Terrence Malick and the Days of Heaven

There's something truly exciting about being a cinephile and getting the chance to see one of your all time favourite films on the big screen. This past week I not only saw Jackie Brown on the big screen, but also Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven. It's long been a mission of mine to see it in a cinema at the first opportunity, and the Malick retrospective at The Astor Theatre provided just that and, oh, what a glorious experience it was.

Days of Heaven was presented in a double feature with Malick's first film, Badlands. In some respects this 1973 feature starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek is Malick's most disciplined film; his most structured. Each of the two films are a scant 90 minutes - scant compared to his three subsequent films that have all been in excess of two hours - but it's Badlands that has the most traditional structure of all. Playing out like an art version of Bonnie & Clyde, it bears the unfortunate hallmarks of its low budget and debutant filmmaking talent, and yet is always a fascinating film in many respects.


It's a crucial film in the career of Malick for more reasons than it simply being his first. It shows the obvious beginnings of his obsession with narration, American history, and most importantly of all his desire to explore nature and the way people relate to it, particularly out of refuge or violence. Explored here by the way Sheen and Spacek's runaway lovers can't outrun the law even as the landscape gets farther and wider, but consider also the way nature is used as a destination for moneyless romantics to escape to in Days of Heaven; the way the blood of soldiers becomes a part of the Pacific locations used in The Thin Red Line; the way body and soul are crushed by British settlers in The New World, but are ultimately revived by a simple garden; the way he examines the bruised souls of The Tree of Life through their connection to nature.

It's also a telling reminder that Malick has always been a brash and thrilling filmmaker. Those who have only seen The Tree of Life may be surprised by the thrilling way he films a car chase sequence in Badlands like a lost reel from Vanishing Point (not to mention the gunfight sequences of The Thin Red Line). While it may lack the now commonplace dreamlike cinematography, it does have a wickedly sly sense of humour - love the early comment about Sheen looking "just like James Dean" and the payoff one-liner late in the final act - and a natural, effortless vibe to it that is in stark contrast to The Tree of Life, which felt like it was straining desperately to be Malick's personal statement on the meaning of life. Badlands simply is life. B+

Days of Heaven, however, is the more typical film we've come to expect from Malick. I maintain that this is the perfect convergence of everything Malick has tried to do in all of his other films. He is able to convey so much through his images that he doesn't need the bloated running time that I felt hampered The Tree of Life. Its imagery is simply astonishing with Oscar-winning cinematography by Néstor Almendros that I consider the greatest of all time. So too is the music by Ennio Morricone, whose beguiling combination of peculiar instruments - what sound like pipes, harpsichords, strings and piano - is integrated so perfectly into the sound design of chirping insects, gusty winds and shimmering wheat crops.


Watching Days of Heaven within such close proximity to Badlands, I couldn't help but notice the similarities and striking differences between the two. Why had I not noticed the glaringly obvious similarities within Badlands and the final act of Heaven? As Richard Gere, Brooke Adams and Linda Manz take to living as outlaws in nature after a silly, bravado-stroking act of violence, had I simply not wanted to notice? What was Malick trying to say by doing this, I wonder? Badlands has the most traditional plot of all of his movies, so was Malick trying to make a point that he wasn't going to play as nice in the future? Was this his way of retroactively changing a version Badlands that he wasn't happy with? Whatever the reason, it certainly worked and got enough people's attention.

Of the differences though, I found it particularly interesting in the way he portrayed women. Whereas Sissy Spacek was positively meek as a sparrow in Badlands, Brooke Adams has a strong presence, grounded firmly by her deep, throaty voice. Adams' performance is probably the film's finest - one I feel is routinely overshadowed by her most high profile co-stars Richard Gere in one of his gutsiest, Earthiest performances - as she feels most at ease with the locations and the least conscious of Malick's camera. When he catches one of her wide grins there is magic in the air, I swear.

Sometimes movies really are a different experience on the big screen. To have gone without seeing Days of Heaven at a cinema is to have not have experienced what cinema is all about. It magnified my emotions for this 1978 masterpiece to levels I didn't think possible. It is an epic film about boutique qualities (this and Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff would be an even more appropriate double feature in the future) and one that will forever move me in ways I can't possibly express. A+

Review: Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3
Dir. Lee Unkrich
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: G
Running Time: 103mins

In the 15 years since Pixar Studios presented Toy Story to audiences for the first time, cinema has changed. Computer-generated animation is no longer a novelty, it is fact of life. Animation is no longer a genre simply for young audiences and it is now given the respect that it deserves as an art form all of its own. With Toy Story 3 Pixar, animation and audiences come full circle, right back to where it all began and, quite frankly, it’s a wonderful feeling.

Read the rest at Trespass Mag

Toy Story 3 is out today. I'd like to stress that I did not cry during this movie. I am not an easy cryer at the movies, but at least Toy Story 3 earns the tears of anybody who does cry, unlike Up, which threw a bunch of manipulation at the audience in the first five minutes and just expected people to cry (they did, apparently - did they cry when they watch the news every night?) The scene where everyone seems to be welling up, well, I did get a big ol' lump in my throat and felt the tears coming on, but I didn't. Is there something wrong with me or is the issue with those who seem to cry at the drop of a hat?

Review: The Room

The Room
Dir. Tommy Wiseau
Year: 2003
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 99mins

Yesterday I had what I think I can say was the greatest cinematic experience of my life. Granted, I’ve only been alive for a quarter of a century and have made the cinema my second home for only half of that time, but last night was without a doubt a truly mind-blowing experience that I will not forget any time soon. I don’t think it’s making too much of a leap to say that Tommy Wiseau’s The Room is anything short of one of the very worst movies ever made in the history of cinema, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t make for one hell of a cinema going treat.

The Room follows the love triangle between three people who are also best friends and all live in the same apartment complex. It’s like Friends, but without the pretty hair and the sarcastic comebacks and “Smelly Cat”. Not to put too fine a point on it, but The Room is trash. Garbage, pure and simple. Horrendously written, acted even worse, shamelessly narcissistic and flat out ugly, and yet it is these very qualities that makes paying for a ticket and witnessing it all the more entertaining.


Last night I did indeed have the pleasure of attending a special advance preview screening – seven years after its release in the US I should add, which says a lot – of The Room before it begins an exclusive limited late-night run on Saturday nights throughout February at the Cinema Nova in Carlton. We had the added extra of having a Tommy Wiseau fan club in the audience, which certainly helped the crowd relax enough to openly mock this disastrous movie. I can’t speak for everyone, but the majority of the audience was certainly getting into the spirit of the event and only the dullest fuddy-duddy could sit there without laughing at the events transpiring on screen.

All part of the “event” of seeing The Room on the big screen was there. Partaking in cult rituals such as throwing spoons at the screen whenever a piece of spoon-related artwork appears, yelling “CANCER!” whenever the cancer-stricken (yet only once mentioned and in a hilarious nonchalant manner) mother appears on screen, chanting during panning shots of the Golden Gate Bridge and cheering when it reaches the other end (or expressing vocal disappointment when it does not), openly expressing one’s outright disgust at the many sex scenes, openly pointing out continuity flaws (a character is played by two completely different actors), bizarre lapses in logic (the engaged lead character never say the word “fiancé”, only “future wife” or “future husband”!?), strange nonsequitors (the aforementioned cancer, or the drug debt that the mildly-retarded Denny character finds himself in) or just howling with laughter at the sheer badness of the movie’s structure, special effects and original songs.


By the end of the 100 minutes that The Room somehow takes to tell its ridiculous story my voice was hoarse, tears had formed in my eyes many times and I had run out of plastic spoons less than half of the way through. John "Outland Institute" Richard and I had a riot. Openly bantering between one another, normally scornful, but here it just adds to the experience. Wanting to hear what other people are saying is part of the fun, realising that you noticed the same strange quirk as others - what was with all those GIANT candles?

The Room is not a movie you can sit down and watch by yourself on DVD. If you don't have the chance to witness it in all of its glory on a cinema screen then gather some friends, pop open a few (or ten) beers and let the experience be had. I can only hope that someday I get to watch movies like Showgirls or Jack Frost on the big screen with an equally appreciative audience. Nothing can quite replicate the experience of The Room, it's truly one-of-a-kind. As a film? F! As a cinema-going experience? A+

I would just like to add that The Room is a perfect example of my argument that you can't create a cult movie. A cult movie needs to be organic and grow out of a filmmaker legitimately thinking they are making a good movie. The Room didn't start out as a cinematic punching bag, but that's how it ended up. However, I can guarantee that there was even the slightest hint of Wiseau or his cast being in on the joke that it wouldn't be funny.

MIFF 2009 Review: Antichrist

Antichrist
Dir. Lars Von Trier
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: R18+
Running Time: 109mins

I actually think seeing Lars Von Trier's latest film deep in the midst of a film festival is the best possible thing. Casually going to the cinema and seeing it could very easily give the impression that Antichrist is a pretentious horror wank. It's easy to dismiss it as pretentious what with it's obsessions with things like "gynocide" and clitoral mutilation, however, having sat through many other films over the two weeks of the Melbourne International Film Festival I can most certainly assure you that Antichrist is not pretentious. You want pretentious? How about Treeless Mountain, a movie so minimalist that even the long passages of silence think they're better than you. Or what about The White Ribbon (a film I more or less liked), which doesn't even have an ending! Now that is pretentious.

Antichrist is a relentlessly unsettling movie and acts as a sort of cleanser for Von Trier who had waffled aimlessly around since the masterpiece of Dogville. Trite like Manderlay and the unnecessary, but slightly entertaining, The Boss of it All. I am quite certain that Von Trier believes his own statements that he is the greatest filmmaker of all time, and while I can't quite agree with him (yet), I do think he is one of the most important and he continues to be one of the only directors brave enough to make a movie as completely and utterly insane and deranged like Antichrist.


Divided into four "chapters" plus a prologue and an epilogue, the movie opens with the - if you can call it such - elegantly filmed death of a baby that belongs to a mid-tryst Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe. It is then decided that a trip to the couple's holiday house in the woods is in order for Gainsbourg's "Her" to reconcile herself with the feelings of hopelessness. It is here that the film descends into the infamous shenanigans that have given the film a reputation as one of the most controversial of all time. Of course, people will go on about the film's depiction of violence - it's far from the goriest film you'll ever see - and Von Trier will be labelled a misogynist, but what I saw was such impressive craft.

What actually struck me quite early on, in the hospital scenes precisely, was the writing. Such cutting and icy dialogue spewing forth out of Dafoe and Gainsbourg and delivered so sharply. Gainsbourg is very impressive here and probably deserved her Cannes award for Best Actress, but I can't express enough how much Dafoe matches her scene for scene. He really impressed me here. Visually the film is a stunner, too, with cinematography by recently Oscar-minted Anthony Dod Mantle. Equally impressive is the sound design, which could almost crush bones it is that intense. It shamelessly steals music cues from The Blair Witch Project, but the sense of ever-increasing doom that it creates is quite palpable.


I'm not sure what Von Trier could have done with this movie to avoid calls of misogyny. He got labelled as one when he attached a large wheel to Nicole Kidman in Dogville and he's still being called on when he does the same to Willem Dafoe. In this case the woman is the villain and not the victim and yet he's still sexist. Colour me confused, okay! Maybe if he wrote a scene in which Gainsbourg hilarious wore vibrating underwear?! Lars Von Trier is one of the only directors continuously making truly career-defining roles for women that I find it hard to consider him sexist. Bjork, Emily Watson, Nicole Kidman and now Charlotte Gainsbourg. What a wonderful list!

The movie's end credits are nothing more than the film's title crudely written in red text over an ugly green background, illustrated by Per Kirkeby, and yet at film's end a large number of crowd members remained. And at 1am too! Lars Von Trier is a master of manipulating his audience. There's something deliciously wicked about naming one of the chapters "PAIN: Chaos Reigns" in order to elicit a collective audience wince. I obviously can't say whether the audience liked it or not, but of all the films I saw at MIFF it was this that seemed to spark the most discussion. People wanted to turn to the person next to them afterward and ask "what was that?" I have to admire any film that can do that. That I think the film is quite good as well is a powerful statement and one that won't soon be leaving my mind. B+