Volver

The most common meanings of the Spanish word “volver” are “to turn” and “to revert” and Pedro Almodovar’s film of the same name does plenty of both. Though it twists through the surface of propriety, turning up sordid family histories and broken relationships, there is at the heart of this tale a genuinely realized hope for reconciliation. The blessings and misfortunes of Raimunda (Penelope Cruz) and those near her constitute the film’s emotional and moral center. Despite living in near poverty and working menial jobs Raimunda still harbors a dream that if fully realized could liberate both her and her family. My ignorance of Spain makes it difficult to decide whether or not a woman such as Penelope Cruz, imbued with fiery wit and exotic beauty, would realistically occupy the lower rungs of Spanish society, but her performance is nothing if not vintage art house gold. The dearth of films that allow for performances where subtle looks and gestures carry great emotional weight or where a character’s personality requires a nimble gait to effectively capture pathos and humor is such that Cruz’s nuanced and justly praised performance arouses in the cinephile a passionate desire to proclaim that she has joined the ranks of Giulietta Masina and Catherine Deneuve. The wonderful thing is that this may not be hyperbole. Yet the glory is not solely Cruz’s, though her name and face help sell the film. This is an ensemble cast of considerable talent, and every woman that enters Almodovar’s prism is fleshed out and reflected as a mysterious and complex creature with a continually growing awareness of her own self.

Volver is tender, capricious, and funny, yet it contains dark undercurrents of violence, jealousy, infidelity, and deception. Perhaps more than any film I can remember, excluding some of the works of Ingmar Bergman, it is thoroughly a woman’s film. The few male characters that manage screen time are largely ephemeral: we do not know them except in the most superficial of ways. Yet this did not strike me as a tract of feminist rage or an exercise in male condemnation but rather a sustained view of the difficulties and joys that exist in female relationships of all stripes. All appear confronted with a past that threatens to devour both body and soul, and all seek a future where they may be free of such terrors. The way to reach it seems to be through true connection with family and friends, through compassion, and interestingly, through confession. Despite his deep concerns and themes, Almodovar appears to revel in the fun and titillation of the intentionally provocative nature of the trashy tabloid culture. This is evident in his consistent thematic preoccupation with social taboos with an eye always cast towards the erotic. So we are treated to the shock of the revealed secret, mortality depicted as both bittersweet and comically macabre, and human dignity thrust cruelly against the lurid backdrop of the daytime television talk show.

Curiously enough, it is usually in the midst of these scandalous moments that the truth is revealed. It is only in these moments that the wounds are treated, the scars accepted, and the ghostly apparitions find embodiment. Despite the fact that many of the plot elements in Almodovar’s films could be lifted straight from bad soap operas, there is something truly remarkable in his ability to find compassion for his characters and arouse that compassion in the viewer. For some reason his filmmaking style reminds me of Fellini. Perhaps it is a carnival spirit, the careful employment of bright and vivid color, or maybe a sensibility native to the Mediterranean, but the similarity, though slight, still seems to exist. Maybe it is reinforced by the graceful closure each is capable of bringing to their work, most notably an acute sense of melancholy lurking beneath a veneer of frivolity. At some point in Volver you become aware that the figures at the center of this spectacle are human, and that all are suffering, all are in a state of purgatory, each seeking liberation, atonement, and possibly (though one can’t be too sure) a measure of grace.

P.T. Anderson Article of Interest

While we pine for There Will Be Blood check out this article on PT Anderson over at Senses of Cinema. Its examines (among other things) his use of lens flares and the suggestive color schemes in Punch Drunk Love.

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/05/35/pt_anderson.html

Stranger Than Fiction

Talladega Nights may boast more box office receipts and a half-nude lap around the speedway, but it is Stranger Than Fiction, that other Will Ferrell film of 2006, that truly beguiles us with its charm. Resting upon a fantastical premise yet endowed with enough humor and pathos to ground it in reality it is one of those odd, quirky, slightly left-field slices of cinema that still manages to court a modest audience. It tells the story of Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), an I.R.S. employee whose solitary existence is suddenly interrupted by a woman’s voice who begins to narrate the events of his life as they unfold, and who mentions rather off-handedly the news of his impending death. After some reflection Harold decides that this voice, possessing a crisp, British accent, and a better vocabulary than his own, must belong to a writer, and so enlists the help of an English professor, Dr. Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), to act as a literary detective in his pursuit of the writer’s identity. With this proverbial cloud hanging over his head, Harold manages to fall for Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal), the owner of a bakery he is auditing, and soon his feelings about life become more complicated, and then so do ours about Harold. Meanwhile, the writer, Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), is unaware that the protagonist of her new novel is all too real and that her artistic decisions have actual consequences for a live human being. Her publisher has sent her an assistant, Penny Escher (Queen Latifah), to help oversee the book’s completion, but Kay’s inability to find a suitable death for Harold Crick, one with profound ironic and metaphoric properties, leaves her unable to finish it and plunges her into an artistic and psychological crisis, thus granting the real Harold his deepest wish: more time.

Given its literary preoccupations, this is at its heart a narrative-driven picture, and yet, there is something strangely arresting about its visuals. They compliment nicely the film’s sometimes whimsical, sometimes melancholy turns of plot. The genuine human longings reflected upon never feel exaggerated and are actually tempered somewhat by Marc Forster’s direction, which is lean and spare. Its’ spartan quality is amplified by many of the film’s locations. The careful employment of ultra-modern architecture, with its landscape of clean, polished surfaces, seems to mirror the barren inner life of its central protagonists: author and subject. It is largely in Ana’s bakery and home that we find external structure and interior décor imbued with real human warmth. There may be an air of predictability looming at certain times, but it never over-shadows the film’s surprisingly endearing cast of characters. True, there is a certain deliberate irony in the fact that the film saddles itself with the same dilemma as faces the novelist: the fate of Harold Crick. Everything unfolds so that some kind of resolution must take place, but deep down, it is not overly concerned with creating a heightened sense of anticipation for the inevitable climax, but in seeing ordinary moments of happiness and melancholy as small epiphanies.

Whether you detect in the film’s treatment of tragedy and comedy a faint whiff of sentimentality or honest, emotional catharsis, this much seems beyond dispute: it has an intellectual temerity and playfulness that are rare qualities of such accessible fare. Highly suggestive, it raises all sorts of interesting questions, leading the viewer to almost unconsciously create a range of dichotomies along the lines of art and life, tragedy and comedy, solitude and communion; the list could go on. It also wrestles good-naturedly with an issue of considerable heft, artistic excellence, and then quickly and wittily beckons us to see the inherent peculiarity of our own lives. In fact, its’ very title functions as a wake up call leading us towards that awareness. You may amble into the theater expecting a Will Ferrell comedy vehicle, but what you are treated to is an uncommon animal: aesthetics striving with the question of human life well-lived. Stranger Than Fiction is that desirable yet elusive figure in short supply at the multiplex these days: the pleasant surprise.

The Fountain

If anyone is lured towards The Fountain expecting a traditional blending of genres, a sci-fi romance hybrid for the CGI age, then the studio’s marketing team should sleep soundly at night knowing they have done their work well. For although science and romance have their respectful roles on the film’s periphery the main object of concern in this, director Darren Aronofsky’s third feature length film, is that most inevitable and mysterious of human limitations, physical death, and the persistent hope of immortality that accompanies it regardless of race, culture, or religious creed. Some higher power must have decided that ruminations on human mortality would be a tough sell especially when they dabble in the fantastic and emerge, as The Fountain does, as an impressive visual spectacle. The film’s substantive visual flair and indelible imagery will haunt you long after the credits roll, but here Aronofsky eschews the brisk, though extremely effective editing techniques of Requiem for a Dream, employing a more singular and philosophical tone that lifts this film into a whole other cinematic realm: it is closer in spirit to the work of Terrence Malick, Andrei Tarkovsky, or Krzysztof Kieslowski than anything a member of his directorial generation has so far produced.

At times astounding, occasionally frustrating, the film unfolds with a grace and mystery analogous to the organic forms that serve as its primary metaphors, branching out into different time periods and religious traditions in a wholly universal reflection on the quest for eternal life. To detail the plot is a delicate undertaking; the danger is not in revealing too much but rather misrepresenting the film as ambitious but hopelessly convoluted. However, a rudimentary distillation may be attempted. Tom (Hugh Jackman) is a modern day American neurosurgeon attempting to find a cure for his wife Izzi’s (Rachel Weisz) brain tumor. Izzi, though terminally ill, is writing a book called The Fountain which concerns a conquistador (Jackman again) who at the request of Queen Isabel (Weisz) has left Inquisition ravaged Spain to search the Mayan empire for a mythic tree of life, seeking immortality for himself and his queen, and salvation for his country. The book then transitions to the 26^th century where an astronaut (Jackman yet again) possessing the freshly shaved head and unadorned wardrobe of a Zen Buddhist novice ascends space in an enormous bubble, accompanied only by a tree of primordial dimensions. His destination, a nebula wrapped around a dying star believed by the Mayans to house the souls of the dead, appears to offer the hope of immortality and results in some of the film’s most unforgettable visuals.

Hugh Jackman ably infuses intensity and metaphysical resolve into each of his three roles while Rachel Weisz, as both Spanish monarch and Izzi, captures a real sense of vulnerability in addition to radiating a truly ethereal beauty. Unfortunately, Ellen Burstyn, so stunning in Requiem for a Dream, here inhabits a much more marginal figure as Tommy’s supervisor. Hers is a character of seriousness and genuine empathy yet her limited role does not allow for the full expression of her considerable talent. The film’s fluctuation in time and locales, from Central American jungles to transparent spacecraft, is in contrast to the singleness of theme that permeates this thousand year span. None of this is too revealing however, because The Fountain doesn’t offer us conflict in one age that is resolved in another. Though all three time periods appear to be inextricably linked there is an elliptical and decidedly non-linear structure to the film. Indeed, one of the film’s central visual metaphors, the ring, reinforces not only cyclical rhythms of life, death, and rebirth, but is also useful when applied to an understanding of the film’s narrative flow. In each age there are the same problems, the same temptations, and the same truth: a constantly reoccurring epiphany for those with the eyes to see.

Perhaps one of the most notable features of The Fountain is its utterly earnest and sincere treatment of all things spiritual. “What do you think about….death as an act of creation?” Izzi asks while reflecting on the Mayan creation myth, a loaded question that could easily stem from a Christian or Buddhist epistemology. There is an element of Buddhist thought underlying much of the film though its introduction seems somewhat arbitrary, at least in the film’s historical context. Still, it manages to coexist with Mayan religious ritual and Catholicism in such a way that their commonality is subtly, though distinctly highlighted. Such ecumenical treatment is remarkable in its best moments for cultivating a rare cinematic humanism that contains real spiritual dimensions. The film may contain the occasional stumble where, for example, the assumption of the lotus position in interstellar flight may make for awkward visual choreography and induce guffaws in even the most seriously inclined of viewers. Still, such missteps are rare. The real difficulty of The Fountain is deciding which understanding of immortality the film attempts to embody as true. The conviction that death is a disease to be cured is clearly repudiated as anti-human, and graceful, calm acceptance of death is depicted as virtuous. However, the question lingers: does our rebirth constitute any semblance of individuality or is it a more impersonal process, forsaking the limitations of the individual in order to be a part of all things? Since theologians and philosophers over millennia have failed to fully address these concerns it would be unfair to expect a film to provide definitive answers, and it is high praise to say that one attempts to raise itself above the level of momentary diversion and aspires to be that rarity among contemporary films: an instrument of sustained philosophical reflection. “I’m going to die” one of the characters says and it is this realization that is the heart of The Fountain. It is more important to recognize this fact than it is to try and penetrate the mystery itself. Functioning simultaneously as spectacle and visual meditation, Aronofsky’s beautiful handiwork challenges, confounds, and perplexes, but even in its imperfect striving manages to reach towards the heart of something so profound that experiencing it onscreen seems to be itself a form of prayer.