Motifs in Cinema '13: Failure

"Motifs in Cinema is a discourse across film blogs, assessing the way in which various thematic elements have been used in the 2013 cinematic landscape. How does a common theme vary in use from a comedy to a drama? Are filmmakers working from a similar canvas when they assess the issue of death or the dynamics of revenge? Like most things, a film begins with an idea – Motifs in Cinema assesses how various themes emanating from a single idea change when utilised by varying artists." - Andrew K.  

Be sure to check out all the other entries on the many more 2013 motifs at Andrew's site, Encore's World of Film & TV.

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Maybe it's because of the two ton of issues facing the nation where I make my home, the two ton of issues facing us on a global scale or merely the baggage I bring all on my own (which is considerable), but I have found myself pontificating the notion of failure - and its hair-trigger - a lot lately. A multitude of places in our world seem braced at national and social and economic tipping points, as if we are a geopolitical landmass, rumbling and ready to splinter and drift off to who-knows-where.

Llewyn Davis, an ungrateful folk-singing sourpuss, and the world he inhabits of Greenwich Village in the early 1960’s are at a tipping point he either does not recognize or will not admit to. His singing partner may have realized it or admitted to it, which may be why he threw himself off the George Washington Bridge, but then maybe he just suffered from depression. Maybe Llewyn suffers from depression, or maybe he’s just a dick, his surliness providing a perfect answer to the question Jack Black posed way back when in “High Fidelity”: “Is it better to burn out than to fade away?”

He mythologizes himself in his own mind, fancying himself as the ultimate starving artist rather than homeless, deriding his former girlfriend’s attempts at eking out an actual life beyond the stage as “a little careerist” which is, in turn, “a little square.” In the story as he might tell it, he’s the hero, holding out and not giving in, adhering to the purity of what he does, though at one point he dismisses his own music as his “job” which seems to betray what he really thinks. He seems to sense the world shifting beneath his feet and rather than readjusting, he lashes out, convinced his failure is fate’s ploy while all the signs of a new path go unheeded. And even when he finally does sort of acknowledge his failure and reluctantly determines to re-enlist as a merchant marine in the square quest for something new, he fails, failing to have his merchant license as required. Eventually he winds up tossed out in the alley, not so much surrendering to a brave new world as telling it “au revoir” as it passes him by in the night.

If Llewyn was an emblem of the radical shift between the fifties and sixties, his artistic wayfaring soul sister, Frances Halladay, is a emblematic of a different era. It’s not failure, per se, that Frances experiences as much as casual fuck-ups and reckless frivolity. She doesn’t really do what she does, as she puts it, and this led some critics to view the film as nothing much more than a series of scattershot vignettes. I saw it more as a series of wholly un-tactical withdrawals and spastic counterattacks. (She can’t afford to move to Tribeca with her friend. She retreats to crashing with friends in an effort to conserve funds. She counterattacks by booking a trip to Paris on a credit card.) Still, she seems so light on her black Converse-clad feet, dancing her way across New York City sidewalks, chatting in that extraordinary livewire Greta Gerwig-ese, that occasionally you might forget the fecklessness with which she approaches adulthood and that future failure is possible if she doesn’t find focus. A.O. Scott termed the film “a bedtime story”, which is spot-on, implying that as the economy burns and the job market ebbs and flows, the youth of America can tuck themselves in by watching “Frances Ha” and having pleasant dreams where ultimately the sweet smell of success is served by your friendly neighborhood barista.

Failure, though, which Frances doesn’t and can’t understand, at least not yet, is often not an all-at-once proposition. It’s a long fade-out, and Woodrow T. Grant’s fade-out is nearing its end. Bruce Dern’s performance in “Nebraska”, his face paralyzed throughout in a sort of weary perplexity, never makes it quite clear that the character is aware of its top billing in its own farcical tragedy. He is a Midwestern Ponce de Leon and a random sweepstakes notice which he misunderstands as having granted him a million dollars is his Fountain of Youth. It’s all a myth, of course, and Woody concluding his episodic journey by wearing a Prize Winner hat is the cruelest irony. Ultimately his good-willed son (Will Forte) makes a couple concessions to provide his father a moment in a version of the limelight. These concluding moments, however, strike a strange tone, precisely because they are, in a way, as false and unearned as the million dollars. If failures are meant to yield lessons, it's legitimate to wonder what Woody has learned. It's possible he has learned nothing.

These failures, however, are not just limited to America. They are global. “Captain Phillips” was heavily involved in telling the tale of the real-life man who gave the film its name, obviously, and it opens with a fairly obvious sequence of Phillips and his wife lamenting the economically unstable into which their children are venturing. But this instability pales compared to the instability facing the Somali pirate who hijacks Phillips’ ship, Muse (Barkhad Abdi), subtly wresting the film from its primary character. With success in his society almost exclusively reliant on violence with no fallback plan, his demeanor is as resigned as desperate. He knows that his wayward attempt to hold Phillips hostage and ask for ransom is likely to end in failure, but he also knows that failing to push forward in that attempt will result in failure too – failure in the form of death. The film’s claustrophobic third act might well be a demonstration of American military might, as has been claimed, but I read it much more as Muse’s out-of-options swan song. Abdi is so frighteningly relaxed in these late-film sequences, fully aware he was born under the sign of failure. All he’s doing is running himself into the ground.

Elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, “All Is Lost”, J.C. Chandor’s sterling cinematic experience of Robert Redford & The Sea, opens with a halting, pointed voiceover by its star. “I tried,” he says. “I think you would all agree that I tried. To be true, to be strong, to be kind, to love, to be right. But I wasn't. And I know you knew this. In each of your ways.” We don’t know who he’s talking to, of course, and we never find out, and that’s fine because the overriding point is clear – whomever he’s writing, he’s admitting he failed them. And that’s an interesting tack for the film to take – to place the failure front and center. The film is about a man braving the elements, to be sure, matter-of-factly facing each setback as it comes, but I saw it as so much more. Apologies for momentarily getting religulous but a Corinthians verse came to mind: “The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” This is a man slowly, perhaps even unwittingly, casting off the failure of his old life bit by bit until, in a closing moment of arresting glow, the new has come.

Then again, most of us aren’t like Robert Redford. Most of us more like Gary King (Simon Pegg) of “The World’s End.” Not so much the obnoxiousness, lunacy and alcoholism, perhaps, as the lingering regret, the moment in our past we are so sure if we just got one chance to do over would make our lives everything we originally wanted them to be. In Gary’s case, he has fixated on The Golden Mile, an epic pub crawl he and his best friends never finished, and he will stop at nothing to reconvene them all in middle age to right this wrong and recalibrate his life. The others present themselves as having grown up and moved on and while this is true to a degree, their facades mask their own fears of failure, and their re-attempt at winning the Golden Mile will bring all those fears to a head as they find themselves face to face with failing themselves, the pub crawl and the world.

In its own hyperkinetic, Cornetto-inflicted way, “The World’s End” ultimately presents its heroes an opportunity to wash away their pasts (and their presents), for the old to pass away and the new – a warm, welcoming new – to come, for their failure to be rendered . Their reaction to this rare opportunity initially wreaks of liquid heroism, but there is something both deeper and simpler. Failure and Success, Success and Failure, this is what makes them (us) whole.

Motifs in Cinema '12: Revenge & Justice

"Motifs in Cinema is a discourse across 22 film blogs, assessing the way in which various thematic elements have been used in the 2012 cinematic landscape. How does a common theme vary in use from a comedy to a drama? Are filmmakers working from a similar canvas when they assess the issue of death or the dynamics of revenge? Like most things, a film begins with an idea - Motifs in Cinema assesses how various themes emanating from a single idea change when utilised by varying artists." - Andrew K.

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Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott) is a Goon. He would like to be considered a Hockey Player but for the fact he is an inept skater and fails to grasp the finer points of hockey strategy. Instead he idles on the bench until a violent incident arises at which point he is summoned to the ice specifically to seek out the opposing team's offender. He drops his gloves and he and the perp exchange punches until blood is drawn and bruises are inflicted.

But, is Glatt's mission to acquire justice or dole out revenge? Or has the line become utterly blurred between the two? And does no even care if it has?

The age-old notions of Revenge & Justice were prominent at the cinema in 2012. The Top 4 grossing movies in America - The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hunger Games, Skyfall - all in their respective ways dealt with these ideas, some more explicitly than others. Of course, the idea of revenge has a driving plot point has been around on film for ages, whether it was John Wayne doing John Wayne things ("You're soft, you should have let 'em kill me, 'cause I'm gonna kill you") or Charlie Bronson doing Charlie Bronson things or poor Ken getting even for the death of his beloved Wanda. We like to see justice served by any means necessary.

Steven Soderbergh's supremely but subtly self-aware Haywire very purposely seems to offer no logical reason as to why anyone in the film would would want Gina Carano's super-duper secret agent Mallory Kane dead except that if no one wanted her dead, well, Haywire would cease to exist. Thus, everyone wants her dead, she spends the majority of the movie kicking ass and, thus, with a sly nod and a wink Soderbergh illustrates the extreme importance of revenge to the motion picture.

Lincoln, on the other hand, Steven Spielberg's handsome recitation of Abraham Lincoln's attempt to push through the 13th Amendment, is all about justice. Or is it? Make no mistake, I implicitly admire the work of Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role. But the character that has stayed with me just as much since the close of the credits is W.N. Bilbo (James Spader), the uncouth lobbyist who spends as much time eating and drinking as Brad Pitt does in the Ocean's movies even as he navigates his way around Capital Hill in an effort to strong-arm undecideds into backing Honest Abe. Perhaps the film's ultimate moment occurs when Bilbo, standing in the chamber balcony, ignores the obligatory John Williams stately score swelling on the soundtrack, steps forward to seek out Ohio congressman Clay Hawkins (Walton Goggins) whom he and Abe need to switch sides and points his index finger at him in the manner of a six-shooter before squeezing the "trigger". Translation: contribute to justice for all or else we will have our revenge.

Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, meanwhile, thirsts for both revenge and justice. Looking into our nation's grotesque nooks and crannies, it purposely makes a mess of America's messy history and pits a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) against a vile slave master (Leonardo DiCaprio). Q.T.'s foremost aim is simply to craft a ripping good - if profane and blood-stained - yarn and, as he has established previously, he will stop at nothing, including re-writing history, to achieve it. And yet, he shows us the chains, the scars, the hot boxes. He does not shy away from the reality even as he simultaneously revises it for narrative purposes. He has taken blaxploitation - or, more to the point, he has taken slavesploitation and brought it to the mainstream, turning it into, of all things, a Christmas Day release. Without his prototypical talky vignettes, absurd humor and flighty indulgences, it might have come across too radical. Instead, he earned it an Oscar nomination. It leaves us feeling morally queasy - partly because its morals are queasy but maybe mostly because a certain percentage of its audience looks at this revenge being dished out and knows, make-believe or not, that it is deserved.

And that brings us right along to the elephant in the room - Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow's chronicling of the manhunt for Osama bin Laden in the name of vengeance. The brou-ha-ha pre-release centered around the film's depiction of torture and, regardless of whether or not it was truly central to the tracking efforts, what many viewers failed to realize was how the torture scenes, only presented in the earliest portions of the film, so accurately represented our national mood in the wake of the terrible tragedy that was 9/11. Less than a week after it happened I remember a friend calling me and initiating the conversation with: "So, are you ready to enlist?" Ready to enlist?! To go off to war - which we would in less than a month's time - to start the decade-long settling of this score.

In those exacerbated Freedom Fries days, when the temperature in the room was akin to a sauna, people's thoughts about what happened and what needed to be done could get frighteningly reactionary. Level heads eventually prevailed (to an extent) but that entire event exposed us for the revenge-minded, justice-seekers we can be at our core, when pushed to the furthest edge. A common reaction to Zero Dark Thirty is an appreciation for its craft but a questioning of "why?" we need to see this, re-live this, and what do I think of myself for being so drawn in to the telling of this story?

Zero Dark Thirty fearlessly re-opens an old wound that never properly healed. When revenge (justice) is as immediate as ZDR, we feel ourselves squirm, which is perhaps why we feel safer watching two Goons duke it out from a distance, clutching a plastic cup of beer, pantomiming one-two combinations, knowing we face none of the consequences, safely tucked away behind towering plates of glass.

Motifs in Cinema 2011: Loneliness & Misanthropy

Perhaps because it’s one of the youngest artistic forms, cinema is often assessed in a much different manner than literature, or the visual arts. We discuss it in terms of genre, not in terms of thematic offering. Comparing, for example,Corpse Bride and Up because they’re both animated leads to some dubious discussion especially when – like any art form – thematic elements examined in cinema and the way different filmmaker address them make for some stimulating discussion. Motifs in Cinema is a discourse, across eleven film blogs, assessing the way in which various thematic elements have been used in the 2011 cinematic landscape. How does a common theme vary in use from a comedy to a drama? Are filmmakers working from a similar canvas when they assess the issue of the artist or the family dynamic? Like everything else, a film begins with an idea - Motifs in Cinema assesses how the use of a single idea changes when utilised by varying artists. - Andrew K., Encore Entertainment, Motifs in Cinema 2011 Blogathon Host

Loneliness & Misanthropy

Certain events that transpired recently, events involving a terribly unfortunate if terribly inevitable end of a fairly famous diva with a once-upon-a-time full throttle voice, made me think of the infinite "Melancholia" of Kirsten Dunst's Justine in Lars von Trier's latest bit of painterly nihilism. Not the operatic opening or the cataclysmic closing - no, I'm talking about the moment during the reception of the "happiest" night of Justine's life when she flees to be all on her lonesome by......soaking in the tub. One of the film's many iconic prelude stills is an ode to the painting of Shakespeare's Ophelia drowning, but this shot of her wasting soaking away on her own wedding night evokes that same sensation much less sensationally. But what pushed her away from the cake and champagne to this lukewarm water? Was it the idiocy of those surrounding her? The Sister who seems more insistent than even the Bride on making this night PERFECT? The Boss who uses the platform of matrimony as a harsh training ground to better her job skills? The scatterbrained Father? The rancorous Mother? The new Husband and his asinine apple orchard dreams? Or was it Justine's clinical and massive depression that skewered this whole ceremony to look like the prelude to the end of the world?  In other words, is it the world itself that pushes her to the point of unrelenting loneliness and misery in the second act? Or does she instigate this tailspin herself? Or is it both? Does the world so piss her off that she wills this other rogue world to life to cure her of her ails? And does she find a modicum of peace in that "magic cave" made of sticks because of the presence of her Sister and Nephew? Or has she already found it all on her own?

Not long after Oliver (Ewan McGregor) in "Beginners" has Met very, very Cute with Anna (Melanie Laurent), the kind-hearted if sad-eyed Arthur the Dog advises his new owner: "...the darkness is about to drown us unless something drastic happens right now." This might have been 2011's cinematic mantra. He is afraid the darkness is going to drown them both on account of Oliver's pop having just passed away from cancer. His mom is deceased too, and he's the kind of guy who even when both his parents were still around would be closed off and shut down and a cosmopolitan hermit, pushing away anyone who dared to try and enter his insulated world. His father, in the film’s intermittent flashback structure, tells him a parable about a giraffe and lion – “You've always dreamed of someday getting a lion. And you wait and you wait and the lion doesn't come. Then along comes a giraffe. You can be alone, or you can be with the giraffe.” Oliver explains he’d wait for the lion. This is meant, of course, to illustrate Oliver's philosophy when it comes to women - as in, he's not settling. Of course, when it comes to isolationists and introverts and misanthropes it's not necessarily that they (we?) are waiting for the lion, it's that the lion is a fine excuse to avoid having to deal with the giraffe because the giraffe is not to their (our?) tastes and/or the thought of the giraffe scares us out of our wits. (Or maybe it's that they - we? - just don't want the giraffe because we find giraffes ungainly and useless. Okay?! IS THAT SO WRONG?! LEAVE US ALONE, YOU DICTATORS! STOP PRESSURING US!)

Consider Mavis Gary, the Charlize Theron-played protagonist of "Young Adult" taking the matters of acute social withdrawal to new heights by simply making her high school ex (Patrick Wilson) who is now married with an infant daughter her lion in flannel shirts. Is the film as much writer Diablo Cody's reaction to her sudden and intense fame in the wake of her Oscar victory as it is, as has been noted and/or alluded to, a working out of her possible failure to grow up? As Cody herself said, "There’s probably no experience more alienating than fame." And thus she has her protagonist make her one shining beacon unattainable, thereby essentially damning herself to isolation. Of course, there can also be perverted pleasure in isolation, wrapping yourself up in a KFC and Kardashian cocoon.

A "Me Party" one might say, which is what Mary (Amy Adams) pledges as her personal anthem midway through when, sure enough, her Muppet-crazed ten year boyfriend Gary (Jason Segel) has gone and forgotten their anniversary dinner. Oh, this tale of the redemption of Jim Henson's much beloved age-old characters was ceaselessly championed for its optimism and gladness in the face of this present day misanthropic world but, hey, they all had to pull themselves up and out of some mighty epic depths. Heck, it's all right there in the supposedly joy-infused opening number when Gary and his Muppet brother Walter keep telling us over and over that life's a happy song when you've got someone by your side to sing along. But then midway through here comes Mary sounding awfully disconsolate as she sings "Everything's great, everything's grand, except Gary's always off with his friend." So, uh, everything's not great and everything's not grand. Right? Especially when she imagines him riding up on a steed to propose to her. Good grief. Once you start imagining your ten year boyfriend finally climbing off the easy chair and getting down on one knee, well, you know something's rotten in Smalltown. Is Mary too reliant on the relationship? Gary and Walter are certainly portrayed as being over-reliant on their relationship and only when they break apart, so to speak, does the story's arc reach its conclusion. Yes, Gary proposes to Mary, as he must, but despite its kid-friendly stylings "The Muppets", believe it or not, is emblematic over and over of how isolated a person can feel even when he or she is surrounded. 

Take Curtis, Samantha and Hannah, the father, mother and daughter of Jeff Nichols' truly for-our-times "Take Shelter" are in names only a typical small town Ohio family. In fact, Hannah is deaf and Curtis is suffering from disturbing and sometimes apocalyptic visions, which may or may not be the same product of his own mother's schizophrenia, and that ultimately threaten his steady paycheck and, in turn, his family's future, financial and emotional. And as his existence slowly unravels in the most ordinarily spectacular way imaginable, he and his wife and daughter find themselves alienated from the community, crystallized in an absurdly terrifying rant Curtis unleashes at a communal potluck. This leads to one of the strangest and most strangely affecting single shots of the year, a family gathered together in a bomb shelter, united by their gas masks. They may be alone, the darkness may be about to drown them, but at least they are together.

Then again, if there's a flip side to that coin (and there always is), it's my homegirl Alex King in "The Descendants." Her mom's in a coma, her dad's distant, her little sister can't always think quite right for herself, and, yes, I suppose she asks that kindly knucklehead Syd to tag along for their familial (mis)adventures. But she also knows, like Dunst's Justine, in one particular scene involving one particularly lovely, harpoon-to-the-heart shot also cast in the water, that sometimes - no matter what anyone says - it's just better to be alone.