283. In the Company of Men

Song - Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (The Beatles)

Movie: In the Company of Men (Neil LaBute, 1997)

Chad (Aaron Eckhart) is a business graduate who can meet women coasting on his professional, cool look and his ability to fake charm and confidence, but it's easy to believe these relationships end sooner rather than later. He is selfish, egotistical, arrogant and willing to exploit any inkling of power for his own gain. Howard (Matt Malloy) is his schlubby college buddy and work colleague. We get the sense that he's always operated in Chad's shadow, picking up the breadcrumbs he leaves behind, without ever really thinking for himself or developing a real identity. Their work trip to Fort Wayne for a project supervised by Howard is an opportunity for change, but even before they set foot in the office they revert to their traditional ways. Chad proposes to amuse themselves by wooing the most vulnerable woman they can find, showering her with love and attention, and breaking up with her when she falls in love with them. He reasons it would be great revenge for their recent breakups. Of course, 'Howie' goes along. 

Howard and Chad spend most of their time demeaning other colleagues and their job, taking personal calls, chiding their minions, having lunch, taking smoke breaks, playing golf and courting Christine (Stacy Edwards), the deaf typist in their office. Most of these activities border on the nihilistic and serve as nothing but fuel for their personal ego's and sense of superiority. However, sleeping with other women is easy, but when your objective is love, that takes work. Howard and Chad have never done that work, and their relationship with Christine forces them to adjust their behavior. They actually listen and respond to her emotional needs. They adjust to her speech impediment and make her feel good about herself. Chad becomes intrigued to know more about how deaf people communicate and how they watch movies, while Howard teaches himself the basics of sign language. Though they neither can't nor want to articulate it without layers upon layers of irony, they like the feelings of care and love their relationship with Christine evokes in them, and they like the opportunity to explore a different side of themselves. Chad is not entirely sure whether he wants to fully accept that side and tries to have his cake and eat it for as long as he can. When he is forced to drop the charade, he transforms in a split second from a caring lover into a raging mysoginist, providing Eckhart's best and most disturbing 'Two-Face' performance of his career. 

LaBute likes to explore to what extent character/psychology breeds behavior and whether people can become good and caring if they make a conscious effort to do so. Howard can't, despite trying real hard, and when he screams at Christine that she is "fucking handicapped", the film's suggestion is that she is not the only one.  It sees Howard's inability to choose a different kind of life, unaffected by the forces that have confined him, as a form of disability, especially emphasised during the final scenes showing his emotional impotence making him literally sick. In the Company of Men is a good film about mysoginist attitudes, male rage, abuse of power and how all of these are enabled by the patriarchal hierarchies of corporate culture. Many films have been made about abusive men though, What makes this one special is LaBute's willingness to explore what happens when men (or even people in general) choose to step outside of the norms and values of their culture, and how they can give themselves cover to do so. When people act against the expectations of their in-group, that raises all kinds of uncomfortable questions they prefer not to answer, risking both their self-identity and their social acceptance. So if you want to try out how it feels to be more sensitive and caring towards women, wouldn't you hide it in a mysoginistic game? Maybe these aren't Chad's intentions, but would it look any different if they were? The ending certainly allows for such an intepretation, and if you wanna have some fun going out on a limb you could also see these ideas reflected by some of LaBute's aesthetic choices. 

It would make sense for a film about the abuse of a deaf person to go the extra mile to be accessible to deaf people, but the crowd of 90's indie cool kids LaBute tried to make his name in would definitely look slightly down on such concerns.  However, as In the Company of Men is his debut feature and an adaptation of his own play it has a good excuse to mostly consist of statically filmed dialogue, set in/against deeply ordinary backgrounds. An added benefit is that this gives the impression that some of the most hateful shit you'll ever hear is nothing more than an unremarkable commonplace experience, giving the film the edgy appeal it seeks. 'Coincidentally', LaBute's approach also makes it easier for deaf people to follow the film, as in most scenes they can read the actors' lips. Maybe that's not LaBute's intention, but would it look any different if it were? Well, the scene in which Christine explains to Chad that she follows most films by reading lips is shot from high up, making it impossible for anyone to read the actors' lips, in the process reinforcing the film's core idea that caring about other people's needs is a choice you can or can not make. 

282. The Happy Ending

Song - Just A Little Bit Of Peace In My Heart (Golden Earring)

Movie: The Happy Ending (Richard Brooks, 1969)

I recently saw The Producers for the first time, and found it absolutely wonderful, for more than just the obvious reasons. It's no surprise that Gene Wilder can be hysterical (and wet!) or that Mel Brooks is capable of writing an absolutely brilliant parody of Nazi propaganda (the Oscars are cowards for not nominating Springtime for Hitler for Best Song), but I probably laughed most during Dick Shawn's audition scene. I had never heard of Shawn before, but he is fantastic as a hippie so oblivious to his ridiculousness that the audience misinterprets his earnest performance for a comedic one. Some of Shawn's stand up comedy is on YouTube and it's easy to see why when he collapsed and died on stage people thought it was part of his act. It's fun to see him in a small role in The Happy Ending, partly because he plays an almost equally oblivious character, though in an entirely different register. He is a married tax consultant who puts so much effort in conveying the sarcasm behind his constant self-deprecating jokes, he completly fails to realise that everything he says comes off as a confession of his (professional and personal) dishonesty. 

Shawn's performance is mucb more subtle than the movie itself, which finds Mary (Jean Simmons) and Fred (John Forsythe) Wilson on the brink of a failed marriage. She is younger than him and has turned to pills, alcohol and cosmetic interventions to ease her sorrows. On the day of their 16th anniversary she spontaneously books a one-way ticket to the Bahamas, leaving Fred, their daughter and her mom (Teresa Wright) in despair.  Simmons and Forsythe are quite good and affecting as people who genuinely love each other, and can't understand, despite their best efforts, why they are unhappy together. The movie should have been on their level, but it acts as if it knows exactly what's ailing them: marriage is a form of consumerism devised by American capitalists to sell houses and beauty products, that is incompatible with human desires and behaviour. While it's true that contemporary western societies have a lot of incentives in place that put some pressure on people to marry, there is plenty to argue with the film's reasoning, even aside from marriage being highly valued in communist societies as well. 

A film can overcome making a bad argument though. What it can't overcome is pounding you over the head with it. Almost every line serves to drive the same point home, leading to completely unnatural dialogue and to de-individualised characters. Brooks finds that all people respond in exactly the same way to marriage and have the exact same problems, and that individual behavior or psychology don't play any role here.  Aside from being unfair to Simmons and Forsythe who do their utmost best to create specific characters, this approach also renders moot the film's non-linearity. It doesn't matter how when, or from which perspective facts are revealed, if all facts lead to the same conclusions anyway. Rumors may be more revealing. Allegedly, the much older Brooks made the film because Simmons' alcohol issues had put a strain on their marriage. With that in mind, The Happy Ending can be seen as Brooks' equivalent of Robin Williams telling Matt Damon it's not his fault in Good WIll Hunting, which makes it a rather nice gesture. As Joan Didion's famous quote puts it, we tell ourselves stories in order to live. 

Besides, the film is only tedioius when people open their mouths. Its prologue, set almost entirely to Michel Legrand's score, detailing the courtship of Mary and Fred is rather beautiful and extremely romantic. It lets Forsythe and Simmons express their love for each other purely thorugh their body language and their gestures. It ends with a touch I've never seen before. Once it reaches their wedding, it shows that on just one half of the screen, with the other half being reserved for a montage of wedding scenes from classic Hollywood movies. One of those scenes is followed by a title card stating 'The End' which then occupies the entire half of the screen next to Mary and Fred giving each other their wedding vows. It's the first hint of the film's blunt messaging, but on a purely cinematic level it works incredibly well, as a slightly disorienting jolt that makes you pay attention. 

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. The film, and Gulietta Masina's great performance in it, works so well because of its sparseness, making the choice to turn its American remake into a lavishly produced Hollywood musical much less self-evident. 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 you 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 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 Oscar's 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 exotic showgirls 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.