Critical Film Theory – Page 6

Guest essay: “Circle of Life”

“Circle of Life”

By Sandra Reid

Imagine picking up a kitten for the first time, or maybe even a human baby. Alternatively seeing the sunrise or visiting the zoo. There is exactly one song that comes to mind in each of these scenarios, the iconic “Circle of Life.”

Whether performing a jumbled collection of syllables to reach for the legendary Zulu solo at the beginning or howling the chorus on seeing a baby, the song has permeated our everyday lives in a way never matched even by the likes of “Let It Go.”

It changed how major films introduce their themes, characters, and titles. The now over-saturated late title drop had been done in a few action movies previously, but “Circle of Life” codified how to make it work; awe-inspiring score and animation all seeped in operatic sincerity.

Even in the musical adaptation it alone could be worth the price of admission with gorgeous puppets and costumes surrounding Pride Rock as it rises over the stage.

As the essential jaw-dropping opener, Disney had set their own stakes and standards at and impossibly high level for this remake.

Sandra Reid has publications in The Rowdy Scholar and Spectrum along with articles in The Metropolitan.

“Song review: ‘Circle of Life’”

By Hunter Goddard

It is all too easy for the unimaginative filmmaker to consign the music in their film to forgettable background noise, but sometimes, a song can elevate the motion picture accompanying it into something immortal: an experience; a memory; a dream.

Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff’s animated musical, The Lion King (1994), is bookended with the choral leitmotifs of its signature track, “Circle of Life.”

This circular structure sings with the lyricism of Walt Disney’s Renaissance, and echoes with the poeticism of the film’s Shakespearean themes.

Composed by Elton John, written by Tim Rice, and performed by Carmen Twillie (who sings the English verses) and Lebo M. (who sings the Zulu), the record was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

It is the sunrise and sunset of the movie, the birth and death, the love and agony. Its notes soar to vertiginous heights while its vocals reach lows beneath our very skin, crawling along the goosebumps it raises on our flesh and the chills it strikes down our spines.

Such tonal polarization surrounds us with the picture’s epic theses of our history shaping our destiny, and the passionately drawn vistas of Simba’s birth at the beginning, then his own cub’s at the end, harmonize with each other divinely.

Ultimately, “Circle of Life” is a songwriting at its most cinematic, so vital to the imagery onscreen, visual and audio together collaborate into a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Amazon Prime review: Jordan Peele’s “Us” (2019)

Once upon a time, there was a girl, and the girl had a shadow…

If you don’t know what to watch next, Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) is available on Amazon Prime.

The psychological horror film had the all-time second-best opening weekend for a live-action feature after James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), and the third-best behind Andy Muschietti’s It (2017) and David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018), but the best for an original horror script.

Peele, who won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his directorial debut, Get Out (2017), is also the screenwriter for Us.

On Rotten Tomatoes, ninety-four percent of critical reviews aggregated for Us are positive.

Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke star as Adelaide Thomas and Gabe Wilson, who visit the family lake house in Santa Cruz with their children, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex).

Adelaide is doubtful about the trip because of the mysterious, traumatic event which befell her at the beach when she was a child. Their first night there, a family of four strangers invade the Wilsons’ home and reveal themselves to be their doppelgängers as the Wilsons fight for survival.

Together, Us and Get Out showcase not only Peele’s genius for the horror genre, but also his talent for filmmaking in general.

His background in comedy does not arrest his passion for horror, but rather refines it with laugh-out-loud dialogue that endears you to the cast all the more devastatingly when the terror comes to claim them.

Us is as rich with subtext as its predecessor, yet speaks with a voice all its own. Where Get Out is a slow-burn suspense thriller, Us is a fast-paced horror show.

Nevertheless, between the two, Get Out is the superior movie, but only because it is so difficult to meet, much less exceed. Get Out is one of the greatest pictures of our time, and one of the most important horror pictures ever, a once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece.

This isn’t to say that Us isn’t still a scissor’s cut above the competition, because it is. Nyong’o’s dynamic performance alone, characterizing both hero and villain, deserves multiple viewings in order to truly experience each layer of nuance she delivers to this dual role.

In a way, Us is more subtle and sophisticated than Get Out, a thematic cocktail of motifs and visual metaphors and double meanings as open to interpretation as a hall of mirror is infinite with reflections.

Us might have been stronger, in fact, if it was more ambiguous, but as it is, it is still a horror piece more lovingly choreographed than the mainstream, cheaply-shot Hollywood release made for no other reason than to rake in an easy profit.

And that twist ending will echo through you forever.

Hulu review: Darren Aronofsky’s “mother!” (2017)

A film that receives both boos and a standing ovation during its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, is a film that demands to be seen.

If you don’t know what to watch next, Darren Aronofsky’s mother! (2017) is available to stream on Hulu. Sixty-nine percent of the reviews aggregated on Rotten Tomatoes for the psychological horror film are positive, but audiences polled through CinemaScore graded it with an “F.”

Its opening weekend marked the worst debut for a Jennifer Lawrence vehicle in which she earned top billing.

A plot synopsis is not easy for a reviewer to put down in words. Suffice to say, the movie opens with an unnamed poet (Javier Bardem) and his wife (Lawrence) living in an idyllic country home evocative of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magical realism.

When a man (Ed Harris) and a woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) come to stay as guests at their house, this paradise begins to fall apart.

Although not a narratively straightforward picture, mother! is an exercise in production value.

The performances of its four decorated stars are dramatic tours-de-force, and Matthew Libatique’s kinetic cinematography externalizes the surreal panic characterizing Lawrence’s titular “mother.”

Whispering alongside them is Johann Johannsson and Craig Henighan’s atmospheric sound design, echoing with the breathy non-diegesis of Aronofsky’s own Black Swan (2010) like chills running down your spine, and creaking with all the dread of the poet’s house.

The trailer misrepresents mother! as an homage to Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), which arguably answers for much of the popular disappointment in the final product.

Indeed, the text can be interpreted as an allegory for Biblical creation, or the artistic process, or sociopolitical and environmental decay (or all three.. or something else).

It is an experimental release marketed as a mainstream scary movie about creepy neighbors, and it fails to meet its own expectations.

But even in its true, arthouse context, mother! can be self-indulgent and pretentious. Some of its metaphors are heavy-handed, and others try too hard to be “ambiguous,” instead coming off as “half-baked.”

The filmmaker wrote the screenplay in five days, and it shows. At its stylized, dreamlike best, that’s a compliment. At its forced, incomprehensible worst, it’s not.

Whether it gets you to cheer or jeer, mother! is sure to be unlike any other film you’ll ever see.

Netflix review: Brian De Palma’s “Carrie” (1976)

The year is 1976. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) introduced the moviegoing public to the summer blockbuster the year before, and George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977) would go on to turn movie studios into toy factories the year after.

The same “film school generation” who pioneered the post-Golden Age renaissance that was New Hollywood, sold its soul to the highest bidder.

Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976) is one of the last classics of its era. If you don’t know what to watch next, it’s available to stream on Netflix.

It is an adaptation of Stephen King’s debut novel, so early in his career, his name is misspelled as “Steven” in the opening credits.

It was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Actress for Sissy Spacek (the titular Carrie White), and Best Supporting Actress for Piper Laurie (Carrie’s religious fanatic mother, Margaret White).

The supernatural horror film begins in a high school locker room, where Carrie, an introverted social outcast, menstruates for the first time; because her puritanical mother never warned her about menstruation, Carrie panics, and the other girls laugh and throw tampons at her.

The saintly gym teacher, Miss Collins (Betty Buckley), punishes Carrie’s classmates, including Sue Snell (Amy Irving) and Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen), for their bullying, and with the advent of her puberty, Carrie discovers she possesses telekinetic powers.

Meanwhile, a remorseful Sue asks her boyfriend, Tommy Ross (William Katt), the most popular boy in school, to take Carrie to the prom, and a vengeful Chris plots with her abusive lover, Billy Nolan (John Travolta, in his first big screen role), to get back at Carrie.

Carrie is as tragic as it is horrifying, the Cinderella story from Hell, as only King could imagine it. It is a monster movie with many monsters, and the mass murderer with telekinesis is not only one of them, but one of the victims, too.

That Carrie is a sympathetic figure, is the scariest part about her.

De Palma’s filmmaking is at its strongest when he’s borrowing from other artists’ work, and his interpretation of King’s book is bursting with nods to his favorite source of inspiration, Sir Alfred Hitchcock.

Composer Pino Donaggio’s shrieking violins parallel Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho (1960), and so does the name change from “Ewen High School” on the page to “Bates High School” on the screen.

Carrie sometimes surpasses its source material. The written word portrays Carrie as an irredeemable psychopath, whereas almost all the people Carrie kills in the picture have it coming, sparking a hellish catharsis in the viewer.

Also, it feels like parts of King’s narrative are padded for length by an author learning how to write his first novel, since before the publication of Carrie, King was a short story writer.

De Palma’s prom set piece is a masterclass of suspense, as Donaggio’s soundtrack as well as editor Paul Hirsch’s split screens and montages of cuts thrust toward a bloody, fiery climax.

Even upon revisiting it, knowing how it ends, you will still find yourself it will somehow end differently, that Carrie will get the happily ever after she deserves, that her dreams will come true, despite the nightmare she was born into.

In King’s own words, though, Carrie is dated. The special effects have aged somewhat poorly, and the jump scare at the finale has been parodied so many times, it’s borderline laughable.

But as with Carrie herself, there is so much more to cinema than what it looks like, and there is so much more to horror than whether or not it makes you cover your eyes.

Carrie may not make you scream, but it might make you cry. It will make you know what it is to be in high school again, how happy you would be to win prom royalty, and what you would do to the people who ruin it in the worst possible way.

And that is the agelessness of its time.

Amazon Prime review: HBO’s “Game of Thrones” (2011-2019)

When you play the game of thrones, you win…

…Or you die.

If you don’t know what to watch next, HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011-2019) is available on Amazon Prime.

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s series of novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, is the most-nominated drama in the history of the Primetime Emmy Awards. It won Outstanding Drama Series in 2015, 2016, and 2018.

The fantasy epic takes place in the feudal Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, united under the Iron Throne. Multiple storylines weave around three central arcs. One is the dynastic civil war between noble Westerosi families for control over the Iron Throne.

Another involves a warrior named Jon Snow (Kit Harington), and his own war against the undead White Walkers in the frozen northern wilderness of the continent.

Meanwhile, east of the Narrow Sea in Essos, the exile princess, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), whose ancestors first sat the Iron Throne, hatches three dragons and leads an armada to conquer the Seven Kingdoms.

The production value of Game of Thrones rivals big-budget Hollywood blockbusters, forging its place in the Golden Age of Television with dragon fire.

But it’s not just the ambitious small-screen spectacle that makes for already classic TV.

At its best, Game of Thrones comes across as more of a political thriller than it does, say, a knockoff of Peter Jackson’s godawful The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), even though such comparison is inevitable.

Its commitment to medieval realism, despite the dragons, witches, and ice zombies populating the mise-en-scene, casts the fantastical setting in a more accessible light for all audiences, not just fans of the genre.

The key to this detailed world-building lies in the show’s character development, with the ensemble fighting to survive in a world where power too often falls into the hands of those who deserve it least.

But that’s Game of Thrones at its best.

The fifth season is the first to adapt material not yet published in A Song of Ice and Fire, and that is where the showrunners’ writing begins to collapse under the weight of Martin’s mythos.

The dialogue in the sixth season is a far cry from the more quotable lines in earlier episodes (“Winter is coming,” “All men must die,” “For the night is dark and full of terrors”), but the storytelling is still consistent with the source material.

After all, Martin himself is a stronger storyteller than he is a wordsmith, and, in their prime, the books and the show complement and improve upon each other spellbindingly.

The final two seasons, though, shorter than the first six ten-episode installments (the seventh season is seven episodes, and the eighth season is six), rush to their subverted expectations at an incoherent pace.

They are almost caricatures of the twists defining the series at its finest. These narrative turns are meant to be the climactic payoffs to the slow-burn, character-driven, chess-piece setups arranging themselves throughout the drama.

Otherwise, it’s all style and no substance.

Still, Game of Thrones is worth your time, if for no other reason than to see what Benioff and Weiss are trying to do (whether they succeed or not), and the first four seasons are more than worth the price of admission. The fourth season alone is some of the greatest TV ever aired.

Valar morghulis.

Hulu review: Craig Gillespie’s “I, Tonya” (2017)

She was loved for a minute. Then, she was hated. Now, she’s just a punchline.

If you don’t know what to watch next, Craig Gillespie’s I, Tonya (2017) is available to stream on Hulu.

The biographical black comedy was nominated for three Academy Awards, and Allison Janney won Best Supporting Actress for her performance as LaVona Golden, the abusive stage mother of infamous Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding (Best Actress nominee Margot Robbie).

The film details Harding’s life and career, centering around her connection to the 1994 attack on rival athlete Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver).

It is framed as a mockumentary, with contradictory interviews from Harding and her abusive ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), casting them both as unreliable narrators. Footage plays over the end credits of the historical interviews these are transcripted from.

Such ambiguity opens up Harding’s tale to popular interpretation arguably for the first time since her self-proclaimed “bodyguard,” Shawn Eckardt (Paul Walter Hauser), hired Shane Stant (Ricky Russert) to bludgeon Kerrigan’s kneecap with a police baton.

As a result, this narrative condemns the court of public opinion that was already looking for a reason to convict Harding, the champion representing the United States at the international games with a “white trash” reputation.

Rightfully, Tatiana S. Riegel was nominated alongside Robbie and Janney for her editing. Her work is reminiscent of Thelma Schoonmaker’s Oscar-nominated cut of Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas (1990).

The energetically stylized composition is replete with fourth-wall breaks, hysterically juxtaposed cuts, and computer-imaged tracking-shot montages dollying through time with the same flow as one of Harding’s skating routines.

When paired with music supervisor Susan Jacobs’s classic rock soundtrack, the electricity between sight and sound sparks in us the forgotten inspiration audiences felt watching Harding skate, back when she was known for her talent and not for Nancy Kerrigan.

As darkly humorous as the picture’s voice is, it is sensitive with its themes of poverty and domestic abuse.

Harding is a tragic, sympathetic figure whose onscreen persona subscribes to the age-old psyche of the unloved child who grows up to marry an equally brutal spouse because it’s all she’s ever known about love, and so seeks the adoration and devotion of strangers across the globe.

The cast of characters deny accusations against themselves while lobbing new ones at each other, and the conflicting voiceover narrations and exaggerated editing make it clear what we see is not an objective story, but the subjective telling of it.

All that being said, the movie begs the question: is Harding so desperately addicted to her own fame that she’ll mastermind a violent criminal conspiracy to protect it?

As with the rumors and biases surrounding the media coverage of the Kerrigan incident, it is a mystery everyone solves differently.

But knowing what contemporary viewers perceive of its titular antihero, I, Tonya introduces us first not to the woman who was loved, but to the woman who’s “just a punchline,” before she tells us her side of the moment she became “hated.”

And by the end, you may find yourself “loving” her more than you thought possible.

Netflix review: AMC’s “Mad Men” (2007-2015)

Tony Soprano… Walter White… Frank Underwood…

All three of these characters would be loathsome human beings, but, in the Golden Age of Television, they make for our favorite antiheroes. They are sociopaths with a body count between them that makes us ask ourselves why we root for them (or at least it should).

Don Draper ranks as one of the greatest among them, and he did it without killing anyone.

If you don’t know what to watch next, AMC’s Mad Men (2007-2015) is available to stream on Netflix.

No stranger to the antihero, series creator Matthew Weiner saw HBO’s The Sopranos (1999-2007) win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama in 2004 and 2007, when he served as their executive producer.

Mad Men itself earned the same award four years in a row, from 2008 to 2011.

Set in 1960s Manhattan, the period drama focuses on the hard-drinking Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the self-made creative director at a Madison Avenue advertising agency. Again, Don isn’t a violent criminal – his failure as a husband, father, and professional are what characterize him.

Meanwhile, all around him, the countercultural revolutions of the decade change life at work and at home.

An episode of Mad Men can go by without much happening, and its commitment to historical realism includes deadpan representations of the sexism, racism, homophobia, child abuse, alcoholism, and smoking of the era, which may be off-putting to modern audiences.

Though not for everyone, Mad Men’s slice-of-life experimentation with TV storytelling is complex with subtext. The setting itself is the star of the show, striking an unpredictable tone of crippling lawnmower accidents and nipples in gift boxes between the more mundane moments.

The aesthetic is a snapshot of the American Dream imperial capitalists at the time were propagandizing for the rest of the world in an effort to combat the global influence of communism during the Cold War.

Indeed, the 1960s may look glamorous on Mad Men, like one of Don Draper’s cigarette ads, but once you realize it’s only to sell a product that slowly kills the consumer, the glamour fades like the passing of time to reveal the social inequality and decadent consumerism lying underneath.

The fourth and fifth seasons are the crown jewels of the series, when the drama comes into its own, finds its voice, and develops its cast into their most dynamic.

One wishes, however, that Weiner were as ethical in his approach to Don Draper as he was with Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini).

In the final season of The Sopranos, Tony’s psychiatrist, Doctor Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), comes to accept what an irredeemable monster he is and condemns him in a scene that’s cathartic for anybody who’s ever had to “break up” with an antisocial personality.

Mad Men, on the other hand, features no such reckoning for Don. The closest we get is a phone call in the series finale with leading lady Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), who he manipulates out of chastising him for his selfishness, to talking him down off the ledge.

As a result, Don’s actions could come across as romanticized for the less-than-critical viewer. In spite of everything else, he is a successful, talented, attractive businessman with a tragic backstory that, for those who long to identify with him, could make him too sympathetic.

The ambiguous ending does not clarify whether Don is a changed man or not after his conversation with Peggy, which could mean he gets away with his narcissistic behavior one last time…

…Or not.

While Mad Men is not known for lending itself to easy interpretation, that’s what lends it well to re-watches – you can binge it over and over again and find something new every time. It is a powerfully honest character study of a man on the run, not from the law, but from himself.

Amazon Prime review: Bradley Cooper’s “A Star Is Born” (2018)

“Music is essentially twelve notes between any octave… Twelve notes, and the octave repeats. It’s the same story, told over and over, forever. All any artist can offer the world is how they see those twelve notes.”

Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born (2018) is the third remake of William A. Wellman’s 1937 film of the same title. If you don’t know what to watch next, the musical romantic drama is available on Amazon Prime.

Cooper’s directorial debut was nominated in eight categories at the Ninety-First Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Cooper himself earned nods for his work as lead actor as well as his contribution to the adapted screenplay.

Co-star Lady Gaga (and Best Actress nominee) won Best Original Song for “Shallow.”

It is the story of an alcoholic country musician named Jackson Maine (Cooper) who falls for a waitress named Ally Campana (Gaga) after he sees her deliver an intoxicating cover of “La Vie en rose” at a drag bar.

When Jackson learns Ally has given up on pursuing a career in music because of all the rejection she’s faced, he uses his fame to help her get discovered.

But once Ally’s meteoric rise to success eclipses his own, Jackson’s drinking drags him down to new lows, and threatens to tear down their relationship with it.

As filmmaker, star, co-screenwriter, and co-producer, Cooper runs the risk of Shyamalanian self-indulgence. But with his stringy hair and slurred growl, he paints an unflattering portrait of alcoholism.

Indeed, the most redeeming characteristic about Jackson is how he helps Ally find the happiness she deserves for her talent.

As for Gaga, the focal point in this fairytale of a server who becomes a pop star, she runs the risk of playing herself, which could go one of two ways: chewing the scenery with her outrageous onstage persona; or striking a flat note with a pedestrian performance.

Instead, she harmonizes with Cooper’s mise-en-scene, balancing a melodious complement between “personal” and “transformative” in her characterization of Ally.

The power of the two romantic leads is critical to the chemistry the audience feels between them.

That Cooper could inspire three Oscar-nominated turns in his first project, is testament to his potential as a director – Sam Elliot, who speaks the “twelve notes” line, was nominated for his supporting role as Jackson’s half-brother and manager, Bobby Maine.

The Academy did not recognize Cooper’s directing work, however. It is disappointing that he chose to shoot a fourth A Star Is Born in a market already oversaturated with reboots, remakes, and sequels.

And it is problematic that the poorly aged template for his wish fulfillment fantasy is a love story between a jealous, narcissistic man who forces his partner to be strong enough for both of them and save him from his own self-destruction (when she isn’t using him for her own ambition).

Still, the way Cooper sees “those twelve notes” is as much a cinematic celebration as it is musical.

Matthew Libatique’s award-nominated cinematography frames Jackson and Ally in fluid closeups as intimate as a lover’s gaze, with lens flares as dazzling as the adrenaline rush of falling in love, or watching your dreams come true.

The cheering crowds at their concerts are relegated to background noise for the courtship at the heart of the picture.

Meanwhile, the dance between the movie’s visual and auditory aesthetics is no less charged than one of Jackson and Ally’s duets. Sound mixers Tom Ozanich, Dean A. Zupancic, Jason Ruder, and Steve A. Morrow were among the nominees at the 2019 Oscars ceremony.

The ringing of Jackson’s tinnitus deafens viewers to the music he shares with Ally, the passion she stirs in him even as he drinks himself half to death, and it invites us to live the tragedy of his downfall.

While the ballad of Jackson and Ally is not immune to the remove of critical viewership, it is stylistically self-aware that it is a tale as old as time and a song as old as rhyme.

And so we can be forgiven for enjoying it as something of a love letter to the “twelve notes” that bring two creative souls together in a consummation as intense and brilliant as they are.