Stanley Kubrick Week Day 7: 2001: A Space Odyssey

Today I watched Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Despite the title, this film does not kick off in 2001, it begins at the dawn of the human race.  It begins with ape-men struggling to survive on the African Savannah as scarce resources put them into conflict with neighboring tribes.  Soon the tribe that we are following is changed though, changed by a strange black monolith.  millions of years in the future and another black monolith has been discovered by humanity, this time on the moon.  Later a new space mission has been launched as Discovery One has set out for Jupiter with a small crew and the HAL 9000 super computer.  If you know anything about A.I. in movies, you know how this goes.

While 2001 is perhaps my favorite of Kubrick’s films, it is certainly not an easy one.  It’s structure is quite odd for one, and drawing the connective tissue between the three sequences, the cavemen, the astronauts, and the starchild, can be confusing and difficult.  You put this on expecting space travel but are presented with 20 minutes of dialogue free monkey mayhem before then, why?  Of course there are good reasons why, this film is like a chronicle of the evolution of thought and talks about our relationship to the universe across eons.  Still, the film doesn’t just come out and say that, it expects a lot out of it’s audience.

That’s kind of why it’s great though, it offers one of the most realistic views of space travel and cosmic exploration and expects you to think about what it means, instead of blatantly telling you.  This makes 2001 stand out among the mostly pulpy and populist sci fi cinema.  To this day there are still scant few films in the genre that have such faith in the audience.  It’s also a great looking film to boot, as great lengths are gone too to ensure a sense of realism while maintaining the wonder exploration and unknown horizons often engenders.  Simply put, this is a very rewarding film, in keeping with it’s difficulty.  It may ask more of you than most films, but it gives you more in return and is absolutely must see cinema.  5/5

 

Stanley Kubrick Week Day 6: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Today I watched Stanley Kubrick’s  Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1968)

While I’m at it I might as well complete my look at Kubrick’s war themed efforts with this classic black comedy.  This farce begins when U.S. General Jack D. Ripper takes control of his own base and orders the bombers under his command to launch a Nuclear assault on Russia.  The planes go to radio silence and after that only accept communications delivered with a special code known only to General Ripper, who is quite mad it seems.  The President and his chiefs of staff now meet in their command room at The Pentagon only to confounded at every turn and unable to recall their bombers.  In the interests of peace they notify the Soviets of the incoming bombers but the Soviets respond that they have set up a doomsday device which, if they are struck by a nuclear attack, will make the Earth uninhabitable, so everything is totally screwed.

I feel like Kubrick’s sense of humour often goes underappreciated in his more serious films, yet humour has always been present in his works, even his most severe.  He has always couched his most political work with sneering satire and this is the crown jewel of his work in that direction.  Of course this is also one of his most blatantly political as it directly parodies the fear of nuclear Armageddon and mines the very grim feelings of the Cold War for some insane laughs.  Now a lot of this has to be credited to the late great Peter Sellers and his chameleon-like ability to disappear into numerous characters, here he plays three.  His performances form the core of this film as it works off of his style of silliness, building on it with absurd political cynicism.

Kubrick often has the reputation of the stodgy perfectionist fawned over by austere film students, but here we see a much more fun side to him, a side that is not wholly absent from his other works.  As I have been one of the aforementioned austere students, I think the reason is because it builds a heroic ideal of him as this perfectionist perfection of the auteur.  But this can’t really be the truth, Kubrick was still a human and expressed a knowable humanity.  I think it is notably through his comedy that the humanity can be seen and while this film is obviously great, I would also like to see more acknowledgement of his humour across the breadth of his work, it really makes him more relatable.  5/5

Stanley Kubrick Week Day 5: Full Metal Jacket

Today I watched Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987)

This film begins in 1967 as a new batch of recruits is brought into boot camp, training for the Vietnam war effort overseas.  They are immediately introduced to their drill sergeant who mercilessly attacks them with a barrage of the most hateful words you’ve ever heard, giving them nicknames in the process which will identify them throughout their military careers.  Our protagonist here is Joker though the real story in this segment of the film is that of Gomer Pyle, a hapless recruit who is singled out for harsh treatment by the drill sergeant.  His story doesn’t end well, but Joker ends up in Vietnam, so no one gets off easy.  The second part of the film follows Joker as he experiences the Tet Offensive first hand as a member of the press corps.

I focused a lot on the first half or so of this movie, the boot camp, because frankly it is the most memorable and effective part of the film.  This first act could, and probably should have been it’s own film what with it’s self contained subject matter of abuse and human misery.  It’s honestly the biggest flaw in this movie, how the two halves feel too self contained and separate, not to mention the first being far better in every way to the second.  The boot camp parts are totally iconic and have gone down in film history as some of the most viscerally presented anti-war sentiments to ever grace the silver screen and the characters don’t even get to the war.

Once they do arrive in the ‘jungle’ the film becomes beset by problems, not the least of which is the fact that this looks nothing like Vietnam, it looks like a chilly day on the English countryside, which it is.  Somehow the perfectionist Kubrick failed to make his location look anything like the place it is supposed to be mimicking, no one looks like they are in a jungle, they all look really cold.  Furthermore there really are not enough call backs to the first half of the movie, maybe this was to illustrate how alien the training is to the real experience, but without that being pointed out it doesn’t seem to go anywhere.  Not that the actual Vietnam segment of the film is bad, it’s just way below par for Kubrick and doesn’t live up to the promising opening chapter.  Still, that first act is amazing and the film is totally worth it for that alone, the second half being more a cautionary tale about how not even the best of filmmakers can make convincing jungle warfare out of British industrial sites.  4/5

Stanley Kubrick Week Day 4: Paths of Glory

Today I watched Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957)

Set during the First World War, this film follows Corporal Dax of the French army as he deals with the inhumanity of social climbers in authority. Dax and his men are ordered to take a fortified German position nicknamed The Anthill yet pretty much everyone agrees that they lack the manpower needed for the operation.  Despite this his commander launches the attack and as everyone expected, it fails disastrously with many of the men not even able to climb out of their trenches.  From the general’s armchair this looks like an act of cowardice, so now despite the soldiers doing everything in their power to achieve victory, they are brought up on charges of cowardice.  Three soldiers are selected to make an example of but Corporal Dax will not take this lying down and he rises to his men’s defense.

Obviously one can see this film has some very strong anti-war sentiments as it deals directly with the vast inequality between officers and common soldiers.  It works very well in exposing the hubris and tactical idiocy which led to the First World War being the huge quagmire that it was and puts much of the blame at the feet of social climbers who have forgotten their ability to empathize with the common folk.  Along with this the film offers a harrowing condemnation of capital punishment as well, seeing as how it plays so strongly into the story.  It lumps it together with the horrors of war as being part of the same endemic barbarism that seems to all stem from nationalist sentiments.

While this is an early Kubrick work and thus doesn’t express the full breadth of his stylistic acumen, there are some really impressive shots here.  Of course they all serve the purpose of forwarding the themes and ideas as this is a very tightly constructed work.  It may not showcase Kubrick’s famous experimental edge, but it does show just how much he had mastered the basics for sure.  His staging here is quite traditional and within that context extremely well executed as the emotional thrust of the film is impossile to misconstrue.  Furthermore he gets fantastic performances out of his cast, especially Kirk Douglas whom he would work with again on Spartacus later.  All in all it’s a real tour de force that doesn;t get talked about nearly enough when discussing the canon of Kubrick, maybe because war movies were about to change drastically in the coming years.  That is neither here nor there though, this is just a very solid movie that is certainly worth your time.  5/5

Vampire Week Day 7: Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive

Today I watched Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton play Adam and Eve, a pair of artsy vampire lovers.  Their romance has endured the centuries and they have served as muses for mortals throughout time, but now Adam is quite deep depression.  Eve sets out to console him, flying by night from her home in Tangier to his in Detroit.  Despite being vampires both of them feed through stolen medical supplies as they both express fear at the increase in tainted blood out there.  Unfortunately their idyllic hermitage in abandoned Detroit is soon invaded when Eve’s sister arrives and brings a lot of the old vampire predation with her.

What this film does right is something extremely rare in the world of film, it presents a real, stable relationship.  In the vast majority of films a relationship is an objective or a piece of someone’s past, it’s an object like any other prize.  But that’s not what a relationship really is in the real world, oh sure it can be that goal for a moment but once acquired it becomes something else.  Here Jarmusch presents a romantic relationship as a character all it’s own, larger than the two individuals who contribute too it.  As such I must spoil that nothing to do with their relationship becomes any sort of conflict, it is a character not a story.  Of course it still changes, it evolves like any well written character though there is still a sense of unchanging timelessness about everything here.

This film directly deals with the immortality of vampires as Adam’s depression can be linked directly to the long life blues as the world has changed so drastically around him.  One could see him as being a stand in for Jarmusch’s own misgivings about the world, feelings which go wholly into the apocalyptic.  This film certainly displays a very doomed tone, set as it is against the backdrop of a nearly abandoned and decaying Detroit.  Nowhere can this be seen better though than in the metaphor of tainted blood which comes up a few times in the movie.  Human blood is just not that good for vamps anymore as it is all generally impure for mostly unstated reasons and Adam wonders how much longer the humans can survive on this polluted world.

All this cynicism certainly fits the metaphor though, Adam is a drugged up rock star who has withdrawn from the world in mysanthropy, only saved by the love of Eve.  I am more than certain that this is a metaphor for Jarmusch’s own feelings as he has expressed frustration numerous times with the direction of the film industry.  Film as an art form has really become the most conservative of them all, filled as it is with cheap violence and lack of morality, it’s just too expensive to make a film for people to take risks.  Sometimes I say film is a dying art because of these very things, it has become an art of comfort, not the confrontational new frontier it once was.  I can really identify with Jarmusch’s discouragement here as the film industry becomes more and more a factory for re-makes, but then again the Hollywood ‘dream factory’ never was as artistic as one would like.  5/5

Vampire Week Day 6: Park Chan-wook’s Thirst

Today I watched Park Chan-wook’s Thirst (2009)

While on the outside it appears as though father Sang-hyun is a very pious man who dedicates his time to the well being of the ill, he harbours great sadness in his heart.  As such he has signed up to be a human test subject in the treatment of a rare and fatal illness.  Of all the people who sing up to test the vaccine, he alone survives for reasons that are unknown at the time.  As he returns to life in the world, news of his recovery has spread and people think he has healing powers, he doesn’t actually, instead he is slowly transforming into a vampire.  Being a christian though, he refuses to kill and manages to make do by stealing blood from hospitals and from the donation of an old priest.

The plot really kicks off when he takes part in an old friend’s weekly mahjong nights and falls for his wife.  Soon they begin an affair and she learns of his vampirism, wanting to be one too and to escape her dead end life.  This situation just goes so wrong and soon Sang-hyun is caught on some very unstable ethical ground as he disagrees significantly with his new lover’s philosophy on the matter.  Maybe that’s something a vampire should work out before siring others of it’s kind, both this film and Interview with a Vampire have drama largely driven by the conflict between killing and not killing.  So if you ever find yourself a vampire in need of company remember that philosophy on the value of human life is much more important to a relationship now.

While it has become a laughably over done trope, the vampire romance is an insepperable element of the monster’s portrayal now.  Thirst is probably the best in this vein as, more than any other vampire film, it really manages to humanize it’s subjects and get beyond the cliches.  Sang-hyun is such a singular vampire character, not just because of his antithetical faith but because of just how much time the film spends on him long before it brings out the horror.  Even the actual conflict is held at bay for a nearly excruciatingly long time as we get to know the film’s subject.  All of this pays off with one of the finest finales I have ever seen in film, a powerful emotional moment that relies on a lot of set up to be what it is.  In that sense the movie really isn’t as consistent as one might like as the build up is hard to even remember with what the finale offers.  It’s a really excellent film, all things considered, but in some ways it is defined by waiting for it’s final moments.  4/5

Vampire Week Day 5: The Spierig Brothers’ Daybreakers

Today I watched The Spierig Brothers’ Daybreakers (2009)

Daybreakers is set in a near future world where vampires have taken over and are now the dominant race.  Unfortunately they have a bit of an appetite problem and humans are uncooperative so the blood supplies are running low.  Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, a hematologist looking for a blood replacement with the major blood corporation headed by Sam Neill’s Charles Bromley where they farm the last remaining humans.  To force an action plot in here, Edward gets swept up with renegade free humans and meets Elvis, played by Willem Dafoe, who was once a vampire but is now cured.  With a serious blood shortage and starving vampires turning into horrific monsters, Edward and Elvis must now race against the clock to figure out this whole cure business.

There is a metaphor in there about sustainable food and the evils of the meat industry of course, but Daybreakers really fails to live up to it’s premise.  This movie is a bunch of really good scenes in a very well realized sci-fi setting that fails to realize it’s full potential for a number of reasons.  Firstly it is hamstrung by too much action and forced horror movie tension which distracts from the neat idea of a vampire medical drama and from both the characters and themes.  Secondly the film’s ending is quite rushed and simplistic in comparison to many of the emotionally heavy and complex subplots and scenes.  It sacrifices a really complex discussion of meat ethics for the moral ease of an escapist action flick.

It should be noted though that this film is filled with incredible scenes and ideas, all presented extremely well on their own.  The acting is impeccable and the direction very sound indeed, the Spierig brothers bring out the best in Ethan Hawke in particular, but it just doesn’t satisfy on the whole.  While the film’s real drama comes from it’s dialogue and the choices that it’s protagonists must make in this strange world, but that frequently gets sidelined for contrived violence which only gets in the way.  I really wish I could love this movie, but it’s flaws just run too deep.  I can still recommend it though because of numerous sequences that are really impressive, both visually and emotionally.  3/5

Vampire Week Day 4: Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In

Today I watched Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In (2008)

In suburban Stockholm a boy named Oskar lives a very lonely life.  He is the frequent victim of bullying and doesn’t seem to relate to any of the other kids.  His time is spent unhealthily obsessing over revenge and violence until one night he meets another young kid from his apartment block.  It seems as though they just moved in, coincidentally there also seems to be a series of murders.  Of course his new friend is a vampire, but Oskar is not in as much danger as one would think as the bonds of friendship formed in these formative years often become unbreakable.

Yes, it’s a vampire coming of age mashup, but not it’s not nearly as bad as that sounds.  This film paints a picture of growing up that speaks to the alienated outsiders whom vampires most readily make metaphors for.  It paints the world around it’s protagonists as extremely austere and sterile, the bitter cold of the Swedish snow can be felt constantly.  It’s more than just a lifeless chill though, it’s a world in which it is hard to see our protagonist existing, thus even before the monster appears there is the horror of repression all around.

While Oskar’s vampire friend may appear to be a girl, it explicitly states this not to be the case which adds further complexity to it’s coming of age narrative.  This is not a normal person’s coming of age and while the film is very subtle and never specifically states whose coming of age it is, it is certainly not a ‘normal’ person’s.  As such the film captures a lot of the chaos, fear, and confusion of someone who was not prepared by a hetero-normative society for what they would become in puberty.  Aside from that the film offers some unique views into corners of vampire lore that are often left untouched or only briefly mentioned, as the title itself refers to how a vampire cannot enter private property unless invited.  This is definitely a film to see this season as it has already become something of a modern classic, I certainly think it deserves the praise as it’s smart, subtle storytelling is open to much interpretation.  5/5

Vampire Week Day 3: Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire

Today I watched Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire (1994)

There is, of course, a reason that so many vampire stories exist, vampires are, despite the efforts of countless hack writers, pretty damn cool.  Being so cool it is only natural that they become protagonists of a sort, dark, predatory antiheroes living tragic, immortal existences.  Anne Rice has written numerous novels on the subject and naturally this is the film adaptation thereof that sees a vampire named Louis recounting his unlife to a modern reporter.  He begins his tale as a colonial noble in the southern bayou who is turned into a creature of the night by the vampire Lestat.  But Louis still clings to the preciousness of life and they bicker endlessly about killing their prey until one day Lestat sires another vampire, a young girl.  Of course turning a child into an ageless immortal is kind of super messed up so you can be sure that a heck of a lot of drama ensues.

I really sensed a classist undercurrent with this film, I suppose it can be seen in many vampire works as they are often portrayed as privileged and noble in their predations.  Here in particular we see slave owning southern white nobility of the colonial era preying on slaves and prostitutes.  This is not the film to shed light on those themes and interpretations of the vampire mythos though, much like Jordan’s previous film, In the Company of Wolves, this is primarily a mood piece driven by imagery and personal melodrama.

As a character piece the film does work though, despite the distractions of the world around the action sometimes intruding.  There is a concerted effort made to seperate the subjects from the world they inhabit actually, as the crux of their tragedy comes from the alienation of watching the world move on without them.  That being said I don’t think this film’s star studded cast does it many favours as few of the performers seem able to truly inhabit their roles.  Tom Cruise as Lestat especially stands out as poor casting to me as his general performance lacks the depth necessary for him to come off as anything more than a scenery chewing bad guy.  But then there is a young Kirsten Dunst as the child vampire and she really brings a level of terror to the picture in just how disturbing her character is.  So all in all I do really enjoy this film, it lacks some insight into it’s own setting and how the characters fit into it but it does offer some of the finest gothic tragedy in modern cinema.  It is decadent and operatic in often extreme and jarring ways, but still has a heart and is effective at drawing the sympathy out of it’s protagonist.  3/5

Vampire Week Day 2: Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys

Today I watched Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys (1987)

Brothers Michael and Sam’s mother has just left their father and driven with them out too California to live with their grandfather.  Their new home is just outside the beach town of Santa Carla and while they bemoan the lack of TV and other modern entertainments in their grandfather’s abode at first, they soon discover a thriving beach night life of carnivals, comic shops, and shredded saxophonists gyrating on open air stages.  But in this anarchic view of west coast life lies a dark secret, Santa Carla is overrun with the undead.  It is Michael who makes contact with them first as he follows a cute girl from the aforementioned sax music, only to be confronted by David, the leader of the bloodsuckers who decides to initiate him into their rambunctious crew.

This movie is one of the most 80’s movies there is, brilliantly stylish and full of swagger.  The film is steeped in the style o LA gothic and night time pacific beaches.  With both the main characters and the vampires themselves all being quite young there is also a strong element of youth rebellion here, which forms something of the thematic thrust of the film.  The vampires here could be said to be metaphorical of that aggressive and violent expression of youth, and of the bad decisions one could make.  The problem then would be how much the film fetishizes and borderline worships both it’s antagonists and it’s radical setting.  Of course such rebellious sentiments are probably the point as that energy does drive the film and run through it’s principle cast.

A young Kiefer Sutherland as the head vampire David is positively hypnotic here as a personification of youthful danger.  His menace rises above the humour and 80’s camp  that much of the film resonates with and keeps things focused on the monsters.  Jason Patrick is also quite good as the infected Michael, though this role is mostly a sense of disorientation and wearing sunglasses at odd hours.  The rest of the characters are who they need to be, but stand out to me much less, they are all swept along by this film’s sense of chaos and energy.  That riotous attitude is the reason why I love this flick and is the reason why I highly recommend it as a deserved cult classic of vampire cinema.  4/5