Noir, round 2

I decided not to wait for another 5, since I've written more than usual about these three.

#6 Key Largo (directed by John Huston)
So after a week off, I continued with my noir quest tonight with the less famous of the John Huston/Humphrey Bogart noir collaborations, Key Largo. Bogie has long been one of my favorite actors, and this is one of his best performances. He had one of the most emotionally expressive faces I've seen, and we see so much play out in his eyes and his facial "body language" as his disillusioned WWII vet Maj. Frank McCloud struggles with discovering a reason to fight, in this case against famous gangster Johnny Rocco, deliciously played by Edward G. Robinson, who is keeping a small hotel full of people hostage as a small hurricane passes through.

Playing as a sort of oppositely cast version of The Petrified Forest (an underrated sort of pre-noir which served as Bogie's big break as the gangster holding people hostage, it was also the movie that made me fall in love with Bette Davis), Key Largo plays out more fascinatingly with Bogart and Robinson playing a sort of cat-and-mouse/battle of wits game that plays out with about as high a body count as a claustrophobic movie like this can manage.

An all-star cast that also includes Lionel Barrymore and Lauren Bacall (in her last screen pairing with her husband), it's "Queen of noir" Claire Trevor who deservedly won an Oscar for her role as Robinson's abused and alcoholic former love Gaye Dawn. In a powerful scene where Robinson forces Gaye to sing a song like she used to in the club in exchange for a drink, Trevor is able to gain the audiences sympathy, as well as Bogart's, by singing a few lines of a song about an abused woman's continuing love for her man. There is not a shred of the same "Iceberg of a woman" Trevor played in entry #5 Born to Kill where she was a woman slowly descending into moral wasteland, here she is a broken woman who finds the smallest shred of self-worth, and using it to help the oppressed group escape from Johnny Rocco's grasp.

Key Largo is the best movie yet on the quest, and gears me up to continue on. Also, Key Largo contains what is, so far, the single best shot in any of the movies, the penultimate shot with Lauren Bacall throwing open the shutters to see light pouring into the dark hotel. Sadly, I couldn't find a screen cap of it on a quick search.

#7 Crossfire (directed by Edward Dmytryk)

So here we have a message film disguised as a b-movie noir thriller, one that managed to get nominated for 5 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. Crossfire's message is about anti-Semitism, especially in the aftermath of WWII. It stars three Robert's - Mitchum, Ryan, and Young, all of whom are good. Mitchum, as is too often the case, doesn't have enough screen time, but that's more of a personal complaint, since I can't get enough of the guy. The movie, although getting a little didactic towards the end, carefully wraps its message up in the procedural of finding out what happened (from the different sources) the night a Jewish man was murdered after meeting 4 soldiers in a bar. The "whodunnit" aspect is fairly benign, since it's obvious from the first few minutes who the killer is, but Dmytryk still plays things close to the vest storytelling wise, thankfully without ever feeling like he's trying act like we don't know the killers identity.

Robert Ryan, whom I've seen in a bunch of movies but still only think about The Wild Bunch when I see him, is effective as the racist killer. He's just civil enough to have us believe he wouldn't be the immediate suspect if the evidence didn't point to him (which it doesn't). Mitchum is, well, Mitchum. Wish he'd been the inspector played by Robert Young, but Young is good in the role too, expertly delivering the least subtle aspect of the movie in the customary "summing up the theme of the movie" speech just before the climax.

I don't know that I would've looked at this movie and thought "Oscar material", but it did effectively deal with the issue of anti-Semitism, and about 5 months before the more famous Gentleman's Agreement. Overall, it was quite good, and the cinematography nicely noirish, but I would just call it solidly good rather than exceptional. Not that that's a bad thing. I'm 7 movies into this quest and have yet to have a stinker, so I'm just glad for what I've got.

NOTE: After some thinking I've come to the conclusion that my opening sentence is incorrect. The movie never really engages with the anti-Semitism theme, and doesn't really give us anything more than a "racism is bad" kind of treatment. So it's really not a message movie disguised as a noir, but a noir disguised as a message movie.

#8 He Walked by Night (directed by Alfred L. Werker, uncredited direction by Anthony Mann)


Now here's some noir! Serving as the blueprint for Dragnet's use of real police files, and having that shows creator and star Jack Webb in a small role, He Walked by Night is a fascinating police procedural noir with some striking cinematography, terrific performances, and a tightly wound script that never lets up, even if it only lasts 79 minutes.

Richard Basehart stars as a killer whom the LAPD are frustratingly searching for, more feverishly after he kills a couple of cops. Basehart had several notable roles throughout his career, including The Fool in Fellini's La Strada and Ishmael in John Huston's Moby Dick, both unseen by me, and he's fantastic in the cold role of Roy, confounding the police at every turn with his sophisticated tactics, and his ability to stay always one step ahead of them. He's matched by the quiet determination given to the cops coming after him, notably Scott Brady's Sgt. Brennan, and Roy Roberts' Capt. Breen, both men of action who're being kept in the dark by the ingenious criminal, but working harder every day to bring him down.

Credited to journeyman filmmaker Alfred L. Werker, but directed at least in part by the legendary Anthony Mann (reports conflict on how much), the calling card of the movie has to be its finale, a flashlight lit chase through the L.A. storm drain system that shames the more famous, and very similar, chase at the end of The Third Man, released the following year. The wonderful suspense of the chase is heightened by what we already know of the killer's knowledge of the underground system, and his preparation of just such a scenario. The little details adding up into a tremendous sequence that's the best I've run across in my quest. The photography of the picture overall should be commended as well, shot by master cinematographer John Alton (An American in Paris, The Big Combo, the movie I took the top screenshot from in my first noir entry, by the way), the finale is not the only memorably photographed sequence (although I can't impress upon you how much I loved that finale), we get many great shots of faces lit by the light shining through the blinds, lonely intersections broken only by a single street lamp, and many more.

I didn't really know what to expect going into He Walked by Night, although the quote on the back of the DVD case from genius filmmaker Errol Morris calling it "a gritty masterpiece" certainly piqued my interest. What I got was quite easily my favorite movie of the quest to this point, and one of my new favorite movies of the 1940's (a marvelous decade for cinema). This is definitely one I'll be returning to many times in the years to come, for its story and performances, and obviously for its remarkable photography which absolutely epitomizes noir.

Noir, round 1

I've long had a fascination with crime and noir movies. I have a few noir boxsets that a friend of mine gave me and decided to watch one of the movies, which led me to watch another one, which made me decide to make a little movie quest out of it. So these are the first 5 noirs that I've seen on my new found quest.

#1 They Live by Night (directed by Nicholas Ray)

A great little noir with Farley Granger, directed by Rebel Without a Cause's Nicholas Ray. I liked the awkward innocence of the central couple, and how they try to get away from his criminal past. The ending is heartbreaking and one of the best in all of noir, I think. It's a terrific movie with some good photography and performances. Especially not bad for supposedly being Ray's debut (although the Internet Movie Database lists other credits previous). Sadly, I don't think he ever topped it.

#2 Crime Wave (directed by Andre de Toth)

It’s an exquisitely shot, terrifically acted, tightly wound noir that is told with an astonishing economy of storytelling. It’s only 73 minutes long! How many directors these days could say everything they needed to say in a movie under 80 minutes? Seems like more than ever no one can tell their story in under 2 hours. Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked. Sterling Hayden and Gene Nelson are wonderful in the leading roles, with some really great supporting work from Charles Buchinsky (who would later change his last name to Bronson), Phyllis Kirk, Timothy Carey (in a tiny role) and especially Jay Novello as the misanthropic animal lover Dr. Hessler.

But, to me, the star of the movie was the gorgeous cinematography from the too little talked about Bert Glennon, who’d worked with De Toth before on House of Wax, as well as shooting legendary movies like John Ford’s Stagecoach, Rio Grande, and Young Mr. Lincoln (among others), Raoul Walsh’s They Died with Their Boots On, Joseph von Sternberg’s The Scarlett Empress, Michael Curtiz’s The Dive Bombers, and Cecil B. DeMille’s original take on The Ten Commandments.

#3 The Big Steal (directed by Don Siegel)

In what is the lightest toned noir I’ve ever seen, last night’s entry into the quest was The Big Steal. Robert Mitchum as Duke is his typically wonderful self, funny, charming, and pretty much just one of the coolest guys ever. Jane Greer, re-teaming with Mitchum two years after their classic Out of the Past, is also very good as Duke’s Spanish speaking foil Joan. Both have been wronged by Patric Knowles’ Fiske, and they’re chasing after him, while Duke is being pursued by his military superior (William Bendix’s Capt. Blake). All are being watched by Inspector General Ortega (deliciously played by Ramon Novarro).

I expected some twists and turns to the plot, (like maybe Fiske didn’t steal the money after all, but someone else did!) but it’s fairly straightforward save for a tiny twist near the end. Mitchum and Greer have some nice chemistry and are really what carries the movie through its short 71-minute run time. Siegel (Clint Eastwood's directorial mentor) doesn’t really do much of interest, although there’s nothing really wrong with the movie, there’s not much that’s great about it. It even ends sunnily! Crime Wave had a happy ending as far as noir was concerned, but The Big Steal is a traditional Hollywood ending. Not that there’s inherently anything wrong with that, but to go in expecting noir, and be presented with a straightforward crime/comedy was a little disappointing. Still, it is a good movie, just not particularly noir.

#4 The Narrow Margin (directed by Robert Fleischer)

Another pleasant surprise, The Narrow Margin is a tautly directed gem with some nice work from all of its actors. Its Oscar-nominated script is superbly written noir, with great character driven suspense, and plenty of little twists and turns to keep us on our toes. The Hitchcockian game of cat-and-mouse is perfectly played out through the long train ride to L.A., and we're not the only ones who are kept in the dark. Just a couple of years before he made 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Richard Fleischer makes tremendous use of hand held camerawork to make the train ride seem both an endurance test for our characters, and a claustrophobic nightmare for our hero's nerves.

After looking over his resume, Charles McGraw has been in some movies I've seen, but I didn't remember him. So I was happily surprised by his terrifically noir leading role. His hardened face and gruff voice suit the genre perfectly, and the way he pulls off the films terrifically confined fight scene was delightful. Jacqueline White was another actor I didn't remember ever seeing, but her Ann Sinclair was a nice performance, ably countering McGraw's. "Queen of the B's" Marie Windsor was a more familiar face, and she also does some good work bringing to life her irritating character and causing quite a bit of tension due to her characters seeming lack of emotion.

So, another good watch, and another quick one (only 71 minutes) that was expertly put together with its economical storytelling and confining camerawork.

#5 Born to Kill (directed by Robert Wise)

Laurence Tierney wasn't exactly known for his lightness of tone, and never was that more on display than in Robert Wise's black as coal noir Born to Kill. Wise, his days as a Val Lewton director still fresh, gives the picture a wonderfully dark look, a scene with Tierney walking up a shadowy staircase given as much care as a late night showdown in the sand. Claire Trevor, no stranger to noir, is terrific as Helen, our slowly conscience-losing female lead. "An iceberg of a woman" as one character describes her. And Elisha Cook, Jr. (who sadly meets the end here that his characters typically met) does some very good work, maybe the best of his career, especially working alongside Tierney's out of control murderer, Sam.

And it is Tierney that I'll most remember from Born to Kill. His killer is overly confident, overly jealous, and overly violent, with a small streak of pride that tends to be the starting point of his outbursts. Within the captivating first 10 minutes, he's charmed Trevor's Helen without saying a word, been wronged by the beautiful Audrey Long's Georgia, and subsequently beaten Georgia and her date to death with his bare hands. It's a dark opening to a dark movie, one that yet again shows that Robert Wise had a ton of versatility, and enough talent to create great movies in a bunch of genres. He not only has The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Sound of Music, The Haunting (easily one of my 10 favorite horror movies), West Side Story, The Sand Pebbles, and Somebody Up There Likes Me, but now I also know about that Born to Kill in his back pocket as an example of his tremendous talents (he was also nominated for an Oscar for his work as editor on a little picture called Citizen Kane).

So far, Crime Wave is the best of the bunch, quickly becoming one of my very favorite crime dramas. I'm very excited by this quest, as it's giving me a reason to check out a lot of noirs both famous and not so much.

Sweet Land

Sweet Land is a movie that caught me completely by surprise. My wife had watched it while I was away, and insisted that I watch it too, as it was one of her new favorite movies. She has good taste, so I assumed it would be good, but I didn't expect to love the movie as much as I did. It's an affectionate look at the courtship of two farm working immigrants in Minnesota, just after WWI. He, Olaf, is Norwegian and has lived in the States for many years. She, Inge, is German, speaks no English whatsoever, and is actually Olaf's mail order bride. Many in the community give her a cold welcome, seeing as we'd just been fighting the Germans, and Olaf begins by protecting her from the acidic response she receives from some folks in town. They slowly, throughout the movie, begin a more proper courtship, which includes her doing such blasphemic things as dancing with Olaf on their porch, in broad daylight, which totally distresses the God-fearing little Lutheran hamlet.
Not only is Sweet Land a lovably thoughtful love story, it's also one of the most strikingly beautiful movies I've ever seen. It's wonderful to watch a film take the time to pay attention to the little things that add up in a relationship. The fleeting looks across the dinner table, the body language from two people trying to find a certain calm in the storm surrounding their lives, the helplessness and even the humor inherent in not speaking the same language as those around you. But to set all that against such breathtaking artistry just makes the movie that much more special. Writer/director Ali Selim's background is in commercials and advertising, which would normally signal the exact opposite of this type of movie, but he takes the care to give us the understated sweetness of the movie. He actually must've used his background to help manipulate the film in a way that gives us the almost unnatural beauty of this movie.
I love the heart of this movie, I love the silent film-like approach to the love story. So many movies these days don't have any clue how to visually tell their story, so it's wonderful to see a movie so intent on giving us so much to visually engage us with. And to engage us with a movie that's not all pretentious art house bullshit, but sweet, lovable romance in an early 20th century setting. It's a movie I wish would have a bigger audience, and one I'd recommend to anyone looking for something gorgeous, good hearted, and completely lovable. Sweet Land is it!

David Gordon Green and George Washington

David Gordon Green is one of the best and most talented directors working right now. The film your average moviegoer would know of Green's is 2008's Pineapple Express, but your average cinephile knows Green as the director of the low key indie movies All the Real Girls, Undertow, and Snow Angels. I wrote previously about Snow Angels in December of '08, but I just recently watched Green's debut movie George Washington and felt the need to write a bit about it as well. Working with a budget under $50,000, Green and his most essential collaborator, cinematographer Tim Orr, created a movie of understated beauty and feeling.
Working with a cast of mostly non-actors, Green gives us a sort of rural, quiet coming of age story. A group of kids hang out, play, talk, and sometimes just look at the unexpected elegance of their bucolic surroundings. A tragedy befalls the group, and each child deals with it in a different way. The quiet, odd George, who due to the plates in his head not fusing correctly isn't supposed to get his head wet, saves a kid from drowning in the local pool. Both kids survive, with George branded a community hero, a badge he may wear a little too seriously as he begins dressing up as a superhero and trying to do good deeds around town. But none of Green's movies are about plot. They're about feeling, sometimes articulated, and sometimes not. Also, a little nostalgia. This is one of those summers that changes everything for these kids, they're becoming teenagers and this is really their last moments of childhood, cut even shorter by the startling accident.
This would actually be the movie I would only recommend to someone who's seen Green's other movies and liked them. His brilliant All the Real Girls is a bit more accessible, as a story of teenage romance, even if it doesn't deal with it in the same light we usually see from teen romance movies. They have a lot in common, as they're about a certain loss of innocence. About moving on and growing up, even if you don't think you're ready for it. Green's most easily watchable is certainly Undertow, with Josh Lucas's crazy uncle chasing after the fortune he believes his nephews have run away with. It's a terrific movie, as usual for Green it's gorgeously filmed, and is his most conventional movie. Actually, strike that. Pineapple Express, even though a bigger budgeted "mainstream" movie is still quite unconventional, though is certainly more accessible to your average moviegoer. His next project is called Your Highness and is a fantasy/comedy starring Zooey Deschanel (his leading lady from All the Real Girls), Danny McBride (his friend from college who was in Real Girls, as well as Pineapple), James Franco (who did the best work of his career in Pineapple), and Natalie Portman (working with Green for the first time). So he's branching out and trying new things, which I think should always be admired in the world of cinema where it seems a quest just to find new things. I think Green is a director I will continue to admire for a long time to come, and one whose new movie will always be anticipated by me.

Let the Right One In

As a fan of international cinema, I've heard a lot about the Swedish romantic-horror movie Let the Right One In over the last couple of years. I've heard it was "the best movie of the year" "the best vampire movie ever" and many other things, but I gotta say, I didn't find it to be any of those things. I purposefully let the hype settle down on it before I checked it out, so that I wouldn't be swayed even a little bit by anything but the movie. Well, the two young leads are good enough, but the movie as a whole just kinda lays there like a bump on a log. I'm all for slow moving movies (Hou Hsiao-Hsien is one of my favorite filmmakers), but this one was just flat out boring.

It's a vampire movie, but with enough different about it to add some interest. Our androgynous vampire and "her" friend lead us through this slog of a story where essentially nothing that we couldn't see coming a mile away happens. I thought in the first 30 minutes or so that we're being set up for a slow moving movie, with some decent atmosphere. After 30 more minutes of nothing of interest coming onto my screen, I actually considered shutting it off. Glad I didn't, since the final 30 minutes or so are actually quite good. The poetic finale especially is well done, but it comes as too little too late. There are plenty of great foreign films out there, and this has been a great decade for foreign cinema making into the US, but I would not recommend Let the Right One In as a shining example of that fact.

Toy Story 3

Okay, to begin with, 3-D sucks and sucks bad. We all know it, they're gonna keep forcing it on us until the fad has run its course again, and I won't devote any more time to it here. It's used as well here as it has ever been used, and it still added absolutely nothing to the experience of watching the movie, except for adding the annoyance of having to wear those damn glasses again. Thankfully, nothing about it ruins anything inside the gorgeously animated new masterpiece from Pixar, Toy Story 3. We get back to Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Rex, Potato Head and the whole gang yet again, and although I think the second entry in the series is among Pixar's weakest efforts, the third time is certainly a charm.
Andy is now 17-years-old and getting ready for college. His beloved toys lay in his toy chest, unplayed with for years. Misunderstandings ensue, and the toys are donated to the Sunnyside Daycare. There they meet a host of other toys lead by the fluffy, strawberry scented, Lots-O'-Huggin' Bear (voiced by Ned Beatty), and Ken (Michael Keaton), who immediately falls for the Barbie doll that Andy's sister had donated. They're told that Sunnyside is an ideal place for toys. They're played with all day, 5 days a week. But after one day in the "caterpillar" room, with the youngest kids (or, "not age appropriate" as Buzz says), they begin to doubt the sincerity of Lots-O and the other toys. Meanwhile, Woody has been snatched up by a sweet little girl named Bonnie and taken to her home where he meets another set of lovable toys, but he's determined to get back to his friends and to Andy.
There was something about Toy Story 2 that didn't connect with me. It didn't have the simple magic that the first Toy Story had, but didn't have its own magic to ride on either. Toy Story 3, on the other hand, has that magic. There's an amazing amount of heart poured into this movie, the characters and relationships (both positive and negative) drawn with more care and developing in much more interesting ways. I was afraid at one point that it would simply be a case of "heroes triumph over villain" and I'd have to leave the theater telling myself "Yeah, it was good. I just wish it had been more than that." Thankfully, I didn't. I even found Lots-O's backstory fascinating on its own in how it shaped the toy we see. There's also a wonderful development between Jessie and Buzz, made most hysterical when Buzz gets accidentally switched to Spanish mode, taking on the over-the-top poetic lover mode of a Spanish hero.
So, unsurprisingly, Pixar has delivered us another masterpiece, with the best ending since the perfection of Monsters, Inc's. Pixar has to mess up eventually, they can't keep up with this kind of excellence forever. Sadly, I have a feeling that next summers Cars 2 will be that slip up. We don't need a sequel to their worst movie. A movie I still liked, sure, but their weakest movie by a wide margin. Regardless, this time they've given us another movie to stand alongside their best. I've previously given 4 Pixar movies my highest rating (4 stars, 10/10, or whatever you want to quantify it as), and Toy Story 3 will join them. It may not reach the poetic brilliance that Wall-E did, or cut straight to my heart like Remy's love of food in Ratatouille did, but Toy Story 3 easily sits next to the family saga/action bonanza of The Incredibles and the unadorned majesty of the original Toy Story as not only Pixar's best work, but among the great gifts the art of animated cinema has ever given us.

Inception

The business of dreams is tricky when it comes to cinema. Many filmmakers have tried, with varying degrees of success. I was intrigued when Christopher Nolan, director of the brilliant movies The Dark Knight and Memento, announced that his next project would be called Inception, and be a contemporary sci-fi action thriller "set within the architecture of the mind." He built up an extraordinary cast, wrote a wonderfully complex script (his first of original material since his debut movie, Following), and used his reported $160 million budget to create his world of dreams, and dreams within dreams, and dreams within dreams within dreams. He did these things to terrific effect, coming up with surely one of the best movies of the year, and probably the best movie of his career (only future re-watches will truly tell).

The star Nolan chose to lead us through his labyrinth was Leonardo DiCaprio, fresh off the boat from his stint on the nightmarish Shutter Island. DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a professional thief in this future world (we're never given a specific date), who gets hired to steal people's ideas by venturing into their dreams. He so impresses one mark that he gets hired to attempt "inception", which instead of stealing is planting an idea in someone's mind, a very powerful tool in the world of business. Although his straight-laced partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, proving again that he's one of our best young actors) claims the job impossible, Cobb says it's not and takes the project. Nolan reminds us forcibly in this section of movies like Rififi (the model for "building a team for one last heist" kind of movies, of which Inception is certainly a part) and Dark City (a movie of shifting realities, both mentally and physically). Those two recently showed up in my list of favorite movies, so I found this a very good thing, since Nolan pays them respect and uses them to further his own movie, and not just steal from them.

To plant an idea, Cobb knows he must go deep into the psyche of the target, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy, working with Nolan a third time). And he uses his team's collective talents to achieve this, Tom Hardy's suave Eames shifting into other people inside the dreams, Ellen Page's Ariadne building the worlds they inhabit, and Dileep Rao's Yusuf making sure that everyone is sedated enough to not wake up before inception is attained. Worryingly, Cobb's ex-wife Mal (La Vie en Rose's Marion Cotillard) keeps showing up, threatening his dependability inside the dream world. In this section, Nolan references M.C. Escher, Michael Mann, and the great Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service, all while creating a movie that is completely his own.

Nolan's been criticized in some corners for creating dream world's that happen too literally, as his critics opine that dreams are more fluid in reality, that there are too many rules that can't or wouldn't exist in the mind, and that Nolan's vision doesn't work abstractly enough to evoke dream states. I can understand that criticism, but since Nolan is not necessarily trying to evoke "reality", I don't see how it applies to this movie. Nolan's dream world really exists to serve as a framework for a big Hollywood action movie. Normally I'm let down by movies that have great concepts and then do nothing but devolve into action movies (The Matrix, for example, or a bit with the recent District 9), but I never felt Nolan let me down. His script stays smart, and has an emotional core in Cobb that many of his other works don't have. He can occasionally feel a bit of a cold director emotionally, and perhaps it's because of the abilities of his actors here, but I was always emotionally involved in the happenings as much as I was intellectually and viscerally engaged.

So despite being a mainstream director making big huge blockbusters, I feel that Nolan is among our most talented directors. He's been referred to as everything from "a new Kubrick" to "a talentless hack in the Michael Bay mold", but I feel his technical accomplishments married with his love of Hollywood cinema makes him feel more like a new Spielberg than anything else. He'll likely not share the "overly sentimental" criticisms that Spielberg has ridiculously endured, but he's a mainstream director making the highest quality big budget Hollywood pictures around right now. And as long as he keeps working with good crews (cinematographer Wally Pfister, working with Nolan for the sixth straight time, makes this the best looking movie he's given us yet) and great casts (I didn't even mention Tom Berenger, Ken Watanabe, and Michael Caine rounding out the cast of seven Oscar nominees), I predict that Chris Nolan will be around and giving us great movies like Inception for years to come, I'd like to see him try to top this one.

Art is storytelling

Despite what some fans of abstract, experimental, or surrealistic art will try to argue, all art is about storytelling. That doesn’t mean that all art is only about its story, just that no matter what the piece of art is, it’s trying to tell you a story. The story may only exist to evoke a single emotion, or may not exist in a standard issue plotted out sort of way, but things remain the same. I came to this realization only recently. I heard someone try to argue that art was not about storytelling. Although they were incoherent in their argument, it made me think about what a successful argument for that viewpoint might be, and I came to believe that one didn’t exist. Even Jackson Pollock’s splatter art is meant to convey things to us through a story of shapes and seemingly chaotic images.
Another reason I started thinking about this is because I started asking myself what an artist was trying to “say” with a particular piece of art I was observing (it was the work of Andres Serrano, such as the Metallica album cover he designed below, if you were wondering). I came to believe that any artist who is showing an audience something is trying to tell them a story in order to evoke whatever it is in that the audience that it evokes, and the method is through a story. Some types of art ask the audience, either consciously or unconsciously, to bring their own interpretation to the work, which is basically the audience filling in the blanks in the story on their own (which can sometimes make the piece more personal, if it’s done right). Landscape painters are telling us the story of the landscape. Monet was telling us stories of the water lilies. Picasso was telling us stories, not always ones I “get”, but they’re there somewhere. Stravinsky was telling us the story of the Rite of Spring. And so on and so forth.
Now, I suppose an artist could not be telling a story if they put out a piece (and when I say “piece”, it could be a painting or a movie or a bit of music or whatever) that was intentionally designed to not mean anything. But I think even in that instance, that’s a story. It would be the story that the audience was telling back to the artist with whatever their response to the piece was. The aspect of storytelling would still be there, just not necessarily put forth by the artist.

Anyway, this is just something I’ve been thinking about lately and thought I would share.

Shutter Island

Of the three screen adaptations of Denis Lehane's novels, I think Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island lands in the top spot. Ben Affleck previously directed Lehane's novel Gone Baby Gone to great effect, showing his skills as a filmmaker and giving his brother Casey a terrific vehicle to highlight his ever growing talents. Lehane's Mystic River was brought to the screen in Clint Eastwood's multi-Oscar-winning film a few years before that. But Scorsese, our greatest living director, unsurprisingly outdoes the others, bringing a story of tremendous atmosphere, intrigue, emotion, and suspense for us to be enraptured by.

Leonardo DiCaprio again stars (his fourth straight turn as Scorsese's leading man), this time as Teddy Daniels, a WWII veteran and US Marshal sent to the psychiatric hospital at Shutter Island to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a patient. They're introduced to Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) and Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow), the presiding psychiatrists of the hospital, who only partially cooperate with Teddy's investigation. As Teddy and his partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) scour the facilities a little deeper, they can't escape the sense that they may not be able to get off the island. They dig into the many mysteries surrounding them, and Teddy, while still mourning the loss of his wife, fights to keep his sanity as everything around him seems pointed towards his impending doom.

Scorsese plays with the tragic mood of the picture in a way he's never dealt with before. I've heard that he said he wanted to film it like a Hitchcock movie, only like if it was made in modern times. So there are many shots with the fake feeling of the old back projection technology, as Teddy's riding along in a jeep at one point, for instance, it's quite obvious that he's against a screen projecting the image. But Scorsese has never been one to have showy techniques in his movies without reason. When he used period correct coloring processes in The Aviator, it helped put us in the time in a subconscious way so that Scorsese didn't have to always spell out when times had changed. And his use of different techniques here are also certainly with reason, but I will leave the reasons for you to discover and consider.

So Scorsese has given us another movie worth dissecting and analyzing, while not forgetting to give us talented actors at the top of their games, and actually giving us one of his few movies with a plot!

Humpday

Humpday is one of those movies you get surprised by sometimes. My wife almost randomly added it to our Netflix queue, and as we were searching through our Instant Watch section one day we also kinda haphazardly picked it because it was short and sounded funny.

The premise is that two college friends, Ben and Andrew, who've gone their separate ways since school meet up again and when high and drunk decide to make a porno movie with each other and enter it into Seattle's famous "Humpday" festival of independent porn. They say that since they're two straight guys making a porno, it'll be more artistic than any other gay porn out there, because it's "beyond gay". How exactly it's supposed to be artistic just because they're straight is not something they can really articulate, but even when they sober up they stick to their plan. The comedy comes from misunderstandings with what Ben tells his wife Anna that he and Andrew are up to (although she's much smarter than he is and finds out, which adds to the comedy), and the boys' increasing determination/reluctance to carry out their plan. The movie keeps escalating the situation, and I had a feeling it wasn't gonna be the type of movie to shy away from the possibly gay content. As it turns out, in the final hilarious sequence, it's not the movie that's afraid of the gay content, it may be Ben and Andrew.

The movie is very low budget. At a time when Hollywood blockbusters are regularly costing $200 million, Humpday was made for less than $500,000. It has no stars, nearly no money, and we came across it almost by accident, but it was a terrific surprise to my wife and I how much we enjoyed it, and since it was so low budget and underseen, we sorta felt like we were making a discovery that not many others had made. And that's always a great feeling.