J.D. Hansel

Satire

Sunset Boulevard Review

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Every now and again, I’m quite surprised which members of my family decide to sit down by the TV and join me in watching a movie that I wouldn’t think is his/her kind of thing.  This happened most recently when I was spending a weekend at my parents’ house and I put Sunset Boulevard on the big screen.  This is a dark, dramatic satire of Hollywood mixed with Gothic chills and romantic comedy from 1950, yet my 12-year-old sister decided to watch it with me.  What made this so special is that Sunset Boulevard happens to be not only a great film by one of my favorite directors, but also a very useful teaching tool.

The first reason why this film is helpful for learning about film history is that it concerns icons of silent cinema, so it re-introduces its viewers to the era with a focus on Cecil B. DeMille, cameos by actors from the time, and an impression of Charlie Chaplin (a very good one, I might add).  Oddly, this actually makes it a very good example of 1950s cinema as well.  The films of the 1950s generally seem to show an awareness of the fact that Hollywood was in a state of crisis as its studio system was falling apart and its Code was weakening, and this film, much like 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain, parallels this with the crisis actors from the silent era faced when they had to learn how to succeed in the sound era.  This film, then, offers the flip side to Singin’ in the Rain, showing how tragic it was for the stars (like Lena) who couldn’t keep shining through the 1930s.  The one thing that makes this a poor example of 1950s film is that it can be seen as a film noir (a relatively small genre) due to its uncommon traits and tropes – voice-over narration explaining the story of how a man died, chilling exploration of the psychology of madness, a narrative about choosing between the good girl and the intimidating woman, deep, jagged shadows and wild chiaroscuro lighting, and general sense that everything is spiraling down towards a gloomy, unsettling end.

Best of all, Sunset Boulevard is a good example of a great film.  This is Billy Wilder at his best, bringing together a great cast and working through serious psychological subjects with a a healthy dose of comedy.  The script is smart, carefully setting up its rather forced story in a way that somehow still feels natural and giving nearly every significant character some wonderful, clever dialogue.  Gloria Swanson, of course, steals the show as Norma Desmond – I could taste the scenery she was chewing – and the performance she gives is surely one of the finest (and one of the most over-the-top) in all of cinema’s history.  The film is made that much better by its stunning visuals, which could have simply been there for the heck of it, but Wilder puts them to good use aiding the story, defining the characters, and saturating the drama.  The film that results may be rather slow and boring at times, but it is still one of the best introductions to Classical Hollywood cinema I know, and I hope to watch it with the rest of my family someday.  If Norma Desmond ever needed proof that the pictures didn’t get small, this is it.

Tootsie Review

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Because I’m a film student, and because I have a particular fascination with comedy films, I am sometimes asked which movies make me laugh out loud.  As much as I enjoy laughing, I must confess that very few comedy films – even the greats – consistently succeed at getting a big belly laugh out of me (purposely, that is).  Fortunately, I now have one more movie that does the trick for me, which shouldn’t be unexpected seeing as how Tootsie is considered one of the greatest and funniest comedies of all time.  With this in mind, it seems strange and surprising that Tootsie is such a cliché film, filled with most of the Hollywood tropes of comedy cinema from the past four decades.  I wasn’t sure I was in the mood to see another movie about a man dressing in drag, but somehow, in spite of its lack of originality (and perhaps general weakness) as a story, it’s one of the smartest movies I’ve seen in a long time.

I am a firm believer in the John Cleese doctrine that “all comedy is critical,” but this movie showed me just how well the “observational comedy” of the stand-up comedian – comedy that starts with “Have you ever noticed . . .” and ends with “What’s up with that?” – converts to cinema.  This film is a captivating study in the psychology of gender, revealing that the way we think about men, women, and romance is very different from the way that we think we think about them.  The story repeatedly emphasizes just how difficult it can be to be a woman, and better yet, it does so without being preachy.  Even with a too-familiar story and some really cruel characters – as are common for romantic comedies – the perfect performances by this stellar cast sell everything flawlessly.  While this is nothing ground-breaking, no proper study of the assumptions we make about gender is complete without viewing this film, and just importantly, Tootsie is purely and simply fun.

Heathers Review

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MINOR SPOILERS

Lately, it seems I’ve been in the mood to watch movies about bad teenagers committing extreme crimes.  I recently watched The Bling Ring, which focuses on the least likable people on the planet breaking into the homes of celebrities and stealing their priceless belongings.  It’s fascinating because it has the feeling of an Animal Planet documentary, giving the viewer a mostly objective look at the lives of creatures that don’t seem to be humans – at least not if my friends, family, peers, and roommates are the standard for “human.”  I thought that I liked it, until I saw the ’80s classic (and life-long member of everyone’s Netflix watch-list) Heathers, which takes a far more interesting approach.  While just as much a satire, this film largely throws realism to the wind and thrusts the audience into a world of mercilessly dark comedy.  I’m not sure exactly how much it made me laugh, but I will say that, when watching this movie, I had more fun – just pure and simple childlike giddiness – than I’ve had watching any other since Suspiria or Animal House – or maybe even my beloved Phantom of the Paradise.

Part of what makes this movie work so well is that it embraces cinema’s area of expertise: not truth, but “truthiness.”  Anyone who knows what my high school was like knows that my experience there did not resemble that of this film’s characters in any way, and yet everything about this movie feels weirdly familiar.  I’ve never met characters like the Heathers, but it feels like I’ve encountered them countless times.  It feels like every high school in America has these same jocks, these same nerds, and this same staff.  It’s almost like a bizarre take on Carrie, offering a chance to see justice done to the people in high school we all kind of wish were dead.  I think that’s why it resonates with so many people, and why it’s a great example of how cinema ought to function, at least in its comedies.

Oddly enough, this film struck me as being the high school equivelent to a film noir.  Perhaps it’s because of the odd, awkward dark tone matched with a bit of expressionism, or maybe it’s because of the situation the protagonist finds herself in, or maybe it’s because of the ending, but the whole thing feels like the filmmakers had been watching a lot of old films noirs when developing this story.  It particularly feels like noir when Veronica looks down at the dead body of the man she just shot, seemingly realizing that she killed him and starting to feel bad, and then she proceeds to shoot the other jock, without explanation.  I got a similar vibe when the film awkwardly tried to work in a message about how bad teen suicide is, with several references throughout to a song entitled, “Teenage Suicide (Don’t Do It).”  This message feels clumsily shoe-horned in, and it reminds me of all the times when the police officers in movies from the 1940s and 1950s explained to the characters (and, more importantly, to the audience) that the actions of the criminals were bad.  These are just some of the ways in which Heathers is both strange and familiar for movie-lovers, and maybe that’s what makes it hit the spot for me.

Network Review

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The first part of this film I ever saw was the famous scene with everyone shouting from their windows.  It was in a film history course I took a few years ago, and ever since I saw the clip, I’d been really wanting to see the whole film.  That scene really moved me when I first saw it – it spoke to me in a way that the most touching and emotional of scenes from other classic movies don’t – but I had to wait to watch it until I was in the right mood.  Since that course was back in early 2014, it seemed like late 2016 was a good time, ensuring that the scene wouldn’t be so fresh in my memory that it would be spoiled.  For this most recent viewing, once I could tell the scene was coming, I turned off the lights, sat up close to the screen, and let it overpower me.  Because the scene is so greatly enhanced by its context in the plot, I found myself quivering as tears fell down my face, and all I could do was remark at the beauty of what I was experiencing.  I’ve found myself tearing up while writing this review just at the thought of it, and this is a very unusual sort of experience for me.  This is exactly what cinema should be doing, and in a time when artsy drivel like 2001 is seen as the kind of thing the elite film critics want from Hollywood, it’s nice to know that a film with true meaning and power is still regarded as a great cinematic achievement.

As for the rest of the film, it’s not bad.  It can be a little boring at times, but most of it is pretty satisfying in its comedy, its irony, or at the very least its brutal honesty.  The film shows us exactly what we would like to think the evil overlords behind our television programming would be saying and doing behind closed doors.  The balance between comedy and drama is pretty good, particularly with the way the lines between the two are blurred.  I will say that I found it somewhat difficult to keep track of names and faces, but the story kept me interested.  The writing is smart, the characters are what they ought to be, and the ending is just perfect (and it merits comparison to the ending of another of my favorite ’70s movies, Phantom of the Paradise, to gain an appreciation of the cinema of the Vietnam-era and the years that followed).  What’s most impressive about the story is that it manages to be very dramatic, very absurd, and very believable all at the same time, such that the ridiculous solution proposed at the end of the film leaves the viewer gaping and thinking, “By gosh, at this point that actually seems plausible!”

Essentially, the movie is an interesting analysis of the normalization of madness, and it raises the question of just how sane a species we truly are.

Watermelon Man Review

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There are three things that interest me about this film.

First, I don’t know how to categorize it.  Is it a blaxploitation film?  A dramedy?  Maybe just a comedy?  An art film?  Fantasy?  It certainly seems to be a cult film, and an unconventional comedy of some sort, but comedy’s usually aren’t as enthused with stress and anger as this seems to be.  It’s definitely a satire of some sort, but not of a usual sort, instead preferring to be its own unique work of art.

The second thing that fascinates me is that it manages to be the most intense film I’ve ever seen, and yet I’d never heard of it until I was watching it.  I’d heard of the song, which I was a little disappointed to learn was not in the film, but not the film.  While the director is recognized as a very significant and influential one, this film isn’t regarded as highly significant, in spite of its immense power.  I came out of that film more exhausted than I would have been if I’d been watching any other film while doing push-ups.  It confronts the audience with racial stereotypes and societal problems in a way that’s jarringly blunt, and it left me wanting to take a nap afterward, but that’s not a bad thing.  It never allows the spectator to be comfortable for more than a second.  It makes the viewer think, and it has shaped my view of the 1970s, and even today, more than anything else I’ve seen in a long time.  The beautiful thing about it is that it shows how intense and powerful a film can be in a meaningful way, as opposed to meaningless displays of power that are usually praised.

What’s especially fascinating about the film is that, although it’s a very engaging film, it actually puts being a film on the back-burner.  In a sense, it’s more of a cinematic essay, or maybe a cultural scrapbook.  The plot does not care to explain itself in the slightest – it knows it doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t care.  It doesn’t quite feel real, but that adds to the unease.  It doesn’t resolve itself well, at least not in any conventional sense, and that’s very deliberate.  The movie doesn’t exist to satisfy an audience, but to challenge its audience, refusing to focus on anything other than its argument.  While it’s by no means a perfect film, and it’s not really my style for the most part, it’s an excellent example of how a message movie can be done in a way that’s more convincing than it is preachy.  I still don’t know just what to call it, but whatever it is, it’s something kind of special.

Oh, and it gets bonus points for the Paul Williams cameo – the best part of ’70s cinema.

Phantom of the Paradise Review

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Whoops.  I only meant to watch the first few minutes of the movie before going to bed, so I wonder, how did I end up staying awake into the middle of the night to finish it?  Oops.  I meant to return it to the library after I watched it, and yet somehow it stayed in my computer with PowerDVD running different scenes from it everyday, which I accidentally kept watching.  Oh, poopy – I had other music I meant to listen to, so why have I been listening to this soundtrack so much over the past month?  Uh oh, it looks like a Blu-Ray copy of this movie somehow became a priority on my birthday wishlist, even though I had more important needs than another Blu-Ray for my collection.  Crap!  I wasn’t supposed to be happy that I actually got the Blu-Ray for my birthday instead of an external hard drive!

And to think, horror isn’t really a genre I go for, so I wasn’t even supposed to like this very much.  Whoops-a-daisy.  By gosh, it sure is amazing what mistakes can be made because of something nearly flawless.

But seriously folks, I can see the movie’s mistakes.  I see the inconsistency in the camera quality, and the continuity errors with the Phantom’s makeup.  I can tell that the editing isn’t always entirely professional, like when it accidentally indicates that Phoenix has noticed a gun, even though she hasn’t.  Somehow, I find these little blemishes to make the movie a little more human, and to make it all the more fun.  It is no surprise that this is a ’70s cult classic.  It’s a movie I’ve been meaning to see for a while since Paul Williams is always talking about it, and I’m a big fan of his, but I just wish I’d realized that I needed to see it sooner so I could immediately start preaching the good new of Phantom of the Paradise to all the world.  I can’t help but feel as though this ignorance was a big mistake on my part.

Whoops.

112 Phantom of the Paradise