235. 8 Mile

Song - Owner Of A Lonely Heart (Yes)

Movie: 8 Mile (Curtis Hanson, 2002)

8 Mile pays great attention to the crumbling infrastructure of Detroit and its suburbs, highlighting how its dirty streets, abandoned properties, creaky houses and cars, and barely liveable trailer parcs contribute to a sense of despair. Even if jobs were available, the desolated surroundings don't make it attractive or motivating to look for them. Young people have little else to do then observe their environment and make snide comments about it, and each other. Add a beat and a rhythm and you have rap. Each neighborhood has its own challenges, which also means it has its own distinct raps. That creates rivarlies between neighborhoods, leading to rap battles spilling out on the streets and becoming actual fights. 

I like stories that show how artistic/cultural movements and expressions are shaped by their local contexts. There also aren't that many mainstream American movies that present such a realistically bleak view of a major American city. But while this approach is in some ways commendable, it also both diminishes and whitewashes Eminem. For the best writing about him, it's worth seeking out a critic called Sheila O'Malley, in particular her piece on the song Kim, a 6 minute cry of despair in which Eminem takes on both the role of himself and his girlfriend Kim as he imagines choking her to death. The song alternates between helpless rage, self-humiliation and utterly hopeless despair. It's quite unpleasant to listen to it, but it's also a genuinely artistic expression of Eminem's struggles with his darkest fears and feelings. It is a nightmarish fantasy of what could happen if he were to succumb to the ugliest parts of him. Most of his songe are more or less about that, only more playfully so. He would be probably less controversial if most of his work was in the same vein as Kim, but his genuinely absurd sense of humor is what makes him slippery and interesting. Aside from that, his guiding principle seems to be that any wordplay is permissable no matter how ridiculous it gets, which leads to lyrics like 'I solemnly swear to treat this roof like my daughters and raise it." I will not insist that this is genius writing, but it certainly doesn't impoverish the English language. 

Eminem's demons and idiosyncrasies are not merely the result of the social state of Detroit, but 8 Mile for the most part disregards these personal elements in his music, making him a far less interesting, distinct artist. The film consists of him going around town with his crew from hood "313". They spend their time joyriding, participating in impromptu rap battles and tauntiing their rivals, "The Leaders of their Free World." B, Rabbit, Eminem's alter ego, always participates in these shenanigans, but he is at every point presented as the most restrained and the most responsible and wise. That's also how he is depicted in his relationship with his mother (Kim Basinger) and little sister, and during the rap battles. While his black opponents insult him with raps about how he doesn't belong in this scene, because of his whiteness, he magnanimously never makes any reference to their skin color, 'winning' the battles mostly becuase he paints the other rappers as inauthentic compared to him. The film even includes a scene in which he interevenes in a homophobic taunt, rapping that the insulting party is the actual "faggot". As a result Eminem's status as an underdog non-gangster white guy becomes the main reason why we should root for him, and the main characteristic that distinguishes him from the other rappers. 8 Mile won Eminem an Oscar for "Lose Yourself". It's notable that the song is not heard by any of the characters in the film, but it's far better (and funnier!) than anything that is played diegetically.

234. Love & Basketball

Song - Zij Maakt Het Verschil (De Poema's)

Movie: Love & Basketball (Gina Prince-Bythewood, 2000)

Watching people who desperately want things negotiate often conflicting interests in the pursuit of their hopes and dreams, is inherently compelling. That’s one reason why sports movies are so reliable. As long as they are competently made, it’s hard not to find at least a little enjoyment in them. They also require more suspension of disbelief than your average science-fiction film. That’s not just because scripted narratives can’t ever convey, and are in direct opposition to, the unpredictability of sports, but also because most of us watch sports on television, and sport broadcasts around the world are pretty much unified in their visual grammar. A basketball game in Brazil will be presented in much the same way as a basketball game in Nigeria, South Korea or Serbia. A film is unable to follow these visual rules when showing sports and as a result the final ‘big game’ never quite has the impact that it’s supposed to have. You are always aware of its staginess, the awkward flow, and the unnatural movements of the actors. In its climax Love & Basketball handles this ‘problem’ better than any film I’ve seen. 

I was enjoying this film very much, but wasn’t sure whether it was truly great or just incredibly effective at pandering exactly to my sensibilities. This is after all an epic basketball romance spanning multiple decennia, divided in four chapters it calls first, second, third and fourth quarters, that consistently tries to find original ways of dramatizing the games. In one case, it shows it literally from the point of view of Monica (Sanaa Lathan), putting us right in the middle of the court and even allowing us to hear her thought process as she is attacking the basket or defending an opponent. In addition to all that, it’s also a nuanced look at how basketball players deal with getting to, being in, and having to leave, the (W)NBA. It’s wonderful throughout, but its ending turns it into a classic. 

Prince-Bythewood turns the final pick-up game into a sports match whose outcome doesn’t merely depend on the basketball talent of Monica and Quincy (Omar Epps), but also on their personal feelings. They are asked to negotiate between following their natural instincts as ballers and their willingness to potentially hurt each other, with the added complexity of both of them knowing that love and basketball are intertwined. Betraying one could mean betraying the other. As such the awkwardness and hesitation of their basketball moves here is both a natural expression of how these people would behave in this particular situation, and an integral part of an intensely competitive game with an outcome we are uncertain of, but highly invested in. The scene is pretty much what movies are for and it’s probably the closest a sports film will ever come to reimagining the story of Orpheus (at least, its most famous part). 

It's a slight shame that Prince-Bythewood doesn’t end on Quincy’s great final line, but the actual final scene of Monica as a professional WNBA player watched by her daughter is also an intelligent one, as the film is also about Monica’s struggle to identify herself as both a woman and a basketball player. Love and Basketball begins with Monica arriving at a basketball court dressed as a boy, only to show herself as a girl when Quincy and his friends allow her to play with them. Throughout her childhood she fights with her mom about her unwillingness to wear dresses and make-up and do other girly things. The film lets Monica be unsure whether she does that because she doesn’t fit mainstream gender roles, because she wants to imitate her idol Magic Johnson, or because she fears exclusion from basketball if she acts too womanly. Whatever the answer is, she has found peace at the end. 

233. Key Largo

Song - One Way Wind (The Cats)

Movie: Key Largo (John Huston, 1948)

In the war Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) was the commanding officer of a soldier who died tragically at the battlefield near San Pietro. Frank has now come to 'Largo Hotel' to meet the solider's father Mr. Temple (Lionel Barrymore) and widow Nora (Lauren Bacall). The war stories he tells are presented solemnly, with Huston's direction, helped by the mournful score, putting all emphasis on conveying the gravitiy of Frank's words, and the moral sacrifices of his fellow soldiers. Having done its duty, the film quickly turns cynical, questioning and complicating the sentiments and ideas expressed in those early scenes, and the positve self-image of post-war America. Films that go against the grain are always interesting, but Key Largo is a bit too literal-minded and it takes some huge leaps to make its case. Also, the ending is way too tidy and too happy for its noirish tendencies. 

When a hurricane approaches the hotel, Frank and the Temples are taken hostage by the notorious Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) and his equally vicious henchmen. The gangsters are shown without any shade of grey. They are purely defined by their villainy and presented in the most unsympathetic possible way. Led by Robinson, almost all of them have distinctly wicked appearances, their faces suggesting histories you want to know as little about as possible. They seem incapable of showing any humanity, and devoid of any feelings but self-serving callousness and greed. We barely find out about their motivations or goals and mostly see them debasing and humiliating themselves and the people around them. There is undoubtedly a lot of truth in this portrayal, but Key Largo uses it to explicitly argue that the victory in World War 2 didn't have much positive consequences as the Nazi's were simply replaced by nihilistically violent gangsters, an argument that is wrong on many levels. More interesting is the film's questioning of what it means to be a hero and how heroic narratives in war are shaped, as are the reminders that America has its own questionable history of treating foreigners and other groups as undesirable. Throughout all this, Huston has a lot of fun exploring all the different ways in which he can block two opposing sets of characters stuck in the same place. 

It's wonderful to see Bogart wrestle here with his inability to truly understand, replicate and appreciate his war heroics. Unfortunately none of the other characters are given even a smidge of that complexity. And the ambivalencies around Bogart get away during the film's climax when he acts too easily as a conventional Hollywood hero. Previously I wrote that Magnolia honors its somewhat overcooked dialogue; in the same vein, when a film has lines like "When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses" and "It's better to be a live coward than a dead hero", it should leave you with at least a hint of dread or a funny feeling that something you can't quite put your hands on is amiss. Key Largo doesn't and never fully commits to the alienated, angsty mood lines like that are meant to evoke. As a result its cynicism feels like an inauthentic put-on for its own sake. The one exception is when the hurricane reaches its high point, the whole hotel starts trembling and even Johnny Rocco starts showing genuine fear on its face. It's the scene that best evokes the idea that when you deal with forces beyond your control, it doesn't matter much if you are a hero or a coward. Dumb luck will decide your fate.