Keep Coming Back: The World’s End and Recovery

“This is a film about a man who escapes therapy but triggers his own intervention.” — Edgar Wright, speaking with Calum Marsh about his most recent film, The World’s End.

The World’s End grows in the same field as A Clockwork Orange and John Wyndham. It’s a serious work of socially conscious science fiction masquerading as a jolly British comedy – capable of inspiring belly laughter in one shot and existential terror in the next. Gary King is our hero, but he’s spinning out of control and into a self-destructive crisis. He cuts his wrists and drives while he’s fucked up and encourages his friends to join him in damaging behaviors. If The World’s End were not directed by Edgar Wright, one of the 2 or 3 greatest living directors of comedy, it would be a nightmare vision closer to Mike Leigh’s Naked.

Forget for a moment how funny this movie is and consider how seriously it takes itself. It is the work of experienced craftsmen – Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s screenplay doesn’t waste a word. Wright’s camera work is energetic, but mostly feels deliberate and controlled. Every prop and gag, no matter how insignificant, functions as a part of the carefully managed universe that is Newton-Haven. Out of Order signs and driver’s license marks are repurposed, creating a pointillist comedy that ultimately seems peripheral to the true aims of the filmmakers, which are twofold: 1) documenting the strange and terrifying realization that your hometown, which has always meant a great deal to you, can’t remember you at all and will continue to change and forget you ever existed; and 2) attempting to capture the experience of an addict/alcoholic’s crisis and recovery.

I think The World’s End manages to express the first metaphor perfectly in a stunning and hilarious second act. But I’d like to challenge the film’s presentation and development of Gary’s substance abuse. Respectably, The World’s End attempts to use addiction as more than a generic character detail and deserves some scrutiny. The Returning Home metaphor provides much of the film’s memorable moments – pub wars and synchronized marching to The Doors – but Gary’s addiction is the true structural core of the film. It is central to the three most important dramatic moments in the picture – the long opening monologue, the first appearance of the Blanks, and the events at The World’s End pub. His issues with addiction are vital to the film’s architecture, but I’m gonna be a buzzkill and say that the triumphal ending isn’t as dry as it wants to be.

The film begins and we are introduced to Gary through voiceover, as he leads us through the events of his Greatest Night Ever, an epic pub-crawl named The Golden Mile – 12 pubs and 12 pints. You can hear his excitement. We don’t know if the flashback images, flickering in brief, aged tones, are true documents or the fabric of Gary’s ballooned ego. We immediately learn that he is an asshole, that he is reckless, that he is cocky, and that he is charismatic. Edgar Wright dishes out character detail more efficiently than anyone.

But we eventually learn that Gary is telling this story, or, more accurately, “sharing” this story with an Alcoholics Anonymous fellowship. Suddenly the “12 pubs – 12 pints” goal makes sense – referencing the 12-step path to recovery. It’s an effective gag, but the reveal is incredibly dark. Not only is Gary reckless, cocky, and an asshole, he is pathetic and clueless. Impressively, Wright sets up the entire ethos of his film in a single cut. But it unfortunately includes the film’s confused attitude towards substance abuse and recovery. The circle of Alcoholics Anonymous is presented as the supreme bummer. No one offers a helpful response or takes Gary’s inventory. Popular culture has traditionally condescended to the fellowship of AA and it’s hard to fault Wright and Pegg for it. They make it believable enough that Gary is doomed from the start – he’s in the room, but he’s not ready to recover. Indeed, a film about Gary and a crocodilian, septuagenarian, croaking sponsor would be something else entirely. But as we will see, the ideology of 12-step programs and substance abuse recovery becomes critical in the third act.

Each of the film’s three acts begins with Gary experiencing a crisis that is directly related to his substance abuse. While the first began with an AA circle, the second begins with a different fellowship – his four childhood friends sitting in the Cross Hands, their fourth pub of the night. If these pubs are each meant to correspond with a step in recovery, the fourth order of business is to create a Fearless and Searching Moral Inventory of Oneself, so it’s as good a point as any to stage the first of two major interventions and plunge the movie into a riotous second act. I love the way that Wright negotiates the introduction of new genre elements – pulling the trigger just when the narrative seems ready to self-destruct. Gary’s visit to the bathroom is a defensive gesture, his mates having just called him out on his addiction. Andy, clearly the one that Gary values the most, observes that they aren’t his friends, just his enablers. Gary deflects by saying “enabler” is a funny word. He continues to rationalize his substance abuse by lying about his mother’s death and alleging that his friends are jealous of his “freedom,” in one of many moments where Gary’s personal philosophy takes the form of recently-heard song lyrics. This is where Gary goes to the bathroom and the boys discover Newton-Haven’s secret in what is surely one of the best scenes of the year, action or otherwise.

Before I can continue, we need to talk about Andy. Nick Frost’s Andrew Knightley is the emotional core of the film. We hope that he can get through to Gary and we sympathize with his foolish devotion to him. Until the events at the Cross Hands, Andy has been the perfect adult – professional and mature. We learn that he has been sober for an impressive 16 years. In the first pub, he orders a glass of water, which, to Gary, is the most disappointing decision anyone could make. Andy makes an honorable statement about how ordering water at a pub takes more balls than ordering alcohol, but Gary doesn’t want to hear it. The film condescends to his decision as well – photographing the exhilarating crack and fizz of four poured beers juxtaposed against the limp drip of tap water. But after their epic Rumble in the Washroom, the fellas wonder what to do next. Gary unsurprisingly suggests they continue their crawl. All the others want to hop in a car and get away. The moment one of them points out that Andy is fit to drive because he’s a grownup and not currently halfway tanked, Andy gulps down five shots like it’s Popeye’s spinach. His relapse, after 16 years of sobriety, is not only unmotivated, it only comes about because the narrative requires them not to drive away. I’ll admit that there’s a certain Badass Factor at play here, but Andy has already revealed exceptional robot-bashing skills without lubrication — People’s Elbow and all. So, suddenly, the film seems to argue that heavy drinking is at once the great flaw of our hero and a fuel for victory. To take a line straight from Andy’s mouth – wouldn’t it take more balls to walk into a bar full of hostile robots and beat the shit out of them without liquid courage?

The impact of Andy’s relapse is mostly superficial during the excellent series of battles and adventures that make up the second act. But when it’s time for him to seriously confront Gary in yet another intervention, it’s as though he never even stepped off the wagon. In the final pub, the two of them have a tearful, desperate argument about whether or not Gary has more to live for than the Drink. Problem is, the words of wisdom are coming out of a mouth that just swallowed at least 8 drinks after 16 years of abstention. The World’s End takes place in a universe where certain genre elements alleviate some responsibility towards realism, but the filmmakers rely on the audience to have an emotional reaction to Gary’s alcoholism. In this moment, we do. But after Gary pulls the tap and triggers the elevator to humanity’s rock bottom, the film loses control of recovery as a theme.

Bill Nighy’s blinding, sarcastic God wastes no time in offering Gary exactly what he spent the entire film wanting – eternal youth. The opportunity to live forever inside of his own legend. To an addicted mind, this is the holy grail – no more tomorrows, no more hangovers, no more wondering what you’ll have to steal to trade for dope. But somehow, Gary denies it, ripping off his younger self’s head and punting it across the room. On the surface, it’s Gary’s final turning point – his moment of clarity. But look at it again. Isn’t it just an extension – an intensification – of his addictive personality? Faced with an authority figure, his instinct is to challenge it. Steps two and three are notoriously hard for recovering addicts because they require finding and trusting a higher power. In this final confrontation, Gary King literally stands on top of a table and defies what appears to be some kind of god offering guidance. It bellows, “You act out the same cycles of self-destruction again and again! You are the least civilized planet in the entire galaxy!” Gary screams back, now with Andy on his side, “It is our basic human right to be fuck ups!” Eventually, Bill Nighy’s disembodied voice gives up and leaves, admitting that nothing he can say will change their minds.

I’ll admit that I can identify with Mr. Nighy’s voice. In a situation where alcoholics are yelling about their god-given right to make their own decisions, it’s best to make an exit. Sure, the antagonist was defeated, but none of Gary’s personality issues were solved – his drinking, his ego, his need for control. In the final scene, Gary’s a legend – a portrait of the addicted ego. His face is shaved and he looks healthy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he chases that water with something from a flask hidden inside his coat.

Forgotten Gems: Cutter’s Way

It is a real pleasure to welcome Andrew Skelton, a good friend, to The Family. He is an experienced viewer and has recently decided to try his hand at analysis and criticism. He has slick style. I hope he inspires you to check out the films he recommends in this new series “Forgotten Gems,” meant to turn your eyes back toward many deserving, but overlooked films.

*****

Cutter’s Way [Passer, 1981]

Ivan Passer’s Cutter’s Way presents an America void of justice and personal responsibility. Passer introduces us to his protagonist, Richard Bone (a young, suave, and oft-shirtless Jeff Bridges), as he trims his mustache and admires his own shirtless visage in a hotel mirror. Rather than engage in meaningful conversation, this self-centered, drifting womanizer leaves his latest sexual conquest to, “visit a sick friend.” Cutter, Bone’s “sick friend,” is first seen attempting to use racial epithets to start a bar fight. After departing this most recent example of Cutter’s self destructive ways, Bone’s car breaks down in a dark alley. While stalled on the side of the road, Bone observes a figure in what will later be identified as a woman’s body in a dumpster.

Bone soon recognizes the figure, which will distinguish Cutter’s Way from other neo-noirs of the 70s and 80s. Cutter’s Way isn’t concerned with who the murderer is, but rather with what Bone will do with his knowledge of that murderer. Bone favors order and status quo, whereas Cutter thrives in chaos. Bone’s primary moral quandary is whether to upend his luxurious lifestyle of sailing (a literal drifting) and sleeping with older women to pursue some form of justice. Cutter, a bitter war veteran, certainly typifies the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate American on a search for justice, as he outlines in one of the film’s many well-written and emotional exchanges between these two protagonists. Has affluence and comfort overshadowed its desire for justice?

Jeffry Alan Fiskin’s smart screenplay, based on Newton Thornburg’s novel, presents three damaged characters; Bone, Cutter, and Cutter’s wife, Moe, who have all known each other long before Passer’s camera starts rolling. Their history together has most recently consisted of dealing with Cutter’s drunken rampages. Neither Bone nor Moe show surprise when Cutter drives home drunk one evening, bashing into a neighbor’s car and fence in the process. Cutter talks his way out of any legal fallout from this event by showing imitation remorse to a police officer. This avoidance of legal fallout is exemplifies Cutter’s ability to maintain his lifestyle, but more than that, an America devoid of ramifications.

Cutter’s Way presents a supremely American quandary between complacency and the pursuit of justice. Bone is promised a reliable full-time job by his employer, but to pursue the murderer would put that employment at risk. Typical of 70s neo noirs is the always prevalent undercurrent of paranoia. Robert Horton has already described this beautifully as part of Jim Emerson’s Opening Shots Project, but one shot of Bone sailing in front of a watchful oil derrick (the murderer Bone spotted was wealthy oil baron J.J. Cord) also captures this sensation.  We can see Cutter’s Way marking America at a crossroads, one in which citizens must decide what they’re willing to risk to become heroes.

*****

Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty please check out Andrew on Twitter here. A really great feed.

The Ten Best Films of 2012

The year of our Lord twelve-and-two-thousand has meant a great deal to me. Not only did I fall in love with my soulsistah this year, I fell in love with movies. Last year at this time, I was completing Jeff Hinkelman’s Intro to Film Studies course at CMU. It was huge. I was an impeccable slacker, but I managed to catch some kind of illness — an obsession entered my blood. Just after the course ended, I asked Jeff if I could come and work for him in the video collection of our school library which he oversees. He said yes and, with an exhaustive list, opened my eyes to cinema. Before 2012, I was a casual filmgoer, vaguely passing judgment on canonical Hitchcock and It’s a Wonderful Life. But this year was different. I started watching, really watching — because that’s all we can do, isn’t it? I studied Bordwell and Hoberman, learned to live and breathe Farber, started to recognize the styles of D’Angelo and Emerson. I started hanging around on Twitter, trying to gradually nudge myself into a crew of some very experienced moviegoers, and had my first video essay published at Indiewire. In twelve months, I’ve moved from not knowing who Howard Hawks was to being able to play back Twentieth Century and Rio Bravo in my dreams. I’ve gone from The Seventh Seal to Winter Light and Virgin Spring. From A Clockwork Orange to Eyes Wide Shut. From Metropolis to Fury. I considered making a list of the best films I’ve seen for the first time this year — but the fact is that it would basically be an All-Time Top 10. I watched 522 films this year. Probably 400 of them were capital g great.

So I’m new to this business. And this blog is barely 9 months old. But I can’t help celebrating. It’s been a great year. For me and for anyone who loves to sit in the dark and stare into the light. So this list is for all of you who can’t look away. I’ll always remember 2012 as the year I got hooked — and what a year I picked!

It’s only fair for me to add the caveat that I have yet to see Django Unchained, Zero Dark Thirty, and a few other films that have managed to make several other lists. I’m impatient and don’t want to wait until late-January to publish this, so I’ll just retroactively update it if anything changes. I’m not easily impressed by the style of either director, so I feel reasonably comfortable with what I have. Of course, every film I list has my unreserved endorsement. See them all! I’ll provide viewing information for each one.

I’ve thought long and hard about everything on this list and the order in which it comes — but I’m still not sure it actually means anything.

Honorable mentions: Lincoln (Spielberg, USA), The Deep Blue Sea (Davies, UK), Barbara (Petzold, Germany), Perks of Being a Wallflower (Chbosky, USA), This is Not a Film (Panahi, Iran), Cosmopolis (Cronenberg, Canada)

10. The Color Wheel, dir. Alex Ross Perry (USA)

I’m doubtful that another independent film made this year was as restless and vital. Alex Ross Perry’s sophomore feature is a complicated, troubled little bastard. The film is shot in black & white, but this is not John Ford’s black & white — this is the color of anxiety and discomfort. Perry plays alongside Carlen Altman, who wrote the film with him. They are brother and sister, the purveyors of infinite wit and malaise. But their sniping is never glorified — just the opposite. By casting himself, Perry creates a jarring self-examination and one of the most unforgiving critiques of millennial snarl. There may not be a likable character in The Color Wheel, but that’s the point. It’s a fantasy — or a nightmare, if you choose. And Perry proves himself as a true lover of dramatic scenario (remember the sequence at the ex-boyfriend’s house?) and the surreal nature of cinema (remember the party scene?). The Color Wheel never aspires to realism. But by embracing the exaggeration inherent to the medium, Perry and Altman are able to dramatize the contradictions and uncertainty of a generation with considerable emotional gravity, even though the characters exhibit little affect. The Color Wheel is available through Amazon.

9. The Imposter, dir. Bart Layton (USA)

Being a “documentary,” The Imposter naturally seeks to arrange sequences in a way that is exciting. Audiences have a complicated relationship with the screen — we always expect something to reflect our own reality and are stubborn to accept fiction as fiction (see the current Zero Dark Thirty debate). But even the most objective documentaries aren’t true documents. Someone decided where to put the camera, when to turn it on, and what to aim it at. By its very nature, the camera disrupts an environment.

Mr. Layton understands this and exploits the shit out of our desire to see reality in everything. He gives us the extraordinary tale of Frederic Bourdin, a professional French con man who managed to sneak into the United States impersonating a missing child. It’s a colorful story. But it’s made into a model of suspense through some of the most inspired editing I’ve ever seen. The interviewee’s speak in the present tense, as if they still only know what they knew at the time they’re describing. The Imposter is the most physical experience I’ve had with film all year. It feels like a work-out. It reveals dangerous and damning truths about the way we accept reality, putting Compliance in the trash. The final shot is dense with the cosmic energy of infinite uncertainty. I’ve heard a few critics call the movie something like a glorified TV special. I’m not sure what television they’re watching, but I wish I got whatever channel this is on. A powerful experience for anyone willing to look Truth in the eye. The Imposter is available through iTunes.

8. Looper, dir. Rian Johnson (USA)

One of my favorite discoveries of 2012 was Brick, Rian Johnson’s first feature — a wicked and intelligent high-school noir. In it, he managed to distill all the adolescent emotions — alienation, smallness, fear, obsession — into a model film, an inexpensive production full of action, suspense, and blistering wit. Johnson treasures the script. He makes car chases and explosions out of words. If you’re not excited about everything this guy might do, get with the program because he’s gonna be dropping bombs.

Looper plays the same game as Brick. It’s a grimy genre deconstruction that sweats rhetorical vitality. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis play the same dude, divided by time travel — one’s the hero, the other’s the villain. Johnson has an inspiring faith in love. Even, in this case, willing to show that it can drive someone to evil. It’s virtue is in its pure strength as both genre-based product and vessel for human observation. Looper has a few interesting things to say about time travel, but it has more poignant insights on sacrifice, morality, and fatherhood. It’s an intensely interesting picture that will one day be recognized as a pillar of science fiction. Looper will be released later this month. I’ll update with links when the time comes.

7. Leviathan, dir. Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel (France)

Next to The Imposter, Leviathan is the film that left me most breathless. Made aboard a commercial fishing boat with $150 GoPro cameras, Castaing-Taylor and Paravel capture some of the most arresting images in recent memory. And if we’re speaking about the possibility of True Documentary, these folks get pretty close by attaching the camera to God-Knows-What, letting it fly, and checking out the footage later. The result is nature’s answer to Brakhage. Leviathan is a horror film of sorts, flinging flashes of violent light against the screen, the only pattern being the rhythm of movement — heartbeats, swinging waves, great wings, and human labor. The film is burdened by a misguided segment where we watch a worker fall asleep watching TV, but the rest is so harrowing, so ghostly and coarse, that it hardly matters. In fact, it chastises our complacency in the midst of such an extraordinary cosmic experiment. The most thrilling passages take place off the boat as the filmmakers allow the camera to fly among the birds. We dip into the water and soar out of it. We are never really sure what we’re witnessing. Nature and life are reduced to motion and light — isn’t that the very definition of cinema? Leviathan will be difficult to find. As soon as I know where, you’ll know.

6. Neighboring Sounds, dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho (Brazil)

The greatest surprise of Neighboring Sounds isn’t in the film. It’s that this truly Great Movie is Filho’s freshman effort — a first film! Save for one scene of unnecessary climax, Neighboring Sounds is a work of Altmanesque genius. The picture features an ensemble cast, various inhabitants of a middle-class Brazilian block. Not only does it deserve recognition as Best First Feature, it also contains the two best dream sequences of the year and the best sound design of the year. These characters are varied — some vulnerable, some bored, some searching — but they are all defined by the spaces they occupy. The spatial structures relate directly to moral and emotional structures. And the sounds of the neighborhood are always amplified because volume (like space) is power. Neighboring Sounds is also tougher to come by. I’ll report back with this one as well.

5. Holy Motors, dir. Leos Carax (France)

Written about in full here (one of my favorite things I’ve written all year). When I wrote about Holy Motors, I was intoxicated by its power. It was after a first viewing. After subsequent viewings, I’m more inclined to consider its profound sadness. Indeed, Holy Motors is a very very happy funeral. It celebrates the magic potential of cinema while reading its eulogy. Holy Motors may very well be the best film of 2012, but I’ve chosen to use it as glue. It’s the safety pin that holds this list together. Holy Motors exists in two places — it exists in a place where cinema is entertainment and in a place where cinema is an intellectual exercise. I’m not convinced that it ever allows itself to exist in both at the same time — which, in my humble unlearned opinion, is what Great Movies are. This film has the most elegant and alluring wink I’ve ever seen, but it’s still just a wink, not a commitment. I find the deathbed sequence incredibly energizing. It’s absolutely heartbreaking, even after the structure of the film has been revealed and we are no longer required to invest any emotional interest in it. And then Oscar gets up to go to his next appointment and has the cheeky interaction with his co-star. It’s enchanting, but it’s avoiding the very illusion that it is eulogizing. Holy Motors is a Great Film about Great Films. But I’m convinced that there were 4 Great Movies released in 2012 that never wink at all — true testaments to the thrilling magic force of cinema. Holy Motors is in theaters. Trust me, it’s worth the travel.

4. The Master, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson (USA)

Written about in full here. Being a card-carrying PTA geek, this was my most anticipated movie of the year. I saw it 4 times on opening weekend and 8 times overall. Though it was advertised as a kind of Scientology exposé, cinephiles were treated to a great surprise — a messy, feral beast of a film, an uncompromising free-association exercise for its director. The complicated, explosive ending of There Will Be Blood was transformed into comfortable uncertainty. We know so little about the future of these characters.

Somewhere, I read that The Master is PTA’s 2001, suggesting a final and decisive break with the formalities of popular cinema. He may no longer be working to please anyone but himself. Boogie Nights is dripping with desire for public appreciation. But I would even suggest that Hard Eight, his first feature, carries evidence of what’s to come. It’s austere and mysterious, using loose ends as moral verification. I tend to believe that we can’t predict where Paul will go. But it’s damn impossible to deny his status as a creator of extraordinary imagery. The shot of Dodd’s yacht sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge is my favorite shot of the year. Intensity seems to follow him around and legendary performances fall out of his nose. Apparently, he’s adapting a couple Pynchon novels as we speak. To imagine this is to imagine the abyss. The Master will be available on BR/DVD soon.

3. The Kid with a Bike, dir. Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne (Belgium)

In my year full of discoveries, none has been more blessed than finding the work of the Dardenne brothers. Before The Kid with a Bike, there seemed to be two defining Dardenne films — La Promesse and Rosetta. We can surely add this title to those two, creating a trilogy of masterpieces on young identity.

The Kid with a Bike is probably their most straightforward fable, placing the restless spirit of a troubled boy against the grace of a surrogate mother. With the usual degree of gentleness and love, the Dardenne brothers create their most optimistic story yet. And by avoiding cynicism, they work in rare territory. Best of all, this is the closest the brothers have come to replicating Aesop. Something in the sprit of these men allows them to be so sympathetic to youthful adventure and the emotional complexity of adolescence. La Promesse and Rosetta are both stories about growing up, but The Kid with a Bike feels magical and fantastic in a way that those two are not. The Dardenne brothers are renowned for their realism and verisimilitude. They bring the same kinetic camera to this film, but also use music and arrange a climactic ending. In doing so, they create an atmosphere that is friendlier to allegory and fable. The last 15 minutes of The Kid with a Bike feels like any of the great endings in cinema history. Like Taste of Cherry, it’s an inexplicable moment of resurrection — a redemptive miracle. Samantha’s grace is manifested in Cyril’s body and soul. He’s saved. The Kid with a Bike is available on Netflix Instant.

2. Bernie, dir. Richard Linklater (USA)

Written about in full here. Last week, I revisited Bernie because it appeared on Netflix Instant. The first time I saw it, I was pleasantly surprised, but not overwhelmed. On second viewing, I realized that this is no Honorable Mention movie. It will probably appear on a few lists as a filler entry — an enjoyable picture but mostly forgettable. No. Bernie has a lot going on under the hood. It’s only masquerading as a charming black comedy.

First of all, Jack Black gives the best performance of the year. This year has featured an onslaught of charismatic performances from Daniel Day-Lewis, Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Denis Lavant, and (in Cosmopolis) Robert Pattinson. But none of them enact the heartbreaking sincerity that Black does. He could win my Best Actor vote on the murder and confession scenes alone. His bubbly, electric personality is dismantled in the second half of the film. Instead of merely sliding into regret, Black chooses to show the war between Bernie’s amiability and the instinctual wrath of man.

And it’s fitting that Black should deliver such a convincing performance, because I believe that Bernie has big observations to make about the nature of performance. I am already working on a piece comparing Bernie and The Imposter. They both make some very interesting points about truth and façade. Bernie‘s greatest trait is the mock interviews. The townspeople form a Greek chorus and lend the film a geographical flavor that I haven’t seen on the screen in a long time. But they’re terrifying. They exhibit a believable ignorance, always contradicting their own moral clarity.

Bernie is as much about the grand performance art of life as Holy Motors is. Bernie is on a stage the first time we meet him and he continues to be depicted as a great performer. He frequently changes his personality to suit the circumstance — and don’t we all? The townspeople are our surrogate. They show us how gullible we all are and how easy it is to lap up a great performance and accept it as truth. The family in The Imposter and the townspeople in Bernie are the same thing — they bear witness to the great battleground of lies and truth. These townspeople are cinema’s greatest audience, so impressed by an enchanting performance that the fiction becomes their reality. Or was it even a fiction in the first place? Bernie asks the best questions of the year. What more can we want from cinema? I’ll take questions over answers.

1. Moonrise Kingdom, dir. Wes Anderson (USA)

Written about in full here. Another movie involving the redemption of children and a great understanding of youth is Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom. It has a great deal in common with The Kid with a Bike and I essentially consider these two films as elements of the same expressive impulse. Of the three perfect films made this year, two of them are fables for and about children.

Anderson was wise to set this film on a New England island. It is his perfect setting. Like the boat in The Life Aquatic, it allows for the explosive collision of fantasy and reality that Anderson’s stories require. Stylistically, he is outrageous — but he aspires to great emotional truth. I tend to think that his films only read emotionally when the style is supported by a self-contained habitat — the house in The Royal Tenenbaums, the aforementioned boat, the train in Darjeeling, and so on. None of his movies have been as consistently perfect as this one.

The second time I saw Moonrise Kingdom, I had a religious experience realizing that Anderson wanted me to have a religious experience. Aside from the obvious evocation of Noah, Suzy and Sam conjure thoughts of the creation — a new Adam and Eve with “Moonrise Kingdom” as their Eden. In the end, they are miraculously saved by a father figure and both are, in a sense, redeemed. As Britten’s cuckoo chorus plays over the final few minutes, we are forced to realize that Anderson is capable of magnificent spiritual insight. He is the closest we have to an American Dardenne — sensitive to the emotions of youth, holding the key to an illuminating spiritual universe. I pray that he follows the path he’s on. Moonrise Kingdom is available on BR & DVD.

Edit: After a belated rewatch, Moonrise Kingdom has been moved from #2 to #1 — a perfect film.

Chinatown: Eyes on the Future

Chinatown is often evaluated as a revival of the Noir Sensibility, released at a time when Hollywood was keen to revisit old forms and imbue them with a more overt surface darkness – something that’s always been done and will continue to be done, (look no further than recent superhero releases). But Mr. Towne and Mr. Polanski do something very radical in Chinatown – they make a Noir in broad daylight. Very little of the action in Robert Towne’s Almost Perfect script takes place after sundown. But when the sun does sink, people sneak, people screw, and people die. Of course, that nighttime death was Polanski’s idea – he knew what kind of film he was dealing with. More than anything else, Chinatown is a masterful exercise in perception and trust. It uses our relationship with film and our tendency to believe everything that we see as a cruel weapon. Has a more subjective film ever been made? We latch onto Jake Gittes like a leech, experiencing every stupid decision he makes through his eyes. Indeed, Polanski and Towne have a thing for eyes and what they can do. Even more, they’re ready to expose what they can’t.

In keeping with Noir tradition, rooted in Sir Raymond Chandler, we aren’t allowed to experience anything our hero doesn’t. Of the 477 shots used in Chinatown, only 19 don’t involve Jake as a visible subject or come from his point of view. Still, he’s present for all 19. In addition, 153 of the shots are unarguably positioned to reference Jake’s subjective visual point of view. Except for those 19 shots, the only reason we don’t see Jake is because we are Jake. The runner up for the Character With Most POV Shots Award goes to Evelyn Mulwray, unsurprisingly, with a paltry 33, most coming in basic conversation with Jake.

But Polanski is too crafty to consider standard POV shots enough to render a subjective perspective. In at least 105 shots, he employs a simple visual tactic that gives the spectator access to both Jake’s subjective experience and a judgmental distance – he just follows Jake around. There aren’t many other movies where we spend almost a third of it watching the back of our hero’s head when they’re not in conversation. Polanski invites us to consume this new Los Angeles with Jake, but not always through his eyes. He does this to deliberately challenge us – to make us ask whether or not we want to follow this idiot. Jake Gittes was not born with the wit and charm of a Sam Spade or a Phillip Marlowe. He’s clumsy, vain, stupid, and “unlikable,” but Polanski gets us to stay with him by allowing us to simultaneously judge him and be caught up in his obsession. On many occasions, Polanski makes this explicit – beginning a shot in strict POV and later swinging out to reveal the subject.

This visual strategy asks the question Do You Trust What You See? Are we supposed to be allies with Jake or do we judge him? More than any other, this is the primary dilemma of Chinatown. What you see may not necessarily be true. The script even makes this immediately clear – Ida Sessions impersonates Evelyn Mulwray. We don’t know it was an impersonation until we see Evelyn for the first time. Polanski also challenges the way we see things by filtering them through another source, may it be binoculars, a mirror, or a lens.

Eyes, mistrusted as they are in Chinatown, are loaded with foreboding throughout the whole picture. Evelyn’s flawed iris. Noah’s busted glasses. Every car mirror is angled to reflect the driver’s eyes. And, of course, the final murder. The film begins with Curly looking at photographs that prove his wife is cheating on him. Today, this carries more resonance – is a photograph really proof anymore? – but we begin the film from someone else’s point of view and we end the film from someone else’s point of view.

During that iconic last scene, we are mostly detached from Jake’s point of view. We see the murder of Evelyn through his eyes – standing at an eerily long range, hearing the blare of that car horn – but that’s almost it. The shot where she is killed begins as a POV shot, but soon everyone walks into frame. Polanski wants us to wait behind and judge, to see what Jake and Noah and Evelyn have been reduced to. From that point, we assume the magnificent POV of Lou’s partner, who is handcuffed to Jake. It may seem strange, but there is no better character to inhabit for the last shot and those bitter last words. We finish the film literally chained to Jake in his repeated, seemingly infinite grief before something magical happens.

Chinatown’s camera work never crosses into expressionism. Establishing shots are at eye height. Motion is almost always executed with a handheld/barely-rigged setup. But in this final moment, the camera lifts into the sky, and we watch as police cars blow by Jake and his associates. Finally, Polanski resists forcing any perspective on us and we are free to judge. I will always find this to be one of the most spectacular visual decisions in the history of the medium specifically because, after a grueling exercise in morality, incest, Americana, and politics, Polanski seems to shrug and say, “Forget it, Folks. It’s a fucking movie.” In the end, he gives us God’s perspective.

Holy Motors [Carax, 2012]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. – But what if there’s no more beholder?

You can hear Mssr. Carax cackling through all of Holy Motors. It’s a movie made from the darkest, most hateful regions of the body, its vitriol constantly spilling out of the screen. Carax loudly and flamboyantly announces the death of Everything. Holy Motors is angry, feral, spiteful, and ridiculous. It spits in your face, steals your handkerchief and tells you to wipe it off with your sleeve. It’s a film of boiling attitude, snarling and not afraid to bite.

But isn’t hate just an anxious desire for love? As I look back, the vitriol of Holy Motors seems to turn itself inside out. There’s a lot of death happening in Holy Motors, but only the death of the Way Things Have Been. Carax isn’t inventing a new type of cinema, but he is trying to kill off an old one. After it condemns the history of film, it requires you to imagine the new future. Holy Motors begins with the most elaborate and darkly exhilarating joke in recent memory. A packed audience sits in front of a movie that we hear but do not see – they’re dead. But that’s not the joke. Carax wants us to hope that his movie will resurrect this fake audience. Of course it doesn’t. But it does require us to be alive. This opening gesture is the core of Holy Motors. With maniacal enthusiasm and profound spite, Carax cleans out the tradition of commercial moviemaking, clearing space for a cinema that celebrates and rewards those of us who are alive.

The film considers a day in the life of Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) as he makes his way around Paris in a limousine, fulfilling various engagements referred to as “appointments.” Oscar is constantly changing shape, but not through magic. Each time he emerges from the limo he is a different character, built from the costume and prosthetics warehouse that appears inside the car – an elegant homage to acting as well as a sturdy structural mechanism. Oscar has “appointments” as a father, a beggar woman, a motion-capture actor, an accordionist, etc. etc. It is said that Carax devised the episodic structure to suit the numerous ideas he’s had during his last dozen filmless years. Be sure, Holy Motors benefits from this. Carax’s work has had a tendency to slouch under ponderous, Romantic pressure. The format of Holy Motors allows his zany episodes to assault the audience at full density.

Some “appointments” make the light bouncing off the screen feel like lightning. In the most crowdpleasing segment, Oscar morphs into “Monsieur Merde,” a lurching, feral gnomish creature that climbs out of the sewers, bites off some fingers, and abducts Eva Mendes. All the while, a pretentious photographer blissfully documents the scene on old-fashioned film, shouting “SO WEIRD!!!” The episode succinctly demonstrates the growing cliché of High/Low juxtaposition and addresses our cultural obsession with beauty and ugliness with a cinematic wallop. One of the film’s most electric images is of Merde, naked and sporting a raging hard-on, lying down to sleep on Mendes’ lap as she sings “All the Pretty Little Horses” to him. Ugliness destroys and corrupts beauty, but ugliness is also just an invention of Oscar’s perpetual theater.

It’s fruitless to name every effective episode, since virtually all of them work on some level and most of them are genius miniatures. As I began to understand the structure of the film when watching, it first seemed like a cop-out. Breaking down the movie into short bursts of zaniness is one way to avoid making solid observations about anything. And it’s what makes the film palatable to lazy or ignorant filmgoers. All of this seemed like a concession to commercial dictum.

I was so fucking wrong. The episodic structure does allow the film to be more accessible, but Carax is so frightened of clarity and cliché that he blissfully rejects the need to unite the segments with anything but character and tone. In fact, he’s ballsy enough to give away the entire point of the film about halfway in, revealing that Oscar is a kind of actor working in a series of non-filmed films. Carax renders every bit of plot action meaningless as a tool for manipulating our narrative expectations. But that isn’t a part of the Newness that Holy Motors is celebrating, it’s a part of the Oldness that it’s killing. Carax obliterates any narrative stakes that he might have constructed in the interest of demonstrating their worthlessness. The best films teach us how to experience them. Here, Carax shows us a cinema that can free itself from traditional procedures and remain engaging as an experience.

After the stakes are eliminated, we are given three mercilessly devastating episodes. We know that there is no narrative purpose in them, but they still work emotionally. In fact, Carax demonstrates his hitherto unseen skill with designing bold emotional scenarios and executing them with concision. First, Oscar plays a father who picks his daughter up from a party. From there, we witness a delicate tug-of-war between the lying, insecure daughter and her loving but insensitive father. Later, Oscar changes into an old man who lies down to die and talks with his niece. It’s the best episode in the film, deeply sad and (ultimately) brilliantly comic. Death wafts over the entire movie – here, Carax is allowed to address it directly. At the end of the scene, one of the most mystical, liberating moments in [hyperbole alert] cinema history occurs. Oscar, apparently dead with his grieving niece and dog next to him, rises from the bed and quietly tiptoes out of the room. He asks his “niece” what her name is and tells her that he has another appointment. She says the same thing back to him. Again, by this time we understand the structure of the film and we know that Oscar is acting through life, fulfilling different roles and characters as they’re demanded. He has “died” a couple times already, including one very memorable gangster sequence. But that doesn’t stop a moment like this from succeeding.

If “pure cinema,” whatever it means, has ever existed, it’s in this moment. It addresses the emotional gravity and potential of the movies while elegantly addressing the fact that they’re make-believe. This is the resurrection that we’ve been waiting for. It’s Carax’s thematic answer to the dead audience. According to his argument, the audience could all be like Oscar, acting in a perpetual production. But the deathbed scene proves that there’s no such thing as death in the movies. There’s no such thing as coincidence, either. It’s all written and produced and edited and projected and consumed as art or entertainment or whatever. Cinema is dead but it’s also alive and been dead and resurrected and dying and doing jumping jacks.

The third episode of heartbreak involves Kylie Minogue. Admittedly, she sings a limping song, but it’s executed in such a thrilling, seamless way that I can’t care much. This scene was where I first acknowledged the Ghost of the Nouvelle Vague. Minogue sports a short, blonde wig and wistfully walks around an abandoned building with Oscar. Her character’s name is Jean – like Jean Seberg. The set looks like Last Year at Marienbad if Atilla the Hun designed it. Pieces of mannequin are stacked and piled on the floor, the ancient ruins of ancient style. The revolutions of Resnais and Godard and Varda are dusty, old, and strewn about the floor. Carax destroys and celebrates the Nouvelle Vague – just as they did to their ancestors. Like Oscar rising from his deathbed, Jean sheds her coat and wig before jumping to her death. She becomes a new character and we can expect that she rises and walks away from her suicide moments after we leave. The cinema is an immortal, impermanent universe – stylistically and otherwise.

Holy Motors ends like a prayer and the title of the film is explained. There is holiness in the way things move. A spirit in the machinery. A soul in the mechanical. Thing is, motors are made to repeat the same process over and over and over again. In a truly grand comedy, the final joke is that things will always stay the same. Dying and Living and Working and Eating and Loving and Begging and Watching and Dying Again and Cetera. Carax knows that revolutions (including his own) can only be so big. Holy Motors is a triumphant punch in the nuts. But nothing tells us we’re alive better than this kind of pain.

93.05

The Best of MAD MEN Season 5: Shot & Costume

Continuing my breakdown of Mad Men‘s fifth season by examining the “Best Shot” and “Best Costume.” Go here to read about my pick for “Best Episode” and “Best Performance.”

Best Shot: The Long Dark Walk, “The Phantom”

“The Phantom” might be the weakest episode of Season 5. We all carry expectations into episodes and we’ve been conditioned to bring impossibly high standards to Mad Men finales. In the last two seasons, Weiner&co. have given us major surprises to tide us over — Season 3 ended with the covert construction of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and Season 4 ended with the unexpected proposal. The writers of this show are not strangers to literary structure. They understand the importance of a climax and a denouement. Before Season 3 finished, we witnessed the incorporation of Kennedy’s assassination and Season 4 essentially climaxed with Don’s letter to the NY Times and Lucky Strike’s consolidation. We see the same treatment in Season 5. The story reached a fair apex with SCDP nabbing Jaguar and Lane killing himself in the aftermath. So how does one approach an episode like “The Phantom”? For most characters, it’s a coda. Peggy is pretty happy over at CGC, Joan is secure in her partnership, and Lane is dead. “The Phantom” wraps up Pete’s narrative when Trudy suggests that he get an apartment in the city. Really, the story belongs to Don and Megan.

In a sea of contenders for this category, Don’s walk away from Ms. Calvé wins by a mile.

Plenty of harsh words have been hurled at Megan during Season 5. Their partnership seemed to bend most of the viewership out of shape by the end of Season 4, probably because of the masterful fake-out that was Faye Miller. Megan’s beauty and grace suggest that she is precisely the kind of woman Don Draper would marry. However, Season 5 works hard to show us that she is a new type of woman — one that is able to follow her “dreams,” one that is willing to stand up to Don, one that won’t eat orange sherbet. Megan’s ability to be both perfect for Don and difficult for Don is exactly what makes “The Phantom” (and Season 5) functional. If you’re going to hate Megan Draper, hate her because she is constructed as a mate for Don, not because she’s “annoying.” One hope for Season 6 is that Megan becomes more of an individual and less predicated on the needs of Don’s outline.

Anyway, this shot manages to encapsulate Don and Megan’s entire season into one beautiful image. Don walks out into a long dark soundstage after getting Megan her first legitimate acting job. The previous scene shows us Don watching her test reel, falling in love with her all over again and persuading us to believe that he will be with her forever. Don is in love with a girl on a screen. In that scene, he faces her, smiling. In this scene, he walks away, face blank. He doesn’t look back.

The symbolism of this shot is overt, but its execution is haunting. We track along with Don, reminded that we are supposed to be seeing this world through his eyes. Instead of giving us a fixed point where we can watch this walk unfold, we stay with Don and experience the endless abyss with him. The shot goes on and on and on as he walks through the long darkness. We can’t really see his face and it isn’t too important. What’s happening on the stage isn’t very important, either. What is important is the distance. Not only is Matt Weiner showing us how far apart these two characters are becoming, he’s engaging us in the widening process. By rendering the action of both characters neutral, we are left to experience the increasing gap between them.

We also hear the beginning of Nancy Sinatra’s “You Only Live Twice” as Don begins walking away. Weiner said that he’s been waiting to use this song for a long time because it so perfectly describes this world and these characters. In a story that clutches so tightly to human nature, it’s hard to disagree. The song resonates particularly well within the Draper marriage. They’ve spent the entire season reconciling the worlds of Work and Home — they are trying to make them into two different lives.

“The Phantom” lacks subtlety, which is its greatest flaw in comparison to an uncompromising season. The refusal to acknowledge Lane’s death is a remarkably truthful gesture on the page, but doesn’t communicate well on the screen. Adam’s suggestion that “Something’s rotten, but it isn’t your tooth,” is worth a thousand eye-rolls. Pete’s confession to a wiped-out Beth reads as a lazy writers-room concession. In a way, this shot is just as obvious — ripping your attention away from both characters and encouraging a clear conclusion. But it’s an example of what any good art will do well — communicate an emotion or ideology through creative gesture. We see Don saunter out into space, leaving his wife behind. She’s engulfed in the vibrant colors of advertising, of creativity, of Don’s world, but he moves on. Unsurprisingly, that black void quickly cuts to a deep, smoky bar where a woman from a new age asks if Don is alone. It’s a line that, like the rest of the episode, might be too overt. But Mad Men is all about getting what you wish for and wondering what it means. The Draper household is in great shape by the end of Season 5 — right?

Best Costume: Sally Draper, “At the Codfish Ball”

Janie Bryant’s costume work will surely be recognized as a turning point in expectations for period fidelity in media.Her designs have inspired a very obvious shift in contemporary fashion, men now favoring slim suits and thin ties and tight hair, women embracing the loud, expressionistic colors of the 1960’s.

Of all the magnificent costumes this season, Sally Draper’s new dress takes the cake. Janie Bryant’s marriage of clothing and content has no match in contemporary television. Tasked with the challenge of Sally Draper’s burgeoning adolescence, she delivered a dynamite outfit.

“At the Codfish Ball” is an episode that we basically experience through Sally’s perspective. Her interaction with Roger feels as pleasant as it does because we think that he’s talking to us, giving us the tour of this world. Whether you like fish or not, you cringe when she receives her meal. And when the waiter finally comes to ask if she’s done with her Shirley Temple, you nod along with her. Her false adulthood is a universal experience — everyone knows what that feels like. Ultimately, she rejects it, saying that the city is “dirty.” Sally’s embodiment of the confusing netherworld between childhood and adulthood is remarkable. She’s postured as a fractured soul, intelligent but damaged by the immaturity of her parents. The enjoyment we’ve previously received from her character comes from seeing her try to navigate the adult world with a childish conscience. But, in Season 5, her arc is one that places her among the adults.

When the series is finished, I wonder if we won’t look at Sally and see the greatest change of all. Of course, we are watching Kiernan Shipka pass into adolescence as well. Sally’s ultimate destination is too hard to tell. Imagining her as a flower child or a protester seems too simple for Mad Men‘s agenda. Where do you think Sally ends up?

The Best of MAD MEN Season 5: Episode & Performance

The fact that Mad Men is not watched and loved by virtually every person on Earth fills me with deep emotional and philosophical turbulence. The show is the greatest weapon for those who are keen to suggest that television is usurping cinema as the Great Populist Art. It’s so good that Homeland’s Emmy sweep this year was basically a chance for the Academy to tell Matt Weiner that it’s polite to share. And how thrilling is it, as a viewer, to know that we live in a time when something like Mad Men is possible? At the end of the line, we’ll have a 91-hour piece of art. If it is true that Mad Men episodes are better than most contemporary cinema, what kind of treasure chest do we have in front of us?

Season Five was recently released on DVD and I did the customary rewatch and explored the extra features and commentary tracks. Not that his ego needs any more prodding, but Weiner does give some of the most illuminating commentary I’ve ever heard. The “recap” culture surrounding Mad Men and so many other current television shows can make it difficult to maintain perspective on a program’s long-term existence. A weekly chapter will end and the world feasts on the details of that episode, often forgetting that we’re dealing with a unique type of narrative – one that can stretch across an entire decade or an entire lifetime with a level of nuance that’s simply impossible in other forms. Weekly recapitulation, as a form, is a strong tool that ultimately fails when trying to contextualize an entire season. So, in the interest of evaluating Mad Men’s most recent season, I want to look at some highlights and see how this installment fits in the full history of the show.

In lieu of a long rambling post, I’m cutting it up into specific categories. Today, I’m doing “Best Episode” and “Best Performance.” Later this week, we’ll have highlights for Scene, Shot, Montage, Costume, Set, Sterling-ism, and more! Let me know your picks in the comments. And don’t forget to argue with mine.

BEST EPISODE: “Signal 30”

Some will suggest that the best episode of Season 5 is a more flamboyant one – “The Other Woman,” which served as the climax of the season or “Far Away Places,” which boasts Mad Men’s most daring structural experiment. But it is “Signal 30,” an episode of brave psychological acrobatics, that best displays what Mad Men is capable of accomplishing.

The story of “Signal 30” belongs to Pete Campbell. Pete’s emotional collapse during Season 5 is possibly even more affecting than Lane’s suicide. He’s a unique creature in this world, but one that we all know and understand. A man who has worked so hard for stability and wealth and power that he doesn’t know what to make of it when he gets there. Like all of us, Pete is a child stepping into situations understood to be “adult.” He and Peggy are our most accommodating guides through the 1960’s, seated somewhere in the nebulous land between youth and old age. They’re neither the agents of change nor the agents of stasis. If you watch closely, you’ll see Pete’s hairline recede noticeably from “A Little Kiss” to “The Phantom.”

“Signal 30” begins with Pete laughing at the maudlin, overwrought driver’s-ed horror film. Removed from the anxiety, he’s able to find humor in it. Then we’re back at his one-story ranch house in the country and the faucet goes drip drip drip. He “fixes” it by cranking the pressure up so high that the leak stops but the faucet waits to explode. Season 5 is partially about how these characters greet permanent problems with temporary solutions – infidelity, LSD, food, and so on. Of course, some folks, like Lane and Joan, do find a way to address major issues and are dramatically changed because of it.

The episode continues, making us privy to Ken’s burgeoning career as a fiction writer. We are allowed into Pete’s home with the Drapers and the Cosgroves and, underneath the easy, rustic posture of Pete’s presentation, we recognize a storm. Mad Men has always been a show about reconciling the worlds of Work and Home. This conflict is made obvious in the Draper household, but Pete represents the core of this war in Season 5. His inability to find peace between the two manifests itself in his physical difficulty with the commute. Pete’s story for the season ultimately resolves when Trudy relinquishes and suggests that he get an apartment in the city. This is more than just a dramatic opportunity for future plot development; it’s a symbol of his separation. Trudy, unknowingly, is ending their marriage. Pete spent all of Season 5 in between Work and Home, finding Beth in the same half-world, but Work won in the end.

Later in the episode, Don, Roger, and Pete take a Jaguar representative to a whorehouse. Pete’s experience is initiated by a series of fantasies where he finally submits to being called a king. In “Commissions & Fees,” Don says, “What is happiness? It’s a moment before you need more happiness.” This relentless quest for power and control over life and, as a result, others is just as present in Pete’s struggle between Work and Home. “Signal 30”’s climax is, of course, the cathartic bare-knuckle contest between Pete and Lane – new and old, American and British. However, Mad Men doesn’t always find fulfillment by satisfying the audience and uses Pete’s humiliation to motivate a dynamite scene between him and Don in the elevator. Earlier, Pete assumed that Don was judging him for his sexual indulgence and tells him, “I have everything.”

As they stand in the elevator, Pete’s face swollen with shame, he says two things that define his character for the season. First, he remarks that “this is an office, we’re supposed to be friends.” The episode is the first in a series to take that idea to task – just how wide is that gulf between Work and Home? But then Pete gets desperate and says, “I have nothing,” mirroring his empty confidence from earlier.

“Signal 30” has one of the great endings of the Season and of the Series, really. Ken, who has been told not to write fiction, initiates a new pen name by writing a story called “The Man with the Miniature Orchestra,” referring to Pete’s enormous stereo. We see Pete back in driver’s-ed, this time watching his desires walk by without noticing. The drip drip drip returns, this time only in his imagination. Something much bigger needs to be fixed.

“Signal 30” is a sort of climax in Pete’s development throughout the entire series. We can easily recall the spunky turd from the pilot and the blackmailing tool from Season 3. But it’s Pete’s inability to change himself that defines him. Of course, he might not even believe that he needs to change, but rather expects the world around him to change. This episode is a rare example of Mad Men committing to major, irreversible character evolution so early in a season. “The Other Woman” can be seen as doing the same thing for Joan, but “Signal 30” carries a more urgent structure, less fascinated with itself and more prone to self-discovery.

BEST PERFORMANCE: Christina Hendricks in “The Other Woman”

After “The Other Woman” aired, there were a few commentators who contended that Joan “wouldn’t really do that.” I still find that sentiment to be embarrassing for those who made it. “The Other Woman” isn’t perfect structurally, but in terms of carefully being led through a series of difficult character decisions and arriving at a satisfying conclusion, it’s a masterpiece. And it wouldn’t be half of what it is without Christina Hendricks. She gives the smartest performance of the year.

Hendricks understood what was going on. She knew that this proposition was a major storytelling risk. Instead of heightening the emotion, she chokes it back and lives with it. Joan’s decision is cold and cynical. She uses the tool that probably got her a job in the first place to secure her own future and the health of her son. The writers designed a scenario where a moment can pay the price for eternity – it’s almost hard to imagine Joan rejecting the offer. The only thing Joan needs to do is survive that singular experience and she is given everything she needs.

Hendricks plays the critical moment – that graceful intercutting between the Jaguar pitch and her exploitation – with heartbreaking gravity.

Again, imagine how easily these moments could be overplayed. The moment where Hendricks grabs his hand and opens her own dress is one of crushing resignation. My sadness doesn’t come from Joan’s choice to sell herself, it comes from the knowledge that this is her only way to get where she wants to go. This is where Mad Men excels as social history/social criticism. It allows us to invest ourselves in these personalities and then subjects them to period realities. Sometimes the outcome is funny, curious, or in this case, awful.

“The Other Woman” is the climax of the season as well as the climax for Joan’s character in the series thus far. Hendricks plays out an event with permanent consequences as quietly as possible. It’s an unforgettable episode and one that will continue to reinforce Joan’s motivations and philosophy for the rest of the series.

The Master [Anderson, 2012]

The last time we visited Paul Thomas Anderson was in 1927 — the bowling alley of a hollow, California castle. Daniel Plainview was curled and slouched on the floor, having just bludgeoned Greedy Faith straight to heaven. “I’m finished.” Plainview catches his breath and Brahms blows in. Anderson may be the only big-game filmmaker cocky enough to invoke the last words of Christ after a pastor is clubbed to death. And, most troubling of all, Plainview doesn’t even know who he’s quoting.

It’s been five years since There Will Be Blood, but not much has changed. We move ahead a dozen years or so and then a dozen more and arrive in the same America where Daniel Plainview pumped gold from the earth and the same America where Eddie Adams will one day change his name to Dirk Diggler and the same America where frogs fall down. The Master cuts a line between the boundless ambition of There Will Be Blood and Anderson’s early work. It ushers us from one to the other. By the time he’s done with us, he might have left behind the most comprehensive cinematic history of America we’d ever imagine. Some may lament the loss of those tidy, personal stories in Sydney or Magnolia, but Anderson is increasing his scope and it’s only getting bigger, more expansive, and more relentless. At the end, we’re left with a floating wish. Freddy might call it a fart. Anderson’s always had trouble ending movies, but how does one end a picture like The Master? How does one end a love story of such terrific, dynamic proportions? It’s a brave cinema, a lets-both-jump-at-the-same-time cinema, a rabid cinema, a confident cinema, an imperfect cinema — and perfectly so.

Much will be written on what The Master is “about.” You can smell the dissertations in the theater. Roger Ebert, with an uncharacteristic lack of vigor, made no effort to wrestle with the beast and ultimately asked “But what does it intend to communicate?” Some weirdo thinks it’s about poison. Many folks in the theater were interpreting the entire movie through the lens of Scientology, which is the worst of all possible ideas. And I’ve read a convincing argument that the film is a pop-Freudian warzone. Indeed, the basic dramatic structure can be filtered through bread and look a lot like ID v. EGO FIFTEEN ROUNDS RUMBLE IN THE HOMOEROTIC TUNDRA. It’s all there. But none of these ideas is as satisfying as need. Anderson has said that he wanted to tell a love story between these two guys, and did he ever. The Master will immediately encourage comparison with There Will Be Blood, but its true companion is Punch-Drunk Love, that strange and enthusiastic monster from 2001. Both take loneliness as the greatest villain of all. Barry only pursues his enemy when his companionship is threatened. Here, Freddy Quell is Barry’s past life — a twitchy time-bomb trying to satisfy the most basic human desires.

World War II is ending when we first meet Freddie. In a prologue that feels very similar to the one in There Will Be Blood, we watch him struggle for satisfaction and satiation in a variety of crude gestures. He fights and climbs trees and eats and drinks and jerks off and fucks — he’s an animal. He first finds work in a department store and later on a farm. In an early, touching moment, Freddie tells a man that he looks like his father before accidentally incapacitating him with his Voodoo Lysol potion. Those familiar with Anderson’s oeuvre will not be surprised at the pathos invested in such a small moment — it deals with a father. On the run, Freddy stows away on a glowing yacht, photographed with mystical curiosity in a doozy of a long shot. The boat sets out into the Pacific and gives us the film’s greatest image — a group of pilgrims floating under the Golden Gate Bridge, an enormous American flag beating back in the dusk.

Aboard the vessel, Freddie meets Master Lancaster Dodd, leader of a pseudo-scientific group called The Cause, and a bond is born. Why is Dodd so friendly towards Freddie? It’s the most puzzling question of the film. In their final encounter, Dodd muses that “in the next life, we will be sworn enemies. And I will show you no mercy.” By giving us an angular, rigid Freddie and a round, rotund Dodd, we are allowed to ruminate on the basic needs that unite them. Opposites attract and all that nonsense but Dodd is undoubtedly drawn to Freddie’s simplicity, his freedom. Freddie becomes a sophisticated pet and soldier, his loyalty rooted in his desire for companionship. As Dodd subjects Freddie to “informal processing” as his guinea pig, Freddie doesn’t want to quit. Most curiously, he says that he “doesn’t like being told what to do.” Of course he does. Dodd, fighting fundamental animalism, sees an opportunity to help Freddie, but, most of all, sees himself in him.

It is hardly necessary to celebrate the pieces that form The Master‘s puzzle. It speaks for itself. Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman exhibit formidable control, commitment, and work-ethic. Watching Phoenix in the processing scene is like watching a witch doctor brew every ache and pain you’ve ever known into a cup of tea and drinking it. Hoffman channels Anderson’s ghosts — Orson Welles and John Huston, above all. It’s a pair of performances with precedent, but led by a director who is somehow able to sell exuberant self-indulgence so well that the characters turn into American giants of inimitable stature. Amy Adams lurks in the corner of every scene. She’s often out of focus, tucked away in some tight crevasse, but always present and intense — hovering over the men. Anderson’s ability with actors is on par with any other, perhaps above — doing most of his job with writing, exhibiting a clear joy for dramatic scenario. Malaimare’s 70mm photography is electric spectacle. One small scene at the end, as Freddie walks along an English road below a ceiling of crooked connecting trees, mirrors the bright blue Rorschach of the ocean. Opting out of the snaking widescreen of There Will Be Blood, The Master uses a tighter ratio to fill the screen with the mountaintops and troughs of the human face, internalizing the epic. Jonny Greenwood leaves behind the moaning, apocalyptic strings of There Will Be Blood in favor of humming, twitchy winds with no desire for resolution. It’s haunting and calm and intimate — and at the end, it shows us how to feel. Anderson’s placement of music, especially the period songs late in the film, is his most assured and deliberate stroke of organization to date. His taste for camera motion has progressed from the unruly panache of Boogie Nights‘s opening to the delicate, dancing charm of the department store. And his taste for large-scale symmetry is as strong as ever. The return of the “processing” questions, the sand-woman, the clear blue wake all lead Freddie on his odyssey.

The Master will surprise many audiences with its compassion for religion. The surface of There Will Be Blood has convinced people that Anderson is hostile towards religion, but ever since the frogs, it’s been clear that he has a desire for faith and understands its place in society. Though we aren’t given a wealth of details on The Cause, Anderson takes it seriously. It confronts the fear that we are animals, the fear that this life is our only chance, the fear of pain, the fear of fleeting friendship — fears that everyone understands. Just like Freddie and Dodd need each other, we all need faith to keep the fear out. Of course, many specific elements of The Cause’s philosophy are made to seem ridiculous, but that doesn’t encourage Anderson to treat them as such.

There’s no question who “The Master” is. But it’s neither Freddie nor Dodd. It’s our urge, our evolutionary impulse, our basic struggle to mediate between our mind and our body. Some have said that Peggy is the true master. She might be. Not because she tells Dodd what to do, but because she can use her body to get it. Freddie’s sexual release in the final scene could have so easily been a surge of rabid energy, but Freddie lays on the bottom, straight and solid and submissive. He parrots the processing questions to his lover, not trying to master her, but to give her the same compassion that Dodd once gave him. He remembers how good it felt to be called “the bravest man I’ve ever known.” He remembers how good it felt to let go. He asks her, “Is this your only life?” After a moment, she says, “I hope not.”

To Anderson, the man who gave us bowling pins and pudding and Aimee Mann and frogs, faith is a virtue. If we do have animal brains, they’re big enough to tell us how small we are.

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