As we approach 2005's midpoint, there has been no better picture to receive its American theatrical premiere this year than Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Tropical Malady, which opens today at New York's recently-christened IFC Center. The 34 year-old Thai auteur's third feature to garner significant international attention, Tropical Malady exceeds its predecessors in virtually every respect, showcasing a form that provides a potential new direction for art cinema worldwide. Apichatpong splits the narrative of Tropical Malady into two parts: the first is a gay romance focused upon a soldier and a small-town young man, while the second is a fable concerning another soldier's hunt for a shaman with the power of transforming himself into animal form.
If it sounds as if Tropical Malady is therefore comprised of two distinct short stories, the brilliance of Apichatpong's form rests in the interdependence of these discordant tales. On its own, part one (or part two for that matter) is a relatively pointless exercise in its subject matter: in the case of the first, the nascent romance of a same-sex couple concluding in an oblique gesture of physical love followed by the descent of one of the two into a dark forest. However, when taken with the second part, Apichatpong imbues his narrative with an entirely different meaning. Importantly, the folkloric second half self-consciously references filmic past through its recourse to intertitles, which in turn accentuate the section's antiquated fabulist narrative. This second part is juxtaposed with the modern narrative of part one, which depicts Thailand's hinter-regions as containing elements of the old and new in equal measure. Most examples of international art cinema, circa 2005, are no more than what Apichatpong depicts in this earlier section: man in a world which is in the process of modernizing, both in terms of its infrastructure, and more importantly, morally.
Yet, Tropical Malady defiantly undercuts the logic of part one, and in the process, modernist cinema: Hou Hsiao-hsien, this bitch-slap is directed at you. With part two, Apichatpong allegorizes the romantic coupling presented in the earlier half, arguing for the inherent compatibility of sex and death -- as such becoming the latest advocate of Bataille's conflation of the two. The all-smiles romance of the first part is revealed to be phony and transient, assuring a destruction symbolized by the stalking tiger. Indeed, it is worth remembering Apichatpong's opening quotation as a signifier of the meaning meted in part two: "all of us are by nature wild beasts... Our duty as human beings is to be like animal trainers... keeping our bestiality in check." This applies no less to the lovers than it does to the soldier and shaman -- and after all, it appears preceding the first part anyways. The pursuit of desire leads to the destruction signaled in the second half.
In fact, the meaning of the folkloric second half is to explain the oblique opening salvo, which in spite of its transparent form, offers a vision of society that is shown to be deceptive when refracted by its parallel half. (Consequently to call it "phony" is to do it a slight disservice: part one is the mirror image of part two, even if it is unintelligible without the second.) Similarly, a narrative concerning a hunter in search of a shaman that features intertitles, primitive illustrations, and a logic with no grounding in phenomenological reality becomes true in its revelations concerning human behavior. Again, part two is the interpretative matrix for the first. It also advocates a new kind of art cinema that dispenses with a default realism that is not only wanting, but fundamentally deceptive in its presentation of life's details: all cinema is selective in its narration; the stuff of fable is every bit as capable of clarifying life's crises, so long as the human condition remains immutable, as Apichatpong's adaptation of fable suggests.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Monday, June 27, 2005
A Few Cursory Notes on Current Japanese Cinema
Among the new titles at this year's New York Asian Film Festival, Katsuhito Ishii's The Taste of Tea (2004) deserves nothing less than to become a major cross-over arthouse hit. Why? Ishii's film is exactly what everybody always says they want their film-going experience to be: something new and different. While The Taste of Tea, easily one of the funniest films I have seen in the past year, consciously references Japan's cinematic past -- namely the works of Yasujiro Ozu and particularly The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1952) -- it does so in order to define Japanese experience here and now. Ishii, who according to the program notes directed the animation segment in Quentin Tarantino's splatter-riot Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (which I detested, by the way), refracts Japanese experience through recent pop culture, creating a set of characters who possess cartoonish qualities of their own, at times dress in superhero costuming, and who in a few cases are themselves manga illustrators. Yet, if Tarantino's first Kill Bill delights in a dehumanized violence of a sort that comes from thorough participation in video culture, The Taste of Tea -- like the second Kill Bill -- manifests a genuine sympathy and generousness towards each of its characters, allowing Ishii's film to transcend the post-modern trap of self-satisfied irony. There is a warmth mingling with all this absurdity, making the experience of The Taste of Tea something more than pop-culture masturbation.
Beyond Ishii's post-Superflat work, Hayao Miyazaki's latest animated opus, Howl's Moving Castle, and Hirokazu Kore-eda's richly allegorical, high-concept Cannes prize-winner, Nobody Knows (both 2004), likewise mine similar adolescent territory, though offering far less pop-infused takes on modern Japanese life. Each of these films shows an emotional depth that is all-to-often a casualty of our ironic zeitgeist, which is not to say that Japan isn't as guilty as the rest of us in this respect: Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer (2001) remains the most horrifying cinematic experience I've had all decade, and represents one of the few times in which I have found myself genuinely concerned with the impact that a film might have on its viewer's. Having said that, Japanese cinema at its best, as opposed to Ichi, seems to be experiencing a renaissance, if these three works are in any way representative. In fact, for all the hoopla surrounding recent Iranian, Chinese, Taiwanese, and South Korean cinema, I'm not so sure that there's any richer center of filmmaking today than Japan, especially when one also considers the work of Kitano, K. Kurosawa, Aoyama, and Oshii, to name only a few. Here's hoping that this thesis can be tested by all of us before what seems to be another "golden age" passes.
Beyond Ishii's post-Superflat work, Hayao Miyazaki's latest animated opus, Howl's Moving Castle, and Hirokazu Kore-eda's richly allegorical, high-concept Cannes prize-winner, Nobody Knows (both 2004), likewise mine similar adolescent territory, though offering far less pop-infused takes on modern Japanese life. Each of these films shows an emotional depth that is all-to-often a casualty of our ironic zeitgeist, which is not to say that Japan isn't as guilty as the rest of us in this respect: Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer (2001) remains the most horrifying cinematic experience I've had all decade, and represents one of the few times in which I have found myself genuinely concerned with the impact that a film might have on its viewer's. Having said that, Japanese cinema at its best, as opposed to Ichi, seems to be experiencing a renaissance, if these three works are in any way representative. In fact, for all the hoopla surrounding recent Iranian, Chinese, Taiwanese, and South Korean cinema, I'm not so sure that there's any richer center of filmmaking today than Japan, especially when one also considers the work of Kitano, K. Kurosawa, Aoyama, and Oshii, to name only a few. Here's hoping that this thesis can be tested by all of us before what seems to be another "golden age" passes.
Friday, June 17, 2005
A Sino Century? Sorry, but the Anglosphere still rules.
China hasn't invented or discovered anything of significance in half a millennium, but the careless assumption that intellectual property is something to be stolen rather than protected shows why. If you're a resource-poor nation (as China is), long-term prosperity comes from liberating the creative energies of your people - and Beijing still has no interest in that.
Back at the beginning of this week, two very interesting articles appeared on the topic of whether this century will increasingly belong to the Chinese, or whether something else is fated for the Middle Kingdom. As Mark Steyn, author of the opening quotation and advocate for the latter alternative puts it, "when European analysts" -- or authors of US News articles -- "coo about a 'Chinese century,' all they mean is 'Oh, God, please, anything other than a second American century.'"
For all the hysteria generated over China's potential emergence as a check to American power, far too many questions remain to assure that this possibility is an inevitability. First, there is the issue that Steyn underlines so succinctly: China is resource poor, save for its human resources; and yet, their creative potential is rendered subservient to the State. Even though wealth is generated by the people under the Chinese system of capitalism cum communism, they reap its rewards only after it passes through the state apparatus. If one is to ask how this is fundamentally different than how our system works -- subject to income taxes, payroll taxes, etc. -- one need look no further than the other unique, which is to say contradictory aspect of Chinese "capitalism": state ownership. Property is an essential component in the creation of wealth under the capitalist model -- one works in order to gain a return. If this return is rendered uncertain by the possibility of state repossession, then the incentive to expend the time, energy and resources to expand wealth diminishes.
Of course one might then rejoined that the state will seek its best interest -- the formulation of wealth -- no less than the individual would. Well, actually no. The state's best interest is its continued existence. Imagine a media company in China who avers that it would be in their best financial interest to cater to disaffection with state ownership. Right, this is unimaginable in such a system because it threatens the power that the few -- the party -- exercise over the many. In fact, when the state does control property, then who is to stop the looting of said property by those who exercise these very controls. Look at it this way: you work your whole life in China to build up a product which is then stripped in part or whole by some bureaucrat who decides that they want a piece of the action. What are you to do, it doesn't belong to you anyways? Make no mistake, this uncertainty will ultimately deter investors every bit as much as it does entrepreneurs. What is your safe guard from theft when the law-making body controls your investment? After all, they can change the rules at any time. The same thing is currently happening in Russia under Putin.
Beyond this fundamental danger, China's future preeminence might just be slowed by a second important factor: China's accelerated collective aging. China's one child per family policy, in place since 1978, has begun to set the table for a major demographic crisis: that one child will be expected to care for both of their parents and all four of their grandparents -- just think about it. There is a reason that humankind has historically exceeded two children per household: the 2.1 (or whatever it is) children per family are the number needed to care for the aged when they are no longer capable of it. One of many insidious consequences of China's inhumane policy is the financial burden that caring for its old will place on China's young: they will have to care for these six additional persons beyond their own wife and child. Self-preservation will demand the reversal of this policy, but it might be too late: China might become old before it becomes wealthy, while other emerging nations proceed without this immense individual burden.
So yes, problems abound for the Middle Kingdom, leading me to guess that China's emergence as a second superpower might be a bit premature. Like Mr. Steyn I too suspect that the twenty-first will be another Anglosphere century, dominated not just by the US, but also increasingly by India, which for all its historic aversions to capitalism has shown a willingness to encourage its people's own creative energies. Steyn offers the following illustration:
India, by contrast, with much less ballyhoo, is advancing faster than China toward a fully-developed economy - one that creates its own ideas. Small example: there are low-fare airlines that sell £40 one-way cross-country air tickets from computer screens at Indian petrol stations. No one would develop such a system for China, where internal travel is still tightly controlled by the state. But, because they respect their own people as a market, Indian businesses are already proving nimbler at serving other markets. The return on investment capital is already much better in India than in China.
Let me add in closing that of course no nation has an eternal grip on power. With that said, there is no historical mandate that the United States will lose its this century: after all, the Barbarian invasions occurred four hundred years after the birth of the Empire. Perhaps America's lease on power will be shorter than Rome's, but China does not figure to be a likely successor, at least so long as it clings to its same economic and social policies. Then again, the end of American strength might just be met with a power vacuum (to match that of the early Medieval world), though that's a post for another time.
Back at the beginning of this week, two very interesting articles appeared on the topic of whether this century will increasingly belong to the Chinese, or whether something else is fated for the Middle Kingdom. As Mark Steyn, author of the opening quotation and advocate for the latter alternative puts it, "when European analysts" -- or authors of US News articles -- "coo about a 'Chinese century,' all they mean is 'Oh, God, please, anything other than a second American century.'"
For all the hysteria generated over China's potential emergence as a check to American power, far too many questions remain to assure that this possibility is an inevitability. First, there is the issue that Steyn underlines so succinctly: China is resource poor, save for its human resources; and yet, their creative potential is rendered subservient to the State. Even though wealth is generated by the people under the Chinese system of capitalism cum communism, they reap its rewards only after it passes through the state apparatus. If one is to ask how this is fundamentally different than how our system works -- subject to income taxes, payroll taxes, etc. -- one need look no further than the other unique, which is to say contradictory aspect of Chinese "capitalism": state ownership. Property is an essential component in the creation of wealth under the capitalist model -- one works in order to gain a return. If this return is rendered uncertain by the possibility of state repossession, then the incentive to expend the time, energy and resources to expand wealth diminishes.
Of course one might then rejoined that the state will seek its best interest -- the formulation of wealth -- no less than the individual would. Well, actually no. The state's best interest is its continued existence. Imagine a media company in China who avers that it would be in their best financial interest to cater to disaffection with state ownership. Right, this is unimaginable in such a system because it threatens the power that the few -- the party -- exercise over the many. In fact, when the state does control property, then who is to stop the looting of said property by those who exercise these very controls. Look at it this way: you work your whole life in China to build up a product which is then stripped in part or whole by some bureaucrat who decides that they want a piece of the action. What are you to do, it doesn't belong to you anyways? Make no mistake, this uncertainty will ultimately deter investors every bit as much as it does entrepreneurs. What is your safe guard from theft when the law-making body controls your investment? After all, they can change the rules at any time. The same thing is currently happening in Russia under Putin.
Beyond this fundamental danger, China's future preeminence might just be slowed by a second important factor: China's accelerated collective aging. China's one child per family policy, in place since 1978, has begun to set the table for a major demographic crisis: that one child will be expected to care for both of their parents and all four of their grandparents -- just think about it. There is a reason that humankind has historically exceeded two children per household: the 2.1 (or whatever it is) children per family are the number needed to care for the aged when they are no longer capable of it. One of many insidious consequences of China's inhumane policy is the financial burden that caring for its old will place on China's young: they will have to care for these six additional persons beyond their own wife and child. Self-preservation will demand the reversal of this policy, but it might be too late: China might become old before it becomes wealthy, while other emerging nations proceed without this immense individual burden.
So yes, problems abound for the Middle Kingdom, leading me to guess that China's emergence as a second superpower might be a bit premature. Like Mr. Steyn I too suspect that the twenty-first will be another Anglosphere century, dominated not just by the US, but also increasingly by India, which for all its historic aversions to capitalism has shown a willingness to encourage its people's own creative energies. Steyn offers the following illustration:
India, by contrast, with much less ballyhoo, is advancing faster than China toward a fully-developed economy - one that creates its own ideas. Small example: there are low-fare airlines that sell £40 one-way cross-country air tickets from computer screens at Indian petrol stations. No one would develop such a system for China, where internal travel is still tightly controlled by the state. But, because they respect their own people as a market, Indian businesses are already proving nimbler at serving other markets. The return on investment capital is already much better in India than in China.
Let me add in closing that of course no nation has an eternal grip on power. With that said, there is no historical mandate that the United States will lose its this century: after all, the Barbarian invasions occurred four hundred years after the birth of the Empire. Perhaps America's lease on power will be shorter than Rome's, but China does not figure to be a likely successor, at least so long as it clings to its same economic and social policies. Then again, the end of American strength might just be met with a power vacuum (to match that of the early Medieval world), though that's a post for another time.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
New Film: 5x2, Batman, and Miranda July (as well as a corresponding look into the future of motion picture distribution)
Opening in limited release last Friday, Francois Ozon's 5x2 (2004) confirms the director's place at the forefront of France's latest generation of filmmakers. Structured in five separate segments ordered in reverse chronology, 5x2 begins with a couple's divorce proceedings and then moves backwards, concluding before the "2" were together. As gimmicky as this might sound, Ozon's structure assures that its viewers will react differently to the film's two protagonists than they might have were the same events arranged chronologically. In other words, suspense becomes a matter of psychological revelation rather than the traditional mechanisms of cause and effect. Nevertheless, Ozon eschews lucidity. When an opportunity to clarify previously narrated actions does arise -- either in terms of what actually happened or in why a character may have behaved in such and such a way -- Ozon refuses to comply.
Batman Begins plays by very different rules. In Christopher Nolan's origins narrative, the future contours of the Batman persona are psychologized to painstaking -- and painful -- extents. Jung is the explicit point of reference here, in everything from Bruce Wayne's motivations to the villainous archetypes that populate Gotham.
Yet, if Batman Begins suffers from an overdetermined application of psychoanalytic theory, this is about the only level where it proves lacking. Otherwise, the fifth installment in the Batman series soars on the basis of Christian Bale's incomparable Capped crusader -- he deserves to be a huge international star, Nolan's crisp (if a little too montage-friendly) direction, and his and David S. Goyer's witty script. It hardly seems possible, but Batman Begins demands a sequel, whereas the year's other blockbuster source narrative, The Revenge of the Sith, succeeded only in mercifully guiding its audience back to its Episode IV starting point.
Of course, Batman Begins is your prototypical event movie, monopolizing multiplex screens as it creates a panic not unlike the one that grips the Narrows in Nolan's pic. On the other hand, 5x2 is destined to a limited national release before it appears at only those video stores which are a bit more subtitle friendly. Closer in fate to the latter than the former is Miranda July's feature film debut Me and You and Everyone We Know, which christens the new IFC Film Center (at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Third Street in Lower Manhattan)this coming Friday. The winner of numerous prizes at both Sundance and Cannes, July's film reimagines Hal Hartley, exchanging a y-chromosome for an x. This is to say that Me and You... does not exactly cover new territory in its postmodern universe, though undoubtedly it will be welcomed as a fresh indie alternative to the dog days of the blockbuster season, which surely it is.
More than anything else, July's film demonstrates a tenderness for its characters, which the director democratically extends over her entire cast. In this way, July avoids the pitfall of the narcissistic actor-auteur -- that is to set his or her own character above their supporting players, intellectually and/or morally. Yet, it is not even this admirable characteristic that might be the film's greatest virtue, but rather Miranda July's own performance, which exudes a charm that is rare in any type of cinema, let alone a postmodern one that so often succumbs to bad faith (think the Coen Brothers).
Unfortunately for July's film, it does suffer a bit for its timing: Me and You and Everyone We Know possesses a mildly-creepy pedophiliac tenor. Now we're not talking Michael Jackson here, but in the days following the verdict you get my point. With that said, there is narrative justification for July's benign adoption of this trope, which it would seem redeems any hint of something uglier (which is only that, a hint). In the end, sex is never the motivation.
So what is the box office potential for Me and You and Everyone We Know? That of course remains to be seen, though surely it will not be hurt by its multiple prizes and what I suspect will be very good word of mouth. Both certainly are essential for any financial success that it may experience, as they are for most indie and mid-major motion pictures. As long as films of this scope -- and of 5x2's -- continued to be produced, they will depend greatly on the power-broking of the festival circuit. Likewise, your Batman Begins' will continue to be impervious to critical appraisal as their inherent cultural traction combined with obscene ad budgets will solidify their statuses as events.
Does this mean that film distribution is static? No, but in my judgment the future will not be characterized by a leveling, but rather by amplification of trends already current. Admittedly it was a Thursday afternoon screening six days after its premiere, but there were only nine other people in the Quad Theatre with me to see 5x2. Of these, at least three were senior citizens, meaning that they would have paid $7 max. That leaves, at most, seven people who paid the full $10. How can a theatre in Greenwich Village maintain the sort of overhead it does with such meager audiences? The answer is that it can't.
Now while the tendency might be thus to decry the injustices in the distribution process, this inviability might just pave the way for greater viewing opportunities for everyone -- not just those who live in the dozen or so US cities where one can expect to see your 5x2's. In my mind, on-line distribution is an inevitability: as long as there is a demand for art films, distribution will exist at some level. What on-line distribution affords is a minimal amount of overhead and a maximum audience. While the technology may or may not be there for all films to be made available thusly, it is going to happen because it is far and away the most economical system.
Consequently, one should expect the same thing to happen in film that has already happened in the music industry: increased fragmentation. As filmmaker and critic Chris Petit once speculated, in the future art films will be shared by e-mail. At the same time, for those more ambitious independent filmmakers, in my estimation, film festivals and critics will become even more important, as their roles as guides to the vast cosmos of independent film crystallize.
For those persons truly interested in the art of cinema, these are all good things, even though it shatters notions of cinema as a communal experience. Then again, when was the last time you interacted with someone you didn't know at a movie theatre? Of course one of the broader implications is the increasing isolation of recreation, but this isn't a factor that will shape the economics of film distribution. It's the cost efficiency of this system that will rule, which for anyone, who like myself may one day wish to make films closer to Ozon's or July's than to Nolan's, is a good thing. And for anyone who just likes to go to movies and pass a few hours experiencing visceral pleasure and eating popcorn, you know what, as long as there are millions of others who continue to share this desire, this will not change either. In fact, theatrical distribution may just become (or remain, I suppose) the prestige-guarantor for entertainment-first works, serving as little more than a tool to sell film downloads or DVDs -- however it will work -- just as festivals and critics will do the same for smaller films.
Batman Begins plays by very different rules. In Christopher Nolan's origins narrative, the future contours of the Batman persona are psychologized to painstaking -- and painful -- extents. Jung is the explicit point of reference here, in everything from Bruce Wayne's motivations to the villainous archetypes that populate Gotham.
Yet, if Batman Begins suffers from an overdetermined application of psychoanalytic theory, this is about the only level where it proves lacking. Otherwise, the fifth installment in the Batman series soars on the basis of Christian Bale's incomparable Capped crusader -- he deserves to be a huge international star, Nolan's crisp (if a little too montage-friendly) direction, and his and David S. Goyer's witty script. It hardly seems possible, but Batman Begins demands a sequel, whereas the year's other blockbuster source narrative, The Revenge of the Sith, succeeded only in mercifully guiding its audience back to its Episode IV starting point.
Of course, Batman Begins is your prototypical event movie, monopolizing multiplex screens as it creates a panic not unlike the one that grips the Narrows in Nolan's pic. On the other hand, 5x2 is destined to a limited national release before it appears at only those video stores which are a bit more subtitle friendly. Closer in fate to the latter than the former is Miranda July's feature film debut Me and You and Everyone We Know, which christens the new IFC Film Center (at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Third Street in Lower Manhattan)this coming Friday. The winner of numerous prizes at both Sundance and Cannes, July's film reimagines Hal Hartley, exchanging a y-chromosome for an x. This is to say that Me and You... does not exactly cover new territory in its postmodern universe, though undoubtedly it will be welcomed as a fresh indie alternative to the dog days of the blockbuster season, which surely it is.
More than anything else, July's film demonstrates a tenderness for its characters, which the director democratically extends over her entire cast. In this way, July avoids the pitfall of the narcissistic actor-auteur -- that is to set his or her own character above their supporting players, intellectually and/or morally. Yet, it is not even this admirable characteristic that might be the film's greatest virtue, but rather Miranda July's own performance, which exudes a charm that is rare in any type of cinema, let alone a postmodern one that so often succumbs to bad faith (think the Coen Brothers).
Unfortunately for July's film, it does suffer a bit for its timing: Me and You and Everyone We Know possesses a mildly-creepy pedophiliac tenor. Now we're not talking Michael Jackson here, but in the days following the verdict you get my point. With that said, there is narrative justification for July's benign adoption of this trope, which it would seem redeems any hint of something uglier (which is only that, a hint). In the end, sex is never the motivation.
So what is the box office potential for Me and You and Everyone We Know? That of course remains to be seen, though surely it will not be hurt by its multiple prizes and what I suspect will be very good word of mouth. Both certainly are essential for any financial success that it may experience, as they are for most indie and mid-major motion pictures. As long as films of this scope -- and of 5x2's -- continued to be produced, they will depend greatly on the power-broking of the festival circuit. Likewise, your Batman Begins' will continue to be impervious to critical appraisal as their inherent cultural traction combined with obscene ad budgets will solidify their statuses as events.
Does this mean that film distribution is static? No, but in my judgment the future will not be characterized by a leveling, but rather by amplification of trends already current. Admittedly it was a Thursday afternoon screening six days after its premiere, but there were only nine other people in the Quad Theatre with me to see 5x2. Of these, at least three were senior citizens, meaning that they would have paid $7 max. That leaves, at most, seven people who paid the full $10. How can a theatre in Greenwich Village maintain the sort of overhead it does with such meager audiences? The answer is that it can't.
Now while the tendency might be thus to decry the injustices in the distribution process, this inviability might just pave the way for greater viewing opportunities for everyone -- not just those who live in the dozen or so US cities where one can expect to see your 5x2's. In my mind, on-line distribution is an inevitability: as long as there is a demand for art films, distribution will exist at some level. What on-line distribution affords is a minimal amount of overhead and a maximum audience. While the technology may or may not be there for all films to be made available thusly, it is going to happen because it is far and away the most economical system.
Consequently, one should expect the same thing to happen in film that has already happened in the music industry: increased fragmentation. As filmmaker and critic Chris Petit once speculated, in the future art films will be shared by e-mail. At the same time, for those more ambitious independent filmmakers, in my estimation, film festivals and critics will become even more important, as their roles as guides to the vast cosmos of independent film crystallize.
For those persons truly interested in the art of cinema, these are all good things, even though it shatters notions of cinema as a communal experience. Then again, when was the last time you interacted with someone you didn't know at a movie theatre? Of course one of the broader implications is the increasing isolation of recreation, but this isn't a factor that will shape the economics of film distribution. It's the cost efficiency of this system that will rule, which for anyone, who like myself may one day wish to make films closer to Ozon's or July's than to Nolan's, is a good thing. And for anyone who just likes to go to movies and pass a few hours experiencing visceral pleasure and eating popcorn, you know what, as long as there are millions of others who continue to share this desire, this will not change either. In fact, theatrical distribution may just become (or remain, I suppose) the prestige-guarantor for entertainment-first works, serving as little more than a tool to sell film downloads or DVDs -- however it will work -- just as festivals and critics will do the same for smaller films.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
My Most Controversial Posts
About a month into this blog thing, most of my claims have gone unchecked (read: unread) with only a couple of exceptions. One was my comparison of French and US growth rates that the learned Dr.X points out were misrepresented -- though substantially true -- in my original piece. For that mistake, my sincerest apologies: yes, economic growth in France is pathetic, but it is only significantly smaller than it is in the States... rather than say epically smaller.
However, it was my hipster post that really seemed to give my more malevolent readers the ammunition they needed to put a chink in this lustrous armor of mine. As readers more savvy than I pointed out, Coldplay has never been cool. Were I to change my story now and claim that I knew this along -- which of course I did, I simply pounced on a convenient story to knock hipsters -- I suspect that many of you wouldn't believe me. So I'll take the high road and ask my readership to forgive this startling lack of pop-culture awareness, which of course I possess.
But you know, really this is all the New York Post's fault. After all, if they can print a headline with Gephardt as the V.P. candidate, they can get hipster tastes wrong as well. After all, their info is probably coming from the same Williamsburg hovel. Were I to have written this article, I might have selected somebody like the Black Eyed Peas to represent the hipsters' dilemma: will they or won't they buy Monkey Business? Surely, those are some damn infectious Best Buy commercials. And what with their spirits still soaring thanks to the sublime "Let's Get it Started," how could anyone deny themselves this certain pleasure?
However, it was my hipster post that really seemed to give my more malevolent readers the ammunition they needed to put a chink in this lustrous armor of mine. As readers more savvy than I pointed out, Coldplay has never been cool. Were I to change my story now and claim that I knew this along -- which of course I did, I simply pounced on a convenient story to knock hipsters -- I suspect that many of you wouldn't believe me. So I'll take the high road and ask my readership to forgive this startling lack of pop-culture awareness, which of course I possess.
But you know, really this is all the New York Post's fault. After all, if they can print a headline with Gephardt as the V.P. candidate, they can get hipster tastes wrong as well. After all, their info is probably coming from the same Williamsburg hovel. Were I to have written this article, I might have selected somebody like the Black Eyed Peas to represent the hipsters' dilemma: will they or won't they buy Monkey Business? Surely, those are some damn infectious Best Buy commercials. And what with their spirits still soaring thanks to the sublime "Let's Get it Started," how could anyone deny themselves this certain pleasure?
Friday, June 10, 2005
Walker Year Zero
Forgive my recent lapse in writing: extenuating circumstances have prevented me from posting all week. After a trying few days, I am back in Minnesota for the weekend, and with a free afternoon on my hands today, I decided to view the recently-completed expansion of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. For those of you who are not familiar with the Walker, it rates as perhaps America's preeminent twentieth and twenty-first art institution located outside New York and Los Angeles. In other words, it is the crown-jewel of Middle America's contemporary art scene.
So it was not without some excitement that I returned to an institution which I used to frequent before my move to the east coast, and prior to Herzog & de Meuron epic transformation. And as far as my reactions to the structure are concerned, they certainly befit a museum of its stature. Whereas the preexisting Walker was a drab brick bastard child of modernisme, the Swiss team's glass and aluminum skin makes for a compelling visual landmark in what is otherwise a sea of pavement. If part of the conceptualization is the museum as an interface with the neighborhood, they can't be faulted too much for their meager surroundings -- at at least the structure offers striking vistas of Minneapolis's glass and steel skyline.
Yet, if the structure itself provides a fine example of urban sculpture -- and the interior follows the Gehry-centered trend toward fractured, irregular cavernous spaces (though eschewing that architect's dependence upon curvilinear surfaces) -- the contents of the Walker itself reaffirm many of the most insidious tendencies of contemporary American and European art. In a quintet of thematically-grouped selections from the center's permanent collection -- The Shape of Time, Shadowland: An Exhibition as a Film, Urban Cocktail, Mythologies, and Elemental -- as well as two additional groupings of key mid-century scene-makers, the Walker inadvertently makes a case for the high-charlatanism of this most recent epoch. Without the context of your Cezanne's, Picasso's, Pollock's, and even Duchamp's, the work of their largely-inferior followers is presented as though it speaks for itself -- and suffers as a result. What one sees most, I would submit, is the adoption of style without substance. When it is in service of the mind, it no longer consults the eye, and vice versa.
Consequently, it is those media that the twentieth-century fine arts establishment most aggressively struggled against -- in conceptual terms -- that trump even the most interesting pieces of painting and sculpture in the museum. Put another way, the film and photography on display in the Shadowlands exhibit best most other pieces on display in the reconstituted museum. In terms of photography, the brilliant Jeff Wall naturally rises to the top with his cinematic "Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona" (1999), which like his best pieces construes an open-ended narrative through its accumulation of detail and action -- in this case the titular cleaning. Also of note are pieces by Sharon Lockhart, Catherine Opie, Wing Young Huie, and fellow traveler painter Gerhard Lockhart. For instance, Opie's series of icehouses (2001) -- a fitting subject for an Upper Midwestern museum, if ever there was one -- reproduce the idiom of minimalism in the photographic medium, reducing the space to a single overwhelming white field surrounding small flecks of bold color deep in the image's recesses.
Yet, if photography offers an instantiation of the art of the eye, finding in nature and architecture compositional grace -- composition is also a key motif in many of the museum's paintings though often devoid of or in deference too an ostensible subject beside itself -- then it is film which continues its reign as the queen of the plastic arts. The most interesting piece, perhaps in the entire Walker, is a twenty-five screen instillation of Chantal Akerman's 1993 "D'Est," here co-titled "Bordering on Fiction." If most pieces inspire thought before feeling, Akerman's travelogue approaches things from the other end, producing a sensorial experience of this particular time and place as captured in her extended travelling shots and as registering on her many subject's faces.
Beyond Akerman's monumental instillation, the museum also feature's Derek Jarman's final work, "Blue" (1993), a single blue screen that corresponds to a maximal soundtrack, and Shirin Neshat's "Soliloquy" (1999), which by virtue of its dual-screen set-up establishes its female protagonist's alienation both from her Turkish motherland and her Albany home. If she longs for the former, her experience of Turkey remains that of an outsider. In the end, these superlative works of cinema not only propose a concept, but they likewise affect a visceral experience that is sadly lacking in so many other works of the contemporary scene.
However, it must be remembered that the non-photographic arts did experience a crisis with the advent of photography. If photography was reflected in Courbet, allegorized in Manet, challenged in Cezanne, and finally lamented in de Kooning, among others, then what we see in the Walker is an art that no longer deals with the crisis but one that seems all-too-often to be feeling around, with its eyes closed, for a brand-new form. It is a year zero art, a dark ages formula that may someday lead to its new Gothic cathedrals or rather inspire a clean Renaissance break. Either way, the visual arts as evinced in this grand new structure are diseased, or to be far more gracious, represent a year zero which will be inevitably eclipsed.
So it was not without some excitement that I returned to an institution which I used to frequent before my move to the east coast, and prior to Herzog & de Meuron epic transformation. And as far as my reactions to the structure are concerned, they certainly befit a museum of its stature. Whereas the preexisting Walker was a drab brick bastard child of modernisme, the Swiss team's glass and aluminum skin makes for a compelling visual landmark in what is otherwise a sea of pavement. If part of the conceptualization is the museum as an interface with the neighborhood, they can't be faulted too much for their meager surroundings -- at at least the structure offers striking vistas of Minneapolis's glass and steel skyline.
Yet, if the structure itself provides a fine example of urban sculpture -- and the interior follows the Gehry-centered trend toward fractured, irregular cavernous spaces (though eschewing that architect's dependence upon curvilinear surfaces) -- the contents of the Walker itself reaffirm many of the most insidious tendencies of contemporary American and European art. In a quintet of thematically-grouped selections from the center's permanent collection -- The Shape of Time, Shadowland: An Exhibition as a Film, Urban Cocktail, Mythologies, and Elemental -- as well as two additional groupings of key mid-century scene-makers, the Walker inadvertently makes a case for the high-charlatanism of this most recent epoch. Without the context of your Cezanne's, Picasso's, Pollock's, and even Duchamp's, the work of their largely-inferior followers is presented as though it speaks for itself -- and suffers as a result. What one sees most, I would submit, is the adoption of style without substance. When it is in service of the mind, it no longer consults the eye, and vice versa.
Consequently, it is those media that the twentieth-century fine arts establishment most aggressively struggled against -- in conceptual terms -- that trump even the most interesting pieces of painting and sculpture in the museum. Put another way, the film and photography on display in the Shadowlands exhibit best most other pieces on display in the reconstituted museum. In terms of photography, the brilliant Jeff Wall naturally rises to the top with his cinematic "Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona" (1999), which like his best pieces construes an open-ended narrative through its accumulation of detail and action -- in this case the titular cleaning. Also of note are pieces by Sharon Lockhart, Catherine Opie, Wing Young Huie, and fellow traveler painter Gerhard Lockhart. For instance, Opie's series of icehouses (2001) -- a fitting subject for an Upper Midwestern museum, if ever there was one -- reproduce the idiom of minimalism in the photographic medium, reducing the space to a single overwhelming white field surrounding small flecks of bold color deep in the image's recesses.
Yet, if photography offers an instantiation of the art of the eye, finding in nature and architecture compositional grace -- composition is also a key motif in many of the museum's paintings though often devoid of or in deference too an ostensible subject beside itself -- then it is film which continues its reign as the queen of the plastic arts. The most interesting piece, perhaps in the entire Walker, is a twenty-five screen instillation of Chantal Akerman's 1993 "D'Est," here co-titled "Bordering on Fiction." If most pieces inspire thought before feeling, Akerman's travelogue approaches things from the other end, producing a sensorial experience of this particular time and place as captured in her extended travelling shots and as registering on her many subject's faces.
Beyond Akerman's monumental instillation, the museum also feature's Derek Jarman's final work, "Blue" (1993), a single blue screen that corresponds to a maximal soundtrack, and Shirin Neshat's "Soliloquy" (1999), which by virtue of its dual-screen set-up establishes its female protagonist's alienation both from her Turkish motherland and her Albany home. If she longs for the former, her experience of Turkey remains that of an outsider. In the end, these superlative works of cinema not only propose a concept, but they likewise affect a visceral experience that is sadly lacking in so many other works of the contemporary scene.
However, it must be remembered that the non-photographic arts did experience a crisis with the advent of photography. If photography was reflected in Courbet, allegorized in Manet, challenged in Cezanne, and finally lamented in de Kooning, among others, then what we see in the Walker is an art that no longer deals with the crisis but one that seems all-too-often to be feeling around, with its eyes closed, for a brand-new form. It is a year zero art, a dark ages formula that may someday lead to its new Gothic cathedrals or rather inspire a clean Renaissance break. Either way, the visual arts as evinced in this grand new structure are diseased, or to be far more gracious, represent a year zero which will be inevitably eclipsed.
Monday, June 6, 2005
Is it possible, am I what I despise most? Am I (gulp!) a hipster?
The reason I bring it up is that while reading my beloved New York Post yesterday, I came across a column on Coldplay's latest album, X & Y (to be released tomorrow), entitled "A Hipster Dilemma." The title says its all: it really isn't cool to like Coldplay anymore, as appealing as some of their music may be. Let me be honest: I really liked their first album Parachutes (2000), for which there was no need to apologize. When their second album was released, A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002), I thought it surpassed the first, and for quite some time thereafter, I believed it to be something of a mini-masterpiece. Then a few months pass, "Clocks" becomes huge, and Chris Martin begins dating Gwyneth Paltrow. You see my problem?
No? Good. That means you're not a hipster. However, I remain extremely skeptical towards the forthcoming release -- in much the same way that I retain a love-hate relationship with U2... not that Coldplay can hold a candle to what the Dubliners have done in twenty-six years. It doesn't help that such commercially-inviable acts like Franz Ferdinand and The Arcade Fire have risen to Spin-circulation level popularity, while updating demiurges The Smiths. Who needs Coldplay when you have these superiors acts anyways?
But really, Coldplay is not the issue here. The issue is whether or not I'm a hipster. On a website devoted to the appropriate criminalization of hipsters, ten preliminary criteria are established. Of these, I am guilty of four: (7) I have a graduate degree, in the arts no less; (4) I can readily recall a TV theme song written before I was born -- you name it; (2) I do believe that "Pet Sounds" is The Beach Boys' best album, and yes I do believe that it rivals "Sgt. Pepper's..."; and finally, (1) I insist on calling movies films.
I come close in two more: (10) I may hail from the Midwest, but unlike hipsters, I despise Brooklyn, avoiding it at all costs; and (6) my parents no longer support me, but if the real estate business doesn't pick up...
However, on the other four, no sir: (9) I don't own a single Guided by Voices album; (8) I'm a Republican -- take that you bloody Naderites; (5) I don't own t-shirts with dated symbols... and to tell the truth, the idea of an undershirt as an ironic statement makes me wretch; and finally, (3) I would never, never muss my hair and/or neglect to wash it. I would rather be drawn-and-quartered than cause even a single strand of my beautiful coiffure to be out of place.
So there you have it, no hipster, even if I might possess certain tendencies. Whether this means I will be able to overcome my objections and buy X & Y, that is yet to be seen.
No? Good. That means you're not a hipster. However, I remain extremely skeptical towards the forthcoming release -- in much the same way that I retain a love-hate relationship with U2... not that Coldplay can hold a candle to what the Dubliners have done in twenty-six years. It doesn't help that such commercially-inviable acts like Franz Ferdinand and The Arcade Fire have risen to Spin-circulation level popularity, while updating demiurges The Smiths. Who needs Coldplay when you have these superiors acts anyways?
But really, Coldplay is not the issue here. The issue is whether or not I'm a hipster. On a website devoted to the appropriate criminalization of hipsters, ten preliminary criteria are established. Of these, I am guilty of four: (7) I have a graduate degree, in the arts no less; (4) I can readily recall a TV theme song written before I was born -- you name it; (2) I do believe that "Pet Sounds" is The Beach Boys' best album, and yes I do believe that it rivals "Sgt. Pepper's..."; and finally, (1) I insist on calling movies films.
I come close in two more: (10) I may hail from the Midwest, but unlike hipsters, I despise Brooklyn, avoiding it at all costs; and (6) my parents no longer support me, but if the real estate business doesn't pick up...
However, on the other four, no sir: (9) I don't own a single Guided by Voices album; (8) I'm a Republican -- take that you bloody Naderites; (5) I don't own t-shirts with dated symbols... and to tell the truth, the idea of an undershirt as an ironic statement makes me wretch; and finally, (3) I would never, never muss my hair and/or neglect to wash it. I would rather be drawn-and-quartered than cause even a single strand of my beautiful coiffure to be out of place.
So there you have it, no hipster, even if I might possess certain tendencies. Whether this means I will be able to overcome my objections and buy X & Y, that is yet to be seen.
Saturday, June 4, 2005
Miyazaki, Shintoism & Ecology
Commencing yesterday and running through the 30th of this month, New York's Museum of Modern Art presents Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata: Masters of Animation. The retrospective's centerpiece will be the North American premiere of Howl's Moving Castle (2004), Miyazaki's latest, which will subsequently receive a limited national release starting June 10th. (For Minneapolis readers, the film will open on that date at the Uptown Theatre.)
As no great fan of animation, let alone animae, I will admit that I think of Miyazaki as something of an exception. His best films manifest many of the same qualities as the very best of the classical Hollywood system: that is, they succeed in addressing multiple audiences at once, both as organic works of art and as entertainments in their own right. Spirited Away (2001), for instance, is targeted at ten year-old girls, seeking to remedy their principle anxieties, while operating as a parable for the economic crisis for older viewers. Then again, those not within the former demographic are likewise given a glimpse into the young female's psychoses. It is in other words an art that operates on numerous levels, separately addressing different viewers.
Another instance of dual and even multiple address in Miyazaki's work is in its salience for culturally Japanese and non-Japanese audiences. In any context, Spirited Away is a fantasy. However, for the Japanese viewers, it is a fantasy mitigated by Shinto metaphysics. Spirits are everywhere in the work, as kami are everywhere in nature. When a creature enters the spa with a horrendous odor, it is the product of a spirit. Chihiro, the ten year-old protagonist, judiciously cleans the monster, ridding the spa of this terrible spirit. In this way, not only does Spirited Away manifest a Shinto causality, but further upholds one of the religion's four affirmations: the importance of physical cleanliness. To bath in Shinto is to participate in an important purifying ritual.
Another of these affirmations is the sacredness of nature, which is a concern that the filmmaker often returns to throughout his corpus. In films like Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Princess Mononoke (1997), this Shinto belief is fused with an ecological allegory that condemns reckless industrial civilization, and particularly its employment of nuclear weaponry. That Shinto has so easily coopted environmentalism surely accounts for the latter's prevalence in recent Japanese cinema -- beyond Miyazaki, major works include the Shinto-titled Himatsuri (Mitsuo Yanagimachi, 1985), Rhapsody in August (Akira Kurosawa, 1990), and Charisma (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1999), among others.
Beyond Japanese cinema, where ecological concerns flow from Shintoist thought, environmentalism has become, arguably, the chief religious art of the modern world. The cathedrals of the medieval world have been since replaced by public spaces that call attention to a transgressive industrial past. Another recent MoMA exhibit perfectly articulated the religious intimations of environmentalist art. Groundswell: Constructing the Contemporary Landscape offers a view of contemporary urban landscapes reappropriated after their industrial dereliction. As the program notes, "nearly every significant landscape designed in recent years occupies a site that has been reinvented and reclaimed from obsolescence or degradation as cities in the postindustrial remake their outdoor spaces." In other words, these new designs represent a sort of contrition toward a misused Mother Earth, often maintaining the scars of their industrial abuse as if a continual reminder for generations ahead of the industrial era's grave sins.
But more on that later: in a film review of mine to be published next month, I further articulate the reasons for evaluating environmentalism as a religion. If you are unable to wait that long, I would recommend Michael Crichton's speech to the Commonweath Club.
As for the current film program at the MoMA, or for Miyazaki's art more generally, it almost goes without saying that it is essential, whether or not its respective religious intimations are of any interest to you. I mention these only out of what is otherwise critical slight: to understand Miyazaki's work in particular, I would argue, it is necessary to understand it within its Shintoist rubric.
As no great fan of animation, let alone animae, I will admit that I think of Miyazaki as something of an exception. His best films manifest many of the same qualities as the very best of the classical Hollywood system: that is, they succeed in addressing multiple audiences at once, both as organic works of art and as entertainments in their own right. Spirited Away (2001), for instance, is targeted at ten year-old girls, seeking to remedy their principle anxieties, while operating as a parable for the economic crisis for older viewers. Then again, those not within the former demographic are likewise given a glimpse into the young female's psychoses. It is in other words an art that operates on numerous levels, separately addressing different viewers.
Another instance of dual and even multiple address in Miyazaki's work is in its salience for culturally Japanese and non-Japanese audiences. In any context, Spirited Away is a fantasy. However, for the Japanese viewers, it is a fantasy mitigated by Shinto metaphysics. Spirits are everywhere in the work, as kami are everywhere in nature. When a creature enters the spa with a horrendous odor, it is the product of a spirit. Chihiro, the ten year-old protagonist, judiciously cleans the monster, ridding the spa of this terrible spirit. In this way, not only does Spirited Away manifest a Shinto causality, but further upholds one of the religion's four affirmations: the importance of physical cleanliness. To bath in Shinto is to participate in an important purifying ritual.
Another of these affirmations is the sacredness of nature, which is a concern that the filmmaker often returns to throughout his corpus. In films like Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Princess Mononoke (1997), this Shinto belief is fused with an ecological allegory that condemns reckless industrial civilization, and particularly its employment of nuclear weaponry. That Shinto has so easily coopted environmentalism surely accounts for the latter's prevalence in recent Japanese cinema -- beyond Miyazaki, major works include the Shinto-titled Himatsuri (Mitsuo Yanagimachi, 1985), Rhapsody in August (Akira Kurosawa, 1990), and Charisma (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1999), among others.
Beyond Japanese cinema, where ecological concerns flow from Shintoist thought, environmentalism has become, arguably, the chief religious art of the modern world. The cathedrals of the medieval world have been since replaced by public spaces that call attention to a transgressive industrial past. Another recent MoMA exhibit perfectly articulated the religious intimations of environmentalist art. Groundswell: Constructing the Contemporary Landscape offers a view of contemporary urban landscapes reappropriated after their industrial dereliction. As the program notes, "nearly every significant landscape designed in recent years occupies a site that has been reinvented and reclaimed from obsolescence or degradation as cities in the postindustrial remake their outdoor spaces." In other words, these new designs represent a sort of contrition toward a misused Mother Earth, often maintaining the scars of their industrial abuse as if a continual reminder for generations ahead of the industrial era's grave sins.
But more on that later: in a film review of mine to be published next month, I further articulate the reasons for evaluating environmentalism as a religion. If you are unable to wait that long, I would recommend Michael Crichton's speech to the Commonweath Club.
As for the current film program at the MoMA, or for Miyazaki's art more generally, it almost goes without saying that it is essential, whether or not its respective religious intimations are of any interest to you. I mention these only out of what is otherwise critical slight: to understand Miyazaki's work in particular, I would argue, it is necessary to understand it within its Shintoist rubric.
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