Film, Literature, & the Human Condition

The short film Vincent, created by Tim Burton while he was a conceptual artist for Disney, is perfection. It must be obvious, despite its overtly dramatic and macabre nature,  that this is a highly autobiographical work. Not autobiographical in events, I don’t believe Tim Burton has dipped his aunt in boiling wax, but autobiographical in feelings. Because of this, the film is universal and speaks to all of us whether we realize it or not. For some, it may take a stretch to recognize the base similarities between what Vincent (a.k.a. Tim Burton) feels and what every other person on this planet will experience more often than they choose to acknowledge. I am of course referring to our feelings of alienation from the external world. Vincent finds solace in his imagination, fueled by the baroque of Vincent Price and Edgar Allan Poe. He embraces madness and torment as a kind of catharsis. And watching Burton’s film should give us a certain cathartic release. However, it might be presumptuous to believe everybody will respond to it the same way I have. For all intents and purposes, movies are like Rorschach tests. It would be particularly interesting to gage different people’s reactions to Vincent. Regardless, the title character struggles through considerably intense bouts of darkness and gloom, and at the center of his melancholy lies a very thoughtful examination of loneliness and isolation. (continue reading…)

Clint Eastwood is the ultimate polymath of the filmmaking world. He started as an actor, but slowly evolved into a director, then a producer, then a film composer, and on the title song of his film, Gran Torino, he sings. He’s pushing 80 years old and shows no signs of slowing. Judging from his demeanor in Gran Torino when his family presents him with the prospect of a nursing home, I imagine merely uttering the term senior citizen in his proximity would be hazardous. While I think other artists his age would rather spend their time playing the grandfatherly figure in a lighthearted comedy or direct a cliched Bucket List kind of movie, Eastwood continues to dredge through brooding existentialism. Since the start of his career, he has been apt at exploring the darker sides of human nature. Most of the characters he’s played are antiheroes or at least anti-establishment, and the characters put under his directorial microscope have their most flawed attributes showcased. The interesting thing about Clint Eastwood’s films is in the way he chooses to see people as individuals. While he has examined characters of diverse cultural backgrounds, he does not ascribe their behavior to anything but who they uniquely are, not ethnically, but as a person. Like I said, the aim of his art is to dissect human nature, trimming away everything, all excuses for a character’s immorality, until there’s nothing left to speak for it except their own human integrity. (continue reading…)

In July of 2009, Michael Mann’s newest film, Public Enemies, will be released starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger. What a sentence that is. When some people think of Michael Mann they immediately get a picture of excess in style. This is a total misconception, although his film adaptation of Miami Vice serves as perfect evidence for that argument. I don’t believe Public Enemies will have the same problems as Miami Vice since the iconic status of John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis most certainly overtakes that of Crockett and Tubbs. We can be rest assured that Enemies is a return to the richly thematic world of Michael Mann as experienced in Heat. A central idea Mann runs with in his movies is that each person is a universe unto himself. An individual is all alone behind their eyes, alone with their thoughts, and alone in their journey through existence. In Heat we get two characters who are polar opposites: one is a criminal and one is the cop chasing him. The singular connection they share is each other, likewise it is very difficult for either of them to function in the world without consideration to what the other is up to. Robert De Niro’s character understands this very well, which is why he chooses to maintain a very dogmatic way of life. Al Pacino, on the other hand, does not possess the same rigidity and allows himself to invest emotions very explosively. He can handle the consequences because he is used to living that way. Robert De Niro’s character is the more interesting of the two, and when he turns weak enough to invest his emotions, even in just a minor capacity,  it throws his entire constitution out of whack and makes him vulnerable. And in the world of Michael Mann, where fate is rendered through a system of cause and effect in direct control of the characters, vulnerability is very dangerous. (continue reading…)

In 2009 comes Inglourious Basterds (yes it’s supposed to be spelled with an ‘ou’ and an ‘e’), the newest film from Quentin Tarantino. It has come to be that whenever Tarantino releases a film, it is an event of sorts. Our last foray into his universe was the 2007 release of Death Proof, the second half of the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino homage to the heyday of self-proclaimed sleaze cinema. Tarantino appears to be obsessed with the nostalgic resonance of exploitation films, from scratched film stock to crackling cheap sound, but his ideas and most certainly his filmmaking sensibilities are uniquely ingenious and transcend the quality of the 70s genre. The elements from them most heavily imbued into Tarantino’s work is the hard edged grittiness and fast paced vitality of that kind of moviemaking. Combined with his own trademarks of quirky storytelling, unique characters, and profanely articulate dialogue, witnessing Tarantino’s tapestry gives the viewer a rhapsodic connection to the material that wholly accentuates his love for movies and creating them to the point that the explosive visuals and soundtrack give us an almost synesthetic sense of being able to smell the celluloid. Now I won’t tell you how, but I managed to come across a copy of his screenplay for Inglourious Basterds and I am ecstatic to say it will be nothing but sheer titillation for fans of Spaghetti Westerns, French New Wave cinema, Bunch-Of-Guys-On-A-Mission movies, Historical War films, and of course, a category all unto himself, Quentin Tarantino. (continue reading…)