130. Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Song - I Want to Break Free (Queen)

Movie: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001)

When Sgt. Luther Robinson leaves Hedwig, raised in East Berlin, on 9 november 1989, their one-year anniversary, she can only cheer herself up by singing 'Wig in a Box' in her trailer. It's the best song in the film, with simple, effective lyrics about imagining different identities for yourself. Halfway through the performance, 1989 Hedwig is joined by her contemporary band members, the trailer is transformed into a makeshift stage, and there is a random brief karaoke interlude inviting the audience to sing along. It's the kind of joyous magical realism, without regard for conventional narrative structures or temporal/spatial logic, that John Cameron Mitchell strives for throughout the entire film. He only truly achieves it during this sequence, and to a lesser extent during the song in which we find out what the angry inch alludes to. Nonetheless, even when Mitchell doesn't quite achieve what he wants, the film remains compelling, charming and committed to following its own whims and rules. Few directors would think of  the 'Sugar Daddy' sequence, including cinema's most erotically charged closeup of HARIBO.

Mitchell is clearly a better writer/director than he is an actor/performer. He is out of his element and uncomfortable acting, and while that, at times, fits the character he is playing, Hedwig is also supposed to be loose and charismatic, at least when she is singing. Mitchell can't convey that, and for the same reasons moments of sincerity don't quite play as they should. Consequently, Hedwig comes off as much more jokey character than intended. You do sometimes wonder whether Mitchell takes Hedwig's story truly seriously, and to what extent she is an ironic device. I actually did like this slippery aspect of the film, just like the fact that it is left ambiguous to what extent Hedwig really identifies as a woman, how she sees her gender, and how the audience is supposed to see her gender. 

A very long time ago I discussed Mitchell's Rabbit Hole on this blog. I called it a rare progressive Hollywood film because it dared to suggest that atheism is a perfectly valid way of dealing with grief, without dismissing that a believe in God can also be equally valid. Interestingly, despite its subject matter, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is much more sympathetic towards God and religion than Rabbit Hole. It is very much interested in exploring how religious stories can validate non-traditional sexual and gender identities. One of the funniest scenes in the film comes when the religiously brought up Tommy Gnosis (Michael Pitt) justifies having sex with Hedwig through an analysis of the story of Adama and Eve. The Origin of Love, the main song of the film, can be seen in the same vein, though that also exemplifies the biggest problem of the film. A lot of the songs, including The Origin of Love are didactic and expository. Often we are shown an aspect of Hedwig's life and then hear a song that explains to us a second time what we just saw, or how to interpret it. Still, the film is so playfully directed, and has such fun hopping between different times and introducing different characters, that you can't help but like it.

129. Cleopatra

Song - Ruthless Queen (Kayak)

Movie: Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1963)

Like Apocalypse Now, Cleopatra is famous for its ridiculously troubled production history. Moreover, this too is a film that is as much meant to be an historical epic about Cleopatra, as well as a showcase for Hollywood's ability to get such epics of the ground no matter what. Unfortunately, unlike Apocalypse Now, Cleopatra is not good. Coppola may have used the Vietnam War as a vessel to highlight his own genius and importance, it was still obvious that he actually cared and thought about the war, and was genuinely interested in it. The curious thing about this film is that it is barely interested in Cleopatra, and even less in the country she ruled over. Cleopatra here is above all a vessel to explore the lives and characters of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. They are very much the main characters of the film; we see them in scenes that have nothing to do with Cleopatra. We barely see her in any scenes that have nothing to do with them.

This is not by definition an uninteresting approach and it is not by definition a sexist approach. Exploring the effects (great) people have on others around them, and on the society they live in can be much more illuminating than simply telling the story of their lives (it can also be a corrective to the forced individualism American films of its ilk like to espouse, but that's a topic for another time). But this film is also barely interested in the society its characters live in. It takes a greatest hits approach to the lives of Caesar and Antony, and with the exception of some early scenes it does not care at all to give any depth or look critically at the historic period it depicts. I already liked Titanic a lot, but this film gives me a newfound appreciation for it. Obviously the epic romance is the heart of that film and the main reason for its success, but the epic romance is very much helped by the film's genuine interest in how class differences shaped its historic period.

Richard Burton, Rex Harrison and Elizabeth Taylor don't get any such help, but they do make the most of the material they are given. Early on in the film, when it still looks like it's going to be good, there are a couple of really good dialogue scenes between Caesar and Cleopatra, where both rulers are shown as sharp minds able to outwit each other and change their strategic position with a couple of well chosen words. Harrison and Taylor are never better than in those scenes, playing confident and cautious at the same time, knowing that even losing a little bit of ground can have major consequences. Eventually they fall in love, forcing Taylor to play the supporting wife for a large period of the film, while Harrison gets to be stately. I haven't seen much of both actors, but you get the feeling they can do that in their sleep.

Taylor wakes up after Caesar's death and her romance with Mark Antony, playing Cleopatra as someone who genuinely loves Antony, but who also feels superior to him. But she's overshadowed by Richard Burton (somehow Harrison got an Oscar nomination, Burton not) who gives a genuinely impressive performance as a man who cannot get out of Caesar's shadow, who sees himself as an embarrassment and a coward, but still believes he deserves more than he gets. He feels too proud to beg Cleopatra for het love, but also feels that her loving him is his greatest achievement, the only way he can ever follow Caesar's footsteps. It's a nuanced and empathetic portrait of an utterly pathetic character.

In the end though, even these great actors drown in the film's grandeur. The Oscars have sometimes been criticized for confusing best acting or best editing, with 'most' acting/editing. This film's Oscar for Best Art-Direction can also be seen in that way. Scenes are so overstuffed with pillars, terraces, railings, walls and all kinds of other 'classically' designed constructions that they often feel completely out of place. And the film's obsessive focus on making sure that the audience is aware of these constructions sometimes leads to ridiculous cuts and camera placements. But I suppose that if you let your narrator inform us of two crucial battle scenes - without showing us any of them - you have to find other ways of showing where the money went.

128. Possession

Song - Margherita (Marco Borsato)

Movie: Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981)

I am not the greatest fan of this, but it is further evidence of how limp and full of shit The Shape of Water was. Zulawski, until the end, doesn't reveal what the strange creature is, what its purpose is, why Anna is so invested in it, and whether the creature is even part of the film's reality or of some surrealist dreamscape. And he never bothers to make clear how Anna actually comes in possession of the creature. Is it made out of the men she kills? Is it the direct product of her insanity? Did it just happen to live in the abandoned apartment now inhabited by Anna? None of these questions are answered, and it makes the whole film just more unsettling.

In the end, the whole doppelganger symbolism, plays a bit too much like a trite and not fully realized metaphor about divided Berlin/Germany/Europe - Mark lives next to the Berlin Wall, the film reminds us by periodically returning to an image of two guards seen from Mark's window. Still, and I don't know if this is because of hindsight, it manages to evoke an atmosphere and mood of impending change. We see graffiti asking for the wall to come down, while on the soundtrack we hear the kind of futuristic electro/techno music that has now become a marker of nostalgia for the restless spirit of 70's/80's Europe in general, and Berlin in particular.

Most of the film's mood though is shaped by the utterly manic acting of Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani, playing Mark and Anna, a husband and wife (with a kid) who absolutely need to break up and absolutely cannot live without each other. Which drives them to insanity. I think at times Zulawski relies a bit too much on their intense acting; after the umpteenth time Anna returns home and has a fight with Mark, you get a little annoyed that Zulawski repeats himself and doesn't do something more or different to drive the story/characters forward or to deepen the film up a bit more. Especially, because when he does so, the film really does reach another level. A scene in which Mark watches a video recording, mysteriously delivered to his front door, of Anna pushing one of her ballet students to the breaking point is almost as distressing as the scenes involving the bizarre creature, certainly so when Anna suddenly breaks the fourth wall.

All of this doesn't mean that Zulawski is wrong to focus so much on Neill and Adjani's performances. They are ridiculously impressive and earn the film its title. They really do act as if they are possessed by demons that make them neither understand each other nor themselves. When they fight each other they do so with utter desperation and a seemingly total abandonment of their rational faculties. And their anger and despair only grow as they barely seem to understand where their emotions come from. The showstopper sequence, set in the Berlin metro, belongs to Adjani who does things with her body that seem almost impossible. The scene is basically only her in a grey tunnel, losing her mind, yet she is so utterly convincing and frightening, it genuinely makes you nauseous. And that's even before it becomes really gory and bloody. 

127. Apocalypse Now

Song - The End (The Doors)

Movie: Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)

It's both ridiculous and awesome that this film exists. I had not seen it until now, but was somewhat familiar with its iconic moments. Had seen the famous shot of the camo-painted head rising out of the muddy water, thought the head belonged to Marlon Brando instead of Martin Sheen. Was familiar with the Ride of the Valkyries scene (I actually saw Da 5 Bloods before Apocalypse Now), and had seen clips of it, but did not know the music was diegetic. Above all, I knew about the film's unhinged production, about how Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack, how cast and crew ended up much, much longer in the jungle than anticipated and how Coppola feuded with Brando, and threatened suicide multiple times. And then there is the slaughtering of live animals, the napalming of the Philippine forest and the shady deals Coppola apparently made with the Marcos government.

Some of this stuff is obviously quite unethical, and unless you can provide evidence that your film has brought world peace, it's hard to rationally justify such overwrought excess. Apocalypse Now did not bring world peace, nor does it need all that firework to tell the story it tells and to make the points it makes. At least if you consider it first and foremost a Vietnam War film. You can also make a case that this is first and foremost a film about Coppola's grand ambitions and his obsession to make an epic war film. There is a famous quote by Orson Welles that a film set is "the biggest toy train set any boy ever had." Can't think of a better film to illustrate that point than Apocalypse Now, apart from probably Mad Max: Fury Road. The elaborate staging, the complex set-pieces, the visibly exhausted and overheated actors, they are all part of the show and the show is the point. Or rather, Coppola's ability to create the show, and not just from a technical and artistic point of view. The point is not just that Coppola is a great director, but also that him being a great artistic visionary director gives him privileges that other people don't have. It gives him the right to will a film into existence, by whatever means possible. It's not just a cute coincidence that Harrison Ford cameos as G. Lucas, sharing a scene with an actor playing a character named R. Corman. In this film's view, people like Lucas, Corman and Coppola are of equal importance as the Vietnam War.

This would be way more annoying and vulgar if Coppola wasn't indeed damn talented and self-aware. The film largely consists of set-pieces in which Americans perform a show of 'Americanness' on Vietnamese soil. That's most obvious in the Ride of the Valkyries scene (which is truly one of the most spectacular war scenes I've ever seen, and one that leaves no doubt about the vileness of the Americans), the playmates scene, the final confrontation between Sheen and Brando, and Robert Duvall's entire performance. But performance also plays a big role on the scenes down the river. I have always found it a bit curious that Coppola's filmography includes coming-of-age teenage dramas, made after he had already established his legendary status. But that's also what much of the scenes on the river are about. The five teenagers/twenty-somethings on the boat are just as busy building and presenting their identity as they are with transporting Willard upstream. Their desire to be visible, to be seen as someone, is often what leads them into trouble. It is actually easy to see why Spike Lee saw Coppola and Apocalypse Now as an inspiration for Da 5 Bloods. The ways in which the characters of Albert Hall and Laurence Fishburne present themselves, build their identity, and see the war differ from those of their white counterparts. At the same time Coppola puts them on equal footing as the white characters, and doesn't define Hall and Fishburne solely by their blackness.

It is also worth noting that Apocalypse Now's focus on show and performance was clearly on Lee's mind when making Da 5 Bloods. It's not a coincidence that in one of the first scenes of the movie we see his black veterans having a good time in an (apparently really exisiting) Apocalypse Now bar in Saigon. What makes Da 5 Bloods an interesting film is that it is in part about what it means for black Americans to perform 'Americanness' abroad, how that affects the way black Americans see themselves, and how the rest of the world sees black Americans. These are questions that have been rarely addressed in American film, and for which Apocalypse Now is really the perfect springboard.

To get back to Apocalypse Now, Robert Duvall's fantastic performance deserves a few more words. I've mostly known him as a more reserved actor and never expected he could play a cocky, showoff villain with such ease. Just like in the Godfather, he is better than Marlon Brando, and I wished he had a bigger role. In any case I am more and more convinced that Duvall is, despite all his plaudits, an underrated actor, who should be considered among the absolute all-time greats. On the other hand, the more I see of Brando, the more I realize I am not really a fan, though it is worth noting that his role here is not an easy one. His only function is to be symbolic and the final 20 minutes are the weakest part of the film, aside from the grating voiceover.

126. El Topo

Song - A Horse with No Name (America)

Movie: El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)

A combination of mysticism, lyrical abstractism and sadism is the fastest way to alienate me as a viewer. Especially if that combination is in the service of a cynically misanthropic worldview the filmmaker can feel smug about. So I did not care much for this film which treats killing one rabbit in the head, and other one in the heart as some sort of grand philosophical insight. I get to some extent though why it's has become something of a cult film. If this kind of thing appeals to you, Jodorowsky cannot be accused of half-assing it. I even thought the first 15 minutes were a kind of impressive depiction of  a fully primitive world in which primal animalistic instincts are the only currency. Here only killing, fucking and debasing others matters. The screeching sounds of animals and the creaking sounds of nooses are heard extra loud on the soundtrack.

After those 15 minutes of starkly realized nihilism a kind of ridiculous plot kicks in, in which our mystical cowboy, El Topo, has to find some masters of some sort and kill them for some reason. It's all kind of pulpy - one master is guarded by a man with no legs and a men with no arms -  but Jodorowsky (who also plays the cowboy) treats it as if he is retelling the New Testament. During this quest he goes on all kinds of philosophical asides which are meant to sound as grand and insightful musings of a tortured soul, but mostly are just silly and meaningless. All of this is interspersed with scenes in which El Topo is fighting, and then making up, with the woman accompanying him. She is abused a lot, but keeps supporting him, which leads to one of the least aesthetically pleasant sex scenes I've ever seen, involving heavy close ups of sand in places where you don't want to see heavy close ups of sand. That's another thing you get tired of by the way, the endlessly boring desert landscapes, whose only role seems to be to emphasize the bleakness and ugliness of the world.

And then suddenly, with about an hour in the film still to go, El Topo is killed and we cut to a story in which he is resurrected as a God who, with the help of a human woman, tries to lead her people out of a cave to which they have been banished. Now, this story is much more interesting and entertaining, but it also cemented further my view that Jodorowsky is kind of boringly smug and callous. The town from which the people are banished is one where (black) slaves are being held, bought and sold, and forced to perform all kinds of debasing stuff. The scenes in which they are shown to do that are the breeziest and have the lightest touch in the whole film. It's one of the most trivializing depiction of slavery I've ever seen. The first half of the film, in which pulpy, actually trivial, stuff was treated with pretentious reverence, only makes this more jarring. Depiction is (clearly here) not endorsement, but that's also part of the problem. Ironically detached cynical racism, nihilism and misanthropy is much duller than the real deal, and not necessarily preferable.

125. Gone Girl

Song - Like A Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan)

Movie: Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014)

I missed, the first time I watched Gone Girl, the fairly important detail that Amy's diary is completely made up (thought it was just the final pages and that Nick really beat her up). I was so giddy by the mid-film reveal - set up as a crime procedural, the film just straight up reveals its mystery barely an hour into the plot - that I couldn't concentrate on all the details. But those details only make the film better, bolder and cheekier. It's essentially a wish-fulfillment fantasy about a woman getting away with lying about being abused, making us root for her in the process. It's a testament to its greatness that it has not become a rallying cry for men's rights activists, incels and other assorted internet trash. 

It is also a testament to its great thorniness that it has been embraced by many feminists. In another world it could have been the first entry in an Amazing Amy superhero franchise in which Amy manipulates mediocre men into matching her greatness. It's also a rare contemporary Hollwyood film that explores the fantasy of escaping an unhappy marriage from a female perspective without patronizingly victimizing her. And, there would be no film without women. Everything that happens in the film is a direct or indirect consequence of a woman's act, including Amy herself getting robbed. (and including the fact that it's based on Gillian Flynn's book, who has also adapted the screenplay) But despite all that, the film has very little actual sympathy for Amy (or for Nick). If there is any female hero, it's detective Boney. I don't know Kim Dickens very much, but she may well give the most unfairly overlooked performance of the decade.

I'd argue that Fincher views both Amy and Nick here in the same way he views the Winklevoss brothers in The Social Network. They are entitled assholes who know how to sound smart to climb the social ladder in New York and who mistake that for sophistication and having high standards. Of course they see the Missourians as a bunch of dumb rubes who will never reach their heights. And of course Fincher absolutely revels in their downfall, directing these scenes with the same cheery cynicism as the rowing boat sequence in The Social Network. It is quite relevant that Amy outsmarts both Nick and the filthy rich Desi, but finds her betters in the 'hicks' renting her a home.  Despite the fact that Fight Club has indeed (and wrongly) become a rallying cry for the aforementioned internet trash, Fincher has always been on the side of the little guy and deeply critical of those with power and (unearned) wealth. Even at his most frustrating - obsessively shooting close-ups of electric appliances - that has always remained true. 

Few recent movies have presented American popular media with such contempt, arguing they exploit sex, murder and crime for no other reason than to sell themselves as righteous gatekeepers of moral values. In the process they also create impossible standards for good behavior, making authentic experiences almost impossible. Nobody in the film, again apart from detective Boney and to a lesser extent Go, is truly interested in morality and justice. All everyone is doing, all the time, is obsess and think about their appearance, or obsess and think about how other people appear. And so the ultimate joke of the film - it is very funny - is that Nick and Amy save their marriage by accepting the fake versions of themselves. All of this makes Gone Girl not just Fincher's best film (by a mile as far as I'm concerned) but perhaps also the best film Paul Verhoeven never made. At least he has never managed anything as subversively perverse as the final 15 minutes of this film. God knows he's tried. 

124. Smells Like Teen Spirit &...

Lyrics

Load up on guns
Bring your friends
It's fun to lose and to pretend
She's overboard, self assured
Oh no I know, a dirty word

Hello, hello, hello, how low [x3]
Hello, hello, hello

With the lights out, it's less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us
A mulatto, an Albino
A mosquito, my libido, yeah

Hey, yay

I'm worse at what I do best
And for this gift, I feel blessed
Our little group has always been
And always will until the end

Hello, hello, hello, how low [x3]
Hello, hello, hello

With the lights out, it's less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us
A mulatto, an Albino
A mosquito, my libido, yeah

Hey, yay

And I forget just why I taste
Oh yeah,

In the final year of elementary school, the teacher allowed us to choose what kind of music we wanted to hear during lunch break. As we were 12 years old, this naturally descended into chaos, and our teacher was forced to create a music roster. Each day someone else was allowed to be responsible for the music. Of course, we cared more about fighting about the music than for the music itself. Fortunately we soon found a new subject of debate: Who listens to the best music, boys or girls? Less fortunately this did not lead to much music diversity. The boys exclusively put on either Carlos Santana or Eminem, while the girls played either Cristina Aguilera or Britney Spears. One dude didn't care about these conventions, but we all thought he was kind of a weird outcast anyway. When it was his turn, we listened to Dutch band Doe Maar and Nirvana. I did not care about Nirvana and still don't. But I have forgotten the names of most off my classmates. I do remember that the Nirvana-fan was called Jeroen.

The Movie: Singles (Cameron Crowe, 1992)

It's a pity Bridget Fonda seems to have stopped acting in 2002. I find her a very sympathetic, and really good actress. She is fantastic here (like in It Could Happen to You) playing a realistically insecure, but generally nice, intelligent girl from Seattle. Yet she can also convincingly play a dim junkie (Jackie Brown) or a poor wife verging on a nervous breakdown(A Simple Plan). Moreover, she does not seem to emulate her more famous family members. I have not seen enough films with Henry and Jane Fonda to confidently make this statement, but I think they tend to present their characters as larger than life. Bridget Fonda is a much more modest actress (which is simply a descriptive statement. I don't think actors must necessarily be modest, and I very much enjoy over the top acting) who never seems to call attention to herself. She acts, especially in Singles, without any hint of self-awareness.

Fonda's 'modesty' is here perhaps emphasized even more because she shares a lot of scenes with Matt Dillon. He plays Cliff Poncier. That kind of name can only belong to a douchey, pretentious dude who thinks he is the next great rock star and that's exactly who Cliff Poncier is. Cliff is the lead singer of a grunge band in Seattle that 'has blown up in Belgium', but has trouble ascending to the top in Seattle. That's mostly Cliff's fault, as he is an awful singer, and even worse lyricist. At least, so the music journalists say. Dillon of course play these kinds of characters in his sleep, but he does not. Yet he has a lot of fun playing Cliff, who of course becomes way more sympathetic as the film progresses and even really starts to care for his sorta girlfriend Janet (Fonda's character).

Fonda and Dillon are unfortunately not the main actors in the film. That are Campbell Scott and Kyra Sedgwick, playing Linda and Steve. They are fairly standard characters going through a fairly standard romance. It works, because while Cameron Crowe may not always be the greatest director (and here he is sometimes rather embarrassingly clunky) he is always one of the most warmhearted. He really does care to make these characters nice and sympathetic. He makes it feel like it would be pleasant to be in their company. Nevertheless this is far from one of his best films, partly because he makes too little use of its setting around the grunge scene in early 90's Seattle. He paints it in too broad strokes. Too often you have the feeling the film could be set in any time or place.