Lessons of Darkness

The Five Obstructions (2003): B+

Those who find Danish auteur Lars Von Trier (Dancer in the Dark, Dogville) to be an insufferable, egomaniacal pain-in-the-ass will undoubtedly find much to loath about The Five Obstructions, a fascinating (and oft-times infuriating) documentary in which Von Trier instructs filmmaker Jorgen Leth to remake his abstract short film The Perfect Human (which Von Trier puzzlingly finds to be “perfect”) five different times under varying sets of difficult circumstances. The point of this cruel experiment is twofold – to torture the mild-mannered Leth (not unlike how Von Trier reportedly likes to torment his own actors and actresses), and to help Leth transcend his safe, comfortable artistic space. Von Trier’s conditions range from demanding that no shot by more than 12 frames long to making Leth shoot in the most miserable place he can imagine (a Bombay ghetto, apparently) and forcing him to recreate his short as a cartoon, but much of the film’s tension comes from Leth’s regular attempts to slyly circumnavigate Von Trier’s rules. That Leth’s new films seem to improve upon his original confirms The Five Obstructions’ position that artistic inspiration frequently flourishes not in an environment of complete freedom but, rather, one of sometimes-severe restrictions, but it also subtly stands as Von Trier’s “told you so” rebuke to critics who decry his harsh work methods.

Tokyo Godfathers (2003): B+

While neither as visually nor as thematically intricate as Millennium Actress, Satoshi Kon’s Tokyo Godfathers – a reimagining of John Ford’s weepy Western 3 Godfathers in which three homeless friends attempt to return an abandoned baby to its parents on Christmas Eve – is nonetheless a delightfully rambunctious holiday fable about the vital importance of family. Crotchety drunk Gin, motherly transvestite Hana, and young girl Miyuki have each fled their dishonorable pasts for a life on the streets, yet an opportunity for redemptive familial reconciliation arrives when they discover an infant discarded in a trash heap and embark on a week-long quest throughout Tokyo to track down the child’s mother and father. Kon’s colorful, irrepressibly antic animation makes up for its lack of facial and background details via energetic, vibrant action sequences, culminating in a climactic chase through the snow-covered streets that’s a marvel of high-strung humor and tension. The film’s narrative is too convoluted by half, and the director’s trademark talent for blending dreams and reality is largely absent (save for a few tantalizingly quick moments). But even as a lesser Kon effort, Tokyo Godfathers remains a delightful film bursting with meticulously drawn lead characters – all three of whom mask their shame and disappointment through hysterical bickering – traces of whimsical fantasy (“Kiyoko,” the baby they find, is something of a Christ-like miracle child), and outright bizarreness.

Stander (2003): B-

“If you go fast enough, you can’t see where you’ve come from,” says a cohort of Andre Stander in Bronwen Hughes’ Stander, and it’s an outlook the notorious South African cop-turned-thief apparently held dear. Disgusted by his participation in the state-sanctioned murder of innocent blacks, Stander threw away a promising career in the police force for a reckless life of non-stop crime, looting over twenty banks in the 1970s while still on the job and another bushel after he broke out of prison. As played by Thomas Jane, Stander is a charismatic, carefree rebel who robbed banks as an act of protest against Apartheid, and Hughes gets great mileage out of her subject’s go-for-broke brazenness. What Stander lacked, however, was a genuinely subversive modus operandi – the man held up banks to spit in the face of his cruel white countrymen, but he was no Robin Hood, and with one trivial exception, he greedily kept the money for himself. Stander’s selfishness goes a long way toward negating the supposed nobility of his actions, and Bronwen’s film doesn’t help itself by using oppressed blacks as merely a device to provide Stander with some criminal motivation. Still, it’s a rather entertaining (if style-over-substance) portrait of insane illicitness.

Heat (1995): B+

Michael Mann’s beautifully hard-edged direction – not unlike a sports car that masks its brawn underneath a beautifully elegant exterior – was never more muscular or sleek than with Heat, his near-masterpiece about the cat-and-mouse competition between ruthless thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and cagey lieutenant Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino). Mann strives for epic grandeur in every ice-blue widescreen composition and tightly edited conversation (which boast the director’s firm grasp of shot-reverse shot technique), and though his film has its minor deficiencies – there’s still too much overacting on Pacino’s part, and a few too many deadweight scenes (like every one featuring Hank Azaria) – the filmmaker nonetheless breaths vibrant life into his somewhat clichéd story about kindred warriors on different sides of the law. Hanna and McCauley are alienated outsiders, victims of a masculine code of honor that places duty, perfection, and a dedication to method – whether it be catching criminals or eluding the powers-that-be – above personal concerns. In his last great screen role, De Niro delivers a frightening vision of frosty criminal efficiency that nonetheless conceals a longing for comforting human contact. Yet the film’s steely force is mainly attributable to Mann, who both subtly evokes how these urban predators (who resemble cowboys in an L.A.-set Western) use emotional isolation as a means of protecting themselves from the harsher realities of their work (and the world), while also depicting, in noir-like fashion, how repudiating one’s true nature can only lead to catastrophe.

The Weekend's Big Three, Plus One

I somehow wound up covering all three of this weekend's major Hollywood releases for Slant magazine. The verdict? You'll have more fun staying at home.

Be Cool (Slant magazine)
The Jacket (Slant magazine)
The Pacifier (Slant magazine)

A better bet is a small, touching film from Argentina called Intimate Stories, which I praise over at filmcritic.com.

Intimate Stories (filmcritic.com)