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.

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.

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.

 

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.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

I’d heard all the hype about Zero Dark Thirty but I knew virtually nothing about it going into the film save that people had been talking a lot about it. I saw it in theatres, a rare occurrence for me, and I can safely say that I’ve never had a movie-going experience like I did for this one. I have a lot of opinions about the film, which I will share below, and I’m allowing myself to be more biased and subjective than normal because I feel very strongly that the controversy and reception of Zero Dark Thirty says a lot about our country and our society.

I think Zero Dark Thirty is very interesting to look at as a pseudo-historical document. I know it’s a fiction film, but it’s based off of elements of the truth. So much of the general public’s conception and education of history is based off of mass media. The prevalence of films, television, and other types of media is transforming how and what we learn about ourselves and the world. In a situation like this, where so much of the details surrounding Bin Laden’s capture were shrouded in secrecy, much of the public’s perception and understanding of the event is bound to be based off of rumor, speculation, and hearsay. Zero Dark Thirty, as of now, seems to be the closest most Americans have come to knowing the truth about what actually happened. It’s interesting to think about how Zero Dark Thirty will function in the future; I can’t help but wonder if, in a couple decades, this film is what kids will be shown in school to learn about what happened after September 11^th as we hunted down Bin Laden

Sound

I knew that Zero Dark Thirty had won the Oscar for Sound Editing and that, together with my own interests in sound, made me really pay attention to the sound design of this film. Given the subject matter and the high-tension action sequences, I was expecting to be bombarded with an overzealous soundtrack that overwhelmed your senses and overtly manipulated your emotions. I was pleasantly surprised at the relatively minimal sound design; I think Zero Dark Thirty was very smart in its approach to sound.

Opening Sequence

First and foremost, the film opens up to a black screen. No titles, no visual at all, just the sound of 911 calls, which we quickly gather are recordings from 9/11. At first, the people in my theatre were stirring and chattering, not realizing that the film had officially begun (because why would a film ever begin with just sound and nothing onscreen, right?). After about a minute, the audience quieted down and people started to pay attention. Another minute in and you could’ve heard a pin drop. Everyone sat rapt, listening to the 911 calls in the darkness.

As someone who is intensely interested in film sound, this was a phenomenally extraordinary moment for me. How many movies can you think of where the visual is completely absent for a significant amount of time, only using sound to capture your attention? It very very rarely, if ever, happens. But for Zero Dark Thirty, it happened and, at least for me, the impact was profound. 9/11 is so fresh in our memories; the wounds have just barely begun to heal. I believe that sound is the most powerful tool cinema has in conveying emotion, and in this case, sound was the best way to touch people. Trauma, especially collective trauma, is such a subjective experience. I’d be willing to guarantee that every American remembers vividly where they were and what they were doing on September 11^th, 2001 when they first heard the news. It’s a collective experience, yes, but each person, each American, experienced September 11^th in their own individual way. It is a collective experience but not a collective memory; everyone has their own distinct memories of the tragedy.

So how do you portray the event visually? We’ve all seen the footage of the planes hitting the towers hundreds, if not thousands, of times. To show that footage would be to just replay what we’ve all seen; conversely, to show us a fictionalized account of someone’s experience of the event would be trite and undoubtedly fall flat. What Kathryn Bigelow did, by opening the film as she did, was remind us of the grief, the panic, the unmitigated terror that we all felt on that day. The sound of the 911 calls stirred up these emotions inside of us and then, with the blank screen, we were allowed to reflect on our own individual memories and project them onto the blank screen. The audio is the common ground linking together everyone’s individual experience. For me at least, the opening had a much larger emotional impact on me than any visual would have been able to produce. I think that this was a distinct moment where the full potential of sound was actualized in a mainstream film, something that I don’t think happens often.

Minimal Background Music

Starting off with that opening, I went into the film with high hopes for the sound and I actually was pleased. The sound design seemed minimal and provided only the necessary dialogue and sounds. The background music was minimal and tasteful. There were a few cases, like in the shots on the bus in London before the bomb exploded, where the music cued me as to what was going on and what to expect. In most cases, though, the music was minimally invasive and did not give away what was about to happen or manipulate me emotionally to expect a certain outcome. One moment that I distinctly noticed this was when the supposed “mole” was driving up to the base and the CIA agents were waiting to find out if he was legitimate or not. The car slowly approaches and there is no music to cue us as to what’s going to happen (although a black cat runs across in front of the car at one point, a subtle clue if you’re paying attention). While you could speculate what was going to happen, we were just as clueless as the CIA agents until the moment when he steps out of the car and the bomb goes off and we realize he was working for the enemy the entire time.

Sound to Amplify Tension

There were other distinct moments in the film in which sound and silence were used to amplify tension and suspense. One such moment takes place when the CIA agents are driving in circles trying to trace Abu Ahmed’s cell phone so they can locate him and figure out what he looks like. The machine they are using to trace his phone emits a beeping sound, which grows louder and more frequent as his cell signal grows stronger the closer he gets. The agents in the car converse some at first, but as they grow closer to locating Abu Ahmed, there is silence in the car. Only the beeping noise of the cell phone tracker is heard. Static silence fills the car (and the theatre) as the beeping increases in frequency and in volume (and amplifies the tension) until the breaking point in which they spot Abu Ahmed in his white SUV and the tension is released.

Sound and Silence

The use of silence and minimal sound was similarly effective in the sequence when the Navy SEAL team raids the compound. There is no dramatic music at all, only the sounds of the SEAL team is they make their way into the compound. Their experience is our experience; the scene unfolds mainly in silence, broken only by the occasional sounds of gun shots or small explosions as a lock is blown off a door. Though the men speak to each other occasionally, it is infrequently and we are forced to live out the experience mostly in tense silence as they creep farther into the compound until the moment when they shoot Bin Laden, upon which the men speak freely and we are released from the tension created by the silence.

External Controversy: Depctions of Torture

Zero Dark Thirty is fascinating to me in and of itself, but the external controversy surrounding the film further amplified my interest in the film. After leaving the theatre, I read articles online for upwards of three hours about the controversy surrounding the film’s depiction of torture. I think that the people who are all up-in-arms and outraged by the torture scenes, claiming that the film glorifies torture, are obtuse and misguided. The film does show brutal torture scenes, yes, but glorify it? I don’t think it does. First, the film shows moments in which torture is both successful and unsuccessful; the London terrorist attack occurs because the torture used on Ammar fails to produce the information needed to prevent it. If the film only showed successful moments of torture, I think you could argue more easily that it condones it.

Secondly, we can’t deny that torture  (or “enhanced interrogation techniques”) is a part of our history. The Abu Ghraib pictures are a testament to that. The story of the film exists in a period of change in which the use of torture was changing as well. Waterboarding really did happen during Bush’s time as President but eventually measures were taken against waterboarding. Obama went further and spoke out against using these controversial “interrogation methods” on prisoners. This all really happened, and the film reflects this changing landscape. The footage of Obama speaking out against torture is featured in the film, as well as moments where the characters discuss how their current techniques are no longer acceptable, as when Dan acknowledges, “You don’t want to be the last one caught with a dog collar in your hand”. The film reflects a period of change in the U.S. and to leave out the torture completely would be both dishonest and cowardly.

Thirdly, the ending of the film is left ambiguous; it is not a happy ending. I think if Bigelow had ended by showing the celebration that took place after news of Bin Laden’s death got out, the film would have made a stronger statement about the efficacy of torture; a “happy ending” would have made it seem more like the ends justifies the means. However, in the ending, the film seems to acknowledge the emotional complexity surrounding the series of events. Maya’s behavior on the plane home suggests this; the very thing that she had been striving to accomplish for 12 years was finally completed, but it was not a happy moment. I think the film does a good job of conveying that, even though the mission to kill Bin Laden was ultimately successful, this whole period of time for America was a dark time and something that weighs heavy on everyone’s hearts. Horrible things had to happen along the way and they all got us to where we are today, but that doesn’t mean that what we did was necessarily right or ethical or that the film is in any way celebrating those horrible things.

Zero Dark Thirty and America

I think the controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty is very indicative of many of the things that are wrong with America. We love to be patriotic and celebrate the heroes, the victories, the successes, the things that make America look great. But we, as a country, don’t like to look at the ugly. We can’t confront the things that we did that make us look bad. We like to ignore the mistakes we made and sugar coat the nasty things we had to do on our way to achieving victory. This is why the history textbooks skip over the bad stuff; that’s why we learn in school that Christopher Columbus was a hero who founded our country rather than the fact that he brutally murdered Native Americans and gave everyone syphilis. I get that sometimes it’s hard to deal with the truth, but sometimes it seems as if we don’t even want to know the truth.

America is disillusioned, preferring to live in a state of denial rather than face the ugly truth. Maybe that’s what has to happen to not grow weary and hopeless in a world where so much of what goes on is horrific and ugly. Maybe we have to lie to ourselves so we don’t lose faith in our country, in humanity, in ourselves. I don’t know what the answer is, but I do believe that we have to get better at facing the bad in our history in order to make the future better. To live in denial is to limit how much we learn from our mistakes. Not to mention how stupid we look to everyone else in the world when we commit all these atrocities and then refuse to acknowledge them as a country, instead pretending that all is beautiful and happy when it is not and teaching our kids that America can do no wrong when we so obviously can, and frequently do, do wrong.

All I’m saying is we need to get better at being critical of ourselves. Perhaps that will come in time. Zero Dark Thirty, in both content and the circumstances surrounding its production and reception, reminds me a lot of The Battle of Algiers. Both films are brutally frank in their depictions of the (arguably necessary) horrors and atrocities of war. Both films were controversial in their time. I know The Battle of Algiers was completely banned in France for something like seven years after the film was released internationally. France needed time before they could confront what happened in Algiers. Eventually they were able to accept what they did in Algiers, but it took time. I know I’m generalizing a lot, but you get the gist. Zero Dark Thirty  focuses on events that are so supremely fresh in our minds and memories; to some extent, it’s understandable that we can’t fully deal with it yet. Perhaps in a decade, Americans will be able to look at this film objectively and accept that we as a country did terrible things along the way but that it’s all a part of our history and  we need to look towards the future and not dwell on the past.

 

PS- Here’s an interesting article that talks about Battle of Algiers and Zero Dark Thirty, if anyone is interested

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-hoffman/zero-dark-thirty-terrorism_b_2421874.html

The Machinist (2004)

My motivation to watch The Machinist, if I’m being honest, is not because I’d heard it was a great film; in fact, it had nothing to do with the film at all. My boyfriend and I went through a kick where we were obsessed with actors and actresses who lost or gained large amounts of weight in a short amount of time. Obviously, Christina Bale’s ghastly 60-pound weight loss for this film and subsequent gain of 100 pounds for Batman Begins in just five (!!) months intrigued us.

Yo-yo dieting to the max

Here’s an article of anyone’s interested: http://www.businessinsider.com/extreme-weight-loss-and-gain-for-movie-roles-2012-7?op=1

The film is definitely a mindfuck, and right up my alley. I love films that play with psychology, subjectivity, and memory; even more that, I love twists and The Machinist did not let me down. The temporal structure of the film is complex and reminds me a bit of Memento. It begins at the end, with Trevor Reznik (Christina Bale) trying to dispose of a body in the ocean. As he tries to roll the body into the sea, the old rug he has the corpse wrapped in unravels to reveal that there is nothing inside. From there, confusions abounds and builds to the close of the film, when the extent of Trevor’ mental repression and depravity is fully understood.

#manorexia

The film’s editing is rapidly paced, giving an added air of suspense to the already dark plot and desaturated world that Trevor is trapped in. The film is also edited in such a way that temporality is ambiguous; as the movie progresses, it is difficult to tell how much story time has passed since the start of the film. This ambiguity is further emphasized by the use of clocks in the film, for example, the broken clock in the airport that constantly flashes 1:30. (IMDB Trivia fun fact: the clocks are stuck at 1:30 because the plot twist occurs 1 hour and 30 minutes into the film).

Mirror, mirror, on the wall. I’m the guiltiest one of all.

The continued use of mirrors and reflective surface played nicely into the identity crisis that Trevor undergoes throughout the film. The opening shot looks in on Trevor through the window; the reflection of the city lights is crystal clear while Trevor is out of focus as we struggle to make out what he is doing (rolling up the body in the carpet). As the film progresses, there is an abundance of shots of Trevor looking at his gaunt reflection in the mirror. The revelation that Ivan does not exist and is in fact a figment of his hallucination that he has created to project his own guilt onto gives added depth to these reflective (and indeed, reflexive) shots. The ghost haunting Trevor is himself, his own guilty conscience.

Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!

Another manifestation of Trevor’s that I found intriguing was his compulsion to scrub his hands with bleach. I read this as a Shakespearean allusion to Lady Macbeth’s hysterical washing of the blood from her hands (a literary allusion that pairs nicely with the Dostoyevsky references in the film)

Maria and Son

Mama Reznik and Trevor

            An interesting aspect of the film to me was Trevor’s projection of “Maria”, the mother of the boy Trevor hit with his car, onto the coffee waitress. I interpreted this imagined relationship with Maria as Trevor’s way of trying to reconcile the loss he caused her by giving himself to her to be loved; he is the replacement for the son she lost because of him. This is further underscored by the parallel drawn between Maria and her son at the carnival and the picture of Trevor with his mother that he finds in an old photo album. Trevor and his mother stand in the exact same place as Maria and her son; this gives the imagined relationship with Maria a hint of an oedipal complex. Trevor is the replacement for the son Maria lost and Maria is fulfilling the motherly role and providing Trevor with the unconditional love he lost with the death of his mother (granted Maria is all a part of Trevor’s hallucination, obviously, but you get my drift).

All in all, I found this movie to be a fascinating exploration of repression and the pain we can cause ourselves in failing to deal with our own guilt. Despite the confusing structure of the film and twist at the end, the film wraps itself up nicely into a nice, cohesive package that answers all your questions but leaves the spectator reeling at the end. I also love that the film was too dark to be picked up by an American studio and thus was produced by a Spanish production company. Sometimes you have to get away from Hollywood to push the boundaries.