Category Archives: 2010s

2010s, 2013, Drama, gothic, Grade, Horror, mystery, Past, psychological, Review, review-movie, S, Thriller, Year

Film Review: Stoker – 2013

October 5, 2021 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Park Chan-wook
Principal Cast	Mia Wasikowska as India Stoker Matthew Goode as Charlie Stoker Nicole Kidman as Evelyn Stoker Dermot Mulroney as Richard Stoker
Release Date	2013
Language(s)	English
Running Time	99 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

India (Mia Wasikowska) walks across the street as the frame freezes. Her actor’s name appears across from her.

“My ears hear what other cannot. Small, faraway things people cannot normally see are visible to me. These senses are the fruits of a lifetime of longing. Longing to be rescued. To be completed. Just as the skirt needs the wind to billow…I’m not formed by things that are of myself alone. I wear my father’s belt tied around my mother’s blouse. And shoes which are from my uncle. This is me. Just as a flower does not choose its color…we are not responsible for what we have come to be. Only once you realize this do you become free. And to become adult, is to become free.”

These words are whispered by our protagonist, India (Mia Wasikowska) in a part opening montage and part intro credit sequence that opens on her walking away from a sports car and police car across the street to a green pasture. Her actress’s name, Mia Wasikowski appears on the screen right next to her as the frame freezes momentarily – the present fading into the past. Time flows again and she walks over the name, subsuming it. She stands over the pasture and looks over it, as the wind blows her skirt and the long grass around her. Another cast member’s name appears in the enclosing of her skirt as the frame freezes again. Once again, the present “intervenes” and the freeze stops while the name recedes into the invisible abyss it came from. This pattern continues to repeat before settling on a white flower spattered in red.

This image is unsettling because at this point in the monologue, India directly refers to how a flower doesn’t choose its colors, in the same way as people do not choose the contingent events that shape up their lives up to that moment. The camera cuts to an image of her face smiling as her whispered speech ends on her explaining that realizing this truth is to become adult, thereby becoming free. The frame freezes one last time as her smiling face dissolves to another shot of a younger her running through another field of green; the sounds of wind and rustling fabrics and grass give way to composer Clint Manwell’s fairy-tale like score which evokes feelings of wonder and propulsive change.

India (Mia Wasikowska) feels an injury on her foot.

Just like her “modern” counterpart, this younger India is also followed by the opening credits which appear in the environment around her. She pays them no mind; instead, she takes her shoes off upon noticing a callous and sits next to a gray statue who serves as a mirror image to her. Her wound bursts with clear pus after she pops it, bursting through the soundscape momentarily, before disappearing again. Without a moment wasted, India continues a search, canvassing multiple locations surrounding her expansive residence for “something.” Finally, she climbs up a tree and finds a Birthday present in a box wrapped with yellow ribbons.

Upon finding her mystery item, the film cuts to India’s birthday cake; the propulsive score fades away as the sounds of sirens and flames take charge – a sharp contrast to the scene in question. The camera pushes in on the cake and then rises above it before descending. Now covered in a glass container, the cake is unable to sustain its flames which dissipate into wisps of smoke as a phone starts to ring. A woman screams, “Richard. No!” as the glass container dissolves into the film’s title card proper, which is etched out by an invisible pen and ink.

The camera lingers on both Evelyn’s and India’s shooes. One wears heels while the other wears saddle shoes, a mark of adulthood and childhood respectively.

A preacher’s voice can be heard and it’s revealed that Richard, India’s father, has died. Thus, her 18th birthday, the threshold marking her “birth” as an adult, is marked by the loss of a parent, a figure meant to guide her on that path. Her mother, Evelyn, and her sit at the funeral, both distraught in their own ways. India is stoic and steely while her mother is visibly puffy and devastated. The camera goes to the pair’s feet momentarily; Evelyn is wearing heels while India is wearing saddle shoes. However, India notices a disturbance – a gaze taking notice of her. She turns her head to the side and notices a figure in the distance, a man staring down at her from above the hillocks she previously ran through.

India plays the piano as a spider crawls towards her.

The funeral service proper ends, but the preacher’s sermon continues playing in the soundscape of India’s mind. She tries to play piano while a spider crawls towards her feet. However, her attempts at distracting herself are interrupted by her mother, whose figure makes its presence known on the mirror above her. As Evelyn implores India to help with the event’s cooking, the latter stares her down with a kind of disdain. Even after turning to face Evelyn, as opposed to facing her mirror image, India refuses to say anything. Evelyn exasperatedly pushes her point while the aforementioned spider skirts up the grieving daughter’s leg.

India (Mia Wasikowska) sits in the kitchen to help make deviled eggs.

However, India does acquiesce to her mother’s demands and goes to the kitchen to help make deviled eggs. She overhears a pair of maids gossiping about the state of her family’s affairs. These unwanted thoughts her, so she starts to roll an egg, cracking it slowly. Outside noise fades out as the sound of the eggs breaking overwhelms the ears, until finally, Mrs. McGarrick (Phyllis Somerville), the Stoker’s head caretaker, silences the pair and goes to inquire into India’s state of mind. The two remnisce on their shared past with deviled eggs and it becomes clear that unlike, Evelyn, India sees the elderly caretaker as a surrogate-mother of sorts. Mrs. McGarrick takes out flowers which are tied with a yellow ribbon and asks India if she found her birthday present yet. India ties the color of the ribbon on the flower to the color of the ribbon on the box from her initial adventure and reveals she found a key in the box before also expressing surprise at the revelation that Mrs.McGarrick is tied to her yearly birthday presents, shoes, as opposed to her deceased father like she initially thought.

She leaves the kitchen momentarily and sees her mother talking to the stranger who gazed upon the mother-daughter duo earlier at the funeral. Her mother sees India and calls out to her, introducing the stranger as Roger’s brother, Charlie – a stranger turned into long lost uncle. The revelation deeply upsets India who immediately walks back into the kitchen. Her pale expression invites concern from Mrs.McGarrick who inquiries into what’s wrong. India responds honestly: “Yes. My father is dead”.

India (Mia Wasikowska) sleeps in her bed dejected.

As if in response to her dejection, the film cuts to a fully lethargic India. The camera tracks to the right from India’s face to a pair of shoes, like the ones she’s worn previously. This pair of shoes dissolves into another which dissolves into another and so on, each pair smaller than the one that came before it. Eventually, the dissolving shoes come to a small pair, fit for a toddler, before the camera tracks right back to India’s face. The camera steps back and reveals that India is laying in a circle of 16 pairs of shoes; each pair from the montage lies around her, in a displaced oval like shape, ranging from oldest to newest pair. Her “current” 17th pair, lies on the floor next to the bed; one pair for every birthday except for the most current birthday – the threshold to becoming an adult.

It’s not just that the 18th pair, the guide to walking the path to adulthood, is missing. India’s turmoil stems from the double mystery of who was fully responsible for her previous 17 pairs of shoes. Up to the moment of Mrs.McGarricks’ reveal, India has walked in her “father’s” footsteps. With the identity of the gift-giver stripped away, the path which has defined her so long as a subject is now that has to be re-treat, rediscovered. The words from the opening monologue ring more resounding here: “I’m not formed by things that are of myself alone “.

The montage which initially presented itself as a series of discrete images, moments bleeding into one another, turns out to be multiple sections of the same image. Far from being from different times, the shoes exist in the same “present” moment with India. However, the montage of them dissolving demonstrates the logic of how moments are just accumulations of everything that came before. Each “shoe” is an epoch that can now be re-cast; a past that can open the doors to new futures.

Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) comments that India and Richard’s hunting trophies are wastes of life but Charlie seems to appreciate the work the father-daughter duo did.

Meanwhile, Evelyn and Charlie talk about India and Richard’s close-knit relationship, one formed primarily around hunting birds. Evelyn bemoans the act as senseless violence, but Charlie shows great respect for the duo’s craft. He picks up one of their winged trophies and reveals an an egg underneath. The deviled eggs which start as one of India’s favorite treats become an egg which serves as a remainder of her relationship with her father which then dissolves into her eye itself. Eggs are treats are trophies are eyes. A series of poetic connections between the images are formed.

Eggs are white on the outside and yellow on the inside. Eggs, at least the ones shown in the film, are related to birds. In other circumstances, the eggs would break apart to allow new life to come out – the birth of something new. This is a story of a girl becoming a woman, on the threshold of adulthood, looking for a path to walk on as influences all around her permeate her crumbling shell.

India walks around the house and the whispers about her family’s affairs continue. In hushed tones, adults abound talk about her family; their words enter her mental landscape constantly. She notices Charlie talking to a seemingly distraught Mrs. McGarrick, but just as she sensed her Uncle Charlie earlier during the funeral, her uncle senses her gaze and turns to meet it. However, India immediately averts the battle of gazes and escapes. Before Charlie can catch up to her, she runs out of a side entrance of her expansive manor. The camera track India while she roams the outside of the house in the background of the frame; in the foreground, Charlie is being occupied by Evelyn.

However, this turns out to be far from the case as India, initially confident upon entering her abode from the front, is shocked when Charlie calls to her from at the top of the master staircase. Just like the first time she saw him, he reigns above her. He coyly asks her if she wants to know why she feels she’s at a disadvantage, both announcing his take on the duo’s power relation and also preferring an analysis of her own psyche; this is all done despite the fact, as India rightly retorts, that she was unaware of his existence till the day. He ignores her comment and asserts the real reason is because she’s standing below him. The subtext of the stairs is thus brought to the level of text and the viewer is made aware of both the importance of height and presence of stairs as a motif representing control.

In response to his claim, India slowly climbs up the staircase. The camera pushes in through a doorway, signifying the start of the confrontation between uncle and niece, showing India alone, rising to meet Charlie, who slowly enters the frame. She gets to the top of the stairs and stares her newly found family member down, asserting her right to stand as equal to him. She quite literally rises to the challenge.

Upon giving him a long look, she remarks that he looks remarkably like her father. Suddenly, her confused emotional state at his presence gains additional texture. Her father, the one who guided her and took her hunting, not only turns out to not be the one setting her path via the shoes she walks in but has returned, so to speak, in the form of a part hidden relation, part quasi-doppelgänger. Her confrontation with Charlie, is then, the first step she has to take to find herself.

Charlie responds to her comparison with an expression of sympathy towards her loss. A strange response which she notices and calls out, reminding her uncle that the loss is shared among them. Once again, he ignores her observation and tells her that he’s planning on staying with her and her mother for the foreseeable future. He makes it clear that he’s gotten her mother on board but tells India that he wants her approval as well because it’s “important” to him. Thus, the stage for Stoker is set and the battle for power can truly commence.

Given the title, Stoker, a viewer with context would think of Bram Stoker and his work in gothic horror. On that level, Stoker works. All the ingredients for gothic feeling are present: there’s a death encased in mystery, a hidden relative that shows up, and troubled familial relations that bubble up and sublimate in obscene fashion. However, as the first 13 minutes above demonstrate, the film operates closer to the psychoanalytic thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock: the bodies of birds appear like in Psycho, the game of gazes is played like in Vertigo, and at the most obvious level, the basic story beats of Hitchock’s film noir, Shadow of a Doubt, serve as Stoker’s jumping off point. Both stories feature an uncle named Charlie, who shares a special bond with his niece and who is covered in a veil of mystery. Likewise, both stories follow a niece as she struggles against penetrating the veil her uncle puts up. Stoker even goes so far as to replicate Shadow of a Doubt’s use of the staircase as the scene of battle between uncle and niece along with its presence as a motif.

But, unlike Hitchcock’s film which uses the relationship between the uncle and niece to reveal the duplicitous nature of the social order and the underpinnings of the idyllic American fantasy, Stoker uses the relationship to examine the way personal identity is generated and navigated. In other words, one film is aimed at a macro-level and the other at the micro-level. In this way, Stoker is able to traverse a whole different set of ideas from the vantage point of a coming-of-age horror.

Furthermore, though the story and narrative progression may be Hitchcock inspired, the editing, sensuality, and painterly mise-en-scène are all in line with director Park Chan-Wook’s style as an auteur. His stylistic flourishes here give the film it’s poetic sensibilities because he elects to show most of the story rather than tell it. On top of layering motifs in a more traditional sense, he constantly uses the nature of his edits – both sequencing and the edit itself – to suggest connections between seemingly disparate ideas. Like the egg becoming the eye, “apparent” match-cuts between objects of similar sizes and shapes along with dissolves between images are used to demonstrate the state of India’s psychic journey and how she’s processing the story as it goes along. As she makes connections, the viewer can piece together both the narrative and what it means to her own journey.

That being said, the nature of this journey is constantly up for re-interpretation. Pivotal scenes aren’t cut chronologically but are cut in the order India is making sense of them and rendering them coherent from her own vantage point. This gives seemingly obvious moments, a palpable level of uncertainty, because the nature of what the moment is supposed to demonstrate is indeterminate until the very end of that movement, but because movements fade into one another and are constantly recalled, every sequence gains a newfound freedom in how it’s used in the present to open up future possibilities. Consequently, the film feels dynamic even as moments repeat, because those moments come to mean something new.

Even if all the moving parts don’t make sense, Chan-wook’s construction of the film ensures the journey can be felt even if not fully understood. He achieves this feeling of consistency via in how he utilizes the architecture of the house to reflect the ebb and flow of power and also his attention towards maintaining a consistent color palette. While the latter has been mentioned above, the former hasn’t been given it’s due. At a basic level, the exterior of the house is white like the color of an egg’s shell. The green surrounding the house in the form of vegetation makes its way in the walls of the “public” spaces of the house, like the dining room. India is constantly in the color yellow’s proximity. Likewise, her mother is always in red’s presence. By establishing the colors early on and constantly repeating them in and out of the house, Chan-wook is able to get the audience to think about the meaning of them in the background of their minds. As a result, the colors become affectively charged which is why they can be felt even if their presence isn’t consciously noted. Chan-wook is weaving poetic patterns that operate on a level that appears like it’s just style, but is in style employed in lieu of accentuating the substance.

In light of this, it’s surprising to see that critical consensus is so harsh on the film, with many critics chastising the film for being style over substance. It’d be one thing if the film gallivanted from scene to scene for shock value; with violent masterpieces like Oldboy in Chan-wook’s filmography, it would be easy for him to just sink to spectacle. But Stoker is less focused on the spectacle than the journey itself. It’s filmed in a delicate and sensual way because unlike many of his previous excursions, Stoker is a women-led character study; that too, it’s a women led horror movie where the protagonist, far from being victimized, is allowed to find herself in the most emphatic fashion, something which would certainly not be possible if there was no substance beneath the film’s stylistic maneuverings.

This oddity is even more inexplicable given that, in many ways, Stoker feels like a dress rehearsal for The Handmaiden, Park Chan-wook’s 2016 erotic thriller, considered by many, including myself, to be the director’s best work. Both film’s share a woman lead, explore relationships between women, and focus more on the unseen gazes of characters than any overt physical action. They both also showcase incredibly sensual moments of eroticism in unsuspecting fashion, demonstrating the way desire codes even the otherwise seemingly ordinary. Furthermore, while Stoker is an homage and twist on Shadow of a Doubt, The Handmaiden, feels like something similar in relation to Vertigo, at least from my view.

Perhaps the reason for Stoker’s undeserved treatment lies in its opacity. Though, the feeling of the film is something a viewer can take away from a viewing, the lack of direct explanation regarding some of the more overt symbols, like the spider, might put off those looking for a story that provides all the answers. However, it is precisely because the explanations are withheld, that the film opens up interpretative possibility and can evoke the feeling of poetry as opposed to pretentious philosophizing. It’s for that reason that Stoker is best reserved for those viewers who relish engaging with a film, whether that be mulling over it afterwards or playing it back it back to confirm a hint about a theory. It’s a film that rewards multiple viewings and interpretations of the events depicted. At the brisk rate of 99 minutes, Stoker would already be worth seeing for its visual splendor alone. Few films have this much fun presenting images in such confident fashion. However, given the depth Chan-wook manages to pack behind each and every movement, big or small, the film is something that any cinephile should give a watch.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Stoker is a film about whispers, glances, stolen gazes, and strategies for getting one’s way. The story uses Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt as a jumping off point to explore the psychological journey of a young woman, India, who is forced to find herself after the death of her father and the mysterious emergence of her uncle. Her journey is one that fluctuates from romance to horror to thriller back again all while remaining couched in psychoanalytic motifs and relationships that give each and every moment a host of meanings. While fans of director Park Chan-wook’s other works should definitely seek out this underrated part of his filmography, I’d recommend Stoker to any viewer who enjoys the experience of being washed over by a film and trying to piece it together afterwards. For the viewer who enjoys the journey even if the destination is unclear, Stoker offers a key to a box waiting to be unlocked.
Rating	10/10
Grade	S

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2010s, 2015, Action, Crime, Drama, Grade, mystery, Past, Review, review-movie, S, Thriller, Year

Film Review: Sicario- 2015

September 30, 2021 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Denis Villeneuve
Principal Cast	Emily Blunt as Kate Josh Brolin as Matt Benicio del Toro as Alejandro Daniel Kaluuya as Reggie
Release Date	2015
Language(s)	English
Running Time	121 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

Text card explaining the genealogy of the word ‘sicario’

The film starts by defining the term ‘sicario’: it was initially used to refer to zealots defending their homeland but means ‘hitman’ in the status quo. Though both interpretations of the word signify a killer, one is oriented around protecting ideals while the other seems to confirm a nihilistic kill-or-be-killed world where no values could persist. This dichotomy between the two meanings of the word represents the battleground Sicario takes place on as it explores what the transition between the terms signifies about the world in a paradigmatic sense.

The establishing shot starts from the vantage point of the idealistic interpretation of the word: a domestic view of a neighborhood in Arizona is interrupted as a group of soldiers, defenders of the homeland, creep into frame while the late Jóhann Jóhannsson’s palpable score reverberates like a droning heartbeat in the background, adding to the feeling of tension. The leader of the group, Kate (Emily Blunt), sits in a tank ready for breach before the vehicle breaks into a house, scattering dust all over the area. She gets down to investigate the residence with her squad but is suddenly caught off guard by a armed resident in the house. She evades his bullet and manages to kill him. The sound calms down. It seems like the dust has settled.

However, his bullet, despite missing her, opens another wound that proves to be even more devastating . The wall, broken in by the impact of the shot, reveals a series of bagged up corpses hiding within – a simple hostage retrieval becomes a mortifying entry into the macabre.

Kate (Emily Blunt) goes outside to vomit.

Kate immediately goes outside to vomit. Being a soldier doesn’t entail being unaffected by such senseless violence, and the brutality of the situation shakes Kate and her crew. She’s asked by personnel on how to document the situation given its severity. Kate insists that the records reveal everything; transparency is more necessary than ever.

While she tries to get an accurate count on the number of bodies in the house, a group of officers outside find a padlocked door in a shed and try and open it. The cuts and expectations established previously lead the viewer to think it’s more bodies hidden away, but the intense heartbeat track comes back signaling shifting times. Suddenly, the shed explodes.

Debris and dust scatter everywhere, obfuscating the frame, and Kate is once again lost in the fog of the situation, unable to see anything besides the carnage. The domestic area turned mausoleum has now become the site of an explosion – suburbia rendered into a site of gratuitous violence. In her efforts to preserve the rule of law, Kate finds herself soaked with so much blood that she can’t seem to scrub it all off in the shower. As she looks into a clouded reflection of herself in her bathroom mirror, it’s clear her more idealistic worldview has been delivered a tremendous blow.

Kate’s superiors speak to Matt (Josh Brolin) about her qualifications.

The next day comes. Kate and her partner on the force, Reggie (Daniel Kaluuya), wait outside of a glass-paned room as their superiors discuss the previous day’s mission. A man speaks to the group with the camera positioned to his back. His framing suggests importance and a sense of mystery. He asks about Kate and Reggie’s respective backgrounds, approving of Kate’s but rejecting Reggie upon hearing about his legal education. The group calls Kate in and introduces her to the man of the hour, Matt (Josh Brolin).

First, he asks her about her relationship and child status. He’s abrupt and straight to the point. She responds she’s both divorced and childless. He tells her he’s hunting the cartels behind the bodies and bombings. She expresses interest. Her superior, Forsing (Jeffrey Donovan) tells her that joining such a task-force requires volunteering for the position. She asks Matt if they’ll be able to hold the people who committed the acts responsible. He guarantees that they’ll be able to deal with the masterminds behind the operation itself.

She agrees with no hesitation and her journey begins. However, as she leaves the room, she notices that the charming, yet serious Matt, shrouded in mystery, is wearing flip-flops in sharp contrast to everyone else in the room wearing business professional clothing – another indication that appearances are not to be trusted. Images are always imbued with an purpose and can’t be taken at face value.

The film cuts to a neighborhood in Nogales, Mexico. A young boy wakes up his father, Silvio(Maximiliano Hernández), to ask him to play soccer. Silvio gets up, eats breakfast while getting a nice helping of side-eye from his wife, puts on his police uniform, and then proceeds to take his son out on a walk. This adjunct narrative is a sense of normalcy that gives the viewer a reprieve from the violence; however, its presence immediately generates a sense of unease. The opening’s mention of Mexico in relation to sicario qua assassin, the eruption of violence in the American residence, the focus on cartel violence, and Silvio’s status as police officer transform a seemingly benign scene and moment into one that threatens to become catastrophic.

Reggie is sent home while Kate (Emily Blunt) is allowed to proceed.

Back in the United Sates, Reggie drives Kate to her first day on Matt’s team. She’s told she’s going to El Paso with them on some preliminary task-work. However, upon getting to the gate, Reggie is denied access and the uncertainty about the situation increases. The emissary of the law is not allowed to pry his eyes upon this supposedly legal execution of justice. He’s forced to leave as Kate continues forward.

As she gets closer to the plane, another man, with his head turned around as to disguise his visage, appears at the plane’s tail. Matt comes out to greet Kate letting her know that the wayward man is Alejandro (Benicio del Toro) – another unexpected surprise. The trio get on the plane and Alejandro asks Kate if she’s ever been to Juárez; the shoe fully drops and the pretenses dissipate as Kate realizes that the mission she’s signed up for is far more expansive than she could have imagined.

While the nature of where Sicario mysteries lead is fairly by the books, the way its cinematically rendered gives it a poignancy that elevates the film into something special. Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan’s script is propulsive and juggles multiple storylines, giving director Denis Villenevue the ability to flex his muscles and leave his mark of the genre. Instead of focusing on the mystery, Villenevue repeatedly turns the viewer’s attention to the dichotomy introduced at the film’s start by utilizing parallels in characters and groups to demonstrate the way the terms and the manner by which they’re used to categorize can rapidly shift .

There’s an implied distinction between between killing while oriented towards an ideal that stands for something greater than oneself and killing for the sake of something material, like wealth. The former position is one that’s idealistic and moves towards a vision of a “just” world. The latter is one that’s nihilistic and treats the world of winner-take-all. Or is that really the case? Are the two ideas separate or do they bleed into one another? Could one assassinate as an ideal or choose to assassinate in order to move towards an ideal? Villeneuve allows these questions to fester by taking the parallel’s Sheridan’s script sets up between the cartel and the US government, the Mexican police force and the American police force, and so on, and forces the viewer to play a horrifying game of compare and contrast.

One act of violence by one side is met by a seemingly equal atrocious act on the other. A “good” character postures and makes a comment on a “bad” character but then takes action that seems just as egregious. Villeneuve chooses to showcase the “immoral” bouts of violence in more explicit detail and withhold the brutality within the “ethical” instances of violence. He gives just enough information for the viewer to imagine how a scene would progress given both the context clues and the explicit parallels, forcing the audience to come to their own conclusions regarding the mechanics and ethics underpinning certain bouts of brutality. The subjective process of imagining the violence generates an uncomfortable proximity to the situation and forces us to deal with the contradictions in values.

This move also generates an empathetic connection with Kate who is thrust into the same world of twists, turns, and moments of depravity and forced to find stable footing in spite of it all. The first act sets up Kate as resourceful, honest, and passionate. She dodges a bullet, kills an assailant, takes control of her group, and wants to achieve justice – an ideal protagonist to root for. However, the moment she volunteers to achieve her ethical vision, she’s forced into a world where friend and foe mean very little, and the boundaries between what the “good” and “evil” are doing is suspect. Thus, an action of violence which may be immediately justified as necessary can be questioned because the viewer experiences it with Kate; she’s a moral barometer that lets us traverse the hazy backdrop the film plays against.

Sicario’s genre peers would usually feature a character like Alejandro or Matt as the lead – a burly man of mystery ready to whatever it takes to get the job done. However, the choice to have the lead be a highly capable woman with her morals intact in a sea of men and violence provides a vantage point that gives the otherwise gratuitous moments of sheer visceral terror a counterpoint that has heft. She’s not a damsel in distress, and she’s not some battle-hardened veteran looking for a fight; she’s just a competent soldier looking to do the right thing in circumstances that go against everything she’s been taught to accept. Blunt exemplifies this by constantly modulating between a soldier capable of holding her own and someone way out of their depth being racked by panic. She’s the perfect vehicle for both her character and the moral fiber of the film. By building up her competency and then slowly revealing its limits within a brutal, new environment, the film is able to push forward new ground on a story and make what would otherwise be cliché’s into uncomfortable moments to unpackage.

In fact, it’s because Kate is presented as competent in the context of what she’s signed up to do that otherwise passive scenes on her part are absolutely dread inducing. For example, as opposed to a conventional car chase scene with professionals chasing after one another, a traffic jam scene where assailants can be in any car and the protagonist is a fish out of water is much more dreadful. Because Kate is established as capable, the film is able to emphasize just how unforgiving the reality of the cartel violence and dealing with them can be; the rules of war don’t do anything in guerilla situations. Thus, her position gives impetus not only to the primary questions of the film but allow the visceral moments to have genuine stakes associated with them.

Put together with the parallel storylines and the near-perfect pacing of the narrative, Sicario certainly merits a comparison to the Coen brothers’ masterpiece, No Country For Old Men, a neo-Western following multiple characters who hunt and are being hunted by one another. Like No Country, Sicario presents a dark vision of an age without values, where the values of older days have seemingly faded away to the gusts of apathy and violence. While Sicario may not be as ambitious in terms of its narrative construction and direction, it certainly evokes a similar feeling of wandering through a foreign land where sense and reason have vacated the premises.

However, Sicario does match No Country when it comes to its visuals. Serving as director of photography on both films, Roger Deakins gives Villeneuve’s vision the room it needs to breath and fully take hold. Dust in the air, shadowy environments, and ever-present sources of reflection reveal the complexity inherent in seemingly straight-forward situations by introducing a visual opacity which accentuates the themes. Nothing is what it seems and it’s within the shadows cast by projections that the “truth” can be ascertained; there’s a space between words and the paradigms they operate within.

Consequently, this makes Sicario a must-see experience for any fan of cinema ranging from the casual fan looking for an exciting time to the cinephile looking for something heftier to sink their teeth into. While veterans of cartel thrillers might be less surprised by plot twists, the sheer culmination of skill including, but not limited to, Deakins camera work, the late Jóhann Jóhannsson’s adrenaline-pumping propulsive score, Blunt’s humanistic yet confident performance, and of course, Villeneuve’s brilliant ability to put all these elements together makes this an experience no one should miss. If nothing else, the final few moments of the film exemplify how dedication to craft can elevate even a small movement into a grand gesture.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Sicario is the rare movie that offers a totally engrossing time from start to finish across different types of moviegoers. With its propulsive narrative, fantastic acting, bloody and well-executed set-pieces, and its dark and foreboding score, the experience stays entertaining the whole time. However, it’s use of Emily Blunt in the role of the main character gives the movie a humanity and a vantage point that transforms it into a meditation on violence and the reality of the rule of law. It’s heady without being alienating and even more engaging as a result.
Rating	10/10
Grade	S

Go to Page 2 for the for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
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2010s, 2013, Drama, Grade, Horror, mystery, Past, psychological, Review, review-movie, S+, Thriller, Year

Film Review: Enemy – 2013

September 28, 2021 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Denis Villeneuve
Principal Cast	Jake Gyllenhaal as Adam Bell / Anthony Claire Mélanie Laurent as Mary Sarah Gadon as Helen Claire Isabella Rossellini as the Mother
Release Date	2013
Language(s)	English
Running Time	90 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

The camera tracks left over a muddied yellow cityscape while composers Bensi and Jurrinan’s eerie and foreboding score plays; discordant strings turn into synth-like drones that get under the skin. A beep emerges; the voicemail message accompanying it feels less intrusion and more accompaniment to the score – the soundscape is unified in its discordant elements. A woman’s voice (Isabella Rossellini) can be heard. She talks to her son and thanks him for showing him her new apartment. She mentions concern over his living conditions and asks for him to call back while the camera cuts to Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal), her son, sitting in a musty car. His eyes reflected in the car’s rear-view mirror show an inertia – he looks unenthused and out of it. The mother’s words gain some power as her son’s disposition indicates a lack of vitality.

She tells him she loves him and the film cuts to a pregnant woman, Helen, who sits basked in a yellow haze of light and shadow. Another mother in response to the son. A pattern established, but what does it mean? The screen turns black as if in response and the following words appear on the screen in yellow font: “”Chaos is order yet undeciphered.” This is Enemy’s calling card; the story is a puzzle that entices the viewer to engage in dialogue. Patterns are present and meanings are given but their connections aren’t immediately apparent. Thus, order is only present for those willing to decipher – a great way to prime the viewer to not only pay attention but to stay invested to even the most minor of details.

The words fade into a black background out which a pair of hands appear in close view. We cut to a wider shot and see a man who looks like Adam but exudes a more confident presence along with another man walking down a dimly lit hallway where the yellow lights emit a sickly feeling in the area. This “potential” Adam^[1]I use potential in quotes here because the nature of which character this is isn’t made definite and is certainly meant to be presented as up for interpretation at the start. For my full … Continue reading opens the door and enters the room as the unnerving score gets more intrusive and for good reason. It turns out that the characters have entered a dimly lit room filled with smoke and mirrors where hordes of men gather around women performing sexual acts. This mise-en-scène gives the setting a surreal feeling – the perverse room feels apart from a “normal” world. The women’s moans and squeals of enjoyment accentuate the unease generated by the score – the sounds of ecstasy take on the sign of omen as they become infected by the score.

Suddenly, two women adorned in a silky robes and long heels comes out and the crowd’s attention becomes focused. Their initial “holy” appearance, at least comparatively, and the way they command the energy of the room evokes the feeling of sacred ritual – the climax approaches. One of the women carries a covered tray which she places in the center of the room. Meanwhile the other one disrobes in the background as the “potential” Adam places his fingers over his face, almost as if trying to cover it, and leaves room only for his eyes to peer through – four fingers on each side of his face wrapping around from the bottom-up. The tray is picked up and a spider walks out from the center of it. However, as it tries to get away, it’s followed by the now fully disrobed women who follows it around the table. Her pursuit is shown via the reflection of the table – a mirror image.

Eventually she corners and stands menacingly over the creature, revealed only by her silhouette. She places her robe over the spider as if about to crush the creature while the room watches with baited breath. Is this what the men came to see? A nude woman threatening to kill a spider? A leg positioned over a creature possessing 8 legs? We cut back to the “potential” Adam in the same position as before. Now the 8 fingers reaching around his face form part of an inverted image: a spider made of hands reaching around the face in contrast to the feet reaching to the spider proper.

Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal) teaches about patterns.

We see a view of the city again before the film cuts to Adam teaching a college classroom. He starts his lecture on control by stating that: “Every dictatorship has one obsession. And that’s it. So, in Ancient Rome, they gave the people bread and circuses. They kept the populace busy with entertainment, but other dictatorships use other strategies to control ideas. How do they do that? Lower education. They limit culture. Censor information. They censor any means of individual expression. And it’s important to remember this, that this is a pattern that repeats itself throughout history. ” He finishes his lecture and the students leave.

He gets on a bus that traverses the city via cable transport that travels along lines that extend from building to building like a web of control. The spider’s influence is everywhere it seems. Adam gets into his disheveled looking apartment where he exists in lethargic state. His dissatisfaction is apparent as he expresses frustration in the movement of his hands while grading his students’ papers. He brings his hands up to his face as if to pray right as his girlfriend, Mary (Mélanie Laurent), shows up. She attempts to converse with him, but he refuses to answer. Instead, he focuses on just engaging in sex with her.

Then, the pattern repeats. He’s back in his classroom, giving the same lecture as above, gets on the web-linked train, grades papers at home, has sex with Mary and back to it again. He’s stuck in a loop that leaves him out of joint. Finally, the pattern breaks. As Adam sits in the teacher’s lounge, one of his co-workers asks him whether or not he goes to the movies and if he’s a “movie guy”. Adam indicates he doesn’t go out a lot and doesn’t like movies. This would also make sense given his lecture content – entertainment is a strategy used to control people so he stays away from it.

His coworker persists and mentions that one can watch a movie at home and that renting can work just as good as going out theatres. In response to this persistence, Adam requests a recommendation for something cheerful to which his coworker recommends Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way” The odd title initially strikes both us and Adam as a philosophical statement until he clarifies the flick is a local film which Adam should check out. Thus, the initial pattern is disrupted. A desire has presented itself within the inert world of Adam’s.

He comes back home after having rented the movie. As he dejectedly rests his head against his right palm, Mary appears and tries to coax him into coming to bed with her even mentioning how “drunk” she is. She plays with his face and tries to awaken something sensual in him but he’s unmoved. In one fluid movement, the camera tracks horizontally Mary as she leaves Adam alone, receding into the darkness and leaving the light on him. He finishes the last paper and opens up his laptop to start and finish the movie. Once again, the camera moves horizontally, demonstrating the passing of time and location. The movie is done and Mary is fast asleep. Adam gets up and looks perturbed, but tries to distract himself by having sex with sleeping Mary. He gets on top of her, but the time is passed and she’s no longer interested. She asks him to stop, gets out of bed, and changes. He asks what’s wrong and she lets him know she’ll call tomorrow. The pattern has now fully broken down and with it comes the first signs of horror.

A bellboy makes his way to help a guest.

The score becomes intimidating as it starts to pound as pattern of the film fully breaks down – now the screen has transported the viewer to within the Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way. This is Adam’s’ dream and his unconscious, now stirred out of the monotony of his “everyday”, presents the dream to move Adam.

A woman in a red dress and black hat stands at a hotel’s reception and is received by two staff without hats. One of the men calls a bell boy with a red hat to help the woman with her two bags. He retrieves two bags from the floor and follows the woman along. As the two walk, a group of men and women sitting close-by stare at the black-hatted woman. A woman wearing a yellow hat courting a man wearing a red-tie with a spider-web pattern on it is terrified at the presence of this woman in the black hat who continues to walk along. The bell boy and woman then run into another man with a hat, who takes his hat off, and then proceeds to talk with the woman. It’s at this point that bell boy’s face is finally revealed and the visage looks exactly like Adam sans a beard. The dream breaks – the realization has been made.

Adam wakes up in dread and slowly walks out of his bedroom to see his laptop, still on, waiting in his chair as if taunting him to peer closer. He picks up the computer and starts to fast forward, pause, and scan Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way for the disturbance he saw in his dream – the presence of his doppelgänger.

Fittingly, upon finding his “repetition”, he begins his next lecture on something new – Hegel. Adam explains that Hegel claimed that “the greatest world events happen twice” and then Karl Marx added that “the first time it was tragedy, and the second time it was a farce.” Taken together, the statements mean that the repetition of an original event, confirms it not merely as contingency but as necessary. In other words, it’s the instantiation of a pattern – chaos which becomes ordered through a repetition which confirms a “truth” established previously. If this is the case, then what patterns does Adam’s movie actor doppelgänger reveal about his patterns – his “truth”? Adam becomes obsessed with finding out precisely that and thus, Enemy can proceed with gusto.

With its doppelgänger set-up, surrealistic set-pieces, and expressed interest in acting as a puzzle to the viewer, it’s no surprise that Enemy falls in a line of films that includes the likes of: Persona, Fight Club, Lost Highway. Like these films, Enemy employs a dream-like logic in its construction to guide the viewer through a matrix of desire and fantasy in such fashion as to engender a desire in the viewer to delve deeper. For all the answers director Denis Villeneuve withholds, he never leaves the viewer feeling frustrated that only “nonsense” is occurring.

He does this by both employing segments of the film absent of Adam and his duplicate to help establish baselines that the audience can use to decipher what can or cannot be the case and also by priming the audience to pay attention to patterns, some easily discernible and others more hidden. Thus, Enemy becomes whatever the audience makes of it – it’s a game that constantly plays back giving the film and enigmatic pulse that gnaws at the viewers curiosity. There’s always another movement, another scene, another pattern waiting to be found to make sense of what came before. Consequently, the mysteries of the film feel solid enough to grasp, so the viewer can traverse strands of Enemy’s web even if they can’t see the web in its entirety.

Because Villeneuve meticulously stages the film in parallel movements, both within scenes and between them, there’s always a constant series of moving answers and questions. As new patterns are formed, new questions can be raised which opens previous and future scenes up to more nuanced interpretations. This is all purposeful, as evidenced by a scene that occurs midway in the film that quite literally represents a particular breakpoint in the film – it’s proof of the intention driving every one of the film’s decisions. Even if one can’t immediately notice each point and it’s counterpoint, it’s doppelgänger so to speak, they can certainly feel it in the structure of the film which reinforces and builds upon symbols and feelings at a subconscious level, priming the audience one way or another.

In particular, this parallel movement sets the viewer up for moments of genuine psychological fear. Patterns induce a level of comfort and the disruption of those patterns creates a level of anxiety. As evidenced by the intrusion of the film within the film, the seemingly random interruption of a “normal occurrence” jolts ones senses. Because the film clues the viewer to notice the patterns, the moments of deviations, the farces to come, are horrific.

Furthermore, the constant presence of the spider and its web in the mise-en-scène evokes the unease of the opening scene of sexual violence while creating webs of meaning between groupings of ideas. The music that accompanies it stays a constant force throughout the film, punctuating every moment with its anxiety inducing drone. There’s never a moment of respite as the senses are assaulted with an impending sense that something obscene is happening. In particular, Villenevue’s dedication to the sickly yellow lighting and color choice accentuates the feeling of misery the characters seem to be experiencing. The color lets the shadows of the dark “shine” through against the yellow, letting the feeling of the unknown pervade in moments of unease. The result is a psychological horror that uses its surrealistic base not just as a method of presenting unnerving images but as a method of probing the viewer’s unconsciousness to pick up on the undercurrents of terror lying just beneath the veneer of the apparent narrative. It’s precisely because of this that the ending of the film hits as hard and shocks as much as it does. It’s a finale that fully crystallizes the tensions and sense of unease that the film spends most of its run-time building, simultaneously tying the strands of the film together while disorienting the viewer.

At the heart of this disorienting feeling is Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays both Adam and his double within the film. Both characters occupy almost every scene, and their intermingling journey serves as the source of the narrative’s momentum. Having one actor play two characters is hard enough, but Villenevue’s story requires that the duo be similar enough to provoke the feeling of unease at the idea of a duplicate, but at the same time be different enough so that the viewer is easily able to identify which character is present in which scene. Jarring cuts which feature jumps between the characters would be wholly incomprehensible if not for Gyllenhaal’s ability to push the smallest subtleties in the characters’ dispositions to help the audience keep track of what storyline is headed in which direction. The genius of the performance lies not in just the distinctions, but the manner in which those performances give birth to even more performances – acts within acts as the two selves vie for control of the situation. Gyllenhaal has to walk a tight rope to let the nuances of Enemy settle and disturb and because he does so, in what I think is his career best performance, he lets the movie rise to its potential.

Currently, Enemy sports the lowest audience and critic scores on both Rotten Tomatoes ^[2]Denis Villeneuve. Rotten Tomatoes. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2021, from https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/denis-villeneuve. and Metacritic ^[3] Denis Villeneuve. Metacritic. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2021, from https://www.metacritic.com/person/denis-villeneuve.. This makes sense when comparing the film to his most popular outputs, Arrival and Sicario, which both feature energetic narratives where there’s a constant sense of propulsion driving everything towards a certain point. Enemy is very much the opposite, choosing instead to assault the audience with patterns whose boundaries bleed into and out of one another. Instead of presenting a straight-forward journey, Enemy presents a closed loop circling around a mystery it beckons the audience towards solving. For those viewers that prefer fully comprehensive narratives that need less discernment on their part, Villenevue’s surreal adventure might prove to be too frustrating an experience to find satisfaction in. However, those viewers looking for a cerebral experience should accept Enemy’s invitation to find order in chaos and take the plunge into the spider’s web of meaning.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Enemy is one part tense psychological horror and another part a puzzle challenging the viewer to put the pieces together. Fans of Villeneuve’s more straightforward ventures à la Sicario might be put off by the matrix of patterns that is Enemy, but those who enjoy his technical style and dedication to creating immersive worlds will definitely appreciate, if not love, this more opaque demonstration of his craft.
Rating	10/10
Grade	S+

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2010s, 2016, Drama, Grade, Review, review-movie, S+, Science Fiction, Year

Film Review: Arrival – 2016

August 16, 2021 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Denis Villeneuve
Principal Cast	Amy Adams as Louise Banks Jeremy Renner as Ian Donnelly Forest Whitaker as Colonel Weber
Release Date	2016
Language(s)	English
Running Time	116 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

The camera pushes in towards the window qua frame.

The camera slowly tracks down and forward towards a window staring out at an ocean view while “On the Nature of Daylight” by Max Richter plays in the background. The song evokes feelings of melancholy and beauty and sets the mood for what’s to come. The window is a frame; a center point that demarcates an area while presenting. As the camera goes towards this frame we hear a voiceover by our still unseen protagonist, Louise, who explains that “Memory is a strange thing. It doesn’t work like I thought it did. We are so bound by time, by its order.”

We cut from the frame to Louise (Amy Adams) and her daughter, Hannah. We see Hannah as a child, being delivered into Louise arms. We cut again and see Louise playing with a slightly older Hannah (Jadyn Malone). Hannah plays in the background as her mom watches from the foreground. We match cut to Louise looking down on her daughter who says “I love you.” We match cut to an older Hannah who now says “I hate you.” Finally, we cut to a hospital where we see Louise crying over a deceased Hannah. Louise walks down an seemingly never-ending arcing hospital hallway as the music comes to an end. Louise’s narration continues as she notes that, “… I’m not so sure I believe in beginnings and endings. There are days that define your story beyond your life, like they day they arrived.”

Louise (Amy Adams) stands in front of her whiteboard qua frame.

Accordingly, the movie shifts to “present” time, to a Louise who seems oblivious to the world around her. She walks along as throngs of people around her crowd around televisions. Her energy levels are muted compared to the frenzy around her. She makes her way to the college classroom she teaches linguistics in and notices a severe lack of students. She gets ready to write on the large white board, a canvas in the center of the screen framing things, much like the window in her house.

The students who are present are distracted by their phones ask Louise to put on the television. She acquiesces and reveals a hidden television behind the whiteboard behind her. This television serves as a new central frame – a plane that provides an interpretative jumping off point. For the first time, Louise is focused on the news, and the camera reinforces this by only showing us her reaction; the content of the news report is not shown. We learn, along with her, that alien objects have landed in multiple locations around the world.

Louise (Amy Adams) goes to the window qua frame.

She drives back home and talks to her mom on the phone. She walks towards the center window while her mom mentions some conspiracy fueled news regarding the aliens which Louise says to ignore. She asks how Louise is doing; a fitting question given both Hannah’s death and Louise’s comparatively muted energy levels. Louise responds, “About the same.”

The camera changes positions in response, going from behind Louise to her side. Her unenthused state limits possibilities, something which is driven through as we watch her flipping through television channels in a desperate attempt to find anything not mentioning the aliens. She falls asleep having found no such escape; all the while, the channels, in contrast to Louise’s lack of concern, showcase mass panic and fear happening around the world. It’s only the next day, when she gets to a fully empty classroom, that Louise finally decides to tune in to the alien news the rest of the world has been binging since first contact.

The camera tracks towards Louise. A single window frame is shown.

The camera tracks in slowly, creeping in on Louise before finally dawning on her, like the news she’s avoided up to now. Her office is adorned with a host of window frames – a continuation of the visual motif. Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) walks into her office and interrupts her while she catches up. He mentions that her previous translation work in Farsi helped the military with some insurgents, so he thought it prudent to have her translate recordings of the aliens “communicating”. She responds that her efforts certainly did help the Colonel in eradicating the insurgents – knowledge turned into violence – before claiming that she won’t be able to translate without first seeing the creatures. Weber refuses and threatens to leave before being told by Louise that his potential linguistic replacement for her, Danvers, is unable to do the task. Louise challenges Weber to ask Danvers for the Sanskrit word for “war” to confirm her claims.

Unfortunately for Danvers, Louise is right on the money. While his translation defines the word as “an argument”, Louise correctly defines it as a “desire for more cows.” ; an innocuous desire interpreted as violence. Weber thus acquiesces to her demands to see the aliens; you need the best translator if you have any shot of making sense of an otherworldly language. She is introduced to her soon-to-be partner, Ian (Jeremy Renner), and flies with him and Weber to the flying spaceship; an oblong shaped semi-egg shape whose size absolutely dwarfs the military set-up underneath it.

The researchers go to the bottom of the UFO.

After being brought up to speed and procedure, her and Ian are sent into the ship to complete their first mission. The two of them get on a rising platform and are pushed up to the very base of the ship which opens to them. They jump off this base to a wall going perpendicular to it, seemingly breaking the rules of gravity. They make their way to the domain of the aliens; the camera flips upside down marking the moment where they officially enter the boundary to a new domain. Ian and Louise come to face with a large cinematic-feeling frame; a large grey canvas which calls to mind Louise’s window, her whiteboard, and the television screen. Face to face with this newest frame, she’s tasked with figuring out the aliens’ purpose on Earth before global war breaks out.

Despite featuring a “save the Earth from extinction” plotline featuring extra-terrestrials, director Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival positions itself closer to science fiction films like Contact and La Jetee as opposed to Independence Day. The focus of the story is about the intimate way human’s experience their day-to-day while grappling with the dice rolls that life doll’s out in seemingly random fashion. This is why we start the movie experiencing Louise’s happiness and her grief. We see a life come into fruition, grow, and then pass all within a few minutes. We’re hit with a range of emotions evidenced most explicitly in Hannah going from “loving” to “hating” her mother. Like Louise mentions in her opening monologue, life is a series of moments, held together in the frames of our memory ready to be processed. These moments with her daughter stick out and demonstrate to us that intensity, not duration, lends moments their meaning.

Even when the movie moves on the “main” storyline, we’re held away from it. We’re put into Louise’s point of view from start to finish, experiencing her grief with her, and then moving forward in dejected fashion. The story happens organically around us, but we’re only given bits and pieces of information. We’re forced to learn with Louise and because of that we adopt her point of view as our own; she is our frame. This is a technique Villeneuve previously employed in his previous film, Sicario, to help set the audience up for the unexpected. We get so wrapped up in our protagonist’s headspace that the world of the movie catches us off guard in the same it does to them. All the pieces of this surprise are shown to us in plain sight, but we’re focused on what Louise sees: a possibility for dialogue.

Arrival is a meditation on syntax and the way that its encapsulation of content changes meaning. In other words, it’s focused on delving into the “how” of language as much as it is the “what” of language. This is why the movie spends so much of its visual capital on frames; what frame do all of us use more than language? The words we use to express ourselves are made up of characters, and each character represents a sound. These sounds only make sense because of the rules we all agree to follow. The process of determining a syntax and providing translation serves as the main narrative focus which follows Louise and her colleagues as they attempt to frame the aliens’ language in such a way as to avoid war.

Louise represents the side of openness and approaches the aliens as partners in a search for truth. Meanwhile the people and organizations around her approach the aliens as, “an enemy who is wrong, who is armful, and whose very existence constitutes a threat.”^[1] Foucault, Michel. “Polemics, Politics and Problematizations.” Interview by P. Rabinow, May 1984, In Essential Works of Foucault Vol. 1. The New Press, 1998. Every interaction Louise has with the aliens is met with skepticism from outside parties who seem set in their determinations of what’s going on. Thus, the race to determine the proper syntax becomes a battleground between Louise and everyone around her to establish the dominant meaning; the stereotypical sci-fi battle we’ve been conditioned to expect transforms into a language game between an interlocutor and a polemicist .

Her journey towards discovering the syntax is marked by a similar inner journey to dealing with the death of her daughter. As the movie progresses, it cuts to memories of Hannah and Louise; moments framed in time. These moments take on an initial meaning that changes as Louise is able to frame them in a new way. Moments of despair turn into moments of learning; memories transform into potentials for something new turning from traumatic to joyous. These transformations are given weight by Joe Walker’s’ fantastic editing. The match cuts which are used to demonstrate Louise flashing to memories of her daughter back to the present become varied in rhythm. Sometimes the cut is immediate. Sometimes the cut feels like something Satoshi Kon would do; event A happens, we cut to event B before A finishes that reframes A, and then we cut to the conclusion of A. This change in rhythm is directly tied to Louise’s external journey, discovering the language of the aliens, and her internal journey, finding purpose in her life despite Hannah’s passing, demonstrating true synergy between content and form. These strands all come together in a truly sublime fashion by the film’s end.

The lynchpin holding these strands together is the star of the film, Amy Adams, whose performance gives the movie its emotional heft. The way she gets lost in her thoughts gives the match cut edits from past to present and back again a heft; we can feel her consciousness shifting gears as she’s forced to overcome her turmoil. Despite acting against CGI aliens, her sense of engagement makes them feel real. We become attached to the aliens because her character is so enthusiastic about trying to understand them. This investment is what makes the cerebral nature of the film works; we care and are invested in our main character, so we want her to succeed even the parameters of her battle are in a different domain than what we’re used to. Because she’s invested in understanding the aliens, we are as well, which helps us stay engaged even in the slower portions of the movie.

While the movie isn’t as action-packed as some of its contemporaries, that doesn’t mean that its visually distinct. Villeneuve has just moved the focus from being so action-oriented to something more mystical and “other-worldly.” Instead of space lasers or explosions, we get chambers which shift gravity (and show multiple gravitational pulls at once) and wispy clouds of ink which are transformed into alien orthography. The result is a cerebral film which challenges and invites the audience into examining the power of each and every moment. It’s a movie that delves into the human condition in a way that hearkens back to the best of science-fiction , using an encounter with aliens to deconstruct what it means to live a fully realized life.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Arrival is a movie that uses the event of an alien first-contact as a jumping off point to examine the way people try and give meaning to their lives. Villeneuve’s direction, Heisserer’s script, and Adams’s acting come together in the form of a gripping cerebral narrative that is as engaging as its typical action-fare counterparts while retaining the inquisitive and thought-provoking elements of the very best of the science-fiction genre. By choosing to focus on the task of translating alien language as opposed to just engaging in some “epic” confrontation with them, Arrival forces us to confront the mysteries within ourselves as we tackle the mysteries of the extraterrestrials that come from beyond.
Rating	10/10
Grade	S+

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2010, 2010s, Action, Adventure, Grade, Review, review-movie, S, Science Fiction, Thriller, Year

Film Review: Inception – 2010

June 21, 2021 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Christopher Nolan
Principal Cast	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
Release Date	2010
Language(s)	English
Running Time	148 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

Dom(Leondardo DiCaprio) wakes up on the shore.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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2010s, 2017, Drama, Grade, mystery, Review, review-movie, S+, Thriller, Year

Film Review: First Reformed – 2017

May 14, 2021 The Critic 2 Comments

Director(s)	Paul Schrader
Principal Cast	Ethan Hawke as Ernst Toller Amanda Seyfried as Mary Philip Ettinger as Michael Cedric Kyles as Joel Victoria Hill as Esther
Release Date	2017
Language(s)	English
Running Time	113 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

The camera slowly pushes in on the First Reformed church.

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.

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.

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+

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2010s, 2012, A+, Art House, Crime, Drama, Grade, Review, review-movie, Year

Review: Spring Breakers

January 1, 2021 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Harmony Korine
Principal Cast	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+

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2010s, 2012, A+, Drama, Fantasy, Grade, Horror, mystery, Review, review-movie, Science Fiction, science fiction horror, Thriller, Year

Review: The Endless

December 16, 2020 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Justin Benson Aaron Scott Moorhead
Principal Cast	Justin Benson as Justin Aaron Scott Moorhead as Aaron Callie Hernandez as Anna Tate Ellington as Hal Lew Temple as Tim Shane Brady as Shane Kira Powell as Lizzy James Jordan as Shitty Carl
Release Date	2017
Language(s)	English
Running Time	111 minutes

The opening quote to the movie encapsulates the thematic journey we’ll be taking- a mixture of Lovecraft, confronting the unknown, fear, alienation, and the way those ideas intertwine in relationships.

The movie opens with two quotes : one from Lovecraft and one from an Unknown source. Lovecraft’s quote encapsulates the drive behind his writing – the idea that the unknown is the root of fear. The latter quote notes that siblings only tell each other their feelings when they’re on their deathbeds. The presentation of the quote highlights that the Unknown Lovecraft is talking about is an agent of sorts that’s the source of the second quote, informing the audience that the movie we’re about to experience is going to explore a sibling relationship against a Lovecraft background – an navigation of the unknown, fear, and relationships.

After this the movie cuts to two brothers, Justin and Aaron, who are attempting to navigate their day to day lives in spite of a grayness that seems to permeate their existence. On top of their sullen demeanors, the color grading is undersaturated and reinforces a dreary and lifeless mood.

Justin (Justin Benson) tries to reach out to his brother Aaron (Aaron Scott Moorhead) who is too sullen to respond or reciprocate. *The brothers lives are gray and worn out after having left the cult . Even the bright sun can’t lighten up their days, reflecting the way their lives have fallen into a depressive rut.*

It’s quickly revealed that the two are survivors of a cult and are struggling with adapting to their new lifestyle. The older brother, Justin, domineers over his younger brother and constantly dictates the duo’s course of action. He’s the one who dragged them out from the clutches of the cult due to fears about them committing some kind of mass suicide. On the other hand, Aaron is very much sick and tired of their current life and is desperate to go back to the cult and experience the sense of warmth he had back there – a familial unity that seems to be missing with his own flesh and blood. After the two receive an ominous videotape from their former cult members talking about an “ascension” of sort. The tape is obviously old and its quality is poor, but it ends on an image of a circle. Desperate, to get his brother back to normal, Justin acquiesces and tells Aaron they’ll go to the cult for one day to get the latter’s mojo back.

As they journey to their previous habitat, the color that had been missing from their lives permeates the screen. The gray gives way to bright and warm colors that compliment Aaron’s newfound joy.

Once they decide the go back to the cult for a day, the light seeps in and saturates the brothers’ lives. There’s a newfound vitality here that was missing before.

During this drive back the brother’s stop at a funeral site – the place where their mother had died so many years ago. Surprisingly, the offerings they had left so many years ago as children still stand, no blemishes or markings to indicate how long they’ve been there. Having given their respects, the two make their way to the cult site – a campground that immediately feels unnerving and inviting at the same time. Their journey is accompanied by a score that evokes hints of John Carpenter – a spectral synth that has a The first person they run into ignores them and keeps walking past them, obviously perturbed. The next person they run into is smiling creepily, their face unmoving. Eventually the duo runs back into their previous acquaintances who happily welcome them back to the site. A nice meal followed by a good night’s sleep assuages Aaron and confirms to him he made the right choice. Meanwhile, Justin is still very much on the fence about the decision.

As the two of them explore the camp and re-integrate with their previous acquaintances/friends they’re forced to confront the host of inexplicable phenomena that pervade the camp. There’s constant mentions of an alien entity that watches the camp ground, a locked wooden shed that’s described as a storehouse for brewery equipment, magic tricks that go from discernible to out of this world, camp bonding activities that seem physically impossible, the presence of two moons, strange totem like objects scattered throughout the area, and camp members who fluctuate from cozy and inviting to seemingly hostile and suspicious. It’s a creepy cult gamut featuring enough additional oddities to keep both the brothers and the audience in a constant search to determine who’s on whose side and what’s really causing these off-putting occurrences. The best part is that the visual effects for many of these moments are simple, effective, and don’t cheapen out on stunning the audience. It’s testament to Benson and Moorhead’s skill that they can shoot a low budget picture but add enough visual magic in the right ways to absolutely nail the impact of each of these visceral phenomena. Very rarely did I feel myself fall into disbelief as the fantastical nature of what was happening blended seamlessly into the reality of the world, calling into question where the bounds of “real” stopped and started.

Everything pays off because each incident by itself is unnerving but put together it generates a fragmented experience. It’s impossible to know exactly where anything is going which generates both tension and a constant desire to figure it out. At the same time, the obvious call backs to horror tropes (ex: a cult brewing beer is the spiritual cousin of a cult drinking the Kool-Aid, Native Indian markings throughout the camp invite the idea that it’s a haunting taking place, etc.) helps us piece the pieces together according to our own preconceptions firmly placing us on the side of one or both of the brothers. Justin is suspicious of them and thinks they have to do with the cult trying to gain control over the brothers. Meanwhile, Aaron is more trusting of the camp members and accepts the oddities as they are. Their relationship develops as a result of every occurrence which not only adds an emotional resonance to the disconcerting events but also pushes the two of them to confront their deep seated feelings. It’s an encapsulation of the beginning quotes – a relationship that develops in the face of fear through the lens of the unknown.

Exemplifying this is the constant use of circles both as visual motif and in the way the camera moves. A circle is a closed shape – marked by boundaries but having no discernible start or end. It’s a loop that contains an infinite possibility of meanings depending on how you break its components down. The movie emphasizes this by constantly cutting to multiple circles, each distinct from one another in size and composition.

Circles are used a constant motif throughout the film, highlighting and tying together the fragmented horror tropes into a cohesive narrative that invites the audience to carve out their own interpretation of what everything means. Every circle represents something different but they’re all united by their shape and the use of match cuts reinforces the idea that there’s something tying these disparate elements together.

Early on, when the brothers get the initial tape from the cult, the tape cuts on an image of a circle – an eerie circle that calls back to something like Stonehenge. The move match cuts this with the bucket of cleaning supplies that the brothers use in their jobs – an circle that constraints their lives in a mundane job. The maps the camp uses are marked with circles – circles of containment that lock in zones. The camp members city in circles around the campfire – a circle of community. On top of this, Benson and Moorhead make multiple uses of arc shots that circle around and give the full view of a situation – a circle of meaning. Multiple scenes are shot in slow motion as the camera arcs – a circle of time. Is there a difference between insulating ourselves in a domestic circle where we take on mundane jobs versus isolating ourselves in a cult like circle that feeds our social and emotional needs? By utilizing the circles in such a way the movie gets us to ask questions like these throughout the movie, tying the fragmented and disparate elements into more cohesive strands – a symbolism that ties narrative to them and back again in a mutually reinforcing loop that’s open to infinite meaning.

This duality in meaning is aided by the stellar cast and crew. Surprisingly, the main players Justin and Aaron who play the the two brothers going by the same names are not the stars of the show. Don’t get me wrong – their performances are more than adequate – better than I expected when I saw the directors were taking center stage. Outside of a few moments of overexertion near the first half of the movie, they do their job at selling their characters relationship through effective and comedic banter along with requisite emotional moments necessary to propel the story. However, it’s their supporting cast that drives home the ambiguity of the camp happenings and the real emotional weight of what’s at stake behind the mysteries. Ellington gives Hal, the de facto leader/not leader, of the group a kind aura that belies the expectations of him that the brothers and us might have of him being a culty control freak. Temple makes Tim, the camp’s brewer, feel both tired and sincere. The way he emotes through his eyes indicates his character’s frustrated, serious, but not malicious. Powell’s dove eyed portrayal of Lizzy is both unnerving and endearing. She makes her character feel crazy, open, or a little bit of both. James Jordan as the aptly named Shitty Carl goes from absolutely batshit, to serious, to emotionally devastated, to goofing around in a seamless manner that underscores the weight of the camp’s mystery/(ies). I could go on and on, but the point is each performance both gives gravity to the consequences of the phenomena that we witness and emphasizes the theme of infinite interpretation.

The Endless proves that all you need is a tight script, interesting ideas, innovative execution, and a real focus on theme to tell a great and compelling story. Despite the budgetary limitations, Benson and Moorhead demonstrate that they’re more than comfortable in their Lovecraftian wheelhouse and can tell complex and diverse stories from within without ever boring their audience. After Resolution and Spring, this is the movie that cements that they’re an up and coming talent that deserves more recognition. If you’re someone who’s been itching for a sci-fi horror that’ll get you to think without giving you easy answers, look no further. The Endless is the kind of movie that begs to be watched and re-watched in an attempt to carve out meaning from it’s seemingly infinite world.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	The Endless expands and builds on Moorhead and Benson’s previous endeavors – combining horror tropes, relationship struggles, the search for meaning, and a healthy dose of Lovecraftian ideas to create a truly mesmerizing movie that’ll get you invested in the characters and invite you to think about the deeper meaning of your life and the way it ebbs and flows. Though the budget is on the smaller side, the movie never suffers and demonstrates that interesting ideas and tight execution are all that’s necessary to tell a thrilling and moving story. Every element – from the tropes, to the characters, to the visual effects, to the worldbuilding- fits with one another and will leave you genuinely impressed by the end. If you’re a fan of sci-fi and/or fantasy, you owe it to yourself to check this out.
Rating	9.8/10
Grade	A+

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2010s, 2012, A+, Drama, Grade, Horror, mystery, Review, review-movie, Thriller, Year

Review: Resolution

December 11, 2020 The Critic 2 Comments

Director(s)	Justin Benson Aaron Scott Moorhead
Principal Cast	Peter Cilella as Michael Vinny Curran as Chris Kurt David Anderson as Billy Skyler Meacham as Micah Zahn McClarnon as Charles
Release Date	2012
Language(s)	English
Running Time	93 minutes

The movie opens on a montage of a man, Chris, acting sporadically in the wilderness. He lights up his crack pipe and takes a large hit. He shoots bottles around him. He plays with a dog near him. There’s no clear cohesion behind the sequencing of these moments. They’re random, sporadic, and paint a disturbing picture. The camera reveals the montage is actually a video file being watched by Michael, Chris’s best friend. Obviously worried by his buddy’s actions on the video, Michael decides to track Chris down using GPS coordinates sent along with the file. After a lengthy drive, he locates an erratic Chris shooting at the birds in the sky with a hail of bullets.

Michael (Peter Cilella) approaches Chris (Vinny Curran) for the first time in years as the latter puts his gun down to greet his friend.

He carefully makes his way up to Chris’s house of sorts after declaring himself and slowly catches up with his friend. Unbeknownst to Chris however, is Michael’s real purpose – saving and rehabilitating his forlorn friend. Michael tricks and handcuffs Chris to a fixture in the house before informing the latter that he intends on getting him to kick his drug habit over the next 7 days.

However, this main story thread of Michael trying to rehabilitate Chris as the latter fights back tooth and nail is a decoy set up by directors Benson and Moorhead to give them a jumping off point to unabashedly explore horror genre conventions. From the moment Michael arrives at Chris’s abode, a series of strange occurrences start to occur almost like clockwork. As Michael tries to find Chris’s drug stash he comes upon a series of eerily shot photographs in the cellar-like area. Later on as he’s walking, he runs into a group of alien cultists who give an off-putting feeling. When the two are sleeping, a girl randomly pops up and watches them through the window. Later it’s revealed that Chris is located on Native grounds. Eventually, the two find a series of increasingly disturbing home-videos.

Some of the most disturbing situations the main duo run into involve strange photographs and movie reels that depict unexplainable moments of violence to strangers.

It’s like an unrelenting barrage horror occurrences/situations that keep you on your toes guessing as to what’s really happening. By playing the conventions straight as opposed to being overtly comedic with them in the vein of something like The Cabin in the Woods, Resolution manages to generate a genuine sense of unease and tension. You know something is up because horror conventions are sprinkled everywhere, but because the movie treats them as serious it avoids turning them into predictable and boring clichés. That’s effective horror film making.

There’s no hand holding from Benson and Moorhead. They’re not here to be tongue-in-cheek or overtly comedic. They’re here to tell a faithful horror story that explores and critiques the genre in a subversive way. This is reflected in their choices to not use a soundtrack or any jump scares. The tension and unease is meant to come from the movie proper, not some auditory tricks. In the place of these played out tools of commercial horror are some compelling visual and auditory clues that hint at, but don’t reveal the true nature of what’s going on. From the moment Michael chooses to pursue his friend, certain scenes are marked with a film burn effect that envelops the screen.

These are examples of the film burns that occur throughout the movie at seemingly random moments. Their purpose is unexplained till the very end, inviting the viewer to question what they mean and what’s causing them.

At other moments, the camera switches from being with the characters to POV shots that look at the characters like objects – implying the presence of something else.

A POV shot of *Chris (Vinny Curran)* and *Michael (Peter Cilella)* talking to one another. The camera shifts from being in the room with the characters to this outside perspective, inviting the audience to ask what’s watching them and why.

Accompanying these visual cues are audio distortions where lines repeat or become glitchy sounding. Because the movie takes such care to not introduce non-diegetic elements , each of these clues feels like part of the world’s fabric and invite the audience to investigate what they really mean. It’s a great way of not only ratcheting up the tension, but it also plays an important part in getting us on Chris and Michael’s side – we’re trying to figure out what’s going just like them.

This is the heart of what makes Resolution so much fun. It invites the audience to play along with the characters in a race to come up with a narrative that explains every story thread. What are the characters really after? Why are certain photos and tapes revealed? Why does the camera shift as the audio becomes distorted? As the layers start to unravel, it becomes more and more apparent that this is a movie about the cinematic form – an exploration of the way we create narratives and imbue them with a certain power, thereby generating foregone conclusions and apparent contradictions that make us question why we even want certain things to happen to begin with. Do I think the movie nails all the punches it goes for? No. There are some ideas that feel thrown in just for the sake of adding more confusion to the narrative, while other ideas are introduced without enough of a build-up. However, these concerns feel small in the face of what the movie is trying to accomplish and what it does to get the audience to question their own complicity in the way horror narratives are put together. The ending of the movie is an absolute knock-out that delivers the goods in a satisfying way.

Now while Chris and Michael’s storyline is not the main draw of Resolution, it is the focal point that ties all these otherwise discordant conventions into a cohesive narrative. Without their central struggle and the audience’s subsequent investment in it, the movie wouldn’t be able to explore any of the ideas above to their fullest. While Michael is controlled and domineering, Chris is a manic ball of energy. The former is down-to-Earth graphic designer desperate to bring his friend back into the “normal” world. The latter is a drug-addicted, misanthropic conspiracy-theorist who doesn’t care if he dies as much as he cares about enjoying the little life he has. There’s a good bit of depth to the both of them that turns them from horror inserts into real people which is obviously helped by the two lead actors’ performances. The movie spends a fair bit of time letting the two just talk to each other, whether that be in the form of Michael hurling insults at Chris or the two of them reminiscing about better times. The way Cilella and Curran riff off one another and banter reminds me of conversations I’ve had with my own friends. It’s hard to believe they’re actors and not two buds catching up after a long time away from one another. Curran in particular gives some emotional heft to his character that I wasn’t expecting, injecting a genuine somberness to his otherwise bombastic personality. They get you to care about their characters because they feel like people you might actually know.

It’s rare for a horror movie to both pay homage and still be surprising, but Resolution is one of those rare few that pulls off the balancing act to great effect. The characters are compelling, well-rounded, and written in a way that gets you to invest in their wellbeing. The diversity in plot threads keeps you guessing where the movie is going and what’s causing everything to happen, even if every sub-plot/idea isn’t utilized or explained to its fullest. The movie effectively manages to keep the sense of dread palpable while asking the audience to think and explore the world with the lead characters, making the experience active and informative on top of being entertaining. If you’re a genre fan looking for a movie that plays the conventions straight while remaining interesting, this is the movie for you.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Resolution is a love-letter to the horror genre that plays off conventions while treating them seriously. The story of a guy trying to help his junkie friend get off the drugs turns out to be so much more, as multiple horror plot threads are layered onto the initial narrative creating interwove mystery that’ll have you asking what is actually going on. If you ever saw The Cabin in the Woods and wished it was less tongue-in-cheek and less expository, this is the movie for you. Through some subtle, yet clever cues the movie forces its audience to question their own biases about the genre in an entertaining and emotionally resonant fashion. Genre fans own it to themselves to check this out.
Rating	9.5/10
Grade	A+

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2010s, 2018, A, Black-Comedy, Grade, Horror, mystery, Review, review-movie, Thriller, Year

Review: Piercing

December 3, 2020 The Critic 2 Comments

Director(s)	Nicolas Pesce
Principal Cast	Christopher Abbott as Reed Mia Wasikowska as Jackie Laia Costa as Mona
Release Date	2018
Language(s)	English
Running Time	81 minutes

The camera pans through a beautiful cityscape that feels artificial and out of touch with reality as the song “L’eredità & agguato nel buio” from the giallo movie The Red Queen Kills Seven Times plays in the background . As the camera gets closer to an open window on a building, the movie cuts to a baby cooing against a red backdrop as an ice pick slowly makes its way closer to to its face. The hand holding it retracts away to reveal an anxious looking man , Reed, who’s then immediately called by his wife, Mona, to come back to bed. Unable to now finish his task, he goes off and chokes himself, a pained expression enveloping his face. After enough time has passed, he goes back to his wife who caresses his head tenderly in an attempt to help him destress. She may not know that he was trying to kill their child, but she does know something is disturbing him. However, just as he gets comfortable their child starts to cry in the background. The noise immediately disturbs him, and his face turns from calm to agitated once again. As he goes to comfort his child, the newborn child says to him in a demonic voice , “You know what you have to do.” It’s at this point that Reed realizes that he has to kill to satiate the urge within and makes plans to hire and murder a prostitute. Unfortunately for him, his dreams to get away with the perfect murder go off the rails when the escort service he’s contacted sends him an unhinged and sporadic woman, Jackie, who threatens to unravel his plan at every step of the way.

This is Nicolas Pesce’s sophomore effort, Piercing ,a cocktail of psychosexual plotlines, imperceptible characters, and a distinct sense of black humor. It’s a love letter to giallo movies that seeks to deconstruct the sub-genre from the inside out, while mixing it with the confusing battle of the sexes from Takashi Miike’s Audition (which makes sense given that both Audition and Piercing are based on books written by Ryū Murakami). Traditional giallo movies follow a fairly standard plotline – there’s a brutal series of murders by an masked black-gloved killer, a journalist-type character tries to figure out what’s going on with or without the presence of some sidekicks, and the killer is eventually revealed with a brief explanation of the trauma that caused them to act out the series of murders. Along the way are psychosexual plotlines, trauma, mystery, tension, and a healthy amount of visual violence. Oh and of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the traditional soundtrack – a combination of progressive rock, jazz, disco, electric, and epic orchestral elements put together to keep the audience energized and invested. Piercing lovingly takes all these components and flips the script by placing the audience on the side of the giallo killer, Reed, as he desperately tries to solve the source of his trauma by killing a prostitute under a peculiar set of conditions. By removing the killer’s mask and placing them front and center, Pesce is able to showcase the absurdity and complexity that drives the genre. The presence of an unknowable entity in Jackie serves to take the mysterious nature of desire that’s normally only present in the backdrop of previous gialli and bring it to the center of discussion, forcing Reed, and subsequently the audience, to examine the way modes of psychosexuality are constructed.

As evidenced by his baby talking earlier, Reed’s delusions play a significant part of the word of the movie, threatening to infect every aspect of it. Images of strange and artificial cityscapes are juxtaposed against real backdrops to suggest that artificiality is always present – a fantasy that covers the trauma within.

An artificial cityscape that looks to be painting of sorts.

The soundscape is filled with diegetic (in the world of the movie , things the characters interact with) and non-diegetic (the external elements of the movie, things that are for the audience) that constantly bleed into one another, reflecting the way that psychotic delusion infects the world but is built from a trauma stemming from that world at the same time. For example, Reed practices what he’s going to do to the prostitute sent to him by physically going through the motions, an imaginary roleplay if you will. As he cuts, and saws, and violates we see nothing on the screen but we can hear every single crack and flow of blood – a clear indication of what Reed is hearing in his mind. In the backdrop is some nice calming music that feels at complete odds with what’s going on (think high class elevator music). At first glance this soundtrack feels non-diegetic, a score meant to elicit a laugh from the audience because of it’s sharp contrast with Reed’s intended actions. However, as he finishes his walkthrough the score is revealed to be part of his mental soundscape as well, becoming dimmer and more muffled as he gets more nervous about what he’s going to do. Along with moments like these which are spread throughout the movie, Reed’s more overt delusional episodes, and Jackie’s general imperceptibility, the movie constantly forces the audience to ask what’s real and piece together the character’s respective desires like a detective getting to the bottom of the mystery, effectively placing them in the role of the traditional giallo detective. It’s not about who’s doing what, but why are they doing what they’re doing.

The sadomasochistic sexual playground the characters interact with each other in opens the perfect space for desire and its exploration. Initially, Reed brings up the idea of S&M to have an excuse to tie Jackie up so he can finish her off, but as the movie unravels the power dynamic inherent in such a relationship is given room to evolve. Sex and violence are staples of gialli and the movie transforms them from merely visually striking elements into genuine mode of communication. Sadism and masochism are orientations towards pleasure and the Other that elicits it. Why does a character like to be beaten in one way? Why does another like to submit? Why are relationships filled with a sense of ambiguity and mystery? It’s all due to some kind of past experience that’s become coded in the flow of desire that subconsciously drives the subject towards their intended action. S&M allows this hidden desire to sublimate and helps to explain the subject and their trauma in a meaningful way. It’s this move that makes every moment of sexual tension or expressive violence more than what it appears. It’s not just shock and excess for the sake of it – it’s an attempt at revealing something more intimate and personal about the subjects at the center of such actions. Without a partner to tango with, be it to inflict violence on or to have sex with, nothing can come to pass because there’s nothing to incite and push desire to the forefront. This is reflected in the movie’s constant use of split-screens which reinforce that both partners in the act are equally important and have a role to play in constructing themselves and one another. Meaning can only be constructed once the two of them interact with one another in an dance for and of power.

The movie uses split screens to highlight the way the characters intrude onto one another lives and shifts the course of their actions. *Jackie( Mia Wasikowska)* on the left brings to light *Reed’s (Christopher Abbott)* desires on the right and vice versa.

Speaking of the partners, the movie entirely hinges on the backs of Abbott and Wasikowska who have to sell their characters’ game of constantly (re)volving interpretative cat-and-mouse. The former exudes general anxiety with his nervous mannerisms and voice that threatens to go to an indescribably whisper at points as he tries gain control of the situation. His nervous energy is present in the way he breathes deeply and in how his eyes dart and move in confusion and worry as he tries to piece together what to do next. He’s a clump of paranoid trepidation that occasionally laughs and smiles as his submerged self slowly comes to the forefront. Meanwhile, the latter is imperceptible, switching from flirty to batshit crazy to seductive without missing a beat. It’s almost impossible to get a read on her as she coyly asks questions one moment and threatens to shock both Reed and the audience with some excessively gratuitously actions the next. The two of them play off each other in an off-putting romantic fashion that constantly feels like it will break apart into something far more terrifying or evolve into something more cutesy, as they circle one another.

Jackie( Mia Wasikowska) informs Reed( Christopher Abbott) that she’s “onto him”.

However, in spite of my praises, the movie does partially fall into the trap it critiques by making the references to the character’s respective traumas and reasons for action too obtuse. The joke about many gialli is that the killers’ motivations are threadbare and only present to help piece together the grandiose kill sequences. While I don’t think the movie fits that description, I can’t help but feel that it plays the characters’ traumas and desires too safe. In both of their cases, there’s a litany of clues that help piece together profiles that give a subtle glimpse behind the veil. For example, there are a plethora of moments where Reed’s anxiety, meticulous attention to detail and procedure, and the murder he’s committed to do are derailed and forced to adapt to the whim’s of his unpredictable victim leading to a variety of horrifying yet comedic scenes that’ll get us to ask why he’s acting in such a peculiar fashion but never go far enough as to give us information to answer them in a satisfying way. I think Pesce could’ve extracted more from these situations without giving up the comedy or ambiguity he was going for. Obviously the movie can’t reveal everything – that would ruin the fun and make the themes less precise. It’s just that the few reveals that do happen feel too surface level in spite of their sometimes surreal presentation. Slightly more information or exploration would help the audience fill in the elliptical scenes and provoke deeper and more nuanced questioning and analysis. As it is the movie is a lot of fun and is tightly put together, but I can’t help feeling it would be a more accessible homerun if it spent more time exploring the characters’ fractured pasts with a bit more depth in the vein of something like Audition.

As a result, this is a movie that I can’t recommend to every horror fan. If you like your movies more visceral than cerebral and are unfamiliar with gialli, a lot of what the movie does might come off as too strange or pretentious. There’s no clear answers to what really drives the movie’s duo and if you want those answers front and center you’ll end up feeling disappointed. Likewise, the subtle way the movie plays with the sub-genre can only be appreciated if you’re a fan of those movies. I first saw Piercing after watching Pesce’s debut, The Eyes of My Mother, a much darker and more universally palatable horror that really gets under your skin. Coming into this from that was a strange shift, because of how much more stylized and funny this movie turns out to be. After going on a huge gialli binge earlier this year (2020) comprised of watching all of Argento’s classics (Tenebrae, Deep Red, Opera) along with a healthy heaping of other fan favorites (Blood and Black Lace, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, Don’t Torture a Duckling, and so on) I’ve come to love the sub-genre and all it’s trashy and classy components. Watching Piercing again with a knowledge and appreciation of what gialli are about and their respective elements makes me truly appreciate what Pesce is going for. For example, the score heavily samples/uses music from some of the aforementioned classics, and if you recognize the tracks, you appreciate what’s been curated and how it’s been used. For instance, Goblin’s (one of Argento’s most famous musical collaborators) heavy hitters are only used during important moments between Reed and Jackie. “Profondo Rosso” starts blaring as the movie uses a split-screen to chronicle the first time the two of them meet, using the more iconic and bombastic song to signify the importance of what’s happening. This music can enjoyed by someone who’s never seen gialli , but it takes on a new level of depth if you know where it’s coming from. So if you’re a gialli fan and enjoy movies that play with cerebral and surreal moments over more visceral and direct ones, this is the movie for you. If not, you might end up frustrated with the way the story unravels and proceeds.

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TLDR	Piercing is a darkly-comedic and intensely quizzical love letter to gialli that deconstructs the sub-genre from the inside out. By placing the audience on the side of an aspiring murderer who’s forced to contend with an equally strange and powerful potential victim, the movie creates an effective backdrop to explore trauma, sexuality, and communication in innovative and interesting ways. The visual design is filled with paintings and the soundscape goes from diegetic to non-diegetic constantly to induce a state of confusion in the viewer, forcing them to piece together what’s real and what’s fantasy. The score features classics from gialli like Deep Red and should get your head bopping even if you’re not familiar with the context or importance of the music. If you’re a gialli lover who enjoys cerebral movies that don’t give you all the answers, you’ll love what Pesce is doing with this wholly unique horror entry.
Rating	9.2/10
Grade	A

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