Friday, March 29, 2013

The Rite of Spring Breakers

First of all, let me apologise for the lack of updates here. Alas, as most of you would probably be aware I have recently made the move overseas so, naturally, I have been a bit busy. I've been fortunate enough to catch a few films in the brief time that I'm here and one of them - the very first, actually - was Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers, which has crashed the multiplex and turned normally intelligent people into blabbers who can't seem to make heads or tails of the whole thing.

 I, however, thought it was great.

A richly textured mood piece of a film that takes its position early and run with it for another 94 minutes, most of which are as hypnotically captivating as one could realistically hope for in a film about this American tradition known as "Spring Break". Seen as a rite of passage for any good looking young American - no seriously, apart from the older drug dealers, everybody in this Florida enclave is apparently really good looking in that indistinguishable way - the film dives headfirst into the story of four particular young women who end up falling down a wormhole of excess and debauchery, much of which is quite clearly illegal. Not that they care.

 Much has been made of the film's casting, which sees three of four girls portrayed by actors known more for wholesome family entertainment than risque, breast-baring arthouse fare. What they were previously known is, I feel, besides the point. They do, however, make for some spot on casting, and alongside James Franco as a drug-dealing skeeze-ball that hands these women a very literal get-out-of-jail-free card, makes for surely one of the most perfectly cast films that we'll get in 2013. While Franco and an emotional Selena Gomez make for the best performances in a film that's filled with all sorts of weird faces that is so typical for a Korine film, it's the technical aspects that turn Spring Breakers into a fluid trip down the rabbit hole.

BenoƮt Debie's neon-lit cinematography gives the film a bright eyed hue that recalls Miami Vice if focused on the villains in a modern day Spring Break resort. The exotic colours of Heidi Bivens' costume design - all bikinis and Ed Hardy-style brand names - are exquisitely lit and make for a particularly eye-popping final scene. Douglas Crise has been given the responsibility of editing Korine's screenplay into the film that it is and he does a particularly stunning job of it. It's easy to see this going completely wrong - hell, many think it did - with random, overlapping, repetitious, and generally untraditional cuts used throughout. However, the final product is one of an almost swirling grandiosity that made for thrilling hypnosis. One scene in particular set to the tune of Britney Spears' "Every Time" has to be seen to be believed, with its juxtaposition of bikini-clad spring breakers with their phallic guns and hot pink balaclavas.



 Naturally, some people don't see it that way. This article in The Guardian by Heather Long is such a case. Yet again we have people unable to distinguish between a film showing a particularly act and endorsing it. Long's argument that Korine's film endorses "rape culture" and the idea that for young women to have the "time of their life" they must resort to scandalous and scantily-clad behaviour is both misguided and ridiculous. I can't imagine how many people could view Spring Breakers and come out thinking it endorses anything other than the unironic appreciation of Britney Spears. And it certainly doesn't "endorse" anything like rape culture. In fact, not only does the film not feature rape of any kind (certainly none that I remember, but maybe I was transfixed and have forgotten), but the one scene that threatens to do so ends with a "no" (albeit a bare-breasted no.) The film very clearly paints the paths of these girls as dangerous and worrisome, with their actions bringing them more and more pain. So much pain that this so-called "time of their life" will forever be marred by the results they crashed head-first into. Sigh.

 Speaking of rites of passage though, I did enjoy my first ever American cinema experience and "experience" is certainly a perfect word for it. Wow. Not only did a woman bring her (at least I hope it was hers) newborn baby to the cinema and let it crawl around on the ground (!!!), but two girls got up and danced during the Skrillex-soundtracked opening scene. Of course people got up and left and came back at a snail's pace, which I don't quite understand unless you're truly hating the film, which one man in particular made well known. Throughout the final ten minutes of the film one man standing in the theatre entry corridor yelled out "Spring Breakers is a lie!" repeatedly. Maybe it was his ode to the film's own use of repetitious dialogue, but it was nevertheless as bothersome as it was hilarious. Hey, at least it makes a great anecdote.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Jackie Brown

Jackie Brown is my favourite Quentin Tarantino film. Anybody who's listened to me yammer on about it would be aware, and it ranks alongside Death Proof as the most rewatched of Tarantino's films by me. I consider it a staggering achievement in the way that many look at Pulp Fiction or the recent Django Unchained. Whilst those two are indeed varying degrees of quality (Pulp Fiction >> Django Unchained, however, obviously), neither can surpass the pop connoisseur's third film in my eyes. From a visual stand point - the entire purpose of Nathaniel Rogers' "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" feature - it certainly lacks the vivid cinematic brush strokes of Tarantino's collaborations with Robert Richardson (Inglourious Basterds and the aforementioned Django Unchained), and yet there's probably quite a lot going on that, upon initial inspection, may be missed.

Jackie Brown, more so than any other of Tarantino's films, has a certain workmanlike quality to its visuals and yet also feels imbued with a stylish swagger. Thanks to cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, this obviously reflects the character at the heart of Jackie Brown - regular, but projecting an everyday class. The film is full of bold uses of colour amongst drab surroundings right from the very get go as Pam Grier's title character emerges on an airport conveyerbelt against a wall of various hues of blues, greens, and browns as the bright electric blue uniform pops. Blue and brown, it would seem, are recurring colours in the film. From the Ordell Robbie's blue flat cap and pants ensemble, the blue hum of a Los Angeles apartment complex, to the drab beige and brown walls of Max Cherry's bail bonds office, and the coffee-coloured textures of Grier and Jackson themselves. Jackie's blue stewardess uniform is surely as vivid a costume as The Bride's yellow motorcycle suit and that fabulous opening tracking shot is a beautiful inroads into this previously unknown character as she weaves her way through an airport lounge. At first calm and a picture of royal beauty, she becomes flushed and frenzied as the serene colours of her backdrop begin to blur into one another and give way to the hustle and bustle of the world around her/us.


This evolution is repeated once more in the film's standout set piece. A rivetting twist on a traditional heist sequence, the drop off department store scene is a deliciously handled moment that tells the same incident from multiple points of view. A stunning example of editing and music that merge to craft a tense, funny, almost cathartic moment for an audience. From Jackie's initial POV - wherein the "boo yah!" moment occurs, forever destined to be awesome - there lies a long take that follows Grier as Brown as she makes her way out of the department store she was to make the money drop and tries to find the FBI agents trailing her. As the camera watches Grier's every facial tick and flinch, it's hard to tell whether Brown is pretending to be worried and scared so as to make the FBI believe her story, or if she's genuinely worried about what's about to go down. A little from column a and a little from column b, perhaps.

This particular long take is my favourite "shot" of the movie, but the one spot I chose to screencap is, I think, so representative of the film as a whole. Pam Grier's face, etched in desperate verve, front and centre and the world whizzing by around her. She's just trying to make her way through the world "doing whatever [she] has to do to survive" (to quote the Bobby Womack song from the opening credits). The end of Jackie Brown is ambiguous if you choose to think of it that way. She sails off into the sunset and is happily ever after, or Jackie just continues to struggle as she attempts to be as classy as she can be even if the world around her is in chaos.