Still Here

I have no readers, but I'm still compelled to post that I'm not abandoning this blog. New post coming this weekend.

The Big, Godless Heat

To date, I cannot recall any film noir that lulled me into such a false sense of ho-hummery as The Big Heat. One kind of has to wonder what the game is all about for the first 20-30 minutes or so; it just seems like a crime drama. A cop (right?) has killed himself, but something is most certainly awry. And, oh, it's not so bad: the cop investigating the (potential) suicide goes back to the placid homestead at 5 o'clock anyway. The baddies and the riffraff do their business in the night, and the good guys clean up by the light of day. Eventually, however, reality comes crashing in quite hard and we realize that The Big Heat, for its weight in dark, misanthropic, post-war gloom, is not to be fucked with. Not at all.

This due in large part (thought not the largest part) to Lee Marvin's Vince Stone. One can basically take Liberty Valance, trade in his spurs for a fedora, and drop him into the high-contrast, duplicitous milieu that is the urban landscape of film noir to get an idea. Marvin, as Stone, is possessed of an intractable temper so powerful as to literally make me (at least) nervous as a viewer. Each scene featuring Marvin is characterized by a torturous uncertainty. This is no small matter; as aforementioned, The Big Heat seems to play with us a bit. If I were to describe a movie to you as a crime drama, questions of moral ambiguity and dehumanizing violence would not immediately come to the fore. But it is precisely through some of the actions of Stone that The Big Heat is transformed from simplistic to sinister. While from the strict perspective of chronology it is the vicious murder of Katie Bannion (Jocelyn Brando) which unhinges the film, Stone's dousing of Gloria Graham with scalding coffee—leaving her with severe burn scars on the better part of half her face—unnerves with potentially greater force. Better to be alive than dead, I guess, but there is a unique cruelty in purposeful disfigurement. Indeed, there is transgression and sin, and then there is sadism.

And yet for all this, Marvin (and moreover, Humphrey Bogart in general) cuts a less than intimidating figure under the shadow of Glenn Ford's David Bannion. Never mind the fact that Ford provides a complete schooling in skillful communication via body language (aided each time by a smart and never pandering close-up shot); the significance of his performance could lie simply in his outright denial of God midway through the film. In Western thought, we know God has been dead. In fact, it wasn't even Nietzsche who killed him; he was simply pointing out the fact that the murder had already taken place (maybe Machiavelli was the culprit—who knows?). So, when Bannion coldly rejects Hettrick's advice of seeing a priest, the death of God can now be the intellectual foundation of common men. Or, taken another way, it doesn't take a mind like Alyosha's to reject God. Thus, in film noir, the world has either denied or killed God, and Ford's David Bannion is sounding the horn. For who is Bannion, anyway? One can certainly not say that he is an unequivocal hero. Hettrick is to a degree right when he tells him, “You can't set yourself against the world and get away with it.” But maybe it is the grim view of film noir or at least Fritz Lang that even though one can't get away with it, it's the only choice he has.

The wickedness of Lee Marvin, the rebellion of Glenn Ford—these are what make The Big Heat an archetypal noir. While I do not intend to wrap up with the question of what makes a noir, I cannot help but contrast the brutality and violence of a movie like The Big Heat with the almost comical and cartoonish qualities of the The Maltese Falcon. Perhaps it's Bogart's over-acting and caricature (which I do not necessarily dislike), but to lump those two films together as embodying the genre is fallacious. Film noir is sinister and it is not cute. It need not resort to the performance-enhancing drugs of Sin City (again, which I do not necessarily dislike), but it is certainly not just about being hard-boiled and sharp-tongued. It is about a worldview, one in which morality is a hard sell because one need not be a philosopher to realize that God is dead.

The Khmer Rouge "Annihilation" Machine

It would be a mistake to go into S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine looking for a history of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, or even Tuol Sleng prison (security prison S21) itself. Rithy Panh’s documentary only deals with these things to the minimal extent that it has to, i.e., he only makes relatively brief mention of Cambodia’s historical situation in the 1970s to place us. It’s up to the audience to do the legwork involved with formulating theories as to why the Khmer Rouge was able to come to power, why Cambodia was in the state that it was, and most importantly here, how such atrocities as those described in the picture’s 100 minutes have taken and continue to take place. Indeed, while I do not think that Cambodia is unimportant here, S21 is mainly about the facticity of institutionalized killing on a grand scale. That is its focus and perhaps the reason the film takes such a meandering and seemingly haphazard course. It is a piece that is exploratory in nature, as opposed to authoritative and expository.

S21 forces questions common to Eichmann in Jerusalem, Ordinary Men, Obedience to Authority, and other germane works to the surface. But for those who may respect the value of these inquiries all the while internally groaning over their perplexity, it should be noted that S21 has something incredibly powerful up its sleeve that is nothing short of a marvel of human experience: it allows a former inmate of prison S21 to confront and engage former prison guards. In whole, S21 actually features two survivors of the death house, Chum Mey and painter Vann Nath (supposedly two of the only 7 survivors, out a total 14,000+ prisoners/victims). However, we never see Chum Mey in the same shot as one of the former prison workers. Considering his rapture while standing on the grounds of the prison, it would be no surprise if facing those unfathomably cruel devils from his past were simply impossible.

On the other hand, Vann Nath is possessed of a composure that stupefies. He is the piece’s protagonist of sorts. I would call him our guide, but that would be inaccurate and would obscure what are some of S21’s most truly disturbing scenes. Through some means, Rithy Panh manages to get his former prison guards to elaborately re-enact their former routines. (Though perhaps it took no coaxing at all, thus revealing yet another possible avenue for psycho-social speculation, theorizing, and inquiry.) Aging Khmer Rouge shout verbal abuses at imaginary prisoners, threatening them with physical beatings should they fuss to much, not be quiet, and go to sleep; they check imaginary locks; and peer into empty cells. During these scenes, it is hard to penetrate the psychological interiors of the men. On some level are they taking a stroll down memory lane? In circumstances as extreme as these, it is troubling to watch these old routines repeated in such cold and icy fashion.

Perhaps a clue is given to why this is so in a late exchange between Nath and three of the former S21 keepers. Nath argues that the Khmer Rouge’s stated practice of annihilation goes beyond that of killing in that annihilation leaves nothing of the victim but dust. One can extrapolate that it is a complete eradication of his past and traces; it leaves not even a memory of an individual’s time on earth. This is obviously more than a rhetorical embellishment given that the Khmer Rouge as discussed in the film would kill women and children, leaving no legacy or relations of supposed traitors, informants, or “enemies.” But can one not come away from this scene in particular without noting the utter vacuous looks of the former guards in contrast to Nath? The annihilating sword is revealed to be double-edged; in the case of the former stewards of S21, it is their humanity which has been completely stripped away and exterminated.

Movie Poster Mayhem

Is this an homage? Or is this the same guy recycling an idea?

A Woman in Trouble, but Who is She?

It is roughly a month to the day since I saw David Lynch’s latest, Inland Empire. I anticipated it a great deal: 2006 I found to be a dismal year for art cinema (despite Three Times and The Death of Mr. Lazarescu). So the year-end buzz circulating around both Lynch’s new project (and Children of Men) had me optimistic towards the possibility of a formidable year-end push in 2006’s waning moments. Technically, a last ditch effort before rolling out Dick Clark one more time, if you will. To boot, the showing I had tickets for at the AFI Silver was to be graced by Mr. Lynch himself. Indeed I was poised: though 2006 had technically already passed, its filmic redemption stood before me, flanked by our very potential benefactor, Mr. Lynch…

Any casual fan of The Simpsons will recall the scene of Homer watching Twin Peaks (for you serious fans, that would be episode 3G02 from season 9, entitled Lisa’s Sax). To the image of a man dancing with a horse, Homer exclaims: “Brilliant! I have no idea what is going on.” A similarly casual fan may also recall (from BABF22, season 12’s HOMR) Homer being escorted out of a movie theatre for not laughing at a punch line incorporating Regis Philbin’s would-be meme: “Is that your final answer?” Though an admittedly flippant means towards elucidating my impressions of Inland Empire, these two scenes are freakishly apropos. Bewilderment and an acute alienation stemming from not “getting it” best encapsulate those three hours. With every chuckle of the sold-out crowd at another quirky line or character, I sank deeper into my chair and grew more anxious and desperate for the movie-cum-torture device to be over.

Naturally, Lynch is worthy of being taken seriously, and it would be cheap to simply throw up hands and say, “I just don’t know what he’s on about!” In fact and to the contrary, I do feel a dull desire to see Inland Empire again. Astute reviews from the likes of the NYT’s Manohla Dargis reinforce these feelings. But what is not so dull is my profound consternation over what Inland Empire lacks. And most importantly, I don’t think any number of viewings will yield it. While critics rave about Laura Dern’s performance, I cannot get over the simple fact that this piece lacks characters of any depth or situations that resonate in the key of the human world.

I think Lynch knows this; I believe it is part of his overall plan. Somewhere around the midpoint (though it’s certainly hard to specify a midpoint when time is seemingly standing still), one of the whores (or actresses, or friends, or hangers-on, or…damn it, I’m not sure) asks directly into the camera, “Who is she?” This is, indeed, the film’s guiding question. But I’m afraid it’s impossible to want to engage in solving the riddle when the viewer isn’t provided enough context to remotely care. Lynch’s very own sense of mystery leaves so much in the shadows that it is impossible to latch onto anything or establish a connection. Who is she? Why should I care? I don’t even recognize this as having anything to do about life.

Ultimately, I cannot help but be reminded of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. Granted that in it, we begin with two distinct people as opposed to an actresses’ on and off camera life. But no matter, both films attempt to render the dissolution of the self into another and the struggle to discover and posit one’s own “I” and identity. And Persona is certainly just as self-aware and deconstructionist as Inland Empire. The difference is that the former is able to root its themes in a simple, coherent narrative and provide characters cut out just enough to provide a foundation. Thus, its force. And conversely, these missing aspects from Lynch’s latest and highly-autonomous project belie its effectiveness, leaving it only able to imbue anxiety and frustration.