240. At Eternity's Gate

Song - Vincent (Don McLean)

Movie: At Eternity's Gate (Julian Schnabel, 2018)

Paul Gaugain (Oscar Isaac) is tired of impressionists! He tells van Gogh (Willem Dafoe) that painting shouldn't be anymore about objective reproductions of reality. Rather, painters should give their own interpretation of how they see the world. In other words, a van Gogh painting of a mountain should primarily tell you something about van Gogh's worldview, rather than the characteristics of the mountain. This would be a revolution, notes Gauguin: "The faces you paint are yours. And they'll stay because of you. People will be known because you painted them and how you painted them, not because of who they are. And people will go to museums to see paintings of people, not to see people who were painted." These words pretty much summarise Schnabel's approach to making the film. It is quite telling that the scene in which they appear is essentially the only one that places van Gogh in a broader context.  

There is very little resembling a traditional narrative here. Its key scenes are three long conversations van Gogh has while in treatment. One of those is with a priest played by Mads Mikkelsen, the other two with doctors played by Mathieu Amalric and (unknown to me) Vladimir Consigny. In all three scenes, but especially in the one with Consigny, Schnabel goes out of his way to show as little as possible of van Gogh and his conversation partner in the same frame together, and he also rarely has an actor speak while the camera is on the other person. Moreover, during these conversations, Dafoe is filmed in a medium close up, while the other actors are often seen in an extreme close up, with their heads barely fitting the frame. The result is that it never feels like we are watching a conversation between two people who talk directly to each other, in the same space. And when van Gogh is asked why he paints, he always gives different, somewhat evasive, answers, never letting us feel as if we have a comprehensive understanding of what drives him. 

There are more formal gambits Schnabel makes throughout the film. At certain points the lower half of the frame is blurred, while the upper half is presented clearly. Some scenes are shown from van Gogh's point of view, essentially turning his eyes into a roving camera, but not all these POV shots share the same visual markers. Sometimes, a grey-yellow-ish filter has been put over them, reminding you of the visual palette of van Gogh paintings, without going so far to make them resemble the actual style of these paintings. Other times these subjective shots share the exact same color and lighting as the objective ones, but are filmed with a shaky handheld camera. The handheld camera is also used to film van Gogh in third person, showing him painting, or wandering through nature. As a result several sequences feel like they come from a 19th century home video, where we see things from exceedingly odd camera angles. At some point we get a shot of van Gogh's feet with the camera seemingly placed on the floor. There are also multiple scenes where dialogue between the characters is repeated in voiceover, sometimes before the 'original' sentence has even ended. In a similar way, images fade in and out of each other, repeating mulitple times in a single scene.

Especially at the beginning, this strange, incosistently applied blend of filmmaking aesthettics can be quite frustrating, as there seems to be no rhyme or reason behind it. It is not an approximation of van Gogh's style, and it gives the impression that the film is somewhat confused about its own view of the painter. As the film went on though, I started to appreciate it as a sensory experience that reflects van Gogh's frazzled mind. After a further while you realise that it also respects his mind. The film is much more interested in exploring how van Gogh may have expressed himself, and in his thoughts about his life, work and mental state, rather than in telegraphing all the ways in which he is suffering. Finally, there is also something to be said for making a film about van Gogh purposefully alienating. Schnabel doesn't follow the conventions of either contemporary biopics or of contemporary arthouse cinema, daring people to be somewhat put off by it and its vision, and disregard it, risking that his film will have the same fate as van Gogh's paintings. Worth noting here that I found most of Schnabel's experimentation quite cool. Even if it doesn't always work, these are not things you see every week in movies.  

The film's individuality only makes its postcript more questionable, noting that van Gogh died after being accidentally shot by some kids. This is not the official account of van Gogh's death, but a theory put forward by two historians. It seems to me like the kind of theory that mostly serves to give attention to its creators, and though it is less damaging than, say, the idea that, due to his poverty, Shakespeare couldn't have written his works, it still seems like the kind of dumb thing you should stay away from.  I have written before that I really like art that knowingly presents false/alternative versions of history and mixes facts with fiction and mythmaking. I think that this can be more insightful about history and historiography than a straightforward retelling of the facts. Nonetheless, there are good and bad ways to do that. At Eternity's Gate's ending is I think an example of the latter, as the film is explicitly subjective throughout its running time, presenting nothing about van Gogh as objective fact, except for this alternate account of his death. It should have at least made clear that its claim is contested. 

239. Trading Places

Song - The Wall Street Shuffle (10cc)

Movie: Trading Places (John Landis, 1983)

In a famous scene in Trading Places, Eddie Murphy looks incredulously into the camera as the Duke Brothers (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) condescendingly explain the concept of a BLT sandwich to him. It is technically the only scene in the film that explicitly breaks the fourth wall, In practice, there is never much divide between Eddie Murphy and the audience. It's one of the many reasons why when I was a kid/teenager, he was pretty much my hero. There is most likely no film I've ssen more than Beverly Hills Cop, except maybe Beverly Hills Cop III, and there are still very few scenes that make me laugh more than the introduction to Serge or the malfunctioning superweapon. Murphy's willingness to get silly and ridiculous, while at the same time confidently and irreverently taking the piss out of the world around him is unmatched. And while some actors disappear into the movie and make you forget that they are acting, in his heyday, Murphy was the opposite; it was always clear that he was performing for the people watching, and committing so much to it that he almost felt like a friend who did everything he could to share his joy, energy and humor with you. His closest equivalent may well be Freddie Mercury, and it's no coincidence that Queen has become one of my favorite bands, or that Seinfeld has become one of my favorite shows. That's great because of, rather than despite, Jerry's inability to keep a straight face. Take Pulp Fiction too. When I first watched it, it was blowing my mind pretty much from the start, but I only truly fell for it during Tarantino's scenes that have very little purpose beyond expressing how much fun it is to be able to act/goof around and do cool/silly stuff for an audience. That's the real reason why you wouldn't readily see a scene like that in a movie today.  

Eddie Murphy is of course an infinitely better actor than Tarantino or Seinfeld and it shows in Trading Places. It was only his second feature film and it is still expecting that Murphy acts in the service of the story, rather than pretty much building everything around him. Yet, Murphy is so good at what he does that even this film can't stop him from going off on superbly improvised comedic setpieces. That does ocassionally mess up the film's rhythm a bit, especially in the first scenes with Murphy, and it takes until the New Year's train for everyone in the film to align and execute the kind of sublimely escalating comic chaos Murphy and Landis (The Blues Brothers is still one of the most exhiliratingly fun movies ever made) were so good at. It's the one sequence in the film that takes time to set up characters and situations that are inconsequential to the plot and provide space for throwaway jokes that also serve as buildup to even funnier moments. 

If Trading Places wasn't as supremely funny as I remembered (I have probably not seen this movie since I was a teen. Same goes for my other Murphy favorites, The Beverly Hills Cop's, Coming to America, The Distinguished Gentleman and Bowfinger), it makes up for that by being much sharper than I remembered. It is genuinely scabrous in its depiction of the super rich, their empty rituals, and their treatment of their (often black) servants, without making it seem as an over the top joke. The close up of 'The Heritage Club's' motto "With Liberty and Justice for All" after the club's black housekeeper kicks Murphy away is a nice example of the film's subtlety, as are the wonderful opening credits. Providing snapshots of diverse locations in Philadelpia, they are a great reminder of how easily urban divides are taken for granted and normalised. And I really liked that the film proves Randolph Duke right, nurture is indeed more important than nature, but not in the way he thinks. Louis Winthorpe (Dan Aykroyd) does turn to crime when stripped from his wealth, but he also becomes kinder and more humane when hanging out with people like Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis). In turn, the moment Ophelia gets access to a butler, she immediately starts treating him like her personal property. This also sets up the film's great ending, that is both happy and cynical. 

238. Romeo Is Bleeding

Song - Always (Bon Jovi)

Movie: Romeo Is Bleeding (Peter Medak, 1993)

In the video clip for Always, a dude (Bon Jovi himself) cheats on his girlfriend with her roommate, which sets up a ridiculously gaudy melodrama filled with inexplicable behavior and overemoting actors. In typical 90's fashion, the clip is obsessed with video imagery. Bon Jovi and his girl flirt by filming each other erotically and both women first discover Jon's exploits in bed through a video screen. Upset to see him with the roommate, the other woman runs away in distress and somehow ends up at the house of an expressionist. The guy paints her in a way that slightly distorts her face and body, making her so distraught that she calls up Bon Jovi. Upon seeing the painting, in a fit of rage he destroys the entire apartment. 

Bon Jovi made a career out of living out the fantasy of a carefree sex-symbol rock star, doing pretty much nothing else but romanticising and glorifying how awesome it was to be a carefree sex symbol rock star. In the 80's and 90's there was probably nobody who did that kind of thing better and more sincerely. and I've always enjoed his music and his whole act. That does make those final scenes in Always more than a little funny. You get the feeling that the slightly off-kilter painting is just about the most grisly thing Bon Jovi can possible imagine or accept in his art. That could explain why he would remove Always from the soundtrack of Romeo Is Bleeding, after specifically writing it for the film. This is a film in which a one-armed (we see her cut off her injured arm!) Lena Olin, dressed in a revealing leather outfit, holds a corrupt cop under gun point, forcing him to dig a grave for the mafia don she is about to kill. It's also a film in which Roy Scheider has the time of his life playing the mafia don in question. He gets to be menacingly threatening while pontificating about the perils of pacifism and British World War 2 poets. The whole film is kinda stupid, but I will always have a soft spot for mischievous, grisly pulp that lets good actors throw their charisma around and chew the scenery with juicy dialogue. 

The best actor in the film is neither Scheider nor Olin, but Gary Oldman. He plays the corrupt cop Jack Grimaldi as a guy who knows the difference between right and wrong, and would do the right thing if he just could resist sex and money a little bit. In the vicinity of either, Oldman responds with a great combination of weary resignation and unbridled desire. Equally wonderful is the spring in his step whenever he senses excitement coming his way, portraying it both as the behaviour of a young ambtious man with endless irrational confidence and a way of masking his insecurities and uncertanity around the people he needs to outsmart. Unfortunately, the amount of people he needs to outsmart keeps growing and with every action he takes he keeps ending up in a bigger and bigger hole. That's also the kind of thing I have a soft spot for, and, no matter how much of a mess the rest of it is, I think the film's (and Oldman's) consideration of Jack's inexperience is genuinely good and insightful. He has discovered that he can make a lot of money playing both sides, but doesn't yet know all the tricks of the trade. So he is playing it by ear, hoping that he doesn't drown, until he realises way too late he is out of his depth, and has no way out. That's more interesting than seeing him fall just because of greed and immorality. 

All of this makes it much easier to tolerate the horrible "too cool for school" narration (that switches from third person to first person in the middle of the film, setting a very obvious point up as a major reveal), the overbearing jazz score, the film's inability to decide whether it wants to be pulp fiction or a moody noir, and the horribly written relationship between Jack and his mistress Sheri. She is played by Juliette Lewis and I still haven't figured out whether most directors have no idea what to do with her or whether I just find her a completely unappealing actress. What does seem obvious here is that making her play a bewigged Marylin Monroe-channeling cocktail waitress brings out even more her incessant, bordering on whiny, neediness that seems to be at least a little bit there in all her roles. 

237. Detour

Song - Another 45 Miles (Golden Earring)

Movie: Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)

I very much like 40's/50's noirs, and in particular their sense of the uncanny. The heroes are plunged in a world full of inscrutable forces that move their lives into directions they can't anticipate or understand, in part because the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters are a bit of a mystery, both to themselves and to us in the audience. I found Detour a tad disappointing as it only really evokes that feeling of unknowability at tbe beginning, when B-rate New York pianist Al Roberts (Tom Neal) falls in love with singer Sue (Claudia Drake), only to see her move to Hollywood a week before they were siupposed to be married. As Al narrates how much they loved each other and how surprised he was by her decision, Ulmer's direction casts some murkiness over his story, emphasising Al's subjectivity. You would not bet your savings that Sue would share Al's account of their time together, but you also can't quite discount that Al may be right.

My favourite little flourish in the film comes when Al explains that he tried to call Sue in Hollywood. Ulmer  cuts to a switchboard operator working in New York, then the camera moves along a highway stretch filled with telephone masts, followed by a cut to a switchboard operator in Los Angeles. Such a visualisation of a journey of a long distance phone call is really cool to see in 2023, but it would have been effective in 1945 too as it both emphasises the distance between Al and Sue, and the sheer wonder of long distance calls being possible. It makes an ordinary act seem strange. And when we eventually do see Sue pick up the call, we only hear Al's end of the conversation. Similarly, another shot I liked is of Sue singing in LA, flanked by three silhouetted musicians we only see from the back. It's never clear whether these are the shadows of the musicians, or their 'real' selves. It could also be that they only exist in Al's imagination.

In any case, after his call to Sue, Al decides to hitchhike to Las Angeles, getting to Arizona when he steps into the car of Charles Haskell Jr (Edmund MacDonald). On their journey to L.A., Haskell dies, and Al responds to this as if it is his fault, taking on the identity of the dead man, and effectively becoming a convict, despite being innocent. The real trouble begins once he picks up hitchiking Vera (Ann Savage), who knows Charles and starts blackmailing Al. From that moment on, the film becomes a bit repetitive, without any sense of ambiguity to Vera and Al's' behaviour. It doesn't help that, unlike at the beginning, Al's narration now doesn't complicate what we see on screen, but merely reinforces it, turning it into a rather straightforward story of a sullen, pouty and self-pitying man who made bad decisions perfectly consistent with his character, and now faces the easily explicable consequences of those decisions. There is ultimately very little mystery to Detour. It does have a gloriosly fatalistic ending and a wonderful live-wire performance of scornful sarcasm by Ann Savage, that seems to have been studied by the likes of Frances McDormand and Holly Hunter. It's not a surprise these two are Coens regulars, but while Detour is an obvious influence on them, I think their (and many other) films have improved on it.