Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is definitely not a film that can be watched passively. As I watched it, my mind was flooded with questions of perception, consciousness, and reality as I tried to understand this complex piece. First and foremost, this film had me questioning reality more than anything else. Many cognitive film theorists stress the importance of the relationship between film and mental perception rather than the relationship between film and reality, and Eternal Sunshine certainly encompasses this ideal.

            Maya Deren wrote about how reality is simply a mental concept; we perceive things as real by relating them to past experiences and learned expectations. I struggled with this theory quite a bit, but I had an epiphany during the film that cleared things up for me. Reality is a something we all deal with and relate to, but who is to say that we all experience the same realities?  At first as I watched the dream sequences, with Clementine and Joel hiding from extraction, existing in an inconceivably realistic world of imagination, I found myself being slightly skeptical of the film. The more I watched though, the more I was struck by the honesty and believability of its premise. The film presented phenomenon that you would not encounter in everyday life, things that could only be present in a dream. However, why should a dream be perceived as any less realistic than real life? My thoughts, my dreams, are real to me inside my head, and they are indeed a part of my every day reality. My reality is unique to me. Reality and identity are simply mental constructs, not physical substances.

Cinema has so much value and potential for expression because, unlike other arts, it retains tangible aspects of reality that we can relate to while appealing to the more intimate aspects of the spectator- emotions, imagination, memories- to create a cinematic world that is unique to each viewer. In Eternal Sunshine, I watched as Joel was asked relive the memories evoked by different objects as Stan watched the MRI and extracted them. Joel is flooded with memories of Clementine as he looks as these seemingly insignificant objects- odd potato figurines and abstract drawings- that, to most people, would mean nothing. But to Joel, these mementos mean everything to him. In that aspect, we, the spectator, are like Joel. We watch a film and each individual spectator is flooded with memories, thoughts, musings, all based on our individual pasts.

This just makes me think about, really and truly, how important the spectator is in cinema. Film is so subjective and the consciousness of the individual spectator shapes how they perceive the film. The active spectator accepts the impression of reality and depth the film presents and derives meaning from it, despite their inherent awareness of the film’s distance from reality. For example, when Joel first sees Clementine in Barnes & Noble and she acts as if she does not know him, it appears as a believable, realistic scene. Then, as Joel walks down the aisles of books, the lights above him start going off one-by-one, and all of a sudden Joel is back in Rob and Carrie’s house.  The viewer is jolted, quickly forced to accept that he or she is not in for a perfectly conventional and linear love story. Once the spectator accepts this, the film’s blending of reality and the supernatural takes on new meaning and the viewer can make his or her own interpretation of the story.

Joel and Clementine themselves demonstrate this phenomenon of how a spectator can adapt and personalize cinema to suit his or her own purposes and experiences. In the dream sequence, at one point, Joel and Clementine find themselves in the memory of a night spent at the drive-in theater. Clem and Joel jokingly dub over the voices of the actors on screen, giving them ridiculous lines and accents. Joel and Clementine, demonstrating Lindsay’s idea that conversation among the audience was beneficial to cinema, use their own methods and imaginations to create a whole new experience and interpretation of the film.

As a spectator, my past experiences and preconceived notions shaped my reception of the film. I kept finding myself thinking about how unconventional Clementine was in her approach to dating; bad romantic comedies and learned social conventions have taught me to react to a woman telling a man “I’m going to marry you” on the first day they met with horror. Similarly, my trite notions of Valentine’s Day had me analyzing the significance of Joel and Clementine’s meeting in Montauk on February 14^th. However, then I realized that my notions were just that: notions, not fact or law.

Once I accepted that, I fully realized how subtly and irrevocably we as humans are influenced by everything we come into contact with. With so many aspects of life that yield to your expectations and stereotypes, it is refreshing to be exposed to things that surprise you. Cinema’s beauty lies in its potential to incorporate aspects of reality with aspects of creativity and imagination. Like Joel’s experience of Déjà vu in Eternal Sunshine, the relationship between reality and creativity is so complexly intertwined that we, the spectator, should experience a feeling of déjà vu when we view a film; it should be an experience so close to our reality, but at the same time, so enigmatic and innovative, that we are awed and inexplicably altered by our contact with it.

Maya Deren stressed cinema’s uniqueness in that it is the only art that cannot be totally controlled; it can be guided by the filmmaker, but will always be affected by the spontaneous and uncontrollable aspects of life. The “controlled accident” transcends into the story of Eternal Sunshine. In the ultimate “controlled accident”, we see Mary fall in love with Howard again after her procedure, and of course, we see Clementine and Joel reunite, despite their troubles. In this way,  fate surpasses all other forces and takes precedence. No matter how much other forces attempt to interfere, nature and its “controlled accident” will always prevail.

M (1931)

Throughout this process, I’ve been thinking a lot about my interest in sound and what first got me hooked and that film was M. Though it was one I’d already seen, I decided I better embrace my what inspired me so I went back and watched M again. So, without further ado, here are a few of my original insights and comments on the sound in Fritz Lang’s M.

The most striking aspect of Fritz Lange’s M, to me, is the way in which the sound and the image are constantly edited in a similar fashion and treated as equally essential to the story. M uses a discontinuous soundtrack that, rather than simply using sound to unify the images, treats sound as the image’s equal by applying the same set of conventions to it that dictate how the spectator is guided to take notice of specific elements. The cinematic conventions of video editing further the plot by conducting the spectator’s attention. These conventions—such as the close-up, the shot-reverse-shot, and the slow motion effect—are unnatural and seemingly obvious, but to the spectator they are often hard to notice; they seem natural and thus appear invisible because they mimic how our concentration is often refocused based on what is most significant. Rather than including every action that happens within the world of the film, filmmakers edit the image track to only include the action that is relevant to the plot to help sustain the attention of the viewer and carry the plot.

Lange uses this approach to accentuate the sounds that are important to the narrative to emphasize their influence to the viewer. Rick Altman believed sound served “to anchor the body to a single continuous experience [… ] providing a satisfying and comfortable base from which the eyes can go flitting about, […] satisfying our visual desire without compromising our unity and fixity.” This analysis of the continuous soundtrack approaches the issue of sound in a way that fails to consider the mental processes of the spectator and the realistic perception of audio.

Think about your own lives. The constant stream of unimportant and distracting noises in our busy realities condition us to tune out most sounds unless they command and hold our attention. The relatively subtle sound effects and lack of any background music in M guarantee that the viewer pays more attention to the ones that are included. This is an example of Michel Chion’s concept of rarefaction. By making the very presence of any sound scarce, we pay more attentions to the ones that do exist. The lack of the continuous soundtrack (and with that, less distractions from the narrative) in M is essentially what prevents the viewer from tuning out the sounds that are so important to the plot.

The relatively muted sound of street noise as Elsie Beckmann walks home from school causes the blaring horn of the car that almost hits her to stand out and startle the viewer; the threat of danger evoked by the car horn occurs right before her kidnapping and this use of sound ups the viewer’s suspense—however unknowingly—in preparation for what is to come. Furthermore, the lack of background music in M results in the increased attentiveness to music when Hans Beckert’s whistled motif is first heard as he buys poor Elsie a balloon. The sudden musical motif takes on a significance that would not be nearly as effective if the viewer were constantly hearing background music throughout the film.

In addition to sounds and images both being treated as equal and only being included when they serve the purpose of furthering the plot, they also assert their respective dominance and narrative importance by, at times, contributing to the scene in a way that the other cannot. In the scene where Elsie is kidnapped, the image we are shown is of a posted warning about the kidnapper as Elsie bounces her ball against it. The kidnapper himself walks up and talks to Elsie, but we only see his shadow. In order to keep up the air of suspense and intrigue until the moment where we first see Beckert’s face, the image cannot show us the kidnapper but must rely on the dialogue to convey that he has kidnapped her.

Later in the film, after the blind balloon man recognize Beckert’s whistle and Beckert has been marked with the “M”, there is complete silence in the film as the men tail Beckert; just as the men trying to catch him are pursuing him based on image alone—the image of the “M”—the viewer can only watch what is happening and thus must construct their own interpretation of the sounds and conversation between Beckert and his victim. This process mimics how we perceive events as they occur in reality. When we experience sound without a visible source, we make inferences about its origin; likewise, when we see an event occur but cannot hear the sound that accompanies it, we attempt to mentally reproduce the accompanying sound  based on the image to discern its meaning.

M astutely shows us how the independence of sound and image shape the meaning of the film and offer unique possibilities of their own to perpetuate and evoke realism in the viewer and thus provide a more honest  and meaningful film. Lang’s M posits sound and image as equals to emphasize their unique power through their situational ability to contribute something to the narrative in a way that the other cannot. The film capitalizes on how the forces of sound and image work together in our every day mental processes in order to stimulate a higher level of understanding in the spectator.

The images and sounds that make up our individual reality are too overwhelming to be attentive to them all and thus we must pick and choose what to focus our attention on based on what holds meaning and captures our interest. We naturally filter out some sights and sounds, while concentrating wholeheartedly on others, to form our own cohesive interpretation of the world. These psychological tendencies, while subtle and often unnoticeable, guide how the audience perceives and interprets a film. Through the competing forces of sound and image, these tendencies dictate what the viewer pays attention to, and consequently, what the viewer takes away from the narrative. This concept would best be taken advantage of through a cinema that uses sound and image as separate entities that are only implemented when they are absolutely necessary to further narrative progression. Approaching films through the subjective method of human perception, focusing on its tendency to succumb to distraction and only focus on what demands to be noticed, would yield a minimalist cinema that heightened the significance of each image and each sound simply through its very existence in the film. Although seemingly jarring at first, the spectator would eventually learn to analyze the confirmed importance of each element, and through their confirmation of its inherent importance, be continuously active in their interpretation of the film rather than passively allowing the film to happen in front of them.

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Most of the films I’ve been watching this semester have been a bit more recent so I decided to take a crack at an old classic. The Philadelphia Story was such a lovely film and it’s made me want to watch more older films, which I have never really had the desire to do before (I also would kill to have the kickass old Hollywood accent). One thing that really stood out to me in this film is the role spectatorship plays as the story unfolds.

The premise of The Philadelphia Story is rooted in the significance of the spectator. The role of the spectator does not exist solely as the person who is viewing the film; it is represented and embodied by  individual characters within the world of the story itselfl. Dinah Lord is a perfect example of a spectator within the film. Because of her youth, Dinah’s presence is often overlooked by adults and she ends up hearing things by accident that she should not know. Despite her elders’ attempts to keep her in the dark, Dinah always seems to know what is going on. At one point, Tracy questions Dinah about how she knows about their father’s relationship with the dancer and Dinah simply replies “I listen around”.

Mike and Liz also function as spectators within the film. They are both spying on the Lord family. They witness Dinah’s little performance upon their arrival with awe and confusion. Later, Mike observes the argument between Dexter and Tracy. Although he feels like an intruder and tries to leave, he is forced to stay as Dexter and Tracy continue to ignore him. Liz also is forced to be the awkward onlooker as she watches Mike fall for Tracy, even witnessing his proposal to her. Mike and Liz begin the film as passive observers of the Lord family but quickly become integral to the development and outcome of the story. Similarly, as the spectator pieces together the story from the information revealed by the film, he or she becomes an essential part of the story; it is through the spectator’s reconstruction of the story-and not the story itself- that the film conveys its meaning.

The influence of the process of reconstructing the story is further accentuated by its manifestation in individual characters. There are several instances in which a character has to construct their own interpretation of what is going on based on the information given to them by others. When Uncle Willie arrives at the Lord house, Tracy, Dinah, and Mrs. Lord pretend that he is Seth Lord. Mike and Liz, foreign to the background story of the Lord family, accept this as fact. Later in the film, Dinah spies out her window and sees part of the drunken exchange between Tracy and Mike. She misinterprets what she saw and as she mysteriously unveils her “dream”, misleads Tracy to believe that she had an affair with Mike. Here, Tracy and Dinah both are given partial accounts of what actually happened and thus believe a warped version of what has happened based on how little they know.

As with Dinah when she dramatically recounts her “dream” to Tracy, The Philadelphia Story is replete with performances. Nearly every example previously discussed can be perceived as a “show” or performance of some sort, and those are merely a handful of instances. The Lords are putting on a show for Liz and Mike, projecting a false image of their family on them. Tracy puts up a false front to everyone around her, acting the part of a tough, unaffected woman who refuses to accept her feelings. Even as her relationship with George ends, Tracy is putting on a show, reading his note to everyone present like an actor reciting a monologue. No character in the film goes untouched by these little performances; they affect all involved and serve as a tool to disguise the truth and promote a falsehood created by the performer.

In this way, The Philadelphia Story can be seen as self-reflexive. Through its narration, it recognizes its status as a film and subtly acknowledges this awareness. During the discussion between Tracy and Dexter about his boat, The True Love, Tracy is in disbelief that he is “selling true love for money”. As previously displayed by her stark opposition to the idea of Spy Magazine doing a piece on her wedding to George, Tracy resents the idea of exploiting love for money and fame. At face value, this does not appear to be significant coming from the fictional Tracy Lord, but it takes on new meaning coming from the lips of actress Katharine Hepburn, who achieved notoriety and success in an industry that capitalized on the “happily ever after” ending where true love always prevails. This irony can be seen again when Tracy learns that George to see  Mike carry her out of the woods in her robe. Here, Tracy exclaims “Good golly, why didn’t you sell tickets?” It is as if the film is making a joke for the viewer; both are aware that there were indeed people who bought tickets to see this show. Evan at the close of the film, The Philadelphia Story demonstrates once more that it is aware of itself as a film. As Tracy tries to cope with her situation and informs the wedding guests that the wedding has been cancelled, she draws a blank and looks frantically to Dexter to help her with what she should say. Dexter proceeds to tell her what to say, and she repeats verbatim exactly what he said to the crowd. She does not question or change anything; it is blind recitation. It is not a stretch, then, to compare this situation to that of an actor (or actress, in this case) being fed their lines.

Abundant with spectators and performance, both externally and internally, The Philadelphia Story works within the constraints of the system of Hollywood narration to stimulate the mind of the spectator and elicit a more thoughtful interpretation of the film than what can be taken from it at face value. By carefully injecting the film with moments of self-awareness, the film undermining the validity  of potential criticism.

Instead of operating blindly within the system and refusing to acknowledge its drawbacks, The Philadelphia Story astutely hints at these pitfalls and critiques them itself. Through this commentary, the film demonstrates its ingenuity in that it is, at the same time, criticizing how the system restricts itself and adhering to its restrictions to prove its own superiority. Through its clever use of the spectator and its self-conscious performances, The Philadelphia Story proves its own value in a manner that I don’t think is found often in contemporary cinema.

Body Heat (1981)

Though Body Heat is considered neo-noir, I would argue that the elements that make it neo-noir are more thematic and narrative noir elements than an adherence to noir-ish style techniques. Though there are some semblances of noir lighting, with shadows and venetian blinds and shots looking through windows, what strikes me as the most noir about this film is Matty/Mary Ann as the ultimate femme fatale. The brilliance of this movie, I believe, is that even as the film’s closing credits role, you never actually know if Matty ever loved Ned; you have no insight into her emotions, you don’t know if she feels remorseful or if this was all just a part of her scheme. She carries out her plan remarkably well and her sociopathic behavior gives an even more powerful side to her sexuality. She exudes lust and sexuality from the start, and the threat of her feminity presents itself in how duped and spellbound Ned is by her charms. In watching the film over again, it’s almost sad to watch Ned run around and believe that he is the mastermind behind this plan when Matty is merely manipulating him like a puppet. She is the ultimate, unfeeling femme fatale and yet, despite uncovering her scheme, I couldn’t help but still like her, perhaps because I couldn’t stop appreciating just how maniacally manipulative and genius she was.

            Femme fatale aside, there were some thematic elements that evoked noir style. There seems to be a haze over most of the film, particularly in the scene in which Ned is trying to transport Mr. Walker’s body. This haze is further emphasized in the constant smoking of the characters. The  cigarettes (which are often used as a phallic symbol, like during the dinner with Matty, Ned, and Mr. Walker in which Ned lights Matty’s cigarette) give off smoke and obscure the scene a bit. One of the characters points this out in the meeting about Mr. Walker’s will, he says something along the lines of “I don’t even need my own cigarette, I’ll just breathe all of your secondhand smoke”.

There are other thematic motifs that don’t necessarily fit into the noir style. One example of this is the fire, which is sometimes used literally via the explosions and arson that run rampant throughout the film. The fire motif also works in the sense of sexual relations; it is a marker of passion, lust, betrayal. The fire motif is further accentuated in the clothing of the characters, Matty in particularly, who seems to be clothed in white and/or red throughout the entire film.

In thinking of the film as neo-noir, it bears obvious references to the noir films of the past. Particularly, the similar plot points to Double Indemnity are difficult to miss, although the sophistication of the plan is amped up a bit in Body Heat to match with more efficient police forces and practices for solving crimes. Another way in which Body Heat takes Double Indemnity’s idea farther is through its more overt depiction of sex. Body Heat is allowed to be much more liberal and explicit with the sex depicted and the sweaty, writhing scenes between Ned and Matty give you a much more realistic sense of how strong Matty’s sexual prowess and power is over Ned.

Caché (2005)

I’d heard a lot about Michael Haneke and I went it with high expectations. I was not disappointed.Michael Haneke’s Caché is undoubtedly sophisticated, but in a way that is unfamiliar to the modern American viewer. Haneke uses minimalistic editing techniques and long takes to progress his narrative while still limiting the knowledge given to the viewer;  Haneke’s expects the viewer to pay attention to the implications made throughout the film and take away a larger meaning from the film than what is explicitly depicted.

Haneke is painstakingly careful in restricting the amount of information displayed in any one scene to reflect exactly what he wants the viewer to see- sometimes that is a clearly illustrated action, while other times it is a vague or muddled message. In the scene in which Majid commits suicide in front of Georges, Haneke is explicit with what he wants the viewer to take away from the scene. He capitalizes on shock factor, astonishing his viewers with Majid’s gruesome suicide. It is not necessary to rely on rapid cutting or overwhelming sound effects to shape the scene; the editing in the scene is simple, and the point is made in a mere two shots. The viewer does not have to mull over the point of this scene or delve deep into the narrative to deduce the purpose of this scene. It’s all there for you in the action. This scene is also interesting in that the camera placement in this scene mirrors the camera placement from Georges first adventure to Majid’s apartment. Although ambiguous at first, it becomes clear that the camera placement in both scenes is intended to be understood as a hidden camera, and furthermore, the source of several of the videotapes. The viewer at this point undertakes the role of voyeur, intruding in on the lives of the Laurents just like the stalker does.  The viewer is the spy, soaking up the message of the filmmaker, which is, in this scene, overt and alarming.

Haneke  displays his versatility, however, throughout the film with scenes, such as the final scene, that demand the viewer to carefully scrutinize them to search for their purposes in relation to the narrative.  This scene, in and of itself, is not particularly exciting or complicated. It is a wide angle shot and an incredibly long take of Pierrot’s school. The scene is one single shot with no camera movement whatsoever; the movement in the frame is chaotic and busy, and upon first glance, it is difficult to deduce what Haneke is cueing the viewer to pay attention to. American audiences are spoiled by American directors who dumb down their shots to guarantee that the viewer’s eye is drawn only to the main subject of interest; watching that type of film is a passive experience. Haneke does not give his viewers the luxury of being able to zone out and still soak in the basic message of the film.

With almost painfully long takes and subtle, sometimes even nonexistent, editing, Haneke forces the viewer to be more attentive to the narrative, and the viewer thus becomes an active participant in the interpretation of the film. Consequently, by the time the final scene of the film is introduced, the viewer is so accustomed to the absurdly long takes that he knows to look for the somewhat disguised purpose of the scene. The watcher’s newly-developed viewing style prompts him to scan the distracting and seemingly unimportant background, searching for what Haneke wants him to see. After much searching, the viewer finally focuses in on Pierrot and Majid’s son deep in conversation. With this subtle move, Haneke brings a whole new set of possibilities to the narrative and leaves the viewer guessing. With less intense action, Haneke manages to make almost a stronger impression on the viewer than in dramatic scenes.

Accordingly, the suicide scene and this ending scene share many other differences. Not only are they dissimilar in how they illustrate their overall messages, they are also different in the emotional connotations that these message elicit. Majid’s suicide provokes a horrified emotional response; the macabre method of his unexpected death makes the spectator cringe. The relaxed camera work and slow pace of editing make Majid’s abrupt throat-slashing all the more startling and appalling. On the other hand, the final scene cues not the emotions of terror and disgust, but those of wonder and inquisition. Although the suicide evokes a more animalistic and innate emotional response, the final scene touches the viewer on a deeper level, making him question the meanings and implications of the film. In comparing these two scenes, we get a feel for Haneke’s emotional dexterity and variation.

Haneke’s editing and long takes give the impression that the viewer is watching the film in real time. In multiple scenes throughout the film, the viewer watches the anyonymous  videotapes from the point of view of the Laurents. These scenes are often mundane and boring. Basically every tape the Laurents receive contains little to no action on it; they are simply every day scenes of the Laurents’ house, with the occasional car passing by.  Although this, at times, can be off-putting and tedious, it does convey the sense of realism that permeates the rest of the film. Yes, there are portions of the film that drag on a bit, but if the story of the film were happening in real life, there would indeed be portions of lag time. Real life is not always interesting, it is not always action packed, and Haneke does an excellent job of translating this into the cinematic world.

This realism goes hand-in-hand with the concept of voyeurism that is at play throughout the film. The videotapes are the most obvious example of this notion. The Laurents’ anonymous stalker is indeed a voyeur, intruding in on their lives and wreaking havoc in their personal relationships. But the concept of voyeurism transcends the diegetic world of the film into the larger message of the film.

Instead of explicity showing the viewer what he wants you to see, Haneke uses subtle editing techniques and long takes to alter how the viewer watches the film. Haneke plays with the audience and limits the amount of knowledge he divulges to the viewer throughout the film, forcing the audience to delve deeper into the story to solve the mystery and assemble the pieces of the narrative together into a concise account. In this way, the viewer is like a voyeur, spying in on the story of the film to try and gain additional knowledge to add to what he already knows. All in all, I’m very impressed with this introduction to Haneke and I look forward to seeing more of his work.

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

I have a firm policy that I generally never see a movie adaptation until I have read the book it is based off of. I’m a die-hard believer that the book is almost always better than the movie and I like testing my theory and paying attention to how a film renders a novel visually.  After hearing rave reviews all year about Silver Linings Playbook, I read the novel and absolutely loved it. I was so excited to see the film because there was so much hype about it, especially after Jennifer Lawrence won an Oscar for her performance and the film received a Best Picture nomination.

            I’m sad to say that I was completely and utterly underwhelmed by this film. There were some moments that felt right but for the most part, the film felt like a stale rom-com where the characters are supposedly suffering from ‘mental illnesses’ that manifest themselves in nothing more than outbursts of anger. I’m going to try to avoid just bitching about how the movie messed up the book, but there are a few relevant points that I feel like I have to make and they tie in to greater issues that I have with cinematic adaptations of books.

            First, the book is ruthlessly dedicated to capturing Pat’s struggles and gives the reader first-person insight into his mind. The book is beautifully written and manages to present Pat’s hysteria in a way that we not only understand but that seems completely logical to us. The film, on the other hand, seems like it does everything possible to present Pat as ‘troubled’ but not too crazy. What were written as crippling, full scale mental breakdowns come off onscreen as no more than outbursts of anger from a hotheaded man. The problem with most book-turned-movie adaptations is that the film cannot convey the narrative voice of the novel, particularly if the novel is written in first-person narration, and so the film ends up telling us the story of the book without all the psychological and mental insight that makes the story so complex and interesting. One recent (and relevant) example of this was The Hunger Games adaptation, which also features Jennifer Lawrence. The novel was written in first person and half of the beauty of the novel is the complexity of Katniss’ character; she is simultaneously disagreeable, bitter, kind, courageous, and naive, and we love her for it. The film (despite Jennifer’s excellent performance) loses a lot of depth because we have hardly any insight into her character. We lose integral parts of the story, like the fact that Katniss is essentially faking her love for Peeta for the cameras in the arena in order to keep them both alive, because we have no idea what’s going on in her mind.

            I think the biggest problem with Silver Linings Playbook is that the film loses nearly all of Pat’s psychological insight. It’s a book about mental illness, for goodness sake, the film was destined to fall flat from the start. If the loss of insight into Pat’s mind wasn’t bad enough, the film seemed scared to really commit to depicting Pat and Tiffany as people who are truly struggling with mental illness. Silver Linings Playbook works hard to make them seem a little off without making them full blown crazy. As I mentioned, a large part of the novel’s charm is that it fully fleshes out Pat’s severe mental illness without sugar coating anything while also making Pat’s mental processes seem almost logical. I really wanted to see the film delve into Pat’s psyche and I think there was a lot of opportunity for creative exploration and stylistic experimentation in conveying Pat’s mental state but the film didn’t really try. There were a few moments where the film almost gave me what I wanted, like when Pat recounts walking in on Nikki and another man and how that triggered his mental breakdown. Pat narrates the memory and we experience him reliving it verbally while seeing the memories. The images are shaky, shot with a handheld, and jump cut to evoke the hysterical moment and the frantic passage of time as Pat rushes to find his wife with another man. The camera inhibits Pat’s point of view as he frantically discovers this shock but then the image cuts back to Dr. Patel’s office before we see Pat’s breakdown. We see the trigger but not the reaction that got him locked away, and that just seem fair. The film is afraid to show us the crazy.  

            The first third of the novel takes place in the mental institution as Pat waits to get out and a large part of the story arc is that a) Pat has no idea how long he was in the mental hospital because he has repressed it, b) he does not remember Nikki cheating on him, which is the incident that trigged his mental collapse and c) that Nikki never comes back despite Pat’s desperate belief that she will. Matthew Quick’s Pat is deranged, delusional; David O. Russell’s Pat is quirky and has a little baggage. I think the film is too afraid to commit to portraying real, cold, hard mental illness; it allows Nikki to come to the dance performance, validating Pat instead of forcing him to admit that it his obsession with reuniting with Nikki is a delusion like he has to in the novel. I get that that’s a dark topic but I think it could have been handled with taste and still with an air of comedy instead of trying to force the issue of mental illness into a formulaic rom-com mold.

Stylistically, there are moments where it really seemed like the film was trying to experiment, trying to do new things. For example, Russell worked a lot with spaces and I noticed attempts to avoid shot-reverse-shot in favor of more explorative camera work during conversations. Another stylized camera moment is when a police officer shows up to Pat’s house and the camera does what one critic called a ‘Dash Milhok’ on the police officer, rapid zooming on his face the moment the door opens and then quickly cuts to his badge, then his nametag, and back out to a medium shot. I would have liked to see more of this experimentation, particularly used in a more psychological way.

Give me more crazy

One aspect of the film that I actually enjoyed was its use of music. The soundtrack felt very rich to me and even though it is a rom-com, I felt like Silver Linings Playbook had more music in it than a typical rom-com. There were a few times where the music merely provided an excuse for a cheese-y montage (i.e. the workout montage, the coming home from the hospital montage, the dance studio montage), which I could have used a little less of. There were also moments though, like in Dr. Patel’s office when the Kenny G. song plays and outside the diner where Pat hears the song again, where the film seemed to be using the music for a greater purpose than simply to manipulate our emotions. Here the film plays with the divide between diegetic/nondiegetic to evoke moments of confusion in the viewer where we don’t know if the music is non-diegetic, diegetic but only in Pat’s mind, or actually emanating from a diegetic source within the scene. Outside the diner, Pat is hysterical and we hear the song; it appears to be diegetic but we’re not sure if it’s playing outside or just in Pat’s head. Then Tiffany tells him “There’s no song” and the song cuts, suggesting the song was indeed a figment of Pat’s hysteria. These were moments I wanted to see more of, where the audience feels Pat’s confusion and mental illness with him rather than just witnessing it from a distance. The Kenny G. was such a huge trigger for Pat in the novel and I think the film could’ve capitalized on it more though—if I recall correctly, the Kenny G. song that he hears when he walks in on his wife with the history teacher can barely be heard, despite the fact that it is this HUGE mental trigger for him. I really wanted to be berated by that song, I wanted it forced down my throat and jammed into my brain repeatedly until it was a trigger for me and I understood Pat’s struggle with the song. But the film didn’t give it to me and is just another example of how the film plays it safe with the psychology in an attempt not to alienate any rom-com enthusiasts.

Mulholland Drive (2001)

After seeing Blue Velvet, I wanted to venture deeper into the dark corners of David Lynch’s body of work and so I watched Mulholland Drive. It straight up blew my mind. I just sat there laughing after the film ended because my favorite types of films are ones like Mulholland Drive which hold up a middle finger to convention and do whatever the hell they want. I’m sure Lynch pissed people off by giving people absolutely zero closure or cohesion with this film but I absolutely love films that aren’t afraid to make people mad and play with our expectations.

Hollywood as Factory of Illusion

Mulholland Drive is really interesting to me when examining it as a critique of Hollywood and the filmmaking industry. Mulholland Drive presents Hollywood as a colorful, beautiful place from the outside but this idealized image quickly gives way to a corrupt system which devours the weak and strips those involved in the system of their morality and ethical responsibility. Although the first portion of the film is arguably the construction of Diane’s unconscious, even this idealized depiction of Hollywood is glaringly flawed and corrupt. The politics of the system are apparent as Adam, the director, is stripped of his artistic integrity. He barely has any control over his own film and is subjected to the whims of others in power, like the mysterious film executive Mr. Roque and the peculiar cowboy character. Even in the first half (or ‘dream’ sequence), the films produced in Hollywood are the victims of a flawed system, which is driven more by the shallow desire for money and seemingly arbitrary hierarchies of power than by the desire to create a product that is artistically meaningful.

Through characters like Diane/Betty and even through Camilla, Hollywood demonstrates its ability to perpetuate delusions and suggests the potentially destructive effect that cinema can have on all involved. In the latter portion of the film, the impact of the corrupt system of Hollywood is felt even more forcefully as it destroys nearly all that it touches. Diane is a failure of the system; her attempts at making it big have proved futile and, though she has maintained some of her humanity, she is ultimately destroyed by her encounter with Hollywood.

Camilla, on the other hand, could be deemed as a Hollywood success; she is a young, beautiful, and famous starlet who seemingly has it all. However, she is morally corrupt, emotionally manipulating those around her for her own personal gain, all while having no qualms about who she is hurting. She is a Hollywood success, yes, but she is stripped of her humanity, robbed of her morality and ethical responsibility by a system, which makes her as much of a victim as Diane.

Mulholland Drive: A Freudian Dream

            The depiction of dreams in cinema is something that has always fascinated me. Dreams are something that we all experience on the regular but rendering them on film and preserving that dream-like feeling is difficult to do and I think Mulholland Drive does it. Mulholland Drive gives you that dream-like feeling where absurd, non-sensical things are constantly occurring but for some reason, they feel completely logical.

Freudian and the double: fragmented identities

Mulholland Drive presents itself like a Freudian dream in which symbolic images are pervasive throughout the film but these images don’t mean what they appear to on the surface—and sometimes they don’t mean anything at all. The film does not highlight what elements carry meaning and which do not. The lack of narrative structure makes you think about all the elements and decide which carry meaning; this puts us through a process much like how we interpret our own realities. Our senses are constantly bombarded and we have to decide where to place our attention and what carries meaning and sometime we might miss important things because there is simply just too much to take in.

 Cinema’s Ability to Mimic Our Mental Processes

Mulholland Drive seems to operate on some system of internal logic which is not based on narrative linearity. The narrative approximates how our mind works and how we perceive things. The film jumps between different time periods and spaces for no reason, disregarding linear temporality or cause and effect. As I mentioned earlier, it also bombards us with sensations whose meanings remain hidden or are only revealed to us much later. I believe the film’s presentation, which is so based on our mental processes and how we come to understand things in life, is a large part of why the film is so adept at depicting a dream-like situation that feels so authentically real.

Furthermore, just as is in life, the film does not give us all the answers at the end. It doesn’t even really give us all the questions. It shows us one thing, which we think we understand, and then it shows us something completely different that makes us recontextualize and reinterpret what we watched earlier. The moment we think we understand what something means, Mulholland Drive flips it on its head and completely unhinges what we thought we knew. The film makes us constantly renegotiate our understanding of the film and alter what we think, mimicking our processes of understanding our own realities.

Authentic vs. Constructed

Mulholland Drive excited me for many, many reasons but the point at which I was the most enthralled was during the scene at the nightclub called Silencio. It is a bizarre sequence but the ideas behind the performance at Silencio carry some very intriguing questions.The scene begins with a strange man on stage speaking ominously, telling the audience that “Everything is pre-recorded”. Then we see a trumpet player on-stage playing an intricate piece of music that appears to be a live performance until his fingers stop and the music plays on, revealing that it is merely a pre-recorded song being played.

There is no band. It’s all recorded.

A second performance repeats the trick. A beautiful woman comes on stage and sings a heartbreaking, tear-jerking ballad in Spanish, only to fall down ‘dead’ on the ground while the music continues, revealing that she was lip-synching the entire time. Moments like these elicit a sense of indignation in the spectator, making us constantly question the authenticity of what we are experiencing. It is unsettling to feel like you’ve been tricked and this scene makes you feel as if you’ve been manipulated because you believed something was real and authentic only to realize you’ve naively been led to assert truthfulness to something that is ultimately fake.

It’s funny that this scene elicits such an uncomfortable feeling because what this scene is playing with is essentially the very basis of what we experience when we watch sound films. Most of what we hear in a film is post-synch sound but for some reason, we’re okay with that. It’s easier to pretend that the sound we hear is actually occurring in the moment onscreen, emanating from the actor or actress pictured, than to accept that what we are hearing is a farce, a reconstruction of something that happened in the past.

In Michel Chion’s Audio-Vision, he makes the argument that the prevalence of cinema is so influencing how we experience sound, that it is conditioning us to perceive recorded sound as more realistic that the sounds we hear in our own reality. We perceive the overexaggerated, stereotypical sound of a punch in a movie fight as more realistic than the sound a punch actually makes in real life. Taking into consideration films like Mulholland Drive, which seeks to acknowledge its ability to manipulate the spectator rather than conceal it, it is easy to see how cinematic convention has conditioned us to be easy prey—conditioned us to be duped, unable to identify when we are being lied to and fed something that is inauthentic.

All of this ultimately begs questions that are hard to ask and even harder to answer. If cinema has made us so easy to fool into believing that something inauthentic is truthful, how is it affecting our ability to identify artifice in our own realities? And furthermore, is cinema’s illusion of reality conditioning us to experience cinematic ‘reality’ as more authentic than our own realities? What happens when what we see onscreen feels more real than our own lives? I’m not sure if I want to know the answer to that.

 

Die Hard (1988)

My boyfriend was appalled to learn that I’d never seen the movie Die Hard. It’s not necessarily the most brilliantly executed or most innovative film I’ve ever seen but I’ll be damned if it didn’t keep me captivated from start to finish.

Watching it after twenty years after it came out is a strange thing because there were several times in the movie where I thought “What an action movie cliché” or mentally noted obvious movie tropes and I was not impressed. But after doing some research and looking into it, I realized the Die Hard is essentially what started the action movie genre and it is what some people consider the perfect action movie. In this way, Die Hard is interesting as a historical document; the tropes and cliches that I identified were the basis and inspiration for the cliches and tropes that are so prevalently used in the action movies that I have seen.

John McLane is the ultimate action hero not because he is badass but because he is easy to identify with. He is relatable; he’s a working class man trying to balance work and family who ends up at the wrong place at the wrong time and kicks bad guy ass. There are several allusions to Westerns, particularly in reference to John’s character. Hans calls how a modern cowboy, which prompts his iconic “Yippee Ki-Yay, motherfucker” line. Some of these references are made in the dialogue while others are more subtle. For example, the moment in which John begins resisting the ‘terrorists’, the foreboding music that plays in every shot where we see the villains is repeated, but this time with some added guitar riffs that are reminiscent of the archetypal guitar music used in Westerns. This use of a Western guitar motif is repeated often throughout the film, providing us with subtle sonic hints that subconsciously draw our attention to John’s Roy Rogers-esque hero status.

Die Hard is set at Christmas time, which might seem irrelevant given the action-packed crime and violence that takes up the majority of screen time. However, when I watched this film through for the second time, I noticed that the Christmas setting actually plays a pretty big part in the film as far as sound design is concerned.

From the start of the film, we hear the sounds of Christmas. As John walks through the airport upon landing in L.A., we hear subtle jingle bells on the soundtrack, setting up the Christmas mood. There is relatively little background music in the film until John steps foot into the Christmas party as a four (or some other number) string quartet is playing classical Christmas music diegetically in the background. It is subtle, but this gentle string music plays for most of the first scenes in the office. As John and Holly talk (and fight) in the bathroom, you can hear “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” playing softly from the party (pay attention to that, it comes back later).

Upon the arrival of the ‘terrorists’ in the big truck, a new musical motif begins. Foreboding music begins, still played by string instruments but much deeper ones (I would guess cellos and violas) which give you a sense of the danger these men pose. The film then cuts back and forth from scenes in the office where Christmas music is being played diegetically back to the scenes with the criminals in which non-diegetic string music is being played. It’s interesting to note that in the early scenes with the criminals, the strains of the music being played bear a distinct resemblance to the chorus of “Joyful Joyful”.

Hans singing tunes in the elevator

“Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee” continues as a musical motif as the film progresses. After Hans Gruber enters the office party and seeks out Takagi, he gets back in the elevator with his henchman with Tagaki in tow and as the elevator descends, Hans whistles the refrain of Joyful, Joyful. Even later in the film when Hans first sees the vault that he is trying to gain access to, the deeply toned strings (again, cellos and violas) on the nondiegetic soundtrack play that chorus of “Joyful, Joyful”. This is a consistent motif that reoccurs through the film and works in an interesting fashion; it takes something traditional and beautiful and morphs it, reinstituting it in moments of suspense and action to reconstitute how we perceive the song and by the end of the film, we begin to associate with the sinister European villains rather than with the loving, nostalgic emotions of Christmas. This is just one example of how a soundtrack can manipulate our perception of events and subtly reframe how we think as a film unfolds. By identifying moments like this in the sound design, we heighten our sense of our awareness and are better equipped to recognize the moments in which we are being manipulated by sound. Hopefully moments like this teach us something about the subtle manipulation that is such an integral part of the film-viewing process and make us more aware and more active participants rather than just passive recipients of visual and auditory stimulation.

To conclude, I haven’t seen the other films in the Die Hard franchise but for those of you who have, here’s an interesting link that identifies a few consistent tropes that are featured in every Die Hard installment.

http://flavorwire.com/370475/10-surprisingly-consistent-features-of-every-die-hard-movie/10

Blue Velvet (1986)

I’ve heard people rave about David Lynch’s body of work before and I knew his films were something I needed to experience. Blue Velvet was my first taste of Lynch and I was in no way prepared for the weirdness that was to follow.

The DVD case champions the film as “David Lynch’s Erotic Masterpiece” so I went in expecting something vastly different than what the film actually was. To me, there seemed to be two different worlds occurring in the film, one being the sugar coated glamour of 1950s small town America and the other being a world of darkness, crime, and sexual perversion.

I’ve read around a little bit and Roger Ebert’s opinion of Blue Velvet criticizes the film for not letting the sexual portion of the storyline unfold. Blue Velvet keeps going back to the kitschy, small town America storyline and the dark world of sexual perversion never really develops past the initial fake rape scene in Dorothy’s apartment. It seemed to me that David Lynch was trying to flesh out two vastly different ideas in this film and the result left me a bit uncomfortable.

 

Color

Moving past that though, I would like to bring up one aspect of the film which really stood out to me and that was Lynch’s use of color. The over-saturated picket fences and perfectly manicured lawns that we are introduced to as the film opens has an interesting, Tim Burton-like effect for me. The overly colorful suburbs read as something being just a little off, as if the town is trying so hard to be something that it is not; the result is an eerie quality which the film quickly develops as Jeffrey finds the severed ear and the mystery plot picks up.

Saturated picket fences

I found myself looking out for the color blue from the very start of the film given the name of the film. I found it interesting that the first time the color blue really shows up in the film is when Jeffrey sneaks into Dorothy’s apartment and the walls in the hallway are dark blue, giving the hallway a cold, eerie feeling. Then Jeffrey walks inside her apartment, only to be greeted by warm red tones all over the walls and furniture.

Shade of red

From that point on, I started to notice a juxtaposition of blue and red tones associated with Isabella Rossellini’s character throughout the film. The juxtaposition is seen, quite literally, on her face in most of the film as she sports that horrific blue eye shadow with the vibrant red lipstick.

 

Every good make-up artist knows you either do bold lips or bold eyes, never both…

Sound

David Lynch was recommended to me as someone to look out for in terms of film sound and I was not disappointed. One aspect of the sound design that stood out to me was Lynch’s (and the sound designer, Alan Splet’s) use of horror sound throughout the film. One such moment occurs when the camera cuts to a close up of a street sign (Lincoln Street) and there is a corresponding screeching sound typical of horror movies. Juxtaposed against the sounds of small town suburbia, these horror sounds stand out and provide two vastly different sonic universes, just as there are two different types of stories occurring.

The sound design continues to implement juxtaposition and contradiction through is use of anempathetic music. As some of you might remember from my lecture on film sound, anempathetic music does not participate in the action or emotion onscreen; the music expresses indifference to what is going on and this apathy further accentuates the emotion onscreen. David Lynch takes full advantage of this effect. One example is in the scene where Frank pulls Jeffrey out of the car on the side of the road and beats him senseless while the cheery song “Candy Colored Clown” blares from the car stereo. The absurd collision of the upbeat song with the violent action accentuates the brutality in an almost comical way. There are also homoerotic undertones in Frank’s treatment of Jeffrey here and the anempathetic music serves to highlight those undertones and give the violence a perversely sexual feeling that harkens back to the violent rape scene earlier.

One last point I will make about sound pertains to the party scene at the whorehouse. Music begins as Ben begins to sing Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” into a lightbulb that he uses as a microphone. His voice is beautiful and although you might momentarily question if he’s really singing, you don’t fully realize that he’s lip synching until Frank begins to sing along and breaks the spell of Ben’s performance, exposing the artificiality of it all. By doing this, Lynch is playing with out conception of what is real and what is staged by first fooling us and then revealing the trick. I find this particularly interesting and it is something that I will discuss further in my response to Mulholland Drive where Lynch plays again with ‘authentic’ versus pre-recorded sound.

Touch of Evil (1958)

To continue with my noir streak, I decided to watch the old classic Touch of Evil. To be honest, I just wasn’t a big fan of this one, I’m not sure why, but I’ll keep my response short for that reason.

Watching Touch of Evil knowing that it was a more self-conscious noir film made it much easier to notice the glaring noir style present in the film. The film is depicted with endless shadows, flashing lights, and morally ambiguous characters. One stylistic element that I noticed was the moments in which the soundtrack was blaring at a very loud volume and it seemed as if the characters almost had to shout to be heard over it. Notable examples include the many scenes of Suzie being trapped in the hotel and the scene in which Orson Welles’ character strangles Grande.

Another stylistic occurrence that I found interesting was the use of high/low angle shots on specific characters. The film seemed to use low angle shots when showing Vargas, Orson Welles, and Grande in particular, making them appear more menacing and powerful. In contrast, it seemed like almost every shot of Suzie was a high angle shot with the camera looking down upon her, and I noticed a similar effect when the camera would show the tarot card reader. This gave the film a slightly misogynistic feel, which was further emphasized in how the women were often treated as helpless, only useful in strip clubs and in moments when the men want to blow off steam. In the mean time, when the real stuff is happening, the women are relegated to remote spaces and trapped, as Suzie is at first trapped in her hotel room (barely clad at all, lying nearly naked for the viewer to feast upon) and then later on the bed as Grande is strangled, setting up her being framed for the crime.