Double Feature: Tiny Furniture, Bellflower, and the Art of the Quarter-Life Crisis

I can’t remember feeling different the day I turned 13. Likewise, nothing noticeably felt different the day I switched from 17 to 18 (My treat myself that day was seeing my first theatrical NC-17 film – I wasn’t even carded). And aside from a nasty hangover, my transition into 21 went without a second thought.

Reaching 26, on the other hand, hit me hard. Harder than I could have anticipated. It felt official. For the first time it felt like actual passage of time between birthdays occurred way too fast. For the first time, it felt like there was real weight to it.  Friends were getting married; friends were getting divorced; friends having kids; people you know have died, and many more have parents who have died.  Adulthood wasn’t impending anymore; adulthood broke in while I wasn’t looking.

With burden of age and expectations firmly on my back, it was time to take stock of my lot in life. Was I happy in my career path? Did I even have a career path? Did my peers respect me? Was I ready for a real, long-term relationship? Who are my friends, and when is it time for a change in environment? Personal growth wasn’t just a matter of asking these questions, but deciding what to do when I had the answer.

In Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture, the desire to define oneself as an individual is hampered by the desire to blanket oneself in the trappings of the past. When we meet Dunham’s character, Aura, she’s entering a phase that would have been embarrassing a generation ago but has become commonplace lately: moving back home. From the moment she enters enters her family’s impeccably designed Manhattan apartment, sporting disheveled hair and a yellow raincoat one size too big, she seems lost. Her mother’s camera lens is focused on her sister, with Aura left in the background to fight for relevance. Her mom never turns her head. “I never think about my 20s, I absolutely don’t look back.”

Aura, on the other hand, is already nostalgic for moments that weren’t great to begin with – a fickle boyfriend is elevated in hindsight to a potential soul mate, slow nights hanging out in the library meant having a good time. Alienated from her family, she falls back in touch with Charlotte (Girls costar Jemima Kirke) a an old friend who she hasn’t seen in years. Desperate for connection, she follows Charlotte down a path of hedonistic mooching. “We’ll be like new friends,” she assures Aura, “New friends with old memories.”

One of Dunham’s strengths in telling this story is a distanced viewpoint that keeps the film from wallowing too much in angst. It’d be a mistake to confuse her entirely with the characters she portrays (in all the internet chatter, people lose track of the fact that Dunham herself is not a mopey trust-fun hipster but a charming and successful filmmaker), but it’s be naive to suggest that a movie shot in her own home with her own friends and family doesn’t have some autobiographical elements to it. In this sense, it takes real perspective and a sense of humor to showcase herself in such a low state. One of the best moments comes when Aura, after lashing out at her mother, darts out of a room in a huff. Dunham keeps the camera on Nadine, laughing her ass off. We can sense Dunham laughing right along with her.

The most revealing and moving aspect of Tiny Furniture come through Aura’s relationships with her mother and sister, played by Dunham’s real-life family. While Dunham is as the front and center throughout the film, she draws a clear portrait of their lives and history with each other. It becomes clear that the issues Aura faces are passed down from her mother and will be echoed by her sister in years to come – Aura just has the misfortune of dealing with them right now.

Tiny Furniture isn’t perfect by any means – to call its narrative lax would be generous, with many characters and subplots never coming to fruition (part of this is by design, part of it seemingly because Dunham doesn’t know how to tie them up). In general, the film has an episodic feel that anticipates her move to the wider canvas of television with Girls. It will be interesting to see how her scope increases if (and hopeful when) she decides to make another feature, as even the small parameters ofTiny Furniture suggest the presence of real voice, of a young filmmaker capturing an awkward moment in time so sharply that the personality behind it shines through.

I don’t know if Dunham has ever met Bellflower writer/director/star Evan Glodell, but it wouldn’t surprise me if their respective debut films were the result of some bizarre, Five Obstructions-esque wager. Both are features made under $40,000; both are about the difficulty of escaping youthful ennui and facing adult decisions in the wake of your youth; both play to breakout success on the festival circuit. The two films, however, are bifurcated over almost too-neat a divide: Dunham making a wry, minimalist, female-driven comedy set in New York, Glodell a violent, stylized drama under the blistering yellow sun of Southern California.

Glodell plays Woodrow, a young man who spends most of his days idling around the streets of SoCal with his best friend, Aiden (Tyler Dawson). The two are self-styled Mad Max fanatics, driving around customized vehicles and testing homemade flamethrowers. Occasionally they’ll frequent the dive-iest of dive bars before crashing at their cluttered apartment, but their priority in life seems to mainly be crafting tools to survive an apocalyptic wasteland.

One night, Woodrow meets Milly, who at first appears to be the girl of his dreams – brassy, blonde, assertive, and seemingly charmed by his awkward shyness. When he picks her up for a first date, he sports a blue sweater vest and hands her flowers. In this world, Woodrow isn’t just a nice guy – he’s practically a parody of a nice guy. As the relationship begins to blossom, friendships begin to splinter – Aiden and Milly’s friend, Courtney, consequently fall into each other’s orbit. As time passes, tensions rise, and when Woodrow finds Milly in a compromising position, his apocalyptic vision begins to unfold.

Where Tiny Furniture‘s worldview seems filtered through an objective and detached lens, Glodell’s is straight-up manifested, projected straight from his brainwaves to your Netflix. It’s the result of a someone coming to grips with the vision he has of himself, and discovering that it’s not pretty. Glodell does a effective job matching the visual language of the film to this gradually heightening emotional tension; the subtle effects and breezy tone become harsher and bolder as Woodrow’s mental anguish is ignited. Make no mistake, as story unravels, the content itself gets hard to endure. This is an ugly portrait that Glodell paints, made even more disturbing by how vivid his aesthetic eye is. A climatic stretch toward the end is so hard to take that I find it hard to recommend to anyone with a weak stomach or a low tolerance for violent, misogynistic imagery.

Indeed, there are moments where I was ready to write Bellfower off completely, wondering how Glodell was going to make all of this unfiltered alpha-male rage pay off. My answer came in the form of a a surprisingly moving and thoughtful coda that plays like a beer and testosterone fueled companion to Brian Cox’s monologue in The 25th Hour. It doesn’t erase the brutality that precedes it, and I’m not convinced that this narrative gambit entirely works to justify it. What it does do, however, is give new perspective to the rest of the film, letting us re-examine the methods to Glodell’s madness.

Like Tiny Furniture, Bellflower is a messy piece of work, partially because it’s one of such personal vision and conviction on behalf of the filmmaker, but moreso because they are both adept at capturing the confusion and contradictions of grappling with identity and one’s future.

(Both films are currently available via Netflix Instant)

Mud

In 2008, on the recommendation of a friend, I saw a tiny, barely heralded movie called Shotgun Stories. Almost immediately I knew that it was something unique, one of the most accomplished and confident debut features since Brick. I took note of the filmmaker, Jeff Nichols, and looked forward to his next project.

He didn’t disappoint. That follow-up, Take Shelter, remains my favorite American film of the past 3 or 4 years. Balancing a poignant look at mental illness with a suspenseful story of an oncoming apocalypse, anchored by great lead performances and a sharp lens on the working class, few films match its ability to move and enthrall on such a personal scale.

With his latest feature, Mud, Nichols has cemented himself as a great filmmaker, one with growing ambitions and the skill to tackle them. Here he’s taken the elements of a coming-of-age story and a hard-boiled crime flick and molded them into something affecting, forceful, and very satisfying.

The film concerns Ellis (Tye Sheridan), a young teen living in a houseboat on the muddy waters of Arkansas. One day, he and his friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) come across a disheveled and mysterious man stranded on an island just off the Mississippi. The man, named simply Mud (Matthew McConaughey), convinces the boys to bring him back food and supplies, quickly sparking a friendship between them. What ensues is a stirring tale of family and friendship, first loves and lost loves, bounty hunters and crime lords, cottonmouths and Piggly Wigglys.

McConaughey is going to walk away with the best notices of his career, and deservedly so. Coming off strong performances in Bernie, Magic Mike, and Killer Joe, he has worked overtime to erase the memory of one too-many Kate Hudson comedies and shirtless stoner roles. A character like Mud requires an actor, who can convincingly take turns from being menacing and self-centered to fatherly and sympathetic (among numerous other qualities). Nichols has crafted a strong, 3-dimensional character in Mud, and it’s a testament to McConaughey that it becomes impossible to imagine anyone else in the role.

The big breakthrough performance in the movie is Sheridan, in one of the great child performances of the past decade. It’s always a risky endeavor to build a movie around a child – one step too precocious or mannered and the whole movie starts to sink with them. Sheridan thankfully gives a natural and layered performance; he not only holds the material, but helps elevate it, doing interesting work against McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon and other seasoned vets in the cast.

Mud feels like an active attempt by Nichols to expand the parameters of his universe. Like Shotgun Stories and Take Shelter, it feels like a fully considered, rich world with lots of unspoken history behind it; unlike those films, however, it dares to spend more time in those margins, drawing a wider array of supporting characters. Some of them, such as a retired military vet (a great turn by Sam Shepherd), come into play in interesting ways; others, such as Michael Shannon and Joe Don Baker, serve only to give the outer edges more color.

While this film may lack the sheer impact of Take Shelter, it nonetheless feels like a jump forward for Jeff Nichols, both as a screenwriter and a visual storyteller. It’s not just that he’s skilled at what he does, but that he has something even more intriguing: a voice. If this were the last film he ever made (dear God, I hope not), we would have a cohesive trilogy of work with shared influences, settings, actors, themes, and moral outlooks. Essentially, he’s standing today where Paul Thomas Anderson stood in 1999. If he’s even close to following that career trajectory, we’re in for a treat.

Stories We Tell

I’ve never been shy about the fact that I was adopted. Even as a kid, my parents were nothing but open and honest about it, always encouraging me to seek out my blood relatives. Any apprehension I had about meeting my birth mother was solely on my own shoulders. For the longest time, part of me wasn’t prepared to face what I saw as the inevitable consequences – understanding the role of genetics vs. upbringing in my identity, knowing the circumstances that resulted in my eventual birth, and perhaps most importantly, the ripple effect that it would have on the immediate family that raised me and the family of a woman that gave me away 27 years ago.

Stories We Tell, the new autobiographical documentary from famed Canadian filmmaker/actress Sarah Polley, is the story of one such reunion, and thankfully for us it isn’t afraid to tackle these quandaries head-on.  It’s about the subjective role of parentage and where we draw our identities from. It discusses the nature of love and the need for a sense of vitality to keep us going. It questions the nature of truth, and the way our memories shape the way we recount events and vice versa. Additionally, it’s about the story about its own creation and the delicate art of documentary filmmaking. It’s all of these things and more, and it’s unlikely that I’ll see a more personal documentary this year that feels so universal.

The film chronicles Polley’s personal journey to learn about the history of her family and the truth about her lineage. Attempting to fairly capture the unfolding saga from all angles, the film captures her candidly and openly interacting with her father, siblings, acquaintances, and various important players and third parties. Memories unfold, stories contradict, and emotions are stirred as Polley uncovers revelations and hidden truths about the nature of her parents’ relationship.

The personal nature of the material gives Polley license to break the mold that most documentaries fall into. Included are the requisite interviews, archival footage, and recreations that form dictates; this time, however, there’s an openness about the filmmaking process and the filmmaker’s thoughts and concerns about shaping the story and what it means to the participants. One of the great recurring moments in the film is Polley directing her own father during a voice-over session, constantly having him repeat lines addressing some of the more difficult periods in his life. It’s the rare documentary where the weight of the filmmaker’s presence is a benefit, as we understand the raw nerve the proceedings touch on.

One of the great (and unexpected) pleasures of Stories We Tell is how it deepens and enriches one’s understanding of Polley’s past work. The film completes a remarkable hat trick, coming off two great narrative features, Away from Her and Take This Waltz. Stories We Tell not only confirms her strengths as a filmmaker, its personal and revealing subject matter actually gives one a greater understanding of her as a person. Fans of her previous work will undoubtedly recognize themes (even plot points) echoing through her real-life experience. Take this Waltz, in particular, was one of my very favorite movies of the past couple years, and one that devastated so hard that I swore I couldn’t watch it again; after seeing Stories We Tell, I can’t wait to be devastated by it again, this time on a whole new level.

At its best (which is quite frequent), this film inspires you to consider the relationships you have and what they mean to you. It’s something that I can’t quite process fully by myself; it begs to be shared and talked about with the people I care about most: my parents, my sister, my girlfriend, my friends, and most significantly my birth mother.

When I eventually met her in the spring of 2010, the awkwardness that I feared so much never materialized. Instead I’ve been lucky enough to find someone who I can call both family and a friend, and someone who welcomed me into her family with open arms. One of the greatest pleasures has been the simple but  significant act of catching up, filling the cracks of our lost time with the characters and settings we’ve come to love. Watching Stories We Tell brought the sensation of that first meeting rushing back, and I can say for certain it’s the most purely emotional movie experience I’ve had this year.

As a bonus, I present to you my favorite scene from any movie in 2012:

Pain & Gain – Michael Bay and The United States of Awesome

If you’re looking for an easy way to get movie fans riled up, simply bring up the work of Michael Bay. Even as you read this sentence, it’s likely that his name alone has evoked a visceral reaction. Depending on your mentality he’s either the unlikely auteur of high-octane classics (The Rock, Bad Boys), a hack responsible for headache-inducing disasters (Pearl Harbor, Transformers 2), or a strange hybrid of the two (Armageddon).

In any case, no other director comes close to capturing America at its gaudiest and most excessive. In the world of Michael Bay, strip clubs and Ferraris are as patriotic as baseball and apple pie; if he’s not lovingly depicting the American flag blowing in the wind, he’s capturing the finer details of a Humvee driving through an explosion. There isn’t a hint of irony in a Bay production – if there’s a slow-motion shot set to an Aerosmith song, you’re meant to feel it.

This is what makes his new film, Pain & Gain, a difficult movie to cipher. Based on the true story of a kidnapping and extortion plot gone horribly wrong, it can easily be seen as the biggest, dumbest, most debaucherous portrait ever of big, dumb debauchery. What’s unclear is just how deep Bay is in on his own joke.

The plot involves Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Mackie, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a trio of Miami bodybuilders who devise a plan to rob a wealthy entrepreneur (Tony Shaloub). Naturally, things begin to go haywire from the very beginning. What follows is an epic of bad-taste involving murder, materialism, cocaine, pornographers, speed boats, sexism, steroids, chainsaws, and just about every instance of amoral behavior imaginable.

It’s difficult to say whether this tasteless display of excess is intended to mirror the themes of the story or if it’s just the director pushing his natural instincts to farcical extremes.  Screenwriters Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely clearly intend this to be a caustic portrait of the delusion behind the American dream. Wahlberg and co. have no qualms about resorting to increasingly perverse methods to obtain their goals; so long as a nice house and a fast car are your rewards, you are justified. Under the lens of The Coen Brothers or David Fincher, this could have been a biting piece of satire. What Bay gives us, however, might actually be more compelling – an authentic manifestation of the mentality behind its characters.

If there’s one clear predecessor to Pain & Gain, it’s Brian DePalma’s Scarface. In addition to the Miami setting and common traits of fast cars, cocaine, and chainsaws, both are technically proficient films about the rise and fall of deluded people in pursuit of tawdry dreams; both teeter between high-energy entertainment and being stimulating to the point of tedium; both may or may not be intentionally funny; both may come to be embraced by the people they’re intended to criticize. Most importantly, when both are being shown back-to-back on Spike TV in the future, they’ll serve as valuable time-capsules to the eras in which they were made.

Evil Dead (2013)

It was an uphill battle from the beginning for Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead (2013). Its namesake alone always meant that it would be invite scrutiny from fans of Sam Raimi’s beloved original series. In this case, however, it has the unfortunate fate of following the trail led by Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods. So thoroughly and creatively did that film satirize its genre that anyone attempting a straight take on the material would really have to make it stick.

Fede Alvarez’ remake isn’t going to usurp the original’s reputation anytime soon, but as a blood-soaked, irony free rollercoaster it delivers the goods. If, like me, you can enjoy the finer points of movies where good-looking young actors with limited acting abilities are killed off in increasingly gruesome ways, you’ll likely appreciate it.

The film jettisons the original’s standard “spring break at a cabin” setup for a clunky plot involving a young heroin addict (Jane Levy) trying to get sober-up with the help of her friends, led by blank slate Shiloh Fernandez as her brother. All of this is just an excuse for them to find an ancient Book of the Dead, read the scripture, and endure the vengeful wrath of evil spirits for the next 75 minutes.

Alvarez’ biggest struggle is in staging all of this believably; even by the lax standards of horror movie logic, the characters’ actions are pretty hard to swallow. Where he more than makes up for this is pure atmosphere. The film is a technical marvel, seemingly determined to make each shot more detailed and unnerving than the last. Alvarez clearly revels in setting up hints at the madness to come – ominous close ups of creaking floorboards, big needles, and a turkey carver. In the aftermath, I couldn’t help but laugh – partly because of how infectious the mayhem is, partly to deal with how disturbing it gets.

All of this is windup for the climax – the strange, disgusting, over the top, climax. These last 15 minutes are what make Evil Dead a must see, and the only stretch of the film that reaches the giddy heights of something like Dead by Dawn. Like the final drop of a rollercoaster, it’s an adrenaline rush that made the wait in line worth it.

The Balcony is Closed

At the age of 10 I began watching Siskel and Ebert At the Movies. All of my other, more active friends spent their summers playing sports or going to camp; I spent it wondering how these two clowns couldn’t recognize the genius inherent in Independence Day. Even as a kid I could see the chemistry these guys had, and got a kick out of watching them if they were on a rant. I never fully warmed to Siskel in those years, though I’ve warmed to his inherent arrogance over the years – like that old friend you keep around despite the fact that he’s kind of a dick.

All I knew about Ebert is that he gave thumbs up to Escape from L.A. To 10-year old me, that proved he was an okay guy.

Every Sunday I watched At the Movies, absorbing info on films I knew nothing of an immediately wanted to see afterwards. Fargo, Breaking the Waves, The Ice Storm, L.A. Confidential, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Bound – all films I heard about first though watching Siskel and Ebert on my days off. The other kids in my class were amped for Titanic and Men in Black – I was the only one seeking out a copy of Cronenberg’s Crash.

The day Ebert named Dark City the best movie of 1998 was the day I started reading his print reviews religiously. It was a mini-ritual every Friday to pick up our local paper, eat a bowl of cereal, and pour over his reviews of the week’s new releases. I always admired his ability to impart deep knowledge and insight about cinema in such light, conversational language. This acted as my film school before I ever considered film school.

People always loved when Ebert wrote a truly harsh review, as his inventiveness and wit as a writer was always on full display (his epic takedown of North being the prime example). I always loved when he wrote a glowing one. Unlike many of his peers, he wasn’t afraid to make things personal; other would take a more distanced, analytical approach, but Ebert loved the form so much that it was impossible for him not to respond with a visceral, emotional reaction. This often mean he gave a few too many passes to some questionable work, but in an internet age too often marked by curt dismissal and cynicism, one couldn’t argue too hard with someone this passionate about his work.

The internet was where Ebert shined late in his life. After losing his voice (and most of his jaw) to cancer in 2006, he embraced writing on the web with a fierce intensity that yielded some of his best writing ever. No longer restricted to just movies, he expressed deeply felt views on politics, science, spirituality, death, and his own memories. A 4-star review of Watchmen could inspire a discussion on metaphysics via his fascination with Dr. Manhattan. Initially skeptical of Twitter, he became a remarkably active user. regarding it as a window to the world as a whole and a way of opening real discussion with followers. Despite what legions of bitter gamers will tel you, Ebert was no fogey.

As Ebert’s health weakened, his ambition and verve didn’t. For every step along the way, he was open about his struggles, his fears, and his realizations. Through his writing, he managed to convey real grace and humility up until the day he died.

And of course, he named Dark City the best movie of 1998. That’s what I liked about him most of all.

Room 237

“I’m sorry to differ with you sir, but YOU are the caretaker. You’ve always been the caretaker. I should know sir.: I’ve always been here.” – Delbert Grady, The Shining

On the short list of my favorite movies of all time, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining ranks somewhere near the top. I can think of other films that I’ve seen as often, have as much entertainment value, or bridge the gap between high and low-art as deftly. What makes the The Shining endure is not just that it has all three of these qualities, but that it does it all in such a remarkably offbeat manner. Like the best movies, there’s an aura of mystery that makes any definitive interpretation feel out of grasp. It isn’t just the hallways drenched in the blood of the twin girls; anyone who’s ever seen the film will tell you, from the very first moment, something just feels… off.

This is the jumping point for Room 237, Rodney Ascher’s clever, absorbing, and often hilarious look at the hidden (or possibly nonexistent) symbolism of Kubrick’s classic. Breaking the mold of current documentaries by featuring minimal original footage and no talking-head cutaways, the film consists solely of five Kubrick obsessives delivering hard-thought and half-baked theories on the true meaning of The Shining.

To say that some of these ideas don’t hold water might be a bit of an understatement. There’s some intricate (if well-traveled) analysis of Kubrick’s use of foreshadowing and incongruous spatial continuity that actually counts as well-observed criticism; a take on the film as a metaphor for the genocide of Native Americans grows more convincing as it goes on; the belief that Kubrick meant the film to be a de-facto confession for faking the Apollo 11 moon-landing comes off as particularly unhinged; and no, the man on the Ski Monarch poster does not represent a minotaur.

Ascher’s first gained notoriety for the online short The S From Hell, a look at the shared childhood trauma caused by the jarring 1960s Screen Gems logo. Beneath that film’s cheeky sense of humor is a real sense of vivid recollection, how the thought of simple corporate logo can turn you into a child, cowering behind your couch in fear. It’s this playful spirit and sharp insight that keeps Room 237 from devolving into pure gobbledigook. He never wants to judge his subjects, and he is always willing to follow his subjects down the rabbit hole, illustrating their theories in great detail. This includes re-creating one subject’s experiment of simultaneously playing The Shining backward and forward (this is actually pretty mind-blowing) and a frame-by-frame breakdown of the opening interview that leads to the film’s biggest laugh.

At its most stirring, Room 237 plays almost like the movie version of a Girl Talk album – less of a documentary than a collage, The Shining remixed through the prism of pop-culture analysis. It’s film theory for the age of memes and mash-ups. This is to say that it’s only partly a film about Shining fandom; it’s mostly a film about the way we’ve come to process culture as a way of understanding our past – how seemingly minor cultural artifacts have a direct and tangible way of connecting us to a particular emotional state. At some point the intent of the creator becomes irrelevant, and what matters is the part of ourselves that we imprint.

The most powerful and persuasive argument in Room 237 comes from one fan who believes that The Shining is not a metaphor for a single event but for the past as a whole. “That’s the essence of great art,” he says, “It’s like a dream. It’s boiled everything down to an emblematic symbol that’s got all of life in it… The way Kubrick made movies was not unlike the way our brains create memories and for that matter dreams.”

I didn’t finish Room 237 convinced of any of The Shining’s hidden symbolism; the only thing I’m certain of is that it actually has symbolism. I did, however, come to an idea of why I tend to rank it so high on my list of favorite movies. To watch it is to draw a clear line through my moviegoing life – from seeing it digitally projected at age 27, back through college-dorm viewings and my high-school horror-movie obsession, all the way back to my childhood, watching a shoddy VHS copy taped off of late-night HBO. Watching it over, and over, and over…

 

To the Wonder

Has there been a more visually engaging movie in past few years than The Tree of Life?

There have certainly been aesthetically compelling movies with better stories or more memorable individual moments – in fact, there were many films from just 2011 that I found more satisfying as overall experiences. That said, I’m hard pressed to find a film that felt as fully engaging the full way through just on the strength of images on screen. There will always gripes about the lack of narrative drive, the Sean Penn material, the ending, and most significantly the lengthy interlude involving the creation of the universe; yet even people I know who disliked the film on first viewing concede that its sweeping and luminous atmosphere makes it hard to resist every time it comes on TV.

That film was a much anticipated, long in the works passion project by Terrence Malick, cinema’s most famous recluse. The fact that his new project, To the Wonder, was finished so quickly thereafter feels almost jarring. In theory, Malick’s newfound productivity should be a welcome development; after seeing To the Wonder, I’m not so sure.

The plot itself is less than threadbare, tracking the ups and downs of a relationship between an Oklahoma contractor (Ben Affleck) and his European lover (Olga Kurylenko). There is some business involving Rachel McAdams as Affleck’s childhood friend and Javier Bardem as a conflicted priest, but let’s face it: it’s a Malick movie, so the camera is the real star here.

This is Malick’s third collaboration with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and, on a purely technical level, To the Wonder comes close to matching their landmark work on Tree of Life. The camera feels less like storytelling tool than a part of the ether, seemingly capable of being everywhere at once. For every scenic shot of the magic-hour on the Oklahoma countryside, there are equally stunning moments of natural light creeping though a window, or ripples moving through a pond; even a trip to a supermarket or a Sonic drive-thru has an ethereal beauty to it.

What’s makes this film unique in Malick’s filmography is that it’s the first to take place entirely within the present-day. All of Malick’s films have dealt with man’s relationship to the natural world, though almost always through the prism of a bygone era. In this case, he seems to be directly channeling a sense a growing unease and discordance, as the artificial sprawl of model homes and strip malls impede on the bison-laden plains of the old world. It isn’t hard to see this conflict as a mirror to the turmoil between Affleck and Kurylenko’s struggling couple.

Unfortunately this is where the film falls apart. Malick has never been interested in straight narratives, and I didn’t expect one from him this time. About halfway through To the Wonder, however, I kept thinking back to Tree of Life- how by that point we already had a clear sense of the characters and their environment. We already understood the regrets of Brad Pitt’s father figure, and how it influenced his strict parenting. We saw Jessica Chastain’s nurturing and graceful nature, and how it put her in opposition to her husband. We opened with the family experiencing the loss of a loved one, and felt how it impacted the proceedings. In this case, we aren’t given any of that. As a result, the film often feels like a beautifully shot but overlong gallery installation.

Ultimately this is a disservice to the actors, who much of the time seem as baffled by the material as we are (undoubtedly a result of Malick’s cleaving swaths of material in post-production). Affleck in particular seems to have gotten the short end of the stick; he is capable of strong work when given the right material, but he simply doesn’t have the natural presence of someone like Brad Pitt to carry long, wordless stretches of film. Kurylenko is left to carry much of the film, which she mostly does admirably, but her abilities only go so far as Malick loses his grip toward the end.

The only character that Malick seems to connect 100% with is Javier Bardem’s lonely, spiritually afflicted priest. His several short scenes carry more sympathy and weight than the countless shots of Olga Kurylenko waifishly prancing through fields of wheat. That in a nutshell is why To the Wonder comes up short – Malick has abandoned the deeply-felt connection that anchored Tree of Life for something seemingly more conceptual. As a result, for all of the visual splendor up on the screen, it occasionally comes close to self-parody.

Part of me feels like I would have responded more positively to this film had I not seen Shane Currth’s Upstream Color the night before. That film had an emotional and personal component that justified its enigmatic visual style. As a result, that film, like Tree of Life, practically demands multiple viewings to unpack everything. To the Wonder, I’m sad to say, is mostly a one-and-done deal.

Upstream Color

Shane Carruth’s Primer was one of the most authentic independent debut features of the past decade – it was also one of the best. Shot for less money than I have in my bank account, with Carruth performing almost all major duties behind (and in front of) the camera, it was nothing less than the craftiest and most cerebral time travel film since Chris Marker’s La Jetée. Nine years have passed since Primer, the amount of time that will turn an up-and-coming young talent to a reluctant auteur (see also Lynne Ramsey, Whit Stillman, Terrence Mallick), and consequently raise higher-than-average expectations for a follow-up.

That follow-up, Upstream Color, is a definitive expansion of Carruth’s still-growing ambitions and identity as a filmmaker. In many ways it feels like an intentional break from Primer – gone is the tightly woven puzzlebox narrative and rigid visual aesthetic, in its place a sprawling and aesthetically rich universe that showcases a more emotionally vulnerable side to its creator.

The basic premise involves Kris (Amy Seimetz), a young video editor whose life is thrown into disarray after being put under the influence of a mysterious, worm-infused drug. She comes to her senses to find her bank accounts emptied and her assets missing.  With no memory of the events, she finds herself inexplicably drawn to Jeff (Carruth), a fellow victim of the same scam. The two embark on a search for solace and understanding amidst a framework that includes hypnosis, pig-farming, and Walden Pond.

Despite the intrigue of the setup, Upstream Color is far less plot-oriented and less explicitly sci-fi than Primer, a development that may throw off fans who might have been expecting something more calculated and forceful. The few fantastic elements that are present, however, serve to enrich the wider themes of identity, loss, and connection. (In this sense Carruth’s closest contemporary is Another Earth and Sound of My Voice writer/producer Brit Marling, equally savvy in her incorporation of genre elements into weightier, more personal stories)

In a Q&A after our screening, Carruth was reluctant to discuss details on the production and budget, but it’s clear that his switch to digital cinematography has benefited his growing narrative ambitions. In retrospect, Primer was an appropriate title for his debut, as it was a textbook case in concise visual storytelling; a clean piece of work but often rigid in its formality (a necessity given the budget and the complexity of the story). The title Upstream Color likewise suggests an evolution in his directorial approach –free-floating, luxuriant, poetic, and quietly propulsive. The scope of the canvas has opened but the focus remains resolute on the details, conveying a true sense of intimacy with world at play.

There remains an inherent difficulty to convey in words the effects of Upstream Color, perhaps because most of its important segments involve little to no dialogue. Unlike Carruth’s debut, there won’t be charts on the internet to figure it out. One’s enjoyment will largely depend on their willingness to embrace its more abstract elements. Indeed, coming out of last night’s screening, I couldn’t sense that anyone knew exactly what to say about the work as a whole. All I can say definitively about Upstream Color at this point is that I can’t wait to see it again.

Stoker

With each passing year, I begin to appreciate the films released in the during the dog days of late winter and early spring more than the overstuffed and self-important features that crowd the rest of the year. It’s rare that you’ll find an Oscar winner, but you’re more likely to find a slick and tight piece work that rises beyond its B-movie roots and isn’t afraid to break out of the Hollywood mold a bit. Every autumn critics will find new ways to laud George Clooney’s latest bid for significance, yet I’m pretty positive I’ll spend that time watching Chronicle or Hanna for the umpteenth time on FX.

Stoker, the American debut of South Korean director Chan-Wook Park (Oldboy, Thirst), marks a welcome chance for arthouse patrons to break from this year’s awards holdovers to a delirious piece of genre excess.

The plot of the film concerns India (Mia Wasikowska), a precocious and distanced 18-year old girl reeling from the recent death of her father (Dermot Mulroney). At the funeral, she is introduced to her Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode), her father’s distant brother who is invited to live in their opulent estate at the behest of her mother, Evelyn (Nicole Kidman). It isn’t long before India to suspect the worst intentions of her uncle, and that she and her mother may be in grave danger.

If that setup sounds vaguely familiar, it ought to. The screenplay by Prison Break actor Wentworth Miller deliberately pays homage to the Hitchcock classic Shadow of a Doubt. Park’s does the work favor by recalling the deliberate framing, playful spirit, and dark humor that was characteristic of the Master of Suspense. As the film progresses, however, it begins to buck restraint and veer into more lurid and dangerous waters, lest we forget that we are in the hands of the man who brought us Oldboy.

In this sense, the film may owe more to Hitchcock’s most frequent and entertaining imitator, Brian DePalma. Indeed, Stoker often feels like it could nest snugly between Dressed to Kill and Body Double, similarly histrionic exercises in suspense that sought to explicitly tackle the psychosexual elements buried in Hitchcock’s work.

Much of your enjoyment of Stoker is going to depend on how far you’re willing to take that ride. Make no mistake, as artful and deliberate as Park’s direction is, this is lurid, grisly, and utterly ridiculous. Any attempt to view the film at face value may prove futile; the whole enterprise works best as a kind of metaphorical fever dream. Aside from one seemingly ill-measured subplot involving bullies at India’s school, I was happy to follow Park down this rabbit-hole.

This is easy when the production is so lush and compelling. Working with longtime cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung, Park draws out the austere beauty of the gothic southern setting. It’s his newfound collaboration with Hollywood editor Nicholas De Toth that yields the film’s most fruitful creative results though. Known primarily for lesser mainstream blockbusters and also-rans, he’s working on another plane with Park, fusing the past and present, constantly finding ways to toy with our expectations in a single cut.

The film is less of an actor’s showcase, though the cast is more than game to treat such pulpy material with the gravitas that it requires. Goode in particular seems to relish the sinister charm of Uncle Charlie, keeping a cool demeanor but exuding a naturally snakelike aura. Kidman has always had a natural air of elegance and regality that has often made her seem cold in previous roles but lends a sense of fragility that serves her well here – she is emblematic of the setting and world in which she inhabits, a well-mannered façade that is ready to crack. The casting of Wasikowska, best known for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, feels like a winking nod to her role in the most famous of coming-of-age fairy tales, this time transported into a twisted piece of gothic fiction.

Stoker isn’t going to win any awards; it’s too offbeat to be any kind of sleeper hit; it’s perhaps even too refined to achieve the cult status of Oldboy. What we have here is simply the pleasure of visual maestro presiding over 90 minutes of suspense, frame by sensuous frame. He’s coloring within the lines, but in the brightest colors available.