Milk (Gus Van Sant, 2008) February 7, 2009
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Biopic, Hollywood, Queer.3 comments
Directed by Gus Van Sant
Cast: Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, James Franco, Josh Brolin
The bullet did not destroy every closet door but it did manage to shake the rickety foundations of a stifling convention. Like every great man, Harvey Milk died when almost all his aspirations were falling into place, when he was just beginning to fulfill the hopes of every gay man in San Francisco, and when every little step he made for the movement became a huge leap to every homosexual all across America. Gus Van Sant details the travails of the last few years of his life, the time when Milk felt he hasn’t done anything yet that he could be proud of, by giving us a vignette of brimming happiness, a drop of vitriol that burns less because it is diluted with too much water, the effect stops when we feel the prickling heat. The mixture of archival footage, interviews, commercials, and screen texts with the actual narrative works. The overwhelming layers of Milk’s remaining years reveal that the film intends not only to punctuate his influence and significant social reform, but also to bookmark a turning point in history when homophobia is militantly defied as a religion. Van Sant’s competence is unquestionable; he has given Milk’s life a combination of entertaining flair and upright seriousness that characterize his advocacy. But the story almost kills me with too much focus, that while it has touched me pensively, leading to a lot of disorganized thoughts on whether a free society is ever possible, it fails to arrest me completely. Milk’s political struggle and personal life seem not to connect. Like threads weaved in different clothes, they form a recognizable yet distant attachment to their whole. The Academy supposes a biopic of a rebellious icon qualifies for eternal recognition – - social responsibility? moral compensation? alleviation of guilt? – - but compared with Van Sant’s other films, Milk only feels like an exercise, a safe exercise that makes up for its timeliness and Penn’s ubiquitously gay nuances.
The Elixir in Julian Schnabel’s Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) October 23, 2008
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Alliance Française, Biopic, Cinemanila, European Films, Literature.add a comment
French Title: Le scaphandre et le papillon
Directed by Julian Schnabel
Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Max Von Sydow
Based on Jean-Dominique Bauby’s memoir
The closest thing to being buried alive is running the shortest distance between heaven and earth, the case when you believe both ends of human life, heaven as a euphemism for Lucifer’s den and earth as where all sleeping dogs lie, short enough for the line to blur, as if existing in two far-fetched worlds at the same time can equip you with a stroke of partial omniscience. Schnabel, in his attempt to paint the remaining years of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s life during his “locked-in” state, not only delivers a moving fragment of fate’s indomitable power to tangle disconnected lines but also creates a heartrending document of the endless virtues of human imagination, the purest vision of all, because in this concentric circle where we all walk, there is never enough time to compensate for all the things we have lost – - never really enough time – - because time lies and time kills us all, one second after another.
Schnabel’s interest in filming biographies proves how personal his art can be. He filmed Basquiat because perhaps he was once Basquiat himself; he filmed Reinaldo Arenas because perhaps the writer’s style has influenced him a lot; he filmed Bauby because, well, perhaps the man’s unbelievable hold in the final days of his life inspired him to share it with the world – - quizas, quizas, quizas. Personal expression moves beyond his world, his art, and it becomes a need, a life, an afterlife, like every artist considers his craft is. Basquiat remains to be seen but Before Night Falls fails to win me over; it feels like a ponderous burden from start to finish, even Javier Bardem can’t save it. But there is that unmistakable eye for unconventionality, that disregard for immature ideas, that lapse between beauty and madness, that magnificent anomaly that is difficult to resist, telling you that he will make up for everything in his next work. And yeah, what a promise. In The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, only his third film, everything becomes a culmination of his sweeping power to recall life through death, a breathing record of magnificence – - a paradox that speaks more on who we are not than who we are.
Jean-Dominique Bauby, former editor of Elle magazine, suffered a stroke while driving with his son for a trip. In a coma for twenty days, he woke up with his entire body paralyzed, except for his left eye. His locked-in state deprived him of any movement aside from rolling his eye and blinking his eyelid, looking at the farthest horizon that his eye could ever reach: vegetative, maimed, barely alive. He was still mentally capable – - he could answer yes or no with a blink of an eye, he could form words and sentences through dictation, blinking through letters that his therapist spoke, a feat of immense difficulty, the only way for him to speak his mind. Accomplished as he was, he had few visitors. He had a wife and kids, as well as a girlfriend who failed to visit him. Through letter-by-letter dictation with his interlocutor, Bauby had written his memoir – - Le Schapandre et Le Papillon - – published in 1997, a runaway bestseller which Bauby had only enjoyed for ten days after a fatal pneumonia.
Irony has never been more resounding than this: I felt even more alive after seeing the film. The use of Bauby’s point of view – - his eye, his view of the world, his only window to physical universe – - provides a groundbreaking feat of emotional hinge, it’s as if every wink of his eye is equivalent to a life born, a soul cleansed, a purpose revivified, and an existence justified. That opening sequence is prolonged enough to put the film in its proper pace, we feel what he feels, we see the people through his eyes, we feel his heart cringe, his hopes crash, his dreams fade – - all the visual pain given to us is rewarding; Schnabel’s brush knows exactly what to paint, where to put emphasis, when to furnish the garnish, how to mix the colors of life and death in perfect tone, and the result is a striking portrait of sublimity; it is paralyzingly beautiful. Under such spell I am powerless.
Understandably, controversies arise regarding how faithful it is to Bauby’s life – - can a film ever be faithful to life? – - which part is fact and which part is fiction, how his relationship with his wife and girlfriend is distorted to create a more cinematic scenario, how he managed to have three kids instead of two, how Bauby never really wanted to die in the beginning, even the legalities of adapting Bauby’s memoir based on the ownership of the “droit moral” which basically is “an intellectual right of an artist to protect his work” thus asserted by Bauby’s wife – - all these elaborately written in Beth Arnold’s The truth about “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”
But the truth is no one really knows what’s going through his head during those two years in vegetative state. No one can claim the exact truth; even Schnabel cannot. But what Schnabel did was take a piece of his life, plant it in his head for years, wait for it to grow, then after some time it flourished, it bore fruits and became one of the most moving works in recent years. Who says nothing can sum up a man’s life in two hours? Schnabel just did. Mathieu Amalric and Max Von Sydow deliver electrifying moments brisk enough to melt you in your seats. And in that magical flashback when Bauby returns home, drives around Paris, and meets his family, in possibly the greatest hommage ever made to 400 Blows, that music of bliss reassures you how comforting it is to live by looking at other people’s failures destroyed by faith, because imprisonment only becomes a choice when you stop fighting against it.
A Void in A Walk Into The Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory (Esther Robinson, 2007) October 5, 2008
Posted by Richard Bolisay in .MOV, Biopic, Docu, Indie Sine, Queer.add a comment
Directed by Esther Robinson
All black and white footage by Danny Williams
In a way it resembles Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There in dissecting the image of a man, the (de)mystification of his existence, except that the figure being examined is no more than a dirt under Dylan’s thumb – - Danny Williams, a lowly drifter in the Warhol Factory who disappeared in 1966, believed to have been drowned in Boston Bay, and whose alleged contribution to the group remains enigmatic, if not heavily unrecognized. Esther Robinson, his niece, introduces us to him with as little knowledge as we do, but with more interest – - who would even care about the faceless names in the rolling credits of every film? – - and with more emphasis on a removed character, his actions that may well be forgotten and fumed in the vast expanse of twentieth century art, which are only as alive as a falling rain in Sahara.
Robinson autopsies not the dead body but the dead memories, all coming from the brood of Warhol’s psychedelic factory – - Brigitte Berlin, Gerard Malanga, Paul Morissey, Billy Name, Don Nameth, John Cale, Chuck Wein – - and Williams’ relatives, to evoke a startling contrast between the two camps: the fidgety, inconsistent accounts of the former and the bare emotional heed of the latter. The best and worst of times that Williams chose to put himself in, Warhol’s lover, Warhol’s light and setman, Warhol’s flyleaf, chewed him hard, and as Robinson discovers her uncle’s short pieces, comparable to those years’ frantic offspring of art with their technical sophistication, we also feel that tinge of regret, of wishful longing that somehow the man with such dreams would find a way to escape his cloudy prison and lead a less glamorous life on his own. The film connects the dots, and the filmmaker herself also adds more dots to reach a conclusion that avoids further probe – - a deadend – - because inside the box of lies is lies themselves, scattered in every molecule of truth, and neither personal interest nor cultural bandwagon can ever stir it awake – - it is random, luckless fate, Danny Williams and the like are all casualties of the era, only time can help them and set them free.
Pop culture never dies; it is an insane socio-political arena. In its gnarled gaudy fences, dreams are built and hopes are crossed. A Walk Into The Sea manages not only to trespass the muddy waters of that bygone age but also the psyche of its subject – - imperfect, incomplete, insufficient, like all truisms are. If we crave for meaning because it makes us happy, does the thought of just being a tiny speck in the universe of allusive oxymorons enough to do the same? No, because even in death equality doesn’t exist.
*3rd .MOV International Digital Film Festival, Bacolod, Dumaguete, Iloilo, Manila (Robinson’s Galleria), September 20 – October 7, 2008.
His Majesty, Genghis Khan (Manuel Conde and Lou Salvador, 1950) July 30, 2008
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Asian Films, Biopic, Cinemalaya, Noypi.2 comments
Directed by Manuel Conde and Lou Salvador
Cast: Manuel Conde, Lou Salvador, Elvira Reyes
“I had been told that I was a genius. I told him that there was a difference. Orson Welles is writer-director-star because he is a genius. Manuel Conde does it for lack of money.”
Old films have that feel of lengthiness – - taking their time in establishing narratives and perfecting the contrast of a certain lighting or finding the seamless twist in the end – - but what enables some to be considered classics is the enduring vision of the filmmaker, how he controls every frame and every action without sacrificing the priceless fun of making films. Genghis Khan is one of the most important relics of Philippine cinema’s golden age in the 50s; Conde’s take on the gallantry of the Mongolian ruler proves to be nothing short of majestic, it is spectacular in every sense of the word, and in almost every aspect of its production there rides a candid revelation of mastery, of unrelenting intention to entertain and at the same time deliver a fantastic memoir of the brave leader of the largest empire in history.
It looks simple, but choosing the plot that would represent Genghis Khan’s mighty invasion of East and Central Asia is a challenge. His rule that spanned for several years has expectedly attracted the glamour of Hollywood productions such as Dick Powell’s ill-fated The Conqueror led by John Wayne and Henry Levin’s version with Omar Sharif. Russian filmmaker Sergei Bodrov’s Mongol must be the closest we can get to history filming itself as it received a nod from the Academy last year and did well in the box-office. These works boast with technical strength and beautiful stars, but what makes Conde’s version more impressive is that it came before all of them. No virtue of comparison here – - I’m not a fan of historical epics so there’s no chance I might have seen them – - but this one, this surviving film of Conde’s MC Productions matches the infamy of Temujin’s 13th century imperial rule – - belligerent and uncanny – - soaring like a proud eagle in gentle flight.
Yet it all boils down to storytelling. Conde strips down the basics and fills everything with outstanding humor – - puns and quips that blend effectively with his charm. He throws food to a lady’s face, spanks her brusquely, screams at her – - where else can you find that hero? Conde plays his character spiritedly, such joy in acting that has been elusive in cinema these years. The fake brows and moustache doubles the fun as well as many other things – - the “strongest man” and “last man standing” matches in the beginning, the gigantic stones falling endlessly towards the army of fools, the dumb king Burchou and his power-driven adviser’s lesson in trust and perfidy, and Genghis Khan’s romance with Burchou’s daughter Lei-Hai – - brilliantly captured in resplendent wit.
The battle scenes are beatific. Forget the theatrics – - the staging reminds me of Seven Samurai without the rain and mud, Ford’s westerns without the breathtaking landscapes, and 300 without the overdone graphics. In short Conde has made it so fresh and original that the silver screen leaves a swish every time the swords are swayed and the bodies are exaggeratedly thrown out of motion. The humor is evident even in these scenes and that’s what pulled the trigger of greatness off. The Western critics praised the horses; I praise the location – - anyone knows where that stony land is found?
Changing his surname from Urbano to Conde, he must have been unnoticed during his time – - like artists who lived ahead of their years – - but Manuel Conde remains a Count even without the name – - His Royal Highness in just a simple hand gesture or movement of lips. As the clouds that embrace his characters in one of Genghis Khan’s battles whisper greatness, everything feels like reminiscence of a forgotten time. * * * * *
Infinite Algorithms and Schizophrenic Blues in Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There (2007) March 3, 2008
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Biopic, Hollywood.16 comments
Directed by Todd Haynes
Written by Todd Haynes and Oren Moverman
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Marcus Carl Franklin, Ben Whishaw, Richard Gere
Like the atom, Dylan is indivisible. The initial strap of thought. Whereas scientists continue to lineate their theories contrary to Democritus’ assumptions, writers and filmmakers are also frying their brains in trying to deconstruct the enormity of the Dylan mystique. Not that the efforts are commensurate, but whichever viewpoint you take — the scientists or the artists — both tasks are equally colossal. That is why when Todd Haynes announced that his upcoming film will be portraying Dylan in six phases of his life with six different actors, almost everyone thought he is out of his mind. And he really is. Because the only way to get to the heart of the artist, whose nucleus is a tremendous mass of influence, whose isotopes possess peculiar properties, and whose subatomic particles are forces of ecclesiastical politics, is to stay out of sanity. And the result is an offbeat pseudo-biopic, a film structured like the most convoluted Dylan composition but certainly not losing its radical gravitational pull. I’m Not There is as worthy as Blowin’ In the Wind, a protesting, iconic work whose details are disorienting enough to persuade anyone to walk out of the theatre, and in reward to those who stay — a jolt of flowing lava working its way up to the crater — a silent volcanic outburst — a pure cinematic orgasm.
Haynes dissects Dylan into six turning points of his life, indirectly telling that his entire life is a huge turning point in everyone else’s life, an amorphous life pie sketched hastily, smudged and smeared, carefully donning a portrait of a jagged man. Everything works miraculously, for Haynes never mentions Dylan but he is everywhere, he is in every frame, in every millisecond, in every word spoken by Woody Guthrie, Arthur Rimbaud, Jack Rollins, Robbie Clark, Jude Quinn, and Billy the Kid. I’m Not There has the isolating feel of an outtake, the one left out, edited out, excluded in the final output of an album — its rawness alienating and disorientating, its surrealism pressing and endemic; and others who are looking forward to learn more about Dylan by seeing this film will only find it immensely disappointing because this is not Ron Howard — this is the man who made Far From Heaven, this is Todd Haynes, and this is him at his subterranean glory.
Yet everyone shares its greatness. Marcus Carl Franklin’s know-it-all slang of a fugitive heralds the troublesome life of a nomad — his antics receiving admiration from his fellow refugees, his fleeting foster families, and every speck of dust he meets while hitching a ride. Conversely, the most difficult segment of all is Richard Gere’s outlaw saviour, shot beautifully in Fellini’s Old West, which closes the narrative in a stunning, epochal allegory. Haynes also figures that some tricky plot delineation could help, inserting a TV documentary about the Troubadour of Conscience, from his increasing popularity and influence in the early 60s to his conversion to a low-profile pastor in a small church in his later years, played perfectly by Christian Bale, linking to the actor (Heath Ledger) who portrayed him in his biographical film. Ledger puts himself in the role the way James Dean does, not to mention that the rebel himself is an inspiration, and flies away with a striking remark — I love women. Really I do. I think everyone should have one. — raising Dylan’s borderline sexism. Understatingly critical, his role mirrors Dylan’s disorderly personal life as it reflects the tumultuous political events embracing America, as remarkably exploited in the film’s use of television screens — symbolisms overstatingly used by Haynes (with more emphasis in Quinn’s psychedelic segment, with the walls cradling the moving images) which turn out to be very effective. But the peak of Haynes’ hallucinations reaches its optimum when he introduces Jude Quinn, perhaps Dylan in his state of unprecedented notoriety, overwhelmingly embodied by Cate Blanchett. Quinn is the Dylan that almost everyone of us remembers — the mountainous hair, the quirky responses, the ubiquitous shades, the helping of cigarette — probably everything that characterises the sex, drugs, and rock and roll fashion of the 60s — and certainly this is the one that hits the mark. It has able to duplicate its inspiration, only with such jest that Haynes successfully turns Mastroianni, the auteur hounded by critics, into a modern figure of interest. Even the allusion to Godard, in a fantastic recreation of sexual philosophising, is strangely compelling enough to incite reverence. Two sequences to note: first, Quinn and his band open their guitar cases and fire their machine guns at the crowd, and second, the frenzy with the Beatles — clearly, both paroxysms exemplify a gift for classic surrealism and efficiently overtake the film to another direction. Quinn’s persona, fueled intensely by Blanchett’s inimitable methodology, beats me — as she quietly resembles the ghost in an early quote from Rimbaud, that even the ghost was more than one person. Which brings me to Arthur, which for me, hands down, is the closest to Dylan that I can imagine, the closest to the idea of Dylan himself, the closest to his mystique, the closest to his idiosyncrasies, the closest to his politics, and the closest to his heart. Rimbaud expresses the workings of his soul — because merely getting close to Dylan’s soul is impossible — and bridges the other five personae into his control, counting down his seven simple rules for life in hiding. Rimbaud’s rabid statements partially represent the core of genius which Dylan himself is made of and Ben Whishaw is just the perfect man to lay everything out. Indeed some of the film’s greatest lines are spoken by him (apparently, everything he’s doing is plainly speaking) and nothing can win me over than this one: The only natural things are dreams, which nature cannot touch with decay, with Quinn kited in the horizon of his shaky reputation.
Perhaps Haynes has indulged so much to the point that he almost crosses the border of self-importance. But the way I see it, if Dylan has not lived his own time, should Haynes sacrifice the intrinsic value of his work for our sake? And if Dylan has lived his time, should he still be the Dylan that we all know? How many times have we felt like shouting the lines of his songs, like a kid standing at the window watching the rain? How many times have we felt close to his sorrows, his happiness, his ambiguity, his cynicism? How many times have we felt like we are Bob Dylan? The poet, the prophet, the outlaw, the fake, the rebel, the star of electricity? How many times? Should Haynes choose to be understood than appreciated by a few? I believe his experiment not only brings to light the complexity of an artist; it also measures the extent of influence that a towering figure like Dylan does — and in the process of collating fragments of his life, he realises that human existence is as mystifying as the atom itself, only the difference is, we are outnumbered. * * * * *
