comedy
Suffer the Little Children: Sebastian Silva’s “Nasty Baby”
Written on the surface of Sebastian Silva’s Nasty Baby is a bunch of tenuously cohesive themes and ideas – the fear of fatherhood, the adolescence of adulthood, the struggles of being an artist, gentrification – that are smudged around with red ink thrown on them for good measure to a point where those things are barely discernible at all. To some degree, there’s an admiration to be had for its audacity inasmuch as a drastic tonal shift, but its main selling point and shock value feels rather unearned at the end of the day. Read the rest of this entry »
My Favorite Opening Scene: Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman
Sometime during the early to mid-1990s, Ang Lee, who had not yet won either of his two Academy Awards for Best director, made food about film. Or film about food? Actually, though, the three films that were included in the delicious thematic trilogy were about the role of the father. Loosely known as the “Father Knows Best” Trilogy, the films were Pushing Hands (1992), The Wedding Banquet (1993), and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994). The films illustrate the clash between traditionalism and modernism in regard to ‘family values”. (It might be fair to say, if a little mean, that Ang Lee has as many daddy issues as Steven Spielberg.) This last entry of the film, however, contains one of the most mesmerizing scenes not only in films about food or Asian cinema, but cinema itself. Its ability to make the audience salivate alone is reason to watch the scene on a loop, as well as its insight into one of the main characters of Lee’s film.
The film begins with a cavalcade of people on their motor bikes and in their cars making their way to work in the noisy city of Taipei. But off in a more serene area is our Father of the film, Mr. Chu. In this short scene, almost everything you would ever need to know about Chu and his daughters is somehow displayed, even if his daughters are never on screen. But what makes it so enticing is how simple it all seems. Lee’s direction is a notched into a high gear that is beautifully subtle, high gear in the way that Mr. Chu’s character appears on screen and, without saying a word, seems fully formed from the very first frame he is in.
Mr. Chu, portrayed by Kuei-Mei Yang, is preparing for Sunday dinner, which for his family is a weekly tradition. His experience as a master chef is portrayed in the deftness of his movements. There’s no trace of unsureness or even struggle. For him, this is all part of the routine. There are barely any hints of fatigue or worry, despite the film’s subsequent storyline. Cooking is what he has put his heart into, and you can see it with every movement. It is cooking that brings him joy, as the audience sees a smile rise on his face and a jaunty movement of the knife as he minces meat on the cutting board.
What else is it that makes this scene so transfixing? Is it the food itself and its representation of lost tradition? How the food will come to be the much needed bridge between the traditionalism of Mr. Chu’s upbringing and the modernism of his daughters, now going off to live their own lives? Or is it because it looks so damn tasty? Actually, I believe it is not only both of these things but a third element: Ang Lee’s direction. Lee, who also wrote the screenplay, is most assured here, watching as Mr. Chu prepares dinner. It is when he is observing food and its function that he works best, as evidenced by the film itself (which utilizes film as a passing metaphor for aforementioned clashes ‘taste’), as well as his countless other films that use food as a focal point of communication and connection. From the Thanksgiving dinners in The Ice Storm and Brokeback Mountain to the titular Wedding Banquet, Ang Lee exerts his filmmaking expertise most often through food. This scene in Eat Drink Man Woman thus resonates so deeply with viewers because the preparation means something to Mr. Chu.
Sunday dinner is essentially the only time that Mr. Chu gets to talk to his daughters: the eldest is a religious school teacher nursing a broken heart; the middle is a savvy airline executive, and the youngest works at Wendy’s. Throughout the film, the girls are illustrated by their inability to really communicate their thoughts through words. The only way they can truly articulate themselves is the best way and the way they learned how to do that; through food. And even though they hate Sunday dinner, where ideas and ideals of the girls must be deferred to that of their father, it is their chance to awkwardly establish that they are grown up and must move on. (Note the juxtaposition of the kind of food that Mr. Chu makes and his youngest daughter makes. How much different could you get?)
Such is the precision that this scene is directed that even the knives give insight to both Mr. Chu and the culture he is so married to, out of tradition. My Chinese teacher at school noted that Asian cooks, particular of Chinese cuisine, are known for having entire walls of knifes, each with used with specificity. That Mr. Chu can be so precise with food is an interesting aspect of he and his family: food is his language, but when it comes to grilling his daughters about their lives, he doesn’t know which way is up. Yet, the sound, the sight, and, yes, even the smell of his work at hand is proof that he can communicate to his daughters. Perhaps the over smoked food might be less of an indication of his age and more an allusion to how weary he is as a father, not as a chef. Smoking food is, like cooking in general, often serves a precise function in terms of taste, which in itself relates to the soul and to the emotion. With food so structurally integrated into the narrative as a representation of language and emotion, the connotations of smoked or overcooked are thus indicative of Mr. Chu’s character and the secret he is carrying.
Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman is one of my very favorite films and yet I hear no one ever talk about it, not even on best of decade lists. It is in this film that Lee grasps how food serves meaning in life, and it is executed with simplicity and beauty in the opening scene: an example of mastery in two professions.
The Scene
A Woman is a Woman: Lars and the Real Girl
While it is more than fair to say that Ryan Gosling is a versatile actor, it would be hard to believe that Gosling could portray awkward so well. This is not to disregard his ability, but most people have ever seen him as a leading man, suave, sophisticated, and undoubtedly sexy. While The Notebook and Crazy, Stupid Love gave him the romantic lead, The Ides of March gave him the suave-Cary Grant-esque quality, and Drive made him an existential fighter, these roles allowed him to be the object of much swooning from the female sex (and some males, one In particular whom I know personally, ahem). Lars and the Real Girl is, in many ways, a revelation, both in terms of how people will see Gosling as an actor and in terms of its subject matter within filmmaking. Gosling plays awkward, socially inept, and he does so with pathos. Gosling brings Lars, and Bianca, to real life.
When Lars is fatigued of his social ineptitude and his insecurities stunting his ability to interact with nearly anyone, he tries to solve his predicament by deciding that it may be time for him to finally find a partner, someone with whom he can relate and be emotionally intimate with. Along comes Bianca, who, while personable, kind, and pleasant, just so happens to be a sex doll. She even comes with her own back story! While his brother and sister-in-law are initially wary of Lars’ delusion, his kind sister-in-law decides that, if this is one way that Lars will finally branch out to people, it may not be a problem. And surprisingly, the rest of the small town community is quick to follow.
Lars and the Real Girl, probably unintentionally, is the best argument for tolerance and acceptance. Slowly but surely, Bianca finds her place in the community and begins to help everyone out. It starts out as a subtle gesture of acceptance, but essentially becomes more than that, and meaning more to themselves than they could imagine. Without overstepping its boundaries and jarring the audience with some oft trodden message about acceptance (something that has been advertised ad museum these days), the film makes all of its characters likable and sympathetic, easer to root for, easier to love, and then easier to buy in to what it may be saying. This is greatly aided by the tremendous acting from the cast, the small characters bringing the small town to life. But the film would be nothing without the man who brings Bianca herself to life, making Bianca just as real of a character as everyone else. What is also a relief is that it, again, is not a PSA for anti-bullying. Thus, there is no obligatory “Lars gets bullied by town hoodlums”, something I worried about constantly as I watched the film. To my relief, there was no such scene. The town loves Lars so much, they were willing to buy into it without that usual tension.
Though it may be strange at first seeing Ryan Gosling, who is so devilish in Drive, romantic in The Notebook (which I actually abhor), and quick witted in Crazy, Stupid Love, lean over and emulate real emotional intimacy with a life sized doll, this subtle, controlled performance becomes so real that it brings one to tears by the end. When Bianca comes into Lars’ life, there is new life and confidence to Lars. It is an exceptional performance, almost electric in its emotionality. With all the confident awkwardness that Gosling is able to portray when he is with Bianca, there are beautiful and subtle moments of ambiguity. These fleeting moments of ambiguity, often when Lars looks down at the ground, often seem as Lars is trying to make himself believe that Bianca is real. He knows he wants her to be real wants to be able to channel his emotions like a “normal” person, but it seems that he sometimes struggles. He needs so much to manifest these feelings with a “person” he is comfortable with, and Bianca seems to be the person he wants focus on. His performance is so nuanced and moving, his interactions with Bianca so real, that he brings Bianca to life for the audience. We care so much about Lars that there are moments when we want to fight for him, hope for him.
Emily Mortimer plays Lars’ sister-in-law with just as much realness. Karen is the sympathetic communal catalyst in terms of getting people to play along with Lars’ delusions. Her honesty, though, is refreshing and sweet. She never seems like she is being demeaning or condescending to Lars, but honestly looking out for him, which is more than Lars’ own brother seems to be doing. Paul Schneider’s Gus, the older brother, reveals certain details about their past which may or may not be a factor into Lars’ insecurities and delusions. Patricia Clarkson is elegant as the local doctor who, little by little, tries to weasel out details from Lars. But Lars knows better than to immediately trust her.
The film is startlingly honest about relationships and the effect they have on other people and the acceptance that it takes to welcome someone into your life. While it may not be the mouthpiece to any political commentary, the film is so subtle and gentle, that it could be just that and no one would notice consciously. There is humor in its pathos as well, making the film both a tender and funny experience. There are few films that can have such power over the viewer where it allows them to buy completely into an unrealistic situation and see it as ordinary and nothing less than real. By the end of the film, I may or may not have been in tears. Though, the film gives both Lars and the viewer a sense of closure that, again, seems logical and warranted. Gosling’s portrayal is brilliantly realistic and nuanced and he, along with director Craig Gillespie and writer Nancy Oliver, bring Lars and Bianca to life. Because, at the heart of the film, it manages to say that a person is a person, no matter how much plastic is in their skin or how they manifest their feelings and quirks. And, in the case of Bianca, a woman is a woman.
Grade: A
Never Let Them Go: Everything Must Go
As one of the few people I know who will forever admire Will Ferrell’s dramatic work in Marc Forster’s Stranger Than Fiction, I was very pleased to hear that the actor, comedian, and recent recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, would be returning to some dramatic work in the indie dramedy Everything Must Go. If you are one of the scattered admirers of what wonderful Fiction Ferrell brought to the screen previously, his performance in Everything Must Go is just as good, if not better. Granted, this film is far sadder and generally more depressing, but no less powerful.
Based on Raymond Carver’s short story “Why Don’t You Dance?”, Everything Must Go is about a man whose life manages to spiral completely downwards in a period of about two days. On the first day, Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell) is fired from his job, at which he has worked for sixteen years. Apparently, his alcoholism got in the way of things from time to time. Upon returning home, freshly let go, he find all of his belongings on his front lawn, with the locks changed, no access to the house, and a note from his wife, notifying that she is leaving him and wants him out of her life. Essentially, every piece of life that Nick wants or could care about is strewn on his front lawn, and he does what any person in that situation would do: he gives up completely.
Lounging in his chair, he befriends a young boy named Kenny, played by Christopher CJ Wallace (aka The Notorious BIG’s son), and befriends his pretty neighbor Samantha (Rebecca Hall), and with them, he goes on a path of redemption! No, not really. Amongst the several things this film does correctly, everything Must Go first and foremost avoids cliché. With such a sad sack protagonist and a depressing, worthy of redemption storyline, it could have easily fallen prey to being your usual sappy drama. While it isn’t as cynical or dark as Young Adult, it does treat its protagonist in a similar way by not letting its protagonist escape from their flaws and mistakes, and instead uses them as an opportunity to see the character develop in their bizarrely stunted ways. Nor does the film allow to overdevelop and thus give way to extreme sappiness and cliché.
The performance that Will Ferrell gives in the film is of utter nuance. The character of Nick is not one of your typical slackers, usually played for comedy, but instead a legitimate depressive alcoholic, someone whom you would initially want to have sympathy for, but any sense of that is driven away by the character’s cynicism. Though, this is not completely true. Ferrell’s nature charm on the screen, almost in a Tom Hanks way, where you know that he must be a nice guy despite that these bad things are happening to a relatively good person, lets the audience have a certain amount of sympathy for him without making the audience regret having that sympathy for a generally unlikable character. Is it because the audience feels a connection with someone who is going through a midlife crisis? Or rather, a person whose midlife crisis has simply crashed down on that person? Why does this character inspire so much emotional response from the audience? What makes the portrayal so tender, so beautiful at times, and so worthy of a watch and, even at times, a tear? It is all thanks to Ferrell, who hones his dramatic skills not only as an actor, but as a performer. One never gets the sense that Ferrell is not taking his role seriously. Rather than a well-known comedian playing a sad sack, Ferrell, who has played the same kind of character for laughs before, inhabits that character and becomes him. That is, essentially, the best an actor can do. That is what acting should be. There is no discernible façade between Will Ferrell the comedian and Nick Halsey the man who is sleeping on his lawn.
It is lucky that one gets such a superb performance from Ferrell, as the story, while just as depressing as listening to Nick’s life story on audiotape, could have presented itself as something rife with genre tropes. There seems to be something around every corner that could have jumped out and made the film a “recovery movie” or a “redemption movie”, usually the province of cable TV. The film’s unsympathetic, un-cynical, and un-cliché look at Nick’s world affords itself a strange realism. If anything, the film presents very human characters whose responses are often irrational, unjustified, but still worthy of our attention.
The supporting cast is excellent, with Christopher CJ Wallace as the kid neighbor who indirectly inspires Nick to get off his ass. Yes, Kenny’s mother works, and yes, we kind of feel bad for him, but, again, the audience is not guilted into any of these emotions or responses; they just seem to happen naturally. The same can be said of Rebecca Hall’s “new in town, married woman next door”. Her husband works and she is there alone while pregnant, but there is enough distance for the audience to relate on their own without being forced to. It is this naturalism that writer and director Dan Rush imbues the story with, devoid of overt pessimism or optimism.
While most of the film is dramatic, and fairly depressing, there are light strokes of comedy brushed in that are definitely amusing. The style and sense of humor is not dark or black, per se, but balances the film out so that the drama and comedy juxtapose one another in terms of the tone in the film. Nor does it feel out of the blue or random in anyway. I guess the key word one could use to describe how good this film is is “natural”. Everything about it just comes together in a neat package, with the right rhythm and cadence.
Dan Rush’s dramedy is placidly paced and naturalistic in every way, from its story to its characters. Although it sometimes teeters on the edge of making the audience want to weep for a thousand years with a pint of ice cream at their side, it balances the sad story with mildly uplifting scenarios and amusing moments of humor. However, it is Will Ferrell’s excellent, almost perfect performance that makes the film worth seeing. Much like Ferrell’s previous venture into dramatic work in, this film that sometimes life is indeed stranger than fiction. Also, more depressing.
Grade: A-
Funny/Scary/Brilliant Genre Games: The Cabin in the Woods
I like horror movies. Actually, I used to love them, even to the extent where, in fifth or sixth grade, I began to write a history of the horror genre in book form. Around seventh or eighth grade, I grew out of my obsession, not exactly because my tastes had been broadened, but because the genre was quickly getting old. A genre that once could reflect social anxieties and also be a lot of fun had turned into something cynical, cruel, and, worst of all, really boring. With the advent of torture porn, the new extreme horror movies did not seem to change much of anything; they just made it gorier. Yes, you had your exceptions like Saw and Scream 4, films that worked on a postmodern level that either explored human nature or the industry itself, and those were great. Neither, however, were really game changers. They could be clever, even great, but were just short of actually revitalizing an ironically dying genre. At least, not in the last decade or so. (You could argue, definitely, that the first Scream in 1996 was a game changer.) But, here we are, in 2012, and while every other studio is rebooting, remaking, and sequeling horror movies to death, Joss Whedon (Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog) and Drew Goddard (writer of Cloverfield) have something entirely new up their sleeves. Something that, while perhaps part of the postmodern meta-humor fad, is actually something different. Something fun, something funny, something terrifying, and something brilliant… this way comes. And it is also something I cannot really divulge.
Your five gloriously stupid young pretty people, your usual archetypes, are headed to, as the title suggests, a cabin in the woods. You have your alpha-male (Chris Hemsworth, pre-Thor), your sex-pot (Anna Hutchinson), your guy-who-actually-smokes-pot (Fran Kranz), your attractive bookish type (Jesse Williams), and your virgin (Kristen Connolly). Behold! The five most overused archetypes in the horror genre ever! All lines up and ready to be slaughtered. Not much else needs to be said about the fates of these poor pretty people, but terror ensues as these unwise people do stupid things, just as the audience predicts.
You know that feeling where you kind of relish the terrible fates of the pretty people in the horror films you watch and enjoy? Schadenfreude, the German expression that translates as “the pleasure from the misfortune of others”? Well, Whedon and Goddard feel it too. However, they seem to have gotten bored with the usual tropes and clichés; but they also seem to be fascinated why we love the stuff, even if it gets old, boring, and stupid. If Michael Heneke (director of the German art house horror film Funny Games) and Wes Craven (Scream) had a film baby, The Cabin in the Woods would probably be it. It is equal parts a derisively hilarious deconstruction of the horror genre (a bit broader than the Scream series, which deconstructs slasher films specifically), and an analytical exploration as to why we, the sadistic audience, love every minute of it.
The acting is not bad at all. For what it needs to be, the acting is clever, which is greatly aided by the fact that the characters, while intentional carbon copy archetypes taken from the Book of Character Archetypes for Movies, are smart. Sometimes they do the idiotic things we, the audience, expect them to do, and sometimes they do something a little smarter. And we have Richard Jenkins (the Visitor) and Bradley Whitford (The West Wing) in the film too, which is pretty great.
The film wink-winks so often to the audience that, if the film were a person with eyes, they would need a very strong prescription for contacts. Even with the incessant postmodern level of construction, the film still remains, to some extent, unpredictable. The humor is devilish and hits you in a place one does not usually expect, but in an extreme jovial level, and in a way that, after you realize you are laughing (hysterically, in my case), you kick yourself a little because you feel like you should have expected the film to toy with you in this way.
Michael Heneke’s Funny Games is a cruel, merciless look at why audiences love horror movies, but the film’s extreme realism and self-satisfied laugh (and the fact that the villains break the fourth wall) make the director just as complicit in the enjoyment of the violence as the audience. Heneke rubs your face in it in a mean spirited way. Goddard and Whedon, however, have a similar treatment, but they ease it up so that they are laughing right along with you. Craven, in all his nightmarish genius, deconstructs a specific sub-genre of horror and does it well. Goddard and Whedon broaden the spectrum and seem to concentrate more on critiquing the voyeurism itself when watching horror movies. What Cabin does that Funny Games does not is fully admit that they love the stuff just as much as the audience that has come to see the carnage. It ends up being the product of two filmmakers who have become so bored with the tropes and clichés; they decide to make a change. Written by a couple of fans for millions of fans.
In a nice way, the film works as criticism of the genre and of the audience, but sans the pretentiousness that a film with these themes would have done. From making the broad generalizations about the horror genre and its over trodden tropes to making very specific allusions, Goddard and Whedon go back and use some of what we have seen before and tests to see if it still scares us. And when they know that it really doesn’t anymore, they high five and push it further, really asking why we audiences keep coming back. What makes it work? What is it about horror films that lead the audience to sadistically cackle at innocent people’s deaths? Thankfully, the two do not force an answer down the audience’s throats either and leave it to the viewer to decide.
After all this praise, how did I feel about the film? I loved it. It has been a very long time since I have seen a horror movie that made me laugh as hard as I did (manically, for that matter), make me jump as high as I did (a good foot in the air), and test me intellectually as much as it did. That is not to say the film is snobby or pretentious, just that it raised questions and asserted ideas that made the audience think both about the genre and about themselves. And it’s a film that is far less cynical than most of the meta-horror films that have been released recently (such as Scream 4). It was the most fun I have had at the movies in a long time.
The Cabin in the Woods can be thought of in two ways: as a very fun horror movie that is very clever in its deconstruction of the genre, or a very smart analysis and piece of criticism, both of the audience and of the genre itself. Deconstructing and criticizing are different things: Scream can deconstruct the slasher genre and fancy it up, but to criticize it, it had to point out how boring it really got and all of its errors and mistakes. Funny Games merely criticized, and maybe laughed in the faces of, the audiences who took pleasure in violence in film. The Cabin in the Woods is a kinder, but just as intelligent play on the two, able to stand on its own where, arguably, my comparison of Cabin to the two films is completely inessential to this review. (But, it is too late, so whatever.) Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon have directed and written a meta-masterpiece, capable of being smart without being snarky, scary without being cliché-ridden (not in the same way, at least), and funny without being stupid. The Cabin in the Woods might be, might be, the horror film to end all horror films of the last decade. That last comment is probably hyperbolic on my part, but Cabin is the first film in a very long time to send shivers down my spine, make me laugh hysterically, and exercise my intellectual acumen: all at the same time. The Cabin in the Woods is fun, frightening, and fantastic.
Grade: A
I Like Things That Look Like Mistakes 