Looking over the
screenings that I had lined up for my second day at AFI
Fest 2007, I kept thinking about how impossible it would
be for me to find a common theme between my selections in
order to start writing about them. After all, what the
hell would a post-apocalyptic American sci-fi allegory by
Richard “Donnie Darko” Kelly, a Lebonese romantic
comedy by first-time writer/director Nadine Labaki, and a
Palme d’Or-winning Romanian abortion-drama by Cristian
Mungiu all have in common? And yet, strangely, I found a
very noticeable uniting theme between the three works as I
watched them, a driving concept explored by each of them:
government oppression. As diverse as these films are and
as different as they wish to be, they are all deeply
rooted in the same subject. Not surprisingly, their
success as motion pictures directly corresponds with how
accurately and insightfully they depict said government
oppression.
There are many
things wrong with Kelly’s Southland Tales, but
underneath all of its flashy excess, one realizes the true
reason why the movie fails: it is just another ridiculous,
uninformed cinematic assault on the Bush Administration.
Like Donnie Darko on steroids, the movie talks in
circles and engages in mindless tomfoolery at will (only
this time without the brains to back it up). For much of
the running length, most viewers will have no clue what’s
going on in terms of the central story, but the movie’s
thesis boils down to the following simple idea: the Bush
Administration is violating the civil liberties of
Americans on a regular basis and this will ultimately lead
to the United States becoming a fascist state led by
Neo-Conservatives. In other words, Southland Tales
may seem to be one of the most complex mindfucks in the
history of filmmaking, but it really only exists to
vocalize one-dimensional and half-baked political
assertions.
Southland
Tales takes place in July 2008, in a radically
different United States than the one that we live in
today. In other words: the country has fallen by the
wayside and it’s all Bush’s fault. After two towns in
Texas, El Paso and Albeine, were nuclear-bombed and World
War III commenced, the U.S. Government soon militarized
and decided to abuse the Patriot Act in order to develop
an organization called USIdent, which monitors everyone,
everywhere, all the time. And the fascistic ways of said
government aren’t about to change; Republican Senator
Bobby Frost is poised to win the 2008 Presidential
Election against Hillary Clinton by a landslide.
Within the
context this wild climate, the viewer is introduced to
three main characters. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is Boxer
Santeros, a famous actor (clearly modeled after Arnold
Schwarzenegger) who wakes up in the desert with a
mysterious case of amnesia. He finds his way back to his
native Los Angeles, trying to stay under government radar
in the fear that he was kidnapped by a covert
organization. In L.A., he returns home to porn-star Krysta
Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who he is cheating on his
wife (Senator Frost’s daughter, played by Mandy Moore)
with. Krysta and Boxer intend to make a movie together, in
which he will star as protagonist Jericho Kane. In order
to research the role of Jericho, Boxer studies a man who
he assumes to be LAPD Officer Roland Taverner (Seann
William Scott). What Boxer doesn’t know is that Roland is
actually Ronald, Roland’s twin brother, who is conspiring
with a group of Neo-Marxists led by his mother and
Krysta Now in an elaborate political plot. Ronald will
commit a racist crime as a cop while Boxer is with him,
which will in turn make Boxer look bad for being present
at the scene. When public opinion of Boxer drops, so will
that of his wife and her father, the President-to-be. As a
result, Clinton will hopefully reign victorious in the
upcoming election and, in the deluded view of the
Neo-Marxists, perhaps restore justice in America.
Oh, and I forgot
to include a few more key plot elements in my synopsis.
The whole thing is narrated by an Iraq War Veteran played
by Justin Timberlake, who I should also mention performs a
karaoke rendition of The Killers’ “All These Things That I
Have Done” directly to the camera toward the end of the
second act. And then there’s also the fact that, as the
plot unfolds to Timberlake’s narration, Boxer comes to
believe that he actually is his character, Jericho. Or
maybe he really is Jericho, because a real
time-rift that was caused by tectonic-plate movement
mentioned in his film-script could truly be real, and
therefore could have led Boxer to split into two separate
people, one in the past and one in the present. (The split
would’ve occurred sometime between when he left Los
Angeles and when he woke up in the desert.)
If that all
sounds complicated, you haven’t heard the half of it. The
main problem with the picture is that Kelly assumes that
the audience will confuse complicated for
complex and therefore come to regard him as some kind
of legit socio-political commentator. Just about
everything that Southland Tales has to say about
America is left-wing propaganda without any cohesive
backing. The movie is an enraged piece of art that cannot
justify its own enragement.
Still, I would be
lying if I didn’t say that I thought the whole thing was
preposterously entertaining in more ways than one. As
conscious as I am of the fact that Southland Tales
represents complete cinematic inanity, I have a bit of a
soft-spot for it. After all, who else but Richard Kelly
would dare to commit the aforementioned vision to the
silver-screen? And who else would try to convince studios
to finance the project with what appears to be well over
$50 million worth of cash? And, if that wasn’t enough, who
else would then recruit Sarah Michelle Gellar, Dwayne “The
Rock” Johnson, Mandy Moore, Justin Timberlake, Kevin
Smith, and Seann William Scott to star in this
movie? Truth be told, I admire Kelly as much as I hate him
for failing and daring to fail in such an off-the-wall,
idiotic way.
I don’t want to
claim that there aren’t many isolated moments of beauty in
Southland Tales, because there are. For this
reason, the film’s near 150-minute running length flies by
rather quickly. Kelly gets career-best performances out of
Gellar (who has never been sexier) and Johnson, despite
the absurdity of their roles. Of what significance their
work is, I dunno. You tell me whether or not acting can be
significant even when the film that it belongs to is
thoroughly insignificant itself. Regardless, the overall
loopy quality that Gellar and Johnson embody here steals a
host of scenes. The visual effects and cinematography of
the film are also worth mentioning, with particularly
striking images coming from a sequence towards the end of
the film in a flying-over-Los Angeles sequence involving
brothers Ronald and Roland.
My favorite
moments of Southland Tales were those in which I
didn’t understand a lick of what was going on. During said
moments, I found myself not caught up in the half-assed
statements that Kelly tries to make, but rather the
movie’s loony atmosphere and appearance. On the whole,
however, the film proves a failure that I am able to
appreciate only as a basic exercise in chaos. That
Southland Tales somehow comes together to form
something (even if it isn’t inherently good) is
somewhat of a cinematic miracle. I may not like what Kelly
says or the manner in which he says it, but I certainly
recognize his vision as a complete work of art, which,
with so much shit going on in the immediate plot
and even more shit taking place in the viewer’s
mind, is an accomplishment in and of itself.
Labaki’s
Caramel explores a much more real form of government
oppression than the one experienced by the characters in
Southland Tales: the legal persecution of females
in the Middle East. That being said, the movie’s tone
isn’t highly bleak or somber, rather using the plight of
the Woman in Lebanon as a backdrop for its central story.
In fact, Caramel is actually rather light-hearted
for the majority of its running length (the festival
programmer who introduced it even went as far as to dub it
a “chick flick”), operating as an affable character study
following the lives of the employees and customers of a
Beirut beauty parlor.
The protagonist
of Caramel is Layale (Labaki herself, who is
radiant and tremendously attractive in the role), the
proprietor of the beauty shop. Layale lives a troubled
personal life, caught up in an affair with a married man
who isn’t particularly interested in having a relationship
with her so much as he is in the ability to have sex with
two different women. At Layale’s side are employees
Nisirine (Yasmine Al Masri),
who is engaged to be married herself but doesn’t know how
to tell her traditionalist Muslim husband that she isn’t a
virgin (or hide the fact from him), and Rima (Joanna
Moukarzel), who fully realizes her lesbian sexuality when
a mysterious client begins to attract her. Layale’s main
clients include Jamale (Gisele Aouad), a middle-aged woman
coping with the process of aging, and Rose (Siham Haddade),
an old regular to the parlor who is constantly troubled by
her elderly quack of an older sister.
Caramel’s characters prove endearing and the movie
is almost uniformily well-acted. Still, there is little
inherently original about the story or its participants.
What is most fascinating about the film is the intimate
look that it provides Western viewers of Lebanese culture.
Typically, Lebanon is regarded as a very modern nation
because of the large percentage of Christians living there
(at least compared to those of other Arab countries).
Still, as one learns watching Caramel, a major part
of the average Lebanese citizen’s lifestyle (particularly
that of a woman) is dictated by traditional Islamic Law.
This aspect of the film proves particularly riveting when
Layale tries to rent a hotel room for she and her
forbidden partner to spend their anniversary in. At nearly
every location, she is denied this ability because she
doesn’t share his last name (and is therefore presumably
not married to him, meaning a sexual relationship between
the two is morally forbidden).
As eye-opening as Caramel may seem to me, an
American, I must also consider how other audiences might
respond to it. If I was a man of Lebonese descent watching
the movie, I would probably find it mediocre and rather
boring. While the artistic elements of the film are not
inherently bad, they certainly lack inspiration and
are only slightly better than what you might find in a
good Lifetime Original Movie. If I was a female of
Lebonese descent, I would be even less interested in the
movie because I wouldn’t be captivated by the action of
staring at Lebaki’s luscious face (her notable charm
aside). As a straightforward piece of cinema, cultural
insights disregarded, Caramel is rather unoriginal.
As such, I am only able to recommend the movie to those
who would like to learn about Lebonese Culture without
having to endure tedious History Channel programs on the
subject.
The most successful work to shine a light on government
oppression that I saw during my second day at AFI Fest
2007 struck me as a breathtaking masterpiece.
Mungiu’s
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days beautifully recalls the
tradition of cinema verite employed by the
participants of the French New Wave, stripping itself down
to the bare essentials of filmmaking and crafting a
product of frustrated social significance out of them. On
the exterior, there is very little to the movie, but its
effortlessness is supremely deceiving. Mungiu carefully
places every frame of film and displays a stunning
emotional prowess over the material—in fact, he only shot
one scene that didn’t make the final cut—and creates a
work that is impossible not to be affected by. He may not
be as technically innovative as Godard or Truffaut were in
their day, but he is every bit as much concerned with the
vitality of grassroots cinema.
The film takes place in 1987 Communist-ruled Romania.
Mungiu depicts the influence of the totalitarian
government in a very even-handed manner, most prominently
displaying the practical ways in which ordinary people are
affected by the oppressive State (such as having to buy
imported cigarettes on the Black Market). The protagonist
is Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) who, the viewer soon learns,
has decided to aid in the illegal abortion of her college-roommate
Gabita’s (Laura Vasiliu) unborn child. Spearheading the
operation due to Gabita’s noticeable fear and despair,
Otilia finds a hotel room for the procedure to be
conducted in, meets with the abortionist (Vlad Ivanov),
and ensures that no one catches them in the process. She
is not fearless, but never shows her true vulnerability,
realizing that peoples’ lives are in
her hands and that she has accepted responsibility in the
situation.
Despite being labeled “the Abortion Movie” ever since it
won the Palme d’Or this year at the Cannes Film Festival,
the picture makes very few comments on the morality of the
practice of abortion itself. Mungiu openly acknowledges
the barbarism of the procedure through the film (as seen
in a long take, which prominently shows the aborted fetus
in the foreground), but understands that it is not his
place to make any type of contemporary political statement
on the issue. He merely depicts a set of real people and
asks the viewer to consider the actions of these people
when they are thrust into an extraordinary situation.
There are no clearly defined heroes or villains in 4
Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, just characters
responding to the events that arise in their lives.
Whether Gabita, Otilia, the abortionist, or the government
is to blame for Gabita’s terminated pregnancy is the
decision of the audience alone.
Whatever conclusion one reaches about the justness of the
abortion by the end of the film (if this conclusion is
relevant to one’s impression at all), one will be
fittingly shaken by Mungiu’s harrowing depiction of the
events in the film. He sticks to uncompromisingly
long, fixed takes in nearly every scene, carefully framing
each shot. All at once, the viewer forgets that Mungiu is
manipulating what is onscreen and never forgets the
genius of his work. A sequence of very few shots in which
the abortionist describes the procedure and its severity,
particularly because of the revealed true age of Gabita’s
child, functions
powerfully in this regard. As much as we might like to
trivialize the abortionist’s character to make the story
easier to swallow, Mungiu doesn’t allow us to. The
abortionist, called Mr. Bebe, is a human being who is
risking just as much as Gabita thinks that she is in
conducting the procedure: a life, a family, and a sense
freedom from the oppressive government. (Abortion in
Communist Romania was, of course, severely punishable by
law).
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days never pretends to
find a Light at the End of the Tunnel; Mungiu remains
unrelentingly realistic in his approach throughout. To
grant these characters a tidy ending (although the viewer could
certainly interpret the one that they get as being
hopeful) would be of grave disservice to them. Once
the abortion is actually carried out, the graveness of the
action surfaces, affecting Otilia in particular. She is
the focus of the film for a reason, forced to endure a far
stronger range of emotions than any other character
involved due to
her burdening feeling of responsibility concerning the
unfolding events. This feeling is captured perfectly in a
heart-stopping, primal, gut-wrenching, minutes-long
tracking shot in which she must dispose of the unborn
fetus.
That I have written a full page on the film and not once
singled out the extraordinary performance of Marinca in
the role of Otilia speaks to just how much I have to
praise about the work. However, without Marinca, 4
Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days would be nowhere near the
affecting motion picture that it is. The actress brings both
strength and imperilment to a complex character, somehow
allowing the viewer to feel unconditionally sympathetic to Otilia while still questioning her sense of morality.
Largely due to Marinca’s nuanced work, 4 Months, 3
Weeks, and 2 Days cements itself as a complex,
challenging, relevant, and ultimately draining piece of
cinema. To my eyes, the picture represents an instant
landmark in contemporary filmmaking. Right now, in
November of 2007, I am almost certain that I will not see
a better picture than this one released in all of 2008.
Thus concludes my second day at AFI Fest 2007. One
ambitious failure, one interesting look into an
all-too-ignored culture, and one great film made for a
solid session of festival-style binge-viewing. Upward and
onward to Day Three!
-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews
(post date: 11.20.2007)
