8 1/2

Dir. Federico Fellini
1963
n/a


Every so often a piece of art comes along that unveils a secret or sacred part of our essence. Through trial and error, persistence or sheer will power, this work crumbles away part of the our monotonous understanding of trivial modern life and reveals a blinding light that is at first disorienting and then ecstatically revelatory. It infuses a sense of livelihood and purpose. It elevates and inspires. Over the course of history its importance does not diminish and its meanings become manifold and gain complexity until it is very nearly hidden beneath a shroud of myth. I can only imagine that there is a world of intellectual analysis based around Federico Fellini's 8 ½. To avoid it would be arrogant but to submit to it wholly would be ignorant. 8 ½ beautifully demonstrates the very human alternations between intellectual self-reflexivity and subconscious desire, as well as establishing the benefits and consequences of both. The film wistfully flows in and out of profound dream sequences which show the viewer the internal starvation of Guido Anselmi, the film's artistically and morally nomadic protagonist. He is as human as any character ever portrayed in cinema and Fellini painstakingly constructs his imperfections: his arrogance, his lies, his narcissism. But we do not hate Guido. We love him. He represents the best and worst of us, on a scale so grand it borders on and finally willfully submits to delightful madness. With 8 ½ Fellini constructed a human god; a towering figure so universal it is painful to watch his delusions of self-control, but worse still when he plummets to depths of self-loathing. With Guido Fellini asks one truly important question, the one that will forever keep his film from aging: what makes a man free?

Freedom, at least to Guido, is explained eloquently in the middle of a lavish fantasy sequence in which Guido returns to his home amongst all the women he has ever laid or loved. He says “happiness is being able to tell the truth without hurting anyone.” Happiness and freedom go hand in hand in 8 ½. Of course the two are also implicitly linked to his melancholy. As Guido sheds off his relations with the people in his life (from cheating on his wife to constantly avoiding an overly demanding and entirely disconnected French actress, as well refusing to respond to any questions regarding his upcoming film), he encounters a compounded contradictory feeling: happiness at avoiding all the obstacles presented in his life and sadness at losing his relation to the world. These emotions are of course subtle in the film's "real" world but in the world of Guido's mind, which includes dreams and fantasies, they are illustrated poignantly: escape as Guido flying upwards only to be pulled down by studio executives; guilt as consultations with his dead father; innocence as bizarre ritualistic scenes of sexuality from his youth. Guido desperately wants to create something original and honest. He can no longer force himself into the mold his producers wish for him. His film's unfinished spaceship stands as an aching metaphor for all the vulgar attempts to consciously create a beauty that exists only in the mind's untouchable regions. In 8 ½, beauty is grotesque and cruel, perfection is rejected and what remains is truth.

What is so true about 8 ½ is not cinematic, nor is intellectual. Cinematically Fellini utilizes interpretive surrealism to communicate Guido's devastating emotions. As for the film's scholarly side, the character of Guido's friend the film critic, who functions as our interpreter, synthesizes the film's artistic and intellectual efforts. He demands a high level of academic thought process to be rendered as something honest, original and triumphant. His philosophy is summed up perfectly when he tells Guido “it is better to destroy than to create something useless,” after Guido aborts his sci-fi project, a moving scene rendered as Guido's suicide. The film critic also draws direct attention toward the film's recursive nature and self-reflexivity. Given that 8 ½ is a largely autobiographical, using Fellini's own mounting artistic crisis as a template, it further takes on emotional gravity. All this is to say nothing of its pioneering use of film as a means of documenting the artistic process of film making, or metafilm, which would inspire a league of filmmakers from Francois Truffaut to David Lynch.

The biggest achievement in the film is Fellini's expansion of cinema's ability to communicate. Fellini, more so than any director of his time, engorged the possibilities of cinema, and 8 ½ is the culmination of all that came before and would come after. Everything, from his contemplative and creative camera use, to his mix of surrealist and symbolic elements, to his unflinching condemnation of his actions via the film's painfully honest narrative, Fellini opened the door to film's new consciousness. His freedom which traces, shades and textures his masterpiece, is the ability to step through doors as they appear. It is the desire to see what comes next and the humble awareness of what has come before. Freedom is not a void. It is the process by which we all come to discover the truth about who we really are. It is the beauty and grandeur of everything. It is sublime. It is pure celestial bliss. It is beyond words.

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.

Jules et Jim

Dir. Francois Truffaut
1962
n/a

Love is war. Real love that is. The artificial, simplified, celluloid dreamscapes etched upon the silver screens of popular cinemas are abstractions, distractions and completely void of consciousness. They nullify reality and celebrate the impossible: the perfect love. Real love is full of sieges, surrenders, negotiations, treaties and assassinations. It is not premeditated and each successive battle, although it may try to adhere to universal conventions, obeys no laws. The anarchy of desire rules the ravaged landscape of amour. If a person seeks a visual complement to the desperately complex and entrancing world of real love, the French New Wave is one of the better places to start. Between Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Francois Truffaut the pervasive, subterranean universe of love and its relation to sex, meaning and existence came about as close as it will ever come to having a distinct definition. The level of clarity and poetic truth they achieved, alongside a myriad of other notable New Wave filmmakers, through the vital and experimental French cinematic movement is simply unparalleled. While Godard's Breathless may be seen as the pinnacle of the movement, among its most all encompassing and highly affecting pieces is Truffaut's Jules et Jim, a sweeping epic and a mutinous piece of romantic film making.

Jules et Jim stuns the senses. It races along with all the nervous energy of young love. Characteristic of the New Wave movement, the film is technically astounding, utilizing enough dynamic film techniques that it is, in and of itself, like a textbook on ocular and auditory stimulation and satisfaction. Whereas in the presence of more concrete subject matter, these techniques would be distracting, here they compliment the marvelous displays of confusion and mixed emotions by Truffaut's expert cast. The film plants the viewer squarely in the middle of a love triangle whose borders and angles are constantly shifting. There is Jules (Oskar Werner), the introverted Austrian who forms a friendship with Jim (Henri Serre), a French romantic, and then, of course, there is the girl: Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) who both Jules and Jim fall in love with after marveling her statued doppelganger in a public garden. They are entranced by the ambiguous smile that both possess. Jules and Catherine marry and, although they are resigned to being content, neither is ever quite satisfied with the relationship. Catherine is noted for her capricious disdain for the ordinary. Stability mocks her capacity to cope with tragedy and at times she forces drama upon herself in order to extricate excitement from the tenuous relationships she has formed with the men in her life, namely Jules and Jim. She falls in and out of love, gaining and losing trust and appreciation, until Jules no longer feels he can love her and Jim can no longer tolerate being used as an object of her ardent, sometimes inexplicable, fervor. In the end she takes her own life along with Jim's and leaves to Jules the sadly satisfying manifestation of the loneliness he has felt for years.

There is a conversation in the film that is very appealing to me. It takes place after Jules and Jim return from their respective time spent on opposing sides of World War I. In a field the two are accompanied by Albert, one of Catherine's many temporary lovers, and they discuss the war. During the conversation Jules imparts this bit of wisdom: “What's revolting about war is that it deprives man of his own individual battle”. For all the horrible grandeur of world war, one of the great debilitating effects is a distinct lack of personal initiative. One becomes a part of a nationalistic crusade and is mostly powerless to matter in either a great facility or, conversely, to be void of use. All movements and actions are controlled by invisible and highly exterior motivations, of which a soldier only understands the smallest degree. This war narrative embodies the film. In war, as in love, it is best not to have your intentions be completely known. A certain amount of secrecy is necessary for both the purpose of sanity and seduction. In Jules et Jim, Catherine is the great temptress and prize. While no acts of physical violence occur between the two friends (with the exception of their friendly brawling) a greater psychological battle is being waged. There is a surprising lack of malice between the two friends, as both want what is best for the other. This, however, is the mystery, not only of the film but of all bipartisan endeavors. What is best for both parties? Where are the lines to be drawn? Who stakes a claim to what territory? And how long until one or both groups become unsatisfied with the division of capital and land, and contention begins again?

When the lives of three people (the two warring combatants and the “prize”) become entangled by equivocal amounts of pleasure, pain and manic love the necessity for conquest or rational colloquy becomes apparent. What does not reveal itself until much later is how a perfect equilibrium between two battling factions can never be fully reached so long as both desire the complete and unquestioned claim to victory. The only solutions lie in the completely abandonment of proclivity or total annihilation; both of which underscore the need for a desertion of interest. As if this scenario weren't complicated enough the “territory”, over which Jules and Jim strive for sole propriety, has a will of its own, like an island that roams aimlessly about the sea, attaching itself to whichever large, exotic land mass it comes across; leaving just as quickly as it arrived. The love-war over a women who does not know what she wants is never over until her ashes are scattered on the winds.