China Celebrates Its Status As World’s Number One Air Polluter

My Year in Film Studies (Part 4)

For those who missed it, here is part 3

And but so now for my next trick....




My rationale for taking on 2001: A Space Odyssey next:

Up to now, we'd spent a fair bit of time looking at cinematic techniques and film narrative, with a minor devotion to the conventions of genre, so at this point in the course, I felt it was time to get into some serious auteur theorizin'. 2001 also allowed me to continue our study of genre, as this film pretty much sets the standard for sci-fi, while also getting into the kind of meaty intellectual material seldom afforded audiences of conventional Hollywood fare. So, pursuant of the rigourous study of auteur theory, and after surveying the class's ignorance on the topic and employing some book learnin', I reckoned it was time to get down to the dirty job of applying the newfound knowledge. And what better place to start than with the filmmaker who unlocked the magic of movies for me, one Mr. Stanley Kubrick. Specifically, I decided to show the students 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (the folks who climb those tall ladders to place the titles on movie marquees must have HATED Kubrick.) I had little doubt, in this age of irony, that Strangelove's satire would be a good fit, but I was filled with trepidation about starting with 2001.




It was actually a bit of a ballsy move, if I must stay so myself, to kick things off with 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film certainly has a devoted following, but it seems to me a eclectic crew made up of cinephiles and those for whom the film's tag line (The Ultimate Trip) would have been not merely a jumping off point for the movie, but a personal lifestyle, if you get my drift. And while these students had certainly proven themselves keen and capable up to this point, there was nothing we had seen that would challenge them and test their patience and open-mindedness like this film would. In fact, I had shown this film to a class of honours students about a decade ago, and the results were mixed. However, the film had done such a job on me as a ten year old, I couldn't resist the opportunity to see if the film still had that sort of power to shock and awe a group of youngsters.

Onward, outward and upward.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, USA/UK, Stanley Kubrick)

Picture this. I was an impressionable lad of ten when I wandered aimlessly into the movie theatre. My experience of film had been largely restricted by my own interests and the tastes of my disinterested parental units; I watched a lotta Disney. Which is to say, my cinematic aptitude was pretty much completely underdeveloped, and my expectations of what a film should look like, be and do almost entirely trite. I had pretty much no experience with the sci fi genre, and had never even heard the term "art film." I was a rube, in almost everyway imaginable.




Boy was I in for a surprise. Kubrick's film unhinged me. 2001:ASO lifted the skull off the top of my head. It rearranged my pia mater. This film shook me all night long. I mean think about it. What kind of film takes you on a four million year journey through space and time that begins in violence and ends with a birth? What sort of film has no dialogue for the first 25 minutes, and doesn't introduce its protagonist until the 55 minute mark (Keir Dullea's Odysseyian-monickered Dave Bowman)? And what sort of genius makes his computer antagonist (HAL 9000) compellingly human and his human protagonist cool and unaffecting? And how does one teach a film like this without getting bogged down in the interpretations and analysis, nevermind Kubrick's audacious decision to mix in the temporary score of classical music (Bach, Strauss) with the avande garde work of Gyorgy Ligeti, its undeniable technical brilliance (its special fx remain state of the art over four decades later) and crazy narrative courage? What kind of movie dares to bore the audience with the seemingly endless passages of what outer space must really be like, full of silences and inaction? What sort of filmmaker wears his coolness and aloofness like a badge of honour, defying the audience to find an emotional entry point into his work? The sort of film and filmmaker that hopes to blow our minds, apparently.




There were many approaches I could have taken to begin our study of this film, including a more literary study of the story's Odyssey-ian elements, but this was meant to be primarily a look at Kubrick as an exemplar of the auteur theory. I chose to analyze the material that made such an impression upon me as a child, as I figured this might mirror the experiences of students coming to the film for the first time. No easy task, however, given how startlingly unique this film is, not to mention the awesome scope of the story. Starting with a memorable sequence from pre-history featuring contact between some sort of apish homo erectus-like creatures and extra-terrestrial intelligence in the form of a screaming monolith, and finishing with the birth of a Star Baby, the next stage of human evolution, 2001: A Space Odyssey covers four million years of human evolution. Given the vast scope of its narrative, it seems somewhat frivolous to get into an extended discussion of the film's key plot points, but let me note the following. When I saw this film as a ten year old, the film's bookkends are the sequences did me in, and these are the moments that I used as entry points into the film in class. The opening sequence with the apes impressed me because I had just seen (and mightily enjoyed) Planet of the Apes, and Kubrick's creatures were creations of an entirely different order. Not only were there no visible signs that these were human beings dressed up in monkey suits, but also the lives of these early humans were grim in a way I had not seen depicted on screen before. Despite the fact that there exists considerable scholarship that suggests life in early hunter gatherer societies was actually pretty good, as people spent a minimal amount of time and effort foraging for food, with the bulk of their time spent socializing, I will cut Kubrick and Clarke (Arthur C., author of the novel and co-writer of the script) some slack here. While anthropologists may have shown that many of the innovations that resulted in human evolution came about as a result of co-operation, it remains that conflict makes for more compelling drama. Culminating in one of the most famous jump and match cuts in cinematic history, the ape section of 2001 proved a fascinating portal into the labyrinthian chambers of the Kubrick's often probing and inscrutible mind.




And it is to the film's great credit that even after the movie ends, the portal remains open. The film's concluding passages return us to the silences that greated us at the film's start. While man was once pre-verbal, it appears that in our next incarnation we will be post-verbal. And it is here that Kubrick unpacks some of his philosophical baggage. The film's finale attacks us with images that the director refuses to explain and actions he declines to define, leaving us with many questions, but charging us with parsing out the answers as well. In a provocative echo of the way that the film both starts and ends in silence, when Dave passes through the stargate and lands up in the alien zoo, his journey both ends and begins. And likewise, the audience's experience of the film must start as it ends, for the enigmatic imagery that concludes Kubrick's film allows us to either dismiss his work as pretentious drivel or challenges us to embrace the ambiguity, and use it as a springboard into interpretation.





I don't mean to put too fine a point on it, but my experience of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came at a time (the fall of 1968) when such a millenial date evoked images either utopian or apocalyptic, was life-altering. Kubrick's film not only changed the way I viewed film, but the way I experienced art and life. It raised the bar, opened me up, challenged my expectations and transported me to a whole new world. It bored me and thrilled me, exasperated and enthralled me. But probably the most important thing that 2001 did for me was to open me up to the idea that movies can be art. More to the point, I saw for the first time that a movie can ask all sorts of questions without providing a single conclusive answers, remaining open to the perceptions and interpretations of the viewer. This was quite a novel concept to me, one that I would come to recognize as the key that would unlock many of the great works of literature, music and painting to me, and to see film elevated to this status made quite an impression. And it has shaped my expectations of film ever since.

What worked:

The film certainly framed the whole issue of the auteur theory nicely, as there are few narrative filmmakers who marry a distinctive style and challenging content like Stanley Kubrick. The open-endedness of the film also allowed personal entry points for individual response and interpretation that proved quite rewarding. Some students found the film's ambitions beyond their grasp, but because I maintained my policy that it was all right not to "get" the film, that experiencing it was enough, it seemed to alleviate concerns about the film's apparent inscrutability. And even more excitingly, some students actually embraced the film's baffling nature, and rather than being turned off by its WTF-ness, revelled in it. 2001 achieved pretty much everything I had hoped it would as a teacher, which is always a very cool thing. Overall, the film was rated 4.25/5 by students, and was in the upper half of the 20 films ranked by the class.

What didn't:

Despite reassurances that "getting it" isn't a necessary precursor to appreciating the film, some students remained unwilling to plumb 2001's cinematic depths, choosing instead to ride along on its occasional surface pleasures. Still, no one dismissed it outright, which is something I guess.

What I'd do differently:

I would put a little more time into establishing context, to clarify exactly how and why this film was so ground-breaking, as well as to explore the ways 2001 affected both genre and art films thereafter.


Would I do it again?

Absotively

Overall Grade: A

Team America: World Police (2004, USA, Trey Parker)


Meisters of the savage skewer, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, whose South Park TV show has, since 1997, set the standard for balancing hilarity and misanthropy, and whose debut feature film, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut upped that particular ante in rather staggering fashion, have apparently decided that the best way to face up to the dreaded sophomore jinx is to avoid comparison to their first film and skin a cat of an entirely different sort by shooting a film featuring puppets in the lead roles. Well, marionettes might be the more specific and accurate term to use, as the strings are most definitely still attached to these creations, and Stone and Parker are most certainly at the other end, yanking our collective chains in this full frontal assault on American ethnocentrism, overblown action movies, atavistic terrorists, lonely North Korean tyrants, self-righteous Hollywood actors and, most importantly, the mainstream audience’s delicate sensibility and good taste.








Team America: World Police is deadly funny throughout its first two reels, as the titular law enforcement agency roams the world thwarting terrorists and making the world safe for folks, whether they deserve it or not. In what is clearly a spoof of the testosterone-driven Bay/Bruckheimer/Simpson/Scott school of filmmaking, we bear witness to many a fine shoot ‘em up as the TA crew does what it does best, bust things up. Everything from the in your face close-ups to the “blowed up real good” explosions, from the blustery and buffoonish 80s soundtrack to the blatantly xenophobic patriotism and all-around global cluelessness, where nations are described solely according to their distance from America, prove fine fodder for satire. The latter is particularly well-spoofed in the sequences where Team America purports to be protecting people and their cultural landmarks, only to blow them to smithereens as they attempt to catch the film’s various nefarious terrorists. The opening scene in Paris, where Team America manages to simultaneously topple the Eiffel Tower and crush the Arch du Triomphe, then blast the Louvre into tiny little pieces, as well as a later episode in Egypt, where the pyramids and the Sphinx are reduced to rubble in short order, provide inspiring examples of this.

The choice of marionettes for this enterprise is particularly clever, given that their ability to emote is about on par with the sort of one-dimensional performances that such films generally feature, while the constant reminder of how these heroes are merely puppets dangling from the end of strings gives the film added ironic cachet. Also, and as you might expect with a Parker/Stone endeavor, Team America’s musical numbers are first rate, with Kim Jung Il’s “I’m So Lonely” the film’s emotional highlight, if such a qualifier can be used for this irreverent film. Unfortunately, after building up such a fine edifice of deadly-aimed humour, some cracks begin to show in the foundation as Parker and Stone allow puerile humour to dominate the film’s final reel. When Team America stoops to featuring an acronym for the actors it is taunting, it risks redefining juvenile humour. Perhaps it is the dour left-winger in me, but what were supposed to be whoops of laughter during the various decapitations of Hollywood activists failed to elicit much more than a shrug outta me, as they proved too easily and relentlessly targeted.

Still, don’t get me wrong, the press-obsessed self-serving-ness of many armchair Hollywood activists strikes me as a perfectly legitimate target for satire; however, you’ve gotta think that there are more interesting hypocrites to pick on in the holier-than-thou sweepstakes, like certain very powerful political leaders and their evil minions, mayhaps? Just think of the opportunity squandered as Parker and Stone could have used the marionettes to show quite literally just who is the puppet and who the puppet master in the current administration. Also, by reducing much of that attack on the actors—after opening with a very funny spoof of Rent, a Broadway show called Lease, where “everybody has AIDS”-- to an adolescent and homophobic pun is a wasted opportunity, the recurring shot at Matt Damon, which is funny in both concept and realization, notwithstanding. That complaint aside, the fact that the world’s fate is, in the end, determined by an acting competition between the protagonist Gary and his idol Alec Baldwin (“the greatest actor in the world!”) proves funny particularly given how the film has been mocking actor’s sense of self-importance throughout. If only the lads behind South Park had managed to maintain that level of comic performance throughout the entire running time of Team America: World Police, it just might have put the “F” back in Freedom, which, if you’re counting, is a bargain at a mere buck oh five.

Primer (2004, USA, Carruth)

A little Memento mixed with a smidgen La Jetee, Primer is the first film I’ve seen since David Lynch’s nearly-impenetrable but clearly-brilliant Mulholland Dr. that I have wanted to re-watch IMMEDIATELY. I have restrained myself from doing so, and this review is based upon a single viewing, so forgive me if I get some things wrong; this is just the sorta film that will do that to you.

So for starters we have Aaron (writer/director Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan), a pair of ambitious and industrious 20-something engineer-types who work 50 hour weeks in the office, then spend most of their remaining waking hours toiling in Aaron’s garage on their next Great Scheme, a prototype for Who the Hell Knows What. I must confess that with only a smattering of undergraduate experience in the most vaguely of scientific endeavors that I have pretty much zero idea what Aaron, Abe an their two increasingly out-of-the-loop partners Robert (Casey Gooden) and Phillip (Anand Upadhyaya) are talking about for the first ten minutes of this film. But the beauty of Primer is that it matters far less that you get the jargon and much more that you dig the big picture, which in this case is yer standard scientist at odds with questions of personal ethics sort of thing. However, Primer is anything but standard in its approach and execution. The most exciting and promising debut effort of this already pretty decent year for films, Primer is one whacked-out mindfuck, a discombobulating, thrilling, challenging and meticulous filmmaking exercise.

Revealing too much of the plot would run the risk of ruining much of the impact of the first-time viewing impact, so I will limit myself to noting that Aaron and Abe make an unexpected and startling discovery while tinkering in the garage, and it is the manner in which they deal with this discovery that gives the film much of its fascination. Primer takes a Kubrickian interest in the way that technology de-humanizes its "masters" and gives a stark lesson in how we have progressed materially and intellectually, but remain largely children emotionally and ethically. Aaron and Abe may have the ingenuity to make a startling discovery, but lack the integrity or grounding necessary to use it wisely (which is to say, probably not at all.) And once they tinker around with their discovery, the partners find that there’s no going back. Okay, that’s not strictly true, given how they end up messing with the time-space continuum; due to the Faustian deal the pair make with themselves, time becomes a commodity to be bought, traded and sold. Regardless, neither Abe nor Aaron prove capable of harnessing the forces they’ve unleashed both within and without, and their steady downward spiral proves to be dreadfully compelling. Is theirs the fate of all clever and ambitious people who lack the moral compass to properly direct their energies and intelligence?

Filmed on 16mm, Primer manages to find a distinctive and interesting look, somewhere between the graininess of pulp noir and bleached, washed out look of a low budget independent film, which this most certainly is, given its $7,000 budget. Carruth, who also wrote the film’s score among his many duties here, has made a film that relies on ideas and moral conundrums for its impact, rather than snazzy audio-visual, computer-generated effects, which makes sense from a budgetary standpoint, but is also just a little ironic, given the central role of technology in the film’s subject matter. While for many the film’s elliptical narrative, which leaps around like an ion on crack, not to mention Aaron’s from-the-other-side riddling voice-over narration, creates an oft-maddening puzzle, for those up to the challenge this film harbors hidden rewards. Perhaps more importantly, even if its science doesn’t add up, the story itself does somehow (almost magically) manage to cohere.

Then again, I’ve only seen Primer once, so I could be talking through my sleeve here. After all, there is much I have yet to forget. Give me time.

2046 (2004, Hong Kong, Wong Kar Wai)

Those of us who fell in love with the seductive and luscious In the Mood for Love have been waiting a loooooong time for this one, Wong Kar-Wai’s much-anticipated follow-up to perhaps the most highly-regarded film of this millennium. The famously meticulous director debuted his latest film at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2004, with Wong Kar-Wai reportedly working on the final cut a mere days before the festival’s launch. Ominously, the film did not receive any awards, despite the fact that WKW acolyte Quentin Tarantino chaired the jury. Yet, despite such harbingers of disaster, 2046 proves to be a slippery and trippy tale whose charms may at first seem somewhat elusive, but whose sensuous imagery and melancholy romanticism will eventually win you over.

The wait has most certainly been worth it.

The enigmatically-titled film refers to a hotel room number, but it is also the year in which some of the pulpy tales of our hero, the fiction-writing playboy Cow Mo Wan are set, where the number also doubles as the emotional equivalent of the Holy Grail to his characters, who seek out their very own room 2046 in order to recapture memories of past romantic bliss. This is appropriate enough given that as the film begins is ensconced in room 2047 so he could keep tabs on the goings-on in the room across the hall, the number of which reminds him of his one great love, the very beautiful and very married Si Lu Zhen (Maggie Cheung) with whom he had once shared a room with this very same number.







While most film cycles aim towards some sort of resolution in their final installments, things in 2046 don’t come full circle so much as they move incessantly forward. The cycle of love, betrayal and heartache as initiated in The Days of Being Wild and continued through In the Mood for Love, claims even more victims in 2046, as the trio of 1960s-set Hong Kong films culminates here with Wong’s most worthy successor to those fine films. Just as Maggie Cheung’s Si Lu, whose heart was crushed by Leslie Cheung in Days of Being Wild, is subsequently unable to give herself over to the smitten Mr. Chow in In the Mood for Love, in 2046 it is Leung’s character who, having made but a brief cameo appearance in Days, and perhaps in response to this romantic defeat in the middle film of this troika, retreats from emotional contact with women, preferring instead a series of affairs, thereby carrying the misery forward by inflicting the pain on others that was previously inflicted on himself. In this vital role Tony Leung does little to damage his reputation as my favourite film actor working today, conveying his character’s complexity with characteristic subtlety and grace.

The idea, first posited in Days of Being Wild, that even the most brief (“one minute”) relationships can achieve a level of intensity that will have an effect that will be lasting, lifelong and even potentially disastrous, is moved forward here, and leaves us with a sense that in these days of transience, when we treat people with the disposability of a razor blade, it ought not to surprise us that we will occasionally come away from these sorta relationships with the wounds that never heal. In 2046 the misery is fanned out, as Leung engages in three affairs of the heart, drawing Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi and Faye Wong (all of whom are marvelous here, by the way) into his net, resulting in a growth in the web of romantic dissatisfaction that, it is implied, will continue to grow, now at exponential rates. Despite the fact that the relationships are varied and distinct, and include intellectual, emotional and carnal elements, they all share one quality: They are doomed to end badly.

Yet, while I make the film sound incessantly grim, it is anything but, for 2046 is a celebration of a very specific time and place that clearly has deep meaning for WKW, and his affection for it is evident in every frame. With trusty sidekick and director of photography Christopher Doyle at his side, 2046 is filled with the sorta eye candy that we’ve come to expect from the films of Wong Kar-Wai. Doyle’s painterly eye for composition and his wizardry with the camera includes a self-referential shot on the train platform of his famous coffee shop shot in Chungking Express is matched here by Wong’s artful use of a rich and sensual colour palette. Wong’s pitch perfect set design is aided by a delightful merger of music and image that results in a seemingly effortless evocation of the period. And even though some have complained about the sometimes-cheesy futuristic CGI effects, even this fits the film’s overall aesthetic in that they are used only when we are plunged into Leung’s fictional futuristic fantasy world, where the world is filled with people and things of increasing cheapness and superficiality. So while 2046 may be a melancholic and elegiac story of damaged and yearning people unhappy in and out of love, it is also a multi-sensual delight, and I will consider myself greatly blessed if I see a more glorious piece of celluloid art this year.

Downfall (2004, Germany, Oliver Hirschbiegel)

Hitler’s last days, as told through the eyes of his young and relatively naïve secretary Trudl Junge (Alexandria Maria Lara), is the premise of Downfall. Apparently the first German-made film to attempt to understand these the darkest days of recent history, the film, despite some structural defects and tonal inconsistencies, proves worthy of the accolades heaped upon it.

Downfall’s cinema verite style is occasionally at odds with it’s dramatic structure, as the documentary feel of the majority of scenes in the Fuhrenbunker clash mightily with the socially-conscientious moments in the battle field, particularly when the director gets all Spielberg on us, both visually and melodramatically, by following the fate of a 12 year old Hitler Youth (all that’s missing is to clothe the boy in some computer generated colour-enhanced red garb). The director also borrows visually and thematically from Visconti’s The Damned, particularly when counterpointing the decadence of many who live in the Fuhrer’s bunker with the horrific reality of the soldiers dying so needlessly in above-ground bunkers mere yards away. And while it is certainly an effective technique, there are moments of contrast—children being rent apart by mortar moments after the servants set out the china for an evening meal in the bunker-- that feel a little too convenient and contrived.







Of all those who inhabit the bunker with Hitler, the Goebbel’s family prove the most interesting. They are this film’s von Trapp’s, a clutch of precious children singing nursery rhymes and bedtime tunes for the entertainment of the faithful. Papa Goebbels is a loyal soldier right to the bitter end, while Frau Goebbel’s slavish devotion to Hitler and the ideals of National Socialism builds to the movie’s most potent and memorable moment, when the mother gives way to the ideologue and murders her lovelies in their sleep rather than have them live in a world where all of their Nazi ideals have been crushed. In what could have been both a thankless and one-note role, Corinna Harfouch, an actress with whom I am completely unfamiliar, makes a deep and marked impression here as Frau Goebbels. In the above-mentioned passage, worthy of the best horror story, and which makes much of the rest of the film pale by comparison, she gives a terribly human performance.

All of which is not to say that Downfall is unsuccessful: Far from it. The film is an eerie and effective recreation of Nazi Germany’s final days, due in no small part to the remarkable performance by Bruno Ganz, that great Spencer Tracy-like potato-faced actor, who captures well both the humanity and demagoguery of the man. The queer sense that I got of watching Nero fiddle while Rome burns is keenly observed in a variety of well-paced and darkly perverse scenes in the bunker, particularly when soldiers and secretaries, officers and their consorts drink, dance and cavort while Berlin falls to the Russians. While the film sometimes takes on a bit more than it can chew, with more characters and story lines than time and space to due them all justice, it is nonetheless rarely less than compelling.

North Country (2005, USA, Niki Caro)


The road to Hell may or may not be paved with good intentions, but it is most certainly littered with the battered corpses of a mediocre movie or two. North Country, unfortunately, is just such a film. Caving into the pressure that so many other films that have likewise been “inspired by” real events, North Country fritters away an engaging set-up by resorting to melodramatic histrionics and clichéd courtroom “surprises” that consistently undercut the inherent drama of the story.


North Country is not the first starring role Charlize Theron has taken since her Oscar-winning performance in Monster, but it does return her to similar territory, playing against type as a downtrodden working class single mother of two named Josey Aimes. “Inspired by” a true story, Theron play a woman who has suffered one indignity and humiliation after another her entire life, but who finally decides that rather than continuing to passively tread water in the pool of oppression and degradation that threatens to drown her, she will rise up against her sea of enemies.

Despite this, the film begins promisingly. Director Niki Caro, whose Whale Rider suffered from some similar narrative dysfunction, but which still managed to rise above it’s limitations because of the sense of authenticity she and the actor’s brought to the mythic tale, uses sound and image effectively in order to immerse us into the grim reality of this mining community. Early scenes that show Josey struggling to get back on her feet after leaving an abusive husband, and trying regain the respect of her family and affection of friends are nicely subdued and effectively acted by the always terrific Francis McDormand, as Josey’s best friend Glory and Richard Jenkins, who plays her father Hank. Indeed, the strained relationship of father and daughter is the meat of most of what is interesting about this film, and it is a shame that this tale is abandoned in order to surrender the film to the tedious conventions of the bio-pic and the predictable twists and turns of the courtroom drama.

However, while Caro builds up cachet with naturalistic imagery and realistic tensions, she fritters it all away when Josey’s story proper begins once she enters the employment in the mines. Suddenly, realism gives way to movie-of-the-week melodramatics, as Josey’s predicament is played out against a vast inert ocean of apathy. The union meeting, where all sorts of abuses are publicly heaped upon Josey, may be the most egregious example of blatant emotional manipulation in this film, but it isn’t the only one. Making matters even worse is the shameless decision to pull out of the closet all the creaky mechanisms of the courtroom trial, the exclamation point of which I will not reveal since it is clearly intended to be the climax of the film. But, it is every bit as shameless as the aforementioned union meeting, and just as hopelessly hokey.

As is often the case with films based, however loosely, upon real events, the hoped-for veracity that such real-life inspirations provide for the filmmakers, these also often create narrative straightjackets from which the story cannot escape. This is particularly true when it involves the stories of people who are still alive, as the storytellers must pay scrupulous attention to not slandering any of the real people whose stories are being told, which unfortunately usually results in banal characterizations and clichéd plotting. North Country is inevitably a victim of both, as Josey rises so far above her adversaries as to undercut the perceived tensions between her goodness and her fellow miner’s (and their corporate and union boss’s) evil. It’s an appropriately stacked deck, as there’s little doubt whom we should be cheering for, but there’s also never really much doubt about the outcome. And do we really need the so-called veracity of reality to make these sorts of tales work? As Polish filmmaker Krystof Kieslowski learned decades ago when he stopped making documentaries and began making feature films, it is much more rewarding and liberating to abandon reality and embrace truth. It is possible to create a thoroughly meaningful and affecting story that touches on all the same themes as the so-called “real” story without having to concern yourself about whose feelings might be getting hurt, or how closely you are following the facts of the actual situation. That said, Raging Bull is a pretty good “inspired by” film, so maybe the real lesson to take away from all of this is that only directors who are relatively fearless should attempt them.

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