331. Mississippi Masala

Song - River Deep, Mountain High (Ike & Tina Turner)

Movie: Mississippi Masala (Mira Nair, 1991)

When it comes to 1991 romances about interracial highly charismatic couples negotiating their passionate love for each other with the prejudices of their friends and family and the contradictions of American society (despite its inherently discriminatory nature it still offers minority groups many opportunities for personal enrichment, self-expression and happiness), Mississippi Masala is no Jungle Fever. It is still a really good film where even the smallest roles get wonderful character beats, and everyone gets overshadowed by Denzel Washington at his best. He plays Demetrius, a carpet cleaner who has his own business and falls in love with Indian immigrant Mina (Sarita Choudhoury). Her family owns some motels and storefronts, but it's not much compared to their old life in Uganda. They used to live in a colonial house on a large plantation until Idi Amin expelled all Indians from his country. Mina's father Jay (Roshan Seth) has been born in Uganda, has never set foot in India, and spends most of his time in Mississippi writing letters to Uganda's post-Amin regime trying to get his confiscated property back. 

The brief flashbacks to life in Uganda present Jay as a well-connected, well-respected man in high society. He is quite obviously aware that his life is the result of the British colonialism, and is intelligent enough to sound vaguely progressive without ever implicating himself or his fellow Asians. When Amin orders his expulsion, his best friend, a black Ugandan he spent his entire childhood with, rationalises the decision: "Africa belongs to black Africans." Nair is not interested in clean racial hierarchies and presents everyone in the film at some point as both a victim and perpetrator of racism, entirely dependent on their position in life. Racist ideology is both invisible and all-encompassing - everyone needs to carve out a life for themselves within the social structures they are faced with, and as a result all racist or anti-racist decisions are mostly motivated by convenience rather than morality. That's even partially true for the film's romantic ending. 

It makes sense that most American films about race and blackness mostly focus on their own communities, but sometimes you'd wish they'd add a little more of the international/geopolitical perspective of Mississippi Masala. Jungle Fever lacks that too, but Spike Lee does have a much defter filmmaking touch allowing him to shift tones and styles much more naturally, and express the different moods and states of mind of his characters without ever losing the forest for the trees. Denzel Washington makes a case for the most charismatic man of 1991 here, and it's not unreasonable to occasionally stop the film dead in its tracks to give him a reaction shot that anticipates audience applause. However some of the comedy and exposition in the film is directed in the same way, with  especially Mina's extended Indian family depicted as if it comes straight from a mediocre American sitcom. Everyone has highly exaggerated accents and mannerism and ends up in situations of manufactured awkwardness that are completely disconnected from the main narrative and aren't developed enough to work as funny standalone set pieces. It's notable that Nair only abandons her "we have a lot to do and very little time to do it in" approach during the romantic scenes between Mina and Demetrius. The film slows down during their scenes together lingering on every gentle touch and gesture, and the pleasure they get out of it. 

330. Heaven's Gate

Song - Happy New Year (ABBA)

Movie: Heaven's Gate (Michael Cimino, 1980)

It all begins with a long, detailed depiction of ritual communality. James Averill (Kris Kristofferson) and Billy Irvine (John Hurt) excitedly join the marching band accompanying their fellow Harvard graduates to Commencement. They arrive at the ceremony to the tune of the abolitionist Battle Hymn of the Republic, honored appropriately by a welcoming speech on the connections between education, civilisation and progress. It doesn't take long for class orator and jester Billy to undercut those hefty words, to the amusement of his friends. They are anyway more interested in the second part of the day, reserved for waltzes with girls and manly brawls approved by tradition, a reminder that war heroes, political leaders and other great men of history most often start off as regular Joes with the same base desires and ordinary interests as the rest of us. Before you know it, it's 20 years later and James is a sheriff in Johnson County, Wyoming, tasked with protecting immigrants from a group of rich white ranchers who have set up a death list of 125 supposedly criminal aliens. Billy is reluctantly part of this death squad, but is mostly drunk and despite his half-hearted moral lamentations never breaks rank.

The Deer Hunter should earn you a lifetime blank check and though the opening of Heaven's Gate can never reach its heights, it does rather promisingly follow its blueprint. Besides, I am sympathetic to stories about how anti-immigrant populism threatens the universalist cosmopolitan values of the world we graduated in, and to artists sticking it to studio shareholders. Alas, the film goes quickly downhill after its introductory scenes, at some points becoming even worse than its reputation suggests. Some of that could be attributed to studio interference; Cimino originally handed in a version that was over five hours long, and was forced to cut it down to 3,5 hours. Many scenes feel unfinished, seem to lack context or end unnaturally, but what is in there is at times so hollow and so misguidedly written, directed and performed it's hard to imagine the film would be salvaged in its full form. The romantic triangle between James, Ella (Isabelle Huppert) and Champion (Christopher Walken) is an especially inexplicable disappointment. 

Few films I've seen have such a humane and intimate understanding of their characters as The Deer Hunter and then Heaven's Gate presents Huppert as an infantilised floozy who can't choose between two caricatures of grandiosely pensive men. Huppert directly commenting on it does lead to the film's funniest and most self-aware line, but Cimino spends so much time filming Jim contemplating he forgets to give him an actual personality, or any urgency. As a result, he also fails to coherently make his political points come across. The immigrants may not be criminals, but they are essentially all drunk dumb damsels in distress needing a real American to save, and think for, them. Moreover, Cimino blew his budget and delayed filming for months to create sets that would meticulously recreate 1890's Johnson County, going so far to make sure that the distance between houses was correct, to then turn Ella into a prostitute, a proven historic lie perpetrated by the rich cattle ranchers the film seeks to present as a symbol of America's supposedly hypocritic promises of plenty.

Still, I enjoyed the staging of the many heated discussions among the immigrants, with people on all sides of the screen yelling in Serbian, Czech, Polish, German and broken English and still understanding each other because of their familiarity. I also liked that Cimino continued his approach to filming violence from The Deer Hunter. It's brutal, sudden and jarring, and completely alien to the tranquillity and ordinariness of daily life. That doesn't mean it can't be used for cinematic excitement. By the end of the film Cimino has finally found an image, of a gun-wielding stylishly dressed Huppert, approaching on horseback, that breathes some life into the proceedings. He keeps returning to it as the immigrants encircle their attackers, knowing full well that it most likely will be futile.

329. Batman Forever

Song - Kiss From A Rose (Seal)

Movie: Batman Forever (Joel Schumacher, 1995)

Everything is half-assed, but Jim Carrey goes full tilt. Batman Forever opens with a bombastic score full of intimidating undertones and the clanging metal of Batman's (Val Kilmer) costume. His lair is full of steel, dark blue hues and rising steam, and as the futuristic Batmobile is slowly revealed, Alfred (Michael Gough) comes out of the dark asking "Can I interest you in a sandwich, sir?" "I'll get drive-thru" responds Kilmer, growlingly. The corny dialogue is supposed to be a funny contrast to the brooding opening, but all it does is stop the introduction dead in its tracks. It's a harbinger for the rest of the film, whose sole aim seems to be subverting audience expectations of darkness, regardless of whether the corny silliness in its place is actually funny or engaging. All of Gotham is draped in colorful neon lights, but they all look exactly the same everywhere, giving the city a boringly monotonous look. A car chase having the Batmobile going vertically up a building, gives us only a few insert shots of the car's perpendicular movement, bafflingly neutering the potential excitement of the scene.

The film's plotting is equally listless. The Riddler (Jim Carrey) has invented a machine that steals people's brainwaves when they watch television, making them dumber while he becomes more intelligent. The lazy satire could have been forgiven if the film cared to flesh it out, or at least showed how Gotham's citizens actually behave when they become dumber. It's a set-up you should be able to squeeze a lot of humor from, but aside from a brief shot of a guy sitting zombified in his rocking chair, we get absolutely nothing. What's worse is that The Riddler himself doesn't actually become, or act, smarter. He can't, because the entire film is essentially built on Jim Carrey being full-blown goofy. Even in the first scene showcasing his invention, Carrey's shtick takes center stage over the visual effects. Several scenes in the film are staged like the big centerpieces in a musical, except instead of a showstopping song you get Carrey's act, devoid of any restraint, rhyme or reason. It's just incoherent yelling and twitching that's overblown even by his own standards.  

Carrey does at least provide a necessary counterweight to Kilmer who had a conflict with Joel Schumacher throughout the production and seems to act as stiff as possible in a deliberate act of sabotage - Heat coming out in the same year makes it hard to convince anyone that Kilmer can be this terrible by accident. Nicole Kidman plays a psychologist who falls in love with Batman, and then with Bruce Wayne. Her reaction when she finds out the truth is the film's only reminder that actors are actually capable of conveying feelings. I've never been much into superheroes, and I am not the biggest Christopher Nolan fan, but I do think The Dark Knight is a genuinely great film. I also think that overall Nolan's Batman trilogy has been a detriment to blockbuster films, moving them towards completely unmotivated self-serious humorless darkness. However, seeing Batman Forever, you can at least appreciate it as a necessary corrective.