The Weekend Review: Gone with the Wind

In which I review a selection of last weekend's entertainment.

So December's kicking in at long last, proving to be just as difficult to manage as last year was (which, as some of you may recall, was when the blog went on an extended hiatus).  You don't have to worry about that happening again, thankfully.  Just be aware that I might at times, such as today, have to play catch up around here.

When war breaks out between the United and Confederate States, the men of the Old South couldn't imagine it outlasting the week.  But as the conflict gradually turns against the Confederates, their entire way of life is doomed to extinction, "gone with the wind which has swept through Georgia."  Scarlett O'Hara - a spoiled, coquettish debutante - is forced to run the family plantation, Tara, in the wake of the Yankees' victory over the South.

I have always had a complicated relationship with Gone with the Wind.  After hearing endlessly of its critical esteem and popular appeal, I walked away from my first viewing of it vaguely disappointed.  I wasn't even sure exactly why.  It wasn't just that it failed to live up to the impossible expectations that had been built up for it, nor that its narrative hinged on the worst sort of historical revisionism.  Even the profound racism that seeps into nearly every scene of the film was not specifically why I disliked it.

Gone with the Wind is simultaneously the most epically brilliant, fundamentally flawed and insufferably immoral film I have ever seen.  My most recent viewing of it has put into perspective just masterfully crafted, perfectly cast and gorgeously rendered the film really, despite its repugnant stance on  the institution of slavery as a whole and on black people in particular.  It is a morally reprehensible film about morally reprehensible people doing morally reprehensible things - not the least of which is racial enslavement, marital rape, infidelity and war profiteering.

Despite its myriad of structural issues - including a bloated run time, slavish fidelity to its source material (to the expense of the overall production) and a second half that fluctuates between repetitive and wholly unnecessary - it is heartbreakingly close to being one of my  favorite films for the exact same reason that The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is my actual favorite: its mind-bogglingly epic scope and pristine execution.  Scarlet and  Rhett escaping from a pandemonic Atlanta that has burst into flames is easily one of the most viscerally thrilling sequences ever filmed.

In fact, everything that is wrong with Gone with the Wind is reserved for its second half, set in the post-war South, which betrays the epic promise of its first half.  It is here where the film's pristinely tragic narrative devolves into petty marital squabbling and domestic melodrama.  In a revelation that absolutely nobody should find shocking, Scarlet and Rhett's marriage (Scarlet's third) - based purely off of their mutual attractiveness and wealth - is an unhappy one.  

Scarlett persistently clings to her adolescent love for Ashley, enticing him to cheat on Melanie with her at every opportunity, even on his wife's death bed.  If anything, Rhett's treatment of Scarlet is even more abhorrent.  When he hears rumors of her infidelity, he forces her to attend Ashley's birthday party in a supremely immodest dress.  When he tires of her spurning his affections, he rapes her.  An altercation between the two of them ends with Scarlet collapsed at the bottom of a staircase, resulting in her miscarriage.  The only thing that holds their dysfunctional marriage together - other than the unbearable shame of a divorce - is their daughter: Bonnie.  Her untimely death undoes their failed union.

Despite their initial appearances, the characters - particularly Rhett and Scarlett - ultimately lack the necessary depth needed to carry the weight of the narrative on their own.  This is not a problem with the first half of the film, where spectacle and plot drive the film forward in equal measure, but  increasingly becomes an issue after the war, when the film awkwardly transitions into a meandering, if intimate, character piece.

If Gone with the Wind had ended with its first act - the fall of the Old South and tragic conclusion of the Civil War - it would easily hold its own against The Lord of the Rings and Metropolis as one of my favorite films.  As it stands, however, it is a reverse 2001 - brilliant, with an immeasurably dull second half.  Overall, I give it a 7.5 out of 10.

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Unreality Companion: The Weirdest Christmas Stories Ever Told

In which I expand on the content from my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

This week at Unreality I dove into one of the most head-scratchingly bizarre films ever made: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.  And no, I'm not making this up.  There is, in fact, a movie where Santa Claus is kidnapped by Martians and becomes embroiled in an attempted coo of the Martian king.

It got me thinking, however, that this isn't really all that a-typical of Christmas movies.  Hollywood churns out so many Christmas movies every year, hoping to wrestle away a precious few holiday dollars away from the public, that, statistically, the bizarre slew of Christmas that we get on a yearly basis is inevitable.

I thought, being that time of year again, that I would spend some time detailing the weirdest, most enigmatic Christmas films ever made.  So here they are, the five other most insanely produced Christmas movies ever to be filmed.

5 - Jack Frost (1997)  Why anybody ever thought that there was a profitable demographic to exploit between those who love Christmas and those who love slasher films, I'll never know.  The film boldly dares to answer the hard-hitting holiday questions that have tasked man's minds for centuries; no, not "is there really a Santa Claus" nor "if I behave solely for material game, can I really be considered a 'good boy,'" but "what would happen if Frosty the Snowman was more like Jason Vorhees."

The film opens with a grotesque parody of "The Night Before Christmas" that includes the lines "Jack was nimble, / Jack was quick.  / Jack gouged eyes out with candle sticks."  I mean, who is this film even for?  Your typical Christmas movie-goer wants to see Christmas Vacation or A Christmas Story, not Olaf going on a Michael Meyers-styled murder spree through small town America.  Likewise, horror fans want their films dressed up in something other than a carrot nose and two eyes made out of coal.

4 - Santa with Muscles (1996)  The nineties were a bygone era where men were men and Santa was ripped.  The same year that gave us Jingle All the Way also gave us this little gem, starring wrestler cum actor Hulk Hogan.  I would have to imagine that most people, if tasked with creating a holiday-themed Hogan-lead film would not have come up with anything half as bizarre as this.

While trying to escape from the police, Blake Thorn ducks into a mall and changes into a Santa costume.  After falling down a garbage chute, he hits his head and gets amnesia - making him believe that he is, in fact, the real Santa Claus.  And, when a mad scientist tries to gain control of an orphanage in order to - I kid you not - steal the magic crystals underneath the building, it's up to Santa to stop him... with muscles... because nineties.

3 - Elves (1989)  So it turns out that Hitler did not imagine his master race to be blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryans afterall, but half-human / half-elf cross-breeds.  When a pagan ritual resurrects the demonic creatures, the last pure-blooded Aryan virgin in the world is kidnapped in order to become the unwilling mother of Hitler's true dream.

I  think that we've finally convinced the film industry that the internet is not frightening.  If only we could do the same thing with Christmas.  At the very least I would settle for not shoe-horning in Nazi's for the lack of a real villain.  And weirdly enough, I honestly think that there is an interesting cinematic space for evil elves, even in a Christmas-set film.  It's just not these specific ones.

2 - Santa's Slay (2005)  It turns out that Santa Claus is not the jolly old elf that everybody seems to think he is.  He's actually a demon who lost a deal with an angel one thousand years ago.  Under the terms of their agreement, he is forced to bring love and good cheer to all the people of the Earth through selfless deeds for the next one thousand years.  But now the terms of his bet have been fulfilled, and Santa has some pent up frustrations to let out.

Let me say this one more time for the film producers reading this: Christmas is NOT scary.  That goes doubly for over-thought dreck like Santa's Slay, which tries too hard to convince its audience that a bearded fat man is menacing enough to straight-up murder people with icicles and go around in a dirty wife-beater.  It combines what are easily the worst and most ludicrous elements of Santa with Muscles and Elves (only thankfully without the Nazis) into a schlocky, unwatchable mess.

1 - Santa Claus (1959) This is it, the big one: the Citizen Kane of "what the fuck were they thinking" films.  It's certainly not nearly as bad as The Room, as stupid as Santa Claus Conquers the Martians nor as blatantly against the spirit of the holiday as half of the movies on this list, but what it lacks for in those respects, it makes up for in sheer confundity.

Santa is busy at work in the few remaining days before Christmas, completing orders of Earth-bound toys in his castle in Space.  Satan has had quite enough of Saint Nick, however, and enlists a demon to turn the children of the world against Santa, convincing a group of children to steal, vandalize and generally misbehave.  Troubled by these events, but forbidden to leave his castle before Christmas Eve, Santa uses his high-tech gizmometry in order to spy on the childrens' dreams, causing him to discover that they're being tormented into submission to Satan's malign will.  Merlin, the Arthurian wizard and Santa's most trusted advisor, assists him in accessing a doorway through Vulcan to the Earth in order to save Christmas from the Devil.

So what Christmas movies are you going to watch this holiday season?  Are there any bizarre choices that I neglected to mention above?  Share your thoughts and suggestions in the comment section below.

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Netflix Update: What's New in December 2014

In which I report on the upcoming changes to Netflix.

Since I have already gone over what treasured classics and cinematic favorites left us this last month, I thought that it would be prudent to go over what films (and series) are replacing them this month.

Well, first of all, I clearly didn't plan my DVD rentals very well, since I currently have a copy of Almost Famous checked out from Family Video.  As a result, this will be the first newly available film on Netflix that I will cross off of my list (even if it is due to sheer stupidity).

Those who have been following this blog for a little bit will know of my love of American Horror Story.  Although I've fallen a little behind at the moment, I am currently reviewing American Horror Story: Freakshow episode-by-episode.  And although I have been warned by those who have already seen it that it is currently the worst season that the show has yet to produce, I can't pretend that I don't desperately want to see it.  Between Kathy Bates, Janet Leigh and all the darkness that the creative team responsible for Glee could come up with, is it any wonder why?

Other than Her, The Wolf of Wall Street is the only big film from last year that I have yet to see.  I missed the opportunity when my parents got it through the mail from Netflix and have been basically biding my time ever since.  Now that it's finally hear, I can check out this controversially good film for myself.

I will guiltily confess wanting to see Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues and Sharknado 2: The Second One despite having no hope whatsoever that they will amount to even decent films.  the original Anchorman is one of the rare comedies that I love and I still can't explain exactly how the first Sharknado cobbled together such an enjoyable film from such a ludicrous premise, low budget and bargain bin creative talent.  I certainly wasn't going to pay to see either of these films invariably embarrass themselves, but for the low, low price of free, I'd be happy enough to check them out.

Beyond that, Netflix is getting a slew of great movies that, having already seen them, I wouldn't mind rewatching.  Notably, this includes American Beauty (which I think that Becky enjoyed as much as she did Being John Malkovich), Oculus (which I was getting ready to simply shell the money out for to see again), Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (a serviceable entry into the series), A Knight's Tale and Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion.

So while last month saw the removal of a massive chunk of extremely good films without all that much to replace it, December seems to be the opposite.  While there were a couple films that I was moderately sad to see go, there wasn't really anything that demanded my immediate attention.  And of the new crop of incoming titles, there are plenty that I want to see.

So which films (or shows) are you most excited about being streamable this month?  Is there anything that you were especially upset to see go?  Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Available 12/1

A Knight's Tale (2001)
Almost Famous (2000)
American Beauty (1999)
Bewitched (2005)
Jewtopia (2012)
Knights of Badassdom (2014)
Madison (2005)
Out of the Clear Blue Sky (2012)
Out of Time (2003)
The Out-of-Towners (1999)
Troop Beverly Hills (1989)
Turbo FAST (New episodes)

Available 12/3

Oculus (2014)
Son of God (2014)

Available 12/5

Bill Burr: I'm Sorry You Feel That Way (2014)

Available 12/6

American Horror Story: Coven
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues Super-sized version (2013)
Ava & Lala (2014)
Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014)

Available 12/8

Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (Season 3)

Available 12/9

I Am Ali (2014)
Drive Hard (2014)

Available 12/10

A Haunted House 2 (2014)

Available 12/11

The Village (2004)
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Available 12/12

Broadchurch (Season 1)
Marco Polo (Season 1)
Nick Offerman: American Ham

Available 12/13

Don't Blink (2014)

Available 12/15

Jake Squared (2014)

Available 12/18

Ragnarok (2014)
The Honourable Woman (Season 1)

Available 12/19

All Hail King Julien

Available 12/20

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones Extended Edition (2014)

Available 12/22

Dark Skies (2013)
Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997)

Available 12/23

The Trip to Italy (2014)

Available 12/24

Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return (2014)

Available 12/25

Good People (2014)

Available 12/27

Child of God (2014)
Labor Day (2013)

Available 12/28

Behaving Badly (2014)
Comedy Bang! Bang! (Season 3)
I, Frankenstein (2014)
Maron (Season 2)
Jessie (Season 3)

Available 12/30

Last Weekend (2014)

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Unreality Companion: 3 Reasons Why I'm Still Nervous About Mockingjay Part 2

In which I expand on the content from my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

Despite everything stacked against it, Mockingjay Part 1 was a resounding success.  Not only did it achieve its expected public notoriety, but it unequivocally solved every issue that I had with the novel upon which it's based.  Although not my absolute favorite of the year, it's definitely up there and will likely stay up there when all is said and done.  And since I spent this week's Unreality article enumerating the reasons why Mockingjay Part 1 should have failed (but didn't), I thought that I would describe the cause for my continued unease while we wait the long year between now and Part 2's release.

They still split one novel into two films.  Yeah, yeah, I know that I specifically mentioned why this was the right decision (or at least a good one) for Part 1, but that's just it: it was the right decision for Part 1.  Although I assume that the same production team that made it work the first time around will be able to do so with the sequel, I cannot pretend that they're not treading extremely murky waters in the attempt.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 also seemed to be going on the right track, before Part 2 was little more than a two hour fight scene.  While Mockingjay has a lot more meat on its bones than the eighth Harry Potter, it could still start running thin on substance by the time that Katniss storms the Capitol.  In fact, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the entire film is essentially that one action sequence: Katniss storming the Capitol at the end of the rebellion.  Like The Deathly Hallows Part 2, it would still be an entertaining enough way to spend an afternoon, but that doesn't make for especially compelling material to revisit years later (or even months) later.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman is still dead.  While it might have seemed more than just a little uncouth at the time, when the revered actor playing Plutarch Heavensbee died during Mockingjay's production, it seemed like the only thing that people were concerned with was how this would affect the films.  After all, Plutarch is an increasingly vital character in the last novel, a fact that would only be exacerbated by the fact that they were making two films from the source material.  Do you create a motion capture duplicate of Hoffman?  Do you replace him with another, invariably worse, actor (it worked for Dumbledore)?  Do you cut out his character entirely, or at least make him a largely behind-the-scenes presence - spoken of more often than he actually appears on camera?

It turned out that Hoffman had essentially finished his contribution to the film at the time of his death, so fans did not have to worry about what shape Heavensbee would actually take in the films to come.  But the devil's in the details: Hoffman was mostly, although not entirely, finished.  According to Lionsgate, there was a final emotional scene that had been planned, but not shot.  While the production company assures fans that it will be easy enough to alter and work around, I can't help but think of what cathartic possibilities we're actually missing out on, and how that will ultimately affect next year's film.

The novel's denouement is terrible.  I know that I am not alone in feeling this way either.  Some fans of the novel, myself included, were outraged about an especially manipulative scene that seems to exist for the sole, sadistic purpose of sucker punching both the reader and the characters.  While comparisons to Rue's death will doubtlessly come up in its defense, the two could not be any more dissimilar.  Rue progressed Katniss' character, the novel's (and sequels') plot(s) forward and was a completely earned tragedy.  The events of Mockingjay progress nothing (in fact, can progress nothing, given that the series is just short of over by that point) and seem to exist for the sole purpose of making sure that the story doesn't end too happily.

Another huge issue that has been threaded throughout the franchise is who Katniss will eventually end up with: Gale or Peeta.  Before Mockingjy, Katniss swore that she would never marry nor ever have children.  It was the one right that she was afforded and fully planned on exercising it.  It was a daring betrayal of romantic convention and made her decisions driven from something other than a flush-faced attraction to the dystopian hunks she was forced to interact with.  I was not upset that she ended up choosing somebody, but that the way the plot plays out, she is essentially stripped of any choice in the matter.  Sure, she goes through the motions of one vs the other, but it's not from a position of power, driven by a desperate loneliness and the fact that one of her two options was completely taken away from her.

I am still excited about the film and am sure that it will be a highlight in what's already shaping up to be a tightly packed year (Age of Ultron vs The Force Awakens vs James Bond anybody?).  Still, I'd be lying to myself if I could say with any confidence that the film will be able to overcome the shortcomings of Mockingjay the novel.  Here's to hoping, though.

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Netflix Update: What's Leaving Us in December 2014

In which I report on the upcoming changes to Netflix.

November's changes to Netflix was like having a crisis of faith.  So many fantastic movies were leaving, precious few of interest were being added.  One disgruntled subscriber that I spoke to declared it as the final straw, pulling the plug on Netflix for increasingly diminishing returns.  Several others, although they continued to pay for the monthly streaming services, expressed a growing concern that it was more and more frequently just not worth what they were paying into it. 

Although December is not a complete reversal of this trend of diminishing returns, it does go a long way to solve the issue.  There are a few noteworthy titles leaving at the end of the month, but they are generally ones that I can live without: either because I already own them or because, while I appreciate and enjoy them immensely, I'm not especially drawn to watch it all that frequently.  A few, admittedly, I haven't seen, but nothing that is so critically important that I feel compelled to have a frantic, last-minute marathon to catch them during the holidays.

Among the few that I intend to watch before it's no longer streamable is Imagining Argentina: a historical drama set in the last days of Argentina's brutal dictatorship that lasted from 1976 to 1983.  It details the brutal tactics that the state utilized against its own people - including torture, rape and the silent abduction over over 30,000 men, women and children.  It's one that Becky nominated for a Date Night installment, which is why I am sure that it will make it in under the wire.

The only other film that I am compulsively drawn toward is Chaplin, a biopic of silent filmmaker Charlie Chaplin starring Robert Downey Jr. in the title role.  I saw most of it when I was in high school - and really enjoyed it - although I never quite got around to finishing it.  In fact, before looking up what films were leaving Netflix, I didn't even realize that it was streamable!  It details the early days of film - when the medium was still struggling for critical acceptance - with historical accuracy and critical insight.

The Untouchables, Brian DePalma's 1987 crime drama, famously took a number of visual cues from Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potempkin.  That, plus just looking like an incredibly good film on its face, is more than enough reason for me to shoehorn it into my viewing schedule.

Oh, and Robocop 2, because why not?

Another notable departure in December is The King's Speech, a historical drama chronicling King George VI's struggle with public speaking that won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Picture.  The Stuff is equal parts social satire and legitimate horror, working despite the ridiculousness of its premise.  Event Horizon is a terrible, terrible sci-fi horror film that I only watched because of Jim Sterling's Movie Defense Force, yet one with a fairly interesting premise that might appeal to the more macabre Netflix subscribers.  First Knight is a solidly entertaining take on the King Arthur mythos starring Sean Connery and Richard Gear that certainly warrants a look if you haven't seen it already.

Mission: Impossible III - in which Tom Cruise squares off against the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman - is easily the best of its series and one of the more viscerally exciting action films to come out in recent years that doesn't involve superheroes.  Mr. Mom is an infinitely rewatchable comedy starring a recently unemployed Michael Keaton who is forced to be a stay at home dad while his wife's new advertising career takes off.  And School Ties is a drama in which Brendan Fraiser is discriminated against while attending a private prep school because he is Jewish (this was back when it looked like he was going to be a "respectable" actor).

The full list of titles that are leaving us is posted below.  What are you especially sad to see leaving us in the next couple of days?  What, if anything, are you planning on watching?  Share your thoughts in the comment section at the bottom.

November 26
The King's Speech

November 30
Black Moon Rising
The Boys Next Door
C.H.U.D.
Helvetica
House
House II
The Philadelphia Experiment
Transylvania 6-5000
The Stuff

December 1
1941
The Apostle
Audrey Rose
The Believers
Better than Chocolate
Blood & Chocolate
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Chaplin
The Choirboys
The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County
Coffee and Cigarettes
The Cold Light of Day
The Constant Gardener
Count Yorga, Vampire
Cry-Baby
Dirty Dancing
Double Indemnity
En la Cama
Event Horizon
Eye for an Eye
Fairy Tale: A True Story
First Knight
Five Easy Pieces
Foreign Student
Free Men
Funny Lady
The Ghost and Mrs Muir
The Girl from Petrovka
Going Berserk
The Great Waldo Pepper
House of Voices
How to Frame a Figg
I'm Not Rappaport
Imagining Argentina
Invaders from Mars
Ishtar
Joe Gould's Secret
Joe Kidd
Johnny Mnemonic
Killer at Large
King of the Hill
Lonely Hearts
Magic Trip
Magicians
Mission Impossible III
Minnie and Moskowitz
Monkey Shines
Mr. Mom
'night Mother
Night of the Creeps
An Officer and a Gentleman
Opal Dream
The Other Side of the Mountain
The Other Side of the Mountain, Part 2
Our City Dreams
The Paper Chase
Paradise Alley
The Parole Officer
The Pirates of Penzance
Prairie Love
The Presidio
The Promise
The Proposition
Reds
The Return of Count Yorga
RoboCop 2
School Ties
The Sci-Fi Boys
The Serpent and the Rainbow
Spice World
Star Trek: Generations
Swashbuckler
The Talented Mr. Ripley
They Might Be Giants
The Untouchables
The Vampire Lovers
Walker
Year of the Horse: Neil Young & Crazy Horse Live
Young Sherlock Holmes

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Extra, Extra!: Meet Wonder Woman's Director

In which I report on the latest in entertainment news.

Warner Brothers' peregrination for a Wonder Woman director has finally come to an end.  At first viciously criticized for not even so much as considering a woman to helm their premiere superheroine's solo film, they eventually focused their efforts on three extremely capable females: Kathryn Bigelow, Mimi Leder and Michelle MacLaren.

For my money, Kathryn Bigelow - the Academy award-winning director of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty - would have been an ideal choice.  She's an incredibly talented and high-profile director who would have given a project that smacks of playing catch-up to Marvel's well-established and highly profitable cinematic universe an air of artistic legitimacy.  Her most recent and most celebrated projects have all been tense, action-packed dramas that exude the same sense of somber, grounded realism that Warner Brothers, for better or for worse, seems Hell-bent on dousing the films in their cinematic universe with (call it "The Dark Knight aesthetic").  She would have come to the project with a uniquely androgynous perspective: feminine, yes, but grounded in traditionally masculine interests.  And given that Wonder Woman is born into a warrior nation, who better to depict this than a woman who has made a career out of depicting martial narratives.

Mimi Leder would not have been an especially good, nor an especially inspired choice.  She directed her way through the 80s one TV show episode at a time, finally breaking into film in the 90s and early 2000s, only to slip back exclusively into television in 2001.  While her TV resume is certainly extensive, none of it seems to be in line with what would be expected out of a Wonder Woman film: adult comedies and situational dramas.  Her actual filmography has been a mixed bag that likewise inspires little confidence: overly saccharine melodramas like Pay It Forward paired with lesser action films like Deep Impact.  While she certainly would not have been an abominably bad choice, she hardly has the talent, experience nor profile that Bigelow would bring to the project.

Michelle MacLaren on the set of Breaking Bad.

The third candidate, and the one who will actually be taking on the project, is Michelle MacLaren (pictured above).  Like Leder, MacLaren has made a career through directing and producing TV series episodes and made-for-TV movies.  But it is here where the comparison between them ends.  Whereas Leder was known for working on shows such as Shameless and ER, MacLaren is best known for her work on Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones: tense, exciting, character-driven dramas that have garnered her significant critical praise - associating her more with Bigelow both stylistically and in terms of narrative content.  And, unlike Bigelow, McLaren's projects have often incorporated aspects of unreality more in line with the Wonder Woman franchise: monsters, magic and melee-driven action.

While admittedly not my first choice, her status as what is essentially the poor man's Kathryn Bigellow means that she is perfectly suited for the task that she is being entrusted with.  And while Wonder Woman is a stretch from the journalistic realism of Bigelow's preferred narrative, it is well within MacLaren's proven talents.

Besides, it would be a good change of pace to get a few more gal's in the directors chairs of major films.  Maybe in a few years Kathryn Bigelow and Sofia Coppola won't have to share the same gender-set spotlight as Catherine Hardwicke for lack of superior alternatives.

Do you think that Warner Brothers made the right call with their new director?  What are you hoping for (or fearing to see) in the upcoming Wonder Woman movie?  Share your thoughts and comments below.

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The Weekend Review: The Wind Rises

In which I review a selection of last weekend's entertainment.

There is a risk with certain movies - with certain director's last movies - to expect too much from them.  It's not enough that they're good, they have to be great: a swan song that encapsulates their entire, decades-long filmography in only 90 minutes and ultimately justifies their lack of future films.  Anything less than perfect is a disgrace, and even perfection is a bitter-sweet reminder for what has left us.

To say that I was excited to see The Wind Rises, legendary anime director Hayao Miyazaki's last film before his retirement, would be a profound understatement.  His films helped open my eyes to the possibilities of non-Western films: to animated epics involving primordial animal gods, exiled princes, goldfish princesses, fire demons, cursed fighter pilots, mechanized castles, otherworldly day spas and friendly neighborhood spirits.  It was through him that I first understood that epic scope did not mean abandoning intimate narratives, that riveting scenes of action did not have to come at the expense of quiet, meditative shots of characters simply being.  Films didn't just have to be one thing.  They could be flashy at times, subdued at others, seething with intense emotion when such things were called for and yet become fully at peace with their own existence when all the fighting was done.

And this - his decidedly last film - was unique in his filmography: not a fantastical tale of gods, monsters and ethereal spirits, but a historical biopic of Jiro Horikoshi, the engineer who designed many of Japan's World War II fighter planes.  Unique, and yet not so far removed: blurring the lines of reality and imagination to create an impossibly, fantastically rendered reality that both does and does not belong to our otherwise mundane existence.

So when I finally saw The Wind Rises on Saturday - this final outing from one of the world's most visionary directors - it would have been easy enough to despairingly label it a failure unworthy of Miyazaki's last film.  But that would have been disingenuous to the truly amazing film that he did produce.  Even if it is not quite what it could have been, it is never-the-less as filled with Miyazaki's trademark love of life and the ugly yet beautiful world that we find ourselves in.

Jiro Horikoshi is a brilliant Japanese engineer whose boyhood fantasies of flight and Inception-esque shared dreams with renowned Italian aircraft designer Count Giovanni Caproni have driven him to to a simple end: to build beautiful planes.  But with the coming second World War and Japan's wealth disparity demanding the country's attention, he is forced to compromise his pure dream by designing fighter planes and bombers: machines that exist only to kill and be shot down.

Despite its decidedly realistic narrative, Miyazaki succeeds at incorporating his trademark style into what could have otherwise just been yet another historical biopic.  His understated fantastical flair touches the film with just enough unreality to make it feel like a wholly unique experience.  While it makes sense that, in his own mind, the two would easily blur (such as the image above, where his papers fly around the office from some unseen gale of the imagination), they do so beyond the bounds of his mere dreams and daydreams.

As Jiro describes his dream of a sleek, near-frictionless airplane capable of shattering current airspeed records to his engineering team, we see his vision swoop down from above in the office.  While lesser directors would have left us with that glimpse of Jiro's vision, Miyazaki presses even further - having Jiro's coworkers follow its progress with their eyes, hurriedly duck down when it dives and exclaim in enthusiastic awe about the shared vision for the project that they just had.  Even their hair and clothes intensely rustle, as if they actually did just have a near miss with a plane zooming over 200 miles an hour past them.

While Miyazaki does go further than what probably any other director in his position would have, I can't help but feel that even he was playing it too safe.  These were, for me, the absolute highlight of the film: his mad scramble to perfect aviation technology and how his mind brought his fantastical creations to life in an equally fantastical way.  I would imagine that, being out of his traditional depth of high fantasy, Miyazaki opted to keep his biographical narrative more grounded in realism than he would have otherwise.

While that is a respectable position to take - even responsible - it was not the correct one.  A film can be stylistically unreal while still being no less realistic.  Igmar Bergman proved this with his entire filmography, especially films like Persona and Wild Strawberries.  Even the Japanese film Perfect Blue managed this in the late nineties.  Last film of no, Miyazaki should have gone for broke with The Wind Rises and merge the fantastical and the mundane so completely that the two would be virtually inseparable from one another.

Miyazaki's films have always dealt with the horrors of war and the ideal of peace.  Princess Mononoke depicted a pointless and horrific war against nature itself, resolving that one should live alongside the planet, not attempt to dominate it.  This brought out more obviously in Howl's Moving Castle, which graphically depicted the military bombing civilian targets and the film's title character alternates the entire film between conscientious objector and defender of the defenseless.

The Wind Rises addresses this theme in the most nuanced way imaginable: not from the perspectives of either the bomber or the bombee, but from the man designing the weapons being used.  Jiro is an idealistic, pacifistic man who only wants to create beautiful planes that can improve peoples' lives - a goal shared by his idol Count Giovanni Caproni, who really just wants to build commercial planes to transport people across the Atlantic.  When working out how to make his planes faster, his first suggestion is to remove the guns (something that his military-backed employer obviously won't allow).  The film ends on a haunting meditation of his and Caproni's life's work: "airplanes are beautiful, cursed dreams waiting to be swallowed by the sky."

If I can really fault the film for anything, other than simply not blurring the lines between reality and fantasy enough, it's that its more interesting story of aeronautical engineering is interspliced with a far less interesting - and completely fictitious - account of Jiro's personal life: of the woman he loves, her (fictitious) death by tuberculosis and the precious little time that they had together.  While none of it was bad per se, it was considerably more dull than the rest of the film, sometimes bordering on feeling as contrived as it, in fact, was.  I would have much preferred an increased focus on Jiro's professional story.

Despite not being Miyazaki's best film, it is easily his most nuanced and mature: a perfectly poignant note for him to end his career on.  The animation is as breathtaking, his characters as endearing and his narrative as engaging as they ever have been.  This is a must see for fans of the director, its medium, dramas and film in general.  It is a film instilled with an infectious love of life, positing that "le vent se lève! / Il faut tenter de vivre!" (The wind is rising!  /  We must try to live!").  I give the film a high 7.5 out of 10.

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