Film School: Vagabond

In 2007 Sean Penn directed Into The Wild, a true life tale about a young man who wants to escape the clutches of modern capitalism by never staying in one place for any marked length of time. The pinnacle of this way of living is to go off into the wild of Alaska by himself for an indefinite period.

Way before that, in 1985, French director, Agnes Varda, made Vagabond, or to give it its French title Sans toit ni loi, which translated literally means "Without Roof or Rule". Like Into The Wild it's about a young woman, Mona, who lives on the road and has no place to call her own. Relying instead on the kindness of others to survive.

A fictional tale, the main thing that separates it from Into The Wild is that the lead character has none of the lust for life that Penn's movie does. Where as Hirsch's character is able to bring a lot of warmth and encouragement to the people he comes across, Mona seems like much too broken a character to be able to do the same thing, and will sometimes greet kindness with a special kind of apathy.

In fact, the true nature of her character is at the centre of the film. Characters address the camera, at various points in the story, expressing their experiences with her, and opinion on her. All differ wildly. What they do have in common in that they reflect something of their own prejudices and outlook.

These differing perspectives give the movie an added dimension, as we the audience are invited to piece together who Mona really was, and whether she was a victim of circumstance or a master of her own fate.

Overall, there's a lot to like in this film. The faux-documentary style, the ambiguous nature of the main character, and the way people's opinions reveal more about themselves than about the person they're describing all make this film very easy to recommend.

I started this series based on titles I was studying at an evening course at Edinburgh University. Vagabond marks the end of the course, and so the end of the series. If you've missed any of the Film School articles, just click here.

My next series will be "Films of Shame". That is films, I really should have seen by now, but haven't.

The first five will be:

1. Citizen Kane
2. Godfather Part 2
3. The Shining
4. Taxi Driver
5. Annie Hall

I'd be interested to know other people's "Films of Shame". Have you never seen "Star Wars", "Schindler's List" or "The Wizard of Oz"? Do you have to pretend to know what's so special about Bruce Willis' watch in Pulp Fiction? Or do you sometimes intersperse conversations about Lord of the Rings, with "My Precioussssss" in the hope no one will find out your guilty secret?

Confessions welcome below:

Film School: Chungking Express

One of the most influential movie of the 90s was Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Combining style, instantly quotable dialogue, and a non-linear, multi-threaded narrative it became an instant classic when it was released in 1994. Watching it back now, it still feels like a very recent, modern film.

Released the same year was the much less famous Chungking Express. Like Tarantino's movie it features a multi-thread narrative, and is incredibly stylish. It also features the same kind of film references Tarantino has become famous for. As such, it isn't at all surprising that this is one of the American director's favourite movies of all time.

It features two almost entirely separate stories, linked by a takeaway restaurant called Midnight Express. The two narratives are both based around cops trying to get over recently failed relationships. However, the women they are interested in couldn't be more different. One is a drug dealer who has just been double crossed by a male associate. The other fits the description of Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

A Manic Pixie Dream Girl (or MPDG for short), for those of you who don't know is the term given to women who fly in and out of a character's life, teaching a normally uptight male lead, to relax and enjoy life more. Other examples include Natalie Portman in Garden State, Maggie Gyllenhaal in Stranger Than Fiction, and Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown, which is where the term, incidentally stems from.

The MPDG in this case is Faye, who dances around to California Dreamin'; breaks into the male lead's apartment so she can clean it and rearrange furniture; and glides across our screens with few concerns beyond making sure the music is loud enough so she can't think.

The success of the movie depends upon whether you find all of this charming or deeply grating. The chances are if you've ever fallen for (or had a girl-crush on) Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel or Maggie Gyllenhaal in any film you'll probably fall for Faye.

Beyond the narrative of the movie, the cinematography on offer is a joy to behold. Mixing fast action, depictions of claustrophobic living and a beautiful mix of yellows, blacks and deep reds that get under the skin of Hong Kong living.

Overall, this movie is very worthwhile, and appears to say a lot through very little. The more I've reflected on it, the more I've come to appreciate all the different layers it has. Like that movie of Tarantino's it's dated very well, and still feels incredibly relevant and ground-breaking 16 years on.

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Film School: McCabe and Mrs Miller

The western is a genre known for the unwavering codes and morals of their protagonists. Heroes will do anything to defend their town from the tyranny of an outsider. Law, order, and honour are all at the heart of the society they inhabit, and nothing will force them to reconsider this strict ethical code.

McCabe and Mrs Miller has certainly got the setting of a Western: a new frontier town which has quickly expanded and is still finding its feet when a stranger (McCabe) comes in and changes everything. However, he's not like the heroes of traditional westerns: he's a gambler- an opportunist, who sees a way of making a life for himself in this new town.

Part of the deal involves giving the townspeople (exclusively men) what they want (women): so he sets up three tents for some ladies of the night to service the males of the town. Mrs Miller, an inhabitant of a nearby settlement, hears about this, and convinces McCabe to expand this part of his empire, and so they become business partners in the town of Presbyterian Church.

The movie has a very 'modern' feeling to it. The way the central character is neither good nor evil, neither heroic nor especially cowardly and neither especially able or a complete wash-out allows the film to continue to have relevance to audiences today. In a way other movies of the Western genre, while enjoyable as entertainment, fall short on social commentary/relevance.

In particular, its critique of capitalism (around half way through the movie, McCable is confronted with a 'hostile takeover' - literally) would certainly ring true with the fans of The Wire. As success brings him to the attention of outside forces who make him an offer he can't refuse.

Perhaps its only weakness is that its 'radical' take on prostitution feels so idealistic in comparison to the more sobering themes of the rest of the film. Once it's taken over by Mrs. Miller, the whore house is presented more like a sorority house: with the women empowered by their ability to bring pleasure to the men of the town. They giggle, they chuckle, they dance, they eat cake. This is very much a film of the free love generation. Compare it to other depictions of prostitution in Slow Motion or Requiem for a Dream where clients pay for a service and can essentially demand anything in return, and you can't help but wonder if the director has really thought this scenario through.

So overall, McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a very enjoyable and watchable movie with a central character that's incredibly engaging and beautifully ambiguous. A Western then, for people who hate Westerns, an old movie for a modern audience.

Film School: Do The Right Thing

Spike Lee's tale about inner-city New York has become a cornerstone of Black Cinema. Set in the mainly African-American community of Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, it's the hottest day of the year and racial tensions are running high.

The film's main character is Mookie, played by Lee, who works for a family of Italian-Americans. As tensions heat-up, he has to make the decision whether to side with his employers or the rest of his community. The film fits squarely into the category of Titles That Are Also Lines In The Movie* (cf. Law Abiding Citizen, You've Got Mail and Home Alone . In this case Mookie is told by "The Mayor" to do the right thing.

Very much an ensemble piece, Lee's aim is clearly to get under the skin of the community it depicts. Taking time to set-up all the characters and their motivations, it shows the differing ways people react to cultures separate from their own.

Lee's film is very much of its time. The way characters dress, speak and love their Nike trainers all screams the 1980s. This also applies to the racial issues it depicts. Middle-aged black men talk scold at the Koreans who have moved in and quickly set-up a successful business, while questioning their own inability to do so. Mookie, while speaking to an Italian American, boldly claims blacks will once again rule the world, designed more to rile his counterpart, than prove a point.

Of course, we now live in a time when the most important man in the world is black. And where there are plenty of African-Americans who've been successful in fields outside of sport and music. We also live in a time where the kind of riots and police beatings that existed 20+ years ago are no longer as prevalent. What then, does a movie such as Do The Right Thing? have to say to a modern audience?

The honest answer is not a lot. Although significant at the time, not only for its depiction of black culture, but also as a cornerstone of black cinema, the film feels very dated now. Some films of their time still work very well, since the issues they depict can be fairly universal or perhaps they capture something about a period which is important or significant. In particular films like Wall Street, Trainspotting or American Beauty still hold up because of, rather than despite, their depiction of the era in which they were made.

If it does have any significance, it is surely historical. In bringing to light the kind of issues people had never seen in film before it was viewed as being very controversial. Many critics of significant clout argued that it might insight African-Americans to riot. Lee was incredibly dismissive of such suggestions, pointing out, quite rightly, that black people were just as capable of controlling their emotions and resisting the urge to riot as their lighter-skinned counterparts.

Perhaps such attitudes show why Do The Right Thing should be given some credit for allowing these issues to come to light. Its significance goes beyond its content, to what it represented to people at the time: a further platform for a voice which felt belittled and marginalised by a society full of fear and suspicion.

Bonus:
*Wanna see other films which use their titles as lines of dialogue? No problemo!

Film School: Eyes Wide Shut

Eyes Wide Shut was the last film Stanley Kubrick directed before he died. It stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as a married couple, and was famous at the time for being slated by critics for what it wasn't. Cruise and Kidman were not chosen for their on-screen chemistry (of which there is little, but neither is there opportunity for much); they weren't necessarily chosen for their wide-reaching acting abilities (even if they were, the dialogue gives them little opportunity for oscar-worthy performances); finally it isn't the most sexy mainstream movie ever made, despite what censors at the time would have you believe.

What then is it? Hmmm... what then is it? In answering the question, I could detail the plot which sees Cruise find out his wife has been fantasising about a man she met only once, and goes out to find his own sexual fantasy: encountering a bereaved daughter, a prostitute, an orgy as he does so.

I could also detail the visual style and art direction: all the sets look like hotels: bereft of any warmth or individuality. You don't really believe the characters have lived there or that they have lives anything like yours or mine. The film deals almost exclusively with those on the upper-crust of society, and the sets point to the artificiality of that existence.

Finally, the dialogue, as already alluded to is deceptively simple. Exchanges are so one dimensional, they must surely have hidden depth. As a result characters feel like actors playing roles.

Putting all of these things together make the movie feel incredibly dreamlike. Phones ring at the most convenient of times, allowing Cruise to avoid decisions he would rather not make. Characters float into existence, almost from nowhere. Cruise quickly moves from one place to the next with little time for thinking in between. The events of the movie are also so unlikely and surreal they could easily fit into a David Lynch movie.

So what then is Eyes Wide Shut? Perhaps the best way to answer that question is to say that it could be anything. There are hundreds of articles on the meaning of the film, all pointing to different ideas. For example, some feel it is a celebration of marriage, others a celebration of sexual fantasy. Regardless of what Kubrick's intentions are, the movie will surely hold different interpretations to different viewers. Like our own dreams, where only we can can expect to truly interpret them, Eyes Wide Shut is a film so rich in subtext, its meaning will be different to each viewer. Intentionally making a film so open to analysis and inference is one of the reasons Kubrick and his movies will be remembered for many years to come.

Film School: Meantime

Meantime is directed by Mike Leigh and stars Phil Daniels, Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, Pam Ferris, and Alfred Molina (among others). Leigh is film-maker known for his unique approach to movies. Rather than writing a script and getting actors to perform lines, he creates characters and a basic storyline, and works with the actors/actresses to create a script. Once the actors have been told about who their characters are, Leigh will put them in a room together and let them improvise lines. This gives each of his movies very natural and realistic dialogue, at the expense of a tight story or obvious character arcs.

In Meantime, the story centres on a family in Thatcherite Britain living in high-rises in East London. The father and two sons are all unemployed, and rely on the dole to eat/smoke/drink. The mother's sister is faring better, living in a middle-class suburb, and this clash of cultures forms the basis for the film's story.

Leigh's individual style is one that very much appeals to me. It gives each of the characters a great sense of 'self' that few movies have. When films were first made, the main experience people had of acting was the theatre, where lines are delivered as much to the audience as the co-stars. This type of delivery can still be seen in most modern movies. Where 'exposition' will mean characters say things people would never really say in real life. For example in last week's Lost the camera pans over a huge temple before cutting to Hurley who says: "So this is the temple."

In Meantime characters will often be so involved in their own worlds, that they aren't actually listening to what the other person is saying, or don't quite get it. How many times have you been in a conversation where your mind is elsewhere, or you kind of half answer a question? The other thing you get is the sense of conversing to fill the awkward silence that often fills the air between two people. So that dialogue is not interesting because of what is being said, but because it reflects a more realistic form of conversation rarely seen in film.

All of this makes for a very unique and interesting movie, which says a lot about Britain in the early 80s. It does it by showing the impact on people's lives without resorting to some character's rise and fall, or other movie trope. Instead, character's lives change little because of events: stuff happens, but its impact is left open to interpretation. Again reflecting the slow process of change and people's general adversity to it.

Out of the five movies I've seen so far (including next week's Eyes Wide Shut) Meantime is definitely my favourite. It's a movie that could only be made by its director, and as a result has a realism and truth you rarely see portrayed on screen.

Film School: Slow Motion

This week's film school movie is Slow Motion (or Sauve qui peut (la vie), to give it its French title. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, it's about a director (also called Godard) who no longer loves his work; his girlfriend who wants to leave city life to cycle in the countryside; and the prostitute he sleeps with, who's trying to earn enough money to rent her own place. Although its story is of little importance to the film as I'll explain.

Godard is a director well known for making 'difficult' movies: one's that tell the audience little and ask for a lot of investment before seeing any return. Slow Motion is certainly representative of this form of film-making. It fluctuates between the bizarre (formula 1 cars appearing in and out of a scene without explanation) and the obscene (the character Godard talking about his daughter in a highly inappropriate way). In between there's philosophy readings, scenes where characters look out windows, and slow motion hugging.

Trying to accurately describe Godard to someone who's never seen him is like trying to describe a rainbow to someone who's only seen black and white. There is no denying the uniqueness and creativity of the director, regardless of my feelings about the result of this endeavour.

For my money, it appears as though Godard is determined to do nothing you would expect in a narrative movie: so story, plot, and character arcs are practically non-existent. However, in loosing what he feels are the chains of classic cinema, I feel like he's shackled himself up to new restrictions. Only shooting in a way that's challenging and unique for his own pleasure/challenge, rather than in a manner that gives his audience any insight into the world he's created. His movies perhaps say more about film-making than they do their subjects.

Perhaps Godard's movies can only really be appreciated by those who believe a script is not the be and end all of cinema. Given that almost every movie films with a script, or at least a clear outline of characters (cf. Mike Leigh), perhaps this shows you how limited Godard believes film-makers can make themselves. Nevertheless, the reason most people (myself included) watch movies is for characters and stories, take that away and you're left with something akin to a great piece of art: challenging and insightful but without the emotional attachment to characters/scenes most of us associate with our favourite movies.

Film School: Shonen

This week's film is a Japanese one called Shonen, which translated into French means 'garçon'. It's about a boy who's parents get him to fake accidents with cars in order to win compensation. Based on a true story, the family goes from city to city defrauding innocent drivers - playing on their guilt for hitting a helpless child.

It's shot in quite a unique way: the camera rarely moves in a scene, giving a feeling of uneasy separation from the characters it portrays. We discussed at film class this might be because normally it's very easy to sympathise with child characters in movies, and by giving the viewer this 'distance' it allows them to genuinely bond with the boy as oppose to a more instant, superficial connection.

The 'boy' in question is literally called that by his parents, giving you a sense of the relationship between him and his father/step-mother. Despite this mistreatment, he always plays his fraudulent role exceedingly well, faking injuries, pain and anger with seemingly little or no effort. One of the movie's strengths is showing the viewer how quickly children pick up the habits and morality of their parents.

Where as a lot of movies nowadays show cruelty by children as a result of a broken society (City of God, Let The Right One In, etc.), Shonen has a much more simple explanation for its lead character's lack of morality, and one that is much easier to understand and empathise with. It's his parent's fault.

The end of the movie gives the boy some hope as events allow him to see the impact of what he's doing, and force him to reconsider the life he and his parents have been living for such a long time. This kind of thinking gives the character a maturity beyond his years, and despite the overall bleakness of the movie, we are left with hope that the main character may not repeat the mistakes of his parents in the future.


Shonen is not available on DVD. However, you can read a list of director Nagisa Ôshima's other films on DVD here: http://www.lovefilm.com/browse/contributor/96561/Nagisa_Oshima.html . Certainly "Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence", starring none other than David Bowie must be worth a look...

Next week I'll be watching a French movie directed by Jean Luc Goddard: Slow Motion

Film School: Chinatown

On Wednesday, I started an evening course at Edinburgh University called "Talking Film". The format of the course if fairly simple: you watch a film and then discuss it with one another at the 2-hour class. The lecturer leads the discussion, and shows the clip from the film itself, as well as other clips relevant to its genre/stars/director. Over the next ten weeks, I'll try and review each of the ten films I'll be watching.

This week's film was Roman Polawski's Chinatown. The plot of the film concerns Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson), a P.I. in the 50's. He's hired to investigate the affairs of a city employee, Hollis Mulwray. Things get complicated when Mulwray dies and Gittes feels compelled to find out who killed him and why.

Chinatown borrows heavily from the tropes of Film Noir: a male lead with few ties, a femme fatale, and a dark mystery to be solved. However, without spoiling anything, the resolution to the film's plot manages to make it much more than a simple detective story.

When I watched the movie on Sunday, I was impressed without being blown away: it's a very well-paced and plotted movie and the nature of the genre means there's always something going on to keep you interested. Nevertheless, while an excellent example of film noir, I don't feel like it does anything for the genre that hasn't been done elsewhere.

I would compare my feelings about it to something like Shawshank Redemption: an excellently plotted, tight movie that's easy to like but will never rock the foundations of cinema.

There are a number of reasons I feel this way. One is that the photography lacks a 'cinematic quality'- the film could easily be adapted for the stage without losing much in the translation. In addition, the plot and characters could almost be considered 'too tight': every action and conversation can be brought back to a specific motivation or event. You're not given the impression there's anything else going on in these characters lives aside from the occurrences we see or hear about in the film.

However, perhaps the main reason I don't hold in such high regard is that I'm just not big a fan of detective stories in general. I've seen enough episodes of Jonathan Creek, Midsomer Murders and Scooby Doo to know that one of the people you meet will be the killer, and most of the time you could spin a wheel to decide who it is. This 'predictable unpredictability' (X killed Y because of event Z we couldn't possibly have known anything about) leaves me with a feeling of being cheated. Chinatown may not be quite so convoluted, but perhaps the feeling of inevitability this genre gives me meant I wasn't as involved in the story as others can allow themselves to be.

I'll conclude by saying I probably enjoyed Chinatown more than the criticism in this post implies. I'd certainly recommend it for fans of the genre, but even beyond that I find it difficult to see anyone not getting something from what is a very well-made, carefully executed film. However, if like me, you're not a fan of the genre, don't expect to be overwhelmed.

If you're interested, the films that have been chosen for discussion at this class are:
1. Chinatown
2. Shonen
3. Slow Motion
4. Vagabond
5. Meantime
6. Eyes Wide Shut
7. Do the Right Thing
8. Battle in Heaven
9. McCabe and Mrs Miller
10. Chungking Express