Blindspot 2012: Nil by Mouth

Written and Directed by Gary Oldman (1997)

Starring: Ray Winstone, Kathy Burke, Charlie Creed-Miles, Laila Morse

Nil by Mouth is, primarily, a difficult movie to watch.  For years I had known that it existed as Gary Oldman’s directorial debut and being a bit of a completionist when it comes to actors I admire filmographies, I knew I was going to watch it.  But I really, really didn’t want to.  It is the realistic depiction of a working class neighborhood in London, with social ills such as drug use, alcoholism, and spousal abuse prominent in the narrative.

The film works best as a series of moments in life for the extended family.  Valerie (Burke) is married to Ray (Winstone) and expecting their second child.  Her brother Billy (Creed-Miles) is living with them, but gets kicked out for stealing Ray’s drugs.  He goes to live with his mother Janet (Morse), who supports his drug habit because she can’t stand his withdrawal.

I never want to watch someone shoot up ever again.  I also never want to watch someone drink Smirnoff vodka or start fights.  Subjects that other directors have handled as romantic are stripped down to the realistic results of addiction and abuse.  Over the course of the film Ray beats Valerie and causes her to lose the baby.  He proceeds to drink and harass her as she moves to her mother’s and a friend’s house to stay away from him.  When she does confront Ray she eloquently gives a speech about their relationship, but it seems like the sentiment won’t last.  They still have a child together and Ray still has legal rights.

Ray himself does not seem like an inhuman figure.  He tells his friend a story about watching his father in the hospital and their difficult relationship.  Its an important reminder to the audience that even though Ray is a person who does terrible things, he’s still a person.

Its just a really difficult two hours to get through to see that.

Blindspot 2012: Umberto D.

Directed by Vittorio de Sica (1952)

Starring: Carlo Battisti, Maria Pia Casilio, Lina Gennari

This is exactly the kind of movie dog lovers would bawl their eyes at.  And look at that dog!  Adorable.  But Umberto D. is firmly located in a time and place – Rome, post World War II, when there was still rubble to clean away and mandatory retirement has left Umberto Domenico Ferrari in a very tight situation.  The movie opens with a protest for higher pensions, reminiscent of the Occupy movement.  Umberto is a tenant behind on his rent with a callous woman as his landlord.  His only friends are his dog Flike and the maid, Maria, although she’s concerned about her pregnancy.

It’s an Italian Neorealist masterpiece, and it is so sad.  Umberto is crushed by his circumstances, trying desperately to find enough money to pay for his back rent.  It’s a case study of being nickeled-and-dimed by societal pressures: from buying food and rent to paying for a doctor.  Even the landlady rents out rooms for couples, although for her it is to maintain her lifestyle.  She wants to remove Umberto just to make her sitting room larger.

It’s beautiful in its starkness – whether around the streets or in the apartments,  the clean lines juxtapose against the crumbling areas of characters’ lives.

I can’t rank Umberto D. comfortably against the other films of  this movement.  It’s not as relatable as The Bicycle Thieves, but I remember it better than Rome, Open City.  I’m just not at the point that Umberto is in his life.  Even Maria’s problem – getting a soldier to take responsibility for her pregnancy seems pretty distant.  The lynchpin of the movie is the dog.  I was so much more concerned about Flike than any other character in this movie, which means I’m terrible, but damn that dog!  That dog broke my heart.

Blindspot 2012: Primer

Written and Directed by Shane Carruth (2004) Starring: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan

Primer is one of those grapevine movies, one of the few that had a lot of people talking about it after it premiered.  It is also a really smart science fiction film that approaches time travel in one of its more plausible scenarios, although I feel like most of the science went right over my head.  That creating a machine for time travel that the inventors might not even know what they’ve created seem fitting.

Abe (Sullivan) approaches his friend and business partner Aaron (Carruth) one day and explains that the machine they had been working on doesn’t error check.  This conclusion is drawn mostly by fungus, then by the fact that Abe has already built a machine for himself, and it is telling Aaron it exists from the future.

What Primer succeeds best in is building tension in a quiet, suburban manner.  The men aren’t trying to change history when they first travel with the machines, just to win money through the stock market.  Pretty soon, the notion of creating “doubles” and abusing the time streams is brought to an ethical quandary.  Notably, the fact that Abe and Aaron are consciously aware that they are destroying themselves through the machine.  Traveling back in time results in injuries that men discuss, but they slide over the fact that the man who goes into the box doesn’t exist at the end of the day.  Identities are drawn clearly as “doubles” rather than acknowledging the paradox of ending one’s own life to pursue time travel.  It poses an interesting double to a film like Moon where science effects the identity of the man experiencing it.

It’s worth another, more careful watch, if only to follow the engineer chatter that sets up the excellent third act.  I will admit that I had to look up a Wikipedia article for fully understand the time loop the characters create and to clear up some plot quibbles I had.  It doesn’t tie up perfectly, but it’s a movie that takes a popular topic for science fiction and turns it into an obscure dialogue into scientific ethics.

Blindspot 2012: Bande a Part

Band of Outsiders

Directed by Jean Luc Godard (1964) Starring: Anna Karina, Sami Frey, Claude Brasseur

There’s a tiny part of me that’s regretting loading my Blindspot queue with a ton of foreign films, since it’s harder to multitask when watching a movie on the second to last day of the month, when I’ve still got homework to get done.

However, one of Jean Luc Godard’s early classics did not skate by me last night.  I managed to give it my whole attention.

There’s something very fun and kinetic about the French New Wave.  It takes a lot of its elements from love of the Hollywood films of the 30s and 40s and they tend to be conscious that what’s happening is a movie.  At the same time, there’s the feeling that a shoe’s about to drop and a character is going to start waxing poetic about an existential crisis.  Bande a Part doesn’t have too many scenes like that, but there is an omnipresent narrator who reveals the character’s thoughts every so often.

After meeting young Odile (Karina) at an English class, Franz (Frey) and Arthur (Brasseur) find out that a lodger at her house is holding a lot of cash in his wardrobe.  They get close to Odile and convince her to help them.  Arthur seduces her while Franz feels lonely in Paris, and Odile keeps switching between helping and resisting.

To be honest, Bande a Part is a pretty uncomfortable story.  Two older, rather emotionless men flit around a young woman and seduce her in order to gain her money.  While certain scenes feel like Odile knows what she’s getting into, there are double the times when it looks like she’s about to get date-raped.  This might be cultural and generational differences, but I’m still drawing the line: It ain’t okay.

Structurally, it feels like a novel ran into a B-movie and left the narration behind, occasionally having moments that are very sensitive about the context this story is appearing.  Those are the moments that remain interesting –  the literal moment of silence, the dance scene, the constant switching between chairs at the table.  These make the French New Wave style feel like the influential movement film history tells us it is, but it’s bogged down by non-characters.  And that’s probably part of the style as well.

As much as I love the kinetic energy of running through the Louvre and dancing in a cafe, I can’t say I didn’t get distracted from the film.  After awhile, I started thinking about Jason Wu’s New Wave-inspired line from Target, which made me wonder: Was the French New Wave a statement of style over substance in art?