chapter eleven

Portrait of Jason

2008-03-24T04:39:00.000-07:00

Shirley Clarke (USA, 1967)

A disarming man smartly dressed with thick black-rimmed glasses talks about his life. That is it. Portrait of Jason defies common rules of moviemaking. But is setting up a camera and shooting a man for one evening art? Such doubts have been uttered repetitively. A snapshot is not photography, a few dots on canvass not a painting yet some artists annihilate these general conceptions elegantly. Sheryl Clarke proves to be one of them, having created finest Cinema Vérité on grainy black and white 16mm film stock.
Jason smokes, drinks and laughs. A lot. He has gone through life as hustler and house boy in San Francisco, a place ‘so creative’ that he has reinvented himself from Aaron Payne to Jason Holliday, dreaming of his own nightclub act, which he is always trying to finance yet never realises.
In the convivial atmosphere of a cosy apartment the presence of the camera is easily forgotten until it forcefully reinstates the fact that it dictates the gaze. The evening goes on and glass after glass is drank, reel after reel is changed and with this focus is lost and regained. The atmosphere changes, sadness creeps in. Uneasy thoughts of exploitation interrupt the films flow, when Jason bursts into tears, being pushed further and further by the of-screen voices of film-makers Shirley Clarke and Carl Lee, telling him ‘sit down’ or ‘shut up you’re full of shit.’
Radically executed, the film is highly engaging and comments on politics, homosexuality, gender and race issues. It challenges boundaries between fiction and documentary by placing a flamboyant man in its centre who is deeply occupied with the showbiz yet never quite part of it, telling detailed stories only to end them with “Well I never tell!” A man whose emotions change in a matter of seconds and whose performance of a Funny Girl song touches on brilliance.

Force of Evil

2008-03-24T04:35:00.000-07:00

Abraham Polonsky (USA, 1948)

Dark shadows dominate the screen, constricting people to tiny spaces in the periphery. Men in hats with guns in their pockets roam back alleys and smoky back rooms, gangsters aiming to land the big coup that will either make or break them.
Abraham Polonsky’s 1948 film Force of Evil comes along as eerie mixture of film noir and melodrama in which the tempting cool blonde has been replaced by naked greed. In its centre is mob-lawyer Joe Morse (John Garfield) who has a plan to manipulate the number rackets, thereby driving little gambling joints into bankruptcy, resulting in a gambling monopole for his boss Ben Tucker (Roy Roberts). The only problem is, that Leo Morse (Thomas Gomez) run’s one of those little businesses and refuses to be saved by his brother. Joe’s loss of control consequently sends him on a cathartic yet painful journey paved with substantial collateral damage.
The film is laden with religious symbolism, most notably the references to Cain and Able, and the key betrayal centred on the date of the American Independence, for only on July 4th can the “number racket” be fixed for most people bet on 776 in honour of the independence-victory year 1776. It vehemently attacks America’s ruthless capitalism. All the praised values of faith, family have to falter under the weight of corruption carried by every single character. Not even innocence radiating secretary Doris (Beatrice Pearson) can withstand its seductive powers.
This expressionistic looking moral fable, based on the Ira Wolfert’s radical novel Tucker’s People tells a story of big time crime mirroring so-called “respectable” business, drawing a very dark picture of an America ruled by capitalism. Not a very welcome message at the time apparently, as both, director and star, were blacklisted in 1951 under Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Movies focus on Rendition

2008-03-10T10:41:00.000-07:00

A fabric bag is firmly pulled over the detainees face. He is tight down, his feet higher than his head. Water is poured over his face. A drowning simulation, designed to make him talk during his interrogation. Just a scene from a film?

So called “Water-boarding” is depicted in three recent films. Gavin Hood’s star studded Hollywood film Rendition, James Threapleton’s low budget, realist drama Extraordinary Rendition, and the very first episode of ITV’s new television drama The Whistleblowers. Threapleton’s stuntman, who is apparently used to drowning experiences (!) could not take the drowning simulation torture for more than a few seconds and refused to ever do it again. He could do that, for him it was indeed just a scene from a film. The background though, is much more serene. Something called Extraordinary Rendition has forced its way into the entertainment industry. This sensitive subject is explored and explained in the three very different films.

I was explained the meaning of this somewhat technical expression by James Threapleton when he presented his film at the international film festival in Locarno this summer. It was one of the disappointingly few highlights at last year’s festival edition, which was shamefully overlooked in the awards but made a lasting impression nonetheless. The film begins with the finding of a heavily wounded man in London. In back flashes we hear how Zaafir ended up there. The well integrated young college tutor gets abducted in town and finds himself facing interrogation and torture in a far away country. He spends horrifying weeks outside of any justice system available to him because he is suspected to be a terrorist.

Countries like the UK or the USA do not torture. It is forbidden by their constitution. Neither is it allowed to extradite people if it is likely that they will undergo torture in their home country. Surely these are laws that we should be proud to abide by. Unfortunately there is a way around them, which is Rendition. Terror suspects are flown out of the country in question and brought to a place that does use torture. This then can be termed collaboration of secret services. Of course this system is prone to heavy mistakes and the new films concentrate on these.

While Extraordinary Rendition focuses on the victim, Gavin Hood’s film focuses on the people and institutions surrounding it. The ice cold CIA agent, the troubled American witnessing the interrogation, the pregnant wife fighting for her disappeared husband, the young senatorial assistant who wants to help until his career is endangered, the leading interrogator and his run away daughter and her boyfriend who gets involved with militant Islamist groups. The film may be overloaded but its intentions are nonetheless the right ones.

It may be a streak of luck that all three films are very good. It’s a tightrope walk between informing and exploiting and all of them balance it well. Film has always been a good political medium and it has to be allowed to be taken seriously as such. The new wave of politically driven Hollywood films like Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck, Michael Clayton or Lambs for Lions have resuscitated the American mainstream. They are not radical films, they are glossy and entertaining and they have to be, they are, after all, Hollywood movies. But the tone has become more stern, the message clearer. The films have an opinion and they want to affect us emotionally. All three films assure us that these things actually happen. Everyday. There should be no accusations that this an in-topic and its depiction redundant. Even more there should be no accusations that this is not a suitable entertainment story. It is true Rendition moves dangerously close along the lines of a thriller and sometimes the viewing gets a bit uncomfortable, not because of what but because of the how certain storylines are depicted. But it does reach a very large audience. So do ITV’s Whistleblowers in which a man is held within England and a professional torturer is flown in. Three audiences are targeted at the same time. Should we not be glad that they are? Aren’t film and television legitimate platforms? Should we not be happy, that these films are made?

I think we should. For Extraordinary Rendition is a fact and is carried out by the countries we live in. People get literally kidnapped by the state, for once they are captured it does not get known where they are, their official status is ‘Missing’. Introduced by the Clinton administration in 1995 numbers of cases carried out have excessively increased in the ‘war on terror’. Between 1995 and 2001 Amnesty International recorded 5 known cases, since September 11th, 2001 the number has risen to 150. The dark figures are feared to be considerably higher. Slowly but surely the practice is being proven and known as more and more former prisoners are speaking out, like Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who got arrested during a flight connection in America and brought to Syria. For him “Water Boarding” became reality, one that he could not stop after a few seconds.

If serious, well made films can increase attention given to these matters, then they should. Especially when George W Bush says in the Times on the 27th January 2005 “Torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture.” while all the victims of "rendition" interviewed by Amnesty International have testified that they were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment. Frankly the film scripts ring more truth.

Juno

2008-03-01T13:40:00.000-08:00

Jason Reitman, 2007

There have been several unwanted pregnancies on our screens recently. From this summer’s hit comedy Knocked Up (why that was such a success I will never comprehend…), to the bleak Romanian abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days and now Juno the charming teen flick with baby.
The script has been widely celebrated and now even crowned with an Oscar. The film is very good, but that good? The beginning turns out to be very hard work, the film is dreadfully boring and the dialogue trying way too hard. Then it suddenly turns around masterfully. The minute Juno makes a decision and tells her parents about the baby the narrative picks up speed and is finally at ease with itself.
Juno (Ellen Page) is a cool rather than trendy, disarming 16year old who decides to have the baby and give it up for adoption. The chosen parents (Jennifer Garner & Jason Bateman) are found in an adoption add. The films determination to fight stereotyping by radically debunking it, is its greatest achievement. At first Jennifer Garner’s character seems hopelessly tense and baby-starved while her laid-back, yet-to-be-discovered musician husband is ever so cool, soon the coin flips however and the movie puts away with this sympathetic and infantile loser type that seems to crop up far too often these days. Similarly the working woman that longs for a baby is not an annoying lunatic, complex-laden and humour-less nightmare of formerly mentioned men and hardcore feminists alike but one of the most sympathetic figures in the movie. Jennifer Garner has never been this good.
The entire cast is great and Ellen Page’s Oscar nomination very deserved. The film is immensely colourful and underscored with a picture-book Indiefilm soundtrack. It fires endless one-liners at its audience and skilfully balances between laugh-out-loud moments and the utter sadness that is essential to the story.
Juno lives in an age where abortion is an equal option for the girl. The fact that she decides against it, is not condemning those who do. It is still a shame, that the scene in the abortion clinic depicts the pro-life demonstrator outside equally miserable as the personnel inside.
Juno is a very good film that seems to be just like its heroine, thoroughly good-hearted yet quite irritating at times.

XALA

2008-02-16T07:41:00.000-08:00

Ousmane Sembene, 1975

The single most powerful sign of the absurdity of Senegalese’s upper class infatuation with the culture of its former oppressor can be a mundane thing like water. A bottle of Evian takes up centre space in the late, great Ousmane Sembene’s 1975 film Xala. The title, translating into curse or impotence from Senegal’s native language of Wolof, is given to a film that explores a country finding its feet in a freshly established independence. Caught between tradition and Westernisation, and making wrong choices in each direction, the new government is incapable of action and so, in the more literal sense of the title, is the films protagonist.

Businessman El Hadji Aboucader Beye (Thierno Leye) is part of a group that overthrows the local colonial authorities taking their place in the chamber of commerce. African people in traditional brightly coloured togas dance in the busy and buzzing streets, the sounds of drums fill the air, as El Hadji and his colleagues clear out the French official’s offices, celebrating a new beginning. The promise of change is broken all too quickly when in the next scene the togas have changed into Western suits and those wearing one receives a briefcase full of money from their predecessor.

El Hadji wholeheartedly embraces European culture, putting it above his own. He drinks two litres of Evian every day. However when it comes to taking a third wife he reminds his critics that colonialism does not need to make him lose his African traditions. After the wedding he finds himself under the curse of impotence though and wants to find who cast it on him and how to get rid of it. He is exposed within minutes of the film as being a hypocritical upper class achiever and yet we follow him as he becomes more and more frantic in his search for a cure. From doctors to medicine men, everyone is consulted and when El Hadji sits in the dust between mud huts in his expensively tailored suit he is more out of place than ever, more so that the deformed beggars whom he had roughly removed from outside his shop. It is this group of outsiders, roaming the film like a parallel society, which may offer a solution in the end to El Hadji after they raid his fridge leaving only a bottle Evian which is as untouchable to them as they are to the likes of El Hadji. The African beggars’ pride and wisdom is at all times higher than that of El Hadji who even uses the French water to wash his car.

Sembene has adapted the film from his own novel and his biting sarcasm translates perfectly to the screen. Vibrant colours enhance the constant confrontation between opposites forced into the mise-en-scene. Beggars and newly rich, European versus African, interiors and exteriors, cars and animals give the film has a restless feel, exuberating the promise of renewal and the pitfalls of what might go wrong. Returning to this story emphasizes its importance to Sembene’s work. He reduces the entire patriarchy of his country to a corrupt, ignorant and sexually inadequate little man, thus attacking the self proclaimed new leaders of Senegal for being politically as impotent as on any other level. Sembene was a man with a mission, a cinematic revolutionary and artist laying part of the foundation for a growing, exciting African film industry. Like his novels, his films told about a great scepticism toward colonial influences and about female empowerment as necessity for a truly independent Senegal and its accompanying identity defining art. Exploring a country and society in change, he challenged old colonial, power and gender relationships.

Women have played a vital role in Sembene’s work and he has created some of the most sophisticated female representations in cinema today. Xala bears no exception. El Hadji is surrounded by five women. A daughter, three wives a new mother-in-law and a secretary. They run his life and while he might think that he is in control, it becomes very clear that he is not. Not even when he slaps his first wife’s daughter Rama (Miriam Niang) does he pose threat or indeed authority, it rather underlines just how pathetic he is. Rama functions as El Hadji’s counterweight and appears to be the mouthpiece for the filmmaker’s own world views. She is educated, progressive and deeply sceptic of the colonial power’s promises. She speaks Wolof, disapproves of her father’s third marriage and urges her mother to get a divorce. She also strongly refuses to drink imported water. Being the daughter, she embodies a new generation, the real future of the country, where the old and the new have merged and struck a healthy balance. Rama is willing to reject oppressive traditions to accomplish a modern development of Senegal, she does not generally refuse Western influences but unlike her father she makes the right choices according to, hopefully, not only Sembene. The attributed place to the Muslim woman at the family home is negated by the absence thereof, each wife lives in her own villa, each is a status symbol for El Hadji rather than family. To the women he is provider, neither lover (literally) nor loved. Sembene said that “Africa can't develop without the participation of its women. Our culture used to relegate women to just a minor role. Now women are starting to take a very active part in society...in the society we are going to build, women will play an important role.” Consequently Rama becomes bearer of the writer/director’s own vision.

Sembene became a writer after being a dock worker and soldier among many other things. Despite writing in French he never considered himself part of the intellectual elite that he found hindering the Senegalese struggle for independence. In film he found a medium with which he could reach the illiterate and non-French speaking audience that he aimed for. He found an individual way of expression; his films have a distinct style that is very different from European cinema taking its sway from African art and storytelling. His death in 2007 was a great loss not only for African cinema.

Dan In Real Life

2008-02-14T12:52:00.001-08:00

Is it possible to make Juliette Binoche look like a bad actress? Against all odds it actually is, Peter Hedges has managed to do so in his film Dan in Real Life. It is one of those romantic comedies of which there are many. A widower with three daughters meets a woman called Marie that makes him want to fall in love again, only to discover that she is his brother’s new girlfriend, brought to a big family gathering in the parents’ idyllic country home.
Now there is nothing wrong with making films like that but there is a lot wrong with this particular one. Some of the dialogue verges on shocking, for example the perfect morning for Marie would be waking up in a country which’s language she does not speak and just drift around in it. Wow isn’t she deep and interesting. Seriously?
The very good cast wastes away in the boredom. The director relies on Binoche’s charisma and stardom far too much; just putting her into your movie is not enough if there is no character for her, it is never quite clear why on earth Dan wants this particular woman, especially since the date (played by Emily Blunt) his parents (Dianne Wiest and John Mahoney) organise for him seems endlessly more attractive.
There are some redeeming moments and even performances. Brittany Roberston as a teenage daughter believing in true love and grand dramatic scenes is very good. The whole film is a vehicle for Steve Carell show casing is absolutely perfect comic timing thanks to which there are a few laugh-out-loud moments (“Murderer of love” being one of them) but it also once again offers a deeper, more serious side to the comedian, that was so marvellously moving in Little Miss Sunshine.
The family is warm and inviting, the setting endlessly cosy and beautiful and it is easy to care for the hero but in the end the script and its realisation do not allow the audience to indulge in a romantic phantasy.

CLAIMING BACK THE FUN! Feminist Film Criticism and Mainstream Entertainment

2008-02-14T11:41:00.000-08:00

Feminist theory, among many other social sciences, has played a vital role throughout the academic study of film. It has however tended to object to popular culture and mainstream movies for being controlled by a dominant male ideology in which there is no place for a true female image. In her highly influential article “Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema”, Laura Mulvey went as far as to say:

"It is said that analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it. That is the intention of this article. The satisfaction and reinforcement of the ego that represent the high point of film history hitherto must be attacked. Not in favour of a reconstructed new pleasure, which cannot exist in the abstract, nor of intellectualised unpleasure, but to make way for a total negation of the ease and plenitude of the narrative film."[1]

In this essay I will argue that the time has come to oppose the idea of the impossibility of mainstream enjoyment of the female spectator and to recapture the entertainment sector, considering two of the major papers written on the subject in the 1970s: Claire Johnston’s “Women’s Cinema as Counter Cinema“and the above mentioned essay by Laura Mulvey and their used methodologies, especially the creation of the myth as defined by Roland Barthes. Do they still apply thirty years later? Looking at the 2007 film Waitress by Adrienne Shelley and the multimedia phenomenon Lara Croft, I will argue that there is a new approach of female self-confidence emerging that uses usual stereotyping in order to negate the male rather than being negated herself and demands her part in the mainstream.

What film studies and feminism have in common is their endless struggle to be taken seriously, not only by the broader public but also by the academic elite. Interestingly enough film studies have played a vital role in entering popular culture into the field of vision of arts scholarship in its hearty embrace of post modernity. Being a rather young academic discipline moving between the arts and humanities, the study of film has been very open to inspirations from established fields but has also kept an eye on new revolutionary ideas. Apart from being art and no doubt entertainment, film has always been closely connected to sociology. Any film made at a certain time reflects on the society that made it, especially if there are reoccurring themes or style devices that can be analysed. According to its versatile nature, film here can work on several levels. One is the explicit art film that undermines the mainstream with a specific agenda while the other however is the actual mainstream. The big Hollywood productions for example offer an even more interesting field since their underlying ideologies have become very subtle due to an overdeveloped familiarity of the viewer with them. Feminism especially has examined the issue of representation in the movies. On the one hand by creating new forms of production and film making, on the other by using semiotics and psychoanalysis among others to recognise the principles at work in the conventional, established entertainment sector.

The aim of feminism is to challenge mainstream ideologies that dictate the gender roles that have developed over the course of history. Meaning to identify the oppression, name it and in the end overcome it by the means of academic discussion. The evil doer is the patriarchal system ruling the Western, if not in fact all, civilisation. Both, film studies and feminism, have entered the stage of scholarship and intellectual thinking at a similar point in time. Both children of the sixties and seventies, they have formed interesting and most influential bonds. In on of the most famous essays ever written in the field Laura Mulvey presented the idea of “the gaze”[2].

"Playing on the tension between film as controlling the dimension of time (editing, narrative) and film as controlling the dimension of space (changes in distance, editing), cinematic codes create a gaze, a world and an object, thereby producing an illusion cut to the measure of desire. It is these cinematic codes and their relationship to formative external structures that must be broken down before mainstream film and the pleasure it provides can be challenged."[3]

She argued that the gaze was male and in order to fully appreciate a film, women had to adopt the male gaze. The basis of her argument was Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. The viewer identifies with the protagonist of a movie who is almost always male in Hollywood. The woman on the screen is his other, never his equal. She is stylised, designed to be passively looked at rather than forwarding the plot herself. By being determined through a male phantasm there can not be a true woman on the screen and the female audience is thereby deprived of a focus point other than that of the male, be it by identifying with him or succumbing to identifying with his representation of the female. The woman is fetishised, being either the whore or the virgin. Laura Mulvey here uses Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) as an example. Judy, ridden by guilt, can be used by Scottie, who turns her into his fantastical ideal woman Madeleine but since she still poses a danger to him through her exhibitionism, she has to die.[4] Only her outer appearance need’s to be formed, she has no distinct personality. While she takes the form of the vice, Midge, the other woman in Vertigo represents virtue. She is completely asexualised and therefore neither of threat nor of interest to the protagonist.

Two years prior to “Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema”, namely in 1973, Claire Johnston wrote an essay entitled “Women’s Cinema as Counter Cinema”[5]. In it she identified the reason for cinematic stereotyping of women according to Erwin Panofsky as a necessary short hand of the early days of filmmaking and more importantly film viewing. Since its invention not only the art of filmmaking has developed but so has the audience. There has been a long and not always easy cognitive learning process involved in our reading of the projected image. Remember the early audiences famously fleeing their seats at the sight of a train coming towards them in Auguste and Louis Lumière’s L’Arrivée d’un train à La Ciotat in1896. While early stereotyping might have been without ideological agenda it is striking how it settled in. The important point that Johnston makes however is, that Hollywood is not to blame firstly but that “The fact that there is far greater differentiation of men’s roles than of women’s roles in the history of the cinema relates to sexist ideology itself, and the basic opposition which places man inside history, and woman as ahistoric and eternal.”[6] Like Mulvey, Johnston stresses the passivity of women but not only on the screen but in everyday apperception. History is largely recorded by the deeds of great men; women on the other hand have only changed in terms of fashion. They are icons rather than developable components of any given narrative. Johnston generates the term icon from Roland Barthes’ writings on the myth and recognizes that the myth

"…as a form of speech or discourse, represents the major means in which women have been used in the cinema: myth transmits and transforms the ideology of sexism and renders it invisible – when it is made visible it evaporates – and therefore natural."[7]

Figure 1 – The formation of the sign according to Saussure In his writings on mythologies Roland Barthes has adopted the linguistic system of semiotics created by Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure has divided language into a system of signified and signifier, one determining the other by association, the premise for which is its affirmed place within a social system. Meaning is therefore not only determined by the word used but also by the cultural knowledge of the speaker.[8]

Myths, according to Roland Barthes, are signifiers of ideology, but if they are depending on context as suggested by Saussure then they do not have a fixed meaning. He adds a second step to the system explaining that the combination of signified and signifier results in a sign which in itself then turns into a signifier again, that combined with another signified then results in a myth and possibly a new meaning, whose signifier is divided between it’s own created meaning and the new meaning it helps to create.

"But the essential point in all this is that the form does not suppress the meaning, it only impoverishes it, it puts it at a distance, it holds it at one’s disposal. One believes that the meaning is going to die, but it is a death with reprieve; the meaning loses its value, but keeps its life, from which the form of the myth will draw its nourishment."[9]

The so hidden sexism in woman as myth is, according to Johnston, less dangerous in mainstream film than it is in the art film. A new female avant-garde movement is what Laura Mulvey called for in 1975, saying that the oppressed can not take pleasure in the mainstream and needs to find her own language. Claire Johnston warns that the art cinema poses a greater threat as it is “…inviting a greater invasion by the myth.”[10] It moves the myth another step further away from its original roots. Claire Johnston’s work on Dorothy Arzner, one of the few female directors in Hollywood in the 1930s analyses a subtle exploitation of the myth to infer other meaning.

The question the changing meaning behind the myth poses is, can connotations change seemingly backwards as well as forwards? In Adrienne Shelley’s film Waitress (2007), pies and pregnancy play a vital role in the female protagonist Jenna’s life. To the second-wave feminists of the 1960 these were exactly the contested attributes of female oppression as they were pictured as the 1950s housewives’ ideal goals and happily accepted destinations. In Shelley’s film, the waitress Jenna is caught in a dead-end job and a loveless marriage to a violent, infantile man. In the end pies and baby empower her to fundamentally change her life, leave her husband and open her own business. The men, husband and the adulterating gynecologist she has an affair with, are left behind when mother and
Figure 2 - Film poster for Waitress (Adrienne Shelley, 2007)daughter start a new life. The fundamental difference is that once the action is driven and dominated by the woman she then can even chose motherhood and baking as long as they are not imposed on her by someone else. Shelley willfully picks up the stereotypes, turning them against the patriarchy, forcing a new connotation upon them. The film is colourful and never shies away from comic moments. It appears to be the opposite of what Laura Mulvey thought possible. Adrienne Shelley refuses the “…total negation of the ease and plenitude of the narrative fiction film.”[11] On the contrary, she reclaims them. She demands a female self recognition that can be classically pretty and feminine. The film however is still very aware of Mulvey’s interpretation of the castration fear of the man as motor behind the refusal of empowerment of the woman on the screen. Jenna’s husband is afraid of the coming baby asking her to always love him more than the baby. In Waitress this Freudian complex weakens the man, exposing its implications.

Thirty years into feminist film criticism the field is still vast, but a higher awareness is recognisable. It has a fixed place in cinematic discussions, even mainstream radio critics like Mark Kermode openly attack films for being misogynistic. Worrying is the fact that it is still necessary to point towards sexism in a continuously male dominated modern cinema in which round female protagonists prove hard to find. The female movie star is largely evaluated by her looks rather than her talent; equally are her roles still often decoration. If the female star wants recognition she is stripped of her looks. Porcelain skinned screen beauty Nicole Kidman for example, was given an Oscar for her artificially nosed portrayal of Virginia Wolf in The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2002), while Gwyneth Paltrow and Hillary Swank even turned into men for their academy awarded films Shakespeare in Love (John Madden, 1998) and Boys Don’t Cry (Kimberly Peirce, 1999). Films like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (John West, 2001) might feature a female heroine, but in the end big-breasted, hot-pants sporting super agent Lara Croft is the incarnation of the male phantasm and seamlessly reaffirms Christian Metz’s description of the fetish. The problem that a film like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider poses is that it has a considerably large female following.

"The action genre is typically masculine so this type of characterization is often celebrated as at least offering some compensation for the ubiquity of oppressive representations of women and the preponderance of masculine hard bodies. […] The transgressive stunting body of the action heroine is replicated in the figure of Lara. Her occupation of a traditionally masculine world, her rejection of particular patriarchal values and the norms of femininity and the physical spaces that she traverses are all in direct contradiction of the typical location of femininity within the private or domestic space. […] Lara's presence within, and familiarity with, a particularly masculine space is in and of itself transgressive. By being there she disturbs the natural symbolism of masculine culture."[12]

Lara Croft, definite child of popular culture, stemming out of the new visual medium of video gaming but also protagonist of two movies, brings feminist criticism to its boundaries. Is she as Helen W. Kennedy asks “Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo?”[13] a similar question could be posed on the Waitress, could she be a feminist icon or is she an oppressed kitchen - mum?

Figure 3 - Film poster Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (John West, 2001)“Feminist theory […] faces a dilemma over its reliance on particular methodologies to describe women as Other.”[14] , excluded from the masculine space and constricted by male fantasy. Feminist filmmaking has occupied a fairly secluded space often overlooked by a wider public. Feminist film criticism is in danger of looking for the woman filmmaker rather than acknowledging slight shifts in the mainstream. It is exactly there though, that the women are invading spaces on the screen as well as altering them. The space they conquer might be one that works according to a male ideology but is no longer defined through it. Lara Croft has no central love-interest; Jenna rids herself of both men once her baby is born. While Laura Mulvey’s essay proved groundbreaking at the beginning, it appears that the time has come to get off the psychoanalytical couch and reclaim the entertainment sector. In her book Feminism Without Women, Tania Modleski argues “…that the time is right for a feminist rethinking of the articulations of popular culture and political criticism.”[15] Since feminism has in recent years suffered from a stigma of almost annoyance and young women often do not identify with it because of that, it can no longer exclude itself from a general, ongoing development within popular culture, which has taken a considerably central role in film studies. The myth it seems changes its connotation again and again. Lara Croft’s big breasts then can also signify a newly determined female self-confidence by reemphasising the female form. In this context the man and his phantasm would be ignored and thereby negated. While the psychoanalysis approach has defined the problem and made visible what had become invisible in our perception, building a central argument on linguistics proves a more durable methodology. As opposed to Laura Mulvey’s essay, Claire Johnston puts the female in a less neurotic position and also acknowledged the importance of actively analysing the mainstream, which is now more significant than ever.

"Our point is that, apart from women actively involved in the second-wave of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, most people’s initial knowledge and understanding of feminism has been formed within the popular and through representation. […] Thus, for many women of our generation, formative understanding of, and identification with, feminist ideas have been almost exclusively within popular culture."[16]

Feminist film theory should not get lost in elitist avant-garde film discussion only. It has to equally consider the possibility of entering its age of entertainment and to actively occupy some of the perspectives it fought for only then can it truly make use of them in its own favour.[17] Keeping in mind the pitfall of the invisible ideology by holding high the analysis according to Roland Barthes, it is time for claiming back the fun.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Books:
Barthes,Roland. Mythologies. London: Vintage, 2000.

De Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd, 1995.

Hollows, Joanne, and Mosley, Rachel eds. Feminism in Popular Culture. Oxford: Berg, 2006.

Johnston, Claire. Notes on Women’s Cinema. London: Society for Education in Film and Television, 1973.

McCabe, Janet. Feminist Film Studies, Writing the Woman into Cinema. London: Wallflower Press, 2004

Mellencamp, Patricia. A Fine Romance, Five Ages of Film Feminism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995.

Metz, Christian. Language and Cinema. The Hague: Mouton, 1974.

Modleski, Tania. Feminism Without Women, Culture and Criticism in a ”Postfeminist“ Age. London: Routledge, 1991.

Articles in Edited Collections:
Johnston, Claire. “Women’s Cinema as Counter Cinema.“ Notes on Women’s Cinema. Ed. Claire Johnston. London: Society for Education in Film and Television, 1973.

Hollows, Joanne and Mosley, Rachel. “Popularity Contest: The Meanings of Popular Feminism.“ Feminism in Popular Culture. Eds. in Joanne Hollows and Rachel Mosley. Oxford: Berg, 2006.

Journals:
Kaplan, E. Ann. “Claire Johnston: 1949-1987.”Cinema Journal, Vol. 28, No.1. Autumn, 1988.

Mulvey, Laura “Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema” Screen, vol. 16, No.3. Autumn 1975.

Web Journal:
Helen W. Kennedy. “Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo? On the Limits of Textual Analysis.” Game Studies: the International Journal of Computer Game Research. January 17th 2008. http://www.gamestudies.org/0202/kennedy/

FILMOGRAPHY:

Boys Don’t Cry (Dir. Kimberly Peirce, USA, 1999)
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (John West, UK, Germany, USA, Japan, 2001)
Shakespeare in Love (Dir. John Madden, USA, UK, 1998)
The Hours (Dir. Stephen Daldry, USA, UK, 2002)
Vertigo (Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, USA, 1958)
Waitress (Dir. Adrienne Shelley, USA, 2007)

[1] Laura Mulvey ”Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema“ in Screen, vol.16, No. 3 Autumn 1975), p.8
[2] Mulvey , p.8ff
[3] Mulvey, p.17
[4] Mulvey, p.16
[5] Claire Johnston „Women’s Cinema as Counter Cinema“ in Claire Johnston, (ed.) Notes on Women’s Cinema (London: Society for Education in Film and Television, 1973), p.24
[6] Johnston, p.24
[7] Johnston, p.25
[8] Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd, 1995)
[9] Roland Barthes, Mythologies (London: Vintage, 2000), p.118
[10] Johnston, p.25
[11] Mulvey, p.8
[12] Helen W. Kennedy, “Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo? On the Limits of Textual Analysis” in Game Studies: the International Journal of Computer Game Research, 17th January 2008, http://www.gamestudies.org/0202/kennedy/
[13] Kennedy, http://www.gamestudies.org/0202/kennedy/
[14] Janet McCabe, Feminist Film Studies, Writing the Woman into Cinema (London: Wallflower Press, 2004), p.116
[15] Tania Modleski, Feminism Without Women, Culture and Criticism in a ”Postfeminist“ Age (London: Routledge, 1991), p. ix
[16] Joanne Hollows and Rachel Mosley, „Popularity Contest: The Meanings of Popular Feminism“ in Joanne Hollows and Rachel Mosley (ed.) Feminism in Popular Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2006), p. 2
[17] Interesting in this respect is the Bond film Casino Royale (Dir. Martin Campbell, USA, UK, Germany, Czech Republic, 2006). In it classical Bond characteristics are turned around. Bond himself becomes the object of the erotic gaze, when he for example walks half naked out of the sea. Bond is not only frequently physically displayed he is also almost literally castrated in a torture scene. The women on the other hand stay dressed and are never sexualised in the way Bond himself is.

2008-02-13T13:25:00.000-08:00

IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH
Paul Haggis

In the valley of Elah David beat Goliath. A little boy is told this as bed time story by Vietnam veteran Hank Deerfield who also tells him that David had to overcome his own fear first before he can succeed. Hank Deerfield wants to find out what happened to his son, a young soldier who just returned from Iraq and has gone AWOL. He checks into a cheap motel and patiently and quietly talks to the police, the military, strippers, waitresses and fellow soldiers of his son, tracing his son’s last whereabouts. Every now and then he receives another part of a video that was filmed on his son’s mobile phone in Iraq. Hank believes in the US army and its codes but he has discover what wars do to young men fighting in them and that they might overcome much more than just their fear, with horrifying consequences.

American cinema is very exciting at the moment and many films discuss the country’s political situations openly and informed. From the great Syriana and Jarhead to Rendition or Lions for Lambs. While their filmic qualities might differ, their intensions are very clear. In the Valley of Elah however has a more subtle agenda. It makes very good use of its actors. The minute Susan Sarandon appears on the screen, the audience knows the position of the film, there is no need to hammer a message home. Therefore it never slips into polemics and gracefully places an army man in its centre who questions neither army nor war. The result is a movie that is about more than ‘just’ the current war in Iraq but generally questions what happens to young people in war zones and the impossibility of returning home and continue life without consequences. It is about the refusal to face this enemy. The Goliath of normality after adapting to a war zone. Hence Hank Deerfield hits walls whenever he tries to get information from any official. Only detective Emily Saunders (Charlize Theron), single mom of the boy with the bed time story, helps him, partly to establish herself among her misogynistic colleagues but also because she has kept a sense of right and wrong.

Tommy Lee Jones plays Hank Deerfield with great subtlety. He seems to shrink under the truths he discovers rather than displaying great emotions. His performance is an event, being neither brash nor vain. The combination of this brilliant performance with the unagitated tone of the film makes it so very good.

2007-11-30T13:25:00.000-08:00

SLEUTH
Kenneth Branagh

„So you are fucking my wife?“ says Michael Caine early on to Jude Law in Kenneth Branagh's new film Sleuth. Straight away it is made clear that the tone is different in this remake of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1972 film of the same title. Calling it a remake however does not do this new film justice. Like the location, an old country estate on the outside but on the inside a highly stylised palace ridden with security cameras, the new film is a luxuriously reinvention. The screenplay is by none other than Nobel Prize laureate Harold Pinter who is far too clever to fall into the trap of simply updating Anthony Shaffer’s stage play. He has made it his own. The fabulous dialogue is Pinter is through and through.

Milo Tindle (Jude Law), the wife’s lover, visits crime writer Andrew Wyke (Michael Caine) asking him to divorce her. Wyke involves the young man in a dangerous cat and mouse game in which personal vanities, hurt pride and simple spite clash. What seemingly starts as an insurance fraud soon spindles out of control. The setting is cold and uncomfortable. White marble floors and designer furniture are wrapped into blue light, every fancy feature of the house is controlled by a tiny remote control. There are no doors but entire walls move and every movement is constantly detected by a high tech security system. Michael Caine and Jude Law are fabulous in a film that heavily relies on its superb actors. Their style is theatrical as they throw the perfectly composed dialogues at each other, seldom responding to but rather testing the actual meaning of what they hear.

Kenneth Branagh knows exactly how to make the most of his actors and he indulges in their art as well as the script and the set, while creating a beautiful cinematic look. The film effortlessly joins into the work of this director who makes highly clever films that hit the stomach first and then the intellect, leaving both satisfied. It seems a futile effort to judge this film on comparison to its predecessor. It may share the title but it does what a remake always should, it stands completely on its own two feet.

A Few Words In Favour Of...Tom Cruise

2007-11-25T09:40:00.000-08:00

To be honest I am not a big fan of Tom Cruise. He annoys me with his silly marriage and his scientology affliction.
His new film Valkyrie, a film about SS officer and almost Hitler assassin Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg recently made headlines when German authorities refused the film to be shot on original locations and a delegate in charge of sects in the Berlin senate, taking pride in never even having seen a film starring Tom Cruise, said that this high rank scientology member must not be allowed to play Stauffenberg.
All this is very silly because there is one thing that all these people in uproar seem to forget about Tom Cruise. The fact that he is an actor. In the world of cinema, cannibals have been played by vegans, Jews by Christians, historical figures by rather young contemporaries. It is called acting, and all these self proclaimed authorities on what and what not to do in cinema appear to have trouble grasping that. A little look past Tom Cruise into this whole project and a basic knowledge of contemporary films should have eased the excitement. Director Bryan Singer and a very high quality cast including Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy and Terence Stamp among others could mean that there is a pretty good film on its way to our screens. I don’t know I have not seen it yet BUT all this fuss around Tom Cruise is unnecessary especially, if the quality of the film itself is never the issue.
At the moment Cruise stars in Robert Redford’s film Lions for Lambs and I suggest all you Tom Cruise haters out there go and take a look. Magnolia wasn’t just a one off as some might say, no, Tom Cruise is actually a good actor. Yes he has made some horrendous films, boring ones, whatever. Yes his public persona is getting more and more irritating. But he is very good at what he does. This should be the important thing. His religious views, however crazed they might be, are not the business of the state, not even of Hollywood. We might have to keep an eye on what Scientology is up to, but we don’t need protection from Tom Cruise. We don’t need politicians to interfere with the casting of films.
Especially so, if these interferences appear to be solely based on sympathy. The reason Valkyrie was not allowed to shoot Stauffenberg’s execution at the Bendlerblock in Berlin where it happened, was that it would ‘disturb a place of mourning’. The German TV Drama Stauffenberg, starring Sebastian Koch, however was allowed. Why is that we must wonder?
The reason was not the protection of a place of mourning, but prejudices against Hollywood and to be honest a quite embarrassing ignorance of film. This unfounded self importance interfering in the arts is infuriating. And it turns “a history drama into a hysteric drama” as Lorenz Maroldt rightly pointed out in the German newspaper Die Zeit. Whether the problem is actual concern about Scientology or the fact that Hollywood is touching one of Germany’s holy cows, neither topic is discussed in any justified form if the basis of the argument is “This star is not allowed to…” Interestingly enough, the opponents of the Cruise-Stauffenberg casting are not film makers, some of them, like Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck have spoken out in favour of Mr Cruise but ultimately they have been excluded from the argument. The matter of cinematic expression has been completely forgotten about. Film itself has not once yet been taken seriously in this fight.
How can we take someone seriously telling us that Tom Cruise is bad, who in the same sentence announces to never go and see a film with him? I’d suggest waiting for the film’s release and then talking about its quality and content might result in a more interesting discussion, led by more qualified people.

Tim Robbins: A new American auteur?

2007-10-24T12:11:00.000-07:00

Contemporary American cinema appears to offer the widest range of filmic expression possible. From the highest budget blockbuster epic to the lowest budget quirky art film, everything seems to be possible not only to make but also to sell successfully within America, as well as abroad. This variety has not always been this homogenous. American cinema and its makers developed over the years, taught and formed through a variety of social, economic and even educational factors. A dominant film theory, the auteur theory, has been influenced by all three of these factors and they have changed its meaning to a certain extend. The auteur theory firstly appeared in America in connection to the New Hollywood movement, which revolutionised American filmmaking in the late 1960s and was driven by a politically left orientated group of actors and directors, which took over successful filmmaking with independent low budget films like Easy Rider after a major break up of the studio system.

The driving force behind the flood of independent productions in America, was the French New Wave, in the French context independent did not mean free from the big studios money but free from required style rules. The French New Wave created a new film language. Other than the classical Hollywood films who took great care in camera positions chosen for continuity reasons and an invisible editing style the films of the French New Wave were very aware of their medium. Shot on location and edited in jump cuts these films wanted their audience to know that they were films.

Part of this awareness of the medium was the auteur theory. The man behind the camera had to gain the importance the man in front of it had, if not more. In his vitriolic essay ‘A Certain Tendency In French Cinema’ Truffaut created the film auteur. Attacking the French cinema for being old-fashioned, the “cinema du papa” and called for radical changes.[1] Changes that were greatly helped by the equipment becoming cheaper, smaller and lighter, and by a new understanding of the medium film. Truffaut started as a film critic and made his first film Les 400 Coups from a theoretical not a practical approach. This method plays a distinctive role in the work of the American filmmakers in the 60s and 70s.

In 1962 Andrew Sarris brought the auteur theory to America, revolutionising Hollywood in a way that Martin Scorsese called “A breath of fresh air”[2]

Until the end of the 1950s Hollywood was firmly in the hands of the big studios (MGM, Fox, Warner, United Artists, RKO) Films were produced in an assembly line method, writer, director, cameramen all had the same status as just someone along these assembly lines doing his or her job towards the final product. Stars could only be in the front of the camera, never behind it. Audiences knew the names Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart, they didn’t know Michael Curtiz. The power of the studios however started to diminish, box office numbers dropped rapidly and studios needed to change their strategies, this was the moment for the so called independents. At this point the term independent for America meant outside of the studio system. The first film which made this development visible was Bonnie and Clyde in 1967. This film was everything that the classical Hollywood movies were not, it played with genres it was violent und highly unconventional. It was deeply influenced by the French New Wave, whose leading voice François Truffaut was originally supposed to direct it[3]. In the end it was directed by the American Arthur Penn. Despite being different or maybe because of that Bonnie and Clyde was a huge success, its box office triumph opened the door for a new generation of films targeted at a younger audience and produced on small budgets which increased their chances of making large winnings at the box office.

“In many ways it is not surprising that the auteur theory succeeded in America in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It had originally been developed in post-Second World War Europe, in the face of a range of social and political systems that were seen to be no longer working and with an emphasis on the need for a new social world founded on the individual. These values seemed to touch a nerve, both politically and culturally, in the America of the late 1960s, beleaguered as it was by a set of increasingly insupportable political, social and economic crisis.”[4] The auteur theory can be attached to politics, for it allowed independently produced films with a less conservative content to become hits. In times of constant presence of violence through the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy, the brutal war in Vietnam and racial uproar, films started commenting on these events. Broken heroes, depiction of violence and the loss, meaninglessness and falsity of the old American values became apparent in films like The Graduate (1967)[5] , Bonnie and Clyde (1967)[6] and Easy Rider (1969) [7]. All of these films were produced outside of the studio system, which had to sell to as large an audience as possible and could not afford to alienate entire groups of the society.

Film therefore became a medium of expression, something of content, something worth studying. At this important moment in film history film turned from being pure entertainment into an art form that was worth discussing.

This intellectualisation of filmmaking was the result of a new generation of film makers that came from universities that had studied films prior to making them.
They new the conventions well enough to break them

Soon however the studios recovered and mainstream blockbusters took over. In the following years there was a constant up and down until studio production and independent cinema levelled and even mixed. Today a clear distinction is often impossible, due to a common co-production system.

In recent years there has been a new left rising, profoundly different from that in the 70s but also a force in Hollywood that can’t be ignored. The heroes of the 70s were Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty, Hal Ashby or Peter Fonda. The political players of Hollywood’s new nineties left are George Clooney, Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon and of course Tim Robbins.

The most striking difference is that most of these big names have made a career in Hollywood before voicing contentious and controversial opinions. They are not film students who want to revolutionise films and film making. They are not reinventing the cinema, but commenting directly on contemporary political issues.

Director Tim Robbins, a very prominent voice of the new left, has made three films so far, do they qualify him for the description auteur?

As an actor Tim Robbins is by all means a child of the contemporary American film, he effortlessly moves around between independent (Jacob’s Ladder, 1991)[8] and the Hollywood blockbuster (War of the Worlds, 2005)[9]. While taking on roles in every genre and pretence, in his directorial career he so far stuck to smaller scale productions of three very different films that were on first sight not connected by style but by a strong political agenda.
Bob Roberts was a satire starring Tim Robbins himself as a senatorial candidate for the Republicans in Pennsylvania. Folk singing and corrupt, Bob Roberts tried to get votes with anything but actual politics. Robbins’ next film was a lot darker but also a lot more successful. Dead Man Walking is a film about the death penalty, made without empty slogans or playing on its audiences heartstrings. It made very clear that Tim Robbins not only trusts his audience to think for itself, he also demands it. His third film was yet another completely different style. The rather lush Cradle Will Rock was a costume drama depicting the events surrounding Orson Welles’ production of Max Blitzstein’s play The Cradle Will Rock and the beginning of the communist fear during the great depression in America after the big stock market crash in 1929. It deplored the relationship between art and politics. Arguably the closest topic to Tim Robbins’ own career.

His debut Bob Roberts was released in 1992, right after Robbins’ success in Robert Altman’s The Player. The film shows many similarities to Altman’s work. The self written folk music singing scenes recall Nashville, the vast flood of cameos by stars like James Spader, Peter Gallagher or Susan Sarandon, or the collaboration with Altman’s cameraman of four projects Jean Lépine,[10] with whom Altman also worked on Tanner 88, to which Bob Roberts bears the greatest affinity in Altman’s work. Tanner 88 was a mini-series produced for TV in 1988, sporting the look of a documentary; it followed a fictional democrat presidential candidate on his election tour through America.

Bob Roberts is Tim Robbins’ most aggressive film, attacking the show business like election tours, the dirty campaigns by candidates, the corruptness of politicians, the manipulability of voters and “the news media, whose bubbleheaded telecasters’ happy-talk approach to the news helps Roberts’s rise to power, come under severe criticism in the movie.”[11]

The main character, described as a “conservative rebel” in the film uses the means of the former sixties left movement, singing protest songs that might sound like Bob Dylan, but are about hanging drug addicts and accusing the unemployed of misuse of the welfare system. One of his albums is significantly called “The Times Are Changing Back”. Robbins plays this character as an ambitious, scrupulous hardliner; another reference to Robert Altman for Roberts is reminiscent of Robbins' character in The Player, producer Griffin Mill who, just like Roberts literally gets away with murder. Bob Roberts was a very upfront film stating an opinion or even an accusation rather than discussing it. Tim Robbins’ own political agenda, he supports the “radical presidential candidate Ralph Nader”[12] and his strong leaning towards the left came to the fore. It revealed a filmmaker not afraid to speak his mind clearly and articulated, like he has done on numerous occasions in protest demonstrations.

Dead Man Walking in 1995 put away with the polemic style of Bob Roberts. The story based on the book by Sister Helen Prejean, a nun who supports inmates on death row, drew a portrait of the death penalty situation in America, rather than denouncing it directly. Robbins aspires to show the human side of every single aspect involved. Thereby questioning every side but also not dismissing a single possible opinion. “Robbins presents a compelling and powerful challenge to death-penalty proponents precisely by refusing to back away from the very arguments they voice in support of the death penalty. Dead Man Walking cinematically constructs a dialectic without hidden agendas: while acknowledging the genuine suffering of crime victims and their families, as well as the real brutality of the crime and criminal, the film skilfully reveals the state’s role in replicating that brutality and barbarism when killing in the name of justice.”[13]
Robbins brings the viewer very close to his protagonists with the use of many close ups. Great importance is put on the face of Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen Prejean, not while talking but while listening. She guides the viewer through all the different perspectives on the issue by listening, rather than commenting. The picture is very static, held in brownish colours and is carefully composed. This is radically different from the hectic, colourful and fast edited Bob Roberts where the dialogue was constantly overlapping and few sentences ended without interruption. While Bob Roberts was a film about saying things, Dead Man Walking is more concerned with listening and understanding, offering the audience a much higher level of concentration through a directness that was achieved by the absence of satire, of judgments and of caricaturist characters.

A crucial difference between Robbins’ two first films is that one was about politics and the other about morality. For Robbins “political” has a negative connotation, when asked about his political filmmaking by the magazine Empire he answered “I don’t know about the word “political” – it’s such an off putting word. You immediately think about politicians – dishonesty, manipulation, cynicism. None of those are things I’d associate with this movie, myself or my work. I’m interested in the human condition, humour, show business.”[14] It was the aim to expose the polemics of politics with a film that was very much polemic itself. Therefore a discussion of ethics cannot be polemic because it is aiming at an emotional level, here he gives his audience time to think and a chance to explore their own inclination towards an opinion at the end. “This is about a nun and her relationship with these parents and with the convicted killer. It’s neither about the politics nor about the statistics. It is very difficult to get into listing facts and still keep the emotional component. Any time that happened in the rough cut, it took away. It became polemical and unnecessary.”[15]

At first sight Tim Robbins’ third film Cradle Will Rock (1999) seems to break the pattern of contemporary films about contemporary issues. It is a costume drama set in the 1930s. It combines different stories set in the depression era that combine art and politics. Nelson Rockefeller’s commission of Diego Rivera’s painting in the Rockefeller centre, which ends in the destruction of the painting because of its political content, namely the depiction of Lenin, or the selling of valuable paintings like a DaVinci to support Mussolini’s war effort. The main storyline follows composer Mark Blitzstein, and his play The Cradle Will Rock, put on stage by the young Orson Welles. The play ends up being censored for its sympathy with the union steelworker strike. The film explores the relativity of freedom of art under the control of those who finance it. Thereby posing the question even to Hollywood, whether or not an executive producer has any right to demand a certain outcome or a certain political direction. The film harshly criticises the misuse of art be it by selling it (Mussolini), or used to create a certain image like Nelson Rockefeller does, yes he invested into art, but not in the free expression of the artist.

According to Ben Dickenson the film is also Tim Robbins’ take on the anti-globalisation movement, which Robbins is very committed to, taking part in the big demonstrations in Seattle in 1999. In his book Hollywood’s New Radicalism Dickens says “Cradle Will Rock relates directly to the Seattle experience through metaphors for modern-day globalisation, as when American businessmen and the Italian government exchange bags of cash for political favours. The film explores the polarisation of ordinary Americans and corporate interests that Seattle represented.”[16] This is a somewhat brave statement considering that the film was released in the year of the Seattle demonstrations, but it is interesting to point out that the anti-globalisation movement gained moment under a Democrat president who advertised the international community as opposed to his predecessors George Bush, Sr. and Ronald Reagan, who cultivated the “ideology of foreign threat” [17], while Clinton’s politic opened the USA up towards the world, it also forwarded the globalisation of businesses. Cradle Will Rock advertises the power of public disobedience, of the possibility to protest and the triumph of the united masses against mandatory governmental regulations. While Diego Rivera’s painting is destroyed the cast of the play performs The Cradle Will Rock from within the packed audience of the shut down theatre. This can not only be read as a statement about the world politics but also towards the relation between Hollywood and independent film. The more independent films are, the more can they allow themselves an opinion and an individual taste, the more they can diverge from the mainstream.
Interestingly enough, Tim Robbins’ films are hybrid co-productions, which again shows how blurred the division often is today but also, targets his films away from the mainstream entertainment towards a selected audience, but still keeps them outside of a niche viewing. Much like the independent films in the 60s were aimed at an educated, younger and politicised audience. The successors of films like Easy Rider or Bonnie and Clyde are these mixed productions, not the completely independent films anymore.

Cradle Will Rock has many aspects in common with Bob Roberts, a large cast of many famous people (from Bill Murray to Susan Sarandon), the hectic colourful scenes, many people talking at the same time. The openly voiced politics that clearly put the film into a leftist corner, are not satirically expressed like in Bob Roberts, but displaced into another time thus allowing the observation of the result of the fight between art, politics and money as well as the impact of civil peaceful protest.

Despite the great discrepancy Dead Man Walking possesses in terms of style, casting, mise-en-scene and subtlety there is a theme that runs through all of Robbins’ films. They are films about hypocrisy. Bob Roberts, conservative politician and songwriter singing “drugs stink” while using a plane that supposedly delivers relief aid to middle America for drug and weapon trafficking; Nelson Rockefeller who patronises art but only as long as it is politically compatible with his American conservatism and his business empire and in Dead Man Walking the pretence of punishing murder with state-approved killing. As a famous lyric by songwriter Holly Near that was to become international slogan against the death penalty puts it: “Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?”[18]

Is that enough to call Tim Robbins an auteur? Andrew Sarris wrote in 1962 about the need of a “distinguishable personality of the director as a criterion of value. Over a group of films, a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature. The way a film looks and moves should have some relationship to the way a director thinks and feels.”[19] Sarris ads that this is a much harder task for film makers who develop their own scripts because they can too easily put all their intentions onto the screen in dialogue, storyline and genre rather than being reduced to finding their own handwriting in their style. This however is the auteur theory in its very beginnings, in its first articulation for America, when the writer-director was still an exception. In order to survive and develop, the auteur theory had to change according to the industry. It has to a certain extend adapted its use to the post-modern concentration on the individual and has thereby attracted notice not only on the directors work but also on his person. “One common characteristic of new American auteurs like Tarantino or David Lynch is the instantaneity of their careers. The brief duration of auteur celebrity these days parallels the rapid turnover of post-modern consumerism. Without being nostalgic, I would at least like to follow Andrew and urge this notion of duration as the missing element in the account of the modern American auteur.”[20] The matter of celebrity is not to be underestimated.

The director Tim Robbins draws the recognition of his persona not from his acting career, but from his public activism. The three main aspects of Tim Robbins’ persona support each other, his acting recognition made his protest more audible which then fuels the understanding of his films. To fully appreciate his films it is important to know where Tim Robbins himself is standing. Since his position towards the death penalty is widely known, he can allow himself more than others would be able to, to take an objective position. He can show every aspect, every argument, and every perspective on his subject matter without fearing to be misunderstood. He can play the caricaturist figure of Bob Roberts without fearing not to be taken seriously. The contemporary Hollywood auteur is not only generated through his released films but also through his public persona. Quentin Tarantino supports his patchwork film style with his day job in a video rental place that allowed him extensive viewing of films thereby giving him the foundation for his work. His public image of loving and knowing about films also saves his films from not being acknowledged, ensuring his credibility.

“There are many kinds of auteurs in contemporary film culture. And there are many strategies through which a moviemaker can employ the agency of auteurism and by which audiences can use it as a way of understanding the films.”[21] This quote by Timothy Corrigan implies yet another aspect of the changes in the auteur theory, apart from the director himself becoming part of his own work. The auteur theory is not only a means of scholarship anymore. It has become an advertisement method. The name Tarantino sells a film, it is more than the director’s name, it has become a brand name “The practice of labelling films according to the name of a single filmmaker, usually the director, has become widespread in Hollywood.”[22] In a way the modern auteur has replaced the genre. When the audience went to see a Western in classical Hollywood they knew exactly what they would get. Today you can say the same about “a Tarantino”. The same goes for Tim Robbins, there is a certain expectancy linked to the name of the director. The actor Tim Robbins keeps serving a different purpose. After finishing Dead Man Walking Tim Robbins acted in the Martin Lawrence vehicle Nothing To Lose. Robbins keeps himself in a wider public recollection, by acting for every type of audience which then again keeps his political voice loud enough, ensures him interviews.

The American auteurs have always been independent from a political conviction. Frank Capra has gained the status as much as Quentin Tarantino is referred to as auteur. But since it started being discussed in America in the late sixties, it will always share some connection with America’ filmmaking left. While this left came out of the hippie movement in the 60s and 70s stirring up the system, today it often comes straight out of the system without any trouble to cross back into it. Many of those connected to the recent politisation of Hollywood are household names. Once again gaining moment through the strong opposition to government.

George Clooney’s second film as a director was a take on true events taking place during the McCarthy hearings. Good Night and Good Luck told the story of news presenter Edward R. Murrow and dealt with the responsibility of the news to be independent and critical of the government. Released in a time of embedded journalism and retributions to those who publicly contested President George W. Bush. Tim Robbins is once again in the first row. Directing a play on Broadway called Embedded and openly speaking out against the war in Iraq. This led to his disinvitation from the celebration of the 15th anniversary of the release of the film Bull Durham by the Baseball Hall of Fame. Robbins was sent a letter stating “We believe your very public criticism of President Bush in this important – and sensitive – time in our nations history helps undermine the U.S. position, which ultimately could put our troops in even more danger” to which Robbins replied “I reject your suggestion that one must be silent in times of war.[…] You are using what power you have to infringe upon my rights to free speech and by taking this action hope to intimidate the millions of others that disagree with our president. I doing so, […] you dishonour […] the men and women who have fought wars to keep this nation a place where one can freely express their opinion without fear of reprisal or punishment.”[23] Once again is Robbins fighting against hypocrisy, defending moral values rather than party political convictions.

Can Tim Robbins then, be called an auteur in modern Hollywood?
Following Timothy Corrigan’s stressing of the duration of a directorial career necessary to determine the auteur quality of a director, judging Tim Robbins on his three films might be a bit early. With a closer look on the connection of his public persona to his films and clearly developed reoccurring themes in them of hypocrisy, ethics of human coexistence and the void between talking and listening; as well as subtle but recognisable style devices, the director Robbins gradually moves towards a homogenous, auteuristic body of work. With his film school background [24] and his government opposing left directed activism he moves steadily in the footsteps of Hollywood’s first rebels of the 1960s.

[1] François Truffaut “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema” in Joanne Hollows, Peter Hutchings et al., ed. The Film Studies Reader (London : Arnold, 2000), pp. 58 - 63
[2] David A. Cook ‘ Auteur Cinema and the Film Generation in 1970s Hollywood’ in Jon Lewis, ed. The New American Cinema (Durham & London, Duke University Press, 1998), p. 13
[3] David A. Cook ‘ Auteur Cinema and the Film Generation in 1970s Hollywood’ in Jon Lewis, ed. The New American Cinema (Durham & London, Duke University Press, 1998), p.1
[4] Michael Allen, Contemporary US Cinema (Essex: Pearson Education Ltd, 2003), p. 91
[5] The Graduate (Dir. Mike Nichols, USA, 1967)
[6] Bonnie and Clyde (Dir. Arthur Penn, 1967)
[7] Easy Rider (Dir. Dennis Hopper, USA, 1969)
[8] Jacob’s Ladder (Dir. David Lyne, USA, 1991)
[9] War Of The Worlds (Dir. Steven Spielberg, USA, 2005)
[10] Emanuel Levy, Cinema of Outsiders (New York: New York University Press, 1999) p. 258
[11] Emanuel Levy, Cinema of Outsiders (New York: New York University Press, 1999) p. 258
[12] Ben Dickenson, Hollywood’s New Radicalism, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006) p. 142
[13] Roy Grundmann and Cynthia Lucia, “Between Ethics and Politics: An Interview with Tim Robbins”, in Cineaste, v. 22 nr. 2 July 1996, p. 4
[14] Empire One-On-One in Empire, Vol. 131, May 2000, p. 124
[15] Roy Grundmann and Cynthia Lucia, “Between Ethics and Politics: An Interview with Tim Robbins”, in Cineaste, v. 22 nr. 2 July 1996, p. 5
[16] Ben Dickenson, Hollywood’s New Radicalism, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006) p. 114
[17] Ben Dickenson, Hollywood’s New Radicalism, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006) p. 34
[18] http://www.hollynear.com/lyrics/foolish.notion.html, accessed 1st January 2007
[19] Andrew Sarris, „Notes On The Auteur Theory In 1962“, Leo Braudy et. Al., ed. Film Theory and Criticism: introductory readings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) p. 562
[20] Timothy Corrigan, “Auteurs and the New Hollywood”, Jon Lewis, ed. The New American Cinema (Durhamand London: Duke University Press, 1998), p. 59
[21] Timothy Corrigan, “Auteurs and the New Hollywood”, Jon Lewis, ed. The New American Cinema (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998), p. 58
[22] Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema (New York, Columbia University Press, 2002) p. 85
[23] Ben Dickenson, Hollywood’s New Radicalism, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006) p. 138
[24] Empire One-On-One in Empire, Vol. 131, May 2000, p.122

Brief Encounter

2007-10-24T12:07:00.000-07:00

BRIEF ENCOUNTER
David Lean (1945)

A brief encounter that made a lasting impression. David Lean’s masterpiece has aged well and even today, over 60 years after its first release, it stands out as one of the greatest British films ever made.

A man and a woman meet in the café of a train station. They meet again by chance and again on purpose. Too late to fight it they realise that they have fallen in love. However both of them are married and their love is destined to cause grief. To assure us of this the film begins at its end. Dr Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) will go to Africa and Laura Jessop (Celia Johnson) will return home. Sitting opposite her husband (Cyril Raymond) in the living room, Laura tells him the story of her adultery, but only in her mind.

The love story is not driven by passion but by repression. Both lovers battle with their conscience constantly, unable to give up this sudden source of happiness and sense of self in a life determined by routine. Their spaces are confined, a small café, a tunnel from one platform to another or a crowded cinema. Their surroundings enforce the temporality of their bond. They might wait for a train together, but ultimately their trains go in opposite directions. The antagonists are not the husband or wife of the lovers, but time itself which is constantly running out, and the strict rules of being middle-class. While the inner struggle is expressed through the raging sound of a Rachmaninov piano concerto, the self-restraint becomes unbearable to watch. The camera is static, often lingering on Celia Johnson’s big eyes, while the mise-en-scene is as well composed as the film’s characters. Only when Laura finally loses her composure in a moment of, literally, heartbreaking despair, does the camera seem to trip over, giving the viewer a sensation of vertigo.

Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard are absolutely marvellous in their subdued performances, communicating mostly though their eyes, and when Trevor Howard says “I love you”, it is much more than a phrase, he means it.
Noel Coward and David Lean are of course by now household names in British film history and this film proves, as many others do, why. With great respect for the characters, love comes to life on the screen. Few would have been able to tell a story of adultery in such a non-judgemental, heart rendering, yet by no means clichéd way.