Not Quite Out of Those Film Classes Yet

For my seminar, I’m taking this great class about Avant-Garde Cinema. That’s actually where I saw The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Oh, how I love that movie). Part of the class is blogging about the movies we see, so if you guys are interested, here is the link:

http://projectorroom.blogspot.com/

Everyone in this class is pretty much hyper-smart, and they have a lot of really cool things to say, so check it out.

Now as more of a me-centric thing, I wrote another Caligari entry on that website that 1)defends the framing technique, since everyone seems to hate it in my class and 2) argues how and why Caligari started horror as a film genre and also helped to create a modern Gothic aesthetic.

If your interested, here’s that link:
http://projectorroom.blogspot.com/2009/09/caligari-as-early-horror.html

I’ll also be putting the class blog in my blog links thingummer (I do know the word for it, I do, I do!). Yay for easy finding solutions.

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.

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.

King Arthur: Sorta Historically Accurate

King Arthur (2004)

Director: Antoine Fuqua

This movie was really fun to watch, which surprised me.  On principle, I hate most movies that have Keira Knightly running around being waifish in them, but this is one of the few exceptions. (Pirates I, by the way, is the other).  She’s really just that one character that could make a good movie sour, but in this one, she worked.  The other characters, who were much more fun to watch on screen include the Knights!:

More than that, the Knights of the Round Table were perfectly picked, in my opinion. (brief note: I do not own any of these pictures, but I got most of them from the Guardian.co.uk film website.)

There’s Lancelot, the Pretty, Skeezy Playboy of the group:

Galahad, the youngest:

Gawain, the Hairiest:

Bors, the One with a Lot of Bastard Children:

Dagonet, the One Who is Secretly a Softie:

Tristan, the one who is Clearly NOT a Softie:

All Led by Clive Own Arturius Catus/ Arthur:

 And oh, were their Ninja- Knight Movies to die for… What with their inability to Die for the first half of the movie. 

The Basic premise is that Arthur is a half-Roman, half-Briton commander of the troops at this base in Hadrian’s Wall.  His troops are made up of Sarmatians who fight for the Romans for 15 years before being allowed to go home, and this is their last mission. 

Until party-pooper Bishop Germanius comes by and tells them that they have to go out and save some Roman Family in the North (where they shouldn’t even be, because the point of Hadrian’s wall was that the Roman’s couldn’t deal with the Scottish and decided to just block them off from the rest of Britain).

So off they go, because the knights follow Arthur relentlessly.  Somewhere along the line, the enemy changes from the Woads (native Britons/Scots) to the invading Saxons, who are led by what looks like the ex-Lead Guitarist in a metal band and his skin head son.

There’s a lot of “Freedom!” in here, which reminds me too much of Braveheart and… really, a lot of the movies I’ve been watching.  And in this case it’s really sad because this is at the brink of the Dark Ages– there is not going to be much freedom going around in these parts for over a thousands years.

It makes for a good historical action movie, and I like seeing how someone imagines how a legend starts out.  Clive Owen… is Clive Owen, and right now I can’t really say anymore on that subject.  He made a good, yet angsty, King Arthur.  His relationship with Lancelot is even angstier, it would seem, than how he reacts to his past.  What I thought was nice, and this is probably just a personal thing, was that even though he was an Extreme Christian, he never makes any move or mention to convert the Knights because… that was important, in some way, to their Sarmatian- Horse Warrior heritage.

And the knights?  Are freakin’ ninjas, without being ninjas.  Which I like.   There’s also some (albeit, some) character developpment, and humor, which is nice to see in intense action films.  It wasn’t overdone, the humor, it was just placed at the right moment when you need someone to say something, and it might as well be funny.

I wouldn’t recommend this to someone looking for some serious romance.  Between Arthur and Guinevere, it looks really tacked on.  I seriously debated whether she was having sex with Arthur or Lancelot in that one sex scene, because it seems like she hung around Lancelot more anyway.  Watch it if you like gritty, historical battle scenes, says me.  The joys of those is that it’s a lot more sensitized to what you’re doing to the guy– it’s all hand to hand combat really, whereas watching a war movie that takes place now or in the 20th century, you’re just watching people shoot or bomb eachother to bits and it’s a lot less effective.

This was also another History Through Film movies, so we discussed why it’s historically accurate/inaccurate and learned about the Picts/Woads, Romans, and Saxons.  Mostly it’s inaccurate because they just smushed a bunch of events happening to England in the sixth century into a one week period of time… then some of the weapons (this is all rather boring unless you’re a history nut, sorry).  Such as, the crossbow would not be used at that period of time nor by the English (it was a French invention).  Then Tristan’s and Lancelot’s swords are inaccurate, but for different reasons.  There’s some other stuff, and I either mentioned it earlier or just don’t care at this point to look it up again.

The point is: I do like this movie.  It’s amusing and intense and I don’t really give a damn about the historical debates surrounding it because yeah, it’s pseudo-accurate.  I don’t care.  I like watching the blood splatter the camera while Lancelot uses his two swords as scissors to behead Some Pict and Tristan arrowing a dude five miles away in a tree that wouldn’t have lived in England at that period.  It’s just a fun, bloody, period piece, and I respect it as such.

One of Those “I Watch it For the Hot Guy” Movies: Attila the Hun

Sooo…. Attila the Hun.  Made by the USA channel to showcase Gerard Butler, as I understand.  Or rather, as I want to understand it.

Taken, with respect, from http://images.teamsugar.com/files/users/2/20158/14_2007/sjm_s_attila_gb03.jpg

As Andrew the Actor pointed out to me, it really is a terrible movie.  Terrible, but I enjoy it because… hot guy!  Hot guy in a wig that both makes me want to touch it and cut it all off at the same time.  I think this might have just knocked Phantom of the Opera down from it’s pillar of Guilty Pleasure movies because

Hot Gerry WIth a Sword beats Singing Deformed Gerry (and… the whole Joel Schumacher thing taints Phantom for me anyway, when I really come down to it).

Clearly, this is not the blood-craving tyrant who looks rather Mongolian that Google wants us to believe.  This is the Good Guy Attila, the Destiny Chosen Attila, the Attila who fell in love with a woman who can kill just as much as he can and who has red hair!

That is what they make the biggest deal of in this movie.  The woman with the red hair, who chose Attila over his fugly brother because… well, when two of the most powerful men in the tribe are fighting over you, go for the handsome and nice one.

The basic story isn’t really raped from history, just Attila actually going to Rome.  (And, as my History teacher would say, “They cut out the best part!” Apparently Attila didn’t sack Rome because the Pope talked to him and… no one knows what they said to each other because neither would talk about it after that.  So.  There you go.  I didn’t finish this, so I don’t really know how it ends.  Most likely in bloody vengeance).

As the film portrays it, Attila is wooed to Rome and it’s hot baths by Aetius, the Roman general who hates the Queen Mother, What’s Her Face, more than her useless son Valentinian III.  Afterall, it’s much simpler to control somone who’s an idiot.  But even before the sojourn to Rome’s hottest baths and princesses, Attila has this God complex and is convinced that it’s his destiny to rule the Huns.

Which it is.  But from where I left off, I felt like the movie was making some statement about misplaced trust and arrogance, and blah blah blah.  This entertained me because I was having a bad week and need a shitty, arrogant, pretty-boy’s in it movie to let my mind seep away so that I didn’t have to think about college application essays for a brief period of time each day.

HELL, I tell you!  But most of you probably already know that.  And… I digress. This is the “Please Entertain Me Scruffy Gerard Butler Movie” that cures what ails you (unless you actually like quality cinema).

If anyone out there has seen this and knows the ending, please enlighten me, ‘kay thanks.

Clan of the Cave Bear

… what?

This wasn’t really my reaction while watching the film.  I was actually really interested in it, it’s just the conversation we would have afterwards always strayed to the strangeness of it.

Clan of the Cave Bear recreates that time when both Neanderthals and Homo Sapien Sapiens walked the earth and fought and competed, and even though the Neanderthals had, supposedly, a more sophisticated culture than early humans did, we basically forced them out of existence. 

But this story is about a Cro Magnon child, Ayla, who’s mother is dead from earth quake and who has recently survived a good mauling from a lion, is adopted by the only smart people the holy man and medicine woman of the CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR!!! (oooh, I see what you did thar).  Ayla never feels like she truly belongs in the Clan, because she is ugly (the one time a leggy blonde will ever be called that) and smarter than everyone else (because she can, like, count?  Or something?).  In her clan, she is really only disrespected by Broud, the son of the leader, who resents her for her awesomeness (which he is surely lacking).

Pretty much, it’s a feminist movie disguised by a cave people plot line.  Although that is interesting too– and thank God there’s subtitles in this movie, and a narrator who is able to explain that Ayla “wants to stay away from Broud”, because that isn’t obvious.  Not to the American movie-going public of the 1980s, it would seem.

Eventually, Broud gets the idea to rape Ayla in the most disgusting scene I’ve seen in awhile, and she retreats to the taboo of hunting weapons.  That was rather cool, and still feminist, how she montaged her way into learning how to use a sling shot.  SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE NEANDERTHAL MENZ!!  But unfortunately that is punishable by death, because she is a female.  And females… don’t do that… in cavepeople times?

Ayla gets preggers by Broud, but she still doesn’t have a mate, so everyone is worried about how the baby will survive and then, thanks to a wolf stealing someone else’s kid, it is revealed that Ayla did the unthinkable and can hunt!  And save children from wolves!  And that her baby is just as normal as any other Neanderthalic baby, so there!

And so Ayla became the first feminist hero, and there was much rejoicing.

I still can’t decide if this movie was great or ridiculous.  In some ways the plot and characters came across very real to me, after I sat myself down and said to myself “Remember, they are cavepeople.  They… can do whatever they want, except, perhaps, go against their laws”.   And I liked picking up the proto-feminist spirt that Ayla conveyed in her rock swinging, and her ultimate ass-kicking of Broud at the end of the film (sorry for the spoiler, but you knew it had to happen, right?).  And she was a devoted Mom, proving, in fact, that feminists can both hunt and be excellent mothers.

This reveals that my blog… isn’t exactly post film class yet.  The class I saw this in is “History through Film” which isn’t quite as hard or as awesome as my other film classes “Film Analysis” and “Cinema Ethics” but it is entertaining, and it does give me blog fodder.  Like Turner Classic Movies doesn’t give me enough of that.

So, keep in mind: Clan of the Cave Bear.  HIlarious 80s flick, serious proto-feminisim, or just cavepeople escaped from Geico commercials?  You make the choice.