October 12: Dead Man (1995 -- Jim Jarmusch)

★★★★★

I love this movie.  I’ve thought about it from a lot of different angles, but what I always come back to is that Dead Man has an irreducible quality that makes it more than the sum of the parts that I can identify.  The quest of the hero, William Blake, has a “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” quality to it – imaginative and phantasmagorical but with at least a toe in a reality I can recognize but not understand.

There’s the obvious Western movie aspect of Dead Man, and the film fits that genre.  Loner William Blake is out on a voyage, and he moves through a country of saloons, gunslingers, powerful businessmen, ambushes, sheriffs, bad guys and Indians.  And as the ineffective accountant journeys, he comes of age as a man.  It’s right out of John Ford.

But the West Blake finds isn’t in Ford’s Westerns.  The trio of bad-guy/bounty hunters tailing Blake includes a black man, killed early, and a reticent cannibal who eats his remaining, more talkative reward seeker.  A trio of trappers includes cross-dressing “Sally” Jenko, who regales his companions with graphic descriptions of how Roman emperors tortured Christians; his two big companions fight over who will have the right to rape Blake first, but all three of the trappers end up dead.  Blake dines on Sally’s beans and possum.

Dead Man’s Indians have far more complexity and history than the Indians in a typical Western, too.  More than the typical Indian guide to the white man, Nobody, is the dominant one of the pair.  Nobody saves Blake’s life while steering him through life in the West.  This Indian sidekick has a Western education, likes the work of the British poet William Blake, and has even been to Europe as a poster child Native Savage.  Dead Man also delivers a striking portrayal of a Northwest Indian village.  Jarmush shows the village as a walled fortress with tall, painted walls and large totems, and it has an interior like the casbah of a North African city.  The nuance and sophistication of Native American culture comes through clearly in the film.

But there is much more than the Western theme going on in Dead Man.  As he journeys though the West, William Blake is also journeying from innocence to experience, citing verses from Blake’s Songs as he goes along.  Naïve and tentative at the beginning of the film, the film’s Blake has become capable with a pistol by the end and has learned how to evaluate the risks he faces.  He goes from accidental gun-slinger at the hotel to hesitant shooter with the trappers to sophisticated defender of himself and Nobody at the trader/missionary’s post. 

There’s also an overlay of language change as Blake moves on this character arc.  Early on, Blake voyages to Machine, trusting the words in the letter that promise him a job.  In the introductory train sequence, Blake’s fellow passengers dress in more and more rustic clothes as the train moves West until everyone’s in buckskin and slaughtering buffalo out the window.  Meanwhile, the train Fireman tries to warn Blake to be cautious, but Blake can’t understand the man’s words; the two clearly have different ideas of what words are and how to use them.  Blake is similarly confused by Nobody’s language, partly because of the Indian’s abstract language but partly because Blake still doesn’t understand the West he’s in.  Nobody tells Blake that he’ll soon speak with his gun, and Blake soon does so to the two sheriffs who are seeking the reward on Blake’s head.  “Have you read my poetry?” Blake asks them before shooting them.  By the end of Dead Man, Blake is speaking the nonsense he couldn’t understand at the beginning.

The visual beauty of Dead Man is also important to the film.  I noticed time and again the tiny depth of field here that is typical of early black-and-white photography, and especially typical of that out West.  The focus would be on Depp’s eye, for example, while the rest of his face was slightly blurry.  And the rich black-and-white of the film has a 19^th century feel.  Often, too, the composition of the shots has a still-photo aesthetic, sometimes so stylized as to take you out of the movie in appreciation of how the image looks.

Such self-consciousness is a big part of the aesthetic of the film.  In addition to the occasional over-the-top images and the cross-dressing trapper, Dead Man has the most Caucasian Indian you’ll see in Gary Farmer’s Nobody.  Robert Mitchum’s long monologue with his back to the camera makes you aware of the camera, and the intercutting of the train wheels with the passengers’ changing dress highlights the filmic in Dead Man.  And there is Neil Young’s eerie, interpretive, intrusive, improvised soundtrack throughout.  Artifice is integral to the film.

What all this leads to, in the words of Roger Ebert’s infamous review, I don’t know.  But I was mesmerized and touched by Dead Man.  I don’t what I thought as William Blake was pushed off in his funerary canoe and his right-hand man and arch nemesis killed each other in the background, but it was a feeling of wonder.  The significance of Blake’s voyage is just out of my reach.  I can see a lot of parts in this film and many levels of significance, but all these elements ultimately lead to something bigger than the sum of the parts.  Beauty, perhaps.

October 11: Mystery Train (1989 -- Jim Jarmusch)

★★★★

I get pulled into movies like Mystery Train easily.  This one teased me by giving me touchpoints among three narratives that enticed me to compare the stories.  In two of the sections, the characters walk by the same empty lot with a city scape in back.  All characters pass by an abandoned movie theater.  All also go to the same hotel, and all comment about the lack of a TV.  All listen to the same radio show with Elvis’ version of "Blue Moon."  All rooms have a little chain that holds (or held) a plastic radio, and all the rooms have a picture of Elvis.  In each story, there’s the same crumbling overpass with the same train passing over it, and a gunshot punctuates each story.  I can’t stay away from an enticement like that.

Each of these stories has foreigners in Memphis, too, and they’re all dealing with crises in this city of logistics (there is transportation everywhere) and rock n roll/blues legends.  It’s an empty, desolate cityscape, and the young, hyper-styled, Japanese couple fixates on music while they work out their relationship.  The Italian recent-widow, who seems to know a good deal about guns, has just lost her husband and finds herself drawn in by a ghost story about Elvis…until Elvis actually appears to her.  A Brit hipster deals with his breakup and loss of a job by dragging his friends into an evening of drinking and violence.  

The Memphis cityscape is tired and beaten down, and the characters of the story, universal in their cultural range, are beaten down, too.  However, as the city has given rise to musical legends, so does it (and its music) get these pilgrims to pull themselves together and head  down the road to the rest of their lives.  It’s a wonderful experience to watch this happen in all three stories as the owner and desk clerk wearily take stock of yet another set of people moving on with their lives.

There’s something oddly positive about Memphis in Mystery Train.  It’s not a city of people – in fact, the city appears to almost devoid of residents. – but it’s a city of inspiration, a city where the urban ruin somehow lifts people up and sends them on their way.  Like its trains, planes and trucks do.  And like the music that found its birth here does.  

October 8: Drive (2011 -- Nicolas Winding Refn)

★★★★

There are eight million stories in the Naked City; this has been one of them. (Naked City, ending)

There's a hundred streets in this city. You don't need to know the route.  (Drive, opening)

There’s more similarity between Drive and noir classic Naked City than grammar structures and language rhythm.  Both films use specificity of location extensively; LA’s wide boulevards, sports arena, strip mall restaurants and river serve as settings for important actions in Drive.  And this LA is a complicated, corrupt, claustrophobic world where innocents are in grave danger, unrecognized conspiracies menace, and taciturn characters speak little.  Low angle cinematography and shadows also play an important role here.  The scene where Driver steps back out of the light after killing his first two attackers is such a heavy use of shadow that it would be at home in a classic noir.

Drive goes further than a lot of noir does, though.  The film has an intense, compelling opening that marries muscle car film convention to noir lighting and suspense.  The image of the helicopter light searching for the car is as tense and arty as any shot of noir police hunting for a fugitive.  And Nicolas Winding Refn’s soundtrack adds to the tension throughout the scene with the sports announcer calling a game on the radio and the car engine racing and quieting down rapidly. 

As Refn’s effective use of soundtrack throughout suggests, Drive veers from noir grammar in several other ways.  For example, there is no femme fatal to bring the hero down; instead, Driver is trying to save an innocent Irene from the complicated tentacles of corruption around them both.  And the focus of this film, while partly about solving the complicated mystery, is also about what happens to a man who tries to fight such decay.  Driver starts the film as an isolated warrior with rules and a code, but his movement is increasingly into violence even as he reaches out to Irene.  His character arc leads simultaneously toward social integration as well as toward horrible, graphic, gory violence as Driver finds he must fight evil by drawing on that within him that addresses the darkness around him

Stylish, noir and intense, Drive is a great, if disturbing, ride.

October 7: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998 -- Terry Gilliam)

October 4: Rango (2011 -- Gore Verbinski)

★★★

October 2: The Bourne Ultimatum (2007 -- Paul Greengrass)

★★★

Of the three Bourne movies, this is my least favorite, thought that might not have been the case if I hadn’t watched Supremacy just last night.  Unfortunately though, I had, and I found Ultimatum to be a rehash of the same – same story, same techniques, same issues, same lack of empathy for the hero.  Ultimatum is capable but covers little new ground.

I will credit Greengrass with introducing some of the political issues that have arisen since 9-11 because the main concern here is with a government agency that is happy to target Americans in the name of national security.  That aside, this film is starting to feel a little formulaic: compelling chase scenes; compelling fights; exotic, European urban locations; omnipotent CIA; girl interest; handheld camera; fast editing.  There are even parallel scenes like Bourne leaving his arch-assassin rival stuck in a wrecked car and the love interest cutting and dying her hair. 

Bourne Ultimatum is a good, fun movie, but this is the second go round with all this stuff.  I would've hoped for a little more innovation.

October 1: The Bourne Supremacy (2004 -- Paul Greengrass)

★★★★

Another rockin’ thriller.  With the change in director from Identity to Supremacy, there are changes in approach to film, but the changes are more or less a wash to me.  I enjoyed the film.

A plus in this film is the technique.  Greengrass amps up the handheld camera here, always giving the viewer a sense of participation.  Sometimes the POV is though the eye of Bourne, but the camera is often the eye of an independent viewer who is right in the action, trying to see what’s going on, to see where the danger is.  So Supremacy is constantly pulling us in but also disorienting us, making us strain to see what’s happening while the camera jogs through the action.  It’s an extremely effective technique, and it’s coupled with editing that reinforces the participant view.  There are rapid cuts in action sequences and longer takes in meetings, though the latter use editing to keep us involved in the film.  In one CIA meeting, while the handheld camera follows what’s happening, there are a several cuts to close-ups and super close-ups, surprising us in their contrast from wide shot to close-up but also duplicating the way a spectator would look to study a reaction.  I think of music video when I think of a technique like this, and in Supremacy, the hand-held camera and fast editing keep you involved throughout.  You’re never lost in chaos, either, even in the chase scenes and fights.  Greengrass skillfully follows the narrative line as he cuts and jostles the camera though the fights and chases.

Supremacy is also strong on the level of image.  The opening sequences in Goa are bathed in warm reds, oranges and browns with bits of more saturated colors dribbled in, and you appreciate this pallet even more because it’s contrasted with the cold blues and greens of Berlin that it’s intercut with.  Greengrass also uses architectural elements to create bold patterns across the screen, like the banks of windows outside the temporary CIA office.  And though there are many woman-underwater-with-floating-hair scenes in film, that scene in Supremacy feels like it owes a special debt to the parallel scene in Night of the Hunter.  Greengrass clearly has a skill at creating strong images.

As skillful and engaging as Greengrass’ technique is here, there is one loss in the move from Identity to Supremacy – a loss of warmth and personality.  In Identity, there is at least some psychology to Bourne, and viewers can feel some empathy with him.  In Supremacy, though, narrative has top billing, and there is little real character development.  Even scenes that should involve some audience sympathy, like the time Bourne spends at the site of his earlier crime and his later visit to the girl, fail to involve us as much as the action and meeting sequences.  Maybe that's a limitation of Greengrass’ technique since you don’t get much intimacy or empathy if you’re at the mercy of an active camera and active editor.

Still, Bourne Supremacy is a great, fun action movie, clearly a notch above much of what is around.