****1/2 (Tour de force)

Throughout Thief’s virtually wordless opening sequence, Mann both lays the foundation for and sets a sort of false expectation regarding the rest of the film. Aside from the heist centerpiece and the relatively simple action sequence at the end of the film, Thief proceeds in a low, contemplative key that has all the drive of a regular action film while focusing on Frank. But the ideal of this master thief that is established in the beginning is vital to the movie; it is the conception that Frank is continually pressured into adopting, as he is torn between his criminal ways and his genuine desire to go on the straight and narrow. Practically every character aside from Jessie pushes and pulls Frank to either keep going or to leave, but all pigeonhole him, only thinking of him as a thief.

There is no denying that Frank (and by proxy Mann and the audience) takes pleasure in what he calls his “magic act”. Mann shoots the heists largely in extreme close-ups, focusing on the hands of the thieves and the detailed instruments; though the viewer doesn’t necessarily understand exactly what is going on, there is such an incredibly purposefulness to each shot that carries the viewer along in the controlled rush that the sequences offer. The rest of the film rarely lets go of this intensity, judiciously using tight close-ups and long shots that observe the body language of the characters (notably, Frank is much more dynamic in his motions), frequently holding in a way that both increases tension and allows the viewer to ponder what drives Frank. The visual look is also incredibly gorgeous, rendering each scene with both unmistakable, gritty realism and a more dreamlike aura. Especially in the nighttime scenes, the neon streets seem just a bit abstract, just a bit too beautiful to be real.

One of Thief’s greatest strengths is that it is willing to seriously consider Frank’s desire to become, for lack of a better term, ordinary. In the bravura coffee shop sequence, Mann forges an uncommon and touching intimacy towards his recollections of the past and hopes for the future, using both the ruminative dialogue and the power of Caan’s by turns ferocious and subdued performance present two sides to the complicated figure at the center of the film.

Tangerine Dream’s score must be mentioned, both in just how lush the pulsing synths sound and in how they are used. Without exception, the synths only come in moments of transition; almost none of the dialogue scenes have a score, whether it be a quiet discussion or a tense confrontation, and even a large portion of the second heist lacks any music cues. The transitions are, quite simply, the most important parts to Frank’s life (and indeed, Mann’s filmography), as they signal to him that he is indeed going somewhere, that there is something more than the doldrums of running successful businesses or the quick thrills of heists.

But in the end, Thief reveals its hand in the best way possible, as both it and Frank realize that he cannot exist in a world with anyone by himself. Caan’s work is key here, as he manages to sell his character’s devolution in a matter of minutes, and his shedding of all of his accouterments feels both saddening and cathartic; after all this time he is free to fulfill his true desires. And he does so, in a glorious haze of gunfire that is assisted by the film’s most soaring music cue and startling alternations between slow-motion and quick cuts that make the deaths all the more impactful. Thief is pure genre, but it also feels like so much more: character study, ode to professionalism, and drama, all made with an equal amount of pulp and grace.

Even though South takes place almost exclusively in the town of Jasper, Texas, focusing on the horrific murder of a black man, there is no denying that there is a universality to the portrayal of the many different locales throughout the film. The audience is shown a cross section of this Southern community in parts, never using anything too specific to Jasper but dealing in the universal iconography of cars, forests, churches, stores, and other such commonplace signifiers.

Akerman’s style is as unmistakeable as ever, subtly shaping the viewer’s perception of the setting. Predominately, static shots are used, often of individuals dwarfed by their surroundings. Even in shots that appear to be in the countryside, cars can be frequently heard and seen, serving as a connecting device between these disparate locations. This is taken to a further extent with the extended tracking shots taken from a car, patiently observing as the buildings change, get more crowded or more separated, or disappear altogether, as people drive by and frequently wave to the camera.

These two signature Akerman techniques are contrasted with the interviews and the pivotal church scene. The interviews are perhaps the both the most political and the most intimate passages in South, putting side by side the personal, passionate recollections of black people which detail racism from both the 1960s and the present (1998) and the fairly dispassionate, sometimes misguided or downright false testimonies of white people (who are only seen in these scenes and in one brief shot of a white man in a field on a horse). The body language also contributes to the divide, as the black interviewees lean in, presenting themselves and their words with frank warmness (occasionally with accoutrements like children or an electric guitar) whereas the first two white people are shot behind desks and the third in an armchair. (Oddly, during two interviews, including the third white man’s, there are several fades to black, even though the others are all done in an unedited shot.)

Without a doubt, however, the most important and impactful scene is the sequence set in a church. Partly passionate and partly reserved, it covers both the political and the personal responses to the brutal tragedy that was James Byrd, Jr.’s murder. Fittingly, it expresses these emotions to a large degree through song that acts as both a lament and praise towards God, and it is no accident that all but one of South’s close-ups are in this scene.

I must echo the concerns of others that South is inadequate when it comes to articulating a clear position on the South and its inherent racism. But the key to me is the shots of nature that appear sporadically, especially in the last third, which suggest to me that the movie is quite simply a document. It is meant to be an evocation of the South, if not the “South” and all the political and societal entanglements that the term implies, and if it doesn’t achieve the lofty heights of a true dissection of this messy region, it is an experience the likes of which only Akerman can truly deliver.

Written for The Dissolve Facebook group’s Lovefest feature.

LoveFest Summer 2016 #2: “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Sky” – Cameron Crowe’s Aloha

Aloha was probably doomed to fail even before it was released in theaters. Between the scathing emails by Amy Pascal unearthed in the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack, with such choice phrases like “People don’t like people in movies who flirt with married people or married people who flirt”, and the rather unfortunate controversy over Emma Stone’s casting as a quarter-Hawaiian, quarter-Chinese Air Force pilot, the odds seemed stacked against the film’s success, on both critical and commercial levels. Aloha’s commercial failure, at least from an general overview, seems inexplicable, as almost all of his previous films turned at minimum a respectable profit (except, intriguingly, what is considered by some to be his best film, Almost Famous). Crowe’s critical cachet, on the other hand, has lessened over the years, as his past three films (Elizabethtown, We Bought a Zoo, and Aloha) have all received at best mixed reviews, and Aloha in particular has been savaged.

I should note here that I have not seen any other Cameron Crowe films, but earlier this year, when I saw Aloha on a plane as part of a sort of 2015 wrap-up, it completely knocked me off of my feet. Even then, I knew it was a special film, bursting with life and joy, and on a recent watch (after it had kept rolling in my head over and over) Aloha seemed to click on both intellectual and emotional levels.

One of the keys to Aloha’s charm is its setting. Like Lost in Translation, another one of my favorites (and perhaps a future Lovefest entry?), what could have (and is likely viewed by many, certainly much more than for Lost in Translation) been a cheap feint at exoticism becomes completely vital to both the characters and the narrative at large. Though Lost in Translation used its setting to evoke alienation and Aloha uses it to evoke a sense of tradition and friendliness, both emphasize the importance of relationships and the sometimes chaotic intersection between past and present. Theo Panayides described it in his Letterboxd review as a “magical setting”, and there is undeniably an almost mystical mood that bleeds through many of the most consequential scenes. Frequent mention is made of the mythology of the Hawaiian people, and even discounting the tantalizing glimpses at the possibility of spirits inhabiting the Hawaiian islands (mainly through too-strong gusts of wind and recurring whispers, especially the ones that happen right before Brian’s climactic decision), the magic of the setting makes the more outlandish situations and characters seem more believable, in a same way. It must be emphasized that the setting is not exploited; characters like the nationalist King Kanahele (playing himself) are treated not as caricatures (if anything, the military officials are more pigeonholed, though they do have their distinguishing, humanizing traits) but as idiosyncratic, strong-willed and passionate people, and the three main characters all have essential ties to the islands. In a way, the movie can be seen as fundamentally the journey of Brian trying to reconnect with his roots in Hawaii through the people he learns to love.

Aloha is also built on the notion of the sky; Brian, Allison, and Tracy’s son are or were at one point obsessed with the beauty of space and its contents, and the clash of Brian’s cynicism and Allison’s optimism in the first half of the movie is founded in part by his disillusionment. Indeed, the opening of the film is a mix of these two ideas, as it intercuts footage of the Hawaiian natives with objects in space before transitioning seamlessly into a CGI recreation of a space cluttered with objects, over which Brian’s wistful but resentful narration plays. The “action” part of the plot centers around Carson’s attempts to control the sky with his weaponized satellite, and no matter how far-fetched it seems (for me it fits in with the overall tone of the film, and is clearly never meant to be treated too seriously) it goes against the deeply-held beliefs of the Hawaiian people and Allison; for Brian his decision to eventually destroy the satellite is the final nail in the coffin for his cynicism and gray sense of morality, as he is willing to sacrifice his livelihood for both the woman and the home that he loves.

But the aspect that struck me most about Aloha this time was how it uses that mode of cinema so loved by vulgar auteurists: “gestures”, and more specifically, glances. Peter Labuza described the film as a rom-com without a single shot of coverage, and it is apparent how meticulously yet effortlessly planned each shot is; Crowe scarcely uses more than one angle on a person for each segment of a conversation, and each edit to something different, no matter how seemingly inconsequential the contents of that frame, feels purposeful. The apex of this feeling is through the gestures that happen extensively through the course of the movie, from military salutes to a friendly but firm shoulder touch to the hula dance. Woody (John Krasinski) is perhaps the personification of this ideal, as he stays mostly silent, only rarely saying something truly important, but the way he physically interacts with people says so much (a phenomenon commented on by Brian and Tracy, and hilariously literalized in the closing minutes with a series of Annie Hall-esque subtitles). Even more important are the glances that form a large part of Aloha‘s most indelible images. Most of the time, the words that the characters utter are almost secondary to their expressions, and large portions of the film are played out entirely through the way they look at each other, whether it be in anger, love, or even a sense of wonder. To carry the idea further, the sunglasses that various characters wear throughout the movie, especially the first half, obscures these glances, making their intentions somewhat unclear. Though it may just be my perception, the characters’ traits seem to be more magnified: Brian is more cynical and willing to bend his principles, Allison becomes more naive and reliant on her heritage, and Carson becomes even more enigmatic, and when each of these characters takes off their sunglasses they become more down-to-earth and more nuanced. It is perhaps not an accident that Carson, in his final appearance, briefly puts on sunglasses and then takes them off, laughing and accepting his arrest.

Turning away from this possible navel-gazing, even without these ideas Aloha is a wildly entertaining, immensely well-crafted film. Crowe’s screenplay may not be the most coherent, straightforwardly plotted thing imaginable, but it moves gracefully with a lighthearted but never weightless mood, as the characters feel alive and converse in an irrepressibly playful manner. Every main actor plays his or her part magnificently: Cooper gives a bona fide movie-star performance, mixing his natural charisma with a sense of inner darkness to create his character’s conflicted nature; Stone, unfairly maligned by the whitewashing controversy, gives a spirited and youthful performance that uses her energetic personality and expressiveness to their fullest extent; and McAdams produces an almost explosive performance (that, I might add, by far outpaces her still wonderful performance in Spotlight), as she is by turns sarcastic, witty, and tender, easily exposing the cracks in Brian’s cynicism in the relatively few scenes she has. The music choices (Cameron Crowe’s specialty) span a wide range of styles, easily mixing (and furthering the idea of the intersection of past and present) together classic rock songs, traditional Hawaiian music (Allison even asks for and is given a performance of an old Hawaiian song that she desperately wanted to hear again) and a modern indie musical score. Of course, I would be remiss in not mentioning Eric Gautier’s cinematography, which, with all due respects to our dear Narrator, is purposely shaky; in the first half Brian is still trying to find solid ground, so to speak, and so the camera careens around as he is thrust into the world and people which he had left; the camera steadies just before the Christmas party (the turning point of the film) and remains mostly stable from then on.

And yet, the most striking and indeed moving part of Aloha is its ending, which may seem almost inconsequential to someone not totally invested in its characters. The only main character in it is Brian, and it is the first and only time in the film that he and his biological daughter (with Tracy), Grace, interact. But it seems to encapsulate every part of the film’s driving ideas: the scene plays with no dialogue, driven entirely by the editing between the glances Brian and Grace share, and has as its subtext the past, present, and now future, as the final shot of the film is of Grace’s hands (another gesture) as she dances the traditional hula. As if to underscore all of this, the music gradually moves from non-diagetic Hawaiian music to the modern score.

In the end, I’m not sure if I can fully explain my love for Aloha coherently. It may just be something that appeals to me in a way that seems incomprehensible and incredibly misguided to most others. But, to my eyes, it is an incredibly well-crafted, moving, and genuinely funny romantic comedy, made with an overflowing amount of love and care.

Written for The Solute’s Forgotbusters series, edited by Sam Scott.

The name “Busby Berkeley” is practically synonymous with the extravagant Hollywood musicals of the Depression era. For about fifteen years, Berkeley was the king of the musical, serving as the choreographer and sometimes director of lavish song-and-dance films, as his geometric, intricate dances often served as the highlights of the somewhat standard backstage dramas that typified the Hollywood musical of that time. Indeed, it was not until the rise of the Freed Unit, with its own iconic musicals such as Singin’ in the Rain and The Band Wagon, that the musical numbers became more integrated into the narrative instead of being largely confined to the stage.

Berkeley is perhaps best known today for the famous films he choreographed for other directors at Warner Bros., such as 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Footlight Parade. These films were all made in 1933, and slowly Berkeley’s brand of extravagance became less popular, as he even made forays into straight drama. Thus, the late-career masterpiece that is The Gang’s All Here is even more unexpected.

The Gang’s All Here was made in 1943, in the middle of World War II, and it stands out for a number of reasons. First, and perhaps most importantly, it was the first color film that Berkeley had directed or even worked extensively on, and stunningly he shows no sign of tentativeness, lavishly and liberally using the fantastical Technicolor to render the both the songs and the narrative sequences in strong hues that add a vital amount of character to the images. Secondly, he was the sole director of the film, and while this may not have altered too much, it gives The Gang’s All Here a more cohesive approach than something like 42nd Street (the only other Berkeley movie I have seen); the aesthetic approach is very similar in most of the scenes and there is an abundance of performances that occur even during the narrative sections.

The plot of The Gang’s All Here is relatively straightforward, relying more on the character interactions than any sense of drama or urgency. The film begins in the Club New Yorker, known for its lavish and wild shows featuring Phil Baker (Phil Baker) and Dorita (Carmen Miranda), as it introduces the de facto protagonist Andy Mason (James Ellison), an Army sergeant about to leave for the Pacific Front. He sees and then meets Eadie Allen (Alice Faye), a new dancer at the Club, and they quickly fall in love. He leaves the next day, and is allowed to return home after receiving a medal. Upon receiving this news, Andrew Mason Sr., his father (Eugene Pallette) decides to throw a party when his son returns/ And, after a series of deliberations, he invites the performers at the Club New Yorker and the Benny Goodman Orchestra (as themselves) to stay at his and his colleague’s homes while they rehearse for a new show and frames the party as a war bond rally. From here, the film splits into a surprisingly complex number of sub-plots, the most relevant being the Andy’s desire to marry Eadie even though he is betrothed to Potter’s daughter Vivian, but by the film’s closing party, as everyone is reconciled. It is a pleasurable story, to be sure, and some parts become truly emotional (especially Eadie’s loneliness at Andy’s absence), but it is by and large an excuse for the musical sequences that grow more and more strange, culminating in perhaps the most profoundly odd 5 minutes I have ever seen in any film. Shall we begin?

The very first shot is a marvel, beginning with a shadowed figure singing “Aquarela do Brasil” (yes, the song from Terry Gilliam’s Brazil). The camera zooms in, and then moves down an inexplicably abstract pattern of lines before settling on a boat from Brazil carrying both passengers and cargo. The camera pans up an improbably large bundle of fruit and back down to reveal Dorida, who begins singing as the camera moves over to Phil Baker, then through the proscenium to reveal the entirety of the audience. And that’s all just in the first shot.

To describe the extent of the ingenuity of The Gang’s All Here, or to just describe each musical number in an acceptable amount of detail, would take several articles. Berkeley’s approach here is less in line with the strict theatricality of something like 42nd Street, where an explicit narrative is being told, and more in terms of a free-associativity, where the performance is embraced for the performance’s sake. From an utterly inexplicable number featuring a long line of chorus girls wielding giant bananas to a simple performance on the Staten Island ferry by Eadie to Andy (that features the fourth-wall breaking exchange, “Hear the orchestra?” “Where’s it coming from?”), to the second-to-last number, featuring heretofore unseen young children dancing in polka-dot dresses, scenes that would normally be incredibly disruptive and extraneous in an ordinary film are the most important, as Berkeley constructs a celebration of creativity and art that is never less than a joy to watch.

But the most surprising aspect of The Gang’s All Here is the ending, which quite literally comes out of nowhere. After a brief segment of the performers with lighted, floating hoops while wearing what look like space suits the film literalizes the kaleidoscopic effect that Berkeley had received acclaim for, turning the dance into completely abstract images, before the faces of all the principal players zoom out of the screen and the heads of the entire cast sings in unison. It is an eerie, almost scary effect, one that would shock almost any viewer.

How then, can such a profoundly weird film be forgotten? Most likely, The Gang’s All Here was probably dismissed as “just another” Hollywood musical, and it likely is about as famous as any other famous-at-the-time film from that era. But Berkeley’s accomplishment speaks for itself; he once said that his main goal was to top himself, and here, at the end of his heyday, he made a musical film that shares more qualities with the avant-garde than anything else, even the musicals which he had done so much to popularize.

Going to resume posting reviews I’m especially proud of, starting with this most personal of films.

The first clue to the brilliance of this film is in the title: Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party. Rather than being a simple character study, it is a vibrant, free-wheeling ensemble piece, often abandoning the ostensible main character for entire sequences and placing him in the background for some scenes in which he does appear in. By adopting this structure, Cone crafts an incisive, heartbreaking, yet hopeful cross-section of a specific part of America: a Southern Christian family and their friends, both religious and not, and with widely varying sets of beliefs and sexualities. It feels both extremely focused and unexpectedly universal; especially to me, it felt like one of the most personal films I have ever seen, for reasons I won’t go into in this review.

Even from a technical point of view, Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party is wonderfully made, with particular attention to the various points of view that switch from scene to scene. Chiu’s cinematography is natural but subtly striking, capturing the vibrant party well as it gets later and later, and comes to the fore during some beautiful underwater shots that almost seem otherworldly in their serene nature. Cone’s editing ensures that the flow of faces and ideas never gets dull or shortchanged, helped by the use of both electronic, driving modern music and a strangely ethereal score.

But Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party soars on the perfect combination of its ensemble cast and its screenplay. As a whole, the cast naturalistically inhabits all of these characters so well, making each and every one of the twenty people on screen stand out from each other and interacting with exactly the right amount of chemistry that would be right for that specific grouping. It is hard to choose any standouts, as the ensemble forms such a cohesive unit, though perhaps Doman (who shoulders the responsibility of the main character with poise), Neilan (who plays my favorite character in the film with no small amount of ease), and Laidlaw (who gives perhaps the most demanding performance, delivering a difficult revelatory monologue in devastating fashion) deserve just slightly more credit.

Cone’s screenplay is built on a sense of the moment-to-moment; it is cohesive in both its character developments and its view of these broken but strong figures, but much of the joy of Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party is in seeing the interactions that occur, the little discrete scenes that pop up within each chunk of the film that offer a change in the viewer’s perspective on each person. From an unexpected crying fit, to a misguided remark, to a simple affirmation of one’s sexuality, the little things manage to make the viewer understand that these characters are, by virtue of their status as humans, unable to be cozily categorized into preconceptions. They are complex, deeply seated in their beliefs yet able to be changed in the course of a single day. But perhaps the most important change of all happens to Henry. In one day, the same shot changes meaning profoundly, and he, on his birthday, becomes more open, more thoughtful, in the way that I sense this film wants the world to be. Where else can you see Gregg Araki’s Kaboom and a Christian book in the same set of presents?