Check out the films they will be discussing:

Enjoy!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

Directed by: Niels Arden Oplev

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1132620/?ref_=sr_2

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Directed by: David Fincher

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1568346/?ref_=sr_1

The Red Shoes

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040725/?ref_=fn_al_tt_5

Black Swan

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0947798/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Check out the films on IMDB:

Paris, Texas (1984)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087884/

Last Tango in Paris (1972)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070849/

Bug (2006)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470705/

Paranoia breeds more paranoia as a mysterious war veteran and a woman experience a bug infestation in an Oklahoma hotel room.

Killer Joe (2011)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1726669/

 Set in the not-so-glamorous side of Texas, Chris (Emile Hirsch) hires a man named Killer Joe (Matthew McConaughey) to kill his mother for the insurance money.  Sounds simple enough…but when things go wrong, Killer Joe is not letting this family forget him.

Here are the films we will be chatting about:

Enjoy!!!

Dead Poets Society (1989)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097165/

Robin Williams and Ethan Hawke star in this inspirational film that takes place at an upper-class prep school for boys.  When a poetry teacher challenges the “normal” curriculum, his students begin to understand the phrase “carpe diem,” and the importance of living life outside the box.

October Sky (1999)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132477/

Based on a true story, Homer Hickam (Jake Gyllenhaal) lives in a small-town but has big ideas.  When Sputnik is launched, he is inspired to build rockets and seek a brighter future than what this mining town originally offered him.

Tune in as we discuss 6 feature film debuts from some of the most prominent filmmakers working today!

Here are the films we will be discussing on this episode:

Bad Boys(1995)

Directed by: Michael Bay
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112442/

Martin Lawrence and Will Smith are two cops in charge of protecting a witness (Tea Leoni) while they investigate a case of stolen heroin from the police station.

Gattaca(1997)
Directed by: Andrew Niccol
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/

Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, and Jude Law (in his breakthrough role) star in this science-fiction drama.  Set in a world were human gene manipulation is down to a science, class in society is not based on wealth as much as what your genes say about you.

As Tears Go By(1988)

Nicholas Winding Refn’s latest film Drive (2011) is less the action film that the trailers and TV spots initially portend, and more Refn’s treatise on the male hero.  Riddled with disparate elements of both our Western hero and fetishistic tendencies, Drive is a slathering of postmodernism atop a rudimentary concept.  Ryan Gosling’s character (known as “Driver” only) is a rag-doll sewn together by fragments of his cinematic forefathers.  But, then again, who isn’t?  Films borrow from their predecessors, one just has to be cognizant of the “how.”  Jean-Luc Godard once stated, “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”  And with Drive, Refn extracts the ingredients and mixes them once again to create a wholly new concoction. 

So let us start with the Western.  Yes I said it, and yes this rambling is still about Drive.  So in your Western film, a man rides in to town, develops a love interest, helps save the town/woman from imminent danger (represented typically by some “big bad”), and rides off into the sunset.  Our male hero, dripping with masculinity and mystery, exhibits that desirable stoicism that we as viewers find so fascinating on screen (sound familiar?).  Take actors like Gary Cooper (High Noon, 1952), John Wayne, Henry Fonda (My Darling Clementine, 1946), and Clint Eastwood in the “Man with No Name” trilogy, for instance.  They were your defenders, your moral strongholds (eh, for the most part), and exhibited both physical strength and intellectual acuity that promised the triumph of good over evil.  

The Western was at one time a genre entirely American–one of our greatest exports to the cinematic world–and then the Italians tried their hand at it, and to some, brought it to a new level.  Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), made after his famous aforementioned “Man with No Name” trilogy starring Clint Eastwood, is a film that bears much comparison to Refn’s Drive, most notably if we extract our main characters from both films.  In Once Upon a Time in the West, Charles Bronson plays a man unambiguously named “Harmonica.”  For indeed, that is what he does best–aside from killing.  Without boring you with too much plot summary, Harmonica helps Jill McBain (played by Claudia Cardinale) defend her land after a greedy man by the name of Frank (Henry Fonda) seeks to take it from her.  Thus ensues an evocative confrontation between Harmonica and Frank, as we discover a connection from their past.  And in the end, Harmonica exacts his punishment and rides off, having protected Jill.  

When looking at it from a fundamental perspective, Refn’s “Driver” character is a re-envisioning of Bronson’s “Harmonica.”  Both characters do not require names.  We are not concerned with delving beyond their cool exterior and “getting to know” them.  Psssh, that is for melodrama!  To do so would betray the very reasoning behind our fascination with them.  All we need to know is that they DO have a heart (as seen by Harmonica’s defense of Jill, and Driver’s need to protect Irene [Carey Mulligan]), and that they can get a job done.  And while they complete their undertaking, they better look damn good doing it.  The camera worships our male hero: long takes focusing on his clandestine facial expression, and him leaning against walls chewing on a toothpick (or a sliver of prairie grass, as is the case in Westerns–which must be some sort of prerequisite, by the way, to obtain the title of “cowboy”).  After being fed all this eye-candy, the audience can be certain that the final showdown will result in his victory.  As Driver and Bernie (Albert Brooks) confront one another in the final scene of the film, Driver realizes he cannot simply walk away from this.  He now sees that he is in a shootout, and there can only be one outcome.  Driver kills Bernie and drives off into the sun as it sets, leaving behind L.A., and more specifically the woman whose life he has saved.  Cue pop music chanting “real hero.” 

Now reread my opening paragraph.  Did I use the word fetishistic?  It’s true, any form of glorification of the male/female body by the camera lens can be read as such.  Westerns, with all that male worship, have long exhibited small elements of gay subtext, which only became actual text when Brokeback Mountain (2005) came galloping onto the scene (I’ll examine this film further in a future post).  But does Drive have any subtext?  The answer to this questions is more dependent on opinion and individual viewer response than anything else.  What makes this impossible to determine for certain is the postmodernist elements of Drive that seek to reference and rebirth old ideas and cinematic techniques.  And the reference that throws the element of fetishism into the mix is that darn Scorpion Jacket (notably capitalized, because to me it is a character in itself).  With this thrown in, you get a strange amalgamation, indeed.  Here is a direct, and I mean DIRECT (confirmed by Refn himself in an interview), reference to an extremely influential filmmaker by the name of Kenneth Anger. 

Anger bursted onto the scene in a whirl of controversy surrounding his first short film entitled Fireworks (1947).  After a screening of the piece, Anger was actually arrested on obscenity charges.  The film opens with a shot of a sailor carrying a young man and then cuts directly to the same young man waking up from a dream.  After getting dressed, he encounters a sailor who he attempts to hit on, instigating a group of sailors to then descend upon him, beat him up, cut him open, pour milk on him, etc.  Then we see a sailor light a firework, strategically placed where the zipper of his pants lies.  The film ends with the young man waking up next to another guy, as if he experienced a dream within a dream.  For its time, Fireworks was a striking exploration and celebration of homoeroticism and the male body.  Shot in black and white and gorgeously lit, the film at one point simply focuses on the flexing of muscles on a sailors back, arms, and shoulders.  One can see why in 1947 Fireworks caused some debate, especially with elements of sadomasochism in there during the torture scene.  

Anger’s most famous film that followed this, Scorpio Rising (1963), is what Refn chooses to sprinkle atop the Driver.  An identical drawing of the scorpion from this film adorns Ryan Gosling’s jacket, and here is our reference to fetishism.  Scorpio Rising records preparations of a biker gang: polishing their bikes, dressing themselves in leather, donning rings, chains, and the signature aviators (we see on Driver as well).  Interspersed between these scenes is a shot that zooms toward a drawing of the scorpion.  Anger’s film is a striking exercise on visual counterpoint and montage, oscillating between the biker gang, skull imagery, nudity, cut-outs of cartoons, found footage of a portrayal of Jesus, and images of the iconic James Dean.  The entirety of which is set to pop music, a technique made famous by the film.  It includes songs like: “Fools Rush In,” “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “Blue Velvet,” and “Hit the Road Jack.”  Not only is this approach seen in the pop music soundtrack of Drive, but also heavily influenced filmmakers such as David Lynch (Blue Velvet, 1986) and Martin Scorsese (Mean Streets, 1973).  In Drive, Ryan Gosling is also frequently seen working on car parts in his apartment, similar to the polishing and preparation of Scorpio Rising’s biker gang.  And perhaps my favorite image of the film, seen after Driver stomps a man’s face in on the elevator, shows the back of his jacket with a strong spotlight barely illuminating the creature on his back.  As Driver breathes, the Scorpion Jacket pulsates. It is alive, awakened, and relishing in the violence, just as the biker gang is at the conclusion of Scorpio Rising.  

Driver and Harmonica, Scorpion Jacket and Scorpio Rising, Refn’s Drive is as original as original can get in our postmodern society.  Where’s the fun if we do not poke fun, bring to light, and extrapolate the conventions of cinematic history?  And let us not forget, Driver’s wielding of the hammer is almost as terrifying as Oh Dae-su in Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy (2003).  Is this a reference as well?  There may not be much of a case for it, but that is where the complexity of postmodernist films come in.  It is hard to tell what is and what is not an allusion to something before it.  But aside from these filmic comparisons, Drive remains a glossy, neon, masterfully crafted examination of an unconventional male hero–an inexplicable champion that the camera both revels in and fetishizes.  The West would not have been won without them, and Drive would hardly be the film that it is without our Driver.  

Links to check out:

Drive IMDB page
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780504/

See Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and Fireworks in their entirety at these sites:

Scorpio Rising-
http://veehd.com/video/4500012_Kenneth-Anger-Scorpio-Rising-1964-nYx64
Fireworks-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDu7mbcGqGY

As I sit down to write about Leos Carax’s most recent film Holy Motors, I realize that it very well may be an impossible task.  There were dogs in theater aisles, Denis Lavant(s) running around everywhere, nine completely different stories, a musical number, and last but not least, chimps.  So one can see my dilemma.  But in the end, if the structure/purpose/meaning/argument of this blog gets lost somewhere along the way and you, dear reader, are left pondering its purpose, then it will indeed be a perfect representation of the film in which it sets out to discuss.  

With the progression of the film and the bizarre unfolding of the plot, I at times thought to myself, “A HA!  I understand!”  But each segment ended with myself once again questioning: what is the reality in which the film is based?  Perhaps this was my first mistake.  One cannot place the characters of Holy Motors in any sort of world, in any sort of reality governed by laws similar to our own.  I kept waiting for the moment that we discovered the true stage upon which the main character Oscar stood; for some sort of correlation between the life of our main character and the world that lay just within reach of him outside of his white limousine.  However, the film was never concerned with giving me that satisfaction.  Maybe it was there, maybe it was not.  The film never really gives you enough evidence to suggest this either way you look at it.

But one thing that I can proudly state for certain, is that Holy Motors is an ode to cinema.  An “art” film (if I so daringly use the term) that celebrates its own genesis to the days of silent cinema.  To a cinema that was ranked not by the number of explosions or big names that it contained, but by the performance.  The performance, above all else, was what film originally relied on.  In between segments we see flashes of early silent films, primarily Marey’s (and later Eadweard Muybridge) study of locomotion, which recorded nothing spectacular but a spectacle nonetheless.  No story, no plot, nothing beyond simply: “watch how the muscles on a man’s body move,” “watch how hands alone in movement make it a character in itself.”  Denis Lavant’s performance resonates with that of Charlie Chaplin as well, most perceptibly as the crazed bum interrupting Eva Mendes’s photo shoot.  It is the contortion of his body as he walks, the eccentric eating of flowers, and unintelligible speech that creates a character perhaps more tangible in a matter of minutes, than a standard two-hour film can accomplish.  Just as the opening scene in a movie theater suggests, we are witnessing a performance, not some essay on the modern world.  We are spectators in the full act of spectatorship.

So what are we watching?  Oscar.  A man with nine appointments, nine different lives he will lead in one day.  A man of innumerable faces, but not a single one his own.  Carax dangles him in front of our eyes but restrains from letting us fully understand the man we find so fascinating.  He is a Chaplin-of-sorts transplanted to modern day Paris, who lives for the act.  One thing that remains unclear, however, is whom he is acting for.  First and foremost, I believe it is us.  Imagine a man driven around in a limousine, sent on jobs to entertain YOU, the viewer sitting in the movie theater.  Once the two-hour time slot is filled, he is dropped off at his final appointment and the limousine gets returned to a place called “Holy Motors.”  The more I think about it, the more this seems to make sense.  There are no cameras watching Oscar within the film.  There is only the camera used to record the very scenes that were then edited and projected in front of our own eyes.  The only difference between this idea and that of the more (arguably) “standard” structure of film, is that the characters typically stand in their own reality, have their own lives.  We sit comfortably back, knowing that their actuality might be similar to our own, but is not ours, and what unfolds in their time-slot is just a period of their life placed in a display case.  We do not see Oscar’s life, however.  We consume it.  He is performing for us, and this fact is obvious.  He has no identity, nor any other characters.  Maybe it’s there, but it is never revealed.  Chaplin is Chaplin, Buster Keaton is Buster Keaton, and Oscar is just simply, Oscar.  

Throughout the entire film, I thought Celine the limousine driver was just that.  But then she puts on a mask and heads “home.”  I thought the limousine was just that, a limousine.  But then it talks to other limos.  I thought Oscar was really going home, but then there were chimpanzees.  Holy Motors is not meant to be understood, dissected and analyzed.  We can feebly attempt, but in the end Leos Carax will make a fool of us all.  It is all an act, a performance by Denis Lavant (or should I say, Oscar) that will stay with the viewer once leaving the theater.  It is simply a film that references a multitude of other films that holds at its core the performer and the spectator.  We are inside the film, the characters know that we are there and they perform, and no genre is off limits.  During an interview after Holy Motors screened at the New York Film Festival, Carax said, “To me, cinema is a place. I discovered this place when I was 16 or 17, and I called it an island. I felt very relieved to find that there was a place that I could live in…”  As one watches this film, we are in cinema with Carax, and our presence is known. 

There are about a hundred more reasons… but I digress.

More than anything, I have recently discovered that Fall, is a time where it mirrors our own cyclical lives, where we shed our skin and prepare to harvest ourselves for a, more often than not, cruel winter and eventually burst into a hopeful spring. A time to harvest and reflect what is within us. Create and listen to that internal dialog, where imagination is begging to leap forward into light and surface out of darkness. That the seasons we live through are not just passages of time, but that we travel through our own time and through the same seasons in our interior lives. The sun always rises even in the bleakest times of our lives. That is what I intend to do in the next couple of months. The sun surrendering to the approaching dark earth is a perfect opportunity to harvest and create more projects and more work and to discover new things I never knew that I knew. To give way to a certain bleakness and listen closely to it and what it can reveal. As we all fall down and change the way we think and feel.

Alex Villaseñor