What a coincidence: two of the films nominated for the 2012 Academy Awards Best Picture award--The Artist and Midnight in Paris--are magic-realism tributes from France to America and vice versa. The Artist does this elegantly, with a brilliantly original take on the classic riches-to-rags-to-riches redemption motif. Ironically, while fawning over Paris, Woody Allen had to spoil his movie by larding it with clichés about superficial, materialistic Californians. While The Artist was a pure and innocent celebration of Hollywood, Woody Allen is a typical young American effacing himself before superior European sophistication. Really quite sad, because the premise was clever, and charmingly carried out during those segments when the hero was soiréeing with historical cultural greats. I also love Paris, and also suffer the recurring fantasy of just simply...staying, maybe to write my book. My experience has been that haughty Parisians really are disarmed by Jerry Lewis-like Americans like me and Owen Wilson. ;) Call me another self-effacing young American, but a French director could have pulled off Midnight in Paris with grace and subtle humor while retaining his dignity. Irony noted.
Reviews
6 Reviews
Melancholia
(2011)
Of the 7+ billion people on the planet, why did Lars von Trier choose to follow this particular nutty woman?
13 February 2012
Yes, it was visually impressive but of the 7+ billion people on the planet, why did Lars von Trier choose to follow this particular nutty woman? Surely others could have offered something more insightful, and maybe even meaningful. I found the characters' behavior...unlikely, even given the circumstances that we later come to appreciate. Many, many books and movies (both fictional and not) have covered the topic of people facing impending doom. Personally, I prefer a combination of the Hemingway hero and Kurt Vonnegut's main character in Cat's Cradle: fight with dignity to the end, but then thumb your nose at the world. Like Breaker Morant: "Shoot straight, you bastards! Don't make a mess of it!" OK, the subject deserves a variety of treatments, but I found this one less than compelling.
3D part of the gag
11 November 2011
Harold & Kummar movies are mercifully free of hypocrisy, with no taboo left unviolated. This is not a film you take your mother to (let her see it by herself). Everyone is criticizing the 3D as gratuitous, but it was part of the humor, exaggerated like in Piranha 3D. I usually despise 3D as a pointless distraction; this was a rare occasion when it seemed to fit. Pot smoke wafting out towards the audience--what better use of 3D? How could anyone complain about gratuitous 3D given this film's other excesses? One could similarly call the clay animation sequence gratuitous, but it was brilliant! It seems to me that these H&K movies contain some serious messages on drugs, race, and other social issues rolled up with the crude humor.
Waiting for Superman
(2010)
In the name of the children: shameless mockery, humiliation, and exploitation
6 November 2010
What a great metaphor--to poor, unsophisticated adults the lottery seems to be the only hope of becoming a millionaire, and for their children the school lottery offers the only hope for an education. They even use the same lottery ball machines, mocking the families with the slim chance at a future, making them pray and beg. What humiliation. How is it that the USA, the champion of the free market, denies the benefits of a competitive market to the poor for such an important thing as education? Who would do such an evil thing, and why? Davis Guggenheim shows us how those who claim to act in the name of the children are really looking shamelessly after the interests of a guild comprised of adults.
Strangers
(2008)
Russian anti-American propaganda and fantasy fulfillment
27 January 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Yuri Grymov's Chuzhie ("Strangers") is a beautifully shot movie that brilliantly accomplishes its twin objectives: Russian anti-American propaganda and fantasy fulfillment. It maintains a perfect balance between art and message. Non-Russian audiences would find it a caricature, if not offensive hate-mongering, but most Russians, with their decade of accumulated grievances and hunger to regain past glory, will doubt neither the Russians' nobility nor the Americans' vulgarity and brutality, because this is what they *want* to believe.
Five American doctors drive alone (with neither guides nor translators) through the desert of an unnamed Arab land to vaccinate children in a remote village, ostensibly motivated by good will. A group of Russians (a surgeon and sappers clearing mines) is juxtaposed on a background of local Arabs. Strangely, in this dangerous, international environment, only one character speaks a second language: a sapper, who understands just enough English to know that he has been insulted. The Americans' selfish motivations quickly become clear. They speak about "the team" and "the children", but each is obsessed with himself and his inadequacies. Americans' well-known philanthropy is revealed to be crassly self-serving, just as the cynical audience always suspected (and hoped). They are completely, stupidly culturally insensitive, though any American doctor has completed graduate school and spent a great deal of time with foreigners, if he is not an immigrant himself (has Grymov seen Harold & Kumar?). Russian filmmakers love grotesques, but assembling such an implausibly flawed group of doctors would require not only careful selection but genetic engineering. Some highlights of the five Americans (SPOILERS):
*Tom (Mark Adam) is the team leader—narrow, brittle, humorless, and dogmatic, he wants to Americanize the primitive Arab world. Sterile, he is unable to provide the child his wife wants. When the Arab guard deliberately leaves his gun next to Tom while he goes and rapes Tom's wife, Tom isn't man enough to defend his honor. Instead, when Tom's wife is later drinking with the grandfatherly Russian surgeon, Tom attacks *him*.
* Jane (Scarlett McAlister), Tom's red-haired wife, longs for a child, so she seduces the grim Arab guard and rendezvous with him repeatedly to copulate in various poses, finally to be violently raped.
* Miss Stone (Kathleen Gati), a sexually frustrated old maid, vaccinates children like an automaton. As warm and compassionate as her surname suggests, she expresses her feeling for the children by singing them "Row, row, row your boat" ENDLESSLY, mercilessly accompanying herself on an accordion, which the Arab boys eventually urinate on.
* Mike (Neil Patrick Stewart) is the passive white gay partner: shrill, prone to hysterics, and desperately afraid that he is getting older and unattractive. He wants to adopt an Arab boy.
* Bill (Jeff Grays) is the muscular black gay partner, stereotypically warm and affable. He likes lollipops (nearly always has one in his mouth) and also likes children, maybe too much: his long, slow proffering of a lollipop to a timid Arab boy is obviously a symbolic seduction.
The pattern is clear—American men aren't real men, American women aren't real women. In Grymov's cosmology, the Americans are demons, and the Arabs animals. Only the Russians are humans with souls, as the Russian surgeon demonstrates when he plays Miss Stone's accordion. The Russian surgeon saves an American's life, and a Russian sapper saves an Arab child. Both lose their own lives, betrayed by the ungrateful Americans. Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Courage, Faith, Hope, Charity—the Americans lack every virtue. Russians' customary heavy use of symbolism becomes laughable, e.g. such unsubtle product anti-placement as a bottle of Jack Daniels as a murder weapon. Russians have less trouble suspending disbelief because they want to believe the central message, that Americans have no souls. This serves the fantasy and propaganda interests: raising Russian self-esteem, dehumanizing the enemy.
From the beginning to the mocking "Happy End," Grymov's Chuzhie is humiliation. One American woman is urinated on, the other raped, whereupon she gets up smiling (after our initial shock, we realize she finally got what she wanted). The humiliation continues into the real world: one wonders why Grymov made the movie, who financed it (Roskultura, the Russian Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography), why the actors participated, and how they could subject the audience to such pandering and abuse. Web-searching for Chuzhie finds discussion expressing neither disgust nor embarrassment, but curiosity about whether the movie really was forbidden in the US by Condoleezza Rice, an absurd publicity-generating rumor broadcast by a Russian news program on TV7. Apparently nobody attempted to publicize Chuzhie outside Russia, quite the opposite: even in the Middle East, its unpleasant portrayal of Arabs would curtail its audience. But Americans will appreciate it most: 80% of the dialog is in English; only a native speaker will feel the stiltedness of the script and acting. Russians will listen to the simultaneous translation, in most movies an annoyance but in Chuzhie a mercy.
Russians claim they are portrayed just as badly in American movies like Rocky, Rambo, Top Gun, and Armageddon, forgetting serious, positive portrayals like in Dr. Zhivago and Enemy at the Gates. Armageddon showed a Russian cosmonaut as not evil, but goofy. Russians do not mind being hated or feared, but they want respect; ridicule is unforgivable. This movie attempts to be payback for all these slights combined, ending up a farce, a fantasy that reveals less about Americans than Russians, whose ancient inferiority complex clearly remains. It is no surprise that Chuzhie's producers did not want it shown abroad. Unfortunately, real respect and self-esteem will come from real achievement, not fantasy, and certainly not from nasty little movies like Grymov's Chuzhie.
Chuzhie ran several weeks in major Moscow cinemas. Together with the end of the Bush administration, Chuzhie will likely mark the nadir of US-Russian relations, though what the 2008 financial crisis portends is now anyone's guess. One hopes that the rising Russian victim mentality, fostered by certain interests, bears only passing resemblance to that of Weimar Germany.
Five American doctors drive alone (with neither guides nor translators) through the desert of an unnamed Arab land to vaccinate children in a remote village, ostensibly motivated by good will. A group of Russians (a surgeon and sappers clearing mines) is juxtaposed on a background of local Arabs. Strangely, in this dangerous, international environment, only one character speaks a second language: a sapper, who understands just enough English to know that he has been insulted. The Americans' selfish motivations quickly become clear. They speak about "the team" and "the children", but each is obsessed with himself and his inadequacies. Americans' well-known philanthropy is revealed to be crassly self-serving, just as the cynical audience always suspected (and hoped). They are completely, stupidly culturally insensitive, though any American doctor has completed graduate school and spent a great deal of time with foreigners, if he is not an immigrant himself (has Grymov seen Harold & Kumar?). Russian filmmakers love grotesques, but assembling such an implausibly flawed group of doctors would require not only careful selection but genetic engineering. Some highlights of the five Americans (SPOILERS):
*Tom (Mark Adam) is the team leader—narrow, brittle, humorless, and dogmatic, he wants to Americanize the primitive Arab world. Sterile, he is unable to provide the child his wife wants. When the Arab guard deliberately leaves his gun next to Tom while he goes and rapes Tom's wife, Tom isn't man enough to defend his honor. Instead, when Tom's wife is later drinking with the grandfatherly Russian surgeon, Tom attacks *him*.
* Jane (Scarlett McAlister), Tom's red-haired wife, longs for a child, so she seduces the grim Arab guard and rendezvous with him repeatedly to copulate in various poses, finally to be violently raped.
* Miss Stone (Kathleen Gati), a sexually frustrated old maid, vaccinates children like an automaton. As warm and compassionate as her surname suggests, she expresses her feeling for the children by singing them "Row, row, row your boat" ENDLESSLY, mercilessly accompanying herself on an accordion, which the Arab boys eventually urinate on.
* Mike (Neil Patrick Stewart) is the passive white gay partner: shrill, prone to hysterics, and desperately afraid that he is getting older and unattractive. He wants to adopt an Arab boy.
* Bill (Jeff Grays) is the muscular black gay partner, stereotypically warm and affable. He likes lollipops (nearly always has one in his mouth) and also likes children, maybe too much: his long, slow proffering of a lollipop to a timid Arab boy is obviously a symbolic seduction.
The pattern is clear—American men aren't real men, American women aren't real women. In Grymov's cosmology, the Americans are demons, and the Arabs animals. Only the Russians are humans with souls, as the Russian surgeon demonstrates when he plays Miss Stone's accordion. The Russian surgeon saves an American's life, and a Russian sapper saves an Arab child. Both lose their own lives, betrayed by the ungrateful Americans. Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Courage, Faith, Hope, Charity—the Americans lack every virtue. Russians' customary heavy use of symbolism becomes laughable, e.g. such unsubtle product anti-placement as a bottle of Jack Daniels as a murder weapon. Russians have less trouble suspending disbelief because they want to believe the central message, that Americans have no souls. This serves the fantasy and propaganda interests: raising Russian self-esteem, dehumanizing the enemy.
From the beginning to the mocking "Happy End," Grymov's Chuzhie is humiliation. One American woman is urinated on, the other raped, whereupon she gets up smiling (after our initial shock, we realize she finally got what she wanted). The humiliation continues into the real world: one wonders why Grymov made the movie, who financed it (Roskultura, the Russian Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography), why the actors participated, and how they could subject the audience to such pandering and abuse. Web-searching for Chuzhie finds discussion expressing neither disgust nor embarrassment, but curiosity about whether the movie really was forbidden in the US by Condoleezza Rice, an absurd publicity-generating rumor broadcast by a Russian news program on TV7. Apparently nobody attempted to publicize Chuzhie outside Russia, quite the opposite: even in the Middle East, its unpleasant portrayal of Arabs would curtail its audience. But Americans will appreciate it most: 80% of the dialog is in English; only a native speaker will feel the stiltedness of the script and acting. Russians will listen to the simultaneous translation, in most movies an annoyance but in Chuzhie a mercy.
Russians claim they are portrayed just as badly in American movies like Rocky, Rambo, Top Gun, and Armageddon, forgetting serious, positive portrayals like in Dr. Zhivago and Enemy at the Gates. Armageddon showed a Russian cosmonaut as not evil, but goofy. Russians do not mind being hated or feared, but they want respect; ridicule is unforgivable. This movie attempts to be payback for all these slights combined, ending up a farce, a fantasy that reveals less about Americans than Russians, whose ancient inferiority complex clearly remains. It is no surprise that Chuzhie's producers did not want it shown abroad. Unfortunately, real respect and self-esteem will come from real achievement, not fantasy, and certainly not from nasty little movies like Grymov's Chuzhie.
Chuzhie ran several weeks in major Moscow cinemas. Together with the end of the Bush administration, Chuzhie will likely mark the nadir of US-Russian relations, though what the 2008 financial crisis portends is now anyone's guess. One hopes that the rising Russian victim mentality, fostered by certain interests, bears only passing resemblance to that of Weimar Germany.
Bride & Prejudice
(2004)
A pair of 3D characters in a 2D world
16 April 2005
In short, a (very) light Bollywood-style movie, good to take a date to if you want to walk out in good mood. Singing and dancing were probably Bollywood average, though I haven't seen that many Bollywood movies.
Perhaps familiarity with Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice would add a bit of depth to this film; I wouldn't know. As it was, the laughably stock characters seem cut right from cardboard, with only the leads showing any hint of depth. I am familiar with Indian culture, and I have lived many years myself in a poor patriot-filled country: Russia. No foreign visitor behaves as rudely as every one of these did--such an unlikely boor as Darcy would be irredeemable. The dialog was utterly unrealistic (maybe except for the Indian parents). But Lalita's young hypersensitive, patriotic, educated, provincial type does exist. She was fairly impressive.
I was bugged that an Indian filmmaker might suggest (through Lalita) that rich westerners could buy up India and turn it into Disneyland. India is a huge and hugely diverse country with over a billion people and a rich culture of its own. It's not in any danger of being culturally recolonized. Quite the reverse--it's we in the west who are increasingly watching Indian movies, eating in Indian restaurants, and working with or for Indians.
Perhaps familiarity with Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice would add a bit of depth to this film; I wouldn't know. As it was, the laughably stock characters seem cut right from cardboard, with only the leads showing any hint of depth. I am familiar with Indian culture, and I have lived many years myself in a poor patriot-filled country: Russia. No foreign visitor behaves as rudely as every one of these did--such an unlikely boor as Darcy would be irredeemable. The dialog was utterly unrealistic (maybe except for the Indian parents). But Lalita's young hypersensitive, patriotic, educated, provincial type does exist. She was fairly impressive.
I was bugged that an Indian filmmaker might suggest (through Lalita) that rich westerners could buy up India and turn it into Disneyland. India is a huge and hugely diverse country with over a billion people and a rich culture of its own. It's not in any danger of being culturally recolonized. Quite the reverse--it's we in the west who are increasingly watching Indian movies, eating in Indian restaurants, and working with or for Indians.
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