Holocaust Kitsch

This weekend in the New York Times, A.O. Scott discreetly explores the dilemma of the Holocaust movie. As far as I'm concerned, there are extremely few movies dealing with this topic that are any good. Most of the time, a huge cringe factor is involved when watching the fictionalization and recreation of something so grotesquely evil that people have a hard time believing it actually happened. I stay away from most Holocaust movies because I find them, even when cloaked in the best intentions, indecent. I think my favorite Holocaust movie of all time is Downfall (or as a friend calls it, "The Poor Hitler Movie"). For one, there is not a concentration camp in sight. There is not one Jew in sight. But this examination of the last days of Hitler is a powerful, chilling depiction of the psychology of depraved power and of a depraved national ideology. This is not a movie that looks to open the wellsprings of sentimentality, but a movie that asks how could an entire nation believe and follow and agree with this man (short answer: because they were much like him). Some people objected to the fact that the movie "humanizes" Hitler, as if he belonged to another species altogether. It doesn't. It really shows him for the human monster that he was. Here you will not see the pornographic obscenities that the Nazis perpetrated by stripping off the humanity of millions of people (and which you can and should see in the Holocaust museums of the world), but you will see one of the most disturbing scenes of all time, when Mrs. Goebbels proceeds to poison each and every one of her six young children, right before the fall of Berlin. In a way, this scene helps underscore the depth of the Nazi horror more than the pictures of naked, emaciated bodies of Jews. However, I must admit that, being a Jew, I have been exposed to gruesome Holocaust paraphernalia from a very early age, so after a while, it starts losing its potency. It works great on young minds -- the outrage and repulsion it engenders is long lasting and very useful. Never forget, indeed. My close second favorite movie is the amazing Mr. Death, the documentary by Errol Morris about the American creator of the lethal injection who also happens to be a Holocaust denier. As is customary with the brilliant Mr. Morris, this strange, unsettling, thought provoking film takes us straight into the stupidity of evil.Just one look at the preview for the new movie, The Boy With the Striped Pajamas, makes me want to vomit. Number one, the title is probably the worst movie title ever. Two, the image of a bald little punk sitting all by himself next to the barbed wire and having all the time and freedom in the world to play chess with a healthy little German on the other side of the wire with no attending Nazi to bash his head against a wall, already fills me with disgust. As A. O Scott observes, we are in Life is Beautiful territory; that is, Holocaust corn, and it just so happens that we have the Weinstein brothers to blame for both of these obscenities. Memo to Harvey Weinstein: please stop torturing people with indecent sap about the Holocaust. There are surely more dignified ways to win Oscars. As I was watching said preview, I also had an epiphany: I bet actors love to wear the Nazi uniform. You know, those full length shiny leather trench coats favored by the SS, the spiffy uniforms with the insignia, the great color coordination, and the stiff, shiny black boots. It's all very fetishistic, and one must admit that the fucking Nazis had a great sense of style. This may be why, I once met a Black girl who told me she had seen Schindler's List 6 times because she fell in love with the Nazi (played with great panache by Ralph Fiennes). And who could blame her? But do actors like to lose 50 pounds, shave their heads and wear soiled striped pajamas? I'm not so sure. Movies about the Holocaust exist not only because the topic is inherently dramatic, or because it's Oscar season, but because there is something inherently morbid and obscene and pornographic about the visual record of depravity and destruction left by the Nazis and people just can't get enough of it. One of my posts in this blog was a link to the recently unearthed pictures of Auschwitz commanders found carousing on weekends near the camp, having jolly picnics and playing the accordion. I titled the post "Shocking Nazi Photos" and for a while it was immensely popular. It still spikes up once in a while.

The Height of Nerve: Hollywood Execs Blame the Audience.

All of a sudden, they are whining about the demise of "story". Peter Guber pines for the days when movies had stories.

Ultimately, he blames the audience for the perceived breakdown in narrative quality: in the end, he argued, consumers get what they want. Bobby Farrelly, a prolific writer, and director with his brother Peter of comedies like “There’s Something About Mary” and “Shallow Hal,” concurred.
“If you go off the beaten path, say, give them something bittersweet, they’re going to tell you they’re disappointed,” Mr. Farrelly said. He spoke from his home in Massachusetts, where he is working on the script for a Three Stooges picture (I CAN ONLY IMAGINE THE CHEKHOVIAN STORYTELLING IN THIS ONE), and said he missed complex stories like that of “The Graduate.”

This makes my blood boil. Consumers don't get what they want. They get what Hollywood serves them. And when you ask them what they would like you to serve them and you get shit as a result, don't blame the audience for having asked them. They are not writers or directors or producers. They're not the ones who should be telling you how to make a movie.
Bobby Farrelly, if you don't want the audience to be disappointed, don't fucking ask them. Have the balls to stick to your artistic principles and tell the story you want to tell.
I've seen the audience questionnaires for movie research. The questions are absurd. I cannot fathom how anybody can get any coherence from whatever inanities the audience opines about a certain scene in a film. "What do you like/dislike about the ending?" The audience deserves no such power.
But I can see Hollywood tabulating the responses, and what comes out is that stale, unoriginal, formulaic, utterly stupid mess that is most Hollywood films. Focus groups are the end of story. And they are not commissioned by the audience.
Stop focus grouping movies and you'll see how soon story waltzes right back into your lives, you spineless cowards.

Slumdog Millionaire

Or: Review of a movie I hate because everyone seems to love it.

To judge from the sold out crowds at the Angelika, you'd think this new film by Danny Boyle is the second coming of cinema. I went with great expectations, having read some enthusiastic reviews and having seen the crowds (which, note to self, should never ever be a reason to see anything).
I really wanted to like this movie because I like some of the films of Danny Boyle, but I guess I happen to like the ones that are diametrically opposed in tone and spirit to this saccharine fantasy. That is, Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and 28 Days Later.
I'm wondering if, because I am a jaundiced Mexican, I have zero tolerance for sentimental cheese. I do not find the Third World's infatuation with love-conquers-all stories endearing (call me a verbissener, I think the media in these countries conspires to keep the poor ignorant through these kinds of basic, corny stories), so I may just not be the audience for this film. Movies that attempt to manipulate my feelings with every heavy handed trick in the book, earn my eternal enmity. I am the only person I know who hates Amelie (which at least tries to look like a fantasy). And don't get me started on that obscene, disgusting film called Life is Beautiful.
Slumdog Millionaire audaciously tries it to have it both ways. It gives us a pretty dreary, Dickensian view of the terrible lot of slum children in India, while at the same time it engages in a romantic fantasy, with absolutely implausible, unrealistic plot turns, all toward a happy ending (the end credit sequence -- very cute, but too little, too late). I understand that the movie tries to pay homage to Indian movies, but I have seen Indian movies, also about the downtrodden, also about their dignity and resourcefulness, that have far more subtlety and grace and humanity (Vanaja is a good example). And as per Bollywood, there is more levity and humor and feisty good nature in any Bollywood movie than in this contrived tale.
In my view, horrible violence and corny romance do not mix well. The movie tries very hard to be bittersweet but even its ironies are so obvious they hit you over the head with a hammer. Forget about subtlety, which it utterly lacks, just one true feeling, one real, dimensional human behavior, would have been welcome.
The story of a slum child in Mumbai who survives absolute horror to be the winner of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire for his one true love, could have been far more touching, truer and deeper, had anybody bothered writing something other than clichés. Ambitiously, through the adventures of Jamal and his brother Salim, the movie tries to depict India in a nutshell, from the orphan slum dwellers of Mumbai, to the telemarketing middle class kids of the new India, even with a necessary, picture postcard detour at the Taj Mahal.
Boyle has the good fortune to have found two gorgeously spirited urchins to play the brothers when they're young children, and their charming sidekick Latika, the love interest. The rest of the cast is nowhere near as charming or believable (except for the always magnificent Irfan Khan, the only person in the whole enterprise who acts like a human being).
The camera is super dynamic, the shots and the color and the editing are great, but the back and forth structure of the movie soon becomes repetitive. The movie soon starts looking like a pretentious, if beautifully shot, commercial. The flashback structure between an entire episode of the show (with its contrived, fabricated suspense) and the childhood of hero Jamal, makes it for very slow going, regardless of how many adventures he and Salim go through.
The high concept of the movie is what bothers me most: that Jamal knows the answer to the questions because they were present at a certain juncture in his eventful life. Sheer fantasy, piled on without remorse or discretion. I do not object to see movies about flying elephants, but if we are knee deep in reality, if there are graphic scenes of terrible cruelty to children, why can't there be psychological realism? You can have all the fantasy and happy endings and romance you want with human insight. Look at the films of one Charles Chaplin.
In the end, even with all the good faith in the world, the sentiment of this film is wielded so mercilessly and is so contrived, why should we believe it? Why should we believe that indeed an impoverished slum child can rise above the most terrible circumstances to greatness if nothing in his story rings true? I think spectacles like this are a slap in the face of the poor, while those who can afford a movie ticket can celebrate cozily the ridiculous notion that love conquers all.
I realize I hate movies about fate. Fate, like religion, allows for all kinds of illogic and leaves little room for doubt. I prefer movies that raise questions about the human condition, not movies that think there is only one answer and treat you like you are too dumb to ask.

Synecdoche, NY

Charlie Kaufman has taken it upon himself to write quirky, original screenplays that bring metaphysics to movies, for which he should be commended. I really liked Adaptation, I loved Being John Malkovich, and I started getting a little restless with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I admire Kaufman's originality but Synecdoche, NY, his first directorial foray, is very disappointing. I went along for the ride for about the first hour, but by the end of the movie I had the nagging feeling that Kaufman was enmeshed in a knot not even he knew how to get out of. The movie got me to thinking about two guys who do metaphysics really well: Kafka and Borges (and Shakespeare* too). They take extremely complex metaphysical concepts and they execute them with brilliant simplicity. They polish and they burnish anything that is extraneous to the central metaphor, so in the end you are left with a hard, beautiful diamond that blows your mind. In my view, the problem with this movie is exactly the opposite: it feels we're stuck with Kaufman in the carbon mine, grasping for diamonds, and never quite finding anything but dark, shapeless soot. It's too complicated.
The movie takes several thoughts (carpe diem, all the world's a stage, the paradox of wanting to portray total truth in art while living a lie) and proceeds to illustrate them with growing confusion and incoherence. For a very lucid take on it, read Anthony Lane's review in The New Yorker. Totally on the money.
My good faith was severely tested in this film. For one, I wish an editor had told Kaufman he could safely cut at least a half an hour of it, because it is looong and repetitive. It seems very complex, but as far as I could tell, the final message of the movie is almost fit for a Hallmark card: you only have one life and one chance to make it work.
If the audience loses patience with the hero, because the hero is just too oblivious, no amount of metaphysical fireworks can save the movie. If the amazing Samantha Morton is hitting on you while your terrible shrew of a wife (poor Catherine Keener, always excellent as The Bitch on Wheels) humiliates the shit out of you, you may want to abandon your miserable fog and surrender to life and love.
I find it objectionable when hugely talented actors are wasted on one-dimensional bullshit. It is interesting that someone as resourceful as Phillip Seymour Hoffman gives a totally one note, humorless, stunted performance. Why should we care about such a miserable moper? Even antiheroes need charm, or a sense of humor, or malice -- dimension. Luckily, at least we can enjoy the formidable Tom Noonan, who together with Samantha Morton are the only people who seem alive in this film.
In the end, this movie feels extremely self-indulgent and so bent on being brainy that it is strangely disconnected emotionally. Charmless, depressive, suffocating, ugly. I'm not asking for every movie to be Mary Poppins, but too much self-indulgent moping is the kiss of death.

*I thought of the end of The Tempest, when Prospero breaks the fourth wall and asks the audience to release him from his bonds with applause. This is the simplicity I'm thinking about. That little speech sends your mind reeling with the relationship between theater and reality, between illusion and truth for hours.

NY Film Festival: 24 City

I have seen three films by Jia Zhangke. Still Life, The World and now 24 City. In all of them Jia is worried sick about the devastating effects of the rapid transformation of China from everything it was before (an agricultural economy, an ancient culture, a Communist country) into what it is today: a steamroller of unbridled development, greed and corruption and diminishing values.
In Still Life a poor laborer comes back from the big city looking for the family he left behind only to find that his neighborhood is now drowned under the waters of the Three Gorges Dam, one of the most catastrophic environmental disasters on Earth. The World shows the surrealistic parallel reality of a Chinese sort of Epcot Center in Beijing, where the outside world is rendered in simplistic stereotypes (just like Epcot Center) which ordinary Chinese people can visit (if they can afford it) and forget about ever actually seeing the real thing. In 24 City he chronicles, in a mix of documentary and fictionalization, the demise of an old armament factory and its transformation into a cluster of expensive condos in the ever growing city of Chengdu.
I imagined Jia to be a sober, meditative man in his sixties, so melancholy and mature are his movies. It turns out he is only 39 years old.
Jia pulls you in with human stories told with the greatest restrain and discretion, with touching grace and with all the time in the world. The stately pace of his movies seems a deliberate comment on the rush of the Chinese government to change everything now, no matter what the consequences. "You are not stopping and looking at the people you are trampling", he seems to say, "so I'm going to show you". Stoic people, bewildered people, people used to injustice and penury, incredibly resourceful and spirited.
24 City is a series of interviews with former factory workers. They go chronologically from the oldest members of the factory to their children or grandchildren today. Through these interviews emerges a deep portrait of Chinese culture in flux. The older people reminisce about the golden years of the factory when they were making arms for the Korean war or the Vietnam war, they remember the terrible years of the Cultural Revolution, where they were protected from Mao's raving cruelty and from famine by their very important military jobs. They remember the aftermath of Mao, in the eighties, when their weap0ns became irrelevant and the factory downsized and became a factory of other things. Through these memories what emerges is a portrait of individuals who until very recently could only think of themselves as part of a bigger context: their families, their factory, their country. It would be unthinkable for a Chinese person born in 1958 to go against their parents wishes and look for opportunities outside the factory, whereas the younger generations are wired completely differently. They want to make money, they want to study, they want to move to another city, they want to shop.
That the elderly in China feel nostalgia for the days of orthodox Communism is very poignant. The Chinese value authority and respect and a community framework. Family is the social unit, not the individual. For the elderly, this sense of community has been lost. I don't think that Jia is glorifying Communism. Through the words of the people he interviews emerge portraits of harrowing personal sacrifice. He admires and respects the ordinary people who sacrificed but not those who controlled them.
Interestingly, Jia intersperses real factory workers with actors playing factory workers. As he said in the interview yesterday at the end of the film, he felt he needed to supplement the real with fictional material, but to him all of them are real. This new trend in movies to blur the line between fiction and reality is very interesting, particularly when exercised by serious, talented filmmakers like Jia and Laurent Cantet.
Jia's films are set in ugly urban areas, in decaying factories, in dirty alleyways. The new China is an eyesore, buy there is not one single frame in his movies that is ugly. His compositions are serene and beautiful, almost hypnotic. And it's not because he art directs or beautifies, but because he finds symmetry everywhere. His films are an amazing window into the soul of China today.