The Prestige (2006, USA, Christopher Nolan)

Wherein the de(con)struction begins...

And So Begin the Beguine of Ben:

Monica has brought home The Prestige for us to watch. It would appear that mine is falling when it comes to selecting viewing matter. David Bowie? Does not his participation in a movie mean it is junk, second only to Mike Jagger (and perhaps Sting) on this score?

And Dan:

Don't worry, The Prestige is okay--Bowie has a small part, and doesn't butcher it. I'm looking forward to your interpretation of the film's conclusion. While Bowie doesn't suck, Scarlet Johanssen, on the other hand, yikes! Hard to believe this is the same young actress who was so promising in Ghost World, Lost in Translation and The Man Who Wasn't There.

Then Ben:

I liked Lost in Translation quite a bit and Ghost World wasn't too bad either, think I saw The Man Who Wasn't There but don't remember, bad sign, I guess he really wasn't there, but it was Woody's Match Point that made me think that the girl lacked solid ability. Sure, she has "a quality," but it remains to be seen whether she has actual talent.

And Dan:

I'm pretty sure she can't act a lick. She can fill the screen, all right, but don't ask her to step outside of herself or you're asking for big trouble.

Then Ben Again:

I'm kicking myself for not sending you the email I wanted to before watching this movie. Because what I wanted to mention then, I want to mention now too and I would have liked to have won points for having a premonition of sorts. How appropriate for the apprecitation of mumbo-jumbo.

Your recent watching of Persona prompted me to surf the net for a little discussion of it. Wikipedia mentioned that the film has been considered an example of Brechtian alienation technique insofar as it it takes a meta-perspective of itself. Nevermind that Brecht's mandate is not simply a technical-aesthetic or even philosophic matter about self-referential frame-breaking but a strategy for ideological presentation. The present point made by Wikipedia is that Persona is hardly exceptional in this technical regard and lists a number of films that comment on themselves as being films: "Kinugasa's A Page of Madness (1926), Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Frederico Fellini's 8½ (1963), Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) and Bergman's own Dreams (1955) and The Magician (1958). There are hundreds of others." I have seen none of these but thanks to you, I have seen Sherlock Jr. (1924).

I wanted to share this with you before but now, having just seen TP, I want to assert that it is barely even a footnote to Buster Keaton's genius. This is true on any darn level you want to examine but the level I have in mind is the whole penetration into illusion. I'm not going to go off the deep end epistemologically, no worries. All I want to emphasize is what I emphasized previously about Keaton. He is actually still close enough to the theatrical stage, still engaged in actual physical performance, and so original with emergent film trickery, what he has to say about illusion is perhaps more profound today in the era of digital sampling, CGI and all the rest of it than it was back in the day.

Now, TP wants to go deep too but it's just not happening. The historic setting, the pursuit of the nature of illusion through the culture of theatrical magic, there is potential here and some fleeting impressions of making good on this potential. But so much of what might have been intellectually thrilling about TP gets bogged down if not completely lost in convoluted narrative. Monica tells me the film is based on a book and the result demonstrates the problems the film-maker encountered and often did not solve. The reading of the diaries, sometimes in voice over, the flashbacks, the repression of information that would naturally be revealed visually for the sake of the plot, et cetera. I imagine these things worked well on the page, but in TP there is considerable clunkiness - and this simply undermines whatever conceptual delight the film might have offered with respect to the power of illusion; never mind any degree of meta-awareness and questioning about it all from an imagistic or flimic orientation.

So what does this leave? Well, what is always left when serious thinking is not on board, a ripping tale and all that, with nifty twists and turns in a plot that is supposed to be hard to pin down, and perhaps some good characterizations along the way if we're lucky. Let me be swift about the latter. I did not warm up to the cast. When Michael Caine was off the screen, I had problems with all of the performances. As you warned, Johansson was dreadful, really irritating, and the other female lead not much better. But it was the two leading men that failed to win me over and not just because they had to play men of many faces, none of which were genuine until the big finish. There was some cleaver dialogue with respect to hints and codas in the plot but nothing to speak of for the constitution of complex characters. This is basically a portrait in rivalry and the characters serve the plot not as stock types but instrumentally nonetheless.

So, what of it? You said you would be interested to hear my feeling about the conclusion of the story. Well, at the risk of sounding like a party pooper, I have to brag that two out of the three main ontological revelations I had scoped long before the climax of the film. I knew pretty early on that the guy who takes the final bullet was the aristocrat hiding in the wings and I understood right away that Tesla's science-fiction technology was a cloning machine; indeed, upon it's arrival Monica leaned over to me and whispered: "Primer." What I did not know was that the guy who pulls the trigger in the finale was one half of a pair of identical twins. However, the fact that his sidekick with the diguise was so indispensible to his life and so recurrent in the plot made me suspicious of him. So when the curtain is drawn back and he is displayed as the twin brother, I felt that it was not such an amazing trick.

To the credit of the story, this twin business was hinted at in a number of scenes, especially to the "bad guy," (and therefore the audience), when he refuses to accept the obvious; i.e., that a double must be used in "The Transported Man" and what could be more ready-made for the trick than natural born twins? So, I'm not bothered by this and I appreciate the parallel between the escalating obsessiveness driving the rivalry and the progessive freakiness of the doubling tactics employed in order to perfect the trick. Still, I did feel it was kinda corny how the other guy was ultimately redeemed as a "good guy" in retrospect; he really did love his wife, his brother loved the other woman, yeah yeah, wimpy. And hey, it never was a fair fight. Two against one. That's a dirty trick, even among tricksters.

TP does provide some cursory thoughtfulness on the need to believe in magic, though. Confronted by what Weber called the "disenchantment of the world," surrounded by the sheer facticity of experience, discontent with this dull life opens up a need to challenge it. Not negate it. That is a spiritual or metaphysical calling. No, magic is all about beating physics at it's own game. The thrill has to do not with transcending matter entirely but rather merely denying it. The point is not to be free of the law of gravity but to defy it. Not to fly. But to float. TP does touch on this to some extent in it's sensitivity to the psychology of ritualized magical performance. It correctly points out that for the trick to work according to theatrical conventions, the audience must not have faith in the magic. Of course, the audience can not have technical knowledge of the mechanics of the act either. But inbetween these two, a "trick" has to do with not suspending disbelieve and believing at the same time. The power comes from this contradiction between materialist suppositions and empirical observation. ("I don't believe it!" and "Seeing is believing!" at the same time.) Giving over emotionally to this cognitive crisis is what magical theatre allows us to do. This is the psychology of illusion as performance art.

Too much goddamn music. Stop telling me how to feel. Patronizing Hollywood manipulation.

And Finally Dan:

Well, you're holding the film up to rather lofty standards with the Persona comp. It's a bit of Hollywood escapism, after all, while Bergman's film is something of a watershed. I think the Sherlock Jr. reference is fairer, as Keaton was, as Nolan (this is the same fella who directed Memento, doncha know?) is, plying his trade in the mainstream, not the arthouse. And measured by this standard, TP is pretty thin gruel indeed. It lacks Sherlock's keen playfulness, not to mention it's ability to confound and astound our understanding and appreciation of cinematic and theatrical reality. Nolan's film toys with a few of the notions that Keaton's film engages and probes in a much more rewarding fashion. The Prestige is countertop surface sheen, Sherlock Jr. the granite upon which it is built.

My initial response, which I posted over at Cinemarati was that it's an enjoyable enough film, but what interested me more the the one-upsmanship and plot twists were the meta-concepts at play, particularly in how the three act structure of the magic trick mirrored the conventional three act play of theatre, and by extension, cinema. Nolan's the magician at the helm of the film, providing us with, in turn, his version of the pledge, the turn, and the prestige. So I confess that I had a good time watching The Prestige, because I was never too worried about it adding up to anything mmuch more substantial that an elaborate magic trick. This is a plot (and to a much smaller degree, idea-) driven tale that forces its actors into the story's mechanisms, so I knew that hoping for interesting characterization would be folly. However, it isn't too much to ask for compelling performances, and I'd have to agree that Caine is the only one who delivers on that front. While I have enjoyed performances by Jackman and Bale in the past, they both seem a bit out of place here. Jackman is too modern for the part, and Bale too studied and aloof (though at least one of the characters he plays calls for some of that, so I will grant him that).

You've covered the flimsiness of the themes, but what I'm interested in is your response to the whole cloning apparatus. It seemed a bit too deux ex machina (literally) for my tastes, particularly given that this was supposed to be a film about a rivalry between illusionists, not scientific adventurers. This aspect of the film has confused a lot of people and led to some high-spirited debate over at Cinemarati, but I'm still waiting for someone to convince me that it was an appropriate way to wrap this thing up.

The Deer Hunter (1978, USA, Michael Cimino)

Wherein Ben and I deconstruct the legendary Oscar-winning film.

Clearly, my family is waging a rebellion against me - and you! (Monica even read me a poem yesterday to this effect. I must get it to you. It's a delight and it's got the likes of you and me by the tail.) As you know, I have a stack of your films here, but this weekend they refused to let me consult the pile. Since he suffered through Heaven's Gate, Jacob wanted to see this and deserved to too. I hadn't seen it since the year of it's release. If I recall, it was a bit of a big deal that we had all recently turned 18 and could get into the theatre without mom. Anyway, is it not reasonable to reflect on a previous Oscar winner on Oscar night?

I promise not to (try not to) go on at length now, especially with respect to the historical substance of the film. I just want to hit on three major topics. First, the cast and the performances. This holds up big time, very big time, with the exception of John Cazale. I hate having to say this because he is so great in all the other films he is known for. Plus, he died before the film was released, I think. But he never quite shakes the New York Italian thing and I don't buy him in that Pennsylvania steel town. Even Di Niro in his part for the pre-Nam portion of the film is a bit of a stretch, but his acting is just so good, he beats the rap, and everying during and after Nam is not a problem. Everyone else is spot on from word one, including the lesser known players, really giving authenticity to both the class and culture of the town. Streep is a god, really, one of the best screen actors of any generation and either sex. And even though I don't know who was competing against him, Walken deserved his Oscar. A career-defining performance of great depth.

Second, Cimeno at the wheel. Here's where having just recently seen Heaven's Gate, we can identify as nascent the problems which would plague that film. Don't get me wrong, there are some powerful shots and some moments of very effective editing. The cinamatography is especially arresting in the town and up in the mountains, whereas the cutting is at its best at war and in the prison cage. However, in retrospect, I reckon it is only because the film came out when it did and delt with what it does that critics could have overlooked the problems with pacing and narrative. Some scenes just drag on, indicating not so much pretentiousness as filmic inexperience. There is considerable clumsiness in framing crowd shots, editing transitions for maximum dramatic effect, the placement of music and so on. Most of all, there is a lot of dead air when it comes to the dialogue. In the liner notes to the DVD, (remarkable to find them in the case of a renter), it says that one of the reasons Di Nero took the part is because he liked the dialogue for being "real and simple." Fair enough on the "real" Mr. Method Actor but the "simple" is too simple. There is a pronounced failure in TDH to give the characters anything to pronounce. There are scenes silently screaming out for more language. The lack of it is not the result of some mandate for the image either. It's just mediocre writing.

And further to this, the amount of poetic license that must be grated to the climax of the film is truly staggering. That a deranged, Russian Roulette-playing junkie on the other side of the world would send regular "remittence payments" to his war-torn buddy back home doesn't even register on the credibility chart. But wait! This sets in motion the peak of the plot that is truly beyond the pale. That Di Nero might attempt to keep his promise, to do a liberal version of Rambo and refuse to leave his friend over there, OK, I can get behind that. But to actually find the guy - incredible. But wait again! Even if I am willing to allow this for the sake of story telling, to be made to accept that against astronomical odds, Walken has managed to survive only to blow his brains out exactly when De Niro shows up to take him home - this is too much bullshit.

And speaking of bullshit, topic number three: What does it all mean? I promised not to go large and loud in regard to history and I will keep my promise. I just want to say that I at 46 now I am pround of the 18 year old that smelled a rat even then. Of course, the film does not have any respect for the human subjectivity of the Viet Cong and the population supporting it. Barely depicted at all, what is depicted is reduced to metaphoric status, as representative of "the horror of war" in general, on both sides equally, the usual ahistorical and supposedly depoliticized moralism. The liner notes explain that Cimino got the idea for the Russian Roulette metaphor from "the infamous photo of Vietnamese police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting a Viet Cong cadre." Yeah, alright. But even if in a Western it is acknowledged that the the Indians did not practice scalping until they learned about it the hard way from the White Man, a Western that shows the Indians doing nothing but scalping white men is still a Western.

But you know, I'm actually not coming down on TDH with this critique now. What I didn't know when I was 18 and what the liner notes (god bless 'em) point out to me now is that the film is just as unacceptable from the perspective of the surviving cowboys. "Even on Oscar night, the film was at the center of a storm: outside the Los Angeles Music Center, police clashed with a group representing the Vietnam Veterans Against The War, who were picketing the film's interpretation of history." TDH is not without meaningful content about the toll the war took on one working class community in America. But the meaning of the film's chief symbols - the Russian Roulette, the hunting of the deer - is ambiguous not in a valid artistic way but in an invalid ideological way. For the Vietnamese people and the American people too.

Don't you just love it when someone hijacks Oscar night for a political protest? If I could count on this happening tonight, I might actually watch the show.

And Dan Responds:

This film figured large for me when it first came out. It was, in fact, one of the very few films I watched more than once in the actual movie theatre. Now, part of the reason for that was I dragged a friend to see it so I'd have someone to talk to about it, and part of the reason for that was that the film troubled me deeply. I was knocked away and repulsed by it in equal measure, and I wanted to work my way through the film, figuring the process might help me come to some sorta peace with it. All these years later, and I am still deeply ambivalent about the whole thing. Cimino's obviously tapped into something emotionally that he hasn't quite got ahold of intellectually, and I think you've touched on some of the reasons for this in your review.

First off, in praise of the film, I love the story's operatic three act structure, particularly the way that Cimino allows the opening act of story to unfold at a leisurely pace, without a lot of editorial intrusion, then shows some real skill, shifting (in a memorable jump cut) from these relatively muted and naturalistic scenes to the Vietnamese action sequences (the content of which is a whole 'nuther kettle of critical fish that I'll come to later) ratcheting the old tension meter up to 11, while the post-Vietnam sequences, in many ways the film's finest, make an unashamed and largely earned grab for the old heartstrings. As this is a tale about a (disintegrating) industrial town, populated by the sorta "old school" folks who'd appreciate such an approach, I think Cimino is wise to present this story as an old-fashioned narrative, telling of these men's journeys from innocence to experience in a pretty conventional style (again, actual content aside).

I'll also whole heartedly back your assertion that Walken deserved his Oscar (for the record he beat out some damned good actors, including John Hurt, Richard Farnsworth, Jack Warden and Bruce Dern, so this was no walkover victory), as his portrayal of a man thoroughly emptied out by the trauma of war is one for the ages. For a fella noted for playing thugs and heavies, Walken plays sensitive remarkably convincingly (for further proof, see his underrated turn in The Dead Zone.) And Streep, surely we can both agree, is the shit. Nobody better, forget which generation, whether boomer, X, Y or Z, she covers the water front. Really, man, just The Best. Ever.

However, looking back on it now, I can't say that I really believe the rest of the guys as blue collar steel workers. Savage overplays it, as only Savage can, and yeah, you're right about the otherwise great Cazale (he was living with Meryl Streep at this time, which must have given her performance some added poignancy knowing how ill he was and all); he's just not a steel working man. Not even deNiro, who is as gritty and no bullshit as they come. You can take Travis off of those filthy NY streets, but that shit sticks. I suppose I shouldn't blame deNiro for this, having created such an iconic figure of post-Vietnam mental disorderliness, but I can't look on his creation here without seeing the shadow of Bickle falling across too many scenes (especially all that "one shot" bullshit.)

Speaking of which, while this one shot, one bullet metaphor makes for riveting drama, it sure casts a pall over the film. The whole Russian roulette analogy just doesn't make much sense, and I don't care if it was inspired by that famous photo, if you can't integrate the image intellectually, it's just a cheap visceral thrill. And it plays right into the hands of those who protest against the film, many of whom were probably--ironically enough--the kind of conservative, old-fashioned folks that live in this kind of town, the kind of folks that I believe Cimino really identifies with and mourns over in this film.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006, USA, Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris)

Wherein Ben and I find a convergence of opinion.

Ben Begins:

Through sheer serendipity I am au courant. (Snob that I am, I feel the need to explain my being up-to-date.) You sent me the Glen Garry, Glen Ross spoof. I revisited the real thing. This led me to do a little research on Alan Arkin which introduced me to today's title. Seems he's received good reviews for his performance. All of this could easily have come to nothing, but Monica came home with LMS yesterday and all of us watched it together. This morning, Jacob noticed a still from the film in the newspaper and Monica explained to both of us that it is up for an Oscar and - honestly, who knew without you at OB these days? - the Awards are tomorrow night. So, here I am for once, on top of the times. In honour of this, I will begin with a tag line.

LMS is The Royal Tenenbaums meets Malcom In The Middle in, well, the middle, with a good measure of Weekend At Bernie's thrown in for, well, good measure. (THIS is a tag line? It's hard to believe I once wrote radio advertising.)

Bernie aside, what we are dealing with is what I will call the familial non-conformist comic genre. Naturally, this genre has a solid pedigree, reaching back into literature, theatre, cartooning, etc. But for our present film we need only go back to the dawn of rock and roll and such, when in the 50s a new market was established for cultural commodities catering specifically to adolescence. Prior to this, the familial non-conformist comic genre was constructed fundamentally from the perspective of the parents, if not the father exclusively. Bare minimum, it was adult. Bizarre, zany, wacky, however non-conformist, the adult point of view ensured that the non-conformity never threatened to become serious. The adults in the family were well enough integrated into the status quo and the comedy was safe. The shift from an essentially adult orientation to an adolescent perspective exacts a seemingly significant change in the genre. Anger is admitted into the ranks. Non-conformity now appears to be not just funny eccentricity but also passionate dissatisfaction at the state of things, especially the family itself. I think I capture the spirit of this shift in the genre when I call it "Rebel With Good Cause."

I am hardly alone in suggesting that the teenage paradigm culturally introduced in the 50s has never been allowed to go away commercially. Quite the contrary, there seems to be no end to the money that can be made by keeping people is a condition of arrested development. Actually, it's worse. Just as the growth hormones in cow's milk today compel eight year old girls to enter puberty, the penetration of marketing to pre-teens involves an regressive treatment of the culture as a whole, wherein adults are profitably subjected to infantilization. Plus, there are serious ideological benefits too. Ruling classes have always relied on infantilization to maintain authority and this situation presently holds. The requirement that everything be legitimated as democratic today makes it all the more imperative to characterize critique as a passing phase of youth and this is where the restriction of rebelliousness to the inner workings of the family is most ideologically entrenched. We can hear about the the family as dysfunctional six days a week, seven if the telling features jokes, but any portrayal of the society as dysfunctional is broadcast once a month and after midnight.

Whereas The Royal Tenebaums has a decidedly - not adult but - post-teen point of view, and Malcom In The Middle has a decidedly - not childish but - pre-teen point of view, LMS retrieves the "Rebel With Good Cause" perspective of the genuinely teen point of view. The non-conformity of the family is meant to be not just humourous but also meaningful. The blend is akin to poignancy except that poignancy comes out of mature reflection whereas this is all about youthful immediacy. Indeed, feeling unhappy about being trapped in The Now is the pacifying sine qua non of any adolescent genre because - "He'll get over it." As indeed he does in LMS. As indeed they all do. Happy families. Happy endings. No (REAL) worries. Grandpa went out in style and we just know that dad getting over his Mr. Winner complex will, go figure, improve the family's fortunes.

I enjoyed LMS. I liked it for not actually being that funny. I'm not saying the relative non-funniness of it is a sign that is is deep, profound. No way. It is truly trivial, trite even. But the relative non-funniness of it I respect as a sign of the film's committment to an authentically adolescent frame of mind, an intelligent one no less. It's not just hip that grandpa snorts horse and mom puffs on butts, that uncle is too into Proust and junior too into Nietzsche. No, it's so hip it celebrates these misfits, it makes a virtue of their failings, it promotes non-conformity. Of course, the critique coming off all of this is shallow in the extreme. Attacking beauty pagents and self-help programs for be being the vulgar expressions of the culture that they are, is shooting fish in a barrel. But it would be silly to expect more from LMS' truly teenage point of view. Honestly, they drive a VW Microbus. Talk about a tired semiotic for hippie rebellion, it's not even nostalgic at this point, it should have its own key on the keyboard.

And there are some funny bits. And the ensemble cast works well together, although I didn't buy waspy Kinnear as the son of super Yiddish Arkin. And the little girl is a gem. And it might even win some prize tomorrow night, although I doubt it. But I've already forgotten half of the movie and before long, I'll get over it.

And Dan Responds:

No, this won't win any prizes tomorrow, for two reasons. First, as you and Woody know, comedy sits at the children's table when it comes to awards. There are exceptions that prove the rule, including the Woodman's own films, but this leads to the second reason it won't win anything, which is that LMS ain't no vintage Allen. But it is pretty decent for Hollywood escapist fare, and maybe, if Arkin keeps a low enough profile that fools voters into thinking that he really has died, mebbe he can sqeak out a victory in the best supporting actor category (though I kinda preferred Carell's more dialed back performance to Arkin's Grampa Brown Sugar's over the top-ness, but that's has less to do with the quality of the work--both actors are great, and do just what they're supposed to do with their parts--and more to do with the way the characters are written), but the odds are against him.

I enjoyed some of LMS's more subversive elements, particularly the striptease at the beauty pagent, both Arkin's and Carell's advice to the depressed kid and grandpa's relationship with his granddaughter, but the parent's really didn't work for me. I like both Kinnear and Collette as actors, but Kinnear's a cartoon buffoon (until the finale when he finally shows up parent-wise) and Collette has been given a rather thankless part as ineffectual mom and wife. She sorta buys into her hubby's inspirational schemes, but only so long as there's a chance to make some dough. Also, she tries to be a mom to her kids, but is consistently overwhelmed, overruled or outparented by others around her. And as you noted, some of the pot shots the film takes at contemporary society are too easy. Given that we have a Proustian scholar on the bus, you'd think there'd be an attempt to take digs at some of the more deeply-rooted of this society's ills.

That said, I can't deny that I had a pretty good time while it made its way across the screen. As you said, the film takes these characters seriously--some deserve it, some don't, but at least the film is lacking in po-mo smirk--and that has got to count for something. There's real existential angst here with the kid, Arkin and Carell, and it isn't resolved painlessly. So, despite some missteps, this is not your standard Hollywood road trip/voyage to awareness flick, so you've gotta give the film some props for that.

Score: 68/100