Could Be

Meek’s Cutoff begins demurely. Three wagons, and several oxen, horses, and people forge a river, the women carrying baskets on their heads to keep them dry. They move without speaking or interacting with each other — or with us.  The camera presents them quietly. We don’t know who they are, where they are, or where they are going. We don’t know much more than this at the end of the film either, except that we hardly noticed the most important element in the scene: the water.

Directed by Kelly Reichardt, this understated, underrated film redirects our attention from the conventions of film viewing (plot, action, character, dialogue) to the constraints of the film frame itself. What is in the frame and what is left just outside it?  The story of a westward migration along the Oregon Trail in 1845, the subject matter is well suited to grappling with this question. Outside the frame there may be desert, gorges, cliffs, hostile peoples….the terrain is literally unmapped around the edges.  Inside the frame are three different families and their guide, Stephen Meek. Inside are wagon wheels, tin pans, buckets, kindling, rifles. There are daily routines of scouring, knitting, cooking, fixing, and walking, walking, walking. What is knowable is only what is right in front of your eyes and feet.

Reichardt emphasizes this by her visual choices. In an inteview she discussed using the 4:3 aspect ratio of television shows because it cuts off peripheral vision from side to side. This limited vision echoes the view from the narrow bonnets the women wear, as well as the settlers’ situation in the wilderness. The effect is unsettling and tensions spiral for characters and viewers. We want to see more, and know more, but Reichardt refuses to indulge us. In this commitment to uncertainty and ambiguity the film seems deeply anti-cinematic.  Indeed, by the end we know little more than we did at first, and neither do the embattled characters, now desperate for water.

Within the film’s frame there are a few particular enigmas. One is Meek himself, who may be as lost as the settlers feel. As performed by Bruce Greenwood, his bluster sounds hollow but it is impossible to know for certain what he knows. As one of the women remarks, “I don’t blame him for not knowing the way, but for saying he did.” This woman, almost nameless and storyless, gradually becomes the central figure of the film, as if emerging organically from the hills and dust. When a nameless Native American enters the frame she is the only character who tries to engage with him. It is a testament to Michele Williams’ performance and Reichardt’s direction that this character too remains enigmatic: is she right in suspecting Meek, in trusting the Native American? The balance of power between these three semi-articulate figures comes to a head in the formal confrontation above. The camera cuts between close ups of different faces, resisting long shots until the three opponents are shown in their triangular stand off. Between Meek’s arrogant threats and the “savage’s” silence the film seems to side with the woman’s simple action. When Meek taunts her with what could be “over those hills” she accepts it laconically: “could be.” Perhaps that is the ultimate message of the film: in desperate straits, when there is no way of knowing what is true or right, one must simply act. It is bold and confident filmmaking.

It’s a Metaphor

credit Columbia Sony Pictures 2011

My students are writing their first papers of the semester now and struggling with Mark Doty’s essay “Souls on Ice,” in which Doty describes metaphors as “containers” for emotion, or tangible vessels for intangible ideas. This definition functions much like metaphors themselves: making the complex simpler, if not simple.

Baseball, of course, is a game made for metaphors, and Moneyball (2011) is full of them. In one of the last scenes of the film, the Oakland A’s assistant general manager (Jonah Hill) tries to show the general manager, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), that some experiences that may feel like failures are really successes. He shows a great clip (is it from a real game?) of a baserunner scrambling to get to first base, then belatedly realizing he had hit a home run. There’s a pause until the Jonah Hill character says “it’s a metaphor.” Billy/Brad, exasperated, says “I know it’s a metaphor!” and we have to wonder what isn’t a metaphor in this idea-driven film. The poster at left, with its tiny figure on the great green grass, puts the main idea on display: how much difference can one man make in a giant system? or, as the slogan puts it, more commercially, “what are you really worth?” The smallness of Pitt’s figure seems to be in ironic juxtaposition to the huge black letters of his name, which tell us exactly what he’s worth.

The movie, directed by Bennett Miller from a book by Michael Lewis, is admirably cautious in answering these questions. Since historical narratives like this one can’t really have “spoilers” I feel safe in saying that Beane does make a difference to the old established ways of running baseball teams, but he still isn’t exactly victorious. The big questions asked in the film– how do you evaluate talent? what is your biggest fear? what does it mean to win or lose?– are only sketched, not reduced to glib cliches. It’s refreshing to see a film so comfortable with complex ideas and so ready to grapple with them respectfully. In that regard this film reminds me of Miller’s last, Capote, which did an equally good job of rendering abstractions on film.

The idea that drives Doty’s essay is very similar to the tentative conclusion that Miller gives us as well: “our metaphors go on ahead of us…” and they know more than we do.

Eden, Texas

I enjoyed The Tree of Life (2011) more than the people I saw it with. I agreed with them that Terrence Malick’s latest film, which won the Cannes d’Or, didn’t succeed in fully integrating its parts. The beginning and ending were surreal or abstract representations of cosmic states, whereas the middle was a relatively realistic portrayal of a particular 1950s family in Waco, Texas. That family, supposedly based on Malick’s own, suffers a tragedy which links it to some universal experience. But the film does not make it clear how the particular and universal are linked. We each had different opinions about what worked and what didn’t, but for me the middle, the family’s story, was both beautiful and compelling.
Here’s a scene from the middle that is particularly beautiful and effective. The father, played by Brad Pitt, takes a business trip and we watch the rest of the family uncoil from his repressive presence. It’s as if a rubber band snapped: the camera pans around the rooms following the careening children who jump on beds, slam doors, and laugh and shout. It’s especially moving because the mother joins them….

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth… When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

The film uses this biblical text from Job to remind us of the joys and beauties that we too easily forget, though they are all around us. These resurrected childhood memories are lost just as the pleasures of childhood (the intense emotions, the vivid sensations) are lost, just as Eden is lost. The film’s title and insistence on spirituality is less about finding an actual god, though it often seems to be addressing one, but rediscovering that spiritual appreciation within oneself. Jack looks back on his childhood as if it is a dream-like state of the unconscious and begins to recognize that his brother’s death makes that pre-lapsarian idyll all the more precious. The joy was not just in contrast to the tragedy that followed; rather, joy and struggle are inextricably connected, as the quote suggests. This realization allows Jack to forgive and be forgiven by his stern father and it allows him a reunion at the end with his hallowed mother.

There is plenty to criticize about this film–the overbearing voice-over, the generic characters, the lack of narrative, the dinosaurs–but in keeping with the film’s ambitious scope and its own effort to find the good and the beautiful, let’s focus on the positive. We should celebrate Malick’s courage in putting this personal and idiosyncratic vision out there, though it may have trouble finding a receptive audience. Malick takes a big risk when he hedges between the personal or autobiographical narrative and the universal or metaphorical. This film lands awkwardly between the two poles, perhaps, but it was worth the leap.

Waaaay Beautiful

The title of Peter Weir’s last film, The Way Back (2010), is misleading. It suggests that the extraordinary journey of a handful of escaped prisoners from Siberia to India is all about returning home to something. And “way” is a wishy washy noun that is easily confused here with its jocular adjective: WAAAAY back! It’s unfortunate.

The beginning and ending of the film do suggest this banal faith in home and the people in it, but the film quickly moves on to more interesting matters, visually and narratively. The clumsy first and last scenes, in which some cliched plot points are given some rapid exposition, could be deleted without damage to the wondrous middle. There Weir allows his camera to veer off track again and again, while reinforcing a narrow storyline. The plot is simple: the inmates escape, suffer harrowing deprivations, and reach their goal. They lose the usual number of characters along the way, with the usual sentimental effect. The geography seems divinely designed to test and torment them: they walk from Siberia through the Mongolian desert to Tibet and the Himalayas. By the time they get to the Himalayas even Weir seems exhausted: that part of the journey is reduced to a few minutes of montage.

Yet by then we’ve been hooked– by the glamorous scenery in part, but also by the beauty of the visual storytelling, as Weir moves from exquisitely composed longshots to tramping feet. He deftly gives a sense of the enormity of the journey and its personal costs by shifting scales and rhythm regularly. He lets his camera stumble along with the characters, as you can see in this quick, rough scene. It begins with a slow pan across the ice then dissolves into a chaotic tumble of cuts and handheld mayhem. It’s giddy with pleasure in running, breathing, being alive. In this and other scenes Weir reveals how nature and humans can sometimes be in sync, both bursting with vivid life.

One Too Many

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part two (Warner Bros, 2011)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, or number 7, part two, is a film with many endings. I’m sure it has at least seven if you count all the signs of finish: a death and resurrection, villains vanquished one by one, a battle won against all odds, the reappearance of favorite characters from early in the series, many well-arranged group shots, and plenty of cameras panning out and away from Hogwarts, our home away from home this past decade. And then there’s the epilogue “19 years later”….

In short, the poster that claims “it all ends,” and the media waxing nostalgic, may be premature. The merchandising machine lives on. If I sound impatient it is because I wanted to enjoy this film, as I have enjoyed several in this series, including Deathly Hallows part one– but I found it impossible. The cutting of the last book into two films leaves this piece almost incomprehensible — a rush of action sequences with few connecting emotions. The direction, again by the usually adept David Yates, feels aimless — as if all decisions were made by a committee of marketing managers who needed the camera to pan past Cho Chang one more time so viewers remember where Harry began. Scenes that should be suspenseful, like characters saved at the last second, just seem repetitive. And there are too few moments of pure glee or mischief–like when Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) giggles”I’ve always wanted to use that spell!” at an otherwise dark moment.

The sheer overflow of fun that was one of the charming features of the books and earlier films feels forced: instead of the exuberant variety we’re used to we get the “gemino” spell which multiplies everything one touches into more of the same. Many of the most climactic scenes do indeed seem to be pastiches of bits from Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, and other former blockbusters. In the scene below in Gringott’s bank Harry enters a dark cave and must distinguish the “authentic” object from the copies, just as Indiana Jones must do in The Last Crusade, part of a series that was itself a parody of adventure films. The scene both expresses and contains our ambivalence about overbundance and uniqueness: if this is art, shouldn’t it be special and unique? but if it is to make money, and be loved my millions, shouldn’t it be mass produced? Voldemort, who has divided his soul into pieces, shows how unsustainable that paradox is.

Overall, the film is more predictable than terrible, but that was disappointing. By its end it is broadcasting shamelessly: the screenplay requires characters to say that the dead “are still here,” thumping their hearts, not once, but twice. As Ron says above in one of the movie’s many self-referential bits, “you’re seriously going to try that one again, are you?” It asks Harry to have faith in love, and its characters to have faith in Harry, but the film has little faith in its viewers.

• Screen Time

  Subscribe by email:

• Mission

  Screen Time is a blog of reviews and short essays on film. Its predecessor, Close Readings, was a blog for formal readings of photographs. Both draw on and benefit from the courses I teach in expository writing at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

• Tags

  Berenice Abbott Black Swan Brooklyn Museum of Art Bruce Davidson Bryan Graf Catherine Opie Central Park Darren Aronofsky Diane Arbus Earth Day Edward Burtynsky Edward Steichen Eugene Atget Flatiron building Frazer Bradshaw Guggenheim Museum Inception International Center for Photography James Agee JazzLife Julia Margaret Cameron Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Mark Doty Mark Twain Martin Scorsese Miroslav Tichy MoMA moon Mount Hood Neil Armstrong New Orleans New York City Paris postaweek2011 Ray Atkeson Requiem for a Dream Robert Frank Roland Barthes Sally Mann The Americans The Last Waltz Vik Muniz Virginia Woolf William Claxton William Henry Fox Talbot

• Archives

  Select Month January 2012 October 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 September 2008 August 2008

• Recent Tweets

  Error: Twitter did not respond. Please wait a few minutes and refresh this page.