Podcasting Them Softly

Warren Beatty’s towering historical drama Reds is one of the grandest achievements in cinema, a film that matches its epic scope with poignant intimacy on a character level, resulting in a work that has genuine grandeur and a sense of sweep that immediately engrosses the viewer. The often-imitated faux interview structure is marvelous to look back upon in retrospect, as it’s informed so many other filmmakers on so many diverse projects, and the way that Beatty was able to shape this sprawling yet always coherent narrative into something fully cohesive is a testament to both his innate understanding of filmmaking, and to the astounding work done by the film’s editors, Dede Allen and Craig McKay. The dense and info-packed screenplay by Beatty and co-writer Trevor Griffiths was based on the John Reed novel Ten Days that Shook the World, focusing on Reed’s life as a journalist during the Russian Revolution, and with Beatty assuming the lead role. Co-starring Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, both absolutely superb, the film had a deep supporting cast, including Paul Sorvino, Jezy Kosinski, Gene Hackman, Nicolas Coster, M. Emmet Walsh, Maureen Stapleton, Ramon Bieri, Edward Herrmann, and many others.

There’s a tremendous sense of romance running all throughout this big and volatile motion picture, with history and Hollywood colliding in the best sense, while the filmmakers stressed intelligence in all departments, resulting in a film made by adults and for adults. Master lenser Vittorio Storaro’s burnished and elegant cinematography worked in perfect tandem with the nearly overwhelming and astonishingly detailed production design by the legendary Richard Sylbert, while the evocative costumes from Shirley Russell reveled in period authenticity. After a year long shoot, in which Beatty and Keaton’s personal relationship apparently greatly suffered, the post-production process reportedly lasted close to two years, as this behemoth of a movie required various teams of editors to sift through nearly two and half million feet of film and the constant supervision of Beatty to bring it all home. Released in December of 1981 and garnering glowing reviews from critics, the film preformed solidly at the box office, grossing $40 million domestic; the over three hour run time definitely limited the number of screenings and likely dissuaded some people from seeing the film on the big screen. Beatty won the Oscar for Best Direction, Storaro for Best Cinematography, and Stapleton for Best Supporting Actress, with nine other nominations.

Regardless of what your stance is on mass data collection supervised by Uncle Sam, Oliver Stone’s engrossing political thriller Snowden raises some extremely provocative and timely questions about our right to privacy, the ever evolving war on terror, and how trustworthy our government has been and can be in the future in regards to these types of surveillance programs. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is very strong as Edward Snowden and there isn’t a performance in the entire cast that’s not well rounded and effective; Rhys Ifans has a casually chilly demeanor which he exhibits to maximum effect as Snowden’s boss, Nicolas Cage is perfectly cast as the old spy who has been sent to the basement, and Shailene Woodley is both natural and extremely easy on the eyes as Snowden’s long suffering and always-in-the-dark girlfriend. The film uses the Citizenfour interview by doc filmmaker Laura Poitras (motherly Melissa Leo) and Guardian newspaper writer Glenn Greenwald (easily angered Zachary Quinto) as its entry point, folding back in time to Snowden’s discharge from military service, his journey through various governmental branches, and eventual hiring as a data analyst. Working for various subcontractors, he got a bird’s eye view of what our post-9/11 espionage world is like, and even had the chance to build some of those systems. It’s totally wild to see how far the government has progressed with the digital monitoring of its citizens and everyone else across the rest of the world. Starting out as an uptight conservative and ending up a liberal defector, Snowden saw things he wished he hadn’t, and for various reasons, felt that he had to tell the world what was going on, thus resulting in his permanent exile in Russia. The busy narrative uses Snowden’s complicated relationship with his girlfriend as an emotional through line, presenting a compelling portrait of a man caught between what he thinks he needs to do and how others are expecting him to act.

The thing that I noticed the most while watching Snowden was how eerily prescient the 1998 film, Enemy of the State, from producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Tony Scott, has become. Researched and written in the mid to late 90’s and three years before the Twin Towers would fall, that film imagined a scenario where the U.S. government is ready to employ a far-reaching and questionable policy called the Telecommunications Security and Privacy Act, which is essentially what the Patriot Act would become a few years down the road. The technology shown in Enemy of the State is EXACTLY THE SAME SORT OF STUFF being used in real life today, as depicted in films like Snowden, which actually break down the official programs being used by big brother. Even some of the stuff glimpsed at during Scott’s sci-fi genre-bender Deja Vu feel like they have been sampled from reality. By the end of watching Snowden, and due in no small part to the dynamic if measured camerawork by digital ace Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, Rush), you’ll have a great sense of what is capable due to the work being done in various underground compounds and secret spy bases all over the world. One of the best sequences in the film is a visual approximation of what it’s like to put a trace on a phone call to one person, and how that one person can spiral into millions of people by the end of the digital process. With whiz-bang ease, so much information can be culled at a moment’s notice, that it’s hard not to be equal parts impressed and alarmed by what’s able to be achieved.

Stone’s film, which he co-wrote with Kieran Fitzgerald, is engaging at all times, frequently incensed by the story being told, and yet, it never went for the jugular in the way that the best, most long-lasting films from this proudly defiant and trouble-making auteur have done in the past. Which is fine. Stone has become a different filmmaker over the last 10 years, which apparently, many people cannot accept. Stone hasn’t “lost it,” but rather, after his sensational and aesthetically groundbreaking run of films during the 1980’s and especially the 1990’s, he’s become more sedate, especially after the grand ambitions of his tour de force historical epic Alexander back in 2004, which for my money, is still one of the best achievements in the sword and sandal genre that’s ever been mounted. World Trade Center, which I feel is his John Ford movie, is wildly underrated, celebrating a country that he so often took to task on a variety of issues; in this film he paid tribute to the notion of sudden heroism, resulting in an emotionally resonant motion picture that scaredy-cat viewers dismissed as “too soon” when it was first released. And while I thought W. could have been better and different and more scalpel-sharp, over repeated viewings, I’ve come to find it a delicious black comedy of political buffoonery. Wall Street 2 was a bit of a let-down but still entertaining, but I absolutely loved his sexy and stony marijuana actioner Savages; he made his Tony Scott adventure with that one, even hiring Scott’s longtime cinematographer Daniel Mindel to call the shots, resulting in one of the slickest looking films of his career. And with Snowden, Stone is clearly conveying a ton of anger towards both the Bush and Obama administrations, while reminding audiences that he’s incapable of making an uninteresting movie. I’d actually wager a guess and say that this is one of the most anti-government movies that has been released in years, going beyond the term liberal and entering into its own new realm. It’s no surprise that indie distributor Open Road were the ones to take this on and that there are about 20 people listed as producers from various overseas entities in various capacities; no major studio would have the balls to put their logo on this one.

With Where the Wild Things Are, idiosyncratic genius Spike Jonze tapped his inner Kubrick and his inner Malick, and made a $100 million art film, a project not necessarily for children, but centering on a child, told in a mature, intelligent, creative, and singular way. I was expecting something grand when I first encountered this film on the big screen roughly six years ago, and I definitely got that. It’s just that I wasn’t sure what the end result was going to be, what with all of the fighting between Jonze and Warner Brothers during production, and the troubled shoot and endless post-production process. The film is definitely “the book,” so anyone who was afraid that Jonze and crew wouldn’t remain faithful to Maurice Sendak’s original source material can stay calm. But for me, it’s much more than the book; it’s a painful movie about the effects of divorce and how it shapes children, and in the case of the film’s hero, Max, how it informs an awkward boy as he starts to understand his uncertain familial future. This is as bold of a “kids” movie as I’ve ever seen, but again, I hesitate to really call it a “kids” movie. For a film that went through years of production and creative turmoil, you’d never know it. Where the Wild Things Are is, above all, a visual marvel; the creatures themselves are some of the most beguiling cinematic creations that have ever been imagined. The idea to go man-in-suit with the Wild Things was a great idea. This low-tech, old-school approach has been perfectly mixed with state of the art visual effects for the eyes and mouths, and the results are nothing less than stunning.

Lance Acord’s gorgeous, hand-held, and totally engrossing cinematography was some of that year’s best shooting, and the driving, upbeat yet melancholy score brought everything together. And one must credit director David Fincher, for showing Jonze the technology he was using at the time on Benjamin Button, as that gave Jonze the confidence to use a blending of CGI and men-in-suit performances. And I haven’t even touched upon the performance of Max Records as Max; in short, it was an auspicious debut. The entire movie hangs on his performance, and he really was captivating. But it was the interactions between the Wild Things that will keep me coming back to this film in years to come. Where the Wild Things Are was one of the best films from 2009, but it’s not going to be loved by all; it’s too specific and too artistic to garner universal love. I think little kids, by and large, will be scared by it, and will probably be turned off by the lack of major action set-pieces and cheap and easy cutesy-humor bits. This isn’t a whiz-bang CGI creation with bright colors and easy to digest themes. It’s a potentially damaging film that is more likely to be appreciated by adults, and by people who loved the book as a child. And maybe most impressively, few other films have conjured up fever-dream images quite like the way Wild Things does. Despite receiving warm critical embrace, the film failed to achieve blockbuster status. But that doesn’t mean that the movie is uniquely special in ways that money can’t describe.

Rating in Stars: **** (out of ****)
Cast: Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael C. Williams
Directors: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez
MPAA Rating: R (for language)
Running Time: 1:21
Release Date: 07/14/99 (limited)

It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.
— Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

We fear the silent darkness because it seems such an unnatural thing; we fear the noises that penetrate it, not because of the potential source of those noises, but because the unnaturalness is now layered on top of itself. A bear in the dark woods is far less frightening than the suggestion of the bear in the dark woods. Alfred Hitchcock once posited that suspense was a bomb placed underneath a table, refusing to explode far past the point at which it would, for the purpose of drama, comfortably explode. The bomb itself is secondary: What frightens is the mere suggestion, and if you doubt this, think about the adage regarding yelling, “Fire,” in a crowded place.

The Blair Witch Project applies that thesis to yet another source, layering the unnaturalness threefold: We are also frightened (sometimes in a playful way, it is true) by ghost stories. Writers/directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez concoct quite the corker. Stories are told of an ancient town in Maryland known as Blair that was discovered abandoned and renamed Burkittsville and of a woman who lived there before being condemned for witchcraft. Since her own vanishing, disappearances and gruesome murders have followed. The early parts of the film detail the legend through faux interviews with the townsfolk of Burkittsville in precisely the anecdotal fashion shared by all ghost stories.

Myrick and Sánchez’ method introduces a fourth bit of layering to the unnaturalness by choosing to frame the story from the point-of-view of a documentary crew investigating the local legend. Heather (Heather Donohue) is the host and leader of a school project. Josh (Joshua Leonard) is the cameraman. Mike (Michael C. Williams) is the sound guy. They are the only primary characters we see as they interview the townsfolk, including a particular woman who saw the Blair Witch up close and somehow survived to tell about it, and then head into the Black Hills woods toward the campsite where, in the 19th century, five men were ritualistically murdered.

In the years since the film’s release, the number of so-called “found footage” films has increased, so that the method now effectively leads a sub-genre within horror. Here, in one of the first examples of the method, is a film that would not work without it. The intimacy of Neal Fredericks’s camera works to dig into the psychology of three young adults who entered into a situation far beyond their ability to control it, and by doing so, he makes the audience a participant in the terror. A member of the group goes missing, his screaming for help useless when the others cannot locate him. At some point, they find they’ve gone in a circle. The most frightening aspect of the film is its rising psychological terror, causing anxiety, panic attacks, and even something near a mental breakdown.

Eventually a more traditional kind of horror must be introduced, as two among the trio enter an ancient house with ties to this legend. What does transpire will not be revealed here for those who haven’t seen the film, but the filmmakers leave much — nearly everything — to the imagination. The audience does not need to know what happened, because, again, the suggestion is far more horrifying than being shown what happened. The performances, especially Donohue’s, are exceptional at conveying a sense of deteriorating sanity. They help to make The Blair Witch Project a positively, desperately, relentlessly horrifying experience, and that’s before the haunted-house tour.