The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Phenomena (1985), directed by Dario Argento

And another one Bites Za Dusto. You know this blog has been around for 5 years now and every year I think that this is going to be the time when I close up shop for good, and yet I keep pressing on. I don't know if it's determination or a paralyzing fear of what I would do with my time without it, but whatever the case it does give me an excuse to try out new things, and that's a crux of the human experience, right? I dunno. Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed the list this year, I hope that I gave you an excuse to try out something new as well, and I hope you join me again next year for another 31 days of scares and spoops. See ya then!

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Flash of the Blade" by Iron Maiden

       The last time we saw a film by Dario Argento on the Marathon (Tenebrae, back in Marathon ‘14), I started off the article by dedicating entire first paragraph to insulting the country of Italy. In retrospect this was probably not the best foot to start off on, but I suppose I did it because I feel a kinship with that Mediterranean boot. Both Italy and my country of of origin are nation stitched together by bloody conflict, after all. Both have an issues between the northern and southern halves. Both are plagued by fascists. Both love cheese. When I pointed a finger at Italy I was really pointing a finger at myself, as a first student psychology major would say. So to make it up to Italians everywhere it seems only right that 4 years after the first proper Long Dark Marathon of the Soul, 4 years after Tenebrae, that we return to the works of Mr. Agento with an older, potentially wiser eye. And yeah I could have done that with everyone on the ‘14 list but I didn’t feel like it.

       It’s once upon a time, as these stories go, and Ms. Clocktower herself Jennifer Corvino (played by Rocketeer actress Jennifer Connelly), daughter of the actor Paul Corvino, is being shipped to the Richard Wagner International School for Girls located near Zurich. This place, colloquially known as the ‘Swiss Transylvania’ for the eerie winds that come down from the Alps, has been terrorized by a mysterious serial killer who seems to only target teenage girls. Which doesn’t really bother Jennifer all that much, until during a strange sleepwalking session she happens to stumble across a murder taking place. She’s also not sure if the murderer, whoever they are, ended up seeing her that night, which isn’t the best position you want to be in when it comes to serial killers. But what can she, a young girl in a foreign land, possibly do? And where does her bizarre affinity with insects fit into it?

       Phenomena, is a giallo film, a term which in this neck of woods (ie wikipedia) refers to a particular type of thriller (with elements of horror and eroticism to taste) film that evolved out of cheap pulp magazines popular in Italy in the post-war period, much in the same way as film noir in the U.S. has its origins in the stories of Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler. Jumping onto the film scene as far back as 1963, giallo could be considered to be an ancestor of the slasher genre, and much like slasher movies dominated the 70s and 80s before collapsing. Much in the same way as the arc of Dario Argento’s career if we’re being brutally honest, which began in the 60s, exploded in the 70s (1970 was the year of his directorial debut, to be precise), and in modern times is commonly associated with poorly made dreck.

       By 1985 Argento was around the tail end of his Golden Age, but in Phenomena you can see the elements of what made him popular. The bizarre and grotesque imagery, clear and concise editing, the beautiful scenery, expert shots and of course all of that over-the-top violence. While not as visually impressive as his film Suspiria (from what I’ve seen of Suspiria anyway), you still see in Phenomena a film that’s a cut above many of its peers in terms of cinematography. Which may not seem all that impressive on paper, but we’ve all seen movies, especially horror movies, where much of the time is spent trying to figure out what the hell is happening on screen. Simple and clean.

       As I said Jennifer Connelly is the star, her first starring role in only her second film. She does a pretty okay job for a 15 year old, although she does seem a bit wooden at times, whether from the direction, the language barrier or her inexperience it’s hard to tell. We’ve also got Donald Pleasence to take a break from doing Halloween movies to do some stuff here. He puts on a good performance as you’d expect, although ultimately doesn’t really get to do much, which seems a bit of waste. Everyone else I can’t really speak much about, although we do have longtime Argento actress/girlfriend Daria Nicolodi as the teacher Frau Bruckner, who does so little for so long in the film that I’m almost certain you don’t actually hear her name spoken aloud until the last 25 minutes, and even then only once. When she actually gets a chance to speak she’s one of the more expressive members of the cast, and that includes the ones being stabbed by a javelin.

       The problem I arrive at, however, is the same one I faced when it came to Tenebrae: it’s too silly. Giallo, from what little I’ve been exposed to is a film style built on big emotions, but Argento here seems to have taken melodrama and pushed it into the realms of absurdity. What starts out as a relatively normal mystery-thriller with slight supernatural elements and then gets increasingly more bizarre and chaotic, to the point where the climax of the film seems feels so random that it feels like it’s from another movie. No to mention all the odd character behavior, the assistant chimpanzees, the out-of-nowhere claim that insects have ESP, it’s such an overload that a sense of drama is lost. I mean if things are just going to happen with no explanation then you can’t really invest yourself in it, you’re just kind of stuck on a haunted house ride that doesn’t quite have enough material to last the time it takes to experience. Not that I could really empathize with a 15 year old rich daughter of a movie star with psychic bug powers anyway, but you get the idea.

       The eclecticism seems to have affected the music as well. We of course have Goblin, mainstays of film soundtracks, as well as cameos by Iron Maiden and Motorhead, and despite it being good heavy stuff it also lacks nuance. That pulse-pounding, heavy prog rock is perfect during the scenes where the killer is tracking their victims, but then they also have scenes where they’ve got a blazing Iron Maiden playing over Jennifer fiddling over a doorknob. Constantly. Compare it to the soundtrack work of people like John Carpenter, subtle and yet often iconic, and Phenomena feels like the audio equivalent of a drunk bull in a china shop. Heavy, but lacks nuance.

       Generally speaking though, Phenomena does its job of keeping you more or less entertained the entire way through, so I’m going it the thumbs-up for recommendation. It’s weird and silly, but weird and silly is what 80’s horror movies were built on, and at the very least Phenomena looks good while doing it. So if you were a fan of The Believers or Sleepaway Camp that we covered previously on this list then there is probably going to be something you like here. Grab some friends, grab some snacks and the movie and have yourself a fun time.


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Amélie (2001), directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Les Jours Tristes", by Yann Tiersen

       Destiny. Fate. Kismet. None of these ideas are ones that I ascribe to, personally, but it does seem like returning to the work of Jean-Pierre Jeunet was an inevitability. After all, with the way I talked up The City of Lost Children last year, and the way I’ve name dropped Jeunet in countless conversations that may or may not be recorded on this blog, and the fact that we’re digging into return guests this year, the stars seemed to align for this exact moment. Because this wasn’t just a chance to fill my quota, you see; it was the perfect opportunity to relieve myself of a movie-sized weight off my back. A film that has lingered in my to-watch queue for years now like a restless ghost, never quite getting its shoe in the door even as other passovers like Trollhunter and Nightcrawler eventually got their golden tickets and their chances to shine. Always a bridesmaid and never a bride as they say, and the fact that this was due to my own inability to commit was an endless source of annoyance. Well no more. Fuck that, we’re covering Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and we’re doing Amelie, and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it! So there!

       Smoothest. Paragraph. Ever.

       Released in 2001, four years after his work on the infamous trainwreck known as Alien Resurrection, Amelie is arguably Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s most famous work, which I base off of the fact that it’s the only one of his films that I’ve actually seen people besides me talk about. At the very least it is his most successful film since his debut, Delicatessen, receiving not only the Cèsar (France’s national film award) for Best Film and Best Director but also his only Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay and Best Foreign Language Film, and pulling in 174 million dollars on a 10 million dollar budget. It is also the first Jeunet film to not feature the talents of fellow Frenchman Marc Caro, the collaboration which produced Delicatessen and City of Lost Children and which was eventually brought to an end by Alien Resurrection (according to wikipedia). Instead we have Monsieur Guillaume Laurant, who co-wrote this film and would later co-write Jeunet’s latest film, 2013’s The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet. It’s not an unnoticeable difference as I’ll touch upon later, and while it is a shame a partnership that created such interesting films fell apart it also happened over two decades ago so it seems silly to be upset about it now. It’s also possible that Amelie wouldn’t even exist had it not been for the Jeunet/Caro dissolution, and as this is a review (more or less) of Amelie I feel a sense of obligation to support its existence so that I can justify writing about it. As I would for any movie that isn’t Dr. Fugazzi. So let’s get to it.

       On September 3rd 1973 in near Montmartre in Paris, Amelie Poulain is born. A neglected child, split between an aloof father and a neurotic mother, is forced to retreat into dreams and fantasies as a series of unfortunate events pushes her through a painfully isolated adolescence. Five years after the death of her mother in a darkly comedic accident, Amelie’s life is not quite as her dreams might have lead her to believe. She has an apartment, a job as a waitress in a bar/cafe known as The Two Windmills, and she has a handful of odd folks that she might call friends, but none of of it can compare to her daydreams. Then again, what life could?

       Then one day, the same day that Princess Diana had her fatal accident in fact, Amelie discovers a box of trinkets in her apartment, hidden by a boy named Dominique Bretodeau over 40 years ago. Amelie, still chomping at the bit for a change of pace, decides to track down the now senior Bretodeau and return the box to him, and when she sees the look of happiness on his face she is filled with an enormous sense of accomplishment and well-being. So much so in fact that she decides she wants to help more people, and so turns her attention to her friends and neighbors, each with their own set of neuroses and problems that she needs to travail. However, when she happens to meet a young, handsome man named Nino, who just so happens to have the same kind of weird hobbies as her, it soon becomes clear that Amelie is going to need some help of her own.

       Amelie sees the return of many familiar faces for Jeunet fans; Dominique Pinon, Rufus, Ticky Holgado, but the obvious stand out performer is newcomer Audrey Tautou in the titular role of Amelie Poulain. Looking at her in 2018, it honestly feels like the she was the blueprint for what would eventually become known as the ‘hipster girl’. Short hair, unflashy fashion sense, interest in weird things, not traditionally ‘sexy’ but attractive in a slightly androgynous David Bowie kind of way, that exudes a kind of mischievous energy and social awkwardness that brings all the introverts to the yard. Give her a latte and a vinyl record and you’ve probably seen about a dozen Amelies around your local college campus. It works though, because Audrey works. The way she looks and moves, the way she smiles, it meshes perfectly with the character, without any need for dialogue (although that area is okay as well). Seeing her on screen you can tell how she managed to pull several Best Actress awards off of her debut film, Tonie Marshall’s Venus Beauty Institute, and why Jeunet would bring her back for his next film, A Very Long Engagement. When she’s on screen you want to see more of her, and when she’s not you’re waiting for her to come back. That’s what you call stage presence.

       Now because I promised it earlier, the big difference between Amelie and the early Jeunet-Caro films is one of whimsy vs. caprice. All three films carry this feeling of heightened reality, where magic feels like it could exist even if it doesn’t, but if you’ll recall from The City of Lost Children write up I mentioned that it and Delicatessen were intentionally made as tributes to Terry Gilliam, and Gilliam is a capricious director. Yes his films take place in strange magical worlds, but they’re not exactly very nice worlds either. In the first ever Gilliam film we ever covered on this blog for example, Jabberwocky, Michael Palin plays an utter dunce who is constantly abused by the people around him, Time Bandits has a child traveling through time with a band of surly dwarvish thieves (and that ending…), Baron Munchausen is a pompous ass throughout the entire film (although you warm up to him), and the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus has a murderous child organ thief in a major role. These are not fairy tales that Gilliam is telling us folks, these are bawdy pub stories, full of grimy, bizarre places and the sad and mean people who live in them. That’s the essence of Gilliam’s films, that sudden, blatant intrusion of reality into fantasy, that Jeunet & Caro attempted to replicate in their own films. Quite well, in my opinion, although it’s been a while since I saw Delicatessen.

       Amelie, on the other hand, is whimsical. There’s no grime in this world, just lovely architecture that houses precisely designed rooms, where our quirky protagonist and their eccentric friends have quirky, eccentric fun together. Sure, sometimes bad things happen, but everything is so explosively colorful and hey man life is like that sometimes so whatever. Rather than Terry Gilliam, it would probably be more appropriate to compare it to the works of Tim Burton, Wes Anderson, or Bryan Fuller’s cult comedy series Pushing Up Daisies, which in retrospect apes so much of the Amelie style you’d think it was some kind of weird fanfiction. Pretty people and upbeat gallows humor, you get the idea.

       That’s where the enjoyment of the film is going to hinge for you, I suppose. If the idea of quirky characters being quirky around each other and falling in love sounds like something you’d be into, then this is definitely the movie for you. If not, then it’s two hours of that thing I just said, so be warned. Personally I ended up liking it, despite not generally being a romance movie kind of guy. I found Amelie and the cast likable enough, the writing generally witty, and the romance being at the very least more believable than The Shape of Water. The 2 hour runtime is a bit of an issue, I feel like they drag the build up a bit too long and that the payoff is smaller than it should have been, but overall I think it manages to entertain fairly consistently the whole way through. In spite of its obvious lack of Ron Perlman, that is.

       Well cross Amelie off of the bucket list, finally, and while you’re at it mark it down for a recommendation. It might not be what you might expect from a movie on Halloween, and how many times have I said that on these lists, but it is a fun movie, and potentially capable of filling the cockles of your heart with a warm, fuzzy feeling (as a person without a heart I can only speculate). Grab a bowl of popcorn and a significant other and enjoy. You might not get spooked, but at least you’ll be happy.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Animal World (2018), directed by Han Yan

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Mirai wa Bokura no Te no Naka", by Kaiji and the Redbound Cherries

       To be honest, I don’t take in much anime these days. It used to be, when I was a much younger nerd, that my days seemed to revolve around what came out of Japan. Games, Comics, their seemingly endless amount of naked lady pictures, and of course their most devious of all creations, anime. Yessir, the bulk of my formative years were shaped in part by that uniquely Japanese style of animation; the adventures of Son Goku and Yusuke Urameshi were far more visceral to me than Batman’s struggles with the Joker, and while I couldn’t tell you the rules of American football I could describe the system of equivalent exchange or discuss the symbolism of FLCL. Keep in mind that these were the days when anime was still largely niche, instead of mostly niche like it is now. If you wanted to see a show you had to either fervently hope it got dubbed and sent to the states, which if you’ve seen what happened to One Piece you know was a gamble, or you had to hope a traveling band of translators decided to make it a project and put it up on the internet, which posed its own set of problems. If you wanted to talk about anime, you either were lucky and your friends were into it as well or you were stuck with the kid who used Japanese honorifics in public conversation despite being whiter than the driven snow. And if you wanted to try the internet, well, it was still in the internet in those days, so you were better off hanging out with the guy in the Naruto headband.

As I said however, at a certain point I seemed to largely drift away from the thing that had once commanded my time. Part of it was just the process of growing up I suppose, budgeting time, moving on to other things, part of it was a lack of interest in the material coming, but however it is to be framed the fact was that at a certain point anime had become an afterthought. I watched maybe a few episodes of something and then would abandon it for months at a time, and the things I did keep up with were mostly for reasons of nostalgia. I just couldn’t find it in me to care anymore, of course that could describe me on any given day.

Then, from out of the blue, I discovered a show by the name of Kaiji. Based on the long-running manga series by Nobuyuki Fukumoto, Kaiji is nominally a story about gambling and literally an exploration of the human psyche on a epic scale. In true anime fashion there are no average stakes in Kaiji; when you win you are floating up in heaven and when you lose you are pulled into the depths of hell, devoting minutes upon minutes of time giving in-depth explanation of strategy and tactics, and just when you think things can’t get any more insane somehow the bar is raised. I can’t think of many shows anime or otherwise that has managed to get me so completely invested in what was going on, and right from the outset as well. To know Kaiji is to know despair as it turns out, which is what I love about it, and when I found out that there was apparently a live action adaptation of the Kaiji manga released this year made in China, I just had to check it out for myself. Sorry Battle Royale, maybe next year.

       Zheng Kai-si is a man at the end of his rope. Most of his time is spent loafing around playing games and daydreaming (or rather hallucinating) at his job as a clown mascot at an arcade, and most of his money is spent on his mother, who has been in a coma for years now. He can’t afford to keep his mother out of the hallway, he can’t afford to give his girlfriend Liu Qing the life he thinks she deserves, he can barely afford to live. In a fit of desperation he decides to mortgage his family’s apartment to his buddy Li Jun’s real estate company, only to find out that Li Jun hasn’t worked at that company in months. The truth is that Li has a bit of a gambling problem and that when the organization that lent him money came a callin’ he decided to scam Kai-si and saddle him with the debt (plus interest), which has ballooned so greatly that working 4 jobs for 30 years straight would just about pay it, as long as he didn’t have to pay for any hospital bills. However, when Kai-si meets the head of this shady organization, Anderson (played by Michael Douglas), he is offered a magnificent deal: There is a cruise ship by the name of Destiny that’s set to leave harbor soon, where a game is going to be held. If Kai-si join the game and win, he could win enough money to pay off his debt and more besides all in one night. If he loses, well… best not to think about it. Besides, as long as Kai-si wins, it doesn’t really matter what happens when you lose, does it? How bad could it be?

       Animal World is based on the opening arc of part 1 of the Kaiji series, known also as Tobaku Mokushiroku Kaiji, which would become the first 9 episodes of the anime series. To its credit it actually manages to hit the bullet points of the source material rather consistently, as well as more Fukumoto related bits like the cutaways to show the breakdown of strategies. It gives you a pretty good sense of what people liked about the original material, which isn’t always common when it comes to adaptations, and shows that Han Yan knows which side to butter his bread, so to speak.

       Of course this being an adaptation there are indeed changes from the source material, and in the case of Animal World those changes are numerous. Liu Qing is an invention of the film for example, as is the coma-ridden mom, Kaiji/Kai-si’s arcade job, or really anything concrete about his backstory. Michael Douglas’ character Anderson seems to be a combination of the characters Andou and Tonegawa from the original, while the character named Andou here seems to be relegated to a creepy looking side character. The shady organization also seems to reach a far larger scope than the Japan-centric Teiai Group of the manga, apparently managing to get its hooks into people from across the world. Even things that you wouldn’t think warranted changing ended up getting changed, like the name of the ship they end up on, Espoir in the original and Destiny in the film (and no, Espoir is not French for Destiny).

       Then there are the fantasy sequences, which are explained in the film as PTSD-inspired hallucinations. Fantastical imagery is actually in line with the original Kaiji, as FKMT uses it often to visualize character’s mental states. A character in the depths of despair might be shown being dragged down into a swamp for instance, or somebody on the upswing might be climbing the broad side of a mountain. To our director Han Yan, this has convinced him that he has carte blanche to just throw in whatever he wants whenever he wants. So you have the kind of classic Kaiji moments, and then you have characters literally becoming monsters every few minutes. I can understand the argument for throwing Liu Qing or coma mom into the story as adding an emotional core to the film (although the original story did fine without them), but who is the minutes long dream sequence with Kai-si fighting monsters on a train while dressed as a clown with more slow motion than a Zack Snyder wet dream for, exactly? Because as a Kaiji fan, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t for me or people like me.

       Which brings us to the major problem with Animal World in my opinion, which is pointless excess. Nothing is allowed to just be normal in this film it seems, it all has to be grim-dark and badass, in the 14-year old boy sense of the term. So Andou isn’t allowed to just be a man in a black suit and sunglasses, he has to be this tattooed weirdo with no eyebrows. The Destiny can’t just be a cruise ship, it has to look like it was built from the remnants of an oil rig. Oh, and it wouldn’t be Kaiji is we didn’t inject a meaningless 15 minute long chase scene right in the middle like this were the fucking Life of Brian. Even the damn cards used in the games aren’t allowed to just be cards, they’ve got to be covered in gold leaf and overly elaborate design like you pulled it out of Harry Potter’s asshole. What’s the point? The way that Kaiji was done was fine as it was, proven by the fact that it’s a renowned series that has several adaptations. It pushed the boundaries of believability, but FKMT always kept things down-to-earth enough that the problems and the drama were on point. Here in Animal World, where you can’t even show the concept of time with an image of a watch packed with grinding gears, where it feels like someone slapped a Guillermo del Toro filter on a screenshot from 300, everything feels so ludicrously over-the-top that it just feels tiresome to watch at a certain point. Just smoke a joint or something and calm the fuck down Han Yan, turning a comic book about gambling into some kind of Michael Bay bullshit isn’t going to solve anyone’s problems. I’ve already got enough problems as it is anyway.
   
I’m also not overly impressed with the quality of the acting here. Generally speaking it’s fine, but at points I wonder if Han Yan decided to make Kai-si ‘crazy’ because Li Yifeng only has about three expressions. In a series that is mired in drama, in scenes where we are supposed to be seeing the heights of emotion, Li doesn’t seem able to hit the high notes, so to speak. The actress who plays Liu Qing might be even worse, having only one expression compared to Kai-si’s handful, but since her importance to the plot is minimal I suppose it doesn’t matter that much. I don’t know if Michael Douglas is bringing much to the table either besides star power, but then again I believe this is first time I’ve ever actually seen him in a movie, so I can’t really judge his performance off of his previous work. He may have played a better vaguely menacing villain in another film, I don’t know.

I will admit though, that for a film that smothers the audience in CGI and slo-mo, it doesn’t look too bad. The monsters and special effects look nice and the action sequences, while superfluous, are choreographed and edited well, and are easy enough to follow. I’ll also note that during the moments when it’s not trying so hard I actually grew a bit fond of Animal World’s aesthetic. It reminds one of that period in the swingin’ 90s where movies were grimy as all hell and it looked like everything was dripping with tetanus, like 12 Monkeys or The Basketball Diaries. I can appreciate a director who appreciates my personal aesthetic.

I find myself then at a crossroads. There is a lot of dumb stuff in this movie, and if it ever got a sequel (which the ending does set up for), it seems like it would be going down an even dumber direction. On the other hand I am a huge Kaiji fan, and while the movie does become tiresome at points I don’t think I ever became straight-up bored. So do I discard it for the mess it made, or do I commend it for its creativity? Do I denounce it as a shoddy imitation of something I love, or praise for its unorthodox approach at adaptation? It’s a question I’ll answer immediately in the next paragraph, but believe me that it took a couple days to consider. I’m that dedicated to the job.

In the end, I think I’m giving Animal World the recommendation. Thinking over things, the fact that it managed to entertain me rather consistently across two hours (some movies can’t do it in half that) is ultimately what pushed me to the ‘stupid but fun’ side, in spite of the director’s hyperactive approach to storytelling. You should check out the source material as well obviously, as the manga and to a lesser extent the anime are the definitive versions, but pop this in (or click on it, because I believe it’s netflix exclusive) and you’ll probably have a fun Halloween night. Insert witty closing line about taking a gamble on this movie here.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Aelita (1924), directed by Yakov Protazanov

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Going to Mars (!)", by Judah & the Lion

       In the book HitchcockTruffaut, a thoroughly entertaining read on the art of filmmaking, there is a section in which legendary director Alfred Hitchcock laments the end of the silent age of film in the wake of ‘talkies’, in spite of his greatest work being in the latter category. Reason being, and I’m paraphrasing here, that by the end of their lifespan silent films had transcended their rough origins and achieved what was more or less a perfected state. This was cinema, visual storytelling in a way that no other medium at the time could match, and when speech was added the entire rules of the game changed. Suddenly movies were centered more around people talking to each other than it was about creating cinema, and many of the great silent film directors and actors weren’t able to adapt to the change. About the only one who did, at least in the mind of pop culture, was Alfred Hitchcock himself, whose experience in that foundational era of filmmaking no doubt contributed greatly to the development of what would become known as his distinctive directing style.

       I find myself agreeing with him, or at least the paraphrased version of him. Taking a look back on the silent films we’ve covered on this blog, Metropolis, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Haxan (although the version I covered wasn’t technically silent), all of them ended up grabbing an easy recommendation. There is an artistry to these films, a primitive, otherworldly beauty that sets them apart from everything that came afterwards. Sure, there are plenty of great visually-oriented directors, but they just don’t have the same vibe, nor can you really expect them to considering the post-sound film world. Maybe that’s why things just didn’t feel right until I added a silent movie to the Marathon, because I was itching to return to that quiet place once again. John Krasinski not included.

       Released in 1924 and based on the work of Alexei Tolstoy, Aelita (also known as Aelita: Queen of Mars) begins quite matter-of-factly: On December 4, 1921, 6:27 Central European time, a mysterious message was picked up my radio stations all over the Earth: Anta Odeli Uta. No one is able to decipher the meaning of the words, but the radio station in Moscow theorizes that it came from Mars, an idea which intrigues Loss, the chief engineer. It’s so intriguing in fact that he starts dedicating all his time towards constructing a spacecraft in order to travel to Mars, neglecting certain aspects of his life like his wife Natasha. What Loss doesn’t know is that Mars is actually inhabited, a brutal society reigned over by the self-serving Queen Alieta and ruled over by Tuskub and his council of Elders, and that he’s happened to become a particular point of interest to the Queen. These two are destined by fate to collide, but the path to get there is even wilder than he might think.

       In classic science-fiction film tradition, although they introduce the idea of Aelita and the Mars society quite early, Aelita: Queen of Mars has far less in the way of sci-fi than the name would imply. In fact Mars and even Aelita herself don’t really come into play until this last 20 minutes or so, and even when it does the movie sort of runs through it pretty quickly. Instead most of this movie is taken up with Loss and Natasha’s unfolding domestic drama, and all the characters that are wrapped up in it. I’ve said it before in other entries, it’s the kind of thing that modern sci-fi fans likely aren’t used to, and might balk at given a runtime that leans towards the 2 hour mark, but if they were able to get through Westworld (the film) then they shouldn’t have an issue.

       It helps that the Earth-based story ends up proving to be pretty interesting, a winding series of incidents that seems akin to a Greek tragedy, with characters that are easily recognized and clearly defined (sometimes helped by certain actors playing dual roles). It makes it pretty easy to get invested in the goings-on, and you end up growing attached to the characters. Bumbling wannabe detective Kravtsov, stout-hearted veteran Gussev, poor Natasha, and of course the melancholic Loss (Nikolai Tsereteli cuts a very striking figure by the way), it almost feels like Protazanov was consciously trying to pack in as many people and as much action as he could without feeling it overwhelming. Reminds one a bit of Metropolis, another film that had no qualms about working with large groups of people.

       Speaking of Metropolis, although the Martian society is not featured as prominently as that futuristic city, it serves the same purpose as the artistic highlight of the film. Unlike the German Expressionist films of the time, with their bizarre perspectives and surrealistic architecture, the sleek stone palace of Mars is all straight lines and sharp angles, grand open rooms that seem to dwarf the people there. It’s as if the entire thing were sculpted from one gargantuan block of marble. The design of the Martians (specifically their clothing) by contrast is a little bit busy for my tastes, chiefly Romanesque in its design, but things like Ihoske the handmaid's wire-frame skirt is an nice touch of artistic continuity.

       My main issues with the film are twofold, although they could probably be better described as personal problems rather than film problems. The first is in regards to the music used in the version I saw, a piano accompaniment that seem ill suited for the emotional nuance that was being presented, although with this being a silent film presumably you could substitute it with a much more appropriate soundtrack. The second, more bothersome issue is the abundance of title cards. This is a plot and dialogue heavy film, and so naturally there are a lot of title cards to explain what’s going on.
As I’ve said my passion for the silent era stems from it being a much more visually-oriented style of filmmaking than it would later become, and it becomes a difficult to get immersed in the film’s world when there are constant cutaways from the action. It’s not as if they had much choice, this being 1924 and all, but despite knowing that it’s still slightly annoying. A pet peeve, perhaps.

       Aelita is not quite the titanic visual marvel that Metropolis is, nor the surrealist pioneer like Caligari, but nevertheless it gets a solid recommendation by me. Certainly worth a watch, as an entertaining experience and as a historically and artistically significant work of art. Even if you’ve grown up your whole life watching movies with people talking in them and you can’t imagine a world where they don’t, Halloween is the time of year to take a chance and try new things. Who knows? You might end up liking peace & quiet almost as much as I do.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Train to Busan (2016), directed by Yeon Sang-ho

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Last Train Home", by Pat Matheny Group

       The last time the Marathon visited Korea was two years ago, when we covered Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy, the infamous fight scene with an elaborate revenge movie attached to it. Of course Korea’s contribution to the world of entertainment don’t rest solely with Oldboy and those thousands of romantic comedies you see on netflix; the country has a rich history of film going back decades, ranging from comedies to horror and everything in between. It’s a region that I have often neglected I’m sad to say, stymied by a seeming lack of availability and distracted by its anime and kung-fu producing neighbors, but I’m planning on rectifying that whenever I can. Which just so happens to begin right now.

       Released in South Korea in 2016, where it became a box office smash, Train to Busan starts the way that most great films do, with an accident at a local biotech plant that unleashes a deadly zombie virus upon the land. Gong Yoo stars as Seok-woo, a fund manager who dabbles in being a divorcee and neglectful parent to his daughter, Su-an. In an attempt to do something for his child besides bribing her with Wii U’s, Seok-woo decides to take the train to Busan so that Su-an can stay with her mother, at the exact moment that the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan. Now Seok-woo, Su-an and the rest of the passengers are stuck on the ride from hell, struggling to survive as they make that long, long journey towards what might be their salvation. At least they hope it will, and hope is the only thing that they have left. Next stop: Death?

       By 2016, audiences know a zombie movie like a fox knows a hen house. All is laid bare, the tropes are all accounted for, the twists anticipated. Train to Busan is no exception. You’ve got your good characters that die early and your bad characters that stick around way too long, you’ve got the selfishness v. altruist moral dilemma, and a smattering of ‘this person is totally gonna get bit but actually they’re not’ moments. Just like every other zombie movie out there except these ones can run, which makes them only like half of every other zombie movie out there. Also people zombify absurdly quick, which removes about 90% of the tension, but whatever.

       A film can be generally formulaic and still be good however if the formula is done well, and I’d say that Train to Busan does it’s thing well. Setting the film on a train was an unique idea (at least it is here in the relatively train-less U.S.), not only providing a convenient way to move the plot forward but also acting as a claustrophobic location for our protagonists to deal with the undead menace. While not as gory as Western zombie fare, the act of having to deal with half a dozen rabid cannibals in the equivalent of a crowded hallway, where one bite is almost immediate death, is pretty good horror. I’d go as far as to say it’s the highlight of the film, beyond being its main selling point, because it’s a universally suspenseful situation. Doesn’t matter if it’s running zombies or slow zombies or peeved ferrets, it’s a scenario built for anxiety. If the entirety of the movie could somehow take place on trains it’d probably be a lot better off, because I wouldn’t have to try and suspend my disbelief over how tired city dwellers could outrun people who could apparently run as fast as possible with infinite stamina.

       I’ll also admit that Train to Busan managed to get me to care about the characters. Maybe I’m just getting to be a big softy in my advancing years, the rekindled relationship forged by Su-an and her dad tugged my heartstrings by the end there, even if Seok-woo and Su-an took about 45 minutes or so to gain a new expression. There was also a certain degree of morbid pleasure at seeing assholes killed by their own hand, but then that’s natural in horror movies. More prevalent than characters you actually care about and want to survive, in my experience.

       I wouldn’t say it’s the best zombie movie I’ve ever seen, or even the best zombie movie I’ve reviewed on this blog, but I can see why Train to Busan was a hit. Especially for a country that likely doesn’t see a lot of homegrown horror movies, at least of the zombie variety. It’s got action, thrills, chills and some melodrama, just about all you need for a successful popcorn movie. Based on that criteria, Train to Busan gets the recommendation. All you zombie purists out there might turn your noses up at this, but those just looking for something to watch this Halloween that’s a little bit different might find something they enjoy. Those people or train enthusiasts I suppose, but then it’s not that hard to please a train enthusiast in my (complete lack of) experience.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Alice (1988), directed by Jan Švankmajer

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "White Rabbit", by Jefferson Airplane

       When it comes to children’s literature, there aren’t many that come close to Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. Sure you’ve got your Peter Pan’s and your Wizards of Oz and Little Nemos that have carved out their own little slice of the pie, but it’s hard to compare to the massive level of Alice-based media that continually poured from the minds of pop culture since then. We’re talking video games, comic books, spin-off novels, fashion, hit singles by Jefferson Airplane, enough to amuse any Wonderfan for a not-insignificant amount of time. Of course this also includes films, and since the closest we’ve ever gotten to Wonderland as far as I recall is Terry Gilliam’s Jabberwocky (which has nothing to do with the classic nonsense poem aside from the fact that the protagonist fights a creature called the Jabberwocky), I figured it was finally time to jump onto the bandwagon. And wouldn’t you know it, it fits the theme too!

       The first feature length film by Czech director Jan Švankmajer (he had built his career on short films before this), Alice, or Něco z Alenky as it’s known in the original tongue, tells the story that most of you are probably familiar with. Alice, a young girl wrapped up in the duties a young girl is required of her, playing with dolls and schoolwork, one day comes a talking white rabbit with a fancy wardrobe and an obsession with punctuality. An intensely curious child, Alice decides to chase after the rabbit, and ends up in Wonderland, a bizarre world populated by even more bizarre residents. Determined to find that white rabbit, Alice goes on an absurd journey through this nonsense country, interacting with all manor of unbelievable creature. Will she ever find the White Rabbit? Will she ever find her way home again? Only time will tell, and there seems to be a shortage of that in Wonderland.

       However, things were a little different when Jan decided to get behind the camera. You see he wasn’t a fan of the Alice adaptations that had been released up to then, believing they had made Wonderland come off as too much of a fairy tale. To him Lewis Carroll’s book was more like an amoral dream, and so that’s the kind of movie he decided to make. An intensely surreal film, where an almost entirely mute Alice (almost all dialogue is given to us by a narrator of sorts, Camilla Power in this case) travels about a nonsense world that’s made up of locations in or around her home, interacting with things that are made up of the things in her home. The White Rabbit’s home is a hutch surrounded by building blocks for example. It seems rather low-key compared to elaborate fantasy worlds of Disney and the like, but I actually really appreciate the idea. For children like Alice their home is their entire world, so it makes sense that their unconscious minds would reflect that. 

       That being said, apparently when Jan decided he wasn’t going to be doing a fairy tale interpretation of ‘Adventures in Wonderland’, that meant he had to go a complete 180 degrees and make it a total nightmare instead. Alice no longer lives in a normal house anymore, but instead some kind of Silent Hill-style post-industrial slum with nothing but dead bugs and jars of various things to keep her company. The White Rabbit is some kind of taxidermy monstrosity with bulging glass eyes and an open chest cavity where sawdust continually pours out, and he’s probably one of the lesser horrific ones. The film also uses extensive stop-motion animation, so when that living sock crawls up out of the floor and absorbs the glass eyes and dentures into itself to form a face, it’s looks as real as they can make it. Despite being a children’s book written specifically for a child, I cannot fathom this being a movie that you’d actually want your child to watch. Maybe kids in the Czech Republic have a better tolerance for this sort of stuff, but I think kid me would have gained two or three mental scars from this movie easy. If you ever wondered what Puppet Master would be like if it was actually scary, here it is.

       Nightmare fuel aside, I’d say my biggest issue with Alice is one of pacing. Now I know that this is meant to be a ‘dream’, which means lots of lingering shots on weird stuff, but with this movie it feels like every scene lingers on a minute or two longer than it probably should. The scene where Alice takes the shrinking drink and the growing tarts for example, feels like it takes up half the film, and the movie had barely started by that point. Which wouldn’t be a problem, necessarily, but when your movie is centered around a child entering and leavings rooms, constantly returning to the same bureau gag, and generally not doing much of anything in particular, you start to become overwhelmingly aware of the passage of time.

        The fact that this is a loose adaptation also becomes quite clear when you notice how sparse Wonderland has become. Alice manages to capture a couple of the set pieces from the novel, the room with the tiny door, the Caterpillar, the Mad Tea Party, even the baby that turns into a pig, but a lot of the things that would otherwise might seem standard going for a Wonderland movie are missing. There’s no Cheshire Cat for instance, a character that’s become as popular as Alice herself in the years since the novel’s release, nor will you find the Dodo, the Mock Turtle, the Duchess (weird to have the baby but not the baby’s mother) and many others. I’m sure it comes down to issues of time and budget, animating a dozen more characters would probably add up, but it does serve to make Wonderland seem a tad less wondrous, and the rampant mildew infestation on every wall in the film had already taken care of that within the first couple of minutes. 

       To me, the appeal of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is that it is a story about a very proper, very bright girl who is placed into a world that’s like a funhouse mirror version of her own, where everything she knows is wrong and everything wrong is right. Jan Švankmajer’s Alice certainly captures the illogic of Carroll’s world visually but that satirical aspect, the Victorian-era Stranger in a Strange Land is missing, and so too the main point of interest of the story in my opinion. Who is Alice in this film? What are her interests, what is her motivation, beyond the obsession with the White Rabbit? You can’t really tell, and if that’s the case then why do I care about her or what she’s doing? Does this movie work without the audience already knowing the Wonderland stories and being able to fill in the blanks? I dunno.

       While I wouldn’t claim it’s the definitive adaptation, if such a thing even exists, from a visual standpoint Alice earns a recommendation. It’s not a movie I’d pick up for family movie night, but considering the popularity of ‘dark’ versions of otherwise benign children’s stories I think finding a willing audience wouldn’t be all that difficult. Whether it’s for Halloween or a loved one’s Un-birthday, Alice just might be the film for you. Try it out, or you might end up losing your head.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: The Guardian Brothers (2016), directed by Gary Wang

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Feng Shou", by Chen Dacan

       We (that’s the royal ‘we’) here at the Marathon have no problem covering family-friendly/kids movies. I (that’s the non-royal ‘I’) have also made it a point to cover animated films when I can, because of my oft-stated opinion that it is a greatly underutilized and underappreciated artistic and filmmaking medium. A problem arises though when we get to that most dreaded of combinations, the animated children’s movie. Namely that there’s too damn many of them and I don’t have the time or the inclination to sift through them all. We struck gold with Kubo last time around, and that’s going to be how we’re approaching these kinds of movies going forward: It’s gotta be relatively unique or interesting to me, or I’m not going to bother with it. No Disney. No Pixar. No Dreamworks. For the foreseeable future, at least.

Dropped quickly and unceremoniously onto Netflix around 2016, The Guardian Brothers, or Little Door Gods as it’s known in China, is a film that takes place in two worlds: The real world, where all us boring humans live, and the Spirit World, home of the Guardians. Guardians are exactly what it says on the tin, spirits whose purpose in life is to help humans. Trouble is, times have changed and humans no longer care about spirits. In retaliation, the spirits have decided to go on strike, even going so far as to start demolishing the portals that lead to the human world. Work stoppages are far more effective when the other party knows you exist, however, so it seems the spirit world is en route to a slow and undignified demise.

       In this middle of all this are the Guardian Brothers, headstrong Yu Lei and easygoing Shen Tu, divided on the issue of helping humans. The issue comes to a head when the brothers discover the existence of a horrific creature known as the Nian, which terrorized both worlds until the combined forces of spirits and humans were able to seal it away. Believing that the return of a mutual enemy is what will reunite humans and spirits, Yu Lei sets off to the real world in order to locate and break the seals containing the Nian. It is while on Earth that he meets a young girl named Rain, whose mother has inherited an old soup shop, and whose will turn out to be far more important to his quest than she might seem.

       Not much to say about the art style and animation, if you’ve seen any kids movie since the switch from hand-drawn to CGI then you’re getting the same here, but I’d say the biggest difference between The Guardian Bros. and your average Disney release is in how it tells the story. The chief antagonist of the film for example, the Nian, is far less of an active presence that Jafar or Hades are in their respective films, serving more as the end result of Yu Lei’s stubbornness and reckless actions than an actual villainous character. The secondary antagonist, the comically greedy businessman Rogman, is by contrast more active, but his actual relevance to the plot also feels negligible. In his moment of greatest influence on the story, his scheme is thwarted a scene or two later and he is immediately punished for his actions. They are antagonists in the most basic of terms, obstacles that the protagonists overcome on their journey. Fancy roadblocks, essentially.

       The role of Rain in the movie is also a very noticeable shift in storytelling. In similar films, Rain would likely be the focus of the film; the story would revolve around her, somehow she’d probably get into spirit world which would lead to generic shenanigans, and in the end she’d be best friends with all the Guardians. Not the case with The Guardian Brothers. While she is an important character and integral to the plot, she’s also a little girl and and her position in the story reflects that. She’s not fighting monsters, she’s helping her mom run a soup shop and worrying about not having friends, and happens to meet a couple of magical beings along the way. I’ve often said that child actors can either make or break a movie, and that belief goes for animated films as well. To have a movie where a child isn’t pushed into being some sort of overdone saviour of mankind role but also isn’t a burden on the competent characters, similarly, is like getting a homerun off of a bunt. Quite refreshing.

        What isn’t as refreshing however, is the voice acting. While at first glance the cast list seems to be cavalcade of stars, Nicole Kidman, Ed Norton, Mel Brooks, right away you realize why voice acting is even a thing. It just sounds so bad so quickly is the thing, that minutes after I heard Bella Thorne’s obviously adult woman voice come out of couldn’t-be-older-than-eleven Rain that I just had to switch it to another dub entirely. French seemed to work out okay, although as a former anime loving loser I would have preferred to have English subtitles with the original Chinese. If only to see the changes, if any, in the voice direction across the international versions.

       The use of music is also not very inspired, in my opinion. Their soundtrack consists of what feels like 4 songs, two of which (‘Celebration’ by Kool & The Gang and ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ by Carl Douglas) are re-used in other scenes. I can understand why they felt the need to throw in popular music, and I know licensing music is an expensive pain the ass, but much like Bella Thorne it just sounds awkward. It probably would have been better off sticking with an original score, maybe rounding things out with some local talent. It maybe not snag those international points, but at least it wouldn’t feel as weird as watching a Chinese movie that plays ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ without batting an eye.

       Although likely not as high action as you’re used to in your kids movies, The Guardian Brothers’ almost magic-realist take on old folklore still manages to entertain in less than 90 minutes. Recommended, especially for those looking for some family-friendly films this Halloween. And if you’re a parent in a country that primarily speaks English, you might want to do so with a glass or two of hard cider. Makes the viewing experience a lot easier.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Heart of Glass (1976), directed by Werner Herzog

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Der Ruf", by Popul Vuh

       Well now, here’s a director that’s slowly racking up the appearances in the Marathon: Mr. Grizzly Man himself, Werner Herzog. Herzog first appeared way back in 2014, when an interest in German actor Klaus Kinski (brought upon by the documentary My Best Friend) and the connection the infamous silent film classic pushed me to throw his film Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht onto the completely meaningless number one spot that year. It was an okay film from what I can remember, which admittedly isn’t much, but that was that. Life moved on, and there were plenty more movies to see.

Fast forward to 2017, and suddenly Herzog shows up again, with the absurdist comedy Even Dwarfs Started Small. The choice of doing another Herzog film wasn’t a whim, a streaming service I often use had a slew of them, but the choice of which film I believe was likely down to last minute decisions. Given that I had the choice of famous films like Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre and I ultimately went for the one where a bunch of little people get into shenanigans, it’s once again an example that the Monty Hall problem doesn’t work in the case of movies. Not the best movie I had ever seen, but we got through it, and life moved on.

Now it’s 2018, and since we’re revisiting the foreign last 10 movies angle, that means that Herzog is squeaking by with yet another one. You have to admire his tenacity, managing to worm his way to an entry not once but twice, where his other colleagues may falter. He may not be the highlight of any Marathon that he shows up on, but he’s still in there. You don’t have to be the MVP to get a Superbowl ring, you just have to be in the right place at the right time.

       Heart of Glass is not the hardest-hitting movie in the world when it comes to story, but I’ll tell you what I can. A few hundred years ago there was a small German village, we never learn its name, that was known for one thing: Shimmering red glass more popularly known as Ruby glass. However, the secret to making Ruby glass was known to only one man, Mühlbeck, and when he died he took the secret with him. Deprived of their source of livelihood, the village falls into a deep depression, as if they are sleepwalking through life. A depression which will become even worse, as Hias the herdsman has predicted that at nightfall the factory will burn, that the villagers will run into the forest and turn to stone, and that everything in the village will perish. The beginning of the end as the kids say, and Hias’ predictions are never wrong…

     There are two main selling points when it comes to Heart of Glass, the first being the use of hypnotism. Aside from Hias and a couple glassblowers (kinda want your wits about you when working with molten glass), every character in every scene was placed under hypnosis, with only minimal direction by Herzog when it came to dialogue. Occasionally you might even notice it, but then there are moments where you can’t do anything else. People mumbling their lines with blank expressions on their faces, characters suddenly laugh or scream for no reason, scenes that you would assume to be boisterous and noisy taking on the aspect of the grave, and so on. It’s intensely surreal and unsettling, uncontrolled, in a way that similarly strange films can’t quite replicate. If nothing else, the fact that this movie runs as smoothly as it does with all these tranced out zombies stumbling around doing scenes together is definitely worth a feather in Herzog’s directing cap. I don’t think many other filmmakers would want to put up with it.

       The other main selling point is that most of the music is done by a band, German progressive rock band Popol Vuh. It’s not an uncommon practice, Michael Mann contracted Tangerine Dream to do the music for his film Thief, not to mention Dario Argento’s many collaborations with the band Goblin, and props to Herzog using local music. Popol Vuh’s music is exactly the right feel for what Heart of Glass is; majestic when taking in the beautiful vistas of the Bavarian countryside, turning almost menacing when turned towards the villagers. It conveys aurally the emotion the scene is trying to convey visually and it does it well, which is what you need in a film score. Also you should check out Popol Vuh, they’re pretty damn good.

       Those two points aside, I’m struggling to find much to say when it comes to Heart of Glass. It’s one of those movies where things seem to just happen, which is appropriate for a village of ‘sleepwalkers’, with a lot of time dedicated to Hias and his strange prophecies. All of which likely holds great significance when you understand the meaning of the film, something like ‘certain against fate is ultimately pointless’ or ‘pessimists will always prove themselves right’ or even ‘make sure you write things down’, but which is otherwise comes across as inscrutable and perhaps even pretentious to those in a sour mood. Which is okay, I just got done talking about how I enjoy unpacking films in the last entry, but it’s also not really a film that leaves you on the edge of your seat in suspense. It’s a lot of sitting and thinking while watching a bunch of people sit and talk, set to the sounds of German progressive rock. Not quite everyone’s idea of a good time, I suspect.

       In the tradition of Herzog films in the Marathon, Heart of Glass isn’t the most exciting film that I’ve covered this year. However, it certainly wasn’t the worst either, and it was a unique gimmick for a film at the very least. If Even Dwarfs Started Small didn’t interest you then it’s probable that you won’t be interested in Heart of Glass either, but if you’re building a list of trippy, weird movies to watch this Halloween, then you might like throwing this one on the queue. You don’t even need to be hypnotized to do it! Although it might help.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009), directed by Terry Gilliam

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Da Art of Storytellin' (Pt. 1)", by Outkast

       With all these modern day films that I’ve been reviewing on this year’s Marathon, I bet you all were thinking that a piece on Terry Gilliam’s long-overdue creation, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was just waiting in the wings. Well shame on you! Readers should know that this blog isn’t about being ‘up-to-date’ or ‘relevant to current interests’, it’s about me farting out a meandering, incoherent mess of a film critique that no one is ever going to read, and then you folks out there not reading it. It’s a proven system honed over years of trial and error, so I see no reason to change things up now. So maybe in a couple of years if I’m not lying dead in a ditch somewhere I’ll get around to Don Quixote, right alongside watching The Wire and forming a sense of self-worth. 

       But not today.

       If you’re ever walking the streets of London when the time is right, there’s a chance that you might come across a horse driven cart containing the most magical show of all, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Step right up and through the silver door and Doctor Parnassus, immortal mystic of the ages, will transport you into a world of your dreams. Anything can happen in the Imaginarium and everything does, and at the end of the journey all you have to do is make a simple choice. Tough but rewarding, or quick and easy? Moral or immoral? Purification or, as the case may be, immolation?

       The truth is, perhaps, a bit less glamorous. Yes Doctor Parnassus is immortal and the Imaginarium is real, but he’s not much of a mystic anymore. He’s more like a bum, drinking himself into a stupor as his troupe, Anton the young ward, Percy (played by the late Verne Troyer) and the Doctor’s daughter Valentina cart their wagon across the city. One day however, Parnassus is visited by his old betting partner Mister Nick, played by music legend Tom Waits. Seems that that’s almost Valentina’s 16th birthday and based on the outcome of the last wager, that means she’s going to be coming with him (hope she likes fire & brimstone). Unless of course if Parnassus wanted to make another wager, say, the first person to sway the souls of 5 people to their side wins? Parnassus eagerly accepts, although with the way the show has been doing lately there seems little hope that Nick won’t run away with the whole thing. That is until the Imaginarium happens to find a hanged man under a bridge, with a pipe in his mouth and strange symbols on his forehead…

       Now before we move on to the nitty-gritty, you can’t really talk about this movie without mentioning that this is Heath Ledger’s final film, passing away before its completion and being replaced in select scenes by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. I didn’t have much of an experience with Ledger prior to this film, a couple of snippets of A Knight’s Tale and a half-remembered viewing of I’m Not There and The Dark Knight years ago, but I think his final performance shows him off well. Hell, he’s probably the best character in it. Using substitute actors was the best choice in the long run, not only in the context of the story/character and also as a nice gesture of support during a tragic event. Don’t know how many othe actors would’ve been honored like that.

       Imaginarium presents itself as having a underlying theme of telling ‘stories’, although most of the allusions tend to lean towards the religious, particularly East-Asian beliefs. Parnassus is depicted as various types of holy men, a yogi, a Sikh, even a pseudo-Krishna at some point, while Mister Nick is clearly analogous to Satan. Parnassus was once a leader of men, until he’s tempted by the pleasures of the material world and ultimately falls from grace. Heath Ledger’s character, as a Hanged Man, symbolizes self-sacrifice in Tarot and is occasionally represented as Judas. Then of course there’s the crux of the film, Parnassus and Nick competing with each other over people’s souls, the struggle between yin and yang played out right on your screen and the positively Buddhist implication that the answer lies beyond them. Gilliam lays it on pretty damn thick too, so if the boats with Anubis’ head don’t make you get the hint than there’s about a dozen other things that will.

       However, while analyzing all of this imagery can be entertaining, the film itself struggles to do the same. The opening scene with the Imaginarium is quite interesting; this bizarre caravan with oddly dressed people just appears on the street, an aggressive drunk chases Valentina through the silver door and he ends up in a giant cardboard forest where his face completely changes, he’s launched into outer space with giant jellyfish and eventually gets blown up by a bar. It’s all wonderfully surreal and mysterious and really draws you into the film. Then they keep going into the Imaginarium, or they have flashbacks, and every single time it’s not as good as the first time. CGI is quite obvious in 2018, and in 2009 a blind man couldn’t miss it. Seeing Johnny Depp pretend to dance on some floating plate is probably funnier than any joke in this movie, and they throw out a lot of jokes here. For a director that I have sung praises for in the past for creating such fanciful, visceral settings for his films, this almost feels like an insult. I came to see something like Brazil, not Shark Boy & Lava Girl.

       Ironically though, those scenes still end up being the highlight of the film, because everything else just sort of stands there awkwardly. A whole bunch of time in this movie is waiting for the plot to catch up with the audience, and then trying to gaslight you with trippy ‘mind-bending’ visuals. Just throwing more and more stuff onto the pile that we’re supposed to accept without explanation, like the eternal story bit or the declaration that black magic doesn’t magic, or that some people change faces in the Imaginarium but not everybody, until you’re so tired and numb to it all that you throw your hands up in the air with exasperation. Hopefully you’re already in the second hour of the movie by then.

       Then we get to characters. Not the acting per se, which is fine, but the characters, which the movie utterly fails to make me care about. Parnassus is barely relevant in his own film until the last 15 minutes or so when the movie decides he’s actually the protagonist. Anton is the typical doormat character who’s there to take abuse until the plot decides he has a spine. Valentina is an overbearing angsty teenager who is constantly pushed into romantic and sexual, and while yes it’s normal for a 16 year old girls to be interested in sex, that doesn’t mean I want to see Heath Ledger put his dick in one. Percy is okay but he’s also immortal for no adequately explained reason so screw that. Which leaves the entire weight of entertaining the audience and moving the story along squarely on the shoulders of Heath Ledger’s character, Tony Shepherd, and while Heath and his substitutes are certainly charismatic enough to entertain an audience, this is not one of those films that can be carried on the performance of one character (even if they’re played by four actors).

       It pains me to say it, but The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus might be the first film by Terry Gilliam covered on this blog that isn’t going to get the recommendation. It’s a two hour long mess of special effects and half-baked philosophy that feels like watching Larry Byrd going for a free throw and hitting the popcorn vendor instead. You can’t judge his entire career based on it, but it certainly takes the shine off it. If you’re interested in movies with a lot of subtext to unpack this Halloween, especially if it's tied to religion, you might want to try Circle of Iron, Jodorowsky’s El Topo, or even David Lynch’s Dune if you’re feeling saucy. Or perhaps you can hang out with your friends and not even bother watching a movie at all. Either way you’re missing out on much if you decide to give this one a pass.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: The Shape of Water (2017), directed by Guillermo del Toro

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "La Javanaise", by Madeleine Peyroux

       Guillermo del Toro has finally ‘made it’. After a decade or two in the world of film, building for himself a finely-crafted cinematic universe of the magically macabre, the man reached the mountain top and managed to snag not just one Oscar but two, for Best Picture and Best Director. Whether or not the Academy Awards mean anything is a matter of opinion, but it’s still quite the accomplishment considering their general disdain for weird/genre films. I mean none of the directors that are beloved around here have seen Oscar gold aside from the Coens and Terry Gilliam once, and that was just for Best Supporting Actress, so at the very least it’s pretty unique for this blog. It makes you wonder though, or at least it made me wonder, just what was it about that year, that film, that finally made Hollywood stand up at take notice? What is it that makes The Shape of Water an Academy Award winning film? Does it deserve a spot in the final 10, even though it arguably doesn’t follow the theme? 

And then here we are.

Once upon a time, 1962 to be exact, in a city that’s perhaps  quite similar to your own, there lived a woman named Eliza Despacito (Sally Hawkins). Eliza lived a quiet life, and that wasn’t just because she was mute. For quite a while now she had gained an overwhelming sense of the routine. She ate the same food, had the same interactions, and always arrived at the same time every day to do the same job, which happened to be cleaning at a government testing facility. Life certainly wasn’t bad per se, she had good friends to keep her company, but Eliza was certain there was something missing, something new and unexpected that would push her out of the perpetual rut that she found herself in. But where could such a transformational spark be?

Then one day, a government agent named Strickland (Michael Shannon) arrived at the facility with mysterious cargo dubbed ‘The Asset’. This ‘Asset’ turns out to be a living thing, an amphibious humanoid revered as a god in a remote South American tribe that was captured/kidnapped and brought to the States. While cleaning up after a rather gruesome accident involving missing fingers and a lot of blood Eliza meets the Asset and, after several such meetings, discovers that it, or rather he, is capable of communication and forms a bond with him. Upon learning that Strickland plans to have Asset cut open and studied, Eliza decides she’s gonna help him escape. The problem is, how exactly are you supposed to bust a 7 foot tall fishman out of a guarded government facility, and what are you supposed to do with him once you get him out? Besides falling in love with him I mean.

Well, if anyone was going to do a version of The Creature from the Black Lagoon where the woman was super into it, it was going to be Guillermo del Toro. He was also probably the best person for the job, precisely because he’s a huge weirdo. When del Toro decides he’s going to be bringing the Gill-Man into the 21st century (unofficially), then by god he’s going to look like a fish man. It doesn’t matter if he’s some bizarre monster who speaks in clicks and shrieks and has a hunger for house pets, and sure he can’t live outside of water for very long, but he’s our love interest! Sparkling vampires and werewolves are for amateurs folks, del Toro is only interested in hardcore romance stories. Unless it looks like it could be related to The Predator, it ain’t worth his time.

That’s Doug Jones as 21st Century Gill-Man by the way. You might remember him as the body actor for Abe Sapien in del Toro’s Hellboy films, where he played pretty much the exact same character. Which is fine, because he’s obviously very talented, and I imagine the underwater love scenes had a lot to do with pushing Shape of Water into the proverbial winner’s circle. That and the gratuitous Michael Shannon.

Speaking of those love scenes, Shape of Water is yet another example of del Toro’s dedication to aesthetics. Much like fellow ‘dark fantasy’ director Tim Burton, and to a lesser extent the team of Jeunet and Caro, del Toro manages to create that is gloomier than our own and yet somehow more vibrant. The world of Shape of Water is one of flux, the last gasp of Mad Men before this tidal wave of change comes rolling in, and that is what del Toro presents to us visually. Art Deco in decline, where the vivid colors only serve to show the dirt and age. It’s as if the city itself were a dark ocean, and every once in a while a glimmer would appear from beneath the surface. It’s a level of detail that can easily go south if you let your interest in visuals overshadow the narrative, and it’s something that I think del Toro struggles with even in this film. Take Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets for example, which in the interests of fairness I have only heard about and not personally seen: A marvelous looking film to be sure, but lacking enough substance to truly resonate with an audience.

The Shape of Water is a romance movie, and like all romance movies it’s about love. Love is the most important thing, if you don’t have love then your life has no meaning, and so on. Eliza’s life is dull and unfulfilling until she finds love. Giles the neighbor is gay, something which 1962 America is not fond of, and so he retreats into an idealized illusion of the past. Strickland is incapable of love, so he’s a massive piece of shit. That all is fine, but where I run into is that the romance the movie is based around feels ephemeral at best. We are meant to assume that Eliza and the Gill-man have built up this relationship, and yet in that two hour time span (which feels longer) I remain unconvinced. Hell, I don’t think Guillermo makes a strong case that Gill-man is sapient, considering everything he does in the film. Sure he communicates occasionally through very basic sign language, but Koko the gorilla could do that as well, and they max out around a fifth-grade child’s level of cognition. It comes across less like ‘Beauty & The Beast for a new age’ and more like ‘lonely woman uses animals to get her rocks off’, which doesn’t exactly carry the same emotional resonance. In fact it might even come across as a bit insulting, if the intent was to liken Eliza’s issues with Gill-man with the homophobic bigotry that Giles deals with at one point in the film. I don’t know if the LGBTQ community would want their relationships equated with what could be bestiality. Or maybe I’m reading too much into what is essentially a simple premise, which is that del Toro wanted to make a movie where a woman had sex with a monster, and he did it. Everything else is just window dressing to distract you from thinking too hard about it. Love is blind, and should be too.

Of course the question that remains is whether Guillermo del Toro deserves those Oscars for The Shape of Water, and the answer that comes to mind is ‘I guess so’. Thing is, Guillermo hasn’t really changed in all these years; since 1993 he’s been making films that looked great, were casted well, and were occasionally hit-or-miss in the storytelling department. If you liked Cronos then it’s a pretty straight line to The Shape of Water. Perhaps it was that because it was a simple premise, the modern day fairy tale, that allowed one to relax and really take in Guillermo’s strongest skill. I dunno, but it was enough to sway the Academy judges that day, and maybe it’ll sway you too. Despite the issues I have with it, The Shape of Water manages to get with the recommendation. Halloween might not be the holiday for romance, but maybe it could be with this film in your queue. Unless that love is directed towards cats, in which case you might just want to look somewhere else.