The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
David Fincher, 2008

Why are filmmakers so obsessed with exposing our vulnerability and temporality? This year, we have seen at least two serious attempts at exploring these hefty concerns. The first is Charlie Kaufman's “Synecdoche, New York,” which centers on a brilliant artist who tries to overcome artistic and personal impediments. The second is David Fincher's latest film, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” The latter is about a man named Benjamin (Brad Pitt), who is born in New Orleans, at the culmination of World War One, in 1918, as an old man who ages backwards.

It's a wonderful, intricately made film, though it's so precisely constructed that its characters are left somewhat emotionally sterile. But I think that this is Fincher's point - that people are subject to circumstances that lie beyond their control. Much of Benjamin's journey consists of simply running into interesting people, many of whom are full of regret, and seeing what cards they have been dealt – and how they deal with their circumstances. He befriends a bored, middle-aged woman named Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), who attempted to swim across the English Channel, only to find that the current was so strong that she had to give up on her dream within two miles of France's shore. In one beautifully engineered sequence, Fincher illustrates how Benjamin's love interest, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), who was a dancer, could have continued her successful career had the taxi that ended up hitting her driven by five minutes earlier, or had the driver stopped for coffee; and so on. Thus we get the fascinating, if somewhat sobering, notion that people are defined largely by their experiences, rather than necessarily being fascinating in themselves.

Like “Zodiac” (2007), “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” feels a bit too long. But Fincher has a keen sense of visuals and of pacing that helps to keep his nearly three hour movie interesting. The film has a curious self-reflexive quality: there is a visual motif involving a clock running backwards, while Benjamin's life moves ahead, and a running gag involving an old man that tells a story about how he was struck repeatedly by lightning (we see grainy, degraded clips that depict these events). Paolo Cherchi Usai, in his book The Death of Cinema, describes film itself as a temporal thing, and as much a subject to time as the characters it chronicles. But if one's life and the medium on which it is recorded – be it film, or the diary on which Benjamin's story is chronicled – is subject to deterioration, and, ultimately, destruction, the most that we can hope to expect is that that the experience itself is memorable. Fortunately for us, it certainly is in Benjamin's case.

Given the sheer amount of detail and characters that Fincher chronicles in Benjamin's unusual journey, it is surprising how poorly he approaches a couple of essential elements in his film. The framing narrative, which takes place in a hospital, with Daisy on her deathbed and her daughter reading Benjamin's journal, feels awkward; and whenever Fincher cuts to it, it takes us out of Benjamin's narrative. And then there's his approach to the prospect of Benjamin, now an old man – in a young man's body – having a child with Daisy. Benjamin feels that he wouldn't be a good father because he would basically be a kid while his child grew up; but he fails to mention how he's matured and developed during his sixty-or-so years of life – he ends up leaving Daisy anyway. It feels like a bit of a cop-out. But as we find out by the end of the film, Benjamin, like the other fascinating people that he befriends, holds similar long-lasting regrets about this very decision, which, admittedly, lies largely outside of his control.

8/10

First Viewed: 12/25/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb

Interview with the Vampire

"Interview with the Vampire"
Neil Jordan, 1994

“Interview with the Vampire,” which is based on a novel by Anne Rice, has a very simple and predictable narrative, which is kind of strange considering its bizarre subject matter. Brad Pitt plays a vampire who gives an account of his centuries-long life to a reporter (Christian Slater). Pitt used to be a plantation owner from New Orleans, but after the deaths of his wife and daughter, he spent his days gambling away his money, because he didn't care about life anymore. This is where a Parisian vampire, played by an unintentionally hilarious and over-the-top Tom Cruise, enters – and it is only when Pitt becomes a vampire that he finally appreciates the life of a normal person.

A character's new-found appreciation for life is a potentially interesting theme, but since we don't really know much about Pitt's past and how his life really became different once he turned into a vampire, this essential part of the movie doesn't resonate with us. We instead turn to other aspects of the film, most of which turn out to be inadequate. The set design, the makeup, and many of the visuals are excellent. Everything else, including the acting, the story, and the silly ending, in particular – not so much.

5/10

First Viewed: 12/24/08, on Blu-ray Disc - IMDb

The Get-Together

The Get-Together

We pass through dim stretches of freeway, on average four lanes across, before reaching our destination. Except that it takes several passes down a cul-de-sac before we actually find the right house. They all look the same, and it doesn't help that it's dark – and that my dad, who's driving, punched in the wrong address on Google Maps. But he decides to park in front of the one home with its lights on and with people going in and with a large, inviting sign that says “Happy Hanukah!” As it turns out, he guesses correctly.

I find get-togethers to be awkward affairs, particularly when they involve older people who I don't know. There's a crush of them by the food in the kitchen. They know my parents and my brother and sister, but not me. But I look like my dad, and I'm as tall and lanky as my younger brother, both of whom this crowd is familiar with, so I'm not without company. I engage in some conversations, which go pretty well until I mention that I'm a Film Studies major. This usually elicits two responses: one, the person pretends that this is a good thing – “how interesting” – and moves on, unless, on the rare occasion, they talk about their favorite film and explain why it worked for them; or two, the person asks me what I'm going to do with such a major. In other words, how am I not going to starve after I finish college? I give them the three half-baked options I'm currently considering – applying to law school, getting involved with films (in cinematography or post-production), or teaching. The person flashes a grin and says something, like, Well, I didn't know what I was going to do when I was in college either. And then, with nothing left to say, both people have to move on. But for some reason, neither person can look the other in the eye and say, “I have nothing left to say to you.” What ends up happening is the other person and I smile at each other for a while, or one of us says that we have to grab food, or we just drift our separate ways.

I start piling food from the buffet onto my plate, until my mom comes over to warn me that it's not being served yet, though it's already, technically, being served by me. Well, that makes me sound like a jerk. But I usually am when I'm hungry. People begin lining up at the buffet, and I get in line. A tall man cuts in front of me, and I tell him that I was in line before him. He deflects my direct statement with a very dry one – “You'll remember me as the prick who cut in front of you” – that only somewhat obscures what he really thinks I am, and cuts behind me.

I actually knew a few of the people there before tonight's get-together. There's Hannah, who was in our synagogue's then-makeshift teen choir with me. She's in the middle of wrapping up college applications, which she finds exhausting, and she hopes to get into Carnegie Mellon. She still goes to religious school, in large part because she loves our cantor, who I never got all that close to for some reason; maybe it's because I sensed that she didn't really like me, even though I enjoyed singing in the choir. I can't really say. There's Samara, a blond-haired girl who was also in the choir with me, and who's also finishing up her applications. There's Penny, the daughter of a member on our synagogue's board of directors, who keeps her hair cut short and has an unusually sweet smile. She's tired of the shallow, arrogant and sheltered people at her private school, and she wants to get out of California. She's a member of her school's GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance). We have a very stimulating conversation.

I lean against the wall, eating chocolate cake with a fork in one hand and cradling my empty plastic cup between an armpit as I listen to some members of the choir sing “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” a highly amusing song by Tom Lehrer. Finally, we leave the house and walk to our car. It's hard to see. There are only two streetlamps to light the way.

The Double Life of Veronique

"The Double Life of Veronique"

Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1991

Watching “The Double Life of Veronique” is like trying to solve a puzzle, but without such nuisances as burgeoning frustration or headaches. No, this is one of those films that is stunning because of its quietness, its challenging yet simple narrative, and its patient pacing. The film centers on two women, who may be identical twins, named Veronique, both of whom are played by an outstanding Irene Jacob: one of them is a promising singer in Poland and the other is a teacher in France. Neither of them know that the other exists. But when one of them suddenly dies, we switch to the narrative of the other Veronique, who is in the middle of having sex with her boyfriend.

The director Krzysztof Kieslowski likes to play with this idea of opposites, and how two extremes really aren't so far apart. We witness, for instance, this link between pain and sex, and death and life, when we first see the other Veronique, who inexplicably feels saddened post-coitus, because she feels that she's lost someone she knows. And for the rest of the film, Veronique attempts to figure out who or what she has lost. Kieslowski and his cinematographer Slawomir Idziak (“Black Hawk Down”) craft an impeccable visual world, complete with a red and green color palette and numerous reflections, that reveal Veronique's confusion, while making the notion of the double all the more apparent.

Veronique's journey is really one of self-discovery, about a woman trying to figure out who she is, even though she inhabits a world that seems to lie much beyond her control. But there is also a somewhat self-reflexive quality to the film; it feels like it is as much about Veronique's story as it is about us being able to look in on her life. It is no accident that a love interest of hers is a puppeteer, Alexandre Fabbri (Philippe Volter), who himself involves her in a playful scheme of his. In one memorable sequence, Veronique, clad only in her underwear, walks up to a window, touches the glass with her hand, and closes her eyes. It is then that we realize that she is yearning for something inexplicable, something, perhaps, that lies beyond her limited, filmic world. But we, the viewers, are merely on the other side of the looking glass. Rarely have I felt so close to and so far away from a character. Rarely has this boundary between reality and artifice been so vaguely and so clearly delineated.

10/10

First Viewed: 12/19/08, on a lovely Criterion DVD - IMDb

Duly Noted: Live Free or Die Hard and Les Choristes

Duly Noted
"Live Free or Die Hard" and "Les Choristes"

“Live Free or Die Hard,” being the latest film in the franchise that gave us the classic action film “Die Hard” (I have not seen the other two sequels) is the type of of movie that you try your best to enjoy. It features Bruce Willis as the bad-ass super-cop, John McClane. It's supposed to offer great action sequences, some fantastic one-liners, and great villains; in short, it has the potential to serve as perfect entertainment. The problems I have with “Live Free or Die Hard” are similar to those I have after listening to Coldplay. Their songs are catchy and easy to listen to, but I find them so inane and boring that, after listening to one of their songs, I ask myself why I chose to do so in the first place. I felt the exact same way after watching “Live Free and Die Hard.”

The movie, which is directed by Len Wiseman, the man behind “Underworld” and “Underworld: Evolution,” the other two films in his limited canon, has the following premise: a computer genius and villain with the utterly uncreative bad-guy name Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) is angry when leaders in the U.S. ignore his calls to revamp the security of the computer networks upon which the country relies. In retaliation, he decides to bring the country to its knees by controlling everything through computers, hiring a sizable team of thugs to carry out his dirty work, and teaming up with his lover, a martial-arts specialist named Mai. Oh, and McClane gets involved when the Feds send him to rescue a ditzy computer hacker named Matt Farrell from Gabriel's thugs.

It's an utterly ridiculous plot, and I don't mind that in the least. What bother me most is that an evil plan involving a villain that gains control of everything is, by its nature, dull. One could argue that the premise of “Die Hard” was similar, but the difference is that Alan Rickman's villain disillusioned himself with his perfect master plan. He was so arrogant that he couldn't recognize its flaws; then, McClane made an entrance, and the rest is history. In “Live Free or Die Hard,” Gabriel has instantaneous access top secret documents and facilities, he can see everything on CCTV, and he can even order a jet to attack targets; he has such an omnipotent presence that it ignores the far more interesting and crazed humanity behind such a plot. It isn't a plan that lies within the realm of great villainy – it's an example of Hollywood at its most schizophrenic and incoherent.

Wiseman does not help matters. His direction, particularly of his actors, feels inadequate, and he appears to feel that he can make up for the film's various inadequacies by throwing a host of action movie cliches at us – the problem is that such requisite action movie fodder doesn't work very well either. The action sequences feel cobbled together, and the fight scenes between McClane and some henchman play out like poorly conceived boss fights in a video game. It's also troubling when the inevitable deus ex machina, involving Gabriel kidnapping McClane's daughter, fails to trigger any kind of feeling from its viewers. Like the rest of the movie, it's just plain boring.

"Les Choristes" follows the familiar mode of other inspirational films in which a brilliant teacher gives his students the opportunity and the hope that society has not. The setting is post-war France, where a middle-aged teacher named Clement Mathieu (an excellent Gerard Jugnot) starts work at a dreary institution for troubled children. Mathieu, who is a composer in his free time, goes against the school's stringent and incompetent headmaster and forms a chorus, making just about everyone feel happy.

It's difficult not to like "Les Choristes." Aside from an astoundingly stupid framing narrative, it's a pretty well made movie with decent performances – we even get to enjoy some lovely singing. But it's the kind of film that doesn't take any chances, that relishes in its own predictability, and doesn't leave much of an impression once you've finished the journey.

"Live Free or Die Hard" First Viewed: 12/11/08 on DVD - IMDb
"Les Choristes" First Viewed: 12/5/08, on DVD - IMDb

My New Yorker Obsession

I've had a subscription to The New Yorker for nearly half a year, and I've basically been obsessed with it, haha. Their articles are extremely well-reported and provide an excellent template for aspiring writers. I usually try to read The Economist every few weeks, and I started reading other high-quality liberal publications like Harper's Magazine and The New Republic. Thus my transformation into a liberal elitist is almost complete, though I intend to come full circle and try reading conservative publications like The Nation next semester. In any case, I just wanted to make a list of my favorite articles that came out in this year's issues of The New Yorker. I've read great articles in other magazines, including National Geographic, but these were particularly exemplary.

"The Chameleon: The Many Lives of Frederic Bourdin"
by David Grann

This article chronicles the life of a notorious French impersonator, and what happens when he decides to impersonate a missing teenager from Texas. Rarely have I found an article so riveting. It was like reading a great piece of fiction - except that it was all real.



"Up and Then Down"
by Nick Paumgarten

This fantastic article delves into the elevator industry, and disproves some myths (the "close door" button hasn't been a functioning button since the early 1990s, and if you're trapped, there's literally no way to escape) while centering on the predicament of a worker who was trapped in his office's elevator during one harrowing weekend.

"Let It Rain"
by Hendrik Hertzberg

Hertzberg, a rather brilliant political observer, who was a former speechwriter for the Carter administration, provides this wonderfully incisive and witty essay about McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as a political ploy that successfully, albeit briefly, took the wind out of Obama's sails in his post-DNC days.




Making It: How Chicago Shaped Barack Obama"
by Ryan Lizza

This nearly 15,000-word article, by Ryan Lizza, who is a graduate of UC Berkeley, is an impressive feat. The number of people he tracks down for his report is dizzying - I almost wish that Lizza had included a list of names so that I could keep track of them all, and their relationships to Obama.

"The Choice"
I read countless editorial endorsements in the weeks leading up to the election, but it was The New Yorker's lengthy and comprehensive one that really stood out to me. The editors have a way of making insights that may have been touched upon by other news sources sound incredibly compelling. For example, in describing Sarah Palin, "We are watching a candidate for Vice-President cram for her ongoing exam in elementary domestic and foreign policy."


"On a Limb"
by Dana Goodyear

This lovely piece concerns UC Berkeley's very own notorious treesitter, Fresh, who resided in front of Wheeler Hall during the spring semester. It's a funny, outsiders' look into the dilemma, and besides, it's about Cal, so that's really cool.

Favorite Reviews: "Troubled Sons" and "Soul Survivor"

These reviews, of "W.," by David Denby, and "Quantum of Solace," by Anthony Lane, are basically perfect film reviews. All aspiring critics, myself included, probably view these two reviews as the epitome of current film critique. It's hard to explain why, precisely, they work so well. It helps that both critics are incredibly erudite, and that they provide fresh takes on the films, and on what did or did not work for them. The key, I think, is that they criticize without sounding whiny, and it doesn't sound like they take it personally when a film sucks (this is something I'm trying to overcome in my reviews).

Well, Fuck You, Too: Frenzy and 25th Hour

Well, Fuck You, Too

"Frenzy" and "25th Hour"

I find it fascinating, given the nearly twenty films that I've seen this semester in my class on Alfred Hitchcock, how little the director's interests changed during his fifty years of filmmaking. By 1972, he was still interested in the concept of the double persona within one individual, with characters drinking brandy, with staircases, with his guilt over his love for food, with his focus on falsely accused individuals, and with murdering someone through strangulation. But with “Frenzy” (1972), the first film that he made without having to worry about censors (it is his only R-rated film), all of these obsession are taken to a more extreme level.

The story is a Hitchcock staple: a troubled guy is falsely accused of murdering a woman, and he must work against authority figures in order to prove his innocence. But without the need to work against censors, which often forces a filmmaker to resort to more creative means, Hitchcock was free to depict his rather disturbing fascination with strangulation in a more graphic manner. The potential downside to this new-found freedom is that a filmmaker can go too far, and push the envelope when modesty may work best. What's remarkable about “Frenzy” is that Hitchcock, with the exception of a grating sequence involving a detective's wife bringing out disturbing-looking plates of food for dinner, knows when and when not to employ these new, more explicit filmmaking tools for the greatest effect.

“Frenzy” is not one of the director's best works: his characters aren't all that memorable, and he has explored this kind of story before – the film has a rather tired feel. (Admittedly, I may feel this way because the film was shot in the 1970s, when people and clothes were really ugly, and with an intentionally desaturated look, but I digress.) What Hitchcock offers us is a decent film with a few brilliant flourishes. Such moments as the notoriously brutal and unflinching murder sequence, where a “nice” guy gives in to his more violent impulses, and rapes and strangles a nice marriage counselor with his necktie, serve as a reminder that Hitch, even in his old age and his poor health, was a one-of-a kind filmmaker. I can't think of any other director who could assault his viewers with a horrible rape sequence, and have them love him all the more because of it.


“25th Hour” (2002), which stars Edward Norton as a former drug dealer, named Monty, who is about to go to prison, is only the third Spike Lee movie that I've seen – I now regret having seen so little of his work. It's a long and challenging film, but it's efficiently edited, well shot by the cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, and so unusually compelling that it generally avoids its own potential pitfalls. “25th Hour” was filmed in New York during the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Lee parallels the destruction, and reconstruction, of Ground Zero with the downfall and reconstruction of Norton's troubled character.

Lee is a bold filmmaker. He risks de-railing his narrative with a ten-minute rant, in which Monty, venting his director's frustrations - “Send those Enron assholes to jail for fucking life!” - gives an exasperated “fuck you” to just about every aspect of and person in New York. It's an unusual and self-reflexive sequence, but I think it's all the more stunning for those very reasons. I could imagine some viewers hating the sequence, particularly because it feels so arbitrary. But it really isn't - “25th Hour” is as much a testament to how Lee loves and hates his city as it is for Monty.

“Frenzy” First Viewed: 12/10/08, on DVD - IMDb
“25th Hour” First Viewed: 12/9/08, on DVD - IMDb

Note: I forgot that "25th Hour" is actually based off of a novel. Monty's rant is taken verbatim from the book. Nonetheless, I feel that Spike Lee could relate to the issues that the rant addresses, which is why it feels so powerful and personal, in my opinion.

The Birds

"The Birds"

Alfred Hitchcock, 1963

Note: I'm taking a course on Hitchcock, and every Wednesday we have a screening of one of his films. Then we write our thoughts in a "journal," which we turn in the next day. This is one such journal. There are spoilers.

I first saw The Birds (1963) over ten years ago, on a VHS tape and a small screen. Even at that age I was blown away by the sheer spectacle of it all. But what I remembered most clearly from that initial viewing was the haunting image of the dead farmer, his eyes gouged out and his body riddled with bite marks. It struck an even more powerful chord with me this time around. I think that it is such a powerful scene because it deals with the notion that normal things that we take for granted can turn against us; at first, the birds are harmless, but for absolutely “no reason,” they suddenly turn into flesh-eating monsters.

The way that Hitchcock constructs the scene is brilliant. It begins with a long take of the mother slowly walking down the hallway, followed by brief point-of-view shots of the room – in total disarray and covered with streaks of blood – finally culminating in a trio of shots that jumps closer and closer into the corpse's mutilated face. In that brief moment, the mother's shock and terror becomes our own. It bears some similarity to the tracking shot on Charlie's hand in Shadow of a Doubt, when both Uncle Charlie and we realize the importance of the ring on her finger.

To be honest, I think that the setup of The Birds is weak; the connection between Mitch and Lydia is sketchy at best. But the film is really about tension, and in that regard it is a masterpiece. First, there is the actual tension that develops within the utterly bizarre love, um, quadrilateral between Mitch, Lydia, the mother, and Annie. We don't really understand what happened in these characters' pasts, but given the amount of animosity between the characters – most of which is unspoken; it is instead depicted through a number of glares, and the way that Hitchcock positions his characters within the frame – would we really want to find out?

Second, the actual bird attacks are masterfully conceived and executed. Every time a character was attacked, be it a child or a random stranger, I was shocked. I'm not really sure why those attacks were so powerful – I'm surprised that some viewers in the class laughed at many of these moments – but I can posit a guess. In the sequences within the house, we get the sense that our protagonists, led by Mitch, who is an ostensibly strong figure, are completely powerless. I think that Robin Wood sums it up perfectly when he describes the sequence as such: “The home-as-refuge becomes home-as-cage.” The Birds is so unsettling because of this very inversion of everyday life. Our protagonists are powerless, their home turns into a prison, and their fates are left up in the air.

Rating: 9

Second Viewing: 12/3/08, on DVD - IMDb