I only got around to seeing two films this week, so I thought I’d start this column with some film-related thoughts. (I’d have put these at the end, but this way there’s a chance they’ll get read.) Oh, and I still support the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikers.
There are, as I see it, two basic schools of film criticism. One approaches the film primarily through its subject matter and themes, analyzing it more as one might analyze a novel, or as one might analyze real events. The other approaches the film primarily through its craft, through the way it tells its story and conveys its themes through writing, acting, cinematography, editing, visual design, music, and so forth. Let us call them the thematic and aesthetic schools.
My friend Cameron, over at Broken Hands Media, recently wrote an article about Barbie and Oppenheimer, reading these very different films which have been so thoroughly twinned in the public eye through the prism of each other. Characteristically, he takes a primarily thematic approach to the films, analyzing what they say about the world we’ve been living in since 1945/1959 (the year of Barbie’s debut and Lewis Strauss’ failed Cabinet confirmation), and about how they each depict a kind of world-breaking by their protagonists:
The whole experience of Barbenheimer as a phenomenon is about this same dislocation. By reading them together, an element that was merely an adjunct to the story is elevated to a prime mover. Dislocation becomes the mechanism by which the world changes and evolves.
The thematic school of criticism inherently benefits from the critic’s own literacy and ability to cite ideas and texts which support their arguments. Cameron is an English teacher and his article reflects this; if you can fully parse the line “This is part and parcel of Deleuzian philosophy through nomadic and rhizomatic interconnection,” you may find his reading of the films more illuminating than my own (I wrote both of my reviews in a rush on Friday morning; I assume he took more time with his article.)
But while his analysis reflects the ideas and story elements present in the script, he devotes little time to the acting and less to the technical craft of the films. That’s not a knock on his post; it’s simply not what he set out to discuss. Compare that to my own reviews, which are focused more on the craft, on the acting, on the way the film actually plays on the screen rather than the associated thoughts it inspires.
Is one way better than the other? Is one way more helpful than the other? And if so, to whom?
You’ve probably heard of Armond White. He’s a film critic who’s best known for being something of a contrarian (to put it politely), writing in his positive review of Norbit:
“Both Norbit and Little Man express how black comics self-consciously relate to ideas of normalcy. Here, Murphy’s gender/ethnic split embraces a sense of freakishness because Norbit, Rasputia and Mr. Wong are all, also, on a realistic continuum…
…When Mr. Wong querulously says “Blacks and Jews love Chinese food. Go figure!” it tweaks the anomalies of American habit at which ethnic comics are rightly bemused.“
He’s also known as a something of an asshole, having been kicked out of the New York Film Critics Circle for allegedly heckling (director) Steve McQueen and being described by Walter Biggins as “…needlessly combative, explosively arrogant and self-defensive in equal measures, and disingenuous in his argumentation against those who disagree with him”…in an article titled “In Defense of Armond White”!!!
I won’t pretend to have read more than a small percentage of White’s reviews, but those I have read, along with analyses of his work (sympathetic and critical alike), are more about placing the films in conversation with other works (especially those he prefers) and popular culture as a whole, especially when they come up against his own moral and political values, than about whether the acting was good, the images were artfully composed, the music fit the action, and so forth.
It sparks a question in me, perhaps as much a reflection of my own profound insecurity as anything: is an aesthetic analysis of film missing the forest for the trees? Does the moral value, the emotional depth, the social awareness of a film count for more than its style? Is there not more value in a film whose script is sound, nay insightful, even if the acting and/or cinematic craft are lacking, than in a film whose script is weak or possessed of problematic values, but which is performed and crafted with great skill?
The most famous example of the latter breed is probably D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, a film still acclaimed for its cinematic innovations and ambition and still controversial for its unabashed racism and the impact it had on the revival of the KKK. As for the former breed…well, how about Don’t Look Up, a film which certainly aims to make vital points about the post-truth society and how corporate greed has thoroughly infected the halls of power, but is overlong, ham-fisted, self-important, visually unremarkable, and quite variably acted despite an impressive cast.
But those are just two examples, one an extreme example, of the tricky task one faces when writing about art, and especially about film. To write about a book, one need only consider the words on the page. To write about a painting, one need only consider the strokes on the canvas. But with a film, there are so many variables to weigh, and I fear that the thematic school of criticism neglects the technical craft of film in favor of the film as a kind of performed text.
Many critics’ awards groups have fairly few technical categories. Almost all have awards for the best film or films of the year, the best directing, the best writing, and the best acting. Many will have an award for cinematography, the easiest of the crafts to appreciate, and more have added a category for editing, one of the most vital – perhaps the most vital of the crafts, given how invisible editing must be and how obvious it is when it’s done poorly.
But the deeper you go into the crafts categories, the fewer groups actually bother to recognize them. Production design, costume design, makeup, score, sound, visual effects…all of these are key to the success of a film when they’re employed. So why should the critics, who should notice these aspects more than the casual viewer, spend less time on them? Are these aspects window dressing for the story and themes, or are they a vital part of what makes a film a film?
Look at the costumes in Barbie, how vital they are to creating the fantasy world we first encounter, how they accentuate Barbie and Ken’s displacement in the real world, how they change in the last act of the film. Look at the makeup in Crimes of the Future, how it conveys the radical mutations of and conscious alterations to the human body which are a central part of the story. Listen to the score of Oppenheimer, how it adds to the mounting tension, the growing dread, the passage of decades. Listen to the sound in Tár, how it creates the environment of a symphony hall and the mysterious which haunt the protagonist. Look at the visual effects in Avatar: The Way of Water, which pervade every shot and must be completely convincing for the film to work at all.
But those, to be sure, are all good or great films. Did great costumes make Mirror Mirror a great or even memorable film? Did the Oscar-winning makeup make Suicide Squad less of a mess? Did the iconic score make Chariots of Fire remotely worthy of its Best Picture win? Did the brilliant use of sound make Grand Prix memorable outside of its racing scenes? Did the pervasive effects make the first Avatar less hollow, less thuddingly predictable?
What it all comes down to, for me, is balance. No aspect of a film is truly irrelevant, even as one is unlikely to note the sound design in Women Talking, the costumes in Past Lives, the makeup in C’mon C’mon, or the visual effects in The Trial of the Chicago 7. One is more likely to discuss the writing and acting in each, even as their editing, cinematography, and music may catch the eye and ear. But it is eminently worthy to think of these films, and others like them, in terms of their cinematic style, as all-around pieces of art, just as it’s worthy to consider what a stylish entertainment like John Wick Chapter 4 has to offer as a showcase for its cast, or what a propulsive thrill-ride like Mad Max: Fury Road has to say about the continuities of fascism and misogyny.
The deeper you reach into any film, or any work of art, the more you should hope to find. One of the marks of a truly great work, in my mind, is the ability to keep digging without hitting bottom.
Days of Heaven (1978) – ****
The images are what you first think of when you think of Days of Heaven, and with good reason; it’s one of the most beautifully shot films of all time and absolutely earned its Oscar for Best Cinematography (the question of whether Haskell Wexler deserved full credit alongside Nestor Almendros notwithstanding). You have the endless fields of wheat, the farmer’s mansion which surveys them, the vast skies which were mostly shot during the twilight “magic hour,” the devastating plague of locusts, and the apocalyptic fire which follows. But other images, less well known, deserve praise as well: a wine glass at the bottom of a river, Abby (Brooke Adams) picking scrap metal in the industrial hellscapes of Chicago, or writing a letter in a pose right out of Vermeer, the hellish ironworks where Bill (Richard Gere) initially labors, or a private conversation between Abby and himself, glimpsed through billowing curtains by the farmer (Sam Shepard).
But there are also the sounds to consider, reflected in the Oscar nomination for Best Sound: the deafening roar of the ironworks, the wind blowing across the prairie, the rumble of the tractors, and the Oscar-nominated score by Ennio Morricone (a fine score, even if Saint-Saëns’ “Aquarium” over the opening credits is still the best thing on the soundtrack). And there’s the sound of Linda’s (Linda Manz) narration – but more on that in due time.
There are also the touches which border on the surreal, which make one think as much of Werner Herzog as of Malick’s other work – in particular, I think of the flying circus who randomly land on the farmer’s property one day, entertain them for a time, and then take off, Bill hitching a ride as tensions have been growing between the farmer and himself. It’s a truly bizarre element to drop into an otherwise serious and grounded drama, but then, one of my favorite scenes in The Tree of Life involves merciful dinosaurs.
All of these make Days of Heaven a striking film to watch, but there’s more beneath the surface, even as the film was (and to a degree still is) accused of lacking dramatic or emotional depth. While there are flaws in the film’s dramaturgy, once you accept its elliptical style, you can focus on how much thematic weight it actually carries.
In The Tree of Life Malick would explicitly spell out the contrast between nature and grace, but it’s certainly on display here, as is the contrast between nature and humanity, reflected in images like that sunken glass (a fish idles nearby) or that mansion, which seems almost out of place, as if it were put down at random and could be removed just as easily. The farmer has tried to tame nature by growing wheat, but first the locusts, and then the fire (which he seems to have started in his own jealous anger) make a mockery of his efforts.
The complexity of human nature is also reflected, in how the film juxtaposes moments of joy (the dance solo performed by veteran vaudevillian Gene Bell) and warmth (the farmer’s growing love for Abby) with moments of anguish (Bill’s resentments, the farmer’s suspicions, Abby’s dilemma) and violence (Bill’s two murders, one an accident born of impulsive anger, the other in self-defense after an ironic misunderstanding).
To be quite sure, there are lapses in the narrative, possibly born of the film’s sprawling production and lengthy editing process. The exact timeline of the story is unclear, and there are points where it seems we’ve skipped a season; at times the story seems to cover a year, at other times closer to two years. And there are points when the editing and staging make the action a shade difficult to follow; Bill’s murder of the foreman is clumsily staged (it’s not even clear if the man is dead or just knocked out), and late in the film the farmer angrily ties Abby to a post on the front porch, but the action never pays off in any way.
There’s also the question of what exactly happens at the end – where Abby is going, whether Linda is running away from the boarding school or just sneaking out for a few hours – but here we can better trust in the nature of Malick’s storytelling and his preference to not spell things out. These characters are used to a life of instability and loss, and so it makes sense that we leave them on a note of uncertainty.
While Gere would become a major star, Shepard would become a Pulitzer-winning playwright and an Oscar-nominated actor, and Adams would have a respectable if not brilliant career, they are all overshadowed by Manz, whose career would fade out after the early 80s. True, Gere is suitably charming yet fatally hotheaded, Shepard is properly simple and earnest, and Adams conveys how Abby has learned to take everything, good and bad, in stride. (Character actor Robert J, Wilke also cuts a good figure as the farmer’s crusty old foreman.)
But Manz brings a blunt authenticity to her performance, a mixture of innocence and experience which reflects how much she has seen and endured in her life, how she has learned to protect herself with a certain detached humor, and how much she has yet to learn. Her narration, heavily or entirely improvised by her, veers from the reflective, to the observant, to the casually troubling, to the poetic, but in a way that rings utterly true, thanks to her unaffected delivery. It is key to the greatness of the film, which becomes more apparent to me with repeat viewings.
Writing about Malick brought out the best in Roger Ebert, and I close with how he described what the film sought to evoke:
…how a child feels when it lives precariously, and then is delivered into security and joy, and then has it all taken away again–and blinks away the tears and says it doesn’t hurt.
Score: 93
The Fisher King (1991) – ****
There’s an alternate cut of Brazil, slashed from Terry Gilliam’s original cut by a full third, which cuts the ending short so that Sam Lowry’s escape from his oppressors, made possible by the woman of his literal dreams, is the actual end of the film, rather than the tragic revelation that this is all a fantasy of his permanently shattered mind, as Gilliam intended. This version is included on the Criterion edition, where it’s derisively called the “Love Conquers All” version. In Gilliam’s The Fisher King, after Parry (Robin Williams) and Lydia (Amanda Plummer), the woman he has long loved from afar, have a giddy but heartening first date with the help of Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) and Anne (Mercedes Ruehl), Anne, laughing over how well everything has gone despite the long odds, notes “Amor vincit omnia”—which she must translate for Jack as “Love conquers all.”
While Sam does not lose his mind until the end of Brazil, Parry is deep into his delusions when we first meet him, believing himself to be a modern knight seeking the Holy Grail, which happens to be in the home of a wealthy architect in Manhattan. It’s not entirely clear if he’s “snapped out of it” when the film ends, but he’s doing better, and more importantly, he and Lydia have a real chance at happiness together.
But the film, despite Williams being top-billed and nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor, isn’t Parry’s story, but Jack’s. Parry doesn’t even appear until almost 20 minutes into the film, when he rescues Jack from a pair of vicious teenagers – and only later do we learn that the tragedy which broke Jack’s spirit and brought him to the verge of taking his own life is the one that broke Henry Sagan’s mind; when he awoke from his catatonic state, he simply went by “Parry.”
Jack was once a hot-shot shock jock, filling the airwaves with cynical snark and on the verge of taking his talents to television, when a frequent caller to his show, motivated by Jack ranting about the evils of yuppies, shot up a popular bar – and one of his victims was Parry’s wife. Now an alcoholic living with the profoundly patient Anne above her video store, Jack is numb and bitter, unable to respond to her love and devotion. He is just as much in need of healing as Parry, but for him healing must come by truly helping another, first by bringing him and Lydia together, then by completing his quest (which gives him the chance to do an unexpected good).
Along the way, we get elements of the magical and fantastical which help to cement this as a Gilliam film. We have the fearsome Red Knight which terrifies Parry, a hallucinated personification of the tragedy which tore him apart, we have the wonderful sequence in Grand Central where Parry follows Lydia through rush-hour crowds who begin to waltz with one another, and we have the world of the homeless, which first seems to Jack a kind of chaotic gentlemen’s club, but which deepens the more he comes to appreciate their struggle. As one of them (Tom Waits in a cameo) notes of a thoughtless donor, “He’s payin’ so he don’t have to look.”
This kind of whimsy could’ve easily gone over the top, and there are moments which do (I got pretty tired of hearing “How About You”), but more often than not it works wonderfully, sweeping you up in its charm, its romance, its imagination, its humanity. It does this in part because it never loses sight of reality, even in those moments of fantasy – the Red Knight may not be real, but Parry’s pain is, the mass waltz ends as suddenly and naturally as it began, and the indignities the homeless characters endure are all too real.
It also does this by never letting its characters drift too far into caricature, showing how Jack, even before the shooting, is somehow unsatisfied with his success, how Parry, despite his delusions, is motivated by a real and fundamental goodness, how Anne, despite her brashness and constancy, has real human needs that Jack is neglecting, and how Lydia, despite her screwball klutziness, is shy, lonely, and mistrustful. And it shows how all of these characters need each other, even Anne and Lydia; there’s a sweet little moment when Anne tells Lydia, “You’re not so invisible. You want a personality? Try this on for size: you can be a real bitch sometimes.” Lydia’s delight at this revelation is infectious.
So, kudos to Richard LaGravenese’s Oscar-nominated script, but also to Williams’ performance, which keeps the comic and dramatic well balanced, avoiding excessive clowning and mawkishness, to Bridges’ underrated work which unshowily reveals how complex Jack really is, to Ruehl’s Oscar-winning turn which triumphs in moments big (her “man was made in the Devil’s image” monologue) and small (her reactions to Parry and Lydia making a mess of the store), to Plummer’s carefully pitched turn, mousy but not boring, awkward but not affected. Michael Jeter also makes the most of his role as the unnamed drag performer, who’s at once broadly showy and quietly tragic.
The film was also nominated for George Fenton’s fine score, which blends classical elements (“Grand Central Waltz”) with modern jazz and orchestral themes evoking medieval adventure (“The Red Knight Suite”) and for the excellent art direction, from the recording booth that looks like a cell in an asylum, to Parry’s basement sanctuary, to the haunting, colorless hospital from which Parry must be delivered. It wasn’t nominated for Gilliam’s direction (which strikes the right note throughout) or Best Picture, being bumped in both categories by another TriStar film, Bugsy, which isn’t quite as good. (Curiously, like Days of Heaven, Fisher King managed Picture and Director nominations from the Globes.)
But its enduring popularity (and its own place in the Criterion Collection) ensure that, like Jack and Parry at the end, it has had the last laugh.
Score: 91
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