associations with Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. That film, too, studied two individuals, one mentally ill and the other trying to heal through empathy. It is questionable whether these intimate examinations ever cured these characters, but as any film, literature or art major knows, they are how we convert our confusion into reverence.

Final Verdict:

4.5 Stars Out of 5

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

Cosmopolis Review

Cosmopolis

Directed by David Cronenberg

Released in 2012

Eric Packer is a billionaire. He rarely makes eye contact with anyone, not even his newlywed wife. He tends to  to refer to himself in majestic plural — the royal “we.” He inches across congested Manhattan in his bulletproof limousine, browsing currency rates on digital screens. He adorns his house with two elevators: One plays rap music by Brutha Fez, a respected artist and Eric’s friend, while the second moves at one-quarter speed and plays Satie. The latter “makes him whole,” he says. Eric Packer is 28 years old, and today, he wants a haircut.

That is more than you need to know of Packer, played by Twilight’s Robert Pattinson, for he operates more as a symbol than as a real human being. David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, based on Don DeLillo’s 2003 novel, clearly marks Packer as an evil agent of capitalism and all its inhuman excesses. But toppling the one-percent through allegory is too easy, not to mention an empty exercise. Instead, DeLillo, Cronenberg and their surrogate, Pattinson, give us the mirror and ask how human we really are, in a time when speed, connection and perfection are our holy trinity.

There is a frustrating irony, then, that over half of the movie takes place in the silent bubble that is Packer’s limo, as it slowly crawls through the city. An unreasonable variety of acts occurs in the car: Packer has sex, gets a prostate exam, watches a gruesome stabbing on live T.V. and, most of all, talks. He talks a lot. Every encounter with another human being — most cycle through his spacious limo — consists of pages of dialogue, most of it very literate and unnaturally refined. These dense conversations are justified because, again, Cronenberg revokes these characters’ full humanity in favor of propping them up to speak to larger truths. It does make the film very literary, rather than cinematic, since dialogue rules over image.

Cosmopolis does not excite with its effects or pacing, but impresses as a slick demonstration of how things can be kept interesting. Few directors can pull off staying in one location for multiple scenes — Hitchcock’s Rope and Lumet’s 12 Angry Men set the bar high in the ’50s, as did Danny Boyle, more recently, in 127 Hours. Cronenberg finds distinct and expressive approaches to every scene, composing striking frames with moody colors and detailed production design, courtesy of cinematographer Peter Suschitzky and designer Arvinder Grewal. As a doctor searches Packer’s, um, packer during the prostate exam, the shot plots Packer along the lower third of the screen, with a cool blue neon light along the ceiling. He is face-to-face with his sweaty adviser, Jane (Emily Hampshire), though the sequence only cuts back and forth to their individual perspectives without joining them in one frame. The two speak of sexual tension when there is, very purposefully, only an air of solitude.

Directing quirks like these complement the lines and plot twists, which confuse more than clarify. Packer’s financial consultant, Vija (Samantha Morton), muses for about 15 minutes in pure DeLillo fashion how “money has lost its narrative quality;” how people have “stopped thinking about eternity” and begun to focus on “measurable man-hours;” how “the future becomes insistent.” The philosophical monologues touch upon some heavy dilemmas and to the patient, the themes unravel themselves. Cronenberg lets his camera do the talking. Packer and Vija drive through a violent protest reminiscent of Occupy Wall Street, though the demonstrators here are dressed as rats. The two, ignoring the external bedlam, talk as protesters vandalize the limousine. Only when Packer witnesses a self-immolating man — through an excellent shot with Packer in the foreground and the martyr framed through the passing car window — does he start to the admire ideology behind this chaos. We are kept within Packer’s head, feeling what he feels, which up to this point is very little at all.

Only extreme measures like suicide penetrate Packer’s skin, so as he begins to make his own choices (besides his decision to get a haircut, he only starts exercising his free will an hour in), the film loses its sterile sheen and adapts to Packer’s reckless behavior. Packer loses his sunglasses and jacket, unbuttons his pressed shirt and starts to stick out in the world; he dares his mysterious stalker, Benno Levin (Paul Giamatti), to give him his best shot. Giamatti’s 15 minutes at the end is the film’s high point; it is the emotional release the prior 90 minutes desperately needed. Of course, Levin’s twitches and giggles classify him as insane. The physically warped and openly emotive Levin is the most human character, an embodiment of the “imperfect” Packer fears. “It’s women’s shoes, it’s all the names they have for shoes!” Levin shouts in a fit. It is a welcome, genuine non-sequitur and about the most concise criticism of today’s culture I can think of.

DeLillo is one of our era’s greatest, and most prescient writers — his 1997 masterwork Underworld foresaw much of the paranoia of a post-9/11 world. The Twin Towers, shrouded in mist and flanked by a distant, swooping hawk, grace the book’s now-disturbing cover. Cronenberg is similarly a legendary and prophetic filmmaker — his 1983 classic Videodrome indicted the media’s control over the mind. It is surprising to learn that Cosmopolis was written before social media, the Arab Spring or our ongoing recession. It examines our push for more: more money, more technology, more perfection. The film does so through a cold lens and muted emotions, the feel of which becomes strangely familiar as the story progresses. Any recommendation for this film requires a bold, loud disclaimer: Most will find the experience slow, pretentious and convoluted. It is all these things, yes. Do you actually think the mind of a 28-year-old billionaire is anything like yours?

Final Verdict:

4 Stars Out of 5

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

The Art of Defamation

Courtesy of Santi Slade

You may feel sad, disappointed or even angry, but certainly not surprised. If this past summer proved to us how stupidly common rampage shootings have become, the past week reminded us yet again of the long-running, fatal clash between Western free speech and fundamental Islam’s problem with it. As of press time, the surge of revolt sweeping the Middle East, Africa and even Australia has broadened to express a deeper distrust in America and its foreign policy. But the media agrees that the catalyst for these attacks is the movie trailer — by one “Sam Bacile” (whose real name is in dispute) — referred to by various titles such as Muhammad Movie, The Real Life of Muhammad and Innocence of Muslims.

This trailer is why we can’t have nice things. When our armed service men and women die for our freedoms, our resulting liberty should not be twisted to make vile and asinine garbage like this. There was nothing wrong in America’s Cairo Embassy condemning the work of this — to use an Internet term — ‘troll.’ Now, we know of the attack in Benghazi, Libya, that took the life of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. The reportedly organized assault used protests against the “film” as a smokescreen. Naturally, certain politicians are blaming others for the tragic incident.

But this is an Arts column, and you aren’t here to read about politics. Let us look at this video (“film” has an artistic connotation). Bacile has a deep-seated hatred of Islam and a desire to defame it, which he fails to do through any semblance of satire or logical argument. Of course, his attempt has achieved its goal, likely by casting the lead actor as the prophet Muhammad and depicting him as a womanizing, pedophilic and homosexual buffoon. Let those three adjectives stir around in your head for a bit.

The 14-minute production throws mud at the wall and does not wait to check if any of it sticks. Egyptian Muslims burn the houses of Egyptian Christians. They kill a beautiful woman, so they are irrevocably evil. Flashback. Muhammad fights over a beef shank with a child. Muhammad lusts over little girls. Muhammad talks to a donkey. Some reference about how the Qur’an is a collection of  “false verses,” mixing the Torah and New Testament. All lines are delivered seriously without any apparent subtext or ulterior motive. Besides amateur sound mixing, continuity errors and one-dimensional green screen so bad it makes The Room look like Avatar, the video’s gravest technical problem — out-of-sync voiceover dubbing — extends to its most dire moral offense: All references to “Muhammad” and “Islam” are not even spoken by the actors. Many of these struggling actors now fear for their lives. Oh, and did I mention the video was apparently directed by a ’70s softcore porn director? The whole thing is so bad that no one looks good in the end.

What we are left with is the modern and very ironic phenomenon known as the “Streisand effect” — decrying something public (i.e. photo, website, film), only to widely publicize it through said protest. If Hollywood signed George Clooney and Brad Pitt to lead a Christopher Nolan-directed anti-Islamic film, then we might have a big problem. Instead, what these violent protests amount to is giving a vulgar bathroom door doodle the new judge seat on American Idol and all of its international variants.

The hateful propaganda made over the last 100 years that we still remember has some — crazy as it may sound — artistic value. D.W. Griffith’s racist ode to Confederate America, The Birth of a Nation, pioneered battlefield cinematography and parallel editing. Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, documenting the 1934 Nuremberg Rally and glorifying Hitler and the Nazi party, implemented innovative aerial shots. Watch them today, and you may find yourself bored to tears. Film historians and theorists, however, admire the far-reaching technical influence of these films to this day. Just six months ago we had Kony 2012 (six months ago!). While not a hateful film — as much I disagree with it — it is certainly an attractive example of propaganda for the digital age.

I hope it is not a sign of the times that this year’s grossest misuse of art is, by all but the loosest definitions, not art at all. Perhaps there is a silver lining here — for all the shouting matches political correctness has stirred, the days of Joseph Goebbels approaching a visionary director like Fritz Lang to make anti-Semitic films are long gone (Lang, himself a Jew, said “no,” by the way). Instead, we just have to deal with this Muhammad Movie excrement.

Salman Rushdie, target of a still-standing fatwa by the Iranian Shah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1988, made it easy for the intellectuals to come to his defense, for his beautiful novel The Satanic Verses was the instigator. Youth and adults with a functional sense of humor similarly rallied around South Park when it stumbled into these crosshairs in 2010. Right now, we must stand for the freedom of speech and prohibition of violence. The pen is mightier than the sword, even when it’s millions of swords against one of those pens you find on the floor of a bathroom stall.

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.