Unanswered Cries

One thing the police, the church, and doctors all have in common: in trying to solve the problems of humanity, they assert an air of authority so their commands and advice are likely to be followed without question. 2016's The Wailing (곡성) destabilises all three, exposing faith people didn't even know they had while undermining it. It's a sad, funny, and frightening story smartly constructed.

One of the very effective choices made by the filmmakers is in the film's central protagonist, Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won), a young police sergeant in a remote mountain village in South Korea. He's slightly overweight, has a soft face and a perpetually dim, anxious expression. He looks more like an underachieving office drone than a cop. One imagines that he's never had to deal with anything worse than petty theft or parking tickets. It's credible, though--this sleepy little village hardly seems to require Eliot Ness. His bossy little daughter, Hyo-jin (Kim Hwan-hee), casually directs the man about food and manners like something from a broad comedy. Certainly, Jong-goo feels more like a protagonist from a comedy, a Keystone Cop, maybe, but the film never takes the tone to a level that artificial. But Jong-goo is like a comedy protagonist lost in a horror film.

Certainly he's not equipped to handle the sudden outbreak of a strange disease that disfigures people with bloody sores and turns them into mindless creatures, hungry for human flesh. At the first crime scene, he and his partner sit discussing the problem when a strange, beautiful woman (Chun Woo-hee) starts throwing rocks at them.

She says the culprit is a Japanese man, played by Japanese star Jun Kunimura, who recently moved into an isolated, decrepit little house in the mountains. She says the man is a ghost and we see him in dreams or visions wearing only a fundoshi and eating large animals raw. In one case, he approaches the viewer and his eyes glow red.

But we've seen too many unreliable narrators in films to trust this right away. And, indeed, it seems the Japanese man may be a victim or even a shaman trying to stop the true perpetrator who put the curse on the village. The history between Japan and Korea is never directly addressed but the tension over the fact that he's a foreigner is present in the portrayal. Do people distrust him just because he's a foreigner, and is he a red herring for that reason? The only person in the village who can speak to him is a Catholic deacon who spent part of his childhood in Japan and so knows the language. This isn't the first reference to Christianity in the film, though. The film begins with a quote from the bible, Luke 24:37-39:

But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed they had seen a spirit. And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see me; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.

There's also a shaman named Il-Gwang (Hwang Jung-min) whom Jong-goo's mother hires once Jong-goo's daughter becomes ill. Il-Gwang immediately finds a dead crow in one of the large pots they use to store food so this guy, at least, seems to know what he's doing. Right? One immediately starts to think about other ways Il-Gwang could have known what was in the pot.

At every stage, every source to which Jong-goo turns for answers demonstrates some real insight while also being arguably dubious. This would be frustrating and frightening enough if time weren't a factor. As it is, the disease seems poised to take out the whole village and no-one at the hospital seems to have any idea how to combat it. The shaman suggests one solution that seems medically dangerous and Jong-goo, being a police officer, has a front row seat to his own institution being undermined when he's so cognisant of his own helplessness.

The film reminded me a little of The Exorcist but destabilised faith in not just the church but in any means of combating a harmful influence is a source of great tension in the story. The end of the film drives its point home with a keen sense of the tragedy this film with a comedy protagonist turns into.

The Arc in Space

Is it possible to care about someone if they don't change their personalities over the course of two and a half hours? Many amateur critics (like this one and this one) of Rogue One would say no--one of the most common attempts for these critics to handle their contrary instincts to anything new being tried in a Star Wars film has been to criticise its characters for not having arcs.

I would say this isn't true--and these critics bring up evidence that it's not true in order to argue that it is true by attaching a vague coda like, "It's not good enough/real/silly." Part of the problem is that a lot of people don't seem to have understood that Rogue One wasn't experimental just for expanding the Star Wars films to outside the main saga, it was also an attempt to make a film of a different genre within that same world. Rogue One was designed to be more of a war film, a team war film like The Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare, a genre where arcs for the characters aren't necessarily present or aren't crucial to the story. Many of the amateurs making this criticism seem pretty young so maybe they don't remember a time when most movies weren't superhero movies. So to-day I've decided to compile a list of recommendations, in no particular order, of different films from a variety of genres that feature main characters with no "arc". Mind you, if the characters in Rogue One qualify as not having arcs, then many of the criteria present in Rogue One, such as death and decisions that don't jive with their previously established world views, would qualify a vast number of films for this list. But I'm going to limit myself to . . . oh, I put together a long list. Well, here's eight of them:

The Passion of Joan of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc) (1928)

Most of the movie consists of close-ups on Renee Jeanne Falconetti as she gives her amazing performance of a woman who will not waver in her devotion while a panel of priests continually try to bully and manipulate her. So, ironically, Joan of Arc had no arc and she would've been less interesting if she'd had one.

Alice in Wonderland

This goes for just about any adaptation of Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass. Exceptions include some of the worst adaptations, like the Tim Burton movie. I love the 1951 version which does attempt to introduce an arc of sorts with one scene, the "Very Good Advice" song, where Alice seems to have learned a lesson about being too curious, but while the line about giving herself very good advice but seldom following is in the book as a narrative observation it's not something Alice realises about herself. In the best adaptations, like 1988's Neco z Alenky, Alice is the same adventurous and thoughtful girl at the end as she is at the beginning.

Seven Samurai (1954)

Some characters in this film, most notably Katsushiro, do have arcs but the characters most people remember best, Kikuchiyo and Kambei, don't have any arcs to speak of. Maybe Kambei's opinions about the villagers evolve a little but that accounts for a small portion of the film's four hour run-time. Seven Samurai inspired many other films, most famously The Magnificent Seven, and could be said to have kicked off the kind of morally murky action team war film genre, making it a spiritual ancestor of Rogue One. Of course, George Lucas was famously influenced by Kurosawa in making Star Wars, particularly by The Hidden Fortress, which is told from the point of view of two peasants. This is largely why Lucas tends to say Star Wars is told from the point of view of R2D2 and C3PO who, like those two peasants, have no arcs.

La Dolce Vita (1960)

Like Alice, the central character of this film, Marcello, has a series of strange encounters but remains basically unchanged by them at the end of the story. The film functions as a snapshot of a peculiar life and culture in fashionable Rome of the 60s.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1967)

Does Clint Eastwood's Blondie really change much over the course of not just this film but over the whole trilogy that began with A Fistful of Dollars? Does anyone? Maybe Tuco. But no, not really. Part of the fun is seeing how the world around these characters just can't seem to crack into their personal motives.

The Wicker Man (1973)

And I mean the original, thank you, I'm not about to defend the Nicolas Cage version. Sergeant Howie remains steadfast in his beliefs and motives throughout the film and so does everyone he meets.

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

After the first film, the Mad Max movies can be watched in any order because Max remains the same throughout them and the movies generally only reference the first one. Max is trying to get through the wilderness, is wary of people, he reluctantly helps out, and then he goes on his way.

Fargo (1996)

Famously featuring one of the few pregnant characters in film history who doesn't end up having her baby at some point in the movie, we never even find out if the case Frances McDormand is working on is the wildest of her career. Like many of the films on this list, the story relies on her character remaining a constant as she reacts to the strange events in the story.

Some other examples:

Pandora's Box (1929)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
I Knew Her Well (1965)
Get Carter (1971)
Nosferatu: The Vampyre (1979)
Almost any James Bond movie.

Twitter Sonnet #949

A copy's plastered on the yellow glass.
The charcoal shades but shrug and seek for smokes.
Ornery mist was pressed in steel and gas.
The spinach hangs above the air it strokes.
Intensely dry cleaned coats descend through damp.
A shivered forest brain contains the fool.
A model made for brighter thoughts than lamp.
Engaged to sharks the stone was but a tool.
A handle made of bone reflects in spoons.
In kitchen walls a lattice knife grew hot.
Beneath the stairs, a larder darkly looms.
The dishes take some rust and missions rot.
Demands for arcs will run in circles fast.
Forgetful droids and young neglect the past.

Smarter than the Average Helium Tank

About halfway through Sunday's new episode of Sherlock, "The Six Thatchers", I hit some kind of peak, some perfect combination of incredulity and sadness provoked by how unbelievably bad it was, that I was giddy, on the verge of tears and bitter laughter. Why . . . why is Mark Gatiss still allowed to write for television?

Spoilers after the screenshot

What was worse? The balloon version of John that Sherlock failed to observe or the subplot about John falling for a redhead on the bus? Or maybe just Mary; dear gods, every episode I think, "Well, okay, she's really annoying, but obviously she won't be important in the next episode," and then the plot keeps fucking revolving around this flawless secret agent who is apparently able to outsmart everyone including Sherlock who, again, mistook a balloon for John.

Why, why, why do they think people want the Super Mary and Befuddled Sherlock Show?

And, hey, when we confront the villain, let's everyone, including Mycroft (?!) waltz right up to her unarmed? Lucky thing Super Mary is faster than a speeding bullet!

And she does shtick! Augh. What happened to Sherlock being a master of disguise?

There's this scene where Sherlock talks about the ability to predict anything in life when he tracks down Mary and I thought, oh, cool, he's going to divulge this whole complicated line of deduction he used to find her, that's cooking like Conan Doyle--but, no, it was "Dur hur, I put a tracker on you." And it was John's idea! Aren't Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley supposed to be in this movie?

I guess the idea was to combine the original Mary Morstan character with her father in The Sign of Four. It's interesting they changed the plot so it wasn't a hidden treasure that was the secret behind the four but secret missions for the government. I guess making her a thief would have made her too much like River Song? And, ugh, Sherlock is doing that, "I'm Sherlock Holmes!" thing, like the Doctor now does that, "I'm the Doctor!" thing on Doctor Who. In the absence of actually inventing cool things for the character to do, he has to announce that he's badass.

Why would Sherlock be tweeting all the time? Was this written by Donald Trump? It's John who does the blogging, supposedly Sherlock hates that stuff--he should be writing monographs on different types of tobacco or something, not--tweeting. These stories are leaning way too hard on the cute, socially inept thing.

To get the taste of this episode out of my mouth I re-read "The Six Napoleons" and watched the Jeremy Brett version of The Sign of Four. Even after all this time, Brett remains the pinnacle.

Well, at least Gatiss didn't write next week's episode. We can say we got it over with. He's co-writer on the third episode but hopefully Moffat will put the kabosh on any more Watson Balloons.

She is Her Habit

Passionate parents can be pretty stifling for their dispassionate children. Well, that's not quite what 2016's Little Sister is trying to say though the film, set during the 2008 presidential election, inevitably comes off differently after Trump's election. But it's a pretty, slightly fetishised look at a young woman in training to be a nun and the family she's reacted against her whole life.

The movie has echoes of The Breakfast Club, featuring Ally Sheedy as Joani Lunsford, the mother of the central character, Colleen (Addison Timlin), and begins with a quote from Marilyn Manson from his first album which, having come out in the early 90s, makes it roughly equivalent to the David Bowie quote from 1971's "Changes" that opens 1985's The Breakfast Club.

Not that I'm arguing Manson is half the artist David Bowie was (I'm sure he wouldn't either) but like the Bowie quote from "Changes" it sets up the thematic conflict between disaffected youth and an adult world trying to enforce its own vision. Sheedy's character in particular is an interesting contrast to her "basket case" character in Breakfast Club. She's still a basket case but of a different kind, or possibly an evolution of the same kind. She and her husband, Colleen's father, are passionate Obama/Biden supporters, taking part in the wave of anti-Bush sentiment. She's a proud pot smoker and really wants Colleen to start smoking pot, too.

But the film's argument, posed with a kind of ironic understatement, is that the political and personal passions of the left in 2008 were shallow and fuelled more by narcissism than true belief in the cause. Sheedy's character is shown as unreasonable in her treatment of Colleen, screaming at her for coming home late in one scene even though Colleen had only just returned home after having been living in the convent. Later, she laughs at Colleen's disgusted reaction when meat is put on her breakfast plate despite knowing that Colleen is a lifelong vegetarian. Colleen's brother, Jacob (Keith Poulson), whose face was completely burned off in his service in Iraq, is confronted by a stranger in a drug store who says to him with weird fervour, "I bet you're so glad for Obama!"

There is certainly some truth to this--for any cause there are plenty of people who don't understand their true reasons for being in it. With all the cards stacked against the side that cares about politics, it's easy to see why the consistent thread in Colleen's life has been reacting against it. In high school, we learn, she'd been a Marilyn Manson fan, I'll say "goth" even though I still remember a time when it was hotly debated whether Manson fans could be goth. I don't think this film really has such a fine appreciation for the subculture, though, any more than it really seems to understand what it's like to be a nun. One of the main problems with the film is that it spools out backstory instead of developing the main story. We see, without knowing exactly why, Colleen leaving the convent at the beginning--we don't learn of her brother's recent injury until she arrives at the family home where he's living with his fiancee (Kristin Slaysman). This makes a disconnect between the audience and Colleen despite the fact that the camera is almost constantly studying her pretty face.

As she goes back to her goth clothes and hair to entertain her brother, dancing to "Have You Seen Me?" by Gwar, the film takes on the quality of a harem anime with every woman in the story trying to figure out how to please him. His fiancee is a gorgeous, buxom blonde who dances for him in her lingerie, and the climax of the film is very much about attending his needs though, again, we learn practically nothing about him but plot points--he served in Iraq, his face was burned, and now he doesn't want to talk to people much. And he also doesn't care about politics much.

And that's fair, not everyone should feel they have to be passionate about politics. But for this message it certainly feels like bad timing. An unintended consequence is that the film reminds me how complacent people are free to be when they have it good.

The Stairway of 2016 Moving Pictures Both Ways

Happy New Year, everyone, it's time for my annual ranking of the previous year's movies. I don't do it at the beginning of December like some publications, thank you.

I used to do a Best and Worst list but some years ago I decided to simply combine them, including movies I felt more neutral about in the middle, so this is a from worst to best list of new movies I saw in 2016. There are still a few more I'd really like to see, especially Arrival and La La Land, so I may come back and add those later. For whatever else it was, 2016 was actually a pretty good year for movies. I haven't had a chance to write reviews for all these yet, hopefully there won't be anymore celebrity deaths I'll want to write about in the next few weeks.

28. Lights Out

This is the Rebecca Black's "Friday" of movies. It feels like someone adapted a headshot and resume into a horror film. A cast of actors who seemed drawn exclusively from soap operas and Maria Bello, its photo-copy of Japanese monster effects and shallow psychological subtext made this film embarrassingly bad in a way that makes you suspect the people to blame are too coked up to care.

Batman V Superman - Sad Ben Affleck - HD by allthingsonline

27. Batman v Superman (my review)

In spite of its bad writing and tired, derivative visuals, it's still the casting of Ben Affleck as Batman I hate the most about this thoroughly lousy film. But Gal Gadot was also pretty lame as Wonder Woman.

26. Ghostbusters (my review)

If Paul Feig wanted to remake The Mask he shouldn't have called it Ghostbusters. Also, I preferred "Cuban Pete" for the dance routine.

25. Fan (my review)

Shah Rukh Khan's amazing, ambidextrous performance and some truly impressive cgi can't replace a film's story.

24. Absolutely Fabulous (my review)

An adequately entertaining revisit to the classic series with its unique flavour of tastelessness.

23. Star Trek Beyond (my review)

A charming effort with the screenplay by Simon Pegg squeaks through despite some conspicuous studio tampering that saddles the film with a silly, nonsensical ending.

22. The Witch (my review)

Featuring some great, handmade costumes and historical detail those of us who study the 17th century can appreciate, its meandering final act puts this film well behind the films it pays homage to like The Blood on Satan's Claw and Day of Wrath.

21. X-Men Apocalypse (my review)

Falling well short of the high water mark of some previous X-Men films this one still provides an entertaining experience with good performances and the promise of a better Dark Phoenix.

20. Little Sister

It might have been called How to Rebel Against Rebellious Parents. Set in 2008, it's maybe the first real portrait of the struggle the generation of entitled hipsters faced at the time of being too poorly educated and dispassionate to care about anything in particular, I guess.

19. Deadpool (my review)

An exciting innovation in the superhero genre with many genuinely funny jokes. A final act that takes it back into the more mundane territory of superhero films couldn't entirely sink it.

18. Suicide Squad (my review)

What a mess. Who thought we'd want to see a movie about a team of villains that ended with them learning about the power of friendship? But Margot Robbie's glorious, you have to admit it to yourself.

17. Captain Fantastic (my review)

A well-meaning, sweet, wealthy, left-wing dream of how life could be better if brought closer to nature.

16. Midnight Special (my review)

A nice, eerie, subtle film about contact with the strange. Featuring appropriately subtle, good performances.

15. The Killing Joke (my review)

Mark Hamill's surprisingly great delivery of Alan Moore's intelligent dialogue is great but the animation looks ugly and cheap and new plot points and dialogue don't fit with Alan Moore's original tale.

14. Captain America Civil War (my review)

Marvel continues to create effective characters who play well off each other. This one effectively tied that into an argument on the appropriateness of passion for people in power.

13. Zootopia (my review)

Adorable characters developed very well, loads of great cartoon humour, and a plot that's pretty smart when seen from just the right angle.

12. Hell or High Water (my review)

A successful translation of very modern problems into the framework of a great western.

11. Hail, Caesar! (my review)

A very stylised ode to and parody of a version of Hollywood that exists in the dreams of its people.

10. 10 Cloverfield Lane

An amazing, insightful psychological thriller with excellent performances by John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead marred only by a goofy ending.

9. Sausage Party (my review)

A long, hilarious, dirty joke with Seth Rogen's team at its best with its innocently presented complete degeneracy.

8. Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (my review)

Werner Herzog brings his inimitable outsider's perspective to the madness that is the encroaching connected future.

7. Elle

A very surprisingly complex but cohesive film from Paul Verhoeven, this is like Eyes Wide Shut meets The Rules of the Game. A fascinating essay on rape, upper class society, successful women, and the video game industry.

6. The Wailing

The real horror in this film with demons, zombies, and ghosts is its fundamental destabilisation of all institutions in which we place faith for protection; law enforcement, medical science, and religion. It achieves this simply through the creation of characters, particularly a startlingly realistic but thoroughly atypical protagonist.

5. Rogue One (my review)

This is a Star Wars movie that was a long time coming. Finally a film that really felt like it explored another part of the vast universe introduced in the original trilogy while creating characters who felt firmly part of the fabric of the fictional reality. Featuring great cinematography that opens the visual potential of very old and familiar ships and costumes, this film would be ranked better on this list if it weren't for certain depressing cgi decisions.

4. The Mermaid (美人鱼) (my review)

Brilliantly effective, absurdist comedy in the tradition of the Marx Brothers. The inventiveness stalls out a bit in the end which turns the film into an action film that the special effects can't support but before that is some incredibly endearing, ridiculous comedy.

3. I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House

There's no way a simply transparency effect on an actress, to make her a ghost, could possibly be scary anymore, is there? Well, this film has a good argument to the contrary, clearly bearing the influence of Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch, it also manages to be frightening for the kind of intimate terror that makes it a spiritual descendant of Carnival of Souls and The Haunting of Hill House.

2. Toni Erdmann

An incredibly delicate and delightful film that places a very credible rendering of a father and daughter relationship in the context of globalisation in the EU. With lots of nudity.

1. The Neon Demon (my review)

This is a movie about how people seek great meaning from incredible beauty and become increasingly vicious in the frustration of not finding it. So a lot of people sell the movie short for not finding that great meaning without realising that's exactly what the movie's about. It has some gorgeous visual poetry.

Twitter Sonnet #948

The stars were blue the night the crystals left.
Sapphire pulse engaged unclouded sky.
In azure cloaks the heroes were bereft.
Like Delvian or Bolian they fly.
Contracted madness rails in chicken trains.
Through narrow eyes the sharks revolve in space.
In frozen air the dust's what mind retains.
A clatt'ring sound bespeaks the metal ace.
On tracks we kept combined with walls we go.
We venture forth to shorter shops online.
En masse, the traffic stars collude to glow.
The deal has shown us running up incline.
Competing tides comes racing joy and fear.
With "Plainsong" credits born is the new year.