Elvis (2022)

Elvis [Baz Luhrmann, 2022]:

If we think of the image of Presley slumped in his penthouse suite, catatonic on a cocktail of hamburgers and prescription pills, with his bank of television screens blazing through the darkness, we get a close approximation of the experience and presentation of Luhrmann’s Elvis – a flashy speed-run through a century of American pop cultural history.

Rather than depict a linear presentation of Presley’s life, Luhrmann gives us a disorganized montage of competing scenes, sounds, events and images, all cut together as if we’re channel surfing (or as if our attention is being pulled in several different directions from one scene to the next.) The whole film feels as if each scene is being broadcast individually and simultaneously across a wall of television monitors, and we, as the audience, are having to scan from screen to screen then back again; the disorienting cacophony of sounds all mixed and remixed as if we’re hearing everything all at once and are left to pick out snippets of conversations, music, voices, until they’re drowned out again, or our attention focuses on something else.

On a level of technique this all sounds audacious, reminiscent (on paper at least) of the experimental approach Oliver Stone brought to his earlier films, JFK (1991) and Nixon (1995). Unfortunately, Luhrmann lacks the focus of Stone as well as his depth and conviction. While he throws everything at his multi-media recreation of Elvis as pop cultural icon, it’s not exactly clear what the point of it all is?

 

 Elvis [Baz Luhrmann, 2022]:

 

One could use Presley as a lens through which to explore the changing landscape of pop culture, race and popular music. There’s a bit of that here, but not as much as you might expect for a film running close to three-hours. You could also look at the story more cynically, presenting Elvis as the establishment’s sock puppet (whose stage-managed persona and ‘scandalous’ hip shaking distracted the masses from the uncomfortable realities of the civil rights movement, the Korean war, the assassination of activists, presidents and presidential candidates, the war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal). Luhrmann attempts to broach a bit of this as well, but he’s 1) too enamored with Presley as an artist to not view his role in this sympathetically, and 2) shifts the focus of the film in too many conflicting directions for any of it to land.

For instance, there’s no reason for the film to be told from the perspective of Presley’s manager, ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker. The film presents Parker as the villain, but also allows Parker to present himself as a victim; giving the film an unnecessary conflict between what we see and what we’re told. We get the sense that Luhrmann wants the audience to feel as manipulated and lied to by Parker as Presley must have done in real life, but we don’t really need this, do we? We don’t need this additional level of self-reflection in which Parker gaslights the audience, while the audience becomes a witness to how monstrously Parker manipulates his star. It feels like Luhrmann is going for a kind of Citizen Kane (1941) rewritten by Brett Easton Ellis, but he can’t quite pull it off (it doesn’t help that Hanks as Parker is delivering one of the worst performances of the decade here.)

 

 Elvis [Baz Luhrmann, 2022]:

In this context, the end of the film and how the message is framed feels like insulting bullshit. Luhrmann gives Parker a platform to say it was “love that killed Elvis,” despite the obvious evidence that Presley was killed by his manager and handlers locking him into a punishing contract and schedule, allowing him to become estranged and alienated from any outside support network in order to better milk him as a cash cow, and then getting hooked on junk food and prescription meds. But none of this background matters for Luhrmann, as he ends the film with a montage of the real-life Presley, fully enshrined as a genuine icon, a legend, and not as another victim of the merciless entertainment industry (like Judy Garland or countless others) who was chewed up and exploited for financial gain.

So, what is Elvis for Luhrmann? What drew him to this project beyond a surface level idolization of Elvis and his work? I think the key is in the sequence depicting the production of the so-called ‘1968 Comeback Special.’ It’s here where the film finally snaps into focus, and we get a clear sense of what this all means for Luhrmann. The deconstructive, behind-the-scenes, film-within-a-film aspect of the special; the fourth-wall-breaking, ‘putting on a show’ spectacle of it all; the idea of Elvis as artist (or Elvis as Luhrmann), defying the expectations of his manager and the suits and the corporate sponsors; the idea of authenticity, of the pop star straining not just for artistic expression, but straining to be the voice of a people, to use his pop platform, his voice, his ‘gift’, to say something meaningful, to become protest personified.

 Elvis [Baz Luhrmann, 2022]:

 

It’s a dazzling sequence for Luhrmann and becomes a kind of ‘Rosetta stone’ for the rest of the film, reflecting and refracting seventy years of pop culture history, enfolding the histories of gospel, rock n’ roll, punk rock, hip hop, theatrical performance and more onto the artifice of Hollywood spectacle; onto the format of the musical; on German expressionism; on the music video. All of it mixed and remixed, as Elvis transcends his role as pop star to become a focal point for American history; his voice expressing on behalf of all voices; his pain becoming our pain; his defiance becoming our defiance.

Again, it’s bullshit, and no less insulting than allowing a proxy Tom Parker to say Elvis was “killed by love,” but it’s the kind of bullshit Luhrmann frequently gets away with, 1) because these kind of sequences (both the ‘68 special and the later scenes involving Presley’s residency in Las Vegas) play exceptionally well to his style of multi-media, cinematic bricolage, and 2) because we get a sense he actually believes it.

La Prisonnière

La Prisonnière [Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1968]:

Redolent of the kinetic art that plays such a large role in the film and the lives of its characters. In theme, it's like the missing link between Buñuel's Belle de jour (1967) and Tsukamoto's A Snake of June (2002): as in another film about repressed female desire finding expression through sadomasochist fantasy; albeit, once again from a "male gaze" perspective. Either this or it's Clouzot's quietly unsettling take on the themes of Beauty and the Beast, where a woman falls under the spell of a monster and attempts to change him. The psychedelic climax is extraordinary cinema.

In many ways, this final work is an example of Clouzot reusing the plot points and aesthetic experimentation that he'd planned to use in his unfinished film, L'Enfer (begun in 1964 but abandoned after Clouzot suffered a heart attack three weeks into the shoot.) Élisabeth Wiener is excellent in the lead role here, backed by great support from the small ensemble, which includes Bernard Fresson, Dany Carrel and Laurent Terzieff. 

Every element of the film is loaded with symbolism and significance. The apartment with the shutters down, suggesting the closed-off repression of the suburban couple soon to have their lives disrupted; the emphasis on kinetic art, which, like the film, are effectively aesthetic objects that transform reality; the motif of mirrors and refracted windows that distort the perspective of the audience to match the distorted perspective and warped outlook of the central characters; the commentary on mass produced art and the commodification of human expression; the themes of voyeurism and objectification, both in art and desire; to say nothing of the premonitions of death and transfiguration, which are hinted throughout.

The Exterminator

The Exterminator [James Glickenhaus, 1980]:

A grim, vigilante slasher film, which plays like Taxi Driver (1976) crossed with one of the sleazier Death Wish sequels. The settings are squalid, the tone is somber and the gore is sensationalistic. However, there's a strong political and social commentary here as well (if arguably somewhat right-wing in message.) It's one of the first horror films to really focus on PTSD as a motivating factor in the psychology of the central character. This isn't some deranged madman out to cause chaos, or a masked slasher in the tradition of Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, but a man trained in violence, trained in death, and pushed too far by the iniquities and injustices of a pre-gentrification New York. As well as being a fantastic bit of filmmaking in its own right, the lurid Vietnam War sequence, which begins the film with a stylized hellscape of scarring violence (care of special effects legend Stan Winston), sets the tone throughout.

The Ringer

The Ringer [Guy Hamilton, 1952]:

Modern audiences will guess the identity of the titular "The Ringer" within the first ten minutes, but nonetheless, director Guy Hamilton's feature debut remains a great deal of fun. Based on a 1929 play by Edgar Wallace, this blend of country house mystery, Doctor Mabuse-inspired crime drama and wry comedy of manners ably establishes the visual style and thematic concerns of subsequent Hamilton films, such as An Inspector Calls (1954), A Touch of Larceny (1959) and Evil Under the Sun (1982).

Prior to this debut, Hamilton had previously worked as assistant director to Carol Reed [a bit of trivia, in The Third Man (1949), Hamilton was also the camera double for Orson Welles in many of the film's long shots] and the scene where Denholm Elliott's character is pursued across the rooftops of Piccadilly shows a definite influence from both The Fallen Idol (1949) and the aforementioned The Third Man respectively.

The cast is excellent here. As well as the then-fresh-faced Denholm Elliott there's also Herbert Lom, Mai Zetterling, Greta Gynt, and the original "Doctor Who" himself, William Hartnell. Already we're seeing Hamilton's propensity for large ensemble casts made up of  huge stars and well-known character actors.

Lux Æterna

Lux Æterna [Gaspar Noé, 2019]:

As someone not ordinarily attuned to this filmmaker's particular wavelength, I know how easy it is to be put off by Noé's more juvenile provocations. Climax (2018) was a real surprise for me, especially since I'd been left underwhelmed and somewhat incredulous by the experience of his earlier works, specifically I Stand Alone (1998) and Irréversible (2002), but Lux Æterna confirms something that even those early provocations have always suggested. For all of his tricks and gimmicks, or his attempts to shock and appall, the truth is, there's no other filmmaker challenging the conventions of cinema and experimenting with the language of film and film "form" as consistently and successfully as Gaspar Noé.

This film, Lux Æterna (or "Eternal Light"), strikes me as one of the filmmaker's greatest works. An epilepsy-inducing, strobe-lit, split-screened, "live at the witch trials" for the post #MeToo era, which through extended dialogues and arresting imagery, aims to explore the marginalization, abuse and exploitation of women in the context of a film about filmmaking (and with the added bonus of Charlotte Gainsbourg and Béatrice Dalle, two of my absolute favourite actors.) At 52 minutes the film doesn't outstay its welcome.

Near Dark

Near Dark [Kathryn Bigelow, 1987]:

A propulsive soundtrack by Tangerine Dream and director Kathryn Bigelow's natural affinity for visceral action sequences are the standout elements of this revisionist neo-western vampire movie. Lance Henricksen, Bill Paxton and Jenette Goldstein, reunited after Aliens (1986), provide great value as the nomadic bloodsuckers, but are let down by the two young leads, who are like beautiful models with nothing behind the eyes. Some strong individual scenes, but not much beneath the surface.

The casting definitely does a lot of heavy lifting here. So much so that most people don’t seem to mind that none of the characters are in any way defined or developed. We learn nothing about who they are, what they want, or where they come from. Any sense of who they appear to be comes from the personality or charisma of the actor. We connect with Severen, not because of anything inherent to that character, but because he’s enlivened by Bill Paxton, and this is true with other casting decisions here as well.

Near Dark [Kathryn Bigelow, 1987]:

This is the type of film where I suspect a lot of people love it because it has two or three stand-out sequences (the kidnapping of Caleb, the massacre at the bar and the shoot-out at the motel) but the connective tissue joining these scenes together is almost non-existent. Likewise, the consistency with which characters are presented. In one scene we’re supposed to be horrified as the vampires’ slaughter innocent people, then in the next scene we’re supposed to be concerned for their survival. Are they unrelenting monsters or misunderstood anti-heroes? Bigelow can’t decide.

There was a lot more the filmmakers could’ve done with the concept here. Nomadic vampires travelling across smalltown America at a time when these communities were being ravaged by Reaganomics (failing industries, social and economic decline and the dissolution of the traditional American family), but Bigelow isn’t interested in the politics of the American western (neo or otherwise) only in the aesthetics of the genre. As such, the early emphasis on lost youth and marginalised characters in search of connections soon gives in to scenes and images (striking as they are) that feel purloined from Mad Max movies.

Leaving Las Vegas

Leaving Las Vegas [Mike Figgis, 1995]:

A little too weighed down by the relentless soundtrack and the extended cameos from what feels like the director's close circle of celebrity friends, but nonetheless, a film that eventually impresses as a portrait of two lonely people, one struggling for survival, the other for self-destruction. The manic energy of Nicolas Cage drew a lot of attention and acclaim at the time of the film's release, but it's Elisabeth Shue who's the real heart of the film and delivers a brave performance of great vulnerability.

White Zombie

White Zombie [Victor Halperin, 1932]:

Having been disappointed by many of the iconic horror films of the 1930s, this comparatively derided effort really worked for me. Tonally, there's something very dreamlike about Halperin's film. The nocturnal setting and somnambulistic atmosphere engender a feeling of unreality. The stilted delivery of the actors works in harmony with its extraordinary image making. It felt to me like a precursor to Jean Cocteau's similarly dreamy adaptation of Beauty and the Beast (1946) - although the notion of a character having to plunge himself into the shadowy world of the dead to revive a lost love has definite shades of Orpheus (1950) - as well as a close cousin to Carl Theodor Dreyer's masterful and analogous Vampyr (1932).

Murders in the Rue Morgue

Murders in the Rue Morgue [Robert Florey, 1932]:

A poor adaptation of one of Edgar Allen Poe's most astounding short stories, but surprisingly not a poor film by its own merits. While this version of Murders in the Rue Morgue makes a nonsense out of Poe's remarkable text (which as well as being a great work of spine-tingling horror is also a fantastic mystery/detective story), it does succeed on a level of pure aesthetics. Cinematographer Karl Freund and production designer Herman Rosse give the film an extraordinary touch of German expressionism, with jagged angles and a heavy emphasis on shadows and fog ensuring the film is visually striking. In the lead, Bela Lugosi brings a tremendous presence to the film, which is undoubtedly flawed, but still remarkably disturbing.

The Look of Love

The Look of Love [Michael Winterbottom, 2013]:

Typical of Winterbottom's worst tendencies. A story he barely seems interested in, used as context for actors to improvise sketches of comedy or drama, which are then cut together like a showreel. It's probably the least focused, least creative version of this story you could ever hope for, avoiding all emotional engagement by cutting the story to ribbons and focusing on the least interesting aspects of generic excess.

Winterbottom peaked for me with Code 46 (2003) [although The Killer Inside Me (2010) was a marginal return to form.] These days he seems to direct a lot of projects like this, where he gets Steve Coogan and a bunch of other comedy actors and lets them improvise around the script while he films the results from the most bland and televisual angles and set-ups. Then he cuts together the brief moments that were funny or interesting or captured a particular emotion, so the whole film feels like an extended montage. As such, characters are introduced then disappear, others turn up and we're never told who they are or what they do. We're always cutting away to scenes that feel at odds with where the story is going, presumably because Winterbottom found something in the scene that was amusing, or had a moment of great acting.

The Look of Love [Michael Winterbottom, 2013]:

Here's a film that could've focused on the spectacle of showbusiness, on performance, on the behind the scenes aspects of Soho, with its decadence and sleaze. It could've been a film about the objectification and exploitation of women, about the porn industry and how Raymond's empire would later find something approaching mainstream respectability in the age of "lads mags." It could've focused on the character's legal disputes and the question of free speech and free expression.

Instead, the film does a bit of each, but usually for no more than 5 minutes. It also mines uneasy humour and titillation from the sexual exploitation of women in these industries. Some of the performances are very good, but Coogan's playing another version of Alan Partridge, which means the Raymond character never engages.

Gushing Prayer

Gushing Prayer: A 15-Year-Old Prostitute [Masao Adachi, 1971]:

Despite its sensationalist title and its status as a "pink film," or "Pinku eiga" - which Wikipedia defines, in its broadest sense, as any Japanese theatrical film that includes nudity (hence 'pink') or deals with sexual content - there is very little to writer and director Masao Adachi's work here that could be referred to as titillating or salacious. Sex scenes are fittingly joyless, with the framing of shots and the use of stylization often reducing characters to vague, disembodied objects, whose acts of coitus are soundtracked by recitals of suicide notes.

Like the films of Teruo Ishii and Kōji Wakamatsu, the intention here is provocation, and while the subject matter might lend itself to charges of exploitation and the "male gaze," the aim of the film is as much political as anything else. A close contemporary point of reference to Adachi's film might be something like Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac, Volumes I and II (2013), where the story is both one of self-reflection and sexual identity, as well as an aesthetic and thematic statement against the themes of convention and conformity.

The Black Cat

The Black Cat [Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934]:

Titans of terror, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, face off in this pitch-black horror. From the title, the film at first seems to gesture to the themes and scenario of a classic by Edgar Allen Poe. Instead, it goes on to weave an altogether more sinister tale of revenge, imprisonment and a still-disturbing depiction of necromancy. Director Edgar G. Ulmer's abusive on-set treatment of actor Lucille Lund would see him rightly cancelled by modern audiences, but there's no denying his extraordinary direction of the film here, which remains a small masterwork of atmosphere and aesthetics.

Quai des Orfèvres

Quai des Orfèvres [Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1947]:

Director Clouzot had an affinity for film noir and for stories about poor saps led astray by obsession and sexual jealousy - a theme well served in many of the director's key films, but especially in this engaging and dramatic thriller. From the outset, the complex relationships between the characters and their jostling intentions set up the various domestic dilemmas that propel the narrative towards murder. In the second act things become murkier, with the introduction of the roguish Inspector Antoine and the formation of a gritty police procedural that feels very much within the same tradition of the works of Georges Simenon.

My MUBI Archive

And other dalliances'

As recent as two days ago, there was no need or necessity for me to return to Lights in the Dusk. I was happy enough updating my film log and posting my short comments to MUBI, while concentrating the rest of my spare time to trying (and largely failing) to write short fiction. However, continual interference from the MUBI management, as well as their on-going lack of respect for users, has forced me to seek other outlets. Since I don't like Letterboxd or IMDb (for both personal and aesthetic reasons) I'm looking back to the blog to provide the answer.

In the last six months, MUBI has removed the news feed, the discover section and now the ability to comment on other people's reviews (or blurbs, as some users refer to them - I call it "micro-criticism.") This has effectively destroyed the social aspect of the site, making it increasingly difficult to keep track of what other users are watching and discussing. Worse, many users (myself included) would use the comment section as an overspill for our reviews. As such, large parts of our reviews have been deleted from the site without warning.

 

 

Lights in the Dusk at MUBI:

 

Many users feel that it's only a matter of time before the review and user profiles are removed completely, and like every other change to the site, this will be done without word or warning. Because of this, there's a renewed urgency on my part to return to Lights in the Dusk, if only as an outlet to preserve many of the comments and criticisms that I've published on MUBI during the past twelve years.

I'll be posting these short notes (or "micro-criticism") over the coming months, and might even try to expand some of them into longer considerations - although the intention is mostly to create an archive of posts as part of the blog.

Also, please note that I've recently changed the design of the blog. Because I'd used custom text (as I copied all my old posts here from word documents) the color of the font on many posts is now too pale to read. I'm currently having to go through every post made between 2014 and 2021 to change the color of the font and reformat the posts, which will take a long time to complete. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

The sense of an ending

Or in Plato's Cave

Apologies for the recent inactivity. I meant to leave a post a couple of months ago, effectively to hand in my resignation here. For a couple of years now I've had a desire to write fiction. Writing for the purposes of the blog is too often a distraction, and it takes away what limited time I might have to write stories, or even a book. With this in mind, I think it's safe to say that Lights in the Dusk has reached its natural conclusion. For now, at least.

I have several unfinished pieces that I might some day get around to completing if I can muster the time and energy. And I never rule out the possibility that in a brief moment of inspiration, or bored infuriation, I might write an aside that's worth sharing. Case in point, the post in question.

The below was written in response to a recent article published by The Guardian. Popcorn! Screams! Mass sobbing! Why I can’t wait for cinema’s big return. Not to belabor a point, but it's another lament from yours truly against the failure of criticism to break-free from the conservative perception of the cinema as something that exists as public spectacle. That it's a conveyor belt of distributed product to be assigned a category and qualification, and not as something that exists and has continued to exist throughout the pandemic, thriving and surviving wherever a film, old or new, can be seen. A lamentation against the unspoken hierarchy that all critics preserve because it's good for business, but bad for art.

Obviously, the cinema, in its reality as a brick-and-mortar space, matters, but in what capacity? Certainly not in its current form. So, I'm afraid I'm cynical about what role the cinema now plays as a kind of nostalgic, post-Covid yearning for the world as it once existed, and as it might exist again. How, in the course of time, a lack of choice, expression, diversity and content has been taken as a kind of totem to the glory days of the medium, when in reality the cinema was already failing, becoming a space where only products of power and affluence were given a screen to be seen. This is a contentious point on my part and one that leaves me open to charges of being against the tide of populism, but so be it. It's a lone voice through the darkness, a whisper in the twilight of Plato's cave, as weak and imperceptible as a mouse's roar.

Photo credit: igoriss/Getty Images/iStockphoto:

The real reason why critics are desperate for the cinemas to re-open has little to do with an actual love of movies. It’s because without cinemas, critics, in their current, journalistic capacity, have no reason to exist. The cinema for them represents a hierarchy. One that benefits their own self-interests over those of the paying audience.

Conventionally, critics get to see movies before us, "the plebs" do. They use their privilege to shape the discussions and expectations surrounding the film, convincing an audience whether they should give up their valuable time and hard-earned money to actually see it. If you remove the enforced hierarchy of theatrical distribution and embrace streaming as self-curation, then the stakes of seeing a film are much, much lower. The critic's voice no longer has the power to make or break a movie. You see a title on Netflix or Amazon, you check the trailer, and if it looks good then you watch it.

The result of this is a kind of democratizing of the viewing experience. Removing the barriers that separate a film (theatrical) from a TV series, a Netflix feature, or a video produced for social media.

The critic can't grapple with the idea that a video produced for YouTube or TikTok is probably getting more views and having more impact on the popular culture than a film like Nomadland (2020). They don't understand the idea that anything can be reviewed, critiqued, discussed or placed within a wider debate as a new kind of image-making, because they only understand the idea that a film is something prestigious (read: expensive) that plays in a cinema. A conservative, outdated view. This is why the cinema has become a place where the same old stories and images get repeated ad infinitum. The cinema is atrophied.

Commercials get shown in cinemas, but critics don't review them. Why? Afterall, they're short films. It's because the critic's job is to review the movie the studio want to promote, not the cinema experience.

For the majority of us, the cinema experience has become the practice of paying £8.00+ to see the latest billion-dollar Disney product with a crowd of people snacking, chatting and checking their phones. It's the experience of sitting through 30 to 40 minutes of commercials before we get to the actual trailers. It's noisy heating systems or having the lights too bright. It's people arriving late or leaving early, brushing past our knees, and stepping on our feet as they go.

And for what? To pick from a small handful of six to ten films (of the 1000s released globally every month) on the basis of what some person designated a "critic", or a wealthy studio, or distributor has decided has merit.

Sure, the cinema is spectacle, if you're into seeing the same CGI extravaganza from film to film, but is it really a shared experience? What have we shared exactly? The process of looking at images projected on a screen? Afterwards we just shuffle out into the daylight, head lowered, barely exchanging a glance or a word with these strangers. Whether we enjoyed the film or not has little to do with whether the rest of the crowd enjoyed it. It's not live theatre. It's not a concert. It's sitting in a big room watching a pre-recorded image, no different to what we do at home.

If you'd like to keep up with what I'm watching and commenting on, then I'm still active on MUBI. And hopefully I might return a couple of times before the end of the year to post some of the longer essays currently languishing in states of incompletion. Thanks for reading.

Further reading at Lights in the Dusk: The Box Office Bomb [27 January 2021], Fin de cinema [08 October 2020]

Joe Baltake

In Memoriam

I only learned today that Joe Baltake passed away last year. A former film critic for the Philadelphia Daily News, among other publications, Joe was the author of one of my absolute favorite film blogs, The Passionate Moviegoer.

Focusing mostly on classical Hollywood cinema, the blog offered a valuable perspective on actors and moviemakers from that "golden era" of film, as well as other, more modern facets of film culture and film appreciation. Throughout his writing, Joe's knowledge and personable style of criticism was always self-evident, and his absence is another great loss for the once thriving blogosphere.

The Films of Jack Lemmon [Joe Baltake, 1977]:

The Unseen

Self-reflexivity and identity in Lupin (2021)

At the time of writing, I'm only three episodes into the new Netflix produced adaptation of Lupin (2021), but I have to admit, I'm quietly invested. While the show is frequently implausible, contrived and utterly unrealistic in its attempts to fold intricate twists and turns into the narrative – one-upping the ingenuity of the character and their efforts to manipulate events to facilitate a preferred outcome; "the sleight of hand", à la Christopher Nolan's movies, such as The Prestige (2006), or a film like Now You See Me (2013) by Louis Leterrier, who directed several episodes of the show in question – I think the series has more interesting elements surrounding the narrative that are worth looking at in further detail.

First, the meta role that the text plays on the formation of the character and their pursuit of truth and vengeance for a loved one cruelly wronged.

For the uninitiated, Lupin is based on a series of books about the character Arsène Lupin, the gentleman thief created by Maurice Leblanc in the early twentieth century. Lupin, as a character, featured in 17 novels and 39 novellas, beginning with the collection, Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar (1907). In this version of the story, the character Assane Diop models his life on that of Lupin after being given a copy of the book as a childhood present by his father. The passing of the book from father to son triggers a significant plot-point, wherein the father, Babakar, is accused by his powerful and wealthy employees of stealing a priceless necklace, is imprisoned, and subsequently commits suicide in jail. Assane grows up, adopting the Lupin persona as his own, and sets out to prove his father's innocence.

The book throughout makes an appearance, offering clues to detectives trying to piece together the mystery, and also providing clues to Assane about the exploitation of his father. Sub-plots from the books are also updated and played out as inspirations for Assane's own plans, creating an interesting thread of self-reflexivity.

Lupin: Chapter One [Louis Leterrier, 2021]:

Lupin: Chapter Two [Louis Leterrier, 2021]:

In this production, Assane/Lupin is brilliantly played by the actor Omar Sy. Historically, the character of Arsène Lupin has almost always been portrayed as white. A twentieth-century everyman able to move seamlessly between worlds and stratums of society, discreet and chameleon-like in his ability to disappear into a role or guise. In changing the ethnicity of Lupin, the creators of the Netlfix series, George Kay and François Uzan, imbue the project with a more contemporary social commentary, subverting societal expectations, and injecting a greater consciousness into the show and its subtext of class and racial exploitation.

In the very first episode, we're introduced to Assane working as part of a team of cleaners at the Louvre. Later, he'll visit a violent loan shark installed within one of the predominantly working-class high-rise developments on the outskirts of Paris, setting up the machinations of a robbery. Without establishing the character and the role he'll subsequently play, the introduction to Assane is meant to assuage conservative expectations and prejudices that unfortunately follow people from non-white, non-European backgrounds, before subverting them with later revelations of the plot. The audience accepts the reality of the character, as presented in these early scenes, because it plays into too many well-worn stereotypes frequently presented in films, music and television.

As the scenes unfold, we see that many of Assane's co-workers at the gallery are also from communities marginalized by the middle-classes. They come from African or Middle Eastern backgrounds. They work through the night, hidden away from the tourists and the patrons, invisible and unseen. The foregrounding of this scene and the way Lupin is able to go about setting up the particulars of his heist without drawing any suspicion or distrust, speaks to the way working class people – especially those from marginalized areas of society – exist in the background of things. To the middle and upper-classes, and those made comfortable by privilege, these people are merely there to fulfil a function or a need. They don't exist.

Lupin: Chapter One [Louis Leterrier, 2021]:

Lupin: Chapter Two [Louis Leterrier, 2021]:

It's this anonymity that privilege and ignorance breeds that gives Lupin the perfect cover to move seamlessly between worlds; to adopt new personas; to install himself in institutions. It also gives the filmmakers context to explore and critique systemic values and structures that allow prejudice, inequality, and the exploitation of working-class people to proliferate through a society controlled, not by the many, but by the few.

When Lupin makes his escape from a rendezvous by using his cover as a delivery cyclist to evade the police, or infiltrates a prison by simply swapping places with a detainee with a similar physicality, it further calls out the lack of attention or concern such people and professions are afforded by those that fail to acknowledge their basic human existence. The show confronts audiences with their own prejudices and preconceptions, becoming in a way like a mirror, reflecting but also challenging the accepted cultural narrative that allows these same prejudices to exist.

In this variation of the story, Lupin's ability to be at once a member of high society and at the same time pass unnoticed through the working class, makes him something of an aspirational figure. A kind of folk hero, like Robin Hood. He might rob from the rich, but in doing so, he shows to the audience the inequalities and the poor living conditions that turn many of the characters existing on the margins of the show and its environments towards acts of criminality. In plainer terms, it also shows that a character like Assane can succeed; that he can play the system at its own game and win; that he can move seamlessly and comfortably through a world of wealth and privilege in a way rarely shown in mainstream entertainment.

There's a further self-reflexive quality to this relating to the nature of performance. Throughout, Assane as Lupin takes on different roles and guises. He's essaying characters essentially, putting on a costume and adopting a particular persona. Through the early episodes the filmmakers play with this, continually blurring the line between Assane as Lupin, Lupin as Assane, and the fear that one might be lost to the other. It will be interesting to see how these themes and ideas broaden and develop through the subsequent episodes.

Artificial Intelligence

The Current Cinema

A recent video posted by Insider, How Marvel Actually Makes Movies Years Before Filming, gets to the broken heart of my problem with the current blockbuster cinema, and helps to explain why the directed-by-committee focus of the modern Hollywood franchise film is so frequently devoid of originality, imagination and risk.

Focusing on the work of previsualization company The Third Floor, Inside preface their video with the following description: The Third Floor is one of the world's top visualization studios and has worked on 19 of the 23 installments in Marvel's "Infinity Saga." From previs and stuntvis to techvis and postvis, The Third Floor's work on Marvel movies runs through the entire production process. The first previsualizations of a Marvel film can begin well in advance of its release date, often before the screenplay is fully finished. Find out how Marvel visualizes its movies years before filmmaking and how this practice has helped the MCU rise its position of box-office dominance today.

The video goes on to explain that "previs" frequently occurs before directors and cinematographers have even been hired, meaning the job of a filmmaker hired to helm a Marvel movie is less about directing than merely recreating what has already been rendered as 3D, computer generated animation.

How Marvel Actually Makes Movies Years Before Filming [Insider, 2021]:

You could argue that this process is merely the modern, 21st century equivalent of the storyboard, and to an extent you would be correct. Many filmmakers, from Alfred Hitchcock to the Coen Brothers, have been known to rigorously storyboard every shot in their films prior to the production process. But the difference here is that Hitchcock, the Coen Brothers and others would sit down with a storyboard artist and translate their ideas to the page. They'd then work with cinematographers, production designers and members of the art department to turn that storyboard into a facsimile of reality.

With previsualization, it's not necessarily the traditional filmmakers that are designing and directing the movie, it's teams like The Third Floor, who are creating demo versions of the film and in the process making many of the creative decisions that inform the finished work. As one of the quoted sources in the film puts it, [the previs team are] "literally an additional director/writer/editor on the movie." With this in mind, why are we still crediting directors with the success of these films?

How Marvel Actually Makes Movies Years Before Filming [Insider, 2021]:

The uniformity of Marvel's cinema is not really a surprise at this point. That they're produced by committee is self-evident. A film like Black Panther (2018), aesthetically, looks a lot like Avengers: Endgame (2019) and Captain Marvel (also 2019), and very little like director Ryan Coogler's previous films, Fruitvale Station (2013) and Creed (2015). This is because the actual job of directing these films has already been done prior to the director coming on-board. This is why Marvel's cinema feels rote and homogenous compared to earlier, auteur-driven superhero movies like Batman Returns (1992), Unbreakable (2000) and even The Dark Knight (2008).

As one of the contributors to the Insider film puts it, "All a director has to do is be an avid viewer of their own movie," which in other words is a total dismissal or rejection of the role of the director as a creative or artistic individual, reducing it to little more than an arbiter or brand guardian.

For those that enjoy Marvel's movies as escapist spectacle, this is hardly concerning. Most audiences don't care about the role of director and aren't going to see these films for their expression of personal art, politics, or ideology. But what does it say about the role of the film critic? Marvel movies are frequently the most critically acclaimed blockbuster films released. When we have a generation of critics not just rejecting but actively ridiculing a work of personal, auteur-driven cinema, like Glass (2019) by M. Night Shymalan, then falling over themselves to praise directors for work they didn't even create, and films that were put together by artificial intelligence, like those by Marvel, then the future of cinema as anything less than a corporate, committee-driven enterprise, is seriously at risk.

Further reading at Lights in the Dusk: On contemporary cinema: Superheroes and the denial of humanity [11 October 2020], The Film Director as Superstar [15 August 2020], The Current Cinema [09 January 2020], The Popular Cinema [22 June 2019]