Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) - Dream that they've all turned into white mice and crawled into an eternal pumpkin!

It's the Letterboxd Season Challenge!  Theme twelve, part one - a film starring Ingrid Bergman!

(Chosen by me!)

It takes a bit've time to settle in with Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman in the parts of Dr. Jekyll and Ivy the barmaid respectively, primarily owing to the accents.  Neither is turning in a bad performance throughout the first act of Victor Flemming's remake of an adaptation of a stageplay based on the Robert Louis Stevenson novella, far from it as Tracy brings his usual hard-mouthed moral pillar with a gentler side to his performance of the good doctor with a disturbing preoccupation over evil, and Bergman makes her part as a would-be rape victim turned slinky temptress to her savior come alive with just how thirsty she plays the role.  As set-up for the film's later dive into a crueler relationship once Jekyll takes his serum and unleashes Mr. Hyde, their flirtations come across well enough... but the accents are still quite a lot to accept.  Tracy a little less so, seeing as American-accented leads in American productions set in Britain is a fairly common practice, and he strikes a compelling enough figure by simply being Spencer Tracy to make the lack of an effort to put on anything remotely posh easy to filter.  Bergman, however, is only two years out from learning to speak English for her part in Selznick's remake of Intermezzo, and trying her damndest to strangle her natural Swedish accent into a lower-class Irish brogue.  Heaven help her, it's not happening - she slips back into her usual mode with great frequency, and her constant seizing onto dialect snippings like "ain't" or replacing "my" with "me" do little except sound odd coming from someone whose screenpresence was otherwise so refined.  S'a thing you have to sit with and learn to accept across the nearly two-hour runtime, cause it never gets better no matter how hard she tries.

I focus so much on the accenting issues in this first paragraph because I think it's necessary to note the film has some uphill territory to cover before detailing how I believe it traverses the terrain like completely flat ground throughout the second act.  Once Jekyll unleashes Hyde and goes out for a night on the town, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde settles into its true intentions, and produces a second act worth praise all on its own terms.  Not at all what you'd expect with Hyde storming about foggy ol' London Town causing a ruckus in bars and making himself a disreputable member of the community (though the act's opening scenes do give you some've that, if incredibly toned down), the film is most interested in exploring how Hyde acts as a manipulative hand behind Ivy's back to cost her a job, isolate her from her friends, and push as far into depicting their abusive relationship as the Hays Code would allow.  Bergman stands as the focus character for this half-hour stretch, and weird accent or no she's doing a fantastic job of portraying an abuse victim in what feels like a realistic manner.  True, you still get the histrionics that can be recut as Fay Wray-style screams for the trailer, but her response to Tracy's mocking runaround conversations and mind games as he pushes her into giving him what he wants are excellent, doing her best to keep her composure against someone who's obviously harmed and violated her many times over even as he's dead in her face and she's on the verge of breaking entirely.  Scenes set apart from Hyde see her putting on a brave face for friends and tip-toeing around anything she thinks might earn her another assault, suddenly recoiling into a ball of defensive excuses when she can't hide the scars.  On Tracy's end, his Hyde certainly isn't a stunning physical or behavioral transformation compared to some of the more lauded actors to fill the part, yet I think him playing it as merely a crueler, disheveled Jekyll rather than a completely split personality opens the film to further exploration of whether or not his postulations regarding good and evil in the human soul are as accurate or bifurcated as he believes.

Fact, let's talk Jekyll/Hyde theory for a moment before digging further into the film.  Per Jekyll's outline in an early dinner scene, those aspects he calls good and evil are inherit to all, expressed not in totality one way or the other, but intermingling at all times, a little of each depending on the circumstance.  To isolate one from the other, express the evil in a man as a wholly different person from the good-facing side, should follow into the good living with a clear conscience and no impulse to do wrong.  Locked away from one another, one might even eradicate the evil altogether by giving it no outlet, no infusion of serum to bring its full force to bear on the physical world.  Course, as we know from Stevenson's novella, Jekyll cannot be considered a righteous innocent if he indulges Hyde's expression at all, for Hyde is of him, a man born of thoughts and impulses within his own brain, and if the two are to draw on knowledge and memories of the other and mutually regard their back-half as a figure worthy of disgust, then they must know what their mirrored self does and why.  Jekyll might safely say, "It was Hyde who did all those horrible things, Hyde, not Jekyll," yet he alone is responsible for drinking the formula that gives Hyde flesh, just as Hyde is responsible for taking the same to hide behind the guise of Jekyll.  Whatever Hyde does is an exercise of what Jekyll wants to do, and in denying Hyde reflects on him and continually indulging his evil side another night's escapades, Dr. Jekyll's supposedly pure half a soul becomes stained with every drop of blood Mr. Hyde sheds.  If, say, Dr. Jekyll were to continually unleash Mr. Hyde in the name of venting his frustrations over not being able to marry his fiance due to her father's concerns, and allows Hyde to torture and rape an innocent woman because it leaves him feeling better, then it's not really good and evil he's separated: it's presentable and unpresentable, only called by another, morally simplified name.

So!  All this in mind, why on earth does Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ask us to sympathize with Jekyll during the third act?  Despite all the work it puts towards locking our sympathies squarely in Ingrid Bergman's corner, once her scene of pleading with Tracy to save her from the insidious Hyde is over, the film takes a turn towards Hyde coming into prominence without the serum, has him murder Ivy, and spends the remaining half hour fretting over how poor innocent Jekyll has lost control over his totally separate evil side.  It's terribly incongruous, dedicating so much time and effort towards depicting an abusive relationship full of manipulation and heavily implied rape as something horrifying, postulating on how the rapist is not a separate person but the inherent desires of a front-facing "good" man, and then escalating to murder our most sympathetic character before acting like the murdering rapist is somehow still deserving our pity.  Worth noting, I think, the picture doesn't get into Jekyll's perspective during the second act at all, so we're left with a bland reassurance of his goodness without any attempt to explore why he unleashed Jekyll so many times, which can only lead to the worst assumptions about his person.  The whole thing plainly doesn't work, as the story only functions if you throw away everything we've been told about how the Jekyll/Hyde dynamic works here and believe Jekyll a tragic protagonist because he's the protagonist and so should be counted as tragically struck low.  What's more, in refusing to examine the why behind Jekyll's actions or condemn him for it, an entire ACT's worth of material I think excellently executed suddenly feels like a cheap, exploitative depiction of the exact same subject matter, because all Ingrid Bergman's suffering comes to is a quick murder and hand-wringing over how oh, how totally innocent is the man who allowed this atrocity!  Such a powerful depiction of abuse and rape denied a point beyond "Isn't it all so horrifying" does not gain from the absence; it only subtracts, and lessens, and yes, cheapens the whole thing by making it a commodity for entertainment rather than a serious issue.

I do so hate it when lazy storytelling taints an otherwise good aspect in a film with the taste of sand and ash.  I hate it doubly so when it's a film with such beautiful views of a reproduced Victorian London shrouded in fog and enclosed spaces darkened by the presence of a single man, a film with good performances across the board and chilling music and some rather nice if not standout effects sequences for the transition from Jekyll to Hyde and back.  Going with a zeroed-in focus on Hyde as a rapist to one victim has massive potential for a character study into the presumptuous nature of Jekyll and men of his like, but without a point beyond "Don't ya feel sorry for him?" all this good work adds up to a bad film.  The post-film conversation with Connie last night ranged for quite a while longer than usual as we debated whether the film deserved 3 stars for its technical and performative aspects, or 2.5 for its thematic failings.  While I argued in favor of the former for a time, after listening to Connie's perspective and considering it in view of my own history of assessing well-made films with major themeing flaws, I think the lower rating is only right and consistent.  If you're gonna do Jekyll and Hyde and expect the audience to stand with Jekyll at the end, either run with Hyde as a more typical force of mayhem and standard crime, or don't even try if you mean to go so hard on the magnifying-glass look at abuse.  "Man willingly unleashes his devils and terrorizes a woman until he ultimately murders her" and "Man never did anything wrong, pure cinnamon roll, etc" do not jive at all.

(The fades employed to transition between the two aspects are pretty impressive technically when you consider how well each successive shot matches to the next, especially given how many subtle little movements Tracy makes that somehow flow near-seamlessly from one to the next, but the part where they try to focus on his eyes by rendering them as a separate strip over the rest of the picture falls apart the second you notice a horizontal stripe of his head bouncing around independent the rest.)

2.5/5

Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie (2008) - Vietnam DOES have a Bigfoot!

It's the Letterboxd Season Challenge!  Theme eleven, part three- a film distributed by Oscilloscope Laboratories!

(Chosen by John!)

(To be read to the tune of All This Time.)

Events of late make it difficult to say how one should feel about the main subjects of Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie.  In fairness, Dallas Gilbert and Wayne Burton's conspiratorial mindsets should always make it difficult to determine the best approach to understanding them, for a conspiratorial mindset will always mean an otherwise amiable person is given towards myopic views on who knows how many otherwise agreeable topics, towards pushing friends and family away in the name of maintaining ideological purity, and towards twisting the world before their own eyes into something that will always agree with them no matter what.  From the documentary, we know Dallas and Wayne are (were in Dallas' case - he passed in 2016) given to these mindsets, for they admit it readily enough on-camera numerous times.  I more mean, however, that with conspiratorial attitudes taking over so many online spaces friendly towards the elderly in recent years, and with those views being so easily coopted by bad actors looking for an easily riled army to spread more substantially dangerous lies and calls to action amidst the Bigfoot hunting and the UFO spotting, the notion of a harmless conspiracy theorist is difficult to believe in this day.  Any one might prove the pressure point in an online campaign to harass the families of shooting victims, or fire a vulnerable population into protesting coronavirus quarantine protocols, or spread coded language to radicalize the youth.  It's difficult to sit back and believe in the notion of a harmless conspiracy theorist when even belief in Bigfoot is the merest step or two removed from something far more sinister, and with a decade-plus passed from this film's release and Jay Delaney showing little interest in cross-examining his subjects, I don't want to reflexively think kindly of these two when I don't know what the next few years brought.

Let's back off from the bully pulpit, though, and examine the actual film.  Important as it is to acknowledge a documentary cannot show one all the facts, what's on-screen still matters, and what's on-screen here does paint a sympathetic picture.  Dallas talks about estranged family members, Wayne makes it clear he has and continues to use threats of suicide to control people (something I'm inclined towards and find detestable in both myself and others), and both men make it clear they've staked their families' financial futures on proving Bigfoot real, but it's hard to think them wicked figures.  Given a stretch to talk about their mutual passion, both men speak with conviction and passion, and importantly a respect for others who show them respect in turn.  To Dallas' mind in particular, he believes in the Bigfoots he finds in his clearly empty photographs so deeply and dearly, it is more a matter of lacking faith in others that stands in his way of finding proof.  Such an attitude can read as sad, and for sure in a few quiet, solitary moments, he seems morose at how impossible his self-appointed task seems.  Yet from what we see, he's got his family, he's got his beliefs, and even if he doesn't have nearly so much money or respect as he'd like, what he holds is his.  Similar attitudes are evident in Wayne, who talks just as much about his attempts to continually better himself and accept his past failings as he does his regrets over those failings or his oncoming financial and legal woes.

It helps when Delaney captures incidents which incline us to understanding how easily others can takes advantage of Dallas and Wayne, foe and friend alike.  When Wayne appears on an internet radio program to discuss his theories and misspeaks about the timing of showing a photo to a dead friend, it is the host who seizes on the error and mocks Wayne to the point that his followers deface and doxx Dallas' website.  When Thomas Biscardi, a noted Bigfoot hoaxer cum hunter comes to town, the contrast between his hunts and the expeditions Dallas and Wayne undertake do much to frame him as an antagonistic figure.  These two older men go into the woods with their Native American words of power and their cameras ready to capture any moving shadow, the trip as much a reason to spend time with buddies as it is a serious attempt to capture Bigfoot; Biscardi drags everyone out late at night, plays disturbing recorded screams into the dark, and berates and belittles everyone who's not taking his mission to fool people seriously as he is.  The pair are plainly uncomfortable around Biscardi, and yet when he abandons them and skips town the next night, it is still a sad moment for the pair as their chance to work with someone they consider one of the greats slips away.  It's much like Wayne says in a roundabout manner during his (somewhat uncomfortable) rant against all political figures: nobody ever considers them as two old men chasing after something they sincerely believe in.  All anyone ever sees are rubes to mock or exploit or celebrate when they take a lick.

Owing to the evidently serious monetary strain both men place their families under thanks to their focus on Bigfoot rather than more sound routes to money, I can't quite say Dallas and Fred's obsession makes them admirable.  The difference between the mystique of sincere belief and taking it too far is the moment when you stop inconveniencing only yourself and start worsening the lives of those who depend on you. At the same time, though, their strategy for making money rather dispels a good deal of my concerns from the opening paragraph: the pair aren't able to see their blurry nothing photos cannot possibly make them any money, and so lack the dishonesty to fake them and exploit others.  Being victims within their own community who also use their mutual conspiratorial belief as a means through which to bond and better themselves makes me think, whatever happened in the years after this documentary, however the conspiracy theory crowd has become something terrible and ugly beneath the wing of the Alex Jones and Steven Crowders of the world, Dallas and Wayne have likely sequestered themselves away from all that.  I hope to God they have, for while Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie won't win anyone over for its filming or ambition or deep insight into anything beyond these two men and their little corner of Ohio, something in the cozy banjo music and amiable manner from our main subjects makes me want to believe in the goodness of their hearts.  I might not ever see what they see or think what they think, but long as they aren't out there trying to make others less or do harm to the marginalized, I'm happy to let Wayne live as he lives and wish Dallas a restful sleep.

(The Amazon rental for this film includes Delaney's 2001 short, American Dream, which interviewed Dallas and Wayne on the same topic and eventually morphed into this production.  It's nice to see it there, but it's also more focused on just letting the two of them explain their Bigfoot theories than talk about and live their lives, which is the main draw of the feature and not half so interesting, so I can't confidently recommend the short, even if it is only ten minutes.)

The Fits (2015) - Must we choose to be slaves to gravity?

It's the Letterboxd Season Challenge!  Theme eleven, part two - a film distributed by Oscilloscope Laboratories!

(Chosen by Jackie!)

.｡*ﾟ+.*.｡It's exorcising personal demons time*ﾟ..｡*ﾟ+

I've discussed my difficulties participating in middle school and high school sports here a few times before.  Primarily as they pertained to the social aspects, bad interactions with my mental issues and hazing and bullying and the like. The actual running wasn't too easy either, tho, and I don't mean in the sense that pumping your arms and legs hard as possible for miles on end is physically taxing even when you're used to doing so day in and day out.  The part where you feel like you belong to a team, use the energy of those around you to better your performance and feed back into the loop with your own contributions was demanding for someone inclined to hole up inside their own head and define themselves as apart rather than within, especially when forming non-antagonistic relationships was already so difficult.  Even a sport so isolated and self-determined as racing requires an understanding of the self as part of a collective, which proved an understanding I could never fully grasp.  Never hit second gear or second wind or whatever you'd like to call it, never took any interest in what my teammates were doing, always felt stressed and drained by people trying to encourage me instead of boosted like I know they meant.  Really, honestly, truly getting what it means to remain oneself while giving it all to a team is maddeningly difficult, and I'm still not sure I'll ever be capable of putting it into practice.  It's a matter I'm always looking to work on, of course, for one must deal with one's devils in addition to simply acknowledging them, but when you're right on the wire, it almost has to be something you either tap intuitively or can't access at all.

All to say, what jumps at me most about The Fits, the directorial debut of Anna Rose Holmer and acting debut of Royalty Hightower, is how they use main character Toni's struggle to balance her old sport of boxing amongst boys with dancing drills amongst girls as a mysterious psychic illness sends her new friends into spasmic fits to explore that sense of individualism amidst the collective.  An early moment I found particularly telling is Toni's initial audition to join the Lionesses, when older girl and instructor Legs emphasizes the need to think of themselves as a unit, and lays out the complicated series of drill steps they're to demonstrate.  Toni, in a space she's not at all comfortable in just yet, and coming from a background where the camera and sound design have emphasized her tendency to obliterate all save herself for the sake of focus, dances about as badly as everyone else in her new group, yet takes the experience harder.  She's not able to engage in the locker room like her new peer, hiding in a stall to avoid others seeing her change while simultaneously listening in on their calls.  During practice, the camera often spins with Toni as its pivot point, highlighting how everyone around her seems perfectly capable of following the steps, yet she remains slightly out of time, tending to misplace or mistime steps, keeping a barrier between her and the group she wants to join.  She still returns to run stairs and work boxing routines with her brother, and during private moments in these exercises, she practices in isolation and seemingly starts to get it when she feels freer to treat the dance like a fight to be overcome, yet when she returns to group practice it never translates.

There's a fear of losing herself entirely if she clicks with the team, one her interactions throughout the film complicate through interesting wrinkles.  When the titular fits start striking the older girls, we the audience can tell each one manifests differently than the last, and eventually understand they leave no lasting harm, but they're still frightening seizure-like events that disrupt the flow of events and prevent Toni from taking advantage of moments when she's closer to getting it.  The uniform sense of uncertainty they produce, however, also enables Toni to bond with the two girls who take to hanging around her in calmer moments, Maia and Beezy.  Beezy in particular gives rise to many positive interactions, opening doors for Toni with temporary tattoos and ear piercings that mark a more physical transformation, and spending a night running about the fitness center in the dark during a rapturously shot scene, which transitions into a moment of quieter understanding when Toni helps Beezy after she gets scared and pees herself.  For Maia's part, she seems a quieter hanger-on for some time, yet shows herself as a more contemplative older presence, specifically as we move to the third act and Toni is able to have an honest conversation with her after the fits appear more sporadically and make the future of the team more uncertain. Of course, just as everyone starts feeling safe because they think the fits can only impact the older girls, Maia and Beezy have their own fits in short succession, and leave Toni more isolated than ever.

What's interesting here is how this sense of isolation plays into Toni's preexisting feelings of being an intruder in a space not meant for her.  In the downtime between notable events, she's often seen blanching at items signifying her welcomeness to the group - picking at the temporary tattoos, fiddling with the piercings before tearing them out, placing herself a subtle distance away from the main body of girls, pinching and pushing herself.  While her distant, colder relationship with Beezy after the latter has a fit can be read as the fits themselves drawing a line between those who've had them and those who've not, I can't help but wonder if Toni thinks of herself as having caused all this.  She shows up, and all of a sudden what looks to her like a cohesive singular unit starts falling apart and feeling afraid.  Even her own friends start acting distant to her because she's too aggressive and stand-offish before they experience a fit.  Her interactions with the boys' boxing team grow less frequent and more distant throughout the film, until she's looking in on their practice in shots framed to mirror her looking in on the drill team for the first time, except there's no more curiosity, only distant observation.  The things that made her part of this old world seemingly disrupt this new world, yet the new experiences here make it so she can't go back and still feel herself.  All the world seems gray, her ears buzz with anxious pounding rhythms, everyone seems distant, fit or no fit, and Toni just doesn't seem to belong anywhere.

So we come the finale, when Toni has her own fit, and it makes one question just how much these are truly negative experiences.  True, they're outwardly frightening, striking at random and producing different effects in each person, yet we've also inhabited the perspective of someone who doesn't possess the faculties or insight to understand what anyone who experiences a fit truly makes of it.  In Toni's case, when her feet leave the ground, and she dances the routine with an energy and individual strength not seen prior to this, we come to understand the experience as one of gained insight.  She envisions herself approaching the covered bridge where she and her brother practiced, shedding her gray sweatsuit to reveal the spangled, colorful Lioness uniform beneath, and dances in perfect time with her team in a variety of locations visually defined as her's throughout the film.  Understanding of the matter I outlined above comes to her for the first time: that it's not about becoming less to contribute to a whole, but about making a whole from many wholes, using the greater flow to build what's already within you, and expand the energy outward in kind.  Yet despite this revelatory moment, we don't see the aftermath.  Toni's teammates are still shown as intimidated by her dance, and when she falls to the floor smiling in the last shot, all we get afterwards is the Lioness hype chant and a return to the tingling, anxious music over the credits.  She gets it now, and will likely have a chance at building her friendships again, but do her revelations match to what her friends came to understand?  We aren't to know.

The Fits offering no insight into what comes next seems appropriate to me.  Much work as Holmer and production/writing collaborators Lisa Kjerulff and Saela Davis put into crafting a world where we can instinctively understand Toni's internal divide, the mysterious, otherworldly nature of her own fit pairs perfectly with what I talked about above.  The actual click is internal and personal in a way no camera or cut can adequately capture - we can only see the aftermath, and the film's conflict is more about Toni coming to balance her two worlds and be comfortable in her own skin than actually dancing as part of the Lionesses.  If she feels she's mastered it, and can show such mastery to others even in the midst of what they've come to view as a scary experience, then we must take whatever comes next on faith.  Perhaps I only think this way because I never got to this point, and remain uncertain whether I ever can.  From listening to the commentary on Criterion this morning, though, I feel confident saying the filmmakers achieved such intuition, and crafted a powerful film about the same,whilst exploring matters of gender expression and growing up in the same breath.  An intense, multitudinous picture, The Fits is bound to register as a profoundly personal experience for all who watch and remember the struggle of trying to be one for the sake of all.

4/5

Kedi (2016) - Cats know that people act as middlemen to God's will.

It's the Letterboxd Season Challenge!  Theme eleven, part one - a film distributed by Oscilloscope Laboratories!

(Chosen by me!)

I should like to avoid melancholy while writing this review.  Kedi is exactly the film to get me feeling depressive in the watching, thanks to its documentation of the cats from Istanbul including numerous scenes of people tending to stray kittens and discussing their methods for dealing with death and monologuing about modern developments making the city less suitable for humans and animals alike.  It's enough to inspire thoughts of personal inadequacy and inability to handle a crisis, or fall into the depths of fear towards losing pets and loved ones, or spiral the drain of powerlessness at the advance of progress taking away green spaces and wild places.  I've issues aplenty readily triggered by seeing these sights, and I could very easily dedicate the entire review to a bleak, despairing outlook.  However, while Kedi contains these passages as a matter of necessity, in order to honestly discuss all aspects of life with cats in the Turkish city, it is not dominated by them.  The dominant mode is one of watching and appreciating and loving cats, celebrating all they do, and our role as their companions and caretakers.  If Ceyda Torun has the fortitude to film and edit and present such sad sights, I have the emotional strength to discuss her movie as its own thing, an even piece of documentation whose highs are equally worth discussing as its lows.

What makes Kedi so special a film, worthy your consideration beyond offering eighty minutes of cats running around doing their thing?  Universality, I think.  Between the structure built around a glimpse into the daily lives of seven different cats throughout the city with plenty breaks to trace the non-central players as well, the interviews with the people most familiar with these four-legged inhabitants, and the wide scope Torun and her crew trace across Istanbul, Kedi imparts a strong sense of kindred spirithood across the distance.  Of finding feline personalities similar to those we know wherever we are, of applying personhood to the cats and thinking of them as we would any other neighbor, of feeling an ethical obligation to ensure their health and safety, of balancing the scales between getting so little in return for so much effort and understanding the nuances of their affection for mutual benefit.  Cliched (and untrue if we're honest) as it remains to call love for cats or any other companion animal the one global constant across all cultures and walks of life, the film is inclined to make anyone who loves cats believe the idea by virtue of showing us so much.  A man breaking off an interview to take an injured kitten to the vet for emergency help, a woman with depressive issues talking about how caring for the alleycats in her neighborhood proves therapeutic, a sailor alternately discussing the history of cats in Istanbul and wondering at their supernatural side, numerous off-screen narrations describing the personalities they find in the local psychopath and the ladies' cat and the social butterfly and the conniving thief - amidst it all, you're liable to stop and say, "Hey, I've known/know a cat like that!" or else, "I've done that/thought like this before!" and the distance between you and Istanbul becomes a vacuum and collapses instantly.  Might not work for everyone, but it certainly worked for the whole watch party last night, and worked constantly.

There is, I've seen, some debate as to whether the inclusion of the human interview segments dilutes the film any, takes away from the potential of a work purely dedicated to watching the cats go about their business free from interpreting voices.  Being as great a lover of purity in form as I am, I can definitely see the argument, and think it has merit.  After all, the universal appeal of cats is quite obvious on the face of it, just by how utterly dominant videos of the same have been in the culture before even the internet - America's Funniest Home Videos and the like.  It would doubtless make a wonderful meditative experience, the only voice the silent word of the camera operators and editors as they guide us through the streets from a cat's eye view.  In total, though, I think the imposition worth it, for the simple reason that verbalizing the humanity the human residents find in the cats is probably the most potent idea Torun advances through Kedi.  To find human traits in the non-human animal is, of course, a quirk of the human condition, a somewhat ridiculous extension of useful traits that proved adaptive to survival many millennia ago.  We all do it, though, because lifelong/generational proximity is bound to engender such thinking patterns, and while we might agree this or that cat has this or that personality from simply watching, part of the point is that vacuum collapse, and one feels certain in their thinking far better if another speaks and confirms yes, I do think this cat is a little clingy, or a bit of a troublemaker, or very suave for a cat.  In effect, we need the humanity of the people as they commentate on the humanity of the cats to find the commonality across it all just a little bit clearer.

You run the risk of losing common agreement when you go the tone poem route, and despite thinking cats excellent subjects for a tone poem, I do not think Torun's vision for Kedi runs down that route.  It is not merely about the cats of Istanbul, but the cats of Istanbul, and the people of Istanbul, and modern Istanbul itself, as viewed through the frame of cats.  You could focus on them exclusively and count on the resonance of the city and its movements in the background to communicate the same ideas, or you could keep it all in frame and find the unifying whole with an unusual subject at the forefront.  Either choice works, since cats are cats and lovely subjects all the same, but Kedi is only Kedi if the people vocalize alongside their less verbal furry friends, in the same way I only feel right discussing the film in total effect rather than drilling into what strikes me hardest about the watching experience.  It's fine and good to take a single idea and squeeze it until all potential is wrung and a paint can be derived from its contents with which you paint the whole canvas.  It's perhaps more worthwhile (and in my case, healthier) to draw from many sources, and coat the canvas with all you can acquire.  Striking though a solid color block be, the total picture of life best emerges when you consider the joy of a cat leaping from ground to roof in a single bound alongside the human who marvels at their superhuman power, and the lamentations at how they can't do more for the less fortunate.  It's all necessary to get what's going on.

(I do so love Gamsız and his little sideways knock.  Hope he and all the other cats are still doing fine four years on.)

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) - There seems to have existed a visual convention extending all the way beyond Baywatch.

It's the Letterboxd Season Challenge!  Theme ten, part three - a cinéma vérité film!

(Chosen by John!)

Let's not make the whole, "Well this film isn't good, proper, Christian cinéma vérité in the true sense, but the list said it was and we stick to our picks," thing a little postscript at the end.  Let's address the matter right up front: director Werner Herzog is not one to embrace the theory of observational cinema.  When he's crafting fiction, he is determined to leave his thumbprint on the work prominently as possible with his often unsafe working practices and method of handling actors; when helming a documentary, his unique, strangely compelling voice is perpetually at the forefront, and we are given constant reminders of how there is a camera, and lights, and a crew, and the person of Werner Herzog involved in every stage of production.  He will not vanish into the background like a fly on a wall, and indeed noted his belief that a director should instead serve as a hornet constantly attacking their subject in an interview chronicled by the New York Times around Cave of Forgotten Dreams' American release.  We have, to all appearances, chosen a film whose contents scantly reflect the tradition of an invisible camera and subjects captured in perfectly natural surroundings.  As he notes, by virtue of the Chauvet cave paintings' depth within their cavernous home both upon initial creation and after a rockslide buried the initial entrance from view, one cannot appreciate them without artificial light, be it from a torch or stage light.  Herzog and his crew at first cannot stand in this space without accompaniment from researchers well-versed in the safety protocols and history behind the cave, and because they are along for the ride, we are going to hear more than plenty from them throughout the film, their words addressed directly to Herzog and the camera.  Peppered throughout we find many vignettes showing the work towards digitally mapping every inch of the cave, inspecting reproduced artifacts from nearby sites in a museum, talking of ancient hunting practices and music and sniffing for cave scents.  Cave of Forgotten Dreams is anything but cinéma vérité, moreso than High School owing to Wiseman's disdain for the term, or Man with a Movie Camera due to Vertov predating the very idea.

And yet, for all this, Herzog does employ techniques we might call purely observational.  At a few key points throughout and most prominently for the climax, he ceases his speech, banishes all persons from the frame, and chooses to only film the paintings in all their preserved beauty.  It is of course impossible to say there's NO intended influence from the director or crew in these passages - he places so much emphasis on the importance of light in making the animals on the walls dance and move in a proto-cinema earlier in the film, it's impossible to ignore how his own lights shift across the rockface - but by comparison there is no guiding hand musing about the nature of those who came here before, no expert detailing why certain images are so fascinating.  When we come down to the matter, it is simply us, the painted animals, and the temporal distance collapsed to zero.  One expects this in a documentary cave paintings, naturally.  If you're gonna take a camera into a fragile location sealed off to all save a handful of experts, you'll eventually stop talking and show what you've found to show.  Why make note of Herzog staying quite when anyone with even the tiniest awareness of how incredible it is to find a direct link to a moment and people 32,000 years past would keep their trap shut?

I do so because I think, despite Herzog's disdain for observational cinema and his tendency to make knowing Werner Herzog is behind all this a top priority, his limited use of observational techniques here is more effective for their sharing time with his usual methods than they would as a total work in themselves.  Pan the camera across the walls, let us appreciate the paleolithic artwork, and it is all awe-inspiring, yes, but the context is so much more.  The paintings become more incredible when someone who knows what's up explains how we can trace the journey of one particular painter through the tunnels thanks to his crooked little finger, when we are given cause to deliberately contemplate the fragility of the calcite structures, when someone explains the limitations that prevent us from getting a full look at an angularly protruding stalactite with a union of woman and bull painted round its circumference.  To follow the archaeologists and art historians and geologists and even the strange perfumer fellow who's determined to find new caves by identifying their musk and following his nose is to gain necessary knowledge, place a specific idea behind WHY we find these images of hunts and wilds long extinct so compelling.  Equipped with this understanding, when we are finally left alone like Herzog and his crew in the furthest confines of the cave, with only these ancient paintings before our eyes, we are able to draw on that which we now know, consider them more fully, and feel our unnamed hypnotic compulsion to look and drink and be one with our ancestors coalesce into an informed sense of commonality.  For my part, knowing more about how they took advantage of the texture and contours of the cave walls sharpened my appreciation for how their tableaux takes on the appearance of a plain observed from a high place, certain features tangibly in the distance, others obscured by foliage and rock formations and the like.  It became a true window into another time, thanks to my learning how and possibly why it was made this way.

 My regular readers will note I constantly harp about purity of form when it comes to movies, dolling out greater praise for works that achieve in one particular manner to a sharpened peak.  While my aesthetic preferences will typically swing this way, it's important to note the equal strength found in a marriage between disciplines.  The tradition behind cinéma vérité, when coupled with a more usual form of heavy-handed, carefully guided documentation, can reveal untold truths about the subject when we finally do back off and look with nothing more than mechanical eyes.  With regards to the Chauvet cave and the paintings within, I wonder whether a more adamantly observational director, interested only in filming the walls, could have captured the same sense of compressed time Herzog manages here?  Learning as we do before our time with light against ancient paint and older stone grants the paintings a stronger sense of humanity, some more visible image of an early homo sapien crouched before their work, bringing it to life before our eyes as we puzzle out their thought processes, their intents, their dreams.  Would the cave speak so legible a tongue if presented on its own, or do we truly need all Herzog includes as a Rosetta stone?  Furthermore, could this explain why Herzog chooses to focus on the albino crocodiles in a nuclear power plant-dependent jungle enclosure several miles away?  After all, the crocodillians will not have any guides or experts to inform them about what the paintings could mean or why their creators chose to draw them, anymore than the tourists in Lascaux would in the days those paintings were open to a mold-breeding public.  In an artistic, anthropomorthized sense, when they see what we see, free from intellectual guidance, will they too dream of the horse on the open plain?

Do Crocodiles Dream of Wild Horses is the name of my new album, look for it on store shelves.

Man with a Movie Camera (1929) - An experimentation in the cinematic communication of visual phenomena.

It's the Letterboxd Season Challenge!  Theme ten, part two - a cinéma vérité* film!

(Chosen by Jackie!)

Dziga Vertov so believed in cinema, he renamed himself for the camera's motion, from the Ukrainian for "spinning top."  His faith in the mechanical eye's ability to capture actualities as they happened, free from any need for characters or narrative, formed the basis for his goals in Man with a Movie Camera.  The three-year project was to serve as a revolutionary cry in support of cinema as the modern art of the people, an artform capable of capturing an entire city in motion without resorting to the techniques of theater or literature, or indeed any medium other than the purely cinematic.  Per the conventional wisdom, he succeeded in his aims while failing to reach the public, crafting an experimental piece of pure filmmaking the likes of which have rarely, if ever, been equaled, just unfortunately timed to release after Battleship Potemkin made a Soviet realist approach the popular mold at home and abroad.  He was, tradition holds, a man fighting the whole weight of narrative film with something completely detached from narrative.  To my eye, however, watching Man with a Movie Camera reveals Vertov failed in even this respect, for his film does adhere to a three-act structure, does communicate in the language of those who came before.  I do not count this failure as a failure he could have avoided, though, nor a failure that speaks to Man with a Movie Camera falling short of its primary goals - rather, I consider it a demonstration of how handily Vertov illustrated the possibility for a moving image to speak the human tongue, and ultimately be a human art.

Let me explain.

The film proper begins with a movie camera atop a movie camera, and the theater's patrons settling into their seats as a projectionist brings the house lights down and the projector to speed, but the first we see of our true subject denies motion entirely.  Our city in the morning is asleep, the rich and poor alike in repose in their quilted bed and bare park benches, the storefronts speak to no one, the great machines all still and quiet.  Trace of activity attract attention ever so slowly: the early risers walking the streets, the pigeons aflutter in the air, the man with the movie camera trotting the landscape and preparing his shots for the day.  With time, the residents rise and busy themselves with freshening and dressing for the day, some already tirelessly working as others blink sleep from their eyes and reluctantly go through the motions.  Even the camera must take time to adjust to the light and focus on the right details and keep its shutter open.  Soon, the traffic begins, workers appearing from nowhere to ready the planes and trains and automobiles, beginning the day's delicate balance of a thousand vehicles narrowly avoiding ten thousand pedestrians.  The pace of life is not entirely even, for the shopworkers have the luxury of sleeping longer than the street cleaners and and transit operators, yet they too must rise and prepare for the day as the machines that truly power the city are brought to life - these, it must be noted, show no hesitance, instantly springing to life and achieving full speed within seconds.  Inside twenty minutes, Vertov and cameraman brother Mikhail Kaufman have brought their subject to its full swing, the camera tracing Kaufman as he places himself in out of the way places to get the shot, slipping under barreling locomotives and perching atop moving cars and walking against the crowd and climbing to high perches to find just what he needs.  All is as it always is...

...and then we transition with a stop.  We move from establishment to exploration with a moment's consideration for the editor, Vertov's wife Yelizaveta Svilova, as she holds the celuloid in its raw, unmoving state, and brings it to life with careful cuts.  Initially an invisible hand taken for granted, we will see her numerous times throughout the remainder of the film, keeping us firmly aware that someone must make these images dance as they do, in addition to our existing awareness towards their place in the movie theater and their selection by someone holding the camera.  The kino eye IS perfect in capturing exactly what it is set to capture, exactly as it is before its lens, but it is nothing without those who operate and discern.

Speaking of operation and discerning, we come to our second act, exploring the city's operations.  Vertov contrasts images more here than at any other point in the film, and it is interesting what he chooses to contrast in what order.  The usual choices are right up front, the camera swiveling atop a balcony to capture marriage and divorce at the same instant, a baby's birth and a man's funeral, the celebration of new beginnings and the mourning inherent to passing.  From this lofty comparison of ultimate extremes, he suddenly finds interest in that delicate balance again, positioning the camera between trams and atop trains and at intersections to capture how readily accidents COULD happen, and how narrowly it all speeds on, even tilting mirrored images towards one another to squash Kaufman between passing vehicles with barely an inch to spare - and then we take a minute or two to watch those who ARE unfortunate enough to take a hit, and the rescue and medical services which follow.  Necessity must compliment indulgence, so we next turn our attention to those who partake in leisure and service during working hours, and intercut them with those who package and craft and toil to keep the same functional.  Notably, halfway into this sequence Vertov starts prominently cutting Svilova's editing process in place of the other workers, arguing for the act of movie-making as laborious and necessary a task as wrapping products and tending weaves and minding traffic.  He does not, I think, places these images against one another to imply conflict, for the laborers are shown to enjoy their task just as much as the patrons do their constant repose, and he does them great kindness by then placing them in complimentary positions against the act's grand finale, the thunder of machines.  Mines, forges, power plants, enormous dams, the necessary lifeblood of the modern metropolis, all captured at the height of their operation, tunnels and pools and rushes of water so great they darken all but themselves... and still, the workers and the man with the movie camera are distinctly visible, their actions presented as essential to the continued movement of it all.

And so we stop again, if in a less jarring way than the sudden freeze frame of the first transition.  The factory workers power down their machines, the laborers put down their labor, and the whole city moves to a third act, one of leisure and play.  We engage ourselves at the beach, the track, the amusement park as the people magically fade into their places naturally as you please, and Vertov becomes endlessly fascinated with their activities.  On those who partake in sport, he makes time to freeze on their most dynamic action, capturing both the total motion and the instant of the human body in peak exertion.  The beachside visitors he photographs simply for their own sake as people.  We watch as many become purposefully dirty before washing off at the same instant, see the children enjoy a magic show as the dancers kick and the track stars hurdle and the carnival-goers shoot and the  motorists ride, the millions upon millions doing as they please with the hours they are given.  Through it all there is the man with the movie camera, Kaufman towering over the tallest buildings and rising from unlikely places to get his shot, the great mechanical eye capturing reverse games of chess and excess drinking at the bar from whatever angle is needed.  As the editing grows faster and the images of the day's activities begin to blur into one impression of pure movement, even the camera takes a break, gamboling an awkward dance atop its spindly legs free from the operator's influence.  At this point, we might expect the film to end with another stoppage, watching as weariness sets in and the city goes to sleep, resting for yet another day of weeks of months of years of this endless ballet we call life.

But Vertov does not stop.  The city does not come to rest.  Instead, it splinters, magnifies, kaleidoscopes into many.  Numerous complimentary views fill the screen all at once, reflections of the city as the every-city, the images we have seen before folding on themselves to become the all that is one.  Rather than halt, the city ascends, returning us to the movie theater to watch as it becomes the very nature of the film before Vertov's audience, before, as we might assume, every audience.  The city IS the art, and as we can see by way of Vertov positioning Kaufman as a giant filming his subjects on the screen one last time, so too are those who create such art.  While the kino eye is great, we have already established its limitations, and here we see this expressed in as literal manner as possible: Kaufman's filming as part of the film itself, and the final shuttering montage of Svilova cutting cut itself with the audience, the film, the cameraman, the camera, until we reach our last, enduring image of her eye within the camera's eye.  It must, Vertov argues, all be one.  The city, the people, the subject, the camera, the operator, the director, the very idea of cinema as the modern art - by their total nature as solid, true subjects before the camera's eye, the mechanical and human alike must BE cinema, nothing more, nothing less.

Vertov, I think, fails to make his point in as pure a manner as he hoped because to tell stories in the mode we are conditioned to understand stories is as much part of what he wanted to capture as the city free from story.  Stripped from all but the barest framing device, however, I also think he makes his point as beautifully as he could possibly have done.  Man with a Movie Camera both is and isn't film freed from all that came before; it answers to the master of segmented structure same as any other tale, while performing under this one remaining constraint as only a movie can, through the contrast of living images and nothing else.  Failure here becomes success, proving his point in a more roundabout manner than his own preferred firebrand manner, and in the process becoming a piece of motion picture-making appreciable to any eye.  He truly makes the photoreceptors of glass and viscera one and the same, the idea of a city and its people as they are the natural subjects for both to consider and subsume, and I would even go so far as to say he does so to such great effect as to make the eventual dominance of narrative cinema something in line with his views.  His techniques here became the basis for so much of the cinematic language as we now speak it, whether directly taken from his visual text or recreated by others further on down the line; regardless of the moving picture lacking so clean a cut as he fought towards, the form is distinctly its own entity according to the pattern he illustrated all the same.

(*Which, again, it's not really cinéma vérité, predating the concept as it does by a good 40 years or so, but we chose what we chose from our list, and some of Vertov's views on the camera as the perfect objective eye do fit with the "fly on the wall" idea behind the movement.)

High School (1968) - It's against my principles, you have to stand for something.

It's the Letterboxd Season Challenge!  Theme ten, part one - a cinéma vérité* film!

(Chosen by me!)

The uniting theme of discussions about Frederick Wiseman's 1968 documentary High School typically holds Wiseman shot and edited the faculty of Philadelphia's Northeast High School to argue they less teach their students the assigned curriculum and valuable skills for independent living, and more constantly drill and drone and degrade with the end goal of producing uniformly gray members of a conformist system.  Some arguments further advance this notion by noting how the film takes place against a backdrop of the counterculture revolution and growing dissatisfaction with the war in Vietnam, and construe intent to paint certain amongst the teachers and disciplinary staff as doubling down on their usual techniques in the vain hope of halting the crushing tide.  It is an understandable perspective to adopt, both in face of how Wiseman presents ample scenes of students trapped beneath apparent doubletalk and quickly escalating punishment and the endless bore of great poetry made bland by bad reading, and how the 1960s carry a commonly accepted Identity in the generally held western world and the United States in particular.  This was a time of Unrest, of Change, of the youth who'd seen a rise in visibility and souring of temperament over the preceding decades finally coalescing into a Movement - whether you're living through the moment as with audiences and critics of its day or watching from a distance as now, the image of a teacher reading private correspondence from a student convinced they'll die in Vietnam against that student's expressed wish for privacy within the letter, and then claiming their success as a grunt destined to die in some anonymous jungle is proof High School works conjures the image of a system that's either failing its intended goals, or meeting them perfectly.

I understand these perspectives, and I agree Wiseman's film is cut and presented to drive the idea firmly as he can manage.  His vignettes are carefully chosen and placed in relation to one another with visible intent of wearying on the strength of collective memories within similar halls and against similar authority figures.  High School is a film sympathetic to the teenager in all of us, the person trapped in a sterile, nonstimulative environment for hours of the most valuable years of our lives, wishing the prick at the front of the room would shut up and let us go five minutes early.  It understands your feeling the adults are dead set on grinding every last piece of you from your person with arbitrary rules and unfair detentions and lessons about what a REAL man does, what CONSEQUENCES there'll be in the REAL world if you don't toe the line, how the line and the toeing thereof is the be-all end-all from the moment you graduate to death's door.  I hold it is right for Wiseman and his work to adopt and argue this perspective, for the experience of being in school and blanching against authority is near-universal; even as someone who socialized better with their teachers than their peers and took to lessons so well I'd actively ask for extra work just to keep the mental stimulation going, I've been in the spot of thinking this is all designed to get rid of me and replace that with what THEY want.  You'll clash against authority and find you're not as equal as you'd like in your teenage years one way or another, model student or no.

I hold, however, that a screed against teachers as willing engines of conformity is not all High School contains for the discerning eye.  Indeed, I'm of a mind to argue the film's just as sympathetic towards the faculty and staff as it is the students who struggle beneath their byzantine rules.  Call it a lingering niggle of doubt born from liking my instructors better than the people who'd shun or belittle me, but I cannot believe the high school experience is truly MEANT for such grinding with individualism as the meat.

One has to understand, the film shows Northeast High School as an unpleasant environment for anyone within its confines.  The only people who show a spark of humor or vibrancy are those who don't have to call its blank white brickwork and uncovered fluorescent lights home forty weeks of the year, parents and guest speakers and the like.  The building itself is an unpleasant, confining structure, and the activities going on within are repetitive by nature, necessarily so if a student is to hypothetically retain any information.  Thing is, while we are only shown a lesson or so per classroom, a single meeting of a club, a few handful of shots in the gym, a limited glimpse into the most telling examples of teachers and administrators failing to reach their charges, you must know, from common experience, there is so much more we don't see.  Lesson plans repeated across days, the same faces week after week, the same lessons year after year.  Routine serves as a millstone for those who have to enforce it as well, because there are still people responsible for said enforcement, people who must balance the nightmarish task of imparting information in an interesting, retentive manner, and remaining distant enough from their pupils to act accordingly when a stronger hand is needed.  Both the English teacher reading "Casey at the Bat" in a monotone that robs the poem of all life, and the English teacher trying to make learning cool by teaching Simon and Garfunkel's "The Dangling Conversation" and failing to roue any interest fall prey to the same problem - this environment is not good for anybody.

How could it be?  The United States model of education asks the impossible of those who serve at its whim, to perform as robots while remaining available as a thinking emotional creature when needed, to educate a body of hundreds while thinking of each unit as a person worthy attention and nurturing, to do this until you can perform no more and yet never show signs of fatigue.  The teachers and faculty here can only look bad before Wiseman's camera, for the easiest, most natural response to such conditions is to do whatever you can to get through the goddamned day.  It'd make everything so much easier if nobody piped up or made trouble, if everyone just did as they're told and marched through freshman to senior years without requiring special attention, if those who DID require special attention were dealt with quickly and easily so you can get onto the dozens more who require the same today alone.  All this against a backdrop  of barren walls and glaring lights and prison-like air and the knowledge you'll have to keep coming in again and again and again, that if you leave to do anything else either someone will replace you and endure the same, or no one will and your colleagues will struggle to pick up the slack.  A drive for conformity, I think, arises not because anyone particularly wants to live in a world where marching in lockstep and speaking as expected when expected and thinking authority should not be questioned, but because we've all inherited into a situation so difficult and grinding and so very terribly samey that trying for control is perhaps the response requiring the least effort.

It sucks.  It does.  For everyone.  Understandable as the reaction is, the students are the ones who suffer because their instructors are pressured until they too ask the impossible from their charges, which is the real tragedy of the high school experience, which is why Wiseman's High School is the way it is.  To balance his film between the two perspectives would lose the raw expression of what it feels like to endure these conditions and lessen the youthful drive to push back and be new and different and stubborn on purpose, yet to leave the limitation of its present state with regards to how the situation comes about in the first place unacknowledged is wrong to my mind.  It'd be ever so nice if I could conclude here by saying the solution is and always will be greater mindfulness about what the easy road will do to those around and below you under strenuous circumstances, for those in charge of education to give it their all every single day to the last and fashion a better environment.  Aware as I am, though, of the ever-diminishing value of education by those in power above our instructors, of the constant underfunding across the country, of how even with maximum effort there ARE the bad actors who want to exercise power and genuinely do see the goal of education as the production of unthinking drones subservient to the whims of those who'd use them as gears in a revenue-generating machine or pawns in a holy war... I cannot make such a suggestion in good faith.  Best I can say is we should ditch those enclosed buildings and make the switch to open-air like the schools I came up in, because honestly, so much of the oppressive environment comes down to not getting any goddamned air or sun between classes, students and teachers alike.  Can't bear the thought of working there for decades on end.

(*I know Frederick Wiseman prefers the term "observational documentary" for his films, but the list we were linked to as example includes it as an option, so we're sticking to our guns here.)

The Wizard of Oz (1939) - What makes the muskrat guard his musk?

It's the Letterboxd Season Challenge!  Theme nine, part two - a film named a 20th century milestone in cinematography by the American Society of Cinematographers!

(Chosen by John!)

Fellas, fellets, all in-between, let me tell y'all somethin' - it's tough out there sometimes.  Some weeks you wind up emotionally exhausting yourself for multiple days over a lot of trivial here and there, and just don't have it in you to go through the usual motions, like writing out a detailed review for one of the greatest films ever made, even if it's one you personally love to pieces across every aspect.  I've burned myself out well and good here, but I'm still looking to provide y'all with at least a little decent content at a pace of once a week anyhow.  Fortunately, since we're looking at The Wizard of Oz, I've already got a review in my back pocket from when I first watched it at a TCM Live event in January of last year for another challenge!

Having reread my work and slept on it, I still largely agree with what I wrote, and feel I don't have any lengthy new insight a scant year later anyhow.  As such, after a few brief bullet pointed thoughts that'll probably flit between stray observations and jokes, I'll present you with my full review of Dorothy's adventures, and see you on the flipside for when we start the cinéma vérité leg of this journey with High School.  Hope you lot have a decent time staving off the coronavirus, and just remember what Charles Manson said about reruns on Family Guy: "If I haven't seen it, it's new to me!"

• We can all agree the ASC likely chose this film as one of the 20th century's great achievements in cinematography due to its stunning, popularizing use of Technicolor to make audiences believe in the Land of Oz like no cinematic fantasyland prior.  I'll definitely agree with this, but think it worth noting how Harold Rosson's camerawork goes the extra mile to sell Oz and its tangibility in much the same way his work on the titular musical number from Singin' in the Rain.  The sets on the MGM lot are quite obviously sets, with visibly painted walls and plainly fake plants and all the trappings of reality achieved via paint and wood and fabric, yet the camera tracks a course through these spaces in such a way as to make them feel all the more vast and expansive than they already are.  It'll pan through Munchkinland or seamlessly take us through multiple sets to create the impression of a longer Yellow  Brick Road or position the character skipping towards a flat horizon, and by this movement and emphasis on space make it all feel as if it really does go on forever.  Regardless of how obvious the seams are, your brain honestly believes this is how Oz should be because the camera is so free to explore and convince you there's forever more to be seen.
• I only briefly mention her below, and I haven't much to add others haven't noted in the preceding century, but Margaret Hamilton's performance as the Wicked Witch of the West really is one of the all-time greats, huh?  The cackle, the hunched, stalking movement, the obvious sense of enjoyment and frustration with every action, the energized presence of an actress who'd reprise the role many times over across the next fifty years out of simple love for the part.  Imagine anyone else doing half so well.  I can't.
• There's so much to unpack from the line, "Only bad witches are evil," that the world needed to craft an entire multimedia empire with one of the most popular live stageshows ever produced at the center just to explore all the implications.
• You'd think the Tin Man would be a terrible choice for putting out a fire, considering how oily he is at all times.
• I've said it before and I'll say it again - I earnestly believe films with this style and approach to effectswork, not just the hoary old "We should ditch CGI and go back to practical effects!" argument, but a total embrace of taking the conventions of stage plays and giving them the best polish studio money can buy can still have a place in the modern cinematic landscape.  Please, anyone, I beg you, give me more soundstage reality productions, they're too glorious and dear to my heart to believe audiences wouldn't respond well anymore.
• Much as it is fun to joke about movies and throw up a cynical affect at times, I really can't be insincere about this film.  Although I didn't note it in the review below, at the time I told Adept how the Munchkin Land sequence felt distinctly of its time and difficult to appreciate on its own terms, and how the Cowardly Lion's "King of the Forest" song felt like weird filler to keep the film moving rather than a fully realized work on its own terms.  These were my only complaints after my first watch, and on a second I cannot possibly imagine what I was talking about.  They're both delightful segments in a film bursting with delight and charm and whimsy and life, and I can only think I meant they felt the least of a work where everything is at the top of its game and endlessly timeless.  I watched both with the biggest of smiles alongside everything else this time, and as such feel no qualms about bumping what was initially a 4.5 star review up to a perfect 5.  It's just... so terribly good, I haven't words, aside from what I'm about to repeat.

So!

***

To dive right into the heart of the matter, The Wizard of Oz succeeded as a piece of family fantasy entertainment and entrenched itself as THE definitive vision for fantasies in live action until George Lucas upended the game some forty years later entirely because it fails to deliver its moral. Owing to the producers fearing audiences were too sophisticated to believe in Oz as a real place one might escape to, the film ends with the revelation that Dorothy merely dreamt the land of scarecrows and tin men and lions and witches, the parts of her closest allies and greatest enemy having been played by people from her average, everyday life. To give the producers some credit (as if their role in overseeing one of the greatest achievements in factory filmmaking wasn't already credit enough), it's a good decision, as it helps emphasize and transform the book's original standard fantasy adventure ending of "It's so good to be home again" into the more basally resonant, ever-iconic "There's no place like home!" which is a solid moral for a children's story. The visual stylings include little touches emphasizing the idea of comings and goings, and Dorothy's departure from Oz becomes a strong bittersweet moment when we realize the spirit of these lovable characters lives on in their real world counterparts, if not the exact forms we grew to adore.

But it is an utter failure nonetheless. The Wizard of Oz boasts larger than life, blisteringly colorful reality by way of a soundstage fantasy, the sort where you can't help but believe this is EXACTLY the way the Land of Oz should look, even if you can pinpoint the spot where set dressing turns into painted wall at all times. It has some of turn-of-the-century's most beloved children's literary characters realized through still-technically-impressive makeup and soft, charming performances from up-and-comers and vaudeville staples alike. It moves at a great clip, has little touches of comedy at every turn (I was just... so glad to hear the reactions of people who've obviously loved this film for decades and still get the fullest enjoyment out of it in the theater today), and a sentimental approach to every aspect of the production so strong that you can easily forget how brutal studio work could get eighty years back. It has the "If I Only Had A..." songs, and "Ding-Dong the Witch Is Dead!", and "We're Off To See the Wizard", and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", for chrissake.

You can't make a movie with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and not have people believe it. Bringing a fantasy world to life and then telling your audience they should really be grateful for their warm bed and loved ones is always a hard sell, because you simply cannot spend so much money making the fantasy world look the way it does and expect home to look even half so attractive. In the case of Oz, Mervin LeRoy and Victor Flemming and the veritable army of MGM staffers responsible for this world did such a good job making its scenery and inhabitants feel real and immediate, the decision to deny their reality at the end comes across as little more than an attempt to avoid stepping on the toes of a far more conservative America.

Thank God the film fails. If it were to sell you on the notion of Oz as a nice fantasy, but ultimately less preferable than life on the Kansas farm, it would require a far inferior Oz. Perhaps a less menacing Wicked Witch, or a less lush Munchkin Land, or a less joyous Emerald City, or - heaven forbid! - a less endearing Cowardly Lion. Something would have to go wrong for Kansas to ring true as the best of all worlds, and then where would we be? In a time where the film doesn't continue to birth homages and inspirations for how to make the impossible believable? When its themes didn't resonate so powerfully in the wakes of both the Great Depression on original release and World War II on rerelease as to serve as a comforting delight for children the world over? When audiences would ever want to do anything but hug the Cowardly Lion and never leave him behind because he's perfect just the way he is?

No, it's better that The Wizard of Oz fails to convince the audience of a healthier moral. Such pure, unbridled fantasy took near-inhuman levels of personal sacrifice and compromise to bring to the screen. We almost saw a classic encapsulation of the studio system in its prime and the American willingness to accept flying monkeys and fraudulent wizards changed into something totally unrecognizable a million times over in the development process. A film like this is, after its own fashion, a miracle, and should a miracle stumble over its words while trying to instruct us on loving our home more than a land over the rainbow, then why not take advantage of its failure to communicate and live there for a while? Happy little bluebirds fly - why, then, oh why can't we?

5/5

The Duellists (1977) - I have submitted to your notions of honor long enough.

It's the Letterboxd Season Challenge!  Theme nine, part two - a film named a 20th century milestone in cinematography by the American Society of Cinematographers!

(Chosen by Jackie!)

Howzabout we try something a little different today?  Ridley Scott's debut feature, adapted from the Joseph Conrad story The Duel, traces the rivalry between proper, dignified 3rd Hussar Lieutenant Armand d'Hubert (Keith Carradine) and hotheaded, bloodsport-loving 7th Hussar Lieutenant Gabriel Feraud (Harvey Keitel) as they duel numerous times across the course of the Napoleonic Wars and beyond, examining just how much their encounters pervert the true and noble spirit of dueling, and how much they reveal what dueling really is.  To this end, let us strip away all but the duels.  Less review The Duellists and more discuss how Scott oversees the shooting and editing and acting in each of the major encounters to see how he characterizes each, and understand the thrust of his argument.  We'll naturally leave aside many other virtues inherent to the film, but like I say, trying something different today, so we'll just need to accept the loss.

-Prelude duel: Staged between Feraud and an unnamed civilian, we begin the film with the central question already established in the way its framing techniques contrast one another.  Where we begin with a painterly wide shot of the two figures at the ready against the misty plains like gentlemen fighters with a rustic house to balance the image, the fight itself is shot in shaky over-the-shoulder view, and becomes more frantic and unstable as Feraud unleashes his blows against his opponent.  The cause of this duel is unknown, the slight totally unexplained to the audience beyond Feraud's love for dueling, and we're already left to wonder which properly defines the practice: the refinement of the wide shot, or the barbarity of the close-up.

-First duel: In the first encounter between d'Hubert and Feraud, Scott certainly seems to favor the latter interpretation.  A battle of anger and passion more than anything else, it's practically all shaking, over-the-shoulder shots of the two men violently swinging their sabers at one another, with only a few cuts to medium when the pair pause to assess one another.  These vanish as they take the battle into a darkened cover area and the music kicks in with great intensity, the editing going faster and reaching a fever pitch as d'Hubert strikes the decisive blow.  Interestingly, Scott begins a trend of cutting to a quieter, more painterly shot in the wake of the duel, as Feraud's maid tackling d'Hubert to the ground is immediately followed by a shift over to a still life.  Even when the argument is fully in favor of reading barbarity into the practice (as fitting for a duel initiated over one party getting needlessly upset over getting arrested for dueling too much), Scott's still interposing a kind of nobility into proceedings.

-Second duel: By contrast, the actual crossing of swords here is as beautifully sculpted and gentlemanly as can be.  Compared to the drab grays of the front and the warm interior firelights amidst inky blackness that precede it, the soft purples and blues and golds and greens of early morning make the duel seem livelier than any surrounding scene, and the fight itself takes place entirely over two wide shots, which focus more on the landscape than the participants.  d'Hubert and Feraud's conduct lacks the aggression of their previous encounters, and where other fights are far bloodier, this one ends with a single slash.  However, the important thing to note is how this more refined look at dueling is immediately followed by a more conventionally shot view of the aftermath, with d'Hubert slowly becoming a mass of blood from his small wound, and Feraud openly declaring his contempt for so easy a victory, all of which lasts longer than the duel itself.  Note again the cut to refinement with a zooming shot of d'Hubert in a lovely-looking bathtub scene with his lover.

-Third duel: Speaking of said lover, the interregnum between these two encounters sees him leave d'Hubert over his refusal to disengage, and while we're mainly focused on the duels here, I'd be remiss to neglect mentioning the moment when she uses red sealant to write "Goodbye" on his sword, which he wipes away like blood on the blade to bring us into their next fight.  Befitting so major a loss to the protagonist at an act change, the third duel is the most openly vicious of the lot, opening with d'Hubert and Feraud already slashed to pieces and bleeding profusely from every new orifice.  The setting is murkier, the movements wilder, the lighting scantly flattering to anyone, and the editing fast fast fast.  One might think this a fairly definitive statement in favor of the inherently basal nature of dueling, but the way it gradually slows as the men exhaust makes me think otherwise.  There's real hatred behind their actions now, a genuine desire to kill and be done with it, yet they cannot achieve their goal with raw, physically-animating anger alone.  Even the camera loses interest as it wanders away, and subsequently wanders back on a wounded d'Hubert in another shot of painterly browns and grays with a big central contrasting object.  If this be dueling, why can it not sustain itself?

-Fourth duel: Performed on horseback, and interesting for the way its surroundings reflect the discussion between refinement and basality.  As noted with bitter irony by d'Hubert beforehand, it is meant as an honor to the cavalry, the rivalry between the two men having become noted enough to stand in for their ascending ranks in Napoleon's army - two people who're just out to cut each other because one won't leave the other alone, the pride and honor of the world's greatest military force.  From the perspective of the characters as they charge one another, the clearing of trees around them forms a perfect corridor, the ideal stage for such a battle.  Scott, however, shoots the scene primarily from the sides, so we can see how these orderly trees are only orderly from one perspective.  Seen any other way, and it's as scattered, disorderly, chaotic an arrangement as the thoughts flashing through d'Hubert's mind as he launches a decisive final strikes (an interesting technique, but considering the way it interrupts the sound editing as well, not one I find fully effective).  For something meant as a compliment to the cavalry and the bloodsport's nobility, Feraud looks an awfuler sight from one slash than at any other point, and yet d'Hubert still rides off into the sunset in still another painterly shot.

-The aborted fifth duel: d'Hubert has, in effect, been fighting for a deluded fantasy for most of the film.  Its first two acts see him believing a strong enough victory against Feraud will dissuade the man from continuing, assert the true intent of dueling as a gentleman's way of resolving uncommon disagreements and disengaging as friends or acquaintances at the end.  Across seven minutes in Russia, however, these notions are dashed entirely.  Amidst a white plain of wretched cold and endless frozen corpses, huddled around an inadequate fire, faces raw and cracking, d'Hubert spies Feraud across the camp, and watches in horror as the man uses all his strength to draw himself up, walk to the munitions, grab two rifles, and plunk himself back down with a meaningful glare back.  While the actual duel is brought off when they use their rounds to defend against a party of Cossacks after foolishly trudging off to a remote corner, the play between their eyes makes Feraud's intent in this all to clear.  This is never going to stop, at any cost, until one is dead by the other's hand.  Hardly bloodsport anymore, not something so simple that might stop for war; just raw, baseless hatred with only one terminal point.

-Interregnum: Worth breaking our pattern here for a brief note on what d'Hubert does across the next half-hour.  There are no duels to speak of, hardly even a threat from Feraud, yet the downtime as Napoleon falls and the royalists reassert their power is vital to why d'Hubert is able to win on his own terms in the end.  More specifically, on hearing Feraud is due for execution for refusing to denounce his raving Bonapartism, d'Hubert intervenes on his part and successfully convinces Joseph Fouché (Albert Finney) to strike him from the list, on the grounds that the man has defined so much of his life and pursued their combat so doggedly, d'Hubert simply cannot allow his death in this manner.  Despite the vision of hell in Russia, the man still believes in honorable conduct and a fair engagement, and so actively chooses to something which guarantees he'll always be looking over his shoulder for yet another challenge.

-Sixth and final duel: Of all the encounters, this features the thickest and wildest wilderness, the tensest and most paranoid music, a construction designed to emphasize how the two men creep towards each other through enormous ruined structures and untamed woods, narrowly missing one another's eyes until they are right on top of each other, ready to kill or be killed at any second.  And yet, vitally, it also contains the most controlled camerawork of any duel here, our view scarcely shaking or muddying even when the pistol shots fly, for it stands as the moment when d'Hubert fully asserts himself and drags the act of dueling far away from Feraud's mad, perverted idea of mindless killing to assuge the roar of anger in his brain.  For all the elements telling us this is a moment of totally lost control, it is presented in a careful, calculated manner, and this coupled with the delayed resolution of d'Hubert laying down his terms, for Feraud to act as dead to him and never engage in another duel so long as both shall live, strikes at the heart of how Scott presents the act of dueling.  There is great risk of it becoming naught but simple murder, a shade on waking life and a constant presence in nightmares, an unchained love for killing for killing's sake and seeing another bloodied and battered and dying just because you don't like the cut of their gib.  If dueling is to have any sense to it, any of its supposed gentlemanly resolve, it requires active thought and a cool head to walk through the wild and ruinous temptation offered by taking arms against another, and the firmest of resolves to MAKE it refined and civilized - something Feraud lacks, and may very well lack as he looks over the grounds of their encounter like Napoleon looking towards the horizon from St Helena.

What I find interesting about The Duellists besides all we've discussed here is the plainspoken nature of the acting.  Compared to the melodramatic vibe I took from Conrad's original dialogue, Carradine and Keitel speak their dialogue without much flair or affectation, leaving much of the work to Scott and his camera.  I do not find this a weakness, but rather an intriguing, intentional element, bringing us into a more visual examination than a more dynamic dialogue might otherwise.  While I might not fully agree with the conclusions I've drawn from this brief analysis, I'm not inclined to believe Scott does either - the material took him here, and he crafted a rather pretty picture in response.

4/5

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) - Air East 31, do you wish to report a UFO, over?

It's the Letterboxd Season Challenge!  Theme nine, part one - a film named as a 20th century milestone in cinematography by the American Society of Cinematographers!

(Chosen by me!)

Of all elements in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the way Spielberg and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond work to associate the aliens with light is easily the most outstanding.  Though the grays and their ships have definite corporeal forms, which stand in a range from impressive feats of production design to a little wobbly when watched nowadays, the primary takeaway of any scene with alien contact is always how the world becomes luminescent when touched by their presence.  Be it the first act business with small probe ships zipping along a highway in glowing, multicolored baths, the phenomenal abduction sequence with its unearthly blare piercing through every opening in the house and rendering the sky as on fire when the door is opened, or the mothership coming down in such an enormous, all-encompassing blast of dazzling disco ball colors and a white light big as the world that makes the ludicrously oversized landing strip set and its hundreds of extras look small, the effect and lasting impression remains the same.  It's as if one of those trillions of twinkling, distant spheres across the blanket of heaven detached itself from the cosmic fabric and came down for a look at our world.  Smaller moments strengthen the association, such as the early near miss when trucker Roy is almost abducted and the sudden activation of his flashlight startles him into thinking the aliens are coming back round, or when he spends all night attacking a model of his vision and finding no meaning, only for night to turn to day through an in-camera lighting transition, and the final piece of the puzzle falls into place with new light.  The simple experience of seeings, of having your sight nearly blinded by something brilliant beyond brilliance, and to keep staring until some comprehension worms across your mind - that is the way Spielberg constructs his extraterrestrials here, and it's striking as ever over forty years on.

Also impressive is the growing sense of scale, and how the film dwarfs all things for its final act.  The choice to divide the story between the scientific/military level response and the experiences of two characters touched by the aliens' passing during the first keeps proceedings nice and broad and shallow in a good way, following multiple perspectives on a single, small-scale fantastic event.  Following this, we start to pull out, with Roy and Jillian puzzling over the psychic imprint in their heads, the expansion in scope signified by the abduction scene.  Roy's impression of Devil's Tower grows from compulsive small scale reproductions, to a miniature clay model, to an impressively detailed room dominating reproduction, to the revelation of the actual Devil's Tower, which then dominates the background as a looming presence throughout the more chase-oriented stretch.  The landmark photographs quite impressively in Zsigmond's hands, growing ever larger as we and the characters approach its base and climb its slopes, until that iconic flattopped peak is looming over practically every shot as we enter the third act.  Entering the landing strip base and seeing the heights of human engineering in such detail (as well as confining the action to one huge location after focusing on interiors and less spacious location shoots for so long) does much to prepare us for the arrival of the mothership, which as already mentioned blows all sense of proportion out of this world and completely dominates the entire last twenty minutes.  I don't believe I can stress enough just how all-encompassing its extraterrestrial lights seem, how far they go towards making the tiny aliens seem like agents of a far higher power.  A gradual build with a hell of a wallop at the very end, definitely a Spielbergian technique.

When it comes to the actual story these techniques service, I'm a little more mixed on the total effect.  The scientific side of things is appropriately regimented and distanced from the awe-inspiring nature of what they study, with an appreciable slide towards true comprehension and inspiration thanks to François Truffaut's turn as the head researcher. Its contrast against the human story, however, is rather weaker. Strangely for Spielberg, he seems distanced from the inner lives of his average everyday POV characters, interested in the events that impact their lives without taking much care to depict these as a natural focus for his story.  Make no mistake, the abduction sequence with Melinda Dillon and Cary Guffey, the part where Richard Dreyfuss is peaking and tearing apart his block in search of materials for his model, and the whole sequence of Dillon and Dreyfuss climbing Devil's Tower are well-acted and promise visceral impressions of a mother losing her child to something otherworldly, or a man so driven to understand the beyond he'll willingly alienate his family, or two lost souls finding meaning in a common goal, but the film never coalesces around these ideas, never thinks to prod at the fallout.  Jillian loses her child and Roy scares his family away, and they sorta just continue to function as the plot needs them to function so they can arrive at the landing strip when the aliens arrive.

Now, the focus is on the aliens, and rightfully so.  Spielberg directs, Zsigmond shoots, and Michael Kahn edits strongly enough in combination to make the whole "the most important event in human history is happening right now, all other petty concerns matter no longer" effect come through, but I still object on the grounds that all other petty concerns should have mattered before the mothership's arrival.  There's space aplenty for examining the psychological effects of the extreme choices the main characters make in favor of chasing down UFOs, examination which could make the contrast against the military's rigor and power all the more prominent, and the final reveal of our intergalactic counterparts' sheer enormity perhaps a bit more impactful.  I must confess we watched the theatrical cut of Close Encounters, not the 1980 special edition or Spielberg's own director's cut, so it's entirely possible my concerns here are addressed there.  Also worth noting is just how much work went into hammering this story together without a solid concept of what it would Be for much of early development, the constant reworking during shooting to fit in new shots and sequences Spielberg dreamed of on the fly, and the budgetary restraints and subsequent rushed release impacting post-production - it's entirely likely Close Encounters' humane story would feel flat and incomplete compared to his other works no matter what.  Still, from the man who brought us, "Anyway, we delivered the bomb," "Indiana... let it go," "An aim not devoid of merit," and "I could have got more," it's disappointing I don't vibe with these people and their struggles more.

It's a colder film than I'd prefer, the potential warmth deemphasized in favor of a larger overarching goal with considerable force behind it, though not nearly as much as on release when there was literally nothing of the like.  These issues registered and understood, I maintain the poetry of light on so large a stage, dancing against such little people and John Williams' famous five-tone composition, makes Close Encounters of the Third Kind a worthwhile watch on their own.  If nothing else, Spielberg and company managed a first of its kind technical achievement with powerful filmmaking at its back, and central performances which can rise above the less considerate screenplay.  I'd crack a joke about this being better or lesser than ET, but I haven't seen that one yet, so I'll instead go for the lower blow and claim it's superior to War of the Worlds, though inferior to Jeff Wayne's live prog rock rendition, as are all things.

Also better than Contact, though I'll admit I'm seemingly in the minority on feeling cool about Contact.

4/5

Polterheist (2018) - How're you gonna make me talk? I'm already dead.

It's the Letterboxd Season Challenge! Theme eight, part three - a foreign horror film!

(Chosen by John!)

Just reading the synopsis for Polterheist makes me unreasonably angry.  Two stupid criminals need to extort some money from their mate lest their boss have them beaten to death, but they've already killed the bloke, so they kidnap a medium and force her to channel his spirit so they can find what they're after.  Those of you in the know about your supernatural entities will understand straight away how possession by the recently deceased has nothing to do with poltergeists.  A poltergeist is very specifically the invisible paranormal manifestation of pent-up negative emotions, usually from a child or teenager, which makes its presence known by violently moving objects with intent to frighten or harm.  Granted, Poltergeist doesn't fully get this right, hitting the mark as it does with the whole household items getting stacked and thrown about whilst explaining it all as the result of a desiccated Native American burial ground (again, not really a poltergeist!), but Polterheist is off the mark entirely.  You might wonder, "Why get upset about a punny title for a ghost-infused crime movie that tells people, 'Hey, there's a ghost in this thing, just thought you should know,' by virtue of most people only knowing 'poltergeist' means 'ghost thing?'"  It's a valid question, and I'll tell you why: because if I ever write and publish a screenplay about some crooks breaking into a mansion inhabited by some shitty repressed millionaire's teenaged kid and teaming up with the poltergeist within to execute their heist, I cannot use the accurate and awesome title of Polterheist because the people behind Polterheist wasted it on this film.

(Harry Potter gets a pass for making Peeves a physical manifestation because Hogwarts is a deeply magical building filled with hundreds upon hundreds of teenaged witches and wizards for over one thousand years, so of course all that negative psychic energy would coalesce into an awful little man.)

Mark you,  the actual film behind the title contains plenty reason to hold the product itself in disdain.  Polterheist is a technically uneven film, occasionally looking pretty darned alright for its limited budget and inexperienced crew, mostly showing the detrimental effects of four camera operators and two editors working without a strong voice to unite their styles.  The visuals aren't at all consistent from shot to shot, with such highlights as a master shot and its three close-ups somehow all featuring different lighting, and an otherwise fairly tense sequence suddenly cutting to what looks for all the world like test footage for no good reason.  Such notably shaky visual language permeates the film, and extends to its sound department whose work renders loud voices and quiet environmental effects alike loud as all holy hell.  The editing team seemingly struggled with prioritization, as we spend way too much time in a black and white flashback that gives us tons of information we shouldn't get based on the presentational context, linger on jokes way longer than is at all funny, and infrequently cut over to gawk at the main mob's goings on without ever finding anything of great interest or import.

It's a sloppily made film for certain, which I can excuse to an extent due to the crew pulling something from practically nothing given what they had, and also because the main character dynamic is quite a lot've fun.  Jo Mousley runs away with the film in her part as Alice, the medium possessed by murdered criminal Frank, spitting out foul-mouthed lines and getting across a nice sense of tension through her bodylanguage throughout.  They've got nothing but profanity and damnation for anyone around them when provoked,  and time spent in a more amiable mood sees her playing well off her costars.  Sid Akbar Ali and Jamie Cymbal make a good teaming as well-to-do Tariq and Northern fuck-up Boxy, trying their hardest to sell jokes the editing is determined to ruin, and bouncing against Frank's disdain for his murderers in an enjoyable manner.  Mousley and Cymbal get a few quieter scenes together round the middle, and I start to feel there's more going on beneath the surface here than "funny bad men do a funny bad thing."  Give it a few passes in the writing room, and Polterheist could make a reasonable play for being about guilt and reconciliation and whether that's all possible in a criminal enterprise.  Elsewhere in the film, though admittedly completely contrary to the point I just made, Pushpinder Chani is capital A Acting his ass off as deranged mob boss Uday, and gets me really excited to see what happens when this absolute vicious maniac comes into contact with the main trio and learns what they've been up to behind his back.

Alack, Polterheist lets us all down.  The conclusion takes some turns regarding a hidden cache of diamonds and Frank playing Tariq and Boxy against one another, which seem fine on paper, but rely on the film's main enjoyable dynamic falling apart and vanishing for the final ten minutes.  What should play as a satisfactory revenge twist lacks the time and focus necessary to make it land, for Chani also drops straight through the floor, rendering all our cutaway to his goings on a pointless drain on the central trio's story resources.  Instead, Mousley shifts from Frank to Alice for these final movements, and despite Alice only appearing in a restrained, almost demur performance for a brief period towards the start and a briefer reprieve from possession round the middle, she has total command of the last several scenes, and drives them with a personality wholly unlike the one glimpsed before.  You could possibly construe it as possession addling her brain or an additional layer of revenge against the morons who used her as a meat puppet, but her actions are both far too vindictive and far too contrary to what our understanding of her place in the midst of a sea of angry dead would indicate should happen.  Yes, I am going to out and out say the ending is bad because she abandons a dog in the middle of nowhere, and no, I am not going to apologize.

Jackie, John, Connie, and myself all agree - Polterheist is a film with a lot've potential and a solid core dynamic that stood a chance at becoming good if more care were paid to its story.  The technical stuff, I don't think you can do much without the funding to hire a better crew or the time necessary to get this one more experience, but the premise and its main characters interactions are worth enough as they appear here to justify further attention and development.  Even if it doesn't become much more than more consistent, satisfying schlock, I'd still appreciate it more if they got it working by giving us a little more Alice and having the villains properly factor into the finale.  Hell, it's already a black comedy: maybe instead of stopping with someone on top, just have everyone keep screwing each other until they're all ghosts and can't be rid of one another.  That's a solid punchline to build towards.

2/5