From the Life of the Marionettes (1980)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

From the Life of the Marionettes (1980) – I. Bergman

Not unlike Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972), Bergman reconstructs a horrible sex murder and explores the events immediately before and after the “disaster” (which is shown in shocking and vivid colour at the film’s start, while the rest is in clinical black and white, shot stunningly by Sven Nykvist).  Of course, the result is very unlike Hitchcock (where the wrong man, our ambiguous hero, is suspected) – although there is a chance that Bergman expects that some viewers could feel some identification with murderer Peter Egermann (Robert Atzorn) who feels increasingly antagonistic toward his wife of ten years, Katarina (Christine Buchegger) and confesses that he fantasizes about killing her to his psychiatrist (Martin Benrath).  We see Katarina and Peter’s life before the event, as he becomes increasingly despondent and even threatens suicide and she pulls away from him asserting her independence (while both are drinking a lot – indeed the names of these characters are the same as the bitter alcoholic couple who are friends with Johan and Marianne in Scenes from a Marriage, 1973).  Peter’s mother and Katarina’s gay co-worker also provide their views, both in flashback and as statements to the police after the murder.  The highpoint of the film is probably the co-worker Tim’s exploration (in a monologue, in front of a mirror) of matters of identity, both as a gay man and as an aging adult who still feels his younger self (even as a child) inside. One senses Bergman reflecting on his own mortality (he was 62) and the effects of time on a person as well as relationships. But, for all the dark self-analysis here, it is hard to grasp why Peter did it – some final Freudian suggestion about latent homosexuality does not cut it.  Instead, it may be better to see the film as another portrayal of the patriarchal environment that women are trapped in, suffering at the hands of men (again and again), particularly when they dare to assert themselves.  Indeed, all three of the film’s female characters have been subjected to unfair control and domination by men; the title of the film itself implies that women are therefore the “marionettes”.  However, Bergman doesn’t provide any solution to the problem, leaving it up to viewers to ponder whether he thinks that men too are marionettes who struggle and despair but cannot break free of the grip of patriarchy.  Say it isn’t so.

Hereditary (2018)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Hereditary (2018) – A. Aster

The quest for the perfect supernatural horror film continues (and by that I mean a film without gore or sadistic torture).  Hereditary managed to hold my attention despite its excruciating and intense personal drama (and awful sadness and grief) but even at its conclusion, I’m still not certain what was reality and what was not.  To be specific, we are told early on that Annie (Toni Collette) has a family history of mental illness – so as things get quite bizarre, viewers are left to wonder (and also to think about whether any of this is stigmatising to people with mental illness).  Annie has two children, an older son Peter (Alex Wolff) and a younger daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro), as well as a loving husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) who may have been her psychiatrist.  The film opens with Annie’s mother having just died and we learn that their relationship had been fraught with tension and the mother had been secretive and distant but especially interested in Charlie.  Annie finds a box of stuff that seems to indicate that her mum had a strong interest in the supernatural.  Soon, things start to unravel for the family and guilt, blame, and antagonism become key to the relationship between Annie and Peter in particular.  Annie is comforted by a stranger that she met through a twelve-step grief program who is also interested in the supernatural.  To say any more would probably be criminal, but for those who have already seen the film, it’s worth noting that even horror classics such as The Exorcist (1974) often had family tensions at their core (Regan was a child of divorce, after all).  And similar to recent films such as The Witch (2015) or Mother! (2017), by the end, we are challenged to accept an alternate reading of “the facts” that might not be entirely believable (and in this case might come too much out of the blue).  I would have preferred a slower build up of the supernatural story but it is clear that the director (first timer Ari Aster) was more devoted to addressing the family dynamics at play. Of course, I may be forever searching for that “perfect” supernatural horror film and might have to be satisfied with one that ticks as many boxes as Hereditary does.  

They Made Me a Fugitive (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

They Made Me a Fugitive (1947) – A. Cavalcanti

British post-war noir that sees ex-RAF flyer Clem Morgan (Trevor Howard) dabbling in black marketeering as a result of his restlessness back in civilian life.  But the gang he winds up in, led by nasty Narcy (short for Narcissus, played by Griffith Jones), starts dealing in drugs not just cigarettes.  So, Morgan wants out – but before this can happen, Narcy double-crosses him and sets him up for a fall that results in a 15-year prison sentence.  Narcy also steals Morgan’s girl, which leads Narcy’s own ex (Sally Gray) to start working to get Morgan freed from prison (by getting witness Soapy to talk to the cops).  Before this can happen, Morgan breaks out of jail on his own and what follows is a cat-and-mouse chase as Morgan tries to track down Narcy and his gang while the cops are hot on his tail.  Sally and Soapy’s girl Cora are taken hostage.  It doesn’t end well for anyone.  Indeed, the dark ending is what puts this film (from Ealing Studios’ Cavalcanti) firmly in the noir genre; before that, it seemed to be a finely observed and stylish adventure tale with an ambiguous “hero” headed for the typical “redemption” ending where the hero saves his skin by catching the baddies by himself and turning them over to the cops.  Once upon a time, Hollywood would have done it this way but noir changed all that and, here, the Brits take their turn.  Worth a look.

A King in New York (1957)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A King in New York (1957) – C. Chaplin

Chaplin’s last starring vehicle (and penultimate directing effort) is a satirical swipe at the country that just kicked him out (for communist sympathies and moral transgressions).  He plays a European king who has escaped a revolution by fleeing to New York City where he discovers that he is broke, having been fleeced by a member of his government.  To make ends meet (staying in the Ritz Hotel), he starts endorsing products and starring in TV commercials (falling into this rather fortuitously).  On one of his charitable visits to a boys’ school he meets a kid whose parents are communists (eventually sentenced to prison by HUAC); when he ends up looking after the boy (played by his real son Michael Chaplin) when he’s run away from the school, he too is accused of being a communist (ironic since he is a royalist).  These are the basic facts of the plot, but as usual with Chaplin the film is more or less a series of gags sewn together hanging on this loose structure.  The Americans seen in the film are often gauche, obsessed with body hygiene (“you are giving me a complex!”), and, of course, insanely concerned about communism.  Chaplin’s script takes potshots at TV, widescreen films, plastic surgery, the atomic bomb, and more.  Perhaps it isn’t always funny and probably it doesn’t always cohere – but there is enough here to keep you interested and Chaplin is never less than charismatic.  And, at the end, when you discover that the young boy has been forced to name names to get his parents out of prison, you feel that Chaplin has sadly hit the bullseye (and he looks directly at the camera to let you know he knows).  That said, this film fails to scale the heights of Monsieur Verdoux (1947), his last great (and very dark) masterpiece.

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957)

☆ ☆ ☆

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) – F. Tashlin

Perhaps you had to grow up in the 1950s to find Frank Tashlin’s films funny (he began by working with Jerry Lewis)?  Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum finds this film to be a subversive masterpiece, but I find myself scratching my head to understand why.  (Tashlin’s Son of Paleface, 1952, with Bob Hope was funnier).  Sure, he brings the same comic book sensibility to this satire of the advertising world, with oddball intertextual references and nearly surreal action (she drops a flowerpot on his head, popcorn pops in his pocket – some of this could have easily happened in Loony Tunes).  Tony Randall plays Rock Hunter, a TV jingle writer who manages to convince Rita Marlowe (Jayne Mansfield) to endorse Stay-Put Lipstick for his agency – but only if he pretends to be her lover (“Lover Doll”) in order to make her current boyfriend (a Tarzan-type) jealous.  Of course, this is all a bit of a tilt at Marilyn Monroe (and Arthur Miller) but sixty years later, it feels rather obvious; that said, there are apparently sly references to all manner of fifties phenomena that went right over my head.  What I didn’t miss was most of the sexual double entendres (aimed at Mansfield’s figure, of course) but there are surprisingly fewer of these than expected. Naturally these aren’t why the Rosenbaum thinks the movie delightfully subversive – instead, it’s the overall assumption that material success isn’t worth it.  Rock Hunter discovers that the big office isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (and he’d rather be a chicken farmer).  In fact, Randall spends the entire film learning that what society taught him to want (money, glossy gals, etc.) isn’t really what he wants.  Maybe that message was more subversive or funny in the 1950s.

  

A Wife Confesses (1961)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A Wife Confesses (1961) – Y. Masumura

This is the fourth film I’ve seen by Yasuzô Masumura (who died in 1986) and I still cannot get a proper “read” on him; each film was very different from the others.  Man of the Biting Wind (1960) was a yakuza/juvenile delinquent picture (starring writer Yukio Mishima!) that was part of the zeitgeist of its time.  Giants and Toys (1958) was a wacky and prescient farce about the world of advertising (my favourite Masumura film so far).  Blind Beast (1969), one of his more notorious pictures, was a dark bizarre and lurid story of a blind sculptor who kidnaps a model and forces a relationship on her.  So, I didn’t quite know what I would get this time – but critic Jonathan Rosenbaum reckons A Wife Confesses (1961) is Masumura’s masterpiece.  I’m not so sure.  It is a courtroom drama about a woman (Ayako Wakao) who may have intentionally murdered her older husband on a mountaineering trip (by cutting the rope and allowing him to fall to his death after they had an accident).  Certainly, I can guess what attracted Rosenbaum’s plaudits:  the story is told in a nested flashback structure so that we see all of the events, including brief conversations, as they are mentioned in the trial (or in the concurrent time period).  The way that Masumura manages to keep viewers onside with all of this jumping around is downright magisterial.  Ayako Wakao also turns in an impressive performance as the wife of the title who maintains her innocence even as every other character, including the young pharma exec (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) who she is clearly infatuated with, suspects her to be guilty.  Perhaps it is a florid performance, but it reveals the underlying instability and yearning desire of the wife very well.  The rest of the cast (save maybe the gruff husband (Eitarô Ozawa)) pales in comparison.  Ultimately, it’s a melodrama but one told with a style that broke with the classical tradition of Japanese film (i.e., Mizoguchi, Ozu) and justifiably belongs to the “new wave”.      

Beast (2017)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Beast (2017) – M. Pearce

A serial killer is loose on the tiny Channel Island of Jersey (nearer to France than England but containing a mix of cultures).  We are introduced to Moll (Jessie Buckley) whose perspective we take – but at times it seems a very unreliable perspective!  Moll has a dark secret in her past and, although somewhere in her mid-20s, she seems to be under the protection of her domineering mother.  Clearly, she wants to rebel and on the night of her birthday garden party she escapes to the local dance club, gets drunk and then very nearly sexually assaulted until she is rescued by Pascal Renouf (Johnny Flynn), an odd but attractive young man out poaching in the early morning.  She’s from the high end of town and he’s rough so her family frowns on their relationship (which does seem impetuous).  Eventually it becomes clear that he is a prime suspect for the serial killings but she takes it upon herself to lie for him to give him an alibi without ever knowing for sure that he is innocent.  So, this is the central tension of the film – but it isn’t really a “woman in distress” picture of the usual sort (despite its links to Hitchcock’s Suspicion, 1941) because it seems eminently plausible that Moll herself is the “beast” of the title.  Not that she would be the serial killer but certainly there is something wrong in her, something that has led her to rebel against society and even into violence and darkness (beyond just despising the constraints that her mother places upon her).  Pearce, in his feature debut (he also wrote the script), controls the tension admirably until late in the film when all is revealed and Moll -- and we viewers -- don’t know exactly what to do.  It is a hesitantly pregnant moment and a finely written one.  That said, I’m not quite sure I’m convinced by the subsequent ending or the motivation underlying the action taken, however – a few more minutes of denouement may have cast a bit more light on questions of character.

Good Will Hunting (1997)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Good Will Hunting (1997) – G. Van Sant

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won the Oscar for best original screenplay and effectively launched their careers as stars with this film, directed by Gus Van Sant (best known then for Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, and To Die For).  When Van Sant came on board, Robin Williams (already a superstar) signed up.  I skipped this in the 1990s but I thought I would fill in this gap now.  Damon plays a kid from Boston who has genius-level math ability but is self-taught and full of anger and defensiveness.  When he is discovered/rescued by a math professor (Stellan Skarsgård), the deal is that he can stay out of jail only if he attends both math workshops and therapy.  No therapist can handle his challenges until Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), also from working class South Boston and the professor’s former college roommate, is brought in.  At the same time, Will Hunting (Damon) continues to hang out with his school mates, the two Afflecks included, and while at a bar, he meets Skylar (Minnie Driver, in a charismatic performance) and they start a romance.  Will’s avoidant attachment style (developed through harsh treatment at the orphanage where he grew up) nearly causes him to throw away his career in maths and his new romance with Skylar.  Of course, with the loving mentoring of Williams (underplaying dramatically), he breaks through the wall. In a movie like this, it isn’t a spoiler, is it?  This is all about the final “feel good” moment – which also reduces the film’s artistic merits (i.e., its been given the Hollywood treatment which you can see coming from a mile away).  The psychologizing is probably a bit too pat as well. That said, there are many finely observed moments in the film and the actors work hard to give their characters some depth (even if not everyone can pull off the Boston accent). At the end of the day, it is probably a testament to Van Sant’s skill that this came off as well as it did; in the hands of a lesser director it could have been much soppier stuff.   

Westworld (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Westworld (2016) – J. Nolan & L. Joy

It’s been eons since I saw the original Westworld (1973) with Yul Brynner as the theme park robot who goes out of control and attacks the guests.  But I remember it somewhat fondly so I thought I would give the HBO update, starring Anthony Hopkins, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright, Evan Rachel Wood, and Ed Harris, a go.  I haven’t really watched too many series in what seems the new golden age of television (apart from Twin Peaks Season 3 and True Detective Season 1, which were both excellent) but I admire the form in that it allows actors and screenwriters to really develop rich characters and for a story to play out across a larger arc.  (That said, I still enjoy the constraints of the 120-minute movie and what can be done within them).  In Westworld, there are numerous storylines that initially feel separate but of course intersect and then come together by the end (over the course of ten 60-minute episodes).  Hopkins and Wright are the scientists who make the robots (and deal with the corporation that has taken over their company/theme park). Newton and Wood are two of the robots who start to verge toward sentience.  Harris is a mysterious guest on a quest.  There are a lot of other strong supporting players who flesh out the onstage (robots) and backstage (workers) stories.  The acting is generally excellent, in fact.  But being HBO, I suppose sex and violence are required – many of the robots spend much of their time naked and of course, there are knifings, shootouts, and the rest the West can offer.  A lot of this does feel gratuitous – and at times, the story drags (or some of the plot strands do).  Yet, suspense is still created so that you want to get to the next episode; i.e. there are enough surprising plot twists (“reveals”) to keep you watching.  However, I’m not sure proper justice has been served for the deeper questions about artificial intelligence and its role in the world’s future.  Sure, humans are base and self-interested; sure, robots are a billion times smarter. Perhaps the ethical and moral issues will be (were) at the heart of Season 2 (2018)?  But I’m not sure that I will stick around to find out; there seems to be less here than meets the eye.  The constraints of a shorter running time might have helped -- or maybe I’m just being too tough on what is essentially popcorn fare with some vaguely highbrow pretensions.

Straw Dogs (1971)

☆ ☆ ☆

Straw Dogs (1971) – S. Peckinpah

Holy hell, what happened here?  I suppose I knew what I was getting myself into, given the rating and notoriety – but Sam Peckinpah’s look at rural England is darker and more violent than I expected.  Dustin Hoffman, a math/astrophysics researcher, and his English wife Susan George, travel back to her hometown when he gets a grant that allows him to study independently.  He may be fleeing something (workplace politics, perhaps) but the locals do not make him welcome either.  Worse, there seems to be an increasing barrier between Amy (George) and David (Hoffman), reinforcing his separateness as an American outside of his own culture.  A bunch of handymen hired to put a roof on the garage start to menace them, including one who knew Amy in the past.  They kill the cat and then there is a horrible, even worse than usual, rape scene.  Peckinpah came under fire for this and there doesn’t seem to be any justifiable reason why one would film it.  Certainly, it increases the tension – but it isn’t clear that Hoffman ever finds out and thus the threat to his masculinity (which must be Peckinpah’s theme) isn’t clear either.  Except these local rapists really do taunt him and her and also an intellectually disabled man (David Warner) who is possibly a pedophile – their desire to lynch the latter sets the final showdown in motion when David seeks to protect this problematic character from the gang.  Then further intense brutality ensues as they lay siege to the house and David must find his masculinity (including slapping Amy around) to fight them off.  Given Peckinpah’s reputation for drinking and womanizing, it is hard not to think that he approves of this change in David.  But let’s hope that, close to 50 years later, this championing of a “masculinity contest” (there is new social psych research on this) can be seen as the catastrophe it really is.  It can’t solve interpersonal problems and the consequences for society can only be dire.  Peckinpah doesn’t stick around to show us.

Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018) – M. Moore

Many parts of Michael Moore’s latest documentary/essay film about US politics are profoundly depressing – in fact, I very nearly turned it off during the pre-credit scenes showing Trump’s win/Hilary’s loss (on 11/9/16).  However, thankfully he doesn’t dwell too much on Trump and his antics.  Instead, he quickly turns his attention elsewhere.  Of course, as always, he shows us Flint, Michigan (his hometown) and the unbelievably awful scandal that hit them (the governor Rick Snyder caused their water source to be switched from Lake Huron to the lead-filled Flint River, poisoning children in the predominantly African-American community).  But, as you may recall, this event happened _before_ Trump was elected (the timelines of the film are jumbled); nevertheless, Moore uses it to criticize then-President Obama, who defended Gov. Snyder and the Michigan authorities, and by extension the entire group of moderate “Wall Street” democrats (including Hilary Clinton).  He reviews how Bernie Sanders’ progressive campaign for the presidency was shutdown (illegally?) by superdelegates and he calls for the end to the electoral college system (a legacy of the slave-owning Old South). These are brave points because they require Moore to admit that he has been wrong (and he acknowledges that he has ties to Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon, who financed/distributed his movie Sicko), although he is not too tough on himself (nor should he be).  More importantly – and upliftingly – he spends time discussing the new activism of the “resistance”, first showing us the rising stars of the progressive wing of the Democrats (AOC, Rashida Tlaib) and their confrontational but effective tactics, and then the young students of Parkland, FL, who took to the streets and hit politicians hard over gun control after another school shooting took the lives of their friends.  Moore calls for more activism and for the scales to fall from our eyes about “US democracy” – although he suggests that most Americans are actually left-wingers, the political elite are billionaires controlled by corporations and inspired purely by profit and greed (Democrats and Republicans).  And of course, we have to return to Trump – Moore chooses to make an explicit parallel to Nazi Germany (aided by historians who draw the connections), showing us one of Hitler’s speeches with Trump dubbed over it.  A bit heavy-handed but apt – as are most of the stunts and clips included in the film (in  true Moore style); he wants to get attention for this message and including some brash over-the-top elements is a tried-and-true method.  In the end, I was ready for same-old, same-old (and there is some of that in the cut-and-paste editing style and meandering storyline) but was pleased to hear the (revised, energized) message and hopeful that people are listening.