Pick Of The Week
Cape Fear (J. Lee
Thompson, 1962) Universal Studios
Max Cady imprisoned in Baltimore, on the strength of
testimony by attorney Sam Bowden (at that time in Maryland for a legal
conference), for the rape of a teenage girl has been released and plants
himself in Bowden’s home town in order to play the classic game of unjust revenge.
The plot, as plots should be, only serves to provide a context for a battle of
wills and principles and an investigation of both. The viewer can predict which
of these wills and value systems will triumph but the victor does not survive unscathed.
Bowden represents the moral tradition of an American
liberal belief in justice and law. This system with its beliefs in the
presumption of innocence and its anti-fascist philosophy that the dangerous
cannot be prosecuted until they cause actual harm is turned on its head and
exposed as a pretense to be rejected at the first sign of its potential inefficacy.
Max Cady, smart and self-educated in the law, knows the game, knows that he has
lived life in a corner, and knows that those beholden to the statutes of the
law are eventually powerless to combat that which they disdain with either senseless
prejudice or justified suspicion. Bowden is reduced to entrapment and
enticement and the encouragement of a violence that falls far outside the
domains of his own investment as an icon of the law. Max Cady is our obvious
villain but like Heath Ledger’s Joker his destructive provocations are also
seen as encouraging exposures of a belief system that on one hand governs a
nation and, on the other hand, is also a lie.
It is telling that Bowden is a dull man, driven by
allegiances and affections that while comforting are also stifling and
impotent. Cady is erotic, dead-smart, interesting, a consistent catalyst of
stimulation in others (on and off the screen) and, of course, dangerous to the
safe, the dull, and the good. When Cady is on the screen playing his casual
charms, he is intoxicating. When we have become drunk and we realize that he is
still sober and the merriment has turned to malice he is terrifying in no less
a thrilling way. He conveys an actual threat to our normalcy and our desire to
protect that which we insist and presume is innocent and because of this he is
both our hero and our nemesis. Cady is no mere beast, his drive is not
instinctual but rather built on a raging hatred for the safe hypocrisies of our
American times. Living in a world of encouraged lust he goes further than
allowed and cannot believe that his is the only crime/failure that is to be noted
and prosecuted.
There is nothing to recommend in the acts he
commits, the foundational rape, the implied sodomy of a woman of little
reputation, the terror of a wife contorted into horrible choices, and the
eventual stalking of a girl just entering puberty, beyond the exciting
enticement of his bravado and style. It is this excitement that makes us
complicit in his deeds, and while we do not share his physic al and carnal
taste for youth in the performance of actual decadence, we are made aware that
he is not foreign to our attraction to the forbidden and that it is this
attraction that encourages us to hide in its moral and social denouncement. We
ask him if he is trying to seduce us and we are thrilled and spooked that the
answer is yes. He must be our villain because he is so attractive in all the
wrong ways. The film is captivating and threatening.
SRP: $19.85
Also Released
Driving Miss Daisy [Blu-ray]
(Bruce Beresford, 1989) Warner Bros.
They don’t make films like this anymore
and that is probably for the best. Incessantly and gently racist throughout,
this saga of an elderly Jewish woman and the imposed upon her black chauffeur,
who become, shockingly, friends aims to touch our hearts with demonstration of
how affection overcomes racial barriers. But it does not accomplish this
because those barriers are not overcome, they are highlighted and we are asked
to be tickled by how this unlikely couple became close all the while accentuating
our acceptance that such a pairing must and should be unlikely. The film gives
itself away in the declaration of the affable son of the matriarch who is
affectionate and kind to all the black folk who work in his mother’s house but
declares that if he were to align himself with the actual civil rights of
African Americans it would be bad for business. The film shares this
perspective.
SRP: $26.99
Forbidden Games [Blu-ray] (René
Clément, 1952) RB UK Studio Canal
This
beautifully photographed and directed film is merciless in its exposure of
human cruelty and suffering. Set in the countryside outside of France in a
community blighted by a bridge that has a military value as a target, a young,
quickly orphaned, girl is reluctantly taken in by a farming family, presently
lamenting the crippling of their eldest son by a horse startled by the same
actions of war. There is suffering available for all. The kids take a beating
as do the neighbors, pets and livestock, much of the human travails are the
result of petty resentments and the difficulty of managing a difficult life in
a difficult time that dispels the premise that tough times bring out the best
in people. “And wounded is the fruit of
the womb, Jesus.” This scriptural confusion provided by the young girl could
serve as the epigraph for the movie in its study of the tribulations of life in
the midst of death. Whether are not this wounding is also blessed is a difficult
question to approach given that the children’s game of reconciling themselves
to the devastation around them is that which comes to be forbidden resulting,
surely, in more suffering for them both.
SRP: $13.99 in pounds
Game Change [Blu-ray] (Jay
Roach, 2012) HBO Studios
While apparently, a very popular
rendering of the McCain presidential campaign decision to put Sarah Palin on
the ticket, this film is at best an interesting disaster. It is interesting in
the deceptive sense that it is providing us with a real presentation of Palin’s
inadequate political and personal character. It is a disaster because the
presentation seems cynically loaded, the performances almost as bad as the
obvious bald caps (save Moore’s impersonation of Palin which seems believable
to someone like myself who has never met Palin). Palin, besides all her
apparent and enormous failings, seems to have disgraced herself in the minds of
“serious”
Republicans because she broke the rule of allowing herself to be completely being used by seeking something for herself. She agreed to stand beside McCain in regards to stem cell research and now she is sticking to her own principles? These are the ingredients of outrageous self-aggrandizing and opportunism. The rest of us who don’t care about the wake of her political reflection can be content to watch her rise as a fall from the dignity and grace of being a useful tool. But who really cares?
Republicans because she broke the rule of allowing herself to be completely being used by seeking something for herself. She agreed to stand beside McCain in regards to stem cell research and now she is sticking to her own principles? These are the ingredients of outrageous self-aggrandizing and opportunism. The rest of us who don’t care about the wake of her political reflection can be content to watch her rise as a fall from the dignity and grace of being a useful tool. But who really cares?
SRP: $24.99
Grand Hotel [Blu-ray]
(Edmund Goulding, 1932) MGM
This extraordinary film pitches the idea
of Berlin’s Grand Hotel as a metaphor for a moment in time filled with
characters seeking their own ends through devices sometimes devious and
sometimes communal. As this moment comes to an end the promise is that another
will begin with new voices and visions competing for life in their era. Because
it continues, incessantly, the rhetorical argument of the film is that none of
it matters; lives come and go and are replaced. The film is also; however,
explicitly clear on what constitutes continuity between generations and it is
not the procreative urge. Rather, it is vulnerability and the desire not
perhaps for success but for a real account of freedom, where one can be without
the constant restraint of servitude. The name of servitude, articulated by many
in the film, is money. But money is not everything and its force does not carry
the day in the picture. What captivates the viewer is this vulnerability of the
human condition, and the glamour of those who can accept it and the despair of
those who would rather kill or die than be humbled by it. Also, while the film
is mostly advertised as a Greta Garbo vehicle despite its star ensemble, Joan
Crawford clearly and constantly steals the moment.
SRP: $19.85
Hit & Run [Blu-ray]
(David Palmer, 2012) Universal Studios
What does it mean that a film can have
interesting dialogue and charming characters and still be a so what? It means
that the world is filled with movies and there is no shortage of slight virtues
in many of them. In a world without movies, Hit & Run would be an exciting
crime drama with a few smiles for relief. But in this world this movie tries
too hard to be both funny and exciting. From pratfalls involving an incompetent
US Marshall to the potentially intriguing plot of a man in the witness
protection program who leaves said protection so his girlfriend can seek a job
in another jurisdiction, consistency is tossed away for that which is presumed
might be intriguing for a minute or two. This does happen, and the film is not
terrible, but with fifteen to twenty new DVDs every week there is nothing remotely
special to recommend this one.
SRP: $30.99
House at the End of the Street [Blu-ray] (Mark
Tonderai, 2012) Relativity Media
Sarah and her
daughter Elyssa are renting a largely country house in a neighborhood beyond
their means. The price is affordable because the house at the end of the street
is the site of the murder of a married couple by one of their children. The
house looms in their imaginations, their dreams and their suspicions. Upon
making contact with one of the children of this very broken home our mother and
daughter are confronted by the ways the community conceives of the child and
how they themselves see him differently – the mother worried, the daughter
attracted by the image of the suffering loner. His status moves her in relation
to her sympathies as someone also suffering half orphan status as a child of divorced
parents. The film is ordinary, with the usual cats jumping when you would
expect to not expect and there is nothing introduced in the first three acts
that isn’t relevant in act five. This is a complaint, as there is no room to
breathe beyond the necessity of plot. And the necessity of this plot is
especially dark and scary for the ways it reinforces and rewards the practical
morality of paranoia and mistrust in our treatment of troubled strangers.
SRP: $39.99
The Imposter [Blu-ray] (Bart
Layton, 2012) RB UK Revolver Entertainment
I think it was
an asset to my viewing that I had no idea what this film about before watching
it. I had no idea it was a documentary, I had no idea it was based on a true
story. I had no idea about anything. And as the film progressed my suspicions
about what it was about were continually being shifted. The initial suggestion
is that it is a film about a missing boy from Texas quickly fell away, or
perhaps more to the truth became much more complicated. My thought that it was
about a Spanish con artist also fell away. What the film is about is varied and
never a settled thing. Additional viewings would draw your attention to a
different aspect of narrative or character possibility. The true story is
intriguing but what is completely fascinating is our main character
Nicholas/Frederic and his willed ability to be a chameleon. He is a tremendous
actor all the more frightening and enticing for making it real even when it is
not believable. The film-makers are to be commended for constantly keeping
suspense in the picture and affections for all, the dark and the light even
after you cannot tell them apart.
SRP: $12.99 in pounds
The Jazz Singer [Blu-ray] (Alan
Crosland, 1927) Warner Bros.
Jakie
Rabinowitz’s father wants his son to follow five generations of Rabinowitz men
and be the cantor for their New York City synagogue. Jakie has different
designs for his life and instead seeks the spotlight of the jazz singer, though
it must be stated that this is not jazz as other records of the era by Bessie
Smith, Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong’s “Potato Head Blues” present. So,
he does not really want to be a jazz singer, he wants to be famous diluting
jazz into something more palatable to the Broadway masses. This touches upon the
argument of the film articulated as one between religious obligation and
secular self-expression, the dialectical conclusion that both can be prayer. I
wonder what this film would be like for the audience if remade as the
confrontation between a religious family and a child who sought their fame in
the sex industry. Even if you are sceptical of that argument between the
religious and the secular it does not matter as the actual tension of the film
is between the call of family and the call of reward for personal dues paid.
This is probably an easier choice and Jakie becomes Jack Robin who pursues fame
at the expense of everything and is praised for doing so. But of course he is
conflicted and we are supposed to be moved by his soul-searching even when
confronted by his actual performance we rely solely on being told it was a
show-stopper as it seems in actuality to be trite and racially offensive. Sold
throughout history as Hollywood’s first sound picture it is a mostly a silent
film. I concede that if the first line of movie sound dialogue is “You have not
heard anything yet” as it is in the film that is winning. But more to the point
when Jakie/Jack talks you wish he would shut up. The empathy he gathers as a
silent figure is destroyed by his cloying, creepy and persistently disturbing
affection he inappropriately displays for his mother. This is a classic film
with no claims to its title.
SRP: $26.99
Mrs. Miniver [Blu-ray] (William Wyler, 1942) Warner Bros.
It is sentimental and off-putting for
its presentation of ordinary English salt of the earth people as what we would
call the upper class in any other part of the world, likely including England.
Mrs. Miniver, both rose and woman, are lovely. All the Minivers are lovely and
they better be as they are the essence of our superiority to any other world
view. But these thoughts are afterthoughts and like a true work of sentimental
art they do not occur to the engaged viewer while the movie plays out. Genuine
tension is created on the basis of our sentimental affections. We cannot really
say that we know these people; all we know is that they are good and because
they are quiet, and never give the game away, we are propelled into belief.
They do not exist like the rest of us because they are not at all like the rest
of us. We believe that they are possible and we fill them with our apprehension
and anxiety for their well-being because we want to believe that such
personalities are achievable, especially in times of strife. They are the
Christian ideal without any directly communicated evangelical message. I would
be intrigued to see how Mrs. Miniver would have responded to Max Cady. My hope
is that they might have seduced each other.
SRP: $19.99
My Dog Tulip [Blu-ray] (Paul
Fierlinger, Sandra Fierlinger, 2009) New Yorker Films
If you like
animation unburdened by computer enhanced realism and anecdotes about dogs,
with a heavy emphasis on their breeding habits, this is the movie that you have
been waiting for. For myself, I do like drawn animation and observations about
canines but I did find the endless passages on the mating habits of Alsatians
to be uncomfortable even before we were taught about the potential necessity of
applying Vaseline to Tulip’s vulva as an aid to copulation. The film does
dignify the mystery of dogs and if you have a new dog in your home, as we do in
ours, this can be warming to one’s heart and appeasing of one’s tensions about
how dogs are to be raised. But eventually it is not about your dog and with
that realization one’s attention wanes. The soundtrack of barking and yelping,
both social and sexual, did seem to send our dog into a bit of a frenzy after
the film was over.
SRP:
Samsara [Blu-ray] (Ron
Fricke, 2011) Paradox
In the
tradition of the Qatsi trilogy (recently released by the Criterion Collection),
Samsara is free of dialogue and
relies on music and images (shown at various and sometimes misleading speeds,
making the Hajj seem like a mass
whirling dervish) to connect with its viewer. It is a film that one thinks you
should admire even if you don’t really appreciate it. For myself, I found it
endlessly depressing. The images of religious life seemed as dreary and
dreadful as the images of our mechanized urban lifestyles. In fact, the most
beauty I found in the film were in the ways our highways and buildings come
alive at night and the ways that chickens are mass handled for production. The
rest, including the chicken based scenes, were mostly reminders of how dead we
are becoming inside. The problem is that this seemed the same with the scenes
of the religiously observant. And so I was left by this glorious celebration of
the eternal that everything is dead and corrupt. It is not true.
SRP: $34.99
Two-Lane Blacktop [Blu-ray]
(Monte Hellman, 1971) Criterion Collection AVER REVI
The driver, the mechanic, the G.T.O., and the girl,
racing on the road – this is all we are given in terms of character and it is a
wonderful cinematic experience that this seems like more than enough. The film
subverts Hitchcock’s claim that movies are life with the dull parts cut out by
showing us life with the exciting parts removed. The excitement is transformed
into the subtle and steady movements of lives going down a road. There is a
race between the driver and the mechanic against the G.T.O. but they are more
friends than foes, or at the least they are more akin than they are foreign.
The girl is an outsider, knows it, and resents it. She is desired but no one
cares to know her and socially speaking her only sense of herself is internal,
all else becomes pouts and performance and ultimately acts of leaving. The
mechanic and the driver have almost nothing to say while showing us who they
are and how they are trying to be true to something that they have not yet
discovered. G.T.O. cannot stop talking and nothing he says seems to be true. It
is in the ache of his smile and his constant need to connect that we are shown
that he is of the same spirit as the other two, trying to find something of
himself and something other than himself out there on the road. The films use
of images and found sights and people is observant and loving, it is not an
investigative camera, it is a seeing one that understands that the eye is a
participant in what it sees. Samsara
gives the proximity of distance that leaves me cold, Two-Lane Blacktop in its lack of intent to make a point, but to
seek inclusion in everything, fills me with hope and faith in the road to come.
SRP: $54.99
