Dir. Wong Kar-Wai
2004
9.5
For all its cyclical and arc-like possibilities life has a sour tendency of being cut and divided into rations. Each are meant to be savored but inevitably they are gobbled down and compared quite frankly to previous portions and the hopes of future servings. Once consumed they are gone for good but this reality some how does not keep us from wishing against all odds that we might someday taste that same enriching fare. The memory of its consistencies, textures and flavors haunts us. At times even the thought that the true feast is right around the corner, the one that will make all others seem like mere nibblings and hors d'oeuvres, cannot keep us from wanting a former piece so badly that we turn instead to the dark and lonesome corners of starvation in the vain hope that the absence of nourishment might help us forget our very fundamental need of it. Segmentation has become an unnatural but nonetheless accepted part of life. Art, the painfully accurate reflection of life, has developed the capacity to emulate this tendency. In Wong Kar-wai's 2046 the theme of compartmentalization is adapted to a stunning and sometimes perplexing visual realization. Engaging in aspects of romance, high-drama, and science fiction the film weaves together a complex tapestry of love, regret, and memory. The end result is both stupefying and astoundingly gorgeous.
Based loosely on themes and plots from two previous films by Kar-wai (Days of Being Wild and In the Mood for Love), 2046 can be jarring without proper appropriation of certain material from the two aforementioned films. Still, the core of the film is not strictly reliant on this knowledge, but rather it assists in contextualizing the film. The story is based on a few years in a man's life, Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), and his encounters with people, mostly women, during those times. Chow has recently loved and lost and throughout the film he finds pieces of his lost love in his new romances. However, he has refused to have his heart broken again and has thus built a towering, nearly impenetrable wall around himself to keep passion out and his insecurities in. In doing so he has unwittingly secured his inability to cope with his own devastation and move forward in his life. The film's plot line is highly reflective of this, with jumps in time that are confounding but revealing as Chow relives moments, seemingly without meaning to, that he has refused to completely release. To add to the greater sense of disorientation the film also encompasses a fictional, futuristic dream-world known as '2046', where “nothing ever changes”. These escapades are both an enigmatic and cryptic rendering of Chow's detachment from reality (scenes from '2046' exclusively feature the characters from the linear portion of the film in largely metaphoric roles) as well as the basis for a science fiction serial which he writes to make ends meet. The reconciliation of a contemptible reality and a subjugated fantasy and the ways in which both becomes modes of escapism for Chow is at the heart of the film's thesis. The concept is that we invent ways in which to avoid harshness in our own lives, but by doing so we are postponing and not eliminating, an action which can only serve to hurt us in the long run.
Despite being a largely complex and intimidating film, 2046 manages to be sensual and passionate as well. The film aches for a cathartic release of psychological and physical tensions between characters. Lust and fear burn and tremble across the screen and while Wong Kar-wai makes the film look exquisite (his tech-savvy and highly stylized film making is salient without being overly commercialized) it is his cast which makes the film vivid and unmistakable. In a film which so expertly captures the depressive disconnect between a man and his corporeality, the subtle tenderness as his former self breaks through his carefully maintained iron exterior is like the precious exhalation from dying body. More than the voice-over narration, it is the internal struggle Chow undergoes that brings the audience in sync with his world of suffering and disenchantment.
As much as we'd like to, the truth is that the harder we try to outstrip parts of our life, the stronger they attach themselves to our present situation. The more we try to forget a lover, the more often we find fragments of that person in our midst. The trying and the almost inevitable failure are a part of a larger continuum of change and how we, as individuals, cope with it. Suffice it to say that there is no easy solution but 2046 does pose some potential cures, or at least tranquilizers, for heartbreak. The film begins by telling how “no one ever came back from '2046', except one man”. '2046' is our artificial paradise: the place where we tweak the events of our lives towards absolute perfection and play them over and over again. What Wong Kar-wai proposes in this film is that this does not actually make us feel any better and that the only way to truly overcome our painful past is to accept the inconsistency of life and leave '2046', “the place where nothing changes”, and never come back.
Showing posts with label 2004. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2004. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Before Sunset
Dir. Richard Linklater
2004
9.8
Assuming you're over the age of 13, chances are you've had one of those moments where you've either overheard someone saying, or found yourself grumbling, the phrase “its just not like the movies”. Projected on to millions of screens every year are images of happiness, love, and the great metaphysical plateau of peace. The scene where the guy runs through the airport to profess his love to the girl he met a few days ago is the cliché of the century, among many other equally sappy, highly repetitious moments in cinema. But every so often a romantic film comes around that breaks the mold. The last 10 years have yielded a few notables including Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, P.T. Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love, and Richard Linklater's Before Sunset. Of those three, Linklater's is, technically, the least progressive: it doesn't have a score composed by Jon Brion; it is not starring a comedic actor in a break through dramatic role, and it creates no divide between reality and fiction. In fact, Before Sunset is about as simple as film making gets. It is an authentic piece of romantic realism that unfolds naturally and beautifully like a summer day in Paris.
Before Sunset is, in fact, the follow-up to Linklater's 1995 motion picture Before Sunrise, which details an evening spent between the two main characters: Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke).The sequel is an 80 minute, real-time, conversation between the two former lovers which spends surprisingly little of its time recounting the love affair. Jesse is in Paris doing a signing for his new book which, as it turns out, is about the night he and Celine spent together in Vienna nine years earlier. Celine hears about the book signing and arrives to meet Jesse. The rest of the film is straightforward: long steadicam shots of Jesse and Celine walking, or sitting, or riding a boat, or in the back seat of a car, and talking. Throughout the entirety of the film you never believe that you are watching anything other than a real conversation between two real people. Linklater co-wrote the screenplay with Delpy and Hawke who, working together before on Before Sunrise, have chemistry. Not in the very Hollywood-esque sense of the word, as in “Boy, Brad Pitt and Scarlett Johansen look great making out on screen. They have great chemistry!” but in the way that Hawke and Delpy actually make you believe that they were one night lovers who haven't seen each other for nine years. The dialog arc is masterful and true. It begins simply enough with “How have you been?”s and “What have you been up to?” platitudes but quickly falls into more intimate discussions about sex, religion, saving the world, and finally the respective characters' own disastrous personal lives, and how they both regret not seeing each other before this day in Paris, 2004. The film ends with Jesse sitting on a couch in Celine's apartment while she does a silly dance to the manic-depressive music of Nina Simone and tells him he's going to miss his plane. He smiles and says “I know.”
In cinema it takes real confidence to be simple. While some of Linklater's other efforts, such as A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life, have garnered him the double edged title of 'pretentious', he is not a director of singular talent. Before Sunset is an exercise in control. It is a tribute to how complicated we make our own lives and how, despite the things we do or whatever we tell ourselves, many of us end up on the short end of the stick, having been placed there through a combination of our own actions and our own lack of actions, not to mention the myriad of circumstances outside of our control. During the film's cathartic moment, which is ironically enough it's most claustrophobic, with Celine screaming at Jesse while his driver takes the two to Celine's apartment, she confesses that she in unable to love anymore saying how “reality and love are like a contradiction to me”. She is furious at Jesse because she believes that, because he has a wife and kids, he is happy. Jesse confides in her that, despite having reasons to be happy (he is a published, best-selling novelist and a father) he is miserable. He doesn't love his wife and even up to his wedding day he couldn't stop thinking about Celine. On the film's slow descent towards its enigmatic conclusion they both manage to find comfort in their mutual misery, as if knowing that someone else you feel inexplicably linked to is also miserable can make a person feel less alone.
Before Sunset is about a lot of things. In the beginning of the film Jesse is asked if his book is autobiographical, which we know it clearly is. He answers that in a sense all of our output is autobiographical. We see the world through our own narrow keyhole. In literature this is true, but in film many life perspectives are combined and the result is sometimes optimistic and fake, and sometimes transcendent and real, if not kind of depressing. Before Sunset belongs to the latter category. It does not seek to tell you something you don't know, or show you something you've never seen before. In fact all the film really does is reinforce what you know is true, but what you and plenty of major motion pictures deny on a regular basis: life is hell, but sometimes its really worth it.
note: I found out after having written this review that Before Sunset was filmed in two weeks on a two million dollar budget, an accomplishment that is basically unheard of in major motion pictures.
2004
9.8
Assuming you're over the age of 13, chances are you've had one of those moments where you've either overheard someone saying, or found yourself grumbling, the phrase “its just not like the movies”. Projected on to millions of screens every year are images of happiness, love, and the great metaphysical plateau of peace. The scene where the guy runs through the airport to profess his love to the girl he met a few days ago is the cliché of the century, among many other equally sappy, highly repetitious moments in cinema. But every so often a romantic film comes around that breaks the mold. The last 10 years have yielded a few notables including Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, P.T. Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love, and Richard Linklater's Before Sunset. Of those three, Linklater's is, technically, the least progressive: it doesn't have a score composed by Jon Brion; it is not starring a comedic actor in a break through dramatic role, and it creates no divide between reality and fiction. In fact, Before Sunset is about as simple as film making gets. It is an authentic piece of romantic realism that unfolds naturally and beautifully like a summer day in Paris.
Before Sunset is, in fact, the follow-up to Linklater's 1995 motion picture Before Sunrise, which details an evening spent between the two main characters: Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke).The sequel is an 80 minute, real-time, conversation between the two former lovers which spends surprisingly little of its time recounting the love affair. Jesse is in Paris doing a signing for his new book which, as it turns out, is about the night he and Celine spent together in Vienna nine years earlier. Celine hears about the book signing and arrives to meet Jesse. The rest of the film is straightforward: long steadicam shots of Jesse and Celine walking, or sitting, or riding a boat, or in the back seat of a car, and talking. Throughout the entirety of the film you never believe that you are watching anything other than a real conversation between two real people. Linklater co-wrote the screenplay with Delpy and Hawke who, working together before on Before Sunrise, have chemistry. Not in the very Hollywood-esque sense of the word, as in “Boy, Brad Pitt and Scarlett Johansen look great making out on screen. They have great chemistry!” but in the way that Hawke and Delpy actually make you believe that they were one night lovers who haven't seen each other for nine years. The dialog arc is masterful and true. It begins simply enough with “How have you been?”s and “What have you been up to?” platitudes but quickly falls into more intimate discussions about sex, religion, saving the world, and finally the respective characters' own disastrous personal lives, and how they both regret not seeing each other before this day in Paris, 2004. The film ends with Jesse sitting on a couch in Celine's apartment while she does a silly dance to the manic-depressive music of Nina Simone and tells him he's going to miss his plane. He smiles and says “I know.”
In cinema it takes real confidence to be simple. While some of Linklater's other efforts, such as A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life, have garnered him the double edged title of 'pretentious', he is not a director of singular talent. Before Sunset is an exercise in control. It is a tribute to how complicated we make our own lives and how, despite the things we do or whatever we tell ourselves, many of us end up on the short end of the stick, having been placed there through a combination of our own actions and our own lack of actions, not to mention the myriad of circumstances outside of our control. During the film's cathartic moment, which is ironically enough it's most claustrophobic, with Celine screaming at Jesse while his driver takes the two to Celine's apartment, she confesses that she in unable to love anymore saying how “reality and love are like a contradiction to me”. She is furious at Jesse because she believes that, because he has a wife and kids, he is happy. Jesse confides in her that, despite having reasons to be happy (he is a published, best-selling novelist and a father) he is miserable. He doesn't love his wife and even up to his wedding day he couldn't stop thinking about Celine. On the film's slow descent towards its enigmatic conclusion they both manage to find comfort in their mutual misery, as if knowing that someone else you feel inexplicably linked to is also miserable can make a person feel less alone.
Before Sunset is about a lot of things. In the beginning of the film Jesse is asked if his book is autobiographical, which we know it clearly is. He answers that in a sense all of our output is autobiographical. We see the world through our own narrow keyhole. In literature this is true, but in film many life perspectives are combined and the result is sometimes optimistic and fake, and sometimes transcendent and real, if not kind of depressing. Before Sunset belongs to the latter category. It does not seek to tell you something you don't know, or show you something you've never seen before. In fact all the film really does is reinforce what you know is true, but what you and plenty of major motion pictures deny on a regular basis: life is hell, but sometimes its really worth it.
note: I found out after having written this review that Before Sunset was filmed in two weeks on a two million dollar budget, an accomplishment that is basically unheard of in major motion pictures.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Sideways
Dir. Alexander Payne
2004
9.2
As far as I can tell, California seems to be a very unforgiving place for the socially inept. Between Silicon Valley, Hollywood and the acres of vineyards its about as nouveau riche as you can get without leaving the country. Los Angeles may be kind of trashy but so is New York and that hasn't kept the country from idolizing it. L.A. also has connotations of warmth and glamor, where New York conjures images of arty socialites huddling together beneath Greenwich Village brownstones and bare trees, with matching striped scarves. In film it is the difference between say Alfred Hitchcock's idealistic Bodega Bay in The Birds and Woody Allen's stark Manhattan. Better still is the single film comparison of New York as the center of the intellectual world and L.A. as the morally depraved capital of smut and daytime television in Allen's seminal Annie Hall. Few films that take place in California avoid these two categorical concepts: California as paradise and California as a fake kingdom. In Alexander Payne's 2004 film Sideways, he avoids the cliches inherent in setting a film in California by focusing almost entirely on the universal theme of human suffering. Sounds really uplifting right? Well keep in mind that, like its excellent predecessor, 2002's About Schmidt, Payne has a knack for the ambiguous but humanizing ending. He also happens to be a visionary filmmaker and a subtle yet profound screenwriter.
Sideways is the story of two guys, Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (Thomas Haden Church), who endeavor to enjoy a week of wine tasting, golf and freedom before Jack gets married. Miles is an unpublished author, divorcee and an obsessively self-defeating personality whose passion for wine at first seems simply to be an easy fit for the California location. Jack is a small time actor who knows nothing about wine but holds infinite patience for Miles' violent mood swings. They are the ideal odd couple. As the narrative unfolds, Jack makes it known to Miles that the real reason he is going on this road trip is to get laid (at least) once before he gets married. Miles is repulsed by the idea but goes along with it, albeit passive-aggressively. Without giving away too much (besides the fact that a summary here would be in bad taste since this film is now five years old), Jack gets his wish (with Grey's Anatomy's Sandra Oh no less), puts Miles in an uncomfortable situation with an attractive woman named Maya (Virginia Madsen), they both drink a lot of wine, and go home, whereupon Jack gets happily married. The end.
If that last paragraph were the whole of Sideways I wouldn't be penning this review and I probably wouldn't have seen the film in the first place as I am a budding asshole/film critic who only watches movies that have received some level of critical acclaim. Speaking of complexes, Sideways, in a pivotal scene, reveals itself to be a divinely perceptive character study and that wines are not just an easy way to attract an adult audience to a movie about a guy in therapy. In a conversation between Maya and Miles she asks him what it is about pinot noir, Miles' favorite type of wine, that he likes the most. He expounds about how pinot noir is made from a volatile grape, one that needs constant attention to really bring to its full potential. She then begins a similar monologue about how she loves wine because of the history behind the grapes and how each wine is constantly evolving and changing. I don't know much about wines but in this brilliant piece of dialog the characters essentially some up their respective romantic lives; all their disappointments and their failings. Miles and his wife divorced two years ago and he has never fully gotten over it. He insists on making himself unhappy, concentrating only on where he has failed (his marriage, his novel, etc.). He needs someone to know he's there. His best friend is getting married and he is suffering from the feeling that he is getting old without ever having done anything with his life. Maya has recently overcome a divorce as well but rather than wallow like Miles she has done what she can to forget it. She is finishing her Master's degree in horticulture and is friendly and popular. Still, as she later tells Miles, she can't help but feel the weight of her divorce everyday. Although Mile seems to sometimes use the alcohol content of wine to forget his troubles he, and Maya as well, both ultimately turned to wine to explore some unchartered region of themselves. In Sideways wine is a vessel of self-discovery.
Sideways, in many respects, is a coming of age story, only in this case coming of age doesn't mean turning 13 or 18 or 21, or even the way Truffaut designed it in The 400 Blows: being grown up before you've developed the capacity to understand what being “grown up” entails. Here, coming of age means simply accepting what life has given you and moving forward. It doesn't mean faking happiness, since we can't be happy all the time but it also doesn't mean intentionally making yourself miserable because you think you deserve it. Sideways is a film about savoring and trying to find the best there is. But mostly its about drinking whatever is put on the table. Even a Merlot.
2004
9.2
As far as I can tell, California seems to be a very unforgiving place for the socially inept. Between Silicon Valley, Hollywood and the acres of vineyards its about as nouveau riche as you can get without leaving the country. Los Angeles may be kind of trashy but so is New York and that hasn't kept the country from idolizing it. L.A. also has connotations of warmth and glamor, where New York conjures images of arty socialites huddling together beneath Greenwich Village brownstones and bare trees, with matching striped scarves. In film it is the difference between say Alfred Hitchcock's idealistic Bodega Bay in The Birds and Woody Allen's stark Manhattan. Better still is the single film comparison of New York as the center of the intellectual world and L.A. as the morally depraved capital of smut and daytime television in Allen's seminal Annie Hall. Few films that take place in California avoid these two categorical concepts: California as paradise and California as a fake kingdom. In Alexander Payne's 2004 film Sideways, he avoids the cliches inherent in setting a film in California by focusing almost entirely on the universal theme of human suffering. Sounds really uplifting right? Well keep in mind that, like its excellent predecessor, 2002's About Schmidt, Payne has a knack for the ambiguous but humanizing ending. He also happens to be a visionary filmmaker and a subtle yet profound screenwriter.
Sideways is the story of two guys, Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (Thomas Haden Church), who endeavor to enjoy a week of wine tasting, golf and freedom before Jack gets married. Miles is an unpublished author, divorcee and an obsessively self-defeating personality whose passion for wine at first seems simply to be an easy fit for the California location. Jack is a small time actor who knows nothing about wine but holds infinite patience for Miles' violent mood swings. They are the ideal odd couple. As the narrative unfolds, Jack makes it known to Miles that the real reason he is going on this road trip is to get laid (at least) once before he gets married. Miles is repulsed by the idea but goes along with it, albeit passive-aggressively. Without giving away too much (besides the fact that a summary here would be in bad taste since this film is now five years old), Jack gets his wish (with Grey's Anatomy's Sandra Oh no less), puts Miles in an uncomfortable situation with an attractive woman named Maya (Virginia Madsen), they both drink a lot of wine, and go home, whereupon Jack gets happily married. The end.
If that last paragraph were the whole of Sideways I wouldn't be penning this review and I probably wouldn't have seen the film in the first place as I am a budding asshole/film critic who only watches movies that have received some level of critical acclaim. Speaking of complexes, Sideways, in a pivotal scene, reveals itself to be a divinely perceptive character study and that wines are not just an easy way to attract an adult audience to a movie about a guy in therapy. In a conversation between Maya and Miles she asks him what it is about pinot noir, Miles' favorite type of wine, that he likes the most. He expounds about how pinot noir is made from a volatile grape, one that needs constant attention to really bring to its full potential. She then begins a similar monologue about how she loves wine because of the history behind the grapes and how each wine is constantly evolving and changing. I don't know much about wines but in this brilliant piece of dialog the characters essentially some up their respective romantic lives; all their disappointments and their failings. Miles and his wife divorced two years ago and he has never fully gotten over it. He insists on making himself unhappy, concentrating only on where he has failed (his marriage, his novel, etc.). He needs someone to know he's there. His best friend is getting married and he is suffering from the feeling that he is getting old without ever having done anything with his life. Maya has recently overcome a divorce as well but rather than wallow like Miles she has done what she can to forget it. She is finishing her Master's degree in horticulture and is friendly and popular. Still, as she later tells Miles, she can't help but feel the weight of her divorce everyday. Although Mile seems to sometimes use the alcohol content of wine to forget his troubles he, and Maya as well, both ultimately turned to wine to explore some unchartered region of themselves. In Sideways wine is a vessel of self-discovery.
Sideways, in many respects, is a coming of age story, only in this case coming of age doesn't mean turning 13 or 18 or 21, or even the way Truffaut designed it in The 400 Blows: being grown up before you've developed the capacity to understand what being “grown up” entails. Here, coming of age means simply accepting what life has given you and moving forward. It doesn't mean faking happiness, since we can't be happy all the time but it also doesn't mean intentionally making yourself miserable because you think you deserve it. Sideways is a film about savoring and trying to find the best there is. But mostly its about drinking whatever is put on the table. Even a Merlot.
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