Be Kind Rewind (2008)

THE BIGGEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME JUST GOT A LITTLE MAKEOVER.

Despite the huge hiatus I took from this already enormous project, I think it should be pretty damn obvious at this point that movies mean a lot to me. If they didn’t, I don’t think I’d be even remotely close to the person I am today, let alone attempting to review every film I own one by one on the Internet. I love movies, and so I especially like it when a film comes out that so clearly comes from that same place in the filmmaker. Michel Gondry is one of those filmmakers that can do this. Idiosyncratic, quirky, absurd and possessed of a unique visual style, Gondry looked back to the films of the past to tell a story of what they mean to people and how they can bring them together through the acts of communal memory.

In Passaic, New Jersey, Elroy Fletcher (Danny Glover) runs a video rental store in a condemned building he claims was the birthplace of jazz legend Fats Waller. Facing foreclosure, Fletcher goes on a business venture, leaving his foster son Mike (Mos Def) in charge of the store. However, when Mike’s friend Jerry (Jack Black) tries to sabotage a nearby power station and becomes magnetised, he inadvertently erases every tape in the store. Mike and Jerry quickly hatch a plan to hide the disaster by making homemade versions of every title to rent and save the store. With help from the local community, their films develop a cult following.

When Gondry first talked to Jack Black about the project, specifically the premise of two friends who accidentally erase all the tapes in a video rental store and have to quickly make up new versions themselves, Black assumed that it was to be a period piece, set in the 70s or 80s. Gondry corrected him that it would be set today, that it would be a video rental store that, now in a world of DVD players and digital playback, was now finally on its way out. Right away, there is a rather wistful sadness to this idea. That this store, its name of Be Kind Rewind now being something that's redundant in this modern day, has held on for way longer than it really should have and is now on the verge of collapse. This point is actually quite literally made, since the entire building itself is due to be condemned, failing to meet some of the most basic requirements for safety and public use. Progress is coming, whether they want it or not.

The store’s owner, Mr. Fletcher, is clearly someone who could never really hack it in a fast-paced world. Early in the film, whilst having lunch with Mike and Jerry, they ask him why he was never married. He answers, “Well, the common story is, the girl that you was gonna ask, you waited too long to ask. She went on to marry somebody else and then you can’t find anybody to compare to her. So, what happens? You get old.” And old itself has a sort of double meaning here, too. Yes, Mr. Fletcher has indeed got old and is now too far gone to catch up, but the force of progress that threatens to oust him and end his business comes in the form of a neighbourhood gentrification project, which plans to clean up the rundown area and rename it Olde Passaic. Mr. Fletcher wants to keep his home and his business, but he needs time to do it.

His foster son Mike (I say foster son, though I’m not really entirely sure as to what the relationship actually is between the two, but it seems the most likely) also wants to hold on to the old neighbourhood, as opposed to the Olde neighbourhood, for a few reasons. Like Mr. Fletcher, he wants to keep things the way they are. He wants Mr. Fletcher to be happy. And he likes the neighbourhood, though when pressed he has kind of a tough time giving reasons as to why. When he and Jerry argue about it, both have their viewpoints on Passaic.

            Jerry: Mike, you have zero ambition.

            Mike: What?

Jerry: That’s your problem. You’re gonna be stuck in this dump

for the rest of your life. Good night.

            Mike: What? What? What’s a dump? What’s a dump? My shop

is a dump? You live in a junkyard.

Jerry: Not just the store… this whole city is a swamp.

            Mike: It’s a swamp now?

Jerry: Yeah, a dump swamp. When you get stuck here, you’re

stuck for life. Come on, Mike, what is so great about this town? Huh?

            Mike: … the people.

            Jerry: The people? You’re gonna make me cry. The people. The

only reason there’s anybody here is because they have nowhere to go.

Perhaps Jerry’s less positive outlook can be forgiven. At least Mike has reasons to hold some affection for his neighbourhood. He grew up here, has something of a life, albeit not a particularly good one if we’re honest. And he’s proud to have lived in the very building in which jazz great Fats Waller was born. It’s the story that Mr. Fletcher has told him since he was young, and is the story that we are told right at the start of the film, that Harlem wasn’t the capital of the jazz scene back in the day; Passaic was. How can you not want to hold on to such an important part of history when it’s so close to you? That’s why he tries to paint a mural of Fats beneath an overpass, to give the people of the neighbourhood something to look to and in which they can take some level of pride.

However, with Jerry, he has comparatively even less than Mike. Jerry does live in a junkyard, in a trailer, right next to a power station. Worse still, he believes that microwaves from the power station are causing his brains and the brains of everyone else to become affected, which is all part of a government conspiracy to alter behaviour. To buy things, to accept things… yeah, he’s a little strange. And people do dismiss him as the paranoid oddball for his strangeness. The local cops even make something of a joke of visiting his trailer in the night, taking turns knocking on his walls, claiming to be from the government, that the black helicopters are here and such… but Jerry has a plan: sabotage.

When Mr. Fletcher leaves town to go to a Fats Waller remembrance ceremony, leaving Mike in charge, Jerry enlists Mike in his plan to scale the fence of the power station and destroy it by swinging a grappling hook onto it and……. well, that’s actually it. Jerry thinks that should be enough to stop the microwaves from controlling everyone, somehow. Mike initially declines, but goes along anyway (it’s kind of plot hole, but not a particularly major one). However, halfway through the mission, Mike gets cold feet about the plan and abandons Jerry and takes off. Jerry stays to follow through, but in a moment that you’d think could only happen in films from the 80s, the power station fights back and sabotages Jerry.

The next morning, when Jerry visits the store to tell Mike about the previous night, Jerry gets in an argument with a customer when he keeps re-arranging all the tapes in the store. It’s not until a little later that we find out that this is the moment when Jerry, having been magnetised by the attempted sabotage, has inadvertently erased every single tape in the store. After an initial period of worry, and under the threat that Mr. Fletcher will be told how poorly Mike is coping, he has an idea. Grabbing a VHS camera and the blank tape of Ghostbusters, he announces to Jerry, “I’m Bill Murray, you’re everyone else.” They are going to personally remake every title in the store, using themselves as cast and crew, from memory, thus keeping the store in business.

Yes, the premise is bizarre as all hell, but don’t you just love that? For the potential downer that Be Kind Rewind could become (the end of VHS, for these people, for this neighbourhood), there is an absurd whimsy and warmth about the whole thing that is incredibly charming. Instead of succumbing to the inevitable, these two guys fight back, armed with a camera and some of the most ridiculous props and costumes available. And as they go, their notoriety escalates. They become so famous that people from all across the state come to see what they’ve made, like their 20-minute version of Ghostbusters featuring a ginger cat as Zuul and proton beams made of Christmas tinsel; their remake of Boyz n’ the Hood in which gunshots result in a literal pizza on the ground standing in for blood; or their take on RoboCop, where the titular character is made entirely of autoyard scrap.

Not only do Mike and Jerry become moderately famous in the city, but the community comes together to help them make more films, effectively becoming an enormous production crew and repertory company. Everyone bands together to make new versions of these films, but all in the uniquely zero-budget way they called “Sweded”.

It’s in this nature of Sweding that we see some of the great tricks of what is effectively guerrilla filmmaking, many of which Michel Gondry used himself growing up. They utilise depth of field and perspective tricks to create a sense of scale between a giant Jack Black-shaped King Kong and the screaming woman he snatches through a window; they flip the camera to negative in order to film night shots during the day; and they use cheap scale models for scenes like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man attacking New York. It’s such a wonderful combination of crass cheapness and incredibly imaginative technique. What’s even better are some of the titles they claim to have Sweded, either from what is seen on shelves or are mentioned during filming montages. Return of the King is one such title that would be absolutely hilarious to see as rendered by three people using a budget of about $20 and filmed in New Jersey. On the other end of the scale is mentioned a Sweded version of Harmony Korine’s Gummo, which, if you’re familiar with that film, proposes an idea of such absurdity since Gummo is as close to the real world equivalent of Sweding films as it’s possible to get. (Harmony Korine even outdid that in 2009 when he made Trash Humpers, a film made entirely on VHS and edited using two VCRs instead of actual editing equipment.) There is even a shot in Be Kind Rewind of genuinely impressive staging in which we are presented with a montage of the films being made, but it is actually one single, uninterrupted shot, with everyone moving from set-piece to set-piece, taking in films as diverse as King Kong, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Men in Black and Carrie. It’s a great shot.

Eventually, things do start to catch up with the Be Kind Rewind crew, with representatives of movie studios looking to enforce copyright law showing up to end their business. It’s here once again that the idea of progress, or at least a contrary sense of progress, seems to enter the film. Even though what they are doing is a violation of copyright law, the films that they make are helping them to progress and make some headway in saving their business, and also fostering a sense of community. Indeed, what they are doing can be found on the Internet and in most film schools, with students remaking scenes and sometimes whole movies in order to develop and progress their skills as filmmakers (I once happened upon a short piece of film on an edit suite in which some students were re-enacting a scene from Twilight… it was pretty funny). And this idea of creativity being derived, borrowed, flat-out stolen from what has gone before has been acknowledged by some great innovators in the world of art. Pablo Picasso famously said that, “good artists copy; great artists steal” and that, “every act of creation is an act of destruction”. Indeed, the history of creating new art or technology or science is a history of taking what has come before and reworking it into something else, something new. That the studios go after the Be Kind Rewind crew is as much an act of desperation that their product will be devalued as it is the defence of intellectual property. In a weird way, Gondry's film that revolves around the anachronism of VHS being overtaken by the new technology of DVD, and those that fight to save it, finds its parallel in the studio executives (like those who try to shut down this small movement) who find themselves on the line of being ousted by the surge of independent filmmakers who rise thanks to the new media opportunities of the Internet and digital distribution... hell of a thing, that.

This idea of taking from the past and turning it into what you want or need it to be is addressed directly in the film when, after the visit from the studio reps ends their Sweding run, the community band together for a last chance at saving the neighbourhood by making something new. It’s no longer about the community banding together over the shared love of other films. Now, it’s about keeping that community together by creating something that speaks for them all. As Jerry says, “We can make any movie we want… they can’t sue us if we’re making new ones.” And the story they choose is simple… a history of Fats Waller’s life as lived in Passaic. They want to tell the story of someone who Mr. Fletcher called “a happy man.”

Given that the film is as much as ode to community as it is to film, Michel Gondry embraced the real community of Passaic as much as he could. Some roles were given to real residents of the area. Pretty much every extra you see was local to the area they were shooting. And the final shot that assembles the community at large is a genuinely heart-warming sight. In making a film about a community coming together, Gondry really did bring a community together.

Be Kind Rewind may require you to screw on something of a whimsical head at certain moments (if you can take Jerry’s attempted sabotage of the power plant as the hilarious throwback that it is, you’ll be fine), but it is a truly warm and charming film, with a deep affection for film, for music, for people. Everyone is great, from Mos Def and Jack Black’s odd double act to the delightful Melonie Diaz to the slightly spaced out kookiness of Mia Farrow. In this film, Gondry has created something of sincerity and obvious love, and it is most certainly worth the watch.

The Dark Knight (2008)

WHY SO SERIOUS?

Following the huge success of Batman Begins, audiences were hungry for a sequel. With one strike, Christopher Nolan had all but completely eradicated the memory of the Schumacher debacle and restored hope in the Batman films by putting the Dark back in the Dark Knight. Of course, now that the groundwork was done, the task was even greater - he had to outdo himself. Nolan was understandably hesitant about returning to Gotham, much like Burton was after his first Batman film. However, the main thing that brought him back was the chance to look at and reinterpret a particular character from the Rogue’s Gallery: the Joker, arguably one of the greatest, if not the greatest villain in the comic book world. Amidst near constant fan speculation, hype and the kind of expectations that would instantly cripple any other film, in 2008, Christopher Nolan released The Dark Knight.

Six months into his crime-fighting career, Batman (Christian Bale) is close to ending organised crime in Gotham, with help from Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) and new D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). In a last attempt to stop this from happening, the mob turns to the Joker (Heath Ledger), a dangerous psychopath intent on engulfing Gotham in chaos and violence. Batman’s struggle against the Joker becomes very personal as the villain pushes everyone to the very brink of madness and moral collapse.

At the end of Batman Begins, Jim Gordon delivers a monologue on the nature of escalation in the fight against crime. He tells Batman, “We start carrying semi-automatics; they buy automatics. We start wearing Kevlar; they buy armour-piercing rounds. And you’re wearing a mask and jumping off rooftops.” It’s a simple, elegant, positively Newtonian way of addressing how one thing begets another. And from this comes the root of conflict within The Dark Knight, where Batman is confronted with the first direct reaction to his method of fighting crime. By employing some extreme means of restoring order, his nemesis is one who would be even more extreme in order to create chaos. And that last word is very important: Chaos.

The Joker describes himself as an agent of Chaos, with no real plan other than to destroy everyone else’s plan. He looks at the other people in Gotham - the police, the criminals, the politicians, even Batman - and sees how weak and pathetic their plans are. They all want some kind of order, an order that benefits them, and one that rests in contradiction to the others. Not only does this provide a great deal of enjoyment for the Joker, but it gives him the chance to ask his questions of these people: If you’re going to reorder society, what makes one person’s plans any better than the others?… What’s the point of trying to instil order with rules that can’t stand up to real strain?… Why not just do away with all the rules and let chaos reign?… Why so serious? To this end, the Joker has a fondness for games, particularly those that force the players to break their own rules of conduct and morality, like having three rival henchmen fight to the death to which of them can join his crew, or the infamous ferry boat game. His games are never particularly fair, but then they don’t have to be, and that’s the point. In a scene where Batman interrogates him, the Joker delivers his view of the world.

            Joker: You see, their morals, their code, it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first

sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. I’ll show

you. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they’ll eat each

other. See, I’m not a monster. I’m just ahead of the curve.

Not only is this an utterly chilling monologue, but it’s also unnervingly convincing as a stance on societal morality. For all of the influences behind the Joker on a level of design and performance, it would seem that the horrifying mix of intelligence and murderous nihilism that makes up the root of his persona is akin to that of Charles Manson, and that makes him goddamn terrifying. On the two occasions when someone seeks to “teach him some manners,” the Joker easily turns things around on his would-be teacher, likely because the mere fact that they have tried to beat their rules into him means that they have already lost the fight.

Batman isn’t exactly very far from this guy, and they both know it. As I talked about in my Batman Begins review, his weapons are generally the same as those of the city’s criminals, like fear and brutality. The only difference is that he uses them on those same criminals. He’s a hero seemingly only by virtue of his targets. And it’s precisely because of these methods that they create someone like the Joker. When Batman finds Harvey trying to extract information from one of the Joker’s henchmen, he tells him that it’s useless, that the henchman in question is a paranoid schizophrenic from Arkham Asylum, “the kind of mind the Joker attracts.” Of course, the corollary of that is to acknowledge that Batman attracts minds like the Joker’s. Batman never had problems fighting the mob or the more common criminal element of the city before, because they had rules. Batman only had one rule so could fight them because he was, to some degree, much worse than them, which is why they were so scared of him. In the Joker, the Dark Knight has found someone without identity, loyalty, rules, empathy or limits. Make no mistake, Batman is scared of the Joker. In order to fight someone like him, Batman would have to break his own rule and become something worse, which is what the Joker has wanted all along. In that purple-suited nutcase, he is shown just how fine that line between them really is and the seeming inevitability that he will cross it.

The darkness in The Dark Knight is prominent, but hope isn’t ignored in all of this. Indeed, without hope, the Joker would have nothing to try and break down. Hope in this world is represented not by Batman, but by Harvey Dent, referred to so regularly as Gotham’s White Knight. Harvey is such an important figure for so many reasons. He’s smart and courageous, standing resolutely against corruption and crime, even if he does it alone, and he does it all without wearing a mask. He’s not just the ray of light for the city, but for Bruce Wayne, too. Wayne sees in him a way out, someone to accept the challenge of cleaning up the streets the right way, and allowing him the chance to hang up his cape for good. Harvey knows this and seems willing and able to do it. Batman calls Harvey “the best of us,” specifically relating to himself, Harvey and Gordon, but also in a more general sense. Harvey is the best of society, decent, capable and with great integrity… and that’s exactly why the Joker goes after him. As we’ve learned, the Joker wants to break down society, with its rules and codes and laws that are only as good as those that make them. To prove this point, he chooses to make an example of Harvey Dent, making him twisted and ugly and a hideous living embodiment of a society at war with itself. He becomes someone like Bruce Wayne: consumed by anger and pain, driven to act on it. As such, he becomes a corrupted agent, not of chaos or anarchy, but of chance, a warped instrument of fate that leaves a trail of death up to the flip of a coin. He becomes Two-Face.

Beyond the direct implications of chaos and morality, Nolan has managed to work in a sort of tragic love story, too. Bruce Wayne still holds onto the hope that, should he be able to give up being the Batman, he and Rachel Dawes will finally be able to be together. After all, she did make a promise to this effect in Batman Begins. However, in the time that Wayne has been fighting crime, Rachel has found that she can’t wait around for Bruce to give up his alter ego. She has fallen for Harvey Dent, which would really have to sting. Not only is Harvey capable of taking on the criminal world of Gotham himself without gadgets or a mask, but in doing so he is also able to win the affections of Rachel. On some level, this would perhaps act as an extra push for Bruce to give up his crime-fighting ways, passing the torch to Harvey, or rather saddling him with the burden, and thereby freeing himself up to pursue a relationship with Rachel. However, Rachel has already made up her mind. The Batman will always be inside Bruce, and she knows that there will never be room for another in his life, even after he quits. The darkness, the psychosis will always be there. Harvey is clearly the better choice because he is really is the better man. That these modest hopes end so badly for all of them just plunges them all into despair.

The supporting players become so much more in all of this, too. Alfred, having been established as a guiding light to Bruce Wayne, continues to act in a way that makes him more than just a butler. He protects Bruce from the things that would hurt him, threaten his already questionable mental stability. It’s perhaps precisely because he has Alfred that Bruce is able to hold onto that last remaining sliver of decency and faith, that he never succumbs to the Joker’s efforts of corruption and destruction. And it’s never done in a way that amounts to directly telling him what to do, but more advising him in a way that allows Bruce to make his own decision. Jim Gordon becomes a more prominent figure, not just professionally (he finally attains his status as Commissioner), but in the grand scheme. He acts as the midway point between Harvey and Batman. He’s a decent man trying to do good, but by working with the corrupt and dishonest, he’s somewhat tainted by them. He’s the most direct and relatable version of us onscreen. He tries to make the best he can with the means at his disposal, but sometimes that just isn’t good enough. Is it a bit much to say that when he tells Harvey he’s sorry for allowing what happened that it’s metaphorically us telling the corrupted and ugly face of society that we’re sorry? Perhaps, but it’s certainly not without basis. Lucius Fox also serves as another good example of decency within the film, but a decency that knows when lines must be crossed (he continues to assist and protect Wayne as Batman) and when they shouldn’t be (his horror upon being presented with Batman’s new sonar computer system). Even Sal Maroni, the new head of the Falcone crime family, has his place as both bad guy and good guy.

On a production level, The Dark Knight is near flawless. As I’ve more or less said, the script for the film is superb. Really, really superb. The story was conceived by David S. Goyer around about the time he was coming up with Batman Begins, though the actual scripting duties fell to Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan, who wrote the script for Memento back in 2000. Nolan’s vision of Gotham is noticeably different from the previous film. It’s a bit of a cleaner look, less infused with that griminess, which is probably an allusion to the effect Batman has had on the city, cleaning it up, as it were. The design of the characters is equally great (I’m rapidly running out of positive adjectives here). Batman has been redesigned to be more agile, freer in movement, but still effective in combat. Also, he’s been given a new vehicle, the Bat-pod. It’s a cool bike, though it did pain me that it came at the cost of the Tumbler. Then there’s the Joker, who looks genuinely maniacal, from his punk-influenced clothes to his make-up, which has the occasional effect of making him look somehow infected.

The performances themselves are a gallery of fine work. Christian Bale continues to do a damn good job as Bruce Wayne/Batman. In the same way that Bruce would be a bit more comfortable as Batman, Bale is a bit more comfortable in the performance. A lot of people actually found this to be a little flatter than he previous turn, but the emotion of Batman Begins was more raw, he was a character still struggling with how to channel his anguish. The Bruce of The Dark Knight has had some time to get used to it, and more importantly has found an outlet for his aggression, even if it is “beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands.” Something else a lot of people found off about the performance was the voice, which was different from that of the previous film, where the vocal change was more subtle. Here, he growls much more. Honestly, I’m fine with this voice for a few reasons: 1) Fear - Batman is supposed to be scary, and regardless of what many people say, if someone started threatening and snarling at you in that voice, you’d be scared; 2) Practicality - You certainly can’t say that Batman’s voice and Bruce Wayne’s voice are similar under these circumstances, so it’s not as easy for people to link the two; 3) Persona - It’s a mark of Bruce’s psychosis that he keeps doing the voice, even when just talking to Lucius, who knows who he is; and 4) Post-production - Though Bale did do the voice, it was Nolan who amped it up in the edit, so it was a conscious decision on the part of the director and, goddamn it, in Nolan we trust.

Aaron Eckhart is superb as Harvey Dent. He holds himself with the great poise and stature throughout. From the get-go, Eckhart looks like someone you can have confidence in, that you can place your trust in. His political slogan was ‘I Believe in Harvey Dent’, and Eckhart makes a damn sure that the audience can do just that. And he handles the shift to Two-Face with great skill. It’s not a complete break of character, as if making the transition from Henry Jekyll to Edward Hyde. This is still the same man, but defeated, broken, torn apart by the machinations of a lunatic. Eckhart plays these two sides so well, in contrast and parallel, that it’s so easy to be convinced by the character. And the horrifying design of the look of Two-Face made this even easier. It’s grotesque, almost painful to look at. Any potential for it to be regarded as darkly amusing is removed by Eckhart’s anguished conviction behind it all. He’s a man angered and hurting, inside and out, and he’s looking to take that out on the people responsible.

Then… there’s Heath Ledger. When Ledger was announced as the choice to take on the role of the Joker, many were not convinced about the decision. Most were incredulous that the guy who once played some gay cowboy could hope to play a part that was last done by Jack Nicholson, and to great and lasting effect. Even the film writer Philip French (of whom I am a great admirer) said in his review of Batman Begins, “[N]o one would be foolish enough to compete with Jack Nicholson’s 1989 Joker.” What in the hell made Nolan think this would work? When asked, his response was simple: “Because Heath is fearless.” I don’t care who says it, that’s a good answer, and he sure wasn’t wrong. Ledger is unbeatable in this film. As strong as the other performances are (and they are), Ledger utterly destroys everyone else. It’s a performance so wholly conceived and convincing that you find yourself longing for him to be onscreen because he’s so damn electric. Jack Nicholson’s Joker was a malevolent lunatic, but there was still something fun about him; Ledger’s Joker is a full-blown psychotic, murderous, sadistic, and just scary as hell. Just watch the scene where he films his tormenting of a “Son of Batman”, listen to the viciousness in his voice and that laugh… shudder. And it’s as complete and committed a performance as Ledger ever gave, and he had some great roles in CV (that gay cowboy one was one them). Just listen to the voice, watch the mannerisms, the genuine glee in his campaign of chaos. So completely caught up in his character and the film was I that it wasn’t until his final scene that I remembered that Ledger had already passed away by the time the film was released. It occurred to me just as the Joker and Batman were having their final words of the film, and it made the moment he says, “I think you and I are destined to do this forever,” so much harder to take. I knew that not only would we never get to have Ledger around for what would have been an awesome career, but we’d never even get the chance to see this Joker again. And as much as people would be hard-pressed to follow Nicholson’s performance as the Joker, it’s going to be pretty much impossible to follow Ledger.

Rachel Dawes came with a casting change, going from Katie Holmes (who I maintain did a fair job in the last film) to Maggie Gyllenhaal (who is one of the bravest actresses of her generation). Contrary to popular belief, it was Holmes that turned the role down, leaving it open for recasting. And Gyllenhaal does give the role what Holmes tried to do. Rachel seems more capable, more mature, better equipped to handle the stresses of her life in the hands of Gyllenhaal. Given the pull of the job and being torn between Harvey and Bruce (another of the film’s relationship triangles), I get the feeling that this would have proved too much for Holmes. However, Gyllenhaal carries this off wonderfully. She’s a strong and capable actress, and this shines through very well, but still holding a degree of vulnerability. It’s a great show.

Gary Oldman typically does a really great job as Gordon, giving a performance that’s understated and naturalistic and solid as a rock. Oldman has always been one of the best at doing a lot with very little, so when he’s given a more prominent part to play in all this, he is able to do some excellent work. Michael Caine continues to bring a solid air of class and dignity to it all, with a dry delivery and warmth. And Morgan Freeman continues to be a presence of great stature and really funny. Just watch how he handles the employee who looks to blackmail Bruce Wayne when he discovers his secret. It’s absolute gold.

There are a couple of holes in proceedings again, though most people (again, including me) didn’t notice them the first time round… or second time… or seventh. One comes from the prisoner transport scene, when the vehicles taking Harvey Dent to jail after he claims to be Batman are forced to take the underground route. They get diverted when a burning fire engine (typical Joker humour) is placed in their path and they need to find an alternate route. Strictly speaking, they could have just gone along the other side of the road. Traffic was clear and there was no obvious obstruction that way, so why not avoid the way that is so clearly a trap? Perhaps the cop that made the call was on the Joker’s side, or there were other minions waiting to force the convoy that way, but it's not made clear. Either way, it’s kind of odd. The bigger hole that doesn’t strike you at the time (which is generally how Nolan gets away with some of these things) comes from the party scene, after the Joker has just pitched Rachel out the window and Batman leaps out to save her. We follow them down to their rough landing, and then cut to the next scene. But wait, what happened with the Joker? Did he just leave the party after that? Wasn’t that a bit awkward? Now, to this, there is the potential explanation that the Joker initially believed that Harvey was Batman (he alludes to this later in the interrogation scene), or at least got that impression at the party. As such, when Batman jumped out the window, it seemed that the man he’d come to find (i.e. Harvey Dent) was now no longer in the building and a bit more dangerous than first anticipated, leading him to temporarily retreat and regroup. This does hold up, though it still holds a couple of awkward minutes in the reality of the film. Finally, there are some basic editing issues in the film. An example would be the scene where Alfred helps patch up Bruce near the beginning of the film, where there’s a couple of times when someone is being heard, though not actually speaking onscreen. It’s blink-and-you-miss-it stuff, but it’s still there. However, I can overlook these, because the rest of the film is so damn good.

The Dark Knight contains so much that it’s really kind of hard to do it justice when talking about it. Honestly, I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of what a proper in-depth look at this film can do. Its thematic concerns are timeless and woven together in such a fantastically intricate way that creates a tremendous sense of depth to the whole. It’s a tragedy of almost operatic scale, with the rise of Chaos, the fall of Hope and the wrenching pull to act without knowing the best course to take. It’s a sort of psychoanalysis on what makes society function on some of its most basic levels, with the Freudian conception of the Id, Ego and Superego represented in a manner that’s accessible and natural. It’s an excellent character drama, and a downright superb action film. I’m not kidding when I say that when I first saw this two-and-a-half hour film, I could’ve stayed for as long as it wanted to continue. Batman Begins was the film that we needed; The Dark Knight was the film we deserved.

And so, with that, Batman Week, which has managed to last nearly three weeks, comes to an end. I’ll be moving out of the Gotham City limits to look at other films from here on. Hope you enjoyed the ride.

Appaloosa (2008)

FEELINGS GET YOU KILLED

In the mid to late 2000s, there was something of a revival of western films, like Seraphim Falls, 3:10 to Yuma, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. It seemed like the classic American movie genre had returned for the beginning of the new Century. One of the quieter releases to gets its release around the time was the second directorial effort from actor Ed Harris, following his debut Pollock in 2000. Reuniting with his A History of Violence co-star, Viggo Mortensen, Harris co-wrote, directed and starred in an adaptation of Robert B. Parker’s novel Appaloosa.

Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) make their living as sheriffs-for-hire, taking on another job in the town of Appaloosa, as marshal and deputy. Their job is to face down the gang of the powerful rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), who killed the last marshal and his two deputies. Their job is complicated slightly when Allison French (Renée Zellweger) arrives in town and starts on a quick romance with Virgil.

There are a few different types of plot available to the maker of westerns. Some films are about the struggle of settlers trying to push through the harsh landscape to find land of their own. Some films are stories vengeance, with one determined gunslinger heading out take their revenge on those that wronged them in some way. Appaloosa is an example of what is generally called the ‘Evil Rancher’ story. The town itself is in such a remote area that the only way it survives is through the business brought by the wealthy rancher, whose cattle trade becomes the primary lifeblood of the town’s economy. If not for them, the town would be abandoned and the residents would have to start again from scratch somewhere else. However, precisely because of this enviable position of power, the rancher figure believes that he owns the town and can do whatever he wants in it, a feeling that is shared by those who work for him. Before you know it, the town is plunged into a state of fear, with the ranch-hands getting drunk, assaulting people, shooting up the saloon and treating the town and its citizens like a plaything. Law ceases to exist, either because the rancher killed him or put him on payroll. Under such circumstances, the townspeople must look for outside help, bring in someone that can stand up to the rancher and clean up the town. This is precisely where Appaloosa begins, with Jeremy Irons acting as the Evil Rancher and Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen the men hired to restore order to the town. For the most part, it’s pretty standard stuff.

In such a case, when the familiarities with plot may become a burden, it’s down to the characters that populate the script that make all the difference… and Appaloosa has some fine characters going. Virgil Cole is the man hired as marshal, the primary force of law. Though he has a liking for things of a more refined nature, he’s not exactly a smart man, often trying to use fancy words, but stumbling on their pronunciation or meaning. Clearly, he has an appreciation for things of a more sophisticated measure, even tries to understand them, but knows that they will always be just beyond his reach. His strength lies in his ability to set aside any form of erudite pursuit in order to do the dirty work of killing people. Emotionality is not really something he’s good at. In fact, there’s evidence that he is rather poor at keeping them in check, such as his whirlwind romance with Allison, which borders on the adolescent, or when he beats down a drunk in the saloon for speaking in too vulgar a manner. Nevertheless, he believes in the law, which is why he’s so good at bringing it to the lawless.

Everett Hitch is Virgil’s long-time friend, and his partner in crime-stopping. Hitch is much smarter than Virgil, more in control of his emotions, and a better hand with a gun. It’s Hitch who helps Virgil with his poor vocabulary, and backs him up when trouble rides into town. What stops Hitch from being the frontman of this duo is that he is less resolute in his belief in law. He knows that not everything is black and white, that there are shades of grey in the mix, that the law is only a solid as the man that upholds it, and it’s all precisely because he’s much smarter than Virgil. This is why he needs Virgil to lead him, because, even though he has his morals, without that extra guiding hand, he’s no better than your average lawless gun-for-hire.

Randall Bragg is a nasty piece of work. He’s just as smart as Hitch, and just as ruthless as Virgil, and has friends in some incredibly high places. It’s these very qualities that have seen him become the successful rancher. With his financial hold on the town, and his influence his prominent circles, he knows he need exert only a little force to get what he wants. Allison French is perhaps the most interesting character, although to explain why would be to give away too much about her and the relationships of all those above. All I will say is this – she is a survivor.

The interaction between these characters, and others, is all a matter of delicate subtlety, and the actors all play it out with an understatement that matches the tone of the script. Harris and Mortensen particularly play well off each other, showing the kind of easy relationship that Virgil and Hitch would have spent years developing. Theirs is not a friendship built on long conversations about life, but of a simple, quiet understanding of each other’s habits and ways.

There is also an interesting consideration within the film as a political text. Within the western genre in general, there is often an association made between the law, and those represent it, and the United States as a country. This is, after all, the quintessential American genre, and such associations helped garner John Wayne the nickname of ‘The Ultimate American’. It’s a political version of the standard civilisation versus wilderness measure, civilisation being the law and, thus, America. Now, with such a notion in mind, look at the representation of law in this film. Virgil is not particularly smart and he’s hot-tempered, but he’s a decisive man of action and resolute moral standing, not to mention with a great faith in his partner. Hitch is equally trusting of his partner, but he’s also smarter than him and less likely to act in the best interests of the law with his influence. Can we not perhaps consider this some sort of meditation on the potentially partisan nature of the American government? With one as Republican, the other as Democrat? It would seem to be a rather hopeful vision of sorts, since the two can co-exist and act as a force for justice and good. If it’s intentional, it’s intriguing and wonderfully noted; if it’s accidental, it’s still interesting.

However, there is a problem within the film… I did not particularly care for Appaloosa, mainly because it’s kind of a waste. It’s got a great cast, and the characters are very interesting, but they are just not handled well by Harris the Director. There is a delicate subtlety in the writing that he is simply unable to convey on the screen, which makes it feel occasionally choppy or weak. In Harris’ vision, there are no subplots, only primary plots that greatly alter the way the film feels. It begins as two men bringing law to a lawless town, but then that just stops and becomes a romance between a man and woman, with the other guy looking on. Then that stops and the law bit comes back. The law bit plays out until it becomes a different story altogether in the wilderness… there is a distinct lack of subtlety in the direction. Harris is unable to effectively weave these stories together, so they crash into each other, passing the buck from one to the other with no grace or dexterity. Also, the point of narration occasionally shifts, which is kind of a rookie mistake. The whole film is being recounted by Hitch, as evidenced by the voice-over at the beginning and end. This works well at times, with the manner we discover the relationship between Virgil and Allison being done in a suitably low-key fashion. However, there are instances that we move away from him to Virgil. It’s not exactly the worst problem ever, but it certainly highlights the problems within the methods of storytelling being used.

Also, everything just feels so flat. There’s little sense of the atmosphere of the period setting or the surroundings. The town of Appaloosa is a small and sparse place, but it feels so hollow. It’s less a town, more of a purpose built set. And the camera always sits at such a distance from things. It could be that Harris wants to incorporate this sense of open space as a regular visual motif, or highlight the metaphorical distance between characters, but it just makes things feel too remote. Given the slightness of the work on show, in the acting and the script, we could have used a discrete closeness to the camerawork. And the editing is a might clumsy on occasion, such as when the film tries to convey the days and nights that Bragg sits in jail after he’s arrested. It’s all in the visuals, but it’s too blocky, with little care taken on transition or thought given to how one scene connects to the next.

In the end, Appaloosa could have been great, because it had so much going for it. The script was fine and subtle, the cast assembled was excellent, they all did great work, and there’s the potential for allegorical discourse within. However, the lacklustre effort from Harris behind the camera fails to evoke the proper sense of drama or tension, which makes becoming emotionally involved an effort placed entirely on the viewer. I certainly don’t mind doing my part, but you’ve got to meet me halfway.