EASY RIDER (Dennis Hopper, 1969, USA) Creators Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda capture the tumultuous zeitgeist of the late sixties landscape as sea change drowns the status quo, seeking independence from political tyranny and fascist morality. Their goal is freedom but the Wardens of the Old World Order do not take kindly to those who rattle the cages and shake the foundations of their archaic beliefs. The film begins with a rustic vignette of static junk, a drug deal in a timeless sweaty and grimy Mexican villa that match cuts to twentieth century technocracy, as sleek jets airliners dominate the sky above while the same drugs change hands: this time to a wealthy American businessman. Hopper films an interesting visual dichotomy between the poor farmer who is selling drugs to probably feed his family and the wealthy American whose aim is pure profit, the disease of rogue Capitalism. But the protagonists become a willing cog of the machine they despise, a vehicle that transports profit without remorse or morality, and Wyatt eventually realizes this conundrum. The systemic change cannot begin outside; it must begin in the mind and spirit of the individual but they hide their troubles and sorrows in the fog of opaque opiates and fractured lucidity. They are typecast and victimized by narrow-minded yokels but they play the part of the stereotype, and are unable to understand that the more they attempt individuality the more conformist they become. This is evident in the “Maggie’s Farm” sequence where they discover superficial brotherhood but sense Desolation Row. Wyatt is most at home on a simple homestead with an honest farmer and his large family, people living off the land with hard work. Again, Hoppe utilizes a great match cut between shoeing a horse and changing the rear tire on the patriotic Harley. The stunning cinematography by Lazlo Kovacs reveals bleeding sunsets and the jagged bones of unknown spaces, a seemingly alien landscape that shares an oblique existence with splintered ideologies. The superheroes partake in the runaway American Dream and their epitaph is a lonely chorus of the Star Spangled Bummer. Wyatt and Billy brutally learn that he not busy being born is busy dying…but it’s alright, Ma it’s life, and life only. (A)

PICKPOCKET (Robert Bresson, 1959, France) Michel deludes himself with Nietzschean philosophy, unable to sustain human connections and addicted to the adrenaline of the thief’s creed. Director Robert Bresson drains all emotion and vitality from Michel’s self-inflicted suffering: he becomes Tabula Rosa for the audience to project upon, the silver screen that reflects the dim light of apathy and dishonesty. Michel remains elusive and disconnected, his shock of dark hair and vapid features a template, a man who seems to care very little for others except in a way that is beneficial to him. He must be urged to visit his dying mother and it is revealed later that he stole from her too, and he is without remorse. He is truly happy when he joins in a conspiracy, finally able to share a common interest. Bresson films a fantastically choreographed fête of thievery upon a train where Michel’s elation is an orgasm of dishonest delight. Bresson’s use of a tight close-up of fingers massaging buttons, gently caressing jackets and deftly slipping inside for the payoff: an incantation of sexual energy. Michel’s audaciousness is contrasted with the Police Inspector who toys with him, unable to bring a probable cause affidavit but fueling Michel’s troublesome spirit with the specter of guilt and loneliness. Fearing arrest, Michel leaves the country and Bresson utilizes a vertiginous jump cut in time that makes the narrative seem disorganized and chaotic, much like the paranoid allusions of the protagonist. Bresson makes suffering the fire that burns away the sophisticated veneer of self-delusion, and it’s through grief and sorrow that his characters discover their true natures. Michel eventually returns and plays the odds…but the House always wins. His salvation is found through a lovely kiss separated by cold iron bars. (A)

ENTRE LES MURS (Laurent Cantet, 2008, France) François struggles to pierce the apathy and unrest of his delinquent students, products of unstructured modernity and burgeoning adolescence. Director Laurent Cantet casts François Bègaudeau the actual teacher and writer of this tough memoir of inner city scholastics, sharpening the cinema verite style and creating a palpable friction between authority and the rebellious youth. Laurent eschews actors and instead chooses to have the teenagers portray themselves, their dialogue loud, impudent, with overlapping arguments and excited utterances, reliving the disease of the classroom. The film is essentially without a fundamental plot and instead centers on individual struggles, vignettes that pry open the hardened foundations of teachers and students to reveal their telltale hearts. François attains that sacred Demilitarized Zone of communication whose ethereal boundaries remain unspoken, neither condescending towards the weakest of his students nor allowing their machinegun-like chatter to overpower his position. Cantet takes us inside the teacher’s lounge where these professionals struggle with their jobs, cursing the disruptive idiots and questioning their own expectations; many see the children as a lost cause, and the few who have a chance are lost amid the inane babble of the violent and hopeless. But we also see from the teenager’s perspectives, their playground society like a prison yard, Darwinian ethics subduing those who truly wish to succeed. François eventually violates the tacit treaty when he loses his temper and curses at two girls by calling them skanks: students who snicker and chew gum and are supposed to be class representatives. He is trying to help Souleymane, a young man who has potential but seems preoccupied with failure, and these girls broke the rules of the meeting by disclosing private information. We quickly discover the double standard of high school morality: François has fallen from his pedestal, his only fault being that he never accepts full responsibility and toys with the use of semantics and context. Souleymane’s tempestuous outburst leaves him facing suspension and though we see the parent/teacher confrontation…the story never veers into melodramatic familial excuses. Cantet’s camera remains rooted in the school for the entire two hours. The secret ballot is taken and we are not allowed to know how François voted but the outcome seems predetermined. The film ends with a quiet young girl, an apparition who haunted the back of the classroom all semester, sadly admitting that she did not learn anything and is afraid to be reduced to Vocational School. She is one of the lost children, to remain forever intellectually inert, who will always be a ghost in society’s machine. The final shot of a disheveled classroom, chairs and desks askew, is an apt metaphor for our lost generations. (B)

A TALE OF TWO SISTERS (KIm Ji-woon, 2003, South Korea) Two sisters share a ghostly communion, their emotional transubstantiation a grim portent of secretive abuse and incestuous deeds. Director Kim Ji-woon weaves a mysterious tapestry of familial deceit and psychological trauma interwoven with supernatural dread. The film begins with Su-Mi being interviewed by a psychiatrist, seemingly withdrawn into a static internal world, until awakened by a family photograph. This set-up leads the young woman Su-Mi back to her father and abusive stepmother; her only companion her younger sister Su-Yeong who seems to share a metaphysical bond that transcends the thick congealing blood of family ties. The paternal power structure is upset, as the father seems passive and powerless in the face of the maternal malediction, the two sisters victims to the dominating and exhaustive rebukes. Isolated in a small but upscale domicile somewhere in the woods, we begin the experience frightening visions of a restless spirit from Su-Mi’s subjective viewpoint: is her psyche fractured beyond repair…or is a ghostly entity tormenting her? The narrative is told in flashbacks and crosscut with possible hallucinations and it soon becomes difficult to tell fantasy from reality. The troubled daughter seems to have transposed her identity upon the raging step-mother, and the final scenes leave us bewildered and wishing to rewind to discover the subtle clues: such as the timing of her period, the taking of pills, or the bloody sack whose contents remain a violent mystery. The father’s docile nature leads to the possibility of an overbearing guilt, and the allusion of incest hangs in the air like a misspoken curse. Kim Ji-woon spices the story with a few terrifying sequences as a ghastly figure creeping across the floor that hovers above a traumatized Su-Mi, menstrual blood whispering an accusation onto the bed sheets, or a dark haired spirit crouched under the sink, a forlorn echo that reverberates through the house’s ethereal milieu. The story peregrinates precariously between revelation and unfathomable conundrum, but the answer lies hidden in a pair of empty shoes…and a mundane closet. (B)

DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST (Robert Bresson, 1951, France) A nameless unassuming priest tries vainly to understand the contempt of the local parishioners, courteously bearing his physical and emotional cross. Director Robert Bresson’s subjective narrative is like gentle penmanship upon the blank pages of the soul, giving concrete relevance to abstract ideals and misunderstandings as if salvation is self-evident in the cryptic Book of Life. The priest’s young visage is tormented by a painful stomach condition that allows him to only digest bread and wine, a virulent Eucharist that slowly consumes him. Bresson begins the film with the priest framed through the iron bars of the small church, a prisoner in a strange land, as a man and woman gaze with disgust at this intruder, like a judge who just witnessed their mystic tryst. He often seeks advice of his mentor, an older and more pugilistic priest from Torcy who admonishes him for wanting to be liked: he should be more concerned with punishing his flock to gain respect. He soon discovers that a local woman is wasting away in grief and he confronts her, strong in his belief and convictions: to give her comfort he must burn away the hardened veneer that separates her from the Word, and he succeeds though she dies happily the following day. But the family and townsfolk blame him for her death, believing he was too harsh for her weakened condition…and he never shares her letter that would set him free of their judgment. The knowledge is between him and his god. He questions his faith when a local doctor commits suicide, and seeks guidance, which is cruelly denied him. Actor Claude Laydu is wonderfully subdued as the passive priest, conveying little emotion except the gentle repose of his piercing eyes, dark prisms of his soul. Bresson often films him through windows and framed in doorways, a rigid and inflexible character contrasted by right angles, a victim captured in a static portrait. He suffers greatly for his god and it’s ambiguous if his condition is bad luck…brought upon himself purposely or unconsciously because of his unhealthy diet, as if being closer to death will bring him closer to divinity. Like Job, he suffers the torment of the righteous: If god is not a torturer, it’s a least a sadist. Bresson dictates a bitter journal of hope and despair, an elemental liturgy of malignant salvation. (B+)

IVAN'S CHILDHOOD (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962, Soviet Union) Ivan’s brief life is reduced to a cold bloody quagmire; his memories are shrapnel that create a vengeful soldier from the ghost of a child. Director Andrei Tarkovsky examines the intrepid Russian spirit and vicious emotional impact of The Great Patriotic War, refusing to glorify combat and bringing the murderous Nazi occupation into sharp focus upon a few insignificant lives. The film begins as Ivan dreams of his mother’s gracious smile, embraced by her love and floating away…to be rudely awakened in a cold swamp pursued by German soldiers. Ivan is an advanced scout for a group of Partisans because his small size allows him to sneak through the trenches and forests to reconnoiter the enemy forces. Tarkovsky utilizes a non-linear narrative structure replete with flashbacks where we learn that the Nazi aggressors murdered Ivan’s family. This unsettling dichotomy imbues the film with anxiety, fear, and maddening injustice, the true sum of war. Ivan has become tainted by the foul stench of death, a wraith whose only goal is to destroy the enemy. He shows little fear and doggedly disobeys orders to be sent away, and vows to avenge the death of his family and compatriots. In one scene, he keeps reading the final pleas of the damned scrawled upon a wall, a grim reminder that he has matured beyond his years. Tarkovsky shows very little combat, explosions kept to a muffled distant roar, and instead concentrates upon a few soldiers in their dirty and barren hideouts, making small talk and awaiting orders: battle is kept to a vaporous backdrop. This heightens tension and allows the characters room to breathe, however briefly, and transcend caricature. Ivan is missing in action for most of the film though his presence haunts the shadows awaiting his return. A minor love story infuses the film with sadness because this basic human desire still exists in the midst of hell, a human need for companionship that inspires jealousy, but is subdued by impending doom, relationships abandoned like burned tanks upon a battlefield. In one scene, Masha is passionately embraced above a muddy trench, the barren forest like jagged bones half buried in the earth: an apt metaphor. Finally, the story jumps several months (years?) as the Russians storm Berlin, and with the use of stock footage we witness the fall of the Thousand Year Reich. And in one litter strewn room, decorated with ragged nooses and a guillotine, a soldier discovers a dossier with a picture of Ivan, detailing his murder by those vainglorious bastards. But our protagonist lives on in a dream, playing with his family on a deserted beach, seemingly walking upon water…but an ominous decaying tree dominates his deathdream: there is no escaping war’s infernal carnage. (A)

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (Spike Jonze, 2009, USA) Max learns that growing up doesn’t mean you have to lose all your baby teeth. Director Spike Jonze adapts the Maurice Sendak classic about the child who lives inside us all, filled with wonder, terror, anxiety and, most of all, love. Jonze expands a few hundred words into a feature length narrative, adding depth to Max’s family drama and allowing his wild rumpus upon the island of misfit monsters to become an extended metaphor concerning parental angst. The wonderful cinematography utilizes hand-held cameras and focuses from Max’s powerless perspective, shooting from low angles so the world of grown-ups seems large and domineering, and a crushing weight upon his maturing psyche. Max has his tenuous hopes crushed like a fragile snow fort, vying for his family’s attention but always being pushed aside: he’s a little boy competing with older men (his mother’s beau and sister’s boyfriend) for the love he so desperately needs. But this isn’t really a children’s film; it is a story for adults who desire to recapture the quicksilver imagination of youth, who have forgotten that dreams can conquer fear, and happiness is but a simple bowl of warm soup…and a mother’s smile. The film’s power is in evoking these childhood musings, and I was flooded with forgotten memories of a Maple tree that scraped ominously at my window like a monstrous claw; playing games as we embarked upon the great Arctic trek walking deftly on the slick ice that coated the snow, and if we broke through we’d die; trying to walk from one end of the house to the other without touching the floor because it was filled with lava; or the endless dirt-ball battles that would leave us crying and laughing, still young enough to be bathed together by our parents. It also reflects the dark fears that haunt childhood, ones which we often repress; those of loneliness and misunderstanding. Max runs away and creates his own world, but soon discovers that being a parent is difficult business because he can’t make his disciples happy: they must find their own way, though love is an integral integer in life’s equation. Jonze’s film is arguably plotless and composed of emotional vignettes, but that’s how children view their routines when life is taken moment by moment. The major flaw I find is in the depiction of Max running away instead of escaping in his own bedroom: what mother would sit idly by when their child disappears into the dark snowy night? The soundtrack is playfully unique, a helter-skelter of driving rhythms and angelic harmonies. The final mise-en-scene is delightfully subdued, without words, emotions expressed with the subtlest of gestures. Life is good. (B)

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (Oren Peli, 2009, USA) Micah struggles for possession of his girlfriend, his ego exacerbated by the camera’s lens, while Katie is slowly consumed by the presence of two fiends: one flesh & blood and the other inhuman. Director Oren Peli uses the standard horror conventions to create a tableau of domestic terrorism, as a young woman is emotionally battered by her boyfriend and stalked by a demonic presence. Filmed in the first person without credits or soundtrack, introduced with a brief acknowledgement of the survivor’s family, Peli seeks to transform a fictional narrative into reality by not severing the audience’s suspension of disbelief. The film is entertaining though it fails to sustain its burden by breaking its own unwritten vow: what could have been a chilling ending is reduced to trite shock tactics and needless explanation. The sheer terror is hidden in the minor occurrences; knockings and footsteps at night, an eerie shadow or soft whisper, or the flicking of lights. We are experiencing the film in real time and are sure that these things cannot be naturally explained, so we expect the bogeyman around every corner. Even a back story concerning Katie’s childhood births the frisson necessary to keep our attention, our imagination racing like a wild pulse, but it’s when Peli must objectively show us the evidence that the illusion becomes a thin ghostly vapor. I think there is a legitimate subtext in PARANORMAL ACTIVITY regarding domestic violence, the all-to-real demon of power and control. Micah sees Katie as an object to own and place in his house; he isn’t as concerned with her welfare as he is in guarding his possession. He is threatened by another force for control of Katie who is torn between the two, a woman whose choice has been exorcized and like any battered woman can’t run away because the abuser will only follow. Micah mugs for the camera, his Cheshire cat persona dominating while Katie is relegated to a subjective pronoun. He lies and breaks his promises then blames her when violence is their domestic equation’s sum total. Their relationship disintegrates within the three weeks of activity but it seems to be on that long road to nowhere, reflected in the scene with the psychic when Micah says “We’re engaged to be engaged”: obviously a reference to his unwillingness to commit. Katie begs him to contact the Demonologist or turn off the camera but only HE knows what’s best for her…and it leads to murder. A modicum of horror homage adds spice to this delectable stew with references to both POLTERGEIST and PSYCHO (with MONTY PYTHON’S HOLY GRAIL thrown in for good measure). The fear is in the things not seen or understood, and Peli begins to show us the monster lurking under the bed…but we’ve all seen that creature feature before. (C)

DELIVERANCE (John Boorman, 1972, USA) Mankind’s primal instincts lurk just below the dark mirrored surface of the mind, the animal only temporarily suppressed by Reason and the trappings of civilization. Four men confront Nature and must face the tumultuous rapids and violent confrontation with their bastard brothers; their modern tools only a crutch because they must rely on their will to survive…and each other. As modernity clashes with anachronism, like Neanderthal witnessing the extinction of Cro-Magnon, DELIVERANCE is an allegory concerning the contempt that these disparate primates feel for one another and the violent outcome when intelligence is consumed by aggression, when law and order breaks down and the only rule is survival. Director John Boorman deftly adapts James Dickey’s novel about three city men and their guide who wish to spend a weekend canoeing on the Cahulawassee River before it is dammed, men who wish to connect with Nature peacefully on their terms, but end up battling the wild deep water, inbred natives, and their own insecurities. The lush cinematography projects the illusion of a journey into the wild, where civilization is but a dream, and anarchy reigns. Boorman creates iconic imagery such as the dueling banjos between Floyd and the craven-eyed boy, and the squealing sexual assault as Bobby wallows in the mud, dominated and unmanned. The anxious feeling of prey being stalked with raptor-like precision is ambiguous; we only experience it from the protagonist’s perspective, and Floyd’s death is never fully explained though it’s interesting that he is the lone dissenter in the democratic vote to bury the dead rapist. Another allusion to this battle between the present and past could be seen in the tools themselves: the wooden canoe breaks apart while the man-made aluminum canoe holds together and takes them safely home. This precarious balance is maintained on the rocky slope, as the bluish sunset casts it ominous shadow over Ed, and he murders the man who escaped the previous encounter. In a nerve-wracking moment, Ed’s hands shake and he cannot bring himself to kill, flashback to another scene when he lost the nerve to kill a doe, lacking the essential component to play Lewis' game. When he does kill…is it an innocent man? The survivors never find the answer and are left to face their nightmares, fearing that the past will resurface like a bloated hand breaking the tepid surface of a lake, making one final accusation. (B+)

ANTICHRIST (Lars von Trier, 2009, Denmark)

“So the green field
To oblivion falls,
Overgrown, flowering,
With incense and weeds
And the cruel noise
Of dirty flies.”
-A Season In Hell, Arthur Rimbaud

Man succumbs to the deviltry of his antithesis, his masculinity replaced by emotional impotency, both victim and abuser of Mother Nature. Lars von Trier’s season in hell exorcizes his own personal demons through the dark glassily; the nameless characters avatars of human conceit, both lost amid their own secret gardens. The film begins in a monochrome snowfall, the couple making love while their son tumbles like spun clothes. Cut to color and a month later where the woman is hospitalized in a deep depression while the man, a psychologist who seems cold like a hard rain and just as expressionless. He begins aversion therapy with his wife, discovering her atypical fear and confronting it, his relentless ego a brooding shadow upon her senses. She is inexplicably afraid of their summer cottage named Eden, where the previous summer she gave up working on her thesis about the Salem witch hunts. He forces her to confront each aspect of this wicked landscape and it soon subsumes her…and him. Trier’s maddening narrative remains elusive in meaning and ripe in interpretation: is she suffering from the trauma of her lost son? Does she become possessed by some feminine malignancy represented by Nature? Cause and effect has been erased and reversed blurring the lines between external horror and internal conflict: in this storm only chaos reigns (rains). We begin to suspect that she has loathed her husband for some time, and had begun torturing their son the summer before. In a revisionist flashback, we see her cruel eyes focus upon their son moments before his fall from grace as if she could have saved him…but chose not to. Her passion has transformed into hatred, and sex becomes a violent weapon whose edge cuts both ways. The lush cinematography imbues this world with a vibrant realism underscored by a damnable crescendo of entropy. The violence is brutal and anarchic, the comfortless man suffering the trials of 17th century women while his wife becomes tormentor. Their roles reversed, she is consumed by her masochistic behavior while his lament blossoms into a spiritual awakening: he is finally embraced by the ghosts of woman past, and becomes a daughter of the dust. (B+)

AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (Robert Bresson, 1966, France) The wise little donkey Balthazar struggles through his innocuous life and becomes a saint among sinners, while Marie’s downfall is a stark contrast, her vice is her lifelessness. Director/writer Robert Bresson’s diminutive parable reaches epic proportions as his lens captures the ignoble origins of rural life and finally attains the majesty of salvation. The story begins with Marie adopting a foal she names Balthazar: she and her friends even baptize the baby donkey in a playful ritual. Marie and Balthazar form a bond of love, though both will be held in physical and emotional bondage for the remainder of their lives. The donkey accepts his hard existence but finds ways to subvert his captors, whether it’s by tipping a cart or breaking the bridle, braying and kicking, while Marie surrenders to her nowhere fate, always depending upon others and soon becomes victim to selfishness. Marie spurns the one boy who professes his passion and runs away with Gerard, the leather jacketed “bad boy” who uses her up…and casts her out like trash. Marie becomes addicted to the adrenaline of ecstasy, and wanders through a stormy night willing to sell her body for a warm bed. Her father is an egotistical man locked in his own world of pride and self-denial, unable to accept reality or offer forgiveness: Marie has learned well. Bresson captures the raw power of life force, the harmonic resonance that synchronizes living beings, whether they are Homo Sapiens or Equus Africanus Asinus. In one touching scene, the donkey escapes from a cruel taskmaster and finds its way to the manger where it once knew happiness, and Marie hears its cry and comes to his aid. We begin to see Balthazar as an intelligent and compassionate animal as he makes his way through the difficult terrain of his life, and he becomes blameless in his hardships…unlike Marie. Both fall by the sword and become portions for foxes, though Marie is offered a choice: her violent fate remains ambiguous while Balthazar has no chance at all. Finally, a tiny suffering life is shepherded from the mountaintops to the Elysium fields. (A)

JACOB'S LADDER (Adrian Lynne, 1990, USA) Jacob frantically sings the mystical hymn of life, his desperate plea a purgatory of terminal reality where demons stalk the lunatic fringe. His voice echoes through the valley of death, where seemingly malignant forces conspire to tear away the last vestiges of his humanity: Jacob has finally reached the last rung of sanity unable to attain the gentle light, devoured by foreboding darkness. Director Adrian Lynne has crafted a psychological horror film ripe with religiosity, that vast conundrum between faith and reason. The narrative is told on three levels of perception: it begins in Vietnam before transitioning to what seems to be present tense, interspersed with flashbacks to his life before the war: we are befuddled by memories within memories. Haunting images of Sol peaking through the jungle canopy like the all-seeing eye of Sauron (or god) where Jacob’s innards are spilt upon the ground creates a paranoid allusion in the “real world” where grotesque Boschian nightmares relentlessly pursue him. Lynne films these creatures in distorted ways, utilizing slow camera speeds, POV angles, and flash-cuts but he hides these images in mundane routine: this sudden transgression of the impossible is frightening and unsettling. At first, we are unable to distinguish Jacob’s fractured psyche from the natural world because everything could be a hallucination based on actual events. Jacob served in Vietnam but did he survive? Was he the subject of drug experiments by the Army? Or is he just another Veteran going slowly mad? Louis (exceptionally portrayed by Danny Aiello!) is a friend and doctor who eases Jacob’s pain and whose advice leads Jacob to enlightenment…but the journey through the abyss must be made alone. Tim Robbins imbues the tortured protagonist with the right amounts of anxiety, intellect, and affableness: an alchemical formula that creates teary-eyed empathy. As he begins to see beyond the material world, Jacob is overwhelmed by the creeping jungle and stuttering cough of helicopters, and taken back in time he climbs that final stairway towards the heavens. His death dream fading, Gabriel offers solace to his father who put up one hell of a struggle to chase away the dying of the light. (B+)

SILENT LIGHT (Carlos Reygadas, 2007, Mexico) Johan is torn apart by the conflict between duty and desire, a war whose peripheral victims languish in silent desperation while he fulfils his naked greed. Johan is the Patriarch of a religious family, his life slowly ticking away, burdened by the love for another woman. Johan’s guilt, like an accusatory beam of an interrogator’s light, has measurable weight but remains silent in those vast empty spaces between heavenly bodies. Director/writer Carlos Reygadas begins the film with a beautiful sunrise, the stars melting into the waxy morning sky, the glowing clouds pregnant with life as the camera slowly pans down to a lonely farmhouse underlined by a rutted dirt road. Inside, a family is praying before breakfast, the monotonous clock counting away the seconds, while Reygadas cuts to each face in turn: the shy and fidgeting children, the dutiful teenagers and his solemn wife. This familial panorama is cold with unspoken dread, like a tumorous disease diagnosed but afraid to be spoken aloud for fear of giving birth to it’s malignant reality. Johan has confessed his unfaithfulness to his wife Esther but remains a purposeful slave to his transgression, often leaving her to fill Marianne with his lust, a dichotomy of animal instinct versus the cognitive reasoning of a deferential husband. In one absorbing scene, he and Ester bathe the children in a small pool, the scene something like an ancient baptismal service, and she soon washes the legs of her teenage daughter with care and dignity. Later, after Esther’s death, we see the grandmother and same daughter cleaning her corpse in the exact same manner, but ripe with a maddening sadness and despair. The ghost of Tarkovsky haunts this grimly beautiful inner world while Malick’s shadow is cast upon the natural contours of human vistas and bleeding skies. The narrative climax is an unburdening of guilt, as Marianne hovers over Esther’s body, a single teardrop bringing the illusion of life and vitality back to the dead, a longing to unlock those secret vaults where selfishness lurks and sometimes overpowers our instincts. Last goodbyes are spoken softly to the gentle sunset as a single moth flutters through the open window like a soul searching for the heavenly incandescence, to burn out until the cycle begins anew. (A)

BILLY JACK (Tom Laughlin, 1971, USA)

“We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know you can count me out/in”
-Revolution by the Beatles

Billy Jack attempts to find a peaceful focus in a world of corrupt Law, and in this political recipe of anarchy he must serve a cold dish of vengeance: a righteous morality that opposes due process. Billy Jack is the guardian angel of the Freedom School on an Indian Reservation, whose fists of fury must defend the innocent from the hate-mongers who hold power in the local town. The Sheriff is a good man but impotent to stop the tempest: when the law is at the mercy of money, its power tainted by the almighty dollar, then inequity replaces justice and violence subjugates peace. Director and star Tom Laughlin begins the film with the Deputy Sheriff and his rich cronies illegally hunting wild horses on the reservation, their meat worth 6 cents a pound for dog food. These beautiful animals are rounded up in a corral and held captive to be shot. Prosner is the contemptuous rich fat businessman who owns the town, and it’s obvious as he taunts his son that he is the film’s main antagonist. Beside him, the Deputy Sheriff wears a badge of tin, a meaningless shield that represents the prejudicial taint of this revolutionary era. Billy Jack struggles with his temper but he is reactionary, pushed to the limit by these mercenaries who hide behind unscrupulous ethics and consider themselves virtuous: they are rattlesnakes whose deadly social venom can only be survived by a victim who is bitten enough times to create moral anti-bodies. And that’s the metaphor for our protagonist who passes the test of the medicine man and becomes a warrior soul. Counterpoint to Billy Jack is Jean Roberts, the pacifist teacher of the school, and their conflict creates incredible friction: if you turn the other cheek you allow yourself to be victimized, or do you become the very thing you despise by resorting to deadly violence? Laughlin mirrors the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial in the guise of a Town Hall meeting where racism and conformity run amok, condemning the young students for their individuality and excersing their constitutional freedom of expression. The film offers no pat answers and herein lays the power, like a fist raised in the hot stagnant air, of the entire narrative. Jean is battered and raped and her abuser would have remained unpunished because of her passionate pacifism, but Billy Jack takes matters literally into his own hands and fulfills the Code of Hammurabi. Though the film wears its heart firmly on its sleeve, it asks questions rather than answering them, proving that morality is in the eye of the beholder. One thing is for certain, Billy Jack is not afraid of Death…Death is afraid of Billy Jack. (B)

THE SERVANT (Joseph Losey, 1963, UK) Hugo Barrett is seemingly a model servant, a man of impeccable references and character, his black suite and bowler hat a charming anachronism that delineates his social status, a man who takes pride in his job. Tony is a young man, a wealthy playboy with grand ideals but locked into a life of ennui, and he hires Hugo and soon comes to depend upon him, both as servant and confidant. Barrett fosters this relationship and begins to place himself in a position of power, forcing his master’s fiancé into a subservient role and introducing a femme fatale into Tony’s life. Barrett manipulates Tony into allowing his (Barrett’s) “sister” to move in but it’s a ploy to seduce Tony and invert their rigid social standing by becoming masters of the household…while Tony serves the servants. Director Joseph Losey and writer Harold Pinter once again collaborate to examine archaic British cultural mores, to vivisect the class structure and reveal the marrow of human nature hat transcends any social hierarchy. Tony becomes the mark, his major flaw a sense of duty, and it’s this inherent and commendable trait that Barrett exploits: Hugo is a man of selfish needs and violent temperament who hides behind the mask of civility. Losey utilizes languid camera movements and tracking shots in claustrophobic spaces, often framing the characters as one dominates the space either by close-up with the other in deep focus or as one stands unflinchingly above the other. He often films reflections in gilded mirrors, as master and servant begin to transpose their allegiance and become opposites. Tony’s fiancé is redacted from his life by the powerful influence of Barrett as she suspects that something is indeed wrong, but Barrett’s “sister” is actually a weapon of sexuality, blackmail that keeps Tony a slave to his base desires. In a climactic scene, Tony and his servant are drunkenly playing a game on the staircase, a violent riptide underscoring the scene, and as Tony is on higher ground he slowly allows Barrett to take control, and orders Tony to pour him a drink. The servant has now conquered the household, and the film descends into a drug addled orgy where Tony’s fiancé stumbles from the inequity to seek the cold slivered air of a winter night, slashing her back to her senses. THE SERVANT is a film that not only examines class distinction but blurs he lines; where the wealthy young man is nothing but naïve while the lower class butler seeks his destruction: debauchery knows no boundaries. (B+)

SUNRISE (F.W. Murnau, 1927, USA) A swan song of two humans, a final pronouncement of love: one whose spirit is divided by the aching lure of modernity, and another whose devotion is drowned in the cold depths of despair. Amidst the angry breaking waves and shrouded moonlit rendezvous’, one man almost sacrifices his integrity for a brief respite from patriarchal routine, his thick hands that once tilled the fields of his lovely wife now weapons of her demise, until his senses return and they attempt to rediscover the ethereal spark that will once again ignite fiery passion. F.W. Murnau’s mute homage to human nature is one of cinema’s crowning achievements, both in substance and style. His use of deep focus photography, detailed rear projection, and fantastic tracking shots were years ahead of their time, with modest set designs slightly skewed to impart a distorted perception and busy long shots establishing fragile humanity lost amid the steel and concrete jungle. SUNRISE was the template that imbued future directors with a melodramatic and creative vision, raising popular cinema above puerile standards and into the realm of artistic expression: though not the first to achieve this goal, it certainly was one of the best. George O’Brien’s masculine pathos and Janet Gaynor’s angelic visage haunt the silver screen, reflecting desperation and adoration through the subtly of mirrored eyes while Margaret Livingston’s sultry femme fatale exudes an ominous sexuality. The nameless protagonist, his hunched shoulders revealing his murderous intentions like a monster stalking his prey, rejects temptation at the last possible moment while his frightened wife cowers at the stern of a tiny boat. Together they travel to the big city, the metaphor concerning our humanity reduced to clacking machinery and noxious fumes, the individual lost amid crowded scenarios, but together they find salvation. Murnau’s sparse use of Title Cards allows the narrative to focus upon the characters and grandiose cinematography, communicating on a basic emotional level, uninterrupted by blank screens and intrusive text. The tempestuous story is also spiked with moments of tenderness and humor, such as the frenetic dance sequence and drunken pig chase to the slippery spaghetti straps barely concealing a woman’s bosom. Murnau’s classic is a shining accomplishment of silent cinema, a creation whose horizon has set the standard for contemporary filmmakers. (A+)

THE WIZARD OF OZ (Victor Fleming, 1939, USA) Dorothy is spirited away by a vicious gale and transposed to the magical Land of Oz, where she must discover the secret power within herself to return home. Adapted from the wonderful L. Frank Baum book, the film differs greatly from the source but Director Victor Fleming has captured the beautiful quicksilver essence of the tale, a story of self-discovery concerning friendship and courage in the face of constant danger. If understood in the context of the era, as the threat of Nazi Germany looms large upon a land on the brink of a great World War, this film acts as both escapist entertainment and a parable concerning the need for allies to defeat a wicked despot. The film begins in sepia tones, a dusty rural life of hardship and trauma, her beloved dog Toto court ordered to be destroyed by her devilish neighbor, while we meet the other farmhands and a mystical marvelous stranger. Then the finger of god wreaks destruction and Dorothy is knocked unconscious to wake in a saturated Technicolor world somewhere over the rainbow. The musical numbers and vivid landscapes are now stuff of cinematic legend, gorgeously rendered with grand set designs and painted backdrops that give an illusion of depth and dreamlike reality. But the screenplay portrays Dorothy “the small and meek” as reactionary, a little girl whose face is awash in tears and seems to be confounded by difficult decisions, always relying on her friends to save her, while Baum’s book portrays our little protagonist as a feminist ideal, a girl who takes action and becomes a leader and it’s her friends who rely upon her. Judy Garland’s freckled innocence imbues Dorothy with perfect grace and naiveté, and her lovely voice is like an ethereal melody. The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion supply the slapstick humor and amusing alliteration, while a nightmarish thread is woven into this tapestry of imagination. A good children’s story must have moments of dread and fear otherwise it becomes mawkish, and the green visage of the Wicked Witch and her flying monkeys, or the fiery image of Oz the Great and Terrible are moments of mature apprehension. Finally, the humbug wizard grants the wishes of our champions, but his magic is only in his keen insight as they have already displayed the very traits they believed lacking: he only gives them awards to reflect their accomplishments. Dorothy also discovers that the power to go home was always within her grasp, and with three clicks of her ruby slippers she discovers that there is indeed no place like home. (B+)

ACCIDENT (Joseph Losey, 1967, UK) Stephen’s patriarchal crisis becomes a car wreck of twisted morals and fetid emotional fumes, a combustible combination that will burn away the slick veneer of his socially forthright conceit. Director Joseph Losey and Writer Harold Pinter collaborate to examine the corrupt cultural mores of the bourgeoisie and reveal the iniquity behind the masks of education and enlightenment, a cancer whose malignancy sickens the entire family unit as it slowly rots away from the inside out. The film begins with a slow zoom towards a beautiful farmhouse as night settles comfortably upon the land, but a revving engine interrupts this serenity and suddenly tires screech and we hear the sounds of metal and flesh being torn apart: but Losey’s camera continues to slowly focus on the house until the front door swings open. Stephen rushes from the house to discover that his guests were involved in the crash: his young student William is dead and the sultry Anna is injured…and drunk. As Anna tries to extricate herself from the wreckage, she grinds her heels into the pallid face of her young lover, an apt metaphor concerning her egocentrism and contempt for men. Stephen carries her back to the empty house and the body of the narrative is a flashback leading up to this fatal moment. Losey and Pinter dissect Stephen and his Oxford cronies, these leering Professors of Philosophy and Literature who usurps the student’s will to quell their own perfunctory passions. Actor Dirk Bogarde imbues the protagonist with the right amount of empathy and emotional detachment, a man whose guilt is sometimes reflected in his dark eyes and sagging visage while his derivative conversations attempt to hide his shallow motivations. The story begins to divulge the vapid secrets between Stephen, his colleague Charlie, his student William and the exotic Anna, a woman not as innocent as she first appears. In one scene pregnant with ennui, we witness Stephen and a former mistress share dinner and sex, the conversation narrated but never matching the images we view onscreen: this disjunction creates a cold psychological indifference towards the protagonist. Stephen is so concerned about losing his virility that he joins in a mock rugby game, and views Anna as only a goal to be achieved…at any expense. He feels threatened by Charlie, who is having an affair with Anna, and even exposes this fact to his gravid wife. Losey expertly crosscuts this scene with Stephen’s visit to Charlie’s estranged spouse where we discover her gardening in the rain, depression consuming her once vibrant personality. As this chronicle of malfeasance comes full circle, Stephen ignores his wife’s premature delivery by blackmailing Anna, who is drunk and still in shock, into sleeping with him. The film closes with another slow zoom upon the farmhouse, as children play in afternoon delight, while the horrendous sound of another crash overwhelms the visuals: this is the explosive trauma that lurks beneath the swagger of the nuclear family. (B+)

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (Richard Lester, 1964, UK) Two fictional days in the life of the Fab Four, prisoners of their own success, confined to a life of crowded rooms, cars, and trains, singing the twelve bar blues while their youth passes them by, their catharsis the creative synergy of powerful vocal harmonies and chord progressions where all the world is a stage. Director Richard Lester’s cinema verite style brings the now legendary Beatles into sharp focus while developing a sentimental intimacy with our young protagonists: John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Lester’s use of hand-held cameras effects a frenetic visual motion where nothing ever stands still, placing the audience into the frame as accomplice to the cheeky humor and snarky personalities of the band. The mundane plot is transcended by the beautiful melodies and frantic energy, capturing the Beatles independent of their surroundings in sublime private moments of self-reflection then cutting to the rhythms of classics such as can’t By Me Love, utilizing non-sequiturs and slapstick whose aftermath is life affirming cheerfulness. The film opens with ripchord tempo, as the band rushes from adoring fans stumbling and laughing, the title track’s immediacy book-ending the conjunctive narrative. We are introduced to Paul’s fictitious Irish grandfather, a clean old man (an in-joke contradicting a catch-phrase from a BBC sitcom starring actor Wilfrid Brambell), a “mixer” who leads the emotionally serene Ringo into all sorts of trouble. There are inspiring moments of performance including Lennon’s I Should Have Known Better while packed in a caboose, and the iconic stage production where Lester films in extreme close-up and gazes through video monitors before cutting to reaction shots of the adoring audience. More importantly, Richard Lester is able to capture the very essence of the Beatles as young men with a sense of humor, and for two hours we begin to experience the world through their eyes. We feel their desperation as inane reporters ask vapid questions, not about their musical passion but about culture and fashion. One reporter asks Ringo if he’s a Mod or Rocker and the reply, of course, is a straight-faced “I’m a Mocker”. Another questions George about the name of his style of haircut and he answers “Arthur”. In one antagonistic scene the faux manager is at odds with Lennon and vows to “murder him”…and I was terribly saddened by the sudden realization of a world without his wonderful music. This is an important film as both a glimpse into fame and history, as entertaining as Buster Keaton and lyrical as Rimbaud. (A)

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (John Landis, 1981, USA)

“If you hear him howling around your kitchen door
Better not let him in
Little old lady got mutilated late last night
Werewolves of London again.”
Warren Zevon

David and Jack are young Americans traversing the foggy Yorkshire moors: exiled by the cloistered townsfolk they are condemned to certain death by a savage curse. Writer/Director John Landis seemingly mines the dank depths of cliché and horror pastiche with just another werewolf tale, but surprisingly invigorates the hackneyed theme as a modern coming of age love story where friendship and human nature cannot be consumed by base animal instincts. From the eerie opening encounters trapped by the moon’s tidal embrace to the dark twisting alleys and subways of London, to the surreal dream sequences of walking corpses to the stark artificial lighting of a hospital room, John Landis creates a believable environment where reality may be counterpoint to a traumatized psyche and nothing is quite what it seems. Though short on characterization and back-story, actor David Naughton imbues the carefree protagonist with a gentle humility and earnest jocularity; a young man who values his family and friendship by realizing that laughter is the best medicine for a broken mind. He falls for the nurse who has cared for him, a beautiful and honest woman whose attachment is sexual and emotional, and together their chemistry is like the best college romance where lust (de)flowers quickly but has the potential to take root and thrive amid the harsh landscape of adolescence. Landis infuses humor into the story with bumbling authority, as the police inspectors seem out of touch, while Jack’s rotting corpse visits his friend and amid wisecracks and self-deprecating humor must convince David to kill himself to sever the Lycanthrope’s bloodline. This mix of horror and burlesque balances the narrative and keeps the characters within an empathetic context, suspending our judgment and blurring the bloody lines between right and wrong. Though David fails suicide before he transforms, it is difficult to hold him totally accountable for the six murders: the victims aren’t that liberal in their assessment and, in a grossly exaggerated and hilarious scene in a porn theatre, urge him to kill himself. The special effects are shockingly brutal, including the painful transformation, decomposing best friend, severed limbs, and a brief glimpse of the shaggy beast, which adds a violent physical dimension that is often lacking with modern CGI. The finale is a danse macabre in Piccadilly Circus of crashing vehicles and bloodletting, and amid the chaos of suppressed humanity only beauty can calm the beast where a selfless act brings absolution. Indeed, love does conquer all. (B)

THE BIG HEAT (Fritz Lang, 1953, USA) Detective Dave Bannion must face the heat as his world explodes around him, his life crumbling like a house of toy blocks, as he insulates himself from corruption and dishonesty. After investigating a policeman’s suicide, Dave Bannion’s investigation leads him into the furnace of greed and political intrigue, where his true self is forged upon the alter of self-sacrifice and integrity, words that echo hollowly through the Halls Of Injustice: our protagonist demands restitution but is not willing to poison himself and become the very thing he despises. Director Fritz Lang’s prescient social commentary is analogous to the world today, where honesty and hard work are anathema to the syndicates who hold dominion over the minds of weak wo/men. Lang’s cinematography utilizes few cuts and he films the action in medium shot, the objective focal point moving with the characters which creates a narrative frisson, allowing us to become accomplice to the drama. The story is classic film noir with the tough talking detective and slimy underworld kingpin and his henchman, the slinky femme fatale, the smoky beer joints and fistfights: but Lang takes the story to a new level of brutality and human suffering. Glen Ford imbues Bannion with a realistic duality, a conscious struggle between the horrors of work and being a loving husband, and Lang takes us inside his personal life to witness a Homicide Detective at home where he is becomes another citizen. This insight heightens the tragedy and we expect Bannion to abandon his morality and seek revenge, cutting down everyone who stands in the way. He begins to see everyone as an enemy and goes on a “hate binge” against the world, until the sultry Debbie Marsh teaches him that survival and cruelty need not go hand in hand…because she is also a victim. Lang preempts the noir conventions with characters that act independently and change, people who aren’t stuck in the stereotype of ignominy. The look of Bannion as he tearfully ponders a life that once was, his face a vacuum of despair and loneliness, is exhilarating and impassioned. But he never yields to the stigma of opprobrium and sticks to his guns (so to speak) to see that the Rule of Law is upheld…even if it stinks of contempt. His last words bring peace to a poor dying girl, a reflective moment that also delivers Bannion towards absolution. (B+)