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.