142. The Rules of the Game

Song - All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix)

Movie: The Rules of the Game - La règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939)

The future is about to arrive when The Rules of the Game begins. A woman journalist dressed in work clothes reports live on the radio on the imminent landing of André Jurieux, the fastest man to fly solo across the Atlantic and the French answer to Charles Lindbergh. Upon landing, a disappointed André finds that the woman for which he risked his life isn't at the airfield waiting for him. Believing that he must win 'his' Catherine back from Marquis Robert de la Cheyniest he finds a way to attend the Marquis' hunting party at his private estate 'La Colliniere'. And so begins a "comedy of manners" involving lordships, aristocrats, servants, chambermaids, lavish gowns, costumes, palace intrigue, masquerades and mechanical music instruments. It's sometimes easy to forget and hard to imagine that this world of noblemen and their traditions, rules and hierarchies overlapped with the world of live radio and airplanes. In hindsight it may be rather obvious that the latter would mean the downfall of the former, but seeing it so clearly while living in the midst of that transition is much harder than Renoir makes it look here.

The Rules of the Game is above all a great farce that doesn't involve merely the three main characters mentioned in the paragraph above, but also Christine's chambermaid Lizette, Lizette's husband Schumacher, her lover Marceau, Robert's mistress Genevieve, Christine's niece Jackie who is in love with André, Octave (played by Renoir), who is a confidant of most of these people, and who may be smarter or more tragic than he lets on, and a whole lot of other aristocrats and servants. The efficiency with which Renoir introduces them is a masterclass in itself. Look at the opening scene at the airfield for example. André is greeted there by a jolly Octave, but can't hide his disappointment to the radio journalist. Renoir then cuts to an opulent room where Lisette and Christine talk about love and life, while the former helps her 'lady' dress to go out with her husband, the Maarquis. In the establishing shot, before we even know their names, we see them from behind the radio. Their relationship to the previous scene is immediately clear, especially when Christine teases Lisette about her affairs, including the one with Octave. In less than 5 minutes Renoir has established all the different ways in which these four people relate to one another, and to the Marquis, who we haven't even seen by then. As he introduces more and more characters, and as we get to know them better, it becomes increasingly fun to discover how entangled they all are with each other, and how much more entangled they can get. 

Once at La Colliniere, everything and everyone has been set up and the real fun starts, most of all for Renoir himself. He happily moves the camera around the estate to discover unexpected people in unexpected corners, and is equally happy to let his characters move around the estate. We see differents sets of people leave a room, their paths diverging, only for them to briefly meet up again in some other space of the estate, and then follow their own paths again. At other times, characters are frantically entering rooms, where others are already, equally frantically, going on about their business. In the process, unlikely alliances are formed and broken, identities are mistaken, punches are thrown and guns are fired. And the most exciting space is the corridor between the various bedrooms, where people constantly move around, get in and out of rooms, and the frame, often not even knowing for certain why they are there or whether they really want what they think they want. Sometimes we may see within a shot three different strands of action take place, such as the moment when the Marquis and Andre leave a room fighting, only to end up in the same space where Schumacher is shooting at Marceau, while in the background we see Genevieve fainting. And while all this is going on, some of the guests at La Colliniere are watching a 'masquerade show'. In one of the acts four Jewish stereotypes sing about how they cannot control their sexual desires. It's hard to make such a funny, lighthearted movie about a dying world. It's easier when you have such contempt for that world.

141. Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Song - Saturday Night (Herman Brood)

Movie: Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling, 1982)

Inadvertently, a great argument for not being a team player. Most of the cast here is wonderfully in tune with each other and with the sweet and endearing vibe of the film, letting the vulnerability, insecurity and excitement of their characters seep through in their performances. It's obvious that all these young actors, at the beginning of their careers, loved the film and loved working with each other to make the best of it. The exception is Sean Penn, who gives the least chill performance of a surfer dude ever. More annoyingly, he is so committed to showing that what he is doing is so special and unique that he completely stops the film in its tracks anytime he appears on screen. It's an utterly stupid and ill-conceived performance. In hindsight, it's hard to blame him. His Jeff Spiccoli could have, and perhaps should have, retired him from acting. Instead, Spiccoli became an iconic character and Penn went on to have the most successful career out of the entire Ridgemont cast.

I am quite fond of The Pledge, Into the Wild and Milk, but Judge Reinhold should have been the biggest star on the evidence of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. (Though if you want to be a star you probably shouldn't appear next to 80's Eddie Murphy. Can't really blame the audience for not paying much attention to you in that situation.) He plays Brad Hamilton, a teen who realises that he is less mature than he thinks he is, but doesn't realise that this makes him more mature than he thinks he is, to utter perfection. The scenes where he debates how to break up with his girlfriend are really glorious. He wants to explore seeing other people, knows that this is a perfectly normal response for a teen, but isn't 100% sure whether this knowledge is correct. And so he tries to come up with all kinds of reasons for breaking up, knowing that all those reasons are bullshit. His reaction when his girlfriend actually breaks up with him, because she wants to see other people, is a priceless combination of relief, regret, amusement and disappointment. He gets into more awkward situations in the rest of the film, similarly responding to them with both annoyance and a knowing bemusement, aware of the fact that these are the kind of situations teens sometimes end up in, and there is not much one can do about it. 

An early scene is key to the character and to the film as a whole. Washing his car with a grin on his face, his younger sister Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh), having lost her virginity the previous night, comes up to him, asking him to hide from their parents the flowers she just received. He helps her without teasing her or making her in any way uncomfortable. That dynamic will be again visible when Stacy needs an abortion, a plot point that badly fits in with the rest of the film, but does again highlight Brad's goodness and comfort in his own skin, without ever turning him into a mature adult. It's really not the kind of character you usually see in these kinds of comedies, certainly not from that period. The rest of the film is quite good too, though it lacks big laughs and a certain manic energy that the best comedies of its ilk have. It makes up of for that with a sort of quiet wisdom, understanding that teens often fear getting what they want much more than not getting what they want. And that anxiety about asking a girl out, is often about the fear that she will actually say yes.  

140. Native Son

Song - In the Ghetto (Elvis Presley)

Movie: Native Son (Jerrold Freedman, 1986)

If Beale Street Could Talk is one of the best films of this century, but even if it had been crap, I would have been grateful to it for introducing me to James Baldwin. Unfortunately, the perspectives of black American leftist thinkers have almost completely passed me by. There are some obvious reasons for this. Emphasising that many of the heroes and intellectuals of the Civil Rights Movement had radical socialist ideals would be quite inconvenient for the stories Americans like to tell (about) themselves. Native Son, an adaptation of the 1940 novel by Richard Wright, is certainly not a great film, but it's interesting for trying to address this conundrum. 

I have not read Native Son, but I have read about Richard Wright on Wikipedia, which obviously makes me an expert! Apparently, Native Son was a highly controversial novel, criticized by Baldwin for presenting negative stereotypes of black Americans, the American literature world still feels uneasy about. It has been criticized for being violent, profane and sexually graphic communist propaganda, causing libraries and high schools to think long and hard about how to present it. Freedman's film doesn't really capture that provocative spirit and is a bit safe. But it must have been hard to adapt a novel by a devoted Marxist during the height of American anti-communist jingoism. When Bigger Thomas (Victor Love) drives Mary (Elizabeth McGovern) to meet her 'red' boyfriend Jan (Matt Dillon) in their socialist set-up/bar, we don't enter the establishment with her. Instead, the camera stays outside with Bigger, showing us shadowy figures behind windows adorned with communist slogans. 

The rest of the night Bigger drives Mary and Jan around town, while they use him as a prop to justify their beliefs and to explore black Chicago. These are among the film's best and most uncomfortable scenes - I would not be surprised if they influenced Jordan Peele when making Get Out, as they evoke similar feelings and ideas. This does so more successfully, as Mary and Jan truly believe they are benevolent do-gooders who will be of benefit to Bigger. They are completely oblivious to the fact that their shenanigans clearly make Bigger uncomfortable and put him in an anxious state of mind. In doing so they set in motion a chain of events leading to Bigger accidentally killing Mary. (As an aside, losing Elizabeth McGovern early is not a good strategy for a film.) The film emphasises that Jan and Mary, and their desire to show off how good socialism is/how good they are for being socialists, are to blame for Bigger's predicament. But when the trial against Bigger starts the film also emphasises that the communists are the only (white) people to care about him, who see his humanity and who help him regain some pride and self-respect. This nuanced approach also shows this to be a rare Hollywood film that seems aware that there are substantial differences between social democracy/socialism and communism. 

Unfortunately. the film does fail considerably in other regards. Bigger placing the dead Mary in the furnace would have been an iconic image if the scenes surrounding it were stronger. You can see how a description of the events leading up to Mary's death and their aftermath, could work well on page. To make them work on film, one has to embrace metaphor and artificiality. Freedman is too damn literal, and so most of it feels completely unbelievable and ridiculous. It doesn't help that Victor Love isn't a very good actor; you simply don't buy that he can successfully convince anyone of his innocence. 

139. Fast Five

Song - Don't Stop Me Now (Queen)

Movie: Fast Five (Justin Lin, 2011)

Well, that was a surprising disappointment. The best thing you can say about Fast Five is that it set up Furious 6, maybe the most purely entertaining blockbuster of the last decade. That film took the franchise' idea that all the matters in life is family, fun, love and fast cars and turned it up all the way to 11, infusing every frame of the film with such hyperactive joy that I actually decided not to see the other movies in the series until the next film came out. Though I had seen the first film by that point, I wanted to remember the characters as they were in Furious 6, and the filmmakers as the people who had made that film. Now that I have seen 1,4,5,6 and 7, this one is by far my least favorite. 

As I remember it, Fast Five was the film that turned the critical tide in favor of the franchise, which may well be the main reason for the differences between 5 and 6. Furious 6 seems made by people who have gotten over themselves, who are so comfortable with making gloriously silly action movies that they couldn't care less about what anyone thinks of them. Fast Five feels made by people who are trying way too hard to prove themselves. It's filled with empty juiced-up posturing, overdetermined 'grittiness' and the most humorless Dwayne Johnson performance ever; he seems to have been given the task to put as much edge as possible on even the most banal command he gives. After the opening scenes we have to wait over an hour for the next car chase scene. 

For some reason the film even makes it a point to skip its street race scene; Diesel and Walker approach the Rio street racers for a bet, and then the film cuts to them returning to their base with the car they've won, without showing the race. That's again a decision that becomes even more disappointing in the context of Furious 6. There, the street race in the London night culminating in the meeting between Vin Diesel and Luke Evans, is one of the absolute highlights in the film, and the first sequence to point to if you want to convince someone of the genuine visual artistry of these films. If you want to teach film students how a director's craft evolves with experience you could do much worse than showing them Fast Five and Furious 6. In the process they might also learn something about Hollywood's Orientalism. It's not a coincidence that a car chase set in London is filmed with more clarity and visual splendor than a car chase set in Rio De Janeiro. This film is dominated by that ugly orange-greyish look American filmmakers like to give to Latin American places and of course a foot chase across the favelas is edited as if the film tries to out-Greengrass Greengrass. And yet, the sheer ridiculousness of the long final sequence almost makes up for the rest of the film. Stealing an entire bank vault by chaining it to two supercars racing across Rio creates the kind of gloriously silly imagery that more Hollywood blockbusters should strive for, and that Lin perfected in Furious 6.