What is there left to say about Enter the Void?

    Yes, there is a lot of sex, nudity and drugs.  There’s some violence too.  No, it’s not pornographic in any way.  Yes, some of the visuals are incredible and the craft is impeccable.

    But does it have anything to say?  Before I enter void (hoho) of that question, lets get the formalities out of the way.

    Enter void follows the point of view of the recently deceased Oscar, a small time drug dealer/addict, as his spirit floats over Tokyo, watching the consequences of his death unfold and intermingle with memories of how his life was, how he wishes it was and how it could have been.

    There is no clear delineation between what we see being real or part of Oscars memory and we are left in the dark as to how reliable a narrator Oscar is.  Most of his memories and observations concern his younger sister, Linda, a naïve and troubled stripper with whom he has always shared a fractured and sexually frustrated relationship.

    So what is it about then?

    Well, that isn’t very clear either.  The most recurring motif in the film seems to be the characters inability to escape their memories and their fears.  If they could only let go of the past they could move forward and maybe be happy.  But they can’t, and they never will be.

    So is this juvenile fatalistic existentialism or a profound comment on the nature of the battered human psyche?

    I subscribe to the latter category, the mood and cinematic language of the film give the viewer all the pieces they need to draw their own meaning from the film, but simultaneously keep the viewer within a fixed and satisfying framework with which to work through the films events.

    The way in which the point of view is handled is the most immersive I have ever encountered in a film.  Regardless of whether or not you identify with Oscar (and if you can you should seek help) you are quickly drawn into his interior world through a Peep Show style camera.

    Oscar’s internal monologue overlaps with his speech and the steady movements of the camera combined with the more ambitious flourishes representing his drug use combine to create a powerful sense of being trapped in the characters inner world.

    Enter The Void never drops up this approach and over the 160 minute run time the sense of Oscar’s claustrophobia, fear and regret becomes more and more poignant and palpable.  The memories that become repeated act as motifs and punctuation marks that keep bringing the audience back to the central traumas of his life; the violent death of his parents, his early separation from his sister and their inability to successfully shake off these burdens.

    If Enter The Void sounds like a depressing film that’s because for the most part it is.  Depressing is an adjective I never like to use to describe a work of art because it is always reductive and often ignores the cathartic power of experience someone else’s state of mind, however troubled it may be.  But Enter The Void is depressing, not in a bad way, not really in a good way either, the style and subject matter combine effortlessly to create a mood of encircling doubt and anxiety.  There is little catharsis to be had because the film offers no resolution and no escape route.  But experiencing the film and immersing oneself in its mood leaves you with a great deal of empathy and insight into the mind of its protagonist even if you feel deeply shaken immediately after watching it.  But the process of absorbing and interpreting it offers the viewer insights into your own trauma’s and how and why you may never be able to escape them.  Enter The Void won’t help you escape your demons but it just might help you identify and understand them.

5/5 Stars

    Inception follows the attempts of Cobb (Leonardo Dicaprio) and his crew of mind hackers trying to plant an idea in a business tycoon’s head, in order to break up a business empire, and hopefully in the process, earn Cobb the ability to return home after years in exile.

    There are many, many layers of dream within dream in Inception and already a lot of interesting theories are sprouting up online debating whether everything in the film is a dream, who at which point is actually doing the dreaming and how to resolve some of the more nagging plot-holes.

    Though undoubtedly smarter than your average blockbuster (does that really mean much these days?)  Inception dangles the tantalizing potential of exploring in depth both visually and psychologically the subconscious and the layers of psyche but ultimately rejects these ideas in favour of action set-pieces.

    It feels as though inclusion of multiple dream layers is only there to create the illusion of depth. The cinematic language stays the same at each dream level, as do the characters.  There is no change of mood or tone as we delve deeper into the dark reaches of the psyche.

    Despite this the film holds together (at least on the first viewing) and does offer some interesting food for thought on the nature of shared/collective dreams and acts as a meta-commentary on the power of cinema to implant ideas in people.

    Any one who has seen a David Lynch film knows that the potential for applying the visual and spatial logic of dreams to cinema can yield baffling, terrifying and rewarding results, but Christopher Nolan seems to have a fairly odd idea of how dreams look and feel.

    It might just be me but my dreams don’t consist of minimalist furniture, five star hotels and rain lashed car chases.  They also don’t follow the causal temporal logic of the real world and the details tend to be much murkier.  Films like Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind and Paprika have both taken much more interesting looks into the nature of dreams and memory, mainly by making dreams terrifying and revealing rather than elaborate playgrounds.

    Regardless of the films intellectual merits, which could be debated ad-infinitum; visually, Inception is far and away the best film so far this year.  The effects are done mainly in-camera and are nothing short of breathtaking.  The early scenes where we follow Ariadne (Ellen Page) being taught how to create dreams and the later fight scenes in the Hotel are master class set-pieces and demand to be seen on the biggest screen possible.

4/5 Stars

Banksy’s debut film, Exit Through The Gift Shop, like most of his graffiti and art-pranks, is designed to reveal the basic vacuity of modern art and the absurdity of artistic institutions.

    Near the start Banksy states that the film was initially going to be by Thierry Guetta and about himself, but it ended up being the other way round.  Judging by Guetta’s disastrous initial foray into documentary making and his on screen charisma, things definitely worked out best this way round.

    Working under the pseudonym Mr. Brainwash, Guetta pulled of probably the greatest non-Damien Hirst related scam the art world has ever seen.  Through plagiarism, meaningless juxtapositions of icons, sloganeering and hype, Mr. Brainwash managed to sell over a million dollars worth of his art in a week.  Though the film tries to keep it ambiguous as to whether he intended to scam people or actually took his art very seriously, our introduction to Guetta at the start of the film as a scheister who sells second hand clothes as “designer” pieces at massively inflated prices to idiot fashionistas makes his later “artistic” intentions pretty clear.

    One of the funniest parts of the film is listening to LA’s art community pontificating about the quality of Mr. Brainwashes’ art, apparently ignoring not only the blatant lack of merit but also the irony in thoughtlessly buying into the idea of someone called Mr. Brainwash being an artist before seeing his art.  As the film makes clear though, the most important point is not whether or not his paintings were good or bad, it’s that they sold, a lot, and by the end of his exhibition they had become for better or worse (mainly worse) part of the art establishment. 

    The film itself is witty, irreverent and all the other adjectives that spring to mind when someone says the word Banksy. Exit is enjoyable regardless of how little or much you know about street art or Banksy and runs along at a breathless pace, has plenty of humour and some decent art.  The main attraction of the film though is Guetta, who is a fascinating subject and is always engaging, with his psychedelic broken English non-sequiters being particularly hilarious. 

    Exit is also a great document of an art scene starting half as a joke, then getting progressively more labored and pretentious until ultimately it crosses over into the mainstream as a parody of itself, loosing all meaning in the process.  Street art is meant to be exactly that, on the street, and while it certainly started that way and made cities all over the world slightly less drab places to live in, the scene gradually made its way into the public conscious, and now for better or worse any idiot can buy a can of spray paint and consider themselves an artiste. 

    The main point of the film by the end seems to be that, Banksy doesn’t make art, and neither does anyone else.  That is until someone hangs their work in a gallery, or puts in on a movie screen.  Ooops.  Or was I meant to think that?  Or maybe that? Or this?  Ah who cares, the film was funny, go see it. 

4/5 Stars

Michael Moore’s latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story has been met with a lot of cynical and dismissive criticism.  The criticism mainly being that; Moore is exploitative, that the film is also a capitalist product and that it is actually a pacifying love letter to capitalism rather than a vitriolic debunking.  While these are to an extent fair complaints, they are not reasons to dismiss the film outright, especially when a lot of Capitalism is very enlightening.

   The most disturbing example of American capitalism gone too far is the revelation that some companies take out secret life insurance policies on their employees, so that they can remain profitable in death.  Moore goes on to show that the families of the deceased receive none of the payout and that in some cases shareholders actually complain that not enough employees are dying.  That this policy is given the disturbingly sneering title of “Dead Peasant Policy” really drives home the extent to which wealth gaps in America have twisted the perspective of the wealthy elite.

    You may have noticed that up to this point, I have been referring to the film as a depiction of ‘American Capitalism’.  This is because, despite the implied breadth in the title, the film focuses solely on American capitalism, and surprisingly doesn’t offer any comparison to European forms.  I’m not sure if this is designed to hide the fact that capitalism can work in a more regulated form from American audiences, or if it is simply meant to imply that capitalism countries works.  Which you believe depends on whether or not you think the purpose behind the film is to instigate a change in the system or demand a new one. 

    It becomes clear from the film that Americans have a highly idiosyncratic view of what capitalism means, and that they have a rabid aversion to anything remotely socialist.  Though touched upon, the ironic absurdity that the people who complain the most about America becoming a socialist nation, are actually the ones who would benefit most from any so called ‘socialist’ policies, is not explored as fully as it should be.  Why Americans remain so determinedly opposed to public run services is suggested as being due to anti-soviet propaganda having a deep hold on the American psyche, but it I imagine there must be more to it than that.  The extent to which Americans fear public run services makes it all the more surprising when watching the film that American fire and police departments are not run by private businesses, when everything else, including parts of the justice system, are.

    One glaring fault in the film is that it is not aimed at people who might disagree with it.  It mainly serves to satisfy smug left-wingers who will tut-tut knowingly at the ignorance of their countrymen.  A film like this can only really be useful if it is designed precisely to convince people who will go into the film disagreeing with it. Instead, it seems designed to satisfy people who are already sympathetic to its ideology that some form of public awareness is growing, and that they can sit back and let the necessary changes happen. 

    Towards the end, Capitalism takes on a more optimistic tone, showing that communal public action can change things and America need not be beholden to the financial elite.  The reminder that the top 1% of rich people in America have more money than the bottom 95% combined is nicely balanced by the idea that that the bottom 95% hold the majority of the voting power, meaning if they want to, Americans can force the financial institutions to become fairer and less driven by greed. 

    Another Idea the film touches on that I found especially interesting, is that the richest 1% have a vested interest in keeping alive the myth that any American can become rich with enough hard work.  Capitalism reveals that the destruction of unions, workers rights and fair wages mean that a large portion of the country remain, and will always remain, wage slaves.  As long as educational and financial institutions remain driven by profit rather than public welfare those at the bottom face impossible odds of becoming in anyway successful, especially in a climate where Banks can freely ruin millions of lives by selling unregulated toxic mortgages.

    Capitalism has Moore’s usual stunts and personal story segments, but I found that in this film, they were actually the strongest rather than the weakest sections.  They simply but effectively drive home the humiliation and betrayal a lot of people feel towards a system they were told was the greatest in the world.  While Moore trying to perform a citizens arrest on the CEOs of banks is a but juvenile, it does a great job of showing how the elite are protected by a top down ideology where wage slave cops and security guards will protect them when they have no real reason to, and in fact can only stand to gain from letting someone like Moore in the building.  Capitalism has several examples of this; house repossessers and security guards that do not question the motives of the people paying them, or the ethical lapses that their jobs entail. 

    Possibly the films best scene shows how people can circumvent this.  A family who have been kicked out of their house decide to by-pass they law and reclaim it by squatting in their former home.  They rally the support of their friends and neighbors who help them move back in and stop the repo-men.  When the repo-men justify their actions by saying “I’m just doing my job”, one crowd member reminds him that “he has a choice”, that he does not have to be complicit with a system he finds unethical.  The man eventually agrees and allows the people to take their house back.

    Scenes of people banding together to fight those sorts of injustices are the standout moments in Capitalism, they show that there is hope, and that people working together can make changes simply by choosing not to participate in a system they consider to be immoral.  The optimism in these scenes though is slightly tainted by the elephant in the room.  The sanctity of American democracy is never challenged.  The extent to which the successful grassroots political action in the film can be scaled up nationwide has arguably been proved somewhat false by Moore’s previous films as well as other sources

    I really recommend people see this film; it is great food for thought, and a great lesson in what not to let happen overseas.  Put aside any cynical responses to the film (e.g. It’s a capitalist product too, Moore is making money of these peoples tragedies, how is he any better than corporations and why should I believe him etc).  While these are reasonable points, they totally miss the bigger picture; that the benefits of people hearing what he has to say are more important than any technical or arguably ethical lapses in the film.  As you can probably tell form this review, there is a lot to talk about and some contradictions to mull over after seeing Capitalism.  I recommend seeing it with people who have opposing political views, even if you lose the argument after the film you get the pleasure of watching them squirm for a few hours (though expect to a fair bit of squirming yourself).

3/5 Stars

Micmacs, Jean-Pierre Jeunet latest film, is another brilliantly surreal and idiosyncratic work in the vein of his previous films Delicatessen and Amelie.  The film follows a group of outcasts and oddballs that band together in a scrapyard to get revenge on two arms dealers, who left their newest member, Bazille (Danny Boon), with a bullet lodged in his head and a deceased father.  They come up with some brilliant and hilarious ways to play the two arms dealers against each other,  by making them think that the other is going to greater and greater lengths to sabotage the others business.

    The film is shot is Jeunet’s usual colour enriched style that gives the film a slightly oversaturated and whimsical feel.  The humour is fairly dry throughout and often relies on sight gags that not everyone will find particularly funny.  A lot of the humour also comes from puns and wordplay that don’t translate well and seem to be let down by inaccurate subtitling form time to time.  One character who especially suffers from this is Remington, who seems only able to speak in turns of phrase, spouting one after the other to get across what he means.  The translation makes him seem more like a hack writer whereas in French he is more witty and verbose.

    The cast are all uniformly suburb and fans of Amelie and Delicatessen will recognize a few of Jeunet’s usual cast.  At one point Jeunet even references himself, as Bazil drops a microphone down a chimney to eavesdrop on an arms dealer, he drops it in the wrong one and hears two people playing violin and saw, as seen in Delicatessen.

    It is hard for me to find fault with the film, especially as it’s has style of humour that I love. The film is superbly shot, directed, acted, and contains a huge wealth of brilliant set pieces and surreal visual asides.  However people who don’t really get that style of humour probably will find fairly little to enjoy.

    Despite the films subject matter being revenge and to a large extent the indifference of arms dealers with regards to the people that are on the receiving end of their products, the film doesn’t aim to paint them as two-dimensional characters but rather similarly eccentric people to the ones in the micmacs group. 

    There is also a refreshing lack of political comment on the ethics etc of arms dealers; they are played purely as villains in a personal rather than an ethical sense.  Though the film is billed as a satire, it is one in a fairly broad sense and the satirical elements don’t always translate very well. 

   Fans of Jeunet and French films in generally will immediately warm to film and love the humour, but anyone expecting a more mainstream affair in the vein of Amelie or the darker cult side of Jeunet may end up slightly confused as to the films intentions and how they are supposed to respond.

4/5 Stars