"The Bling Ring" (2013), Celebrity Obsession, and Cultural and Personal Vacuity

After watching the young burglars in The Bling Ring rob the houses of celebrities, party, drink and do drugs, and attempt to emulate the very people they steal from, writer-director Sophia Coppola does something bold. She denies us the opportunity to see their trial. The film shows the courtroom doors close only to cut to the same set of doors re-opening and the young criminals exiting. We hear their sentences read by the judge in a voiceover set to their slow motion departure. They are punished but we are unable to be given pleasure in watching them be punished.

The narrative choice matters because the film really isn't an indictment of the vapidness and emptiness of the lifestyle of its characters. It's a critique of the larger culture that breeds this kind of behavior in the first place. The young celebrity obsessed teens rob celebrities' homes in order to appropriate some of the celebrity's status and wealth. And yet, it never brings them any more contentment; they can't stop stealing from the homes, and using their gains in order to party and look like the celebrities they steal from.

When they're caught, they never seem to be upset with their actions, but rather upset with being unable to get away with their crimes. Yet the brilliant irony of the film is that they end up getting exactly what they want by being arrested. They are turned into celebrities in their own right, chased after by the paparazzi and news reporters and thrown into the scrutinizing public spotlight they always yearned for. Sure, we're infuriated and baffled by their behavior, but we're also infatuated by it. Why else would anyone desire to be like Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan? We create a strange dichotomy: criticizing them for their excessive and naughty behavior, but encouraging it through tabloids and fashion mags.

While too much of The Bling Ring reads as obvious, and even a bit on the nose, that might just be, in part, due to its protagonists being loud and brash. They yell out for attention, much like their flashy jewelry and outfits. The character of Marc (Israel Broussard) is where Coppola attempts to make it most explicit how this lifestyle isn't just empty but rather the people living it are aware, on some level, of its emptiness -- even if Coppola doesn't seem to go far enough in explaining or rounding out the character (But then again, with the help of the late cinematographer Harris Savides, Coppola's style is highly impersonal and detached). Marc gets caught up in the lifestyle because he finally, for once in his life, has the attention he's never felt he had, or deserved, in the form of his friendship with the other teens  (Interestingly enough, Marc is the only male member of the Bling Ring outfit, and the only one who seem to show genuine guilt). These characters are crying out for attention, any attention at all, and at any cost.

Perhaps this is best seen in the character of Nicki (a scene-stealing performance by Emma Watson). Watson's performance is delightfully hammy, but somehow it never reads as too over-the-top. It rings true for this kind of fame fixated persona. Of all the characters, she most closely looks and acts like the vacuous celebs she imitates. She's a total ditz, but she's also, surprisingly and insidiously intelligent, utilizing her good looks and angelic baby face to get away with bad behavior. And the film, ends on her, looking out at us, while on a talk show, and building up an actual celebrity status from her time as a criminal. It's a darkly cynical end-note which implicates us as just as responsible for the Bling Ring's behavior as they are.

"All That Heaven Allows" (1955), and Social Propriety and Conformity

Late in All That Heaven Allows, the widow Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) takes her new fiance Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson) out to a party to prove to herself and society at large that the age and social class differences between the couple don't matter. Ron is a much younger, much less wealthy man, and Cary initially fights her very real feelings due to a weary understanding of the consequences she will face if they date. When the town begins gossiping and rumors start spreading, it's not just an idle threat but a personal and real one which, rightfully, makes Carry feel as though she might not be able to liver her life unaffected.

Amongst the many striking and frustrating hypocrisies the film presents, perhaps the one which stands out strongest of all occurs when a much younger woman at the gathering, set to marry a man more than twice her age, quietly passes judgement on the couple. The film subtly draws attention to the twisted double standard for men and women. Cary is expected to marry again right away, and yet when a man her age, Harvey (Conrad Nagel), believes he's coming to her rescue by offering a marriage proposal, she gingerly rejects. Harvey offers her companionship but not romance or love, but romance and love are exactly what Cary desires. Yet everyone is too pigheaded, stubborn and stuck in their ways to understand why she would ever want to date a man like Ron.

Even Cary's two grown children angrily reject the possibility or legitimacy of the engagement. They have much greater reason to be upset and concerned than others who take the relationship as a personal insult. Not only is it a personal and honorary humiliation, but her son and daughter feel the burden of the public scrutiny and worry about the strain on their personal and social image. However, no one is considering Cary's feelings or emotions. They can't see past the age difference or the social class gap. Cary is transgressing boundaries, but she keeps running into people who've made it their job to police those borders.

In short, the film discovers the despairing, complicated intersection of gender, class, and social and familial expectations and obligations of the socially loaded relationship. The setting is important for this intersection, heightening the level of indignant scrutiny; by placing it in the kind of small town where everyone knows everyone else, the film makes the social ties seem more important and exceptional than they might necessarily be otherwise (1950's audiences didn't necessarily always pick up on the barbed jabs at conformity in mainstream society, but they seem patently obvious today).

Director Douglas Sirk sticking a happy ending on feels a little dishonest. There's was a more poignant and more satisfying (perversely satisfying admittedly) potential conclusion to be had, which would have crushed the hopes of this relationship and taken the examination of the film's social problem to its logical conclusion. Before this though, the film finds a painfully realistic consideration of how society, family and social bonds restrict us whether we realize it or not and how we conform to the expectations of society even against our best interests. Cary confronting her social peers, her family and their expectations about class and age is as strong as it is due to how it rings true to the unfortunate social realities it speaks to. The melodrama might seem a bit more obvious today, but its message still remains strong and its complications are still potently frustrating and absorbing.

What Today's Action Films Could Learn From "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938)

The Adventures of Robin Hood is a classic Hollywood, swashbuckling adventure, which shamelessly embraces notions of honor and loyalty; it's unabashedly escapist cinema done right. Unfolding on a beautiful, eye-popping Technicolor canvas and filled with some wonderful set and costume design, the film is essentially an old fashioned tale of good and evil. However, Robin Hood surpasses many of today's action and adventure films by using its action in service of the narrative, and not the other way around.

Every fight sequence in the film is not only fantastically choreographed and staged, but always has clear conflicts and stakes. We understand the motivations of Sir John (Claude Rains), and we understand those of Robin (Errol Flynn) and his followers. Sir John wants to shut out Richard the Lionheart from the throne and take power; Robin wants to protect the poor and defenseless against Sir John's reign of terror. It's nothing fancy or complicated, but sometimes good drama doesn't need to be overly complex. This is not intended as a complex story; it aims to please, and its conflict is established quickly and then utilized to tell a fun story about heroics, bravery and loyalty. Unlike, say, Man of Steel the film doesn't claim its concerned with what it means to be a hero; it proves it to us. Man of Steel wants to get straight to the action and fighting without giving us a reason to care for Superman and his fight (Heck, General Zod's plan doesn't make a lick of sense). Worse still, if Supe had never come to Earth, the planet would never have been in trouble in the first place. How are we supposed to root for a hero who causes more harm than good? We can't.  

The action in Robin Hood is entertaining, but it's also inseparable from the story it's trying to tell. Robin fights to tests new recruits, and this shows his growing group of loyal followers. Otherwise, he fights against Sir John to set things right. In so many films recently, I'm simply waiting for the action to pass so we can get back to characters talking, but in Robin Hood the spectacle is great to look at; it's lush eye-candy. The action is uncluttered both visually and narratively. One of my favorite shots comes during the final fight sequence, a huge, sprawling battle taking place inside the king's castle. To give us a sense of the chaos of the battle, the camera gives us an extreme long shot which shows us the battle in its entirety. There are no quick cuts to create tension or make things seem more chaotic than they are. It's chaotic because we see that this is a two-fisted free-for-all taking up every inch of the castle's inner court.

There's also a sense of wit and excitement to everything taking place. The dialogue crackles with sharp-tongued wise cracking. The action has playfulness to it as well. Robin and his followers appreciate the merits and qualities of fighters. We see this in a number of one-on-one fights where Robin recruits new members of his merry men. Everyone involved seems to be enjoying the thrill of the fight and so it's hard not to enjoy it yourself. Even Sir John appears pleased to finally have a worthy adversary.

Robin Hood's fights are never overlong, but they also never feel perfunctory. They're to the point, never unnecessarily lingering. There's no excess. There's no belaboring. There is no complicated methods to attempt to excite us. What's exciting is right before our eyes. There's no outrageous twists. There's no overdone plotting. If Star Trek: Into the Darkness had half as coherent a plot as Robin Hood, the film would be far more entertaining. There are fun elements to Star Trek but they are lost in the midst of a overwrought narrative so convoluted and careless that it's insulting to the viewer. Robin Hood never insults; it entertains. It doesn't need some cheap gimmick or crazy twist to hold our attention.

The Adventures of Robin Hood helped inspire some of the myths surrounding the the legendary figure of Robin Hood, and I think that speaks a lot to the quality of the story. Whether they realize it or not, people have likely been influenced by the film. Into the Darkness, Man of Steel, Iron Man 3, and many other top box office earners aren't creating myth; they are sequels or re-adaptations, but they do little to set a new bar for the types of stories that can be told about their characters. They are also dark and brooding; there's no spark of life to them. Robin Hood is feel-good and innocent, but never to a fault; it believes its own values. I'm not sure today's blockbusters do. They want to please us, but they don't seem to know how to; there's no sense of enjoyment in pulling off a well put together piece of showmanship. The summer of 2013, on the blockbuster side of films, was one of the most widely panned summers of recent memory for films; people were frustrated with their film selections. May be we should look more to our film history and what worked and why it worked. Perhaps then we could get films which are more than fleetingly entertaining, but eternally memorable as well.

"Au Hasard Balthazar" (1966)

Au Hasard Balthazar begins with a highly sentimental montage about the childhood of of a handful of its prominent characters. Everything after these early scenes, however, is brutally unsentimental. Writer-director Robert Bresson goes extensively out of his way to show how innocent and naive his characters were at this age, and how much has changed since then.

Bresson uses the framing device of the life of the donkey Balthazar to weave the the various stories throughout together. Balthazar witnesses events but since he's only a donkey he takes everything in stride as a beast of burden. And this is important because he sees and experiences awful things throughout his short life; yet he never passes judgement. In deed, the film is often shot from lower angles, from the height level of Balthazar, and turns the perspective of the donkey into an objective observer of the film's story. The film is elliptical and minimalist, suggesting large information through small moments and episodes rather than a more straightforward narrative. While Bresson's style suggests an emotional distance from his story, he makes us feel deep emotion underneath the cool, objective gaze.

The film connects Balthazar with the timid Mari (Anne Wiazemsky), whose known the donkey since her childhood. Mari's quiet demeanor causes her to be misunderstood or abused by nearly every person around her. She wants to escape her her stifling life, but when her adventures away from home prove too much, she can't seem to settle down either. Balthazar, similarly, is repeatedly and needlessly beaten by individuals using his labor.  Balthazar's trials abroad from the small farm also end badly, but in its own ways the farm life isn't much better. Perhaps saddest of all, Mari's only true friendship was with Balthazar, but she slowly forgets about the animal. It's an unconventional friendship but the two got something out of it for a time, but as Balthazar increasingly starts to become emblematic of a youth long since fade into memory, he too is forgotten and overlooked.

The film is unafraid to make its characters come off as terrible people, but it also forms complex characters who aren't simply good or evil. Mari represents broken innocence. She's raped early in the film, and her treatment only becomes more depressing and miserable as the film goes on. But the film doesn't treat her like a convenient symbol; she has unforgivable things done at her expense, but the film makes her a full character who has complicated and plausible reasons for being complicit in her circumstances and treatment.

Balthazar offers so much to the people he helps and they offer almost nothing in return. The film depicts him in almost religious terms. He's called a saint at one point, and his death at the film's conclusion has a Biblical quality; Balthazar lies down in green pastures amongst a shepherd and his sheep, as if Balthazar is a Christ figure. He's suffered at the expense of the sins of his various owners, and he ultimately dies due to those sins.

It's undeniably a purposely challenging film, but its accumulated, deeply affecting weight about human existence is powerful and beautiful.

Grade: ★★★★

Doctor Who: "The Day of the Doctor"

Very early on under the auspices of Russel T. Davies' time as showrunner of Doctor Who, it became apparent that one writer stood a cut above the rest. He didn't write a lot of episodes, but whenever he did, every Doctor Who fan began to stop and take notice. His name, as you have probably already guessed, was Steven Moffat, a long time fan of the revived cult television series. Moffat had a flare for ambitious, inventive storytelling that pushed the limits of what the show would try to do on a week-to-week basis, and many of his episodes are considered the best of the bunch of the rebooted series. His episode "Blink" is widely regarded as one of the best episodes of the show ever, not just since the revival. And it makes sense; "Blink" tests what Who is capable of; it's knotty without becoming too heady; it's playful and suspenseful, but the fun is in service of a well-told story that never loses sight of its themes or characters.

When Moffat was handed over the mantle of showrunner, it seemed like a no brainer. Give the best writer the task of making the show the best it could be. Moffat, however, increasingly took the show in a rather different direction from his predecessor. Davies liked big emotions and melodrama, emphasizing plot over character. Moffat preferred big ideas and cerebral science fiction, focusing on plot over character. Moffat's not a bad writer (in fact, I would argue that season five, the first season under his guidance, is the best of new Who), but he's a bit of one trick pony. Granted so was Davies, but his emphasis on character made you forgive him just a little bit more when he faltered. If Doctor Who has had a problem in the Moffat era, it's due to Moffat creating wildly ambitious and complex narratives. The narratives are often so self-involved and intricate that it sometimes feels like Moffat is showing off how insane and awesome he can make his stories be. And in the process he's lost a little bit of the reason the show is so good to watch. I love cool stories, but Doctor Who has always been so much more than cool stories. It's been cool stories through a very specific message about humanity, and humanity as seen through the Doctor and his current companion.

"The Day of the Doctor" felt, to an extent, like a return to form for Moffat. It's still a story filled with energetic grandeur but it's in the service of some real, well-earned emotion. Though I'm still not sure how to feel about the retconning that takes place in the episode, there is simply too much in the episode representative of what the new Doctor Who has been at its best. The Doctor has to make a difficult decision, one with large consequences and emotional and moral complexity, and he has to do it in the face of his past and the show's history. The episode draws upon the events of the Time War, the darkest material of the new series, and it uses it in order to examine who the Doctor is and why he does what he does. A fact made most poignantly when Clara, the current companion and stand-in for us and humanity at large, steps up to remind the Doctor what that truly means. Moffat is audacious in returning to events seemingly tied up for good, but he never seems to be doing it to simply shake up the waters. In stead, he reminds us why we watch the show in the first place. This is a very fun episode, starting from the team up of the three incarnations of the Doctor, including John Hurt building an entire character in such a brief amount of time. But beyond filling the episode with nifty ideas and liveliness, Moffat also puts the show in conversation with its fifty year history while creating a road map for the future.

Doctor Who is one of the few television shows which can shift quite easily between deep emotion and entertaining comfort, high concept and quiet intimacy, small premises and big ideas, silly humor and compelling philosophy. It's a small show, but darn if it doesn't have so much more to offer on the inside, and this special was proof that it still has plenty to still do and say for a long time to come. Happy 50th Anniversary Doctor Who! Here's to fifty more.

"Ninotchka" (1939)

Ninotchka's views on Russians, the Soviet Union and communism are largely as terrible as one might expect a film produced in 1939 would be. The film presents a very simple divide between capitalism and socialism, and it inevitably favors and reaffirms American cultural values (There's also some American cultural imperialistic connotations). The later scenes set in Russia are embarrassingly stereotypical and even a bit propaghandistic.

But I'd like to offer up why all those unfortunate elements don't matter. Greta Garbo has genuine and hilarious comedic timing as Ninotchka, the stone-faced, overly rational Russian agent sent by the Soviet government to fix a botched deal to sell Russian jewels. For instance, take this scene where Ninotchka and her love interest Count Leon d'Algout (Melvyn Douglas) talk past one another:

Your General Appearance is Not Distasteful
Ninotchka — MOVIECLIPS.com

"Your general appearance is not distasteful," Ninotchka says without a hint of irony. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard at a single line. Ninotchka is a funny movie with a love for sharp dialogue and wit. The screenplay by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch (based on the story by Melchior Lengyel) goes a long ways towards creating sympathetic and recognizable characters, turning stock characters into flesh and blood figures -- including Sig Ruman, Felix Bressart, and Alexander Granach as the bumbling diplomatic envoy who goes ahead of Ninchotka. And even if they're restrained by the antics of the comedy and romance of director Ernst Lubitsch's production, Lubitsch never seems to be mocking them, so much as he appears to be poking fun at human nature more generally, and the Soviet Union specifically. Lubitsch also gives the production -- with his so-called "Lubitsch Touch" -- a sense of elegance and luxuriance. The film looks gorgeous. The people, the outfits, and the locales all look gorgeous, for that matter.

But, more importantly, the film actually gives a surprisingly detailed conversation, for its time, underneath its satire of the Soviet Union, about the Soviet-American divide. People discuss the merits of both philosophies and countries (even if it's highly reductive and not the film's primary concern, and even if the film looks down on the Russian side of things). America is often enough made to look silly in its habits and ways of thinking, and through Ninotchka -- and in contrast to her rival Grand Dutchess Swana (Ina Claire) -- the film offers up the possibility of there being some worthwhile qualities to Russia -- and, possibly strangest and most interesting of all, argues in favor of the Russian monarchy's overthrow (a point made all the weirder when you consider that the film is throwing satirical jabs at the oppression of the Soviet state). The film doesn't go far enough with this, but it's hard to fault a studio comedy, whose first concern was to be funny, with failing to be completely refined in its argument. It's refined in plenty of other regards to make up for its shortcomings.

Grade: ★★★

Divergent's Romantic Elements Do a Disservice to Its Story

 **Spoilers on Veronica Roth's book Divergent below**

Veronica Roth's young adult novel Divergent, the first book in a trilogy of dystopic narratives, is essentially a coming of age story dressed up in sci-fi genre components. In the future world of Divergent, society is divided into five different factions. Each believes that some fundamental, but different, character trait will be the salvation for humanity from preventing the same sort of catastrophe that caused the world to be dystopic in the first place -- currently none are right on that account, but they still fight passionately over the issue. At the age of sixteen, the members of all factions take a test which informs them what faction they are best suited for, and soon after they use the test to determine whether they wish to stick with their faction or leave their family behind for a faction that might just better suit their personality. Abandoning one's faction is perceived as equivalent to fratricide. It's a near treasonous act, not just because you can't see your family ever again, but because of the ferocious rivalries between the factions.

This is a compelling and largely original premise. Though the assignment of singular character traits to the factions is a bit on the nose, Roth uses the scenario to ask meaningful questions about identity, family and adolescence. Beatrice, the story's protagonist, is a member of the Abnegation faction, who preach selflessness, but Beatrice has always felt herself to be a black sheep. When Beatrice chooses Dauntless, who preaches bravery, and changes her name to Tris, Roth thoughtfully explores Tris' poignant and earnest awakening. Tris begins to realize a side of herself she never was able to express under the burden of Abnegation's restrictions. Yet at the same time, being Dauntless has its own rigors and strictures that are problematic in their own right. Neither experience is perfect, and both are limiting and freeing in different but crucial ways. 

It's at this point in the story where Roth drops the ball. She inserts one of the most overused elements of the coming of age story: a romance. Tris is a complex and strong enough character without needing to rely on a guy, and her circumstances are fascinating enough that they don't need romantic elements to spice it up. Why can't a female-centric story tells its narrative without it involving her falling for a man? The romance detracts from Roth plumbing the psyche of her protagonist and the implications of the world she's built up. But the romance is also just as problematic on its own terms. Four, Tris' initiation instructor, is predatory in his advances, and Tris is ultimately overwhelmed by his infatuation rather than starting from a place of real interest and reciprocating feelings. Roth robs Tris of agency. It doesn't help that Roth treats Four as if he's in his forties before backtracking much later and saying, "No, it's cool. He's eighteen. Only a two year difference". The shift from dirty old man stalking to idealized teen romance is jarring, not least of which is due to the former reading more honestly (When she gets to the second side of the romance, it's as if Roth is writing the perfect romance rather than one specific to her characters and this fictional world or the realities of young love).

It doesn't help that Roth uses Four to excessively underline the themes of the book. Tris doesn't recognize the inner strength being revealed by her circumstances? Have Four tell her repeatedly. Because obviously if the story hadn't been showing us this rather than telling us this, it was unclear. Where Roth fails most with the romance is lack of subtlety. Perhaps she doesn't trust her target audience, but it's a poor excuse. Teens will get what you're trying to get at; they can handle dark, weighty ideas and content. The book's best moments possibly come in its final chapters, where Roth ratchets up the tension and forces Tris to be witness to awful, violent experiences -- in a book that's already had plenty of unflinchingly vicious acts. A revolution, long hinted at, occurs, but rather than emphasizing the scope of the conflict, Roth wisely articulates it through intimacy. Tris reconnects with her family only to watch most of the people she care about die before her eyes while she's unable to prevent it from happening. The most compelling part of the book is Tris coming to terms with her family and who she is in regards to both her faction and her family. The romance serves neither of those.

It's not like I'm a jaded cynic who isn't won over by romance in his stories. But the romantic elements of Divergent feel like they were written for a very different story, as if Roth felt pressured to include them due to recent genre expectations. But Tris' experience is interesting for what it tells us about a young teen's struggles with and conception of the world, whether it be in Roth's dystopia or our world, which it at times reflects, and the book doesn't need to get some teen smooching on in order to achieve this. In fact, it ultimately does a major disservice to the thematic strength and insight of the narrative. The teen experience is not just about the butterflies of first romance and a more significant interest in the opposite sex, and Roth deals with those other far less considered aspects of the experience -- family, friendship, body image issues, bullying -- pretty well up until the point that the gooey, pure romantic relationship rears its ugly head.