Oblivion, etc.

Remember when we started NotThatCritical and we meant to write briefly and quickly, with no pressure, because no one would be reading it? I think it was supposed to be: 1) no more than five hundred words per movie, and 2) write something every single day. We never really kept up with every single day part, but, you know, like Maude said, consistency is not really a human trait.

I saw Oblivion a couple weeks ago. Well, "saw" is probably overstating it. I was present for it, although I might have fallen asleep once or twice. I did gather that it was about killer drones (topical!), and I can report that during the time I was awake, Tom Cruise occupied probably about 85% of the screen time. Maybe 90%. I remember just one scene he was not in, where stoned-eyed Andrea Riseborough (who seems familiar but imdb reveals nothing I remember seeing her in) talked with Melissa Leo, but I think their conversation was mainly about the Tom Cruise character, so it does not pass the Bechdel Test.

Speaking of Tom Cruise, I read this Vulture article a month or so ago, and I just saw Lindy West's response to it, which is, as usual, pretty much spot on. The only thing I need to add is that when they say "analyzed the data" they really mean, "made up a bunch of data points and wrote down some ideas about them." Which is cool, that's mostly what we want from Vulture, right? But this actual data exists--you can get all of imdb's data, for money--so is someone doing an actual analysis of actual data? Because that could be really interesting.

This research on gender and the movies was released recently from the Annenberg School: http://annenberg.usc.edu/Faculty/Communication%20and%20Journalism/~/media/5DB47326757B416FBE2CB5E6F1B5CBE4.ashx
This paper interests me, but this sort of analysis is necessarily so very subjective, despite best efforts. See for instance, from page 11:

All characters were evaluated for attractiveness. This measure ascertained whether one or more characters in the plot verbally (e.g., “You are so hot!”) and/or nonverbally (e.g., cat call, whistling, gapping mouth) indicated the physical desirousness of another character. Self references did not count. Characters were coded as not attractive (i.e., no verbal or non verbal references), attractive (i.e., one reference), or very attractive (i.e., two or more references). These latter two levels were collapsed prior to analysis.

Makes me a little dizzy, trying to think of ways to make an objective character attractiveness criteria.

I feel pretty certain that are fewer leading women in the movies now than there used to be, and fewer of those leading women are tough. But I have no real idea of how to objectively assess that statement.

Ripley: tough
(wikimedia.org)

Katniss: also tough
(www.fanpop.com/)

W. (2008)

Oliver Stone's habit of mining the recent and familiar for his fictionalized histories requires a leap from his audience. I think that the strengths of W. become clearer if it's viewed as an alternate history, if we pretend for a couple of hours that we're from a calmer, saner universe where George W. Bush was only ever the son of a President, a semi-public figure of fun, instead of a world-historical fuckup. Imagine, we say, just imagine what would have happened if Dan Quayle had become President! Or Jesse Ventura! Or worst of all George W. Bush! Someone that feckless and callow and lazy—what dystopia would reign!

Stone presents Bush (Josh Brolin) in scenes from throughout his adult life, moving back and forth through time as we see how his formative experiences and demons and flaws shape his actions. These scenes, mostly, are intensely personal: and, while they present Bush, especially younger Bush, as a grotesque, they are careful not to damn him for that; Brolin plays him with such confidence that he becomes a preternatural charmer even through the slouching and loudness and mouthfuls of food. Two scenes at the beginning neatly lay out the Bush dynamic: one, a golden moment on a baseball diamond where Bush receives full and absolute adoration from the crowd before he throws out the first pitch as President; the second a fraternity hazing where Bush is seen to be a peculiar interpersonal genius. Bush craves love but will accept deference; and if he cannot compete in the world of ideas and reason he will resituate all his problems from there to the realm of personal connection where he is nigh unrivaled. Bush's struggle for the respect of his father (James Cromwell in a nice performance of some heavy-handed scenes) is the key to this dynamic: GHWB seems to be the only person who both refuses W. affection and does not fall for his charms; in Stone's telling, it is approval from this distant father that motivates the striving of an unfit man for office but is not enough to overcome shallowness and incompetence.

Of course W. would not be an Oliver Stone film without a little wackadoodle read on l'affaire Bush, one he here situates within the national security apparatus of the administration. These scenes are where the feel of alternate history comes in; the odd impressions and recontextualized quotes identify this as parodic; the murderous absurdities calmly dropping from the mouths of Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz reminded me of nothing as much as Dr. Strangelove. Most of these criminals don't come off well, of course: Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright) gets the best treatment, with his Iraq war arc being presented as tragedy-lite; Condi Rice is shown as less conspirator than enabler, though Thandie Newton's distracting impression makes her thoroughly a figure of ridicule. Karl Rove, wow: Rove is not only a villain, he is a malevolent corrupt elf; casting Toby Jones here is one of Stone's most interesting choices in the whole film.

Throughout the film, we come, as we expect, to feel sympathy for W. He's a man wholly out of his depth, whose personal psychodrama became treasonous only because of the family into which he was born. His interpersonal instincts are so right that he cannot realize that his intellectual instincts are so wrong; in manipulating those around him to give him love (or deference, that Splenda to his soul), he opens himself up to their manipulation to war. But those very scenes with his advisers and cabinet pull us back out of any sympathy. The jarring satire reignites our anger at regular intervals. Nixon was part tragedy, part Grand Guignol, but the character was given an amoral macabre dignity. Bush's dignity, hinted at in the sympathy Stone give to his rise through life, is utterly undercut by the clowns by which he is undone; and we in our alternate universe laugh at the criminals and cringe at Bush, thinking What a bullet we dodged, then, didn't we?

Rear Window (1954)

"We're two of the most frightening ghouls I've ever known."

While this is probably the most technically beautiful movie I can remember seeing, to talk at length about Hitchcock’s camerawork would be like going to the Antarctic and reporting on how very, very cold it was. If you’ve been there you know and it can obscure its subtler features, like the native subcutaneous parasites. For the sake of everyone’s hypothalamus gland, this would be a mistake.
By confining us to Stewart’s perspective, Rear Window does not only implicate us in his voyeurism, it also invests us in its world. Loneliness and isolation are as major a part of the feel of the film as the guilty delight in watching, especially since its sounds are mostly ambient. It is not until the dog is killed that the leads act on the plot directly, meaning it is the killer who first breaks the neighborhood’s silent taboo. While the broach of privacy isn’t portrayed as less moral than the wife’s murder, it is the one that provokes an interaction. Compare the dog-owner’s denouncement of her neighbor’s indifference to Mrs. Thorwald’s scream the night of the murder. Every window turns to hear the dog-speech, but even our hero, who is watching the Thorwalds when the scream happens, responds by falling asleep.
Situated in this narrative world, Stewart and Kelly’s relationship is what I find most interesting. Even before anything is afoot, we witness Stewart’s neuroses over his “too perfect” relationship. The film’s discomfort with intimacy seems to stand in as their real problem, especially since Stewart’s version of the problem is inconsistent (he tells his nurse she’s too good while telling Kelly they’re too different). She’s a career-minded socialite; he’s a free-spirited adventurer who can’t be tied down; these would be the hallmarks of romance if they weren’t presented by complete absence. Unlike how a romantic comedy tends to show characters struggling to find a balance between their public and private lives, Rear Window ignores the public side and obsesses with the private while its lead characters begin the film by doing just the reverse. The mean, weird indifference of love is overcome by their engagement in the plot. If the two have nothing else in common they’ve found someone to share their perverse fascinations, which is, I think, as good a definition of happiness as any.
Stewart’s confrontation with Thorwald is remarkable, and Halloween-appropriate. While the film tends to confront the morality of voyeurism by having the characters flatly ask each other about it, this scene is probably the most useful to the discussion. It has signifiers of horror- the heavy steps up the stairs, Throwald’s now-obscured and surprisingly large figure looming in the doorway. While the terror of the scene is mostly based on our identification with Stewart’s character, Thorwald’s reaction is interesting. Upon entering to find a seated silhouette of a man Thorwald says, “Say something… anything,” before advancing. We are offered only the slightest glimpse of the murder’s terror: confronting a faceless man after days of being privately observed, to all appearances calm enough to stay in his chair when a murderer breaks into his door. A reversal made all the more chilling by its transience.