A Conversation About "Contempt, Part II

This is Madelyn Sutton's first response to Evan Davis's provocation about the controversial Jean-Luc Godard film. Contempt is playing through Tuesday, April 8th, at Film Forum in downtown Manhattan.





Evan dear,

You covered plenty of ground; I hope you'll forgive a similarly broad response, which addresses, I suppose, your general effusiveness - and my (mostly) opposite response.

Why do I so despise Contempt? It's a difficult question to answer, particularly in the space alloted for this discussion. I will say, first, that I consider the general experience (physical and intellectual, rarely emotional) of the viewer particularly significant - this is why I would begin with the question above. I recall first seeing Contempt in Malcolm Turvey's class on Hitchcock and Godard, though not particularly well (I can barely remember what I saw for the first time today!); what I do remember is being bored. Of course, in terms of the more general discussion of the film, the immediate answer might be, "Why, that's just the point!" Really? Would I like to watch a full-length feature making this point more than once? I might go ahead and interpret the thing a thousand ways to attempt to defend my displeasure and barely suppressable yawns, intellectually, yet I think this negative experience matters a great deal. I guess I sound a bit like Jerry - "The wise man does not oppress others with his superiority."

And yet, I adore many of Godard's particularly "difficult" (read: pretentious, longish, etc.) films, such as Ici et ailleurs (Here and Elsewhere) and, my personal favorite, Weekend. Early in Contempt, when Palance's Jerry first appears, he's ranting (and I love Palance throughout for just this sort of thing) about his somewhat depleted budget and empty "set"; he concludes with arms thrown out, saying, "And this, my lost kingdom!" However, when Frencesca translates the latter for Paul, and I think the difference is important, she says, "It's the end of cinema." Paul, as obtuse as he will be throughout, answers, "I don't think cinema will ever die." If the subject of Contempt is indeed the art film, you will surely agree that this is a significant exchange and an important moment of various levels of miscommunication. However, returning to my earlier comparison, I can't help but draw a parallel to the intertitles of Weekend, one of the more powerful of which reads "END OF CINEMA". As such a claim can hardly be considered minor for either film - it's about the death of the medium itself, after all - broadening the comparison is surely acceptable. Furthermore, I might add, if Godard has indeed performed what this phrase states, it's as significant to his "project" as, say, Hegel's "death of art" or Nietzsche's "God is dead," if I might be so bold. And I will!

The respective manner in which the two films enact the "end of cinema" highlights the distinction that, in my general verbal and, after all, knee-jerk response, becomes paramount. Weekend is hilarious, disgusting, shameless, and wonderfully broad; it effectively touches upon many issues, including Marxism, the evils of bourgeois consumerism, the irreversible comodification of the "men, nature and gods" that still (somehow) interest the art cinema, the destruction of the sages and innocent idols of the past, the need for revolution on the scale of the present destruction, and so on. This is the "end of cinema" - the end of a tradition of filmmaking in which we can continue to root for the "good" rather than the "bad," ponder the significance of the danse macabre or the quality of emptiness of the individual, become intimately involved or perversely aligned with the characters whatever their supposed moral qualities, or, say, the universal qualities of hatred, violence, sadness or love. Sure, the belief in so many "truths" remains lurking behind the screen where the contemporary Hollywood film plays or even within the hearts of many contemporary indie films; after all, people continued to make art after Hegel and to worship "God" after Nietzsche. The point is, the door was opened. The "protagonist" can turn to his wife and say, "What a rotten film. All we meet are crazy people." (And just one more quote! "I am here to inform these modern times of the grammatical era's end and the beginning of flamboyance, especially in cinema." Postmodern? Maybe, if you believe in that stuff. Fantastic? Undeniably so.)

So, I'll stand up and say, well, Weekend does, in fact, achieve a sort of "END OF CINEMA", without leaving the cinephile wallowing and afraid - we've entered the beginning of flamboyance! Screw "high art" or the "Idea"! But what about Contempt? If the filmmaker's angst represented by the misunderstood hero-artist (Lang) or the easily bought-and-sold (Paul) or the powerful yet shallow (Prokosch) is not ironic, and I don't think you mean to suggest that it is, Evan, well, doesn't that mean there's still the hope for the great cinema, for the power of the "Art Film"? Does the "end of cinema" refer to this profuse bitterness and worship of Lang, the languishing voice of greater truths? If so, can we accept this backwards adoration, knowing what we know, having seen what we've seen? Gods, nature, existence, essence, beauty, nature - they're "grammatical" (or linguistic or dead) values, and Lang, and perhaps all of Contempt, worship angrily and tragically at their demise. Get over it! I'll take flamboyance over boredom any day.

But I'm not fully convinced of this latest interpretation of the film; as I mentioned, I might redeem the film for myself by viewing such nostalgia as ironic. Paul claims to love all of Camille "tragically," and having seen Contempt, we know how absolutely moronic that statement is.

How's that? I'm dying to say more.

Madelyn

A Conversation about "Contempt," Part I

For the next several days--or until they want to kill each other, whichever comes first--perennial odd couple Evan Davis and Madelyn Sutton will hash it out about one of Jean-Luc Godard's most celebrated early works. Check back regularly for updates.

Contempt is currently playing at Film Forum in downtown Manhattan until Tuesday, April 8th. The film is also available on an excellent DVD from the Criterion Collection.





Madelyn,

I don't know if you've had a chance to re-watch Contempt yet, but I suppose that since this whole scheme was my idea, I'll be the first to jump in. Let me also note that I plan to read the source novel by Alberto Moravia before this correspondence is over.

Having seen Contempt again last week (and for the first time on the big screen), I am still awestruck by the power the movie has on me. Never again did Jean-Luc Godard have a similar kind of power in one of his films, even in the ones I have held more dearly to my heart. Set amidst the master's 15-film winning streak in the 1960s, Contempt lacks the puckish anarchy of Pierrot le Fou, the apocalyptic majesty of La Chinoise and Weekend, the gleeful abandon of Breathless, A Woman is a Woman, Band of Outsiders and Masculin Feminin, and the academic depth of Les Carabiniers, Alphaville and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her-- but it has to be, alongside Vivre sa Vie, Godard's most emotionally satisfying work. And perhaps why that is has something to do with the subject he is honoring and deconstructing: the art film.

The topics of art vs. commerce, tradition vs. modernity, man vs. nature: these were subjects taken on by the great art filmmakers of the day. At least, they were so-called because the industry decided that a certain type of world cinema had to be codified as a genre. Antonioni, Bergman, and to a certain extent Resnais all dealt with this type of modern, ambiguous cinema, and Godard set out to probe just how they may have all connected into such a genre as the "art film." Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli) is the frustrated screenwriter who sells his soul to a boorish American producer, Jerry Prokosch (Jack Palance) in order to make some quick money for he and his young wife, Camille (Brigitte Bardot). But in the process, a series of misunderstandings leads Camille to loathe Paul for his avarice, his potential infidelity, and his insouciance toward Prokosch's advances toward her. All the while, Fritz Lang, who is directing the adaptation of The Odyssey being written by Paul, stands at an observational distance, a relic from a past Contempt craves to reclaim, but cannot.

The distance between not only Paul and Camille but between Paul and everybody else is emphasized by the language barrier established from the humorous concept of the "international production." One of the most tender scenes involves Lang and Francesca (Giorgia Moll), Prokosch's assistant. They are the only two who speak all involved languages (French, English, Italian, German), and they seem to hold a deep warmth for each other because of this. Such tenderness doesn't exist between any two characters in the film, even Paul and Camille.

Famously, the prologue of a nude Camille and Paul lying in bed was forced on Godard by the film's producers, Georges de Beauregard, Carlo Ponti and Joseph Levine. They thought that there wasn't enough "skin" of Bardot on screen, which would naturally be the main selling point, right? What Godard does in that moment is not only expose the audience's voyeurism, but also problematizes Bardot's own image of herself. The persistent questioning of Paul about whether or not he loves her various body parts illuminates Camille's deep insecurity about herself, and gives us a prophetic image of why Paul and Camille's marriage is fragile long before Paul becomes involved with Prokosch.

As emotionally involved as we become with Paul and Camille, Godard deliberately forces us to examine their tenderness and cruelty from a distance. He shoots long, distant takes that are never clean in their mise en scene. Most famously, in the extended break-up/make-up scene between Paul and Camille, pillars, doors, and even lampshades prevent the two characters from joining in proper unity. Indeed, the apartment itself becomes a war zone.

Flash cuts remind us of the past and predict the future. Georges Delerue's brilliant score comes and goes seemingly at random. During a vaudeville show, the music stops so the characters can converse uninterrupted. And what Lang is seemingly making is a delicious parody of a traditional misconception of the "art film," when in fact, in the form of Contempt, the audience is witnessing one of its greatest incarnations. Godard is constantly distancing us from natural emotion, which in its own perverse way makes us feel even stronger the emotional catastrophe that Paul and Camille are inflicting on each other. In the late 1950s/early 1960s heyday of the "art film," Godard made the weirdest and most beautiful of them all.


This is all perhaps a bit vague in its effusiveness, but I think that depth will be achieved once the sparring begins. I look forward to your rebuttal.

-Evan

Gus Van Sant's Newest Masterpiece

Paranoid Park opens this Friday at the Angelika Film Center in Manhattan, and opens wide in two weeks.



Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, 2007)

I'm writing this a little out of order. Sorry. I didn't do so well in creative writing . . .


No one would ever accuse Alex Tremaine (Gabe Nevins) of being anything but normal. He is 15, lives in Portland, OR, goes to high school, has divorced parents, has a girlfriend, and loves to skateboard. But there is something else to Alex, something more mysterious and perhaps more profound. Of course, he doesn’t really know it yet.

Paranoid Park is a film that brings every confused and terrifying element of Alex’s psyche to a boiling surface. Writer/editor/director Gus Van Sant has sculpted a film that is an embodiment of subjectivity, every element some evocation of emotional consciousness. And it takes a most brutal event to make Alex even slightly aware that there is something going on inside of him.

The event in question is a death that Alex causes, but is difficult to classify as murder. The police certainly do, but within the diegesis of the film, they never discover the truth. Alex can barely comprehend what has occurred, but it creates a deep rupture that closes him off from his former life.

Van Sant, taking his cue from the source novel by Blake Nelson, frames the movie as a letter Alex is writing to his friend Macy (Lauren McKinney), but unlike Nelson’s protagonist, Van Sant’s Alex tells it out of order. Accordingly, Van Sant fragments chronology in a dense and effortless way. Alex is so consumed by the bewildering viscerality of his emotions that he is unable to cohere his experience properly. Alex is a stream of consciousness, but the film then becomes the complete embodiment of that stream, giving form and grace to Alex’s confusion.

How does Van Sant accomplish this? First and foremost, credit must be given to DP’s Christopher Doyle and Rain Kathy Li. It is a rather canny move on Van Sant’s part to use Doyle in place of his standby for the “Death Trilogy,” Harris Savides. Whereas Savides’s images are dense and heavy, Doyle’s are light and lyrical. He is looser and more delicate. (See his work with Wong Kar Wai for further proof.) Slow motion, eerie lighting, and the texture of faces are all a part of Doyle and Van Sant’s arsenal, emphasizing a tension between Alex’s exterior monotone and the swirl of interior psychic trauma.

As much as Paranoid Park’s visual conception brings forth a vision of Alex’s psychological deterioration, so the sound design further ruptures his subconscious. The songs, which are certainly not part of Alex’s universe (from Elliott Smith to Beethoven to Nino Rota), marry themselves to Doyle and Li’s images in a startlingly bracing way. From the slow-motion shower scene set to a piercing sound tone, to the silent breakup between Alex and Jennifer (Taylor Momsen) set to a theme from Juliet of the Spirits, sound is wholly integral to the lyrical tapestry, and may signal a push forward in American sound design when considered alongside No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood.

And then there is the subject of skateboarding itself. As mentioned by a friend who himself is a skateboarder (and who will, hopefully, eventually post a response to this review), the movie doesn’t appear to contain much fidelity toward the question of why teenagers skateboard in the first place. (There is also the semantic issue of misnaming Portland’s Burnside Skateboard Park as Paranoid Park, when in fact there actually is a Paranoid Park located in downtown Portland.) The movie’s launch point is skateboarding, but it is not its destination. What Alex finds in skateboarding is a liberating, alluring, and dangerous escape from the trials of his quotidian existence (divorce, homework, girlfriends). Especially if we accept the notion that the film’s aesthetic achievements serve as a subconscious counterpoint to what Alex is actually conscious of, then we can argue that skateboarding is not what he believes it to be. And certainly his fantasies of kids doing high-level tricks–gorgeously filmed in Super-8 by Li, which serve as their own counterpoint to Doyle’s more immediately psychological images–are delightful dreams of his own aspirations, aspirations he may never actually achieve. Similarly, his description of those who frequent Paranoid Park (“train hoppers, guitar punks, throwaway kids . . .”) is a highly subjective reading of those he finds there, and may not necessarily be reality. The film seeks to uncover the rift in Alex’s consciousness that his “murder” creates. And since his association with one of Paranoid Park’s regulars leads to this rift, we can potentially see his view of skateboarding as a trap rather than a liberation.

Akiva Gottlieb at Slant mentions that at the end of the film, “we empathize with an ‘unrepentant murderer.’” Granted, he puts the key phrase in quotes, but it is worth mulling over. By film’s end, it has been revealed to us who exactly Alex is writing his letter to, and what he does with it. In one of the film’s most haunting images, we watch Alex in slow-motion throw one page after another into a fire while “Angeles” by Elliott Smith plays on the soundtrack. His soul has finally been unburdened. But does this mean that Alex has not repented? Does it even mean that he “got away with it?” Thanks to Van Sant’s fragmented chronology, we cannot be certain as to what may have happened after Alex disposes of the letter. It is unclear when his conversation with the detective–in which it is revealed that Alex’s skateboard has been found with the security guard’s DNA on it–occurs in relation to the letter’s burning. One can presume that the police might find further evidence on that skateboard that links Alex directly to the murder. And the final sequence finds Alex dreaming Li’s skateboarding fantasias, which he finally appears in. Have his fantasies consumed him to the point where he is a part of them, or are they delivering their farewell, never to return? It is unclear, and for Alex, the only thing that matters is that he is now able to honestly grapple with what he earlier called “different levels of stuff.” In other words, he has passed from innocence to experience. And perhaps he will begin to understand what those different levels actually mean.

Pregnancy, Abortion & The Movies: A Look Back at 2007

A rather unexpected cycle of films, as aesthetically and economically different from each other as could be, all took as partial or total focus of their narratives the topic of abortion. From small budget quirky comedy Waitress to the latest Judd Apatow powerhouse Knocked Up to Tony Kaye’s epic documentary Lake of Fire to the even quirkier teen comedy Juno to the Romanian drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, all five of these movies dealt with abortion on some level or another, which is a surprise given how much the subject has stayed off of the front pages in recent years. (More hot-button issues in the last four years seem to have been war, torture, gay marriage, stem-cell research and sexual impropriety by the nation’s leaders, whereas in the mid-1990s, abortion clinics were picketed and bombed with terrifying frequency, and whether a candidate was pro-choice or pro-life could make or break their campaign.)

It is certainly commendable that abortion should find its way into three relatively mainstream American comedies–Knocked Up, Waitress, and Juno. These movies, however, don’t really take abortion as its primary subject; rather, it is an unexpected pregnancy that is the spine of these films’ narratives. All of these pregnancies are carried to term, fitting them neatly into that subgenre of romantic comedy in which the female protagonist gets a bun in the oven in the first act, and has a blissful delivery at the climax. This is all well and good, to a degree. As several people have pointed out, there’s no story if the baby doesn’t get born. I’ll dispute that later; firstly, let’s examine just how these movies resolve the conflict early on, in which a woman must choose either Planned Parenthood or the local obstetrician.



In Waitress, much like Knocked Up and Juno, writer-director Adrienne Shelley dispatches abortion with quite a bit of narrative speed. Shelley’s heroine Jenna, a preternaturally gifted pie maker played by Keri Russell, discovers that she is pregnant, the father being her abusive husband (Jeremy Sisto). She and her friends Dawn and Becky (Shelley and Cheryl Hines) wait outside the diner where they all work discussing Jenna’s new problem. Dawn brings it up hesitatingly: “have you thought about...the other thing?” Becky and Jenna react with shock and horror. Jenna immediately assures them that she will have the baby–despite the fact that she hates the thing, and for the rest of the movie, writes it letters which blame it for ruining her life. By the end of the movie, her pregnancy has given her the strength to become an independent, self-reliant woman, and she sloughs off both her husband and her OB/GYN lover (Nathan Fillion).



Judd Apatow similarly pays slight and evasive attention to the issue. Alison (Katherine Heigl), an up-and-coming producer/host on E!, has a drunken one-night stand with Ben (Seth Rogen), a Canadian pothead slacker living off of an accident settlement. After she discovers that she is pregnant and informs Ben, Apatow presents two scenes. In the first, Ben consults with his friends. One (Jonah Hill) insists that Alison should “take care of it.” He eventually calls it a “shmashmortion,” so as to not upset one of the guys. This guy eventually bursts into a fit of hysteria, begging Ben to keep the baby away from “those butchers.” He even offers to raise the child himself if Ben does not believe he can handle the responsibility. Meanwhile, Alison is having lunch with her mother (Joanna Kerns), who similarly tells her to “take care of it.” A few more brief words from her, met by silence from Alison, lead to the clinching transition: Alison calls Ben to tell him that she is keeping the baby. Ben decides he wants to be involved, and after many setbacks, he and Alison fall in love, the baby is climactically born, and the three of them literally ride off into the sunset.



Juno is the only one of these three films to actually use the word “abortion.” High school junior Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) decides one night that it would be more fun to have sex with her best friend, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), than to watch The Blair Witch Project. Pregnancy ensues, and she makes the trip to the local clinic. A school acquaintance is outside protesting, and warns Juno that the fetus has fingernails. Inside the clinic, a goofy-looking slacker takes Juno’s information, making uncouth jokes in the process. As Juno looks around the waiting room, director Jason Reitman rapidly cuts from one nervous, “uncool” woman to another, until he cuts to Juno high-tailing it out of the office. That night, Juno tells her friend (Olivia Thirlby) that she couldn’t go through with it, that the thought of a fetus having fingernails freaked her out too much. She then decides to find a cute couple in the Penny-Saver who can adopt the child. She finds one (Jason Bateman & Jennifer Garner), and thanks to seeing Garner act as a good mom when she interacts with her niece–as opposed to the suburban ice queen she previously believed Garner to be–Juno realizes that she can give as well as admit her complete love for Paulie. Climactic birth ensues, and Juno and Paulie play their guitars into the sunset.

Make no mistake: no woman should ever be forced to have an abortion. She has the ultimate right to choose what to do with her body, be that abortion, adoption, or becoming a full-fledged mother. And certainly on the most literal level, Jenna, Alison and Juno make their own choices. But, as I have hinted at, there seem to be other rhetorical forces at work informing those choices.

In 21st Century America, abortion is something which is considered practically every time a woman becomes unexpectedly pregnant. It is a serious decision, and it is not my impression that most women make it lightly. (People tell me that in post-communist Romania, women often use abortion as a form of birth control; but more on that later.) In Waitress, Knocked Up, and Juno, however, abortion is treated as something of an afterthought, an idea quickly discarded for the more sensible option.

Juno decides to have an abortion, certainly, but writer Diablo Cody and Reitman suggest that her decision to give the baby away is the first step toward a growing maturity within Juno, culminating in rejecting the arrested development of Bateman in favor of the loving maternity of Garner. Certainly Juno’s horror at the abortion clinic implies that such a choice for a pregnant teenager is positively repugnant.

Both Jenna and Alison don’t appear to want to be mothers at all. They are both career women who are attempting to discover their own right to independence. Jenna is outright contemptuous of the thing growing inside of her, and Alison is depicted as a hot young spinster who is told by her bosses that she needs to focus on her image in order to get ahead. She is not happy to hear that she is pregnant, but after her talk with her mother, she comes to a quick decision to have–and keep–the baby. The way Apatow constructs the sequence suggests that Alison petulantly makes her choice as a defiant act against her mother. Neither Shelley nor Apatow have created scenarios in which their women might make a more serious, considered decision about the rest of their lives. There actually doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of choice in the matter. At points, all three movies are openly hostile toward abortion, from the outright disgust of Ben and Jenna’s friends to Juno’s shock and horror at the clinic.

As for the rebuttal, “there’s no movie if she has an abortion,” honestly: as far as narrative is concerned, the pregnancy rom-com subgenre is a little too easy to make. Your three-act structure is built right in, as if nothing else interesting could be explored with these characters. Is it really that impossible to make a 90-120 minute movie–a romantic comedy, even–in which a woman has an abortion? I would like to think that Apatow, Cody, Reitman, and Shelley are creative enough to put together films that are more complex when it comes to the issue of women’s choice.

By contrast, Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Tony Kaye’s Lake of Fire never flinch from the realities and broader emotional spectrum of abortion. 4 Months (a fiction film from Romania following two college friends over the course of one day as one of them tries to obtain an illegal abortion during the Ceausescu era) and Lake of Fire (a documentary shot in 35mm black-and-white in the US over a 17-year period) are certainly different in many respects, but both take abortion as seriously as cancer.



Lake of Fire may stand as the definitive polemic on abortion in America. Begun in the early 1990s, when the British-born Kaye was still a commercials director, the film features talking-head interviews, vérité footage of pro-choice and pro-life rallies, and two actual abortion procedures. Advocates on both sides of the aisle–and along various points of the spectrum–let their voices be heard. Kaye gives roughly equal time to most participants, and though his rhetorical technique subtly reveals the film’s pro-choice leanings, he never allows the film to devolve into an ideological screed. Many unexpected opinions emerge from various figures, including author and Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff, who is literally pro-life. He is an atheist and is opposed to abortion, war and the death penalty, a platform most pro-lifers would not claim as their own. Another is Norma McCorvey, the woman who served as Roe in Roe v. Wade. After being a pro-choice crusader for many years–along with being a lesbian–McCorvey claims to have seen a collection of dead fetuses in the walk-in freezer at the Texas abortion clinic where she worked. Soon afterward, she denounced her lesbianism, found Jesus, and became one of the key pro-life advocates in America. This is obviously a massive political windfall for the pro-life movement, but Kaye treats it as another example of how complex the issue of abortion is, certainly more complex than many of the demagogues in the film would like us to believe.

The film’s climactic sequence–following a woman in Wisconsin through her own abortion procedure–is similarly treated with great restraint and impassivity. the woman describes her previous abortion procedures, and appears to have a great deal of melancholy about the latest. Doctors and nurses interview her, making sure that she is doing this of her own free will, and that she is 100% certain that this is what she wants to do. Then Kaye shows the actual procedure. Some critics have decried this move as exploitation, that Kaye wishes to merely shock the audience with the image of a dead fetus. But the procedure is so restrained, and its gruesome elements so deftly and matter-of-factly handled, that all we can think about is simply, this is how abortions are done. After the procedure has ended, the woman speaks directly to the camera about the experience. Eventually, she breaks down crying.

The grand ideas we come away with after the movie ends is not that abortion is an uncomfortable afterthought, something which women quickly need to disregard when they discover that they are pregnant. Instead, the question of abortion emerges as something which is a very real, serious idea that every woman must decide for themselves. No one takes it lightly, and no one underestimates its consequences. But the necessity of its legality has the potential, as Kaye shows, to rip America in two.



4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days offers up a case study which Tony Kaye might have used had he filmed in Romania instead of America. Two college students, Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) and Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), attempt to traverse the black-market abortion industry in Romania in 1987. Ceausescu criminalized the procedure when he came to power in 1966, and it wouldn’t become legal again until 1989, when he was deposed. Meanwhile, Otilia must monomaniacally overcome many obstacles in order to help Gabita procure an abortion. These include incredibly precise logistical steps in order to avoid being caught, negotiating with a terrifying doctor (Vlad Ivanov) who eventually forces Otilia to prostitute herself, and her boyfriend’s family, who trap her at dinner and incessantly talk about the banal while Otilia grows more and more anxious by the second. Mungiu films in long, sustained, hand-held takes, allowing a mood of quiet menace to creep into every corner of the frame. Otilia thinks of nothing else but helping her friend, to the point where, through her own frustration and the incredible rigor of Mungiu’s images, she becomes consumed by the quest and the quest alone, physically unable to understand anything else. The portentousness of the ending–a two-shot of Otilia and Gabita after the procedure, neither woman able to eat dinner while a wedding party goes on in the background–speaks to the depths of, and perhaps the irreparable harm done to, their friendship. But the film never questions the bond between them, or the necessity for the both of them to do what they do, even if it means potential harm. And the evil done to them is not abortion itself, but a political ideology that doesn’t allow for Gabita to share the experience of the woman at the end of Lake of Fire.

So what are we left with? Five films which roughly split into two camps: comedy vs. drama, pro-life vs. pro-choice, mainstream vs. art house. Their approaches may all widely differ from each other, but these dualities remain fairly consistent. It would seem to suggest that mainstream America cannot face abortion in 2007. Or it could suggest that pregnancy narratives are merely in fashion, and the suppression of abortion is just an unfortunate byproduct. Further still, it could be that no one knows how to make a pro-choice comedy. I am not sure. In any case, we are left with a somewhat disturbing trend that has the potential to continue for years to come.


By the way, here's the piece that killed my motivation to put this one on the web, mainly because he beat me to the punch, and it's much better:

J. Hoberman in The Village Voice

The Best Preemptive Film of 2008

This week, we look at abortion in the films of 2007, with two short reviews, and a large think piece about the theme of abortion in 2007. Here's the first:




4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)

The third Romanian to be heralded in the US in as many years, Cristian Mungiu’s second feature may be the best yet. It did not get officially released in America until late January, yet it was one of the most talked-about films of 2007. Why? Firstly, it was Romania’s official selection for the Best Foreign Film Oscar nomination process (and it was controversially not one of that award's finalists). Secondly, it played for a week in Los Angeles in late December to qualify for the general Oscar nominations. Finally, for all the above reasons, many critics, critics organizations, and critics’ polls have been including it in their best-of-2007 considerations. So, I am compromising: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is the best preemptive film of 2008. (P.S. It also came out of nowhere to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last May.)

Like Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 East of Bucharest before it, 4 Months is a triumph of temporal elasticity, terse narrative economy, and political subtext. Set in 1987, two years before the collapse of communism in Romania, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) has to arrange an abortion for her friend Gabita (Lara Vasiliu). Both are in college, and abortion is illegal. But it must be done, and over the course of one night, the claustrophobic terror of such an experience is suffocating. Mungiu employs harsh light and long, handheld takes to expand time and present their ordeal quite starkly. Time eventually becomes an extension of Otilia’s psyche, as she is unsure of when the nightmare will end. And what a deft choice to focus not on the patient, but on her friend who must make sure everything happens correctly. From arranging the hotel to bargaining with the doctor (bargaining which includes sexual debasement) to dealing with her boyfriend’s insufferable family (easily the funniest scene in the movie) to both chastising and comforting Gabita, Otilia must accomplish all and be rewarded nothing. The film does have its political trappings, but this is more a story about how friends must do everything for each other, even if it potentially destroys their bond. The final moments, composed in an unblinking two-shot with Otilia and Gabita in silence at dinner, suggests a great deal of uncertainty as well as relief about what the future holds for the both of them.

End of the Year Blog-a-thon, Pt. VI: The Ones I Missed

I saw 75 new films in 2007 (a new record!) In a perfect world, I would've seen around 200 or so. Here are 21 that were essential viewing, but still slipped through my fingers. Can't see everything, after all.



Bamako (Abderrahmane Sissako)



The Band's Visit (Eran Kolirin)



Day Night Day Night (Julia Loktev)



The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)



Dry Season (Mahamet-Saleh Haroun)



Election (Johnny To)



Triad Election (Johnny To)



Exiled (Johnny To)



Exterminating Angels (Jean-Claude Brisseau)



Flanders (Bruno Dumont)



Forever (Heddy Honigmann)



Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck)



Half Moon (Bahman Ghobadi)



Honor de Cavalleria (Albert Serra)



Into the Wild (Sean Penn)



Lady Chatterley (Pascale Ferran)



Los Muertos (Lisandro Alonso)



Quiet City (Aaron Katz)



This is England (Shane Meadows)



West of the Tracks (Wang Bing)



The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach)



As I say, there's always next year. Thanks for takin' the journey with me. I'll see you in 2008.

End of the Year Blog-a-thon, Pt. V: The 4 Best Movies of 2007, pt. C

Here it is, the final entry, the movie that I may have seen last, but left the most deep, violent impression on me: if I'm Not There and Syndromes and a Century are joy inherent, and Colossal Youth represents a completely new kind of film, then this is the most explosive piece of mainstream cinema of the year.




There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)

I’m not sure I have ever seen anything like what has been achieved with There Will Be Blood. It is a work that grows within you, festering, not letting its grip loose. It is a work of sublimated emotional and physical violence, etching each shot into the fabric like a knife blade into a block of wood.

We open in silence. Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) can’t make his fortune in silver, so he moves to oil prospecting. He becomes rich. But he lusts for even bigger windfalls. He has a son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier). One day, Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) come to his office and tells him that oil is in Little Boston, California. Plainview finds it, buys the land, and drains the oil from the ground. H.W. has an accident by the derrick and becomes deaf. Daniel’s mysterious half-brother, Henry (Kevin J. O’Connor), appears and becomes a new partner. H.W. is sent away to a deaf school, and all the while Daniel builds a rivalry with the other Sunday brother, Eli (also played by Dano), a young preacher who may not be all that he seems. And so, after Daniel has sold off to Union Oil, and we discover the depths and sources of both his fury and his sorrow, we see him retired, fifteen years later, disowning his son and having one final showdown with Eli. It is here that we see what these two men have quietly been all along: the corruption of the American soul, and of their own souls. Daniel lost his family to his avarice, and Eli lost his and many others’ faiths to the same vice.

Anderson has crystallized what he began with Punch-Drunk Love, namely, refocusing and concentrating the vast wealth of his talent. His tracking shots have slowed their tempo, and have thus become more penetrating and ominous. Similarly, his soundscapes are more stark, and more sparse. The score, by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, is Anderson’s first without the Michael Penn-Aimee Mann-Jon Brion juggernaut, but Greenwood follows Brion’s lead from Punch-Drunk Love by creating an impressionistic, sparsely-used score that is without fail, the best film score since Brion’s 2002 opus. Anderson employs Greenwood’s percussive, dissonant strings to terrifying use, as they actively become an essential part of the film’s fabric, the tool which alludes to the hideous decay which is slowly built upon with all other elements.

And then there is the small matter of Day-Lewis and Dano. Day-Lewis only further confirms his mastery over his craft, as every nuance, every simmering ferocity, every small expression of tenderness or pain is completely under his control. Daniel Plainview is a titanic smokestack, misanthropic to the core and willing to subvert any obstacle in order to achieve his ends. He instantly recognizes in Eli the same impulse to control and manipulate, and hates the threat to his power. It is a marvel to see Day-Lewis keep this all under the surface of things, smoldering until the climactic battle between and money and faith.

As for Dano, make no mistake: he is a force to be reckoned with. Outclassed he may be, but how many 23-year-olds do you know who wouldn’t be? Eli is, similarly to Javier Bardem’s Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, a mortal demon, a clear-eyed, placid poison who hungers for wealth and power while appearing calm and pious to his parishioners. He condemns Plainview and his own father for striking a deal to drill for oil, but he is sickened more by the fact that he is not paid what he feel he is owed. A most revealing moment is his new church being built around him while he rehearses his sermon. Elmer Gantry would be proud. But Dano, as wonderfully creepy and outlandish as he lets Eli be, also shows his vulnerability, especially when Eli, now rich and famous at the movie’s climax, visits Daniel to see if he will drill for more oil for him. Eli is weak, succumbing to “sin” and greed, some semblance of true belief still within him that says he has failed to do the Lord’s will.

SPOILER ALERT: And what of the ending which many decry or laugh off? It seems like the explosion that the movie has threatened to bring, but away from which it always shies. It is the mad, tormented battle that illuminates the final straw of Daniel’s hatred, and of his madness. He finally explodes, like the oil derrick that brings about H.W.’s deafness. It is the delirious end of faith, faith destroyed by money, and the evil that lays sprawling out before us, yelling, “I’m finished ” Plainview has won and lost–for it is America that is finished.