Think About It! (Even Though It's a Rom-Com?)

Just because it’s a romantic comedy doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think about it a little after you’re done digesting the popcorn. I don’t mean sit there and ponder the natures of the characters; it is a romantic comedy, not a Jane Austen novel. But you should never just take a film for granted. Every film has expectations of its audience. Even rom-coms.

Sometimes those expectations are based around formulas we could recite in our sleep: A meets B, A falls for B, B presents some sort of obstacle to A, A overcomes obstacle, A marries / has a significantly romantic scene with B…of course there are modulations that you could make a case for…A’s weird, lovable best friend, the awkward ex-boy/girlfriend of A, etc., etc.

But it’s easy to forget that sometimes these films also tell us other things. One of my favorite examples is 50 First Dates, the 2004 film starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. The plot focuses on Henry Roth (Sandler) and his attempts to woo Lucy Whitmore (Barrymore), who suffers from a severe case of anterograde amnesia. This happens…as the title suggests…upwards of 50 times over 90 minutes.

But it’s clearly just another Hollywood confection, right? There couldn’t possibly be anything…er…“thoughtful” or “serious” about it…right?!

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In an earlier post regarding the HBO film Too Big To Fail, I touched on the dangers of inaccurate representation in films that profess to be either factual or informative. The case, however, extends to fictive works as well. While it’s safe to say that no one walked out of 50 First Dates thinking that they witnessed some sort of bizarrely-filmed documentary or screen adaptation of a “true story,” people certainly walked out of the theater with a conception of the processes of amnesia and how it affects people in the real world.

Maybe your run-of-the-mill neuroscientist shrugged off the simplistic science and walked away with medical knowledge intact. But I doubt that every moviegoer was blessed with ten years of med-school and subscriptions to Psych journals. (Because I would count those as blessings?) Anterograde amnesia, as it turns out, is a lot more complicated than what director Peter Segal bothers to show in 50 First Dates.

Roth (Sandler) woos Whitmore (Barrymore) for the umpteenth time; via reelingreviews.com

Firstly, anterograde amnesia (inability to form new memories) is often accompanied by retrograde amnesia (inability to remember the past). But even that does not address core issues like the dichotomy between declarative and procedural memory and, within the realm of declarative memory, the dichotomy between semantic and episodic memory.

Procedural memory is the ability to form long-term memories surrounding repeated actions, in other words, the ability to form and remember new motor skills. Declarative memory is what we typically recognize as memory: I ate tuna salad for dinner, Barack Obama is the President of the U.S., Jane Austen is fantastic (second name drop for those counting). Declarative memory is divided into semantic and episodic memory; episodic relating to specific personal experience and semantic which might be loosely qualified as “general knowledge.” This kind of memory is memory that remains untagged by personal experience. (Do you remember when/where/how you learned what rain was? Probably not…)

But the film sweeps all these concepts and subtle gradations under the rug. Of course it’s a film and I don’t expect it to be my psych textbook. It would be absurd to expect art to conform to any kind of standard in the sense of conveying good science or political theory or police methodology. That’s not what I’m after. Rather, I’m after a standard for viewership. I’d like to see people stop and think about retrograde amnesia—not just how cute it is in terms of the film or, worse still, unconsciously perceive it as an acceptable source of knowledge about amnesia.

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But the real kicker of an example? Just Like Heaven.

Just Like Heaven, the 2005 film starring Mark Ruffalo and Reese Witherspoon, follows the tempestuous relationship between landscape architect David Abbott (Ruffalo) and the what-appears-to-be-the-ghost of Elizabeth Masterson (Witherspoon), the former resident of Abbott’s apartment. I add the whole unfunny appears-to-be-ghost bit, because, in fact, the “ghost” is more like the roaming “soul” of Masterson, whose body is still very much alive and in a coma at the local hospital. (Returning to our formula…A meets B, obstacle between A and B…and… overcoming that obstacle?…“Of course!” says the writer. “We can’t let them pull the plug on her body! She’s not dead! She only seems like a vegetable! Her spirits right there! Don’t…no! …don’t…do…it!!!”) Abbott stops the hospital from pulling the plug and witnesses the revival of Masterson. (A little memory loss in this story too! (before they fall back into love))

via impawards.com

In the end, I think the film (and the novel from which it was adapted) is mostly just fun. (Some of the more amusing bits you’ll find in the trailer below.) But upon recognizing the anti-euthanasia views of the film, the fun, romantic spirit seems not so innocent. The romantic comedy has engineered a bizarre twist; by incorporating euthanasia into the film, the genre rules and expectations have nullified and depoliticized notions of euthanasia. How did that happen?

Sometimes I bring up the example of this film and people scoff at the idea, thinking that I attribute this anti-euthanasia message to the writers and director. Far from it! I don’t think the creators were at all intentional in the way they portrayed euthanasia in the film. (It may have occurred to them, but I doubt it was an angle they actively pursued.) Instead, I think that the plot represents the way in which certain genres and art forms are capable of rearranging notions of heated political issues like euthanasia and, to a certain extent, shift public views of serious mental illnesses. We need to always keep our friends A + B in mind when watching formula films—there may be serious ideas lurking under the surface.

See more:

"Anterograde amnesia." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia

Review of Codes and Keys - Death Cab for Cutie

It’s safe to say that Death Cab for Cutie has now been inducted into that rare breed of musical acts that enjoy both massive popularity and the ability to experiment without alienating said popularity. Granted, Death Cab is not popular to the tune of U2 or experimental to the tune of Radiohead (if Thom Yorke and company hasn’t abandoned the idea of “tune” entirely…), but I think the band has arrived at a comfortable middle ground.

Their seventh full-length album finds them treading a pleasant mixture of the familiar and the foreign. Hype surrounding the album focused on comments from both Chris Walla and Ben Gibbard that the album would be less “guitar-based” than previous work. Incorporating new textures and keyboard sounds, songs like “Unobstructed Views” would fit nowhere else into the band’s catalogue. Despite the shift in approach, the songwriting remains as strong as ever.

Although the lyrics occasionally fall into the trite, Gibbard and Walla redeem themselves by hanging the words over massive, overblown arrangements. I don’t mean to suggest that Death Cab is wandering into the My Bloody Valentine territory of let’s-make-our-voices-into-instruments! (Although the album was mixed by My Bloody Valentine mastermind Alan Moulder…just sayin’…); I mean only to say that the music provides a welcome showcase for the powers of Gibbard's voice...lyrics be damned.

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One beauty of this record is that the clarion quality of Gibbard’s voice (not for the first time, but maybe more emphatically than ever) really jumps out at you. Most of the record swirls with heavy sounds: layers of guitars and synths and drum effects—Walla admits to LCD Soundsystem’s This Is Happening as an inspiration—but Gibbard’s voice cuts right through them.

A friend of mine once pointed out that Gibbard’s voice is so good because he never received any professional training; in a way, the pure quality of his voice lends him a kind of credence that other professionals cannot muster. For example, those who have been trained for opera will never sing “purely” ever again. Every time they sing, they will affect their voice in the way that they have trained it. Sometimes it seems that Gibbard (this sounds silly, I know) sings with no restraint...not that he's belting the notes or anything like that, but rather that he's at total freedom with his voice and how to use it.

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Ever the hapless critic, I keep looking at the album title and expecting some hidden meaning to reveal itself to me. Is there one? Both the title and the “pound” (#) symbol on the cover seem so deliberate I can’t help but give it a try. But, of course, the title track presents me with one of Gibbard’s more inscrutable sets of lyrics:

We won’t get far

flying in circles inside a jar,

because the air we breathe

is thinning with the words that we speak…

that we speak

you and me

that we speak

you and me.

You’re on the floor,

fearful of what's outside your door.

But the codes and keys,

they can protect you

from the pangs of jealousy.

So are the words exchanged between the narrator and his companion unimportant because they “[thin]…the air [they] breathe”? It’s a fine idea, but it doesn’t seem to relate to the second verse, which approaches an entirely different problem. Are we then to take “codes and keys” to be language? If language can protect this person from “the pangs of jealousy,” then what else is it capable of doing?

To be honest, I’m not digging the “language approach.” It’s probably better to think about “codes and keys” in relation to music itself. (How apropos!) I think it wouldn’t be unfair to claim that some people (Gibbard himself) use music as a kind of buffer between the self and the rest of the world. The rest of “Codes and Keys” lyrics:

When you scream,

love you see,

like a child

throwing stones at the sky.

When they fall back to earth

as minor chords of major works,

separate rooms of single life.

We are one,

we are alive.

When the narrator is confronted by love, his reaction is that of the child throwing stones towards the sky: the scattered stones land in different places, as “minor chords of major works” and “separate rooms of single life.” The original emotion of love has been dissected and split up through the process of songwriting. Gibbard wants to point out that it doesn’t need to be this way; he asserts that “we are one” and “we are alive” through the end of the song.

[If anyone has ideas of their own, please feel free to comment below! The analysis is never over!]

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But commenting on the quality of Gibbard’s singing or the theme/message of the work runs away from the point of this post: Codes and Keys is an excellent album. But it’s excellent not in the particularly cerebral manner of Narrow Stairs (Is that a Brian Wilson influence? Math metaphors!?) or the heartbreaking clarity of Plans and Transatlanticism, but excellent in a rather joyful tone I haven’t heard before from Death Cab.

Lead single “You Are a Tourist” has a title that sounds bleak, but offers this:

“When there's a burning in your heart, / an endless yearning in your heart, / build it bigger than the sun, / let it grow, let it grow. / When there's a burning in your heart, / don't be alarmed.”

And the final track “Stay Young, Go Dancing”? How happy is that? Ah! Let’s listen to it again!

Can Ebert Be Honest? (Listen to Ken Jacobs...)

I love Roger Ebert. I’ll get that out right at the beginning; I don’t want my post to be misconstrued. I value every one of his reviews that I have read for one reason or another. They’ve been helpful to me not only as critical assessments of films, but also as style guides in terms of writing personable, helpful reviews. That said, I’d be dishonest to say that sometimes I have some misgivings about loving him so much…

Firstly, I should point out that you may take the unsophisticated route out of this whole argument by telling me that no review is ever “wrong”… “How could it be?” you would say. “It’s a review!” But that line of argument shoots out of a silly premise; if every review is “right” in some sense, then why have reviews at all? I’d argue that the mere presence of reviews points to the notion that films, books, and music are either “good” or “bad.” Surely, if films are “good” and bad,” then reviews can be “right” or wrong?” (Or at least some derivative of that…admit to me at least “fair” or “unfair.”)

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In a few of his reviews, Ebert professes to a kind of code by which he tries to rate films. For the review of the horror film The Human Centipede (PLEASE don’t look this up if you’re not already familiar—it’s disgusting and possibly nauseating to think about), he refused to attach any kind of star rating, noting:

“I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine.”

Ebert’s review is careful; most of the text describes the plot and the characters, etc. as well as helpfully providing potential moviegoers with a few words of warning. But a straightforward opinion on the film is lrgely absent; if you return to the quote above, he does not define the film as either “good” or “bad.”

“I have long attempted to take a generic approach. In other words, is a film true to its genre and does it deliver what its audiences presumably expect? The Human Centipede scores high on this scale. It is depraved and disgusting enough to satisfy the most demanding midnight movie fan.”

But, I stop and ask, is that the point of criticism? I think that trying to step into the shoes (or eyes or whatever uncomfortable clichéd metaphor you’d like…) of some “midnight movie fan” isn’t quite the right approach. (You would like [blank] film if you are [blank] kind of person.) If a film is vile and doesn’t seem to have any redeeming quality (in Ebert’s not-so-amateur opinion), then why does he hold back?

The fear of overstepping boundaries seems evident to me at least; maybe Ebert isn’t the biggest fan of violent, depraved horror films…I understand that. But while I understand that he might not feel comfortable dismissing the film, not being a midnight movie fanboy himself, but he can still tell us that he thinks it’s crap.

I’ll offer myself as an example: I’m not much of a classical music fan. I can point out a composer here and there and sit down and enjoy some “Carnival of the Animals,” but as soon as you hit the Heitor Villa-Lobos and Bach’s massive back catalogue, I’m out of there. But as uncomfortable as I am with classical music, if I were asked to write a review about it, I’d be willing to stick my head out there and say something. It would silly to pretend myself into the shoes (yes, that metaphor again) of an aged symphony-goer and simply offer that I’m sure they would like it. If I think it’s boring…well…then I should say so!

(I’m afraid I’ve demotec myself a little in some of your eyes with that statement. I’m not sure Bach-bashing is ever the answer…)

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I’m not going to pretend that any of these issues are easy fixes or tell you that Roger Ebert’s job is simple. His job, in fact, is often very difficult. He must balance his personal opinion with the popular opinion. Sometimes his reviews of more popular, “box-office” films can’t help but follow the “generic approach” mentioned above.

For example, his review of The Longest Yard, the 2005 remake of the 1974 film, centers on his thumbs-up reaction to the film on first viewing (back when he was still taping the television show with Richard Roeper). Having been to Cannes in the meantime and seen a whole other side of the film world, he returns to this review of The Longest Yard and struggles with how to justify his thumbs-up reaction. He patiently concludes his way to three stars.

“I do not say that I was wrong about the film. I said what I sincerely believed at the time. I believed it as one might believe in a good cup of coffee; welcome while you are drinking it, even completely absorbing, but not much discussed three weeks later. Indeed after my immersion in the films of Cannes, I can hardly bring myself to return to The Longest Yard at all, since it represents such a limited idea of what a movie can be and what movies are for.

“Yet there are those whose entire lives as moviegoers are spent within the reassuring confines of such entertainments. In many cities and some states, there are few ways for them to get their eyes on movies that can feed their souls. They will have to be content with a movie in which Adam Sandler plays an alcoholic has-been football hero…”

Ebert zeroes in on these “moviegoers” who “can[not] feed their souls.” The end of the review finds him in murky waters as he admits:

“I often practice a generic approach to film criticism, in which the starting point for a review is the question of what a movie sets out to achieve. The Longest Yard more or less achieves what most of the people attending it will expect. Most of its audiences will be satisfied enough when they leave the theater, although few will feel compelled to rent it on video to share with their friends. So, yes, it’s a fair example of what it is.” (my emphasis)

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What I’d like to see is more of the rhetoric that emerges from his “Great Movies” writings. Every week, Ebert returns to a film that he deems “great” and writes a short essay on it. Some of the films collected in this list are obvious, but others are not as well known and intended to break up the notions of canon a little.

A little self-consciously, Ebert admits in an afterword the first 100 “Great Movies,”

“I like to sit in the dark and enjoy movies. I think of old films as a resource of treasures. Movies have been made for 100 years, in color and black and white, in sound and silence, in wide-screen and the classic frame, in English and every other language. To limit yourself to popular hits and recent years is like being Ferris Bueller but staying home all day.

“I believe we are born with our minds open to wonderful experiences, and only slowly learn to limit ourselves to narrow tastes. We are taught to lose our curiosity by the bludgeon-blows of mass marketing, which brainwash us to see ‘hits,’ and discourage exploration.”

And amen to that. Now if only his reviews could pack a little more of that punch! I don’t want to read about how Ebert plays a misguided sort of cinematic detective by trying to fit himself into the intended (or “authorial”) audience of a film. I’ll end with a quote from avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs, who hits the nail (in my humble opinion) more or less on the head:

“Cinema creates an experience for its viewers and many people come to depend on the experiences provided them by the movies. Most movies are coherent. They are fairy tales that lead to something. Movies have resolutions. Many people live at the movies and tolerate fumbling through their real lives. Life is different; it does not seem to lead to anything. It’s diffuse, yet infinitely penetrable. So, the difference is between a cinema that is a cooked, or organized experience, and one that encourages viewers to reflect and have their own experiences. The difference is between living through the movies and using the movies to enrich your critical engagement with life and the real world. One is an experience that dominates while the other condemns you to be free.” 

See more:

Ebert, Roger. Reviews of The Human Centipede and The Longest Yard, "Great Movies" collection

rogerebert.com

New Malick Film, Looking Back to Days of Heaven

Warming up for the new Terrence Malick film The Tree of Life (which I will hopefully see in theaters next weekend!), I sat down a few hours ago and watched Malick’s 1978 film Days of Heaven. Gene Siskel once admitted that the film “tests a film critic’s power of description.” I came away from a first viewing with a similar feeling, but buoyed by the naïve thought that all I needed was a second viewing to clear my head. Everything would be crystal clear after a second time through, right? Right!?

Wrong. The film remains (as the more mature parts of me expected it would) fantastically aloof from any attempt of my descriptive powers. And yet I’ll stick my head out there. An outline of the plot: A migrant worker (Richard Gere), his girlfriend (Brooke Adams), and his younger sister (Linda Manz) look for work in the American Midwest of the early twentieth century. They find field hand jobs on the land of a wealthy farmer (Sam Shepard), who soon enough falls in love with the migrant worker’s girlfriend. Upon learning that the farmer is seriously ill with only a year to live, the worker convinces his girlfriend to marry him for the money…and…well…it’s a tragedy. I’ll say no more.

But (of course!) just putting plot points on the page is the wrong approach (as countless critics have already discovered). The film really isn’t about any of that at all. Rather, the film is an attempt to tell a story using mostly symbolic imagery and the plaintive voiceover of Linda Manz, who plays the worker’s younger sister.

via google.com

The core of the film, as previously mentioned, is image and sound. Malick provides expert twilight views of the plains and sets up eerily suggestive shots: the farmer biting into an apple, the farmer’s lonesome house sitting on hill in the prairie, the worker and his girlfriend huddled against a pile of wheat in a snowstorm. Added to the mix is Manz’s voiceover—a mix of oblique observations about her surroundings, important narrative points, and ideas about human nature (“Nobody’s perfect. There was never a perfect person around. You just have half-angel and half-devil in you.”). The result is a beautiful, confusing story that tells the plot described above, but is certainly not limited to it or even really about it. It has the characteristics of a mesmeric dream.

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But in telling the story this way, the emotions seem to get lost; the jealousy and anger of the tragic love triangle seem subdued by the beautiful imagery and the careful soundtrack. We don’t hear most of the arguments that take place; we hear only snatches of conversation between the main characters. Most of the film concentrates on the careful set pieces of life around the farm.

Writing about the film in his “Great Films” collection, I think Roger Ebert hits the nail on the head when he discusses the so-called “muted emotions” in the film that some writers often criticize:

“Days of Heaven has been praised for its painterly images and evocative score, but criticized for its muted emotions: Although passions erupt in a deadly love triangle, all the feelings are somehow held at arm’s length. This observation is true enough, if you think only about the actions of the adults in the story. But watching this 1978 film again recently, I was struck more than ever with the conviction that this is the story of a teenage girl, told by her, and its subject is the way that hope and cheer have been beaten down in her heart. We do not feel the full passion of the adults because it is not her passion: It is seen at a distance…”

I think Ebert is sensible to assume that the story belongs to Linda. The film falls into place once we view it through the lens of memory. The story maintains a nostalgic grandeur from the opening credits—shuffling through faded, yellow photos, as if the viewer had found an old family photo album and were thumbing through it. The credits over, Malick plants us firmly in a world characterized by warm colors (sometimes even verging on sepia-toned) and Ennio Morricone’s haunting score, featuring quotations from Saint-Saëns’s “Aquarium” section of “Carnival of the Animals.”

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While focusing on Linda’s experience is engrossing, I think that such an interpretation is also somewhat limiting. I think something ought to be said for the way in which the characters (besides Linda) are virtual nonentities. The wealthy farmer is never even given a name; when discussed in conversation or in Linda’s voiceover, his presence is always understood implicitly. When I described the plot earlier, I omitted the names “Bill,” “Abby,” and “Linda” because I felt that the names weren’t important. I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that they are archetypes, but rather that they are mysteries; we have no idea who they are. Where does Bill go in his time away? Does Abby really love the farmer? But even reduced to mysteries, they are still identifiable by social class.

In one short scene, Bill converses with the farmer and admits to the moment when he realized he wasn’t intelligent like some other people. The farmer says nothing and the gap between them—intellectual, personal, what-have-you—perceptibly widens. The unspoken tension of that moment is echoed in various ways throughout the movie. When Abby first arrives as a field hand, she is not permitted to go near the farmer’s mansion. By the time the migrant workers return for the next year’s harvest, she lives in the mansion as the farmer’s wife. 

via google.com

Is the film then Marxist? The opening scenes of the steel factory in Chicago have a proletariat tinge to them…should we see Bill’s entrance into the life of a migrant worker as a return to serfdom, as if in retrograde motion back to the Middle Ages? What about his subsequent move into the mansion and, later, his abandonment of it?

But regardless of how we choose to read Malick’s masterpiece, it remains both a beautiful and elusive film that asks of the viewer more than does the typical film. I expect The Tree of Life to be much the same.

See more:

Ebert, Roger. “Days of Heaven.” Great Movies.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19971207/REVIEWS08/401010327/1023.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Heaven