1. The Hurt Locker
Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq war thriller/action movie could well be, as James Cameron put it, the Platoon of the Iraq war. Chillingly objective and unflinching, The Hurt Locker cuts to the core of why humans need (and in a disturbing way, want) war. One of the most powerful experiences of the last few years. -Jon
2. Inglourious Basterds
Quentin Tarantino's World War II action/comedy/drama was not only the most fun I had at the movies all year, but it also fuelled some of the best online discussion of any movie released in 2009. Tarantino here applies his encyclopedic knowledge of cinema and its history, his astoundingly confident writing and directing style, and his deep love of movies to create one of the most memorable and hard-hitting films of his career, of 2009, and of this first decade of the 21st century. - Jon
3. A Serious Man
The new Coen Brothers film epitomises everything I love about these film-makers. Deeply sardonic, quietly hilarious, surprisingly profound and, as usual, divisive as all hell, A Serious Man is just about the must-see movie of the year. This simple story of a man trying to work out why his life is falling apart discovers that in the Coen Brothers' world, there is no why -- shit just happens. -Jon
4. Goodbye Solo
Ramin Bahrani, one of America's great directors of this decade, has done more than anyone else to dissect the nature of American multiculturalism. His films begin with cultural barriers and then move past them into themes that are universally human. Ethnicity offers only surface definitions. In one of the film's many great exchanges, Senegalese cab driver Solo, his reggae music turned up in the cab, asks William, a desperate old man who may be considering suicide, about his favorite music. We can be fairly certain that Solo never actually looked up the music of Hank Williams. What was important about that scene was the two mens' shared enthusiasm for music in principle. In the end, it is their shared understanding of each others' pains that elevates the film to such a powerful emotional pitch. -Rollie
5. Up in the Air
Jason Reitman's exquisite "Up in the Air" is being called a "recession era fable", but I think the recession is more of a backdrop. A utilized backdrop to be sure, but what he's really up to here is a commentary on the growing psychological differences between us as Americans, the effects that accessibility and technology have had on such important institutions as love and family. Vera Farmiga deserves an Oscar nomination as the median of this theme, but then so does Geore Clooney, our generation's Cary Grant, as the tragic one man corporate firing squad who's home is between homes (if one can be said to be ahead of him) and whose family longs for his return only in passing. This is an important film, I think, and a must see. Does it deserve comparisons to Frank Capra's depression era films? Probably not. But Preston Sturgess perhaps? Absolutely. -Rollie
6. The Road
I'm a tough cookie to crack at the movies, but I was nearly a blubbering mess by the end of The Road. Put it down to the performance of Viggo Mortensen as a man trying to guide his son through a hopeless post-apocalyptic world, the visual style of The Proposition director John Hillcoat, and the source material from one of the best of modern authors, Cormac McCarthy. The Road is almost completely hopeless, but for the dim light in every human that wants to help others, to be happy and optimistic. The sad suggestion of The Road is that we may be on a path that will extinguish that dim light forever. -Jon
7. Paranormal Activity
Made for around $10,000, starring two unkowns and filmed in director Oren Peli's house, Paranormal Activity is currently sitting on a pretty $110 million dollar global gross. It deserves it. This is one of the scariest, cleverest, relentless horror movies since The Exorcist set the bar over 30 years ago. For about a week after seeing this film for the first time, I woke up at 2 in the morning, convinced that I'd heard something in my kitchen or living room. One thing this movie taught me is: don't try to film it. -Jon
8. Samson & Delilah
Wildly regarded as the film that should have gotten the world-wide attention that Baz Luhrmann's overblown Australia did, Samson and Delilah is a depiction of the other Australia that most of us choose to ignore. The people of the community that Samson and Delilah belong to are increasingly without hope. Samuel Johnson famously said, "a decent provision for the poor is the true test of a society." That quote, combined with the way that Samson and Delilah articulates the nature of the Indigenous living-standards disaster in Australia, should force any number of us to take a good, hard look at ourselves. -Jon
9. Up
Another year, another Pixar masterpiece. Up is perhaps the most fanciful Pixar film to date, a story of an old man tethering thousands of helium balloons to his house and taking off to find Paradise Falls, a place he promised himself and his late wife he would visit before he died. What follows is a wonderful visual feast, a beautiful story about the nature of friendship and the importance of never giving up on your dreams. -Jon
10. Broken Embraces
Alive with its vivid color palette, Pedro Almodovar's "Broken Embraces" is about seeing, about distinguishing, about understanding. With a brave performance from Penelope Cruz at its heart, "Broken Embraces" is a sumptuous visual feast and a touching melodrama to boot. What we see can be superficial. It can hide the most interesting of stories from us, disguise the most important of truths. But lodged in our memories are feelings that our eyes cannot steal from us. -Rollie
Sorry for the extended lack of activity around here, folks. I've decided to let the Ghost rest for a few months while I finish up my bachelor's degree, among other reasons. Ghost on Screen will be up and running again in early May. Set your alarms.
Until then. You can find me blogging for the Daily Nebraskan at my blog Moving Pictures (also available at the sidebar). I am also doing my column for one more semester on great movies and an even dabbling in pseudo-legitimate journalism. In the meantime, Jon will likely be posting occasionally, so keep an eye out. Until then, long days and pleasant nights.
Greetings, ghosts. I hope life finds you living. Traveling and family events have kept me from posting recently, and as I gear up for my cruise in Mexico, said trend will likely continue through the next two weeks. But it's not all bad. Jon has recently unveiled his decidedly Australian top ten films of the year over at the Film Brief, which should keep you occupied for a bit, and the list of pieces on the horizon is far more exciting than the recent lack of action has been discouraging. Me and Jon should be returning from our international adventures around the same time, and will commence articles and podcasts discussing the best films of the year and of the decade. It should make for some thrilling debate. Unfortunately for me, the list of films I'm still anxious to see seems more exciting the the list of the best films I've already seen. Ergo, both lists will soon be made available. As for now, I've raced through a handful of movies in the few days between Christmas and the cruise, so here's my holiday roundup in neatly packaged form.
The Girlfriend Experience Two and One Half Stars
Steven Soderbergh's "The Girlfriend Experience" recalls an observation by Jack Nicholson on the set of "The Shining", defending director Stanley Kubrick's approach. He said, "You go mad with something like realism and then you come up with someone...who says 'Yeah it's real, but it's not interesting'." Such a problem plagues "The Girlfriend Experience", which is so deliberately improvised that it becomes a distraction. Soderbergh's poetic, often ethereal visual style is at direct odds with the blunt, droll exchanges that comprise the bulk of the film's substance.
The film is real, but that isn't necessarily why it isn't interesting. If you would like to know what Soderbergh is getting at, you need only listen to any one of the myriad conversations that permeate "The Girlfriend Experience", in which people carry on about the state of the economy, and the 2008 presidential election, during which the film is set. At a time of great economic turmoil, those who can still afford an escort at $2,000 an hour spend their costly time advising said escort where and how to invest her money, though the primary commentary of these conversations is that they're advising her to invest it at all.
The girl is Chelsea, played distantly by adult film star Sasha Gray. IMDB lists her performance in "The Girlfriend Experience" right between the films "Fox Holes" and "Roadside Ass-istance". That said, her performance here is an intelligent one, delicate and brave. And if she seems amateurish, well, Sodergergh goes to such lengths to make the entire project feel amateurish that it hardly matters. He clearly has a lot of confidence in his young starlet, leaving the camera on her for what seems like minutes on end as she listens to her boyfriends, er, clients ramble on through financial advice and questions about her profession and financial advice again. Soderbergh's film may be blunt and shallow, but Ms. Gray is anything but.
Goodbye Solo Four Stars
Considering that so much time is spent looking over the steering wheel of a shabby taxi cab into the back seat, Ramin Bahrani's "Goodbye Solo" is a beautiful film. His characters are plagued by earthly problems, but they are not defined by them. Senegalese cabby Solo (Souleymane Sy Savane) does everything he can and more for his suicidal patron William (Red West) but in the end it is his own demons and character flaws that stifle redemption, and he must admit defeat.
Bahrani, one of America's great directors of this decade, has done more than anyone else to dissect the nature of American multiculturalism. His films begin with cultural barriers and then move past them into themes that are universally human. Ethnicity offers only surface definitions. In one of the film's many great exchanges, Solo, his reggae music turned up in the cab, asks William about his favorite music. We can be fairly certain that Solo never actually looked up the music of Hank Williams. What was important about that scene was the two mens' shared enthusiasm for music in principle. In the end, it is their shared understanding of each others' pains that elevates the film to such a powerful emotional pitch.
Invictus Three Stars
Clint Eastwood's "Invictus" is, in essence, a hammy feel-good sports movie that made me feel good. I can handle that. Eastwood, in his aging career, is not maturing however. He seems to be losing confidence in his audience's intelligence, a problem that plagued last year's "Gran Torino" as well. Too much thinking out loud. Too many heavy-handed emotional cues from the music or slow motion or otherwise, but it's Morgan Freeman's eloquent portrayal of South African president Nelson Mandella for which I am recommending "Invictus", for which I was made to feel good.Pay attention to Eastwood's exquisite opening sequence, in which privileged white children practice rugby on a neatly gated green lawn while impoverished black children play soccer across the street in a dirt pasture enclosed with chicken wire. The way Eastwood moves back and forth between them subtly allowing the disparity in abundance to balloon on its own until Mandela's victory procession slyly accentuates the divide between the two is exquisite. It is Eastwood's finest moment in terms of pure cinema since "Unforgiven".
Julia Four Stars
If Job had been a con man, his caper would have progressed something like the crime catastrophe "Julia", directed by Erick Zonca. But more than debunking nearly every crime thriller cliche in the book, the film is a triumph for Tilda Swinton, who alongside Zonca creates a woman we both (or neither) care for and (nor) detest, but above all understand. This is one of those rare and valuable instances when a performer is confronted with a character of nearly infinite dimensions and understands every one of them.
Julia's plot to help her neighbor kidnap her son from his grandfather crashes over and over through the floor and comes to rest on a floor less stable than the one before. Swinton allows the twists and turns of the story to draw new and unforeseen elements, both positive and negative, from her character. Zonca wisely spends over a half hour with Julia to begin the film, observing her drinking problems, her nymphomania, her profound lack of compassion, so that when the crime finally happens it is developing out of her character, not the other way around, and everything that transpires from then on out feels absolutely inevitable. The film's final line is perfect. Funny and self-reflexive, yet enigmatic and foreboding, it is a perfect moment, which is always a good way to leave.
Nine Two Stars
To say that "Nine" doesn't survive the transition to the screen would be unfair, because the film doesn't really make an attempt to transition at all. After all, what would a Tony Award winning musical do without a stage? I don't mean that necessarily as a criticism. Many films have stayed true to their theatrical roots and succeeded (think of Kazan's great "A Streetcar Named Desire"). No, the problem I have with "Nine" is the effect that said stage has on the source material, Federico Fellini's brilliant "8 1/2".
Fellini's wonderfully sardonic observation of the creative process seamlessly meanders between fantasy and reality. It is the seamlessness that's important. Not being able to discern the ideas from the inspirations, the dreamscape from the wakefullness emblematic of the artist's subversive venture, is itself the central theme of Fellini's film, which is the best film ever made about movie making. With "Nine", however, director Rob Marshall tells the concrete story of Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) and the creative block hindering his massive new film "Italia" in one reality, then returns to the stage for musical numbers that symbolize his fantasies. Marshall's consistent use of black and white further sorts the mystery for us. The result is an adaptation of "8 1/2" that isn't so much an interpretation as it is an instruction manual, which greatly inhibits our ability to interact with it.
Day-Lewis is himself inhibited. One of the best and certainly the most selective of actors working today, the most we are allowed of the man's brilliance are in early scenes when his Guido speaks intuitively of the film-making process to a crowd of excited reporters. One of those reporters is Stephanie, played by the radiant Kate Hudson, and if "Nine" did anything, it was to remind me of how frustrating Hudson's career choices have been since "Almost Famous". The woman is tremendously talented, and here she seems almost to be satirizing her own career, as a superficial fashion queen with a warm, real smile.
Penelope Cruz and Marion Cotillard, both fearless, are also restrained from doing to their characters what they're capable of, and Nicole Kidman's plastic Claudia is an obvious homage to Anita Ekberg in another Fellini film, "La Dolce Vita". Marshall even brings her and Day-Lewis (whose Guido was initially played by Marcello Mostroianni, who also played the male lead in "La Dolce Vita") to a fountain in Rome.
The Road Two and One Half Stars
John Hillcoat places nearly all of the emotional stock of "The Road" in the starkness of his cinematography. It only modestly succeeds. The cinematography is indeed stark, as was the case in Hillcoat's earlier film, "The Proposition", which was a good film. Unfortunately, he openly sidesteps the characterization necessary to make "The Road" poignant. A soft-spoken narration by the man played by Viggo Mortensen explains to us the stories he would tell to his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) about his wife(played in enigmatic flashbacks by Charlize Theron). These stories must be summarized in narration, apparently, because Hillcoat couldn't find time for moments of that kind of intimacy amidst an episodic narrative dictated by countless shots of the famished duo quietly navigating this beautifully realized post-apocalyptic world. It is a misguided decision. So much of "The Road's" plan of attack is based on the decay of beauty, particularly internalized through memory. Not showing us these exchanges is, I think, why the film never reaches the emotional firepower its gunning for.
This decade has offered an interesting evolutionary step for the post-apocalyptic thriller. "The Road", like Timur Bekmombetov's "9" earlier this year and Alfonso Cuaron's remarkable "Children of Men", have sidestepped the cause and effect progression of the apocalypse in favor of the inherited conflicts that follow. This deceased, gray world is so often more of a backdrop than a spectacle, and Hillcoat is keen to incorporate it into the narrative arc, to interact with it. The Man's resourcefulness reveals subtle details that make this world tragic without ever seeming nostalgic.
The dichotomy of Hillcoat's commentary is deeply rooted in the withering of compassion by earthly experiences and human interaction. Smit-McPhee's young boy is, as they always are, innocent, though Hillcoat wisely avoids making him cute or optimistic. His generosity is borderline Christlike. Mortensen's father is pessimistic, suspicious, reclusive, and attempts to project these qualities onto his unprepared son. It's a story that can be told in pretty much any setting. Think of Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", or Antoine Fuqua's "Training Day" or any other tale of idealistic youth revitalizing the values of their disenfranchised elders. The problem is that Hillcoat tells when he should show, and is perhaps too loyal to the barren dialog of Cormac McCarthy's novel to really capture a revealing and provocative atmosphere. But damn, that cinematography sure is stark. Expect an Oscar nomination for Javier Aguirresarobe.
Sherlock Holmes Two and One Half Stars
Guy Ritchie is not a patient or talented enough director to handle the likes of Robert Downey Jr., who in "Sherlock Holmes" feels muted in a role begging for the exact opposite. I think the problem is that Ritchie is too quick to cut away. He doesn't understand the significance of a reaction shot, which is where the magic of an RDJ performance so often lies. The man could conduct a symphony orchestra with his eyebrows, and so often it is that final rise or fall or skewering of his brows that can make a shot or cap an exchange, a technique that Ritchie's headlong style does not have time for.
From a narrative standpoint, the mystery proceeds in a fairly straightforward manner, even though the film often doubles back on itself to poke us in the ribs and say "gotcha". It's subject, involving world dominion as they always do when one wants to up the ante, is nice and fun, and just almost makes sense after about five minutes of relentless explanation at the end. A technique involving Holmes rationalizing his way through the progression of a fight scene before executing it flawlessly is used about three times over the film's two hour plus running time, but is not utilized during the climactic fight scene. Ultimately however, the project fails to be engaging because it fails to properly develop its villain, Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong). Blackwood exists entirely in shadows and ominous exchanges on the street, and Holmes is locked in a one sided chess match which thoroughly deflates the tension.
Sin Nombre Four Stars
A beautiful is world passing by, visible from the top of a train unintentionally carrying hundreds of desperate Mexicans north toward America, but in "Sin Nombre" that beauty is no refuge, not when you know its secrets. It is permeated by a vengeful gang who relentlessly pursue Casper (Edgar Flores) north, like the demons of his past. They are waiting for him at every station, at every open stretch of rail, anxious to pump him full of bullets for killing their leader. His one act of redemption, saving the beautiful Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) from rape and robbery from his own gang, provided him only with piece of mind and the promise of death. The twelve year old boy he recruited into the gang, ostensibly ruining any promise of a fulfilling or prosperous life, is ironically leading the charge against him. But damnit, if he can just get young Sayra safely across the border, he'll at least still have that piece of mind.
Up in the Air Four Stars
Jason Reitman's exquisite "Up in the Air" is being called a "recession era fable", but I think the recession is more of a backdrop. A utilized backdrop to be sure, but what he's really up to here is a commentary on the growing psychological differences between us as Americans, the effects that accessibility and technology have had on such important institutions as love and family. Vera Farmiga deserves an Oscar nomination as the median of this theme, but then so does Geore Clooney, our generation's Cary Grant, as the tragic one man corporate firing squad who's home is between homes (if one can be said to be ahead of him) and whose family longs for his return only in passing. This is an important film, I think, and a must see. Does it deserve comparisons to Frank Capra's depression era films? Probably not. But Preston Sturgess perhaps? Absolutely.
Much like Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” Trilogy earlier this decade, James Cameron has created with “Avatar” a world that I would like to experience first hand. I want to stand on the road-like branches of these mountainous trees. I want to see the moist glossy fauna of the forest floor illuminate under my bare feet and swim in the stainless crystal springs. I want to emerge from the cover of the canopy and the heavy fog and see the Hallelujah Mountains floating in the sky above me. More than anything else in “Avatar”, the lush and ethereally beautiful planet of Pandora is Cameron’s crowning achievement.
Plenty of people will argue that the Na’vi, Pandora’s indigenous race of shamanic blue giants, are the real technical accomplishment, but I would contend that they are one of the many components of Pandora, and a vital one as you’ll eventually understand. The Na’vi, with their slender, blue patterned bodies and feline characteristics, are somewhat of a miracle of motion-capture technology. They are wonderfully expressive and fully realized, and occupy the screen comfortably alongside their human counterparts, who are no more or less real, but rather share Cameron’s universe as beings of equal authenticity.
The Na’vi occupy the Hometree, a mammoth culmination of symbiosis resting over the planet’s largest known deposits of Unobtanium (clever), a metal that has attracted a hoard of humans (American, of course) in the year 2154 to the far away planet to mine it dry. The metal, and who knows how its function or location was initially discovered, is apparently vital to preserving life on Earth. The Na’vi, as one might have guessed, are less than thrilled with our presence.
The humans bring with them an arsenal of military technology and rock-em sock-em soldiers to secure the operation. The quaint, poison-tipped wooden arrows of the Na’vi are no match for our alloys and armors, but they have no intention of backing down. This is their land, thank you very much, and they’ll be damned if they’ll be chased off.
They do have a distinct advantage, however. Apart from the knowledge of the land, they can breathe the air, which is toxic to us. We wear masks for rudimentary activities, but for extensive outdoor work, we have designed the Avatars, organic replicas of the Na’vi infused with the DNA of selected scientists and soldiers. Their pilots, for lack of a better word, operate the Avatars with their thoughts inside sensor-ridden pods. The transition from human to Avatar is not permanent, which is an important element to the story. Their minds can be returned to their human vessels with the push of a button.
One of those minds is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-marine who was brought into the project after his twin brother, whom an Avatar was fashioned for, was killed in a mugging. Jake finds the freedom of his new body liberating, and his lack of preparation quickly finds him recklessly involved in the Na’vi tribe, under the watchful guidance of Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). Meanwhile, at the base, Sully is torn between conflicting objectives from the environmentally conscious Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and shoot-first-shoot-again-later military Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang).
Lost yet? This is all just a broad outline of the establishing sequences of the film. Pandora harbors an interesting secret revealed later that reminded me of the oceanic consciousness of “Solaris” (1972). An inevitable relationship forms between Jake and Neytiri that doesn’t carry a lot of weight, but is adequate to move the story forward. Hitchcock once said that if you introduce a gun in the first hour of your film, that gun must go off. Well Cameron introduces a lot of guns, and they all go off in a final battle that pits among many other creatures and weapons, Jake’s mentally piloted Avatar against a humanoid robot piloted from within by Col. Quaritch in one of the film’s more subtle metaphors.
But rising above all else is the film’s immaculate spectacle, realized with an extraordinary eye for detail and a livid imagination. Cameron is much better at shooting these big budget action movies than his evil counterpart Michael Bay. He leaves the money on screen long enough for us to savor it, and places it in service of something more than just effects. The project is more palatable than other recent action flicks, particularly films like the monochromatic club to the face "Death Race" from last year. It is also well edited and choreographed, setting apart from this year's other mammoth budget spectacle "Transformers 2", which overdid the former to disguise the absence of the latter. Cameron has a superb eye for place and scale. Not for a second in “Avatar” does this universe not make perfect sense.
I suspect that much of the triumph that “Avatar” has become isn’t necessarily explicitly visible on screen. Cameron utilized many state of the art FX technologies, many of them he invented himself. What we see is more of an exhibition of product, a fun but clunky story seeing itself through in a utopian vision. Cameron was aiming for the heavens with this project. If he had to burn a few clichés to get there, well, I can forgive that.
Rollan Schott
December 18, 2009
Jon's review of "Avatar" is available at GoS' brother site, The Film Brief.
Jim Sheridan’s “Brothers” comes out focused and prepared. It takes a strong warm-up lap, properly does its stretching and calisthenics, steps up to the blocks, and hits the showers. It is an excellent first two-thirds of a film.
Sheridan based this film of postwar trauma on a Danish film of the same name, in which a prodigal son is sent to war while his delinquent brother is saved from the battlefield by his own delinquency. Toby Maguire plays the prodigal son, Capt. Sam Cahill, in an intensely over-the-top performance. He has a wife, Grace (Natalie Portman) and two daughters, and they are, of course, quite happy.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays the delinquent brother, Tommy, who houses a quaint shyness that makes it hard to picture him as someone who just got out of prison for armed robbery. The two men share a relationship that is respectful but under duress. Expectations, both failed and surpassed, have formed a wall between them, and their father (Sam Shepard) has laid the mortar.
Of the general plot, I will not go into extreme detail. The whole of the story is explained in the trailers, and if you’re like me, you felt like the trailer had only revealed the establishing sequences of the film.
Sam goes to war and is presumed dead after a helicopter crash. Grace is distraught, and Tommy, fresh out of prison, eases into her and her daughters’ lives as a surrogate father.
But Sam emerges alive and returns to his family, strung out, traumatized and paranoid. He senses a relationship between his wife and his brother and punishes himself for a life-changing decision he made while imprisoned in Afghanistan by allowing his paranoia to snowball into violence.
“Brothers” is, in many ways, a story that Michael Cimino told with “The Deer Hunter” in 1978, which was a far superior film. Both films deal with the psychological and emotional losses that soldiers face when returning from war.
Cimino’s film was more about the soldiers, though, and the emptiness that they felt at home after returning from Vietnam. “Brothers” assumes the reverse perspective of Grace and Tommy and how they attempt to recreate a family that was destroyed overseas.
Grace goes through the motions of the loving marriage she had with Sam before he left, but he is a different man now and their love seems one-sided. Grace is clinging to an idea more than a person, and her daughters respond to the new-found distance in their father with a growing fondness for their uncle Tommy.
Sheridan observes this family drama with great detail. The project is a bit too glossy to become completely involving, but the performances, particularly Maguire’s manic, bug-eyed intensity and Gyllenhaal’s gruff shy-guy warmth, bring gravity to the film and its themes.
Most importantly, though, the film ends far too soon, cutting itself off when it is only beginning to break into something genuine. Sheridan seems afraid to make the leap. He cuts his emotional ark short by mistaking the firing of a gun for the climax of the film, and tidies up to such an extent that he jeopardizes the very commentary he was threatening to make.
“Brothers” is a good film. Make no mistake. If I seem harsh it is because it got off a station too soon and, in so doing, amplified many of its other shortcomings. Consider simply that if it were not a good film, I would certainly not be complaining that it ended sooner rather than later. “The Deer Hunter” was more than three hours long.
Andrei Tarkovsky made “Solaris” as a response to Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” from a few years before, criticizing that film as too cold and detached to convey genuine emotion. He was wrong about Kubrick’s film, which is about evolving beyond our petty human sentiments and is transcendental of the ‘genuine emotion’ he accused it of lacking. But “2001” and “Solaris” are nonetheless excellent companions for one another. Kubrick’s film reaches out, while Tarkovsky’s reaches in.
They do have much in common. They are both science fiction films, they both explore the nature of man on a very broad scale, and they are both tremendously slow and meditative. Their aims are to use the vast and quiet stillness of space to reveal the truths of our existence, to take their audiences to a place of emptiness and reverence where they can contemplate these themes more clearly. Tarkovsky’s aim is to question what it is that makes us human.
Its brilliant concept is adapted from a novel by Stanislaw Lem. Earth has recently discovered another planet on the far outreaches of our solar system, which we have named Solaris. Studies have shown that the planet is covered by an oceanic consciousness that has the power to manifest itself as the desires of alien minds within its proximity. Russia launches a space station into orbit around the planet to investigate but after only a few weeks, contact with the crew has become mysteriously infrequent and nonsensical.
Russia selects their top psychologist, Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) to go to the space station and determine if further research can safely be conducted. He doesn’t particularly know what he’s getting into, and there is a significant chance that he is walking into a death trap, but he has struggled to carry on since the death of his wife two years before, and isn’t bothered much by the danger.
Kelvin boards the space station to find it in shambles from neglect. The crew wanders the halls quietly mad, nearly traumatized. They disregard Kelvin’s presence. They assume that he is not the real Kelvin, but a manifestation created by Solaris. This proves not to be the case, however, when Kelvin makes his way to his quarters and finds his wife Khari (Natalya Bondarchuk) there waiting for him.
His wife is dead. He knows this. The crew knows this. She is a product of Solaris, which has probed Kelvin’s mind and manifested itself as his deepest desire. Khari does not know this. This is where “Solaris” elevates itself above standard science fiction fare. A lesser movie what have made the planet Solaris a malevolent mind that would aim to destroy the members of the space station by taking human form. But Khari is precisely how Kris remembered her, not just in appearance but in personality. She loves Kris as the original Khari had, and Kris can’t help but love her back, even though he knows she is not technically human.
Ultimately, Tarkovsky is asking us, how real are we if an artificial duplication of our soul mate can inspire the same feelings? Is it our fellow humans that we love, or is it simply the idea of them? What exists outside of our own perception of reality? These are not easy questions, and Tarkovsky certainly doesn’t have the answers. How could he? That he had the courage to ask them at all is telling of his brilliance.
Tarkovsky is often listed alongside Sergei Eisenstein as one of the most important directors of the Soviet Union, and the two filmmakers could not have been more opposite in their approach to the cinema. Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” revolutionized the concept of the montage, rapid cutting to juxtapose several images into a uniting theme. The “Odessa Steps” sequence in that film is among the most important seven minutes in the history of cinema. The camera cuts rapidly between innocent bystanders and the soldiers gunning them down. The average shot is about two seconds long.
But fifty years later, Tarkovsky’s films favored shots of twenty or thirty seconds. He felt that the long shot had the power to unveil certain higher truths that can only be revealed over time. His films move incredibly slowly because of this. They become reverential. They require that we slow down with them. A film like “Solaris” can only work this way. Tarkovsky gives us time to think about what he’s showing us, he wants to give us time to reflect, to recall our own memories and see them before us, rejuvenated.
There is a moment late in Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” when Mr. Fox (George Clooney) and Company pause to recognize a moment of serene beauty, a majestic(ish) wolf on an elevated stone before the backdrop of snowcapped mountains.
It seems like an ambiguous moment, or at least it seems like it’s meant to be ambiguous. What’s strange is that it isn’t. It’s a flat moment, relatively void of meaning. I was frustrated with this at first, but quickly realized that this moment isn’t about mysterious themes or hidden meanings. It’s a send-up of those same moments in other films.
Understanding this conceit is central to appreciating “Fantastic Mr. Fox” which relies on flat compositions and deliberate actions to achieve a dry and wildly audacious style of humor that Anderson has made all his own.
He occupies his films with characters who are either bored stiff with the roles they are meant to play or relish them with the enthusiastic thrill of classical theater. Consider the way two relatively similar characters inhabit this world.
Kristofferson (Eric Anderson), a wildly talented white fox with speed, brains, and a budding romance, trudges through the film with relative disinterest. It’s not that he’s bitter, he’s just, I don’t know, indifferent?
Mr. Fox, on the other hand, has the same athleticism and smarts, and a loving and devoted wife, and he walks upright and speaks in an assertive matter-of-fact enthusiasm that is most certainly on the smug side. His suave confidence lends the film much of its wit.
Mr. Fox, having sworn off chicken thievery at the request of his wife, Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep), moves his wife and son Ash (Jason Schwartzmann) out of their lowly hole-in-the-ground hole in the ground and into a lavish tree after assuming an occupation as a newspaper journalist (who nobody reads).
But his identity cannot be denied. He is a fox, after all, and foxes steal chickens. Mr. Fox plots to rob the three heavyweight famers nearby, Boggis and Bunce and Bean. He succeeds, of course, and the three outraged farmers plot to steal his hide in return.
Fox and his family burrow deep beneath their tree, meeting up with other members of the local animal population. Their misfortune is held against Mr. Fox, who seems unfazed, and tensions mount as the farmers try first to blow them out then to starve them out then to wash them out then…
Much of the humor in “Fantastic Mr. Fox” comes from moments outside the narrative, or at least moments that exist within the narrative that are not well-suited to its continuity. I can think of no better example than the poor bloke playing his banjo and improvising a song. The song itself is funny, but the response it garners is one of the biggest laughs of the year.
And what a deliberate movie this is. When the camera races in on a face you can almost hear Anderson somewhere off screen shouting “Aaand CLOSEUP!” The characters all say their lines matter-of-factly, their expressions artificial but strangely human. It’s almost as if they’re trying to slip the jokes past us.
But that moment with the wolf is still haunting me. It is a funny moment, over the top and obvious in its intentions, so what’s with the staying power? The secret to the film can be found here. That secret may well be that there is no secret at all, that the movie is what it is and should not shy away from its clichés, a theme that digs deeper than it seems.
Rollan Schott
December 2, 2009
Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan
"Rollie's reviews are among the most insightful and interesting in the cosmos (except for mine)." -Jonathan Fisher (Ghost on Screen)
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Welcome, Ghosts
Jonathan Fisher Location: Canberra, Australia Favorite Movie: The Third Man Member: Australian Film Critics Association
Rollan Schott Location: Lincoln, Nebraska Favorite Movie: 2001 A Space Odyssey Winner: Outstanding Review and Outstanding Column - Daily Nebraskan Publication Board, Spring 2009. Grand Prize for Significant Contributions, Outstanding Review - Daily Nebraskan Publication Board, Fall 2009
Welcome to Ghost on Screen, a reflection of the cinema and the culture that consumes it. Our regular features here include reviews - based on a four star scale, the Canon of Legends - essays on great films of the past, the Pantheon - an annual list we compile of our top 100 movies, and just otherwise progressive commentary on the world at large. Also keep an eye out for our Quick Tweet Reviews (QTR's) on Twitter and follow us on Facebook for updates on new entries.
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