This Week in Rixflix #11: May 19-25, 2017

Forgive me if I am still trying, eleven attempts deep, to figure out exactly how I want to do things around here. I have been seeking the best approach in how to present these (meant to be) brief looks at the films that I have seen each week, without either overwhelming the reader with nearly two dozen reviews through which to sort nor destroying my own personal goals by not leaving any time for me to work on other projects and writing.

A couple of notes on what you have seen on these posts up to now and where I plan to go this and the following week in experimenting with my form...

Header Images
When you see a header image at the top of each article (which appears even larger on the home page at first), the tiny posters seen within that image really do represent the films that I have seen that particular week. They are not just random posters that have been assembled to form a backdrop. I seek out the original poster images, format them inside sizing templates I have built, and then combine them for the final image to give you a quick glance at the previous week's viewing. I have templates built for various quantities of 12, 15, 18 or 21 films; if I miss any of those numbers in the week, I can fill it in (as I have a couple of times) by dropping in other things that I have seen along the way, such as posters for stand-up specials, miniseries, or TV shows that have dominated my mind in the course of the previous seven days. In one case, I built a graphic inside one header to represent the National Film Board of Canada animation festival that I spent poring over one weekend. It all goes towards the same purpose: I have been watching, and this is how it looked.

Choosing Films for Focus
Like anyone, it's no surprise that I get emotional about things I see on a movie or television screen. We all have loves and hates. When I watch new movies or revisit old favorites each week, it is inevitable that I will get truly excited about a couple of them, like several others, but dismiss most as mere product. Because I try to keep things on a mostly even keel, however, and try not to generally watch things purposefully that would upset me or that I would obviously think were stupid and annoying, there is less chance that I will get really riled up in a negative way about most films. Every once in a while, though, something will catch me completely by surprise, and have me straining for adjectives of the lowest form to describe that film. It is the reason why it is important, even if you are highly anticipating the release of a project to the public (as I do with super-hero and giant monster flicks), to approach the film as composed and centered as possible before finally watching the film, so that all stories are given equal opportunity to either capture your imagination or repel you.

I will not go into why I choose to watch certain films at this juncture. That is a massively intricate and even more long-winded discussion that I have already spoken about in pieces elsewhere all over this website. The real question here is: After having watched 14 to 20 (or so) films per week, why do I choose what I choose for inclusion in these pieces?

Let's take a look at this week for an immediate example. Going through the movies from left to right in the image and down through each row, the first that stands out is Alien: Covenant, which was released on the Friday of that week. Clearly, as the original Alien is in my Top Ten films of all time, I will probably have something at length to say about the latest film in the series, so I put that one to the side. The next that stands out is the 1983 monster rat film, Of Unknown Origin, which I had not seen for over 30 years when I watched it that week. I am planning to launch a potential new series about movies that went into the vaults for me until I rewatched them more recently, and so that title too gets set aside for future plundering. Next up is Jonathan Demme's Ricki and the Flash, which naturally will be included soon in the next installment of All or Nothing. Angels Hard as They Come (while seen previously) will likely be discussed at least tangentially in All or Nothing at some point (possibly Part 5) since Demme wrote the screenplay for it. Certain types of films are always up for further expansion on the site, such as Godzilla flicks or David Lynch's work (especially with the buildup to the new Twin Peaks, which premiered during this week), so they too go into the File Later pile. The 1972 Disney flick Napoleon and Samantha falls into two categories: 1) a film I have not seen since I was a kid, and 2) a Disney flick, for which I am hoping to start yet another new series. As a result, that film is set aside for further commentary.

That leaves me with about 14 other films in the graphic, and because I saw more than 21 films that week, there were a couple more titles that did not make the final cut (mostly out of not being to find appropriate posters). So, out of 16 films, I have decided to review six of them; in future installments, I hope to get the total number of reviews up closer to the full amount of films that week.

Sizing Down the "Capsule Reviews"

Now this has been a problem. It's my site, and I have no lack of space for expounding upon a film as much as I would like, and no editor but myself to hold me back. However, in some scenarios, I would rather practice some form of brevity. I have been calling the reviews in these pieces "capsule reviews," but they hardly ever are, and so it has become a joke to me. I might go into a review hoping to write just three or four lines at most, but those few lines become full paragraphs pretty quickly for me, and then that one paragraph becomes several. This would be fine if I were referring to a larger quantity of reviews, but the expansive and exploratory tone of my writing seems to take over nearly every film. 

As a result, this time around I have given myself a hard-centered limit of 250 words per review, which is approximately the amount of text that I need to carry the review just past the sizing of the accompanying poster image to the right. (Really, that's the only reason for the choice of number of words.) When I reach the limit, allowing for some room to breathe on either side (perhaps 300 words maximum, 200 minimum), then I must move on to the next film. 

I am treating this as a writing and editing exercise, as an opportunity to see if I can produce something short and to the point. In future installments, I hope to have shorter reviews for more films each week, though because of a time crunch, I am only going to do six this time. Let's see how it goes...

The Numbers: 

This week's feature-length film count: 23; 16 first-time viewings and 7 repeats.
Highest rated feature-length film: Eraserhead (1977) – 9/9
Lowest rated feature film: Spine (1986) – 3/9
Average films per day in May so far: 2.80
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 3.03
Consecutive days with at least 1 feature-length film seen per day: 163

One note: I have added a new line at the bottom about the number of consecutive days in a row, I have watched at least one feature-length film. This number extends back to mid-December after I lost the job at Amazon due to injury. (I will add that the current total is nearing 170 at the time of this writing.)

The Reviews:

Viral (2016) Dir.: Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman – A perfect choice with which to start, because I would normally go on quite easily for about three years regarding my struggle with watching the zombie horror subgenre today. With my new rules in place, I now just have to dig in and say that I was rather rooting for this film in its early stages. The lead actress, Sofia Black-D'Elia, is well cast and quite appealing as Emma, a recently displaced teen who not only has to deal with a zombie apocalypse outside her door in a new town, but also with the fact that her older sister Stacey, played by Analeigh Tipton, is being slowly taken over by the parasitic worms who are the cause of the outbreak which has already killed billions worldwide. Seeing the rest of the world turn into hell before them, they barricade themselves in their own home, but Stacey goes more than a tad stir crazy, hence the results of her infection. The tone in the early going of this film is pretty much dead on, helped immeasurably by the surprising turns from the two main actresses. But as parasitic worm living dead films go, it is hard to top Night of the Creeps and Slither for me. Despite this, I wish the film had gone a little deeper into the science fiction angle to distinguish it from the hordes of other undead pretenders to George A. Romero's legacy. However, idiotic plot turns (that dumbass party sequence) and needless jump scares (surprise, the same directors gave us Paranormal Activity films 3 and 4, not to mention the odd documentary Catfish) rather ruin the early promise. – TC4P Rating: 5/9

The Desert Rats (1953) Dir.: Robert Wise – It is possible that I may have skipped this film out of confusion with The Desert Fox: The Edwin Rommel Story, released two years earlier (in 1951) with James Mason in the lead. Since I am watching these films eons later than their release, that shouldn't be a problem. The twist here is that Mason plays Rommel in this semi-sequel to that film, and he plays it mainly in German, which is a nice touch. (Heck, they don't even subtitle him.) I am very pleased that I decided a while ago to become a completist of Robert Wise's filmography in the past year, and finally hit films like The Set-Up (now one of my favorites) and Odds Against Tomorrow (which may one day be on that list as well). The Desert Rats doesn't quite reach that same level, but it is still a fine example of a tense, nerve-rattling war picture. Burton is his usual tense, spitting self, which comes in handy as his character is supposed to be disliked heavily at first by the Australian division of troops under his command who are called upon to hold the important port city of Tobruk against the Rommel and the Nazis in 1941. Robert Newton, Chips Rafferty, and Torin Thatcher are the main supporting actors at Burton's side, and they bring a lived-in, seen-it-all humanity to a film that could have been nothing but a rote actioner in lesser hands than Wise's, who knows exactly how to ratchet up the tension when needed. – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Look Back in Anger (1959) Dir.: Tony Richardson – Speaking of Burton, I find it hard, merely as an outside observer, to believe that he could have ever been well-liked at all except perhaps by those who were on the same, exact plane of celebrity existence as he. This opinion is based first on my impression of the press that I have seen during his career, but mainly on his performances, where he seems miles beyond the ken of anyone in his presence in the terms of both skillful technique and unnecessary bombast. If there is an actor where I can both admire and be annoyed by him in the same scene, it is Burton. So it goes with Look Back in Anger, a film that I have probably tried to start watching about a dozen times in my life, but had always pulled back because I knew the play fairly well, and just didn't want to deal with it for another two hours. It's a stunner, and I regret not having seen it before, and most of the credit goes to Burton. He is fiery, cuttingly humorous, pouty, spiteful, whiny, drunken, angry (of course), and quite simply monumental in this prototypical example of the "angry young man" subgenre of drama. I have a short span of interest in the type, but when produced with such conviction and an explosive style by Tony Richardson (Tom Jones), where it feels like Burton will quite literally implode if he doesn't spew his rage at his wife, his best friend, and his lover (Claire Bloom, equally his match) at every given opportunity, the film becomes indispensable. This is one of the prime Burton roles, and should be seen to be believed. – TC4P Rating: 8/9

Crime of Passion (1957) Dir.: Gerd Oswald – Yet another find from watching Eddie Muller's Noir Alley on Turner Classic Movies, Crime of Passion is the perfect answer when one wishes to get lost in a film loaded with suburban angst, wifely betrayal, and police corruption. And heavy on the suburban angst, please, as a former S.F. newspaper reporter played by the always terrific Barbara Stanwyck thinks she has found the perfect marriage with L.A. cop (a rock solid Sterling Hayden). She leaves her city for his, and ends up as an intensely bored housewife in the middle of dull tract housing and ceaseless dinner parties which always end up with the women in one room talking about their nothing lives, and the men in another playing poker and talking about their own nothing lives. Worst of all, the women are never supposed to intrude upon the men's time. The still highly ambitious Stanwyck slowly goes nuts in this new arrangement, starting first with manipulating her husband up the chain of command, then with having an affair, and finally, a burst of violence. It is a surprisingly cold film, both in its portrayal of then-modern suburban aspiration and in the relationships between its main characters. I consider Stanwyck one of the top actresses of all time, and so it was revelatory to see her in this role during the final stage of her film career, before she made the leap to television success in The Big Valley in the late '60s.    – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's the Fantastic Four (2015) Dir.: Marty Langford – Once upon a time there was a film produced in 1992 by Roger Corman called The Fantastic Four. It was ultra low in budget, was made at the last second in a desperate attempt to sustain a copyright over some comic book characters borrowed from Marvel Comics, and was never released to movie theatres despite having been announced to be released. The people making it, mostly the cast, felt they had been cast adrift during filming by the producers, and couldn't understand when the hard work they had done seemed to disappear into the ether forever. Well, almost forever... the film popped up on the interwebs, becoming a treasured monument of the YouTube age, where it can be found in various places today. The film is not very good, of course, but has a charm and innocence to it that was not captured by the subsequent, high budget films featuring the same characters released in 2005, 2007 and 2013. Doomed!, taking its name from the FF's primary foe, Doctor Doom, is just about as fun as a documentary about a small stakes cult film could be. I watched it on the same day as Batman and Bill, and while that comic book doc has an emotional core that Doomed! can't touch, this one is completely charming and earnest, a mood best captured by the interviews with 1992 film's still bewildered cast members. If you don't care about comics or the films made from them, you still might take a swing at this one. It's a fascinating tale.  – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Ducks and Drakes (1921) Dir.: Maurice Campbell – Whenever I need a real refresher, I turn back the clock to the silent days. I especially love to dig into silent comedies, and am completely happy when discovering a film whose path I had not yet crossed. TCM's Silent Sunday Nights program is usually the source of most of these types of films, and they had a winner with me in their airing of Ducks and Drakes recently. Bebe Daniels was born in 1901 and acted in films from the age of four. She made numerous short subjects, some of which still exist, and became a big star in the 1920s, even though most of her features are lost to time, and eventually broke through in talkies, including 42nd Street, before retiring.. I knew her since I was a teenager in a 1930 comedy called Reaching for the Moon, but I had never seen her silent work until Ducks and Drakes, and she is a terrific comedic presence in the film, as a flibbertigibbet who enjoys ignoring the man to whom she is engaged, but carries on flirting with his two best friends, none of whom are aware of the others flirting with her. Best of all are the scenes where she mercilessly tortures her haughty, bluenose of an aunt, but the comedy everywhere is fast paced and fun, if not more than a tad obvious in places. A grand find even if it is not top drawer, and I look forward to finding more of Daniels' work in the future.  – TC4P Rating: 6/9

Psychotronic Ketchup: The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976)

The Witch Who Came from the Sea is not an easy watch. In climbing deep into the recesses of a mind wracked by a childhood full of sexual abuse – which culminates in an adulthood full of swinging sex and drug addiction – director Matt Cimber made quite the interesting counterpart to his later film, Butterfly… you know, the one that got Pia Zadora a Golden Globe award (and a couple of Golden Raspberries) but is generally considered to be one of the worst films ever made.

This is not the case for the far more interesting The Witch Who Came from the Sea, which is sparked by a frankly astonishing performance by Millie Perkins (an actress to whom I have paid little attention over the years), along with sharp, evocative cinematography, some of it provided by Dean Cundey, who worked on this film before performing the same duties on several of John Carpenter’s biggest films (Halloween, The Fog, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China), as well as filming the Back to the Future trilogy, Rock ’n’ Roll High School, Romancing the Stone, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Apollo 13, and Jurassic Park.

Honestly, I would not have watched the film today except that my pal Aaron and I were discussing it early this morning, and he mentioned that he found the film streaming on Amazon, along with a couple of other titles which recently had gotten the Blu-ray treatment in something called The American Horror Project Vol. 1. The purpose of The American Horror Project is to recognize lost classics of the horror genre from the 1970s and then give those long-neglected films (some never even had decent VHS releases) restoration and high-end release to the public. The film’s selection for this honor instantly made us both realize we need to see it, but the cost of the Blu-ray set (well over $60, even with a discount on Amazon.com) is more than slightly prohibitive for both of us right now, with a new baby in his household and me without steady employment. Luckily enough, he found all of the three titles (the others being Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood and The Premonition) on Amazon’s site, and lucky me as well, I have a Shudder subscription on there so that I too can now watch and (hopefully) enjoy those films.

In the end, The Witch Who Came from the Sea is more of a psychological drama (its not, even with its murders and resulting police investigation, even really all that much in the thriller genre) than it is an actual horror film. Don’t get me wrong… there is violence within the film and it might indeed be troubling to some (it was one of the 72 films declared to be a “Video Nasty” and banned from England in the 1980s), and when you add in the nudity and sexual scenes, this is not a film for the kiddies or truly weak of stomach (and especially mind). Even though most of the more graphic violence is merely suggested and occurs offscreen (and the razor cutting scenes that are shown aren’t done all that believably), when the lead character gets around to murdering, her fallback move is that of castrating her victims. So if you are a guy and overly sensitive about your manhood, just repeat to yourself… no, never mind. You are just a big baby. It’s a movie and the violence is faked. Get over it.

The film has gained some controversy in the horror nerd realm for its appropriation of some Frank Frazetta artwork from the cover of an old issue of Vampirella. The face of the artwork was changed to that of Millie Perkins and she is holding a man’s severed head in the movie poster. The fact that such an image (or even a severed head) does not occur within the film itself seems to really set a lot of people who encounter this film on edge. And sometimes their reaction is such that they savage the film entirely without taking into account that The Witch Who Came from the Sea is a very sincere look at child abuse and the sexual politics of the 1970s. Since the film is most decidedly not a book, I guess the armchair critics feel justified in judging the film solely by its poster (i.e., cover) and its ability to deliver those goods promised by the image. But then, they aren’t taking into account that the elements within the image all are either discussed or implied within the film (seriously, the poster image makes perfect sense fairly early on in the film), whether an actual supernatural witch bearing a scythe manifests herself or not.

I had thought for a good while that I had seen the film before this morning, but discovered just a scene or three into the film that I had not. The Witch Who Came from the Sea bears slight thematic and title similarities to another 1976 film of greater note, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, which I have seen a couple of times (and which came into my life at the age of 12 when I saw a particular picture of a naked Sarah Miles (and that Kristofferson guy) getting it on in one of those “Sex in Film” annual recaps in the pages of Playboy). So a film with a similar title has been kicking around my head for a good while (though it would be about a decade more before I first saw it). When you take into account just how many horror films (and films in general) that I have seen in my life, I find it quite reasonable that I sometimes get confused when confronted with certain titles.

But now I have actually seen The Witch Who Came from the Sea on its own, and while it wasn’t really the horror film suggested by its garish, gaudy (but intriguing) poster artwork, it turns out that found the film a very worthwhile watch and one that is quite worthy of further discussion and study.

Visiting and Revisiting: After Life (1998) Pt. 2

This is the second part of a two-part discussion about Hirokazu Kore-eda's 1998 drama, After Life [Wandâfuru raifu]. To read the first part of this article, visit my pal Aaron Lowe's Working Dead Productions website at http://bit.ly/1OszYhL.

PART II

Rik: I want to go back to that article on The Guardian website about Kore-eda. The interviewer asks him about After Life, and how the interviewer found it hard to think of a memory that would qualify as “heavenly”. Kore-eda’s response was “If you can’t choose, it means that you are still alive. Choose, and you’re dead.”

It rather pissed me off at first when I was watching the film and discovered that there was a character that insisted that he could not choose. I thought the character was just being contrarian or thinking himself a “cool” rebel. I thought, “What a fucking jerk,” from the very first moment I met him in the film. But when it was over, and I seriously considered whether I could choose a single memory, I realized that I would not wish to do so either. The penalty of not choosing means you are stuck in wherever this agency exists to work in what is essentially a form of the film industry. You get to have lunches with cute girls like Shiori and carry on some form of existence, where you can still create and think and dream and ponder existence? Did I mention you still get to have lunch? Seems like heaven to me.

So, I was very pleased to see Kore-eda’s response. And I think reading that response sold the film to me even more, because it wasn’t just a wishy-washy film based ultimately on a theological lesson to be learned or an idealized vision of a heavenly realm, but was really only willing to be held accountable for more existential discussions. But if the viewer still prefers to be sad that so-and-so chose this or that in the film, they can have that emotion as well.

Aaron: Thus far we’ve avoided the actual plot of the movie, but I think it’s time we delve into it a bit. Though the film follows several characters and treats them all as important and meaningful and deserving of our attention, the real backbone of the piece is the relationship between Takashi, one of the workers, and Ichiro, a recently deceased man who shares a surprising connection with Takashi. That relationship is not fully revealed until the end of the movie, although it never feels like it’s being withheld for dramatic purposes. We only see that Ichiro is having trouble choosing a memory, and Takashi seems to be taking a vested interest in helping him, but until the end the audience assumes that this is because the two are from the same generation (though Takashi seems to be decades younger, this is because he died in World War II). In fact, after World War II ended, Ichiro ended up in an arranged marriage with Takashi’s fiancé, who, it turns out, never stopped mourning him. Once again, we see something that could have been treated as emotionally manipulative schmaltz underplayed beautifully.

All three of these characters, Ichiro, Takashi, and the woman they both loved, Kyoko, choose variations of the same memory. Ichiro chooses a quiet moment on a park bench with Kyoko shortly before she died; Kyoko chose a memory of the same park bench, where she sat with Takashi shortly before he shipped off to war. Takashi also sits on the same park bench, but instead turns the camera to those he has spent the last three years with, working and resting and living. It’s a beautiful ending, one that has me smiling once again as I type, but it once again raises the question of what those memories will signify once everything else has been wiped away, and also implies a more troubling line of thought that may actually say more about me personally than it does about the film. But first, lets try to unpack the threads in this.

Does the fact that Ichiro chooses a memory of Kyoko, even though Kyoko’s memory was of a different man, alter what those memories mean? Would Ichiro have chosen differently, or felt differently about his wife if he knew she had chosen to forget about him once she moved on? And what does it say about Takashi that he chooses to forget about life entirely and remember only purgatory? In Kyoko’s memory, as I brought up earlier, will she remember that Takashi died in the war? Will she remember he was her fiancé, or even what his name was? Likewise for Ichiro: will he remember that their marriage was arranged, that she had loved another man, and that she had died before him?

Rik: I think that Ichiro keeping the memory of his wife, even with the further knowledge that she chose a memory with Takashi instead has a lot to do with the times and social setting in which he lived. Arranged marriages might seem horrific to us now, but they would have been more standard in Ichiro’s youth. Emotion was supposed to be held in check and replaced with duty to one’s family, honor, and social standing. Having grown up in this mindset, it would be (at least on the surface) easier for Ichiro to remain committed to the memory of his wife of many years, no matter her ultimate feelings for a past love.

As for Takashi, my take is that he was a very young man when he died during the war, and while he has only been at this facility for the past three years, I assume he has been kicking around doing social work for many, many more, at least 50-plus years (at the time of the making of After Life). He has spent more time in this “afterlife,” as it were, than he has living a corporeal existence. So, why shouldn’t the fact that he prefers to choose a moment in his afterlife to his rather brief existence on the planet be shocking? If he is happy in his work, is good at it, and has made great companions, why shouldn’t he?

I think it has been fairly well proven that our memories, no matter how much we cherish them, are really not to be trusted. We tend to embellish them the longer we hold them, details from other “memories” can drift in to another one, or if it is an event that we don’t recall as well as others, we can often err in the recollection in an effort to keep up a front. And the angle from which we see something, even an emotional angle, can be wildly different for other people within that same memory. I can tell you about the memory of my skipping on the stairs of the 4th Avenue Theatre ready to see Pinocchio at the age of 4, and tell you what a perfect day that was, and my mom might tell you that I was being a little shit all day long and crapped my pants as well.

Aaron: To the film’s credit, that is a concern that Kore-eda brings up in the film itself. There is a character that is caught embellishing her memories, and then another who, once she’s watching the memory being filmed, realizes she got some details wrong and finds the experience quite disturbing. Kore-eda realizes that memory is faulty, and not likely to be a depiction of absolute truth, and I think he’s OK with that. I believe that in this film’s theology, the point isn’t to depict an accurate slice of your life, but to recreate the emotional feeling you’ve carried with you all those years. Perhaps that’s what the memories do; they remind you of the feeling of being alive. But here’s where it troubles me, if I allow myself to think about this too long. Do the dead take that memory as a keepsake, as I brought up earlier, or do they live within that memory? If they live within one memory for eternity, would that begin to feel like hell after awhile, no matter how good the memory? And if all of the memories associated with that one memory are gone, what emotion can possibly remain?

As I said, it’s a can of worms that probably speaks more to my own neuroses, but if I allow myself that’s the hole I start to go down. It’s weird that I suddenly became critical of this, right here at the end, because even with those questions After Life remains a marvelous, beautiful film that fills me with happiness and, yes, a feeling of love for my fellow man. Which, sad to say, is not my default state, as I’m sure you can empathize.

Rik: I suppose it could be considered a hell of your own making in a way, wrapped up in a heavenly disguise. I am assuming that if you can only take a single memory with you – putting aside the consideration of whether you had to live forever within that memory itself -- then yes, it would be a hell, because I would then surmise that your ability to think critically would be severely stunted because you wouldn’t have access to most of your own mind. And even if you could access everything in your brain except the remainder of your memories, wouldn’t it drive you insane as you watched or lived within this memory, over and over and over again, and all the while trying to figure out what it means, and why nothing else ever happens to you? If you could still think, wouldn’t going over a single moment in time repeatedly make you absolutely batty?

The more I think about this, for this to not create such an outcome, the dead in this film – or at least the ones who choose to move forward -- are basically committing themselves to a form of supernatural lobotomy, where they are rendered incapable of grasping the meaning or understanding of something while being trapped with that single memory, drooling like an idiot for eternity.

What is your take on the relationship between Takashi and Shiori, the assistant social worker with whom he shares an unspoken bond? For the entire film, there is obviously something between them, but we don’t really get a clue how deep it might run until Shiori, upset that Takashi has decided to move on fully to the afterlife and choose a memory, throws a conniption fit and kicks and throws snow around. And just as Takashi heads to film his “memory,” she confronts him about her own reluctance to move onward, and says, “If I choose, I’ll have to forget all about this place. So, I won’t choose. I’m going to keep you inside me forever. I can’t bear to be forgotten by any more people.” It’s my favorite line in the movie, and the saddest as far as I am concerned. It also seems to me to be the moment where Takashi really realizes what he must do. Your view?

Aaron: I always felt like the relationship was a little one sided on Shiori’s part. Obviously Takashi is fond of her, and he may have eventually grown to love her, but within the period that we see he is clearly a little ignorant as to Shiori’s feelings. I’m actually at a bit of a loss as to how I would define Takashi’s character overall. He’s not exactly a cipher, he has a personality and inner thoughts, but we’re never really privy to them. We see the stuff about his former fiancé, and we see that it moves him deeply, but he plays everything close to the vest.

Shiori is a bit more of an open book, probably owing to their generational differences (though they appear roughly the same age, Takashi is around 50 years her senior). Shiori wears her emotions openly, and I believe the line you quote is probably the heart of this entire movie, and gets to the fears and concerns we have about death. Not just that we’ll be gone, not just that the Earth continues without us, but that our emotions, our love, will disappear as well. That would make Takashi’s choice at the end of the film, to remember his time in purgatory, a powerful symbol of love and caring. He’s given this group of people the highest honor you could imagine in this theological system; they will never be forgotten. When they’ve all moved on and possibly forgotten each other, Takashi will still remember them, and the emotions he felt, and the help they gave him.

Look at me… I’m all over the map with this one. Feeling unease at the system on display in one paragraph, and then arguing the opposite just a few moments later. That, I think, explains its endurance with me. Though I find myself happy after each viewing, I still find myself puzzling it over in my mind for weeks, months, or years afterwards.

Rik: There is a shot early on where we see a doorway in a darkened entrance, and the doorway is lit from the outside, but we cannot see anything clearly out there because there is a mist or fog obscuring it. We then see that week’s arrivals make their way one by one through the door. To me, the building (and the city, if indeed there is a city, in which it is located) exists out of time; perhaps in another dimension. The workers in the building arrive each morning, and we see their apartments, so we know they carry on an existence, just perhaps on another plane unearthly. They eat lunch, make small talk, and have repressed feelings for one another, in the case of Shiori and Takashi. It is not unreasonable to expect there are numerous other agencies like this, because more than twenty people die each week in Japan, and this facility seems to average about twenty entrants per week. So, it is also not unreasonable to assume there is a functioning city built around this afterlife industry, and thus.

The question is: is it an otherworldly city built on top of the city we would know on Earth? I am not really surprised by the scene where we see cars and people walking around, but the question is if they are in our world or theirs. The only other explanation that I can reason out is that the workers of the waystation and the applicants for the afterlife are ghosts and are occupying buildings that exist in our dimension but go unseen by the regular populace. It doesn’t explain how they are able to have possessions, eat, and move things around without scaring the crap out of earthly inhabitants, and since we never see any evidence of such behavior, I prefer to accept that the entire city and the movements of its occupants exists outside of our own dimension, but is an exact replica so that the workers of the agency can go out and study locations for film shoots.

Aaron: As much as my mind constantly goes to this sort of pragmatic detail, I have to remind myself that this film is an allegory and not meant to be taken literally. As much as I may want to know how something works, or if the people who pass by Shiori in the outside world can see her, I realize it’s beside the point. We know that other waystations exist, because Takashi says he worked at one until three years prior to the movie’s opening. I think it stands to reason that there are several in each major city, at least one in every small town. Probably they exist like FBI field offices, dotting the world in a frequency that matches the local population.

We could also ponder what those stations would look like in other countries, or to other religions. No one we see questions the theological implications of the film, which is of course to the film’s credit. No one seems surprised to not see St. Peter, or clouds or pearly gates. Everyone, in fact, seems to be almost expecting what he or she finds, which looks like nothing they have been prepared for by any religion. But as you mentioned earlier, the film’s lack of theological specificity is one of its greatest aspects, and gives After Life the universality that the real afterlife would hopefully have.

Rik: Here is a stray thought that I had while watching this film. All of the applicants are Japanese, but I wonder what would happen to someone not of Japanese descent if they were to die in Japan. Would they automatically go to a different way-station run by others of their ancestry? Are the Japanese waystations only for the Japanese, and so on? It might have been cool to have an American of non-Asian descent who perhaps had a heart attack on a plane at the airport end up in the waystation and not be able to comprehend most or all of what was being asked of them.

Aaron: Now that you’ve put that idea in my head I find myself excited about the possibilities of it, but I also think it would have been a bit out of place in this film. It would have pulled focus from the already large cast and possibly veered too far into comedy or tragedy. But, of course, that could just be my own love of the film balking at the idea of tampering with it.

Rik: And one more thing I have been pondering --and I am sorry to take this into the realm of comedy, when this film, while lightly humorous in moments, is not a comedy – the use of technology in the film. Ichiro is made to go through piles and piles of videotapes in trying to select one of his memories. Given that the film came out to theatres in 1998, when DVDs were really just taking hold of the film industry, was this a comment on Kore-eda’s part upon governmental facilities and how behind the times they often are in regards to keeping up with technology? I figure that whatever administration (read: supreme being) is behind the curtain, as it were, would have the capabilities of having the most up-to-date means of processing the millions of people that die each year.

And Ichiro and Takashi’s memories extend to World War II, when videotape was not yet invented. When the deceased arrived at the facility in those days, did they have to go through old newsreels of their memories? Was it silent films and then picture books before that, and matted prints and scrolls before that?

Aaron: I think you may be onto something there. I always felt the VHS tapes were just a sign of the times, and honestly I think that might still be the real reason behind things; it was probably just what came to mind when it came to filming that scene. But then, it also fits the somewhat ramshackle nature of this whole department. Everything looks a little handmade; the workers begin each day by communally cleaning their offices. They live in little dorm rooms and brew their own tea and grow their own plants and make their own music. It doesn’t seem like they have the largest or most opulent budget imaginable, and so it would make sense for them to be slightly behind the times. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were still using VHS today. 

Rik: Well, I think it is pretty obvious that I really liked this film and you are trapped in slavish devotion to it. But I also feel that as much as I enjoyed it (and have now seen it three times in the past month, though it is finally time to return it to Netflix), I will probably not revisit After Life for a good while, because I have lived in it a little too long. I find pondering such affairs somewhat uncomfortable, especially at length. However, given how much After Life and Hana resonated with me (Hana even more so), I am likely to give more of Kore-eda’s films a shot in the future, as long as I can find them. But I will add that if I can find a decently priced copy of After Life anywhere (it seems to be out of print in North America and prices currently start around $90 for a copy), then I am going to grab it. Because you never know when I, like you, are going to need to see this again. Any last thoughts?

Aaron: I think calling my love of After Life ‘slavish devotion’ might be exaggerating things slightly (though only slightly). Clearly, even after all these years and all this discussion, I’m still unsure about several things within the film, and haven’t completely made up my mind about everything. However, this is a film that always fills me with a sense of enormous well-being, of joy and warmth and love. Hirokazu Kore-eda became a name to watch for me after this film, and I’ve been following him ever since, eagerly tracking down his newest releases (several of which remain unavailable in North America). A couple months ago I was lucky enough to see the North American premiere of his newest film, Our Little Sister (Umimachi Diary in Japan), after which he gave a short Q&A. He came across exactly as you would expect him to, based on his films. He was thoughtful, generous in his answers and time, and funny in a subdued manner.

I have no advice of where to go next in pursuing his filmography; I tend to think they are all worth at least one viewing. Through his filmography ‘humane’ does seem to be the most apt word to describe him, as his affection for his characters works to leaven even the most depressing aspects of his films. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed this film, and even more glad that you’ve enjoyed at least one of Kore-eda’s other works. I look forward to discussing them all with you in the future, even though we may not document those discussions for posterity.

Rik: And we shall leave you with that. Check back with us in the near future for a Visiting & Revisiting discussion of the super-schlocky 1978 Italian sci-fi "masterpiece," Starcrash aka The Adventures of Stella Star!

Recently Rated Movies #65: Broadcasting Half Alive

Talk to Me (2007)
Director: Kasi Lemmons
Cinema 4 Rating: 6
Notes: Talk to Me nearly smooth-talked me, alright. Pulled right in from the start, I became convinced that, once again, Don Cheadle was robbed of an Oscar, and also convinced that Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is fast becoming a favorite of mine, should be nominated constantly for the next ten years. I was deep in admiration for this film -- and then the last 45 minutes happened. It has nothing to do with disliking anything in particular which happens in that time, but it has everything to do with watching a film rush too quickly to its dénouement, to the point where I didn't even recognize characters with whom I had just been enamored a short half hour before, watching them devolve into mere cartoons in the name of tidying things up neatly. Edges dissolve, tears are shed, and I was waiting impatiently for the credits to roll. Great detail, though, in the sixties scenes, and the riot scenes are devastating.
Replay/Purchase Meter: Cheadle and Chiwetel (that has something of a ring to it... perhaps a great new team?) need to be seen, and I will watch this again just for them. No purchase though.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly [Le Scaphandre et le Papillon] (2007)
Director: Julian Schnabel
Cinema 4 Rating: 8
Notes: I am so close to giving this my highest rating straight off (that would be a "9"), but that would be disregarding my rule of not allowing such a thing until a film has been out at least a decade, no matter how much I love it. It's a built-in device, of the sort that I wish many movie sites would employ, On my list, there are some very beautiful or amazing films waiting for their tenth year to run out. Not that it means a damn thing to those films or their makers; I am but a lowly, but highly-opinionated, worm, but that holding back on a "9" blessing means a lot to me. Having stern lines drawn and following through on them makes the guts of my inner world ripple far more tautly than the guts of my physical being. And sometimes, having such control of my hidden self is all I need. But my inner world is self-imposed, unlike that of the Diving Bell's main figure, Jean-Do, paralyzed except for a single eye, who increasingly has to maintain his sanity through an elaborate fantasy life which he can only spell out to the world by learning how to write by blinking his left eyelid. Sound too crazy for words or images? True story, people. And as horrifying and humiliating as some of his hospital life seems in such a direct context, the film cannot be turned away from. It is hypnotic from the first scene. The main thing I learned from Diving Bell is that, if one is going to lose most of their facilities, hopefully they will have had the good fortune to have edited a high-gloss fashion magazine in their movable past. 'Cause even in his shabbiest moments, Jean-Do finds himself surrounded by beautiful women. Or maybe it is one of the more subtler hints in the movie that due to Jean-Do's increasing distance from those of the opposite sex, every women appears beautiful to him. Hard to know; haven't read the book. Probably should.
Replay/Purchase Meter: Yeah, this one is joining the collection. Can't imagine even fully-limbed life without it now.

Nightfall (1957)
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Cinema 4 Rating: 7
Notes: Here's to rediscovering actors that we once wrote off for obscure or dopey reasons. In my youth, I became convinced that Robert Ryan was terrible because I saw him in a couple of rather shabby productions late in his career, and so I avoided a great many other films out of which I may have gained varied amounts of pleasure due to his appearing in them. Then, I saw a couple of old westerns, and when it dawned on me that the actor on whom my attention was locked magnet-tight was Ryan, I had to rewrite my internal film textbook. Recently, I have to do a similar repair job on Aldo Ray, whom I have always mildly enjoyed (We're No Angels, especially) but for whom I have never held any great respect. This may have been due to my seeing a porno movie (Sweet Savage with Carol Connors, aka Thora Birch's mom) in the late '70s which feature Ray in a bit part, and from that point on, I thought of him primarily as a sad has-been. And then I watched Nightfall on TCM last week, a missing film on my Tourneur list, which is every bit as tough as another great noir flick from relatively the same period, Kiss Me Deadly. The film jumps through hoops to keep you on your toes, Brian Keith and Rudy Bond are a truly sadistic pair as the villains, and Anne Bancroft is stunning as the possible love interest. And then there is Ray, seemingly as sweetly meat-headed as ever, but with a determined mien that is positively contagious, drawing the viewer (and Bancroft) deep into his plight, no matter how tightly the noose seems to be pulling around his neck.
Replay/Purchase Meter: Since this one seems to be more obscure, it's not available on DVD yet. Tourneur fans need to see this one, and until it hits a disc, I am going to watch this on TCM every chance I get.

Spout Mavens Disc #3: Clean (2004)

Clean
Director: Olivier Assayas // 2004 [Palm Pictures Promo Screener DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

At a certain point in Olivier Assayas' addiction meditation Clean, we are asked to accept the fact that not only would Maggie Cheung's breathy meander of a voice warrant the attention of a record producer, but that someone would ask her to fly all the way from Paris to San Francisco to record it. It's not that there isn't a sort of intriguing dreariness to the music on her demo tape; it's just hard to imagine the commercial possibilities for it. One reason it could hold such possibilities is that her character, Emily Wang, is a minor celebrity (video jockeys are all minor celebrities, no matter how famous they actually got) whose life partner just ended up on the fatal side of a heroin overdose. So, certainly there is commercial potential in that not necessarily blessed combination. Hearing her music in a movie tangentially about rock music but lacking any real fire musically, I was as lost in context regarding her music as Cheung's character is emotionally wayward within her screen life. But the moment where I go, "Ah, of course he would be interested..." is when they mention the producer in question is David Roback, the fellow from Mazzy Star. Once we hear of that particular band, everything -- the music, Emily's possible appeal to the industry, Cheung's mild voice -- is no longer to be questioned, and neither is the notion that she might indeed believe herself to have some potential. Although I don't particularly care for the music in the film (especially for the horrendous act that opens the film), the Mazzy-style music (actually written and produced by Roback for the film) chosen for the character is perfect for Cheung, and thus the scoffing attitude I had towards Emily's belief in her rumored talent was turned into mute assent; I knew it was more than just another lie Emily was telling herself.

No one lies to Emily Wang but Emily Wang. Everyone calls her an addict, which she is. Everyone, including her estranged six-year old son, says she killed his father, and, yes, she technically did. Heroin that she provided him did him in, but she purchased it, even if she maintains to everyone within earshot that she didn't. Because of her son -- currently being raised by her late partner's parents -- Emily has to struggle with more than just her own drug addiction. She has to move on; she has to regain more than just physical possession of her son, but also his love; most of all, she has to clean up her act. To do this, she has to stop lying to herself. The mad scramble to find money to purchase drugs, stabbing a needle into her veins, and losing the trust of everyone in her life seems an easier pursuit for her than simply facing up to life and its consequences. After a jail stint for possession, she trades heroin for methadone, and brings her remaining friends in on the quest for fulfillment of that curse. And when her "addicted" lifestyle keeps a hold on her -- party friends, record producers, jail companions -- even when one wishes deeply to clean up, how does one do so?

My struggle going in to Clean would be my fear that I would merely be watching The Beautiful Side of Addiction. I have been immensely taken -- physically -- with Maggie Cheung since Police Story in the mid-'80s, considering her to be one of the most lovely things on the planet, and I would be hard-pressed to accede my own denial that the thought of her as a heroin addict doesn't exactly jibe with my Idealized Version of Angelic Loveliness. Taking Ms. Cheung off the pedestal on which I have clearly seated due to her physical appearance alone -- owning up to my own inherent American Male Misogynistic Streak -- I will have to admit that her beauty actually makes the role even more difficult to pull off, and thus, makes her achievement here even more impressive. It's one thing to play the role of addict if you already look like Courtney Love run through a washing mangle -- if you always look like you are trashed, it's easier to persuade an audience that you are; it's another thing altogether if you look like you just stepped off a modeling runway (even though we know full well by this point that most models are addicts of one form or another, as a society, we remain blithely tied to the concept of outward beauty as inner perfection).

Cheung is a fireball of barely contained nervousness here -- the success comes in not showing how lost she has become, but in how normal she can seem. Her every emotion is sorrowfully conflicted: when she should stay, she wants to run; where she should immediately get away, she lingers far too long. She shrieks and practically growls and pisses away relationships and locales which can no longer serve her any purpose. She can no longer judge which people are really her friends, who is merely around because of her reputation and who is around for the chance to burn her (don't even ask about her family members in Paris; they have become convinced that she is ashamed of her Chinese heritage). She reaches out in every direction she can, hungry to find a foothold on which she may begin to lift herself out of the hole she has dug for herself, but everything ends up a cruel and ironic dead end. Cheung's outward mask may seem too strangely placid to some, given her circumstance; what I see is an ocean rife with turmoil. What we have here is an actress whose character is clearly and desperately thinking her way through her character's state of unthinking blindness to her own situation.

And yet, the key to success for this movie, and in keeping my interest in it, lies not with Cheung, but with a man who in recent years has had his own struggles with addictions of various stripes, Nick Nolte. As Albrecht Hauser, the stoic grandfather, and a man who is likely going to soon be losing his own life partner, Nolte holds the keys to Emily's future relationship with her son. He knows that she has a right to see him, and even regain custody of him, but unlike his dying wife, who sincerely believes Emily is a murderer and is blinded by this hatred, Albrecht wants to ensure that when, not if, Emily takes the rein as a parent, that she is ready to do so. He is always fair-handed with her, and even when she disappoints him, he is not a man prone to snap judgments.

There is a scene where we see Emily's son commit a robbery on the grandfather, stealing money from his coat to sneak out and buy comic books. We later see, in an extremely underplayed sequence, that Albrecht is fully aware of these small strikes of rebellion and thievery, finding them amusing with a "kids will be kids" sort of attitude, and preferring to absorb the small betrayal to keep peace in the household. He uses the same tactic on Emily, whom I assume he sees as something of a daughter herself, and instead of reprimanding her for a small indiscretion, he gives her a pair of well-weighed options, letting her figure out the path to reconciliation her way. A way that she needs to work things out. Others may not lie to Emily, but Albrecht is the only one willing to give her what she really needs: enough trust to get her to the next step, which is faith in herself. It's a trust that many of us could do with more in our lives, and Nolte plays it so naturally and warmly, but not cloyingly (this film is certainly never cloying in the least), it's a wonder the man hasn't collected a shelf full of Oscars. Whatever his own struggles are, on screen in Clean, Nolte is perfection.

Too bad the music isn't. It works within the context of Cheung's character, and helps to serve as her grace note, but for a film based around music, it's a sorry state of affairs. Luckily, director Assayas (Cheung's ex-husband) knows full well it is the weakest part of the film, and lets the actors carry the day, an end to which Nolte and Cheung rise wonderfully.