Andrei Tarkovsky and Stalker

Another brief interruption in my Studio Ghibli series…
Stalker is a film from 1979 by the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. His films are generally considered art films, that is, not easily accessible to the layman. I have at times struggled to keep awake during some of his oeuvre, and have immediately afterwards felt that while meticulously framed and containing some striking images, the stories themselves have not been all that. However, as time has passed I have found myself thinking back on his films, and so large portions of them have remained in my mind, that I’ve come to realize that the fault lies entirely with me for not recognizing their greatness at first view.

Now I feel his masterpiece is his portrait of the iconic painter Andrei Rublev – iconic in that he painted icons (duh!) – and I can find myself shuddering whenever I recall the fantastic spectacle of the resolution to that film. The effect is achieved by having the three hour film unfold slowly in black and white, with the protagonist toiling in mud and darkness for the last half of the film, only to reveal at the very end his art in glorious colour.

However, I digress, as the point at hand, is Tarkovsky’s maybe most famous film, Stalker.

The director (in)famously shot the film two times (with different script, props and for almost no money the second time) as the first version was ruined in the processing, maybe due to a sub quality Kodak-stock or maybe because of sabotage. It is rumoured that the first version stuck more closely to the science fiction element of the story, while the re-shoot necessarily was more transcendental due to the lack of money. The story can be summed up briefly: In a post-war country, if there is such a thing, some happening – be it a meteor or extraterrestrials – has created a mysterious zone. The government of the small country in which the action takes place, has decided that access to The Zone is forbidden. There are those few, though, that specializes in smuggling people through the army-lines into The Zone, and after having gained access, guides them to “the room”, which is a place our innermost wishes come true.

Tarkovsky claimed that the Zone had no further meaning than its literal representation in the film: “The Zone doesn’t symbolize anything, any more than anything else does in my films; the zone is a zone, it’s life, and as he makes his way across it a man may break down or he may come through. Whether he comes through or not depends on his own self-respect, and his capacity to distinguish between what matters and what is merely passing”. First of all, Tarkovsky contradicts himself as he does indeed say that The Zone is life, and as such he already has offered an interpretation. Secondly, as Tarkovsky was a believer in audience participation in his films, to say that a thing means only itself seems to be contrary to his purpose: “Anyone who wants can look at my films as into a mirror, in which he will see himself”.

And herein lies much of the power in Tarkovsky’s best work. While he is so adept and meticulous in presenting strong images, images that stay with us long after the witnessing, he also leaves us with a basic void: The images does not mean more than themselves unless we choose to look into ourselves for answers. We can feel that they strike a chord in us, but are often unable to explain exactly why or how. It is first by our active participation that the void can be negated, so to say, that some meaning can occur. This is also, I think, why his films stay with us, even though they at first impression fail to convince us that we have seen something truly worthwhile. They take time, as reflection takes time, and even though the films may be long, the period of contemplation must always be longer. The reward is bound to not be immediate.

Stalker is perhaps the best example of this. In my next post I shall try to suggest a few reasons why.

Studio Ghibli Part 3: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

Two years after the release of The Castle of Cagliostro, Miyazaki-san began his first and so far only manga: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. By 1984, he had finished the first two volumes and wrote a script for a feature length anime based on these volumes. The full story of the manga was completed in 1992, so – needless to say – the film is very much an abridged version of a longer work. That is not to say that the film is not complete unto itself.

After having completed his script, Miyazaki-san took the directing reins himself and the rest, as they say, is history. For the first time the master was able to write a story from scratch with his own characters and one has to marvel at how his directing abilities had blossomed in the four years that had passed since his last directorial venture. (In the meantime, he had, together with Isao Takahata, tried his luck in the US through the co-production of a film called Little Nemo. However, the Japanese delegation pretty much abandoned ship because of the differences between the two countries in how to produce a movie – and not least, what the movie should actually be about).

This is the first film that really has the full “Miyazaki-touch”. It’s both an ecological fable, an anti-war film and a grand adventure story. It features a complicated heroine, Nausicaa, who is no damsel in distress, to put it mildly. More than that, the villain of the piece is hardly a villain at all, not in the one dimensional way, at least. She as well is female, and one has to admire Miyazaki-san’s belief that the audience of a predominantly male genre will accept a story in which both the protagonists (and antagonists?) are female – and as far from bimbos as one can possibly get. While the feminism of Miyazaki-san’s stories stem in part from a much stronger tradition in Japan of granting females roles as strong – and often headstrong – characters, I think that his consistent use of female protagonists in his films also points to his societal concerns.

Also, I suspect that he wishes to erase the sometimes artificial borders that the Japanese put up between different forms of manga/anime. Shonen, for example, is supposed to be manga stories that appeal to the typical young boy, with space crafts and robots; s/f-motifs and general adventure stories. Shojo is meant for girls and young women, featuring romance stories, female super heroines or depictions of girls working together (such a group is called sentai, with military connotations). Bishojo are comics that feature pretty single girls, as far as I can understand, while seinen is meant for boys or young men too old to read the shonen. I could go on, but you get the point.

Thus, a part of Miyazaki-san’s project seems to be to move past the separation of comics – or films – meant for only boys or only girls, but also to move past the barriers around what these films can depict. While this can initially seem strange for a westerner, as we don’t have these barriers as pronounced in our culture, I’ll venture that they still exist, we only haven’t been smart or calculated enough to put names to them. Well, that is not entirely true. The media has long since coined terms like “chick-flicks” and most recently, in desperation I suppose, “Dick-Flicks”; about stories of platonic male romances. This, though, has more to do with marketing and the decline of the Western civilization, and is thus slightly too wide a topic to cover in this post.

Of course, the problem with western films is that they are pretty much all shonen or shojo, with the majority by far being the former. (Although, as I’ve pointed out in an earlier post, for every 300 or The Dark Knight, we now increasingly seem to have a Sex and the City and Confessions of a Shopaholic. The problem with this has less to do with making genre films predominantly for only one sex, but the quality of the product and the depiction of women in the “women‘s films“).

But I digress. Miyazaki-san consistently uses young girls as his protagonists, and intermittently women as the antagonists. As a man, I’ve never cared one way or the other while watching the films, meaning I’ve never had any problems identifying with the plight of the characters, their desires or joy of life, their ways of acting in the world they inhabit. And, while this may put into question my manhood, I think that’s a part of the reason he has done so. (Not to put my manhood into question, but to create stories that go beyond sexually grounded consumerist definitions).

He is showing us by example of his stories that separations between the sexes, as well as between groups of people, are artificial and easily overcome by all that we have in common. The real enemy is lack of imagination and what causes said lack. Work is such an antagonist, if work is not heartfelt, if it is not based on something one enjoys. Certainly, the capitalist system is questioned, both as an alienating force which removes us from a sense of ourselves, but also as a downright destructive force that is eating away at the ground beneath our feet; our connection to the earth, and thus to where we come from. Often the steps to adulthood is seen as a crisis for his characters, and his films celebrate a more natural state in us, something that made us more human before we became human in society’s definition. Innocence, another word for nature, is grieved with its passing, not with fey sentimentalism, but by showing us the consequences of a world too grown up to see whence it grew.

I’ll try to be more concrete, and I’ll begin by returning to the film at hand. Miyazaki-san has surely taken the name Nausicaa from the character in The Odyssey. A young girl, wiser than her father, introduces Odysseus (Ulysses to some of you) into her society through the help of her mother. While she clearly has love for Odysseus, the relationship is never made sexual. Also, Miyazaki-san mentioned in an essay that he was inspired by the “Princess Who Loved Insects“. This is a Japanese story that takes place in the Heian period. The story revolves around a young princess who prefers to study insects and other creatures rather than finding herself a husband. In the essay he very much hints that his Nausicaa is an amalgamation of the two.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is a post-apocalyptic tale that takes place some 1000 years from now. Large parts of the Earth is uninhabitable, as the land has been made toxic by “the sea of decay”. What we see of the human world is mostly primitive, with different states having access to different kinds of technology – of differing sophistication. The states seem to be ruled after a monarchical/ feudal model. We don’t know how the world came to be this way.

We first encounter the young heroine as she is out in the wilderness, exploring the “sea of decay”, collecting samples and traversing the overgrown remains of some former civilization, now almost undistinguishable from the seemingly chemically ravaged nature. Upon returning on her “glider”, a flying apparatus that she controls to perfection, she comes across an “Ohmu”, which we learn is one of the more intelligent creatures to have evolved from the wastelands. It is very fast when it wants to and is armoured and looks like a gigantic caterpillar. Nausicaa seems to have a knack for communicating with the Ohmu.

The film is actually very plot-heavy, so I’ll limit myself to some introductory remarks. Back home in her village, or “The Valley of the Wind” of the title, we see her at work, experimenting with growing plants picked in the contaminated areas. Her findings lead her to believe that only the top soil of the wastelands is contaminated, and that by letting the insects (nature) do their work, the world can again be inhabitable. While at heart a pacifist, she is also a warrior princess and when her father is killed by the invading Tolmekians, she goes on a rampage and kills a large number of the enemy before being overtaken. This dichotomy in her character lifts her above clichéd and Disneyfied portrayals of young females. (Although Mulan is perhaps an exception from the Disney norm of the last 40 years).

The leader of the Tolmekians turns out to be a woman, Princess Kushana, who is like a dark grown up twin, or a version of someone Nausicaa could turn out to be if she didn’t have her love for nature to ground her. It turns out that the Tolmekians are there to secure a weapon of mass destruction that ended up in the valley by accident, namely the embryo of an ancient giant warrior. Their plan is to grow the embryo into full size and use it to destroy the sea of decay. Thus, two perspectives arise; that of Nausicaa, who wants to give nature a chance to fix itself if humanity leaves it well enough alone, and Kushana, who wants to fight fire with fire, so to say, to impose her own will on nature under the guise of wanting to restore it. Nausicaa’s approach is accepting, penitent and almost Buddhist in its non-confrontational way. Kushana’s way out of the human-made disaster is very human in its belief that humanity can restore what it has destroyed, the irony being that it must do so through further destruction.

In a sense, both of the characters do what they believe is best, not necessarily for themselves, but for humanity. As a consequence, it is hard to view Kushana as a villain, and she is certainly not a one-note bad guy. Both of them want to see nature restored, but they differ in their view of what place humanity should have in the restoration as well as in nature itself.

The ecological theme of the film is just one aspect of it, but it is the one that informs all the other elements that the film entails. Narrative doubles such as war and pacifism, love and duty, religion and myth are all given attention, but are very much connected to – and perhaps subservient to – the overriding views on Nature. An example is Miyazaki-san’s handling of Nausicaa as a messianic figure. While she certainly has elements of the christian and redeeming Christ, it is treated here more like a fulfilment of a mythical prophecy. Through Nausicaa’s bond with the Ohmu and the rest of the entomology of the “sea of decay“, she gets a kind of vision of what the earth itself needs. When she sacrifices herself, it is not to save humanity, but in service of a nature that is complex, in that it is partly already contaminated – much like the church’s view of humanity itself, one might interject – and seen as at least as important as the people populating Earth. (By the way, I am not giving away the ending here!)

There are so many things I could say about the film, but I fear it would ruin the appreciation for the first time viewer, so I’ll stop myself here. A danger of offering interpretations of films, is that it will make them seem more clear cut and boring than they are. Let me assure you, that this film is anything but boring. Even if you don’t care an iota or an inch or at all about the above, it is perfectly possible to view the film for its imagery, the unbridled joy of soaring above the fields on quiet wings, or for the adventure of it all – a princess defending her people in times of war – or its high quality animation; in short, for telling a better story than you are likely to see this or pretty much any year.

Wanted: Film, Fascism and Angelina Jolie

I’ll take a short break from my Studio Ghibli series. Rest assured, new chapters will soon follow.

There are times I can find myself in agreement with W. Somerset Maugham’s semi-witty tenet that “Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit“. However, I’m pretty sure that should Maugham have had the misfortune to be transported in time only to be forced to sit through the almost nihilistic action film Wanted (stranger things have happened… or perhaps not), he would use the word excess with indeed more careful moderation. For excess is the key word in introducing this film, perhaps assisted by other terms of a Darwinian slash Nietzschean order.

Wanted is made by Russian/Kazach director Timur Bekmambetov, known for his vampire films Night Watch and Day Watch. which were huge successes in Russia and moderately popular in the west as well. It stars James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman. None of these perform their roles better or worse than one should expect. It is based on British writer Mark Millar’s comic book miniseries, which was slightly satirical in its approach to the amoral violence of the characters. The film is content to forego said satire.

I can’t really fault the direction of the film beyond saying that the different set pieces at times lack coherence, not to say logic, and what would otherwise have been impressive stunts disappear in a haze of CGI and breakneck editing. I mention the set pieces, for this is a film that almost doesn’t exist when it is not moving. Fast.

I remember seeing Terminator 2 for the first time and how awe-inspiring I then felt it was. Much of this awe had to do with how Cameron was able to utilize state of the art technology while at the same time making sure that we could actually see everything we were meant to see: We could follow the T1000‘s jump into the helicopter and study each transformation made by the then ground breaking use of CGI.

For some reason many films these days opt to cut so quickly from angle to misused angle, to push the camera into our faces until what we see has little semblance of reality and thus removing us from the illusion that film is indeed a kind of reality. Without this illusion, films become only spectacle and not a very well made spectacle at that. The ability to combine fast action with judicious amounts of CGI in a tangible and understandable manner is an art quickly becoming lost in the action genre. (Let me add that I don’t object to fast editing per se, and neither is the practice particularly new. I recently watched Alfred Hitchcock’s 1930- film Murder!, in which the cuts were at times much faster than in most modern films, particularly in scenes where the directors of today tend to linger if they at all venture there; e.g. reaction shots and transitional scenes).

However, Bekmambetov is an accomplished visually oriented director (as opposed to intellectually oriented?) who does have the ability to show us some scenes we have not seen before. The biggest problem I have with the film is the story he chooses to tell, and how he tells it is merely an extension of some deep faults within the story.

James McAvoy’s character starts out as an everyman, although one by far more apathetic than most of us. He hates his job and his girl friend and his life and so on. The fact that he is impotent, both virtually and metaphorically is made clear for us through some unpleasantly juvenile scenes. In fact, let me interject here, that I’ve seldom had a stronger feeling that a film must have been written by a thirteen year old with severe revenge fantasies. The little there is of psychology is so infantile in its insights that it beggars belief. I admit that I laughed out loud a couple of times during the delivery of dialogue in the film, but unfortunately not where the film wanted me to laugh, which I hope was nowhere. “I can now stand in my father’s shoes” was one such line. – I guess you have to see it…

Oh well, our not so lovable loser is quickly torn away from his mundane loser life (yes, the film repeats quite some times that he is a loser) when a mysterious and heavily tattooed woman in the shape and form of Angelina Jolie (which means, I guess, that it must be her), warns him that he is about to be killed, and off they go in a blaze of speed and death defying acts while shooting at the bad guy. Our man learns that she is part of an ancient order of assassins (The Fraternity, they call themselves) that are killing people to maintain some kind of balance on earth dictated by “the fates”. The manner the fates have of dictating to the Order which people to kill is through a somewhat unorthodox medium: A giant loom – the Loom of Fate, no less – is weaving small errors that can be interpreted as binary code. This code spells out the names of the people that need to be extinguished by the assassin order. Of all the ways I have ever imagined the gods to communicate with people, this has to be the most obscure or – all right – most lame.

Loserboy is told that his increased heart rate is not a matter for the doctor, but rather a symptom of his adrenaline granting him superhuman speed and agility and – for some reason – the ability to make killing shots from extremely long distances as well as curve the trajectory of the bullets. Morgan Freeman tells him gravely that “If you had not been told that bullets go straight, wouldn’t you have trusted your instincts to let the bullet find the target in other ways”, or something to that effect. Yes, the film is indeed this stupid.

Then follows the obligatory training sessions for our man, as he is punished and beaten until he is at least as accomplished in the art of killing as his new comrades and Angelina. He kills some people as part of early assignments, having few qualms to do so. (As soon as he learns to trust the Fate, he accepts the rightness and infallibility of the giant weaving apparatus). To turn an inane story short, the person he is told killed his father turns out to actually be his father and Morgan Freeman is evil. On the way to this insight, he has killed his father and an entire train of innocent passengers, seemingly without any regret whatsoever.

I won’t reveal the outcome of “the final battle”, except to say that it turns out that the killing orders that the Fraternity has received for these last years had less to do with any fates and more to do with Morgan Freeman’s ambitions. The film now tells us that to kill for personal gains is wrong, and I actually felt we were on the brink of some US criticism at this point, though of the heavy handed variety. But then the film makes a case for the nobility of killing people if The Fates tell us so (read God), which again is a view not completely beyond the pale in some US presidential administrations, nor in some other countries, for that matter.

No matter, soon the former loser, now super hero assassin James McAvoy stumbles out of the rubble, musing: “Six weeks ago I was ordinary and pathetic. Just like you.“ I can’t imagine a clearer way for the film to signal it’s view on people and humanity; on normality. The last reel of the film has the protagonist, now super human, saying: “This is me taking back control of my life. What the fuck have you done lately?”, thereby again stepping out of the reality of the film, so to say, and involving us, the spectators.

This is also where the film becomes interesting, and a part of me almost wants the entire film to be one big hoax, one giant misleading manoeuvre. It reaches this point, spelling out its contempt for everyone watching the film, and instead of giving us a classic end, subverts the relationship between protagonist and viewer. If I had felt there had been present an iota of intelligence at other places during the narrative, I could give it the benefit of the doubt and say that the film is indeed a critique of its own audience.

The film and its protagonist in effect says at this point: “Don’t look at me, look at yourselves. You have seen a film celebrating the more unpleasant notions of the Ubermensch and fascism; it is, after all, good to kill if God tells you so. And you have stuck with me, rooted for me“. What this ultimately means is that the film is now stuck between two positions, one being: “Now, go out and kill. It is liberating.” The other alternative is “You fools, I am no hero for you. I despise you.” Needless to say, the average moviegoer is not likely to want to take the latter to heart, and one can only hope they avoid taking the former statement seriously.

And of course, one probably shouldn’t take seeming fluff like Wanted seriously. But on the other hand, perhaps it is exactly this kind of mindless summer entertainment that is most interesting to subject to at least a minimum of critical analysis. As well as reflecting the needs of society, maybe these types of film also show society as they want it to be.

Studio Ghibli Part 2: the 70s

As we recall from last post, the underwhelming sales of Horus, Prince of the Sun, forced Isao Takahata to look for other companies in order to continue directing. Miyazaki-san stayed for a year or so more at Toei, but in 1971 left to co-direct with Takahata-san the bulk of episodes of the action/adventure series Lupin III. After this, he wrote – together with his wife – the two shorts that constitute Panda! Go, Panda! These shorts were directed by Takahata-san as well, while Miyazaki-san served as animator and chief-designer on the project. (Evidently there was a bit of a panda-craze in Japan – and the rest of the world – at the time, as China had just begun to lend out their national animals to foreign zoos).

By now, it must have been pretty clear that the two animators were a hell of a team. The biggest project they participated on during the 70s, is probably what is called World Masterpiece Theatre, a production of Nippon Animation. The concept was to take famous works of children’s literature and to tell the stories as fully as the television format allowed. With the possibility to make series into 20 or 30 episodes, Miyazaki-san and Takahata-san sharpened their knack for being able to extract true and recognizable moments from their characters. If a situation required time and reflection, the anime-team let the action slow down, introducing everyday moments in a genre that so often had – and at times still has – an inbuilt resistance to rest and inactivity.

Very often the works of this period focuses on nature and the relationship between children and nature. Often the protagonists are girls, as in Heidi, Girl of the Alps (which technically was a precursor to Nippon Animations Masterpiece-series) and Anne of Green Gables. (Miyazaki tried to get the rights to Pippi Longstocking and even flew to Sweden to meet Astrid Lindgren, but to no avail. Not the Swedish author’s best decision…) It is clear that these early works are, to a larger degree than what was to be Studio Ghibli’s own films, meant as children’s entertainment If there is a darker undercurrent in these series, it is well hidden. Mostly the problems facing the protagonists have to do with the grown up’s inability to understand the children’s needs and how they perceive the world, usually because they have become alienated from nature and the natural world.

Of course, seeing as these series are based on literary works, most of or part of the narrative is taken from the books. But the different series almost all feel as if they are made by the same intelligence, so to say. The animation, clearly, is similar from series to series, but more than that, I find the themes and ways of presenting the world is very similar as well. This signifies -at least to me- that the directors are pursuing a definite project that actually means something to them. And, certainly, while I can easily sit through six hours of a simple peasant girl running around the alps as long as Heidi is directed by Takahata-san, I have found all other versions of the story pretty near unbearable to watch. This as well leads me to believe that there is an undeniable quality present in these series, and that Takahata-san and Miyazaki-san are pretty much incapable of making anything thoroughly uninteresting, no matter the age of the viewer.

Another work Miyazaki-san did for Nippon Animation is Future Boy Conan from 1978. Here Miyazaki-san himself directed the bulk of the episodes, maybe giving him the confidence to make his first feature length animated film the year after. This series, by the way, was for some reason an enormous success in Yemen. Or so I am informed.

Thus, after quite a long apprenticeship, mostly under – or in collaboration with -Takahata-san, Miyazaki was finally given the opportunity to undertake a full-length project as director. The Castle of Cagliostro is a feature film of the Lupin III hero that Miyazaki-san had directed intermittently before in its TV-series incarnations. Here we see the Miyazaki-touch in pretty near full bloom. While the film is more violent and cynical than most of his later works, he uses his eye for directing tremendous set pieces while at the same time balancing the action with an almost archaeological interest in the natural earth his characters inhabit.

The Castle of Cagliostro was voted 5th place on a list that Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs published in 2007 of Best Anime. While such a list is not terribly interesting in itself, I note that Cagliostro had to see itself beaten by two other Miyazaki-films, which gives an indication of his popularity in Japan.

The film is also famous for Steven Spielberg’s praise of an initial car chase scene (The best ever filmed!). And quite rightly so, as we can see homages to Cagliostro’s car chase in Raiders of the Lost Ark, released a year after, as well as in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But the film is much more than the action, impressive as that is. Miyazaki-san at times goes for a kind of hyper-exaggeration in the characters, almost Bugs Bunny-like, but while this only contributes to a feel of overall fun, when the characters need to be serious or act in pivotal scenes, the animation is much more down to earth, for lack of a better phrase.

The plot of the film is perhaps not that important. Lupin is a kind of Mediterranean hero of the kind Jean Paul Belmondo so often inhabited (see: That Man From Rio). In the TV-series he had been rather rash and cynical, with few redeeming qualities. Now he is, as he says, no longer as stupid as he was in his younger days, meaning in the TV-series. Thus, the film at times dares to slow down to reflect this, and our rascal-hero even falls in love with the lovely Clarissa, whose bloodline holds the key to the mystery/treasure of the Cagliostros. While the plot initially seems decidedly whimsical, a more serious undertone gradually creeps into the film, making us care what happens. There is love in this film, both visible in the directorial touches, but not least in the film’s love of history and of telling a thoroughly entertaining yarn or two.

On the way to the resolution, we can marvel at Miyazaki-san’s designs of aeroplanes – or baroque machines that somehow can fly, I should say – and architecture (houses and castles all seem as if they have a history, and as if the history is about to win; with cracks and wild growing vegetation trying to take over the stone world that Man has built) and his mastery of showing people and objects in motion, giving the animated cells a kind of kinetic dirty energy that has lacked in Disney films since uncle Walt left us. I shall not reveal here how the film ends, just say that the Castle of Cagliostro holds a treasure in its foundations, but it is not for one man only, and that is my kind of treasure. (At least the days I feel more benevolent and magnanimous and all around a better person than is my habit).

Oh, and I must not forget to mention the creepiest assassins in memory, animated or not!

Studio Ghibli Part 1

The first film I ever watched on DVD was the Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki’s magically excellent Princess Mononoke (Mononoke-hime) back in 2001 (pardon the slight hyperbole!). This was also the first film I watched by Studio Ghibli, a Japanese anime studio that was formed in 1985 with Miyasaki-san and his erstwhile mentor Isao Takahata as creative directors. Needless to say I was immediately convinced about the qualities of the new technological medium as well as the studio’s storytelling abilities. I decided, with a fervour I seldom feel, to immediately delve into Ghibli’s back catalogue. It turned out that I had to wait for the Oscar-success of the studio’s next film, Spirited Away, before Disney/Buena Vista, who held the distribution rights outside Japan and the east, saw fit to grant these other films a DVD release. Well, that is yesterday’s snow under the bridge, and let’s not spoil the good mood these films are bound to instil in any human being with a more or less sound mind and soul.

I won’t be recapitulating the entire story of the company’s formation in this post. I wanted, rather, to concentrate on the films themselves, and what makes them so worthwhile entries in the annals of film (you can snigger at the word if you want to…), and I wouldn’t be too surprised if a tentative history of Ghibli’s place in anime will threaten to surface as well. In short, what are the films about, and why are they so much better than pretty much anything any animation studio in the west has produced since Bambi? (The possible exception being, of course, Pixar, a studio that has taken to heart Ghibli’s insistence upon story over spectacle).

As mentioned, the creative force behind Studio Ghibli, consists of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. (I use here the western custom of not putting surnames first). They first collaborated on what has later been called the first modern anime film, Horus, Prince of the Sun (Taiyo no oji: Horusu no daiboken), in 1968. The film is also known as, among other things, The Little Norse Prince and Hols: Prince of the Sun. Horus was directed by Takahata-san and Miyazaki-san served as “chief animator and concept artist”.

While later seen as a landmark in animation, the film was upon its release a financial failure prompting the two to seek employment elsewhere, to put it carefully. (The Toei Studio only allowed the film a ten day limited release, which goes a way to explain the lack of success). While originally conceived of as a run of the mill-anime, Takahata-san decided to expand the scope of the film both in terms of animation as well as in narrative. As a result the film went over budget, over time, and, according to the producers, all over the place.

The film is the story of Horus, or Hols, depending on which translation/edition one sees, a young boy, who in the film’s very first scene is being attacked by a pack of wolves. It’s an impressive action scene that shows the considerable skill of the director at this early stage in his career. At the end of the fight, Horus is saved by the stone-giant Mogue, out of whose “hide” he manages to pull the “sword of the sun”. He is told that once he manages to reforge the sword, he will be “the prince of the sun”. So far, so Arthur. We learn that his father, who is dying, once escaped the village where they lived because it was under attack by “the demon”, Grunwald. The film then plays out as a classic adventure where the boy will have to “find his way” or “find himself” in order to destroy the evil of the land. On the way he encounters a mysterious girl, Hilda, who, it turns out, holds the key to understand what hold Evil has over the people. The battle within her is mirrored by the battle between Horus and Grunwald; both of them claiming a part of her. In the end it is herself who decides the outcome of both the internal as well as the external battle. While this on the surface is hardly a groundbreaking plot, the real meaning of the story is found in the details as well as in the more complex parts that I allude to above.

The film was originally meant to be based on the Ainu, an indigenous people of Japan who were persecuted by ancestors of the modern Japanese. For some reason, be it of a commercial or political nature, Toei Studio felt that the film shouldn’t have a Japanese setting. As a result, we are in, I assume because of the title, a Norse settlement. However, with characters called Drago, Hilda and Grunwald, I suspect a kind of pan-European placement, with Germanic sprinklings. The geographical reason for the name Horus – or Hols, which is the pronounced Japanese equivalent – escapes me. Symbolically, though, it’s probably a reference to the Egyptian god Horus. (I mean, how many Horuses are out there?) He is traditionally considered “a protector of the people” and associated with hunting through his sometimes form as a falcon. This is all fitting to the story at hand.

The name of the villain, Grunwald, is also worth a short note. On one hand, it is deeply ironic, signifying “green forest” in German. Grunwald takes the form of Winter and his weapon is snow and ice. His way of destroying the villages is to cover everything green and freezing the land. On the other hand, it might be a reference to the Battle of Grunwald, which was decisive in ending the reign of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, if memory and Wikipedia serves me. I’m sure interpretative strands can be extracted in this context as well.

The year of the film’s making is also worth a thought. 1968 bears with it many connotations, and while the student protests of Europe and USA were maybe not felt as strongly in Japan, I understand that quite severe unionist disputes were taking place there as well. This can maybe account for the communist tableaus and iconography I noticed a couple of times during the film. The music is also vaguely communist sounding, without me being able to be very clear about this point. (Let me stress that this – communist leanings – is not at all problematic to me!) The protagonist’s main message also seems to be that the people must work together to overcome an evil that has paralyzed them and made them live in fear. As I’ve hinted at, though, the resolution of the film turns out to be a personal, individual resolution as much as a coming together of the people on a macro-level. The interplay between the individual’s concerns and need and the needs of the society to which he and she must belong to, leads us away from uncomplicated dogmas. Maybe the final winner is nature, which awakening and blossoming coincides with the people’s renaissance.

The joys of the film is in its fine action sequences and “unbridled imagination“, as reviewers like to say about films that don’t contain a tenth of the creativity this film has going for it. However, considering the things that were to come from the hands of these anime artists later on, the film is mostly of historical interest as an early intent to utilize the Ghibli touch. Here as well we have benign and evil giants alike, we see the joy of flying and have a complicated female character who turns out to be at least as important in the narrative as the male protagonist. It is only natural that the animation style is not as accomplished as in the works that would appear 15 or 20 years later, but the film is also marred by the studio shutting down production before some key scenes were filmed. While two large-scale attacks on the village (the first by wolves, the second by rats), is presented in still pictures, this does not really harm the film that much. More serious is the fact that Takahata-san had to remove some thirty minutes of the film because of the shut down. As a result, the film can at times seem disjointed and without sufficient resolution of various plot threads. Also, the film is almost burdened with a cutesy side-kick bear cub. I assume this was a demand of the studio, as they probably figured they could sell some cub dolls and earn back its money in merchandise. I say the film is almost burdened with it. Takahata-san gets rid of the talking bear cub immediately after the first scene in which it appears by conveniently having it be separated from Horus. When it returns to the narrative many scenes later, it never achieves a purpose in the film and mostly just lingers in the background. I can imagine the producers were not terribly happy with this handling of their cash-cub.

Anyhow, as they say, this was a brief introduction to the first collaboration between the creative fathers of Studio Ghibli. I chose to begin with this film not only because of its historical significance, but because it was directed by Isao Takahata. When one mentions Ghibli, most people think only of Miyazaki-san. While he undoubtedly is the more famous – and productive – of these two, I’ll try in the coming posts to make a case for the equal importance of Takahata-san. As we get past the seventies and into the eighties and the formation of their studio, I promise that most of the films under discussion will all be not only worthwhile, but indubitable masterworks of Film in general. Sayonara for now!

David Lynch Films not by Lynch

Everyone knows David Lynch is an idiosyncratic film maker. That is, he has a singular vision that he is quite alone in pursuing in modern Cinema. His films are not made in a complete cultural vacuum, however, far from it. At least since Blue Velvet, a trait like pastiche; a kind of ironic comment upon film history (or pop culture history in general), has been decidedly present in his films. It is an accomplishment that this aspect of his films has (almost) never seemed to be there solely as a kind of fun, post modern or distancing formal feature. He came close, maybe, in the Wizard of Oz-allusions in Wild at Heart and I felt the film was less successful for it.

Lately his films have taken a turn towards self reflexivity; a preoccupation with film itself as theme. Perhaps I should rather say that this trend has been accentuated, as I guess a case could be made for how the production of the films has in a way mirrored the content of the films since Eraserhead, his first picture (He had made some short films before). With both Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire, Lynch has focused on the relationship between film and reality. This is maybe an extension of his earlier films’ interest in the dichotomy between imagination and reality and the gradual breaking down of that dichotomy: An erasing of the difference, so to say.

As I found myself pondering these questions, I started thinking of the films that Lynch must surely have seen in order to comment upon film history: What films would influence his style, his themes, his narrative preoccupations? We know that he is a bit of a renaissance man, and that he refuses to dedicate himself to just one type of film making, much less just one type of artistic expression. This is reflected both in his technical concerns (with film stock, newfound admiration of digital camera, internet as a premiere venue for new films, etc.) as well as in the short film experiments, in his paintings and cartoons, in his eclectic music choices.

Here, then, without much further ado about very little, I’ll present a short list of some films I feel are relevant in discussions about the cinematic universe of David Lynch. Needless to say, I consider these films as grand entertainments and mostly art in their own right. Thus, apart from perhaps giving an understanding of the Lynchian world, these films will also reward the viewer with some fine, fine moments in the their company They may come off as very slightly offbeat, but they are always very watchable and usually down right indispensable viewing for any film fan. Many of these films would also find their way into my own top two hundred-list.

1. Jack Clayton’s excellent The Innocents (1961), based on Henry James The Turn of the Screw. The Director of Photography on that film, Freddie Francis, uses depth photography in a way that is at times extremely revealing, so that we sit and dread what might be caught by the lens. However, in critical moments he is also capable of holding something back, as if somewhere in the back ground, on the lake between the tall grass, there is a solid thing, a woman, but is she real, is she in the same plane? It is a magical film that is indeed about imagination, and with a strong central performance by Deborah Kerr that wouldn’t be out of context in pretty much any Lynch-film. “Was he handsome? – Yes, he was handsome, handsome and obscene!“ Lynch used Francis many years later as his DoP in The Elephant Man, Dune and The Straight Story, which should tell us safely enough that he has certainly seen and enjoyed this film.

2. Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950). Without this film, I can’t see Mulholland Drive existing. This is a kind of film noir, a kind of melodrama, all kinds of great! The less I talk about it, the better to enjoy it for the first time!

3. Mark Robson’s Peyton Place (1957. This gloriously over the top Technicolor drama is almost an early Soap. It was incidentally seven years later made into a TV-series. However, the dark undercurrents, the very bad, dark and sexually threatening and incestuous existing side by side with the warmest, kindest normality, is something that we see clearly in Blue Velvet as well as in Twin Peaks.

4. Harvey (1950) by Henry Koster. The tale of James Stewart’s alcoholic/eccentric older bachelor and his best friend, an invisible giant rabbit (or, rather, a pooka, a shape shifting animal from celtic mythology) named Harvey, is both heart warming and a little bit uncomfortable at the same time. Richard Kelly, a man who has definite Lynchian genes, to put it mildly, certainly must have taken the film to heart as he made Donnie Darko. The theme of which (kind of) reality is the most fulfilling to live in is also something I feel Lynch will have taken notice of.

5. Samuel Fuller. Instead of picking just one film, I’ll name a director. The WW2 veteran and maverick independent director has so many meeting points with Lynch, both in his films as well as in his take on the production of films, that I take it for granted that Lynch knows his work quite well. The Naked Kiss (1964) and Shock Corridor (1963) would certainly interest him. As they should interest all of you reading this. The former has strong heroine (who just happens to be a prostitute) who, when trying to start again in a quiet wholesome small town, meets an evil even jaded city life has never shown her. The latter is about a reporter who wants to write an exposé from the inside of an insane asylum, only to find that getting out again proves difficult. Again, the question of which reality is more real; the reality of the mind or the reality of the outside world, is a thematic concern that Lynch very much shares. It can be found in all of his films, except The Straight Story and possibly The Elephant Man. (I generally leave Dune out of this discussion, as he didn‘t have final cut on the film and was generally very unhappy about the production.)

6. Vertigo (1958)/Rear Window (1954). Alfred Hitchcock’s films have influenced pretty much everyone working in film today – or at least they should! – but especially these two seem to me direct predecessors of the mystery part – the thriller element – of Blue Velvet. The films are so well known that I won‘t say much more about them. I think Shadow of a Doubt by the same director is equally present both in Blue Velvet, but perhaps particularly in Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me.

7. Other typical influences to name would be Luis Buñuel, who has almost certainly informed some of Lynch’s surrealistic traits and Robert Aldrich, whose Kiss Me Deadly (1955) is the kind of Noir-film that with its supernatural overtones – and especially the ending – is something that Lynch would appreciate. (And I seem to recall that Quentin Tarantino borrowed Pulp Fiction’s suitcase idea from this film). The Technicolor melodramas of Douglas Sirk would equally interest Lynch, for its colour-rich representations of the tragedies just under the surface of the American 50s. – For, let’s face it, the 50s were indeed American. Also the sudden and almost shocking moments of pure sentimentality, as in Imitation of Life, is a trick Lynch has used time and again.

Lastly, seeing as Lynch so often has suffering female protagonists, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he also holds Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc in high esteem.

I realize, of course, that this list could go on and on, and its usefulness is limited at best, so I’ll trail off here, and if some of you or one of you pick up any of these films and give it – or them – a chance, this half assed post will have been worth the two beers I just downed writing this.

My IMDB-Ratings

One day I should publish a book of mini reviews of  five thousand films or so in the style of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide. By the time I have the means, though, – and the prestige one has to flaunt – I guess the need for consulting the printed word in matters like this is by far a thing of the past. Thus, in order to give the readers of this blog an impression of what films I hold in esteem and what films I consider esteemless, not to say esteemly challenged, I present you all with my IMDB ratings.

I have the last year or so been rating films I have seen and remembered well enough to give them a fair score. As of this writing, they number just under 1800 films. These ratings have come about usually because I’ve had to look up a certain actor I didn’t remember; or double check the director of that 80s horror comedy; or whether this and that Western was based upon a novel, an article or an original script. You get the drift. The ratings can be found under the categories’ headings on the right margin of the blog, specifically under Films & TV. So now, you don’t have any excuse if you sit at home and wonder whether to bother watching The Musketeer and decide that yes, a film about musketeers can never be that bad (it can!). Sort by name and look for the letter M and there you’ll find the film. If you do so, the next two hours of your life will suck just a little bit less if you follow my advice. Then again, maybe you’ll find that you violently disagree with me. If so, you are always free to drop me a more or less polite line. Perhaps one day I will have written an informed opinion of all these films here on this blog. I wouldn’t bet on it, though. For the time being, I’ll only say: Look out, Lenny. I’m aiming for you and your two stars for Blue Velvet and Donnie Darko!

Baz Luhrmann’s Australia; or Bloated Bruces and Shallow Sheilas

Maybe someone has noted a certain tone of complaint in my last posts, an intimation that I find everything recent in cinema tiresome and dumbed down to fit only certain groups of cinemagoers; demographics that have low standards of quality in their viewing demands. This cantankerous outlook is not entirely appropriate to how I perceive myself. Every time I walk into a movie theatre or pop a new disc into my DVD-player, I have genuine hopes that my next hours will prove worthwhile. So it was today as well, as I was brought by my wife to see Baz Luhrmann’s latest “personal vision”, the epic Australia.

Let me start by noting that the film lasts for close to three hours. The length is not an unimportant ingredient when one sets out to make an epic, so Luhrmann certainly knows what he’s doing in this department. I must say that I was rather satisfied with the first third of the film. It is bigger-than-life film making, to be sure, but I felt that at least the proceedings held my interest and was put together in a way that was liable to make me forgive that I had seen it all before. Luhrmann starts with some magnificent shots of a “half breed”, an aboriginal child with a white father, who is told by his shamanic grandfather to make himself invisible by hiding under water as some white people pass by. We see the child under water and suddenly the surface opens up to the intrusion of a white man speared through the chest and dead. The child rises from the water and as his head breaks the surface, he is face to head with a black horse. These are beautiful images and as the child climbs the back of the horse and rides off, I feel that with luck the film might offer more than I’m used to from Luhrmann. (Mind, I actually liked both Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge!, so I am not averse to his film making techniques).

Then follows a typical story of Nicole Kidman’s upper class English Woman coming to the still semi-savage continent down under and of course she initially dislikes everything about it; its people, customs and its nature. (Relax, she’ll learn to love it all!)The film is at this point a Western, where the frail English Woman , Sarah, grows to admire the rugged Drover, played by a buffed up Hugh Jackman. Drover, by the way, is also his profession. They go on a cattle drive and everything that always happens on cattle drives happens here as well. But I was entertained, so I didn’t look at my watch. Yet.

After about an hour, the initial cattle drive is over with, and things begin to look bleaker for the viewer as the two protagonists find themselves well and truly in love, and they look meaningfully at each other and stare and kiss and say a few words. Two hours remain of the film at this point. Drover: “When it rains, I’ll stay with you. When the dry season comes, I have to drove“. Quite. Or how about this?: Sarah: “Let’s go home”. Drover: “There’s no place like it”. This by itself wouldn’t be so bad if the various homilies were only said once, but evidently Luhrmann is so satisfied with his writing that he needs every clunking sentence to be repeated and repeated again. “I’ll sing you to me”, says the little aboriginal boy some thirty times during the film. Maybe I exaggerate, but not much. I can’t remember having ever seen a film so proudly uttering this many platitudes. At times I had to concentrate hard not to begin laughing. I guess this makes me an unfeeling person. I think I am not. I cry during Bambi like anyone else.

However, I can live with some bad dialogue if it at least brings the story forward. No such luck. Baz Luhrmann has recently been tasked by the Australian prime minister to film an advertising campaign to promote Australia as a tourist destination, and I gather he has already shot a thousand times over the material he needs by making this film. Well, I can also live with pretty pictures of Australian nature. Unfortunately he relies so much on CGI and colour manipulation that Australia looks more like something out of the more ethereal parts of Lord of the Rings than any real location. Also, why do war ships always look so fake in films like this? I guess the short answer is “because they are”. When our heroes are supposed to see water, we see green screen, when they are supposed to swim in the sea, we see stand- ins wading in a pool. I am well aware that Luhrmann’s style is supposed to be presenting a kind of hyper reality; that is, not real at all, but expressionistically so. And certainly, many of his withdrawal shots could be mistaken for deleted scenes from his prior Moulin Rouge!, but while that film’s artificiality was intentional and fitting its subject; a kind of opium induced point of view of bohemian life, Australia is a much worse fit.

Luhrmann has always taken existing stories, well known formulas, and given them his own over the top-spin. One could be clever and mention Jean Baudrillard’s theories of simulacra and throw in words like kinetic, post modern; self referential/film referential, but I feel that “over the top” covers his style well. By always giving us recognizable stories (and none more so than Romeo + Juliet), he should know that he is working in the territory of clichés, but I fear that he actually feels that all his stories have something of value to impart on his audience. There is a weak sign of a thread in Australia that hints at “the power of storytelling”. We learn that if the aboriginal boy doesn’t go walkabout, he’ll lose his identity: “his story of himself”. Three times it is repeated that stories are the most important tool we have to make sense and meaning of our lives. This is all well and good, but for me this narrative thread mostly points to the fact that Luhrmann takes his stories seriously, and seriousness is the last thing they should be mistaken for. As far as I can see, Luhrmann’s only “message” in any of his films (he has written the scripts for all, and often the story as well) is that “love conquers all”, and in two of the films that it conquers even death. This is hardly a ground breaking insight. When it is coupled with repetitive clichés, it leaves us with a film maker who has actually nothing to say and just one way to say it. While he might be a visually recognizable director, he is hardly visionary, quite the opposite.

Not a single incident in Australia surprised me. The bad guy was very bad and grew worse, the good guys all grew even better. The aboriginals were as usual portrayed in a mystical light; they have an insight into the world that us white people can never have and they are closer to nature. This is not exactly an idiosyncratic take on the matter, to say the least. Furthermore, every feeling we might read from the situations or the characters is spelled out for us in case there are sociopaths in the movie theatre who might not be able to interpret what is clear as a very clear Australian day for anyone more or less sane. And in case we forget what we are supposed to feel, the music is quick to remind us with cloying romanticism in the kissing scenes and something akin to Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten for strings and bell in the scenes we are supposed to feel some unfortunate incident is just around the corner. (One of Luhrmann’s first projects was to make his version of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by the way). Of course, we also get to hear Waltzing Matilda; the film is, after all, called Australia. And we meet kangaroos. I’ll add in fairness that I think Luhrmann realized that as he had to show every single cliché about Australia, he filmed the Kangaroo scene in order for us to get a surprise, as if to say that he could at least in one scene make the film seem as if it had some life. The reader will see what I mean if he decides to brave a viewing.

As I am disappointed that yet another new film failed to live up to my hopes, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Luhrmann has a similar scepticism as myself to the value of many modern films. As Australia has been panned rather severely by many critics, Luhrmann has decided that the problem is with their perception, rather than with his own film, as witnessed by this exchange with The Hollywood Reporter:

“A lot of reviewers like ‘Australia.’ And we’re making people cry; I know because they write to us,” he said. “But there are those that don’t get it. A lot of the film scientists don’t get it. And it’s not just that that they don’t get it, but they hate it and they hate me, and they think I’m the black hole of cinema. They say, ‘He shouldn’t have made it, and he should die.’ “
Asked why he thought the reactions were so passionate, he replied: “I know what it’s about.” The movie’s detractors were used to movies that were neatly defined, he said. “This is not (simply) a romantic comedy for 40-year-old women or action movies for 17-year-old boys, and that’s not OK with some people. It’s not OK for people to come eat at the same table of cinema. But you look at movies like ‘Gone With the Wind’ and Old Hollywood classics, and they don’t fit in any box. “Corny Hollywood movies from the ’40s freak out (the film scientists),” he added.

I’ve included some space to his answers as they seem to indicate a number of things I find interesting. Well, firstly, that he clearly struggles with a slight case of paranoid delusions, but this is to expect working with Fox, so no one can hold that against him. His belief that people, and by “they” I assume he means critics, should want him dead for having made what they perceive to be a bad film, is just a bit over the top, though. In short, he considers himself an artist, and as such, I guess it is only natural that he feels the world to have singled him out for a special destiny, even though that destiny is rather on the bleak side.

Secondly, I find it interesting that he uses the phrase “film scientists” about what is commonly known as film critics or film reviewers. Maybe his term will catch on and a lot of incompetent reviewers for newspapers will be able to say “I am not a lowly reviewer, I am a scientist”. Oh, excuse me, he doesn’t mean that all the reviewers are scientists, merely those that have the unfortunate and accursed tendency to think. After all, a lot of reviewers like the film (because the film) is making people cry.

Thirdly, I can appreciate that Luhrmann wants to communicate with our hearts rather than with our conniving little minds, but unfortunately even I, who can find myself touched by the smallest things, was not able to break through the shell of sentimentality Luhrmann layered his film with. If the film is more laughable than touching, no amount of actorly emoting can make us care about what happens on the large canvas before us. I thought I heard some twelve year old girls cry a bit during the film, but my wife insists they were sniggering. Alas, I shall never know the true answer…

To my knowledge, critics are not particularly put off by “corny Hollywood movies from the ‘40s. Douglas Sirk is rather the critics’ darling these days, more so than in his lifetime, and films like A Letter to Three Wives, Dark Victory – and pretty much everything with Bette Davis – are usually appreciated more now than ever. Luhrmann mentions Gone With the Wind as an example of the kind of film he tried to make. Well, maybe he tried, but that is not sufficient to hold his own work in comparison with the classic epic. There is nothing in the set pieces of Australia that even comes close to the burning of Atlanta in the earlier film. There is no “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” among the bland sentences Luhrmann put in his actors’ mouths. In short, the only thing the films have in common is that they are on the long side. Even the central love story is vastly more complex in Gone With the Wind than in Australia, and the former actually seems to be surprisingly more mature – and modern – than Luhrmann’s bumbling cinematic creature.

Well, I am indeed sorry not to have more positive things to say about the film. I could add that it’s Nicole Kidman’s best performance in quite some while, but that is really not the apex of congratulatory remarks. Let me end, though, on a bright note and assure Mr. Luhrmann that I have no wish to see him dead and wish him the best of luck with his next project, which is an adaptation of F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. This masterpiece is a subtle little book where most of the plot points are well situated between the lines. Unfortunately, Luhrmann wants to make it because he sees it as illustrative of the current economic crisis, which is really not what the novel is about, current or otherwise. Well, it is partly about disgust for materialism and flamboyancy, so the link is not completely beyond the pale.  I fear, though, that Luhrmann’s take will possibly work against this. As for subtlety, we’ll do well, I think, not to hold our collective breaths.

The Browning Versions; What is a Remake and When is it Not?

After my last post, regarding the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, I received quite some negative replies – as well as some positive comments. I’ve replied/clarified some of my points in a number of forums and on the IMDB. I’ll let this long winded series of musings serve as a final summing up of points I’ve not had space to address on previous occasions. Almost all the negative feedback had to do with the perception that I, being more or less familiar with film history, could never view a remake “on its own terms“; meaning, I assume, that the spectre of an original – and fondly remembered – film, would always come between me and the new “work of art”.

I mainly disagree with this notion, but I can’t dismiss it altogether. Film reviewing and criticism has as much to do with knowledge of what has come before as with anything else. Film criticism, it seems to me, is not the art of analyzing a film and only that single film, as if no other films have been made. Without the ability to compare films, to hold them up against each other, it would be very hard to decide what quality is and what it is not.

Can one, for example, fully appreciate L.A. Confidential with no knowledge of the period in which it is set – and in the kind of films they made in that period? One can like it for its plot, suspense, action scenes and to a certain degree its characters, but I would certainly claim that a more thorough appreciation hinges on recognizing certain archetypes and archetropes of film noir and in seeing this film’s treatment of such. Also, while one can easily like the film without any comparative knowledge, one can never know whether it is really good; if there has already been made 1000 better films in the genre, one would be hard pressed to find the thousandandfirst film more than average at best. No one ever sees all the films ever made, so a truly exhaustive comparison is never possible, but if one hasn’t seen enough films to have at least a tentative understanding of what constitutes a genre, one can well rent films and privately consider every seeming novelty the best film in the world, but one should keep silent about them in polite company, if not on the internet…

Genre is one of the ways we can make sense of films. It is also a tool that enables us to talk about films that in some ways have something in common, usually having to do with subject matter and/or film style. It is usually ridiculous to compare a film (in terms of quality )of one genre to one in another genre. While I may like, say, the anime Mononoke-hime better than Die Hard, I can’t really claim that it is definitely the better film (it is!!!), as both seem to succeed in what they set out to do in a manner that is exemplary for their respective genres (Anime and Mainstream Action). I can, however say that Die Hard is better than American Gangster. I could also imply that I prefer a well made Anime over a well made Mainstream Action film, and thus validate my preference. It is after all the reviewer’s subjective take on the films that constitute the review. However, this must not mean that he disregards films in a genre that he doesn’t hold in especially high esteem as positively inferior. Ideally a reviewer should be able to appreciate all genres for what they are, what they can be.

Genre, thus, constitutes one way we judge newer films by what has come before. As mentioned above, there were some protests that implied that I, having seen the original TDTESS, was incapable of judging it in a way that had anything to say to those that had not yet seen the original. This is not far from claiming that the less informed a reviewer is about the history of film, the better equipped he is to communicate what the general public is likely to appreciate. I will approach the matter of judging and validating remakes by another example, that of sequels.

In the case that a film is deemed successful enough to warrant a sequel, one of two things generally occurs: 1: The studio hopes to earn some easy money by replacing everything that made the original any good (if it had ever been good in the first place) with a second rate production or less known faces in front of and behind the camera. Often these films end up going direct to DVD, or at least sells gradually less and less (a number of Disney films come to mind as well as any sequel featuring members of Saturday Night Live. And let‘s not forget any mildly or very successful horror-film; Puppetmaster, Halloween, Friday 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Hills Have Eyes, Tremors, Resident Evil, Child’s Play, Critters, Jaws, Highlander, Mimic, etc, etc. By the way, none of these has less than 2 sequels, and some have already been remade as well). 2: Other films were maybe so-called sleeper hits, or films that the studio felt insecure about upon their original release, and when having proved successful beyond expectations, a bigger, more expensive and expansive sequel is arranged, with as many of the same players as possible. Sometimes these films do reasonably well commercially, such as the mentioned Die Hard-films, the Jason Bourne- or the Matrix Trilogy, other times they bomb as if there is no tomorrow, as, let’s say, Speed 2. Once in a blue moon, the sequels are actually almost on par with the original of what has now become a kind of franchise, or it betters them: Godfather II, Superman II, Spiderman II, Empire Strikes Back, Dawn of the Dead, Mad Max II, The Dark Knight (which is not called Batman II, so I don‘t know if it counts as a sequel) and let’s not forget Revenge of the Nerds II.

In the case of the lower budgeted sequels, it is generally not that necessary to have seen the first part of the series in order to understand/appreciate the following films. I find that the opposite is usually true for the ones that add a bigger budget. This is strange, as one would assume that the more expensive a film is, the more the studios would want the film to be able to stand alone. Oh well, I digress. My point here is that in order to determine whether, say, The Matrix: Revolutions is any good, or rather, how bad it is, one would be expected to have seen the preceding film(s). Seen by and for itself, one could perhaps confuse it for an original sci/fi-action film utilizing exciting and ground breaking new technology. I find it strenuous to think that someone would accuse a reviewer of being biased because he had seen the first of the trilogy and found the sequels to be severely lacking in comparison. Again, the point is that the quality of the film is in some ways bound to comparisons with already existing films. I doubt that the fact of having seen Tremors invites the viewer to base his entire impression of the quality of the sequels upon whether they follow the same formula as the original. There are other aspects that come into play, such as competence, direction and story. I fail to see that judging sequels differs enormously from reviewing remakes.

In the matter of remakes, one has a very definite and literal source of comparison. The film makers have decided for some reason – and these reasons can be good or bad – that they want to have another go at a cultural product. I put it as loosely as that, because in most instances they don’t really want to make the same film again – Gus van Sant’s Psycho being the possible exception – but to take a story, a character, a concept or – in too many cases – merely want to capitalize upon an established title, a brand, so to say, and try to make something new or financially viable of it.

Seeing as the film makers – or studio – has thus invited comparisons by retooling an already existing cultural entity (how’s that for being obscure?), I think any reviewer would be amiss if he didn’t consider how the newer version differs from, improves upon, takes away from, or expands upon the original concept. This by no means implies that the reviewer should automatically perceive the original version as a biblical text and any deviations from it as heresy. I very much like Anthony Asquith’s original The Winslow Boy, and, seeing as it is based on a play by the excellent Terence Rattigan, I could see very few ways in which to improve upon the film. In David Mamet’s remake, almost the exact same story was told in almost the exact same way, with a very few exceptions. These exceptions had to do with some of Mamet’s usual concerns, a certain delivery of speech and stressing of relationship between truth and seeming truth. For me some little extra scenes and a very slightly different ear for dialogue was enough to more than appreciate Mamet’s new version.

I think the biggest problem some reviewers and many mere viewers have with remakes has to do with the quality of the original. If a film was really good, why remake it? Wouldn’t it make more sense to remake a flawed product that one perceives as having potential to be better than it actually turned out to be? In other cases, usually concerning some supernatural or sci/fi- concept, the effects available at the time of the original were so few that one thinks that adding green screen and blue screen and sensors on everyone’s faces will automatically make for a better viewing experience. The idea is not silly. The better the effects in these kinds of films, the easier to lose oneself in the reality of the film, one might say. So one “reinvents” Planet of the Apes and The Day The Earth Stood Still. It is needless to say that none of these will survive the test of time. I think part of the reason is that it was not the technology per se that made them function as films but the story and direction. So any remake has very little to gain but much to lose by relying on better visual effects to validate its existence.

Sometimes the results are indeed honourable, as in the recent versions of King Kong and War of the Worlds. I still prefer the 1933-version of the former. This has to do with being able to compare it to other films of the time, and thus seeing how inventive and adventurous the film really was and is. Another reason might be almost archaeological in nature, as if it stands before us as a beautiful artefact of a time gone by, and we should be glad it still exists for our pleasure. Both these reasons might be said to be more theoretical or intellectual than aesthetic, but I think that one can’t overlook that the story is extremely well told and as long as the story is captivating enough to hold our attention, the technical means of telling it does not matter a whole lot. My preferring the original did not, however, make me disposed to hate Peter Jackson’s remake. On the contrary, I liked it and thought it among the better block busters of its year. Much the same I can say for Steven Spielberg’s retooling of the classic invasion film. While not his best work, it was by no means a disaster, and I particularly liked how he made the action happen outside the reach of his Everyman. It reminded me in this aspect a fair bit of Marvels, the excellent comic book by Kurt Busiek.

This begs the question: Why remake films where the only available new technology to speak of is colour, and even that was available for most of these films? Why remake Father of the Bride, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, 3:10 to Yuma, The Manchurian Candidate, The Women, The Pink Panther, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, and many, many more? If it was the story that seemed old fashioned, why remake it, why not make something entirely new? If one thinks the acting style seemed too old fashioned, well, why pander to fads and make everything so goddamn easy for everyone? And why have Steve Martin try to badly copy Peter Sellers? Even some of my favourite directors are guilty of this meaningless retooling of already very good films, as in the case of the Coen Brother’s remake of the Ladykillers. And that, as they say, is a shame.

Maybe the first lesson the Remakers should take is “never remake a film made by a distinct director, someone who has/had their own vision”. Try to remake some journeyman director instead. I don’t think anyone alive, maybe except Stephen King, much appreciates the remake of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Well, at least they had the wits to call it Stephen King’s The Shining… I shudder to think of the day they decide to remake A Clockwork Orange. David Lynch has made one film that is not a master piece, but seeing as that was based on a series of novels and not even he was satisfied with the final version, I don’t find it scandalous that they remade Dune. However, imagine in 20 years a producer wanting to have a go at Blue Velvet or conceive of Eraserhead: The Mutation!

Now, while mentioning The Shining and A Clockwork Orange, I took pause, wondering if any new version of a novel or play is really a remake of the film or just another version of the literary source. In, let’s say films based on works by Shakespeare, Austen or Dickens, one doesn’t really think of them as remakes of films, does one? Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V or Hamlet are not really remakes of Olivier’s versions as much as interpretations of Shakespeare, methinks. Neither are new versions of Emma, Othello, Oliver Twist, Wuthering Heights or Dracula as much remakes of existing films as they are yet another way to bring the book to life. War of the Worlds, though, is considered a remake of the 1956-film more than an interpretation of H.G.Wells, and a number of Western films that have later been remade also had a literary antecedent, without this being considered when we talk about the remakes. Maybe it has to do with the classic status of the original work, or whether the novels predates Film itself?

In closing, I’d like to take the opportunity to mention a case where I saw the remake first and only much later the original work. I have seen Mike Figgis’ film The Browning Version two times. It is based on a play by already mentioned Terrence Rattigan. Neither viewing left much impression on me. I thought it a so-so film, with good actors trying to play as good actors should. Recently I saw Anthony Asquith’s original and was blown away. Michael Redgrave delivers a portrait of the retiring teacher that put Albert Finney’s portrayal if not to shame, than at least rendered more or less meaningless. The difference in acting and actors was not all, though. It was made in another time, yet the original felt emotionally a hundred times more relevant to me than Figgis’ remake. Why this is so, and why the earlier film was so much better is something I hope one day to put into more words, maybe here. Perhaps they just made better films before, or perhaps when something has been made once, it can very seldom be bettered. I don’t know. I do not, however, hate those that try. Unless they insist on bringing Steve Martin along. And unless they fuck with my favourite films. Now, go and remake the Phantom Menace. With a director.

The Day The Earth Stood Still – Again (Remake 2008)

They did it. The fools! They finally did it. Goddamn you! Goddamn you all to hell! – While this outburst would be better suited to Tim Burton’s remake of the Planet of the Apes, I’ll let it herald another cinematic atrocity: They have remade Robert Wise’s science fiction classic The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), and the result is thoroughly unspectacular. Yep, that’s telling ‘em off… Honestly, I wanted the remake to succeed, but my initial scepticism proved, unfortunately, not to be the result of a paranoid mind.

It’s not so often I get the chance to see films some 10 days prior to their world premieres. Thus I was in an elevated mood when the opportunity presented itself today. As one never knows what’s liable to get a man into trouble, I’ll not thank the person responsible for this treat here… I’ve been a fan of the original film since I saw it together with my wife some six years ago. (It’s now one of her favourite films). Of course, we’re not alone in our fandom of the movie; Klaatu Barada Nikto has become something of a household phrase in USA and among nerds and geeks the world over. The 1951-film is one of the best known black and white S/F films ever made and one of the most beloved.

It’s not difficult to see why. The film has a pretty timeless message about humanity’s place on earth. In 1951, the perceived prevalent threat to our existence was the atomic bomb, but one hardly needs to be a rocket scientist to imagine new ways for the human race to destroy itself or its world. Thus, the concerns of Robert Wise’s film can easily be renewed, so to say, or re-energized, by newer generations. Then also the film had going for it the design of an incredibly cool – though borderline dorky, some would say – robot, or automaton as I prefer to call it. GORT wasn’t much more than mansized, but still damn well unstoppable when he got going. That is, until the humanoid envoy of the alien race called him to stop with the succinct “Deglet Ovrosco!” and the now so famous command “Klaatu Barada Nikto”.

I could list, if pressured by Gort, a hundred reasons why the 1951-version of The Day The Earth Stood Still deserves its classic status, but I’ll dedicate this post to some of the hundred reasons why the remake that has an imminent world premiere falls not only short of the original, but falls extremely painfully short, with broken limbs and a smashed skull to show for its toils.

The original film jumps straight to the action. As soon as the credits have played, over images of the universe with Bernard Herrmann’s wonderful soundtrack setting the mood, we get to know that an alien spaceship is about to land on earth. Within five minutes, it has landed in Central Park, and as the film delivers its plotpoints economically, we have also been prior to the reactions to the phenomenon all over the world.

The first problem I have with the remake is that it uses so much of its running time to get to the point. First we have a kind of prologue, which shows us a mountain climber, played by Keanu Reeves, encountering a giant orb-like object in the Himalayas (?) The entire sequence is accompanied by the fakest looking snow I can recall having seen since the more claustrophobic second rate studio pictures of the forties. As it turns out, this sequence has no real bearing on the rest of the film, apart from trying to over-explain some points mentioned later anyway.

Then, as the film proper begins, Jennifer Connelly, who as always does a fine role here, is shown at work handing out homework assignments for a class of students of astrophysics or astrobiology or some such. There is a scene where she is asked on a date by a colleague, an offer she declines. We never see her students, workplace, or colleague again. Couldn’t the film just have told us what her work is? We follow her home, where she meets her stepson. This we know because said son actually tells her: “Don’t be such a stepmom!” I guess we could not be trusted to gather this ourselves. Later in the film, she explains her family history to Reeves’ character, Klaatu. How many times does the audience need to hear the same? Isn’t one of the advantages of the medium that we don’t have to be told everything, as we can actually SEE what is happening. If the “show, don’t tell!”-rule is true for literature, it must be doubly so for films.

The following twenty minutes or so posits exciting questions, such as who’s going to watch the increasingly irritating STEPson while momma is apprehended by the government and what is going on? (I suspect that most viewers, even those unfamiliar with the original film, will have a far better idea about what’s going on than the protagonists. This is seldom a good thing). We follow what can only be described as bureaucratic procedures as Connelly’s character gains access to an emergency area filled with scientists – and one engineer (!) – that have no idea why they are there. After introducing these, the film never lets us see them again. She meets the head of the science community, played by Jon Hamm, always so tired looking in the very good TV-series Mad Men. He looks even more tired here, maybe because the film has no need for him. There is an intimation that he knows Connelly from before, but this thread is not followed up on. Neither is his part in the film, except from a scene towards the end, in which he serves as her driver. Now, that’s a character arc for you!

After half an hour, the spaceship has finally landed and eventually Keanu Reeves emerges from a cocoon-thingy. For once, Reeves’ wooden acting serves a purpose, as the character is supposed to be inhuman in most aspects apart from appearance. Reeves manages more or less to appear as human, and maybe they should award him a prize for this.

The story is supposed to be a kind of moral parable or a tale of what if? – Can human beings change if they finally know, without any room for doubt, that they are about to destroy themselves – or be destroyed? This is all well and good, but while the original film knew what it was trying to say and said it succinctly and effectively, this remake manages to spend a third of its running time just setting up the situation. Not only does it spend too much time on incidents and characters that ultimately don’t contribute to the story, but the story it does tell is muddled and not convincing, even within its own reality and frame of thought. The filmmakers have tried to make it contemporary and relevant to today, but I never felt convinced by humanity’s right to a continued existence after the evidence presented here.

Global warming and pollution is the atomic bomb of today, the film tells us. This is all well and good, but while the first film showed us this as a challenge to the world, and showed us the world answering, the remake is US-centric to the extreme. While it tries to show the US- government as ill equipped to handle the situation, paradoxically it has no interest in how the rest of the world faces the global threat that GORT and the alien races post. The film initially introduces us to scientists of many cultural and national backgrounds, but it lets these disappear without any further thoughts of their place in the story. Reeves’ alien once tries to get the chance to talk with the UN, but this request is quickly dismissed by the American Secretary of Defence (if I remember correctly), played by Kathy Bates, and for all intents and purposes, both the film and Klaatu forget about the request.

Instead of trusting that the seemingly timeless galactic moral dilemma of whether it is necessary to kill humanity before they kill their planet is sufficient in the stakes department, we are also treated to a back story of Connelly’s husband dying in Iraq and this event’s effect on the remaining family. I can see little reason to include this except as a forced reference to current events that doesn’t even manage to throw the briefest flicker of light on why the father died or how his death has served as the mean of estrangement between mother and stepson that the film tries to convince us of is a deep source of unhappiness. I find myself being obfuscate here, partly because I don’t want to give away too much of the action, but mostly because this part of the story makes little narrative sense and the storyline comes off as downright uninteresting.

Apart from an uninteresting story, which irrelevance is an accomplishment considering the material they had to work with and base the story on, the film has two serious problems: The first is the special effects, which are surprisingly badly made, and the second is John Cleese, or, rather, the casting of Cleese. GORT, the automaton, is initially well made. He is now about ten metres tall, but that is a remake for you, and it kind of works well. However, in his second incarnation, in the latter part of the film, he dissolves – by own volition – into a kind of metallic dust cloud consisting of myriads of tiny metal insects (don’t ask!). Everyone who has seen The Mummy Returns knows how bad digital dust storms can look and this film is definitely no exception. Apart from GORT2, there are a number of bad effects, and as already mentioned, they were not even able to make the snow look convincing.

The worst special effect, though, has to be John Cleese posing as a scientist. People in the movie theatre started giggling as soon as he appeared and immediately began making difficult equations on a black board. Some actors just have too much baggage to work in roles like this. While Cleese could function in the humoristic role of Q in the Brosnan Bond-films, serious acting is another venue altogether. Seldom have I seen a role working so much against the film it appears in as Cleese’s appearance here.

In closing, I know that most will share my deep regret that not even GORT’s commands are given correctly in this film. When the automaton in his first appearance destroys all of the army vehicles and weapons, his humanoid companion, Klaatu, makes him stop his rampage by commanding him “Deglet Ovrosco!”. In the remake, they can’t wait to introduce the iconic (if one can say that about a sentence) Klaatu Barada Nikto, so they use it already at this point. We never hear it again, nor any other commands to GORT. Damn, that’s a shame! Had they had a creative bone in their collective bodies, the film makers could at least have tried to introduce a phrase themselves, something new, something worthwhile, something.