The primary focus of Movies by Bowes ™ has been, to this point, on narrative features. Personal prejudice, aesthetic laziness, bourgeois attachment to people, stories, and meaning, go have that argument elsewhere and let me know how it comes out so I can light a fart in your face. I'm never going to be a grownup critic like this asshole, so rather than even try, let's assert the primacy of the music video in the development of avant-garde cinema!
For a more thorough—and better—history of the music video than I could pull out of my ass on this lovely summer Saturday, read this. As ultimately damaging as videos turned out to be for pop music (skyrocketing costs led to the industry fucking itself in the ass by keeping the pretty and tone-deaf in the luxury to which they'd become accustomed while bands that could actually play sledgehammered the foundation by learning to use the Internet to circumvent the traditional distribution system) they were an unexpected boon to the movie business.
Many critics, especially the sort whose nipples get all hard at Serious Cinema (read: foreign, political, painful to watch), moan to the heavens about quick cutting and rock n roll soundtracks ruining cinema in the 80s. The older ones, anyway. While, in the wrong hands, the “MTV aesthetic” leads to pointless, attitudinal editing and shallowness, the evolution of these tropes in the development of the music video began out of necessity and for actual reasons. The average pop song being between 3-4 minutes long (occasionally as long as 5 or 6), the music video director needs to pack as much as possible into that time. And it's not as if Russell Mulcahy invented quick cutting:
And, as specifically pertains to the marriage between cinema and pop music, like everything else in music, all roads lead back to The Beatles at some point. Among the impressive list of pop institutions on which they hold the copyright—drugs, dippy experimentation in musical forms like Indian and electronic that they didn't really understand except they were on drugs, letting girlfriends come between the band and the music, self-indulgent side projects, pissing off Jesus freaks, the much-better-than-you'd-think guitarist solo album (seriously, do not sleep on George Harrison, that boy's solo output was fucking fierce), more drugs, the melodramatic breakup—the one that had arguably the biggest input was originating the form of the music video. Much like their music synthesized earlier influences to create something new and wonderful, A Hard Day's Night took its cue from experiments going back to Louis Jordan and even earlier to Bessie Smith and did the same.
While, obviously, the Beatles are most of what make A Hard Day's Night what it is—an exhilarating, fun whirlwind—it wouldn't have been as revolutionary and influential without Richard Lester. The 60s were an exciting time for playing with cinema vocabulary, and Lester matched form with content in such a skillful way that A Hard Day's Night doesn't even feel like an art picture. The story of four dudes from Liverpool who suddenly got retarded famous playing pop songs, the rapid-fire editing emphasizes the new craziness of their lives, as do the non sequiturs—the lolwut gem of the bunch being Paul's grandfather, and everyone saying “He's very clean.” Of course, the fact that it's all scored to Beatle songs helps, but note especially the train compartment/card game “I Should Have Known Better” sequence and the holy shit we're free “Can't Buy Me Love” sequence. In those two scenes, we have the birth of the music video.
Naturally, the Beatles being kind of popular, other people took their cue from A Hard Day's Night and to a similar extent, Bob Dylan's “zup, D.A. Pennebaker, let's make a movie” Don't Look Back. The Stones got in on it, mocking their arrest for the smacked out sex with Marianne Faithfull bearskin rug thing. David Bowie, master of both the homage and getting as much attention as humanly (or alienly) possible, got himself banned by the BBC for excessive gay in the early 70s, and then relaunched his career as a chart-topper in the late 70s. And then there was MTV, and the rest is history.
A lot of that history—Madonna and Michael—has been so thoroughly written about that even I, the White Man in Yammersmith Palais, will refrain from redundancy. Much as “Express Yourself” (key in launching director David Fincher's career) and “Billie Jean” are stunningly good songs and videos, Madonna and Michael were so massively popular and singularly themselves that it's been the rare subsequent pop singer who even dared imitate them directly (hats off to Lady GaGa though; rama oo la la, baby-san).
The following people and institutions I think had more actual impact on the music video, instead of merely its popularity:
Duran Duran
Since the longest stretch of time when MTV actually played videos was the 1980s, most of the important developments in the form took place then. And who was more 80s than Duran Duran? Bored, English, kinky, authors of polished, ludicrously catchy pop tunes (that are impossible to cover due to that bendy shit Simon LeBon always did with his voice on choruses—see “Union of the Snake” and View to a Kill” among others), Duran Duran would be remembered most today by revisionist musical historians insisting that they were actually a pretty good band if not for the videos. This one was banned due to tits:
But this one is the definitive Duran Duran video. Revel in the majesty.
It's pretty simple math: band looking cool + scantily clad women = WIN. Someone else probably would have thought of it if Duran Duran didn't do it first, but just because someone else would have chipped two rocks together and set something else on fire doesn't mean the first cave person to do so wasn't awesome. In short order, bands across all genres, from hair metal to hip hop to harpsichord sonatas packed as many good-looking women as possible in every video they put out, but, learning from the “Girls on Film” controversy, always made sure there was plenty of double-sided tape on hand so there'd be no bikini slippage. Alas.
Pussies With Mullets
Where Duran Duran had balls and a surprisingly well-developed sense of perspective about themselves, many bands in the 80s had neither. Note in the following the band never appearing in the same shot as the scantily-clad woman:
A historically important subgenre for its trailblazing work in the field of unintentional comedy, and providing a never-ending supply of slow-dance and karaoke selections.
Yo! MTV (reluctantly) Raps!
Prefiguring the chart dominance in the 90s of hip-hop and “R&B” (much of which has neither rhythm nor blues), the rap video's evolution began in the 80s with DIY, low-budget efforts by the legendary Grandmaster Flash:
Later, in hip-hop's first entree into mainstream pop, concurrent with MTV sufficiently extricating its head from its ass to start airing videos by rappers other than Run-DMC, we started to see a tip of the hat to the Duran Duran template. For one of the funnier examples, I present Rakim Allah, esq.
Throughout the history of hip-hop there have been internecine struggles between artistic integrity (a focus on the MC and the DJ) and the trappings of commercial success (gold chains, girls, conspicuous consumption), but rarely a focus on the creative possibilities afforded by the music video form. For a while in the 90s, it looked like Wu-Tang would manage to “keep it real,” sell shitloads of records, and put out beautifully strange videos:
However, as RZA and company overextended themselves and oversaturated the market, the rap video became defined by Puff and his mountains of money, leading to the massive budgets of the late 90s, helicopter shots, the same old shots of bored-looking girls without lots of clothes, and nouveaux riche tackiness griming up every frame:
The 90s, and the Disappearance of the Video
Once MTV started showing director credits on videos, stars were made out of people like David Fincher and Spike Jonze, who would later take their talents to Hollywood and make features. This, of course, was partly due to their videos being so creative and entertaining, but also the unfortunate, ratings-motivated decision by MTV in the mid-90s to abandon the “music” part of the acronym for “music television.” As videos got more interesting, they also got more expensive. And, lest we forget, the 90s were notable for the widening schism between the good and the popular in pop music, so the more likely a band was to have an interesting video, the less likely it was for the mass teenage audience to want to see that video. And so it became that the above-mentioned Puff hegemony solidified, as by the end of the decade, the only place you could see videos on MTV was on Total Request Live, and only the same 10 decadently-conceived pieces of crap ever found their way onto the air.
This led to the music video, as an art form, appearing to recede into history, as a curio of the 80s and early 90s, and the increasing relegation onto channels like MTV2 (which eventually stopped showing videos). Amazingly, VH1, started as the vanilla stepchild to MTV, took the lead in reviving interest (however niche it may have been) in the music video by launching VH1 Classic, a reliquary for the great videos of the 80s and before, which was a fantastic and important thing. Initially, they showed no commercials, just videos. And it was good. They showed shit like this—
—all the time. Alas, eventually niche channels catering to nostalgic nerds need to pay the fiddler. VH1 Classic started showing commercials. And so began its slow decline.
A Savior Appears!
Much like in The Hunt For Red October, the submarine ex machina keeps Stellan Skarsgard's torpedo from vaporizing Alec Baldwin and Sean Connery, prompting Courtney B. Vance's “WAY TO GO, DALLAS!” the Internet would save the day. February 2005. YouTube.
Without sounding like a commercial for the fucking place—though note where all the embedded videos came from—YouTube saved the music video by, in true Internet fashion, giving the audience the freedom to watch what they want to watch when they want to watch it (the odd unavailable-due-to-copyright infringement lacunae aside), and leading to bands actually making music videos again! This leads to such wonders as Grizzly Bear's beautifully strange clip for “Two Weeks” (probably the best single of the last decade)—
—being just as available as Lady GaGa (who, to the equal parts dismay and delight of millions, is here to stay):
It's this last development, the archive and breeding ground that is YouTube, that make it possible to study the music video as art, without wasting months watching MTV in the middle of the night, hoping to catch the one time they ever play Grizzly Bear. Being able to write this post in an afternoon is infinitely preferable.
Music videos, as the way most people, for the last three decades, see (occasionally) avant-garde short-form cinema, have served as a kind of Trojan horse to expose the otherwise aggressively uninterested American teenager to techniques and visual concepts to which they'd otherwise never be exposed. This is not to say that suddenly the average dipshit mallrat suddenly sees this (NSFW, as if anything on this fucking blog is SFW)—
—and runs out to MoMA to see Matthew Barney retrospectives, but you gotta start somewhere.
But more than any high-minded purpose as art, music videos are fun. Being short-form, you can watch one in four minutes or thirty in two hours, depending on the mood. At their best, videos can increase one's appreciation for a singer or band, and even at their worst, they're over fairly quickly.
I leave you with the two videos that inspired this post, two of my very favorite ever, from the one, the only, Michel Gondry. Enjoy.
Let Forever Be (Best. Transitions. Ever.)
Je Danse Le Mia (You know why . . .)
Showing posts with label Michel Gondry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michel Gondry. Show all posts
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Thursday, 31 December 2009
TOP TEN--5 TO 1
(5) There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)—2007
Numerology aficionados, take note: number five on this list is the fifth feature directed by P.T. Anderson, “P.T. Anderson” has five syllables, “Daniel Day-Lewis” also has five syllables, it’s 158 minutes long (if you divide 158 by 31.6, you get . . . five!), it won five awards from the Austin Film Critics’ Association . . . oh, shit, wait, I forgot I wasn’t writing about Magnolia. Sorry.
I’ve personally gone back and forth on P.T. Anderson several times. I saw Boogie Nights, thought it was a masterpiece (still do), I saw Magnolia, thought it was a masterpiece, then watched it again and realized I was high when I watched it the previous time and thought it was a bit of a mess, talked to someone who swore to me that Magnolia was the best American film since Citizen Kane, watched it again, was swayed by their opinion, told someone else Magnolia was the new gold standard in auteur cinema, was told by them that I was a pretentious asshole and that Magnolia sucked, replied “fuck you,” let a couple years go by, watched Magnolia again, realized that it had its moments but was about an hour too long; saw Punch-Drunk Love, wondered why; finally Netflixed Hard Eight, aka Sydney, got very excited about the possibilities of cinema . . . and then came time to see There Will Be Blood.
There Will Be Blood is a legitimate epic. “Epic” is one of those words like “awesome” or “diva” (or “fact”) that has a different use now than it used to, and gets tossed around so much that it’s easy to lose sight that it once carried a grandeur implying something beyond the ordinary. One of the puzzling contradictions of modern-day Hollywood is that, in spite of the emphasis on commercialism (i.e. maximizing the number of screenings per day a picture can have) and the perceived dwindling attention span of the modern moviegoer, two-and-a-half hour movies are relatively common, but most of those movies are the result of the Gore Verbinskis of the world losing the keys to the editing room rather than there being a preponderance of actual epics. This, though, is an epic in a very American tradition.
It looks and feels like a Western, but is set sometime after the “Old West” period, at the dawn of the 20th century. The fact of its being a Western in form gives a sense of inevitability to the story of oilman Daniel Plainview, that this is where the Old West was always heading. There Will Be Blood is not a polemic, nor is it even overtly political; the best choice it makes from the very beginning is that, although Daniel Plainview does bad things, he is not a villain. He’s just a guy. This has always been P.T. Anderson’s greatest strength as a writer, not judging his characters, but scrupulously showing them as they are and letting the audience make up its own mind.
No discussion of this movie is complete without mentioning Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance in the lead. It is, without exaggeration, one of the defining performances in the history of cinema. It’s so good that even talking about it is almost pointless. One understands immediately watching him on the screen, radiating intensity to the terrifying degree he does, why Mr. Day-Lewis retires after every movie and goes off to make shoes for a couple years. If he tried to sustain one of those Samuel L. Jackson four-or-five movie a year careers, his head would explode. (Actually, it’s this quality of DDL’s process that makes me like him less as an actor; being an actor myself I can’t help but think what a monumental fucking pain in the ass it must be to work with a guy who walks around set in character all the time, insisting on being addressed as his character . . . I still think he’s about as good at that kind of acting as anyone ever has or ever will be, I just really don’t want him to spawn any imitators).
Ultimately, even though There Will Be Blood is one of those movies it’s easier to admire than love, the admiration it demands is supreme. Any movie about which it can be said, “Okay, here are my top five favorite shots . . . wait, shit, that’s seven . . .” is a force to be reckoned with (take a bow, Robert Elswit). That necessary admiration is what jumps this movie to the top 5, but the emotional chilliness and deliberate (not slow, just deliberate) pace keep it from rising higher.
(4) Children of Men (dir. Alfonso Cuaron)—2006
Warning: spoilers ahead, so watch the movie first. You’re welcome.
When I was first compiling this list—as a joke, while Gchatting with my good friend James Comtois about his top 50—I forgot to include Children of Men. Some might say that this means “how memorable could it be?” That ain’t it, though. The real reason I forgot about this movie is because HBO has been showing it so often, and always when I’m flipping channels in the middle of the night (insomnia’s a bitch, folks), that I keep thinking it’s been around for longer, because at this point I’ve seen it so many times that I think it must be older.
(What’s that you say? You worry for me, since my idea of a good time is closing the shades, listening to gloomy Brit guitar music, watching dystopian science fiction movies, and contemplating man’s place in a near-infinite cosmos? You’re really too kind for worrying.)
Most other end-of-decade lists have Children of Men somewhere in the teens or twenties. I can see that, especially if you only saw it once or maybe twice. The first time I saw it a couple things really jumped out at me—Clive Owen’s performance is terrific, as is the vividly real, cinema-verite vision of the future—as well as the same thing that everyone was talking about: those now-famous uninterrupted takes. There are the most famous two—the one in the car and the one fucking incredible one at Bexhill—but upon repeated viewings, you notice even the first shot of the movie, where Clive Owen goes in, gets his morning coffee, sees on the TV that the youngest person in the world has died (an 18 year old in Argentina), goes out, puts his sugar in and BOOM the coffee shop explodes is all in one take. That the one where Clive Owen’s trying to jumpstart the car and push it through the mud, all in one take. That the one where the baby is born, all one take.
There isn’t a ton of exposition here. Alfonso Cuaron seems more concerned with the audience’s visceral experience of this world than in their understanding just why no babies have been born in 18 years. Exactly that kind of overexplanation was what stopped V for Vendetta dead in its tracks and made you go “wait, hold up” when you were supposed to be getting excited about Natalie Portman blowing up Parliament. Cuaron, with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s help, keeps us focused on the task at hand: getting Clive Owen, Kee, and Kee’s baby, the fuck out of England. No subplots, none of that crap, just an hour and forty-five minutes of focused intensity and a couple of eight-minute single-shot action scenes that will give you a boner. Or the nearest local equivalent.
(3) The Lives of Others (dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)—2006
I wrote this back in December ‘07: First things first, the director has a whole lot of name, but if you plan on seeing movies for the next 30-50 years, learn how to spell it. This cat’s here to stay.
While this technically came out in 2006 justintime for the Oscar eligibility—and had all those Pan’s Labyrinth fans going “huh?” when it won—it went wide(ish) in ‘07, and in any case I just saw it. All justifications for its presence here are null and void, though. This movie is goddamn extraordinary.
Europeans are the only people who can pull of a character study/thriller that’s equally great as both, and The Lives of Others is everything great about European movies: a serious movie by a serious (first-time!) director about a serious theme that is not only entertaining, it’s immensely powerful emotionally. The cast is sensational. You can get lost in this movie like few others ever made. It’s up there with Citizen Kane and The 400 Blows as the best first features ever. And yes, it is that good. Pan’s Labyrinth did not get snubbed. Seriously.
Now: I keep meaning to go back and watch The Lives of Others, but I haven’t been able to. Watching it the first time was a little overwhelming. I cried. I cry at the movies from time to time, but I was sobbing at the end of this one. (Top 5 all-time surprising “I’m crying at this?” movies: this, WALL-E, P.S. I Love You—don’t ask—Pulp Fiction, and The Remains of the Day. In retrospect, Lives of Others and WALL-E kinda make sense, but refer any questions about the other three to my attorney). Partly because I knew Ulrich Mühe died before the movie came out, and he was incredible as the Stasi agent. Mostly because it’s a large movie about something important—the horrible effect totalitarian regimes have on people—that’s as well done as this movie is.
Part of the PR problem this movie had at first was that the people plugging it were German: “You VILL sink zis ist vun of ze greatest feelms uv all times!” (Actually, that’s me being a shithead; von Donnersmarck spent part of his childhood in the Upper East Side of NYC and speaks perfect mid-Atlantic American English; he’s not that far behind Tony Leung Chiu-Wai in the “foreigners speaking our language better than we do” list. Tony Leung speaking English is beautiful to listen to. Maybe we can bring him and von Donnersmarck over to the States and have them make a picture together . . .) Most of it was the above-mentioned Pan’s Labyrinth business. People loved them some Pan’s Labyrinth. And I mean, it’s a good movie, but comparing it to The Lives of Others is stupid. They both have repressive political regimes looming large over everything, but they diverge slightly from there. Suffice it to say there are no Stasi or KGB guys with eyeballs in their palms in The Lives of Others. But still, the friends I was watching the Oscars with stood up when they announced the Best Foreign Film winner and said, “THAT WAS FUCKING BULLSHIT” when the winner wasn’t Pan’s Labyrinth. Some things you just can’t help.
I only want to back off on my Citizen Kane/400 Blows rhetoric a little bit. The fact that all the heat around it has died down, and I’m just about the only person I know still talking about it, indicates that it may not be remembered on that level. Still, it’s a good fuckin’ movie. RIP Ulrich Mühe.
(2) City of God (dir. Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund)—2002
“Benny was the coolest hood in the City of God.”
One of my quirks is a love for random movie lines that, out of context, don’t always have the same resonance, or even have any resonance out of context, or aren’t even that important in context. But the line “Benny was the coolest hood in the City of God,” for some reason, made me feel just how cool Benny was, how much everyone else loved him, and so on. And it fit with the tone of the movie for me: it felt like I was listening to Homer singing the epic tale of legendary Cidade de Deus, the most dangerous slum in Rio de Janeiro.
At the same time as it feels legendary, it also feels vividly real. Trying to describe City of God to a friend once—in one of my frequent glib, reductive moods—I said “it’s season 4 of The Wire in Portuguese.” Not my most precise analogy, admittedly. But one quality City of God and The Wire have in common is a feeling, whether true or not, of reality. (A lot of Brazilians on imdb and other internet fora make the counterclaim that City of God is a bullshit MTV version of the real favelas, and I’ve admittedly never been there, so maybe they’re right). But where The Wire always avoided building anyone up to legendary status (or in Omar’s case, letting him retain it), there are epic figures in City of God. No one is crazier than Lil’ Ze. No one is cooler than Benny. No one is more bent on revenge than Knockout Ned. And, naturally, no one is hotter than Angelica (Alice Braga, niece of Sonia, possessor of the same knee-weakening hotness), and no one is more in love with Angelica than the protagonist, Rocket.
So, maybe a better framework in which to discuss City of God than realism is intensity. It’s almost too intense in places. Some of the things the characters do are a little hard to watch (especially if you find it hard to watch 8 year olds waving guns). When the closing credits role, you exhale. For the first time in over two hours.
(1) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (dir. Michel Gondry)--2004
And at long last, number one. This, in many ways is a Bowes no-brainer:
French director? Check
Run-of-the-mill civilians been known to call it depressing? Check
Great lead performance by an actor about whom that has to be prefaced by “now, I know what you thinking . . .?” Check
Kate Winslet? Check
Best Original Screenplay winner at the Oscars? Check
That last might seem arbitrary and overly reliant on the notoriously unreliable Oscars, but the kind of movie that wins Best Original Screenplay more often than not is the kind of thing I’d rather see than a Best Picture winner. A brief selected (non-chronological) list: Citizen Kane, Pulp Fiction, Annie Hall, Eternal Sunshine, Lost in Translation, Network, Sunset Boulevard, The Producers, Chinatown, The Usual Suspects, The Crying Game. Every last one an all-time favorite. None of them a Best Picture winner except Annie Hall. As an award, I always felt like Best Original Screenplay was the “ok, you’re too weird to give the big trophy to, but even though we’re a conservative institution with an unspoken yet distinct set of voting criteria, we still know a good movie when we see it” award. And ever since I was 16, I’ve thought that I if ever win an Oscar, the one I really want is Best Original Screenplay.
Eternal Sunshine has a very original screenplay indeed. Conceived by artist Pierre Bismuth, director Gondry, and the inimitable Charlie Kaufman, it tells the story of an artist named Joel (Jim Carrey) and his troubled relationship with a colorful-haired, hard drinking girl named Clementine (Kate Winslet). It opens with Joel and Clementine meeting as strangers, little knowing that they have been a couple for two years. They have each decided, with Clementine’s decision preceding Joel’s, to erase the other from their memory. Joel, though, in the middle of the process, begins to resist, as he can’t let the memory of the girl he once loved so dearly go.
And there you have it, a very basic and true idea: as much as love hurts when it goes bad, it’s still the best thing there is. A lot of what keeps a relationship going, after the initial bloom of romance fades into the comfort of familiarity, is the memory of the first romance. Some blossoms fade faster than others. Some, upon fading, reveal that the first romance was based on false pretenses. Some reveal that, although you love each other very much, certain compromises are necessary to keep one or two things from avalanching into relationship-enders. Whatever way the particular relationship evolves, there was always a point at which it was perfect, and the memory of that time is something to never let go.
The most impressive thing about Eternal Sunshine is that when the protagonist has that realization, Jim fucking Carrey is having that realization. A real emotion? From Jim fucking Carrey? Balderdash, you say? That’s what I said—with a couple “fuck”s randomly thrown in, of course—until I realized, no, it’s true. Jim Carrey really is giving a spectacularly effective lead performance, but even more amazingly, Jim Carrey is giving an understated performance. Maybe Charlie Kaufman, intellectual that he is, stopped by Carrey’s trailer and showed him the definition of “subtle” in Webster’s. Whatever the hell happened, whoever was responsible for reeling that motherfucker in deserves a Nobel Prize, fuck an Oscar and furthermore fuck a Palme D’Or.
So there you have it. Eternal Sunshine is my best of the decade. It ranks up there with Michel Gondry’s music videos, which will warrant their own entry at some point in this blog’s future. Happy New Year, everyone!
Numerology aficionados, take note: number five on this list is the fifth feature directed by P.T. Anderson, “P.T. Anderson” has five syllables, “Daniel Day-Lewis” also has five syllables, it’s 158 minutes long (if you divide 158 by 31.6, you get . . . five!), it won five awards from the Austin Film Critics’ Association . . . oh, shit, wait, I forgot I wasn’t writing about Magnolia. Sorry.
I’ve personally gone back and forth on P.T. Anderson several times. I saw Boogie Nights, thought it was a masterpiece (still do), I saw Magnolia, thought it was a masterpiece, then watched it again and realized I was high when I watched it the previous time and thought it was a bit of a mess, talked to someone who swore to me that Magnolia was the best American film since Citizen Kane, watched it again, was swayed by their opinion, told someone else Magnolia was the new gold standard in auteur cinema, was told by them that I was a pretentious asshole and that Magnolia sucked, replied “fuck you,” let a couple years go by, watched Magnolia again, realized that it had its moments but was about an hour too long; saw Punch-Drunk Love, wondered why; finally Netflixed Hard Eight, aka Sydney, got very excited about the possibilities of cinema . . . and then came time to see There Will Be Blood.
There Will Be Blood is a legitimate epic. “Epic” is one of those words like “awesome” or “diva” (or “fact”) that has a different use now than it used to, and gets tossed around so much that it’s easy to lose sight that it once carried a grandeur implying something beyond the ordinary. One of the puzzling contradictions of modern-day Hollywood is that, in spite of the emphasis on commercialism (i.e. maximizing the number of screenings per day a picture can have) and the perceived dwindling attention span of the modern moviegoer, two-and-a-half hour movies are relatively common, but most of those movies are the result of the Gore Verbinskis of the world losing the keys to the editing room rather than there being a preponderance of actual epics. This, though, is an epic in a very American tradition.
It looks and feels like a Western, but is set sometime after the “Old West” period, at the dawn of the 20th century. The fact of its being a Western in form gives a sense of inevitability to the story of oilman Daniel Plainview, that this is where the Old West was always heading. There Will Be Blood is not a polemic, nor is it even overtly political; the best choice it makes from the very beginning is that, although Daniel Plainview does bad things, he is not a villain. He’s just a guy. This has always been P.T. Anderson’s greatest strength as a writer, not judging his characters, but scrupulously showing them as they are and letting the audience make up its own mind.
No discussion of this movie is complete without mentioning Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance in the lead. It is, without exaggeration, one of the defining performances in the history of cinema. It’s so good that even talking about it is almost pointless. One understands immediately watching him on the screen, radiating intensity to the terrifying degree he does, why Mr. Day-Lewis retires after every movie and goes off to make shoes for a couple years. If he tried to sustain one of those Samuel L. Jackson four-or-five movie a year careers, his head would explode. (Actually, it’s this quality of DDL’s process that makes me like him less as an actor; being an actor myself I can’t help but think what a monumental fucking pain in the ass it must be to work with a guy who walks around set in character all the time, insisting on being addressed as his character . . . I still think he’s about as good at that kind of acting as anyone ever has or ever will be, I just really don’t want him to spawn any imitators).
Ultimately, even though There Will Be Blood is one of those movies it’s easier to admire than love, the admiration it demands is supreme. Any movie about which it can be said, “Okay, here are my top five favorite shots . . . wait, shit, that’s seven . . .” is a force to be reckoned with (take a bow, Robert Elswit). That necessary admiration is what jumps this movie to the top 5, but the emotional chilliness and deliberate (not slow, just deliberate) pace keep it from rising higher.
(4) Children of Men (dir. Alfonso Cuaron)—2006
Warning: spoilers ahead, so watch the movie first. You’re welcome.
When I was first compiling this list—as a joke, while Gchatting with my good friend James Comtois about his top 50—I forgot to include Children of Men. Some might say that this means “how memorable could it be?” That ain’t it, though. The real reason I forgot about this movie is because HBO has been showing it so often, and always when I’m flipping channels in the middle of the night (insomnia’s a bitch, folks), that I keep thinking it’s been around for longer, because at this point I’ve seen it so many times that I think it must be older.
(What’s that you say? You worry for me, since my idea of a good time is closing the shades, listening to gloomy Brit guitar music, watching dystopian science fiction movies, and contemplating man’s place in a near-infinite cosmos? You’re really too kind for worrying.)
Most other end-of-decade lists have Children of Men somewhere in the teens or twenties. I can see that, especially if you only saw it once or maybe twice. The first time I saw it a couple things really jumped out at me—Clive Owen’s performance is terrific, as is the vividly real, cinema-verite vision of the future—as well as the same thing that everyone was talking about: those now-famous uninterrupted takes. There are the most famous two—the one in the car and the one fucking incredible one at Bexhill—but upon repeated viewings, you notice even the first shot of the movie, where Clive Owen goes in, gets his morning coffee, sees on the TV that the youngest person in the world has died (an 18 year old in Argentina), goes out, puts his sugar in and BOOM the coffee shop explodes is all in one take. That the one where Clive Owen’s trying to jumpstart the car and push it through the mud, all in one take. That the one where the baby is born, all one take.
There isn’t a ton of exposition here. Alfonso Cuaron seems more concerned with the audience’s visceral experience of this world than in their understanding just why no babies have been born in 18 years. Exactly that kind of overexplanation was what stopped V for Vendetta dead in its tracks and made you go “wait, hold up” when you were supposed to be getting excited about Natalie Portman blowing up Parliament. Cuaron, with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s help, keeps us focused on the task at hand: getting Clive Owen, Kee, and Kee’s baby, the fuck out of England. No subplots, none of that crap, just an hour and forty-five minutes of focused intensity and a couple of eight-minute single-shot action scenes that will give you a boner. Or the nearest local equivalent.
(3) The Lives of Others (dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)—2006
I wrote this back in December ‘07: First things first, the director has a whole lot of name, but if you plan on seeing movies for the next 30-50 years, learn how to spell it. This cat’s here to stay.
While this technically came out in 2006 justintime for the Oscar eligibility—and had all those Pan’s Labyrinth fans going “huh?” when it won—it went wide(ish) in ‘07, and in any case I just saw it. All justifications for its presence here are null and void, though. This movie is goddamn extraordinary.
Europeans are the only people who can pull of a character study/thriller that’s equally great as both, and The Lives of Others is everything great about European movies: a serious movie by a serious (first-time!) director about a serious theme that is not only entertaining, it’s immensely powerful emotionally. The cast is sensational. You can get lost in this movie like few others ever made. It’s up there with Citizen Kane and The 400 Blows as the best first features ever. And yes, it is that good. Pan’s Labyrinth did not get snubbed. Seriously.
Now: I keep meaning to go back and watch The Lives of Others, but I haven’t been able to. Watching it the first time was a little overwhelming. I cried. I cry at the movies from time to time, but I was sobbing at the end of this one. (Top 5 all-time surprising “I’m crying at this?” movies: this, WALL-E, P.S. I Love You—don’t ask—Pulp Fiction, and The Remains of the Day. In retrospect, Lives of Others and WALL-E kinda make sense, but refer any questions about the other three to my attorney). Partly because I knew Ulrich Mühe died before the movie came out, and he was incredible as the Stasi agent. Mostly because it’s a large movie about something important—the horrible effect totalitarian regimes have on people—that’s as well done as this movie is.
Part of the PR problem this movie had at first was that the people plugging it were German: “You VILL sink zis ist vun of ze greatest feelms uv all times!” (Actually, that’s me being a shithead; von Donnersmarck spent part of his childhood in the Upper East Side of NYC and speaks perfect mid-Atlantic American English; he’s not that far behind Tony Leung Chiu-Wai in the “foreigners speaking our language better than we do” list. Tony Leung speaking English is beautiful to listen to. Maybe we can bring him and von Donnersmarck over to the States and have them make a picture together . . .) Most of it was the above-mentioned Pan’s Labyrinth business. People loved them some Pan’s Labyrinth. And I mean, it’s a good movie, but comparing it to The Lives of Others is stupid. They both have repressive political regimes looming large over everything, but they diverge slightly from there. Suffice it to say there are no Stasi or KGB guys with eyeballs in their palms in The Lives of Others. But still, the friends I was watching the Oscars with stood up when they announced the Best Foreign Film winner and said, “THAT WAS FUCKING BULLSHIT” when the winner wasn’t Pan’s Labyrinth. Some things you just can’t help.
I only want to back off on my Citizen Kane/400 Blows rhetoric a little bit. The fact that all the heat around it has died down, and I’m just about the only person I know still talking about it, indicates that it may not be remembered on that level. Still, it’s a good fuckin’ movie. RIP Ulrich Mühe.
(2) City of God (dir. Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund)—2002
“Benny was the coolest hood in the City of God.”
One of my quirks is a love for random movie lines that, out of context, don’t always have the same resonance, or even have any resonance out of context, or aren’t even that important in context. But the line “Benny was the coolest hood in the City of God,” for some reason, made me feel just how cool Benny was, how much everyone else loved him, and so on. And it fit with the tone of the movie for me: it felt like I was listening to Homer singing the epic tale of legendary Cidade de Deus, the most dangerous slum in Rio de Janeiro.
At the same time as it feels legendary, it also feels vividly real. Trying to describe City of God to a friend once—in one of my frequent glib, reductive moods—I said “it’s season 4 of The Wire in Portuguese.” Not my most precise analogy, admittedly. But one quality City of God and The Wire have in common is a feeling, whether true or not, of reality. (A lot of Brazilians on imdb and other internet fora make the counterclaim that City of God is a bullshit MTV version of the real favelas, and I’ve admittedly never been there, so maybe they’re right). But where The Wire always avoided building anyone up to legendary status (or in Omar’s case, letting him retain it), there are epic figures in City of God. No one is crazier than Lil’ Ze. No one is cooler than Benny. No one is more bent on revenge than Knockout Ned. And, naturally, no one is hotter than Angelica (Alice Braga, niece of Sonia, possessor of the same knee-weakening hotness), and no one is more in love with Angelica than the protagonist, Rocket.
So, maybe a better framework in which to discuss City of God than realism is intensity. It’s almost too intense in places. Some of the things the characters do are a little hard to watch (especially if you find it hard to watch 8 year olds waving guns). When the closing credits role, you exhale. For the first time in over two hours.
(1) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (dir. Michel Gondry)--2004
And at long last, number one. This, in many ways is a Bowes no-brainer:
French director? Check
Run-of-the-mill civilians been known to call it depressing? Check
Great lead performance by an actor about whom that has to be prefaced by “now, I know what you thinking . . .?” Check
Kate Winslet? Check
Best Original Screenplay winner at the Oscars? Check
That last might seem arbitrary and overly reliant on the notoriously unreliable Oscars, but the kind of movie that wins Best Original Screenplay more often than not is the kind of thing I’d rather see than a Best Picture winner. A brief selected (non-chronological) list: Citizen Kane, Pulp Fiction, Annie Hall, Eternal Sunshine, Lost in Translation, Network, Sunset Boulevard, The Producers, Chinatown, The Usual Suspects, The Crying Game. Every last one an all-time favorite. None of them a Best Picture winner except Annie Hall. As an award, I always felt like Best Original Screenplay was the “ok, you’re too weird to give the big trophy to, but even though we’re a conservative institution with an unspoken yet distinct set of voting criteria, we still know a good movie when we see it” award. And ever since I was 16, I’ve thought that I if ever win an Oscar, the one I really want is Best Original Screenplay.
Eternal Sunshine has a very original screenplay indeed. Conceived by artist Pierre Bismuth, director Gondry, and the inimitable Charlie Kaufman, it tells the story of an artist named Joel (Jim Carrey) and his troubled relationship with a colorful-haired, hard drinking girl named Clementine (Kate Winslet). It opens with Joel and Clementine meeting as strangers, little knowing that they have been a couple for two years. They have each decided, with Clementine’s decision preceding Joel’s, to erase the other from their memory. Joel, though, in the middle of the process, begins to resist, as he can’t let the memory of the girl he once loved so dearly go.
And there you have it, a very basic and true idea: as much as love hurts when it goes bad, it’s still the best thing there is. A lot of what keeps a relationship going, after the initial bloom of romance fades into the comfort of familiarity, is the memory of the first romance. Some blossoms fade faster than others. Some, upon fading, reveal that the first romance was based on false pretenses. Some reveal that, although you love each other very much, certain compromises are necessary to keep one or two things from avalanching into relationship-enders. Whatever way the particular relationship evolves, there was always a point at which it was perfect, and the memory of that time is something to never let go.
The most impressive thing about Eternal Sunshine is that when the protagonist has that realization, Jim fucking Carrey is having that realization. A real emotion? From Jim fucking Carrey? Balderdash, you say? That’s what I said—with a couple “fuck”s randomly thrown in, of course—until I realized, no, it’s true. Jim Carrey really is giving a spectacularly effective lead performance, but even more amazingly, Jim Carrey is giving an understated performance. Maybe Charlie Kaufman, intellectual that he is, stopped by Carrey’s trailer and showed him the definition of “subtle” in Webster’s. Whatever the hell happened, whoever was responsible for reeling that motherfucker in deserves a Nobel Prize, fuck an Oscar and furthermore fuck a Palme D’Or.
So there you have it. Eternal Sunshine is my best of the decade. It ranks up there with Michel Gondry’s music videos, which will warrant their own entry at some point in this blog’s future. Happy New Year, everyone!
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