A Year in Film (Part One)

A Viewing List for Twenty-Fifteen

Goodbye to Language [Jean-Luc Godard, 2014]: 

The title is non-judgmental.  "Goodbye" in the sense that technology is changing the way we live, but "goodbye" also to the thing that has failed to define us.  The shackles of language that keep us tethered to ideas, forms, thoughts and feelings; a liberation from expectation or the need to understand.  3D shots and the fragmentation of the image (from one into two) again relate to the typically 'Godardian' theme of disparity.  The disparity of ideas, politics, love, etc.  The inability of couples to co-exist.  The filmmaker remarks: we can film a landscape and an empty room, but not the landscape at the back of an empty room.  Yet here he achieves just that, and beautifully so.  At various points throughout, Godard frames his dog with the same zealous heroism of John Wayne, circa Stagecoach (1939), the same quiet stoicism of a van Gogh self-portrait and the same wounded dignity of Falconetti's St. Joan. The dog is at once a surrogate for the viewer, on the outside looking in, attempting to make sense, to understand, but also a surrogate for Godard, the eyes and ears at the centre of things.  Remarkable.

Kagemusha [Akira Kurosawa, 1980]: 

The political implications of the scenario are enthralling.  Throughout the film, themes of power, corruption, leadership and the suppression of the 'self' (in the purely psychological sense of the term), are each carefully woven into the fabric of the film.  However, so much of the subtext can be seen as an extension on the idea of performance; the character compelled to put on a costume, to adopt a persona, to play a part.  As such, it's not only Kurosawa's definitive political statement, but also his most self-reflexive/self-referential commentary on the psychology of the "warrior as performer", and vice versa.  The film is a testament to the talent of Kurosawa and his lead actor, Tatsuya Nakadai, however it is the delirious, near-psychedelic 'nightmare sequence' occurring midway through the film that not only draws a line of influence from the similarly personal Dodes'ka-den (1970) to the richly-autobiographical Dreams (1990) but remains one of the most dazzling, imaginative and purely cinematic moments of Kurosawa's entire career.

Los Angeles Plays Itself [Thom Andersen, 2003]: 

The story of a city on film, both literally and figuratively.  Like many of the films on this particular portion of the list, too much time has passed for me to give an accurate clarification of the film's "objective" merits, but the memory of the work still lingers.  Los Angeles Plays Itself is at once and simultaneously an astounding documentary, a travelogue of a city, a narrative history of that same city on film and above all else a defining work of actual film criticism that offers a quantum leap in the evolution of the genre.  Watching Andersen's visual interpretation of his own text - less a compilation of "clips" than a genuine adaptation, where each image or scene, each cut or juxtaposition, presents a theoretical, geographical, historical or emotional association - can only seem to shame all other forms of contemporary film criticism.

Sound and Fury [Jean-Claude Brisseau, 1988]: 

Arguably the great masterpiece of Brisseau's career and a film to file alongside Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959) and Pialat's The Naked Childhood (1968) as one of the most brutal and affecting works on the subject of adolescent alienation in French cinema.  Refining and re-establishing what would eventually become his trademark style through later and no less controversial features, such as Céline (1992), The Exterminating Angels (2006) and The Girl from Nowhere (2012), Brisseau incorporates a milieu of gritty social-drama against a more alarming series of scenes and images that seem to extend from an un-tethered perspective of magical realism.  The result is a film in which discussions on socialism, unemployment and educational-reform are punctuated by scenes of uncompromising violence, brutality and an atmosphere of near-dreamlike surrealism that features revenants, spirits and phantoms conjured from the past.  An astounding and unforgettable work.

They All Laughed [Peter Bogdanovich, 1981]: 

Too much time has passed since my initial viewing of the film back in February 2015 to offer any kind of definitive statement; an unfortunately consequence of my inability to put down in words any initial thoughts and feelings that circulated at the time.  However, my prevailing impression of the film is one of complete enjoyment!  Though the narrative of Bogdanovich's career is that of the talented "wunderkind" who created back-to-back masterworks with his first four features, Targets (1968), The Last Picture Show (1971), What's Up Doc (1972) and Paper Moon (1973), only to burn out and lose it following the hostile reception of the films Daisy Miller (1974), At Long Last Love (1975) and Nickelodeon (1976), the existence of a film like They All Laughed seems to contradict the critical consensus and shows a filmmaker creating what might possibly be  the greatest work of his career.  Working with Wim Wenders' then cinematographer of choice Robby Müller, Bogdanovich is able to do for New York what Jacques Rivette often did for his beloved Paris; turning the city into a fully fledged character, part melancholy labyrinth, part eternal playground, where characters left on the fringes of society can come together to share in their anxieties, eccentricities, passions and woes.

Talking Head [Mamoru Oshii, 1992]: 

Many directors of the post new-wave era of personal "auteurist" expression have tackled at least one semi-autobiographical work on the perils of filmmaking.  From Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris (1963) and Passion (1982) respectively, to Fassbinder's Beware of a Holy Whore (1971) Wenders' The State of Things (1982) and Antonioni's Identification of a Woman (1982), through to a vast gamut of eclectic works, including (but not limited to) Day For Night (1973) by François Truffaut, Ed Wood (1994) by Tim Burton, A Moment of Innocence (1996) by Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Art History (2011) by Joe Swanberg, the very subject of filmmaking has itself proven to be a fascinating resource for writers and directors to explore what the cinema means to them.  However, for all the variety and individuality found the films aforementioned, no other filmmaker to the best of my knowledge has explored the subject with the same gonzo eccentricity and abandon as Mamoru Oshii, who envisions his film-about-filmmaking™ as a bizarre psychodrama cum murder mystery with elements of almost Three Stooges inspired slapstick comedy, intentionally "bad" B-movie special effects, Godardian inter-titles and poetic rumination (reminiscent of something like Soigne ta droite, 1987), fourth-wall breaking and a heavy influence of Brecht.  The result is one of the great works of auteur cinema; as playful, baffling and self-deprecating as von Trier's less abstract but no less "meta" deconstruction of the role of the filmmaker, The Boss of it All (2006).

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid [Sam Peckinpah, 1973]: 

The usual superlatives hold true; this is Peckinpah's final statement on the end of the "west", on violence, masculinity and the passing of tradition.  When supposed lawman Pay Garrett shoots out his own reflection following his pitiless assassination of 'the Kid', the act itself communicates so much about the character's own loss of identity; the self-hated and the disillusionment felt not just by the lawman corrupted by a need to save face but by any and all who saw their own country slip away from them as one generation gave in to the next.  Throughout the film the landscape becomes symbolic, the journey into history expressing something about the need for heroes, myths and legends against the often brutal and unflinching reality, as the mournful, world-weary soundtrack of Bob Dylan becomes a disembodied chorus reflecting on the sense of inevitable destruction, as idealism, trust, hope and even goodness are very gradually corrupted by the bitterness of time.

For Your Eyes Only [John Glen, 1981]: 

The standard nonsensical Bond conventions are here elevated by a sense of genuine spectacle.  From the helicopter hi-jack of the pre-title sequence to later scenes, such as the Olympic pursuit, underwater exploration and literal mountain top cliff-hanger, the film doesn't just provide the usual action and suspense that one expects from the genre, it's a genuinely jaw-dropping affair!  Maybe this sentiment is simply an expression of nostalgia for a type of pre-CGI extravagance, but some of the images here are genuinely astounding; where the thrill of "actuality" - real cars, real locations, real jumps and hits - becomes as much a selling point as the narrative and its wider commitment to the requirements of the Bond "brand."  Kudos then to director John Glen, whose muscular action sequences and injection of gritty violence, often at odds with the lighter tone of this particular era, would find their truest expression several years later in the most brutal Bond film, The Living Daylights (1987).

Dodes'ka-den [Akira Kurosawa, 1970]: 

The onomatopoeic title, which suggests an imitation of the sound a tram-car would make as it moves along a track, plays into the film's notion of artifice, of a reflection of life that's not quite the real thing but an abstraction of it, while also suggesting the idea of the journey, of characters moving towards a definite (emotional or psychological) destination.  In terms of style, it is a film that feels almost like a collaboration between Walt Disney and Samuel Beckett, but with an undeniable streak of social commentary that ties it to the filmmaker's earlier movie, The Lower Depths (1957).  In its structure, it lurches from moments of burlesque humour, its scenes presenting a pantomime of larger than life characterisations amid flights of fantasy and child-like sentiment, to moments that show the brutal reality of the world suggested with a blunt, emotional honesty.  The effect can be odd and disengaging but is nonetheless unique.  An explosion of colour and stylisation; the approach offering a staggering counterpoint to the squalor and misery of the characters lives and this reflection of the modern world (circa 1970) re-imagined as a junkyard microcosm.  The only thing more dazzling than Kurosawa's experiments with colour, light and composition is the sensitivity he shows to his central characters.

Magic in the Moonlight [Woody Allen, 2014]: 

Relaxed and conversational in the best possible way, with the sun-kissed locations, lovingly photographed, and pristine period detail only adding to the charm.  It is a film full of rich and illustrative discussions on issues of nature and the cosmos; a mediation on the universe analogous to a film by Jean-Claude Brisseau - such as À L'Aventure (2008), only minus the soft-core lesbian erotica - wherein the relationship between two people becomes the fore-grounded focal point to a grander philosophical or theoretical discussion on the foundation of life itself.  Overflowing with incredible subtext, the film's smaller crisis of faith, love and loyalty becomes a reflection on greater themes, such as the nature of illusion, performance and identity; of characters as impostors, posing as something they're not; of cinema as the grand illusion, a sleight of hand; of love as the ultimate magic act, conquering cynicism; weaving its way through the elements of frothy romantic farce and bitter atheistic lament like a leitmotif.  Though many found it flawed, the film for me was a little masterpiece and one of Allen's greatest works.

A Year in Film (Part Three)

A Viewing List for Twenty-Fifteen

The Red Spectacles [Mamoru Oshii, 1987]:

Oshii manages to corral the influences of '60s Godard (post-modernism) and '80s Godard (poetic ennui) alongside elements of Seijun Suzuki and Jerry Lewis; finding a middle-ground between the pop-art sci-fi reportage of Alphaville (1965) and the comical-philosophical patchwork of Keep Your Right Up (1987) or King Lear (1987). For those that find the director's later (and for me no less essential) films to be largely humourless, self-serious ruminations on tired cyber punk concerns, The Red Spectacles is a work of genuine comic brilliance, both deadpan and slapstick; albeit, with a mystical, vaguely metaphorical climax that questions the nature of reality, existence, perception, etc. It also works as a fairly successful if academic experiment in cinematic stylisation analogous to what von Trier would attempt in films such as The Element of Crime (1984), Epidemic (1988) and Europa (1991); in short, a gnomic synthesis between genre deconstruction, social commentary and self-referential critique.

Song of the Sea [Tomm Moore, 2014]:

A poetic, intensely lyrical family drama, which, like the greatest works of Studio Ghibli, has been sold as a conventional children's adventure story, but in reality seems a far more penetrating examination of deeply human concerns - such as bereavement, grief, abandonment and the end of childhood innocence - which will only be truly felt by an older, more sensitive audience. The imagery throughout is rich and magical, beautifully designed and animated with great imagination, but always relevant to the central story of the two children and their familiar disconnection. From the old woman transformed by the fearful children into the image of a great owl, to the lonely giant turned into a mountain by his sorceress mother so as to stop him from drowning the world in an ocean of tears, the flights of fancy only deepen the metaphorical interpretations of the work.

The Canterbury Tales [Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1972]:

Pasolini as the figure of Geoffrey Chaucer gives the film a more tangible through-line than his earlier, similarly picaresque but looser exploration of Boccaccio's The Decameron (1971). Here, the same medley of stories - which run the gamut from satirical swipes at politics and religion to bawdy "sexcapades" and Chaplin pastiche - are tied together by the presence of Chaucer as self-reflexive surrogate for Pasolini; casting his critical eye not just over a medieval burlesque but its reflection on the modern world. The films' third act depiction of Hell as a surreal Hieronymus Bosch-like fantasia elevates the work above the level of the "merely great" to the realms of absolute genius! One of the most bizarre and inventive sequences Pasolini ever filmed. Lyrical, funny and disturbing in equal measure.

3 Women [Robert Altman, 1977]:

Altman's strangest film. A pre-Lynch take on Lynchian themes of dissociation, identity, alienation, the blurring of perspectives. Nods to Persona (1966) escape the curse of empty "Bergmanesque" imitation by being delivered in Altman's unique and characteristic approach; the camera drifting nomadically across complex scenes; picking out startling shots, strange objects, moments that seems inconsequential but make sense on reflection. A haunting and hypnotic work that rivals the director's earlier psychological study, Images (1972).

Nymphomaniac: Vol. I & II (Director's Cut) [Lars von Trier, 2013]:

1. Joe fashions a story from the ephemera of Seligman's room. Why? Is she telling her own story or something else? The framing device gives credence to the more preposterous moments; creates a context for Joe to indulge in fantasy but also for Seligman to interject; to deconstruct the material. In this sense the film is not just a thesis on the themes herein, but a self-reflexive study on von Trier's own methodology. 2. Joe's story about the paedophile suggests hidden implications at the end. Why is she telling these stories to Seligman? What response is she looking for and does she get it? Is the film a chronicle of one woman's self-destruction/transfiguration through sexual experience or a cruel game of deception and entrapment? I would say both. The subtleties of the ending introduce a profound degree of potential reinterpretations. 3. A pornographic variant on The Princess Bride (1987) with all of the same self-reflexive dialogues about the relationship between 'author' (Joe as surrogate for von Trier) and 'spectator' (Seligman as surrogate for the audience). However, the film is also the clearest, most penetrating iteration of the filmmaker's recent themes; depression, self-destruction, gender identity, the cruelties of nature, etc. A revelatory masterwork for von Trier.

Mr. Holmes [Bill Condon, 2015]:

While the concept of a logical Holmes encountering the one thing beyond his understanding (actual human emotion) could have been played for cheap sentimentality, Condon's film hits somewhat harder. As an investigation into memory as an effort to understand what it is to be hurt by something beyond rational comprehension, the film ably touches on issues of war, genocide, failure and grief in a profound and hugely compelling way; deconstructing the notion of the procedural (or, more plainly, the detective story) until it becomes a penetrating and insightful rumination on age, memory, experience, repentance and the inability to let go.

Welcome to New York [Abel Ferrara, 2014]:

A fearless political commentary disguised as psychological examination. Ferrara uses his Strauss-Kahn facsimile as personification of both the financial crisis and the attitude of those in positions of power; here protected by laws that leave them free to use and abuse the lowest rung of society. The character, like the condition itself, becomes a wild animal; pawing and groping his way through the culture made flesh; consuming everything. The resulting arrest and trial is like an indictment against the city itself; that inbuilt corruption of money as something above the safeguarding of actual human experience that allows all other levels of corruption to be maintained. Anchored by Depardieu's grotesque, violent performance, and a series of penetrating dialogues that hint at the true circumstances at play, Welcome to New York is arguably Ferrara's most powerful and necessary work.

Phantom of the Paradise [Brian De Palma, 1974]:

De Palma buries a personal commentary on creative freedom and the exploitation of the artist beneath a post-modern blend of Goethe and Leroux, camp B-movie horror and exaggerated glam rock. Peppered with additional nods to silent comedy, Hitchcock (naturally) and Welles - to say nothing of a frenzied, faux-reportage climax that deconstructs the line between fiction and reality, and reminds the viewer of the counter-culture experimentation of the filmmaker's earlier, much underrated Dionysus in '69 (1970) - the film works both as a vicious music business satire and as a dazzling phantasmagoria, full of heightened emotions, bold imagery and clever storytelling. The intelligent, self-reflexive soundtrack by Paul Williams is without question one of the films greatest assets.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne [Walerian Borowczyk, 1981]:

Here, lurid exploitation meets art-house exploration, blending slasher movie tropes and soft-core/soft-focus sexuality with deeper philosophical questions regarding social identity, transgression and the 'beast within.' The atmosphere is evocative of the adult fairy tales of Rolin and Argento, such as The Iron Rose (1973) and Suspiria (1977) to name just two, but taken to a level of frenzied sexuality and heightened violence that only compliments the films' rich psychological themes. The combination of the baroque and the brutal is no less beautiful and atmospheric than in a film like Neil Jordan's later masterpiece of 80s meta-horror, The Company of Wolves (1984); another mesmerising and unsettling work of dreamlike psychosexual surrealism.

L'argent [Robert Bresson, 1983]:

A film less about 'money' or its power to corrupt or debase, than a film about actions and their consequences. A good man is very gradually turned into a criminal by the dishonesty and villainy of the world around him. As such, the man is less an individual than a reflection of his own society. Bresson's characteristically austere approach is perfectly suited to this story of dehumanisation; where even a third act atrocity is presented without sensationalism or melodramatic excess. As political commentary, the film very subtly communicates the ironies of criminality; that those who initiated the chain of events receive little to no punishment, while those on the bottom rung of society are forced to suffer a genuine humiliation, speaks volumes. More than anything, Bresson's masterpiece embodies the philosophy of Godard's 'Uncle Jeannot' character from his First Name, Carmen (1983); "when shit's worth money, the poor won't have assholes." A work of art.

Key Films #31

Ghost in the Shell: Innocence [Mamoru Oshii, 2004]:

If the original Ghost in the Shell (1995) used the practicalities of a generic cyberpunk conspiracy to question the moralities of mortality, free-will and the complexities of human identity, this follow-up feature - less a direct sequel, in the conventional sense, than a philosophical reimagining - re-examines the same considerations from an entirely different point of view.  Rejecting the hard-line science-fiction influences and references to Hollywood action cinema that propelled its cult predecessor, writer/director Mamoru Oshii and his collaborators have instead taken the character Batou - a significant if peripheral figure from the previous film - and created around him an obscure but revelatory murder mystery that unfolds like a suspended riff on the tech-noir investigations of the Ridley Scott directed Blade Runner (1982), with the deeper shades of existentialism found in a story like Death and the Compass (1942) by Jorge Luis Borges.  As with that particular narrative, the full course of the inquiry, as it develops through a series of echoes, repetitions and the mysteries of viral-infected dreams, is less about tying up the various loose ends of the investigation, or arriving at a suitable third-act "point", than an example of the character being led on a journey of self-discovery, from refutation to self-awareness and the acceptance of his fate.

Like the character of Deckard from Blade Runner, Batou takes on the role of the detective, here investigating a cycle of violent serial-murders involving a system of malfunctioning "gynoids" (essentially: mechanical sex toys, used for illicit means).  Through the development of this macguffin, Oshii is able to introduce not just the dramatic requirements of his narrative (the investigation and Batou's quest), but the various themes and ideas that will come to define the experience of the film and give a weight to its theoretical hypothesis on the nature of individualism and freewill.  The contrasting issues of sex and death, the role of artificial-intelligence and the perseverance of a pretence of human emotion in a world now entirely dominated by robotic technology, are each brought up and explored by the characters in the context of this fictional narrative, but are also deeply entrenched in the design of this character and in the dark and lonesome word that the filmmakers create.  While the first film had Batou as a kind of paternal mentor-figure - offering support, guidance and advice to the conflicted heroine, Major Motoko Kusanagi - the version of the character presented here has been left resentful (possibly even jaded) by his experiences during the previous film, but also by his own sense of alienation and disconnection from the world, as it exists.

The progression of Batou though the different levels of the film is really the progression of a character who exists between worlds; no longer a human, in the conventional, biological sense of the word, but at the same time, not quite a "robot", either.  The underlying philosophy of this takes the film back to the same ideological anxieties littered throughout Oshii's original Ghost in the Shell; where the discussions on humanity itself as being the literal "ghost in the machine" - lost or in danger of being replaced - provided a subtext to the more conventional scenes of action and suspense.  In comparison, this follow-up film - subtitled "Innocence", for reasons that we'll soon return to - is a slow, sombre and emotionally inhibited work that strives to present a vision of the future that is less a modern-metropolis than a dank, decaying environment, closer in its rain-soaked misery and late night desperation to the territory of the American film noir.  In its presentation, the film once again brings to mind the world of Scott's "replicant" themed masterpiece, but at the same time is also intended to evoke (more significantly) the considerations of Jean-Luc Godard, and in particular the filmmaker's own science-fiction landmark, Alphaville: A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution (1965); itself, one of the great influences on Oshii's work.

The world of "Innocence" is a world of contrasts.  The idea of different technologies co-existing, of eras - of design, or human endeavour - reflected within a single space (a shot, or idea), are each indicative of the desire to transcend, to correct, to adapt or make easy the course of our own human experience; even if such attempts to use the technology to "make better" the perceived flaws of the natural world or the wrongs of civilisation invariably lead us ever closer to the loss of our own identity.  Here, the sight of old cars, baroque architecture and the Godardian influence of having characters speak almost entirely in literary quotations is an acknowledgement of the objectification of the past, as "fetish", against this cold, ultra-robotic world, where love and human expression no longer exist.  They're a part of the pretence of Batou's character, to convince himself that he is "normal"; that the car he drives, the apartment he owns, the words he speaks, are all, in some small way, like reminders of a lost humanity.  It is here where the subtleties of the subtitle become clear.  The journey of the character - like that previously taken by the protagonist of the Borges tale - becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.  An investigation that has no conventional outcome, but is intended instead to facilitate the unconscious acceptance of Batou's role.  His "innocence" - the attempt to feign humanity - is an affectation.  He is just a "ghost", still clinging; unable to embrace the emptiness of a digital world.

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Akira [Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988]:

As a kid, it was the mix of violent dystopia, sci-fi action and grotesque, almost "Cronenbergian" scenes of pure body-horror that defined the experience of the film.  The transmutation of the central character, Tetsuo - both fascinating and repulsive in its outrageous grandeur - was more a sufficient coda to its preceding scenes of gang violence, motorcycle rallies, police shootouts and government enforcements than anything more metaphysical, or philosophical, in intent.  On reflection, now approaching the film as an adult, aware of its cultural context and more significant historical perspective, it is this socio-political facet of Akira - its attempts to reconcile the history of the country with the then-present-day realities of advanced computer systems, economic uncertainty and the perceived loss of tradition, or cultural identity - that seems the most satisfying interpretation of the work.  That the film begins with an image of Tokyo, annihilated by the white haloed blast of a nuclear bomb, now seems less like a promise of action and spectacle, as it once did, than a calculated effort on the part of the filmmakers to evoke the symbol of destruction that not only brought about the conclusion of the Second World War, but in a sense changed the course of the modern Japan, as it exists today.

The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain shocking moments in twentieth century history; not just for the severity of their destruction, but for the way these events would shape the Japanese psychology during the fall of the 20th century.  It was the bomb that crippled the Japanese economy; ending the country's reign as a legitimate Imperial Empire, and bringing with it the rise of democracy, and a new form of western consumerism that would in fact make possible the economic miracle that saw prosperity during the post-war years.  In Akira, the concerns of the present "past" become the concerns of a potential, if as yet unrealised future; this imaginary future that seems, in its design and direction, to be dangerously close to our own.  Here, the bomb that begins the film becomes a catalyst for the slow death of this future society; a society where the clashes between student radicals and armoured police suggest a political disharmony that is matched by the spiritual disharmony as supported by the ranting-mad prophet and his all-too-eager cult.  These political struggles are placed against the more personal disharmonies reflected by its gangs of disaffected kids causing havoc on the roads and motorways; their rituals and initiations suggestive of ancient knights, or samurai - both jousting and battling for honour and supremacy; like The Warriors (1979) or Mad Max 2 (1981) - but also representing a kind of corrupted fatalism; where life, as these characters now see it, no longer holds meaning.

It is one of these kids - the weakling, Tetsuo - that will become a symbol for all the various concerns and calamities that the filmmakers see as pivotal to the way the country has been shaped by the realities of nuclear annihilation; the course of life, more transient, reckless and unstable; its children, born in the shadow of a mushroom cloud, now lost to the world of technology, images, sensations.  The transmutation of this character, as referenced earlier, now has less to do with the facilitation of shock and gore (as I once perceived) than an effort to visualise the debasement of the culture in an attempt to understand.  The physical transformation as an outer expression of the psychological transformation occurring within is presented as a sort of figurative re-birth; the body transcending the limitations of flesh and blood and instead connecting itself to the new technologies that now define our way of life.  Tetsuo, in his metamorphosis and subsequent retribution, becomes the personification of the country's own post-nuclear identity turned against itself, flesh against flesh, steel against steel, etc.   A powerful image that seems related, in hindsight, to the concerns of the filmmaker Shin'ya Tsukamoto, and to his own "Tetsuo"; there subtitled The Iron Man (1989).

The world of the film is as beautiful in its design as it is brutal in its conception.  Brought to life in a way that is vibrant, vivid and entirely immersive - a modern-day Mecca of consumerism, black market racketeering and synthetic sensations - the reference-points seem blatantly obvious, but no less immense.  The literal "neon-jungle", with its large outdoor video monitors broadcasting 24/7 news bulletins, soap operas and commercial breaks, recalls the retro-futurist metropolis of the Ridley Scott directed Blade Runner (1982) - the eternal benchmark for this kind of cyberpunk tale - while the subculture of gangs and gang violence, and their own world of graffiti-covered classrooms and derelict buildings, is closer to the "brutalist" future of Stanley Kubrick's similarly violent and prophetic A Clockwork Orange (1971).  However, it is the emotional and psychological struggle of Tetsuo (and those closest to him) that for me defines the experience of the film; elevating the action and violence above a level of adolescent excess, and instead connecting it to a more genuine concern about the relationship between youth, technology and the state of the modern-world.  The film is as such loaded with the tragedy of a generation unable to put down roots; to live a life with a sense of stability, or certainty; a generation that expects death to come quickly and without warning, as it did, so many times before.

Key Films #30

Carrie [Brian De Palma, 1976]:

What feels like one of De Palma's less personal films - at least in terms of how well it communicates the various interests and obsessions that most often define his work - is ultimately informed, if not elevated, by the remarkable lead performance of Sissy Spacek and by some of the most daring and elaborate stylisations of the director's career.  Perhaps because De Palma was conscious of the lack of individual investment - the influence of his own preoccupations, such as voyeurism, dual personalities and the self-reflexive relationship between the viewer and the work are all absent - the filmmaker over-compensated by indulging in all manner of audio-visual tricks.  The end result is a veritable showcase for De Palma's unparalleled ability to manipulate and stun the senses of an audience through an active experimentation with the filmmaking form.  Slow-motion is intercut with images played at twice the normal speed; split-screen effects convey contrasting perspectives; saturated colours suggest the growing emotional intensity of the title character; while the use of jump-cuts and those long, carefully choreographed sequences (which define the third act) create incomparable feelings of both terror and suspense.

Surprisingly, such cinematic extremes never distract (or detract) from the emotional context of the story, nor from the subtle nuances of Spacek's work.  If anything, De Palma's bold and often dizzying direction enhances the drama, imbuing the film with a dreamlike quality that succeeds in presenting the life of its character almost as if a fairy-tale-like fable - a Cinderella distortion complete with real-world manifestation of the evil step-mother - but in a way that makes the progression of the narrative and the treatment of its character all the more convincing.  The audience is able to share in the loneliness of Carrie - her fear and exclusion - just as easily as we can share in the pain, anger and inevitable retribution, precisely because De Palma has worked so hard to place the audience (through the use of editing, sound, design and cinematography) in the same emotional and psychological sphere.  This not only makes some of the more sudden shifts from high school melodrama to full-blown supernatural hysteria more palatable, it gives the drama a genuine heart and poignancy that allows the audience to better identify with something that is, on the surface at least, entirely paranormal.

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The Girl from Monday [Hal Hartley, 2005]:

The narrative requires no greater elucidation.  The themes are explicit, established via the initial voice-over, or through the discussions between its various protagonists, providing context and clarification throughout.  The depiction of a (near) future society where consumerism has become more than just a new religion but a genuine obligation (human interaction as commoditisation; everything a product, a brand; monetary transactions; goods & services, etc), owes a clear debt to the work of writers like Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood and Philip K. Dick.  Likewise, the stylisations of the film and its cold, modernist metropolis - where emotional commitment and individual expression seem punishable by exile, if not death - are very much influenced by the no less unconventional dystopia of films like Alphaville (1965) by Jean-Luc Godard, World on a Wire (1973) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Code 46 (2003) by Michael Winterbottom, to name a few.  In developing the background of the narrative, Hartley has taken the lead from such creative fictions and - in a very succinct way - appropriated their collective influence to further his own highly charged socio-political observations on the culture as it exists (or might exist) through the first part of the twenty-first century.

The presentation of this culture is exaggerated for the purpose of creative satire, but is still recognisable as a commentary on the world, circa 2005 -  the year the film was released - and on where our own society seems to be progressing, now, almost a decade later.  Issues like terrorism and insurrection - and the idea of exiled "immigrants" with poor credit ratings denied access to a more comfortable way of life - are very much keyed into that post-9/11 mindset of fear and surveillance (already mined in genre deconstructions like The  Village (2004), Land of the Dead (2005) and Southland Tales, 2006), while the very idea of a future society essentially governed and controlled by a mass-media communications company speaks to the contemporary obsession with consumer branding, fashion, technology (the Apple™ logo proudly displayed on the character's laptop), tabloid information and viral sensations.  While such themes and their appearances might possibly seem obvious, it's the unconventional (and at times brazenly naive) stylisation of Hartley's direction that perhaps requires additional justification.

Imagined on a minimal budget, Hartley envisions the film as a series of intimate close-ups.  This reinforces  the contradictory idea of a world of intense physical closeness that is devoid of any genuine emotional intimacy.  Characters are forced - by over-crowding, or over-population - to share space, but the requirements of this future-world have made bodily contact or acts of physical seduction, romance and sexual activity completely prohibited without the necessary paperwork.  It suggests a very pertinent push/pull between spatial connection and personal disconnection, which already seems a reality of life in this new digital age.  Further stylistic experiments are no less audacious and seem intended to create a sense of disorientation (even artificiality), where the visual stimulation of the world offers a kind of sensory overload.  Canted-angles combine with saturated colours - amber, grey, blue pastels and neon - stroboscopic effects, editorial ellipses, black & white sequences and a minimalist electronic soundtrack.  The result is a film that takes on an almost ambient quality; an emotional tonality that is as lulled, languorous and lyrical as the music that accompanies its strange and often abstract imagery, or the very leisurely progression of its fragmented, suitably elliptical scenes.

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Ghost in the Shell [Mamoru Oshii, 1995]:

Two characters are sat on a boat in the harbour.  It's sundown.  The lights of the city shimmer iridescently, like artificial stars in the night sky.  The first half of the film has been an endless tableau of scenes of balletic action, chaos and disarray; the action unrelenting, but also used to establish the bare necessities of a convoluted plot.  We've seen a bombardment of assassination attempts, gun battles, car chases and infinite pursuits through the busy streets, but here the narrative finally settles, it slows, finds its emotional centre.  It takes a short moment to exhale and let the characters speak, and for the first time they become more than just stylish avatars intended to appeal to the adolescent ideas of machismo, or fantasised (female) sexuality, but expressive of a deeper emotion; a personality, driven by a system of thoughts, anxieties and dreams.  It's an amazing scene and one that becomes a kind of skeleton key to understanding the greater themes of the work, its title and the relationship between its central characters.  It plants the seed of an interpretation, where the struggle between our heroes to retain aspects of their own humanity (in this instance, the literal ghost in the shell) is a fight against their programmed role as mechanised objects intended for a specific task.

The revelation of this significant existential conundrum dovetails beautifully into another extraordinary sequence.  A montage of ambient moments depicting the topography of the city at night.  Street scenes, actuality or expressions of "still life" (reminiscent, in presentation, to scenes found in the Ridley Scott directed landmark, Blade Runner, 1982) that illustrate the actual life of the city, provide a more grounded or reliable contrast to the generic action sequences that have previously defined the film.  The sequence is immediately effective; it brings us down to earth; reminds us that this is still a fully functioning word; that although there is this other narrative taking place - with its conspiracies, deceptions and cyber-terrorism - there is still a very real and very tangible backdrop to this fantasy; a world filled with ordinary people, struggling to endure.  More than this, the scene also provides a further (visual) illustration of what the film is essentially about.  These images of people, coexisting, cohabitating with new technology - the technology of the new world - is like a mirror to the role of the central characters.  If these cyborgs represent this new technology, then these images of mundane, run of the mill subsistence represent a reflection of that dream of the human experience; that lost (archaic) humanity that the characters still cling to.