May 23-25, 2008

Turned out to be a damn good weekend for movies.

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams -

A collection of 8 vignettes based upon actual dreams of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.

In film there is a cinematic device that is seldom used. It is called a tone poem. It is a bit of film that has no purpose in the narrative. It does not strengthen or advance the story, it does not develop the characters, it doesn't set the scene. It is a bit of film used solely to convey a mood. It is seldom used because as filmmakers are under the constant pressure to shorten their films, tone poems are easily removed without affecting the story. This film, or more accurately a collection of films, are tone poems.

This is an art film, plain and true. There is no narrative here. No story, no character development, hell, sometimes not even any logic. There is just visual textures and overall moods. In the simplest sense, this is a moving painting. It is mostly an abstract thing, from which you must garner the meaning yourself. As such, I doubt it will be accessible to most people. This isn't a movie you just pop in to kill some time. It is an experience, like going to a museum.

These stories were, simply put, amazing. Kurosawa was able to capture the beautiful surrealness of dreams. How they are real, yet not real at the same time. How ideas and concepts are introduced on the fly, dredged up out of the subconscious and exposed. You know how when you are having a vivid dream, how everything seems to make sense, how all the connections are apparent and logical, but viewed as a whole the arc of the dream itself is absurd. This is a difficult thing to describe, which makes the fact that Kurosawa was able to capture it perfectly that much more impressive. The best example of this is the first story in the film, Sunshine Through the Rain.

Unfortunately, some of the stories can get a little preachy. Two of them deal with the destruction of the world by nuclear fallout of one kind or another, perhaps unsurprising given how Kurosawa did live through the war. The last one, Village of the Watermills, is basically a sermon, but the location and design of the set, on the river with watermills, is so absolutely idyllic, so heavenly, that I can't but love it.

The most famous of the stories is Crows, wherein a man enters the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh. ILM received accolades for bringing the paintings to life in 3-dimensions, in addition to the fact that Vincent Van Gogh is played by Kurosawa fan Martin Scorsese. But for my money, the best story is The Blizzard. The tone set by the opening is beyond measure. Four mountaineers trudging through the snow. This lasts for a solid four minutes and I was riveted to the screen for the entire time. It's impossible to describe the mood conveyed. The screen is clouded by a haze, like walking through a shadowy gorge. You can't see the peoples faces, all you can discern is the ashen look on them, the buildup of beards and ice and snow encrusted on them. The way the men move, doubled over, broken, tied together with ropes, tugging futilely at each other to keep moving. Stooping through the snow with preponderance. The sound, oh god the sound of it. Most directors would go with a howling wind, and though Kurosawa uses it later, he doesn't use it here. The sound is mostly silence. An intense silence, that highlights the little sound you do hear. The labored breathing of the men, the soft clink of metal on metal, used as an indication of their movements. It's like the clinking metal serves as the tick of a clock, and it occurs so infrequently, it really highlights how slow they are moving. The entire scene speaks of stillness, cloistered and insulated spaces. These men aren't moving across the face of a mountain. They seem to be walking in a personal 40 x 40 snow-filled hell that just repeats on itself when the reach the end. The tone of absolute bone-weariness comes over you. And all of this, ALL of it, is conveyed cinematically. There is no dialogue. It's four men walking through snow, but it creates such a feeling in you. It's beyond description. The story then turns slightly surreal, but in a totally amazing and fantastical way. It is absolute brilliance.

Grade: B+

Cecil B. Demented -

John Waters is a pervert and everything he does is with the singular focus of being as distasteful and offensive as possible. And I LOVE IT. John Waters is amazing. You want a counterculture hero? He's right there. All his films are essentially the same thing. Taking a "normal" thing and perverting it. Which is great. Just because something is "normal" doesn't make it "right". It just makes it popular. This appeals to the anarchist in me. John Waters seems to despise and target mainstream culture and, more specifically, the people that work under the assumption that because something is mainstream, it is the way it "should" be. Which, to me, is nonsense. Like the song says, there ain't no straight line on Gods green. If you like smearing your ass with peanut butter while singing the Good Ship Lollipop, then hey, more fucking power to you. Life's too short to deny yourself whatever pushes your buttons. So John Waters makes fun of popularity. Sometimes he does it with an even hand, sometimes it's a little more bitter. But always the target is the "normal". What's interesting is the angle he takes. Many people would take the angle that normal really isn't that normal, and show that supposedly normal things/activities can, when viewed in the right light, be quite abnormal and strange. John Waters doesn't go this direction. He points out the normal things, says "yeah, that's normal stuff. It really IS normal. And you know what? Fuck normal."

In the past he's turned this view, this...weapon, on race relations, and on sex (one of my favorites), this time he turns it on cinema itself. Many times it's a little bitter. I.e. making fun of Hollywood for making bad sequels to movies which often times were bad themselves (Flintstones 2 anyone?). As a consumer of mainstream cinema I could get offended, because the meaning of the film is pretty militant pro-independent cinema, and I do believe mainstream film does produce some good movies, but for the most part I agree, so whatever. Hollywood does produce a lot of shit, but so does independent film. Really, the best message from the film is cinematic freedom, the freedom to make whatever movies you want. Be it family crap, hardcore action, hardcore art, hardcore porn. Whatever floats your boat, babe. Roll with it. Fuck the MPAA and fuck censorship. Freedom of expression, that's what I'm for.

Of course, Coyote should be all over this film. Takes place in Baltimore, features much of Baltimore, John Waters is a Baltimore icon and as I recall Coyote really loves the Senator theater, which is actually used in the film. Of course, John Waters also makes fun of Baltimore a bit, as it should be. Nothing is sacrosanct.

This film cracked me the fuck up. Some of it is ludicrous, some of it crass. All of it is awesome. But it's not for the easily offended.

Grade: B+

Big Fish -

When I was in college and taking a fiction writing class, my teacher told me a story. It was about Scheherazade and the Thousand Tales. There was a prince, and every night the prince would take a different woman into his room. He would have his way with her, and then he would kill her. As you can imagine, the female populace of this city was a bit nervous. Eventually, every woman would be killed. So the daughter of the princes vizier, Scheherazade, concocted a plan. She would volunteer to be the princes next consort, and when the night came, she would tell the prince a story. The prince would become enthralled with the story, and keep Scheherazade alive for the next night, and the next night and so on. The vizier, predictably, was not happy, as he loved his daughter and did not want to lose her. So he came to his daughter and said, "daughter, I want to tell you a story." And the vizier concocted a tale of a woman that went to the prince with noble thoughts and intentions, but instead found her fate sealed, and no amount of good intentions could save her from her death. It was a very convincing tale. And when he finished, pleased with himself, he asked his daughter what she thought. She replied, "father, I am now more determined than ever to carry out my plan. For you yourself, in telling me that story, have shown me that you believe in the power of stories to change people." And thus Scheherazade went through with her plan, and told the prince 1001 stories.

I rented this movie because you bastards kept going on and on about it. In the realm of interpretation, this film could be about many things. It could be about the way people are different than the way we want them to be, and how we must accept who they are. It could be about the need for a certain level of escapism in every day life, not to the level of psychosis, but to the level making life a little more interesting. But to me, this film is about stories. Telling stories, and the power that those stories have. You see, it was in being told the story related above that I remember how powerful stories are. How they have a way of sticking with you, staying inside you, and ultimately changing you. In part, because of the way that story unfolds, and how it ends not how I thought it would. But also because I remember it because it was told to me as a story. It in a cute meta-sense, the story of someone telling a story of someone telling a story made me remember how telling a story can make you remember. It's the story itself, and the telling of it.

This film is about stories and the power of stories. My favorite part of the film is at the end SPOILERS AHEAD when they are at the funeral and the camera pans over the crowd. The people are in knots and small groups, and you see people catching up with each other. Their hands are sawing the air as they relate one story or another to each other. That's just it, isn't it. When friends get together, what do they do? They tell each other stories. Stories from their life, stories they heard or read. The entertain. They inform. They change our lives. And I loved how you saw some of the people of Edwards life there, as they really were. Carl wasn't a 20 foot tall giant. He was about 7 feet. And the twins weren't joined at the waist. They were two separate people. Edwards stories, like all good stories, had an element of truth inside the fiction. Hell, the story above about Scheherazade may not even be the real Scheherazade story. But it doesn't matter. I remember the story, it has changed me. That's what matters. And that's what Edwards stories were about. The factual truth isn't really all that important. It's the telling of the story, the hearing of the story and how we incorporate that story into ourselves that mattered. It can be a tough thing to resolve. When presented with the obvious fallacies with his fathers stories, Will thought his father was a fake. He took the fictions for falsehood and thought his father was hiding something from him, obscuring the truth. What he had to come to realize is that his father didn't make those stories to hide any truth, his father didn't give a damn about the truth. His father cared about the stories. His father WAS the stories. His father wasn't a fake person just the way a painting isn't a fake reality. It is what he was composed of. He was a story, and that is where his power came from.

The film is made by Tim Burton, and of course it is superiorly crafted. The visual look of the film was impeccable. Burton brought the perfect balance of surrealism to it. The fantastical wasn't over the top. Just like Edwards stories, it was reality, just embellished. The acting was pretty good all around. Albert Finney was a little flat, but so it goes. Ewan Mcgregor continues to kick ass. However, I found Helena Bonham Carter, an actress I very much respect, was miscast for her part. It just wasn't working. Still, on the whole, it was an incredible piece of film craft.

Grade: A-