If They Don't Offer Us Justice, Then They Aren't Laws: Machete (2010)

A blind buy through and through, I had very little in the way of expectations for this relatively recent Robert Rodriguez helmed film, despite being quite adoring of El Mariachi and rather embracing towards his From Dusk Till Dawn, during my Halloween marathon.  I am rather certain that much of this preconceived notion towards this film exists in it coming out during a time when I was still entrenching myself within a certain degree of cinematic pretension, only viewing the established classics and barely making room for any film with an established cult status that was not also part of the canon.  Of course, as I noted earlier I absolutely adored El Mariachi and must simply have not made the connection while this film was originally making its way through theaters, for which I am quite regretful, considering that Machete is a bit of absurdist cinematic brilliance that one could and really should only expect from Robert Rodriguez.  Knowing everything I could no about the film going in, I was not prepared for two things, first being the magnificent bit of over-the-top acting on the part of Robert De Niro who both plays against his typecast, as well as into it when it proves beneficial.  Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I did not expect Machete to be such an astute reflection on the  state of immigration in The United States, especially considering that this film is pushing the discussion to the forefront well before it became a popular topic in last years elections, as well as an underlying theme within Casa De Mi Padre, perhaps the most overlooked comedy of last year.  Of course, one cannot overlook Rodriguez's clearly vested interest in such a subject, especially since border crossing has undoubtedly proved to be a theme within so many of his earlier works.  Regardless, the ways in which the maniacally driven director incorporates the best and worst of both sides of the trafficiking and sneaking between borders into a film that clocks in under two hours is to be praised and shared, hell, I would have to revisit the directors works, but as it stands this could well be my new favorite work by Rodriguez.

Machete follows, all be it somewhat loosely, the experiences of ex-federal agent Machete Cortez (Danny Trejo) a vengeful Mexican man whose dead wife fuels such an impassioned desire for revenge that he proves a nearly unstoppable force.  However, Machete's world is a tricky one considering that he has lost his status as a federal agent as is subsequently given the status of a Mexican citizen, making even the thought of crossing the border illegal.  In fact, his only source of forward momentum appears to come from Luz (Michelle Rodriguez) a food truck vendor who also appears to be running an underground Mexican rights group cleverly named Shé.  The border also proves a treacherous place regarding drugs and the trafficking of any illegal substance, much to the apparent disapproval of one Michael Booth (Jeff Fahey) who hires Machete to exact an assassination attempt on the hyper-racist politician John MacLaughlin (Robert De Niro).  However, it is during this assassination attempt that Machete discovers he is simply being placed on a rooftop as a scapegoat for a larger political action with some intense ties.  Fortunately for Machete, Booth's drug consuming daughter April (Lindsay Lohan) is more than an easy target and actually serves as a point of blackmail against Booth on the part of Machete.  Within this already twisted web, Machete also encounters Sartana (Jessica Alba) a fiery customs officer with a lot to prove and while the two initially butt heads, they eventually become romantically involved.  Finally, the infamously mythic anti-immigration vigilante Von Jackson (Don Johnson) plays a huge part into the plot as he is a person whose gun seems to do his talking, not to mention his having close ties with the controversial MacLaughlin.  In fact, it is MacLaughlin who is injured at the border between Mexico and the United States leading to his being killed by the very vigilantes whom he associates with, all the while Machete survives the insanity and is assumedly to return for more violence at a later time.  A convoluted plot without a doubt, but one cannot forget its inherent ties to the exploitation genre, not to mention its clear consideration of the immigration issue.

Rodriguez seems quite intent on harping on the issue of immigration, not only as a problem in which American officials are ignoring a human rights issue, but also a narrative chiefly concerned with drawing attention to Mexican citizens own willful involvement in the continual exploitation of their peoples.  Characters like Machete, Sartana and Luz clearly exist to battle the injustices occurring on both sides of the border, while pretty much every other person in the cast of characters exists to show one of the many barriers or complexities existing as a means to defeat the possibility of a free flowing border.  Of course, drugs are a huge portion of this narrative, particularly the means with which they cause oppressed individuals within America, in this case the powerless April, to become addicted and, subsequently, involved in the oppression of Mexican citizens tied into the trade involuntarily.  MacLaughlin and Jackson represent figures of ivory tower privilege who see the "illegals" crossing the border as invaders of some glorified vision of America as a puritanical place of perfection, in which every job is to be possessed by a hard working citizen of The United States, yet Rodriguez is brilliant in showing that it is perhaps the lack of ethics concerning labor as a means of earning a living that is most troubling Americans (opening up an undeniable Marxist approach to this film that is best suited for another day).  In fact, Luz's attempts to properly make a living, including obtaining papers and a clientele are equally criticized, not because she is doing so illegally, but because she is engaging in the public sphere as a woman as a person of color.  It is no accident that Sartana constantly criticizes her, because their dueling identities as women of color prove to be a point of distrust as opposed to unity, due to the fact of internalization.  This idea of internalized oppression helps to understand the seemingly implicit role the Mexicans in the narrative play in their own inability to prosper, they have grown to fear the MacLaughlins and Jacksons of the world, when in reality as the closing scenes show, when the roles are reversed identity politics become quite arbitrary.

Key Scene:  Granted De Niro plays a bad guy, but it is such an absurd performance that anytime he shows up it proves to be one of the highlights of an already excellent film.

Buy a copy.  While I have a DVD version, it is vibrant and lively enough that I imagine paying an extra buck for the bluray version is more than worth it.

With A Rich Husband Cheating Is Part Of The Package: The Housemaid (2010)

With all the intensity of a New Korean Thriller and the subtle paranoia latent to some of Steven Soderbergh's more experimental narrative films, the 2010 offering from Sang-soo Im titled The Housemaid is something to be seen.  However, probably the most rewarding element of this film is that those watching it are given another fantastic performance by Do-yeon Jeon, the actress I praised lavishly in my review of Secret Sunshine, which has proven to be my favorite viewing experience of this year, as well as one of the better films I have ever seen.  This film is an adaptation of sorts of an earlier 1960's version of a film with the same title.  While I have not personally seen the original I have had the pleasure of watching Beasts of Prey, another film by Ki-young Kim, who did direct the original The Housemaid.  As such, I expected a vivacious, sexually driven film that would blow up with cinematic fervor and stop at not point to excel at being a forceful work.  The Housemaid is an exceptionally great work of cinema, one that is thankfully seeing larger audience at the hands of IFC, who has, along with Magnolia pictures, proven the most reliable source in expanding awareness regarding Korean cinema.  The Housemaid while certainly engaging in some of the tropes and themes we have come to expect with New Korean Cinema, like hyper violence, multi-layered unconventionally formulated narrative and some degree of fear with modernity, nonetheless, manages to exist within its own new conceptualization.  While The Housemaid is not the first film from Korea to severely reconsider gender roles and identity to a lengthened degree, this film is particularly unique in its approach, particularly through the ways it reconsiders domestic spaces.  The film also considers some of the latent issues in female distrust and deceit, especially when these negative interactions seem to stem from a problematic male figure, something certainly and undeniably present within this film.  While intense from beginning to end, The Housemaid is a thrill to watch and something I look forward to revisiting in the future.

The narrative of The Housemaid begins rather unconventionally with an opening of various women of different classes traversing the streets of what we can assume to be Seoul during the night hours.  A woman who has been standing on a ledge unexpectedly leaps to her death, at which point we begin what could be defined as the narrative proper in which Eun-yi (Do-yeon Jeon) takes a job as a nanny and maid for a wealthy family headed by Hoon (Lee Jung-jae) a wine guzzling man who takes an instant liking to Eun-yi, despite his wife Hae-ra (Seo-woo) being pregnant with twins.  Eun-yi by no means dismisses the advances, despite being led to assume that she is at the very least bi-sexual, and is at one point caught by a fellow maid in the act of sleeping with Hoon.  Part out of personal advancement and guilt the second maid Miss Cho (Yoon yea-Jeong) informs Hae-ra's mother of the incidents which lead the worried woman to take out her concerns on the unsuspecting Eun-yi, causing her to fall from a ladder on the second story of the mansion in which she is working.  It is revealed during her recovery that she was pregnant, a thing that looms over the state of the house until she is troubled by a miscarriage, one, undoubtedly, connected to her intense accident.  Despite Hae-ra's misgivings her mother demands that she enjoy living a lavish lifestyle while her guilty husband is at her every whim, it is during the birth of the twins that she dismisses her feelings for Hoon and leaves it his job to fire Eun-yi, a task that causes her a great deal of frustration.  After a discussion with Miss Cho about her motives for ratting her out, Eun-yi hatches a plan to exact revenge upon the family, an act which involves her committing a grandly grotesque suicide within their foyer.  The film then closes with Hoon, Hae-ra and their daughter speaking in English as the daughter appears to be painting a picture.

This film could be read as a point of problem as it relates to female distrust and envy within upper class society and, of course, this would not be a completely ungrounded reading of this dense work.  However, I would argue that the film is a heightened state of realities in which women find themselves blaming one another for their own unhappiness or anger, when, in fact, it is certainly a figure of patriarchal oppression causing issues.  This is clearly the role that Hoon plays within The Housemaid, he is an alcoholic, sex crazed maniac who clearly holds little concern for the world around him unless it can provide him some degree of pleasure.  While it is certainly clear that Eun-yi welcomes the advances of Hoon, one cannot deny that her degree of submissiveness can be tied to her lack of power in relation to Hoon the wealthy patriarch.  The film is also clever enough to pepper in a few feminist theory commentaries and ideals as a means to push further a notion of unity, as opposed to distrust.  We see this first with Hae-ra's reading of The Second Sex as a reminder of her othering, in relation to a male of power, something based almost entirely on her sexual being, which is further emphasized by her being pregnant.  However, I find the most telling example of a need for unity to occur in the conversations between Eun-yi and Miss Cho, particularly their closing one, in which they both realize that their divisive ideas were tragically misguided and despite a clear age difference the two had far more to share  and celebrate than ignore and destroy.  Finally, with this conceptualization of the film in mind, one cannot help but read Eun-yi's suicidal act as a means of feminist martyrdom, in that it causes Miss Cho a moment to escape from the traps of patriarchy and most importantly for Hoon's daughter to see the effects of the current establishment on a woman's sanity.

Key Scene:  There are a few scenes set up in front of a fireplace that are cinematically perfect and metaphorically masterful.

This movie is available on Netflix Watch Instantly and well worth checking out, as for me I will be saving up to snag the ultra expensive bluray version.

Don’t Go Chasing Shadows: The Woman In Black (2012)

A time long ago in cinema history known as the 1970’s witnessed a particularly offering of horror films from the illustrious company known as Hammer Films.  This company become popular quite quickly given their keen understanding of Gothic horror and a substantial use of corn syrup blood.  Tragically, as technology advanced it appeared as though the magnificent company lacked the relevance to continue successfully franchising their films when competing with films with larger production scales.  However, the recent release of the surprisingly enjoyable The Woman In Black proved a success for the newly revived company and offers the promise of a good future for Gothic horror.  Perhaps it is just the right mix of Daniel Radcliffe, jumpy scares and rotting children’s toys that makes the film so damn creepy, but while watching the film I could not help but find myself reminded of the eerie nature of The Wicker Man, as well as the dreary desperation of contemporary Asian films.  It is not necessarily a new offering to the genre of horror, but it is certainly refreshing to see the genre done right, because it is becoming more difficult to find consistently good horror offerings in the past few years.  Essentially, The Woman In Black is your textbook horror film and as such it is a welcome viewing experience that respects its absurdity without losing any of its suspenseful elements.

The Woman in Black focuses on Arthur (Daniel Radcliffe) a wraithlike young man who is coping with the untimely death of his wife after the birth of their son.  He is scraping by attempting to provide care for his child while also making a name for himself as an up and coming lawyer.  Despite his best efforts, he is threatened with his job unless he agrees to take on some clerical work in a desolate village that is a lengthy travel by train.  Upon arrival to the town, Arthur is dismissed given his foreign nature and clear attachment to technologies and his clearly urban leanings, attempting to find help from the various townsfolk with no success, Arthur is eventually befriended by Daily (Ciarin Hinds)  the only man in the village who owns a car.  Oblivious to the eerie nature of the town, Arthur demands a ride to the manor of Eel Marsh, which belonged to the late Alice Drabow.  It is once he ventures into this house that he realizes the village is not quite as simple as it initially let on.  After viewing a mysterious woman walking through the cemetery outside the manner, Arthur begins to ask questions about what actually happened at Eel Marsh.  Despite the attempts by the villagers, including Daily, to extract himself from the situation, Arthur continues to dig and discovers that Drabow actually lost her own child after it was removed from her custody given her instable mental state.  If this were not bad enough, Drabow was forced to watch her child die in the lake in front of her unable to provide assistance as she was locked away in a cellar.  As a result, Drabow’s ghost takes vengeance on the village causing the town’s children to kill themselves inexplicably.  Arthur, both adamant about keeping his job and realizing his otherness allows him access to hidden parts of the village, takes it upon himself to fix the situation.  With the help of Daily he discovers the location of Drabow’s dead child and returns it to her room, hoping that by reuniting the two the curse will forever end.  However, as Arthur awaits the arrival of his son to the village, the film cuts to the now empty house as the voice of Drabow yells her refusal to provide forgiveness, this is followed by Arthur’s son walking onto the tracks of an oncoming train, only to cause Arthur to dive to his rescue.  The film then cuts to the two walking in a darker version of the train station to discover Arthur’s dead wife, the scene implies that the family is reunited with the death of Arthur and his son and the three walk off into the darkness of the tunnel ahead.  In the closing image, the camera pans to a statue of Drabow in the corner as the head moves to make direct eye contact with viewers, suggesting that her curse is transferred off the screen and into reality.

While horror films are often relegated to a lesser film genre given their usually schlocky nature, it is important to note that they, perhaps more than any other genre, allow for possibilities of alternative narratives and previously unseen characters.  Take the original Night of the Living Dead for example.  In this work, the main character is a black male, which prior to this film was something considerably unusual, particularly in such a popular film.  This happens to some extent in The Woman in Black, as Arthur is certainly not your traditional hero.  He is a young widowed dad who is not entirely masculine and is undoubtedly not mentally stable.  Arthur clearly suffers from some level of crippling depression, which affects his behaviors and allows him to become in touch with the spiritual world.  In another setting, the hero would have been a stalwart character of social power, perhaps a police officer or a soldier.  Another notable feature of this particular horror film is its dealings with unjust seclusion to a person with mental illness.  To some extent, the character of Drabow nicely reflects that character of the crazy woman in the attic from Jane Eyre who would be given her own narrative in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.  The reflection exists in the fact that a person is placed in solitary confinement for no apparent reason and is not allowed access to the world she created.  It is only suggested that Drabow had a child and that the child’s father is completely out of the picture.  Similar to the woman in the attic who burns down the Rochester house in revolt, Drabow is doing so out of vengeance, as well as lack of acknowledgement.  It could be argued that if Drabow were simply allowed access to her child then none of the terrible instance would have occurred.  Unfortunately, this is not the case and the result is gruesome to say the least.  Horror predicates itself on the absurd, however, it also reminds viewers that in  many of these instances the vengeful ghosts are doing so for a clear social injustice done to them in the past, and as such it is a call to end such irrational behavior in contemporary settings.

The Woman in Black is still making its way through theaters and is incredibly cinematic.  Take some friends with you, as it is certainly an edge of the seat viewing experience.  As for the eventually release, it is certainly a bluray grab for horror fans.