Movie Minutiae: Notes on Top 10 Films
I revisit my top 5 and 10 films periodically, and sometimes I write notes like the following.
27 Mar 2017 @ 07:49, PST
#1: “The Grandmaster,” Wong Kar Wai (2013)
#2: “The Wind Rises,” Hayao Miyazaki (2013)
#3: “The Tale of Princess Kaguya,” Isao Takahata (2013)
#4: “Paprika,” Satoshi Kon (2006)
#5: “Minority Report,” Steven Spielberg (2002)*
#6: “Moonlight,” Barry Jenkins (2016)*
#7: “Beauty and the Beast,” Howard Ashman** (1991)
#8: “Mad Max: Fury Road,” George Miller, Margaret Sixel** (2015)
#9: “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” Michel Gondry (2004)
#10: “The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan (2008)
*Note #1: It was incredibly difficult to put Jenkins’ “Moonlight” at #6 because, for all unequivocable sakes and purposes, “Minority Report” is an inferior film by at least tenfold. However, I’ve reserved my top five films for films that have impacted my filmmaking ethos and philosophy is a distinct, discernible way, as well as raising questions -- be it ethical, political, social, etc. -- that I may not necessarily agree with, if not outright oppose.
Also, as ‘childish’ as this may seem: I often revisit my top 5 and 10 films at least once a year, if not more so on any given occasion, because
a) I find them enjoyable (the feeling without necessarily thinking part), and
b) I’m always learning something new with each subsequent viewing.
“Minority Report” is a personally significant film because it was one of my earliest memories in realizing that film was a medium that could explore implications and ideas while adhering to gripping and interesting narratives. (I also love procedurals, which makes sense since I spent many years in the pre-medical track before segmenting off into a different, complementary field -- see: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.) Additionally, Janusz Kamiński’s cinematography in this film never fails to take my breath away.
Since lists are always subjective, in my mind “Moonlight” and “Minority Report” are inherently in my personal top 5 list, so I’ve only listed “Minority Report” in the chronological #5 by chronological succession of their release. I suspect that over time, as the poetry and mastery of “Moonlight” continues to seep into my subconscious, it will easily kick out “Minority Report” into #5 for the rest of my life -- the question, really, is how long that will take. (As of today, I’m giving it a year.)
**Note #2: These individuals are not (in strictest terms) the primary director of the film in question. However, I’ve listed them here because I feel that their contributions are what made the film in question the way it is -- which is to say, they are the heart and soul of why this movie works for me.
Howard Ashman: He was a genius lyricists who embedded spunk into a bibliophilic protagonist, internal conflictions of a ‘beast’ in appearance, and the subtle yet malicious underpinnings of how chauvinism and patriarchy transform a pompous buffoon into an actual monster. Ahistorical hipsters currently going on about how “Beauty and the Beast” is an ‘anti-feminist movie that shouldn’t be celebrated’ would do themselves a favor in further exploring:
1) The original context of which the French fairy tale was conceived, as it was both an examination of arranged marriages and finding ways to cope within the context of a patriarchal society, and
2) To watch the 1946 French film, “La Belle et la Bête” (directed by Jean Cocteau) which added to the original cannon and has the original character that inspired Disney’s Gaston, Avenant.
No lyricist in the Disney Renaissance of the Animation from 1989 to 1999 ever came close to capturing the creativity and clever underpinnings of Ashman’s captivating overtures and haunting ballads of wishes, desires, and longing for a place in what can be a largely unforgiving world to those who do not fall into place. In remembering that Ashman was also a gay man who died as a result of Reagan era domestic policies and died eight months prior to the film’s release, the songs of “Beauty and the Beast” take on an additional weight, melancholy and depth.
Margaret Sixel: Hollywood seems to have forgotten how to properly frame and edit and action sequence since the early 2000s (or, dare I say, even before then) in favor of seeking verisimilitude at best, or valuing quantity of ‘tried and true(ly bad)’ action formulas for the ‘tried and true(ly abysmal)’ middling ground of mediocrity.
“Mad Max: Fury Road” comes together from over 400+ hours of raw footage because of the attentive editing eye of Margaret Sixel: her attention to detail notwithstanding, Sixel astutely refused to fall in line with Hollywood ‘verisimilitude’ and instead opted for visual cohesion in line with what director George Miller strived for -- to create a film that could be understood without subtitles.
Sixel’s background in documentary filmmaking is not only an asset in her understanding of visual cohesion, but arguably the main reason why she understands the invisible fiction of editing. From double to quintuple takes, strategic slow motions and quiet moments during an assault of steampunk battle machines, as well as the beautifully unforgiving desert landscape so ravaged by toxic masculinity that pixels of blue and teal become visual diamonds, Sixel transformed what could have otherwise been standard action fare into a seamless, metal infused movie. (Oh, what a lovely day!)
Performative Demagoguery
On January 8th 2017, Meryl Streep gave one of the
most defiant and dead-on speeches against the current United States president.
The speech was not without some problematic elements – what,
for instance, is considered “art” within the paradigm of Western culture as
opposed to the rest of the world and not (MMA within the United States versus
Hong Kong cinema), which is not entirely out of line with Ms. Streep’s speckled
resume of ahistorical interpretations of race relations and power dynamics – but
at its very core, the speech was noteworthy not only for its advocacy of free
press, good journalism, and human decency, but also because it hit a note that
many seemed to miss:
Demagoguery is performative.
It was no accident that Streep focused in on Trump’s mockery of a journalist with a disability – there were many other instances of his bigotry that she could have focused on – because at the very heart of that moment, he was performing for a crowd.
A performance needs an audience.
In the case of Mr. Kovaleski being targeted, the performance drew mockery, jeer, and debauchery. The performance in question was successful in arousing some of the worse guttural instincts of a crowd that revels in a severe lack of empathy, and even more successful because it was circulated through news and cascaded into further marked outrage or dehumanizing validation.
Demagogues thrive under any reaction.
Streep, among many of the best actors, understands that reaction is centerfold to how effective any performance is, and she correctly zeroed in who Trump is:
He is Hollywood, and he is a performer – and Hollywood will never accept his performance, no matter how successful he arouses the basest of emotions.
It was a brilliant and humane craftsmanship of speech writing.
In these next four years, it will be even more important to consider the performative nature of demagoguery that comes with an individual defined by narcissism and a delusionary reality of alternative facts: we must understand that such a performance is designed to instigate the worse of instincts, to rile up bigotry, to gaslight one’s sense of reality, to shift blame and accountability against the unsuspecting, to ultimately manipulate.
Streep understood this, and hit back – hard.
Everyone should be taking note of her rallying cry, especially as we navigate a White House dominated solely by narcissism that, amongst many other forms reminiscent of autocracies, aims control of the media narrative.
Demagogues do not forego their public performance of abuse because morality and ethics do not bely their conscious. Given that he has employed Steve Bannon – former editor of the 21st Century version of “alternative facts” (read: lies) for the “alternative right” (read: white supremacists; Nazis; misogynists) outlet, “Breibart” – as one of his top strategic advisors, it will be even more imperative to stay on target in following and covering the political reality show as it unfolds.
The ensuing story of this country’s politics will not adhere to human decency: Bannon understands this, and will continue to guide Trump in this manner because traditional American media does not know how to cover a man so publicly and proudly devoid of such.
The next four years (dare I even suggest eight?) will be a constant stream of performative demagoguery, a performance that designed to derange and derail public attention from the more insidious underpinnings of legislative undermining and redesign to render the most powerful even more powerful, and the most vulnerable even more vulnerable to the point of nonexistence. We have already seen it with the rising advent of Richard Spencer and hate crimes since that fateful election day, as well as the advent of blatant, baseless lies.
We must continue to be vigilant as to how the performance and lies of a demagogue point not to the truth, but to the intended effect of their words: that is, when someone claims that “millions of illegals voted,” do not waste your attention on refuting and providing facts, but remember that they do not care, and that such a lie is a proclamation of intent – “millions of people did not vote for me, and I intend to make voting even more difficult because of that.”
They have already done it before with voting rights restrictions as recently as last year, and they will continue to do so.
Do not accept such a performance, and do not lose sight of the mechanisms and intent behind a performance.
Streep understood this, which is why her speech was particularly powerful.
She refused to accept this performance, and rightfully advocated for continued free and investigative journalism that runs counter to an Orweillian possibility of an unrelenting propaganda of “alternative facts” from the “alternative right.” She focused in what was actually happening behind the performance, rightfully deemed it demagoguery, and rejected it.
Hollywood followed in suit, and we must too.
Rejecting performative demagoguery will be core to our own sanity and survival, especially since truly terrible, terrifying forces are puppeteering the whole orchestration.
Do not accept the demagogue’s performance, anticipate the intents of its puppeteers, and do everything you can to protect their intended targets.
It seems apt that, as I finish writing this, Ms. Streep just received her 20th Oscar nomination. Congratulations Meryl – for rejecting a demagogue on all of our behalf, for advocating and rallying for the free press, and for breaking your own award record in the process.
Re: Existing in an Unknown Future
On Friday, I received an email from a reader that stumbled onto my Tumblr blog post inquiring about what I meant about “resisting distinctly as an artist.”
I sent them the following email to elaborate (with minor omissions specific to what the reader shared privately):
…
Regarding what I meant by “resisting distinctly as an artist”: it’s a loaded statement ripe for interpreting as you see fit and appropriate for your own circumstances. That being said, I hope these points will help you find your own means of resistance as an artist:
When creativity and creation are seen as assets to be commodified into economics – create anything and everything that is in direct opposition to economics. For instance, in Hollywood, if creativity and creation mean that whiteness is the centerfold of a story – create a world and story in which whiteness is not the centerfold of a story.
Understanding the politics of your identity is key to usurping pivots of power. Within the context of America, the pivots of power are currently white supremacy and patriarchy: if you are a heteronormative white cis-male in America, you are allotted societal privilege to behave and engage in a spectrum of human experiences and emotions without the restrictions of assumed categories; compare this to the larger narrative of what how most Americans perceive African American women (see: welfare queens, angry black woman, etc.)
In understanding the politics of your identity and how it falls within the spectrum of your circumstances, you can work actively against that as an artist in what you choose to create. Drawing from the previous example: within the American pivot of power: creating an artistic endeavor that imagines African American women as free agents of their own destiny and desire – distinctly juxtaposed to the current narrative of ‘welfare queens’ – is an act of defiance against the assumed underlying power dynamic that ‘only white cis-male individuals are able to achieve certain degrees of human accomplishment.’ Or, to paraphrase Mindy Kaling: “I have a personality defect where I refuse to see myself as an underdog because I was raised with the entitlement of a tall, blond, white man.”
Boiling it all down:
Understanding current limitations and boundaries of imagination and reality helps us create works of art that undermine those limitations and boundaries: as artists, we can imagine worlds beyond the paradigms of what is currently assumed and normal.
Dare to imagine something beyond what is considered the norm and assumed, and be mindful in how you approach your imagination. What are the implications of creating something new, or inspired by something prior? Are you appropriating something, or are you paying due homage? What norms and assumptions are you challenging in your creation?
Disregard what is seen as ‘profitable’ and consider what is moral and ethical.
Speaking for myself, I am a filmmaker foremost, and everything else in my life is secondary and informative of how I approach filmmaking. I don’t limit myself only to the spectrum of cinema – my participation and engagement with life helps me understand larger implications beyond my own individual experience, how my experience is consequently informed, and how I can consequently challenge larger systems in place. It’s a circular system of analysis, deconstruction, and construction of something different, if not entirely new – just like jazz. (For more on this, I highly recommend watching this video essay on Chuck Jones’ development as an artist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHpXle4NqWI)
Artists have the power to question power indirectly while having profoundly direct impacts on the minds of those who experience our work. It’s why the phrase “it’s just a book” and different iterations of such are so, so false: the jester in “King Lear” understood this with regards to comedy, and likewise Hitler understood this with regards to the power of xenophobia in Mein Kamf.
Some last notes:
When it comes to art – nothing angers oppressors more than being out done by anyone they aim to oppress. Oppressors aim to stifle progress and creativity because they themselves are fundamentally incapable of imagining and inventing a better world than what is currently the status quo. So as an artist, creating art that is better than what an oppressor can conjure up is one of the greatest forms of resistance because an oppressor can never, ever replicate true talent and sincerity. (See: Trump’s replica of Obama’ inauguration cake.)
Existing is an act of resistance – never forget that.