Flying Leathernecks

John Wayne and Robert Ryan lead the cast of this solid, very human WWII drama. You might think that Nicholas Ray would be out of his element with a patriotic war movie, yet the man knows how to direct a movie, and he even makes perhaps the best use of stock footage in any war film of the era. Wayne is the tough nosed new commander of a Naval air squadron and Ryan is the more sensitive XO who the men respect. In some of the latter scenes, Wayne seems strangely out of place in Ray's boldly iconoclastic vision of Americana, yet the film as a whole works well and wisely focuses the drama on the two leads rather than on mindless propaganda or any superficial social statements.

The Best Films of 2005...

2005 was a good year for movies, especially if you knew where to look. There were some surprising discoveries and some surprising disappointments. A number of very good directors made mediocre films and there were some remarkably assured debuts. 2005 has seen primarily two critical darlings, Brokeback Mountain and A History of Violence -- both generally well made and both rather overrated (particularly the cult which has arisen around Brokeback).
I know it was a good year because I have had difficulty reducing my list down to the traditional top 10, therefore I prefer a top 25.

So here it goes...

25. A History of Violence
David Cronenberg's latest is his most conventional and impersonal to date. Yet there is something sly about his willingness to indulge the film's violence thereby exciting bloodlust from the audience, only to later implicate the audience, filmdom, and even himself as he reveals the effects and damage of violence. It's not nearly as good as many think it is, because it's not nearly as good as it thinks it is, but it does have ideas worth expressing.

24. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
The latest film about everyone's favorite boy wizard is the best and most imaginative yet in the series. Mike Newell provides visual wit and manages to wonderfully integrate the visual effects with the story. The film introduces some interesting metaphors for growing up as its young cast continues to develop both physically and emotionally. It's also the most morally grounded of the series as Harry is confronted with various tests of character.

23. Land of the Dead
Never content with a mere zombie film, George Romero makes his undead world a biting satire of capitalism with Dennis Hopper at the top of his corporate punching bag. Romero has always been a director whose ideas (however trivial they may be) outweigh his talent as a filmmaker, though this may be his most polished film. He remains, however, the master of horror-as-metaphor.

22. Crash
Paul Haggis' racially themed film has two or three of the best scenes from any movie this year, yet I can't get over the feeling that he must have the impression that every person in Los Angeles is a racist and has nothing to talk about except for that which relates to racial issues. Nevertheless, he manages to get some strong performances from his ensemble cast, particularly the often underrated, Matt Dillon, and he gets his point across however bluntly and even clumsily at times.

21. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
Probably the best exorcism film since Friedkin's, director Scott Derrickson manages to effectively blend horror movie scares, with an aesthetic flair (thanks to Tom Stern's wonderful cinematography) and leaves the audience asking themselves what they believe about the existence of the supernatural/demons/God. Unfortunately, at times, his horror movie sensibilities undercut the seriousness of his spiritual inquest.

20. Land of Plenty
Wim Wender's post-9/11 journey of spiritual renewal is a passionate and well-meaning film for today and now. It has an immediacy that may be irrelevant a few years from now, but one can't ignore its current significance. Even if the brief political ramblings are a bit heavy handed, one has to admire his humanism and his love for the characters.

19. Serenity
Joss Whedon's pop sci-fi adventure is certainly one of the most purely enjoyable films of the year. He fills it to the brim with wit, humor, action, and general rascaliness. I'm not the first to claim that Nathan Fillion may have what it takes to claim the mantle held by Harrison Ford for oh so many years.

18. The Holy Girl
This film plays out like a minor miracle in its exploration of teenage sexual awakening combined with spiritual fervor. Lucrecia Martel is a unique visual stylist with slightly offset compositions that encourage the viewer to see her film from an entirely different perspective. Maria Alche has a wonderful and understated naturalness to her performance as Amalia, the film's young heroin.

17. Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
George Lucas concludes his epic saga with a bang. Though not without its flaws, it manages to humanize Darth Vader and provides a reasonable motivation for his transition to the Dark Side. Lucas also manages to show that the man who is most responsible for modern special effects is also their chief manipulator. One of the best entries into what is almost certainly the cinema's most accomplished mythology.

16. Last Days
Silently following a drugged out, fading rock star through a lot of non-action straight to the grave might sound both pointless and depressing. Yet with Gus Van Sant's characteristic long, fluid takes, it becomes a haunting meditation of a lost and fractured soul.

15. Melinda and Melinda
Woody Allen, in even his most banal films (this is not one), makes me smile because we have grown so accustomed to his mannerism that you can almost anticipate the joke before it comes. Though Allen was not in this film, his humor was. Here we look at the same story told from two different perspectives: the comic and the tragic. Neither one seems to be the full truth, but when combined, you might get something close to life.

14. Pride & Prejudice
Joe Wright turns in a remarkably assured debut film with this Jane Austen adaptation. It's one of the best "costume films" in recent memory. He gleans excellent performances from his cast, particularly Keira Knightley who is charming as Elizabeth Bennet. He wisely manages to avoid many of the romantic comedy cliche's, and proves a formidably visual stylist through his orchestrations of the ball sequences and his use of the English countryside.

13. King Kong
Peter Jackson may well have tapped into the imagination of this generation. Bold and excessive, Kong throws in the kitchen sink to create in the audience a sense of childlike joy and awe. Whether its a giant ape fighting three T-Rex's or a second rate vaudeville performer doing a dance routine for a giant ape, Jackson finds the action and the emotion. Andy Serkis' work is a revelation.

12. Howl's Moving Castle
Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most consistently overlooked great directors working today, perhaps because he is an animator. Yet even while this may not be one of his towering successes, it is still perhaps the most fantastic and imaginative film of the year. He creates an entire world within his film and a protagonist whose goodness rubs off on everyone around her. Unlike most family friendly animations, he doesn't provide "good guys" and "bad guys", but complex characters with motivations and capable of change.

(tie) 11. The White Diamond
This Werner Herzog documentary finds an eccentric aeronautics engineer who is determined to build a small airship that will fly over the rainforrests of Guyana. His vigor is motivated as a kind of penance for his guilt over the death of a friend and colleague years earlier. As with his best films, Herzog takes that magnificent man and his flying machine, and creates spiritual metaphor for transcending the earthly realm.

(tie) 11. Grizzly Man
Another Herzog documentary, this time about bear activist, Timothy Treadwell whose annual foray's into the Alaskan wilderness led to his being eaten by one of the bears. The combination of Treadwell's video tape footage with Herzog's often contradictory narration, at times creates an almost magical effect. The conflicting worldviews presented engages the intellect, and in some of the quieter moments, Herzog points out how mystical it is to capture the wind blowing.

10. Match Point
Woody Allen's latest film is almost certainly one of the darkest films of his career. It is a film about luck, chance, randomness, and the meaninglessness of life. As Martin Landau in Crimes and Misdemeanors is able to get away with murder because God does not exist (or, at least he believes God does not exist), Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is able to go and do likewise. Wheras in the former, though probably the superior film, exists in a cold, sterile world where God does seem mysteriously absent, for Match Point, in which later scenes takes on elements of Greek tragedy, the meticulousness of Allen's direction undercuts his assertion that the world is governed by chance. As Allen himself is deified in orchestrating the events of his film, therefore they cannot be by chance or luck, so might God's presence be in this world. To see a film is to see a filmmaker, to see a world is to see a worldmaker. Though there may be no justice in this life, with a little luck, there might be in the next.

9. Turtles Can Fly
An equally beautiful and devastating film from Iraq focusing on a group of orphans in a Kurdish refugee camp just before the U.S. invastion of Iraq. It's about the will to survive under extremely harsh circumstances. Its cast of children (many deformed by shrapnel or land mines) are wonderful to watch with their resilience and even contentment.

8. Cache'
Michael Haneke challenges our notions of the nature of film and perception, all while confronting issues of guilt and revenge. We all have our dirty, little secrets, and his bourgeois, Parisian family is no different. Yet as soon as they beginning receiving anonymous video tapes of their everyday activities and they know that they are secretly being watched, they suddenly begin thinking about that one thing that they don't want anyone to find out about. Conflicts erupt and Haneke is almost stubbornly oblique in his refusal to give answers to what it all means.

7. Broken Flowers
Bill Murray is an aging Don Juan looking on his life with nothing to show for it. He receives a letter from an old flame telling him he as a teenage son. He then takes off on a kind of spiritual journey, visiting old girlfriends and evaluating his life through his various romances. This is Jim Jarmusch's finest film to date, mostly because his characters stop talking and begin reflecting.

6. The New World
Just because this may be Terrence Malick's worst film, doesn't mean that it's not still wonderful. Here he tackles the settling of Jamestown and the relationship between John Smith and Pocahontas with his typical poetic naturalism. The opening scene is almost painfully beautiful, and no director perhaps ever has had as profound an appreciation for nature and natural settings. His camera observes and captures with a magical poignancy.

5. Junebug
In yet another startling debut, Phil Morrison captures real, normal people. As red state/blue state tensions flare in our world, he focuses on the humanity and eccentricities of his characters. The film solves nothing, but it does honestly portray a part of America that has rarely seen so truthful and loving a depiction. I may well shed tears if Amy Adams doesn't receive and Academy Award nomination for her infectiously enthusiastic performance.

4. Millions
Danny Boyle continues to prove to be a formidable talent of world cinema with his most light-hearted and family friendly film yet. Here we see the poignancy of having what Jesus called "the faith of a child" as a boy with an encyclopedic knowledge of Catholic saints is tested when he receives a "gift from God" in the form of a duffle bag filled with cast. To be cliche, this film is heart-warming, funny, and very human.

3. Munich
Steven Spielberg has made one of the best films of his career in this impassioned dramatization of Middle Eastern politics and the cycle of revenge/violence. In the aftermath of 1972 Munich massacre, Israel reacts the only way they can... by retaliating. Yet, while they may be justified, Spielberg reminds us that by acting when we act like the terrorists, we become them and only perpetuate the problem. It's messy, complex, and his first film in a long time that follows through with the core of its convictions. The final montage brilliantly places the events of the film into startling context.

2. Saraband
Though Ingmar Bergman's final film will never be remembered as one of his finest, it just goes to show that even a mediocre Bergman film is better than almost anything anyone else has to offer. Here his 40+ year relationship with actors Liv Ullman and Erland Josephsson concludes as their silent chemistry is almost palpable. This examination of a broken family, which is an indirect sequel to his Scenes From a Marriage, is penetrating and often painful, yet the final moments in which Ullman speaks directly to the camera as a tear rolls down her cheek has the kind of quiet poignancy that a master like Bergman can finally say goodbye with.

and...

1. 2046
Not only is this the best film of the year, but it may also be Wong Kar-Wai's best film, which also means that it is probably the best film to ever come out of Hong Kong. It is a haunting meditation on lost love, memory, and the inability to escape one's past. Christopher Doyle once again proves why he may be the best cinematographer in the world today with his lush imagery. And in one single moment, when she realizes that she is in love with Tony Leung's playboy-like character, the beautiful Ziyi Zhang outacts every other great performance of this year. Wong's combination of images, music, and voice over allows this to become one of those rare films which begins to take on a life of its own in the viewers head, even as the film is still playing. Wonderful.


Honorable Mentions:

Bad News Bears - Richard Linklater's remake is easily the funniest and best comedy of the year and Billy Bob Thornton is in top form as the boozing coach.

Batman Begins - Christopher Nolan directs one of the best superhero/comic book movies ever. Christian Bale is the complex and human Dark Knight. Though the actions scenes seem strangely out of place in film which does so much to create compelling characters.

Kings and Queen - Half comedy and half tragedy, this French film follows two characters with different demons to overcome and numerous emotional ambiguities along the way.

Nobody Knows - One of the most original coming-of-age stories in recent memories follows four abandoned Japanese children who must learn to take care of themselves.

Oliver Twist - Though disappointing considering how much I love Roman Polanski, it is neverthess a very satisfying Dickens adaptation.

Eros - Three short films one by Wong Kar-Wai, one by Steven Soderbergh, and one by the nearly 100-year-old Michelangelo Antonioni all about eroticism. Though Antonioni's may be painfully inscrutable, as Andrew Sarris put it, "...at this point, I can be content that he knows more about what it means than I do."

Or (Mon Tresor) - An Israeli film which sits and observes as a beautiful teenage girl begins to accept the only path left for her (presumably because of a flawed society) as she attempts to protect her aging, prostitute mother.

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist - Though Paul Schrader's film may be the most theologically challenging horror film since Ferrara's The Addiction, it is painfully marred by an almost aesthetic indifference.

Red Eye - Though a very conventional thriller, it also represents the consummation of Wes Craven's career in which his heroin retains her humanity by refusing to become the killer at the end.

Kontroll - Hangarian film which journey's through one man's personal hell as represented by the Budapest subways system.


Unfortunately, this list isn't as authoritative as I might like it to be because I haven't yet seen all of the noteworthy films that I was interested in, therefore, as I watch more films from this year, I may periodically update this list.

The following are films that I have yet to see:

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Good Night and Good Luck
Capote
March of the Penguins
Nine Lives
The Weather Man
The World
Cafe Lumiere
Paradise Now
The Weeping Meadow
Wheel of Time
The Best of Youth
Pulse

The White Diamond

Once again, Werner Herzog takes an eccentric subject for what could be a conventional documentary -- in this case a passionate aeronautics engineer -- and turns it into a spiritual journey about overcoming guilt and transcending the earthly realm into the unkown... literally. Graham Dorrington is determined to build one of the smallest air ships ever constructed and fly it over the dense, unexplored rainforrests of Guyana. One of the natives, named Mark Anthony Yhap, who provides some of the more humbly profound observations throughout the film, describes the craft as looking like a "white diamond". As in his recent Grizzly Man, Herzog also provides some useful voice over narration which complements his film. The aerial footage is majestic.

Funny Ha Ha

Director Andrew Bujalski would seem to be the logical successor to Richard Linklater (Slacker era) with his use of pseudo-naturalistic dialogue and his (as some have claimed) Cassavetes-like insistence on "reality" and capturing the ordinary of everyday life and people. He is neither as articulate or philosophical as Linklater, nor does he have the artists eye and ear of Cassavetes (but then again, who does?). His characters are almost embarassingly non-confrontational, seem very unsure of themselves, never saying what they think until prodded into a corner, and constantly apologizing for creating awkward moments. It's actually very interesting, and though I know exactly what Bujalski was trying to accomplish, I can't say that I've ever met people who talk the way these characters do as consistently as they do. The ulta low budget, black and white, 16mm photography has a look similar to the films of Larry Fessenden. Bujalski seems to have an interesting idea with an eye and ear worth developing, but he doesn't quite pull this film up to where it could be.

3-Iron

This Korean import is an odd little film. First we meet a strange young man who breaks into the homes of people who are away and indulges himself for a night or two. Then, rather than stealing anything, he replaces and cleans everything he used, fixes broken objects in the house, and tidies up for the absent owners. He then moves along. One of the houses he breaks into is home to an equally silent young house wife who has been battered by her jerk of a husband. The two run off together on a silent journey (neither of the two leads says a word to each other in the entire film). While reaching for the sublime, this film becomes ridiculous. There are some truly funny scenes, that I am not convinced were entirely intentional, such as when the male protagonist uses the titular golf club to hit a ball which flys through the windshield of a car, killing a woman (trust me, the scene ends up much funnier than it sounds). It just goes to show than in an era of sound films, one cannot develop a convincing relationship by visuals alone. Speech, however minimal it may be, is a necessary part of reality and therefore, cinema.

Syriana

Stephen Gaghan's fascinatingly complex political thriller takes us through the labyrinthine world of oil politics in the Middle East. The focus is corruption -- not of any one person or political party, but of everyone. In this sense, the film is a success -- its complexities and the mystery of discovering how everyone and everything relates is compelling. The ensemble cast also helps to provide recognizable faces to the numerous characters that come and go. The problem is that we never get to stay with any of the character long enough to really get to know them or discover any of their true motivations. The performances, however, are good enough to almost make you forget that the characters are fairly shallow, and the story is compelling enough to almost make you forget that you never really learn anything.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)

Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange star in this disappointing remake from James M. Cain's classic, hard-boiled novel. The imposing level of talent both in front of and behind the camera make it all the more disappointing (directed by Bob Rafelson, written by David Mamet, photographed by Sven Nykvist). It certainly captures the seedy, crime novel atmosphere with an animalistic passion unlike any other film I've ever seen, but despite it all, it just isn't very compelling. See the original John Garfield/Lana Turner version instead, or better yet, the unoffical early Luchino Visconti version, Ossessione.

Kontroll

Kontroll is a Dante-esque (or perhaps Kafkaesque) journey through one man's hell, symbolized by the subterranean corridors of the Budapest subway system (which I have traveled through). The entire film takes place in this underground world, and Bulcsu, the main character seems to be living down there. It is hinted that he was once a successful architect, a vocation which he has since abandoned (for unknown reasons), to become a subway controller -- a person who checks for passengers tickets. He and his motley crew play for dark humor as they fluctuate between harassing and being harassed by passengers. In their off time, they play deadly games of running through the tunnels trying to make it to the next platform before they are run over by the train behind them. Meanwhile a hooded figure (not dissimilar from the red cloaked dwarf of Don't Look Now) roams the corridors pushing people off of the platform to their deaths. The films allegory seems to be all to obvious or a bit too confused, nevertheless, as a debut film from Nimrod Antal, it seems he may be a director worth following in the future.

High Tension

A few things become immediately apparent after watching Alexandre Aja's French slasher flick: (1) while certainly a very violent film it is not as gory as I was expecting (which may say more about me than the film itself), (2) Aja is a competent and even slyly effective craftsman of terror, and (3) twist endings have become far too stylish. In fact, the utterly ridiculous ending of this film ruins an otherwise solid slasher film. The film's dyke-ish heroine, Alex, is unusually resourceful for a horror film lead, as crafty, in fact, as the brutish killer whose face is always concealed in shadow cast by his fedora. Aja's direction is often so efficient in its rising tension, that one may be quick to forget just how little actaully happens in the film. The entire film feels like a silent (there is very little dialogue), slow build up which is occasionally broken up by some brutal and cathartic death scenes. But damn that ending. Who the hell comes up with this stuff and thinks that it will ever work?

Turtles Can Fly

This heartbreaking film is the first made in Iraq since the fall of Saddam. It takes place in a Kurdish refugee camp near the Iraq-Turkey border and primarily focuses on the large number of orphans at the camp. The leader of these children, and in fact the entire village really, is a resourcefull 13ish-year-old named Satellite who gained his position thanks to his ability to install antennas and satellite dishes for the village elders to watch the news about the upcoming U.S. invasion of Iraq. He also speaks English and can translate for them. The children spend much of their time disarming land mines around the area which has left many of them without arms, legs, or hands. An armless, clairvoyant boy and his beautiful young sister arrive in the village, they have with them a blind baby which is presumed to be their younger brother. It is later revealed that it is the result of the girl's rape by and Iraqi soldier. She hates her child and what he represents. It's a devastating, yet beautiful film about life and survival in unimaginable circumstances. Director Bahman Ghobadi gets some wonderful performances out of his non-professional cast of children, and he gives us a behind the scenes look at the lives of orphans in a behinds the scenes world. Like Born Into Brothels, these are the children without a voice (who probably don't even realize the gravity of their own situations), and without a future, yet somehow many of them still manage to endure and survive.

Kings and Queen

Director Arnaud Desplechin weaves together a complex array of emotions in this personality drama. It centers around two primary characters, Nora, a single mother about to be remarried whose father is on his death bed, and Ismael, her ex-lover (we come to discover) and a slightly neurotic violinist who is accidentally put away in a mental institution. Desplechin juxtaposes the comic and the tragic elements of life with an almost theatrical understanding of the terms. The scenes with Nora are high drama and inevitably tragic, whereas the Ismael's institution antics are decidedly comic. Of course the two intertwine as the paths of the two characters meet again. There is a confession scene in which the dying father tells his daughter what he really thinks that borders on Bergmanesque, and a wonderful scene in which Ismael takes Nora's son through an art gallery and explains his ideas about life. It's a complex film, much of which, no doubt, I probably missed, yet a stirring example of life's emotional ambiguities and our ever changing perceptions of them.

The Holy Girl

Lucrecia Martel's pseudo-religious Argentinian drama seems in some ways to be a small miracle. With an almost Bressonian sense of casting and a slightly off-kilter sense of image framing, she unfolds her story of a 14-year-old girls sexual awakening (without any actual sex) intertwined with her Catholic ferver. She lives in a hotel owned by her mother. The hotel is hosting a medical convention. One afternoon she joins a crowd in watching live music, one of the doctor's stands uncomfortably close behind her, close enough to make pelvic contact for a few moments before scurrying off. After this encounter, she devotes herself to saving his soul. Maria Alche, who plays the girl, has a beautiful inscrutability about her, as does Martel's narrative. At times it is subtle and understated to a fault, one can quickly begins to lose focus of what's going on. Yet her visual sense and the mood she creates actually manage to carry the film whether you're following it or not. Jim Hoberman says that it is "characterized by agnostic irony," which is probably true, yet it still feels like a minor miracle.

Nobody Knows

This Japanese familial drama centers around four siblings, headed by 12-year-old Akira. Their mother is a sympathetic, though immature twit who seems scarcely more capable than her two oldest children, she just happens to have the advantage (or disadvantage) of age. She makes all but Akira stay in the house at all times. She works, maybe, and they don't go to school. One day she leaves on a trip, gives them some money and returns a few weeks later, just after the money has run out. Later she leaves again, and when she will return, I suppose nobody knows, because she doesn't. The children learn to take care of themselves, despite the fact that the water, gas, and electricity has been turned off. It's a coming of age story featuring some magnificent performances from the mostly prepubescent cast. Watching Akira try to hold things together as they gradually grow more and more desperate, is a heartbreaking sight. Director, Hirokazu Koreeda doesn't pull at the heart-strings, because he recognizes the potency of the material. He keeps it straightforward and un-manipulative. Events unfold slowly and naturally, leaving one with a sense of everyday life in an unusual situation.

5x2: Five Times Two

After the undwhelming debacle of Swimming Pool, I decided to give French director, Francois Ozon another chance with this marital drama. The gimmick of the film is that it tells of the marriage Marion and Gilles from end to beginning. It takes five significant events in their relationship -- first love, the wedding night, birth of their child, a dinner party, and divorce -- and begins the film with the divorce and ends the film with the moment they first fall in love. It's an intriguing premise filled with possibilities, yet as far as I can see, Ozon fails to utilize any of them. The idea alone, the development of their relationship, and the understated execution of it all is worthy of making this a good film, but its lack of insight into the characters or the idea of marriage, keep this from becoming a better film. Perhaps it is the fact that prior to their initial encounter, both Marion and Gilles were either recovering from or on the downard slopes of previous relationships, and the fact that they seem to need to be in relationships in their often selfish quests to make themselves "happy" that dooms them from the start, leaving the postcard perfect final image to be a bittersweet heralding of failure.

The Steamroller and the Violin

This is worth watching if for no other reason than to see Andrei Tarkovsky's thesis film from film school. It's a 45 minute look at the life of young boy who plays the violin and the friendship he strikes with a steamroller operator. Perhaps the film is commenting on the relationship between artist and worker in Soviet Russia. Actually, there is little that distinguishes this as a Tarkovsky film, he is clearly developing his ideas and style, yet there is an unmistakably Russian lyricism to the images and tone of the film.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Pedro Almodovar's first major international success is not his best film, but it may be his most light-hearted and funny. There are a number of women, a lot of misunderstandings, a terrorist subplot, and wackiness ensues. It also has a young Antonio Banderas. It's only slightly surreal and not nearly as strange as some of his more recent films, but neither does it has the subtlty or depth of a film like Talk to Her. It does work well as a farce, however, filled with Spanish 80's clothes and all.

Five Fingers of Death

Considered to be the original, classic kung fu movie, and according to Quentin Tarantino, one of the ten best films ever made. That may be overstating it, but it does have the joy and thrills of a low-budget, genre trash film, bad dubbing and all. Actually, the dubbing isn't that bad. The film has plenty of fighting (which is why you're watching it in the first place), and something of a plot to justify all of the fighting. To watch this film is to come to a better understanding of such recent films as Tarantino's own Kill Bill (he steals a music cue from this film), and Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle. If you find yourself drawn to this kind of film (you know who you are), then you won't be let down.

Grizzly Man

Timothy Treadwell must have been a complex human being. Werner Herzog's documentary combines some of the footage that Treadwell shot over the 13 summers he spent living with grizzly bears in Alaska (before they ate him), with various interviews with people who knew him. Like many Herzog protagonists, Treadwell seemed to be a lonely man with an obsession for something that's a little bit ridiculous, in this case protecting the bears by living with them, but unlike the characters of Aguirre or Fitzcarraldo, Treadwell was real -- the self-appointed protector of nature. It's a fascinating film, not the least of which being Treadwell's footage, which at times, Herzog correctly points out, has some unusually poetic moments. What elevates this film, however, is Herzog's ongoing narration, which often finds itself contradicting and debating Treadwell's oft stated beliefs. Herzog avoids discussing what could amount to being the politics of the situations, and instead focuses on the aesthetics of Treadwell's "filmmaking" and their respective philosphies of life and nature. In his review, Michael Atkinson makes a perceptive observation: "Regarding the bears as deus ex machina within Treadwell's bizarre saga, Herzog asserts again one of modern moviedom's wisest, plainest humanistic sensibilities, sympathetic to man's never ending war with the planet but aware that the struggle will always draw ambiguous blood. Treadwell is simply another lost foot soldier, killed in the ongoing collision between human obsession and untamed reality. " A wonderful documentary.

Munich

For over a decade now, Steven Spielberg has been trying to prove to the world that he's grown up by making more adult themed, "important" films. Except one problem, he hadn't, at least not until now. With Munich, he finally has the courage to hold true to the core of his convictions and not water them down with sentimentality and cheap emotional manipulation. This film deals with a secret Israeli squad assigned to track down and assassinate the 11 Palestinians responsible for kidnapping and murdering the Israeli athletes at 1972 Olympics in Munich. The film is an international thriller (I feel like paying a travel agent after watching it), and thrilling it is. But more importantly, it is about the moral ambiguities of returning violence for violence. It neither condones nor condemns the actions (of either side), merely presents them and asks the audience to decide what they believe. There are no easy answers and the film offers none. It is, however, incredibly fair. There are some wonderfully executed scenes including the opening scene at the Olympics, a scene at a French villa where Eric Bana (the leader of the squad) converses with a French contact, and the climactic montage juxtaposing the death of the Israeli athletes with a morally confused Eric Bana making love to his wife -- the juxtaposition of life and death, a bit heavy-handed perhaps, but effective. While the films deals with the complexities of the situations in the Middle East, much has been made of its current relevance in America. Actually, I think that the questions this film poses are relevant as much in peace time as in war, and for any nation. Though I suppose it is no coincidence that the film concludes on an image of New York City with the Twin Towers in the background. This is the best American film of the year.

My Neighbor Totoro

If in describing the films of Hayao Miyazaki I consistently repeat myself, it is because all of his films have left me with an inexplicable kind of joy. Even though each of his films are distinct and different, they all make me feel the same. For what it's worth, My Neighbor Totoro may be my favorite yet of his films. It is utterly delightful, and no one captures the expressions of a child like the animation of Miyazaki. In this film, two young girls move to the country with their father as their mother is sick in the hospital. In the nearby woods, the girls meet a Totoro. Now, I'm still not entirely sure what a Totoro is (a forrest sprite, is the closest I've come), all I know is that if I were a child, I would want to find a Totoro in the forrest. The film is filled with magic and awe and imagination, and is probably one of the best of its kind.

Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven

This film constitutes perhaps Fassbinder's most politically coherent film. Mother Kusters is an aging housewife who receives news that her husband for many years has just murdered his boss at the factory and then killed himself. The film seems to be about a couple of things: the way that various organizations attempt to explain these kinds of actions through their jobs (the media claims that he was tyrant at home -- a violent man waiting to snap; the communists claim that he was a heroic revolutionary fighting back at those would seek to exploit him after years of capitalist oppression), and the way that people and organizations opportunistically use tragedies to further their own ends. Mother Kusters is a slightly naive woman (like many Fassbinder protagonists) who, at first, merely wants to clear her husbands name. The media hounds them, her daughter uses the publicity to start a second rate singing career, a reporter uses it to write a sensationalistic story, the communist party uses it promote their agenda and bring Mother Kusters into the party. Fassbinder, it seems, is clearly fighting explotiation from all sides. It's one of his best, and in some ways, one of his saddest films.

Best Films of 2005...

...not just yet. I intend to post a list of my favorite films of this year sometime around the end of January, but before Academy Award nominations are announced. In the meantime I have a lot of films to catch up with before I can feel authoritative.

Memoirs of a Geisha

This seems to be one of those films which feels flawless, but isn't very good. Flawless in the sense that everything from direction, to cinematography, music, and performances are all good, yet it doesn't all add up. It's about the life of a geisha in WWII era Japan, and the rigorous life and dedication is requires. I honestly can't put my finger on where it is that this movie goes wrong, but I know it does. The luminous Ziyi Zhang plays the titular geisha, and her smile alone could carry a film, as it almost does this one, but not make it great. Of all the actors, however, Gong Li once again proves herself to be probably the world's most formidable actress, and now in two different languages. Her character, and the film itself, at times feel like an indirect sequel to Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern, also starring Gong. This film, however, is beautiful but lifeless, even though the talented cast desperately want to bring it to life. Rob Marshall is at least a competent director, but not yet good enough to elevate what may only be an average story into a good film.

The Card Player

Dario Argento's latest film is probably his most well crafted film in 20+ years and probably the most solid pure thriller of the year. It concerns an unseen psychopath who challenges the Roman police to games of video poker for the lives of women he/she has kidnapped. The chief detectives on the trail are a female Italian officer and an Irish cop from the embassy. Argento has some nice set pieces, including a trek through an underground tunnel, and he even lets loose with some of the bold visuals that helped to make Suspiria his masterpiece. Despite some graphic views of mangled corpses, the gore quotient is rather low in comparisson to many of his other films. It's solid, but not great Argento.

The Gospel of John

This three hour, faithful adaptation of the life of Christ as described in the book of John was somewhat overshadowed in the wake of the phenomenon of The Passion of the Christ. Comparing the two is difficult, because for me, they are equals. Gibson's film strives to be a work of art, and in my opinion fails. Phillip Saville's film has no lofty artistic ambitions, but is content with being an ultra-faithful (every word from the book, including the narration as read by Christopher Plummer, is spoken from the Good News Bible) treatment of the Biblical text, and succeeds at just that. He proves to be a capable director in the way he manages to keep even the lengthy passages of narration from being dull or "preachy". His film seems content with allowing the power of the story and text to carry the film, without sprucing anything up in either the script or by adding any unnecessary directoral flair. This is not a great film, but is significantly better than one might imagine (better than I imagined, anyway). Its strength and it weakness is its devotion to every single word which makes for some awkward moments contrasting the consistent narration with the dialogue of the characters. Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew is a much better example of a similar idea. Nevertheless, this is a worthy entry into the canon of films about the life of Christ.

The Flowers of St. Francis

This is a wonderful little film by Roberto Rossellini which, in its Italian neo-realist style, manages to be as simple and sublime as its subject. It's been said that only one who is willing to risk the ridiculous has a shot at the sublime, and Francis and his monk are a little bit ridiculous. Apparently the Italian subtitle of the film is "God's jester," and in their childlike simplicity, one comes to understand what this means. The film is broken up into a number of vignettes, some of which don't even focus on Francis, but on his monks, particularly the comically naive Brother Ginepro, and Giovanni, an old man who has an equally simple faith. There is a beautiful segment in which Francis sees a leper walking down the road and runs up the man and hugs him. Francis is the wisest and most mature of his monks, dedicated to fully living a life in service to God. Rossellini's direction is utterly inobtrusive, content with merely capturing the quiet moments between his non-actors (all of the monks were played by real life Franciscan monks). It's a very human film, filled with love, simplicity, faithfulness, and humor.

Porco Rosso

The fact that I can call this the least of the films by Hayao Miyazaki that I have yet seen really means nothing because this is still a wonderful little film. It's a Japanese animated film that takes place in Italy sometime in between WWI and II. A seaplane pilot, for one reason or another, has been cursed and turned into a pig, now he's a mercenary for hire. Miyazaki seems to have a particular affection for pigs and flying, considering that in one way or another, they seem to figure prominently in most of his films. The only reason I call this the least of his film is that it seems to add up to the least -- it still manages to have his loveable, well-developed characters, beautiful animation, and his belief in the goodness of humanity, but it's not quite as "transcendent" as some of his better films. It's still perfectly enjoyable and the work of a real artist.

Pretty Persuasion

What emerges from this almost satisfying mess of a film is the fact that Evan Rachel Wood is quickly becoming one of the best young actresses around. It attempts an Election- style satire of, well, just about everything, though is set in a Beverly Hills prep school -- the world of a 15-year-old puppet master. Her goal is to become an actress, so she convinces a couple of her friends to play along and accuse their English teacher of sexual harrassment, and while he does fantasize about his female students, he hasn't harrassed them. Unfortunately, despite some fairly funny moments, the films satire just doesn't hold together, and while Marcos Siega's direction seems unusually efficient and restrained for an ex-music video vet, it isn't particularly good. There is wasted potential in there somewhere.

The Devil Commands

Boris Karloff stars in this eerie horror film as an honest scientist whose life is turned upside down after the death of his wife. He becomes obsessed with the idea of using science to communicate with the dead. Director Edward Dmytryk keeps the film filled with atmosphere. The opening shot of a creepy house in a rain storm, slowly pushing in, with a voice over playing, provides an excellent set up, and the rest of the movie, while never becoming a great pseudo-zombie film (such as I Walked With a Zombie), doesn't disappoint.

Brokeback Mountain

As a conservative Christian I believe that homosexuality is a sin. Therefore, the fact that this film, perhaps admirably, attempts to portray it as "normal", may inherently lessen my admiration for it. However, that having been said, I will attempt to ignore that fact for the moment and describe its merits as a love story. Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist both get hired as sheep herders in Wyoming for a summer. During that time, they develop feelings for each other and spend the rest of their lives in secrecy, only on occasion able to rekindle their passion. After the summer, they both marry and have families -- loving families. But it becomes increasingly obvious who their hearts truly belong to. The first thing one might notice in Ang Lee's drama is the almost Fordian imagery juxtaposing the epic, well composed long shot of the landscape with close ups. Actually, as beautiful as many of these shots are, they become almost a parody of Ford because it seems to be attempting to bring out the archetypes of Western imagery, whereas Ford rarely worked with archetypes (maybe in his early days), he created and made the land an inescapable character of his films, a feat Brokeback Mountain never fully accomplishes. Heath Ledger as Ennis gives career defining performance because of what he doesn't say. Jake Gyllenhaal is somewhat less effective because his character is based on what he does say. To be honest, I found myself most moved by some of the secondary relationships, particularly the relationship between Ledger and Michelle Williams as his wife. She knows he is going behind her back, and moreover she knows that it is with a man. The straight people are not stereotyped, nor even particularly bigoted. I also found myself moved by the relationship between Ledger and his older daughter, particularly in later scenes. While I admire Lee as a director, I think that many of the strengths of the film belong to the performances and particularly the script by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, which manages to be human, subtle, and cinematically intelligent while avoiding many of the cliches that I was dreading going in. Roger Ebert observes the point that I was initially trying to put my finger on when he says, "The movie wisely never steps back to look at the larger picture, or deliver the 'message.' It is specifically the story of these men, this love. It stays in closeup. That's how Jack and Ennis see it. 'You know I ain't queer,' Ennis tells Jack after their first night together. 'Me, neither,' says Jack." It's a good film, probably one of the best of the year. It's a wise film that avoids being more morally troubling than it needs to be (considering the subject matter). And if you have an open mind and heart for star crossed love stories, this may be for you.

King Kong (2005)

Peter Jackson's remake of the classic 1933 monster movie is quite a thrill ride and the best movie spectacle since, well, The Lord of the Rings. Once again he manages to create another world that is part 1930's New York and part prehistoric terror. Naomi Watts successfully fills the role made famous by Fay Wray, as an out of work, Depression-era vaudvillian whose path intersects with an ambitious and somewhat unethical movie director played for all it worth by Jack Black. His Carl Denham is somewhat more insanely driven than the Robert Armstrong version. The first hour is spent introducing characters and building up to Skull Island. Kong himself is an utterly convincing CGI creation. If I didn't know any better, I'd be writing Jackson and asking where he found a 25'' gorilla that could act. These sequences he fills with eye popping visuals and the kind of imagination that Andrew Adamson sorely lacked with his Chronicles of Narnia. Besides the Kong vs. 3 T-rex fight, one of my favorites scenes was watching Watts perform a vaudville routine for Kong, her captive audience. The most developed relationship in the film is between the two of them. Watts is more sympathetic to Kong's plight than was Wray. The third hour, of course, is a rampage through New York City leading up the Empire State Building. My complaint with the film is that it's too long. There are a few too many extended glances between Watts and Kong and there are a number of moments that go on a bit longer than they need to. But honestly, I didn't mind. I was captivated. It still doesn't quite equal the original (the ending still makes me cry every time I see it), and it certainly isn't as efficient a piece of filmmaking, but Peter Jackson proves to be the cinematic imagination of our generation.

Vernon, Florida

Errol Morris' quirky, but short documentary seems like something of an homage to the wonderful and unusually eclectic people of small town America, particularly Vernon, Florida. His static camera allows the residents to recount various stories about their lives or hobbies. There's really not much more to it than that, but Morris obviously has an eye (and ear) for interesting subject matter, and this is the kind of film that reminds me that I could easily make a documentary like this.

Born Into Brothels

Last years Oscar winner for best documentary is the heartbreaking account of a group of children raised in the brothels of Calcutta's red light district. As children, they are wide-eyed, imaginative, joyful, and strangely down to earth. Many of them fear they will end up as prostitutes like their parents. Zana Briskie, a photojournalist from New York, somehow finds her way into this godforsaken place, but everyone is suspicious and afraid of the cameras. She decides to live there for a few years to get to know the people and teach the children photography. She gives them each a camera, they take pictures and evaluate them. Suddenly, the power of artistc creation has inspired some of them. We follow the children and Briskie through their day to day life. The film avoids being exploitive (as some documentaries can be), it also manages to truthful, realistic, and inspirational, without being either sentimental or cynical. She helps to get some of them into boarding school and does everything in her power to give the children a chance to escape. With some, she succeeds, but the point is that its going to take more than one compassionate photojournalist with a few camera's to change the endless cycle of poverty and prostitution in Calcutta. This is one of the year's best and most moving films.

Elizabethtown

Not Cameron Crowe's best film, but charming nonetheless. Much like last year's Garden State (I'm not sure which of the two is better), it concerns a young man's feeling dislocated and in desperate need of an emotional jump-start. Both return home after extended absences to a newly deceased parent and meet a quirky girl. This time it's Kirsten Dunst, as one of those lovely Crowe girlfriends (or not so girlfriend). His musical sense is in top form, and the film ends with an extended travel montage across the country as a kind of lyric to middle America. Orlando Bloom gives his most layered performance to date (or maybe it's just his most layered character), and it's Dunst's best work since The Virgin Suicides. Does it all hold together? Not perfectly, but it's a good film, that despite its flaws, makes me remember how much I love small, Southern towns.

1941

This strangely underrated comedy from Steven Spielberg is neither a disaster nor even Spielberg's worst film (as one might be led to believe). It's 2 1/2 hours of comic anarchy that plays out like a combination of The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming and the what I imagine the cut pie fight scene from Dr. Strangelove might be like. Even when it's not funny, one can sense the joy and enthusiasm in the making of it. This is a fictional account of riots in Los Angeles when a Japanese submarine is spotted off of the California coast not long after Pearl Harbor. One of the most spectacular scenes is a prolonged airplane dogfight through the middle of downtown Hollywood, with a riot going on in the streets below. In fact, I have no idea how they pulled it off as convincingly as they did. The film must have had a significant budget. It's a strangely fun film with an all-star cast that's certainly worth watching at least once.

Palindromes

It is difficult to not be engaged while watching a Todd Solondz film, because he has an uncanny way of never really letting the audience know what he's thinking. Perhaps he's throwing out various ideas, hoping that his viewers will be encouraged to think about them for themselves and make their own conclusions. Perhaps he is revealing the inherent complexities in issues that many of us consider "simple." Perhaps he genuinely has no opinion, because he either agrees with them all or disagrees with them all. Roger Ebert correctly points out, "Palindromes contains characters in favor of abortion and characters opposed to it, and finds fault with all of them. The film has no heroes without flaws and no villains without virtues, and that is true no matter who you think the heroes and villains are. To ambiguity it adds perplexity by providing us with a central character named Aviva, a girl of about 12 played by eight different actors, two of them adults, one a boy, one a 6-year-old girl. She is not always called Aviva." She desperately wants to become pregnant and have a child, so she recruits a neighbors son to help her out. When she becomes pregnant, her parents force her to have an abortion. She then takes off on a journey and meets an assortment of people, including a Christian family that shelters deformed children. Even they are as flawed as they are compassionate. I honestly don't know what Solondz thinks, but I appreciate the humanity and complexity that he allows all of his characters. Nothing and no one is black and white in this world, and I am left with a fundamental desire love people.

Martha

One of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's best films. It's something of a dark comedy wrapped in the guise of a socio-political melodrama. This was the era in which Fassbinder's admiration for the social melodrama's of Douglas Sirk was most pronounced. It is about bourgeouis, marital opression. Martha, a young librarian, marries soon after the death of her father. The man she marries insists that she need not work if his income will sustain them. He is the kind of man who won't allow her to wear sunscreen, and after she become embarrassingly sunburned, gets turned on and begins to make violent love to her. He is the kind of man who, when he leaves for a few days on business, prefers she not leave the house, and instead leaves with her a book on civil engineering for her to read so that they can talk about his job. He is the kind of man who gets angry her musical preferences or when she makes a meal he doesn't like, though later patronizingly appologizes by pointing out that she "means well". His abuse is never overt, but clear. He is a sadist and she is a masochist. His abuse of her is as funny as it is psychologically hurtful, and Fassbinder balances his social commentary and his filmmaking gusto with assurance.

The Emotion of BAD LIEUTENANT

The following is my final paper for my Philosophy of Film class:



Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant is one of the grittiest, most searing cinematic examples of a broken soul’s need for redemption. It is often vile and disgusting, because the lieutenant is an utterly immoral man. It is also one of the most bold and intensely Christian films that I have ever seen. Christian in theme and imagery, though its heart belongs in the streets of New York with the junkies and lowlife’s, also crying out for salvation. Upon second viewing, it is an even more rewarding experience as a film that clearly takes its moral and spiritual ideas seriously and offers them a potency rarely seen in modern film. In this paper I will attempt to describe and evaluate the way Ferrara utilizes emotion in his film, particularly those of horror, identification, and ultimately the sublime.

Harvey Keitel gives an uncompromisingly powerful performance as the unnamed lieutenant, a corrupt New York City cop. Roger Ebert points out that, "The movie does not give the lieutenant a name, because the human aspects of individual personality no longer matter at this stage; he is a bad cop, and those two words, expressing his moral state and leverage in society, say everything that is important about him." His self-destructive behavior leads him to indulge in all of the vices that he should be combating. He leaves drug dealers alone in exchange for their product, he steals money from the thieves that just robbed a convenience store, he drinks until he passes out, he completely ignores his family, and he perversely, verbally rapes two teenage girls driving without a license in exchange for not turning them in. Also, he’s a gambler, and right now New York is eagerly waiting on the results of the seven game playoff match between the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers. The lieutenant is betting it all on the Dodgers with some dangerous bookies, but the Mets seem to be making a historic comeback. In the middle of all of this, a nun is brutally raped by a couple of young hoodlums. She knows who did, but refuses to turn them in because she has already forgiven them, "Those boys. Those raging, sad boys. They came to me as the needy do, and like many of the needy they were rude, and like all the needy they took. Like all the needy, they needed." He can’t conceive of this kind of forgiveness, because if they can be forgiven, can he? At the absolute end of his rope – the Dodgers have lost and he can’t pay, strung out on booze and cocaine, and desperately seeking redemption – he begins to hallucinate and sees a vision of Christ standing before him in the church. "He no longer knows for sure what the boundaries of reality are," Ebert says. "His temporary remedies – drugs and hookers – have stopped working. All that remains are self loathing, guilt, deep physical disquiet, and the hope of salvation." At first he curses Jesus in His perceived absence, and then begins to beg for forgiveness, leading him literally to the feet of Christ. Eventually he finds the two young rapists, and in an unusual act of grace, gives them $30,000 dollars that he was going to use to help pay his gambling debts, and puts them on a bus to leave. He sets them free. In Ferrara’s allegory, New York City is a metaphor for a fallen and sinful world. With his act of grace, the lieutenant frees the young sinners to start over again in a better place. At the end, in an unbroken, static wide shot we see him in his car parked in front of Madison Square Garden. A car drives up alongside his, a voice can be heard, "Hey, cop!" Shots are fired, and the car drives off. The lieutenant has paid for his sins, but he has also been redeemed and had a chance to offer redemption to others. Harvey Keitel commented about the role, "I wanted to play this part because I have a deep desire to know God. Knowing God isn’t just a matter of going to confession and praying. We also know God by confronting evil, and this character gave me the opportunity to descend into the most painful part of myself and learn about the dark places."

It is difficult to describe or even evaluate Bad Lieutenant in terms of "horror," because it is not a horror film. The lieutenant is neither a monster, nor supernatural, nor a serial killer (he is, however, a less likable character than the cannibal, Hannibal Lector). Yet, there is still something disturbing and even horrible about his actions. There is something frightening about a man like this representing justice in a civil society. Perhaps it is frightening in a way that many horror films cannot be, in that we may never truly fear a monster which we know does not exist, but we can fear a self-destructive man. Perhaps this could be what Cynthia Freeland describes as "realist horror," though she uses that term primarily in reference to serial killers in film. She says, "Yet realist horror is a prevalent and important subgenre of horror that deserves consideration. Psycho and Peeping Tom, both released in 1960, initiated a significant shift in the horror genre. They chillingly depicted ‘ordinary’ men who were unable to connect with the reality around them. Due to traumas of childhood and sexual repression, so the story went, they became slashers." The lieutenant is an "ordinary" man (not subhuman or supernatural) who, at times, seems unable to connect with the reality around him. There also seems to be in him, to some extent, an underlying sexual frustration explaining his various encounters with prostitutes which never seems to involve sex (impotence?), as well as his, as one writer puts it, "queerly celibate (i.e., masturbatory) encounter with the two young women that he stops and harasses." Freeland goes on to say, "In realist horror, male sexuality is a ticking time bomb, a natural force that must be released and will seek its outlet in violence if it is frustrated or repressed." While impotence may not be an outspoken motivation for his actions, it is a possibility or at least a factor that can’t be ignored. Perhaps the most overt reference to horror in the film comes from a line spoken by a prostitute played by Zoe Lund, the films’ co-writer:

Vampires are lucky, they can feed on others. We gotta eat away at ourselves. We gotta eat our legs to get the energy to walk. We gotta come, so we can go. We gotta suck ourselves off. We gotta eat away at ourselves until there’s nothing left but appetite. We give, and give, and give crazy. Because a gift that makes sense ain’t worth it. Jesus said seventy times seven. No one will ever understand why, why you did it. They’ll just forget about you tomorrow, but you gotta do it.

Perhaps in this line could be found the source for a future Ferrara film, The Addiction. The interesting thing here is that to Ferrara, horror is not to be found in a monster, or a murderer, or even a man, but in life itself. Life, perhaps, in a fallen world. The real horror is that of decay and man’s selfish nature – both curses of the Fall. So in a way, this is a horror film, or at least a film about that which is horrible.

I am fairly certain that identification is not the point of Bad Lieutenant. In fact, Ferrara and Keitel seem to have intentionally crafted the character so that the audience would not empathize with him. He is utterly void of redeeming qualities. Perhaps we are not meant to identify with him. Perhaps he is intended to be identified with Christ. Simon Taylor observes:

As his daughter receives her first Communion, the lieutenant does not receive the sacrament but discusses his betting. Again we have the conjunction of his bad behavior and a crucifix. Here, however, Ferrara frames him in the same way as he frames the Christ on the crucifix. Ferrara is going further than a simple conjunction of religious imagery and the lieutenant and begins to suggest an identification between the lieutenant and Christ. We can see this elsewhere in the film. He goes to the home of a young dealer to whom he has sold drugs in order to collect the money he is owed. There are a number of religious pictures in this apartment, including a picture of Jesus’ face woven into a sofa. The lieutenant sits on the sofa right over the face of Jesus, as it were, in his place. Just as Ferrara has the lieutenants body form the image of the cross (itself suggesting some identification with Christ), so the lieutenant boldly takes the place of Christ. This occurs in the church. He picks up the statue of the Madonna that the rapists knocked over and lies down next to it. There is something of the cross in this pose, but most of all it resembles a pieta.

As well as this identification between the lieutenant and Christ, we twice see Christ himself during the film. Christ is never fully present in the film, only seen as a vision. The Christ we see is stripped to the waste, wounded and bleeding. He is the Christ of the crucifix. This visionary appearance of Christ is a departure from the realism that characterizes the rest of the film, and is unique to Bad Lieutenant in the whole of Ferrara’s body of work. The first time we see Christ is as the nun is raped on the altar of a church. As we watch this crime, the film cuts between the rape and an image of Christ on the cross, screaming in agony. The suggestion is as if it were happening to Christ, or at the least that Christ shares her pain. It later transpires the boys used a cross to penetrate the nun. The lieutenant sees Christ in the same church, where he has gone to plead with the nun for the names of her assailants. She refuses, saying that she has already forgiven them. The nun then leaves him, silently, giving him her rosary. She quite literally hands her cross to the lieutenant. He then drops to the floor and howls. It is at this point that he sees Christ, just as we saw Christ during the rape. He curses Christ at first and throws the rosary he has been given. Finally he breaks down and begs for forgiveness, "What am I going to do? You’ve gotta say something. You want me to do everything. Where were you? Where the fuck were you? I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ve done so many bad things! I’m sorry. I tried to do... tried to do the right thing, but I’m weak. I’m too fucking weak. I need you to help me. Help me. Forgive me, forgive me. Forgive me, please. Forgive me, Father." As he crawls toward Christ and kisses his feet, we see that in fact it is an old woman that has entered the church. It is she who has stolen the chalice and gives him enough information to find the rapists. The vision of Christ thus leads to his most significant identification with Christ as he takes the place of Christ in forgiving and setting free the two rapists. This identification is compounded by the fact that this costs the lieutenant his life.

Ferrara goes out of his way to insure that we will not make the mistake of identifying with the lieutenant in the sense that we condone or support his actions, and in the process he reveals a profound truth. Christ can identify with us even when we cannot with each other. Christ who is fully God and fully human, can identify with the violated nun as he can with a bad lieutenant seeking forgiveness. Most of the identification techniques described by Taylor are as much juxtapositions as they are identifications. The similar framing, the woven image on the sofa, and the pieta are as much reminders of the omnipresence of Christ as anything else. Christ is identifying with lieutenant, but the lieutenant cannot yet be identified with Christ because the lieutenant has not been redeemed or passed over into the Sacred. It is only when he receives the forgiveness of Christ that the identification can be made complete and satisfactory. Only the changed lieutenant can make an adequate identification with Christ, because it is at that point where the lieutenant is not merely passively identified with Christ, but he actively identifies with Christ by demonstrating grace and mercy to sinners. The identification is complete and a two-way process, not just one.

When one thinks of the sublime moments in this history of cinema, perhaps one might conjure up images from The Passion of Joan of Arc, or from the works of Bresson, Bergman, and even Chaplin, but I imagine that one is not likely to immediately consider Abel Ferrara and Bad Lieutenant. Yet I might go so far as to say that scene in which the lieutenant encounters Christ is sublime, not merely because of the way that I "felt" while watching the scene, but because it seems to adhere to the definition of sublime. Cynthia Freeland claims:

To call an object "sublime" means, first and most centrally, that it calls forth a characteristic conflict between certain feelings of pain and pleasure – it evokes what Burke labeled "rapturous terror." On the one hand, the sublime prompts a painful feeling sometimes designated as terror, fear, or dread. But the sublime object does not cause merely pain or terror, but also "rapture": we find it exhilarating and exciting. Kant and Burke emphasized that so long as we are safe, the ineffable, great element before us in the awesome object evokes a certain intellectual pleasure of astonishment or elevation. Kant thought that this pleasure was tied to an awareness of features of our moral selves . . . A final feature of the sublime is that it prompts moral reflection.

It is painful to watch the completely broken cop rant about his need for forgiveness and help – at that moment, my heart goes out to him. If I am correct in describing this as a kind of horror movie, or a film about that which is horrible, then one might understand the feelings of terror. One is, in fact, likely to be fearful – to feel a "rapturous terror" – in the presence of Christ. I probably need not even argue that the moment of spiritual redemption and salvation is the most sublime of all experiences, and Ferrara captures that feeling when his character, who so clearly needs that redemption and renewal (as we all do), receives it. And by its very nature – the imagery of salvation, the church location, the presence of Christ, and the consistent religious iconography – the film prompts moral reflection. The lieutenant is awakened to the "awareness of features of [his] moral self." If the salvation imagery is not sufficient to constitute a sublime moment, then I don’t what is. Ferrara’s film is more overtly dark and viscerally intense than many of its sublime cinematic counterparts, but it is through great darkness that the victory of the light shines most brightly.

Bad Lieutenant is an experience of a film is set in the horrible darkness of the human soul, though manages to make an identification between the lieutenant and Christ himself, leading to a moment of sublime victory. It is a film that knows nothing of tameness and subtlety, belonging to that type of street-tough New York maverick filmmaking, comparable to the early works of Martin Scorsese. Its boldness is a result of the palpable, all-consuming passion of the filmmaker’s, primarily Abel Ferrara and Harvey Keitel. It is an admirably direct, no-holds-barred reminder of our need for salvation, and the necessity of grace in a fallen world.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Andrew Adamson's (mostly) live action retelling of the first in C.S. Lewis' Narnia book series is good, if not entirely successful. The story is about four English children circa-WWII that find themselves transported to another world via a large wardrobe in the house of an old professor (Lewis?). In Narnia they encounter the White Witch, an evil sorceress who has left Narnia in perpetual winter, and Aslan, the mighty lion/Christ-figure. They also find themselves at the brunt of an ancient prophecy which destines them to be rulers of the land. The problem is that films strengths and allegorical depth seem solely a result of Lewis' efficient storytelling, and have little to do with Adamson. Wheras the greatness of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films can be as much credited to Jackson as to Tolkien. Adamson lacks the imagination and vision of a great fantasy filmmaker, yet I applaud his wisdom in remaining faithful to Lewis' text, and not making what could have easily become an embarrassing film. It settles for being a faithful incarnation rather than a visionary interpretation -- a visual book rather than a movie.