Blogorium Review: Django Unchained

 Django Unchained is by far the most entertaining of Quentin Tarantino's films. This comes from a fan, an unabashed apologist. I look forward to Tarantino films and I rarely find myself disappointed after finishing each new offering. (The exception being Death Proof, which had the unfortunate task of being immediately compared to Planet Terror, Robert Rodriguez's crowd-pleasing horror portion of Grindhouse.) As I revisit the films, I find I appreciate them more, and while Django Unchained may not be my favorite - not after one viewing, anyway - it's the most fun I've had watching a Tarantino movie since I saw Pulp Fiction at far too young an age.

 It's worth noting to the five or six of you who read the Blogorium but haven't seen Django Unchained yet that like Inglourious Basterds, its attachment to the title and the adherence to the legacy of the Django series of Spaghetti Westerns is tenuous at best. Yes, Franco Nero appears in the film, but most of the audience I saw the film with (and many of my friends) a) didn't know who he was or b) weren't aware that the title was based in any way on anything, let alone half a dozen movies about the titular gunfighter sometimes - but often not - played by Nero and directed by Sergio Corbucci*.

 That said, you don't really need to follow any of Unchained's cinematic antecedents - or necessarily be aware of them - to enjoy the story of Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave separated from his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) turned apprentice Bounty Hunter by Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). If you've seen the trailer, you know the basic beats: Schultz is hunting the Brittle brothers (MC Gainey, Doc Duhame, and Cooper Huckabee), and because they captured and split up Django and Broomhilda, his associate has the benefit of knowing what the brothers look like.

 What I didn't expect was how quickly this particular plot point is resolved, and for the most part by Django without the involvement of Schultz. It turns out that "the kid is a natural" at the bounty hunting business, not to mention the "fastest gun in the South," and by the time Django and Schultz head into the heart of Mississippi to rescue Broomhilda from Calvin Candie (Leonardo Di Caprio), the apprentice has surpassed the mentor. When it comes to dealing with the discomforting reality of slavery, and particularly of "Mandingo" slave fighting, Django has more of a stomach for it than Schultz does.

 Since we spend most of the film with Django and Schultz, I'd like to mention Jamie Foxx's stoic, composed title character (until he sees Broomhilda, anyway) and Christoph Waltz's amiable, conflicted Dentist / Bounty Hunter. As if to counter-balance Hans Landa, Tarantino gives Schultz's German dentist an appropriately disconnect European opinion of slavery - he feels uncomfortable at the concept of having to buy Django, even though strictly for legal purposes in order to free him. Until late in the film, when he can no longer help himself, Schultz is a man capable of maintaining whatever ruse is necessary to win legally. Django, he discovers, has a natural talent as a gunfighter, as a bounty hunter, and a fierce loyalty to what Schultz taught him. As he slowly transitions into the character audiences are expecting to see, Foxx earns our good will because he doesn't begin the film as "Bad Ass Django." When we come to the end of the film, he's earned a just victory.

 On the opposite side are Calvin Candie and his house servant Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson). Candie is the spoiled, sadistic, and not particularly bright third generation owner of Candieland, the third biggest plantation in Mississippi. While not immediately apparent, it becomes clear that Stephen is the real power behind the throne, and he realizes quickly what Schultz and Django are up to. There's been some debate about the merits of Stephen being arguably a worse human being than Candie, and I'm not sure what side of the fence I land on. It's clear that he's happy to perpetuate slavery on the plantation in order to maintain his own standing, but much of what he does in the film is a reaction to his distaste for Django in principle.

 Much as it pains me to say it, Tarantino really dropped the ball with Broomhilda, the least developed female character I can remember in any of his films. Yes, she occupies most of the first half of the film in Django's imagination, linked to Die Niebelnungen by Schultz's recognition of her name (Brunhilde was in all likelihood "Americanized" to Broomhilda by the Brittles or Candie), but when we're finally introduced to Kerry Washington's character in the present narrative, she's naked and being kept in "the hot box" for trying to escape. Admittedly, she doesn't have it quite as bad as the other failed escapee, who Candie feeds to his dogs after Django seals his fate. Nevertheless, Broomhilda never develops beyond a crying, fainting, screaming, tortured plot device. I don't blame Washington so much as I do Tarantino, because there's just not much of a character there.

 Django Unchained may suffer from that in other instances, as there are a lot of recognizable actors in small roles, many of which you might miss entirely. I saw Amber Tamblyn but not Russ Tamblyn, neither of whom factor into the narrative at all. Candie's toadies include Tom Savini, Robert Carradine, and almost unrecognizable Zoe Bell, and Walton Goggins, who may be the only character that registers at all.You'll also see Bruce Dern, Tom Wopat, and James Remar in two roles - once as the slaver Schultz kills to buy Django and later as Candie's "muscle."

 Tarantino pops up late in the film with another superfluous cameo, this time with a terrible Australian accent to answer the question "could this be any more obnoxious?" He's accompanied by Michael Parks and Wolf Creek's John Jarratt, and if nothing else, Tarantino's (SPOILER) death scene elicits laughter enough to justify his nearly pointless appearance.

 In the past, moreso in the pulpy Kill Bill films than in Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino has mixed humor in with his violence to keep the audience engaged, but I can't recall anything quite as funny as the proto-Klan scene in Django Unchained. When Big Daddy (Don Johnson) brings together his posse to kill Django and Schultz for (legally) killing the Brittle brothers on his plantation, they quickly realize that wearing masks with hoods on makes it almost impossible to see. The impromptu meeting to complain about the masks is played broadly, with Jonah Hill of all people the straight man, one of Big Daddy's lackeys who tears his eyehole. It's one of many scenes in the film where the comedy is overt and designed for the broad laughter it invariably gets (at least from every review I've seen). Juxtaposed with the at times brutally violent sequences - Candie's introduction, for example, which is accompanied by an exceptionally rough "Mandingo" fight - Tarantino balances entertainment with a sobering truth about the world these characters inhabit.

  But is there a degree of "white guilt wish fulfillment" in the revenge narrative of Django Unchained? I feel like the question can't be avoided. It is apparent that crowd reactions to the movie have been similar - if not identical - to the one I experienced: laughter, gasps, uncomfortable chuckles, and some degree of cheers as Django tears his way through the slimy bastards at Candieland, saving Stephen for last. The audience I saw the film with was racially mixed, but it seems like there is a sense of relief in seeing Jamie Foxx blowing holes into these villains that satisfies a white audience's discomfort over our past.

 Yes, it's not all of our pasts, and not all of our ancestors had slaves, but slavery remains one of the great unresolved chapters in American history, so Django Unchained, like Inglourious Basterds before it, allows audiences to feel comfortable (by proxy) watching excessively violent retribution against two universally loathed types of people (Nazis and slave owners). In both instances, the oppressed turns against the oppressor and systematically dismantles their enemy, regardless of historical accuracy. (Unless, of course, historians have been wildly exaggerating Hitler's final hours.)

 Was it historically appropriate to use the same racial epithet 109 times in one movie? Probably. Does it still feel excessive? Sure, but I might argue it's necessary to. It tempers the escapism a bit, and calls into attention the baggage surrounding Tarantino's use of the "n-word" in his earlier films. Like the flashbacks to the dogs tearing into the runaway D'Artagnan, there is a conscious level of discomfort in place during Django Unchained. The question is what end it serves: to contextualize the fictional narrative in real horrors or to justify further audience catharsis when Django has his vengeance?

 Slavery and the Holocaust were both very real, and while to some degree I can understand Spike Lee's reasons for dismissing Django Unchained as "disrespectful" sight unseen, Tarantino's film is, like Basterds, a movie. Since Kill Bill, Tarantino's output has largely been increasingly operatic tales of vengeance, enacted on increasingly horrendous villains. Django Unchained is more streamlined, more satisfying as entertainment - it's a two-and-a-half-hour extension of the climax of Basterds, and while the film doesn't skirt around uncomfortable imagery, there is a concerted effort to leave viewers cheering at the end. It's escapism, constructed brilliantly, and so I'm conflicted about how much I should simply allow Tarantino's accomplishment to stand as a film and how much of what's behind the hybrid of Spaghetti Western and Blaxploitation influence what makes me uncomfortable while laughing.

 Can I give it a pass because it's just a movie? Particularly when Tarantino doesn't let John Ford off of the hook for putting on a KKK hood as an extra in Birth of a Nation, or the following paragraph (used partially out of context when reprinted by The Huffington Post):

"One of my American Western heroes is not John Ford, obviously. To say the least, I hate him. Forget about faceless Indians he killed like zombies. It really is people like that that kept alive this idea of Anglo-Saxon humanity compared to everybody else's humanity -- and the idea that that's hogwash is a very new idea in relative terms. And you can see it in the cinema in the '30s and '40s -- it's still there. And even in the '50s."

 If Ford and, by extension, Griffith, were perpetuating a notion, that Tarantino is theoretically rebuking with Django, I'm still torn as to how to reconcile the ugly reality present in the film with the heightened reality of a revenge film, one told to provide a cathartic reaction for audiences who feel some degree of discomfort about said ugly reality. It's not whether Django Unchained can have its cake and eat it too, but how we as an audience are complicit in reacting to this disparity. It's not "did I enjoy Django Unchained" so much as "should have I enjoyed it as much as I did" and why?


*   To be honest, it's not really an issue unless you're expecting Django Unchained to be a Spaghetti Western (or "Southern" as Tarantino prefers to call it), but I'd suggest you look a little more locally for direct influences on the film. Specifically, Fred Williamson's "Charley" trilogy, which I  would prefer not to mention by their full names, and of which only the third film - Boss - is available on DVD. They center around a freed slave who ends up on the run (it directly influenced the Blacksmith's backstory in The Man with the Iron Fists) and who alternates between fighting oppression and tormenting the racists he comes across.

Four Reasons to See The Cabin in the Woods (Again)

 I caught a little grief for reviewing Lockout instead of The Cabin in the Woods following a successful (?) double feature of the two last month, but after spending a few days wading through various reviews of the film, ones approaching it from nearly every angle, it seemed unnecessary to weigh in. I also didn't want to choose between writing "Just See It!" and not explaining too much about the film, or diving into an all-out spoiler fest, which is basically the only way you can really get into why The Cabin in the Woods is worth seeing to horror fans. At this point, I think we're far enough away from the film's release that I can openly dance around plot points without ruining your experience of the film. It's not actually a facetious suggestion when someone says "the less you know, the better" for The Cabin in the Woods, but at this point either you've watched the film or you'll check it out on home video.

 The Cap'n fully intends to watch it again on Blu-Ray, probably a few times, and here are four reasons why:

 1. It's Not Exactly a Horror Movie - One of the first things I told people was that The Cabin in the Woods is a movie about horror movies. While it does follow the structure of some horror films, it's simultaneously a comedy that explains the absurdity of things that happen in horror movies, the way characters behave, and provides a rationale for the necessity of those things to happen. On more than one occasion a friend assumed The Cabin in the Woods must be a documentary, but the truth is that it's more of a "meta"-film along the lines of Charlie Kaufman or Michel Gondry. The film is about horror films, about audiences, and ultimately, about itself. A little further down I'll get into more specific ramifications that come from The Cabin in the Woods' "meta" message.

 In the meantime, I look forward to watching the film again because it is more of a comedy with horror elements (like Shaun of the Dead) than a horror comedy (like Dead Alive). It plays with horror conventions, both real and generally assumed tropes about what "horror films" are all about in an entertaining manner. Writer Joss Whedon and director / writer Drew Goddard are able to build tension while also sneaking in well placed laughs (primarily by juxtaposing the "cabin" section with the mundane "underground" team). Because I didn't know exactly what I was walking in to (I deliberately avoided any spoilers or information), the discovery that The Cabin in the Woods isn't so much a horror film as a riff on the idea of "horror films" was refreshing. Knowing the direction the story takes, I'm quite excited to sit down and see it again.

 2. Pay Careful Attention to Plot Construction - The Cabin in the Woods takes audiences on a ride, one that we're familiar with and take such pleasure in seeing subverted that we forget what we already know. Goddard and Whedon's screenplay is designed so well that you forget deliberately contradictory evidence to the "archetypes" each of the protagonists are supposed to represent. Dana (The Virgin) is going to the cabin in order to forget about a disastrous affair she was having with one of her professors. Holden (The Scholar) is introduced catching a football and described as having "the fastest hands on the team," while Curt (The Athlete) is giving Dana tips on better theory to read for her classes. Jules (The Whore) and Marty (The Fool) both require assistance from "Chemistry" (the hair dye and laced marijuana) to ensure the fulfill their archetypes, although it ends up backfiring with Marty, making him immune to other chemically induced "twists."

 This actually pays off later when The Director (Sigourney Weaver) admits they "work with what we've got" when Dana scoffs at being "The Virgin." Because The Cabin in the Woods is so successful at setting up established tropes about horror films and selling them with the characters we're presented, it's possible to forget that half of the "archetypes" don't actually fit.

 Now, Cabin does take some liberties the with concept of "horror tropes" and plays more on what people assume are tropes rather than what horror films actually present. This is not to say that the Virgin, Athlete, Whore, Scholar, and Fool don't appear in some variation in a lot of horror films, but that exact combination may not map on to slashers films in the way that non-horror fans assume. For example, the most obvious visual connection in the film is to The Evil Dead (arguably the best "cabin in the woods" entry) which doesn't map onto those "types" at all. If you followed The Evil Dead by Cabin in the Woods rules, Ash would be the "virgin" who makes it to the end and is killed. Now if I asked most fans of the Evil Dead series, Ash would fit the "Fool" type, especially as we move into the sequels.

 The Cabin in the Woods seems to take its archetypes from Friday the 13th Part 3, which does mostly have those "tropes" but also several other characters. Honestly, I can't think of a movie that actually follows the ritual required in Cabin, but I appreciate the idea. It's designed for audiences who are midway to serious horror fans and who don't mind that the rules are built more on a general premise than any specific film. Although, since I mentioned The Evil Dead, let's move to the next point...

 3. Easter Eggs - Aside from the obvious Hellraiser reference, there are a number of other nods (some subtle, some blatant) to other horror films, many of which are included on "the Board." The team gets together and has a pool based on which menace will be unleashed on the students, and there's a whiteboard with most of the options available. Here's the best shot of the board I could find:

 I mentioned The Evil Dead because the "board" lists both "Deadites" and "Angry Molesting Tree" as options, which implies that both Evil Dead films could theoretically have been previous "rituals" conducted for the "Ancient Ones" (maybe before they put in the lake). Based on the possibilities (as well as some of the choices we see unleashed later in the film) you could also argue that Jack Frost, The Strangers, Wrong Turn, The Deadly Spawn, The Cave, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Dog Soldiers, Diary of the Dead, and every Full Moon "evil dolls" movie ever made were variations on previous rituals. Those are the direct ones without covering more vague listings like "vampires" or "sexy witches". Beyond that, Goddard has indicated that the triggers for every single monster on the board is in the basement, which gives us plenty of incentive to freeze frames. I don't know about you, but I fully intend to find the "unicorn tapestry".

 Meanwhile, I really want to see the other countries and their contending rituals, because other than Japan's "stringy long haired pale ghost" trope from the late 90s / early 00s, I didn't quite catch what was meant to represent other forms of "foreign" horror. I thought I saw a Gothic castle and maybe a troll, but that's also one I look forward to examining more closely.


 4. Implications About Horror Before and After This Film - That's a little vague as a category, but I'm not quite sure how I'd sum up what The Cabin in the Woods says about the relationship between audiences and horror films in one sentence. During Jules and Curt's sex scene, Hadley (Bradley Whitford) and Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) tell Truman (Brian White) that "we're not the only ones watching" and you've "gotta keep the customers satisfied" when he questions whether she needs to show "the goods." In the context of the film, you could argue that they're referring to "The Ancient Ones," but as we won't be introduced to the concept of their manipulation as part of a predetermined ritual, the dialogue reads as a direct commentary on the audience. We, the viewers, are watching The Cabin in the Woods expecting the same adherence to "formula" (in this case, T&A) as "The Ancient Ones".

 So who's to say we aren't "The Ancient Ones"? I mean, once you get past the Lovecraftian assumptions that follow any concept of an "ancient" force in horror, an idea so pervasive beyond Lovecraft's fiction that it made it all the way to Guillermo Del Toro's comic book adaptation Hellboy. Sure, I was hoping that's what The Director was talking about, but it's not what we got. We got a giant hand smashing the cabin (and presumably, destroying the world) when it didn't get what it wanted. If that isn't a metaphor for internet-age fandom I must really misunderstand bloggers and "geek" sites. I'm not saying that it's the only way to read this, but if you've spent any time reading sites that build up movies to impossible expectations and then relish their downfall in comments (and yes, I would include my reaction to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World fans bashing The Expendables when the former belly flopped). Better still, there's the contingent of "complain about remakes / sequels" that also won't go see movies that don't fit into that mold or will instead complain about how those movies "probably suck". This is the mentality that plays into the end of The Cabin in the Woods, when the "Ancient Ones" don't get their ritual exactly right so they destroy everything. Better still, the protagonists let it happen in what is arguably the funniest nihilistic ending in a long time. It doesn't even give us a coda to let us down easy like Dr. Strangelove or Heathers - it's just "SMASH!"

 Now I don't think that The Cabin in the Woods is going to have the kind of impact that a Scream did. For one thing, while the people who did see it really enjoyed it (or enjoyed it with reservations or didn't like that it was a comedy but mostly liked it), it doesn't seem like The Cabin in the Woods is having the same draw that Scream did. Scream ushered in a wave of self-reflexive horror movies, mostly lousy knock-offs that didn't understand what Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven were commenting about - and I'll include Scream 2 and 3 in that list - and that became the dominant trend until the J-Horror remakes took over with The Ring. At this point in horror, we're seeing the concept of "torture porn" dying off as we move further away from the Saw series, and the remake craze is finally losing some steam after the unwatchable Nightmare on Elm Street two years ago.

 Right now things are up in the air: are the slow burns of Ti West (The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers) where things are headed? The splatterfest throwbacks of Adam Green (Hatchet) or Joe Lynch (Wrong Turn 2)? Are the French or Spanish super gore / disturbing films ([REC], Martyrs, Inside, High Tension) going to prevail? Are the "Masters of Horror" and the "Splat Pack" all done with? Is All the Boys Love Mandy Lane ever going to come out in the U.S. and would anybody watch it? Are anthology films like Trick 'r Treat, Chillerama, and V/H/S going to usher in a comeback? Is Insidious bringing back haunted houses? Is Hammer films poised to fill the void? Or is horror going to get wrapped up in this "exploitation" craze in the wake of Grindhouse or Hobo with a Shotgun (go look up "The Disco Exorcist" on YouTube).

 I'm not really sure where horror is going. The truth is that all of these directions seem to be happening at once without any clear "trend" to speak of. That's probably a good thing, although it refutes the idea that horror can be distilled into archetypes for a ritual purpose. To bring it back to the idea of "the audience" and expectations, I was surprised to talk to people who were unaware of horror theory. They had never considered that horror provides a cathartic release by building up tension and by facing viewers with their worst fears, only to allow them to return to the comfort of daylight at the end. I guess I've spent more time poring through books like Screening Violence, The Monster Show and Projected Fears because of classes I've taken and an interest in why people are drawn to the horrific. I can see how avoiding horror altogether might also cause people to be surprised that it does serve a sociological purpose - or at least there are scholars who make the case it does.

 The Cabin in the Woods asks us "what would happen if the characters rebelled?" What if the catharsis didn't happen and evil won? In that way, the film is an extension of Michael Haneke's Funny Games, a film I didn't like because the director chose to impose his disdain for audience expectations on viewers, to rub their nose in it. The point in both films it that audiences are complicit in the formula a movie follows: if you expect it, they (the studios / creative forces / etc) will give it to you. Both films deny you what you expect (to some degree) to make you question your role as the voyeur. The Cabin in the Woods cheats a bit by giving you what you want but also telling you that it's happening while you watch it, but I don't know that audiences are going to be looking for more films like this. It may be a one-off that makes horror fans more demanding of what comes next, which may simply result in more "smashing". We'll see.

The Curious Case of David Cronenberg

I have a pet theory; it's based on discussions over the years, one about certain directors and their bodies of work, but invariably I've noticed one trend consistent with one film maker / auteur / visionary (if you will): David Cronenberg. More than any other director I can think of, Cronenberg's films elicit a visceral reaction from their audience, and I happen to know several fans of his films - what this says about them (or me) is the subject of another discussion - and as time goes by, while in discourse about the Canadian, body-fixated, sometimes horror but not really, always shifting in subject matter, one consistent thread is visible.

There is one film for every person that doesn't "work" of Cronenberg's. The fascinating intangible in that for each of them, the film is different. One person hates Spider; another finds Videodrome's ending too "over-the-top"; yet another was underwhelmed by A History of Violence. For me, the clinical, dispassionate tone of Crash loses me every time. I have several ideas that may account for this theory, but let's look at the strongest case I can discern based on Cronenberg's oeuvre.

While almost all of Cronenberg's work deals with the body in some form or fashion - particularly with changes in the body and the abject horror / fascination that accompanies the changes, his approach varies considerably from film to film. Some are explicit: the mutant STD of Shivers, the transplanted / transformation in Rabid, whereas others are subtle in their approach - the schizophrenia of Dennis "Spider" Clegg, the visions of The Dead Zone, or the gender fluidity of M. Butterfly. Then there are the films that split the difference and hybridize the body with technology - identical twins and their custom gynecological devices in Dead Ringers, the literal "plugging in" of eXistenZ, and the auto-fetishism of Crash. Some are almost parodic in their bluntness: Videodrome's "New Flesh," or The Fly's Brundle metamorphosis. His work with Viggo Mortensen fixated on the idea of men who are not what they seem, who have undergone radical physical (Eastern Promises) or psychological (A History of Violence) changes in order to "fit in" or "start fresh."

Cronenberg also has a habit of adapting the "unfilmable," most famously by semi-translating William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch, but many would argue that J.G. Ballard's Crash was equally difficult to translate from novel to motion picture. He is a filmmaker who divides his time between original concepts and adaptations: including A Dangerous Method and Cosmopolis (Cronenberg's next two films) - 10 adaptations (one of which is a remake of The Fly), 5 original works, and two films written by someone else (Eastern Promises and Fast Company).

In total, this is a wildly varying body of work, from low budget shockers with graphic violence to quiet character studies to hallucinatory visits to the Interzone. There is certainly room for his fans to find a movie that doesn't "fit" or simply disengages them from the experience, but we need to take a step further. Is it a visceral response that turns them off? Not always - in the case of Spider, at least two people I know don't feel that the film is consistent with Cronenberg's thematic trends, whereas others - including, in the interest of full disclosure, myself - find the film to be a bridge from his literal body explorations to the figurative echoes in his recent work.

At time, I wonder if the emotionally distant approach evident in many - if not most - of David Cronenberg's films occasionally registers with his fans when it normally might not. Naked Lunch's mixture of biography and adaptation is, on first viewing, virtually impenetrable. Crash has no character with which to "enter" the story; James and Catherine Ballard (James Spader and Deborah Kara Unger) are wholly inaccessible throughout the film, even during the supposed "awakening" of James to the car crashing fetish. Naomi Watts' Anna is the entry point to Eastern Promises, but quickly vanishes into the background so that the stoic, reserved Nikolia (Mortensen)'s admittedly more intriguing story takes precedence.

The Fly comes the closest to to having two sympathetic, relatable characters: Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) and Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis), but the films graphic, disgusting transformation sequences building towards Brundlefly keeps conventional audiences at a distance. However, The Fly is the only film I've never heard listed as anyone's "least favorite." Some point to eXistenZ, a few Dead Ringers, and Naked Lunch is mentioned as one of the less viewed films. Th availability of They Came from Within / Shivers, Rage / Rabid, and The Brood limits their exposure to fans. And then there's Fast Company, a movie I suspect might alter the theory slightly, if only more people knew it existed or had any interest in watching the film. Cronenberg's curious side-trip into the world of stock car racing, devoid of almost anything fans would recognize as "Cronenberg-ian," remains for hardcore fans and completists only, which actually applies to the audience addressed in this essay.

In any event, it seems that for every David Cronenberg fan, one film simply doesn't fit in / "work" / "do it." If the reason(s) aren't apparent or consistent from fan to fan, I feel comfortable in asserting that the theory itself is consistent. It also seems to be at least partially unique to Cronenberg; with many other "cult" directors, one finds a considerably more varied approach towards their filmography, with "ups" and "downs" not tied to one specific film - a trend that is trickier with Cronenberg (and some would argue, David Lynch) as the varied output is nevertheless tonally and thematically consistent.

As a final note, I turn the exploration to you: is this true? Is there one David Cronenberg film that means less to you than others? Why do you feel that is?

(Kinda) Blogorium Review: The Man Who Wasn't There

or, Four Things I Noticed While Watching the Coen Brothers' Free Adaptation of Classic Noir:


1. Posture - Specifically Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton)'s posture during most of the movie. When he's not sitting in a particular pose (such as when he's at the dinner table with Doris [Frances McDormand], Anne [Katharine Borowitz] and Big Dave [James Gandolfini]), Ed is almost always seated as though he's sitting in an electric chair - apropos, considering the end of the film. When he isn't, it tends to have some bearing on the subtext of the scene- note in particular how Ed sits when he's listening to Birdy playing music - or is indicative of his attitude towards another character (the scenes with Ed and the Pansy [Jon Polito]). Admittedly, I picked some of this up from the commentary track with the Coens and Billy Bob Thornton, but unlike many of the other seemingly pointless information they share, this seems to have some bearing on the film.

2. UFO Imagery - There's a consistent theme of circular imagery in the Coen brothers films, but The Man Who Wasn't There pushes it well into another arena. During almost every scene one can find at least one, if not more, UFO shaped objects: ashtrays, light fixtures, perfume bottles, hubcaps, tables, shadows, or pillars of light. You can watch the movie looking for nothing other than specifically this and still find plenty to do. By the time (spoiler) the actual UFO appears, you should be well conditioned to the shape from its omnipresence in the film.


3. The Noir "Ideal" - After discussing the film, I feel strongly that the brothers Coen were trying less to pay homage to specific noir films (although there are many direct references to Double Indemnity, The Asphalt Jungle, and The Postman Always Rings Twice), and were instead stepping above that citation to make a film that embodies film noir as it was embraced ex post facto by the French Critical Circle of the 1950s. Most of their direct revisions seems to reflect ideas about film noir that aren't always consistent from film to film in what's considered the "canon" (let's say Double Indemnity to Kiss Me Deadly).

For example, most Film Noir uses some variation on Jazz as its musical accompaniment, along with a score that announces "DOOM!" for some character. In The Man Who Wasn't There, almost all of the music is by Beethoven, with some accompaniment by Carter Burwell. In this instance, rather than include music of the period, the Coens play to the critical concept in noir of always looking to the past, of which you don't get much further than classical music. The film is built around incorporating all of the "essential" elements of film noir (save for the obsession with water) into one film, which is why it feels less like any specific film and more like an encapsulation of the movement. Speaking of which...

4. Film Professors Like to Shoehorn Their Theories Into Just About Anything - Look, I don't mind that you have a pet theory that Ed Crane is a closeted homosexual and you can find plenty of circumstantial evidence in the film to support it. Certainly it's a well mined topic in films like Double Indemnity and Laura, so I get why you want to go there. However, there is a point at which when certain professors are simply unwilling to hear counter-arguments from other students (actually not the Cap'n in this case) based on comparably solid evidence in the film that you start to sound silly. Like when you imply that all "men's magazines" meant "something else back then..." I'm even on board with the fact that the entire story of The Man Who Wasn't There could have been something Ed Crane made up because a magazine paid him to, but it's really embarrassing to think that as a film scholar (or teacher of criticism), only your take - based on your particular obsessions in film history - is the only way to read a cinematic text. But that's how you presented the "Ed Crane is a homosexual" theory, and it will no doubt be a question on the final exam...

Things like that really make the Cap'n wonder if he's cut out for the world of Film Criticism.