Loving and Hating, But on Whose Terms?

In all worthwhile criticism, two inclinations are always at war, and they are humility and vigilance. Too much humility precludes the ability to say anything at all, while excessive vigilance almost always reads as petty after the blood has cooled. Being discerning but fair and above all curious demands a balance, which seems feasible until you’re faced with the question: Do you judge a movie on your terms or its own?

In other words: Do you evaluate a movie for what it does do or for what, in your lowly opinion, it should do? Do you place it against the exemplary works of its own genre and judge accordingly, or do you have the right to rebuke a whole genre, a whole mode of filmmaking, for violating principles you yourself set? These are questions with answers that vary on a case-by-case basis, but like Ready to Die versus Illmatic and sexual preference, you tend to lean one way or the other.

I’ve gotten to the point where I embrace my power to set the terms of engagement. By that, I mean I don’t watch a movie now and give it a thumbs-up or down depending on how successfully and seamlessly it “does its job.” Instead, I see my job, when writing a review, to track down missed opportunities in a movie, moments of shallowness or cheapness that are often reinforced by the codes of genre and narrative. And when a movie connects, the priority is not to judge it against its generic peers but rather for the revelations it touches upon by breaking expectations, by doing what it should not do.

Let me clarify with an example. Over the weekend, I saw that other Brad Pitt World War II movie, Fury. It’s brutal, draining and unequivocally “well-done,” my friend and fellow Sun columnist, Julia Moser ’15, and I agreed. About halfway through, the battlefield carnage halts for a 20-minute interlude in an apartment that two soldiers, played by Pitt and Logan Lerman, have entered with the intent of raping the female occupants. Things complicate from there, and through facial expressions, pregnant pauses and the use of space, the scene vivisects a much less gory, but more entrenched form of male violence.

The movie surprised me there, for its commitment to exploring sexual violence at the expense of on-screen action or spectacle. That’s something not many war movies dare to do, and I give Fury credit for trying. It’s too bad the movie ends with one of those airheaded stand-offs that glorifies the valor in mowing down as many Nazis as possible. It shoots itself in the foot by obeying and so ferociously embracing the “last stand” scene intrinsic to so many war movies instead of subverting that trope in some way. The ending was “well-done,” no doubt, but far and away the stupidest part of the film.

So I reject Fury’s reality and substitute it with my own — or something like that. I don’t care for the “the acting was good, that plot twist was dumb” kind of pseudo-criticism that stays within a movie’s world and makes no effort to bridge it with our own. That line of thinking, or lack thereof, assumes that no film exploits, cash-grabs or, worst of all, panders. Lord, to think of all the pandering we’ll soon slog through with Oscar season now upon us. Time to flex that vigilance I mentioned before, for no matter how polished every Blackfish or Philomena may be, we all have the right, and distinct pleasure, to call bullshit.

This disparity between what is “well-done” and what is actually interesting to each of us, on a personal level, has been reinforced by the illusion that there is any difference between “favorite” and “best.” We lie when we say, “That is the best movie of the year,” yet we feel no personal connection to it, no urge to think it over or watch it again. “Best” most often esteems the “white elephants” in the room, Manny Farber’s term for those lumbering films with loud artistic or thematic aspirations, which are often unpleasing, unimaginative and overlong. The idea that we can objectively judge works of art, as so many gamers insist when a critic entertains a feminist reading instead of just sticking to the “gameplay,” perpetuates a borderline fascistic, anti-intellectual and above all boring culture.

Let your taste carry you, through all the cultures and all the genres. It’s really the only way to open yourself up to surprise after watching hundreds and thousands of movies. I’m guilty of not rushing to see Frances Ha last year because I anticipated just another ditzy indie comedy. When I finally saw it at Cornell Cinema, I couldn’t shake it, and my instincts urged me to keep that opinion to myself because this was, after all, just another ditzy indie comedy and not worth serious attention.

But no, Frances Ha is a masterpiece, and I have no qualms saying it because it is a judgment forged in my soul. It is in turns the funniest and saddest movie of last year, for its depiction of melancholia is all but unspoken, maybe even unrecognized by Greta Gerwig’s protagonist. I ranked it alongside heavyweights like The Act of Killing and 12 Years a Slave in my “Best of 2013” list, and if I could do it again I’d rank it higher. Frances Ha obliterates any expectations of its genre through its command of cinema and its intimate understanding of what it is to be human, and for doing all that in a way that speaks to me, it’s simply my job to meet it with awe.

This article was written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location here.

12 Years a Slave Review

12 Years a Slave
Directed by Steve McQueen
Released in 2013

Think back to elementary and high school, when you learned about American slavery as a young student. A chalkboard or PowerPoint slide relayed statistics of the Triangle Trade. You paid attention to key words and concepts that might appear on next day’s fill-in-the-blank quiz. Your life was comfortable enough that this grade seemed to be the only thing at stake. And that was that.

With blunt force, 12 Years a Slave reminds us that embalmed, quasi-objective summaries of America’s greatest shame do not approach anything close to knowledge. For in this draining but necessary new film, history informs art, but it is art that realizes history. Like Steven Spielberg with Schindler’s List, director Steve McQueen knows that only emotion and, more precisely, pain, convey the true toll of our violent, oft-romanticized past. While you may feel battered around taking in McQueen’s manipulative, unapologetic style of filmmaking, you should also leave the theater grateful. At last, you have witnessed an image of slavery both lucid — for, like most Hollywood pictures, it follows one man and his struggle — and unflinchingly, savagely honest.

Our eyes into history belong to the incredible Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Based on the life and memoir of a freeman-turned-slave of the same name, 12 Years a Slave opens on a plantation where a dejected, much older Solomon hacks away, like a machine, at sugar cane before flashing back to an idyllic suburban family portrait in Saratoga Springs, New York, circa 1841. A gifted carpenter and violinist who has won the favor of the town’s wealthy white folks and its remarkably progressive shopkeeper, Solomon lives a pretty modern life with his wife, daughter and son. Enter Scoot McNairy and SNL’s Taran Killam as two genteel traveling musicians who look like the Mad Hatter and recruit Solomon’s skills for a tour to Washington D.C. After a night where his hosts made sure his wine glass was always filled to the brim, Solomon wakes up on the floor of a dungeon, in rags and chains. A walloping from a studded paddle and the words, “You ain’t a free man,” welcome Solomon to hell.

If you would allow me the digression, I would like to look closer at that turning point of a scene, when Solomon gets beaten. In the first long take and off-putting composition in a film full with them, McQueen and cinematographer Sean Bobbitt spread Solomon across the foreground of the shot, on his hands and knees, as a white man, out-of-focus in the background, enforces blows to his back. Solomon screams in agony with every strike, but shadows shroud his contorted face. So, what do we have? Solomon, the white man and the weapon are all obscured or distorted from our sight in some way, yet the iconography of a slave receiving punishment, from Solomon’s supplicant pose to the abstracted colors of both faces, is unmistakable. In this shot, Solomon stands in for any and all slaves, suffering not just bodily harm but the first pangs of becoming something less than a person.

From this shot onward, McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley balance the two conflicting duties when depicting slavery: humanize your lead subject (here, Solomon) but do not elevate him above the millions of others unable to tell their own story. While Solomon is more educated and well-spoken than most of his fellow slaves, he realizes he must play dumb if he wants to survive in a white man’s world (not unlike Forrest Whitaker’s adaptive servant in Lee Daniels’ The Butler). Slavers look for obedience to match a slave’s muscles — anything more stirs revolt. Notice the sickening compliments a slaver (Paul Giamatti) showers over the naked black men and women standing frozen like mannequins at auction, rapping a man’s toned chest and lifting a girl’s smooth chin, with awful insinuations. He sells Solomon, now known as “Platt,” and a mother (Adepero Oduye) to Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), denying Ford’s half-hearted attempt to appease the mother’s cries to buy her children too. Not the son, the slaver whispers with glee, because “he will grow into a fine young beast,” and not the prepubescent daughter, because give her time and, well …

If the slaver’s inhumanity brings out the gentleness in Ford’s disposition, the scene also reinforces that Ford perpetuates this system with a bundle of cash. After Ford gifts Solomon a violin for good behavior, the lamenting mother makes sure Solomon doesn’t forget that, “given the circumstances,” Ford is still a slave owner. And after Solomon assaults a sadistic overseer (Paul Dano, who, after Prisoners and There Will Be Blood seems to be Hollywood’s go-to punching bag), Ford whisks his property away to Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), infamous for “breaking” his slaves. By the way, this is immediately after Solomon survives a daylong lynching by tiptoeing in the mud, which McQueen films for a suffocating, unbroken eternity.

It is at Epps’ cotton plantation where the majority of the film remains, where Solomon befriends a doomed, kind soul named Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o) and completes a transformation of his own. Patsey has earned the bad fortune of Epps’ lust, and thus also his wife Mary’s (Sarah Paulson) cold-eyed contempt. The scenes between Patsey and the two Epps bring out a savagery in the so-called civilized white men and women who believe they have a biological mandate to own “inferior” humans. Thankfully, Patsey has Solomon, who has wised up to the dehumanized submission survival requires. This leads to a horrible, albeit cinematically extraordinary scene filmed in nauseating handheld, akin to Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible. Not long after, Solomon resolves his guilt and accepts his sorry state in another perfect long take, filmed in tight close-up, where he hesitates before joining in on a graveside Negro spiritual. The internal strife Ejiofor communicates with just his eyes — looking up to God, down to the dirt and, finally, forward ahead — pretty much grasps 12 Years a Slave from McQueen’s hands.

Like Schindler’s List before it, 12 Years a Slave concedes to a fair dose of Hollywood sheen. Mary Epps is so evil she’s lifeless. Hans Zimmer’s score, while effective, reuses Inception’s “Time” motif (which he, in turn, adopted from his Thin Red Line soundtrack). The 134-minute running time almost feels too short, stretching the believability that Solomon’s journey spans 12 years. Brad Pitt shows up near the end, to distracting effect. But if Pitt’s name sells one or 1,000,000 more tickets to see this film, I am on board. For once, a gimme-Oscar pitch has earned its merit through artistry and provocation. You won’t remember the lashings as much as those despairing human faces. Those you won’t forget.

Final Verdict:

4.5 Stars Out of 5

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

Inglourious Basterds Review

Inglourious Basterds:

Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Released in 2009

Quentin Tarantino makes great movies. It is a simple fact. There is no denying the draw and appeal of classics such as Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs, or perhaps the mad violence that made the Kill Bill series an action classic. It just so happens that Inglourious Basterds is another great film by Tarantino. So good, in fact, it ranks up there with his best, easily. After leaving the theater, I was overwhelmed with love for this movie. It is definitely my favorite movie of the summer and will be hard to top for the rest of the year.

The film starts out with a scene that strongly parallels the opener to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, Tarantino's professed favorite movie. Hans Landa, played by a impossibly good Christoph Waltz, is a Nazi assigned with the task of rounding up the Jews in France, or just exterminating them. He meets with a French farmer, Perrier LaPadite (in an excellent, too short appearance by Denis Menochet) to ask him if he is hiding any Jewish people in his house. The conversation is innocent enough; he compliments LaPadite of his beautiful daughters and requests a drink, milk in this case. They engage in small talk for a few minutes and the scene documents every moment. The suspense is present throughout as Landa uses his menacing wit to coax information out of the farmer. It eventually draws to a thunderous, frightening close as Landa gets his way. This opening scene is almost identical in a sense to The Good, The Bad and the Ugly when The Bad confronts a farmer, pestering him for information. Drawing from one of the greatest movies of all time is certainly a fine thing to do (Tarantino borrowed elements from the film before such as the Mexican Standoff which makes an appearance in this film as well). This scene starts the movie off well and gives the Jewish escapee, Shoshanna Dreyfus, a reason for vengeance.

Brad Pitt and his crew are given a introduction as "The Basterds" next, a group of Jewish-Americans with one mission only: "Killin' Nazis." According to Aldo Raine (Pitt), the "business is boomin'" and the whole German army is starting to fear this ragtag group of violent figures. Pitt is excellent in his Nazi-hating, Southern American role and is always provides a laugh throughout the movie. Aldo's gang
also includes "The Bear Jew," played by a insane yet amusing Eli Roth, Hugo Stiglitz, a Nazi killing machine who Til Schweiger fulfills the role for, and Smithson Utivich, played by BJ Novak, or "Ryan" from The Office. The whole crew is given a comical view, despite their horrible war crimes, and each member is given a distinct, interesting personality.

There is also a separate agenda for Shoshanna, the Jewish girl whose family was terrorized early on by Landa. Her role is occupied by another relative unknown to American cinema, Melanie Laurent. She acts with cold grace, turning down the advances made on her by the handsome, nagging hero soldier, Frederick Zoller, played by Daniel Bruhl. She owns a cinema in Paris, and Zoller, trying to flatter her, wants to premiere the movie based off his accomplishments at her venue. This quickly sets up a situation where she can get back at the scum that murdered her family and her vengeful character really steals the show in many of her scenes.

Meanwhile, there is a separate plan to take down the Third Reich by the Basterds themselves, with an almost unrecognizable Mike Myers as the courier. A bunch of other great roles are shown throughout, including a British film critic turned spy played by Michael Fassbender and a large part played by Diane Kruger as Bridget von Hammersmark, a famous actress turned spy for the Allies. Everyone here adds a ton of personality to their characters and, as a result, the world feels fresh and alive. There has not been such a stellar lineup of actors, known and unknown, in awhile.

As many Quentin Tarantino movies can boast to, Inglourious Basterds has style. Pure, smooth style. Starting with the words "Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France," the film does not take itself seriously and, thus, can have a lot of fun with its setting. The props and settings are all historically accurate but the presentation of the movie is anything but. When introducing Hugo Stiglitz, a burst of rock guitar rings with huge, screen-filling, yellow font of his name. A cool narration by Samuel L. Jackson ensues with a flashback, and the action returns to the scene as if nothing happened. Only Tarantino can pull off something like that. In addition, the soundtrack is stellar as well, mixing Ennio Morricone-style epics with 70s funk and David Bowie. The music is so far from the setting that each time it plays, you can't help but laugh at the some of the ridiculousness at hand. Regardless, the soundtrack still managed to fit perfectly with the action, giving the movie its own identity.

Much praise has already been given to Christoph Waltz for his impeccable portrayal of mirth mixed with malice, but I must add to it. Every scene of his is his own, and his blend of evil and humor is unlike anything I have seen before. When he finds out crucial information about Operation Kino (the plan to kill high-ranking Nazi officials), he shouts "That's a bingo!!" in a way that will make anyone laugh and cringe simultaneously. His "chat" with Shoshanna at a Nazi party is suspenseful and nerve-wracking, even when he has nothing much to say at all. He will surely receive a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his performance and he deserves to win it. The psychotic villain genre has been played by many great actors recently, such as Heath Ledger and Jackie Earle-Haley, and now Christoph Waltz can deservedly sit among them. He draws attention from every audience member and won't let go until his character is completely absent from the screen. In summary, he is fantastic.

The violence in this film has also gained some publicity but it is no more than a typical 21st century Tarantino film. There are several scenes of scalping and beatings but they are usually not given a serious tone, but instead a comical one. Shootouts are brief but intense; a shootout in the bar must have had at least 20 shots go by in less than 10 seconds. The final, climactic scene is literally explosive and a pleasure to watch, even despite its grossly disfigured body parts. Seeing history being rewritten, Tarantino-style, had me laughing hard for its approximate three minute duration.

The writing overall is top-notch, with obviously Quentin at the helm. While some may say they drag on too long, I found about every line of dialogue interesting due to the talented actors, and usually suspense is drawn from even the most inane of occurrences such as a waiter serving whipped cream. Once again, Christoph Waltz steals every one of his scenes and takes Tarantino's work and elevates it farther than even the director predicted. The screenplay was reportedly ten years in the making, going through several rewrites, and, while there have certainly been better scripts written in shorter amounts of time, Tarantino did not put that time to waste because the effort and proofreading show. The film's steady, patient approach throughout also suggest one thing and one thing only: Quentin Tarantino is the man and he knows it. He does not need anyone to ask him to cut with zooming in on someone pouring milk because it HAS to be there, at least in his mind. At a solid two and a half hours long, Inglourious Basterds takes its time but still manages to make all of it interesting, even when conversations approach the twenty minute mark or more. Only a man like Quentin can pull that off.

In the end, Inglourious Basterds is a fantastic film. Some may end up not liking it because of its length, gratuity or blend of different genres but they probably don't like Tarantino's style in the first place. This movie will be remembered by me and many others down the road as a mad work of art. The film's final words are, said by Pitt's Aldo Raine, "I think this just might be my masterpiece" as he stares at a swastika-scarred scalp he created. We all know that it is truly Tarantino behind the camera saying that, and he truly is right.

Final Verdict: 5 Stars out of 5