300. The Flying Dutchman

Song - Ren Lenny Ren (Acda en De Munnik)

Movie: The Flying Dutchman - De vliegende Hollander (Jos Stelling, 1995)

The Flying Dutchman starts with a title card explicitly situating this story at the end of the Eighty Years War when the Low Countries were rebelling against the Spanish monarchy, It's somewhat confusing then why in the opening scenes a Flemish rural village is attacked by French speaking nobility. The French keep appearing at random moments in the film, leaving little clarity to their role in it, until it's suddenly revealed that these are Spanish troops. It's one of the many moments that helps clarify why what should have been a blockbuster, at the time this was the most expensive Dutch film production in history, turned out to be a complete (commercial and artistic) flop. Stelling's storytelling is so incoherent that even if he would have established the Spaniards as Spanish from the very beginning, we'd still have little idea of how they relate to anything or anyone in the film. It doesn't help that the main protagonist 'Hollander', who is supposed to be around 21 years old, is played by Rene Groothof, 46 at the time of shooting. I have never been a stickler for accurate casting (or accents), but it's so egregious here you'd almost doubt your basic understanding that Groothof is supposed to be the representation of Dutch youthful naivete and innocent idealism.

Of course many national epics have been founded upon the adventures of young everymen imagined as the embodiment of their nation. The Dutch have some (good!) stories like that, but they are not as globally renowned as their counterparts from surrounding nations. It's that last part that seems to be driving force behind the film; you get the sense too often that Stelling has made the film mostly to show that Dutch cinema has as much place for patroitic myths as other cinema cultures and that it can measure itself against these. As a result the Spaniards speak French (a language that is much more associated with artistic world cinema than Spanish) and the young 'Hollander' is guided by a harlequin, played by legendary Italian comic actor Nino Manfredi, as if he has come straight from a commedia dell' arte. Later on, we get plenty of shots of large groups of people trekking through the countryside to reach the sea, shot as if they are American pioneers going west. And Stelling definitely cannot get away with his ice scenes being more influenced by Doctor Zhivago than by Dutch painters. 

I was recently at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam where I saw the film Fabula, which shows that a mish-mash of international styles can work fantastically well and also have a distinctly Dutch character. Fabula is a modern fairy-tale/gangster comedy about the exploits of sadsack Limburg criminals thwarted by the hystories, myths and legends hidden in the Limburgian soil and landscape. I'd never expected to see a film that can be described as Snatch meets A Canterbury Tale, but director Michiel Ten Horn's work also helps highlight that these two films may have a bit more in common than may appear at first sight. What makes it relevant however in the context of The Flying Dutchman is that it is interested in exploring how national/regional identity is shaped by the surrounding landscapes, in ways that go beyond dull close ups of its characters with their heads and feet in miuddy waters. The Flying Dutchman's opening few minutes should give you an immediate sense of how much its reach exceeds its grasp. The first frames show a giant stone head being pulled uphill. It's again a scene with an obvious reference to classic storytelling (The Trojan Horse) that lacks the confidence to let Dutch culture just stand on itself, but at least the stone head is a peculiar presence. Stelling realises that, but it comes soon obvious that he has no real idea of what to do about it, leading to a whole lot of contrived shots that find different ways of framing the bizarre object. These shots can't help but be unusual and interesting, but fizzle out once Stelling has run out ways and excuses for getting them. Like everything else in the film, the giant head is forgotten almost immediately after it's been shot.   

299. Keane

Song - Somewhere Only We Know (Keane)

Movie: Keane (Lodge Kerrigan, 2004)

Occasionally the voices in his head retreat, and when they do William Keane (Damian Lewis) can just about resemble a functioning adult. In one of these moments he meets Lynn (Amy Ryan) and her daughter, offering them 100 dollar to be able to stay in their New York hotel a couple more nights. She hesitantly accepts and invites him the next evening for some takeout in their room. An innocent dance follows and at the first hint of sexual potential she asks William to leave. He does without protest and with respectful consideration. In the next shot, it's the day after and we see a distressed William fussing about, hunched against a wall on a street corner. As the camera pans to the open space on the left it reveals a desparing Lynn in a phone booth, trying to reach her husband (Keane is the second film in a row here about a woman's unsuccesfull efforts to settle down in Albany with a man who may not be right for her) or at least find out whether he even is at the location she is calling. The scene evokes the painfully misjudged phone call from Taxi Driver for good reason. Both films are about a man in mental torment walking the streets of New York in the mistaken belief a woman will fall in love with him if he saves her from a situation she doesn't want to be rescued from. and both Scorsese and Kerrigan are compassionate in their understanding that their protagonists are still lucid enough to sense that human connection might offer a way out of their misery, but too far gone to have the capacity for it.  

Kerrigan's approach is however different to Scorsese's. Taxi Driver plays out as an expression of Travis' inner life, every scene feeling on the verge of boiling out, as if possessed by De Niro's volatile, vulnerable mania. Keane is an intense film where the camera almost constantly stays extremely close to William, seeing every detail of his anguish as he contorts himself around New York. Even so, it allows more distance between the audience and Keane than Taxi Driver, remaining at all times a naturalistic third-person account of a mentally unwell person. We first meet William at a major transit station in New York where he walks around in a daze trying to retrieve his daughter who apparently disappeared some time ago. The film's ending impliees that something like that really did happen, but Kerrigan leaves it relatively open for interepreation and his decision late in the film to show Keane look for jobs during one of his more rational episodes potentially flips the narrative even further on its head. The implication that only now we are finally watching Keane do what he actually came to New York for fully conveys how much his mind sidetracks him from acting on his correct intentions. 

I am a fan of slightly surreal accounts of a night that gets progressively more irrational, and of urban odysseys with a sense of the absurd. Combine the two and you can barely ever go wrong, which is why After Hours remains Scorsese's greatest movie. The best of these films wouldn't work without its collection of strange characters that pester, confound or annoy the main protagonists in their attempts to stabilise their situation. Often there is an implication that these side characters suffer from a social or psychological ill, but even when they are not used for comic effect/building atmosphere they are quckly tossed aside and forgotten after they've served their purpose for the film. Keane is consciously presented here as one of those people society would prefer to ignore, and often does. Kerrigan frames him constantly around passengers in transit, cars, busess and trains, all passing him by, paying no heed to his agony unless he gets into their face. He builds a lot of sympathy for him in the process, and ends the film at exactly the right point, allowing us to leave Keane on a positive note, despite knowing full well that what follows is gonna hurt even more than what came before. But we don't need to see that.

298. His Girl Friday

Song - Words (Bee Gees)

Movie: His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)

I will probably like His Girl Friday more on repeated viewings. Woody Allen bringing out Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall is one of my favorite moments in cinema; Cary Grant noting of Ralph Bellamy's character that "he looks like the fellow in the movies, Ralph Bellamy" paved the way for it (and for Woody Allen's entire persona). Besides, the idea that there is an entire host of peculiar characters outside of the frame that can enter the movie at any given time to divert whatever's going on is pretty much at the heart of Hawks' film. So is the notion that it's funny to watch people frenetically talk over each other about entirely different subjects, especially when they are pompous blowhards such as the professor in media studies complaining that there is not much to Fellini and Beckett beyond their technical proficiency. He is rightly put in his place by McLuhan, and anyone who's seen Annie Hall will know better than trying to sound like that guy. But what do you do when you see a classic that you find techincally impressive, but a little hollow? Blame it on Cary Grant, maybe? I think the film as it its best during its surpisingly long stretch in the middle when he is barely on screen. 

Another favorite, Tarantino, has never let an opportunity slip to declare his love for His Girl Friday, and it does play like one of the keys to his entire filmography. You can see Hawks' movie in all his work, even when he doesn't neccessarily make an explicit reference to it. The Hateful Eight for example is most succesful when it lets the door to the cabin take center stage, essentially becoming a film about the efforts to enter, exit and close it, and how power relations change depending on who is in and out. The same can be said for His Girl Friday, which I found a bit disappointing when it focuses on the relationship between Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, but rather marvelous when it is about the municipal press room as the city's center of power. Journalists, criminals, policemen, and crooked politicians all try to occupy it and are forced to constantly adjust their actions based on who is present and absent, and why. Everyone is always missing some crucial piece of information (or the ability to obtain it), and knows it without entirely being able to put their finger on what they lack. Hawks is a master in blocking, and in evoking group dynamics. Even when a specific combination of people is only on screen for a brief amount of time, you get a great sense of how they all relate to and act around each other. In the meantime the phones keep ringing, with every call having the potential to change the context. 

Of course the main thing that connects His Girl Friday to both Allen and Tarantino is its focus on dialogue, but there is a key difference. Tarantino and Allen write as if their dialogue would be memorable whichever actor says it. His Girl Friday is directed to to highlight that Grant and Russell will be memorable whatever they say at breakneck speed. I prefer the first approach even if Tarantino in particular is sometimes the writer equivalent of a basketball player ostentatiously admiring the big three he just hit. It's hard to blame him; it's incredibly difficult to write styllized literary dialogue that is self-conscious about the pleasures of its rhythms, structures, inventions and diversions, and also meaningfully moves the story forward, deepens the characters, and adds complexity. In His Girl Friday Russell and Grant play unscrupulously determined journalists and former lovers who are aware of each other's rhetorical skills and know that they can never lose their guard if they want to remain true to their intentions, feelings and ideas. One slip of the tongue and you may lose the argument. It's all quite entertaining but the film never really bothers to build upon what we learn of them. Instead Grant and Russell spend entire acts communicating the exact same ideas about each other, only worded differently. 

I absolutely don't mind exercises in style that serve little purpose beyond showmanship. However, a movie that is more interested in how its actors express themselves than in what is being expressed needs to get every key role right, and I felt that Cary Grant was somewhat miscast here. 'Friday' refers to Robinson Crusoe's slave and the title seeks to convey the nature of the relationship between an editor-in-chief (Grant) and his star journalist (Russell). Of course this dynamic only exists in Grant's mind; Russell is a much better and more ruthless journalist than he'll ever be and doesn't need his paternalistic sense of protection and guidance. That's part of the joke, but for a joke to work the set up has to be believable, and Cary Grant's meek, gently confused affect is at odds with his savvy scoundrel confidently pulling all the strings. It's hard to conceive of him ever being in a position to be the Robinson Crusoe to any Friday, let alone one with as steely nerves as Russell. As a result a lot of his dialogue comes off as completely inauthentic.  

297. Departures

Song - De Neus Umhoeg (Rowwen Heze)

Movie: Departures - Okuribito (Yojiro Takita, 2008) . 

Daigo (Masahiro Motoko) is a cellist who has spent most of his youth pursuing a musical career, knowing deep down that he is a merely moderate talent. When his orchestra in Tokyo disbands, he suggests to his wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) to move back to his hometown, where they can live in the house of his mother who died two years ago (his father abandoned them when he was a kid). Daigo hasn't been back for much longer, missing the funeral because "he was living abroad." That might be technically true, but we get the sense that he was abroad precisely so he would have a good excuse to not deal with the complexities, both practical and emotional, of his mother dying. He's now reached the point where he can't run away from such complexities, but actually being an adult who takes responsibility for difficult decisions is different than merely acting like one. It requires a leap that's hard to make, and Departures is above everything else a really perceptive film about how it feels to be stuck in the strange confusing place between becoming mature and genuinely feeling that your maturity is an authentic part of your self you can act on.  I loved the small moment when, in conversation with his wife, Daigo strokes his chin in weary contemplation and becomes briefly self-conscious about it, baffled that such a distinctly 'adult' gesture suddenly comes so naturally to him.

Departures depicts Daigo's transition through a story of morticians following traditional rituals to prepare the dead for their burial or cremation, a controversial topic in Japan where there is a social taboo on dealing with death. When Daigo responds to the job ad looking for someone to work with 'departures', he thinks he will be some sort of travel agent. He remains convinced of the same after a phone conversation with his boss-to-be, and only finds out that he will be actually working as an assistant mortician after being offered the position, when he has essentially no choice but to accept it. At first sight, this may look like an obvious plot contrivance the film is forced into, being unable to show someone voluntarily wanting to work as an embalmer. However, earlier in the film we've seen Daigo lie to his wife about the true cost of his cello, and he continues to lie to her once he gets the job. When she finds out and leaves him in disgust, his dinners amount to bread and butter, while the dishes keep piling up. In other words, Daigo is exactly the kind of guy who may end up in a career he doesn't want, simply because he'll prefer to let life happen rather than get uncomfortable addressing potential frictions and misunderstandings. 

You get no points for guessing if his new vocation makes Daigo more comfortable with the acts of adulthood and whether it eventually makes his marriage happier. Such predictability isn't a major issue when a film is so immensely likeable and absolutely spot on in presenting the dynamics between a kindly, yet stern boss, his new apprentice/colleague and their supportive office manager during the first days on a niche job. I do think that in trying to make death feel more 'normal' it overcorrects a little, making it seem a bit too clean and agreaable, but I rather liked the patience and attention to detail with which Takita depicts the encoffining rituals. In front of their grieving families, the bodies are shaved, washed, dressed and cleaned up for their 'final journey, following a strict order the 'nokanshi' never deviate from. The families watch the procedure while sitting on the floor, with each ceremony creating a personal connection to the departed by incorporating objects that were important to them during their life. Takita shows it all from the point of view of the bereaved; the camera remaims close to the ground, making sure to not 'hover' over the dead, at least until they are placed in the coffin. Everything is filmed to emphasise as much as possible the dignity of the custom and to show how it creates the sense that everyone's life, regardless of background, was important enough to warrant such reverent treatment. It's notable that the film begins with the procession of a trans person. The family quibbles about whether they are burying a man or a woman, and they try to convince Daigo and his boss (Tsutomo Yamazaki, a veteran of Akira Kurosawa's films) to take a side. They remain stonefaced throughout. They might have an opinion, but their job is to give the dead a worthy farewell, regardless of their thoughts about them. 

296. Con Air

Song - I'm Going Home (Ten Years After)

Movie: Con Air (Simon West, 1997)

One more reason for radical climate action! You can't make a movie like this when your house is burning down. Similarly to Titanic (released in the same year), Con Air is a testament to the excesses "kings of the world" can afford to indulge in. Do you wanna tie up a Corvette cabrio to the back of an airplane and fly it high up in the air? Go ahead, you are untouchable and unstoppable! Who cares if the Corvette gets destroyed (spectacularly!)? Another super car is right around the corner, and saving resources is for wussies. The climax in Las Vegas was scheduled to coincide with the actual destruction of a hotel, and you better believe everyone involved was more invested in maximising entertainment potential than in following circular demolition guidelines and material passports. They all did a fantastic job. 

Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) is an Army Ranger who had to go to jail after accidentally killing a guy harassing his pregnant wife. After years of thoughtful letters, he is now finally on parole and just a plane away from meeting his daughter. He even brings along a cute stuffed rabbit, so you know that when the rapists, serial killers, white supremacists, black nationalists, drug dealers, and all the other remorseless criminals hijack 'con air', Cameron will be the hero to save the day. Cage of course gets many moments putting him in the spotlight as a cool, laidback (Southern) badass, with particular highlights being his drawling command to "put the bunny back in the box" and his response when the bunny is not put back in the box. But you don't cast actors like John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, and Danny Trejo as his adversaries for no reason. They all go more over the top than Cage, and also get many crowd-pleasing scenes where they get to be the top dog and express it victorioulsy and appealingly. The movie is basically designed for people to constantly be yelling 'Hell yeah' without caring at all whether the acts set up to elicit such a reaction are heroic or completely despicable. 

By the time all the criminals start dancing around to Sweet Home Alabama, and this is presented as a karaoke session you'd wanna take part in, you'll have to accept that for Con Air distinctions between heroes and villains are solely relevant for entertainment purposes. Much of what, say, John Malkovich says and does here is completely unacceptable in polite society, but the film knows that it is ridiculously entertaining to watch Malkovich casually commit horrific violence and use colorfully degrading language, and it uses every tool at its disposal to ensure that the audience revels in it, uninhibited by any moral qualms. Some may call this nihilistic, and maybe it is, but I laughed very much when they threw Dave Chappele's dead body out of the plane and followed it falling down as it eventually splashes on the car of an ordinary older couple stuck in traffic in a mid-sized city. It's almost Looney Tunes, which is ultimately a more moral approach to depicting violence than whatever the Avengers films (and way too many other contemporary action blockbusters) were doing, developing convoluted backstories to justify way more death and destruction than Con Air can even dream of - it's how you get folks like Chris Evans to proudly photograph themselves signing actual bombs the US military will drop over some Middle East nation. 

295. Truly Madly Deeply

Song - Eternal Flame (The Bangles)

Movie: Truly Madly Deeply (Anthony Minghella, 1990)

"My feet will want to march to where you are sleeping, but I shall go on living." This line from a Pablo Neruda poem, quoted late in Truly Madly Deeply encapsulates it better than anything I could write about it. The film never pretends that Jamie's (Alan Rickman) ghost is a real feat of magic, or that Nina (Juliet Stevenson) believes it is. She quickly clocks that he is a figment of her imagination and though she decides to indulge her runaway brain, she also accepts it rationally as just another challenging part of her grieving process.  The scenes between Rickman and Stevenson are wonderful and express how much of a void his death left in her life, but it's no coincidence that the best and most romantic scene is a date with a new potential partner.

In the late 80's/early 90's a group of British actors and directors (seemingly all of them somehow, someway connected to Emma Thompson) emerged that influenced much of the British cinema I grew up with. They brought to their characters and movies a cheerful wit, grounded in reality that seemed to be an extension of their actual personalities. They carried themselves with a confidence that they could be at comfort in any context with any people, and that they welcomed this opportunity to interact with the world around them and be part of shaping it. And though their attitudes and roles were far removed from the cinema of council homes and mine workers, you still always got the sense that they didn't forget their working class roots and sensibilities; that even though they were sometimes walking in the same circles as the Tony Blairs and Richard Bransons, they could see through the bullshit, call it out, and keep at least one foot in the realm of the ordinary people. In other words, they were cool as shit people that folks like me (as my gushing peace on Da 5 Bloods showed, I have more sympathy for socialism than the average fan of American-led liberal globalisation, and more sympathy for American-led liberal globalisation than the average socialist) could see as a wonderful examples of how to be in the world. 

If you want to see many of these actors in one place you can watch Sense & Sensibility, Peter's Friends or Love, Actually, but to my surprise no film embodies their spirit as wonderfully as Truly Madly Deeply (and the same can be said for Juliet Stevenson's performance in it). I absolutely loved it, pretty much from the first seconds, filmed to make London at night feel like a place where even at your most heartbroken you can strike a beautiful, poetic figure, In voiceover we hear Nina calmly explain to her psychiatrist that she is hearing Jamie talk to her, sometimes even in Spanish, a language he didn't speak when alive. These scenes immediately set the mood for what's to come. Everything that happens in the film is informed by the idea that the world is an interesting and fun place and that it's interesting and fun to be able to engage it with curiosity, intelligence and confidence. Nina is able to do so, and Truly Madly Deeply is above all about observing her be. It never presents her as just a generic grieving woman, but forces you to consider her as a full person with many interests, opportunities and happy moments in her life. 

Nina does break down once, sobbing and yelping uncontrollably. Minghella films it all in a close-up he holds for a long time, leaving almost no distance between Stevenson and the audience. It's a scene of raw despair that quickly makes way for a more lighthearted touch, without ever dismissing or forgetting Nina's vulnearbility. It's a great example of how confident the film is juggling different tones and moods. It shifts between magic realism and psychological drama, and between romantic fantasy and slapstick comedy. Once Jamie's ghost has settled down he brings along some of his friends from the underworld. They keep Nina from sleeping with their disagreements about whether to watch Five Easy Pieces or Hannah and Her Sisters. Most of these 'friends' look like regular people, but Minghella also has a few folks stand around looking like tbey are extras in a Dracula film.. It's a very funny detail in context that's also a testament to the film's commitment to find something worthwhile about every single character it introduces, including the rodent control friend who comes to inspect Nina's house for rats. He does his job seemingly oblivious to Nina yelling for Jamie to appear, until before leaving he kindly explains he is gonna tell his dead wife about his day, as he has been doing for the past 12 years. His words symbolise the optimistc solidarity that anchors the film.  It's a beautiful fantasy, your lover returning from the death as a ghost you can touch and talk to, but Truly Madly Deeply imagines something even better: the ability to continue in the face of an ugly reality. 

294. Fearless

Song - Love You More (Racoon)

Movie: Fearless (Peter Weir, 1993)

In Witness, Peter Weir sent Harrison Ford, playing a New York cop, to an Amish community. Dead Poets Society had a progressive, free-spirited professor teach poetry in a rigidly conservative boarding school. Green Card forced two strangers to live and act as a married couple. In Master & Commander, a pacifist man of science found himself on a warship on an irrational mission. With this in mind, it's perhaps no surprise that at the height of his powers Weir stretched his interest in exploring what happens when people are placed in situations antithetical to their (preferred) way of life to the breaking point. The Truman Show and Fearless both turn the entire world into an alien environment to its main characters. The main difference is of course that in The Truman Show external factors are to blame, while in Fearless the problem is entirely psychological. Max Klein (Jeff Bridges) miraculously survived a plane crash and now he feels he should be dead. What's more, he isn't entirely sure he is alive, despite all the empirical evidence for it. If that makes it sound like a twist is coming, it's not. Max really is alive (and with only a minor scratch to remind him of the accident) and the film is about how he and the people around him try to make sense of the situation. 

Fearless is a good film that at times purposefully keeps a little distance from the audience. Max is utterly confounding and his behaviour changes dramatically from scene to scene. It's never entirely clear what his character is building up to, how he feels, or why he takes certain actions and it's as impossible for us to understand him as it is for the others around him, or even for himself. That is sometimes a little frustrating, but it's the only way to put you in the shoes of Max and his loved ones. It makes sense then that Fearless is at its best when Weir's filmmaking matches the absurd irrationality of the situation. I loved the moment when Max, in one of his many reckless attempts to show/confim that nothing can hurt or kill him, disregards a warning sign to keep out of a construction area, and ends up walking along an empty highway, framed against the San Francisco highline as if he is the only sign of life in the city. Even better is the detour Max takes with Carla (Rosie Perez), a fellow survivor who feels guilt over losing her baby in the crash. Trying to find a way through their confusion, they end up in a mall where they decide to buy gifts for their dead family members. Conveniently, at just the right spot there is a piano player playing just the right tune for a dance. It's a brush with magic realism that sets up the film's best scene, one that fully embraces the frantically shambolic headspace of Max, leading to a terrible decision with positive consequences. 

I wish the movie took that stylistically evocative and subjective approach a bit further. Jeff Bridges' wonderfully ambigous performance (At certain moments, his tone of voice, facial expressions and dialogue are all incongruent with each other and often you just cannot get a reading of his emotional state) and the agressive close ups of Max eating strawberries (as a kid he had an almost deadly allergic reaction to them) go a long way, but Weir still communicates Max' unstable state of mind mostly through conventional dramatic realism. In addition, the film also sometimes tries way too hard to become a statement on The Way We Live Now, in particular with the inclusion of an insurance lawyer who is shamelessly exploiting the dead in trying to squeeze out more money for the survivors of the plane crash. He is pointedly funny the first few times he appears, but Tom Hulce' hysteric performance contributes to him way overstaying his welcome.