The Year in Film 2019 - Part Ten

Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil [Paul Urkijo Alijo, 2017]:

 

Watched: Nov 10, 2019

 
Co-produced by the cult filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia, Errementari – subtitled The Blacksmith and The Devil – is an excellent and atmospheric piece of cinematic phantasmagoria that feels as rich in its storytelling and image-making as any of the great films by Guillermo Del Toro, specifically The Devil's Backbone (2001) and Pan's Labyrinth (2006). The tone isn't always cohesive, moving from historical war atrocity, to dark horror, to broad slapstick, often on a whim. However, the film remains a genuinely compelling and bewitching supernatural fable with a rich tapestry of interesting characters, an authentic Basque Country setting and strong performances, especially from Eneko Sagardoy, buried beneath layers of special make-up effects as the devil-like Sartael, and the young Uma Bracaglia as heroine Usue. I hadn't heard of co-writer and director Paul Urkijo Alijo previously, but on the strength of Errementari, I'm hoping it's safe to say he'll become an exciting new voice in contemporary fantasy cinema.
 
 

The Magnificent Butcher [Yuen Woo-Ping, 1979]:

 

Watched: Nov 21, 2019

 

Having helped launch the career of Honk Kong superstar Jackie Chan with his previous films, Drunken Master (1978) and Snake in the Eagle's Shadow (also 1978), director Yuen Woo-Ping here works his magic for another of the Seven Little Fortunes, the iconic Sammo Hung. The Magnificent Butcher effectively picks up where the director's earlier films left off, combining broad slapstick comedy and loose historical storytelling with the kind of extravagant prop-based martial artistry that Hong Kong cinema would take to insane heights during the next two decades. Here, the fight scenes are choreographed with the same care and attention as a Hollywood musical number, as performers frequently indulge in jaw-dropping levels of physicality, turning the presentation of the human body, its movements and the "dance" between the performer, the camera and the cutting between shots, into a kind of special effect. The action here is beyond words and the humour incredibly funny.
 
 

A Bullet for the General [Damiano Damiani, 1966]:

 

Watched: Dec 07, 2019

 

This is a complex film, both emotionally and politically, and as such is one that I would need to revisit in order to provide any kind of definitive commentary on. An example of the Zapata Western, director Damiano Damiani's film focuses on the friendship between a Mexican bandit and an American counter-revolutionary, with the relationship between the two men, their ideologies and ultimately their betrayals, defining the film and its subtext. Co-written by Franco Solinas, a Marxist writer best known for his work on the overtly political films Salvatore Giuliano (1962) and The Battle of Algiers (1966), A Bullet for the General is considered to be the first Italian Western to seriously deal with the Mexican revolution. As such, it sets itself apart from a lot of other films from the subgenre that leaned more heavily on the influence of the early Sergio Leone films, such as A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and its follow-up, his first masterpiece, For a Few Dollars More (1965). In those works the emphasis was more on the post-modernist deconstruction of genre, enlivening and subverting the conventions and clichés of the American western through the influences of Samurai films, pop cinema and the peasant opera, but in A Bullet for the General we have a work that engages wholeheartedly with themes of politics and revolution, creating in the process a film that uses a depiction or recreation of a period of actual history to provide a mirror to the turbulence of the 1960s. Led by two fearsome performances from Gian Maria Volonté and Lou Castel, and featuring supporting roles from Klaus Kinski and Martine Beswick, A Bullet for the General combines the scale and grandeur of Leone's perennial The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) with the politics of filmmakers like Gillo Pontecorvo or Francesco Rosi.
 
 

Electra, My Love [Miklós Jancsó, 1974]:

 

Watched: Dec 15, 2019

 

If you recently saw Ari Aster's mind-numbing and empty horror film Midsommar (2019) you might be curious to know where he "borrowed” his visual aesthetic. Look no further. Based on a play by László Gyurkó, which imagines the Greek myth of Electra through a lens of contemporary socialist politics, Jancsó's film radically unfolds like a work of live theatre that's been transposed to an open-air setting. The actors recite their dialogues in long, unbroken, carefully choreographed takes that give the film an immersive quality, in which the changes of light, from harsh daylight to the ochre hues of the setting sun, become as much a part of the unfolding drama as the interplay between characters and the combination of song and voice. The setting, a vast wilderness of shrubs and grassland, allows the themes and dialogues to transcend the contemporary politics of any geographical region, instead highlighting a more universal message. The film could be set anywhere, at any time in human history, as it mixes allegory and anachronism freely, breaking the fourth wall to create a back and forth commentary on past and present, text and subtext, and the self-reflexive relationship between reality and fiction. It's an extraordinary work and one of Jancsó's great masterpieces.
 
 

Star Wars – Episode III: Revenge of the Sith [George Lucas, 2005]:

 

Watched: Dec 31, 2019

 
Last year, I wrote a bit about George Lucas and his lasting influence on the contemporary blockbuster cinema. At the time I wasn't necessarily I great fan of Lucas or the "Star Wars" franchise, but as a die-hard contrarian I felt his singular innovations and legacy were being denied him. In the course of writing about Lucas, I effectively convinced myself to give his films a second look and began a process of watching and re-watching his entire body of work. Having balked at the experience of the earlier Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) on its initial release, I'd skipped the two subsequent installments, Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) and the film in question. What a mistake I'd made. Returning to these films as an adult and seeing a work like "Revenge of the Sith" for the first time was a revelation. For me, Lucas's prequel trilogy represents the absolute pinnacle of the franchise. Watched in totality, the experience of the films is richer, deeper, and more cohesive. They tell a story of politics, corruption, betrayal, revenge, and the loss of innocence, while presenting themselves as ultra-stylised experiments in form and aesthetics. In short, the films feel like a reflection of Lucas's personal influences, from Kurosawa and Godard, to Flash Gordon and John Ford. "Revenge of the Sith" is for me Lucas's masterpiece. Brutal in its tragedy, but more so in how ruthlessly it implicates the Jedi order as a negative force. Anakin's downfall is a result of emotional repression forced upon him by his masters; unable to grieve or express weakness, he turns to those that use his naivety against him. Political machinations that run throughout the trilogy become clearer, but it's the sadness of the various arcs colliding that makes this worthwhile.
 
Further reading at Lights in the Dusk: The Year in Film 2019 - Part One [6 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Two [9 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Three [21 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Four [24 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Five [22 March 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Six [28 March 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Seven [10 May 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Eight [17 October 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Nine [18 October 2020]

The Year in Film 2019 - Part Nine

 

Ladybird, Ladybird [Ken Loach, 1994]:

 

Watched: Oct 22, 2019

 

Crissy Rock's performance as the central character, a woman struggling to reclaim her children from social services after being trapped in an abusive relationship, remains one of the best ever on-screen. For me, she creates a fully realised character, lives and breathes her, makes her human. The subject matter is devastating, as it explores and impeaches a system of social care that all too often turns against the victims and works to grind-down the hopes and aspirations of those caught on the bottom rung of society by means of entirely systemic circumstances. The film plays well to director Ken Loach's usual intention to create works that inspire debate and make steps towards genuine social change, as he commits to a story that shows how genuine people fight against corruption and persecution; not through childish acts of designer violence, as in a film like Joker (2019), but through resilience, strength of will and the kindness of others. If the film doesn't leave its audience angry at the exploitation of its characters and the cycles of abuse and institutional prejudices relating to gender, ethnicity and class, then we've failed in our capacity as human beings.
 
 

Under the Silver Lake [David Robert Mitchell, 2018]:

 

Watched: Oct 23, 2019

 

What remains in the mind at the end of the film, more than the weird characters, the strange diversions, the sub-plots and gestures towards satire, the mysteries and conspiracies, is the presence of its sociopathic protagonist, whose problems may hold the key to unlocking the whole thing. Early nods to the eccentric LA noir of films like The Long Goodbye (1973), Body Double (1984), The Big Lebowski (1997) and Mulholland Drive (2001) – with their own mysteries and conspiracies, their interludes and their scenes of characters just shooting the shit – eventually give way to this warped character study, in which the protagonist, as either cipher or unreliable narrator, may be the instigator of everything. Criticisms of Mitchell's film – his follow-up to the excellent and atmospheric horror movie It Follows (2014) – focused on charges of self-indulgence. While it's potentially true that any of the individual sub-plots here could've formed the basis for a standalone feature and been all the stronger for it, the film nonetheless got under my skin and left me fascinated and frustrated in a way that only the truly reckless and singular films can. In his direction and stylization, Mitchell once again proves that he's a formidable maker of images, with every shot and sequence very carefully planned and probably storyboarded to create extraordinary mise-en-scène. If his storytelling is meandering and oblique, then at least his aesthetic is controlled and original throughout.
 
 

The Bling Ring [Sofia Coppola, 2013]:

 

Watched: Nov 02, 2019

 

A frequent criticism of the films of Sofia Coppola is that they focus almost exclusively on characters from backgrounds of wealth and privilege. I don't see this as a flaw, personally. If anything, it illustrates that Coppola is a filmmaker of honesty and self-awareness. She understands wealth and privilege because this is the world she was born into. It gives her a unique perspective, which she doesn't shy away from. The vast majority of filmmakers come from wealth and privilege or at the very least are able to easily attain it. And yet they turn their gaze on the poor and the working class and in doing so fetishize their struggles as a virtue. Recent films like Roma (2018) and Parasite (2019) are each guilty of this, their millionaire directors either deifying the woman who acted as their housemaid for a meagre income, or in turn portraying the wealthy as an actual pestilence to be punished and cast out. Coppola doesn't succumb to anything so crass and hypocritical. Her portrayals of the bored and the beautiful are presented with criticism but also consideration. In The Bling Ring, which is based on true events, Coppola finds shades and nuances to these characters, showing them to be emotionally complex and capable of self-awareness, but at the same time susceptible enough to be swept along on the tide of shallow consumerism, lifestyle aspiration and brand envy. It's a surprisingly engaging work that takes characters that could've been presented as nothing more than spoiled brats and superficial monsters (which they still are, to a large extent) and places them in a wider system of influences and causalities that point to a cultural or systemic failure, wherein the stability of the family unit and the support of friendship were replaced by the empty one-upmanship of celebrity culture. It tackles some deep and satirical themes, but still manages to feel like one of its director's lighter and more entertaining works.
 
 

I am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House [Osgood Perkins, 2016]:

 

Watched: Nov 05, 2019

 

This had a very literary quality to me. It reminded me at different points of the work of Shirley Jackson. Books like "The Haunting of Hill House" (1959), her great masterpiece, and her final book, "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" (1962), with their remote protagonists in retreat from a personal trauma, their houses full of mystery and dark secrets, and their emphasis on atmosphere and the playful use of language. It also reminded me of "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1890) by Charlotte Perkins Gillman. Another classic horror story centered on the perspective of alienated women, and the struggles against isolation, human cruelty, and maladies of the mind. In terms of aesthetics, its cinematic qualities, it reminded me of certain titles by M. Night Shyamalan. The M. Night Shyamalan of films like The Sixth Sense (1999) and The Village (2004), with their stark colour schemes, careful composition of shots, slow pace and sparse use of sound, as well as the same delicate performances, the florid dialog spoken as a whisper, the themes of trauma, ghosts and separation. Many audiences have found this beautifully titled film forgettable, even boring, but I was engrossed from beginning to end.
 
 

The Lynx [Stanisław Różewicz, 1982]:

 

Watched: Nov 05, 2019

 

Set in a small village during the Second World War, the enigmatically-titled The Lynx is a forgotten masterwork about faith and morality; about the struggle to see light in a world beset by darkness. Subtly drawn, with gestures towards symbolic interpretation, the film grapples with questions of integrity, as circumstances of war lead a young priest to ask if murder is ever justified. In its visual austerity, its grappling with faith and culpability and the rigidity of its performances, it feels like the missing link between Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest (1951) and Paul Schrader's First Reformed (2017). In the lead role, Polish superstar Jerzy Radziwilowicz has never been more subdued, as his character attempts to prevent the execution of a local farmer accused of treason during the period of occupation. Director Stanisław Różewicz shoots the film in subdued colours that bring out the cold austerity of the location and the wintry setting, with brief interludes of black and white offering glimpses into the conflicted subconscious of Radziwilowicz's priest. It's a powerful and engaging film that presents still relevant and complex themes of belief, righteousness, and personal identity.
 
Further reading at Lights in the Dusk: The Year in Film 2019 - Part One [6 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Two [9 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Three [21 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Four [24 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Five [22 March 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Six [28 March 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Seven [10 May 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Eight [17 October 2020]

The Year in Film 2019 - Part Eight

 

Apologies to the three or four readers waiting for me to wrap this up. In short, I took too much time away from it, lost momentum, and now it's nearly a year since I watched most of these films and the experience is no longer fresh enough to extrapolate anything of real interest. I'm still committed to finishing the series, however, please be mindful that the blurbs will be shorter and less specific.
 
 

Belle de Jour [Luis Buñuel, 1967]:

 

Watched: Oct 06, 2019

 

Throughout the film, the character Séverine – the bored housewife who, in the absence of genuine excitement, turns to a world of high-class prostitution, becoming the "belle de jour" of the title – finds herself navigating a labyrinth of dreams. But are they her dreams, born of her own desires, fears, even perversions, or are they someone else's? In the films of Luis Buñuel, the dreamer never questions who's dreaming who. They move passively, as a sleepwalker does, through the reveries that become like the rooms of a haunted house, each suggestive of a story or a history that might be there beneath the surface of the subconscious. Buñuel was a bit of a blindspot for me, but in 2019 I was able to watch several of the director's later films, all great in their own specific way, however Belle de Jour struck me as something of a masterpiece. It's an accessible film for the director, combining elements of melodrama, soap-opera, social commentary and even crime thriller, uniting each element of the plot in a mesmerizing and thought-provoking final act, as well as in the film's continual exploration of dreamers and the dreamed.
 
 

Lisa and the Devil [Mario Bava, 1973]:

 

Watched: Oct 08, 2019

 

To misquote Dante Alighieri, the credo of the film could very well be: Abandon logic, all ye who enter here. The most lyrical and poetic film by horror maestro Mario Bava, Lisa and the Devil is an absolute marvel of mood and emotion. The slim plot functions more as a dream-play than conventional narrative, as repetitions of time and vague elements of genre – specifically gothic horror – weave in and out of what is essentially a kind of bizarre fairy-tale, heavily indebted to the otherworldly influences of Jean Cocteau's adaptation of Beauty and the Beast (1945) and the writings of Lewis Carroll. In keeping with this, the title character becomes a kind of Alice surrogate; albeit, one in adult form. Like her earlier counterpart, she is led down the metaphysical rabbit hole into a strange otherworld, where time stands-still and nothing is as it appears. It's less fantastical than Carroll's work, but can nonetheless be read as a similar exploration of the psyche, where the more surreal flourishes are as much born out of the character's fears and anxieties as they are by the possible supernatural power of the place. I'm not as fond of the ending, which, without wishing to offer spoilers, feels forced and tries to tie down the film's more unconscious projections to a strict psychological interpretation. Nonetheless, the film remains a strange, enchanting, even unsettling work for Bava, and is more than worthy of acclaim alongside the director's more accessible features, such as Black Sunday (1960), The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), Black Sabbath (also 1963) and Blood & Black Lace (1964) to name a few.
 
 

Chi-Raq [Spike Lee, 2015]:

 

Watched: Oct 12, 2019

 

That Spike Lee wields his social commentary with all the grace of a sledgehammer is a fair criticism at this point. While some filmmakers approach their message with a sniper-like precision, Lee comes at his subject matter like a wrecking ball, knocking down targets and leveling the discussion with every technique and device available in his directorial arsenal. It's an approach that can rub a lot of audiences the wrong way. However, this approach to political filmmaking is not always a detriment and has benefited absolute masterworks, such as Do the Right Thing (1989), 4 Little Girls (1997), Bamboozled (2000) and When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006). Here, the filmmaker was able to apply his virtuoso technical abilities to stories that were urgent and relevant. Often, Lee's approach can be overwhelming. There are moments in Chi-Raq where the film threatens to collapse under the weight of the filmmaker's heavy-handedness; the frequent contrast between the didactic and the melodramatic creating an odd push/pull disparity between engagement and disaffection, excitement, and inertia. However, the experiment is so different and exciting, and the political commentary so bracing and necessary, that the film succeeds, overall, as much as the films aforementioned. As an audience, we stick with these films because the aesthetics and the actual filmmaking are frequently revelatory and always ambitious. It's this element of Lee's work that makes him so essential. At a time when the majority of films are safe and designed to appease the largest possible audience without challenging attitudes or preconceptions, a film like Chi-Raq is uncompromising in both its message and delivery. It commits fully to its conceptual melding of Greek myth, hip-hop music and political commentary, taking the vagaries of Aristophanes' play "Lysistrata", first performed in the year 411bc, and melding it with contemporary protests about the rise of inner-city gun violence, collective mourning and the struggles of power between men and women.
 
 

Open Your Eyes [Alejandro Amenábar, 1997]:

 

Watched: Oct 20, 2019

 

The opening sequence of the film is iconic and has been frequently imitated since its initial release. However, the image of the world abandoned, and the presence of the central character César as the only person seemingly left alive to wander the empty streets, introduces several of the film's signature themes. Primarily, it reflects the loneliness of César, both before and after the terrible accident that robs him of his face, but it also introduces themes of perception and reality. It might be a slight spoiler to reveal that this opening sequence is essentially a dream (or is it a premonition) but it's part of Amenábar's focus on the illusion of reality and the way life can be seen as a construct or a projection triggered by emotion. There are echoes here to what the filmmakers Lana and Lilly Wachowski would later explore in The Matrix (1999). However, while their film employed cyber-punk and Hong Kong action movie influences, Open Your Eyes blends the influences of film noir and classic monster movies. The film has a confessional structure, employing dreams and flashbacks as César tells his story to a prison psychiatrist. The psychiatrist becomes a surrogate for the audience, prompting César for answers as we attempt to find out what happened to him, and in the process become an active participant in our own understanding of the story and its twists and turns. Though produced on a low budget, the film is always compelling. The combination of genre elements is creative and intelligently done, and there's a genuine commitment to following through on themes of trauma, PTSD, loss of identity and the way guilt corrupts the psyche.
 
 

Princess Cyd [Stephen Cone, 2017]:

 

Watched: Oct 21, 2019

 

The film too often rushes into significant plot developments, undercutting emotional beats and denying the audience a necessary catharsis. However, I'm in love with its naturalism, the sympathy with which it presents its characters and the relaxed nature of its filmmaking. If anything, it reminded me of a very good if not great film by Éric Rohmer; not quite on a par with works like Pauline at the Beach (1983) or A Tale of Summer (1996), but maybe closer to My Night at Maud's (1969) or A Good Marriage (1982). The end of summer setting is perfectly evoked in the film's languid tone and shots of gardens bathed in golden sun, while the season itself, and its image of nature turning from green to gold, the death and rebirth of an encroaching autumn, and the contrasts between those at the beginning of youth and those approaching the end of it, seems tied into the film's themes of loneliness, new love, sexuality and grief. The performances throughout are humanist, believable and deeply felt.
 
Further reading at Lights in the Dusk: The Year in Film 2019 - Part One [6 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Two [9 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Three [21 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Four [24 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Five [22 March 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Six [28 March 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Seven [10 May 2020]

Sunless

Notes on a film: E-clip-se (1999)

"Once you look further from the delusion of banalities, you can find that the eclipse-goggle bearing individuals are more than just the observed. The film simply tells you: We are still waiting for Godot. Just in a more controlled fashion. From an owl's eye perspective, to which Marker later even alludes, the masses of the eclipse's watchers are almost as dystopian as modern-day human beings who grab their VR-headsets (to escape reality). Was Chris Marker a prophet of times to come?"

- Rahul Sharma, Letterboxd, June 30th 2020

Eclipse. Or clip? In the absence of E and se, the two words fading in and out of one another against an image of the titular occurrence, form a half-word: a word between words, like an image between images. The appearance of this first eclipse – a black and white solarization that looks like a human mouth in negative – cuts via a crude iris wipe to the face of a smiling child that for a moment recalls the gurning lunar surface from Georges Méliès silent landmark, A Trip to the Moon (1902). In doing so, the transition of shots connects the present to the past and reality to fiction; framing the observations of everyday people attempting to view the natural spectacle of a solar eclipse as another of Marker's alien dispatches, in which the filmmaker attempts to understand the vagaries of human behavior by wielding his camera like a scientist wields a microscope.

E-clip-se [Chris Marker, 1999]:

Like much of Marker's work, it would be easy if not dismissive to read E-clip-se as a documentary. On one level, the film is essentially a homemade observation/recording of an actual solar eclipse, which occurred on the 11th of August 1999. The subjects – gathered in a park on a warm, late summer day, some sat at picnic tables eating food as nearby children play innocently on sculpted objects, all dressed in their solar goggles to stare wordlessly into the darkening sky – are real people: strays before Marker's lens. However, in filming real people reacting genuinely to a real occurrence, Marker isn't simply documenting the occurrence itself or the reaction of those in attendance, but instead creating a homage to the audience, to the act of spectatorship, which for Marker becomes spectacle itself.

Hence, the deconstruction of the title at the beginning of the film and its presentation in all further promotional materials, "E-clip-se", which can be read in a variety of different ways, with a myriad of different interpretations and emphases. From the obvious, "Eclipse", which refers primarily to the actual occurrence that these spectators have gathered to view, to the included word, "clip", which might refer to the film itself, the clip, the short film, or to the idea of the cut, the edit, this montage of shots depicting the human face and its various expressions. In the image of Parisiennes watching the eclipse occur behind their disposable solar goggles, the film also recalls, intentionally or not, sinister images from Marker's earlier and more famous film, La Jetée (1962). In this context, they suggest the presence of a hidden mystery, a conspiracy, though one that I won't spoil.

La Jetée [Chris Marker, 1962]:

La Jetée is a film that evokes sight, its montage of still images broken only by a single shot of the eyes of a blinking face. However, it's also a film about time; about human existence, and the attempt to save a remnant of civilization following a cataclysmic event. In the film, an unnamed protagonist – a prisoner of a post-apocalyptic future ravaged by a third world war – is sent back in time by a group of scientists attempting, in their own words, to "call past and future to the rescue of the present". Using a memory of a significant event, the man is sent backwards through time and space to become a witness to an incident that connects both his past and future lives to a single fixed point in time, creating a paradox, or a window between worlds.

In E-clip-se, we see a different event being depicted; however, it's one that again creates a fixed moment in time that Marker – and in turn the viewing audience – can return to. Not via the efforts of scientists from the future, but via the film itself. The work, the recording, becomes a vessel, a piece of history however small and seemingly insignificant, that we can go back to, again and again.

E-clip-se [Chris Marker, 1999]:

Throughout his career, Marker was a filmmaker obsessed with notions of time and travel. In films as varied as Sunday in Peking (1956), Letter from Siberia (1958), The Koumiko Mystery (1965), Sans Soleil (1983), Tokyo Days (1988), Level Five (1997), The Case of the Grinning Cat (2004), Ouvroir, the Movie (2009) and others, the filmmaker depicted travels between countries and territories, both real and imagined. Travel for Marker was both physical and metaphysical. One could travel between countries and continents, cross borders and observe actual cities and their customs, or one could cross more figurative territories of time, memory, and space. Whether turning his camera on the underground bunkers of a post-War future-world ravaged by destruction, the bustling urban streets of contemporary Tokyo, or the ephemeral worlds of the internet and the online gaming platform Second Life, Marker was interested in the ethnological minutiae of lives and the memories and experiences that make up life.

Thinking of E-clip-se as an echo of La Jetée gives the film a whole new perspective. Is what we're seeing really a benign observation of Parisiennes gathered together in a park to watch a solar eclipse, or is this some kind of dispatch? A warning from Marker, the alien anthropologist, the time traveler extraordinaire, connecting the past to the present, a memory translated into fragmentary images that play out like a short film? At eight-minutes, many will dismiss the film as a short-sketch, a "clip", an observation, but in its imagery and ideas it creates echoes and repetitions that reverberate throughout Marker's career, creating a dialog, or a conversation across time. It's as if each project existed within another, both a continuation and reflection of itself and its predecessors. In this context, I don't think it's an accident that the subject matter evokes the title of an earlier film by Marker, Sans Soleil. The English-language title translating plainly as "Sunless", or without sun. Another eclipse.

E-clip-se is currently available to view on YouTube. Further reading at Lights in the Dusk: Sans Soleil [20th August, 2020], Tokyo Days [31st of March, 2020].

On contemporary cinema: Superheroes and the denial of humanity

Thoughts on a quote by Alan Moore

 
Every few years, the former comic book writer, Alan Moore, comes out of retirement to give an interview in which he effectively pours fuel on the detritus of the modern comic book industry, superheroes and the general state of popular culture, and takes a flame to it. Recently interviewed for Deadline.com, the writer was there to talk about a new project that he's been working on; a surreal, independently produced fantasy film called The Show (2020). The conversation however soon turned (or more accurately, was pushed) towards the ubiquity of the modern superhero movie, to which Moore made his feelings plainly felt.
 
"Most people equate comics with superhero movies now. That adds another layer of difficulty for me. I haven’t seen a superhero movie since the first Tim Burton Batman film. They have blighted cinema, and also blighted culture to a degree. Several years ago, I said I thought it was a really worrying sign, that hundreds of thousands of adults were queuing up to see characters that were created 50 years ago to entertain 12-year-old boys. That seemed to speak to some kind of longing to escape from the complexities of the modern world, and go back to a nostalgic, remembered childhood. That seemed dangerous, it was infantilizing the population.
 
This may be entirely coincidence but in 2016 when the American people elected a National Socialist satsuma and the UK voted to leave the European Union, six of the top 12 highest grossing films were superhero movies. Not to say that one causes the other, but I think they’re both symptoms of the same thing – a denial of reality and an urge for simplistic and sensational solutions."
 
 

Publicity image of Alan Moore in The Show [Mitch Jenkins/ Protagonist Pictures, 2020]:

 
Unsurprisingly, many commentators and fans of the modern comic book cinema have accused Moore of hypocrisy and called him out for criticizing something that he's admittedly unfamiliar with. While there's an objective truth to this critique against Moore, I don't think the writer necessarily needs to see any of the recent run of highly acclaimed and hugely successful comic book movies for his point to be more or less valid. He isn't arguing against the objective quality of these films, nor the method of delivery, but rather their oversaturation of the marketplace, the politics of the medium, their ideology and corporate intent.
 
Some comic book films, on occasion, might grapple with the moral ambiguities of the superhero as a vigilante, or the lengths that superheroes take in the war on crime, but they don't make them the subject matter or the narrative that defines the whole.
 
As one example, Christopher Nolan's film, The Dark Knight (2008), is a genuinely great work that has aged incredibly well. While occasionally weighed down by unnecessary exposition and narrative contrivances, Nolan's film nonetheless emerges as an engaging and powerful treatise on the morality of vigilantism, the dualism between good and evil, and the reality of how readily the former can be corrupted by tragic circumstances. The subtext is alive with issues of post-millennium terror, giving the action a much deeper emotional resonance. And yet the film isn't really "about" any of these things. They're just subtext. They enrich the action and drama, but they don't define it.
 
 

The Dark Knight [Christopher Nolan, 2008]:

 

Image credit: https://film-grab.com/2010/10/02/the-dark-knight/

                                                                                                                       
Throughout the film, the moral ambiguity of the Batman/Bruce Wayne character is called into question, just enough for Nolan to skirt some of the more right-wing or fascistic elements of the subject matter. However, the issue is never really investigated, dramatically, to the same extent as the corruption of Harvey Keitel's character in director Abel Ferrara's grueling urban drama, Bad Lieutenant (1992). Similarly, the psychological trauma felt by the character in Nolan's film is an important part of the Batman mythology, but it isn't dealt with as sufficiently as the mental illness of the protagonist in the John Cassavetes film A Woman Under the Influence (1974), which is about the impact of mental illness on the individual, and the effect it has on the wider family unit. There, the issue is the text, not the subtext of the work, which is a significant distinction.
 
Further, the development of the Batman character is generated from grief and the processing of bereavement, but the film doesn't explore the intense and transformative aspect of grief as sufficiently, intelligently or destructively as Carine Adler does in her earlier film, Under the Skin (1997). These films are about serious subjects that genuinely affect us, whereas the modern blockbuster cinema, which, for all intents and purposes, is now the only cinema, aren't.
 
 

A Woman Under the Influence [John Cassavetes, 1974]:

 

Image credit: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare5/womanundertheinfluence.htm

 

 

Bad Lieutenant [Abel Ferrara, 1992]:

 

Image credit: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-ray_reviews52/bad_lieutenant_blu-ray.htm

 

This for me seems part of the crux of what Moore is saying. Superhero movies, no matter how great or terrible they might be, pander to a very thin veneer of profundity, of "themes" that give context to the scenes of action and adventure, but they don't engage with the reality of these issues with any great intellectual or political complexity. Audiences are denied the realities of police brutality, of innocent bystanders being killed by rampaging villains, of property damage, of lost jobs, of war, of surveillance, of the misuse of technology, of eugenics. All of these are plot points across a litany of popular comic book movies, but they represent an ugly reality that the filmmakers don't want to see intruding upon the fantasy they're trying to sell. Batman might question his moral integrity or the ambiguities of vigilantism, but we're hardly going to see an entire film about the character dealing with the real-world ramifications of guilt and grief after an innocent bystander is killed during a hot pursuit.
 
Of course, another aspect of Moore's argument is that we shouldn't ever see that kind of film to begin with. By looking at real world issues through a prism of comic book fantasy, we're only seeking to further dehumanize the issues that affect us, placing them within an imaginary sandbox that is as divorced from the real world and its politics and corruptions as the space battles of Luke Skywalker. This is the problem with a film like Joker (2019), which attempts to present a serious psychological study of the cartoon character made popular in the Batman comics, but ends up merely exploiting themes of abuse and mental illness by applying them to a character with such a loaded history.
 
Attempts to imbue ostensibly "comic book" characters with serious emotion isn't impossible. It's been done with characters that don't carry as strong of a cultural footprint as the Batman villain; for instance films like RoboCop (1987), Big Hero 6 (2014) and Split (2016) do a much better job of exploring ideas of trauma, bereavement and abuse, because their characters have a veneer of being real and identifiable, at least initially. The attempt to approach an understanding of the Joker through a parody of the Paul Schrader/Martin Scorsese films Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1983) can only feel like a post-modern joke. Whatever a film like Joker thinks it's saying about marginalized characters on the fringes of a society worn down by the abuses of the state and the systems that failed them, it still reduces its symbol of humanity, of identification, to an actual clown. Compare and contrast this to a social realist film like Ladybird, Ladybird (1994) by Ken Loach, and see how much more affecting and galvanizing the drama becomes when we recognize actual humanity on screen.
 
 

Joker [Todd Phillips, 2019]:

 
 

Ladybird, Ladybird [Ken Loach, 1994]:

 
Superhero movies, by and large, don't galvanize their audience. They don't inspire audiences to change their own worlds and make the experience of life better for those who are struggling with the world as it is. They provide only escapism, pushing the narrative that the world can only be saved by magical superbeings that stand above humanity and intercede on our behalf. Change won't come from without. We can't be saved by Superman and Captain America, Wonder Woman or Thor. Change comes from within. It comes from us, and the thousand little acts of charity and kindness that real people enact each day. Acts of kindness and charity that have been banished from the contemporary cinema and the presentation of our own humanity, in favor of superheroes locked in a battle with unreal elemental forces that provide no real-world threat.
 
Fundamentally, I don't think Moore is wrong when he links the popularity of the modern superhero cinema with the rise of Trump in America, or Brexit in the UK. Whether the fans of the sub-genre like to admit it or not (and they don't), the machinations of the comic book movie – the politics of them – are deeply conservative, if not genuinely fascistic. They're aimed at a level of populism; of black and white morality; of simplistic notions of good against evil; and the idea that someone outside of our own system and society can fix systemic problems that make the world worse for all but the 1%.
 
At their core, superhero movies promote the notion of the Übermensch: a corruption of a philosophical theory of Friedrich Nietzsche. The term Übermensch was used frequently by Hitler to describe the Fascist idea of a biologically superior Aryan or Germanic master race. This in turn spawned their idea of "inferior humans" (Untermenschen) who should be dominated and enslaved. Superheroes are, by and large, physically and intellectually superior to the average human. They're often attractive, independently wealthy, charismatic, white, and heterosexual. They stand apart from ordinary humans who are unable to protect themselves from the threat of potential supervillains that are intent on destroying the world.
 
If superheroes are beautiful and physically perfect, then supervillains are often alien invaders (frequently a coded shorthand for outsiders, or "foreigners"), or they're people that have been maimed or disfigured by some terrible incident. Again, there are many exceptions to this – some comic book characters are genuinely progressive – however, the notion of the attractive hero versus the scarred villain is a still popular trope that runs throughout fantasy fiction, from comic book movies and James Bond, even to the family films of Walt Disney. Think Scar from The Lion King (1994) for example.
 
 

The Dark Knight [Christopher Nolan, 2008]:

 

In the aforementioned The Dark Knight, crusading District Attorney Harvey Dent turns to criminality after being disfigured in an accident. The "evil" side of his new persona is physically personified by the scars on his face.

 

 

Captain America: The First Avenger [Joe Johnston, 2011]:

 

Heroes and villains: Clean-cut, all-American Steve Rogers, a genetically modified super soldier dressed literally in the stars and stripes, faces off against Red Skull, not only a Nazi, but a disfigured one.

 

 

Wonder Woman [Patty Jenkins, 2017]:

 

Heroes and villains: Wonder Woman demonstrated that female characters can also save the world, as long as they look like aesthetically perfect supermodels. Conversely, Dr. Isabel Maru has a facial difference, so she's obviously a villain.

 

There are countless other ideological problems that a person could have with the superhero subgenre, especially an avowed anarchist like Moore, who has been stung by the industry. Superhero films are increasingly pro-war. They fetishize the military to the point of mimicking the iconography of recruitment videos. They promote Eugenics. They valorize authority figures, police, military, politicians, while demonizing agitators, rebels, and freethinkers. They dehumanize our own civilization, making us background characters in our own apocalypse, just there to be terrorized, enslaved, blown-up, but rarely killed. Our cities might be crushed, our homes and livelihoods destroyed, our economies trashed, but we never see the real-life consequences of these atrocities.
 
Whereas cinema, books, theatre and art once showed us a reflection of ourselves, our suffering, our collaborations, our spirit of perseverance, the modern superhero movie denies us this identification. They refuse to show the real problems faced by the everyday world, they ignore our real-life heroes, our key workers, and they fail to show us an image of humanity banding together, of ordinary people working to create a better world. This is significant to what Moore is saying. Superhero movies to a large extent condition ordinary people to see themselves as powerless.
 
This is why a film like Glass (2019) by M. Night Shyamalan was so remarkable to me, because it presented its superhero characters – previously steeped in the same ableist tropes as the films discussed above – as victims of a corrupt and heartless system that had denied them their true expression and forced them to play the part of freaks and outcasts. Glass shows that the real supervillains that threaten our civil liberties are shadowy corporations that separate us, that work against our best interests, that convince us that we're powerless to stand against them. The final scene showed ordinary people, people bound together by loss, by grief, by the scars of trauma and abuse, make the first step towards revolution.
 
 

Glass [M. Night Shyamalan, 2019]:

 

Image credit: https://sesiondemadrugada.tumblr.com/post/185092367486/glass-m-night-shyamalan-2019

 

While the fallout from Moore's interview will follow the same narrative to that of Martin Scorsese, who incurred the wrath of the popular culture when he said Marvel movies weren't cinema. To clarify, the filmmaker went on to explain: "Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn't the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being." Scorsese was attacked for being old and out of touch with the popular cinema, but what he's saying isn't wrong. No matter how much we might enjoy a film like The Avengers (2012) or Black Panther (2018), they're not films that comment on life and the human condition. There is a world of difference between a film like Late Spring (1949), I Vitelloni (1953), Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), Wanda (1970) or The Godfather (1972) and a film like Batman Begins (2005) and Watchman (2008).
 
Escapism is fine and should always be encouraged. Life can be difficult, and we all need a release from the pressures and anxieties of modern existence, whether its movies, video games, books, or sport. But escapism without respite or alternative is a distraction. It's a snare and a delusion. We learn so much about ourselves, our humanity, our civilization, by seeing it reflected in media, art, and drama. Superhero movies, by their very nature, deny us this reflection. By allowing comic book movies to dominate the cinema, its discourse, and our conception of the medium, we've effectively created a culture that can no longer recognize real heroes and villains. A culture that has become unable to see itself and its own power and potential reflected on screen. A culture that is poorer, more divided, more deceived, and more consumed by hate and anxiety than it was twenty years ago.
 
Further reading at Lights in the Dusk: Superheroes - Or: why no one is waiting for The Avengers to save the day [18^th April, 2020], The Politics of Hope: Glass vs Joker [7^th January, 2020], The Popular Cinema: A Question of Aesthetics [22^nd June, 2019]