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.

Hurt Him. Hurt Him, To Save Him: Moulin Rouge! (2001)

This film is a mess.  A beautiful, cinematic, saccharine and unadulterated mess.  It is also a perfectly realized mess, something that could only come from the feverish mind of post-modern prodigy Baz Luhrmann.  While I am not a complete Luhrmann apologist, based almost primarily in his excessive appropriation of the misunderstood artist moniker, one that he claims is affirmed by his own vilification for 'ruining' classic texts.  While this is debatable, his visionary work Moulin Rouge! stands in a world all of its own, between its mash-up of classic songs into a GirlTalk like musical, or his near seizure inducing visual layering, everything Lurhmann offers his viewers is potent and pleasure inducing.  Between a haptic camera and quickened heartbeat at work in this film it is quite easy to lose out to the visuals of the film and overlook the very well executed, even if decidedly simplistic, story.  I have not seen all of Luhrmann's work and while I am holding out high hopes for Strictly Ballroom I am playing it safe in assuming that this is his current masterpiece.  Sure The Great Gatsby has an equal pacing, but problems like Toby MacGuire's acting and a hesitancy to go down a few of the darkest corners of the novel lead to a film that is not entirely perfect.  Moulin Rouge! is not perfect either, but damn if it is not as close to being such as possible.  I understand that the style of Luhrmann is not for everyone and I am willing to concede to this point of critique in some cases, simply attributing the frantic and overly referential nature of his oeuvre as a point of frustration.  In some cases, however, the critiques being mounted against this particular filmmaker are from individuals who also happen to think Quentin Tarantino is a consistently rewarding and masterful filmmaker, never seeing past his equally pastiched and kitschy veneer to realize he is doing precisely the same things in his films.  If critics and cinephiles alike are to concede to Tarantino being the bad boy of the post-modern styling, then it should also be extended to suggest that Lurhmann is in contrast its angst-laden rebel, the latter using culture in a far more curious and, I cannot believe I am saying this, far less pretentious manner.

Moulin Rouge! follows the experiences of Christian (Ewan McGregor) a struggling writer who has moved to the most rundown parts of Paris in hopes of discovering a space where he can blossom as a wordsmith, telling his disappointed father that his pursuits are purely inspired by the notion to understand the complexities of love.   The problem with Christian's noble aspirations is that he has never himself been in love.  Moving, however, into a dilapidated apartment, Christian immediately comes in contact with a variety of weird and wonderful characters including the squeaky voiced Toulouse-Lautrec (John Lequizamo) who is part of an acting troupe that is headed by the bombastic but keen Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent).  When they realize that Christian is indeed skilled as a writer they employ him to help compose a play, hoping that his prowess will convince local burlesque dancer and object of affection for many Satine (Nicole Kidman) to join in the production.  By using a combination of his poetry and his actual attractions, along with the fortune of being mistaken as a duke, Christian immediately attains the affections of Satine.  However, when the real Duke (Richard Roxburgh) emerges things prove troublesome as Satine is quickly required to avert her burgeoning desires for Christian and replicated them, if falsely, towards The Duke.  This is made all the more troublesome by Satine's suffering from tuberculosis.  The Duke an admittedly possessive man threatens to buy out the Moulin Rouge club from Zidler should Satine not agree to be his property, the worried Zidler agreeing immediately.  While Satine understands the gravitas of the situation, she and Christian continue to use the guise of preparation for the play as a means to further their relationship, stealing kisses and glances behind The Duke's back.  When Satine's sickness immobilizes her for an entire evening, The Duke assumes her to be galavanting with Christian leading to his final demand that he be removed from the picture entirely, in turn leading to Zidler telling Satine that she must end things with Christian.  However, when Satine does this, Christian refuses to accept this as a reality and crashes the final production one that is garish and almost nearly fatal.  Tragically, however, even when their love is rekindled, the reality of Satine's sickness causes her ultimate demise, though not before forgiveness is afforded to all involved.

Upon doing some very basic research for this film, I discovered that Moulin Rouge! is often referred to as a jukebox musical.  This is a term often applied to musicals, specifically theatrical, that appropriate the songs of one artist into a larger narrative, notable examples including ABBA, Bob Dylan and The Beatles.  Yet, Moulin Rouge! is a bit more complicated than this and as Baz Luhrmann has suggested, he intended his work to be palatable to the MTV Generation of music listeners.  This claim helps to better ground the idea of the film, one that is both sporadic and hybrid in its musical composition, indicative of a TRL Top Ten, while also heavily visual, bowing to the music video generation, wherein how the music looks plays as much into the nature of the song itself.  Think about the seeming inextricable connection between Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball as a song and as a music video.  Of course, nearly every musical intends for the visual nature of the film to take precedence, but often does so in a linear and formalist structure, wherein Luhrmann rejects this for layering and subtext.  Indeed, the film begins by showing a stage, thus calling attention to the projected nature of the film, but within the film there are often extra layers of staging, whether it be the wonderfully lavish production of the play in the closing moments of the film or the various dioramas that appear either in possession of the characters or as spaces in which the characters occupy.  It is in this execution that Luhrmann's use of special effects becomes quite interesting.  For a filmmaker like Tarantino this is almost always used to emphasize a degree of violence, moving it from bloody to hyper-violent.  In contrast is Luhrmann's invocation of the cgi to achieve a degree of meta-theatrics, already at play agains the layering of music, this causes the film to work almost like a gyroscope always rotating and viewers attempt to keep focus on the center.  Indeed, when this is achieved it is often the most climactic moment in the film where everything comes to a jarring halt evoking emotion by stripping away the melodramatic elements.  Indeed, this is perhaps as post-modern as the musical can get, by working in the opposite direction from the hyper showy to the simplistic.  Moulin Rouge! really is quite a fascinating work of cinema.

Key Scene:  The Kismet-inspired final production scene is magical.

I am sure quite a few of my readers are opposed to Luhrmann for various reasons and may have already encountered this film in the past.  I would strongly urge you to revisit this film and consider it from a counter-structuralist standpoint.  It is as impassioned an argument for rethinking the language of cinema in the post-digital age as one can hope to find.

I've Seen Brightness In One Little Spark: Dancer in the Dark (2000)

I am a proponent of the work of Lars Von Trier, while I had seen films like Antichrist and The Five Obstructions and was aware of his dreary style and bleak worldview, it was not until I encountered the enigmatic, condemning and frankly post-cinematic film Dogville, one of his offerings to the Dogme 95 group whose demand that cinema return to the very act of recording the image managed to constitute a new idea of the possibilities of digital cinema.  Dogville is a very tough sit, indeed, one of the most confrontational and, ultimately, moving films I have ever encountered.   It also happens to be one of the films for which I have had the most emotive response.  I did not think it would be likely that I would encounter another work quite like it, but leave it to watching another Lars Von Trier film to allow for such an occurrence.  Here in Dancer in the Dark, the cinephile that is Von Trier takes a the much beloved genre of the musical, noted for its escapist elements and asks filmgoers to truly understand who is escaping from what during such a film and more so, who is afforded access and privilege in such spaces.  I had heard whispers of this for some time, but its difficulty to obtain, rather lengthy runtime and an admittedly long time on my part to come around to the genius of Bjork, made me hesitant to embrace this endeavor.  I am now ashamed that it indeed took so long, because it is really something special, not always happy or enjoyable in the escapist cinema context more in line with the musical, but in a post-structuralist and, dare I suggest, post-modern cinema this is the only type of genre film that should exist, one that reminds viewers that their hopes of escaping into the world of film is always tempered with the reality that the visual image is only partial reality when placed in a cinematic where linear narrative can be broken.  Von Trier, always the provocateur, asks those watching a film like Dancer in the Dark a very stern and appropriate question.  Should the society which condemns a figure in trouble that clings tenuously to a dream, or should the collective viewership of a film that demands such dreams be fictionally allowed be the real villain.  In traditional Von Trier fashion, the answer is far from obvious.

Dancer in the Dark centers on the struggle single mother Selma (Bjork), whose legal blindness makes it somewhat difficult for her to remain viable and successful at her factory job, where precision and focus are not only necessary but key to survival.  Despite these troubles she works hard and slowly builds up a large amount of money which she plans to use to help her own son Gene (Vladica Kostic) attain corrective eye surgery so he will not have to live his life with the same crippling blindness Selma has faced.  While Selma does have the odds stacked against her, she is aided by the maternal guidance of another factory worker named Kathy (Catherine Deneuve) who helps her work through the nights and keeps an eye out for her in dangerous situations.  Selma and Gene are also fortunate to be provided a cheap living space with a local family consisting of cop Bill Houston (David Morse) and his wife Linda (Cara Seymour), although it is revealed that Selma has been engaged in an affair with Bill for quite sometime, he constantly borrowing money from her for some unestablished source of money leak.  When Bill becomes persistent about receiving a large loan, Selma refuses explaining that she is quite close to having the money for Gene's surgery and cannot afford the gamble.  Frustrated, Bill betrays Selma and tells his wife that Selma has been making advances towards him, all the while taking the money he needs.  Selma, as happy as ever, attempts merely to take the money back from Bill, who in a fit of defense ends up shooting himself and blaming Selma for the act.  Selma on the run, attempts briefly to return to her dream of playing Maria in a local production of The Sound of Music, but is eventually tracked down by authorities who bring her in on murder charges.  During her trial it is revealed that Selma has fabricated some of her past experiences, particularly in regards to who her father is thus leading to the jury finding her guilty of the murder she committed. While Kathy and others do their best to get a plea bargain for Selma, she is slammed with a death sentence that is acted out in the space of a penitentiary, but not before one final stirring and, ultimately, disconcerting dance number, one that is made all the more jarring by the film's final shot.

Dancer in the Dark, like all of Lars Von Trier's work exists in the post-structuralist state, as noted his Dogme 95 group draws attention to the very fabrication of cinema.  With that in mind, Von Trier does include elements of post-production, often in a very purposeful and deconstructionist manner, this is evidenced in the final moment of Breaking the Waves when CGI invades previously minimalist film in a arguably divine manner.  The same post-production elements work within Dancer in the Dark by the way of the musical performances, which while filmed in a realtime and on the fly do have the benefit of a post-production recording making the varied shots and ability to create continuity work.  In the context of Von Trier this would seem like a betrayal to his style, but it is important to remember that the musical numbers exist within the mind of Selma and nowhere else, to her they are moments of dreamlike escapism that often result in her returning, very jarringly, to a disparaging reality.  It is necessary to remember that there are other musical interludes in the film in the way of Selma and Kathy attending screenings of classic Hollywood musicals, these are not cut for continuity and the dialogue splits the film, in Selma's reality her escapism cannot come through the cinema, both because of her inability to see, but the refusal of other patrons to afford her extra sight by way of condemning her talking during the film.  Thus, Dancer in the Dark uses the post-production nature of the musical and its navigation of the diegetic and non-diegetic world to suggest that escapism is at play in all musicals in so much as their impossibility must exist in a day dream of sorts, because singing and dancing to all-invading music is simply not part of a reality.  Von Trier is commenting upon the world of the musical by showing that if musicals are in their purest sense the ultimate form of escapism, their success is predicated upon the viewer sharing in the sympathies of the cinematic subject, one that was established through witty dialogue in the thirties is here done through the reality afforded in digital cinema.  In either case, the choreography, music and generally cinematic nature of the musical performance is not lost, but merely predicates itself upon different standards entirely.

Key Scene:  The "I've Seen It All" sequence is profound.   Simply profound.

I know it is not the cheapest of films to pick up but it is worth owning.  I intend to upgrade to the Japanese bluray, but considering not all have gone region free, the DVD will suffice.

I'm Michio Hiyazaki, Too: Doppelgänger (2003)

When Christopher Nolan released the audacious and interwoven narrative that was Memento he created a piece of cinema that not only demanded a full viewing by those engaging with the work, but required it in order to truly understand the complexities of what he was trying to do in regards to the frame of storytelling, as well as in consideration of the frames of cinematic space.  When people went nuts about his more recent Inception, I kowtowed to it being cinematically sound but also silently remembered that his earlier work was far more engaging, entertaining and deconstructive in regards to what the traditional film could do despite having a relatively minuscule budget.  I say all this because it is a rare feat for film to be so different and demand that those watching it give it their full attention, but more so to be rewarding as a result.  In most cases, such as something like 13 Tzameti, the film will take an idea and flounder it in its own sense of pretension and self-aggrandizing glory failing to see the message beneath its push for grittiness and non-narrative constructs.  Doppelgänger, hereafter Doppelganger for the various search engines, is from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa and in its quest for an understanding of how one categorizes the self in relation to a larger social other, he manages to push not only to the level of the puzzling Memento but well beyond its limitations, breaking down even more cinematic conventions in the process, even if doing so required the simplest of camera tricks and editing techniques, and while the currently available transfer of the film is far from stellar, it is better than not having this work readily available to American audiences and the particular sects of fan boys that see Inception or anything Nolan puts out as the pinnacle of cinematic achievement, in which case most items are far from reaching (Inception is quite good I am willing to accept its having merit).  I included Doppelganger in the month of horror movies, partially because it is wildly revisionist, but too because it demands viewers to reconsider what is truly scary in life, positing that an encounter with one's self in all its impossibility would prove far more challenging to the self than any degree of horrendous other, because it breaks down the very dichotomy in the process.  This has the same chilling effect as it does in Primer, but here with even more of a confrontational intensity.

Doppelganger focuses on the work of Michio Hiyazaki (Koji Yakusho) an engineer who is working on a machine for disabled persons that is both incredibly mobile, while also possessing the finesse to properly crack an egg into a bowl, a task that is considerably difficult given the still clunky movements of even his high end robot prototype.  Caving under the stress related to such a project, doubled with a deadline, Michio's day is made all the worse when he discovers that a duplicate version of himself has begun occupying all the same places he does, specifically a coffee shop, but eventually meeting him in his own house.  Knowing of the ancient folklore that one who sees their doppelgänger is assuredly moments away from their death Michio begins to panic even more, actually ignoring his work in the process, even when it prove successful at an expo of the product.  Frustrated, Michio begins to mount all his efforts into confronting the doppelgänger  who while similar in looks is the complete opposite of the repressed and reluctant Michio, using all of his will and power to exert himself in the world in a wily and destructive way, going about killing individuals and sleeping with women, much to the demise of Michio who fears that they will mistake the engagements as actions undertaken by himself, leading Michio on a frivolous quest to prove the difference between himself and his identical doppelgänger  only able to convince a few that he is actually a twin brother, thus explaining his questionable actions and problematic ways.  Yet, when Michio comes to discover that the doppelgängers destructive attitudes are actually helping to relieve stress from his life, he begins to embrace its presence, allowing his particularly rampant and carefree attitude to wash over his previously troubled body, playing into blind ignorance in favor of allowing himself a continually stress free state of existence.  Yet even in these moments of joy, the actions of the doppelgänger prove to get a bit too out of hand and Michio must step in and correct the actions of his other self, one that ends in even more violent results than before, but not prior to an absurd set of events that take place in an abandoned building, one of which includes a giant disco ball careening out of control.

The self and the other prove to be the great divide in terms of privilege and oppression in pretty much any system of hierarchies in the world.  Doppelganer, absolutely destroys any possibilities of quantifying these two opposing forces, instead; suggesting that the self/other divide is entirely an internal construct created by one to define and set up an existential understanding of how one should engage with the world.  Now this becomes tricky when the self must create a tangible other in the real world, whether it be through creating a sense of higher moral standing based on religious/philosophical ideals, or in an oppressive sense through suggestions of inferiority that are always ungrounded and often predicated upon some seemingly miniscule genetic difference.  Again, Doppelganger manages to tackle both of these as constructs by showing that when extended to consider an identical body this becomes impossible to assert, let alone conceive, affirmed by Kusosawa's splitting of the screen into multiple spaces to consider how and why a person would demand a separation from one's self, here in a very literal sense.  What makes Michio's doppelgänger distinct is its seeming lack for moral conviction or sense of restraint, giving it a very id-like quality that he initially attempts to suppress, however, when it becomes evident that these actions speak to his internal frustrations Michio is willing to overlook such problems in favor of his (the self's) higher advancement.  Indeed, by throwing the genetic variations out the window, it also causes Michio to consider his own points of power and lack, drawing upon his own failures by having to face himself in a mirror of sorts, one that constantly haunts his every move.  By seeing his own loneliness on display through an other version that seeks harmony, Michio begins to fall apart at the seams, but this is not before the other, or perhaps the self, takes it upon itself to engage in a destructive path, one that is never truly reprimanded, for Michio has managed to exist space as both the self and the other, throwing any sense of authority or hierarchical structure out the window.  Kurosawa breaks the conventions of cinema in order to show that rules and guidelines are foolish when the very signifier that have caused them power are duplicated, subverted and invariably undermined.  This is a bold and forward thinking piece of cinema that demands to be viewed fully and critically.

Key Scene:  The first of the filmic space fracturings is so pleasantly unexpected as to set the pace for the remainder of the film as it grows exponentially more bizarre.

The transfer of this film currently available is a bit underwhelming, as such a rental will make due until a bluray is made available.