This Week at The Hand Grenade’s Headquarters #18

The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass, 2004 / 2007)

If Identity was a clean, risk-free no brainer that delivered a satisfying thriller out of its very intriguing premise, Supremacy, under the hectic direction of Paul Greengrass, is riskier and more serious in many ways. Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) and Marie (Franka Potente), the protagonists of the franchise’s opening film, are in greater danger, and the twist (an exciting one) is that neither Bourne nor the American intelligence knows the full story due to a third element that disrupts the black-and-white confrontation between them. This third element, introduced very discreetly in the film, plays the role of an agent of chaos, arranging the facts so that there’s misinformation on both sides.

But while its shapeless form helps bringing the film many extra thrills that Identity couldn’t deliver, the film’s plot makes the double investigation so full of holes and so poorly understandable the action narrows down to a man who has to clean his name… for some reason. The shaky cam, which leads to an entirely different visual style for this Second Bourne, is more disorienting than visceral, and that makes the action much less satisfying. Still, the essence of what made the first Bourne a pleasing experience is still here: very well constructed characters, and a unique notion of the moral conundrums that spies and assassins must deal with when humanity gets in the way.

In Ultimatum, the story develops much more clearly, which helps the trilogy close in a satisfying note. Ultimatum is largely considered the franchise’s finest installment, and for good reasons: the action scenes are much more intense, there are more characters than ever, and some of the great scenes do have some continuity and spatial clarity. Still, there are some significant flaws in Ultimatum that I was able to see just as clearly, and if this sequel’s good moments are better, its bad moments are much worse. 

The premise is an ugly repetition: once again there’s a third element, once again it has roots within the CIA, and once again Bourne goes on a quest to find out who he is and who’s after him – the film even recycles Bourne’s uses of subway trains, crowded areas and household items to distract his enemies and create obstacles. The antagonists, who were very defined in Identity and partially obscure but omnipresent in Supremacy, are never convincing in Ultimatum, because very little of the dialogue rings true and whenever it does or doesn’t it’s filled with action movie clichés. Most importantly, the camerawork, which was already cranky in Supremacy, is even less coherent; the camera shakes, zooms, whips, tilts and does whatever it can to avoid any sense of inertia. Greengrass doesn’t even spare establishing shots, dialogue scenes and POV shots of people looking at documents.

Critics and scholars like David Bordwell and Jim Emerson have defended that Ultimatum pumps up the shaky cam style to the point of self-parody, that it calls too much attention to itself and that it obscures flaws in the film, from bad acting to plot holes. I believe that to be true: it worked in films like Captain Philips (also by Greengrass) and The Hurt Locker, but the sense of immediacy and lack of balance was more fitting to their stories (Philips takes place in a boat in the middle of the ocean, and Hurt Locker often deals with snipers and phone-activated bombs).

Blade Runner: The Theatrical Version (Ridley Scott, 1982)

Blade Runner, the classic science fiction tour de force that was widely underrated back in 1982, had its final and most magnificent polish in Ridley Scott’s Final Cut, thus becoming one of the great masterpieces of science fiction. Seeing its version as when it was first released, one can understand why it could’ve been so misjudged: the voice-over is basically all expository, telling in poorly executed narration what was already told with images; the ending is less satisfying and more sentimental; and this version overall lessens the power of the film’s psychedelic, neo-noirish vision of the future, and makes the story feel thinner than what it is. The fantastic thing about watching this imperfect version is that the film, as faulty as it is, is still one of the most fascinating movies ever made. The visuals are beautiful, the message is rich, the characters are unforgettable and the final monologue is still more human than anything else done by anyone else.

The Killings /Ubiytsy, There Will Be No Leave Today / Segodnya uvolneniya ne budet, and The Steamroller and The Violin / Katok i skripka (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1956, 1959 and 1961)

These three short films, although simple, are very significant for being the first films directed by Andrei Tarkovsky during his studies at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography. While these films lack the entrancing nature of Tarkovsky’s films, the long takes and the spiritual themes, they’re an interesting example of a great director who grew out of experimenting with film techniques and genres.

The Killers, co-directed by Aleksandr Gordon and Marika Beiku (two of Tarkovsky’s classmates at the Institute) is a tension-less crime drama about two young bandits who wait for a target at a local bar. It’s mostly made of static shots and by-the-numbers dialogue, but it manages to look very clean and explore its spaces with precision, generating various compositions in a single set.. There Will Be No Leave Today, also co-directed by Gordon, is a Soviet propaganda film about a group of soldiers trying to dispose unexploded bombs. Its story is even sparser that The Killer’s, but it succeeds it creating tension over the fact that they’re work is incredibly delicate. And finally, The Steamroller and Violin, Tarkovsky’s first color film, tells the story of a 7 year-old music student and a steamroller operator who become friends for a day. The film, Tarkovsky’s graduation project, is his most successful early effort, creating a sweet but unsentimental friendship between art and labor that embodies a vision of a new USSR.

Mother / Madeo (Bong Joon-ho, 2009)

It’s strange that while no Bong Joon-ho film makes my list of greats, Bong himself has gradually become one of my favorite directors, contemporary and overall. His films have a consistent and incredibly appealing cinematic power, and each of them is a work of art where everything works beautifully. No one makes blockbusters like he does them: equally clever and thrilling, hilarious and deeply moving. Besides, he fittingly blends elements that have often been left out of modern action films: the disorganization of urban life, the emergence of new problems to be solved, the blend between the city and the country. Unafraid to use long takes, ambiguous protagonists, dark humor and gorgeous landscapes, Bong has deeply cared about the parallels between his films and contemporary society.

Mother, a wrong man murder mystery and a one-woman show elevated by Kim Hye-ja, is another refreshing blockbuster in his filmography. It tells the story of a mother and her unconditioned loved for her son, who’s been accused of murdering a local student. Unlike most murder mysteries, often more linear than otherwise, the film boasts as much clues as red herrings, and the mother’s steps lead to progress and regress, and an ultimate discovery that enlightens the fact that the murder is never the main point of the story. Set in a small South Korean town, it feels like a parallel to Bong’s Memories of Murder, and it’s just as good.

Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916)

Far above the also revolutionary The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance is a glorious piece of filmmaking, if only for how influential it is. Like many of the silent era’s greatest films, it creates an opulent and bold visual work out of very simple stories, faulty but appealing, probably because of their unashamed naiveté. Griffith, in an equally unashamed attempt to make up for the despicable racism of Birth, creates a film colossus with monumental images that can hardly be measured. Famously supported by the allegations that Griffith shot it without a script, the film interweaves four stories of intolerance, or love’s struggle throughout the ages, three of them concerning religious intolerance, another group of three concerning the obsession with decency, and another group of three concerning romantic love itself.

There’s nothing really transcendent about these stories; it’s in the way Griffith sets them up, gives it monumental production values and interweaves them in a pre-Potemkin montage tour de force (which starts badly and evolves into sheer greatness) that it becomes magical and unparalleled. One personal comment: I watched most of it in silence, since some one its most accessible versions comes with a cringe-worthy, distracting soundtrack performed by the National Orchestra of Île-de-France, which I had to remove for my own good. Don’t watch Intolerance with this soundtrack, it will do no good to the film.

And this week’s choice for Shot of the Week? A no-brainer:

This Week at The Hand Grenade’s Headquarters #4

And so it goes again, with a lot of movies to watch and a lot to write about. This weeks had some pretty good movies to follow The Hand Grenade’s first full year in action, and so there were some much delayed classic viewings and some great discoveries of recent films and underseen jewels. It had birds. It had rats. It had bombs, Jewish nuns, coconuts and peaches. Here they go!

Memories of Murder / Salinui chueok (Bong Joon-ho, 2003)

It seems unfair to give such a privilege to a single director considering how many movies I watch (this is my third Bong Joon-ho film in a month, following his great thrills The Host and Snowpiercer) but Memories of Murder is yet another evidence of the mastery of this Korean director and another promising evidence that he’s getting better and better. Bong, with his delightfully clumsy character, strangely entrancing images, calculated long shots and intense sense of suspense and action, has created a body of work that transcends genre and manages to offer depth and entertainment at equal levels.

Memories of Murder tells the fictionalized version of the story of three South Korean detectives (including Bong favorite Song Kang-ho) and their painful investigation of the first serial murders in the country, which happened in the late 80’s and early 90’s and barely left any traces. As with Snowpiercer, the film seems to stand out much more in its depiction the human enigmas than in the story’s conceptualization, meaning here that this film is much more about the victims and the police officers than about the investigation and the mystery themselves, which is actually a great thing if you notice it and stick to it well enough.

Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2013)

One of those strange “Surprise of the Year” films that you can’t quite sum up in words but know that, in time, it’ll take full form in your mind. Ida, Pawel Pawlikowski’s cold road movie, places its character 90% of the time near the edges of the screen, shoots them with a stark use of focus and a highly detailed black-and-white gracefulness, barely plays with sound and offers only a handful of camera movement amid its oppression of static camerawork. It’s so confidently minimalist and particular it also seems to boast it, but inside of its strangely beautiful structure lies a powerful film that fills the emptiness of its shots with great performances, and beautiful images. Ida, a young nun who’s about to take her vows, finds out about her unknown past through her aunt, who drives her into a quest for tying the loose ends of her background story; Ida’s inexperience and mysteriousness populates the screen and turns a simple road movie story of finding the truth about her family into an Ashes and Diamonds like reflection of 1960’s Poland. A strange film I’ll have to reward further viewings.

Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)

One of the great imperfects films, a quasi-masterpiece depressingly flawed but euphorically unforgettable thanks to an unbelievable chemistry between Joe Buck (pre-Baby Geniuses Jon Voight) and Enrico Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman in one of his greatest performances), two lost kids who find themselves in very similar positions when they first meet in New York (Rico is from the Bronx, Joe’s from Texas) and become friends. The friendship is timeless, but they both have small-town dreams and aspirations that lead them to the wrong place and the wrong time. But even more out of place is the great problem with the film, which is the man behind the camera: surrounding a beautiful story of friendship between two lost souls, there are strange, unnecessary “Schlesingerisms” (which also ruins the experience of watching his own Marathon Man), including flashbacks, flash-forwards, Freudian technobabble and arthouse exaggerations; none of them actually fit the story, and you’re locked inside a film that doesn’t decided whether it’s a conventional buddy movie or a psychological thriller. Nevertheless, it’s a must-see, because above all that Voight and Hoffman stand out in unspeakable greatness, and John Barry’s melancholy tune is a masterpiece of nostalgia.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

Dr. Strangelove is based on the deadly serious Cold War thriller Red Alert and depicts the frightening emergence of a intelligence failure that leads to a full-blown American attack to Russia sent by mistake, unaware that such an attack will trigger the doomsday machine, a device recently created by the Russians to blow all life on Earth away. The idea of a doomsday machine, in the context of the Cold War, was a very real threat, and the film does everything right in order to turn its story into a thriller: the sets have a noirish sense of doom, every important information is laid down and seriously delivered to the audience, and there’s always the underlining impression that something’s very wrong in how everything’s going. And that’s how you make one of the greatest and most dynamic comedies of all time.

Kubrick’s film lands on masterpiece ground here in each and every way, primarily because the seriousness of its characters is so convincing and absurd it’s almost deceitful. The situation they’re in, however, shake down that seriousness with powerful satire; for such an imminent threat, it’s sadly hilarious that in fact, no president, general or minister involved is quite prepared for it, and some of them are even unaware of the dimension of the problem. As a result, Dr. Strangelove is all about the failures between the ultimate doom: General Ripper’s machismo water fluoridation paranoia, Buck Turgidson’s almost innocent pride of his Air Force batallions, Merkin Muffleyand his incapacity to speak to a drunken Russian premier, and so forth. Everyone’s trying to be diplomatic and serious on the issue, but that never works out. And that itself works marvelously.

Man With a Movie Camera / Chelovek s kinoapparatom (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

Man With a Movie Camera is not a very conventional film; in fact, it remains fresh and radical after 85 long years and still challenges even those who uncover its many secrets. While Vertov films life in three Soviet cities in a “single day”, the film leaves itself open to interpretations and goes back, forth and sideways while making important statements about the process of living in the city and, surprisingly, the process of filming it. We see trains rushing, children laughing, and women having fun at the beach, and then we see the cameraman as he sets the camera and gets his work done. By breaking conventional narrative and keeping the viewers aware that they’re watching a film, he creates new forms of storytelling and documenting.

Dawn and sunset, birth and death, work and leisure, anger and peace, haste and tranquiity: through this groundbreaking documentary masterpiece, Dziga Vertov created one of the most influential and fascinating films ever made, a city symphony that didn’t kill narrative and “illusionist” filmmaking but cast a spell of breathtaking documentation and self-reflection. This sweet, gentle grandfather of Koyaanisqatsi was a revolution of filmmaking, wildly and vividly exploring the power of filmmaking, the role of the filmmaker as an adventurer and life in the city through then groundbreaking techniques like slow motion, fast motion, freeze frames, flash forwards, non-linear sequencing, split screens, Dutch angles and everything you can imagine present in a montage film. It still looks just as good and just as lively, and with my one and only score chosen for the film (2008’s Cinematic Orchestra jazzy score), I managed to see the masterpiece in it once again.

Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)

Back to the Future, like Zemeckis’ own Forrest Gump, is a film that’s become a wild, unstoppable classic to audiences all around the world, but is far from perfect under its thrilling, marvelous surface. Like most Zemeckis films, it’s a technical marvel to watch, and it has several moments that deservedly make it a classic and reach a strange gracefulness. It also shows that Zemeckis has a true passion for the medium, through its construction of the story and its traces of the directions who inspired him: the film feels like a blend of Frank Capra and Steven Spielberg in its view of the 1950’s, the racist cantina owner is named after the protagonist of Cassavetes’ Shadows and there’s a Kubrick reference right in the first shots.

But altogether the film collapses: it doesn’t have any energy at the human level, and it fails to make truer efforts to create stronger and more definite characters, which would be essential when you’re dealing with the story of a teenager who has to ensure its survival by saving the love of his parents in time to return to the future in an almost impossible scientific breakthrough. Its 1985 setting, in both ends of the story, is absolutely cartoonish in its stereotypical vision of nerds and cool guys, and the acting is terrible and predictable; the 1950’s setting is far better (which is good, since it’s the center of the film), but it also has a series of compromising issues.

First, Marty seems to be unable to deal with the fact that he’s gone back in time even after he becomes sure of that. Second, he’s also unable to avoid his own mother by saying something like “I have a girlfriend back where I come from”,  or “I’m interested in asking someone else to the dance”. Third, the Biff-George relationship, besides being too cliché, is also unlikely to have developed in such a way: we’re supposed to believe that they’re working to work at the exact same place and evolve into preposterous older versions of themselves (speaking of that, 3.5: the terrible old-age make-up) in the future, and we’re supposed to believe that in the parallel universe, George lets Biff consistently working for him and for his children after one punch in the face and a sugarcoated attempted rape of George’s own wife. Fourth, the story drives itself from one scene to the other like it was cut from any quieter moments, letting not true time for the viewer to absorb any of its good moments, even though the bad moments still resonate: it’s just as deceitfully fast-paced as any modern film. I’d go on to other points, but I’ve already used three paragraphs and it wouldn’t add much to everything.

The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)

Hitchcock’s The Birds introduced viewers to his late filmmaking period, marked by a quieter, more gentle and mostly different tone and different approach towards suspense. And although his pre-Psycho masterpieces are much more popular and critically acclaimed, The Birds is just as good, and even more terrifying than (blasphemy alert) Psycho; its predecessor is a better film and its jump scares are frightening, but there’s nothing quite like the quasi-apocalyptic doom of Hitchcock’s bird attacks. It has more than enough human depth, which takes a large fraction of the film’s length, and everything flips into a hell hole after it gets nasty halfway through the film, leading to one of the purest sensations of perdition and vulnerability ever put to film. There’s no pratical music other than the chirps of crows and gulls, the cast is all powerful – especially for Tippi Hedren’s mysterious performance -, the script is sharp and the effects are outdated but smoothly fit the film. There are a few things I question about the story – why Melanie Daniels decided to explore the house at night for herself, or why does the film reduce its human component so drastically after the first act -, but when I watch the film, I don’t actually care much about it. Pure gold.

Ratatouille (Brad Bird, 2007)

A rather offbeat entry in the Pixar artistic rampage, Ratatouille is delightfully detached from other recent classics from the company (both the superior and the lesser ones) by relying on a specifically selected theme and universe without making it almost entirely about the parallel universe it creates: it’s about rats and humans in the same way that Toy Story deals with toys and humans, The Incredibles deals with superheroes and humans and Finding Nemo deals with fish and humans, but there’s a unique, almost exclusive balance in this movie. And it’s just as sweet, technically inventive (Remy’s labyrinthine race to ground-level Paris is one great treat) and magically painted. It has some ordinary moments among its many great ones, and it’s still behind other Pixar great movies, but this is a runner-up among equals, and it has the unique advantage of having a scene that’s so nostalgic and homey (like most food should be) it gives you the opportunity of listening to Peter O’Toole being awesome, super-mega-evil and ultimately sweet.

Monty Python’s Life of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979)

Life of Brian is, as any Monty Python product, obligatory viewing for any fan of British comedy: it’s biting, poignant, bold, and explosively silly. What’s most notorious about Life of Brian in comparison with the other three Monty Python features is that it actually cares about its production values, which are remarkably impressive here. Also, note how it manages to not insult faith and religion, but how people misinterpret it and use it as a tool for maneuvers, speculation and cultural persecution.

The General (Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman, 1926)

The General isn’t as inventive as Sherlock Jr. and doesn’t offer a display of physical comedy as explosive as that of Steamboat Bill, Jr. or Our Hospitality, but has the best story, the most active leading lady and the greatest sense of thrill. This masterpiece about an engineer who loses both loves of his life – a girl and his train – to the Civil War is just as influential and thrilling action film as King Kong and stands out as an even superior pioneer in the genre. Like in any other Keaton film, the stunts are almost unbelievable, the comedy is naturally powerful and the train chases are the best train chases one could ever think of. After decades of film history, Keaton is still the only director who can rival Chaplin at comedy.

The Big Lebowski (The Coen Brothers, 1998)

Misunderstood by many, deeply loved by some, worshiped by a few, The Big Lebowski is a cult classic that permeates the mind with its absurd images and hilarious plot development. It’s a story about the lifestyle of Jeffrey ‘The Dude’ Lebowski, an unemployed dude wandering through life (and bowling) who gets involved in the lousiest special mission story ever made. Lebowski, like many of the supporting characters, is a man stuck in the past, but while the others don’t realize that they’re the right men at the wrong time and that things have changed, The Dude seems to fit very well in his own simple, stationary world. Everyone else is the complete opposite of Lebowski: an ultrafeminist artist, a bankrupt millionaire, a group of German technopop nihilists a Vietnam veteran who never got out of it. The more complex things get for him, the harder and the more unwanted too.

The Big Lebowski is yet another masterpiece from the Coen Brothers, who have always been making great films without being truly acknowledged as great directors. It’s sharp, crazy, intricate and mysteriously surreal. It also has some pretty deep things to say, in a Dudeist way that can’t be ignored.