Walkabout: Criterion #10

"Walkabout" is an often disorienting experience that offers the audience a bare amount of exposition. There is a violent unsettling act early in the story of wilderness survival that sets the story in motion, but is never explained. The question of why is important, but not knowing the answer is just as necessary and in not providing an answer director Nicolas Roeg is stretching our brain muscles and
removing the safety netting. We start the movie disoriented, lost and this is a deliberate choice by its creator. "Walkabout" is a dangerous movie about seemingly irrational acts of violence and the violent and rational cycle of life played out in nature. It's also about man's uneasy relationship with the frequently violent natural world and how this relationship defines us.

Nicolas Roeg is a master craftsman who in this film is more comfortableconveying meaning through montage than filmed conversation. "Walkabout"opens with a dialogue-free tour of modern-day (circa 1960s) industrial Australia. Machines click clack, cars honk, and butchers slice withcold mechanical precision. Even the film's lead (played by JennyAgutter and referred to as Girl in the credits) is trapped in a mechanical role as she and her classmates steadily drone and sputter in a classroom voice exercise. The modern world is cold, angular, gray, impersonal. Contrast the cold grays of urban Australia with the brilliant rust-colored sands of the film's wild outback setting. These are two vastly different worlds and successfully moving from one to another proves impossible for everyone in the movie.

The film's simple story finds actress Jenny Agutter and the director's young son Luc Roeg abandoned in the Australian outback and details their attempt to survive. During their journey they meet a helpful Aboriginal teenager on his walkabout, a rite of passage where a young man is left to the wilderness to survive on his own. A nagging question tugs at us throughout the film as we wonder if the Aboriginal teen is irreparably harming his quest as he becomes more involved in the lives of the two city dwellers. As the trio wanders through the wilderness, the children, who arrived in the outback in formal school uniforms, slowly shed their outfits as they begin to adapt to the natural world.

As mentioned, "Walkabout" is a story about violence and Roeg's film is filled with much violent efficiency as insects strip down carrion, rust reclaims abandoned mining outposts, men slaughter wildlife for sustenance and sport, and the native peoples of the outback pick over a burnt and abandoned automobile. Those who would claim "Walkabout" is a simplistic fable about returning to nature and living simply neglect how unforgiving the outback is in the film. It readily consumes anything that stands still. Life in the wilderness is short and brutal, but Roeg does seem to be saying that the trappings of modern life are noise that distracts us from our finite nature and inevitability that the land will one day reclaim us for its own.

The existence of the British interlopers is simplified as they focus on the essential concerns of finding food, water, and shelter. In an existence stripped down to essential needs, a sexual longing quickly develops between the Aboriginal teen and the girl he is shepherding through the wilderness. Roeg's treatment of this inevitability is frank, insistent, and sure to make many viewers ill at ease although it never seems forced or unnatural. This is a film about being guided by essential needs when removed from the concerns of modern existence. Roeg's frank examination of sexuality is more anthropological than titillating.

The film is finally beautifully elliptical. "Walkabout" is about cycles--renewal, destruction, repeat. The film is bookended by unsettling deaths the causes of which the movie does not explain, but which can be readily discerned by the attentive viewer. "Walkabout" works on a basic emotional level while viewing it, but then expands in significance after the film is turned off and reflected upon. "Walkabout" may be a hard film to love as it is deliberately disorienting and holds that life is brutal and short. But it is a film that is hard to not to appreciate as one peels back its layers after viewing. Most multiplex bon bons quickly pass from memory once we have stepped outside the theater, but "Walkabout" plants itself firmly in the brain and lives on long after the movie has ended.

A great work of art and essential viewing.

Hard Boiled: Criterion #9

There is no subtlety whatsoever to John Woo’s “Hard Boiled” the follow-up to his action melodrama “The Killer.” “Hard Boiled” strips away much of the previous film’s labored sentiment and replaces it with insane action set-pieces involving babies in peril, motorcycles exploding in midair, and hundreds of thugs and cops flying through glass windows. So many glass windows. Yet “Hard Boiled” is also insanely fun in its ludicrousness. There is not one shred of realism in this go for broke, surprisingly gory, action extravaganza, and we are thankfully spared much of Woo’s heavy handed take on the duality of man, nature of evil, and spiritual concerns. There are also blessedly no doves whatsoever in this film. Woo’s films are better when he keeps his rote, superficial philosophizing to a minimum and lets his flair for berserko action take center stage.

The plot is simple if not always coherent. Rogue super cop Tequila (Chow Yun-Fat) is out to avenge the death of his partner at the hands of Triad gun smugglers. While gunning down mob thugs, Tequila comes face-to-face with an undercover cop, played by Tony Leung, who is continually forced to compromise his own values in order to remain undercover. In Leung, Woo is able to examine his favorite theme of man being neither completely good nor wholly evil, but unlike in “The Killer,” “Hard Boiled” doesn’t dwell on this theme interminably and the film is the film is stronger for it.

John Woo, a Christian, displays substantial gore in this film with many highly stylized shots of arteries being severed followed by blood splattering onto faces, glass windows, and white walls. The heroes and villains also possess an insane tendency to create mayhem in the midst of crowded restaurants and hospitals where innocent bystanders are picked off quickly and by the hundreds. Had the film been a mainstream US release, its gory action scenes would have assuredly caught the attention of congress persons displaying election year “what about the children” concerns about media violence. The berserk violence of “Hard Boiled” is not an afterthought, though. It is, instead, the point of the whole bloody exercise. Remove the film’s stylized bloodletting and it would lose its pulse.

Maybe it says something about this viewer that Woo’s restrained by comparison and morally concerned “The Killer” came off as lackluster, while the more bloody, less talky cut to the chase “Hard Boiled” struck me as a wildly successful genre exercise. “The Killer” had a classical tragic story arc while the story of “Hard Boiled” is mostly a device to deliver mayhem. But “The Killer” was frequently heavy handed and Woo spends much of his film developing his hero’s thin personalities. Character development does not play to Woo’s strengths. He is at his best when choreographing death and destruction.

Woo makes several appearances in “Hard Boiled” as the owner of The Jazz Bar where Tequila plays tenor sax after hours. He is the film’s moral voice and offers meta-commentary on the action, but never overstays his welcome. These are light mostly insubstantial moments that clue you in to the fact that “Hard Boiled” is more concerned with obliterating man than examining his soul.

Next Up: Nicolas Roeg’s “Walkabout.”

(John Woo wanted Chow Yun-Fat play a jazz musician in “The Killer,” but producers balked at the lead’s embrace of this American art form. Jazz enthusiast Woo, though, got his wish with “Hard Boiled” and he features a long opening sequence where super cop Tequila wails on his sax.)

The Killer: Criterion #8

I came to John Woo's "The Killer," a Hong Kong production, after having seen much of his American work including the sublime "Face/Off"--a film I love not in spite of it's insanity, but because of it--and the regrettable sci-fi action drudgery of "Paycheck." In my mind, "Face/Off" was the perfection of the Woo asthetic--bullet ballet, good/evil versus evil/good, maudlin sentimentality, gun battles on the beach, gun battles in church, and doves. Lots of doves. Those films that came before it were warm-ups and those after were tired retreads.

But no proper consideration of Woo can be properly made without seeking out his most critically acclaimed works "The Killer" and "Hard Boiled"--we'll get to that one next--starring frequent Woo leading man Chow Yun-Fat. Those critics who came to "The Killer" in 1989 unfamiliar with the director's work were no doubt impressed by his unique action sensibility that lovingly frames bullet wound upon bullet wound as injured bodies fly through the air and through conveniently placed panes of glass. Surrounding the violence is a story that is unapologetically melodramatic acted out by classic types: the renegade cop, the hit man with a conscience and the wilting chanteuse who loves him. In "The Killer," she is blind, but is the only one who sees the good in him.

By 2009, Woo's style has been heavily imitated, parodied, and fully integrated into the American action movie aesthetic. "The Matrix" being a prime example. Watching "The Killer" now is not nearly as invigorating as it must have been to its initial audience. We can't help but see it in part as an artifact. Just as watching "Psycho" won't have today's seen-it-all jaded horror fan fainting in the theater, "The Killer" won't substantially impact those raised on Woo imitators. Woo has done himself no favors by endlessly recycling the same visual tricks in so many of his later films. The ill-placed doves in the climactic moments of "Paycheck" invited derisive howls.

"The Killer" is an exercise in style and as a result fails to engage on a basic human level. The endless parade of canon fodder who continue to fall in lovingly rendered scenes of carnage make no connection with the viewer. They are a means to a bloody end. They arrive in wave after wave never providing a substantial challenge to conscientious killer Ah Jong (Chow Yun-Fat) and arch-rival Inspector Li-Ying (Danny Lee). Jennie is forever helpless, always getting in Ah Jong's way, but providing him with the desire to go straight, a desire which proves problematic.

Ah Jong and Li-Ying are super human taking down wave after wave of machine gun-toting baddies and are only really challenged in the climax when the screenplay demands it. Is such a hero even interesting? When the hero is seemingly invulnerable what's to keep the audience worried and therefore invested in the film. John Woo does spend a fair amount of screen time exploring the fact that good and evil live in everyone and that a hero or villain can be both a good guy or bad guy, but the conversations that spell out this ideas are blunt, repetitive, and uninteresting.

The film does have a dynamite sequence, however, involving a political assassination that is tense and that concludes with a stand-off in a hospital emergency room where a little girl's life hangs in the balance. It's the film's high point and shows Woo at the height of his powers. There's greater economy in these moments. The action is tighter and there is no heavy handed dialogue to weigh it all down.

Did I expect too much from "The Killer"? Was I expecting the wrong things from the film and asking it to be something it was not? Possibly. It's not the first time the melodrama and simple characterization prevalent in many Asian action films have bored me. Two recent examples being "Tears of the Purple Tiger" and the critics' darling "Triad Election." Maybe I am failing to appreciate the genre for what it is. Maybe I'll have a better idea after our next installment John Woo's "Hard Boiled." Stay tuned.

A Night to Remember: Criterion #7

Fifty years after its release, "A Night to Remember" can't help but have lost some of its impact. In telling the story of the sinking of the Titanic, the film is hindered by budgetary and special effects restrictions that make the whole enterprise frequently seem stage bound. Those coming of age in the 1990s are apt to think James Cameron got here first and it's impossible to watch Roy Ward Baker's take on the tragedy and not constantly compare the two films. Baker has more human, compelling characters, but for sheer spectacle Cameron edges out this quieter, very reserved, very British take on the disaster.

Director Roy Ward Baker's film is based on the book of the same title which was compiled from first hand accounts of the ship's surviving passengers and crew. Both Baker's film and Cameron's, in an effort to achieve veracity, depict many of the same incidents detailed in the book. This repetition makes Cameron's "Titanic" seem like a remake of the 1958 film which many still consider to be the definitive dramatic take on the subject. The two films are incredibly similar in their closing halves when the ship's musicians play on the deck of the ship while Molly Brown looks on from a nearby lifeboat as the ship's tail end slowly begins to rise high into the air. Unfortunately those who have encountered Cameron first won't be as surprised by the proceedings lessening the dramatic impact.

Baker's film, however, distinguishes itself with its very British point of view and its attention to detail. The first class passengers approach the impending disaster with great self-control and bearing. They are more apt to be perturbed than terrified. This is in part due to the fact that they believe the ship is unsinkable and the whole evacuation an unwarranted nuisance, but the film makes clear that their dignity and unflappability is a result of their class and nationality. It is the rabble in steerage--a mix of poor European immigrants and Irishmen--that react in panic. They are, in fact, closer to the rising water and not allowed up on deck until the first class passengers are tended to, but the film almost treats their tragedy as a noisy afterthought. The primary focus of the story is on how the moneyed British react to the growing doom.

Beauty and the Beast: Criterion #6

"Beauty and the Beast" is a fascinating adaptation of the Leprince de Beaumont fairy tale that tweaks the story's usual theme of love beyond appearance. In director Jean Cocteau's sumptuous fantasy, the Beast's appearance remains a constant hindrance to love throughout the story and Belle has difficulty looking beyond it. Disney's version, the most familiar to this viewer, finds Belle learning to love the beast for his character and eventually growing to love his unique, but not too beastly, appearance. Cocteau has something else in mind and uses the fairy tale to examine traditional notions of beauty and love. Belle is not quite the heroine we expected and the Beast is not rewarded in the manner we assume.

Cocteau explains his intentions in this letter to American viewers:

To fairyland as people usually see it, I would bring a kind of realism to banish the vague and misty nonsense now so completely outworn. My story would concern itself mainly with the unconscious obstinacy with which women pursue the same type of man, and expose the naiveté of the old fairy tales that would have us believe that this type reaches its ideal in conventional good looks. My aim would be to make the Beast so human, so sympathetic, so superior to men, that his transformation into Prince Charming would come as a terrible blow to Beauty, condemning her to a humdrum marriage and a future that I summed up in that last sentence of all fairy tales: “And they had many children.”

I was therefore obliged to deceive both the public and Beauty herself. Slyly, and with much effort, I persuaded my cameraman Alekan to shoot Jean Marais, as the Prince in as saccharine a style as possible. The trick worked. When the picture was released, letters poured in from matrons, teen-age girls and children, complaining to me and Marais about the transformation. They mourned the disappearance of the Beast—the same Beast who terrified them so at the time when Madame Leprince de Beaumont wrote the tale.

So in "Beauty and the Beast," Cocteau is trying to be subversive and unpack traditional notions of beauty. Belle, more inwardly and outwardly beautiful than her wicked sisters--see Goneril and Regan--still is none too saintly as to rise above an enslavement to the desire for the traditional prize catch. Given that fairy tales are about the attractive ensnaring the attractive--beauty is the result of good character and vice versa--Cocteau's conclusion is likely to appear odd and unsatisfying after the first viewing. When Belle gets her handsome prince we are ill at ease and unsatisfied. I found it off-putting, but after reading Cocteau's letter, reprinted in part above, I am fascinated. He was being a provocateur trying to destabilize the ideological underpinnings of the fairy tale and, necessarily, our own facile desires. The seeming purity of fairy tales is a sham and props up a superficial beauty ethic.

Yet "Beauty" succeeds as a traditional fairy tale until its closing moments. Belle is far kinder than her sisters and chooses to put herself at the mercy of the Beast when her sisters refuse out of vain self interest. She is pursued by a strapping traditional hero type unworthy of her attention and greedy. Her quest finds her remaining in the beast's home, but more out of a desire to honor her father and out of respect and admiration, but not love, of the Beast. That this love never really materializes is confounding given our familiarity with the story. Cocteau is playing a devilish game.

When ever anyone enters the Beast's estate, the straightforward sunny film becomes dark and dream-like. Time slows down and characters float across the screen. Candelabras are represented by human arms poking through walls clutching candlesticks. (An obvious inspiration to Lumiere, Ms. Potts, and crew.) The Beast costume is convincing and surprising given my expectation of 1946 special effects. The film, whether the viewer appreciates its rhetorical aims, is too beautiful to miss.

And what do we make of the ending? Belle finally gets her handsome prince, but not as we expected. When the Beast changes it does not feel triumphant, but tragic. The Beast proves to be the film's most noble character and Belle a tragic figure for seeking out someone more palatable. Cocteau closes his film with a triumphant ascension to the heavens, but we feel loss and disappointment.

Is Cocteau successful in deconstructing our beauty ethic? It's hard to say yes when he's so clearly manipulating the audience, but it is a deft manipulation and done in a medium that honors beauty as a virtue. In the end it's a beautiful experiment that must be experienced and hashed over.

The Adventures of Antoine Doinel, Part III

Love on the Run

Having completed Truffaut's Doinel cycle, we've progressed from a powerful portrait of childhood cruelty in "The 400 Blows" to the affable, adequate romance of "Love on the Run." "Love" is hindered, however, by repeated flashbacks to the previous films. This does no "Love" no favors; when it jumps to scenes from "Blows," it instantly suffers in comparison and reminds us of the far better film.

When "Love" is not mired in flashbacks, it's a nice enough film. Antoine is now separated from Christine and pursuing record store employee Sabine (Dorothee). Sabine grows tired of Antoine's unpredictability and rootlessness and leaves him. Truffaut then throws us a welcome surprise by reintroducing Collete (Marie France-Pisier) of "Antoine and Collete." Now a lawyer, Collete spots Antoine running--as always--away from the courthouse after his divorce is finalized.

Collete finds a copy of Antoine's autobiographical commercial failure of a first novel and while reading it invokes several of the film's ponderous flashbacks. Collete does provide the film's most haunting scene as she recalls to Christine the tragedy that ended her first marriage. It's a jarring and effective moment in an otherwise average movie.

What are we left with at the end of "Love on the Run"? It hardly feels like we've learned much. Antoine has entered another relationship, which given his track record and restlessness, will likely fail. The series does not provide a definitive end with the film as it just sort of ends. Antoine is in love again. But for how long?

The Adventures of Antoine Doinel: Part II

In which I sound like a Philistine...



Stolen Kisses

The first full length sequel to "The 400 Blows" is bound to suffer by comparison to the masterwork preceding it. "The 400 Blows" is one of cinema's greatest achievements, an indictment of child abuse and neglect that's hard to shake. It's follow-up, "Stolen Kisses", is a breezy, unfocused farce that at times seems hastily assembled. Reviewing the film I am reminded of the danger of undertaking a task of reviewing The Great Films. My dislike of them, or failure to "get" them, is more likely to reveal my ignorance than the film's flaws. I fear that I will be exposed as a Philistine. But here goes.

"Stolen Kisses" is not a bad film. But it is not a great one. Jean Pierre Leaud returns as the romantic Antoine Doinel and it is a testament to his charisma and charm that we continue to watch the series with interest despite its decline in quality. Doinel is still running everywhere, unlucky in love, bad at life, and still dreaming big. As noted before, the fact that Doinel emerged from "The 400 Blows" a relatively happy person is both a relief and--possibly this reveals a cruel streak in this author--a disappointment. "Blows" closing note of doom and sadness is bleak, but perfect and we can't but help feel that the film's coda is undermined by a sequel.

While "Blows" was wistful, "Kisses" is comic. It features the wacky misadventures of Antoine Doinel and more than a little mugging by Jean Pierre Leaud. We get to see him fail miserably as a private detective, hotel porter, and television repairman. These scenes of professional failure are often played broadly and Truffaut's direction seems at times rushed and uneven. The film's heart lies in Leaud's relationship with Christine Darbon (Claude Jade). As with Collete in the previous installment, Antoine is doted on by Christine's parents. Through them, he finds a semblance of the parental bonds he never had.

Christine and Antoine's relationship gives the film heart. It is pensive and sweet: the anxious Antoine attacking the demure Christine all while trying to figure out romance. While trying to snag Christine, Antoine will also find himself involved in an affair with a married woman who also offers him a lesson in romance and the fairer sex. This is the coming of age chapter of the Doinel cycle and it never quite coalesces into a pleasing whole. It's choppy and disappointing in light of its predecessor. Yet the performances by Leaud and Jade recommend the film and those who grew attached to Antoine in "Blows" will desire to follow his story further.



Bed and Board

"Board" almost becomes a great film, but is dragged down by a regrettable, forgettable romance between Antoine and a stereotypically exotic, distant Asian temptress. Christine and Antoine are now married and "Board" will focus on the simultaneous distance and close connection that marriage can create. Antione finds himself bored with his wife sexually--"Bed and Bored"--without the challenge of pursuit, but ultimately finds himself longing the connection and comfort he shares with his lover.

While "Kisses" featured a frequently slapdash editing style, Truffaut's direction in "Board" is fluid and dynamic. It opens with a delightful sequence following Christine's feet down a city street as we are cleverly introduced to Mrs. Doinel for the first time. "Kisses" is often chaotic and oddly directed while Truffaut appears to be in full control of this installment. The camera pans and swoops with precision and grace and the editing is concise. This film features some of the most assured direction of the series.

Much of the film's action takes place in Antoine and Christine's neighborhood: a collection of apartment buildings with windows and doors emptying into a shared courtyard. It's a small, boisterous community whose characters in their boisterousness and choleric temper recall a Fellini ensemble. While in this neighborhood, the film enchants, but then we are taken outside of it and into a regrettable storyline involving another dead end job for Antoine and a boring affair.

Antoine and Christine anchor the film and keep you watching. Leaud still charms and scenes late in the film when he realizes he loves Christine deeply, though his lust may have cooled, are touching and painful. The two portions of the film inside and outside the marriage are uncomfortably incongruous, but Truffaut's assured direction and the film's ensemble ultimately redeem the uneven film.