What a Wonderful World This Would Be—Well, Maybe

A Review of Midnight in Paris by S. Linwick for J. Morton

Directed by Woody Allen

Written by Woody Allen

Starring Kathy Bates, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hiddleston, Rachel McAdams, Alison Pill, Corey Stoll, and Owen Wilson

Score: ☆☆

Midnight in Paris didn’t fail to elicit consistent, hysterical laughter from the balding sexagenarian sitting across the aisle and one row ahead of me in the Minneapolis movie theater. Accompanied by a matronly woman in an orange, linen shift dress, the mirthful man in question sported a linen, button-down shirt of the same hue, carefully pressed cargo shorts, and a pair of those fashionably sensible KEEN sandals. In other words, Midnight in Paris charmed Woody Allen’s target audience: the (probably) neurotic, white, heterosexual, liberal, (upper) middle class male.

That’s not to say that Midnight in Paris didn’t entertain me. In all fairness, it’s a pretty film. At times it’s even a pretty hilarious film. But its initially humorous characters eventually wind up seeming rather hollow. Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill), and Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), for instance, ultimately come across as merely mediocre caricatures. Moreover, although the protagonist Gil (Owen Wilson) is certainly cute and comical, he isn’t particularly complex or compelling. So as the final credits started rolling, I found myself wondering, “Huh. That’s all there was to him? That’s all there was to Midnight in Paris? Um, okay.”

But I don’t mean to suggest that Midnight in Paris disappointed me. It didn’t; my expectations for it weren’t that high in the first place. Of course class, race, and gender are basically non-issues in this flick.  As I noted, Allen’s films generally cater to neurotic, white, heterosexual, liberal, (upper) middle class males. That’s why money, for example, never really presents a problem at any point in the picture—not even for time travelers like Gil. Everyone in Allen’s (transhistorical) Paris also appears to be of European descent. Indeed, in a piece on the treatment of race in legal culture, Jerome McCristal Culp, Jr. (Professor of Law at Duke University) denominates the dismissal of “‘identity politics’ as unimportant to understanding the law and doing justice” as the “Woody Allen Blues”—i.e., the “liberal establishment’s inability to deal with race and identity.” “The six-line chorus that gets repeated by the ‘Woody Allen Blues,’” Culp explains, “is that if we do not speak of race, then racism does not exist” (512-13).[1]

Who knows? Maybe Allen is just loath to imagine a world in which a guy like him who faces problems like his isn’t always the center of attention. That would shed light on why even lesbians only dote on men in this movie. Stein’s famous lover, Alice B. Toklas, does make a brief appearance, but shortly after Hemingway hails her, she fades into the shadows so Stein can tend to Pablo Picasso, Hemingway, and Gil. Likewise, Djuna Barnes evidently materializes for the sole pleasure of a quick caper with Gil. Gee, what a wonderful world this would be—well, maybe for Woody Allen or the man in the orange, linen shirt. 

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[1] Jerome McCristal Culp, Jr., “The Woody Allen Blues: ‘Identity Politics,’ Race, and the Law,” Florida Law Review 51 (1999): 511-28. 

Now That's Some Class

Erik Lensherr revenges  his mother's death in Argentina

A Review of X-Men: First Class by S. Linwick

Directed by Matthew Vaughn

Written by Ashley Miller, Zack Stenz, Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn, Sheldon Turner, Bryan Singer

Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne, and Jennifer Lawrence

Score: ☆☆☆☆

Even the title of this film cleverly invites its audience to examine the construction of class. (Here I employ a sense of “class” synonymous with “category.”) Perhaps the most salient question it poses is, “How does society decide when and where a species—a kind of class—ends or begins?” Or more specifically, “Are Professor Xavier’s X-Men necessarily ex-men (i.e., ex-humans)?” So although “first class” conventionally denotes a specific socioeconomic station, in this particular flick, the term remains productively ambiguous; “first class” may refer to an originary group (the founding members of the X-Men), a superhuman—or a paradoxically inhuman—division of humankind, a superlative set of individuals, or all of the above. Indeed, throughout the film the characters themselves struggle to determine whether they actually belong to any class and—if they do belong to a class—how they ought to conceptualize the nature of that class.

Erik Lensherr—who eventually assumes the moniker “Magneto”—proves the most problematic character in the throes of this existential class crisis. At some moments, I find Erik profoundly compelling, but at other moments I find him utterly unconvincing. Michael Fassbender deserves most of the credit for Erik’s magnetic appeal. His exchanges with Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Raven Darkholme (Jennifer Lawrence) are more often than not quite moving. Erik’s rationale for parting with Charles, however, seems tenuous at best, which—given Erik’s obvious intelligence—strikes me as one of the script’s most serious flaws.[1]

But the questions that X-Men: First Class raises, not the answers it offers are what—aside from the awesome action sequences and special effects—truly distinguish it. Suffice it to say that when I described this film to a friend as “the best movie of the year,” I was only being slightly facetious. Who knows? It very well could be. Mutatis mutandis.

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[1] Because of his childhood experiences as a prisoner in a concentration camp during World War II, Erik knows the genocidal horrors that humans are capable of committing. In fact, a Nazi eugenicist—Dr. Klaus Schmidt—who is convinced that Erik possesses superhuman magnetic power attempts to tap that power by torturing Erik and his mother. After Erik fails to comply with Schmidt’s injunction to move a coin with his magnetic power, Schmidt has Erik’s mother escorted into the room. Schmidt then explains that he will count to three, and if Erik cannot move the coin within that space of time, he will shoot her. By the count of three, none of Erik’s efforts prove successful, and Schmidt keeps his promise. Enraged by his mother’s murder, Erik discovers that he can access his powers through his rage, and he promptly demolishes Schmidt’s quarters. 

But this delights Schmidt, who is no mere Nazi. In actuality, Schmidt is none other than Sebastian Shaw, a “mutant” with the ability to absorb, radiate, and generally manipulate energy. Shaw’s grand plan in X-Men: First Class is to trigger a nuclear war that will wipe out all but the strongest living organisms—in his view, to separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff—and thereby to accelerate the evolutionary process. Somewhat surprisingly, just before Erik revenges himself on Shaw, he admits that he endorses Shaw’s program—he “agree[s] with everything [Shaw] said.” “But you killed my mother,” he adds as he forces the same coin that he could not move in time to prevent his mother’s murder through Shaw’s skull. Like Shaw, Erik wishes to rid the earth of non-mutants—in other words, those conventionally classified as “normal.” Yet if he truly agrees with Shaw, he would have to concede that his own mother was one of those basically normal and unspectacular humans who, at the end of the day, didn’t really matter. Shaw is motivated by his passion for eugenics. Erik, in contrast, is motivated by a desire to protect forms of life that society deems “abnormal.” I can’t help but think, then, that because Erik’s concerns are essentially ideological, he might do well to spend more time grinding an ideological axe with Professor Charles Xavier and less time playing with magnets.

"I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act." 
- Orson Welles

Note from a Concerned Reader

The Stars Are Half Empty; or, Why I Didn't Vote in the Black Swan Poll

"I curse the Satanic force that dreamed up the four-star scale (at the New York Daily News in 1929, I think). It forces a compromise. So why don't I simply drop the star ratings? As I have explained before, I'd about convinced my editors to drop them circa 1970, when Siskel started using them. To drop them now would be unilateral disarmament. Do editors even care about such things? You're damned right they do."

—Roger Ebert, "'You give out too many stars'"

When I read 2NK's "Introduction of Methods," I was hoping that I was witnessing a subversive takeover of the ubiquitous star scale. I've long had mixed feelings about the scale, so something that twisted it without doing away with it entirely has a significant appeal. Before I get into what I had hoped I was seeing in 2NK, let me briefly touch on the duality of the current system.

Roger Ebert does a very good job laying out the case against the star rating system in his column, so I will attempt to offer a very brief summary in saying that the system's ability to compare movies is fundamentally flawed. Comparing Airplane to Lawrence of Arabia is hard enough. Using the same system to compare both of those films and Gigli and Chaos and your cousin's amateur film project is simply absurd. While Gigli was bad, no one would suggest that it was either immoral or technically deficient, so it must rank above the other two. When the bottom of the barrel is considered, it's easy to see how a "typical" bad film like Gigli ends up with 2½ stars.

Having said all this, I frequently appreciate the star system because it makes the review quickly accessible and potentially stripped of all spoilers. If Francis Ford Coppola makes a film, I want an assessment of quality without a shred of plot, and I get this by looking at nothing but the stars.

So here's where 2NK has the opportunity to twist all this is an exciting way. By giving each star a specific meaning (as outlined in the Introduction), it's changed the stars from a scale-type ranking to a checklist. Beautiful cinematography? Shade in star number two! A character too complex for anyone save Hugh Laurie? Shade in number four! Zagat has been doing this for restaurants. USGBC has been doing this with "green" buildings. And both systems have proved to be useful if not perfect. On 2NK, that we're using stars isn't meaningful, but it does bring with it familiarity that makes it more instantly accepted by the mind and this makes me wonder if maybe this could be first step towards dismantling a broken 80-year-old system.

In conclusion, let me finally address Mr Aranofsky's latest work with the my 2NK rating, and when I've issued it "☆★☆★☆," let no one say that I've given it "two stars." 




-J. Lucas

On Beauty and Being Just

A review of Jane Eyre by C. Cleary

Directed by Cary Fukunaga

Written by Moira Buffini, adapted from the novel by Charlotte Brontë

Starring Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, and Jamie Bell

Score: ☆☆☆[1]

When I resolved to write a short review of the new Jane Eyre movie as a means of 1) placating our thousands of hungry, loyal readers and 2) staving off threats of superiority from a vicious competing cohort blog, I promised myself that I would avoid pettily commenting upon the fact that JANE EYRE DOES NOT LOOK LIKE THAT!! Instead, I'm going to do just that. Mostly because when I was Google Image searching "Jane Eyre 2011" to find an image for this post, this blog came up, and in it, the author concluded: "But the driving force of Jane Eyre is the remarkable portrayal of Jane by Mia Wasikowska, whose absorbing performance and beautiful presence magnify the film’s visual beauty."

 Um......yes. And this is the problem.


Is it an absorbing performance? Yes! Of Jane Eyre? Not really. A new Jane Eyre, maybe. I don't mean to enforce adherence to the original text or anything (yes, I do), but what happened to Jane's stubborn assertiveness? In the film, she loses most of it after age ten, partially because Jane's splendid narration is missing, leaving, in the film, eye contact and Jane's "beautiful presence" onscreen to bear the heavy brunt of communicating Jane's insoluble will (yes, insoluble--as in, not dissolved by Rochester's domineering presence). 

Jane's not directing anymore--instead, she's obeying orders and crying on cliffs as we stare at her face. But Jane did not lay herself over the rain-stained cliffs of the heath to cry never-ending torrents of tears like a mourning seal when Rochester would leave for a few days or intend to marry a dum-dum or whatever. She was like eff that, it is raining out here and I've still got to govern this silly French girl for four more hours today, and then draw strange drawings revealing my even stranger soul.

Am I arguing that visual beauty is overrated in film? Never, my friends. Never. But the camera's fetishization of the well-lit and well-proportioned/traditionally beautiful female face is not to be conflated with the beauty of the landscape (a la Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice), or, if you want to think about it this way, set in contrast to the sublimity of the gothic landscape, to begin to mean only its pleasing (pleasingly feminine) image [2]. Especially when you're adapting texts about female characters who are not chiefly beautiful. Jane Eyre's face is boring. It's a blank space! Don't even try to look at it!


Okayyyy, you're right, reader--I'm being unfair. I can't think of an actress with a face uninteresting enough to satisfy me as Jane (does such a thing even exist? has filmic representation ever not endowed the object with meaning?)

In sum, it's hard work to film this so novel-y of novels, and maybe shouldn't be attempted. After all, besides the fact that I don't want Jane Eyre to have a face, there's not supposed to be a lot to see (I'm going to refrain from making an analogy to Bertha's imprisonment/Rochester's blindness...ahem).  It's Jane's narration and novelistic presence, and not necessarily the events of the plot, that drive the novel. All you've got is nothing happening + very little happening while you wait for something significant to happen. Well, you know, until all that crazy shit starts happening. But there's no time for this in the film, so what were incredibly powerful plot moments lose their potency and become a series of not entirely satisfying cheap thrills (I use the term "cheap thrills" loosely...). See marginal utility. And so, as my roommate pointed out, an adaptation like this one has difficulty granting its scenes enough silence and space for viewer anticipation to develop. So what I'm advocating for here is Jane Eyre doing very little in a dark, dark house with a blurred-out face and voice over narration. Yes....

Hmm, wait a minute--this review sounds altogether negative, but in truth, I thoroughly enjoyed watching this movie, especially for the following reasons:

 

1. Gothic to the max

2. Rochester: yes.

3. cinematography: yes.

4. Mia's acting is a pleasure to watch. It's true.

5. Excellent job of illuminating the dynamics of Western culture--i.e. "oh, wait--Rochester was actually taking advantage of this girl who knew no other life, huh?" There's a nice scene in which Jane and Mrs. Fairfax are looking out the window of the house as Jane vents her frustration about this.

6. costumes

And there you have it [3].

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[1] Though three stars appear here, in truth, the star system is temporarily suspended until we figure out just how the hell to quantify our opinions of a film's merits.
[2] I apologize for using the word "fetishization."
[3] Bessie, you need to review this movie.

Of Gods and Men

A review by C. Cleary

Directed by Xavier Beauvois

Written by Xavier Beauvois and Etienne Comar

Starring Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, and Olivier Rabourdin

Score: ☆☆☆☆☆

All the stars*. At least. Go see it. Bring some wine, cheese, and a pretzel roll.


*Caveats: There should have been significant (named) female characters. There should have been significant (named) characters from the village.

PLEASE DON'T SING ALONG TO THIS SWAN'S SONG

An incomplete review of Black Swan


Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Written by Mark Heymanm, Andres Heinz, and John McLaughlin

Starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, and Vincent Cassel

Score: ☆☆X

Black Swan truly inspired both of us. Indeed, its banal characters, its perpetuation of certain profoundly disturbing stereotypes, and its predictable plot inspired us to begin this blog; we felt compelled to weigh in on the general hoo-ha over the film. Too few critics were calling attention to its self-indulgent misogyny—i.e., to its superficial, at times even snide, portrayal of its female characters, not to mention the evident pleasure it takes in the process of Nina’s demise.


But as we developed a scoring system with which to evaluate films, we became increasingly excited about reviewing other films and decided that we would rather not waste much breath in a diatribe against Black Swan.[1] Still, we do think the film deserves more consideration than we can bring ourselves to afford it. We’re therefore asking you, our esteemed readers, to share your two cents; please take a moment to vote in the poll to your right. How many stars would you give Black Swan?

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[1] In summary, we think Black Swan deserves two stars and one imploding star: one star for cinematography, half a star for “originality,” half a star for illuminating the social dynamics of Western culture, and one imploding star for sexism.