Lessons of Darkness

Alice (1988): B+

There’s a reason that Jan Svankmajer’s reimagining of Lewis Carroll’s seminal children’s fable is titled simply Alice – namely, because the bizarre, unsettling and occasionally terrifying world that his pint-sized heroine (Kristyna Kohoutova) magically enters is anything but a delightful wonderland. Melding live-action with stop-motion animation, Svankmajer remains largely faithful to his source material’s narrative arc while bestowing it with a bustling undercurrent of psycho-sexual menace derived from phallic/penetration imagery (slithering sock puppet caterpillars, a fat, meaty frog’s tongue) and grotesque, violent visuals (the white rabbit bleeding sawdust and then repeatedly licking it off his watch, scissor beheadings, the March Hare moving about in a rickety wheelchair). The director’s synthesis of the authentic and the artificial (replete with frighteningly creaking, clanging sound effects) – as well as his refusal to bookend the fantastical action with comforting visions of the waking world – allows Alice to tap into the element of nightmarish dread that’s always colored the classic kid’s story, and his sparse use of English narration (delivered via fetishistic, out-of-sync close-ups of Kohoutova’s mouth) highlights the power of the spoken word while also contributing to the overriding air of unreality. Eerily evocative and disturbingly potent, Svankmajer’s surrealist adaptation is a welcome antidote to the cute and cuddly Disneyfication of Carroll’s iconic tale.

Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys (2000): C+

German provocateur Michael Haneke operates in a vein similar to the villain of Code Unknown’s movie-within-the-movie The Collector, trapping his characters in meticulously constructed, confining scenarios in order to punish them. The difference, however, is that whereas the nefarious Collector’s plot against star Anne (Juliette Binoche) is seemingly perpetrated for no reason, Haneke has a point to make: namely, to slam the bourgeoisie for being selfish and cloistered in a cocoon of wealth and privilege, and to lament the plight of the working/immigrant population who suffer indignities at the hands of the social elite. It’s a class-conscious thematic thrust that defines nearly all of Haneke’s work, and here is most forcefully dramatized during an intro scene involving a black man’s attempts to force Anne’s son to apologize to the beggar he callously insulted, and in a climactic Métro confrontation between Anne and an Arab teen that culminates in a shocking bit of spitting. Yet whereas the director’s sterile formalism (his narrative fragmented into unedited single scenes) and expert orchestration of slowly building tension produces a voyeuristic chill that’s hard to shake, his socio-political condemnations assume an aggressively hectoring tone, so that – even during beautifully wrought moments such as Anne and war photojournalist boyfriend Georges’ grocery store trip, in which irrepressible emotions (anger, disgust, passion) momentarily burst forth from trivial discussions about wine and rice – Code Unknown feels frustratingly pedantic. The intro’s deaf kids may speak to the story’s larger portrait of communication failures, but more than his characters, it’s Haneke himself – content, in film after film, to make the same didactic denunciations of the upper crust – who seems unable to say something compellingly novel.

Sherrybaby (2006): C

Laurie Collyer’s Sherrybaby is the feminine flip-side to Ryan Fleck’s Half Nelson, less because its narrative centers on a Caucasian heroin junkie working with African-American children, and more because it’s a similar bit of trite indie melodrama bolstered by a searing lead performance. As Sherry Swanson, a recently paroled addict determined to win back custody of her young daughter Alexis (Ryan Simpkins), Maggie Gyllenhaal dives headfirst into unglamorous wretchedness, the actress infusing her ugly character with a foundation of authentic pitifulness even during spurious “Look how I’ve hit rock bottom” moments marked by breast-flashing. The rest of the film, alas, exhibits little of its star’s genuineness, forcing its on-the-skids protagonist to tackle a veritable checklist of contrived obstacles – a humiliating job interview, tense confrontations with a tough-love parole officer (Giancarlo Esposito), and a traumatic encounter with her incestuous father (Sam Bottoms) – before arriving at the predestined cathartic climax. As implied by the film’s title and confirmed by her mismanagement of relationships and responsibilities, Sherry is a troubled child in a slutty adult’s body. However, by the time Gyllenhaal’s needy little girl lost, in the film’s phony centerpiece, embarrassingly interrupts a family reunion dinner to belt out the Bangles’ “Eternal Flame,” what’s clear is that, even more than the immature Sherry herself, it’s Sherrybaby’s storytelling that’s truly underdeveloped.

Versus (2000): C

Proving the old adage about less being more, Versus piles on so much geektastic pandemonium that it quickly results in sensory overload. Taking an exhausting kitchen-sink approach to genre hybridization, director Ryuhei Kitamura melds yakuza, samurai, and zombie films via this tale of an escaped convict (Tak Sakaguchi) who, having been broken out of jail by a mysterious baddie (Hideo Sakaki), finds himself trying to save a girl (Chieko Misaka) from ruthless gangsters in The Forest of Resurrection, one of 666 portals to the “other side” where the hungry undead roam free. It’s a lunatic scenario that Kitamura drenches in manic humor and mountains of blood, with hacked limbs flying and combatants soaring during hyperactive skirmishes that are part Night of the Living Dead, part The Killer. With only the flimsiest of backstories (involving some Highlander-ish claptrap about immortal warriors) and characters so one-dimensional that they’re not even given names (the final credits list them as Hero, Head Villain, Heroine, etc.), it’s clear that the shamelessly goofy Versus is only after unadulterated hack-and-slash-and-splatter mayhem, an objective at which it technically succeeds. Yet Kitamura’s gonzo flick is overstuffed to the point of nausea, its barrage of gory outrageousness becoming wearisome after the first fifty fatal mutilations, and its cartoonish humor (such as Sakaguchi’s penchant for knocking Misaka unconscious before each battle) more aggressive than amusing.

Labor Day Changeover

August is gone and the Fall movie season is right around the corner, meaning that it's time for studios to dump their final summer films into theaters and then start preparing to roll out their Oscar hopefuls. My latest batch of reviews reflects this transitional release period, as I spent the past week checking out a couple of disposable new mainstream releases - The Wicker Man and Crossover, the latter of which is a definite contender for Year's Worst Film - as well as one of the first end-of-year prestige pictures, the so-so Hollywoodland.

More encouraging news, however, can be found in my reviews of Andrew Bujalski's Mutual Appreciation and the chilling doc Jesus Camp.

Out Now:
The Wicker Man (2006) (Slant magazine)
Crossover (Slant magazine)
Mutual Appreciation (Slant magazine)
Looking for Kitty (Slant magazine)

Coming Soon:
Hollywoodland (Slant magazine)
Jesus Camp (Slant magazine)
Vajra Sky Over Tibet (Slant magazine)