Bourne To Run

Matt Damon as Jason Bourne is back at it--which is to say he doesn’t know who he is and where he’s going. Alzheimer’s? No. He’s a CIA killing machine turned amnesiac and he’s looking for answers.

The Bourne Ultimatum is the third film in the series (following The Bourne Identity, 2002 and The Bourne Supremacy, 2004). It has the distinctive look and feel of its predecessors (cool color palette, quick cuts, and jumpy handheld camera work) and, if possible, an even more breathless pace. And don’t worry if you’re coming to the trilogy late; a few flashbacks detail critical info from previous episodes. Perhaps more amazing than Bourne’s assassin’s repertoire is how little we need to know from the previous films to understand this one. (Damon joked in a recent interview that the next installment will be called The Bourne Redundancy.)

This time around Bourne gets mixed up with a British journalist who has information from a top CIA official that could explain who he is and where he came from. London leads to Madrid to Tangiers to Manhattan. But the plot is just a means to an end--the fuse to ignite Bourne’s fission reaction. “Action” or “perpetual motion” in a Bourne film is an understatement.

The politics of the film (and its director, United 93's Paul Greengrass) are as thin as its characters. Drunk on its own power from The Patriot Act, Echelon, and Rendition, the CIA is depicted as a massive, bureaucratic, omnipotent, and spiritually bankrupt vipers’ nest struggling to neutralize the renegade Bourne instead of chasing the real baddies. CIA honchos order murders like the rest of us order White Castle but without any of the moral regret or gastrointestinal distress. “We’re the sharp end of the stick now. No more waiting for politicians to give us the okay to pull the trigger while the bad guys get away,” says CIA Deputy Director Noah Vosen (David Strathairn), or something like that. He also gets many lines where he barks out orders to CIA underlings that always end in the word people. As in, “Let’s get this done yesterday, people!” It’s how we know he’s in charge.

The man on the run story is as old as Odysseus. Yet what the Bourne trilogy does so well is documentary-style violence that’s claustrophobic, exciting, never gratuitous, and surreptitiously cinematic. The car chase scenes in Manhattan are so tightly shot that you feel you’re in the car with Bourne spinning out of control, and yet so expansive you never doubt that you’re watching this deadly action unfold in Tudor City.

Does Bourne learn who he is? Does he defeat the CIA? Does he fall in love and live happily ever after with the elusive Nicky Parsons (Julia Styles)? Let’s hope not. A world where Jason Bourne has no reason to run is a tedious place populated by Adam Sandler comedies and Chris Tucker/Jackie Chan buddy flicks. Run, Jason! Run as if our film-going lives depended on it. Because they do.

The Future of Martin Scorsese

I confess that I'm a Netflix junkie. Less and less I enjoy the theater--the people talking to the screen, the people talking to each other, the movie that doesn't pause when I need to go to the restroom. Soda, at my apartment, has never risen to movie theater/Yankee Stadium prices and no one crossing his or her legs has ever kicked the back of my sofa. The theater has always been a paradox: a private viewing experience in the company of others. I understand the power of being in a darkened room full of people laughing at the same joke you're laughing at. It's reassuring. Fun, even. All these strangers seeing what you're seeing, hearing what you're hearing, reacting the way you're reacting. Yet less and less I enjoy the theater. If we can send an 'Army of One' to Iraq, perhaps I am a 'Theater of One.' It takes a village, after all...

And so my latest Netflix experience in the privacy of my own living room was Sang-soo Hong's Woman Is the Future of Man, a South Korean film from 2004. It's funny to see Martin Scorsese introducing this film on the DVD--a director whose last project, the Oscar-winning The Departed, was a bloated rip-off of Infernal Affairs, a superior Hong Kong crime drama. His films couldn't be more different from Hong's. But if Marty likes it...

Woman Is the Future of Man is the story of three 30-something acquaintances (two men and a woman) who at one point were friends and lovers but now, in the words of Borat, not so much. The film plays out with almost no cinematic interference. The camera is often stationary and people enter and exit these long, still shots with saint-like patience. It's so effective that at one point, early in the film, a rare, slow camera pan to the right is enough to induce vertigo.

In this meticulous character study we learn of the men's callowness and the redemptive, nurturing power of the woman who accepts them for what they are while never falling completely victim to their charms--or lack thereof. However, despite the lingering gaze of the camera these characters aren't nuanced, they're types. We're allowed to glimpse them as we pass by but our emotional engagement with them is appropriately shallow. Despite their chatter and frank sexual encounters they don't connect with each other--so why should we form any lasting attachment? That unsatisfying taste at the film's end is as cultivated and appropriate as it is unfortunate. Who was it that said we don't grow up, we just grow older?

The film's title, whether it's intended to be humorous or profound, is essentially meaningless. The men in this story are so insubstantial that for the perpetuation of the human species--let's hope our eggs are in the women's basket.

The Season of Our Discontent

The last two films I've seen are Half Nelson and Borat. Both worth mentioning and maybe I will--but for the moment the final episode of The Sopranos is the 800 lb. gabagool in the room.

My first reaction was that I didn't like the ending at all, but I respected it. After 24 hours and a second viewing I like it more and more. Here's why:

The general plot is pretty simple: With the back door help of the New Jersey FBI, Tony wins the war with the New York family and, in a classic scene, Phil Leotardo's head is squashed by his own SUV. On a typically cynical note, A.J.'s global angst is cured by a new girlfriend, a new job at a film production company, and a new BMW whose 23 mpg highway, he feels, is helping to ameliorate America's dependence on foreign oil. (So much for joining the Army and saving the world from Afghanistan). In the last scene the family gathers in a local diner, hearkening back to the final episode of the first season. A.J. even alludes to Tony's words of wisdom those many years ago that have become a refrain for the last two seasons: 'Cherish the good times.'

However, this isn't the first season. We’ve all come too far and there isn’t going to be a next time. The show's creator, David Chase, reportedly agonized over the music for each episode and so it’s fitting that Tony flips the carousel of a table jukebox for the song to end it all. As, one by one, the family gathers in the booth for dinner, the camera takes note of several other patrons--most notably a middle-aged man who enters and takes a stool at the counter. He may (or may not) seem to have a special interest in Tony. It's impossible to say. Tony settles on Journey's Don't Stop Believin' and the next few moments are a brilliant mixture of banality and tension. Tony says that there’s a strong chance he's about to be indicted for illegal gun possession; Carmella states that Meadow’s changing her preferred method of birth control, and A.J. sidles up to add that he’s already dissatisfied with his new job.

Then as Meadow rushes in after a difficult parallel park and the suspicious man at the counter heads off to the restroom and two African-American men enter the diner, the camera catches Tony looking up from his menu quickly--not in fear or surprise or in any easily discernible emotion. He just looks up and then--NOTHING. Cut to 4-5 seconds of black before the credits scroll silently across the screen. And that's it. It's like we got whacked.

Frustrating, but that's the idea. Chase is too good to give a comfortable ending that satisfies expectations and offers the consolation of a neatly ordered structure. Instead we get ambiguity, interruption, and massive uncertainty. It's been the world of the show for the last eight years and it's the world we live in every day.

Think back to the last episode of Seinfeld. There was a sitcom that proudly touted itself as a show about nothing: "No hugging, no learning," was the writers' mantra. And America ate it with a big spoon. Then, in the finale, the lead characters were placed on trial for failure to comply with a good Samaritan law, and suddenly it was a show about something: a really lame morality tale where minor characters of seasons past returned to accuse Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer of everything from gross insensitivity to dangling a marble rye from the window of an Upper East Side brownstone. It was the worst creative decision since McLean Stevenson left M*A*S*H to do Hello, Larry.

I’m glad Chase didn’t pander or try to imply that any kind of harmony governs his universe. That awkward, sudden cut to black is an ending that’s not an ending. It denies even the solace of a violent death that so many had predicted for Tony. Instead, it implies that the Sopranos will live on in the same territory we all do--in that strange mixture of daily tedium, anxiety, and joy where uncertainties abound. Will Silvio live? Who will become the next New York don? Will Tony go to jail or even make it out of that diner alive? If death (or in Philip Larkin's nihilistic phrase, "endless extinction") is the only real closure, no closure may be the most hopeful gesture of all.

And after the black—no music whatsoever. Just the credits, a list of who’s accountable. The rest is silence.

Our Final Award...

So Close Yet So Far

Credits: Jessica R., Alice K., Liz K., and Ji Y-S.

Perhaps more than any other production in our festival, the makers of this film recognized the limitations of the project (handheld cameras, the difficulty of capturing sound, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to (Ignore that last, pretentious reference to Hamlet)) and found a way to transcend them. It's also the only film in which the creators do not appear. So Close Yet So Far is a Boy Meets Girl, Girl Falls in Love with Boy, Boy Ignores Girl, Boy Fails a Math Test and Gets Tutored By Girl, Boy Falls in Love with Girl kind of story.

HIGHS: The film relies completely on visuals and its wonderful soundtrack to carry the story: there's no dialogue whatsoever and yet it works brilliantly; the Boy (Jeremiah) and Girl (Joanne) have excellent camera presence; the strangely disturbing yet effective transition from the inside of Joanne's head to what's "on her mind": Jeremiah; no irony, no sarcasm, just some refreshing good old-fashioned sweetness; the allusion to Chungking Express where Joanne dances outside Jeremiah's locker to California Dreamin'.

LOWS: Some rough music edits, but still an impressive production for a group with almost no iMovie editing experience when the project began! And where was Ji during the editing process?

THE ENVELOPE PLEASE: this film gets the Baby Daz for best use of music to set the mood and best use of Jeremiah (I don't know what that means).

Our Next Film Is...

Moonshine
Red Skyline Productions

CAST: Thomas, Rebecca, and Sara

Perhaps the only film in our festival to play it straight--and 'right down the line,' if you know what I mean. Moonshine is no moonlight serenade; this is one cynical little film! Prescott (Thomas) is an 'absurd man' on whom nothing registers--not school, not lunch, not even his annoying friend Luna (Rebecca) who pesters him repeatedly about all things social and academic. By the film's end it's clear that Luna has murdered someone and left the body for Prescott to find and take the blame.

HIGHS: Night-vision shooting on school grounds; tracking shot of school hallway cieling as the credits roll and the camera tilts down to follow Thomas walking--very smooth!; match cut of Thomas' pen transitioning to a fork at lunchtime; anomie aplenty as Thomas eats popcorn with a fork; Rebecca's performance as the wonderfully irritating Luna (nice name, btw); Sara's gorgeous cinematography both day and night.

LOWS: None really, but a few Loose Plot Threads--When Luna sends Prescott to her car, why does he think he's going there? She just asks him to go to her car and throws him the keys. It's clearly part of her scheme to frame him for the murder, but what's at the car for him? And who died and why? Luna is some femme fatale!

THE ENVELOPE PLEASE: This film gets the Baby Daz for originality--for only allowing the chuckles to be dark ones--and for showing what we always suspected: that Wing Kay, at the very least, has a tobacco problem.

The Baby Daz Goes to...

Well, the reviews go on. I’m watching each film again and loving every minute of it. Almost.

Scott
Mooing Wolf Productions

CAST: Jonah (“Jo-Moo”), Scott, Treyton, Eric, Doug (“Frizzbee”)

Where, oh where does Scott go when he should be tracing the roots of Anglo-Saxon grammar in Dr. Manuel’s English 12 AP class? That’s the question this mockumentary feigns to answer. Strangely enough, Scott finds a portal in a school closet that transports him through time and space to, where else, the humble abode of GNSH alumnus Jon Kantrowitz. Why? Don’t ask. This excision of motive leads to a strategic narrative opacity that forces the audience to endlessly debate this terrifying ripple in the space-time continuum. Fortunately, after much boredom (Scott’s, not ours), he returns to school and finds a forgiving Dr. Manuel willing to ignore the quiz Scott missed today. Add a star if you hang out with Jon.

HIGHS: Jonah’s brilliant selection of music; Scott’s very naturalistic acting; the camera work throughout of Doug, Eric, and Treyton (esp. the library scene when Scott finds the clue that leads him to the portal and then, later, enters that portal); the improvised dialogue in the library; did I mention the music selected by Jonah?; excellent “steadicam” shot of Scott heading for room 432; cameo by John S. (“Intel Chip”) as the physicist who explains the whole kooky anomaly; Dr, Manuel who, it grieves me to say, is a better actor than me—I mean “I.”

LOWS: as the credits say: “Writers?”; a reliance on knowing Jon to bring home the comedy bacon.

THE ENVELOPE PLEASE: This film takes the Baby Daz for best eclectic soundtrack and best friend willing to let you make fun of his hair.

Art of Film - FINAL ANALYSIS

I thought I would do a few entries to look back at everyone's final projects. I'm instituting a new award too; so long Oscar. Hello, Baby Daz:

La Douche de L’espirit (U.S. title: La Douche de L’espirit)
D- Productions (pronounced “dee-MIE-nus”)

CAST: Max, Craig, Ben B., Ben W., Brandon, Josh

This is the story of a TV anchorman (Craig) who loses his job to a colleague (Ben B.) because studio executives (Brandon & Ben W.) are delighted with the latter’s coverage of a school scandal. But no one seems to be too concerned with plot, which is okay, because Josh has Final Cut Pro and he knows how to use it.

HIGHS: Max's appearance as Christ to the down-and-out Craig; Halo 2 SFX in the final revenge scene; Brandon’s deadpan performance of a TV studio exec.; climactic scenes filmed on location in Great Neck and in the rain!; Craig stopping an oncoming car with a wave of his hand as he runs past it; Ben W.’s expert camera work; Ben B.’s interview of the cheating scandal's “Deep Throat.”

LOWS: Bathroom scenes; a few inaudible moments; poor kid whom Craig yells at in the hallway probably still in shock.

THE ENVELOPE PLEASE: This film takes the Baby Daz for best editing and best impersonation of the Messiah.