Kris and Adam Discuss AFI’s Top 100: Spartacus

Adam Daroff is an old friend of mine who currently works and lives in LA as an editor of film and TV. We are both finishing off the American Film Institute's Top 100 and writing joint reviews and thoughts as we go. This is my response to his review, check out the original at his blog, I Am A Blog

Spartacus

I share Adam’s love-hate relationship with epics, but I’m generally more positive on Stanley Kubrick. The “drag” effect is very real in his movies, but I think the root cause – and his real sin - is in stylizing moments that don’t need to be stylized. It doesn’t ruin his movies for me, but it does make them difficult to re-watch. The first few times I watched A Clockwork Orange I was captivated from beginning to end; I didn’t want to miss a thing because I wanted to understand this unique vision of the world. On subsequent viewings, however, I find myself getting a bit bored when I know that a scene isn’t all that important but still takes its time. A Clockwork Orange has some of my favorite film moments of all time, but the lack of differentiation between what is important and what is filler makes repeat viewings more of a chore than a pleasure. And only about a half hour of Eyes Wide Shut is any fun to watch once you know what is actually happening.

There are many one trick pony directors out there who manage to squeeze out one or two good movies before it gets old (M Night Shyamalan, Richard Kelly). While Kubrick certainly has his own style that rubs some people the wrong way, what prevents me from calling it a trick is a movie like Spartacus. Adam has already described most of what I like about it, but I actually enjoy Kubrick’s later work even more because Spartacus shows that he is fully aware of his style. His movies aren’t the way they are because that’s all he knows how to do, and we know this because he’s made a fantastic Hollywood epic that doesn’t look like his later movies. Occasionally his style has steered him wrong, but it’s comforting to know that there’s a motivation for it. Gus Van Sant does this same thing – he makes an infinitely watchable movie like Good Will Hunting, makes three experimental films out of which only one is any good, then makes Milk to show us he still remembers how to do it. It makes you appreciate his skills even more.

Kris and Adam Discuss AFI’s Top 100: Chinatown

Adam Daroff is an old friend of mine who currently works and lives in LA as an editor of film and TV. We are both finishing off the American Film Institute's Top 100 and writing joint reviews and thoughts as we go. You can read his response at his blog, I Am A Blog

Chinatown

Note: Roman Polanski gets no love from me. Any praise for the movie and his direction should not be taken as praise for him personally.

The Context

Almost every movie on the AFI Top 100 from the 1970s is made by members of what has been dubbed New Hollywood – Francis Ford Coppolla, Mike Nichols, Martin Scorcese, Roman Polanski, Michael Cimino. Some of these names are legendary, some are infamous, some continue to make notable movies but are not household names, and some are largely forgotten, but their impact is still felt. Their films are approaching 40 years old, but even today many of them still evoke feelings of discovery and inspiration not unlike the first time I read Nietzsche at age 15 (admit it, we all went through a Nietzsche phase, and if you've ever said “Fuck you, mom,” it was probably while under his spell). Filmmakers were experimenting with new ideas, new freedoms and ever-expanding budgets. It was something of a renaissance, I've always wished I could have been there as it happened.

Everybody was trying new things during these years, but Chinatown stands out as a new take on something old. The same way Apocalypse Now demonstrates Joseph Conrad's continued relevance by putting his story Heart of Darkness in a modern setting, Chinatown reinvigorates the entire genre of film noir by keeping its 1930s setting and tone but by being more honest about how such a story would have played out than films had previously been allowed. The sex is sexier, the twists are twistier, the violence is more violent and the nihilistic protagonist is even more nihilistic – that is, until he realizes what's actually at stake in this case.

However, Polanski never allows his newfound freedom descend into licentiousness, and the most luscious part of Chinatown remains the atmosphere. Most revisionist noir I've seen get carried away in following tropes and stereotypes, filmmaking by numbers. If you've seen an episode of Boardwalk Empire you know what I mean - “Hey, people were more racist!” “Hey, people said 'dame' and 'broad' a lot!” “Hey, everyone spoke in either elaborate metaphors or pedantic truisms!” It is very easy to get carried away with making a period film, rather than creating a world for that period film. That's where Chinatown excels – every character is a real person in a real environment, not a stock character to lend it period-specific credentials.

The Film

Part of what's so great about Chinatown is how it slowly reveals what it's about, so a plot summary would do it disservice. Suffice to say Jake Gittes has an amoral swagger that has served him well as a PI, and Evelyn Mulwary wants what's nicest even if it's not what's best. Both have rather large fish to fry. Intrigue ensues.

Probably the most gripping part, and the thing that makes Chinatown truly worth watching, is its ending. I won't say anything specific, but at the moment where Jake realizes exactly what has just happened and that this is how the story really ends, you feel the impact it has on him. Here's a guy who's never been phased by anything in his life, but he honestly never saw this coming, and even if he did he never expected to let it impact him like it does. This one scene is some of the best acting Jack Nicholson has ever done and the best directing Roman Polanski has ever done. Watch it for this one scene.

Now, my biggest pet peeve in film is anything that takes you out of the moment. Polanski has a very self-serving cameo as a gangster guarding the waterworks. Here's what that scene did for my enjoyment of the film: “Oh man, what's going to happen? Hey, that's a young Roman Polanski! Wait, why does an LA gangster have a Polish accent? And why does he keep calling Jack Nicholson 'kitty'? Crap, he just cut him, something important just happened but I was too distracted to understand why!” A minor complaint, but probably emblematic of the invincibility Polanski was feeling at the time.

Comments: Roman Polanski is a contemptible human being and if I ran a studio I would outright refuse to fund or distribute any of his films. But movies like this remind you why he was, and continues to be, such a big deal.

Deserves to be on Top 100: Yes.

Inspired: Early Coen Brothers, no doubt. I got the same feeling watching this film that I got from Blood Simple and Barton Fink.

Kris and Adam Discuss AFI’s Top 100: Casablanca

Adam Daroff is an old friend of mine who currently works and lives in LA as an editor of film and TV. We are both finishing off the American Film Institute's Top 100 and writing joint reviews and thoughts as we go. You can read his response at his blog, I Am A Blog

Casablanca

How good is Casablanca? It's so good that it's almost become cliche to talk about how good it is. This one lives up to the hype, and very few movies, even good ones, are able to live up to any hype at all. The whole thing lives and breathes, the plot and characters are completely believable, the nightclub actually feels alive, every actor fills the part brilliantly, and all of the subplots contribute to the movie instead of dragging it down. Best of all, there are no cheap sentimental tricks, just pure honesty and genuine inner turmoil.

Because I don't have much to say about its greatness that someone else hasn't already said more eloquently, I'm just going to make two observations then wrap this up:

-This movie seems to have the reputation of being a great love story. I think it's exactly the opposite. The great love story happened years before in Paris, and that part of Rick and Ilsa's life is over. This movie is about contextualizing your emotions and seeing your place in the world and the events around you. That's the whole point of the "hill of beans" speech - the world keeps turning no matter how heartbroken you are, and self-pity should never stop you from doing the right thing.

-Because it was made in 1942, during the war itself but not in an actual war zone, this is the only film I can think of where Nazis are portrayed as a fact of life. Too many movies fall into the trap of making the bad guys bloodthirsty dicks while the good guys are handsome boys who love their families (I'm looking at you, Pan's Labyrinth). That is lazy character development and Casablanca doesn't do any of that. Don't get me wrong, this is clearly an anti-Nazi movie - the bad guys are Nazis and the good guys are resistance fighters, and there is a lot of anti-Nazi rhetoric in the dialogue - but there is a noticeable difference in the way the individual Nazis and collaborators are portrayed. They are bad guys because they've sided with the enemy, not because they're alcoholics who don't like children and kick puppies.

Comments: As good as you've heard, possibly better.

Deserves to be on Top 100: Oh God, yes.

Inspired: Chasing Amy. That may be a stretch, but I had the same emotional reaction to both movies. The hero is a generally likable guy who loses sight of his moral compass...he genuinely loves the girl but can never get her back because reality pushes them apart, and in the end the only right thing to do is let her go for both of their sakes.***

***The key difference is why she left - in Casablanca it's because of the difficult reality of the war, in Chasing Amy it's because he still has hangups about her past but won't admit it.

Kris and Adam Discuss AFI’s Top 100: The Third Man

Adam Daroff is an old friend of mine who currently works and lives in LA as an editor of film and TV. We are both finishing off the American Film Institute's Top 100 and writing joint reviews and thoughts as we go. You can read his response at his blog, I Am A Blog

The Third Man

When watching old movies, I find myself thinking one of two things. It's either “Wow, why don't they make them like that anymore?” or it's “Wow, I'm sure glad they don't make them like that anymore.” I felt both over the course of watching The Third Man, a 1949 thriller where the plot is constantly restated in the dialogue for the first 45 minutes as if they were expecting the audience to show up a half hour late, then suddenly shifts gears and turns into some of the most compelling, gripping filmmaking I've ever seen for the second half.

What Happens

The movie begins with pulp novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) arriving in post-war Vienna which, because of the partitioning between the four Allies, is halfway between police state and total anarchy. Martins was told by his friend Harry Lime that he could get some work, but upon arriving Martins finds that Lime has just died after getting hit by a car. Suspiciously, nobody can quite agree on the details of the accident, and everybody involved seems to be some sort of swindler or smuggler who has some vested interest in hiding the truth.

Martins juggles the all of these accounts, none of which hold any water and all of which foreshadow so strongly that the characters may as well end every line of dialogue with “Dot dot dot, Mr. Martins...” He also encounters all the old standbys one would expect in a film such this; he falls for Lime's vampy mistress and is hassled by the British investigator handling Lime's case. Suddenly, Lime (Orson Welles, as it is turns out) is back on the scene alive and well, and here is where the movie takes a sharp turn for the exciting. Martins has mixed feelings about Lime after finding out about his crimes (he'd been selling second-rate penicillin and is responsible for the deaths of many sick children), but Lime turns out to have a cynical yet oddly compelling worldview behind his actions.

I'll stop summarizing here. I don't mind spoiling the first half, but the second half really needs to be seen to be appreciated.

What's Really Going On

The first half seemed to be setting us up for a competent yet boring romp through old-time Hollywood-style filmmaking – a sarcastic yet cocksure American shows up in Europe and plows his way through an investigation by brutish smooth talking, hard drinking and lady-charming. His investigative technique isn't particularly delicate or clever, he just runs up to a person and asks what they know in the rudest way possible, his only apparent motivation being his cynicism. He ignores everyone's well-meaning advice to leave the matter be. He feels like he deserves something from everyone even though he has nothing to offer them. He thinks he can seduce the girl. He thinks that he's smarter than the police. And nobody truly confronts him or attempts to prove him wrong for 45 minutes.

Once Lime shows up, Martins is no longer the star of the show and has to finally think about all of the advice he'd ignored, even though everyone had been freely offering it to him since the moment he arrived. He no longer has all the answers, he's caught up in forces he doesn't understand, and Lime actually is the free thinking and enterprising spirit Martins only pretends to be. He betrays his friend and doesn't get the girl, nobody has a happy ending, and things end up worse than if he'd just left it be like everyone told him. The very character traits he'd flaunted at the beginning of the film were a facade to mask his equivocating nature, and his inability to live up to his ideals only causes more misery for everyone.

All in all, this is a wonderful movie if you're willing to endure conventions from 1949 that later became cliché.

Comments: First half uninteresting, but sets up amazing second half

Deserves to be on Top 100: Yes

Inspired: Seven; person being hunted portrayed by star whose presence in the movie was planned as a surprise; movie takes unexpected change in pacing and tone; we learn that character's true motives in one big conversation in a confined space.