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Reviews
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Just an entertaining thriller
Hitchcock was truly a great director, as is shown in such masterpieces as "Vertigo," "North by Northwest," and "The Birds." Typically, "Strangers on a Train" is also listed among his finest achievements; people will tell you that it's much deeper than a normal thriller because it is not merely a wrongfully accused man who seeks to prove his innocence, because the wrong man knows that he is, in fact, not innocent. If this were the case, "Strangers on a Train" would truly be a great film, but sadly, Farley Granger's performance doesn't allow it.
Textually, the film is built around the principle of a doppelganger; two men meet each other on a train, each of whom envy each other. The crazy man envies the star athlete who has found true love and security in the world with a bright future in politics, and the star athlete envies the crazy man who could murder without troubling his conscience because he has an unfaithful wife who is inconvenient to his romance with a senator's daughter. Thus, when the crazy man murders the star athlete's wife due to a mix-up, the star athlete is not completely innocent, because of his desire for her murder.
Unfortunately, this only exists on a textual level because Farley Granger plays his star athlete like any wrongfully accused man seeking to prove his innocence. We don't believe him when he says that he could just strangle his wife on the phone; he is too nice to be blamed. The films central struggle should not be the athlete's attempt to prove his innocence, but his attempt to come to terms with his conscience, knowing that, even though he did not murder her himself, it was his murder.
I much prefer Orson Welles' "The Trial" to this film. It does not contain a doppelganger, but it is about a man who is arrested without knowing what crime he is charged with, but becomes convinced of his own guilt in the process of trying to prove his innocence. Anthony Perkins' performance in that film is much greater at showing the confused sense of guilt that is central to "The Trial," and that should have been central to "Strangers on a Train."
That said, it is quite an enjoyable film, and I would recommend seeing it in spite of its shortcomings.
Yôkihi (1955)
Perhaps Mizoguchi's Most Underrated
Donald Richie, the famous scholar of Japanese film, has dismissed this as a dull reworking of Chinese* history, albeit with some nice-looking colors. Though many others have agreed, his analysis is correct in one detail merely: the colors are absolutely beautiful, even in the VHS my library has. As it is one of only two color films Mizoguchi ever made, and the more beautiful of the two, this alone would make Yokihi a worthwhile watch.
But this film has a strange relationship with the beauty that is present, both in the color and in the relationship between the Emperor and Yang Kwei-Fei. The film admires beauty, but it is about the prostitution of beauty and the hatred that beauty can inspire. Some have accused it of being merely another Cinderella story, just like all the others, and it would certainly be a mistake to overlook the similarities. But it looks at the Cinderella archetype in a more disillusioned way: instead of being Yang Kwei-Fei's escape from her unfortunate family, her relationship with the Emperor is exploited by the same family members so that she is just as much their slave as she had always been, and so that, when the Chinese peasants get upset at the corruption caused by her family, naturally they lash out at her. But because of the sheer beauty of the film, both visual and in the way that the relationship between the Emperor and Yang Kwei-Fei is treated, the film is not cynical, ironic, and it never thinks itself better than the myths from which it arises. Instead, it becomes a sublime fabulous (in much the same way that many of Mizoguchi's greatest films, such as Zangiku Monogatari, Saikaku Ichidai Onna, Ugetsu Monogatari, and Sansho Dayu, resemble fables) romantic tragedy about beauty and its exploitation.
*This is not a typographical error. Though the film itself is Japanese, the legend of Yang Kwei-Fei is Chinese, and as such the film is set in China.
The Departed (2006)
I beg your pardon?
I am shocked at the number of reviews that exist that praise this film to no end, and that call it Scorsese's best film since "Goodfellas." "The Departed" is far from a bad film; it is, in fact, a decent one, but it is still very disappointing, and the only part of "Goodfellas" it resembles at all is that film's last segment, starting at 6:55 AM on May 11 of 1980, after which it loses track of everything that made it one of Scorsese's best film. The film consists primarily of extremely short takes sloppily edited together which are theoretically meant to jar the spectators, but in fact only prohibit the narrative from moving effectively. There is nothing theoretically wrong with short takes; Sergei Eisenstein made very powerful films with shorter Average Shot Lengths than "The Departed" ever dreamed of having, but his films were conceived as juxtapositions of shots, whereas in "The Departed," as in most modern films that use this technique, the shots only interrupt each other. Eisenstein's films were great, and revolutionary, because he used editing to create sequences of shots to develop his ideas; Scorsese's greatest films tend to have longer average shot lengths because he expresses his ideas in a single shot rather than a sequence of them. In "The Departed" he has not decided to express himself with sequences of shots rather than single shots, he has merely made the shots shorter and thus hindered the expression of his ideas in the film.
Moreover, there are serious narrative flaws in the film. Jack Nicholson gives an outstanding performance as a once great (if a little eccentric) mob boss who has become paranoid near the end of his life and becomes self-destructive. He is hilarious for much of the film, but at times, particularly near the end, he truly becomes terrifying. This is all quite good, but the film is not about him; it is about Billy and Colin. It perhaps would have been better to have made a completely separate film about Frank Costello, since he is given either too much or too little attention in "The Departed." The same could be said about Alec Baldwin's and Marky Mark's characters; they need either to be given more major roles that relate more directly to the thematic elements of the film, or to be removed entirely. At times, it seems as if Scorsese were so intent on having an Outstanding Ensemble Cast and in the process forgot about his main characters.
It would seem to me, from the film's mere plot, that a major idea with which "The Departed" could play is that Billy and Colin are mirror images of each other. The film should be an exploration with the nature of identity, and though it obviously would tie in most directly with these two characters, it should also apply more subtly to the other characters in the film. However, Colin (Matt Damon's character) does not come across as in interesting character suffering from inner conflict; he is simply a jerk. Before Marky Mark's character shoots him at the end, he says "okay." The line should be delivered with a sense of self- hatred that has developed after Colin's conscience begins to attack him for the damage that he has wreaked on all the people from both of his lives; instead, he sounds merely bored. Billy is significantly more interesting than Colin (though I give more credit to Leonardo DiCaprio than to the screenwriters for this), but could still use more work. Damon's performance does not stand out, DiCaprio's reminds us that he is perhaps the most talented actor of his generation in Hollywood, though the film, lamentably, does not make as much use of these talents as "The Aviator" did.
The film particularly seems to fall apart after Frank Costello dies. It would make sense for Colin to become indecisive and confused after such an event, since his mafia loyalties were to Frank alone, but it instead seems as if the screenwriters were the confused and indecisive ones. Moreover, having all the major characters (except Baldwin and Marky Mark) die was not the proper ending for the film; it seems dull, predictable, and superficial to the extent that, when Colin says "Okay" before getting shot, I could empathize with his boredom.
King Kong (2005)
(Pounds Chest)
Prior to making the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, Peter Jackson made deliberately disgusting, terrible films such as "Bad Taste" on very low budgets. While I found "Return of the King" to be visually the best epic of its kind in recent memory, none of the "Lord of the Rings" films were anywhere near as fun as Jackson's earlier efforts. With "King Kong," however, he has made a film that is visually as impressive as anything in the "Lord of the Rings" and restored the energy and sense of humor that he brought to his earlier projects. The result is a masterpiece.
Naturally, modern audiences, whose imaginations have been dulled by the Kiarostami-style realism that has infected both Hollywood and independent films, are not going to accept a film about a giant monkey wandering around New York City very easily. But Jackson embraces the ludicrous plot and moves forward from there. The film has a strange ability to be hilarious and heartfelt at the same moment, such as in the scene in which Kong pounds his chest (meaning "beautiful"), or when he and his newly-found friend slide around over a frozen pond. And then there is the film's last line: "It wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast." which is both an apt parody of pretentious one-liners from such painful epics as "Braveheart," "Gladiator," or "Troy," but is also remarkably tragic, because it shows the inability to grasp Kong's significance on both the part of the speaker, and that of everyone around him.
It takes a long while before Kong gets to New York City, however, and the earlier parts of the film are great, too. Prior to the return, the film is a glorious adventure onto a forgotten island with terrifying natives (they can get away with this because the group of people portrayed as savage doesn't exist), creatures of all different kinds, and Kong. It was a very wise decision on Jackson's part to build up a mythology of Kong in the film prior to his entrance, which is thus made all the more fascinating. Some have complained that the characters spend too much time on the island being chased by various dinosaurs and giant bugs, but I felt that there should not have been a moment cut out of the film.
Jack Black gives a surprisingly brilliant performance as the self-proclaimed auteur filmmaker who is responsible for Kong's capture, and for essentially everything that goes wrong in the film. His performance is an absurdist interpretation of a self-obsessed man convinced of his own brilliance, and willing to do anything to show it. In one of the film's best moments, as other characters discover the corpses of characters whom they loved, he discovers his film camera destroyed after a fall. Naomi Watts gives an impressive performance as a vaudeville actress who wins Kong's heart with her performance (and we can see why), and Adrien Brody gives a decent supporting performance as a well-meaning man who is brought against his will into this situation, and who, despite his good intentions, fails to understand Kong, as everyone but Watts' character does.
Visually, of course, the film is spectacular. New York City has the glamor of a Busby Berkeley musical number, which makes it seem all the more fitting that its inhabitants would be entertained by the show of a giant ape in chains, but is also quite beautiful, as is the island from which Kong hails, though the creatures who inhabit that island are quite nasty too.
But alas, this film did not fair as well in the box office as the "Lord of the Rings" films did, even though it was better than they were, and most everything that came out in 2005. If you have not yet seen it, I would strongly recommend it.
Match Point (2005)
Match Point of Our Love
It's been a long, long while since we've been strung out on love; and there's no mask of a smile that can hide what we're thinking of. From your heart I hear only distant echoes of empty love. I guess this must be the match point of our love.
Those are lyrics from "Match Point of Our Love," a Beach Boys song written long after most of their important work (except The Beach Boys Love You), which is built around a painful pun, and really doesn't have any right to exist. It has a lot in common with Woody Allen's "Match Point."
From the opening narration, which uses a tennis match as a metaphor for life to illustrate how important luck is (technically it's physics, but we won't dwell on that), the topic of luck is used as a painfully calculated motif. The worst is when a conversation between two investigating police officers is dragged on well past having any relevance whatsoever, so that one can "casually" remark that "some people have no luck at all."
How much of this film really does rely on luck, though? Sure, it was luck that Chris and Nola met again, but Chris' reactions to this were hardly luck. I suspect that Allen realized this, and that's why he put in two scenes involving "Crime and Punishment." But Allen does not play with that novel's ideas; he merely hopes that we've read it and relies on it to explain Chris' actions. Chris also quotes Sophocles at one point, in a blatant use of name dropping on Allen's part, as its relevance to the film is slight.
Mainly, my problem was with the screenplay. The performances were varied: Jonathan Rhys Meyers seemed like a more annoying, stupider Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson played the femme fatale character better than any other actress her age could have, though the film's tone was off, and she became less convincing as her character was supposed to be more sympathetic. One of the police officers also gave an irritating performance, though that could have been the screenplay's fault; after waking up one night, he delivers the film's most laughably bad line. The other performances did not really draw attention to themselves. The mise-en-scene and cinematography are fairly good; together they manage to encapsulate the dullness of the British aristocratic life that Chris has accepted, and which has provided him with material items while leaving him more intangible things to desire. And while they show dullness, the dullness becomes interesting somehow. Unfortunately, the screenplay is bad enough that it is difficult to recognize these things.
A few final notes: Woody Allen is not Ingmar Bergman, despite what he seems to think (if you see the movie, you'll know which scene I'm talking about). And why do we see so much of Chris in his office? How is that at all important to the film? Is it just so that Allen can show that he knows how to say "Thank You" in Japanese? Allen san wa totemo atama ga ii desu yo! Yeah, right.
Crash (2004)
It probably meant well
Perhaps I went in with expectations that were too high, because I liked "Million Dollar Baby," and everybody I spoke to who had seen this movie was in love with it. It is nowhere near as important or complex as it thinks it is, however, and functions as a bizarre kind of escapism. The film flaunts that it is about racism, that it reveals to us that people who don't consider themselves racist contribute to the problem to such an extent that the only people who might be stupid enough not to understand are the characters in the film. The narrative structure (which resembles "Short Cuts" or "Magnolia" or whichever of those you like) does not add much to the film; I suspect Haggis wanted to illustrate that these seemingly separate problems were systemic, but the screenplay is too calculated to succeed at this, and, by separating screen time between so many characters, they become oversimplified (with the possible exception of Don Cheadle's character, who is at times as simplistic as the other characters, but at times more real). Many seem more like one-dimensional characters with multiple personality disorder than fully developed human beings.
The most irritating thing about "Crash" is that its ideas in and of themselves are valid, but Haggis is incapable of using them effectively. It is sadly realistic that a white police officer (or anyone with a gun, for that matter) who does not consider himself racist could shoot an unarmed black man, making the assumption that the black man is armed and dangerous with little evidence other than racial profiling. What is not realistic, however, is that a police officer would pick up a hitchhiker (and if he were a racial profiler, certainly not a black man in a poor neighborhood), and Ryan Phillipe's screen transition is not convincing. It further calculates in a painfully symbolic scene, made even more painful by its use of slow-motion, in which a little girl is believed to be killed, and the sacrifice saves everyone.
What was Haggis thinking with the slow-motion scenes? With the exception of Wong Kar- Wai's "In the Mood for Love," slow-motion should never be used under any circumstances whatsoever. It is almost a signed confession of the calculation of the screenplay.
I think it says something for the significance of this film that discussions around "Crash" are debates over the believability of the screenplay, and not in terms of its subject matter, but its dealing with it. I have yet to hear one intelligent debate about modern racism in the United States that this film has inspired.