Coen brothers go West

The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, have been rather prolific over the past years, maintaining around one new release per year. After their "No Country for Old Men" Oscar triumph a few years ago, they've presented audiences with offbeat humor ("Burn After Reading") and existential dilemmas ("A Serious Man"), all filtered through eccentric eyes. Coen films are easily identifiable by their unpredictability, unconventional protagonists (The Dude stands chief among them) and off-beat dialogue.

In light of the above, I'm a bit taken aback by all the comments stating how their latest film, the Western remake "True Grit", which features the above elements, is their most audience friendly and straightforward work. If "straightforward" here means that one thing leads to another in the film, then yes, it is straightforward. But sometimes it seems as if "straightforward" is meant to mean "simple" or "plain", and that is patently incorrect. Along with these statements are implications of how their film is a conventional, if well written, embodiment of recognisable genre iconography.

Bah. I never thought that one could make a Coen movie sound "conventional" but that's what some people would have one believe. Actually, "True Grit" is another 'clearly Coen' film; the brothers have taken stock characters and a vengeance-based plot and turned it into something profound. Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld, who commands this film front and center) is a fourteen year-old girl looking for her father's killer, a man she believes goes by the name of Tom Chaney (a greasy Josh Brolin). She has the will but not the way to get him herself, and so she employs (though that may not be the best word to describe this transaction) a US marshal called Rooster Cogburn (a character made famous by John Wayne and immortalised by Jeff Bridges). They are sometimes aided in their quest by Laboeuf (Matt Damon), a Texas Ranger who's been on Chaney's track for some time and looks forward to apprehending him. (Steinfeld and Bridges are superb.) 

Looking at the above plot description, the film does sound "straightforward", so let's get the "straightforward" qualities out of the way. There are landscape shots captured by legendary Roger Deakins. There's a shoot-out. Men are tested by the elements, their own internal weaknesses and by their companions, with whom they nearly inevitably butt heads. However, there is more to the film than those genre indicators. For instance, the landscape shots only appear some time into film, and are not used as an initial establishing device as most Westerns use it. And the action, when it happens, is always bound to the points of view of key characters, and in one instance the action is brutal and abrupt.

There is what one might call "character development" for one character, while another completely subverts the notion. In addition, there is a scene where Mattie and Rooster expect a familiar face to appear, and when this does not happen and they face instead someone that seems half animal, Rooster's reply is priceless. This moment - with the character's placing in the middle of the frame instead of somewhat to the side - is pure Coen ingenuity.

"True Grit" thematically addresses the idea of doing what has to be done, doing the right thing, sometimes against great odds and at great cost. Still, as the opening and closing shots make clear, "True Grit" isn't just a Western with outlaws, lawmen and beans around the fire. It is a celebration of the genre and trappings. The opening shot seems at first to be a movie frame fluttering into sight and then reveals itself to be a memory from a long time ago. This evokes not only the narrative content that opens the film, but also makes us aware that we are watching a type of movie that went out of fashion a long time ago (at least at the box-office) yet never goes away completely. In a goosebumps inducing final shot, the filmmakers display their love for the genre as much as the movie characters with just enough respect and sentiment.

"True Grit" is the best Western since "Unforgiven" and was nominated for 10 Oscars.

(I thought that "No Country for Old Men", another type of Western, was the best film of 2008, and I listed "A Serious Man" in my top ten of 2010.)

Old school Spielberg

Once when I was a child, my parents gave me Neil Sinyard's "The Films of Steven Spielberg" for my birthday. At first I looked only at the pictures, particularly those images from Spielberg's big movies: "E.T.", the "Indiana Jones" movies, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and so on. I chose to ignore his early movies on account of the practical reason that my local video store did not have them in stock, so why bother? Hence I have not joined Goldie Hawn on the "Sugarland Express" and I still haven't seen Spielberg's take on Columbo.

The early Spielberg movie that would garner the most attention and acclaim over the years would be the thriller "Duel" (1971), a simple cat-and-mouse story based on a Richard Matheson ("I Am Legend") short story published in Playboy.

The impotent protagonist

Filmed as a low budget "movie of the weekend" for the American TV channel ABC - Spielberg was not yet to be trusted with expensive studio fare - the film uses its budgetary limitations to its advantage in pitting a mild-mannered city dweller David Mann (Dennis Weaver) against a malicious (and never seen) truck driver on the open country road, stripping the film of distracting subplots and secondary characters that take up much screen time. We are so aligned with Mann that we are privy to his thoughts as he reflects on his predicament, making it clear that he in his Plymouth really is no much for a redneck in a massive truck. Weaver is completely believable as the panicking Mann (in an interview, Matheson concedes his naming the character Mann as representative of 'man' was "foolish") and clearly anticipates Kurt Russell's Jeff Taylor in "Breakdown" (Mostow 1996) twenty five years later. ("Breakdown", by the way, is one of the 1990's most deserving B-movies and remains worth a watch.)

"Duel" starts with the point-of-view of a car gradually exchanging the city's congested roads for the easy driving of the country. Mann is on a business trip, and we learn that he and his wife had had a falling out the night before which had not been resolved. His telephone conversation with his wife, where we are shown not only the wife but also the couple's children, is the film's most misguided creative choice - why does Spielberg insist on locating Mann in a nuclear family while the character would have been just as convincing without this character baggage? Mann encounters the truck early on as it hinders his way, overtakes it, and in so doing incurs the wrath of whoever drives the truck. The rest of the film consists of Mann being hunted by the truck, with the truck showing up every now and again just as the tension threatens to ebb.

While the film relies too much on musical cues to announce objects and themes (a shrill twiiiiing! when the truck appears around the corner, with some sounds indicating a debt to Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann), the camera and editing become fittingly frenzied as the film builds up to the inevitable final showdown. ("Duel" is maybe not an accurate title for the film, as Mann is dominated by the truck 99% of the time.) The film is good at demonstrating Mann's fear, as in scenes where Mann finds himself taking a break after a dangerous showdown in a roadside diner. Boxed in by the diner's pink interiors, Mann is shown as positively petrified. Another scene is illustrative of Spielberg's command of tension: Mann is waved down by a bus driver. The bus overheated and now needs a push to get going again. The bus is transporting school children, and the kids are playing on Mann's car and the roadside. We know that it's a matter of time before the truck reappears, and what happens then?

[A digression: in John Carpenter's superb "Assault on Precinct 13" (1976), which is another significant American film from the revolutionary 1970s, a gang member shoots and kills a young girl eating an ice cream. It happens on camera, and comes as such a surprise to someone fed on a diet of safe American filmmaking that you replay the scene just to check that it actually happened. For a second I pondered the possibilities of carnage in the school bus scene, but Spielberg is always protecting children; even if he puts them in harm's way himself, things always work out fine for them.]

I wanted to embed the "Duel" trailer below, but it makes the film look lightweight and absurd and gives far too many of the film's best scenes away.

"Duel" is a road movie thriller that puts similar films (see "Joyride") to shame by showing these more recent, road rage-era incarnations as self-indulgent. I much prefer this film to another famous film about the dangers of having trucks on roads, "The Wages of Fear" (Clouzot 1953).

Club Dread

If you are interested in horror in any way, or have a specialised passion for zombies (I know you're out there, even if many of you have never heard of Romero), you have to watch the trailer for the forthcoming game "Dead Island". The game has already been optioned for film.

Note: NSFW, and not for sensitive viewers.

Clean, Shaven

While one can praise the stylistically spartan look of George Lucas' "THX 1138" (1971), a dystopian SF cult classic set in the not-too-far future, little changes the fact that the film is as dull and uninteresting as the characters that populate its world. Many seem to care for this rediscovered Lucas film - one he co-wrote with none other than legendary sound magician Walter Murch - apparently due to its restrained nature. Certainly, compared to the noise and clutter of "Star Wars", "THX 1138" is nearly Bergmanesque in presentation. There is nothing here that is truly excessive in any way, except if you count the leagues of whiteness in front of your eyes.

The unique look of the film starts wearing thin after half an hour, as I found myself heavy-lidded while watching Robert Duvall's THX resist ("rebel" is far too strong and active a word) the sedatives and forced calm of his world as he dares to not only have sex with LUH (Maggie McOmie) but also fall in love with her. Surely love (lost and found) is a popular subject for world cinemas, but it is seldom presented as mechanically and leaden as it is here.

Dystopian futures aren't anything new either, and possible fantastical scenarios have been imagined many times in more emotionally and intellectually involving ways (see "Blade Runner", "Robocop", and an all-time personal favourite, "Brazil"). The film is best seen as a historical curiosity.

Magnificent Obsession

While "Pi" (1998) announced Darren Aronofsky as a major new talent, it was "Requiem for a Dream" (2000) that indelibly etched his name into the movie books as one of the new auteurs in American cinema. His latest, "Black Swan", takes the madness and persecution mania of "Pi" and the individualised devastation of "Requiem" and places it in competitive ballet. The result is rather breathtaking.

Nina Sayers (Oscar nominated Natalie Portman) has her heart set on the starring role as the Swan Queen in her company's revival of "Swan Lake". The manipulative Thomas (Vincent Cassel) tells her early on that she is great as the White Swan - pure, untouched - but lacks a certain force and dimension when she attempts to embody the Black Swan - carnal, hungry. It is clear from the very beginning that something is not right in Nina's world, that something is askew. We understand the film's terms: we are joining a potentially mentally unstable young woman on a dark journey. To add further stress to Nina's already surfacing mental fragility, Lily (Mila Kunis) joins the company as a dancer. In addition to this threatening outsider figure, Nina's mother (Barbara Hershey) has controlling means of her own.

"Black Swan" is one of the few films where, from the opening frames, you know you're in for something special. The film opens with a dream sequence, motifs of which effortlessly find their way into Nina's waking life. The story of Swan Lake also becomes a mirror (talking of key motifs) of Nina's own struggle to contain her psyche while trying to let her id out enough to construct a credible performance. Nina's struggles with sexuality, her performance and her over involved mother culminate in a stunning final 20 minutes of precision editing enhanced by Clint Mansell's unsettling score. Aronofsky skillfully toys with perception and subjectivity, using the mirrors to suggest never ending space while the strict confinement of Nina's mother's apartment and her room appear truly claustrophobic.

Much has been said of the comparisons between this film and Aronofsky's previous effort, "The Wrestler" (2008). One should not be quick to force parallels. While "The Wrestler" also dealt with one character's dark journey as complemented by the virtues and vices of others, "Black Swan's" emphasis on psychological spillover and self-destruction results in a more potent motion picture.

Some critics have called the film absurd and deliciously melodramatic (occasionally intending the labels as compliments). While there may be some validity to those descriptions, I think it has more value to refer to the film's style and form as directly corresponding to Nina's increasing instability. Ever since German Expressionism the mind was shown as a fragile thing, and "Black Swan" is a masterful demonstration of that fact. Here is one of the best films of the year.

Faces smeared with dirt

Kirk Douglas leads his men in "Paths of Glory".

The above image occurs not long into Stanley Kubrick's rather intimate anti-war film "Paths of Glory" (1957), and occurs during one of the late director's much loved tracking shots. It's one of the earliest examples of what would become a signature of the director, and a much referenced signature at that (see "Atonement"). I use intimate because, like with Melville's French resistance masterpiece "Army of Shadows", Kubrick's interest is in his protagonists' reactions to the context of warfare, and not just explosions and gunfire, making it rather contained for a war epic.

Kirk Douglas stars as Col. Dax, a principled man trapped in the French war machine during World War One. When told that he and his men need to take the German stronghold called "The Anthill" in less than two days from now, Dax understandably has his doubts. There to make sure that all goes according to plan is the dubious Gen. Mireau (George Macready), who seems to epitomise the hunger for war felt by those who never get into the fighting themselves but prefer to direct it from afar, impeccably dressed and enjoying some tea. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that the tension between Mireau and Dax will come to erupt, and indeed it happens most significantly after the battle is over and the lives of the some French soldiers hang in the balance.

Anti-war films would become something of a habit for Kubrick, whose "Dr. Strangelove" (1964) remains, like "Paths of Glory", a timeless indictment of the absurdity of war and those who manage it. With "Full Metal Jacket" (1987), Kubrick took aim on the dehumanising effect that the Vietnam war had on young American men, and shows us that the dehumanisation started on home ground already. "Paths of Glory" is easily as powerful as these films, and bears the advantage of, like "Dr. Strangelove", coming in at around 90 minutes.

This is far from the indulgences of "Barry Lyndon" and "Eyes Wide Shut", both testing my patience with their adoration of themselves. It's a lean film with the clear aim of breaking down the dominant (at the time) mythology of French heroism (which resulted in many European countries banning the film for many years). Kubrick never shows us the apparent evil, the Germans, because he is concerned with what the 'good guys' were doing to themselves. "Paths of glory" has dated incredibly well because of Kubrick's near timeless visual style, and his focus on character and theme over spectacle.

The film was a testing ground to further develop Kubrick cine-eye. Consider the image below, and see how a master arranges a shot:

Click below to watch a key scene from the film where two soldiers discuss whether death by machine gun or bayonet would be best. Ebert describes the dialogue here as approaching Shakespearean: