Sabin Writes for Film Monthly
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Big Magilla
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LOL. I love Wes Anderson (well, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums anyway) but his treatment of non-white, non-privileged classes has always been somewhat uncomfortable. Even in Tenebaums, the character of Pagoda is problematic.Sabin wrote:My biggest problem is the egotism on Anderson's part in how he chooses to submerge the Whitman Brothers into Indian culture. British Invasion amidst traditional Indian funeral process? Horseshit.
Good to see you again though Josh!
A second viewing of 'The Darjeeling Limited' confirms in my mind Wes Anderson's undeniable talent for composition; even within such closed quarters, he finds such amazing ways to convey comedic narrative. The film has problems but it's still rich with merit, even though I have strong reservations. 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou' is far stronger a production than I had initially thought, and I'd wager that on a third viewing 'The Darjeeling Limited' at the very least approaches more substantiative merit.
My biggest problem is the egotism on Anderson's part in how he chooses to submerge the Whitman Brothers into Indian culture. British Invasion amidst traditional Indian funeral process? Horseshit.
My biggest problem is the egotism on Anderson's part in how he chooses to submerge the Whitman Brothers into Indian culture. British Invasion amidst traditional Indian funeral process? Horseshit.
"How's the despair?"
...sigh...no. Even though it certainly speaks to how Americans perceive the rest of the world and how foreigners can correctly ascertain said worldview from watching the film.
I did watch the film again on El Air and found it far more enjoyable. The film's lopsided narrative seemed less egregious, its lackadaisical spiritual journey less pungently coy, and its rather glorious opening two thirds aboard the Darjeeling Limited itself more substantive. The most it can get from me upon a second viewing is still a recommendation with strong reservations, but it's still beautiful filmmaking. Here is my original review of 'The Darjeeling Limited' (though nobody asked on any level for it):
THE DARJEELING LIMITED
Recent photos have revealed a different side to Wes Anderson than the spindly dork-wad who directed Bottle Rocket, the man so visibly uncomfortable at the MTV Movie Awards, where he somehow reduced Janeane Garofalo and Ben Stiller to fanboys on only his first movie, and somehow charmed the heart of Scott Rudin enough to allot for his Felllini-esque fantasias to come. These days with his dapper, particular wardrobe, Wes Anderson seems more at home in a Wes Anderson movie than directing a Wes Anderson movie. Harsh? Perhaps, but only out of love. More than even Fellini, the degree to which Wes Anderson expanded his filmic world (and it’s all the same Wes-World) is rather unparalleled: the ramshackle tender goof of Bottle Rocket, the Truffaut charm of the high school academia in Rushmore, the Salinger’s eye view of New York in The Royal Tenenbaums. The progression was so strong and encompassing that what the filmmaker could possibly do next was a mystery. Under the sea for The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou! Off to India for The Darjeeling Limited! It’s almost fitting that his next film is an animated Roald Dahl adaptation of The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Even his titles have an inscrutable eloquence to them, something that shouldn’t work and yet feels downright regal.
The Darjeeling Limited is no exception for the filmmaker. The movie is enjoyable when not infuriating, dazzling when not flaccid, so sure-footed when not scrambled. We begin with a nifty red herring prologue: Bill Murray plays a business man late for his train, holding onto his fedora, careening through the bustling town, racing after the train as it leaves, running, running…and then Adrien Brody appears beside him, also tackling the same train, but younger and quicker. And then the film goes into slow motion as he reaches the train to the dueling strings of The Kinks’ “This Time Tomorrow”. The young has succeeded, the old has not; they make eye contact, and they’re gone. He is the middle Whitman brother Peter, sandwiched (an apt description) between mustachioed rapscallion novelist Jack (Jason Schwartzman), and overbearing and incredibly injured Francis (Owen Wilson). They are reunited for the first time since their father’s funeral, they all have their secrets (Jack is calling his ex-girlfriend’s answering machine, Peter is having a baby with a woman he always planned on divorcing, and Francis tried to kill himself), they are off on a spiritual journey to see their mother, and they’re on The Darjeeling Limited, a wonderment of a train that provides for some unpretentious silliness as their personalities careen.
If Wes Anderson were to allow their spiritual journey to remain aboard the Darjeeling Limited, the film would be a minor joy. They are quickly shuttled off for reasons of excessive destruction and the film progresses to an Indian funeral and a monastery and the film more or less deflates on its quest for purpose, the former of which is especially disingenuous – a word I must use to label most of this film. The death of an Indian child leads to the path of redemption, and yet there is something inherently (again!) disingenuous about how both Wes Anderson casually offs a child for the benefit of white hipsters and how the white characters march in line in slow motion to another song by The Kinks, making it entirely about them. Wes Anderson denies that all of his films are autobiographical but it’s fairly easy to see that this script (which was written with Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola in India) is full of little moments that feel lived, shared, and scribbled down. Wes Anderson digs the culture, but not nearly enough to immerse us in it more than halfway. A telling scene: Jack having sex with Rita in the bathroom, her pleading for him not to cum inside her. “Welcome to India: Please Don’t Cum Inside Us!”
What I grapple with now is how the film will hold on repeat viewing. Even The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, a film as unruly as its name, is something of a delight, an unexpectedly genuine film about middle age and a far more poignant and insightful one than the suburban malaise of American Beauty. As of now, The Darjeeling Limited has the feel of a lark stuck awkwardly between Hope/Crosby mayhem and Renoir humanism, and all signs point to a film too void of form. As in Donnie Darko, as in Garden State, the film epilogues to a slow-motion lateral-parading cast that now in the hands of Wes Anderson again feels routine. What might become of this man were he, like Scorsese before him, forced to return to grassroots film campaigning without Frames Per Second Toggling at his disposal?
I did watch the film again on El Air and found it far more enjoyable. The film's lopsided narrative seemed less egregious, its lackadaisical spiritual journey less pungently coy, and its rather glorious opening two thirds aboard the Darjeeling Limited itself more substantive. The most it can get from me upon a second viewing is still a recommendation with strong reservations, but it's still beautiful filmmaking. Here is my original review of 'The Darjeeling Limited' (though nobody asked on any level for it):
THE DARJEELING LIMITED
Recent photos have revealed a different side to Wes Anderson than the spindly dork-wad who directed Bottle Rocket, the man so visibly uncomfortable at the MTV Movie Awards, where he somehow reduced Janeane Garofalo and Ben Stiller to fanboys on only his first movie, and somehow charmed the heart of Scott Rudin enough to allot for his Felllini-esque fantasias to come. These days with his dapper, particular wardrobe, Wes Anderson seems more at home in a Wes Anderson movie than directing a Wes Anderson movie. Harsh? Perhaps, but only out of love. More than even Fellini, the degree to which Wes Anderson expanded his filmic world (and it’s all the same Wes-World) is rather unparalleled: the ramshackle tender goof of Bottle Rocket, the Truffaut charm of the high school academia in Rushmore, the Salinger’s eye view of New York in The Royal Tenenbaums. The progression was so strong and encompassing that what the filmmaker could possibly do next was a mystery. Under the sea for The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou! Off to India for The Darjeeling Limited! It’s almost fitting that his next film is an animated Roald Dahl adaptation of The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Even his titles have an inscrutable eloquence to them, something that shouldn’t work and yet feels downright regal.
The Darjeeling Limited is no exception for the filmmaker. The movie is enjoyable when not infuriating, dazzling when not flaccid, so sure-footed when not scrambled. We begin with a nifty red herring prologue: Bill Murray plays a business man late for his train, holding onto his fedora, careening through the bustling town, racing after the train as it leaves, running, running…and then Adrien Brody appears beside him, also tackling the same train, but younger and quicker. And then the film goes into slow motion as he reaches the train to the dueling strings of The Kinks’ “This Time Tomorrow”. The young has succeeded, the old has not; they make eye contact, and they’re gone. He is the middle Whitman brother Peter, sandwiched (an apt description) between mustachioed rapscallion novelist Jack (Jason Schwartzman), and overbearing and incredibly injured Francis (Owen Wilson). They are reunited for the first time since their father’s funeral, they all have their secrets (Jack is calling his ex-girlfriend’s answering machine, Peter is having a baby with a woman he always planned on divorcing, and Francis tried to kill himself), they are off on a spiritual journey to see their mother, and they’re on The Darjeeling Limited, a wonderment of a train that provides for some unpretentious silliness as their personalities careen.
If Wes Anderson were to allow their spiritual journey to remain aboard the Darjeeling Limited, the film would be a minor joy. They are quickly shuttled off for reasons of excessive destruction and the film progresses to an Indian funeral and a monastery and the film more or less deflates on its quest for purpose, the former of which is especially disingenuous – a word I must use to label most of this film. The death of an Indian child leads to the path of redemption, and yet there is something inherently (again!) disingenuous about how both Wes Anderson casually offs a child for the benefit of white hipsters and how the white characters march in line in slow motion to another song by The Kinks, making it entirely about them. Wes Anderson denies that all of his films are autobiographical but it’s fairly easy to see that this script (which was written with Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola in India) is full of little moments that feel lived, shared, and scribbled down. Wes Anderson digs the culture, but not nearly enough to immerse us in it more than halfway. A telling scene: Jack having sex with Rita in the bathroom, her pleading for him not to cum inside her. “Welcome to India: Please Don’t Cum Inside Us!”
What I grapple with now is how the film will hold on repeat viewing. Even The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, a film as unruly as its name, is something of a delight, an unexpectedly genuine film about middle age and a far more poignant and insightful one than the suburban malaise of American Beauty. As of now, The Darjeeling Limited has the feel of a lark stuck awkwardly between Hope/Crosby mayhem and Renoir humanism, and all signs point to a film too void of form. As in Donnie Darko, as in Garden State, the film epilogues to a slow-motion lateral-parading cast that now in the hands of Wes Anderson again feels routine. What might become of this man were he, like Scorsese before him, forced to return to grassroots film campaigning without Frames Per Second Toggling at his disposal?
"How's the despair?"
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Sonic Youth
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I feel remiss in that I have not been able to see '4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days' and 'The Diving Bell and teh Butterfly' and (most egregiously, because it's been out forever) 'Away from Her', but The Gospel Five are what they are. One could supplant David Fincher's 'Zodiac' in there (and indeed, I'm a little ashamed that I didn't) but they speak to me more about how to live my life than any American films since 'Eternal Sunshine...' and 'Before Sunset' tandemed my ass three and a half years prior.
Went on Birthright. Decided to stay. No plans to speak of. Not many connections. Just kind of vagabonding around. I like it here. All of my friends think I've been through some religious reawakening but that's not the case. This place is incredibly secular. I haven't met a single religious person (even though I know they're here). I'm just not ready to leave yet. I think I'll get a job making coffee or washing dishes somewhere, learn the language, stay for a few months. There's a strike on and the work I have pending can get done here just as easily.
(TMI perhaps?)
I got a hummer after taking a dip in the sulfuric hot springs and an evening of heavy wine consumption and no shower. One for the books.
Went on Birthright. Decided to stay. No plans to speak of. Not many connections. Just kind of vagabonding around. I like it here. All of my friends think I've been through some religious reawakening but that's not the case. This place is incredibly secular. I haven't met a single religious person (even though I know they're here). I'm just not ready to leave yet. I think I'll get a job making coffee or washing dishes somewhere, learn the language, stay for a few months. There's a strike on and the work I have pending can get done here just as easily.
(TMI perhaps?)
I got a hummer after taking a dip in the sulfuric hot springs and an evening of heavy wine consumption and no shower. One for the books.
"How's the despair?"
Baruch Haba. It's nice to have another member of this board in my neck of the woods. So – how did you find us? I guess the verdict is positive, since you've decided to stay. Anyway – when you're finished with all the exciting stuff Israel has to offer, you're always welcome to stop by.
Edited By Uri on 1198588439
Edited By Uri on 1198588439
A piece that I wrote for www.filmmonthly.com. I will not be watching any more 2007 movies for a while as I'm staying in Israel indefinitely. Later.
The Best Films of the Best Year
By Joshua Livingston Sabin
There are good years for movies, and then there was 2007. Although technically 2006 releases, the turning of the year saw Children of Men, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Lives of Others, and Pan’s Labyrinth creeping into theaters partitioning for Academy attention that would was heretofore reserved for the likes of Dreamgirls. Hipness prevailed and the year began with The Departed winning the Academy Award for Best Picture and one for Mr. Martin Scorsese as Best Director; all the aforementioned holdovers from the previous year would be recognized in some form or another, and are unlikely to be obscured in filmic lexicon for some time at least.
The year truly began with the long-anticipated release of David Fincher’s Zodiac, a truncated version that managed to retain its power; no amount of studio interference could butcher Fincher’s obsessive brilliance, although a stunning weekend box office defeat to the likes of Wild Hogs butchered its chances for financial reciprocity. Likewise, we finally saw Bong Joon-ho’s The Host, a thrilling masterwork of Spielberg-ian precision and control, one of the most entertaining and schizophrenic monster movies of our time, as it bounds from convention to convention with satisfying off-kilter ADD. These were enough to hold over through the most profitable and derisive Spring in ages: 300, Blades of Glory, Ghost Rider, Norbit, TMNT, Wild Hogs…who gives a shit?
And who gave a shit this summer? There were three movies to enter wide-release of franchise proportions: Knocked Up, Ratatouille, and Superbad. And they were great! This lineup a few years ago would see me going broke just to check out The Silver Surfer on the big screen. This year? I couldn’t bring myself to care about this year’s offerings; at some point I will catch up with Live Free or Die Hard, but aside from the nervy 28 Weeks Later and The Bourne Ultimatum (both very good films), I missed the latest entries in the Pirates, Ocean’s, Shrek, Fantastic Four, Rush Hour, “Almighty”, and Harry Potter “sagas” and have no desire for reunion. I watched Spider-Man and Transformers and felt emotionally distanced enough.
Then came the fall of the Iraq films, the harsh critique of America’s involvement that was not to be. As of yet, Mike Nichols’ Charlie Wilson’s War has not yet been released so it is unknown if it will follow suit with its self-righteous brethren and release to audience indifference. I have seen Charlie Wilson’s War, and at best it is entertaining for most of its duration; as a whole, it is incomplete and vacuous, with alarmingly little to say more by nature of studio timidity. The less said about Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah, Gavin Hood’s Rendition, and Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs, the better; meanwhile, Brian DePalma’s Redacted will not be playing at a studio near you.
Stronger indictments of our country came by way of what I will refer to as “The Gospel Five”, which will perch atop my list as the best film of the year. A cheat? Yes, and go fuck yourself; this was such a relentlessly engaging year for film, that I will cite five movies for their individual virtue that will guide us in the coming years of war. Because we will never leave Iraq, never entirely. It will haunt us for years and years to come and eventually, oh yes, eventually we will fall; for we, dear Brutus, are complicit in this act and retribution does not feel far away. These five films will be listed alphabetically with a brief synopsis following its inalienable truth.
Let the record show that 2007, for me, was a year of change. I shot three short films in the spring, spent the summer in fluctuation with script polishing for Beverly Ridge, reshooting Runaways, binge-drinking, editing, editing, editing, and then Los Angeles. Now, as I write this, I embark on my first vacation in some seven years. I am currently in Brooklyn and then off to Israel and Chicago for New Year’s. This has been a year of growth, happiness, grief, and awakening, and thusly, there are several films that unforgivably fell through the cracks and will not make my list right now, although they will make their presence known eventually. Films like Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, Sarah Polley’s Away from Her, Adam Shankman’s Hairspray, Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, Francis Coppola’s Youth Without Youth, Adrienne Shelley’s Waitress, Joe Wright’s Atonement, Brian DePalma’s Redacted, Michael Moore’s Sicko, Gregg Araki’s [Smiley Face], and Oliver Dahan’s La Vie en Rose. All of which will be seen and appreciated some time soon. And I cannot wait for Persepolis.
THE GOSPEL FIVE
I. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik) – How am I to go about wanting?
Perhaps my affectionate favorite film of the year, The Assassination of Jesse James bears just as much resemblance to American tragedy than revisionist Western; as if the two are not intertwined forever, I ask. It is a film of overwhelmingly sad destiny that derives much of its power from Casey Affleck’s beautiful performance as perennial dreamer Robert Ford. Any other time and place and Robert Ford might be the partner-in-arms that Jesse always needed; but unbeknownst to Bob and even Jesse himself, the James Brothers are done and there will be no robberies ahead of him, a fact that Jesse himself is far too spacey to grasp, bearing more resemblance to unstable vagabond than the legend others perceive him as. Everybody in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford wants something that isn’t there, and indeed perhaps never was there to begin with; and by the time this legendary act of murder occurs, the film attains a spooky tabloid power that raises one’s hairs as the star-crossed friendship between Bob and Jesse is consummated in an act of violence mixed with exhaustion and puppy doggish betrayal that becomes legacy for only the most surface of reasons.
II. I’m Not There (dir. Todd Haynes) – How much should I resist perception, and the labels placed upon me by others?
Some have criticized Todd Haynes’ best film since Safe (and perhaps best film ever) as a surface essay that exists of its own shallow volition, a pop miasma of reference and stunt. Yet at the heart of I’m Not There is the ultimate deconstruction of popular music’s poet laureate Bob Dylan, and I maintain that one does not need to be aficionado to fully embrace what Haynes is doing, as truthfully it’s simple enough. Bob Dylan lived many different lives, and “Arthur Rimbaud” (the jokester interviewee) aside, each one arrives at the same query that is also conclusion: who do I have to answer to and who are you to ask? This is the roadblock between Bob Dylan and the answers we’ve never received for decades running, and Haynes celebrates his squirreled irreverence (especially in Blanchett’s canonic performance in her Fellini-esque sequence) and posits Occum’s Razor: that a man can resist what is so fundamentally him and his for so long out of self-interest, -destruction, and –absorption, that he never realizes what he finds is what he always wanted.
III. Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn) – What shall I keep and what shall I leave behind?
Alexander Supertramp (née Christopher McChambliss) set his cash and credit cards ablaze upon his graduation and knowledge that his cozy existence with his parents was rooted in artifice, set off into the wild across America, and died in Alaska from eating the wrong kind of berries. Inside the abandoned vehicle that he called home, he had a book of flora and fauna identifications that could’ve steered him towards food he could eat, but more important was the trial itself, his need to prove his worth, to tackle a challenge he did not know if he could meet, and he died after being trapped from civilization with the newfound knowledge that the only joys in life that matter are that which can be shared. Just as Emile Hirsch plays him as stoned on idealism, Sean Penn’s infectious marriage of music and montage celebrates McChambliss’ naiveté and not simply a reflection to those he encounters on his amazing journey (all of which make for beautiful rendezvous, but Hal Holbrook’s is the one that haunts as the life left unlived) but as a testament to the notions we shrug off on a daily basis. It serves as tribute and parable in equal measure often for the same reasons.
IV. No Country for Old Men (dir. Joel & Ethan Coen) – How am I to live in a world of evil?
It is difficult to reconcile the ending of the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name with the tonality of the preceding acts; the question remains: are the Coen Brothers making a movie through an old man’s perspective of a world of evil, or about the world of evil itself? Does it begin with a story told by Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones in the most dignified performance in a Coen Brothers movie), or with a meticulous escape executed by Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem, terrifying)? Does it end with act of tragic admission or sadistic commission? Though the film is stronger when gleefully amoral cat and mouse, there is no denying that No Country for Old Men works as both devastating thriller and astonishing work of genre subversion about two men Chigurh and Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin, capping a renaissance year of supporting roles with a brilliantly subdued hell-bent handyman) who live by a code of weary survival and another (Jones’ Bell) who learns it too late to change his role in life from that of a one man-Greek Chorus.
V. There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) – And what is evil if not the all-consumed?
“I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed…it’s hard doing this alone…with these…people.” It’s not a monologue. He’s opening up to his long-lost brother who interjects with nominal pleasantries about plans and hopes, far weaker in form that Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis); and yet it feels like a monologue, for all its relevance as audience-directed aside. It confirms what we have expected in this man for almost two hours, nothing more or less, and yet what speaks volumes is the pause before the word “people”. That pause, that desperate search from a man who has given so little thought to the masses that he may have forgotten what to even call them, is the stuff of legends and of Daniel Plainview. Paul Thomas Anderson has been building to There Will Be Blood, and creates an indelible nexus between himself, Mr. Day-Lewis (ferocious, gloriously misanthropic, and hell-bent on success), and Robert Elswitt’s cinematography that is as antiquated in glorious scope as it is nourishing; and by the time it reaches its mad, mad end with that final line of concession and victory, you know you’ve seen a vision of America so pure that I’m relatively astonished it got made in the first place.
ALSO WELL, WELL, WELL, WELL WORTH MENTIONING – The Host, Juno, Michael Clayton, Offside, Ratatouille, The Savages, Superbad, and Zodiac. All of which are upper-echelon material, and many of which would crown my list any other year. Zodiac especially feels like the movie of the year, albeit the one with the most editorial questionability. The pending director’s cut (not the one with 8 additional minutes but that 3+ hour whopper you just know they’ll release) is likely one of the best of the decade.
Also very much deserving of mention are 3:10 to Yuma, 28 Weeks Later, Black Snake Moan, Brand Upon the Brain!, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Darjeeling Limited (a second viewing bolsters far more pleasures than my initial reservations picked up on; bless you, Wesley), Eastern Promises (if only for Cronenberg’s affinity for narrative marginality in lieu of homoerotic subtext-made-text; a studio walk in the park that is still not old), Gone Baby Gone, Knocked Up (hilarious, but far too conservative-minded), Rescue Dawn, and We Own the Night.
There are far too many films left unseen by me that I planned on revisiting but never got around to. How much change did 2007 bring? Well, I now plan on staying indefinitely in Israel, a little development that occurred since beginning this list in Brooklyn on the way to Birthright and now staying in my Aunt Pesia’s couch in Ramat Gan. To the Kibbutz? To Petra? To the imminently affordable youth hostels of Haifa? Exactly.
2007 was one for the books, and so were the Gospel Five. So impacting are they, that I’m homeless in Israel. Shalom!
The Best Films of the Best Year
By Joshua Livingston Sabin
There are good years for movies, and then there was 2007. Although technically 2006 releases, the turning of the year saw Children of Men, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Lives of Others, and Pan’s Labyrinth creeping into theaters partitioning for Academy attention that would was heretofore reserved for the likes of Dreamgirls. Hipness prevailed and the year began with The Departed winning the Academy Award for Best Picture and one for Mr. Martin Scorsese as Best Director; all the aforementioned holdovers from the previous year would be recognized in some form or another, and are unlikely to be obscured in filmic lexicon for some time at least.
The year truly began with the long-anticipated release of David Fincher’s Zodiac, a truncated version that managed to retain its power; no amount of studio interference could butcher Fincher’s obsessive brilliance, although a stunning weekend box office defeat to the likes of Wild Hogs butchered its chances for financial reciprocity. Likewise, we finally saw Bong Joon-ho’s The Host, a thrilling masterwork of Spielberg-ian precision and control, one of the most entertaining and schizophrenic monster movies of our time, as it bounds from convention to convention with satisfying off-kilter ADD. These were enough to hold over through the most profitable and derisive Spring in ages: 300, Blades of Glory, Ghost Rider, Norbit, TMNT, Wild Hogs…who gives a shit?
And who gave a shit this summer? There were three movies to enter wide-release of franchise proportions: Knocked Up, Ratatouille, and Superbad. And they were great! This lineup a few years ago would see me going broke just to check out The Silver Surfer on the big screen. This year? I couldn’t bring myself to care about this year’s offerings; at some point I will catch up with Live Free or Die Hard, but aside from the nervy 28 Weeks Later and The Bourne Ultimatum (both very good films), I missed the latest entries in the Pirates, Ocean’s, Shrek, Fantastic Four, Rush Hour, “Almighty”, and Harry Potter “sagas” and have no desire for reunion. I watched Spider-Man and Transformers and felt emotionally distanced enough.
Then came the fall of the Iraq films, the harsh critique of America’s involvement that was not to be. As of yet, Mike Nichols’ Charlie Wilson’s War has not yet been released so it is unknown if it will follow suit with its self-righteous brethren and release to audience indifference. I have seen Charlie Wilson’s War, and at best it is entertaining for most of its duration; as a whole, it is incomplete and vacuous, with alarmingly little to say more by nature of studio timidity. The less said about Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah, Gavin Hood’s Rendition, and Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs, the better; meanwhile, Brian DePalma’s Redacted will not be playing at a studio near you.
Stronger indictments of our country came by way of what I will refer to as “The Gospel Five”, which will perch atop my list as the best film of the year. A cheat? Yes, and go fuck yourself; this was such a relentlessly engaging year for film, that I will cite five movies for their individual virtue that will guide us in the coming years of war. Because we will never leave Iraq, never entirely. It will haunt us for years and years to come and eventually, oh yes, eventually we will fall; for we, dear Brutus, are complicit in this act and retribution does not feel far away. These five films will be listed alphabetically with a brief synopsis following its inalienable truth.
Let the record show that 2007, for me, was a year of change. I shot three short films in the spring, spent the summer in fluctuation with script polishing for Beverly Ridge, reshooting Runaways, binge-drinking, editing, editing, editing, and then Los Angeles. Now, as I write this, I embark on my first vacation in some seven years. I am currently in Brooklyn and then off to Israel and Chicago for New Year’s. This has been a year of growth, happiness, grief, and awakening, and thusly, there are several films that unforgivably fell through the cracks and will not make my list right now, although they will make their presence known eventually. Films like Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, Sarah Polley’s Away from Her, Adam Shankman’s Hairspray, Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, Francis Coppola’s Youth Without Youth, Adrienne Shelley’s Waitress, Joe Wright’s Atonement, Brian DePalma’s Redacted, Michael Moore’s Sicko, Gregg Araki’s [Smiley Face], and Oliver Dahan’s La Vie en Rose. All of which will be seen and appreciated some time soon. And I cannot wait for Persepolis.
THE GOSPEL FIVE
I. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik) – How am I to go about wanting?
Perhaps my affectionate favorite film of the year, The Assassination of Jesse James bears just as much resemblance to American tragedy than revisionist Western; as if the two are not intertwined forever, I ask. It is a film of overwhelmingly sad destiny that derives much of its power from Casey Affleck’s beautiful performance as perennial dreamer Robert Ford. Any other time and place and Robert Ford might be the partner-in-arms that Jesse always needed; but unbeknownst to Bob and even Jesse himself, the James Brothers are done and there will be no robberies ahead of him, a fact that Jesse himself is far too spacey to grasp, bearing more resemblance to unstable vagabond than the legend others perceive him as. Everybody in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford wants something that isn’t there, and indeed perhaps never was there to begin with; and by the time this legendary act of murder occurs, the film attains a spooky tabloid power that raises one’s hairs as the star-crossed friendship between Bob and Jesse is consummated in an act of violence mixed with exhaustion and puppy doggish betrayal that becomes legacy for only the most surface of reasons.
II. I’m Not There (dir. Todd Haynes) – How much should I resist perception, and the labels placed upon me by others?
Some have criticized Todd Haynes’ best film since Safe (and perhaps best film ever) as a surface essay that exists of its own shallow volition, a pop miasma of reference and stunt. Yet at the heart of I’m Not There is the ultimate deconstruction of popular music’s poet laureate Bob Dylan, and I maintain that one does not need to be aficionado to fully embrace what Haynes is doing, as truthfully it’s simple enough. Bob Dylan lived many different lives, and “Arthur Rimbaud” (the jokester interviewee) aside, each one arrives at the same query that is also conclusion: who do I have to answer to and who are you to ask? This is the roadblock between Bob Dylan and the answers we’ve never received for decades running, and Haynes celebrates his squirreled irreverence (especially in Blanchett’s canonic performance in her Fellini-esque sequence) and posits Occum’s Razor: that a man can resist what is so fundamentally him and his for so long out of self-interest, -destruction, and –absorption, that he never realizes what he finds is what he always wanted.
III. Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn) – What shall I keep and what shall I leave behind?
Alexander Supertramp (née Christopher McChambliss) set his cash and credit cards ablaze upon his graduation and knowledge that his cozy existence with his parents was rooted in artifice, set off into the wild across America, and died in Alaska from eating the wrong kind of berries. Inside the abandoned vehicle that he called home, he had a book of flora and fauna identifications that could’ve steered him towards food he could eat, but more important was the trial itself, his need to prove his worth, to tackle a challenge he did not know if he could meet, and he died after being trapped from civilization with the newfound knowledge that the only joys in life that matter are that which can be shared. Just as Emile Hirsch plays him as stoned on idealism, Sean Penn’s infectious marriage of music and montage celebrates McChambliss’ naiveté and not simply a reflection to those he encounters on his amazing journey (all of which make for beautiful rendezvous, but Hal Holbrook’s is the one that haunts as the life left unlived) but as a testament to the notions we shrug off on a daily basis. It serves as tribute and parable in equal measure often for the same reasons.
IV. No Country for Old Men (dir. Joel & Ethan Coen) – How am I to live in a world of evil?
It is difficult to reconcile the ending of the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name with the tonality of the preceding acts; the question remains: are the Coen Brothers making a movie through an old man’s perspective of a world of evil, or about the world of evil itself? Does it begin with a story told by Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones in the most dignified performance in a Coen Brothers movie), or with a meticulous escape executed by Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem, terrifying)? Does it end with act of tragic admission or sadistic commission? Though the film is stronger when gleefully amoral cat and mouse, there is no denying that No Country for Old Men works as both devastating thriller and astonishing work of genre subversion about two men Chigurh and Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin, capping a renaissance year of supporting roles with a brilliantly subdued hell-bent handyman) who live by a code of weary survival and another (Jones’ Bell) who learns it too late to change his role in life from that of a one man-Greek Chorus.
V. There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) – And what is evil if not the all-consumed?
“I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed…it’s hard doing this alone…with these…people.” It’s not a monologue. He’s opening up to his long-lost brother who interjects with nominal pleasantries about plans and hopes, far weaker in form that Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis); and yet it feels like a monologue, for all its relevance as audience-directed aside. It confirms what we have expected in this man for almost two hours, nothing more or less, and yet what speaks volumes is the pause before the word “people”. That pause, that desperate search from a man who has given so little thought to the masses that he may have forgotten what to even call them, is the stuff of legends and of Daniel Plainview. Paul Thomas Anderson has been building to There Will Be Blood, and creates an indelible nexus between himself, Mr. Day-Lewis (ferocious, gloriously misanthropic, and hell-bent on success), and Robert Elswitt’s cinematography that is as antiquated in glorious scope as it is nourishing; and by the time it reaches its mad, mad end with that final line of concession and victory, you know you’ve seen a vision of America so pure that I’m relatively astonished it got made in the first place.
ALSO WELL, WELL, WELL, WELL WORTH MENTIONING – The Host, Juno, Michael Clayton, Offside, Ratatouille, The Savages, Superbad, and Zodiac. All of which are upper-echelon material, and many of which would crown my list any other year. Zodiac especially feels like the movie of the year, albeit the one with the most editorial questionability. The pending director’s cut (not the one with 8 additional minutes but that 3+ hour whopper you just know they’ll release) is likely one of the best of the decade.
Also very much deserving of mention are 3:10 to Yuma, 28 Weeks Later, Black Snake Moan, Brand Upon the Brain!, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Darjeeling Limited (a second viewing bolsters far more pleasures than my initial reservations picked up on; bless you, Wesley), Eastern Promises (if only for Cronenberg’s affinity for narrative marginality in lieu of homoerotic subtext-made-text; a studio walk in the park that is still not old), Gone Baby Gone, Knocked Up (hilarious, but far too conservative-minded), Rescue Dawn, and We Own the Night.
There are far too many films left unseen by me that I planned on revisiting but never got around to. How much change did 2007 bring? Well, I now plan on staying indefinitely in Israel, a little development that occurred since beginning this list in Brooklyn on the way to Birthright and now staying in my Aunt Pesia’s couch in Ramat Gan. To the Kibbutz? To Petra? To the imminently affordable youth hostels of Haifa? Exactly.
2007 was one for the books, and so were the Gospel Five. So impacting are they, that I’m homeless in Israel. Shalom!
"How's the despair?"