"Young Mr. Lincoln" (1939) and Mythologizing Our History

In the first scene we get of  Henry Fonda as Abraham Lincoln in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln, Lincoln humbly speaks before a small crowd. He's running for the legislature, and he tells them, "I'm not here to make a speech". He informs them of his political principles and lets them speak for him. But it's the manner in which Fonda delivers the monologue and his dialogue that follows that's equally as important as what he's saying. Fonda slows down his words to a Kentuckian, slow-as-molasses drawl. He punctuates breaks between lines by looking down at his feet as if he's uncomfortable in his own skin, and doesn't care much for making a big show or drawing much attention to himself.

Fonda isn't Lincoln in the film so much as he's the Lincoln we imagine the man to have been. He's the Lincoln of folk tales and high school history textbooks. This isn't the raging candor of Daniel Day-Lewis' performance in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. The film is purposely obfuscating some of the truth about the man. To quote another Ford film, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend". This is the aw-shucks, gee-whiz country boy who believed truth, justice, and the American way. It's the formative years of the man. He's free of wrinkles and weary signs of age. He's, in stead, a fresh, youthful idealist.

In the central story of the film, he takes on a court case for two young men accused of murder; he saves them from a lynching, and makes the town realize its civility and morality. Everyone deserves a proper trial by a jury of their peers, and Lincoln gains the moral high ground by preaching the necessity of justice. For most of the case, it seems Lincoln is defending men who are guilty, not because he agrees with their actions, but because they are only human and citizens of this great nation. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, Lincoln finds a way to win the case, and impresses everyone (Although, it's a surprisingly morally complex situation up until that impossible reversal).

Lincoln is placed on an impossibly high pedestal. He calls himself "simple"; he's a soft-spoke individual of integrity and wit. When he gets a law book, he looks at it not as a daunting task but rather with honest excitement at the potential to discover. He pauses after reading a passage that interests him, and notes how right is right, and wrong is wrong. He's so darn earnest we can tell he believes it.

The film is an act of mythologizing, but Fonda's performance is still a good one. He's pretty perfect for this version of Lincoln. Not only does he fit the part, but he almost makes us believe in the sincerity of his character. His body movement is as measured as his speech patterns; he looks like he's constantly considering his words. This is only one story of Lincoln, the legendary figure; the film ends with him walking away, probably to save some other innocent with his folksy wisdom.

"Computer Chess" (2013)

Computer Chess is a relentlessly droll and dour film. Writer-director Andrew Bujalski tells the film at an almost clinical remove; he's detachedly observing a group of computer programmers competing in a computer chess competition in the early 1980's. But he's not really judging them. Though there's some humor to be found in their behavior, and it is a funny film, Bujalski seems more concerned with noting the peculiar daily beats and idiosyncrasies of this kind of event and these sorts of people. In deed, the film does a wonderful job of recreating the 1980's time and place its set in, keenly observing period detail. At times the film is a mockumentary with individuals filming the competition. The film is shot in grainy Sony tube vintage black and white video as if it's found footage, but it slowly becomes clear that some of what we see could not possibly have been filmed by anyone. And that's before Bujalski really starts taking liberties with the limitations of his stylistic convention.

For Computer Chess starts out in abstraction and then turns its thematic interests into weirdly cerebral realities (like the hard sci-fi these geeks are likely fond of). Whether it be connection and loneliness, or the shrinking gap between humanity and technology, or power and knowledge and their purpose, the film takes ideas to their logical (or, sometimes, illogical) extremes. A film like The Social Network had similar themes but explored them through procedural. Chess, however, is purposely misshapen. It doesn't rise to a high emotional point, but plummets stuttering to an anticlimax fitting for its isolated, frustrating introverts and outsiders.

If its ending feels like its of little consequence, that's likely because the events of the film were equally of little consequence. The chess players realize that beyond a handful of obsessive techies, no one will care much about the slow trudge of technological advancement or the potential denigrating effects it might have on humans in the long run. We see the members of the competition slowly fall victim to their own worse peccadilloes, missing opportunities or going after the wrong gains. Though they may have done plenty for the greater good of society and the scientific community, they also consistently seem to do it at unconscious, or, at least, suppressedly self-aware, personal loss and suffering.

Grade: ★★★

"Resident Evil" (2002)

Resident Evil for better and (mostly) worse abides my no standard film logic. It's not a horror, action or sci-fi film (though it has elements of all those). The plot hurdles forward without batting an eye at logic or motivation. Characters are there to be framed by the camera, fight off threats, or die at the hands of zombies and computer programs. In short, it is a glorified video game (perhaps not entirely surprising considering it's actually based on a video game). Writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson is a competent director who knows how to get a desired effect. The film looks and acts like video game, but it also mostly never looks cheap (except for some poor CGI towards film's end).

However, as much as I love zombie dogs getting kicked in the face by a kickass woman, no amount of technical or visual competency can make up for how empty and hollow Anderson's story is. Anderson's characters are convenient and disposable props for the film's action setpieces. The setting, an underground, high tech research facility, is unreal and undefined, serving only to look elegantly, technocratically cool. Anderson seems to have no real interest in exploring the bare-bones themes that underlie the film. The Umbrella Corporation is an overwhelming corporate, scientific and military evil, but the company is impossibly shadowy and all consuming. There's a potential critique of the military-industrial complex and corporate capitalism run a muck, but they are way, way down on the low end of the totem pole of the film's concerns.

The film revels in its superficiality, the object-ness of the environment and its characters. It pauses in moments of self-aware satisfaction at the glorious bombast on display. As if: Yea, did you see what just happened; wasn't that neat? If nothing else, my inner ten year old certainly got a kick out of it -- I don't mean that entirely as a dismissal or insult, but I don't intend it entirely as a plaudit either.

"The Devil's Rejects" (2005) and the Complications of Character Identification

Who are we meant to identify with in The Devil's Rejects? If you look at your options, it's either the corrupt police sheriff John Quincy Wydell (William Forsythe) who abuses his institutional authority to get revenge or the sadistic psychopathic mass murderers known as the Devil's Rejects (Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon Zombie, Leslie Easterbrook). And neither of those options look at all pleasing or satisfying. But Rejects doesn't seem all that keen on allowing pleasure to be had at any turn. Characters are colorful and interesting but never entirely lovably so, and the actions they take are disturbing at best and uncomfortably atrocious and excessive at worst. It's a highly sleazy and grisly film where torturous death and pain are the only certainty.

Initially the film seems poised to have us see the protagonist as the police. They're a bit douchily hyper-masculine but they have the goal of righteous justice on their side. They want to stop the reign of terror of the Rejects who are completely irredeemable. The Rejects, by contrast, are inbred hillbillies who have taken pleasure in gruesomely murdering countless people. They're horror movie villains shown plain as day for what they are: morally bankrupt maniacs. They know this is what they are and revel in every opportunity to be exactly what people see them as.

And yet, they are our protagonists, not the police. We spend the majority of screen-time with them as they struggle to stay ahead of the police and brutally kill people. But as the body count rises and viscera increases, it becomes harder and harder to sympathize with the characters. They're antiheroes, emphasis on the anti. It's a film shown largely from the perspective of the horror villain rather than the person who would normally be the hero.

But on the other hand, the sheriff's quest for justice doesn't contrast him as any better than the people he seeks to stop. The sheriff takes his task as a personal one; he hopes to avenge his brother, who died at the hands of the Rejects. Justice, however, quickly morphs into vengeance, where any gratifying retribution is lost. The sheriff's mission slowly drags him down to the level of the Rejects.

He's no better than them, and that's why Rejects reads so bizarrely as a viewing experience. Beyond the victims of the Rejects, there's no one who's clearly a decent person and didn't deserve their fate. The heroes have become just as bad as the villains, and the hero is okay with that as long as justice is served, no matter the cost. But it leaves the world feeling a bit more off-kilter, like the ground has been cut out from under our feet.

"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.