Now Don't Bullshit A Bullshitter: All That Jazz (1979)

Bob Fosse is nothing short of a visionary, this is not intended to be specific to his skills a choreographer or to limit the consideration to only his work as a filmmaker.  His musicals in all their wildly revisionist nature prove to be an entirely different fare from the conventional work, particularly as it contrasts the spectacular, but often nausea-inducing showy works of the forties and fifties.  Using whispers, snaps and pulling heavily from the sounds of the natural world, Fosse creates a type of musical that works from the ground up making the diegetic and non-diegetic necessitate one another for a fully functioning film.  This is not, however, to say that his works are somehow entirely situated within reality.  As was certainly shown in my earlier review of Cabaret, but almost exclusively a product of All That Jazz, the otherworldly, or the afterlife, is always at play within the experiences of an individual, particularly one who is fracturing and falling apart at the seams.  Furthermore, where another director would play up the loving and earnest look at a person falling into their final days and hours, Fosse chooses to go with the real, looking at the plight of a man dying and his success and failures at reconciliation.  While I have encountered other attempts at the independent filmmaking approach to the musical All That Jazz is, undoubtedly, the crowning achievement, managing to use the metacinematic in a simple, but appropriate manner and never allowing for the lavish sets necessary for certain numbers to overpower the narrative.  While it is a far cry from the composition and symmetry of the illustrious Busby Berkeley musical numbers, it is certainly no less startling or awe-inspiring.  All That Jazz works not in spite of the traditional musical film, but because of its very limitless nature in the filmic language.  Indeed, Fosse reminds viewers that perhaps next to the expansive possibilities of animated films that the non-linear and extra-diegetic structure of the musical allow for exploration of the human existence well beyond the corporeal, the final result of such an exploration is absolutely riveting in this film.

All That Jazz focuses on the experiences of Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) a theatre director, choreographer and filmmaker.  While Joe has managed to establish himself as a legitimate figure in both communities, the stress of such high demands, doubled with his life of philandering have led him to become reliant on a wicked blend of smoking and anxiety reduction pills to keep awake and productive.  On the coattails o f a newly anticipated theatrical show with a tinge for the erotic, Joe proves incapable of delivering to his expectations and when negative feedback emerges both in regards to his play and his newly edited film, he collapses at work.  When in the hospital it is revealed that he has been suffering seriously from angina pectoris, a particularly troublesome heart dysfunction that is a result of his high stress job.  The doctors at the hospital insist that if Joe hopes to survive he must severely limit the amount of stress inducing endeavors he engages in, specifically anything that involves a lot of movement.  Joe is completely flippant to such requests and continues to choreograph from his bedroom, while also taking in the various criticisms of his new film.  Furthermore, the seemingly unfazed Joe keeps up with his philandering ways, both sleeping with his dancers and attempting to make advances on his day nurse.  When it becomes more clear, however, that Joe is going to die from his angina, he begins to move through the various stages of approaching death, which is narratively overlaid by his recent comedic film's narrative, as the actor in the film states the various occurrences, such as bargaining and acceptance as Joe engages in each issue.  These challenges include Joe coming to assure his love for his young daughter and aspiring dancer Michelle (Erzsébet Földi), as well as a sort of truce with his ex-wife Audrey (Leland Palmer).  In the closing moments of the film, Joe is having trouble navigating between the reality of his hospital bed and his own execution of a musical about his death, the two seem to coalesce into a feverish nightmare, one that has him singing lead, while he caries about intravenous injections, images of his pumping heart serving as the backdrop for the scene.  Although it is a grand bit of spectacle, the film ends in a very matter-of-fact kind of way, asserting that in death finality comes to even the act of dreaming.

Temporal and spatial contrast are huge in the musical, as I have mentioned earlier, the escapist nature of the genre and the necessity of advancing time considerably result in musical numbers serving as transitory spaces between one event and another.  In All That Jazz, the various performances should also serve a similar factor, but it is almost as though in this situation the music and Joe's own relationship to the songs is stuck in some sort of liminal space.  These moments are liminal in that they reflect Joe as he is lost amidst two opposing forces, that which causes him to identify as one embodiment of the self or other.  This is done most innocently, although it might not be apparent, when Joe creates the Air Erotica musical number, wherein he must learn to navigate between his own creations as an artist and his own lustful and passionate desires, the backers for his show being confused by the graphic sexual nature of the various moments, completely overlooking the ways in which such a number might suggest a sexual politics that is far more complex than they could begin to imagine.  It is perhaps least innocent at a time when it would seem so, which occurs when Joe's daughter Michelle and his girlfriend Katie (Ann Reinking) jointly perform a song and dance number in his apartment.  At this point, Joe must decide whether he wants to fully commit to being a father figure in the traditional sense, or a paternal figure in a sexual sense, both girls seeking a degree of affection that is eerily and problematically similar.  These two sequences are somewhat similar in composition, it the final sequence, which features Joe as the lead in "Bye Bye Life" that absolutely traipses the lines of liminality, especially considering that it is performed, assumedly, in Joe's mind, wherein all that he witnesses and learns is wholly an internal struggle, completely detached from the corporeal space.  However, because it is about the death of Joe it has a inherent tie to corporeality, the stage thus becoming an embodied thing, something that Joe must navigate one last time free from the reigns of temporal and spatial control.  The liminal here is expansive, because in death all the spaces and boundaries appear to become definitively destroyed.

Key Scene: The "Bye Bye Life" number is the final portion of the film and it certainly builds to it in a perfected manner.

Get this film.  It is perfect.

Exterminate All Rational Thought: Naked Lunch (1991)

I am both regretting, as well as beginning to appreciate the #100filmsforJune marathon I have decided to undertake along with a ton of other members on Letterboxd.  I am regretful because it is proving to be an incredibly daunting and time-consuming process, especially considering that I am trying to avoid repeat viewings per the stipulations of the marathon.  However, it has thus far afforded me an opportunity to catch up with a few blind spots within my film literacy a problem that I hope will be noticeably altered by the end of the month.  One such blind spot for me, as mentioned with my previous post concerning Sunshine, is that of underrated or overlooked science fiction films, which made a viewing such as Naked Lunch excellent, primarily because it falls within the confines of lesser known science fiction, while also affording me the very welcomed opportunity to fill in a gap on my desired viewing list with the psychosexual madness of yet another Cronenberg film.  While I would not say that Cronenberg hits every work out of the park, I do find most of his choices engaging and, at times, deeply profound.  Works like Videodrome and Existenz have become staples of consumerist fears and the detachment of the body in regards to an omnipresent, artificial entity that can fulfill even the most base of human needs and desires.  As should be little surprise, Cronenberg takes lens in Naked Lunch and spins a web of insanity relating to some absurd hybrid of drug culture and repressed heterosexuality.  What comes out of his cauldron of visions is a film that is parts Terry Gilliam and Ken Russell, engaging the very fabric of human life and its fractured psyche during a state of dependence that parallels nicely with the narrative of Linklater's A Scanner Darkly which provides for yet another layer of fitting parallels, in that both manage to perfectly adapt rather dense and challenging texts from equally prolific authors into a world all their own, using similar metaphors and messages to paint their facsimile of society in such a way that it is entirely implausible to the point of viewers finding safe detachment, while also being incredibly prescient and a cause for very real feels of discontent and dismay.

Naked Lunch is set inconceivably in fifties era New York and follows the life of exterminator Bill Lee (Peter Weller), a rather interesting job in the context of this world considering that both bugs, as well as particular pesticides prove to be highly addictive drugs, so much so that his girlfriend Joan (Judy Davis) is a strung out addict to bug powder herself, often stealing large quantities from Bill's work supply to get her fix, which, in turn, leads to his being fired from his job. Later that evening in an attempt to get people out of his house, Bill and Joan do a William Tell routine that involves him shooting a glass off of Joan's head, only for it to go awry and result in her being shot.  During an arrest related to his assumed murder Bill begins his own hallucinations as a result of repeated work around bug powder, where in he sees a large insect who informs him that he is to be a secret agent in a alternate world known as Inter Zone where he will serve as a writer for the various alien-like bugs that inhabit the world.  During his work for a particular bug, one named Clark Nova, after the typewriter which it manifests itself though, Bill is told that he is to find one Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider), an endeavor that leads him to meeting doppleganger of his deceased wife.  As this navigation towards Dr. Benway continues, Bill comes to realize that the entirity of Inter Zone, as well as its extended alternate universe Annexia are riddle with drug addicted individuals, many of which actively engage in gay relationships, and that a larger narcotics trade orbits around the trafficking of a particular bug based drug known as "black meat."  Of course, getting to the center of the issues is far from simple, particularly since Bill himself is navigating various drug induced trips, yet after a constant shifting of mind states, he eventually comes to realize that it is indeed Dr. Benway who is the veritable kingpin of the narcotics pushing and in an attempt to flee to Annexia, he, as well as the doppleganger of Joan, is stopped by border police, also dopplegangers of previous characters themselves who demand that Bill prove he is a writer.   After pulling a pen out of his pocket as evidence, Bill, for no obvious reason, recreates the William Tell accident from earlier, thus bring the acid trip of a film full circle and Bill no closer to a sort of meaning and happiness he so clearly seeks throughout.

Much like other Cronenberg films, the narrative and its visual stylings seem to have a particular fascination with flesh, penetration and the seemingly inextricable connection between the mind and body as it relates to identity and survival.  This cinematic theme within Cronenberg's films furthermore always seems to have a psychosexual layer added as well, one of invasion and intrusion that is made all the more grotesque by the perfectly disgusting creatures that Cronenberg's crew makes for his films.  While I know I am not going to do any justice to this thematically, I feel it necessary to talk about the particularly unusual way in which the psychosexual elements relate to homosexuality between males.  Much like Barton Fink, the film has a drifting writer character to seems to be struggling with something larger than himself that is forcefully and unsuccessfully being repressed only to blow apart in troubling and destructive ways.  I would argue that both the character of Barton, as well as Bill are dealing with their respective oppressed sexualities, ones that are necessariliy oppressed for fear of violence and desertion from society.  In Cronenberg's film, this repression means that Bill must shack up with a drug addicted woman who he "accidentally" kills not out of malice, but out of a desperate hope to escape to something desirable, an escape he and the other openly gay characters of the film seem to pursue via wild hallucinogenics.  The escape only proves mildly beneficial for Bill, in that he is arguably surrounded by other gay males, although the price is pretty severe because the various drugs essentially allow for his feuding id and superego to go unchecked resulting in some bizarre drug induced visions. Of course the image that will be easy to pick up to the non-Freudian thinking viewer will undoubtedly be that of the various writers and other figures suckling at the flaccid stem of the white bug hoping to receive the liquid that emerges upon the completion of "good writing," which, of course, extends to include a good sexual performance as well.  Bill while madly struggling to repress his feelings cannot help but desire this secretion, much as he cannot change his desire for other men.  Of course, there is also the bug whose back, and apparent form of communication very much resemble the anus, suggesting a point of sexual pleasure, as well as verbal interaction whose implications both within the context of sexuality and Freudian psychology are many and multifaceted.

Key Scene:  The bug farm scene and the revelation of Dr. Benway's disguise are a fitting way to bring this narrative to a near close and defy all the logic in the film, which was minimal to begin with.

This is an excellent film and Criterion has recently put out a bluray, I would strongly encourage obtaining a copy when finances allow you to do so.