281. Nights of Cabiria

Song - Another Day In Paradise (Phil Collins)

Movie: Nights of Cabiria - Le notti di Cabiria (Federico Fellini, 1957)

Casting Shirley MacLaine in Sweet Charity must have been one of the most self-evident decisions in Hollywood history. Nights of Cabiria plays like a Chaplin movie with MacLaine at her most irascible in the role of the Tramp, making the choice to turn its American remake into a lavishly produced Hollywood musical much more questionable. Nights of Cabiria, and Giulietta Masina's great perfromance in it, works so well because of its sparseness. Masina is free to overwhelm the screen with her incessantly earnest emotionality, without being distracted by anything that doesn't belong there. More importantly, her Cabiria's angry, proudly disagreaable attitude is a necessity, and an entirely understandable response to her surroundings. She lives in a traveller's encampment on the outskirts of Rome in a barely functional cabin that is still preferable to living in the surrounding caves. As a prostitute she's earned enough to be able to own her shelter, but still has to spend most of her life on the streets, where she is constantly exploited by men, both clients and not. 

The film essentially presents several episodes in Cabiria's life that mostly follow the same pattern. Circumstances beyond her control create an opportunity for her to improve her financial or romantic prospects, she puts her entire being into trying to make the most of it, only for other circumstances beyond her control to put an end to her hopes and dreams, sometimes in deeply humiliating ways. Though Chaplin movies have similar structures, the Tramp usually responds to his misfortunes with an open-hearted, gracefully self--effacing, humanity, while Cabiria doesn't let ycu look away from her hurt, anger and irrationality while turning combative. In either case, both characters defiantly will not let life bring them down, whatever happens. For this reason, the ending doesn't entirely work for me. For the most part, whatever challenges Cabiria faces, they feel like they flow organically out of the film's milieu and its characters. That is not the case for Oscar's (Francois Perier) final act, that feels more like it is forced by Fellini to create the ultimate tragedy in which Cabiria is doomed forever in a perpetual cycle of misery, rather than as an honest expression of his feelings towards Cabiria. 

The opening half hour however gives the impression that this is going to be one of the great masterpieces, with Fellini translating Masina's unpent energy and outlook to his depiction of the streets of Rome. The city is her workplace, but also a not entirely comprehensible world that exists outside her ordinary reality, where there is potential to burst in a spontaneous dance, meet the nouveau riche, and encounter foreign dancers from unknown corners of the the world. In these scenes Fellini integrates a sort of manic metatextual expressionism withiin the usual context of Italian neo-realism, giving a glimpse of how a 1950's Michael Mann movie could have looked like. After the visit to Alberto Lazzari's (Amedeo Nazzari, playing apprently a version of himself with a wonderful combination of sleaze and charm) extravagant villa, Fellini only ocassionally returns to this approach, settling for a more conventional style that still showcases why post-war Italian cinema has become so influential. Among other things, he keeps framing his characters against the backdrop of construction projects, railways and other symbols of Italy's rapid industrialisation during the 1950's/60s. It's a metter of time before the travellers' encampment will be replaced by apartment flats, but whether Cabiria will get to live in those is a whole other question. 

280. On the Beach

Song - Vluchten Kan Niet Meer (Frans Halsema & Jenny Arean)

Movie: On the Beach (Stanley Kramer, 1959)

When an American nuclear submarine docks in Melbourne, it finds its citizens rather unexcited by the approaching end of the world. Nuclear war has wiped out life in all of the northern hemisphere and it's a matter of months until the radioactive fallout will reach Australia, where people await their faith with a dignified resignation. A fuel shortage has left the streets filled with bicycles and horses, moving even slower than usual in scenes that are quietly masterworks of pacing and perfectly timed choreography. Nobody has a spring in their step, yet everyone is still trying to do more than just go thorugh the motions, wonderfully evoking a sense of demure bustle. People still tend to their families and work, run errands, enjoy the beach, make love, and commit to their daily responsibilities. At no point does anyone do anything illegal or out of line with social conventions. Moira (Ava Gardner) is a promiscous drunk, but she had always been that, and the arrival of Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck), the commander of the submarine, may be her chance to find real love at last. 

The social conventions everyone respects are not those of 50's Australia, but of the 50's Hollywood studio system. It's notable that everyone, including characters who are supposed to be English or Australian, speaks with an American accent. It's also notable that nobody ever gets angry at the American submarine crew for maybe being complicit in the apocalypse. Nobody blames the Sovjets either, all of it is chalked up as an immensly tragic accident, and it never becomes clear who started the war, or why. The stale, actively inoffensive formality of the film's politics, style and characters is sometimes a bit too much, but it does help make Kramer's less conventional choices more startling and effective. On the Beach looks like it is going to follow a familiar structure. It presents a seemingly totally hopeless situation, until a certain 'revelation' hints that things may not be as dire as they appear, becoming a 'men on a mission movie' where the men on the mission are supposed to heroically improve things through their hardheaded determination. However, commander Towers and his crew never get to showcase any determination and this subplot only serves to highlight that even the idea of hope is completely ridiculous in these circumstances, a point Kramer keeps reinforcing. The film has no interest in offering even the slightest possibility of a way out. 

Apocalyptic fantasies have always existed, partly because they allow people to imagine that the fate of the world may depend on their actions and that they will belong to a very special 'last' generation.  Most narratives about the apocalypse reflect that and are about people finding meaning in their lives, becoming heroes, asserting their true personalities or simply about spectacular sights and sounds never before seen. The famous saying 'it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism' means to imply that capitalism has become so entrenched in our daily lives that it is hard to imagine an alternative to it. There is a lot of truth in that, but it's also the case that many people would much rather imagine the end of the world, because it gives them more freedom to indulge in their most irresponsible, incredible fantasies. I think it's worth researching to what extent climate change doomerism has contributed to the rise of fascist movements around the world and quite appreciated On the Beach's coomplete refusal to indulge in any fantasy that would make the end of the world feel in any way meaningful - it doesn't even show a dead body. Life remans as mundane and insignificant as usual, people are just slightly sadder.  As one character exclaims, "there is a lot of bureaucracy still, you know?", and indeed even in the final days people are still standing duly in line to receive the suicide pills from the government officials handing them out.   

279. Priscilla

Song - Always On My Mind (Elvis Presley)

Movie: Priscilla (Sofia Coppola, 2023)

Maybe Shakira's hips don't lie, but Elvis' (Jacob Elordi) do. The tantalising promises of their public appearances amount to nothing in private, where Elvis needs an emotional assistant more than a romantic partner. In Baby Doll, Elia Kazan consistently highlighted Carroll Baker's immaturity to emphasise her sexual desirability. Here Sofia Coppola too makes it a point to show how childish Priscilla (Callee Spaeny) looks in comparison to Elvis, and how that childishness is what draws him to her. However, Coppola then goes into a more provocative direction, positing that Priscilla's baby doll qualities are attractive to Elvis precisely because they provide him an excuse to not have sex with her, in the process seing him almost as a sex worker exploited by the unseen Colonel Tom Parker. Pleasuring women is his job, in Graceland he is off the clock, leaving Priscilla to wander the halls of the mansion in frustration, hoping against hope that the stage version of Elvis will match the reality. It never happens, and aside from a detour to Las Vegas (Coppola highlights the explosively bright lights of the city so much, the contrast with the brown-darkish hue of Graceland couldn't be bigger) and a brief scene where they playfully take sexy pictures of each other, Elvis and Priscilla spend most of their time together doing  what ordinary middle class middle-aged couples would do. They watch some movies, have dinner, read books and have a clear division of roles. When Elvis goes on tour to work (which includes going to bed with Ann-Margret), Priscilla stays home to watch the house. And when they do have sex, Priscilla gets pregnant. 

Sofia Coppola likes to explore how men withholding sex (or more precisely, sexual pleasure) can be a way of manipulating, opressing or controlling women. It's a perspective that is quite out of the ordinary in American movies, especially in combination with Coppola's commitment to be a populist formalist filmmaker, who is very much interested in making stylishly appealing movies that are willing to find entertainment in their sources of criticism. There is a scene here in which Elvis at the height of Priscilla's pregnancy crudely suggests that they should maybe spend less time together. As his attempts at nonchalant coolness can't hide his existential confusion, half his body is well lit, the other half appears in the shadow. The scene makes a point about how much Priscilla was mistreated, and works as a metaphor for the patriarchal structures women in general are faced with. But it's also leaning in on Elvis' compelling attittude and appearance, and Elordi's freedom to give a remarkably eccentric (If Jim Carrey were to play Elvis without ever deciding whether to give a dramatic or comedic performance, you might get something like this), yet extremely well controlled, portrayal. Much of the film works like this. It's serious in its criticism of the forces that made Priscilla's life impossible, while also exploiting their (aesthetic) appeal. 

Elordi's approach could have easily turned Elvis into a gimmick, instead it's an extremely believable performance of a perpetually morose and bewildered man who is somewhat surprised by his power over Priscilla, but will happily experiment to what extent he can exploit it. Unsurprisingly, the Elvis estate was opposed to the movie, but Coppola is more sympathetic towards him than it may seem at first sight. Even aside from the mysterious and exploitative activities of Colonel Tom Parker, and other handlers who've figured out that Elvis being unprecedented makes him malleable, the expressive stylisation in some of the scenes in which Elvis' odiousness is especially pronounced, also serves to highlight the subjectivity of these accounts, allowing that it could be to some extent contested whether they really happened as shown. That still however leaves us with two ironies: While Elvis contrbuted to the sexual liberation of American/western society, his own wife didn't get the benefit of that, and due to the nature of their relationship even a biopic about Priscilla ultimately provides more insight into him than into her.  

278. Boyz n the Hood

Song - Father And Son (Ronan Keating & Cat Stevens)

Movie: Boyz n the Hood (John Singleton, 1991)

When a film takes its name from a NWA song, references NWA lyrics in its dialogue, and casts Ice Cube in a key role you expect brazen unfiltered showmanship. Singleton shows an affinity for that by getting Laurence Fishburne to play a guy named 'Furious Styles', yet much of the film plays like a Parental Advisory warning label come alive, with multiple scenes existing solely to remind young men to wear condoms. Singleton wanted Doughboy's (Ice Cube) aimless, shit-talking hangabout friends to be played by the other NWA members. They rejected the offer, because of a prior dispute with Ice Cube, but you also wonder how they would have felt about the film's perspective. Their namesake song forces you to delight in the vulgarity, violence and posturing of its subjects, while Singleton looks at this life from a (psychological) distance and with a moralising attitude. It's a great example or Roger Ebert's famous notion that what a film is about is less important than how it's about it. For all the horrors Singleton depicts, his earnest de-escalatory approach is the biggest testament to the bleak state of black American neighborhoods. A 24-year old first-time filmmaker only makes a film like this if he is thoroughly devastated by all the shootings, drug use, broken families and general hopelessness he sees around him. 

I think Singleton's approach is valuable, but there are better ways to do this. The majority of the scenes pretty much follow the same pattern where we see people act in certain ways, only for them to be explicitly corrected when they step outside the norm. Perhaps this is more obvious now than it was in 1991. The film formed the breakthrough of many black actors like Morris Chestnut, Nia Long, Regina King, Cuba Gooding Jr, and Ice Cube who have helped define and change American popular culture in the past few decades, probably much more than Singleton ever expected. Their irreverent slang and attitude, both extremely confident and playfully derisive of both themselves and of white America, have in certain cultural contexts (both in and outside of America) become the mainstream, bringing with it an often self-effacing lighthearted approach to serious subjects that is more sophisticated than it appears (and shares a kindred spirit in Balkan humor!). This has led to a lot of racist talk decrying the downfall and unserious frivolity of western civilisation, ironically pointing to some of the same things (though obviously for much different reasons) as John Singleton  It's fun to see Regina King here in a much less dignified role than in If Beale Street Could Talk. Like everyone else, she has a field day with her graphic dialogue, but you often get the feeling that Singleton has writen a lot of it purely to admonish it.    

Singleton's need to neuter any potential volatilty he sets up, and to force a mature responsibility on his characters turns them all more into symbols than actual human beings, perhaps most ridiculously so when Tre Styles (Cuba Gooding Jr,) and Brandi (Nia Long) lose their virginity. The scene is filmed with such an adult perspective on sex and romanticism, showcasing how people should ideally behave when preparing for, and engaging in, sex, rather than how two teens who barely know shit about it would act. A visit from a college adminstrator who is interested in offering Ricky (Morris Chestnut), an NFL prospect and the great hope of the neighborhood, a scholarship is filmed with a similar wide-eyed sincerity. The respect for that particular moment is so overblown by Singleton you almost start fearing that he is setting it all up to pull the rug under poor Ricky's feet, or to make a satiric point, but he is too enamored by civil, correct formality (and too invested in contrasting it with the 'crass' attitudes surrounding it) to do any of that. What makes that scene even odder is that the film points out several times that the Army is just another way for white people to kill and exploit black people, while the most vile character is a black (with much darker skin than most characters in the film) policeman who seizes every opportunity to harrass and hate with outrageously evil facial expressions. You'd expect that someone with such a negative view towards these institutions would be a little more skeptical towards college football, even (or especially) when a kindly black recruiter makes a case for it.   

Finally, we get to Furious Styles, who is somehow both the film's preachy paragon of virtue and the most interesting, intelligently conceived character. Furious will stop entire scenes in their track to talk about sexual education, personal responsibility and the evils of gentrification, in the process raising his son Tre into a 'real man', and an example for the community. Furious became a dad at 17, and both Singleton's characterisation and Fishburne's great performance highlight how his moralism is not entirely selfless. You get the sense that Furious never really got the chance to define himself as an adult as oridinary 17-year olds would, so now his persona as the neighbourhood's moral conscience is as much a performance for himself as it is an act of good parenting. He is called out for that by Tre's mother (Angela Bassett) in the film's sharpest scene that highlights what Singleton is capable of when he allows a little bit of knottiness. Even better examples of that are Four Brothers and his 2000 remake of Shaft.  

277. If Beale Street Could Talk

Song - You're The First, The Last, My Everything (Barry White)

Movie: If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)

Lulu Wang's The Farewell is my favorite work from the Barry Jenkins household, but If Beale Street Could Talk is also one of the best films of recent years. It may sound a bit odd, but if Oliver Stone was interested in black history (some would shudder at the thought), and was romantically inclined, you can imagine he could have made something like this. The film freely cuts between different timelines, giving itself the freedom to digress whenever it sees fit, re-contextualizing images, motifs and lines of dialogue, introducing and re-introducing characters, hovering between different styles and genres, while never losing focus of the central love story between Tish (Kiki Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James). Starting out as childhood friends, they fall in love in their twenties and prepare for a life together until a vindictive cop frames Fonny for the rape of Victoria, a Puerto Rican immigrant. 

Jenkins is a director who wears his heart on his sleeve, sometimes a bit too much. I thought Moonlight was quite good, but it was obvious that Jenkins was way more invested in the final third of the movie, especially the diner scene, than in the rest of it. If Beale Street Could Talk features a trip to Puerto Rico, where Tish's mom (Regina King) has gone to convince Victoria and her handlers to change her testimony - she was clearly forced to identify Fonny as the culprit and now fears the ramifications of the truth, The detour to Puerto Rico requires a more conventional realism, as well as dialogue that could come out of a straightforward crime drama. Jenkins is more at ease with the elegiac romanticism of the rest of the film and employs here the kind of out of focus shots and handheld camera work so loved by uninspired American narco-thrillers set in Mexico or another generic 'Latino' environment. That results in Puerto Rico being presented as a place where people lead unappealing lives in boringly anonymous slums only defined by their grtttiness, and you could criticise Jenkins for perpetuating the kind of stereotypes about Puerto Rico, that he seeks to subvert in his depiction of Harlem and the lives of African-Americans. But man, he sure does subvert those!

Interesting, stylish dialogue has been my way into film, and the elongated scene in which Trish announces her pregrancy to her in-laws is one of the scenes of the century as far as I am concerned. Rarely have actors been allowed to delight so openly in rhetorically playful viciousness. It matters I think that this scene is set in the safety of Trish' parents' living room - solidarity is great, but being free to tell the truth of how you really feel without fearing being divided by the whites is better. What's remarkable is that the languid intensity of that scene is upheld throughout the rest of the film, playing as if it demands that you find the time to bask in love, friendship, sex, solidarity, artistry, a good smoke (vaping companies and lung doctors should really watch this film in sheer terror), good food, and good conversation. At the end of the film, It's almost startling to realise that it has actually shown only a relative few moments during a very specific period of Trish and Fony's life. It feels like we know their every thought and feeling. 

This romantic approach is not just the result of Jenkins' general disposition. There is a political dimension to it, that seems to fit James Baldwin's work. I have read little of Baldwin, but have found all of it fantastic. His writings care as much about pointing out the absurdities and hypocrisies of American racism, as about advancing his literary stylistic concerns. Too much of contemporary social criticism and critical journalism forgets that second aspect, in part becuase of economic models which incentivize clickbait and parochialism, and is less effective as a result. Writing that makes an argument for a better/more interesting world should not present itself like regular slop, but as a dispatch from that world, providing an appealing window into how something else might feel and look. That's definitely what If Beale Street Could Talk is, with "Unbow your head sister!" and "We've been here long before you, and we'll remain here after you are long gone" as its driving principles. 

276. The Strawberry Statement

Song - Almost Cut My Hair (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

Movie: The Strawberry Statement (Stuart Hagmann, 1970)

The students occupying their university (it has displaced a playground and community centre for black people, aside from funding the Vietnam War) apprehensively await the speech of their dean. It's expected that he will send in the National Guard if they don't cease their occupation. Outside, the faculty grounds are filled with press, cops, and curious crowds of all political colors. When the dean takes the microphone, he indeed gives the students five minutes to clear out voluntarily. Instead, they break out in song, chanting the chorus of John Lennon's Give Peace A Chance. For the next five minutes (the movie almost gives the impression that it's happening in real time) tension mounts, as the music envelops everything and Hagmann cuts between the uneasy atmosphere outside and the students inside, solely concentrated on their performance. When their time is over, the National Guard charges in, and we are dropped in the middle of the action, seeing from up close how the cops wreck havoc inside the building and inflict violence and tear gas on the students, while on the soundtrack we keep hearing the ever fainter (now non-diegetic) sounds of Give Peace A Chance.

The scenes described above form the climax of The Strawberry Statement, are some of the most memorable I've seen in American counterculture cinema, and come as a complete surprise. The clarity, intelligence and sharpness of the filmmaking here is at complete odds with the rest of the movie, which is both unfocused and overdetermined. That becomes obvious from the opening scene, in Simon's (Bruce Davison) dorm. Just after we see a poster of JFK on the wall, we hear a radio report on the Sharon Tate murder trial, followed by Simon comparing the ants in his room to the Viet Cong. Craming the entire 1960's in one scene to signal what your movie has on its mind seems unnecessary, but not once you realise that Hagmann has quite a lot of trouble communicating his ideas narratively or visually. At one point, a montage set to a rock song from the counterculture movement is directly followed by a montage set to a similar song without either montage containing anything of note. Ordinary dialogue scenes between two characters are sometimes shot with the camera quickly moving in a circle around them, showing things that are completely irrelevant to the scene. During protest scenes the camera mirrors fists being thrown in the air, making quick jitttery moves forwards and backwards. The movie has many similar moments that mostly emphasise that Hagmann is making big, original directorial choices, without seemingly having thought about what these choices actually add to the movie. Most of the time they are counterproductive. 

The aforementioned Simon is a 20-year old dude, part of the rowing team, and loving it, despite not entirely fitting in its conservative macho culture. Identifying as a liberal, without really thinking about the actual ideological implications of that, he joins the protest movement on a lark and mostly to meet women. He doesn't quite fit among the occupiers either, but he senses that their concerns are valid, without really feeling emboldened to take radical action beyond that. He spends most of the film confused about how he wants to define his relationship to the protests, the rowing team, the university itself and Linda (Kim Darby), the student radical he has a thing for (and vice versa). I quite liked this characterisation of Simon - it's one of the more realitic portrayals I've seen of how students negotiate their political awakening with their desire to comfortably enjoy, and adapt into, the adult world. Simon eventually does find his voice, choosing to fully stand with the protesters, in a monologue that sets up the film's climax. What this means, and what adds some additional interest to the movie, is that the sharpness of the filmmaking corresponds with Simon's clarity of thought.  

275. Inception

Song - Dromen Zijn Bedrog (Marco Borsato)

Movie: Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)

There is a dreamsharing-industrial complex! Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) may be the best extractor in the world, but he is one among many. There are competitors out there, as well as corporations developing protection from people who are trying to invade your dream space. And then there are the bars and dens opening their doors to those who want to dream together in safety and peace. Dreamsharing is not a secretive plot of the American government that is separate from daily life; it is integrated into society-at-large and my favorite bits of Inception are the ones where Nolan shows glimpses of the odd ways in which the world has adapted to this new phenomenon. Unfortunately his actual conception of dreams and the subconscious is much less imaginative, never going much further than literalising the most straightforward ideas about the inner workings of the mind, and integrating them into a Hollywood blocknbuster that doesn't deviate as much from the mold as it likes to pretend. 

Inception is always entertaining, but it's one of the reasons why I wasn't fully on board with Nolan (despite liking most of his movies) until Tenet and Oppenheimer. Tenet is probably the best possible movie about the current state of the fight against climate change. Its genius lies in not showing us a glimpse of the future - we don't really know whether it's good or bad, which is much more unsettling than presenting a straightforward dystopia. It's also the best possible fit for Nolan's obsession with exploring all the ways in which we can never know the conesequences of our actions. That makes him of course the perfect director for a biopic about Oppenheimer, a better film about the strangeness  and unpredictability of our subconscious than Inception. 

In one of the potentially best scenes in Inception Ariadne (Elliot Page) goes through the elevator of Dom's mind, seeing various memories of his life with Mal (Marion Cotillard). You could easily forgive the obviousness of Dom's memories becoming darker further down the elevator, if the content of those memories was a little more unrelaible and fraught. As it is, each memory of Cobb seems to follow a perfectly understandable straightforward narrative, about which he feels almost completely certain. There is no naked Florence Pugh appearing out of nowhere in an interrogation room. Even aside from those kinds of surrealist interventions, in Oppenheimer we are constantly aware that something feels off about Cillian Murphy's recollectios of the events and we always have to live with the notion that it may not have happened quite as it is presented, or that whatever is presented could be seen in a much different light. Inception achieves this only rarely, even in the scenes between Dom and Mal, where it most forcefilly tries to go for such an effect. DiCaprio and Cotillard are put through an aleborate wringer in the service of a cloyingly sentimental, and somewhat distasteful, plot about trauma that offers no real insights into the characters except that they are feeling sad and guilty, something that's established right at the start of the movie. It offers no real insights into dreams, subconsciousness, or architecture either (though it likes to talk about these things a lot), while also sacrificing any semblance of fun.   

Thankfully, the rest of the film is much better. In partuclar, the final third, where the fate of characters in a dream depends on the actions of others in a dream within a dream, while there are also things going on in a side dream, is exciting. Nolan's greatest strength has always been setting the stakes, and creating great tension by showing exactly how a different number of conflicted interests and scenario's converge to a point of no return, His croscutting across different dream states here makes it really fun to follow how the actions in one dimension affect events in another one. Inception also works exceptionally well as a heist movie, helped by Elliott Page, Tom Hardy (between 2010 and 2015 there was probably no more exciting actor in the world than him) and Joseph Gordon-Levvitt at the height of their bantering charisma. Still, none of that can take the attention away from the film's most basic issue. Dom has done an inception before, planting the idea in his wife's head that the world she lives in is fake. This should provide an opportunity for some freewheeling filmmaking that goes into all kinds of goofy, grotesque, frightening and bizarre directions. Instead, Nolan glosses over this with a few lines of dialogue and instead focuses on the inception of the idea to break up a company, culminating with the opening of a vault with a piece of paper inside. It's quite incredible that the movie sets up its world with the folding of Paris, and the subsequent dream tour of the city, and then never shows anything remotely as spectacular or as irrational.