Philmology

Like the character of Monsieur Hulot for which he was renowned, the work of Jacques Tati is often seen as being somewhat out of place in the world. Despite the high esteem with which the French performer and director is now commonly held, Tati’s brief filmography testifies to his status as an artistic outsider. It’s this aspect of his filmmaking that Michael House reveals in his concise but timely exploration of the long-legged legend of European cinema.

The Magnificent Tati begins by recounting the Tati’s path into comedy through the series of sporting-inspired mime routines that he developed while performing within the music hall scene in occupied France during WWII. Work in cinema followed soon after, and while Tati was considered for a role in Les Enfants Du Paradis (1945), the near miss eventually led to his first feature film, Jour De Fête (1949), which he remarkably wrote, starred in and directed.

As the documentary points out, while success followed in the form of Tati’s Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953) and Mon Uncle (1958), for which he was awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film, the director resisted numerous requests to work within Hollywood. Unlike the American industry, Tati was fascinated with a form of cinema that was less protagonist-driven and more observational in its comic approach.

The distinction between Tati’s approach to physical comedy and that of the American silent stars he’d grown up admiring (Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Stan Laurel) is nicely articulated by the documentary through a comparison with the work of Charlie Chaplin. As one interviewee remarks, if Chaplin’s approach was about finding comic ways ‘to get out of a scrape’, then Tati’s comedy (in his guise as Hulot) was organised around ‘putting the world into scrapes’.

Beyond the biographical, The Magnificent Tati explores the technical artistry that characterised Tati’s distinctive brand of filmmaking, in particular his use of sound (as opposed than dialogue) to complement his physical humour. It’s somewhat of an irony then that technical innovation in the cinema is seen as partly responsible for his eventual exile from the film industry. Rejoicing in the grand potential of 70mm filmmaking, Tati’s Play Time (1967) – for which he constructed an entire mini-city – failed to connect with audiences of the time and left him financially destitute.

While Play Time (a film with a strong contemporary resonance) has been reappraised as an unappreciated masterpiece, the director’s work has also found new life recently in the form of Sylvain Chomet’s excellent animated feature, L’Illusionniste (2010), based on an unproduced Tati screenplay. As Chomet and other artists who appear in the documentary, such as director Mike Mills (Beginners) and singer Frank Black suggest, Jacques Tati was a unique artist deserving of far greater recognition. The Magnificent Tati certainly aids that cause.

Review | Comments (1)

The figure of the Southerner/Hillbilly has a distinguished place within the genre of American horror cinema. Invariably depicted as inbred rapists (Deliverance), cannibals (Wrong Turn), serial killers (House of 1000 Corpses) or a combination of evils (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), it’s fair to say their reputation has, over the years, been suitably maligned. In that context alone, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil could well be seen as a form of long overdue positive PR.

The plot of the film revolves around two good-natured hillbilly friends, Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine), on vacation in the Appalachian Mountains. Despite the reclusive setting, their ‘man-time’ wilderness retreat is interrupted when preppy college kids on a getaway of their own set up camp nearby. Tensions escalate however, when the pair intervenes to save one of the students, Katrina Bowden (30 Rock), from drowning and return her to their dilapidated cabin nearby. Interpreting the deed as a sinister act, the remaining college kids set about ‘rescuing’ their friend by any means necessary.

Inverting the traditions of the rural horror film, writer/director Eli Craig’s debut feature offers a clever rewriting of genre and stereotypes. Avoiding the sadism typical of its predecessors, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil depicts its comic violence as a consequence of urban middle-class ignorance. The irony is that despite their altruistic intentions, Tucker and Dale’s actions are repeatedly misconstrued as threatening, a confusion that only leads to more deaths.

One such moment in which Tucker, chainsaw in hand, is seen running wildly away from a swarm of bees after accidentally cutting into a nest, (in a gesture recalling Leatherface from Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre) has dire consequences. Perceiving his behaviour as an imminent attack, one of the college kids takes flight only to end up impaled on a tree branch. And so it continues for the other teenagers, leading Tucker and Dale to conclude that the students must be attempting a bizarre form of mass suicide. Misperception, it seems, literally cuts both ways.

Besides the inventive premise, a key reason for the success of the film is the pairing of Tudyk (Serenity) and Labine (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) in the title roles. Recalling the chemistry of Simon Pegg/Nick Frost from Shaun of the Dead, the performances by the two lead actors make Tucker and Dale’s on-screen partnership suitably endearing.

The only questionable aspect of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is the film’s conclusion. Despite having successfully deconstructed the traditional hick stereotype, at the very end the filmmaker introduces another character that reconsolidates the image of the rural inhabitant as a violent Neanderthal. While this brief moment isn’t enough to spoil what is an otherwise enjoyable romp, it does suggest that the conventional perception of the hillbilly isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

Review | Comments (0)

Ken Wardrop’s debut feature documentary opens with an old Irish proverb: “A man loves his girlfriend the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest”. An exploration of family, relationships, age and gender, His & Hers might be seen as an attempt to address the question, what do women really think of the opposite sex?

Consisting almost entirely of interviews, Wardrop’s film approaches these issues of gender through a vast tapestry of women ranging in age, experience and socio-economic background, all from within the Irish Midlands. Rather than draw assumptions based on a few select subjects, His & Hers is more interested in reaching a broader, universal understanding of the role men and women play in each other’s lives.

The simple and yet carefully organised structure of the documentary is the key to this approach. Arranged by age, the film begins with a series of young girls, proceeds through teenagers, and gradually concludes with the elderly. It’s one of the film’s obvious strengths and Wardrop deserves credit for the way in which supposedly distinct generations of women appear to slide almost imperceptibly from one to the next.

The women’s responses regarding the men in their lives also tend to vary over the course of the film. While the early interviewees refer predominantly to paternal figures (“Daddy says, clean up your room!”), as the subjects get older the topics shift to dating, engagement, marriage, pregnancy, motherhood and towards the end, widowhood and loneliness. While many of the comments are woven together to reflect fairly conventional views of gender (e.g. men as the breadwinner and women as emotional support) there are instances that stand out.

For example, the moment in which one woman describes the death of her father, or another of the effect of a breast cancer scare upon her partner are simple in their retelling but emotionally resonant. Generally however, such sombre confessions are counterbalanced by the wry humour and resilience evident in many of Wardrop’s subjects.

Despite the documentary’s many charms, the style and construction of His & Hers does tend to provoke more questions than it ultimately addresses. For instance, would the women have responded differently to a female director? Has Wardrop considered the implications of filming all of the women within the domestic space of the home while few if any talk about their role outside that as wife, mum or homemaker? What are the views of women who never experienced (either by choice or circumstance) male companionship or motherhood?

These queries would no doubt complicate the neat vision of gender relations that His & Hers presents but given the broadness of the film’s approach, they’re valid nonetheless. If only for the sake of comparison then, I wonder what insights a similar film about women from the male perspective might yield. Would Wardrop consider making Hers & His? Lets hope so.

Review | Comments (0)

Thirty-five years after it claimed the Palme d’Or for best feature film at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver remains a landmark work of cinema. An iconic depiction of loneliness, violence and urban alienation, Scorsese’s film stands out within that period of American cinema during the late 1960s and 1970s often referred to as its last Golden Age. With its provocative subject matter, European cinema-inspired style and distinct directorial vision, Taxi Driveris characteristic of the daring and artistic brand of filmmaking that defined the era.

But Taxi Driver also reflects the social context of the 1970s in other ways. Through its representation of Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), a twenty-something year old Vietnam veteran who takes a job driving taxis in New York City to break the monotony of his aimless existence, the film evokes the uncertainty and trauma of America’s post-war years. In many regards, the character of Travis symbolises the loss of national confidence following the failure in Vietnam, the collapse of the counter-cultural revolution, and the rapid decline of America’s post-WWII economic prosperity.

Like the nation for which he’d gone to war, Travis Bickle seems caught at a crossroads in history. When we first meet him he appears as a kind of moralising observer, railing against the perceived filth of the city streets. However, as his personal frustrations intensify, Travis begins to envisage himself in a series of different roles – as lover to Cybill Shepherd’s Betsy, then as liberator to Iris, a twelve year old prostitute played by Jodie Foster – culminating in his emergence as a self-appointed avenging angel. Insisting upon the need for decisive action, Travis resolves to commit an act of bloodshed in order to bring about his salvation. Yet as Taxi Driver’s oft-discussed ending implies, the traditional resort to violence may no longer serve as an effective means of achieving personal or social redemption.

Beyond Taxi Driver’s cultural significance, the film is also important in the context of Scorsese’s career through the creative relationships that it helped forge, and which would shape the director’s work in the years that followed. Taxi Driver’s screenwriter Paul Schrader would go on to collaborate with the director on three subsequent films (Raging Bull 1980, The Last Temptation of Christ 1988, and Bringing Out The Dead 1999) while actor Robert De Niro (who had previously appeared in Scorsese’s Mean Streets 1973) has worked with the director on eight occasions.

Through these associations Scorsese had found the perfect collaborators for the exploration of male violence, existential ennui, and religious burdens that define the male subjects of his films. And in these regards Travis Bickle is the archetypal Scorsesean protagonist, particularly when it comes to the issue of sex. Fixed in a dichotomous understanding of women as virgin/whore (a perception he imposes upon both Betsy and Iris), Travis’ sexuality is characterised by a stark ambivalence. Even as he habitually frequents porno theatres, Travis displays disgust at the presence of sex workers on the streets of New York. He is, as Betsy refers to him in one scene when she likens him to the lyrics of a Kris Kristofferson song, ‘a walking contradiction’.

Travis’ inability to reconcile these contradictory aspects of his personality may be one explanation for the violence that erupts in the film’s latter stages. And increasingly, the violence in Taxi Driver is coded with sexual connotations. Through Travis’ pistol-like gestures to pornographic imagery, to the scene of the disturbed passenger (performed by Scorsese) and his description of what he plans to do to his adulterous wife, the fetishistic close-up imagery of the .44 Magnum and the climactic shoot-out that takes place in a brothel, Taxi Driver repeatedly collapses the boundaries between sex and violence. In doing so, the film appears to locate and explore the impetus to violent action as emanating from a male paranoia and anxiety regarding sexuality.

But the violence in Taxi Driver (for which it is renowned) has another aspect to it that distinguishes it from the standard vigilante or psychotic Vietnam vet narrative. Rather than simply enact violent imagery, Taxi Driver repeatedly links Travis’ actions to the violence of earlier cinematic representations. From its overt references to numerous films and genres (particularly John Ford’s The Searchers 1956), to Travis’ transformation from insomniac flâneur to urban cowboy and Mohawk warrior, together with the guns that he purchases, each one associated with characters such as Dirty Harry and James Bond, or in his self-seeking performances before the mirror (“Are you talking to me?”), Taxi Driver draws attention to the role representations play in constructing individual and cultural identity. In this context, Taxi Driver’s coda can be seen to offer a critique on the way cinema (and the wider media) shape cultural perceptions of violence and heroism.

It is in this final regard that Taxi Driver, far from being merely a product of its time, remains entirely relevant to the contemporary era, and continues to exert a profound influence on filmgoers more than three decades after its initial release.

Rewind | Comments (0)

To commemorate the film’s 35th anniversary restoration release, the Plato’s Cave team take an in-depth look at Martin Scorsese’s 1976 classic Taxi Driver. They also cast their eye over Scorsese’s early career, discussing the films on the the recent DVD collection Martin Scorsese’s Short Films (including What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This, It’s Not Just You, Murray, The Big Shave, Italianamerican). With Josh Nelson, Thomas Caldwell and Tara Judah.

PLATO’S CAVE TAXI DRIVER SPECIAL (.MP3)

Podcast | Comments (0)

Filmic productions of theatrical performances have an unfortunate tendency to be, as the Bard might put it, ‘a little more than kin, and less than kind’. Often shot with static or spatially distant cinematography, weakened by conflicting performance styles, or overly lengthy, the transition from stage to screen is not always harmonious.

Gregory Doran’s adaptation of The Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2008 production of Hamlet however is largely a successful one, due in part to its carefully considered simplicity. Unlike the grandiose stylings of Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 version, Doran has opted for a refined minimalist presentation – sparse sets characterised by few props and polished interiors.

And yet while the production design is theatrical in nature, Doran directs the camera in a manner more typical of television (cutting between mid-shots and occasionally moving in close) to capture the nuances of the performances and the play’s theme of madness. In particular, the emphasis on reflective surfaces throughout the work, such as fractured mirrors, provides Doran with a suitable motif to signify the splintering psyches of Hamlet’s various characters (Hamlet, Ophelia, Gertrude, Claudius etc).

The only flaw within the otherwise discreet production design is the occasional employment of cheap looking visual affectations – CCTV and home movie camera footage – perhaps in an attempt to impose a heightened filmic sensibility upon proceedings. And yet, while such imagery may reinforce the element of surveillance, their clumsy and intrusive execution is more disruptive than innovative.

With few exceptions, the performances too are generally strong. Despite the whisperings of criticism for his manic characterisation of Hamlet (a tendency some have likened to his role as Doctor Who) David Tennant is well cast in the lead. Whatever baggage his Timelord persona hath burdened him with, Tennant’s youthful appearance and erratic mannerisms are entirely appropriate to the impetuous Danish Prince.

More tellingly though, Tennant’s perfectly restrained rendition of the iconic ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy ranks amongst the most convincing captured on screen. Shot predominantly in close-up as Hamlet ruminates on life and death, Tennant brings to the words a wonderfully understated melancholic quality.

It’s arguably Tennant’s skill (and that of his fellow cast members Patrick Stewart, Penny Downie and Mariah Gale) in traversing the darkly comic and tragic aspects of Shakespeare’s text that ultimately elevates Doran’s from the mass of earlier adaptations. Minor gripes notwithstanding (the concluding acts feel somewhat rushed and the finale veers toward the anti-climactic), this version of Hamlet seems principally immune to the common stage-to-screen curse.

Review | Comments (0)

At a time when popular culture is increasingly preoccupied with smug self-parody, ironic pastiche or cynical commercialism, Zachary Oberzan’s Flooding with Love for the Kid is something of a rarity; an earnest labour of love. And though his film mightn’t be the first to adapt First Blood (1972), David Morrell’s novel of a Vietnam veteran waging war on a small Kentucky town – Ted Kotcheff directed the 1982 version that starred Sylvester Stallone as Rambo – it may be the most unique. Oberzan shot, edited, and performed every role of the film, all within the confines of his Manhattan studio apartment.

While that description may conjure imagery of the type of low-budget homage recreations popularised by Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind (2008), Flooding with Love for the Kid is no simple ‘swede’. Instead, Oberzan seems committed to exploring the serious drama at the centre of Morrell’s work, particularly the relationship between Rambo and the lawman obsessively pursuing him, Sheriff Teasle.

First published before the end of the war, First Blood was remarkable for the way it used the plight of the returned vet to allegorise the bloody conflict of Vietnam on American soil. Despite their greater number and superior firepower, the state authorities in Morrell’s tale (like the US Military forces in South-East Asia), find themselves no match against an enemy (in this case one of their own) skilled in bloody guerrilla warfare.

But where Morrell depicted the Vietnam veteran as an excessive killing machine consumed by rage and resentment, Kotcheff’s film represented Rambo as a misunderstood hero, who only maims not murders. The character of Teasle also differs markedly in both versions. In Morrell’s tale he’s a distinguished veteran of the Korean War while in the film he’s basically an ignorant, corpulent red neck. It’s this aspect of Kotcheff’s First Blood that Oberzan appears most keen to rectify in his adaptation.

Echoing the novel’s construction of personal war, Flooding with Love for the Kid places a greater emphasis on Teasle’s character and the motivations behind his relentless pursuit of the troubled vet. The conflict that erupts between Teasle and Rambo is unmistakably generational, where the themes of guilt, betrayal and fears of waning authority are played out through the father-son identification that emerges across the narrative. That Oberzan performs both roles only adds to the sense of these men as mirrored masculinities.

And it’s Oberzan’s performance of the two lead characters (particularly Teasle) that largely keeps the film grounded dramatically, even if the peripheral characters occasionally veer into comic territory. A camp cop, a Scottish-accented (?) state trooper and the fairly suspect portrayal of Rambo’s Vietnamese captors notwithstanding, Oberzan does a reasonable job of preventing the film sliding into farce.

Perhaps more impressive though is the fact that despite making little to no effort to disguise his apartment surroundings, Oberzan transforms the residential space into a variety of ‘believable’ settings for his one-man war. An office chair doubles as a motorcycle, a running tap becomes a waterfall, a closet a cave and so on. It’s a testament to his creativity that it he manages to keep things engaging for the majority of the film’s 107 minute running time.

Watching Oberzan’s film ultimately feels a lot like witnessing someone with no formal training pick up a musical instrument and through perseverance and sheer pluckiness alone, produce a recognisable tune. Flooding with Love for the Kid may be unpolished, but it has immense heart. I can think of numerous films that boast eight and nine figure budgets of which the same couldn’t be said.

Flooding with Love for the Kid is screening on May 3, 5, 8 and 10 at The Grace Darling Hotel in Collingwood, Victoria.

For more details visit: www.speakeasycinema.com.au

Review | Comments (0)

It’s not uncommon for female sexuality to serve as a source of anxiety within horror cinema. However, in films such as Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People (1942), Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976) or David Cronenberg’s Rabid (1977) the depiction of feminine monstrosity is geared toward an exploration of the cultural and political values that produce the female as ‘threatening other’.

More recently though, certain representations of the ‘monstrous feminine’ in Hollywood cinema have been decidedly less self-critical. For instance, in the Twilight franchise, the burgeoning sexuality of Bella, the film’s central female character, is cast in far more threatening terms than that of her monstrous love-interests: Edward (a vampire) and Jacob (a werewolf). A key motif of Twilight’s sexual schema is the insistent repression of Bella’s desires until they can be contained within a ‘socially acceptable’ discourse such as marriage. Failure to do so, we are constantly reminded, may result in a potentially uncontrollable evil. In that context alone, Twilight is unashamedly conservative.

Continuing this recent trend, Red Riding Hood, a revision of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, might well serve as a companion piece to the Twilight saga. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke (who not incidentally helmed the first Twilight movie), Red Riding Hood centres around a love struck young woman, Valerie (Amanda Seyfried), whose village has been waylaid by a menacing wolf. Typically placated through sacrificial animal offerings, when the beast kills one of their own (Valerie’s sister), the enraged townsfolk enlist the services of supernatural slayer, Father Solomon (Gary Oldman) to eradicate the monstrosity once and for all.

While Hardwicke is quick to emphasise the psychosexual content of this fairy tale – paralleling the wolf’s emergence with moments of forbidden romance and violence – the slapdash manner in which these sub-textual signs are woven throughout the narrative demonstrates an inability (or unwillingness) to engage them in any real detail. Everything is inscribed on the surface but with little or no thought as to its connotations. This is particularly so of Red Riding Hood’s striking visual design, which raises numerous questions/issues – i.e. why has Grandma been ‘relocated’ outside the village to live in a shack surrounded by thorny trees? – that the narrative sidelines.

Avoiding any substantiative exploration of sexuality and monstrosity (despite ample opportunity), Red Riding Hood opts instead for turgid love triangles and tedious tween drama. More problematically though, in an effort to subvert the expectations of an audience familiar with the tale, Hardwicke converts the fable-like structure of Little Red Riding Hood into a whodunit style mystery in which the film’s central (if only) conflict becomes the unveiling of the (were)wolf’s identity.

It’s a testament to the film’s lack of imagination that when the denouement finally arrives, the outcome is overwhelmingly traditional. As with Twilight, Red Riding Hood envisages a form of female heroism and independence that is limited by the need to conform to dominant patriarchal values. What’s worse is that here, Valerie’s ‘triumph’ makes her the willing instrument of her own oppression. Like a werewolf in human garb, Hardwicke’s work is a conservative tale that wishes to pass itself off as a feminist evocation of empowerment and sexual freedom. And in that disguise alone it is a monstrous failure.

Review | Comments (0)

Produced for television by Arena BBC and directed by Nicola Roberts, Brian Eno: Another Green World offers an insight into one of the most prominent figures of the music industry. From his playing days as keyboardist with Roxy Music, Eno’s long list of collaborations reads like a roll call of pop royalty: David Bowie, David Byrne, U2, Devo, Coldplay, Paul Simon, Toto and Talking Heads (amongst many others). No wonder then that Bono attributes the success of bands like U2 to Eno’s influence: “We didn’t go to art school, we went to Brian”.

Describing Eno as the ‘intellectual guru of rock’, Roberts’ short documentary situates him as an introspective figure whose love of music was founded on the experience it provided: a “state of surrender”. Interwoven with imagery of the natural world, Eno recalls how, as a youngster attending church, the combination of the sounds and voices (rather than the religious motifs) granted him a sense “of something bigger”.

While Another Green World’s emphasis on nature and transcendence initially casts Eno within a new-age sensibility, it soon becomes apparent that the musician is far more passionate about the relationship between technology and individuals. In a revealing discussion, Eno describes his fascination with a Player Piano he inherited, primarily because of the seeming emotions that were being produced by a machine. This he contrasts with the influence of technology upon contemporary music, and the increasing homogenisation of performance. For Eno, the distinctly human (and uniquely flawed) element of music is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

Negotiating the broad philosophical interests that Eno explores in and through his music and collaborations, the documentary also offers a glimpse of his involvement with figures such as Richard Dawkins and Stafford Beer together with a variety of other musicians. Drawing on his discussions of history, literature, future and management theory, and the relationship between art, science and religion, Eno comes off as an intensely thoughtful and engaging subject.

Less an in-depth biographical portrait or chronological investigation of his work than it is a revealing snapshot, Brian Eno: Another Green World is rewarding viewing nonetheless, even if feels an all-too-brief encounter.

Brian Eno: Another Green World is screening at ACMI cinemas in Melbourne from April 1^st until the 4^th.

For further details visit http://www.acmi.net.au/fl_brian_eno.aspx

Review | Comments (0)

This month I joined Lee Zachariah and Paul Anthony Nelson in an illuminating discussion on the work of Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg for their podcast Hell Is For Hyphenates. Download or play the podcast on the link below:

Hell Is For Hyphenates – February 2011 Edition: David Cronenberg

Podcast | Comments (0)