The Devil’s Advocate October 13, 2006
Posted by Sandsquish in Mephistopheles.add a comment
Directed by Taylor Hackford, 1997 (Color, 7:3, Surround, 145′)
Starring Keanu Reeves, Al Pacino, Charlize Theron, Jeffrey Jones, Judith Ivey, Connie Nielsen, and Craig T. Nelson
Kevin Lomax is a lawyer, and he’s remarkably good at his job. He doesn’t know how to lose. He’s more than just a competitor, he’s a winner. When, one day, he sees something that makes him doubt whether he should be using the questionable tactics he often uses in the courtroom, he gets over it and finishes his job anyway. That’s what winners do.
As it so happens, a law firm in the city, named Milton, Chadwick, and Waters, has noticed what a good advocate Lomax is, and, naturally, wants to hire him. But, The Devil’s Advocate isn’t the drama about legal ethics it initially appears to be. Instead, it’s both an effective horror story and a clever satire of American society.
Kevin, you see, is obligated to work long hours, be competitive, and win, because, like all American men, he’s responsible for supporting his wife and can never be allowed to suspect that he would be worthy of her, or anyone, if he wasn’t a winner. But his wife, Mary Ann, isn’t happy about Kevin’s obsession with work. The firm’s other wives seem cold and mean, and she feels so lonely in the city. What options do the couple have? Well, he can stay with the new firm, working late into the night, and be wealthy, or he can leave the firm, work late into the night, and be poor. It’s not much of a dilemma, really. Except Kevin’s mother keeps insisting that the city is Babylon, and Mary Ann just might be losing her sanity.
The Devil’s Advocate is a little more ambitious than that, though. Instead of merely making us uneasy, and occasionally shocking us, while questioning gender roles and institutionalized competition, it starts hinting that something bigger and more perverse is going on. The film’s central plot point, the one that allows you to understand what is going on, is the nature of the firm’s senior partner, John Milton. If you haven’t guessed it already, you might want to watch the movie before you read on.
John Milton, it turns out, is Satan, the same Satan who corrupted mankind in his namesake’s poem, Paradise Lost. So, why would Satan want to be a lawyer, aside from that fact that it’s funny? Not so he can argue theology, though he will at the end of the film. It’s because, in the 20th century, corporate law allows him to have a hand in everything. In fact, he’s doing so well practicing corporate law that he figures he’s at his peak, and it’s time to wrap things up for good.
The movie wants us to draw analogies between Christian theology and American society. It wants us to ask why horrible things keep happening. According to Milton, it’s because God created the world as a practical joke. Milton appears to be angry about it, but the film has already shown us that we can’t take him at his word. He claims people have free will, but prevents them from exercising it. He says he cares about people, but tricks them into doing destructive things. The film shows him playing his part in this philosophical gag and enjoying it. The film also shows people praying to God for help, with no help arriving. Lomax must outwit the Devil himself, and he does so, successfully, by committing what Christians believe is a horrendous sin.
So, is it all a joke? And, whether it is or not, how does this relate to our society? The Devil’s Advocate leaves that one up to us.
Gattaca October 6, 2006
Posted by Sandsquish in Dystopias.add a comment
Directed by Andrew Niccol, 1997 (Color, 7:3, Surround, 105′)
Starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law, and Gore Vidal
Gattaca wants you to think it’s about the social consequences of genetically engineering people. It starts out with a couple of quotes about the wisdom of mucking around with Mother Nature, and it, originally, ended with a list of genetically “defective” people, like JFK and Einstein, who would never have been born in the world Gattaca depicts.
But, I’m not sure genetic engineering is really what this movie is about. For one thing, I think the consequences of genetically engineering people would be a lot more hellish than the ones presented. Let’s face it, we can’t even engineer crops without creating unintended, and usually destructive, consequences. Why would anyone think we could engineer people with better results?
For another thing, Gattaca shows us that it’s not really about the future. The world it presents doesn’t even try to look like it. It looks like the ’60s, seen through a nice golden filter. And, just as clearly, the problems its hero, Vincent, has, seem a lot like the problems most of us have. They’re just a little more dramatic.
In Gattaca, society has profiling down pat. Résumés, educational records, credit ratings, consumer profiles, psychological measurements, demographics, and statistical analysis haven’t got anything on the latest rage in categorizing people. Gattaca has genetic profiling, and it’s all of those things wrapped up into one. Have problems getting a loan, some insurance, or a job? Well, Vincent does too.
Vincent, you see, was conceived without the aid of genetic technicians. It’s unfortunate, but it happens. Everyone already knows who he is and what he can, and can’t, do. It’s in his genetic profile. You don’t question things like that, unless you’re Vincent. It’s just how things are. And that’s never wrong.
But, in this case, it certainly seems wrong. Like most of the trivial distinctions we make between people, the ones we make in Gattaca hurt more of us than just the folks who end up with the unflattering distinction. Vincent’s roommate, for instance, is genetically perfect, but he’s been, literally, crippled by his profile. Not even someone as flawless as him, it seems, can live up to the expectations of his category. And Vincent, as you might expect, can’t live his down.
Vincent and his roommate are separated by a set of spiral stairs in their home. The stairs might remind you of the helical structure of a DNA strand, except, if you look closely, you might notice that the spiral is backwards. Not only does it spin in the wrong direction, but Vincent lives at the top of the stairs and Jerome, the one with a great profile and a miserable life, lives at the bottom.
It turns out that the real difference between Vincent and Jerome isn’t their profiles. The real difference is that Vincent decided, one day, that he wasn’t going to pay attention to his profile anymore. But, Jerome, like most of the people in Gattaca, can’t. No one notices that the photograph that shows up whenever Vincent’s blood is tested isn’t Vincent’s, because they don’t look at Vincent. It’s his profile that matters. And Vincent’s girlfriend gets so confused when she discovers that Vincent’s profile doesn’t belong to him, that she thinks she doesn’t know him anymore. Vincent was still Vincent, of course, only his category had changed.
Late in the movie, Vincent’s girlfriend takes him to a piano concert. The performer plays very well, and his girlfriend tells him that this is because the pianist has twelve fingers. The composition, she says, can only be played by someone like that. But the piece he played sounded a lot like a piece composed, and originally performed, by Franz Schubert. Just like most of us, Schubert only had ten fingers. Just like most of us, he didn’t have any musical credentials. And just like all of us, in Gattaca, or in our world, he couldn’t find work as a composer because musical training wasn’t in his résumé. Everyone knew, at the time, that one of the best composers of the 19th century couldn’t be a musician. It just wasn’t in his profile.
Don’t Look Now September 8, 2006
Posted by Sandsquish in Psychological Shivers.add a comment
Directed by Nicolas Roeg, 1973 (Color, 9:5, Stereo, 110′)
Starring Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland, Hilary Mason, and Clelia Matania
Don’t Look Now is a leisurely horror film. The director is going to creep you out, and he’s going to take his time doing it.
Fortunately, there’s plenty to do in-between all the quiet weirdness in this film, like try to figure out what all the quiet weirdness means. And, if that doesn’t suit your fancy, you could also gaze at the slightly decaying, earthy-brown Venice, with its startling splashes of bright red, reflections in the water, and clanking, sometimes shattering, glass.
You’ll also have plenty of time to wonder what all this talk about vision is, too. The title, for instance, instructs us to not look now, and, as the beginning of the film hints, one of the characters will have some problems seeing things that might not be occurring right now. He won’t be the only one, though, because the viewer will also see a disquieting number of sudden flashbacks and flash-forwards, sometimes involving characters who are blind, but claim to have second sight, characters who can see, but can’t quite grasp the significance of the things that they are seeing, characters who might only be able to see with one eye, because the audience is prevented from seeing the other one, characters who wear sunglasses indoors, and probably can’t see very well because of it, and characters who could see just fine, except it’s so dark and foggy out that they can’t tell where they’re going, even if it’s just around the corner.
You’ll see most of the film spelled out for you in the first twenty minutes. You’ll see the brown earth, the startling red splashes of color, the reflections in the water, and the shattering glass. You’ll see people looking at things, but not really recognizing their significance. You’ll see second sight. You’ll see death. You’ll see the character that brings about one of the most unsettling, and chilling, endings you’re ever likely to see in a film. But, you won’t catch the meaning of any of these things. In fact, you’ll even see someone looking something up to find a meaning. But, the film won’t tell you whether she understood the meaning, just like the film won’t tell you what the film means.
Don’t Look Now wants you to try to figure out what is going on and what, for instance, a gargoyle might have to do with it, or why the number of dead children the two sisters have changes when they move a few blocks down the street, or what the blind woman is laughing about, or why someone would stop, while chasing someone else, to close gates behind himself, and prevent anyone from helping him out. Most obviously, the film wants you to try to figure out who, or what, the, casually mentioned, serial killer is. But Don’t Look Now doesn’t want to explain any of these things to you, because if you knew their meaning, you wouldn’t feel so unsettled. And that would just ruin a very good movie.
Max Headroom September 1, 2006
Posted by Sandsquish in Cyberpunk.add a comment
Directed by Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, 1985 (Color, 4:3, Mono, 55′)
Starring Matt Frewer, Nickolas Grace, Amanda Pays, Hilary Tindall, Morgan Sheppard, Paul Spurrier, Hilton McRae, and George Rossi
The TV network in “Max Headroom” has a problem. Well, two problems, really. Neither of them are much of a bother. But still, you never can tell. You may as well deal with them and be done with it. After all, you’ve got to keep the sponsors happy and the ratings up. And you’ve got this really innovative way to do both those things. Your R&D department has worked out how to compress advertising, so viewers can’t consciously react to it and you can squeeze much more of it into the shows. And this makes everything much more efficient and profitable.
You’re very good at this sort of thing.
But, the new commercials have this, sort of, well, deadly, side effect in some viewers. Not very many of them, really. It’s not like it will effect your ratings or anything like that. At least, not if that investigative reporter starts doing his job, like he’s been told to, and stops doing irresponsible things like investigating dead viewers.
Although “Max Headroom” is subtitled “Twenty Minutes Into the Future,” it’s really, as you’ve probably guessed, about the present. The main differences are that the present has worse art direction and the writers switched the TV networks in “Max Headroom” to the more general, but just as pathological, corporations.
For instance, when the TV network’s head of R&D explains that the future is about translating people into data, it’s tough to believe that he’s really talking about Max, the amusing, computer-generated, talking head. He’s got to be talking about credit ratings, consumer profiles, demographic statistics, and market analysis, right? And when the art directors show us a future littered with obsolete video technology, they must have been thinking about cable boxes, VHS, DVD, satellite dishes, Web casting, pay-per-view, pod-casting, video-enabled cell phones, and on-demand movie feeds, right?
The American TV series based on this short film had much clumsier scripts. And, well, this script would have been better if it had either dropped the title character or involved him more in the film’s subject matter. However, the TV show still retained this film’s remarkably insightful story ideas and explored more of its thinly-disguised present-day world. It depicted mortuaries that sell body parts (and if you want something fresher, they can manage that too), government officials who are sponsored and controlled by big business (and elected by audience ratings), computer-controlled security systems that are inherently abusive (but keep stock prices high), people who are summarily convicted of crimes if their profiles fit (unless they’re lucky enough to end up with a trial by TV game show), an outsourced school system that can’t be bothered with producing anything other than highly-trained (but ethically challenged) math geeks, entrepreneurs who push a technology so invasive it can record peoples’ dreams (and create great subscriber-video content), corporations who claim (and enforce) intellectual-property rights to human knowledge, and subsidiaries that sell genetically-modifed babies (not only because it’s profitable, but also because the results make great employees).
It’s enough to make you understand what Blank Reg, the video jockey, means when he reminds his audience to, “Remember when they said there was no future? Well, this is it.”
Captain’s Paradise August 25, 2006
Posted by Sandsquish in Alec & Ealing.add a comment
Directed by Anthony Kimmins, 1953 (B&W, 4:3, Mono, 90′)
Starring Alec Guiness, Yvonne de Carlo, Celia Johnson, and Charles Goldner
Captain St. James is a genius, his first mate tells us. And, if you’ve seen the poster for Captain’s Paradise, you might think you know what he’s talking about. The Captain, it seems, has a girl in both of the ports his ship sails from, just as in the old cliché.
On the other hand, you might realize that this hardly requires genius, and you’d be right, because The Captain’s Paradise is only tangentially about non-monogamy (or, if you have the uncensored, British, version of the film, bigamy). Captain’s Paradise also tells a perceptive, and quietly amusing, story that’s a little more general, and slightly more subversive, than just that.
The movie reveals, through scenes that mirror each other in whimsically different ways, that the Captain’s real stroke of genius was to work out how to live a reasonably complete life without confusing or upsetting anyone. He has figured out that the way to avoid being suffocated by the modern world’s elaborate categorization of people, and the one-dimensional roles it demands from them, is, simply, to make sure that no one ever catches you behaving “out of character.” After all, you can’t expect anyone to believe that the same man could be a decisive, efficient leader (as St. James is with his crew above deck), and an erudite, witty philosopher (as he is while dining with scholarly passengers below deck), and a playful, risqué lover (as he is with his mistress Nita in the port of Ceuta), and a sensible, responsible husband (as he is with his wife Maud in Gibraltar). The trick, he thinks, is to do different things in different places with different people.
Well, Captain’s Paradise wouldn’t be a comedy if he had gotten it completely right, and, of course, he hasn’t. Despite his perceptiveness, St. James never realizes that he might not be the only one who is really capable of, and wants to do, more than just those things his category requires of him. When he notices that his playful, erotic mistress has some domestic leanings, and his sedate, domestic wife wants to be sexy, he quickly discourages them. After all, they can’t have it both ways, can they? That would just be out of character.
The real irony here, one which Captain’s Paradise will, eventually, have a lot of fun with, is that, of all people, Captain St. James should have known better. He is, after all, someone who is leading not only a double, but a quadruple, life.
Of course, this was made in the ’50s, and we’re over that sort of thing now, aren’t we? Why, no one would bat an eye if stodgy, old Uncle Bob showed up at a nightclub, or that stuffed-shirt boss were seen singing along at Lollapalooza, or if someone spotted the family doctor gunning his Harley down the freeway, or if the technical support guy passed out invitations to a showing of his sculpture at the local art gallery, right?
Well, okay, maybe someday we’ll learn that people are, inherently, multi-dimensional. In the meantime we can always enjoy the subtly amusing antics of Henry St. James as he tries to be himself, in different places for different things, and gets just as confused as everyone else when other folks also turn out to be a little more than their categories would imply.
Tremors August 18, 2006
Posted by Sandsquish in Humorous Horror.add a comment
Directed by Ron Underwood, 1990 (Color, 9:5, Stereo, 95′)
Starring Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross, and Reba McEntire
Tremors is a fun homage to ’50s horror movies. It has some monstrous critters wreaking havoc in the heartland of America. It takes place in a valley that is cut off from any outsiders who might be able to help. It shows us a mixed group of characters who will, probably, work out how to deal with the situation through teamwork, persistence, and courage. It even, most notably, has a sense of humor.
Of course, this film wasn’t made in the ’50s, so the local kid turns out to be something of a brat, the helpless little girl can’t hear warning shouts because she’s listening to the latest girl band with her headphones, and the town’s residents include a couple of survivalists who know their ammo better than a green beret.
The film mainly follows a couple of handymen — who believe that thinking ahead to Wednesday constitutes planning — and a geology student from a nearby university — who’s noticed that something’s wrong out there in the desert. The interplay between the two handymen provides most of the film’s fun. They poke and prod at each other’s psyches much the way two people who’ve spent way too much time together might, especially if they lived in a town where everyone figures that the best way to handle minor disputes is by playing rock-paper-scissors.
Tremors doesn’t neglect suspense in favor of wit, though. This film knows when to show the audience information the characters haven’t seen yet, when to keep some characters from learning about things that other characters have figured out, and when to allow the audience to discover things at the same time as the astonished characters. None of us will notice exactly how cunning the monsters are till the end of the film.
And, refreshingly, the end of the movie isn’t a cop-out that relies on some weird-science solution, or a plucky, last-man-standing victory. Instead, the conflict turns into a battle of wits between the townsmen and the giant beasties. That’s fitting for a film that’s a little more clever that it initially seems.
