J.D. Hansel

Dystopian

Delicatessen Review

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I think the first time I ever saw a scene from a French film was in one of my classes at Harford Community College.  The professor showed a brief clip in which residents of an apartment were all moving in unison to the rhythm of a couple having sex on a bed.  I never knew where it came from, but I would have liked to see the whole film since this scene struck me as both humorous very artistic.

I think the first time I ever saw a French film all the way through was when I watched Amélie.  Consequently, the stylistic choices of Jean-Pierre Jeunet formed my entire schema of what a French film was for a very long time – I think I assumed that his style was normal for French cinema because I didn’t realize the scene I had seen from Delicatessen was by the same director.  Now that I’ve seen many more French films, I can clearly see how Amélie and Delicatessen clearly belong in their own little corner doing their own little thing.

After a bit more consideration, however, what’s struck me is just how different the two films are.  Amélie, while it engages with the dark and gloomy, is extremely romantic, and Delicatessen, while it engages with romance, is extremely dark and gloomy.  Delicatessen takes pride in its repulsiveness, and for some strange reason, I appreciate that.  It’s a very icky movie, and I think it may have started a lot of bad trends in the filmmaking styles of the 1990s (bland color schemes, excessive fish-eye lenses, etc.), but it’s still clever, slick, and a well of creative inspiration.  Don’t make the same mistake I did – now that you know about it, see it sooner rather than later.

The Matrix Review

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I was brought here by The Question.  It’s the question that’s been playing in my head on a loop ever since I first started studying film.  It’s the question I, as a movie buff, have been asked more than any other: “What do you think of The Matrix?”.

Really.  This actually happens.

Whenever someone hears that I’m a film major, they’ll ask me about my favorite film or director, what kind of movies I’d like to make, and what I think of The Matrix.  Sometimes they’ll ask about Christopher Nolan movies, of which I have seen very few, but usually it’s The Matrix.  But do you know what the answer to The Question is?

It’s fine.

It’s a perfectly fine movie.  It’s creative, visually impressive, and kinda fun.  So why does everyone care so much what the movie buffs think of it?

I can only assume it’s because the average moviegoers think there’s much more to this film than they can grasp in one viewing.  They see a certain depth to it – an intellectual, philosophical quality – and they think that we film students hold the key to seeing just how brilliant it is.  Once the average viewer realizes that Neo’s life parallels that of Jesus Christ, he/she can’t help but wonder what other messages and analogies the movie contains that are only visible to those in the know.

Well, I have good news: I do know the key to understanding everything that this film is about … but, believe it or not, I didn’t learn this from studying film.  I learned it because I study philosophy.  Every philosophy student should know where I’m going with this.

Do you want to know what this movie is really about?  Do you want me to spoil it for you?  If not, you can just click the ‘X’ for this tab and go back to browsing the rest of the web, and you’ll continue to see The Matrix as the same work of genius you’ve always thought it was.  But, if you want to know the truth, click the line below.  A warning: once you know the truth, there’s no going back.

[Read more…] about The Matrix Review

Escape from New York Review

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I’ve heard it said that nearly every movie about a future urban dystopia steals its style from Blade Runner.  While I can certainly see the resemblance between the aesthetic of Blade Runner and that of many later films about the future, it’s worth noting that many ’80s movies were portraying cities with the same darkness, theatricality, vivid color, and nods to film noir cinematography as Blade Runner.  What’s interesting is how using a theatrical and colorful style in both visuals and characters was very common in horror films in the 1970s, but then somehow moved into the mainstream in the 1980s, seemingly without reason.  It makes sense for a horror film to have a mixture of darkness and theatricality, but why did this become a part of the styles of all ’80s movies?

I think the answer is Escape from New York, which I see as a more or less direct predecessor to Blade Runner.  Released in 1981, this movie shows horror director John Carpenter bringing the stylistic elements of horror – including the visual style, the acting style, and the writing style – to both the dystopian sci-fi genre and the action genre.  I suspect that this film took part in making over-the-top lighting more mainstream, but as much as I appreciate this, I think what’s particularly impressive about this film is how it brings much cleverness to the action genre.  Most action movies are just looking for an excuse to fire a gun or set off a bomb, but this movie is interested in creating situations that make the viewer really want to see the action hero – or anti-hero – take action.  There’s a wonderful scene with a street that everyone tries to avoid driving down at night because lines of people on either side of the road wait for unsuspecting cars, line up, and smash the car as it goes along their little conveyor-belt of doom.  There’s technically no reason for this to be considered a “horror” scene since there’s nothing supernatural about it and there’s arguably no suggestion of insanity (merely desperation), but it’s certainly the kind of scene that only a horror filmmaker would write.

Of course, there are other aspects of the writing that are more conventional for the genre – a rescue mission, a countdown, etc. – but even these are done in a way that somehow creates more intensity than most action films.  This makes Escape from New York a thrilling, chilling, and exciting film that’s sure to make the viewer rethink film genres altogether.

Wizards Review

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This movie is extremely different from what I was expecting, which is odd since my expectations were neither rigid nor conventional, so I should have been a tough audience to surprise.  Ralph Bakshi, however, is full of surprises, and his creativity knows no bounds.  Unfortunately, creativity sometimes needs some constraints in order to be understandable to those who are not the thinker, and Wizards lacks the lucidity it requires.  The best example of this is how the film suggests an army in a fantasy world improves its performance simply by watching a projected film reel of Nazis to get pumped up, without any understanding of the Nazi party’s tenants.  It’s a strange idea, but the way it is expressed visually makes it stranger: the reel isn’t projected onto any particular space, instead appearing behind the army as though the Nazi film filled the air and/or the soldiers in the fantasy world were becoming part of the film.  This isn’t simply a matter of openness of interpretation – this is cinematically illegible, and it is typical of the rest of the movie, which seems to follow dream logic more than narrative logic and expects the audience to buy into many unexplained, confusing plot points.  When this is combined with the bizarre characters, unsettling sexual imagery, and poorly executed climax, the result is a film that, in spite of its inspired artistry, has little substance and no coherence, making it regrettably difficult to tolerate.

Metropolis Review: Upon Further Consideration…

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NOTE: This is an amendment to an earlier review of the same film.

When I first watched this movie, it was the Giorgio Moroder version (a soundtrack comprised of ’80s pop that only sometimes fit the scene well).  This is because I had little tolerance for silent cinema at the time, and while I still don’t think I’m very good at watching silent movies, I’m improving.  The main reason why it made sense for me to return to this story is that the version I saw from back in the ’80s was missing so much of the movie – a lot of the film was lost and had yet to be restored.  I didn’t realize that at the time, so I stupidly criticized Lang for the unintelligible plot that the incomplete version had (and felt quite ashamed when I learned within the month or so that followed that I had been so ignorant of such important information).  The current (2010) version is missing only about five minutes, which is why it’s called “The Complete Metropolis” in some editions, and its plot is perfectly understandable and enjoyable.  For this and other reasons, although I’m not changing the four-star rating I gave the film before, I think I appreciate the movie even more than I did years ago.

It is very clear that this is a unique work of art from the very beginning.  The film’s opening – specifically the title card – is in and of itself worthy of praise, and it sets the exciting tone for the epic movie that follows.  The film is structured in three acts, more or less, and the cards that tell us how far we are through the movie help to create the theatrical experience.  The theatrical feeling – that is, the feeling of being at a stage show – makes me wish I could see this in the form of a musical, but I know that it is designed to serve a very different purpose.  Lang is borrowing from theater to appeal to the people who would be too embarrassed to go to a film that didn’t resemble high culture in some way: the upper class.  This project of making cinema something for intelligent and sophisticated audiences was very important to many German filmmakers at the time, and it is apparent in the relentless use of biblical references all throughout the film, even including the obscure Canaanite god “Moloch.”  The protagonist is very much a Christ-like figure, but is also at least as much a Moses (since he is, more or less, the son of Pharaoh).  Nods to the Tower of Babel are also mixed in, with Maria entirely reworking the story to support her thesis – an unsettling use of religion that sort of makes Maria, a very moral character, seem almost like a lying demagogue.

The film has such a strange mix of elements that I love and elements that I find frustratingly disappointing.  The binary between the moral Maria who hasn’t a bad bone in her body (and who seems like she might as well be oblivious to the existence of sex) and the robot Maria who embraces all things sexual and wild is a great setup, but it would have been great for the two of them to have had an encounter.  The protagonist is a fascinating character: he has a number of visions that make him either a madman or a supernatural prophet, and the has his most important vision – a nightmare sequence – after he wakes up, whereas any other film would show him having a nightmare and then waking up.  It is actually this nightmare scene that makes the film work for me; it’s my favorite part of the movie because it builds up to such a satisfying climax of the second act, ending just as perfectly as the second Hunger Games film does.  I can’t help but compare it to the film adaptations of Carrie, which send us into the third act with great anticipation to see how everything’s about to fall to chaos, “B-movie style,” although Lang gives us more hype before act three that makes it all that much better.  The problem is that the third act doesn’t offer quite enough excitement to live up to this hype, instead feeling rather long.  The ending, too, is not as satisfying as it could be, mostly because the message that the film keeps preaching about the heart being a “mediator” isn’t very meaningful (and I think I read somewhere that Lang himself didn’t sincerely believe it).

This issue of the vague thesis brings me to the question of what the heck this movie is supposed to be.  Is it a utopia or a dystopia?  I hear that Hitler loved this movie, but I can’t tell if it promotes fascism, socialism, democracy, or some other form of government entirely.  Somehow this movie is very European and very American.  It may be in black and white, but it is very colorful (although perhaps my memories of the lovely tints in the Moroder version have shaped the way I want to see this version).  I can’t even tell what I’m supposed to think about technology after watching this film.  It almost tries to undercut its every move, and yet it still manages to be a very satisfying experience.  There’s a kind of energy in this film that’s infectious, and it’s the kind of movie that I just want to have on in the background all the time because I enjoy its essence more than anything else about it.  After thinking about all of this, one thing has become more and more clear: this must, indeed, be made into a musical.  Get to it.

Dark City Review

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READ THIS REVIEW BEFORE SEEING THE FILM

For what it’s worth, I really tried to watch this movie the right way.  I had been warned that the film has an opening voiceover (added by the studio due to concerns that humans are stupid) which gives away many of the biggest surprises, reveals, and twists.  So, I did my filmic duty and muted everything up until the opening titles, which is what everyone who sees it ought to do.  Unfortunately, I forgot that I had the closed captions turned on, so I still had something important spoiled for me, but it wasn’t much more than had already been spoiled by the guy who had informed me about the voiceover in the first place.  I think the best way to avoid this issue is to just watch the director’s cut, which does not spoil itself at the start and remains more true to what the film was meant to be.  I eagerly look forward to watching the director’s cut for myself, if only because, in spite of its problems, I actually greatly enjoy this movie – so much so that I started watching it again from the beginning almost immediately after it ended.  No matter how many times the movie explains itself (and it is a lot), it manages to stay surprising and interesting, holding my attention from start to finish.

One of the things that makes it so captivating is the editing, which is incredibly fast.  When I started watching the movie from the beginning for a second time, it felt normal to me, but during my initial viewing, it threw me off with its rather awkward speed and tight transitions, throwing out so much of the space to catch one’s breath between cuts/scenes that other films offer.  It’s obviously visually outstanding – that’s arguably the point of the film – but I think there’s more to it than that.  Yes, it’s about getting lost in another world and exploring a strange, anxiety-inducing place, but it also makes an argument for how the human mind/soul works, and it makes it well.  Its story may be nothing remarkable, but that doesn’t matter – It’s still one of the most thrilling films I’ve ever seen.  If not for the film’s inability to keep its mouth shut and let me figure it out for myself, and if not for the film’s disinterest in making me feel emotion, I would be hailing it as practically perfect and as one of the all-time greatest movies ever made.