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.

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.