Equilibrium... or, Why does dystopia have to be so depressing?

First of all, 'Equilibrium' was made before, it was called 'Farenheit 451,' and it was based on one of the most famous science fiction novels of all time. Second, just because they've coupled 'Farenheit 451' with 'The Matrix,' and 'Prozac Nation,' and 'Triumph of the Will,' and 'Brave New World,' and John Woo (And gun kata? Seriously? I thought bullet ballet was just supposed to be a cool sounding metaphore...), and every other dystopic, futuristic pseudo-fascist cliche, just confirms the fact that this muck is nothing more than a lame retread. And while I'm at it, 'Demolition Man' already did the "future = no sex" thing and even though the film was just about as bad as 'Judge Dredd,' the sex joke was hilarious. But the real question is, why is the future never any fun?

Many great dystopias have been brought to the big screen. 'Children of Men' is one of the latest, and certainly one of the greatest, and it's worth drawing attention to Michael Caine's hilarious turn as a sexagenarian stoner to demonstrate just how fun the post-apocalypse can be; 'Dark City' and 'The City of Lost Children' were underrated gems, meshing great concepts with masterful sets, finding beauty in the darkness; 'V For Vendetta,' against all odds, managed to mix the Wachowskis' (via Alan Moore) lame conspiracy politics with humour and daring swashbuckling; nothing more needs to be said about 'Blade Runner,' the 'Mad Max' series, or '12 Monkeys,' except to reiterate that it's entirely possible for fun to outlast the atomic bomb.

Not in 'Equilibrium' though. Instead, the film had me browsing the web within 15 minutes. It had me downloading new and more promising films to ease the pain, within the hour. I had to break in the middle for a few days just to get through it. And this from a film with one of the highest body count characters (Christian Bale's John Preston kills 118 people during the film according to http://moviebodycounts.com/). One would think that 118 kills in just under 2 hours - that over 1 kill a minute, for Bale alone - could hold one's attention. But body count alone does not make a good film (or even a terrible one, unfortunately, because I can watch two hours of trash if I'm laughing my ass off, but 'Equilibrium' commits the worst crime in cinema by simply being mediocre). Like all the characters in 'Equilibrium,' during the course of the film I was tempted to start shooting Prozac straight into my jugular (or Prozarium, or whatever ham-fisted name they came up with to hammer home the weak analogy). Unfortunately, this wasn't because the film was such a masterful work of genius that violent passions overcame my docile nature (or something... according to the film, the Mona Lisa led to the Third World War, and not, like, philistine Presidents and the military-industrial complex). Instead, I simply wanted to kill the drabness and boredom that matched the dull grey sets and the characters' expressionless faces.

So here's hoping the next time Hollywood tackles the apocalypse or the atom bomb (or political corruption, mental or physical disabilities, or even the Holocaust), they do so with a smile.

Equilibrium: 2/10

Mongol... or, Genghis Khan as a romantic lead?

Oh! Historical epics that lay waste to concerns regarding historical accuracy... Oh! Swordplay, barbarian hordes, epic violence, and buckets of blood...

I'm a firm believer in balance, so if you're going to mess with history, you better give us entertainment. Hmm. Isn't that the modus operandi of TV news?

Not that veracity should be the foremost concern in biographical film-making (consider the liberties taken with Bob Dylan's story in 'I'm Not There' for example; or the "ecstatic truth" approach espoused by Werner Herzog). But one should hope for a little congruence. Genghis Khan as the modern male; as the fiery, passionate lead with beautiful, long black hair; as the self-assured lover; as the conquerer, as concerned with the promises he made to his woman as he is with the honour in battle, devotion to the Gods, and loyalty to the Khan. Can the viewer imagine a more dignified person to trample across mostw of the known world sowing death and, pilfering the great treasures of the ancients, raping, maiming and destroying anything in his path?


As for the film itself, the plot was repetitive, the dialogue trite, and the characters were undeveloped. But there was plenty of blood, gore, death, violence and brutality, and sometimes that's good enough, especially when taking place against the arid backdrop of the great Asiatic steppes.


On an unrelated note, I definitely want one of those wolf tail hats.

Mongol: 5/10

Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was an entire lifetime of possibilities compressed into the last minute of a dying man's life. It was life imitating art, imitating life, imitating art, imitating life, ad infinitum. It was Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, and I wasn't sure what I thought of the movie upon leaving the theatre and still don't know what I think about it now.
So for now, four (4) simple observations:


1. 'Synecdoche, New York' makes all previous films written by Charlie Kaufman seem conventional and straightforward in comparison. There is simply nothing we ordinarily expect from a film (even a film with a Charlie Kaufman script) to grasp onto. The film is a schizophrenic (see: Cotard's syndrome) jigsaw puzzle of non-sensical vignettes. Occasionally someone cries. Even more rarely something wierd and cool happens. And yet it kept my attention somehow.


2. I laughed. I got a little teary. I almost fell asleep more than once. I didn't understand anything in the film, and yet found myself profoundly affected by its beautiful, little mysteries, its rare moments of poignancy and desperation.


3. This is a film for people who read Derrida, or who pretend to read Derrida, or who name drop Derrida without really knowing anything about him (like me).


4. 'Synecdoche, New York' is either the worst movie of the year, or the film of a lifetime. It's either our generation's 'Citizen Kane,' or a steaming heap of green poo (which is an allusion to an early episode in the film, not just lame scatology). Yeah, the film has poo. Twice.


Synecdoche, New York: 1/10
Synecdoche, New York: 10/10

Skateboard Movies: Ken Park, Wassup Rockers, Paranoid Park

Okay, so the actors play teens, they have sex with each other and anything else that moves, Larry Clark is a pedophile and he makes the same movie over and over again. In contrast Gus Van Sant is a genius, even though 80% of his movies are meandering, pretentious crap, and I'd give just about anything to get back all the time I've spent watching everything he's made since 'My Own Private Idaho.' I'd like to posit the reverse, and explore a realm where Larry Clark is the auteur director that all the film students want to emulate and Gus Van Sant is recognized as the chump Ed Wood of arthouse cinema. Let's test this hypothesis by contrasting how the two directors explore America's great slacker pasttime, skateboard culture.

Skateboard culture, and teen culture in general, is nothing new to Larry Clark. His photography explored outcasts, junkies and losers, and his first feature, 'Kids,' is a bonafide classic of independant cinema, focusing on a gang of teens who carouse the streets, smoke weed, skateboard, drink, and fuck. 'Another Day In Paradise' was a wild diversion, and it had a cameo by Clarence Carter whose performance of 'I'm Looking For A Fox' was a highlight of the film for me (although while we're on the topic of Clarence Carter, neglected soul great, I may have preferred something hilarious like 'Backdoor Santa,' 'I Got Caught (Makin' Love To Another Man's Wife),' or maybe even 'Strokin'). 'Bully' was another bleak teenage film, and 'Teenage Caveman' took Clark's schtick into science fiction territory. 'Ken Park' and 'Wassup Rockers,' on the other hand, bring him right back to his roots.

'Ken Park' is about a group of young friends, their relationships with one another, and their dysfunctional homes, where beatings are commonplace, and ever more terrible things are always a possibility. Unfortunately, the film was almost universally maligned by critics and condemned by censors for its graphic depictions of teenage sex. Not surprinsingly, those blinded by righteous outrage missed the sensitive, amateurish beauty of teenage lust as depicted in the film. 'Wassup Rockers,' while exploring similar territory, is a pseudo-doc featuring a group of Guatemalan skate-punks in LA, outcasts in their own neighborhood due to their tight pants and taste for hardcore punk, but outright aliens in posh Rodeo. The film chronicles a day in the lives of the Velasquez brothers with humour and realism, punctuated by disturbing scenes of racism and the innocence of young lovers.

Clark's characters, for all their confusion, their faults and insecurities, their misdirected anger and childishness, are real, three dimensional. Jonathan Velasquez's opening monologue ('and then... and then... and then...') in 'Wassup Rockers' is almost absurd in its sheer banality. Then we realize that even though the boys are growing up hard in a rough neighborhood, their concerns are as real and insignificant as those of the kids who live in every mall in America. Jonathan's desires are simple and universal: girls, bros, skateboards, music. In 'Ken Park', the character's desires are even more base - they want to fuck - but their concerns are in many ways bigger and more desperate. These kids are escaping domestic cruelty and abuse the only way they know how to: the base joy of sex is their coping mechanism, their therapeutic release. But their sexuality is pure. There's nothing degrading or dirty about the teens fooling around with each other (except for their scruffy clothes and greasy hair), even when one of the young boys eats out his girlfriend's mother (!). Like 'Citrus,' or just about any other song The Hold Steady have ever written, the viewer easily finds "Jesus in the clumsiness of (these) young and awkward lovers." If the sex is in anyway offensive or shocking, it's because we know that at the end of the day they must return to homes as hard and violent as their lovemaking is delicate and kind. Perhaps Ken Park, the ghost character whose demise hangs over the entire movie, was forced to his unlikely demise because for the first time, his teenage sexual fantasies resulted in adult consequences.

What truly separates Clark from his contemporaries, and especially Van Sant, is the verisimilitude of his works. Clark may be a pervert, but he doesn't pervert (!sorry!) his characters' true selves. In 'Ken Park' and 'Wassup Rockers' the dialogue feels easy and improvised, and Clark's stories are always loose, messy, inconclusive. In contrast to the mass of staid and tepid teenage melodramas, Clark recognizes that hyperbole and polish (clean scripts, nice sets, and polished actors are not to be found in his films) mask the true nature of adolescence. Instead, Clark gives us dirty streets, awkward sex, and scruffy, stinky non-actors, as if to say "pay heed -this is where the true drama of youth and its greatest tales are to be found."

'Paranoid Park,' on the other hand, is a crime against celluloid and adolescence. The repetitive structure of the film is interesting at first, and is probably meant to evoke the obsessive, confusing, circular reasoning of the teenage mind, but is ultimately neither illuminating nor terribly interesting. In contrast to Clark's non-actors, Van Sant's crew are outfitted in brand name clothing, spiffy haircuts and decals of cool. One similarity to Clark's films however, is the fact that Van Sant's kids can't act - which is not a compliment here. Mirroring the general trend of indie art, rock and style being absorbed into the mainstream, Van Sant's film, like 'Elephant' before it, is more cool than it is real. Sure, the narrative is non-traditional, but like skateboarding, non-linear narratives are no longer a crime.

And though the cinematography is at times striking, it seems as if Van Sant, rather than letting his characters simply live and breath, has surrounded them in artifice. The film's one saving grace are Van Sant's beautiful, slow-motion shots of skaters riding around bowls and ramps and zigzaging down in full pipes. Contrast these images with the Velasquez brothers crusing through gritty South Central locales, or wiping out on stairs outside a posh high school. No, beauty does not equal youth; and though Van Sant shows us a security guard diced in half on a train track, his main character's movement towards understanding seems contrived, too pretty, too complete.

Ken Park (Larry Clark): 8.5/10

Wassup Rockers (Larry Clark): 7.5/10

Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant): 3/10

Mister Lonely (Harmony Korine)

So this should suck, shouldn't it? A simulation of a simulcra. A messy post-modern examination of identity disorders. A new, post-rehab, "conventional" Harmony Korine movie.

The plot is fairly straightforward. A Michael Jackson impersonater meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonater while both are working at an old folks home in Paris (the scene where Michael is urging the geriatric crowd to live - crying "Don't die! Don't die!" as he dances around drooling, senial seniors in wheelchairs and rockers - is touching, disturbing, and basically hilarious). Marilyn invites Michael to come back to her home in Scotland, where she shares a castle with her husband (Charlie Chaplin), their daughter (Shirley Temple), and a motley crew of other professional impersonaters (Abraham Lincoln, James Dean, Little Red Riding Hood, Buckwheat, the Three Stooges, the Pope, and the Queen). The film works towards the opening night of their variety show, staged in a shabby, homemade shack on the estate. At the same time, Werner Herzog plays a Catholic priest delivering food in Latin America. On a delivery mission, one of the nuns falls from the delivery plane and survives. She claims it is a miracle - divine recognition of her faith. She urges her sisters to make the same leap of faith.

Granted, Mister Lonely may be too straight for lovers of Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy, but it's far from mainstream (if it must be said, PLEASE don't listen to the fanboy detractors or the critics). The plot is still a mess, the characters are all half insane, and Werner Herzog milks his cameo for all its wierd glory. But every so often, Korine punctuates the film with beautiful, heartbreaking moments. I challenge anyone with a heart not to be touched by the scene of drunken, deranged Charlie Chaplin babbling incoherently about the government mandated slaughter of his entire flock of sheep. Or when a weary, emotionally frayed Monroe tells her husband that he may play Charlie Chaplin, but he sometimes reminds her of Hitler. Or the beautiful, chilling final beach scene.

Mister Lonely is an imperfect film. It looses focus at times and meanders. It was critically panned, and even Korine buffs seem to hate it. I didn't.

Mister Lonely (Harmony Korine): 8/10