Ratatouille

Dir. Brad Bird
2007
9.5


In their October, 2008 edition Sight & Sound magazine published a series of essays at the heart of which was the question “Who Needs Critics?” In editor Nick James' article he argues for an increase in honest criticism noting “we live in a culture that is either afraid or disdainful of unvarnished truth and of skeptical analysis.” True, this sound like an indictment of the populous rather than the preacher but James makes it clear that film critics are as much responsible for their own decline as are their readers (or lack thereof) and the industry they make their living off of. Fast forward to February, 2010. In that issue the magazine published a review of the most recent Twilight film, New Moon, which concludes by defeatedly asking “why do we bother?” As New Moon, Avatar and a slew of others proved this year, the 'critic-proof' blockbuster is going to be watched despite any amount of serious critical abuse. So why commit to writing about them? Though far from its central theme, the notion of critics' responsibility to their audiences is explored poignantly in Ratatouille, one of the few critically lauded and commercially successful films of the decade.

Though his role in Ratatouille is understated and representative of Pixar's classic “mirror antagonist,” simultaneously representing the internal struggle of the protagonists while allowing for a conventional tension-release narrative structure, food critic and vampirical (note: thanks for the word choice Alanna) antagonist Anton Ego proved an unexpected contrast to Pixar's history of inflated villains and a telling insight into the world of criticism. Ego represents the finest in cultivated taste and the contradiction that taste often neglects new experience. Though certainly a throwback to a time when the printed word held greater meaning, Ego's epiphany at the hand's of Ratatouille's central protagonist, Remy the rat, is no less important. In a moving flashback to his childhood we see Ego in a rural French cottage on the edge of impoverished tears. His mother places before him a bowl of the titular peasant dish. We watch as solace emerges from behind his weary face. The moment reconciles the fundamental contradiction latent in providing objective critique of a fanatically adored art. The predominant complaint against critics, especially those at Sight & Sound, has always been that they are emotionally and socially detached from those who would be reading their reviews. In pursuing their medium so devoutly they have alienated themselves against those who watch films for the sheer pleasure of the moving image. The critic is too often looked on as one who has lost the ability to enjoy the simple pleasures of their passion.

So, is a review of New Moon superfluous in the same way that a gastronomical review of Olive Garden is? Yes and no. Pleasure comes in many forms in both food and film. The tastes of both are certainly lowest common denominator at best. However, it is Ego himself who admits that bad reviews are fun to read and write. Certainly a professional film critic may have a harder time candidly pointing out how truly awful the Twilight films are due to the advertising interests of certain third parties, but this circumstance can permit or perhaps even encourage a twisted re-reading of the narrative. Same with Olive Garden. Instead of asking “who could possibly enjoy this?” perhaps ask “why is this particular cuisine so popular?” What does it say about our culture? Though certainly anyone who is truly interested in anything, be it food, film or otherwise will not wish to spend much of their time toiling in the endless banalities of the low, they must not, under any circumstances, dismiss the possibility of pleasure and surprise at any juncture.

Which leads directly into what Ratatouille is actually about. Epitomized by Chef Gusteau's mantra “Anyone can cook,” the film suggests that, try as we might, we cannot always predict from which corner of any occupational universe the “next great thing” will come from. Admittedly, the film is Pixar's most fantastic to date, calling for a suspension of disbelief so great that were the film not so rigorously sequenced it could have quite easily fallen into the realm of hopeless cinematic kitsch. Despite its premise (a rat wishing to become a cook and the human marionette who aids him), at its heart the film is quite pragmatic and almost painfully honest. Diagramming the xenophobia still prevalent in modern France (see: Jacques Audiard's A Prophet), Ratatouille's acute sense of melancholy stems directly from a prevalent social issue aggressively addressed through cinema. Though occasionally expository, the film unfolds beautifully. Pixar's animation team captures all the delights of the City of Light, allowing even the sewers of the famed Parisian rats to appear vaguely impressionistic. The film draws it's influence from the country's rich history of films that fall between the art house and the cineplex, utilizing an irregular structure but appropriating certain criterion from popular genre films (see: the film's ingenious chase sequence and the numerous illusions to Rififi and the caper films of the 1950s). Containing perhaps the least over simplified conclusion in Pixar's history, Ratatouille is a film dedicated to its social conflict and driven to deliver an answer rather than a not-quite-comforting-enough pat on the back.

So what does all this mean in terms of the film critic? With the film's central themes of identity and place within a cultural system, the bottom line is that we must expect great things but not to expect them to come from certain preordained regions. The film purports that by choosing a career (chef/critic) or an identity distinct and different from those we live with (human/rats) that we are instinctively closing ourselves off to a portion of humanity that may truly surprise us. Sadly, the film brings to light that this sort of behavior in society is not only accepted but encouraged. The ultimate difference between a critic like Nick James and a film like Ratatouille is the difference of intent. James wishes to wrestle back some of the prior importance of the professional critic in order to raise international cinematic standards in audiences. Ratatouille gently suggests that a professional critic is just a person with a passion that all too often gets the better of them; that their social position and projected self-importance can easily overshadow the subject they profess to loving. In other word the critic can become more important than the food/film/et al. As to which position I commit my loyalties, I will submit myself willingly to this closing ambiguity: I'm just a man with a movie blog.

The Assassination of Jesses James by the Coward Robert Ford

Dir. Andrew Dominik
2007
9.8


2007 was a hell of a year for film. Were it not for P.T. Anderson's magnum opus, the Coen's darkest (and possibly best) venture, the Palm D'or winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, David Fincher's glorious Zodiac, the impeccable I'm Not There as well as several other outstanding films from directors new and old, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford may have had a chance of establishing its own mythic stature. This isn't meant to downplay the critical and commercial reception of the film nor to eschew its quality. Just the opposite: it is an attempt to suggest that through its incredible psychological depth mirrored in its breathtaking pictorial quality and ability to co-opt American myth to comment back on American myth making, The Assassination of Jesse James was then and continues to be, like James himself, ahead of its time.

In age inundated with films of all types and quality, from the hysterical spectacle of the Hollywood blockbuster to the outsider installation-ready art film, suggesting a film is “ahead of its time” may be kind of a moot point. Which films recognize and represent our cinematic time? In 1942 when Orson Welles released Citizen Kane, a film that utilized a myriad of unseen techniques to a sophisticated and highly effective end, it was not so obvious that the film was “ahead of its time”. In fact, like so many masterpieces before and after it, it was a critical and commercial failure; rejected by its viewership like one fickly rejects an unappealing flavor in a dish. Almost 70 years later it is unanimously praised as the most important film of all time. Upon my first viewing of The Assassination of Jesse James I rejected the film on the grounds that it was blaise mythologizing, tedious and banal, creating an artificial gravity around a subject that could not hold its own weight. In retrospect I can say that I was not paying enough attention. Closer examination revealed a world of psychological intimidation and obsession. Themes of distortion, of vision through the smearing of camera lenses and blurry windows of the picture perfect colonial houses and of time through the panoramic vistas with clouds rushing by above them, etched an aching metaphor of Robert Ford's painful detachment from reality and Jesse Jame's descent into madness. The quantity of characters and their offscreen movement, before seemingly untraceable, shaped itself into a dramatic symphony of elements; a exquisite counterpoint of desire and duty. Most importantly, the severe but never overt emotional undertones of the film came through, as a crescendo, building to a soaring catharsis of a climax reaching its hand out of the screen and tugging the viewer by the collar into the depraved and alienating world of myth.

The myth that the film relies so heavily upon is actually based, as much as possible, on fact. The central story, that of Jesse James “befriending” Robert Ford (the true central character of the film) and his eventual, intentional death/suicide at his hands, is true. The myth, that is not so much cruelly debunked as it is gently, if painfully, revealed, is the one in Robert Ford's mind. That myth, of Jesse James as a God, is further encouraged by the film's voice over narration which unveils details of Jesse's inner life that create a rich subtext of his sometimes inexplicable actions and abilities. The film is less about an accurate portrayal of the past as it about personal, subjective history. It not about knowing the textbook facts but memorizing the penny arcade story, which is of course more interesting and much more revealing. The film's core story sometimes feels like the stuff of myth, although it is firmly grounded in historical realism. The myth exists in between the words and the actions, in the breathing room that Dominik expertly allows for. It is during these moments, when we are asked to study the nervous twitch of Ford's face or the omnipotent reflection in Jame's eye, that the infinite myth of the film reveals itself.

Dominik takes both a minimalist and maximalist approach to his film. The aforementioned emphasis on spaciousness in the dialog and the supreme concentration on his actors (still not enough has been said about Casey Afleck and Brad Pitt who offer career expanding and career topping performances, respectfully) is uniquely balanced by his rigorous attention to period detail and a noteworthy ability to subtly illuminate and apprehend the viewer, both of which greatly deepen the film's astounding ethos. The film also represents a perfect conjunction of minds. Dominik, working with veteran actor Brad Pitt alongside no-longer up-and-coming Casey Affleck, utilizes the multiform talents of director of photography Roger Deakins (who impressively also filmed No Country for Old Men that same year), procures Nick Cave and Warren Ellis who create a score wonderfully harmonic with the meloncholy tone of the film, and snatches Spielberg's editor. Spare no expense, indeed! And the result is a masterpiece of modern cinema.

Though it may be cinematic blasphemy to continue the line of reasoning that compares The Assassination of Jesse James to Citizen Kane but nevertheless the parallels linking the two are evident. Thematically and cinematically the two are cut from the same cloth. Whether James proves to be as important as Kane is for history, and the omnipotent power of myth, to decide.

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. 

I'm Not There

Dir. Todd Haynes
2007
9.7

The crime of the century was committed last year at the Academy Awards when Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton beat out Cate Blanchett for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. That year Blanchett portrayed one of the many faces of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, a fictional biopic based on the singer's fragmented life. Blanchett stars as Jude Quinn or middle 60s era Dylan, full of vicious snarkiness and contempt for humanity. Along side her are various other incarnations of Dylan including a young black boy who's named himself after his hero, folk icon Woody Guthrie, a vain Hollywood actor who falls in love with a beautiful but notoriously unselfish French painter, and a young folk songwriter turned bible thumper, among others. While Blanchett's role is the most obvious and literal recreation of Dylan, the trickle down effect finds the viewer searching, sometimes desperately, for pieces of Dylan they recognize in the ensemble players. For those of us, such as myself, who know little about Dylan, the film in a way constructs a very true image: chaos. With so many different images, ideas, and emotions passing by at a lightning pace we are forced to conclude that all of the film, every tiny piece of it, makes up some integral part of the universal understanding of Bob Dylan. Which, in a far more daunting way, points to how we understand each other and ourselves. Every piece of contradictory evidence, every remote possibility, every muttered phrase are all cogs that grind towards the bigger picture. The truth.

While Jude Quinn was my favorite character in the film, or I should favorite version of one character in the film, s/he was also the most difficult to grasp. Along with Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Wishaw), who's scenes were more like philosophized interpretations of previously witnessed events with other characters, a sort of oblique narrative, Quinn seems almost inhuman at times. There is something so exquisitely pleasurable about self destruction and Quinn rolls in the thick mud of decay, delighting in its filth. Haynes' screenplay, which he wrote with Oren Moverman, is simply brilliant. It captures a callous youth, an arrogant aging, and graceful decline, each represented with equal care and thought throughout the film's effortless 135 minutes. There's a hugeness to I'm Not There, one that actively refuses to be understood. Its not in the obviousness of the film's refracted narrative, or the intentional slurring of reality and fiction, but rather in the way it painfully reflects how little we know each other. We hardly know ourselves and as Robbie (Heath Leger), the Hollywood actor, tells his soon to be girlfriend and wife Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) we are at the center of our own world. So intrinsically focused on ourselves that we forget that it is cultural appropriation, more often than not, or manners that cause us to give the facade of being interested about other people. Ideas are one thing, when they're divorced from the people who create them, but people come with so much baggage. This caring is translated into never being entirely honest, thinking that we're doing some kind of good because we aren't telling people how we really feel. Quinn tears down the idol (or idle) giant, and suffers for it. He almost seems to want to cause as much pain to others as he has caused himself. It was one of the more detailed and gross portrayals of the breaking of a man's spirit that's been captured on film. Quinn is Haynes' archetype, the truest of the Dylan's on screen, which is, of course, ironic since there is little truth to Quinn. Like a man dressed all in mirrors, you only see what you want to in Quinn.

I'm Not There is not an easy film. It's narrative is told in piecemeal, making digetic and visual leaps from one decade to another. It runs the gauntlet of complex emotions and occasionally dips into surrealism. But as one of the pioneering directors of the 21st century, Haynes is not satisfied by simply telling a story. If I'm Not There fully represents anything it's how stories can be entirely misleading, and that the story beneath the story (which some might call truth, or a purer form of it at least) is far more interesting. Haynes gets at the guts of what it means to be alive; to be growing and evolving and changing your mind, changing it back and insulting your friends and taking too many drugs, and loving, and fighting, and fucking, and, at the end of it all, accepting it for what it was. Life is not crystalline. It's not a diamond. There is really no guarantee that you're ever going to get it; that you're going to understand a thing. You can read all the books you want. What I'm Not There theorizes is that knowing would take all the fun out of living, and all the hardship. It begs you to keep in mind that there is nothing more vivacious then dropping everything and starting all over again, while you still have time.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Dir. Cristian Mungiu
2007
9.1

As I was watching Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days I had a strange thought. I say strange because while the film's central premise is illegal abortion the thought that came to me was about modernity. Modernity is the great rupture of beauty. It is the corrosion of the natural in favor of the grotesque. Where the Romans and Greeks ecstatically sought the perfection of aesthetics, we can only feel stifled by it. Something truly miraculous happened well before the 20th century and although no one has ever seemed to completely define what it was, we are hard pressed to outlive it. If I had to guess as to why this thought came in connection with watching 4 Months, it's probably because abortion and all the degradation, politics and catharsis that comes with it feels like a pinnacle of modernity: the destruction of life. It is the utterly devastating realization that there are far too many reasons not to bring a life into the world, both private and public. Unlike the slew of birth comedies that have come out in the past few years (Knocked Up, Juno, etc.) which utilized bias and irrationality (“It has finger nails”) to justify the trauma of giving birth under less than ideal, or simply unthinkable circumstances, 4 Months takes a provocative and deeply controversial issue, puts into a foreign but even more upsetting environment (1980s Romania) and comes out refreshing and brilliant. If one fails to see the film as a tribute to the aching pains of modern life, the effect of the film would seem paradoxical. However, in opposing conventions and making a film that is stirring and aggressively human, Mungiu manages to make a film that is not about abortion at all but rather about life.

Abortion is such a heated issue that I always figured that a film about it would be a totally transparent political film with super-imposed morality. 4 Months begins in the most auspicious and promiscuous of institutions: college. We are introduced to our principle characters who come to represent a sort of cerebral dichotomy. Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) is a gruffly independent country girl who becomes an obscure mother figure to Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) after Gabita becomes pregnant and decides she wants to get an abortion which is illegal in their home country of Romania. Otilia is well versed in bribery, bartering and lying. However, for her, it must be premeditated. She has to know what she is getting herself into. Gabita lies out of an instinctual and naïve desire to protect and shelter herself and others, but ends up failing because of her inability to tolerate the contradiction inherent in lying (going against morality) to save (going with morality). The two eventually meet an illegal surgeon who, after giving them a hard time about money and breaking his rigid guidelines, performs the operation. It is here that the film tenses up, as if all its muscles contracted. There is a touching fragility between Gabita and Otilia, the kind that only comes from a relationship where one person is in a state of total helplessness and the other a position to criticize and condescend. The film's completely digetic soundtrack adds a painful clarity to the strained relationship between the two girls. Documentary style long takes, reminiscent of Alfonso Cuaron's Y Tu Mama Tambien and Children of Men capture the intimacy of disdain and repentance. The moments in which nothing is said are some of the hardest to bear, especially a long sequence directly after Mr. Bebe, the surgeon, has implanted the abortive probe and left. Gabita lays barely covered on the bed, with a deeply distressed yet almost slightly relieved look on her face. After several moments of silence she whispers “Thanks” to Otilia. It is truly one of the most obliterating moments in the entire film. Sadness is rarely so eloquent as this.

The rest of the film is mostly nomadic, with a literal take on the twists and turns of the mind as it decides what to do in the wake of an event that is nearly impossible to grasp in its entirety. It's perhaps more nerve racking and less contemplative than it should have been, but chalk that up to the assumption that the audience probably needed a breather after a brutally long take of the unborn fetus lying on the bathroom floor of a cheap hotel. Nothing about the film's vision of humanity is glorious or inspiring. The girls are deeply affected but the end of the film finds them agreeing to never talk about what happened. The focus in 4 Months is on the great burden of life not only in places like Romania but here at home as well. Not to suggest that life was any easier centuries or millenia ago, but since having lost a fair amount of necessity and gained a heaping portion of luxury and distraction, humanity has also been charged with justifying itself. It is not a responsibility we take to happily. To truly understand humanity one must not be afraid of even the most deplorable acts, and must be ready to have any and all convictions torn down and replaced by insecurity and contempt. We cannot find who we are simply by looking on the bright, satisfying side of things. Truer still, we will not discover anything by probing the depths of despair either. Modernity is the accepting of the horrible and ugly as relatives to the beautiful and the perfect. It is the realization that death can bring a truly greater understanding of and appreciate for life. 4 Months succeeds exactly where it should: in de-politicizing and thus de-dichotomizing the heated and relentless issue of living.

Zodiac

Dir. David Fincher
2007
9.0

Films based on true stories are built on unstable ground and they have a nasty habit of being sensationalist pieces of star-studded non-fiction. While David Fincher's Zodiac fits this general description it can be ruled out of the stereotyped canon of murder mystery/crime dramas based on real events. Fincher's films tend to be highly stylized and blatantly metaphorical. Fight Club, Se7en and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button are films that look amazing but lack the substance to make them much more than entertaining. In Zodiac Fincher removes a lot of the flash-bang cinematography for which he has become famous and inserts copious amounts of suspense and drama. With Zodiac Fincher has finally covered territory that is both thrilling and believable; intense and subtle. His characters aren't symbols (not literally, although the killer does call himself the Zodiac) and in detailing the process of a murder investigation that occurs over over 20 years, Fincher shows their degradation and fallibility. The frustration and bureaucracy that accompanies all police work, is sketched magnificently lending Zodiac an air of realism that makes the fact that it was based on a true story almost obsolete.

The genre of non-fiction in cinema often comes with the pretext of being authentic. It would seem the common opinion is “But its based on real life”. Unfortunately, in many cases, this becomes a justification for Hollywood to weave a more elaborate and less believable film than the historical scenario may actually have allowed (see: Saving Private Ryan, Valkyrie, Che, Into the Wild, etc. etc.). It is rarely a point of honesty, rather it is a device used to attract viewers. Films based on true stories are no more or less incredible because of the fact and sometimes suffer under the burden of the amount of information required to properly contextualize the film, including the classic post-narrative detailing how the story concludes. Zodiac doesn't entirely avoid this. At times the amount of detail is overbearing and the plot gets buried under scores of police chiefs, detectives, newspaper reporters and various other characters who add substance but also muddy the clarity of the film's intent. Then again, if Zodiac's goal was to mystify (the ending, after all, is inconclusive) then these moments, perhaps unintentionally, help assist that. Despite being distracting at times this obsession with detail is one of the film's only hindrances and is really a two way street as the details make each successive watching more captivating than the one before it.

The detail orientated nature of the script does not overpower the performances given by the actors in the film. Jake Gyllenhaal's good looks and even better character acting is employed for the part of Robert Graysmith, the San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist who wrote the book that the film is based on, and who, in lieu of conclusive evidence on the part of the police, becomes the main protagonist in the murder mystery. He plays alongside Robert Downey Jr. as drunken, solipsist writer Paul Avery at the same newspaper. Throw in Mark Ruffalo as detective Dave Toschi and you've already got most of what it takes to make an ego-driven Hollywood detective story. Only it isn't. It isn't because these three actors, and all the rest of the actors in the film know how to interact with each other and appear dutifully committed to the accurate portrayal of their characters. Herein lies the notable advantage to doing a non-fiction film: actors have fodder for their performances in physical and written form. They have the option of playing detective themselves and really digging into the history of the story. The cast manage the complicated scenario with admirable earnestness and ease. These said performances in conjunction with a thrilling and maze-like story is truly the full realization of the murder mystery sub genre of the larger non-fiction based crime drama. So many like-films have attempted to create a rich and compelling story but fail because of their devotion to spectacle over substance.

With Zodiac David Fincher has made a crime drama of the caliber of Silence of the Lambs. It is an eerie, disturbing who-done-it with a simple concept that is pushed to a remarkable extreme without ever becoming extravagant. In short, it is Fincher's most controlled and focused picture yet. While his upcoming projects, including two films based on graphic novels and a biopic about Eliot Ness, have all the earmarks of being in league with Fincher's more salient pictures, he has showed great potential as a well balanced film maker. Time will tell whether or not he will choose the path of lesser resistance. Commercial appeal and coolness are certainly enticing, but after proving his capacity as a director who can skew the obvious mechanisms of a dated genre and make it exciting and provocative, one can only hope that he will prove to be up to the challenge of making a film as good, or better, than Zodiac.

Eastern Promises

Dir. David Cronenberg
2007
8.7

A friend of mine recently returned from several months in Russia. He explained it as one of the most harrowing and grossly depressing experiences of his life (my words here paraphrase his more articulate sentiments). It seems contemporary Russian culture is divided very strongly between the new and the aged, the young and the old, the progressive and the historical. He told me McDonald's is one of the most popular restaurants in St. Petersburg, with lines often stretching out the door. He also told me about the memorials to Stalin and Lenin and how the two respective leaders are still worshiped there. Russia is a strongly patriarchal country, and Lenin and Stalin were father figures in the league of gods. This past summer the Russian economy tanked, with the RTS index losing 80 percent of it's value in six months. My friend told me he saw 13 year old kids passed out on tables next to bottles of vodka, while their friends begged cigarettes from strangers. The desire to escape poverty will cause people to do many, sometimes seemingly unforgivable, things. David Cronenberg's most recent film Eastern Promises is about the ever shifting lines of morality in eastern, and more specifically Russian, culture. It is a film that doesn't seek to dissociate between right and wrong, but rather attempt to understand the basis for the dichotomy and what allows people to commit acts that others deem unthinkable.

In the film Russian culture is displaced from it's homeland and unearthed in London; a prosperous and diverse part of the world. The film stars Anna (Naomi Watts) as a midwife at a local hospital who, after delivering a baby for a teenage Russian immigrant who dies in childbirth, discovers a diary the leads her into a shadowy world of appearances and loyalties; crime and murder. She meets Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), a Russian Secret Service member working in conjunction with Scotland Yard to infiltrate the Russian organized crime syndicate in London. He is posing as the driver of a young Russian pseudo-aristocrat whose father is head of the family that Nikolai seeks to disarm. The film gives an indepth and disturbing view into the mob psyche: the extent and limitations of it's cruelty and the hierarchal system of loyalty and leadership. The film has been praised by critics for being an authentic picture of the Russian criminal underworld, so I am told. This post-script is the unfortunate punchline to the truth about so many films, especially crime films. I, like most of the assumed audience of Cronenberg's film, know nothing about the Russian crime world and anything I know about the mafia in general comes from fictionalized depictions in film and television (The Sopranos, The Godfather, etc.). The fact is that, in trusting Cronenberg's reputation as an often uncomfortably accurate director, I am taking him at his word. The theory known as “suspension of disbelief” often used in conjunction with war films or films in which non-American characters speak perfect, fluent English (I'm looking at you Slumdog Millionaire) would be a bit harsh in this situation. It is not so much that, as a viewer, I simply choose to believe what is placed in front of me but that I simply believe it. Therein lies the dangerously two-sided nature of authenticity in film: that, as a director or writer, your audience believes you. The Russian crime world could not possibly be presented in a 100 minute drama without some simplification, or the narrowing of scope. In Eastern Promises Cronenberg gives enough detail to convince even the most scrutinous of casual film goers of his clear understanding of the Russian criminal world and frame of mind. At no point does the film get caught in it's own web, but instead weaves an elaborate tale of morality with excellent cinematography, precise choreography of scenes and actions, and powerful acting, avoiding the “Yeah, but wait...” moments by simply distracting the viewer away from the notion that all they are seeing is a simulated portrayal of a very real and terrifying world.

Cronenberg is not alone in this approach. In fact most films that take place in an environment foreign to the viewer utilize the same idea. A film that is too crowded with explanation or detail is a film that bores and stifles it's intended audience. Still, Eastern Promises at times presents almost too many foreign objects for the audience to cope with. Compared to his previous effort, A History of Violence, which was brutally succinct and focused, Eastern Promises occasionally seems unsure of which point it is trying to highlight: That good and evil are subjective to the person in question (killing babies is wrong, but murdering a man who insinuates another's homosexuality is not)? The cultural divide between East and West (Naomi Watts is portrayed as having pure intentions, while Mortensen's are less clear)? I'm not suggesting that you become a forensic scientist so that you can tell how bullshit CSI is (or isn't...), or that film makers should stick to making pictures that are painfully tangible and logical. I am, however, saying that appealing to an audience is a delicate balance between the foreign and the familiar, which everyone, film makers and film goers alike, should keep in mind.

Flight of the Red Balloon

Dir. Hou Hsiao-Hsien
2007
9.3

There's a scene in Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where Kate Winslet's character, Clementine, is crying and saying how “people don't realize how lonely it is to a kid”. Adults have the unfortunate ability to dramatize their childhoods and this tends to lead in one of two polar directions: the highly simplified notion that childhood is blissed-out ignorance, or conversely, that it is a wash of pain that has done little to prepare a person for the heavier burden of adult life. The truth is that childhood is a combination of the two. It is both sad and happy. Children notice things (like large red balloons) that adults do not. They don't have the pretension to take themselves too seriously. For children, puppet shows are fun. For selected adults they are an art form. Children are upset by the shouts of their parents, not by what their parents are shouting about. As we get older we insinuate complication into our lives in the form of responsibility, paranoia, fear and doubt, among many others. Despite it being somewhat backwards-thinking, we do this in order to safe guard ourselves against the idea that we don't matter, or that we're going to die someday: ideas that do not exist in children. Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon is a remarkable pseudo-documentary on the discrepancies and similarities between adults and children. It illustrates very poignantly how the more accustomed we become to aspects of our lives (people, places, foods, etc.) the more we forget the simple things that used to give us pleasure.

Flight of the Red Balloon centers around three characters. Simon (Simon Iteanu) is a shy elementary school boy who lives with his divorced mother, Suzanne (Juliette Binoche). Suzanne has recently taken on a young Chinese film student, Song (Fang Song), to look after Simon while Suzanne is away working as a voice actor for a professional puppet theater. Suzanne is a high strung but vibrant woman who has a habit of having near-nervous breakdowns in front of Simon and Song. The film is slow and steady, a combination of Hsiao-Hsien's temperance behind the camera and the haunting performances given by his actors. The film will occasionally break into a flurry of action, in an almost apologetic way, in order to make up for time spent staring out the windows of trains at the French countryside, or admiring the bustling street corners of Paris. What makes the film so unexpected is the way Hsiao-Hsien captures details. His filming is detached from his scenarios and by doing so we are able to enter into another world as an independent and invisible observer. He spends most of the movie filming mundane moments that would make up any average day in the life of a city boy and his nanny. However, there is a dedication here to the sublime. While he captures the smallest moments of the trio's lives, in the moments where Simon casts a sidelong glance at his mother; Song unwraps 'un gateau' for Simon; Suzanne exhales deeply while rubbing her forehead after a long, tiresome talk with her friend Philip about her downstairs lodger Marc who hasn't been paying his rent, that the film comes to life. You become so detached from the concept of watching a film that you begin to read characters not by what they say, but by what they do. Just like a child. There is a deep subconscious understanding of each moment of the film, which evades standard dramatic structure. You can't judge this film on the merits of it's sweep or grandeur, but rather on its uncanny ability to say a lot without saying anything at all. In the end there is no great conflict and thus no kind of a resolution. The film finishes with a faraway shot of a red balloon hovering above a dusty blue Parisian sky in the late afternoon. It makes you feel vaguely lonely, but curious at the same time. Where is the wind going to take that balloon next? What other little children will be entranced by its simplicity? What will become of it?

There is a remarkably child-like and almost magical quality about Flight of the Red Balloon. Throughout the film it seems to be floating just out of sight, hovering, not as a distraction but as a subtle addition to what would otherwise be a rather plain, formless family drama. Its tough to put into words because the film never puts it into words either. Perhaps its the feeling of comfort in the resilience of a child or the selflessness of a young college students trying to capture the magic of childhood on a portable camera. Perhaps its how the film seems to suggest how everyone gets lonely but no one has to be alone. Whatever it is Hsiao-Hsien captures it like a lightning bug in a jar and holds it up for everyone to see.