Scientism and Pi

 

Remembering back, the personal dimension is the stand out for Darren Aronofsky’s debut, Pi. The film has an austere look at how insanity can manifest when in the hands of an obsession. A lonely mathematician seeks to explain how the stock market is understandable and predictable by mathematics and he holds the key to unlocking the mystery. Set by a tunnel vision drive, Aronofsky creates a harrowing look at how a crazed mentality can make an apartment looking continually claustrophobic since it’s clogged by an impossible dream. It’s a freak idea to think anyone would believe the stock market could be predicted with such a simplistic view, but the simplicity allows for transcendence of how devastating madness can appear.

The personal fall into madness is nothing new. For me, the interesting development with the film is how it reminds me about articles over the trending issue of scientism and the continuing debate about what it can and cannot explain. Scientism is the promotion of various scientific disciplines to move their fields into new arenas to see how unlikely sciences can explain moral issues. Since religion has been discredited for many things among strict secularists, there is wiggle room for new assumptions to take hold.

While Pi is about math (a form of structured science) trying to explain a cultural phenomenon, scientism usually bleeds into how science can explain morality and people’s deepest instincts and natures. By some accounts, both are impossible tasks. Both try to simplify a structure that if it really could be explained, would have to be honed in by a number of different investigations and disciplines. The problem with writers who adhere to scientism have professional biases which allows them to highlight certain means of logic over others. However, this challenge has spurted a literature of different thoughts. The current race to in literature to explain the last unknown personal realms away seems to be a chase for who has the key to the lock. All anyone wants at the end is the cultural credit for having the convincing argument that swayed the public.

The problematic center of making films about scientism is the lack of interesting drama which comes in talking about methods to re-define morality. Since the literature itself is trying to model theoretical as a way to blueprint future executions of the ideal approach to morality, the human element of how and why aren’t there yet. Films about science failing to explain human elements in society have come and gone. Most memorable is the first episode of Kieslowski’s Decalogue in which a father and son try to measure the adequate durability of ice for human crossing over a lake. Confident thanks to scientific precision, the story ends in tragedy as the boy falls through the ice and dies. The implied failure from the filmmaker is the lack of ability by the people to not see themselves as God. The sturdiness of ice over water is defined by nature. Trying to fully understand and predict nature is the continuing battle.

Pi feels more relevant today since it is the drama of trying to bridge a theory into reality. The film finds a human element of how someone can be so invested by their own genius that it drives them to be defied by nature. An implication of nature can be the work of God; however, it can also be more of a comment on the limitations of scientism as a realistic theory to explain anything. The distance of scientism (in most cases) from drama is that most theories can neither be proved nor disproved. A man failing at writing a book and trying to prove a thesis would need some specific science fiction parameters. For everyday reality today, theories float through different social chains and exist in half amassed success and failure. Some people believe them and some don’t. There are concrete groundwork surrounding the idea of a man trying to visibly understand the stock market. He has an idea of how success will come and how if he continues to grind at something impossible, the results will eventually be visible. It’s the closest drama we have to depicting scientism.

Someday a drama will reign in a specific subject related to scientism and explore the inexplicable shortcomings it encompasses. For now, the territory is mostly unmarked and itself a seemingly impossible story to be convincing about. Pi is an allusion since most books on scientism have no interest in stock market prediction, but considering the questions we ask scientism to broach, is Pi any more unrealistic or unconvincing? Historical dramas continually are made by filmmakers. Many times the sole purpose is for allusion to problems in modern times. In foreign countries, there is more reprimand by a government if a filmmaker is too accusatory. Pi may be accidentally treading on some relevant topics. More I read on this social phenomenon, more the film grows for me.

The Lesser Comedy

 

As usually is the case in movies, leave it to a mistake by a filmmaker to better highlight what his strengths are. Sasha Baron Cohen released The Dictator recently and per usual, the movie is an assault on political correctness norms when it comes to American vision of Middle East and itself. The mockumentary, Borat and Bruno, were highly successful in being funny and uncomfortable. They were filled with slightly staged but actual events of Cohen playing offensive characters and interacting with real people. Him playing demonstrably offensive characters and people reacting to the drumbeat of their assumptions allowed for both funny and telling comedy.

On top of the short list of pure comedic filmmakers, Sasha Baron Cohen extended himself by making his third American feature be straight fiction. The result is nowhere near the earlier pedigree. I would argue the majority of the jokes are weaker, but that feels too subjective to list as a criticism. However, this film being fully fictional allows the old jokes to fly more by the waist side because since everything is fully staged (and more placed in a recognizable romantic comedy genre feeling), the jokes just feel typically caricature. Lots of comedy halfheartedly slam America in honest ways, but no comedy had the confrontational spirit of Cohen’s previous efforts to see the full dimensional spirit of joke insulting the intended target and getting their reaction to help the comedy. The movies were well done representations of our nerve system. The straight fictional take feels like leftover jokes. The jokes need a better structure surrounding it to be sincere.

One technical defense of the movie is that since it would be harder to make the interactions of a fictional dictator believable with average Americans, the film had to go this route to even tell the story. Maybe, but most Americans, when interviewed about everyday global facts, get many wrong. Is it so hard to find some Americans who could believe (if given a buyable premise), that a dictator from a country was visiting the UN and was making a tour of regional America round New York? Likelihood is idea allows for less potential in comedic situations and filmmakers went with their route since the methods of storytelling were much greater. Problem is the result is lukewarm. Hopefully Sasha Baron Cohen does better next time.

Two new (and significantly different) trailers…

 

Two highly anticipated movies of a very different order got their teaser trailer debuts today. An easy topic to comment on, but I will try to refrain from navigating the assumption road of how good these films will or won’t be since I now have celluloid evidence they exist.

First, The Master is the follow up by Paul Thomas Anderson to There Will Be Blood. The continuation feels pertinent as Anderson is continuing with a similar historical feel, look, and mostly a similar production crew. One thing that can be said is that Joaquin Phoenix looks perfectly realistic and detailed in the simple scene featured. Always a brooding talent, Phoenix has taken the Kevin Bacon route of “one for the reel, one for the meal” in choosing roles. The only disappointment is his choices for more quality roles has only allowed for so much introspection. Here’s hoping for a little more meat on his plate in this one. For Anderson in his youthful directorial career, variety has been the only commonality between all of the films. If the Master feels more like the last, Anderson may be more interested to hone in on a style, structure and form of storytelling. Should make for interesting development over genre jumping.

Then Skyfall, the delayed 23rd James Bond entry, hit with its first images and scenes. Included is every expectation of Daniel Craig featuring gun in hand, saying a line implied to be witty, and some explosions. The continuing director carousel in the series assumes some changes will happen with every feature.  At helm this time, Sam Mendes, seems to lace more dramatic shots where lighting and darkness allows for some change in a tonal feature. Just a few shots so who knows if any tonal quality within the movie will adhere to some uncharacteristic Bond shots, but word is from the production truck is that Daniel Craig went back and read all of the Ian Fleming novels again and was told by Mendes to contribute the jaded character from the novels to his performance. The only other Bond actor who ever tried (it seemed) with any sincerity was Timothy Dalton. During filming, Dalton was infamous for having copies of the novels in hand over even his script. I wonder if the current production age where a million explosions dress every action film will allow for a darker tone to really set into a Bond story, but here’s to a portion of hope.

Drive Blowback

After watching Drive in theaters last year, the two running thoughts in my head were 1.) I have some problems with the film and execution of the structure and 2.) man, what a fun film. Pure candy for cinema enthusiasts. Usually when a film irks me on small levels but I see the digestible talent in the making, it’s very easy to predict excitement for the latter will win out with everyone else. More critics than not backed up Drive. The unexpected drop came from many general people I know in the audience who get excited over Tarantino levels of violence yet could not muster much enthrallment over Drive. The disconnect seemed weird to me.

While Drive seems like a simple revenge film highlighted in an anti-hero driven to violence (played by Ryan Gosling), the film has hallmarks in Robert Bresson’s mode of character isolation. Instead of have characters dispel loneliness by lamenting on their pain verbally, the characters gravitate through life in silence and mode their drama in facial contortions. Method of storytelling this is about focusing on technical realms outside narrative. Throughout his career, Bresson highlighted stories by pushing the idea that features considered inane before could be propelled to speak a character or environment in a film.

European based, Refn gravitates toward homeland musical inspiration. The heavy techno music flow reflects a numbing of Gosling’s character and an inability to silence the debris in his life. Calm during robbery heists, his mentality lives for the rush. Techo music is structured on the idea of never ending beats that not only lack conclusion, but do not have peaks or valleys. The continuation is its own metamorphosis. During interviews, Refn acknowledged his interest in creating a Frankenstein type of monster with Gosling’s character. The image is relevant enough, but the Bresson model is overtly staged and static. There is also hints of what Jean Pierre Melville did, too. Le Samourai rings true since he tries to find some element of normalcy through a profession (hired killer in Samourai and driver for criminals in Drive) that refuses the opportunity.

The rift seems to be in the tonal decisions in Drive. Not only off putting is a lack of characterization in any typical regard, but how comfortable Refn is to utilize European music as a heavy feature creating structural tone within his film. Nicholas Winding Refn is a European counterpart to Quentin Tarantino. Implication goes deeper than geography since at the beginning of Tarantino’s career, he was happy with film references but solicitous in telling his stories through appeasing tones which was more digestible for American audiences. The perspective for Refn (at least in Drive) is that deeper reference goes beyond just number of shot references and is more structured in how a story is told.

Tarantino isn’t completely adverse to tone over scene reference. In Jackie Brown and Death Proof, he risked some alienation by altering old habits to fit new tonal qualities. The pace in the stories seemed more suited to the films he was referencing before. However, Tarantino has enough good fortune in other more appeasing work that his career wasn’t determined by those two features. Refn is new and while Bronson is getting some nods on DVD rewatching, his career is still in first impression stage. As far as his American career is concerned, he is taking the chances it took Tarantino a few memorable successes to make.

The more simple presumption why the techno soundtrack in Drive was off putting is because it was not a typical sonic decision for a thriller. As much as people want to be able to rationalize their distaste for movies, a lot of disagreement comes down to stomach disagreement. If something does not mesh with subjective senses, there is little chance for acceptance.

Dardenne Brothers to Criterion

 

After many years of hoping, welcome the Dardenne brothers to Criterion. Just the first few films to Criterion and considering both of these discs are “director approved”, we can hope a continuing relationship will exist. Neither of these works stand as personal favorites considering their already impressive filmography, but it’s nice since Rosetta wasn’t available on DVD before in the United States. I had to rely on a shot vhs copy. No more. While I never imagined blu ray clarity when imagining the best presentation potential of their films, I’m glad I can contribute money to these films instead of hyper special effect films begging for the blu ray stare.

Both La Promesse and Rosetta will be released on August, 14.

Summer Buzz

 

The Cabin in the Woods

The aura of Joss Whedon seemed lost on me with The Avengers. It’s just not a good movie. Though he did not direct and I have no idea how much input he had in his co-writing venture (with the actual director), there is much better result, resolve, and pure fun in Cabin in the Woods that is along the same line of what one can expect with a super hero movie. The idea being if one extends out their logic to dig too far to injest the moral of the film (meaning, it’s intellectual capability), one is losing ground with rational expectations. If one checks higher ideal at the door, The Cabin in the Woods actually makes one of the worse genres a lot of fun.

If one actually digested the spoiler bulk of the plot incarnation, the idea of an organization playing out a secret world system in which innocent people are sacrificed by scenarios seen in horror movies so Gods below will be happy, is beyond dumb. Done straight, the story is no better than bad high school whim and fantasy. Thankfully, all the filmmakers are interested in here is a means to a comic end. The plot (not fully revealed until end) is just a license for a back-and-forth comic twisting of stale cliches. The characters (likeable enough) are good enough for smirks and enjoyment.

The film rotates between kids in danger with monsters and the two men in charge of molding their situation so it’s best for graphic death. The film has the very bad habit of making up rules for an absurd plot as it goes along because the audience is in the dark  about what’s going on. Just makes plot rules irrevelant but since the film is a horror comedy, it has enough pace and movement the main tone is scene-to-scene irreverency. Like the best of what watered down movie skills in summer tend to offer, I cared more about the ride than the circumstances around it. I also genuinely had no idea what was going to happen, but I also try not to guess plot outcomes like some other people.

In end, a refreshing summer movie. Highly enjoyable. Just don’t ask me to forecast if the buzz of the ride could ever extend itself beyond this first viewing. The best summer movies tend to have that greater result as well.

Cult of Personality

The Avengers

Going in, the vigor of praise for The Avengers surprised me. The premise was troubling because it encompassed the age old Hollywood problem of having too many stars and personalities to really have a detailed story (even for a summer extravaganza) and the word is that the film was wonderfully charming and above the pay grade of the usual super hero affair. The assumption on my mind is the ingredient of Joss Whedon directing and writing (including completely rewriting an original script) is what made the film so much better.

Sadly, the movie is pretty bad. No need to fully review the bland. The story is a continuing trade off of one liners between characters mixed in with generic action. The third ingredient of self evaluating speech making is thrown in for dramatic touch, but the more I watched the movie, the more I noticed the wheels of plot turn hoping to entertain on every airy summer movie level. Problem is the frequency of good jokes was once a half hour (standard for bad sitcoms) and the story is almost non-existent.

Don’t know why this movie is garnering the praise and money. General rule of thumb is that every sequel adds more bad guys to further diminish appeal in essential super hero story. Only one bad guy in The Avengers, but does not seem very novel to replace multiple bad guys with just multiple good guys and think the likely problem will just go away. It definitely did not here. Even the easy likability of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark has seen better days of comic timing and one liners.

Fractured Purpose

 

Jane Eyre

(dir. Cary Fukunaga)

 

The least exciting idea is another adaptation of Jane Eyre would be forthcoming. Not only is the history of classical novels on film worn most sense of use, but Jane Eyre has already bypassed Hollywood romanticizing and saw its norm become hallmarked by PBS production of what a small budget can entail when the look of the film screams “made for television movie.” All qualities aside (mainly due to some actors), the films aim to just project a straight interpretation of the novel in condensed fashion. The principle belief is that the novel should be enshrined and any corresponding film should be just a support to lift up whatever the interpreter believes is the best qualities of the original work. Since the novels are best as just being novels, the hope does not merit much and compelling cinema is typically lost. A bevy of films from a number of talented filmmaker have tried to curb stale expectations. Not new to the party is a fascinating interpretation of Jane Eyre by relative newcomer, filmmaker Cary Fukunaga.

The principle evolution in the film is the structure of the story. Instead of slot the story into a chronological coming-of-age story (typical for classical novels of the period), the film immediately breaks up the story by varying the order of what scenes are shown. No random order, the realignment is aimed to better project the emotional states in the story. The film begins with Jane Eyre in desperate measure when she is wandering through an endless series of meadows. Drenched down by rain, her body begins to give out. A passing by carriage spots her and the people inside come to assist. As they take her home and supply her with food, things become apparent she is not typically poor. A curious story must be the reason why she ended up in the straits they found her. With use of various first person perspectives, the film begins to take on a multi-layered drive to lay credence to an emotional history for young Jane.

During the hysterics of Jane’s physical rebuilding, the film allows her to remember childhood moments of estrangement from an overbearing aunt and heartbreak at an orphanage when a fellow classmate died in her arms. The friendly strangers are asking her about where she came from and all her emotions can circumference is blips of painful memories. Instead of extend out these early scenes, they are capsized in searing emotional moments. The first dramatic tone the film establishes is not to doll the emotions but find ways to make the darker themes more subjective. In classical films, implied emotions in characters exist around the exterior of a tone in the story that is more focused on exhibiting realism of day-to-day life during the time period. By choosing not get cozy with a standard realism code, Jane Eyre establishes its filmmaking as more workable for some intrinsic themes in the novel.

I have always believed too many historical films relied on historical filmmaking methods to align emotions with a dumb sense of what history would have felt like. When Francois Truffaut imagined how a film about Jesus Christ would look like, he famously opined how it would be need to be black-and-white film since that is what color a film back then would have been made of. Other filmmakers have followed in similar assumption by steadying all camera work and keeping certain realism methods flow throughout the films. Jane Eyre continuously changes the emotional juxtaposition of the scenes by switching from handheld cameras to hybrid dolly shots that speed up the pace of the action but feel like a character in a hallucinatory state. Instead of try to just be experimental all around, the approach is more economical. The better result is a film that borders more on an Ingmar Bergman intensity instead of a Jane Austen comfortable.

But abandoning a linear narrative also keeps the story from general heroic angles. A trend of literature in England at this time was to write books that were critical of certain social patterns but also equip the story with plot requirements of a romance and coming-of-age mentality. From Dickens to Austen, tracking a character through evolutions and seeing their point of personal completion made for more translatable narrative. By breaking up the story into sections and most notably diminishing Jane Eyre’s early years, the film wants the viewer to see story as less heroic and more of a meddling into a psychological condition. Every stage of her life is broken into moments of scars. The depth of character comes from how the film depicts the moments and sequesters the emotions to darker corners. Even though the original novel played against romantic archetypes than what Jane Austen ever dared to, the final scene of Eyre returning to a disfigured Mr. Rochester has a horrific aspect to it in this film.

In the film, the relationship between Eyre and Rochester is a memory. Eyre is still lingering with the kind people who have taken her in and she is trying to convince them she has found peace in her new setting, but time and isolation allows the memories of what happened to come roaring back. The film digs a trail to her past by showing how coming to work for Mr. Rochester as a tutor after experience with her aunt and the orphanage was almost a godsend. At first Eyre is hesitant to open herself up to Mr. Rochester. He’s smitten by her unique gift for gab, but the audience understands her history has to make her shy about trusting anyone. The portrayal of Mr. Rochester leans on his intimidating presence and failure to be fully welcoming or clear in his personal intentions to Eyre. Unexpected warmth endears Eyre to Rochester when she saves him from a fire. Still, they share tumultuous conflicts and betrayals of trust when past secrets come roaring back. The relationship is antagonistic to the cogs of film romance.

The principle development for Eyre during this tempestuous engagement is that she develops a sense of independence and becoming of herself. The courtship between the two is very short on screen, but Eyre imagines a future with Rochester and holds firm to the idea of being with him. Saving his life and being a tutor/role model to the children of the house feels like things she has accomplished and will continue to do. An unruly lie drives her to leave Rochester and flee a dream. The development of a new menial life seems to be a nice change of pace. Eyre tries to convince her relations she is at full peace in her surroundings. Still, her memories of Rochester continue to haunt. Days look lazy and even a new teaching job for local children isn’t enough. When someone tries to propel a romantic relationship with Eyre, the feeling drives her to search out Rochester again. Memories have clouded the peace.

Using modes of editing that are essential to cinema, Jane Eyre structures a feeling of loss and emptiness around blips of memories. The new narrative bend to this story allows it to be perfectly housed in a new environment. Film has to methods to curtail the depths of detail and length in novels. An excellent example is the experimental Passages From Finnegan’s Wake (1966). Adapting James Joyce’s impossible last novel, the film curtails scope issues by structuring the film to be about some elements of the novel. At the same time, a film adaptation was made for Ulysses. Seemingly an easier adaptation possibility (at least for a Joyce work), the film tried unsuccessfully to portray the entire story. All it did was take an excellently deft novel and make it into a simple moral work. Even the implied morality from the film hardly feels existent in the novel. A full fabrication.

The revolution around the themes of the film is found in the back-and-forth moments in the story. Certain relations and character developments are given traditional measure to be drawn out. Left out conclusions and implications of tense scenarios do not find realization until the history is enlightened upon. Instead of make missing details any real bigger clue, the film seems to leave out details just so it can get to a few transcendent scenes at the end when all the emotions of the film come to a head. After Eyre is left soulfully lost and returns to Rochester, she learns his brutal fate in a fire. Still alive, Rochester suffers from burning and disfigurement of vision. Our emotional conclusion is when she finds him and simply caresses his face, hands and motions her body next to him. He understands who she is calls out her name. The film has reached climax.

Even complimented by a structure that understands how to compact a bigger story, the film does need other reasons to instill belief in the characters and story. The main benefit of the wonderful sub settings of the film is the two lead actors, Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender. Playing Eyre and Mr. Rochester respectively, the two combine to paint a thorough depiction of torn love erupting from sequestered surroundings. With the aid of close camera proximity, the performance of Wasikowska focuses on her intent focus and diligence. Part of her coming to independence is her social opening up and the muscles in her face beginning to blossom in some variation. Fassbender is allowed to do more generics because he moves from stern overseer to smitten gentleman and adds his dose of nuance by going into a performance of regret. Nothing is wrong the performance, but the camera only really knows Wasikowska’s Eyre. She is the actor who goes through every stage and ends her performance in the poetically unexplainable when we wonder what her character must be feeling when she is reunited with Rochester under regrettable circumstances.

It’s hard to make more out of this film. Mia Wasikowska is a talent on the rise and while she has star potential, she isn’t giving herself up to cheap roles to make a brand name yet. The director, Cary Fukunaga, had little reel history before and there is little way to forecast his future. Michael Fassbender is making his acting name in better performances and will continue to be spotlighted when he isn’t detouring for summer blockbuster movies. However, if more movies continue to take fragmented approaches to classic novels like this Jane Eyre does, a healthy tradition could be in the making. This isn’t the first film to do it, but it was a spotlight work in American release this year. A trend can find almost any tide to cast itself from. Here’s me more hoping adaptations get this thoughtful and adventurous with their endeavors.

An Unexpected Memorial

 

Miral

(dir. Julian Schnabel)

 

A level of expectation went into what Julian Schnabel would do when he announced his intentions to make a film about the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Past efforts and his incline of ratcheting up the filmmaking decibel to interrogate truth of difficult subject matter seemed to indicate personality and controversy may come to a head if Schnabel sight-lined a tenuous issue (like the strained Middle East dilemma) with the right amount of fervor. Time progressed after the announcement and when it came for Miral to finally debut, the film tracked up enough production mud to get delayed a few times and stunt momentum for any headlining world cinema controversy. The film also did something more off putting and disenchanting by skirting most controversial issues and going more down the social middle of the road with its story.

The good news is that there is much merit in what Schnabel does. Miral, an adaption of a novel by the same name from Rula Jebreal, is a fictional story about a historical situation of philanthropist Hindi Hussein and the results of her efforts in trying to create a school haven that would allow Palestinian girls to grow up in Israel without feeling any second class citizenry that came with the creation of Israel and disjointing of land around Jerusalem from locals nationalities already living there, namely the Palestinians. Because Hindi was a successful politician in swaying Israeli political interest, she maintained peace at her school for years. The story is history of characters involved with the school and how things came to a breaking point when Palestinian protests pushed for independence and a girl from Hindi’s school put both her family’s interest and the school’s by joining in on the political crusade.

The narrative of the story has a novel feeling of backtracking the history of the school and the main figure of Miral from the respective history of different characters and how their dramas shaped the events that revolve around later portions of the film. At the beginning Hindi Hussein finds herself accidentally helping out orphaned children. Subsequently, her housing means allows for a floodgate of more orphaned children. The accident turns into a cause. Years later, the narrative gets to know Miral’s mother and her unlikely chance of meeting her father while in prison. The story bends even more by telling how Miral got her namesake (named after a common flower on the side of the road) and how she grew to adapt Hindi as a second mother after her biological mother ended her life. The suicide does not have an immediate plot necessity to helping understand Miral herself, but it underpins many social dwellings. Many facts in the story have a sweeping curiosity that have no easy plot peg to fit into.

The eventual moral discussion is framed around the struggle for independence and acceptance of compromise by protesting Palestinians. For many Palestinians, it is not enough. The film registers their complaints on the faintest level. It directs the focus through Miral and the school and their safer desire to find peace. There is insuniation that Hindi wants peace but she also wants her school to be protected. When the agreement means that only 22% of the disputed land will be recovered, Hindi seems happy to go to her grave with that achievement. The dismal reality (supplied in a footnote) is that Israelis still have not given Palestinians even that, but the belief it will happen will be lasting solace for Hindi’s efforts. The nice notion of a contained independence being given a level of credence is controversial because it bow ties an enormous and ongoing argument with deep history into a smaller struggle. If I was going to rate Miral’s political deft, the film would flunk. However, I believe the film has an interesting level of apolitical morality and finds some interesting (and relevant) emotional strands by trying to be something else.

There is no reason to think Julian Schnabel short changes the novel. The slim work gets consistent criticism for being light on political issues, but what this story has going for it is an air of authenticity into a sidebar historical issue. As a biography of Miral until her early adulthood, the film is a tracking of how she was able to get the means to leave Israel and study with a full scholarship in Italy. The thanks is to Hindi Hussein and her school, but since both had unique ways of both coming into existence and finding each other, the narrative relies on anecdotal quirks to detail how both could evolve in the same universe. Unlike Slumdog Millionaire (2008), the quirky facts are not friendly for a clever plot construction. They just exist and conclusion does not find most stories or characters in the film. The only story in Miral with solid beginning and end is Hindi Hussein herself. Whatever size her school has in the region’s bigger political picture, the validation of doing what she did is still a rational dramatic stronghold. The result is the creation of a memorial work in the midst of a controversy.

An intimidating road to travel is to successfully navigate a difficult subject that has too many ends to cover. Topics and subjects have intimidated artists in various fields before. It does not even have to be an unresolved situation. Stanley Kubrick abandoned Aryan Papers and his dream of ever making a Holocaust picture when he realized no work was going to speak for the millions who died. The fear is trying to avoid short sighted moralizing that does not register with people who have experience with the event. The history of Hollywood and commercial art relying on fictional narratives has almost expunged film from getting any benefit of a doubt. Exceptions exist, and Miral gets a plus because Rula Jebreal based the character of Miral on her own life. Hindi Hussein was her real mentor and the path they took together grew into a mother-daughter relationship. Since Jebreal wrote the screenplay, the film is kept biographical.

There are some unique prisms to Miral. Rula Jebreal is acting on Hindi Hussein’s account to include the entire history of the school in her own biographical work, but she is also acting on author-subject accord to make the relationship between the writer and the subject feel interconnected in ways that cannot be rationed down to a formula. The simulation is metaphysical because the reader/viewer is thinking about processes in-and-out of the work, but specifically, the story shows an ongoing history of semi-political works that understand the inability to address full topics so compress their focus to facts more interpersonal to characters in history. The greatest biography of the 20th century was also one of the most compelling accounts of the Spanish Civil War, The Forging of a Rebel. Its author, Arturo Barea, was mainly re-telling his life but his identity to have a life became forged in the war. The creation of an identity is what became the main focus of the enormous book. Instead of self experiences, Miral road maps a theoretical history around the protagonist’s parameters of life to show how her school and other people in her life were a lead in to finding her identity through the Israeli/Palestinian situation.

Perceived political deft of a subject is based on a version of hindsight intelligence. Since the abject commentator has every published account to go on, they have the resources to say how a work is limited in its vision. The clemency for a work like Miral is that it makes a shrine for Hindi Hussein and allocates ideas of her beliefs and hopes. She is a historical figure who lived a full life within the struggle. Her dying hopes may come off as naive in greater schemes, but the film pays higher debt to her cause by hunkering down with her basic hopes and dreams when she was still alive. As much as the second guesser wants to point out limitations in her beliefs, they cannot put themselves in her day-to-day reality of what she felt was attainable and important progress between Palestinians and Israelis. Her entire life is moderating on give-and-take between both sides so the idea she could feel positive thoughts over a conservative settlement isn’t too surprising.  Since political notions are created by outside forces and make up imaginary narratives about a situation, the film’s measured political commentary goes back to its biographical focus.

Last but not least, the director needs to be regarded. Julian Schnabel is continuing on a path with few doubts. So far in his career, he is trademarking his approach with veracity over style engagement. Isn’t to say he can’t delve into styles, but he isn’t genre conscious like other filmmakers. Whatever moods and tempos Schnabel warms to, they seem to exist on an individual basis of what he thinks what will just help the emotions in a scene. Other structures and considerations seem to be damned. In Miral, a consistent production technique is to over saturate the light. The locale is Middle East so brighter scenes inhabit the visual senses even more. A moderate cliche is that light is abundant in happier scenes while light is dimmer in tenser scenes. It’s an easy mood swing. Difference with Schnabel is he distils so much light radiation onto the film in many ways that the lighting feels like a veneer on the surface of something larger. In the “film is most like painting” argument, Schnabel’s predisposition to lighting seems to make it qualify here.

The other overwhelming technical stroke is the precision of the compositional storytelling. For a film that travels over 30 years of story, the running time is under two hours. Instead of laboring through a methodical tone, Schnabel minimizes the amount of scenes and scenery the audience gets to see. After a while, it becomes evident the film wants locations and people to stand out in the audience’s mind. No physical alteration to adjust their reality and the school is the only place consistently shown throughout the film, but Schnabel tries to make visual cues the focal point. For a travelogue story, it reduces the identity of Miral’s mother to a broken person who has little technical characterization and existed for the specifically traumatic moments in her life. The thematic link harkens back to Miral’s third and first-person narrative of her life. For moments she cannot specify, Rula Jebreal just elaborates on the telling parts for the story. Schnabel assists by making the scenes emotionally traumatic and fitting the disjointed narrative into an almost seamless memory.

Julian Schnabel is continuing to separate himself. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) felt like a full mind meld of Schnabel’s realism potential from before. Some filmmakers sees decibel levels to push their filmmaking up to and call every new notch progression. Schnabel fully pulls back in his long awaited follow up. The result is not only fascinating history, but it is also a success in revamping my expectation levels. I saw visions of images to come after Diving Bell and now I see the same for Miral. Before one tries to catch up to Schnabel and play Nostradamus, all I hope is that his willing audience gets to see his next effort sooner instead of later.

 

Spielberg’s World War II

 

An Argument Against Saving Private Ryan

During the first ten years of Steven Spielberg’s career, there was hope among some he would lose his childhood cap and start making a string of serious films for adults. Quality or not, the wear and tear of a Peter Pan filmmaker fighting every vested interest to commit himself to articles of emotional seriousness was a little troubling. To many, Spielberg was finding better capabilities of making his filmmaking more profitable for distribution in an increasingly changing box office landscape. With the freedom of CGI becoming normalized, a simple story with a few effects like Jaws (1975) was no longer going to do it. To prove his direction continued to accommodate for the times, Spielberg granted himself marketer of CGI norms by making Jurassic Park (1993) its first credited box office smash. After making Schindler’s List in the same year, the winds of perception apparently started to change.

When Spielberg approached Saving Private Ryan (1998), he was dealing with an old hat subject in American lore. Not only was World War II the only historical subject with enough mileage to be almost considered a genre, but the story of soldiers looking for a lone soldier who had every other of his brothers killed in combat was close to being done before. In 1944, The Fighting Sullivans commemorated a war that was still going on by fictionalizing an odd historical fact of a family who saw all of its male children killed in combat. The film is based on a true story and honed on good propaganda of American patriotism by showing how a grieving family could be reimbursed with a facile rendering of heroics of their fallen in combat. The film fit the culture of other war propaganda movies being made to support the World War II and were better at celebrating generic heroics over depicting brutality and anguish. As a sales pitch to the American public to be exciting, war movies have not changed much since.

Spielberg did not settle for this nostalgia. To notch up dramatic implications, Saving Private Ryan was framed around Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1953). Like his better efforts, Kurosawa retooled a typical samurai story into the a moral challenge against the excess of violence and culture of sacrifice for honor. Seven elite samurai are hired to protect a small village and to accomplish what turns out to be a thankless feat, they give up almost all of their members in battle. In an epic 3 and half hour story, Kurosawa finds meaning and back story in all the characters to remove their guild of honor and create a personal history worth caring about. The tragedy is the blossom for life just wastes away on the vine of their profession. The film could be considered an anti-action exploitation but because Kurosawa was cutting edge in his editing to enliven the limited number of action sequences, the film was pegged with generic action acclaim. Since action films mean to compartmentalize story and character for effects, a 3 and half hour story isn’t welcoming. A full understanding discloses the deeper layers of the film.

In Saving Private Ryan, a small band of soldiers sacrifice all to bring back the Fighting Sullivans-esque soldier. Instead of any of them surviving, the soldier meant to be brought back to his family is the only one left standing. He wonders why they went to the costs they did. Still feeling his duty to serve, he even pleaded with the small unit to assist him with a dangerous assault oncoming by German soldiers. They reluctantly agree and die for their service in combat. The final shot of the saved soldier is him overlooking the body of the lead soldier in charge of his rescue. The image cuts to a later cemetery scene when he is elder age and now overlooking that soldier’s grave and still remembering what he did to save him way back when. Spielberg flanks the scene with patriotic imagery and music. The implied symbolism of unnecessary sacrifice is there, but a higher aesthetic plateau is made to dignify the duty in war and pains of fighting a greater evil.

Francois Truffaut once said there could not be an anti-war film because war invariably looks exciting on screen. The quote is true to a large extent, but Kurosawa had a story in Seven Samurai that was a full revolution around story archetypes of a war film and Kurosawa consistently favors showing more dour and dire moments of personal pain in contrast to moments of excitement. Since Kurosawa also wanted to re-work universal elements of story (in early days, he wanted his films to play for world audiences instead of just in Japan),  he wanted to play with genre boundaries to play against their expectations. On the other hand, Spielberg is fixated on bringing a new strand of hyper realism in his battle sequences. Instead of shy away from making war look exciting, Saving Private Ryan wants to go beyond our cognitive notion of exciting in war and make a war film that looks other worldly for how intense the battle sequences are. More negatives than positives are a result of this.

An idea of why Spielberg would fixate on war brutality is because every American film beforehand underscored the devastation of war. It was not technically manageable. Like making CGI plausible for first time, Spielberg had a degree of claim in saying the same for realism in war depiction. The most stunning sequence is the D-day invasion is at the outset of the film. If allowed to stand by itself, the fifteen minutes would make an amazing short film. The impeccable start is just a tone setter for the rest of the film. For a dramatic film, what is surprising is that Spielberg finds a plot structure that is eerily similar to action films. Mixing in standard story, Saving Private Ryan has an up tempo push of action sequences until a dramatic battle finale. Generally, films outside genre conventions find ways to make these things different flavors in their story, but Spielberg commits himself to pushing up the bar for honoring realism. It’s familiar to Mel Gibson’s belief in the importance of Christ’s passion by dedicating much of The Passion of the Christ (2004) to exploring the brutality of Christ’s bodily harm.

The perfection of a possible short film for Spielberg’s rendering of the D-day invasion is that the wavelength of the gravitas filmmaking is tolerable because the burst is short and succinct for a specific event. Dragged out, the effects oriented shooting of a number of theaters of war becomes a little redundant. A simple technical buzz kill came a few years after the film was released and every Jerry Bruckheimer produced movie started to copy the simple mechanics of the first person oriented vision of Saving Private Ryan’s action and mainstreamed it for every action film. Steven Spielberg even contributed some producer credits to help recall the feeling of whatever uniqueness his film had going for it. Now the social reality is that most people probably forget Spielberg’s original simple technical innovation since video games are also doing their share to expand on the technological feature.

Going back to the film, the feeling of boredom is only added because the story around all the wartime scenes mainly plays into every World War II cliche in American movies. Tom Hanks plays an everyman school teacher who isn’t a professional soldier but represents the idiom of the typical soldier. Then a number of other characters represent different backgrounds of life. It isn’t that their histories cannot be interesting, but mainly the film has little interest in them. They get enough characterization to be identifiable yet the film is still more interested in the generalized duty of war and memorial feeling for a bygone generation that did something great. Saving Private Ryan is not The Fighting Sullivans since it deals with a story outside the history of the family, but its story is no more generic in how it attributes any level of personal characterization. The modern re-telling effort has more to do with the style and permissiveness of content.

Spielberg does not always have this problem. If seen as fiction, the bulk of Schindler’s List is a welcome look into only the daily life of a holocaust camp and has enough patience to project the personal idiosyncrasies of two characters on opposite ends of a personal and political spectrum. The film devalues itself at the end with an unnecessary and unbelievable charitable message. Considering Spielberg was closely aligned with World War II memorial building in Washington D.C. around the time of making Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg seems to feel the need to over extend his memorial hand. Terrance Malick made his own sweeping film at the time with The Thin Red Line (1999). Like Spielberg’s film, the radar of the film is focused on the greater effort. To Malick’s small credit, he revolves the humanistic message around more ambiguous ideas of feeling lost in a war greater than the individual self. But Malick is always more of a structural filmmaker and his efforts rely less on moral content and more on prisms of how his style renders the feeling of different experience onto screen.

From The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) to Eastwood’s recent two tier effort in Flags of our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), if you want to border a World War II story around the strength of your content from within the style, you have to create a thorough story that evades generalization and can still be interesting after hundreds of films have been made on the subject. The reel weight of World War II on our collective senses is that people who have not experienced the effects of World War II during their lifetime can still smell every fiber of generalization and hammed message in Saving Private Ryan. Whatever inspiration Spielberg actually got from Seven Samurai was discarded after the simple plot carry over. Since his early detractors complained about his reluctance to embrace serious subjects, Spielberg has varied his output and added new levels of color to a now storied filmography, but Spielberg’s worst version of an adult sensibility is when he traffics cliche something meaningful.