Cobb (1994, Ron Shelton)

Uncertain whether it aspires to be a farce or a tragedy, Cobb matches the hubris of its titular slugger and stretches for the pair, paradoxically emerging as callous and sentimental, despite attempts to impart emotional complexity. While the truth of its tabloid source material is eternally debatable, Ron Shelton’s admiration for the outfielder is not, making each uncomfortable shift in tone an unspoken justification for the violent mood swings of an amoral athlete. By laughing off aberrant behavior as eccentricity, Shelton buys into the cult of personality, mirroring a reluctance to rebuke celebrity malfeasance that has contaminated popular culture.

Unfurling in a newsreel-style montage, the film commences at the height of turn-of-the-century nostalgia, focusing on journalist Al Stump (Robert Wuhl) and his clique of outspoken beat reporters. Tucked away in a dimly-lit Angeleno dive, the roundtable debates sports’ superlatives, shouting out favorites like floor brokers at the New York Stock Exchange. Despite his soft-spoken demeanor, Stump is the most career-driven of the rowdy bunch, gladly leaving his post at the bar to accept an open-ended invitation from aging hardball icon, Tyrus Cobb (Tommy Lee Jones).

Inadvertently assuming the role of transcriber, Stump acts as middleman for Cobb’s blend of revisionist history, relinquishing his authorial voice at the cock of the power-hitter’s Luger pistol. The hyperbole of the fallen star’s tall tales are matched in absurdity by Shelton’s permissiveness, presenting Tommy Lee Jones with carte blanche to chew scenery, dulling each act of wild-eyed brutality by conveying an air of slapstick irrelevance.   

A snowbound, whiskey-soaked drag race to Reno embodies this triviality at its apex, cartoonishly painting Cobb as spirited reveler and Stump as his gobsmacked enabler. Wuhl’s gesture-heavy acting does little to temper Jones’ excess, welcoming every maniacal bender and bout of violence with a reciprocal schmaltziness. Sadly, his intermittent narration, which could have benefitted from some mannered oration, is as stilted as his acting is melodramatic.

The tone is as manic as the lead performances, intentionally wavering between madcap and maudlin to the point of utter incoherence. Efforts to wrangle with the polar opposites of a complicated man, particularly the gulf between his talent and depravity, are abandoned for a gratuitous subplot that further uncovers the film’s decadence, recklessly veering from meet cute to sadistic sexual violation within minutes.

If Shelton had allowed the rape scene to have a ripple effect on the rest of the narrative, it would have been less jarring and incongruous, but left as a vignette in a film chock-full of them, it loses all resonance to a concluding revelation that pardons a long-suffering “hero.” Overwhelmed by this disingenuity, Shelton’s attempts at witty discourse and photographic majesty are rendered moot, stranding a handsomely-mounted character study somewhere between compelling and catastrophic.

Cobb (Warner Bros. Pictures, 1994)
Directed by Ron Shelton
Written by Al Stump (biography) and Ron Shelton (screenplay)
Photographed by Russell Boyd

Tin Cup (1996, Ron Shelton)

Dispensing with the hoary rise-and-fall of the orthodox sport saga, Ron Shelton’s Tin Cup starts the narrative at the epilogue, settling in with its self-sabotaging golf pro at the point of resignation, hiding on a dilapidated driving range miles from a competitor and worlds away from a tournament berth. Obscuring the tumultuous nature of his hero in a flood of flirtatious banter, Shelton masks anxiety beneath red-blooded bravado, forcing intermittent outbursts to disrupt the story as much as they disrupt the hacker’s swing and sex life. This warts and all complexity produces genuine laughs and palpable drama in equal measure, marrying new-age psychoanalysis and old-world macho bluster with a linguist’s aplomb, furnishing a bewitching tale of romance and redemption from outwardly low-stakes material.

Nursing beers and an undiagnosed chemical imbalance, Roy McAvoy (Kevin Costner) wastes his days cracking wise with a coterie of hangers-on, always one shot away from a blackout and one shank away from a meltdown. His belligerence is disguised by a crafty coyness and the slightest pinch of a Texas accent, affectations that would charm anyone outside of his growing army of creditors and ex-lovers. Even his clubhouse witticisms have a touch of class, that is, until Dr. Molly Griswold (Rene Russo) saunters in for lessons, her high-end duds and grad-school smarts providing the perfect antithesis to his sweat-soaked undershirt and tacky brain teasers.

Shelton loves their bodily exchange as much as their chatter, proliferating sexual tension through the swivel of Griswold’s hips and the glint of arousal in McAvoy’s eye as he places his hands to demonstrate stroke and sexual dominance. Molly preaches the purely cerebral, stressing the “gathering” of knowledge and spouting a string of philosophers, medical techniques and ideologies at the feet of her confused coach. Roy is the corporeal response to her intellect, emphasizing the arc of the swing through heavy insinuation and excessive force, inadvertently revealing his professional shortcomings (“Short follow through... unfinished look.”)

McAvoy evades these character flaws through doublespeak and misdirection, chalking up every disaster to a failed quest for immortality or “defining moment” foiled by a cunning adversary. His scapegoat for personal responsibility is David Simms (Don Johnson), a duplicitous PGA tour leader known for a calculated method of play and talent for cocksure trash talk that nearly rivals his “crapped-out” ex-teammate’s. If Simms’ meteoric rise to fame and courtship of Molly seem like trite narrative shortcuts, it’s only because Shelton is endeavoring to resolve Roy’s fear of success and intimacy in one fell swoop, positioning the closing U.S. Open dogfight as a cathartic venture for his brain and balls.

By ushering these insecurities to the surface, Shelton skewers male competition, both in sport and love, exposing the “dick measuring” as a self-perpetuating exercise in emotional dishonesty. Though Roy’s maturity on the green and in the boudoir can be attributed directly to therapy, his greatest victory is an acceptance of self by refusing to “play it safe,” embracing an uncompromising attitude on and off the links. Ron Shelton’s denial of melodramatic cliché is just as fulfilling, providing his audience with a salty underdog who merits an unlikely brush with greatness and fidelity.

Tin Cup (Warner Bros. Pictures, 1996)
Directed by Ron Shelton
Written by John Norville and Ron Shelton
Photographed by Russell Boyd

At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1964, José Mojica Marins)

Transporting the dense fog and menacing shadows of gothic fiction to São Paulo, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul shuns Cinema Novo’s staunch realism, favoring operatic performance and lurid, sanguine images. The thundering force of the sound design, culled from snippets of static-laden moans and warped laughter, creates an agitated atmosphere, bearing a striking resemblance to the sonic overload of a carnival funhouse. Though the milieu is pure horror fantasy, right down to its highly-stylized villain, a chilling sadism bubbles beneath the surface, bridging the gap between the innocuous creature features of the 1950s and the forthcoming wave of brutal exploitation pictures.

Advising his audience to exit the theater before they lay eyes on a decomposing corpse, José Mojica Marins gleefully trades in structural gimmicks, opening his film with two content warnings, each bursting with horrific hyperbole and baleful waves of echo. His lead performance as Zé do Caixão is just as extravagant, sporting a Stygian three-piece suit and towering top hat, each persuasive point of his finger embellished by curled fingernail and demonic cackle.

Refusing to subscribe to the tenets of Catholicism, Zé spurns the communal fast on Good Friday, demanding a dinner of flesh from his browbeaten wife (Valéria Vasquez), even if it requires a human sacrifice. Fiendishly gripping his horned billiard pipe and smirking at the superstitions of the devoted, Zé vigorously dines on a leg of lamb before a passing holiday procession, demonstrating his mental fortitude and freedom from conventional morality. His narcissism has transformed him into a god, expressing an atheistic temperament that would be commendable, if not for his future transgressions.

Zé exposes his corrupt nature during a hand of poker, severing the fingers of a fellow gambler with a splintered wine bottle after he declines to cough up his monetary losses. Marins personifies this fury through a constrictive “Italian shot,” closing in on the whites of Ze’s eyes as they turn bloodshot with rage. The source of this wrath is his wife’s infertility, severing his bloodline and forcing him to seek a more appropriate vessel for his seed. We hear the cold calculation of his thoughts as he binds his loving spouse and plots to covet his best friend’s fiancée, depositing a scurrying tarantula onto the chest of his scantily-clad victim, spawning an uncomfortable marriage of the tortuous and titillating.

A latent eroticism seeps into all of Ze’s methods of execution, each smack of his black-gloved palm and thrust of his pelvis producing a jubilant chuckle and pool of crimson blood. This indifference to human pain and adoration of sexualized cruelty even extends to his male counterparts, making his desecration of a detractor’s lips and cheek with a miniature crown of thorns an intriguing merger of the prurient and sacrilegious.

Unfortunately, a whirlwind of supernatural retribution falls upon Zé do Caixão during a nocturnal stroll, contradicting the boldness of his practical atheism and validating blind faith. Political unrest and audience allegiances may have twisted José Mojica Marins’ arm in the opposite direction for his finale, but the strength of his inspired direction and profane protagonist are enough to ensure absolution, solidifying At Midnight as a startlingly modern and antagonistic vision of ideological autonomy.

At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (Industria Cinematografica Apolo, 1964)
Directed by José Mojica Marins
Written by José Mojica Marins (story and screenplay), Magda Mei (screenplay) and Waldomiro França (screenplay)
Photographed by Giorgia Attili

Vidas Secas (1963, Nelson Pereira dos Santos)

Vidas Secas tells its story through oppressive silences and deafening wails.

The stillness of the desert is captured in its first instant, the camera observing a duo of vague figures in extreme long shot, distant enough to be mistaken for a mirage. The din of a horn penetrates the soundscape, representing the punishing heat of the sun through aural torment, decelerating the panning shot to a sedate crawl. As the human silhouettes enter the frame, carrying the weight of their possessions atop their heads, an unspoken despair couples with the cacophony, immersing the viewer in an earthen inferno.

A minimalist approach strips the canvas bare, allowing the camera to patiently observe and fragmentary dialogue to hang in the humid air. Conversations are incongruent and cluttered, words pouring out onto images of the blistering noon-day sun and craggy terrain, rarely emitted from mouths or communicating intelligible ideas. The slow, deliberate recitation and blunt phrasing flourish into rough-hewn poetry, transforming quotidian desires into starry-eyed reverie.

The procession of snapshots bears the authenticity of photojournalism, beholding the quiet beauty of rainwater trickling from terra cotta eaves and dusty hair dancing in a cool breeze. An air of sincerity permeates the picture, lending credence to the core relationships at play, particularly a pair of real-life siblings that bond over mutual responsibility, smiling heartily as they corral a flock of iron-willed billy goats.

Empathy builds through this austere and realistic tableau, heightening dramatic tension and compounding the forthcoming disgrace and dehumanization. Nelson Pereira dos Santos brilliantly utilizes livestock as his symbol for this subjugation, analogizing the branding of petrified cattle to the brutal lashing of Fabiano (Átila Iório), employing the patriarch’s squandering of funds and wrongful imprisonment as a statement on bureaucratic corruption and the inevitability of suffering. As hope recedes and the film veers into the purely metaphorical, dos Santos paints a grim portrait of innocence lost, revealing a fatalistic worldview through the eyes of his cherubic shepherds and their ailing hounddog.

The demoralization of the eldest son creeps forth from tales of fire and brimstone, transforming the fruitless plains and precipitous peaks of his barren home into the orange flames and sharpened pitchforks of perdition. Employing a child’s imagination to articulate his themes, dos Santos stresses the anguish of an existence not far removed from the hyperbole of Hell, steeling the audience for the misery of the closing passages.

Perpetuating a claustrophobic atmosphere through stationary shots, each taken at ground level, the camera stares death in the face, witnessing the euthanization of a hunting dog and fathoming the fear in his eyes as he tumbles to the brittle sand. As he nears expiration with each labored gasp, the camera pans to his scurrying prey, their swift motion bordering on elation, reflecting the human apathy that engenders the vicious cycle of poverty and desolation.

Vidas Secas (Sino Filmes, 1963)
Directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos
Written by Graciliano Ramos (novel) and Nelson Pereira dos Santos (screenplay)
Photographed by Luis Carlos Barreto and José Rosa

Black God, White Devil (1964, Glauber Rocha)

Black God, White Devil is a film as harsh and pitiless as the sertão (desert), thoroughly bleached of color and beset with woe. The camera hangs its head to echo the desperation, refusing to advocate or glamorize hard labor and poverty, only rising above the action as an ironic statement on the artificiality of the cinematic gaze. It even keeps a sardonic inventory of its characters’ motivations through song, wryly imitating the theme music and mythology of the idealized Western, varying only in the depravity of its characters and hopelessness of its message.

The stifling heat of the barren Brazilian outback is the setting and source of anguish, embodied in every drop of sweat on Rosa’s (Yoná Magalhães) brow, her visage personifying destitution as her weary arms crank the handle of a crumbling grain mill. The torment of hunger has nurtured a practical pessimism, leaving her to balk at the aspirations of an optimistic husband, Manuel (Geraldo Del Rey), and the empty promises of a seditious cleric (Lidio Silva).

A slow, pensive tone permeates these opening forlorn passages, allowing the pace to reflect the all-encompassing vacuity of the arid landscape and stand in contrast to the forthcoming violent retribution. Pandemonium sets in as Manuel becomes untethered, each severe and hasty edit keeping time with the slice of his machete and the scamper of feet. The initial homicide, brought forth by a combination of starvation and humiliation, precipitates an erratic and disorienting horse chase and cluster of murders. As the narrative intensifies, so does the soundtrack, abandoning its humble ballads for operatic crescendo, elevating an unexceptional fall from grace to the heights of religious allegory. The emotional heft of the strings even impacts the characters, each orchestral upsurge tempting passion to the surface and momentarily humanizing the sadistic and cruel.

Glauber Rocha utilizes sound as a vehicle for satire, jumbling the singing voices of the Black God’s congregation into a grating sonic puddle, paralleling the indoctrination of prayer to the systematic subjugation of the poor. Suffering for the absolution of his sins, Manuel acts as the symbolic representation of religion’s duplicity, lugging a hefty stone to the peak of a steep mount, embarking on an interminable and Sisyphean spiritual quest. The grand irony is that, with each act of selfless devotion, Manuel steps further away from family and redemption, acting only to promote the agenda of an opportunist in hope of a divine reward.

His concluding acts of desecration spawn an unbound delirium, at once impenetrable and enchanting, marrying abstruse, Godardian political rhetoric to paradoxically epiphanic and macabre visual imagery. The close-ups are radiant, capturing human faces atop beaming sunlight, sun-burnt skin and silver facial hair hanging like constellations against the achromatic terrain. Occupying this gray area, balancing between the aesthetics of cinema and tenets of an ideology, Glauber Rocha hits his directorial stride, fashioning a film that functions as political dissent and bold artistic provocation.

Black God, White Devil (Copacabana Filmes, 1964)
Written and Directed by Glauber Rocha
Photographed by Waldemar Lima

Coneheads (1993, Steve Barron)

Disjointed and clumsy from its inaugural splashdown, Coneheads coasts on the goodwill bestowed upon its cult characters, never realizing that the rudimentary aspects of a 5-minute Saturday Night Live sketch aren’t enough to sustain a feature-length film. Its bloodless caricatures, impassive aside from deafening shriek, mug to conceal the vapidity of their dialogue, inspiring confusion in place of emotional resonance. Verbal exchanges drag the pace to a grinding halt, allowing the mind to wander to the curious state of the props and set design. The distraction of strewn junk food and crude gadgetry beget a budget phantasmagoria that unintentionally engages an otherwise dazed audience.

Our extraterrestrial visitors, sporting heads shaped like fleshy traffic cones and prominently-collared spacesuits, attempt to commingle with their Earthly peers, perplexing neighbor and viewer alike through a verbose and barely discernible prattle. This endless feed of technobabble, dribbling from Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin’s frothing mouths, is intended to be humorous, but it’s impossible to snicker as your mind backpedals through a sea of garbled jargon. The exaggerated clip of their speech is matched by accelerated-motion photography, speeding up patches of mechanical ingenuity and mild sexuality for comedic effect, but upsetting the natural rhythm of the film. The narrative itself is just as jumpy, excising subplots and leaving decades in its wake as it tramples towards the foregone conclusion of a tidy climax.

In spite of this hackneyed premise, a rather modern critique of naturalization lies just beneath the surface, presenting planetary aliens as proxies for undocumented immigrants, progressing the plot based on their desperate efforts to evade capture by a draconian INS. Additional insight may have elevated the concept to shrewd political satire, but painting each government operative as a one-dimensional villain seems partisan, establishing the writing staff’s argument as poorly researched and absolutist.

The emigrants themselves fare far better, having their assimilation documented in a Super 8 home movie that eulogizes the “American Dream,” propelling the film further into the abyss of bald sentimentality with each note of Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome.” Despite the triteness of this extended montage, the film improves as its characters shift into bourgeois roles, finding footing through the addition of a teenaged daughter that inspires engaging bits about parenting and dating that transcend the first half’s army of failed gags.

The application of old-fashioned practical effects also succeed against the odds, delighting and disgusting in equal measure by way of a stop-motion karkadann and the cavernous layers of Aykroyd’s comically unfastened jaw, overflowing with rows of arrow-shaped teeth and a protuberant pink tongue. If the style and verve of these creatures and the space opera epilogue were applied to the central domestic drama, Coneheads could have matured into a cult item, but its melange of conflicting elements were never made to cohere, miring otherwise brilliant ideas in a wave of inanity.

Coneheads (Paramount Pictures, 1993)
Directed by Steve Barron
Written by Tom Davis, Dan Aykroyd, Bonnie Turner and Terry Turner
Photographed by Francis Kenny

Wayne’s World (1992, Penelope Spheeris)

A deceptively simple spoof of suburban eccentricity and corporate duplicity, Wayne’s World conceals its ingenuity and technique behind its emphatic, hockey-haired protagonists, inserting piece-to-camera narration and swift editorial work around each sarcastic quip and lecherous daydream. Though the genre requires little more than competency, the craftsmanship on display actually benefits the scenario, providing Wayne and Garth with an insular world to amplify their personalities and cinematic style to match the breadth of their cultural obsessions.  

Utilizing montage and comic-strip surrealism borrowed from Saturday Night Live’s mixed-media sketches, Wayne Campbell (Mike Myers) and Garth Algar (Dana Carvey) escort us on a subjective Chicago travelogue, curating a tour of their favorite donut shops, heavy-metal venues and airport landing strips, cataloging the outlandish locals along the way. Though their sense of humor leans towards the puerile and parlance borders on the esoteric (“Ex-squeeze me? Baking powder?”), adjusting to the pair’s lingo occurs in an instant, negotiated by an inclusive and immediate form of storytelling.

The communal vibe evoked by the leads yields honest and uproarious moments, sequences and asides that skewer the avarice of network television and channel nostalgia into era-defining visual art (see the “Bohemian Rhapsody” sing-along). Thankfully, this sentimentality never drifts into reverence, freeing the team to scoff at the same cinematic cliches they’re gleefully exploiting, transforming “extraneous” scenes, excessive subtitling and happy endings into self-reflexive film criticism.

Sadly, these formal triumphs don’t always overshadow the faults of the writing staff, revealing the jejune romances and pious posturing at the center of the script. Wayne’s dueling love interests, Tia Carrere and Lara Flynn Boyle, are only furnished with enough dialogue to reinforce their characters’ stereotypes, trapped as little more than an exotic chanteuse and self-loathing ditz at the beck and call of unrepentant male libido. Themes of artistic integrity are just as dubious, considering the compromises inherent in SNL’s composition and the prominent roles of the primary cast in a corporate entity. Biting the hand that feeds is noble, but each statement of defiance feels more like an easy story arc than rallying cry of artistic autonomy.

Aside from misguided agenda and chauvinistic state of mind, Wanye’s World constructs an authentic and inspired universe around it characters, mining laughs from their relatable struggle with the banalities of adult life. Though the trappings of their hair-metal subculture seem tacky in retrospect, a bond is shared through the religion of popular music and American ephemera, forging an alliance with teenagers unrestricted by generational cohort.

Wayne’s World (Paramount Pictures, 1992)
Directed by Penelope Spheeris
Written by Mike Myers, Bonnie Turner and Terry Turner
Photographed by Theo Van de Sande

Ghostbusters (2016, Paul Feig)

Winsome and appropriately jovial, Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters is a benign comedic enterprise forced into politics by the peanut gallery, flourishing through its disregard for the shackles of legacy and hegemony of polite society. Avoiding the sarcasm of the original in favor of a juvenile absurdity, it plays to the quirks of its cast and the expectations of the genre, sweeping the viewer into its spirited marriage of gag humor and computer-animated set piece. As the acrid taste of internet speculation vacates your short-term memory, you’ll find a warm-hearted adventure of considerable merit, bolstered by radiant visual effects and a surprising lack of comedic malice.

Bearing a striking similarity to internet crusades fought over the film’s supposed agenda, our all-female Ghostbusters team skirmishes with Rowan North (Neil Casey), a Reddit-era version of Travis Bickle, devoted to washing the streets clean in a rain of supernatural malignance. His coup de grace, entitled “The Fourth Cataclysm,” attempts to untether the boundaries between dimensions, freeing the malignant creatures that reside outside of our physical realm. Laying conjuring contraptions amidst the storied architecture of metropolitan New York City, Rowan’s harbingers of the apocalypse inspire awe in their emergence, summoning luminescent bolts of light that dance atop the art-deco buttresses and steely subway tracks of lower Manhattan.

Subtextually, it’s telling that our team of shamed scientists have written the book that inspired their adversary, since both parties endure the scorn and ridicule of authority in equal measure and clash despite this shared marginalization. Drs. Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) and Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy), co-authors of the pseudoscientific text, even sever their professional relationship due to academic backlash, a broken bond that the film nurtures back to health in lieu of an arbitrary erotic relationship.

The gender debate that prefaced the film’s release is only vaguely insinuated on the surface, hinted at by wardrobe choices (a “One of the Boys” t-shirt) and the casual misogyny of their arch-enemy, particularly when his spirit inhabits Chris Hemsworth’s chiseled husk. This lack of direct acknowledgement makes the product more empowering, providing women with a superhero vehicle that doesn’t subsist on sexual platitudes, but doesn’t ignore their individual femininity. These are multi-dimensional characters that are capable of being adept physicists, logical thinkers, witty pranksters and unapologetically female.

As for the performers that interpret these modern heroines, each takes a unique bent on a previously conceived role and fashions it to their taste. Kristen Wiig turns in a subdued rendition, playing straight woman to her ebullient co-stars, saving her strength for a vivid reminiscence of a childhood encounter that rivals the actual poltergeists. Kate McKinnon’s idiosyncratic version of Dr. Spengler manages the jargon-heavy syntax quite well, drolly quipping despite the occasionally infantile dialogue, sprucing up the material with a jokey glance when a recycled bit doesn’t sing (see The Exorcist-inspired possession sequence).

The striking computer-generated spectres collaborate well with the vivacious acting of the primary cast, incandescent and sparkling like firecrackers as they parade about Times Square. Director Paul Feig does an admirable job of wedging in all of the original film’s landmarks and properties (Slimer, Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, etc.), often at the expense of his setpieces, which are cluttered with excess personnel and poorly blocked. His misuse of master cinematographer Robert D. Yeoman is the film’s only grave error, since the precision and symmetry of his previous work (Drugstore Cowboy, The Royal Tenenbaums) would have helped to tighten the sprawl of the climactic brawl.

That being said, the Ghostbusters series has never succeeded solely on technique, thriving instead on the fellowship between its investigative team and its willingness to laugh in the face of peril. The latest entry in the series produces two moments that perfectly embody these characteristics: McKinnon’s closing speech of dedication to her compatriots and the unification of the troop as they spray proton rays at the groin of their antagonist. The fact that the recipient has morphed into a colossal version of the proprietary ghost logo as he’s emasculated is a wink at the pious hordes that rallied against this revisionist success, proof that nothing is sacred and film is an artform in flux.

Ghostbusters (Columbia Pictures, 2016)
Directed by Paul Feig
Written by Katie Dippold and Paul Feig, adapted from the 1984 film written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis
Photographed by Robert D. Yeoman

Quo Vadis (1951, Mervyn LeRoy)

A philosophical counterpoint to the militaristic bombast of the historical epic, Quo Vadis expels the grand battles and superfluous strategy, favoring dramatic richness and a contemplative examination of faith and authority. Forthright in its Christian perspective, but never obstinate, the narrative paints pagan Rome in a harsh light without shielding its eyes, retaining the decadence and promiscuity of a culture bewitched by conquest and pleasure.

Satirizing the delusions of grandeur that propelled Rome towards oblivion, the camera pans slowly to reveal material wealth, poring over marble columns, amethyst gowns and golden imperial uniforms, fineries that stand in stark contrast to the venal words pouring from the mouths of the magistrate. At the fore of this despotic monarchy is Nero, embodying the duality of man through his artistic sensitivities and bloodthirsty carnality. He is a petulant child in the role of God and the peppery Peter Ustinov lays him in perpetual recline, imbibing liberally and bellowing in amateurish lyric poem.

Marcus Vinicius (Robert Taylor) is Nero’s polar opposite, building a reputation through military campaign and resolute comportment, denying himself the amenities of celebrity aside from absolute vanity. His fixation on possession extends beyond the fray, inserting itself into lustful desires that couple the bondage of slavery with the catharsis of sexual congress. The target of his affection is Lygia (Deborah Kerr), the adopted daughter of a retired general and devotee of the spiritual and intellectual; a woman indifferent to the libidinous cravings of a violent narcissist.

Manipulating Roman law to his advantage, Marcus exploits Lygia’s patronage, enslaving her as a way to sate her concupiscent thirst, though she’d much prefer to drink from the metaphorical cup of Christ. This clash between body and mind further stresses duality, positing Marcus and Lygia’s tempestuous relationship as a key symbol for strain between Roman wealth and virility and the modesty of evangelical Christianity.

Despite broad shoulders and a square jaw, characteristics that epitomize noble fortitude, Robert Taylor’s stone-faced line reading stalls the pace of an otherwise refined chamber piece, leaving the camera and cast to counterbalance through sweeping tracking shot and exaggerated performance. The only rendition that remains unscathed is Deborah Kerr’s Lygia, her wit and beauty perfectly representing disharmony, each wrinkle of her anxious countenance clashing with strawberry locks that flit atop her pearly breast. The camera is appropriately transfixed, bathing in the radiance of her crimson lips and the sparkling ornaments of her cobalt robe, nearly legitimizing the covetous nature of Marcus’ courtship.

The biblical flashbacks are just as sumptuous, reproducing Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper and the tale of the four fishermen, animating the Gospel by the soft glow of orange torches and wondrous close-up shots. Each character portrait is potent and lovingly produced, searing tan flesh, pink lips and blue eyes into our memory banks. Al fresco shots of Roman flora are treated with as much esteem, each elaborate exterior replete with verdant olive trees and azure trickling pools, adding tranquility despite the tumultuous nature of the times. The claustrophobia of a collapsing imperium only develops as the aesthetic beauty gives way to a litany of sorrows, each Christian suffering the cross to gratify the demoniac Nero. As his scramble for absolute power canonizes a peaceful legion of monotheists, Nero triggers a regime change, one not only of fidelity over idolatry, but the evolution of the mind over the lust of the body.  

Quo Vadis (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1951)
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Written by Henryk Sienkiewicz (novel), John Lee Mahin (screenplay), S.N. Behrman (screenplay), Sonya Levien (screenplay) and Hugh Gray (lyrical compositions and historical advisor)
Photographed by William V. Skall and Robert Surtees

Spartacus (1960, Stanley Kubrick)

Playful in exchange and clinical in execution, Spartacus profits from its pairing of strange bedfellows, generating suspense through the crackle of Dalton Trumbo’s eloquent banter and the unflinching ferocity of Stanley Kubrick’s direction. The richness of performance and context flourish in riveting vignettes, keeping the action compact and diverse, despite the film’s marathon length and the immensity of the production. This episodic nature provides an uncommon intimacy, one capable of fleshing-out complex characters without overshadowing the bombast of a grand saga. It’s a unique approach that works in fits, ultimately lagging under the restriction of its genre and the demands of a director uninspired by pre-packaged studio product.

Zeroing in on the carnality of the Classical Age, Spartacus investigates the bond between violence and sexuality, uncovering the master-slave relationship that prevails by virtue of these forms of human expression. Our eponymous hero (Kirk Douglas), an illiterate drudge and captive combatant, comprehends the system of punishment and reward through the cruelty of his masters, uncovering the hierarchy of power upon receiving the gift of a concubine as “payment” for his gladiatorial exploits.

The non-physical relationship that develops between Spartacus and the brazen Varinia (Jean Simmons) evolves through fervent glances and seething passion, but acts only as an extension of their bondage, each intimate exchange met with a forbidding whisper or possessive sentiment. Their only common ground aside from lust is a shared confinement, further magnified by the restraints of gender and eventual collapse of their servant rebellion.

Exploiting male bisexuality as an extension of societal misogyny, Spartacus capitalizes on the homoeroticism of a phallocentric Rome, painting gay culture as an ornament of upper class opulence. Treating same-sex couplings as an exotic vestige of a polytheistic civilization, Kubrick presents unctuous male flesh and marble soaking pools behind gauzy drapery and the echo of ambient chimes, characterizing the behavior as foreign and anomalous.

A veiled discussion of desire between Crassus (Laurence Olivier) and Antoninus (Tony Curtis), key figures on opposing sides of Spartacus’ radicalized army, is harder to decipher than the decor, dealing in double entendre and polite metaphor. Propositioning the naive poet Antoninus, Crassus, the most duplicitous of politicians, asks his subject’s opinion on “oysters and snails,” comparing a varied diet to an omnisexual appetite. The argument for diversity is sound, but the mouthpiece is unreliable, lending Dalton Trumbo’s saucy dialogue an air of homophobia, particularly in relation to Antoninus’ desertion of his post and devotion to Spartacus’ slave brigade. The matter becomes even more confounding when the lyricist’s allegiance to Spartacus develops an erotic bent in the closing passages, potentially conveying Trumbo’s preference of a warrior’s libido over a senator’s hissed insinuations.

The fluidity of Trumbo’s prose masks the allusions to forbidden pleasures, but Stanley Kubrick’s directorial eye evokes the displeasure of pain, replacing the bravado of battle with the horror of human degradation. Violence is the focal point of Kubrick’s visual subtext, cutting directly from brutality to an alarming reaction shot, illustrating the fear on Spartacus’ face as he’s branded and the desperate, clawing fists of Marcellus (Charles McGraw), the gladiator trainer, as he’s submerged in a cauldron of blistering soup.

Physical torment becomes its own form of slavery and Kubrick paints the sand of his training facility with sweat and spurts of crimson blood. Uncommonly cruel for the era and the plausible inspiration for Salò’s closing exhibition, the gymnasium serves a dual purpose of training mechanism and gallows pole, binding sparrers between wooden rods and employing oscillating blades as hurdles. Observing these men as they struggle places us in the role of voyeur, paralleling the viciousness of the coliseum's audience as they salivate over the prospect of fresh carrion.

Kubrick incorporates this queasiness into a towering closing battle, choreographing a barrage of swinging swords and whirling bodies, depicting the progression from vitality to fatality as a surrealistic waltz. It’s a testament to his brilliance as a filmmaker that he managed to impart skepticism and ambiguity onto the glories of war and the wide-eyed certainty of the tragic hero, transforming Spartacus from pious martyr to tight-lipped insurgent. The ideological triumph is admirable, but the change in ingredients has upset the recipe, allowing the connective tissue, comprised of perfunctory montages and rallying cries, to weigh down the midsection and telegraph the extraneous runtime. By allowing the pageantry of his aesthetic to overshadow the prerequisites of the form, Stanley Kubrick reduced the splendor of the cinematic epic to an asymmetrical character study.

Spartacus (Universal Pictures, 1960)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Written by Howard Fast (novel) and Dalton Trumbo (screenplay)
Photographed by Russell Metty

El Cid (1961, Anthony Mann)

Constructed specifically for an auditorium, the historical epic is an event of prolonged pleasure, an extravagance bedecked in ornate period costume and wide-shot cinematography, set against the broad backdrop of monarchical politics and star-crossed sensuality. Its narrative sprawl is met with literal mass, as a sea of extras quarrel in the theater of war, each panorama of choreographed bloodshed captured in resplendent Technicolor and blown up to 70MM. The excesses in length and vision can be intimidating, but the ceremony of the cinematic experience, complete with relics of refinement like musical overture and intermission, puts art before convenience, transforming the motion picture into cultural event instead of mundane triviality.

Anthony Mann’s El Cid marries the potent imagery and scope of the medieval epic with a modern sociological preoccupation, putting man’s lust for power under the microscope and exposing religion as a tool of the belligerent and manipulative. Placing his primary combatants on opposing sides of the moral landscape, Mann and his screenwriting team discard ambiguity in favor of a clear-cut ideology, realizing that unwavering support of the hero benefits the gung-ho energy of the battle sequences and tone of Charlton Heston’s gallant performance.    

Playing Rodrigo with chin tilted towards the sky, Heston places honor before strength in his portrayal of the iconic military general, constructing a quixotic character so virtuous and noble that he’d spare water for a leper and liberate his prisoners of war in the name of clemency. Logic may wrestle with the idea of an infallible warrior, but a rousing orchestral score and grandiose cinematography sell the fantasy, casting our hero in warm, ocean-tinted sunlight, representing his rise in rank and subsequent martyrdom as secular passion play.

Complexity is woven into the narrative through Rodrigo’s relationship with Jimena (Sophia Loren), a countess that forsakes her feelings for the misunderstood knight following charges of treason and his unwitting execution of her arrogant patriarch. Poetic exchanges between the conflicted couple are cursed by the ghosts of their pasts and the honest words omitted, each disdainful remark spoken by Loren uttered beneath clenched lips, concealing sincerity and passion. The camera and set design act as accomplices to her discordance, shielding Loren’s face with drapery and tilted window shutters, visually personifying the tempestuous nature trapped within.

The cramped interiors and gloom of Jimena’s quarters are contrasted by the exterior majesty, captured in tracking shots that pivot to reveal an ever-expanding wealth of space and sumptuous uniform design. The peach skies and rolling hills of provincial Spain act as the perfect canvas for the pastels of religious and political iconography, the red and yellow of the Spanish coat of arms juxtaposed atop the onyx black thobes of Ben Yusuf’s (Herbert Lom) Islamic legion, the splashes of color acting as unification of Rodrigo’s multicultural army.

Mann composes these visual setpieces with the utmost elegance, jutting swords and limbs into the frame to give the impression of action occurring out of sight, heightening tension through evocative pans and naturalistic swordplay. Swift edits and crisp foley work represent the brutality of war far better than bloodshed, the thumping of hooves and fluid camera motion adding viscera to the thrust of a blade as it penetrates armor. Sparse lighting and wide shots add to the intimacy of single combat scenes, the stripped down sound design and distance realistically mirroring the voyeurism of violence as sport.

The closing siege is an offensive worthy of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, its wooden palisades, breaching towers and litany of archers channeling that film’s magnitude. Harnessing cameras to catapults and the necks of stampeding horses, Robert Krasker and his team of photographers improve upon Griffith’s artistic feats, imparting realism by simulating the motion of charging soldiers and surging war machines.

Their artistic sleight-of-hand is enrapturing, but El Cid’s greatest feat lies in its guilelessness, not its craft. Never once does the film condescend to its story, a forthright disposition that mounts a production of staggering size without abandoning its message of human allegiance in the face of religious fundamentalism. Sincerity may be a product of a bygone era, but its representation of the errancy of man is more important today than ever, as the lines between faith and fact are blurred and passion steadily morphs into ironic indifference.

El Cid (Allied Artists Pictures, 1961)
Directed by Anthony Mann
Written by Fredric M. Frank (story/screenplay), Philip Yordan (screenplay) and Ben Barzman (screenplay)
Photographed by Robert Krasker

Phantom (1922, F.W. Murnau)

A meditation on guilt and unfulfilled potential, Phantom travels back in time through subjective memory, acting as catharsis for an artist haunted by his dreams. Painting the past in a nostalgic silver-blue, F.W. Murnau fuses reality with bursts of the fantastic, propelling his protagonist through fits of reverie so vivid that the truth sways in their wake. Presenting each shot as ornate tableau or miniature picture box, Murnau commiserates with his romantic lead and constructs an impressionistic world to mirror his sensibilities, fabricating a singular alternative to life that falters only when it veers into the baldly sentimental.

Boyish and enraptured by literature and fantasy, Lorenz lives vicariously through his passions, ignoring poverty and domestic turmoil by never peering beyond the margins of a book. Struck by a passing carriage while drifting into the rhythm of a poem, Lorenz transfers his obsession to a new object, gazing deeply into the eyes of a blonde nymph as she hoists him from the cobblestone. The camera frames her face in a portrait, beckoning the viewer to share the boy’s fixation, highlighting her porcelain complexion and low hanging curls, deifying the female form. As Lorenz shadows her, the camera gravitates into a secluded grotto, untethering from the literal-minded narrative and embracing metaphor, using the estate’s spiral staircase and noble white horses as symbols for the girl’s unattainability.

As a director, Murnau is less partisan to architecture and structure than his fellow expressionists, favoring a subtle and more resonant rush of emotion, his lens straying from focus as Lorenz’s mind wanders and surging as the writer’s desire is juxtaposed atop the Potsdam skyline. A dancehall sequence shares this ecstatic nature, journeying from golden champagne bubbles to streams of milky smoke, ultimately plummeting to the floor with the prostitute that exhaled the billowy vapor. Each of these formidable images is cohesively strung in succession, forcing the melancholy threads to play second fiddle to the perpetuity of motion, vision and hope.

Space is also used to convey yearning, placing the shrunken, dispossessed scribe on a lower berth as his beloved’s mother, a woman of wealth and confidence, quizzically leers down at his shriveled shape. Lorenz’s pallid demeanor may even be played for laughs, each word from his comically dour matriarch spilling over him like a frigid pool of self-pity and shame, his wretched longing and doubt doubling as Schadenfreude.

Feelings of audience superiority and detachment fade as Lorenz devolves into a street-wise charlatan, his mind polluted by unrequited lust and avarice, represented on screen by a dainty hand depositing cash into the cups of a brassiere. His loss of identity and the photography that accompanies it are stirring, sabotaged only by a moralistic and overwrought final act, one desperate to wring suspense from a delicate flight of fancy. Hints of spiritual renewal and atonement peak out from the epilogue, but conjecture doesn’t suit a picture of this magnitude, leaving many of F.W. Murnau’s primary themes in chrysalis, not yet ready to burst from their shell.

Phantom (Uco-Film GMBH, 1922)
Directed by F.W. Murnau
Written by Gerhart Hauptmann (novel) and Thea von Harbou (screenplay)
Photographed by Axel Graatkjaer and Theophan Ouchakoff

The Golem (1920, Paul Wegener and Carl Boese)

Neither a companion to or contradiction of mounting German anti-semitism, The Golem camouflages its ideology beneath tinted swatches of color and atmospheric photography, suggesting an unbiased observation of Hebrew myth while revealing its prejudices in hushed tones. The warmth and richness of hue captured through staining does foster a self-contained cinematic language, one that provides supernatural characteristics to the four elements and celestial bodies, but these aesthetic pleasures only further the stereotype of Judaism as necromancy and alchemy, creating an uncomfortable rift between artistry and philosophy.

A similar discord occurs in the visual composition of the piece, varying between wide shot and intimate close-up, striking in its implementation of landscape and abstraction, but disharmonious in the clutter of its crowd scenes. Nocturnal images of structures and jagged surfaces work best, especially when a scurrying cat cuts a dividing line between dusky skylight and charcoal-colored rooftop, creating a natural, horizontal split-screen that symbolizes the balance between good and evil.

The color palette also functions as more than window dressing, establishing tone and symbol without the assistance of intertitle or exaggerated performance. Establishing shots reveal a rabbi, bathed in oceanic blue light, extracting prophecies from the constellations. As he gazes at the sky, a servant stokes the fire in his chamber, heavily shadowed and illuminated in an unnatural lime green. The shift from dulcet, soft pigment to brash neon foreshadows disaster, embodied by the bigotry of the Roman Emperor and the abomination created in its opposition.

Use of sunlight complements the celluloid tinting, adding a touch of authenticity to the terrain of rocky hollow and darkened chamber, casting beams of light onto the gloom of the cavernous “ghetto.” The tenebrous mass of doorframes and lofty bell towers increases as the “Decree Against The Jews” falls upon the community, coercing families from their homes by accusation of black magic and deicide. Summoning a colossal spectral being to protect his tribe from prescribed exodus, Rabbi Löw (Albert Steinrück) uses a pairing of sorcery and sculpture to fabricate “The Golem,” kneading clay into facial features and beckoning the underworld for spiritual guidance. In the film’s most surreal passage, Löw conjures spirits from the floor beneath, invoking a smog-breathing demon that spells out his wisdom in clouds of smoke, bombarding the altar with bolts of lightning as olive steam pours from the house and pollutes the azure sky.

Löw’s creation is far less compelling than his demigod, its eyes wide and limbs stiff like Caligari’s somnambulist, but performed with little of that film’s ardor or aplomb. Passive and phlegmatic, the titular monster begins to parallel the film’s messy ideology, never inspiring fear or pity, but clinging to emotional distance and impartiality in the name of entertainment. This nonchalance benefits the poetry of the visuals, but besmirches the integrity of the myth, transforming Judaica into burlesque sideshow.

The Golem (Universum Film AG, 1920)
Directed by Paul Wegener and Carl Boese
Written by Paul Wegener and Henrik Galeen
Photographed by Karl Freund and Guido Seeber

Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang)

A collage of pistons and gears, pumping in stereo and beating out an industrial harmony, Metropolis signals its objective from its first images, attributing human qualities to the cold and inorganic. The intersection of horizontal and vertical lines and coalescing of multiple exposures conjures a hypnotic motion, evoking the aesthetic beauty of a mechanized society, only to counteract its power through a harsh plume of steam from the factory whistle. Symbolizing the great divide between the toil of the rank and file and the fruit of their labor, Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou appealed for arbitration, using editorial elegance and geometrical design as visual metaphor for social balance. The diagonal beams of the logo, streams of liquid and towering structures are a triumph of symmetry and scope, manufacturing a universe that is rooted in human conflict, but alien in its sterility.

Harnessing energy for the “Eternal Gardens” that lie above, the subterranean working class develop a symbiotic relationship with their machines, the spasmodic motion of their limbs mirroring the spring-driven click of a clock’s skeletal hands. As they listlessly trudge to the hovels beneath the workshop floor, Freder (Gustav Fröhlich), heir apparent to Metropolis’ throne, frolics in his palatial flowerbed, unaware of the class disparity that stimulates his opulent lifestyle. A moment of revelation blossoms from the kindness of an intruder, the warmth of her visage precipitating a profound sensation in Freder’s breast. We see Maria (Brigitte Helm) as Freder sees her, angelic and bathed in radiant light, encircled by adoring children like the Christian messiah. Her presence consecrates Freder, guiding him on the path from privileged complacency to virtuous activism.

The ineffability of Freder’s passion and divine influence stand in stark contrast to Metropolis’ fortified structures, arched like cathedrals and boundlessly ascending to the heavens, but stressing architectural and intellectual practicality. Lang attributes human qualities to these immense edifices, transforming the nucleus of “The Heart Machine” into a demon’s mouth, ingesting enslaved laborers as they ascend to its malignant altar. Its moniker even acts as a depressing personification of mechanics, attributing more value to the synthesized parts than their operators, rendered on screen by the swift disposal of injured craftsman.

Hallucinations overwhelm Freder as he glimpses the grave conditions of the power plant, inspiring visions of Moloch so vivid that the letters of the deity’s name intersect like shot arrows in the center of the screen. Lang’s employment of unique typography instead of standard intertitle mirrors the sleek linearity of his topography, drawing influence from the rudimentary shapes and textures of the Absolute film movement (aided by co-founder Walter Ruttmann). The marriage of stenciled backdrops and physical sets heighten the symphony of images, each circling biplane and stratum of concrete building to a complex, but not illogical, cityscape. Transitions and fades masterfully marry this juxtaposition of booming sound and intricate mise-en-scene, the crescendo of cymbal, drum and string paralleling the majesty of the set design and emotional heft of the narrative.

Thea von Harbou’s script also deals in contrast, accentuating ideological differences between characters and intrapersonal conflicts, fleshed out between two rival variations of the same being. Acting as counterpoint to Freder’s transparency, Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) is a menacing and conniving figure, wiping a greasy flock of white hair from his sunken eyes as he pores over his anthropoid inventions. Fabricated from the remains of Freder’s mother and glistening sheets of metal, Hel is a false God for an industrialized future, a robotic merger of man and machine that has a striking fluidity of motion and indented cranial halo. Intending to sow “discord” between the workers and Maria, the symbol of their solidarity, Rotwang models the automaton’s coating after her pearly skin, fashioning a licentious Frankenstein’s monster to arouse and distract her devoted congregation.

As the “man-machine” stirs to life, surrounded by ascending and descending waves of electricity, the heat gleams like a shooting star in its chest, generating a stunning portrait of artificial beauty that rivals the human form. The android’s magnificence may seem contradictory, but its ability to allure corresponds to the entrancing effect its physique has on Freder’s peers, biting their knuckles and panting in a salacious frenzy as it gyrates and mimics sexual congress. Lang once again uses Freder’s imagination as a canvas for artistic innovation, visualizing his paternalistic horror through concentric circles, exploding orbs of light, multiple overlay and superimposition.

Brigitte Helm, tackling the “Madonna” and “Whore” roles of Maria and Hel, embodies light and dark, expressing compassion, fragility and sexuality in equal measure. She transcends the constraints of her characters and the duality reflected in her performance aligns with the film’s plea for mediation between opposing sides, channeling a harmony that stretches from script to screen. Considering the breadth of vision, the narrative is remarkably direct and blissfully simple, seamlessly intertwining parable and fantasy, injecting realism and faith into the steely tenets of Futurism.

Metropolis (Universum Film AG, 1927)
Directed by Fritz Lang
Written by Thea von Harbou
Photographed by Karl Freund, Günther Rittau and Walter Ruttmann

Sherlock Holmes (2009, Guy Ritchie)

Fixed in a state of perpetual motion, Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes takes a working-class approach to the distinguished detective, balancing his investigative acumen with a visceral physicality and outsider mentality. The intellect is present, if a bit muted, muffled beneath the thunderous blow of fists on the soundtrack and procession of tracking shots, sensory elements that add sophistication to the salvo of on-screen dustups. Holmes’ newfound passion for pugilism may be more for Ritchie’s benefit than our own, but who am I to deny a director his fetishes, especially ones handled with such elan and conviction.

Embracing intoxication unlike any Holmes before him, Robert Downey Jr. portrays his sleuth as a bit of a degenerate, happily wallowing in a filthy study, wantonly under the influence of a bevy of anonymous substances. His intemperate state lends a shiftiness to his eyeballs, each darting glance collecting evidence like a photographic lens, compiling data for use in the near future. Slow-motion visual representations of Holmes’ thoughts preface his actions, primarily indiscriminate beatings, orchestrated by his mind and accomplished, seconds later, by the sinewy muscles of his chest and forearms.

His cavalier nature and propensity for roughhousing put a strain on his partnership with Watson (Jude Law), their cohabitation terminated after Holmes’ boorish dinner behavior ends in wasted wine and a furious fiancée. It’s not impossible to imagine this petulance as a way to disguise homosexual desires, especially when taking into consideration Holmes’ capricious relationship with Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), a counterspy regarded as his “beard” and halfheartedly depicted as an ex-lover. Even if Holmes isn’t using her presence as camouflage, she’s certainly out of his league, poisoning his wine on a lark and gleefully cracking walnuts as proxies for his testicles.

Holmes fares better in the field than he does in the boudoir, apprehending Blackwood (Mark Strong), London’s preeminent warlock, in the midst of a ritual sacrifice and city-wide manhunt. Aiming to bring the nation to its knees with his blend of “practical magic,” Blackwood predates fascism, but bears a striking resemblance to a uniformed Nazi, his slicked hair and leather-collared jacket mimicking their rigid silhouette. Ideologically, he espouses Satanic dogma, at least a fictionalized version, using ostensible supernatural faculties to kill in a clandestine manner and survive a neck-snapping at the gallows’ pole. Regardless of communal superstition, Holmes remains pragmatic, deriding “modern religious fervor” and probing the alleged resurrection as a mystery to be exposed only through logic and keen detection.

The satisfaction Sherlock Holmes gathers from the “thrill of the macabre” is shared by Sarah Greenwood’s production design, the recesses of which are stuffed with potions, vermin and varied necrophrenalia. One especially handy gadget appears to be an modified tuning fork, capable of shooting propulsive currents of electricity that catapult Holmes’ adversaries through load-bearing walls and wooden door frames. Though the foley work dwells on the crackle of each broken limb, the trading of punches carries the rhythm of dance and rarely reflects the actual consequences of physical violence. Having said that, this fixation on fisticuffs does little to move the narrative forward and frequently extends well beyond its shelf life.

Guy Ritchie’s visual compositions are far more expressive and integral, signifying danger through the spiraling chasms of sewer channels and serpentine metal of scaffolding. His use of slow-motion is just as vital, displaying the ripple of fabric and sonic destruction caused by the detonation of dynamite, amplifying the impact by retarding the progression of time. Filmmaking by brute force works on an aesthetic level, but breaking chronology to double back and reveal obscured details seems meretricious, functioning only as an exercise in style and damaging the integrity of the puzzle at the film’s core. The only rehash that serves a purpose is Holmes’ concluding speech, an exhaustive cataloging of every esoteric image spied by the camera eye, left nearly forgotten, called to mind to clarify the untold deductions of the investigation and validate Ritchie’s muscular direction. The synopsis is wordy, but the thesis is cogent, dismantling the influence of the supernatural and untenable nature of spirituality through critical thinking and reason.

Sherlock Holmes (Warner Bros. Pictures, 2009)
Directed by Guy Ritchie
Written by Arthur Conan Doyle (characters), Michael Robert Johnson (screenplay and screen story), Anthony Peckham (screenplay), Simon Kinberg (screenplay) and Lionel Wigram (screen story)
Photographed by Philippe Rousselot

Young Sherlock Holmes (1985, Barry Levinson)

Despite efforts to divorce its story from Arthur Conan Doyle’s oeuvre, even politely stating a lack of affiliation in the opening credits, Young Sherlock Holmes preserves the spirit of Doyle’s characters, fostering an intimate relationship between the adolescent leads and using deductive reasoning as the backbone of their forthcoming professional partnership. The core attributes are deep-rooted, regardless of the reconstituted origin story and multitude of practical effects, which act as a pleasant diversion, but produce a distracting incongruity when paired with Victorian set design. Nevertheless, the alliance between Albion pomp and American excess routinely prevails, bolstered by unexpected melancholic notes and lived-in performances that could sway even the most obstinate purist.  

The setting is a snow-bound London, frigid and inhospitable, in spite of the flaxon beams of moonlight pouring over the narrow streets and illuminating the intricately-painted backdrops. The interiors of an eatery are cozy by comparison, warmed by steaming platters and the orange glow of lantern sconces. A modish middle-aged man, emanating an air of high breeding, ducks into the roadside café, evading an unseen stalker with an antique blow gun. Street scenes of their foot chase are shot from above and below, avoiding faces and benefiting from the jagged contours of brick buildings and stony paths. The resulting homicide is far less subtle, as our dignified patron, poisoned by an airborne dart, hallucinates that his pheasant dinner has reanimated and attempts to throttle the flailing bird.

The animatronic work aims to startle the film’s juvenile audience, but the overindulgence clashes with the refined atmosphere, cheapening an otherwise stimulating pursuit. The second murder setpiece cultivates a more harmonious fusion, laying animated cells atop live action footage and realistically extracting a knight from an ornate stained-glass window. As the belligerent swordsman approaches the envenomed vicar cowering before him, his flimsy glass frame quivers with each step, acting as a merger of scientific logic and the brazenly fantastic.

The precocious Sherlock Holmes (Nicholas Rowe), barely in his teen years, pores over the details of these “suicides” in the Reynolds’s Weekly Newspaper, drawing parallels between the upbringing and social sect of the recently departed pair. Utilizing investigative skills honed by schoolyard riddles and competitive fencing, Holmes treats his new bunkmate, the shy John Watson (Alan Cox), as a dry run for his first case, uncovering his backstory by scrutinizing his manner of dress and stout build. The invasion of privacy is a way for the greenhorn to build confidence and resolve, traits he’ll desperately need to attract the attention of Elizabeth (Sophie Ward), the gamine niece of campus mad-scientist and fictional first in flight, Rupert T. Waxflatter (Nigel Stock).

Bestrewn with tools, trinkets and knicknacks, Waxflatter’s attic laboratory is the summation of Executive Producer Steven Spielberg’s Reagan-era aesthetic, a two-pronged approach that promoted innocence and awe through sensory overload, while subtextually addressing the forthcoming compromises of adulthood. The agony of divorce, illness and poverty that swam beneath the surface in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial are far more pronounced in Chris Columbus’ script, shedding light on Holmes’ monomaniacal focus on detection through an examination of the series of death and abandonment that stretches back to his early childhood. The film’s best metaphor directly follows Holmes’ expulsion from school and Waxflatter’s murder, as the young intellectual hides in the comfort of his mentor’s attic, his fear of the maturity that accompanies disappointment and loss driving him into a place of safety and boundless imagination.

The exhilaration of the case, which shoves the pair down a rabbit hole of Egyptian pseudohistory, subterranean witchcraft and capitalistic corruption, is as much an entertaining distraction for us as it is for Sherlock Holmes. A climactic hallucination brings both parties back to reality, as the budding detective, intoxicated by a poison-tipped dart, mentally retreats back to his childhood manor. Veiled in onyx and lit only by flickering, cobwebbed candelabra, Sherlock’s mother sobs in a rocking chair as his combative father, standing hearthside, bellows angrily at his inquisitive son for revealing his adulterous nature. Exposing the faults of our progenitors and heroes can be weighty material for younger viewers, but this poignant strand and its tragic coda masterfully shade in a complex character, exhibiting his single-minded obsession with investigation as an enduring defense mechanism.

Young Sherlock Holmes (Paramount Pictures, 1985)
Directed by Barry Levinson
Written by Arthur Conan Doyle (characters) and Chris Columbus (screenplay)
Photographed by Stephen Goldblatt

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939, Sidney Lanfield)

Comforting in its old-fashioned formality, The Hound of the Baskervilles milks suspense from a stockpile of dated banalities, fabricating an insular, clammy environment from stagy backdrops and exaggerated expressions. The caterwauling of cast and soundtrack alike conceal narrative shortcuts by sheer volume, placing the chilly pleasures of a horror-tinged whodunit at the fore and rashly obscuring the core puzzle beneath protracted oration and antiquated intertitle. Left without a stake in the mystery, the audience ruminates over the defects, finding little of merit in Richard Greene’s listless performance and its accompanying romantic subplot, inevitably settling for the attractive rind atop fleshless fruit.

The preserved elements of Arthur Conan Doyle’s text flourish when used appropriately, particularly in the discourse conducted between Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Dr. John Watson (Nigel Bruce), which is snappy without sounding garbled or rushed. The film benefits heartily from Rathbone’s cocksure and quick-witted take on Holmes, his knowing glances and self-possession contrasting Watson’s skepticism and lumbering gait. No introduction is needed for these prominent literary figures, their collective quirks deeply ingrained in Western culture, and screenwriter Ernest Pascal wisely inserts them directly into the narrative in progress, eschewing an origin story.

The matter at hand concerns murder amidst the dreaded “moors of Dartmoor,” a location as sparse and craggy as the surface of the Moon and swathed in creamy layers of brume. In accordance with local legend, every Baskerville male for countless generations has met a grizzly end upon receiving his inheritance, mauled by the jaws of a phantom canine. The genesis of the myth is shown in faded images, superimposed over intermittently turned pages from the folio that harbors the tall tale. Returning to handle his deceased uncle’s affairs, Henry Baskerville (Greene), the last living heir, laughs off these resident superstitions, only to be rattled by an ominous threat in the post, cobbled together from newspaper clippings.

Ignoring the forewarning, Baskerville returns to his ancestral home with Watson in tow, curiously turning a blind eye to Holmes’ absence and the assassination attempt that occurred within hours of their voyage. The “dreadful eeriness” of the manor is just as unwelcoming as London’s cobblestone thoroughfares, leaving Henry and his guest to walk on eggshells around the servants, their malignant stares and nocturnal scheming laying the groundwork for a plateful of red herring. Despite the material’s familiarity, the stale machinations of Gothic horror sustain interest, primarily the otherworldly ambience of the moors, protruding at acute angles and concealing bottomless peat bogs and wild-eyed convicts. The density of the fog and incessant howling conjure a bone-chilling atmosphere, aided by the marriage of smoky whites and desolate greys that adorn the intricately painted backdrops.

Hints of German Expressionist influence reside within the heavy shadowing, hanging over shoulder and bedecking the corner of each room, coaxing jagged silhouettes from the faint flicker of candlelight. The séance at the film’s center benefits from this natural lighting, casting dancing flames on the frightened brows of its congregates and illuminating the spectral gesticulations of the oracle. Depth and space are also insinuated by the photography and set design, fashioning extensive drawing rooms and endless tracts of land in spite of the unconcealed scrims.

Regrettably, any triumph of technique is undercut by strained attempts at integrating romance, an aspect of the novel best left on the page or tackled by a picture with a prolonged runtime. At a lean 80 minutes, Sherlock Holmes is absent for nearly a third of the film’s length and visual depictions of letters and notes are frequently used to expedite the plot, leaving the consulting detective’s deductions to a hasty summation in the closing seconds. Drained of its exploratory essence, The Hound of the Baskervilles is slight and inert, a pretty picture bereft of intrigue and subtext.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (20th Century Fox, 1939)
Directed by Sidney Lanfield
Written by Arthur Conan Doyle (novel) and Ernest Pascal (screenplay)
Photographed by Peverell Marley

This Is Not a Film (2011, Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)

This Is Not a Film, a documentary in the purest and least contrived sense, prefaces its quiet observations with a detailed list of the criminal charges facing its subject, distinguished filmmaker Jafar Panahi. Seen as a “vocal critic” of the Iranian government and opponent of orthodox values, the artist faces 6 years in prison and a 20-year ban from directing motion pictures and leaving the country, a verdict that would separate Panahi from his vocation and sever his ties to the global film community.

In an attempt to facilitate his creative impulses and forestall loneliness, Jafar and a contemporary, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, monitor a day of house arrest, alternating between handheld camera and iPhone, photographing the mundanity of domestic life. The shots are routinely stationary, utilizing packs of cigarettes or chairs as support, unobtrusively studying the maestro as he washes dishes, takes phone calls, eats meals and browses the internet. The world outside of his apartment is completely concealed, only inferred by the sound of faint explosions, each burst amplifying Panahi’s anxiety as he thrashes out his forthcoming appeal. Civil unrest in the street below and the guarded nature with which our protagonist speaks evince the paranoia and fear that walk hand in hand in a totalitarian state, symbolizing the far-reaching assault on the individual made by an unchecked theocracy.  

As is customary for Iranian filmmakers, Panahi pulls back the curtain, candidly referencing his own on-screen artificiality and its relationship to his cinematic work with amateur performers. Communicating directly to the camera, Jafar draws parallels between the metaphorical mask he wears to hide his sorrow and the disguise worn by an actor as they create a character, fondly recalling the authenticity of a child thespian shedding her costume and storming off the set of The Mirror. Using his living room television as a reference point, Panahi expounds upon the personality imparted by untrained talent, crediting the spontaneity of location and instinct as the true source of cinematic inspiration.

Staging a read-through of an unfilmed script in the family room, Jafar and Mojtaba deliberate over lighting and saturation, permitting the process to inseminate the product. As they lay out the boundaries of the heroine’s bedroom with masking tape, the accused pours over the trail of rejected screenplays that led to his arrest, the lines on his face and weariness in his eyes exposing the sadness that his mouth dare not reveal. Resisting self-pity, Panahi joyfully paints his mise-en-scene and itemizes the progression of edits, the breadth of his vision evident from the specificity of his phrasing. His confidence wanes as he nears the final shot, a static image of a noose prepared for the neck of his despondent student, the restrictions of her gender and customs of her people too heavy a burden to bear.

The limitations of Jafar Panahi’s characters are his own and by documenting the commonplace, solely observing his day as it unfolds, he’s struck a bond between censored artist and persecuted proletariat. Using his camera as an instrument for civil disobedience, Panahi has taken the subtle aspersions of his fictional work to their zenith, risking his freedom to chastise despotism on a global scale.

This Is Not a Film (Palisades Tartan, 2011)
Written, Directed and Photographed by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb

Cannibal Holocaust (1980, Ruggero Deodato)

Blurring the line between fact and fiction and demolishing the boundaries of good taste, Cannibal Holocaust is a barbed and malignant satire of broadcast journalism, manipulating viewers through an unpalatable mélange of zoosadism, rape and anthropophagy. If viewed objectively, it thrives as a polemic against Western neocolonialism, unflinching in its depiction of white reporters defiling and murdering their aboriginal subjects, leaving no transgression uncharted in the name of realism. One could argue that this single-minded pursuit of authenticity is courageous and that Ruggero Deodato’s assault on media immorality contains a certain self-reflexive integrity, but intellectualizing the experience does little to dilute the ferocity of the images. Cannibal Holocaust poisons the mind and, in a world of sanitized entertainment, is a dangerous artistic object.

Sporting an unanticipated structural complexity, particularly for rough exploitation fare, Deodato’s framework progresses from news exposé to cinematic jungle expedition to raw documentary footage, rotating film stock and photographic style along the way. The lion’s share of the narrative revolves around Dr. Harold Monroe, a New York University professor saddled with retrieving a missing filmmaking crew from “The Green Inferno,” ultimately uncovering the crimes against humanity captured in their humidity-damaged reels. As the sweat-soaked academic treks through the brush, wheezing from a combination of exhaustion and fear, a palpable menace permeates each image of untamed wild, stirring discomfort through ominous location footage and graphic clips of stomach-churning carrion.

We observe barbarous tribal rituals through Monroe’s eyes, voyeuristically peeking through the palm fronds as an adulterous woman is desecrated with a cylindrical piece of stone. The camera lingers as the sacrifice is dragged through the mud, gawking as she thrashes against the weight of her assailant, concentrating on the bloody pulp that coats the end of the jagged rock. Deodato’s violence speaks in the same visual language as pornography, emphasizing penetrative and vagocentric attacks, utilizing the female body as canvas for vulgar entertainment.

Though prurient methods are employed to shock the viewer, Deodato’s intentions may be less insidious than the ramifications, since his primary objective is to inspire panic, not subjugate a gender or race of people. His subtle moments outshine the more aggressive fare and lack its queasy depravity, building tension through the reciprocal anxiety shared by Monroe’s party and the “Tree People,” their inability to communicate serving as the crux of the conflict. The skillful application of symbol also benefits thematic concerns, intertwining Western technological fetish with biotic material, embodied in the deific shrine of flensed bone and optical lens that acts as a tomb for the disgraced documentary team.

Surviving the voyage and returning to New York with the bulk of the crew’s canisters, Monroe and an editor pore over the dailies, their appalled utterances blanketing the footage like the unseen voices on a commentary track. The black leader inserted between reels and intermittently waning diegetic sound add a fragmentary nature and textural roughness to the images, convincingly distressing each cell and paralleling the on-screen atrophy. Isolated in the editor’s chamber, the abhorrent behavior captured on film begins to overwhelm the senses, stimulating nausea through an unexpurgated violation of land, animal and human. As the so-called objective observers torch a village and fornicate on the incinerated remains of its inhabitants, a melancholy shroud envelops the forthcoming action, elevated by the quivering, regretful pulsations of Riz Ortolani’s score.  

Matching the sensationalistic visual display, Ortolani’s recurring theme pairs organic and inorganic sounds, marrying simple acoustic guitar and string to strangely touching and sorrowful waves of synthesizer. The pathos and emotional heft of the orchestral performance is sweeping, playing counterpoint to the film’s misanthropic perspective and imparting a gracefulness to an otherwise jarring work of art. Conversely, Ortolani’s other pieces, particularly those made to accompany gruesome makeup effects, are guttural and downtempo, ascending and descending between bubbling orbs of computerized dread.

The discomfort of shifting sonic tones and audio imperfection amplify the revolting frankness of the climax, stirring dizzied physical reactions through vivid passages of feticide, gang rape, castration and impalement. The simulations on display are suitably disgusting, but none rival the abomination of actual murder, exhibited by the production’s slaughter of no less than 5 animals before a leering camera eye. Zooming in to bask in the convulsions of the death rattle, a turtle is butchered in methodical steps before the lens, separated from its shell and left to wriggle as its innards pool on the sandy earth. Whether the ingestion of the turtle’s meat is validation enough for the sequence is up to the beholder, but any vegetarian (this critic included) would deem these tactics as an unethical and artless attempt at verisimilitude.

The yin yang of Cannibal Holocaust’s unscrupulous cruelty and technical innovation make for quite the paradox, placing an asterisk next to its designation as found-footage progenitor and unsung magnum opus. Its ethnocentrism can be vindicated by comparison, likening first-world prejudices to horror cinema’s history of disregard for mental illness (Psycho), religion (The Exorcist) and foreign relations (Dracula). Defending its deft editing, thematic patterning and willingness to repulse is just as equitable, but nonpartisan viewership and much ponderous discourse can’t obscure the inexcusable, permanently sullying an otherwise daring provocation.

Cannibal Holocaust (F.D. Cinematografica, 1980)
Directed by Ruggero Deodato
Written by Gianfranco Clerici
Photographed by Sergio D’Offizi

The Da Vinci Code (2006, Ron Howard)

Circumspect and overtly middlebrow, The Da Vinci Code flirts with the arcane and sacrilegious, hiding an intellectually-stimulating alternative to Christian history beneath the sheen of big-ticket spectacle. Theistic debate as fodder for popcorn cinema is peculiar enough to warrant interest, especially when exploring the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, but Ron Howard’s adaptation never aims to stimulate the mind or obliterate the senses, instead passing muted emotion and vague mystery off as commercial product.

Anchored by Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), a professor of symbology with photographic memory and trauma-based claustrophobia, the narrative underplays any quirk of character to avoid hampering the mechanical progression of its plot, pivoting from point to point with minimal reflection. Swept up in a murder investigation during a Parisian speaking tour, Langdon is beckoned to decipher the symbols adorning a corpse’s chest, becoming the prime suspect after a sect of religious zealots finger him as an enemy of the faith. Aided by the victim’s granddaughter (Audrey Tautou) and hounded by a self-flagellating assassin (Paul Bettany), Langdon goes on a wild goose chase through secluded sacristies and twilight-lit galleries, pursuing answers in a search for the Holy Grail and the covert cabal that protects its secret.

Shifting between three storylines, all of which unravel concurrently, the script generates curiosity through intermittent passages of revisionist history, squandering opportunity through wordy exchanges that wrap trivialities in florid prose. This compositional murkiness and lack of purpose spills over into the photography, each shot cloaked in perpetual night and underlit, mistaking lack of visual detail for mystique. The color palette is just as washed-out as the art direction, utilizing soft hologram and gauzy blue filter to evoke the past, effectively sapping the medium’s primary vehicle for symbol of its vitality.

As for any controversy garnered by this disingenuous cash grab, it’s all whisked away in an uncluttered coda that further proliferates the ecclesiastical folklore the previous two acts aimed to subvert. Valid points made about sexuality and church-supported misogyny are surrendered once spoken by the chief antagonist, lending credence to the blindly faithful and admonishing the skeptical for traces of doubt. Having said that, I realize that believers rarely abandon their faith, even if presented with facts that impart logical explanations onto the supernatural. At its core, religion is more about comfort than practicality and Ron Howard is as guilty as his audience when it comes to embracing the easiest answer. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the only provocation in this quasi-cerebral potboiler is an interminable dullness, dousing the flames of dissent in a sea of moralist drivel.

The Da Vinci Code (Columbia Pictures, 2006)
Directed by Ron Howard
Written by Dan Brown (novel) and Akiva Goldsman (screenplay)
Photographed by Salvatore Totino