(Before you read this, I have to state that I never mean to offend anyone with my personal rants, heavy sarcasm, or taste in movies. Liking a film or not liking a film is based on personal taste alone. There is no right and there is no wrong, which is why movie criticism is such bulls***.)
Tomorrow, a British drama film entitled Little Ashes (dir. Paul Morrison, 2009) is being released in the US, and it brings up an issue that would appear irrelevant to most audiences. The film concerns the life and work of a young Salvador Dali and his supposed relationship with poet Federico Garcia Lorca while living in Franco's Spain, and although the film concerns Spanish affairs and artists, it was financed and shot in the UK. This, I have no issue with.
The issue is that director Morrison chose to have all the actors, even the native Spaniards, speak accented English instead of, oh I don't know, Spanish? By taking away the language of Spain - the same language that Dali, Bunuel, and Lorca actually spoke - Morrison is also taking away what is inherently Spain's culture. He is displacing a piece of Spain's history that in no way belongs to Britain.
How wrong would it be if a film about the American Revolution were shot using French or German actors speaking in their English-accented native language? And how much of a problem would us Americans have with that sort of a film?
The recent Tom Cruise shitfest Valkyrie (dir. Bryan Singer, 2008) took the same liberty, only telling a German story instead of a Spanish one. However, Singer wholly American-ized it, adding explosions, tension, and a hilarious (not in a good way) Tom Cruise performance. It's laughable to me that films like this can get made. How can people, especially the Germans, be okay that Scientologist (a "religion" considered a cult in many parts of the world, including inside my head) Cruise is playing one of Germany's most honorable men, Claus von Stauffenberg? And without telling the story in German, not even with German-accented English? (In all fairness to Mr. Cruise, he did appear in the so-so The Last Samurai, a film for which he spent two years learning Japenese). Language is an important, nay essential, part of any culture, and taking that away can certainly send a message to some ignorant viewers that the story no longer belongs or is deserved by its native country.
Don't get me wrong, I'm okay with telling stories from other countries. But the key is: If it is to be done, it must be done well, or not at all. De Niro learned Italian for The Godfather: Part II, and even though the film is not centered on a historical figure, Coppola does give us a pretty accurate experience of the feeling and culture of Italy. Julian Schnabel's recent mind-blowing film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) was based on the memoir of a French fashion editor, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered from "locked-in syndrome." The film was originally slated to be in English and financed by Universal Studios with Johnny Depp in the lead role. Schnabel admirably contended that the English language could not do justice to the words that Bauby wrote and, despite extreme pressures to the contrary, made the film in French. He even more admirably learned French so that he could direct the film, which later provided him with an Academy Award nomination for Best Director - although it should have been a win as well.
The unfortunate feeling I have is that modern audiences are afraid of the subtitle, now a wholly realized fear as I am seeing signs at the ticket kiosk in theaters reading: Pan's Labyrinth/Y Tu Mama Tambien/The Orphanage/Insert Film Here is in Spanish with English subtitles. If you are dissatisfied, please see the manager for a full refund within the first fifteen minutes of the showing. This disturbing trend epitomizes the contradiction of rampant Americanism, and is certainly challenging, if not outrightly destroying the notion of US hegemony because of Americans' refusal to accept something that is not ours. We are telling stories that don't belong to us and not doing it well, or giving the culture or country the story belongs to adequate credit.
Franquist Spain, I'm sure, wasn't a great place to live for Dali, Bunuel, and Lorca, but is this country full of lazy moviegoers any better?
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Fame perceptions
I stumbled across this article online and found it really interesting. The article written about this experiment won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008, and is endlessly fascinating in its implications it suggests for our perceptions of fame, talent, and stardom. The original article was featured in the Washington Post, and this shortened version was taken from Ego Dialogues ( http://www.egodialogues.com/general/violinist-in-metro.php).
"A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.
A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.
A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.
In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.
Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.
Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?
One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:
If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?"
"A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.
A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.
A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.
In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.
Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.
Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?
One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:
If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?"
Monday, April 20, 2009
P2 Review
P2 (2007): A film by Franck Khalfoun
P2 is not quite as good as classic horror films like Night of the Living Dead or Suspiria, but it is far superior to many horror films as of late. Critics tore the film apart, many passing it off as just another schlocky and campy B-movie, worthy of nothing less than harsh words and box office failure. The film, however, displays a tremendous amount of promise in the first few scenes but begins to slowly and gradually lose that promise until around the 3/4 mark, when the audience is effectively exhausted and the film amounts to nothing more than just another horror film. Upcoming films should use P2 as a wobbly foundation upon which to rebuild the structure of modern horror.
Angela (Rachel Nichols) is stuck working late on Christmas Eve, her asshole boss making her redo reports over and over again in her large office inside a Manhattan skyscraper, her family nagging at her to get home as soon as possible so they can start dinner, and one of her co-workers sincerely apologizing for groping her at a recent Christmas party. She eventually gets out of her office and down to the parking garage to head to her family party, but...her car won't start. Sigh.
She begins to try and find more and more ways out of the parking garage - more likely than not her version of purgatory - and we slowly begin to sense that, failed attempt after failed attempt, something more sinister is at work here. Enter Thomas, the kindly parking garage attendant who helps Angela out and figures since she can't leave, why not have a quaint Christmas Eve dinner in the attendant's office? No, she says, she can't dissapoint her family. But maybe some other time. You see where this is going, I'm sure.
Thomas, of course, has been stalking Angela, and knows just about everything about her. He knocks her out, ties her up, and makes her eat that quaint dinner with him. Thomas, played with insane over-the-topness by Wes Bentley, has a Norman Bates-esque feel about him. He is seemingly gentle, kind, quite a good conversationalist, with boyish good looks and a naive innocence, but he's, well...just a little insane, is all.
And the cat-and-mouse game begins.
Although rather formulaic and predictable, the movie displays enormous potential for topical issues, in particular sexual harrasment. Unfortunately, P2 fails to say (or try to say) anything relevant about the glass ceiling, or sexual harassment, or anything about feminism in general. Such a shame that a technically-competent and, yes, even sometimes suspenseful film could waste its nearly two hours teasing us with social commentary but never quite reaching it. This film is not to be taken as 28 Weeks Later or the aforementioned Night of the Living Dead should be. P2 is a horror movie through and through, both on the surface and in the shallow subtexts, without socio-political commentary. The poorly-lit parking garage at night, a classic fear for women (and men for that matter), would have been a wonderful place to explore the troublesome state of women in the workplace.
The film is high on gore in individual scenes; the violence is well-contained into one horrifically gruesome death and a few shorter scenes of quick but bloody stabs, punches, etc. Thankfully, except for that gratuitous scene, the movie is quite low on sadism. Director Khalfoun manages to ramp up the creepy thanks to a few classic Christmas songs and keeps the claustrophobic feel throughout the film, lost in a maze of cars and identical-looking levels of the parking garage.
Also notable is P2's way of manipulating us to pity Thomas while simultaneously hoping for Angela's escape. Thomas outwardly admits he's lonely - he is a graveyard shift parking garage attendant, after all. We feel bad. He even says he would never want to hurt Angela, which seems to be true at first, but is quite untrue as we later learn. I, for one, genuinely believed Tom's promise, keeping in mind he never said anything about hurting those around her. This interesting pact is not to be seen later in the movie. Was it to make the film more of a horror film and the threat to Angela more real, or did he never really plan on keeping his promise in the first place? I'm not sure.
We understand Tom is lonely, but do people as seemingly kind and good-looking as him really have to go to this length to get a girl to have dinner with him?
Feels like it sometimes, doesn't it?
P2 is not quite as good as classic horror films like Night of the Living Dead or Suspiria, but it is far superior to many horror films as of late. Critics tore the film apart, many passing it off as just another schlocky and campy B-movie, worthy of nothing less than harsh words and box office failure. The film, however, displays a tremendous amount of promise in the first few scenes but begins to slowly and gradually lose that promise until around the 3/4 mark, when the audience is effectively exhausted and the film amounts to nothing more than just another horror film. Upcoming films should use P2 as a wobbly foundation upon which to rebuild the structure of modern horror.
Angela (Rachel Nichols) is stuck working late on Christmas Eve, her asshole boss making her redo reports over and over again in her large office inside a Manhattan skyscraper, her family nagging at her to get home as soon as possible so they can start dinner, and one of her co-workers sincerely apologizing for groping her at a recent Christmas party. She eventually gets out of her office and down to the parking garage to head to her family party, but...her car won't start. Sigh.
She begins to try and find more and more ways out of the parking garage - more likely than not her version of purgatory - and we slowly begin to sense that, failed attempt after failed attempt, something more sinister is at work here. Enter Thomas, the kindly parking garage attendant who helps Angela out and figures since she can't leave, why not have a quaint Christmas Eve dinner in the attendant's office? No, she says, she can't dissapoint her family. But maybe some other time. You see where this is going, I'm sure.
Thomas, of course, has been stalking Angela, and knows just about everything about her. He knocks her out, ties her up, and makes her eat that quaint dinner with him. Thomas, played with insane over-the-topness by Wes Bentley, has a Norman Bates-esque feel about him. He is seemingly gentle, kind, quite a good conversationalist, with boyish good looks and a naive innocence, but he's, well...just a little insane, is all.
And the cat-and-mouse game begins.
Although rather formulaic and predictable, the movie displays enormous potential for topical issues, in particular sexual harrasment. Unfortunately, P2 fails to say (or try to say) anything relevant about the glass ceiling, or sexual harassment, or anything about feminism in general. Such a shame that a technically-competent and, yes, even sometimes suspenseful film could waste its nearly two hours teasing us with social commentary but never quite reaching it. This film is not to be taken as 28 Weeks Later or the aforementioned Night of the Living Dead should be. P2 is a horror movie through and through, both on the surface and in the shallow subtexts, without socio-political commentary. The poorly-lit parking garage at night, a classic fear for women (and men for that matter), would have been a wonderful place to explore the troublesome state of women in the workplace.
The film is high on gore in individual scenes; the violence is well-contained into one horrifically gruesome death and a few shorter scenes of quick but bloody stabs, punches, etc. Thankfully, except for that gratuitous scene, the movie is quite low on sadism. Director Khalfoun manages to ramp up the creepy thanks to a few classic Christmas songs and keeps the claustrophobic feel throughout the film, lost in a maze of cars and identical-looking levels of the parking garage.
Also notable is P2's way of manipulating us to pity Thomas while simultaneously hoping for Angela's escape. Thomas outwardly admits he's lonely - he is a graveyard shift parking garage attendant, after all. We feel bad. He even says he would never want to hurt Angela, which seems to be true at first, but is quite untrue as we later learn. I, for one, genuinely believed Tom's promise, keeping in mind he never said anything about hurting those around her. This interesting pact is not to be seen later in the movie. Was it to make the film more of a horror film and the threat to Angela more real, or did he never really plan on keeping his promise in the first place? I'm not sure.
We understand Tom is lonely, but do people as seemingly kind and good-looking as him really have to go to this length to get a girl to have dinner with him?
Feels like it sometimes, doesn't it?
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