Sundance 2011: The Nine Muses

As a film archivist and student of Classics, The Nine Muses (John Akomfrah 2010), a Ghana/UK co-production, was irresistible to me. This film was pitched as an experimental documentary/personal essay about the plight of the filmmaker's ancestors and others like them - immigrants from former British colonies coaxed to Great Britain to reconstruct a depleted workforce after WWII - illustrated by archive footage and ancient and modern poetry and categorized by themes represented by the nine Muses and set in the framework of the story of Odysseus' son, Telemachus, searching for his father as told in Homer's Odyssey.

Although the film's premise was fascinating enough to draw me into the theater and garner UK lottery funding, the overall execution of the piece is very poor.

The movie is divided into nine sections, one for each of the Muses:

Calliope: epic poetry

Clio: history

Erato: love poetry

Euterpe: song

Melpomene: tragedy

Polyhymnia: hymns

Terpsichore: dance

Thalia: comedy

Urania: astronomy

Each section features archive footage of workers who were brought to England to do blue collar jobs that badly needed to be filled in the country's struggling Postwar economy, then ostracized and eventually labelled an immigrant problem. The footage is accompanied by preexisting music and poetry meant to draw out to mood and fate of the immigrant community.

Unfortunately, many of the segments' content bears only a tenuous connection to its theme. The comedy section in particular displays a poor understanding of the ancient term, which generally referred to stage plays with happy endings. In The Nine Muses the comedy segment focuses on the tragic irony that the people brought in to save the British economy were later demonized as undesirables within the country.

The film's connection to The Odyssey is similarly vague. Homer's poem is quoted in the film, and we do see the filmmaker traveling in an inhospitable landscape in a metaphorical search for his heritage's meaning, but the metaphor is undeveloped. Throughout the film, we see Akomfrah and other, faceless people standing and walking in the snow in endless recurring segments unsubtly representing the lonely, misfit status of the descendents of this poorly integrated immigrant group. All of this footage was shot in Alaska, which is increasingly apparent as Akomfrah includes shots of American speed limit and other signs posted along icy coasts and snow covered roads. Although the cinematography in this section is very pretty, the repetitiveness of the shots and their irrelevant yet easily pinpointed location stagnates the film and the filmmaker's journey of personal discovery.

The subject matter in this film is historically and socially important and, it seems, little discussed in my part of the world. This documentary represents the poor execution of a creative interpretation of an important and interesting subject. Somebody should try again.

Sundance 2011: The Troll Hunter (Trolljegeren)

Last winter at Sundance 2011 I saw only a few films, and the top pick of the group was the U.S. premier Norway's The Troll Hunter (or Trolljegeren) (André Øvredal 2010).  Inspired by Norwegian fairy tales, this clever and creative mockumentary-horror-comedy follows three Volda college documentarians - reporter Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), sound girl Johanna (Johanna Mørck) and cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) - who stumble upon a government conspiracy to cover up the existence of trolls while investigating a series of supposedly bear related deaths.

Believing him to be a poacher, the students foolishly follow Hans (Norwegian comedian Otto Jespersen) into the woods where they are attacked by a troll.  Although actual fairy tale trolls wear clothes and talk and act like human beings, this movie's trolls are animals that have been secretly restricted to territories in Norway's less traveled areas.  The deadpan Troll Hunter, Hans, is solely responsible for controlling the population and keeping the country clear of marauding trolls who escape their designated territories.

Though Øvredal's script does deal with political and environmental issues - it consistently satirizes the government agents and their cover-up, humorously addresses the erection of gigantic power lines all over Norway's fantastic scenery and, more poignantly, touches upon the subject of the control and even extermination of dangerous natural predators - the film is more concerned with being an light, exciting horror comedy than a serious social commentary, a decision which works to its advantage. 

Practically a road movie, the film was shot all over Norway, and the extraordinary landscapes are both well used - as habitats for different trolls - and well shot.  Although the characters are students, they are clearly meant to be experienced filmmakers, and, the movie successfully captures the feel of an on-the-fly amateur production without falling prey to irritating hallmarks of the "found footage" genre like dizzying, shaky camera movements.

The actors, who were encouraged to deliver their own interpretations of the written dialog, stay true to their characters' filmmaking roles.  We hardly ever see Kalle, the cameraman, who wields a hefty shoulder camera with minimum jitter (except when fleeing trolls) while and Johanna uses professional grade sound equipment that supposedly picks up all sorts of alarming troll sounds. Øvredal effectively uses details of the filmmaking process - white balance, hooking up the boom mic - to enhance both the realism of the documentary within the film and the suspense, shock and horror brought on by the trolls when the monsters are revealed suddenly through night vision (used with tasteful restraint) or the activation of Johanna's microphone. 

The trolls themselves are wonderfully designed.  Taken from the illustrations in fairy tale books, the trolls steer clear of more conventional horror movie monsters; their bulbous noses make them look like giant, man-eating Muppets, and the CGI, all carefully crafted by Norwegian artists unused to the opportunity to work on a large scale film (in this case a comparatively low $3-4 million), blends in well with the environment.

The film loses suspense by showing the monsters so often, but it is plain that the Øvredal's goal is comedic fantasy with a horror element rather than straight up horror.  Fast paced and entertaining, The Troll Hunter is a memorable film my friends and I still refer to nearly 10 months later. 

Since I saw The Troll Hunter at Sundance it has played in American theaters and is now available on DVD and, currently, on Netflix streaming.  Highly recommended.

They're Here . . .

After a long absence I have decided to revive (or re-animate) this blog, just in time for Halloween 2011 and in celebration of the long awaited theatrical release of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, my favorite film from Sundance 2010. Check out my review from the festival screening.  Tucker and Dale vs. Evil comes out this Friday, September 30.

Elisha Cook Jr. Film Series: I Wake Up Screaming

I Wake Up Screaming (Bruce Humberstone 1941) has a title that could mean nearly anything.  But, after viewing the film, that vague, generic title seems surprisingly fitting. A fast paced mystery with over the top dialogue and lighting and a threatening overweight detective reminiscent of characters in later films like Born to Kill (Robert Wise 1947) and, particularly, Blood Simple (Joel and Ethan Coen 1984), I Wake Up Screaming is a movie packed with quintessential film noir themes.  Fighting varying degrees of anonymity and helplessness, the cast descends into a futile film noir world that costs its residents their names, their homes, their freedom and their lives.

Elisha Cook Jr. stars as Harry Williams, an apartment switchboard operator enchanted by beautiful tenant Vicky Lynn (Carole Landis), a heartless ingenue who captures the imagination and inflames the libido of every man she meets.  Among Vicky's more prominent conquests is professional promoter Frankie Christopher (Victor Mature), who, along with his equally smitten friends in high places, resolves to transform the attractive waitress into a star.  The plan falls through, however, when Vicky announces that she is planning to ditch her New York benefactors for a Hollywood career and promptly ends up dead.  Dogged by Ed Cornell (Laird Cregar), an influential police inspector convinced of the about-to-be jilted boyfriend's guilt, Frankie attempts to persuade the world, the audience and Vicky's wholesome sister Jill (Betty Grable) that he is actually innocent.

A variation on the Wrong Man subgenre of film noir, I Wake Up Screaming plays up the sinister figure of the tenacious, intrusive Inspector Cornell without ever assuring its viewers that Frankie is not the killer after all.  Dwight Taylor's script, based on Steve Fisher's similarly titled novel, dispenses information about the crime with judicious leisure, the lack of evidence revealed and the lack of other likely suspects prohibiting both the audience and Jill from trusting the film's ostensible hero completely.  Meanwhile, director Bruce Humberstone and cinematographer Edward Cronjager employ low key, Expressionist lighting techniques to heighten the already uneasy mood and emphasize the power the deftly ominous Laird Cregar's mysterious detective holds over the persecuted man . . .

. . . and the way in which his physically impressive presence pervades the movie, drives its plot and menaces its characters.

But while I Wake Up Screaming shares its wrong man persecution theme with other genre classics like The Blue Dahlia (George Marshall 1946) and Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959) and The Wrong Man (1956), it ultimately shares much more with films like Laura (Otto Preminger 1944) and Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock 1940), in which the lives of the surviving characters are overshadowed by the lingering presence of the murdered girl.  Frankie, Jill and Elisha Cook Jr.'s Harry Williams may all be pawns in Inspector Cornell's game, but even he is governed by his attachment to the late, seductive Vicky.  Whether haunted by a far-reaching, shadowy detective or the ghost of a captivating woman, the players in this concise melodramatic mystery are impelled to act but given few attractive choices.  In the noir tradition they are trapped, as Cornell says, like "a rat in a box with no holes."

The Vincent Price Song

Last Halloween, wondering why matinee idols like Clark Gable get all the songs written about them, I wrote an affectionate if somewhat goofy song in a similar mode for one of my all time favorite movie stars, Vincent Price.  At Film Walrus's request, I am posting the lyrics here:

All alone
I watch the movie in the dark
And it thrills, it thrills me
It chills me to the bone
There's no one here to hold my hand
Or to whisper, whisper
There's a kiss waiting for me
    If I come with him back to his door

I've been looking for a man
I've tried naughty, I've tried nice
Why don't they make more men like Vincent Price?

"Come inside,
"Come into my parlor, taste the jam"
And he could quote Shakespeare
As he sharpens his knives
"I set it down that one may smile and smile . . .
"And is it white bread or wheat bread
"That you'll take tonight?
    "They'll be red, stained with strawberry jam."

I've been looking for a man
I've tried naughty, I've tried nice
Why don't they make more men like Vincent Price?

Way out there
I know there's someone in a cold dark lab
Who can make me a monster
Or make me a man
A man who smiles and smiles
And takes care to make me, make me
And take me away
    To the arms of the lurid silver screen

I've been looking for a man
I've tried naughty, I've tried nice
Why don't they make more men like Vincent Price?

Bleeders, Liminality and Fate

As a genre, horror is the master of the different and unknown.  Even so, many tales of terror focus not on the utterly alien but on liminal monsters - vampires, werewolves, the victims of scientific accidents - those creatures that are very close to human.  In serial killer movies, the objects of terror are human themselves.  Happily munching popcorn, sitting on the sofa, watching a film we like to think of ourselves as normal, stable creatures.  Movies like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian 1931), The Fly (Kurt Neumann 1958; David Cronenberg 1986), and The Descent (Neil Marshall 2005) remind us just how close we are to becoming monsters.  In Bleeders (Peter Svatek 1997) that step is only a few generations of natural evolution away.

Based on H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Lurking Fear," Bleeders follows John (Roy Dupuis), a man with an undiagnosed disease and an unclear family tree, on a journey of genealogical research and self discovery that reveals that inbreeding can lead to much worse things than anemia.  When he reaches the island where he was born, John and local physician Dr. Marlowe (Rutger Hauer) begin to piece together the truth about the twisted evolutionary track taken by the narcissistic, inbreeding Dutch immigrants from whom John is descended.

The film is fraught with low budget genre movie cliches.  Occasional scenes of graphic sex feel as though they were dropped in at random only to make the exploitation audience happy or to keep the movie safe from airing on network television.  Shaky images and disorienting sound effects frequently interrupt the narrative as the laughably Byronic John suffers constant flashbacks to memories of his infancy on the island, an apparent side effect of his disease.  Here, as in many modern horror films, this technique is overused and ineffective.  Likewise, the voiceover segments that frame the film are cheesy and superfluous, particularly the tacky, sensational epilogue, which does lasting damage to the film through, among other things, its use of the phrase, "and so it came to pass." An extremely flawed film, Bleeders fares slightly better when compared not with other horror movies but with Canadian television of the time.  The production values, general feel and synthesizer heavy score are reminiscent of Highlander: the Series (1992-1998) and La Femme Nikita (1997-2001), with which it shares its star.

In spite of its terrible wigs, poorly developed characters, shaky dialogue and alternately illogical and predictable storyline, Bleeders still manages to be both atmospheric and disturbing.  Filmed on an island in New Brunswick, Canada, the film offers a daunting, confusing and isolated geography, and the lack of men on the island (they are all off in the fishing fleet) contributes to the feeling that something about the place and its community is not quite right.  As John and his wife (Kristin Lehman) journey around the unfamiliar island looking for an answer to the mystery disease, the slow pacing is interrupted by sporadic bursts of brutal violence, which create effective shocks and tension until the mood is broken once and for all by the movie's overloaded finale.

SPOILER ALERT

The most interesting element of the film is the way in which it treats its monsters.  The descendants of an inbred family who have evolved into a deformed, subterranean species, the remains of the Van Daam clan introduce themselves to the island community by snatching people down through open graves, sometimes digging into their flesh using mole-claw-like hooks.  But while the monsters remain frightening and violent throughout the film, they are ultimately treated much more sympathetically than they are in Lovecraft's story.

In "The Lurking Fear," the narrator expounds the horrors of what he views as an accident of backwards evolution by describing a town terrorized by cannibalistic mole people who, under cover of violent thunderstorms, slaughter the unprotected inhabitants of the surface.  Although the bloodthirstiness of the monsters is important, the real terror comes from the evolutionary angle.  Lovecraft's hero sees "the ultimate product of mammalian degeneration; the frightful outcome of isolated spawning, multiplication, and cannibal nutrition above and below the ground; the embodiment of all the snarling and chaos and grinning fear that lurk behind life."  His description emphasizes not only the monstrosity of the creatures but also their closeness to humanity.  When he characterizes this simple evolutionary mistake as the "chaos and . . . fear that lurk behind life," he suggests that these barely inhuman mutants personify the preexisting dark side of the human animal in all its undiluted glory.

But, while the origin and bestial brutality of the monsters remain unchanged in the film penned by Charles Adair and Alien (Ridley Scott 1979) writers Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, the on-screen creatures are not depicted as such unsympathetic abominations as their literary counterparts.  In the movie, the Van Daam descendants have only resorted to taking living humans because their regular food supply has been disturbed: they had evolved to feed upon the flesh of embalmed corpses, and the cemetery is being dug up.  Because of this change to the story, the conflict unfolds more like a culture clash and less like an organized attack, in spite of the terror of the townspeople and the heroic, Indiana Jones-ish image designed for Rutger Hauer as he strives to protect them.  Plot holes aside, the film even allows for a peaceful resolution of sorts when John returns to the arms of his mutant family, apparently providing some sort of link or understanding between the two ethnic groups.

Unlike the Wolf Man or Frankenstein's Monster in Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale 1935) or Lovecraft's own protagonist in his famous fish-people story "The Shadow over Innsmouth" (from which this film lifted the descendant element of its plot), John considers neither self destruction nor confinement and insanity when the mystery of his genetic condition comes to light.  While these older liminal characters cannot see a place for themselves in a normal human world, John ultimately embraces his monstrous heritage.  It is possible that this trend in modern Lovecraft cinema espoused not only in Bleeders but also in Stuart Gordon's 2001 "Innsmouth" adaptation, Dagon, and the bleak, semi-apocalyptic mythos movie, Cthulhu (Dan Gildark 2007), suggests that we have moved beyond the limited understanding of humanity and acceptance of difference popularly practiced in Lovecraft's time.  However, while a message of cultural understanding may lurk somewhere in the Bleeders script, the overall trend of fatalistic acceptance that seems to emerge in the past few decades of Lovecraftian cinema just as likely points to an emphasis on the hopelessness inherent in the author's cosmic horror.  Suicide and isolation in the face of difference may be closed minded solutions, but they also represent a modicum of resistance to what the character perceives as malevolent forces beyond his or her control.  Are these modern Lovecraftian heroes adaptive and accepting, or did they simply decide that resistance is futile and quietly succumb?

Elisha Cook Jr. Film Series: Born to Kill

In an ambivalent 1911 poem, "The Female of the Species," Rudyard Kipling pens the famous line, "the female of the species is more deadly than the male."  But while in Kipling's poem it is woman who, "wedded to convictions," "may not deal in doubt or pity," and "man the coward" who has evolved to "compromise" and "concede," these distinctions become muddied in Robert Wise's 1947 film Born to Kill based on James Gunn's referentially titled novel Deadlier than the Male.  Although the allusion is not perfect, however, it remains fitting nonetheless.  In this tale of basic instinct and mutual destruction, neither sex is cast in a particularly positive light.

Elisha Cook Jr. stars as Mart, a fairly harmless grifter whose best friend Sam (Lawrence Tierney) is a magnet for serious trouble.  After brutally murdering his girlfriend and her escort in Reno, Sam takes Mart's advice and leaves town.  On the train to San Francisco he encounters Helen (Claire Trevor), a recent divorcee who proved her cool (and her moral flexibility) near the beginning of the film when she discovered the murder victims and then phoned the railway station instead of the police.

Although Helen is desperately attracted to the dangerous man, she is not so impulsive as to forsake her sensible fiancee Fred (Phillip Terry).  Instead, Helen waffles between reason and desire, sometimes trying to get rid of Sam, sometimes falling all over him while, unchecked, his uncompromising ambition and possessiveness wreak havoc on her family and friends.

As in Dillinger (Max Nosseck 1945), Tierney's stiff performance as the ruthless homme fatale is as unsympathetic as it is menacing.  But while the earlier film hinged solely on its title character, Born to Kill is more interested in the effect that Tierney's character has on those around him.  Consequently,  although Sam is so unsympathetic as to make other characters' devotion to him seem nearly implausible, the film works because the viewer can identify with the terrible, self destructive and, sadly, universal decisions Mart and Helen make on his account.

We are all plagued by basic desires for pleasurable things:  We want drugs, alcohol and unhealthy food.  Like the slimy, unprincipled private detective deliciously portrayed by Walter Slezak we want money to dress up our lives.  We want to stick by our friends and keep hold of our lovers even when we see terrible consequences looming just ahead.  And so, while we can see that Helen ought to go back to Fred and Mart ought to stay out of Sam's business, we also understand them when they don't.

The main characters in the film are dominated by the Id, and their actions provide an outlet for an audience living in a world where survival generally depends on self restraint.  The passion and the violence in the film are shown as harshly - both in lighting and in content - and as explicitly as the time period would allow, and director Robert Wise allows his audience plenty of opportunity to physically identify with Sam, whose violent impulses we sometimes witness from his point of view.

But it is Mart and Helen who, through a misguided act of friendship or the reckless lack of self control, provide the viewer with a real catharsis.  Like the viewer of a Greek tragedy, Born to Kill's modern audience can experience and identify with the characters' emotions and purge these passions as we watch the characters fall.  Both the female and the male are deadly when guided by their more bestial instincts.  In the real world we try to keep our weaknesses in check to avoid being punished in kind.