The Revenant (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2015)

Iñárritu is a unabashedly simplistic filmmaker, and he knows that to be true so he covers up his inability to say anything of profundity with showmanship. Emmanuel Lubezki is his perfect partner, because like Iñárritu his images over-compensate, and at two and a half hours their abilities begin to wear thin, and what you have is two filmmakers grasping at how to reign in a film that has fallen completely out of their control. In a way it is fitting that their intentions to make The Revenant as realistic as possible left both men lost in the woods of their own ideas.

And those ideas remain simplistic as well. The Revenant attempts to channel something evocative of Apocalypse Now, but it isn't nearly as complicated as Coppola's dense war picture. The Revenant is a simple moral tale of revenge. When Iñárritu goes for narrative beats he cannot help but make distinctly clear these are the good guys and the bad guys. Instead of complicating his characters he fashions one of them as a murderer with no redeeming qualities whatsoever- that would be Tom Hardy in yet another role where he, like Iñárritu shows his lack of ability by overperforming in every possible scene. But the tale of revenge isn't the only idea stewing in Iñárritu's pot of shit. He also wants you to know about the plight of Native Americans so he tacks on a plot about a chief's daughter being taken by a group of white men and then refuses to elaborate further on that story. There is also man against nature which is probably the most interesting of these threads that barely make up a movie, but Iñárritu knows no delivery other than sledgehammer obviousness so everything is made out to be cold and brutal, as much of a nightmare as the bloodstained corpses is the fact that there is no escaping the grip of death through the frost. It functions as a metaphor, but has all the grace of a series of Game of Thrones scenes featuring the always dull Jon Snow.

Poor Leonardo DiCaprio turns his body into Iñárritu's clay and is met with the violence inherent in the man's cinema. However, DiCaprio is much too boyish and iconic to pull off a role of this "toughness". He squints, grunts and screams his way through visceral terror for a man who is giving him nothing back. If he does win an Academy Award for this role we will hopefully be blessed with the sense that one of our greatest actors no longer has to make himself a martyr for cinema- poor cinema at that.

The Revenant contains one good sequence, and it is at the beginning of the film and the selling point of the trailer. Lubezki and Iñárritu finally coalesce into something memorable with tracking shots that closely resemble the final confrontation in Children of Men, but once the film slows down, and DiCaprio has to trudge through the snow, to crawl to his vengeance, the film becomes tiresome. A series of punishments, and a resolution that finds one man calling another man's son a girl. God bless masculinity.

Winchester '73 (Anthony Mann, 1950)

 

 A close-up of a rifle laying on the ground panning up to reveal the bodies that lay before that altar of the West, and the future of the United States of America.

 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015)

The Force Awakens could more appropriately be called A New Hope, but not just for the fact that the plot follows many of the same beats and narrative trajectory as the film everyone fell in love with from the seventies, but because The Force Awakens has granted a generation that grew up on the notoriously hated prequels the optimism to believe in Star Wars again. In many ways, The Force Awakens is merely an introduction, and an attempt at a palette cleanse by going back to the basics of what made the original trilogy beloved in the first place, and for the most part J.J. Abrams and company succeed. The Force Awakens isn't the only film to use familiar imagery and plotting of a previously beloved picture to kickstart a new franchise this year. 2015 has given us both good (Creed) and bad (Jurassic World) examples, and while The Force Awakens isn't as successful as Creed at recontextualizing a franchise around new characters of different genders and races it adequately introduces a more diverse Star Wars that feels fresh by opening up their universe a bit to extend beyond a faultless white male protagonist.

Ultimately these new characters makes this installment of Star Wars worthwhile, because they offer a new wrinkle on old ideas. Finn (Jon Boyega), Rey (Daisey Ridley) and Poe (Oscar Isaac) are introduced with such confidence that these characters already feel iconic and stand alongside the old guard (Solo, Leia, Chewbacca) admirably. Finn is a former stormtrooper who cannot abide by a fascist state, Rey is a farmgirl scrapping for parts to put enough food on her table to make it to the next day, and Poe is a fast talking ace fighter pilot. All three get a potentially iconic moment of introduction, Finn's Stormtrooper helmet covered in blood, Rey cave diving (the films only effective 3D moment) and Poe's confident back and forth with R2D2 replacement droid BB-8, but it is Finn's that introduces the newest idea to the franchise that links the prequels and original trilogy in a fascinating way. The blood on the helmet is such a simple, perfect image that it conveys the real sense of violence in this regime. Later on, it is mentioned that the stormtroopers are brainwashed children who have grown up to die for The First Order. This ties back into the Clones in film number two, and while I'm unsure if they ever intend on asking the philosophical questions of a Stormtrooper's innocence, and the nature of war it is something of far more depth than this film often presents. Woefully, this is as far as it goes so it almost renders that potentially loaded image as mute.

There is also Kylo Ren, at once both a stand in for Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader, and the trickiest role to pull off of the new characters. The riskiest bit of writing in The Force Awakens comes by the way of taking inspiration from the prequels and making Kylo Ren a figure who is being torn apart by a decision, much in the same way Anakin Skywalker was in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Ren mopes, he explodes at any little thing going wrong, and he is deeply insecure about his abilities. He talks to a Darth Vader helmet, and wishes he could be like the legend. It's all embarrassing, but Adam Driver flourishes in these complexities that on the surface could singlehandedly sink this revival. Driver is working on a level that no one else even touches. Isaac, Ridley and Boyega are all enthusiastic about being in Star Wars, and it shows through effervescent reading of the dialogue, and if Driver were to take the same path his performance would be hammy, but instead Driver comes off as complicated, which is something those other three characters lack at the moment.

J.J. Abrams has also never been better. His employment of crane and tracking shots throughout the aerial combat sequences is some of the finest in the series, and through all of this action he doesn't lose sight of the image. While my screening was compromised by the background neutralization of the image it was easily identifiable that Abrams was working with a concentrated effort to make this film beautiful. Some of his choices get lost once the plot has to be engaged, and the next film set-up, but credit where credit is due, there are a bevy of striking, emotional compositions throughout The Force Awakens most notably of which involve Rey flying a vehicle across the sandy plains of Jukka with the fallen imperial ship in the background, and a long shot of an embrace between two characters in mourning while the rest of the world celebrates. Both of these images contain depth and resonance, one being the other side of war, and another being the image of the film- a rebirth, a new dawn.

From time to time The Force Awakens falls under the weight of obligation by having to set up the next film. Too often plots are given simple resolutions and the more interesting aspects of this film are sidelined to tackle the singular goal of destroying the Nu-Death Star, complete with Triumph of the Will imagery in one of the films more cringe-worthy moments. Jogging to get to the next plot point never really gives anything the space to breathe in the final third, and the fact that all of our heroes except Poe are attached to a separate far more interesting plot makes the conclusion feel unbalanced. A lightsaber fight in the snow with our main hero and villain is going to be more interesting than the side quest 100% of the time. If there is also intention on giving layering to the stormtroopers as brainwashed innocents then the ra-ra victory of destroying them unequivocally means that this ending is not one of pure celebration. There simply has to be more dissection if that is going to be introduced, and to ignore that is to dishonour that original writing for Finn. Star Wars, was after all supposed to be in some effect a response to the Vietnam War as stated in the Making of Star Wars, and to render that idea in such an unexplored fashion makes me squeamish about the body count. Is this then just a war spectacle if we aren't even going to examine that idea? I'm willing to give it a pass for now since this is the first chapter of three, but that plot point lingers afterward much stronger than anything that gave a thrill. As Star Wars moves forward, it is in my deepest hopes that some of these flaws are cleared up. The hardest part is already out of the way, and that was to gain our trust, which I think The Force Awakens easily achieves.

Female FIlmmaker Project: Joanna Arnow: Cinema of Herself

"It seems so shallow"

"You are so self involved"

These two phrases pop up in Joanna Arnow's Bad at Dancing and i Hate Myself :), which begs the question is Joanna Arnow a self-indulgent filmmaker and is that a bad thing? Arnow is at the subject of each of her films, both behind the camera, and in front of it, and her lens functions as a way to release her own anxieties about herself out into the world. These could easily be called vanity projects, but Arnow isn't a filmmaker of minimal self-obsession. She is a self assured publisher of personal cinema that unleashes a torrent of inward complexity that marks her as a unique voice in a currently overstuffed cinematic climate.

Joanna Arnow's voice is singular. There are many screenwriters and directors who tread some of the same ground as Arnow, like Lena Dunham, and Greta Gerwig, and many of the one size fits all men of the mumblecore scene, but none of these voices are as difficult to pin down as Arnow.  Dunham, far too often goes for self inflicted humour that contains no long-lasting bite, and Gerwig is a sentimentalist at heart, but Arnow presents herself in a fashion that has no preconceived notions of whether or not she is pleasing. She just is. That alone is a maximizing quality that would lift even the most banal filmmakers, but Arnow is not banal. She is exciting, because she is unpredictable, uncomfortable, and unpolished in a very real way.

Her first feature, i Hate Myself :) is especially impressive as she asks herself the question "Is my relationship with my boyfriend healthy?". What is initially a portrait of her aggressive, oftentimes drunk, racist boyfriend becomes a portrait of herself, and her film works as therapy. Her editor (who does his job completely naked) asks her difficult questions about herself, and her relationship. He is a phallic therapist who doesn't mince words with Joanna. ("Do you like it when he degrades you? I think you do".) Joanna has no concrete answer for that question, and while it is obvious that her boyfriend James could very well spell trouble for Joanna she never quite lets go of her relationship. The audience at any point is likely screaming for her to run as far away as possible, but Arnow isn't asking for our approval. She just presents herself, lets us make up our minds, and then she chooses her own path regardless of what we may think, and that's bold. The final moments contrast in emotionally difficult ways that complicate her filmmaking, and leaves the viewer at a loss at how exactly one should feel. There is a level of fearlessness in that kind of craft, and while the documentary aspect of the film makes the ending inevitable, the fact that she never once softened her story only further proves her guile as a filmmaker.

In Bad at Dancing, Joanna Arnow is once again presenting herself, but this time she is fictionalized to a degree. She is essentially playing herself, as her mannerisms, speech patterns and behaviour mirror her real self in i Hate Myself :) . Bad at Dancing is a little difficult to watch at times, but the escalation of tension in her previous film is replaced with awkward humour set around the staging of her body in any given scene. The most significant of these jokes happens in the bedroom of her best friend and her boyfriend where she insists on interjecting herself in their most intimate sexual activities. Arnow never asks to participate in sex, but she wants to be close to them at all times. Her body is consistently framed a bit to the left or right of the centre of the frame and the subject of Arnow's images is more frequently the roommates that she is making uncomfortable. Even when her best friend begins to play a song on guitar to try and capture an older moment of sisterly bonding Joanna can't help but interject or cause the moment to stop. Her body, her voice, her actions are always fracturing the frame. She is terrified of losing her best friend, and that makes the situation humorous, because Joanna Arnow, the character, cannot help but get in her own way. Surely enough the film ends with her alone, touching herself as her friends go to have sex in another room. It is an image of deep introspection. Arnow's body, much like her anxieties and quirks are on display. No rules. She will use all of herself. She carries the same attitude in her direction. She is Tina Belcher with a movie camera willing to put every single aspect of her life into her work of personal cinema.

Female Filmmaker Project: Hotel Monterey (Chantal Akerman, 1972)

In Chantal Akerman's previous short film La Chambre she experimented with big ideas on the nature of cinema and what constitutes as narrative in spaces. She takes that idea to its logical endpoint in Hotel Monterey. Monterey is a film made up mostly of static observational shots on the people who reside in a run down hotel in New York City. Hotel Monterey is rigorous to say the least, but there are these pockets of narrative surrounding the residents and the all encompassing oppressive look of the hotel is very deliberate in creating a specific feeling of dread. In my previous review for Hotel Monterey I likened the film to a thesis on the idea of a home, and how hotels are inherently these soulless institutions, because they are rarely the home of anyone. They exist only to be a substitute of the warmth that comes from having a home so Akerman's filmmaking feels ghostly and cold. I still think that's very present in Hotel Monterey as my ideas on what hotels represent hasn't changed in the last year, but what has changed is my understanding of why exactly this film connects with me so deeply.

On a more basic level Hotel Monterey is simply about documentation, but the word simple never really conveys the maximal qualities of Chantal Akerman. This hotel is seemingly falling apart, the hallways look like they've been beaten down, white paint has turned yellow over the years, and rooms have garish furniture, but Akerman uses these tools to create a portrait. Her documentaries in this mode (Monterey, D'est, South) are in some way or another about the people who wander into her lens, but they are just as much about the rooms they occupy, and the images they end up creating in those rooms. One such image is that of a woman sitting in solitude with her back to the camera. It could be an image from any one of her movies, but this is the first time Chantal Akerman has used that picture. She is interested in how women, especially, occupy space over time. She brought this idea to perfection in Jeanne Dielman, but the women of Chantal Akerman's films could star in any of her movies with little changes in substitution. Chantal Akerman makes Chantal Akerman movies and her movies feel like something primal in my very soul.

There is one image (it is the first screencap in this post) that I had forgotten about, but upon seeing it again brought out an internal pang of loneliness inside of my body. The pregnant woman in clear view who shines in perfection through the grime of the hallway walls. The door and the angular framing position her as a focal point and bring an image of deep blues and whites to contrast with her humanity. She seems so very far away though, there is no close-up, Akerman would hardly ever move the camera in this film so this is the only image we get. The only glimpse of her narrative and her life is this hallway, and her body piercing the frame and so clearly it ruptured the entire film for me on an emotional level. This image came along on the recent news that scientists believe trans women may be able to get pregnant within the next five years. I latch onto that glimmer of hope, and see this idea of who I want to be, and what I want my future to look like and Akerman's cinema gives me an image of a pregnant woman within reach. Akerman's cinema has always felt as if it has evolved around my mental state whenever I decide to watch one of her films, and that one example has left me in a state of bittersweet devastation upon coming into contact.

However, there is a deep irony in that image of the pregnant woman as it contrasts so severely with the rest of the picture. While the pregnant woman represents a semblance of life or a future the majority of the images in Hotel Monterey show a barren existence. Akerman spends the majority of time on the emptiness. There's no sound, no life, just a bit of reflected light bouncing off the walls and showing these blank dead doors and the lack of a subject within. Even when people are front and centre to the camera, like in the elevator sequence at the beginning of the picture, they'll often move out of the way of the frame as to not get in the way of whatever it is Akerman was shooting. This assumption that whatever it is Akerman was filming was more interesting than that person is unsettling, because even when Akerman was pointing the camera into dead space the people of Hotel Monterey would resist the camera and the idea of becoming the subject of her movie. In that way the humans of this hotel more closely resemble ghosts slipping in and out of frame and hardly effecting it in one way or another. The only people in the film who remain corporeal are the pregnant woman, the woman in the chair and the singular man, who we know almost nothing about. His face is eerie, and in some ways he could also be a ghost.

When Akerman finally does move the camera it is after nearly forty minutes of immobility, but it's so slow and unsure of movement that it more closely resembles being sucked into the hotel itself at first. It is another simple camera movement, like the reverse of direction in La Chambre, that emphasizes her great attention to detail over time. When she shifted her mode of storytelling she began to more visibly move upward through the hotel rather than linger on the walls. It is in these final moments when she reaches the rooftops that she finally reaches New York City, the skyline is pearl, the city is just waking up, and the traffic is already building, it seems peaceful. It seems like at once an afterlife and a home. A new dawn brings light through the dreary hotel and maybe it's residents will call this city their home. For Chantal Akerman she found a hotel, her first of many.

Female Filmmaker Project: La Chambre (Chantal Akerman, 1972)

A ragged apartment is explored by a cinematic eye as a camera turns 360 degrees to explore every corner of a living space. None of the objects move, and the question of subject is deliberated by audience and instinctual camera movement. The only thing that changes in the chamber is a woman, presumably the owner of the house, who sits on a bed, stares at the camera and eats an apple. The woman is Chantal Akerman, and she is wrangling with the very ideas of how cinema functions in this avant-garde short. 

Unlike her first film, Saute Ma Ville, there isn't a narrative in La Chambre, and Akerman has begun to twist away from conventional cinematic goals into something both entirely her own, and daringly experimental. In La Chambre, Akerman asks many questions and none of them have explicit answers, but the function of the movie is to get the viewer to think of how they view cinema as a narrative art-form and how we latch onto any tidbits of information that may move a story forward. Akerman has consistently been concerned with stillness in her movies, and how that plays into realism (look at the opening third of Je, Tu, Ill, Elle for example), and La Chambre's only progression is how this singular woman moves, otherwise objects are at rest. But Akerman is just as interested in those resting objects, and her camera makes a point to frame household items such as chairs, an oven, and a dishwasher with the same priority she frames herself. The framing is meticulous, but never boring, and the images never dull due to the function of the camera's constant movement. By placing the camera in a 360 degree pan she's asking audience members to observe how the objects change, even if they don't. The only changes to the objects are in the lighting, and it's only slight, but this is something we must view, because the camera demands their importance with the same centered framing as the subject (the woman). Something interesting happens after the first couple courses around the room though- the camera reverses course as if on audience instinct to move towards the woman. The curious thing about this is why that was needed and what Akerman is saying about narrative subjects. She's just as calm as the chair we've already seen twice. Her movement isn't any more fascinating than how the light reflects off of a wall, but the camera is pulled to her, because she moves. Each repetitive movement of the camera becomes tighter and tighter until the camera keeps the woman in frame for the better part of a minute, but she remains listless as she devours an apple. When the camera finally realizes there is nothing to see here the lens pulls away from her again and the movie ends. What was the subject? Is a subject even needed to produce cinema? These questions aren't definitely answered, but explored and beg to be analyzed by viewers.

La Chambre is just the beginning of Chantal Akerman questioning how cinema functions, and offers a glimpse into more of her instinctive techniques as a filmmaker. While, Saute Ma Ville, may have been an introduction to her feminist themes La Chambre offers more in the way of what we've come to know as Chantal Akerman's form. The attention to space and how movement effects image and narrative were brought to full light in Hotel Monterey, and in that way La Chambre sometimes feels like a test run for a fuller picture, but the attention to objects, rooms and the people within them would be of fascination to Chantal Akerman throughout her career all the way up through Almayer's Folly, where she finally sought freedom from interior spaces. The interior lives of women can be seen in her first two films as well, even if La Chambre rejects any traditional narrative filmmaking technique, and positions Akerman as a subject in her films. Akerman's resolute attention to portraying women came first through portraying herself. By questioning cinema and distancing her filmmaking from a popular narrative mode she gained a reputation as a difficult filmmaker, but she's inviting you into her worlds and into herself, even if whatever she's doing is simple, such is the case in La Chambre.

you can watch La Chambre on youtube here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AGakyb3eBU

Female Filmmaker Project: Saute Ma Ville (Chantal Akerman, 1968)

"Saute Ma Ville is the mirror image of Jeanne Dielman"
-Chantal Akerman

In Jeanne Dielman there is a woman who lives her life through rituals. She cooks and cleans every single day. It's mechanical, perfectly shaped and fills her life with purpose. When there are slight breaks in those tasks the woman of that film begins to fracture. Jeanne Dielman shows a structure to live in. Saute Ma Ville seeks to destroy those structures.

Saute Ma Ville is a phoenix film. It is destroying the old guard to bring life to a new generation. In this case it is the women of the 1960s not wishing to live the types of lives their mothers, aunts and grandmothers were forced to endure. While Jeanne Dielman is a more radical statement by tapping into the mental state of women and delivering a portrait of time and procedure Saute Ma Ville is more like a blunt instrument. The title even infers a simple act of destruction: "Blow Up My Town". In that respect Chantal Akerman's first film feels similar to the energy and exuberance of Vera Chytilova's Daisies, but Akerman's technique is different and entirely her own, even if Daisies and Saute Ma Ville are sisters in arms.

Chantal Akerman was only 18 when she made this film, but her filmmaking is already developed. Her insistence on framing around tight spaces and entering into the mindset of specific characters is present, and she is adept at capturing poignant moments of singularity- a recurring theme throughout her entire career. The parallelism of her camera to her characters is one of her trademarks and in Saute Ma Ville it strengthens Akerman's chaotic turn as an implosion. Her camera is energetic which contrasts heavily with the work she would do in New York a few years later (the work her reputation as a difficult filmmaker is built upon), but the excess of movement calls for what she wants to convey. Her character is a blitzkrieg and can never stay still for more than a couple of seconds so the camera follows her. Her voice echoes over the images in a lilting, angelic humming that clashes with the violent nature of the acts she is committing to totems of femininity of the past. The brooms are broken, the lotion is everywhere and the soap is on the floor. Everything is out of place, because it must be to start anew, and Akerman's zipping camera work personifies her character with resolute confidence.

Chantal Akerman stars in this picture, and in her own words she's a Charlie Chaplin-esque kind of character whenever she is in her own movies, this one included. Akerman is jovial, singing, a smile forever attached to her face as she moves around the kitchen knocking anything in her path to the floor. This is a death dance, but instead of being somber it is celebratory, because the end of this prison is liberating for Chantal and speaks to a larger theme on the kitchen as a woman's place. In 1968 Saute Ma Ville could also easily be seen as an oncoming storm, a film that literally represents the dawning of second wave feminism. When Chantal writes in lotion on a mirror with her hands "IT'S ALL OVER" she doesn't mean her life, she means the past. When she finally kills herself on top of an oven in the final frames of the short she's destroying the idea that a kitchen is a woman's place while also damning the kitchen as a place of life lost for those women who toiled away in that confined space. The women Chantal watched growing up, and the women she'd make movies about for the rest of her career.

As a first statement Chantal Akerman came out of the gates swinging with a rough snapshot of feminist thought. She'd never accept those queer or feminist labels that are key to her work, but I believe she was absolutely aware of the type of cinema she was making. She wouldn't return to this type of work again until 1974 with Je, Tu, Il, Elle and her filmmaking acumen would evolve as she was introduced to experimental cinema, but as it stands Saute Ma Ville is an interesting first chapter for one of the great filmmakers and an introduction to everything Akerman would give the world.