Deborah Lipp

Rashômon (1950) 9/10
In feudal Japan, the story of a rape and murder is told from four different points of view: The bandit (Toshirô Mifune), who came upon a husband and wife, raped the wife, and perhaps murdered the husband, the wife, the husband (through a medium), and an eyewitness. The stories all contradict one another, and all the storytellers may have reason to lie. Directed by Akira Kurasawa.

This is my second Kurasawa, and I liked it better than Seven Samurai. While Seven Samurai has sweep and adventure, Rashômon is a human story, full of sorrow and dread, while still being thoughtful and contemplative.

The wrap story for telling these tales is this: A woodcutter and a priest were both witnesses in court; the priest saw the couple on the road shortly before the crime, and the woodcutter was the one who found the body. They are both deeply disturbed at the lies they have heard; for the priest, it is a crisis of faith.

Caught in the rain and sheltering in the ruined temple Rashômon, a stranger approaches and they tell what they have heard. The stranger listens with amusement; he is cynical and unperturbed by lying; after all, everyone is motivated to lie, that’s human nature. While a philosophical battle plays out in this downpour in this visually arresting ruin, the story itself is told. Again and again we see the bandit attack, we see the woman weep in despair while her husband, tied to a tree, is forced to watch. What happens next?

The story each tells is self-serving. It is an idealized version of the events; what each would have wished to happen. The bandit’s version is amoral but heroic, while the husband and wife each reach for dignity for themselves, while blaming the other. The movie focuses more on the unknowability of the truth, but to me, the rewriting of history to make oneself seem good is more compelling. Additionally, the woman’s story is full of dignity and pain. Her position in her culture is so low, so helpless, that virtually any action she takes is hopeless. Does she desire the bandit? Some versions would have us believe so, but is it desire, or turning to a man to escape shame, which is all she can do anyway? A loyal wife is expected to commit suicide for the “crime” of being raped, is it surprising she’s interested in alternatives? But then, is she interested? And what of the dead husband? Did he hate his wife for being “soiled,” or hate himself for being unable to save her? Or did he truly wish to fight for her honor?

The part that doesn’t work for me is that this story drives the two witnesses into such dreadful despair. Is this case really, as the priest says, worse than famine and plague? Is his faith as ruined as the temple in which they shelter? It is moving but perhaps a bit too much.

Ace in the Hole (1951) 10/10
Down on his luck newspaper reporter Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas) takes a job at an Albuquerque paper. His hope is that some big story will bring him back to the attention of the major urban papers. When a man (Richard Benedict) is trapped in a cave, Tatum sees his big break, but if Mimosa (Benedict) is rescued too soon, Tatum can’t play the story for all it’s worth. Tatum persuades the local sheriff and construction chief to use a slower rescue method while a media circus gathers. Directed by Billy Wilder.

This is a dark, cynical story of corruption and self-interest. It was honestly hard to watch, and yet it was compelling and I can’t fault it in any way. None of the main characters are likeable, certainly not Douglas’s Chuck Tatum, who is a son-of-a-bitch from the opening scene and only gets worse. Jan Sterling as Mimosa’s wife is unpleasant through and through, and yet strangely sympathetic. She doesn’t want to fool anyone or play any games for fame or even fortune, she just wants enough money to get her out of town and away from an unhappy marriage.

The sheriff (Ray Teal, who is painfully familiar from having been in everything ever) is a thoroughly despicable guy. Tatum easily convinces him that appearing heroic to the media will get him re-elected, and of course, good media depends on Tatum. With that little detail handled, Tatum owns the town and the story.

Forgotten in all of this is Leo Mimosa, trapped, pinned, and thoroughly isolated. He seems, from what little we see, like a decent guy; trusting, direct, a veteran, and pathetically trying to be a good husband despite knowing how badly his wife wants out. Of course, Leo matters to know one except his parents; not to Tatum, not to the sheriff, certainly not to the thousands of people who gather and set up camp to participate in the spectacle. Media circuses have only gotten bigger and gaudier, so as dated as this movie might appear in terms of technology and style, it is up-to-the-minute in terms of its opinions and observations about the way media attention buries (hah!) stories it tries to tell.

The actors chosen for this film, except for Douglas, are not stars, and they are not beautiful. The sense of ordinariness is perfect; everything feels present and immediate. This is important in building the sense of claustrophobia; for Leo, trapped in a cave, for Tatum, trapped in the media circus he created, for everyone playing out roles and telling lies. Whenever Tatum walks through the growing crowd into his quiet room, it’s like a breath of air, and the parallel to the trapped Leo is a constant subtext.

Tatum is a bastard, and sometimes he talks too much like a Billy Wilder bastard, all snappy dialogue and hard edges, but he is also thoroughly real. How different is he, truly, from Chris Matthews, or Joe Scarborough, or any of these guys who love the fact that there’s a story more than they care about anything happening inside the story? Tatum wants to write a story, and he wants to sell it, and he wants it to be his ticket back to New York. That Leo grows weaker with each day is secondary. That Lorraine Mimosa wants out is never a consideration at all. It’s all just a story.

Things to Come (1936) 6/10
Science fiction showing one hundred years in one anonymous city (“Everytown”), based on the work of H.G. Wells. The film begins in 1940 when (a fictional) World War II breaks out; war lasts decades, at which point, bombing and germ warfare have devasted civilization. In 1970, Everytown, now a primitive feudal state, is invaded by “Wings Over the World,” a newly-formed world government, ruled by a scientific elite, that has re-started manufacturing and air travel. By 2036, society is a technological utopia.

You will often hear people talk about the times we live in as an ironic age, and about the 1930s and 1940s as being without irony. Things to Come is really a perfect expression of that. It is the least ironic movie ever made. I really wish I’d seen it with a bunch of drunken gays, because it simply longs for camp.

You can see how this movie must have been exciting and startling in 1936, and certainly all of the dialogue about ideas (as opposed to relationships or adventure) is interesting, and must have been kind of thrilling. It opens with an ordinary British family (Everytown is London in thin disguise) discussing the coming war; they discuss whether war is ever necessary, and the cost to culture, medicine, and technology. Sure enough, the pessimist wins out; strategic bombing destroys civilization, a plague devastates what’s left of society, manufacturing ceases, and the streets of Everytown in 1970 strong resemble 1570.

There’s a raw beauty in these scenes, the bombastic “Boss” (Ralph Richardson) is utterly over the top, but the use of cars as horse-drawn carts, and of scraps of old clothes with fur attached as royal robes, is kind of stunning. Then the mighty airman (Raymond Massey) comes. And I do love how, when civilization is rebuilt (in Basra of all places) it’s a priority to make sure clothing is futuristic. I’m looking at the guy and thinking, If I were retooling dormant factories, I’d stick with pre-existing molds for efficiency. But no. Gotta have those jumpsuits. The Boss fights back, with like nothing, so it doesn’t last long, and John Cabal (Massey) informs us that from now on, it’s world government, no religion, and the rule of the Airmen, hurrah. It’s all kind of creepy.

Now there’s a scene of rebuilding. It’s like a love song to manufacturing and technology, about 2 minutes of close-ups of rock-blasting and dye-casting and assembly, all to highly inspirational music. And I thought, these people really love science. Really. Love.

Skip forward to 2036 and everyone is wearing jumpsuits or tunics. And capes. With big-ass shoulder pads. Seriously, I needed to watch this with Chris March. Life is incredibly perfect, except for, you know, the dictatorship. But it’s totally benevolent and good for you and run by scientists. Scientists are high-minded and only make decisions that are for the good of high-minded things. There is nothing wrong with that model.

Anyway, it’s all utopian. No hunger or poverty or bad weather (underground cities!). And they’re just now getting around to shooting a “rocket gun” at the moon. This upsets some people, who think all this progress is just too much. Mankind needs a rest. Progress, progress, progress, it’s so tiring. And seriously, this is the actual argument. I’m not leaving out any of the nuance. But of course, the Luddites lose and the rocket gun launches, causing Raymond Massey (playing his own great-grandson) to give a speech about how cool progress is and how without it, life sucks.

I didn’t actually watch any movies this week. I know, right? Anyway, here’s some reviews of some other stuff I’ve been doing.

Arthur and I have been re-watching Angel on DVD. His homework schedule has been light for the first time since entering high school, so I suspended my Netflix account for a month and we’ve been spending “family time” watching 1 or 2 episodes a night, and are currently up to episode 19 (of 22) of season 2.

I got on board late with Buffy and Angel, watching Buffy in reruns after it was all over, and starting Angel reruns from the pilot while season 4 was still in prime time. I fell in love with Angel right away, and really thought it was better than Buffy. On re-viewing, I can see why some people never got bit by the Angel bug. Season 1 is choppy and inconsistent. Some of the episodes are outstanding, but overall, the show struggles to find a voice. In episode 18, though, Faith is brought in. What works is that Faith epitomizes what becomes Angel’s unique voice: The gray area of redemption.

While Buffy battles evil and works to draw a line in the sand, with her always on one side and evil always on the other, Angel is about the fluidity of the line and the place of individuals on either side of it. Angel is a vampire with a soul. Faith is a slayer gone evil. Both can be redeemed. Angel is about regret, remorse, atonement, and vengeance. That last is the tricky one, as season 2 progresses, Angel becomes more interested in fighting the enemy (Wolfram & Hart) than saving souls, and this is all it takes to push him dangerously close to switching sides.

Watching a television series is making me very conscious of the craft of writing. Seeing how a bit of dialogue is inserted for exposition; when it works, when it doesn’t work. There are scenes that are stiff, there are people being told things they already know. Nonetheless, I stand by my contention that Angel is one of the best things ever televised.

Angel: After the Fall is a “season 6” continuation comic book. Despite Joss Whedon’s hand in the plotting, I’m just about ready to give it up. The premise is that the culmination of the grand cliff-hanger battle that ended season 5 was the transporting of the entire city of LA into Hell. The hellish illustration is murky and hard to follow. Characters from time to time shine through, but there’s too much going on. Hell is a busy place; it’s hard to get a feel for what’s important when there are SO MANY demons and so much muck and so much RED.

Duma Key is Stephen King’s latest, and for regular reader of King’s work, it is especially remarkable. I’m not a King fanatic, but I’ve read many of his books, and as far as I know, this is the first one written in a first person voice. It’s a remarkable change for a writer of fifty or so books, and it brings a new sensibility to the pages.

Edgar Freemantle is simply nothing like a King character. He’s something like King—being a middle-aged man recovering from a body-crushing injury—but his voice has never before appeared in a King book. He’s wealthy, down to earth, direct, and confused. He speaks of his pain, his marriage, his daughters, and the growing mystery surrounding his time on Duma Key in an intimate and personal way. His new friend Wireman, his neighbor on Duma Key, is perhaps a more typical and stylized King character, but the friendship has a unique feeling.

Edgar, a construction company owner, was crushed by a crane. He has lost an arm, has a brain injury, and is rehabbing a crushed hip. He has rented a house on an isolated Florida Key to recover and paint. Once there, he gradually learns that there may be a supernatural reason that the prime real estate of Duma Key is relatively uninhabited, and that his own injury may have a supernatural component. Well, we expect this of King, but the horror is not the focus of the novel; the characters are.

The horror side of the plot bears a definite similarity to The Shining; the confluence of psychic people, a violent past, and an isolated location, but that part of the book is not nearly as important as the characters. This is a book about people.

I wrote an extensive review (seriously, 2000 words—what was I thinking?) of The Bond Code by Philip Gardiner at my James Bond site. The book is about the occult influences on Ian Fleming and James Bond. You might be interested.

The ones you say all the time. I mean, not your favorites, but the ones you actually say. Because sure, I’d like to say “We’ll always have Paris” is something I say all the time; I’d like to be that cool, but not so much in real life. I’ve said “You know how to whistle, don’t you?” once or twice, but it doesn’t come up all that often, conversationally.

While waiting for our Chinese food last night, Arthur and I strolled over to the pet store, and seeing a birdcage, I said “Boids. Filthy, disgusting, disease-ridden BOIDS.” Bizarrely, that is a line that comes up often.

“I’m using the word hate here. About…” Fill in the blank. The voice of that line just works when you want to underline that you hate something.

“That’ll do, pig.” Virtually any time I finish anything.

Arthur also uses “You might, rabbit, you might” rather more often than you’d expect.

So, here’s a quick compensation for yesterday’s non-trivia: Name the movies I quote, and give me the quotes you like to use (the ones you really use, in conversation. Not the ones you wish you were cool enough to use, and not the ones you only use when you’re being movie-quotey).

Godspell (1973) 3/10
Jesus (Victor Garber) comes to New York with big clown feet and paints the faces of his followers. Then he dies.

I’m trying to decide if Godspell is the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Maybe not. But it’s a contender. Yet, it’s the kind of bad movie I’m fascinating by, as I attempt to understand the choices that the filmmakers made. In other words, what were they thinking?

Now, I’d heard that Godspell was a bad movie, but when I know the score of a musical, I like to see it, because I like to see the songs in context, and this leads me to seeing some real turkeys. Like A Chorus Line. And less than halfway through Godspell, I realized there is no context. All these songs that I know so well, that I’d wondered about—where in the story of Jesus do they fit?—don’t fit anywhere. They’re just sung by a traveling troupe of Jesus clowns.

The movie opens with a bunch of ordinary New Yorkers doing ordinary, frustrating things. Getting stuck in traffic, serving coffee at a lunch counter, using the public library. Then John the Baptist calls them to come and worship the Lord. As they gather in Central Park, their ordinary clothes are transformed into hippie clothes. Okay, I can get behind that. Certainly the idea that Jesus was a hippie of sorts in his own era is not unheard of, and was popular in 1973. Rejecting the material and all that.

Then the group finds a junkyard, and there they find the makings of clown costumes (apparently this is where the circus dumps its stuff when it leaves town). They dress up, act goofy, and Jesus paints everyone’s faces with cute little clown stuff.

The whole time this is going on, it’s very shticky, very over-acted, with lots of big gestures and wide-eyed facial expressions. I’m thinking, I guess they’re making a case for innocence and childlike openness to the wonder of God. The problem I’m having is that they’re not really distinguishing between childlike innocence and actual brain damage. Some of these people are acting innocence so broadly that I fear they will wander out in traffic. Maybe they’re suffused with the joy of the Presence, but they seem more like they’re off their meds.

But hey, innocence. Gentleness. Love. I’m still suspending disbelief mightily. And then Jesus delivers his first message. And it’s about the importance obeying every letter of the law. Well, thud. That’s definitely not about love and innocence.

The entire movie takes place all over New York City, in locations empty except for the Jesus clowns, as diverse as Lincoln Center, Ward’s Island, and the top of the World Trade Center (still under construction at the time). The group walks from spot to spot, acting out parables. The parables don’t relate to the locations, nor do they flow one to another. Each is entirely separate, as if each was a part of a different performance. No flow, no plot (not even, y’know, Jesus’s life), no sense of who the characters are. Meanwhile, who they are is a group of the shtickiest overacters ever born. Each parable is acted out with “funny” voices; often more than one per character, AND broad movements, AND silly props, AND mime. It’s like it’s their last day at Clown School, and they have to use everything they’ve learned. Everything. Over and over.

There were some charming moments; the All for the Best number was wonderfully done, and Jesus in the Garden in his moment of doubt is quite touching, although by that point in the film I was too impatient to appreciate it. But everything is so broad that the enjoyable moments get buried.

And yes, the music is excellent. In my own mind, I am judging the movie entirely separate from music, since the music pre-dates it. And maybe that isn’t fair, since some movie musicals certainly do butcher original scores. The vocal performances are outstanding, although it’s hard to pay attention to Lynne Thigpen‘s magnificent rendition of “Bless the Lord” while she is wearing a funny hat and face paint and a choker made of giant beads in rainbow colors and ruffled sleeves and a polka-dot vest and lavender tights and funny shoes.

I’m going to listen to the soundtrack and try to forget I saw this.

Marie Antoinette (2006) 9/10
At the age of 14, a member of the Austrian royal family (Kirsten Dunst) is sent to France to marry (the future) Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman). There her name is styled Marie Antoinette and she struggles with loneliness and a sexless marriage, while under great pressure to produce an heir. Written and drected by Sofia Coppola.

Shortly after I finished watching Marie Antoinette, I realized how very much it resembled Coppola’s previous picture, Lost in Translation. Both involved lonely, privileged young women in foreign lands and with inattentive husbands. Both women mask their loneliness with partying and gaiety. That Coppola chooses to direct her attention to sad, disaffected women trying to find themselves amidst noise and clamour speaks of her as a director. It’s also working to create some very effective films.

The film is not concerned with perfect period recreation. 1980s dance music is used to create an atmosphere of fun and intensity, brighter-than-period colors are used to express Marie’s youth and playfulness. Nonetheless, the story sticks pretty close to history, albeit with its sympathies squarely with Marie.

It’s wonderful. The movie stays committed to being a character study, and yet Marie Antoinette’s character is revealed amidst noise and color and costume and pageantry. It’s got all the visual wealth that a movie can provide, and its imagery is very mischievous, having fun with the shoes, the bedchamber, the hairstyles, and all of that.

Dunst is wonderful, and deserves accolades for this role. She is a stranger in a strange land, lost and confused in all the pomp of Versailles. But she is blue-blooded and grew up in a court, so she cannot simply act confused. It’s a delicate balance, as is aging from 14 to 38 (or so) with little makeup. Her face is on-screen almost all the time, and she remains captivating.

The movie becomes a bit confusing at the end, if you don’t know the particulars of how the final days of Louis & Marie played out, the script is not terribly interested in telling you. At that point, the movie really runs out of steam; it feels like Coppola is less interested in this part. That probably sounds like a bigger flaw than it is, it’s more of a quibble, really.

Marie Antoinette doesn’t glamorize royalty, but it doesn’t exactly deglamorize it either. There’s definitely some lovely pageantry and cool clothes. There’s also the simple reality of being a young girl sent away from home forever, and having even your beloved dog taken away from you (she is allowed “to have as many French dogs as you like” but can bring nothing of Austria with her, she is told as she weeps helplessly). It finds a truth in the humanity of whoever ends up in any overwhelming situation, and sees her with great sympathy.

I thought it was a hell of an achievement. Frankly, the descriptions I’d read sounded kitsch, or coy, but this was a very honest film, just done in an unusual way.