Flashdance - Male gaze

Lockdown has been a hard time, for every good film we watch there is a grand balancing out that seems to be required - a terrible film must be watched too.  A few weeks ago Flashdance was suggested.  Really?  Really.

Jennifer Beals plays Alex.  Alex works by day in Pittsburgh's steel mills and by night dances at a local bar.  She lives with her old grandma and works hard, but what she really wants is to break free and get a place at the local dance school.  But how will she get an audition?  How indeed.  Oh - and terrible 80s fashions.  So very terrible.

Though the film is (we assume) intended as an aspirational tale in which an honest working class girl comes good and gets to go off and be a dancer, it is hard to get over the explicit male gaze through which the story is told.  It is no surprise to discover that Flashdance was written by 2 men, directed by a man and produced by none other than Jerry Bruckheimer (also a man).  Alex is a character who makes no sense until you realise she's being idealised and imagined purely from a male view-point.  She's innocent but surprisingly sexually confident.  She likes dancing because... well that's what girls like isn't it?  She's completely happy with being stalked by her boss.  She's an 18-year-old woman imagined by male movie producers in the 1980s.  Make you wonder who this movie's intended audience was.  Was it made by men for men?  Or was it made by men for women, imagining this is what women and girls wanted to see?  The fact the film was popular at the time implies people (some of whom I assume were actual women) did want to see it.  Tells you something about how times have changed.

Far from being a strong female character or feminist cypher, everything about Alex that should indicate a progressive depiction is absolutely shallow.  Alex works at the forge, but she's neither seen as good at it, or having to fight any battles with sexism in the workplace or having to square the circle of her dreams against societal expectations.  Alex is introduced writhing around on a stage and having a bucket of water chucked over her (see image above) - such women's lib.  One of Alex's friends wants to be a figure skater but fails - probably because she hasn't got a man looking out for her!  Alex wants to be a dancer, but she's neither shown to be much good at it nor does she have to work particularly hard to get into dance school.  Rather she has the helping hand of a man pulling the strings to get her an audition - help she only gets by consenting to being stalked and making herself sexually available to him.  Not very #MeToo is it?  The script then has the audacity to give Alex lines implying she never wanted any help or that the man she's just given a foot-job to in a restaurant was betraying her feminist ideals by doing her a good turn.  The shallowness of this attempt to give a veneer of feminist authenticity to the story is jaw-dropping.

The film is a worthwhile watch as a sort of historical document for the hair, clothing and stylings of the time.  Contemporary depictions of night clubs from the 1980s always fill me with unease - I can never work out if clubs were really like that or they're satirical depictions of something else.  No wonder that scene died a rapid death in favour of rave culture and the eventual 90's dance scene.  What Flashdance is most certainly NOT, is an aspirational tale about one young woman's dreams to be a dancer.  Rather it's film showing what a group of men in their 40s imagined it would be like to be an 18-year-old woman who dreams of being a dancer; and how they want to have sex with her.

The Hunger Games - starting a revolution

I was reminded of this scene from The Hunger Games recently following the protests that have rocked the US and parts of the world after the death of George Floyd.  I am reminded of the way in which a revolution or protest movement can be kicked off in the most unknowable of ways.  Here, Katniss - of District 12 - is embroiled in the battle royale that is the Hunger Games.  She has spent her time in the game forging alliances with the other participants rather than fighting as expected by the semi-royalty of the Capital.  Her strongest ally is Rue of District 11, who has just died.  Rather than lashing out in rage or anger, Katniss tends to Rue's body and then makes a gesture to the camera she knows is there.  It's a gesture of significance to the citizens of District 11.  It's a gesture of solidarity.  That she of District 12 makes it gives it all the more significance.  It says that we - the oppressed - stand as one.  And with it she unwittingly starts a revolution.

Dear lord this scene brings a tear to my eye when I watch it.  Captures what The Hunger Games at its best was actually about.  About how real change is created by forging alliances and changing minds through action.  Life imitates art.

Jurassic Park - still great

One of the very few benefits of lock-down time (I write this in May 2020 - UK) is having the time to watch all the films you never watched.  I never thought I'd ever say this, but thank all that's holy for Amazon Prime.

On my girlfriend's big list of films she hasn't seen, there are several quite ridiculous entries, of which the biggest was possibly Jurassic Park.  Just how someone can be a kid in the 1990s and not manage to see Jurassic Park is a serious mystery.  The fact that as I write this Jurassic Park is available for free on Amazon Prime is something to just be thankful for.

Just in case you've been living under a stone for your whole life - a plot summary: John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) is an unthinkably rich former flea circus operator who has harnessed the power of science to create actual, real-life dinosaurs.  He has created a theme park to house the dinosaurs and wants a seal of approval from some actual palaeontologists - enter Sam Neil and Laura Dern.  What follows is part theme park ride, part horror, part story of the hubris of man - but mostly a tale about family.  It is one of the most famous, and high-earning films of all time.  The film's logo is iconic.  There have been any number of sequel and spin-offs.  The film's place in cinema history is certain.

The success of Jurassic Park lies mainly in the special effects that even 27 years on still just holds up.  Actual dinosaurs.  But the success also lies in the way the film sits exactly on the line between not enough and too much.  Just enough to scare the kids, not too much to get a 15 certificate.  Just enough about family to tug at heart strings, but never straying into cheese.  Its final hour is relentlessly paced, but with a set-up so well-crafted that each mini crisis flows perfectly into the next without being at all repetitive.  The film's effects are the film's primary draw, but it is instructive to reflect on its structure, and how well Spielberg sticks to the maxim of show-don't-tell.  Witness the scene introducing Sean Neil's character, in a series of simple interactions we learn Alan Grant 1) is a palaeontologist 2) doesn't like kids and 3) likes partner-in-dinosaurs Ellie.  We also learn that a T-Rex sees with motion and that Velociraptors hunt in packs and the ones you don't see are the ones that get you.  All simple, natural, character-building dialogue.  It's done again when mathematician Jeff Goldblum explains Chaos Theory to the audience through the medium of flirting with Ellie.  And then again when Hammond tells everyone his backstory.  By the time the film ramps up into chase mode at some point in the middle of the second act we are armed with all the knowledge needed to understand every movement and beat of what's to come.  This is how you make films.  Spielberg really is a master.

So regardless of if you've seen it before (I will assume you have) or not - Jurassic Park is still great.

Green Book - great actors, moralising-by-numbers

How simplistic do you like your race relations?  Well if you like it predictable, Green Book is your film.  Green Book tells the semi-real story of how semi-racist Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) takes a job driving Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) around the Southern US states, partly cos he needed a driver, but mostly because he needed someone hard-as-nails who could get him out of the almost inevitable strife that being a black man in Alabama in the 1960s would generate.  Tony needs to be home for Xmas.  Don needs to play his final gig in Birmingham Alabama on December 23rd.  Go ahead and try to write the script.  How do you think it'll end?  Seriously have a go - you'll probably get it right.

Which is one of a number of reasons why Green Book doesn't quite work as well as I imagine the production team would have hoped.  Aside from the linearity and predictability of the plot, the film hits every beat you would expect it to.  Tony Lip is a racist, he interacts with a bunch of black people and learns not to be.  Shirley feels like an outcast, he experiences the simple pleasures of 1960s Americana and learns not to be.  Nothing wrong with this, but for a film that was billed for its relevance in an age of Black Lives Matter, it's not really good enough.  Additionally, Tony Lip is a little too racist at the start of the film.  I wasn't around in the 1960s, but this film was made in 2018 and it is something of a stretch to believe a man who would throw away glasses black workmen drank out of will a few months later invite a black man into his house for Xmas.  Or was casual I'm-not-racist-but racism in the 1960s really like that?  Am I really that naive?

Green Book won a series of awards at the Oscars, and one of course wonders how much of this was influenced by the now annual accusation that the ceremony is 'so white'.  What better way to demonstrate inclusivity than dish out the awards to the film that does 'race' relations, the film in which the misguided-but-lovable white guy from New York realises not to be a racist?  Don't get me wrong, Mahershala Ali deserved the award, but best film Green Book isn't.  BlacKkKlansman is a better film and speaks in a much deeper way about the black experience in the USA; at least it got the best screenplay award.

In watching the film I was reminded of the Simpsons episode where Homer struggles to cope with new guy in town - John - who is gay.  The episode ends with Homer finally accepting John for who he is after John saves Homer's life.  John quips "I won your respect; and all I had to do was save your life.  Now if only every gay man could do that - you'd be set.".  Homer reacts: "Amen to that". In two lines The Simpsons in 1997 was far more cutting in critiquing society's demand that people justify themselves for their differences than this film is over a full 2 hours.

All of this is not to say that Green Book isn't a good watch.  Ali and Mortensen are great actors, and it's worth one's time to see them riff off each other for an hour.  Just don't expect to feel all warm and fuzzy about the US at the end of it.

The Searchers - Westerns not my thing I guess

Writing this in April 2020 - the age of lock-down - it seems completely natural that I would get back to my film-watching roots and watch all of the films.  Got enough time for it whatever else is happening in the world.  Hunting around for film genres I'm not even slightly abreast of usually involves getting very obscure these days, however there is one major genre I never really got into.  Or understood.  Or watched.

The Western is a genre that seems to have arisen out of a very specific set of circumstances surrounding the creation of the nation state that is the USA.  The pioneers that created that nation are lauded; be they religious extremists from Western Europe settling on the Eastern seaboard or astronauts setting foot on the moon, in amongst them are the intrepid explorers who set off over the Appalachian mountains to colonise a land already occupied by more people than some versions of history want us to remember.  They took weapons with them into a hostile land, and so the USA's 2nd amendment was born.  They colonised a land of considerable mineral wealth and gave the modern USA a backyard of endless resources with which to build a superpower.  And hence the Western was born of a lionisation of those individuals.  Their crimes against native peoples were brushed over.  The hardships endured were recast as a forging of a nation.

Hence The Searchers.  If you hunt around for not very long at all on the internet you'll be told by more than one source that The Searcher is one of the greatest Westerns ever made - if not the greatest.

Hmmm...

Watching The Searchers is an odd experience.  Like any art created in a different era, it is always important to understand its contemporary impact.  From a modern standpoint The Searchers is racist, and The Searchers is sexist.  It is hard to understand how that could have been different in a 1950s setting.  America was a very different place, but it is hard to understand how anyone could see any good in the character portrayed by John Wayne - Ethan Edwards.  Edwards is a veteran of war and returns to his family shortly before local Comanches attack their residence and kill his brother's family, kidnapping his niece.  Edwards then spends the next several years hunting down the kidnappers, more out of rage and revenge than any real desire to save her.  In fact Edwards even resolves to kill her if she has gone 'too far' and turned Comanche.  Better to be dead than a Comanche.  Is this what happens in Westerns?

And so it is that we follow Edwards and several companions trailing the Comanche.  Occasionally they chance upon a bar and ask questions, one time they arrive back at the ranch and Edwards' companion tries to reignite a romance, at the end they turn up at her wedding and start a fight for some reason to prove some point of idiotic masculinity.  If the film is a critique of Westerns, it isn't strong enough.  If the film is celebrating individuals like Edwards, then it's zigzagging tone makes it feel extremely unsure of itself.  The female characters do nothing except wait for the men folk to turn up and save / marry them.  The Comanche characters do nothing except growl and shoot guns.  The male characters do nothing but look bedraggled and gaze hopelessly towards the horizon.  The film is at best a loose critique of a world thankfully behind us, and at worst it is a shameful document reminding us that world isn't as far behind us as we'd wish.  Or maybe Westerns just aren't for me.  Probably wont be watching any more John Wayne films - not unless the lock-down goes on for a loooong time...

Parasite - A masterwork

I went into Aldershot Cineworld 4 weeks ago with some trepidation.  With the cinematic world in an absolute gush over Parasite, what if I didn't like it?  The awkward conversations with friends of mine would be just the tip of the iceberg.  Imagine having to go through your life defending a position against overwhelming consensus - the absolute hard work of it.  Just so much hard work.

Parasite - luckily - is a masterwork.  Rarely upon watching a film is it so clear so quickly that such a description isn't an overstatement.  Rarely does it become even more apparent the more one thinks about what one has seen.  Parasite is the first non-English language film to win best picture at the Oscars.  It is that rarest of rare things - the Academy getting it right.

At its simplest level Parasite is a deconstruction of the madness of our capitalist system.  Through smart characterisation and story-telling, it rips apart the contradictions of class in that system by setting two families against each other.  The Kims are poor.  The Parks are wealthy.  By the end of the first act the Kims have inveigled themselves into the Parks' lives by posing as various hired help.  Mother Kim the housekeeper, father Kim the chauffeur, son Kim the teacher, daughter Kim the therapist.  Are these lies created to prey on the upper-middle class fears of the Park family and quietly pocket their cash?  Or perhaps they're the actions of smart entrepreneurial underdogs doing nothing less than spotting a market for society's latest panacea?  Or neither?  Or both?  Capitalism much?

This story is rich enough in itself to merit your attention.  However it is myriad of other details that turn this film into the masterwork it has already been lauded.  Smart use of camerawork and set / setting convey visually the difference between the Kims and Parks.  A character ascends and is blinded by the sun as he emerges into the golden pastures of the Parks' garden.  The Kim family manifest as cockroaches under the Parks' furniture.  The families' respective houses each have a window looking out on to a jarringly different view of the world.  These and many, many others demonstrate an attention to detail in the creation of this film that elevates it far beyond its basic story.  The apex of the first act is as flawless a sequence of cinematic storytelling as I have ever seen.  The more I think about it, the more analysis I absorb of its visual breadth, the more I am in awe.

The film naturally asks us to consider the meaning of its title.  Who or what is the parasite?  The Kims naturally prey on the Parks, but then the Parks treat their help with inhuman disdain.  Then there is the underclass, leaching from everyone else.  The final message either condemns everyone or gives them all a pass as mere pawns in capitalism's great never-ending game.  In years to come A-Level film studies students will write essays on this exact question - and it feels an honour to have been there when it first came out.  Parasite is a masterpiece.

Mary Queen of Scots - a modern re-framing

The machinations of the British royal family eh?  As it was 450 years ago so it is today.  Someone is in favour and someone is on the wane.  Someone thinks someone else should abdicate the throne.  People who don't fit the bill are hounded out by a whispering campaign of the chattering classes.  England and Scotland are uneasy bedfellows.  Some things never change.

In the mid 16th century Elizabeth I sat on the English throne, the only remaining offspring of Henry VIII.  Her distant cousin Mary sat on the Scottish throne, but claimed the throne of England too through her heritage to Henry VII.  That was only a problem because Mary was a catholic and that was very important for some reason.  What the courtiers of England really wanted was Elizabeth to birth an heir so they could put their eggs in this future basket and cast both women aside.  But Elizabeth was having none of it, had no children and refused to name an heir.  Eventually Mary gave birth to a boy who would unite the kingdoms as King James I of England / VI of Scotland, and then she was killed for the privilege.  Spoiler alert.

When a creative force decides to retell a story that has been told a dozen times before in a dozen different ways, one expects there to be a reason for doing so.  In this retelling of the intertwined lives of Mary and Elizabeth, the intention is to rebrand it as a struggle of women against the glass ceiling and male domination.  Here - at its most basic level - Elizabeth succeeds because she shuns her own femininity and rules as a man; whereas Mary fails because she wants to rule as a woman, rather than in spite of it.  Elizabeth refuses to make herself obsolete, as she would be in the eyes of her courtiers were she to create / name an heir.  As soon as Mary has her son and heir, she is doomed - the men around her lose interest in pretending they're loyal to her, discarding her in favour of the male heir.  The choice is clear; act like woman and be condemned for it, or act like a man and be commended for that too.  This is an interesting slant for a contemporary audience familiar with such themes and how they play out in the modern work environment, where there are often vastly different behavioural expectations for men and women.

It is a shame then that the actual film feels incredibly flat.  There are a number of directorial misteps that are scene-breaking.  The worst being at the concluding meeting between the two queens.  The space where they meet is draped with silk demi-curtains that cramp the space and get in the way of several shots.  We spend a very long time with Mary, but far less with Elizabeth, an editing decision that gives Elizabeth much less sympathy than her distant cousin.  It isn't clear if that was intended.  If so then it's odd as this is meant to be about two woman each fighting in their own way to survive in a male-dominated world.  Equal sympathy is deserved surely?  The narrative occasionally jumps periods of time without it being completely clear why other than to maintain historical accuracy.  Finally, there is a short battle sequence in act 2 that is mostly incomprehensible.  What with all participants dressed in similar leather jerkins and slugging it out on a river bank it's messy to the point where I just wanted it to end so we could get on with the story.

Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie are great actresses.  Ronan will be rewarded by the Academy eventually, but it was the film's make up and design that was fairly nominated at the 2019 Oscars.  This isn't the only way it was edged out at those awards, since The Favourite was given awards for Olivier Coleman and nominated in multiple technical categories.  That it went head-to-head with The Favourite is prescient and unfortunate, because it meant that not only was Mary Queen of Scots not the best period British monarchy film at the Oscars that year, it was also not the best period British monarchy film that specifically re-examined historical events through the lens of 21st century gender politics.  The Favourite is more engaging scene-to-scene, is superbly-directed & lit, contains beautiful production design and costars Rachel Weisz - an actress too-often under-appreciated by the Academy who was righted nominated for her performance.  I may not have been as blown away by The Favourite as I was hoping, but its treatment of this subject is a level above Mary Queen of Scots.  Save for Ronan and Robbie themselves, I can't find many reasons to recommend this film.  Watch The Favourite.