Distant Relatives: Repulsion and Black Swan

Robert here, with my series Distant Relatives, where we look at two films, (one classic, one modern) related through a common theme and ask what their similarities and differences can tell us about the evolution of cinema.  Since one of these films is still in theaters, I thought I'd mention that while certain plot elements are revealed I've done my best not to spoil any of the film's dramatic resolution.

Women well into their nervous breakdowns

We love to watch people go mad in the movies.  We watch people go mad because of fame and money.  We watch people go mad because of war or tragedy.  And we watch people go mad because of the relentless pursuit of perfection.  We're especially fascinated by beautiful people going mad.  "I hate to do this to a beautiful woman," said one of the cameramen of Catherine Deneuve on the set of Repulsion.  As if tormenting a plain looking person would be somewhat less repulsive.  We envy and idealize the beautiful.  What reason should they have to go mad, when life has dealt them such a winning hand?

But Natalie Portman's Nina and Catherine Deneuve's Carol do spiral down into madness.  Both are haunted by visions of walking nightmares.  Both see their reflections become broken and distorted.  And both are eventually brought to violence.  Each film contains moments of such fierce discomfort, we begin to expect (or fear) that the director is capable of showing us anything.  Now that is horror.  A scene of cuticle cutting in Repulsion suggests that Darren Aronofsky was probably influenced by that film's understanding of our empathy toward hangnail trauma.  But it's not fear of physical pain that's the catalyst for these beauties' insanty.

Would you fuck that girl?

They're all the same these bloody virgins, they're all teasers that's all.

Sex is dirty.  Sex is bad.  Both of these women have stilted sexuality in a world that demands they be sex objects.  Each film does a superb job of getting us into their heads, making us understand how they see sex.  As Carol lies in bed at night, hearing the animalistic moans and grunts being made by her sister and her sister's beau in the next room, we agree that they don't sound sexy at all.  They don't sound like something Carol would want to partake in.  They don't sound like something we would want to do.  For Nina, a subway encounter with a perverted old man tells us all we need to know about how sex appears before her: dirty, aggressive, a violation.  There's nothing present that suggests the comfort of love or even the enjoyment of pleasure.

For both of these women, being virginal is part of attaining or maintaining perfection.  Carol's pursuit of this ideal is subconscious.  She doesn't hope to achieve anything by accomplishing it, but being spoiled by a man would be akin to falling from grace.  For Nina, avoiding sex is part of her active pursuit of artistic perfection.  Her mother has pushed her in the direction of the pure innocent ballerina.  When company director Thomas Leroy insists that sexuality is her only path to perfection, it both contradicts and reinforces her attitudes toward sexuality and innocence.  After all, he demands she become sexual to embody the black swan, the dark character.  So sex may now be the goal, but it's still something sinister.

No way out

The activeness of Nina versus the passiveness of Carol is one of the major differences between these two films.  Yet in both cases it seemingly makes their downfall more inevitable.  Carol has no direction in life, no goals, no hobbies even.  Her descent into madness seems a natural progression of that emptiness.  For Nina, her pursuit of artistic triumph is so great, it can only lead where it eventually does - downward.  What both of these women do share is obsession, and that, however manifest, is the key to their fates.  The two women justify their darkness differently as well.  Black Swan plays with the doppleganger (echoing Swan Lake).  Nina, perhaps unable to accept any darkness within herself, creates mirror images of herself, onto whom she can project her inner evil.  Carol recedes within herself, becoming further and further the eternal victim.  She rationalizes her actions as necessary self-defense.  She has to.  By the end of her film, even the walls are attacking her.

In the over forty-five years between these two films, we notice that audiences have changed little.  Stories of beauty and obsession are still captivating.  Both films present us with a heroine who the picture empathizes with and sexualizes, almost becoming another one of the many gazing and lecherous men that surround them.  Like Nina, Black Swan the film is more active in its pursuit of our emotional distress.  The film is bombastic, swirling around, throwing a large amount of stimuli at is from all sides.  Repulsion is more passive like Carol, building slowly to a point where fantastic images truly shock.  Both methods work for their respective films, though the more modern one is maybe indicative of a time when the weight of film history and media saturation requires images be louder.  But however the times have changed, we still respond to beauty in peril.  We still are shocked at beauty embodying evil.  And like that camerman we feel terrible about it, but keep it in our gaze.

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By: Unknown On 14.41

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Distant Relatives: Metropolis and District 9

Robert here, with my series Distant Relatives, where we look at two films, (one classic, one modern) related through a common theme and ask what their similarities and differences can tell us about the evolution of cinema.

Upstairs/Downstairs

They tell bird owners to avoid putting your new pet in one of those high hanging Tweety-bird cages.  See, if the bird spends most of his time positioned above you, he'll develop a sense of superiority and will be impossible to teach and train.  Just in case the overworld/underworld concept started to seem like a common and cliched metaphor, it doesn't hurt to remember that it's a fact of nature. Those who are above see themselves as greater than those who are below.  And if it transcends animal species here on Earth then why not throughout the universe?  Which is why it makes so much sense that the aliens of District 9 couldn't be allowed to live in their space ship towering high in the sky but had to be moved onto the ground and given the nickname "prawn" after an animal that mucks about far below us humans.  Metropolis classically uses the conceit and creates a reality where the workers live below the ground while the aristocracy lives in skyscrapers high above, and extends it to Biblical dimension, with workers being gobbled up in fantasy by the demon Moloch, rich people cavorting around overworld places called the "Eternal Gardens" and the central skyscraper the "New Tower of Babel."

Like much science fiction that comments on social justice issues, we're presented in both films with evil corporatedom.  In Metropolis, Joh Frederson is the founder and autocratic force behind the city.  In District 9 the wonderfully generically named Multinational United is the military company tasked with relocating the slum based aliens (because surely no government wants to do it).  In both cases, someone from deep within this corporate atmosphere will penetrate the "underworld" and come to an understanding, and in both cases it's a privileged son (or son-in-law).  At the front, Freder and Wikus van de Merwe seem like they couldn't be more different.  Frederson is a playboy and van de Merwe is a schlub (who hasn't even the decency to have been born into his luck) but both men are fated to bridge the gap between two very different worlds.  It's no surprise given their strength or weakness of personality that Freder ventures down into the unknown because of passion and cunning.  Van der Merwe goes because he's told.

Hero/Villain

Both District 9 and Metropolis are burdened with heroes that we, the audience, aren't likely to want to identify with.  Metropolis gets around this by making its protagonist display the heroism and moral fortitude that we'd all like to believe we'd have given his situation.  He acts out of love and then out of common decency.  Van der Merwe is a stooge and when he grows a conscience it's only in the most extreme of situations, when he is forced to literally live in the skin of the "prawns" and witness the inhumanity toward them.  Perhaps because in modern times we simply can't believe a man of business would become a moral champion without being dragged into it kicking or screaming.  Perhaps it's because audiences no longer identify with unapologetic heroes (even superheros these days are painted with serious amounts of pathos and self-doubt).  However, no one wants to identify with a racist.  District 9 director Blomkamp cleverly provides us with a tough road to tolerance, making his aliens disgusting, unsettling, and violent creatures.  Van der Merwe does eventually capture our sympathies because we see in him, not immediate heroism, but the capacity to learn and change.  Our standards for heroism have changed in eighty years, or just gotten more realistic.  And eventually, Van der Merwe too acts out of love.

The original bio-technology

 It's interesting that while both men are eventually compelled by the injustices they see, there is always that underlying compulsion to attain or re-attain the woman they love.  Whether that's selfishness or not - well neither film is exactly a lesson in Ayn Rand Objectivisim.   Then again, the lesson of Metropolis isn't exactly "Comrades Unite!" either, though the juxtaposition of the workers and aristocrats isn't far from the Soviet revolution silents of that same period.  Instead the message is "The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart," a somewhat muddled and sentimental cry toward empathy all around.  Not so for District 9.  While our "good guy" situation may be murky, there are certainly bad guys and they must be defeated, through destruction if necessary.  In Metropolis the only villain set for destruction is the evil scientist Rotwang.  Even Frederson gets inexplicably redeemed.  In the time between the two films, one-dimensional heroes have made way for one-dimensional villains.  This makes it easier when the good guys win, if they win.  Unfortunately in that same amount of time, that conclusion has gotten much less inevitable.


Hope/Uncertainty

Metropolis ends on a pretty high note.  Foes are vanquished.  Love is founds.  Mutual respects are earned.  Societal breakdown is avoided.  At the end of District 9, what we're left with is hope.  We're presented with the possibility of an eventual happy ending.  When you think of the characters of District 9 in five or ten years, do you see a happy ending?  Chances are you haven't filled one in yet, and are hesitant to doing so.  This is because the filmmakers have us exactly where they want us.  For a movie influenced so strongly and apparently by the recent history of Apartheid in South Africa, it could never in good conscience end by the hands and the head meeting with the heart.  All is well.  Intolerance is defeated.  It has to present the struggle for equality as one with no end, just ongoing hope.  Curiously in this particularly pessimistic fable, the only real solution is the permanent separation of the human and alien class.  Metropolis certainly wasn't errant to suggest peaceful protest, but nearly a century later after war, corruption, holocaust and unending civil rights struggle, the idea may not play as well at the multiplex.  Even Fritz Lang eventually said "You cannot make a social-conscious picture in which you say that the intermediary between the hand and the brain is the heart. I mean, that's a fairy tale."

Metropolis is indeed a fairy tale.  That's one of the major differences between the two films and indicative of how the science fiction genre has evolved.  Metropolis is a big intentionally artificial stylized production with expressionist sets, wild dream sequences and eventually the Whore of Babylon running about.  It's not set in our reality but is a parable. District 9 is presented in a semi-documentary style, heavy on realism, going to lengths to redefine our history in a way we'll accept.  It thrives on its believability. It's worth noting that the high-concept of District 9 propelled it to surprise independent film success, although the backing Peter Jackson didn't hurt, nor did the action movie finale (which is why one must wonder if the film promotes just revolution as a social philosophy or a reason to get some explosions into the picture).  Metropolis's high concept on the other hand lead to political and critical controversy (enjoy this take down by dissenter H.G. Welles), highly edited, nearly incoherent versions.  Therein perhaps lies the main lesson in the comparison of these two films.  Anyone looking to stir up controversy today should tackle a subject other than the eternal, unresolvable struggle between the haves and have-nots.  Which may not necessarily be such a good sign of progress.  Because while we almost all now agree with the triumphantness of the statement, we've also accepted the inevitability of the premise.

By: Unknown On 15.00

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Distant Relatives: The Entertainer and The Wrestler

Robert here, with my series Distant Relatives, where we look at two films, (one classic, one modern) related through a common theme and ask what their similarities and differences can tell us about the evolution of cinema. 

Angry Old Men 

As a society we have such a strange relationship with celebrities.  We admire them and we despise them.  We love when they fail, embarrassing humiliation and then we promise to celebrate their comeback.   For the person who has actually attained fame, there's a good chance that that fame will come to an end before they do.  At some point society won't have a place for them anymore.  Filmmakers seem naturally attracted to the stories of these people since their world, for good or bad, is eternally rooted in the hype of fame.

Tony Richardson's The Entertainer and Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler are two outside-of-Hollywood films with two very outside-of-Hollywood subjects.  Archie Rice of the somewhat-forgotten (or at least under-loved) The Entertainer is an old music hall performer, a song and dance man in a world where rock and roll is the only song and dance anyone seems to care about any more.  His audience is small and unenthusiastic.  Randy the Ram's audience is enthusiastic.  He's got small crowds cheering for him every week as he makes the rounds of the local underground wrestling scene.  The audience cheers for blood and bruises.  They cheer for Randy out of nostalgia for a time when Randy had full arenas packed just to see him entertain.

See the Resurrection

Two men trying desperately to hold onto a time when they mattered, growing old, living paycheck to paycheck or not even.  At the start Randy seems to have a better deal.  He's at least part of a community (though most of his fellow underground wrestlers are young guys trying to get where he once was), he has a haunt in the local strip club and a tenuous connection with fellow over-the-hill dancer Cassidy.  Living in a trailer park isn't preferred but he plays with the local kids and he has people who cheer for him.  Archie Rice does not.  And while he can often be found throwing one or many back among laughing cohorts, it's an attempt to recapture the good old days and numb the present ones.  They are not really his friends.  Both men are estranged from their families with particular attention payed to their relationships with their daughters.  Archie's is sympathetic but disappointed.  Randy's is jaded.  The father/daughter relationship is often plastered with "daddy's little girl" cliches.  Maybe we're meant to think that here, or maybe not.  Certainly we're given a glimpse into what could be.

Naturally there's a comeback opportunity that is not to be.  It seems unfair to breeze over the big chance for these men but it's a foregone conclusion that it can never be.  The entertainment industry demands change or death and these men, so desperate to matter again, aren't evolving but trying to pull their worlds back into the past with them.  Then again, the evolution that the world demands of these men is far from ideal.  Archie's best prospects are in Canada where he has an opportunity to run a hotel.  For Randy it's the deli counter of his local grocer, waiting on grumpy, particular seniors.  It's no surprise that Randy chooses to put his health at risk to fulfill his comeback, just as Archie stakes his financial future and risk of prison time on his.  The choice that these men have really isn't a choice at all.

We Had Faces Then

There is one woman whose shadow looms large over these two men.  She is the patron saint of washed up performers, or perhaps since we're talking in terms of relatives, their mother.  Norma Desmond is the original doomed performer though she's a villain; as time goes on, these characters get more and more tuned to our sympathies.  Desmond is such a villain that her film needs a hero.  Archie Rice isn't a villain but he's quite hurtful to those who love him.  He's given up trying.  Randy the Ram too screws up and often, but we get the sense that he's trying, he just can't overcome his own nature.

Randy's likability and the severity of his ultimate fate presents us with the biggest emotional blow of any of these characters.  Perhaps as time goes on, these kinds of stories must get more painful to make us take notice.  Or perhaps writer Robert Siegel has noticed how fatalistic celebrity culture has become.  All three films inhabited by these characters end with a death.  Perhaps it's the death of hype, or old Hollywood or British reign (as has been speculated in the case of The Entertainer).  Either way, the past dies.  And so does the roar of the crowd.

By: Unknown On 13.00

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Distant Relatives: The Spirit of the Beehive and Pan's Labyrinth

Robert here, with my new series Distant Relatives, where we look at two films, (one classic, one modern) related through a common theme and ask what their similarities and differences can tell us about the evolution of cinema.

Érase una vez...

There was a young girl in the civil war-torn Spainish country, very alone in the world, her mother hung up with a new lover, all she had was the flights of often frightening fantasy brought on by amazing tales.  It is surprising the similarities between Victor Erice's 1973 Spirit of the Beehive and Guillermo Del Toro's 2006 Pan's Labyrinth.  Both have young raven-haired girls as protagonists.  Both take place in the same decade in the same country and ask how their protagonists can comprehend and cope with the danger and unrest of their very similar situations.  And in that, they are not surprising.  Artists have been musing at the inner lives of children in trouble since, well, forever.

Playing at death

Culturally we romanticize the lives of children.  We think back on a time devoid of responsibilities and filled with play and forget that the darkness we've come to accept as adults was still there and far more confusing to us, conflicting with the lessons our young selves are taught about a world made of order, not chaos. Because of this, childrens' lives are actually filled with more fear than adults.  But we selectively forget to include this in our nostalgia.  For both Beehive's Ana and Labyrinth's Ofelia, the fear presents itself in the form of civil war and rebellion, encounters with soldiers, good or bad, death an every day possibility.

Dangerous Fantasy

Neither Erice nor Del Toro are interested in happy, fluffy fairy tales.  Neither young girl escapes into a world of joy.  Ana's search for the Frankenstein monster, who she knows to be a child killer, and Ofelia's quest to prove her royalty by accomplishing a series of dangerous tasks, including encountering a child killing monster too, demonstrate how the dark imaginations of children can reflect their dark emotions and provide them with a route to comprehend their worlds in a way where they have some control over the outcome (whether that be doing something as bold as saving an infant or simple as bringing a coat to a soldier.)

Tales about the intersection of fantasy and reality are commonly interpreted as metaphors about the effect of cinema on our lives.  In the case of Ana, who is obsessing over a classic film, the connection is direct, no metaphor needed.  For Ofelia, her escapes serve as fine examples of the scary, visceral and otherworldly realities that fine horror and fantasy films (something about which Guillermo Del Toro knows a bit) can transport us too.  In both cases, they transport us far from our normal lives while providing a new emotional understanding of them.


But is it real?


As is sure to become a frequent theme in this series, the primary noticeable difference between our two films is one of degrees of intensity.  The Spirit of the Beehive is the more subtle one this time, with Ana encountering just one strange creature, but Ofelia an entire world.  Furthermore the violence in Spirit of the Beehive is always off camera where Pan's Labyrinth is rife with cringe worthy moments.  Does that mean that modern audiences demand more blood or at least less nuance?  Not necessarily, or at least not in this case.  With extreme violence more common in films these days than in the early 70's, Del Toro is using a tool at his disposal and finding a new breaking point for our discomfort.  Pan's Labyrinth may not be as violent as some modern horror films, but the contrast between the bloodshed and evil of the real world and the innocence and strangeness of Ofelia's world is effective.  Victor Erice takes the opposite approach, utilizing what we don't see and playing up to what we fear we may see to induce in us a response.  When the Frankenstein monster finally arrives, the moment is that much more grand because we're finally allowed into Ana's imagination.

More than just fantasy

One other difference between the films is Del Toro's insistence that the events of Pan's Labyrinth aren't fantasy at all but are, instead actually happening.  While it's possible that Erice means for us to really believe that Ana meets Frankenstein, it's most likely just her perception (though it is fun to read the film as if it's actually happening).  Yet it doesn't matter whether it's actually happening or not in the cases of Ana or Ofelia.  The reality of these films' worlds are defined by their heroes' perceptions, and we know that what we're seeing is true to that.  Considering the undercurrent symbolism of the effect of cinema, we know that we have ourselves to define what we're seeing, whether it's real or not, it's still happening to us.  And these things were indeed happening to Ana and Ofelia, two dark children in the darkest of times.

By: Unknown On 13.41

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Distant Relatives: Taxi Driver and One Hour Photo

Robert here, with my new series Distant Relatives, where we look at two films, (one classic, one modern) related through a common theme and ask what their similarities and differences can tell us about the evolution of cinema.

God's Lonely Men

When they tell what drew them so passionately to Paul Schrader's Taxi Driver script, Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro often cite the line "I am God's lonely man."  Equally, One Hour Photo director Mark Romanek has cited Taxi Driver as an influence in his desire to make a film about modern loneliness.  The reason movies like this work at all is rooted in how easily we, the viewer, can initially relate to the characters.  We all know loneliness.  We all feel loneliness.  In an odd way, that feeling of isolation is one thing that unites all people.  So when Travis Bickle or Sy Parrish go careening off the tracks, we may no longer relate, we may in fact be appalled, but just a little, we understand.

Both Bickle and Sy work customer service.  Anyone who ever has can understand the immediate distaste that both develop for mankind.  But different than working the register at your corner store, Travis and Sy get a particularly bold first-hand view at the worst in humanity; whores, dopers, junkies, amateur pornographers of all kinds (Sy recounts store policy in terms of animal abuse and child pornography with the familiarity of experience).  Sy and Travis see themselves as islands in a sea of filth.  So it's not surprising that they latch onto whatever example of goodness they can find, in the form of beautiful Betsy for Travis and the flawless Yorkin family for Sy.  Nor is it surprising that they both eventually take measures to lend importance to their lives by correcting just a bit of the vast imperfection they see in their world.

You Are What You Do 

A man takes a job, you know? And that job - I mean, like that - That becomes what he is. You know, like - You do a thing and that's what you are.

In an attempt to give him some words of wisdom, Bickle's friend Wizard drops on him perhaps the most depressing truth he could possibly think up.  Neither men, Travis nor Sy would end where they do if they didn't feel their complete insignificance in the world.  Travis needs to recognize that as a taxi driver, he could never be as powerful as say, a politician.  Sy, who longs to be "Uncle Sy" to the Yorkins is instead dubbed "Sy the Photo Guy."  He is merely what he does.  The suggestion by Mrs. Yorkin that they're considering switching to digital certainly can't make him feel good about his job or prospects.

So aware of their insignificance and rejected, sometimes painfully so, by those who have power over the life they desire, Sy and Travis spiral down into the territories that finally challenge our sympathies. Although to be fair, elements of their lives have been challenging our sympathies all along.  As soon as we see Sy's shrine to the Yorkins and as soon as Travis takes Betsy to an adult theater we understand that we should be concerned about these desperately irrelevant men.  Lucky for both of them, they encounter opportunities to improve their increasingly disappointing realities.

Grandiose Gestures

After their explosive crimes, Sy ends up punished, Travis celebrated.  In part this is because Taxi Driver has more to say about society, almost echoing the cynicism of it's main character where One Hour Photo is more of a one man psychological case study.  And because of this, we get something in the case of Sy Parrish that we do not get from Travis Bickle: closure.  Mad man Sy is caught by the police, the Yorkins become a family again, even Sy seems to have relieved himself of his personal demons, which are (furthering the closure) exposed to the audience.  In Sy's story we're left at the end.  For Travis, we're left with the promise that this will happen again.

So does that mean that modern audiences prefer films more cleanly resolved?  Perhaps.  But by the end of One Hour Photo Sy (particularly because of the revelation of his past) has become more sympathetic than Travis.  Between these two men, the wrong one is sent to jail.  This is another lesson of both films: there are no real happy endings.  Will Yorkin and young Iris may be safe but both lonely men are still alone, despite one moment of action that may have finally leant real meaning to their lives.

By: Unknown On 17.00

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Distant Relatives: The Deer Hunter and The Hurt Locker

Robert here, with my new series Distant Relatives, where we look at two films, (one classic, one modern) related through a common theme and ask what their similarities and differences can tell us about the evolution of cinema.  Two Best Picture winners for today.

Addictive Personalities

There are about as many themes and concepts explored by war films as there are war films.  Still, they can be generally be narrowed down to three types.  There are films about the physical toll of war (Saving Private Ryan), the mental toll of war (Apocalypse Now) and the spiritual toll of war (The Thin Red Line).  Both The Deer Hunter and The Hurt Locker fit into the second category, but they're special.  We're not talking about Colonel Kurtz level madness here.  In fact, we're not talking about madness at all.  What both films are most interested in is the "hook" of war, the adrenaline rush.  The Hurt Locker doesn't beat around the bush here.  It starts with the quote "for war is a drug" from Chris Hedges' essay "War is a force that gives us meaning."  The Deer Hunter and The Hurt Locker are about two men whose worlds were torn clean of meaning by the nihilism of war and then gifted with meaning by the rush of war.

There are a lot of surface similarities between the two films.  Both follow three men, one of whom sustains a physical injury, one of whom comes to the realization of his absent legacy back home and one of whom can't bring himself to leave the battlefield.  Interestingly enough, both films find the excesses, and sterilized nature of a grocery store an apt contrast between war and home.  But unlike most war films, neither The Deer Hunter nor The Hurt Locker are interested in traditional extended battle scenes. The emphasis instead is on moments that feature the slow build of suspense, eventually the release of survival. 

Game of Chance

Other films have dabbled in the idea that soldiers find themselves compelled to return to or remain in war.  Yet few films can really make us understand why that is.  But a speech given late in The Hurt Locker by Sargeant James to his son makes it pretty clear.  There is only one thing left that he loves.  Why?  Because he's good at it... very good.  He's dismantled eight hundred and seventy three bombs successfully.  But can the same be said of The Deer Hunter's Nick?  Certainly his endeavors into Russian roulette yield enough money to send wads and wads back to his friends.  In this case, skill may not be required, but the exhalation of winning and living is still the same. It's that exhalation that seems to have made the lasting difference.  Even Sgt. James box of souvenirs that almost killed him aren't there to remind him that he almost died.  They're there to remind him that he lived.



What back home can compete with such an experience?  Is it hard to believe that the enhanced reality of facing death daily and surviving is preferable to a reality of not facing death at all?  The idea of enhanced reality in both films (and many war films in fact) suggests that normal feelings just don't cut it any more. There is a sense in  that the characters have been numbed and require over-stimulation to feel again.  This is perhaps why Nick self-injures, or why the men of Operation Liberty punch each other for fun.


Welcome to the Soldiers' Side

One of the primary differences between The Deer Hunter and The Hurt Locker is rooted in the influence of outside social factors.  In 1978 making an anti-Vietnam film wasn't exactly a bold statement. But in 2009, The Hurt Locker opened after a long line of anti-Iraq films that were received coolly by a divided public.  The film dodged controversy by focusing not on the question of the moral righteousness of war but simply on it's effect on soldiers.  Contrastingly, the 70's cultural climate gave Michael Cimino such a free hand to declare the Vietnam war wrong, some viewers felt he overdid it, specifically by inventing the factually inaccurate device of North Vietnamese soldiers forcing prisoners into Russian roulette games. Still, the protesters outside were not enough to keep the film from winning Best Picture.

While it's hard to make an argument that subtlety is making a comeback, these two films, each in their respective political climate are a lesson in the softening touch of a message.  Could you imagine The Hurt Locker closing with a sad rendition of "God Bless America?"  Equally it shows far less of the characters' home lives than The Deer Hunter (which it needs for the most extreme possible contrast).  Nick's mental state is far more deteriorated than Sgt James', and his end is far more dramatic. But in addition to the political climate, you could argue that in the thirty years between the films, audiences have broadened their scope and definition of what constitutes the meaningful effect of war on its participants.  So as it becomes more difficult to deliver an overt anti-war message it becomes easier to display the subtleties of its lasting impact.

There is one more important distinction is perhaps the difference between a film about a war that's ended, where Nick's fate is known and one that has not, where Sgt. James' fate is up to you or me.  The Deer Hunter tells us how things ended.  The Hurt Locker asks us to wonder how we'd like things to end.

By: Unknown On 17.00

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Distant Relatives: Citizen Kane and There Will Be Blood

Robert here, with the inaugural post of my new feature: Distant Relatives, where we look at two films, (one classic, one modern) related through a common theme and ask what their similarities and differences can tell us about the evolution of cinema.

What has become of the American entrepreneur?

There are many reasons why we're drawn to tales of industrialists, inventors and entrepreneurs.  For starters, their influence is almost inescapable.  Tales about them are vis-a-vis tales about us and the world in which we live.  If we don't see theirs as stories about what we are, then surely they're stories about what we'd like to be, that ever elusive American dream that we want to achieve, and their eventual corruption and fall from grace (common in movies, not in reality) gives our schadenfreude a nice shot of adrenaline.  Films like Citizen Kane and There Will Be Blood play out an examination of a complex relationship between the psychology of an individual and the sociology of the world that loves and hates them, and at times we see ourselves as both.

Downhill from here.

Charles Foster Kane and Daniel Plainview are both men of their times (by that I mean their films' times).  Kane is a representative of media influence growing in a world that was shrinking where a "journalist" moving into politics no longer seems even remotely strange.  Men like Kane ran the world.  Not to be outdone, Plainview, ambitious industrialist, rules in a place where the power is split between his business of oil and the business of God.  Notice how the town of Little Boston seems to have no mayor, council or politicians?  In fact the only men with any power are Plainview and preacher Eli Sunday (both of whom come with a slate of political promises).

Success. Betrayal. Abandonment.

"I will provide the people of this city with a daily paper that will tell all the news honestly. I will also provide them with a fighting and tireless champion of their rights as citizens and as human beings."                                                 

Charles Kane comes with his promises too, though once he passes the point of misanthropic no return, somewhere between "it would be fun to run a newspaper" and people will believe "what I tell them to" we don't get to hear, nor care much about what those specific promises may be.  The only important ones are his youthfully optimistic "Declaration of Principles."  We know they'll eventually be abandoned.  Beware businessmen who fancy themselves champions of the people.  Plainview's promises on the other hand, of roads, schools and bread seem to be fulfilled, or at least there's no indication that they're not and in what might be his most humanistic moment, he wields his power to stop the abuse of the Sunday children.  Is it possible that Plainview's symbiotic relationship with his constituents yields greater results than Kane's supposed charitable one?

It's surprising how similarly the paths of Kane and Plainview develop.  Both begin with a stroke of luck, in Plainview's case, striking black gold, for Kane a rich foster father.  From there it's right down to business where both are intensely good at what they do and have little to fear from competition.  Their first real encounter with reality comes courtesy a supposedly uncontrollable event (the death of a political career and the injury of a child) that amplifies their fears, flaws and inability to control their world.  With their lack of power exposed, the next deterioration comes in the form of betrayal by a long time friend or trusted "sibling" emphasizing a reality in which absolutely no one can be trusted. The final blow is the abandonment of a loved one who can no longer bear their dominating presence, leaving them alone with their worthless success.  The subsequent outburst of violence by our entrepreneurs acts as one last attack against a world that they can no longer claim absolute dominion over.


The capacity to kill

Now we come to the real major split in the paths of Kane and Plainview.  Kane's violent attack is directed toward his house, his possessions, his makeshift prison.  His relent comes with the sad admission that he cannot attain the love that he's always wanted.  He's failed and he knows it.  Plainview's outburst however is not directed so inwardly.  He rages against his competition for power.  Plainview succeeds.  We don't know what comes after the credits roll, but it's almost impossible to read his statement of "I'm finished!" as a concession of regret or submission.  In fact it might be a declaration of his own perceived victory.  

Baptism didn't help.

So how did we get from stubborn regret to defiant murder?  There's an important step between Kane and Plainview in the form of Michael Corleone.  Corleone, who had his own fair share of youthful optimism, betrayal and abandonment, displays the same moral character as Plainvew but the same recognition of loss as Charles Kane.  So the more recent evolutionary step hasn't been the "hero's" transformation into a killer but the development of his self-defined triumph."  The question becomes: can we accept that a bad person doesn't get their just desserts?  Certainly there's no real sense of joy at the downfall of Kane and Corleone, but at least a sense of justice.  There's a satisfaction.  In the case of Daniel Plainview, the only conclusion we're left with is his own perception of success... so justice no longer matters.

Hallucinogenic reality

As a final contrast between Citizen Kane and There Will Be Blood, consider what each film's structure says about it's subject.  Citizen Kane is a mystery, a puzzle, where pieces must be found and assembled in order to eventually reveal the person that is Charles Kane.  Structurally, There Will Be Blood isn't a puzzle.  Everything shown is chronological and straight forward.  But the high-contrast cinematography and anachronistic music present Plainview's life as something of a bizarre hallucinogenic experience, slightly elevated above what we perceive as normal reality.  When you consider how society regards its movers and shakers, we're no longer really interested in what makes them tick as much as we are in the details of the strange worlds they inhabit.

Of course, there's no limit to the number of cinematic entrepreneurs that the medium has produced over the decades.  The discussion should include more than Charles Kane, Daniel Plainview and Michael Corleone.  But what seems to never fade is our fascination with how their quest and success for the American dream drives them to sorrow or vice or madness.  What hasn't changed is the sense that one must abandon themselves if they want to be great, and to some extent it's true, and intriguing how many people still line up to board that particular train.  Is There Will Be Blood evidence that we don't expect justice any more?  Not necessarily, but keep an eye on the stories of these men in the future to see if their fate is presented as important as the frailty that got them there.
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By: Unknown On 18.00

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