Broken Flowers

Methodical yet abrupt, Broken Flowers attempts to scrutinize a man’s life decisions in one episodic event. Perhaps this event is the first time in his life where he developed contemplation, and more telling, self-doubt.

Don Johnston is wealthy yet lonely. He clearly, despite his ease with women, has never considered the value of his life. We do not really see a man but instead an idler in life. The decision to determine if he has anything to love outside of his home was not even initiated by himself, but by his hilariously gum-shoe neighbor, who enjoys passing his existence as a crime sleuth.

His journey is divided into 4 vignettes. Fortunately none are seen exasperatingly bizarre, aside from a peculiar Lolita reminiscence. Though not much is made of his inanimateness, Don reveals his emotions through what he sees. And these are women. They appear within dreams accompanying his quest to find out if he fathered a son.

Loneliness best conveys what he is attempting to resolve. This is not made patently clear until desperately he provides food to a hitch-hiker and begs for him to be his son. When the young man flees, the realization hits Don: I have nothing.

Thus, the concentration on two pairs of attractive ladies legs by Don. They centrally indicate to us a schism in his outlook on life. Whereas before they may have prompted him to flirt, he now questions the accumulation of his time on earth, and henceforth what the old “him” would do.

The greatest challenge with a metamorphosis is the uncertainty about the life-change. Not only in the possibility of a worse-off condition, but also the uncertainty of how to act as this new “self”. Do I act oppositely to how I normally would? Am I being genuine if I am simply a polar opposite of before? What was so wrong with me?

There is an eclectic reaction with the women who he believes is the mother of his potential son. We have a typical womanizer response from one, embrace from another, and apprehension from the other two. All four have completely moved on with their lives from the decades old flames they carried with Don. We do not get a sense with any of them, however, their own struggle or battle with metamorphosis. At best, the scenes with each woman are merely random jests at meaning in Don’s life. And Don does not find any.

His success in his computer business aside, Don is left with a persistent empty void that he only realizes with this agitation. Thus, this film is a part of the common theme of nihilism in contemporary society. We are not here to judge Don, nor do we develop a sense of empathy with his procedure. We end the film as he does: what next?

Grade: B   

Factotum

Being a writer is hard work. It involves doing things you don’t like to sustain your craft. And it is a craft that may never achieve recognition.

This last fact is of course what makes a writer a writer. He doesn’t write for acclaim. He writes to make sense of the world around him. Intriguingly, like most artists, the obsession with the craft can be personally self-destructive. And the entire film is centered around not the writing obsession, as that is in the background, but in the self-destructive behavior of Henry Chinanski.

He can’t hold a job. But that is his choice. He finds spectacular ways to terminate himself, and other ways which are quite riveting to the 9-5 er watching how easy it is to lose a steady paycheck.

Homelessness he doesn’t mind. Booze and cigarettes are his fuel. As for women? The film does a poor job of cementing this as beyond a mere happenstance snippet in this writer’s life. He does shack up with someone just as capable of poor decisions as him – but why? He doesn’t have an answer until the ending.

While I am critical of film which lacks a trajectory – and this one would follow-suit – I am appreciative of its contemplation on the nature of a particular character walking through life. Despite how agitating a life of his is towards my bourgeois–upbringing – though I am not the only one, as even his father wishes he “did something” – we see a living, breathing, philosophy. His passage through time, while much more convoluted, is much more authentic than “phonies” who run away from perseverance.

Indeed, the irony here is that in the age of nihilism, we mistake his living as marked with “bad decisions”. Yet his way of life, where all he needs is paper, a pen, a cigarette, and a desk, is a more powerful reflection of living than paying the bank for a little box on the hillside.

The film beautifully concludes with one of Henry’s short stories being accepted, without his awareness. It doesn’t matter to him: he’s a writer.

Grade: B 

Revolver

Swirling in the vortex of another male sophomore production, Revolver encapsulates – or at least tries to – sentimental verve. In that, the bloodshed and outlandish machismo actually serves a purpose beyond scintillating teenage boys.

Masterfully, Mr. Ritchie does not reveal his hand until the closing credits. He is indeed attempting to ‘con’ his audience amidst the flying bullets and standard kill sequences between bad guys, grafters, and Cockney.  Admittedly, I was fooled for more than half of the film.

Typical stock characters fit into their suits, and plot progression seemed banal. There is intrigue in its wrinkles, however, enough to keep an active mind occupied above the clichéd braggadocio and misconceived alpha male dominance; after all, if leading a gang which deals in drugs and strippers is the apex of masculinity, then one lacks a sophisticated taste for dominance.

Nevertheless, what would be boring popcorn fare has a lining of genuine artistry. The artistic merit of the meaning of Revolver is loftier than Mr. Ritchie’s previous works, which do not rise higher than the significance of a bar brawl. Here, we have the deception of a brawl, to tell a story about personal demons, and the process of exorcising them.

Is the attempt successful? Pausing to answer, we can contemplate at least the attempt in the medium of a guy flick. That is commendable in itself. However, I feel the abrupt reflex found in the conclusion would have had a softer landing had the pilot angled the plane at a more gentle descending angle, meaning, there was plenty of film time to weave the message in more clearly, while still deceiving the audience as Mr. Ritchie intended. Or perhaps I am merely projecting?

Grade: B

The Long Goodbye

Noir films have a certain sensation about them, where too much investment in the effort creates predictability, and a repellent and detachment from the film observer. Indeed, good noir depictions do not try to work within the theme at all. The only connected dots between the treatment and the genre is simply a story involving the police.

Elliot Gould plays an exceptional character in Mr. Marlowe. As the protagonist makes or breaks the center stage in this genre, Mr. Gould's balance is extraordinary. We do not see a fatigued exertion into the machismo. Yet we also do not see a man who finds the story he is in to be overtly melodramatic, as if he is aware of the director's efforts to film. 

Thus the absence of apathy seen on his face is commendable. As the engine in the story - by necessity - we see an emotional commitment in the shifting gears. Often times we will have a sense that "gumshoes" roll their eyes at the malaise that their clients put themselves into. Here, however, we have a sincerity with Mr. Gould's effort - almost a conviction that his cause his noble in itself. This is in sharp contrast with poorer efforts in the genre which would paint the detective using the same color palette as the scenery.

And the scenery is not terribly asymmetric to the main character. This is not a hopeless world, in other words, where it would be easier to flood it and start anew. The characters and their lives which breathe life into every frame do not have a sense of decadence or decay about them. The main current in the film is indeed caused by immorality, but we do not see a city of sinners where this is a frequent happenstance. In fact, as one character drowns himself in the Pacific, we have a community of onlookers, distressed, look out into the darkness of the sea, the same night he passes on. This catastrophe is communally felt. It is abnormal. Teams of police come in, scuba gear in tow. The setting is one in which we ourselves would inhabit.

Thus a golden mean between sleuthing and the underbelly of every story such as this, and the normalcy of society, is cleverly accomplished. The pacing is such that we rarely have time to contemplate the inner nature of Marlowe; neither are we scratching our heads in the who-dun-it. The film flows like a gentle creek, which eventually arrives at a sudden, but small, jaded rock, at its ending. 

What to make of it? There are men who enjoy their job. And there are men who enjoy justice in the world. And they are not mutually exclusive.

Grade: B

Ally McBeal (Pilot)

In the midst of the emergence of the ability for women to apply themselves in a sophisticated manner in a sophisticated labor market, the consciousness, or placement of the modern female in society, has had its landscape pruned.

Whereas before, perhaps in a “simpler age”, women devoted their time solely on beautification and decorum – argued by modern intellectuals as subservient to the opposite sex – they now have to balance the added duty of possessing a well-paying job. Office secretary is no longer noble to don. Its intent was to give a young lady something to do before absconding with her beau. Now, with liberty comes responsibility.

Contrasted with her near-contemporaries found in Sex in the City, Ally McBeal is a woman who still believes in love. Or rather, love is a central component of her life. The genesis of the entire show is in the dramatization, and the romantic reminiscence, of the man she had loved more than any other. Further, as the show prunes immediately in its premiere, this romantic struggle is at the epicenter of her life.

But now a paradox emerges: Ally is a higher-echelon laborer. Her credentials and social hierarchal position, while not an upward ascent from her class upbringing, indicates, by all Feminist accounts, a worldly success. Even in the midst of striving in a “man’s world”, with the exaggerative sexual harassment of that world mocked from the get-go, she is missing something. Is her longing for love a sign of patriarchal oppression? Is her obsession with her ex a male power play?

The focus of the show on her love, with the legal proceedings acting as a backdrop to this drama, is insightful amidst the confusion on what it is to be a female with a six-figure income. One of the criticisms of cultural products such as a television show of a woman who immerses herself in the fantasy of romance is that the centerpiece still exudes “oppression”, as if the fact women do not think like men do yet is evidence of the brutality of society, shackling the ability for woman to be “truly” “free”.

Thus it comes as a celebration that Ally McBeal unabashedly absorbs itself in the single-female mystique, if not crisis: what do I do now? A job and a drink with friends is not fulfilling to her it seems. And yet there is the abrasive proclamation that she craves a man in her life. Sex in the City relishes the abandonment of such “naïveté”: romance is dead is the motto of that episodic, with love as a fantasy to keep little girl’s minds occupied. With Ally, however, we see a whimsical expose into the modern girl’s foray into the unknown world. Love may be sold separately, but it is an honest pursuit for her yet.   

Thus the show does not see its embrace of a classical female ideal as a weakness, but rather as its raison d’etre. Jobs may come and go, as Ally is already seen working at two firms, but love is here to stay.

Grade: B