The Red Shoes

1948 // UK // Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger // September 5, 2010 // Theatrical Print (Webster University Moore Auditorium)

[Note: This post contains spoilers. The Red Shoes was screened on September 3-5, 2010 as a part of the Webster University Film Series' Dance on Film feature.]

"Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by, but the Red Shoes go on."  Another inexcusable blind spot in my cinema literacy, rectified at long last. Much has been written about the film's Technicolor glories, and about its surreal central ballet performance. I don't have much to add at the moment, other than to observe that while technically tame compared to, say, a contemporary show-stopper from Julie Taymor, The Red Shoes' ballet represents a far more daring gambit, narratively speaking. It takes a certain creative courage to drop a trippy, fantastical fifteen-minute ballet sequence into a film that is otherwise poised between a bubbling "Life Backstage" melodrama and an archetypal romantic tragedy.

Moira Shearer's flaming tresses (and perfectly freckled bosom) aside, the most compelling aspect of the film for me is unquestionably Anton Walbrook's for-the-ages portrayal of Mephistophelean producer Boris Lermontov. He's a domineering monster at heart, but there's nonetheless something pitiable in Walbrook's performance that suggests genuine artistic torment. The ambiguity of what's going on behind that perfectly collected and groomed façade, the uncertainty about what exactly motivates Lermontov, is what makes him such a delicious character. Walbrook himself was gay, and Powell and Pressburger seem to have conceived of the character as gay, which is fortunate, given that mere sexual craving for Vickie wouldn't be half as interesting as the hazy gestalt of possessiveness, paternalism, resentment, entitlement, and artistic idealism that seems to animate Lermontov.

One complaint: Setting aside the notorious plot hole on display in the final scenes—Why the heck is Vickie wearing the red shoes before the show even starts?—the post-suicide coda strikes me as largely unnecessary. Much of it feels emotionally leaden or just downright silly, especially after the fiendish crescendo of the dressing room confrontation: Lermontov's choked-up announcement from the stage, the performance of the ballet sans-lead, and the lingering death scene between Julian and a suspiciously un-mangled Vickie. Far be it from me to re-write a masterpiece, but it would have been more satisfying if the film had concluded shortly after Vickie's fatal leap.

Barfly

1987 // USA // Barbet Schroeder // September 3, 2010 // VHS - Warner Brothers (1998)

"No money, no job, no rent. Hey, I'm back to normal." Barfly is one of those films that's been languishing without a proper American DVD release, so I had to turn to VHS when I wanted to share it with friends. I had seen the film years ago, but apparently remembered virtually nothing of it, because the screening I caught at this year's Ebertfest left me gobsmacked and grinning from ear to ear. You don't have to be a fan of Charles Bukowski to appreciate what he and director Schroeder are doing, which is less about telling a story (there isn't much of one) than about sketching a portrait of a man, a lifestyle, and most significantly, an ethos. That ethos is personified in Bukowski-analogue Henry Chinaski, portrayed by a paunchy, limp-haired Mickey Rourke, affecting a Snagglepuss cadence that works wonders with every muttered aside. ("Misdirected animosity...") Between Rourke, whose charisma here is so molten it burns through the dingy sheets and blood-spattered boxer shorts, and riveting a Faye Dunaway in Walking Husk Mode, Barfly is inescapably an actor's film. Yet there's plenty to love here formally, whether from the unobtrusive, marvelous movements of Robby Müller's camera or the way that he and Schroeder convey the distinct scuzziness of Los Angeles' fleabag apartments and dive bars. You can practically smell the rail scotch and sour armpit funk. In short, it's a smart, funny, enthralling little film that more people should see.

Cannibal Holocaust

1980 // Italy // Ruggero Deodato // August 27, 2010 // Theatrical Print (Hi-Pointe Theater)

The legends surrounding Ruggeo Deodato's exploitation magnum opus are so fulsome and contradictory, I think it's probably best to simply appraise what is on the screen, and leave questions of sincerity and intentions aside. Revisiting the film following a Halloween DVD screening in 2008—and for the first time theatrically—it's more self-evident to me that Cannibal Holocaust is a fairly daring slice of nastiness, rather than merely nasty. Granted, it's gratuitous, skuzzy, and stomach-churning, and in its lowest moments it quite deliberately apes a Mondo feature, lending it the whiff of a spectacle with no purpose other than to revolt. I'm thinking particularly of the on-screen animal murder, which is admittedly gruesome, but also comes off as sort of vapidly shocking and pointless, aspirations of crude metaphor aside. However, what's fascinating here is how much time Deodato devotes to things that aren't violent and appalling. Robert Kerman's anthropologist spends a healthy chunk of the film negotiating with guides, sparring with television executives, and interviewing acquaintances of the murdered documentarians. Not exactly the sort of stuff that keeps squirming teens in their seats when they came for gore and titties. Of course, the film's innovative found footage / double-timeline structure definitively betrays the filmmaker's interest in the artificiality of cinema. Errol Morris it ain't, but that's sort of the point; if it accomplishes nothing else, Cannibal Holocaust puts to rest the notion that metafilm is necessarily a pretentious, high-brow endeavor.

It's in the pursuit of its social commentary that the film finds its most gratifying traction, amid all the excessively drawn-out, oddly-scored scenes of turtle gutting and awkward, post-atrocity coitus. Sometimes this commentary has all the subtlety of a jackhammer, as when Deodato repeatedly cuts from the found footage to the executives in the screening room, who shift uncomfortably in their seats and throw horrified glances at one another. (Get it?! You're culpable too, Mr. and Mrs. Viewer!) Occasionally, however, the film exhibits some genuine black wit. One of my favorite moments occurs when documentary director Alan Yates (Carl Gabriel Yorke), upon stumbling upon an impaled woman, is observed cracking a shit-eating grin. When Yates' cameraman alerts him that he is being filmed, the director reverts to carefully arranged look of grim sorrow. Now that's delicious satire! My main problem with Cannibal Holocaust is the old saw about having and eating one's cake. The film bottoms out on the shoals of tastelessness even as it lobs righteous hand-grenades at filmmakers, journalists, Big Media, and consumers. Of course, the "wants to have it both ways" charge is leveled at almost every work that addresses violence, sex, or other potentially offensive subject matter, but I think the often jarring contrast between Cannibal Holocaust's leering tendencies and its cleverness supports at least an indictment for two-facedness.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

2010 // USA // Edgar Wright // August 23, 2010 // Theatrical Print (St. Louis Cinemas Chase Park Plaza)

Revisiting Edgar Wright's bitingly funny, pixelated mash-up of geek culture and romantic comedy tropes, this time with the Lovely Wife, I was struck by how relaxed the film is about its ambitions. Compared to Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, which are deliriously fun but embrace their respective generic legacies a little too unquestioningly for my taste, Scott Pilgrim always retains a touch of the sardonic. And yet it never acquires the grating self-satisfaction that plagues so many satirical films. Perhaps it's just that Wright's full-throttle comedic approach smooths over the rough edges. However, a second viewing and a thumb-through of the first Scott Pilgrim graphic novel reveals that the film's admirable balancing act flows directly from its strength as a shrewd adaptation. Bryan Lee O'Malley's manga-tinged black-and-white funny books necessarily lose some of their indie scruffiness in the translation to the big screen, but Wright's approach is in a different key than the slavish (or desperate) devotion of a fanboy. He preserves the visual inventiveness of the comics, borrows liberally from O'Malley's writing (sharpening the quips with sheer velocity), and uses his own medium to fine effect. Exhibit A: The characters of the comics, who are lovingly written but often pictorially indistinguishable with their wide eyes and unfussy lines, are each brought to striking and distinctive life in Wright's film by a succession of marvelously cast performers. Secondary characters such as Scott's snide roommate Wallace Wells might be caricatures, but Kieran Culkin makes him memorable, dammit, and not just with the prickly lines he spouts, but all the wonderful details of his physical performance.  (Culkin's slightly tipsy, archly helpful delivery of "Scott! Look out! It's that one guy!" might be one of my favorite throwaway moments this year.) This sort of creative doodling and the exploitation of all of cinema's components—actors, motion, sound, and so forth—is what makes Scott Pilgrim the film such a pleasurable experience.

Miami Vice (Unrated Director's Edition)

2006 // USA // Michael Mann // August 9, 2010 // Blu-ray - Universal (2008)

The film's relatively recent vintage notwithstanding, the dreaded consensus seems to have already decreed that Miami Vice belongs in the lower tiers of Michael Mann's oeuvre. However, the film has its lonely and dogged boosters, among them Slant luminaries Ed Gonzalez and Nick Schager, as well as Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies blogger Kevin J. Olson. Truth be told, it was Kevin's recent appreciation for the film that provoked me to finally visit Mann's contemporized vision of Sonny Crocket and Ricardo Tubbs' neon-drenched world. While I can't share the aforementioned writers' assessment that it is a great work, there is far more roiling beneath Miami Vice's slick surface than might be immediately apparent.

The film's design lustily embraces the faint air of the ridiculous that permeated its namesake television series, at least when it comes to the fashions, cars, and architecture. The world of Miami Vice is one where undercover narcotics officers drive Ferraris, dwell in dazzling condos, and pilot speedboats in their off hours. The cops and crooks alike possess flawless Caribbean fashion sense, sip mojitos behind velvet ropes, and have access to an unlimited supply of firepower, gadgets, and vehicles. Yet Mann presents this world without a wink or a titter, with absolute conviction. It is as though the goal is to submerge us in kitsch to the point where we can no longer detect that it is kitsch. The effect is undeniably heady, particularly when paired with the film's lurid, domineering aesthetic. (The sky itself essentially becomes a canvas for Mann to paint with some truly astonishing hues.) Miami Vice is an aggressively cool film, but it never seems to be striking a pose. It just happens to have been filmed in an aggressively cool alternate universe.

Mann, who also wrote the screenplay, has a focused and elegant conception of what Miami Vice should be, and he is scrupulous about keeping it on track. There are action sequences, but it's not really an action film. The chases and gunplay primarily serve as jittery releases of dramatic tension, rather than delivery devices for drama. It's a story about cops, but it's not really a police procedural. Mann fetishizes the visual language of law enforcement rather than its logistical minutiae. Given that the film maintains the director's preference for emotional chilliness (or at least a forlornness that precludes flamboyant emotional clashes), it can't really be regarded as a character study.

So what is Miami Vice? Ultimately, I think it proves to be a surprisingly simple tale of moral vexation, where the triumph of righteousness—and the tears that result—was never in doubt. While Mann has long exhibited an absorption with male honor codes, his focus has always been on the proximate consequences of such codes. Here he takes a much more melancholy, even meditative approach, particularly in his presentation of the male-female dyads of Sonny-Isabella and, to a lesser degree, Rico-Trudy. Rarely have characters in a Mann joint smelled their unhappy fates on the wind with as much precision as these four, and yet they are still willing to luxuriate in fleeting moments of pleasure, joy, and human intimacy. Whatever the film's flaws or self-imposed restraints, its tone is an undeniable achievement: Mann evokes decadence and moral peril without the aura of doom. Miami Vice is ripe with the sensation that this fallen world cannot accommodate compromises or hesitation, and will never forgive us our bad choices.

The Damned United

2009 // UK // Tom Hooper // August 9, 2010 // DVD - Sony (2010)

This prickly tale of the rise and fall (and subsequent humbling) of notoriously sharp-tongued football manager Brian Clough provides an array of unexpected pleasures. To be sure, the film boasts a worthy pedigree. It was adapted by Frost/Nixon and The Queen writer Peter Morgan from a novel by David Peace, who also penned the Red Riding quartet, which was itself adapted into one of the finest British films of the past decade. However, director Tom Hooper was not known to me, save by reputation as the helmsman of all seven episodes of HBO's lauded John Adams. Accordingly, it's rewarding to witness Hooper's adroit handling of The Damned United's twin timelines (a structure that echoes, among other works, Sean Penn's Into the Wild), as well as his determination to tweak sports movie conventions. There are plenty of histrionic confrontations and tearful reunions, all of them entirely unsurprising, but for a film about football, it boasts remarkably little gameplay footage. Hooper and Morgan keep the focus on Clough's personality: his unflagging ambition, unfortunate taste for conflict, and self-destructive hubris. It's a daring thing to make a sports film about the limits of personal achievement, even if the subject is a manager rather than an athlete. The Damned United's full-throated commitment to its themes is impressive, and that commitment drips from every frame and performance. Cinematographer Ben Smithard's striking recreation of 1970s England is exquisite, from moldering Leeds to sun-kissed Brighton. And while Michael Sheen doesn't quite seem to inhabit the same world as his fellow performers, his portrayal of Clough—the startling blend of priggishness, throbbing ego, and lip-curling desperation—is mesmerizing stuff.