The Mustard-blood Must Flow

PHANTASM

Having just watched it for the first time, I must say I've seen few films that combine the good, the bad, the derivative, and the head-scratchingly bizarre in such equal measures as Phantasm (trailer).

The low-budget 1979 "classic" horror film concerns restless small-town heartthrob Jody (Bill Thornbury) and his little sister Mike (A. Michael Baldwin), whom Jody's been raising since their parents' deaths. After the mysterious death-by-cemetery-sex of Jody's friend at the hands of a homely trollop (Kathy Lester), Mike grows suspicious of the town's eerie mortician (the awesomely named Angus Scrimm)—generally referred to as "the Tall Man," but to me he's Captain Underbite. Eventually Mike convinces Jody and their friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister), a creepy, guitar-playing, pony-tailed ice cream man, of the otherworldly danger posed by the funeral home and its mysterious owner.

First, the good. Phantasm is no mere slasher. The characters aren't just cannon fodder waiting to be murdered, but people whom the film takes the trouble to spend time with and explore outside of the context of the threat. You really buy the bond between Jody and Mike, Jody's longing to get away and start his life, and Mike's fear of losing the last remaining member of her family. Of course, Phantasm isn't really a family drama but a horror film, and the horror aspects are generally executed pretty well too. I can't help but think its $300,000 budget was a blessing in disguise, as it made sure that most of the tension and scares would come from what the audience can't see, creepy sounds and dark woods and hallways. I found that it was when I could actually see what was going on that the scares were less effective and often downright laughable, as with—Phantasm fans are going to hate me for this—the iconic flying chrome face-drilling, blood-spurting sphere-thing. (Here's a suggestion to writer and director Don Coscarelli: Just because something was scary in a dream you had doesn't necessarily mean it'll be scary on film.)

While some elements of the film, like the aforementioned sphere-thing and the labyrinthine halls of the funeral home, are quite unusual, a shockingly high number are very derivative, if not outright rip-offs. The biggest single victim of this is Dune (hence the post's title, along with the fact that all the creatures have thick, yellow, mustard-like slime for blood). Not only is the murder-sphere suspiciously similar (in function if not appearance) to a hunter-seeker, but while visiting a fortune teller Mike basically undergoes the "humanity test" administered to Paul, putting her hand in a box and undergoing extreme pain until she shows mental self-mastery. To top it all off, the fortune teller's granddaughter practically quotes the Litany against Fear when she tells Mike, "Fear is the killer." (The scene at the fortune teller's serves no narrative purpose but to convey Mike's anxiety about her brother's leaving and her need to conquer fear, both of which could've been conveyed without introducing extraneous characters and apparently genuine magic.)

The overall setting and tone seem like they could be straight out of any number of Stephen King novels: a small town, a contemporary setting (i.e., the '70s), a supernatural threat that's either unknown to or disbelieved by the general populace. (As I've said before, I've never actually read a King novel, but I've seen enough of the film adaptations to know to stay out of small-town Maine.) In addition, Phantasm features a homicidal, apparently driverless car (a hearse, naturally) à la Christine. Captain Underbite's horde of three-foot-tall zombies in hooded brown robes look just like Jawas. (Though Coscarelli gets points for making them more like the "genuine" zombies of Haitian voodoo, reanimated corpses obeying another's will, than the all-too-prevalent Romero-style zombies.) And the theme song is strongly reminiscent of those of The Exorcist, Suspiria, and Halloween, though, to be fair, that probably has more to do with '70s horror's affinity for repetitive piano-plinking than with Phantasm ripping anyone off.

As the previous paragraphs no doubt indicate, Phantasm is a pretty weird film, and its weirdness reaches a dizzying crescendo as the end draws near . . .

— SPOILERS AHEAD, BOY! —

So Jody and Mike (independently) infiltrate Captain Underbite's funeral home, where they run into Reggie, previously thought dead, who's already released some of Captain Underbite's still-living prisoners, who then ran off "like scared rabbits." The three proceed into the Hall of Purple Plastic Drums—it's a white room lined with stacks of . . . purple plastic drums (containers, I mean, not instruments)—where Mike is sucked into some kind of portal and sees a long line of Jawa-zombies doing something amidst a red-skied, wind-swept landscape. Jody and Reggie manage to pull her back, and Mike then explains that Captain Underbite is reanimating corpses to use them as slave labor on another planet, and that they're so short on account of the planet's greater gravity and heat. (How she learnt all this, I have not a clue.) The lights in the Hall of Purple Plastic Drums then go out, and Mike is attacked by Jawas. The next we see of them, Reggie is alone in the Hall of Purple Plastic Drums, while Jody and Mike are now inexplicably outside the funeral home, separated. There they are stalked by the knife-wielding homely trollop, who's actually Captain Underbite in another form. (In which case, the fact that she (he?) murdered Jody's friend at the beginning was an act of kindness of sorts; I can't imagine he'd want to go on after finding out he'd just banged Angus Scrimm in a cemetery.) Just then, though, Reggie (who, as a musician, knows all about tuning forks) touches two tuning-fork-like bars in the Hall of Purple Plastic Drums, causing them to stop vibrating (or at least humming). This harms or weakens the homely trollop in some way. While Jody and Mike are still wandering around outside looking for each other, Reggie escapes from the Hall of Purple Plastic Drums, runs out of the funeral home, and sees the homely trollop lying on the ground; he goes over to help, and she promptly stabs him to death and transforms back into Captain Underbite. Jody finds Mike, tells her that Reggie's dead (which he can apparently diagnose from some distance away, at night), and they escape back to their house, where they promptly split up (brilliant!). Captain Underbite shows up and chases after Mike, but she manages to conquer her fear and follow her brother's overly complex plan of luring Captain Underbite out into the woods, tricking him into falling down a thousand-foot abandoned mine shaft, and rolling a boulder onto it to block it up. Safe at last . . .

Except that it was all a dream! Mike wakes up to a fate worse than death where Jody was killed in a car accident and she's being raised by Reggie, the—just to reiterate—creepy, guitar-playing, pony-tailed ice cream man. (You better get Child Protective Services on speed-dial, kid.) After a little cuddle by the fire with Reggie, Mike goes to her room . . . only to find Captain Underbite there, who pulls her into a mirror! Roll credits.

Phantasm was clearly a labor of love for Coscarelli and the rest of those involved. It was produced on a shoe-string (it's really remarkable how polished and professional it looks, considering), was filmed on week-ends over the course of about a year, and once completed was threatened with an X rating before the M.P.A.A. relented. (Hey, Phantasm and Blue Valentine have something in common!) As with a lot of low-budget independent films, the passion and personal vision are almost tangible. Though to a great extent I'm impressed with its uniqueness—and especially the crew's ability to bring that uniqueness to life as well as they did for what's chump change in the film industry—I also think its greatest weakness is that uniqueness, that personal vision. To anyone accustomed to how stories have been told for the past few tens of thousands of years, the plot of Phantasm makes no sense. A murderous, shape-shifting, superhumanly strong mortician/alien/demon/monster/whatever? Three-foot-tall hooded zombies as interplanetary slaves? A chrome sphere that flies around a funeral home killing people? A severed finger that bleeds mustard and turns into a giant flying beetle? A magical fortune teller for no apparent reason? An heroic ice cream man? It was all a dream? Coscarelli clearly had a lot of story to tell (the original version would've run three hours) and a lot of ideas for both the drama and the horror, many of which sound interesting individually, but which don't really cohere in any rational way. Phantasm is probably among those instances **cough** Star Wars prequels **cough** Southland Tales **cough** where a well-meaning filmmaker exerting total creative control over a film wasn't ideal for the final product. Nevertheless, I can't help but recommend it for anyone interested in genuine scares, suspense, and a crazy, one-of-a-kind cinematic trip.

2010: The Year We Got Lots of Free Junior Frosties at Wendy's

Here we are, on the de-facto first day of 2011. (If there were ever a day that should count as a mulligan, it's New Year's.) Since we haven't posted here in a while, this seems as good a time as any to catch up on the end of the year's cinematic goings-on, reflect on 2010 in general, and look ahead to the new year in film.

As the tally in the sidebar shows, I've seen a fair number of films since I posted on Black Swan about a month ago, and a fair number of good ones at that. (Just because a film isn't posted on doesn't mean it didn't make an impression.) Foremost of these is, naturally, True Grit. Any new Coen Brothers movie is an event to me, especially one that has them teaming back up with El Duderino and Llewelyn Moss to tell a classic story imbued with Coenesque themes of revenge and redemption, and in a setting reminiscent of Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Fargo (though a bit less snow), and No Country. Their newest film isn't thematically delving in the way Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, Fargo, No Country, or A Serious Man was, but a film doesn't have to be profound to be hugely entertaining, with a bevy of terrific performances and a simple story masterfully told.

Two other upper-tier films I saw in the past month were 127 Hours and The King's Speech. The former counts as one more notch on Danny Boyle's already impressive cinematic belt, imbuing a single person stuck in one place for days on end, unable to see more than a few feet around him besides up, with more drama than a hundred TV police procedurals and more energy than a hundred music videos. The latter deserves better than to be dismissed as stuffy Oscar bait; though I didn't exactly find the story exciting or compelling (believe me, I'm as surprised as anyone, given my interest in history and royalty), the subtle and touching performances that Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, and ol' Clau-Clau-Claudius himself, Sir Derek Jacobi, turn in are easily worth the ticket price.

We finished the year off with another good film hasn't gotten the credit it deserves, 2010: The Year We Make Contact. (Though not exactly imaginative, ending 2010 with 2010 just seemed too appropriate to deny, especially after having failed to do the same in 1900, 1984, or 1999.) I'd say the main reason 2010 is scarcely remembered nowadays is its bad luck in being a sequel to one of the greatest motion pictures ever made, 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Hélas, there are still some out there who have to take my word on that assessment of the original.) On its own merits, though, 2010 has an exciting and intriguing story that ties in well thematically with the original (like it, ending with a new beginning); fine performances by the late Roy Scheider, Helen Mirren, John Lithgow, and Bob Balaban (with the original's Keir Dullea and Douglas Rain reprising their iconic roles as Dave Bowman and HAL 9000); and, most memorably, dazzling and gorgeous special effects (except for a mulligan or two in blending the Leonov to the space background) reminiscent of the similarly breathtaking effects in the original, Close Encounters, and Blade Runner. (Those three films had effects by the great Douglas Trumbull, and though he didn't work on 2010 himself, his effects house did, and they all certainly bear the same visual-effects stamp.) The best way I can summarize 2010 is by saying that it's not so much like 2001 the film as it's like 2001 the novel (having read about ten pages back in high school); it may not transcend character and story the way Kubrick's film does, but it nails those elements nonetheless.

Speaking of Blade Runner—probably my favorite film back in high school; as I've said, I'm a sucker for a pretty movie—it's my sad duty to acknowledge 2010 as the year that I gave up on one of my former favorite filmmakers, and all but gave up on another of my former favorites. I was raised on Tim Burton; Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, and Batman are some of the staples of my childhood, and I've counted myself a fan of his even as recently as Sweeney Todd. But his Alice in Wonderland was so predictable, so idiotic, so mediocrely and unimaginitively executed, so insulting to anyone who's seen Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, or Big Fish, that, as much as it pains me, I can't help but write him off as nothing more than a hack working his own "dark," "gothy," "quirky" niche in the studio assembly line.

As for Ridley Scott, 2010 didn't see him fall as far in my eyes as Burton did, but Robin Hood certainly didn't help. That film is exibit A that both his historical-epic well and his Russell-Crowe well have run dry, and that it's time to make in a new direction. (That should, God willing, free Crowe up to make another Master and Commander film, thereby also fishing Paul Bettany out of the cinematic ghetto in which he's found himself. Also, he should tell his brother Tony to release Denzel Washington from whatever signed-in-blood, deal-with-the-devil thirty-picture contract he's trapped him with.) That's certainly not to say that I'm at all pleased with his plans to return to the now-moribund Alien franchise, with, of all things, a prequel (for those for whom a sequel risks too great a danger for creativity; this way you know where it will end) giving the origin of one of the great unexplained, enigmatic mysteries of Xenomorphia, the "space jockey" briefly seen in his 1979 classic. Maybe next he'll dispel the remaining mystery surrounding the later life of Féraud from The Duellists or Batty's reference to Tannhäuser Gate from Blade Runner. You're in your seventies, Mr. Scott; stop wasting your great ability and little remaining time on mediocrity.

So 2010 had a couple major cinematic disappointments for me, and not a lot of truly great work to counterbalance them. Black Swan, Inception, True Grit, The Social Network, and Scott Pilgrim were all great, of course, but 2010 didn't see a film on the level of No Country, There Will Be Blood, The Fountain, Brokeback Mountain, Eternal Sunshine, or Adaptation. Oh well, maybe next year. And speaking of next year, what's 2011 got in store for us cinephiles? (Other than more installments in the Transformers, Pirates, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and Big Momma's House franchises, that is.) Well, Terrence Malick will be giving us The Tree of Life, after working at break-neck speed to release a film only six years after his last. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) If you haven't seen the trailer yet, prepare to be blown away. Spielberg and Jackson will be launching their ambitious motion-capture Tintin trilogy in December. Another childhood-adventure franchise will be wrapping up with the second part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The summer will see two more Marvel films, Thor in May and Captain America in July, setting the (rather crowded) stage for The Avengers the following summer; meanwhile, DC is getting in on the act with Green Lantern. Genres will mash in Cowboys & Aliens and Your Highness. The X-Men, Planet of the Apes, and The Thing will get the prequel treatment. Not exactly a line-up that has me tingling with anticipation—this will be an off-year for the Coens, Nolan, Aronofsky, and Edgar Wright, who all just released films, and P.T. Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Judd Apatow, Spike Jonze, Terry Gilliam, David Lynch, Guillermo del Toro, and Charlie Kaufman don't have any new films in the immediate future either—but still my film-loving fingers are crossed that 2011 won't turn out to be a cinematic dead zone (or dark territory, if you prefer).

Metamorphoses

BLACK SWAN

As the screen completed its slow fade to white, and the words "Directed by Darren Aronofsky" appeared to start the closing credits, I was breathless, my mouth agape, my eyes as big as saucers, my heart racing. The previous hundred ten minutes—and particularly the last twenty or so—had been one of the most thrilling, moving, transcendent experiences I'd ever had watching a film. After having seen thousands of films in my life, I found myself astounded anew at what this medium is capable of achieving.

(And I'm not just talking about Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis's "scene together." Though that was certainly memorable in its own right.)

Black Swan (trailer) is the story of Nina (Portman), a talented ballerina in a New York ballet company, whose greatness is impaired by an almost childlike meekness and inexperience. However, the company's director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel), sees potential—and perhaps something else as well—in her, and chooses her for the lead in Swan Lake, requiring her to play both the pure, innocent heroine and her dark, seductive doppelgänger, the "black swan." The tremendous physical, mental, and artistic pressures that the role imposes as she prepares are compounded by the people around her: her encouraging but dominating and manipulative mother (Barbara Hershey), a ballerina herself before Nina's unexpected birth required her to give up her career; the retiring prima ballerina Beth (Winona Ryder), bitter over her seemingly premature sunset and the way the company—and Thomas in particular—used and then discarded her; and above all Lily (Kunis), a new arrival to the company whose uninhibited and passionate nature is exactly what Nina's "black swan" lacks, possibly both the key to getting Nina out of her artistic and personal shell and a ruthless rival trying to sabotage her big break. The strain of all this on the already fragile Nina takes a growing toll on her psyche, dragging her into paranoia, hallucination, and self-destruction.

Aronofsky's execution of this is fantastic. Portman's stunning performance is the best of her career. Her Nina begins seemingly in control, but only because never before seriously challenged; under her role's demands and Lily's influence, her brittleness becomes more and more apparent and threatens to shatter instead of strengthen her. (The role is funny because, like Nina, it is often said of Portman that, while very talented and attractive, she comes off as too sweet, delicate, and innocent to be really sexy, like a modern-day Audrey Hepburn. She's said that one reason she took the role was to try to shed some of that sweet-little-girl image and to be seen as more of a serious, adult actress.) Though pulling Nina in opposite directions, Kunis (whose performance won her the Mastroianni Award at Venice) and Hershey both nail the ambiguity their respective characters require, offering Nina comfort (in the latter's case) or liberation (in the former's) one minute and smilingly threatening her the next. Cassel has turned out to be one of my favorite actors this year, coming off his revelatory (to me, anyway) lead performance in the two-part crime-epic biopic Mesrine (trailer); here he not so much straddles the line between demanding mentor and exploitative scumbag as embraces both aspects of his character, accepting and exploring how they complement each other.

In addition to the cast, another aspect that stands out is the sound, and I don't just mean the Tchaikovsky. The incredibly demanding physicality of ballet is conveyed compellingly with the sounds of toes grinding on the floor like dull drills and clothes stretching and compressing as the dancers contort. Given that all this is usually drowned out by music during performances, actually hearing it during practice and rehearsals—no doubt accentuated for cinematic effect—gives an understanding of the great physical strain their bodies experience, while making visible and audible Nina's own psychological strain.

And speaking of physicality, Black Swan features enough cringe-inducing body horror to make Cronenberg proud. Not just the more fantastical transformations that Nina undergoes (of which the trailer offers a glimpse), but also the bodily damage resulting from the physical rigors of ballet and Nina's own increasingly high-strung nature: accidents from cutting finger- and toe-nails with scissors (which makes me uncomfortable regardless of the context), toe-nails breaking from pressure, nervous scratching and pulling at the skin around finger-nails. Though sometimes taken to gruesome extremes, this damage obviously results in far less harm or blood than your average horror film or thriller, but watching it did far more to ratchet up my tension, discomfort, and anxiety than most stabbings, gun shots, or beatings could. Though we never see much blood or gore, this film is not for the squeamish.

Regardless of its many art-house elements, Black Swan is, by genre, a thriller, like Aronofsky's debut, Pi; but it hews much more closely to the common themes and tropes of that genre, making it a more "thrillerish" thriller. The threats to Nina, even the ones only in her mind, are much more concrete than intellectual obsession; she comes to fear that people and forces are actually threatening her career and herself. This is where my only real criticisms of the film lie. (No, despite what all the praise above might suggest, I didn't think it was perfect.) Its faithfulness to familiar thriller tropes makes certain plot elements rather predictable: Of course the talented newcomer is going to be a rival and a threat to our heroine; of course the fading star whom she's replacing is going to be bitter and vindictive; of course the lights are going to go out and some blurred shape is going to rush past the end of the hall accompanied by a sudden, discordant crash on the score. I can't help but think the film could've forgone some of these "bump in the dark" moments and just let the tension come from Nina's more natural fears and disorientation; but this is a minor complaint for a film that does such a good job building a sense of threat, uncertainty, and loss of control. (Needless to say, it's handily unseated Argento's Suspiria (trailer) as the premier ballet-themed thriller featuring supernatural elements.)

Besides the film's artistic qualities, it also featured some core themes I found intriguing as well. One—probably the principal theme—is the idea of artistic creation through self-destruction. In order to play the "black swan" part of her role convincingly, Nina realizes that she must discard a good deal of who she is, the young, shy, inexperienced "white swan" who lives with her mother and has a bedroom full of stuffed animals. To achieve what the role demands, this butterfly must break out of her cocoon; but the process turns out to be a dangerous one, over which she has very incomplete control. She eventually begins to see positive results as her "black swan" performance improves, but what'll be left of her by the end as she lets go of her old life is uncertain. Before her stands the example—as both object of admiration and cautionary tale—of her predecessor as prima ballerina, Beth, whose great artistic highs went hand in hand with devastating personal lows. How far down Beth's road Nina will need to go is both a core element of the film's drama and a challenging question it poses about the creative process in general.

Another theme is that of the unreliable narrator. Though Nina doesn't literally narrate, we see the entire film through her eyes (I don't think there's a single scene without her), including her apparent hallucinations as her psyche breaks down. The subjectivity and unreliability of what we see is an obvious outcome of her psychological instability, but Aronofsky plays with this in interesting ways. For instance, Nina's hallucinations don't steadily become more dramatic and obvious; instead, obvious hallucinations are followed by events that seem plausible but on which doubt is later cast. ——— SPOILERS ——— For instance, obvious hallucinations like Nina's seeing her own face on a stranger, her mother's paintings screaming at her, and her growing wings during her "black swan" performance are interspersed with events like her sleeping with Lily, Beth's stabbing herself with her nail file, and Nina's killing Lily, which seem very real at the time but are later shown to be impossible or at least ambiguous. (Lily denies sleeping with Nina; Nina finds Beth's bloody nail file in her own hand after running away; and Lily turns up alive and well after Nina supposedly killed her.) ——— END SPOILERS ——— As a result, we begin to doubt (at least on first viewing) whether anything we're seeing, however plausible, is really happening or is merely in Nina's increasingly deranged mind.

Wow. There's so much more I could go on about: the captivating opening scene; Clint Mansell's haunting, operatic score; the grainy, heldheld-style photography (very like The Wrestler's) and its interesting contrast with the classical score and fantastical imagery; the camera's balletic movements around the actors. But I think I've written enough for now, to get my thoughts down while the experience is still fresh. Though not perfect—I'd have to rank it a little below The Fountain in Aronofsky's filmography, if only because a gorgeous time-skipping love story is a lot more pleasant to watch than Natalie Portman pulling at her cuticle until she tears it halfway down her finger—Black Swan is a gripping, intense, expertly crafted experience throughout, and in its conclusion rises to a beautiful, exhilirating euphoria rarely achieved by even the best. Perhaps it's just a matter of Aronofsky again shamelessly taking advantage of my well known weakness for pretty and emotive movies; even if so, he's done cinema a service in the process, and I couldn't be more grateful for it. You've triumphed again, Mr. Aronofsky.

P.S. — "I was perfect" is this year's "I think this just might be my masterpiece." Discuss amongst yourselves.

From the Moon to the Earth

The trailer of Source Code, the next film by the terrific director, Ziggy Stardust progeny, and friend of the blog Duncan Jones, is now available. Though he's moved to slightly more terrestrial settings this time around, he's hardly eschewing the fantastical and heady concepts that Moon featured. The plot seems a good deal more action-and-suspence-oriented than his last film (though Moon was hardly lacking in tension, of course), but I have a hard time believing that those elements won't stay tied to the mind-bending concepts and moral dilemmas we've seen in his past work. As for the cast, Gyllenhaal has done some fantastic work over the past decade (Prince of Persia aside), from Donnie Darko to Brokeback Mountain to Zodiac, and I loved Monaghan in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Gone Baby Gone (in both playing a love interest who's more than just a love interest—which, incidentally, is the vibe I'm getting from her role in Source Code as well). Given that he got what I consider one of the best performances of his career out of Sam Rockwell for Moon, I've got no worries at all in that department. If the trailer's anything to go by, it looks like Jones is two for two in delivering films that make us think while keeping us on the edge of our seats.

Is Michael Caine the new Christopher Walken?

Maybe, because there seem to be celebrity impressions of him coming left and right. Here (courtesy of Devin Faraci's new gig, the Alamo Drafthouse's Badass Digest), Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon square off to see whose Michael Caine impression is Michael-Cainier. And here, Peter Serafinowicz (a.k.a. the guy Edgar Wright calls when he needs to fill an asshole-supporting-character role; see, e.g., his turns as "Duane," Tim's girlfriend-stealing ex-friend in Spaced, and "Pete," Shaun and Ed's "prick" roommate in Shaun of the Dead) does a pretty mean impression as well as part of his "Acting Masterclass" bit on The Peter Serafinowicz Show. (Of course, that isn't his only great impression there; his Kevin Spacey, Ralph Fiennes, Robert De Niro, and Al Pacino are also spot-on. Regarding his Pacino, I'm impressed by anyone who goes for the Michael-Corleone-style quiet-Pacino over later-career loud-Pacino (the best of which is, of course, Bill Hader's—he's got some grief with his moolah!). So peruse those to your heart's content, gentle reader.) If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then Michael Caine must have the most kissed ass in British entertainment.

The golden age of minimalist movie posters is now.

It'll probably take some squinting to appreciate them to the fullest, but this outfit called 37 Posters made, well, posters based on a simple but effective formula: Pick a beloved film or TV show, pick an iconic object from said film or TV show, and cover said object with iconic lines from said film or TV show. The results of their brilliance can be seen here. (And a shout-out to CHUD for informing me of this.)

From Slough to Bag End

Though we don't post a lot on film news, the Tolkien-nerd in me cries out that I give notice to the fact that several roles in The Hobbit have officially been cast. In addition to several Dwarves to be played by actors whose names I don't recognize (yet), Martin Freeman—Tim Canterbury (a.k.a. the "Jim" role) on the original Office, Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Dr. Watson on the BBC series Sherlock—has been cast as the title Halfling, the reluctant burglar, he that walks unseen, the ring-winner and luckwearer, Bilbo Baggins, Esquire. It's a choice that's been kicked around for years now, mostly because it's a very good one; Freeman is great at playing the everyman (especially the English kind), with a sense of being ordinary, compliant, and a bit put-upon, but with a potential for unexpected (seemingly uncharacteristic) courage when the need arises. The only other actor I can think of who might be equally good for the role is Tom Hollander, who starred in last year's excellent In the Loop. So Freeman's casting is some welcome, if not exactly shocking, news.

This is a production that's needed some good news for a while. Peter Jackson had been devoping it with Guillermo del Toro for some time, with the latter planning to direct it for MGM as two films—one covering the events of the novel itself (or at least most of it), and the other covering the six decades or so between that and Bilbo's eleventy-first birthday party with which The Lord of the Rings begins. But MGM's mounting financial problems (leading to the studio's upcoming bankruptcy) delayed work so long that del Toro left in May to pursue other projects. (While two del Toro Hobbit films was a tantalizing prospect, the fact that his next project will be his long-awaited adaptation of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness certainly makes his loss to Tolkiendom much easier to bear.) Though Jackson has now assumed the director's chair for both films, he has faced legal disputes over the rights with the Tolkien estate and New Line, the studio behind his Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as labor disputes with actors' unions that may force Jackson not to film in New Zealand.

Given that most of the news about the Hobbit adaptation has been negative for some time, the fact that it's apparently soldiering on regardless is encouraging and gives me hope that we may soon enjoy once again the wonder and spectacle that Jackson first brought us nine years ago.

P.S. — If Jackson has any sense, he'll find a way to incorporate this into the films. Forget Howard Shore; the main theme for the score is already written!

Everybody must get Stone(d)

PLATOON

First off, I should explain that while the words in quotation marks in the first paragraph of my last post were intended to quote what you'd said after we watched the film, I intended the quotation marks around "happy ending" in the third paragraph as scare-quotes, not (for lack of a better word) quotation-quotes. I guess I could've made that clearer. (Though in your last post you did write that the ending seemed to avoid "something that could be perceived to have a negative message"; maybe there's a difference between that and a "happy ending," but I'm honestly not seeing it.)

Secondly, I think our disagreement about the ending of Platoon stems from the fact that we simply see what the film is about somewhat differently. I agree that Taylor's "education," the various points that the film conveys about war can do to people, is an important element. But I think that to see that as the film's only purpose is to see it too narrowly. Platoon's not just about Taylor's learning the "moral of the story," so to speak—"the primal nature that can exist," "becoming what you loathe," "the experience of war can make any man a killer,"* etc.—but more about his Vietnam experiences as a whole and how they shaped his young life. It makes sense that Stone would look at it this way, since the events are partly based on (or at least inspired by) his own experiences in the war, with Taylor in many respects standing in for Stone himself (who came from an upper-middle-class family, dropped out of Yale, and enlisted at the age of twenty-one for combat duty in Vietnam). Taylor's more than just a character in a story whose role is to move the narrative along and illustrate certain issues, or at least that's how I imagine Stone saw him when he made the film. After all, nearly two decades of his life had already passed since Stone had served in Vietnam, so it would be natural for him to spend a minute or two reflecting on his fictional soldier's post-Vietnam life.

Taylor isn't a mere cipher to convey the film's lessons, to serve a narrative purpose and then disappear; he's a broader embodiment of the Vietnam experiences of Stone and veterans like him, experiences that they carried off the battlefield and that shaped their post-war lives. Those experiences included saying goodbye to friends, returning to "the world," mourning the dead, and reflecting on what it all meant and how one should move forward with the rest of one's life. So I think that Stone intended the film's ending as a nod to those aspects of veterans' lives—indeed, to his own life. As a matter of fact, I think that it makes the film more "fulfilling," giving it a broader scope and meaning, rather than encapsulating the events we've just seen with an abrupt ending on the battlefield. Just because it isn't The Deer Hunter or Born on the Fourth of July doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't touch on post-war life in addition to depicting combat. (And besides, I have a hard time seeing a film that depicts an American N.C.O. as a homicidal psychopath, and most of the rest as brutal, cruel, or indifferent, as making much of an effort to pander to veterans.)

And such themes, issues, and messages aside, I stand by my assertion that ending the film as soon as Taylor kills Barnes would have been less stylistically and tonally appropriate than ending it as it does, which eases the audience out and offers a chance for reflection.

I should mention that my support for the ending doesn't mean that I think Platoon is flawless in all respects. My main criticism would be that it doesn't really convey Taylor's claim during the epilogic voice-over that he was "born of those two fathers," Sgts. Barnes and Elias, that they were "fighting for possession of his soul." Other than that line and an earlier one (in the scene when Taylor attacks Barnes in the tent) when Rhah reminds Taylor that he (Taylor) used to admire Barnes, he seems to be entirely on Elias's side throughout the film and disgusted with Barnes. Maybe there are cut scenes of Taylor looking up to or identifying with Barnes, I don't know, but in the cut we watched those two lines seem really out of place, obliquely hinting at an aspect of the film that we never actually see.

* On that point, we should remember that Sgt. Elias had been in Vietnam for three years and was an excellent soldier, but never lost his decency or humanity. So the moral deterioration that Stone generally depicts among the characters as a result of their war experiences isn't really universal or inevitable.

Casting the second (post on) Stone

In your recent post about my somewhat offhand comments about Platoon, I think you may have put words in my mouth a little bit. As a student of journalism I should scold you for putting quotes around words I never said. Who do you think you are, Aaron Sorkin?

Spoiler alert as well here folks, which should be obvious since this is a response to another spoiler-heavy post. But I imagine one can never be too safe about preventing the spoiling of a 24-year-old movie.

My feeling was not that the movie had a "happy ending" by any stretch of the imagination -- Taylor is shown clutching a grenade and contemplating suicide and then we watch helicopters en route to military hospitals depart from land being made into mass graves. My quibble was with what I called a sentimental ending. The only purpose that the last few minutes served to me was to show how Taylor had a lot of emotion on leaving Vietnam and it did not seem that was what the movie was about prior to that ending. I saw the movie as following Taylor's education as a man and discovering through war the primal nature that can exist. That scene with Barnes was so powerful because it was the end of his education: He does exactly what he loathed about the sergeant and discovered that no matter how much he thought he was better than Barnes, at heart the experience of war can make any man a killer. It was a powerful movie about how a man loses enough of himself to become a warrior, not how a man becomes sorrowful about war. What it came across as was Stone felt he had to make an ending that was a bit of a tribute to veterans more so than a fulfilling part of the movie.

The slightly half-baked idea I mentioned at the end of the movie may not have been exactly how the film should have ended. It did not need to be a Sopranos style closing. But I stand by my observation that Stone would have made a stronger finish had he made that scene the final one. Instead that last moments had the smell of something a studio usually tacks on to make a particular group (veterans in this case -- not that I think it was anti-veteran but that's a whole different subject) or Academy voters who do not like to see something that could be perceived to have a negative message.

Oliver's stones

PLATOON

— THE FIRST CASUALTY OF WAR IS SPOILERS. —

Matt, after watching Platoon a couple nights ago, you said that you didn't like how Oliver Stone ended the film; specifically, you said that the fact that we see Taylor (Charlie Sheen) being evacuated from the battlefield and saying goodbye to some of the survivors from his unit meant that Stone didn't have any "stones" (in the parlance of our times), and that film would have been much more "effective" if it had ended with Taylor shooting Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger). I disagreed at the time, but hadn't had the chance really to articulate why (beyond the fact that we wouldn't have gotten that great final epilogic voice-over). Now that I've had the chance to think about it a little, I'd like to explain why I think the right ending for Platoon is the ending it has.

Platoon is told in a realistic style, and its tone is reflective and mournful. You see this in its straightforward structure and visual style, in the voice-overs, and in the score. That being the case, it makes sense to follow Taylor off the battlefield, into the beginning of his post-Vietnam life, as he reflects on what the experiences we've just witnessed meant to him, easing the audience out of the film. Ending it with a sudden cut to black (or something like that) after he shoots Barnes would have been completely out of place in terms of the tone the film had established. Something like that would have been more fitting for a film like Natural Born Killers, with its much more stylized . . . well, style, and its shocking and aggressive tone. Ending the film that way would have had a jarring effect that the rest of the film just wasn't going for. (Of course, a lot of the events depicted are shocking and jarring, for instance Barnes's shooting of the Vietnamese woman, but the way they're depicted is not, in terms of editing and photography.) It would be much more in keeping with what would become Stone's signature visual and editing style in later films of his like The Doors, JFK, and the aforementioned Natural Born Killers, or with Kubrick's nearly contemporaneous Full Metal Jacket, which, from its opening shots of conscripts having their heads shaven to the strains of "Hello Vietnam," informs the audience of its more over-the-top and satirical tone. Ending Platoon as he did was perfectly in keeping with the seriousness and realism that Stone had spent the prior two hours establishing, and so was quite effective.

I certainly don't see the ending as a sign of Stone's chickening out by giving the audience a more upbeat ending than the ending you suggested. First off, it's not really much of a "happy ending": Most of the unit is dead (either from the North Vietnamese or the napalm bombing), we see bulldozers pushing mounds of corpses into mass graves, and our protagonist weeps as the voice-over talks about how he carried the war's emotional scars for the rest of his life. Moreover, we don't need those final scenes to know that Taylor was probably going to make it off the battlefield: He was obviously wounded badly enough to be hospitalized, but not so badly that he would die before U.S. troops found him (as they almost certainly would, since they'd beaten off the North Vietnamese assault (however pyrrhically) and would then search the battlefield for survivors and collect the dead). Even if the film had ended as you suggested, it wouldn't have been any more or less a "happy ending," except for its jarring emotional effect, which, as I explained above, would have been inappropriate.

In any number of other films, the ending you suggested would have been great. But it would have been tonally and stylistically out of place in Platoon.