Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky)

Werckmeister Harmonies is a cinematic endurance test.

As each shot lingers far beyond the five-minute mark and characters’ ruminations become increasingly obscure, it’s impossible not to momentarily drift into deep thought or lose patience. It’s a shame that the pace is so uncompromising, because the photography is richly textured and emotional moments stirring. More adventurous viewers may be inclined to forgive 2-plus hours of meandering, but even those familiar with this type of rigorous artistic exercise will find Werckmeister more successful in concept than execution.

A kindred spirit to Andrei Tarkovsky, Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr specializes in stoic, cerebral think pieces, made up of hypnotic long takes, color-stripped photography and bleak mindset. At his best, his films are capable of striking a melancholic shroud over the audience (see Turin Horse), making the viewer a participant in a grim, funereal dirge. At worst, he can take an inconsequential moment and endlessly magnify it, trying to bring the sublime to the mundane. His efforts are high-minded and worthy, but not always entertaining.

Visually, Tarr is fascinated by the way objects and people cast shadows, guiding his lens towards the skeletal outlines painted by faint light under an opaque sky. The monotonous and rhythmic marching of his figures in the dark hypnotizes the viewer, drawing them parallel to the emotional isolation of his somnambulistic characters and reflecting the despair inherent in the life of the working poor.

In contrast to the zombies that occupy this dreary vision of Hungarian life, Janos, our protagonist, takes pleasure in the wonders of astronomy and the anticipation of a forthcoming carnival attraction. Promising a whale of massive proportions and a mysterious “prince,” the event fills Janos with child-like wonder, while it exacerbates his neighbors’ superstition and ignorance.

Gradually, the whale and prince create a spiritual rift amongst the townspeople, acting as epiphany for the open-minded and inciting violence in the corrupt and shallow. The concluding moments find the town in ruins, destroyed by a haze of chaos and fury provoked by a profound fear of change.

What sounds like a straight-forward narrative on paper unfolds as one endless, poetic non-sequitur. Characters speak in monologues that unravel like riddles, cloaked in esoteric navel-gazing of dubious meaning and eye-rolling pseudo-profundity (ex. “Great frozen mountains of refuse are everywhere”). The willingness to dissect these labyrinthine passages depends on the virtue and focus of the viewer, but diving into these murky waters may be a thankless task. What lies beneath a few moments of haunting brilliance is an impenetrable work of frustration, offering little reward for diligent contemplation.

Werckmeister Harmonies (Facets Video, 2000)
Directed by Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky
Written by László Krasznahorkai and Béla Tarr
Additional Dialogue by Péter Dobai, Gyuri Dósa Kiss and György Fehér
Photographed by Patrick de Ranter, Miklós Gurbán, Erwin Lanzensberger, Gábor Medvigy, Emil Novák and Rob Tregenza

Baise-moi (2000, Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi)

Baise-moi fancies itself a revolutionary picture, one capable of externalizing female aggression toward a male-dominated society and casting aside the coquettish bedside manner expected of the “fairer sex.” It certainly doesn’t bat an eyelash at raw carnality and wears its hostility toward mainstream sexuality on its sleeve, but it never marries this political ideology with its vision, instead banking on the power of shock tactics.

The resulting film is feeble in its execution and childishly sadistic in its demeanor, unable to express its ideas through visual storytelling or reconcile with the odious nature of its characters. It’s a shame, because female empowerment is rarely this righteously bitter and anarchic, but self-actualization can’t be gained solely through sexual dominance and cinematic art can’t be created without the skill set.

Nadine (Karen Bach) smokes and drinks in a dive bar, observing the patrons and eavesdropping on their supposedly private conversations. She snickers to herself as two men fantasize about a female with the capacity for giving great head, while another woman looks on nervously as her two-timing boyfriend ignores her and plays pool. She finds amusement in the female subservience on display, a role she believes she’s never had to play as a part-time prostitute and dominatrix. She has a realization days later, while being forced to perform oral sex on a john, that she doesn’t differ much from the obedient, crestfallen woman waiting beside the pool table.

Manu (Raffaëla Anderson) tends bar at her brother’s restaurant and is not only subject to his physical abuse, but to the aggressive tendencies of drug dealers and crooks in her neighborhood. Sharing a beer with an old friend in a brief respite from her life of servitude, she relaxes momentarily to expound on her disgust for local busybodies, only to be kidnapped by a roving gang of rapists. Though Manu is capable of remaining stoic during the act, believing it is her key to survival, her friend wails constantly to the delight of their unmasked violators.

The sight of a bloodied woman crying during an actual sex act is profoundly unsettling, churning the stomach and channeling the depravity found at the darkest recesses of 70’s pornography. The penetration shots linger for effect, zooming in on the sex organs, lasting long enough for us to question the motives of the participants and thoroughly distract from the pace of the film.

Coincidentally, Nadine and Manu take on their slave masters at the very same moment, killing the objects of their oppression in stereo, as if united by some cosmic force. Manu shoots her brother in the head as he rushes out to confront her rapists, an act she immediately regrets, signified by a gentle kiss goodbye. Nadine chokes her nagging roommate simply to shut her up, never realizing that an explosion of emotion could result in a lifeless cadaver.

The two meet by chance as they wait for the morning train and make a pact to drink, screw and kill until the law or the grave stops them. After warming up by shooting a woman at an ATM, the deadly duo hit the road in a stolen car and jump from hotel to hotel, leaving a litany of corpses in their wake. Each unlucky victim receives a unique execution, whether it be by the heel of a shoe, wheel of a car, hail of bullet spray or rain of fists.

This orgy of sex and death culminates at the “Libertine Club,” a setpiece that ends the film with a cataclysmic bang. As couples fornicate in a dimly-lit speakeasy, perfectly angled toward the camera eye, Nadine and Manu assassinate them while in the throes of passion, even shoving a pistol up a horny patron’s ass and blowing his brains out from the backend, despite its scientific improbability.

Whether intended as one last sick joke or a statement on the similarities between orgasm and death rattle, it manages to be the most excessive stunt in a film gorged on excess, a scene as arousing as it is grotesque. Yet, the directorial team claims the sex on display isn’t intended to be erotic, a claim I thoroughly dismiss, finding the throbbing electronic score, often accompanied by histrionic female moaning, to add a certain prurient thrust to the scenes of intimacy. The violent moments also aim to stimulate, hitting heights of cartoonish extremity, made even more disturbing by their proximity to unsimulated scenes of intercourse, calculated to spit in the face of false modesty.

I agree that so-called “softcore” and its implied morality is inherently dishonest, but Baise-moi doesn’t make a very compelling case for “hardcore,” instead leaning on the lurid aspects of the genre as a crutch when the writing isn’t strong enough to carry a scene. It’s also as disingenuous as the male-produced pornographic product, gazing endlessly at engorged genitalia, staging oral sex scenes to leave the face unobscured by hair and doing double or triple-takes of every explosive gunblast to the head. These are the same egregious methods used in pornography and this film falls flatly into that category, differing only in its length and sporadic narrative.

Baise-moi (FilmFixx, 2000)
Written and Directed by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi
Photographed by Benoît Chamaillard

I Stand Alone (1998, Gaspar Noé)

“Life is a huge void.”

So says Le Boucher, the isolated, empty shell occupying Gaspar Noé’s intensely bleak I Stand Alone. We share this blank space with the unemployed horse butcher, getting a transmission directly from his battered psyche in an almost constant voiceover, obsessively spewing vitriolic rhetoric at his peers, whom he sees as opposition (the French title translates directly to “Alone Against All”) and the subjects of his inevitable vengeance.

The form mirrors the content of Le Boucher’s head, surging with roiling aggression and tension, shot in an oppressive 2:66:1 aspect ratio, trapping us in the degradative and nauseating nature of the visuals. Noé is an impudent provocateur, his words, sounds and images rolling atop each other in explosive bursts. Every aspect personifies the frenzy of violence, whether it be the acrobatic, lunging camera work, sanguinary visual effects or piercing gunshot echoes. His is the art of brutality, reflecting man’s worst characteristics through his protagonist: aggression, blind hate and emotional inarticulateness.

Each burst of blood-red gore and shot of penetrative sex illuminates the screen, challenging us to look, breaking the boundary between art and pornography. It’s a daring provocation, but a valuable one, separating entertainment from violence and sexuality and demanding that we take dehumanization at face value.

Acting as a sequel of sorts, I Stand Alone directly follows Carne, a work that famously (or infamously) began with a captive bolt pistol piercing the skull of a horse. Noé intends to strike us in a similar fashion, his filmic technique encapsulating the assaultive nature of the slaughter and his “hero” acting as an extension of the morbidity of factory farming. He also carries over the restrictive intertitles and typography from the previous film, cutting into the action with flat, one-word slogans (“MORALE”) in stark, block-lettering, always signaled by the bellow of taut, symphonic music.

A theme is presented in the opening seconds, entirely separate from the feature film, hinting at a political subtext beneath the forthcoming fury. A man waving a gun in a pub explains how laws and rules only tilt the scales in favor of the rich and how a counter-morality, a bullet from a gun, is the only way to impart balance. Money will prove to be the cruelest master in Le Boucher’s world and Noé implies here that the ethics of a wealth-based class system inspire cruelty and acts of desperation. In essence, the constructs of society make monsters of the lower-class.

From this introduction, action directly shifts into a recap of the previous film, telling “The story of a jobless butcher,” fleshed out before our eyes in sun-damaged photographs and roaring in our ears through dour narration. Abandoned by his mother and left orphaned after his father’s death, Le Boucher suffered a childhood of molestation, redeemed only by an early adulthood that brought him his own butcher shop and the sensation of breaking his lover’s hymen.

Sadly, happiness faded and history repeated itself, leaving Le Boucher and his mute daughter on their own, a situation that only intensified his feelings of lust toward the child. In a fit of blind rage and perhaps as a reaction toward his own incestuous desires, Le Boucher stabbed an immigrant worker in the face, assuming menstruation stains on his daughter’s skirt were the result of non-consensual sex. Ironically, his act of fatherly protection would permanently separate them, sending one to an orphanage and the other to prison.

Following the trip down memory lane, we arrive in the present, specifically Lille, France in 1980, time-stamped on the screen with the voyeuristic glee of true crime television. Le Boucher is now a free man, leaving his daughter behind and starting a new life in the suburbs with a pregnant barmaid, desperately hoping to escape “the dark tunnel of his existence.” His new bride even agrees to foot the bill for a butcher shop in his name, that is, as long as he finds temporary work at a deli counter to subsidize the cost.

Despite her best efforts to appease him, Le Boucher is insulted by her forward nature and feminine input, thoroughly emasculated as she negotiates business deals in his name. Each evening spent in her mother’s home and inquest into his unemployment is a blow to his fragile psyche and he relishes the opportunity to slander Sa Maitresse (his teacher) in his mind, spouting out “fatso” and “cunt” as his favorite descriptive slurs.

His constant critique of her pregnant form is exceptionally cruel and he completely foregoes sexual intercourse with her, opting instead for pornography as the less intimate alternative. The mechanics of porn perfectly reflect his personal ideology, an outlook that separates the unique aspects of a person from the functionality of their parts, much like the profession of butchery. In his eyes, if you’re a man, you only function as an erect penis, destined to penetrate in an intrusive manner. If you’re a woman, your only purpose is to be penetrated.

Noé depicts these interactions without simulation, showing the dehumanizing aspects of the commercialization of sexuality without eroticizing his human subjects. The only salacious moment is a dream sequence, depicting moistened fingers caressing folds of raw horse meat, illustrating the destructive passions of our corrupt lead and the vicious aspects of his occupation.

Arriving home late after an excursion to an adult movie theater, Le Boucher is greeted by accusations of infidelity and the taunts of an angry, pregnant wife. He barks back, ambivalently, until she draws metaphorical blood, questioning his libido and calling him “PEDE” (faggot). The slur resonates deeply, further contaminating his masculine identity and coercing him into asserting dominance. His reaction results in one of the most dreadful and disquieting sequences in the film, an unflinching depiction of feticide that the aggressor likens to grinding up “hamburger meat.” It’s a nihilistic response to a despicable moment, only appropriate for a man who likens humans to breathing sex organs, much like he correlates animals to their cuts of meat in his boucherie.

Noé employs the repulsiveness of this sequence to satirize the gore fetishism and apolitical nature of modern cinema. Striving for a more honest depiction of immorality, Noé saps his “kills” of entertainment value, leaving behind the harrowing and destructive nature of violence, a behavior influenced by fear, ignorance and poverty. Seeing these images outside of the guise of recreation, we’re left to question our implication in the proliferation of fictional violence and what it says about our own moral code.

I Stand Alone (Strand Releasing, 1998)
Written and Directed by Gaspar Noé
Photographed by Dominique Colin

Frontière(s) (2007, Xavier Gens)

Horror is a genre of options.

It can be based in reality or operate in the purely fantastic. It can rely on an antagonist or utilize atmosphere as a means of inspiring fear. It can be played for laughs, done with a straight face, present a sexual subtext, even reflect grace and beauty. The options are without limit and it would be hard to find another type of picture, outside of the erotic, that features so many sub-categories and offshoots. That being said, it’s startling how few modern horror films take advantage of the endless realm of possibility, instead leaning on the achievements of their forebearers, as if to benefit through association.

Frontière(s) is one of these gutless attempts, never stepping out of the shadow of its chief influencer and cowering in fear at the thought of coloring in its insipid attempts at political and racial commentary. It’s a pointless exercise in convention, aimed squarely at an audience far too familiar with this motif.  

The story opens on France in a state of chaos. As a fundamentalist right-wing government takes office, the public riots, depicted in a mélange of jumpy fictional footage and stock news clippings. Yasmine, our protagonist and reluctant future parent, runs from police, seeking shelter for her wounded brother who’s steadily losing consciousness. To make matters worse, her violent baby daddy and his crew of ne’er-do-wells are en route, hashing a plan to transport a copious amount of stolen cash to the French-German border.

Though Alex is a brute, capable of both beating a cop bloody and comparing a dying man to a used tampon, he concedes, driving Yas and her brother to the hospital while his criminal counterparts (Tom and Farid) make a dash for greener pastures. As the sun fades and tensions run high, the pair decide to stop at a hostel for a little R&R, only to be greeted by a suspiciously flirtatious pair of sisters and their hulking brother, who passes his time brutally skinning a buck on the kitchen table.

If just hearing this description threw up a red flag in your mind, prepare to roll your eyes when the boys overlook the staff’s dubious behavior and decide to book a room. By the time they witness and shirk off the family grandmother regurgitating dinner through a tracheotomy tube in her neck, mild frustration will turn to rage, due in equal parts to anemic writing and blatant plagiarism (see Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

Every tired cliché gets trotted out for a victory lap. The secret room filled with passports and cell phones, half-dead victims hung from meat hooks, the sadistic patriarch, the “final girl,” fetishistic Nazi imagery…

But wait, isn’t this all intended as some sort of political statement, paralleling right-wing conservatism to fascistic hate mongering? Possibly in more capable hands, but any flirtation with social importance is just a cop out, intended to disguise Frontière(s) true intentions. This is a splatter film dressed as satire, too callow and weak to take a shot at the powers that be and far too restrained to function as transgressive horror.

Frontière(s) (Lionsgate Films, 2007)
Written and Directed by Xavier Gens
Photographed by Laurent Barès

The Firm (1993, Sydney Pollack)

Delicately balancing between the emotional and the physical, The Firm succeeds as entertainment without ever defining itself, determining mood and demeanor on a scene-by-scene basis. Its refusal to create a singular narrative thread could have made for erratic and unfocused work, but it wisely ratchets up the suspense by alternating characters and concepts, drawing as much audience enthusiasm from its contemplative war of words as it generates from the rush of foot chases and narrow escapes.

Mitch McDeere (Tom Cruise, at his most cherubic) is our humble hero, a gifted, but grounded, Harvard Law student who slings pub grub in the evening just to keep himself and his beautiful wife financially afloat. As graduation nears, the lucrative offers start pouring in, but McDeere isn’t smitten until he meets with Oliver Lambert (Hal Holbrook), the man behind a quaint Memphis firm that stresses a conservative image and tight-knit, familial work environment.  

Mitch is drawn to the normalcy on display at Lambert & Locke, subconsciously striving to distance himself from a childhood spent in a trailer park and the embarrassment surrounding his brother’s manslaughter conviction. His desire to be a member of a family, at least one in the traditional sense, blinds him to the stranglehold the firm’s value system puts on one’s freedom of choice, effectively eliminating employee dissent through the promise of wealth and the facade of community.

Abby McDeere (Jeanne Tripplehorn), Mitch’s spouse, is far more cynical and suspicious of the company’s generosity, sensing the trepidation in co-worker’s responses to her pursuit of a teaching career and reluctance to have children. Her concerns seem unfounded, at least to the wide-eyed Mitch, but they’ll both soon discover that wishes go well beyond gentle insinuation and any insolence is recorded by the Lambert & Locke “security team,” a shadowy group tasked with tracing employee calls and dissuading illicit behavior.

While most employees buy into the groupthink lock, stock and barrel, cavalier veteran Avery Tolar (Gene Hackman) is afforded a “few minor rebellions,” revelling in every extramarital affair and liquid lunch purchased on the company dime. Equal parts charmer and sleazeball, Tolar is tasked with ushering Mitch through his bar exam preparation and easing him into the company’s bookkeeping affairs, a process that mostly consists of “business” trips to the firm’s crash pad in the Cayman Islands.

Despite first impressions, Avery doesn’t hide behind his duplicitousness, openly inspiring Mitch to bend the law without breaking it and expounding upon the silver lining of moral turpitude (i.e. wealth, power). Hackman’s nuanced performance makes this veil of confidence alluring, credible enough to convert our most moral Mitch into a master of deception and desperate enough to make the character’s fall from grace in the last reel touching and unusually revelatory.

Days before Mitch’s maiden voyage to the Caribbean, two of his peers mysteriously die on a scuba diving expedition, insinuated to be the handiwork of L&L’s security team and its intimidating chieftain,  William Devasher (Wilfred Brimley). Mitch is rattled by the news, but even more disconcerted by the reaction of his peers, who range from paralyzed by fear to borderline catatonic, as if they’re imagining their heads beneath the executioner’s axe.

Unwilling to forgo the dream just yet, Mitch dives headfirst into his work and a parade of domestic excesses (queue the montage), moving his conscience to the back burner for the foreseeable future. The status quo goes on uninterrupted, except for some marital strain, until Mitch’s headspace is thoroughly invaded by F.B.I. agent Wayne Tarrance (Ed Harris), who reveals that Lambert & Locke has lost 4 employees in a rather dubious fashion over the past decade. Tarrance’s evidence is circumstantial and he can’t prove the firm’s involvement, but he makes a compelling case and reignites Mitch’s lingering suspicions.

Intent on extracting information from the unofficial, offshore branch, Mitch tags along with Avery on a jaunt to the Caymans, under the guise of assuaging the concerns of a finicky client. While Avery freshens for dinner and drinks, Mitch rifles through a mountain of on-site files, intrigued by a set of boxes related to Chicago’s Morolto crime family. Realizing he’s stumbled onto something substantial, but not entirely sure what this wealth of information adds up to, Mitch puts a pin in his covert operation until a later date, getting temporarily seduced by Tolar’s business acumen and debaucherous habits. In a moment of weakness, Mitch succumbs to his basest instincts and solicits sex from a wounded girl on the beach, temporarily losing his moral high ground.

Up until this point, Mitch McDeere has been the film’s ethical center, infallible in the eyes of the audience, acting as a symbol of opposition towards the transgressive and immoral. Can his character function after a fault of this magnitude, since he’s now a participant in the pattern of behavior he intended to subvert? The Firm never offers up a definitive answer to this question, but it does enjoy playing with the dichotomy between good and evil wrestling within all men.

Perhaps as an act of penance, Mitch visits his brother, Ray (David Strathairn), in prison, recognizing how their lives run parallel (“both surrounded by crooks”) and his emotional need to make amends. Ray is surprisingly genteel and soft-spoken, never made bitter by Mitch’s resentment and apologetic for how his current legal predicament may affect his brother’s fledgling legal career. After clearing the air, the brothers agree to free themselves from their literal and figurative prisons: Mitch working on Ray’s parole hearing and Ray offering up the assistance of a reliable P.I. buddy.

Mitch enlists Eddie Lomax (Gary Busey), an ex-cellmate of Ray’s, to dig deeper into the recent Cayman scandal, a request rescinded within hours by Devasher’s trigger-happy security team, who seem to be one step ahead of Mitch and unwilling to negotiate with words. Witnessing the surprise office visit and ensuing execution, Lomax’s assistant, Tammy Hemphill (Holly Hunter), flees to Memphis in hopes of linking up with Mitch and devising a convoluted retaliatory plan, one that would both capsize the firm and help Mitch avoid becoming an F.B.I. informant. As if matters weren’t complex enough, Tarrance and team don’t just want Mitch to snitch on his co-workers, they want confidential information concerning his clients, particularly the Morolto clan, which could result in his disbarment and would most certainly lead to an early death. Can Mitch and Tammy pull off the Yojimbo-style con and survive unscathed?

As the plot thickens to a roux, a crucial shift in tone occurs, transplanting the focus from Mitch to his wife, Abby. Since Mitch only needs to function in action sequences from thus on, the film loses its narrative core without an emotional connection, shrewdly avoided by upping another character's participation. Abby takes over as Tammy Hemphill’s co-conspirator, flying to the Caymans to seduce Tolar and steal his secret stash of confidential documents. It’s a brilliant structural move, hindered a bit by the messy gender politics it brings to the surface.

Since Abby has a slight attraction to Avery, she wavers between the goal of her mission and her desire to sleep with him and, in essence, punish Mitch. Though she can’t bring herself to consummate the act of sexual aggression, Mitch still seems offended when he gets wind of her involvement in the operation. “Did I lose you?,” he asks sheepishly, as if to imply that infidelity on her part would be tantamount to a complete dissolution of the marriage. It’s a strange, paternalistic attitude to have if you’ve actually committed adultery, but Mitch’s confrontational line of questioning might not be the film’s point of view, but his own skewed sexual identity. Mitch has already revealed himself to be flawed and the increased female dynamic in the final hour of the film not only adds meat to Tripplehorn and Hunter’s roles, but might act as an admission of Mitch’s guilt.

It wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to assume that co-writer Robert Towne, the master scribe behind Chinatown, shaded in these strong women and added some polish to the film noir cliches peppering the film’s mid-section.  This richness of character is why the film succeeds and it resonates deeply during a final act solely dependent on taut direction. The editorial work is also crucial, with the team of Frederic and William Steinkamp perfectly capturing reaction and terror in one nearly dialogue-free scene.

Fearing that his house has been bugged and dying to illustrate the direness of his situation to Abby, Mitch cranks the home stereo to top volume and clutches his wife to his chest, whispering every detail into her ear. We initially get a close up of Mitch’s mouth, slowly and calmly enunciating, transitioning abruptly to Abby widening her eyes and allowing fear to envelop her furrowed brow. The passage feels like it occurs outside of time, eliciting a heightened attention through the soundless conveyance of words and sharpness of editing, drawing us deeper into the mystery.

The Firm manages to function as a tightly wound and thoroughly enthralling thriller, despite the foggy moral compass, shifting gears without losing steam and taking risks without undermining our devotion to the characters. It’s rather sophisticated for this type of fare and transparent enough to tell its story through the mouths of imperfect men.

The Firm (Paramount Pictures, 1993)
Directed by Sydney Pollack
Written by David Rabe (screenplay), Robert Towne (screenplay), David Rayfiel (screenplay) and John Grisham (novel)
Photographed by John Seale

The Gingerbread Man (1998, Robert Altman)

Enamored by the musicality of conversation and the dynamic of gentle improvisation, Robert Altman imbued his works with the messy charm of an actual bull session, bristling with the energy of a barroom brawl where the words fly as fast as the hypothetical fists. The linguistic sprawl of his work always felt organic, certainly a more natural alternative to the stilted delivery of most motion picture conveyances, where lines of dialogue are broken by an unnecessary edit or awkward pause. His ears could always ferret out an honest repartee and he respected his performers enough to free their characters from the prison of the printed word and let them create genuine moments.

His strengths seemed suited for a project like The Gingerbread Man, one so enraptured with Savannah’s richly accented drawl and manner of speech, allowed to linger on each bourbon-soaked syllable and Southern-fried idiom. Altman took full advantage of this abundance of local color, mirroring the eccentricities of the geography through the banter of his characters, aligning the pace of the film with the slow roll of storm clouds and the smoky lighting of a lawyer’s chamber. His attention to detail is impeccable, perfectly capturing the zeitgeist of coastal Georgia in every frame, but his obsession with authenticity proves to be a distraction within the confines of genre, resulting in a thriller of muddied logic and broad performance, flailing wildly between excess and ennui.

The story, culled from an abandoned John Grisham manuscript, focuses on Rick Magruder (Kenneth Branagh, unmannered and sophisticated), a high-profile Southern lawyer caught between a blossoming career and a floundering marriage. After a watershed victory in Florida, Magruder returns home for an office celebration in his honor, leaving the party with a hefty buzz and mysterious female companion in tow (a saturnine Embeth Davidtz). Desperate and drenched from the seemingly incessant downpour, our damsel in distress waxes pessimistic, cataloging domestic woes that outshine Magruder’s, nearly all relating to her volatile, delinquent father. The list of complaints runs the gamut from troublesome to humorous, boasting everything from violent outbursts to kleptomania to a distaste for footwear. Magruder might have laughed along with the audience, if he wasn’t so interested in playing the protector and drooling over the seductive Mallory Doss’ constant state of undress.

With his current relationship in purgatory (marital and parental) and legal career on hiatus, Magruder spins one passionate evening into an eternal flame, taking on his lover as a client, single-handedly tracking down her cult-leader father (Robert Duvall, channeling his best Boo Radley) and making a sterling case for his insanity and institutionalization in family court. Also along for the ride on this conflict of interest is Mallory’s curmudgeonly ex-husband (Tom Berenger), a blue-collar roughneck who fancies himself a tough guy, but seems to have run afoul of the relatively frail defendant on many an occasion. If that wasn’t suspicious enough, he corroborates Mallory’s story in court to the nth degree, contradicting his previous exclamations of distaste for his spouse and the legal system in general.

Magruder is too blinded by lust to detect the coincidences in Mallory’s story, but the audience sees the writing on the wall and can smell a set-up well before the final act, foreshadowed by sledgehammer visual cues that feature our nefarious female lead lighting a smoke in unison with the crackle of thunder. In his defense, Mallory’s father does make for the perfect fall guy, living in squalor with a pack of equally disheveled hobos and raving like a wild man in the courtroom. How Duvall manages to bring a certain dignity to this role borders on the miraculous, especially after participating in a prison break sequence that would be better suited for a film about Burke and Hare than an Altman ensemble drama.

By the time the action shifts into high gear and Magruder is forced into a game of cat-and-mouse with a cult hell bent on retribution, we’re asked to indiscriminately go along for the ride or left questioning the film’s rationale. Suspension of disbelief is reasonable, especially with works that make up for logic with visual and emotional enlightenment, but The Gingerbread Man is far too enamored with its own telegraphed plot twist to break free into the realm of popcorn cinema.

On a purely technical level, it’s something of a triumph, faltering only in invocation of the written word. The photography is tasteful and evocative, capturing the mahogany hues of Magruder’s office and the flicker of Zippo lighters igniting behind rain-soaked windshields. The best shots mirror Magruder’s obsessions, traveling gracefully up Mallory’s fishnet stockings, revealing small bits of flesh through puckered rectangular holes. Seedy motels and dive bars are also adorned with the glow of neon and artificial light, adding a warmth and texture to the visual composition.

Conversely, the sound mix is rather undefined and messy, diminishing important discussion beneath a wave of background clatter, deadening the usually lively blend of voices in Altman’s previous work. Matters aren’t helped by an unnecessarily jarring and thunderous Mark Isham score, likely utilized to mirror the perpetual patter of rain or inject some suspense into a deliberately paced film.

The performances, in most cases, accommodate the pace, particularly Branagh and Davidtz, who vary between smoldering sexuality and unmitigated fear. Robert Downey Jr. doesn’t fare as well in a supporting role, channeling his drunken P.I. from the pages of some torrid novel, never gelling once with the audience or a scene partner. An embarrassment of casting riches are left buried beneath the leads, strapped with underwritten characters or victimized by an overly complex plot. Duvall, Berenger and Daryl Hannah are all sequestered to the background, struggling to make an impression in fleeting moments at arm’s length from the meat of the story.

We’re also left to tread water at a distance from the core of The Gingerbread Man, all emotional connections obscured by a constant downpour of rain and tonal incoherence. The behavior and actions of the characters are just as ornamental as the setting, acting as nothing more than decor for an unsubtle and occasionally absurd potboiler. It’s a shame, because the mechanics on display are stunning and often quite brilliant, but Altman never sees the forest for the trees, bogging himself down in the minutiae of set dressing instead of focusing on the machinations of plot.

The Gingerbread Man (PolyGram Films, 1998)
Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Robert Altman (screenplay) and John Grisham (manuscript)
Photographed by Gu Changwei

A Time to Kill (1996, Joel Schumacher)

Serious subject matter and the best intentions haven’t stopped Joel Schumacher’s technically adept courtroom drama from toeing the line between moral superiority and reprehensibility. It feels like a step backward from 1993’s Falling Down, which was a more thoughtful exercise in vigilantism and never as certain about its own skewed, self-serving philosophy.

No fault lies with the performers, all of whom exceed the requirements of what are basically cookie-cutter characters, functioning only to facilitate the script’s agenda. Whether or not the guilt falls on John Grisham’s head (the film is based on his novel) is not for me to decide, but any moviegoer who has seen more than one film of the type will predict the resolution far before the nearly 150 minutes expire.

The setting is Canton, Mississippi, a sweat-drenched Southern burg, occupied by both sides of economic and racial dividing lines. One can assume that tension pre-existed in Canton, turbulently roiling up somewhere beneath the surface of a functioning society, patiently waiting to boil over. The rape and attempted murder of a 10-year-old black girl by white assailants is the tipping point, forcing the locals to take sides and prepare for battle.

Incensed with rage and expecting little retribution by local law enforcement, the girl’s heartbroken and working-class father (Samuel L. Jackson) decides to take a stand and assassinate the culprits, involuntarily crippling a police deputy in the process. The only legal representative willing to defend the vengeful patriarch may also be partially responsible for the crime, since the defendant had hinted at his violent ambitions during a previous conversation.

Matthew McConaughey brings a shoot-from-the hip bravado to the inexperienced lawyer, lending a sympathetic ear not offered by most of his social stratum, who are either apathetic, outspokenly racist or an amalgam of both. Despite his best intentions, a subconscious desire for media recognition and financial compensation cloud his judgment and the considerable strain the trial puts on his family and practice are indirectly caused by his own narcissism.

Unfortunately for the American justice system, he’s not the only one with an agenda. The District Attorney, Ku Klux Klan, NAACP and a rich, Ole Miss grad-student all want a slice of the pie, seeing dollar signs and political power between the lines. The level of corruption makes the potential for a fair trial seem absurd and the defense team goes forth, knowing that the deck is stacked against them.

Schumacher does a fine job visually detailing this media circus and its accompanying hysteria, especially in relation to the Klan’s insidious backroom dealings. The opening assault and subsequent transgressions inspire the right amount of anger and disgust, never teetering over the edge into pure exploitation, despite the stereotypically grease-soaked hillbillies that occupy his vision.

His work with the sprawling ensemble cast is also praiseworthy. Managing a dozen big names with unusually small parts is no simple task, but giving each individual a moment to shine speaks volumes about his abilities as a filmmaker.

Sadly, talent with performers doesn’t always translate to storytelling virtues. He and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman focus far more on the personal lives of the involved parties than the progression of the trial, draining the film of much-needed suspense. Equally frustrating are the attempts at generating sexual tension between McConaughey and Sandra Bullock (the affluent scholar). Romantic subplots are perfunctory and cheap, especially when retrofitted into a story too austere to need one.

The only diversion that might have lent complexity to the film would be to examine the perspective of the victim, shining light on the effects of sexual assault and humanizing a character that has otherwise been reduced to a plot point. The problem with shading in the innocent victim is that it might put the film’s tricky morality under a microscope, posing questions about a child’s ability to come to terms with trauma in an environment that legitimizes violence.

A Time to Kill isn’t willing to ask these questions and falters due to this inability to show moral ambiguity. Revenge is an understandable knee-jerk reaction, but justifying murder sets a rather dangerous precedent. Unfortunately, this film isn’t confident enough to examine the cost of vigilante justice, banking instead on sentimentality.

A Time to Kill (Warner Bros. Pictures, 1996)
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Written by Akiva Goldsman (screenplay) and John Grisham (novel)
Photographed by Peter Menzies Jr.

Over the Edge (1979, Jonathan Kaplan)

New Granada, Colorado is a “planned" community, a village nestled in the hills, geographically protected from the noise and influence of the city by vacant lots and row after row of cookie-cutter, “ticky-tacky” Colonial homes. It’s slogan, “Tomorrow’s city… today,” is intended as a beacon of hope to those seeking shelter from the woes of urban inhabitance, promising a community segregated from crime, overcrowding and loosening morality. Ironically, its tagline is an accurate representation of things to come, but not representative of a serene family life. It turns out that fleeing the metropolis for a life of suburban ennui doesn’t actually solve little problems, it only magnifies them, spawning a bored army of mischievous teenagers, trapped in a rural prison that offers only violence and drug abuse as a means of release.

Fatigued by joyless days at school and constant police presence at the local rec center, Carl (Michael Eric Kramer) and Richie (Matt Dillon, in his debut) pass the time riding bikes, flirting with girls and desperately seeking adventure. Both are good kids, trapped by circumstance, constantly in fear of running afoul of the aptly named Sergeant Doberman, who hangs the threat of reform school over their heads like a swinging pendulum.

Catching wind of a stolen handgun, the boys manage to wrestle it from its female burglars, take it out for some very unsafe target practice and scare the life out of a local drug dealer turned police informant. Despite the emptiness of their threats and inherent best intentions, lounging on-lookers spy the weapon, forcing the boys to flee town and seek a buyer for their plaything turned bad luck charm.

As anticipated, through anxious and nerve-wracking foreshadowing, the resulting police chase ends in tragedy, forcing the community to come to terms with its teen delinquency problem and inspiring the local teens to lash out at their aloof parents. The adolescents’ ability to organize and work together to inspire fear and promote chaos is both disquieting and remarkable, showing that if nurtured and appreciated, they would be capable of bringing about positive change.

These unattended, private moments shared by the children carry a certain intimacy, accentuated by authentic dialogue and uncharacteristically nuanced teen performances. The photography is just as subtle, carrying beautiful blue-hues and sweeping tracking shots, spanning vast meadows and endless, sun-scorched strips of highway. Even moments of savagery, particularly Carl’s brutal beating at the hands of his enemies, are artfully shot in slow-motion and bathed in atmospheric noise and echoey harpsichord. It’s a tone far more suggestive than expected for the genre, lending an air of tragedy and pathos to an environment of perpetual tension.

Over the Edge culminates with the moment this volcano of hostility explodes, spilling out into full-blown combat. New Granada’s once silent prisoners have rebelled against their captors, waging war against indoctrination into a world of conformity. It’s a futile battle, which the precocious Carl seems to realize in the film’s final moments, but it’s not without its tiny victories. The PTA meeting coup is a brilliant burst of anarchic spirit, catharsis and ingenuity, just reckless and alarming enough to shock the adult members of this community into active parenting.

Over the Edge (Orion Pictures, 1979)
Directed by Jonathan Kaplan
Written by Charlie Haas and Tim Hunter
Photographed by Andrew Davis

Suburbia (1983, Penelope Spheeris)

Suburbia is a desperate vision of middle-class America, hopeless in its obsession with violence and fear of nuclear assault. Writer-director Penelope Spheeris knows the turf well and depicts the catharsis of punk-rock music and teenage anti-authoritarianism with a refreshing subjectivity, circumvented only by her allegiance to characters as oblivious as they are liberated.

Growing tired of his mother’s drinking and paranoid finger pointing, straight-laced comic-book devotee Evan runs away from home, taking shelter in the esotericism of LA’s punk-rock underground, enamored with the studded jackets, sense of freedom and rowdy fraternizing. Mentored by a scene veteran with a spray-paint adorned sedan and chip firmly placed on shoulder, Evan becomes a member of the “T.R.” house, an abandoned Raised Ranch-turned-squat designed for teens too frightened or apathetic to return home.

The “T.R.” kids are part of a reckless subset of crust punks, content to swill beers and steal from open garages, seeing violent conflict as a badge of courage and welcoming confused stares with an erect middle finger. Theirs is an occasionally dangerous and certainly misogynistic way of life, off-set by a strong sense of community and understandable distrust of authority. Only after they’re framed for murder and ruthlessly hunted by jobless vigilantes do we realize that these supposedly aberrant characters are scapegoats, taking the blame of a marginalized middle-class seeking an outlet for their blind hostility.

Spheeris depicts this clash through swift, tense action, favoring authenticity over artifice. Her camera relishes in the cramped spaces and destitution of the squat, lending each scene a sweaty, lived-in immediacy, benefitted exponentially by Timothy Suhrstedt’s uncluttered, symmetrical cinematography. Overlooking a patch of jagged editing or an amateurish transition is a necessity, especially as it caters to the attitudes and fashion of its subject: harsh, reckless and desperate. It’s a befitting milieu, despite the fact that it binds the film to its era like a time capsule, particularly during the unnecessarily long performance footage, which distracts from an already untidy narrative.

In contrast to this slightness of story is Spheeris’ ability to draw complex comparisons, especially between the punkers and their unemployed antagonists. Both disenfranchised and strapped for cash, the warring parties share a distaste for authority, which is ironically lost on them, resulting in continued bloodshed instead of a pooling of resources and redirection of aggression towards the source of their mutual oppression.

Like her cast of characters, Spheeris is just as confused about the identity of this oppressor, taking aim in every direction, firing wildly at capitalism, nuclear energy, consumerism and parenthood, hopelessly longing for a direct hit. Her mode of attack works intermittently, faltering only in its reluctance to make a statement on homophobia, enabling her protagonists to paint gay men as cold, unsavory and dysfunctional.

Passionately sympathizing with one group of outsiders while ostracizing another seems counter-productive, but Spheeris doesn’t want to untangle the contradictory, fascistic aspects of punk-rock ideology. She’d rather take the path of least resistance, narrowing her focus to teen angst and parental neglect, but her depiction of the American suburbs would have been far more compelling if I didn’t just reflect its characters’ fear and ignorance, but challenge it.

Suburbia (New World Pictures, 1983)
Written and Directed by Penelope Spheeris
Photographed by Timothy Suhrstedt

Spring Breakers (2012, Harmony Korine)

Dedicating much of his career to verite-style teen exposé, first-class provocateur Harmony Korine has temporarily taken a break from examining the arcane world of skateboarders and hillbilly delinquents. Stepping up from the underground and onto greener pastures, he’s set his sights on the college set, aiming to unmask the corruption and superficiality behind party culture. His finished product, Spring Breakers, is a hypnotic and kaleidoscopic journey through hell by way of beautiful, overstimulated teen flesh. It’s an exhilarating stunt that satirizes the hedonistic rite of passage that is higher education and looks on in fear at the zombies birthed by blind consumerism.

As subtle as a shotgun blast, the opening moments are the beach party cliché taken to its zenith. Naked breasts bounce in super slo-mo to blaring, repetitive house music. Drunken, beer-soaked frat boys take funnels and bellow at the camera. The fiery sun reflects off the water and sand, giving the images a blinding glow and scorched, sepia tone. It’s a sequence of sheer excess, familiarizing us with new territory and acting as a means of foreshadowing.

Our story begins on a nondescript college campus, occupied by equally archetypal teen protagonists. Three of the four girl team passively coast through class by day and smoke bongs by night, fantasizing about a consequence-free world of boys and booze on the beaches of sunny Florida. Their emotional and conversational abilities are decidedly limited, punctuated only by the occasional song lyric, expletive or sarcastically placed finger gun to forehead.

The group’s moral compass is Faith (Selena Gomez), a sensitive and spiritual Christian, who seems younger than her peers, if only because of a child-like naivety. Despite persistent warnings about temptation from bible study classmates, Faith joins the girls for their spring break adventure, ignoring the disturbing backstory that led to a recent influx of funds (armed robbery!).

With school and the local police far behind them, the dangerous foursome don bikinis like warpaint, prepping for a week of unmitigated carnality. Korine presents the high points of their vacation in rapid fire montage, creating a dizzying blur of waving arms, raised liquor bottles and ravaged hotel rooms.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end and our pretty little felons find themselves behind bars following a particularly rowdy, coke-fueled foam party. Crestfallen, they give up on the spring break fantasy, that is, until they are “rescued” by local rapper-cum-druglord, Alien (James Franco), who has bail money in hand and decidedly dicey plans for the next couple of weeks.

The enigmatic Franco brings much needed energy and intensity to the picture, kicking the narrative into high gear the moment he bursts onto the screen, menacingly flashing a smile from behind a mouth plastered with diamond grills. While his emotional piano performance of Britney Spears’ “Everytime” is a bravura surrealistic set piece, it’s the way he obsessively details his possessions that most serves Korine’s argument. Poring over every detail of his wonderland of drugs, guns, and garb, Alien beautifully illustrates how people equate their personal value to their belongings, embodying the emptiness of all involved in the neverending party that is consumer culture.

Korine’s color palette and sound design are just as meticulously coordinated as Alien’s hat collection. Soaking each image in fuzzy pinks and yellows, he chooses colors as artificial as his characters, giving each image the sheen of a gas station Slurpee. Visuals and their accompanying sounds repeat incessantly, appearing and reappearing at random, working as mantras for the characters (“Spring Break Forever”) and forcing a dreamlike state onto the audience. The click of cocked weapons emanates endlessly, signifying a scene change and creating a sense of foreboding that briefly jars us from our trance, just in time for a burst of cataclysmic violence.

We may not share this propensity for violence or ability to dissociate from reality, but as a funhouse mirror image of American consumerism, Korine has drawn parallels between our avarice and the brutality on display in Spring Breakers. What’s most frightening about this cautionary tale isn’t the excessive partying or unprotected sex, but the lengths we’ll go to attain these things, no matter the cost.

Spring Breakers (A24 Films, 2012)
Written and Directed by Harmony Korine
Photographed by Benoît Debie