Maybe it's the Catholic boy in me, but I think it's time for a confession.
I never meant to end up in a small town. Like every other maritimer who's left home, I came here for a job. I presumed that some sacrifices would be required of me to live in a small town, but for the most part, I couldn't think of one that I wasn't prepared to make. Until now.
Of course, for a cineaste, the term "small town" covers a lot of ground. I used to think of London, Ontario (a city of around 300,000) as a small town, because they weren't showing Punch Drunk Love in any local theatres, and I had to drive 2 hours to Toronto to see Seven Samurai. Little did I know...
Nelson is a cool small town - no question about that. Its arts and culture scene is more vibrant (or at least equal to) that of many larger centers. There are some great, creative, energetic people here who have a real commitment to the arts. Despite all that, there's no good cinema, no repertory cinema, no serious film society and basically no opportunity for seeing good films out of the comfort of your home. Having a good video store with a large back catalog helps, as does having a nice home theatre, but it's not a substitute for the true cinematic experience.
I miss the sense that a film was an event. I miss having a local art theatre profile a director (like the Vancity Festival Cinema does in Vancouver), showing several of their films in a given week, allowing a real appreciation for auteurism. I miss midnight screenings of cult favourites (like Wormwood's used to back in Halifax). I miss real film festivals, with older films mixed with the new, put in context by filmmakers and film scholars, rather than political documentaries and token Canadian films tossed out once a month.
When I first came here, I thought I would miss malls, big box stores and the like - not so. I thought I would miss the anonymity of a city, and I do occasionally. But what I really miss is the opportunity to be a true cineaste, to lose myself in the dark with a great piece of cinema.
I guess my most telling confession is that after five years, I've finally found something I miss about Vancouver.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Movies from the Space Age
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of the space age, with the launch of Sputnik 1 on this day in 1957. Since NASA is adrift (at least in terms of manned space exploration) and Russia is still recovering from financial collapse by selling Soyuz seats to tourists, it's time to think about how the space age has been depicted on film for the past 50 years, the only place that still retains some vision. So, here are a few notable landmarks in that peculiar genre of cinema that attempts to portray a reasonably realistic vision of the exploration of space.
1. Destination Moon (1950). I know, it's before the space age started for "real", but it's a great example of what we thought space travel would be like before it was ever done. By 1950, the theory was in place (things like weightlessness, etc.) and the mythic astronaut archetypes were already entrenched. It's interesting to see how much they got "right", and how much they didn't.
2. Forbidden Planet (1956). The first attempt to translate the headiness of "hard" science fiction into film is still an entertaining, if overly plotted and "talky" movie. The special effects haven't dated nearly as much as they deserve to, and it's pretty clear that this was the template from which Star Trek was struck. Realistic? Not really. But it was movies like this that the people who went to the moon were watching.
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Arthur C. Clarke often said that he and Stanley Kubrick were setting out to make the "proverbial good science fiction movie", since neither had seen a film that matched the intelligence and verisimilitude of the sci fi they had read. 2001 succeeds on a number of levels (it's probably one of the most-analyzed films in history), but it's notable today for at least making the attempt to get the physics of space travel correct. So, astronauts don't walk around unless they're in a centrifuge (or wearing velcro-shoes, which somehow never caught on), and their spacewalks are slow, careful and tedious, just like in real life. One thing it didn't get right was the topography of the moon. The prevailing image was one of tall, craggy peaks, and in reality the moon's landscape is much more smooth. It's the kind of thing that we didn't find out until we went there, and remember, when this film was produced, we hadn't even orbited it yet.
4. Silent Running (1972). Doug Trumbull had worked on the special effects for 2001, so it was natural that his first film as a director became an effects extravaganza. The film is ultimately much more "dated" than 2001, since it grapples with the topical issue of deforestation and unwisely incorporates a contemporary musical score with songs by Joan Baez. The science, however, has been done worse. As in 2001, the spacecraft don't zip through space like Buck Rogers, but instead move in predetermined orbits and take a long time to communicate with earth. The notion of giant, domed gardens in space is something that may yet come to pass in reality, and it certainly created the kind of geodesic template for the kinds of ships seen in Battlestar Galactica and the abortive 80s series Earth Star Voyager.
5. The Andromeda Strain (1971). Trumbull also helmed the cutting-edge effects for this Robert Wise sci-fi film, an adaptation of Michael Crichton's scientifically rigorous novel about a virulent organism brought to earth on a returning space probe. The premise of the film was realistic enough for NASA to require returning lunar astronauts (at least on the first few landings) to undergo two weeks of quarantine upon their return to earth. As a film, it plays like the scientific procedural the novel succeeds in being, which doesn't always make for compelling cinema, but having Crichton on board certainly guaranteed that the science was plausible. Today it's most memorable as a fascinating example of late-60s space-age thinking.
6. Alien (1979). For all its success, Ridley Scott's first sci-fi film is simply a skillfully made, high-budget monster movie, but its space-age styling (courtesy of technology-nut designer Ron Cobb) is more realistic than it needed to be. For example, the Sulacco's cathedral-esque spires illustrate the obvious point that a spacecraft has no need to be sleek in a vacuum (for an obvious influence, look at the Alliance cruisers in Joss Wheedon's Firefly), and landing on a planet is not as easy as simply pointing the ship "down" and hitting the gas. The way the alien is ultimately disposed of, making use of pressure differential and vacuum, is remarkably realistic (artificial gravity notwithstanding) and indicative of, by then, decades of experience in human spaceflight.
7. 2010 (1984). Its politics have not aged as well as its effects (to be fair - no one could have predicted that the cold war would be over in 5 years), but 2010 carries on the tradition of its predecessor in the use of centrifuges for gravity (still the only plausible way of creating it in space), realistic flight times (using hibernation) and slow, careful spacewalks. The scenery of Jupiter and its moons is also taken straight from the images returned by Voyagers 1 and 2, making it the most accurate portrayal of a solar planetary system not yet visited by humans on record.
8. Apollo 13 (1995). Probably the most accurate space flight film ever made, Ron Howard took the unprecedented step of shooting zero-g scenes in zero-g. There are serious proposals on the table today to set up a movie studio in orbit which, if it comes to pass, might make it possible to shoot the rest of the Apollo program with similar accuracy. The film also makes extensive use of CG (then a new technology) and copies the space-to-ground radio transmissions verbatim. What other film has an action scene that hinges on someone's ability to do long division?
9. Mission to Mars (2000). Those of us with some vague memory of high school biology will be taken completely out of the film by the atrocious molecular biology the film's climax hinges upon, but the filmmakers seem to have spent their consultant budget on the physics, as the orbital ballet that happens early in the film is as accurate as anything set to film. Mars entered our consciousness in the early 2000s as the next logical step for space exploration, but we probably won't be going there for a while, due to political shortsightedness, but this film and Red Planet are true products of our culture's burgeoning interest in it.
10. Space Cowboys (2000). Again produced with the cooperation of NASA, Clint Eastwood's science fiction attempt is more or less plausible (although in reality, only one senior citizen is likely to be allowed to fly to space at a time). The uncomfortable relationship between the US and Russian space programs is at the core of the film's narrative conflict, something that fairly accurately reflects the current state of manned space exploration. Space Cowboys also brings things full circle in a way, by re-visiting the roots of the space program, and illustrating how much things have changed.
Of course, you should all see the Right Stuff, but oddly, that movie is more about the culture of American heroism than it really is about technology. There are loads of screamingly bad technical gaffes in it, but that doesn't stop it from being an interesting bit of film.
So, after 50 years, space travel has become both more and less exciting for us. Let's hope in another 50 years we'll have made some real progress in the exploration of our world, instead of, as we are now, hunkering down in a cave and bitching about who gets the most meat.
1. Destination Moon (1950). I know, it's before the space age started for "real", but it's a great example of what we thought space travel would be like before it was ever done. By 1950, the theory was in place (things like weightlessness, etc.) and the mythic astronaut archetypes were already entrenched. It's interesting to see how much they got "right", and how much they didn't.
2. Forbidden Planet (1956). The first attempt to translate the headiness of "hard" science fiction into film is still an entertaining, if overly plotted and "talky" movie. The special effects haven't dated nearly as much as they deserve to, and it's pretty clear that this was the template from which Star Trek was struck. Realistic? Not really. But it was movies like this that the people who went to the moon were watching.
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Arthur C. Clarke often said that he and Stanley Kubrick were setting out to make the "proverbial good science fiction movie", since neither had seen a film that matched the intelligence and verisimilitude of the sci fi they had read. 2001 succeeds on a number of levels (it's probably one of the most-analyzed films in history), but it's notable today for at least making the attempt to get the physics of space travel correct. So, astronauts don't walk around unless they're in a centrifuge (or wearing velcro-shoes, which somehow never caught on), and their spacewalks are slow, careful and tedious, just like in real life. One thing it didn't get right was the topography of the moon. The prevailing image was one of tall, craggy peaks, and in reality the moon's landscape is much more smooth. It's the kind of thing that we didn't find out until we went there, and remember, when this film was produced, we hadn't even orbited it yet.
4. Silent Running (1972). Doug Trumbull had worked on the special effects for 2001, so it was natural that his first film as a director became an effects extravaganza. The film is ultimately much more "dated" than 2001, since it grapples with the topical issue of deforestation and unwisely incorporates a contemporary musical score with songs by Joan Baez. The science, however, has been done worse. As in 2001, the spacecraft don't zip through space like Buck Rogers, but instead move in predetermined orbits and take a long time to communicate with earth. The notion of giant, domed gardens in space is something that may yet come to pass in reality, and it certainly created the kind of geodesic template for the kinds of ships seen in Battlestar Galactica and the abortive 80s series Earth Star Voyager.
5. The Andromeda Strain (1971). Trumbull also helmed the cutting-edge effects for this Robert Wise sci-fi film, an adaptation of Michael Crichton's scientifically rigorous novel about a virulent organism brought to earth on a returning space probe. The premise of the film was realistic enough for NASA to require returning lunar astronauts (at least on the first few landings) to undergo two weeks of quarantine upon their return to earth. As a film, it plays like the scientific procedural the novel succeeds in being, which doesn't always make for compelling cinema, but having Crichton on board certainly guaranteed that the science was plausible. Today it's most memorable as a fascinating example of late-60s space-age thinking.
6. Alien (1979). For all its success, Ridley Scott's first sci-fi film is simply a skillfully made, high-budget monster movie, but its space-age styling (courtesy of technology-nut designer Ron Cobb) is more realistic than it needed to be. For example, the Sulacco's cathedral-esque spires illustrate the obvious point that a spacecraft has no need to be sleek in a vacuum (for an obvious influence, look at the Alliance cruisers in Joss Wheedon's Firefly), and landing on a planet is not as easy as simply pointing the ship "down" and hitting the gas. The way the alien is ultimately disposed of, making use of pressure differential and vacuum, is remarkably realistic (artificial gravity notwithstanding) and indicative of, by then, decades of experience in human spaceflight.
7. 2010 (1984). Its politics have not aged as well as its effects (to be fair - no one could have predicted that the cold war would be over in 5 years), but 2010 carries on the tradition of its predecessor in the use of centrifuges for gravity (still the only plausible way of creating it in space), realistic flight times (using hibernation) and slow, careful spacewalks. The scenery of Jupiter and its moons is also taken straight from the images returned by Voyagers 1 and 2, making it the most accurate portrayal of a solar planetary system not yet visited by humans on record.
8. Apollo 13 (1995). Probably the most accurate space flight film ever made, Ron Howard took the unprecedented step of shooting zero-g scenes in zero-g. There are serious proposals on the table today to set up a movie studio in orbit which, if it comes to pass, might make it possible to shoot the rest of the Apollo program with similar accuracy. The film also makes extensive use of CG (then a new technology) and copies the space-to-ground radio transmissions verbatim. What other film has an action scene that hinges on someone's ability to do long division?
9. Mission to Mars (2000). Those of us with some vague memory of high school biology will be taken completely out of the film by the atrocious molecular biology the film's climax hinges upon, but the filmmakers seem to have spent their consultant budget on the physics, as the orbital ballet that happens early in the film is as accurate as anything set to film. Mars entered our consciousness in the early 2000s as the next logical step for space exploration, but we probably won't be going there for a while, due to political shortsightedness, but this film and Red Planet are true products of our culture's burgeoning interest in it.
10. Space Cowboys (2000). Again produced with the cooperation of NASA, Clint Eastwood's science fiction attempt is more or less plausible (although in reality, only one senior citizen is likely to be allowed to fly to space at a time). The uncomfortable relationship between the US and Russian space programs is at the core of the film's narrative conflict, something that fairly accurately reflects the current state of manned space exploration. Space Cowboys also brings things full circle in a way, by re-visiting the roots of the space program, and illustrating how much things have changed.
Of course, you should all see the Right Stuff, but oddly, that movie is more about the culture of American heroism than it really is about technology. There are loads of screamingly bad technical gaffes in it, but that doesn't stop it from being an interesting bit of film.
So, after 50 years, space travel has become both more and less exciting for us. Let's hope in another 50 years we'll have made some real progress in the exploration of our world, instead of, as we are now, hunkering down in a cave and bitching about who gets the most meat.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
REVIEW: In Memory of Myself
This new film from rising Italian director Saverio Costanzo is an affecting and original piece of art that may seem odd to a mainstream film audience. Since Kubrick's 2001, filmmakers have been experimenting with original approaches to narrative, though most films still tend to tell stories in familiar ways. In Memory of Myself achieves a victory for the form in that it does that most difficult of cinematic tasks: portraying an internal spiritual and psychological struggle without resorting to plot contrivances, overt narrative conflict or that most deadly explicit of measures, internal monologue. Most filmmakers who try this kind of thing fail. Costanzo doesn't, and it is the most important achievement of this powerful film.
The film concerns Andrea (Christo Jivkov), an novice in the Jesuit Order, which essentially means he is a person traveling between two worlds. Jesuits are notoriously hard on their new initiates, and with good reason. The decision to join a priesthood as demanding as the Jesuits is not one to be taken lightly. As his Father Superior (André Hennicke) tells Andrea more often than not, "You judge the order, but the order also judges you." His first challenge is to spend two weeks in a silent world of routine and contemplation, after which, again in the words of the Father Superior, "You will know if you have a vocation or not". This long period of discernment forms the bulk of the story.
And what a fascinating story it is. Right from the start, we know this is a different kind of film, with little dialogue, action or conflict. Its pace is hypnotic, a word used all-t00-often by critics as a synonym of "boring", but in this case it is entirely appropriate. We are introduced to the routine of waking, work, study, eating and prayer, all of which are taken equally seriously by the initiates. We begin, through Andrea, to know some of the other novices, notably Fausto (Fausto Russo Alesi), who is undergoing his own personal struggle that culminates in a haunting scene of him banging his head repeatedly against the bathroom wall. His fumbling words in class, in which he has to explain a line of scripture, suggest some great spiritual war within him, but the film isn't interested in the specifics, on in the way Andrea sees their external manifestation. Later, we meet the deeply emotional Zanna (Filippo Timi), who struggles to reconcile the cold, distant Jesuit rituals with the Biblical Jesus, a figure that said little about mopping floors, but much about love. Zanna seems to spend more and more time in the infirmary, where it becomes clear that a member of the order is dying.
As time passes, we see Andrea broken down piece by piece. He is lost between the "real world", which he poignantly watches through the windows at the monastery each night, and the spirit world, which seems to him just out of reach. He is cold, observant (his fellow novices think him judgmental), but we know that in order to fully make the transition, he must face aspects of himself he does not wish to face. He must become human in order to become divine. The last act of the film is a masterfully controlled series of affecting images, telling us everything we need to know about Andrea's struggle with no need for dialogue.
Costanzo's control over the film is in fact the most notable element of it. The deliberate, graceful tracking shots and frequent use of subjective camera draw us into this strange world of spirit and mystery. Classical music is used to enhance this strange, medieval life pattern, contrasted sharply with the images of these practitioners of profoundly ancient rituals making use of laptop computers and CD players. Costanzo also steers the plot away from the cliched territory of homosexual desire, something with which the Catholic church has become, somewhat unfairly, associated. He isn't interested in scoring easy PC points, but instead exploring a deep spiritual mystery.
Few films would dare to be this bold.
The film concerns Andrea (Christo Jivkov), an novice in the Jesuit Order, which essentially means he is a person traveling between two worlds. Jesuits are notoriously hard on their new initiates, and with good reason. The decision to join a priesthood as demanding as the Jesuits is not one to be taken lightly. As his Father Superior (André Hennicke) tells Andrea more often than not, "You judge the order, but the order also judges you." His first challenge is to spend two weeks in a silent world of routine and contemplation, after which, again in the words of the Father Superior, "You will know if you have a vocation or not". This long period of discernment forms the bulk of the story.
And what a fascinating story it is. Right from the start, we know this is a different kind of film, with little dialogue, action or conflict. Its pace is hypnotic, a word used all-t00-often by critics as a synonym of "boring", but in this case it is entirely appropriate. We are introduced to the routine of waking, work, study, eating and prayer, all of which are taken equally seriously by the initiates. We begin, through Andrea, to know some of the other novices, notably Fausto (Fausto Russo Alesi), who is undergoing his own personal struggle that culminates in a haunting scene of him banging his head repeatedly against the bathroom wall. His fumbling words in class, in which he has to explain a line of scripture, suggest some great spiritual war within him, but the film isn't interested in the specifics, on in the way Andrea sees their external manifestation. Later, we meet the deeply emotional Zanna (Filippo Timi), who struggles to reconcile the cold, distant Jesuit rituals with the Biblical Jesus, a figure that said little about mopping floors, but much about love. Zanna seems to spend more and more time in the infirmary, where it becomes clear that a member of the order is dying.
As time passes, we see Andrea broken down piece by piece. He is lost between the "real world", which he poignantly watches through the windows at the monastery each night, and the spirit world, which seems to him just out of reach. He is cold, observant (his fellow novices think him judgmental), but we know that in order to fully make the transition, he must face aspects of himself he does not wish to face. He must become human in order to become divine. The last act of the film is a masterfully controlled series of affecting images, telling us everything we need to know about Andrea's struggle with no need for dialogue.
Costanzo's control over the film is in fact the most notable element of it. The deliberate, graceful tracking shots and frequent use of subjective camera draw us into this strange world of spirit and mystery. Classical music is used to enhance this strange, medieval life pattern, contrasted sharply with the images of these practitioners of profoundly ancient rituals making use of laptop computers and CD players. Costanzo also steers the plot away from the cliched territory of homosexual desire, something with which the Catholic church has become, somewhat unfairly, associated. He isn't interested in scoring easy PC points, but instead exploring a deep spiritual mystery.
Few films would dare to be this bold.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Eastern Promises
I had a chance, this weekend, to visit Vancouver and catch some new films. (This is an inevitable consequence of living in a small rural community - you usually have to wait for DVD to see new releases other than big Hollywood crap.) One of these was David Cronenberg's new film Eastern Promises, which, if my opinion means anything to anyone, is an absolutely unmissable effort by the greatest working Canadian director.
A woman walks into a London drugstore late at night, pregnant, pleading for help in broken English. Below her is a pool of blood. She is taken to a hospital, where she is assigned a midwife named Anna (played by Naomi Watts), who, along with doctors, manages to save her baby, but not her. Anna makes it her mission to discover this woman's story, a process that leads her to a Russian restaurant owned and operated by Mr. Semyon (played masterfully by Armin Mueller-Stahl). Semyon knew Anna's father (she is a second-generation Russian immigrant), and treats her warmly, offering to translate from Russian the diary of the dead woman. But all is not right at his restaurant. Shady characters, including his uncouth, violent son Kirill (French superstar Vincent Cassel) seem to populate the street outside. Most mysterious of all is Kirill's "driver", a cold, spare, sinister Russian named Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen, in the performance of his career).
To reveal more of the plot is to rob you of the genuine pleasures of allowing its various twists and turns to unfold, but it's not hard to see that the Russian mafia plays a role in the film, and Anna is drawn into a dangerous world, with dangerous people. And that Nikolai... there's something about him...
Cronenberg's films are all about identity and transformation, and Eastern Promises is no exception. No one in this film is who they seem at first blush, except perhaps Anna's mother and uncle, who sensibly warn her to stop this relentless search for the dead girl's identity. Some of their hesitation comes from what her Russian uncle reads in the diary. It's not pleasant.
The other Cronenberg signature is his penchant for violence and gore, although in this film and its companion piece, A History of Violence, the gore is used to good, not excessive effect. You make think that hyperbole after seeing the film, but pause for a moment to consider Cronenberg's motivation. Violence is disturbing. It should be upsetting. I would rather see the real consequences of something like a knife fight (featured in a scene guaranteed to become a classic, set in a Turkish bath) then see some action hero jump from jet fighter to moving car, taking plate glass to the face without so much as a bruise. Cronenberg shows it, all of it, to his credit. Violence shouldn't be exciting. It's not pleasant.
For all that unpleasantness, the film achieves a transcendental quality by ultimately pushing all of its plot-related intricacies and gory violence aside and finally settling on a profoundly human exploration of the nature of identity and morality. Far more haunting an effective than A History of Violence (a great movie in itself), Eastern Promises goes deep, and the final scene (and words) linger in the imagination. It may well be Cronenberg's masterpiece.
A woman walks into a London drugstore late at night, pregnant, pleading for help in broken English. Below her is a pool of blood. She is taken to a hospital, where she is assigned a midwife named Anna (played by Naomi Watts), who, along with doctors, manages to save her baby, but not her. Anna makes it her mission to discover this woman's story, a process that leads her to a Russian restaurant owned and operated by Mr. Semyon (played masterfully by Armin Mueller-Stahl). Semyon knew Anna's father (she is a second-generation Russian immigrant), and treats her warmly, offering to translate from Russian the diary of the dead woman. But all is not right at his restaurant. Shady characters, including his uncouth, violent son Kirill (French superstar Vincent Cassel) seem to populate the street outside. Most mysterious of all is Kirill's "driver", a cold, spare, sinister Russian named Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen, in the performance of his career).
To reveal more of the plot is to rob you of the genuine pleasures of allowing its various twists and turns to unfold, but it's not hard to see that the Russian mafia plays a role in the film, and Anna is drawn into a dangerous world, with dangerous people. And that Nikolai... there's something about him...
Cronenberg's films are all about identity and transformation, and Eastern Promises is no exception. No one in this film is who they seem at first blush, except perhaps Anna's mother and uncle, who sensibly warn her to stop this relentless search for the dead girl's identity. Some of their hesitation comes from what her Russian uncle reads in the diary. It's not pleasant.
The other Cronenberg signature is his penchant for violence and gore, although in this film and its companion piece, A History of Violence, the gore is used to good, not excessive effect. You make think that hyperbole after seeing the film, but pause for a moment to consider Cronenberg's motivation. Violence is disturbing. It should be upsetting. I would rather see the real consequences of something like a knife fight (featured in a scene guaranteed to become a classic, set in a Turkish bath) then see some action hero jump from jet fighter to moving car, taking plate glass to the face without so much as a bruise. Cronenberg shows it, all of it, to his credit. Violence shouldn't be exciting. It's not pleasant.
For all that unpleasantness, the film achieves a transcendental quality by ultimately pushing all of its plot-related intricacies and gory violence aside and finally settling on a profoundly human exploration of the nature of identity and morality. Far more haunting an effective than A History of Violence (a great movie in itself), Eastern Promises goes deep, and the final scene (and words) linger in the imagination. It may well be Cronenberg's masterpiece.
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