Blinded by the Light (Gurinder Chadha, 2019)

Before I begin slicing and dicing, let me confess that I did get choked up at the end of Blinded by the Light when director Gurinder Chadha (Bend it Like Beckham) shows photographs of Sarfraz Manzoor, the real Bruce Springsteen fan whose 2007 memoir Greetings from Bury Park: Race, Religion and Rock N’ Roll inspired the film. Chadha includes several snaps of Manzoor with his best friend, his parents, and several with The Boss himself, all figures with whom we've spent the previous running time. Manzoor was able to make something of his intense fandom (he's seen Springsteen live more than 150 times). Good for him. Now on to this terrible movie.

Even Springsteen's most rabid fans must admit that the man traffics in corn. His high-fructose post-teen symphonies to America (is there something grander than capital-A?) have certainly inspired a corresponding cottage industry of corny criticism. Take Greil Marcus on the Springsteen show at the Sports Arena, Los Angeles, Au­gust 27, 1981: "I was there because I wanted to hear him sing one line: 'Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart.' He didn’t just sing it, he did it." (rolls damn eyes) Manzoor and Chadha love that line too (and I wouldn't be shocked to discover they know Marcus' blurb as well). They use it many times in the film because it derives from "The Promised Land," evoking the Pakistani diaspora and Manzoor's struggles with assimilation in 1987 England.

And therein lies the problem with corn and this movie. Like the fungible foodstuff of its namesake, corn in art repeats on you. It abjures specifics and recycles low-nutrition homilies in their stead. And right about now, I should admit that Springsteen has transcended these shortcomings in most of his oeuvre with not just lyrical specifics but musical ones as well, especially his 1980s oeuvre which comes off as conversant with a wider swath of popular music than the monochromatic Rock of the 1970s albums - punk on The River (1980), Suicide on Nebraska (1982), pop on Born in the U.S.A. (1984) and Latin freestyle on Tunnel of Love (1987) (although I'm open to the suggestion that he was wrestling with boogaloo on 1973's The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle).

Specifics would just get in the way of Blinded by the Light's goal of creating a feel-good movie. Never does it suggest that anything about the music of Bruce Springsteen has fired up Javed Khan (Viveik Kalra, adorable), a Pakistani teen based on Manzoor. Chadha merely shows lyrics whirling around Javed, a desperate conceit that is supposed to convey Springsteen's genius to the audience as automatically as it does for Javed. Worse, the apparently self-evident brilliance of the music is constantly counterposed against all other musics. The ebullient "Born to Run" number comes at the expense of Tiffany and the Pet Shop Boys, that inauthentic pop and new wave junk played by the DJ at the high school radio station. Javed and his friend Roops (Aaron Phagura) put on "Born to Run" and then lock the door to the station, preventing anyone from changing the song. Roops and Javed and his girlfriend Eliza (Nell Williams) then proceed to run through the halls and eventually the city streets, singing along to Springsteen's song while ignoring how Tiffany and the Pet Shop Boys have provided succor and escape for their listeners. Javed does come around to appreciating other music, especially as he dances (suddenly, without much reason) to the bhangra group Heera at a daytimer. But it's far too little, too late.

It gets even worse. In a scene soon after, Javed's father Malik (Kulvinder Ghir, in the "I hef no son" role) must pawn his wife Noor's (Meera Ganatra) jewelry to pay the bills after he's been laid off by Vauxhall Motors. "O Duniya Ke Rakhwale" from the film Baiju Bawra (Vijay Bhatt, 1952) plays non-diegetically over the scene and the effect is two-fold: 1. It associates Hindi film music with suffering in explicit contrast to the freedom (however provisional) of "Born to Run." 2. It cannot be commented on so we learn nothing about the song. Why aren't the lyrics to this song swirling around his parents' heads? Why do we hear no mention of the name Mohammed Rafi (or Lata Mangeshkar, heard in another scene), who sings this song and is one of the greatest playback singers in Indian cinema history? What does this music mean to Malik and Noor? In 117 minutes, one would think the subject could have been broached at some point.

Most curiously of all, there's a deeper, emptier nostalgia to this already emptily nostalgic movie. Bruce Springsteen's new album at the time, Tunnel of Love, is almost never mentioned. We see a picture of the album cover when Javed learns that Springsteen is going on tour...for that album. But we hear no songs from it. Not even the title is uttered. There's no rush to buy it at the record store, no taping it off the radio, no playing the CD to death. The most current Bruce tracks played in the film come from Born in the U.S.A. three years prior. So the Bruce Springsteen of Blinded by the Light is one that's already past. Tunnel of Love happens to be my favorite Springsteen album, a perversely revisionist gesture, I've been told, although it landed at #2 on that year's Pazz & Jop list. But even if it were the worst, this oversight cheapens Springsteen's legacy. It casts him as perpetual backward-looking journeyman rather than an artist actively engaging with the present. And it gives the audience a license to ignore the music that's happening around them today.

Grade: C+

Footsteps in the Fog (Arthur Lubin, 1955)

A solid gothic thriller in the tradition of Gaslight, Footsteps in the Fog is included in the Noir Archive Volume 2: 1954-1956 collection released by Kit Parker/Mill Creek Entertainment, the latter being my favorite DVD label ever for their hilariously cynical box sets of public domain films crammed four to a disc. In typical Mill Creek fashion, this is not a noir and, reportedly, neither are any of the others in the set. But an Amazon review says "Femme fatale versus homme fatale. Very noir." So I guess it is one after all.

Directed by Arthur Lubin (whom Sarris left out of The American Cinema, the Kiss of Death for name recognition but catnip for cinephiles searching for the next Hugo Fregonese), Footsteps in the Fog features a string of perverse twists including a move similar to the one pulled by Don Ameche to fake out Claudette Colbert in Sleep, My Love (Douglas Sirk, 1948). In fact, the film was titled I perversi in Italy. Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons both occupy the Sergis Bauer role and their deadly fireworks make for a diverting if forgettable 90 minutes. But KG users have voted it the best Lubin film so give it a shot if you want to see what stands out against the John Wayne and Abbott and Costello and Francis the Talking Mule and Mr. Ed vehicles in Lubin's filmography.
Grade: B+

P. S. According to Wiki, "Lubin was gay and for many years lived with Frank Buford."

P. P. S. Hi, Bill Travers!

Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2019)

Finally - a horror film for adults! I got scared, I screamed, I covered my eyes. Haley Bennett stars (in an Oscar-worthy performance) as Hunter, a housewife beset by first vague and then not-so-vague dread in a upper-class marriage. She takes to swallowing increasingly dangerous inanimate objects (a marble, a tack, a long nail, etc.) to the exasperation of her husband and in-laws. The latter are painted a bit too broadly as Pure Evil. But Mirabella-Davis complicates the tension by displaying toxic masculinity as an ambient threat (especially in the creepy hug scene) rather than one that resides in a Bad Person. A pungent portrait of a woman going to potentially fatal extremes in order to self-actualize, Swallow is an always welcome reminder that patriarchy is a scarier monster than Freddie and Jason combined.
Grade: A-minus

 

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (David Dobkin, 2020)

Too damn long! Did we really need the montage of Lars (Will Ferrell) and Sigrit (Rachel McAdams) experiencing the splendor of Edinburgh? At the very least, the space could have been used for another show-stopping number like the "Song-A-Long" featuring recent Eurovision contestants (Conchita Wurst, Netta, etc.) joining together for a Cher-Madonna-ABBA-Celine Dion-Black Eyed Peas medley (!). And does "Volcano Man" really only exist in a 1:21 version? Did they not anticipate that these fake songs might be real hits? "Húsavík" (a real city btw) is number ten on American iTunes as I write. Still, this is a cute, affectionate love letter to the looniest of music contests. And at 67, Pierce Brosnan (in the "I hef no son!" role) is a gorgeous wonder of nature.
Grade: B+

The Andromeda Strain (Robert Wise, 1971)

Where Soderbergh's Contagion goes global in its tale of a virus run amok, The Andromeda Strain (based on Michael Crichton's novel) focuses on one location for the majority of its running time. And yet, it's the far more stylish film. The severe reduction in setting elicits a corresponding orgy of late 1960s/early 1970s avant-pop aesthetics - 2001-inspired production design courtesy of Boris Levin, solarized special effects via Douglas Trumbull, creepy Wiseian deep focus, multiple split screens, and an electronic Gil Mellé score atonal enough to receive the Creel Pone treatment in 2006. 

After a rural New Mexico town is decimated in its near entirety, the U.S. military sequesters a four-scientist team in an Area 51-type bunker 16 hours below the ground to determine if an alien organism is the cause. We know precious little about the personal lives of each scientist. They're brought on board solely due to their expertise so Wise devotes most of the film to their professional activity (although Kate Reid's sardonic Dr. Ruth Leavitt bristles under the frequently sexist proceedings). This avoids the dreary character arcs and heteronormativity and anti-unionism of Contagion and affords a deeper concentration on the workings of the bunker. In fact, the story becomes so obsessively processual that details accrue less into a story than a skein of technological (and professional) oppression (and intoxication). A Siri-like voice constantly intones, more random and ambient than HAL ever was (Dr. Leavitt rolls her eyes when the voice refers to the team as "gentlemen"). Sleek, germfree hallways and automatic doors lead nowhere. And screens, so many screens. Screens to touch, screens to analyze, screens that absorb the frame. Somehow it feels very much a film of its time and yet strikingly up to date.
Grade: A-minus

I could have flooded this post with chic screenshots. So here's a juvenile one along with an example of Wise's creepy deep focus.

Side note: After watching this film, I fell down an obscure books hole and came across the 50 Watts blog and the astounding post about the psychedelic drawings in a 1972 textbook called Biology Today. And look who was a contributing consultant!

Luther Price 1962 - 2020

How to respond to Luther Price's death? After all, according to his own bio (reproduced on Dennis Cooper's blog post on Price, a typically thorough orgy of links), he died already in 1985 after being shot in Nicaragua. A titan of avant-garde cinema (who also worked in sculpture, slides, performance art, etc), he deserves a most reverent obituary. But is it ignorant to wonder if we should mourn his loss?

The first time I saw Luther Price in person was at a Cinematexas screening in 2006. I no longer recall the titles.* But they were violent, spasmodic things that rattled through the projector. Inevitably, one film broke, a more extreme, more final finish than even, say, a Warhol film that doesn't end but stops. A Price film simply cannot go on and may never be revived again. Like Price himself now.

Towards the end of the Q&A after, someone wistfully said, "Sorry about your film." Price just shrugged. Someone else asked if he would ever make his films available on DVD. He paused for a long time before saying, "No." He wasn't smug or contemptuous. It really did appear as if he was pondering the impossibility of his work having any sense of permanence. Not since my first encounter with Walter Benjamin's "Unpacking My Library" did I, an inveterate media hoarder, get such a pungent reminder that wrestling with art means above all to wrestle with your mortality. 

So how to honor Luther Price? Would a catalogue raisonné betray his legacy? A Criterion Blu-ray? Is it possible to preserve his textual disturbances - the chancres, the sores, the noise, the crud after being exhumed from the earth, the do-not-resuscitate endings? How to convey that this was one of the most visceral filmmakers in the history of the medium? Perhaps only Michael Sicinski's deathless praise from 2007 will do:

“In the near future, perhaps 'a Luther Price film' will consist of getting a speck of dust in your eye in some dark alley. Late at night. Far from home. That’s a compliment.”

* Underground Film Journal reports that a "Retrospective" took place on September 21st. Price appeared a few weeks later at Anthology Film Archives where, according to a post on the Frameworks listserv, "[t]his special screening may include a sneak preview of work in progress SILK and SINGING BISCOTTS. Films from the URF series and the Biscotts series will be included along with FANCY and INSIDE THE VELVET K , DEAF FOR CHICKEN LIP and others." So some of those titles might have been shown at the Cinematexas screening. Or not.

Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee, 2020)

Accusing Spike Lee of making a mess is like calling Neil Tennant a bored wimp. Mess is his subject and his medium. So in this tale of four veterans who return to Vietnam to retrieve millions of dollars in buried gold, we get didacticism, varied aspect ratios and film stocks, myriad allusions to westerns and war films (Rambo and Missing in Action and The Treasure of Sierra Madre and Day of the Outlaw and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia), Marvin Gaye's isolated vocal track for "What's Going On?" and, somewhere in there, a tense-as-funk 155-minute genre film. The film's most conspicuous virtue is its uncontainable intellectual pride. And at the center of it all, Lee places the psychology of Paul (Delroy Lindo, stunning), a MAGA-hat-wearing black man denied an inner life by America. Da 5 Bloods gives him the room to exhale.

Grade: A-minus

Saving Mr. Banks (John Lee Hancock, 2013)

Damn straight, I got verklempt towards the end of this falsified account of the run-in between P. L. Travers (Emma Thompson, cartoon-hating but cartoonish up to her Aqua-Netted coif) and Walt Disney (Tom Hanks, who else?) over transforming Travers' Mary Poppins book series into the celebrated 1964 film. I'm not a robot or a zombie although HAL and the walking dead in Joe Dante's Homecoming evince more human feeling than anything in this sorry slab of PR.

Why does Disney have to lie? We know that Travers resented many aspects of the Mary Poppins film and forbade any subsequent Disney adaptations of her work. But this reality isn't all that cretinous or surprising. Who would be stunned to learn that Walt Disney was a rabid capitalist? More importantly, would Disney stock plummet due to a portrait of his ruthlessness in getting exactly what he wants? Hell, I imagine the core audience for this film would applaud *any* of his attempts to get Mary Poppins on film.

But lo - we're served ever more pablum ooze in Saving Mr. Banks with a tearful Travers succumbing to The Magic of Disney at Mary Poppins' premiere and Walt as an anthropomorphic Ideological State Apparatus sitting directly behind blowing pixie-dust platitudes into her ear. Bags and bags of sugar but not a drop of medicine in the 310.

Also, 125 minutes? Nuh-uh. No, ma'am.

Finally, can we have a permanent moratorium on tiles of the Present Participle + Character variety, especially since another Tom Hanks vehicle already used Saving?

Grade: B-minus

Misery (Rob Reiner, 1990)

Expert direction. Barely a wasted moment. Never boring. Excellent performances (yes, yes, Kathy Bates deserved her Oscar). Extremely effective thriller overall. And empty.

Yet again, as with so much Hollywood product, Misery is the equivalent of eating a bag of wet pork rinds and feeling like (what else?) crap immediately after. The very economy rendering this such a tight thrill ride contributes all the more to the film's pointlessness. With little context and few secondary characters (nor, Lawd knows, a dialectical mise-en-scène à la Sirk), the sadistic two-character story has to provide all the meaning. Instead, it provides pork rinds. I want my heart rate to increase for more than just expertly reduced storytelling, especially when it offers a sexist and condescending account of the lives of women who consumer romance fiction. Hey - there is a context after all.

And don't just bitch at me. Leonard Maltin didn't even dig it that much, stating that the Stephen King novel on which the film is based was more nuanced, a fact I will likely never confirm.

Hooray for Hollywood!

Grade: C+

Moonstruck (Norman Jewison, 1987)

A tad overlong and yet severely undernourished, Moonstruck proves yet again that Hollywood enjoys no corner on well-constructed narratives. After twenty-five minutes of back (and present) story about Loretta (Cher), Ronny's (Nicholas Cage) first scene does way too much heavy lifting. He airs his back story and then...that's it. The affair between Loretta and Ronny happens so quickly after that it comes off as random, leaving Ronny with little character left. Truth is, the same happens with Loretta. The film simply settles into a courtship stasis and you wonder how on earth these people could become so instantly attracted to one another (no matter how beautiful they are). It's no surprise to discover that the best (deepest, most mature) scene has nothing to do with the two principals. Loretta's mother, Rose (Olympia Dukakis), strikes up a lonely conversation with gasbag professor Perry (John Mahoney, as sexy as Cage) at a favorite restaurant during which more insight is gained into the nature of attraction and long-term relationships than at any other point in the film.

Still, the finale is a master class in corn. I half expected the ensemble to burst out in a chorus of "We Go Together." Best line (Cher to Cage): "Where's The Met?" In short, though, I'll take Twice a Man (Gregory Markopoulos, 1964).

Grade: B

The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson, 2019)

SPOILERS (but not really if you've seen damn near every mainstream film of the past 100 years)

Imagine a narrative version of part 8 of Twin Peaks: Season 3 and you're in the ballpark of what Andrew Patterson (along with screenwriters James Montague and Craig W. Sanger) have achieved with The Vast of Night. The story centers around a radio station in fictional Cayuga, New Mexico in the 1950s and it starts off with refreshing ambiguity. Fay Crocker (Sierra McCormick) is a nerdy but tough-minded teenager who tags along with the slightly older Everett (Jake Horowitz), a night-shift DJ, to fix an audio problem at the high school gymnasium during a basketball game. Their interaction during this opening scene and their trek back to their respective jobs (Fay works the town's switchboard) bespeaks mutual respect. Fay seeks Everett's expertise and Everett makes sure not to condescend. He even pushes her to go to college. And all throughout, I kept repeating to myself "Please don't heterosexualize this relationship! Please don't heterosexualize this relationship! Please don't heterosexualize this relationship!"

Fay picks up some odd space noise on one of her lines and patches it over to Everett who broadcasts it over the air in the hopes that one of his twelve listeners will be able to identify the sound. And while soon a dying black military man, Billy (Bruce Davis), and an old woman who gave birth out of wedlock, Mabel Blanche (Gail Cronauer), contact Fay and Everett to inform them that the sound is coming from aliens in the vast of night, you realize that the real story is back down here in small-town America. Fay, Everett, Billy, and Mabel Blanche are all misfits connecting with one another under cover of the fugitive night while almost the entire town is at the high school basketball game. Billy and Mabel Blanche are in their last chapters but there is a future for Fay and Everett far from Cuyoga. The aliens merely brings that reality to the fore. In this respect, the most redolent moment occurs when Mabel Blanche says to Everett, "I listen to your broadcast every night. I think you're very good and I hope you can get far away from here," to which Everett responds with a matter-of-fact "Thank you."

But then the ending...which might irk some viewers with its ambiguity with respect to the aliens but is really quite conventional. About ten minutes before the end comes the suggestion that there may be some attraction between Fay and Everett (Fay's friend Gretchen smiles at Fay's mention of Everett and Fay, embarrassed, tells her to stop, an exchange included in the trailer). And the end seals the convention as the aliens beam up not just Fay and Everett together but Fay's baby cousin Ethel as well. Whether this means to signal the destruction of the heterosexual nuclear family or, more likely, its centrality to rebirth, the iconography remains the same. I do too want narrative cinema; I just want it to Tell. Different. Stories.

Still, this is a remarkable, highly recommended work which uses its virtuosity to generate narrative tension rather than show off. Just as noteworthy as the soon-to-be-famous tracking shot are the long takes that are quite literally breathtaking; you honestly forget to take a breath for considerable stretches of time. And now I hear that, unsurprisingly, Patterson has a development deal with Bezos' bottomless coffers. I eagerly await his Southland Tales. 

Grade: A-minus