Swades (2004)

Swades (Ashutosh Gowariker, 2004)
English Title: Our Country

Almost every thinktank, hospital, educational facility, technical departments of huge corporations would have a non-resident Indian (NRI) as employee, either as a technical expert or specialist. Indians have migrated out of their nation with the hopes of finding better opportunities for living, education, or social acceptance. It is actually not endemic to India, but to almost every nation that has suffered poverty and severe social inequalities. Families would migrate all over the world to find immediate solutions to a more impending concern: which is their very own comfort, and their children's future. Yet as the title song of the Ashutosh Gowariker's follow-up to the critically acclaimed cricket epic Lagaan chants: an invisible bond between oneself and one's country will keep you coming back. Such is the dilemma of Swades protagonist who has achieved much recognition and fulfillment abroad, but has fallen in love with the land he left more than a decade ago.

Mohan Bhargav (Shahrukh Khan) is the film's protagonist, a technical expert for NASA who is initiating a project involving launching a satellite that will measure global precipitation. On the day of the project's press conference, he suddenly feels the urge to visit India and bring back his beloved nanny and surrogate mother Kaveri (Kishori Balal) to America and take care of her. He returns to India and discovers that Kaveri was taken out of the old folks' home and brought to a remote village. He rents a station wagon and travels to the remote village. There, he falls in love with an independent, strong-willed school teacher Gita (Gayatri Joshi), while slowly nurturing a growing love for the village's simple life and adherence to tradition.

Swades has a clear message. It works best as a letter to each and every Indian to nurture a love for the country they have conveniently left. It also works as a caution to all Indians that there are traditions that delay growth, and that mere reliance on one's age-old traditions and culture is a mere excuse to keep one's attention to the country's more pressing problems. Of course, much of what has been said here is spoken directly by the characters in the film, which is one problem that keeps me from completely falling in love with the film: it is preachy and repetitive in this insistence. Such preachiness may have been the result of Gowariker's clear passions at work. Here, Gowariker shows much more personality, much more individuality than the technical expertise which he showcased in Lagaan.

Lagaan is a much-lauded film, mostly because it was able to provide entertainment from the impossibly complex sport of cricket, complicated with Bollywood-type song numbers and blatant melodrama. Swades is much more personal I think, which might impede appreciation. The song numbers a lot more meaningful and more incidental to the plot, and the melodrama more grounded on humanism than on narrative romanticism. What Swades lacks is technical polish. The film tends to slowdown, something I rarely felt in Lagaan's more than three hours running time.

There are several scenes of note here, but one scene, actually a song number, struck an emotional cord with me. The scene opens with a film being shown in the village center. The brahmin and the rich people on the correct side of the white cloth used as a screen, and the less privileged and the people of lower caste, on the wrong side of the cloth, seeing the movie in mirror image. The power dies, and the song number begins, about the stars and how a star may be brilliant in its lonesome, but create a clear picture when together. The cloth is torn down by the protagonist who dances, in true Hollywood fashion, with the village children who discard the traditional caste system. It is beautiful despite the obvious kitsch. There are several other scenes that simply and directly portray India's plight, and numerous scenes that showcase the land and more imporantly, the people's beauty. After three and so hours of Gowariker's filmmaking, there is a clear acknowledgment that Swades is not merely entertainment fare, it is a love song to a nation most of its citizens are willing to give up for personal comforts.

Sinners in Paradise (1938)

Sinners in Paradise (James Whale, 1938)

In 1938, stuck in the middle of a quagmire of studio politics, James Whale was assigned to direct a feature film which would turn out to be the most disappointing film Whale has ever attached his name to. The film, Sinners in Paradise, is in one word, disastrous. The film opened to negative reviews from both critics and the audience. However, is Whale exactly the one to blame for the cinematic disaster? When Carl Laemmle sold Universal Studios, the result was the ouster of both Laemmle and Carl Laemmle, Jr as head of the studio, lessening Whale's clout within the Hollywood film factory. Whale's level of scrutiny, from the casting, and the script development is completely absent from the film and Whale's task was to merely sit behind the camera and see to it that the script turns into a coherent, watchable whole. That's what Whale basically did, turn a ridiculously bad screenplay by Harold Buckley into something watchable.

A group of outcasts, misfits and other personalities of ill repute find themselves trapped in an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean when their seaplane that was supposedly bringing them to China, crashes. The survivors include an all knowing and despicable state senator, two competing businessmen who trade in guns and ammunition, a rich heiress escaping a labor strike in one of her factories, a criminal on the run, another criminal personality who decides to tell on her former colleagues, a cranky airplane steward, a nurse who barters her marriage for an opportunity to work in a Shanghai hospital, and a mother who is off to China to visit her only son. In the island, the different personalities are forced to survive under the mercy of the island's only residents, Jim Taylor (John Boles), who owns the boat parked comfortably near the beach, and his man-servant Ping (Willie Fung).

There's an obvious lack of Whale's usual directorial flourish. Given a measly budget, Whale makes most of what he has. Much of the special effects is laughable. The airplane crash abandons all notions of logic as the miniature plane undergoes turbulence that is most possibly fatal, but the characters in that plane standing up in the plane's aisle as if they were merely experiencing a slight meteorological bump instead of the plot's typhoon. The island itself looks drab and makes you wish for the intricate production designs that dressed up Whale's previous projects. The acting is passable, with most of the actors and actresses, delivering their lines in theatrical fashion, making most of what little characterization the screenplay has to offer.

It's not that the story is hideous, it's just that the writing is so uninspired, the comedy so practically dead, and the plot movement so uncreative, that the film can literally be much worse if given to any director with less talent than Whale. I think the story is actually serviceable, with some similarities with Whale's previous Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) where we are introduced to characters so arrogant that they opt to create life and play around with such creations. Here, Jim Taylor comes off as a Dr. Frankenstein type of character whose erstwhile purpose was to build an artificial community of sinners in a remote Pacific island. However, the similarities end there as Jim Taylor devolves into a character that is much less than the maniacal scientist in the famous horror classics.

Taylor turns into a romantic figure whose experimantations in forced community building is stunted by the fact that the participants in the community are mere cardboard cut-outs of stereotypical social misfits or upper class snobs. Taylor himself is trapped in a romantic storm with divorcee Anne Wesson (Madge Evans), which leaves him a character as uninteresting as the island survivors. It's a missed opportunity. Whale can handle comedy most efficiently when it oozes with sarcasm, irony, and deadpan commentary. However, when the comedy is forced down your throat with slapstick, middle-brow humor, it simply wouldn't work no matter how inspired the direction could be. The possible story that examines man's insatiable need to be like gods, by creating artificial communities, is completely lost with this mess.

Children of Hiroshima (1952)

Children of Hiroshima (Kaneto Shindô, 1952)
Japanese Title: Gembaku no ko

In a scene in Kaneto Shindô's Children of Hiroshima, Takako Ishikawa (Nobuko Otowa) converses with the adoption center's caretaker. The caretaker, as if reading statistics from an almanac, tells Takako that there are more orphans in Hiroshima than Tokyo and Kyoto combined, notwithstanding the fact that the two latter cities are bigger and more populated. He goes on telling that there are a few hundred orphans in a number of orphanages in the city, but the exact number cannot be determined since there must probably be more who are actually living in the streets. Shindô takes those statistics into account and tells a compassionate story of the surviving offsprings of that fateful day when the A-bomb was dropped in the middle of Hiroshima and literally obliterating its innocent citizens.

Takako used to be a kindergarten teacher in Hiroshima but later on, moved to a remote fishing island after her parents and sister perished during the bombing. After six years, she decides to return to visit her former colleague in Hiroshima. While walking past the street, she notices a blind beggar who she remembers as her father's assistant Iwakichi (Osamu Takizawa). She stays the night in Iwakichi's shack and learns that the former assistant's son also perished during the war, leaving only little Taro, his grandchild, as his remaining relative. However, Taro is staying at the adoption center since Iwakichi cannot afford to raise the child with his meager earnings. Takako then stays with her colleague Natsue (Niwa Saito), and from there, visits the three remaining survivors of her former kindergarten class. The visits and the entire experience in Hiroshima becomes an eye-opener for Takako, who takes more than experiences with her on her way back to the fishing island.

Made right after the Americans occupation of Japan, Children of Hiroshima seems more like a reminder that the scars of the Pacific War have not faded. When the shores of Hiroshima appears in Takako's sight, while aboard the ferry from the island to the city, she begins a narration about how the land has forgotten that day. The river is still flowing as it was, the skies as wide as it was. We also see reconstruction undergoing, with huge machineries blocking the rubbles and the devastation that used to be there. However, the scars are visible. Physically, structures remain as mere skeletons of their former grandeur. Black chars color cement steps telling a story of a man who was completely vaporized while innocently seated there. Less tangible is the taint that will forever haunt the city. In the beginning, Takako's aunt and uncle carefully select their words as if avoiding the topic of the bombing. The citizens of Hiroshima nonchalantly joke about it and just continue their lives, bearing whatever permanent injury or disease they have encountered because of the A-bomb's radiation. It's a creeping terror that has afflicted the city. The result is a forced forgetfulness, or a graceful acceptance that such is an act of fate, or a complete rejection of the past's former grandeur, and that the present is merely a perpetual hell one has to live with.

Shindô achieves what he wants by combining both objectivity and melodrama. Flashbacks are utilized to depict the change that was caused by the bombing. Most disturbing among these flashbacks is the depiction of the few minutes before the explosion, which Shindô captured with both the objectivity of a documentarian and the emotionality of one who is actually affected by the tragedy. There, he uses bizarrely formed tableaus of bloodied and injured women, their babies crying, and destruction within the perimeter of the frame, to create a lasting image of how terrifying and hellish it must have been caught in the middle of a sudden twist of fate. The effective musical scoring by Akira Ifukube accompanies the imagery with emotional precision.

At times poignant, but mostly overbearing and pushy, the revelation of Hiroshima's orphans' plight unfolds in uneven levels. There are times when Shindô seems to be pondering too much on a point already driven at, and there are times where Shindô quickly steals away a moment wherein much emotional resonance is still brewing. The narrative arcs might be a bit creased at the edges, and could have been reduced to less melodramatic effects. However, the import of the film is derived because of its value, as a belated warning that, as one of the children states in a surprisingly innocent and peaceful demeanor before finally dying, "war is evil."

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935)

James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) left me at awe. Men trying to be gods, creating monsters. Monsters of moral ambiguity, dramatically trying to catch the light. Monsters as mere children, misshapen, misunderstood and later on, prosecuted. It' is an experience that will leave any viewer horrified, and suspicious of the possible answers to the many questions left unanswered. James Whale, who originally didn't want to revisit the tale, ups the stakes and cooks up a sequel that further examines the humanity of the monster, the insatiability of all humanity, and all that existential, religio-social conceptions of morality. The sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein, although impossible, is a vast improvement over its predecessor.

The Bride of Frankenstein opens on a stormy night, inside a beautiful mansion where two men are discussing poetry and literature as a lady is doing some stitching in her dainty chair. We learn that the lady is no ordinary woman, but is actually Mary Shelley (Elsa Lanchester), the creator of the story of Frankenstein and his monster. She then proceeds in telling what happened after the fiery conclusion of the first film. The monster (Boris Karloff) has survived and in an effort to save himself, kills townspeople who are trying to harm him. Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is recuperating from his injuries when a mysterious visitor Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) pays him a visit, and offers him a team-up to create another monster, a female monster who would serve as the monster's mate, and from there create a world of "gods and monsters."

The monster is stalking the woods and the nearby houses where he is continuouosly chased by angry mobs. Although injured and afraid, he becomes attracted to the beautiful music from a nearby hut. The owner is a blind man who befriends the monsters and teaches him basic words. The scene is quite moving, despite the overt religiosity that surrounds it. The background music features church tunes, the old blind man prays and thanks God for giving him a friend in his times of loneliness, and the monster, for the first time, sheds a tear. It could've ended there where a well-deserved bliss is finally granted to the misunderstood creature. However, the joyous and playful exchanges of smiles and elementary words are aborted when two huntsmen disrupt their momentary glee and attack the monster, chasing him again into the woods. The monster flees but is now armed with a learned sense of good and evil.

The monster hides in a crypt and longs for friendship from a beautiful corpse. There, he chances upon Dr. Pretorius, who has been stealing corpses for his experiments. They make a pact. Dr. Pretorius is a prime character in the film. He is the very personality of evil and Whale doesn't put upon him any question of moral ambiguity. His experiments are unlike that of Dr. Frankenstein's. He actually creates life from his very own sources: black magic, as Dr. Frankenstein calls it.

The results are misshapen, unholy creatures. Miniature versions of royalty, clergy, a pitiful mermaid, a ballerina, and finally a demon, who Pretorius admits he has a bit of resemblance with. He comes in the film, always with an offer to the human characters that they can either accept or desist, a literary trait of the devil who delights in obligations and contracts as read from the stories of Faust and Daniel Webster. Here, the devil, as Dr. Pretorius, makes two contracts: one with Dr. Frankenstein and one with Frankenstein's monster. The objects of the contracts are similar: for the doctor, the safety of her bride; and for the monster, companionship.

The film climaxes in the creation of the monster's mate. Much has been said about the homosexual undertones of Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius' team-up: Frankenstein as the overworked father, and Pretorius as the mother who makes sure everything is alright. It holds ground here as its quite evident in Whale's direction. However, much more than that, the climax here is very technically well-staged. It literally has you grabbing your seat, waiting to see what happens to the experiment, and if successful, if the experiment will go as planned. The conclusion is both humorous and fitting. The monster's mate is dressed in a white flowing dress, with her eyes wide with curiosity or fear, and her head constantly bobbing up and down. The monster descends waiting to see his bride. The music reminds you of a bizarre wedding song. The two finally exchange glances. Like any other human being in the village, the female creation shrieks in horror. The bride thereafter settles and sits down. The monster proceeds to sit beside her and attempts holds her hand. The female monster again shrieks at the sight of the monster, and the monster gives up.

Brilliantly staged, masterfully directed, superbly acted by both Karloff and Elsa Lanchester, the scene is a culmination, or a fitting conclusion to all of the spice and the excitement held over the supposed marriage between the two monsters. The film ends in a bittersweet note. Dr. Frankenstein and his wife escape through the help of the monster who makes a final decision: that he, who is a created out of evil, despite learning goodness and evil through the inherent kindness of the blind man, and with his supposed mate, and the conniving devil-incarnate Dr. Pretorius, should perish, leaving a world that is bereft of evil, although tainted.

Miami Vice (2006)

Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

Michael Mann's Miami Vice starts abruptly: with no opening credits, no bullshit. It just greets your eyes with a scene composed of grainy yet undeniably hypnotic visuals. These visuals are accompanied by music Linkin Park, completely drowning the senses with a barrage of stimuli. The scene is set in a nightclub, crowded with dancing party people. Somewhere in the crowd are Sonny Crocker (Colin Farrell), Rico Tubbs (Jamie Foxx), and their team of Miami undercover cops, stoic, patient, and waiting for something to happen. These are the same characters of the television series of the same name which was aired in the eighties. The times have changed, but the crimes haven't.

Mann actually served as executive producer to the 80's television hit series and knows how to work these characters and their setting. From there, Mann became the director of the some of the most notable urban crime thrillers in recent memory like Heat (1995) and Collateral (2004). Mann is therefore the logical choice to direct the cinematic update of the beloved television series. However, instead of merely redoing the show, he also infuses a particular energy that makes the film indescribably powerful. He just borrows the characters, updates the setting (the cars are a lot more gorgeous, the fashion a lot more chic, and the streets a lot more dangerous), and bakes into the story something that resembles an ordinary television episode, but with the visual punctuation and the narrative pump that is worthy of the silver screen.

The story involves the two famous Miami coppers who goes undercover to discover the person who leaks the inside information of the government to the drug dealers. The two travel to an unnamed Latin American nations and deal with one of the largest drug dealers in the whole world, Jose Yero (John Ortiz), who actually turns out to be a mere puppet of an even-larger drug dealer, Arcangel de Jesus Montoya (Luis Tosar). Montoya's trusted sidekick is a Chinese-Cuban businesswoman Isabella (Gong Li), who becomes attracted to Sonny Crocker. Crocker returns the interest, and the two eventually fall in love, culminating in a night together in Havana, Cuba. The plot gets more intricate when it is discovered that the drugs trade actually involve other networks, including a White Supremacist group in Miami, who peddle the drugs to their own customers.

While the story is complex, Mann's masterfully guides us through the intertwining networks and the heated emotions. With the help of his cinematographer Dion Beebe, Mann paints the film with a cool, metallic blue that invokes an icy exterior to the entire endeavor. It is only when passions arise that other colors dominate: reds, yellows, greens. This very apt play of colors and visual gloss punctuate the storytelling, giving the plot a necessary push. The digital filmmaking is actually very effective and Mann makes wonders using the limitations of his chosen medium. The editing is crisp, the acting is mostly superb, and the musical scoring lends to the already rich visuals foreboding tension.

Miami Vice is truly technically astounding. The film beats with its inherent hypnotic rhythm, making you thirst for the incessant gunfights, the deafening explosions, the stolen kisses, and the gorgeously painted vistas. If only for this graduated feel, Miami Vice is something of an achievement. Mann understands cinema, and has injected the television series with his understanding, creating a masterpiece in mood and rhythm.

Cowards Bend the Knee (2003)

Cowards Bend the Knee (Guy Maddin, 2003)

Guy Maddin's Cowards Bend the Knee has often been inaccurately described as the hip Canadian director's autobiography. I'd like to think of the film as the director's recurring nightmare etched into film form. It is a phantasmagoric hodgepodge of film styles, techniques, and genres, haphazardly edited into an arguably coherent whole clocking at an hour and some minutes. It is fast paced and feverish in its presentation, yet its stylistic roots owe much to German Expressionist, surrealist and avant-garde film styles. The visuals are somehow randomly placed. The film switches colored tints (green, blue, black and white), cinematographic styles (kaleidoscope, peep-hole) and film speeds (slow motion), in lightning speed whim. The result is like downing a grand size bottle of whisky and waking up without a trace of a hangover. It's pure joy.

The story goes like this: Guy Maddin (Darcy Fehr) is the star player of the local hockey team. After a bloody headbutt, he suddenly emerges as the stereotypical animalistic male: selfish, irresponsible yet will always find "joy, joy, joy" in meeting someone new. He goes to an abortion clinic within the premises of a beauty parlor-by-day-and-bordello-by-night establishment to have his girlfriend Veronica (Amy Stuart) obtain an abortion from Dr. Fusi (Louis Negin). There, Guy sees and falls in love with the parlor-owner's daughter Meta (Melissa Dionisio), who vows to avenge her father's death by killing the murderers: her mom Liliom (Tara Birtwhistle), and her paramour Shaky (David Stuart Evans). She devises a plan by transplanting her father's blue-dyed hands into Guy's body and have Guy continue her devious designs.

Cowards Bend the Knee is part noir, part erotica, part fantasy, part sports tale; everything crumpled into one intriguing final product. It is, as previously mentioned, inaccurately-described as autobiographical recounting of the director's supposed darkest secrets. In a courageous decision, he names his main character Guy Maddin, imputing upon the persona of the director the actions of his film's fictional character.

Maddin did not allow his mother Herdis Maddin (who plays Meta's blind grandmother) to watch the film since he admitted that the film's dark-natured portrayal of those who have been involved in the director's own life might be obnoxious even if such may be accurate in a purely subliminal intent. The film is probably what Maddin dreamed of every night, and through the film, the director finally released these nightly demons, courageously unveiling to the whole world his source of madness, which I believe fuels his unique brand of filmmaking

Reportedly, the film was shown in the different festivals using a modern version of the nickelodeon peepshows, which were popular in the early 20th century. Ten of these mechanisms were placed and the festival patrons would likewise be peeping on the little hole, watching the ten chapters of the film unfold before their eyes. More than just a gimmick, the technique presupposes the very personal subject aspect the film: that somehow Maddin doesn't want you to see all these insanity and craziness and sex with clear open and blatantly watching eyes. I saw the film in its DVD version, the chapters are all in chronological order. However, I would love to experience watching it as to how Maddin intended. I'm sure it will make a world of a difference in the cinematic experience. But as seen, Maddin's film is still maddeningly original, discomfortingly personal, tremendously funny, and simply astonishing.

Cavite (2005)

Cavite (Neill dela Llana & Ian Gamazon, 2005)

The fascinating thing about Cavite is that as evidenced by the end credits, there are only around ten people who are directly involved in the film, minus of course the family members and friends that tangentially helped with cash and moral support. It is obvious that the film was made with a mere fraction of what it would cost to make a Hollywood film. However, the amount of tension, of suspense, and actual content contained in this little film would have it towering over the overdressed Hollywood productions.

Cavite is written and directed by Neill dela Llana and Ian Gamazon, Filipino-American filmmakers who were awarded as the most promising filmmakers in the 2006 Independent Spirit Awards. It's really no surprise as Cavite is probably the most independent of all independent features made in the United States. I can imagine how these filmmakers would go to their aunts, uncles, godmothers, godfathers, and have them donate a few hundred dollars just to buy more digital tapes for further footage. The amazing feat here is Cavite doesn't look amateurishly done. Despite the fact that the visuals are compromised because of the duo's guerrilla style filmmaking, the film is harrowing, depressing, and poignant in all its ugly and filthy reality. If anything, the lack of aesthetic appeal is overpowered by the courage and the cleverness of the cinematography (by Dela Llana), most of which are stolen footages. I cannot conclude that the filmmakers, with their budgetary and time constraints, could have secured necessary permits from the different airports and localities.

Cavite is the abomination of what a travelogue about the Philippines should be. Instead of having a verbose pale-skinned traveler orate about the wonderful white sand beaches, the majestic waterfalls, and the historical sites, we have a returning Filipino-American, Adam (Ian Gamazon) who receives a mysterious call from an omnipresent person demanding that he follow his every command or else, his mother and sister who were kidnapped, are gonna be killed. The film then follows Adam as he makes his way to the titular Cavite where he witnesses the most unappealing and negatively arresting locales of the Philippines.

The plot is paper-thin but its repercussions are tremendous. The filmmakers might be stretching their imaginations too far when they propose that the kidnappers are actually Abu Sayyaff terrorists who have spread around the many island of the Philippines (one of which finally ends up in predominantly Catholic Cavite), but the unrealistic elements of the film are beyond the point. It can happen since the threat of terror, as President Bush would arrogantly proclaim in his rousing speeches, is everywhere. The point here, which finds basis by the fact that the mysterious terrorist caller's omnipresence is never logically explained, is that oppression breeds terrorism. It's simply one vicious cycle. The mysterious caller notes the atrocities of the Philippine Armed Forces against the Muslims of Mindanao, and while there might be inaccuracies as to the numbers of deaths, the truth of the matter is that there is oppression. The people of the shantytowns have very little privacy. These families are too poor to even buy their kids underwear, to afford a private bathroom, to cook a decent meal. That is oppression at its rawest and most familiar. A sideplot involves a little kid purchasing a value meal from McDonalds after being paid for his services in stealing Adam's things. He takes the meal home, and shares it with his grandmother, The sharing is a very good gesture but in reality, is rooted out of an evil act. Oppression corrupts the noblest of intentions. Terrorism does not happen when two airplanes hit the World Trade Center, it happens when there are people too poor, too marginalized, too oppressed to even live like human beings.

The fact that the film is shot in guerrilla-style, meaning there were no sets, and there no actors except for those who actually forward the plot, is very disturbing and disquieting. Those who have not seen the poverty in the Philippines might consider it outrageous for a man to take a bath in a garbage-infested river, or to witness smoke emerge out of the filth-ridden soil of the shantytowns, but it's all evidently true. Cavite's biggest challenge is to show the Philippines for what it really is, a nation of direly impoverished citizens being shrouded by fake reports of economic achievements. Take the story as an added bonus while digesting the hard-hitting facts the directors want to show. Cavite is a thriller that furthers the directors' perception that at the threat of oppression, even the most sheltered, most reasonable, and most morally upright man can do the most heinous of crimes and be a terrorist in his own right.

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)

I'd like to classify Woody Allen's filmography into two categories: the first one being those wherein he or his actor stars as the stereotypical Allen protagonist, and the second one being those that are completely devoid of any manifestation of this neurotic Allen stereotype. The categorization seems unfair as Allen's artistry is far-reaching enough that boxing them into categories belittles the director's creativity. But I feel comfortable with the categories and it makes reviewing his films a lot easier. For example, I can say that Annie Hall (1977) is a masterpiece of the first category, and The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), is the masterpiece of the second category.

Then comes Hannah and Her Sisters, which muddles the categorization completely. The film has a Woody Allen protagonist, although it doesn't center on that character's antics. The film mostly tackles the lives of three sisters and their men, one of which is the Allen stereotype, who enter and re-enter each other's lives like molecules drifting in space only to bump into each other, and then separate, with electric consequences. Hannah and Her Sisters completely ruins my categorization technique as it is without a doubt, an Allen masterpiece, but as to which category I'd sneak it in, I wouldn't know, since the Allen protagonist is one of the terrific elements of the film, but the film as a whole, is wonderful in itself.

Hannah (Mia Farrow) is the eldest of three sisters. Holly (Diane Wiest) is the middle child who is both rebellious yet is always seeking approval from her sisters and the people surrounding her. Lee (Barbara Hershey) is the youngest whose only aim is to please those who are always guiding her. Hannah is married to Elliot (Michael Caine), who secretly longs for Lee, the girlfriend of art snob and social recluse Frederick (Max von Sydow). Hannah's ex-husband is television producer Mickey Sachs (Woody Allen), a hypochondriac who thinks he has cancer and is now re-examining his life choices, including his lack of religion, his professional career, and his relationships. Holly, a former coke addict and struggling actress-turned-caterer meets a dreamy architect in one of her catering jobs. However, the architect is snatched by her best friend, and business partner April (Carrie Fisher), leaving Holly's ego bruised.

The screenplay is probably the most complex Allen has ever written. It features a number of three dimensional characters who interact with each other with real natural consequences, despite the typical scenarios Allen has created for them. Interestingly, despite some instances wherein Allen's own character would jump out of context with his typical razorsharp wit and comedic self-loathing, the typical Allen protagonist doesn't come off as inert or out-of-place but mixes and meshes with the rest of the characters. His quest to find a justification for living through organized religion is both humorous and actually quite touching: a perfect affirmation on life by someone like Allen whose cynicism and literary expertise dominate his writing, leaving humanism behind. The sisters' personalities are complete and psycho-analytically taut, if we completely base it on Freud's theories.

One understands why Holly is both dependent, rebellious and seemingly always in the verge of discovery since she is a middle child. And there is Lee whose inability to be without a mentor is understandable as a need to find identity. Everyone loves Hannah, especially since their parents have praised her to the heavens. She's depicted as a perfect being: caring, cool and calm in the face of adveristy, able to be good friends with an ex-husband, successful in both her previous profession and her domestic affairs. She's the quintessential eldest daughter.

It is the men who disorganize, and in a way, free the sisters from the preconceived psychological stereotypes. Mickey affirms Holly's ambition, thus finding both merit and love and forever disattaching herself from dependency. Elliot forces, through emotional leverage, Lee to cheat on Frederick thus freeing her from an unromantic mentor-student relationship that she by herself cannot escape from. The turn-of-events between Holly's self-discovery and Lee's freedom from Frederick causes Hannah to be free from her sisters and finally just become a wife to her Elliot and a mother to her children from her previous marriage. All those complicated characters and plot manipulations harmonize in a beautifully conceived ending that is both a proof that Allen is a filmmaker and that Allen's blurting out of his philosophical and aesthetic theories through his self-depreciating character doesn't remain in theory, but also in practice, though most of the time, his philosophical musings seem repetitive to be of any merit.

The Ice Storm (1997)

The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997)

Ang Lee's status as one of the more important directors of this generation has been solidified by his existential swordplay adventure Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Academy Award-nominated homosexual romantic weeper Brokeback Mountain (2005). Of course, there's that failed yet interesting attempt to put comic book hero the Hulk into philosophical perspective and a bunch of relationship comedies set within his Asian-American cultural context. In 1997, Ang Lee directed The Ice Storm from a screenplay adapted from a Rick Moody novel by his long-time collaborator James Schamus. The moody drama about the lives of two dysfunctional suburban families, I thought, is Ang Lee's most accomplished film.

Thanksgiving week and the Hoods are preparing for the arrival of their son, Paul (Tobey Maguire). What seems like a normal suburban middle-class family is in fact a bunch of discordant relationships surely bursting with repressed emotions. Ben (Kevin Kline) and Elena (Joan Allen) have put off marriage counseling in the guise that their marriage is actually going very well. Their fourteen year old daughter Wendy (Christina Ricci) is experimenting with her sexuality with her boyfriend, Mikey (Elijah Wood), one of the two sons of the Hoods' nextdoor neighbors, the Carvers. The Carvers are in a similar mess. The patriarch Jim (Jamey Sheridan) is always away for business, while his wife Janey (Sigourney Weaver), taking advantage of her husband's frequent prolonged leaves, maintains an affair with Ben. Sandy, the youngest of the Carver siblings, is an introverted mess.

The Ice Storm is a complicated relationship piece whose success hinges on atmosphere and mood. The screenplay by Schamus is pretty detailed and the dialogue externally calm yet brimming with context. There's a curious absence of rhythm in the film. Instead, Lee allows the events to flow, and the characters to trigger what I think is a natural reaction in the film's setting. Interestingly, the film's backdrop is during the 70's where America is facing a political crisis with Richard Nixon's administration. More interestingly, the adults in the film care more for alcohol and swingers' games rather than the state of the nation, while it is the children who follow-up the political weather. A visible boundary separates the concerns of the adults and the children, and as a result, creates a hindrance to normal familial functions.

Lee depicts with painful clarity the irony that subsists in American suburbia: where discontent, boredom, repression, and amorality displaces the human need to actually communicate. In a telling scene between Ben Hood and Janey Carver, Ben tries to woo Janey into small talk. Janey boredly replies "I don't need another husband." Even the seemingly amoral act of infidelity has turned into a mere bartering of their naked bodies in the efforts of extinguishing their primal and animalistic needs.

Lee begins the film with a narration by Paul Hood about how the family unit is one's biggest enemy, basing his observations from a Fantastic Four comic book where Mr. Fantastic had to sacrifice his son. It is an interesting note from Paul, who is perhaps the most disassociated character in the film. His perceptions are based mostly from the news he gathers from his sister, and the usual external quirks he observes during his short visits. I believe that Paul's observation runs counter to the two suburban families' experience. Unlike the comic book tale, the complexities of these family's dysfunction do not arise out of the members' superpowers, or in the real world and its inherent personalities, but by a society that has lost all notion of what is moral, as observed in a larger perspective of the nation's politics. Unlike the superheroes which are given the power to do as they please without the otherworldly guidance of fate and cosmic design, the characters of this film would go on doing their thing if it weren't for a sudden impetus for change, the titular ice storm, that would serve saving grace for the two families.

Edmond (2005)

Edmond (Stuart Gordon, 2005)

David Mamet's pre-Pulitzer Award 1982 one-act play Edmond, is a morality play set in the darkest, most sinful interiors of an unnamed American city. Yet, unlike other morality tales, the play leads us on to believe that something good will happen, that there is indeed redemption in the end of all these profanity, sex, and violence, only to realize, in that there is actually none. It's clever writing. It has trappings of a modern noir and the main character, Edmond Burke (William H. Macy), being the center of all misfortune as he walks away from the comfort and boredom of his dwelling to tread the alleys of this literary urban hell.

The film starts with Edmond being given a note by his office's receptionist that his meeting has been moved to 1:15pm the next day. While walking, he notices a magic shop, its address as being number 115 of the apartment compound. Taking it as some sort of sign, he enters. There, he has his fortune told. The fortune teller tells him that he doesn't belong here. Somehow, that triggers Edmond to finally realize that he is bored and unhappy and tells his wife (Rebecca Pidgeon), that he is leaving her forever. Thrown out by his furious wife, he meets a racist bar regular (Joe Mantegna), who invites him to drown his sorrows in a strip club. He searches the city's red light district for sex but each time, he only gets more and more disappointed.

It's curious as to why Mamet would have another director take charge of his play, which he himself adapted for the screen. Moreover, it is quite curious as to why horror director Gordon Stuart was chosen to helm the project. Before Stuart started his career with splatter film classic Re-Animator (1985), he worked as a theater director and has directed some of Mamet's plays. It shows in the film that Stuart is comfortable with Mamet's material and theme. Somehow though, you question, whether Edmond is Stuart's or Mamet's film. Obviously, Mamet lent Stuart his reputation which caused the enlistment of A-list stars, most of which are Mamet veterans. Stuart's directorial quirks surface when the film involves destiny and fate being prime motivators of Edmond's downward spiraling. Stuart's thirst for splatter also surfaces in the more violent portions of the film and I believe, lends credence to Mamet's somewhat abstract and vague propositions.

Of course, the play is indeed Mamet's material. Whatever Stuart contributed would add will only pump up or enrich Mamet's ideas. In fact, Mamet barely modernized his 1982 play when he adapted it into a screenplay. There is much confidence in the material which features profanity that would cause Oprah Winfrey to shriek in terror, and rhythmic banter that would tease psychoanalysts and philosophical commentators to gasp in wonderment. It's a good mixture of black humor of social and racial commentary, of philosophical musings, and personal anger (which might have been a personal repercussion of Mamet's divorce.

There's much to think about as to Edmond's demons. A white man living a middle class life, who just suddenly explodes and decides to withdraw from that life, with an honest belief that he doesn't belong there, and armed with a philosophy that fear is an instrument to show what you really want. He longs to have sex but finds that paid sex is too expensive, or he might just be too shrewd as shown in an episode where he asks for his ten-dollar change from a peepshow stripper. He only gets some when he's supercharged with anger and self-realization, and now, feels the need to change the entire world, starting with the waitress he picked up from the restaurant. Then, the film ends in a deadpan humorous note, which also serves as a culmination to Edmond's racism, violence, and insatiable need to belong. Edmond's adventure to self-realization is all too warped and twisted that it might turn off, or even be branded as pointless. But certainly, it has something to say, or if not, can be very funny.

The film's success really hinges on William H. Macy. Macy is very very good here. His distinct features, an incongruent head on top of a body that's well-taken care of, is a unique sight to behold. Here, Macy musters his physical attributes and his acting prowess to portray Edmond as an alien, an everyman who doesn't belong anywhere. He walks into a bar and he sticks up like a sore thumb (only that he has a bloodied face and a bloodied shirt for further attraction). Then he preaches and giddily announces his thirst for life --- that is not something that one would normally expect from anyone who has just been beaten up and have the whole world (at least world of hookers, crooks and shady pawnshop owners) kick him out of their places of business. Macy controls his character with an indifferent glance from his hugely unproportioned eyes, and a vocal ability to sound convincingly insane even if his words might actually have sense in them. Edmond's difference might have worked because of Mamet's writing, or Gordon's love for Lovecraftian protagonists, or Macy's effective method acting, but outwardly, Edmond works because we make him work. Present society's fear and stereotypes breed characters like Edmond who feel like they don't belong, who in a way, in good faith, breed discord and disconnect with society as shown by his outward racism, his shrewdness and his lack of trust to sex workers.