Frownland

This review was originally published here on Tiny Mix Tapes.

Dir. Ronald Bronstein
2008
9.0


The trick and motivation of independent cinema has always been the same: to do more with less. This ideology is hardly revolutionary and in many cases is not so much a stylistic choice but rather a necessity for existence. Enter: Frownland, a 2007 low budget drama by first time director Ronald Bronstein. Frownland categorizes the contradiction of independent cinema in that it is both remarkable and mundane; with the two aspects feeding into each other simultaneously. It takes a bizarre, twisted, and ultimate depressing urban existence and forces us to realize that it is our own. It makes us hate and pity characters only to realize they are us. It makes us recoil in disgust at the abomination of life only to realize that this is it. Frownland is not a 21st century indie film. It is life.

Frownland does not reveal too much of its transcendence upon its initial viewing. Its opening segment is long, difficult and a precursor to all the long, difficult scenes ahead. To put it plainly: Frownland is a long, difficult movie. It is at times almost unwatchable, not because it is, by any standard, bad but because the shards of its awareness cut very deeply and can be severely uncomfortable. It is filled with the awkward silences and pathological anxiety that we desperately try to shield ourselves from in life. In many ways Frownland begs to be turned off; forgotten about; dismissed. It takes an extraordinary risk in being so hopelessly frank and honest, one that not every viewer is going to be OK with. The film contains no romance, a miserably unhappy yet cathartic ending, and an almost indiscernible plot. But something far more profound and unexpected happens during the film's 105 minutes. Something plain and yet spectacular. Slowly the viewer is interpolated into the film's hopelessness and becomes one with its misguided entourage of characters. Like a famous novel, what is deep between the lines of perfectly human dialog begins to reveal itself. Frownland is the sound and text of human suffering and alienation. It is a disgusting, beautiful portrait of regret and contempt. It is the cinematic rendering of the see-saw of indifference.

It is difficult to explain how Frownland accomplishes all these accolades. There are few instances of truly revealing dialog. More is said by following the arc of the film's characters. At the start of the film Keith, the mentally unsound main character, is confronted with a friend's tears and finds no reaction within himself. By the end of the film, through endless and tireless scenes of sweat, tribulation and panic, Keith finds himself crying and broken on the rooftop of a New York City apartment building. Along the way Keith experiences perhaps the single most appropriate rendering of a physical catharsis. Surrounded by the ungodly noise and color of a city party in a scene that is ferociously dizzying and maddeningly reminiscent of Antonioni's Blow Up, Keith pukes before exiting the building. All his fear and anxiety comes to the surface in this final scene and his rooftop weeping is the film's most prominently upsetting moments. His roommate Charles also experiences a similar revelation. He lives in a comfortable world of cultural know-how and academia only to find that he is losing his ability to pay his rent and maintain his bubbled-in lifestyle. He comes face to face with a nameless hypocritical antagonist who verbally assaults his desperate need for comfort, telling him in one of the film's funnier moments (paraphrase) “You're telling me in the middle of this ontological crisis (the test Charles has just taken) that all you can think about is fucking candy.” What these two story lines drive at is the whole of Frownland's message: any person can be driven to any logical extreme. No one is safe from a life that is hard, complex and painful revelatory.

While all this is happening the film maintains the gritty iconography of 1970s American New Wave. It's elegance is in its lack of polish, the rejection of classic ideals in beauty. The characters are ugly and normal. They lack the outstanding physical features that have become detractors to content in Hollywood. Frownland is filled with a mysterious pus that is somewhere between a disease and a soul. It is all the grandeur and decadence of sadness and anonymity. It lets light through to illuminate but refuses to reveal its own design. It is miraculous and somehow not miraculous at all. It points to the fact that we have all suffered trauma. If you haven't, perhaps consider yourself unlucky. Frownland meditates on and seems to fully believe in the modern notion that to suffer is to live. Growth is painful. Experience can hurt like hell. But it brings us closer to ourselves. And it is largely unavoidable. Everyday is a struggle, but without that inherent struggle our lives would lack a fundamental dichotomy. They would lose all semblance of meaning, of value. So, in that sense, maybe Frownland had a happy ending after all.

The Science of Sleep

Dir. Michel Gondry
2006
6.8


In the 1930s during Stalin's rise to power many great filmmakers in the Soviet Union were accused of formalism and subsequently banned from producing their art. Formalism, as described by film historian David A. Cook is “the sometimes deadly sin of exalting the aesthetic form of a work above its ideological content.” In other words: style over substance. Early landmark Soviet directors such as Dziga Vertov, Lev Kuleshov, and national hero Sergei Eisenstein, were all silenced under Stalin's artistic tyranny. Today, things are quite different. Style is exalted. David Fincher and Quentin Tarantino, whose respective style occasionally become a means unto itself, are among America's most popular directors. The 21st century has thus far bore witness to impressive advancements in reproducing life via film technology. Between Peter Jackson, Tarantino, Pixar, and a host of films such as Children of Men, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Mulholland Dr., silver screen possibilities have never seemed more infinite. Among the technically ambitious there is French director Michel Gondry whose pioneering visual work, like Fincher and Spike Jonze, stems from his time spent producing music videos. If you've never seen one of his music videos I suggest starting here. Gondry spent the early part of his film career working closely with the brilliant screen writer Charlie Kaufman, a union that produced Human Nature (2001) and the romantic epic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). In 2006 Gondry wrote and directed The Science of Sleep, which is a film that ultimately proves the difference between a visually stimulating film counterbalanced by an intoxicating and bitter sweet script and a visually stimulating film that exists by and for itself.

Following in the vein of Eternal Sunshine, The Science of Sleep is the story of a rather twisted romance. Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal) returns to his former home in France after his father dies. Here he meets and falls in love with his neighbor, Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Their relationship begins with a series of bumbling, half-witted lies that later create an opportunity for comedic relief. Said relief is necessary as Stephane is a horribly awkward, insular and hyper creative person whose imagination has a tendency to take control. As the film begins to swirl downwards like water draining from a sink, we find out that Stephane is largely unable to separate reality and his dreamworld. His wild imagination roams free while sleeping, but occasionally (and more often as the film progresses) it entirely detaches and the result, psychologically, is vaguely interesting rather than insightful. Gondry clearly knows how to handle and enhance the visual aspect of Stephane's unconscious paradise, but his grasp on its psychological aspect is at best basic, and at worst horribly understated. Stephane is portrayed as a child and his desires conform to his adolescent concept of romance. The problem is that Gondry fills the cinematic dead space between ocular episodes that border on hallucination with emotional responses to them that could only be the biproduct of a more experienced person, one with acute knowledge of death and the twisted, confusing realities of the world. This contradiction ruins the emotional continuity of the film to the point at which it literally falls apart. The film's final sequence, a very obvious reference to Freudian wish-fulfillment, is a narrative cop-out if there ever was one.

Though hugely flawed in its ignorance of psychological relations, The Science of Sleep is still a visual masterpiece. Gondry's art direction is simply unparalleled and is taken to its very limit. The sheer amount of vision required to visualize and produce everything from the vivid, surreal dream sequences of Stephane to the plausible and pleasant aesthetics of Stephanie's Parisian apartment is awe inspiring. This is not to suggest that Gondry was alone in this endeavor, but The Silence of Sleep is very clearly his brainchild. He proves, without any trace of doubt, that he is a genius visionary and a prolific innovator. Still, The Science of Sleep fails in spite of, or perhaps because of, this vision and artistic perseverance. The film plays like an extended music video, subjecting the viewer to a lavish display of artistic refinement and technological know-how, but ultimately fails to form a cohesive statement. It is likely his work with Kaufman encouraged a reevaluation of traditional film structure. However, Gondry takes the idea one step too far and abandons it altogether. Gondry, like Stephane, operates best in the absence of reality, with nothing tethering him to his fears and insecurities. I shall conclude simply by saying that, despite its impressive stimuli, Stalin probably would have exiled Michel Gondry to Siberia for The Silence of Sleep.

Shadows

Dir. John Cassavetes
1959
n/a
There's an episode of AMC's Mad Men where a few insubordinate staff members sneak into Mr. Cooper's office to see his new acquisition: a painting by the now-famous abstract expressionist Mark Rothko. Staring at the painting affixed someone asks what the painting means. The young Ken Cosgrove offers a profound explanation. He suggests that the painting isn't supposed to mean anything but rather the point is that one “falls into it.” If there is any better explanation for the work done by so many modern artists all over the world in the period following WWII's aftermath, I have yet to hear one. The conclusion of the war, the horrific revelation of Hitler's concentration camps and, most importantly, the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was the beginning of a new era in art. A certain listlessness pervaded in the young post-war generation. It manifested itself many different ways but one of the most important was a dramatic sense of nihilism. While the film capitol of the world, Hollywood, largely sought to continue boosting morale, many young people nevertheless went on to deeper and more depraved states of hopelessness and apathy. The war time boom and subsequent celebration likely felt disingenuous to them and certainly did not renew feelings of purpose. The coping mechanism of the world seemed to be to treat the war as a distant memory even after it had just occurred. By the late 1950s, with Cold War paranoia reaching a climactic point and disruption and chaos creeping back into everyday life, the skepticism and doubt of this disenfranchised lot must have been all but confirmed; their convictions in the absurdity of existence undoubtedly strengthened. In producing and directing his first film, Shadows, in 1959, John Cassavetes firmly squared himself as the voice of the forgotten who cannot forget; those who suffer with an invisible, internal burden which they can never shake off.

Shadows' legacy is built off its meticulous attention to reactionary lives. When viewing the film one doesn't get a sense of construction but rather organic process and movement, which has become a key feature in the ongoing American independent film movement which owes a great deal to Cassavetes. His film is a study of self destructive behavior at the dynamic and artistic heart of America: Newt York City. Where two years before author Jack Kerouac published an intelligentsia oriented study of the common man in “On the Road,” wherein he horrendously glorified the strivings of simple, unrealized people and cruelly, if inadvertently, widened the gap between himself and working man's world, Cassavetes sought to undue the damage caused by lack of perspective. Cassavete's characters in Shadows are not the aristocracy of cool or the Man-God Dean Moriarty of Kerouac's world, but just people. They are people without careers, without direction and without anything to do. At times they rejoice in their condition and other times they are humbled and broken by it. Without the plot devices of Hollywood or the conditioned detachment of the Beat Generation, they still manage to learn lessons and grow. In inaugurating independent cinema Cassavetes proved that lives are not products of cultural indoctrination and mind control, but rather that our existence is the basis for all creation, petty or sublime.

Using improvisation to build his narrative, Cassavetes achieves two remarkable, interrelated goals. First, he demonstrates the cinema's unique ability to capture and recreate the natural, if only given the opportunity to break free of the contrivances of stereotypes. Second, he shows how art, and in particular the cinema, can bring disparate people together and destroy the barrier between participant and viewer. In demonstrating its capacity to unite, Cassavetes christened a new relationship between people and cinema. Moving beyond the voyeurism of Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock, Cassavetes does more than just implicate his viewers, he involves them. Extreme closeups, a disorienting and complex diegetic system (which closely ties it to legendary French independent film: Breathless), and authentic realism drive the viewer's close relationship to the film. Even the film's politics (interracial relations were still taboo at the time), which could be a vehicle onto itself, are subordinate to the film's intensive dedication to the engaging and animated lives of its characters.

All things considered, it is not hard to see why Shadows wasn't a great commercial or critical success when it was released. In the year of Hitchcock's magnum opus Vertigo (which itself was a box office failure), the historical epic Ben-Hur (which won a record setting 11 Oscars), Some Like it Hot (perhaps the most subversive Hollywood picture of its time) amongst so many others, the likelihood of an upstart director's cheap shot-on-location film, which stars a troop of amateur actors largely playing themselves, getting noticed by a large audience was hardly plausible. Conversely, the idea that Shadows and John Cassavetes would become a considerable part of the catalyst for a new generation of noble and daring young filmmakers seems almost fundamental now. In his bold attempt to recondition audiences and reprocess reality into a coarser but more fulfilling substance, Cassavetes took a great risk. Lucky for us, it would turn out to be a risk that inspired generations of risk takers who, to this day, continue to define American independent cinema.

Sunset Boulevard

Dir. Billy Wilder
1950
n/a


Industry in America is unforgiving. Hollywood is no exception. Perhaps the most relevant observation about our capitalist (which has become something of a dirty word in the last half century) society is how progress is something of a double edged sword. On the one hand progress is necessary in order to compete in the world markets. On the other, progress that falls into the realm of radicalism tends to be quickly quashed. Take for instance Hollywood in the 1920s. Already, big business was becoming intrinsically intertwined with the movie making process and affecting output. Charlie Chaplin, the first seminal American comedy director, made films all throughout the 20s and into the 30s that waged strong criticisms against societal elites. Though he was critically acclaimed and hugely popular Chaplin was eventually ostracized and very nearly excommunicated by the U.S. Government in a coup to censor his strongly satiric voice. Buster Keaton suffered a similar fate, not at the hands of a culturally totalitarian government, but rather equally brutal Hollywood producers who forced him into artistic subordination when America's attention turned toward the new era of sound films. All this is to emphasize the heartless depravity of progress. There is one Hollywood picture that better illuminates the intolerable cruelty of the thin line of progress than any other. Billy Wilder's dramatic masterpiece Sunset Boulevard is the acme of self-reflexive cinema. Not just about Hollywood but about our culture as a whole, it reminds the viewer of the internal suffering of the stubborn and the anxiety of the hopeful. The film, like Wilder's whole career, is emblematic of just how difficult it can be to do “good work” when restricted by the confines of a loving but controlling body.

Joe Gillis (William Holden), the film's protagonist, is a smooth talking script writer down on his luck. He often speaks of the ambition all young people, actors and writers alike, arrive with in Hollywood, which in turn slowly dissolves into cynicism and hopelessness. Gillis is terribly observant, wry and confident even in the face of destitution. He and later-romantic interest Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olsen), an eager and earnest reader with grand aspirations, represent the film's modern half; the young Hollywood pioneers working to change the system from the inside out to suit their own needs. It is not until Gillis meets defunct silent film star Norma Desmond (played in a self-realized, semi-autobiographical style by Gloria Swanson) and her scrupulous butler/ex-husband/former director Max (played, again semi-autobiographically by tragic mastermind director Erich von Stoheim) that he begins to sense the danger in becoming to closely involved with Hollywood. Norma and Max represent the long forgotten age of silent film stars in the 20s; an age that passed, almost without notice, with the coming of sound in 1928. By the 30s these once great stars had been dismissed from the studios whose legacy had once relied upon their namesakes. Norma raves about the temporary era of sound that will, in her opinion, no doubt fall in on itself and out of the ashes silent pictures will enjoy their reincarnation. She offers Gillis a job editing her “masterpiece”, a narcissistic and indulgent historical epic which she demands be directed by Cecil B. DeMille and of course star her. From here a shocking and grotesque tale of fate and temptation unfolds, on the scale of true Greek tragedy. Norma's pathologies eventually drown any connection between her and the real world and Joe meets his own tragic, aqueous end.

Sunset Boulevard is littered with filmic references. With Erich von Stroheim as “the man you can't help but feel empathy toward”, and appearances by Cecil B. DeMille and Buster Keaton, among others, playing themselves, Wilder no doubt means to show his appreciation for the film's that defined early Hollywood. But this film is far more than a nod to the masters. It is itself a model of cinematic greatness. The film represents the meeting point and reconciliation between the now remote silent era and the blossoming sound era. By 1950 nearly the same amount of time (roughly 20 years) had passed since the inception of sound as had passed between Griffith's narrative expansion at the end of the century's first decade and the demise of silent films. One could even suggest that Wilder represents, especially at this point in his career the Charlie Chaplin of sound. Not so much because he was a great comedic director (although few films are funnier than Some Like It Hot), but because Wilder used subversive intelligence to manipulate the medium and speak his human message to millions.

If Norma Desmond represents the silent era's depressing self-importance, stuck in perpetual state of “sleep walking” having exited the dream of stardom, and Joe Gillis represents the self-aware but no less depressing reality of the modern sound film then one can only conclude that although both meant well they will never be able to coexist. This might seem obvious to those of who have grown up amongst not only sound but color and television and Blu-Ray etc. etc., but there was a time when it was believed by many of Hollywood's biggest production companies that there would be a market for sound and silent films. Few directors have paid their respects to those early pioneers more eloquently than Wilder did in Sunset Boulevard. On top of everything else, the entire film takes place within a highly taught and engaging narrative. It is gorgeous to observe with all those disenchanting but somehow still plenty glamorous behind-the-scenes shots of Hollywood back lots. However, Sunset Boulevard is not a happy film. It is a raw and powerful statement about the harsh and bland aspects of Hollywood. It shows the daily tribulation of just attempting to make a living. It demonstrates the anonymity that has only further increased as more and more talent streams to Hollywood each year in hope's of becoming the next Who Ever. It paints a picture of near universal melancholy and moral incertitude. Yet, somehow it always makes me want to pack my bags and head west...

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Dir. Stanley Kubrick
1964
n/a


Recently, I've seen this new Mercedes Benz commercial which advertises "top of the line" features to keep drivers safe. Such technologies include sensors to identify if a driver is losing focus and automated braking if obstructions occur. Mercedes makes it sound like a dream: a car with an insurance policy built right in. To those mindful of the technological shifts of the last decade it exemplifies the ongoing trend of willfully relinquishing personal control to automated technological processes. Take for example Microsoft's latest development: Bing.com, billed as the “first ever decision engine.” Like the iPod Shuffle before them, Bing.com, Mercedes Benz and a myriad of other developments have arisen that alleviate the burden of thoughtful cognition while simultaneously increasing the need for further production of supplemental equipment. In so many respects we, as an international community of industrialized (and furthermore, computerized) nations, are entering into a Digital Dark Age.

The Digital Dark Age is coming about as computer based technologies evolve at a faster and faster rate. We as a society experience a paradoxical helplessness because of this rapid growth. If we do not attempt to form a working knowledge of these technologies then we surrender, but if we attempt an understanding, it is likely that by the time we achieve it (if we achieve it) the technology has further evolved to another point of incomprehensibility. In Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick's seventh film and the first in a string of six formidable films whose legacy would earn Kubrick his reputation as one of the “most accomplished, innovative and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema,” this concept of absurd dependence on occult technologies is catapulted into the structure of political satire as Kubrick anticipates our now-reality and prophesies our self-destructive end.

Kubrick did all this within the cultural framework of the mid 1960s, during which time a paradigmatic shift in cinema's priorities were taking place. A new batch of young independent producers and film makers, who desired to work outside the confines of the current strict Hollywood system, were coming of age in America. The ensuing movement, known as American New Wave or New Hollywood, would be inaugurated with Bonnie and Clyde and span well into the 1980s. However, Dr. Strangelove foreshadowed many of the themes that would become prevalent during this and later film movements. His use of Vera Lynn's soothing “We'll Meet Again” juxtaposed with stock footage of atomic explosions foresaw David Lynch's own unnerving use of digetic and visual juxtaposition. His deceptively economic cinematics coupled with Hollywood's resources had a distinct influence on directors such as Peter Bogdanovich. Most importantly, like the German Expressionism of the 20s, Italian Neorealism of the 50s and the rising French New Wave, Kubrick placed an emphasis on authenticity. This new realism, which at times manifested itself very graphically (Bonnie and Clyde, Mean Streets, Kubrick's own A Clockwork Orange), would be the movements biggest focal point. Kubrick makes Strangelove almost dizzyingly realistic, overloading his audiences with a blur of military jargon and a mass of technological terms which are never aptly defined. This is Kubrick's intent: to show the impossible vastness of machine-based information. As if the technology itself wasn't complicated enough the bureaucratic lexicon of the film's purported U.S. government further complicates matters. This is demonstrated by General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) explanation of the inevitability of Plan F (a coordinated strike on all Russian military targets) to the President (Peter Sellers) who stares at him blankly, clearly not understanding the complexities of a bill he signed into law.

This is essentially Kubrick's post-modern “comedy of errors” and simultaneous rejection of classic Hollywood tropes. He largely abandons the novelty of a single hero, adopting instead something closer to Eisenstein's group protagonist, which in itself is pointedly contradicted by Peter Sellers' tri-role in the film. Protagonist in this sense is a moot point as the “antagonist” is General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) the delusional and paranoid hyper patriot who orders the assault on the USSR in order to protect our “precious bodily fluids.” Brilliantly, Kubrick mirrors this patriotic insanity in his War Room proceedings, the ravings of Turgidson and, of course, the pronunciations of former Nazi scientist: Dr. Strangelove. Dr. Strangelove is essentially a symbolic device used to wage a strong condemnation against the United States' own hypocrisy in treating the Soviets with the same indignity and fear as they did for the Germans during WWII, exemplifying an utter lack of moral retention. Cinematically the doctor endures as one of the great highlights of the film, in particular the sequence in which he explains an elaborate plan (which involves a 100 year subterranean existence) that is essentially Hitler's manic belief in a chosen race. White House chiefs of staff sit around mesmerized by his promise that they will be safe and encouraged to copulate. The film's final line is perhaps Kubrick's most memorable: “Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!”

It is important to remember that Dr. Strangelove is a black comedy. Unlike almost all of the films that followed it (with the exception of Full Metal Jacket) Strangelove is funny and deeply affecting. Kubrick's sense of dark humor and commitment to intense socio-political satire would only grow more intense and profound as he progressed as a director. Dr. Strangelove represents Kubrick's jumping off point and conversely illuminates, in retrospect of course, that by 1964 he had already reached an impressive point of cinematic sophistication, but that he also had so much farther to go. As film historians have said of Griffith pre-The Birth of a Nation, had Kubrick only gone as far as Dr. Strangelove he would have still been considered a noteworthy and highly fascinating director. Luckily, Dr. Strangelove was not the end of the world after all but rather the tone setting beginning of it.

Y Tu Mamá También

Dir. Alfonso Cuarón
2002
9.7

People tend to view their individual progressions through time geographically. Youth and adolescence is a slow climb toward a plateau which eventually becomes a slow or rapid descent into the valley that is our departure from the mortal world. I prefer to see life musically. The first two decades or so are a slow crescendo, a quick and lively section that ultimately reaches the point at which the music remains the same volume for a long period of time. Nevertheless, during this passage of uniform loudness there are plenty of unique moments that never fail to elicit some form of reaction. The phrases become more and more complex; there are key and tempo changes; notes are missed while others are just a few cents off. Sometimes there is the passion of vibrato and other times the staleness of pizzicato. And then, just like that, the music tapers off until the final, resounding chord is struck. It is this chord which ultimately defines the entire piece. If we choose to use this life as music metaphor than there are few contemporary pieces more violently dramatic and emotionally rich than Alfonso Cuarón's Y Tu Mamá También, an insurmountable work of genius film making that synthesizes the director's immediate sense of naturalism and his beyond-brilliant ability to capture symbolic details latent in everyday life.

The film's primary theory, the one that drives its inner and exterior conflict, is the notion that truth is partial. As primary characters, thoughtless teenagers and best friends, Julio (Gael García Bernal) and Tenoch (Diego Luna) explain to sexy, heartbroken Luisa (Maribel Verdú) that truth is cool but “unattainable.” The irony of course being that as 18 year olds living in Mexico City (set against the backdrop of the turn-of-the-century Mexican socio-political clash between the ruling bourgeois and mutinous proletariat) who spend most of their time partying and masturbating, Julio and Tenoch have a very limited concept of “the truth.” After meeting Luisa, the boys begin to plan a road trip that will result in the culmination of their desires: a satisfying (which to teenage boys is of course a very partial term) sexual experience with Luisa, which essentially represents their seamless transition into adulthood. What happens instead is the painful growth of their consciousness, their evacuation from their sheltered childhood, the ultimate demise of their friendship and their reaching the point at which the music of their respective lives will remain at the same volume. In other words: their true transition into adulthood.

This is the bare story. So much happens that it is difficult to contextualize the abundance of details that enrich the narrative, never mind analyze the film's sublime subtext of shrinking and burgeoning life experiences. The style of the film alone is a pamphlet on Expressionist modes of communicating in cinema. Emmanuel Lubezki, one of my favorite contemporary cinematographers, utilizes a spiritual, subjective third person view point. Spiritual, in the sense that the camera is not omnipresent but rather is subject to the limitations of our temporal universe. His camera wanders throughout the homes of Julio, Tenoch and Luisa, positions itself in the remaining passenger seat in Julio's car, and is limited by the physical restrictions of a regular person. This constraint actually becomes a means to an end. Lubezki uses it to produce creative, awe-inspiring and fluid shots, working the camera in harmony with his surroundings rather than forcing the opposite. Lubezki's cinematography exemplifies a whole new level of voyeurism that is emotionally subjective, allowing the viewer to be interpolated into the visceral experience of the film.

And still the film barrels on toward its psychological train wreck of a climax. While on the road Luisa seduces Tenoch which inflicts a bitter, Shakespearean angst in Julio who seeks to punish Tenoch by telling him he slept with his girlfriend. Thus begins a long and painful disintegration of their bond, which proves to be the uncomfortably confidential and subconscious bond of adolescence. Luisa attempts to rectify this situation by having sex with Julio but instead causes the violence to escalate. If we see Julio and Tenoch as the essentially innocent, customarily arrogant, premature protagonists that they are then it is Luisa who is both victim and antagonist as result of her sexual philanthropy. Tenoch and Julio experience an Oedipal desire for Luisa who is in fact almost 10 years older than they are, and the result is a near complete dependence on her. As it is, Luisa has had dependents her whole life. It is only at the point when she meets the two boys that she seeks to become a “fully realized women,” by shrinking her plane of existence to the point at which she can control every aspect of her life; shirking the responsibility she has felt toward others and freeing herself from the confines of her maternal instinct. However, there is one aspect, revealed in the final minutes of the film, that she cannot control and it is the one that fuels her progression, allowing her to move beyond the trivial ennui of modern life.

There is a scene near the end of Y Tu Mamá También where Luisa, Tenoch and Julio are sitting around a table talking, joking and drinking. They talk mostly of sex, the sex that makes this film both intimate and controversial. Luisa imparts on the boys a very simple, adult and self-less piece of advice: the greatest pleasure is giving pleasure. Balanced and fully realized lives are contained not within the self but outside it: experiencing and exploring the canals, tunnels, and caverns of other people's lives. Y Tu Mamá También is a coming-of-age tale as well as a departure from life anecdote. It is a double helix of a film in so many respects. Its interwoven narrative of explosive expansion and subtle contraction of vision is paralleled by the rise of Julio and Tenoch's consciousness and the fall of Luisa's desire to live amongst falsity and betrayal. The film represents the ubiquitous but not generic universality of life's music and is, in and of itself, not so much perfect as it is truly real.

There Will Be Blood

Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
2007
10.0

In 1941 the wife of Soviet author Mikhail Bulgakov finished what would become his lasting triumph: “The Master and Margarita.” In contemporary literary circles it is hailed as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. Sixty-five years later a young director began working on a film whose eloquence and power would find significant parallel in Bulgakov's masterpiece. Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is often described as an “American epic.” However, it is far more than that. Its implications and inspirations are intensely universal. Like Bulgakov's late epic, There Will Be Blood is Biblical in scope and content. Its themes are morality, evil usurping good, and the weakness and corruptibility of the human spirit. Its implications are soul crushing. Its ambitions are enlightening. There Will Be Blood represents the point at which a film becomes a world and that world becomes a reflection of hellish truth seething a hair's breath beneath the surface of our own derelict existence.

There are two other pieces of artistic brilliance from the last century that come to mind when thinking about There Will Be Blood. The first is Orson Welles' legendary Citizen Kane and the second is Stanley Kubrick's equally immortal 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick's late 60s space age film might not immediately make the same connections as Citizen Kane but the associations are there, subtly. Firstly, there is Jonny Greenwood's classically driven score of unnerving microtonal and monumentally symphonic music. More importantly,  are the themes of moral philosophy and mankind's ethical lineage. Kubrick hypothesized that man was born not out of goodness but out of malice, murder and desire and that these tendencies have increased exponentially throughout our evolution. Citizen Kane shows a man whose inexorable egomania forces him into going against his conscience for the sake of appearances. It shows the madness latent in arrogance and affluence, and how the two are interrelated. Both films purport the disturbing notion that it takes less to be evil than to be good, and thus is a certain degree easier. There Will Be Blood takes this idea a step further, introducing the susceptibility of potential goodness to the gravity of sinister yet lucrative temptation. It suggests a certain powerlessness in the face of easy capital, be it physical (as in the case of Daniel Plainview) or existential (the case of Eli Sunday).

If one considers There Will Be Blood as at least a partial re-narrating of the story of Eden, where Little Boston is paradise, then Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is most certainly the devil. However, the film is not a simple reapplication of the timeless metaphor of creation and invention of consciousness. In fact, Little Boston has all the undertones of a town unsure of its own motivations. Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) is at first glance a hero in the vein of Elijah. He is the preacher at the local Church of the Third Revelation, a branch of Christianity which believes that God will reveal himself to his believers through a number of “spirits”. Though it may sound like madness one must consider the solidarity of the town's people's lives and the ease at which rhetoric can be become doctrine without any points of reference. Along comes Daniel who instinctively takes advantage of the town's naivete. With the exception of Eli, the town hands over not only its land buts its principles as well. In the fierce emotional and geographical desert there is little resistance to improved living conditions regardless of what form they take. In this case the form is inky blackness of oil.

There is also a theme of de-evolution in There Will Be Blood; of falling into madness. Daniel begins as a cunning, ambitious business man. He is a self proclaimed “oil man,” and the money that can be made from oil always comes first for him. Daniel's vocation leads him down darker paths of solipsism and greed with only fleeting moments of self-realization and regret, the most powerful manifestation of course being his baptism in the church during which he is made to surrender his agony over having sent his young son (who proves, in the end, not to be his son at all, adding to the complex subtext of relationships and family in the narrative) off to private school after an accident leaves him deaf. Daniel, like so many great men before and after him, believe that if he can only achieve peace, stability and wealth that he will reclaim his transient humanity. This is not the case and never is. Daniel's dealings transform him into a raving, drunken monster. Daniel's corrupted capitalist mindset totally overcomes his sense of morality. He viciously beats the "false prophet" Eli who comes to him begging. Eli has lost himself in the ramifications and moral ambiguity of the business world and has landed himself in monstrous debt, which he blames not on himself but on the Lord. His faith in purity has been broken and the two men both wallow in the shadows of graveness and sin. They have both lost their spirit. Where Daniel has given his away in exchange for riches, like Faust before him, Eli has had his ripped away leaving him a vacant shell of a human being filled up instead by loneliness and loathing.

The long and terrible arc that brings these two characters to their respective points at the film's finale is, at every single moment, perfect. For such a young director, Paul Thomas Anderson shows a simply immaculate sense of timing and pacing. He refuses to rush moments. Rather, he lets them breathe organically, allowing his characters to come to life and inhabit a sphere of simulacrum reserved only for the most taught and stunning portraits of reality. There Will Be Blood is as dark as realist cinema gets. The core of the film pulsates with tireless insistence that never becomes overwrought but rather gains momentum, clarity and terrifying power with each successive viewing. There Will Be Blood is without a doubt the new American classic, an epic on par with Casablanca and in league with the films that have defined the greatest aspects of cinema for the past 100 years.