They Live by Night (1948, Nicholas Ray)

Lampooning the dewy-eyed optimism of cinematic romance, They Live by Night deceives its audience through a brief preamble of saccharine strings and youthful, flushed faces, only to yank the rug from under their naive sensibilities and send the film into rough terrain. Disguised as a heist picture, it coasts on vivid, geometric composition and authentic outlaw vernacular, overshadowing an intimacy shared by the principal players that eclipses the action sequences, standing in stark contrast to its affected bleakness. Taken as a whole, the resonating passages reside in the quiet conversations and eager embraces of our adolescent lovers, leaving the petty details of their transgressions to sway in the wind like a paper tiger.

Edward Anderson’s characters are damaged goods far before we meet them, racing down a dirt road in a stolen car, desperate to avoid apprehension and further incarceration. Nursing a sprained ankle, Bowie (Farley Granger), the youngest of the treacherous trio, is abandoned in the sticks as his partners retrieve a cache of “stashed dough,” left to fester alone in the pouring rain. Forsaken by parent and school system alike, the defiant 23-year-old forges on without an ally, paradoxically committing crime in an attempt to finance a criminal lawyer. His middle-aged collaborators are also convicted felons, fueling Bowie’s pipe dreams with an endless stream of pilfered cash, exploiting his good faith for profit and power.

Bowie’s eyes meet Keechie’s (Cathy O’Donnell) in a ramshackle safe house, the pair sharing a smoke over war stories of parental neglect and veiled physical abuse. Keechie is as weather-beaten as her male counterpart, despite being in her teens, aged by cigarillos and a viscous coat of inky soot. Regardless of the literal and figurative layers of grime that blanket her exterior, she’s frightened by Bowie’s murderous anecdotes, shuddering as he expounds upon the death of his father and the manslaughter charge that landed him in a detention center. Their budding sexuality and the catharsis of conversation establish a rock-solid bond between the couple, broken only by Bowie’s dedication to his role as getaway driver and Keechie’s premonition of a violent end.  

Rendering these obstructions through visual symbol, Nicholas Ray and photographer George E. Diskant shoot through the grates of fences, metal wire of car partitions and steely bars of motel bed posts, evoking a private prison cell for our damned devotees. Exterior photography also conveys distance and desperation, captured by crane shots that register the protagonists as inconsequential specks on the landscape, paralleling their sense of self worth. Travel is even implied through aesthetic detachment, shown exclusively by slow fade into the block letters of a coal-black map.

Though the forthcoming caper is methodical and filmed with aplomb, Ray seems indifferent to the machinations of the crime thriller, exuding an aloofness that counteracts the exposition surrounding the central setpiece. The twists, turns and tragic ends planned for the final reel are all a foregone conclusion, telegraphed well before they arrive on screen and well after we’ve connected the dots in our heads. His love story, lived on borrowed time, is far more stirring than his gangster picture, articulating infatuation through Keechie’s wide, toothy smile and Bowie’s nervous chatter and childlike inquiry. The pathos exuded by these newlyweds as they relinquish their future and fondly reminisce over the heartbeat of happiness they shared is devastating and deserving of a far more exhaustive motion picture.

They Live by Night (Warner Bros. Pictures, 1948)
Directed by Nicholas Ray
Written by Edward Anderson (novel), Nicholas Ray (adaptation) and Charles Schnee (screenplay)
Photographed by George E. Diskant

The Hitch-Hiker (1953, Ida Lupino)

“This is the true story of a man and a gun and a car.”

Masquerading as fact and closely adhering to the frankness of the opening title card, The Hitch-Hiker is sensational in its simplicity, conveying a detached, mechanical violence that smothers the flames of film noir’s romantic predispositions. Isolating the genre’s all-encompassing dread, director Ida Lupino exploits the paranoia and abject cruelty of our eponymous boogeyman, sneaking in a subtextual condemnation of masculinity that extols feminism through its absence of female characters. The finished product is a shrewd and succinct white-knuckler, triggering sweat-soaked panic via brutish games of dominance and agonizing pleas for survival.

Shot at ground level and carrying an ominous tune, the commencement only reveals the boots of the aggressor, capturing the sound of his pistol and the spring in his step as he extinguishes innocent lives. Our first visual introduction to Emmett Myers (William Talman) feels like a slap in the face, his paralyzed right eye and grizzled chin spinning towards us on a newspaper front page, flanked by the particulars of a criminal life that reads like an athlete’s stat sheet. Migrating south with plans to capitalize on the anonymity of Mexico’s seaside villages, Myers hitches a ride to San Felipe with two war buddies, warning his unsuspecting captives of the bounty of “dead heroes” littering the road behind them. As he leans in from the backseat, brandishing a loaded revolver, his face radiates as if hit by an interrogation lamp, symbolizing the figurative prison that ensnares the hard-bitten and barbarous.

Quarantined to the confines of a vehicle, the film spends the entirety of its 70-minute runtime on the road, keeping the tension at a boil as the tires kick up rocky gravel from the bone-dry desert floor. Editor Douglas Stewart acts as an accessory to the blistering pace, making sharp, abrupt cuts that maintain the overarching sense of anxiety, stealthily shifting from the first-person POV of a shotgun sight to the wrist of the shooter wiping sweat from his eyes. The use of expressive edits and images fills in the gaps left by the minimalistic scenario, employing shots of furrowed brows and trembling hands to uncover emotion excluded from the dialogue.

Shadow also plays a key role in conveying the desperation of each man’s struggle to endure, focusing on the thin, skeletal shape of their depleted bodies as they strike a silhouette on the vast wasteland. As the film leaves the relative safety of the car and ventures on foot toward the ocean, a grim logic comes into play, stressing the practicality of selfishness in the face of certain demise. Despite the stark pragmatism of the presentation, the unbearable torment takes on a certain poetic quality, reflected by the gentle strum of guitar on the soundtrack and the dirt-strewn faces of the victimized, certain only of death’s inevitability, oblivious to the exact moment they’ll topple into the void.

The Hitch-Hiker (RKO Radio Pictures, 1953)
Directed by Ida Lupino
Written by Daniel Mainwaring (story), Robert L. Joseph (adaptation), Ida Lupino (screenplay) and Collier Young (screenplay)
Photographed by Nicholas Musuraca

Out of the Past (1947, Jacques Tourneur)

Doomed from the get-go and traipsing far behind the eight ball, Jeff Markham (Robert Mitchum) is the quintessential tragic hero, desperately grasping at the Elysian life that lies out of reach, inadvertently tightening the noose around his neck as he wrestles to free himself from bondage. Out of the Past acts as his elaborately-designed coffin, fabricating suspense from a gradual decline, smirking as his futile attempts to isolate the past only further contaminate his future. It’s a bleak portrait painted by a master; a marvel of light and dark that gracefully hurtles towards a brick wall, beguiling with its passages of rhythmic dialogue and clarity of composition.

The level of visual detail maintained by Jacques Tourneur and his cinematographer, Nicholas Musuraca, is sublime, treating each image as a naturalistic painting, using illumination and darkness as shading to reflect nuances in personality and tone. Take the opening coffee shop conversation, which positions conflicting cultures on opposite sides of the frame, situating chatty townspeople at the bar beneath bright light, while an eavesdropping gangster, dressed in all black, casts a shadow over the glistening jukebox. The blocking of the shot conveys a secret message, as does each frame that follows, paralleling the themes of the narrative while enhancing the layers of mystery implemented by fits of pithy discourse and shrouded bits of sign language.

Not a scripted word is wasted on these formidable players, particularly Mitchum, who takes subtle pleasure in Markham’s quips, read with a certain nonchalance that foretells the character’s demise, conveyed by sad eyes and a knowing glance. His melancholy refugee lives under an assumed name in an unassuming California burg, operating a gas station and arousing the suspicion of local gossips, titillated by his roguish mystique and adulterous sex life. The facade of his rural homestead is ruptured by the arrival of the aforementioned nosey hoodlum, luring him back into the service of a menacing Nevada gambler and rekindling his obsession with the double-crossing dame that had led him astray.

Bound by a sense of honor unbecoming within his former social circle, Markham resigns himself to the card shark’s orders, trekking to a rendezvous in Lake Tahoe to collect his assignment. Traveling with his sweetheart in tow, Jeff unveils his former self in toto, divulging his Christian name, crooked profession and corrupt cohorts, pinning his hopes on Ann’s (Virginia Huston) clemency. Shots of the confession are restricted to the bucket seat of Jeff’s automobile, utilizing color contrast to define the space and assist the performances, shining dashboard light on Ann’s face to present her reactions, while cloaking Jeff’s visage in twilight to reflect apprehension.

The narrative backtracks as Markham recounts his downfall, his words lying atop a string of cityscapes, captured in a crafty montage that implies forward motion. The chronological kickoff finds our hero in the role of metropolitan private eye, aiding a bullet-riddled highroller swindled out of a small fortune by his main squeeze. Whit, the victim in question, played with a seamless fusion of menace and charm by Kirk Douglas, had lost money once before on a horse, but got even by putting the poor beast “out in a nice, green pasture.” Entrusted to collect the femme fatale and the misplaced dough, Jeff ventures to Acapulco on a hunch, secretly hoping to protect the fugitive from the threats of her creditor. Instead, he and the captivating Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer) engage in a game of seduction, one-upping each other in sexual insinuation, ultimately succumbing to their basest desires.

Tourneur orchestrates his own stratagem of suggestion, weaving unique patterns of images that imply the obscene, employing a succession of shots that signify sex through an overturned lamp, swinging door and torrent of rain. Yet, an alternate reading of this sequence could interpret the three snippets as harbingers of misfortune and Tourneur’s taste for duality lends credence to both expositions. Out of the Past fashions high art out of the atmospheric auteur’s strange bedfellows, marrying the romance of noir fantasy to the powder keg of post-war cynicism.

Out of the Past (Warner Bros. Pictures, 1947)
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Written by Daniel Mainwaring (as Geoffrey Homes), James M. Cain (revisions) and Frank Fenton (revisions)
Photographed by Nicholas Musuraca

Pyaasa (1957, Guru Dutt)

Extolling the value of art and altruism in a capitalistic society, Pyaasa rails against the sanctimonious, exposing greed and hypocrisy through a scathing satire of celebrity and its accompanying insincerity. By virtue of its elegiac mouthpiece, Guru Dutt emphasizes humanistic attitudes, placing pride in dignity and equality over piety, subtextually endorsing apostasy from religion, social class and community. Its conceit is rather audacious and earnest for a musical, threatening to buckle under the weight of its themes, but its execution is unblemished, minimizing the frivolous fanfare as it wages an ideological war with ethical and financial poverty.

Finding little solace in the fever pitch of the publishing world, Vijay (played by director Guru Dutt), a political poet, relaxes in the tranquility of nature, allowing the visions before his eyes to mature into stanzas in his mind. His artistic habits deviate from the flaring tempers of the newspaper office and the sibling resentment in his mother’s parlor, a contrast defined by cinematographer V.K. Murthy through the limitless space of the outdoors and the claustrophobic clutter of interior shots. Lying in the vastness of his bucolic surroundings, Vijay overhears a woman reciting his poetry, enchanting him with a come-hither sway equaled in seductive power by the entrancing strum of sitar and clack of woodblock.

Vijay’s lyrics stir indefinable feelings in the compassionate prostitute undulating before him, reflecting the power of the written word to inspire empathy and catharsis. Unbeknownst to Gulabo (Waheeda Rehman), our aforementioned escort, she’s soliciting the author of the poem with her coquettish vocalizations, a claim she rebuffs as she sends the penniless wordsmith stumbling into the mud-caked streets. As blind rage fades into thoughtful clarity, Gulabo realizes that she had denied the author of her dearest romantic ballad, vowing to seek love from the tender poet and, through it, inspire personal rebirth.

Seeking a renewal of his own through creative expression, Vijay bares his soul in rhymed verse at a college reunion, bringing a past love to tears, but drawing ire from an audience eager for hollow entertainment. Dutt uses this uncomfortable performance piece as a means to expose audience indifference to art and the prescribed role of the artist in society, examining the apathy towards introspection in the industrialized India. Though his confident oration secures him a job at a publishing house, the director of operations refuses to print “the trash of a novice” and sequesters Vijay to a role of servitude.

In a moment of ironic coincidence common to Bollywood’s earliest melodramas, Vijay finds his bygone sweetheart, Meena (Mala Sinha), has married his treacherous superior, trading their collegiate love for the comfort of wealth. Dutt weaves the sorrow of their collective memory into montage, expressing the first flashes of affection, however fleeting, in rapid succession, demonstrating the couple’s inability to account for the impermanence of bliss through their joyous union in song. Another faded memory is captured in the blurred, glistening reflection of an elevator door, entering the subconscious through tight camera zoom and unhurried fade. This recollection feels like a fantasy, indulging in narcotic dances, bathed in flowing white cloth and buoyant balloons. Parisian lampposts and impenetrable fog add ambience to this extended reverie, but even in the most pleasant daydreams, love fades away.

Dutt realizes the emotional heft of the story and wisely interjects genial interludes, the best of which features an amateur masseuse, a jaunty tune and crafty tracking shot that traverses a vine-clad palisade. All passages of comic relief are seamlessly blended into the primary narrative, benefiting from editorial work that mirrors the musical pulsations and visuals that highlight spatial distance and craft metaphor through illuminating beams of light.

A drunken celebration encapsulates this marriage of the aural and ocular, representing intoxication through dizzying twirl, keeping rhythm through the rattling of bracelets and pulsating patter of a dancer’s feet. The pace gradually changes as the sound of a crying baby is added to the mix, creating discord and reflecting the lack of fluidity in the dancer’s motions. Though she fears for her ailing child, she must continue the dance, shackled by a perpetual need for money. Dutt implies that currency spurned the shift between a charitable India and a desperate one, abandoning a history of dignity for a future that  “auctions” pleasure to the highest bidder.

Conversely, a chosen few will shun the bondage of avarice and Guru Dutt finds a glimmer of hope in Gulabo, seeing her pro bono efforts to publish Vijay’s work as a divine act of selflessness. Art functions as a liberating force in an oppressed Indian and the words of Dutt’s martyred poet will live on, supplanting his temporary physical form. Whether the story is fictional or contains inklings of the autobiographical, Pyaasa is the greatest defense of fine art ever filmed, benefiting from Guru Dutt’s rich tapestry of aesthetic pleasures, skillfully employed to veil a caustic indictment of the material world.

Pyaasa (Guru Dutt Films Pvt. Ltd., 1957)
Directed by Guru Dutt
Written by Abrar Alvi
Photographed by V.K. Murthy

Bhoot Bungla (1965, Mehmood)

A pastiche of era-specific genres and ephemeral curiosities, Bhoot Bungla blends elements of American beach party films and fright flicks with Bollywood’s romantic tradition, approaching the youth market from all angles and with reckless abandon. Flashes of brilliance exist beneath the incoherence, fostered by lively dance numbers and cartoonish characterizations, but no single idea is fully realized, floundering beneath the weight of a scattershot screenplay. The end product is ungainly, if innocuous, best suited for curious viewers with insomnia and low expectations.

Details of the exposition are bewildering from the first shot, capturing a dying man as he collapses atop a staircase without preamble or visual clarification. Narration eventually reveals that the murder was unsolved and the victim’s descendants still occupy his “bungalow,” grappling with the mental illness imbued by the cursed grounds. Old chestnuts of horror’s past peak out from the mansion’s dark corridors: eerie blasts of off-key organ, menacing nocturnal footsteps, glacial breezes and a grotesque domestic staff. The film teeters into black humor in its use of prop and makeup, arming its ridiculously hideous gardener with a razor-sharp, protruding cuspid that closely resembles the fangs of a vampire. Sadly, the film leaves all of its panache in the costume department, treating its murder sequences as road bumps in the way of its forthcoming musical numbers.

Director and leading man Mehmood indulges in the non-violent tropes of macabre cinema, recycling stylistic cues from House on Haunted Hill, particularly its theatricality and penchant for jump scares. Sequences shot in the eponymous haunted house engage when allowed to blossom, particularly as characters are forced into confined spaces and besieged by plumes of artificial fog, swinging shutters and pitch-black abysses. Bouts of comic relief even function in this restrictive setting, imparting a dizzying, funhouse lunacy to a song and dance boasting hoofers in skeletal pajamas, diabolical surgeons and growling ornamental tigers.

The only thing holding back the terror is Mehmood’s insatiable desire to shift gears before a setpiece builds steam, either to maintain a furious pace or force in every disparate ingredient from a cluttered script. The extraneous “Beach Club Competition” segments bring all momentum to a screeching halt, devoting nearly 30 minutes to a desperate rendition of “The Twist” and undeveloped intergender rivalry. Though it may be impossible to deny the musical passages their bravado, particularly the outlandish West Side Story appropriation, they’re as distracting as the central mystery’s red herrings and just as malnourished. The divergent narrative threads are begging for the restraint of an accomplished filmmaker, one astute enough to trim the excess fat from a gratuitous and shapeless hodgepodge.

Bhoot Bungla (Mumtaz Films, 1965)
Directed by Mehmood
Written by Ranjan Bose (screenplay), Mehmood (story) and Akhtar-Ul-Iman (dialogue)
Photographed by Dara Engineer

Awara (1951, Raj Kapoor)

Confident and fluid, effortlessly navigating precarious shifts in tone and genre, Raj Kapoor’s Awara encapsulates the essence of Bollywood’s Golden Age, generating emotion through the aesthetic contrast between its humanistic narrative and visual extravagance. As oxymoronic as a musical about a lovelorn street urchin sounds on paper, the bombast of the production manages to usher the travails of our indignant bandit to the heights of Greek Tragedy, fashioning his struggle with illegitimacy into a microcosm of India’s rift between its nobility and the impoverished that kneel at their feet. The end product is as innovative as it is poignant, marrying elements of film noir, melodrama and Hollywood spectacle into a cogent examination of Machiavellianism and the oppression of the Dalit caste.

Inserting a melancholy thread into the text through a frame story, the film opens with our protagonist, Raj (director and producer Raj Kapoor), confined to a cage, overcome by despair as he awaits trial for attempted murder. He is defended by a female law clerk returning an undisclosed favor, her youth barely disguising aplomb and self-assurance, captured in tight zoom as she vigorously interrogates the accuser. Coincidentally, Rita (Nargis), the virginal defense attorney, had studied under the victim on the stand, Justice Raghunath (Prithviraj Kapoor), and humbly requests his blessing before conducting her cross examination. Raghunath is a dour puritan, masking a secret beneath his chaste exterior that will unravel as he expounds upon his career in criminal justice. A torrent of betrayal is “rooted in the past” and the camera closes in on his anxious brow as narration sets forth a slow transition into rippling waves and recent history.

Foreshadowing a future of misfortune, an oarsman and band of field workers converge in a rhythmically infectious cautionary ballad, serenading a younger version of the judge as he lies in a ligneous raft with his adoring wife. The backlit silhouettes of the farmers obscure the sun, cloaking the light in an ominous haze, each of their words warning against a mythical thief known simply as “Jagga” (K.N Singh). Born an honest man, Jagga was accused of rape because of his low breeding and ostracized from his community and occupation. In retaliation, the once noble creature transforms into the embodiment of vice and deceit, kidnapping Raghunath’s wife to inspire doubt about the source of her pregnancy. Poisoned by the gossip of his neighbors and an overwhelming lust for power, the judge falls for Jagga’s gambit and banishes his wife to the slums before she can “bear the fruit of her sins,” this infirmity epitomized by a fast cut to his frame cowering beneath a dangling baby bootie.

Questions of honor, particularly in relation to rape and monogamy, clash with the film’s depiction of the intellectual and individualistic Rita, epitomizing the divide between India’s conservative past and its inevitable future. Ideologically, Raj Kapoor is a progressive, injecting his politics into the feature in a visual manner, allowing a thunderstorm to mirror his discontent. Prior to the judge’s dismissal of his innocent wife, Kapoor captured shots of the slandered spouse thrashing in her bed, reproducing a nightmare through rapid-fire edits and alternating angles, reflecting her emotional strain and fear. Raghunath’s suspicion and indignation are paralleled by the tempest, shot at a low-angle and in extreme closeup, intrusive enough to capture the inky circles surrounding his eyelids. As he casts his bride into the streets, the thunder crackles in anger, the curtains and chandelier feverishly swaying in stereo with the ecstatic drama.

In a flash of ingenuity, Raj Kapoor switches protagonists and disposition for the second half, manifesting life on the other side of the tracks through the eyes of Raghunath’s misbegotten son. Each lead operates in his own milieu, Raj residing in the sun-drenched streets of Bombay and the honorable judge resting in the lap of luxury, carefully concealing the darkness that lies beyond the facade of wealth and power. The remainder of the film deals in happenstance, aligning these disparate characters through chance meetings that feel natural, as if predestined. Taking on the lead role, Kapoor brings a Chaplin-esque physicality to his charming grifter, tempering bouts of slapstick with snippets of American slang and crafty con games, lightening the mood and providing the audience with a relatable male character.

Drawn to his father by opposing forces, Raj struggles to balance his fondness for Rita, a primary school classmate and current infatuation, with his obligation to crime kingpin and surrogate father figure, Jagga. Through this conflict, Kapoor illustrates the trappings of poverty, manifesting the hopelessness of the destitute as they attempt to succeed in a world designed for their failure. Circumstances don’t necessarily provide Raj with his happy ending, but the chemistry he shares with Rita is palpable and fulfilling, modestly captured in the soft caress of her dress with his fingers, a sensation that sends her twirling in rapturous song.

The lavish odes to their devotion function as more than an accompaniment to the action or entertaining digression, operating as the driving force behind the narrative, expounding upon the emotions of the characters and imbuing meaning onto the mise en scène. Kapoor’s clean, photographic storytelling uses bursts of light and shadow to stimulate mood, forging symbols in gorgeous black and white, arousing a sense of danger with the setting sun and opaque, cumulus clouds. Sensuality is implied in each embrace, insinuated by propulsive musical numbers that convey passion through flowing robes and the unseen carnal actions that accompany them. By bridging social class through his star-crossed lovers, Kapoor stresses a society that separates matters of the heart and the letter of the law, sneakily subverting the status quo through reckless romance and bewitching fits of hasta mudra.

Awara (R.K. Films, 1951)
Directed by Raj Kapoor
Written by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas (screenplay/story) and V.P. Sathe (story)
Photographed by Radhu Karmakar

Very Bad Things (1998, Peter Berg)

Delicately balancing between horror and farce, Very Bad Things mines for laughs in a shallow grave, daring its audience to chuckle through realistic and unconscionable scenes of dismemberment and violence. The shock of the material overshadows a keen ear for the ironic and many intuitive correlations between bloodsport and genuine brutality, but don’t confuse this gruesome little number for a high-minded declaration of moral superiority. Instead, indulge your inner sociopath by snickering at the succession of transgressive sight gags, many of which exude sophistication and superlative comic timing, in spite of their ethical turpitude.

The pacing and performances on display are playfully excessive, maintaining an exaggerated mood to mitigate the conduct of the characters, lending a madcap disposition to their egregious actions. Even the everyday is embellished, illustrated by a feverish tête-à-tête over wedding vendor checks and the slam of a rubber stamp on marriage licenses in the opening scene. As our betrothed couple, Kyle (Jon Favreau) and Laura (Cameron Diaz), squabble over the groom’s forthcoming bachelor party and a battery of invoices, we get the sense that we’re observing a high-stakes sitcom, one that treats the mundane as fodder for misanthropic satire. Writer/Director Peter Berg sets this jaundiced tone in the first thirty minutes, gradually heightening the tension to test the audience, baiting us into accompanying his protagonists as they spiral into depravity.

The stag party sequence opens under the guise of cliché, beguiling with fades, wipes and double exposures, drumming up energy by way of Las Vegas’ superficial shimmer and garish, music video-inspired camera calisthenics. The bleary-eyed philosophizing of the groomsmen is equally distracting, lending little to the narrative aside from illustrating their intoxication and lack of introspection. Ironically, their forthcoming collective sin imparts personality and inspires catharsis, ushering their strengths and weaknesses to the forefront and, in turn, making them more human.

Trouble arises for our inebriated revelers with the entrance of their entertainment; a scantily-clad escort whose pelvic thrusts mirror the punches and grapples of combat emanating from the adjacent television set. As his partners in crime pantomime the on-screen battle in their deluxe suite, Michael (Jeremy Piven), fueled by cocaine and camaraderie, vigorously fornicates with the hired help, forcing her head into the tiled wall of the bathroom and unwittingly spearing her neck on a towel hook as he reaches climax. Surveying the scene, illustrated only through detached overhead shot, the party of five cower in fear at the sight of the suspended prostitute, trailing her corpse with their eyes as it falls to the marble floor with a bone-crunching thud.

After a few beats of frenzied terror, the gang puts her fate to a vote, agreeing to inhume the remains in the vastness of the desert, per the suggestion of the calculating and phlegmatic Robert Boyd. Christian Slater plays this insidious character as a fast-talking pragmatist, veiling his disdain for humanity beneath polarized shades, a precariously dangling cigarette and shit-eating grin. Observing his exhilaration as he plans the perfect crime is a sight to behold, conveying mixed emotions as he coaches his co-conspirators to abandon the “moral and ethical implications” and treat the lifeless body as a “109 pound problem.” Yet, this moral ambiguity fades as Boyd thrusts a corkscrew into the chest of an inquisitive security guard, blurring the line between innocuous comedy and terroristic affront to conventional morality.

This contradiction hits its apex as the accessories barricade the dying guard in the bathroom, ignoring his blood-curdling screams as they force their weight against the quaking doorframe. Peter Berg casts the tribulations of his panicked murderers in a comedic light, juxtaposing this jocularity against the desperation of the moribund watchman’s death gasps, using their selfish dread as the catalyst for the spate of catastrophes that lie ahead. This polarity makes for a twisted logic, one that spawns a palpable, unnerving discomfort, but it ultimately serves its purpose, providing these vapid characters with scenarios as ludicrous as their lack of conscience. The resulting picture is as vivacious as it is macabre, every bit of its droll gallows humor created with the utmost levity and bad taste.

Very Bad Things (PolyGram Pictures, 1998)
Written and Directed by Peter Berg
Photographed by David Hennings

Bachelorette (2012, Leslye Headland)

Steadfast in its attempts to offend an already jaded audience, Bachelorette mercilessly skewers an assortment of taboo topics, assuming that ribald anecdotes and vaginal jargon will sound novel when spouted in a female cadence. It’s an incredibly pessimistic film, one that figures friendship for veiled contempt and vulgarity for brutal honesty, never once taking its characters to task for their sociopathic conduct or upper middle class self-loathing. The end product is at once naive and cynical, wishing away deep-rooted psychological maladies over the course of an unruly eve, but lacking the courage to admit that those same disorders are fueling the manic narrative.

Defining its protagonists in the simplest of terms, the pre-credit sequence bonds our leads in narcissism, splicing us into a cellular pow-wow that exists only to eviscerate a full-figured friend in regards to her betrothal. Beneath every gibe about weight and personality, a sense of longing emerges from these superficial and substance-addled mademoiselles, unveiled through accidental revelations of inadequacy and resentment. As hints of depth peek out from beneath the nihilistic sheen, the credits roll and propel the film six months into the future, abandoning the flirtation with three-dimensionality.

Reconvening for the bachelorette party, the modestly-named “B-Faces” sabotage the festivities, showing their open disdain for the bride by casually referencing her bulimia at the rehearsal dinner and donning her gown as if it were the sack in a three-legged race. When the fabric tears, the trio is forced to scour Manhattan in the dead of night for a seamstress, an assignment that doubles as an excuse to entangle the ladies in a contest of moral bankruptcy with the equally unscrupulous groomsmen. The only element of the frenetic rising action that doesn’t feel flippant or perfunctory is the interplay between Lizzy Caplan and Adam Scott, portraying ex-lovers bearing the brunt of a hasty abortion and the relationship that dissolved in its wake. Regrettably, whispers of abandonment and drug dependency are given short shrift, never developed beyond a punchline and prostituted as story beats leading to a stilted sexual reconciliation.

For all of its earnest aspirations, Bachelorette amounts to nothing more than salacious junk food, falling back on pop ephemera as shorthand for emotional intelligence and cultural cool. The concept of a blue comedy helmed by a female auteur is exhilarating and Kristen Wiig’s Bridesmaids bested the boys in the tightrope walk between raunch and resonance, developing a kinship between the characters and audience through candid fits of hilarity. Writer-director Leslye Headland was obviously inspired by Wiig’s prose, but misheard her voice, confusing obscenity for feminism and intercourse for intimacy. If only she had taken her own advice and realized that “You can’t just fuck things into being better.”

Bachelorette (The Weinstein Company, 2012)
Written and Directed by Leslye Headland
Photographed by Doug Emmett

Bachelor Party (1984, Neal Israel)

A juvenile concoction of slapstick, shock and sex, Bachelor Party wears the excesses of its era like a badge, cramming in every clichéd conflict and obligatory setpiece that made 80’s cinema amiable and intolerable in equal measure. The components are certainly in place for a raucous comedy, generating goodwill through breakneck pacing and mammocentric visual motif, but the assembly is haphazard and pedestrian, exposing its ineptitude the moment Tom Hanks and Tawny Kitaen aren’t drawing focus.

Ad-libbing his way through the lead role, Hanks plays Rick Gassko as the sarcastic life of the party, furnishing the character with enough snarky material to keep the audience rapt during bouts of nonsensical monologue. He and his gang of cronies are frat boys without diplomas, coasting through monotonous day jobs, fueled only by the thrill of beer-soaked evenings and dreams of carnal embrace. Gathering at a pub for a monumental announcement, Rick sheepishly divulges his plans for marriage, sending waves of dissonance through his posse of perpetual bachelors. The cacophony is finally broken by the most stentorian of the group, shouting a rallying cry of masculine potency: “Let’s have a bachelor party with chicks and guns and fire trucks and hookers…!”

Anyone familiar with the rules of the game will recognize that discord is necessary to propel a story this unsophisticated forward. The writing staff, realizing their folly, decided to go for broke and include three trite sources of conflict: disapproving parents, a scheming ex-spouse and extracurricular restrictions (i.e. no hookers). Despite being the source of all of Rick’s distress, Debbie, our prospective bride, is a full-bodied character, brought to life by Tawny Kitaen in a performance that matches Hanks’ vivacity with equal charisma and attitude. The pair also share a palpable chemistry, contradicted only by the superficial relationships struck between the supporting cast, all of whom seem forced in from different motion pictures. The most glaring example is Cole, the aforementioned sociopath that had previously dated the emotionally incompatible Debbie, who is necessary to the story only as a hurdle for Rick and as the brunt of many feeble jokes.

In spite of Cole’s bribes and the advances of his female guests, Rick survives his hotel suite shindig unscathed, maintaining his role as archetypal good guy. His groomsmen, on the other hand, bed multiple partners, pop pills, deface property and act as accomplices to bestiality, all of which curiously occurs offscreen. Racial humor seems to be the only taboo topic the writing staff is willing to broach, leaving behind several missed opportunities, particularly a transgendered sexual encounter that deserved more than a perfunctory “pee standing up” punchline.

A smattering of sight gags teeter toward the callous, but any violation is minor enough to be glossed over by Tom Hanks’ infectious energy. He’s the sole survivor of Bachelor Party, rising above the tackiness of the production through waggish dance floor gyrations, writhing in spasms on a couch solely for our amusement. Without his charms, this party would be a dismal affair, overwhelmed by woeful post-synchronization and a deafening soundtrack, so saxophone heavy that it drowns out the rare attempt at substance.

Bachelor Party (20th Century Fox, 1984)
Directed by Neal Israel
Written by Bob Israel (story), Neal Israel (screenplay) and Pat Proft (screenplay)
Photographed by Hal Trussell

Japón (2002, Carlos Reygadas)

Shouldering the weight of contradictions that would define the Reygadian corpus, Japón bears the mark of a director’s maiden voyage, laboring beneath a sophomoric fascination with brutality that clashes with an otherwise observational and stoic style of filmmaking. The fluidity of the point-of-view camera work and stirring upsurge of operatic vocals, ingeniously piped in through the protagonist’s headphones, yield sublime results, but every attempt at transcendence is undercut by an egotistical disregard for misery, one hell-bent on illustrating suffering by administering pain.

Taking cues from Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry, Carlos Reygadas exhibits the disparity between the psychological and the ecological, tarnishing the virility and abundance of the environment by presenting it through a mud-caked windshield, paralleling the mindset of his suicidal protagonist. Travelling through the gorges that rest beneath imposing stretches of mountain, the anonymous transient (Alejandro Ferretis) struggles on the slate beneath his feet, his cane barely holding his weakened frame upright as the camera languidly vacillates behind his head. The chain of slowly fading images that document his journey create the most beautiful juxtapositions, pairing the chalky harshness of the terrain with the amorphous bluster of the wind as it rustles through the trees.

Discourse between characters is directed toward the camera eye, though the impatient lens wanders as they speak, precipitating the motion of the drifter or fixating on the spontaneous, capturing children wading in a murky slough or a pool of blood splashing from a hog’s throat. The impulsive nature of the first reel wanes as the nameless man obtains shelter from Ascen (Magdalena Flores), an elderly widow whose religious devotion echoes the implications of her forename. As she kneels in prayer beneath a humble shrine, Reygadas fashions a succession of Christian iconography, the glowing beams surrounding the face of Jesus Christ coming to life in the firelight. Her sorrow even mirrors the Easter pageant of the Biblical New Testament, the indignities imposed by her nephew’s greed and boarder’s concupiscence resembling the betrayals of Judas and Peter.

Reygadas forges a marriage between sexuality and divinity by brute force, affixing Ascen’s account of her incarcerated nephew’s lust for the Madonna to a master shot of the vagabond vigorously pleasuring himself. The radical shift in tone is jarring and intended to provoke, but never exploit, emphasizing the burgeoning libido in our previously crestfallen protagonist. The lineage of images that establish this rebirth carry an intangible exoticism, wafting between shots of horses embracing in coital bliss and the nameless tramp sniffing the collar of a laundered white shirt. This wellspring of passion also precipitates a renewed sense of empathy, intertwining our unlikely couple in sexual congress and equipping the lead with steely resolve, inspiring him to challenge the recalcitrant nephew’s claim to Ascen’s stone barn.

Reygadas’ sympathies also lie with the altruistic matron and he dedicates the closing passages of the film to her silent ascension above the terra firma. As her head sways back and forth from the motion of a ramshackle tractor, the slightest of smiles washes over her weathered visage, her ailing spirit accepting joy as it prepares to vacate the body. Through Ascen’s eyes, the modesty of the soil is elevated to an angelic grace, ascribing mystical properties to the human experience, despite the transgressions of her masculine counterparts. Carlos Reygadas blurs the line between art and reality through the wrinkles on Flores’ face and the guileless essence of her performance, but, like his leading man, he never atones for personal improprieties, surmising that aesthetic precision will distract from the animal sacrifices made to his artistic vanity.

Japón (Palisades Tartan, 2002)
Written and Directed by Carlos Reygadas
Photographed by Diego Martínez Vignatti and Thierry Tronchet

Post Tenebras Lux (2012, Carlos Reygadas)

Harnessing the elegance of his muse, Carlos Reygadas opens Post Tenebras Lux in the organic space beneath the dusky sky, girded by viridescent mountains awash in a balmy, pink glow. Approximating the spontaneous beauty of Silent Light’s daybreak, Reygadas tempers the harmony of the landscape through in-camera manipulation, warping the corners of his images, lending each picture a narcotic, rippled haziness. His eye is content to capture beauty free of diegetic restraint, permitting the strand of images to possess an incongruity that obscures any meaning and mires the narrative in the cerebral. Multiple viewings and inexhaustible patience will lay his metaphors bare, but the propensity for cruelty overshadows the singularity of Reygadas’ vision.

An inkling of plot is broached by the entrance of a luminous demon, jarring in its dissonance to the serenity of the commencement and glowing red like a flaming ember. The horned beast creeps into a cottage, staining the kitchen in a blush hue as it precariously swings its toolkit and protruding genitalia. As it peers down at the characters in slumber, the action abruptly cuts to a family stirring from sleep, the patriarch warmly tossing his infant son above his head. Despite initial implications of altruism, parallels are to be drawn between Juan (Adolfo Jiménez Castro), the father, and the scarlet devil, illustrated by his temperament around his canine companions, one of which he recklessly beats in the abdomen with his balled-up fist. Though this sequence succeeds in painting its character as unsympathetic and occurs primarily off-screen, the yelps of the puppy as it endures the attack are excruciating and realistic, distracting enough in their credibility to stir up questions of morality in the minds of the viewing audience.   

This callousness extends beyond a penchant for animal abuse, spilling over into Juan’s relationship with his subjugated spouse, Natalia (Nathalia Acevedo). Sojourning to a French sex spa at Juan’s insistence, the reluctant wife allows herself to be disrobed and coveted by a group of revellers, engaging in sex with another man as Juan objectifies her naked form. Reygadas drains the scene of eroticism, despite its frankness, even providing a respite for the frightened Natalia in the form of a matriarchal figure, one who rubs her temples and whispers in placid tones. The magnanimity of this good samaritan is antithetical to Juan’s selfishness, his corrupt nature poisoning connections between family and environment.

Our protagonist confronts the distance he’s struck between himself and the natural order as he lies on his deathbed, reflecting on the simplicity of childhood and the loss of innocence that accompanies adulthood. The most affecting passage of the film accompanies this realization, focusing on Natalia as she performs Neil Young’s “It’s A Dream” on piano, the pair singing in unison, their monotone vocalizations demonstrating the grace in human imperfection. As a single tear trickles down Natalia’s face, the camera zooms in on a portrait of an iceberg adrift in an waveless sea, personifying the isolation at the core of human existence, only surmountable through compassion and temperance.  

Post Tenebras Lux concludes with kinetic shots of a youth rugby match, the camera standing beneath a club as it converges in huddle, a spirited player shouting, “They’ve got individuals, we’ve got a team.” His words are the metaphorical center of Reygadas’ work, stressing a unity and balance that evade his principal characters, but are embodied within the sanctity of children, animals and the landscape. This purity is evoked through photographic vignettes that speak without words, eliciting a toddler’s wonder as she scampers alongside a herd of cows and defining love through a grandmother’s gentle tap on her grandson’s forearm. It’s a poetic work constructed of contrasts, equal parts enticing and revolting, marred only by its architect’s inability to discern between sadism and realism.

Post Tenebras Lux (Strand Releasing, 2012)
Written and Directed by Carlos Reygadas
Photographed by Alexis Zabe

Silent Light (2007, Carlos Reygadas)

Patient and willfully obscure, Carlos Reygadas’ body of work requires audience participation through reverent observation, compelling the viewer to linger and ponder stationary images, scarcely moving the eye of the camera beyond a glacial tracking shot. The infrequent edits and restrictive pace align the composition to Silent Light’s subject, channelling the perspective of Mexico’s Mennonite community instead of exploiting it, constructing art that is free of illusion and bound by simple truth, generating traces of the divine amidst the mundane. The viewer awakens to the conceits of the film through its introduction, a luminous sunrise, adapting to the flow of the narrative and visual language by way of extended metaphor, surrendering to a meditative and defiantly spiritual form of cinema.

As the camera stares at the tenebrous sky, transfixed by gleaming constellations, reverberations of insects and cattle chime in from the unseen vastness, acting as a soundtrack for five minutes of stargazing. Motion is slight, as if lulled by the repetitive chirps and oneiric stillness, arcing only to convey the immensity of space, gradually seceding to dawn through time-lapsed footage. The tranquility of the image overwhelms as soft blues and yellow beams of sunlight build on the horizon, the camera sleepwalking towards the illumination, parting the tree line to gaze directly at the burnt orange texture of daybreak.

The resonance of the exterior noise infiltrates the kitchen of an achromatic farmhouse, paralleled by the ticking pendulum of a clock that hangs above the doorframe. Speaking in Low German, a family of eight prepares breakfast, uniting through prayer and quiet contemplation. An unsaid distance emerges between the adults at the table, expressed through mournful glances passed from dutiful wife to inexpressive husband. As Esther (Miriam Toews) and the children rise from their seats, she places a hand on her husband’s shoulder and implores him to rest alone for a moment in the sparse dining room. Ceasing the clicking of the clock and slumping back into his wooden chair, Johan (Cornelio Wall) begins to weep, quietly hyperventilating under the weight of his catharsis as the camera gracefully edges towards him.

The rhythm is sedate and phlegmatic on the surface, but never dull, holding the viewer rapt in the innate elegance of the color palette and sound design. Reygadas allows lens flare and distortion to impart realism, conjuring remembered experiences of rippling wind and the pant of a contented dog through hollow, echo-laden vibrations. The photography channels intimacy through an analogous proximity, resting on the shoulders of Johan and his mistress, Marianne (Maria Pankratz), as they share a clandestine tryst at the apex of a mountain. Pink and yellow reflections sparkle on the film as the couple engages in a passionate kiss, the effect precipitated by the harshness of the sun’s rays captured in tight close up and the bursts of color that blossom by drifting in and out of focus.

There’s a modesty to the sexuality depicted on screen, revealed only in faint glances and tender embraces. The ripples of rain dribbling into a puddle and warm glow seeping through venetian blinds draw cinematographer Alexis Zabe’s attention during lustful passages, his eye wafting back to the matter at hand to analyze the contours of Marianne’s face and pool of sweat accumulating on her neck as she reaches climax. The emotional impact of their affair is far more vital to the narrative than the details of their fornication and Marianne’s reluctance to sustain the liaison inspires Johan to confess the sum of his faults to the dejected Esther. The pair say adieu in secret, Marianne stealing a graze of Johan’s wrist behind his back as the comical ballad playing on television transforms into an elegy for their forbidden love.

Wracked with guilt, Johan divulges the extent of his relationship with Marianne to Esther during a leisurely drive, inspiring his ordinarily serene wife to call his paramour “a damn whore.” As torrents of precipitation ricochet off of the sedan’s roof, Esther clasps her chest and persuades her husband to pull over, rushing into the woods in a nauseous and depressive state. Frantically sobbing as she picks the loose bark from a sodden tree, Esther removes her shawl, symbolically lifting the veil of silence and unmasking her sorrow, plunging to the wet ground as the pain in her breast reaches its zenith. The camera keeps its distance as Johan discovers her body and bellows at the sky, suggesting our inability to fathom his misery and reflecting the distance between the couple prior to Esther’s coronary episode.

Shots of her casket, constructed of linens and flanked by white candles in silver candelabras, are a facsimile of the closing images of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet and the similitude between both funeral sequences is indisputable. Yet, Ordet stressed the power of faith, while Carlos Reygadas’ film perfectly elucidates its title, illustrating the magnificence in plain sight and the unseen motivation that exists on the periphery. Silent Light manages to embrace the secular while invoking the supernatural, indulging in the majesty of the physical world and finding credence in celestial influence.

Silent Light (Palisades Tartan, 2007)
Written and Directed by Carlos Reygadas
Photographed by Alexis Zabe

Ran (1985, Akira Kurosawa)

Propelled by airy woodwind dirges and a palpable queasiness, Ran illustrates its foreboding narrative through pronounced use of color, personifying fear and betrayal through custard yellow and fiery red. The expressiveness of the makeup, which mirrors the theatrical nature of the performances, stresses a blackness around the eyes and shadowing on the brow, drawing grief to the surface on the visage of our tragic protagonist. The photography is just as expressive, sparking transitions in the storyline through shots of drifting clouds, blossoming like lilies atop the azure sky in placid moments and pouring out like black ink over the heavens as glory fades and conceit overshadows familial allegiance.

Set in Feudal Japan, Ran opens in a state of harmonious silence, speaking volumes about its characters through studied observance, spying them as they rest in a lush meadow and the mild winds rustle through long blades of grass. Lord Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai), the aged, but virile, patriarch of the Ichimonji Clan, celebrates a boar hunt with his sons and political leadership from neighboring territories, savoring the performance of his hōkan against the backdrop of a forested mountain range. In an uncharacteristic moment of vulnerability, the great warrior falls asleep, allowing the bowl of sake to slide from his grasp and onto the moist ground. He awakens in a state of panic, recalling a dream that placed him in an open field, out of reach of his children and most trusted advisors.

Accepting the “ravages of age,” the warlord surrenders his empire to his eldest boy, Taro (Akira Terao), secure that the peace fostered during his tenure will continue throughout his son’s reign. Demonstrating the bond of family, Hidetora teaches a lesson to his offspring, having each snap a single arrow and then allowing them to struggle to crack a bundle of three. Made uneasy by Hidetora’s bewildered and ebullient state, Saburo (Daisuke Ryû), his youngest and most outspoken son, attempts to muzzle his father’s soul-bearing monologue, only to be chastised by his groveling elder siblings. Emphasizing the lack of “fidelity” between the brothers, Saburo defiantly breaks the sheaf over his knee, provoking an extreme reaction from his bemused patriarch. In a state of unbridled rage, the monarch banishes his insolent successor, unaware that the discourteous display was intended to safeguard the clan from insidious interlopers.

The diegetic sound employed during the opening sequence, incorporating crickets, birds and the aforementioned wind, demonstrates the contrast between the natural order and the belligerent men that inhabit the Earth, their dominion over the environment tarnishing the terrain. Thematically, this lust for supremacy and the suffering that follows parallel the source of Ran’s inspiration, William Shakespeare’s King Lear, both works placing emphasis on the impermanence of power and the futility of man’s resistance to death. Akira Kurosawa’s adaptation, however, openly embraces irony, revealed through Hidetora’s swift transition from nobleman to transient and the tragic funeral procession that transpires in the final reel.

Within hours of the hunt, Hidetora is pressured into signing a “covenant” with the self-serving Taro, emasculating the once formidable master before his court. Ashamed and ailing, Hidetora seeks asylum with Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu), his middle child, but discovers that the burgeoning political alliances between his kith and kin can only function through his submission. As he progressively detaches from reality and wanders the plains seeking shelter, the lord is forced to seek clemency from his exiled son, realizing that the consequences of his misgivings have come home to roost. The glare of the blistering sun and screeching of birds overhead befit the distress that overwhelms Hidetora’s face, his mouth agape in horror as he fathoms his utter folly.

Unfortunately, the dejected Saburo has taken up residency with Lord Fujimaki (Hitoshi Ueki), leaving his vacant castle open for siege, a scheme hastily orchestrated by his conniving siblings. As they storm the fortress, natural sound fades, lending an operatic, ceremonial tone to the choreographed brutality. Photographed at dusk, the battlefield bears a striking resemblance to the abattoir, as dirt rustled by charging horse hooves and pools of cherry red blood blanket the strewn corpses like an afghan. Arrows and bullets careen through the air, arcing into windows of the stronghold as Hidetora attempts to thwart the charging soldiers, breaking the blade of his sword on the first swing.

The clash for Saburo’s castle is the film’s centerpiece, both as an uncompromising vision of war and final stage of Hidetora’s psychological collapse. Scrambling in a last ditch effort to protect himself, the feeble royal is stranded without a weapon in a burning tower, the profound metaphor of his impotence dancing beside him as flickering orange flames. He stumbles out of the citadel in a daze, the armor clad foot soldiers parting “like the sea for Israel,”* flanking him in malevolent shades of red and yellow, symbols of the bloodshed and fire that swept over the palace walls. From that moment forward, Hidetora is a ghost, roaming through the mist without a domicile, existing only as a pawn in the wargames conducted by his rapacious progeny.

Ran is an astounding display of directorial confidence, capturing the fury of imperfect men and immensity of battle with a delicate hand and unfathomable depth of vision, identical in its accentuation of character development and production design. Akira Kurosawa’s aptitude for merging interpersonal morality play with rousing combat setpiece has never been more evident, utilizing his visual grandeur as a vehicle for symbols that render man insignificant against the magnitude of the landscape.

*Miller, Arthur. The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts. New York, NY: Penguin, 2003. Print.

Ran (StudioCanal, 1985)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Written by William Shakespeare (play - “King Lear”), Akira Kurosawa (screenplay), Hideo Oguni (screenplay) and Masato Ide (screenplay)
Photographed by Asakazu Nakai, Takao Saitô and Shôji Ueda

Macbeth (1971, Roman Polanski)

Roman Polanski’s Scotland never beholds daylight, wavering between forbidding shades of dusk and dawn, its verdant earth buckling under torrents of frigid rain and stampeding horses. The grimness of the landscape correlates to the director’s rendering of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a bellicose adaptation that is hermetic in both senses of the word, as engrossed in the intangible elements of the occult as it is enthralled by the isolation fostered by a paranoid mind. The dialogue and decor maintain a certain authenticity, capturing the verve of Shakespeare’s blank verse and the cavernous recesses of Macbeth’s chamber, but the ghastly visual components are purely Polanski’s, fashioning a feverish and phantasmagorical nightmare out of unbridled avarice and the burden of guilt.

Facets of the supernatural permeate Polanski’s film and he wisely employs Shakespeare’s coven of witches as the instrument for his macabre catalog of symbols. The opening sequence finds the trio of necromancers clawing at the sand beneath a ruby sky, burying a noose, dagger and severed arm in the wet beach, their emblems of malice obscured by a coat of heavy fog. The unseen battle that rages amidst this dense smog is clamorous, leaving behind only brutalized flesh, thoroughly unmasked by the unforgiving camera eye. As two victors, Macbeth (Jon Finch) and Banquo (Martin Shaw), trot past the clairvoyants, they are treated to a labyrinthine prophecy, discerning from the string of riddles and menacing cackles that Macbeth shall rise through the ranks to the Kingdom of Scotland.

The soundtrack enters the thoughts of Macbeth, reproducing the whisper of his internal monologue, the union of fear and elation moving from the annals of his mind to his lips as they curl into a smile. Despite his military prowess and obvious intelligence, he is crippled by anxiety, his musings circling him like a buzzard as he succumbs to “black and deep desires” and plots his predecessor's execution. A dagger hangs before our assassin like an apparition, guiding him to the King’s bedside through sharp musical cues and a glowing orb of light. As he straddles the resting monarch, he plunges the sharpened blade into his torso, severing the jugular vein and sending his crown and a stream of warm blood onto the floor below, spied only by the rich flicker of a wood fireplace.

Interiors are lit by flame or a rosy, artificial glow, creating an insular, unearthly atmosphere, one capable of transforming a king into a cutthroat by the shadows of its faint illumination. The photography bears a comparable soft focus on the fringes of each shot, lending images an illusory quality, unreliable and hazy like the deliberations of Macbeth’s poisoned mind. The ascension to the throne illustrates this subjectivity, adorning the new king in white robes as beams of sunlight sparkle through the end of his sceptre, bathing him in blinding light like the resurrected Christ. On the other hand, the drifting, mobile camera never mimics the potentate’s anxiety, trailing him like a passive observer until it springs forth to accompany one of his sensory hallucinations, manifesting his shame through levitating spectres and a dizzying procession of mirrors.

Polanski utilizes primary colors to represent guilt and fear, drenching Macbeth’s restless body in the sanguine light that pours through his bedroom window, paralleling his bloody reign. The deep blues of twilight also carry metaphorical heft, washing over the fallen Banquo as his corpse floats in a shallow pool of water, echoing the cold distance of a king willing to slay his most loyal subject. The spell conjured by this evocative shading and frenzied violence is amplified by the high-pitched squeal of Third Ear Band’s avant-garde improvisations, eliciting panic through blurts of oboe and shredded violin strings.

Far more concerned with fabricating a mood than accurately representing text, Polanski focuses on the physical expression of rage in the final act, typifying his artistic vision by linking internal torment to external aggression. His Macbeth exhibits a measured pace, but builds to an unbearable tension, marrying a lesson in humility to a study in existential dread and mortal cruelty.

Macbeth (Columbia Pictures, 1971)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Written by William Shakespeare (play), Roman Polanski (screenplay) and Kenneth Tynan (screenplay)
Photographed by Gil Taylor

Romeo + Juliet (1996, Baz Luhrmann)

Contrary to the ascription on the theatrical one-sheet, Romeo + Juliet is more a product of Baz Luhrmann’s artistic sensibilities than William Shakespeare’s, transposing the Elizabethan English of “The Bard” onto the sun-damaged surf of a crumbling California, emphasizing the melodiousness of the text through expeditious editing and intentionally gaudy set dressing. Luhrmann’s flamboyant physicality and spectrum of color is almost brutish in its creative license, employing the civil unrest of the Los Angeles riots and epidemic of gang violence as a point of reference for the rivalry between the Montague and Capulet families, masking a glorification of silver-plated weaponry beneath the guise of social activism. The visuals do bear a certain allure, capturing the vividness of Mexican Folk Art and mystique of religious iconography, but every passage of beauty is smothered beneath a heavy-handed mélange of sight and sound, bewildering the viewer through its disarray and lack of restraint.

The film opens in fierce montage, cycling through its cast of characters by way of magazine cover and newscast, utilizing the anchor as a replacement for Shakespeare’s Chorus, reinforcing the script through large print intertitles. We enter the narrative at a gas station, the camera rapidly shifting from the boot heels to gun butts of a pair of rival gangs, each clamoring for respect through the brandishing of firearms and the pomp of the plainly anachronistic dialogue. The exaggerated appearances of the characters and abrupt camera zooms are cartoonish, imparting levity onto Verona Beach’s criminal element through shocks of neon hair and customized lowriders, each glossed in coats of color better suited for a scoop of sorbet.

Christian imagery is prevalent, as it was in Shakespeare’s work, characterized by extensive overhead shots of al fresco statues, many inspired by Christ the Redeemer or functioning as reminder of the crucifixion. Luhrmann intends to parallel the suffering of the Christian messiah to the eponymous lovers, a lofty goal that he nearly accomplishes through directorial bombast and the superb application of rousing music, both classic and contemporary. The integration of diegetic and nondiegetic sound is rather exhilarating, transforming the masquerade ball at the Capulet’s mansion from stuffy social affair to choreographed chorus line, accelerating the footage to emphasize the feverish twirling of the performers.

Scenes of revelry also sport a certain sexual ambiguity, one that feels rather prescient considering our current cultural debate on the politics of gender and identity, especially when bookended by passages of brutality. Luhrmann’s juxtaposition of the ravishing and savage is compelling, particularly within the construct of a mainstream adaptation, but Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers was far more subversive and had yet to fade from memory, its confidence fostering a cogent marriage of romance and media satire. Romeo + Juliet isn’t as neatly threaded, stumbling beneath an editorial incongruity that confuses rather than captivates, trammeling the impact of the photographic majesty.

The solemnity of the ironic conclusion survives unscathed, boasting a magical, illusory quality in the kaleidoscopic color and soft candlelight that illuminate the couple’s altar-bound coffin. As Liebestod pervades the soundtrack and the camera slowly scans the tomb from overhead, we see a flashback of the couple embracing underwater, sharing an impassioned kiss. It’s a subtle denouement to an otherwise garish and impetuous work, one plagued by a reckless abandon that confuses excess and technical prowess for transcendence.

Romeo + Juliet (20th Century Fox, 1996)
Directed by Baz Luhrmann
Written by William Shakespeare (play), Craig Pearce (screenplay) and Baz Luhrmann (screenplay)
Photographed by Donald M. McAlpine

Carol (2015, Todd Haynes)

Carol is a sentimental picture that occupies a pragmatic world. Sequences traverse memory and images capture color and space with a rapturous affection for detail, working to negate the restrictiveness and desperation that defined the cultural climate of the 1950s. It’s a highly subjective work, reflecting the infatuations of its director like it indulges those of the characters, lighting the streets of New York City with a warm, painterly glow, adding a certain filmic resonance to the tribulations of its ill-omened couple. Yet, it’s this decorum that makes Carol so hard to latch onto, creating a separation between the handsomeness of the imagery and the emotional center of the story, manifesting a passivity that makes it easy to discern between homage and the real thing.

We open on Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett) and Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) sharing what appears to be their final meal, the former holding back tears and the latter sternly resisting emotional impulse. Carol places her palm on Therese’s (pronounced “TA-REZ”) shoulder as she steps away from the table, the camera capturing her apprehension as she takes leave, revealing the intimacy of touch that will recur throughout the film. As Therese stares through the fogged glass of a yellow taxi cab, replaying the exchange in her mind, she remembers bits of their relationship in flashback, drifting through the past to the first time their eyes met and Carol touched the top of her hand.

The pair converged at Frankenberg’s department store, beholding each other through a sea of clamoring shoppers, sharing a moment despite the surging holiday rush. Director Todd Haynes embellishes their crush with ephemera, filling the screen with pastel tones, baby dolls and train sets, signifiers that isolate the story to a bygone era, despite the modernity of the subject matter. The trance-like narrative pace, which drifts between the present and an idealized past, matches the sexual attraction stoked by this chance meeting, insinuating a passion beneath the surface that doesn’t necessarily mirror the context of their conversation.

Politically, the nature of their discussion and forthcoming affair acts as an intersection of two different classes of people, one that not only smashes sexual barriers, but the boundaries defined by social status. Carol’s wealth and the confidence in her voice convey a certain prestige, reinforced by the fur coat draped over her shoulders and air of aloofness. Standing in stark contrast, Therese is indecisive and reserved, so eager to please that she adopts Carol’s attributes as they share their first meal, but elusive enough to have been “flung out of space.”

Both occupy their own figurative prisons, Therese trapped beneath her boyfriend’s expectations and Carol ensnared by a jealous husband and the opinions of high society. Gossip and disapproving glances still function as the scarlet letter in Todd Haynes’ body of work and he not only brings Carol’s love affair before the court of public opinion, but integrates her divorce from Harge (Kyle Chandler) and the subsequent custody battle into the climax of the story. He also reiterates the covetous insecurities of his male characters from previous films, upping the ante by fashioning unapproachable, oafish bores out of his jilted beaus. These perceptions could be a component of Therese’s selective memory, but the ill-defined masculine roles feel shallow in comparison to the chemistry of the leads, creating villains instead of three-dimensional humans.

That said, Carol and Therese share countless revelatory moments, nearly enough to wash away inconsistencies and the lack of narrative drive. The most evocative is their jaunt from the city to rural New Jersey, expressed only through image and echoes of forgotten words. Ed Lachman’s shot selection reveals intimacy through the movement of Carol’s lips and Therese’s watchful eye, intoxicating the viewer as the camera pores over the ruffles of Carol’s coat and the gentle tapping of her fingers on the radio receiver. The overexposure of the images symbolizes an existential impermanence, displaying the passage of time through these faded escapades as they slowly evaporate from Therese’s memory.

Depictions of sexuality are just as poetic, seen only through arched backs and shoulders and heard through trembling breaths and passionate whispers. Lachman’s range as a photographer is impressive, manufacturing a hypnotic rhythm that permeates the progression of shots, often superseding the narrative. The twilight footage is the most sensual, transposing the passion of our lovers onto the environment, inspiring awe through plumes of white smoke coating a pink sky. A tracking shot of bumper-to-bumper congestion even elicits comparisons to Raoul Coutard’s traffic-jam sequence from Weekend, though Lachman prefers the sheen of chromatic motor cars over the politics of style and technique.

The tone diverges from the visual palette, stressing a lonely introspection that Rooney Mara’s performance and the gentle piano keys on the soundtrack masterfully embody. Mara is chameleonic, morphing into her character and never giving the appearance of affectation or insincerity. Aside from her complexity, Carol coasts on a beautiful surface devoid of flesh and blood. The meticulous design and evocation of the period are impeccable, but the film builds to a muted crescendo, one that may open up on multiple viewings, but makes for a middling first impression.

Carol (The Weinstein Company, 2015)
Directed by Todd Haynes
Written by Patricia Highsmith (novel) and Phyllis Nagy (screenplay)
Photographed by Edward Lachman

Far From Heaven (2002, Todd Haynes)

Modeled after the Douglas Sirk melodramas, right down to the font of the title card and cymbal crescendos on the soundtrack, Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven is a merger between the gloss of “Old Hollywood” and the penetrating, intimate nature of his own genre deconstructions, devout in its adherence to style, but renegade in its refusal to obscure repression and discrimination. Sirk concealed his message beneath rigorous technique and a grandiose outpouring of emotion, but Haynes manages to temper the histrionics to reveal the injustices swept under the rug, recontextualizing the suburban utopia as fascist society.

At first glance, the Whitakers appear to be the perfect American family, boasting the wealth, beauty and etiquette that embodies an idealized vision of the mid-20th Century bourgeoisie. Cathy (Julianne Moore) is a housewife and Ladies Auxiliary member, more concerned with “civic causes” than her fellow socialites, but equally absorbed in the car pools, art openings and soirées that occupy the daily dance card. Her husband, Frank (Dennis Quaid) is an advertising man, charming and jovial on the surface, but harboring a clandestine existence after business hours, hidden beneath a mountain of lies and a worsening dependence on hard liquor. The revelation concealed behind Frank’s office door is nearly impossible to fathom, lifting the veil of complacency from Cathy’s eyes and outing Frank as a homosexual. He stutters as he tries to explain his efforts to suppress the urges, but he’s stifled by the mores of the time, preferring to protect his job and family instead of risk ostracization.

Gin-soaked from an evening of hobnobbing and intent on proving his masculinity, Frank ventures to get intimate with Cathy, breaking down when he can’t arouse himself for the endeavor. As tempers flare and the string section mounts, Frank strikes his wife, leaving a sizable bruise on her forehead that acts as a physical manifestation of systemic oppression. Cathy hides the wound beneath a lock of her hair, secretly sobbing over her dissolving marriage in the shrubbery that wraps around her residence, sheltered from plain view. Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert), her African-American gardener and acquaintance, notices her melancholy state and offers sympathetic words, his placid demeanor inspiring the reserved Cathy to join him on a countryside excursion. Isolated from their social circles by miles of forest, the pair develop a natural chemistry despite their racial and economic differences, recognizing that through confiding and vulnerability, that which is dissimilar is “no longer really outside.”

Sharing cocktails and a slow dance, the couple never muster the courage to kiss, daring only to embrace during their brief respite from reality. Unbeknownst to the ill-fated lovers, black patrons and white passersby have already set the rumor mill churning, inspiring speculation strong enough to fall into Frank’s lap, forcing Cathy to fire her trusted confidante in the name of “reputation.” Ironically, Frank would abandon his wife months later for a younger beau, taking a chance on love despite the risks, an option that would be unreasonable for Raymond and Cathy. Left alone and teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, our protagonist cries as she straddles their twin beds, the location of a passionless marriage that will act as a symbolic ball and chain for the rest of her existence. The only pleasure afforded to a “homemaker” in 1957 is one last farewell to her shamed sweetheart as his train passes, the lavender scarf swaddled over her head acting as the sole reminder of their fleeting moment of happiness.

Perfectly replicating Technicolor film processing, every image in Far From Heaven is a vista, sporting deep greens and fiery autumnal leaves, traveling by way of fluid crane shot from the tops of the trees to the front porches of stunning colonial homes. Body language and dialogue befit the period as well, but distinctions are made between the affectations of polite discussion and the reality that seeps out behind closed doors, saving bitter words and uninhibited passion for the shadows of back alley bars and the isolation of the forest.

The two divergent worlds rarely intermingle, overlapping only for a drunken outburst or contemptuous stare, involuntarily exposing the tension bubbling beneath the surface. Cathy and Raymond briefly venture beyond this invisible barrier, finding companionship outside of the restrictions of class, race and marital vow. Todd Haynes suggests that even their failed efforts at subversion are authentic in a society dictated by fear and ignorance, using their flirtation as a harbinger of the Civil Rights Movement and a weapon against the mystique of the “American Dream.”

Far From Heaven (Focus Features, 2002)
Written and Directed by Todd Haynes
Photographed by Edward Lachman

Safe (1995, Todd Haynes)

The magnetism of Todd Haynes’ Safe stems from its ability to deceive, a willingness to lure in through hypnotic, steady motion and quickly detach by shifting focus and negating its initial instincts. What begins as a paralyzing examination of a deteriorating human body gradually morphs into a condemnation of the cure instead of the disease, exposing the self-help movement as a malady of the mind that advocates dissociation over self-actualization.

Filming the San Fernando Valley from a distance, capturing the enormity of wealth with clinical focus, Safe observes Carol White (Julianne Moore) with a detached stillness, symbolizing her malaise through cold, symmetrical photography and stabbing bursts of steely, isolated synthesizer. Never uttering a word above a whisper and passive to the point of torpid, Carol only springs to life in defense of her upholstery, clinging desperately to the one aspect of domesticity under her control. Sex has even lost its cathartic power for Carol, signified by the metaphorical snare she occupies beneath her husband as he writhes atop her inert frame.

Carol’s internal suffering begins to externalize itself through discomfort and debility, the camera surveying her sallow skin and paretic limbs as she struggles to hoist a glass of milk to her lips. Her infrequent excursions out-of-doors are even interrupted by this ambiguous ailment, propelling her into frenzied coughing bouts as she inhales exhaust from passing dump trucks. The cause of her enervate state remains a mystery until Carol happens upon an infomercial regarding deep ecology, a movement that stresses “spiritual awareness” in an increasingly toxic environment. Through the guidance of the advertorial and the suggestions of a friend, Carol adopts an all-fruit diet, desperate to cleanse “the body of all toxins” and recapture her youthful glow.

Diverting from her usual routine, Carol opts for a “perm” at the hair salon, seeking physical reinvention to match the modifications made to her regimen. As the chemical relaxer is poured over her scalp, irrigating through the channels of damp hair, sound effects simulate the bubbling and gurgling of a mad scientist’s lab, demonstrating Carol’s newfound paranoia through non-diegetic sound. The horror of Carol’s mind finally leaps forth from her body in a stream of blood, trickling slowly from her nostril and over her pale, peach skin.

Aerosol usage in the boudoir continues to exacerbate her condition, compelling her to vomit after embracing her hairspray-soaked husband, who has grown weary of her lack of sexual desire and inability to keep up appearances. Friends even gossip about her worsening psoriasis and lack of participation at aerobics, treating a panic attack at a baby shower as a cause for embarrassment instead of concern. The isolation that had festered inside has materialized on the surface, paralleling her affliction, forcing her to seek approval elsewhere, drawing her closer to the culture of self-guided improvement advertised on television and gymnasium message boards.

“Environmental illness” is the disease preached by these holistic seminars, stressing the corrosiveness of synthetic materials in food, air, water and habitat, persuading attendees to “create an oasis” in their homes free from toxic infiltration. The influence of charismatic speakers and ideological branding seems to make Carol’s symptoms more severe, resulting in seizures, labored breathing and seclusion from the outside world, all at the behest of amelioration. The last stop on Carol’s downward spiral into solitude is Wrenwood, an idyllic facility that harbors the environmentally ill and emphasizes a complete avoidance of actuality. The impact and charm of the group’s leader, who has beaten AIDS through the power of positive thinking, commandeers Carol’s free will just like the chemicals overwhelmed her body, inspiring her to adopt the behavior and physiological infirmity of the most severe and reclusive patients. Sleeping in an igloo and breathing with the assistance of an oxygen tank, Carol revels in the acceptance of her fellow victims and believes she’s on the path to recovery, but doesn’t recognize that she’s exchanged the bondage of marriage for a prison of the mind.

Safe never belabors the true nature of Carol’s “illness,” suggesting instead that society’s fear of disease allows the sick to be marginalized and manipulated, birthing the false prophecy of self-improvement. By breaking the film into contrasting segments, one that exploits the body and one that exploits the mind, Todd Haynes satirizes modern medicine, exposing the fear that fuels an industry of “doctors” and the desire for approval that drives an industry of “healers.”

Safe (Sony Pictures Classics, 1995)
Written and Directed by Todd Haynes
Photographed by Alex Nepomniaschy

Titanic (1997, James Cameron)

As off-putting as the pageantry surrounding Titanic was during its initial theatrical release, characterized by an omnipresent hit single and staggering financial success, none of the facile hype sullied the content of the film, standing in direct contrast to the marketing melodrama through artful grace and a measure of restraint. Its romantic temperament does ascend to operatic apexes and the monumental setpiece is milked for its emotional resonance, but moments of catharsis are well-balanced with tranquility, imparted through color-tinted, deep-blue photography and hypnotic, cherubic intonations on the soundtrack. The finished product is ethereal, even reserved, achieving intimacy despite the magnitude of James Cameron’s vision and the devastation of the majestic ocean liner’s plunge into the glacial water.

Titanic’s frame story opens in present-day aboard a research submarine, its team of intrepid explorers surveying the wreckage of “The Ship of Dreams,” probing the depths for sunken treasure. As “Duncan,” their robotic excavator, inspects the shell of the submerged monolith, a safe is discovered peeking out from beneath a sodden doorframe, surmised to be the final resting place of “The Heart of the Ocean” diamond necklace. To the crew’s dismay, the strongbox is severely water-damaged, containing nothing more than ravaged documents and a nude sketch of survivor Rose Calvert (Gloria Stuart), donning the missing sapphire around her rosy neck. Seeking guidance in their search, the crew invites the spry centenarian on board to review their findings, regaling her with details of their underwater adventures and a computer-generated rendering of the great craft splitting and sinking to the seabed. Rose is wounded by the objectivity of the image, referring to it as a “forensic analysis,” one sapped of the human struggle waged against insurmountable odds. As she recounts her personal story of embarking across the Atlantic, we see her face reflected in the footage of the ghost ship, her skin bathed in the turquoise glow of the ocean floor as if preserved by the frigid salt water.

As we’re transported back in time with her evocative words, the tone follows suit, sliding into an old-fashioned narrative that parallels the vessel in sprawl, marked by the striking mass of characters waiting to board the ship and the astounding reconstruction of the RMS Titanic preparing to set sail. We see a teenaged Rose (Kate Winslet) slinking out of her candy red Rambler, wearing a capeline hat bedecked with a bow, stately in her regal appearance and “well brought up,” but trapped in a world of her mother’s design. Her polar opposite is the scrappy Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a transient who won his ticket in a hand of cards and is just crafty enough to hoodwink the staff into letting him board without the prerequisite lice check.

Rose is first-class and Jack is trapped in steerage, two star-crossed lovers that perfectly embody Cameron’s passion for contrast, highlighted in the divergent worlds of the Titanic; one cool, clean and refined, the other fiery like the pits of hell and dusted in a layer of coal. Distinctions are also made between old and new money, classic and contemporary art (Picasso gets a mention) and live-action and CGI, a hybrid of concrete and abstract that lends a certain realism to sequences impossible to recreate by hand. “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” (Kathy Bates) is also a study in opposites, acting as go-between for rich and poor passengers, marrying wealth with frank conversation, and defending Rose during a misguided debate on phallocentrism during diplomatic dinner discussion.

Rose’s fiancé, Cal Hockley (Billy Zane), is particularly critical of his future wife’s outspoken nature, overpowering our protagonist like he’s breaking a horse, restricting her reading material and snatching the cigarette from her contemptuous lips during supper. Overwhelmed by the demands of her beau and the vapidity of polite society, Rose stands “at a great precipice,” contemplating suicide as she precariously hangs over the upper deck, observing the steely surf below. As she climbs the rungs and prepares to dismount, the lovestruck Jack intervenes, having admired the girl from afar, distracting from her despondency by beguiling with an ice fishing story from his childhood, one that would foreshadow his own demise.

Much is made of “what’s suitable” in Rose’s world, but it quickly becomes apparent that the confrontational nature of Jack’s honesty and the knowledge he’s accrued through experience best affluent passivity, though it’s debatable as to whether or not the mechanics of spitting are representative of a fulfilling existence. Unlike the commandeering Cal, Jack agrees to meet the smitten Rose halfway, dolling up in a tuxedo for their dinner date and modifying his roguish behavior through keen observation. Yet, his bohemian roots show a bit during the first course, as the placement and volume of silverware and surplus of condescension wage war against his plain-spoken sincerity.

Cameron sticks with this study in disparity, detailing the pleasures of both classes in direct succession, forcing Rose to carouse with those at the lowest berth following dinner, a new experience that she thoroughly adapts to through hearty drink and acrobatic dancing. Despite this newfound vigor and tolerance, the survival of Rose’s wealth hinges on the marriage to Hockley, trapping her in a prison of refinement just as she has begun to discover the pleasures of the flesh. Crestfallen, the stoic Rose decides to fall on her sword, regardless of Jack’s promise to love her unconditionally and promote her independence.

Coincidentally, mechanical problems parallel these bouts of domestic turmoil. Despite the ship’s inability to turn, the powers that be choose to fire the last boilers for publicity, a grave error that will eventually send this maiden voyage careening into a towering iceberg. The mass of frozen water emerges just as Rose musters the courage to abandon her sycophantic family and elope with Jack, the crash acting as ironic confirmation of their eternal bond.

Beholding the water as it surges through the damaged hull is shocking, despite prior knowledge of the Titanic’s fate, and tension continues to mount as mechanics rush to slide beneath the closing doors as liquid rapidly fills the undercarriage of the boat. As patrons prepare to evacuate and the frantic meet a tragic end, the film begins to verge on the absolute, replacing narrative with a symphony of sound and motion. The once massive and airy space becomes claustrophobic as ocean permeates the sleeping quarters and Rose rushes through knee-high water to locate her incarcerated love, captured in a ruse orchestrated by the covetous Cal. There’s a sad, delicate beauty to the image of the stately liner sinking as strings play. Natural sound slowly fades as the ship’s quartet occupies the soundtrack, showing private moments of select travelers lost in thought; the captain and architect realizing their culpability and an elderly couple awaiting the inevitable, clutching each other as sea foam springs onto their bed sheets.

Cameron manages to represent the less contemplative passengers with equal aplomb, encapsulating the frenzy and chaos of the class structure in the face of uncertainty. While the wealthy cling to ritual even in death, the poor wrestle against the gates padlocked between each floor, struggling against the “order” that restrained them both in life and death. As the ship opens like a mouth, ingesting its passengers, those floundering for survival in the piercing climes of the ocean scale their fellow casualties, holding each other beneath the surface as they cling to their remaining breaths.

Capturing the overpowering rush of the sea and creaking of the dying vessel, Titanic’s sound design crackles with life, reproducing natural sound in an unnatural environment through creative use of stereo and credible foley work. James Horner’s score is just as rousing, boasting a sense of adventure and sentimentality that is essential to a film of this enormity. Though the dialogue teeters toward the overwrought and the lead performances are stagy, Cameron would rather represent nostalgia for a period of the time than actuality, favoring the grandiose sweep of emotion over the dreariness of substance. His instincts are right most of the time, but fleshing out his insinuations on the corruption of class and gender may have added a layer of nuance to complement the viscera of his imagery.

Russell Carpenter’s photography is certainly the boldest aspect of this melancholic adventure, enchanting and accurate in its representation of reflection, both in light dancing on the rippling water and monitors casting a glow on the arches and lines of the human face. Slow-motion is also employed to depict the beauty of simple gestures, swaying gracefully with the flow of Rose’s dress as she dashes across the deck or adding psychological weight to the rush of escaping passengers. Though it runs well beyond three hours, it’s lithe and necessitates the ambitions of its astonishing and poignant second half. Titanic is unapologetically emotional, but if you relieve yourself of the burden of irony and immerse yourself in the mood, you’ll be spellbound.

Titanic (Paramount Pictures, 1997)
Written and Directed by James Cameron
Photographed by Russell Carpenter

Juno (2007, Jason Reitman)

A waggish modernization of the After School Special, replete with teen pregnancy and the fallout of a failed marriage, Juno is self-consciously cool to the point of being glib, so beguiled by its own dialogue that it neglects to develop genuine relationships between its pubescent protagonists. Channelling adolescent angst through snide superficiality may be an effective method for depicting immaturity, but pomp is a poor substitute for depth and Juno’s youthful ensemble never complements the sincerity of the narrative, favoring ingenuity over emotional authenticity.

Acting as screenwriter Diablo Cody’s mouthpiece, Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) breathes life into a stock scenario through her sardonic sense of humor, playfully conveying contempt for peer and parent alike through acerbic barb or arcane pop-culture allusion. The curtness and levity of her speech, littered with a constant stream of antiquated jargon, may function as a defense mechanism, obscuring the sorrow of her mother’s absence and the unexamined disconnect between herself and her preschool-aged sister.

We open on Juno with child, the product of a platonic sexual voyage shared with bandmate Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), a track star who has yet to determine if he’s part of the in-crowd or a misfit of Juno’s caliber. Bleeker is certain of one thing, however, languishing over his erotic conquest as he lies beneath his bedsheets, clutching her cotton panties in his fist like some hormonal devotion ritual. Nocturnal pining aside, the dynamics of Bleeker and Juno’s relationship are ill-defined, leaving the audience to conjure the building blocks of a friendship without any prologue to the pregnancy. The pair doesn’t even engage in a passionate discourse until well into Juno’s third trimester, scuffling over the jilted Bleeker’s parent-approved prom date and Juno’s fear of commitment. One saving grace to a juvenile conflict is Bleeker’s callow reaction to Juno’s distance, an honest depiction of youthful selfishness that ignores Juno’s predicament, despite the fact that she bears the brunt of their intimacy in her distended belly.

Months prior to this coy exchange with Bleeker, Juno had intended to play her pregnancy close to the vest, venturing alone in search of a teen-friendly clinic to “procure a hasty abortion.” Hiding behind a cavalier pose, Juno sought termination with poise and resolve, only to be affronted by the ineffectual ministrations of the staff and the chattering of loitering patients in a grubby waiting room. As she made her swift escape, the impassioned words of a lone protester permeated her thoughts, the queer notion of a fetus with fingernails transforming a night of misadventure into a genuine human being. Avoiding pro-life proselytizing without insulting religious devotion is a fine line to walk, but Cody manages to compose a delicate scenelet, motivating her naive counterpart toward adoption instead of the extremes of zealotry or abortion.

Realizing how “ill-equipped” she is to perform the tasks of a caregiver, Juno seeks out prospective parents in the Pennysaver, nominating a wide-eyed couple that has an excess of financial wealth, but little in the way of communication skills. The mother-to-be, Vanessa (Jennifer Garner), quietly hides the sadness of failed pregnancies beneath a mask of civility, quivering at the mere mention of infertility. Her husband, Mark (Jason Bateman), feigns interest in the adoption, but his ambitions are trapped in a spare-bedroom recording studio that houses the ghosts of his teenage dreams. As an also-ran in the 1990’s grunge-rock revolution, Mark’s band once opened for The Melvins, an experience he uses to draw himself closer to Juno, finding her snotty behavior and thrift-store fashion sense as signs of a more suitable mate, despite her immaturity. Common ground shared through splatter cinema and proto-punk inspires a clandestine bond, forcing Vanessa further down the depression spiral and driving a wedge between the expectant couple, imparting a much needed dose of reality that parallels the ignorance of youth and uncertainty of adulthood. The most rewarding aspect of this mounting conflict is Jennifer Garner’s soul-baring performance, a study in repressed misery that blossoms into hope as the kicks in Juno’s stomach reverberate onto Vanessa’s fingertips. The wellspring of emotion expressed solely through pointed glance and extended palm all but wash away the cloying modishness and pretense of Mark and Juno’s “intellectual” connection, constructing a tender passage that belongs in a far more intuitive film.

Desperately straining for cool points, Diablo Cody favors cultural cache over verisimilitude, prostituting the work of singular artists like H.G. Lewis and Sonic Youth in hopes that some of their well-deserved hipness will rub off. Soundtrack selections also function as signification of taste instead of visual accompaniment, repurposing the sneakily sarcastic odes of Belle and Sebastian into montage music for characters that don’t match their wit or eloquence. Unlike Stuart Murdoch’s effortless poetics, Diablo Cody’s dialogue feels like dialogue, ringing hollow when forced into real-world scenarios. Slang terminology can sing when peppered into sentences rich with real, dictionary-defined words, but language constructed solely of patois is just stoner psycho-babble.

The linguistic games do, however, bind the adolescent characters to childhood, wisely providing contrast between the adult responsibilities that accompany Juno’s maiden pregnancy and her jejune mindset. A late-blooming maturity also befits the lead character, allowing her to embrace a fondness for Bleeker without succumbing to his will or losing herself in the emotional merger. The pair even shares a heartfelt moment of reconciliation that avoids melodrama, revealing the emphasis that Bleeker places on appearing cool, a facade that goes unnoticed by his betrothed. Juno works best when it takes Bleeker’s advice and champions vulnerability, faltering only when it buys into affectation and wallows in its own verbosity.

Juno (Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2007)
Directed by Jason Reitman
Written by Diablo Cody
Photographed by Eric Steelberg