Experiments In Film: Manhatta (1921)

I have decided in the past few weeks that since I am in graduate school and have become fairly certain of my intentions to continue on with my education in film studies that expanding my research interests to exist outside of the rather limiting window of South Korean cinema was of the necessity.  While this has manifested itself in various formats, whether it be more work with archival footage and orphan media or an expansion to include previously unforeseen genre films, my secondary place of rest seems to have landed squarely within the frame of cyberpunk cinema, primarily because it is something that already has ties to contemporary South Korean films, but also because it manages to exist as an amalgam of some of my favorite elements from other works of genre, whether it be the cold, calculated, but ultimately indifferent way of the world that is clearly in line with the film noir of eras gone by, or the ability to transgress and readdress boundary issues by way of also possessing a decided heir of the science fiction film.  Given the diversity at play within the cyberpunk film, I have even implemented weekly screenings of works within the broad genre as a means to expand my horizons.  Of course, it is a somewhat expansive frame for a nondescript genre, so I manage to pull things like the short film Manhatta as a way to approach some of the more integral issues to the cyberpunk films, while also continuing to expand my understanding of urban spaces and social integrity.  Manhatta, exists in this space because for all of its intentions to exist as a documentary, it is clearly far too invested in reflecting the mechanized labor at display that makes not only the film much more experimental in its composition, but also proves to be a rather evocative statement on the proletariat implications of an expanding cityscape, one that carries with it Babel like implications as the various bridges, towers and skyscrapers in the short  films narrative burst through the sky unapologetically.  Here the human figures neither exist comfortably in the real world, nor do they exist safely in a past or future space.  Manhatta, while it may be an earnest look at a day in the life of a blue-collar worker in America, it also proves a forceful and poignant warning as to what can happen should humans becomes too invested in their machine, one of the major components of genre.

How then do the workings of dual filmmakers Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand evoke the idea that the mechanical and the human have somehow become inextricably intertwined in the modern setting.  Well, considering that it is an experimental film from 1921 there is a heavy investment in methods of editing and juxtaposition that allow for a paralleling between the movement of the rows and clusters of people through New York with the various machinery of construction and destruction.  The very human who desires to make the space of Manhatta(n) into something spectacular and grand, too fails to connect their own reliance on these beastial machines as a means to enact this expansion that is both outward and upward.  Indeed, Manhatta takes on issues of hyper-technolization and, to a degree, industrialization much in the same way Fritz Lang's Metropolis would do the same, but where the latter is very much rooted in the workings of science-fiction, Manhatta still remains a documentary.  In its emphasis on reality and the depictions of the city from a near-omniscient presence it seems more inclined to evoke an idea of the monotony and repetition of the cityscape and its various mechanized industries as being synonymous with the hustle and bustle of the daily commute.  While it is far less violent, but no less surreal, one could make a comfortable comparison between Sheeler and Strand's work and that of Testuo, Iron Man wherein the metal and oil of the machine comes colliding together with the human to create some simple version of the cinematic cyborg, although in this short film one must accept it as a rather broad metaphor.  What is far more clear in this short documentary are the concerns of the filmmakers.  The film ends with a deeply rousing image of the sky cracking open to reveal large beams of light washing over the city, as though the very presence of God has bursted over the metropolis to look down on its own fusion in a 20th century Babel Revisited.  The judgement or joy of the heavenly presence is left uncertain, a reality is only marked and the natural/spiritual is left merely to accept this existence.  In Manhatta, man has matched the gods, the result is to this day still to be determined.

For more information on the filmmakers, or to watch Manhatta, click on either of the images below:

He Found Some Dice And Think The Devil Got Ahold Of Him: Cabin In The Sky (1943)

The black experience in America is one that is troubled by many factors and opening a history book more than denotes these various issues.  Yet, even with the heavy awareness of a history of slavery, Jim Crow oppression and a hard earned Civil Rights movement that resulted in the deaths of many a prolific figure.  A consensus that the black experience somehow did not extend to issues within popular entertainment is outright foolish and generally ill-conceived.  Indeed, jazz and poetry were part in parcel to the popular culture of the time, but became a thing to be appropriated within white culture, much in the same way that primitivism would inject new life into the modernist art movement without really providing any justification to its origins and certainly not the equal point of access to the very artists with which the work was drawn.  Now, when it came to Hollywood productions the black representation was far more troubling, certainly denoted this month with the various musicals I have watched, a variety of which use blackface in a very unapologetic manner, but this was far from the only genre to appropriate such imagery.  I say all this to note the exceptional nature of something like Cabin in the Sky in its complete use of an entirely black cast, which included musical powerhouses of the time, particularly a dynamic and inspired turn by Ethel Waters who is moving as a troubled wife that simply wants the best for her husband.  As the Warner Brother DVD notes at its beginning, the imagery present within Cabin in the Sky is not always the most ideal or positive when it comes to a representation of black culture during the time, however, there is something very aware in the filmmaking of Vincente Minnelli, who shoots the film in a very loving manner, allowing the performances to take on an heir of the natural, as opposed to some of the more hyper-performative things that happened in early all-black films, most notably Green Pastures.  Sure it is far from a perfect film in terms of racial depictions, but it is void of blackface and aside from a few unfortunate instances this really is a testament to the magnificent performance art coming out of the African-American community in the thirties and forties.

Cabin in the Sky focuses on the life of Little Joe Jackson (Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson) a dice gambler who is down on his luck and owes considerable money to various gamblers in his community.  However, Joe realizing the error of his ways has taken to a life of improvement, inspired by his loyal and devout wife Petunia (Ethel Waters).  Unfortunately, since his gambling is a considerable addiction, the rediscovery of a set of calamity cubes in his drawer followed by the prodding of local loan sharks, leads to Joe foolishly returning to the local gambling saloon, only to become caught up in a fight, in which he is stabbed in the process.  This near fatal would leads to the religiously confused Joe to be a point of confrontation between hell and heaven, each believing that they have the right to his soul.  Hell is represented by Lucifer Jr. (Rex Ingram) who posits that Joe must necessarily spend his eternity in hell because while on Earth he was suspectible to gambling, boozing and the provocations of the local temptress Georgia Brown (Lena Horne).  Yet, The General (Kenneth Spencer) represents the side of Heaven and asserts that considering the heavy amount of praying being undertaken on the part of Petunia that he should be given a chance for heaven.  In a religious bargaining, both sides agree to give the morally ambiguous soul of Joe six months to correct his ways, although his earthly spirit will have no recollection of the events prior, instead; having only his world and conscious to make his decisions.  At this point the battle for Joe's sole does take on spiritual proportions as both Lucifer Jr. and The General exact their sway on the individuals in the world, as well as the natural world around them in order to save Joe.  Lucifer Jr. attempts to play into Joe's weakness for gambling, using trickery to make him win a large amount of money in a lottery, one that causes individuals like Georgia Brown and his former loan sharks to come hunting for his money.  In contrast, The General uses the spirituality of Petunia to push Joe towards salvation.  All of these events lead to a climactic, jazz-infused confrontation with both sides that layers into a larger narrative in regards to where salvation truly occurs.

Cabin in the Sky is perhaps one of the great considerations of religious navigation and how one attains salvation and seeks forgiveness.  While I will not be able to review it anytime soon, I was able to catch up with Philomena and it is an equally ambiguous, but, nonetheless astute observation on how one navigates the world of salvation.  I would place Cabin in the Sky second only to Secret Sunshine in its look at how factors beyond simple faith or penance play into a person's ability to find religious understanding.  Joe is a troubled character who clearly wants to correct the wrongs in his life, looking initially to do so through financial means, as it is a world he understands as a result of his crippling gambling addiction.  This is clear in his choice to buy Petunia a electric washer for their house, despite having no electricity with which to run the appliance.  He assumes that what Petunia wants is a means to make her physical labors lessened, although she constantly asserts that she wants Joe only to be appreciative and around for her to love, as Joe's own salvation becomes more clear and define, to do his actions towards Petunia, bringing her gifts that he had to labor to accrue, most notably the simple, yet sweet, gesture of picking wild flowers.  It is this understanding that his own actions have come from the natural world that inspires Petunia to note the brilliance of God in the natural world.  Indeed, much of Joe's frustration and trouble comes from the mechanized and industrialized world, his connection to the damnation in the saloon or Georgia Brown's arriving via train.  This film, while somewhat troublesome in its context, seems to suggest that happiness is tied to understanding that not all joy and affection can be produced, indeed, when money is placed into the narrative, even Petunia becomes jealous, asserting that her frustration comes from Joe offering money to Georgia Brown, when it is somewhat clear that it is more a result of catching the two together, without understanding that Joe was doing his best to deter her advances.  The narrative does posit the absolute power of the natural to shift the order of things as a certain tornado comes to solidify Joe's final push towards salvation through a cataclysmic cleansing.

Key Scene:  The "consequences" song between Anderson and Horne is a moment of natural, simplistic aural contrast in an otherwise wholly visual film and it sticks out in an emotionally stirring way.

This is available via the Warner Archive and the DVD looks like near HD quality.  It is worth your time if you are fascinated by race in American cinema or musicals at their most realized.

Too Much Perfection Is A Mistake: El Topo (1970)

When I discovered during my initial research that there was a sub-genre of revisionist westerns referred to as acid westerns, I knew that at least one of these works would need to be included in my blog this month.  At first I was unsure which direction to go with this as many of the "acclaimed" acid westerns seemed to merely be a film that blows the lid of the styling of the spaghetti western, while providing a critique of the sixties, so to a degree films like Easy Rider and Sam Peckinpah's works would make the cut.  However, I by chance alone glanced at my Alejandro Jodorowsky box set which was collecting dust on my DVD shelf and remembered that he had made a film called El Topo, for which I had managed yet to catch up with at any point.  Upon brief research I realized that in some circles El Topo is considered the greatest moment in the acid western, a completely fresh appropriation of the spaghetti western excess, paired with a hero's quest for identity.  In one full and wild stroke, Jodorowsky manages to make a work that is a harsh reflection of the problematic nature of authority within the context of sixties Mexico, while creating a film that aside from being a western, is also a passion play, a coming of age tale, a spirit quest and even a horror film to varying degrees.  I have often considered that no director could pickup the revolutionary narrative workings and trenchantly surrealist film making style of the great Luis Bunuel, without it appearing contrived or pretentious.  I am now fully willing to afford an exception to Jodorowsky.  Prior to seeing El Topo I was only familiar with his works Fando Y Lis, and what is considered his master work Santa Sangre.  About fifteen minutes into El Topo I realized that I had discovered my new favorite work by the director, and a new found faith in the possibilities of truly surrealist film making. There are a lot of moments with El Topo that are visually challenging and baffling, which at first glance appear to be completely incoherent and detached from one another, yet something happens in the films "second" act that makes the absurdity become poetically realized.  Between bouts of uncontrollable laughter and moments of truly cringe inducing visual offerings, I wish every filmmaker cared about their work with as much compassion as Jodorowsky proves to, even if it all seems tied to some terribly troubled parental figures.  To Jodorowsky the western, and all of cinema, only serve as a brief respite from reality, and even in that moment of escapism, reality must be acknowledged in all its glorious brutality.

As noted the film is decidedly divided into two sections, although the title cards lifted from biblical references such as Genesis and Psalms, do little to clearly delineate the separation, an even more so induced by clear setting shifts.  Nonetheless, the first half focuses on the travels of El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky) as he takes his naked son through the Mexican deserts in the search of four accomplished gunmen, along the way meeting a group of bandits who have recently taken it upon themselves to pillage a Franciscan monastery with the hopes bedding a girl with whom their leader is currently sleeping.  El Topo emerges to destroy these various members, as well as the general with the intent of taking the woman and leaving his son to live with the remaining monks.  After this abandonment, El Topo takes on the four gunmen, each having their respective eccentricities and quirks, like one man believing that he has perfected a way for his body to prepare for any incoming bullet, while another believes his raising of rabbits and handcrafted gun have led to his own perfection that assures each bullet will be a fatal blow.  The last one, indeed, refuses to fight El Topo, but in a moment of genius El Topo convinces him to take his own life, thus affirming him as the master gunslinger of the area, yet, his reign is cut short, when he returns to the woman he has taken, only to be gunned down by another female lover she has undertaken in El Topo's repeated absence.  All of this, of course, only captures the first half of the film, the second considers the experiences of El Topo, now awaken in an underground cave with paled skin and whitened hair, only to discover himself the demigod of a group of deformed persons living in the cave, completely castaway from a wealthy and decadent village living above the ground.  Recruiting the help of a dwarf woman, for whom he adores, El Topo begins a plan of digging out a tunnel, while begging for supplies to expedite the process, with the hopes that upon escape the crippled and deformed individuals can simply integrate into the city.  Meanwhile, the city is visited by a traveling monk who instantly dismisses their life of cultist excess, hoping, instead; seeing a possibility in helping the underground colony, yet when he realizes that El Topo is his father, it is drawn to attention that the monk is indeed his abandoned son, who vows to kill him upon the completion of the tunnel.  Yet when the tunnel is completed, El Topo flees with his followers to the city, only to be gunned down in the moment, while his dwarf lover gives birth to a child.  El Topo's son the monk now rides off with the new child, and a near duplication of the film's opening shot occurs, suggesting an absurd and futile cycle.

El Topo is so many amazing things wrapped into a surprisingly taut two hours.  One could walk away from this film and debate it as a psychoanalytic nightmare of abandonment, or as one of the most introspective considerations of Jesus Christ's last days and to a heavy degree be correct.  What Jodorowsky does within El Topo is take the very lose strictures of the revisionist western and use them to set into motion a deeply focused critique on any form of oppression humanly imaginable.  This is key, because one of the biggest issues I find myself struggling with as I go through this marathon is the decided denial of otherness with the western genre, sure, women, persons of color and native populations receive screen time within the genre, but it is quite often purely for narrative continuity and done so with forced subservience on their part.  El Topo rejects all authoritative figures within this text, whether it be a general who dons his costume much in the same way that a drag performer would don their wig and makeup.  In this moment it is quite possible that Jodorowsky wants to suggest that the only difference between a person in power and a peasant is the garb worn, the authoritative signifiers such as a medal or plumed hat becoming useless once removed.  The same could certainly hold true for the foolish looking sheriffs in the town of the second act, whose badges, while felt, nonetheless, represent the law, therefore, allowing them to exact law as they see fit, even in their incredibly violent and prejudiced manner.  Other examples of this occur in regards to religious figures, bourgeois women and even in the character of El Topo, who must struggle with his gender privilege while traveling with the woman in the first act, just as he repeatedly fails to reject his demigod status throughout the second act.  All of this expands nicely to consider the eye within the triangle cult symbol that seems to exact ultimate authority over the narrative.  The panoptic gaze of this eye causes even those in the most oppressed of situations to accept their role, out of a fear that this ever present element of surveillance will capture their slightest divergence from preordained roles.  Indeed, it is only the underground community who is unaware of this cult-like fear, yet when they emerge from their cage to the light of realization, unlike Plato's allegory where enlightentment is achieved, here in the disparate world of El Topo death comes synonymous with "seeing the light."

Key Scene:  While there are easily tons to go with, I was partial to the sand and sex scene, it is cinematically profound and challenging both on a compositional and theoretical level.

This boxset is a wonderful item, unfortunately, in the recent bluray upgrade it managed not to obtain all the films.  As such, for expense reasons I would suggest going with the single disc bluray, although the DVD boxset does include soundtracks.

A Friend Of Mine Went On Carousel, Now He's Gone: Logan's Run (1976)

The very nature of the dystopian sci-fi thriller is to lull audiences with awe-inspiring imagery only to counter such beauty with jarring realities of a nightmarish and terribly Orwellian futurescape, however, very few films manage to take the concept and stretch it out over a feature length film and not completely lose steam halfway through, this certainly happens at times during The Omega Man and Soylent Green, perhaps Charlton Heston is to blame.  However, when a director and its subject matter gets it right the result can be quite astounding, as is certainly the case with THX 1138, which is both a visual feast and a narrative masterpiece.  While not quite on the level of the early Lucas work, Logan's Run does indeed manage to be an impressionist vision of the future that substantiates itself with a stellar narrative and commentary on the future.  Hell, it even proves to have come out in one of the most seminal years in filmmaking, setting along side Taxi Driver, Cria Cuervos and Nashville, all films that i have provided praise for to some degree in on this blog, although the latter was, technically, released a year earlier.  Logan's Run is particularly good, because while it certainly makes viewers aware of its showy elements, whether they be the expansive miniature sets intended to display the future, or the heavy emphasis on stop-motion special effects and hand drawn animation, all elements exist as a means to expand on the story, as opposed to distract viewers from any degree of lack, although it is admittedly hard not to become completely overwhelmed by something like the carousel scene, which works on a highly poetic level, as well as a grounded undermining of the notion of moving on to a "better place."  I would argue that very few contemporary directors within the sci-fi genre manage to comprehend the future in quite this way, except maybe The Wachowski's but even then their works clearly exist with a degree of homage to this works Platonic philosophy.  If all of this fails to sell this cinematic masterpiece, there is some glorious hair going on that even includes the likes of a young Farah Fawcett.

Logan's Run is set in the future, 2274 to be exact, wherein lifespans cut off at the age of thirty and individuals are sent onto Carousel a spiraling upward magical ride that leads those at cut-off to a sort of rebirth, meaning, of course, that no individual within this society is old, nor has ever seen an old person.  While a majority of the citizens gladly embrace their assumed rebirth a considerable amount of individuals are suspicious of the carousel as a form of population control and attempt to avoid their turn on it, becoming known as Runners in the process, precisely because they must run away from the world in order to avoid such a fate.  In comes Logan 5 (Michael York) and his friend Francis 7 (Richard Jordan) as Sandman, whose jobs within this society are to prevent runners from escaping, even if it means killing them to do so.  Logan 5, unlike Francis 7 begins to reconsider his role as a Sandman, and his eventual fate at the carousel when he takes one runners possession to a processor, and discovers their ankh necklace to be a symbol of eternal life.  The computer in rebellion pushes Logan 5's processing date ahead, forcing him to flee in fear of carousel, becoming a runner himself, acquiring the help of another runner Jessica 6 (Jenny Agutter) to help escape the colony.  This escape leads them deep underground where they discover a frozen underworld in which the bodies of those runners frozen, as well as food kept from the outside world.  Box (Roscoe Lee Browne) a robot attempts to stop them from running, but Logan 5 and Jessica 6 eventually escape relatively unharmed, even managing to find the overgrown world of Washington D.C., although they are unfamiliar with it, finding a the aged statue of Abraham Lincoln quite bizarre.  During their exploration they met an old man, played supremely by Peter Ustinov, who explains to them the world outside of their colony, as well as the joys of growing old.  This revelation, in the eyes of Logan 5 and Jessica 6, must be shared with their colony, and after fighting off those who disagree, including Francis 7, they share the experiences of the old man with their colony, as they all begin to rise out of the cave of lies and false hopes of recycling.

While the main theme of this film certainly concerns issues of overpopulation, sustenance and fears of growing old, as do many science fiction works, it is hard not to consider how excellent of a consideration this is of Plato's Allegory of the Cave.  I know I refer to this quite regularly on the blog, but Logan's Run is truly a stellar adaptation of one of the great philosophers most universal teachings.  I will assume readers are quite familiar with this work and, as such, will not elaborate to heavily, however, I do want to note that it is essentially about living in metaphorical darkness, and seeing a light,  or becoming educated and attempting to share those realizations with persons still living in the darkness of ignorance.  Director Michael Anderson extends this notion to argue that the ignorance of people living in Logan 5's colony is a direct result of consumer excess, as much of the colony is quite reminiscent of a large shopping mall.  They chose to agree to young age and the comforts of conspicuous consumption, even fearing wrinkles or old age, let alone a person who even begins to question the possibility of something aside from carousel.  The film deals with seeing the light in a very literal sense, in that Logan 5 and Jessica 6 emerge from the cave into a blistering sun, although it to occurs in a educational sense, as they purposefully emerge in a dilapidated Washington D.C., a veritable locale of knowledge as guiding light.  However, it is their interaction with an individual who is equally, if not more, happy than they living outside the colony and growing old that inspires them to share their experiences, particularly those relating to learning.  It is also no accident, that the old man quotes T.S. Eliot, whose poetry would personify the idea of expanding the human consciousness to things beyond even the tangible, although as the closing moments of the film do emphasize, it is quite often the quantifiable elements that help move people from blind ignorance to enlightenment.

Key Scene:  The entire "face change" sequence is a god damn vision of cinematic dystopia, that is at once beautiful and nightmarish.

Buy this on bluray, it is a spectacle and well worth seeing in the highest quality possible.

Free Your Mind, And Your Ass Will Follow: Platoon (1986)

Over the years Oliver Stone has sort of gained a reputation as being an abrasive director who often loses sight of making a good film due to his penchant for making politically scathing commentaries within his work.  Fortunately, on a few occasions Stone manages to keep the criticism focused enough to create a spectacular work, this is the case with Wall Street and is certainly the case with Platoon.  In the same vein as war movies like Saving Private Ryan and Thin Red Line, Platoon is loaded with a veritable who's who of emerging Hollywood actors, and a few veterans colliding together in brilliantly stacked performances, ranging from a smile-wielding Forrest Whitaker to a soft-spoken, yet suave Johnny Depp.  A film with a frenzied pace and incoherent editing structure, Platoon depicts a film about war as though the viewer is actually amidst the action, perhaps due to the fact that Stone himself was a Vietnam veteran, helping to explain the vehement and focused rage of his films.  At no point in the film does the narrative fall stale and having known the plot to this film well before its viewing, I found myself nonetheless blown away by its cinematic presence and general enjoyability.  Trying at times and poetic at others, the mix of cinema verite and exploitative grandiosity comprises what could well be one of the best war films I have ever seen, if it were not for the existence of Stanley Kubrick.  Platoon is an American classic and deservedly so, it like Citizen Kane or Easy Rider has a very real place in the historical landscape of American cinema and society.

Platoon introduces us to the hellish experiences of one enlisted soldier named Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen), who has done the unthinkable and actually volunteered for service.  Along side a gang of lively soldiers, Taylor experiences the emotional and physical drains of war.  This includes amongst other individuals King (Keith David) a wise-cracking African-American man on the lookout for a means to leave the jungle, Sergeant O'Neill (John C. McGinley) who strives to gain promotions within his squadron despite being overlooked multiple times, as well as the less than authoritative Lieutenant Wolfe (Mark Moses) who is clearly scared by the entire Vietnam ordeal.  However, much of Taylor's war experiences are contentiously battled between two sergeants, one the hippy, hash smoking Sergeant Elias (Willem Dafoe) who clearly tries to befriend those around him and wants nothing more than to leave and Sergeant Barnes (Tom Beringer) who is ruthless and maniacal, seeing the war as a means to purge the earth of lesser beings.  Constantly confronting one another over the "soul" of Taylor, Barnes and Elias become incredibly confrontational to the point that Barnes kills Elias in cold blood during  a shootout, ultimately, leading to the squadron being disbanded.  After a short rest, Taylor is sent back out to war and, after yet another skirmish, finds himself with an opportunity to exact revenge for Elias and act he quickly undertakes, killing Barnes.  Ultimately, the film reminds us that war often pits allies against one another, leaving the enemy secondary, at least this is how Oliver Stone remembers Vietnam.

I could go into detail about how Platoon focuses on the intensity and sporadic nature of war, or I could talk about the racial vision of Stone's Vietnam.  More so I could talk about this film's political nature as it relates to other Stone movies, however, none of these approaches quite matches the idea of possessing souls as it relates to Platoon.  In this context, Barnes and Elias represent two reapers of souls, Barnes for the evil and Elias for the good, or so it seems, it could be said that both are simply corrupt soldiers seeking to validate their existences.  Furthermore, both Barnes and Elias have their assumed apostles, the various troops in the squadron siding with whom they find the most reflective of their own ideals.  It is saturated with religious metaphors and imagery from the presence of crosses, to somewhat ironic ankhs, as well as the now famous and oft-parodied death of Elias, which is all to Christlike.  Furthermore, it is, in my belief, no accident that Christ Taylor, becomes Christ T., a bit on the nose but quite fitting with Stone's religious study of war.  Overall, the film reads as a glorified study of The Golden Rule, one that is, ultimately, questioned, revisited and undermined in two hours of cinematic perfection.

Key Scene: Guns and smoke...and not from firing said gun.

This is a classic, and undeniable stamp on the greatness of American cinema, and while I watched it on Netflix, I would venture to say that the bluray is worth looking into, I know I intend to grab a copy.