Awaken from Your Dark Night: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

It’s pure horror. The shadows that play on the walls of our subconscious.

In a short form, it’s an exquisite mind fuck, but this is one of those movies that doesn’t deserve a short-form right-off.

Everything about it is visceral, with a strong emphasis on the visual: sets, costumes, title cards, filters, make up, actors. The version I watched had an updated score by Rainer Viertblock, a kind of twangy, discordant jazz that roots around and picks up all of the bizarre overtones of the film, bringing to the audience the need to sit up and pay attention.

While being extraordinarily different, there are pieces of it that fit into the usual movie scenario: The hero, a villain, an idyllic maiden.

It plays with your emotions, suspicions and expectations. It changes the perspective and the mood with painted shadows and grimly costumed characters. While touching on the Victorian Gothic, it also envelops Europe, post-WWI during the time of expressionism and Dadaism. If anyone ever doubted that film is art, sit them down and show them this movie.

It is part romantic Victorian novel and part trip into the hell of the mind, the entrapment of insanity and the escape of reality. It is dark and riotous and bizarre, a sleepwalker’s dream on the crooked streets in a surreal German village.

How is it pure horror? While the sets are highly designed, the horrific aspect of the film is simple compared to horror from later years. It is the fear of murder and of death– stripped down bare and unexpected. It is also the fear of no control, whether as a puppet in the hands of a cruel master or loss of control in one’s own mind.

It explores dark imagination, obsession, and the darkness of scientific exploration. Beautiful and frightening, it is not only a must see before you die, it is a film that haunts our nightmares.

A Delicious Metaphor

My mom took me out to this Asian Fusion restaurant over the weekend, and I realized that the menu serves as a pretty good guide to the movies I’ve watched recently.

 

Chicken Won-Tons: The Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyessy (1988)

            A little, unexpected Indie film (much like our won-tons, which didn’t have anything in them besides dry chicken.  Dry chicken does not a won-ton make).  Apparently, this was the Indie Darling of the ‘80s: it won Fantafestival, Fantasporto, a whole string of Australian Film Institute awards, and was nominated for a Golden Palm at Cannes.

            At a small Scottish village in 1347, there lives Griffon, a boy who can see into the future.  His brother, Connor, has recently returned and informs the town council equivalent that the plague has arrived, and Griffon has a vision about their solution: They must tunnel through the earth to arrive at a great city and place a cross on the highest cathedral’s spire.  Seems feasible when you live in a mining town.

            About six of them go into the mine and start tunneling with their mediaeval “drill” and when they see light, they have arrived at Twentieth Century New Zealand.  Which would confuse anyone, I’m sure, but they handle it marvelously.

            I love seeing the characters react to modern day events, like crossing a highway.  Everything is related back to their quest or to religion.  There’s a great scene when Griffon breaks into an appliance shop and he’s staring at a wall of televisions, all showing these truly bizarre images that keep switching every few seconds.  It’s a fun watch when the night is waning and you can’t get to sleep.  Like watching a fairy tale with some modern depth.

Manchurian Shrimp: The Host (2006)

            This was my mom’s dish.  I tried some, but didn’t like it.  There was this really complicated mixture of flavors in it and it was really spicy.  In this sense, it was a lot like The Host, a Korean Horror-Family Drama.  (To be honest, at first thought I figured these go together because the shrimp were butterflied and looked like the monster).

            The full amalgamation of the movie baffles at first.  It seems like too much to include, but c’est la vie.  It opens up by introducing the monster’s origins (stupid decisions with formaldehyde at an American military base), but cuts to the family, a man (Gang-du) with his daughter (Hyun-seo) living with his father (Papa Park) and helping to run the family snack shack.  The family comes together through the illegitimate daughter, who is adored on all sides by her father, grandfather, uncle (drunk, unemployed college graduate, Nam-il), and aunt (National archery competitor, Nam-joo).  Their drama escalates with the first of the monster attacks, which drags Hyun-seo into the river after gobbling up a few dozen other people.

            Sometimes the family interactions feel like I’m watching a dark comedy.  They weep pathetically for the lost Hyun-seo, then fall down with journalists taking their picture in some comedic pose.  They can’t help but bicker and fight while their being quarantined at the hospital (the greatest concern after the attack was the potential ‘virus’ spread by contact with the creature).  Late at night in quarantine, Gang-du gets a phone call from his daughter.  She’s alive!  But trapped in the sewer by the monster.  And thus begins phase two: the rescue.

            There’s social commentary in this, on the relationship between family members and America’s involvement with other countries (after deciding that the Korean government wasn’t handling the situation, they come in with “Agent Yellow”).  The combination of seeing the characters in a larger than life problem, combined with a sweeping score that emphasizes the emotional tension perfectly, The Host is an extremely powerful film.

Deep Fried Lamb Peking: Captain from Castile (1947)

            I was surprised in the flavor and texture that I had with my Lamb, but I was also surprised by this movie.  It is a stepping stone from the old epics to modern cinema, even back in 1947.

            It’s a very involved storyline, from the opening to the conflict that leads our hero Pedro de Vargas to the New World, under the command of Cortez.  I watched it day-by-day style, so for awhile I felt like they were just throwing together plot points so that Hollywood could produce another swashbuckling adventure flick.

            That’s not the case.  Remove one character flaw, it destroys the plot.  Change one moment in time, the ending wouldn’t make sense.  There’s still this 1940s feel to it, either coming from the costumes, sets, or style of acting, but there is that script with the modern feel to it. 

Mongolian Beef: Mongol (2007)

            Mongol.  The dish I never had (but I greatly enjoyed the film).  This is the story of Genghis Khan, first emperor of the largest land empire ever in existence.  According to The Industry Rumors, there are two more sequels to follow, in order to span his entire life.  So far, this was the beginning.

            Temudjin, son of a rather powerful Khan, is taken by his father to pick out his bride (family bonding abounds in this menu, it would seem).  His choice is the best Mongolian bride ever, apparently.  More importantly, she picked him.  That equality follows them through their whole relationship.

            When Temudjin’s father dies, his family is thrown out of their clan while the powers that be fight over the vacuum left in the death’s wake.  There, Temudjin starts to be filled with righteous fury and makes a blood brother in Jamukha, who is also looking towards becoming a great khan.

            The story goes on like this: Temudjin grows up, marries his girl, and jumps through hoops in order to become the hero-leader that he lives up to.  The filmmakers felt it necessary to include his family life a great deal in this opening and the violence takes a step down.  Overall, it is very engaging, both as an action movie and as a biopic.  The culture is well explained visually and through voiceover, mostly by watching Temudjin go through religious rituals and laying out his plans of government. 

            Everyone I talk to always likes to mention how international the cast and crew are, or they criticize it.  I think they’re missing the point: yeah, it’s fun to notice stuff like that, but it’s more important to acknowledge the film separate.  It is supposed to stand as a whole when we watch it, as a work of art or a person.  It’s not supposed to be analyzed for where it came from, but then again, we do that with people and art a lot too.

Fortune Cookie: The Duchess (2008)

            The Duchess is fun to watch while watching, but once the credits roll my mind went to “What?  I just watched a movie?  But… what happened?”  The plot is so slow and languidly formed that I felt more like I was watching a fashion show than an actual movie.  And I had such high hopes… ah, well.  The costumes were pretty, expectantly, and I have greater respect for Keira Knightly as an actress.  She had to really stretch her emotions for this one.

            I feel now that I should have gotten more from watching the film—there are these high-strung emotional moments when you’re horrified or at least sympathetic to her situation.  The problem was that I wasn’t all that sympathetic:  I was horrified from my own perspective first, but I was never really rooting for her to conquer her husband or escape from that lifestyle. 

            I discussed this movie with my friend who saw it with me, and she got the same opinion out of it: A lot happened, but it doesn’t feel like much at all.  I’ve seen this story before, I’ve heard it in history class every year since sixth grade.  A woman is only as good as the children she bears, and in that society she didn’t have the capacity to rebel.

            Well, whatever.  Rebel away, or at least make the attempt.  Please, just do something so that I don’t forget you after the credits roll and the taste of crispy cookie has left my mouth.

Hero

This reminded me greatly of The Fall, but I also have a feeling that if I had seen Hero first, the situation would have been reversed.

This was another Movie Class film.  So far, the only good movies I’ve seen this school year have been in my HIstory through Film class, more out of my busy life (etc etc blahdiblah) than the fact that currently, I haven’t been able to figure out how the DVD player works anymore.  This will be remedied in haste.

Digression over!  Hero blew me away visually, but over a three day period, I wasn’t really interested in it until the end of the second day.  It starts out with Nameless (Jet Li) coming for an audience with Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi (Daoming Chen) because he defeated the three greatest assassins of the land- Sky, Flying Snow, and Broken Sword- and the emperor wants to hear the story.

The use of color and the scenery of China astonds me when I watched it, but this is a Wuxia movie.  Rather, it is a kungfu movie with lots of dialogue about honor, emotions, the way of the sword, etc.  For a movie so indepth about emotions, the first third or so is very cold.  I recognize that it is, at this point, Nameless talking to the Emperor followed by a flashback of Nameless’s fight with Sky, but it still struck me.  Later on, there’s greater use of the emotional palate as it were, through the relationship of Broken Sword and Flying Snow.

There are various stories told in Hero, which is another comparison I notice with it and The Fall.  Both films look at stories, their motivations and their consequences.  In The Fall, the motive is to use a child, but the story ends up reflecting the lives of the main characters and the people who surround them.  In Hero, it is more the abuse of story-telling.  Well, alright, not so much an abuse.  Rather, how a character can manipulate a story (Nameless’s original story), how this manipulation is found out, the assumption of the real story that follows (The Emperor creates his own idea of the truth), then the Truth itself (where Nameless reveals the actual plot, mostly with aid from Broken Sword’s personal story interlaced).

I get the feeling that this is the kind of film you either love or hate, and I’m rather neutral.  Now that I know that it is not just a kung fu movie, but a Wuxia story, I have respect for it.  I just don’t think it’s my thing.  Costumes and scenery aside, for once, while I think on this topic of actually liking this movie.

…

Bah.  Meanwhile, I shall analyze the title: Once can assume that the “Hero” is Nameless, because, as the ending credits informs us “He was buried as a hero,” but there are other characters who are put in a rather heroic light.  Firstly, the Emperor himself, who I’m sure we all learned about as a tyrant of Ancient China.  This is how he first appears in the film, then later revealed to be a complicated man with a strong goal of uniting China and making it into a great empire, no matter the consequences. 

Secondly, there is Broken Sword, who is shown to be a rather Zen character who understands the Emperor’s goals.  This is symbolically reflected through his sacrifice of his relationship with Flying Snow, then visually with a very large piece of calligraphy for the twentieth variation of the character “Sword.”  Actually, while analyzing the character in a way that would make English teachers across the country swoon, the emperor gives a rather beautiful solioquy about the Zen of the ideals expressed in Broken Sword’s character. 

Broken Sword is, I think, the ideal character in this movie.  His character changes through relationships and his motivations for his actions change from hate and anger to love, which makes him a rather likeable guy in my book.  This ideal affects Nameless and the Emperor, and that is vocally expressed and expressed in actions.  It’s not just some symbol to ponder forever and ever, which I think works better in this situation.

…

I do like this film, I’ve decided.  I respect it’s artistic qualities and the Honor Code means of expressing them.  This didn’t blow me away like other films have, maybe because it’s more distant.  This film takes place in an era I can hardly relate too and in a country who is more driven towards community relationships than to the relationships of the individual.  In which case, I call Culture Clash.

Kamikaze Girls

It’s a lot like reading a shojo manga, but live action.  And mildly insane.

 (Yeah I… I really don’t care that I’m using the same image twice in this case).

Kamikaze Girls also known as Shimotsuma monogatari (or Shimostuma Story) is the hyper-tale of Momoko, the antisocial Lolita who is forced to leave her city when her father is exiled by the yakuza.  In the country she meets Ichigo, the tough (but stupid) yanki, and wackiness ensues, etc.

If you have no idea what “Lolita” or “yanki” mean, here’s a brief recap:

Lolita:  Japanese fashion style popular among teenagers to early twenty-somethings, Lolita is typified by lots of lace and frills and usually emmulates a period of history in style, though with shorter skirts and platform shoes.  In the case of Momoko, she is reliving the Rococo period of Europe, which results in a hilarious explanation of what thos 18th century crazy, Mozart-loving Europeans were doing: Embroidery, sex, elegant conversations, more sex, and then a walk through the countryside.

Yanki: The punks of Japan, without a musical affiliation!  They form biker gangs that roam the country and cause fights.  Usually typified by dyed hair (before it became popular, blond hair was a sure sign of being a yanki) and long coats with Chinese calligraphy on them.  In Ichigo’s case, this is a scooter (she couldn’t pass the test for a real motorcycle) and calligraphy spelled wrong in her bike gang, the Ponytails.

Momoko likes being antisocial: According to her, it was always in her nature.  Her father was a low-ranked yakuza (Japanese mafia) member and her mother was a whore, but between them Momoko was born (and her mother had an affair/second marriage with the OB-GYN).  Momoko, in the divorce, decided to stay with her father, because it was more fun and tells her mother to go out, get plastic surgery, and compete in beauty competitions because that’s all she’ll ever have. 

And Momoko grows up, only to fall in love on a class trip with BABY THE STARS SHINE BRIGHT, a frilly Lolita brand.  She spends the next year or two conning her father out of cash to buy these expensive outfits, but once in the countryside, her fuel has dried up.

So she puts an ad out and Ichigo, the yanki rebel idiot, winds up at her door.  And continues to do so, because she… she’s an idiot, let’s just say.  Or likes Momoko’s twisted personality.  Putting that aside, Ichigo tells the reluctant Momoko, who doesn’t want any friends (she finds her ideal death eighty years in the future in a “BABY” dress, found by a robot) her life story and the story of the infamous Yanki leader who wanted to join up all the girl gangs in the province and fight the yakuza.

This could be subtitled as “Modern Japanese Culture in a Box” but there are some subtle plot structures and character development.  Also, more of the Japanese culture could probably be explained better in the book, like how Ichigo wants to live the life of a yanki character in a manga, “Momoko”, which isn’t explained as well in the movie, most likely due to time constraints.

This is my favorite girl-friendship movie because both characters develop according to their reactions to each other.  Ichigo finds acceptance instead of expectations because of Momoko and Momoko learns to trust in other people and do something with her life besides just lazing about and taking strolls.

All of the characters are clowns and over the top, but the hyperactivity of the movie makes it so much fun.  Everything is in day-glow colors and the cinematography is a lot of cuts and short comedic moments to change from scene to scene or to see into the mind of Momoko.  It is a sugary-sweet guilty pleasure at one moment while also managing to convey a deeper meaning just five minutes later.  And it’s endlessly quotable, like “Humans are cowards in the face of happiness.”

There is, of course, the vivid contrast between prim Momoko and vulgar Ichigo, but they each reveal their own faults and gifts, so it comes off as a bit of a cliche, but it works magnificently.