Reviews

Now, several months after I first saw "American Beauty" is prompted to thinking about it again, not so much by the Oscar hoopla, but rather by a comment made recently by esteemed screenwriter William Goldman, during an interview on Charlie Rose - he said that the only real difference between "The Ice Storm" and "American Beauty" is that the latter is a financial hit, while the former was not.

What is the element that seperates these two, essentially similar films, equally well-made films, that accounts for the disparity at the Box-Office? Mr. Goldman would say simply that people wanted to see "American Beauty" and did not want to see "The Ice Storm" - though (and he knows this) it goes a little deeper than that.

Both are keen studies of suburban inertia, the key difference is that "The Ice Storm" is a hermetically sealed one, it does not seek to engage the audience in a way that "American Beauty" does, it is a tightly focussed character study. "American Beauty" engages us from the get go, with the "Sunset Boulevard"-esque voice over delivered right to us. More precisely than that, "American Beauty" speaks to something universal in all of us - we ALL believe that we see beauty in a place that no one else does, it alone is OUR beauty, because we have taken the time to look closer.

(When I told this to a friend he pointed out that it had nothing to do with the above point, but that people would rather see Mena Suvari seducing Kevin Spacey, than Christina Ricci seducing little boys in bathrooms).

Ho-Po Wing's mantra, and an ode to the search for something permanent in this age of transience and impermanence in which we live.

In what looks to be a very free, almost loose film, NO decision is arbitrary, and Wong Kar-Wai proves himself, once again, one of THE filmmakers (along with Hirokazu Kore-Eda, the Dardenne brothers, Erick Zonca, Steven Soderbergh, Tom Tykwer) who will lead us into, and through the next decade and beyond. His films take the idea that form should mirror content to an entirely new level. They capture what it means to be alive, to be human. Kar-Wai understands that film is a construct, an abstraction of reality, and in doing so works his particular brand of magic. He operates in a hyper-reality in which he weaves together pop melodies, jump cuts, freeze frames, soliloquy, color and black and white into a fabric which is... just that, more real than real - but human.

That is what this is - a story about human beings, beyond, beneath, through, under and up-side down of that the protagonist is homosexual. This is not a GAY ISSUE film, thankfully, nor is it a gay NOVELTY film, again - spare me (I've been spared). It transcends what drags so many films (particular character driven ones) into charicature hell and reaches true poetic heights.

The film is sped up, slowed down, brightly lit in lush colors, stark in high-contrast black and white. It's all very Shakespearean... in that Shakespeare oscillated between verse and prose, and not for the simple purpose of differentiating commoners from royalty - the shifts are subtle and more than anything represented characters various states of mind - Kar-Wai, with cinematographer Chris Doyle, does the same thing here, cinematically.

Ultimately, for all the stylistic brashness, it is the simplicity of the film that makes it work. The simple story framework that makes it GO. As he did with "Chunking Express" Wong Kar-Wai pulls off a meditation about what it means to be human, through all the temporal, sensual, and geographical dislocation that is MODERN life.

Except perhaps in Paris where, until recently, it played in a cinema just off the Champs Elysee. This film has been condemned from just about every possible, so I will not try and defend it blow by blow. There is much to appreciate here, particularly when the film is looked at in the context of it being the '80's "Last Tango In Paris" - perhaps even self consciously so. The opening shot of "Nine 1/2 Weeks" echoes the famous opening of "Last Tango In Paris" and there are many parallels, but never to the point of it becoming overt.

If one accepts that form is to mirror content and apply that here it becomes clear that efforts were made to do so. The visual 'look' of both films not only mirror their content (for 'Tango': a muted color pallette, yet somehow lush, there is a layer over everything) but also their era. Both films deal with similar subject matter, in the context of the time in which they were made.

"Nine 1/2 Weeks" IS the '80's in much the way that "Last Tango..." is the '70's - the obsessions of an era are embodied in the struggle of two human bodies. Motions, touches are imbued with something beyond what is happening in the here and now. Very much in question here is the internal landscape of the characters involved - something one, as a filmmaker, would rather expose in a visual way as opposed to having characters pontificate about it (though Brando TALKS in "Last Tango..." it is very often what he doesn't say, the silence between two lines of dialogue, that SAY more) - in "Nine 1/2 Weeks" there are many visual cues/pointers as to the characters' states of mind, i.e. their apartments, the manner in which they are decorated stark, all straight lines (John) vs. cluttered and dusty (Liz). Elements like that make a film work.

The only moments of relief that Liz experiences in the film are when she is away from the city, away from John, amidst nature with the painter - in fact, one almost never sees John outside, just like Paul in "Last Tango..." - all these little cues about character should raise the questions in the viewer's mind - what sort of person would?...

There is a new aesthetic of cinema currently evolving in Europe, of which Erick Zonca is a chief proponent. It achieves much the same effects as the those intended by the Danish filmmakers of the Dogma 95 school - but without having to adhere to their 'Vow of Chastity'. Zonca's feature film debut "The Dreamlife of Angels" takes flight in a way that a Dogma 95 just does not. "Alone" is a earlier short film of his and comes from very much the same social context/consciousness as "Dreamlife..." and is in many ways a precursor. The film is visceral and authentic - it manages to convey the protagonist's internal state of being solely through her action, both dramatic action and physical, something every film should strive for. There is no time given over to introspection, yet every action is motivated - what does she want? A job. It is an example, not just of good filmmaking, but of good screen craft - that is, the script is excellent, something that can be said for very few films - it is simple and elegant and this follows through the rest of the film. It is a film of the have nots of the modern European youth in which the imperative is to have a job, because without one, one simply does not exist.

"Rosetta" a film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne and winner of the 1999 Palme d'Or at Cannes is another film from this aesthetic that is even more harsh in its examination.

This is film at its simplest: pure cinema. And then he pulls out the rug from underneath you. The director removes the event from the film, in doing so calls attention not to what the protagonist's action will be, but rather the reason for the action. Nor does he make the reason specific, though the concerns are human, universal, which transcends the specific. Foremost this film is about cinema, cinema and the what it means to be, to exist.