(500) Days of Summer (2009)

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin

Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in

Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove.

Dance me to the end of love.

- Leonard Cohen, "Dance Me to the End of Love"

Recently, I told a friend of mine that I’d just watched (500) Days of Summer. When she asked what I thought about it, I told her I really liked it. I think she was pleasantly surprised to hear that. “You’re always so contrary,” she said. “We all thought you wouldn’t like it just because we did.”

Personally, I think that’s a ridiculous thing to say. Me? Dislike something because other people like it? Never. Some people just don't understand the high art of being contrary.Besides, this movie only proves how cool I really am. Undoubtedly, a whole generation will try being indie because they saw (500) Days of Summer, but I want the world to know that I was crushing on Zooey Deschanel, wearing skinny ties, and listening to The Smiths long before this movie came out.

There were certainly indie romances before (500) Days of Summer, and there will certainly be indie romances after it. However, I have a feeling that this movie will become the gold standard for the genre. On one hand, the movie feels as if it were made using an “Everything-You-Need-To-Do-To-Be-Indie” checklist. But on another, nothing in (500) Days of Summer ever felt forced, pretentious, or manipulative to me. The movie has that genuine, authentic feel which is a prerequisite for indie art.

Essentially, (500) Days of Summer is a love story told in non-linear form. It’s about Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his 500-day romance with Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel). We see their first meeting, their first conversation, their first flirtations, their first date, their first sex, their first fight, and their final break-up, but not in chronological order. As the story develops in its non-linear way, we see an ironic shift. Tom begins as a determined romantic who believes in love and destiny, but he so convinced that Summer is “the one” that their break-up destroys all his hope and optimism. However, though Summer begins as this generation’s equivalent of Holly Golightly, she eventually “converts” to his view. The question is will Tom ever regain his faith in life and love? It seems unlikely, until a final conversation with the newly-married Summer and a fateful encounter with a girl named Autumn convince him that relationships do happen for a reason, and that love and lifelong relationships might actually be possible.

I would describe (500) Days of Summer as a “feel-good” movie, which is an unusual thing to say since it’s a “boy-meets-girl” story where the boy doesn’t get the girl. This is an almost-romance, a story about that special girl who was almost the girl. Parts of it hurt because they feel so true to life. This is certainly a feel-good movie, but it’s not without substance and it’s not without a little heartache.

I liked (500) Days of Summer for two primary reasons. The first is that I happen to love Zooey Deschanel (I even listen to The Who because of her). The second reason is that I happen to really like romances (a little-known Cole fact). By romance, however, I don’t mean chick-flicks. More often than not, chick-flicks are to women what action movies and pornography are to men – very cheap and perverse imitations of the things that remind us what it means to be a real man or woman.

Once upon a time, the word romance was a complex term; it conveyed a sense of adventure, mystery, and excitement. That’s been lost today. Now, romance generally just means vanilla “boy-meets-girl” stories where all of life’s problems are resolved in a kiss. However, every so often, a movie like (500) Days of Summer comes along to remind us that human relationships are an adventure in the full sense of the word – full of everyday danger, beauty, excitement, mystery, and pain. They do not always work out. They do not always neatly resolve. They do not always make sense. More often that not, they break down more than they build-up. But in the end, there are two ways to look at the situation. The first is the cynical way, which causes us to see human relationships as empty and meaningless. The other way is the adventurous way, which requires us to see past the initial pain and emptiness. Ultimately, I think it requires a great deal of courage to look at life as an adventure. But all love, beauty, and meaning is dependent on bravery. None of those things can be found unless we have the courage to look for them.

J.R.R. Tolkien use to say the most dangerous thing in the world is stepping out your front door. I think he was right. It’s a big world, and you never know who you’re going to fall in love with.

I love The Smiths...and I love you, Zooey Deschanel.

White Christmas (1954)

It's not Christmas without Bing.

The Road (2009)

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire,

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

   - Robert Frost “Fire & Ice” 

The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.

   - Ernest Hemingway

It would be tempting to dedicate my entire review of The Road to Viggo Mortensen’s performance. In this movie, Viggo Mortensen reminds us that he’s one of the best actors currently working in Hollywood. Mortensen received an Oscar nomination for his 2007 performance in Eastern Promises. I have no doubt he’ll be nominated again this year.

The reason it’s easy to analyze The Road only in terms of Viggo Mortensen’s acting is not just because he delivers an incredible performance, but because the entire film seems so carefully designed to keep our focus on him. In The Road, Mortensen plays “The Man,” a father trying to keep himself and his eight year-old son alive in a bleak, post-apocalyptic world. The two of them inhabit a planet wrecked by global pollution, earthquakes, wildfires, crop failure, starvation, and cannibalism. These things, however, are of secondary importance in The Road. They’re just the conditions, the backdrop for the story.

The Road is a postapocalyptic movie, but I guarantee you that you’ve never seen an postapocalyptic movie like this before. There are no prophetic messages or political warnings about nuclear warfare, environmental pollution, or cultural decadence. In fact, the film never even takes the time to show or explain the disaster(s) responsible for this nightmare. It alternates between beautiful, bleak, and harrowing images of a dying world, but it never allows us to revel in the apocalyptic grandeur movies like 28 Days Later and I Am Legend love. Every shot feels as if it were carefully constructed to serve a purpose in the movie. This is definitely a film without excess; it establishes itself with subtleties and nuances. Like director John Hillcoat’s previous film The Proposition (which I just watched), this is a “quiet” movie.

Granted, there’s plenty of violence and horror. This movie shows us dreadful things, things I’m not sure I ever wanted to see or imagine. However, though situations in the movie are reminiscent of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance, this film never gives itself over to violence or terror. It has action, but it isn’t an action movie. It’s horrific, but it’s not a horror movie.

Ultimately, The Road is a story about a relationship - a relationship between a father and son at the end of the world. However, this relationship transcends simple parental dynamics. The Man isn’t just the Boy’s father. He’s his guardian and mentor. He doesn’t just want to help him survive; he wants to instill him with values that are in danger of being completely lost in this nightmarish world. The Man needs the Boy just as much as the Boy needs him. The Man’s son is his last chance for hope and beauty.

The Road is based on Cormac McCarthy’s prize-winning 2006 novel. Literary critic Harold Bloom considers McCarthy to be the greatest living American author, ranking him with Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. McCarthy has Faulkner’s interest in characters and relationships, and like Hemingway he is concerned with violence and nihilism. His works are bleak and violent, governed by a sort of “ecclesiastical” despair. For me, the film walks a fine line between nihilistic despair and hard-earned hope. Some will say it veers into nihilism; others will say it affirms life. It's hard to say which view is correct. Like the Coen Brothers' adaptation of No Country For Old Men, The Road has an ambiguous ending. The final scene will leave many feeling inspired, while others will be bitterly depressed. 

However, while its philosophical message might be obscure, The Road makes its "worldview" clear:

The word is a sad, beautiful place, and it requires a great deal of courage and love to live in it.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was my first Wes Anderson film, and I loved it.

Anderson is an auteur guided by a passionate imagination. In The Life Aquatic, he fashions a beautiful, fantastic world that is so removed from reality, and yet at the same time, grounded with a true-to-life pathos. The venerable Bill Murray plays Steve Zissou as a postmodern Captain Ahab, a man who defies all his past professional and relational failures by embarking on his greatest adventure yet. His quest is fantastical, but its underlying emotions are poignant and deep.

The Proposition (2005)

Set in the 1880s Australian Outback, The Proposition opens with the arrest of outlaw Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) and his younger brother Mikey. Charlie and Mikey are guilty of hanging offenses, but Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone), the police officer who captures them, offers Charles a deal: if he tracks down and kills his older brother Arthur (Danny Huston), an even more wanted outlaw, then he and his younger brother will be pardoned. So, within the first few minutes of the film, Mikey is taken off to prison and Charlie is left with a horrible decision to make. Which brother will he save?

The Proposition takes the conventions of the American western and transports them to an Australian setting. It’s authentic western, however, which means it is primarily a character study. The authentic western has always been concerned with showing how men – and women – live on the edge. The Proposition is takes place on the frontier, that historical and mythic place where civilization and nature meet. This is a dusty, desolate, and violent world where nothing is fully wild or fully civilized. For those living on the frontier, there is the world ahead of them, the world of the aborigines who live in peace with nature. But there is also the world behind them, the civilized world where people live in peace with culture (and one another). What The Proposition tries to do is show how people live in the gap between these two worlds. Captain Stanley tries to bring justice to it, but by making his proposition to Charlie he violates the system he represents. His wife Martha (Emily Watson) tries to bring domesticity to it, but the sight of her rose garden surrounded by the desolate outback makes us realize how futile this effort really is. Charlie tries to live on the edge, but slowly gets drawn into his older brother’s psychopathic grip. Only Arthur seems to be able to live effectively in this wasteland, but his days are numbered.

While reading his review, I was pleased to see that Roger Ebert found similarities between the The Proposition and Cormac McCarthy’s novels. To me, there is a strong connection between The Proposition and No Country For Old Men. Both stories focus on people trying to live in a savage, violent place, alternating between images of poetical beauty and blunt, mind-numbing violence. I suppose this is what remains of the western once the myths are gone.

For me, The Proposition was a great film with one problem: its brevity. It sets up an incredible situation, and then carries us through it so quickly that we barely have enough time to process it all. The ending is very fitting, because it establishes a contemplative mood (“What will you do next?”). Contemplation and unanswered questions are what this film leaves us with.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing…

The always reliable Guy Peace

Ray Winstone...without his CGI-generated Beowulf body here.

Samuel Stote: What's a misanthrope?

Arthur Burns: A misanthrope is one who hates humanity.

Samuel Stote: Is that what we are misanthropes?

Arthur Burns: Good lord, no. We're a family.

Conclusion: Despite its brutal violence, The Proposition is a "quiet" film because ultimately, it isn't about "action" but contemplation. It contemplates the actions people have to perform in order to survive in a cruel, chaotic world.

Mulholland Drive (2001)

I'm afraid of David Lynch movies.

Probably because they so closely resemble my nightmares. In fact, I even have this recurring dream where I'm trapped in a David Lynch film. In my dream, I'm eating waffles at this retro diner with Quentin Tarantino and Virginia Woolf. As I butter my waffles, Tarantino rants about Elizabeth Taylor movies while Virginia does this stream of consciousness thing about maple syrup and suicide. While I wonder if slitting Tarantino's throat with the butter knife would make him shut up, I look over my shoulder to see David Lynch, eerily moving closer towards us with a giant movie camera. I think Roy Orbison is even playing somewhere in the backround.

I really hate that dream.

If Virginia Woolf (mother of stream-of-consciousness narratives) and Douglas Sirk (father of big budget, emotionally-oversaturated 1950s romances) had a child, I'm certain that child would be David Lynch. I'm also certain that if screenwriters mated The Twilight Zone with Peyton Place, the cinematic offspring from that coupling would be Mulholland Drive.

Lynch got his start in television, and originally intended Mulholland Drive to be a pilot episode. That probably explains why the film feels so "small screen." The lighting, camera techniques, and filming angles all make it register like a TV soap opera. However, Mulholland Drive is also a pastiche of 1940s film noir and 1950s "malt shop" culture, resulting in a mix of darkness and levity you won't find in Days of Our Lives.

Describing Mulholland Drive is difficult, since nobody seems to know what it's about except Lynch, and he's not telling. Basically, it’s a story about a young, idealistic woman named Betty (Naomi Watts) who moves to Hollywood to become an actress. There, she meets Rita (Laura Elena Harring), an amnesiac with no memory, a purse filled with money, and several hitmen after her. While Betty helps Rita uncover the secrets of her past, we see a simultaneously developing story about Adam (Justin Theroux), a struggling director whose production is being sabotaged by a strange, sinister group of characters who pull the executive strings in Hollywood. At the same time, the film incorporates seemingly unconnected “vignettes” or short stories such as the infamous “diner scene" (which made it into Bravo's "100 Scariest Scenes of All Time").

As the film develops, Betty and Rita fall in love. However, their developing romance and the mystery of Rita’s identity suddenly disappears and Betty becomes Dianne Selwyn, a failing actress who has been jilted by her lover Camilla Rhodes, a big movie star now engaged to Adam, a successful director. Furious at being rejected, Dianne hires a hitman to kill Camilla. However, once the deed is done, she is haunted visions of a maniacal elderly couple (most likely projections of her own guilt) who drive her to suicide.

I read several reviews of the film, and I tended to agree with the ones that argued that though the film is complex, it does tell a unified and comprehensible narrative. To me, the Betty-Rita scenario is a fantasy. It’s Dianne’s vision of a happier life, a life built on images of Hollywood glamour and mystery. She casts herself as Betty, the idealistic young actress on the verge of stardom and Camilla as Rita, a damsel-in-distress she can heroically rescue. In this re-imagining, her experiences promise to achieve glamour, mystery, excitement, and above all, a happy ending.

So, despite its unconventional storytelling and bizarre moments, Mulholland Drive is a fairly straightforward film about the illusory nature of life and movies. It reminded me of Billy Wilder’s classic Sunset Boulevard, another “poisonous little valentine to Hollywood.” Like Wilder, Lynch concerns himself with the “putrefaction” of human beings living under the mythic burden of Hollywood. In Mulholland Drive, he establishes this underlying tension that seems to reference some darkness or perversity. This force is never allowed to fully manifest itself in the film. It never becomes, in other words, a horror movie. The force is simply there, capable of being glimpsed at times in the most bizarre moments of the film. As a result, Mulholland Drive reads like a sublimated Gothic fantasy, one in which Freudian drives lurk beneath a pastiche of 1940s Hollywood glamour and 1950s modernism.

The result is hyperreal, to say the least.

Dianne imagines herself as "Betty," a character who can rescue her fantasy projection of Camilla.

The dark, mysterious evil in Mulholland Drive never fully manifests itself

Laura Harring's amnesiac character takes the alias "Rita" after glimpsing a movie poster of actress Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946). Many critics believe that Gilda is a film about a woman who comes between the homosexual relationship between two men. This is analogous to Dianne's relationship with Camilla which is "violated" by Adam in Mulholland Drive.

Conclusion: I give Mulholland Drive three out of four stars. Content-wise, I would certainly not recommend this movie. But from a cinematic or philosophical perspective, it's a fascinating commentary on loneliness and despair in a Hollywood culture.

The Purpose of This Blog

Hey people.

I've created this movie blog with a specific purpose in mind. Over the next twenty-five weeks, my goal is to work my way through a special list of 50 movies I've never seen before (well, I will rewatch about five movies I haven't seen in a long time). These movies will represent a diverse collection of films ranging from silent classics to upcoming theatrical releases. Some of these films can be found in the American Film Institute's "Top 100" movie list. Others can be found in the always reliable ten-cent VHS section at the used video-store.

I'll watch these movies over the next few months and report my findings here. This blog will be a sort of cinematic journal where I can keep track of my progress, as well as record my impressions (I also might use it to explore other movie-watching goals such as seeing every movie with Zooey Deschanel or Daniel Day-Lewis in it).

If you're interested in following along (because you don't have a life), please do. Comments, dialogue, and suggestions are always welcome.

- Cole

The List:

1. 400 Blows

2. 500 Days of Summer

3. Apocalypse Now

4. The Asphalt Jungle

5. The Band Wagon*

6. The Blair Witch Project

7. Blue Velvet

8. Breathless

9. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

10. The Conversation

11. Dangerous Liasons

12. Das Boot

13. Dead of Night

14. The Deerhunter

15. Donnie Darko

16. Dr. Strangelove

17. Dr. Zhivago

18. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

19. Following

20. The Gay Divorcee

21. Glenglarry, Glen Ross

22. Grapes of Wrath

23. La Dolce Vita

24. Lawrence of Arabia*

25. M

26. The Man Who Would Be King

27. Metropolis

28. Miller's Crossing

29. The Mission

30. Mulholland Drive

31. The Omen

32. Platoon

33. Point Blank (not to be confused with Pointe Break)

34. The Proposition

35. Raise the Red Lantern

36. Rashomon

37. Rio Bravo*

38. The Road

39. The Seventh Seal

40. Some Like It Hot

41. Sweet Smell of Success

42. The Third Man*

43. Top Hat

44. Trainspotting

45. The Unbearable Lightness of Being

46. The Unforgiven*

47. Vertigo*

48. The Wolf Man (2010)

49. The Wicker Man (most definitely not to be confused with the Nicolas Cage version)

50. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

* The asterisk indicates movies I've already seen and want to rewatch.