J.D. Hansel

One and a Half Stars

Gone with the Wind Review

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This is perhaps the most wasteful film I have ever seen in my life.

There is a tendency in film criticism to give the highest value and praise to films that show off the power of cinema – the epics that make the medium seem overpowering, thunderous, and majestic, even if the stories they tell are terrible.  Gone with the Wind, as impressive as it may have been at the time, was the Oscar-bait of its time, and it feels like another one of those films that panders to those who just want a film that looks really cinematic and beautiful and has some unconventional storytelling elements.  Ultimately, however, the problem is the characters.  These people exist in a world that seems so distant from my conception of American history, yet it seems to be trying to offer a genuine perspective that many people had, and I get the impression that this film appealed to those subscribed to the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy” narrative, which just isn’t me.  The one of the film’s main theses seems to be, “have pity on the poor slave-owners who lost the war,” and I simply don’t have the capacity to do that.

Not only are the general vibes and themes of the film off-putting for me, but the main character is simply unbearable throughout most of the film.  I can deal with focusing on a character I don’t entirely like, but the problem here is that this is a four-hour romantic epic that can only hold my attention by being romantic.  When the romantic lead is a rotten, spoiled brat who hardly seems human, the romance fails, and the film becomes uninteresting.  I also find her values incomprehensible, because the obsession with the family’s land seems entirely stupid – it’s just dirt, and there is nothing special about it.  Everything the film romanticizes is unromantic, and as impressive, powerful, and beautiful as the film is technically, visually, and musically, it can’t trick me.  A Clockwork Orange is impressive because it made me care about a character I knew I was supposed to hate, but Gone with the Wind couldn’t make me like a character whom I desperately needed to like in order to make it through all four hours, which is utterly pathetic.  Even if most of the complaints I’ve expressed appear to be about things that may have been done on purpose, I still feel as though my time has been wasted.

Frankly, my dear, shut up.

Raw Deal Review

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SPOILER ALERT

Unlike many of my fellow millennials, I have no reservations or concerns about watching films from Classical Hollywood, because I do not share in their fears that old movies are “too boring.”  My issue with classic cinema is that it can be uncomfortable recommending or showing older films to friends of mine without explaining to them beforehand that I don’t condone the sexism or racism that sometimes appears in these classic films.  When I heard that Raw Deal brings a female perspective to film noir by having a woman narrate, I was hoping that it would be a film noir I could show to friends with no such concerns.  Better yet, the professor of the class that was screening Raw Deal said it was his favorite film noir, which sounded like a good sign (as he was also a big fan of Double Indemnity, which I find excellent).  Regrettably, I not only greatly disliked the film, but was very disappointed to find no trace of feminism or anything of the sort.  While I do think the recurring theme throughout the film is the theme of the choice(s) of its women, I do not think that the film presents the women’s freedom to choose in a positive light.

Most scenes in Raw Deal are part of a set up for the main female choices in the film: Pat’s choice to lie to Joe about Rick’s goon’s phone call concerning Ann, and then her choice tell him the truth.  Pat is the character who is most clearly being silenced throughout the film, never getting the chance to take part in the decision-making in her and Joe’s relationship during the first two acts.  She’s actually being told what to do by men even before Joe starts – at the prison, she’s told she’ll have to wait to see Joe, which is just the first of many moments in the film that focus on how she’s forced to wait, and then she and Joe are commanded by the security guard to keep their voices up.  When Joe starts, if Pat’s narration is to be trusted, the commanding gets alarmingly strict.  She hardly gets to finish one sentence once he gets in the car before he tells her to focus on the wheel, and then when she tells him he doesn’t like his plan to use her and Ann to get through the dragnet, he dismisses her concerns immediately and tells her to get dressed.  She is similarly told what to do and/or silenced when speaking her mind – either on screen or according to her voiceover – in their car ride to the border, just after they pass the dragnet, at the campfire, when they make their way to Walt’s bar by the beach, and repeatedly throughout their whole discussion when he decides to leave her behind and go to Rick’s.  Pat’s narration makes it seem almost as though it’s the story of a woman who’s trapped in a film that’s about her lover’s love story, not hers.

From the perspective of screenwriting theory, it seems like this would be the obvious set-up for a story about a woman who finally learns to make her own choice.  While Joe may be the protagonist and dominate the film’s climax, Pat has her own semi-climactic moment when she decides to lie about the phone call.  However, the liberation that seems to be displayed in this scene is undercut by her more climactic scene, when she realizes her one big decision in the film was a mistake.  If she learns any moral lesson – although that’s debatable – it’s that she should have done as Joe told her in the first place and told him what the man said on the phone call.

Rick goes further in his mistreatment of women, as I suppose one would expect of the villain, and he shows this by keeping his cool after he’s lost his poker game and found out that Joe successfully escaped, but losing it when his lady friend accidentally spills a little bit of her drink on him.  (That’s rather small in comparison, even if it is supposed to be the last straw.)  Still, it’s ultimately Pat’s narrative that reveals time and time again that she lives in a world in which women’s views aren’t as important as men’s, and I don’t see how her decision to withhold information from Joe changes that.  Ann’s choice to shoot a man, which is also set up earlier in the film (with her mentioning in her apartment that she’d be able to stop Joe if she had a gun), but this choice leads to her overwhelming guilt, and ultimately Joe ends up dying hours later anyway.  Add this to the number of times they use the word dame and the way the whistle blows when Ann walks out of the prison and it’s clear that the film does not play as well as one would hope to younger audiences who find anti-feminism in film morally unsatisfactory.  While I’ve heard some make the case today that the way women are presented and/or treated in film today seems worse that it was back in the days of Classical Hollywood, this is clearly the kind of movie that people are afraid to find when they watch classic films because it perpetuates the view that it is the woman’s place to shut up and obey.  At the end of the day, as much as I really appreciate the film’s charmingly “Noir-Expressionist” visual style, I have found nothing else about the film which is particularly noteworthy or memorable, which presents me in the Song of the South conundrum – if all that’s really memorable about the film are the few parts that seem particularly politically inappropriate, should those alone be the memorable part of its reception and ratings?

In this case, I vote yes.

143-raw-deal

Detour (1945) Review

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This film is an absolute mess.  It looks as cheap as it is, constantly making it painfully obvious that the director’s been given less than $100,000 and less than a week to make a movie.  The script is all over the place, with a story that the biggest of fans of this film concede makes little or no sense.  The characters are clearly not meant to be likable, but I found them utterly detestable without reason.  The whole experience is painful, and I think most film critics/historians recognize that, but they still review it well and consider it a classic because they justify its badness.  I’m not going to do that, because this film doesn’t deserve my help.

I’ve heard a number of reasons why the story and characters are as bad as they are and explanations of what it’s supposed to mean.  I’ve come up with a few similar explanations myself, which the professor of my film noir class found rather thoughtful.  Some argue that the story is addressed directly to us, while I argue he’s mentally preparing his story for anyone – primarily the cops – who may question him, and some would say it’s all essentially a dream (which would explain why it seems to function in an over-dramatized fairy tale world of “dream logic” rather than in reality).  The running theme throughout interpretations and justifications of the story is the unreliable narrator, but in the end, these are all mere excuses.  I think the real reason why people make such excuses is that the film is so intellectually fascinating to critics, and these critics want to make their fascination with the film – which often transforms into love for the film – seem justified.  In my view, however, this is not a matter of a film being so bad that it’s good, although I’ve reviewed such films positively in the past.  This is a case of a very creative and fascinating (yet illogical) film that feels like it ought to have a logic to it, so it remains a memorable enigma, and for that it is a classic . . . it’s just not a good classic.

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Alexander Nevsky Review

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I haven’t reviewed many foreign films yet.  I know I’ve done my fair share of British movies, but Amelie and Passion have been my only reviews of films in foreign languages (to my memory).   I’m going to change this.  I expect to be bouncing around the globe for my next few reviews, and a good way to start a world tour of cinema is with Eisenstein.  Seeing as how this man’s work is taught in every film class, I was hoping that Alexander Nevsky, his classic 1938 epic about a war hero in the 1200s, would be a bit more … well, epic.

I’m faced with a serious problem here because this film has brought to the surface a conflict between my ideology and my views on art.  It has been my strong opinion for quite some time that a work of art should not be judged by its message alone, but by how well it conveys it.  For example, someone might agree with the general message or theme in God’s Not Dead, but he/she should still recognize that it’s a remarkably horrendous piece of angel dung.  Similarly, one does not have to be a racist to appreciate D.W. Griffith’s contributions to the cinematic arts as seen in Birth of a Nation.  In music, I can appreciate old rock songs that focus on men who don’t seem to be exceptionally respectful towards women.  (I should note that I’m not referring to particularly misogynistic songs, but instead songs such as “The Wanderer” or “Lightnin’ Strikes” that take infatuation to a rather uncomfortable level of objectification.  However, in all fairness, some songs from this time by female artists – The Chordettes’ “Mr. Sandman,” for example – seem to indicate that this kind of attraction went both ways at the time.)  The key thing about song lyrics, however, is to be watchful of songs that are actually character studies, and often consequently period pieces, which are written and performed from the perspective of the character being analyzed and explored (not necessarily the artist’s view).

It only makes sense, then, that I would have to approach Alexander Nevsky with the same stance, focusing on the craft more than the conclusion, but alas, I am unable to appreciate anything about this film because I am so overwhelmed by its disgusting ideology.  I have spent much time pondering this, and I think I have realized a few factors that have been at play in my analysis of art.  The first factor is the way the film sees itself.  This may seem odd, but I think that movies nearly always have a way that they “feel” about their own contents, and while 2001: A Space Odyssey has a very conceited view of itself, Dr. Strangelove clearly thinks that the events it displays are absurd, and it critiques them for such.  So, Eisenstein could have made a movie that analyzed the people of the time period objectively (without sharing in their perspective or criticizing them), and he could have made it as a critique of their ways, but instead he played along with their loony nationalism and gave them the operatic choir they desired.  Secondly, if a work of art has a serious flaw in its point of view, I can still appreciate it as art if it supplies enough other elements that make me respect it in a different way.  “My Sweet Lord” redeems itself, and I therefore greatly appreciate it, but “Anaconda” offers no such merit, and therefore leaves us only with the words to be analyzed.

Lo and behold, there may not be as much contradiction in my views as I had feared.  I do think that Eisenstein did put together a work that is quite impressive, but not to the extent that it redeems its dogmatic, propagandic nature.  To its credit, it surprised me by taking a sharp turn in the way it handled the awkward (and somewhat sexist) storyline of the men who made a girl choose which of them would be her husband.  As it turns out, one of the men decides that he would rather be with a different woman – the one who fought bravely and competently in the battle.  This not only gives us a strong, courageous female character to enjoy, but also takes away a touch of the “shallow” feeling in the film’s romantic affairs.  Still, the redeeming quality throughout is bravery, and since I am no fan of bravery, I cannot comply to Eisenstein’s persistent demand that I wallow in the imagined elegance of prideful war.

93 Alexander Nevsky

The Witches Review

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Freaking Roald Dahl.

This article could be focused on any of a few potential rants about this writer.  It is no secret that children’s authors always seem to end up being very . . . difficult people (for lack of a better term), and in a way, Dahl was to Henson what Travers was to Disney.  I could just give Dahl a hard time for being a pain to poor Jim, but that’s not good for a review.  I could instead choose the more obvious rant about how awful it is to make a profession out of terrifying children, but the problem with that is simply that children sometimes like to be scared.  I think it was Walt Disney who said, when accused of making the villains in his animated films to scary,  that children enjoy it if they can peek through their parents’ fingers.  For this reason, I am not against putting a good scare in a children’s film.

My bone to pick with Dahl is a problem with a particular type of scare that is not necessarily limited to stories for children (although that is the genre in which it’s most common): The Awkward Terror.  The Awkward Terror is what I call those moments when there is a misunderstanding concerning the way one should respond to a bad scenario, but rather than making it into awkward comedy, it’s played as horror.  Don’t get me wrong – discomfort has an important place in storytelling: when done in comedy, it leads to the awkward realization that the character forgot to wear pants, and when done in drama, it leads to a good scare when the shadow of a man with a knife is on the shower curtain.  However, when an uncomfortably awkward situation (one in which people can’t figure out how to respond appropriately) meets the uncomfortably chilling spook, I have found that the different types of enjoyment that come from these discomforts cancel each other out, leaving me only uncomfortable with no element of fun.

Now it’s example time.  In an episode of R. L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour, a boy finds himself in a circus tent dressed as a clown, unable to remove his makeup or attire.  As several other clowns surround the boy (who has always had a fear of clowns) he finds his parents there, and rather than displaying the appropriate response of feeling bad for him, they gleefully take off their human disguise to reveal that the boy and his family have always been members of the clown species.  This is terribly awkward as there is no comprehensible response to someone realizing he’s turned into a clown, just as I would not know how to react if someone standing in front of me were to suddenly become a fruit.  There is no reaction to such a bizarre, unnatural phenomenon, and one would be foolish to expect people to enjoy seeing  a spectacle like someone turning into a fruit.

Roald Dahl is stupid enough to turn someone into a fruit.  Not in The Witches, of course, but in his more famous book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which Violet memorably becomes a giant blueberry.  If everyone in the scene responded with sheer terror and tried to save her right away, perhaps the scene could have worked better, but the way people just stand there confusedly as Wonka remains calm and the Oompa Loompas sing in a circle around her makes me squeamish to this day.  Not in a fun, spooky way – in a way that’s just nauseating.  This is the kind of thing Dahl does often that rubs me the wrong way, so I should have known I would dislike the film adaptation of his book that’s practically an ode to the Awkward Terror, The Witches.

Imagine if a whole movie was centered around something as awkward as a person turning into a fruit, but instead of being in a setting of fantasy (in which it might almost be permissible), it’s set in a realistic, normal, everyday place.  That is what Witches is all about: a boy goes to a hotel where he is turned into a mouse.  When different characters see these mice that used to be the boys they loved, their reactions are inevitably incorrect no matter what they are since there cannot be a realistic reaction to such an intangible scenario, which is a clear sign that this whole concept should have been avoided altogether.  It makes the entire film both uncomfortable and unbelievable, without offering a strong plot, strong characters, strong dialogue, or strong morals to make up for it.

To get to the point of this review, the film is a waste of time.  It seems that there are some Henson productions that Muppet fans joke about because of how odd they are, and others that we simply do not address.  Although this is the last film for which Henson was a producer of any sort, he’d had so little involvement in the story that he couldn’t save it, so we Henson fans honestly never give it as much thought as we give The Jim Henson Hour, or even his failed Little Mermaid series.  I cannot fathom how anyone could enjoy a film so tedious that it doesn’t get to its inciting incident until halfway through the running time, so dull that it makes Rowan Atkinson’s character a bore, and so idiotic in theme that I cannot believe it was ever released.  If this flick is watched for any reason, it should be watched for the puppetry, effects, and other excellent elements of the visual style that make this film wickedly impressive as visual art (which is what earned the film as many stars as I’ve given it).  While critics may praise it on the grounds that it will give children quite a scare,  I berate it because it offers a big scare instead of a good scare.  If a movie wants to scare people, it should make sure the emotion it’s grabbing is fear, not disgust.

80 The Witches