by Jonathan M

The Girl Cut In Two (2007) – False Dichotomies

Morality takes as many forms as there are cultures to manifest it.  For some people, it is a question of commandments.  For others it is a question of ideals.  For other groups it is a question of economics, minutely calibrated cost-benefit analyses.  But for all of these systems and all of these cultures, morality always boils down to a series of dichotomies : Should I do X or should I do Y?  Simple binaries that make the world.  Works such as Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847) encourage us to see our relationships in similar terms.  Do we want a love filled with the peaks and valleys of passion,  or do we want a pleasingly mild existence, an emotional even keel?

Claude Chabrol’s 2007 film La Fille Coupee En Deux seems to attack this vision of human relations.  We expect to have to make a trade-off in our personal lives, but what happens if both of our options are bad ones?  Chabrol hints at an answer.  An answer which, like Chabrol’s great films of the late 60s and early 70s, depends upon a viciously cynical vision of the class system that continues to corrupt French life.  But is this vision perhaps too cynical for its own good?

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by Jonathan M

Blissfully Yours (2002) – Now Rather Than Later

The last time I wrote about the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, I suggested that his films constituted a challenge to the critic.  A reminder, if you will, that as cinematic expression evolves, so too must the tools of the critic.  Indeed, most of the critical reaction to the Thai-film-maker’s work has tended to emphasise either the biographical (Weerasethakul is gay and his parents are doctors, facts that have clearly inspired his film-making) or a form of woolly mysticism that attempts to alight upon his films with the same softness and the aloofness that Weerasethakul uses in examining different topics in his films.  In other words, Weerasehakul is not a forensic film-maker and so it is okay to speak of his films in non-forensic terms.  For my part, the jury is still out on this approach.  Especially when you consider that Weerasethakul’s earlier films seem to be quite accessible to standard critical readings.

Indeed, Blissfully Yours (Sud Sanaeha) could easily have been made by a European art house director.  It is, after all, a fairly straightforward exploration of the temptation to ignore one’s problems in order to take pleasure in the present.  While the film does share many of the images that Weerasethakul would deploy so forcefully in films like Syndromes and a Century and Tropical Malady, it is also a much darker film.  A film that seems strangely at odds with the warm-hearted mysticism of Weerasethakul’s later films and the critical reaction to them.

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by Jonathan M

Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947) – Ozu for Beginners

There have been some interesting rumblings recently over on the Guardian Film blog.

The Guardian’s film-related output tends to be dominated by the work of Peter Bradshaw.  Reportedly one of the few British film critics whose reviews still have the power to make a film.  However, despite Bradshaw’s prominence, I have never warned to him as a writer.  His reviews generally lack either theoretical or historical foundation, they are seldom funny and they are generally pedestrian enough to be predictable.  I also think that he gets it wrong a lot of the time.  Especially when it comes to films that cause a stir.  Anyway, beneath Bradshaw’s prominence, there are a number of other film writers whose work I do have a lot more time for.  Indeed, while I tend to ignore the Guardian’s reviews, I almost always read its film-related op-eds.  Which brings us to the inspiration for this particular piece.

Since the beginning of January, it has become de rigueur for Guardian film writers to reference the works of Yasujiro Ozu.  Indeed, back on the 9th of January we had a piece about Ozu’s work itself by Ian Buruma entitled “An Artist of the Unhurried World”.  Then, on the 15th of January David Thomson produced “Ozu vs Avatar”, an impassioned piece that framed Ozu’s work as a natural antithesis to mindless effects-driven films such as District 9 and Avatar.  Then, on the 16th of January, John Patterson gave us “John Woo, Ang Lee, Jet Li, enough of the Hollywood Kung fu movies”, a piece that ends with a plaintive :

“I’m all through with this genre, thanks. I’m heading back to Ozu and Mizoguchi”

There are two good reasons for Ozu being present in the minds of these film writers.  The first is that Ozu’s masterpiece Tokyo Story (1953) has been re-released at the cinema.  The second is that the first great film to emerge this year at British cinemas is Hirokazu Koreeda’s Still Walking (2008), an extended homage to and updating of the family drama genre that Ozu made his own.  While I broadly agree with the sentiments animating these pieces, I was struck by the extent to which they go out of their way to Other the works of Ozu.

For example, in his article, Buruma states :

“Ozu’s style would surely strike action-loving westerners as boring and slow”

and

“To young Japanese brought up on lurid comic books and animated science fiction, Ozu’s world looks as alien as it might to uninformed westerners”

and

“Surely, foreigners preferred to see more exotic creatures, rushing about with drawn swords, wearing colourful kimonos”

Meanwhile, Patterson and particularly Thomson’s pieces set up the idea that over here you have mindless action films and over there you have works such as those of Ozu.  My problem with these articles is that I do not think that this distinction exists.  There is only one meaningful spectrum along which works of art can be placed and that is one of quality.  Ozu’s films are not qualitatively different to District 9 or A Quantum of Solace, they are simply better made, better written, better thought out, better acted and better shot.  Ozu made great films, it is as simple as that.

The idea that there is some other kind of film is one that draws its strength chiefly from the dialectics of marketing.  Kevin Smith once said of Jersey Girl (2004) that it was “not for critics” and most of the people who have been defending Avatar from its high-minded detractors have taken the line that it is simply mindless fun.  But why should fun be mindless?  How can fun actually be mindless?  People in marketing are fond of the idea that we live inordinately hectic lives.  Lives lived at break-neck pace.  Lives spent wading through dense data-schoals that leave us exhausted at the end of the day.  If you buy into this vision of your life than a) I suggest you think about the people currently trying to survive in Haiti and b) maybe you’d like to spend just a little bit more on dinner?  Maybe you’d like some gourmet chocolate?  Don’t you deserve a 50” 3D TV?  You work hard, why shouldn’t you have it?  There is no such thing as mindless entertainment, but there are rubbish films that people get tricked into going to see.

So it is in this spirit that I have decided to visit one of Yasujiro Ozu’s more accessible and instantly lovable films – Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947) in order to demonstrate why it is that appreciating Ozu should come naturally to everyone, even those people who cannot help but spend money on Hollywood blockbusters.

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by Jonathan M

Fish Tank (2009) – The Ambiguities of Age

Art is a conceit and cinema doubly so.   For all the demands for greater realism and protestations that one is producing cinema verite, the director can never hope to capture reality itself on film.  If a director is holding up a mirror to the real world with the help of actors, camera crews and sound technicians then the distortions are so great that, in a sense, the director might as well be making a super hero film for all the truth that he has managed to capture on film.  The very artificiality of artistic endeavour means that it is forever on an ontologically slippery slope.  Indeed, consider the evolution of forms of story-telling such as the three act structure or the buildungsroman.  These evolved in order to communicate certain kinds of truths but all too often the demands of the form come to dominate to desire to communicate truth.  Real life seldom fits into a three act structure.  What started off as abstraction from reality quickly becomes obfuscation of it as the cinema begins to create its own fictional worlds.  Simplified parodies of the real world.  Childish facsimiles in which the good guys always win and the cute couple always wind up together.  These forms can then solidify into genres, traditions of stories that follow the same rules or which evolve with the rules in mind.  The original truths behind the rules and the forms long since ignored and abandoned.

Because of this tendency to confuse the cause with the effect, discerning audiences have come to value ambiguity in their stories.  Ambiguity that fills a space normally reserved for boldly fraudulent declarations of how the world works.  Ferocious defences of the natural order of purely literary universes.  This deliberate ambiguity is seen as a sign of intelligence as it is a reminder that there is a universe outside of the artistic, the traditional and the conceptual.  A universe more complex and more intriguing than could ever be captured by a single piece of art.

Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank is a film that has internalised this understanding of the nature of art.  Ostensibly a formulaic coming-of-age/loss-of-innocence story, its strength comes from a willingness to explore not only the ambiguities within the characters, but also within our perceptions of those characters.

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by Jonathan M

BG 23 – Redefining friendship: Facebook, MMORPGs and Dragon Age Origins

Futurismic have my twenty third (!) Blasphemous Geometries column entitled Redefining Friendship : Facebook, MMORPGs and Dragon Age : Origins.  It deals with the capacity for well written computer characters to effectively stand-in for human players in what were once considered group activities and in particular how console RPGs like Dragon Age : Origins seem to be trying to do to MMORPGs what a previous generation of video games did to real-world sports.

by Jonathan M

REVIEW – Love Exposure (2008)

Videovista have my review of Shion Sono’s Love Exposure.

I simply adored this film.  In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I don’t think that my review does it justice.  It very nearly made it onto my film of the year list as it did sneak out in cinemas in the UK earlier in the year despite being initially released in 2005 2008.  Love Exposure is, quite simply, potty.  Potty in the ideas it puts forward.  Potty in the way it is shot.  Potty in the way it is acted.  Potty in terms of its subject matter.

EDIT : As pointed out in the comments, this film was made in 2008 and not 2005.  The sad thing is that it’s entirely feasible that a film made in 2008 might only find its way to UK cinemas in 2009.

by Jonathan M

Films of the Year : 2009 Edition

2009 has been, by my estimation, an excellent year in film.  In the wake of the recession, many people are moaning about the collapse of mid-range budgets (leaving only Avatar and Paranormal Activity).  This may well prove to be true but I suspect that the UK will not feel the cinematic bite of the recession until this year as we tend to be months behind the pace when it comes to releasing smaller films.  This time slippage also means that some of my favourite films of 2009 were in fact made in 2008 or even 2007.

In no particular order…

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by Jonathan M

Films of the Year : Not Quite the 2009 Edition

I have decided to split my favourite films into two distinct groups.  The first group is a list of the films that I have particularly enjoyed this year but which were not made or released this year.  It is a longer list than the other and because it is more a reflection of what I have seen than anything else, it will have a touch less impact.  However, for those interested, here are some of my favourite films of the year.

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