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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, 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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2000s, 2008, Action, Adventure, D+, Grade, Marvel, Past, Review, review-movie, Science Fiction, Superhero, Year

Film Review: Thor – 2011

September 14, 2021 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Kenneth Branagh
Principal Cast	Chris Hemsworth as Thor Tom Hiddleston as Loki Anthony Hopkins as Odin Idris Elba as Heimdall Colm Feore as Laufey Natalie Portman as Jane Foster Stellan Skarsgård as Erik Selvig
Release Date	2011
Language(s)	English
Running Time	114 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

Thor (Chris Hemsworth), God of Thunder and son of Odin (Anthony Perkins), is banished by his father and stripped of his mighty hammer Mjöllnir for having attempted an invasion of the Frost Giant’s home of Jotunheim in retaliation to the giant’s interruption of his own crowning ceremony. Now instead of being the next king, he is cast aside from his home of Asgard; his purpose is now lost and none of his friends are are able to stop Odin’s judgement. Heimdall (Idris Elba), both Thor’s friend and the guardian of the bifröst , a bridge capable of transporting anyone to any location, is forced to send the power God of thunder away. Thus, Thor is transported to the planet of Earth, where he immediately makes contact with Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), a young astrophysicist who had been following weather fluctuations, which unbeknownst to her had been tied to the use of bifröst.

The narrative is ambitious; on one hand it’s an attempt to tell the tale of Thor’s succession with epic familial stakes and on another hand it’s an attempt to meld the fantastical worlds present in the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) with the scientific excursions demonstrated so far in Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk in order to create a bridge to more complex directions. Unfortunately, that ambition can’t make up for the film’s inability to meld the worlds of Asgard and the Earth off one another in a fluid and mutually beneficial manner. Instead of helping one another, the halves of the movie feel disjointed with another and often times feel like they’re intruding – like they belong in different films.

Establishing shot of Jane and company in Puente Antiguo, New Mexico.

For example, the start of the movie opens on Jane looking for signs of her phenomena. She gets evidence, gets excited, and then drives towards the event where she ends up hitting Thor with her car. She asks where he came from at which point the film cuts to a voice-over by Odin in 965 A.D. where he goes over and explains the history of mankind. The viewer stays with Odin and Asgard for close to 30 minutes before cutting back to Jane and her crash with Thor, which is treated as a comedic moment. The epic intensity and impact of Thor’s exile immediately becomes the butt of a joke and the rest of the story follows; moments of intensity in the Asgardian moments trade off with comedic, fish out of water human moments which makes it impossible for emotional resonance to take hold at any important moments. This dichotomy is most pronounced in Patrick Doyle’s score which flips from seemingly epic to screw-ball comedy whenever the Asgardian plot threads meet up with the human ones.

Alas, the pitiful characterization of anyone not named Thor and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) hardly helps; the hollow Asgardian and human entourages that are meant to be foils for one another and Thor’s allies only serve to waste screen-time that could have been better spent. That’s the key reason why Iron Man, which also starts with its hero in a low point before cutting back to how he got there, is able to get the audience invested in what’s to come; everyone’s relationship to Tony Stark is established and we get a good sense of who he is, why he is the way he is, and how the people close to him deal with his personality quirks. Thor on the other hand does nothing like this for its titular character. Thor’s closest friends get no development: it’s impossible to tell them apart from one another let alone how they matter to Thor. Likewise, how Thor came to be his pompous and belligerent self and managed to inspire so much faith from those around him is less so explained and more just asserted.

This lack of grounding makes Thor’s subsequent meeting with Jane and her allies less relevant. Instead of being able to serve as ways to humanize Thor and help him grow into a hero worthy of redemption, thereby combining the two halves of the story, they seemingly transport him to a whole other narrative instead. Instead of epic, we get a meet-cute that reduces Thor, the God of Thunder, to a walking set of goofy abs and transforms Jane, an scientist devoted to her research, to a woman smitten by schoolgirl love. It’s precisely because these two worlds don’t line up with each other thematically that the movie then has to waste additional time introducing a whole other villain and sub-plot to help Thor get from point A to point B.

Imagine if the opening of the film started with Odin’s monologue about the history of Asgard and the 9 realms. We could see Thor, the warriors Three (Ray Stevenson, Tadanobu Asano, Josh Dallas), Lady Sif(Jaimie Alexander), and Loki go around and engage in battles through the realms which would give director Kenneth Branagh an opportunity to distinguish the characters from one another. Thor’s headstrong and impulsive nature could be better established along with the nature of his relationships to his entourage. Each battle would require Heimdall to open the bifröst whose energy signature would be tracked by Jane. At these moments, the movie could have cut momentarily towards Jane trying to tie the nature of the events together becoming more and more fanatically attached to it.

This would make Thor and Jane’s collision with one another and their subsequent relationship would be more believable. Jane’s differences from his usual group would be pronounced and her enthusiasm in following him would stem not from his status as a hunk but rather as living proof of her research. Furthermore, many of the latter sequences of characters explaining their motivations could be removed because hopefully those details would be fleshed out in the opening Asgard section. As the film is now, these additional bits of exposition are needed to flesh out the stakes and move the story along. Removing them would make a leaner and more cohesive overall narrative.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is captured by Coulson’s men.

Frustratingly, Branagh demonstrates that he’s more than capable of interweaving between the two storylines in neat movements when he wants, but he chooses not to when it would be opportune. Heimdall, given his role as watcher of the bridge, is shown to be able to pay attention to any event happening in the nine realms. As such, certain scenes reveal that Heimdall is actually seeing them which helps the movie switch from Asgard to human and back with each. However, Branagh rarely uses the Heimdall transition technique. Instead, of utilizing the gatekeeper as a way to swap between parallel plot techniques and introduce a common visual motif, the movie is more than satisfied mentioning and using Heimdall’s skill a few times and then dropping it.

Jane (Natalie Portman) looks at the space phenomena.

This inconsistency in use extends to all the visual flourishes on display. At one moment Branagh will have the camera swoop from the top of Asgard to the bottom in one fluid moment, while at other moments he’ll just cut without abandon to showcase character reactions. Like previously mentioned, canted angles are on full display from start to finish. However, the choice of which scenes are shot with the tilted angles seems completely at random, rendering their selection confusing. Multiple moments will feature the change in angle and a switch back to normal for no other reason than someone fancied them. Consequently, the discord from the visual and audio swaps makes the incongruity between the Asgardian and human storylines all the more palpable. It’s all one big jumbling mess.

Therefore, while Thor isn’t quite the wreckage The Incredible Hulk is, it’s a far cry from the precise and slicked out Iron Man. It provides a plot that has points that are competently expected on their own, but it never once provides the momentum or composition capable of letting those points build off and complement one another. The end result is a grab-bag of decent points swimming around a pool of mainly bland and unmemorable scenes that teases a great film filled with familiar drama and romance but rarely delivers anywhere close on its potential.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Thor is a series of interesting ideas that fail to meld into a story that can sustain interest for longer than single scenes. The script gives the actors few moments to sell the gravitas of what’s happening – a feeling which is further undermined by the film’s own inability in determining whether or not it wants to be a serious epic of a cutesy rom-com. The end result is a film that lacks any staying power after the fact.
Rating	5.9/10
Grade	D+

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2020s, 2021, A+, Crime, Grade, Horror, mystery, Past, Review, review-movie, slasher, supernatural, Thriller, Year

Film Review: Malignant – 2021

September 11, 2021 The Critic 2 Comments

Director(s)	James Wan
Principal Cast	Annabelle Wallis as Madison /Emily Maye Maddie Hasson as Sydney George Young as Detective Shaw Michole Briana White as Detective Moss
Release Date	2021
Language(s)	English
Running Time	111 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

NOTE: This is a new release and the review is based off a theatre viewing. This means the review won’t feature common elements like visual analysis, extended theme analysis, or long-form discussions of the cinematic techniques being used. Once I am able to get a copy of the movie to watch, pause, analyze, and get stills from the review will be updated to match the current site’s standard.

It’s hard to believe that a storyline involving a psychic monster capable of brutally murdering scientists, inept help from the relevant authorities, a woman who has psychic visions of a black-robed murderer who contorts and viciously slices apart its victims, and meticulously crafted murder set pieces is the basis of a James Wan horror movie when it feels like something plucked out of Dario Argento’s giallo playbook, in particular his fever dream film, Phenomena. In other words, the movie is a showcase of spectacle; the point is not the narrative but the audio-visual journey. Extravagance matters more than plot, which functions more as a vehicle for Wan to canvas off of. He’s always been a stylistic director, but Malignant showcases the height of his visual prowess; it’s an absolute treat to behold.

The movie starts with a small taste of things to come as the walls of a institutional facility are drenched with blood. Dr. Florence Weaver (Jacqueline McKenzie) escorts a group, which includes an officer with a gun, towards a room where people are flung out with bloody aplomb. She instructs them to shoot the patient, Gabriel, who is causing all the issues. The group suffers heavy casualties, but the nature of Gabriel along with his powers is left to the viewer’s imagination as the film cuts to twenty-eight years later.

A woman, Madison (Annabelle Wallis ), argues with her husband, Derek (Jake Abel) over the nature of her pregnancies, which seem to always terminate in miscarriages. He viciously attacks her for inability to conceive and beats her against the wall, causing the back of her head to bleed. Madison locks the door to keep safe from her husband, but then nighttime comes and a shadowy assassin makes its presence known. Its form is just a shadow creeping, and Wan teases the audience slowly with its presence before letting the violence continue; the husband is stabbed with no hesitation before Madison herself is thrown on the floor.

She wakes up at the hospital where she reunites with her sister, Sydney (Maddie Hasson). We learn that the siblings haven’t had contact with one another due to Derek’s controlling nature; he stopped Madison from reaching out. Thus, the black-coated figures first kill marks the end of the estrangement between Madison and her sibling and the start of her journey to move past and overcome her trauma at the hands of abuse.

However, later at night, Madison realizes that after this attack she’s now linked to the black-coated figure and can see the murders committed by the figure as they’re happening. These psychic drop-ins, which feel like the pensieve from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, feature the walls around our protagonist dissolving and reforming around her. Within crisp and fluid shots, Madison is transported from wherever she is to the scene of the next assault. Desperate to figure out the reason for this connection, she tasks Detectives Shaw (George Young) and Moss (Michole Briana White) along with Sydney in an race against time before the killer is allowed to strike again.

Wan said he wanted Malignant to be his take on giallo and the film more than delivers a set-up let lets him have fun. ^[1]Navarro, M. (2021, September 1). “My version OF GIALLO”: James wan lets us know what to expect from his new horror Movie ‘Malignant’ [Interview]. Bloody Disgusting! Retrieved … Continue readingThere’s a mysterious killer in possession of a distinctive weapon, brutal murders, a race to figure out the identity of the murderer, and law enforcement characters who are meant to help but who actively inhibit the protagonist while bumbling around. However, penchant of any great gialli, like the ones made by Argento and Bava, is to structure the violence with great care around fluid and dramatic camera moves which transform the macabre into the sensational. Malignant nails all of this and more. The plot moves along at a pace that keeps the audience invested until a reveal 30 minutes before the ending which then ratchets the film into an utterly enthralling cinematic experience that any fan of sensual cinema should watch. It’s entirely unpredictable; even if you guess one element of the way events will unfold, the entirety of the combined threads is something that can only be described as Shymalanesque in the best possible way.

Wan, who has always been stylistically talented, is allowed to push the boundaries on his own patterns. While the movie starts slow with some of his trademark sequences, like a tense overhead tracking shot which follows the characters as they navigate a household à la The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2, it really starts to show its hand once Madison is allowed to “dissolve” into the psychic visions that she’s made to see. The transitions are as evocative as the murders which follow and serve a purpose in delineating the contours of Madison’s psyche. As the film continues and Madison is allowed to explore the connection, its visualization changes in ways to reflect the same.

However, what pushes Malignant over the edge is the vitality and fury by which Wan shoots some of the larger set-pieces, moments which blow out scenes from even movies, including even Wan’s own Aquaman. The camera is an assassin and follows the path of blood and carnage with surgical precession. Every blow is brutal. Every slice is sinister. Every moment is an extension of the dance of the fabulous blood-bath. He lets the impact of the ferocity sit with the audience as the frame sticks on the murders unbroken. There may be a lot of the stereotypical horror movie teasing with the slow set-ups and the disappearing shadows, but the pay-off is bloody, excessive, beautiful, and utterly worth every moment in wait – a carnivalesque celebration of blood and splatter.

The supernatural slasher often takes place in rooms lit by rich reds and glowing greens along with rooms dyed in shades of dark blue and pockets of darkness. Often times, the camera glides from one room to another, swinging between colors in a way to accentuate the visual momentum of the spectacle occurring. Even though some of the needle drop moments feel like they could have been timed to synch up with the emotional intensity of the film a bit better, most of Joseph Bishara’s electric score fulfills what it sets out to do – provide a companion to the visuals that can match their energy. Many of the tracks inject a head-bobbing energy that add a fiery intensity to the scenes. The combination of both elements creates dynamite film-making that serves as proof that some things have to be seen on the big screen to be experienced in their full glory.

While there are some plot issues here and there, the muscular film-making put on display by Wan is more than worth witnessing for fans of the genre and for those people looking for a off-the-walls story to have fun with. It’s more than just stylistic homage. Malignant is a celebration of sheer and utter excess in the best of ways. It’s the best of Wan’s artillery amplified to the next level – truly bravura filmmaking.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Since his horror debut with Saw, Wan has put out some of the most well-loved horror classics. Insidious galvanized a new-age of horror fans and The Conjuring confirmed that his arrival was no fluke. Malignant is a confirmation of the director’s potential and showcases some of the highest highs in his oeuvre as of yet.
Rating	9.0/10
Grade	A

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2000s, 2008, Action, Adventure, F, Grade, Marvel, Past, Review, review-movie, Science Fiction, Superhero, Year

Film Review: The Incredible Hulk – 2008

September 9, 2021 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Louis Leterrier
Principal Cast	Edward Norton as Bruce Banner/The Hulk (Voice by Lou Ferrigno) Liv Tyler as Betty Ross William Hurt as General Ross Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky / Abomination
Release Date	2008
Language(s)	English
Running Time	112 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) tests his Gamma treatment on himself.

The movie starts with a montage set to Craig Armstrong’s epic and triumphant score which almost tricks the viewer into thinking that the title sequence is doing something special. In reality, the 3-minute introduction sequence is a formal nightmare and makes the themes and ideas of the story hard to decipher at first. Instead of setting the film’s pace and giving it a unique voice, the introduction feels like a cheap way of getting to the “real” story.

First, the initial images of the montage make it feel like this recollection of memories is from Bruce Banner’s (Edward Norton) fragmented point-of-view. As such, the repetition of certain key scenes – namely Bruce’s partner, Betty (Liv Tyler) being injured after he transformed into the Hulk – should suggest Bruce’s pre-occupation. The scenes are even tinted in green suggesting they might be an effect of the Hulk’s influence on Banner’s brain.

However, at the halfway point of the introduction, scenes that are clearly not from Bruce’s point-of-view enter. For example, General Ross is seen looking for Bruce at one point and maps along with relevant documentation prop up on the screen to reinforce that Bruce is being hunted. Given that he’s on the run, it seems impossible that he’d be privy to this information which begs the question: why are these moments in the montage?

One could chalk it up to just quick storytelling, but the sequence ends in such a way as if to suggest that it is in fact Banner recalling his past. The montage ends as the camera pushes in on Betty’s injury before suddenly cutting to a metronome, an item featured in the montage intermittently at random moments, which Banner grabs and stops. He sits center frame and then a counter appears next to him indicating it’s been 158 days since his last “incident.” Is this counter his mental barometer now perhaps because days to him only exist if he’s not the Hulk or is it a mechanism of the movie to inform the audience of the time between transformations? Because of the sloppy nature of the montage, this determination is impossible make.

The second issue with the introduction is also an issue I expect a few readers to run into: the characters and events depicted in the montage require prior context to have any chance of being relevant to the viewer. Given that Ang Lee’s Hulk came out in 2003, it’s reasonable that Marvel and screen-writer Zak Pen wanted to avoid re-hashing the origin story and chose to truncate it; the issue is the emotional core of the story being told in The Incredible Hulk is contingent on understanding the Hulk’s origin. This issue is even more pronounced because even though The Incredible Hulk could work as a spiritual sequel to Lee’s film, there are enough differences in how Bruce gets and relates to his “Hulk” power that would justify time spent explaining the nuance to the audience.

It’s especially confusing how this movie got approved given how clear Iron Man, the first installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) , ended up being for audiences unfamiliar with the character. Coming right off the heels of one of the best super-hero movies was always going to be rough, but The Incredible Hulk doesn’t make the situation any easier for itself. The issue with the film isn’t even just the botched origin story. Unlike Marvel’s reboot of Spiderman in the form of Homecoming, which truncated the origin story which had been told twice before in the 21st century, The Incredible Hulk doesn’t try and tell a story that can ride its own coattails and get the audience invested with or without previous interest.

Betty (Liv Tyler) and Bruce (Edward Norton) reunite in the rain.

For example, one of the primary driving forces behind Banner’s desire to control his Hulk state is his desire to eventually get back with Betty. This motivation is his primary purpose for any and all action within the story, outside of some vague ethical concerns about his research which are never explained. The movie tells us as much with the montage which features a moment where Banner flashbacks within the sequence qua memory recall to an even more intimate encounter with her.

Yet, when the couple finally get to talking and meeting with one another there’s absolutely no chemistry between them. Their conversations devolve to quips, useless chitter-chatter, and verbal reminders that they love each other. They’re seeing each for the first time in years and the director and screenwriter can’t think of any possible things they would want to mention to one another again? It feels more like they’re acquaintances running into one another than lovers who have been forcibly separated for years on end. The golden rule is to show and not tell, and The Incredible Hulk never shows; instead, it prefers to reiterate what was shown in the montage and use the shallow scaffolding created off those minute impressions to leverage interest in where the story goes. The couple loves each other because they love each other. The push just doesn’t work and the emotions are missing which makes caring during any of the tense sequences that much harder.

Just to give context, within 15 minutes Iron Man manages to explain its protagonist’s, Tony Stark’s motivations, relationships with key persons in the movie, primary character arc, and foreshadow the eventual final battle. In that same time frame, The Incredibly Hulk explains that Bruce has been trying to figure out to control his anger since his incident, that he thinks about Betty a lot, and then just gets to the first chase sequence in a series of many. Even by the end of the movie’s run-time, the amount of information learned doesn’t actually increase by a meaningful margin. The plot is nothing more than a vehicle to get Banner from point A to point B in the hopes for a Hulk transformation and fight.

The Hulk looks menacingly from the shadows.

Now, this approach would work if they either showcased the Hulk in such a way as to develop Bruce’s character and dynamic or, in a more visceral sense, just let their CGI monster go wild in dynamic action set pieces. Instead, Banner’s transformations are always marred by some other visual distraction and/or a color grading that makes it hard to distinguish his figure. He’s on the screen but doesn’t pop out and get to actually show off. Banner makes fun of the iconic purple pants his character normally wears in a meta-comedy moment, but the reason purple is a great color with the Hulk is because it lets his green shine.

This is made all the more frustrating because it’s clear that Leterrier wanted to go for a green aesthetic. Plenty of shots feature green in the set design; the issue is these greens make the contrast between Hulk and the environment even worse and end up crowding the hulking green mammoth out of the frames he should be a star in. There are a few moments where the camera lingers on a Hulk’s face in a close-up and we get to see beautiful contrasts in his face and a rich texture in the colors. Unfortunately, these moments are few and far in between; the movie usually showcases its showstopper poorly.

Thankfully, the movie spends a decent amount of time on developing Emil Blonsky(Tim Roth). We get to know him as a veteran player who takes the mission seriously and early conversations even set him as the soldier to Banner’s scientist. While the movie does very little with Banner’s scientist storyline, choosing both not to investigate why he would test the “Hulk experiment” on himself or what he wanted, it does go deeper into Blonsky’s motivations and ties his eventual transformations to his character’s’ motivations. It doesn’t matter that the character is shallow; Roth is so amped up about being cruel, militaristic, and bloodthirsty beyond reason that we can get behind his character. Woefully, the movie throws away this saving grace in the third act by replacing Roth with a CGI creature; one less performance capable of galvanizing interest in the fights to come.

Banner clicks on a simple Desktop application.

It’s not that the story doesn’t have interesting characters or that it can’t go towards more interesting storylines. It’s just that every story decision feels like the easiest path towards the next plot beat. Case in point, Banner communicates with a secret contact to find a cure to the “Hulk” problem. The way he gets to the contact platform is literally through clicking an application, getting to a chat screen with no place to put in long in information, and then “auto-encrypting” the chat. I don’t expect a complicated encryption process, but I expect the process to be at least be complicated enough for me to believe that the antagonists cannot easily access this information.

However, in this film, the government’s crack-job solution to the messaging platform that Banner has used for apparent YEARS is to put a simple parser out to search for the code names the two are using and then coming upon the duo almost instantly. If the introductory montage didn’t stress that Banner has been sleuthing around the government for years and that the government has been actively pursuing him as per Ross’s command, the laziness wouldn’t be so apparent. Unfortunately, this example of blatantly “rushing” towards the next plot point is one of many. A few can be handled. A litany makes for an unremarkable time. The end result is a skeleton of a espionage movie that never tries to surprise the audience.

Frustratingly, the movie has all the parts necessary to do something intriguing, but it constantly chooses to underutilize them in an attempt to deliver a product that’s “good enough.” It’s a shame because a few tweaks and the movie could have been a psychological navigation of the “Hulk” condition. The opening montage is an attempt at showing how the experiment has fractured Banner’s mind. Imagine if the movie then followed Banner as he tries to figure out a way to control it as opposed to trying to get some mumbo-jumbo cure that acts as nothing more than a MacGuffin. Additionally, the cutaways to distorted green visions, if handled with regards to Banner and the Hulk’s character arcs, could be moments of progression between them. Instead, they’re just quick visuals meant to demonstrate the presence of Banner’s condition – a fact we are well aware of.

Needless to say, the psychological angle was ready and available to dive into, even within the parameters of the script. Some of the movie’s best scenes involve the Hulk showcasing a darker, and more evil disposition. Close-ups of his face showcase an intensity that’s missing from Norton’s face. The movie could have very easily used this juxtaposition to explore even the simplest ideas of good and bad if not something more complex like the Hulk as representative of id and Banner as ego. Furthermore, the movie attempts to use fragmented green-tinted memory recollection sequences as a call-back to the opening montage and as an indication of Banner’s damaged mental state. However, just like the opening, these moments showcase images and details that tells the viewer absolutely nothing of relevance regarding Bruce’s connections or motivations. At the very least, if they presented a warped perspective of scenes, an altered perspective to Bruce’s, these moments could help develop Hulk as a character and juxtapose both sides of the green hero. Instead, the technique is used to just reinforce the same points we already know.

Sadly, there’s a severe lack of effort made at letting the characters and the actors shine through. It’s hard to blame Norton for not getting the audience invested in his character, when all he has to work with are jokes and long chase and walk sequences that are adorned with Armstrong’s rich and emotionally evocative score.

The film tries so hard to use the score to carry the weight of longer A-to-B sections, but Suspiria this movie is not; The Incredible Hulk lacks the grandiose compositions, cinematography, and editing needed to let Armstrong’s music be appreciated. The visuals are safe and milquetoast and drag down the rich and riveting score which is is never given any time to rest because any dead time has to be filled with it. Music is used used to propel all the emotional momentum in the film because the story proper doesn’t give the actors enough material to imbue their characters with passions that would get us to care about their tribulations. The score attempts to generate that momentum, but the lack of any help from any other cinematic element makes the mission impossible.

Alas, this is why The Incredible Hulk marks the low-point of the MCU. It’s a film that feels and actively shows its status as nothing more than a cog in the machine. There’s no flair in it’s presentation or composition which end up making the hollow and threadbare story look all the more lazy and shoddy when on display. The actors are given such little direction on what their characters motivations are or why those desires are they way the are and this lack of guidance carries over to the narrative which often feels like its being forcefully dragged from place to place. There are brief moments of joy, especially when the Hulk is allowed to be the star of the scene, but these moments are so brief that can’t be used to justify watching the entire movie. It’s a shame for fans of the green behemoth, but you’re better off watching later MCU installments ,Thor Ragnarok especially, or even Lee’s older Hulk for nuanced and/or visually interesting story beats.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	The Incredible Hulk is a movie that exists more to push the MCU along than anything else. Outside of Craig Armstrong’s score and a few neat shots, this chronicle of the green behemoth offers very little in terms of engaging content capable. The story is predictable, lazily told, and emotionally empty. Instead of focusing on the interesting psychological angles presented by the narrative, the movie is more than satisfied with giving just enough information to move to the next point until the whole journey is over. Only MCU completionists or super fans of the Hulk should give this a watch.
Rating	4.3
Grade	F

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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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1940s, 1943, Crime, Drama, Film Noir, Grade, Review, review-movie, S+, Thriller, Year

Film Review: Shadow of a Doubt – 1943

August 11, 2021 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Alfred Hitchcock
Principal Cast	Teresa Wright as Charlie Newton Joseph Cotten as Uncle Charlie Henry Travers as Joseph Newton Patricia Collinge as Emma Newton Charles Bates as Roger Newton Edna May Wonacott as Ann Newton Hume Cronyn as Herb Macdonald Carey as Detective Jack Graham Wallace Ford as Detective Fred Saunders
Release Date	1943
Language(s)	English
Running Time	108 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

The “Merry Widow Waltz” plays as the title sequence goes on.

The title card opens on a shot of couples waltzing to the “Merry Widow Waltz”. A waltz is characterized as being a triple time^[1]A rhythym characterized by three beats to a bar,so it makes sense that this shot of the couples dancing will be be used 3 more times during the film’s run-time, each occasion marking one of 3 pivotal movements in the narrative: the start of the mystery, the mystery’s reveal, and the final conclusion. This shot dissolves to a view of two detectives eating underneath the Pulaski Skyway in New Jersey. The object of these men’s investigation is unknown.

We cut to children playing in a street – an image of innocence. This tranquility is broken by the next shots: canted images of a doorway followed by a window – a darkness hiding under the innocence. We go to a shot of a young man sleeping in a room. The camera pans to a stack of bills next to him and underneath; he has a lot of money but doesn’t care about it. The door to his room opens. A motherly figure enters and informs that him that two of his “friends” showed up and asked for him. It’s clear from the conversation that this woman has no previous relation to the young man but she dotes on him regardless, treating him like one of the children playing outside. He informs her that the two man who inquired after him have never met him before despite being “friends”. Our censors go off at the oddity but hers do not.

Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) pretends to sleep as the blinds are closed.

Instead, she moves towards the blinds and closes them, insisting that the young strange man get some rest. The darkness envelops the mans face as he pretends to sleep before awaking – a denizen of the shadows react to move. He peers out the window and looks down on the two men who wait for him at the corner. This is a common motif Hitchcock employs to demonstrate power: the one who stands on the high ground comes out on top. The young man moves brazenly past the two detectives demonstrating to us that he is: 1. absolutely unafraid of his pursuers 2. the detectives looking for him don’t know what he looks like. They give chase to him but he gets away. The camera pans from the confused detectives who stumble on the ground up towards the young man who watches them from the upper floor of a nearby building; once again, he’s on top.

He goes to make a telegram to extended family of his in Santa Rosa, California. We learn his name is Charlie (Joseph Cotten) ^[2]I will be referring to him as Uncle Charlie for the rest of the review to make disambiguation easier. We learn that he’s an uncle. But we don’t learn why the detectives are pursuing him.

The traffic cop (Earle S. Dewey) stands as a symbol of the idyllic American life.

We cut from the wanted man on the run to the city of Santa Rosa. A cop monitors the traffic. This is a lawful place; an idyllic American city. The cop dissolves into a shot of a house. Like the transition from the children to the canted entrance to Uncle Charlie the transition from the cop to the house also shows a building in disarray. We cut from a canted back entrance of a house to a young woman, Charlie (Teresa Wright), in the same position we found Uncle Charlie in. Charlie explains to her dad, Joseph (Henry Travers), that she’s tired of her family who seems to be in a rut, especially her mother, Emma ( Patricia Collinge),who she feels is overworked and underappreciated. Desperate for a “miracle” she goes off to send a telegram to the family’s favorite uncle and her namesake, Uncle Charlie, hoping that he can shake things up at the Newton household.

Emma (Patricia Collinge) is trapped by Roger (Charles Bates) and Ann (Edna May Wonacott) who accost her from both sides.

At the same time Charlie, a telephone comes in for the Newtons. The call is picked up by Emma who tries to take the call while being accosted by her younger children, Ann (Edna May Wonacott) and Roger(Charles Bates ). The two children “surround” Emma on both sides. However, as soon as the caller mentions to Emma that her brother, Uncle Charlie has sent a telegram informing the Newton’s that he’s going to be visiting them , the camera pans to a new view of Emma; this time she’s “free” and is framed in a new light. It’s clear that Uncle Charlie means the world to his sister.

Charlie (Teresa Wright) walks home excited that her uncle is coming.

Meanwhile, Charlie makes her way to the telegram store where she learns the same information her mother had. She happily exclaims that her Uncle and her have a psychic connection with one another. As she makes her way home, the shot dissolves to a train going off in the same direction. The noise and smoke plume from the train serve as harbingers of the darkness to come. On the train, we learn that Uncle Charlie is “sick”, apparently so much so that no one on the machine has seen him. Uncle Charlie limps out of the train with the assistance of others but straightens up (un)surprisingly quickly upon seeing his family, namely Charlie, running towards him.

Immediately it’s understandable why the family loves him so. He regales Emma upon seeing her causing her to burst with joy. At dinner he presents every member of the family with gifts. Charlie initially refuses but acquiesces after her uncle places the ring on her right right finger. This placement is not a coincidence; if the left hand’s ringer finger marks a legal marriage, the right hand’s ring finger marks an alliance to prohibited.

Charlie notes that the ring is engraved with a couples initials but enjoys the mystery. Her uncle does not share the sentiment and comments he didn’t know it was marked; his face breaks into horror and the the shot dissolves to our first of the three “waltz” refrains; the “Merry Widow Waltz” mystery is finally afoot. This is made explicit as the camera cuts to Joseph talking to his friend Herb (Hume Cronyn) about their shared interest: murder mysteries their machinations. With all the key players finally introduced – the detectives, Uncle Charlie, Charlie, the rest of the Newton family, and Herb – Hitchcock’s thriller can begin with gusto.

Shadow of a Doubt is a story which examines the idyllic American fantasy and it’s nightmarish underside. In many ways the movie is a precursor to David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, seeking to explore the way two seemingly opposite worlds interact with and feed into the others construction. This is why our introduction to both worlds is so stylized. While Uncle Charlie’s world is one of darkness, Charlie’s is one where there is belief in the rule of law. The ring given to Charlie^[3] Speaking of Blue Velvet, Charlie finding the ring is analogous to Jeffrey finding the detached ear. It’s the start of the journey into the mystery world. What do the initials mean? represents the choice, both metaphorically and literally, she has to make, one where she chooses to marry the fantasy of order and legality or the fantasy of chaos and disregard for law.

This battle for dominant fantasy is reflected in the architecture of the Newton residence, which has both a front and back entrance and which serves as the primary environment the movie takes place in. The front entrance is the domain of the idyllic fantasy, while the back entrance is the domain of the nightmare. Connecting these entrances is the stairway which automatically positions people higher or lower than another. Thus, the “everyday” American house becomes the battlefield for the direction of its soul. As Charlie and her uncle learn more about one another, they swap positions; the cat and mouse game flipping on its head as each party vies for the “top” of the stairs. Eventually the intensity of the battle bleeds out to the city proper, as the characters venture to new locale which reinforce the dichotomy between the two worlds.

This movie, for me, is the first of Hitchcock’s masterpieces combining both his sensibilities as the “master of suspense” with an immaculate use of technique to get his themes across in as many ways as possible. From the opening to the final shot, there is not a single wasted camera movement or out-of-place shot. Multiple scenes demonstrate changes in character disposition purely through changes in lighting long before making those changes noted through dialogue. If my long-winded analysis of the opening 20 minutes above wasn’t proof enough, one only has to look at any scene’s ending image to figure out what the point of that scene was; that’s how methodical the direction is. Every minute detail has at least one counterpoint that is meant to draw contrast in order to constantly draw our attention to story’s thematic question. However, none of these moments are ever done for their own sake; every detail supports multiple narrative threads. What seems to be the point of one scene transforms into the set-up for an even more elaborate plot in the next, giving the movie a fully immersive and connected feeling in spite of plot details that would otherwise immediately draw ire. Instead of questioning the story, one is completely captured by it, desperate to figure out where its end will lead. In fact, Hitchcock intentionally uses ellipses in the story by not fully explaining certain plot threads to force us to imagine scenes in the movie without seeing them; that’s cinematic mastery.

Even if one isn’t captured by the way Hitchcock deconstructs the American fantasy, one certainly can’t help but be caught up by the propulsive energy of the narrative which is in large part helped by commanding performances by both Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotton. Both of their characters have to do a juggling act between personas, light and dark, while showing cracks in their personas depending on what the story calls for. There are multiple scenes involving the two of them as they go from scared to received to enthralled and so on without ever skipping a beat. They play off one another believably like partners in a waltz as their worlds bleed into each others.

The end result is a film that effectively demonstrates the fragility of our notions of peace and the dirty processes that result in the successful deployment of such ideas (think Nolan’s The Dark Knight ) without ever treating itself like an epic. By subtly incorporating the themes and driving ideas behind them in and around every small detail, Hitchcock manages to give the questions he’s asking a more universal feeling; their presence can literally be felt in every movement of the movie. In spite of this, the movie never feels overly “showy”, choosing instead to lull the audience into its rhythm until they’re glued to the screen to the very end.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Shadow of a Doubt is a a thrill ride from start to finish, showcasing some of the finest craft and most impeccable storytelling. Even the smallest moment has meaning in this film-noir qua deconstruction of the American dream. Over 40 years before Lynch’s own masterpiece, Blue Velvet, Hitchcock’s work does much of the traversing between the two fantasies of American life: the beautiful dream and the terrible nightmare. And even now it’s just as powerful a watch.
Rating	10/10
Grade	S+

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2000s, 2008, Action, Adventure, B+, Grade, Marvel, Past, Review, review-movie, Science Fiction, Superhero, Year

Film Review: Iron Man – 2008

August 8, 2021 The Critic 1 Comment

Director(s)	Jon Favreau
Principal Cast	Robert Downey Jr.as Tony Stark Terrence Howard as James “Rhodey” Rhodes Gwyneth Paltrow as Virginia “Pepper” Potts Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane Shaun Toubas as Yinsen
Release Date	2008
Language(s)	English
Running Time	126 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

We start in media res as Tony Stark( Robert Downey Jr.) , a billionaire inventor and weapons manufacturer, tries to ease the tension in a tank full nervous soldiers. His jovial and comedic décor feels as out of place in the vehicle as the presence of AC/DC’s “Back in Black” does playing in the soundscape of a barren wasteland (from a diegetic source at that: Tony’s personal radio); a rock and roll persona and sound trying to make their impact felt in a war-torn environment seems the perfect analogy for the story to come.

Tony’s presence breaks through to the soldiers who finally feel at ease with his celebrity behavior. A soldier asks to take a picture and puts up a peace sign to which Tony comments that it’s because of peace that he’s still in business; weapons in war are needed for eventual tranquility. The soldier puts up the peace sign for the picture at which point the convoy is ambushed, the soldiers are killed, and Tony experiences firsthand the devastation of his own weapons as one of his missiles lands near him, explodes, and sends shrapnel straight into his chest. A peace achieved through war imploding as peace breaks to war. Poetic.

The screen dissolves from the blinding hot sun Tony stares at while bleeding out to a lighting fixture. We cut to Tony being held hostage in a cave by terrorist figures. The title card drops and we go back in time 36 hours to when Tony was living the life we’d expect of a “genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist”. He misses a conference in his honor in lieu of gambling with groupies. He deflects criticism of his war profiteering with quips and flirtatious machinations. Any serious matter meets him and turns into something fun-filled and fantastic instead, but we know how his story will eventually go.

While the structure of the opening isn’t as ambitious as something like Nolan’s Batman Begins (which also starts in media res), but extends the layering of different timelines to more effectively demonstrate its protagonists core traits and paths forward for growth, it does a good enough job of keeping the audience enthused and invested in Tony’s journey. We know how Tony’s character traits have led him to where he is and as such can better appreciate and focus on his development through the film. It’s at this point we return to Tony in his current situation, trapped by a terrorist group who demands he make them the same weapons that he sells the United States.

Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) poses with a solider who puts up a peace sign.

With the help of another trapped scientist, Yinsen (Shaun Toubas), Tony manages to create and escape in an armored suit attached with a variety of weapons. It’s in this “iron man” suit that he escapes from the compound after setting it to flames. After an trek in the desert, he is found by the military. He puts up the peace sign again – the first time since he put it up jokingly with the soldier earlier- with a real understanding of the dark side of the price paid to achieve it and newfound mission : removing his companies weapons from the hands of criminals and terrorists.

Even though the story’s beats feels well-trodden now, they still manage to remain unique and captivating in an sea of Iron Man copy-cats (many of which are done by Marvel themselves). In some part, this is due to Iron Man’s successful lifting story elements from – and I don’t mean to beat a dead horse here – Batman Begins, which is in many ways the archetypal super-hero origin story. Executing the flashback start, a protagonist struggling to maintain a balance between their sense of duty and their humanity, and an antagonist set-up that operates on multiple layers in a way that’s compelling would already make Iron Man a fantastic mimicry with an interesting enough set of themes (namely the duplicity of the military industrial complex), but what pushes and sets it apart from both Batman Begins is its absolute commitment to making the human part of the story real. No character, from Tony’s friends to the man himself, comes off overly serious (Batman Begins) or overly campy (Batman & Robin). Instead each of them feels grounded and genuine, both in the way they carry themselves and the way they deal with Tony’s subsequent decisions.

It’s surprising then, to learn that the movie followed a very bare-bones script and required the actors and director Jon Favreau to improvise many scenes on the day of ^[1] Woerner, M. (2015, December 16). Jeff bridges Admits Iron Man movie had no script. Gizmodo. https://gizmodo.com/jeff-bridges-admits-iron-man-movie-had-no-script-5417310. You wouldn’t be able to infer based on the fluidity and cohesiveness that the actors are interacting with little planning which is a mark of praise for everyone involved. The end result is a movie where all the characters interact and come off of one another in a smooth non-manufactured way. The quips we’re used to now in Marvel movies feel far more authentic here because they naturally arise from the situation as opposed to feeling like an attempt at controlling our emotional response to the situation. It helps that in comparison to Tony almost every other character is quip-less which makes Tony’s zingers more prominent and distinct in comparison to the dialogue happening around him. The result is a movie where almost every character is one we can believe if not get behind allowing us to suspend our disbelief at the comic-book extremities and sip the superhero smoothie with ease.

In particular, the relationship between Tony and his secretary/love-interest, Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) propels the movie in a way that previous entries in the super-hero genre have felt lacking. The friendship between the two is established in the first flashback and lets us know that they have a long and storied history with each other and are aware of each others mannerisms. It’s clear there might be something there, but we know it won’t work because of Tony’s traits; he’s egoistical, unable to remember basic things (like Pepper’s birthday), and is focused on fully enjoying and embracing his status as billionaire playboy. The subtle nuances in their interactions are a result of both Downey Jr.’s and Paltrow’s fantastic ability to play off another – their chemistry feels palpable. The sense of progression he works on pursuing his new goals and begins to change, Pepper (and us the audience) and his relationship serves as a kind of barometer on his character growth.

Additionally, Tony’s growth is characterized by his suit in a literal sense. At the start of the movie, he is impaled by shards from a stolen missile of his. The weapon he made to stand for peace thus threatens to take that very peace away from him in every way. These shards are held at bay with an arc reactor he makes with Yinsen. This shining bright circle in the middle of Tony’s chest is the heart of his suit, powering the machine, is necessary in keeping his literal heart beating, and is the start of his first real human interaction in the form of Yinsen thereby representing a more metaphorical heart. He goes through a few reactor changes; each scene involving them is matched with a similar movement in his character – the fact that Pepper is so intimately involved with this motif in particular adds to Tony’s humanity as well, ultimately giving the movie it’s staying power in a sea of superhero movies.

Unfortunately, the thing holding the movie back from the highest echelon of the genre is how safe the movie plays with some of the unique elements it introduces. The start of the movie primes us to get ready for a rock infused score that coincides with Tony’s aura at the moment. I kept hoping that the music would continue as a motif; something like a different style of rock for different moods and progressions would have been interesting. Instead, the rock music is used sporadically and we hear a generic feeling score in the background ^[2]This shocked me given the composer is Ramin Djawadi whose Game of Thrones score I absolutely adore. I wish he could have captured more of the badass, independent, rocker vibe we get from the actual … Continue reading Likewise, the propulsive energy and clever plot development that defines the majority of the movie comes to a bit of a hiccup near the climax when the story decides to capitulate to cliché that it had no need to give in to. It’s not that the final clash is horrible or unsatisfying; there are clever callbacks littered through this sequence and the way it concludes is neat in the context of certain motifs. It just feels like it betrays possible clever ways out in favor of an option that’s totally unnecessary.

It’s a testament to the cast and crew that even over a decade into the Marvel franchise, Iron Man stands up as one of the better movies responsible for laying down an effective formula that the studio has been using in it’s movies ever since. The action scenes and many of the more “quiet”^[3] By quiet, I mean the slower suit transformation sequences that feature less action but still look awesome. digital effects scene still have that same wonderous (and now as time has passed, endearing) effect years later because their aim is to create the same propulsive feeling found in comic books proper. While it may no longer be as “shiny” as it once was, Iron Man is still a movie you can put on and have a great time with.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Iron Man is proof that some gambles are worth taking. Though the movie started as an un-scripted grab-bag of ideas, the end result is anything but – feeling as slick as the Iron Man suit Tony Stark adorns. By focusing on creating an immersive and lived-in world from the geopolitical discussions to the nuanced way characters work off one another, Favreau and his team managed to create one of the most “humane” super movies. It may not be as flashy as some of the best in the genre, but it’s staying power stems from the heart feeling it generates. It’s simply a great time.
Rating	8.6/10
Grade	B+

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2020s, 2021, Grade, Review, review-movie, S, Year

Film Review: The Green Knight – 2021

August 5, 2021 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	David Lowery
Principal Cast	Dev Patel as Sir Gawain Ralph Ineson as the Green Knight Alicia Vikander as Lady / Esel Joel Edgerton as Lord Sarita Choudhury as Morgan Le Fay Sean Harris as King Arthur Kate Dickie as Queen Guinevere
Release Date	2021
Language(s)	English
Running Time	130 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

The movie starts on our young knight-to-be Gawain (Dev Patel) waking up in a brothel partaking in booze and making merry with women. It’s clear from his appearance and familiarity with the surrounding that this is nothing out of the ordinary for him. In direct contrast to our expectations, the nephew of the great King Arthur (Sean Harris) seems anything but coming off more like a loser getting by on the name of his family – lazing around in hedonistic fashion as opposed to doing anything suggesting knightly values.

He comes home to his mother, Morgan Le Fay (Sarita Choudhury) where he’s admonished for his unkempt behavior, cleaned, and then sent to to feast with King Arthur and Queen Guinevere (Kate Dickie) and the members of the round table. At first he sits afar from the king and partakes in the splendor of the feast but is then summoned by Arthur to approach the place closest to the royal couple. It’s here where Arthur asks his Gawain to tell the couple Gawain’s tale. Gawain’s expression sours as he responds he has no tale to tell at which point he’s interrupted by Guinevere who reminds him that he’s still more than capable of engaging on journeys to experience and then provide such tails. As if to answer her claim, the room darkens and a large figure, the Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) approaches. He asks the crowd around him if there’s a knight willing to play a beheading game with him. Gawain uncharacteristically accepts the “call to adventure” and lops off the figure’s head. The Green Knight reveals that he’s very much alive while grabbing his lopped head and tells Gawain to meet him at one year’s time to receive a similar blow.

A year slowly passes in the town. Gawain drinks and frets at the prospect of having his head chopped off; unlike the knight, he can’t grow his head back. He is championed by the city who finally views him as aligning with the knightly virtues he’s expected to align with while dreading having to act good on what those virtues entail. This duality is reflected in a puppet performance that we (and the town) get to see on repeat – a microcosm of the larger story – that shows Gawain lopping off the Green Knight’s head, gaining honor, and then losing his own head and dying. In fact, Gawain is literally forced onto his journey by Arthur. Thus, the story begins.

The setup, due to it’s nature as adaptation of the poem, aligns perfectly with the “hero’s journey”. Gawain starts off in his “normal” world as a vagrant getting by on his family’s name. He is “called to adventure” by the Green Knight. Based on the structure of the journey (and the poem proper), Gawain would meets a mentor/helper who guides them through problems until eventually he has to come to terms with the issue himself. They he would be “reborn” and come back to his original realm changed. However, as Gawain proceeds on his adventure it becomes clear that director David Lowery has made some huge changes to both the story and the nature of the hero’s journey itself. He runs into mentors of sorts, but each encounter with them feels more like an impediment than anything, making it unclear who is ally and who is foe.

Each character he runs into – a young boy (Barry Keoghan), a headless ghost (Erin Kellyman), a horde of giants, a fox, an overly accommodating Lord ( Joel Edgerton ) and Lady ( Alicia Vikander) – presents a scenario that is both analogous to Gawain’s own fear of the outcome of the beheading game whilst simultaneously representing one of the five virtues of knighthood: chastity, courtesy, friendship, generosity, and piety. Every scenario presents Gawain a choice he can make – a duality that is represented not only in vibrant symbolic color shifts (red to green) but also in methodologically slow paced scenes which literally demonstrate Gawain’s contemplation of what the future holds. For example, early on in his journey, Gawain is left for dead. The camera starts on him and slowly arcs around one way before coming back on him dead – the fate that awaits him if he doesn’t act – before arcing all the way in the opposite direction to show him in his original position. This constant repetition not only reinforces that death is always in the background as a finality but also makes it abundantly clear that honor is always a choice and a choice that one has to undergo by themselves.

While this goes against both expectation and the poem itself, that doesn’t mean that Lowery’s adaptation is inauthentic. It’s precisely in the way that it deconstructs knighthood shines that it is then allowed to appreciate the importance of the virtues. The adaptation functions more like a dialogue between Lowery, the poem, the nature of knighthood, and the audience proper. What the virtues represent and the way they’re handled in the poem proper are questionable in some parts, namely the ending (something I agree with). The adaptation challenges these moments by examining them under the framework of what the virtues would actually entail in an attempt to determine what a true knightly journey for Gawain would actually entail.

However, the consequence of what these moments actually mean are up to the interpretation of the viewer. The movie is littered with sprawls of text that seemed ripped from the poem and plastered into the world of the movie – a combination of the diegetic and non-diegetic elements. At one point, Gawain’s name shows up on the screen in rapid fashion and font styles like something out of Climax’s multiple title drops. These textual intrusions become something else when Gawain eventually runs into a Lady who informs him that she likes to collect texts and modify them in places she thinks could use work. Thus, the adaptations’ changes can be seen as a direct response to the source work itself while also suggesting the world of the movie is one of constant interpretation. The intentional ellipses in meaning aren’t meant to confuse as much as meant to draw the audience into conversation on what honorable action would mean in that situation. The movie pushes this to the extreme by ending the story near halfway point of the traditional hero’s journey, inviting the audience to come up with their own ending.

In many ways, the narrative shares a similarity to Bergman’s The Seventh Seal which follows a knight, Antonius, looking for meaning in a world filled with suffering and God’s apparent silence. As he goes from spectacle to spectacle, he tries to gleam some kind of meaning from God. Here, Gawain is not considered with the silence of God as much as he is with the ambiguity on what it means to be a true knight. Like Antonius, he goes from scene to scene trying to determine what an honorable knight would do and like Antonius he never receives any kind of confirmation that what he’s done is in accordance with this ideal.

For those of you looking for a straightforward narrative that follows the traditional beats, this may be a deal-breaker. However, to those looking for an immersive experience that’s fully drenched in the mysteries and splendor of Arthurian mythos there’s rarely been something quite as ambitious and joyous to experience. Even just ignoring the visual spectacle- beautiful color grading and scene construction which emphasizes contrasts and themes combined Lowery’s slow unwavering long shots – and the score which feels mystical and rustic (any score with chanting has a good chance of sounding epic), the host of Easter Eggs and nods to the legends of the Round Table make this a must watch. Lowery never draws overt attention to any of these details but naturally incorporates them to make the world feel lived and textured. The world is magical and mysterious so many events and situations just happen with no given explanation letting the audience draw their own conclusions on who’s doing what and why. The end result is we’re as disoriented as Gawain , going along his journey with him in the truest of senses. Now that’s bringing a story to life.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	The Green Knight perfectly encapsulates the themes, mysteries, and sense of allure Arthurian mythos inspires in its deconstruction of the poem of Gawain and the Green Knight. This is a movie that challenges and invites the audience to parse meaning at every moment, refusing to offer any easy way out to some predetermined answer. Anyone who likes engaging with movies as dialogue and/or wants to experience a lived in Arthurian visual and auditory vision owes it to themselves to check this out.
Rating	10/10
Grade	S

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1960's, 1963, Drama, Grade, Review, review-movie, S, Year

Film Review: Winter Light – 1963

June 30, 2021 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	Ingmar Bergman
Principal Cast	Gunnar Björnstrand as Tomas Ingrid Thulin as Märta Gunnel Lindblom as Karin Max von Sydow as Jonas Allan Edwall as Algot
Release Date	1963
Language(s)	Swedish
Running Time	81 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) guides his congregation in prayer, but his eyes seem like they aren’t focused.

We hear church bells ringing in the background as the title sequence starts. Their presence primes us for the opening scene – the start of Communion. The camera lingers on a Pastor, Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand), as he solemnly guides his congregation. His face is somber as his eyes seem to distantly gaze to the side of the screen – his mind out of focus. The movie cuts to a shot far behind him, demonstrating that his Church’s flock is small; a pastor diminished during his sermon among a small, disparate gathering guiding them through the Lord’s Prayer.

*Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand)* kneeling in the church dissolves to a view of it from outside.

The scene dissolves from the inside of the Church to multiple vantage points outside of it, as though Tomas’s mind can’t afford to stay in the building during the prayer – his distance constantly grows until finally the exterior of the church dissolves back into a closeup of his face. Despite his desires to escape God, his mind is unable to detach; the existential crisis becomes apparent.

Members of the congregation are shown on the screen in succession, demonstrating that Tomas’s spiritual conflict is present in them as an entity. The sexton, Algot (Allan Edwall), is seen praying solemnly, reading along the words with a real dedication. Meanwhile, a schoolteacher, Märta (Ingrid Thulin), sits calmly saying nothing while staring forward as if focused on Tomas. However, another shot demonstrates a child bored out of their mind with the word of God desperate to seek some form of entertainment. As the group gets up to receive their daily bread and wine, it’s made apparent that every member has a different reason for being there; a different relation to the divine entirely. This difference is demonstrated in the actions of a young couple; the husband, Jonas (Max von Sydow), barely sips any wine while the wife, Karin (Gunnel Lindblom), seems to drink a healthy amount. What could explain this difference in deference to the blood of God?

The image of the empty church dissolves to an sculpture of Jesus.

Inevitably the congregation leaves the Church and Tomas retires inside. The camera dissolves from the newly empty Church to a fixture of Jesus on the wall – a fixture that hangs behind, slightly behind the left of him. However, as Tomas puts his head down, in obvious pain and discomfort from sickness – physical and metaphysical – the camera repositions the two figures to have Jesus staring at Tomas from behind. It’s telling then at this moment that the young couple from earlier, Karin and Thomas, come in looking for advice. The former explains that while she puts very little stock in the matter, her husband is despondent over the idea of a nuclear war instigated by China; a nihilism that annihilates any attempt at life. Tomas responds that we must trust God.

*Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand)* realizes the dishonesty of what he’s said.

However, it’s clear that he doesn’t believe his own words as his face gives his true feelings away. His despondent eyes are matched with an accompanying shot of his hands trembling on his desk. He goes towards the couple and faces them in a more intimate arrangement, ready to divulge his more truthful thoughts. He confesses that atrocities in the world make the idea of God remote and as a result he understands Jonas’s anguish. The camera switches to a Dutch/canted angle, as he continues to comment that in spite of his empathetic identification with Jonas’s despair, “life must go on.” Jonas asks, angled in similar fashion to Tomas, “why do we have to go on living?” Thus, the canted conversation crystallizes the crisis of faith established at the start of the movie; how do we find meaning in a world where everything is so tenuous as to be wiped out at any moment? It’s a sickening reversal of the idea of life as positive, instead suggesting that life is out of synch with the universe whose natural condition is one of death – life is nothing more than a temporary blight on an otherwise incomprehensible void. Tomas is unable to give an answer at the moment and the trio agree that Jonas will drop Karin home and then come back. The trio’s attempt at establishing the upcoming rendezvous is fraught with panic as Jonas’s despair seems almost physically manifest as he leaves, making it uncertain on what he’ll end up doing.

As the couple leaves the Church, Tomas is once again left alone only for a brief moment before Märta, shows up and makes it apparent to the audience that there’s some notion of intimacy between Tomas and herself – a flame from the past she seems desperate to (re)kindle more emphatically. She’s an atheist, which as he points out, makes her appearance at Communion earlier strange. She points out that communion is a love feast, so her attendance fit the spirit of the ceremony. He mentions that he feels despair at God’s silence. She responds that God is silent because God does not exist. His metaphysical quandaries are met with her requests for love. Their dichotomy feels like an echo of the younger couple we’ve just seen – a man lost in his existential despair with a woman who tries to save him. Eventually she leaves as well, leaving Tomas alone to grapple with the gravity of what he’s been privy to.

Thus, the stage of Winter Light is set; a man who preaches, having a crisis of faith, forced to give advice to someone experiencing the same despair as him while at the same time being pursued by an atheist who seems more in tune with his faith then even him. Accosted by an unwanted love on one side and an unbearable nihilism on the other, Tomas is forced to navigate a path to coming to terms with his life. Despite taking place over the course of an afternoon, the story is lacking in anything but depth.

Every simple decision characters make become heightened because they transform into representations of the way we orient ourselves to faith. For example, after Jonas leaves there’s a palpable tension in the air because we’re uncertain about how put together Jonas is after being told by a pastor that the world is cruel and unforgiving and we must live in spite of that just because. It’s not a large leap in deduction to think the troubled husband might harm himself. Thus, at a narrative level there’s a genuine sense of dread that’s allowed to exist because of the severity of the content and its presentation. Thematically, his decision becomes one about the value of faith itself.

It’s in this way that the movie elevates its seemingly simple structure into a transcendent masterpiece that tackles the idea of a silent, ungaugable God from a variety of different perspectives. As the movie continues and relationships are revealed, both in the characters backgrounds and in the construction of the mise-en-scène, even the most minute detail transforms into something worth analyzing. Every dissolve that bleeds two images together begs the question of what facets of faith are being called to question on top of why those identifications are being made.

David (Gunnar Björnstrand) tells Minus (Lars Passgård) God is present in love.

These ideas become all the more layered when evaluating Winter Light as a spiritual sequel to Through a Glass Darkly. The movie goes so far as to directly quote this previous entry in Bergman’s unofficially titled “Silence of God” trilogy, by having a character admonish the idea of God being love, one of the key takeaways of the former entry. Funnily enough, this idea is something Björnstrand’s character in that movie, David, espoused. Thus his transformation in this movie – being cold and indifferent – gains a past, so to speak, which help parse even more from each of Tomas’s actions. There’s a referent and context by which to evaluate and further evaluate his decisions. Seen in this way, Winter Light forces Through a Glass Darkly to justify itself, asking David qua Tomas in the form of Jonas how love even matters in a world that is seemingly indifferent to all displays of it. If nuclear war can erupt at any point, a negation of life driven by hate, then what does love mean?

Being able to achieve this depth at all is masterful but to do so in a narrative that only takes 81 minutes while involving only 2 primary characters and 2-4 side characters (depending on how you qualify side characters) is something else entirely – marrying one of the most deftly written scripts with a visual vision capable of matching it.

It’s on that note that both the actors and cinematographer Sven Nykvist must be mentioned, for if not for their combined efforts Tomas’s journey would rob the movie of much of its heavy impact. Most of the movie employs only natural light provided during the cold months of winter which gives the movie a chilling, somber aesthetic which compliments it tonally and thematically. Every burst of light suddenly feels holy because it’s so out of the ordinary. The shadows naturally creep along as the story continues, making the final moments of the movie all the more decisive. Most importantly, the lighting is harsh and doesn’t disguise or hide the actors’ faces in any way. Every pore, every line, every quiver is on display for us to experience.

*Märta* (*Ingrid Thulin*) stares at the camera during her monologue.

Due to the quality of the actors’ performances (main and side), each closeup transforms into a gaze into the soul. The characters’ doubts, interests, and points of identification become clear as we see their eyes look around the frame. This is made evident no more clearly than in an almost 8 minute, nearly unbroken monologue given by Ingrid Thulin as she stares directly at the camera, both at the audience and at the recipient of her message, Tomas. Her eyes shift as she divulges her innermost thoughts, darting towards the lower corners at times as she remembers something or directly down as she gets ready to drop something heavy. Calling it a performance masterclass would be a good starting place to describe what we see. Thulin’s performance is matched by an equally powerful, yet far more morose and despondent performance from Björnstrand, who at one point in the movie delivers a monologue difficult to watch entirely because of how searing and brutal it comes off.

The final result is a film that that probes the darkest places of the soul in an honest and thought-provoking fashion, inviting anyone willing to go on a journey with its characters. Despite its specific Christian background and intimate ties with Bergman’s own religious tribulations, there’s a universal quality in the movie that’s perceptible to anyone who’s ever had that existential feeling of despair that we’re really all alone in the world. By forcing Tomas to go through so many different confrontations with finding meaning in existence, the movie cultivates the grounds by which we can do the same. It’s a piece of art that truly tugs at heart, leaving one in awe by the time the end credits play.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Winter Light is a solemn and profound insight into nature of God’s silence in a world that seems chaotic and unbearably cruel. The naturalistic lighting that accentuates the severity of every one of the actors’ faces to the deft way makes monologues and moments of decision sear through the screen, almost as if directed at us. The script creates parallels between multiple sets of characters and ideas that give it a host of meanings based on how you perceive different identifications. If nothing else, the fact that Paul Schrader’s First Reformed , a modern spiritual masterpiece, was able to lift from and use so many ideas from this movie to such great effect, proves that its apparent simplicity hides a treasure trove of potential within for those willing to look.
Rating	10/10
Grade	S

Go to Page 2 for the for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
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