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By Carson Lund
When I first saw trailers for Derek Cianfrance’s Ryan Gosling/Michelle Williams vehicle Blue Valentine, I immediately expected a revival of The Notebook phenomenon: that is, a film so slack-jawed and precious in its celebration of “true love” that it would inspire red-cheeked mayhem from young girls nationwide. The only difference, seemingly, was that Cianfrance’s film was posing as something more mature and adult, something digestible for an experienced romantic crowd. Not once did I expect it to actually be a mature evolution of The Notebook’s earnestly sappy themes as well as a potent reversal of that film’s ultimately optimistic, fairy-tale perspective that love triumphs all and is everlasting. Cianfrance’s view here is a decidedly contemporary one sensitive to the transient pleasures and euphoric thrills of falling in love but also fixed in a very specific context where the idea of lifelong happiness in a relationship has become impoverished in the face of widespread divorce. Blue Valentine dissects this harsh reality by centering in on a young married couple who are at the brink of marital collapse, staring into the abyss of a single life but still grasping onto traces of an idyllic past. Limited in its scope, it’s nonetheless a powerful, brutal, unsentimental film, but one not without a poignant realization of a kind of historical optimism, the ability to turn to memory as a way of coping with a dismal future.
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By livvyloo
The holiday season is upon us and this is most prevalent in the change of movies and shows airing. While ABC Family’s 25 days of Christmas is most known there is another less common holiday experience that many sci-fi fans will be happy to know about. On Christmas the highly anticipated Doctor Who Christmas special will air on BBC. If you do not know what Doctor Who is then you are missing out on the longest running Sci-fi show in history.
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By Carson Lund
In recent years, Claire Denis has made an unexpected jump from the abstract, open-ended story collages of The Intruder and Trouble Every Day to something more prosaic and definable, with results both safer and equally accomplished. The interaction between Denis’ bold, loose-limbed formal elements and the more straightforward narratives she has embraced makes for an interesting hybrid, certainly for 2008’s 35 Shots of Rum, a gentle Ozu homage, and perhaps even more so with her latest film White Material. This time she has ventured away from the sedate and fleeting pleasures of her previous film and revived the strain of implicit bloodlust so delicately hinted at in much of her cinema, yet the story structure remains comfortable. A somnambulistic and radiant French plantation owner named Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert) clings to the promise of her coffee beans even as a potent threat of indigenous violence swarms around her uncharted plot of African land. On all sides, a civil war obliterates her fences (both literally and figuratively), and the misshapen nature of them is scrutinized by Denis as if fences are ever anything more than superficial indicators of differentiation between people and ways of life in her work.
This indistinct political situation - a war between a violent native militia and a scattered group of rebels, as well as, to no lesser impact, a troupe of armed and dangerous kids - is merely given a cursory examination. Denis allows only the basics of this conflict to organically work themselves out in the viewer’s consciousness because it is, of course, a fictional construct, but also because Maria is so hopelessly unaware of specifics. Early on, in one of the film’s most memorable scenes, she stalls while taking a spin on her motorcycle before being called out by a helicopter of French troops who insist that she evacuate the country, where it has become especially dangerous in the no-man’s land of Café Vial. Maria just stands there stubbornly and confidently in the middle of the dirt road until, as if punishing her for not taking a hint, the helicopter swoops closer to the ground, clouding her with dust. The elimination of perspective as the dust explodes into the foreground of the shot visually encapsulates Maria’s arrogant and self-defeating vantage point, her inability to register the escalating tension around her, and it’s particularly jarring when placed aside the beautiful, liberating images that came before it of Maria happily riding her clunky motorcycle around her plantation (not unlike the final moments with The Wild Woman in The Intruder). Immediately, Denis establishes how purity and sensuality can exist right beside corruption and ugliness, a dialectic that could be the ideal description of the film’s complex treatment of Africa. Clearly, part of White Material’s thrust is the deconstruction of European colonialist attitudes, the feeling of simultaneous equality and superiority that frames Huppert’s character. Though it goes without saying that the film is criticizing this mindset through its relentless responses of terror to Maria’s acts of hypocrisy, Denis is never quite so single-minded. Within Huppert’s remarkable performance, there are dynamic displays of perseverance, tenderness, and intelligence to go along with her more glaring moments of smugness and exploitation, guaranteeing, if not outright sympathy, then at least no easy antagonizing. When Maria loses her familiar plantation workers and heads into town to collect more, the objectification and manipulation that she flexes is perhaps inexcusable, but later, Denis reveals her seemingly at peace with the son of her black ex-husband, going out of her way to pick him up from school, or generating a tentative but mutual relationship with “The Boxer” (Isaach de Bankolé), a washed-up, wounded rebel hiding out at her plantation and often cited on the radio broadcast that variably plays throughout the film. These instances portray Maria as a kinder and more accepting individual than she may initially seem, someone who simply wants to maintain the land she believes she owns legally and monetarily and will go to great lengths to do so. Cinema audiences want to be able to root for this kind of persevering figure - especially when, in her soft sun dresses and sandals, she looks like such an alien with no fighting chance - but Denis orchestrates a more complicated scenario, one without a clear-cut voice of moral authority.
This is further shrouded by the supporting players in the immediate and extended Vial family. To some degree, White Material functions as an opaque family drama driven by oft-suggested tensions among members, such as the feelings of disappointment, inadequacy, and estrangement surrounding Maria and her good-for-nothing son Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle) (even if this relationship triggers Huppert’s warmest offhand smile), the suspicion and loaded distrust between Maria and her other ex-husband André (Christopher Lambert), who negotiates a behind-the-scenes deal to sell the plantation, or the enigmatic force of Maria’s father-in-law and proprietor Henri (Michel Subor), a native of Africa who is more or less lounging around mysteriously whenever onscreen. Connections are challenged after a pivotal scene when Manuel is stripped and toyed with by a pair of spear-and-machete-wielding children in an open field just within the Vial’s boundaries, inspiring sudden and inexplicable Travis Bickle-isms in Manuel. Notably, he raids Henri’s dwelling before disappearing as a newly anointed vigilante/rebel, donning Henri’s purple robe as a displacement of his unspoken patriarchal power. This chilling scene forms the emotional undercurrent for the film’s ambiguous final dramatic cataclysm, an outbreak of violence that justifies the numerous recurring shots of unused weapons throughout.
Denis is typically subtle in her visual storytelling here, and it comes as no surprise that the “white material” of the title, which is defined by the natives quite simply as the products of the white colonists, comes to outline the characters and themes. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky has penned an essential visual essay about the particular objects that fill in for the psychological penetration that Denis deliberately eschews; it’s a collection of observations I only passingly picked up on when I watched it that confirms the offhand visual sophistication Denis offers in even her most comparatively direct narratives. It’s thrilling to experience the ways in which she loads this potentially didactic political critique with nuance and competing emotions, peppering her storytelling with various gaps (less expansive and inscrutable than in previous work) to encourage imaginative participation with the film. White Material’s an oppressive, breathtaking, and predictably complex experience, up there with the heights of Denis’ work.
By Andras Ostrom
Heavenly Creatures was an extremely well directed film for a number of reasons. The first is the choosing of the story, and the way in which it was told. The second reason is the incredible whimsical style in which the story was shot. The third is the casting and powerful performances. All of these factors, and many other smaller factors, came together under the direction of Peter Jackson to make a film that deeply affects us. But to understand why the story affects us so powerfully, we must consider why Peter Jackson chose this particular story and why he chose to tell it this way.
If one looks at this story from a purely objective level, as if reading about it in a newspaper, it’s an incredibly morbid and depressing story. We as an audience could never sympathize with such bad and seemingly amoral characters, especially considering this young girl murdered her own mother. Most people would might even pass them off as insane. However, I think Peter Jackson choose this story because he was interested in why these two girls did it. A director should be interested in what makes people tick and do what they do, no matter how gruesome, and Peter Jackson took up this challenge to try to understand how this girl and her friend could kill her own mother. I think that upon further investigation into the story, Peter Jackson realized that to tell the story straight would result in the audience not understanding the inner lives the the two girls, or the world that they constructed for themselves and lived in after they formed their close relationship. So he chose to create a highly stylized fantasy world, full of beauty, art, and optimism, which the two girls were trying to escape to. He also chose to depict normal 1950s New Zealand society as repressed and dull and awful, so we would clearly understand why these two girls would want to escape. To get even further into the head of our main protagonist, he gave her a voice over track so that we could hear her thoughts and desires, which made us sympathize with her even more. All these factors come together to make us love and root for these two girls and for this relationship to work out, but we find out to our horror that it leads to matricide. In a strange way, despite how crazy the girls get towards the end, we understand this desperate need for them to stay together, even though we may not have agreed with the tragic course of action that they took.
All this is aided by the stylistic directorial flourishes. The camera is constantly moving and there are spectacular crane and helicopter shots. The fantasy world of the two girls is wonderfully realized, as exemplified by the expert model work of the sand castle, and the special effects of the clay people who the girls love so much. It all symbolizes how they want to escape and be together in that magic place, and as an audience we want to be there too, instead of the drab and oppressed real world which seeks to break them apart.
Another strength in this movie is Peter Jackson’s casting choices. Kate Winslet gives a charismatic performance. She’s a true leader and rebel, vivacious, with an irresistible charm, so it’s no wonder Kate’s character falls for her and would try to follow her to the ends of the earth. Melanie Lynskey, who played Kate, was also very perfect for the role. She was more innocent and shy, and the opposing qualities of the two girls led to some very strong chemistry and attraction. The casting of the other supporting parts was excellent as well. Kate’s father really stands out as an interesting, humorous kind of character. Another strength of the film is that the parents of the kids are not portrayed as completely bad or oppressive, they’re just following common sense and the norms of society at the time, so we understand their point of view as well. The fact that Peter Jackson refrained from making everything black and white is another testament to his great direction in this film.
Ultimately, all these aspects of the film, among others, come together through Peter Jackson’s direction to make us really care for these characters and their story, which results in a powerful film that deeply affects us.
By Katherine Breeman
So you know that kid in school that has a giant blue head that isn’t even remotely in proportion to his scrawny body? You know the one that you make up nicknames for to draw everyone’s attention to his enormous head ? The one everyone laughs at? Well after watching Megamind, you’ll know why you shouldn’t make fun of him: he just might be a super-mega-villain that one day will overthrown Metro city, I mean your city, and make you and your friends part of his slave-army.
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By Carson Lund
(This review is referring to a screening at the Harvard Film Archive after which Pedro Costa himself spoke.)
“I don’t like documentaries. No one likes documentaries.”
Pedro Costa
They say great artists don’t know how to talk about their work. Or so the cliché goes. Pedro Costa reinvigorates this understanding; not only does he ponderously ramble on about matters somewhat tangential to those inquired about (which must partially be attributed to the language barrier), but in many instances he seems to present notions that contradict or complicate the ostensible motivations and ideologies present onscreen. When Costa half-jokes about a universal distaste for documentaries, one gets the sense that he’s referring to a didactic, dry form that he does not concern himself with. That much is clear. However, this offhand comment comes moments before an extended monologue about what he perceives to be a widespread disillusionment with the pleasures of fictional world-building, a lack of ability for contemporary audiences to invest in narratives with the same sense of wonderment and awe that cinema-goers did in the early 1900’s. All of this is curious when placed in context of the film in question, his latest venture into the vast gray area between narrative and documentary, Ne Change Rien. Nine out of ten viewers unaware of the exacting cinematic practice of Pedro Costa would call this a documentary, perhaps even an insipid, perplexing one at that, and that same sample would likely agree that Costa had no intentions of creating a skewed kind of “vampire story”. This pro-fiction babble is destabilizing coming from a director whose very films seem disillusioned by narratives, fixated as they are on worlds where all stories seem to have evaporated and there is little more to do than tirelessly investigate the strange tendencies of surfaces and people.
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By Alexander Fierro-Clarke
Swedish pop sensation Robyn disappeared for a while. After a few hits (“Show Me Love” and “Do You Know (What It Takes)”) in the nineties, she essentially vanished from the US music charts until this year. What was she doing during her ten-year departure from American pop culture? Over the years, working mostly in Europe, she has perfected her craft into something more than just dance music. This summer, she released the first of a series of albums entitled Body Talk, Pt. 1 in June. She issued the follow-up, Body Talk, Pt. 2, in September. The final segment will go on sale at the end of the year. Not to say her work is “mainstream music,” but this new series of albums has invigorated Robyn’s career and is quickly moving her back into the mainstream in America, a place she has long been comfortable in Europe. Despite the stigma that dance music is very shallow, her songs have incredible depth, both musical and lyrical. Robyn elevates current dance music to a never before reached high with her own unique sound; by defying modern pop conventions and setting herself apart, she creates original music worthy of her worldwide popularity.
A disgusting amount of this generation’s pop music uses the same contrived techniques to attract listeners. Artists like Ke$ha and Nicki Minaj rely far too much on autotune while others, such as Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus, have mediocre musical production values, including uninspired lyrics, insipid melodies and harmonies, and bland instrumentation. In one of her biggest singles of the year, Perry yowls, “California gurls, we’re unforgettable/Daisy dukes, bikinis on top/Sun-kissed skin, so hot, will melt your popsicle,” as an annoyingly repetitive synth beat and some light electric guitar plays underneath. Her songs are fine in their own right; however, they’re far from meaningful, worthwhile music.
As of late, there has been a resurgence of electronic and techno music, last widely popular in the 1980s. Perry and other artists have recognized this, adding limited synth and electronic layers to their music. Unfortunately, either they or their producers do not have enough knowledge of electronic-based music, as their attempts at it often come off as half-hearted and fall flat. Using well-produced electronic backing, Robyn’s songs have more musical substance and relevance than her simple pop counterparts. Instead of lightly peppering her songs with some synth, Robyn constructs her songs with a veritable electronic orchestra; “Fembot” and “Hang With Me” are perfect examples of this. Her dance beats soar, creating inescapably entertaining music.
Her limits do not end with her brilliant musicality. Robyn has keen, often biting lyrics. In stripped down versions of her songs, it is apparent she does not rely on instrumentation and studio production to make her work compelling; her voice and lyrics can be engaging on their own. Between her lyrics and song structure, Robyn’s music is far superior to standard American cookie-cutter singles. In “Fembot” she uses wordplay to compare herself to a robot. She raps, “I got a lotta automatic booty applications/Got a C.P.U maxed out sensation/Looking for a joy to man my station.” Later, in the chorus, she sings, “I’ve got some news for you/Fembots have feelings too/You split my heart in two.” She uses these lyrics as a means of describing herself as similar to other women, but really wants the listener to understand she has feelings too.
Robyn is not perfect; she does falter at times. While so much of her music is powerful and evocative, essentially the second half of Body Talk, Pt. 1 falls short. This could be a result of her desire to release three albums within half of a year, thus forcing her to extend her library to include some subpar tracks. Lesser songs include the Swedish lullaby “Jag Vet En Dejlig Rosa” and “Love Kills” from the first and second albums of the series, respectively.
Overall, however, Robyn’s music is powerful and fun. Her complete willingness to be herself and not what American audiences might want her to be ironically brought her to the top of the charts this summer with single “Dancing On My Own.” For instance, despite the fact she appears very masculine (instead of feminine and fragile, a style that might be expected from the song’s content) in the song’s music video, American audiences still bought into the song. By resisting in her music what a corporate studio might think is viable for modern listeners, she actually contends with the biggest commercial pop stars of the last few years. What makes Robyn’s music truly wonderful is her creativity. Her persona shines through all her songs, leaving the listener with heartfelt, danceable, evocative music. Why fall into the mainstream when originality is so much better? Robyn answers that question in big bass beats.
By Carson Lund
The great, mysterious, and unexpectedly funny counter-cultural hero Kenneth Anger made a special appearance at the Harvard Film Archive a week ago to show a selection of his films from very early on in his career to his latest digital work and to answer the questions of a fanatical audience. I was only able to attend one night, in which some of his most widely known experimental shorts were screening, and I was enormously impressed by the turnout. I’ve never seen the Archive sell out (they actually had to turn guests away at the entrance when the place had filled up, and I was the final one granted a ticket), and I’ve especially never seen such a mad, starstruck audience. Normally, cinema crowds are reserved and distanced, but here it was as if a generation of fanboys and fangirls were trying and failing to restrain their giddy idolatry. The result was a theater experience with a sense of communitarian spirit and aliveness that I haven’t been apart of in a while, maybe not since witnessing the dreadful Rocky Horror Picture Show cult. Why exactly does Anger, an esoteric leftist, open homosexual, and practitioner of the marginal Thelema religion, inspire such a furor when compared to other experimental film artists? Why not Michael Snow, Bruce Conner (who passed away two years ago), Su Friedrich, or Chantal Akerman? I think a lot of it has to do with the propensity for Anger’s films to be considered “trip movies”, or works that can pass as pure visual entertainment without necessitating intellectual engagement. These are very approachable films; they straddle so many ideas but do so in a way that invites comfort, a peripheral familiarity with the world as it’s depicted.
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 By Katherine Breeman
One the third day, despite a significant hangover from partying with famous filmmakers all night, I dragged myself to Rainbow’s End, the world premiere of a film by Eric Hueber. I’m glad I did! This documentary about East Texans on a trip to California in a schoolbus named “Green Hell” feels more like a narrative film - there’s no way these eccentric and diverse characters can really exist! (Only in Texas).
Country Willie and his band The Cosmic Debris (named for actual pieces of the space shuttle Columbia, which they’ve fashioned into a drum set) head to San Jose to record with “world-renowned Legendary Stardust Cowboy”, decide to turn this trip into a West Coast Tour. A few characters tag along. Birdman, (Brian Birdwell), has been fighting cocks his whole life and has a stone-cold killer rooster that he wants to audition in LA for a movie called “Cock Heat”. Audrey Dean, a baton twirling old bearded man in daisy dukes and a pink victorian flowered hat, heads for the Gay and Lesbian Institute in San Francisco. Peter Guizzano, a high school student who believes himself to be living in the seventies, goes after a musical career.
This ramshackle journey sets out, facing many obstacles: the bus is continually breaking, Audrey refuses to shower, Peter the Band doesn’t play any instruments, and of course the roosters crowing at all hours of the morning. More often then not, the bands are seen as a joke, Birdman is ridiculed for his roosters, and no one can quite know what to think of Audrey, but in the end we realize this matters very little. More importantly, we get to know these characters throughout the journey and begin to understand the chaos they are seeking and the bittersweetness that exists in our world.
During the Q & A after the film, the director, Birdman, and Country WIllie were present to answer questions. They seemed so out of place on the theater stage, uncomfortable, but also grinning as though they were all in on some big joke. Honestly, I needed to see them in person to believe these people were real. Hueber, when asked what he thinks of the 2004 film now, laments losing the spunk that enabled Rainbow’s End. Made with little money, no legitimate acting talent, and in fact inspired by the director’s own homelessness, Rainbow’s End became a haphazard search for dreams: the gold at the end of the rainbow.
By Katherine Breeman
On the second day of the film festival, I spent all day in screenings. So here’s a film review!
Hello Lonesome, writer/director Adam Reid’s first feature film, explores the world of six individuals and their relationships with loneliness. A widow who has recently lost her license to macular degeneration asks her neighbor to drive her to the grocery store. A successful voice-over artist finds himself alone in the country, with a trampoline, a go cart, his own sound studio, and a daughter who resents him as a selfish and egocentric father. A man and a woman meet online, and proceed to fall in love in person, but (of course!) things can’t be that simple.
Three intertwining stories play out, but never connect. The widow and the neighbor strike up a quirky and surprising relationship, the voice-over artist, still snubbed by his daughter (and perhaps for good cause) befriends the delivery man, and the unlikely romance of these internet lovers is cut short. Remarkable relationships are formed by the least likely of isolated individuals, and the result is hilarious, magical, and unbelievably tragic.
Hello Lonesome is a playful, rambunctious look at the intrinsic need to love and be loved, and the inevitable obstacles that always fall between. The realistic and unromanticized way Reid deals with his characters only makes their realizations and pain that much more heart-breaking. A film that is truer than most, Hello Lonesome illustrates with incredible impact that all we have in this life is one another.
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