Up (2009) A Film by Pete Docter

When Pixar releases a film, it seems its reception is either bound to snowball into a mountain of acclaim or a mere anthill of interest. Recently, they've hit the former three consecutive times, with Ratatouille (2007), Wall-E (2008), and now Up (2009). Wall-E took Pixar's traditional ethos and turned them on their head, and it is safe to say that Up does the same. The film is no piece of cute anthropomorphism, nor is it a prosopopoeial message movie; in fact, Up is the first time, as far as I can tell, that we've seen real human blood in a Pixar film. Pete Docter delivers a very grounded, human tale with an elderly, secretly tender curmudgeon at its center. However, along with Wall-E, Pixar has proven to couple their new wave of refreshing animations with a similar set of flaws.

Because Up is such a deceptively simple film, it is all the more disappointing when it pounds us with action-packed, increasingly convoluted magical realism. The film opens with the same kind of economical, dialogue-free set-up that was impressive in Wall-E's Chaplinesque beginning. Carl, a four-eyed boy with a penchant for romanticism (following the newsreels he views of Charles Muntz, a heroic explorer with a zeppelin, he imitates Muntz's actions on the street near his house), runs into Ellie, another wannabe adventurer who clings to a desire to reach the South American oasis dubbed Paradise Falls, grows old with her, and sadly witnesses her death in a matter of minutes. The film is effortless in its ability to document their entire lifetime with poignancy (thanks to the incredibly realistic facial expressions), and despite the sequence's inevitably prompt structure, it is not schmaltzy and melodramatic but rather sentimental and nostalgic in the best possible way.

At this point Carl is left alone in the couple's lifelong home, a retired balloon salesman who holds tight to his memories of the past which are literally nailed to the walls. When a retirement home committee arrives one day to claim Carl, he cleverly assembles a balloon-oriented rig in the chimney that is released all at once, ripping the house from the bedrock and sending it straight into cumulus clouds. The next morning, while drifting peacefully in his home through the crystal-clear blue sky, he hears a knock at his door and finds Russell, the young boyscout who pledged at his door Jehovah's-Witness style the previous day, clutched against the siding. A hyper-passionate globetrotter hopeful himself, Russell joins Carl - much to his dismay as he chatters nonstop - on his excursion to Paradise Falls, aspiring to plant the house beside it so that Ellie's spirit, which is preserved inside, can bask in the glory. Docter does a terrific job of engaging in this section; the story is taut and the imagery, when seen for the first time, is conceptually marvelous. It is perhaps Pixar's biggest visual triumph ever to have juxtaposed so perfectly the petite house with its multicolored balloons looming above, the floor of puffy white clouds (an extension of the short that precedes the film in its theatrical showing), and the spotless blue sky. When they encounter a threatening thunderstorm and the house sways convulsively in the stratosphere, it hints at an entirely separate direction the story could have taken, one that would take place more prominently in the sky.

Unfortunately however, with Russell's surprisingly skillful steering techniques, the house lands in a majestic canyon in Venezuela directly across from the Falls. The visual invention still does not suffer in the slightest, most notably with the heavenly light that sprays the canyon, but the story takes a turn that is ultimately detrimental. Carl and Russell trudge around the canyon, tugging the house now like disciples dragging their weary camels, and pass through a mysterious jungle that houses talking dogs (not in the normal way, but with electronic collars) and a monstrously large but friendly parakeet-like creature. These unusual animals, they find, are being kept by Charles Muntz, whom Carl is ecstatic to meet at first. In classic Pixar fashion though, Muntz is revealed as the bad guy and the remainder of the film is spent lounging in lethargic good vs. evil conventions, with Carl as the truly unlikely hero. This is not the direction that was meant for Up, a simple story at heart about one man's search for meaning, no matter how small, just as humans were not the direction for Wall-E. After the wonderful opening, it seemed that the only place that Up could go was up.

Rushmore (1998) A Film by Wes Anderson

Nearly every Wes Anderson film has its own special setting, a world that is considerably unique even in the face of distantly recognizable forebears. The only exception is Anderson's first film, Bottle Rocket, where it felt like a mildly creative director was tuning his strings rather than the pedantic artist that Anderson has become. Therefore, Rushmore, his sophomore effort, arrived as the first shimmering foray into Andersonland, a place that is perpetually changing on the surface but which is unquestionably crafted by the same man. Rushmore's antecedents are well cataloged, with 60's coming-of-age films being the salient reference point: Lindsay Anderson's If.... (1968), with its tight private school community, Mike Nichols' The Graduate (1967), and Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude (actually from 1971), both of which contain highbrow main characters and young man/older woman relationships that can also be spotted in Rushmore.

Despite these similarities, Rushmore is very much its own film, as eager to shake off its inevitable comparisons as its main character Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) is to win the heart of Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams), a first-grade teacher he falls for at the Rushmore Academy. For Max, school is life, but ironically, this does not mean his grades are sparkling. What he cares about is extracurricular activities, the absurd extent of which seems a conscious attempt to prove his elitism to the leaders of the Academy. (In a wonderfully composed series of tableaux, Anderson documents all of them, from the Beekeeping Society to the Fencing Team.) Max is an extremely well-dressed prep with a razor-sharp wit and a constant drive to assert his point-of-view or justify the elaborate schemes he devises, which are meticulously organized but ludicrous on the outset. Miss Cross is charmed by Max's confidence only like an owner is to its pet, but Max's weakness is his emotional ignorance, and as a result he clumsily persists at becoming her boyfriend in spite of the age gap.



He finds support from Herman Blume (Bill Murray's first role in what would becoming a continuing collaboration with Anderson), a local millionaire and Rushmore alumnus who, outwardly, is the antithesis of Max: he is introverted and lonely and has been through Vietnam, putting him leagues ahead of Max regarding real-world experience, considering Max seems to have been supernaturally implanted with knowledge and is almost entirely blind to life outside of Rushmore (his attempts at universalism as a theater director result in wildly bombastic, technically astounding plays that are rife with caricatures and generalized attitudes). Max and Herman both learn in the end however that they are at the same maturity level, when after a cavalcade of ups and downs - Herman's betrayal of Max when he dates Miss Cross, Max's declaration to Herman's wife of his adultery - they meet at reconciliation.

Anderson never once judges his characters, viewing their relentless quirks and missteps with cool distance rather than treating them to a long, scrupulous eye. The film is paced accordingly; short scenes flow together with economical deftness, usually shot with a few wide and medium shots (utilizing barrel distortion), until the film's dynamics begin unfolding, in which case a few longer scenes ensue. Still, the bouts of dark drama do not lack a discernible comic edge, and vice versa. Anderson and his co-writer, his college roommate Owen Wilson, have clearly shown a knack for writing both droll one-liners ("one dead fingernail" immediately comes to mind) and spontaneous, downplayed physical behaviors (at one point, Bill Murray enters into a scene and randomly stuffs a kid's shot at a basketball hoop). Rushmore's strength lies in this sardonic humor as well as in Anderson's dedication to the visual schema: the film is told in monthly chapters which are announced by colored curtains. With this, Anderson also directly acknowledges and even foreshadows the theatrical strain that runs throughout his entire oeuvre. The film is one of his more modest successes, an always enjoyable character study before the increasingly style-heavy films that have followed.

The Lady from Shanghai (1947) A Film by Orson Welles

In its first twenty minutes, Orson Welles' The Lady from Shanghai has made quick work of establishing its main characters and their scenario: an Irish seaman, Michael O'Hara (Welles himself), becomes visibly infatuated by the angelic Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) after saving her from a mugging in Central Park and therefore agrees to work on her older husband's yacht on their trip to San Francisco. Mrs. Bannister has little interest in her schmucky husband, a balding lawyer with crutches, but stays with him due to some unspoken motive, likely money and prestige, whilst secretly building a romance with Michael. One of Mr. Bannister's business associates, George Grisby (Glenn Anders), arrives on the yacht and works a deal with Michael to sign a confession of the murder of Mr. Grisby so that he can disappear unscathed, claiming that O'Hara cannot be accused without visual confirmation of there being a corpse.

For some time, Welles does not slow down the narrative drive, frequently even appearing to have skipped over some necessary bits of information along the way. The characters are roughly sketched, with Elsa and O'Hara's relationship seeming to have missed a beat. Nonetheless, Welles infuses his performances with enough gusto to keep the story intriguing, providing a strong basis for the film's final act, which was undoubtedly given the most effort. The Lady from Shanghai is based somewhat arbitrarily on a novel by Sherwood King, and Welles used the film mainly as a way to profit for future endeavors. Although the pacing is quick, the film lumbers along, and Welles' apathy regarding the material is somewhat conspicuous. What did interest him was the story's rather convoluted finale, which he renders magnificently, so what comes before is carried only by character idiosyncrasies and stylistic flourishes (the long crane shot that follows the mugging and subsequent horse and buggy ride at the beginning). While Hayworth is positively radiant as the femme fatale, serviced greatly by Charles Lawton Jr.'s delicate blankets of light, the character of George Grisby is the finest example; he is a hulking enigma who chuckles at O'Hara via suffocating close-up and has an unorthodox way of dragging out consonants ("just tell 'em you're taking tarrrrget practice").

When O'Hara carries out his fake murder and Grisby speeds off on a boat across the pier, he becomes suspicious of Grisby's true intentions, and eventually finds himself being blamed for Grisby's unexpected death. Michael goes to court being defended by Mr. Bannister, himself angrily curious of O'Hara's relationship with his wife. In the film's mesmerizing funhouse mirror sequence, the double crosses of Elsa and Mr. Bannister are revealed to O'Hara in a stunning visual arrangement. It is as if the extent of secondary personalities that the characters harbored throughout the film are multiplied perpetually against the mirrored walls and Welles takes every opportunity to manifest this climactic meeting in a tricky manner; large faces superimpose over full, duplicated bodies, characters jigsaw along the fragmented frame, and bullets then shatter their images into full-fledged abstraction. It is one of the most experimental resolutions in a Hollywood narrative film and has lost none of its audacity. Unfortunately, studio executives became the downfall of many of Welles' films, and the finished Lady from Shanghai allegedly contained much more of this Wellesian brilliance before being hacked up for commercial purposes. What remains is short and clumsy but compelling.

On the Waterfront (1954) A Film by Elia Kazan

On the Waterfront marks a rare instance where we explicitly know a filmmaker's intentions in creating a film. Elia Kazan testified during Anti-McCarthy trials against some of his colleagues whom he was certain of Communist activity and was subsequently accused of betrayal. The road to this declaration was of course a difficult one that wore heavily on Kazan's conscience, and this is precisely what he details in On the Waterfront. Although he loosely cloaks it in a true story of a longshoreman who similarly betrayed the corrupt union he worked for, the film is really Kazan's saving grace, an elaborate attempt at using cinema as a means for self-liberation.

In this sense, Marlon Brando, who plays the role of an ex-fighter notoriously accused of being a "bum", really plays the director. When Terry Malloy (Brando) becomes unwillingly involved in the murder of a fellow dock worker, Joey Doyle, he finds himself caught between the persuasive hand of Father Barry (Karl Malden), who urges for him to testify against the Union, and the loyalties of his brother Charley (Rod Steiger) and Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), the fraudulent boss/closet gangster responsible for both Terry's former success as a fighter and his subsequent career collapse. To complicate matters, Terry finds a love in the angelic Edie (Eva Marie Saint), Joey Doyle's sister whom Terry feels guilty towards. Budd Schulberg's screenplay has all the makings of a deft melodrama but Kazan infuses it with heavy doses of neorealism. The interplay of character motivations makes for some engaging viewing; Terry's aforementioned interior battle of guilt, brotherly allegiance, and thirst to prove himself a well-meaning man, Edie's uncertain attachment to Terry, Father Barry's hard-nosed pursuit of justice, and Johnny Friendly's crooked predilection towards evil.

What binds it all together is the acting, most famously Brando's. His virile, hardened, yet gentle mannerisms foreshadow 50 ensuing years of outsider characters involved in mob business, namely the players in Scorsese films or Brando's own later turn in The Godfather. Frequently, Brando can transmute the notion of a sparring conscience into one downplayed facial expression or shrug. It is also true that he is often improvising in front of the camera, doing so with great comfort and grace. Although Kazan gets strong performances from nearly every other actor surrounding him (James Westerfield is a highlight as one of Terry's fellow workers who is supplied with several hysterical lines), the attention is always on Brando without being overwhelmingly one-sided. If any element has not aged well however, it's the grand and uplifting finale and Leonard Bernstein's intrusive score, which cuts into dialogue scenes with haphazardness. Given that the real longshoremen failed when testifying against his corrupt union, Terry's triumphant rise from a beating ("Am I on my feet?") feels enormously romantic. All criticisms aside, Kazan's cogent direction, Brando's show-stopping performance, and Boris Kaufman's stellar lighting justify On the Waterfront's stature as an American classic.

The Case of the Grinning Cat (Chats perchés) A Film by Chris Marker (2004)

At 85 years old, I suppose it's not a surprise to see Chris Marker grappling with the new millennium in a way that feels as if it was being witnessed by a filmmaker in the 1980's. The Case of the Grinning Cat, his hour-long documentary on the public and political changes that have come in the first four years of 21st century both internationally and in his native France, feels, in contrast to some of his groundbreaking films of the 60's and 70's, twenty years behind. Marker's mode of observing the world has remained hands-off and his approach even has a keen similarity to an earlier film of his, Grin Without a Cat (1977).

It seems Marker has carried a very old-world disposition along with him, so his transition to video is somewhat dissonant. The film was aired on French television and understandably so; it doesn't look too far off from a low-budget PBS documentary. The images, as usual, are shot entirely by Marker and have a strictly on-the-fly feel, as if they were taken by a tourist. There is a motorcade of shaky footage as well as clumsy zooms and cuts. News footage, still photos, and intertitles are also cycled into the muffled aesthetic, making it a grab-bag of media matter surrounding events such as 9/11, the French political campaign of 2002 (between Jacques Chirac, a right-wing, and Lionel Jospin, a leftist), and the genesis of the Iraq War. In the midst of these events, Marker watches a graffiti image of his favorite animal, the cat, pop up sporadically in France on buildings, bridges, trees, and in metro stations. The cat is illustrated in sharp, bold lines, has a maniacal grin from cheek to cheek, is colored bright yellow, and is signed "M. Chat". Just as much as the mix of cultural happenings he documents on screen, this rapidly duplicating piece of street art is Marker's focus. He seems to be interested in the evolution of the symbol, at one point appearing haphazardly as if nestled inside tree bark, likening the cat to an owl, and then on a placard amidst a public protest on Parisian streets regarding Bush's decision to invade Iraq. The grinning cat matures from a whimsical street logo meant to elicit smiles from passersby to a far-reaching symbol of freedom making rounds on network news programs.

While Marker does describe this very transition quite plainly himself via intertitles, he still does not give one element in his film higher precedence than another, frequently raising a point and then moving on right when a more manipulative filmmaker would hammer this factoid home with a subjective stance. This is what lifts The Case of the Grinning Cat out of the vat of mediocrity that its aesthetics may suggest it belongs in. If one can tune out the terse narration that was added to the English-language release of the film (not a product of Marker whatsoever), what we get is a characteristic observation of society by a thought-provoking French documentarian. It's just that the film feels so minor and almost pedestrian in comparison to some of his more accomplished works.

The Man From London (A londoni férfi) A Film by Bela Tarr (2007)

When writing about Bela Tarr's cinema, starting with the opening shots of his films is nearly unavoidable. He places so much emphasis on his extraordinarily long, spellbinding first impressions. Seven years after Werckmeister Harmonies, the greatest film of the 21st century thus far in my opinion, he has somehow managed to match the brilliance of its opening shot with The Man From London's, a feat which seemed unimaginable. Beginning on a rope dangling in water as it anchors a boat to shore and concluding with a train leaving its station seen through the wooden supports of a watchtower, the mind-bendingly complex shot tells an entire slow burner of a story that makes up a great chunk of the film's plot: Maloin (Miroslav Krobot), the gloomy watchtower attendant, paces back and forth in his roost and witnesses a classic bit of noirish tomfoolery involving a cloaked man with an ominous suitcase evading the boat guards. The shot is delivered in one swooping motion, first upward and eventually repetitively horizontal, and is far more abstract than the cow trudge of Satantango or the bar dance of Werckmeister Harmonies. A few times, it seems possible that Tarr has actually cut, but what really happens is the frame is variably interrupted by pitch black surfaces, the floor of the watchtower or the thick window frames. We also never get a solid view of the interior of the room from which Maloin is voyeuristically peering, or of Maloin himself in fact; the camera instead crawls in and out of focus directly behind his gaping back, interchanging this with his panoramic view of the pier. After approximately twelve demanding minutes, Tarr has infuriated fans of "getting to the point" and left others, like myself, in mesmerized awe.

The impact of The Man from London can therefore be likened to the striking of a chord on the piano which is subsequently left to sustain. This is not to suggest that it declines considerably, because the final ring of the piano strings can be just as beautiful as that initial contact. However, as much as the film establishes what may seem like a plot-heavy noir, Tarr loses a whole bunch of interest in his initial premise (which ultimately finds Maloin with the suitcase of money), instead meditating on the aftermath. He lets the brooding mood of the film's initial minutes simmer over tangentially into the rest of the film. Mihaly Vig's deep, vibrating score continues to underpin, but does so at briefer interjections. A police investigator (István Lénárt) arrives in the small town Maloin inhabits, determined to solve the murder that followed, but goes about his business in a routine manner, only existing in the film through Maloin's immediate awareness and being nearly immaterial due to the fact that the bulk of his discussions are spoken in English, which the French Maloin does not comprehend. So, yes, to an extent, the film is Tarr's most plot-driven piece (perhaps naturally, given its source material is a 1933 Georges Simenon novel), with classic elements such as murder and suitcases of money, but paradoxically continues to treat atmosphere with the same emphasis.



Tarr has stated that he intends on returning to simplicity for his declared "final film", The Turin House, because he felt he maxed out his capacity for technical bravura and narrative complexity with The Man from London. Of course, this comment is coming from the world's greatest arthouse practitioner, a filmmaker who is blind to current cinematic trends, so there is a bit of a knee-jerk response that accompanies it: "Huh? Complex?". Tarr's work is the holy grail of elusive cinematic excellence in the face of extremely modest material. I wouldn't say The Man from London is nearly pandering enough for Tarr to dive back to roots (even though it does have a surprising appearance from Tilda Swinton, an accomplished Hollywood name), but by the same token, he has pushed himself to the more conventional boundaries of his decidedly unconventional vision. Vig's music comes the closest it ever has to serving the classical function of a film score, showing up more frequently to bring mystery to the dullest of moments (Maloin purchasing his daughter Henriette (Erika Bók, the unforgettable little girl from Satantango) a fine scarf in attempt to detour his mind from the guilt of his silent possession of money). The use of Simenon's novel is also a choice that has raised eyebrows from Tarranites, considering it is quite orthodox indeed.

Nonetheless, Tarr's stylistic virtues remain intact. His work with cinematographer Fred Kelemen (a student of Tarr's) is characteristically marvelous. The film's look is a sterling example of chiaroscuro lighting, giving defined crispness to the world-weary wrinkles in his familiar character's faces (I say familiar because we have seen nearly every character in a Tarr film before and they essentially reprise their roles). At times, it was difficult to recall when a particular shot began, largely due to the fact that his stately camera movements travel anywhere and everywhere, showcasing an amazing ability to shift focal planes. As usual, Tarr does the majority of his sound work in post-production, which has admittedly become most noticeable here. The dubbing, while it does sometimes seem to be a choice meant to give a hypersensual quality to voices that succeeds frequently, can be aggravatingly disjointed. Still, Tarr's crystalline handling of the nuances of a bar room's ambiance proves to be one thing that never ceases to be singular; pool ball's rattle around with unimaginable amplification, accordions sound continuously, and the slurping of beer against the lips has wonderful clarity. That being said, the fact that Tarr returns so casually to an almost exact replica of the kind of pub that we saw in Damnation (1988) smacks of regression rather than artistic evolution.

I do believe that The Man From London was given an unfair glance by many critics at Cannes two years ago. The resounding verdict was that it was "good but not great Tarr". The film doesn't resonate with as much cosmic multivalence as Werckmeister Harmonies, but there is also an entirely different goal at hand. Tarr's more occupied by Maloin's passivity, a trait that eats away at him, and his desperate need to make something of his humdrum life, made known by the metronome-like rhythms that sometimes reverberate in his head. If the film were treated with the same kind of epic scope of its predecessor, it would have been off base. The Man From London is dealt with exactly as it should be, a reserved examination of the human condition with quiet intensity. It is different than any other Tarr film, and given his apparently impending retirement, it should be savored.

The Ice Storm (1997) A Film by Ang Lee

Fate is the engine that drives The Ice Storm and its cast of characters - the members of two Connecticut upper middle-class suburban families - into a flurry of entanglement that proves devastating. The touch of magic realism that brews beneath the spot-on period piece naturalism should come as no surprise in an Ang Lee film (the director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and is all the more respectable for its subtle deployment, the opposite of which contributed to the bloat of a film like American Beauty, another examination of the effects of suburban blues.

The Ice Storm, an adaption of Rick Moody's acclaimed novel, is set in 1973, a few years after the massive cultural and sexual revolution that occurred in the late 1960's. The Hood's and the Carver's are still living within this jostled cultural landscape, either fostering adulterous or criminal habits or experimenting with sex, alcohol, and drugs. Ben Hood (Kevin Kline) is frequenting the Carver house for afternoon delights with the bored wife Janey (Sigourney Weaver), thus triggering simmering suspicion in Elena Hood (Joan Allen). All of their children have uncertain romantic or scandalous pursuits: the rebellious Wendy Hood (Christina Ricci) speaks casually about sexual encounters with her friends at school and is secretly admired by Sandy Carver (Adam Hann-Byrd), to whom she makes the offer, "I'll show you mine if you show me yours.", Sandy's spacey brother Mikey (Elijah Wood) uses Wendy for strictly experimental purposes, and Paul Hood (Tobey Maguire) has "that feeling" for a fellow student with knowledge of Dostoevsky and existentialism but with a serious aptitude for heavy drug usage. They are all considerably unsure of their actions, a sentiment that is mirrored by their parents. Ben knows what he's doing is wrong but is too shallow and immersed in himself to properly inform his wife who stubbornly remains silent until the situation intensifies.

The film is structured modularly; to an extent, the scenes that make up the middle portion of the film (all occurring during a Thanksgiving weekend) could be rearranged without risking a loss of clarity. Lee opens the film on the night of the ice storm, revealing small fragments, shifts backwards, and returns to the storm for the final act. Therefore, the motif of ice is omnipresent, with there being nicely detailed shots of freezer trays scattered throughout. Water can frequently stand in as a symbol for sex, in its inexorable renewals and flow, so what exists for the characters is a kind of sexual freeze, a reduction of the sexual act to something that is rigid, cold, devoid of feeling, and ultimately physical. Because sex and sexual anxiety is the source of immaturity and much of the unspoken distress that the characters (both young and old) feel, the ice storm is somewhat of a karma device. It inevitably causes a death that is part of one of nature's domino effects.

To visually convey this metaphorical depth, Lee wisely chooses to not do a tremendous amount with his camera; instead he only occasionally provides gentle shots of the ice frozen solid to tree branches, and more tellingly will shoot through windows at his characters, the precipitation on the windows shrouding a mosaic of the outdoors reflected against the glass and the scene inside to evoke the double lives of his confused souls. The rich cast, made up of established Hollywood actors (Joan Allen being the highlight) and promising newcomers who have only currently become stars (i.e. Tobey Maguire and Elijah Wood), does a stellar job of bringing this ennui to life. Christina Ricci's performance is especially fantastic. With its simultaneous period relevance and timelessness (ancient Native American flute reverberates on the soundtrack), The Ice Storm is the most important film of Ang Lee's career.