Roundtable: Taste of a different order
The credits were still rolling, the lights came up, and the brewing desire to release the pressure valve fell on everyone’s lips as opinions increasingly became secret confessions of an anxious reader to an absent author. The film in question is James Gray’s Two Lovers, best described by Andrew O’Hehir as “a romantic drama about Leonard (Gray regular Joaquin Phoenix), a damaged 30ish Brooklynite living with his parents, who must choose between a nurturing, socially appropriate girlfriend (Vinessa Shaw) and a drugged-out, unavailable shiksa goddess (Gwyneth Paltrow).” The ensuing discussion skipped the usual interpretative dance of grasping connections to the human condition, or what’s left of it. Instead, superficial assessments were the preferred format of the day, ranging from Gwyneth’s miscasting to “ugly” Manhattan lawyer types to hatred of the Jewish father. Even worse, “authentic” portrayal of NY life and “believability” of the characters’ psychologies and emotions were buzzing in the air as indicators of artistic honesty. Then again, if we take the director’s word for his work (neither a good nor bad idea), we would be stuck with Gray’s meditative study of love as a solipsistic projection, in which the dictum “save one person, save the world” isn’t that far from the religious upbringing of the main character and his impulse to save the messed-up girl, and his fiancee’s impulse to save him. Would that be the measure of success, when a filmmaker fully translates every feeling and meaning to his audience? Gray admits to be reading Jacques Lacan and Louis Aragon during the film production, but how are we supposed to notice his subliminal projections in the final product?
These points are not moot in any shape or form, they reveal surely the film’s immense ability to elicit a spectrum of responses beyond the original intent of the filmmaker in demanding a serious consideration of his work as some lasting examination of modern relationships and their discontents. There will always be a gap between intention and reception, encoding and decoding, and generations of old and young.
Interview with James Gray courtesy of Salon.com
Perhaps, Paltrow’s “miscasting” was not an error in judgement but an indication of an actress’s failure to escape her extradiegetic persona, in which she constantly inhabits her offscreen self or play variations on an established theme whether she wanted to or not. However, this doesn’t mean she fails within the level of the film itself, rather the aura of Gwyneth forever haunts and complements the blonde bimbo shell that is Michelle. In short, Gwyneth plays Gwyneth really well, and O’Hehir is acute in pointing out that she is the quintessential femme fatale, desirable but never tangible, her first appearance in the film marks the arrival of fantasy rather than flesh, the ghost of her former role transported to a different film. As much as I despise the God-given wisdom of the auteur, his final say as our final say, the “oh jeez, we got it now, thanks mister,” I have to credit Gray for being his own best analyst in regards to the doomed lovers’ last encounter. He mentioned that he wanted Gwyneth (ooops, i mean Michelle) to appear as if she’s floating in the dark alleyway before she emerges in front of Leonard. An inevitable farewell to an ideal woman, a Hollywood construction more real than real. And a side rebuttal to one vocal commentator: Vanessa Redgrave in a Joe Wright’s film is not the same as Gwyneth Paltrow in a James Gray’s movie. It’s like saying Judi Dench’s cameo in Pride and Prejudice was also his desperate ploy for funding. Get it straight.
Moreover, the overrated focus on a film’s capacity to mimic reality, to capture an imprint of life, as if it could’ve existed, eventually leads us to a dead end in the art of film criticism since it means fantasy narratives are playing another deck of cards to make us believe otherwise. In the case of Two Lovers, destiny is laid out like a minefield, there will be causalities, there will be survivors, a safe pathway is painfully visible. Keeping in mind that there are two separate occasions where Michelle and Leonard stare straight into the camera, knowing all too well that their intimate embrace is one stemming from vulnerability rather than potentiality. Only Vinessa Shaw’s character is out of this loop. What we have forgotten when it comes to cinema is neither illusion or realism, but the creation of microcosms, of fictions passing off as realities (rather than REALITY), distinct in their individuality, but always in dialogue with each other, eventually cementing into transparent codes and conventions we take for granted. It’s appropriate that critics have labeled Gray as an old-fashioned craftsman, producing films they used to make in the old days, because in the very tone of that nostalgic sentiment lies the truth of their words—he’s doing something that WAS done before, just reassembled into new permutations. That familiarity tells us more about how we as moviegoers have deeply ingrained cultural memory into our consciousness of history and our perception of everyday reality.
In laying out the above expositions on the multi-faceted experience of watching Two Lovers, I want to probe into the wider phenomenon of film reception, which encompasses more than just watching, but all the tactile senses and more. I admit that I was giggling at particular moments in the film because those were the scenes that retreated from the overall cumbersome trajectory, moments where the characters would exhibit ludicrous behaviors such as demanding an inscription on your arm as a lullaby, displaying your naked breast to a pathetic man across the hall, or asking your son if he needs help using Expedia. At other times, I’m simply amused by the physical pleasure of seeing Joaquin doing breakdancing or Gwyneth with smeared mascara. Spoutblog writer, Karina Longworth even cites that she was asleep for the first half of the film until that nightclub scene captivated her to the end. Her review fluctuates between adoration and ambivalence; she clearly enjoyed the film, but was uncertain on how to judge it as a critic. Does it always have to funnel down towards a recommendation for yourself, or for others? Film historian and cinephile, David Bordwell, performs an admirable job categorizing the nature of reception into these two components that make for competing rivals and strange bedfellows:
I can like films I don’t think are particularly good. I enjoy mid-level Hong Kong movies because I can see their ties to local history and film history, because I take delight in certain actors, because I try to spot familiar locations. But I wouldn’t argue that because I like them, they’re good. We all have guilty pleasures—a label that was coined exactly to designate films which give us enjoyment, even if by any wide criteria they aren’t especially good.
The difference between taste and judgment emerges in this way: You can recognize that some films are good even if you don’t like them. You can declare Birth of a Nation or Citizen Kane or Persona an excellent film without finding it to your liking…There aren’t any fully “objective” standards, but they are intersubjective—lots of people with widely varying tastes accept them.
What Bordwell is hinting at, though he never mentions explicitly, is the ongoing transformation of taste into judgement, of elitist proclivities becoming the gold standard. Taste is always shifting from one person to another, but judgement is harder to change, it requires an informal consensus with time as an overseer. In my agreement with O’Hehir, Two Lovers continue to diverge reactions because it’s a successful failed experiment, fascinating, frustrating, and inherently fictitious to its bittersweet finale. Everyone left the room with something to say instead of a forgettable nod of acceptance. Tolerance would’ve been boring!
I will not conclude with a report on film appreciation, for a simple call to arms is much more bearable and easier to administer in the realm of critical reception and pleasurable enjoyment. Broadening of one’s taste (the inclusivity principle) and a cautious judgment of judgment will keep any filmgoer from being too satisfied and too picky with his meal. Without reverting to archaic rules of appropriateness, when to laugh, when to cry, when to tremble in suspense, it would be better to refer to these selected musings of Susan Sontag in her seminal essay Notes on Camp rather than just grouping everything under that misused umbrella term, camp. It shouldn’t be a label, but a contentious neologism to be argued for and against.
18. One must distinguish between naïve and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp is always naïve. Camp which knows itself to be Camp (“camping”) is usually less satisfying.
41. The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to “the serious.” One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.
Just one minor exception to social propriety: Don’t ever holler at the screen unless you’re at a sing-a-long.
Put on your Sunday Clothes: T-minus 2 days until launch
It’s Wednesday of premiere week and still no A.O. Scott or Stephanie Zacharek filling the WALL•E profile on Rotten Tomatoes. The only thing posted as a top critic is Richard Roeper’s review and when you click the link to read more, the review does not exist! An attempt to creating a compilation post of various reviews has proven unfruitful as the overall silence amongst the critic heavyweights is deafening.
What appears as a display of silence and secrecy in reality is perhaps an inability to write about this film in normal review writing fashion. How does one write a review for a film that converges past (Keaton, Chaplin, and Lloyd), present (3D animation), and future (the destruction of Earth)? How does one translate the pantomime of a curious archiving robot into a writing style that requires an end point such as “Will be successful domestically, but mediocre internationally”? How can one not want to say and write more about this film than what is allotted to them on page E1 and E15 of the Art & Entertainment section of the paper?
In any case, here at Le Repertoire, we cannot express the level of excitement of this film’s premiere to the world. Yes, some of us may have a certain bias, ahem, but WALL•E is the second film, beginning with Ratatouille, to concrete the new wave of Pixar films, quite parallel to the Disney Renaissance of the mid-1990s. However instead of a re-invention of the musical via feats of 2D animation and solid melodramatic stories, the Pixar Renaissance shines through the depth of their stories that provide an open door for technological advances in animated shot composition.
Here are a few words from reviews that have been published (more to come):
Richard Corliss (Time) writes: Yet, as we spot the fret lines above his eyes and see the carcasses of other robots on the junk heaps, we realize that WALL•E is a lonely guy. There’s an instant poignancy to his puttering around the late, great planet Earth like a solitary child on an abandoned playground, or an oldster among his souvenirs. WALL•E’s special ache is his nostalgia for a life he never lived, for the intimate connection only humans enjoy.
Robert Wilonsky (Village Voice) writes: Many will attempt to describe WALL-E with a one-liner. It’s R2-D2 in love. 2001: A Space Odyssey starring The Little Tramp. An Inconvenient Truth meets Idiocracy on its way to Toy Story. But none of these do justice to a film that’s both breathtakingly majestic and heartbreakingly intimate—and, for a good long while, absolutely bereft of dialogue save the squeals, beeps, and chirps of a sweet, lonely robot who, aside from his cockroach pet, is the closest thing to the last living being on earth…Such reverence for movie history in general and sci-fi in particular is vital to the story, because it’s what ultimately gives WALL-E its wow factor and its weight—this reinvigoration of the past on the way to the future of filmmaking. (Charlie Chapin … in space.)
Mark Millar (creator of the graphic novel for which competing film Wanted is based on) states: Wanted 2 already being planned and they’ve asked me how I can develop some of the other stuff from the book into the sequel. We’ll see what box office is like at the weekend, but everyone knows this is going to make a LOT of dough…Wall-E permitting. Fucking bastard of a wee robot.
Wall•E Trailer
Hello Dolly!
The Dreamlife of Angels & Demons
Guy Bourdin for French Vogue
Steven Meisel, “State of Emergency” series for Italian Vogue
Pairing the works of late fashion photographer (in reality, a misunderstood surrealist master) Guy Bourdin with the glossy resume of his less worthy successor, Steven Meidel is like comparing apples and blood oranges. The strange fruit, an ancient citrus hybrid, with its bitter flavor and mesmerizing crimson color, shares an almost inescapable fact with a Bourdin “still life,” leaving behind an unforgettable bruise that last for weeks and even years without the hope of amnesia as anesthesia. Still, the nameless collagists at The Image Archive wants us to believe in their nonexistent dialogue through the rhetoric of the photo essay (see video below), inflating the blase beauty of one with the iconographic might of the other. Establishing space in the first few seconds, we journey from physical landmarks to geographies less familiar, as shadows and shoulders collide into the unknown. It’s a cleverly edited video, a readymade cliff-notes introduction that should, at least, invite viewers to approach two separate careers with enough biographical history on hand.
While I’ll credit Meidel for taking liberties with the typical fashion shoot, tackling contemporary political sentiments through high production values replete with statuesque supermodels and trendy couture, his radicalism whimpers like a caged beast, suitable for city billboards and the big heads at Conde Nast HQ—wholly accessible, rarely affective. Representative of his oeuvre, the photograph above intends to capture feminine duress under the police state, but what we have sadly is merely a pretty face under the boot of a fashionable fascist. Relying heavily on photogenic poses, Meidel never reaches for the tiny detail that would complicate the very subject of our attention. Terror evaporates just as her doll eyes signify nothing but the camera’s reflection. In Bourdin’s photograph, the curious finger on the ivory doorbell makes you wonder in fear of the revelation just to the left.
Bourdin, on the other hand, applied strenuous pressure to his creative process, like a ringmaster to a harem of Botticelli angels, he churned out snapshots of bodies, mangled and tested to their limits. No longer just mannequins primed to sell clothes, these were daredevil artists ready for the next Cirque du Soleil audition. Adding to this “enactment of the impossible,” Tim Blanks (notable fashion writer) sums up Bourdin’s death-drive:
Throughout his career, he remained an artist manqué, composing and reordering the elements he saw through his viewfinder until they matched the pictures he imagined in his head (and sketched in his notebooks). Except they never did.
As noted by other critics, Bourdin was obsessed with scenarios conjured by a childhood watching the film-noirs imported to France from Hollywood and informed by schooling in European art history. Never hesitating on aesthetic honesty over sartorial concerns, his repertoire (yes, i used the taboo R word) desires for a world of cinematic conceits, where female figures are obscured by frames and forces that pay little attention to their presence. It’s almost like a picture taken by someone who happens to walk by a gruesome murder, indifferent to sensationalism, slightly aroused but never masturbatory. Comparisons to Stanley Kubrick are apt, but these are facile bullet points that could point to anyone, such as Godard or Varda, instead, a painting by Magritte should suffice as a teasing doorway to Bourdin’s infinite fantasies, which themselves are self-effacing artifices. We recognize the amount of hard work behind the illusion, though looking at a mirror doesn’t necessarily mean we’re safe.
René Magritte’s “Dangerous Liaisons”
Guy Bourdin made a series of 16mm “home” movies of his photo shoots, this happens to be my favorite.
Unplugged Redux: Black Cab Sessions
Like we weren’t already gushing over all things English – BBC television shows and miniseries, Top Shop, the selection of sauces at Nando’s, the Brits strike again with a new location to see your favorite bands: a taxi cab. What started a year ago as a solo performance that music promoters Hidden Fruit and film company Just So Films decided to film for Johnny Flynn became a series attracting the likes of Spoon, My Morning Jacket, The Raveonettes, and more. With the days of MTV Unplugged: Eric Clapton gone, Black Cab Sessions fills the hole for intimate, bare bones music performances that can be experienced by the masses. Even better, these young music promoters and filmmakers only have to pay the price of their taxi ride for the venue. Also, props to the cameramen who not only are squished in the back of these cabs and are able to film the bands beautifully in a single take, but for the extranneous pieces of the environment that they capture on miniDV.
Here is a taste. For more click here.
Spoon – I Summon You
Okkervil River – Big Black Car
Lykke Li – I’m Good, I’m Gone
Daniel Johnston – Greivances
Johnathan Byers – Bach’s Cello Suite, Prelude in G Major
St. Vincent – Dig A Pony
TGIFF: Volumen 4
THE SCOOP: Back to Old Europe
Giulia y Los Tellarini: Not only has Woody got his groove back (that’s assuming if the critics’ positive feedback of his latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, was not a fluke), he also regained his hearing, more attuned to music being made in the NOW, and no place better than his host country, Spain for its local flavor and neglected indie troubadours. The music you hear in the film’s trailer, and presumbly its soundtrack (Allen stated that “Barcelona” is its main theme) will eventually land these Lucky 7 on the global map of music meccas. This might be the year when people would start humming (and clapping) to Spanish songs like they did 2 years ago.
Latest album: Eusebio
Think: Early Belle and Sebastian + Ponies in the Surf + René Peña-Govea
Giulia y Los Tellarini – Il Principe
Giulia y Los Tellarini – Barcelona
Best Variety Show Appearance, love the Carmen Maura look in little girl white:
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Sporto Kantes: Formed in 1990, this French drum-and-bass duo has been pumping out outstanding albums one after another. Though still under the radar, they seem content in playing outside of the competition when the year’s best lists are announced. Weaving Afro-Caribbean and Spanish melodies into a heavy electronic framework, Sporto indulges the sin of sampling with enough originality to pass under everyone’s favorite ambivalent term, “fusion.”
Latest: 3 At Last
Think: RJD2 + Gonzales + Groove Armada
Best Guest Stint: Bonus song “Ferdinand” in Jean Luc-Godard’s Histoire(s) du Musique compilation
I think this tune might kickstart your neurons:
YouTune Part Two: Exit Music (For a Film)
There are a handful of bands whose music lends itself easily to current cinema. Radiohead is perhaps near the top, if not the top. With two songs with titles that infer a connection of their music to the silver screen and Jonny Greenwood’s most recent stint as composer for There Will Be Blood, Thom Yorke & Company have been recognized for their ability to create an ambient type of music that is still memorable and distinguishable, i.e. Pure Moods but with great words and melodies. What is particularly interesting with this week’s selection are the similarities in tone and editing between the music video and the film scene.
Happily Ever After – Charlotte meets Johnny at the Virgin Store
“Creep”
L’auberge espagnole – Romain walks around Paris
“No Surprises”
Honorable Mentions/Moments that are not on YouTube that I cannot upload because I am on probation for uploading a copyright clip of the OC where Caitlin walks out and Kelis’ “Bossy” plays:
Roswell, “Max in the City” – “How to Disappear Completely”
Nip/Tuck, “Frankenlaura” – “Everything in its Right Place”
Romeo + Juliet – “Talk Show Host” and “Exit Music (For a Film)”
and more.
Indie Dance Party Redux, or Oslo is the new Stockholm
Mr. Darcy: So what do you recommend to encourage affection?
Elizabeth Bennet: Dancing. Even if one’s partner is barely tolerable.
- Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Right before the second half of a morose film about two young aspiring writers, a dance breaks out. So far, the film unfolds like a book either one of them could have written (since we never actually see their creative process or actual contents). Better yet, it develops like an cinematic adaptation of their novels, complete with flashbacks, flashforwards, what-ifs, and a dry weary narrator. Best buds since grade school, Erik and Phillip, who are the literary equivalents to real life Swedish musical duo, Tough Alliance, struggle to keep their existential careers intact. Philip is depicted as an inherently gifted wordsmith who undergoes a nervous breakdown because he “loves” his girlfriend, Kari, too much. Again props to the casting director for finding a prettier Bjork. Erik’s relationship to writing is bound to his idolizing friendship with Philip; their desires are aligned as if they’re one person. Thankfully, no bizarre love triangle is formed between the three main characters, or at least, by any heterosexual dictum.
Reprise (Joachim Trier, 2006) exchanges scenes and dialogs typical of my generation, a swarm of twenty-somethings with a full-time job and a part-time dream to realize whatever shred of creative potential that might grow into an insular enterprise…this blog for instance.
One of the many elements that have been obligatory in films dealing with dime-store alienation and aimless directionality afflicting young folks is the momentary dance that only exacerbates those symptoms of modernity for the viewer–a confirmation of shit hitting the fan but in slow motion. In Reprise, Le Tigre’s Deceptacon only comes on through the speakers because one of the guys decided to amp up the party scene and overthrow the tranquilizing muzak. It works on both fronts, the participants there, and for me here! Like the bumper car sequence in Bresson’s Mouchette, the dance suspends the pervasive mood enveloping the rest of the film, it gives both the character and the viewer breathing space before we take the plunge back into the film as a whole. Unlike the musical genre which includes its now trendy white girl-can-do-hip-hop-too inspirational manifestos, the best dance sequences are those extractable from the larger body of work. You expect them, not anticipate them. They stick out like sore thumbs and propels our bodies to mingle with those onscreen rather than enjoying it voyeuristically. Reprise with all its crazy pillow fights and heads and toes going up and down, delivers a kinetic analogy to the film’s central metaphor, a dark undeveloped photograph Erik took of him and Philip meeting their great hero, a reclusive author. Only one minor forgotten detail: he left his lens cap on. Yet, like the transitory dance, the blackened photo signifies the very tools of how we visualize—with our memories and imagination—than anything emulsified on film or in cinema. A writer’s block, a reader’s reign.
P.S. Hands down, better than the official video! Jem fans, be proud:
He[ART]@SF: Reverse Graffiti
The HeART@SF series is dedicated to the hardworking men and women who dare to change a foggy city into a cozy home without sacrificing you + me in the process.
Englishman and American met up and had a Green-conscious plan.
Their mission was simple: remove dirt using intricate stencil patterns and high-pressure pumps.
Overlooked con: Much like the rampant gentrification spreading like wildfire through the city’s districts, the art of making reverse graffiti follows the same guidelines: it requires the dirty grime as the base in order to exaggerate the beauty of whatever is affixed/removed from it afterwards. It must have the final look of possessing a wealth of unkempt history, of justified violence, of tension between the Sharks and the Jets, only succumbing to the discipline of immaculate hygiene because of increased urbanization and pollution. Just one marker of authenticity is all one needs. “I don’t want to live in these new high-rises, but they’re better than living in old snobby Richmond,” I would repeat over and over at yesterday and tomorrow’s boho dinner parties. Hold the Whole Foods brie, we only have Trader Joe’s gouda!
The Broadway Tunnel best viewed on foot, not bikes/skateboards.
I’ve been watching you like a hawk
Attention LeRepertoire customers: On October 2008, for just $44.99, you can own your own Tippi Hendren doll. Celebrating the Hitchcock classic, Melanie Daniels includes, as the description writes, “real fake birds!” and “high-quality head looks scared and has awesome hair!”
To commemorate this momentous occasion in doll production history, enjoy the invisible terror of Martjin Hendrik’s reworking of the birthday scene as well as the original second half of the diner scene, or what I like to call “Tippi does Eisenstein.”
Martjin Hendrik
Alfred Hitchcock
Dancin’ in Tongues
Johan Söderberg’s award-winning (and Pitchfork-approved) video for Swedish techno act, Familjen, turns avant-garde appropriation on its ass, or more appropriately, saves it from pretentious flights of fancy by allowing the old footage to speak for itself within a completely profane context (Evangelist revival as Friday-nite rave) and transplanting the emotional intensity of the religious to the secular. What’s better than Daft Punk as some sort of deity controlling our convulsive bodies? Through the conventions of step-repeat-step-repeat-etc, Söderberg cuts across the divide between seemingly archaic rituals and hedonistic forms of release, the latter being a chore urbanites practice more often than their God-fearing forefathers. Whatever the reason may be, emotion and motion are mixed so precisely (meticulous editing!) and organically, that the existence of the video is essential to us seeing the music and hearing the images when the song is played alone on iTunes. Director Werner Herzog has always been a proponent of ecstatic truth over factual claim, preferring the wisdom gained from the experience of the sublime through tactility. It never lasts long enough, but once there, on the beer-stained concert floor, on the rotting wooden planks of a blazing white cathedral, or on the creaky metal foundation of the Metro bus, the ecstasy will seem to last forever. Shuffle to the next song, please.
*Söderberg has an impressive CV including the likes of Beyonce, Madonna, and Robyn.
Peter Adair’s Holy Ghost People (1967) captures the day-to-day movements of a Pentecostal Church in what has been circulating as a verite document of folk Americana. A frustrating short film placing the viewer in the middle of action, the clip below with all the snake handling and mumblecore babble absolutely enraptured me the first time, but placed side by side with the Soderberg’s music video, it makes me uncomfortable, those flaying arms and jittery knees bring FAITH to a freeze frame, once a product of unfathomable belief, now laughing stock for those skeptics too cool for Sunday mass.
Look again at the new church! Put your hands up high!
