My review of Inception is published in two parts at Good Letters, the Image blog.
By the way… if you’re curious about my series of fantasy novels, but you don’t want to hand over 15 bucks to try one, here’s good news.
You can now find out what all of this fuss is about for only 99 cents.
That’s right: In the month of August, Auralia’s Colors – the eBook – is only 99 cents here.
Check it out, but act fast. The deal is over come September.
a review by Jeffrey Overstreet
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UPDATE 2010:
Looking back at my original review for Fight Club, I find my feelings haven’t changed about it… except in one significant way. The conclusion of the film is much, much more disheartening. It portrays a calamity that, at the time of the film’s release, seemed over-the-top and incredibly bleak. Apocalyptic, even. Well, a couple of years after the film came out, we came to know calamity just like that. And so, what was once a sort of absurd comedy is now a very real scar on the American psyche. The film feels, in retrospect, prophetic. I admire it more. But I’ll probably watch it less.
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Caution: This review includes discussion of key plot points, including the ending of the film. If you don’t want spoilers, steer clear.
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David Fincher’s subversive comedy Fight Club will scare a lot of moviegoers.
Its characters unleash incredible violence, indulge in meaningless and manipulative sex, and deliver nihilistic speeches, and Fincher draws us into author Chuck Palahniuk’s world by strapping us to a cinematic runaway train. It’s a volatile combination that could provoke an angry backlash. In the future, we’ll probably see all manner of society’s ills blamed on this movie, just as others have blamed society’s corruption on Oliver Stone for Natural Born Killers. Give the film a few weeks, and we’ll be hearing about real “fight clubs” starting up somewhere. Some seem to think that a movie exposing the problems with our culture are actually the cause of those problems. And some are dumb enough to witness the characters’ folly and think, “Hey, that looks like fun!”
A lot of comedies are called “subversive” these days, and it seems to have become the equivalent of “cool.” But some films are subversive in that they seek merely to ruin something, where others subvert to expose the truth about something… which can be very constructive. Fight Club is subversive in the best sense of the word. It portrays alarming attitudes and destructive perspectives so vividly that the watchful will see the fault lines in the characters’ thinking. This isn’t the glorification of nihilism, but a thorough critique of it.
Most audiences are unfamiliar with irony and satire as sharp as this, so few will appreciate this film’s greatest strengths. Fight Club is about what happens when people respond against a dehumanizing culture by reacting violently. Ultimately, the rebellion creates its own dehumanizing culture, and anything meaningful they might be fighting for is only further trampled in the experience. It’s like a cynical response to Star Wars: The rebels strike at the Empire, and become a lesser empire that’s doomed to implode. It could be a parable about political revolution, social uprisings, or religious schism.
Our antihero — we’ll call him “Jack,” one of his many names — is a man who finds himself torn in two. On one hand, he’s inspired by a rebel named Tyler Durden who wants to respond to society’s ills with a violent wake-up call. On the other hand, Jack knows that Tyler’s ways are not headed for a happy ending. While I don’t think Fincher or Palahniuk come up with a sufficient answer to society’s ills, they do a powerful job of exploring one of the wrong answers and showing it for the lie that it is. Isn’t rebelling against materialism and hypocrisy a good thing? Not if the only way to do so is to leave chaos and destruction in your wake.
There are a lot of similarities between Fincher’s Fight Club and Sam Mendes’s acclaimed new film American Beauty. They’re both about a man who, fed up with American Culture at the end of the millennium, decides to rebel at all costs, no matter what anyone thinks. Both characters are sick of the corporate, shirt-and-tie rat race. Both are fed up with materialism (which Fight Club calls “the IKEA nesting instinct.”) Both hate the hypocrisy of those who sell the American dream. And so both try to quit caring what other people think of them, to follow their own dreams at any cost.
American Beauty celebrates — yea, revels in — the rebellious sarcasm and destructive reactions of Lester Birnam. Lester tramples on the feelings of the poor saps all around him on his way to self-actualization, and we are encouraged to laugh and cheer him on. Only at the very last minute does Lester stop to think about the fact that there might be a better answer, one of kindness and respect rather than selfishness. For me, after all of the movie’s self-indulgence, that was too little, too late.
Fight Club is wiser than that. Jack lets the audience in on his aching conscience throughout the movie. He can see the monster he is becoming. As much as he admires the rebellion led by the ultimate tough-guy Tyler, he sees that while he’s escaping materialism, he’s also losing his only hope for a meaningful relationship or a meaningful life.
Edward Norton plays Jack perfectly. In search of meaningful conversations and relationships, as well as an emotional outlet, he discovers a new night life visiting all manner of late-night support groups. He embraces cancer victims, for example, and weeps even though he isn’t dying of cancer. In those circles, people take him seriously because they believe he’s dying. And he finds people willing to speak their minds. It works for him. He feels better. For a while. Then another “faker” shows up, a spaced-out chain-smoking girl named Marla (Helena Bonham Carter, looking like she just finished auditioning for Blade Runner 2.) Forced to face his own hypocrisy, Jack decides he needs a different outlet.
Along comes Tyler Durden, who is immediately one of the most iconic rebels in Hollywood history. Tyler introduces Jack to another sort of support group. “Fight Club,” Tyler says, is the beginning of recovery for men who were never taught to become men because they never had committed fathers. Tyler’s view is this: For men raised only by their messed up mothers, the American Dream of marriage and family won’t help. “I don’t think another woman is the answer,” he scoffs.
At Fight Club, men duke it out to unleash their anger and frustration, until they lie panting and deliriously happy, bathed in their own blood. The pain wakes them up from their catatonic lives. Jack finds this to be a great release, only half-listening to Tyler’s philosophical reasons for starting the group.
Tyler’s philosophy, however awkward and preachy, might be an appealing lie to the youth of America, because there is a lot of truth to it. We are a generation of children without fathers. Because a person’s concept of God often has a lot to do with his or her relationship with parents, he or she easily concludes that God is hateful and has abandoned His children. So, instead of going quietly, acquiescing to the “program” of the corporate ladder, these overgrown boys become rebels, nihilists, spitting in God’s face, because they want to be noticed. They want to get Daddy’s attention. And who cares if they have to lash out at Him to do it? They’re going to suffer His wrath no matter what, right?
Now, some will come to believe that Tyler Durden’s message is the movie’s message. (MovieGuide’s Ted Baehr has already announced that Fight Club is full of “disturbed material” instead of disturbed characters.) Jack is our anchor. He is our conscience. And he questions Tyler all along, even though he goes along with it. Just as Jack enjoys rebelling and breaking free, he can see that this unleashed anger is going to rise until it’s out of control, until people start getting killed.
The rest of the movie is about Jack’s relationship with Tyler Durden and how, by accepting Tyler’s challenge to live outside the law, he is going to lose everything that he holds dear. When Marla finds out about Tyler and a love triangle develops, it’s only a matter of time before enmity arises between Tyler and Jack. And that’s when Fight Club gets really really interesting. (‘Tis the season for wild surprise endings. Blame it on Keyser Soze.)
Ironically, Tyler’s club, which evolves into a violent and muscular militia, begins adhering to rules even stricter and more dehumanizing than the culture outside. I couldn’t help but think of the fourth chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, in which the apostle says that the corrupt culture “having become callous (ignorant of pain), have given themselves over to sensuality, for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.” In Ephesians, the answer is not in “anger, clamor, wrath, and slander,” but in being “kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other…” Jack finds out the hard way that by following Tyler’s violent plan, there is no room for any sort of kindness or friendship, even among “friends.” When you sacrifice order and meaning, you sacrifice all the good things you so desperately need.
Fight Club is a political cartoon of a movie. The biggest surprise to me was how funny it is… big laughs every few minutes, thanks to the chemistry of Pitt and Norton, and the over-the-top spectacle of Helena Bonham Carter. Pitt gives his very best performance, a fusion of his wisecracking freak from Twelve Monkeys and his cocky kid from A River Runs Through It. He’s all over the screen. He’s the energy that makes this two-and-a-half hours so viscerally engaging.
Norton strikes a perfect balance with Pitt, demonstrating just enough sense to provoke the audience toward thoughtfulness, yet never becoming preachy. Norton’s narration may be the most effective narration I’ve ever encountered in a film. The movie finds its voice in him. He’s brilliant.
Like GoodFellas, Fight Club powerfully explores the disastrous result of depending on power and anger to achieve one’s ends. It makes startling observations of how parents set the tone for their childrens’ views of God. Unfortunately, it seems uninterested in the religious implications of its narrative. Some engagement with those questions could have made the film so much richer. The movie never stops to ask whether there is any higher power that might offer something better than tyranny and cruelty. As a result, there’s no good answer to the oppression that troubles Jack in the first place.
So Jack is left reaching for the only shred of grace he can find — an unstable, unlikely love affair. But that gets drowned out in the the sound and fury of the film’s rather bewildering finale. The movie seems to end up saying that even if we do recover our wits in time and reach for love instead of rebellion, it’s already too late… we’ve ruined the world.
While this is a bit disappointing, I came away astonished at how much there was to enjoy and appreciate about this film. Fincher’s last outing — the dark and violent Seven — depicted a world so dark and hopeless that I staggered out of the theater feeling sick to my stomach. Here, I was entertained by great performances and an intensely clever script, I wanted to sit and discuss it for hours with others from the audience, and I felt I had been given new insight into the illnesses of my own generation. For that, I have to give Fight Club very high marks.
Audiences will almost certainly be excited about this movie for the wrong reasons. Tyler’s lie will be attractive to some, and we’ll probably see some terrorist act or some crime subculture pop up only to discover a copy of a Fight Club video in their closet. It’s always a risk to try and expose evil for the sake of good; somebody out there will come away more interested in the evil than the good.
Like Jesus said, “Those who have eyes to see, let them see. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.”
2010 NOTE: This review is eight years old. It’s been off of the website for a while because it needed some slight revisions. My first encounter with the movie was very, very different from my second viewing. I’ve watched it several times since then and come to appreciate it much, much more. So here is an updated version of my original review of Adaptation.
Here’s the pitch:
Jeffrey Overstreet is a film critic with an assignment to review the bizarre, relentlessly clever movie Adaptation, from director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.
He’s excited about it. He’ll get to lavish praise on Nicolas Cage for the actor’s best performance in many years, and he’ll get to point out the cleverness of the Jonze/Kaufman team. Their last collaboration was Being John Malkovich, which challenged viewers to sort out a confusing jumble of perspectives and non-chronological sequences. Adaptation works in a similar way.
But Overstreet is filled with angst about reviewing the film for several reasons:
But Overstreet will review the film. He has a deadline. Perhaps the best way to write about the film is to write about his own attempts to review the film. Is that self-absorbed?
First, he should set up the plot for readers as simply as possible:
Adaptation is about a writer named Charlie Kaufman. (Yes, just like the actual writer of the film — Charlie Kaufman.) Kaufman, played by Nicolas Cage, is a depressed, self-loathing man whose insecurities and moods keep him from developing meaningful relationships with the opposite sex. He is also an artist with nothing but contempt for commercialism and cliché. Thus, when he is asked to write a compelling Hollywood screenplay based on a popular work of non-fiction, he determines to write an inspired adaptation that respects the author’s intentions without resorting to cliché. But he’s too scared to talk to the author, so he is left with his own feeble guesses at how to portray her or bring her book to life.
The book in question is Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief. And yes, this is what began the real Kaufman’s journey to making Adaptation – a request to write a good film from a plot-less collection of articles.)
Already, Overstreet is having trouble making the details clear. After all, Susan Orlean, like Charlie Kaufman, is a real person too, and so is her book The Orchid Thief. But in the film, Orlean is played by Meryl Streep, and her behavior strongly suggests that this version of Orlean bears little resemblance to the real person.
Back to the summary:
Kaufman is distressed because he wants to make a movie that is as beautiful as Orlean’s book. He wants to give life to Orlean’s insights about the way human beings pursue their passions in search of something higher, something sustaining and meaningful.
There’s a problem. The studio wants a “hit”. Thus, they want Kaufman’s movie to feature car-chases, violence, and implausibly sappy romance. Kaufman loathes the cheap tricks of conventional films. But he’s running into the worst writer’s block this side of Barton Fink. Thus, we are treated to Kaufman sweating, Kaufman ranting, Kaufman pacing.
Overstreet stops there. He is thinking about Barton Fink. Barton Fink – a film he dearly loves – is also dark and bleak and full of self-absorbed characters. Both films portray the world as a dangerous place in which it is difficult to form meaningful bonds with others. Why does Adaptation feel more oppressive? What is the difference? He thinks it through, and stumbles onto a possibility:
The thing that kept Barton Fink from collapsing under the weight of its own angst is the inclusion of a character (played by Judy Davis) who knows something about grace, something about love. She represents a better perspective on life, a heart that can bring grace to the suffering.
Adaptation also has a character who offers kindness and some measure of grace, but that character is portrayed as such a compromising buffoon that he’s hardly admirable. That character is Kaufman’s twin brother Donald. (Donald doesn’t exist in real life but who plays an important part in the film.)
Unlike Charlie, Donald is an aspiring screenwriter, a humble man, unafraid of asking for advice, and seemingly comfortable with his couch-potato physique. He has no qualms about playing the commercial movie game. Donald happily pounds out an implausible, ridiculous, cliché-ridden screenplay about a serial killer called the Deconstructionist (of course) who chops up his victims. His shallowness nearly drives his brother Charlie insane. And yet, his goodness will eventually play a larger part in his brother’s trials.
Overstreet bites his tongue. He’s going too far. He gets up from his chair, paces back and forth. He’s got to stop and wrap up this review. He’ll try focusing on the good things. He’ll praise the technical aspects of the film, which are indeed praiseworthy:
Donald is played by Nicolas Cage as well. When it comes to sequences in which one actor plays multiple roles, Cage’s work as the two Kaufmans together are some of the most persuasive and effective that Overstreet has ever seen. It works because the two characters are so different, and because the movie does not distract us with stunts that make us wonder “How did they do that?” The relationship of the brothers remains central to the film.
As Charlie and Donald, Cage has found roles that show he’s still capable of great acting. This is his best work since Leaving Las Vegas. Oh, he’s had some memorable turns since then, especially Bringing Out the Dead and Face/Off, but for the most part he’s been an action figure and a headliner in flashy action throwaways like Gone in 60 Seconds and sentimental clichés like The Family Man. Here, he’s wonderfully funny, he wins our sympathies, and he makes the struggle between artistic integrity and compromise compelling.
Meryl Streep lives up to her reputation as well, making the movie’s version of Susan Orlean a melancholy, funny, and deeply sad woman who is capable of deplorable acts of self-preservation and self-destruction.
Sam Cooper is also fantastic, giving a career-capping performance as the orchid expert, John Laroche, who develops a tenuous friendship with Orlean as she interviews him about his passion for flowers. Cooper deserves an…
Overstreet stops again. He almost said “Cooper deserves an Oscar nomination,” but that’s such a predictable “critic” thing to say. Good writers avoid clichés. So Overstreet worries about how to continue with his review without just sounding like a hack. He tries philosophizing about the film’s subtext:
Intentionally or not, Adaptation goes a long way to explaining why a purely evolutionary perspective on life will lead ultimately to despair.
The orchid survives by constantly changing itself in order to get what it wants. And the characters in the film try to do the same thing. But it is interesting: As these characters compromise and abandon morality in order to get what they want, they become weaker, more self-centered, even mean-spirited. Laroche sees no difference between his passion for the beauty of orchids and his “passion” for making money off of pornography. Orlean’s desire to discover her own passion leads to indulgence, weakness, and violence.
Kaufman’s observes this without preaching, without spelling out what our conclusions should be. But for those with eyes to see, it should be clear: Striving for mere survival leads to dissatisfaction and malnourishment of the soul. All of these lost characters must learn to humble themselves, submit to the constraints that have been set for us, and employ their talents to serve others even if the process becomes embarrassing. When one’s own survival is the goal, anything goes, and thus the world gets darker.
It is clear that living things in the world seek to preserve their lives. It is certainly the dominant way. But is it the best way for humans to find fulfillment and joy? Why is it that we praise love, which seems to require the opposite of self-preservation? Love asks us to be vulnerable and offer ourselves up for the good of others.
The first time I watched Kaufman’s film, I felt unsatisfied and discouraged. I felt that he was shrugging his shoulders and saying, “You’ll be lost and lonely and unsatisfied unless you compromise your standards and play dirty… and then you’re just pathetic.” But upon a second viewing, I now think he has painted a poignant portrait of a man struggling to find fulfillment, a man who learns the value of putting aside his own desires to serve the needs and desires of others.
The review is getting too long. Agitated by caffeine and his own carelessness, Overstreet checks his watch and decides to wrap things up.
Adaptation will receive award nominations and, if the Academy is brave, it could even pull off a Best Picture award. It is as clever as any film I’ve seen, and it recalls Flannery O’Connor’s work in that it boldly displays the depravity of human beings, causing us to cry out for mercy.
Nicolas Cage says of Kaufman, “I discovered that Charlie was someone who is very devoted to being honest and totally naked in his art. He wants to rip the masks off himself, off everybody.” Unfortunately, through Charlie’s eyes, the faces behind those masks are all about need and devoid of the desire to give. Thus, they may find fleeting happiness, but they will not know joy or true fulfillment.
In the character of Donald, Kaufman has given us a signpost to the truth. The meaningful life is not the one that adapts in order to survive, but the one that puts aside earthly worries and offers itself in service of others. Adaptation suggests that there is something “not of this earth” about humanity, that we are meant for higher, better things than mere adaptation.
Jeffrey Overstreet walks away troubled by the oppressive unpleasantness of Adaptation’s view of the world. Yet, he is again convinced that sometimes we can find glimmers of truth and redemption in the darkest places, that visions of sadness can point the way to joy, and that the truth can shine through even the bleakest storytelling.
Days of Heaven, Terrence Malick’s 1978 story of adultery on the Texas Panhandle, is set just before World War 1, but it resounds with echoes of Old Testament drama.
In it, blast-furnace worker Bill (Richard Gere) gets in a fight with his foreman, ten goes on the run with his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams) and little sister Linda. They settle as field workers for a rich farmer (Sam Shephard), who eventually falls for the irresistibly beautiful Abby.
Bill sees this as an opportunity to get rich not-so-quick. And his plot is the first step toward violence, which blazes up in a conflagration that may be the greatest inferno ever filmed.
Captured indelibly by cinematographers Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler, Malick’s film has a visual syntax so eloquent and graceful — its fields of gold cause its quiet characters to stand out like mythic figures — it would play powerfully as a silent film. (Shots of a hand extended to brush across the wheat fields have inspired numerous imitators, including Gladiator’s Ridley Scott.)
But the poetic narration by young Linda is endearing, and it keeps the goings-on from becoming too ponderous.
After making this meditative masterpiece, Malick abandoned filmmaking for thirty years, only to return with greater ambition, and similarly spellbinding cinema. Recently, The Criterion Collection released a pristine, beautiful restoration of Days of Heaven on Blu-ray and DVD. That is now the best way to experience the film, especially if you can see it on a large screen.
“Ponderous”? Yes.
“Slow”? Indeed.
But Robert Bresson’s 1951 film Diary of a Country Priest is an undisputed classic. It was the third of thirteen films by Bresson who, according to Francois Truffaut, is to French movies what Mozart is to German music. And it may be the best entry point for appreciating his unique style.
If this were a “Christian movie,” it would be the story of a cleric who moves into a troubled town and inspires everyone to cultivate compassion for one another through his courageous example. Persecuted villagers would be liberated. Doubters would find God. Bad guys would be exposed and locked up, or else they would crumble into confession. Some dark secret in the cleric’s past would be exposed as a misunderstanding, and he would emerge triumphantly righteous, an example for us all.
Instead, this is a story that is relevant to the world we live in. Things begin messy, and lead to further messy-ness. There are victories, but they are memorable because they are hard-won, faint glimmers of grace in a dark world.
A sensitive new priest (Claude Laydu) moves into a parish in Northern France so he can serve a small village called Ambricourt, only to discover he is less than welcome.
As the town’s dark secrets emerge, his attempts to provide insight or comfort fall on deaf ears, and the weight of the troubles threaten to crush him.
He doesn’t get along well with the older priest up the road, who shows little concern for how the villagers have hurt his feelings.
A local countess is in pieces over the death of her son. The countess’s husband is carrying on an extramarital affair with their daughter’s governess. And their daughter, a cynical and resentful adolescent named Séraphita (Martine Lemaire), is becoming quite a monster.
Exhausted by stomach trouble, the priest relies on what little nourishment he can draw from a strict diet of hard bread and wine. His “godless” doctor does little to lift his spirits.
Thus, the priest’s plight inspires our sympathies, even though he lacks any kind of charm.
A master class in visual composition and sound design, Diary has influenced filmmakers for generations by proving the gravity of telling cinematic stories without many of the common enhancements we’ve been conditioned to expect. Its rare glimpses of the French countryside are stark and striking, suggesting that any man who would truly pursue holiness will walk hard roads through desolate lands.
The great and final act of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s remarkable career was the production of a trilogy called Three Colors — Blue, White, and Red — that represents the colors of the French flag, and the values they represent: liberty, equality and fraternity.
This symphonic, poetic trilogy intrigued me in my first encounter with its opening chapter, Blue. Then it began to haunt me, and I returned to see that film four times in the theater. As I began learning to translate Kieslowski’s unconventional, intuitive form of storytelling, I fell in love with his images, with the performances he drew from his actors, and with the work of his musical partner, Zbignew Priesner. Since then, Three Colors has become my favorite cinematic achievement. I return to it again and again, blessed by its visual beauty, its musical invention, its astonishing performances (especially Juliet Binoche in Blue), and its inspired spiritual exploration.
Filmed in three countries (France, Poland, Switzerland), their plots overlap only slightly. Watch closely, and you’ll see the different main characters pass each other and remain strangers.
Blue, empowered by what may be Juliette Binoche’s greatest performance, is the first: In it, the grieving widow of an internationally renowned composer must decide whether to assist in the completion of her husband’s unfinished work — a symphony about the reunification of Europe. As she tries to begin a new life and escape the pain of memory and loss, she becomes entangled in the lives of her husband’s assistant Olivier, a prostitute named Lucille, and a beautiful stranger named Sandrine who keeps a scandalous secret. Blue is a personal journey of grief, forgiveness, and healing, but it is also a story about the heart of Europe, which history has broken to pieces, and all that will be necessary for reconciliation and hope.
White is a dark but whimsical comedy about Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski), a Polish hairdresser whose wife (Julie Delpy) humiliates him and abandons him. Furious and vengeful, he makes a devil’s bargain with a depressed stranger named Mikolaj, finds his way into wealth, and then stages a disappearing act that will help him carry out a wicked plot. Even as the film focuses on Karol’s misery, his unexpected failures, and his attempt to “dominate” Dominique, it’s also about Poland’s uncertain future and how cultural transformation may bring in a whole new wave of problems.
Red, the last chapter, follows a young fashion model named Valentin (Irene Jacob) who catches a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) in an act of voyeurism. Frustrated by the legal system’s inability to uncover the truth of a matter, the old man sits at home and uses sophisticated surveillance to listen in on the “truth” of his neighbors’ private telephone conversations with some sophisticated surveillance. While the judge has given up on law, Valentine’s legalism makes her judgmental and condemning. Slowly they explore a middle ground — fraternity — until the film brings all three of the trilogy’s episodes together in an unexpected and dramatic finale.
While the films explore themes of liberty, equality and fraternity, don’t let those limit your experience or narrow your interpretation. They do not begin to summarize the wisdom that these films convey — many other themes, questions, and insights suggest themselves to us through the course of the stories.
But the three themes indicated can prove helpful as starting points for those who want to engage with and discuss the trilogy. And they are best phrased as questions: In Blue, what happens when Julie pursues personal “liberty” from her past and her pain? What would true, life-giving liberty look like? Or in White, what kind of “equality” is Karol seeking? These themes are suggested like lenses that will reveal different paths into understanding the riches of these stories.
The great French comedy director Jacques Tati starred in four of his own films, playing one of cinema’s most beloved comic figures, Monsieur Hulot.
Hulot has a charming, Chaplin-esque presence, but the wonder of Tati’s films come from the extravagant activity that plays out in the world around him. You might consider Hulot an ancestor to Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean, and plenty of directors have shown Tati’s influence on their work. (Tom Hanks has something of Hulot’s demeanor in Steven Spielberg’s fish-out-of-water comedy The Terminal.) But Hulot isn’t exactly a clown; often, he’s merely an awkward observer stumbling through a world fraught with hilarious, barely controlled chaos.
In Playtime, the subject is not Hulot, but the developing civilization around him. Paris is growing and changing at such a frantic rate that many of the film’s absurd and elaborate sets seem to be in a constant state of simultaneous construction and deconstruction.
The film, a failure at the box office, was a project of extraordinary ambition with a huge price tag, and it shows. The Paris of Playtime is a prophetic vision of this present high-speed society, in which architecture sacrifices style for practicality, and the trends of the fashionable are often downright ridiculous. (The city may remind you of Metropolis or the chaotic cityscape of Brazil. You may not even recognize that it’s Paris until you catch a fleeting reflection of the Eiffel Tower in an opening door.)
Tati’s physical comedy is relentlessly clever, sometimes playing out in several situations at once. Watch the glass-front apartment complex as a man watching TV in his living room seems to be responding to the woman undressing in the next apartment. In another confounding sequence, a restaurant’s glass door shatters, and the doorman picks up the door handle so he can pretends to continue to dong his job, while the arriving diners fail to notice.
Playtime may frustrate viewers who demand a compelling plot, and it takes some getting used to as its widescreen spectacle keeps us at a distance from the action. Remember, this was meant to be seen on a Cinerama screen. And some may find it a tedious expression of cynicism about contemporary trends. (Where is the natural world? Has humanity wiped it out?)
But the more you pay attention to Tati’s intricate details, the more you’ll find that this film delivers exactly what its title promises. It’s a panoramic frenzy of elaborate sights and sound design. What we hear in Playtime is almost as overwhelming and encompassing as what we see. If you’re lucky enough to see this in a theater, don’t miss it. Otherwise, settle for nothing less than Criterion’s DVD presentation. You’ll want to see this on the largest screen you can find, with the best surround-sound you can set up.
Even as it reminds us to have a sense of humor about ourselves, Playtime is full of affection for the relentless circus of human creativity.
The Wind Will Carry Us is often hailed as the masterpiece of Iran’s most celebrated filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami.
Apparently lost, some men who claim to be treasure hunters drive their jeep through rugged country in what seems like Middle Of Nowhere, Iran. It’s actually a Kurdish province, and a polite young boy guides the driver — a man called the Engineer (Behzad Dourani) — into the town of Siah Dareh.
In fact, the Engineer is a treasure hunter of sorts. He’s come to document the community’s rituals as they prepare for the death of a respected old woman. That is to say, he’s ready to exploit a family’s sufferings for the sake of a film.
You can probably see where this is going: Kiarostami, is exploring his own artistic impulses and motivations even as he imagines an original fiction.
To get what he wants from the locals, the Engineer feigns compassion for the boy’s ailing grandmother, and for the family that is gathered around anticipating her death. But his real concern is for his project, and for his difficulty in getting good cell phone reception in this dusty, labyrinthine town.
Kiarostami film draws us into this extraordinary place, and into the conversations of the locals. We share their tea time at a tea bar. We learn about their rituals. There’s a hint of romance as the filmmaker shares sensual poetry with a pretty local girl. And there is some marvelous, understated comedy along the way, including a scene in which the Engineer chats with a voice from below ground — a ditch digger who is digging up the town cemetery for a questionable purpose.
But we also observe this filmmaker and his growing realization of detachment from his people and his homeland. The film is a healthy act of self-questioning. Kiarostami could have just made a documentary, and it would have been fascinating. But his narrative is a way of humbly questioning his own ethics and methods, and in doing so he asks us to consider why we might take this journey with him.
The title, then, becomes a multi-faceted banner. It’s a phrase from a poem about loneliness that the Engineer recites. But the “wind” might also be the light that channels this remote experience to our eyes, or the mysteries that connect us through space and time to such customs. Or it might just be the Engineer’s feeble cell phone signal, which reminds him how difficult it can be to transmit truth from one culture to another.
