December 28: Twelve Years a Slave (2013 -- Steve McQueen)

★★★

It takes some hutzpah for a director with a fine art bent like Steve McQueen to undertake a movie about slavery, and Twelve Years a Slave has a lot of good ideas.  One of McQueen’s best decisions is to show how the institution affected everyone involved with it rather than simply focus on the plight of the slave.   Of course, we repeatedly see how horrible it was to live as a slave; it was a horrible institution.  Love and family are disrupted as we see not only in Solomon’s situation after his enslavement but also in the situation of Eliza, who is stripped of her children in a New Orleans slave sale after having been her previous master’s favorite. We see the horrible beatings that slaves receive when Solomon, and later Patsey, are whipped, and there is even torture when Solomon is left hanging from a tree with his toes barely touching the ground.  Epps’ drunken dragging in of his slaves to dance for a midnight “party” is another form of abuse.

The film's handling of Solomon’s hanging points to another aspect of slavery – its effect inside the slave community.  While Solomon is hanging, struggling to stay alive by dancing on tiptoe, other slaves continue their lives only catching furtive glances of him from the corners of their eyes, and kids play outdoors in plain sight of the torture.  Only one woman risks punishment by bringing Solomon some water.  The level of horrific violence that Solomon experiences is not only familiar to the slave community, but the community knows that resisting it will only bring added pain.  Solomon is told this very clearly on the boat to New Orleans, and he even repeats it in trying to console Eliza after the woman’s separation from her children.

But the breadth of McQueen’s portrayal of the institution of slavery extends beyond those enslaved
to include the enslavers, and what we see is not a monolith of racism.  Solomon’s first master, Ford, tries to buy Eliza’s children when he buys her in order to keep the family together, but he can’t afford them all.  At his estate, Ford shows some respect for Solomon’s opinion over that of a racist craftsman, Tibeats.  And we see that even masters have limits when Ford has to sell Solomon to Epps in order to protect his slave from the anger of Tibeats.  Ford warns Solomon that he can’t protect him alone.

But the most compelling portrayal of a slaveholder is Michael Fassbender’s Epps.  In fact, this character is the fullest, most complex character in the film.  Epps is a powerful man, rigidly beating underperforming slaves and subjecting his slaves to humiliating behavior like rousing them to dance for him when he is drunk late one night.  This dancing scene also shows other aspects of the complex Epps, though.  He drags his slaves in to dance because he lacks friends and companionship on his isolated plantation.  His wife not only hates him, but she berates him and insults his honor in front of the slaves here, showing his own weakness, insecurity and hesitancy in this episode.  And the cause of her behavior is that, although Epps feels that slaves are inferior, he searches for consolation by sexually assaulting Patsey, seeking a  complex solace that involves both power and attraction. The extremes of Epps’ moods and behaviors make him the most complicated and compelling element of Twelve Years a Slave.

Which is the central problem with this film.  The main character, Solomon, lacks complexity and emotional resonance with the audience.  Often, he’s merely a vehicle for showing us what slavery is all about, but even when he’s involved in the action, we don’t see the complexity of motivation in him that we see in Fassbender’s Epps or, for that matter, in Lupita Nyong'o's Patsey, who ranges from despair and submission to defiance.  Twelve Years a Slave initially gives us a formal Solomon who doesn't engage us, and he become even more distant from us when he’s a slave.  You have to think that McQueen has directed Chiwetel Ejiofor to make Solomon reticent; in scenes like Solomon’s pleading his innocence about writing a letter or his resistance to whipping Patsey, we see that Ejiofor can indeed connect with the audience.  But though most of Twelve Years a Slave, the reticence of the main character keeps us from being fully engaged in the film.  Epps is a fully-formed character, Patsy is complex and conflicted, but Solomon is just a means for the movie to make a statement.  The formal disconnect between the cardboard main character and these two dynamically realized ones prevents Twelve Years a Slave from being aesthetically satisfying.

There is a lot in this movie to recommend it.  There are moments of beauty when McQueen is willing to let his camera linger and take in what’s around him.  Images like the swamp sunset with silhouettes of cypresses and moss show the beauty that coexists with the horrible institution of slavery.  Solomon’s letter (and hope) burns slowly, turns into red glow, diminishes and then goes out.  Such measured moments pace the film and offer touches of beauty amid the grimness.  But the decision to prevent us from empathizing with Solomon, coupled with the masterful creation of the complicated, conflicted, insecure, tyrant Epps and his equally complex slave Patsey, creates a weakness at the center of this ambitious work.

December 18: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013 -- Francis Lawrence)

★★★

The Hunger Games is back, and there are compelling elements in Shooting Fire that go beyond taking care of the franchise.  I was a fan of the first Hunger Games, but Francis Lawrence here ups the ante from assembling the now-familiar costumes, characters and decent story to include continuous dramatic tension and very high stakes.  The big achievement here is Katniss because we sympathize with her dilemma, respect her integrity and recognize the difficulty of her decisions.  She grows before our eyes as she works to protect her family, Peeta, and Gale while increasingly wanting to support the rising resistance to the Capital.  And focused tightly on Katniss’ arc, Shooting Fire addresses several ideas.

Of course, the film has an anti-authoritarian element to it.  Donald Sutherland’s cold-blooded, manipulative Shooting Fire goes beyond Snow to make its anti-authoritarianism by sending in Peacekeepers who look like the Storm Troopers of Star Wars to rough up audiences during Katniss’ tour, whip Gale in public and beat Cinna in front of Katniss as she ascends to the Games.  Authority comes off badly in this film.
President Snow could create this idea on his own as he threatens everyone Katniss’ loves and tries to have her killed by changing the rules of the Third Quarter Quell.  But

There’s also a continuation of the media parody from the first film.  And here it’s the same elements.  There are ridiculous public appearances by Katniss and Peeta that are stiff and staged as their erstwhile media manager Effie determinedly ignores reality in favor of her scripts and broadcast times, and Stanley Tucci again chews into the role of host Caesar Flickerman, bringing a perfectly pitched exaggeration of a show host to the screen.  In Catching Fire, however, those opposed to authority and the media that enables it subvert their media appearances and take control long enough to send a message to the rising rebellion.  In a pageant in the Capitol, the clothes of Katniss and Peeta ignite in a fire connoting rebellion, and when Katniss later appears on a broadcast in her wedding dress at the command of Snow, the dress transforms into a Mockingjay, her symbol for the rebellion.  In the 74th Game that ended the first Hunger Games, the grist for the media mill in subverted the media and used it to fight with when Katniss forced the game master to spare both her and Peeta.  That same subversion occurs again at the end of the Third Quarter Quell here when Katniss destroys the game area and is airlifted out of the arena.  The media isn't able to exploit its subjects in the either of these Games.

Catching Fire is a great time spent at the movies.  It has an interesting story with several unexpected turns, it has sustained drama that keeps interest high, and it has visuals that are fun to look at.  Some of Effie’s costumes have so much plumage that they almost look soft focus, and even throwaways like the technologically-advanced train racing too fast through a verdant forest make you look.  Add to this the likeable characters, and Catching Fire is a fine film pleasure.

December 13: Frozen (2013 -- Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee)

★★★

Just in time for the holidays, Disney has kicked out a fun film to escape to the theaters for.  If, like me, you enjoy Disney, Frozen is sure to please.  It’s a story of magic and threat, love and yearning, goofy characters and villains.  And it’s a musical with songs that sound like they were recorded on Broadway.  And, more innovative for Disney, it’s got lots of visual interest.

Everything the film is about is wrapped up in the two sisters, Elsa and Anna.  The older Elsa is gifted with dangerous ice magic, and she shuts everyone out, including Anna, in an effort to hide and control it.  Anna, meanwhile, wants to be social and loving, and she longs for company and for the childhood relationship she had with her older sister before Elsa chose to go into isolation.  Anna must get through Elsa’s distrust and distance to save Arendell, and Elsa ultimately learns that the solution to her problems (and the kingdom’s) isn’t withdrawal into solitude but accepting and trusting her sister.  The story is a worthwhile take on the Disney princess tale since it’s girl-rescuing-girl (and kingdom) while the heroines are growing up at the same time.  And in the focus on women, Frozen has a distinct echo of Brave, though the two films look at different aspects of girls’ development.

Even with the focus on women, the guys don’t come off irrelevant or bad here.  Social Anna falls in love with Hans the day of Elsa’s coronation, and the couple has a fun musical number, “Love Is an Open Door,” with in-your-face, over-the-top fantasy and cinema cliché.  And then there’s the sudden dramatic reversal centered around Hans that becomes important at the end of the film.   The amiable, rougher Kristoff has an important role, too, as a capable assistant who also contributes comic relief; plot-wise, he becomes an unexpected red herring as the story reaches its climax.  Although Frozen is about the girls, the boys have a lot to do here.

In addition to the way the film plays with expectations, Frozen is the first Disney animation in a while that has so solidly embraced its music.  The lyrically-edited opening song, “Frozen Heart,” sets the tone, mood and theme of the whole movie, and Else’s “Let It Go” endorses individuality in such moving terms that you feel she’s made the right decision in building her ice castle in the mountains.  There are awfully funny songs, too.  The naïve snowman’s ode “In Summer” gets a lot of laughs from the central paradox that the poor man would melt while enjoying his beach.  Likewise, the witty lyrics and onscreen antics by the trolls make “Fixer Upper” funny.  More than most recent Disney films, Frozen exploits its song to add to the pleasure of the film.

And the visuals make the film involving.  Frozen uses a range of palettes that keep the screen changing from white to brown to blue to orange, and the images certainly engage.  Else’s castle is striking to look at, and landscapes of ice-bejeweled willow branches or windblown snow in howling winds add to the visual interest.  But a lot of the pleasure in the visuals concern movement and editing.  Wolves chase the sleigh of Anna and Kristoff, a snow monster runs them away from Elsa’s castle, and things freeze up and change color.  Editing, too, makes the film fun to watch.  Song montages follow choreographed movement or sequences of images associated with the lyrics.  In Frozen, there is almost always something interesting to look at.

In fact, it’s the strong visuals that carry the film because the story has a few problems.  Perhaps it’s not fair to ask for too much story in a Disney Christmas movie, but all the dilatory moments -- whether fast-paced action, musical interludes or just dialog -- aren't a substitute for dramatic engagement, and Frozen has an episodic quality that at times leaves you feeling like it’s not going anywhere.  For example, there’s a lot of thematic and plot buildup to Anna's visit to Else's ice castle, but then nothing comes of the encounter between the two.  Also, although the characters are generally winning and sympathetic, they lack the complexity of characters like Carl in Up, Merida in Brave or even Remy in Ratatouille.  Frozen’s characters are mostly mono-dimensional, embodying a certain quality or idea but lacking personality.  This shallowness is most obvious when Hans makes a radical shift from one quality to another with no motivation or groundwork laid for the transformation.

But these reservations aside, Frozen is still fun for what it is -- a couple of hours of classic Disney.

December 4: Abraham Lincoln (1930 -- D.W. Griffith)

★★

There is some fun flair in Abraham Lincoln, but there isn't enough to redeem the film from its terrible script and the stilted acting.  From the love scenes through the public oratory and presidential decision-making, the language is poetic and the delivery, declamatory.  As Lou said, this film is a silent movie with sound.

It features Griffith using techniques that were innovative fifteen years earlier but old hat by this time.  There’s cross-cutting, which Birth of a Nation skillfully exploited in 1915; here, Griffith uses the same technique and for the same purpose, to contrast the North and the South and to show simultaneous action.  Lincoln also shows us extras-packed war scenes reminiscent of both Birth and Intolerance, and dissolves between scenes here suggest that the content of one shot lingers into the next.  For example, Lincoln’s distress at the death of Ann Rutledge dissolves into his virtual breakdown afterwards.  There’s also the technique of using a repeated image to convey a poetic meaning.  Intolerance repeatedly returns to the rocking cradle; here, we keep seeing a tracking shot of a landscape model, an image the film offers as symbolic.  And close-ups here lend intimacy and urgency, just as they did in Birth, Intolerance and Way Down East.  Whether it’s Lincoln’s seduction of Ann or the facial intensity of rebels plotting the assassination, close-ups of the actors’ faces bring us into the emotion of the scene.

Griffith adds at least one new element to some close-ups Lincoln that shows his direction hasn't completely ossified.  In a very contemporary and unexpected way, Griffith sometimes has his actors, in close-up, look directly at the camera and at us.  Our introduction to John Wilkes Booth has one such moment in it, which drives home to us the radical he is; likewise, Lincoln tells us at one point, eye to eye, that the Union will not be dissolved.  Such breaking the fourth wall shows a director at least modestly looking to vary his cinematic language.

Griffith also integrates camera movement especially well with the rhythm of a scene in this film.  At one point, the camera moves in on wedge Lincoln is using to split wood and then draws back to show us Ann watching Abe as he splits logs.  Then the camera moves in for their intimate dialog before it ultimately cuts to dialog with Abe’s employer.  This is a much more fluid camera than we see in early Griffith.  The scene of Abe’s proposal to Ann is even more lyrical and fluid.  As the scene opens, the camera follows a singing shepherdess walking a cow out through the pasture.  The camera then swings back across the field to close in on Abe’s proposal.  After Ann accepts, the camera swings back to the shepherd girl, who is just closing the gate and coming to the end of her song.  It’s a beautifully-edited sequence, a culmination of techniques Griffith used earlier.

There’s even a moment of German Expressionism in Abraham Lincoln.  Late in the film, a backlit Lincoln wearing a tall top hat descends narrow stairs toward the viewer with a child at each hand, a shot which carries an eeriness that doesn't appear in other Griffith work.  Here, the director is clearly trying out alternative ways of telling stories.

Unfortunately, for all the innovations big and small, Abraham Lincoln doesn’t engage an audience because its dialog is so literary and its acting so stiff and stagy.  It can have striking moments of historical accuracy, like the scene that shows the horse and buggy dirtied up with mud, but in cinema, Griffith had clearly done better work previously.

December 3: Way Down East (1920 -- D.W. Griffith)

★★★★★

The first whiff of sentimentality or melodrama can take me out of a movie fast; I moaned aloud at the big reveal in Gravity, which broke the spell of even those effects.  But when Lillian Gish learns she isn't actually married in Way Down East, I’m hurt and angry.  And when she’s wandering homeless and sees the happy Bartlett family in their home, I long for her to join them just like she does.  Gish’s performance in this film is a master class in silent acting, in understanding and collaborating with the camera in a way that sucks a viewer in.  Her posture, her timing, her facial expressions, her gestures – all these are hugely emotive.  For an audience that can suspend current cinematic values enough to allow the silent’s, Way Down East is a remarkably affective film.

An easy way for a modern audience to engage Way Down East is through the character of Gish’s Anna.  She’s a little simpler and far more innocent than we can believe today, but her wisdom and power grow dramatically in the film.  After learning she’s been deceived about her marriage, she vows to marshal on as a single mother, and when her newborn is ill and she fears for the unbaptized child’s eternal soul, Anna usurps clerical prerogative and baptizes her child herself, an act that would bring a good deal of condemnation even in today’s cinema.  Not long afterwards, Anna defies class conventions and refuses to leave her home with the Bartletts despite being ordered to do so by the upper-class Sanderson.  And she takes a feminist stance when she complains that an unwed mother is ostracized but the father of the child is embraced.  Way Down East may be approaching the century mark, but Anna is a common-sense feminist that can inspire us today.

Several Griffith film techniques are on clear display here, too.  Early in the film, we’re already seeing sentimental symbolism as we watch the young Bartlett longing for love while surrounded by baby birds and blossoms.  As Bartlett later courts Anna, Griffith sets the couple in the lower left of a pastoral scene.  The scene of Bartlett’s longing also points to another technique that Griffith uses often, the close-up.  Griffith mastered the art of filling the frame with actors’ faces to bring viewers into the action and into the personal struggles of the characters.  In this scene, Richard Barthelmess overplays Bartlett’s longing, but Griffith’s use of close-up for effect remains a good decision.  The director also uses the tracking shot on Way Down East that he’d found so worthwhile in his two previous features.  At one point, for example, his camera tracks Martha as she rushes back to the Bartlett’s bringing news of Anna’s deceit.

While all of these elements are familiar, the tried-and-true Griffith technique that gets the most attention here is cross-cutting.  Like in his other films, Griffith uses this technique to build suspense.  Much of the suspense in the famous ice floe scene come from the film alternating between showing us the rescuer and cutting to the heroine.  More suspense is created as Martha is rushing home to denounce Anna and Griffith cuts back and forth between Martha and Bartlett’s effort to propose.  As this scene also implies, Griffith’s cross-cutting can elicit irony.  While Bartlett is at home longing for a mate, the film cuts back and forth from him to the false marriage that Sanderson has set up.  Way Down East shows Griffith refining the number of things he can do with cross-cutting.

Like many silents, Way Down East also uses the vocabulary of melodrama.  Anna trials are textbook examples of the extreme situations and heightened emotions that govern this style.  Anna is deceived by the evil Sanderson and bears an illegitimate child.  Her mother dies, and the new mother is cast out penniless.  The child then dies.  And just when Anna is beginning to recover, her secret past is revealed, and she finds herself cast out yet again.  The film’s story uses such heightened exaggeration to engage its audience.  And in addition to the melodrama, Way Down East relies on stereotypical characters like the spinster gossip and the comic, plain-faced country people.  Elements such as these are no better or worse that those found in other films of the era, though Gish’s ability to play to the camera hooks us into this melodrama.

Of course, the ending of the film is rightly famous.  Attention is generally focused on the ice floe rescue during which actor Richard Barthelmess actually leaps from ice sheet to ice sheet to get to Lilian Gish, herself floating down the river towards a waterfall on a piece of ice.  However, the prior scenes of Anna running through the winter storm in anguish at this final reversal in her life are equally gripping.  During this segment, we see images of bare branches that are intercut with Anna’s bent, clutching hands and arms in the air, and the film then cuts to a ghoulish image of the devastated woman’s face, eyelashes tinged with frost.  And all of these on film stock tinted purple.  It’s as creepy a sequence as anything Murnau would create.

In Way Down East, Griffith tells a straightforward melodramatic story using the cinematic language he had played such a key role in developing.  His collaboration with Lillian Gish gives this film the lift that puts it at the top of silent drama.

December 1: Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916 -- D.W. Griffith)

★★★★★

The word to describe Intolerance is “scale.”  Nothing here is modest or subtle.  Rather than one story, this one has four, and they’re not only spread over thousands of years but they’re weighty subjects like the fall of Babylon to the Persians, the massacre of the Huguenots by Catherine de Medici’s Catholics, and the life of Jesus Christ.  It’s hard not to admire Griffith’s ability to even imagine such a project, not to mention actually setting out to accomplish it.

Griffith’s ambition here doesn't stop at his choice of subject matter; what he puts on screen is every bit as impressive to look at.  His contemporary tale of the poor who are oppressed by capitalism and by self-righteous Reformers still manages to open with an opulent ball and elaborate costumes.  Likewise, the depiction of Charles IX’s France has some lavish royal sets and decoration as well as scenes filled with running crowds and soldiers surging from one side of the screen to the other.  The crowds appear, too, as Jesus struggles to Golgotha with the cross.  But it’s in the Babylonian story that Griffith goes all out for spectacle in Intolerance.  Thousands of extras dance on an elevated courtyard surrounded by undulating pillars that rise several stories from carved bases and end in large elephants.  In the interiors, Babylonians wear elaborate costumes, jewelry and make-up, and the battle scenes are replete with siege towers, basins of burning oil, and hundreds of soldiers scaling walls and being repulsed.  At one point, the camera itself takes wing, perhaps mounted in on early dolly, as it photographs a Babylonian performance.  The whole movie is visual extravaganza.

Griffith, too, ups the editing ante in Intolerance.  The previous year’s Birth of a Nation had clearly shown the power of cross-cutting to create suspense, and Griffith was quick to apply that lesson in Intolerance.  In the contemporary story, he cross-cuts scenes of the execution with scenes of the rush to get exculpatory evidence to the prison, for good measure tossing in a racing scene and a few impediments to the car carrying the evidence.  There is similar use of this editing technique in the Babylonian and the French stories as characters rush to warn others of the imminent threat bearing down on their respective beloveds.  But Griffith amplifies this technique of building suspense by cross-cutting beyond what he accomplished in Birth of a Nation because he cuts between the stories as he cross-cuts within each story.  Thus, the story of the Mountain Girl rushing to warn Belshazzar is cross-cut with the story of Prosper Latour rushing to warn Brown Eyes.  And this intercutting of stories builds suspense in a way impossible in the one story of Birth of a Nation because both the Mountain Girl and Prosper fail to save the object of their affection, suggesting that The Dear One might, too, fail to save The Boy.  With four storylines to play with, Griffith ramps up the suspense in Intolerance exponentially over that in Birth of a Nation.

All of which is not to say there are no problems with this early spectacle.  One of the biggest drawbacks is the muddled point of all the excess and suspense.  Only three of the stories in fact deal with intolerance – the Modern, the French, and Jesus’ – while intolerance doesn't seem to be an issue in the Babylonian.  And if we consider the subtitle, “Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages,” we only cover the Modern, the French and the Babylonian because we don’t find love as an element of the Jesus story.  And the film's odd ending of the peaceful soldiers, the angels and the divine light hardly seems appropriate to the stories we've seen either, especially given their tenuous thematic links.   Likewise, the woman rocking the cradle, the image idée fixe of the film, doesn't have a clear significance.  With the large time span of the stories, there’s no real reason to affirm the universality of Intolerance’s themes, as some maintain the image does.

Intolerance also suffers from expressing some of Griffith’s own intolerance.  The meddling do-gooders in the modern story come in for special scorn with their hypocrisy and their coldness.  With their holier-than-thou attitude, they take away The Dear One’s baby to turn over to irresponsible handlers; in fact, it’s the do-gooders’ need for more money that motivates the factory owner to squeeze his workers until they all strike and end up unemployed in the city.  Elements of the other four storylines imply criticism of these same women.  Jesus criticizes the public piety of the Pharisees, forgives a prostitute, and even makes wine; all these actions fly in the face of the values and practices of the modern do-gooders.  In the French story, religion is primarily a weapon, another indictment of religious people, and the sympathetic couple of the Babylon story are hedonistic lovers who aren't married.  If there is any unity among the four stories, it’s a shared critique of do-gooders and their manifestations in various ages.

Intolerance is a sprawling film of great excess, and it’s hard not to get caught up in its technical achievement and thematic grasp.  The film is far from perfect, but it is one of cinema’s great pleasures.