Gummo (1997)

Gummo is a beautiful film about; memory, identity, perception, loss, and a seemingly chaotic but completely harmonious life, rather both.  The film begins and ends with the image of a tornado.  In the opening Solomon talks about "the great tornado" and how "houses were split open and you could seen necklaces hanging from branches of trees."  "I saw a girl fly through the sky, and I looked up her skirt."  These simple lines tell what Gummo is about.  The veil is lifted and things are no longer grounded and concrete, and we can see what we couldn't see before.  Houses are no longer enclosed dwellings, and nothing is separate, objects and the memories and ideas attached to them have become scattered and thrown together in the fierce wind and the light.  People seem free-er and looser but if anything it is a tighter community, with no boundaries of taste.  The order of things no longer seems continual, and the way things were before is told through abstract, random sentences that tell themselves.

"My dad was mugged on Martin Luther King jr. day.  For the rest of his days, my dad never celebrated this holiday."  Solomon shows how people are defined by the experiences they've had and how identity is shaped, any other day wouldn't have made a difference but for the name "Martin Luther King jr."  Similarly at the end of the film, even more explanatory, the retarded lady with the baby dolls lies in bed and sings "yes jesus loves me, yes jesus loves me, yes jesus loves me, for the bible tells me so."  There is no clever little irony here or in the way it is presented, she is stating that jesus loves her because the bible tells her so and that's her truth.  Everyone has their own truth in this film which they are confined to and tell, but which all seems to add up to the same thing, it's just that the names and labels are all different.  The tornado that split the house open has mixed everything up so everything seems to join together.  Throughout the film Tummler and Solomon search the debris filled town for the last remnant of the old life.  "Dogs died, cats died."  The cat is a wandering animal by nature, and they hunt stray cats for money to fund their glue sniffing habit.  The last house cat "Foot Foot," has gone missing, and three girls go searching for it between tying tape to their nipples for a "better nipple" which could almost be some bad parody of an advert, talking to some boy who has ADD, and who was saved by ADD, as before he knew he had ADD he thought there was something wrong with him and lacked self-esteem and wouldn't go the extra mile.  In the term ADD he found his truth and the drug ritalin is his sacrament.  In the search for cats, the two boys come across a competitor, a cross-dresser who takes care of his granny.  After soliciting the services of a down's syndrome prostitute, for some last comfort, they find the rival's cat traps near a power station and unamused with the loss of the cats that feed their cheap glue-fuelled euphoria they break into the tranny's house, and discover, among other things, his granny, a vegetable kept alive on a life support machine.  The tranny has to clean up around her, which he hates.  Discovering the problem, the cause Jarrod's problems and the subsequent cat shortage because of his need to kill cats, they switch off the machine, because it is a lie, and she is no longer alive inside.  Balance is soon restored when the rain washes it all clean.

Throughout the film are seemingly random but actually very deliberate images.  The boy in the bunny ears with the skateboard rides down hill with arms outstretched, in the middle of the film, whereas once he kicked impotently at the stream of traffic on the freeway against the metal cage of the overpass.  At one  point he plays chords over and over on an accordian painted in blue and red, in the stall of a bathroom among empty stalls as the camera panned over them.  And that's it really, just playing the same chords over and over in a bathroom stall.  Like all great films it works both literally and metaphorically, the difference no longer relevant.  The characters are all symbolic entities of the same thing, but are still characters and real people.  Characters have their own way of communicating with one another.  A couple in the bowling alley scream and yelp at each other like animals.  In another scene Solomon has a bath and eats dinner at the same time (everything in the film makes less sense within the boundaries of taste, yet is strangely more practical), eating a chocolate bar and spaghetti at the same time in dirty water.  His hair is shampooed up into a point, which bends and falls as it does.  In the final scene, the rain finally falls to Roy Orbision's "Crying" and as the last house cat is killed Tummler and Solomon finally accept, and the dead house-cat is held up to the camera by Bunny-boy in a final gesture to show that it is finally dead, then finally back to the tornado, and in the end all is put back together again and this Xenia is just a dream.

There is no real violence in the film.  There is nothing mean or sadistic.  The only violence of the film is the two skinhead brothers brawling in the kitchen, and even that is just mutual play, and a demonstration of the primal, raw feeling behind everyday life, as Solomon tells us about the two boys who had perfect, clicked back hair, perfectly brushed teeth and were always smart, who killed their parents, and that he didn't know what went wrong.  It's merely what is behind the person, and everyone is without that, but also within it.

Wild At Heart (1990)

Unique film in Lynch's work. It's about good triumphing over the forces of evil, or good surviving in an entire world of evil, two innocent free spirits surrounded by equal part oddball freaks, equal part evil psychos who have their own systems of perversion, like getting of on a countdown to a guy's execution. The violence is hilarious and cartoonish. There are lot of seemingly throwaway, trashy scenes like an underrage rape and an abortion and it all ties together, it's film as a dream and all the violence and trauma is like a cartoon to the heroes and they just get on with it. Full of life and free, this film does not give a f--k and I love the excessive violence and acting, it's full of awesome, powerful scenes that are both affecting and hilarious at the same time, like the car crash girl going on about losing her wallet with her cards in it before dying. A lot of the characters seem consumed in loops and obsess over material possession for it's own sake, like Lula's evil mom wants to possess her. Also in the last act Sailor is tricked in desperation by the awesome Bobby Peru into committing armed robbery to get money when he finds out Lula's pregnant, and pays for it, but love prevails even in a world half ruled by rape, money and violence. In one scene 00 Spool tells them about his dog, and observes that they picture his dog even though he hasn't told them the "type" of dog, and show show they're still alive inside. A lot of the characters are so cartoonish and stylish they seem like objects. Amazing performances too. Best love story ever put on film. THIS is cinema.

Journey Into Fear (1943)

Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton made several great films together through the 40s/50s one of which is the overlooked Journey Into Fear.  It is a kind of surreal, absurdist thriller about war, identity and the stripping away of identity that turns a cowardly man in denial into a soldier...of sorts.  Howard Graham very deliberately goes to Turkey with his wife so he can be tied to an X by a magician and have an attempt made on his life, which kills the magician and sends him into hiding on a boat on its way to the mainland.  All the while he maintains the disguise of being the victim and of not wanting to get involved and of being just a businessman with no part in the war, despite being a representative of a munitions company.  His wife is sent to take the train while he must be separated from her and sent adrift on the boat.  This tale is very cleverly disguised in a World War 2 story but still works on both levels.

Everyone knows what Graham denies himself.  The Colonel who sends him away on the boat can see right through him and knowingly comments on his choice to arm himself.  I find these moments funny, such as Graham clearly immersing himself in the role in private with his revolver in his cabin, clearly relishing the freedom.  Everyone on the boat can see right through him, and they all appear to be stuck in their own reverie or loop, otherwise in the case of the Captain they just laugh at him as he impotently whines that there's a man on the boat trying to kill him and mock his false pleas.  In one brilliant scene a tobacco salesman explains how he was scolded by his wife for making remarks and talking nonsense as if he were a mere worker, which he is at heart, then says he gained freedom at home by threatening to do so again.  Like Graham, he overstepped his bounds and by doing so overcame his fear and now lives comfortably in illusion.  I could go into it further, but this film is not so overt in the way it expresses its ideas so it would take longer, whereas a different kind of film like say, Metropolis, makes it very easy as the images speak for themselves, but that is a different film from a different era and being a genre film Journey Into Fear must be disguised in order to sell itself.  In another scene another liberated soul gazes out to the sky and asks "what is better, to see the land from a ship, or a ship from the land?," and comes to the conclusion that he dislikes both and so takes simple comfort merely from the respiratory system that keeps him alive, another experienced man who has been liberated through time and lives a glad life dreaming aboard the boat.  While they all talk of the war and its folly and how terrible it is (really the inner war of Mr. Graham), one man, a businessman, gets up and says that "war is bad for business," and it is as it seems to contradict the flow of events and cause the individual confusion.

Mr. Graham, in the letter he is writing through the film from its end, apologises to his wife for hooking up with a dancing girl on the boat he met in a club at the start of the film.  She tags along with him but he just uses her as a comfort as he faces his fear of death and of his own doubt.  Finally he is confronted by the man who has hired the assassin to kill him in his cabin, who has his gun aimed at him and bluntly tells him that he lucky because he is going to catch Typhus.  Rightfully confused by this statement and by Muller's half assed plan he seeks to finally do something about it and when they get off the ship and he is held in a car, he disables the driver and crashes the car before reuniting with the dancer girl and his wife at a hotel, where the Colonel is also waiting.  In the final showdown, on a precarious ledge high up in the pouring rain, he is finally forced into action when the Colonel, his uniformed "Turkish" protector is shot and falls back through the glass into one of the rooms, and he finally accepts his role and kills his would-be assassin.  There are two different versions of the film, one with a great ending, one with a not-so-good ending.  One version has his wife call up to him that he'll "catch his death of cold," and then it just ends, and the better version has him finish the letter he's been recounting the events of the film in only to scrap his version and walk through the doors to his newfound courage and freedom.  Thankfully the bad ending is just on the TV version.

A note on the closure of the IMDb message boards

For about seven years or so I frequented many boards on IMDb, but mainly Film General.  It was one half a films board, that is about films, with titles, and genre tags and whatnot, the other half a film board, that is a community of users from the film of life who shared their opinions and ideas on anything and everything.  It truly was "film general," despite the the indignation of certain stiff users who could not accept the trolling that became more and more frequent on the board.  The trolling was the best on the internet, in that it was actually amusing and often well hidden, with numerous personas and characters provoking and entertaining with ridiculous and absurd opinions.  Later on, the board became infested with pornographic spam posts, doxxing, and call out threads.  Again harmless stuff, but also easily avoidable with the use of the ignore button, the endlessly cloning troll accounts a mere inconvenience to those who did not wish to indulge them.  The board was also host to many great discussions through the years.  It was fun.  That is all.  

RIP IMDb message boards.  Good riddance Benman.  

Metropolis (1927) (spoiler warning, but who cares anyway it's the experience that matters)

Much of what follow describes what happens in the film in order but I hope the way I've written it provides some insight into what I found in the film.  Also don't read this if you don't enjoy long rambling analytical text.  I've tried to be as concise as I can.  

Metropolis is about the city of the psyche.  It's a great film so dense with ideas it'll be hard to fit everything into a mere review, but I'll say as much as I can.  It's about the psyche of the mind and of society and the disintegration, separation, and rebirth of this city, which is divided into three levels, an intricate, perfect utopia on the surface and an industrial machine city below.  The surface level is one of luxury, freedom, games, culture, recreation and fancy.  It is here that Joh Frederson's son Freder lives a carefree life.  In the middle of a fling with a woman a set of doors open and he is confronted by a woman, Maria, surrounded by poor, ragged children, who tells him "Freder, these are your brothers and sisters."  Struck by this and bewitched, Freder decides to go searching for her, and this is what happens when he does.  

He finds himself in the machine city below, in which there is no luxury and no freedom and workers are trapped in bondage machines which they work with tirelessly and without rest.  Freder is shocked by what he witnesses, and there is an explosion, as these workers are tied together and marched into the mouth of of some entity named "MOLOCH."  He confronts his father about the explosion, and his father asks why he heard this news from his son and not his employee, Josaphat.  Josaphat has no answer.  Then Grot, the boss of the workers below, who is in charge of the heart M-machine of Metropolis, shows Joh a pair of plans of the machines he found on two workers below.  This represents awareness, the workers become aware of the machines they are in bondage to, and subsequently these plans are brought up to Joh by Grot, and he is made aware of this, as is his son.  Joh, perturbed by the news, again asks why he was informed by Grot, and not by his employee Josaphat.  Josaphat seems to represent a kind of spare part, or proxy figure to Joh, whom relays information to Joh, and his failure to relay information and the question as to why is part of the chaos, seeming malfunction and separation of the psyche and the city of Metropolis that follows. 

From this point everything becomes thrown apart in chaos.  Josaphat is fired, and becomes spare and without purpose (which should be impossible in a perfectly running utopia).  Beginning his role as a mediator and taking responsibility for the first time, Freder, who cannot make sense of Josaphat the information relay being fired, employs him and tells him to wait at his apartment.  Freder goes deeper into the machine city, first relieving a worker of his responsibility in bondage to a clock-like machine and taking his place while further chaos ensues as the worker finds himself giving into temptation and decadence, and then below into the depths of the caverns and finds the girl he was looking for, Maria, who is worshipped by the workers as a saint.  What follows is the story of the city of Babel, a sort of mini-film within the film which describes the film perfectly, and yet is also a story told within the depths of the psyche to warn of disaster, still just another mechanism to keep it all running.  Workers are employed to build the tower of Babel, a perfect city, and they do so, and it stands, but as the intertitle describes perfectly - 

- But the minds that had conceived the Tower of Babel could not build it. The task was too great. So they hired hands for wages. But the hands that built the Tower of Babel knew nothing of the dream of the brain that had conceived it. BABEL. BABEL. BABEL. BABEL. One man's hymns of praise became other men's curses. People spoke the same language, but could not understand each other...

This is an illusory self telling story that describes the folly of mind control, and subsequently the structure that only collapses from this foundation.  The psyche ends up at war with itself through fatal misunderstanding and it collapses in the face of the creator and.  It is an illusion but also just as real as the rest of the machinery of Metropolis, an idea that does not make sense and is self-defeating but when discovered and read keeps the psyche in check.

Next comes the inventor, Rotwang, who lives in an old, out-of-place house that seems to belong in another age.  Joh Fredereson sees Rotwang for advice, and laments the death of his wife, who died giving birth to Freder.  Although the film seems to follow a linear narrative (impossible to do it any other way, even altering the order of events appears linear in a way), it happens out of time, and therefore the loss of Joh's wife, or the female element of his psyche, or his freedom represented as a female, has happened and has yet to happen as everything in the film is.  A statue has been made of her and kept in the inventor's house.  Frederson, having learned of the woman in the depths who is worshipped as a saint and who he sees as a disruptive influence, seeks to shift the balance of power by tarnishing her image and depicting her as the opposite, he seeks to devilise her, and the inventor then reveals to him a cybernetic being he has created, who sits under an inverted pentagram, the naked representation of evil mind control, a being seemingly created by the will of an individual mind alone, but a necessary evil in this story, a scapegoat and last ditch attempt to seize control which will go fatally wrong and prove itself false and powerless despite it's seductive allure.  The "real" Maria is cornered and trapped in the caverns by the inventor, who captures her.  This is when the female and male is separated.  She is captured and taken away, and one door opens for the inventor and the last closes for Freder and they are rendered helpless.  She finds herself at his mercy, and displays fear and revulsion as the inventor says he wants to take her face and put it on the robot.  The loss of individuality and persona to a machine is horrifying.

In the mix is a seemingly disruptive influence in the form of "the thin man," another attempt at control and subterfuge by Joh Frederson.  The false Maria begins rallying the workers in a revolt against the machines, while distracting the priveliged bourgeoisie with her charms and with a very revealing outfit that is like a large circle with multiple spokes protruding from it.  Sexually charged and blinded by the possibilities on offer, they go mad for her.  The imagery here is perfect, the wild and raving men lusting for her transform into a set of multiple eyes, disjointed and staring.

In the finale, she leads the revolt against the machines, and the machine city is flooded, and Freder and Josaphat escape and save the children from drowning, while Grot saves the M-machine just in time.  This is another way in which Joh Frederson's grab at power turns on him fatally.  Having seen the destruction they were led to by the false Maria, they flock to her with pitchforks to burn the witch as she finally serves her purpose as scapegoat and her cackling, maniacal persona is revealed as an illusion as the fire strips her to her cybernetic circuitry.  Horrified at the revelation, they try to attack Joh Frederson, but are held at bay.  The inventor tries to take the real Maria as his own, having been so proud of his created Maria.  He takes her to the roof of a building and onto a precarious ledge ornamented with devilish gargoyles.  Freder gives chase and attempts to stop the inventor, as Joh Frederson is finally forced to kneel amidst the total chaos, after all of his plans crumbled around him, his hands clasping his scalp, his expression one of fear and horror.  Finally the trickster inventor falls and Freder and Maria, male and female, are reunited and embrace once more.

At last peace as always is restored and the psyche is reborn whole and without the demonic power lust that seemed to possess it in the form of the trickster inventor and his satanic creation.  The psyche is made whole by it's own power, and not that of Joh Frederson or the egoic inventor.  As Grot, the man of the heart, and Joh Frederson, the man of the mind, are re-united by Freder, it reads "the heart must be the mediator between the mind and the hands," rather than Maria's false, but necessary teaching "the hands must be the mediator between the heart and the mind" which led to the telling of this tale in the first place.

Not really a "review" as such but I've tried to describe the events and tie them to what I believe are the ideas of this film logically, and I feel this film follows an ingenious, impeccable logic, although the film of course has to be seen, experienced and above all enjoyed, and it is one of the most entertaining films ever made, and a great story no matter what way you read it.  The photography and set design is beautiful, futuristic and industrial, this film pulls you in and never lets go.  The music too, by Gottfried Huppertz, is awesome and goes with it perfectly.  One of my favourite films.  

Muriel's Wedding (1994)

Muriel's wedding is a sham, a staged, set up display designed to further the false goals and aspirations of a sad group of people so enamoured with winning and getting ahead that they forget to care.  In the beginning of the film Muriel is a down-and-out unemployed girl with no self-esteem who is constantly belittled by everyone around her, so she feels the need to act out, lying and stealing to live the ideal of a life she sees her peers living and appease her greedy, success obsessed father.  Eventually she meets a friend from school and they move in together and they think they're free but things go wrong again and her friend his rendered paraplegic due to a tumor in her spine.  Another blow and Muriel, ever desperate to live up to the idea of success, sees it in marriage, her new ultimate goal, overlooking her friend in favour of a phoney wedding to a professional swimmer so he can get citizenship because she's so desperate to be somebody and feels as if she has nothing, when she always had all she ever needed but was blind to it and had to learn through the suicide of her long suffering mother who always stood by her and believed in her no matter what but was ignored at the wedding as she grinned for the cameras.

Muriel's Wedding is a great film because unlike other "cinderella stories" this completely subverts that idea and dodges every cliche because it's not about success, it's about failure, or the failure in success.  In the end Muriel and her friend finally break free of it and ride off to live together but they don't really gain anything, they simply accept themselves and give up.  Most of the characters end up worse off than they began, and while portrayed comically, none of them are villains, and instead all seem just as sad and desperate as Muriel, her thieving, lying timidity just a symptom of the bind denial that afflicts them all.  Her father is an abusive, greedy, status obsessed businessman who tries repeatedly to run for governor, her siblings all sit around watching TV and doing nothing, her peers are all image and sex obsessed bitches and her mother, plain, simple and wanting for nothing, is caught in the middle of it all and when her own daughter ignores her because it she eventually has enough and self-destructs.  He leaves her for some glamorous, well-to-do woman he keeps meeting "coincidentally," and she's in just as much of a prison as the rest, who all need to make noise and shout about how great they are by the standards of a sick society that seems so loud and purposeful and keeps grabbing and taunting but is only an outward symptom of self-hatred.  

It's a great film, full of great characters and the ABBA soundtrack compliments it wonderfully.  Toni Colette is excellent as Muriel and the whole cast is great.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine pilot episode (1993) (some spoilers)

I'm an avid fan of Star Trek TNG, and while it's a great series, it's far from perfect, often preachy and pandering but with a perfect send-off in all good things, a time jumping episode in which Picard is forced to give himself up and conform to a truth in order so that humanity and all that he loves does not cease to ever have existed, the ultimate sacrifice, leaving Star Trek Deep Space Nine to take the franchise and the ideas of the series so far further into the realm of the metaphysical, and Deep Space Nine is a marvel with great characters and ideas that explores ideas of faith, time, conflict and power on a galactic scale but all aboard one station under the command of Benjamin Sisko, the Emissary of the Prophets, a race of god-like being who exist beyond humanoid perception of time and space.

The whole pilot episode is about time and timelessness and the contradictory nature of time-continuing existence existing within timelessness and destiny, and the tightrope of faith.  Whereas the Enterprise is a perfectly oiled machine and the whole crew is pretty much perfect and know how to overcome all obstacles in a rigid, literary surface sense, Deep Space Nine is a broken space station abandoned and left in pieces by a totalitarian race of control freaks who oppressed the people of Bajor and committed atrocities against them for an era.  When they leave and Bajor is "free" under a provisional government, Starfleet steps in to help out and Benjamin Sisko reluctantly takes command of the station having lost his wife at the battle of Wolf 359 seen in TNG in which Picard was assimilated by the Borg and forced to assist them in an assault on Earth.  Therefore Sisko starts out with a resentment and hatred of his predecessor in the Trek story.  The way the pilot works as a continuation of the ideas explored in the best episodes of TNG, the final episode as well as the brilliant two parter in which Picard is assimilated, is poetic in the way it comes together and adds up as a profound demonstration.

As Sisko reluctantly arrives on the station struggling to deal with loss and carrying the baggage of hatred and resentment for the previous Captain incarnation of Picard, he unwittingly sets the stage for what is to come and puts the pieces in place.  As the episode begins it is far more of a slow burner, more mysterious and mystical than the fantastical and adventurous pilot of TNG, for this is a very different show and no one is eager or agreeable, every first encounter an argument or confrontation rather than a reunion or instant friendship, at least not on the surface, for these characters thrive on conflict, uncertainty and doubt, instead of the outward goodness and purity of the Enterprise crew, although that worked for a show that had only a partially continuing story but was for the most part an adventure of the week kind of thing.  Rather by having a continuing story the show unfolds and suprises you and tries the faith of its characters whose struggle is compelling and difficult but fits in place in a larger picture.  In this way the show combines religion and science as its foundation and achieves a grander scope than its predecessors.

In TNG's brilliant two-parter "The Best of Both Worlds," aptly titled as it explores the illusory conflict between the surface reality of culture, personality and freedom and the underlying cybernetic control structure which assimilates Picard in servitude to them as humanity is forced to fight in order to save their freedom.  In the beginning of Deep Space Nine Sisko is aboard one of the ships assaulting the Borg cube.  The ship is catches fire and begins to break up and in in the chaos Sisko loses his wife but saves his child.  This loss leaves him hardened but better for it, and three years later he is assigned to oversee the station as Bajor recovers from the occupation of a controlling occupying force similar to the Borg but less absolute and more reptilian and sadistic, a kind of lingering disruptive presence throughout the series, powerful but also deluded and arrogant,their rigid control and domination their downfall as with the Dominion allies later in the series.  Deep Space Nine is very much about power play both real and illusory.  As I've mentioned before there are races of varying levels of technological advancement and power in the Star Trek universe.  The systems at the higher end of the spectrum like the Dominion and moreso the Borg tend to be more rigidly controlling, systematic, invasive and powerful, or seem so, assimilating other cultures and civilisations or assimilating them so the Federation and Bajorans have to take leaps of faith and accept and overcome their flaws in the face of the ultimate power, the beings the Bajorans worship as gods, the prophets, which speak to Sisko after giving him his test in the pilot.

At some point Sisko and Dax get in a runabout to investigate anomalous readings in an attempt to find out more about mysterious orbs that have appeared in the skies above Bajor for millenia.  Suddenly in the same way a Bajoran pilot once described the heavens open up and swallow them, and they are sucked into a wormhole a folding of time and space, the celestial temple of the prophets in which they reside beyond time forever.  It is here that Sisko's time continuing existence is tested, and as he explains how he goes from one moment to the next in life as a human being, is is thrust into different meaningful events in his life, back and forth between meeting his wife, the death of his wife at Wolf 359 and playing baseball.  The prophets speak to him through figures from his life, from Picard, who in one shot appropriately as a borg stands alongside Sisko as the prophets deconstruct from within the mechanics that get Sisko from one point in time to the next, Sisko struggling to explain that he moves forward in time while he is repeatedly thrust back into the moment his wife died with the ultimatum from the prophets "but you also exist here."  They are learning one another in order for Sisko to become the emissary.  His being is deemed intrusive to them for trying to explain how he moves and how things are lost and his mortality, but as the prophets learn this Sisko also learns of timeless existence, of destiny, and so they are bonded forever by this and Sisko returns from his experience renewed as the emissary.  

At the same time the demonstration is taking place in the temple it is also happening on Deep Space Nine as the crew races against time to stop the Cardassians from staking a claim to the wormhole.  The tension lies in the fact that the station is barely functional and could tear apart at any moment, and the crew has to rely on blind faith to get them from point A to B.  At one point O'Brien tries desperately to get a computer console working before literally kicking it into action.  Everything seems to just happen instead of being controlled completely by the crew and as Sisko returns triumphant Deep Space Nine begins.  My favourite Trek series, fascinating.