Robert Downey Jr.as Tony Stark Terrence Howard as James “Rhodey” Rhodes Gwyneth Paltrow as Virginia “Pepper” Potts Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane Shaun Toubas as Yinsen
AC/DC’s “Back in Black” plays from Tony’s personal radio which looks out of place in the tank.
Tony sees one of his company’s missiles land next to him.
Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) is punctured by the blast shrapnel as the blinding sun hovers over him.
The sun fades to a blinding light source.
Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) is captured by the 10 Rings.
The opening of the movie establishes that we’re in a desert. The tank convoy seems to be subsumed by the environment around it. This imposing environment is disrupted as we cut to the tank Tony is in. His personal boombox blasts rock music in protests against the silent environment as he likewise tries to coax the nervous soldiers around him into becoming more jovial. This fun is immediately shattered as Tony is grievously injured by one of his own missiles. He wakes up from his injury captured by a terrorist group at which point the movie cuts to 36 hours in the past.
We start in media res as Tony Stark( Robert Downey Jr.) , a billionaire inventor and weapons manufacturer, tries to ease the tension in a tank full nervous soldiers. His jovial and comedic décor feels as out of place in the vehicle as the presence of AC/DC’s “Back in Black” does playing in the soundscape of a barren wasteland (from a diegetic source at that: Tony’s personal radio); a rock and roll persona and sound trying to make their impact felt in a war-torn environment seems the perfect analogy for the story to come.
Tony’s presence breaks through to the soldiers who finally feel at ease with his celebrity behavior. A soldier asks to take a picture and puts up a peace sign to which Tony comments that it’s because of peace that he’s still in business; weapons in war are needed for eventual tranquility. The soldier puts up the peace sign for the picture at which point the convoy is ambushed, the soldiers are killed, and Tony experiences firsthand the devastation of his own weapons as one of his missiles lands near him, explodes, and sends shrapnel straight into his chest. A peace achieved through war imploding as peace breaks to war. Poetic.
The screen dissolves from the blinding hot sun Tony stares at while bleeding out to a lighting fixture. We cut to Tony being held hostage in a cave by terrorist figures. The title card drops and we go back in time 36 hours to when Tony was living the life we’d expect of a “genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist”. He misses a conference in his honor in lieu of gambling with groupies. He deflects criticism of his war profiteering with quips and flirtatious machinations. Any serious matter meets him and turns into something fun-filled and fantastic instead, but we know how his story will eventually go.
While the structure of the opening isn’t as ambitious as something like Nolan’s Batman Begins (which also starts in media res), but extends the layering of different timelines to more effectively demonstrate its protagonists core traits and paths forward for growth, it does a good enough job of keeping the audience enthused and invested in Tony’s journey. We know how Tony’s character traits have led him to where he is and as such can better appreciate and focus on his development through the film. It’s at this point we return to Tony in his current situation, trapped by a terrorist group who demands he make them the same weapons that he sells the United States.
Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) poses with a solider who puts up a peace sign.
Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) puts up a peace sign while being rescued.
The peace sign transforms from a hollow symbol that Tony references as being the end goal of his military inventions to being the driving force motivating him to remove his weapons from the wrong hands. The sign previously held by the soldier becomes more personal to Tony; he’s now authentically pursuing peace.
With the help of another trapped scientist, Yinsen (Shaun Toubas), Tony manages to create and escape in an armored suit attached with a variety of weapons. It’s in this “iron man” suit that he escapes from the compound after setting it to flames. After an trek in the desert, he is found by the military. He puts up the peace sign again – the first time since he put it up jokingly with the soldier earlier- with a real understanding of the dark side of the price paid to achieve it and newfound mission : removing his companies weapons from the hands of criminals and terrorists.
Even though the story’s beats feels well-trodden now, they still manage to remain unique and captivating in an sea of Iron Man copy-cats (many of which are done by Marvel themselves). In some part, this is due to Iron Man’s successful lifting story elements from – and I don’t mean to beat a dead horse here – Batman Begins, which is in many ways the archetypal super-hero origin story. Executing the flashback start, a protagonist struggling to maintain a balance between their sense of duty and their humanity, and an antagonist set-up that operates on multiple layers in a way that’s compelling would already make Iron Man a fantastic mimicry with an interesting enough set of themes (namely the duplicity of the military industrial complex), but what pushes and sets it apart from both Batman Begins is its absolute commitment to making the human part of the story real. No character, from Tony’s friends to the man himself, comes off overly serious (Batman Begins) or overly campy (Batman & Robin). Instead each of them feels grounded and genuine, both in the way they carry themselves and the way they deal with Tony’s subsequent decisions.
It’s surprising then, to learn that the movie followed a very bare-bones script and required the actors and directorJon Favreau to improvise many scenes on the day of [1] Woerner, M. (2015, December 16). Jeff bridges Admits Iron Man movie had no script. Gizmodo. https://gizmodo.com/jeff-bridges-admits-iron-man-movie-had-no-script-5417310. You wouldn’t be able to infer based on the fluidity and cohesiveness that the actors are interacting with little planning which is a mark of praise for everyone involved. The end result is a movie where all the characters interact and come off of one another in a smooth non-manufactured way. The quips we’re used to now in Marvel movies feel far more authentic here because they naturally arise from the situation as opposed to feeling like an attempt at controlling our emotional response to the situation. It helps that in comparison to Tony almost every other character is quip-less which makes Tony’s zingers more prominent and distinct in comparison to the dialogue happening around him. The result is a movie where almost every character is one we can believe if not get behind allowing us to suspend our disbelief at the comic-book extremities and sip the superhero smoothie with ease.
In particular, the relationship between Tony and his secretary/love-interest, Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) propels the movie in a way that previous entries in the super-hero genre have felt lacking. The friendship between the two is established in the first flashback and lets us know that they have a long and storied history with each other and are aware of each others mannerisms. It’s clear there might be something there, but we know it won’t work because of Tony’s traits; he’s egoistical, unable to remember basic things (like Pepper’s birthday), and is focused on fully enjoying and embracing his status as billionaire playboy. The subtle nuances in their interactions are a result of both Downey Jr.’s and Paltrow’s fantastic ability to play off another – their chemistry feels palpable. The sense of progression he works on pursuing his new goals and begins to change, Pepper (and us the audience) and his relationship serves as a kind of barometer on his character growth.
Additionally, Tony’s growth is characterized by his suit in a literal sense. At the start of the movie, he is impaled by shards from a stolen missile of his. The weapon he made to stand for peace thus threatens to take that very peace away from him in every way. These shards are held at bay with an arc reactor he makes with Yinsen. This shining bright circle in the middle of Tony’s chest is the heart of his suit, powering the machine, is necessary in keeping his literal heart beating, and is the start of his first real human interaction in the form of Yinsen thereby representing a more metaphorical heart. He goes through a few reactor changes; each scene involving them is matched with a similar movement in his character – the fact that Pepper is so intimately involved with this motif in particular adds to Tony’s humanity as well, ultimately giving the movie it’s staying power in a sea of superhero movies.
Unfortunately, the thing holding the movie back from the highest echelon of the genre is how safe the movie plays with some of the unique elements it introduces. The start of the movie primes us to get ready for a rock infused score that coincides with Tony’s aura at the moment. I kept hoping that the music would continue as a motif; something like a different style of rock for different moods and progressions would have been interesting. Instead, the rock music is used sporadically and we hear a generic feeling score in the background [2]This shocked me given the composer is Ramin Djawadi whose Game of Thrones score I absolutely adore. I wish he could have captured more of the badass, independent, rocker vibe we get from the actual … Continue reading Likewise, the propulsive energy and clever plot development that defines the majority of the movie comes to a bit of a hiccup near the climax when the story decides to capitulate to cliché that it had no need to give in to. It’s not that the final clash is horrible or unsatisfying; there are clever callbacks littered through this sequence and the way it concludes is neat in the context of certain motifs. It just feels like it betrays possible clever ways out in favor of an option that’s totally unnecessary.
It’s a testament to the cast and crew that even over a decade into the Marvel franchise, Iron Man stands up as one of the better movies responsible for laying down an effective formula that the studio has been using in it’s movies ever since. The action scenes and many of the more “quiet”[3] By quiet, I mean the slower suit transformation sequences that feature less action but still look awesome. digital effects scene still have that same wonderous (and now as time has passed, endearing) effect years later because their aim is to create the same propulsive feeling found in comic books proper. While it may no longer be as “shiny” as it once was, Iron Man is still a movie you can put on and have a great time with.
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TLDR
Iron Man is proof that some gambles are worth taking. Though the movie started as an un-scripted grab-bag of ideas, the end result is anything but – feeling as slick as the Iron Man suit Tony Stark adorns. By focusing on creating an immersive and lived-in world from the geopolitical discussions to the nuanced way characters work off one another, Favreau and his team managed to create one of the most “humane” super movies. It may not be as flashy as some of the best in the genre, but it’s staying power stems from the heart feeling it generates. It’s simply a great time.
Rating
8.6/10
Grade
B+
Go to Page 2for the for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis. Go to Page 3to view this review’s progress report .
Dev Patel as Sir Gawain Ralph Ineson as the Green Knight Alicia Vikander as Lady / Esel Joel Edgerton as Lord Sarita Choudhury as Morgan Le Fay Sean Harris as King Arthur Kate Dickie as Queen Guinevere
NOTE: This is a new release and the review is based off a theatre viewing. This means the review won’t feature common elements like visual analysis, extended theme analysis, or long-form discussions of the cinematic techniques being used. Once I am able to get a copy of the movie to watch, pause, analyze, and get stills from the review will be updated to match the current site’s standard.
The movie starts on our young knight-to-be Gawain (Dev Patel) waking up in a brothel partaking in booze and making merry with women. It’s clear from his appearance and familiarity with the surrounding that this is nothing out of the ordinary for him. In direct contrast to our expectations, the nephew of the great King Arthur (Sean Harris) seems anything but coming off more like a loser getting by on the name of his family – lazing around in hedonistic fashion as opposed to doing anything suggesting knightly values.
He comes home to his mother, Morgan Le Fay (Sarita Choudhury) where he’s admonished for his unkempt behavior, cleaned, and then sent to to feast with King Arthur and Queen Guinevere (Kate Dickie) and the members of the round table. At first he sits afar from the king and partakes in the splendor of the feast but is then summoned by Arthur to approach the place closest to the royal couple. It’s here where Arthur asks his Gawain to tell the couple Gawain’s tale. Gawain’s expression sours as he responds he has no tale to tell at which point he’s interrupted by Guinevere who reminds him that he’s still more than capable of engaging on journeys to experience and then provide such tails. As if to answer her claim, the room darkens and a large figure, the Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) approaches. He asks the crowd around him if there’s a knight willing to play a beheading game with him. Gawain uncharacteristically accepts the “call to adventure” and lops off the figure’s head. The Green Knight reveals that he’s very much alive while grabbing his lopped head and tells Gawain to meet him at one year’s time to receive a similar blow.
A year slowly passes in the town. Gawain drinks and frets at the prospect of having his head chopped off; unlike the knight, he can’t grow his head back. He is championed by the city who finally views him as aligning with the knightly virtues he’s expected to align with while dreading having to act good on what those virtues entail. This duality is reflected in a puppet performance that we (and the town) get to see on repeat – a microcosm of the larger story – that shows Gawain lopping off the Green Knight’s head, gaining honor, and then losing his own head and dying. In fact, Gawain is literally forced onto his journey by Arthur. Thus, the story begins.
The setup, due to it’s nature as adaptation of the poem, aligns perfectly with the “hero’s journey”. Gawain starts off in his “normal” world as a vagrant getting by on his family’s name. He is “called to adventure” by the Green Knight. Based on the structure of the journey (and the poem proper), Gawain would meets a mentor/helper who guides them through problems until eventually he has to come to terms with the issue himself. They he would be “reborn” and come back to his original realm changed. However, as Gawain proceeds on his adventure it becomes clear that director David Lowery has made some huge changes to both the story and the nature of the hero’s journey itself. He runs into mentors of sorts, but each encounter with them feels more like an impediment than anything, making it unclear who is ally and who is foe.
Each character he runs into – a young boy (Barry Keoghan), a headless ghost (Erin Kellyman), a horde of giants, a fox, an overly accommodating Lord ( Joel Edgerton ) and Lady ( Alicia Vikander) – presents a scenario that is both analogous to Gawain’s own fear of the outcome of the beheading game whilst simultaneously representing one of the five virtues of knighthood: chastity, courtesy, friendship, generosity, and piety. Every scenario presents Gawain a choice he can make – a duality that is represented not only in vibrant symbolic color shifts (red to green) but also in methodologically slow paced scenes which literally demonstrate Gawain’s contemplation of what the future holds. For example, early on in his journey, Gawain is left for dead. The camera starts on him and slowly arcs around one way before coming back on him dead – the fate that awaits him if he doesn’t act – before arcing all the way in the opposite direction to show him in his original position. This constant repetition not only reinforces that death is always in the background as a finality but also makes it abundantly clear that honor is always a choice and a choice that one has to undergo by themselves.
While this goes against both expectation and the poem itself, that doesn’t mean that Lowery’s adaptation is inauthentic. It’s precisely in the way that it deconstructs knighthood shines that it is then allowed to appreciate the importance of the virtues. The adaptation functions more like a dialogue between Lowery, the poem, the nature of knighthood, and the audience proper. What the virtues represent and the way they’re handled in the poem proper are questionable in some parts, namely the ending (something I agree with). The adaptation challenges these moments by examining them under the framework of what the virtues would actually entail in an attempt to determine what a true knightly journey for Gawain would actually entail.
However, the consequence of what these moments actually mean are up to the interpretation of the viewer. The movie is littered with sprawls of text that seemed ripped from the poem and plastered into the world of the movie – a combination of the diegetic and non-diegetic elements. At one point, Gawain’s name shows up on the screen in rapid fashion and font styles like something out of Climax’s multiple title drops. These textual intrusions become something else when Gawain eventually runs into a Lady who informs him that she likes to collect texts and modify them in places she thinks could use work. Thus, the adaptations’ changes can be seen as a direct response to the source work itself while also suggesting the world of the movie is one of constant interpretation. The intentional ellipses in meaning aren’t meant to confuse as much as meant to draw the audience into conversation on what honorable action would mean in that situation. The movie pushes this to the extreme by ending the story near halfway point of the traditional hero’s journey, inviting the audience to come up with their own ending.
In many ways, the narrative shares a similarity to Bergman’s The Seventh Seal which follows a knight, Antonius, looking for meaning in a world filled with suffering and God’s apparent silence. As he goes from spectacle to spectacle, he tries to gleam some kind of meaning from God. Here, Gawain is not considered with the silence of God as much as he is with the ambiguity on what it means to be a true knight. Like Antonius, he goes from scene to scene trying to determine what an honorable knight would do and like Antonius he never receives any kind of confirmation that what he’s done is in accordance with this ideal.
For those of you looking for a straightforward narrative that follows the traditional beats, this may be a deal-breaker. However, to those looking for an immersive experience that’s fully drenched in the mysteries and splendor of Arthurian mythos there’s rarely been something quite as ambitious and joyous to experience. Even just ignoring the visual spectacle- beautiful color grading and scene construction which emphasizes contrasts and themes combined Lowery’s slow unwavering long shots – and the score which feels mystical and rustic (any score with chanting has a good chance of sounding epic), the host of Easter Eggs and nods to the legends of the Round Table make this a must watch. Lowery never draws overt attention to any of these details but naturally incorporates them to make the world feel lived and textured. The world is magical and mysterious so many events and situations just happen with no given explanation letting the audience draw their own conclusions on who’s doing what and why. The end result is we’re as disoriented as Gawain , going along his journey with him in the truest of senses. Now that’s bringing a story to life.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
The Green Knight perfectly encapsulates the themes, mysteries, and sense of allure Arthurian mythos inspires in its deconstruction of the poem of Gawain and the Green Knight. This is a movie that challenges and invites the audience to parse meaning at every moment, refusing to offer any easy way out to some predetermined answer. Anyone who likes engaging with movies as dialogue and/or wants to experience a lived in Arthurian visual and auditory vision owes it to themselves to check this out.
Rating
10/10
Grade
S
Go to Page 2 for the for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) guides his congregation in prayer, but his eyes seem like they aren’t focused.
As Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) prays, the camera frames him as distant and small, showing how small his congregation is.
We start the movie on Tomas and immediately come to know he’s distant from the words he’s preaching as both his eyes and mind wander.
We hear church bells ringing in the background as the title sequence starts. Their presence primes us for the opening scene – the start of Communion. The camera lingers on a Pastor, Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand), as he solemnly guides his congregation. His face is somber as his eyes seem to distantly gaze to the side of the screen – his mind out of focus. The movie cuts to a shot far behind him, demonstrating that his Church’s flock is small; a pastor diminished during his sermon among a small, disparate gathering guiding them through the Lord’s Prayer.
Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) kneeling in the church dissolves to a view of it from outside.
The church from a distance.
This view of the church dissolves to another.
The church from another angle.
This view of the church dissolves to another.
The church from another angle.
The church dissolves back into Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand), as his mind comes back into focus.
Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) is mentally once again in the church.
The montage of dissolves of different exterior shots of the church starting with Tomas and ending with him is a beautiful way of demonstrating the nature of his despair. He’s trapped by the Church, unable to run from it even in his thoughts which circle it from every angle. Even if he no longer believes in the words he says, he can’t find a way to escape their grip on his life; he’s both unable to stay and unable to go away.
The scene dissolves from the inside of the Church to multiple vantage points outside of it, as though Tomas’s mind can’t afford to stay in the building during the prayer – his distance constantly grows until finally the exterior of the church dissolves back into a closeup of his face. Despite his desires to escape God, his mind is unable to detach; the existential crisis becomes apparent.
Algot (Allan Edwall) prays earnestly.
Märta (Ingrid Thulin) stares forward at Tomas instead of praying.
A mother scolds her child who doesn’t seem to want to focus on praying.
Like Tomas, the congregation is fractured in how they approach God. While some members pray earnestly like Algot others seem to just be forced to be there like the young child. A church with a leader experiencing a crisis in faith is one thing, but to have this spiritual trouble reflected in the nature of the church’s makeup is to tie Tomas’s journey to that of the Church – making him a stand in for something larger and opening the interpretative floor.
Members of the congregation are shown on the screen in succession, demonstrating that Tomas’s spiritual conflict is present in them as an entity. The sexton, Algot (Allan Edwall), is seen praying solemnly, reading along the words with a real dedication. Meanwhile, a schoolteacher, Märta (Ingrid Thulin), sits calmly saying nothing while staring forward as if focused on Tomas. However, another shot demonstrates a child bored out of their mind with the word of God desperate to seek some form of entertainment. As the group gets up to receive their daily bread and wine, it’s made apparent that every member has a different reason for being there; a different relation to the divine entirely. This difference is demonstrated in the actions of a young couple; the husband, Jonas (Max von Sydow), barely sips any wine while the wife, Karin (Gunnel Lindblom), seems to drink a healthy amount. What could explain this difference in deference to the blood of God?
The image of the empty church dissolves to an sculpture of Jesus.
Jesus is positioned on the left of Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand).
After Algot (Allan Edwall) questions Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand), the sculpture of Jesus gets closer to the latter.
After Algot leaves, Tomas(Gunnar Björnstrand) looks down in angst/pain, but is positioned to the left of Jesus now, being in the latter’s sight now.
As the people leave , Tomas is allowed to retire inside, but his attempts to do so are marked by a curious relationship with a statue of Jesus. The statue marks the transition from the empty Church to Tomas’s upcoming fight to despair so its presence is fitting in that sense, especially given the nature of Tomas’s relationship to Jesus. An encounter with Algot is accompanied by a reframing of the statue which seems to move from Tomas’s left side to his right side, ,going from looking away to looking directly at Tomas. In a movie about God’s silence, nothing could be more meaningful.
Inevitably the congregation leaves the Church and Tomas retires inside. The camera dissolves from the newly empty Church to a fixture of Jesus on the wall – a fixture that hangs behind, slightly behind the left of him. However, as Tomas puts his head down, in obvious pain and discomfort from sickness – physical and metaphysical – the camera repositions the two figures to have Jesus staring at Tomas from behind. It’s telling then at this moment that the young couple from earlier, Karin and Thomas, come in looking for advice. The former explains that while she puts very little stock in the matter, her husband is despondent over the idea of a nuclear war instigated by China; a nihilism that annihilates any attempt at life. Tomas responds that we must trust God.
Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) realizes the dishonesty of what he’s said.
Tomas’s (Gunnar Björnstrand) hand quivers over his desk.
Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) tells Jonas that “life must go on.”
Jonas (Max von Sydow) asks Tomas , “Why do we have to go on living?”
Jonas’s words strike through Tomas’s scripted ideas of what to say and do. Tomas’s inability to lie and okay the role manifest s in his disgruntled expression and quivering hand, culminating in him honestly confronting Jonas. Eventually he admits that he understands the young man’s despair, but is unable to provide an answer for why he, Jonas, must keep on living. The exchange is framed in canted angles to reinforce the severity of what’s being discussed – the idea of living a life that in end of itself might be entirely “pointless”.
However, it’s clear that he doesn’t believe his own words as his face gives his true feelings away. His despondent eyes are matched with an accompanying shot of his hands trembling on his desk. He goes towards the couple and faces them in a more intimate arrangement, ready to divulge his more truthful thoughts. He confesses that atrocities in the world make the idea of God remote and as a result he understands Jonas’s anguish. The camera switches to a Dutch/canted angle, as he continues to comment that in spite of his empathetic identification with Jonas’s despair, “life must go on.” Jonas asks, angled in similar fashion to Tomas, “why do we have to go on living?” Thus, the canted conversation crystallizes the crisis of faith established at the start of the movie; how do we find meaning in a world where everything is so tenuous as to be wiped out at any moment? It’s a sickening reversal of the idea of life as positive, instead suggesting that life is out of synch with the universe whose natural condition is one of death – life is nothing more than a temporary blight on an otherwise incomprehensible void. Tomas is unable to give an answer at the moment and the trio agree that Jonas will drop Karin home and then come back. The trio’s attempt at establishing the upcoming rendezvous is fraught with panic as Jonas’s despair seems almost physically manifest as he leaves, making it uncertain on what he’ll end up doing.
As the couple leaves the Church, Tomas is once again left alone only for a brief moment before Märta, shows up and makes it apparent to the audience that there’s some notion of intimacy between Tomas and herself – a flame from the past she seems desperate to (re)kindle more emphatically. She’s an atheist, which as he points out, makes her appearance at Communion earlier strange. She points out that communion is a love feast, so her attendance fit the spirit of the ceremony. He mentions that he feels despair at God’s silence. She responds that God is silent because God does not exist. His metaphysical quandaries are met with her requests for love. Their dichotomy feels like an echo of the younger couple we’ve just seen – a man lost in his existential despair with a woman who tries to save him. Eventually she leaves as well, leaving Tomas alone to grapple with the gravity of what he’s been privy to.
Thus, the stage of Winter Light is set; a man who preaches, having a crisis of faith, forced to give advice to someone experiencing the same despair as him while at the same time being pursued by an atheist who seems more in tune with his faith then even him. Accosted by an unwanted love on one side and an unbearable nihilism on the other, Tomas is forced to navigate a path to coming to terms with his life. Despite taking place over the course of an afternoon, the story is lacking in anything but depth.
Every simple decision characters make become heightened because they transform into representations of the way we orient ourselves to faith. For example, after Jonas leaves there’s a palpable tension in the air because we’re uncertain about how put together Jonas is after being told by a pastor that the world is cruel and unforgiving and we must live in spite of that just because. It’s not a large leap in deduction to think the troubled husband might harm himself. Thus, at a narrative level there’s a genuine sense of dread that’s allowed to exist because of the severity of the content and its presentation. Thematically, his decision becomes one about the value of faith itself.
It’s in this way that the movie elevates its seemingly simple structure into a transcendent masterpiece that tackles the idea of a silent, ungaugable God from a variety of different perspectives. As the movie continues and relationships are revealed, both in the characters backgrounds and in the construction of the mise-en-scène, even the most minute detail transforms into something worth analyzing. Every dissolve that bleeds two images together begs the question of what facets of faith are being called to question on top of why those identifications are being made.
David (Gunnar Björnstrand) tells Minus (Lars Passgård) God is present in love.
Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) is unable to comfort Jonas (Max von Sydow) in the presence of God’s silence.
As the second part of the trilogy, Winter Light does more than just extend the themes of a movie subtly, instead taking entire strands and ideas wholesale and putting them to the test. In Through a Glass Darkly, Björnstrand‘s character, David, tells his son, Minus, that God is present in love. This answer is put to the test as Björnstrand’s character is forced to answer, Jonas, who can’t see how love can exist in a world where nuclear war, a technique of pure obliteration, can exist alongside it. The shared characters give the dialogues a connective tissue; Jonas is another take on Minus, this time a “son” who’s seen the dark recesses of the human condition and is unable to reconcile them any longer.
These ideas become all the more layered when evaluating Winter Light as a spiritual sequel to Through a Glass Darkly. The movie goes so far as to directly quote this previous entry in Bergman’s unofficially titled “Silence of God” trilogy, by having a character admonish the idea of God being love, one of the key takeaways of the former entry. Funnily enough, this idea is something Björnstrand’s character in that movie, David, espoused. Thus his transformation in this movie – being cold and indifferent – gains a past, so to speak, which help parse even more from each of Tomas’s actions. There’s a referent and context by which to evaluate and further evaluate his decisions. Seen in this way, Winter Light forces Through a Glass Darkly to justify itself, asking David qua Tomas in the form of Jonas how love even matters in a world that is seemingly indifferent to all displays of it. If nuclear war can erupt at any point, a negation of life driven by hate, then what does love mean?
Being able to achieve this depth at all is masterful but to do so in a narrative that only takes 81 minutes while involving only 2 primary characters and 2-4 side characters (depending on how you qualify side characters) is something else entirely – marrying one of the most deftly written scripts with a visual vision capable of matching it.
It’s on that note that both the actors and cinematographer Sven Nykvist must be mentioned, for if not for their combined efforts Tomas’s journey would rob the movie of much of its heavy impact. Most of the movie employs only natural light provided during the cold months of winter which gives the movie a chilling, somber aesthetic which compliments it tonally and thematically. Every burst of light suddenly feels holy because it’s so out of the ordinary. The shadows naturally creep along as the story continues, making the final moments of the movie all the more decisive. Most importantly, the lighting is harsh and doesn’t disguise or hide the actors’ faces in any way. Every pore, every line, every quiver is on display for us to experience.
Märta (Ingrid Thulin) stares at the camera during her monologue.
Märta (Ingrid Thulin) looks towards the corner during her monologue.
Ingrid Thulin‘s near 8 minute monologue as Märta is the strongest example of how Bergman manages to use close-ups to push the themes of the movie to the forefront of our minds. The intimate way her eyes connect with ours forces us to deal with her ideas more seriously; there’s a responsibility generated on the part of the viewer by a performance so raw. By filling the movie with powerful conversations, natural lighting, and the perfect closeups Bergman manages to keep the viewer engaged in the somber and dense tone of the movie.
Due to the quality of the actors’ performances (main and side), each closeup transforms into a gaze into the soul. The characters’ doubts, interests, and points of identification become clear as we see their eyes look around the frame. This is made evident no more clearly than in an almost 8 minute, nearly unbroken monologue given by Ingrid Thulin as she stares directly at the camera, both at the audience and at the recipient of her message, Tomas. Her eyes shift as she divulges her innermost thoughts, darting towards the lower corners at times as she remembers something or directly down as she gets ready to drop something heavy. Calling it a performance masterclass would be a good starting place to describe what we see. Thulin’s performance is matched by an equally powerful, yet far more morose and despondent performance from Björnstrand, who at one point in the movie delivers a monologue difficult to watch entirely because of how searing and brutal it comes off.
The final result is a film that that probes the darkest places of the soul in an honest and thought-provoking fashion, inviting anyone willing to go on a journey with its characters. Despite its specific Christian background and intimate ties with Bergman’s own religious tribulations, there’s a universal quality in the movie that’s perceptible to anyone who’s ever had that existential feeling of despair that we’re really all alone in the world. By forcing Tomas to go through so many different confrontations with finding meaning in existence, the movie cultivates the grounds by which we can do the same. It’s a piece of art that truly tugs at heart, leaving one in awe by the time the end credits play.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
Winter Light is a solemn and profound insight into nature of God’s silence in a world that seems chaotic and unbearably cruel. The naturalistic lighting that accentuates the severity of every one of the actors’ faces to the deft way makes monologues and moments of decision sear through the screen, almost as if directed at us. The script creates parallels between multiple sets of characters and ideas that give it a host of meanings based on how you perceive different identifications. If nothing else, the fact that Paul Schrader’s First Reformed , a modern spiritual masterpiece, was able to lift from and use so many ideas from this movie to such great effect, proves that its apparent simplicity hides a treasure trove of potential within for those willing to look.
Rating
10/10
Grade
S
Go to Page 2 for the for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis. Go to Page 3to view this review’s progress report .
Leonardo DiCaprio as Dom Cobb Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur Elliot Page[1]Credited as Ellen Page as Ariadne Marion Cotillard as Mal Cobb Ken Watanabe as Saito Cillian Murphy as Robert Fischer Tom Hardy as Eames Dileep Rao as Yusuf
Dom sees two children on the shore who seem out of place.
Nolan starts his experimentation in mimesis here, replacing the loud blare from Zimmer’s score with the rushing sound of the waves. The swell of waves crashing against the shore represent a world of potential. Every moment marks the birth of a new wave – a vortex of creation – that eventually gives way to another. It’s from this swirl that our protagonist, Dom, wakes up confused. He sees two children building sand castles on the shore. The children seem out of place given the disheveled appearance of Dom, but their act of creating sandcastles mimics the waves. After all sandcastles are an act of creation that give way to new castles as the waves wash away the old ones. It’s fitting that the man whose eventual mission will be to implant ideas is sandwiches between these two parallel movements of creation.
As the intro sequence plays, Hans Zimmer’s music envelops the soundscape ensuring that your attention is fully focused on the sound. The title fades to black as the music approaches a crescendo, swelling to a massive size before fading away to the sound of crashing waves. Our attention immediately switches focus as the importance we’ve given the score now shifts to the waves on screen. Water swells before crashing into the shoreline creating momentary impressions upon impact -explosions of being- before fading back into the ocean from where it came. Given the movie’s thematic connections with Tarkovksy’s Solaris, a science fiction film about a group of emotionally fractured astronauts stuck on an ocean planet named Solaris which seems to conjure the crew’s memories from within its oceans, it makes sense then that it is from this abode of infinite creation, the ocean, that the camera picks its next target of focus – a partially submerged man named Dom.
His eyes flutter awake revealing that he’s very much alive. It’s at this point that both Dom and the audience become privy to the fact that there are children present. The camera cuts between Dom’s perplexed face and two children who appear with their backs to him. They’re building a sandcastle. Like the waves, the sandcastle is a temporary explosion of creativity, coming into form for an instance before fading away, leaving only its impressions behind.
An older Asian man ( Ken Watanabe) tells Dom that the top he, Dom , carries reminds him of something from the past.
Dom’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) expression changes upon being reminded of the top.
Saito (Ken Watanabe) talks to Dom.
Dom(Leonardo DiCaprio) tries to get Saito to buy some extraction protection lessons.
Nolan uses cuts to demonstrate the malleability of different moments and scenes, showcasing the way ideas give way and lapse into others- whether they be dreams or memories. The normal shot, reverse-shot structure used to cover dialogue scenes is used to transfer us from space and time along with the characters. As the older Asian man talks and ignites a thought in Dom’s head, the reverse shot which would normally be the elder man is instead a much younger man named Saito. He’s oriented to the camera facing a different angle. As the camera cuts again to a much more composed looking Dom, we realize the orientation of the first meeting has also shifted, reflecting a shift in power as well. It’s brilliant filmmaking.
Before Dom can make sense of what’s happening, he’s accosted by armed security who check for weaponry before finding a gun on him. They take him to their boss, an elderly Asian man, for interrogation in a large ornate dining room. This man starts to play with a top he’s apparently taken from Dom before claiming that the object reminded him of something from his past – a distant memory. The camera cuts from the old man back to Dom at which point the movie employs a match cut to another conversation between a much younger Asian man, Saito, and a Dom from another time in the same ornate dining room, this time framed from opposite angles. It is here that Dom and his associate, Arthur, indicate to Saito that they are “extractors”, individuals who specialize in the art of stealing from peoples’ dreams, looking to teach him the tools of the trade to keep his own mental faculties safe.
The room shakes as though and earthquake is happening.
The movie cuts to the face of a watch whose hands go from moving slowly to moving much faster.
People riot on the streets as a car in the background explodes.
Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio) sits unconscious in an new apartment location.
The movie cuts to the face of a watch whose hands go from moving fast to moving much slower.
The flames coming from the car’s explosion seem to slow down along with the clock.
Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio) walk outside and notice the world shaking in non-natural ways.
The parallel watch sequence demonstrates the logic Inception will continue to use (and will explain later). Impacts from seemingly disparate moments bleed into each other – this is not only a mechanic of the universe but the first indication that the important thing to focus on is the intensity of feeling. This is cemented by the way that the impacts of both scenes’ respective rumblings are tied to the respective dilations of the watch face.
Saito indicates he’ll think about the deal from the two before leaving the room at which it starts to shake violently, as though an earthquake is causing the foundations of the house to rumble. The duo comment that Saito is on to their ruse before the movie cuts to the face of a watch whose hands move slowly before quickly ramping. This ramp up is matched with another cut a riot happening in the streets of a wholly distinct location. The camera moves from the rumble on the street to an apartment overlooking the chaos. Inside the unit, a new character is show tending to what appears to be Dom and Arthur’s unconscious bodies. We cut back to the image of the watch whose hands goes from fast to slow, a reversal of the previous temporal dilation. A car explodes on the street, shaking the screen before the movie cuts back to Arthur and Dom who are walking outside in a world that seems to be shaking just as hard as the explosion that came before.
In a sequence that runs a little over 5 minutes, Nolan manages to establish and present the core mechanics by which his world operates and make clear the themes he’ll be tackling – the way memory and reality bleed into one another, granting meaning to existence. The initial match cut makes it apparent that this is a world where memories and dreams interconnect- one moment, the future, gives way to the interruptions of a past, that may or may not itself be nothing more than artifice. The conversation with Saito primes the viewer to begin probing these ideas, questioning the nature of the first scene and what it’s meant to represent. The parallel watch-sequence is not only a beautiful demonstration of the exposition that Nolan will give us later on, but also hammers home the idea of intensity and duration. The rumbling that starts in the dining room, goes to the riots, stays with the exploding cars, and leads to a world literally shaking as time continues to ramp forward and slow down emphasizes that what matters is intensity , not duration.
This is Inception – a time-diluting, dream-invading, thriller that will have you questioning the “reality” of what’s being presented on the screen at every moment. After this initial sequence, Dom is offered a job with a reward that he can’t resist. The reward? A chance to see his children. The job? Implanting an idea into a person’s head, thereby changing their future decisions – in other words a kind of psychological terrorism. [2]In Kon’s Paprika, Chiba’s exclaims that “Implanting dreams in other people’s heads is terrorism!” It’s funny then that one of the bigger reaction to Inception by many … Continue reading. He goes on to make a team to help in his operation and the “heist” movie really begins.
In a traditional heist movie, a group comes together, usually skillful criminals, to carry out a theft of some kind. The unifying force between movies in the genre is the presence of an object that gets stolen – whether it be money or technology. Inception flips the genre’s trappings on its head by changing the object getting stolen from something physical to something metaphysical – that of free will. After all, the idea of implanting an idea into someone’s head assumes that you are replacing some other idea that was originally there. In other words, the object the thieves are trying to steal are the autonomy of a subject.
Eames (Tom Hardy) explains the nature of the mark’s relationships to his inner circle. Dom (Leonardio DiCaprio) and co. listen on.
From left to right: Saito (Ken Watanabe), Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Yusuf (Dileep Rao), Eames (Tom Hardy), Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio), Ariadne (Elliot Paige)
Traditional heist-planning sequences aren’t missing. They’ve just been modified to deal with the psychological nature of the heist being planned. Instead of talking about firewall security, the group has to probe into the inner psyches of their subjects mind and lives so they can more easily break into said subjects subjectivity and influence it. These sessions take place in both the “real” world of the movie and the “dream” world of the movie.
Likewise, the traditional heist-planning sequences have their counterparts here. Instead of discussing how to get past a certain firewall, the characters analyze their subject(s) from the microscopic details of their daily behavior to the larger way they deal with relationships among their associates. In this way, the structure of the heist film maps onto what feels like a psychoanalytic session, the extractors serving as psychoanalysts treating their mark as a analysand. Each maneuver the crew utilizes to plant their idea doubles as technique an analyst would use in a session. Unwinding in parallel to this external psychological session is Dom’s internal journey to overcome his respective psychological trauma. As he rushes forward to plant an idea into another to control them, he has to deal with his own wayward ideas which refuse to submit to his control – a schema which makes us ask how one can implant a thought in stable fashion to someone if one’s own thoughts constantly float around outside of our control.
This conundrum of subjectivity is reflected in the rules of the story early on as it’s revealed that people breaking into a dream bring along their subconscious projections with them. The subconscious is nothing more than a sea of cognitive material formed from the fabrics of our day to day – images and ideas that slip through our self-constructed barriers to the parts of our mind out of our control. These ideas come from others – people, cultures, legal institutions. Would this entail that social behavior by its nature is always involved in some “inception” of a kind if our ideas are “implanted” by some other agent?
At a technical level, Nolan achieves this conundrum through the magic of cutting. That’s right. Just normal cuts from scene to scene. Traditional movies dealing with dreams and memory as subject matter tend to approach field with surrealist imagery, imperceptible messages, and an obvious desire to be recognized as distinctly “dream-like.” The point is to call attention to the nature of the dream versus reality. Inception approaches dreams in the complete opposite way – treating them as they come to us in real life. Completely naturally. By using audio, especially Zimmer’s simultaneously bombastic and inquisitively resonating score (seriously just listen to the difference between the adrenaline pumping “Mombasa” and the somber epic sounding “Time”), as a throughline, Nolan is able to intercut between scenes occurring in different locations without alerting us to a change in scenery. For example, characters can begin talking in one location. The camera will cut to a completely different location as their conversation continues to play out in the background, the characters now missing from the frame. Then the camera cuts back to the characters in a different location, the same conversation continuing. It seems innocuous until it’s revealed that the final conversation in the sequence is actually occurring in a dream as opposed to the first conversation which occurred in reality.
Dom (Leonardio DiCaprio) looks in awe as Ariadne bends physics in the dreamworld to clone the world into new planes.
Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Ariadne (Elliot Paige) walk up the new plane of reality.
Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) explains to Ariadne (Elliot Paige) the way dreams allow people to cheat logic.
Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) shows Ariadne (Elliot Paige) the Penrose steps as an example of paradoxes that dreams allow.
Inception’s dream visuals are astounding and larger than life, constantly cheating reality and reveling in doing so. From the early demonstration of the way gravity can shift to the way paradoxes can come to life, it’s made clear that anything is possible.
That isn’t to say the movie approaches dreams just through subtleties – the majority of the obvious dream action makes major use of spectacular set pieces that will leave you in awe if at nothing else, the sheer slick fluidity by which everything operates. Those looking for a visual feast will take great viewing pleasure in watching the way structures form out of nowhere or the manner in which gravity shifts directions. Instead of embracing the surrealist spirit in the vein of Satoshi Kon with scenarios that beg interpretation (whose own movie about dreams, Paprika, served as some influence to Nolan himself) , Nolan “mechanizes” surrealism to fit the mold of a thriller, letting action play out against a tapestry that rests on the tenuous connection reality and the unconscious.
In fact, one of the great feats of the movie is the way it forces the audience to engage with it in its totality by misdirecting them in the most obvious ways. The breathtaking visual effects in the “dream” worlds and the focus on clear and robust exposition all make it seem like the spectacle of the movie is the focus – the focus on what is real and what is not real. However, what this interpretation tends to miss is that the duplicity between what is real and what is not real is something Nolan is actively showing you on the screen. He’s not hiding it or making the tenuous nature of reality ambiguous. Like Solaris, Inception makes it apparent that everything is not what it seems- the barriers between memory, reality, and dreams are revealed to be tenuous at best. If the movie stresses to us the duplicity between the real and dream world, the question becomes what does such a revelation tell us? What does existence look when we’re constantly traversing one realm to another, calling one “real” and one “dream” ?
With all its moving parts working in tandem, Inception can be seen as a a serious reckoning with the story of Chuang Tzu who dreamt he was a butterfly so vividly that he experienced shock upon waking back up. The dream was so lifelike that it led him to ask, “was I Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly or am I now really a butterfly dreaming that I am Chuang Tzu?” [3] The Philosophy Foundation – The Butterfly Dream. (n.d.). https://www.philosophy-foundation.org/enquiries/view/the-butterfly-dream.. In other words, given the depth of experience in both domains how can (un)consciousness determine what is reality. Nolan’s answer seems to be reality itself doesn’t matter as much as the experience itself. It doesn’t matter whether or not Chuang Tzu was a butterfly or a person as much as if both experiences left an meaningful impact on that unified consciousness (ex: soul) which perceived them. It’s the emotional journey that matters more than the literal journey – the latter only serves as a jumping off point to begin the former’s discovery.
The end result of these two journeys is a heist movie about perception whose very reality is constantly under question, tying form into content and narrative into theme. It’s a movie that treats its audience intelligently, showing first and explaining just enough later, forcing engagement with the subject matter. The cerebral elements of the movie never overpower the visceral elements or vice versa giving fans of both visual splendor and philosophical inquiry things to chew on. At it’s heart, Inception is nothing more than the story of finding ourselves in our own absences.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
Inception deftly combines the genre mainstays of a heist film with the cerebral intensity involved with the best of science fiction. It is a movie that trusts the audience fully, constantly demonstrating the rules of the world it presents to wow and dazzle. At no point does either element, cerebral or visceral, overwhelm the other as Nolan manages to keep the thriller sequences and metaphysical discoveries tied to each other. Cinema, in both form and content, is used to reveal the duplicitous nature of ideas – their source, their interpretation, and their impact on (un)unconsciousness. The result is a truly human story that asks what it means to have freedom and what it means to use that freedom to live a life worth living.
Rating
10/10
Grade
S
Go to Page 2 for the for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
Kimiko Ikegami as Gorgeous Miki Jinbo as Kung Fu Ai Matsubara as Prof Kumiko Oba as Fantasy Mieko Sato as Mac Masayo Miyako as Sweet Eriko Tanaka as Melody Yōko Minamida as Auntie Kiyohiko Ozaki as Keisuke Tōgō Saho Sasazawa as Gorgeous’s Father Haruko Wanibuchi as Ryoko
A blue line demarcates a frame in the center of the frame at which point a red letter “A” appears in the center.
The word “MOVIE” then appears in the frame. It’s a green color.
The name of the movie is reveals and he “O” in the title is revealed to have a mouth with jagged teeth.
The blue from the border of the inner frame bleeds in to color the entire background.
The “O” starts to chew onto something. It’s pale color has given way to a blood red.
A hand falls out of the “O” mouth.
The “O” mouth opens up to reveal an eyeball at the center.
The title card then becomes filled with the blood red – the color of the violent lips overwhelms and subsumes the rest of the letters.
The title card becomes less threatening as the word “House” becomes loose and animated again with a peaceful green background.
The opening sequence of House starts with music before a blue box is demarcated against the black box. It’s within this center frame that the majority of the action for the next minute will take place as the space is filled with a variety of different words, colors, and animations. Obayashi constantly demonstrates the way the space is demarcated, its presence constantly being interrupted by the suggestions of surrounding elements.
A somber and melancholic tune plays as soon as the title sequence starts up . The sound of wind intrudes upon the music creating an auditory clutter. The apparent diegetic sound (the wind) bleeds in with the apparent non-diegetic sound(the music) suggesting they’re occurring in the same auditory space. [1]Note: I say apparent here because there’s no reason to suggest that the music is inherently non-diegetic or the wind is inherently diegetic. It’s just an assumption of cinema that music … Continue reading The melodic part of the soundscape become more hopeful sounding than before. As the tune changes, a small blue box is drawn in the center of the screen before the words “A” and “movie” show up in the colors of red and green respectively within it – a frame within a frame. It’s at this point that the title of the movie, House, fills the inner frame. Unlike the previous two words which were static, the title presentation is fully animated. The letters each move up and down with whimsy and vigor.
However, a scream intrudes the soundscape . The inner frame is suddenly encroached upon by the blue border surrounding it and eventually its black background subsequently turns blue. Then, the letter “O” in “House” is revealed to have a ruby red mouth and a set of jagged teeth. It starts to chew maliciously before opening up and revealing an eyeball hidden inside of it. Suddenly, a peaceful high pitched tune starts to play completely incongruent with the image in the frame which shows the “O” mouth letting a bloodied stump of a hand drop out of it. It’s at this point that the blue background becomes black and devoid once again as all the letters take on a blood red color . The blood red from the lips, now transformed by a literal ingestion of a what appears to be a person, transforms the entire word into a monstrous abomination. before finally transforming into a less malicious configuration. The letters settle and become white again. Likewise, the background becomes green and calm once more. The violence which threatened to overwhelm disappears just as fast as it came – a momentary explosion.
Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) stares at the camera. Her head is covered by a veil.
Fantasy (Kumiko Oba) stares at Gorgeous.
Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) tells Fantasy (Kumko Oba) to hurry up with the shot.
The flash of the photograph ruptures the frame itself. the green image of Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) gives way to one of red. The contrast in color reminds us of the title card, immediately tying the flash to violence. The moment at which the present is frozen in a moment is a temporal violence.
Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) after the shot.
The background comes in around Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami).
The color of the inner frame changes from green to a colorscape that matches the background surrounding the enclosure.
The temporal frame demarcating Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) from the flow of time dissipates as soon as she takes off the veil. She’s now free to enter the present once again.
The photography sequence reinforces the way the movie uses colors and further expands on the idea of how a space can be made up of both the past and present colliding with each other. The color green is not only tied to peace but also the constant flow of time – a present. The moment of the flash is the moment of capture – where the present is captures as past and transformed into a temporary moment. Thus the past is linked with violence. The discontinuity of the frame within the frame reinforces these disjunctions in time – the past and present colliding against each other in the same arena.
It’s at this point the movie cuts and the soundscape changes. The music changes to a cheerful tune that has a hypnotic jingle in the background. Instead of words occupying the inner frame, there’s a young woman, Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami), staring directly at the screen, a green filter covering her. She has a veil covering the top of her head and a lit candle on her side. The inner frame then shows another young woman, Fantasy (Kumiko Oba), standing with a camera before quickly moving back go Gorgeous who tells , Fantasy, to hurry up with the photo shoot. Fantasy takes the shot of Gorgeous. As the flash of the camera goes off the green hue gives way to red – a callback to the color motif used in the title sequence. After getting an “Okay” from Fantasy confirming the success of the shot, the space around the inner frame comes back into the view letting us know the girls are both in a classroom. However, the only spot of the frame where motion happens is the inner frame. Even as the color in the frame changes back to match its surroundings, Gorgeous moves as though the world outside of the box doesn’t exist. It’s as if the moments are intruding on one another, a present and a past out of joint with one another. However, once she takes the veil off the inner frame fades away and she is allowed to “return” to the present flow of time.
In just these opening 90 seconds , Obayashi’s House has foreshadowed the entire story, demonstrated its cinematic style, laid the framework for its approach to color, and set up the thematic point it wants to play upon. Up to the title sequence the soundscape suggests that music is not only going to be a prominent feature but that it intrudes upon the very world. If you enjoyed the start of Godiego’s score get ready to enjoy even more because every track is as addictive and fun to listen to and the music is played for almost the entirety of the movie’s run time.
The inner frame showcases the way moments in time can become demarcated- separated from what they were previously a part of. It’s no coincidence that the words entering this newly formed space are “A”, “Movie”, and “House”. It also imbues the space with the idea of cinema. What’s more cinematic than a frame that captures a story? Everything cinematic (at least in the traditional sense) that happens until the 90 second mark happens here and only here. The title turning from innocuous to horrifying to back again represents the way the movie will proceed in its tone as well – cheery, scary, joyful, and disjointed.
Suddenly, the title is abruptly interrupted by none other than the story proper as the movie cuts to a young woman, Gorgeous, who now occupies the inner frame. The cut itself is disorienting because the inner frame has changed while the background of the frame around it has stayed the same. The movie has spent so long making us aware of the power of the frame that we’ve become hypnotized and are staring right at it as the cut happens. Because we’re staring at the center, we are hyper aware of the change whose impact is magnified by the fact that everything around it stays the same. We’re reminded of the cinematic power of the frame – simply through the technique of demarcation and transition a discontinuity (the inner frame) is created through unity (the unchanging background). The movie’s past, the title, foreshadows the movie’s future, the story. The movie confirms this by revealing the space is one where a photoshoot is happening. The green image- calmness and continuity- gives way to a red image – violence and stillness – which then gives way to the green once more. The red is associated with the flash. The flash is the moment where a moment in time is demarcated, rendered permanent as the flow of time continues marching onwards. The flash is also the moment where a subject is shown in their true state, as the darkness is removed from their visage. A violent past that breaks a calm present- a sign of things to come. It’s at this point the blackness occupying the background of the frame is replaced by an appropriate classroom setting. The demarcation of the moving inner frame is suddenly juxtaposed against an immobile outside, but now that there is a content to that outside the disorientation feels all the more apparent. The time before the shot and the time mix like oil and water, both overwhelming the screen until finally the past fades into the present and the movie continues.
Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) and Fantasy (Kumiko Oba) embrace. As the camera arcs around them, they become framed by lush green trees.
As soon as Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) starts to leave the green forests leave the frame and a blood red filter bleeds over everything, casting an ominous shadow. Another repetition of the color motif.
Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) and Fantasy embrace happily after the photoshoot, completely surrounded by a superimposed bright green forest. However, as soon as Gorgeous bids farewell and starts to go home, the green forests disappear and a blood red filter envelops the screen. The ending of the moment marks the appearance of red, tying the color to the “death” of the present, when a moment ceases and becomes an event, a memory lost to time.
The two girls frolic into the hallway as the happy go-lucky main theme continues to play. Suddenly, as they descend down a stairwell, the camera arcs around the two of them as they embrace and converse. The background around them are the green leaves of a forest. This idyllic moment is broken as Gorgeous bids her friend farewell. As she leaves the green from the background gives way to a crimson red filter which encompasses the screen – a signal of an end to peaceful times.
Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) runs into her father’s (Saho Sasazawa) arms
Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) learns from her Father (Saho Sasazawa) that he plans on getting married once more, to a woman named Ryoko (Haruko Wanibuchi).
The camera slowly moves to frame the new attempt at a family structure in a unified way. Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami), her father (Saho Sasazawa), and Ryoko (Haruko Wanibuchi) represent a potential future.
Unfortunately for the adults, Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) is in shock upon hearing the news. The camera shows the images around her reflecting and distorting, showcasing the damage.
Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) remembers fonder days with her father (Saho Sasazawa).
Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) throws her scarf as the frame partially freezes.
Gorgeous’s meeting with her father quickly turns from serene and picturesque to divided and broken up once he mentions his plans on remarriage to the youthful and beautiful Ryoko. Ryoko enters the screen gracefully and attempts to curry favor with her soon-to-be step-daughter by giving her a sash but it’s of no use. As both her father and Ryoko try and interact with her Gorgeous starts to reminisce about the past, better times when things seemed more unified. Unable to deal with the situation, Gorgeous throws the gifted sash and runs off the screen. Her running motion stays trapped in place as the sash falls in the background – the abdication of the possible future cements this past as an event lost in time as the sash (the future) floats away.
Gorgeous makes her way home and runs to her Father (Saho Sasazawa). She runs into his arms, the camera capturing the two of them in tender embrace. However, the camera starts to move and reveals that its positioned behind a glass pane. As Gorgeous’s father indicates he needs to talk, the frame becomes demarcated into multiple rectangular pieces. The peaceful music track is interrupted by a the discordant fast paced noises of a piano. The unity in the image of father and daughter splits. It’s fitting then that he tells her that their planned father-daughter vacation is now being intruded upon by a third agent, Ryoko (Haruko Wanibuchi).
She makes her way onto the screen, passing by the window pane – constantly being split into new configurations. The music changes and becomes more hopeful as well. It’s at this point the camera starts zooming in, the panes start to overlap with the frame almost presenting a fully unified image again. Just as the two boundaries are about to meet and become one her father mentions that he plans on marrying Ryoko. However, mention of this unity breaks the scene. The shot reveals a closer view of Gorgeous, her image and surroundings being reflected and distorted around her edges. As she’s processing the news, Ryoko tries to put a scarf around her neck as an attempt at starting a fresh bond towards a hopeful future. Gorgeous however can only focus on the past. As her father talks, the camera cuts from the present of the conversation the adults are trying to have to the memories that Gorgeous is desperate to maintain. These memories, though slightly demarcated by the pane on the edges of the shot, are mostly centered and show a unified happy image of the pair.
This past memory gives way to the future as the camera transitions to the present and shifts away once again, showing the scene breaking into segments. Gorgeous, unable to deal with the situation, runs away and throws her newly gifted scarf into the air. It’s at this time the temporality of the screen breaks again. Half the screen shows the scarf slowly falling down as the other half shows Gorgeous frozen as she runs off. This establishes not only the importance of her throwing the “future” away but reinforces the way continuous time breaks into discrete moments which are then stored as memories. Temporality is quickly returned as Gorgeous comes back to the present and runs into her bedroom which is aptly adorned with flowers. She takes out a host of photos showcasing both her father and deceased mother, wishing for her mother fondly, before recollecting that her mother had a sister – an Auntie (Yōko Minamida) whom she, Gorgeous, would be able to escape to given her father’s “betrayal”.
It’s with this motivation that Gorgeous meets up with her friends Fantasy, Melody (Eriko Tanaka), Kung Fu (Miki Jinbo), Mac (Mieko Sato), Prof AKA Professor (Ai Matsubara), and Sweet (Masayo Miyako). As you’d imagine each girl’s name is indicative of their respective personality traits. For example, Melody, as her name implies, is the musically inclined member of the group. Gorgeous asks her friends to accompany her to her Auntie’s house for their summer vacation trip. The 6 girls agree and the group of 7 venture off to the country in hopes of a fun-filled vacation. Unfortunately for them, their hopes are squashed almost immediately by bouts of supernatural phenomena. As the title sequence indicated, there’s nothing but discordant violence to be found once one enters the house.
Now, House has been described as many things by many different people. The Criterion Collection fondly describes the movie as, ” a psychedelic ghost tale”, “[a] stream-of-consciousness bedtime story”, and “[a]n episode of Scooby-Doo as directed by Mario Bava”. [2]https://www.criterion.com/films/27523-house Each of these descriptions is accurate. In fact, most of the praise surrounding House focus on it’s colorful and surrealist visuals, outlandish story, quirky and eccentric characters, Godiego’s emotionally distinctive and iconic score, and/or its absurdist sense of humor. Don’t get me wrong, I think all of these things are true. If the description of the opening 10 minutes of the movie above wasn’t proof enough, let me confirm. You’ve never seen a movie like House before. It’s a movie where Obayashi throws everything but the kitchen sink on screen. Painted backdrops, stop-motion, split frame shots, use of stutter motion, blue-screen, animation, and the like are used with gusto lending themselves to dozens of memorable scenes. However, all these techniques aren’t done just for fun; every one of them is put in place to develop the movie’s themes – namely how one can confront Japan’s horrifying nuclear history and more broadly how humanity can confront its own past bouts of violence.
Early on before the girls get to Auntie’s house, they have a conversation discussing the end of World War II, the nuclear devastation that occurred as a result of it, and the subsequent loss. However, because the girls are young and naivete, they brush past the historical atrocity with relative ease.
The girls discuss Japan’s fate at the end of World War II and go over the devastating effects of the nuclear bombs dropped. However, the impact of the weapons is still too hard to conceptualize for such a young and naïve group, so they end up treating it as another everyday event.
Mac even goes so far as to compare the smoke clouds with cotton candy before the group turns to more positive matters. This disconnect between Japan’s past and it’s future is something Obayashi explicitly wanted to tackle, having lost some of his own friends to the war and its related horrors. [3]“Constructing a “House.”” House, Criterion Collection, 2010. Blu-Ray. The nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were brutalizing, not only in their immediate impact, but in the way the effects of the damage persisted and continue to do so even now. This is why the movie constantly emphasizes the idea of intrusion – the idea that the present is constantly being interrupted by the past. By tying the supernatural events of the movie to Japan’s nuclear past, Obayashi is demonstrating the way the bombings still rupture in Japan’s present, even affecting the youth who think they’re separated from the violence. This violence is in turn presented in a surreal, colorful, and festive way. Obayashi’s daughter was the source for many of the situations the girls end up finding themselves in, so both the situations and the manner they play out are childlike. The horror subsequently comes off as bizarre and comedic on a surface level.
It’s no surprise so many people say House is not “really” a horror film. Even ardent fans praise the movie not for its horror but for the passion and sense of childlike whimsy it has. However, it is my position that House is not only a horror movie, but an example of horror surrealism done at a masterful level. At the stories base are tales of fear as described by Obayashi’s daughter, so the nightmares we see on screen are definitionally someone’s fears come to life. [4]Constructing a “House.”” House, Criterion Collection, 2010. Blu-Ray. The presentation of each sequence might be cute and harmless to us, but the sequences proper have horrifying consequences for the characters that inhabit the story’s world. In the same way Mac sees the devastation of the bomb and sees cotton candy, we see the brutalization of the girls and think it’s all good fun. The movie’s surrealist presentation disguises the violence so it’s palatable to us, but the reality lurking under the vibrant colors is terrifying.
Just like the specter of the nuclear incident in the movie precipitates the girls inevitable faiths, the specters of past injustices continue to prop up even now. Ghosts haunt the characters in the same way the past haunts the present. The fact that Gorgeous chooses to go to her Aunt, a person linked to her past, over her Father, a person linked to a new future, is not a coincidence but a reminder to the audience of the way the past nullifies potential futures, rendering them ghosts. All those who died in the nuclear blasts of WWII had lives with trajectories that suddenly ended, no place to go – a demarcation frozen in time as everything moves around it.
However, House also reveals the way cinema can bring life to these frozen moments and let their memory linger breathing life into the spirits of the past. From the opening frame that showcases the way moments can be captured, frozen, and then reincorporated to the last line of dialogue in the movie, Obayashi’s point is to never forget. If the past can never be negated and it cannot be run from then it must be embraced. The power of cinema is in its ability to embrace and transform moments into narratives with a broader appeal, breathing life into demarcated moments to create a moving whole.
The power of House is it doesn’t trade subtext for entertainment or vice versa. Sure, there are some elements that are less than perfect. Certain effects are a bit shoddy and some of the acting comes off as amateurish. However, I’d deal with these issues any day of the week if I was guaranteed a piece of art with this much depth. None of these “problems” at any point takes you out of the story because the sincere presentation of the movie makes such moments feel like a natural extension of the setting. Who really cares if a green-screen effect isn’t the greatest when you have a cat playing the piano in forwards and backwards motions? By wholeheartedly embracing these small production flaws and keeping them in line with the spirit of the story, Obayashi manages to turn even imperfections into endearing qualities. The end result is a wholly charming story that’s visually captivating from start to finish, that uses surrealism to transform horrifying scenes into colorful and whimsical moments, and that manages to have a compelling and relevant theme underlying it all. It’s a movie that everyone should watch at least once because there is quite literally nothing else out there like it.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
House is a movie that has to be seen to be believed, combining an audacious visual style with a childlike tale of whimsy and terror in an effort to deconstruct the way the future and present are always constantly indicted by a past they can’t escape. Every scene from start to finish is memorable not just because Obayashi uses ever cinematic tool in the book but because of his dedication to ensuring that the movie was at it’s core fun for the audience. For those viewers just looking for a one of a kind experience, there’s no movie that can prepare you for the absurdity that is House. You can watch it and have a blast even if you only take it at its face value.
However, those viewers willing to take the plunge into the subtext will find themselves deeply rewarded. Under the vibrant colors and absurdist humor, is a truly surreal horror story that reminds us of the way the specters of humanity’s past violence and atrocities of will always remain in the background, intruding in on the present along with how cinema can honor them.
Rating
10/10
Grade
S+
Go to Page 2for the for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis. Go to Page 3to view this review’s progress report .
The camera slowly pushes in on the First Reformed church.
The camera lingers on the First Reformed Church sign.
The camera lingers on the Church from an alternative angle -the back of the building.
The camera lingers on the front door of the Church.
The opening 3 minutes of the movie set the stage for the piece to follow by lulling us into a meditative state with silence and slow moving cinema. Each shot lingers and makes us anticipate what’s to come. The lack of anything tangible to grasp onto forces us to reach forward which primes us for the upcoming scene.
For over a minute, the camera slowly and quietly pushes in on a church. Upon getting to the building’s base the movie cuts to a sign in front letting us know this is the First Reformed Church. Like the shot getting to the church, this shot of the sign lingers. The movie cuts to yet another image of the church, this time from an angle behind it as opposed to in front of it. The camera lingers once again before cutting to a shot of the church’s door. Another pause as the camera lingers. Four shots. Each silent. This is the movie priming us, letting us know to strap in for the slow and meticulous ride. By using silence and stillness like this, Schrader creates type of meditative lull. We’re desperate to find something to latch onto because it feels like nothing’s been given to us.
Ernst (Ethan Hawke) writes in his journal as he explains to the audience that he writes because he cannot pray. God’s lonely man experiencing a crisis of faith – this is Schrader’s wheelhouse.
It’s at this moment of desperation where the 3 minute long silence is broken by a voice-over by Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke). The camera cuts to reveal him writing in a journal. The preceding silence of the opening sequence not only signals the importance of the first source of sound but also heightens their spiritual impact. We’re fully attentive to what Toller has to say. It’s at this point he mentions that the journal is his attempt at spirituality – an alternative to praying which, for reasons unknown to us, he can longer engage in. A priest experiencing a crisis of faith.
After a service, Toller is approached by a young mother-to-be Mary (Amanda Seyfried) and her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger). She asks Toller to check in on her husband due to fears that he, Michael, is in a dark spiritual place. Toller agrees and sets out to meet him the next day. He spends the night writing in his journal giving us more to learn about him. His process of introspection is harsh and unforgiving, revealing a man desperate to find inner peace. He ends the entry once again bemoaning his lack of ability to pray.
The camera lingers on Mary and Michael’s house for over a minute. All that happens during this time is a women walking her dog across the screen.
After the women and her dog clear off, Ernst finally shows up and proceeds to walk into the house.
The movie makes frequent use of pauses and deadtimes to achieve a meditative state. Schrader’s transcendental style focuses on getting the audience to slow down and actively engage in the cinematic experience as opposed to passively just absorbing information. By forcing the long wait on the women just walking, he gets us ready for the important conversation to come.
The next day comes. The camera cuts to Mary and Michael’s house. We watch the house for close to a minute during which time all that happens is a women walking her dog across the sidewalk. Like the start of the movie, this sequence a meditative lull, purposely put by Schrader to slow the pace of the movie and get us primed to fully invest in what’s to happen. Eventually Toller does arrive and goes to engage Michael. The 12 minute conversation between the two is the heart and soul of the movie and ranges from topics including anti-natalism to martyrdom. At each turn of the conversation, Michael nihilism regarding the world pours out. It’s clear he’s at his wits end and Toller attempts to diffuse the situation as best as he can before explaining to Michael that the source of his problem is an existential issue that’s plagued us all since the start of time.
Wisdom is holding two contradictory truths in our mind, simultaneously, Hope and despair. A life without despair is a life without hope. Holding these two ideas in our head is life itself.
He explains that, “Wisdom is holding two contradictory truths in our mind, simultaneously, Hope and despair. A life without despair is a life without hope. Holding these two ideas in our head is life itself.” This statement is the thesis of the movie and the jumping off point for the questions it seeks to answer. What is hope? What is despair? What does it mean for something to exhibit hope or despair? How do those ideas change when presented with different interpretations of the divine?
These spiritual questions become more poignant because the circumstances under which they arrive are intimately tied to the material issues the movie tackles. For example, what does environmental preservation look like once you consider the problem of evil. Did God mean for us to destroy the planet for some greater end? If so does that mean renewal efforts are problematic? The movie constantly throws loops like these and more (opposing Bible verses for example) into the equation causing us to re-evaluate the same event over and over sometimes multiple times in a scene. These moments not only force us to ask whether or not what the character’s are doing wrong but also whether or not our own actions hold up to judgement. Schrader can only achieve this level of audience engagement and introspection because of the perfect way he marries narrative and structure.
At a narrative level, Schrader’s script sets everything up for success. The story of a priest helping the troubled husband of a young couple is lifted from Bergman’s Winter Light. The loner on a mission who slowly becomes obsessed with a singular goal is lifted from his own Taxi Driver script. The voice-over narration and the journal is lifted from Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest (which Schrader also previously lifted for Taxi Driver). These larger allusions are combined with a host of other references (ex: Tarkovsky) to create a sum that’s genuinely greater than its parts. This is because every element lifted over is only done so if it helps tie into and expand the theme and the content involved is updated to be more relevant to an audience now. Nothing is homage just for homage’s sake. It all has a purpose.
For example, in Winter Light the main preacher, Tomas, is someone who’s frustrated with the silence of God. He’s an angry man dealing with the loss of a wife. His encounter with Jonas, Michael’s double, is marked by complete despair. Likewise, Toller is someone who’s dealing with his own crisis of faith. He’s dealing with the loss of his wife and son. His encounter with Michael, is marked by hope and despair, primarily because he sees Michael as an counterpoint to his deceased son. The lifted plot thus becomes distinct and opens new points of contrast that were unavailable before. Furthermore, Jonas is concerned about the threat with China. Michael is primarily concerned with anthropogenic climate change. The latter is far more relevant to an audience today. This is true of most of the call-backs to other movies. The structures/ideas are imported over, but are constructed in strict point and counterpoint duos to explore the ideas of hope and despair.
The way that Schrader has taken and developed these story ideas is most apparent when comparing First Reformed to Taxi Driver. Both stories employ Bresson’s voice-over tool to get us in the protagonists head. The technique not only lets us know them but gets us invested in rooting for them. In Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle, the protagonist, is a loner desperate to find a place. He’s never found a way to belong so his attempts at finding normalcy are utterly strange even if they initially come off as endearing. We’re sympathetic to his struggles even if we can’t understand him. As his decision making becomes more erratic we experience a strange shock. While Toller shares this desperation to find a place, he’s more mature and grounded. Unlike Travis, he’s had a family and a past before. Unlike Travis, he’s able to articulate the nature of his existential crisis. He’s not just being assaulted by a unassailable alienation. This makes his journey more easy to latch onto and comprehend. It’s not sympathy but empathy that gets us on his side. He reads. He thinks. He’s contemplative and kind, even if he’s harsh on himself. His nature as a priest makes him automatically someone we’re more receptive towards. As his decision making becomes more apparent, we become incredibly unnerved. By pushing us even more into the corner of his lonely protagonist, Schrader manages to increase the impact and feeling of every decision that’s made. It’s one thing watching a loose canon go closer to the extreme. It’s another thing entirely to watch a self-tempered man of God go to the same places.
Schrader’s dedication to using his “transcendental” style to structure the movie makes these hard hitting moments that much more effective [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFcCs8c2n6I. He litters the movie with odd little sequences that only serve to elongate the time between moments of tension. We’re forced to sit with our thoughts and take in the world. Every event is given it’s importance. Every decision’s significance becomes that much more relevance. By testing our patience, Schrader ensures we’re invested in the story and thinking about the relevance of what’s going on.
Ernst (Ethan Hawke) and Michael (Philip Ettinger) speak about a host of issues. The initial conversation is framed in a two shot to force the audience to pick sides.
Ernst (Ethan Hawke) responding to Michael.
Michael ( Phillip Ettinger) responding to Ersnt.
The color palette the movie uses is drab, muted, and drained. The austere environment adds to the meditative feeling of the movie. This palette combined with the way dialogue is framed makes every conversation that much more hard-hitting and involved. Conversation happening in a two shot requires the audience to parse the scene – paying attention to what is being said, how it’s being said, and how it’s been perceived. Singles are inherently more intimate because they allow the characters to speak “directly” to the audience with less of a filter. The resulting combination makes dialogue scenes more personal and engaging for audience members because they become involved in parsing and dealing with the weight of what’s being said.
This is reinforced at a visual level in both the drab color palette, the smaller aspect ratio (1:37) , and the basically un-moving camera. Nothing on the screen is ever meant to distract so nothing is flashy. This makes visceral scenes that much more direct. The screen itself is smaller and more constricted than usual, limiting the amount of information we have to work with and forcing us to pay even more attention to what we actually get. An unmoving camera forces us to stay focused on what’s happening in front of us, giving the moments that play out a duration which adds to their intensity. They also help build anticipation as the camera will stay focused on nothing as characters converse off frame. Unlike a normal movie which would pan over to the characters, Schrader often chooses to just wait till the characters come back in. Dialogue scenes are usually filmed in two shots (with both characters in frame) or in respective singles. Unlike most movies now, there are no over-the shoulder shots. Put together, the techniques lead to an rare intimacy with the characters. When they talk directly at the screen it feels like they’re talking to us. No over the shoulders mean no defense against their questions and concerns. The impact of what is happening is something that must be confronted.
Similarly, the soundscape is mainly quiet and filled with diegetic (within the world of the movie) noises, like footsteps or the wind blowing. When non-diegetic sound is finally introduced over an hour into the movie, it’s presence coincides with a startling event. The movie makes clear strides not to use any non-diegetic music, opting instead for a disconcerting droning noises to emphasize the uneasiness of the situations playing out.
Even the actors aren’t spared the quieting treatment as Schrader directs them to be as non-theatrical as possible. None of the characters ever emote in a way that’s showy or overly familiar. They’re not stoic, but their immediate feelings aren’t easily accessible. You have to take the time to look at them and see the slight nuances they give off. The emotional depth present only reveals itself to those willing to give to the movie as much as they want to take.
Ethan Hawke exemplifies subtle acting in this scene as he slowly closes his eyes and demonstrates a light feeling of satisfaction in response to the Church choir’s singing. The slow way the music washes over him is played subtle enough to show its impact without feeling showy or staged.
For example, in one breathtaking scene Reverend Toller walks in on the church’s youth choir singing “Are You Washed in the Blood”. He quietly takes a seat in the audience and lets the music envelop him. Hawke’s acting is subtle. He doesn’t do anything ostentation. Instead he closes his eyes slowly and lets the smallest slimmer of a smile creep up. The speed at which he does it makes it feel like Toller is actually experiencing something washing over him. The movie is filled with moments like these and it’s testament to both Schrader and his actors that most of them leave such a powerful impact.
The telos of all these surgically precise decisions is to generate a piece capable of reaching the audience on a truly spiritual level. Just like William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, First Reformed gives to the view exactly what they put in. One’s disposition towards hope or despair colors the way the entire story progresses, and the more one intensely relates to the context by which these ideas are presented the more intense the culmination of the entire experience becomes. Every critical juncture within the story presents a point and counterpoint – a path of hope and a path of despair. These moments allow the audience, the characters, and Schrader via proxy to engage in dialogue constantly, transforming the moments of silence the film employs into opportunities for reflection and gestation. We’re allowed to bask in the severity of what’s being explored. The final scene is the ultimate closing to everything leading up to it; it’s construction fully makes use of past judgements on the part of viewer so no two viewing experiences will ever be the same.
First Reformed is the culmination of a lifetime of work and represents the absolute crystallization of Schrader’s style, a culmination of the ideas he’s been bringing to life for the past few decades. It’s filled with references and allusions to Schrader’s favorite movies, informing us both of the movie’s place in the transcendental cannon and Schrader’s own thought process in the story’s construction. Despite this, the movie feels completely unique because each reference has a distinctive purpose in the grander scheme of the theme .It’s a movie where every move has purpose each of which can be traced back to Schrader’s own writings on what makes transcendental filmmaking . Toller being a more mature Bickle is emblematic of the way First Reformed is the maturation of Schrader’s “lonely man” narrative – a story he’s been telling since the 70’s. It is my favorite movie of his (including both his written and directed works) and one every person should watch. If you authentically give yourself to it and the ideas it presents, you may find yourself in the midst of a genuine spiritual journey.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
First Reformed feels like Paul Schrader’s most distilled and rigidly methodical movie. This tale of a reverend dealing with a crisis of faith might be Schrader’s latest in a long line of God’s lonely man stories, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have something unique to say. By combining the ideas and plot structures from his favorite spiritual movies and his own former works, Schrader is able to create a truly unique tale exploring the depths of hope and despair.
Every move made from editing to lighting, is done in accords with the transcendental method Schrader defined so many years ago in his seminal work, Transcendental style in film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. He makes use of dead time, an unmoving camera, minimal noise in the soundscape, and the like to lull us into his character’s point of view before then dragging us along our own parallel spiritual journey. This is a movie that demands an active audience to parse meaning from it because answers aren’t clear and points of emphasis aren’t made clear. Every scene requires the audience to make a choice on what is and is not important and why. The more you give to the movie, the more it gives back to you.
If you’re someone who’s loved Schrader’s past works (both written and directed), you owe it to yourself to check this out. At the very least, using it as a reference stick against his other movies will give you a lot to inspect regarding his evolution as an auteur. Likewise, if you’re someone who enjoys slow moving spiritual works in the vein of Dreyer and Bresson, you should check out the movie for similar reasons. The way it remixes references and ideas is something truly innovative and demonstrates proper allusions can make a work that much stronger.
Rating
10/10
Grade
S+
Go to Page 2 for the for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis. Go to Page 3to view this review’s progress report .
Haley Bishop as Haley Jemma Moore as Jemma Emma Louise Webb as Emma Radina Drandova as Radina Caroline Ward as Caroline Edward Linard as Teddy Seylan Baxter as Seylan
Haley starts the Zoom meeting at the start of the movie. Haley removes the tape from her camera.Haley (Haley Bishop) sends out invitations to the meeting.Someone else joins the meeting as Haley steps away from the camera.
We start in the virtual plane. A Zoom call opens up. The mouse moves to start up a meeting. The computer screen is the stage this play takes stage on. The physical pierces through the virtual as the filter tape that covers the meeting host’s camera is slowly removed. Privacy gives way for a chance at intimacy. We finally see our host, Haley (Haley Bishop), as she gets ready for meeting. Unbeknownst to her, someone else has joined her meeting room.
Haley moves the laptop down the hallway to look for the noise.Haley discovers Jemma (Jemma Moore) is the source of the noise.
Suddenly we hear a loud thud. Has something happened already? Does it have something to do with the unseen participant in the room? Haley leaves to find out, moving the laptop with her to bring us along on the journey. The screen is no longer bound to one place and is allowed to be active. As she makes her way to her living area, she realizes the sound is coming from outside. She peers out the window.
Crisis averted. She realizes that this noise, this false source of fear, is her friend Jemma (Jemma Moore), who’s outside making a ruckus in an attempt to get Haley to give her, Jemma, permission to join the zoom meeting; thus, the boundary between the physical gives way to the virtual as the encounter between the two transitions to the online call.
In just a little under 4 minutes, Rob Savage’s Host manages to showcase its themes, set up a scare, and foreshadow the structure of the story (along with finer plot details). As the rest of the members of the Zoom meeting show up, it’s revealed that the jolly group of friends, made up of 5 women – Haley, Jemma, Emma ( Emma Louise Webb), Radina (Radina Drandova), and Caroline (Caroline Ward) along with their male cohort Teddy (Edward Linard ), have come together under Haley’s instructions to perform an online séance. However, it becomes clear that things are going to take a turn for the worse as the group is inevitably forced to defend themselves against supernatural forces.
Now while creepy séance movies are nothing new, Host manages to raise the stakes by taking the process online. A séance is a ritualized procedure whereby individuals participate with one another to communicate with the spirits. The procedure involves the dissolution of the physical into the spiritual. It is not a coincidence that the nature of a séance matches up so well with the nature of an online meeting. Like the best J-Horrors (Pulse, Ringu), Host is focused on exploring the way the web has become the realm of a new spiritual – a site of connectivity where the the bonds between the living and the dead commingle. As communication transforms so does the nature of the haunting.
This is where the COVID-19 quarantine based setting of the movie comes in. Participants in a séance have to follow protocol to safely engage with the astral world. Breaking these rules can have consequences in the same way that breaking quarantine protocol can. Quarantine limits communication, relegating people to online messages as opposed to in person discussion. Without the physical presence of people around us, the way we engage in that conversation changes. We may be less inclined to follow rules of decorum or less likely to be as committed to engaging. In a more intimate sense, the forced closeness generated by quarantine protocol means that in-person relationships are forced to weather increased presences. People who you might have been able to ignore now are an everyday presence, and if they choose to ignore protocol they can end up infecting you with the virus potentially harming you and those you love. Privacy becomes harder to feign because the private is forced to seep into the public – another dissolution.
It is these qualities that makes an online séance during COVID-19 quarantine the perfect melting pot of ideas and themes. Barriers between the physical, spiritual, virtual, public, and private bleed into one another forcing us to ask tough questions about what we think about those closest to us and ourselves. Corona is compared to the nature of haunting. The breakdown of spirits is compared to the way the virtual space is made up. Each layer of the movie works on it’s own, but the strength of the movie comes from the way the ideas so easily build upon and proceed into one another.
This can most be seen in the way the movie marries its metaphysical vision to an equally exciting visual style. The way the script tackles its particular spirit(s) gives Savage and co. carte blanche to go hog wild with their ways of supernatural scares along with building up a mythos for what’s going on. Early on, the movie intentionally calls note to some small flickers on a user’s screen to goad you into focusing onto small details. That way when the screen changes from the group view to the individual view and back, you’re hyper focused on making sure nothing’s moving. The smallest flicker can elicit a scare. By layering moments like these early on, the movie manages to ratchet up the tension to incredibly high levels.
However unlike its most of its found-footage contemporaries, Host isn’t satisfied with just going for micro-scares and ending with one big scare akin to Paranormal Activity. It’s more ambitious and plays closer to something like James Wan’s The Conjuring; there are beautiful big set pieces, scares that are set up earlier in the movie, and practical effects are deployed wherever possible to help enhance the sense of immersion
Despite being constrained by filming (mostly) by themselves in their own apartments., Savage and his crew don’t shy away from going for big and impactful scenes with real heft demonstrating that embracing limitations is a powerful way to ground scares. Because it starts small and builds up progressively, the story is able to explore the development of the spiritual and offer space for questions to form on what’s actually going on.
By grounding the more horrifying elements of the supernatural encounter the movie’s individual elements can congeal. This is primarily achieved in two ways:
Careful attention to characterization details
Maintaing the feeling of a Zoom call.
Subtle interactions between the characters and in relation to the way they describe/deal with their respective living situations helps to fill in a lot of context as to what they’re doing and their respective histories with one another. Every piece of dialogue feels natural and conversations between the character’s feel consistent and proceed in a way that’s too natural to feel scripted but to well put together to fell fully done off the cuff. For example, early on the girls rag on Teddy before he shows up. Anyone who’s had friends can tell that under the playfulness is a real frustration at his presumed recent callousness at their group interactions. Moments like these are a testament to both the editor, Brenna Rangott, for picking clips that seamlessly flow off of one another and the cast and crew for playing off one another in a way that feels like actual friends would.
From left to right and top to bottom: Emma (Emma Louise Webb), Caroline (Caroline Ward), Haley (Haley Bishop), Jemma (Jemma Moore), Radina (Radina Drandova). The group uses the Zoom audio interface to boost up their ability to capture potential noises happening around them demonstrating both a commitment to the application and a neat way of using it to the movie’s advantage.
However, what grounds the film and makes it work is its impeccable formal consistency; never once does the film break away from the formatting of a Zoom call. It starts and ends on the application proper. The audio and video feeds range from high definition and nice microphone quality to scratchy and lagging video streams. The characters make use of functions in the application to problem solve a variety of issues. As they switch between mediums, from phones to computers, audio feedback delays and connection issues come about. Variation comes from the quality of the videos as the film cuts between the group participant views of the screen to solo participant views of the screen, and having the characters move the camera when the situation calls for it. The result is a movie that’s brimming with visual life despite being so limited in location and space.
Furthermore, there’s no score, because the movie is supposed to be a chronicle of a séance. But instead of silence, the soundscape is littered with bits of feedback and small creaks which manages to unsettle just as well as any compelling horror score. No noise or visual cue betrays the feeling of the movie which in turn makes the more grandiose moments feel satisfying, authentic, and unexpected.
Best of all, there’s no cheating with the use of awful glitch effects. Even the better found-footage horror movies like Hell House LLC tend to use cheap-feeling glitch effects where the camera presents a stream of static in an attempt to show the supernatural distorting things. It typically comes off as awful visual clutter that betrays the aesthetic of found-footage movies. Host completely avoids these issues because the practical stunts and effects are done so well that there’s no need to be afraid of showing the audience the horror.
However, the bursts of cinematic genius and narrative levity come to a close far too quickly. Many of the fleshier metaphysical ideas feel like they get truncated too quickly and consequently the depth present in each haunting is diminished. For example, the movie introduces the idea of personal totems that each character can use during the séance but makes very little use of it as the film goes on. Tying in some of the intense scary scenes with these more intimate character items would have helped give more definition to certain character arcs and relationship dynamics and made the supernatural subjectivity the film is trying to establish more apparent.
But in spite of these misses, Host is part of a select few found footage to evoke same sense of dread and unease that the The Blair Witch Project did at the turn of the century. By placing the narrative within the pandemic that many remains so fresh in many of our minds, it’s more easily able to get us to invest in the story and care about what happens to the characters because they’re like us: they’re trapped, forced to take responsibility for others, and susceptible to the smallest misstep from someone in their social group. It’s this empathetic identification that makes the sense of unease in Host so poignant and terrifying – a reminder of the shared horrors we’re still vulnerable to today.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
Host is proof that budget matters less than the guts to commit to a vision and figure out the most effective way to demonstrate that vision with the tools available. Despite being made during quarantine and with a low budget, each member of the cast and crew came together to turn in a cohesive and well-oiled horror machine that looks and plays like a major horror blockbuster. There’s characters to cheer for, scares that get under the skin, and a story that’s easy to follow while remaining compelling to think about.
Rating
8.7/10
Grade
A
Go to Page 2for the for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
Adam Sandler as Barry Egan Emily Watson as Lena Leonard Philip Seymour Hoffman as Dean Trumbell Mary Lynn Rajskub as Elizabeth Egan
Release Date
2002
Language(s)
English
Running Time
95 minutes
The movie opens on Barry Egan, an plunger entrepreneur who’s engaged in conversation with a help desk of sorts. His conversation style is awkward due to the importance and seriousness of the subject he’s speaking about – an airwards mile rewards program. This conversation is shot on a handheld camera. This is on purpose- many moments the movie explores, Barry’s awkwardness is a natural predisposition towards the world that manifests in his shaky lack of control over the way it should work.
Barry Eagan (Adam Sandler) isolated through mise en scène as he talks about an airplane rewards program. He’s in a corner oppressed by the shadows that encroach him.
He is surrounded by the colors blue and white – the blue matches his suit and feels like an extension of himself. The white feels oppressive especially with the way the shadows loom all around. He feels enclosed – stuck in a rut, threatening to get engulfed by the darkness around him. This is a pattern he needs to break.
He gets up to open his garage and literally disappears from the screen. Saying he’s in in a dark place is putting it lightly. As he looks out at the entrance to his garage lot the camera cuts to the entrance of the lot quite and starts tracking to the left side of it. Unlike the sky that surrounds Barry – a melancholic blue -the site on the street is a gradient of purple – a mix of blues and reds. Up to this moment, the soundscape has been minimal and precise outside of Barry’s footsteps, his dialogue (obviously), the scribbling of his notes, and similar small details.
Barry (Adam Sandler) walks away from his desk.
Barry (Adam Sandler) is subsumed by the darkness.
Barry (Adam Sandler) opens up the garage to his office.
As Barry (Adam Sandler) leaves his desk to go outside he’s momentarily swallowed by darkness. He’s experiencing a bout of something bad at the moment and we’re joining him at a pivotal event in his life.
This calculated calm gives way as a red car flips over the street violently. The sound of its crash is jarring – a wake up call – a signal to Barry that change is coming. Immediately after this crashed car skids down, a red moving van drops off a small harmonium before quickly driving off. Two red vehicles arriving at the same time disrupting the silence – in intervention in Barry’s life. The camera zooms onto the discarded harmonium before quickly cutting to Barry at his desk – his body replacing the space the piano was previously in. The piano will come to play an intimate part in his life.
Barry (Adam Sandler) looks out at the street in from of the lot he’s located at.
The street is calm. The background is a mix of purple, blue, and red.
A flash of violence as a red car flies through the air.
Barry (Adam Sandler) looks at the car crash in shock. The background behind him is blue like his suit, but is also different from the more distinct and gradient like street background.
Another red vehicle approaches and drops off a harmonium.
A zoom on the harmonium lets us know that it’s important.
The movie cuts from the harmonium being center of the frame to Barry (Adam Sandler) showing the way it’s going to play a defininig role in what’s to come in his life.
He goes through another awkward but telling phone conversation – socializing is not his strong point. The conversation ends and he goes outside once more. This time the sky is bright, filled with the sun- a warm radiance. A woman dressed in red, Lena, runs out of her white car. The warmth of the sun seems drawn to her. She’s fully illuminated as she runs towards Barry. Due to some unforeseen scheduling issues she needs his help getting her car to the mechanic next door. Barry plays it cool and lets her know he’ll be of assistance .
Their conversation is accompanied by a multicolored lens flare which shows up in between them. A bridge of light made up of red and blue colors – a connection willingly made by two parties. As she walks away the camera pauses on her standing next to the harmonium. Another connection made between a person and the harmonium. Now the two red interruptions (the red cars and Lena) are linked to an instrument (the harmonium) that’s linked to Barry.
He waits coyly for her to leave before rushing back into his garage/office. He hides in the shadows. The blackness consumes him. This is a momentary paralysis – a fear of the decision he has to make. A brief pause later and he choses to go into the light. His silhouette stands strongly and resolutely – a sign of his determination. The blackness goes from imposing to representing a moment of agency – from the shadows to the light. Speaking of the light, the harmonium which has been tied to Lena – a literal beacon of light, beckons Barry forward. To demonstrate to us the severity of Barry’s upcoming decision – PTA opts to show us our protagonist along with the harmonium from 3 separate angles , even going so far as to break the 180 degree rule( Barry’s orientation changes in images 7 to 8 as he goes from facing left to facing right) . The decision to take the harmonium is one of vital importance and as Barry decides to take it another truck violently zooms. As the truck goes by there’s another loud and abrasive car noise – a counterpoint to the first crash – a confirmation of a choice that has been made.
Barry (Adam Sandler) goes out into the blinding sunlight as a white car approaches him.
Barry (Adam Sandler) meets Lena (Emily Watson) who’s completely covered by the light – a new light in his life.
As Lena (Emily Watson) leaves the lot, the camera shows her next to the harmonium drawing a connection between the two.
Barry (Adam Sandler) runs back into his garage after his encounter with Lena. He’s paralyzed in fear and hides in the shadows, letting the black cover him up.
Barry (Adam Sandler) snaps out his momentary paralysis and becomes resolved in his decision to get the harmonium. He stands by the light- his frame becoming resolute and distinct showing his will instantiating.
Barry (Adam Sandler) goes to the harmonium.
Barry (Adam Sandler) looks at the harmonium from the right looking left.
Barry (Adam Sandler) looks at the harmonium from the left looking right.
As Barry takes the harmonium a large white truck goes on by and makes a large and jarring noise like the vehicles from earlier.
Barry (Adam Sandler) runs down to his office with the harmonium.
Lena (Emily Watson ) is a source of light in Barry’s (Adam Sandler) life. She shows up in a white car – a decision to be made. She’s dressed in red and stands with the harmonium – this ties her with the idea of love and music and in contrast to the violence of the original crash. If she is the harmonium and not the crash, then what is the crash going to look like? The movie invites us such questions through it’s clever development of motifs.
After agreeing to turn her car in, Barry hides in fear before deciding to recover the harmonium. His decision is reflected in the way the movie is edited through both the movie’s motifs (car crash noise) and the way it uses multiple angles and breaking the 180 rule.
He brings the harmonium back to his private office – a room which he keeps free from the chaos of his work environment. As he sets to examine the instrument, a blue lens flare appears- this is an important moment of determination from Barry . His face which was previously covered in shadows becomes enveloped in a light as the camera slowly zooms in on him staring at the instrument- he’s lit up by an outside brightness just like with Lena earlier.
As he plays the instrument, Jon Brion’s “Punch Drunk Melody” starts up in the background alongside the wonky harmonium notes Barry plays -the first meeting of the non-diegetic experimental score with the deliberate diegetic soundscape feels like an orchestra of sorts. The silence from earlier feels like a deliberate refrain akin to a song which helps tie the newfound audio to Berry’s newfound decision making process. The idea to bring in the harmonium is the key to everything – it brings “music” into Barry’s life. Even if the character’s can’t hear it, the non-diegetic score blends in with the sounds of their life, giving their actions and behaviors an accentuated rhythm.
One of Barry’s employee’s shows up and asks why there’s a harmonium in the main office . Barry initially ignores the question. He slowly dances out of the office with his eyes fixated on the harmonium almost as if in a trance. As he’s asked again he responds, “I don’t know.” Watch the movie to find out why.
Barry (Adam Sandler) sits down to tinker with the harmonium after picking it up off the street. There’s a blue lens flare showcasing how this manifestation of his will is important for what’s to come.
Barry (Adam Sandler) looks at the harmonium and goes from being in the shadow…
to being revealed in a light. The harmonium is a positive force for him.
Barry (Adam Sandler) slowly dances…
from side to side…
before admitting he doesn’t know why he brought the harmonium in.
Barry (Adam Sandler) may not know why the harmonium is so important to him, but he does find it to be a source of light in his life. It brings music and rhythm to his silent and melancholic existence and he goes on a journey to figure out why it is that it means so much to him.
To commemorate the start of Barry’s journey, the movie cuts to a Jeremy Blake art piece that showcases colors and shapes slowly dissolving, transforming, molding, and becoming one another. A gradient of pinks become blue become stars in the night sky become rainbows that cascade across the screen. The soundscape changes as music and dialogue interplay with one another – the diegetic/non-diegetic boundary continues to come undone as this plane of attributes coalesces into something before cutting to the next scene in the movie.
This living art piece is the framing device holding the elements of the movie together and is cut to at 4 critical junctures in the movie – moments of decision or change (this decision and resulting question being one of them) . The infinite array of sounds and changing visual schema represent the potential inherent to any decision – anything is possible. Highlighting the malleability of a situation by tying key junctures to the literal visual depiction of change helps drive home the importance of Barry’s decisions. However, Blake’s work also lets PTA say something about the act of cinema itself. It’s an assemblage of moving parts – lights, colors, sound, sound design, shapes, compositions, and so on- that can blend into an infinite array of phenomena. The particular presentation of a moment then, is incredibly important. It’s a distinct manifestation of the attributes done in an explicit way to elicit a feeling. As such it’s not just Barry’s decisions that are highlighted as important to the narrative, but also the auteur’s (and their respective cohorts) decisions to film scenes in certain ways.
Jeremy Blake’s constantly changing art piece serves as the framing mechanism that orders and matches the form, content, and themes of the movie into one cohesive breathing entity. This changing assemblage is a meditation on art, a deliberation on deliberation, love given a visual form, and the movie in its basest.
In Barry’s case – his decision involves love, hence the title of the movie. His awkward mannerisms and tendencies to hide in the shadows and become paralyzed are only the beginning of his character traits. As the movie continues, it’s clear that Barry is a man who struggles with his self image and doesn’t have full control over his impulses. He constantly commits Freudian slips, breaks into immense moments of emotional volatility, breaks things, awkwardly tries to get out of situations, and similar such behaviors. However, in spite of this he’s not a “bad guy”. It helps that Adam Sandler is naturally goofy and charming and those natural qualities bleed into his performance here. It’s this veneer of likability that gets us on his side cheering for him as opposed to against him and his manic patterns.
The movie uses every detail possible to showcase his developing agency, the way it manifests, and the way he feels about himself before and after such manifestations (identity). The movie uses colors, shadows, camera moves to highlight the way Barry sees and perceives every situation. White/yellow represent change and feel almost paralyzing. Change is horrifying and Barry spends much of time petrified in the white. Blue is the color of Barry. Obviously blue is connoted with a melancholy/depression which makes sense given where Barry is, but the color is more representative of his will. His fate and sense of being. Red is the color of Lena. It is the color of both love and violence. As evidenced by the red car and truck at the start of the movie, there’s both forces are explosive in their own right. Black is the color of determinacy – it represents a stabilization of attributes – a manifestation of the will. Characters constantly change their outfits in slight ways – changing colors to show their thought process and where they’re going to go. By adopting other characters’ colors, it’s evident that people can become a part of one another – that which was alone becomes part of a whole. Lens flares show moments of decision – the potential of a person activating a change and making a meaningful choice. These colors are draped in either a blinding light or a overwhelming shadow – the light and dark side of each of these colors – the duality between love and hate.
The innermost feeling of the characters are felt in the soundscape. As I have mentioned before, Brion’s work melds in seamlessly with the world of Punch Drunk Love. It is evocative and experimental – the sounds get under the skin like they’re being tapped or blown in the ear. It’s a direct and unforgettable kind of noise. It is also an explosion, turning beautiful and romantic at one moment to brutal and anxiety inducing at the next. There are other moments where the score fades to the background if not disappears altogether when something important is happening. For example, chaotic scenes might have a thumping score that ceases for a few moments as characters find a sense of peace.
Every single element of the movie works and is elevated because every point has a counterpoint (if not multiple) to tie together symbols and ideas into recognizable motifs- tying plot and theme together in an organic way that’s subconsciously understandable even if not particularly noticeable. The use of color, light, and certain musical cues only scratch the tip of the iceberg. In the same vein as Blue Velvet, the story is split and explores a seedy underbelly (violence) and a beautiful, charming, picket-fence world (love). Our protagonist has to navigate and deliberate between this split world and come up with a way of living in the world because his worldview is shattered/incomplete as of now. The counterpoints in each of these social spheres help reinforce the idea of love and hate being two sides of the same coin (as evidenced by the crash early on) – two instantiations of passion.
With Sandler and Watson’s performances as the leads along with more than satisfying performances from Hoffman and other members of the supporting cast, the movie feels fully realized. Sandler and Watson have a chemistry that’s undeniable – it helps keep the more absurd moments of the movie endearing, so they pass off as something heartfelt as opposed to disconcerting. Both of them bring something from the other and their relationship is one you cheer for. Sandler in particular taps into a darkness that gives his character the capacity to deal with both the light and dark worlds the movies present (a precursor of the depths he would end up going to in the more recent Uncut Gems).
As evidenced by the swarm of screenshots and stills, this is a movie where every frame has a purpose – a definite meaning. Every lens flare, every use of color, ever crash, every beat shift, every movement of the characters is purposeful and comes together to create what can only be called a true cinematic experience. I could spend hours just poring over the mise en scène, cinematography, shot composition, etc but the main point I want to emphasize is that the meticulous attention to detail more than pays off. Every symbol is introduced in a dynamic and distinctive way. Symbols are tied together to narrative cues and elements of the movie. The repetition of these motifs along with the symbols gives the movie a host of meanings that film nerds can get completely lost in. On top of this the score and pacing of scenes gives the movie a beat that every characters actions and decision seem to abide by – there’s even a moment where Barry dances in a grocery aisle that feels like it could be from a musical. This underlying rhythm helps keep the pace steady and consistent – even in quality from beginning to end. This is all then tied together by a framing mechanism that’s quite literally a meditation on art form – giving the formal decisions of the movie a resonance that can’t help but be appreciate.
It’s a movie that shows cinema as love. Every decision really is important and by giving such dedication to every element – big and small- PTA manages to take that love as plot point and transform it love as audience response. In the same way the non-diegetic music has the characters moving along to it, as if they can hear its reverberations making some kind of impact on the rhythm of the world, the movie has us completely entrapped by it. Without even knowing why, we’re wrapped up in a love story, a meditation on film, and a look at the way trauma manifests and can be resolved all without ever being hit over the head with it. We fall in love.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
Punch Drunk Love is a masterpiece that needs to be seen to be believed. It is a true demonstration of the potential of cinema as an art form , of cinema as a conduit to emotion. The way that formal elements are set up, utilized, referenced, and grouped into more discernible patterns shows that PTA has made every decision deliberately. Symbols and their respective ideas are shown explicitly, subtly, and repeatedly with multiple scenes constantly hammering the connections between different ideas. From the everything is color coded to the way the score transforms the movie into a spiritual musical , this is a movie that really has something for everybody. It’s funny, charming, disturbing, heartwarming, beautiful, meditative, and everything in between – a potential that’s constantly giving .
Rating
10/10
Grade
A+
Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
Carey Mulligan as Cassandra/ “Cassie” Bo Burnham as Dr. Ryan Cooper Clancy Brown as Stanley Jennifer Coolidge as Susan
Release Date
2020
Language(s)
English
Running Time
113 minutes
Charlie XCX’s “Boys” plays accompanied by a montage of men’s hips thrusting and gyrating in a bar setting. A pop song that means something more.
Montage of men’s groins as they dance in the bar. The early montage accompanied by Charlie XCX’s “Boys” sets the stage for the analysis of phallocentrism and agency to come.
The song’s accompanying music video is a view on alternative masculinity – men commit to performing “sexiness” in alternate fashions [1]Kim, M. (2018, March 17). We need to talk about charli xcx’s very important “boys” video. Retrieved February 09, 2021, from … Continue reading. The video showcases men acting like prototypical women in sexy photoshoots, but treats the whole endeavor as more wholesome. The result is a exploration of the ranges of masculinity. As a result, the song’s hook, “I’ve been busy thinking about boys,” comes to mean something far more. It’s thinking about alternative instantiations of masculine agency. Promising Young Woman operates in a similar fashion- it has a lot to say about the way power and gender operates under its stylized poppy exterior.
The montage ends and the movie moves to a conversation among 3 men in the bar who engage in “locker room” talk. It starts off with them trashing on some coworkers until they notice Cassandra, a seemingly inebriated and thoroughly “wasted” woman, laying passed out on some couches.
Cassie (Carey Mulligan) slumped against the red couches in the back of the bar. Unbeknownst to her prey, she waits for them to make a move patiently.
The group’s insults turn towards her as they cast judgement on her poor decisions. If anything happens to her it’s her fault for not taking care of herself – rape culture. One member of the group, Jerry (Adam Brody), feigns worry about Cassandra’s state and goes to help her get home. He lets his friends know and they immediately and holler – the implication is clear. Rape becomes an in-joke – consent is murky and she was asking for it, but it’s all a joke so there’s plausible deniability. The moment he gets her out of the bar and into a rideshare vehicle, he announces that his apartment is “close by” and actively changes the GPS end location. He tells Cassie they can have some drinks at his place. The man who was concerned about the drunk girl getting taken advantage of takes her home to give her more alcohol. Did we expect something different?
Meanwhile, the cab driver feigns ignorance. It doesn’t matter that a drunk woman is being escorted by a stranger blatantly taking advantage of her. We’ve met 4 men so far -3 were willing to look past the obviously drunk woman being escorted by someone she doesn’t know while 1 is fine taking her home despite knowing she can’t consent to anything . Complicity is not direct participation says the former group but that complicity is what serves as direct affirmation for the latter person. As such everything becomes forgiven.
Unfortunately for Jerry, he’s finally run into someone who can’t forget and definitely can’t forgive. As he removes her underwear despite her protests and questions about what he’s doing, she looks up directly at the camera- at the audience – to clue us in on on a little secret; she’s the one who’s in charge. No longer relegated to the periphery of society, she flips the script and reveals her drunk performance was nothing more than bait set out to lure prey to her.
This moment is one of the most striking and demonstrates early on that this is Cassie’s (Carey Mulligan) story. As she’s being stripped she stares at the camera, breaking the fourth wall, to let us know that this is all going according to her plan and that she’s more in charge of everything happening than we think. This is an important idea the movie expands on, using Cassie’s status as “writer” of the story to explore the way agency can manifest under oppressive circumstances. Notice how the Christmas lights surround her in the first and third images like a boundary of sorts, but as soon as she reveals she’s in charge the next shot shows her with the lights below her. She’s outside of the box.
Furthermore, the way she carries over her “gotcha” look from the audience to Jerry reflects the way that the problems the latter represents are endemic in society proper, not just the world of the movie.
She had “been busy thinking about boys” all along – their agency, their ability to inflict violence, their nice guy personas, the way society actively helps protect/enable them, and had decided that enough was enough.
The movie cuts from Cassie revealing to Jerry that she’s very much conscious to her walking down the street, a red smear on her leg. In a typical revenge movie, this smear would be blood- the presence of the torture that Cassie enacted on Jerry in her “revenge”. However, this is a movie that’s painfully aware of narrative conventions and subverts them in an attempt to interrogate the underlying logic of a phallocentric society – one where rape culture, as the movie demonstrates heads on , is pervasive and built into the “rules”. The camera continues to tilt up and reveals a similar huge red smear on Cassie’s arm. However, it’s made immediately apparent that the red smears aren’t blood but are jelly from the doughnuts instead. What we thought to be blood turns to be something far more innocuous instead – violence transformed into something sweet and sugary.
Cassie (Carey Mulligan) wipes off jelly doughnut filling after her rendezvous with Jerry. The way the camera tilts up along with revenge-story tropes makes us think this is blood, but the deflection is done purposefully. It’s an early sign to to the audience to be aware of revenge narrative tropes and to break down why they are/are not being implemented in certain ways and what that says about a character’s position in relation to power structures.
As she continues to walk, Cassie is accosted by cat-calling construction workers across the street who deride/shame her for having had a crazy night out. They laugh at her. She stares back at them. She is unmoving. She is unfazed. Her gaze unsettles them to the point of distress. They immediately call her a spoil sport and go off. Her refusal to play along to the scripted relation by frustrates them. She continues on her path until she gets home. Once she’s inside her room she retrieves a journal, flips through dozens upon dozens of pages, deliberately and aggressive adds a count to a tally which appears to be color coded, flips to another section of the journal, and then proceeds to write out the name Jerry in a list that contains a staggering number of names. What’s been done to Jerry or any of these other names is still unknown at this point.
This is simple, clean, and effective visual storytelling. It’s immediately clear that Cassie has been playing rape culture vigilante for a while. The throng of names and tally marks give an indication of the count, but the way that indentations bleed from page to page show brutal and destructive the whole endeavor has been for Cassie. Hundreds of people have tried to do God knows what to her to the point where she has a healthy running tally. No wonder she’s so fatalistic. How does one live in a world where one is constantly reduced to a passive object that can be casually used and discarded?
Her name Cassandra is fitting. In Greek myth, Cassandra is a princess who catches the eye of Apollo, rejects him, and then is cursed with the power to tell of prophecies that will come true but that no one will listen to. [2]“Cassandra.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Cassandra. A woman cursed by a man for rejecting his advances who is then condemned to tell the truth but be ignored. That description seems to hit a lot of marks especially as we proceed through the story. Given that Cassie’s prophecies are doomed to be ignored the question becomes how does she exercise agency? How can rape culture be fought when it’s part and parcel of society at large – when people hear the truth but choose to ignore it? This is where the movie’s play and subversion on narrative ideology comes in.
The revenge story is the cultural mythos of this society – a man who is wronged in some way musters up the wherewithal necessary to beat down whomever stands in his way whether it involve underground criminal organizations or covert government forces. Even when women are written in as the leads, the way they deal with the problems and scenarios doesn’t differ in a meaningful structural level. The “good” guys win and the “bad” guys lose. The overall result is a kind of propaganda that doesn’t meaningfully wrangle with subjectivity. Promising Young Woman does the opposite of this by having Cassie act with a distinct womanhood. It recognizes that the world forces certain vantage points upon people based on their social position and actively positions the narrative and its development around Cassie and her subjective orientation towards the dominant social order.
Everything from the way she deals with her night-time vigilante situations to the way she handles her fundamental revenge mission plays on familiar tropes (look back to the aforementioned doughnut example). By placing her in typical revenge confrontations and delaying the reveal of what she actually done, the movie forces us to examine just how brutal the rules of the social order are for some while they’re unfairly stacked in the favor of others. We have images of what we think Cassie has done which help reveal our complicity in/normalization of the system and the movie cleverly shows us how out of depth we are when it reveals what’s actually happened. Furthermore, Cassie’s relation to her trauma is kept as anonymized as possible – there’s no “face” to attach to it per say. It makes placing yourself in Cassie’s shoes incredibly easy because her relationship becomes something more universal – the anonymization helps showcase just how deep seated rape culture is and how devastating it can be to all involved.
The end result is a striking dialogue that engages the audience on multiple levels. It becomes clear just how integrated certain ideas are within our psyches and how they colors our view on envisioning the realm of possible action, both for ourselves and other people. It shows us just how easy it is to distract away from violence by framing it in more abstract terms – a sweeping under the rug that does nothing but tidy the mess. This is reflected in the structure of the movie, which uses Cassie’s orientation towards her trauma as a way to constantly change the genre. As her character arc progresses the movie goes from thriller/black comedy, to rom-com, to drama, to fantasy with some some great transitory bits in between. Each of these moments uses Cassie’s character disposition, the music, the use of montage (like the one that starts the movie), and so on to reveal a vantage point that women can occupy in respect to a male dominated order. Some of these genre moves feel abrupt (ex: a rom- com styled dance sequence that pops up out of nowhere is a common criticism I’ve seen in some reviews) because they are meant to critique the way these issues are normally pushed aside in favor of more lighthearted and palatable discussions – the range fantasies go in concealing the true nature of what’s going on.
The framing mechanism takes elements from Cassie’s (Carey Mulligan) personal journal and makes them chapters in the story. This further emphasizes her agency in constructing what we’re seeing and helps to drive the point the story is making.
Structurally the movie makes use of a list of targets from Cassie’s journal as a framing device. This directly ties form to content – the story (movie proper) is Cassie’s tale. This is the story she’s writing and the framing mechanism does an important job in both establishing the way she thinks about how to deal with her trauma and what “winning” against the same looks like. Each genre shift forces you to think about what her agency means. There are multiple moments where you’re left wondering if her range of choices were really as limited as presented or if that limitation was meant to reveal something else entirely.
Holding all these strands together is Cary Mulligan’s standout performance as Cassie. She’s the emotional center of the movie and single handedly helps every story thread come together in a cohesive and moving fashion. Her deadpan delivery along with her witty dialogue makes her easy to root for. The anger by which she emotes make it easy to understand how serious what she’s dealing with is. There are moments where she moves around on the camera like a hunter- slowly pushing her target to the corner of the frame trapping them – cornering someone in the most literal sense of the term. The ease by which she controls situations makes it apparent that she’s skilled. It all coms down to one thing – Mulligan knows how to show the depth of what she’s going through which makes Cassie’s subsequent arc coherent and believable while still using it to explore social positions. This is also why so many members of the supporting cast were cast from likable comedians/actors who immediately make us trust as opposed to doubt them. The movie uses this previously built trust to reveal how deep seated and ubiquitous rape culture is and the danger inherent at the heart of it – anyone can hurt you and appearances are deceiving.
The end result plays likea Gothic fairy tale, albeit one with a bubblegum pop aesthetic as opposed to the traditional black and white palette. The traditional pop songs and the vibrant use of colors, namely pink and blue, come off feeling as something reclaimed as opposed to something campy -they are the artifice of womanhood that must be taken seriously. Likewise, the story actively forces you to engage with the point it’s trying to make, not in a way that’s preachy but in a way that demonstrates the ideological maneuverings we use to obstruct and get around difficult issues and conversations. Most importantly, it tells a story that needs to be heard because of how lasting and important it is. The way the movie tackles issues of culpability, consent, systemic injustice, and the manifestation make it essential viewing, but it’s presentation and examination of the way ideology plays into these demarcating these thoughts makes it an absolute masterwork.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
Promising Young Women is the type of debut that gets you excited for the director’s future movies. Fennell takes an idea – what does “real” agency look like in a world where rape culture is built into the way that world operates – and explores it in a way that actively gets the audience involved in examining their own prejudice while being wholly committed to a strong singular vision. The movie utilizes a bubblegum pop aesthetic comes in both the c olor palette and music choice giving this Grimm fairytale an updated makeover that’s infectious, fun, and serious. The script’s genre jumping tendencies gives Mulligan a huge canvas to play on which gives the story the emotional core it needs to sustain its more intense beats. The elements come together in a truly ambitious fashion that help it more than deliver on its promise.
Rating
10/10
Grade
A+
Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
James Franco as Alien Selena Gomez as Faith Vanessa Hudgens as Candy Ashley Benson as Brit Rachel Korine as Cotty Gucci Mane as Archie
Release Date
2012
Language(s)
English
Running Time
93 minutes
The movie opens with excess as the title credits splash onto the screen. Neon colors and stylized letters give an indication of the story to come.
The title card is a sign of things to come – normal letters that feel like so much more due to the neon infused colors and stylization. Spring Break is elevated into something that seems exceptionally beautiful.
Synth dance music starts to play as a montage depicting the festivities of spring break start to play. The camera leers at the debauchery – moving over the bodies of young 20 somethings fully embracing the pleasures associated with the season. Crotch grabbing, ass shaking, flashing the camera, a litany of phallic behavior (talk about Freudian) from fellating popsicles to jerking off beer bottles – it’s all a proclamation that this drive to enjoyment is the law of the land.
Phallic behavior is the name of the game at the sunny beaches of Florida as young women suck on popsicles suggestively while young men feed the former booze from beer cans positioned over their crotches. In a Freudian sense, this represents the symbolic law of the land has transformed. The only ethical injection is to enjoy and give in to hedonism.
This excitement is interrupted as the movie cuts to a suburban area – a college campus that’s boring and drab compared to what came before. We move to a classroom filled with bright, neon screens coloring the space. The professor at the head of room starts to talk about the Double V campaign – a slogan used during World War II to tie the fight against fascism abroad to the fight against racism at home. Despite serving in the troops, African Americans were still treated as sub-humans in their homeland of America. This discussion on the nature of race’s relation to the American dream and its ideological stronghold is ignored as the camera moves to two girls, Candy and Brit, who are more focused their upcoming spring break-cation. The plight and suffering of African Americans is drowned out by Candy performing mock fellatio on a drawn out penis that says “Spring Break Bitch”.
Candy (Vanessa Hudgens) ignores the discussion of the pervading antiblackness that haunts the history of America in favor of pretending to blow a penis representing Spring Break. This is a tie in to the earlier phallic endorsement of Spring Break and represents the way the drive for “new” pleasure is used to displace the call for justice.
This displacement is no coincidence. It’s a reminder to us that the anti-blackness that was started in the United States with slavery and plantations still persists – lingering in the background – an undercurrent to Americana that is constantly ignored and shoved aside.
The professor’s lecture drowns out and turns into the voice of a youth pastor trying to amp up a group of young Christians. In this circle of religious adherents is the aptly named Faith, a young women who’s dissatisfied with the seemingly boring goings of her everyday life. As the group says “Amen” together in hypnotic and repetitive fashion, the camera cuts to Brit drinking booze out of a squirt gun with a poster of Lil Wayne behind her. A black rapper and pop idol watching the young white women drinking alcohol from a gun – the gun as a tool of violence turns into one of pleasure as pop stars are respectively turned into idols which are to be consumed. The blackness of the star in question is not a coincidence – like the labor of African Americans during WWII, the cultural work done by this community is consumed without abandon without regard for the creators.
Brit (Ashley Benson) squirts alcohol into her mouth from a gun. On top of reinforcing the phallic imagery, the transformation of the gun as a tool to kill to a tool to deliver alcohol showcases the ties between violence and pleasure. The figure of a black rapper in the background is no coincidence. In a world where pop idols are “Gods” and blackness is consumes as a product, Lil Wayne becomes emblematic of the way pop culture is created by black people and coopted by others.
The movie cuts back to Faith, who informs her Church friends that she’s excited to go Florida with Candy, Brit, and their other friend Cotty to celebrate Spring Break. The three party girls make their way to Faith to make sure they have enough money for their upcoming vacation. Unfortunately, the girls realize they don’t have enough. This depression manifests itself in the color of their surroundings – blue hallways, blue rooms, and a blue ambiance. The blue normalcy that surrounds them is unbearable and they have to get away. They need to find themselves and awaken in a spiritual fashion that’s” impossible” to do in their current location. It’s at this point that Candy, Brit, and Cotty make plans to steal the money they need. They drive down a yellow road. Like the road Dorothy travels in Oz this is a path to transformation and change. The whole time a voiceover from Candy and Brit repeats over and over like the “Amen”‘s from before- “Just pretend like it’s a video game” , “Act like you’re in a movie or something” – an updated mantra for the new age. If pop culture and pleasure are the new Gods in this incarnation of the American Dream, then this repetition is the prayer adherents must believe to survive. They go into a local restaurant and steal from the unsuspecting patrons- emerging at the bright red exit. Finally, their journey can start.
The girls make their way down a yellow road to go from their boring dreary lives marked my a neon blue to escape to new and better pastures marked by a neon red. The colors not only make their burglary pop but represent their “spiritual” journey.
They make their way to Florida and the party begins. The girls lose themselves in the spring break assemblage as the images become hyper saturated, letting bodies blend into one another. To be one with spring break is to give oneself fully to pleasure. In this “new” world, all that matters is how far one’s willing to go to get what they want. There’s a newfound agency as the girl’s engage in the same debauchery as their male counterparts. They’re sexualized by the camera, but they embrace it and grab the pleasure bull by its horns. It’s during their escapades that they run into Alien – a white rapper with dreads who traps as his main form of currency. He takes pride in both “being out of this world” and being the only white boy in a black neighborhood. He loves the American Dream which as he explains is all about making change and acquiring more and more.
This is Spring Breakers – an introspective look into the transformed American dream, one that prioritizes material growth at the cost of everything else. The only ethical injunction is to enjoy pleasures to the max. However, this pleasure is nothing more than a pretty picture that covers up the emptiness at the heart of endless hedonism. When the girls are living their lives back home they watch tv, they drink to excess, they smoke weed, they go to house parties, they mess around with each other. When they go on Spring Break, they quite literally participate in the same behavior – it’s just ratcheted up higher and with more dazzling colors. All their spiritual awakening really amounts to is putting a nice filter over their everyday behavior – something that Korine quite literally demonstrates through the replication of certain shots under different lighting. The blue drab lighting that they do despised gives way to a bright red neon hue that demonstrates that it’s only their ideological investment in the idea of spring break as spiritual praxis that makes it so as opposed to the activities they engage in.
The girls do the same things whether it be at home or in Florida during spring break. This is made obvious with the repetition in shot selection. In both areas they have fun and relax by doing hand stands; however, they enjoy the experience more in Florida because they think spring break makes it magically superior. It’s an ideological investment that transforms the mundane into something special despite there being no material change in what’s going on. The change of colors from the boring and dreary blue to the exciting and vibrant red signifies that this is all about ideology.
In the background is the specter of African Americans- like the plantations and buildings they built centuries ago they have created the the pop culture that the young masses can’t get enough of. However, just like the fruits of their labors on the plantations and the respect /rights they deserved for fighting in World War II, their efforts are once again coopted by the system. They put in the work, but they receive very little if any of the fruits of their labor- relegated to the periphery constantly. From the professor’s early lectures to the constant imagery of black entertainment being consumed and emulated by young white 20 somethings , their presence is always felt.
While the subject matter is disgusting and excessive in the vein of John Waters, the presentation definitely reminds me of Terrence Malick. There’s immense attention given to compositions (there are multiple shots in the movie that feel like they could be wall art/post cards) and using lighting as mise en scène. Blue is dreary normalcy, yellow is change and transformation, while red is the promise of spring break – the heart of the American Dream. The colors permeate through every shot, giving the movie a visual splendor while tying the elements together thematically. The editing is elliptical and features a healthy dose of voiceovers. Lines of dialogue are presented in an almost innocent way to start – a promise of good things, but then are repeated again to reveal the true depravity of the situation at hand. On top of revealing the duplicity of spring break , the repetition of lines creates an hypnotic feeling that fully immerses you in the world. The movie is vapid and deceptive, but that doesn’t stop it from being beautiful and poetic in its own way. It’s beautiful to look and hypnotizing to listen to with very little underneath in terms of plot perfectly tying form to theme.
Complimenting this structure and the movies themes are the performances by the cast. Given the movie’s celebration of pop culture as idolatry, the casting of both Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens, two former Disney super stars, is more than apt and sets the movie up for success. Each member of our main cast of heroines demonstrates a different level of comfort with the transformed American Dream. Gomez constantly gives off an disconcerted feeling that she quickly disguises with faux happiness representing Faith’s conflict in embracing hedonism over her spiritual roots. Rachel Korine is constantly having fun and gives herself to the party scene fully showcasing Cotty’s desire to just have a good time. Both Hudgens and Benson express sheer ecstasy at the situation highlighting how how Candy and Brit respectively don’t care about anything than enjoying their experience, no matter how debauched it threatens to get. In particular, Benson showcases a cold danger in her eyes , demonstrating the cutthroat disposition one must have to succeed in the “new” America. Franco brings a surprising amount of depth to a white rapper who drops the n-word from the way he gleefully engages with the girls to the way he constantly has a disconcerted look that occasionally comes through in his eyes. His cover of Britney Spear’s “Everytime” in the latter half of the movie is heartfelt and touching in the most off-putting way possible, perfectly encapsulating everything Alien and the movie is about – celebrating the drive to pleasure and material goods as the end all be all.
It’s not surprising to see the low ratings for the movie : a 5.3 on IMDB, 67% on Rotten Tomatoes, 63 on Metacritic. Those looking for an believable crime story with traditional storytelling are going to feel betrayed by what they get. On top of this, the editing of scenes feels disjointed and fragmented while the repetitive voiceovers can feel lazy and just like an excuse to pad the run time. However, these criticisms miss the point. It’s not that the movie isn’t empty at it’s core. It definitely is. That’s the point. The emptiness is used to point out that way the ideologies we currently subscribe to are empty and vapid. The ideals we cling to are not only built on a bed of anti-blackness, but amount to nothing more than a nihilistic drive towards pleasure. If this famous clip of Spring Breaker in 2020 proves anything, it’s that Korine’s vision and analysis should be treated more seriously. What says hedonistic destruction more than Spring Breakers willing to get corona just to experience their long awaited festivities?
REPORT CARD
TLDR
In what can only be described as Terrence Malick directing a John Waters movie, Korine’s Spring Breakers is one part a celebration of excessive hedonism and superficiality, another part an elevation of pleasure seeking to a form of spirituality, and at it’s core an simultaneous indictment and valorization of the duplicity of the American Dream. The elliptical editing, use of repetition in lines, constant voiceovers, and bright and saturated compositions are intoxicating and transport the viewer into a world of excess that feels empty at its core. Though the movie might seem vapid at first go, it tackles a host of issues from antiblackness to pop culture idolization in thought provoking ways asking us to assess the state of our current orientation towards success and having a good time. Immersive and important, those people who are willing to look beyond the surface might find something worthwhile in Korine’s breakdown of modern ideology.
Rating
10/10
Grade
A+
Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
