The Decade List: Eastern Promises (2007)

Eastern Promises – dir. David Cronenberg

In a way, Naomi Watts has become cinema’s fatalistic Nancy Drew. In both Mulholland Drive and The Ring, Watts allows her curiosity to lead her down dangerous paths to the point of no return. In David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, she does the same, allowing both her curiosity and moral code draw her into an unfamiliar and perilous world. As midwife Anna, Watts takes it upon herself to find the whereabouts of a deceased Russian girl’s family in order to keep the girl’s newborn child out of foster care. This, inevitably, has disturbing results, as she becomes associated with London’s Russian mafia, lead by restaurant owner Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), and must choose between her and her family’s safety or the usually difficult choice of “doing the right thing.”

In many people’s eyes, Cronenberg "returned to form" with A History of Violence, a film with lofty ambitions that I still haven’t decided whether he met or not. Eastern Promises is simpler than A History of Violence in most respects. The film never presumes to dissect the nature and consequences of the violence it depicts, however Cronenberg and screenwriter Steven Knight layer Eastern Promises with so many other levels of intrigue that it poses as almost a more intellectually difficult film than its predecessor. Gone from A History of Violence (and a number of his first films) is the teetering pulpiness of its comic book roots. Replaced is something quieter, less showy, and more mannered. With Viggo Mortensen, Vincent Cassel, and Sinéad Cusack rounding out the rest of the cast, Cronenberg keeps his actors to a level of discreetness without sacrificing competence. In fact, even with the occasional spurts of graphic violence, Cronenberg keeps the whole film from venturing over the top, which pays off in the electrifying naked bathhouse brawl.

A friend of mine commented that if Eastern Promises were released in the 1950s, it would have been simply a pleasant time at the picture show. It has all the qualities of a sophisticated B-movie. One must remember that, unfortunately, we live in an era where most films (A, B, C, or whatever letter you choose to assign them) coast at middle-of-the-road, so in this world, we fall over ourselves when a B-movie succeeds beyond expectation. In regards to Cronenberg’s career over the past decade, Eastern Promises could be regarded as his biggest success as a direct result of its restraint. With Eastern Promises, Cronenberg defines himself as a filmmaker who defies expectation, a man of considerable integrity and the uncanny ability to surprise his audience with each new film.

With: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Sinéad Cusack, Jerzy Skolimowski, Mina E. Mina, Donald Sumpter
Screenplay: Steven Knight
Cinematography: Peter Suschitzky
Music: Howard Shore
Country of Origin: UK/Canada
US Distributor: Focus Features

Premiere: 8 September 2007 (Toronto International Film Festival)
US Premiere: 14 September 2007

Awards: People’s Choice Award (Toronto International Film Festival); Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor – Armin Mueller-Stahl, Best Cinematography, Best Editing – Ronald Sanders, Best Score, Best Overall Sound, Best Sound Editing (Genie Awards, Canada); Best Actor – Viggo Mortensen (British Independent Film Awards)

The Decade List: Mulholland Drive (2001)

Mulholland Drive - dir. David Lynch

I've always been of the belief that David Lynch is the perfect gateway drug for film enthusiasts. Those who grew up with Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart or Mulholland Drive (Inland Empire was much less a cultural phenomenon) all found a film artist who played with cinema (and television) like a puzzle, indulging in your wildest nightmares and fantasies. If you were like me (or many of the other people I know), an early love for Mr. Lynch would easily branch off your cinematic curiosity, exploring similar filmmakers, like Jodorowsky, or the ones that marked a striking influence on the director, from Ingmar Bergman to Jacques Rivette, but never his imitators. I've heard Lynch claim he wasn't much of a cinephile, but like most of the great filmmakers of the past forty years, he wore his influences on his sleeve, all of which leading up to Mulholland Drive, his epic take on Hollywood and the dreams it would produce and destroy.

Lynch doesn't hold the same flame for me as he once did, but that doesn't render his finer works, of which Mulholland Drive is certainly one, any less bountiful. I find myself less concerned with unlocking the films' infinite mysteries than playing with the cards I'm dealt. I can't begin to decipher the intricacies (or fallacies, if you're of that party) of Mulholland Drive, nor can I defend its weaker moments, most of which involve Justin Theroux's "smart aleck" director Adam Kesher. I don't know whether the first two-thirds of the film stems from Diane's (Naomi Watts) wish fulfillment/guilt complex, the popular interpretation, or Camilla's (Laura Elena Harring) attempts to conquer her amnesia. But there's plenty I do understand about Mulholland Drive, and all of it is completely ravishing.

There are two significant elements of Mulholland Drive that never fail to impress me. The first concerns the central romance between Diane/Betty and Camilla/Rita. While I'm still unsure as to whether the first portion of the film exists in Diane's mind or Camilla's reality, there's no arguing that what follows happened chronologically before the fateful car crash. While their time frames may overlap depending on your take, Lynch clearly shows that things did not end well for our beautiful lesbians lovers. This structure, in addition to Watts' amazingly dynamic performance, provides the emotional satisfaction of repeat viewings, though I know many found themselves returning to Mulholland Drive in an attempt to solve its puzzle. Though it's hard not to sense the intensity of the first sex scene, it's even more heartbreaking hearing Watts moan, "I want to with you," knowing their doomed fate.

Though the list of clues Lynch included in the US DVD of the film might be misleading, the chosen tagline, "A Love Story in the City of Dreams," is the best tip one should need when approaching Mulholland Drive. You can set aside mythical cowboys, demons that live behind diners and creepy old folks and still find something magical about the film. For all its eccentricities, Mulholland Drive has the most humane romance out of all of Lynch's films, unless you're counting the cosmic love between Laura Palmer and Agent Cooper. Though it descends into murder plots and suicide, Diane and Camilla's affair sours because of their respected dreams. Camilla is jaded by Hollywood, though in scenes like the one where she walks Diane up the hill to the party it could be inferred that something romantic still exists inside of her. Diane is broken by the notion that her love for Camilla must always remain a secret. It doesn't appear as if Lynch is being overtly political, but there's something of interest in the way Hollywood projects the image of open-mindedness while still keeping its bankable actors in the closet. That Camilla could freely parade her affair with Diane is a dream, and it's one that's only felt by Diane, as she serves no gain for Camilla's career-oriented reverie.

The other element of interest is in Lynch's toying with the idea of illusion. He calls attention to his own apparatus in the film's best scene, at the Club Silencio. This, of course, operates well within the narrative, as it closes the lucid, or induced, dream of the first portion of the film, but it functions on a number of other levels. While it results in the discovery of the box to the mysterious blue key, it also illuminates the unveiled fantasy of its romance. And, possibly more than anything else Lynch has done, it breaks the fourth wall, similar to the burning of the film in Bergman's Persona, undoubtedly a huge influence on Mulholland Drive. In a way, this would be his justification for the later Inland Empire, his most obtuse film since Eraserhead. By addressing the fact that the film which holds a set of dreams is just much of an illusion, he permits himself to explore his own subconscious, with all of its pageantry, and with all of its red herrings.

Mulholland Drive provided me with what's probably the most majestic filmgoing experience of my life. No cinematic experience had ever made me beam with elation the way this one did, and I'm not sure any has done the same since then. I could chalk it up to youthfulness, but seeing it a month before it opened in Saint Louis with a crowd that eerily resembled Betty's airport escorts (many of whom left during the sex scene) and with only the prior knowledge of Lynch's previous works, I couldn't have imagined a more perfect scenario. It was, in a way, the end of an era for me, one which would give way to watching films on a computer screen and a jading similar to the ones that occur in the film's characters. In the film, my own illusions were satiated and unmasked in a single swoop, and with that, Mulholland Drive will always exist as something much more, a reflection and a requiem for a broken dream.

With: Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller, Scott Coffey, Angelo Badalamenti, Dan Hedaya, Melissa George, Mark Pellegrino, Lafayette Montgomery, Michael J. Anderson, Robert Forster, Lee Grant, Katharine Towne, Scott Coffey, Billy Ray Cyrus, James Karen, Jeanne Bates, Missy Crider, Rebekah Del Rio
Screenplay: David Lynch
Cinematography: Peter Deming
Music: Angelo Badalamenti
Country of Origin: France/USA
US Distributor: Universal Focus

Premiere: 16 May 2001 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 6 October 2001 (New York Film Festival)

Awards: Best Director (Cannes); Best Editing - Mary Sweeney (BAFTAs); Best Foreign Film (César Awards, France); Best Cinematography (Independent Spirit Awards); Actress in a Leading Role - Naomi Watts (LA Outfest)

Das Ist Berlin

Via GreenCine, the Berlin International Film Festival, in its 59th year, will open with the premiere of Tom Tykwer's The International, starring Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl and Ulrich Thomsen on 5 February. The rest of the line-up has yet to be announced, but it had been previously announced that the lovely Tilda Swinton will be the jury president next year. Sony will release The International worldwide a week later. I will post more information about the festival as it becomes available.

Um, ha ha

Sorry, Michael Haneke, but I’ve officially decided to resist the English-language Funny Games. I was reprehensive when I first heard that he planned the English version to be a shot-for-shot remake, but now that word is out that it wasn’t indeed a rumor, I simply wonder why. Funny Games isn’t the sort of film one looks forward to revisiting time and time again; in fact, I’ve only seen it three times because I felt particularly sadistic in forcing friends to watch it with me. Haneke himself said that Funny Games was always sort of a film about America more than it was about Austria, so the decision to remake it himself should have been a no-brainer.

With the prospect of a shot-for-shot remake, the only qualifying measure would have been to onslaught its unassuming audience into utter peril (as the Austrian version did to those who’ve already seen it). Promote the hell out of it, throw it onto three thousand screens and piss off the people you’re so adamantly pointing your finger at. However, such isn’t the case. In Saint Louis, Funny Games is opening on a single screen at the Landmark theatre… so what’s the fucking point? Most people who attend said theatre have probably at least heard of the original Funny Games, after The Piano Teacher and Caché did solid business in the arthouse community. So are fans of Saw really going to drive across town just to see this? The answer is no. This is particularly disheartening because media frenzy would have been the only acceptable reason why Haneke would take a film he made ten years ago and adapt it solely in the English language.

The one review I read of the film was probably the most condemning of Haneke’s motives. Michael Koresky of IndieWire states, "What's worse, the entire project suffers from the gall Haneke shows in not only remaking his own film for the 'edification' of a wider audience, but in trusting his own original vision so fundamentally and without question that he has chosen not to append or alter it in any significant way." There are plenty of other denunciations of Haneke’s motives which you can find through GreenCine from the poor film critics who have “professional obligations to endure it,” as J Hoberman states in his review, especially since the most astute of which would have already seen the original.

Where should one go from here? Haneke was on a streak of brilliance from Funny Games on, even if Time of the Wolf and Code Unknown weren’t as widely popular as Caché or The Piano Teacher. Should we let him have his so-called fun with the remake and hope he continues on to better things? I hope this is the case, as Haneke seems to be on the shit list of every single person who’s had to “endure” this film once again. I guess if we all gave Gus Van Sant another shot...

She said "Fuckabees"

I Heart Huckabees - dir. David O. Russell - 2004 - USA

I Heart Huckabees has always been one of the stranger failures of the past few years. When the film came out, writer-director David O. Russell somehow was given the title of “American auteur” along the likes of other less-than-five-film showponies like Paul Thomas Anderson and Darren Aronofsky. I mean, what did he direct prior? Three Kings and Flirting with Disaster? Sure, those two were decent films, but hardly worthy of throwing such a title upon Russell. He assembled a noteworthy cast (aside from Schwartzman) for what was dubbed an “existential comedy,” or a slapstick farce for intellectuals. Somehow, the film ended up being as deep as a plastic kiddy pool, but this was of no fault to the cast, as they end up being uniformly excellent. Putting notable dramatic actors like Isabelle Huppert, Naomi Watts, Jude Law, and Mark Wahlberg in a comedy as silly as this one sounded like a bad idea, but all four held their own against comic veterans like Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman (with Wahlberg being the real stand-out). Russell claimed to have made this film because he found Buddhism, so are we to interpret that Buddhism (at least for him) is as shallow and farcical as the film he made about his transformation? Or could I be wrong about Russell and his intentions?

I Heart Huckabees takes a bold stand, putting the philosophical and ethical quandaries that often serve as subtext in the foreground. “It’s like that story about the cave,” Watts exclaims during one scene. While this method works on certain levels, it certainly doesn’t on any grand scheme. Someone who hasn’t taken their undergraduate initiation course in philosophy might decipher that such schools of theory (as represented in opposition by Tomlin and Hoffman versus Huppert) are as simple as black and white. Seeing Schwartzman’s real mother, Talia Shire, call Huppert a bitch and then be chastised for her cruelty may inspire some tongue-in-cheek laughs, but Russell presents Huppert’s nihilism as the direct converse of Tomlin and Hoffman’s mere existentialism. One of the beauties of philosophy, even philosophy as taken from a novice level as Russell appears to be assuming, is the ambiguity and gray area that is absent here. I don’t consider myself any real authority on philosophy, but it doesn’t take a masters degree to spot the errors in Russell’s theories.

There are moments of true hilarity that occur within the film, especially during a dinner table scene where Mark Wahlberg challenges Republican/Christian beliefs with Jean Smart, but all this proves is Russell’s comic abilities. He can push amazing performances out of his cast (even if the always-lovely Huppert is underused) and mold comical situations skillfully, but with such lofty ambitions in a film like I Heart Huckabees, these feel like minor accolades. There’s little question as to why the cast was drawn to this film, but to have them acting in a superficial farce such as this is a grave waste. While watching the film, you almost question whether Russell is trying to criticize and parody these ideas. It might almost work, if he had a greater grasp on what they truly meant. Don’t let Russell fool you; the world isn’t black and white, and philosophy isn’t as digestible and frivolous as he might lead you to believe.