The Space Between the Arts

What more can be said of Pixar’s ability to make wonderful stories that rake in mounds of cash? The animation studio has put out the most consistently original and entertaining films of the past thirteen years and each film has been a commercial success. Even the animated shorts they play before their features have more creativity, heart, and humor than most of the films released. They’ve explored the worlds of toys, monsters, cars, fish, superheroes, bugs, and even a rat with great culinary talents. They’ve given us amazing characters like Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Boo, Elastigirl, Edna Mode, Dory, and Remy. Perhaps the one thing that can be said of Pixar is that no matter how predictable it is that their next movie will be very good or excellent, we still leave the theater surprised, enraptured, entertained, and even enlightened. Pixar’s films defy the animation genre; they don’t make just the most technologically advanced cartoons, they make some of the best films, period.

With the release of their ninth film, WALL-E, Pixar extends their successful streak to nine. They also continue to break new ground by giving us both their first science-fiction tale and date movie. Writer-director Andrew Stanton has fashioned yet another iconic character in WALL-E, the last working robot of thousands created by Buy N Large — a giant retailer that has taken over providing humanity with nearly every need or desire — to clean up the Earth after humans’ consumption and waste has made the planet uninhabitable and devoid of nearly all vegetation. We meet him 700 years into the future and he’s still working away, compacting the trash into cubes and placing them in stacks as high as sky-scrapers. All the while, WALL-E collects some of the interesting pieces of garbage — rubber duckies, Christmas lights, a Rubik’s Cube — and brings them back to his shelter. WALL-E does not talk per se, but he communicates clearly and his curiosity and wonderment at the world around him are contagious. It also helps that Ben Burtt made the sound design for the film. Burtt previously gave “voices” to R2-D2 and ET, two of the most wonderful and articulate communicators in cinema despite the fact that they don’t speak any human language. Like all Pixar films, WALL-E looks gorgeous, even the early sequences depicting the desolate Earth. Like all Pixar films, however, WALL-E’s beauty resides primarily in its story and characters. The amount of imagination the filmmakers and animators possess humbles the audience.
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On his music blog, “List of the Day,” on Yahoo!, Rob O’Connor recently wrote of Bob Dylan, saying, “No matter how much is written about the man, he never becomes any more known to any of us.” Writer-director Todd Haynes takes this fact of one of the most well-known and most enigmatic public figures of the past fifty years and makes a whole film exploring Bob Dylan given what we have of him. That film, I’m Not There, is a fascinating if uneven piece of art that defies categorization. It is no biopic of an artist like Ray or Walk the Line. Rather, Haynes’ film looks at the understanding of Dylan as it already exists in the public eye. Before seeing this film, it’s probably best if people go watch two documentaries: D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back and Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home. These films will help people understand how Haynes plays with the legend of Dylan. It goes without saying that I’m Not There has a wonderful soundtrack.

Haynes chooses from the outset to avoid the conventions of the biopic since he’s not playing with that genre; he’s playing with notions of artistry and celebrity. Most notably, Haynes has chosen to portray Dylan as six different characters embodying different popular notions of Dylan, played by six different actors. Some of the characters have obvious connections to the singer/songwriter such as Jack Rollins (Christian Bale), the social critic of Dylan’s early career and the born-again Christian in the late 1970’s. Or Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett), the version of Dylan who plugged in an electric guitar and alienated a large swathe of his fan base on albums such as Bringing it All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. Other embodiments of Dylan are more confusing, such as the young African-American adolescent (Marcus Carl Franklin) stowing away on trains, playing guitar, and telling anyone who will listen that he’s Woody Guthrie.
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In college I became fascinated with NASA’s Apollo program. The grandiosity of the project to send people to the Moon astounded me. Technologies nowhere close to existence would need to be invented. Thousands upon thousands of people would need to work together to build rockets, spacecraft, clothing, and even food that ensured the pilots of these new contraptions could not only survive escaping Earth’s atmosphere, but would also land on another terrestrial body and return intact. I was in awe of the dedication, creativity, and courage it took for people to send others to walk on the Moon. I don’t know how many times I watched Ron Howard’s 1995 film, Apollo 13 or HBO’s excellent 1998 miniseries, From the Earth to the Moon. I read countless web pages, books, and even wrote more than one college paper that dealt with the Apollo program as its subject, which is a hard thing to do since I was a psychology major and a religious studies minor. I became fascinated with the multi-stage launches, the strange-looking Lunar Module, and the powerful Saturn V rocket, what author Andrew Chaikin calls, “NASA’s answer to the Pyramids.” When I was a kid, I had a poster of the famous picture Neil Armstrong took of Buzz Aldrin on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission, but I had thrown it out in junior high. In college, I bought another copy and framed it. Through college and seminary I would look at the space explorer to inspire me when I felt bogged down by schoolwork.

It is thus surprising that it has taken so long for me to watch Al Reinert’s 1989 documentary, For All Mankind. I’ve known about the documentary for at least a decade, but it was hard to find in rental stores. With the advent of movie rental subscriptions, I had the film delivered to my house. On viewing it, I loved the film, but I know I would have just about jumped out of my seat had I watched it at the height of my fanaticism for all things Apollo. Also, I imagine this splendid documentary would render a viewer speechless if seen on the big screen.
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Born as an homage to pulp serial films, the Indiana Jones franchise has always shrugged in the face of reality, opting instead for unadulterated entertainment. The films are exciting, funny, engrossing, and unbelievable, all at the same time, and to varying degrees. I recently returned to Raiders of the Lost Ark in preparation for the latest sequel and found myself enraptured again with a story that sets out to do one thing — entertain the audience — and does it perfectly. Perhaps the surprising thing about the popularity of the Indiana Jones series is its utter lack of social or philosophical commentary. Other popular stories such as Star Wars, The Matrix, or even Jurassic Park have tapped into mythical or ethical discussions that have shaped Western society. After watching Raiders again, I asked myself, what was the point, the deeper message of the film? Nazis are bad? If I ever come across an important Old Testament artifact, be careful? In the end, I had to shrug and admit I haven’t learned much of anything from this series, but I’ve had a great time anyway. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Harrison Ford, and company just wanted to entertain and the Indiana Jones movies should probably be judged on the criterion of how well do they achieve that entertainment.

Thus we come to the sequel nineteen years in the making, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Indy and the world around him have aged. The Nazis are history and the Soviets are now the bad guys on the scene. I won’t describe much of the plot because it’s a classic case of the MacGuffin — everyone is looking for an item because that item is powerful. The Soviets want the item, the crystal skull of the title, for world domination and Indy wants it so that the Soviets can’t get it. Like the Ark of the Covenant, the Sankara Stones, or the Holy Grail before it, the crystal skull is an excuse to set up epic and hilarious chase sequences, booby-trapped ruins, and show Indy taking and giving punches that sound like howitzers firing. Indy’s older and there are enough appropriate jokes about this. His love-interest from the first film, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) has returned, but that’s about it in terms of familiar faces. Indy’s father (Sean Connery) and friend Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) have passed on. Instead we get a new set of characters such as Marion’s son Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), Marcus’ replacement at the university Charles Stanforth (Jim Broadbent in an underused role), Indy’s underdeveloped sidekick Mac (Ray Winstone), and the new villain, the femme-fatale Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett, who looks like she’s having a lot of fun).
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I have quickly become enamored with Cormac McCarthy’s prose. He writes with an unmistakable voice characterized by quiet immediacy and a sure style. Reading a McCarthy novel is like reading one long prose poem.

All the Pretty Horses (1992) earned McCarthy a National Book Award. It is the first of his Border Trilogy and follows the sixteen-year-old John Grady Cole whose father is distant and mother ran away when John Grady was a toddler. The story opens with the funeral of his maternal grandfather on whose ranch John Grady has lived his whole life. His mother, the heiress of the ranch, has made it known that she intends to sell the land. Disenfranchised and convinced there is nothing left for him in Texas, John Grady sets out on horseback with his friend Lacey Rawlins for Mexico.
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Not so long ago it seemed like we were heading toward a huge collapse of the Tolkien film legacy when New Line Cinema announced that they would never work with Peter Jackson again. The film version of The Hobbit appeared doomed. When Jackson announced he reached an agreement to produce the film, but wouldn’t return to the direct, I calmed down a bit.

While I would prefer the original The Lord of the Rings team to return in its entirety with Jackson directing, there have been further encouraging developments. Jackson chose director Guillermo del Toro to helm the two-part film. Del Toro, writer/director of the amazing Pan’s Labyrinth has shown he can handle the imaginative demands that adapting Tolkien takes. Now, we get news that Ian McKellen will likely reprise his role as Gandalf. I’m growing excited.

Lately, the Western genre has captivated me. It probably started in October with seeing the recent remake of 3:10 to Yuma. Since then I saw No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, which has taken much of my attention. For my movie club selections, I chose The Searchers and High Noon, two classics in the genre that I had not previously viewed. I returned to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I bought a copy of Unforgiven and am currently reading Cormac McCarthy’s novel, All the Pretty Horses.

What attracts me to Westerns right now is not what traditionally comes to mind when one considers the genre. The clear-cut white hat versus black hat morality doesn’t interest me much. Nor do the actual history of western expansion by the United States and the important discussions of justice and genocide that history brings forth. Instead, I am drawn to what McCarthy emphasizes of the West: the frontier is a hard land capable of destroying people and communities. Because it exists beyond the reach of the law, the contents of peoples’ hearts show more clearly. One has to make a choice to be a moral person rather than depend upon the borders society creates to make moral decisions for them.

The Westerns set in the 19th century embrace the hope of settlers to make a fresh start in the untamed land as well as see it as a dangerously hard place to survive. Farmers cannot make their crops grow. Wild animals, harsh weather, and other humans threaten to take whatever gains one has made. People faced with the challenge of survival must choose whether they will behave in ways that promote community and justice, or will they shuck all morality and choose a self-interested existence? As in the cases of Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) in High Noon or Dan Evans (Christian Bale) in 3:10 to Yuma, on what resources do they rely when their communities would rather retreat and seek immediate safety rather than challenge evil? Or in the case of Bill Munny (Clint Eastwood) in Unforgiven, what should have kept him from resorting to his old violent ways; how did the system of justice become so perverted that vigilantism was the only means of recourse? How does the prospect of riches in There Will Be Blood and The Treasure of Sierra Madre change human relationships and how could the men in those stories have made choices that sought the benefit of others rather than their defeat? Where does their greed eventually lead them? While people may say that Westerns are too simple in their morality, these are questions we need to answer today.

In McCarthy’s contemporary Westerns, society has not tamed the land. If anything, it is more terrifying than before, as evinced in the harrowing character Anton Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem in the film version of No Country for Old Men) with his odd sense of fate and morality. The open landscape may begin as a symbol of freedom and opportunity, but it ends in chaos void of rules, as in the case of John Grady Cole’s journey in All the Pretty Horses. I find myself drawn to this bleak world full of more terrifying questions than reassuring answers. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) understands the risk in living in such a world. He explains in the opening narration of No Country for Old Men, “But, I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He’d have to say, ‘O.K., I’ll be part of this world.’”

I previously wrote a post about movies that evoked love in a lot of people, but didn’t garner the same response from me. This post would be its companion piece. Here are movies I liked or loved, but many people around me didn’t like the films or hated them.

1. The Star Wars prequels. Episodes 1, 2, and 3 [d. Lucas, 1999, 2002, 2005]
2. Eyes Wide Shut [d. Kubrick, 1999]
3. Signs [d. Shyamalan, 2002]
4. Deep Impact [d. Leder, 1998]
5. Crash [d. Haggis, 2005]
6. Artificial Intelligence: AI [d. Spielberg, 2001]
7. The Talented Mr. Ripley [d. Minghella, 1999]

Hmm… Strangely enough, there is a lot of science-fiction on this list.

(Note: I’m a huge fan of everything Wes Anderson has done, though I don’t include his work in this list since people generally fall into one of two categories: they either love his work or despise it. If someone likes one of his films, chances are he or she likes all of Anderson’s films. Conversely, if someone doesn’t like one of Anderson’s films, there is a great liklihood that she or he won’t like any of his movies.)

Not that I’m all too excited about the internet traffic this post will generate, given the subject matter of the work discussed, but I wanted to review Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel, Lolita. Digesting this strange masterpiece was truly one of the most unique experiences I’ve had as a reader. Because of the grotesque setting of the novel — a pedophile’s first-hand account of his desires and ultimate crimes against a twelve-year-old — I found myself fighting through the first one hundred fifty pages or so. What kept me going was the fact that Lolita is considered such an important work and I imagined its lasting influence had to with more than its taboo subject matter.

Lolita comes to the reader as an extended narrative from Humbert Humbert, an anomalous European intellectual expatriate with a questionable past who moves to America. Humbert remains stunted from the death of his childhood love, Annabel Leigh. From that point on, he finds himself only sexually attracted to nymphets, a term he employs to describe girls aged 9 to 14 whom he believes possess a certain type of precociousness. Humbert has fought his desires in the past by spending time in and out of mental institutions, enduring one failed marriage, and satiating himself in bordellos. The interesting thing about Humbert is that he is an immoral character — that is, he knows full well that his desires are illegal and that there are good reasons for that illegality, though he does try to defend his proclivities at various points. Once in America, Humbert rents a room from Charlotte Haze and immediately sees in her twelve year-old-daughter, Dolores, the embodiment of all his lifelong desires. Humbert agrees to marry Charlotte so that he can remain close to Dolores. When Charlotte dies in an accident, Humbert seizes on his chance to indulge all his vile desires and kidnaps Dolores, taking her on an extended road trip, buying her off with lavish gifts, but all the while raping her on a regular basis. Because Humbert is our narrator, we are told that it is actually Dolores who initiates the sexual encounter. On the road, we see his jealousy emerge and that jealousy eventually leads the reader to wonder Humbert has mental problems beyond his perversion. Humbert’s decline rivals that of Raskolnikov’s in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, though it occurs in the opposite direction. Where Raskolnikov’s conscience returns with vengeance and ultimately leads him back into society, Humbert’s conscience loses its mooring and he descends beyond the point of keeping any law, human or traffic.
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I love that people find movies seminal in their lives and they consider them good friends. Stories have a way of changing the way we see the world or of saying something we believe in a new way that resonates inside of us so profoundly that we can never think about a subject without thinking about that story. I can honestly say that To Kill a Mockingbird and The Lord of the Rings (both the novels and movies) have affected my ethics so that I think of Atticus Finch or Frodo when facing a tough decision.

Every so often a movie comes out that seems to garner near universal praise and adulation from people I know, and yet it doesn’t work for me. Sometimes I can’t stand the film. Usually, I like the movie just ok, but for various reasons, I don’t like it as much as other people. This is a touchy subject because we take those stories that transform us very personally. Thus, a disclaimer: I may say I missed the boat on your movie, but I’m not saying I think you’re a bad person or less than me for liking it as much as you do.

1. The Matrix [d. Wachowski brothers, 1999]
2. Gladiator [d. Scott, 2000]
3. Life is Beautiful [d. Benigni, 1998]
4. Whale Rider [d. Caro, 2002]
5. Chicago [d. Marshall, 2002]
6. Training Day [d. Fuqua, 2001]
7. Napoleon Dynamite [d. Hess, 2004]

I can elaborate further if you’d like, or if you’d prefer just to call me a heartless idiot, feel free.