Alea iacta est: The Films of Christopher Nolan

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology



Thanks, Inception Cat. You've given me a terrific segueway, in my usual roundabout fashion, to a topic I like to call Christopher Nolan: Genius in the Making or GENIE IN THE BOTTLE? (see what I did there? It's a play on words! hahaha....oh, me.)

Slant Magazine has an outstanding essay by Tom Elrod on the films of Christopher Nolan, exploring the connection, if any, between his artistic merit and populist appeal. It's an idea that's certainly tested in his box offices grosses, at least post-Batman Begins. Read it: it's thoughtful and well-reasoned piece, if not without its flaws. 

Full disclosure: I have written for Slant before, but hey man. As ThreeMafia reminded us in their Oscar-winning song (?), it's hard out there for a pimp, so don't indulge in hating. 

Time will tell, but Inception has left me curious as to what kind if filmmaker Nolan is going to be. By now, I think it's fair to say that his name on a marquee has attained a mystical quality of 'headiness', for lack of a better term: a hushed reverence and a mimed mind-blown gesture from audiences departing the theatres. 

The basic premise of Elrod's article, as I see it, is that Nolan's film-making relies less on an artistic vision than a purely technical one: Nolan is a master of form and plot rather than theme, conceit or character. As he states: 

No matter what anyone may say, [Nolan] is no Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick's films, despite their objectivity and reputation for coldness, were studies of characters. Nolan's films, by contrast, are studies of plot. Indeed, you could say he's an artist of plot.

I enjoyed the article very much, though I couldn't help but think Elrod's argument hinged on the secretive knowledge of some platonic ideal of filmmaking. One point strikes me though, as particularly true: Nolan loves his plot. His films unravel with the postured certainly of being a film; in this way, I think, Nolan finds his real power. 

Great Stars and Their Last Films

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology


There's one film that leads the discussion of Famous Last Films, and that's The Misfits (1961). Arthur Miller originally wrote the screenplay as a Valentine's Day present to his then-wife Marilyn Monroe, and in the years since, The Misfits has acquired a misty nostalgic sheen to it; it stands as a kind of talisman that film buffs can point to and say, "Look. Here. This is when the change started."

Whether or not that's accurate, it certainly is a tempting mythology. Starring Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift, the entire production seems like cinematic kismet, as the film details the efforts of an aging cowboy (Gable) to rustle up mustangs to sell, while befriending an aimless divorced woman (Monroe) and rodeo drifter (Clift). Here, the symbolism starts to work overtime: the horses are sold for dog food, but the cowboy can remember the days (the good old days, in case you were wondering) when these same horses would be sold for children's fairs.

All three of its stars were approaching the end of their careers, though of course none of them knew it: Gable was a lifelong alcoholic and would collapse from a heart attack two days after filming; Clift, whose had only escaped his matinée idol good looks by being uncommonly talented, had been very badly disfigured in a motorcycle accident some years before and had never quite found his footing in Hollywood after that.

And then, of course, there is Marilyn Monroe, whose troubled life have filled a thousand pages of a hundred books far more impressively than I could attempt here; I will mention, however, that she had to attend the film's premiere on a pass from the psychiatric ward she had checked herself into for narcotics abuse.

Gable, who'd begun his career as an extra in silent films, was one of the last leftovers from the studio system, one of the last holdouts of the traditional, stoic masculine screen image that actors like Clift had fought hard to reinvent. Watching him in The Misfits is a little like witnessing the end of an era. And it's not just Gable: in their own ways, both Monroe and Clift were also the last of their kind, both raised in a largely studio-based Hollywood system that would begin to crumble in just a few years.

It's hard to watch The Misfits without all of this in mind; I tend to judge it as a haunting punctuation to three bright and troubled lives. Is this always the case, I wondered? It's a morbid tendency I've always nursed: the minute I hear that a famous Hollywood name has passed on, it's usually my first instinct to check their IMDb page for the last movie they completed.

Why? I'm not entirely sure, though I think it may have more to do with my need for symmetry. It touches me deeply when a star's last film provides some kind of symbolic closure on a life lived in the public eye; it disturbs me greatly when it seems arbitrary, or happenstance. 

Discuss! 

Audrey Hepburn - Always

 By 1989, Audrey Hepburn had begun the slow descendant of a successful star on the downswing; after her Oscar-nominated turn in 1967's Wait Until Dark, she worked only occasionally while raising her family or promoting the charities closest to her heart (as a child who'd grown up in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, the plight of impoverished children hit her especially hard). In a career marked by style, charm and gamine grace, this treacly remake of 1943's A Guy Named Joe is an oddity on an otherwise impeccable resume.

Hepburn plays an angel to Richard Dreyfuss' downed airline pilot, and her charming, ever so maternal grace is a comforting distraction. The first clue to the film's general quality is how many genres it straddles: billed as a romantic comedy drama, Always strikes me as a jack of a couple of trades, but master of none. Also, many critics consider it a direct forefather to Ghost, so at least we know who to blame for this:

Do Movies Lie to Us?

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology


I always take note when my brother asks me questions -- he's got an active, curious mind, and usually asks me simple things that spin an entire subject into a new perspective. That very thing occurred when he asks me the deceptively straightforward question, out of the blue: "Do movies lie to us?"

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He meant it in a very specific way, and he went on to clarify: he had seen a video on YouTube of a guy mimicking, of all things, the makeshift Beatles concert in the film Love Actually. The film version, for anyone who hasn't seen it, is here.

Then feast your eyes on its real life equivalent:


My brother went on to notice that while it was a very sweet gesture, the longer it went on, the more awkward it got. Like no one knew exactly how to stand, or what expression to have on their face. It's like they wanted it to end so they could immediately transition to the more comfortable position of "Hey, remember that time when...?"

But of course it's awkward. These poor people don't have three takes to nail the right "delightfully surprised" look, they have no stylists adjusting them, and no set decorators to make sure the hallway is just the right shade of "whimsically downtrodden." But moreover, I think it's these events are so rare in everyday life that we aren't taught how to react to them. We shift uncomfortably. We giggle nervously. Really, we want it to end immediately.

But it made me think: do movies lie to us? And if they do, isn't that somehow what we asked them to do?

Artists on Film: Where to Turn in These Troubled Times

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology


Art is wounded, for the time being.


It's hard out there for anyone who loves, admires or creates art, especially in these lean times. Stuck in downswell of a recession is a bad time to be involved with the arts, for sure. It starts in the schools, because when a budget needs to be cut to the bare minimum, I suppose it's easier to look at Music, Art, Theatre and Film and dismiss them.


I've seen a lot of artistic people recently turn to more "suitable" career paths, which is very smart, but also a little sad. The reality is that most of us who have chosen to devote our lives to the arts usually have very little say in the matter; let me tell you, I did not choose any of my past or current vocations based on earning potential. But even so, there are always those moments that you need to reaffirm my faith in the power of art to reflect, restore and rethink.


Luckily, I have my staples.

Wonder Boys
(2002)
Directed by Curtis Hanson
Starring Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Robert Downey Jr & Katie Holmes
The Story: A writer sits on the eternally unfinished follow-up to the smashing success of his first novel, as the various factors of his life fall to pieces around him. 


I saw this at the perfect time: sitting on a short story that refused to be finished and was stubbornly, if metaphorically, gnawing on my ankle. When I saw Grady look at the 2500+ pages of his ever-unfinished manu-clump, I knew his pain.


Wonder Boys, beyond the coming of age stories of both its middle aged protagonist and college-enrolled sidekick, is perhaps the most entertaining depiction writer's block I've ever seen on screen. But more than that, it's the truest. His inertia with his work seeps into the rest of his life, affecting the way he sees his crumbling marriage, his promising student, and his word-hungry editor. He starts to realize his work isn't the only thing in need of a good edit.


What Wonder Boys teaches is that sometimes, letting go of a bad idea is just as valuable a lesson as getting an idea in the first place.

Billy Elliot
(2000 )
Directed by Stephen Daldry
Starring Jamie Bell, Gary Lewis, Jamie Draven & Julie Walters 
The Story: A young boy from a rough, English coal mining town discovers an unlikely passion for ballet.


If you can watch Billy Elliot with a dry pair of eyes, then you've discovered something I haven't. What I admire most of the story is that it avoids every sinkhole its plot could have fallen into. It's briquely unsentimental and refuses to be nice to its children: the ballet teacher that pushes Billy to greatness is most times an insufferable harpy. But then, she gives Billy a little wink, a kindly nudge, and we know that, impossibly, it will all be okay.


This is also the way the film treats its audience: it earns every single moment of sentiment by refusing to diverge into a fantasy alter-world wherein Billy isn't a gruff coal miner's son working towards improbable dreams. It never shies away from the bleakness of Billy's world, or pander to the character reaction we expect: these are brilliantly realized people acting out the most realistic fairy tale I've ever seen.


But mostly, Billy Elliot is a refreshing spin on happily ever after:  if you work harder and care more than everyone, give the naysayers the finger and try your best to stubbornly ignore any and all obstacles, you'll get to dance the lead in Matthew Bourne's innovative retelling of Swan Lake. And isn't that the dream?

The Red Shoes
(1948)
Directed by Emeric Pressburger & Michael Powell
Starring Anton Walbrook, Leonide Massine, Marius Goring, Moira Shearer
The Story: A young, talented ballerina is torn between her lover and her need to dance.  


Love or art? That's the central question at the heart of this classic tragedy, lovingly profiled in The New Yorker. From the onset, it's clear that in this divine melodrama there is little room for compromise: Vicki Page, the heroine, is only elevated to prima ballerina after the last one foolishly eloped. This is not a world where things like commuting, part time hours or maternity leaves exist. It's all or absolutely nothing.


Vicki is clear in her drive to devote her life to art, equating being alive with being a dancer. So then, when she falls in love with a young composer and begins a secret affiar with him, she is going against the wishes of her domineering patron and against the drive of her ambition.


What follows is a dilemma so central to the lives of so many creative women: do you live your life or live for your art? Because as this film makes clear, you very rarely can have both in equal measure. Love becomes a harmful distraction for an artist as talented as Vicki, as she leaves the company with her lover and sacrifices her dreams. Soon she learns that she must make a choice, as she cannot continue on living half a life: either be without love, or be without dance.


The tragedy is reflected in the resplendent 20 minute ballet within the film, "The Red Shoes", a version of the Hans Christian Anderson fable. And such tragedy has never been so beautifully communicated as through Moira Shearer's body.  It doesn't take much imagination to see how the main narrative is wrapped up in this one: the herione is seduced by the glorious red shoes , though (METAPHOR ALERT) they compel the wearer to dance themselves seemingly to death.

Bright Star
(2009)
Directed by Jane Campion
Starring Ben Winshaw, Abbie Cornish
The Story: The last years of poet John Keats, particularly his bittersweet romance with bonny Fanny Brawne. 


Beyond exploring the Victorian tragedy that was Keats' brief life and death, Bright Star builds an uncanny portrait of an artist walking the line between life and divinity.
This isn't something explored often on film: the artistic side of these personalities are too persuasive, too romantic, and too loud, and the artist ends up a figure of secretive, unknowing genius.


But there are two sides that live secretly inside anyone who creates: there is the artist, posed with pen or brush or instrument in hand, always quivering towards the perfect phrasing, languid in the armchair and pondering the world from mundane surroundings; then, almost like quicksilver, comes the reality of actively avoiding poverty, fickle inspiration or just plain boredom.


Most artists walk some variation of this line; they, like anyone, have to eat, and brush their teeth, and balance the chequebook. But Bright Star manages to at least show a little peek behind the curtain, proving while it's hardly high drama, these realities are hardly as dull as the idea would imply. By portraying Keats as not a messiah of the written word, but a lovesick young frailty whose work was often more important to his fellow poet slash patron Charles Brown (Paul Schneider) than himself, it paints a touching picture of the eternal struggle of the artist to fit himself into the framework of the mundane, necessary everyday world.

Amadeus 
(1984)
Directed by Milos Forman 
Starring F. Murray Abraham & Tom Hulce
The Story: The life and death of Mozart, recounted by the mediocre composer who lived in the shadow of his genius.


Perhaps more key to the success of Amadeus is not the musical genius of its lynchpin, classical composer and wunderkind Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but the story hiding behind it. From the start, F. Murray Abraham's Salieri is at once the most sympathetic of villains and the most vile of heroes. You sense his quiet, seething rage and hardly blame him for his imperceptible sabotage of Mozart's career in the Austiran artistic community.


Mediocrity doesn't get much screentime. at least not intentionally. But Salieri is its patron saint: a moderately talented, mostly well-connected court composer. When he encounters Mozart for the first time, you can sense his struggle with such gifts being given to a loutish, loudmouthed twerp. Historical inaccurancies aside, it's a potent theme that shakes Salieri to the core.


He's also cursed to be the only one around who truly recognizes the depth of Mozart's genuis, so any personal success is tinged with his knowledge that in a world where Mozart exists, these are false victories, the benefits of a myopic society. The moments when Mozart's ambitious, innovative talent falls flat are thus imbued with an tragically comic double indemnity: you sense Salieri's triumph at having bested his rival, but also his gaping mouth frustration that no one else would understand the divinity of Mozart's music.






F for Fake
(1974)
Directed by Orson Welles
The Story: A documentary examining the possibility of authenticity within art, using for its subjects professional art forger Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving, the notorious Howard Hughes "biographer."


I first became fascinated by the story of Elmyr de Hory during a captivating one-man show that took the forger as his subject. He had an incredible talent for mimicry, and successfully sold his own forgeries of great artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Renoir, passing them off as old relics he "happened across" in a foreign grandmother's attic. It is a story so fabulous your mind will resist it out of sheer practicality.


de Hory is only one of the fascinating quandaries at the heart of F for Fake. The film jumps like a strange, fevered thought pattern from subject to subject, always touching on the same basic themes: what decides the difference between real art and fake art? Does opinion make art, or can it proved with fact?


Stories, paintings, novels...isn't it all pretend, in the end -- a shell of real things?


This is, at its heart, Orson Welles' film, despite the breadth and variety of his topics -- he is the narrator and ringleader of the film, offering  a trademark smirk alongside his commentary -- a commentary delivered on camera and directly to the audience, like a conversation. This is Welles is at his lushest audacity -- recounting briefly his own career, from his beginnings as an actor in Ireland (for the record, he was 19 years old and pretending to be a New York sensation) and his part in the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast.







Worth Mentioning:


The Turning Point (1977)
Two former ballet rivals (the sublime Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine) clash over the future of a promising young dancer -- especially tense since one of them is the girl's mother.  Also: MIKHAIL!!!!


Pollock (2000)
The story of the rocky life of notorious painter Jackson Pollock. Which came first, my love of Pollock or my lust for Ed Harris?


My Left Foot (1989)
An Irishman born with cerebral palsy can control only his left foot. Nonetheless, he grows up from his poor, working class roots to become a prolific writer and artist.


Dangerous Beauty (1998)
A Viennese courtesan turned poet writes of the role of women in society, while using her intelligence to set herself apart in the superficial world of selling desire.




Modest artwork property of Amersandology. 

Bromance Through the Ages

by Jillian Leigh, Ampersandology

Call it a fluke: the oeuvre of Judd Apatow has popularized male friendships in a such a way that called for the resurrection of its handy portmanteau--coined, incidentally, in the late 1990s by Dave Carnie--the bromance. All but unheard a decade ago, the bromance has crept back into the vernacular with a vengeance. 


To be sure, dropping casual mentions of one's bromance with another is bordering on trendy -- from the Apatow-produced Superbad or I Love You, Man, (which, truly, was a full-throated ode to the underlying romance of male friendships) through to the man love solidarity on display every week on shows like House M.D. or latter-day Scrubs, its pop culture temperature has transformed the love that didn't bother to speak its name into something that every male treasures or wishes he had. 


Is it a sign of the times? I'd like to think so. Until one looks at the definition, gleaned from the most reputable of sources for all thing pop cultural, Wikipedia: 

bro-mance: (noun) a close but non-sexual relationship between two (or more) men, a form of homosocial intimacy. See also: man crush.

Oh, I see you there, you tricky little thing. You little homosocial. 

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Ah, the homosocial: mental lubricant for any grad student worth his or her salt and fur-raiser of anyone who just wants to watch crappy 1950s biker movies in peace, goddamnit. It was the product of feminist scholars who, by and large, examined the remarkable solidarity and affection that existed in male friendships--and sidenote, the homosocial prompted theorist-with-chops Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick to posit in 1985's mind-bending Between Men that...

...the oppressive effects on women and men [create] a cultural system in which male-male desire became widely intelligible primarily by being routed through nonexistent desire involving a woman. 

So basically, in all these stories the men funnel their man love through to lady love just so the world keeps spinning its hetero-axis. And suddenly, the plot machinations of Closer make a whole lot more sense. 

Nowadays, of course, it's adorable to see George Clooney and Brad Pitt joke about meeting each other at a bath house. Man love, bromance, boy crush ---call it what you will, but its stuff is no longer the tormented undercurrent of cultural taboo. Now, it's practically fashionable to openly embrace your gooey guy on guy feelings. 

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But the central point of my post? Is that bromance is nothing new. And these johnny-come latelys owe a hell of a lot to these trailblazers in the turbulent world of men loving men -- mostly platonically but also kind of...not. 

Plato & Socrates

Bromance Heyday: 469 - 399 BC

It’s the classic love story – just a boy and his mentor. In his youth, when Plato was the ancient Greek equivalent of those guys who devour Simple Plan one day and Kurt Cobain the next, he’d listen to anyone in an effort to iron out his world view. But he soon joined the horde of young men who would follow Socrates around and hinge on his every word. And once Socrates took him on as a student, all bets were off, and Plato predictably turned his attentions to what chewed up Socrates’ time—namely, what made one’s life virtuous.

Compared to some philosophers out there, this is a positively tame doctrine, but it was enough to get the old boy killed. Socrates was put on trial for impiety (disrespect of the gods) and corruption of youth, and ultimately sentenced to death. Waste of good hemlock if you ask me. 

After his mentor’s death, Plato became a one-man army for preserving the Socratic teachings. You see, Socrates had never written down any of his teachings or philosophic methods down on paper. In fact, Plato's efforts are probably the only reason we know who this hemlock-scarfer is today.  Now that is devotion.  

Arthur & Lancelot

Bromance Heyday: sometime in the late 5th to early 6th century

Perhaps one of the more tragic tales of bromance is the story of King Arthur and his bravest knight, Lancelot du Lac. 

So long story short, Arthur inherited the title of king by divine right, and set about creating a utopia where all men were equal and all the castle tops were bright blue. It was no easy feat, given that knights were more given to the pillaging and raping side of the coin than the traditional chivalry we think of today. YAY HISTORY! But Arthur triumphed, creating the Round Table, a gathering of knights so noble and courtly, with none so noble as the greatest knight in the land, Lancelot du Lac. 


Legends vary, but Lancelot basically came to Camelot intending to devote himself in servitude to Arthur, who he saw as a fair and just leader. They were besties in the truest sense of the word, and all the other knights were jealous of the attention and favour that Arthur showered on him. And no wonder: word had it Lancelot was raised by the mystical Lady in the Lake. Quite awkwardly, Lancelot also held the honor of the Queen's Knight, which basically meant that all his heroic deeds were abstractly done in her name and also, that every time she went and got herself captured (which was often) Lancelot was the one who saddled up to go rescue her. 


Why was this awkward? Because Lancelot and Queen Guinevere were totes in love. Their affair was one of many factors that ultimately crushed the dream of Camelot, rending the kingdom apart by the seams when their betrayal was exposed. Arthur ultimately forgave them, but no one ended up happy: Lancelot became a hermit, Guinevere chopped off all her hair and became a nun, and Arthur ended up dead by his illegitimate son's hand. 


That...well, that sucks. Moral of the story? Keep it in your pants, people. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley & Lord Byron

Bromance Heyday: 1816- 1822

In a letter dated April 26, 1821, Byron wrote to his good friend and fellow poet, P.B. Shelley, (emphasis mine)--

 You want me to undertake a great Poem - I have not the inclination nor the power.  As I grow older, the indifference - not to life, for we love it by instinct - but to the stimuli of life, increases.  Besides, this late failure of the Italians has latterly disappointed me for many reasons, - some public, some personal.  My respects to Mrs S. 

                                                        Yours ever. 

                                                                        BYRON 

P.S. Could not you and I contrive to meet this summer?  Could not you take a run here alone? 

Since their meeting in 1816, when the two poets rented neighbouring houses on the shores of Lake Geneva, Byron and Shelley had provided inspiration throughout the often tumultuous years of being a bad-ass pirate son and adulterous pretty boy (respectively). Their personalities complemented the other, for the most part -- where Shelley was imaginative and reclusive, Byron was forceful and gregarious. Their meeting, among other things, coaxed Shelley through a rather vicious case of writer's block and encouraged Byron to take his pen (and talents) a little more seriously. 

But their passion was halted abruptly and tragically by Shelley's accidental drowning--his boat overturned in rough seas and his body was found with a book of poetry. According to John Trelawny's juicy account, when he stood on the beach reflecting on Shelley's funeral pyre, Byron was so overcome he  leapt into the sea, yelling furiously that the fickle waters should take him next. Spent, he then retired to his coach, and was soon making his girlfriends dress up like choir boys to soothe his grief. 

Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson

Bromance Heyday: 1887-1927

Okay, check this: the whole set-up of the Sherlock Holmes story was that his Girl Friday and faithful sidekick, Dr. Watson, lived with him and went on most if not all of his adventures through the underbelly of 19th century London. That's pretty bromantic in itself, but it gets even better. 


More importantly, Dr. Watson was the one who chronicled their adventures in a series of  "pamphlets", thus explaining the existence of the tales and lending credence to the idea that Holmes was a real guy. Holmes was supposed to be way too cool for school to bother with such trivial matters, and in fact, kind of made fun of Watson for doing so. But Watson did it anyway, becoming Holmes' unofficial biographer in the process. 


Yes. That's right. Doc Watson was such a lovestruck fanboy that he was writing fanfiction about his boss. 


Considering that everyone and their dog thinks of Sherlock Holmes as this bad-ass Victorian dandy with a keen deductive eye, who snuffs cocaine and has a "profound knowledge" of everything from botany to paperback horror stories, Watson did right by his subject. Watson seemed to be nursing one hella mancrush on Sherlock, describing his employer as a formidable bare-knuckle fighter, an expert swordsman, a trained boxer AND a master singlestick...whatever that means. Those aren't words you throw around lightly. The 2009 Guy Ritchie update notwithstanding, the bromance of Holmes and Watson was as touching as it was low-key.  

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway

Bromance Heyday: 1925 - roughly 1930

The most tempestuous of all bromances, Fitzgerald and Hemingway met in Paris in April of 1925. They moved in the same circle, affectionately nicknamed 'the Lost Generation', though at the time of their meeting Ernest's best work was in front of him and Fitzgerald's was reaching its apex with the publication of The Great Gastby. The two fell into a fast friendship, despite the disapproval of Mrs. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda... whose personality can be rather accurately described as sugar-coated TNT. Fitzgerald was dead-set on helping Ernest reach literary greatness, and put his considerable celebrity and know-how to work. 


But all was not well in bro-land. The two were famous for their disagreements, which could turn sour quickly and go on for days. And they disagreed on plenty: for one thing, Fitzgerald was a cheap drunk, and for Hemingway, this was a major character defect. From Steve Newman's account of their meeting: 

Fitzgerald was getting drunk, awfully drunk, and on just three glasses of champagne. Hemingway realised Scott could not take his drink, that drink made him ill and turned him into a small, well dressed monster.

In addition, Hemingway and Zelda hated each other something fierce. Ernest would accuse her of keeping him drunk so that he couldn't work, and Zelda, volatile on a good day, was convinced Ernest had seduced her husband and lured him into an affair.  Also, Hemingway was a bit of a bully, churlish and imposing exacting standards on his companions, while Fitzgerald crumbled under social pressure with drink and frivolity. 


Alas, it was not meant to be. In 1930, the Fitzgeralds abandoned their Paris playground when Zelda was admitted to a sanatorium in Switzerland for treatment of her schizophrenia. The friendship appeared to dissolve after that, with Hemingway and his mustache going on safari in East Africa before joining the Spanish Civil War, all the while pumping out the great novels of his career.  F. Scott faded into churning out hated grunt work in Hollywood, while his former tutee soared into the annals of literary fame. By the 1930s, the bloom was definitely off the rose of their friendship, transforming the two into bitter rivals that met only a handful of times throughout the 1930s. In fact, Hemingway would notoriously, and likely unfairly, depict F. Scott as a drunk, snivelling lout in his autobiographical last work, A Movable Feast. But the brilliance of their friendship lives on in infamy, though it burned out too fast in reality. 


No one ever said bromance was meant to last forever. 

The Cracked Granite of Don Draper

by Jillian Leigh, Ampersandology


*if you're not caught up with Season Three of Mad Men but care to do so on your own--do NOT read on. Spoilers up to 3.11 "The Gypsy and the Hobo."

It's been a losing battle for Don Draper this year. My affections have waned considerably alongside the cruelty he's been proudly boasting for the majority of Season Three-- look no farther than his snaps at Peggy or curt dismissal of Salvatore. For me, his slow descent into cruelty is a pretty good barometer on his slipping grasp on the once-enviable Draper charisma: the threadbare quality of his once unflappable cool has caused the undereducated and outmatched Dick Whitman (or worse, father Archibald) to lash out like a cat cornered from all sides. Don has been downright mean. 

Now, folks, when it comes to fictional characters, I don't mind imperfection. Actually, truth be told, I sort dislike characters without it (see: Kent, Clark, Jill's dislike of). And I'm not choosy, either: Psychologically damaged? Gee, who isn't these days? Obstinate to the point of rudeness? Join the club! Creepy close with your mother? Er, ah, well, okay, I guess. 

But this season, Draper pushed it too far, as usual; what was once alluring iciness hardened into hardcore cruelty. I understood the root--he'd tried so hard after the estrangement of his marriage to be good, doting on his pregnant wife and being the bright little solider even as Sterling Cooper crumbled under the British invasion. But his efforts fixed nothing like it was supposed to: Betty remained aloof and vaguely dissatisfied, his golden status around the office was under question, and moreover, he was still not happy. It was like plugging 2 + 2 into a calculator and getting an answer of 5; something was inexplicably absent from the equation but from Draper's self-centered design and secretive nature, he would miss it every time. 


I compared Don once to a granite statue: cool, calculated and manufactured to present the world with his best version of himself. That was the whole motivation behind the name-swap, after all. 

And then came "The Gypsy and the Hobo," otherwise known as "The Day Don Draper Stood Still." His little box of secrets was dragged into the light and he was forced to confront a whole mess of truths that being the gatekeeper lets you smother. When you don't have a Greek chorus aware of your every transgression, I'm sure your conscience would sleep a whole lot sounder. 

I bring up Greek tragedy because the entire confrontation scene brought that old (as in ancient) literary trope to mind. Betty becomes Don's Greek chorus, in turns horrified and heartbroken by the convoluted mess that is Don/Dick's past. Seeing Betty react to something we've all had seasons to process was a real treat, and a subtle reminder of how ludicrous yet ingenious the whole assumed identity  plotline is. And the fact that most of it took place in the kitchen and bedroom of the Draper residence-- mundane snapshots of domesticity that has kept Don grounded all these years--really makes me think that this may be the turning point (for keeps this time) for ol' Dick. Note how he referred to the life they'd built that now seemed in ruins: he reminds Betty that this is "our children....OUR home." Would the Don Draper of season one, ready to run away to places unknown with his mistress, ever made such a statement? The home that once trapped him is now the place of his confession and possible release. 


And speaking of Betty....she may still be a housecat--as her mother insinuated during her drug-induced labour dreams--but damn, this kitty's got claws. Having once been in Betty's position myself, I was tickled pink by her cool head and relentless barrage of questions. "You don't get to ask questions." Me-OW. I loved every minute of it, though I go back and forth in my actual evaluation of Betty's depth as a character. I'm sure the Stasi couldn't have player it cooler than Betty did during her long overdue interrogation. 


Anyway, to sum up? I saw Don Draper's granite crack this week, and I liked it. I hope that this is the sign of change on the horizon, because Don was quickly running himself into a place even my fractured idea of affection couldn't follow. Go Team Draper, I hope. At least until I catch Don in either flared jeans or tie-dye. 

Homage and Rip Off, Part Two: A Breakdown of Onscreen Shorthand

by Jillian Leigh, Ampersandology

Part One is here.



In the last post, I talked about some possible origins of the homage—the old boys of New Hollywood, and their love of referencing  their heroes and peers on the screen. Now, to start off this look at actual homage, let’s dive into 2003’s The Dreamers.

The Dreamers, set in 1968 during the student rebellion in Paris, follows Matthew, a young American student and blossoming cinephile. Every day he sits in the front row at the Cinémathèque Française, describing what takes place in the synapses of the patrons there as something near religious in its estacsy. He eventually befriends Theo and Isabelle, brother and sister who claim to be twins. Exotic and intelligent, the pair absorb Matthew into their home, and the days devolve into a lazy game of obscure film trivia and sexual one-upmanship.


The film was based on Gilbert Adair’s novel The Holy Innocents, but Bertolucci insisted on infusing the screenplay with references to his favorite films. The Dreamers therefore becomes a love song to the films of long-forgotten eras...and Bertolucci ain't subtle.

The characters are explicit in their debates (the slapstick ballet of Buster Keaton versus the pathos of Charlie Chaplin) and reenact scenes from their idolized films in an attempt to stump each other. They let Matthew know he’s part of the group by chanting the “one of us” refrain from Freaks (1936). The three race through the Lourve to beat the record in Bande à part (1964), pin up foreign posters of Blowup (1966) and, in my favorite moment, wrap themselves into their favorite narratives: Isabelle claims that she was born on the Champs Elysees and that her first words were “New York Herald Tribune, New York Herald Tribune.” This is, of course, a direct conscious reference to the heroine of Jean Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960), helpfully accompanied by the exact scene in question.


It's built in with the reverence that many of these films inspire, and when the reality that they have created in their self-referential cinematic crashes around them, the trio disbands. I always wonder what kind of message this is really sending about film lovers and their passions—is it really the purest kind of devotion, or is it a self-aware mockery of the same, suggesting it can only exist in a vacuum?

*

A little theorizing gives us three basic types of homage: by frame, by character or by theme.

FRAME

Being a visual medium, frame homage is the most obvious and easily recognizable way to reference another film. Take The Crowd, made in 1928 by director King Vidor. It was a groundbreaking film, and ahead of its time, depicting the metropolitan workspace as a cold, unfeeling place where dreams are squandered. John Sims (James Murray) is a cog in the machine, once believing he was destined for great things but now resigned to his neutered existence as #137 out of who knows how many. He marries, has kids, and is doomed to watch his children repeat his same mistake. Born on the fourth of July, I like to think of Sims’ character as Vidor's sly dig at the American Dream—after all, what’s more American than capitalistic obscurity?



A landmark film, and this image from the film has become iconic: a visual representation of Sims’ obscurity and wasted potential. So Billy Wilder chose to famously pay tribute to it in his 1960 masterpiece The Apartment (yes, I said masterpiece!). He even gives his lead, C.C. Baxter, a number to underscore how minuscule he is in comparison to the big scheme; “I work on the 19th floor,” Baxter says in his opening monologue. “Ordinary Policy Department, Premium Accounting Division, Section W, desk number 861.”


What’s key here is not the similarity of these two shots, but how they differ. The Crowd places the camera high above the ant-like employees, emphasizing their detachment from the real world and their identical station. But Wilder chooses to angle the lens on the ground, framing the scene so that the vast scope of the space is truly realized, with row after row of diligent employees and bright, unflattering lighting (here’s some trivia for you: this set was actually only about a third of a the size it appears—Hollywood magic and trick perspective gave the illusion of an expansive office space). What The Crowd started, The Apartment finishes, rescuing Baxter from obscurity by plucking him off the corporate ladder and turning him into a self-aware, happily unwound cog. Sims couldn't escape his lot in life, but Baxter fights for his freedom (and the girl).

OTHER NOTABLE REFERENCES

Dressed to Kill/Psycho
Director Brian de Palma has often been accused of ripping off Hitchcock like it was going out of style, and none is the senior director’s influence more clear than in 1980’s Dressed to Kill. Watch the trailer—the moody lighting, the densely weighted dialogue, the ramshackle editing of murder scenes (the execution of which, by the way, never seem to match the wounds on the victim’s body)--you can find it all done first (and quite frankly, done better) in 1960's Psycho. And then there’s this shot—not to spoil either film, but come on, Brian. Did you really think we wouldn’t notice?



Rashomon/Now, Voyager
Two drastically different films—Now, Voyager (1942) and Rashomon (1950)— made years apart but bearing uncanny similarities. A mysterious woman, face hidden by an unusually large headpiece, tilts up her chin for the potent reveal of a lovely face. Trying to trace a line of connection between these drastically different films may be a shot in the dark— but what strikes me here is the symbolic threads between them: in the latter, the samurai’s wife is introduced in the film for the first time, in one of several retellings of the same event, and still no closer to revealing the truth. In the former, we’ve already seen Bette Davis, but only as a hollow echo of her inner self: here, stepping out from the shadow of her mother, she is the girl underneath finally reaching the surface. Both shots delve into the art of revelation, attraction and identity. Plus, great hats! 

CHARACTER

Down With Pillow Talk
Evoking a famous character can be its own shorthand—put any surly kid in a red leather jacket and blue jeans and suddenly you’re channeling James Dean. Sometimes the character reference is more obscure, daring the film to pick apart the reference to get some hidden clue to the themes and influences of the film at large. And rarer still, it’s a loaded commentary on a certain era or film genre, and serves as the jumping off point for a mouthful of cultural criticism.


No film proves this like 2004's Down With Love. Barbara Novak is the author of a new book that glorifies having sex like a man (in this case, without love) that's taken the world’s female population by storm, empowering housewives and single gals alike. Catcher Block is the journalist determined to take her down and get things back to normal so he can happily continue his life as a cad. So he poses as an out of town bumpkin and seduces her with a false identity, hoping to trick her into falling for him and thus invalidating her book’s philosophy.


It was advertised as a send-up of all those Doris Day/Rock Hudson pairings of the 1950s and 1960s, but what everyone failed to point out how it was less a send-up than the unofficial remake of Pillow Talk, perhaps one of the most famous Day/Hudson outings. The idea of switching identities to trick the female love interest. Rock Hudson did it first, right down to the fake accent. But the translation, for the most part, works; with the freedom to explore issues that would have been taboo, or at the very least, unfashionable for a mainstream romcom in the late 1950s, Down With Love manages to both shed light on the assumptions of  its predecessor and muddle up commentary on the role of gender in society--both  past and present.

Everything—from sets, costumes, credits and visuals (note the split screen effect during phone calls—straight out of the playbook)-is lovingly reproduced, but none so thoroughly as the characters of Catcher Block and Barbara Novak, standing in for Hudson and Day, respectively. Zelleweger nails Doris Day’s throaty, pursed lip caricature of exasperation, doing her best to act like her attraction to the scandalous Catcher is nothing more than a buzzing gnat. And McGregor manages to edge Hudson’s traditional masculinity with a hint of mischievous, wide-eyed schoolboy.


But what these two characters really accomplish, besides bringing to life a pretty neat cinematic experiment, is a fulfillment of the kind of gender explorations that the older vehicles couldn’t match. A Rock Hudson/Day picture of the late 1950s and early 1960s promised a battle of the sexes, sure, but only guaranteed it for the first two thirds, at which the female character would give in just in time for the two to happily pair off. But in the updated version, their counterparts are free to explore the innuendo and inequality lying underneath those nearly-stock characters. Watch the scene where Barbara and Catcher converse on the phone, with the split screen cleverly edited to simulate every sex act in the book; can you call it innuendo when the gag is so explicit?

OTHER NOTABLE REFERENCES

Rachael in Blade Runner/Mildred Pierce in Mildred Pierce
The first time I saw Rachael’s hairdo in Blade Runner, I knew I’d seen it somewhere before. And that somewhere was on top of Joan Crawford's frankly terrifying visage in 1946's Mildred Pierce. And this got me thinking: what were they going for here? Mildred Pierce is a woman who builds her life around making her snotty, entitled brat of a daughter, Veda, happy. What exactly does that have to do with a 21st century replicant programmed to believe she's actually a human being? But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense: Rachel is channeling the kind of rigid, business-like exterior that Mildred later relied on to run her life.

Mutt Williams in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull/Johnny in The Wild One
Honestly? I can’t say much more about this one without blushing. Why do I blush? Because I feel personally embarrassed for Spielberg, and partly responsible. This isn’t a character inspired by another, this is tracing paper and an old copy of the studio stills. But bless him: I can’t blame the guy, because he’s so love with film that he probably just thought he was sending a Valentine to the hungry, angry ghost of Marlon Brando. But look, Brando didn’t tolerate his shtick being stolen the first time (by James Dean, who used to study the way the older actor sat in a chair and then ripped it wholeheartedly for his starring role in Rebel Without a Cause a few years later) and I really don’t think putting SHIIIIIA on a harley would get him tickled pink. I'm just saying. I don't think the ghost of Marlon Brando is going to be any more sane and/or genial than his corporeal being. Marlon Brando could eat Shia LeBeouf for breakfast and save the magnificent embers of his arrogant youth for lunch.

THEME/STYLE

Wes Anderson

More common, and more touching, I think, is when a director chooses to embrace or continue the themes that their cinematic heroes began. And one director who has turned this into a sweetly childlike habit is Wes Anderson. Wes Anderson’s influences are usually bolded on the screen—his work has shared qualities with J.D. Salinger’s novels, Charles Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip, the French New Wave and the 1970s auteur crowd. But one influence that stands out is the oeuvre of Orson Welles. Welles and Anderson share a handful of thematic haunts, revisiting them over and over. There is the pervasive exploration of the once great family name, tarnished by years of scandal, misuse and betrayal. Welles, of course, went epic, because I'm fairly certain he didn't know any other way, using The Magnificent Ambersons to cover an entire generation of the embittered, Southern family. For Anderson, it was more localized: in The Royal Tenenbaums, he creates an alternate New York City and sets up scene in a single household over a period of roughly two weeks. But the strains are echoed throughout both films: the betrayal of blood and the closed sense of space.

Matt Zohn Seitz breaks it down succinctly in his essay The Substance of Style:

Anderson and Wilson’s script for The Royal Tenenbaums contains many acknowledgments of Welles’s second feature, Ambersons, an adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s novel about a prominent small-town family in decline. There’s a similarly palatial, cone-topped family home, significant action blocked on and around imposing wooden staircases, and a sense of collective anxiety born of the feeling that time has passed a once-important family by and the community knows it. Both movies feature novelistic third-person narration, by Welles in Ambersons and Alec Baldwin in Tenenbaums.

Then there’s the fixation on tracing the fall those who live under great scrutiny and crumble with the pressure. These films, more often than not, center around great men and their steep decline—it’s a pattern both directors indulge often and with abandon. Welles, obviously, did it loudest with Citizen Kane, his magnum opus right out of the gate, and his examination of a life from every angle. Citizen Kane may be the flashiest digression on the subject, but he revisited the idea often, with Touch of Evil, Othello, The Stranger---even his documentary about infamous forger Elmyr de Hory,  F for Fake, deals with the same sense of glorious, inevitable decline.

Anderson, too, revisits this idea over and over again—you get the feeling that Mr. Blume in Rushmore and Steve Zissou have more in common than simply being played by Bill Murray. His male leads all bear the smudged luster of a bright past: they’re over the hill, with their best days are behind them, and to make matters worse, they’ve got a generation of upstarts nipping close at their heels. With Anderson’s interpretation, it’s usually the families that suffer most acutely from the fall of their patriarchs. In The Darjeeling Limited, a trio of brothers are left broken and in search of some piecemeal idea of their father’s legacy. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou explores a son's desire connect with his absentee father at the cost of his own personal idenitity. And in The Royal Tenenbaums, three children have been left orphans of neglect thanks to a father who never thought to make amends until he needed a place to stay.

What makes that last comparison even more potent is the fact that the Tenenbaum children are failed child prodigies returning to their childhood home: wunderkinds who fizzled out under the weight of their family’s damages. I can’t help but think of Welles himself, who directed Citizen Kane when he was 24*, and famously spent the next forty years battling bloated expectation, studio interference and a rather persuasive alcoholism. In the end, the boy genius was crippled by his own heady potential and never really made anything to truly rival his first film, notoriously remarking, “Everybody denies I am a genius --but nobody ever called me one.”

OTHER NOTABLE REFERENCES

Blade Runner/Metropolis

Let's break down the thematic strings tying these two together: both are set in the dystopian future, both deal with the reality of robots among civilization, and the perils of losing touch with our humanity and relying on slaves. But more importantly, both portray the creators of these robots as something near god-like, with the robots believing in their divinity and trusting that he (Rotwag in Metropolis and Tyrell in Blade Runner) can solve the woes of their short, dependent lives.

The Good German/Casablanca

Exhibit A:

Enough said.

Next: Now that we've seen how homage can work in film, let's move onto the prince of thieves himself: one Quentin Tarantino.

*Yeah, I know: 24. Orson Welles makes the rest of us look like lazy slobs. Until he became one himself, of course.