Sunday, April 20, 2014

Ugliness, and beauty, at Easter

So, on Friday night I was home alone, deciding what to watch, when the well reviewed Clint Eastwood movie "In the Line of Fire" started on free to air TV, and I half watched the opening sequence while trying to find a DVD.

Sure enough, within 10 minutes there's been a pistol clicked at someone's head, a hostage with a plastic bag over his head is roughed up, and Eastwood blasts away a couple of (I assume) bad guys at close range in the room in graphic detail as if it was another day in the office.

I thought it was just typical of this guy's shtick.

And in case you didn't know already:  man, I just hate the guy's oeuvre - ugly, usually revenge themed, graphically violent and violence endorsing* junk, featuring an actor with a range from 0 to 1 if you're using a scale that goes to a hundred.   (And in recent incarnations, usually with lots of swearing too.)    As far as I am concerned, he's been a poisonous amoral stain on cinema, in fierce competition in my mind with Quentin Tarantino as to which modern film maker ranks highest in my contempt.   

Obviously, I did not continue with that film, and found the DVD of the recent science fiction film Looper that I was looking for.   (I bought it as an ex-rental for $2, as I was not completely confident that I would like it, but hey it got a very high rating on Rottentomatoes.)

Well, what a mistake that was.

I didn't mind the surprise element within the first few minutes when you see what "loopers" do - wait at the designated spot for a person being sent back from the future for immediate execution with a futuristic shotgun.  (It's the speed with which it happens that sort of shocks, and this first one is not shown in graphic detail.)

But that was the last indication I had that I might enjoy the film.

The thing that kept coming into my mind was how intensely ugly this film is.   Everything from Joseph Gordon-Levitt's face done up (with no success whatsoever, if you ask me) to look like a young Bruce Willis, the depressing future society portrayed (everyone packs a gun and uses it more or less casually, it seems, and drug addiction seems rampant - now that I think of it, it's probably pretty much how a libertarian led future would look), the entire stupid story set up, to the increasing level of violence as the movie progresses and continual profane dialogue.

Honestly, the whole scenario is pretty stupid and bizarre, and if I could make a guess, just seems to have been contrived to serve one idea pitched at some studio execs - a younger man has to fight the future version of himself. It has elements that I could see serve no real value at all (the bit about the future development of telekinesis in some people, for example.)

Now, I was so appalled by the bleak amorality of the entire exercise (not just the movie story, but the fact the movie was made at all) I could not really be bothered analysing the time travel contrivances for consistency.   But others have (in fact, many reviewers noted that they doubted that it was logically consistent), but one reviewer did a particularly good job at complaining how it was nonsense, even by the loose standards one has to bring to this genre.

I have no idea at all why it got good critical reception, and the fact that so few critics reacted against its bleak and violent nature just shows what a boiled frog in the pot of declining values, so to speak, the collective body of professional cinema critics has become.

So what could redeem the weekend?

Well,  I had another ex rental DVD I had been wanting to watch, and last night I did:  Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life.

This is an intensely beautiful work that I cannot recommend highly enough.

Certainly it's not a movie with any normal narrative; it's more an impressionistic contemplation of Christian theodicy that imitates how human memory really is experienced in an extraordinary way.

It's almost hard to fathom how it was made  - there are so many very short sequences you can't imagine it being scripted in any normal sense.  (I should go looking for interview with Malick about this, but I suspect he might have shot a huge number of scenes and the movie was really created in the editing room.)

The overall thrill of the thing is how so many beautiful images are blended together in a very kinetic way.   The camera is virtually never still; it swoops around but gracefully and never to jarring effect.  It enhances the half dreamlike quality of memory that the film captures so perfectly.  And I say that as someone who does not like the overuse of handheld camera in modern cinema, particularly action films.

Now, it is not at all clear what some sequences, particularly near the end, mean.  You are left with the feeling that main characters have reached resolution, but exactly how or why is not at all clear.  But hey, that is in a way one of the films features - I don't think there has ever been a movie more inviting for a re-viewing than this one.

And it is, in its way, a near perfect film for Easter (at least for those of a religious persuasion).

After Tree of Life finished,  I remembered that SBS was showing Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ.  I have never seen it - there were too many reviewers complaining of the near pornographic nature of the violence to encourage me to see it.   And indeed, as I turned to the channel, Jesus was on the cross, dying, and the soldier stabs his side with a spear and gets, not just blood and water flowing out as per scripture, but something like a brief fire hydrant effect.

It looked completely ludicrous, and hence I was at least satisfied that a 60 second viewing confirmed I should never bother with the film in its entirety.  (I have never cared for Mel Gibson and his movies either - but he is no where near as far down on my list of Hollywood loathing as Eastwood.)

And finally, my family arrived back from their trip overseas today, safe and sound, and that's a thing of beauty in itself...

 
* Yes, I am aware of the plot of Gran Torino.  My comment stands.

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