Where the Stress Falls

Blue

Wong Kar-Wai's My Blueberry Nights arrived in local theaters like a vague apparition: the lukewarm advanced word didn't quell in any way my desire to see the film, but it made me lower my expectations, which is difficult to do, given my appreciation for Wong's work. The resulting experience was definitely mixed. Wong's dialog sounded occasionally campy and somewhat stilted; the metaphors for transition seemed a bit too neat and standard (trains, doorways, keys that unlock doors); the acting seemed to lay somewhere between the purposeful artificiality of a stage production and the spontaneity of an unscripted film. I have to admit that I'm not a fan of Natalie Portman's approach to character, in this film or in others, although her wayward sassiness here is a relatively nice complement to Norah Jones' somewhat flat, perhaps even lethargic, performance (I'm borrowing the term "flat" from a source I can't recall at the moment; I'm also wondering if the flatness is intentional, a sort of verbal and physical manifestation of the emotional drubbing her character receives). But, these caveats aside, I found My Blueberry Nights to be a somewhat beautiful, poignant film. Wong's adeptness at creating visual mood, his characteristic use of color and compression, framing and close-up, inform this film thoroughly, and he appropriately mirrors the varied landscapes and settings of his new-found territory (the United States) in different spaces, from the cramped quarters of small cafes and seedy bars, to the wide-open Nevada desert. In addition, I don't think anyone has ever photographed Rachel Weisz more beautifully. Whether she's half-drunk or enraged or in a saddened stupor, or reclaiming remnants of her dignity in her character's own limited way, Wong's camera truly flatters her. Most of all, Wong's first English-language film carries, with admittedly somewhat less efficacy than his previous work, that visceral, chest-tightening sense of the bittersweetness of change, that burning compulsion, from which everyone in this film "suffers", to hold on to a past that cannot be reclaimed while trying anxiously to understand the present and the future. Wong surveys this experience in the lives of his characters, all of whom have had, or have, people departing from their lives. He surveys it in the simple, complementary shots of an apartment at once occupied, then vacant. And he surveys it in the all-too-brief moment (that's the point, of course) in which Chan Marshall (a.k.a. Cat Power) appears, like a pleasant flash, as Jude Law's ex-girlfriend, in the midst of yet another transition, preparing for yet another departure. The film's melodrama, its patness, limit the film's potential; even the scene with Law and Marshall contains those repeated references to time-worn symbols of locks and doors. But, at least in their essence, moments like these keep the film in line with some of Wong's other work, not only thematically, but visually: he shoots Law and Marshall from the other side of a cafe window, a physical marker in certain ways of the division these individuals long to rectify.

An Update

Well, let me apologize for the long radio silence -- the very long radio silence, at least in blogging terms. I suppose there are a number of reasons for my absence, though the most prevailing one is a change in professions not too long ago; I've now got a teaching gig, and it's proven to be far more work than I had anticipated. In and of itself, it's a whole new venture, and in certain respects a far cry from my previous job, but the work seems also to be nearly around the clock, leaving me with little time for a whole variety of enthusiasms. I'm not necessarily complaining here, and teaching brings a certain kind of exhilaration (and, at other times, madness) I suspect few jobs afford; but, then, I've also found myself wishing for the moments to catch those films I've been meaning to see, the phone calls I've been wanting to return, the writing I've been planning to do. I began blogging, and continue to do so (well, not lately), for many of the reasons my friend Girish and his many commenting visitors do, and for as long as I can recall, I've found writing therapeutic, enriching, and in many ways a personal necessity.  All the more reason why I miss blogging, and miss being part of the community of online writers, cinephiles, and fellow travelers.

I'm not entirely sure what'll come next, not entirely sure if I'll be able to find the time to keep this site going, but I'm hoping I can.  I might have to put the blog on hiatus for a little while, perhaps until mid-June or so; or I might only be able to post snippets of ideas here and there, something I've thought of doing for a while.  In the least, I feel that I owe it to those of you who have stayed with me, radio silence and all, to explain where I've been and what I've been up to.  And once I figure out more definitely what I'll do about blogging, I'll announce it here.  In the meantime, I'm happy to say I haven't been entirely swallowed up by my vocation.  Here are some various thoughts on just a few enthusiasms I've been able to indulge lately:

*My sister lent me a copy of Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007), a film I had longed to see, and while many, rightfully, stressed Daniel Day Lewis' performance as Daniel Plainview, I was most impressed by Robert Elswit's photography. His command of landscape and depth-of-field made this a uniquely enjoyable film for me.

*Godard, always time for Godard, and though at the moment I can't write up all of my thoughts about Pierrot Le Fou, let me offer these: Criterion's DVD transfer is brilliant; Godard's use of words, letters, texts, and literary works is as extensive as it's ever been in his 60s films; the lack of exposition and the relaxed momentum to the film's shady thriller elements makes this a uniquely loose and random viewing experience; and the subtext about the Vietnam War gives the film a certain historical currency. One of my favorite lines in the film occurs when Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo stage a fake car accident: "It's gotta look real," Karina says.  "This isn't a movie."  Of course it is, and that's why it's so much fun.

*When I'm doing prep work for my courses, I can't watch films, but at least I can listen to music.  I've been enjoying the Handsome Furs' stripped-down Plague Park. The band consists of Dan Boeckner, the singer of Wolf Parade, and his wife, Alexei Perry.  Have a listen to "Cannot Get Started", the album's fifth track.

*I don't often have conversations about fiction anymore, only because I have little time to read any. But I was recently talking to a student of mine who enjoys reading in her spare time, and I found myself discussing writers I hadn't thought about in a while: Fitzgerald, Hemingway, James, contemporary authors such as Jhumpa Lahiri. This student gave me the idea to give Steinbeck a try; I've never read Steinbeck. Now, East of Eden, all 600 pages of it, sits on my desk. I'm on p. 1.  But, hey, I'm further than I was before I bought the book.

I hope to return soon. As always, thanks for your readership.

Yeah

The Kills. Midnight Boom. Out now.

Cut and Slice

I'm currently trying to cut and slice my way through a massive pile of work. As soon as I can catch a break, I'll be writing here again, including posts on Godard's Pierrot le fou (pictured above), the recent collaborative project Paris je t'aime, and several other films (along with other assorted subjects). See you all soon.

Strange Brew

I might not be all that original in saying that my favorite jazz musician is Miles Davis or in deeming one of my favorite albums by him, Bitches Brew, to be monumentally important. But, then, one simply likes what one likes, and even cliches have, at the very least, nuggets of truth in them. When Miles recorded Bitches Brew in 1969, behind him lay years of traditional jazz, while before him were entirely new directions in electric music. Those who say that he was behind the curve, that his experiments in electric jazz, in freer and newer forms of music, were a delayed reaction to similar experiments by other musicians or to the specter of rock, certainly might be onto something; Miles, after all, was for much of his career temperamentally more traditional than some of his more adventurous colleagues, until circumstance or persuasion from others compelled him to change. Yet whatever motivations moved Miles to complete Bitches Brew, that fact is that it still exists, that it still marks a crucial point in the evolution of the art. No discussion of jazz in the 1950s and 1960s can occur without reference to Miles, and, by 1969, he had given everyone something else to talk about: a palette consisting of amplification and droning accompaniment, a rejection of standard exposition and form, a performance so free of conventional harmonic limitations or other strictures that it seemed, to many, almost amorphous. Miles, once the most lyrical of trumpet players, now punctured the accompaniment with strong, terse phrases. His horn, beyond that middle register that his harsher critics say imprisoned him, nearly blisters in those quick, staccato etchings in "Pharaoh's Dance," the album's opener, or in the darker passages of "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down."

The form of the music here impresses as much as the performance; even for jazz, which is based on the principle of freedom, the music is awfully open-ended. As Brian Morton and Richard Cook wrote in their indispensable The Penguin Guide to Modern Jazz:

The most significant change in personnel from previous bands was the replacement of [drummer Tony] Williams and his very linear approach with the more sculptural [Jack] DeJohnette. The rhythms are immediately more shifting and uncertain, matching the complete polytonality of much of the music. It is rarely possible to decide what key the pieces are in, once they are under way, and there is never much consistency between the key of a "solo", if such they are, and what the rest of the band is about.

In addition to these vital musical shifts is the important fact that Bitches Brew, unlike most jazz, is not so much about performance, as glaringly fine as some of that performance is, but about using post-production techniques as methods for composition. "The tape was running," bassist Dave Holland once remarked in an interview. "And half the time I didn't know whether we were recording or not ... the process was being recorded ... that's what Miles was onto; he was onto recording the process of discovering the music and developing it, and that's why it has this sort of searching quality." Miles gave his band no direction, no changes, but simply had them play; then, during the editing and mixing phases, Miles' producer, Teo Macero, showed just how brilliantly talented a producer he was. Macero's splicing and arranging of the master tapes gave Bitches Brew both its deeply elastic feel and a remarkable coherence. "Pharaoh's Dance," for example, ventures almost aimlessly ("searching", as Holland said) until it reaches a climactic crescendo. "The whole package," Morton and Cook wrote in summarizing the album, "is less of a performance in the old-fashioned sense than an artifact, the details of which are secondary to the overall effect, which for all the awkwardness is shattering."

Occasionally, I read or hear critics state that Miles' late-60s albums, including Miles in the Sky, Filles de Kilimanjaro, and In a Silent Way, are more transitional than complete. But in most cases art seems transitional only in retrospect. Bitches Brew might represent a point on a long, arching trajectory from the acoustic Miles of previous years to the later electric Miles, the one who played over heavy back-beats with his trumpet siphoned through a wah-wah pedal. Yet Bitches Brew is nevertheless a destination, a work that had its own present. Those who, in 1969, stared, wide-eyed, at Mati Klarwein's surrealistic cover while listening to Miles and his crew drift loudly and energetically through modes and wildly loose structures were not aware of what Miles would do in the future because the future had not happened yet. Bitches Brew, for them, was the immediate, revolutionary present: cacophonous, free, entirely cauterizing. I suspect that, for Miles, it was too; in light of his development in the mid to late 1960s, this was perhaps the natural place to stop and explore, not only as part of a larger ensemble, but also as a soloist. "Miles stabs out some of his most maximal playing on record," as Morton and Cook put it. For one of jazz's most lyrical and laconic players, that was something new.

* * *

Next to "Pharaoh's Dance," my favorite track on the album is "Spanish Key," perhaps the closest Miles and his band came to conventional structure. Miles' playing is fairly raucous, though some of that old lyricism appears momentarily when he states the main "theme" (if it can even be called one). After an extended intro by guitarist John McLaughlin and bass clarinetist Bernie Maupin, Miles enters and then solos. McLaughlin and keyboardist Chick Corea, playing in tandem, follow Miles' solo with their own. Miles then restates the theme, however briefly, around 9:20; the band continues to jam along, Miles solos again, and the tempo slows. Then, Corea and McLaughlin take turns until Miles re-enters one last time and the tune rides out.

"Spanish Key" MP3. Note: this is a big file.

Playlist

I rarely sit and just listen to music anymore, not like the way I'll sit and watch a film; most of my listening in recent years has been intermittent, interrupted: portions of an album here and there, music playing while I'm working, and, given that I live in California, more often than not I listen to music while I'm driving somewhere. To me, these habits are somewhat of a disservice to the people who created the music and to the music itself, and nearly the equivalent of not paying attention when someone is talking to you.  The best music deserves and rewards active, uninterrupted listening (Beethoven doesn't roll over because Chuck Berry tells him to; he rolls over because I'm typing up something for work while I've got his Hammerklavier playing in the background). Still, life and duties intervene. Which is all the more reason why I've been making a concerted effort to make time to sit and do nothing but listen to music. The amount of new releases this month and the next certainly make this resolution easier to fulfill; there have been, or will be, new albums from British Sea Power, The Raveonettes, Supreme Beings of Leisure, The Duke Spirit, Goldfrapp, and -- yeah -- The Kills. Here are some things I currently have in rotation, with comments and some MP3s:

The Duke Spirit, Neptune. The band's first full-length album since their 2005 debut, Cuts Across the Land. After listening to this album repeatedly for the last week or so, I'm actually disappointed -- and, believe me, I really hate to say that, given my passion for this band's music. The Duke Spirit have a tighter, more radio-friendly feel and are experimenting with different styles and influences; I suppose this shows they're evolving in a certain direction, but I didn't quite expect it based on the B-sides, EPs, covers, and demo tracks they've released in the last couple of years. Those displayed a more natural evolution from their original sound, while their latest release has much less of an edge while also being much less cohesive. Even then, I still think Neptune is worthwhile, in large part because some of the basics of their sound are still evident (particularly Leila Moss' dry, vintage voice).  "This Ship Was Built to Last" is one of the highlights of the new album, in my opinion; Moss' voice is surrounded by the drone of Luke Ford's and Dan Higgins' guitars and Olly Bett's booming toms -- "This Ship Was Built to Last" MP3.

The Raveonettes, Lust Lust Lust. This band tends to evolve in the subtlest of shifts. Their sound is unmistakably their own, a retro, reverb-drenched throwback to the 1950s and 60s, updated with 21st century moral sensibilities. Lust Lust Lust contains more minor-key efforts than the band's previous two albums, while all of the core elements of their sound remain intact: the subdued, almost muted singing, the Jesus-and-Mary-Chain feedback, the knife-sharp riffs, the syncopated rhythms. One other thing I admire: they rarely use hi-hats or cymbals on their drum tracks, which is refreshing, given that too many rock records feel like hi-hat city because that little plate of metal is usually the loudest "instrument" in the mix. "Hallucinations" MP3 -- great guitars on this one, and listen to how the song builds.

British Sea Power, Do You Like Rock Music? I go back and forth on this band, but I liked their previous effort, Open Season, and when I noticed the buzz about this album on the web and in print, I figured, why not? The Onion A.V. Club, the AllMusic Guide, and Paste Magazine all liked it. Pitchfork Media didn't, which truly means it's good. "Down on the Ground" MP3.

Finally, a couple of extras. One very recent Duke Spirit song that I think is particularly impressive is "Masca," from their Ex-Voto E.P. (2007). The changes in the verse and the chorus are essentially the same; that low, growling guitar, set in the center of the mix, adds nice texture; and Moss' voice sounds especially golden in the chorus. "Masca" MP3. Regarding the Raveonettes, I've uploaded a video for "That Great Love Sound", from their  2003 release, Chain Gang of Love.  Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo (who distorts her bass) try to devise ways of killing each other in a humorous homage of sorts to Hitchcock's Vertigo. Foo's dressed as Kim Novack, Wagner as Jimmy Stewart.

Riffing

Over at Errata, Rob Davis has posted his latest film discussion podcast with J. Robert Parks, and the two discuss, among other things, Todd Haynes' I'm Not There. I formed and expressed my own thoughts about the film just after seeing it, but I'm still working through it -- and the ensuing Errata discussion has given me much food for thought.  One thing that came to mind is how the multiple references in I'm Not There are not simply references, but implicit comments on the very act of filmmaking.  Darren (Long Pauses) has compelling remarks about the post-modern aspects of the film; Rob about Haynes' methods.  I highly recommend downloading Rob's podcast and giving it a good listen.

I'm looking forward to the film's release on DVD so I can revisit it again.  (As I mentioned in my comments at Errata, I saw I'm Not There in one of the worst second-run theaters in California.  The screen actually slanted to the left; the projection did not fit the screen properly; I could hear the audio from adjacent screenings; and the room was so dark my friends and I had real difficulty finding our seats.  The environment was directly proportional to the $2 admission fee.  Still, good times.)

I'll be back soon with some new posts.

There and Not There

On a purely conceptual level, Todd Haynes' I'm Not There is exactly what the biopic genre needed: a non-literal, non-chronological interpretation of a man's career, art, and life, all sifted through the varied angles of  a prism, filtered into abstraction. No one in the film utters Dylan's name, and Haynes never assumes Dylan's life to be a single entity. At once, in the late 1950s, Dylan is an eleven-year-old boy; at another time, he is a folk singer who later converts to Christianity and preaches the word of God; yet at another, he is an actor playing the singer in a film. He is also a narrating poet named Arthur Rimbaud, a nineteenth-century outlaw named Billy the Kid, and, in the film's most noted performance (by Cate Blanchett), a rock star hooked on drugs in 1960s London. Such a figurative interpretation of Dylan might seem to conflate too much imagination with reality and therefore might veer too far from an easily identifiable truth about the man; but, then, I like to think that the biopic needs such imagination and that Haynes' approach, given his subject, is in some ways as truthful as can be. Musicians riff on things, pure and simple, as Haynes does here on Dylan, on the representations of Dylan in American culture, even on American culture and history itself (the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement receive particular attention, and just as most Americans experienced it: on television, as a constant image). Haynes also riffs on other films, referencing them in the respectful, practical manner in which rock and folk musicians borrow from their predecessors. Blanchett dangles in the air, a rope attached to her ankle, much like Mastroianni did in Fellini's 8 1/2. Charlotte Gainsbourg, surprisingly good as an actress (and the beneficiary of Edward Lachman's cool-temperature cinematography), echoes Chantal Goya from Godard's Masculin Feminin, even speaks some of that film's lines. One of my favorite moments in I'm Not There is a very brief "Godardian" sequence that introduces Dylan's loud, alienating conversion to electric music; Blanchett and other band members walk on stage and fire machine guns straight at the audience and the camera -- the kind of joke that could have easily fit into Masculin Feminin, A Woman Is a Woman, or Band of Outsiders.

I've read (though, unfortunately, I can't quite recall the source) that I'm Not There, while about Dylan, is simultaneously a more general film about how a person's life is the sum total of multiple lives, of varied experiences, phases, efforts, and failures. The film's allusions to 8 1/2 are telling in this respect because, like Fellini's film, Haynes' is partly about patterns of self-definition, especially in contrast to the public's own definitions of artists and celebrities. In this respect, Blanchett's scenes convey a resonant sense of struggle. In addition to alienating fans, friends, and lovers while also reinventing himself, Blanchett's Jude Quinn must jostle with a British journalist's interrogations and then suffer his subsequent animadversions on Quinn's music and personality. This sense of struggle seems to lie at the heart of each phase of the film: the juvenile delinquent who sings songs about the Depression, Billy the Kid's difficulties with anonymity and publicity, Jack Rollins' shifting religious identities and his changing relationship to his musical past, the actor Robbie Clark, whose marriage gradually dissolves in the early 1970s (I think the film is at its most poignant here). Taken together, these strains turn Haynes' film into an experiment, a cacophony of melodies, a meandering improvisation; the film comes across as a deliberate deconstruction of both the subject's life and of the forms of biographical filmmaking. Periods and perspectives simply coalesce through free association, while, visually, Haynes makes use of a variety of film stocks and color palettes, each carefully chosen to suit a particular phase of Dylan's life. At the same time, these strains -- and Haynes' methods -- nicely make I'm Not There a decidedly pluralistic film. This pluralism is part of the film's inventiveness; whereas a conventional documentary or biopic might provide multiple, external perspectives on a life (though to some degree, Haynes does this too, though even these are representations), the perspectives in I'm Not There arrive from the inside and then filter out. Most of all, this pluralism give the film its verisimilitude, provide the there in I'm Not There: Dylan, Dylan and America, and, most of all, the fragility and the varied formations of personality.

Another Thought

Following up on my previous post about evaluating films:

For me, the ultimate value of a film lies in its ability to transform; in other words, the experience of viewing it is transformative in some particular way, allowing me to understand more, feel more, or see more. I often find that formally inventive films tend to be the most effective; form can accelerate and enhance a film's aesthetic or psychological or emotional impact. But films needn't always be inventive in this regard, and for every rule, there's usually an exception (compared to say, Claire Denis or Alain Resnais, William Wyler's best films aren't experimental, but they're still transformative). Films I've seen relatively recently and that I've found to be truly transformative include: both of Lucrecia Martel's feature films (The Holy Girl and La Cienaga), all of Ozu's late films, Stefan Krohmer's Summer 04, Olivier Assayas' Clean, Tsai Ming-liang's What Times Is It There?, Krzystztof Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique, Denis' L'Intrus, Danis Tanovic's L'Enfer, Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flowers of Shanghai, and Jia Zhang-ke' Still Life (which I saw at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, and which is now making its way to various theaters and film centers -- Dan Sallitt has a nice write-up about it).

More to come.

Evaluation

A few weeks ago, Girish wrote a thought-provoking post about the shifting value of films, and in particular how any given film "is a complex, mutating entity" and not a stable thing that "stands apart from the flow of discourse but instead something that becomes enmeshed in this discourse, fused with it." I've been thinking about this issue off and on since then, and here are some of my own conclusions, which might shift in time themselves:

*As Girish suggests, the difference between the immediately apparent value of a film and its long-term value can sometimes be significant, and I often find that the kinds of discourse he mentions influence my sense of a film's worth: conversations with others, existing criticism of the work in question, the changing evaluations of a film by other filmmakers. My own estimation of individual films or the careers of particular directors rise and fall because of this discourse, which I'd say is an inextricable, necessary part of film viewing. This isn't to discount the power of the moment; I've certainly had moments when a film's value appears and hits me immediately. I was so impressed by Tsai Ming-liang's What Time Is It There?, Jonathan Glazer's Birth, and Terence Malick's The New World that I followed my initial viewing of each one with at least one repeated viewing the very next day, which is not something I often do. My estimation of these films has more or less remained steadfast, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it eventually changed.

*More often than not, though, evaluation takes time. Forming an opinion of a film's value can require repeat viewings (even across years), continual reconsideration, and an ongoing, willing engagement with all the varied discourse about a film. This reminds me of something Jonathan Rosenbaum once wrote about Pauline Kael and similar critics who reflexively denounced some of Antonioni's work: "any of these people were already starting to adopt a critical attitude that assumed it was possible to know immediately and without a doubt what was good and bad in a movie the precise moment it appeared ... intricate, melancholic mood pieces like Antonioni's, which invite and reward -- and occasionally even require -- weeks of mulling over, could find no place at all within this approach, so fewer and fewer critics wound up dealing with them, seriously or otherwise." (Rosenbaum, Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism, University of California Press, 1995, p. 309.) I recall being initially lukewarm to Antonioni's L'Eclisse, even though I greatly admired L'Avventura and La notte, the triumphs that preceded it, but upon subsequent consideration my feelings of its value rose so high that I now consider it a crowning achievement of modernist cinema and a personal favorite.

*I believe that as viewers and critics we should distinguish between different kinds of value. Some films have significant cinematic or artistic worth because they challenge and expand film-making in formal, visual, or other aesthetic terms, while other films might lack these qualities but still have important historical or cultural value (particularly when it comes to national cinemas, though this is not the only case). In addition, certain films carry with them significant emotional or personal value for individual viewers, and even though film criticism historically has centered on discussions of a film's artistic merits, I don't believe that this aspect of the film experience should be discounted or overlooked. I was moved, for example, by Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement, and yet I have to muster strength to be similarly affected by some of Ingmar Bergman's work, even though I admire much of it on a formal level. My hope for film criticism is that it will move towards a more experiential approach to cinema (Sontag's influence looms large here, I admit), and I suppose if I have any particular agenda in my own writing, I'd modestly say that this is it.

*In thinking about film evaluation, the one overbearing, recurring thought I have is how my view of a film's value is deeply affected by other films, by watching more, by expanding my own experience of cinema. When I became serious about watching films roughly five years ago and introduced myself to the work of Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, and some of their contemporaries, I initially thought that I had reached, to borrow very loosely from Weekend, the "end of cinema." Later viewing of films by Tsai Ming-liang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Claire Denis, Yasujiro Ozu, Wong Kar-wai, Krzystztof Kieslowski, and Lucrecia Martel revealed how wrong I was, how much more I had to learn. In the process, at least two things occurred to me: for one, I've become more adept at determining a film's value; and two -- and perhaps most important -- my estimation of Antonioni, Godard, and Resnais did not diminish after discovering other accomplished filmmakers. Instead, it escalated to an entirely new level of appreciation, in large part because the distinctive qualities of their cinema, like the distinctive qualities of my later discoveries, became all the more pronounced.