Cinema: The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman, 1960)

It's Palme d'Or Sunday and I have a number of films buzzing around my head for this entry. I'm tempted to go all out and write about one of my favorite films, Viridiana, which won the Palme d'Or fifty years ago, but have ultimately decided against such a large endeavor. Instead of giving you an in-depth essay, I decided to write down some thoughts on something I'd recently seen to keep this fresh and brief.

Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring screened in competition at the 1960 Cannes film festival. Overshadowed by the Italian one-two punch of Antonioni's Jury Prize winner L'Avventura and Fellini's Palme d'Or winning La Dolce Vita, Bergman's film was honored at the festival with a special mention alongside Luis Buñuel's similarly overlooked The Young One. The film is a period piece adapted from a 13th century Swedish ballad about a group of young girls whose corpses leave behind flowing springs after their headless bodies are discovered. Bergman changes the focus of the source material, giving us another existentialist meditation on human weakness in the face of God's absence.

A beautiful young virgin from a wealthy family is sent to deliver candles to the church alongside her pregnant foster sister. The two girls are polar opposites: the virgin Karin, with her clear complexion, is devoutly Christian, naive and diligent, Ingeri is unkempt, irascible and prays to Norse God Odin. After an argument, the two become separated and Ingeri must watch from a distance as Karin is is intercepted by three beggars. The beggars are all brothers, two adults and one child, who feign good intentions in order to lure, rape and murder Karin. Bergman is able to complicate the vilification of the beggars by making one of the culprits a child. Though he doesn't participate in the rape or murder, the child aids his brothers in trapping Karin -making him indirectly responsible for the brutal actions that ensue regardless if he comprehends their seriousness. The three siblings flee the scene, only to seek refuge at Karin's home. Her unsuspecting parents give them a place to sleep for the night, but soon discover they are the people responsible for their daughter's death. Karin's father enacts a vicious revenge and murders the three of them in a fit of rage. The family returns to the site of the crime and finds a spring sprouting up beneath their deceased daughter's body. Unable to understand God's reason for allowing the crime, the father apologizes for his revenge and vows to build a church at the place of his daughter's death.

The Virgin Spring is one of the few films for which Bergman didn't provide his own screenplay, which might be one of the reasons why the film feels like one of his most staged productions. The small cast, few settings and calculated performances all have a theatrical quality to them that stand out in the film. In fact, The Virgin Spring feels a lot more like one of the many plays or TV movies that the Swedish master directed in his lifetime. What drives the project into feature film rather than any other form is the explicit way Bergman depicts the story's brutal violence. The rape is surprisingly graphic for its time, going further than the equally as uncomfortable rape scenes in Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers, released the same year. The same can be said of the father's brutal revenge. After locking the three beggars in a room, he wakes them up and kills them one-by-one, including the defenseless child whose responsibility over the incident is marginal. Bergman uses minimal cuts and camera movement in shooting this scene, keeping with the economy of style that the film proposes. The lack of music or dialogue gives the event a particularly shocking gravity to it -unparalleled by any other film of its era.

Watching Bergman film in black and white is an incomparable privilege. Though this film doesn't rank amongst my favorite of his works, I still have to commend the breathtaking photography which once again takes full advantage of shadows to inform the mise-en-scene. What I like the most about The Virgin Spring, however, is the moral question it poses: How does man respond to the absence of God? Karin's rape is unmotivated, and her murder is a consequence of chance. And while her father's revenge is very much motivated, why does he also kill the child? Isn't the child also a victim of chance? Isn't the father then just as responsible for his primal actions? The father's vow to build a church comes as an afterthought, like a half-assed apology done out of exhaustion rather than an act to commemorate his daughter's death. The idea of God is irrelevant to these characters when it comes to primal emotions. The beggars rape because they feel like it. Karin's murder is absolutely gratuitous, as is the father's bloodlust in killing the three siblings responsible for it. Human desire in The Virgin Spring conquers divine supervision, regardless the stakes.

Unfortunately, The Virgin Spring is perhaps best known today as the main inspiration for Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left (1972) and its 2009 remake. The film is available on Region 1 DVD in a superb edition from The Criterion Collection that includes audio commentary from the director himself and an introduction by Ang Lee.

Cinema: Inside Job (Charles Ferguson, 2010)

It’s become increasingly difficult for me to separate the way I remember films without recalling the circumstances of the particular screenings I’ve seen them in (as you can tell from my opening lines in my Babies review below). So you’ll understand why the best thing about watching An Inconvenient Truth for me was that I saw it next to an old girlfriend, the only date at the movies we ever had, and that we both fell asleep throughout different segments of it. “An Inconvenient Truth” is one of the best naps I’ve ever taken in a movie theater.

Unfortunately, I have no positive memories of sitting and down and rewatching the film properly. I don’t know why I never noticed, but the whole idea of Al Gore giving a fancy powerpoint presentation in a feature film that people pay money to see sounds like a mediocre SNL skit from the late 90’s. Nevertheless, the film took home the Oscar that year for Best Documentary Feature. This is only pertinent because Davis Guggenheim’s exposé was the main reference to many of the frustrations I had with last year’s Oscar-winning doc, Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job.

Charles Ferguson is a good filmmaker and “Inside Job” is a very well-made film that suffers from a thematic myopia and misguided approach to understanding the current financial crisis. Its obnoxious didacticism can barely hide behind an impressive array of visual graphics that over-simplifies a fascinating subject. Ferguson’s exploration into the crisis is complemented by strong, research-focused journalistic rigor but is ultimately sacrificed once the filmmaker allows his personal indignation to seep into the film. Before long, “Inside Job” stops feeling like another didactic powerpoint doc and starts sinking as a poorly-planned witch-hunt. The director sets up his subjects as bowling pins and then knocks them down, or at least attempts to, with sobering intertitles indicating that so-and-so declined to be in the film. The poor saps that do get to go onscreen, either end up looking like bumbling assholes or sternly remind the filmmaker that his little movie isn’t a deposition and that they’re not dumb enough to admit to anything on camera.

The film suffers because it mistakes its search for answers with a search for culprits. The most interesting angle in this subject isn’t the people behind it but the effects it’s caused around the world. Ferguson gives us glimpses of this in the documentary’s strongest sections -the opening in Iceland and a quick glimpse into Chinese factories- but abandons the approach in favor of his one-man quest to make people look stupid. What the filmmaker is unaware of, however, is that the people he interviews don’t need any help from his “Gotcha!” brand of journalism to look any more guilty, or dumber, than they already are. It’s unfortunate, really, since Inside Job plays like a great non-fiction piece doomed by a tragically misguided approach.

Ten Movies For Halloween

“So what’s your favorite movie?”

It’s an impossible question to answer, one that most of us have already devised a prepared statement or counter-question to respond with. My friends know better than to ask it, but acquaintances/people-I-meet-in-bars love to put me on the spot. Fortunately, after my standardized less-than-satisfying reply, the follow-up question(s) ends up being more specific.

In October the follow-up question tends to be about Horror Films, or at least about “scary movies”. As the depths of Genre Theory confirms, genre is a touchy subject in film studies –particularly if the genre experiences radical changes (as they are prone to) after the Classical period of Hollywood studio cinema. I don’t want to go anywhere near defining Horror, nor do I want to make an argument on the merits and/or pitfalls of framing such a conversation under “genre”. For those interested in such a dialogue, I would recommend Brigid Cherry’s book on the subject –a complete and up-to-date volume on the topic. Rather than vying for your attention with an objective definition of Horror, I’d like to frame this conversation around a more pragmatic, perhaps tragically subjective, definition based on the exclusion of certain films instead of a set of parameters that welcome the selective inclusion of titles. By this I mean that I am leaving out several films I love like Psycho (1960), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Se7en (1996) and Zodiac (2006) because I don’t see them, or more importantly, I don’t experience them on the same visceral register than the films which I have included.

Moreover, to be honest, I don’t really experience too many films as horror films when watching them. If I were to conform a serious list of fear in cinema, I wouldn’t include entire films as much as I’d compromise the assignment with scenes, moments or even shots in films regardless (and thus successfully side-stepping the controversial issue of) genre.

Recently, a (new-old) good friend of mine in San Francisco shared her displeasure at “ranking” films, conforming lists and applying value judgments influenced by taste. Mind you, she had an earful to say about my music tastes, but her rejection nevertheless struck me as compelling –as any sort of rejection from women usually does. I have to say that I share her feelings, though I don’t necessarily subscribe to them. I also hate forming lists for the same reason –but that doesn’t mean I don’t have fun making them. Therefore, you don’t have to buy my argument (I’m giving you permission), mostly because it’s not an argument at all. This framework, and the list presented below, serves only to achieve its own purpose. A “list for list’s sake,” –nothing more and nothing less.

TEN MOVIES FOR HALLOWEEN.

Omissions: I still haven’t seen Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Herzog’s Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979), El Orfanato (2007) or Let the Right One In (2008) –all of which have piqued my interest and could very well appear in a future draft of this list.

Honorable Mention: The Fast Zombie - Dawn of the Dead (2004) and 28 Weeks Later (2007).

I know –there isn’t a single Romero movie on this list. I don’t mean to overlook his influence or suggest that I don’t enjoy his films. I’ve written at length about him and the original Night of the Living Dead (1967) and really do enjoy that movie. But when compiling this list, his stuff came an afterthought to an afterthought. Instead, I want to bring up two of the movies with the best opening first acts that I’ve ever seen. I like Zac Snyder’s remake of Dawn of the Dead over the original. I can’t say enough positive things about the film’s pacing; the narrative structure has a smooth, engaging dynamism that I wish all contemporary films (especially Snyder’s) could employ. Spaniard Juan Carlos Fresnadillo 28 Weeks Later builds on Danny Boyle’s predecessor and takes the story to a very dark, exciting place. In fact Fresnadillo’s film is so good that it’s hard to even recall Boyle’s movie, which deserves a lot of attention in itself. The narrative of repopulation and placing a Catholic-tinged catalyst like the preservation and reunion of the nuclear family at the core of the movie were brilliant ideas and are executed with terrifying results.

10. J.D.’s Revenge (1976)

Blaxploitation needs to start being taken as a period in film history rather than a genre. This film is a shining example of the multiple genres that were appropriated throughout these movies of the 1970s. Glynn Turner’s body is taken over by the ghost of a murderous, jazz-age pimp. Unintended hilarity ensues for the once mild-mannered law-student/cab-driver.

9. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Tobe Hooper’s debut is still as raw, unpolished and (therefore) effective as it was nearly forty years ago. The classical age in Hollywood often featured foreigners (Bela Lugosi, Borlis Karloff) and outside-threats as monsters who would strike fear in spectators. The culturally turbulent 70s saw the monster come from inside the American milieu. Here, the rural American family is presented as vulgar and grotesque –a sort of dystopic Norman Rockwell painting.

8. Das Cabinet der Dr. Caligari (1920)

Style. Arguably German Expressionism’s marquee film, Robert Weine’s masterpiece is so visually rich that it’s virtually impossible to erase it from memory. As haunting as it is beautiful.

7. The Fly (1986)

Another remake, and the highest on my list. Cronenberg turns in what would be, if it weren’t for Back to the Future (1985), the best American film of its decade. The Fly begins in medias res and doesn't stop until any semblance of humanity is stripped from Jeff Goldblum's character in the performance of his career. The movie perfectly taps into the period's AIDS paranoia, taking the themes from the original 50s film and extending them to contemporary social taboos.

6. Cat People (1942)

Val Lewton turned to Jacques Tourneur to helm this studio-era horror film about the dangers of feminine sexuality and desire. Though I still think that Lewton should've dug out Luis Buñuel from MoMA to direct the film, Tourneur does a magnificent job in crafting an eerie and mysterious atmosphere that envelops this narrative of wanton transmutation.

5. Funny Games (1997)

Possibly the most divisive of all of Michael Haneke's movies, Funny Games is a film you either accept on the grounds it (explicitly) imposes or reject completely. Its intrinsic dialogue on violence, spectatorship, and entertainment might be (/is) a bit heavy-handed but it works for me. The underlying sadism isn't explored to the extents as someone like Pier Paolo Pasolini might take them (though I'd argue that while Pasolini's exhibitionism is politically motivated, it is exhibitionism nevertheless), but there remains a true sense of horror, shock and awe throughout the running time.

4. Scream (1996)

The only Wes Craven film I have on here, though I have to admit that it's mostly because of Kevin Williamson's fantastic script. Scream single-handedly revitalized the Horror Film and saved it from VHS obscurity with a new generation of hip, young, attractive twenty-something that showed just enough skin before getting killed. Kevin Williamson makes a strong statement to be considered as the principal auteur of the film, with Craven relegated to paying homage to his earlier career and let the screenplay do the talking. The film sounds like a conversation between students over break during a film school lecture, and the script has the requisite cinephillic intertextuality to function simultaneously as a satire. Scream's reputation might have been tainted by the other films and sequels it inspired, but the original's charm and wit still holds up.

3. Halloween (1978)

John Carpenter made a strong impact with his debut feature, turning a tremendous profit for the low-budget film in the process. Carpenter borrows his fair share from Hitchcock, Psycho specifically, while still crafting his own style and aesthetic. Halloween might have reintroduced the Monster back to American Horror. Michael Meyers set a precedent for the other slasher protagonists that followed him throughout the 80s. It also became a commodity for studios. A lower budget is practically guaranteed when your film franchise's star wears a mask throughout the entire film.

2. Les Diaboliques (1955)

Remember when I was talking about "moments" being the most present forms of visceral response between me and a film? The ending to Henri-Georges Clouzot's film is worth sittingits leisurely pace. The film, however, highly depends on how effective the denoument is for the viewer -if it fails to draw you in from the beginning it's doubtful that you'll stick around for the end. If patience was ever a virtue in the cinema, it'd be a virtue reserved for those who soldier on through the films (/running-time marathons) of Andrei Tarkovsky and Luchino Visconti. If instead of a virtue, though, patience was something you had now-and-then when watching movies, Diabolique is a great piece to work with.

1. The Birds (1963)

Buñuel called it one of his favorite films. Romero acknowledged it as a strong inspiration in his cinema. The Birds continues to impress me today by how unbelievably efficient it is. Small cast. Minimal plot. No musical score. But most importantly, the brilliant decision to leave out any exposition whatsoever. The most common question about the film is "Why?," and the best part about the film is that there isn't -nor does there have to be- an answer. I don't want to sound like Rohmer & Chabrol, but Hitchcock's film taps into a rootless evil, closer to the uniform purity of a biblical malevolence. This is evil without the constraints or conventions of pop psychology or motivation. The violence is, aptly, animalistic. Natural, visceral, and most frightening of all -arbitrary. Unlike Psycho, which tries (too) hard to offer answers for the spectator, The Birds is ninety-minutes of pure transgression. Everything about the film works to make the viewer uncomfortable, but the resonance and genius of its unheimliche qualities resonate via the cozy, suburban setting. The home for Hitchcock is often portrayed as a façade for great evil. In The Birds that evil is omnipresent and the home is only a pathetic, flimsy excuse to offer us protection.

Update (May, 2011): After watching Let the Right One In and the (arguably superior) American remake, Let Me In (2010), I have to admit that I absolutely loved both films. They should be on this list, in one of the top spots, and I sincerely hope they stick around in our collective cultural memory long enough to be written about more and more.

Cinema: Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)

I like foreplay as much as the next guy but there comes a point in every evening/semi-awake-morning when enough is enough. That’s why I don’t mind genre pictures, where exposition is presented with the haphazard brevity of frat house cunnilingus. All it takes for a good genre film to lay out the rules in its fictional universe are a rough and rowdy five minutes: these vampires can walk in the daylight; these are fast zombies, you need to shoot them in the head; Eddie Murphy plays every character in this movie and it’s supposed to be funny when one of them farts. You can imagine my impatience when Christopher Nolan’s new film takes seventy minutes to sort out its complicated, self-indulgent, obnoxious and ultimately ludicrous storyline. This is a movie about breaking into people’s dreams and stealing their secrets. That’s not a difficult concept to convey to an audience, but like the film’s protagonist, Nolan loses himself too deep in his own fantasy. The first half of the film calls alarming attention to Jonathan Nolan’s conspicuous absence from the production. The director’s younger brother, after all, had been involved in the writing process for three of Christopher Nolan’s best-known films. It doesn’t strike me as a coincidence that his collaboration in those particular projects produced smoother, better balanced, and generally more polished narratives.

My real frustration with Inception is not in its execution (which is remarkable, by the way), but in its namesake –the inception of the film itself. Nolan carefully constructs a dream world that doesn’t even remotely strike one as such. The mortal sin the writer/director commits is imposing a narrative logic into a realm that defines itself by the very rejection of any sort of rationale. The filmmaker loses sight of the absurd simplicity, the visceral joy that makes up the essence of all our dreams. Luis Buñuel, who practically made a career of putting his dreams on celluloid, understood what Nolan is unable to grasp: dreams are motivated by irrational desire, by abrupt shifts in time and place, by a consortium of fetish objects that present themselves without welcome or warning. Inception tries so hard, and even struggles at times, to make sense without realizing that it doesn’t have to. Ellen Page swallows her pride and plays a role that was written in solely to clarify plot points and guide viewers through Nolan’s maze of a film. Di Caprio’s role lacks the required character depth for a Hollywood protagonist, which might be why Nolan makes the unfortunate (and ineffective) attempt at giving the hero a tormented past. This decision proves to be a distracting mistake, bloating the running time and doing horrors to the film’s pacing in a denouement we’ve waited over two hours for. In fact, the whole dead-spouse-guilt-dream motif seems like a cheap knock-off of a similar theme explored by the protagonist of Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972). But whereas the Russian film had the time and patience to genuinely explore such an emotionally-packed topic, the blockbuster spectacle of Inception does not have either the tact or responsibility to go anywhere near the issue. I get the impression that someone forgot to tell Chris Nolan that he was making an action movie, which is a pity because that’s where the film truly excels.

The special effects are breathtaking. The fight choreography is brilliantly conceived, exuding an air of confidence in its visual innovation that I haven’t felt in watching an action film since The Matrix (1999). Lee Smith, the film’s editor who is another long-time Nolan collaborator, makes organizing such a complex screenplay look easy. His ability to transition between scenes is a master class in parallel editing; Smith keeps the story moving forward even when it gets caught up in Nolan’s dime-store melodrama. Inception also sounds as good as it looks. Hans Zimmer outdoes himself with a terrific score. The veteran composer delivers an intense, foreboding soundtrack that stands out as some of the best work in his twenty-plus year career. The spectacle of Inception is so entertaining that one winces every time Nolan resorts to dialogue.

With this film, Christopher Nolan retains his reputation as one of today’s most exciting and dynamic filmmakers. Memento (2000) was a breath of fresh air in its release, surprising audiences with an unorthodox and intriguing narrative structure. He has completely revitalized Warner Brothers’ Batman franchise, sacrificing Tim Burton’s over-valued visual style (and its ill-fated kitschy appropriation at the hands of Joel Schumacher) for a somber shift in tone absent in most mainstream cinema today. The Prestige (2006) was a thrilling magic trick, with inspired casting and genre-bending twists. Even his 2002 remake of Erik Skjoldbjaerg’s Insomnia (1997) is an inferior but nevertheless admirable adaptation of the Norwegian original. Nolan likes to take risks with his films and Inception is certainly a risk worth taking. Unfortunately for us, however, it’s not a risk worth watching.