Pulp Fiction Series #1: Demon Caravan, John Eagle Expeditor: Valley of Vultures, The Destroyer: The Final Death

I'm adding a new section here where I review pul fiction novels I read. Being deployed, there are a lot of organizations who like to send us free books to enjoy in our free time. Unfortunately, most of these books are crap. Here, I get to write a small ditty about the best of them! Some of them actually turn out pretty good--pretty good as in, they are crazy as hell and too cool for irony. Here are the first books of the series.

The Demon Caravan (Georges Surdez, 1927)
Action, romance, and adventure in the Sahara--belied by the era it was from, this book is total and complete French colonial romanticism. African slaves, violent Arabs, peaceful Berbers, and the civilized French caught right in the middle, it largely toes the French colonial bent, with the distant metropole always alluded to by reminiscing French Soldiers (that is, reminiscing for civilization) or barbarians admiring examples of what it is to be civil. However, as much as cluelessly colonial the story is, there are peeks of self-doubt: many a times, Surdez's French captain hero questions what civilization and conquest has brought to the savage beauty of North Africa. It almost pushes self-examination, but the answer is simple: the great ordering effect of Western law and civility.

John Eagle Expeditor: Valley of Vultures (Paul Edwards, 1975)

A James Bond wannabe, John Eagle is a white man raised as a native american (street cred) working for an unknown boss to bring about peace and harmony by kicking ass. Many dead people, many bombed houses, and many pleasured ladies (in this story, Eagle's only untouched female conquest is the Jewish female assasin that looks like she's sixty). In Valley of the Vultures, John Eagle tracks down Nazis who transplant testicles in the middle of South America. Yeah, apparently his nemeses throughout the series are the Nazis. But of course, he kicks their asses, until a lunatic member escapes right before he kills him, cackling and promising revenge. It's actually an engaging read, still much of the 60s, dedicated to world peace, yet also entering the 70s with its obession with manly men who can kick ass and pleasure women at the same time.

The Destroyer: The Final Death (Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy, 1977)

If John Eagle is the conscientous hero, Remo is the clueless athlete who could care less--that is, until it involves killing somebody with special kung fu moves. The Final Death is full-on Nixon anti-60s revenge era, where racial gags, mysoginism, and right-wing ideology abound. In this one, Remo tries to hunt down a clan of Chinese vegetarian activists who try to punish America by killing all meat-eaters in the country. Worse still, however, is when they reveal their true identity: Chinese vegetarian vampires! And oh shit, they can kung fu too. (Un)Fortunately, Remo is the white man with a funny Korean sidekick who writes a script for a TV soap opera, and he kicks all of their asses in many varied ways. Gore, sex, kung fu, and killing Chinese vampires...this one has all of them. But it's not really entertaining, more like "who comes up with this shit!?"

Blithe Spirit (David Lean, 1945)

A story of a two divorcees trying to affirm their love for each other amongst angry ghosts, Blithe Spirit is a good example of that traditional English form of comedy: very mundane happenings peppered with acerbic lines delivered in what is now considered “dead-pan.” Added to that are Lean’s mastery of light and shadows, cheesy but effective special effects, and a wonderful use of color, and one has a very entertaining movie delivered with a filmmaking that can only be described as enchanting. The plot could be the answer to the question posed by Lean’s next movie, Brief Encounter: what if the affair did go far enough? Would the man eventually regret his decision? Would the woman finally be granted happiness? The answer of course is no. Even the spirits, finally rid of their bodies, still seem bored and unfulfilled. Lean and Coward thus condemn us all to an eternal search for happiness—which, from the fun that the characters seem to be having, doesn’t seem all that bad.

Of all the characters, the most interestingly portrayed maybe Madame Arcati, the spiritual medium whom the couple invited for the purpose of exposing her “fraud,” and whose actions unleashed the spirits and the unresolved past on the insecure couple. She isn’t aloof and decaying like other old cinematic mediums, or a nut-job who quite obviously is faking the funk. Arcati is a lively British eccentric who clearly believes in what she does and loves what she does. It was her “fraud” that the film’s other characters was supposed to expose, and instead it was theirs that she exposed. She was also the film’s stand-in within the film, unleashing the magic of cinema to the “realism” of cinema. To that extent, Arcati is Lean’s stand-in, as the character that opened the audience—who expects the reality of pictures played before them—to the magic of photographic effects.

The other really interesting aspect of the movie is its use of Technicolor. The ghosts weren’t merely ghosts—invisible and all that—but separated from the “world” by their color (ashen gray, sometimes greenish) and how gusts of air from unknown sources that blow their gowns about make them look immaterial. Again, Lean does the invisible thing when he needs to, but his reliance on the coloring effect emphasizes the separation between the living and not living. This in turn emphasizes the characters’ placement in relation to one another: characters who could not see the “ghosts” looking in the wrong direction (except for Arcati, whose upturned gaze always looks at the correct general direction), the always close husband but never close enough, and the stiff wife who competes against the former wife’s ghost. These constant shifts emphasize that eternal “search,” and the fun to be had to look for something one cannot even see.

May Lady (Rakhshan Bani Etemad, 1998)

Although Etemad's Nargess (1992) is the film which many consider the film to which comparisons are to be made to truly judge her work, I have never seen Nargess. Thus, I guess I am truly capable of judging her work in the accepted sense. But having seen Under the Skin of the City (2001) and her pitch-perfect Gilaneh (2005), I have to say that May Lady is somewhat of a digression. Filmed like an Iranian love poem with its constant reliance on literal rich metaphors, May Lady follows the life of a middle class woman, part mother to her son, part artist, and part lover to an unknown and unseen man of whom her son disapproves, both because she is divorced and because she is tangled in somewhat of an Oedipal struggle with him. The film is driven by the mother's musings, questioning her relationship with her kind but rebellious child, to her unseen lover who we only know from the letters he writes, and to the culture that forces her to choose between roles. All of this, while she makes a film about the "exemplary" Iranian mother. For the most part, Etemad is lost, never settling into a rhythm that really drives the conflicts of having to chose one's identity. It sounds ironic, requiring certainty in form to depict uncertainty in theme, but to an extent the uncertainty in her filmmaking--the inability to make either her voice-over or camera take dominance, or to fully depict the conflicts that bind lover, son, and mother together--belies a certainty in the opposite of what she wants to say about the role of the woman in Iran. The conflicts remain unsaid because sadly, one has to admit that in this case, there may be none at all. Unlike the mothers of her documentary, her conflicts stem from this perceived "choice." She realizes that she has options, and must choose one over another. Compared to the faces and lives of the women she captured on tape and stops, rewinds, and fast forwards on her editing deck at will, the question posed back to her dilemma is, "so what?" Unlike their brave choice to just be, the mother's brazen idea that there is any other option but to live disables Etemad from humanizing her, instead posing her as a "question" rather than a character. Gladly, Etemad's mother/filmmkaer does finish her film, through Gilaneh, which we are all very lucky to have.

The clock (Vincente Minnelli, 1945)

Produced during--or in this case, right at the very end of--WWII to, like many other films during the time, to bolster the war effort, The Clock is a classic Minnelli, constructed with equal lyricism evident in Minnelli's musicals such as Gigi or Meet Me in St. Louis applied to the romantic/melodrama non-musical format. A soldier goes on a pass in New York City, but finds a city cold and crowded until she meets another lonely person from a different world (in her case, a Midwestern transplant desperate to be a native--kinda like Sex and the City). In a short span of a day (or is it a few days? I don't remember) they familiarize, fall in love, and marry before they are separated by war. The Clock is a precursor to many modern movies that deal with urban alienation and the existential crises of human beings trapped between the machinations of history and the great men that drive it. His crowd scenes are intense--swirling camerawork, frames filled to the brim of walking/running feet, bumping against each other but not necessarily meeting each other--and lorded over by the machine that define and threaten to destroy modern life: the clock, which has regimented life and compartmentalized moments and signifcant times in one's lifespan into sconds, minutes, hours. But unlike Harry Lime's last minute gesture of desperation, the two lovers raise their hands in a promise that through it all, they will transcend their mechanical reality. It may not fall within the philosophical confines of film noir, but this cheery culmination of a sordid reality is just as defiant and just as strong a statement against that very march of time as the dark and pessimistic tone that American cinema will soon take.

American Gangster (Ridley Scott, 2007)

I recently had the opportunity to catch American Gangster again tonight, from a German station that specializes in recent American releases, since watching it on the big screen when it came out a few months ago. This second outing surely reiterated to me just why I hated this movie so much. Bottom line, this movie, directed by one of the greatest and most successful hacks in Hollywood in the past two decades, is just a giant ball of badly-executed liberal cliches that only seek to exploit the cynical and condescending attitude pervasive in the contemporary, average, "smart" audience. It deems itself an expose to the "lie" that is the "American dream," but everything in quotes: "negro," "war," "soldier," "truth," "integrity," "community." Scott cannot conceive of a populace working to better their lives because there simply is no other option. No, he turns America into a place of crooks and the people they victimize. Even if he had to tell the story of criminals and the criminal minded cops designed to catch them, he does not even go into why criminals do what they do, and cops do what their adversaries do. Only, that they live in the post-60s world of corruption and war, and that their lives are strictly regulated by those facts. Scott's characters aren't characters, more like sketches of what a "Criminal" and a "cop" would be given the time frames.

With the heavy commercializing of Jay-Z's album released concurrently with the film's premiere and the vision of Denzel's character as a "revolutionary cinematic black character," the producers o this film shamelessly tapped into the very attitudes amongst communities of color that created the world that they portray and ultimately condemn in their film. Gangsters and violence are glorified, and the use of progressive Civil Rights ideals to justify their glorification and justification is despicable. The film's argument that a black man rising in power in influence through the destruction of others' lives is justified because his society has done nothing to him only reveals an ignorance of the legacy of the community to people of color. Scott's ethnicization of the failures of American society without explicitly addressing the complex results of the skin color of his pro/antagonists (Colbert's satirical line comes to mind: "I see beyond color") only reveals the liberal tendency to which Scott caters of hiding deeply held social prejudices behind progressive and cynical analyses of history.

In terms of filmmaking, there is nothing to discuss. The film is bland, lacking anything significant or captivating. It has the clinical movement of a perfectly executed Hollywood film, devoid of the lyricism of the Burnett films released earlier in the year (films that were more incisive in its look at the black community, which is probably the reason why they were also more ignored). Scott could have at least made his black actors look good photographed, but he doesn't have Spike Lee's capacity and frankly the sense of urgency to do so. His black actors look anemic, like they were destined to look like crack addicts. His New York City is as flatly photographed, and his editing lacks the pace and rhythm as determined by somebody who knows what he is doing.

It's disappointing really, having such a movie with such potential ruined by such an inept director. But really, being a movie made in 2007, it is on par with it's colleagues. 2007 is filled with equally disappointing and equally appalling movies such as Zodiac, Juno, Atonement, and There Will be Blood. American Gangster is a monumental failure, but to be honest it is a monumental failure in a year that was by and large a monumental cinematic failure.

Atonement (Joe Wright, 2007)

An overblown epic about childhood mistakes morphing into adult regrets, Atonement is nothing but a bore. It has been overpraised for its use of cinematic flourishes, which really did nothing but to confuse a story best kept simple and sincere. The first and second acts that involved the intrigues of an upper-class British family vacationing at the countryside lacked the lazy yet critical elegance of Altman or Davies. (Let's all admit it: we watch these kinds of movies to both marvel at the lives we do not and cannot live and be bitter at our incapacity to live such a life of comfort.) The act was dished out through frenetic cuts and deplorably grandiose camera techniques which showed nothing but the filmmakers' lack of internal sense of pacing or framing. It seems the filmmakers wanted to say something about class, but kind of missed the fact that their pornographic focus on the upper class deny them the right or the ability to be conscious of it. (Robbie was a help's son, but so what? He seems like he has nothing better to do than flirt with the family's pretty girls and dine with them. In short, he's a gentleman in ratty clothes.) This overuse of literary/cinematic high-mindedness reached its peak with the five-minute Dunkirk scene, which was not only detached from the rest of the movie but merely indulged the civilian fantasy of the infantile soldier. Briony's character however suffers the greatest. Her “perspective” involved the most use of dollies, cranes, and jump cuts, but what it crucially left out is Briony herself. When she is a young girl, she remains pitifully immature. When she becomes old, she did not necessarily grow, just become more pitiful. Her sexuality was never explored, only portrayed as curio in the film's display of Corruption. (In fact, the film is so cowardly as to limit adolescent sexuality to rape.) When she grows old, she merely becomes an overblown tween whose only lesson from the past is regret and sorrow. Which is sad, because a mature Briony would have salvaged this dry and humorless movie (and actually raise the idea of “atonement” to “salvation”), and would have given reason for Vanessa Redgrave's appearance.

Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931)

Feeling through a world that has already ordered itself without consulting him, Frankenstein's mosnter is most pathetic not because he is merely different--taller, shoulders more squared, eyes recessed deeper--but because his emotions and sensation are the same yet incommunicable in a world where such emotions and sensations are no longer just as such, but rather understood through complex indoctrinated systems that dictate how to act, move, and to socialize. Not that the Frankenstein clan necessarily chooses to ignore the new sensations that Frankenstein feels and thinks he must explore, but rather because their only association with it is through the supporting system of customs, rituals, and prejudices. Without these, the Frankensteins are as "abnormal" as the monster, but the safety of which they choose not to leave. The final scene of the burning windmill with the monster trapped inside is most haunting because it clearly points to this binary between the monster and its creators: with the monster, the pain of murder and being murdered is clearly etched into his face and psyche. He understands murder not just through legalistic descriptions, but as the mere termination of life (the girl: first she speaks, next she's gone). The crowd on the other hand understands it only through ideas of retribution, normalcy, order. While the monster's reaction to his murder is pure agony, the mob's reaction to the murder of one of their own is one of being wronged (which, of course, implies a right). Whale's design for the film is straight out of Caligari's hospital through Conrad's eyes. Frankenstein's laboratory has walls that undulate, ceilings that spiral up, and hallways that juts into the horizon through exaggerated tromps d'oeil. Lights criss-cross to further push the effect of the set construction, highlighting shadowed corners, menacing beams, light from the building exteriors. Cmpare this, the monster's birthplace, to the grand rooms of the Frankenstein mansion, where the decor and construction is ordered by "good taste," by what is acceptably aristocratic.

Mad Love (Karl Freund, 1935)

The story of a surgeon's fanatic love for a woman he cannot have, Mad Love is a prime example of the influences of German expressionism in early sound Hollywood and involved the collaboration of three huge imports from the Weimar studios: the great actor Peter Lorre and the cinematographers Gregg Toland and Karl Freund (acting as the film's director). Peter Lorre is his most exaggeratedly best in this movie, eyes bulging out further than in Fritz Lang's M and his gleaming dome reminiscent of Uncle Fester if his travails as a monstrous creature was ever taken seriously and not just for comic relief. Lorre's Dr. Gogol is as sinister as any German monster, but his expressive face, pathetically stubbly fingers, and short stature that causes him to always have to look up gave this horrific monster a humanity and even a reason for being so evil. All around him, truth, morality, and sexuality are being traded for mere francs, and he cannot participate not only because he is far too generous (he tells a crying mother that she does not have to surrender her last fifty francs, only later to discover that she is wearing a giant gleaming ring), but because ironically, he is far too ugly to ever be part of this "normal world." His efforts to "own" the thing he loves--which in essence is what has been happening during the entire film, people owning and buying each others' devotions and allegiances--fires back, leading to his sad demise (the reunion of the woman he covets and her husband is heard in the background, while Gogol slowly dies). Gregg Toland and Karl Freund adds to Lorre's tragic character the eeriness and highly-contrasting shadows of German cinema, especially the use of sillhouettes to represent characters (a technique that will later find its greatest expression in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), a film clearly influenced by Citizen Kane (1940), which Toland lensed). The constant interchange between high-angle and low-angle shots, Freund's specialty (he innovated the use of multiple camera angles for use in television broadcast) here worked well in depcting Gogol's psychological downfall and eventually, his death. In essence, Mad Love is a horror masterpiece and a great example of the German contribution to Hollywood cinema.

Bjork's "Declare Independence" (Michel Gondry, 2007)

I've never been a big fan of Bjork's music, simply because I don't really know how to respond to it. I never know if she's playing with the pop form, going beyond it, or not even bothering with it at all (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly makes listening to her music a little harder). But I am a fan however of Michel Gondry's videos, and this one is no different. Gondry's signature of building simple strokes into a cacophony of effects suit the song's industrial sound well, and adds a touch of irony and a layer of complexity into Bjork's relationship with pop music ("declare independence," she says to an audience whose head is connected to her megaphone).

Ira and Abby (Robert Cary, 2006)

Obsessed in romanticizing and pathologizing the neuroses of people trapped in the confines of large cities and drowned in seas of faceless human beings incapable of communicating, Ira and Abby's opening scene is a red flag enough: Ira (Chris Messina, who depicted a more balanced city dweller as the Republican attorney Ted in Six Feet Under) is babbling on and on while in his therapist's couch. When his therapist breaks up with him, he walks out into the streets, Rilo Kiley's "Ripchord" playing in the background, used in the most literal way possible. The film would have been fine, if it dwelled simply on Ira and Abby's (played by Jennifer Westfeldt) relationship and shotgun wedding(s). Instead, it is hampered by the movie's desire to address the "issue" of marriage, as a contract and as an expression of social constructs and pressures. It failed to recognize the act of marrying and signing contracts as first a display of devotion between two people, and second as a recognition of the state to officiate such emotions existing between two human beings. In the end, the film's focus on marriage as contract rather than declaration of true faith made the "issues" of marriage (infidelity, loneliness) a little trite and pointless, the promise to stay merely being just a contract. The movie was highly critical of marriage, but never fully delved into the very motivations people have in having the contract regardless. The promotion for the film says that it is a "subversive" movie, which goes to show how much easier it is to reject an established idea than it is to understand it and know the very reasons why people allow ideas to be established and become dogma.