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.

Life During Wartime

2009 // USA // Todd Solondz // August 29, 2010 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Tivoli Theater)

B- - Memory, culpability, and above all forgiveness snake with python-scale brazenness through Todd Solondz's Life During Wartime, a sequel (of sorts) to Happiness, his 1998 pitch-black slice of middle-class disillusionment (and, memorably, pedophilia). Recasting all of the characters from that film, Solondz revisits the frayed, stymied lives of middle-aged sisters Joy, Trish, and Helen Jordan (here played by Shirley Henderson, Allison Janney, and Ally Sheedy) as they attempt to forget, move on, and start over. Building upon its predecessor's single-minded theme—You Hardly Ever Get What You Want—Life During Wartime gazes on the tangled, habitually dysfunctional lives of the Jordan clan and pointedly asks who we should blame for our miseries, and whether our offenders should (or can be) forgiven. Solondz's approach is his customary swirl of jarring frankness and comical anguish. The forthrightness of the film's aims lend it the aura of a morality play, as does its curious structure, which forgoes conventional narrative for a succession of linked set pieces, each one amusing and aching in its way, and each something of a self-contained short film. Solondz's despairing yet earnest sensibility remains an acquired taste. Yet while Life During Wartime is unmistakably slighter and less bracing than its forebears, it also reveals a more disciplined and adroit filmmaker.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start

2010 // USA // Edgar Wright // August 16, 2010 // Theatrical Print (St. Louis Cinemas Chase Park Plaza)

B - There's no denying that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World seems engineered to tap into the brainstems of Gen-Xers raised on The Legend of Zelda, tickling their nostalgia centers with a blend of hipster banter and sheer awesomeness until they submit, giggling with delight. More broadly, the film presents a romantic comedy that doesn't just name-check slacker cultural touchstones such as comics, video games, and indie rock, but earnestly drapes itself in their idioms and aesthetics. Based on the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley, and set in a wintery, shabby Toronto of indeterminate era—characters fiddle with their Nintendo DS Lites, but also visit CD stores (how quaint!) and wrestle with AOL dial-up—Scott Pilgrim follows the amorous travails of the titular character, an awkward twenty-two-year-old played by Michael Cera (a bit redundant, I know). Director Edgar Wright previously showcased his droll wit and rapid-fire stylings in the genre-tweaking, deliriously funny Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, co-written with leading man Simon Pegg. Here his writing partner is actor Michael Bacall (last seen playing separate characters named Omar in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof and Inglourious Basterds), but Pegg's absence hasn't diminished Wright's facility for maintaining a cutting and relentless comic cadence while slathering on outlandish spectacle.

Scott is unemployed (naturally), shares a mattress on the floor of a one-room basement apartment with his gay roommate Wallace (Kieran Culkin), and plays bass in a White Stripes-esque band called, somewhat sheepishly, Sex Bob-omb. (If you get the joke, congratulations: you're part of the target audience.) Somehow, despite his chronic whining, crippling insecurities, and abject dorkiness, Scott has managed to attain a spitfire seventeen-year-old pseudo-girlfriend, Knives Chao (Ellen Wong). Everyone around Scott seems to regard this relationship as slightly skeevy and exceedingly pathetic, from his meddling sister Stacey (Anna Kendrick) to doubtful bandmates Kim, Stephen, and Young Neil (Alison Pine, Mark Webber, and Johnny Simmons). Fortunately (or perhaps not), Scott is soon smitten by one Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a rollerblading American with a tangled neon dyejob, recently arrived in Toronto with a plethora of "battle scars," as Scott's acquaintances tell it. Ramona is too sarcastic and taciturn to qualify as a Manic Pixie, but Scott has nonetheless resolved that she is his Dream Girl, clumsily dropping Knives in order to pursue her.

Despite the story's vaguely banal outlines, the screenplay is razor-sharp, bursting forth with a kind of machine-gun alacrity that has become something of a Wright signature, complemented by equally breakneck editing.  Even more conspicuous is the film's design, which borrows shamelessly and earnestly from the visual language of video games, comics, and anime to sculpt a world as seen through eyes conditioned to visualize environments (and relationships) as pixelated, four-color, and replete with speed-lines. The approach is more amusing than audacious; Scott Pilgrim isn't striving to be a formalist experiment within a Hollywood frame, in the manner of, say, the Wachowski Brothers' Speed Racer. Wright's film is simpler, more adorable, and more approachable. From the cartoon RIIIIINNNNGs that leap from trilling phones to the way locales in the Toronto slackerverse seem to morph and bleed into one another, Scott Pilgrim poses an alternate reality governed by an unfocused mind with its own defiantly nerdy vocabulary. Often, there is an element of furtive, shamefaced communion between the filmmakers and audience at work in the flourishes. (Who in the post-Sims world hasn't occasionally thought of their bladder needs in terms of a yellow "Pee Bar"?)

Up to a point, one might regard this unabashed, witty embrace of the fantastical as a product of Scott's geeky fixations. However, at a Battle of the Bands where he hopes to impress his Object of Desire, things get a little... heavy. Scott is confronted by Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha), a flying, flame-chucking, demon-summoning ex-boyfriend of Ramona's. Unfortunately for our hero, she neglected to mention that she has seven "evil exes" who must be defeated by any prospective boyfriend.  Scott, being a video game aficionado, rises to the challenge, although he remains shrilly exasperated by Ramona's reticence about the super-powered exes. These include skateboarder-turned-actor Lucas Lee (Chris Evans, hamming it up with a Christian Bale growl), who has stunt crew do all his fighting; and Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh), whose psychic powers (and stupendous hair) stem from his self-righteous veganism. Scott cuts through them one-by-one in a series of Street Fighter-style battles, permitting Cera some choreographed martial arts action and Wright an excuse to pepper the frame with points, power-ups, and explosions of gold coins.

Were it merely a glitzy collection of in-jokes meant to appeal to former latchkey kids with fond memories of Final Fantasy II, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World would be an endearing amusement park ride, but little more. Fortunately, it's also consistently funny, in a way that transcends mere pointing and squealing at its abundant pop references. Cera's slouchy, self-effacing manner (which has almost worn out its welcome) is the antithesis of Pegg's tightly-wound grimacing and goggling. However, Wright handles his new leading man quite well, plopping the slow-witted and spineless Scott into a universe populated by friends and enemies who, in contrast, speak and act with precision. Romantic comedies don't often feature protagonists who are so clueless, negligent, and fundamentally cowardly, and part of what makes Scott Pilgrim unconventional is its determination that its hero emerge a better person from his romantic tribulations, not just his old self +1 girlfriend.

Ramona is unfortunately a bit of a cipher—and her attraction to a milquetoast like Scott a mere Nice Guy fantasy—but she does serve a rather pointed role in our hero's arc. Namely, she snaps Scott out his mopey self-pity and forces him to confront his own moral missteps. In one crucial scene, when Scott bellyaches yet again about the vengeful exes left in Ramona's wake, she points out all the broken hearts he's left behind, and which he never acknowledges, because he prefers to be the put-upon underdog. It's not exactly a resoundingly feminist film—Ramona is reduced to the role of the proverbial Mushroom Princess by the end—but it is atypical in some extremely gratifying ways. When Scott finally confronts the dreaded seventh ex, slimy record producer Gidegon Gordon Graves (Jason Schwartzman), his flaming Power of Love sword fails him. (Shameless, reckless devotion only counts for so much, after all.) The power-up he unsheathes instead? Why the Power of Self-Respect, of course. If you'd read the strategy guide, you'd know that.

Interview with Ryan Eslinger

Alton, Illinois native Ryan Eslinger made his first feature film, Madness and Genius, between his sophomore and junior years at New York University. The film went on to premiere at the 2003 Toronto Film Festival, and garnered attention for Eslinger as an emerging talent. His second feature, When a Man Falls in the Forest, boasted the sort of star power that independent sophomore efforts can rarely claim, with a cast that included Dylan Baker, Sharon Stone, and Timothy Hutton. Developed at the Sundance Institute's workshops, the film went on to be nominated for a Golden Bear at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival. Eslinger's latest film, Daniel and Abraham, is a micro-budget feature that utilizes just two actors and a snowbound forest. It was screened at the St. Louis Filmmaker's Showcase in July, and is headed to the St. Louis International Film Festival this November. As a follow-up to my piece on the film at Look/Listen, I spoke with Ryan about his approach to film-making, and what's going on beneath Daniel and Abraham's frosty surface.

GC: In some respects, Daniel and Abraham represents a fairly significant shift from your previous film, When a Man Falls in the Forest, particularly in terms of the scale of the production. Was that reactive in response to your experience making When a Man Falls in the Forest, or has the sort of micro-budget, total-control approach utilized in Daniel and Abraham been a long-gestating interest?

RE: I did not film Daniel and Abraham as a reaction to my experience making When a Man Falls in the Forest.  Aside from the fact that I think a gritty micro-budget best serves the story of Daniel and Abraham, I was also trying to find new ways to challenge myself. Daniel and Abraham was definitely not a project on which I had total control. When you shoot out in the woods in the middle of winter, you don't have control over much of anything, including the weather and your ability to hold your hands steady. The one thing you do have control over is your inner drive to keep pushing forward and put one foot in front of the other. It is an almost meditative experience. I had hoped this would be the case, and I wanted to experience working in these conditions.

GC: The screenplay is what really captured my attention about Daniel and Abraham. It contains straightforward thriller elements, but also strong allegorical currents. The conflict between the titular characters almost comprises a dialog on abstract concepts like gratitude, duty, and humility. Can you talk a bit about the genesis for this story, and how you and your co-writers developed the film's distinctive tone?

RE: I originally wrote Daniel and Abraham as a completely different script that had eight or nine characters. However, the story was not working, so I threw out most of it and kept only two of the characters. I had a couple passages of dialogue that I gave to [co-writers and actors] Gary [Lamadore] and David [Williams], and we all sat down together and they read through the material. They began to improvise scenes, and I recorded and transcribed portions of those scenes. I used their improvisations to write twenty pages, then I brought this back to them, and they rewrote the new material to fit their own voices and improvise more. This process was repeated until we had a completed script.

GC: The winter setting is one of the keys to the aura of menace that pervades the film. The link between the savagery of nature and savagery of man is one of the hoariest tropes in fiction, but Daniel and Abraham establishes it very unobtrusively, and the effect is quite potent. Was the winter environment always a part of the story as you originally envisioned it?

RE: It was fairly early on that I decided I wanted to shoot in the winter. No matter how many layers of clothing we wore in the woods, the cold always found its way in. You would get so cold that your bones hurt. In a similar sense, Abraham finds his way into the deepest levels of Daniel's subconscious, so much so that, as the film moves along, you begin to question whether Abraham is real or a projection of Daniel's mind. I think I prefer that symbolism to a savagery of nature/man symbolism.

GC: Gary Lamadore is astonishing in the film, but in many ways David Williams has the more difficult task as an actor. The film follows Daniel's perspective, and we're inclined to be sympathetic to him. Yet the film is in a sense about his rapid moral slide into selfishness and aggression, or perhaps just about the sort of situation that reveals his true character. Was developing the character of Daniel a difficult task for you and David?

RE: Personally, I think both Gary and David have equally difficult parts. David slips into selfishness and aggression, as you said, but Gary's character also transforms. At the beginning, he seems threatening and conniving, but as the story moves along, we begin to think that maybe he really does know what he is talking about. After all, if Daniel had listened to him at key points instead of cutting him off, Abraham might have helped him properly clean his wound, et cetera. That is the ambiguity we tried to instill in both characters. Whenever David and Gary would be reading a scene and something would seem too one-dimensionally good or bad, we would try to add layers and additional motivations to their actions.

GC: In a sense, both When a Man Falls in the Forest and Daniel and Abraham are films about failure and stasis. Where the former is steeped in the ennui of middle age, the latter brackets this in a way, touching on both the aimlessness of the young and the regrets of older individuals. Do you see introspective characters as essential to the kind of stories you want to tell?

RE: I wouldn't say it is essential to the stories I want to tell. I'm always willing to throw out everything and tackle a different style and subject altogether.

GC: Given those environmental challenges you faced during the production of Daniel and Abraham, does the notion of "art from adversity" have any resonance for you? That is, do challenges (anticipated and otherwise) help a work becomes something better than it would have been otherwise? Would that apply to Daniel and Abraham specifically, or to film-making in general, or is that too sweeping a statement?

RE: I definitely think that challenges can stimulate creativity, but I also think it depends on the person. I thrive on pressure. I played basketball for many years, and, in one game, I experienced a somewhat clichéd moment when my team was down by one point, there were only a few seconds left on the clock, and I had to make two free throws in order for us to win. Intense pressure like that makes you realize that you are in control of your life. You control the outcome of the game, whether it's the last few seconds or first few seconds on the clock. Some people probably don't like being reminded that they are in control of their life, but I do.

GC: Taking a another step back, it sounds like your greatly value filmmaking as a personal challenge for yourself. Is that a fair assessment? For you, does a film's value as a personal accomplishment have more, less, or equal weight than its function for the audience: conveying a message, providing entertainment, evoking a mood?

RE: I do value the personal challenge, because what is the point of doing something you know you can do? Records would never be broken, technology would never be invented, et cetera. Regarding an audience's reaction: my favorite films tend to be those that can be interpreted a hundred different ways by a hundred different people. Their meaning can change over time, too. The films almost feel like living organisms. I strive to create these types of films, so in that respect, their function for the audience is extremely important. It is equally important as the personal challenge factor.