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Bardo, False Chroncile of a Handful of Truths: A Review - Inarritu's Head Up Inarritu's Ass

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A self-aggrandizing, self-pitying, self-righteous, and self-indulgent…not to mention pretentious, piece of crap.

In case you’d forgotten, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has won two Best Director Academy Awards – for Birdman and The Revenant, which puts him in some very rarified air. To put into context, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola have one Best Directing Oscar each, and Stanley Kubrick and Robert Altman have none.

I readily admit that I enjoyed Birdman (2014) and thought it was clever, and in hindsight its critique of superhero culture was spot-on and before its time, but I also thought the film badly bungled its ending.

I thought The Revenant (2015) was a flawed film but was deeper than it appeared on the surface and became much more interesting when seen through Jungian dream analysis rather than through the pop culture lens.

Except for those two films, Inarritu’s filmography is littered with some truly abysmal and pretentious pieces of work. For example, Inarritu’s 2006 shlockfest Babel may be the worst ‘taken seriously’ movie of the 21st Century…and its main competition is another Inarritu movie, 2003’s 21 Grams.

Which brings us to Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Inarritu’s newest cinematic venture, which is currently streaming on Netflix.

Bardo, which was a Netflix production and hit the streaming service October 27th, was written and directed by Inarritu and stars Daniel Giminez Cacho and Griselda Siciliani.

The movie, which describes itself as an epic black comedy-drama, is a fictional, pseudo-autobiographical story that chronicles Silverio Gama – a sort of stand in for Inarritu himself, as he navigates his life as a big-time journalist and documentarian who immigrated from Mexico to the U.S.

Gama wrestles with his career success, his critics, his artistry, his family, his grief, and his past, as well as the past of Mexico and his guilt over having left the country of his birth. Of course, these are all the same things with which Inarritu grapples.

Bardo, which runs two hours and forty minutes, is another in a bevy of films this year made by auteurs examining their own lives in feature films. For example, I recently reviewed Armageddon Time, James Gray’s dismal autobiographical effort, and I’ve yet to see Spielberg’s The Fabelmans or Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light.

I will say this about The Fabelmans and Empire of Light…it is absolutely impossible for them to be worse than Bardo. Bardo is bad-o. Really bad-o. Like excruciatingly bad-o. Like so bad it makes the awful Armageddon Time feel like Citizen Kane.

Bardo, which has a grueling two-hour and forty-minute run time, is somewhat remarkable as it’s simultaneously self-aggrandizing, self-pitying, self-righteous, and self-indulgent.

The problem with Bardo is not cinematic incompetence on the part of Inarritu. If Inarritu is anything it’s competent. He knows how to shoot a film and make beautiful images – and he’s aided in this effort by cinematographer Darius Khondji (who…curiously, also shot Armageddon Time – poor bastard). What Inarritu doesn’t know how to do is turn off his ego and turn down his adolescent maudlin impulses in order to tell a coherent and compelling story.

Bardo is supposed to be infused with magical realism but is devoid of magic and allergic to realism. In their stead Inarritu injects an extraordinary lack of subtlety and pronounced heavy-handedness as well as a steaming hot serving of middlebrow bourgeois bullshit philosophy.

This movie is, without exaggeration, literally a director bitching about how persecuted he is by critics, how envied he is by jealous less successful people, and imagining how devastated everyone will be when he dies. This is more akin to something a petulant teenager would dream up as they cry in their bedroom after their parents refused to buy them a sports car for their sixteenth birthday than something an adult filmmaker should put in a feature.

To give you an indication of what an absolute shitshow Bardo is, consider this…the film features a graphic scene where a baby is literally pushed back into a vagina, and another scene where Gama’s adult face is CGI’d onto a little kid as he has a discussion with his father in a sort of dream like sequence. Did I mention it was heavy-handed? Yikes!

In addition to all of that self-serving navel gazing, Inarritu also throws colonialism and anti-Mexican racism shit against the wall to see if any of it sticks…and none of it does.

Then there’s the virtuoso filmmaking stuff, like the extended, one-shot dance scene, which I was supposed to be impressed by but which I wasn’t impressed by.

What’s astonishing about Bardo is that Inarritu has made himself the hero of the story but only succeeds in exposing himself as being relentlessly unlikable. The Inarritu character Gama is one of the most punchable people to have graced the silver screen this year, and maybe this decade.

Even the film’s more interesting visual sequences, like when people start dropping dead in Mexico City, is derivative. I saw the same sequence done better in a Radiohead music video nearly thirty years ago.

Speaking of derivative, it seems to me that with Bardo Inarritu was trying to copy/emulate his fellow Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron’s film Roma (2018), and maybe even Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups (2015). Roma is a brilliant, magical realist, autobiographical story about growing up in Mexico, and Knight of Cups is, in my opinion, a dreamlike masterpiece about navigating the hell of Hollywood and moviemaking.

The problem though is that Inarritu is no Cuaron and no Malick. He lacks their deftness, their depth and their profundity. Inarritu is an artistic poseur. A pretentious pretender who thinks cinematically pouting and preening is equivalent to being profound.

What is bothersome about Inarritu’s failure on Bardo is that we are witnessing the end of the auteur era at Netflix. The streaming giant in recent years made the decision to throw money at auteurs and let them do what they want. In the case of Cuaron, David Fincher and Martin Scorsese, that decision was cinematically fruitful as it gave us Roma, Mank and The Irishman. This year the two auteurs blessed by Netflix’s desire for prestige were Noah Baumbach and Inarritu, and they delivered the excrement filled dump-trucks that were White Noise and Bardo. It should not be a shock that Netflix announced this year that they will no longer throw money at auteurs…thanks Baumbach and Inarritu.

The bottom line is that Bardo may finally expose Inarritu for the philosophically trite filmmaking fraud that he is. His elevation to the heights of Hollywood success is more a testament to the buffoonery of the movie business than to the artistic genius of Inarritu.

Whatever one may think of Inarritu as a filmmaker, there is simply no denying that Bardo is an artistic catastrophe of epic proportions. This movie is nothing but a vacuous, vapid and vain exercise in cinematic masturbation. Avoid it at all costs.

©2023

It's a Miracle...Hollywood Finds Religion!

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 38 seconds

Hollywood is Allowing Catholics Who Are Not Corrupt or Pedophiles to Appear on Screen Again

Hollywood is currently making some surprisingly good Catholic entertainment with a refreshingly traditionalist bent.

As a practicing Catholic and a devout cinephile, I am constantly frustrated that Hollywood rarely gets religion right. Films and tv shows that touch upon Catholic and religious themes are often reduced to being either saccharine adoration in the hands of believing “conservatives” or vacuous vilification in the hands of agnostic “liberals”.

Considering there are 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in the world, and 84% of all people believe in one religion or another, it would seem a wise choice for Hollywood to explore Catholic and religious themed stories with much more regularity, artistic integrity and sincerity.

Hollywood and the Catholic Church need not be adversaries, as they have a lot more in common than one might think. For instance, they both have gobs of money and their hierarchies are littered with perverts and pedophiles. I’M KIDDING! As I said, I’m a practicing Catholic…and as my Catholic gallows humor shows…I definitely need more practice because I’m not very good at it.

Truth be told, now is actually a great time to be a Catholic cinephile because that den of iniquity, Hollywood, has recently shaken off its allergy to organized religion and turned its storytelling eye toward Catholicism with a striking spiritual seriousness and cinematic verve.

Tinsel Town’s recent mini-Catholic renaissance began in late November when it dipped its toe into the holy water font with the Netflix film The Two Popes. The movie, which features two compelling performances from Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce as Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis respectively, is visually uneven but surprisingly philosophically vibrant.

This was followed in short order by Terrence Malick’s artistically gorgeous and profound film, A Hidden Life, which hit art house theatres in late December and told the story of Franz Jagerstatter, a Catholic Austrian farmer turned saint for his conscientious objection to Hitler and the Nazi war machine.

Then in January, HBO premiered The New Pope, which is a continuation of the network’s highly stylized 2016 drama The Young Pope, a fictional account of Vatican intrigue starring Jude Law as an enigmatic Pontiff. The Young Pope and its new iteration The New Pope, are cinematically lush and quite theologically robust shows.

Considering that Hollywood is so reflexively liberal, especially in cultural matters, what makes these three projects so striking, beyond their simply being about religion, is that they shine an unabashedly positive light on traditional Catholic ideology.

For instance, I’m not conservative but even I was reticent to watch The Young Pope when it first aired in 2016 because I assumed it was going to be an intellectually lazy and predictably liberal spin on church matters. Much to my cinephile delight the show has consistently defied expectations, with Jude Law’s character Pope Pius XIII being a brazen crusader for old world traditionalism as an antidote to the menace of new world moral relativity and meaninglessness.

The Young Pope is certainly not reverential toward the Church, and this along with the show’s narrative audacity and occasional racy nature is maybe why some conservative Catholics find it blasphemous. But conservatives who dislike The Young Pope/The New Pope are missing the forest for the trees, as the show is a mature meditation on faith and is extremely respectful to Catholic teachings and belief in God.

The truth is that if conservative Catholics were cinematically literate and culturally sophisticated enough they would understand that The Young Pope/The New Pope is a beacon for potential religious traditionalists converts lost in the storm of pop cultural vacuity and idolatry.

The same is true of The Two Popes, which treats Catholicism, its adherents and God with the utmost seriousness. The debates in the film between Pope Benedict and Pope Francis perfectly encapsulate the present Catholic conundrum and the film goes to great lengths to respectfully highlight both men’s arguments as well as their personal failings.

 A Hidden Life furthers the traditional Catholic cause by showing the faith in action. Protagonist Franz Jagerstatter is the living embodiment of the commitment to Catholic faith and while his story certainly isn’t a happy one, for serious Catholics, it is ultimately a spiritually joyous one.

The entertainment industry acknowledging and exploring Catholicism is remarkable, bordering on the miraculous, as religion is usually either ignored, ridiculed or vilified in Hollywood productions.

This is why I find The Two Popes, A Hidden Life and The Young Pope/The New Pope to be such a breath of fresh air. Religion, particularly Catholicism with its hierarchical structure and global nature, is a veritable gold mine of dramatic potential, and it does my Catholic cinephile heart good to see it being so exquisitely utilized in artistically and spiritually satisfying ways.

Art and cinema are about asking difficult questions and potentially opening hearts and changing minds, and it seems we are currently in a cultural moment where the madness of the world has become so disorienting that even Hollywood is considering the unthinkable, that traditional religion might be of value in trying to make sense of it all.

I am sure, soon enough, Hollywood will revert back to its relentlessly diabolical ways and this glorious mini-Catholic artistic renaissance will be but a faded, distant memory…but for now…I am going to enjoy it in all its glory while it lasts.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

1917 Dazzles the Eye but Fails to Stir the Soul

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 32 seconds

Sam Mendes’ visually stunning new war film may generate Oscar hype, but it is ultimately an underwhelming and totally forgettable cinematic venture.

With the media telling me that the world, or certain parts of it, is once again potentially on the verge of war, I did the brave and noble thing and ventured out to my local movie theatre to see Oscar winning director Sam Mendes’ new World War I film, 1917.

My hope was that 1917, a recent winner of the Golden Globe for Best Picture and Best Director, would be a powerful film that would remind audiences, particularly the more belligerent American ones, of the spiritual, emotional and physical toll of war and the inherent inhumanity, futility and barbarity of waging one. Sadly, 1917 is not up to the task.

The film, which boasts a solid cast that stars George MacKay with supporting turns from Dean Charles-Chapman, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch and Colin Firth, is the story of two British soldiers in World War I sent on a dangerous mission to save hundreds of their countrymen from an impending German ambush.

 1917 has all the makings of a great movie as it tells a compelling war story, is beautifully shot and proficiently acted, the problem though is that those ingredients never coalesce into a cohesive cinematic meal that satisfies and viewers are left still feeling hungry after the closing credits roll.

The best thing about 1917 is the exquisite cinematography, as it is beautifully shot by one of the great cinematographers in film history, Roger Deakins, a 14 time Oscar nominee. The film has generated a lot of buzz because it is shot and edited so that it appears as if the entire movie were filmed in one long take. That ‘one long take’ approach could be thought a gimmick in lesser hands, but Deakins uses it to expertly draw the viewer into the narrative and escort them through the film’s journey. Deakins’ ability to use camera movement, framing, light and shadow to propel the story is sublime and visually gorgeous to behold.

No, the problem with 1917 is certainly not the look of the film, but rather the feel of it. As impressive as the movie is visually, it never resonates emotionally and ends up being a rather hollow cinematic experience. The blame for that failure lay squarely at the feet of writer/director Sam Mendes.

Mendes’ shallow script has fundamental structural and dramatic flaws, such as plot points that hit too soon or too late, that keep viewers at arms length from the two main characters, Lance Corporal William Schofield (MacKay) and Lance Corporal Tom Blake (Charles-Chapman). Due to the script’s failures, viewers never really have too much invested in Schofield and Blake as they are whisked along on their perilous odyssey. This emotional detachment reduces the twists and turns of the story into mere storytelling devices without emotional power, and thus the movie often feels reduced to a roller coaster ride or a video game, which can be exciting but predictable and never dramatically profound.

I have long found Mendes to be a middling talent, and a brief perusal of his filmography is a study in underachievement and wasted opportunities. American Beauty (1999) won Mendes his Best Directing Oscar but is a movie that has not stood the test of time and is, in fact, like its star Kevin Spacey, quite embarrassing in retrospect. Other Mendes films, like Road to Perdition (2002), Jarhead (2005) and Revolutionary Road (2008) had fantastic casts and interesting stories but, like 1917, never coalesced into cinematic greatness.

Another issue plaguing 1917 is that as a war movie it will inevitably be measured against other notable films in that genre, and it does not fare well in comparison. For instance, it is not as technically superior, particularly in terms of the sound, or as artistically ambitious as Christopher Nolan’s time and perspective bending WWII tour de force Dunkirk (2017). It lacks the emotional resonance and spiritual profundity of Terrence Malick’s thoughtful The Thin Red Line (1998), and has nowhere near the psychological and political insights of a masterpiece like Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957). It also fails to convey the sheer madness and depravity of war like Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1978), Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986) and Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987).

On the surface, 1917 is somewhat evasive in its political, moral and ethical perspective, and avoids dirtying its hands in the complexity of war. Mendes shows his true bourgeois colors though by choosing to focus the narrative exclusively on the nobility and heroism of the soldiers who fight the war and never even hinting at the malignancy of those in the officer and ruling class who cynically wage it. In Mendes’ hands, World War I is a morally sterile and ethically antiseptic venture that was little more than a stage to showcase the better angels of British soldier’s nature.

Mendes sticks to this painstakingly straight forward and uncomplicated approach in 1917 because he wants the audience, particularly the older, Anglophile viewers who vote for the Academy Awards, to mindlessly gobble up his middle-brow Oscar bait and not get bogged down with too many difficult questions he is ill-equipped to ask, never mind answer.

Sadly, in the hands of the artistically obtuse Sam Mendes, 1917 is incapable of being the great and profound war film the world needs right now, the type that challenges audiences and changes hearts and minds. At its best, 1917 is a stunning piece of technical virtuosity reduced to a mildly entertaining, but ultimately forgettable, film.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

 

©2020

Top 10 Films of the Decade - 2010's Edition

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes 24 seconds

Much to my surprise, I have been seeing a large number of writers putting out their “Best of the Decade” list in recent weeks. I was surprised by this because I had no idea the decade was ending. At my very best I barely know what day it is nevermind what month or year. Just this morning I saw a headline declaring the best movies of 2020 and had to stop and think about it a few moments and then eventually check my iPhone and make sure our current year wasn’t 2020 (the article was predicting what will be great in 2020).

Once I discovered that the 2010’s are actually ending just next week, I figured it was my duty to put together my own cinematic retrospective on the decade. In compiling my list I was wary of recency bias and tried to keep films from this year at arm’s length…but the problem is that 2019 is easily the best year for movies in the decade and thus far in the millennium…so my list simply HAD to reflect that.

So sit back, relax and enjoy my Best of the 2010’s movie list. As always, keep in mind my list is THE definitive list, and all other lists are incredibly, incredibly stupid and worthless.

BEST ACTION MOVIE OF DECADE

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) - I was never much of a Mad Max fan at all. Mel Gibson was someone I never appreciated as an actor or action star (or a director for that matter), and the Mad Max phenomenon just passed me by when it was at its height in the 80’s. I missed seeing Fury Road in the theatre out of sheer disinterest, but stumbled upon on it one night on cable television and thought I’d give it a shot because I had no other options. I was ready to bail on the movie pretty quick but it totally hooked me and left me mesmerized to the point of being slack jawed.

Director George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road is insane. It is basically a violent, beautifully shot, continuous car chase. The film is supremely crafted and the long chase is exquisitely conceived, blocked and executed. I am so mad at myself for having not seen Fury Road in the theatres as I can only assume that the spectacle of it all was even more spectacular on the big screen.

Mad Max: Fury Road is a stunning spectacle to behold, a crowning achievement for the action genre and the best action movie of the decade.

BEST FRANCHISE OF DECADE

Planet of the Apes Trilogy - In a remarkable upset I went with Planet of the Apes over the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel had a great decade, no doubt, and dominated at the box office for the entirety of the 2010’s, but the best franchise in terms of quality was Planet of the Apes.

The first film of the reboot, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, came out in 2011 and I thoroughly expected it to be awful. Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes film of 2001 was an absolute catastrophe that, being a huge Planet of the Apes fan since I was a kid, scarred me deeply. When I saw that James Franco was the lead actor in the 2011 reboot I figured this was nothing more than a vacuous money grab by producers trying to cash in on the glory of the older movies. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Rise was a stellar origin film that appreciated, correctly understood, and properly connected to the mythology of the earlier films from the 60’s and the 70’s, and was followed by the equally fantastic Dawn and War. The CGI now available to filmmakers elevated the myth and material at the heart of the story and turned Planet of the Apes into the top-notch franchise it was always meant to be.

Great performances by Andy Serkis and the rest of the CGI ape-actors turned these films, which could have been a punch line, into a compelling and profound series that is better than anything Marvel, or anyone else, has put out this decade.

MOST OVERRATED FILM OF DECADE

A TIE!

Ladybird (2017)- Ladybird was the Greta Gerwig directed coming of age story set in Sacramento that critics absolutely adored (it has a 98% critical score at Rotten Tomatoes). I found the film to be little more than a sloppily slapped together mish-mash of trite SNL sketches completely devoid of insight, profundity or original ideas. Director Greta Gerwig is the darling of critics because she is the manic pixie dreamgirl of arthouse poseurs…this is only heightened by the fact that she married an arthouse poseur - Noah Baumbach! Look no further than the glowing adoration of her newest beating a dead-horse film, Little Women, for proof of my thesis.

Get Out (2017) - Critics loved Get Out because they were looking for a black director to be their messiah in the wake of the #OscarsSoWhite nonsense. Get Out was a flaccid and forced piece of banal nothingness that exposed the bias of critics and the power of white liberal guilt. For proof of my thesis look no further than Peele’s second film Us…which is a total mess of a movie but which critics adored anyway.

WORST FILM OF DECADE

Detroit (2017)- Detroit attempts to tell the story of the Detroit race riots of 1967 but is so ineptly directed by Kathryn Bigelow that she should have her Oscar (for The Hurt Locker) retroactively revoked for setting the art of filmmaking back four decades. As anyone who has ever been to Detroit can attest, it is easily the worst place in the universe, so maybe Bigelow was doing some meta commentary by making the worst movie ever with the title Detroit to match the awfulness of the city with that moniker…who knows. Regardless, Bigelow’s directorial incompetence is remarkable in a way, as it seems impossible to make a film as dreadful as Detroit. That said, Tom Ford gave it a run with his abysmal Nocturnal Animals, but still fell short. better luck next time Tom.

BEST FILMS OF DECADE

10. Hell or High Water (2016) - Hell or High Water could have been named “Revenge of the Working Class”, as screenwriter Taylor Sheridan’s script accurately captured the desperation of those of us living under the boot of the cancer of American capitalism that is devouring its own. Top notch performances from Jeff Bridges, Ben Foster, Chris Pine and Gil Birmingham (as well as the local hires and those with smaller roles) turn Sheridan’s script into a resonant and powerfully insightful commentary on modern-day America in the forgotten fly-over country.

9. The Big Short (2015) - Adam McKay’s cinematic adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book of the same name, is miraculous. It artfully tells the intricate and dazzlingly complex story of the 2008 housing meltdown with comedic aplomb and dramatic power. A great cast and stellar direction make The Big Short not only one of the best, but one of the most important film of the 2010’s.

8. Phantom Thread (2017) - P.T. Anderson’s collaboration with Daniel Day-Lewis is a mediation on control, power and the toxic and intoxicating brew when the anima is conjured. A twisted, lush and vibrant love story that peels away the skin and reveals the wound on the spirit of a powerful man, and the woman who loves him not despite of it, but because of it. A sumptuous feast for the eyes and the soul, Phantom Thread is powered by the masterful work of P.T. Anderson, Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps.

7. Dunkirk (2017) - Dunkirk is a film of exquisite technical precision, insightful political analysis, heart-stopping action and gut-wrenching drama. Director Christopher Nolan is one of the great artistically populist filmmakers of our time and Dunkirk is his most well-made and daring film yet. leave it to Nolan to twist time and perspective in what could have been a straightforward story of British heroism. A solid cast, which include such surprises as boy band star Harry Styles, give excellent performances that are buoyed by some of the very best technical work cinema has ever seen…or heard to be more exact, as the sound in Dunkirk is amazing beyond belief. The best war film of the decade, and one of the greatest masterpieces of the genre.

6. The Master (2012) - The Master boasts the very best acting captured on film in the last decade…and even further in the history of cinema. Joaquin Phoenix reinvents the art of acting as the literally and figuratively twisted Freddie Quell, a recent World War II veteran with a knack for making delicious, delirious and deadly concoctions from bizarre items. The acting clashes between Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who plays charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd, are absolute sublime perfection. The Master, like its two stars, is a compelling and combustible drama that elevates acting beyond its previous bounds.

5. The Irishman (2019) - The Irishman is a movie about introspection, retrospection and regret. Scorsese’s three and half hour masterpiece is both a genre and career defining and ending classic. The film boasts a solid performance from Robert DeNiro and two stellar supporting turns from Joe Pesci and Al Pacino, who are at their very best. Just as Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven commented on his own career while making his career defining genre, westerns, dramatically obsolete, so does Scorsese have the final word on his career and puts the dramatic nail in the coffin of the genre that, for good or for ill, defined it, the mobster movie.

4. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019) - This is Tarantino’s most dramatically potent and resonant film. DiCaprio and Pitt give two fantastic performances as a fading star and his stunt double and Margot Robbie is undeniably luminous as Sharon Tate. Tarantino transports audiences back to 1969 in order to tell the story of wishful thinking gone awry. A true masterwork from a master director.

3. Joker (2019) - In a decade where superhero movies ruled supreme, the last and final word on the genre was put forth by an emaciated lunatic with a Quaker’s hair cut. Joker has forever altered the current top genre by dragging it through the gutter and being brave enough to tell the actual truth about our time. When Arthur Fleck tells his disinterested therapist that “all I have are negative thoughts”, he spoke for millions upon millions of people living in the spiritual hell that is capitalism in late stage American empire. Joker is the best comic book movie of all time because it takes a chainsaw to the form and shapes it into an incendiary Taxi Driver/The King of Comedy sequel. Who knew that Todd Phillips of all people, had this level of greatness within him? It helps that Joaquin Phoenix, the best actor on the planet, used his formidable talent and skill to morph into the most interesting and human super villain (or hero) to ever grace the big screen. Joker is a game changer for superhero movies, and thankfully, cinema will never be quite the same.

2. Roma (2018) - Roma is a cinematic tour de force that was an exquisitely conceived and executed film of startling artistic precision and vision. Alfonso Cuaron wrote, directed and was even his own cinematographer on the film that catapulted him into the rarefied air of the cinematic masters.

1. The Tree of Life (2011) - The Tree of Life is not only the best film of the decade, it may very well be the best film of all time. Terrence Malick’s magnum opus veered from the present day to the 1950’s and all the way back to prehistoric times. Malick’s experimental meditation on life and loss covered large swaths of history but never failed to be breath-takingly intimate, thanks in part to sublime cinematography from Emmanuel Lubezki and grounded and genuine performances from Sean Penn, Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. As spiritually, psychologically, philosophically and theologically profound and insightful a film as has ever been made. With The Tree of Life, Malick takes his place on the Mount Rushmore of filmmakers…and atop my Best of the 2010’s list.

Thus concludes my Best of List of the 2010’s…and soon the 2010’s will end too! Let’s hope the 2020’s will bring us some more great cinema!

©2019

A Hidden Life is the Story of a Farmer Who Resisted Hitler - NOT a Metaphor for Anti-Trump #Resistance

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 47 seconds

A Hidden Life by iconic filmmaker Terence Malick celebrates an Austrian farmer’s Christian principled opposition to Hitler, and any attempts to draw a parallel between the movie and anti-Trump resistance are myopic at best.

The new film is the true story of Franz Jagerstatter, a Catholic farmer in Austria who is conscripted into the German army during World War II and must choose between his conscience and pledging allegiance to Hitler and the Third Reich.

Jagerstatter’s conscientious objections to Nazism come with dire legal consequences that put his life in peril and leave his mother, wife, and three young daughters pariahs in their small village community.

The movie, which stars a who’s who of European actors, including August Diehl, Bruno Ganz, Michael Nyqvist, Franz Rogowski and Mathias Shoenaerts, may be difficult for non-cinephiles to absorb as Malick, who has made such classics as Badlands, The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life, has a storytelling style that is more meditative and impressionistic than general audiences may be conditioned to accept. That said, the film is as dramatically profound and insightful as anything I have seen all year.

Although A Hidden Life was in development before Trump ever became president, some out here in Hollywood have interpreted the film as a metaphor for the moral imperative to resist Trump. I think that interpretation is myopic at best, and believe that the movie is unintentionally a scathing indictment of the moral vacuity and hypocrisy at the heart of the anti-Trump resistance.

The main point that I took away from the film is that moral authority is essential if opposition to evil is to endure. Franz Jagerstatter had an abundance of moral authority because his loyalty was not to country, village, leader, party, policy or even church, but to Truth.

The opposition to Trump, which calls itself the #Resistance, loathes Trump because he is a boor and a bully, its opposition to him is based solely on personality and political party rather than on the moral principle to which Jagerstatter adhered. This lack of a commitment to Truth and principle is what exposes the #Resistance as being completely vapid and devoid of moral standing.

For instance, the #Resistance are rightfully furious over Trump’s immigration policies, and like to wail about “babies in cages” to prove their point, but that outrage rings entirely hollow since they never spoke up in opposition when Obama put “babies in cages” and deported so many immigrants that he was known as the “Deporter-in-Chief”.

Equally disingenuous is the #Resistance outrage over Trump’s supposed war on the free press. Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers during his two terms than every other president combined and yet none of these resistors said a word in opposition back then.

Even more damning is the #Resistance deification of morally and ethically dubious intelligence agency apparatchiks. John Brennan, Michael Hayden and James Clapper are all criminals and moral abominations for being integral parts of America’s heinous torture, rendition, surveillance and drone war programs, and yet the #Resistance now hail them as patriots and heroes.

The FBI has long infiltrated civil rights, anti-war and environmental groups in order to destroy them, but that hasn’t stopped the #Resistance from celebrating the FBI’s “professionalism” and genuflecting before loathsome establishment creatures like FBI alums Robert Mueller and James Comey, out of pure anti-Trump animus.

Political darlings of the #Resistance, such as Democrats Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, call Trump a traitor but then pass expansive military and intelligence bills that further empower the executive branch and the Washington war machine.

The #Resistance has further proven their hypocrisy by embracing the establishment talking points to a shocking degree. These allegedly liberal anti-Trumpers are shameless anti-progressive shills for empire who cheer the prosecution and persecution of truth-tellers such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and decry the failure of Trump to go to war in Syria and Iran and to be more belligerent towards Russia.

Franz Jagerstatter lived a quiet, seemingly inconsequential, “hidden life”, until he was forced by his conscience to oppose the Nazis and carry the cross of Truth from his Eden in the Austrian Alps to his Golgotha in Berlin. Pope Benedict XVI beatified Franz Jagerstater in 2007 for his unwavering commitment to Christian moral principles in the face of a formidable evil that was aided in by a complicit Catholic Church. In contrast, the fraudulent #Resistance in America only play at opposition to evil, as is proven by their craven sychophancy toward the depraved neo-liberal, imperial establishment and its military-intelligence industrial complex.

The neo-liberal, imperial establishment in America is a malignant, brutish and bloodthirsty beast that has killed and exploited millions of innocent people from Asia to the Middle East to Latin America and everywhere in between over the last 70 years and the self-righteous and self-aggrandizing anti-Trump #Resistance poseurs will never have the moral authority of a great man like Franz Jagerstatter until they recognize that simple fact. For the #Resistance to squabble over which mask the slouching imperial beast will wear, be it the folksy mask of George W. Bush, or the good ol’ boy mask of Bill Clinton, or the hope and change mask of Barrack Obama, or the brash and brazen mask of Donald Trump, is a fool’s errand and the devil’s handiwork.

A Hidden Life is a deeply moving and worthwhile cinematic venture because it shows the poignant struggles of a man who, unlike the current crop of “resistors”, was willing to sacrifice everything in the service of Truth. The #Resistance must learn the crucial lesson of Franz Jagerstatter, that loyalty to Truth must be the priority, if it ever hopes to attain any moral authority. The first, most basic and most important truth that the #Resistance needs to understand is this…that Donald Trump is not the cause of the evil of neo-liberalism and American empire…he is a consequence of it.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2019

Martin Scorsese - Top Five Films

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes 57 seconds

Despite an abysmal winter, spring and most of the summer, 2019 is actually shaping up to be a good year for cinema. The first ray of sunshine came in the form of Quentin Tarantino’s wish fulfillment ode to Los Angeles, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. Then the cultural hurricane known as Joker came along and sent the woke brigade and the impotent cuckolds in the establishment media into a full blown panic before most ever even saw it. When the Joker finally made landfall it was an insightful and electrifying artistic nuclear explosion at the center of the comic book genre that has dominated the box office and the culture wars.

Now that Halloween has come and gone, cinematic master Martin Scorsese has a new film, The Irishman, hitting theatres, and shortly thereafter hitting Netflix, that is generating massive Oscar buzz. This will be followed by another enigmatic auteur, Terrence Malick, who has a new film, A Hidden Life, coming out this December.

With Tarantino, Joaquin Phoenix, Martin Scorsese and Terrence Malick in the mix, it is a good time time be a cinephile…and since Scorsese’s new film came out last Friday and I haven’t seen it yet, it is also a good time for me to rank his top five films.

Scorsese is the most important film maker of his generation and maybe the most important American film maker of all time. Unlike Spielberg and his popcorn movies, Scorsese hasn’t padded his wallet with his work but instead advanced the art of cinema. Nearly every single film and filmmaker of note over the last 40 years has used Scorsese’s artistic palette to paint their own works. His use of dynamic camera movement, popular music and unorthodox storytelling structures and styles have become requisite and foundational film making skills. Scorsese didn’t invent cinema, but he did invent a new style of it that did not exist prior to his rise to prominence in the 1970’s, and that is why he is the most unique of auteurs.

Scorsese’s filmography can be split in two, with 1997’s Kundun being the end of the first half of his film making career, and 1999’s Bringing Out the Dead being the beginning of the latter part of his career. The first half of his career is staggeringly impressive, as he jumped genres with ease. Films as diverse as the gritty Taxi Driver, the musical New York, New York, the controversial The Last Temptation of Christ, the remake of Cape Fear, the enigmatic sequel to The Hustler, The Color of Money, and his biography of the Dalai Lama, Kundun, showcase Scorsese’s cinematic versatility.

The second half of his career has shown Scorsese to have lost a few miles per hour off his fastball and to have been brow beaten by the studios into making more mainstream fare. 1999’s Bringing Out the Dead was awful, most notably because Scorsese fell under the then popular spell of acting charlatan Nicholas Cage. Gangs of New York had similarly bad casting decisions, such as Cameron Diaz, no doubt encouraged by meddling money people…like Harvey Weinstein, who also took a gigantic shit on Scorsese’s vision of the film by demanding he cut 45 minutes off the running time. Other notable films from this period are The Aviator, Shutter Island and Hugo, all of which are less Scorsese films than they are studio films made by Scorsese.

Scorsese’s lone Academy Award win for Best Director came during this period with the film The Departed. The Departed is an ok movie, but it definitely feels more like a knock-off of a Scorsese film than an actual Scorsese film. It also feels like it could have been directed by anybody, which is more an indictment of the movie than and endorsement of the movie making.

The first half of Scorsese’s career is highlighted by his frequent collaborations with Robert DeNiro, and the second half by his frequent collaborations with Leonardo DiCaprio. If you’re looking for any greater piece of evidence that Scorsese is no longer at his peak, look no further than that fact. DiCaprio is a fine actor, but he is no Robert DeNiro, as DeNiro in his heyday was as good an actor as we have ever seen.

That said, Scorsese has made some great films in the second half of his career…as my list will attest…and who knows, maybe The Irishman will be worthy of inclusion. I am definitely looking forward to seeing it.

Now without further delay…onto the the list of Martin Scorsese’s “five” best films!

5C - Wolf of Wall Street (2013) - Wolf of Wall Street sneaks onto the list because it is uproariously funny while also being socially and politically insightful. In the face of the grotesque corruption so evident on Wall Street and in Washington, it was nice to see Scorsese focus his talents on the decadence and depravity that are the soul of American capitalism. It also helps that this is the only time the DiCaprio collaboration works, as Leo does the best work of his career as Jordan Belfort.

5B - Casino (1995) - Casino is an often often overlooked gem in Scorsese’s filmography. The film may have suffered from “Scorsese fatigue” as it appeared to tread on the same “mob” ground his recent masterpiece Goodfellas (1991). Casino is an indulgent masterwork in its own right, as Scorsese tells the story of how the west was won, and lost, by the Italian mafia, who were replaced by the corporate mafia. The film showcases some stellar performances from DeNiro, Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone.

5A - Silence (2016) - Silence is the very best film of the second half of his career…so far. Scorsese has always carried a Catholic cross bearing a tortured Christ on it throughout most of his films, and Silence is a tantalizing glimpse at the muse that has haunted Scorsese his entire artistic life. Silence is an ambitious film, and it doesn’t quite live up to its ambitions, but it still is great. One thing that I felt hampered the film was that it also was the victim of cuts for time, which is frustrating as Silence is a rare film in that it runs 160 minutes but deserved, and needed, to run at least another 45 minutes. Secondly, Scorsese once again falls for artistic fool’s gold by casting this generations Nicholas Cage, the mystifyinly popular Adam Driver.

4. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)- Speaking of Scorsese’s Catholicism…The Last Temptation of Christ hit theatres while I was attending Catholic high school, and you would’ve thought that Satan himself had put the movie out. Students were read a statement by the diocese imploring us not to see the movie because it was blasphemous and viewing it would guarantee a one-way trip to eternal damnation. Obviously, I responded to this warning by rushing out and seeing the film as quickly as I could…and I am glad I did (and I’m still Catholic!). The Catholic Church’s fear over this film was so absurd as to be laughable, and this is only heightened by the fact that the film is the most spiritually vibrant and resonant depiction of Christ ever captured on film.

3. The Age of Innocence (1993) - The Age of Innocence is the most un-Scorsese of Scorsese films, as it tackles romantic intrigue among the austere world of Edith Wharton’s 1870’s New York. In many ways The Age of Innocence is a massive cinematic flex by Scorsese as he shows off his directorial versatility and exquisite film making skill. While the casting of Winona Ryder and Michelle Pfeiffer were hurdles to overcome, Scorsese does so and in magnificent fashion as The Age of Innocence is an exercise in dramatic and cinematic precision.

2. The King of Comedy (1982)- The King of Comedy is a piece of cinematic gold that accurately and insightfully diagnoses America’s star-fueled, delusional culture. The film is highlighted by Robert DeNiro, who gives an unnervingly committed and forceful performance as Rupert Pupkin, the celebrity obsessed comic wannabe who tries to get his big break by any means necessary.

The King of Comedy crackles because Scorsese creates a palpable sense of claustrophobic desperation that permeates every scene in the movie. The film is genuinely funny but uncomfortably unsettling and undeniably brilliant.

1C - Raging Bull (1980) - The top three films here could be in any order as all of them are undeniable masterpieces and the height of cinematic achievement. Raging Bull, the black and white look at former Middleweight boxing champion Jake LaMotta, is a tour-de-force from not only the film’s star Robert DeNiro, who won a Best Actor Oscar, but from Martin Scorsese, who brings all of his cinematic skills to bear on the most cinematic of sports, boxing.

Scorsese uses LaMotta’s story to explore the meaning of masculinity, its incessant fragility and its inherent volatility. While Scorsese does masterful work bringing LaMotta’s battles inside the ring to exquisite life, his most brilliant film making achievement is in illuminating LaMotta’s most imposing fight, the one raging inside of himself.

1B - Taxi Driver - Taxi Driver once again shows both Scorsese and DeNiro at the very top of their game. The film perfectly captures the madness of New York City in the 1970’s, and the spiraling madness of a delusional loner who is the modern day everyman.

Scorsese’s camera rides along a taxi cab as it ventures through the gritty streets and bares witness to the sick and venal society that produces pimps, whores and politicians, and we get to know Travis Bickle, who is the rain that will wash these filthy streets clean.

A simply astonishing film in every respect. Not just one of Scorsese’s greatest films, but one of the greatest films of all-time.

1A - Goodfellas - Goodfellas is a not only a monumental cinematic achievement, it is also a fantastically entertaining and eminently rewatchable masterpiece. Over the last thirty years, whenever I have stumbled across Goodfellas playing on cable, I will always and everytime stop and watch whatever scene is on, and 9 times out of 10, will end up watching the rest of the movie.

A terrific cast that boasts superb performances from Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco, turns this film about New York gangsters, into a familiar and familial tale that everyone can relate to in one way or another. The New York of Goodfellas, is the New York of my youth, and those populating that world are my Irish family…all of them. In my family there’s a Paulie, a Henry, a Jimmy and everyone knows a Tommy. These guys are my uncles and their friends and cousins, and their wives are my aunts. Watching Goodfellas is like watching a home movie for me.

The film teems with iconic scenes and sequences, from entering the Copa to the “Layla” dead bodies sequence to “hoof” to “go get your shine box” to “what do you want fucko?” to “funny how? I mean, funny like a clown? I amuse you?” I can’t get enough of Goodfellas, as I’ve probably seen the movie at least 100 times, and I’ve discovered something new every time I’ve seen it.

Scorsese has made many masterpieces, but Goodfellas is his most entertaining masterpiece, and is a testament and monument to his greatness.

More proof of Scorsese’s genius is that I had many, many films that I love sit just on the outside of my top “five”…such as Mean Streets, The Color of Money, Cape Fear and Kundun, and they stand up to most other makers very best work.

And thus concludes my Scorsese top “five”…which is really a top nine, because Scorsese, the consummate rule breaking director, deserves a list that breaks the rules. So go forth and watch as much Scorsese as you can, and let’s hope that The Irishmen lives up to the hype!

©2019

Game of Thrones: The Battle of Winterfell and the Fog of War

****WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR GAME OF THRONES EPISODE THE LONG NIGHT (SEASON 8 EPISODE 3)****

Last Sunday night’s episode of Game of Thrones (Season 8 Episode 3), titled The Long Night, was the climactic battle between the the Starks and their allies against the Night King and his army of undead wights. The Battle of Winterfell, as it has been dubbed, is thought to be the penultimate clash on the iconic program, with only the fight between the Stark/Targaryen forces against Cersei Lannister and her army in Kings Landing remaining.

The Long Night was a strange episode as the Battle of Winterfell was built up for years as a cataclysmic clash between the forces of good and evil, literally life and death, but the show uncharacteristically deviated from its long standing thematic and narrative traditions by limiting the amount of carnage upon the main characters of the show.

Game of Thrones made its name by flouting Hollywood conventions and sacrificing its lead characters on the altar of great story telling. Ned Stark lost his head so that Game of Thrones could be taken seriously, and the Red Wedding solidified the shows commitment to leading character carnage…but in The Long Night, way too many characters survived the apocalyptic battle. There is no way that Lady Mormont, Jorah Mormont (bad night for House Mormont!), Beric and Theon Greyjoy should be the only notable characters to go down in the Battle of Winterfell.

How did Davos Seaworth, Brianne of Tarth, Tormund, Varys, Missandei, Grey Worm and Podrick not die? I understand why they’d want to save Jon Snow Daenerys, Tyrion, Jaime, Sansa, Arya and Bran…but I don’t get why secondary characters weren’t slaughtered en masse. And even the ones who did die went in very Hollywood ways, with Lady Mormont’s action hero death while killing a zombie giant the most dubious. And while we are at it, Arya’s killing of the Night King was cool and all, but not totally in keeping with the show’s grounding in its established reality. I mean, how did Arya jump over all these people to get to the Night King? And if Game of Thrones is going all Hollywood, why not have Arya die while killing the Night King, at least then it feels somewhat in keeping with the shows themes?

Narrative choices aside, the biggest issue people are having with The Long Night is the cinematography of Fabian Wagner and director Miguel Sapochik, with many complaints that the show was much too dark and too visually muddled. I happen to agree with those complaints and thought it would be a worthy topic to briefly examine.

Game of Thrones has done an exceptional job of filming “medieval” combat over the years and so I was surprised to see them flail about on The Long Night. The mistake that the creators made was to try and convey the “fog of war”, the confusion and disorientation that can accompany combat, by literally creating a white/blue snow fog to simply obfuscating visual clarity. This sort of approach is an error that many make and it never fails to fail.

To be fair, the episode did have some bright cinematographic moments though, the lighting of the Dothraki swords and their charge into the darkness being one of them. But then the visuals went down hill when the White Walkers conjured up a wind storm to conceal their movements and sow confusion. That is a great battle plan for the White Walkers to take Winterfell, but a bad one for tv viewers trying to watch the fight.

There may be two reason why Wagner and Sapochik may have made the decision to muddy the visual waters at Winterfell, the first being that they wanted viewers to experience the chaos and confusion of war, the second being that they wanted to save some money from their huge budgets by limiting the amount of special effects they had to use to cover the scope and scale of the enormous battle. Both reasons are legitimate but misguided. Regardles of why, the end result was that viewers didn’t feel like they were participants in the Battle of Winterfell, they felt like they were going blind.

It is a common mistake to conflate darkness with a lack of light, what darkness means in cinematic terms is a a sharp contrast between dark and light. In cinematic “darkness” viewers still have visual clarity but with a “lack of light”, contrast gets watered down and visual coherence evaporates.

Clear and clean contrast between dark and light make for clear and coherent images that convey both narrative and thematic information. For example, go watch The Favourite (2018), and notice the exquisite use of candles in the voids of darkness. Those images propel the story and the sub-text by using ‘illumination’ (literally and figuratively) that marks a clear delineation between the dark and the light. In The Long Night, light and dark wash into each other, colors are non existent and the action all becomes a visually muddled, grey mess.

Two films came out in 1998, Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, that showed visually interesting ways to convey the fog of war. Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and its iconic Omaha Beach assault scene is a perfect example of how to maintain visual clarity while creating a sense of anxiety and confusion (the fog of war). Spielberg and his cinematographer Janusz Kaminski‘s camera dances amidst an understated and muted light from an amphibious vehicle, into the water, and up the zig-zag maze of the beach all while under assault from barely discernible machine gun nests. Kaminski’s camera picks up the textures of the muted colors and materials in each shot. Viewers are given a soldier’s eye view of the carnage of D-Day, and the camera movements and tangible textures help to convey the confusion of that assault, but the visuals were never unclear for more than a brief second or so. Kaminski’s camera shows us what is happening very precisely and distinctly and its handheld movements aided in creating tension and anxiety in viewers.

Later in the film Spielberg uses a character looking through a telescopic sight to watch a battle to convey the fog of war and confusion of what is happening. This sequence is interesting because unlike in the Omaha Beach scene where viewers are active participants in the action, in the telescopic sight scene the character becomes an audience member as he tries to watch the action and discern what is happening. To Spielberg’s credit, this was a great way to create psychological reciprocity between the audience and the character.

In The Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick and his cinematographer John Toll use crisp and clean visuals with dynamic and rich colors to convey the fog of war. In the sequence where the Marines must make their way up a lush, green hillside to find and eliminate a machine gun nest, Malick and Toll give viewers a clear look at the surroundings, and just like the Marines, no clear shot of the machine gun nest. The rolling green of the hills are like a never ending sea and the machine gun nest a crocodile that only pokes its eyes and nose above the water line. The beauty of Malick and Toll’s visuals is in stark contrast to the physical and psychological mayhem unleashed with them.

Malick also gives clear focus to the nature which surrounds the battle, with Toll’s camera lingering long on a flower or an insect crawling on a leave of grass. Malick and Toll’s use of natural light and their ability to crisply define the colors, textures and contrasts of the setting make his fog of war confusion breathtakingly beautiful and utterly horrifying. (watch The Thin Red Line and notice that Malick’s camera picks up every little bump on Marine’s helmets…it creates an intimacy through texture that is one of Malick’s signature, understated styles.)

The Long Night made the same error of visual incoherence that Clint Eastwood made in American Sniper, where Eastwood rolled in a sand storm in Iraq to convey the moral confusion of the Iraq war. That tactic did not visually work in American Sniper either as it created little more than a cloud of yellow dust just like The Long Night gave us a blueish white cloud of snow. In Eastwood’s case I can almost guarantee you that his creative decision to muddy things up was a result of budgetary concerns, as he is a notorious slave to budget. As for The Long Night’s decisions making…they do have large budgets, but hey also have at least one more big battle in this final season, so maybe they were cutting corners too.

Game of Thrones have made some of the greatest battle scenes in television history, as the Battle of the Bastards, The Spoils of War and Hardhome have shown, but with The Long Night they fell into more than just the fog of war trap, they failed to fully establish the geography of the scenes and battle ground and never established a coherent time line.

As the Battle of Winterfell raged on, the locations of characters was never clearly elucidated, and so the lack of visual clarity became ever more heightened. I understand not wanting to give the “god shot”, an overhead view of things to show who is where and what is happening, but by failing to make the geography clear, the battle felt redundant and circular, and lacked specifics which could have heightened dramatic tension to a greater degree.

The timeline was as muddied as the visuals, as Arya ran through the castle trying to escape wights in an extended sequence, the battle raged outside. But when the camera returned to the battle outside, nothing had changed, and because viewers had no central character upon which to focus, the battle seemed aimless and incoherent.

Maybe the focus should have been on Samwell, and we viewers could have seen the battle through his perspective at times (like the telescopic scene in Saving Private Ryan), or we could shift perspective through a series of characters in order to get clarity on different areas of the fight. Maybe have Jaime, Arya, Jon Snow, Danerys and Theon lead us through the battle and we see what they see…so when Lady Mormont gets killed it is through Jaime’s perspective…things like that.

Look, I thoroughly enjoy Game of Thrones, I admire the show for its integrity and quality, and I was disappointed in parts of the episode the Long Night. The bottom line is this, Game of Thrones has given us eight glorious seasons of thrills, chills, carnage, nudity, incest, murder, dragons, zombies and palace intrigue, I only hope they can right the ship for the final three episodes after their visual and thematic missteps in the much discussed Battle of Winterfell.

©2019




Song to Song : A Review

****THIS IS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME VERY MINOR SPOILERS (Discussion of themes and plot structure)!!!! THIS IS TECHNICALLY NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!!****

My Rating : 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation : SEE IT (with caveats).  If you are a fan of director Terrence Malick, you will enjoy this film a great deal. If your tastes are less "experimental" and more conventional, you will absolutely hate this movie, so skip it.

Song to Song, written and directed by Terrence Malick, with cinematography by three time Academy Award winner Emmanuel Lubezki, is a meditation on love, shame, sex, mercy and forgiveness set in the music scene of Austin, Texas. The film stars Rooney Mara, Ryan Gosling, Michael Fassbender and Natalie Portman.

For some reason, every time I go see a Malick film in the theaters, I run into some issue with my fellow moviegoers. This time around I had two white-haired biddies come into the theatre as the previews rolled and they proceeded to talk very loudly during them. Then when the film started, one of the old Crones said very loudly, "it's hot in here!!".

I turned and said to them, in as gentle a voice as possible, "excuse me ladies, would you mind not talking, that would be awesome." They said, "ok", but then proceeded to talk throughout the entire film anyway. I kept getting distracted by these two nasty hags and daydreamed of stomping their empty skulls to dust with my steel toed boots every time they felt the need to say how much they hated the film as it was playing. 

I never killed them, or even kicked them, as much as I wanted to, mostly because I assumed one or both of them were packing heat…just a hunch...but because of this irritating distraction it was difficult for me to get into the proper Malick head space to watch the film. The first third of the movie was definitely a struggle, but against all odds, Song to Song was able to win me over, and in the final two thirds was able to transport me into the mind and spirit of its genius director, no small feat with the Greek chorus of dipshits persistently chiming in behind me. 

Enigmatic filmmaker Terrence Malick's work can be an acquired taste, I readily acknowledge this fact. His recent string of films, Tree of Life, To the Wonder, Knight of Cups and this year's Song to Song, are often times describes as "experimental" films. I label them "contemplative cinema" because they are not meant to be watched like you watch a "regular" movie with a linear narrative, but is meant to be enjoyed as more of a meditative storytelling experience.

Malick speaks in a very distinct language, and if you do not understand that language, his films will not only be confusing, but will be downright frustrating and irritating. It would be like watching a foreign film without the subtitles and with sunglasses on. Hence you get people like the two morons behind me who were so out of their depth watching Song to Song they felt the need to assume everyone was equally as ill-equipped to understand what they were watching. Those old whores (again this is just a hunch, I have no definitive proof that they have or had sex for money) didn't understand Malick's language, hell, they probably thought they were going to see the animated musical Sing.

The thing to understand before going to see a Malick film is that Malick makes films that speak in a veiled, but distinctly religious and cinematic language. The trouble with this is that the people who are artistically cultured enough to understand the cinematic language, will most likely be members of the Church of the Libertine and not understand Malick's Gnostic Catholic religious language, and those with the religious understanding will not be cinematically sophisticated enough to understand the structure, style and visuals of the film. It is a dilemma, no doubt, but at this point, I do not care, as I am apparently one of a very, very tiny minority of people (and critics) for whom Malick's film's deeply resonate. I don't care how, or why that is, just that it is. I consider myself blessed because of it. If you do not "get" Malick's work, that is on you, and I beg you to keep your ignorance to yourself, because next time I might not be so reticent and go full on Hulk and smash those who ruin my sacred experience in the local art house. 

As for the film itself, cinematographer Lubezki once again does a masterful job with his floating and dancing camera that creates an otherworldly aura about the entire project. Malick's films, (and Lubezki's), are gorgeous to look at, but they also tell the deeper story of the film with visuals alone, and so it is with Song to Song. Lubezki consistently moves his camera from left to right, sometimes to observe a conversation, other times to expand the make up of the shot. The left to right camera movement is meant to symbolize the alchemical journey the lead character makes on the "left hand path" away from her center.

Regardless of what Lubezki is shooting in Song to Song, each fluid shot offers a brief glimpse at a visual masterpiece. It is like spinning your way through an art museum, the view is staggeringly beautiful, but ephemeral, quickly replaced by a new work of wonder to amaze you.

The themes that Malick examines in Song to Song are similar to the ones he explored in his Dante-esque masterpiece Knight of Cups. This time though, the main, but not exclusive, protagonist is a woman, Rooney Mara's Faye, a struggling musician in Austin, as opposed to the man at the center of Knight of Cups, played by Christian Bale, who was navigating the perils of Hollywood.

Rooney Mara does exquisitely wondrous work as Malick's muse Faye. Mara is able to fill the camera, and her scenes with a painfully yearning melancholy that is mesmerizing to watch. She seems wonderfully comfortable with her discomfort in front of Malick's camera, and that translates remarkably well to the myth at the heart of the film. Mara's face is striking, and she is able to draw the viewer in towards her even while she withdraws into her cocoon of self doubt and spiritual turmoil.

Ryan Gosling plays BV, a song writer and Faye's love interest, while Michael Fassbender is music producer Cook and Natalie Portman plays Cook's girlfriend Rhonda. They all do top-notch, and at times spectacular work in Song to Song. BV's Christ-like gentle nature and kind heart are balanced by Cook's Mephistophelean and insatiable hunger, just like Faye's melancholic yearning is balanced by Rhonda's crushing desperation. 

Cate Blanchett also has a small role but proves once again what a extraordinary actress she truly is. Blanchett is a wonder to behold in her brief screen time. She can tell an entire story with just the smallest of gestures with her hands, watch her tap the glass!! I would encourage any and all actors to closely watch Ms. Blanchett's hands in both Song to Song and in Knight of Cups to see a masterclass in subtly powerful acting.

As with many of Malick's films, most notably Knight of Cups, the theme of forgetting one's true self runs throughout. Faye has forgotten her true nature, her connection to God and her goodness. Like a Prodigal daughter she must leave home, and the Divine, and take the "left hand path" of struggle in order to return to her center out of choice, not chance. Unlike most films, Song to Song is structured as a circle, not a straight line. When Faye returns to where she began, it all seems so new that it is only vaguely familiar. The starting point is the same, but Faye is different, she sees it with new eyes.

The haunting sense of the familiar, and of a lost connection to the true self are common themes that Malick explores in many of his more recent films. Malick films are like dreams and should be watched and understood through that prism. Everything means something, but not what it appears to mean on the surface. And, as in all Malick movies, and as it is in dreams, time in Song to Song is at best fluid, and at most, non-existent.

As Faye tries to return to the Eden she left behind, she is seduced by the temptations of the "left hand path" of this world, success, fame, wealth, and power. But this is a fallen world, and Cook, like the fallen angel Satan, is the king of it. To follow the path of Cook is to embrace the momentary over the eternal, the profane over the divine. While Cook's world is deliciously tantalizing, it is most assuredly the way of spiritual death. On some level Faye knows this, but the allure of that sweet death can be both intoxicating and spellbinding. 

The message at the heart of Song to Song is one that should resonate with spiritual seekers of all kinds, that in order to return to our true selves and higher nature, we must evolve beyond our animal drives and instincts, and simplify our lives and embrace a true and honest heart inspired love (as opposed to genital inspired). Of course, that is much easier said than done, and even when one makes that choice, their more base desires will still call out to them like the Sirens singing ships into their doom on the pointy rocks of shore, but as Song to Song shows us, evolution is a process, one that is cyclical and circular. We return Home from our travels and travails, born anew, but will be called once again to the "left hand path" of our lesser urges and will have to make the journey all over again, just with new eyes.

When BV washes Faye, her sins are cleansed, her heart and soul clear, and they are both born again into a new, and more simple life. Cook will still be in Austin hunting for souls, damaged ones or ones he seeks to damage, but the key for Faye and BV is to return to the simplicity of Eden. Their journey is a return to the earth, a return to love, a return to their true and higher selves. 

Mercy and the freedom of forgiveness are the gifts Faye receives and they propel her to evolve beyond her limiting animal nature, and to sacrifice her wants for the higher purpose of her true self and love. I know this all sounds very new-agey, but it isn't, it is in many ways deeply traditionalist, just without the female subservience. The answer for Faye and BV, is a traditionalist return to a grounding on the earth, not the new age promise of life among the stars. And this may be why Malick's film has caused such a negative stir among cinephiles. The more sophisticated of viewers will probably be members of the Church of the Libertine, and therefore will not see Faye's dalliances with debauchery or moral and ethical compromises as problematic, they would see them as a form of freedom. But the reality is that freedom for Faye, and for many of us, is an illusion, and comes with a steep price, namely your soul. 

That message is anathema to American culture, one that celebrates the individual’s wants and demands instant gratification of any and all desires. As Song to Song tells us, sex is a gift, and to abuse it for any reason is a sin against oneself and the divine. That is a message that most members of the Church of the Libertine will reject out of hand, which may explain why critics are so hostile to Song to Song, as they are unconsciously repulsed by the films moral, ethical and spiritual compass.

Song to Song is a piece of art to be experienced, not a puzzle to be solved. The film, like all of Malick's recent work, not only works visually and acoustically, but viscerally. Song to Song, if you can lose yourself in it, washes over you like the cool waters of a cinematic baptism, inviting the viewer to witness the struggle and the possibility of faith and a true and transcendent love. 

If you are a lover of more mainstream fare, Song to Song is most definitely not for you…not at all. If you love Malick films, I believe you will love Song to Song. If you are somewhere in the middle, I would assume that Song to Song would be a bridge too far for you. This type of cinema, whether you call it "experimental" or "cinematic contemplation", is very challenging, and if you aren't up for the challenge, then you should stick to your comfort zone. But if you do make the ambitious trek to see Song to Song, then please just give yourself over to it. And if you hate it, keep it to yourself. Let's make a deal, I won't ruin the Fast and Furious movies for you, and you don't ruin Malick movies for me? Ok? Great!! See you at the concession stand!!

©2017

 

Knight of Cups : A Review and Dispatches From the Great Malick Civil War

***THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!!***

ESTIMATED READING TIME : 14 MINUTES

MY RATING: 4.75 out of 5 STARS - SEE IT IN THE THEATRE

*** REVIEW SUMMARY***: If you like Terrence Malick films you will really like Knight of Cups. As the third film in Malick's undeclared autobiographical trilogy, with The Tree of Life and To the Wonder being the first two films, it is much more accessible than To the Wonder and ever so slightly less accessible than The Tree of Life. Be forewarned, if your tastes run more conventional and mainstream, Knight of Cups, and any other Malick film for that matter, will not be for you.

Once the soul was perfect and had wings, and could soar into Heavenfind your way from darkness to light. Remember.

In 2011, I went to see the film The Tree of Life written and directed by Terence Malick. I was deeply moved by the film and genuinely loved it. The greatest attempt at describing my feelings for the film would be to say it was the film that I had unknowingly been waiting for my entire life.  Considering I am very reticent to engage in hyperbole in regards to any film (or any-thing for that matter), this was high praise indeed. 

When I was asked by people if I liked the film, I shared with them that same glowing endorsement, and I was received in one of two ways, either people warmly embraced me as a fellow traveler and soul-mate on this incredible journey of life, or I was assaulted like a stranger in a strange land with a level of vitriol unprecedented in the long, troubled history of mankind. 

It was clear, the battle lines had been drawn, pro-Malick people on one side, anti-Malick people on the other. The people who disliked The Tree of Life, REALLY, REALLY HATED it, and the people who liked the film, REALLY, REALLY LOVED it. The anti-Tree of Lifers said the film was incoherent, rambling and pretentious, while the pro-Tree of Lifers said it was intimate, personal and visionary. I wasn't entirely shocked by the negative reaction to the film by some people, during the showing I went to, three different audience members, at different times, got up and turned to face the rest of the crowd and held their arms out wide as if to say "what in the hell is this?" and then made a spectacle of themselves as they stormed out of the theatre in a loud huff, making sure everyone knew how much they hated the film.  And thus, with these 'walk-outs', the first shots in "The Great Malick Civil War", which had been simmering for decades, were fired, and the horrible, bloody war rages on to this day with Malick's latest release Knight of Cups.

At the conclusion of the showing of Knight of Cups (which is written and directed by Terrence Malick, stars Christian Bale, and is shot by Emmanuel Lubezki) which I attended, two blue-haried old biddies sitting near the front of the sparsely filled theatre made a show of dismissively laughing loudly the moment credits rolled. This was followed by an older man, sitting by himself on the other side of my row, who cupped his hands by his mouth and booed loudly, vomiting his negative opinion over every one in the theatre. My instinct was to walk over and pour my root beer over this geezer's head, and tell him that since he felt the need to share his feelings with me, I thought I'd share my feelings with him. Thankfully my better nature prevailed, or I might be writing this post on the lam, wanted for the murder, justifiable in my eyes, of three old people in a Los Angeles theatre. When it comes to this Great Malick Civil War, I am trying, God knows, to follow John Lennon's example of "giving peace a chance."

The Malick Civil War is one of those wars to which we've become so accustomed, the type of war which no one can win and which will last until the end of history. I can't end the war myself but I can try to help you understand it, it's origins and how to survive it, so that you can tell your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren about how we got into this senseless slaughter we know as "The Great Malick Civil War", with the hope that those future generations can bring an end to the carnage.

FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN MOVIES AGO

The Abraham Lincoln at the center of this civil war is enigmatic writer/director Terence Malick. Malick has directed and written seven feature films, which are, in chronological order, Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), The New World (2005), The Tree of Life (2011), To the Wonder (2012) and Knight of Cups (2016). In keeping with his somewhat eccentric image, after his second feature, Days of Heaven, Malick disappeared from movie-making and public life, only to resurface twenty years later with the film The Thin Red Line. Malick is a unique man, unlike most other directors, as evidenced by his rarely doing any press or interviews for his films, and not even allowing himself be photographed on the set of his movies.

Malick's last three films, The Tree of Life, To the Wonder and Knight of Cups, which seem to form a sort of personal and autobiographical trilogy, are films that are particularly challenging for some viewers, and down right off-putting to others. The biggest complaint about The Tree of Life, To the Wonder and Knight of Cups is the main complaint about many of Malick's films, namely people don't understand what the hell is happening in the story. In a Malick film, the narrative can be, at times, non-linear. Malick's films are like dreams...impressionistic, abstract and filled with symbolism.

"GIVE ME SIX HOURS TO CHOP DOWN A TREE AND I WILL SPEND THE FIRST FOUR SHARPENING THE AXE." - ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Unlike most other other filmmakers, Malick likes to shift perspective in his films. We often hear, in voice over, the inner thoughts and feelings of multiple characters throughout his films. It is a technique very similar in story telling structure to a novel or even a long form poem, and when done well, as it is in Malick's case, it helps create an intimacy and personal connection between the audience and the character.

Malick heightens this effect by often having these voice-overs be done in a barely audible whisper. Examples of this multiple-protagonist-narration technique can be found in The Thin Red Line, where the narration comes from as many as five characters, Private Witt, Sgt. Welsh, Captain Staros, Private Bell and Lt. Col. Tall, and the perspective jumps across multiple story lines, so we see the overarching narrative through these different protagonists perspectives, giving the film a depth and complexity it would otherwise be lacking with a more conventional storytelling technique.

The New World is also narrated by three different characters as well, Captain Smith, Pocahontas and John Rolfe, giving the story a much more well-rounded and deeper personal dimension than a standard filmmaking approach. This love triangle, which is a theme often explored in Malick's films, is brought to greater life and depth by understanding the inner thoughts and workings of all the participants. 

In The Tree of Life, the narration jumps between the mother (Jessica Chastain), the father (Brad Pitt) and the son as both a child (Hunter McCracken) and as an adult (Sean Penn), which gives the film a vibrant and exquisitely powerful intimacy. The use of multiple protagonist's narrations and perspectives is extremely unconventional in filmmaking, hell, just using a single narrator is a technique that many filmmakers vehemently disagree with, never mind using multiple narrators. In the hands of a less visionary director, the voice-over is a bandage used to cover their weak storytelling skill, but with a handful of directors, Malick and Scorsese in particular, voice-over narration is a weapon they wield expertly that elevates their storytelling to glorious heights. 

Malick hasn't always use multiple narrators in his films, for instance in Badlands and Days of Heaven, his first two films, he uses a singular narrator, both young woman/girls, to guide the viewer through the picture. In Badlands, the protagonist is Sissy Spacek's teenage character, Holly, who shows us the story, and her innocence makes the brutality and barbarity of Kit (Martin Sheen) and the other male characters more palatable for the viewer. In Days of Heaven, a young girl, Linda (Linda Manz), narrates the story of Bill (Richard Gere) and Abby (Brooke Adams) as they make their way from Chicago to the plains of the Midwest. This technique gives the viewer a distance from the main protagonists, but maintains Malick's signature intimacy (and the theme of femininity), in this case, through the eyes of an innocent child. As Malick has matured and found his voice and style as an artist and filmmaker, he has become more deft at the use of the multiple protagonists and narrations, and has used it to great effect in his last five films to give the viewer more complex perspectives.

"I WALK SLOWLY, BUT I NEVER WALK BACKWARDS" - ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Malick also has a distinct and unique visual style where he only uses natural lighting. In addition to the natural lighting, Malick also highlights this naturalism with his camera movement by letting the camera dance and float about. He sometimes let's the camera stop to focus on the wonders of the natural world and setting, holding on an animal, an insect or a tree. Malick never rushes his camera, and his deliberate pace and natural lighting, free moving camera and occasional focus on nature, all create a signature style that has a tangible and palpable feel to it. You don't just see through Malick's camera, you feel the world it inhabits. Whether it is the minuscule bumps on a soldiers helmet, the abrasive blades of grass in a field, the texture of a character's sweater, through Malick's use of natural light, these objects have greater definition and every contour of them is accentuated, giving the viewer the sense memory of similar items they have felt in their own lives. It is a remarkable accomplishment for Malick to be able to bring his visuals to such a heightened  and naturalistic state that viewers not only bask in their beauty but recall their own tactile memories.

There is a sequence in Knight of Cups where Christian Bale wears a bulky, wool sweater, and Cate Blanchett simply reaches out towards him and feels it. Malick's camera, with the guidance of one of the great cinematographers working today, Emmaneul Lubezki, picks up every single nook and cranny of this sweater, it is palpable on screen, and when Blanchett reaches out for it you feel that sweater right along with her, and also feel her character's longing to connect with Bale.

"I DESTROY MY ENEMIES WHEN I MAKE THEM MY FRIENDS." - ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Which brings us to acting in a Malick film. Of the many people with whom I have disagreed about Terrence Malick films, many of them are actors. A lot of actors I spoke with about The Tree of Life, absolutely hated the movie. I was shocked by this revelation as I would have assumed actors were a bit more cinematically sophisticated than the average Joe, but boy was I wrong. Actors may actually be even more culturally conditioned in their movie watching because they are so used to reading scripts and understanding the basics of how to tell a story. This does not suit the viewer of a Malick film, in fact it is poison.

Malick is very improvisational with his actors and his camera, which scares the living hell out of most actors. A lot of actors want to know what to do and when to do it. Being left out in front of a camera with no context and nothing to do but simply "be", is a form of torture for most actors. In addition, because Malick is able to bring us so intensely close to his subjects and into their internal world, the opportunities for a big external clash with the outer world are reduced. The brushes with the external are quickly integrated into the internal, so we don't have the explosive confrontation that actors love to embrace. Since Malick uses voice over so often, actors aren't allowed to talk their way through something, which a lot of actors desperately love to do. The actors are forced to be present in the moment and just "be alive" before the cameras. It is very improvisational and in some ways like watching an unrehearsed dance...kind of like…I don't know...life. Some actors hate it when they don't know what to do...am I mad here? Am I sad? Do I laugh? Do I cry? No, you just are here...alive and human. Once an actor can get comfortable with the "not knowing" of Malick's approach, then Malick can fill in the proper meaning and purpose he intends through voice over and editing.

Malick's style of filmmaking lays an actor bare. You can't bullshit, or rely on your good looks to charm your way through a Malick film. You need talent, skill and frankly, intelligence and gravitas to be able to thrive in a Malick film. There have been some extraordinary performances in Malick films, for instance, Cate Blanchett in Knight of Cups does simple yet stellar work, bringing her great craft to bear in a role that would have been invisible in the hands of a lesser actress. 

Blanchett being great is no surprise as she is one of the world's finest actresses, but Malick has been able to get great performances from some less expected places. In To the Wonder, Olga Kurylenko, who had previously been in little more than action films, gives a wondrous performance. Kurylenko, whose background is in dance and for whom English is a third language, is comfortable expressing herself through her body and movement, which means she is never stuck trying to figure out a scene, but rather is capable if just inhabiting it, a great quality for an actor to possess in a Malick film. Another surprising performance in a Malick film is Colin Farrell in The New World. Farrell's naturalism and tangible fear in front of Malick's camera made for a mesmerizing and unexpected  performance from the often-time uneven actor.

Other actors who have thrived in Malick films are Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek in Badlands, with Sheen giving a Brando-esque level performance filled with charisma and power. Nick Nolte, Jim Cavezial, Sean Penn, Ben Chaplin and Elias Koteas all do very solid work in The Thin Red Line. Koteas and Nolte in particular do spectacularly specific work in very difficult roles. The aforementioned Colin Farrell, Christian Bale and Q'oriana Kilcher in The New World. Kilcher is simply amazing as Pocahontes, completely natural, charismatic and at ease as Malick's Native American muse. Sean Penn, Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain all give detailed and vibrant performances in The Tree of Life, with Chastain really being the break out star. Chastain, like Blanchett, is one of the great actresses working today, and her work in The Tree of Life was so masterful and elegantly human that she was immediately catapulted into the upper echelon of highly respected actors.

Conversely, there have been actors who have been exposed in Malick films as being little more than a pretty face with an empty head. Richard Gere simply lacked the gravitas to carry Days of Heaven and the film suffered greatly for it. Gere was just unable too fill the screen and maintain the viewers interest mostly due to a lack of focus and grounding. Along the same lines, Ben Affleck is really dreadful in To the Wonder. Affleck was revealed to be a dullard with absolutely nothing going on behind the eyes. He is obviously a handsome guy, but he is unable to express much with his face, leaving him being awkward and uncomfortable in front of Malick's camera without anything to do but just be. Simliarly, Rachel McAdams also struggled mightily in To the Wonder, as both actors seemed lost and wandering throughout their screen time, especially in comparison to Olga Kurylenko's transcendent performance. 

The ability to be able to communicate non-verbally is paramount for an actor in a Malick film, which is why highly skilled actors, like Chastain, Blanchett, Penn and Sheen were able to shine, as were relative novices like Kilcher and Kurylenko who are grounded and comfortable in their bodies. 

In Knight of Cups, Christian Bale shows his great craft and skill by being able to carry the narrative of the film without saying a whole lot. He is an often underrated actor, but his work in Knight of Cups is testament to his mastery of craft and innate talent.

"ALL THAT I AM, OR HOPE TO BE, I OWE TO MY ANGEL MOTHER." - ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Malick often returns to the same themes in his films. One theme that runs through all of his films, and is the central focus of Knight of Cups, is the Anima, the feminine. Malick has always had a certain, very specific type of feminine archetype on display in his films. His central female characters have almost always worn flowing, light dresses, mostly in the style of the 1940's or so, and have also frequently gone barefoot, both symbolic of femininity and maternity. This particular female archetype, probably inspired by the director's own mother, is not a damsel in distress, or a vixen or a school marm, it is a femininity of strength and intrigue, like the goddess or the Virgin Mary. At once mystical, mysterious, powerful and enchanting. This archetype is vividly on display in The Tree of Life in the mother character portrayed by Jessica Chastain. The archetype also shows up in fleeting and tantalizing glimpses in The Thin Red Line, as Ben Chaplin's wife (Miranda Otto) who writes him at the front. 

In Knight of Cups, the entire film is an exploration of the Anima, and the director's relationship, in the form of Christian Bale, to her many faces. Even the interaction between male characters is entirely based upon their individual and unique relationship to the Anima. The different faces of the Anima, such as Cate Blanchett and Natalie Portman, are sign posts along the journey of the main character as his relationship to the feminine changes as he ages and matures.

Other themes running through all of Malick's films are philosophy and spirituality, usually in the form of a Gnostic Catholicism. Malick is one of the rare directors who even considers having characters who think about God in their life in his films. The big questions that Malick tackles, questions of life and death, love and loss, God, nature and the infinite, are almost never found in any other films. Malick is alone out in the wilderness in trying to understand the world in which he lives, both in its external and internal forms, and the universe he inhabits and the God who created it, be he merciful or not, or if he exists or not, and what that all means to the individual making his way in the world. 

In the Knight of Cups this Gnostic Catholicism is a major theme as well. Christian Bale's character is lost amid the decadence and debauchery of a modern day Babylon, and has forgotten his true self and that he is a divine Son of God. The spiritual seeking and struggle on display in Knight of Cups is a common and powerful theme running through all of Malick's films and it is part of what sets him apart from other directors.

HOW TO WATCH A MALICK MOVIE - A PRIMER

Malick's films, especially his later ones and the autobiographical trilogy, are less storytelling as they are meditations. Meditations on God, faith, nature, grace, annihilation, fatherhood, motherhood, childhood, the duality of man, the duality of God, and Malick's cinematic meditation can become meditative for viewers. The key to appreciating Malick's films are to understand that they are not something you actively try to figure out. You don't have to decide if the guy in the red hat is in internal affairs, or if the doctor is really a ghost or the ship's captain is a spy. Watching Malick is, in and of itself, an artistic meditation. A meditation on the internal life of his characters and the character's struggle, as it relates to our own struggle and to our own internal life. Viewers are not consumers of a Malick film, they are participants. The catch being, of course, is that viewers don't participate intellectually with Malick's films, but emotionally and spiritually.

The key to enjoying a Malick film is to stop trying to impose standard storytelling rules upon it, and trying to figure it out consciously. A Malick film is like going to an art exhibit, you don't mentally figure the art out, you just let it wash over you and go for the ride. You trust that the artist/auteur has something to say and that you'll understand it at some point in time. The artist may be working on an unconscious level, beyond the ability of the viewer to articulate how or why the piece moves them. With Malick, it may not even be when the film is over, it may be after you see it a second time, or third time that it resonates with the viewer. Or it may be when an event in the viewer's life changes their perspective and the film then makes more sense to them in retrospect.

Some people may not be ready to hear what Malick is saying. Maybe they have become a prisoner to formula and cultural conditioning. Maybe they've been taught to be a passive consumer and need their films to only be entertainment and can only tolerate their art when it's spoon-fed to them. Maybe Malick's philosophical and theological perspective are off-putting to many viewers who do not share his Catholicism or any belief in God at all. I mean Adam Sandler is a trillionaire and makes a couple of movies a year, and they've made TWO Sex in the City films for God's sake, but poor Terence Malick has only made seven films in the last forty years, so trust me when I tell you that I totally understand if people don't believe in God. The truth is, belief in God is not a requirement to enjoying a Malick film, but belief in art is.

Another requirement to enjoying a Malick film is that you must have lived a life in order to truly appreciate Malick's work. Malick's films are not for some twenty-something who is joyously jaunting through life with the world as their oyster. A Malick film is for those who have experienced the slings and arrows of life and have the scars to prove it, and those who have loved and lost or lost and loved. For example, The Tree of Life is entirely about loss. If you haven't lost a loved one, a dear friend, a child, then maybe the film is a jumbled mush of nonsense. But if you have, like me, lost someone, the film walks you through the questions, the thoughts, the meditations, the doubts, the hopes and the fears of what this life, and the ending of it, all mean. It has no answers, and therein lies the rub.

We have been culturally conditioned to want answers. We pay our $10 and if we are asked a question by a film, then by God that same film better give us answers. And if it doesn't, if we are left walking out of the theatre with questions, with doubt, with a humility before the vastness of the universe and all of time, with nothing more than an understanding of how miniscule and insignificant we are in the big picture of things and yet how meaningful and powerful we are in the lives of others in the same predicament as we are. Well...that causes some people to walk out before the film is over. Or to shut down and seethe while waiting for it to end and then unleashing their boos on anyone within earshot. Or to simply want to go back to sleep walking through life avoiding the only certainty that we are born with...that we will all die. Everyone we know, have known or will ever know, will die. Everything we know, have ever known or will ever know will disappear. And so will we. The clock is ticking.

This is why I love Terrence Malick films, because they feel as if they were made especially for me. Malick and I have lived very different lives, but his films, The Tree of Life, To the Wonder and Knight of Cups, in particular, are as close to my actual inner life and struggles as anything ever captured on film. Malick speaks my language, walks in my world and is able to cut me to the bone and reveal things about my inner being that I wasn't even aware of until he enlightened me. Malick asks me the same questions that I ask myself and struggles with the same answers, or lack of answers, that I struggle with. This is what makes Malick such a genius, and why I admire his work so much, and also why others may loathe his work. 

"MEDIOCRITIES EVERYWHEREI ABSOLVE YOUI ABSOLVE YOUI ABSOLVE YOU ALL." - SALIERI

"MOZART, MOZART, FORGIVE YOUR ASSASSIN!! I CONFESS I KILLED YOU" - SALIERI (AND THE REST OF US)

We live in a world of Salieri's, where mediocrity is rewarded and genius shunned. Some great examples of this are that Steven Spielberg has two Best Director Oscars and Terrence Malick has none. Spielberg is the ultimate Salieri to Malick's Mozart. A comparison of their two war films is proof of that. In 1997, after a twenty year absences from directing, Malick returned with his World War II film, The Thin Red Line, based on the James Jones book. Also that year, Steven Spielberg released his World War II film, Saving Private Ryan. The films could not have been more different and more glaring examples of the genius of one man, Malick, and the pandering mediocrity of the other, Spielberg. 

The juxtaposition of these two films is perfect for making the point about Malick as a singularly unique and original artistic voice and brilliant filmmaker. In Saving Private Ryan, a standard formulaic war film, we are shown the devastating effects of war upon the human body. Spielberg's gymnastic D-Day sequence shows the physical brutality of war in a very tense and riveting way. But after that sequence the film falls into the pattern of standard war film tropes. Malick's The Thin Red Line on the other hand, shows the impact of war not only on man's body, but upon his psyche, his spirit and his soul. Malick also has a vividly compelling war action sequence, where Marines must take a hill with Japanese machine gunners atop it, but Malick gives a more nuanced and human view of war beyond the physical carnage of it, by showing how it impacts not only the external life of the soldiers fighting, but the internal life. The torment of war upon the mind, the heart, the humanity and the spirituality of the men forced to fight it is front and center in The Thin Red Line, and completely missing from Saving Private Ryan. The Thin Red Line is the rarest of the rare, a multi-dimensional, deeply intimate war film that leaves us questioning war and our own righteousness, while Saving Private Ryan is simply another one-dimensional, standard war film that never forces us to question our virtue or morality. Saving Private Ryan shows us men surviving war, while The Thin Red Line teaches us that it is what men do to survive in war that does the most damage to them.

Spielberg won a Best Director Oscar for Saving Private Ryan. No one boos or walks out of a Spielberg film because he never questions his audience or makes them think or feel. He just mindlessly and soullessly entertains and leaves us on our way. Malick never let's his audience, or himself, off the hook. He challenges the audience, to surpass their cultural conditioning and to ask themselves the big questions that they don't want to think about. 

We are the guilty ones. We are all mini-Salieri's who reward the work of other more famous Salieris. Mediocrity has become King in America. Tom Hanks has won two Best Actor Oscars while Joaquin Phoenix has won none. A malignant mediocrity like Steven Spielberg has two Best Director Oscars, when two of the most rare cinematic geniuses, Terrence Malick and Stanley Kubrick have none. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, poster children for mediocrity, currently lead our Presidential elections. We have sentenced ourselves to a life term of mediocrity and deceive ourselves by calling it greatness. We are the ones to blame for this, no one else.

It is interesting to me that the people who walked out of The Tree of Life when I saw it, and the people who were so dismayed at the Knight of Cups when I saw it, were older people. These are the people who should most be thinking about the questions of life and death that Terrence Malick raises, yet they were the ones who were the most resistant to these Malick films. Maybe the fact that the next big thing to happen in the life of these folks will be the ending of it, is why they do not want to think about death, and they would rather be mindlessly entertained rather than confronted with their mortality. Of course, their fear and cowardice speaks more to them and their failings than it does to the artistry of Terrence Malick.

The people who would walk out of a Malick film, or boo it upon its conclusion, are the same people who laughed at Van Gogh, Picasso, Jackson Pollack or Mozart. They are the Gatekeepers of Mediocrity, Salieri's all, who want to keep genius in a cage while they whistle by the graveyard of their own worthless lives. I don't hate people who boo Malick films, I pity them. These people are missing out on so much beauty and joy and wisdom. To their credit, they do make me think about what things might I be resistant to out there that may be so fantastically wonderful but which I am too afraid to experience or understand. There is a lot of art in the world which is beyond my limited intellect, but I would never be so presumptuous as to boo it and stamp it as worthless. While I may not intellectually understand Jackson Pollack's work, I can still marvel at its dynamism. The same can be said of Opera, or classical music. While those art forms are things I know very little about, I would not presume to belch my inadequacies upon them in order to not feel stupid. Rather I would try and learn more about them and see if I could find the ageless beauty and wisdom that resides within them. 

Malick is an incomparable filmmaker. No one even attempts to do what he is and has been doing in cinema for the last forty years. Terrence Malick is among a very small, handful of true cinematic geniuses the world has ever known. The reality is, if you stand up and walk out of a Malick film, or boo loudly at the completion of a Malick film, that is an indictment of you and your compulsively myopic artistic tastes. Not understanding the genius of a Malick film is not a Malick problem….it is a YOU problem.

The Great Malick Civil War still rages to this day (and obviously, I rage along with it!!), with neither side willing to give an inch, but only one thing is assured…this war will end, and years from now, the fools, the clowns and the idiots who laughed and booed at Malick will be long gone and completely forgotten, but Malick's films will stand as a monument to his genius for the ages to come. Knight of Cups will be among those films which history will revere.

©2016