Films Folded
Ted Goranson is a writer and consultant who works with structured narrative as well as other topics. New visitors may want to read this information about how the site is structured.
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January 4, 2009 Body of Lies: Bodies that Lie
Ted's Evaluation: 3 / 4
IMDB Rating: 7.5
DVD at Amazon
Two things interest me about this.
One is how Ridley approaches a project. Other than "Bladerunner" he is conspicuously uninterested in story. He only uses the story as a necessity, like light and time, rather than a scaffold for the narrative. His narrative isn't in illustrated story, but in the texture of the cinematic presentation itself. For Ridly, it is all about what you see.
Therefore, what you get is a collection of textures and rhythms that convey by themselves the primary value. This is something that his actors do not get clued in to; I think he uses strong actors in ways that they want to be strong. He doesn't shape them into the thing much, except with Crowe he helped him lean into the edit.
That's a technique where each scene is not there to provide information but to set up the next scene where we expect information to be conveyed. In this way, we always live in the future, anticipating the story rather than catching up. Its rather brilliant because it takes some time for film reality to seep in, so if you have the viewer always living a few moments in the future, he will be in the present when you need him to be.
This has that. It has Crowe doing that for Ridley, here literally as an on-screen filmmaker/observer. Brother often Tony plays with this idea of spy observer in the film, but this is a whole new level of sophistication.
The second interesting item is more mundane. It has to do with Hollywood film beauty. North American and European films have no trouble finding beautiful women of all races and facial types. Its actually common now for us to see multiracial faces.
The only exception is Arab women. Its a strange effect of 9-11, I think, that in the lamentable demonization of Arabs we have lost Arab beauty as well. It was natural in "Aladdin" to think of Jasmine as an unqualified beauty. The animators did not cheat either: her face and indeed her bearing are from genuine sources. But since 9-11 there seems to be no beauty in Arabia.
Look here. They needed a love interest in Jordan for our troubled agent. It means little in the story. Its just more texture, more cinema. What do we find but an Iranian woman doctor who by some plot device is in Jordan. The actress (I understand) knows little Arabic. She is lovely.
I'm not one who is interested in using films to further a social agenda. I think it is dangerous and would probably fight anyone using movies for oblique propaganda, even for causes I agree with. But surely a way to prevent demonization of a people is to celebrate the beauty of their women (when we can see their faces).
January 1, 2009 Frost/Nixon: Rehabilitation of the Dead
Ted's Evaluation: 2 / 4
IMDB Rating: 8.2
DVD at Amazon
I am always happy to be proved wrong when I am negative. I did not believe it possible that Ron Howard could make a film that is remotely watchable, especially since he figuratively married Brian Grazer. The two together have such an insipid work view that even with potentially weighty material what they give us seems to be from a world made up on a schoolbus.
But this is very effective at what it attempts. Its a very simple dynamic, but it has significant resonance for someone my age. He manages to hold the tension all the way to the end, and that's no simple task. I think that the way he has done this is to put himself into the Frost character: a thin intellect struggling publicly with difficult ideas and complex situations. I can easily imagine that the struggles he had with trying to guide Langella into complexities.
Fortunately, Langella has already done this part — without the hulking posture — in the superior "Starting Out in the Evening." Even more luckily, the Watergate situation is one of the best stories in politics, newly reborn as the US struggles with how to handle the crimes of its 43rd president.
And more luck: the situation is inherently cinematic because its a story about a similar goal: how to reveal a complex truth for the camera.
So generally, Howard is able to keep himself focused. But there is one element where Howard/Grazer just cannot help themselves. They have to add a pretty girl who appears only for this story (she is met on the plane on his introductory trip). She them provides the domestic support that seems to be at the foundation of every Howard story.
She is pretty. I last saw her in a story about a college quiz, where she was "the appealing one." But here she is a distraction that doesn't fit, a long answer to a simple question.
December 30, 2008 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: Shaved Fish
Ted's Evaluation: 2 / 4
IMDB Rating: 7.8
DVD at Amazon
I guess I am glad that Tim Burton is alive and making films if only to keep Depp working and encourage him to take chances. I think it is even worth a ticket from time to time to watch the old boy do something weird that isn't intended as a joke. But Burton's work as a whole seems to be in a rut. He knows how to appear to take chances without actually doing so.
This time, we have large singing instead of small. Operatic blood instead of human-sized. Long shots instead of simple frames.
I may skip the next couple. Email me to tell me if Depp gets interesting again.
For me, all the cinematic effects, though large, are tired and ordinary. All the songs big empty balloons. What fascinates me is the love story between Burton and one of the most interesting women in film: Helena. She's earned a place in my imagination just on "Wings" and "Fight," possibly "Novocaine." She matters as a template now and probably will for generations.
Its why it is so interesting the way we have her now: written in, made up and photographed by a man who plainly loves her as deeply as he knows — and shares that with us because the deepest he knows is how to make her real on screen. Its not just a love story we peer into, its one we participate in.
Hey, I guess I've talked myself into watching the next Burton project, huh?
December 30, 2008 Suspiria: SusperNegotiation
Ted's Evaluation: 3 / 4
IMDB Rating: 7.3
DVD at Amazon
We watch so many movies that we forget. Its never real, as real as we are. And surely it is never as rich as what we carry in our inner minds and dreams. The most that externally carried stories can offer is to provide contours that we then apply our own stories. What art is all about is negotiating with us, in perhaps the most elaborate dance in existence, to find things that we can accept and also that we can be enticed to use in building these inner stories.
We forget, how much allowance we make, how much artificiality we accept. We accept as real a two dimensional image with elements we know to be fake. We did that a century ago. We accept that certain mannerisms that actors must use to convey selves are somehow similar to what real people use. We accept all sorts of cinematic conventions having to do with structured lighting, assembled scenes and where the placement of the eye makes sense.
Most obviously, we accept certain other conventions: effects, simplicity, closure in the spirit of this negotiation. And in these we encounter strange treaties that previously were acceptable but no longer are. The "overacting" of old movies. Special effects that seem unreal now. Obsolete conventions of beauty, seduction, love, horror.
That's why a visit to Argento is so interesting. When these were new, they were on the edge of what could work, and for a smaller majority. Today, the artistic values and what we are willing to ignore have changed. So with this film, it is more than a film experience; it is an experience about what once was a film experience. Its like visiting a museum of obsolete gods that still beckon.
Argento never cared about the story except as it gave an excuse for the situations he wants us to see: mood and (for the times) radical violence against women. His compositions have nothing to do with long form narrative, instead are purely episodic.
The things we don't accept today are the bad acting, stupid story and clumsy effects. It isn't that any of these are closer to the world now, its just that we have made different compromises as intents have evolved. But some of the effects are laughable. All the acting seems execrable. The story is apparently vapid: in fact it is not so. His original idea was to have a ballet school of almost-pubescent girls, and give us David Hamilton with innocent sexual awakening into bewitched death. That is so promising I almost want to contribute to a fund to have dePalma do a correct remake.
In any case, we don't come for that. We come for the visual experience, and that remains classic. He draws exclusively on pure red, blue and green. Much has been made of the tri- color Technicolor print technology, but in fact the colors he chose were not those specified by Technicolor, but slightly off. This gives a shimmer to the colors that you can only see on a big screen with a good print. The first death scene is the most notable and perhaps that is all you should watch. It has no story, only motion, color and shape.
Is he important? Is this film, probably his most famous?
Yes.
