Ruminations from My Film Theory Class

(Unprompted Blog Entry #1)

In my film theories class, taught by Professor Wagner, cinema is dealt with as the grand subject of the 20th century. It's kind of hard to think of cinema now as the central pillar of American society, but it once dominated not only American culture but was watched almost by nearly all the people and nations in the world that could afford it. In the 1940's, right before and after WWII was when cinema spectatorship in America peaked, attracting something like 40 million people EVERY WEEK out of the population of 90 million (I don't remember the exact statistic, but I believe it was roughly half the American population). In the 40's, cinema defined culture as much as culture defined cinema.

National ticket sales crashed in the 50's and 60's with the breakup of Hollywood monopolies, the coming of television, and many other reasons. Ticket sales regained some ground in the 70's and have been relatively constant in recent years, but nothing near the glory of the golden years.



Our homework mainly consists of reading the major film theorists of the last 100 years. Many theorists think of cinema as an educational tool, not in the sense of multiplication tables but cinema teaches people how to behave and how to "be" people. Think of it for a second, when we include the other media forms--such as TV and the internet--that all serve the singular purpose that cinema used to hold, that of mass entertainment, you begin to realize how much media has affected your perceptions of the world and personal identity. Think of the major events that happen in your life: forming and maintaining friendships and romantic relationships, working at a job, traumatic events such as national or natural disasters or the loss of someone close ... As people, we probably experienced all these things maybe hundreds of times on TV and movies before we experienced them in real life. It becomes obvious that media influences every aspect of our lives, maybe even more than our experiences in real life. I guess that's why contemporary American society is often called a media society.

In lecture, Prof. Wagner stated that it was cinema that taught people how to deal with the mass of sensory stimuli that we now navigate so easily. It was cinema that first bombarded people's senses with tons of visual and audio information, and as people have grown more accustomed to so much stimuli, the cinema has also grown more overflowing with information, mostly through the increased frequency of cutting and enabling technologies in visual and audio special effects. What we now see as ordinary everyday tasks, such as driving fast in heavy traffic, or surfing the internet while listening to music and aiming friends, are really only possible after the education of cinema and other media that have taught us how to deal with such overwhelming amounts of information. In general, people 150 years ago didn't interact with their surroundings in ways that included any where near as much relevant information as we do now.

There Will Be Blood

(Blog Assignment #3)

There Will Be Blood has been debated incessantly by film critics, academics, cinephiles since it's release four months ago. For this reason, I've decided to skip on titling this blog with some less than clever There Will Be "X". I've now seen the film four times and I position myself squarely on the side declaring that this film is perhaps the best film of the decade. In this entry, I will try to make observations other than the obvious ones that critics are obligated to (amazing performance by Day-Lewis, Anderson is an energetic, virtuosic, postmodern director, etc.) because many readers only read one review.
It seems oil itself is the principle around which Daniel Plainview's identity and the entire film revolves around. At it's simplest, oil is worth a lot of money and is very volatile. Put in a little family drama and that's the most succinct description possible of There Will Be Blood. A related and most obvious symbol that I have not seen mentioned is the phallic significance of the structures that mine the oil. These towers feed Plainview's greed and inflate his masculinity to the point that he loses sight of everything else.
Two other motifs that structure the relationships in the film are whiskey and milk, which are emblematic of corruption and nourishment. When Daniel first assumes the role of father to H.W., he pours whiskey on his milk bottle to stop him from crying. Later, after H.W. loses his hearing from an oil explosion, Daniel pours whiskey into a glass of milk and force feeds it into his son's mouth. By the end, Daniel's attitude toward H.W. is full of hatred, but Daniel does seem to show real affection towards him in some scenes.
Liquids in general now seem to be the substance that all of the film's themes are grounded on. The evil of oil, the goodness of milk, the corruption of whiskey, and the purity of water.
One of the greatest moments in the film and one that I've never seen any mention to is when Daniel's assistant, Fletcher Hamilton, asks Daniel, "is it true that you're taking Henry to see Union Oil?" Throughout the film, Fletcher is a completely undeveloped character with no insights revealed about his past, thoughts, or emotions. After Daniel discovers he has a "brother" named Henry, Henry begins to assume the role of Daniel's main assistant. With that one line by Fletcher, spoken in an almost pleading voice, an entire world of conflict and emotions are suggested. The camera first frames both Daniel and Fletcher in the shot, but then pans to focus only on Daniel, who ignores Fletcher's question and walks away. This kind of suggestion of other conflicts and scenes without actually showing them adds a great deal of depth and texture to the already dense scenes of the movie.
David Bordwell writes about Anderson's use of staging in this article.

Errol Morris

A graphic from Morris' site that conveys his thought process but also reflects the disorganized layout of the site.

(Assignment #2)

Errol Morris is a documentary filmmaker like no other. Roger Ebert has stated, "After twenty years of reviewing films, I haven't found another filmmaker who intrigues me more...Errol Morris is like a magician, and as great a filmmaker as Hitchcock or Fellini." His favorite themes are self-delusion and moral complexity and these are evident in films like The Thin Red Line, Gates of Heaven, and his Oscar-winning The Fog of War. These films often start out by trying to delineate and explain certain phenomenon--like Robert McNamara's involvement in WWII and Vietnam in The Fog of War or the inner workings of a pet cemetary in Gates of Heaven--but end up only as arguments for the complexity of human existence because of the moral dilemmas, innumerable perspectives, and subjective nature of experience that Morris presents. Despite this ambiguity and backwardsness of reality, Morris is completely devoted to the idea of objective truth.
Morris' website is a hodge-podge of his writing, interviews, sample video clips, ramblings, truisms, and updates on his new works. The layout of the website itself is visually pleasing, if not equally as jumbled as its content. But let me emphasize, the life and work of Morris is much more the focus of the site. This seemingly random collection of media and content may appear unrelated, disorganized, and thus unimportant, but it offers a good glimpse of what Morris' approach to art and life is.
As awesome as I make Morris appear to be, he is a hopelessly pessimistic and misanthropic person. But his view is definitely valid, especially in the face of all the unwarranted optimism that people console themselves with. Morris writes, "I am a secular anti-humanist." Perhaps what sets Morris apart from other rambling fatalists is the intelligence and wit of his presentation of ideas.
One amazing ability that Morris has is getting people to say things in interviews and on film that are truly revelatory. In 3 minute interview with Donald Trump on the website, Trump discusses the Citizen Kane and the corruption of wealth and unhappiness that it can bring. There is an awful and awesome irony because of Trump's obvious similarities to Kane. For most of the video, Trump seems to admit his own unhappiness and insufficiencies in a way usually hidden under his hyper-masculine and successful exterior. In the last seconds though, Morris asks Trump what advice he would give to Kane, and Trump replies, "Get yourself a different woman!" and alas, the contradictions of Trump's persona come full circle with a beautifully succinct, misogynist comment.




In a series of essays on the website that were also written for the New York Times, Morris explores the nature of truth and photography. Can a photo be true? What exactly can one determine from a photograph? Morris explores the origins of 2 famous early war photographs taken by Roger Fenton in the mid 1800's. The photos are nearly identical pictures of an empty field and deserted road with canonsballs lying on the ground. In one photo, there are canon balls on the road and in the other, there are not. The great mystery behind these photos is which one came first and which one is staged. One assumes that somebody moved canon balls onto the road or off after the first picture to create dramatic effect. Morris becomes obsessed with this mystery and over the course of 3 extremely long articles, he interviews and enlists an array of art historians and forensic specialists, travels to Crimea where the photos were taken and ruminates on the nature of art and photography. The article is unbelievably engrossing, so I won't ruin the ending here. In Morris' new movie set to come out in April, Standard Operating Procedure, he embarks on a similarly obsessive search for truth in the famous torture photos taken at Abu Ghraib. In this video, Morris talks briefly about this.
But, let's not forget Morris' great comic side. In his reinterpretation of the story of Pandora's Box (Pandora opens a box that unleashes all the evils of the world, but at the bottom of the box is hope, which is supposed to make up for the evil), Morris posits that hope is the final most evil pestilence released from the box.
Morris on natural selection and intelligent design:

I look at the world of fauna and flora around me, and it becomes completely obvious that it can not be explained by the processes of natural selection. Natural selection would have done a better job. That's why, I believe in unintelligent design. The sheer idiocy of it all has to be explained by something, doesn's it? A mentally retarded creator? A flawed plan? An idea improperly thought out? Or an idea enacted hastily? (Six days, by the way, has always seemed to me to be rushing things.)

Tarkovsky

(Many of my posts this spring will be addressing prompts from a writing class I'm taking this semester.)
(Assignment #1)

Andrei Tarkovsky was a Russian director who made films in the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Over the last few years, Tarkovsky has become my favorite filmmaker. As he was a devout Russian Orthodox Christian, each of his films deal with religion. In treating his religious themes, Tarkovsky often had to allude to them obliquely or allegorically because the communist regimes in power in Russia were strictly atheist. In the science-fiction film, Solyaris (1972), an omniscient-like being is manifested in a strange planet that a group of scientists is sent to to research. In his other sci-fi film, Stalker (1979), there is a fenced-off and highly guarded place known as "the zone" where a meteor had crashed decades before. Illegal tourist guides bring people to the zone and their deepest wishes come true. In Andrei Rublev (1969), the title character is a religious icon painter. The film was banned in Russia for decades after a very limited release. Tarkovsky struggled his entire life with Russian authorities and it is amazing that he made these films at all, no less so because many of his films used large government subsidies to fund the films.
Tarkovsky's preoccupation with big issues of religion and the meaning of life are dramatized in ways that make his specific world-view very appealing. I am not religious and at times can be particularly anti-religious. However, Tarkovsky's vision of religion has made me respect religion as a way of life. The way his characters question and reassess their purpose and place in the world resonates with my own desire to help the world become a better place. He doesn't do this by creating explicitly subversive films or films that question the orders of society, but by peering inward and inviting his audience to do the same.
The characters in Tarkovsky's films are not just spiritually disillusioned, but are at odds with the exterior realities of their worlds. Most of his films follow a traditional status-quo-crisis-confrontation-redemption plot. I identify with these characters and their struggles because of my own insecurity about big questions that arise from the conflicts in my life. I too seek some kind of redemption, but like these characters, I am unclear about how to go about achieving it.
In Andrei Rublev, the protagonist is one of those most sought after icon painters in Russia during the 15th century. Rublev renounces his faith and quits painting because of the enormous suffering that he witnesses when a Tatar army slaughters an entire Russian town. His faith in religion and humanity is restored at the end when he witnesses a 15 year-old boy pour his soul into an artistic creation (I'm trying not to give away too much).
Formally, Tarkovky uses long takes to build sequences with wandering camera movements. Much of the images are filmed are extraneous to the plot. This gives his films a slow (but only boring to those with short attention spans) and ruminative effect, maybe somewhat comparable to the steadiness with which one reads a written poem word by word and conjures its images.
These formal techniques find there way into all of Tarkovsky's films. Each film also tends to deal with similar - but by no means exhausted - themes of religion, suffering, and purpose. Consequently, if you like one of his films, you will probably like all of them, as I do. For those who want to see one of his films and haven't before, I recommend Solyaris and Stalker because of their relatively fast pace and sci fi intrigue. These will prepare you for his no less beautiful but puzzlingly ambiguous The Mirror (1975) and his 205 min. loosely structured Andrei Rublev.
For more reading, I suggest Senses of Cinema's article on him.

2007

Looking back, many critics consider 2007 a great year for the movies and I pretty much agree. The slate of prestigious films released near the end of the year were impressive and helps make up for a particularly dry summer of releases. Being a film snob, I ended up seeing movies I didn't necessarily want to over the summer just because there was nothing else worth watching. I'm going to list my top 5 for the year instead of my top 10 because for one, there are a few films I have yet to see. Also I tend to believe a top 10 list to be misleading: to fill up the last few spots I'd have to list movies I liked but didn't love, aka, nothing "top" about them.

1. There Will Be Blood
I have a feeling that after watching it a second time, it may end up on my top 10 of all time list. I think the best films are the ones that amaze on all levels, and this film did just that. Daniel Day-Lewis turned the amp up to an unheard of 12. The images realistically captured early 20th century California in all of its barrenness. The musical score from that guitarist from Radiohead absolutely blew my mind. Even the most obligatory scenes were racked with tension because of the soundtrack and the dramatic climaxes were equaled in audible dissonance. Apparently there is a lot of disagreement about whether the ending lives up to the rest of the film. I think the ending is the best part and completely fitting.

2. No Country For Old Men
Scary, twisted, and philosophical, thrillers rarely make to these heights. After seeing it 3 times in theaters, the themes and plot became clear but I'm convinced my favorite Coen brother film is still The Man Who Wasn't There.

3. Juno
One of those films that really made me fall in love with the protagonist. Afterwards, I thought about what I'd say to Ellen Page if I saw her on the street.

Okay, maybe I'll limit it to the top 3 because these are the only three that really wowed me but I do have a lot of honorable mentions. Just to point out I don't just go along with critical reception, I despised the critically praised Atonement and Sweeney Todd.

The Artist's Art

While I think definitions of art are always problematic partly because the word "art" is thrown around so much in the media but also because there are so many vastly different individual works, people, and crafts that I would truly designate as art.

But when an artist is creating a work of art, he should adhere to a very rigid conception of art in order to give the work a unity of vision. Watching as many movies as I do, I've become partial to certain concepts of art that have affected me more than others. So here's a few such concepts, where I get them from, why I like them, and specific films that I think exemplify them (a little preachy, but so are most people when they try to express their deepest convictions) :

1.) A work of art should give it's audience the freedom take it in their own way. An artist should present the world as he sees it but should avoid overt statements. It is much more interesting to engage critically with what is going and drawing one's own conclusions than to have the film itself proclaim its film's themes and world view. I agree with Andrei Tarkovsky when he says that the filmmaker should meet the audience halfway.
Tarkovsky's Stalker or Mirror

2.) "The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but rather the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity."
-Glenn Gould

Although I'm not convinced that wonder and serenity are the end goals of art, I do think art has an important role in individual's lives and society at large. These roles of art are not played out viscerally through sensationalism, but possibly through the role of reenacting people and conflicts in a structure that allows an audience to see themselves and their conflicts more clearly - a luxury not afforded by the chaotic flow of everyday life. In this way art has definitely had a profound impact on my life.
Bergman's Wild Strawberries

3.) I am interested in the non-dramatic moments in life. I'm not at all attracted to making films that are about drama.
-Jim Jarmusch

When films involve lots of drama, they tend to bore me. I don't necessarily believe that this is an artistic truth, but when drama comes first it is often accompanied by cliches and stereotypes.
Any Jarmusch film, Malick's Badlands

4.) Don't reduce characters to simple psychological causes.

Badlands

Art vs. Entertainment

Film, especially in the United States, has always had an inseparable and uneasy relationship between what people consider "art" and "entertainment". I will not attempt to make any sweeping statements about what constitutes art or entertainment because no matter what ideas I read about and tend to agree with at one time or another, I inexorably find exceptions and contradictions within such theories. The one criteria I'll put forth is that "entertaining" films are generally more geared towards making money than "art" films.

As an aspiring filmmaker myself, I struggle with what kind of films I would like to make. Although I'm not whole-heartedly an idealist (I eat meat even though I think it is immoral), I've always leaned towards wanting to make art films because the films I love and hold dear are the ones commonly referred to as "art". If I had to choose, I'd rather be making films I like and have no money than making films where I compromise my ideas and "artistic vision" for films that will make lots of money. Okay, so I'm idealist.

But there have been many great filmmakers who could have virtually complete control over their films and become wealthy simultaneously. Alfred Hitchcock is the epitome of this type. His films were hugely successful, very well received, and now considered some of the best films ever made. This was possible because Hitchcock's artistic vision was also commercially viable and one that people found entertaining in addition to artful.

Hitchcock's American counterpart might be Orson Welles (these 2 directors are consistently rated above all other directors in critics' and directors' polls). Other than his first film, Citizen Kane - which he made at the age of 26 and is now considered the best film of all time - he hardly ever had control over his films because he could never find funding for the kinds of films he wanted to make or after making a film, the studio in charge would considerably reedit his film.

There is also the filmmaker who supports his artistic endeavors with blockbuster successes. Steven Soderbergh is perhaps the greatest example; Becoming one of the faces of American independent film in the late 80's, over the last few years he has alternated between making the star-studded Ocean's 11 movies with small low-budget artsy films like Bubble.

Assuming I become a competent writer and/or director (let's play along), I know I would never like to make my living making Hollywood films. The few Hollywood films being made today that I do like are just not stylistically what I'm interested in making myself (sorry mom and dad). One of the paradoxes of independent filmmaking is that it is equally bent on making money albeit on a smaller scale. No one is going to fund your film if they don't stand a chance of getting their money back, no matter how "good" you are.

So what can I conclude? Hollywood sucks but other non-Hollywood (independent) modes of filmmaking suffer the from the same problems. So I'll have to rob banks on the side.

"I've got a peculiar weakness for criminals and artists, neither takes life as it is. Any tragic story has to be in conflict with things as they are."
-Stanley Kubrick