“Best of the 2000’s” – Discussion the Fourth

 

- “The Best of the Decade Project” is an ongoing series of essays written by Match Cuts and The Filmist concerning the finest films of the last ten years.

 

After a short delay, it is so that we return -

 

 

 

 

 

TheFilmist: Let’s start with your film, howzabout?
MatchCuts: For sure. For me, A History of Violence is Cronenberg’s most disturbing film because it’s all about the interior character, something that he plays with in beautifully constructed conflicts that build in violence, literally ripping this small town family apart. Did the film have this type of effect on you?
F: It was certainly an affecting film, and all the more so because I’d read the graphic novel it was based on beforehand. And, it’s filled with a lot of really, really over-the-top violence, without much focus – so, it was especially astounding the opposite direction Cronenberg went, deciding to move inward instead of outward. Although the film is not without it’s physical violence – generally any time Tom Stall is prodded into action – it seemed to be more about emotional violence.
M: And how emotional violence begins in these small little moments of indecision, of mistrust, the breaking apart of these relationships. Even though some of the dialogue is over the top, the emotional violence you mentioned just seems to ooze under the surface. You see this especially with the son and with Tom’s wife. The doubt of it all.
F: Oh, certainly. I love the moment just before the attack on the family’s lawn between Tom and his wife – but, it becomes especially potent afterward, in the hospital when Tom admits everything to Edie.
M: Her reaction, violently throwing up, almost purging that trust from her soul, is really an astounding moment, and Bello’s performance goes toe to toe with Viggo’s astounding turn. It’s the one Cronenberg moment where the viral themes of his previous films comes into play.
F: And from then on, there’s an almost opaque aura of mistrust around the two of them, when we see them both at the dinner table and driving home, finally culminating in the – I don’t quite want to call it a rape sequence, but you know of what I’m referring to.
M: That second sex scene is all about Edie challenging Tom to bring out his alter ego, the violence in the sex, that love really doesn’t play into it, the control she wants him to show in order to prove his other self really does exist. She’s seen the violence, but now she challenges him in the bedroom, and the result is devastating for them both. Especially for Tom, he his truly torn between past and present.
F: What was interesting to me about that scene was that it acts as a parallel to the earlier, more gentle sex scene between the two, and how – in contrast to that one – there’s absolutely no real warmth between the two. It’s almost completely mechanical.
M: The two sex scenes are crucial to this film Rosenbaum talks about it in his great review for the film, about how this film is a series of flip sides to a coin. Similar Interactions between characters that take place at different points in the film, but have very different tones, outcomes, and consequences.
F: This is true.
M: And I really think Cronenberg achieves this perfect vision of an alternate world, where global issues reside in the local, the violence of protecting one’s property, be psychological or physical property at stake.
F: I also love the son’s arc – well, love’s not the right word, because it’s not really a positive arc, but it’s so well-rounded, even if the bullies he constantly has trouble with do seem just a little over the top at times. What cinched it for me was that scene of himself and his (as The Dude would put it) special lady friend smoking pot outside of that downtown building – that’s essentially what it’s like, living in a small town like that. Either that, or you go to Wal-Mart.
M: The son is really the most over the top character in the film for me, in that his arc is the most drastic like you said. The opening introduction to the family is so exaggerated, and his story about the monsters, very strange, then where he ends up by the end of the film, full of hatred toward not understanding his father, or himself, it makes the bullies look tame in comparison.
F: I can see that. I mean, forgive my course language, but he is kind of a whiny bitch throughout the whole movie, almost to an excessive degree.
M: Yes, and I think this is the point. The contrast in characters. Father and so are about as far apart as one could imagine. But after the violence he commits, the son is on the road toward becoming his father.
F: Yes, indeed. After he shoots Fogarty in the face, he does seem to become a gradually more brooding character, disaffected by such things – then, there’s that final sequence, where Joey arrives home, and through the aura of almost complete and total distrust between everybody in the room towards him, his son pushes his plate nearer to him.
M: The last scene, at the dinner table, is one of my favorite in Film History. No words spoken, yet there is so much weight, so much action in these character’s faces. They way Cronenberg uses eye lines to connect certain characters and not others, all culminating in the innocent child getting Tom’s plate for him. It’s what all filmmakers should aspire to, telling a story through the eyes of its characters.
F: That’s one of the things that I feel should be stressed more often, certainly – attention to the eyes, because that’s where it all is. Especially in a visual medium.
M: And you see this motif throughout A History of Violence, when the bullies almost run into the killers, all they do is share a glance, and that’s enough. Tthere’s an intrinsic understanding between both evil doers and innocents.
F: Indeedy. I love the look of the film, as well – the cinematography is almost sedate, in contrast to what it’s framing.
M: I always like to talk about the extreme violence in the film, how Tom almost seems like a superhero when he’s enacting these brutal death blows, he’s so swift, and his actions are incredibly potent. No one stands a chance against him, but his actions represent the evil inside of him. Like all great Westerns, you have to return to your evil ways in order to save what matters most. This is probably most evident in Anthony Mann’s Man of the West, where Gary Cooper has to relive his days as a serial killing outlaw to save his new life. And this plays into the framing as well, As you stated.
F: Yes, and the impact of Tom’s actions are much helped by Cronenberg’s trimming all the excess fat from the film’s pulpy, pulpy source material.
M: There’s not a wasted scene in this film, and that’s the sign of a great director.
F: The contrast between the two is really most obvious when talking about the ‘Richie’ character, Tom’s brother in the film. His story ties into the weird, fragmented structure of the graphic novel – which is, half the time, about Tom’s escape from the mob. They capture Richie, cut off his limbs and string him up in a dark room, and torture him, which we’re reminded of constantly. Stuff like that.
M: Yes, how that would fit into Cronenberg’s vision is tough to reconcile.
F: And, yes – there’s a great and sudden visceral quality to those scenes where Joey is roused out of Tom’s stupor. Rapid-fire editing combined with brutal, unnerving violence.
M: Character through editing, not dialogue, Cronenberg does this to a great extent in Eastern Promises as well, I think it’s something about Viggo’s face that allows for such an approach, the wrinkles of his face, the complexity of tone.
F: He’s a great deal more interesting here than in the Lord of the Rings, I’ll say that much.
M: For sure. I also wanted to mention the opening long take, which is truly an astounding way to introduce characters. The slow, languished stroll of their walk, the restless, tired nature they seem to exude. These guys seem so beat, yet they will kill and kill, seemingly forever to stay one step ahead. Of what? Who knows. It plays into the fact that there is a whole other universe going on right under our noses, of evil men and murder.
F: I like the fluidity of that shot – it’s almost like a magic sleight-of-hand trick.
M: We wait for something bad to happen, but it’s already happened off screen, Just genius pacing, something Cronenberg does better than anyone.
F: Certainly.
M: I think the best segue way into The Hurt Locker is the Western angle. Both of these films seem to be using Western archetypes and iconography but in other genres, and extreme genres at that. The War film and the Thriller.
F: That’s an angle I relied upon a lot in my review, actually – in The Hurt Locker, the connection is more definitively stated, with the main character James’ nickname being “cowboy,” and the use of the desert. “The Hurt Locker” is a startling picture, I think – and, probably one of the only truly apolitical war films we’ve had in a while. Although, in a way – it does really become about the perils of war in a way that hasn’t been confronted all that much, and that is war-as-addiction, as an initial escape from a fractured home-life in James’ case that seems to spiral outward. But, also – it’s a film constantly fraught with visceral tensity, through it’s set-pieces.
M: When I first saw your list, I thought maybe it was too soon to call this one of the best of the decade, but it’s certainly a masterful piece, and I think that tense, constant onslaught of uncertainty, makes it a near masterpiece.
F: That thought had crossed my mind early on, but then a second one soon followed it, and that was – “oh, well. Better earlier than before it becomes too late.” It’s the one film I have in the whole of my selections that comes from this present year, actually – in contrast to the two I have from 2007 and the two from 2008 (but, now I’m spoiling things).
M: What struck me most about Bigelow’s direction, is her reliance on the POV shot, usually an omniscient POV from above, or the POV from potential attackers. It makes the build up just too much to bare. Where is the violence going to come from? Like many Westerns, the attack could come from any direction, and this plays perfectly into the current War’s in the Middle East.
F: This is true. And, speaking of the cinematography, that was one of the more interesting technical aspects of the film, was her use of multiple camera on the same take. And, the POV shots are of particular note – fleeting shots from the back of an abandoned car, on the side of the road, from the window of a building above, quickly – making us jumpy, and expectant. It’s a disarmingly simple device, but one that’s of particular effect, when suddenly – WHACK!
M: A sniper’s bullet rips through a body.
F: But, speaking of the POV shots of the film, the ones that stand out the most for me are the most are the ones that come to pass during the unnaturally long and held-out sequence in the desert, the almost High Noon-esque standoff between the snipers in the broken building husk some miles off, through the haze and desert heat.
M: Best scene of 2009. Just monumentally long, drawn out to the extreme, we get to feel the sweat and dust on their faces, and the action is just brutal.
F: You keep wondering when the scene is going to cut, and it doesn’t – not for almost fifteen minutes, nearing twenty.
M: It doesn’t let you off the hook, ever.
F: And it’s really in those scenes that the character James seems to come alive, almost – he’s over there, buzzing encouragement in their marksman’s ear, and he’s down there, tending to the guy who got shot down in the crevice. Which is what’s really interesting about him – initially, he seems to be the newest iteration in the cool and silent stranger, coming into this new unit a hot-shot with a long history of success at what he does. But, slowly Bigelow reveals him to be the most vulnerable out of all of them – even the officer who was mentioning to the psychiatrist his contemplations of suicide.
M I don’t get it when critics say James isn’t a complex character, that he’s one note. Come on! The last scenes with him are down right dynamic. The choices he makes, the contradictions he experiences, just incredible stuff.
F: I’d say those critics probably fell asleep in the second hour, but things start bubbling under the surface with him during that scene relatively early on, where he has a startling reaction to the rough-housing of his fellow cadets, and we hear the details about his home-life for the first time.
M: James gets tempted so many times to develop human relationships, and it almost seems like it war, that’s the last thing you want to do, get attached, which is why he is so reckless, so perfectly attuned to the environment over the personnel who are his support team. He’s a true lone wolf.
F: Yes – and then, everything falls apart during his saga with the boy, eventually even leading him to break into civilian’s homes.
M: He just breaks down, and becomes this frantic roaming soldier who has no connection with the enemy or his comrades, just a blatant need to diffuse situations that he deems dangerous, no matter how perilous.
F: – which really makes the ending all that more unnerving, really. That he decides to throw himself back into those same situations over again.
M: For James, the life of diffusing bombs is easier than dealing with the reality of stateside existence. Like I said in my review a while back, the walk down the grocery store isle is more dangerous for James than that final walk of the film.
F: All those cereal boxes – the aisle just becomes daunting. Still, I’d probably feel the same way, and I’m not even a soldier. There’s just too many cereals, man.
M: Ha ha, for sure. It’s pretty scary though, everyday decisions are just moot in the face of extreme danger. And this makes perfect sense. It’s the reason why people buy into the fact that War is indeed a drug.
F: Exactly.
M: The cameos in this film are first rate, especially Ralph Fiennes and David Morse, just brilliant incarnations of the macho war film persona, yet slightly askew.
F: Yes, and they’re so well-integrated that you hardly register them on your first go around. And then – ‘hey, it’s Ralph Fiennes!” Of course – he doesn’t last long.
M: No one really does in this movie, mentally and physically.
F: True. They all become rundown in some way or another.
M: What about the slow motion in this film? Just great uses of an overused action aesthetic. Makes what seems cliche fresh again, it brings this breakneck film to an almost serene state.
F: Those almost surreal shots of James in the bomb-suit, making his way down the deserted street – they’re almost haunting.
M: The moment where the ground shifts under their feet, the pebbles and sand just slowly moving away. Let’s talk about Bigelow’s treatment of these extreme situations. How does this play into her other films? You mentioned Point Break in your review, which is a great example of subverting action film tropes to create an interesting genre film.
F: Bigelow uses a lot of devices that have become somewhat stale in recent years, and she does so in a way that actually makes them feel new – partially, I think this is because she integrates them so well throughout the film: an action sequence charged with viscerality slows down suddenly to witness the idiosyncratic site of the army-man in his balloon-shaped bomb-suit make his way down the street, or plumes of dust rising up from their feet. All of her films seem to be about the dynamic of male camaraderie in these extreme situations, really. She just seems so — fascinated by us, for some reason, and “Point Break” is another example.
M: Yes, and even though many of her films are quite cheesy, they can be linked through these auteurist traits. Like it or not, she’s a fascinating artist. And The Hurt Locker is maybe her best and most accomplished films.
F: Oh, I’m fine with those two statements – I actually enjoy “Strange Days” quite a bit, although “Point Break” is phenomenally cheesy, I agree. What with the Swayze and the Keanu, and all.
M: yes, Keanu doesn’t exude seriousness.
F: Well, he tries.

“Best of the 2000’s” – #6: The Coen Brothers’ “No Country For Old Men.”

- “The Best of the Decade Project” is an ongoing series of essays written by Match Cuts and The Filmist concerning the finest films of the last ten years.

So, this guy – he walks into this little mom and pop store in the middle of nowhere. He comes up to the counter, and he slaps a coin down on the table-top. He pushes it toward the little old man behind the counter, and he asks: “What’s the most you ever lost in a coin toss?”

Call it, friend-o.

Right now, I don’t think I’d be alienating anybody in saying that right now, America has no greater cinematic credit than the Brothers’ Coen -  they’re at the top of this new class of American filmmakers, and in many ways they seem to define the particular style of this New Wave: a mix of influences old and new, combined with the intent of creating something unique out of the osmosis. Their fingerprints can be seen everywhere from Wes Anderson to Rian Johnson – with their idiosyncratic, nervous characters in a heightened environment, seemingly at ease with it, in films defined by their unique and constant visual style that nevertheless changes to fit every subject where appropriate. Still, it’s hard to place the exact moment they came to prominence – more than likely, theirs was a slow, almost inobservable ride upward rather than any one film, propelled by the continuing critical acclaim of their past films. First came Blood Simple, in ‘85 – and, word began to spread.

More than any of their other films, this one in particular owes a huge debt to Sam Peckinpah, with it’s hard men roaming around the sparse, empty Texas landscape, connecting occasionally and shooting at each other, something the Coens willingly acknowledge, and – like those films, and with the Coen Brothers’ previous films like Fargo and Raising Arizona – this one takes a particular joy in presenting as authentic and hermetic a vision of the time and place it’s representing as it can. Here, long, drawling accents and tired, old eyes mix with foppish haircuts and a polyester shine – and personally, as a Texan, I can well attest that there are a lot of places outside of the metroplex that haven’t changed at all from the nineteen eighties presented in the film. Sheriffs are still amiably personal old men that seem faintly dazed by the things coming over the radio, and as far back as I can remember, there have always been those faintly dingy hotels – but then, those are everywhere. In trying to gain an authenticity, the Coens could not have found better than our very own Tommy Lee Jones, himself a native of the region the film centers around. While everyone else does conduct themselves admirably, and I do bestow upon them the label of “honorary Texans,” it’s through him, more than anyone else, that the film really sells itself as cut from from the cloth of the area.

Initially, the film seems to be about three men, none of whom ever come face to face – and, 0n the one side, there’s Llewelyn. Llewelyn’s face is rough and hewn from the best leather – a kind of “cowboy in a world with no more room for cowboys,” as one critic put it. His burden comes to him initially out of luck, while following game over the foothills and plains of windswept Texas. Coming over a rise, the scene laid out before him presents an opportunity that I’m not sure any man in the same situation could resist: trucks left parked halfway open, bodies splayed this-a-way and that on the grass. And, in one of the trucks, a quiet, thirsty man begging for water through dried and cracked lips. “I told you I ain’t got no aqua,” he says – and, then his eyes fall on the real prize: a satchel with two million dollars in cash stuffed inside. Llewellyn absconds with the money, stashing it under his trailer, and – yet, he finds himself drawn back to the man in the truck, later than night. His initial aim is to bring the guy some water, partially out of guilt. And, then behind him, the truck lights pop on, always kept in silhouette, and Llewellyn finds himself chased into the river. Llewelyn, a sweaty, nervous Vietnam veteran with hooded eyes and a mustache that just won’t quit as portrayed by Josh Brolin, seems initially to have his own agenda, and he does – to keep living, to support himself and his wife. Not even necessarily to prop themselves up into a better life, but to sustain in the type of harsh, rugged environment that typifies McCarthy’s world. His wife finds herself apprehensive, not knowing what kind of bad craziness her husband might have brought on them in his quest to keep this money for the two of them, and eventually her fears are proven correct.  She’s a character that is more than she initially appears, with her defining moment coming just before her death in the second to last scene, being the only one in the film with the cajones to stare down the reaper himself. Perhaps it’s because she’s lost so much throughout the rest of the film, but there’s no fear in her voice in that final scene.

Following him closely is Sheriff Bell, played with a real native twang in his voice by Tommy Lee Jones – and, there’s a constant weariness to him, despite his attempts at putting on a solid face, and a dismay at the ever-growing grisliness present at the crime scenes he ends up at. “There was this boy I sent to Huntsville here a while back,” he tells his protege near the beginning of the film,”… he killed a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn’t any passion to it. Told me that he’d been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. … I don’t know what to make of that. I surely don’t.” Constantly, he arrives at the aftermath of this new boy by consequence of their mutual pursuit, blowing people’s heads clean through with a cattle gun, who seems to leave a bigger and bigger trail of blood everywhere he goes – but, is he a new kind of evil, or just another product of  the tide that seems to be washing over the world, of late?

This is a quiet film, sometimes unflinchingly so, resembling nothing so much as a slow, almost funereal, burn. The Brothers Coen keep pulling their string tighter and tighter, as characters close in on each other, unaware of one another’s presence in the dark, or crest a hill overlooking a stark and windswept desert, where bison mill about lazily and cars lay strewn in the grass with their insides spilled out, and their owners not far away in the same condition. There’s one scene in particular that does well as a prime example – Moss is in a darkened hotel room, sitting on the bed with his gun propped toward the door as his pursuers make their way through the hall. Their footsteps slowly die away into the distance, and the next sound we hear is the scraping of the lightbulb in the hall being twisted out of it’s outlet in the ceiling. All in the dark. Always, the slow and sure Steadicam, moving us silently along a wheat-bordered Texas road, or toward the light-filled crime scene, off in the distance – and, we know what’s there as well as the Sheriff does, even if it’s initially blind-siding. Always the quiet, always the silence – sometimes blanketing a scene completely, and sometimes filling the spaces between words with implication – and it’s never allowed to be comfortable. Always, there’s a nervous tension behind every look, behind every haggard breath.  During one scene in particular, when Llewelyn finds himself engaged in a gunfight with the black angel of death that spills out right onto the street, our only sounds are gunshots followed by footsteps that quicken rapidly in pace, and – then Chigurh has gone, without a sound.  Llewelyn reels along, moving as quickly as he can away from the street, coming to rest against a wire-fence in the half-light. The silence is finally broken when Llewelyn asks for the clothes off a passing bystander – but, it isn’t a sigh of relief. The knot in our stomachs doesn’t go down.

And then, in the middle of it all, there’s Anton Chigurh, portrayed by Javier Bardem as a force of nature that no man on Earth can move, a sort of modern counterpart to the Angel of Death from The Seventh Seal – wandering slowly toward his intended target, stopping here and there to indulge in his duty toward fate, and the coin in his pocket. He carries with him a sawed-off shotgun in the one hand, and in the other a captive bolt pistol – the kind they use to kill cows with – and, the first time we meet him in full, he’s choking a man to death on the tile of a bathroom floor.  Very rarely does he speak, and when he does, it’s in a weird sort of Midwestern-Hispanic laughing street rumble, that remains almost entirely without inflection or emotion the whole way through. But interestingly, though for most of the film he does remain the embodiment of the same kind of archetype of  pure-sociopathy that the Coen’s have employed previously – most prominently in Fargo with the far-eyed blond killer Gaear Grimswud and in Barton Fink, Carl “Madman” Mundt – there are sudden moments where he seems to break down, and to falter. Especially near the end of the film, where – upon visiting Moss’ wife and offering her a chance to call the face-down side of the coin – he becomes visibly confused and a little frightened when faced with the self-responsibility for his actions, if only briefly. And, it’s directly after this that he finds himself in a head-on collision, and bleeding like a stuck pig on the side of the road – asking to borrow a shirt off a polite neighbor boy, and running off with a catch in his voice, telling the two boys that he “was never there.”

The film pulls a narrative stunt that actually had certain critics (like AICN’s Massawyrm – who, let’s be honest, is really only read because he sounds insane, and Jonathan Rosenbaum, most famously) actively calling the directors “mean-spirited” and deceitful for doing such a thing – as, halfway through, the man we’ve been following the whole film  and that we’ve assumed to be our focal point is revealed not to be -  and suddenly, everything that had come before takes on another meaning entirely. For, what was before an existential chase film between the fop-haired Anton and the cowboy-booted Llewelyn in the Texas of the eighties has gradually transformed into Sheriff Bell’s reaction to a new and startlingly violent culture that’s left him behind. The world does not wait for us  in its movements, and if we are not careful, we’ll find ourself lost, as if we’d walked down the wrong side-street. When doing his best to pry into all of it, Bell finds himself visiting his Uncle, and he tells him that he plans to retire soon, because he feels “over-matched” by the inhumanity in his environs that seems to be welling over the sides. But, his uncle tells him, the region’s always been violent. Bell’s crime is assuming that it would have waited for him to catch up.

Is the film nihilistic in it’s philosophies? I don’t know that I’d agree with that to the extent that so many other critics and reviewers seem to. Anton Chigurh is certainly a nihilistic character, and – yes, the bad guy does “get away” at the end of the film, but his armor has been broken. He’s bleeding, and he’s been wounded, and is revealed to be as flesh and blood as the rest of us.  No – myself, I think the point of the film is summed up entirely by its title, and Sheriff Bell’s last monologue, near the end of the film.

After his retirement, Bell finds himself awake of a nights, startled by images, dreams of his father -

“…two of ‘em. Both had my father in ‘em. It’s peculiar. I’m older now then he ever was by twenty years. So in a sense he’s the younger man. Anyway, first one I don’t remember too well but it was about meetin’ him in town somewhere, he’s gonna give me some money. I think I lost it. The second one, it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin’ through the mountains of a night. Goin’ through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin’. Never said nothin’ goin’ by. He just rode on past… and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin’ fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. ‘Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold. And I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.”

***

Glenn Heath’s intruing entry for his Number Six spot, Wong Kar-Wai’s “In The Mood For Love,” can be found here.

“Best of the 2000’s” – Discussion the Third

- “The Best of the Decade Project” is an ongoing series of essays written by Match Cuts and The Filmist concerning the finest films of the last ten years.

 

For those thusly interested, Glenn has posted the third of our planned discussions – though, of course, they’re completely unrehearsed – comparing and contrasting our picks for the eight-spot on our respective lists of the Best of the Decade. It’s a real humdinger (or a corker, whichever you prefer), I think – and, you can find it here.

 

***

 

Oh, and ‘fore I go off forgetting, like I do, I’d like to take a minute and mention Pathogen, the zombie movie written and directed in 2005 by then-twelve year old Emily Hagen, now seventeen.  Being that it was a movie made by a twelve year old, you’ve got to take for granted the lack of budget, the bad sound (because it was filmed on a video camcorder),  and the use of her mother’s office as a science laboratory  – but, behind all that, Hagen’s burgeoning directorial talent really does shine through. It’s raw, and it’s unfocused, and it’s more than a little hazy a lot of the time, but it’s there. She knows how to frame a shot, which is certainly more than I can say for me at twelve – I tried to do the same thing, once. And, all that came of it, at the end of the day, was a fumbling shot of feet running through the lawn of the local old folk’s home.

So, good on her, and I can’t wait to see what she does next.