Review of the film Sicario

“You're asking me how a watch is made. For now just keep your eye on the time.”*

     The American/Mexican borderland hinges on contradictions. One can live on the surface of the land, only skimming along reality — casting eyes away from that which screams to be heard and witnessed. It only takes the right sideways glance, the correct angle of sunlight, to catch sight of the dirtier, messier world that operates just below society’s superficial gaze. 

     In the film Sicario, directed by Denis Villeneuve, we are thrust below the surface — forced to gaze below that easy-going semblance of order and normalcy. Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is an idealistic young FBI agent who is recruited to join an inter-agency task force combating drug cartel movement along the Mexico border. The man doing the recruiting (portrayed by Josh Brolin) tells her little of what the team will be up to, other than flying to El Paso. Her hackles are immediately raised as she is introduced to a mysterious “consultant” named Alejandro (Benicio del Toro), who says little to nothing regarding his personal credentials or objective. 

     The action begins immediately, and Kate finds herself tripping along within a moral quagmire. The numerous men swirling around her operate outside federal jurisdiction or any sense of lawful procedures. Borders are crossed, literally and figuratively — doors are kicked in, shots are fired, and informants savagely interrogated in locked rooms. We are kept in the dark as much as Kate as to the end goal of the team’s mission. She is a cog in their machine, and she will serve her purpose no matter if she wishes it or not. It’s frightening how easily these men create a situation in which Kate, a woman amidst them, has no choice. Viewers see her face, along with the faces of those that stand in the way of the team’s end goal, and realize how little agency so many have in the violent drug war taking place on the border. It steamrolls anyone who might object or find fault with the brutal, dehumanizing methods employed by those who fight for either side. Or it will find some use for them, and then they will be discarded with no regard whatsoever for life or limb or conscience.

     This film is structured like a horror story, the action and sense of dread keep mounting. And it all is leading towards that violent, foregone conclusion that Kate hastily begins to piece together and realizes fully her impotence to stop. Violence begets violence, and the order we believe we are existing in is as flimsy as a chainlink fence.

*dialogue from the film

Review of the film Mad Max: Fury Road

     Mad Max: Fury Road flings its characters into perpetual motion, into a two-hour long car chase across the lifeless sands of a nuclear ravaged dystopia. They are propelled — shot, tossed, rocketed — through the same world we remember from the first three Mad Max movies. It’s been a 20 plus year wait for director George Miller to return to this arid, uncharitable landscape, and it was well worth it. This is an action movie of great clarity and singular purpose — to get seriously crazy. And the whole thing is exhilarating.

     It begins in furious fashion with Max, now played by British actor Tom Hardy, running from and pursued by slobbering, writhing hordes of a society that sees everything, including fellow human beings, as an assortment of parts for potential use. They drag him into their city where the overlord Immortan Joe holds tight the lives of his sickly, near-starving minions. It seems that Max’s story has nowhere to go as his universal donor status means that his blood becomes a prized resource for the anemic war boys.

     But within the walls of the city, Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, the trusted driver of the overlord’s main war rig, has secretly turned rogue. In the belly of her thundering vehicle are the brood wives of the overlord, escaping their enslavement with her steely, level-eyed help. They are running to the mythical “Green Place” where they will no longer be treated as objects — no longer farmed for their wombs by megalomaniacs of an utterly deranged society. Furiosa leads these women through the desert pursued by Immortan Joe’s brainwashed warriors. 

     Max somehow finds his way into this band of refugees and, at first, aids them based solely on his own survival. But, as he witnesses their fortitude, he begins to help based on empathy for their cause. Haunted by past failures, Max finds something like new meaning in the women’s fevered desire for self-determination. 

     Cries of misandry by some have been heard all around the opening and showing of this particular film narrative. There are a particular few who, even before seeing the film, railed against an action movie that placed women in roles on equal level with men. Instead of damsels in distress, we see these women executing their own escape from and revenge on Immortan Joe. They never needed a man to rescue their efforts or their persons. It’s purely by chance that Max begins to help them at all. In many ways, he benefits more from their assistance than they ever will from his. But this does nothing to emasculate Max, as the critics have wailed that it does. Instead, it humanizes him, makes him more realistic as a character in a world that has gone mad. And it makes the entire narrative infinitely more engaging and thrilling for a wider audience — contains the potential to enthrall a much more diverse array of viewers — than simply bros thirsting for explosions and some T. & A.

     It’s something for me to say that an action movie actually moved me, but I’m saying it now. Sure, the dialogue falls flat but there’s not too much of it to worry about. And it’s quickly forgotten as the kinetic, propulsive gears of this story are ignited and take off, never slowing, never pausing for breath, until that final frame. Then it’s just pure satisfaction. 

Book to Film: A Review of Brokeback Mountain

"There ain't never enough time, never enough..."*

     In the sparest of prose, Brokeback Mountain mines a deep and passionate well of profundity. Author Annie Proulx’s choices of syntax, cadence, rhythm and individual words have each been labored over and calculated. But that seemingly-cold process yields such exquisite desire and depth — as time, circumstances, and stubbornness combine to keep two doomed lovers apart. 

      In this particular short story, the spareness of the tale seems to place the responsibility of depth and subtlety with the reader to supply. Its is his/her perceptions of the characters, actions, and events that give the epic breadth to the simple story on the page. The inner lives of the characters are largely left unsaid, but it is implied in what they do in their day to day lives over time. These people are products of their upbringings within a culture where men are told not to voice or show their emotions and, instead, tamp them down inside their guts.

     Ennis del Mar is a man of his upbringing, one to never let on his true feelings or desires, while scrimping a living bearing watch over other men’s livestock. The man he falls for, Jack Twist, is often rash and impulsive in his actions and talk, eking out money rodeoing and summers herding cattle and sheep. These men share an idyllic summer in the early 60s on a mountain side in Wyoming — one in which, despite their better figuring, they find something like passion. This world that these two main characters reside in bears no sympathy for a love that does not exist within it’s rigorously strict standards. And it takes everything in their power and beyond to attempt to uphold the rules — both spoken and unspoken.

     It’s difficult for films, with their abbreviated running times, to always capture the depth, subtlety and psychological insight of a book. The clarity with which the story of Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain was adapted to the screen reminds me somewhat of that which was accomplished with Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men by the Coen Brothers. The two stories are vastly different, but each is so spare in its prose — yet the returns are so great. For many readers, the little of what verse is on the page resonates deeply at an emotional level, and the film versions only serve to deepen those reactions. Despite little description of visuals, both adaptations seem to  effortlessly capture and expand the story’s intentions and themes in masterful ways:  The characters and their surroundings look, sound, and behave just as we imagine they should. 

     In Brokeback Mountain, the beauty and idyllic nature of that one summer is cut short, and the two lovers agree to part for good. But try as mightily as they do — each marrying themselves away to suspecting women, fathering children, continuing working, meeting only quickly and furtively through the years — Ennis and Jack cannot stamp out their yearning for each other. They continually question what life would have been like if they had been capable of staying together. And as age rapidly wears on their faces, they long for a world that would have allowed them to have really loved one another without any reservations. This aching wondering echoes long after the book covers are closed and the screen fades to black.

*dialogue from the film

Book to Film: A Review Series on Various Follies & Masterpieces

“By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This is to me a miracle.”

                              -Kurt Vonnegut

   

     Books are glorious things. And they unfold — unfurl, unleash, unravel — worlds which we might have never visited or dreamt of ourselves. The sensations sparked by the combinations of words within radiate throughout our entire forms, placing us on a high plain of imagination. The possibilities stretch without limits to infinity. It’s something like a miracle, as Mr. Vonnegut so rightly suggested in the above statement.

     Something similar could be said to happen with films. How each of us interprets a film has incalculable possibilities. However, in adapting a book to a film, there are differences, and they are treacherous. I am not at all suggesting that adapting a book into a film is something to be shunned. There’s definitely manipulation in each prospect — both penning a book and adapting a book into a film. Each project’s author has designs on their audience experiencing something that leads to certain judgments, understandings, and perceptions. But every member of that audience can take something different away, a uniquely individualized version of the story that was told. 

     Here lies the giant, hulking stumbling block for many of those who attempt to adapt a book into a film is this: Can the film version do justice to a story the audience might have already read and of which they have their own versions? In the cinematic medium, we — as viewers — are witnessing a very individualized interpretation of a book’s story. True, there may be many different people involved in creating any given film, directors, producers, editors, score composers, actors, etc. But there is only one outcome — a single feature film — to which the audience bears witness. There is not quite so much infinity with which to play once one has witnessed the movie version. The faces of actors, certain gestures, certain landscapes, certain narrative decisions might catch in one’s mind. Then that personal interpretation of the story is likely forever altered/overlapped by the film adaptation seen, and never completely erased from memory. 

     I say the aforementioned with a bit of reservation. And this is due to the nature of all story-telling. What’s beautiful here is that once the artist/author/director/whatever has laid the final line or faded to black on the final scene, s/he doesn’t have say over how audiences interpret the work anymore. Power still resides within that work to manipulate the minds of those who digest it. But the possibilities, even those the artist never imagined, are irrevocably limitless in form. That is the wondrous essence of story-telling. It can be a nearly transcendent experience for someone and/or many, whatever the medium through which the tale is told.

     This column will look at a number of book to film adaptations. Some are successful in conceptualizing the story from page to screen. Others are not so successful. Some are astonishing masterpieces while others are devastating follies. This will be entirely based on my opinion and interpretation of the story’s themes as well as its intent, as well as how skillfully those were committed to film. The first tale up to bat is Annie E. Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain, which was adapted to film in 2005 by director Ang Lee. 


"If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed."
                                                 - Stanley Kubrick

Deserted Island List Mania: 5 More Favorite Books - Return to the Island

     It's spring cleaning time again, and that means I'm thinning my personal library, packing up and donating those books that I just don't forsee reading again. This is a tough process. Books are such wonderful things in an infinite number of ways. They hold the promise of worlds beyond our own realities. And the stories within form bridges between those worlds and our own inner lives so that they are forever connected. Giving certain books away feels like severing connections, making the notion so difficult.
     So, these 5 books are more of those that I'd never put on the chopping block. I'd add them to my deserted island collection and be forever happy paging through each as the soothing sound of the ocean waves on the shore accompanies some great uninterrupted reading.

In no particular order:

1. ...And The Earth Did Not Devour Him by Tomas Rivera

     A fictional account of Mexican-American migrant workers in the '40s and '50s, this book hums with stunning realism. I've often heard it said that there is more truth in fiction than facts, and this perfect blend of precise poetry and lyrical prose makes that case ever stronger.








2. The Subsequent Blues by Gary Copeland Lilley

     "...Lilley's verse weaves stark realism with the spiritual, crafting myths of honest witness to the good, the bad, and all the shades of in between coloring this earth. Quietly lovely and then brazen and arresting in the exhilaration emitted. Drugs and booze, love and hate, life and death all sing inside the covers of this collection. And, after putting it down, one is left sensing a renewed and refreshed contact with the world." - Excerpt from my 06/16/14 review of the collection.





3. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua

     A powerful collection of essays and poems by a Chicana Texas-borderland native, this book draws together the personal and political into something extraordinary and unique. Anzaldua explores complex issues of identity - including race, gender, sexual orientation, heritage, and family - through a skilled weaving of language that is sure to leave readers with a heightened sensitivity to the great and varied diversity present throughout the human race.





4. Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

     "Moon Tiger is a gorgeous, sprawling novel about one woman who never hesitated to write her own way through history. Claudia's life has taken her from the English seaside, the Egyptian deserts of World War II, the Central American jungles to the cusp of death.  This final place is the setting for her journey through that past and that of the entire known world..." - Excerpt from my 4/6/14 review of the novel.






5. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

     Such a strange book. So hallucinatory and mirage-like. Bradbury penned the dreamscape of Mars with such precision and frightening beauty. The stories within chronicle the many attempts of the human race as men return again and again to colonize this red planet that neighbors our own, always beckoning with possibilities and mystery. What they find there serves only to deepen and expand that mystery, all beneath the glow of long-extinguished stars and galaxies, spreading out to the limits of infinity. 

Deserted Island List Mania: 5 More Favorite Films - Return to the Island

     Films are simply astonishing creations. And some much more than others, quite obviously. The work that goes into a great movie is beyond comprehension - the vision, the labor, the creative input and output of those involved. It's an accomplishment in the grandest sense.
     These five films are getting on in age but still demand space in the cultural canon of great stories told. Each one holds rapt my attention every time I sit down to watch. I am continually floored by the viewing experience. And I would put these in my hypothetical life raft as I set sail towards the shimmering mirage of that deserted island in my dreams - where solitude and sand are plentiful, and, somehow, someway, there's a working DVD player sitting among the palm trees and the coconuts that litter the beach at their roots.

In no particular order:


1. Notorious directed by Alfred Hitchcock

     The master of suspense does his thing just right. Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant smolder in this tense tale involving Nazis, spies, and serious mommy issues. The movement of the story from beginning to end simmers and then crackles, expertly building in pressure, until the final reveals hit you with an emotional, gut-smacking wallop. 







2. The Grapes of Wrath directed by John Ford

     "I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too" (dialogue from the story).
     Oh, Tom Joad. The film version of Steinbeck's Great Depression-era mega-classic The Grapes of Wrath may have cut the story by half, but director John Ford and cinematographer Gregg Toland knock that half out of the park. They found the perfect embodiment of the tale's protagonist Tom in Henry Fonda and his unique ability to truly inhabit the world of any story he inserted himself into. A searingly political and personal tale of the have-nots struggling to gain something, just enough, to live and die with anything like dignity.


3. Cleo from 5 to 7 directed by Agnes Varda

     In traditional French culture, the early evening hours of 5 to 7 are those in which lovers meet. This story involves a young woman and her lover meeting and loving, but it is also so much more deeply about her internal world. Cleo is waiting in these few precious hours, and what she is waiting for will impact the rest of her life in ways she can only currently imagine. She is living and waiting, and the ecstasy and agony of both ripple across her expressive face in director Agnes Varda's beautiful ode to human existence.




4. Dr. Strangelove directed by Stanley Kubrick

     Arguably the best political satire ever put to film. I can watch this one over and over, as it relinquishes new details with each viewing. A film about the possible end of the human race that roars with comedy and seers with something so very close to a terrifyingly realistic vision of the future. 








5. Do The Right Thing directed by Spike Lee 

     So this one might not be quite as elderly as the others listed on here - only 26 years old - but it is one that I'd certainly place within my classic collection. It's a movie about race but one that doesn't choose sides. It's also such an artistic statement by a 32 years old director in love with the power of his craft. I've always loved Lee for his style with visuals, especially colors. And this film sings with colors of all sorts and descriptions. What those colors say to each of us is completely up to one's own imagination and worldview. 

           

Review of the film Children of Men

"As the sound of the playgrounds faded, despair set in."*                                                                                            

     What a visceral, terrifying film. Transcendent beauty and devastating violence in the same breath. It fills one up to near over-saturation with intense, gut-wrenching emotion. The year is 2027 and the human race is on the brink of extinction, no babies having been born for over 18 years anywhere. The place is a dystopic Britain where fascism has taken hold of the last place on earth clinging to something like civilization. Director Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien) has populated his film in such a manner that this world looks merely an extension of that which we already inhabit, so realistic are the settings and disparate acts of its people. How much can be said with so few words.

     Violence exists just below the surface of every frame in this film, ebbing and waning in threat within the viewer’s consciousness. Then it will suddenly explode to the forefront, shrapnel-ing across the screen. And layers of sweat, grime, and blood bespatter the lens — the one thing seemingly separating us from being inside the scene ourselves, in the action, also on the brink of the violence.   

     Beauty resides there too, though it is often so quickly extinguished by the action. Most of that beauty comes from the characters emerging from their surroundings. They stand, stride, limp, and bend in this world, unknowing of the moment of grace they are suddenly involved in — just through simple acts and words. But they are unmistakably present and alive — quick, quiet and over before we can fully grasp their significance.    

*dialogue from the film 

Review of the film Whiplash

"There are no two words in the English language more harmful than good job.”*

    

     Whiplash is a firework of a film — speeding and crackling upwards, aiming at that single explosive end note. It’s an exhilarating 106 minutes. Set at a movie world stand-in for Juliard Conservatory, the story centers on a 19 years old aspiring drummer and his relationship with the demanding conductor of the school’s top big jazz band. The young musician, Andrew (Miles Teller), finds himself called up to this esteemed group where he quickly discovers the nature of pressure. Insults are thrown, chairs hurled, and sloppy tears provoked in an unpredictable storm — controlled by precisionist maestro Terence Fletcher (J. K. Simmons), wildly oscillating between a menacing simmer and a boiling rage. He towers over his musicians by instilling the ultimate fear of failure — in his eyes. 

     Andrew quickly becomes obsessed with proving to this man that he can perform to the unyieldingly high expectations that have been set. While practicing for endless swaths of time, the student pushes himself to the point of exhaustion, sweat weeping from his body and blood oozing from the blisters that line his palms and fingers. The performance, and Fletcher’s always receding approval, become Andrew’s obsession — the only thing he can see through his tunnel vision aimed at perfection. The sliver of a barrier between breakdown and breakthrough lives in the tension of every second as he pushes and pushes towards an apex. The conductor’s shadow looms constantly.

     This film is a strange experience — wholly engrossing and entertaining, while also being mystifyingly uncomfortable. Perhaps the latter is that the power dynamic playing out between these two men seems on the edge of insanity. One could see Fletcher as purely a villain in the story, but there is something in Andrew’s character that borders on malignantly vainglorious too. Perhaps this is what the quest for genius looks like.

     In the final scene — one of the most entertaining and astounding film scenes I’ve ever witnessed — the two men are finally, for a moment, on equal footing. They face off eye to eye over the drum kit, their supreme battleground. And even though no fists fly or chairs are thrown, each is giving the other absolutely every piece of spitting fight that resides within. One will rise to that pinnacle edge of breakthrough. And there will be not a single witness to this explosion of a performance who would ever think to utter the words, “Good job.” 

Stunned silence will do. 

Catch your breath.

*dialogue from the film

Review of the film Selma

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”     
                          - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

     There are so many angles a review of Selma could take. The timeliness of a film centered on the American Civil Rights Movement is undeniable. Race is at the forefront of discussions all over our national media. And names like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Renisha McBride, and Eric Gardner sound like echoes of those that resonated so loudly in the country’s ears nearly 50 years ago. This story is uncannily familiar in our current cultural moment. It could seem like we have come so far since the 60s in regards to civil rights, yet it is blatantly apparent that there is still very far to go. 

     Following Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as he works with other dedicated and passionate black activists, the film focuses its lens on a few weeks of time during the movement. This short period was the lead-up to that historical protest march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama that precluded President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Director Ava DuVernay chooses this angle instead of the usual biographic tactic of attempting to provide a neat narrative arch to an entire life. It is a fruitful choice, as it gives the proceedings a streamlined intensity. It also allows for more shaded depth to the supporting players, who were each significant individuals in their own right. Giving nuance to all those interwoven in this historical moment does not sully the message — King and his allies were marked with imperfections and personal struggles as all human beings are — rather, this strategy proves how profoundly personal the political can be and vice versa. And among these strongly depicted characters are those very real women who populated the movement. DuVernay places them on equal footing with the often more recognizable male figures surrounding King, and this serves the film’s theme extremely well.

     That theme of the personal being political is also on display within each of the many differing levels of bureaucracy in which Dr. King is enmeshed as he works towards the movement’s goals. He steers himself with grace and determination — from the highest office of political power, verbally sparring and negotiating with the president of the United States — to the pews of a Selma, Alabama church, where he speaks in hushed tones with his fellow activists as they flex and step towards something that could resemble grassroots consensus. It is through these transitions that we also see Dr. King the fallible and resilient man right alongside the shining iconic figure of history. The two identities are not separate, and we watch this human being radiating an inner power and nearly unwavering sense of personal and political agency. This voice that spoke so loudly — that grew out of so much support and tenacity from so many who surrounded him in moments of high and low alike.

     There also have been a lot of high and low controversies following this film around. The ones that stand out the most to me are that of certain voices and groups calling out historical inaccuracies within Selma’s narrative. Specifically, the supposed alteration of President Johnson’s role in the negotiations leading up to the Voting Rights Act and that of the exclusion of Rabbi Abraham Heschel from the ranks of those who march with Dr. King. In looking at historical inaccuracies in the Hollywood film universe overall, it seems especially telling that there is so much outrage over these particular figures. In my mind, it almost reads like a kind of knee-jerk protest against the racial make-up of those protagonists on most prominent display throughout the story. Those we are asked to identify with most strongly are black, proud, and complete agents of their own destiny in the midst of the movement. That so many viewers of such a film — who also happen to be mostly white — are crying foul because of the reduction of white historical characters on the screen should be suspect. I don’t mean to shame anyone’s experience, but I do think that one should question these kinds of quick reactions to what is a moving and emotionally honest portrayal of an important moment in American history. It’s not ever easy to look at cultural errors without also feeling defensive towards our own role in them. We all share guilt in some way, but that is the nature of history. To pick on this film for those reasons is somewhat naive and altogether faulty — especially in terms of the message of such a film as Selma.

     We should be able to identify with those who do not always look, sound, and act like ourselves. That doesn’t mean that it’s always easy and that we don’t have to examine our first, second, third and ongoing reactions when presented with difficult cultural and historical messages. But the more stories we seek out and share are not simply a matter of diversity — they are a mandate for reality. Selma is a mighty and artful piece of that reality.

"If you are a person ... that has a human spirit looking to be enlarged, you cannot do that staying in the same room with the same people...It's not about diversity. It's not about even inclusion or representation. It's about reality."                                                                                                                   
                                                                            - Selma Director Ava DuVernay

"What happens when a man stands up...says enough is enough?”                                                            
                                - lyrics from the song “Glory” by Common & John Legend

Review of the film Birdman

"You're the one who doesn't exist. You're doing this because you're scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don't matter. And you know what? You're right. You don't. It's not important. You're not important. Get used to it."*

     Birdman plays with the idea of the status afforded to so many white men — their apparently seamless cultural privilege. Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) is an aging actor grasping onto the last bits of celebrity he garnered by donning the cape of a movie superhero. That franchise ended decades ago, along with any artistic credibility he had possessed beforehand. 

     He is viewed raging against his current insignificance. In this tantrum of self-importance, Riggan is mounting a play based on a Raymond Carver piece that he has adapted, is directing, and is also starring in. The film takes place in the few days leading up to the opening night on Broadway. It is a last ditch effort; all his energy, celebrity connections, fortune, and sanity are buried in this process. Birdman illustrates this delusional drive to matter to the world — Riggan's world — to rise above commonality and be something grander. It’s a crazy notion, and it’s also megalomania, and we see it so much among men like him.

     Despite his status — his treasure trove of privilege — there is pain there and there is struggle. It’s interesting to think on this narrative as a that of a man with his back against the wall, his sanity on a razor’s edge. He is balancing between two extremes — that of stubbornly believing himself the center of the world, and that of realizing how tiny and unimportant he is amidst the whole of existence. And we watch Riggan oscillate between the two. He wildly fumbles and protests against the pigeonhole life has given him to fill, an identity he had a lot to do with carving out. It’s an exhilarating process to observe, so strange and so funny. There’s something so wonderfully refreshing about a film that bears witness to its own insignificance in the realm of the universe. A tiny blip on the radar screen of eternity.

*dialogue from the film