E, S, A, R, I, N, T, U, L…

In the hands of a different cast and crew, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le Papillon) could have been bad – or worse, it could have been absolutely nothingy. Of course the real-life premise is memorable and impressive – locked-in syndrome, being a prisoner inside your own body – but making this work as a magazine article or even a book is very different from making it work as a film. Without a keen directorial vision, this would’ve turned into the worst kind of movie-of-the-week.

I’ve never seen any other films by Julian Schnabel (the sheer silliness of his name may have kept me from watching his earlier work), but based on this film I’m definitely going to keep my eyes open for Basquiat and Before Night Falls. The movie isn’t overburdened by directorial flourishes, but Schnabel has a strong sense of the visual, in the real scenes as much as in those that take place in Jean-Do’s imagination or are inspired by his words. Talking of which, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, based on Jean-Dominique Bauby’s memoir (the film could be described as a sort of making-of of the memoir, but that would be far too banal a description for what Schnabel achieves), strikes a deft balance between the visual and the verbal. It hums with the energy of words – Jean-Do is filled with language, even if his condition doesn’t allow him to express them easily. Each word is a battle, each phrase is a war – at least at first, but one of the refreshing aspects of the film is that the women who help the man express himself are all French beauties of the Emanuelle Seigner type (and one of them looks like a Gallic dead ringer for Naomi Watts), and Jean-Do is the kind of man who falls in love, at least a bit, with every woman he sees.

The lightness that the film has, derived equally from Bauby’s ironic tone (he isn’t afraid of laughing at himself and his situation) and Schnabel’s visual idiom, doesn’t detract from its darker side, though. Quite the opposite, in fact. The horror of Jean-Do’s situation makes especially the first twenty minutes almost unbearable at times. Schnabel doesn’t need to emphasise this – he shows, quite simply and unflinchingly.

I’ve only just finished watching the film about an hour ago, so my first impression is still fresh and might change. However, throughout the movie I kept thinking of another film, this one by Alejandro Amenábar: The Sea Inside (Mar Adentro), also a true-life story, based on the struggles of a Spanish quadruplegic fighting for his right to die. Both films are centred on men who have been taken prisoner by their failing bodies; both men are full of life, yet have been deprived of the ability to life as fully as they desire; and both The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and The Sea Inside use similar imagery, especially the ocean and seaside. To some extent they feel like a French and a Spanish take on similar issues and would make near-perfect companion pieces.

On a different note: we’ve added another HBO series to the already considerable list. It’s called Wome, at least if you ask Michael Palin:

And like so many HBO series, it’s got a pretty cool title sequence. Enjoy!

Better than being hit over the head with a baseball bat

Quentin Tarantino loves cinema. If anyone ever doubted that, fifteen minutes of Inglourious Basterds should put that doubt to rest.Also, Quention Tarantino knows cinema. He knows its history, he knows films, he knows how to construct a scene, how to film it, how to make it work. As I’ve argued before, he is in control of his material like few other directors.

He may also just be the most radical of the big-name film makers working in Hollywood today.

Now, “radical” does not mean “independent” – or, more aptly, “indie”. The current indie film scene in the US, while gems keep coming out of it, is disappointingly generic, with quirky comedies about geeky weirdoes we’re supposed to love having become as predictable and stale as mainstream romantic comedies. What makes Quentin Tarantino radical is he doesn’t pander to his audiences. In the end, he makes films entirely for himself. If the audience enjoys them, all the better, if not, well, fuck them.

Which may go some way towards explaining why Tarantino is one of the filmmakers who is either loved or hated. If you don’t like what he’s doing, his films will grate like mad. There are no compromises for a broad audience. Tarantino is a lucky bastard (or “basterd”) who can be indifferent to what test audiences may say about his films. (Actually, I’d be curious as to what test audiences would make of his movies.)

One of the things that is most striking about Inglourious Basterds is how little the Basterds are actually in the movie, and how, in the end, they are not the heroes of the film. That honour goes to Shosanna Dreyfus, played to perfection by Mélanie Laurent. The Basterds themselves are pretty much a team of goons and thugs, a bunch of self-admitted terrorists, and they are only seen as the good guys because they go after Nazis (or “Nat-zees!”, as Brad Pitt insists with over-the-top relish), perhaps the easiest target in cinematic history.

And that’s where the second intriguing thing comes in: while the Basterds remain cartoony and one-dimensional, Tarantino takes a number of “Nat-zees” and humanises them. He doesn’t make them into the good Nazi, they’re not Germans with hearts of gold who happened to end up, against their will, wearing Wehrmacht uniforms – but they become human beings. While the surface of the film is all about Our Heroes wreaking terrible, deserved revenge on the Hun, the subtext – which may even be more prevalent than the text – is much more ambivalent.

And that’s what may be most radical about Tarantino: he’s managed to fool a large part of critics and audiences into thinking he’s a B-movie geek with an affinity for trash and violence, when his films are intricatedly crafted, wittily written, much more complex (and much less violent) than they’re given credit for. Many people have watched his films and seen only slickly made trash. He’s been hiding with incredible success that he’s that most elusive of cinematic beasts: an auteur. God bless his narcissistic, self-centred, infuriatingly post-modern little heart – and may he make many more films!

Would you kindly…?

My apologies for the posting delay – I was laid low the last two days with a stomach bug. I’m still home from work, but now I have no more excuse to dawdle… So here, without much further ado, the latest entry. I promise not to throw up while writing it.

I’ve been re-reading The Sandman from beginning to end. About a month ago I got the last of the Absolute Sandman volumes – gorgeous hardback large-format reprints of the original comics, with tons of extras such as additional stories in the Endless universe or scripts of some of the most important issues.

This is probably the fourth or fifth time time I’m reading the series in its entirety, and I still have the same favourites: A Game of You (vol. 5), Worlds’ End (vol. 8) and The Kindly Ones (vol. 9 – more on that later). However, Brief Lives (vol. 7) has grown on me, especially the last few chapters. I’m still not all that hot on its art, but the storytelling is fantastic – Gaiman at his finest – and it’s pretty much the volume when Delirium comes into her own.

I’m currently halfway through The Kindly Ones, and even at a fifth re-read, it still packs quite a punch. I love the art (which some found too cartoony – but I definitely prefer it to the more generic comic-book art of some of the other volumes, even though they all have their inspired moments), but even more, I love how Gaiman manages to bring together dozens of threads from the previous volumes in clever but not ostentatious ways. He makes it all feel natural and, as in all the best tragedies, inevitable.

There are a number of things that in the hands of a lesser writer would feel like fan service, especially the return of the Corinthian, or indeed the extended scenes with Mervin Pumpkinhead. But what Gaiman pulls off is something that few series (in any medium) have managed so far: reading The Kindly Ones, you get the impression that he’s always known where he was going. And you want to follow him, even though you know it’ll all end in tears.

I haven’t been all that hot about most of Gaiman’s work since The Sandman. His recent short stories, and indeed his novels, have seemed too twee, too enamoured with their cleverness. There are always great bits, but in between those bits I feel I’m reading some Gaiman imitator who does an okay job but simply isn’t the same. Fragile Things was a shadow of Smoke and Mirrors (which contains some of my favourite short stories). Anansi Boys was fun but pretty forgettable. I liked Coraline a lot, though – perhaps Gaiman tries too hard to be clever and Gaimanesque when writing for adults, and when he writes for children he simply focuses on telling a good story. Which, in Coraline, he very much does.

Talking of Gaiman: this animated short reminded me of him – most of all because Nick Cave’s narration sounds exactly like some of Gaiman’s readings:

youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj4RBmU-PIo]

More series business

How many different series can a person watch and still keep them all apart? Right now we’re watching Angel, House  M.D., Carnivale and Heroes and Grey’s Anatomy, I’m rewatching Six Feet Under, Battlestar Galactica and Life on Mars, we’ve just finished Fringe and we’re waiting to continue The Sopranos and Buffy. Well, at least no one can accuse me of being a total elitist snob when it comes to telly series…

I enjoyed Fringe because it fulfilled my post-X-Files FBI-investigating-weird-shit cravings. Is it a good series? Not particularly – it’s repetitive, some of the acting is dubious and with half the episodes I think that I’ve seen them before, only Mulder and Scully did them better. It’s great turn-off-your-brain TV fast-food, though, and I’m looking forward to more Leonard Nimoy in season 2. “It’s all lies. But they’re entertaining lies. And in the end, isn’t that the real truth?” (Damn you, YouTube, for not having a clip of that scene!)

Grey’s Anatomy has been something of a guilty pleasure of mine, and throughout much of season 4 it wasn’t all that much of a pleasure, to be honest. The series’ problem – well, main problem – is that they’ve got a number of very good actors and even the middling actors know their parts by now, but the writing (especially with respect to character development) covers the whole range from maudlin to obvious to plain bad, with the occasional strong scene. If the series could decide to be a comedy, it wouldn’t matter that most of the characters are written to be highly unprofessional so much of the time (typical example: some patient is dying and needs urgent care, and doctor X decides that this is the right moment to ask doctor Y why they didn’t have sex the previous night – remind me not to get ill in TV Seattle…). It takes very good writing to make the constant jumps from quirky comedy to serious (melo)drama work if the characters aren’t to come across as nincompoops at the mercy of the script. Season 5 had many of those weaknesses, but it had enough strong moments to keep me watching. Still, there are some developments and storylines that just annoy the hell out of me: a resident at a big Seattle hospital going more or less bankrupt from one day to the next because Daddy cuts her trust fund? Swapping one interesting lesbian character for cute but eternally bland blondie because you want eye candy rather than an actual character? Derek Shepard yet again going all pompously self-righteous, and still no one takes one of those circular saws to his perfectly coiffed head?

In the meantime, I’m rather enjoying where Angel season 3 is taking us. Yes, there were a couple of false steps – Gunn and Wesley going all mooney over Fred wasn’t cute, it was just annoying, and having it go on for several episodes made me want to go Angelus on them all – but it’s fascinating to see how Angel, Cordelia and especially Wesley develop during the season. Just 2-3 more episodes to go until season 4 – and I’m ignoring all those people who say that it’s one of the worst seasons ever in the Whedonverse, because it’s something we have to get through before season 5 and “Smile Time” and the (wait for it) bitter-sweet finale. (Yes, Lucy, I put that there just for you…)

Oh, before I forget: gotta love this recent article in The Onion: Next Tarantino Movie An Homage To Beloved Tarantino Movies Of Director’s Youth.

And finally: I’ll be writing a weekly entry at The Best Shows You’re Not Watching, alternating between Six Feet Under and Life on Mars. You can find the first one here. Let me know what you think!

Hanging on to the chick habit

I’m okay with people disliking Quentin Tarantino’s movies. I have no problem with those who find him annoying as a person. His films aren’t for everyone.

But those who call him talentless? These I have a major issue with.

It may be tempting to say that all Tarantino does is cut and paste old films into fan-wankery collages – he is in effect a collage artist, and you can watch almost any scene in any of his films and point to an original he’s ripping off – most likely some forgotten ’70s B movie of dubious taste. But like all the most compelling postmodernists, Tarantino knows that there is nothing new under the sun… except in the recombination of old things. Kill Bill, for instance, is a collection of hommages, clichés, parodies, pastiches, but Tarantino pulls all these disparate bits together in a way that invigorates them. I came out of both volumes of his worship at the feet of Uma Thurman feeling energised in ways that few other films have managed.

Is Tarantino self-indulgent? Definitely. But more than almost any director who can be accused of this, he’s also usually in great control of his material. The films are more tightly constructed than is usually acknowledged, in ways that make it easy for audiences to underestimate their sheer formal accomplishment. Yet, in spite of this, the films breathe freely.

Death Proof was much maligned when it came out, and it’s perhaps Tarantino’s most self-indulgent film. Its first half is misogynist, its characters unlikeable, its humour sadistic and misanthropic. But it’s almost a textbook case of postmodern pastiche vs. parody. Again, I fully respect people who dislike or even hate what Tarantino does, but he does it oh so well: the second part of Death Proof desconstructs the male sex-and-death fantasy of the first half. Stuntman Mike’s wet dream of fucking over sexy but annoying chicks with his car (and yes, sometimes a dick extension on wheels is not just a cigar) is turned on its head when the girls of the second half fight back. And god, is it exhilarating to watch as they turn the tables on Kurt Russell’s leathery prick of a man.

And then the ending comes. And it feels like Tarantino ran out of ideas and the script just read: “And then they beat the shit out of him.”

That they do, indeed. But, as so often in Tarantino, the rewarding bits aren’t the bursts of violence – his reputation of wall-to-wall, bloody violence is undeserved, but he likes to punctuate his films with bursts of it -, it’s the conversations leading up to the violence. People who say they liked such-and-such film of his, “if only there wasn’t quite so much talking”? You might as well say, “I like Michael Bay’s films, if only it wasn’t for the explosions. And the stupidity.”