By Jason A. Hill

In a story, and more often screenwriting, writers have a concept they refer to as the “controlling idea“. This is an idea that boils down all the complexity of a movie down to one idea, one sentence. In Inception by Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Momento) he has crafted a story who’s “controlling idea” is a controlling idea. That is “an idea, planted deep enough into a person’s sub conscience, will grow like a virus and become the very center of that person’s existence” which is referred to as inception. This loop of meanings is just the surface of what is a multi layered labyrinth of a plot and can become very confusing for much of the audiences this film will entertain. But if you can get past the vast complexity of the plot, where Nolen has spared no expense in giving plenty of action, suspense, and drama, you will have seen quite possibly the best Sci Fi film in ten years. I know that’s a bold statement and considering it’s very good but tame 84% rating from Rottentomatoes.com composite of critics reviews, it is still yet to be determined how it will resonate with viewers over the next few weeks. But having seen it for myself I already know another viewing will be necessary to fully grasp all this film has to offer and I may write another article just to explain. For now I will try to justify my high praise for this film and attempt to apply inception that this film is not to be missed!

The story follows Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) a unique information broker who specializes in the art of “extraction”, which entails entering a persona’s dream and stealing information directly from their mind. Cobb’s ability is set against a terrible truth locked away in his own sub conscience. (no Spoiler here) He is commissioned by Saito (Ken Watanabe) a rich Japanese business owner who wants Cobb to plant an idea inside his dying business rival’s son’s mind (Inception) that will lead to the break up of his empire. The stakes are high as well as the risks. In order to accomplish this Cobb must reach the deepest level of his targets mind. To do this he must assemble a “dream team” of highly skilled extraction agents who deal specifically in corporate espionage. To achieve inception, his team must take his victim into the deepest reaches of his own mind via a dream within a dream (and then another). This disorienting state that makes it difficult for the subject to even realize what is real and what is the dream. The deeper inside the mind, the more dangerous and actions taken in the dream have dire consequences in the real world. But for Cobb, this is the last job he has to do before he can return to his home. But where is home exactly, he is tempted to “make” a home in his dream world but it is there where he must face his greatest fears and his true enemy. Only Ariadne (Ellen Page), a skilled dream maze designer and his protege, knows the truth and she joins him as he confronts his demons in the deepest reaches of his own mind.

The film has a complexity to it not seen in sci fi since the Matrix. The complexity adds layers and excites many intellectual viewers but it is also the base for its hardest critics citing it to be incomprehensible and trying too hard to fool the audience. But for an action sci fi thriller, these are complements. Not long before Star Wars, sci fi was considered a “B” movie genre and it is rare to see a film in either action or sci fi that isn’t full of camp and over laden with CGI. Granted Inception is not short on unrealistic violence and none of the themes in the film are totally original, “What is real” = Matrix (1999). Dream fighting is nothing new either, = A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987). What is new is Christopher Nolan’s vision and his skills in writing, directing, and producing take on these themes. After The Dark Knight, Nolan earned himself a chance to make a film the way he wanted and getting his way gave us a film that could suppliant his film immortality. This film functions on a high level in every area, acting particularity.DiCaprio and Ellen Page give A performances. Casting was superb even finding spots for film veterans like Michael Caine (Miles) and Tom Berenger (Browning). Camera work and special effects are sure to be Oscar contenders next year, and the sound track by Hans Zimmer (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight) is amazing. The tension and compounding conflict in the film is so good it’s Hitchcockean and interwoven seamlessly with the action reminiscent of The Matrix and the Bourne series.

The set up of this has the viewer cheering for Cobb and his team to pull off his heist of an innocent man’s free will which begs the question of not only will this work but is this just? Why do we want Cobb to complete his mission? The conflict that comes from the ethics of what Cobb and his team are doing is a great example of the perplexity of this film. It is riddled and torn with perplexity and that’s what makes it such hard film to “get”. But you have to see it for your self and try your best to “get” this film or you just might miss the beginning of a great cinematic phenomenon.

OK, I’m going to admit it: I absolutely love nature documentaries.  Perhaps “March of the Penguins” and BBC’s “Earth” are two that come immediately to mind as nature pictures that have stayed with me since watching them.  The latter, a brilliant work narrated by James Earl Jones was interestingly acquired for U.S. release by none other than Disney’s new kid on the block Independent nature documentary group, Disneynature.  Being as moved as I was by “Earth,” when I found out Disneynature had put together their own documentary, I was ecstatic to hear it’d be getting a Japanese release so I could see it over here.  With its ambitious attempt to document the massive bodies of water that cover 3/4’s of our planet, “Oceans” is a visual and auditory masterpiece put together by French directors Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud.  On a visual level I have to be honest that I never been moved to ohh and ahh more than I have when watching “Oceans.”  And yet, as beautifully shot, edited and scored as the film may be, what didn’t I get about it?  I’ll sum it up in one word for you:

Robots.

Robots you say?  Yeah, I’d be thinking the same thing too.  But I wasn’t thinking this when I went in to enjoy what I thought would be a documentary about that big bowl of water out there and all of its amazing inhabitants.  Immersed completely in the visual and audio experience of the film, I didn’t learn until after I got home later that night that the scenes in the film showing cruelty towards sharks, sea turtles, whales and other sea creatures were actually all just done using robots!  Yep, friggin’ robots.  Now you might be asking yourself like I did, why would the creators of this project want to spend thousands of dollars on animatronic sea animals as a way to portray the cold reality of mass net fishing and certain fishery industries’ practices?  Perhaps the scene that sticks most with me was the one showing the de-finning and de-tailing of a mid-sized shark, with the fisherman then coldly discarding the still alive shark back into the water as the camera makes us follow the poor creature to its grave at the sea floor, blood pouring from its gills.  It’s images like this that would make just about anyone want to join Green Peace or Sea Shepard and blow up all the fishery industries of the world.  And yet that’s where I have to draw the line and say that a documentary is a documentary only when it is telling the unedited truth.

So what did the filmmakers have to say for themselves?  Reading Japan’s Asahi Newspaper and its interview with both directors, when asked why they chose to use robots in the cruelty towards sea animal scenes in their film, the two state that from one living creature to another, they could never sit back and document such a grotesque incident as it’s happening.  Granted I share the same feelings as they do and would also be unable to sit passively on the sidelines, that doesn’t mean I’d use robots to re-enact such a horrific scene in my so-called documentary just to get my audiences fired up and angry about cruelty towards sea animals.  In fact, I wouldn’t have put a scene using robots in my documentary at all if I ever wanted my work to be considered a vehicle of truth.

Granted that it’s absolutely fine for one to have their own opinion and to express it how they see fit, that doesn’t mean I’m going to agree with or like the way in which said individual chooses to express their opinion.  In the case of “Oceans,” I have even more trouble seeing why such a strong opinion as that of the two filmmakers had to be veiled beneath a gorgeously shot film that pulls viewers in only to side-punch them with a political message that is constructed using robots to get said message across.  As such, I feel like the efforts made by the filmmakers to sway me to their way of thinking were cheap and misplaced, resulting in my ultimate dislike for this film and discounting it as a documentary altogether.

So ultimately the reason I don’t get “Oceans” is I cannot agree with the filmmakers use of re-enactment just so they can get their political message across.  I think that is the real challenge of documentary and really all filmmaking and storytelling for that matter: always always always tell the truth in your work.  In the case of documentary, you just have to work that much harder to tell the truth.  So if you want to portray cruelty towards animals and take on that responsibility as a documentarian, put away the robots and go out and shoot some real material, as disturbing or haunting as it may be to you.  Otherwise stop calling your work a documentary and go make some recruiting videos for Green Peace.

-Review by Corey Birkhofer

Carl Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” is arguably one of the most famous children’s story books ever published.  Its beautiful imagery and simple story touch on a desire in all of us that even into adulthood many of us never shed: the desire to go home.  When I found out this incredible tale would be put onto the big screen helmed by none other than quirky music video director extraordinaire Spike Jonze, I was doubly intrigued.  How would the images burned permanently into my mind be realized on screen?  How would the wild things look?  Would they just CG the hell out of everything and make a husk of a film with no soul?  The answer to the CG question was boldly answered by Jonze (spending tons of studio money in the process) on expensive Jim Henson Workshop produced real-working puppets and crazy wire-work stunts that have definitely advanced puppetry to the next level.  And yet, despite the love and care that so obviously went into the crafting of this film, I still sat through it asking myself: “So when does the story start?”  I still sat there three-quarters of the way through the film saying to myself: “And now the little kid decides to just go home?”  How could a children’s book that had no more than 10 sentences capture so much that a 2-hour film could not?  The answer is simple: a story.  To me Jonze’s film has none because A) Max the protagonist (if you could call him one) never changes and B) none of the problems of the characters in the film are solved.  Instead you have an attention starved kid who rants and raves around for a couple hours amidst the strange relationships of some weird monsters and then decides it’s time to go home after he can’t help them all get along and be friends.

Now granted I realize Jonze and his team had a hell of a mountain to climb in taking on a story such as this which has been loved the world over for so many years.  As someone who has written a few screenplays myself, I can only imagine how much of a challenge it must have been.  But I would think that in 111 studio approved pages that there would have to be some sort of a story rather than just some annoying kid who doesn’t get enough attention at home going to an island to be friends with some prozac-deprived monsters only to decide he just wants to go back home when the problems of his new monster friends are just too complicated for him to solve.  That’s when I realized that maybe this story-less film made it through the gates because the studio just left Jonze to his own devices due to his reputation and the built-in audience they knew they had who would go to see the film for nostalgic purposes alone.  That’s why to me Jonze was able to sneak in an anti-plot film produced by a major studio that uses a well-known children’s story as a platform for his ideas about how messed up relationships can be and how sometimes we just want to go home.  So let me ask you this: as much as you may have loved the children’s book from your childhood, would you go out of your way to see a bunch of depressed monsters loll around for a couple hours, get bossed around by a kid who just wants to be paid attention to, and then have him go home with none of the problems introduced in the film solved whatsoever?  I would hope your answer is the same as mine: N-O.

Soundtrack-wise I was also very excited to see this film with the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s frontwoman Karen O producing the soundtrack and one of my favorite Arcade Fire songs “Wake Up” being used in the well-put-together trailer preceding the release of the film.  In the end I got let down when Arcade’s song appeared only in the trailer and Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O’s so-called soundtrack was just her and her backing band wailing like banshees and bashing their instruments for two hours and calling it a day.  I thought to myself how pretentious everyone was who worked on this project just to push out their artsy fartsy crap without trying to tell an actual story.  I thought how wrong it was for them to use people’s nostalgia to adapt a wonderful children’s story and make a platform for their own masturbatory and armchair-psychologist-ideas about relationships.  Lastly I thought to myself: “Damn I wish I could get paid to make a story-less movie with a crappy soundtrack just ’cause I’m an artsy, young and edgy music video director.”

And so as the film reached its so-called third act and my wife looked over to me and gave me her “So this is the film you dragged me to?” look that she’s so good at doing, I wished I could get my 2,000 yen (about $20 US) back and at the same time thank the creators of this film for bastardizing such a classic children’s story from my childhood.  My only hope is that none of my other favorite children’s story books are adapted by Spike Jonze any time soon.

A personal message to Spike: Stick to making music videos, man, and leave the real storytelling to those out there who can actually do it.

-Review by Corey Birkhofer

2005: an unlikely time to see a Western being made.  Yet this Western comes with a unique twist.  Not having been moved to watch a Western since Eastwood’s Unforgiven in the ’90s, I was excited to watch The Proposition, starring one of my favorite late-90s independent actors Guy Pierce.  LA Confidential and Memento being two of my favorite films from the 90s both starring Pierce, I thought I was in for a treat.  The trailer for The Proposition is also top-notch.  And yet, there was just something about this film that didn’t quite make it into the masterpiece I was led to believe it was.  I’ve been thinking about why this might be for the last three weeks while trying to put together a few paragraphs about the film for this blog, and yet it’s still quite difficult for me to pinpoint why I didn’t get this movie.

The film is put together very well, introducing new characters at a very natural, fluid and almost seamless pace; almost as if we already knew these individuals and are just stopping back in to check up on them.  Not wasting time on introducing who all the characters are, the film gets right to the story: a trio of outlaw brothers, one too young to know the evil of his brothers’ ways, one so evil the blackness seeps out of him, and the last played by Pierce stuck in the middle of his innocent brother and his evil brother.  Through watching the film you find out that there’s been a falling out between the brothers, with Pierce taking his younger brother and getting as far away from their evil brother as possible.  It’s not long until the law gets its hands on Pierce and his brother, with the gallows waiting for them.  The two are basically good as dead until the sheriff makes a proposition to Pierce: find your older brother and bring his head to me and I’ll let you and your younger brother free.  This seems like an easy choice for Pierce who wants nothing to do with his older brother, until he does eventually track him down and is saved by him after being ambushed and speared by a group of Aborigines.  Now Pierce feels indebted to his brother, but at the same time torn between needing to kill him to save their younger brother.  Coming clean about why he suddenly came looking for him, Pierce and his older brother scheme to break their younger brother out.  Only problem is they arrive too late after the younger brother has been publicly whipped by a townspeople hungry for any kind of justice they can get against the three outlaw brothers.

Reading the above, I am reminded of how tightly put together the film is, setting up an interesting triangle of objects of desire that all three brothers want.  Even more interesting, their desires all conflict with each other and yet because they are family, somehow they remain loyal.  That is until the very end when Pierce finally completes the end of his bargain with the sheriff.  The only problem is at that point it’s too late and there’s no point to him killing his older brother as their younger brother is already dead.  Perhaps this is where the film’s narrative fell apart for me.  Being a film-viewer driven by protagonists that stop at nothing to get what they want, only to have it taken right out from under them and have them left with nothing in the case of The Proposition, it just sort of left me feeling empty and wondering why I took the time to watch such a dismal and depressing film.  Though I know not every story is meant to end happily and wrapped up in a nice little package, the nihilistic “life sucks and then you die” motto is definitely not something I want to invest 2+ hours in when all I really want to do is be blown away by an amazing Western.

The Proposition came very highly recommended to me and given the surface craftsmanship that went into it I could see why.  Unfortunately on a narrative level, the film fell apart for me when the protagonist suddenly lost the very object he’d been striving to obtain from the start of Act 1: his younger innocent brother still worth saving.  At the end of the day, if I want to watch a good ol’ Western I’ll throw in Unforgiven and be reminded that even a dark film in which most of the main characters are killed can still leave a little bit of hope by the time the end credits roll.

-Review by Corey Birkhofer

Essay by Jason A. Hill

Umberto D. (1952)

Written by Cesare Zavattini

Directed by Vittorio De Sica

Umerbto D, Vittorio De Sica’s tribute to his father, could be viewed as a farewell to Italian Neo Realism.  The year was 1951.  Reconstruction in Italy after WWII had been well on its way. The conditions from which directors and writers had given birth to this style of filmmaking had all but changed.  However, as things “improved” in Italy, there were many other places in the world that were experiencing what Italy had in 1945. Umberto D was not only a clinic on Neorealist films, it was also a film that transitions itself to end with a cinematic claim to the end of Neorealism and this period in Italy. But writers and directors in other countries we’re so inspired by Italy’s neorealist legacy that it can be viewed as the beginning of Neorealism for the rest of the world.
During the war under Mussolini, much like the country as a whole, the film industry was controlled by national fascist interests.  Filmmakers either had to cooperate with the controlling government or make films which pleased the fascist regime which usually violated their own creative sensibilities. During this time many of the filmmakers vowed an “Italian Spring” where they would be free to express the truth of Italy on screen. Soon after Italy was liberated these filmmakers got their chance and Italian Neorealism was born.

The subject matter was simple, present Italy in its most truthful sense. Screen writer Cesare Zavattini, who worked with De Sica on The Bicycle Thief and Umberto D explains that Neorealism was simply an attempt not to use style or creative film technique to obscure the reality of life in Italy at the time. “The task of the artist – the neorealist artist at least – does not consist in bringing the audience to tears and indignation by means of transference, but, on the contrary, it consists in bringing them to reflect (and then if you will, to stir up emotions and indignation) upon what are doing and upon what others are doing; that is, to think about reality precisely as it is.”(1)
Despite these attempts at truth, Italian Neorealist film defiantly bore a style. However its style was in part a symptom of its circumstances as the filmmakers struggled to gather resources, film stock, shooting locations, and actors. They often times used untrained actors as leads and because they knew how to re-dub the audio they resigned to shooting in busy streets.
It was not until Umberto D that people even began to discuss this period in Italian cinema as a movement.  There was never any formal declaration by the filmmakers involved nor were the films themselves very commercially successful.  These conditions we’re no different for Umberto D.
Umberto, played by untrained actor Carlo Battisti, is an aged government pensioner whose wages are inadequate for him to maintain his standard of living in post war Rome.  Umberto’s plight is disregarded by most of the characters as he disregards theirs.  This is more a convention of the Neorealism projecting a real person with real problems and real short comings rather than a more constructed anti-hero character.  Umberto’s companions are Flick, his beloved dog, Maria, the maid who lives across the hallway, and his nemesis Antonia, the landlady of the Via Martini Della Battaglia hotel whose apathy towards Umberto reflects a modern Italy eager to put the old Italy behind and enjoy the new prosperity.
Umberto is behind on his rent and he struggles to gather the funds to pay Antonia before she evicts him.  He also learns that Maria is pregnant and will soon be evicted as soon as Antonia finds out.  There is no incentive for Antonia to have sympathy for either character, even though she was looked after by Umberto during the war when she used to call him “grampa”. Antonia represents the new Italy, ready to forget the past and partake in the new Italy.
There are many scenes in the film that are pivotal to Umberto’s and Maria’s lives but in keeping with Neorealist conventions, there are also many scenes that do nothing to advance the narrative along but do add to an understanding take on the human condition of the characters. This is especially evident in Maria’s famous morning scene.
When Umberto takes ill and moves to a care mission, Maria agrees to look after Flick but looses him because of Antiona.  When Umberto recovers and returns to the hotel, he discovers Maria, who has just been abandoned by her baby’s father.  He ignores her despair for his lost dog.  There are hints and opportunities for Umberto and Maria to band together and tackle their problems by helping each other, but the film keeps to its Neorealist’s roots and both characters eventually part ways, facing their fates alone.

Umberto finds Flick at the local dog pound and in a very emotional scene that shakes the film’s neorealist foundation, Umberto rescues Flick from a certain death.  He then returns to the hotel only to finally realize that he has no hope of living there any longer.  And in another scene that suggests the end of the character as well as neorealism, Umberto contemplates suicide as a resolve to his despair. These neorealist aberrations are justified by Zavattini; “The contents always engender their own expression, their own technique. Imagination, therefore, is allowed, but only on the condition that it exercise itself within reality and not on the periphery.” (1)
Umberto D is truly a neorealist film, but the question I find more interesting is weather in this film we see the end of Italian Neorealism and does it give birth to neorealism for the rest of the world?  Major art movements sometime seem to be zeitgeists of creative ideas all coming together in the same era to make statements about their times.  And often these movements are the result of deliberate and explicit collaborations between artist and ideas.
De Sica may have felt that neorealism died in Italy by the end of the credits in Umberto D, but the torch had already been past to Satyajit Ray with his Apu Trilogy that began in 1950 and started the Parallel Cinema Movement in Bengal and India proper. Neorealist roots form in Ousmane Sembene with Borom Serret (1966) in Bengali Africa.  In America there was John Cassavetes in the 1960s and later Jim Jarmusch in the 1980s.  More recently you have directors like Jia Zhang-Ke in China whom with films like Still Life (2006) take neorealism into the twenty first century.  This works because the true intentions of neorealism can never fade.  And becuase here will always be a time and place for people struggling to exist in their environment.  I think Zavattini says it best; “The true function of the arts has always been that of expressing the needs of the times; it is towards this function that we should redirect them. No other means of expression has the potential which the cinema possess for making things known directly” (1)
If Zavattini is correct, this can be true for any person in any country at any time and thankfully it has been. I hope that this tradition will continue and continue to deliver the day to day inner workings of people’s lives in yet discovered films from Iraq and Afghanistan to new films from Africa and Eastern Europe. These tenets of Neorealism have held its meaning well beyond Umberto D in 1951 and should hold for another 50 plus years and beyond.
(1) Zavattini, Cesare, and Overbey, David, ED. (1978). Springtime in Italy, A Reader on Neorealism. Hamden, CT. Archon Books.

Will Smith is on fire. A big blockbuster nearly every year for as long as I can remember and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to stop anytime soon. Now for any of you who follow his work, you’ll know that Smith has played the last-action-hero or beaten-down-nice-guy-against-the-rest-of-the-world role before (I Robot, I Am Legend, The Pursuit of Happyness(sic)). Personally I have loved him in every one of these roles because there was always something unique about his character that compelled me to watch him succeed through all the struggle put before him.

Earlier this year when I finally had a chance to see Hancock, I have to say I felt more than a little giddy to see what Smith would bring to the role. To me, there’s something about Smith’s whole aura that just makes me want to watch him do what he does. He has a full range of emotions at his disposal not to mention his consistency in picking interesting characters that have unbelievably difficult obstacles put before them. On the surface of I Robot, Smith is a detective bent on solving the murder of a leading scientist who was also his friend. Underneath the surface of this detective exterior is a character that hates robots.  This is a problem for him in the overly robot-reliant society he lives in and makes his struggle all the more difficult (and as such compelling to watch).  In I Am Legend, Smith is again the lone man (in this case literally) trying to find the cure to a disease that has either killed and/or mutated the remaining human population into viscous zombie-like carnivores. Throughout the film we see the protagonist’s clockwork routine that he has undoubtedly developed through near life-and-death experiences fighting the once human now zombie-like creatures that only come out at night.  This routine is what has kept him alive and the meticulousness of it is real and tangible, thus making him an interesting protagonist to watch succeed.  In Pursuit of Happyness (which was based on a true story), Smith plays a salesman trying to sell these ridiculously difficult to sell x-ray machines all while his family is falling apart at the seams.  Despite this, his strange knack for memorizing numbers and his insanely driven work ethic are character attributes that make him incredibly interesting to watch as he struggles to get what he wants.  No surprise this too was a film I loved.  Now let me get to Hancock.

As I said above, Smith has been consistent in taking on roles in which one man faces the world alone. Amidst this struggle, there has also consistently been some unique attribute that made Smith’s characters interesting for me to watch. In the case of Hancock, he’s a modern-day super hero.  The catch: he’s a reluctant to help, depressed, alcoholic and temperamental superhero.  As we get more into the story, Hancock agrees to work with a PR agent who wants to clean up his unpopular image.  This makes for some marginal comic moments for the first hour or so, but ultimately I was looking for that one special attribute about Hancock that made Smith take on this role like he did with his films leading up to this point.  One major different from his recent films is that the one special attribute that sets his Smith’s character apart is not revealed right at the start of the story. This is the answer to the question of “How did Hancock become a super hero?” Now with some more unique writing, I think the writers of Hancock could have figured out a way to show their cards earlier instead of making the reason to watch the film to just find out the answer to this question. In the end, the answer to the question of why Hancock is a super hero is about as simple and contrived as can be: Hancock is a super hero because he is a god. OK…

Now this may very well be a cheap shot at the creators of an otherwise enjoyable-to-watch and pretty well put-together film, but I felt like the god angle to explain Smith’s super powers was a cheap device used to lure me in as a viewer instead of respecting my intelligence and either coming up with a better reason for Hancock’s powers or at the very least showing all the cards at the start of the film and constructing a more compelling narrative. Sitting here writing this piece, I literally imagined to myself the concept team for Hancock sitting around a big conference table asking themselves: “So how did Hancock get his super powers?” until one naive writer spouted out “I know!  What if we made him a god?” Easy answer, easy solution. And thus the keystone for Hancock’s plot was born.

Now I don’t mind plot devices that service the story, but when the plot device is so elementary that a 10 year old could have come up with it, I lose faith that the writer’s of today are even trying to push our stories to their limits. In a movie climate rife with remakes, rehashes, sequels of remakes of rehashes; originality and taking new risks is a rare commodity and much appreciated. Hancock was a pretty well-received movie critically because of Will Smith standing behind it, but despite him choosing solid scripts these past few years, I just didn’t get why he decided to take on this two-dimensional role.

-Review by Corey Birkhofer

By Michael Forstein (www.michaelforstein.com)

Ok, ok. I’ve resisted the temptation to use this (or any) forum to write about movies. It’s too easy, and I could spend far too much time doing it. There was a moment in high school when I thought film critic would be a novel career, but I quickly decided against it – citing, in equal parts, a world already saturated with critical opinion, and a desire to make movies of my own. But while watching Inglourious Basterds, I realized I was witnessing one of the great feats of modern storytelling, and that poor Mr. Tarentino – simply because, along with being a gifted filmmaker, he happens to be a sick f*$# and fills his movies with grotesque and offensive oddities, while often treating serious moments with levity and irreverence, and because, though he draws on cinematic tradition, he doesn’t care about fulfilling anyone’s expectations of what a movie should be but his own – would not get half the credit he deserved for what clearly is his masterpiece (what a beautiful cherry on top, that closing line), and thus, I realized I had something to say. Incidentally, I promise there will be no more awful run-on sentences like the previous one. Let my lack of brevity be a testament to my passion for the subject. I love movies – always have – and it bothers me that the two best movies in recent years were, and will continue to be, so shallowly dealt with and often times misunderstood by critics and audiences.

Quentin Tarentino’s Inglourious Basterds, like Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood before it, possesses a unique psychological underpinning, the depths of which we seldom experience in film, or any art, for that matter. In There Will Be Blood, we wrestle with the psychology of Daniel Plainview – the most epic, nuanced and tragic film protagonist since Charles Foster Kane. In Inglourious Basterds, we wrestle with the psychology of both the viewer – which is to say, ourselves – and the director/writer – Tarentino – as we watch one man’s interpretation of post-Holocaust collective subconscious unleashed via simple characters and a straightforward, albeit clever, plot. I loved No Country For Old Men, and I’m sure I’ll love whatever movie ends up beating out Basterds for this year’s Oscar, but despite what critics and award juries might conclude, Inglourious Basterds, like There Will Be Blood, represents a feat in storytelling so grand, so rare, and so profound, we’re lucky to experience it at all, let alone twice in three years.

There Will Be Blood had such an active protagonist in Daniel Plainview that, for once, critics actually wrote about the most important aspect of a movie – the protagonist’s goal, and what he does to achieve it – or, the plot. Usually critics take up far more column inches on the acting, cinematography, etc. – all vital elements, but only insofar as they serve the story, which is the reason the movie is made, and the reason people go to see it. With There Will Be Blood, we finally had such a strong protagonist that critics were actually paying attention to his actions and motivations. Unfortunately, the majority of the reviews only went skin deep. There was all this talk about “greed” and “capitalism”, when really, what drove Daniel Plainview was similar to what drove Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane – a crippling desire to fill an unfulfillable void. Kane spent his entire life trying to fill the void left by his mother, who abandoned him as a child. Plainview spent his entire life trying to fill a void left by godlessness. Even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t believe in God. He was incapable of coping with this absence of meaning. He was empty inside, and his fatal flaw, really, was that he lacked the insight to understand why. While others flocked to church, he sat back, scoffed at them, and built an empire. Was he greedy? Did he just want a bunch of money? Or was he searching, always, for fulfillment he would never get – a fulfillment everyone else in town got each Sunday at church? There Will Be Blood provided writers and critics with a golden opportunity to delve deeper into the subjects of greed – what motivates it – and capitalism – the human forces driving why it operates the way it does. But too many of them were excited to draw some sort of comparison between Plainview’s own imperialism and the US’s presence in Iraq, or, failing that, prove their own benevolence by casting off his actions, implying that he got what he deserved, and that we’re a more fulfilled moviegoing public for it. Sure, Plainview deserved his fate, but the most profound aspect of the film wasn’t that he was greedy, but why he was greedy. They pinned this movie as an epic allegory about capitalism and greed, but had they looked deeper, they would have found the most compelling film meditation on god and religion ever made.

While There Will Be Blood engages us – the viewer – to be a quiet witness to the action, Inglourious Basterds keeps us at a distance. From the opening credits – which utilize multiple colors and fonts, switching almost arbitrarily from one style to another – the hand of the director is present. There are, at various points, a comic book style reveal of a bomb strapped to a character’s leg, a bold title superimposed over a freeze frame to introduce a supporting character well into the film, and a descriptive note with an arrow pointing to one of the characters, superimposed over the image (harkening back to Mia’s “don’t be a square” moment in Pulp Fiction). There are scenes of utter suspense, but Basterds never dwells in fictional verite for very long: multiple films within the film; film trivia playing a vital role in the plot; and celluloid itself – the very fiber of it – responsible for the fate of not just the story, but, within the story’s conceit, World War Two. Film and filmmaking at once make up the viscera of the world of the filmmaker – the story and the techniques used to tell it – and the world of the film itself – the mis-en-scene – forcing us to be aware, constantly, that we are watching a movie. This is crucial to the experience of watching Inglourious Basterds, because the meaning of the film exists not in the characters’ psyche but, uniquely, in our own.

There have been many articles citing Inglourious Basterds as a Jewish revenge fastasy, which, for at least some, it most certainly is. Eli Roth, co-star, described the film as playing out a “deep sexual satisfaction of wanting to beat Nazis to death, an orgasmic feeling.” And Lawrence Bender, Producer, went one step further, calling it, simply, “a fucking Jewish wet dream.” Whether or not – or to what degree – the film is a revenge fantasy depends solely on the individual viewer (I know where I stand, but that’s another essay entirely). But the film brings about an even more nuanced dilemma than the question of what, in our wildest fantasies, could or should have happened to Hitler.

Unlike Daniel Plainview, whose tragic lack of self-awareness leads him to make choices that subvert his real desires, the characters in Basterds know exactly who they are and what they want. While Plainview is startlingly real and complex, the Basterds and company are simple, inhumane, and unrealistic. Which is fine. There is nothing real about what takes place in Inglourious Basterds. The film is a postulation. As Tarentino has explained, none of this stuff happened, but had the characters been real and had they been placed in WW2, it would have – which is to say, it doesn’t matter whether they are realistic, as long as what they do in the movie is true to their characters. And what they do, if you haven’t seen the film, is scalp Nazis, carve swastikas into their foreheads, and, ultimately, burn them all to death – Hitler, Goebbels, et al. Whether or not Nazis (and please note that I understand the difference between Nazis, SS, German infantry, and Germans, and concede that their conflation in the mind of some viewers is a possible negative side effect of the film) or anyone ever deserved this treatment is a philosophical question I don’t care to tackle. What concerns me, and what Inglourious Basterds so brilliantly, viciously posits, is what the legacy of the Nazis should be. By carving swastikas into their foreheads, Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) spends the entire film making sure no Nazi left alive will be able to “remove his uniform.” This way, they will never be able to hide – from others and from themselves – what they did. While this is certainly the most exacting manifestation of “never forget” imaginable, its implications extend beyond the Holocaust, and beyond war altogether.

We face transgressions, and the many different ways to deal with those who have transgressed, on a regular basis. We can forgive, forget, hold permanently in contempt, or we can exact revenge as a way toward catharsis. We encounter this dilemma in all facets of life – often times with our enemies, but also with ones we love.

True, the Jews in Inglourious Basterds never existed, and therefor never had to deal with the memory of their transgressors. But we – the Jews living today – do, every day, in our collective memory and inherited knowledge of what happened. Our story is one of many. We are not alone amongst cultures, tribes, and human beings who have to wrestle with this dilemma. While most filmmakers tell the story of the Holocaust in relatively black and white (no pun intended, Spielberg) terms, Tarentino took a bold approach, and instead of telling us how bad it was (come on, we know how bad it was), he raised some of the most important questions we – as Jews, as human beings, as those who have ever been wronged – could possibly ask. How do we look upon those who have wronged us? Do we seek vengeance? Do we offer forgiveness? To what lengths should we go – must we go – to ensure that it doesn’t happen again?

Take Tarentino’s predilection for ultra-violence with a grain of salt. This is a brilliant man who, like Anderson, made a film that won’t be recognized as the best of the year, but deserves to go down as one of the best of all time.

And with that, I’ll say goodbye to my inner film critic for another few years or so. There certainly are enough others to do the job. And, more importantly, I’ve got a movie to make. Au revoir.

*Michael Forstein is an active filmmaker, editor and writer living and working in Minnesota.  He agreed to let us post this incredibly well-written movie essay to Movies I Didn’t Get so we hope you enjoyed his writing.  To see more of his work, point your browser to his portfolio site www.michaelforstein.com  There you can see excerpts of his documentary and other film works as well as keep up on the latest going’s-on in his world.  Thanks again Mike and we hope to share more of your work soon!

Essay by Jason A. Hill

F For Fake. 1975
Written and Directed by Orson Welles

With the recent new release of Michael Moore’s latest effort, Capitalism, A Love Story, I thought it would be a good time to talk about a seldom understood yet truly great documentary film, F For Fake.

F For Fake, a film documentary about truth and authorship in art by Orson Welles released in 1975, is almost as much a narrative film as it is a documentary. It covers two “fakes” , famed art forger Elmyr De Hory and pretend Howard Hughes Biographer Clifford Irving. The film, narrated by Welles in different scenes from train stations, a studio sound stage, and in the actual editing room, follows several stories all dealing with the same concept, truth in art. First we follow the story or Elmyr De Hory whom we come to learn has forged possibly hundreds of art master pieces over a period of twenty years. De Hory states the reason for his career’s vehicle for success is that the “so called experts” are in fact no experts at all and his body of work is the proof. It’s not clear which of De Hory’s claims are really true but the film’s evidence of De Hory’s guilt alone in enough to validate at least the idea that he would be guilty of nothing if forging a masterpiece was not possible. Later we discuss Clifford Irving who is present in many of the scenes with Elmyr and who gives his own account of De Hory’s adventures in a book he recently wrote. Clifford’s hoax with Howard Hughes actually unfolds in the middle of the making of F For Fake and makes for a pretty intriguing plot twist. Welles explains that until Irving actually confesses,  there was still doubt as to Irving’s guilt and this is difficult to prove either way due to the mysterious nature of Hughes himself.

But these two men are not quite on trial. What seems to be more interesting to Wells in this film isn’t whether or not what these men did we’re right or wrong but whether or not the truth in art is even a real concept to begin with. Welles seems to question just about everything relating to the truth in the film including the film its self which says something about the truthfulness of all documentaries. Not only does Welles question the “tropes of veracity” in documentary film making, he completely reinvents it as a new form of storytelling.

Film movements in the past have used forms from reality to help make narrative films of fiction like the films of the Italian neo realist’s use of ordinary people and real time events to John Cassavetes’s films made spontaneously in the streets of New York. But Welles has introduced something new here as he employs the use of fiction elements to enhance his cinema verite. And it could be argued that no documentary has ever simply been without some alteration or tampering of the facts. But never has it been put to use in such a deliberate effect of style and purpose. Welles also wastes no film tool or under utilizes any technique from photo stills and stock footage to shots in front and behind the camera showing his film making process. This is also fitting because the film is widely recognized as a masterpiece in film editing.

Welles, a film icon who rarely gets involved with a project with a halfhearted effort, spares no less the effort in this film as the subject of truthfulness expands to include Welles himself. In 1938, Welles perpetrated on of the greatest hoaxes in the 20th century by reporting the invasion of the planet Earth by Martians. So many people believed Welles broad cast that it became a media frenzy itself and launched Welles into fame (or infamy). Knowing this makes it no surprise when during the film Welles mentions this as he presents himself as a “charlatan”. There is also a segment of the film where as it begins Welles states “for the next hour everything you are about to see is absolutely true” as Welles tells the story of Clifford Irving’s “hoax” biography of Howard Hughes.  Shortly after this we are told the story of Oja Kodar’s encounter with Pablo Picasso, which in fact is a fabrication and we only understand this after Welles himself confesses to this by stating “for the last 17minutes, I’ve been lying my head off”.

This segment proved to be extremely personal for Welles. Kodar, who not only worked with him in writing F For Fake but was personal inspiration for the final segment of the film. As one of my film professors Joseph McBride explains in his book What Ever Happened to Orson Welles: “What could be called Welles’s “Oja period” lasted until his death in 1985, and it marked profound changes in his filmmaking style. Under Kodar’s influence, Welles’s work underwent a Picasso-like late flowering of sexual themes and imagery. The Immortal Story contains an actual lovemaking scene; although filmed obliquely, its arguably more erotic for its concentration on suggestive details. The connection between Welles and the older Picasso is drawn explicitly in F for Fake, with Welles ingeniously “directing” the artist by interacting still photographs of him seemingly ogling Oja as she strolls past his window in skimpy outfits. As “Picasso” paints nude pictures of Oja, Welles intercuts ravishing shots of her body in sensuous poses and rhapsodizes about the artist’s reaction to her lush figure: “Was he…tenpted? Perhaps inspired…[T]he results of this encounter were, to say the least of it, extremely fruitful. Figs sweetened on the trees-grapes burst into ripeness on the vines-and twenty two-twenty-two!-large portraits of Miss Kodar were born under that virtile brush.”

It has often been explained that truth is an abstract concept that has many meanings. And depending on the person and their point of view, the truth can change from one to another. I believe Welles’s final point for F For Fake is that truth is an abstract idea but honesty is the faithful telling of one’s own feelings. There can be no truth in art only honesty. Honesty is the courage to be bold. And in that sense there has never been a more honest documentary than F For Fake.

Don’t get me wrong.  Remakes can work.  I actually liked the American remake of Seven Samurai (Magnificent Seven).  Hell, I even enjoyed The Ring and The Grudge remakes after seeing the original Japanese versions of both.  But when Martin Scorsese decided to remake Infernal Affairs, one of my favorite more recent Hong Kong films, I have to admit some lines were crossed.

Before I get too ahead of myself, let’s contemplate for a minute why remakes are even made in the first place?  If the original was so inspiring, why does it need to be redone?  And in one’s remaking of an original work, what do the creators intend to change to make it in their mind better?  I think this gives a hint as to why films are remade in the first place, but there’s also the question of accessibility and reception.  How will the original work be received if the audience has to sit through a film with (gasp!) subtitles?!  Unfortunately, the general American moviegoer is definitely not up for a film where they have to sit and read words on the screen.  Unfortunately for these viewers, they miss out on a wealth of amazing films.  And yet, with these moviegoers being the ones who fill movie seats, they are the judge and jury of what kind of films get greenlit, thus we get foreign films perfectly fine being left the way they are getting remade to be more attuned to American audiences.  That being said, though the original Infernal Affairs was a box office smash hit in China, who was to say it would be as big of a hit when it hit the states?  Though Miramax did bring the original Infernal Affairs over for a relatively successful limited release in 2004 (two years after its release in China), I guess Scorsese just couldn’t resist taking a stab at the narrative himself.  I remember back in 2004 when I was still reeling off the excitement after seeing the original Infernal Affairs, only to find out Scorsese was planning to make his own American version.  With Scorsese at the helm I was actually pretty excited at the time, but flashing forward three years after The Departed came out in 2006, I’m definitely wishing I could go back to a moment in time when this film did not exist.

I’m sure I must sound like some sort of fanboy, pissed off that his precious little film has been mangled by a director who can make any film he wants, but this is only because I think The Departed was a remake not worth remaking.  Scorsese, a director whom I have been fond of for as long as I can remember has always been a master of portraying raw violence in an almost tangible way through film.  Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Good Fellas are three films he has made that I don’t know if he will ever top for me.  His realistic portrayal of violence is just as potent in his remake of Infernal Affairs but the problem is, to me he took a story germane to its location (Hong Kong) and tried to cut and paste it into an Irish mob-based Massachusetts setting to little effect.  Another thing to consider is that elements from Infernal Affairs II and Infernal Affairs III were put into the script that Scorsese shot, thus making it a sort of mutant remake trying to compress way too much story into one film.  This to me drew out The Departed making it way longer than it needed to be to get the point across.  I think Andrew Lau, co-director and co-star of Infernal Affairs put it best in his Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily interview when asked what he thought of the film.  Lau responded saying, “Of course I think the version I made is better, but the Hollywood version is pretty good too. [Scorsese] made the Hollywood version more attuned to American culture.”  I think Lau hits the nail on the head.  Though you can take a story and attune it to your audience, if the original story is a product of the environment it takes place in, there’s some “Frankenstein’ing” that will have to be done to make it work (i.e. screenwriter William Monahan having to borrow elements from all three Infernal Affairs), thus leaving you with an amalgamated and non-cohesive story.  At that point I don’t care if Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin are in the film.  Again, without a solid story even a killer cast can never save your film.

Looking back though on just how well The Departed was received, grossing nearly $27 million in its opening weekend not to mention taking home four academy awards including Best Picture and Best Director, I have to accept that my opinions are definitely in the minority.  But after finally checking the film out myself three years after all the hype has died down, I couldn’t help but recall how much I liked the original better, and how much I wish certain films were never, ever remade.  I know Scorsese definitely feels differently, with The Departed marking the first time he was able to take home an Oscar in his career.  When asked why he thought he won, Scorsese remarked: “This is the first movie I’ve done with a plot.”  Too bad it wasn’t your own, Martin.

-Review by Corey Birkhofer

Essay by Jason A. Hill

Seven – USA 1995
Director – David Fincher
Writer/ Screenplay – Andrew Kevin Walker

Seven is a crime thriller set in what appears to be urban Chicago. Two detectives on two different paths and at different stages in their careers track a methodical serial killer who leaves his victims with symbolic clues of the “seven deadly sins” to their murder.

Throughout the film you are given a bleak view of the world where it seems to never stop raining. Somerset (Morgan Freeman), a detective close to retirement and Mills, (Brad Pitt) a detective just starting his career pursue John Doe (Kevin Spacey), a psycho path serial killer who apparently bored with the ease and randomness of killing the old fashion way, needs to channel Dante, Milton and Chaucer to find inspiration for his killings.  Very early on its clear that the detectives aren’t going to catch this killer. Otherwise the film would be called “Three” or “Four”. Nope we are going to see all seven deadly sins and the only question is why is John Doe doing this and how is he going to pull it off?

The tone of the film also takes an overly sympathetic view of the killer. Every victim is discovered with more of their death focusing on their “sin” or why rather than how leaving out any need for detective work. Not that super genius “Yoda” killer John Doe would leave any evidence behind anyway. And I can accept that the film is more about the killer than the cops chasing him so why then is his motive so elusive? Is he just a sick psychotic with an irresistible flare for irony, or is he a religious nut, hell bent on re-making the world in the biblical since.

Even up to this point the film can still work only, as with most films that leave me so unfulfilled, it’s ending is as meaningless as it is memorable. As John Doe leads his foolish police pursuers every which way but loose he completes his murder opus and turns him self in. But only does so in order to let the full impact of his deeds be felt by Detective Mills.

As I said before the film works on many levels, the dark landscape of the city is very stylized but believable. Technically the film stands with the best. The acting is subtle and effective. And if not for the ridiculousness of the main villain’s abilities and the story’s pointless conclusion, we have a fairly excellent thriller.

At one point in the film the detectives, desperate for a break in the case, illegally comp John Doe’s library reader list and find his apartment, illegally breaking and entering his premises. When John Doe arrives he out foxes the flatfoots and even has a moment with Mills, holding him at gunpoint but sparing him for a more gruesome outcome.  This kind of bleakness was seen in Fincher’s previous film “Aliens 3” where we end the film with everyone important in that series dead and almost making “Aliens” (One of my favorite Sci Fi thrillers) completely pointless.

So what is the point of this story? The first place we can look is the closing exposition by Somerset who again quotes one of his favorite writers; “The world is a sick place but worth fighting for.” And he agrees with at least the first part of that quote. So the point of Seven is that the world is a sick place?

This seems too simplistic a conclusion for such a detailed and sophisticated thriller.  Not only that but this is just not true. Sure the world is sometimes a sick place. But sometimes it’s a nurturing and allow me to channel Louie Armstrong, also a beautiful world. Although I think it takes a certain kind of wisdom and understanding to see it sometimes.  It is this point of view that separates the protagonist from the antagonist in most stories for me.  Any character may make the observation that death and destruction is a proper response to what they may see as a sick world. But it takes a truly higher mind to put that view aside and find some beauty in their sick world. It’s a shame Fincher only gives us the latter in Seven. Otherwise, we might have seen his killer in a more realistic light. Like most real serial killers we have heard of.

I left Seven feeling that both of the protagonists in this film were victims of their deficiencies, one too cavalier and ignorant, or maybe naive of the sick world and the other to unwilling to fully face the horror of this reality. The killer should have narrated this film. I think Seven had something going with the style and the characters but in the end it sacrificed poignancy for a punch line ending.