You know what it cost you in the past

WILD GRASS (2009)

For some reason, I rarely come across films that kick off brilliantly, then gradually collapse. It’s usually the other way around: films that initially strike me as duds often have a way of surprising me in the end. The former is obviously more upsetting – becoming completely invested in a film only to see it slowly fall apart – but alas, the former is the case for Alain Resnais’ Wild Grass. The now eighty-eight-year-old Marienbad director, who I lauded with a considerable amount of praise in my last review, has sustained a productive career for over half a century, and while his filmography isn’t exactly teeming with an array of achievements, the modernist auteur has contributed beyond his share to French cinema. While Resnais’ work may span decades, he isn’t prolific, so selecting a film to follow-up Marienbad with should have been a breeze. Night and Fog was perhaps the obvious choice, but typical of my curiosity, I decided to check out his most recent effort. With Wild Grass, Resnais utilizes his unique approach of complex narratives featuring ambiguous characters, but unlike Marienbad, the setup here isn’t fully realized, or even successful for that matter.

Wild Grass opens with an existential narration that profiles a peculiar, zany-haired woman named Marguerite (Sabine Azéma) who has just been mugged on the street. The story’s narrator points out how in similar clichéd predicaments people feel compelled to call out for help, despite the slim odds of actually receiving any. She contemplates calling the police, but assumes her small dilemma doesn’t quite warrant involving the law enforcement. What’s interesting to point out here is that we never clearly see this woman’s face – even after following her home – until much later in the film. I suppose this is Resnais’ way of rendering the audience clueless regarding Marguerite's identity in order for us to see her the way the film’s second protagonist, Georges (André Dussollier), visualizes her – as a stranger.

En route to his car in an empty parking garage, Georges stumbles upon Marguerite’s stolen wallet and begins to obsessively psychoanalyze the stranger based on the contents inside. As he rummages through Marguerite’s papers, it becomes clear that the middle-aged man is a bit neurotic. Paranoid and tactless, Georges returns the wallet to the local police station and is clearly discomforted by the presence of officers; it’s suggested that Georges has a criminal past. Stuck on his irrational longing for the hapless stranger, Georges looks her up in a telephone directory and plots a way to meet her. After hounding Marguerite with fanatically detailed voice messages and even slashing her tires to convey his passion, Georges is finally approached by local officers, who advise him to cut all ties with the theft victim. In an unlikely turn of events, Marguerite begins to sympathize with Georges, experience guilt over the unforeseen impact she's made on both his life and marriage, and thus decides to pursue him – how comically ironic.

The narrative then begins to employ repetitive dialogue, deviating points of view, spontaneous, but integral character introductions, and dubious suspensions of disbelief. Oddly enough, this disordered method actually worked for Marienbad. So what did Resnais’ new wave critical achievement have that his latest feature lacked? Consistency. With Marienbad, viewers are generally able to determine the type of film it is from the offset. Wild Grass, however, unfolds as a seemingly ordinary story that boasts two innovative and realistic character studies which somehow get lost in the absurdity of the film’s final acts. Resnais offers two of the most complex characters I’ve seen in a film all year, then replaces them with vague mannequins of different ideals and frames of mind. In the film’s first half, we see Georges as a potentially dangerous, withdrawn archetype of severe neurosis while Marguerite displays an apprehensive woman who seeks to avoid crisis at all costs. These initial characterizations were amazing, but ultimately became lost in the story’s odd plot developments. I suppose I could interpret the title Wild Grass one of two ways: as a symbolic reference to Georges’ mental state or as a reference to the actual film, which is essentially as tangled and unkempt as wild grass itself.

7.5/10

The same conversations were always repeated

LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961)

Try to imagine David Lynch, Jean-Luc Godard and Giorgio de Chirico teaming up to remake Christopher Nolan’s Memento. The result could be convoluted, but captivating, and that’s essentially how I view Alain Resnais’ design for this drastically surreal tale of star-crossed lovers, upper-class spite, and pined-after liberation. Admittedly, I was fully prepared to dose off during the French auteur’s complex mystery – which is considered by many to be "one of the most boring movies of all time" – but once the characters were more or less introduced, I was too busy trying to dissect their history and comprehend the odd science of Resnais’ invention. His enigmatic setup is almost Kubrickian in detail, and of course while Kubrick came later with career landmarks 2001 and A Clockwork Orange, I couldn’t help but pick up on possible influences drawn from this film: the tracking shots, classical music, vast interiors and ambiguous imagery all struck me as tinges of Kubrick’s respective style. Sure, the film is incredibly artsy, but the pretensions eventually dissolve and we’re left with the framework of a familiar love story that I found quite accessible.

I suppose I should start off by tackling moviegoers’ misconception of Marienbad as “dull and pretentious”, because while the opening may be a bit off-putting – a near inaudible narrator fading in and out of repetitive sentences – and the plot may run exceptionally slow, the film has a lot to offer given the proper insight. Perhaps the “dull” remarks stem from the story’s drab interplay between our two unnamed characters; a man and a woman referred to as X and A respectively. The story is set within an extravagant chateau, presumably in Marienbad, decorated with baroque ornaments, elaborate furniture and soulless butlers. Our two main characters happen to be guests at a social gathering in this maze of corridors exclusive to the upper-crust and full of “fun and games” only these stuffy aristocrat-types could appreciate. The chief protagonist – Mr. X – finds his fellow guests shallow and uninteresting, so he pursues after a woman – Ms. A – who he claims to have trysted with last year at Marienbad – clever. Ms. A, however, doesn’t recall Mr. X or any affair with the man, yet the persistent X basically stalks A until she cracks and acknowledges their past. We’re later introduced to her husband, and like a number of prototypical love stories, Mr. X sets out to thwart Ms. A’s domineering partner in games of Nim, rescue her from the oppressive upper-class, and then run off to live happily ever after. Standard formula, right? Essentially, but the way it’s told is pretty off-the-wall.

Here’s the problem most people have with Marienbad: it’s dialogue-heavy. The narrative vaguely drags the audience through obscure shifts in time and space, and what’s worse is that most viewers aren’t likely to be invested in these characters’ plight because – quite frankly – their plight isn’t all that relatable. Fair enough. On the subjective end, this film is a mystery, and like most mysteries, I found it incredibly interactive. The entire point is to investigate the characters presented and discern their motives. Resnais has intentionally molded this story into a disorienting muddle of events in order to confuse the audience. The objective then becomes assembling clues – as indistinct as they are – to approach some sort of revelation. With Marienbad, Resnais is simply trying to give our noggins a little workout; while tossing in some soap-opera fluff to atone for the loss brainpower. As far as I’m concerned, it works.

Solving Marienbad may be problematic, but interpreting it is duck soup considering there's no definitive explanation. For instance, I could infer that the chateau epitomizes limbo with no means of escape and I wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. The snobby guests of this colossal mansion are essentially trapped by their haughty delusions of happiness and have nothing to absorb themselves in besides tedious gossip and bland card games. Then there’s Marienbad’s two lovers, who are disillusioned by this world, yet are unable to break free from it, and in a way feel destined to it. They mostly fear the doldrums that their lifestyle entails as well as the likelihood of being metaphorically frozen in time like their peers.

In many ways, Marienbad reminds me of my experience with Inland Empire; hard to fully understand, but fun to interpret. Obviously not as schizophrenic as Lynch’s freakish thriller, Marienbad offers adequate storytelling and grandiose cinematography. Resnais’ narrative may be the film’s Achilles' heel, but at least he handles the plot in a way that doesn’t completely insult our intelligence.

8/10

I'm a Dolly, bred and buttered

WINTER’S BONE (2010)

Cormac McCarthy’s stark “Outer Dark” was perhaps my first dreadful experience with the Appalachia-centric genre. The novel is brilliant and McCarthy’s structure is immaculate, but there’s something about cold, desolate settings like his that just unnerve me. It could tie in with my brief upbringing in the south; I was raised in Georgia for a couple of years, so when I read books like McCarthy’s and watch films like Deliverance – and now Debra Granik’s Winter's Bone – I can’t help but associate my childhood with such bleak surroundings. Of course, I’m not saying that all rural films that entail that “backwoods horror” element have zero redeeming factors – many, like Deliverance, are incomparable – but those factors prove difficult to appreciate, or even identify when the plot is engulfed by impoverished environments and gritty vernacular. This was my beef with Winter’s Bone. There are no saving graces outside the story’s wretched atmosphere and the film’s miserable disposition becomes taxing after the first thirty minutes or so. However, despite Granik’s Bone being dreary to a fault, you inevitably fall in love with Jennifer Lawrence’s steadfast portrayal of the film’s heroine.

When I first caught wind of Granik’s mystery thriller back during Sundance, it instantly became one of my most anticipated of the year. Films propelled by brave female protagonists usually do it for me because they’re a rarity these days, and Bone’s rousing story was enough to get me hyped. Hype is unfortunately what ruined my viewing experience, because throughout, I was eagerly awaiting the moments of “mounting tensions” and “raw poetry”, yet the tension was spent and the "poetry" was dry.

Granik’s vision is actually an adaptation of Daniel Woodrell’s novel of the same name that recounts seventeen-year-old Ree’s (Lawrence) desperate search for her fugitive father through the local criminal apparatus. With her father missing and her mother riddled with depression, Ree has been entitled with the demanding role of matriarch over the Dolly family, which also consists of her younger brother and sister. Matters are made worse after she discovers that her father – who’s infamous around town for his dealings in meth – has placed the family’s property up as a bail bond. Left with few options, Ree decides to track her father down, who presumably died while on the lam, in order to salvage her home and her family.

It becomes clear that Ree is an exceptionally strong-willed young woman, but as her burdens become too much to bare, she begins to find adulthood difficult to embrace. In one of the film’s many maudlin scenes, Ree consults with her mother – who’s practically mute – about the decisive steps she should take regarding the house and the pursuit of her father. She receives impassive silence in return, sheds a tear or two, and then burrows deeper into her own indecisiveness. It’s upsetting really, because right on the brink of overcoming these subdued personalities, the moment’s undercut by the next monotonous scene.

Overall, the film’s pretty – and I hate this word – bland, even fairly one-dimensional as far as character development goes. Lawrence’s performance is engaging, harrowing, etc., but we’re only shown one side of Ree; there aren’t any light shades to her temperament. It’s unfortunate – because I was really looking forward to this one – but the film lacks heart, and I can usually determine this simply from the dialogue, which in this film’s case, was written like lines in a drippy work of prose. The narrative is cold and misses out on a fluid, well-balanced structure that could have fostered a true masterwork, but luckily the ensemble’s quality performances and the film’s shocking conclusion aren’t completely impaired.

7.5/10

The sky is very wide, the way is very long

CITIZEN DOG (2004)
 

Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s whimsical Amélie has become an influential template amongst new-wave directors like Wisit Sasanatieng. The comparisons are unavoidable, but Sasanatieng’s Citizen Dog is successful in its own right by establishing itself within a separate, distinctive playing field. Unlike Jeunet’s French comedy, Citizen Dog was originally a novel written by Sasanatieng’s wife Koynuch. However, akin to Amélie, Sasanatieng’s contemporary take is pure eye candy – introducing us to a lovesick good Samaritan proportional to Amélie herself – and while the film’s inconsistent magic doesn’t quite exceed Amélie’s incessant novelties, the overall product provides for a remarkable concept.

I’m completely unfamiliar with Thai culture, so I can only assume that Dog is filled with explicit nods to the country’s myths and theologies that completely went over my head. From the outset, we’re able to distinguish Thai culture as one of the film's centerpieces. In the opening, Pod’s (Mahasamut Boonyaruk) grandmother (Raenkum Saninn) advises that he adhere to said culture’s doctrines upon his transition to Bangkok, where he wishes to make a living. Ignoring his grandmother’s warning – that he’ll grow a tail if he moves to the city – Pod settles down in Bangkok with a modest abode and factory job at a local sardine cannery.

Pod eventually meets and becomes infatuated with Jin (Saengthong Gate-Uthong), a peculiar young maid who’s perpetually engrossed in a foreign white book that fell from the sky during her youth. Pod swaps up vocations several times – security guard, cab driver, etc. – in order to better acquaint himself with Jin; who’s seemingly oblivious to the country boy’s advances. The story essentially intermixes Pod’s intense longing for Jin and his goodwill toward strangers in disordered, but comical fashion.

The significance of having a “tail” is touched on later in the film as a metaphor for success, and when Jin realizes that Pod lacks a “tail” of his own, their chances of marriage or even sustaining a relationship become slim. The irony lies in the idea that success is arbitrary – illustrated however we choose to define it – suggesting that personal ambitions are easily achieved based on one’s outlook. But Pod’s shortcomings are the least of Jin’s worries; her obsession with the little white book culminates into a myriad of misconceptions and stray paths that prevent her from seeing the answers laid out before her and nearly jeopardizes her potential love life.

Thoroughly enjoyable, Citizen Dog is a vibrant parable. Sure, as I mentioned before, Dog’s magic is erratic – some areas felt uninspired – whereas Amélie’s is seamless, but Sasanatieng’s fairytale prevails as a feast for the eyes. The arrangement of visual coups is satisfying in itself, but the story packs a fair wallop of its own that symbolizes the extraneous measures we take to seek fulfillment in life.

8/10

Everything sits in the order somewhere

ANIMAL KINGDOM (2010)

Despite my comprehensive critique of the year a few entries back, 2010 is shaping up to be more promising than I expected. Four Lions somewhat replenished my faith in what’s appeared to be lackluster year film-wise and now David Michod’s impeccable Australian drama Animal Kingdom has me choking back a few unwarranted gripes. As a matter of fact, Kingdom may possibly rank as my favorite amongst this year’s offerings; which is a bit amusing considering this particular genre isn't quite up my alley. Call me a bore, but I prefer moderately slow-paced flicks, and crime thrillers – such as this one – tend to be the opposite. So, “what a treat,” I thought, as Kingdom peeled open so poignantly to expose the haunting character studies of an afflicted, yet closely integrated criminal family.

Michod dabbles into the darkest colors on his palette to convey the gritty, hostile side of Australia – playing against our perceptions of the sunny continent down under – in a grim tale of family and corruption. Kingdom dives directly into the cut-throat gangland of Melbourne and devours our mechanical protagonist – Josh (James Frecheville) – in the process. After losing his mother to a heroin overdose, the pokerfaced orphan dials up his grandmother (Jacki Weaver) to solicit temporary lodging. Weaver has three sons of her own – one who’s no more than a few years older than Josh – and all are involved in some form of criminal activity. Josh quickly ascertains the lion’s den he’s fallen into, however feels guarded, even influenced by this aggressive triad of brothers. The film progresses – with staggering revelations – as the triad weakens, leaving Josh vulnerable and emotionally wrecked.

Antagonistic films like this hold a special place in my heart. The criminal mind is dangerous, yet fascinating to explore, and Kingdom does just that with pitch-perfect execution. The characters exhibit depraved behavior that's unsound to a fault and haphazardly triggered in compromising situations, yet we pity them. It takes a certain amount of finesse to mold such wickedly demoralized characters that stir up the amount of sympathy Michod’s felons do, and what makes Kingdom an arresting triumph is that past misdemeanors and criminal histories are of little relevance to the plot, while character introspection and paths forward drive the film.

9/10

My dog barks some. Mentally, you picture my dog.

WILD AT HEART (1990)

I’d be lying if I said David Lynch wasn’t an intimidating filmmaker. His films are, for the most part, some of the hardest to decipher, yet his execution is brilliant. A man of few words, Lynch is an advocate of “show, not tell” and relies heavily on eerie visuals to relay his messages. He’s an idealist who exudes creative spirit, so much in fact that his ingenuity is often buried underneath an array of mismatched puzzle pieces and lost to the bromidic eye. In Wild at Heart, visions of violence and malevolence entangle a seemingly sweet love story fueled by dreams of Emerald City. A fan of the 1939 classic, Lynch ensures that his Wizard of Oz references are impossible to miss, but I saw them as little red herrings scattered throughout, fooling the audience into regarding the film as anything but an indirect representation of man’s savage nature.

From what I hear, Barry Gifford’s neo-noir pulp novel "Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula" is quite different from Lynch’s adaptation, and – while not having read the book myself – I wouldn’t doubt it. The film may be considered Lynch’s easiest to understand (it is, for the most part) but the Lynchian oddities are abundant and I’m sure the book could never dream of conceiving such bizarre kinks. Lula (Laura Dern) and Sailor (Nicolas Cage) are pseudo-reincarnations of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley respectively. They’re both jaded internally due to negligent upbringings, but sex-crazed externally. The opening scene threw me initially because I walked in with little background and was pretty stunned by Cage’s brutality. This opening number is just a taste of Lynch’s macabre world. What we have here is a world where jealous mothers send assailants to execute their daughters’ lovers, and this happens to be the case for Lula and Sailor. Diane Ladd plays Lula’s vindictive mother Miss Fortune – appropriate – and she’s the film’s brazen Wicked Witch prototype. The goons she enlists to slay Sailor can be seen as her “flying monkeys”; sentimental Farragut (Harry Dean Stanton) and sinister Santos (J.E. Freeman), both out to win Ladd’s heart by disposing of the Elvis impersonator. As the film progresses, Lynch tosses a slew of unforgettable oddballs our way and polishes the story off with a shopworn happy ending.

Lynch builds Wild at Heart around this Wizard of Oz idealism – pretty blatantly – and when I think of Oz I think of a spiritual journey toward "illusory splendor". Similar to Dorothy’s journey along the yellow break road, Lula and Sailor are destined to seek fulfillment; despite facing many obstacles along the way and – after reaching their destination – realizing that perhaps their dreams were ill-considered. Lynch’s decision to sculpt Wild after Oz is intriguing, if not a bit off-kilter, but I would have opted for less obvious nods to Fleming’s classic.

I called Lynch’s Oz references red herrings earlier, and this may be an unfounded opinion, but they really come across that way. After sifting through the Oz bologna, I noticed the uncanny similarities Wild shares with Godard’s Week-End. Lynch is as overtly picaresque as Godard in depicting society's callous response toward the human condition. In one scene, Lula displays her disinterest in reality by irritably flipping past chilling death reports in search of rock n’ roll tunes on the radio to lull back into her contrived fantasy. Other scenes show characters on the verge of death at relative disregard, worrying more about hairbrushes and purses (a la "my Hermes handbag!") and reminiscing past mishaps of similar aftermath. And how could you miss Lynch’s gesture during the final act’s traffic jam scene? Week-End’s more political, but you can’t deny that the two films share illustrations that suggest a frighteningly indifferent world.

On the upside, I admire Lynch’s singular approach in elucidating another creator's work; he’s better at penning his own ideas, but he makes a good effort here. The Oz bits, while inspired, are a tad excessive, and I wish Lynch would have taken advantage of his trademark obscurity to mitigate the allusions. Overall, Wild at Heart is an amusing satire – of sorts – on love, road trips and dynamic duos harking back to Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde and perhaps inspiring Tarantino’s Natural Born Killers.

7.5/10

Is he a martyr or is he a Jalfrezi?

FOUR LIONS (2010)

Amid the heated controversy surrounding the recent opposition to Park51 – or the “ground zero mosque” – a number of PSAs, news columns and reports have spawned quite notably throughout the media. Amongst these was a piece on NPR’s All Things Considered that touched on the growth of anti-Muslim sentiment and the deterioration of Muslim/non-Muslim relations in America. The saddest part of the special was not learning how widespread anti-Muslim sentiment has escalated across the country, but hearing Muslims testify to the most absurd misconceptions they encounter every day, and how Muslims and their creed have been misconceived since the days of the Puritans. So when I stumbled upon satirist Chris Morris’ latest farce Four Lions, I was both skeptical and intrigued in seeing how he portrayed a scatterbrained group of radical Muslims living in London. Needless to say, while a bit heart-rending, Morris’ satire does not disappoint.

The film’s title derives from The Lion King, as implied when Omar – a British jihadist, and our hero – ad-libs his own rendition of the Disney classic to his son. He uses Simba as an archetype for glory and dreams of one day realizing his own ambition of martyrdom. Determined to have his name echo through history, Omar seeks to be radicalized and then upgraded to a suicide bomber via training camp. Of course to achieve such an abstract goal he forms a crack team of fellow Muslims; including the blond-bearded, blue-eyed convert Barry (Nigel Lindsay). Idiocy ensues as the group’s conflicting ideologies ultimately foil their terrorist plot.

Although Four Lions makes light of an arguably taboo subject, Morris’ intention for doing so is pretty darn amicable. He’s taken a hot topic that has consumed a vast amount of media attention – and our lives – and deconstructed it in a way that questions our perceptions of the Islamic faith. Morris is essentially having a good-humored laugh at global ignorance. The tables are turned and we’re shown the underside of this "nebulous, hostile Arab world" that society has artlessly sketched out for us. We’re shown humans, not suicide bombers. We’re shown families, not radical groups. We’re shown that alien ideologies are of no greater threat than our own and that the real danger lies in misunderstanding.

8.5/10