That's all, folks (for mankind, not this blog).

Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia is an audacious, earnest drama intended (I assume) to illustrate a simple truth about the human condition, that those best prepared to deal with man-made rituals created to instill a sense of meaning and regularity into an apparently meaningless and irregular existence are least best-suited to deal with the potential collapse of the structure those rituals support.

The film has two acts and two protagonists. The first act is set on the wedding night of Kirsten Dunst’s Justine, a depressed twenty-something unable to survive the evening’s proceedings without disappearing regularly to take bubble baths and have sex with newly hired co-workers. Von Trier staggers scenes featuring a spaced-out Dunst wandering around in a funk with those featuring the wedding’s guests, among them Justine’s overbearing sister Claire (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg) and vindictive mother Gaby (Charlotte Rampling).

Taken on its own, the first half of Melancholia is a frustrating piece of filmmaking. The camera roams about Justine’s sister’s estate (upon which the ceremony is being held) somewhat aimlessly, there’s little in the way of dramatic tension, and viewers already aware of the film’s apocalyptic bent will doubt the script’s ability to make us care about its protagonists by the time the titular doomsday planet smashes Earth to smithereens.

They will be wrong.

As act two begins, Justine has returned to the scene of her wedding. It seems that a newly discovered planet, hiding for god-knows-how-long behind the sun, is due to either collide with or narrowly pass by Earth’s rotation within the next 48 hours. Still depressed, Justine joins Claire, her stuffy millionaire husband John (played by a quiet, raspy Kiefer Sutherland), and their son Leo to watch the (possible) final hours of their planet's existence play out in each other’s company. John doesn’t believe the warnings about Melancholia, and he tries with some success to calm his wife’s rattled nerves. Justine, however, believes that mankind’s end is imminent, and also tells her sister, in the act’s sole misstep, that humans are alone in the universe, knowledge she is privy to because she “knows things”.

Although the character’s final acts are played out in a beautiful slow-motion montage that opens the film, the climax to Melancholia is affecting nevertheless (or perhaps because of). Only when we are fully aware of what Melancholia represents to the film’s characters do we understand the frustrating choices Von Trier made in Act One (throughout which are hidden several little plot points that only pay off later, a nice bit of misdirection that only works because of the filmmaker’s seemingly random Dogma-esque directing style). To Justine, Earth’s destruction is a natural conclusion to its story; it does not cause her dismay because she understands that existence has no greater meaning. To her sister, however, the end of our existence is unfathomable, an unfair climax to her life and belief system. Melancholia represents death both literal and spiritual.

Although Von Trier has a world-view (universe-view?) that could kindly be described as pessimistic, Melancholia is not a nihilistic film thematically. The director seems to be making as much of a statement about the obvious fragile nature of existence and our ability to cope with its inevitable end as he is commenting on the perceived meaning of said existence.  The film’s relatively uneventful opening half serves to lull the audience into a false sense of comfort, something we only become aware of as the characters’ tense final hours play out in Act Two.

Where's the beef?

In the mood for horror, my better half and I had ourselves a Halloween double-bill last night, featuring one unseen classic, 1963's The Haunting, and one Canadian curiosity, 1981's My Bloody Valentine. It's a weird pairing, but the horror section at the video store was appropriately bare for October 29th.

I've wanted to see The Haunting for some time. It was on Scorcese's (somewhat strange) list of the scariest movies ever made, and I'm a big fan of '60s horror, the decade during which many of the genre's more interesting tropes (ie. cliches) were first being developed. Based on a novel by Shirley Jackson, it's a psychological melodrama about an emotionally-stunted woman who agrees to spend a few nights in a (supposedly) haunted house in order to help a paranormal investigator find evidence proving the existence of the supernatural.

It works better as a drama than as a thriller and, to be honest, it's really not that scary. In what I can only assume is an attempt by the screenwriter, Nelson Gidding, to replicate the psychological terror of the novel, he fills his script with staggered bits of narration, putting us into the mind of the film's empathetic (yet still annoying) protagonist at some point during every scene. The first time the device is employed, Julie Harris’ Eleanor is sitting behind the wheel of her car, thinking about what she's left behind. The extent to which this scene, and much of the film's narration, recalls Marion Crane's rain-soaked drive to Bates Motel is both jarring and reassuring. Jarring because the rip-off is so obvious, reassuring because it means Gidding's seen Psycho.

The rest of the film, however, is nothing like that Hitchcock classic. It's a character-based horror film, high on tension but light on scares (save for two great ones). 

Eleanor is attracted to the house’s unearthly residents just as much as she fears them, and it’s this strange desire that provides the film with its romantically eerie atmosphere and unexpected yet satisfying climax, drawing us into Eleanor’s increasingly fractured psyche as it becomes more and more unhinged.

And then there’s My Bloody Valentine, a poorly made film about a bunch of teenagers who are stalked and picked off, one by one, by a masked killer.

The mining town setting adds a bit of novelty to the formula, and many of the cast are charming in a folksy Canadian kind of way, but My Bloody Valentine is so typical of its genre it could be shown to aliens as an example of what a slasher movie is.

Although the kill scenes are effective and the director does manage to build up a modicum of tension in the film’s first act, the script is completely devoid of theme and the twist ending is stupidly obvious and nonsensical (which almost sounds like a compliment).

It’s amazing to think Texas Chainsaw Massacre came before the slasher movie onslaught. It’s so much more interesting and subversive than its offspring that it plays now as though it was intended to be a response to the genre’s conventions, not the film that originated them. Plus it’s actually scary.

Horror movie fans are like indie record collectors. The desire to experience something great for the first time causes (a subset of them) to overhype slightly-above-average (or just idiosyncratic) obscurities. Obscurities like My Bloody Valentine.

Keep the cat in the bag, horror movie fans. Keep circulating those cassettes torrents to prevent proper DVDs of this crap from showing up on the shelves at my local video store. I already saw Cannibal Holocaust.

Neither The Haunting nor My Bloody Valentine has an interesting poster, so here's TCM's instead:

Kiss directed Jaws

In the spring of 1977, filmmaker William Friedkin was putting the finishing touches on his then-expensive remake of the classic French thriller The Wages of Fear. The story of four crooks driving a truckload of dynamite across the dangerous Nicaraguan jungle, the $22 million production was Friedkin's first following the one-two punch of classics he'd completed prior, The French Connection and The Exorcist.

Released during a summer movie season of which it never even knew it was a part (and pulled from theaters after only one week to make room for the return of the first Star Wars) Sorcerer grossed a meager $12 million, marking the end of Friedkin's reputation as a great director and the (inexplicable) failure of an advertising campaign revolving around this(!) one-sheet:

Film marketing changed significantly in the ‘70s. A previous sure-fire hit such as Sorcerer, sold on its high-concept and proven director, found itself unable to compete with newer, effects-driven blockbusters, finally being sold on television for the first time.

Selling audiences high concepts and plot-based narratives, Spielberg, Lucas, and their ilk spoke the language of Reagan-era America. Rocky became Rambo, and it didn’t take long for everything else to go to shit. Watch Back to the Future 2 for an example of how self-referential “tent pole pictures” quickly became. The film is full of in-jokes and winks to its (1990) audience, empty and pathetic when viewed under pretenses unenhanced by nostalgia.

Despite the aforementioned shittiness, however, Hollywood blockbusters (though not Blockbusters) remain the dominant form of filmed entertainment in twenty-first century America (excluding porn, obviously, and television shows featuring celebrities doing nothing/dancing), to the point where their previously designated “season” threatens to engulf the rest of the schedule.

A top executive at one of the six major studios recently confirmed what was already assumed by anyone who was paying attention, that the studios focus almost entirely on blockbusters as profit-makers. Successes are determined by marketing and distribution, word of mouth has little to do with it, and it’s already a cliché to bemuse that hits are already hits (and bombs are already bombs) by the end of opening weekend.

This rotting of the development cycle has left studios no choice but to focus entirely on known properties, unable to risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars on untested ideas. As a result, this summer saw the release of the remake of Conan the Barbarian, from the director of the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the remake of Friday the 13^th. The year’s top 15 thus far includes eight sequels, one prequel, and three other films based on already-existing properties.

As the summer movie season of 2011 draws to a close, as Hollywood's pathetic output ably reflects the dire state of human existence at large, consider that all empires eventually do fall.

Dark of the Moon ain't nothin' but a relic.

When the social contract is broken...

The government must default. That's how that thing goes, isn't it?

---

The state of popular cinema is not good. Last time I checked, the 3rd or 4th Transformers movie had already grossed $406 nukkuib# (that'd be "million$" if you had yer fingers on the right keys), and that's A LOT A CHANGE.

Ignoring the oughts, if you were to choose a random year from any decade since Jaws and then check its top 20, you'd likely find at least one or two films that were remembered to a certain (ie. existent) extent. '99 had "The Matrix," '93 had "Jurassic Park," and '94 had "Speed".

Ignoring even recent history, this summer still sucks.

As a culture, we want to be philosophised to (at?). We willfully submitted ourselves to Christopher Nolan last summer (and in '08, for that matter), and were respected accordingly. Knock Inception however you may, it was inarguably a popular entertainment during its run.

Have we simply reached the apex of 20th century culture's (populist) ascent? Has popular art submitted itself to capitalism completely?

Yes!

PS. Next time: more old shit.

PPS. This is the weekend they didn't play golf:

The Last Action Hero shamed (when we needed him most)!

September sees the release of Rod Lurie's remake of the (semi-)forgotten 1971 thriller Straw Dogs, which was directed by the also semi-forgotten (and late) Sam Peckinpah. Peckinpah made manly movies like the Wild Bunch and Convoy, testosterone-fueled affairs from a time when every critic reviewing a Western didn't feel obligated to reference Unforgiven in the first paragraph of his or her review.

Straw Dogs is a unique film, the story of a timid mathematician (played by Dustin Hoffman) forced to defend his wife and home from a gang of English townies hell-bent on breaking in and causing mayhem. Famous for a "is she enjoying it?" rape scene and an absolutely fantastic poster (see below), Straw Dogs, like Vertigo, is the kind of movie Hollywood just doesn't make anymore (Michael Haneke's remake of his own Funny Games notwithstanding).

I don't hold out much hope for the remake. Starring Cyclops and Lois Lane, it looks like yer typical modern thriller, full of Michael Bay-style shiny golden sweat reflections and an (also Michael Bay-like) lack of subtlety; that Samuel L. Jackson bad neighbour movie minus Samuel L. Jackson.

Much like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the first Straw Dogs FEELS like a reflection on war even though it isn't (overtly). Both films feature characters who escape to the countryside, away from college-campus protests and increasingly-grisly nightly news broadcasts, only to be faced with new terrors staring them (directly) in the face, posing a real, physical threat.

A case could be made for the 1970s as the best decade in film history, and the newfound sense of freedom and self-reflection that permeated the culture of the period is obviously due to America's involvement in the Vietnam War. This is why the decade's thrillers are so successful; their protagonists are guilty before the film begins, even if their level of complicity in the war is debatable (or indirect).

This underlying sense of guilt is missing from modern thrillers, despite the United States' ever-increasing involvement in international conflicts. The reasons for this are obvious, but depressing nevertheless. Instead of entrusting real storytellers with the responsibility to tell the world's audiences what they didn't know they needed to hear (ie. the ROLE of the artist in society), today's Hollywood hires systems managers trained on music video sets to recycle themes better articulated by other (ie. better) men.

Where are you when we need you, Sam?

PS. Further viewing: Deliverance.