vanishing american

neil diamond's nfb documentary, reel injun, appropriately examines the evolutionary portrayal of indian culture in hollywood cinema. framed chronologically, the film provides an iconoclastic deconstruction of each decade's stereotypic representations of the "injun" and, in turn, the difficulties in constructing an identity lost to genocide. an insightful interview with filmmaker jim jarmusch brings attention to how the birth of cinema coincided with the colonization of native peoples allowing america to replace an exterminated culture with a mythology of the indian. technology taking over for centuries of tradition.

this thought really puts into perspective the fragility of native identity, which independent of its own free will is inextricably linked to the power of cinema. as a result, any form of cliche, from the "noble" indian (silent, peaceful, mystical) to the "savage" indian (loud, warring, barbaric), de-humanizes and warps native/popular conceptions of what it means to be an actual indian. it takes from the original and imparts creations of convenience (non-existent headbands); alters truths of appearance (plains indians did not wear headdresses); and instills fallacies of fiction (that signature woo-ing warrior call, an invention of hollywood) into the replacement.

with such a media-based identity, technology has also helped in the reconstruction and empowerment of native culture. sacheen littlefeather's stand-in for marlon brando's best actor (the godfather) boycotted acceptance speech gave visibility to real adversities (wounded knee) in the native community. and a current for-us by-us mentality in native filmmaking has given a voice and gaze to native peoples that is utterly native. prize winning atanarjuat (fast runner) ends with a presumedly dead man running out of a tent completely naked across the arctic ice in a scene that volumizes the rebirth of the on-screen injun; stripped down and the future ahead of him.

              

comic relief

to quote woody allen from annie hall: "they're always giving out awards. best fascist dictator: adolf hitler. if an award like that really did exist, though, they’d probably end up giving it to mussolini."

up for eight oscars at this year's academy awards, a satirized hitler co-stars in inglourious basterds. no stranger to the academy, adolf has been represented before and won for pictures like black fox (best documentary) and downfall (best foreign). tarantino's basterds, however, depicts the notorious subject in a much more cartoonish manner akin to chaplin's the great dictator (nominated itself for 1940's best picture). consider how the first few scenes of the fuhrer illustrate a "type" as much as they do a politcal icon. cloaked in an illustrious cape, hitler is shown mid-tantrum pounding on his desk looking more like a foiled super-villain than an actual leader of germany. his ineptitude becomes a source of comedy and he is positioned in a very basic dichotomy of good and evil - the source of his rage being the titular g.i. joe task force of the basterds (the good guys).

showing a proclivity for comics (tarantino's kill bill has a scene that's fully animated as well as a scene in which bill waxes on the mythology of superman), tarantino fashions this tale of sadistic jewish revenge in an aesthetic of glamourized violence. within the realm of the comic (emphasis on the visual/surface), endings such as the over-the-top hitler assasination/german third reich blaze work because they are purposely theatrical. the fact that this revenge is exacted within a movie theatre, by a theatre owner, who insists on filming herself is quite revealing. on the other side of things, in addition to the super-heroic identities of "aldo the apache" and  "the bear jew," the basterds are joined in their parallel plot to destroy the nazis (project kino) by a german movie star, an english soldier who happens to be a film scholar/critique, and a renegade german soldier (hugo stiglitz) who is equipped with his very own "origin story" and marquee title. while it is impossible to undo the past, inglourious basterds uses these caricatures of film to revise the course of history. through its theatricality, the film becomes a parody of itself.

it is precisely this type of bastardization of history along with language that animates the "ratatat" world of inglourious basterds. just like a comic, the film uses the english language graphically; most of the film existing in subtitles and characters oscillating spoken languages without hesitation, complete with numerous misnomers. take the film's title as cue that there is nothing "proper" about the idealization of a history where hitler's face is machine-gunned to death.

shuttering depths

a man completely unto himself, edward daniels (dicaprio) unconciously re-plays his life as a us marshall hellbent on uncovering the sinister conspiracies (transorbital lobotomies, psychotropic drug use, etc.) practised on shutter island in a medically planned attempt to have edward recover from his own severe repressed psychological traumas. this act of role play successfully works, after two previous years of treatment, when the emotional shock of self-realization eventually kicks in. daniels learns that he is in fact the man (andrew laeddis) he was attempting to hunt down for the death of his wife.

in order to come to this ultimate truth daniels traverses the treacherous landscape of the island and penetrates the deep psychological labyrinth of his own mind. these two obstacles going hand-in-hand. the island itself is as isolated (geographically/socially) as edwards' own fantasy narrative. encircled by a perimeter of inescapable bluffs, the island's outer regions are almost impossible navigate. they become a border that works to prevent daniels from getting to the truth and likewise securing him in his dreamworld.

even in the opening scene, daniels is introduced aboard a ferry in front of a "stormy" green-screened background. a technique echoing the film noir staple of rear projection (casting a pre-filmed background before live actors) that today has the cinematic effect of blurring lines of verisimilitude and invoking a degree of artifice. on the boat, daniels tells his partner of their vague assignment and of his secluded personal history; equally unclear as the surface and texture of their setting. while shutter island certainly plays homage to the detective-thriller genre, its first scene also sets the stage for the jig-sawing of reality to come.

it is no wonder, then, that in this maze of a landscape scorsese should use a lighthouse (the place where daniels dellusionally believes houses the most unimaginable/horrific surgeries) at the base of the bluffs as the location for daniels' coming to; daniels reaches the logical conclusion of his fictitious"conspiracy" when he reaches the top of a structure designed for vision and clarity. like the rear-projected background of the ferry scene, the symbolism of such a structure seems strangely familiar. take for example, hitchcock's masterpiece vertigo which follows a similar thematic course to shutter. in place of a lighthose, a church bell-tower (a building of literal religious awakening) is used as the final location of scottie's (stewart) healing of his own individual trauma.

in addition to the symbolic reference of these buildings as psychiatric posts of consciousness, they have a common visual characteristic that works to encompass their character's respective journey. inside each building there is a staircase that winds upward to the top. although more prevalent in vertigo, this spiral motif represents a confusing/dizzying path. in shutter island, daniels traces this path into the truth of his own past. not limited to the staircase alone, the spiral can be recognized throughout the film: from the use of german records (which recollect some memory for edward); to the recorded tape of daniels' therapy sessions which dr. cawley (kingsley) reminds the viewer have been on a continuous loop for two years; to the circuitous route that daniels and partner take on the island, twisting and turning at seemless ends including daniels' own solitary venture into the nether-regions of ward c that coincidentally bring him closer to his real-life past; to the swirling of letters necessary to anagram the alter-ego's he creates; and even to the puzzling rotation of daniels and his partner's appearance on the island and the disappearnce of their counterparts. and holding all these elements together is the biggest natural cyclone of them all: the hurricane.

abraxas

for a film that so meticulously recreates the time of the summer of love (may 1967 appears as the date on the calendar of the first rabbi's office wall) it may strike a viewer as odd that a serious man time-jumps ahead 3 years when larry gopnik is summoned by the columbia record club. during this conversation larry is informed that he owes them for his monthly main selections. this month's record being santana's abraxas and next month's selection vowed to be ccr's cosmo's factory; both albums were recorded and released in 1970. 

etymologically the two records share reference to god and the heavens. the origins of "abraxas" come from a greek word generally describing gnostic cosmology. while it remains vague, carl jung offers the following from his gnostic text seven sermons to the dead: "that which is spoken by god-the-sun is life; that which is spoken by the devil is death; abraxas speaketh that hallowed and accursed word, which is life and death at the same time. abraxas begetteth truth and lying, good and evil, light and darkness in the same word and in the same act. wherefore is abraxas terrible." 

according to jung abraxas is a force that combines all opposites into a single being; a god higher than that of god and the devil and at the same time encompassing each. theoretically this is not unlike the paradox of schrödinger's cat referenced by gopnik earlier in the film. gopnik uses a boxed cat that is at once dead and alive to illustrate the uncertainty principle. the conclusion being that we can't really know anything until the cat is out-of-the-bag or the answer reveals itself. abraxas, then, may come to stand for gopnik's inability to comprehend the unattainable, the unknown, and the unlistened to record.

on the otherhand, cosmo's factory is a little more straightforward. although the album itself refers to the rehearsal space in which the band recorded, the root "cosmos" refers to the sky, the heavens and the universe. in this sense abraxas and cosmos are used with artistic liscence to represent a call from the supernatural.

this thought is especially salient considering how gopnik's frustration with the "columbian" record club parallels his problems at large: larry didn't ask for or want santana abraxas and to recieve it he didn't do anything. much like all the present trials that have befallen larry, he automatically recieves abraxas without knowledge or reason for the cosmological order behind it. it just happens. there is no understandable explanation of god's will (or in this case the coens). and like the goy's teeth it is best to stop trying to decipher what these (anachronistic) puzzles mean and simply accept the mystery.

korean avatar adds fourth dimension

a gimmick is a gimmick is a..... avatar. while most of the world marvelled at cameron's digital wonderland avatar, korean moviehouse mogul CJ-CGV equipped the film with a fourth dimension. half film/half amusement ride, specialized 4D theatres in seoul engage the audience with real-life sensations (lazers, mist, explosions, etc.) making the special-effects that much more "special."

avatar, however, is not the first film in korea to recieve this deluxe treatment. apparently, journey to the centre of the earth was fully enhanced last year and the popularity/profitablilty of the experience (along with promises of sequels to the avatar franchise) may soon bring these multi-dimensional movieplexes to north america, which apart from 10-15 minute rides has sofar failed to bank on feature films.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118014803.html?categoryid=19&cs=1

guardian angel

tom ford's debut a single man introduces supporting actor nicholas hoult as a mysterious crush-laden university student named kenny. unlike a normative clear cut love interest, his role as pursuer involves a seemingly selfless desire for his professor. fully aware of falconer's (firth) visible depression and in tune with his suicidal loneliness, kenny goes beyond the role of lover - to which he will eventually take- and becomes his spiritual rescuer.

in his attempts at breaking the ice with falconer, kenny not only goes out of his stalkerish way to court his prof (outside falconer's car door) but has air of omnipresence for showing up at the right time and place (a bar around the corner from falconer's home, where presumably he's having his last drink). however, this transcendent characteristic is not limited to spatiality alone.

while ford's lens visually objectifies every pore and follicle of hoult's fountain-of-youth face, kenny's sexual interest in falconer is blurred by observations of a girl-friend and an unclear boundary of appropriate student/teacher behaviour. thereby making kenny, on the surface, solely interested in a deeper beauty; one beyond the skin; one of conversation and partnership; and one that george falconer has been without since the tragic loss of his long-term boyfriend, jim, several years prior. this absence of partnership (and cause of george's closeted/single lifestyle) is crystallized in the "ceremonious" swimming scene right after kenny and falconer have left the bar. kenny has focused his carefree, carpe diem philosophies in a way that falconer has no trouble seeing and ultimately receiving: the once always suited, ever-guarded man of intellect throws caution to the wind (along with his trousers) and has become a bare, emotion-lead man of the moment.

transformed and now headed in a direction of happiness, falconer owes a debt or two of gratitude to his newest lover. not to be mistaken as a simple replacement for his lost love - falconer makes especially clear to one time female lover, charlie (moore), that there is no replacing jim with anybody - kenny is better recognized as a protector and conduit of self-realization, imparting his openness as a guide for falconer to follow. a white light at the end of a dark miserable tunnel.