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Room (2015), or TV Planet Worlds Are Better than the Real One

When I think too hard about the concept of infinity, my brain shorts out a bit and must reboot by returning to thoughts of the tangible world that I know. Now imagine that an incomprehensible notion is instead “outside.”

Jack (Jacob Tremblay) and Ma (Brie Larson) live such a confined existence that Jack greets the objects in his sparsely furnished room as proper nouns – Door, Sink, Toilet – because, in his mind, the things in Room  are the only objects that exist. They are his friends, but none more so than Ma.

Ma, a young woman who was kidnapped at seventeen by a man called Old Nick by the duo (played by Sean Bridgers), has lived in captivity in a modified garden shed in her assailant’s back yard for the past seven years. She and her five-year-old son are each other’s only companions. Ma survives wholly for her love of Jack, ignoring her own suffering at the hands of Old Nick’s nightly visits, and devoting all her time to keeping Jack healthy and entertained. She teaches him as best she can while protecting him from the harsh reality of their existence. Jack, for his part, knows no better about the world outside Room except what the TV shows, though he is convinced the TV Planets, as he calls them, are not real. Only he and Ma are real. Only he and Ma matter.

After Jack’s increasingly curious nature puts both he and Ma in harm’s way, Ma decides to make a change and find a way out of Room forever. The aftermath blows Jack’s conception of the world wide open, and conversely only causes Ma’s existence to deteriorate. Each step of Jack’s growth is given adequate time and attention, which lends itself well to satisfying pacing. The film neither flies nor drags at any point, but marinates and broils exactly as long as it should.

Room’s screenplay is written by Emma Donoghue, the author of the source material, and while – as with any adaptation – some content is lost or condensed, having Donoghue on board goes a long way in preserve the essence of the novel. The film deals entirely in complex and upsetting subjects, but it is never a broad tragedy. Donoghue and Director Lenny Abrahamson focus often on the possibly mundane details of living and making it day-to-day against adversity, be it making a snake of egg shells and string in place of toys, or the unusual gravity of Jack’s first haircut. They also sidestep some of the worst of violent imagery by following only Jack’s perspective, so that there is a pervasive feeling of unknowing fear, and a frustration at a lack of solution on everyone’s part.

The makers of Room seem to have taken great care to treat the story with respect and sufficient gravity to prevent their creation doesn’t become a lifetime movie. There is no happy ending. That is to say, it isn’t solved at any climactic point - be it an escape attempt, a reunion, a new milestone met. Even the actual ending of the film indicates a continuation for its protagonists. Life, as it is dutifully shown, is harder than making it to a checkpoint. It is a rare and poignant moment that feels open to possibility, but also like a completion of a circle.

Highest praise, beyond the story-telling itself, should go to its actors. Brie Larson draws immense empathy and, in her entire body of work, has brought a naturalism to her performances that engender a deep kinship with viewers. She has been on the radar since her excellent turn in Short Term 12, another draining role, and I truly believe this will get her the recognition and opportunities for further triumphs. Larson is a starlet that will soon drop that suffix, I predict.

Jacob Tremblay should be given his due moment of appreciation for his turn as Jack, as well. Abrahamson worked very closely with the young boy to get the best performance out of Tremblay, and it shows. Watching the gears turn as he adapts to the new domains he inhabits with each passing moment in the wide world is enthralling. In one scene, Jack looks up at the vast sky, enrapt with it’s expanse, with both wonder and fear. His trepidation paired seamlessly with his child-like elasticity makes his development over the course of the film exciting and touching to watch.

Most emphatically, I cannot commend the connection between mother and son as acted by the two. They are each other’s only companions for so many years - for Jack’s entire life - and their bond and trust in the other is the through line of the film. Their lives and sanity wholly depend upon each other. While being in Room is duly alien and claustrophobic, there is a very truthful sense broadcast of the bond of mother and child. As an audience, we may not ever be able to comprehend their tribulations and sufferings, but we can sympathize with the lengths a mother goes to amuse, teach, love, and protect her child. We can understand seeing our parent as the light of our world. We know Ma and Jack in our own families, and that makes Room all the more tender.

Best Picture Nomination

Best Director Nomination: Lenny Abrahamson

Best Actress - Lead Nomination: Brie Larson

Best Adapted Screenplay: Emma Donoghue 

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The Revenant (2015), or Tough Man Toughs Out Tough Stuff

I will say, the only thing this fine film exemplar of the “rugged individual” of American romanticism is trumped by is an EAGLE. Otherwise, it knocked the rest of the Man vs. Nature bit out of the park, with excellent overlays of historically contextualized human conflict, be it motivated by prejudice, hatred, or greed. The strength of The Revenant lies deep within its untouched landscapes and the men who struggle to survive within them.

In the wilderness of the West in 1823, a frontiersman named Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is hired as a guide for a fur trapping group, but runs into life-or-death-or-death-or-death situations, beginning with a brutal attack by a defensive mother grizzly bear. It’s grueling to witness. The ensuing acts follow Glass as he comes close to slipping away and pulls himself out time and again, rising up like a ghastly apparition.

I rather think James Fennimore Cooper would have enjoyed this film, but it doesn’t quite match the fireside tales of yore; it’s much more grisly (GRIZZLY? Don’t mind me.). The hopeful resilience is replaced with desperation. It’s bloody and violent in a manner that might upset weaker stomachs, or even moderate ones.

The bear mauling scene deserves special attention as one of the most memorable scenes of 2015. It was stunning in its untamed, adrenaline inducing action. The collective pulse of the audience races as the struggle continues on almost endlessly but not slowly. Even the mouth breather in the theater seated behind me was auspiciously silent.

The excruciatingly and masterfully long sequence is one of several long takes staged by Director Alejandro González Iñárritu and his partner-in-crime, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, whether truly single takes or flawlessly seamed together in the manner of their previous race horse, Birdman. Frankly, I don’t care. They’re awesome in the traditional sense of the word. And terrifying.

In early scene depicts an ambush on the trappers perpetrated by the local First Nations people tribe. It plays out like a scene from Apocalypse Now with visceral gore set against a backdrop of the bright red pelts strung up to dry, the remains of the natural bounty of the land the trappers are reaping without attention to consequence.

Lubezki flits and darts through the sparse coverage and across the water as if the camera was a fearful man fleeing for his life as well. His contribution to the film is a character unto itself and places the audience squarely in the action, getting so close to DiCaprio that the actor’s breath sometimes fogs the lens. He and Iñárritu carefully chose locations that had never graced the screen before so that it would all seem as fresh and undisturbed as it might have for Glass.

Lubezki sets himself up for a potential Triple Crown following Birdman and Gravity before it with Revenant. His vivid imagery was far and beyond my favorite aspect of the film, giving the weight and liveliness to the wilderness that is required of a Man vs. Nature conflict. The sweeping landscapes, flow of water though ice, eye-catching bright spills of blood, and the never-ending horizon over the antediluvian deciduous forests – it’s truly something special to behold. Lubezki provides for our eyes the wonder and fearsomeness of a land untouched by foot or tool.

While the frontier may be the star for me, it is impossible not to give credit where credit is due to the human cast. Even the horse cast did great, but sadly they aren’t given a line in the credits for me to reference. Leo might have his shot at the golden man finally this year, though I will qualify that with the observation that I don’t find this to be his personal best performance in his career. However, depending on who else is in the stables with him, to continue this horse racing metaphor I’ve apparently latched onto, Leo may just claim the top prize and snag an Oscar.

The sheer physical toll exacted by a role such as Hugh Glass must be enormous, and DiCaprio attacks this part with full vigor and soul. He carries the movie, as the titular apparent ghost back from the grave, often alone and without lines or dialogue of any kind. The whole throat injury caused me to have a squeaker of a voice deal, though….quite a shame. It doesn’t aid his performance, I feel, and became distracting when he finally reunites with someone and has a real conversation for the first time in basically an hour.

The ensemble provides commendable support to our beleaguered protagonist. Tom Hardy is at his best – underutilized even! – as a quick to anger mountain man trying to get paid for his labor and time, and learning the harsh reality of the value of men like him in this harsh environment. Hardy gives more complexity to the role than might have otherwise been possible for a character so clearly lined up to be the nefarious and dirty villain to be reviled. 

His foil in Andrew Henry, played by Domnhall Gleeson (Star Wars 7, Brooklyn, Ex Machina, and I’m pretty sure every movie this year), who is not so dynamically built – whether by fault of writing or Gleeson’s performance – but his moral conflict and desire for justice are intriguing. Will Poulter stands out in a supporting role of a very green trapper who is the avatar for the audience’s horror and helplessness in the actions unfolding.

As much as they were a part of the plot, the First Nations characters left more to be desired in their writing. The most important one, Hugh’s half Pawnee son, Hawk, played by Forrest Goodluck, was a blatant metaphor for the massacre of Native American peoples to the degree he isn’t really a character himself. His performance was well enough, just sadly an underutilized character in which Goodluck could not blossom.

Flashbacks to a vague and underdeveloped idyllic past feature Hugh’s Pawnee wife and Hawk’s mother (played by Grace Dove), but are not meaty enough to sufficiently engender proper empathy, and fall fall short. The wife, in fact, is such an afterthought that she doesn’t even get a name. Mrs. Glass, we shall call her I suppose, is one of two “prominent” female roles – both First Nations women – the other being Pawaqua (Melaw Nakehk’o), the chieftain’s missing daughter appears in I believe only two scenes, at which times respectively I was momentarily confused as to her purpose or identity before recalling that Pawaqua even existed.

Both women, and Hawk too, exist entirely as a call to action for the men in their lives. Pawaqua motivates her Dad to vengeance; Hawk and M’Lady Hawk Mom do the same for Hugh Glass. I would be upset about the women and minorities being used as props in a movie clearly about white dudes who are bad asses, but it’s so tired and boring a trope to have loved ones be kidnapped or killed to catalyze the action of a story, or to further marginalize minorities, that I can’t even muster up the energy to be ticked off.

Towards the latter portion of the film, Iñárritu takes Revenant to a place less The Last of the Mohicans and more The Last Unicorn, unfortunately. The spiritualism or borderline magical realism elements just aren’t welcome additions to a story that thrives in its realistic survival sequences. The real story of Hugh Glass is so steeped in mythos that it leaves excellent room for artistic license, shall we say, which is a boon but also may have been pushed too far.

Iñárritu was never one for subtlety, after all, which can be a good thing for his striking imagery, but doesn’t always benefit the plot or the character exposition. I confess that the motif of the swirls, which was likely linked to whatever spiritual take-away I was meant to garner, was quite lost on me. And at a lengthy 156 minutes, it could have behooved Iñárritu to trim some of it down.

It is an exhausting business watching The Revenant, but it leaves you rather thankful that we’ve had a mild winter this year, huh? Plus, I’ve never had to sleep inside the hollowed out carcass of a large animal. It’s the little things, am I right? This film is more than a survival flick. We can leave that to Everest. It lingers on the mind with a slow and creeping staying power not unlike Glass’ own resurgence. I suspect Revenant will have its own resilience under scrutiny, as well, and will find success.

Nominations: 

Best Picture 

Best Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Best Actor - Lead: Leonardo DiCaprio

Best Actor - Supporting: Tom Hardy 

Best Cinematography: Emmaunuel Lubezki 

Best Costume Design: Jacqueline West 

Best Sound Editing: Martin Hernandez, Lon Bender 

Best Sound Mixing: Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño, Randy Thom, Chris Duesterdiek

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Siân Grigg, Duncan Jarman, Robert Pandini

Best Visual Effects: Rich McBride, Matthew Shumway, Jason Smith, Cameron Waldbauer

Best Film Editing: Stephen Mirrione

Best Production Design: Jack Fisk, Hamish Purdy 

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Foreign Film Weekends - France: La Passion de Jeanne D’Arc/The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), or Falconetti the One Hit Wonder and Dreyer the Exceptionally Creative

Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer created his 1928 magnum opus silent film for the Société Générale des Films of France (which is why I am counting this as French not Danish), and chose the French legendary figure, Joan of Arc as his subject. He poured over original manuscripts of the trials and historical documents to create the script and tapped the unnerving and heartrending acting force that is Renée Jeanne Falconetti, a stage actor with no other major film credits. Nor does she need any to prove her merit. Dreyer pushed his muse to deliver a plaintive performance of a near broken woman by almost breaking the actress herself, and shooting her without make up and with ­lighting designed specifically to make her look gaunt and grotesque.

These techniques are not what we know or expect of cinema today – or even of Old Hollywood or the “classics” that spring to mind. Dreyer’s technique, smack in the middle of the era of German Expressionism and French avante garde – wasted little time on spectacle or glamour and went straight in pursuit of soul and art. Some unusual (by our current expectations) choices include the cinematography choices. Dreyer’s masterpiece is shot chronologically at his behest. It made up entirely of mid shots and close up. There is not one establishing shot to be found. Indeed, that wouldn’t even be possible. The dreary locales were interconnected in an intricate set of moving parts modeled, designed, and built by Dreyer himself to achieve exactly the claustrophobic, bare, and off-putting effect he sought after. The inspired complex was the most expensive film set ever built at the time, and for all that effort; only small glimpses and portions of it are visible at any given moment.

Other approaches taken by Dreyer can be considered almost commonplace today, but were pioneered in part by the director. He painted his behemoth of a set pink to make it a soft grey on the black and white film, which separates it from the stark white sky. He also tended to film characters besides Joan, especially adversaries, in high contrast lighting that provides incredible fall off shadowing (all the more threatening), while giving Falconetti a gentle, even wash of light to balance her out – yet still reveal every imperfection upon her visage. Using lighting to harshly reveal and obscure or alternatively gently illuminate is a passing thought that was still undergoing development as an artistic aspect of film at the time. Dreyer also developed the method of shooting antagonists from below (digging holes in the floor to lower the rig of the camera) in order to visually portray them as looming and menacing, as well as setting characters in the edges of the frame to cause visual unbalance and discomfort. 

Such innovation provides a natural progression for Jeanne D’Arc aesthetically (though “logical” cut sequences are few and far between, but more earnestly reflect the harrowing experience of Joan), but the film most magnificently draws one into the struggle and the distressing reflection upon this martyr’s last days. Poet Hilda Doolittle, known as HD, wrote at length about her appreciation for the drama, gushing for page after page about it’s magnitude of importance. “His is one film among all the films to be judged differently, to be approached differently, to be viewed as a masterpiece, one of the absolute masterpieces of screen craft. Technically, artistically, dramatically, this is a masterpiece” she effuses (Doolittle, 39).  Most strikingly, HD contemplated the difficulty she possessed as she wrestled with the subject matter, with the emotional reaction she felt, and with the film as a piece itself. She muses, “[Dreyer’s The Passion of Jeanne d’Arc] is a film that caused me more unrest, more spiritual forebodings, more intellectual rackings, more emotional torment than any I have yet seen” (42).

For its time, and for any following decade to be sure, Jeanne D’Arc is a masterpiece. It is unlike other films in many ways, but perhaps in this context, most especially in its richness. The feat of artistic direction, of cinematography, of divested acting, of the collaboration of all facets of the creative process, all culminate to fashion a piéce de résistance that is unlike anything predating 1928, and still viably respectable in the hereafter.

For its sheer innovation and ingenuity, I bestow upon Jeanne D’Arc 89 new techniques because that’s probably how many there are here. 

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AFI’s Top 100 #89 - The Sixth Sense (1999), or An Emotionally Driven Ghost Story

M. Night Shyamalan may not have a spiffy reputation these days (no one mention the live action Avatar: The Last Airbender movie and maybe it will cease to exist), but anyone who can remember this turn of the millennium classic in the making’s first release, knows of its notoriety. And for the later generations, the out-of-nowhere surprise is ruined, but hey. It’s still a good time. 

Eight-year-old Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) has a problem. He sees dead people. Ghosts visit him with requests they cannot solve themselves (see: dead people), but cannot move on without resolving (see: ghosts). Cole becomes the first patient of child psychologist  Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) after his recovery from an altercation with a former patient that ended in shots fired. Crowe shows no signs of external injury, but is still dealing with the emotional shockwaves caused by the incident, and his marital troubles with a wife who won’t even speak to him. Together, Dr. Crowe and Cole delve into the unwilling little medium’s powers and uncover secrets and their consequences. 

First, let’s give a hand to Mr. Shyamalan, the director and writer of this sort of thriller. It really is impeccably written, despite it’s author being written off in Hollywood today. The actors, for their part, take the dialogue and understated ghostly horror and play it organically. Bruce Willis, known best for action-y type roles, tends to act flat - which isn’t so bad when a movie doesn’t call for depth, but can get him into trouble, vis a vis the previous year’s Armageddon (1998). Here, Willis expresses himself with unprecedented subtlety and subdued seriousness that may just be his usual flatness in a different context, but he has an earnestness to his performance that makes it work. It’s Willis at his best. 

Haley Joel Osment more than keeps up with his adult costars, in fact outshining them in most cases. For an actor so young, Osment conquers a role that foists upon him the bulk of the dialogue and reaction. He emotes the terror and confusion and loneliness that Cole is plagued with and has excellent timing and inflection in his tête-à-têtes with Dr. Crowe. It brings a chilly discomfort to the viewer that taps into that long forgotten part of the psyche where children’s fears lie. It may make you squirm or shiver, depending on how viscerally you feel that guileless trepidation. 

They say that kids are more readily able to reach out to the spirits that haunt this world yet because they haven’t yet grown up to block the connections with cynicism and disbelief. I say, despite the catchphrase and the twist ending being beaten to death in pop culture, give The Sixth Sense its due and try your best to watch it with child-like wonder and innocence. 

The Sixth Sense gets 34 unseen ghost people because of its slow-build horror, authentic and gripping acting from its two leads, and good plays on an old story. Now excuse me while I go ponder the implications of the ending for a while. 

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Foreign Film Weekends - South Korea: Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom/Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...And Spring (2003), or the Circle of Life but not the happy Lion King kind. 

Director Kim Ki-duk is known for his “arthouse” films, but also courts controversy over depictions of animal cruelty, violence, and perhaps misogyny in his films (think Oldboy, another South Korean affair, but like....way less). With Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...And Spring, Kim may not have shied away from questionable animal cruelty, but drew a very different kind of attention in relation to the tone of his film. 

Spring is a Buddhist fable. I felt like I was experiencing something very important in watching something so simple and so meaningfully derived. Much like the religion it abides by, Spring embraces the sometimes painful existence one experiences within the wheel of life (a Tibetan Buddhist concept), which is bound - or doomed? - to repeat itself, just as the seasons roll around each year. 

The film is broken down into five parts, the titular order of seasons, that follow the lives of an elderly monk (Oh Young-soo) and his apprentice monk who live on a floating one room house on the isolated Jusan Pond, which serves as both hideaway from the world and temple for prayer and meditation. As a child, the Child Monk (Kim Jong-ho) learns the suffering of cruelty and of guilt upon the soul when he sees the consequences of his juvenile torment upon animals. As an adolescent, Boy Monk (Seo Jae-kyeong) experiences the fires of love and lust when The Girl (Ha Yeo-jin) stays at the hermitage to become well. The Young Adult Monk (Kim Young-min) receives penitence from his master to clear his tormented soul of anger and fear. Finally, the monk, now a grown man, survives the old monk and pursues peace of heart and presence of mind through Buddhist practices and atonement, and eventually becomes the master himself to a new child novice (Song Min-young). 

The plot unfolds naturally and leaves the commentary upon the season’s of a man’s life to be colored by the presence of Buddhist iconography and symbolism, rather than guide or force any meaning to be gleaned. There is no exposition to be found here. One might even lose some appreciation for the depth of the symbolism without a knowledge of Korean and Buddhist metaphor. I took notes and looked things up after finishing my screening, and felt sad that I did not make connections during my viewing that could have influenced my understanding better. 

The raft house is almost an ark with the number of animals featured in this film - a dog, a rooster, a cat, many snakes, some fish, frogs, and a turtle. And a partridge in a pear tree. All of them have meanings that, as a non-eastern or non-Buddhist viewer, I simply did not get. For instance, there are many and sundry a snake in all of the chapters of this film, which I so western-ly associated with sin and corruption a la Adam and Eve. However, serpents in Buddhism symbology are guardians and mythic protectors, who watched over the monk in Spring especially when he needed it in the “winter” of his life when he was alone (I think I saw half a dozen of the buggers). The Elder Monk has a white cat, whose tail he uses to ink the rites of atonement for the Younger Monk to carve out. Korean culture traditionally portrays felines as creatures that drive away bad spirits and unseen tormenters, which the young monk most certainly required at the time. Roosters equal new beginnings and hope for the budding relationship of the monk’s youth, Turtles equal longevity and predictions of the future, as the new apprentice child seems destined to repeat the monk’s mistakes. And there I was, just thinking, “oooh! a kitty!” Clearly a lot stands to be lost from this complex film without proper context, which not all may have. 

No matter what the background of an audience, there are a few unalienable qualities to Spring. Firstly, Baek Dong-hyeon’s cinematography under Kim Ki-duk’s direction is masterful. It is simple and gorgeous. Long and distant wide shots of the lake, the landscape, and the little raft house show its isolation, cloistered in the mountains under the watchful gaze of ever-changing nature surrounding it. The final shot of the film sees a Buddhist holy statue placed atop a mountain by Adult Monk looking down upon the lake without judgement and at once, I felt peace and satisfaction, which I often don’t with open ended movies that perhaps lack closure to my tastes. This open end doesn’t leave loose strings, though, but depicts life as continuous and cyclical, and I understood. 

Composer Ji Bark really helped me find that zen with his beautiful, peaceful, and occasionally very eastern sounding scoring. A song written specifically for the film is sung in the fifth act, and it is aching and timeless, modern and traditional at once. It is transcendent of the strictures of time just like the film which it accompanies. 

Yet Spring is not unaffected by time, just not dependent upon it. It shows the circle that life may and often will follow, but it gives the simple hope of learning from the grand design of nature. Kim is quoted in an interview saying, ''If we were able to remember life's lesson from spring we wouldn't repeat them, but like winter which rots away the leaves and freezes over everything, like the seasons' patterns, our patterns in life will make us forget and repeat our past mistakes. This is not only a Buddhist idea but one of the facts of life.” 

The seasons of our lives and of human existence continue to follow each other in turn. Spring is a meditation upon one man’s individual life, but also upon the human experience and the hope life provides. 

I’m feeling all introspective and philosophical now, so I’m going to give Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...And Spring 60 nice snakes for its objectively stunning cinematic style and grace, for its simplicity of expression within the most complex concept we have - life - and for it’s motifs which were awesome when I knew what they actually meant. 

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Foreign Film Weekends - South Korea: Secret Sunshine/Milyang (2010), or Deeply Upsetting and Quietly Amazing

Jeon Do-yeon’s grieving protagonist, Shin-ae, does not stand up to tragedy with the stoic strength of a martyr, nor does she weep quiet and beautiful tears. She wails, she heaves, she moans, she flails. She laments. Shin-ae is a fallible and flawed woman played to perfection.

After the death of her husband in a car accident, Shin-ae moves with her young son, Jun (Seon Jung-yeop), to the husband’s childhood hometown, Miryang. When Shin-ae asks her first local aquaintence, the puppy-like Mr. Kim (Song Kang-ho), what Miryang is like, he replies, “There’s nothing strange about it. It’s like everywhere else.” Shin-ae desperately hopes the small town is her escape from the sadness of her former life in Seoul, but like Mr. Kim says, Miryang, with it’s nosy and judgmental residents, is no different.

Shin-ae opens a piano school and goes about trying to make friends and find land to invest in, but she struggles to fit in. She doesn’t quite finds her solution when a cataclysmic misfortune befalls her. What ensues after this game-changer about a third of the way in changes the tone from a hushed slice of life comedy to a horror. Secret Sunshine becomes a compelling study of grief and solace and the relationship between them and within Shin-ae’s utterly changed life.

Jeon takes this unimaginably difficult role in stride, winning her the best actress award at the 2007 Cannes Festival. Jeon is a Cannes darling, and well recognized on the festival circuit, for good reason. She must carry the film, so prominently about the turmoil of this one woman, but does so with visceral candor. Shin-ae is a guileless wreck, which Jeon emotes excruciatingly as the character whips violently between extremes of devastation at great loss and blind joy and the discovery of faith in God.

A most agonizing scene encompasses this searing pain when it presents an evangelical Christian congregation engaged in jubilant song. A long, fixed shot trains itself on the parishioners as they sing their hymn, which is steadily drowned out by a dreadful and guttural howling from out of shot – an overcome Shin-ae, who quiets when the pastor places his hand upon his new congregant. The sequence takes no mysticism or exaggeration to the evangelical gathering. Director Lee Chang-dong, not a Christian himself, seems to contemplate the hold Evangelical Christianity has on South Korea in the latter half of his film. Korea, second only to the US in evangelicals and Protestant Christian missionaries sent abroad, houses eleven of the twelve biggest evangelical churches in the world. It is a massive cultural force in the nation that Chang-dong manages to represent in its complexity and in its draw through his harrowed convert protagonist and the smiling veterans that surround her.

Lee Chang-dong navigates the multiplicity of faith with the same grace with which he maneuvers through minor interactions and major horrors in turn. The comfort of finding God fills her life with radiant joy until she attempts to show how great a believer she is by going to forgive the culprit of her afflictions. When she meets him, his face mirrors hers: full of the bliss of being born again in faith. Her last bastion was God’s support behind her, but He had already touched the malefactor, as well. Shattered, Shin-ae is derailed from her newly meaning-infused life.

Secret Sunshine does not explicitly agree with or mock religion, though. It expresses skepticism, and features as much diversity in those that number the ranks of organized religion as Lee can managed, but it does not do the one thing the evangelicals set out to do – preach.

Instead, the film reflects on how life can be cobbled together into a meaningful existence through lying to oneself. This doesn’t even necessarily entail coping, just surviving. Shin-ae refuses to acknowledge glaring issues in her life, such as her late husband’s infidelity and dishonorable behavior, or the ulterior motives of her neighbors and fellow Christians. She lies about being wealthy enough to buy property to impress the townsfolk in a place she pretends will be different for her. Kim, the almost pathetic semi-stalker of Shin-ae turned singular support system, is wildly in denial about his clearly unrequited feelings, not to mention his fake piano credentials for Shin-ae or his fake new conversion to Christianity to spend more time with her. Most broadly, the film even tackles the lie of religion – but not to tear it down. Faith is a knowing lie of survival.

Shin-ae muses to Kim as she looks up to the blindingly blue sky that Miryang, in its literal translation, means “secret sunshine.” This invisible warmth is the key to the titular film. Some suggest it is the relief found in religion, in faith in what cannot be seen, but Shin-ae finds this assuaging of her anguish to be evanescent. Jeon ends her bright performance in a dark film with her face basked in sunlight, as the camera pans to a patch of dirt similarly bathed. Perhaps the secret sunshine Lee is pursuing, moving his protagonist’s sights from the heavens to the land, is a grounding in the simplicity of earth rather than the complexity of the unknown.

Secret Sunshine gets 27 good cries, which is approximately how many times I cried heavily during this film, actually. 

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The Big Lebowski (1998), or A Mainsteam Cult Classic And Jumbo Shrimp on the Side 

The Big Lebowski  is arguably the first cult smash hit of the Internet age. The Coen Brothers followed their Oscar winning 1996 hit Fargo with a bizarre dark comedy, to the confusion of even the most affectionate of Coen fans, and it bombed at the box office. However, through word of mouth – or more like the word passed along chats and online forums, the quirky mess of a comedy took on a life of its own on video and found a life of it’s own.

Lebowski is a foolhardy comedy of miscommunication, which is often a common theme in Coens movies, though never quite in this vein of ridiculousness. Aging hippie bowler, The Dude (Jeff Bridges) - more formally Jeffrey Lebowski - is caught up in the high octane shenanigans of another, richer Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston) when strangers break into his home and urinate on his rug, looking for the Big Lebowski. The wealthy Lebowski’s young floozy of a wife (Tara Reid) is then allegedly kidnapped and The Dude is sucked into the negotiations, with the detrimental “aid” of Vietnam vet and bowling friend Walter (John Goodman), the influence of his “f***ing lady friend” Maude Lebowski of the greater Lebowski clan (Julianne Moore),  and the innocent and almost negligible presence of his sweet bowling buddy Donny (Steve Buscemi). The Dude, who just wanted his rug cleaned, experiences “a lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what have yous” before the adventure finally comes to a close when everything is said and done.

The bread and butter of cult hits is quote-ability, which Lebowski has in spades, albeit very few of them are expletive free. The liberal serving of curse words perhaps even furthers the notoriety of the lines. Another cult requirement is outlandish and farcical characters – adjectives that can be ascribed to really any of the characters from The Nihilists to Treehorn the adult filmmaker, but most especially to the eccentric Walter and The Dude.

From there, how Lebowski took on a life of it’s own is a mystery, and may just be The Dude’s only stroke of real good luck. The film has spawned a large fandom, in which viewing is practically a right of passage for high school boys and film lovers alike. Midnight screenings happen regularly on a national scale, with out loud quoting from the audience to rival and Rocky Horror Picture Show screening. There is a Lebowski Fest in Louisville, Kentucky yearly. There is even a religion, Dudeism (It’s verifiable; just Google it), that guides its disciples of the Dude to learn to Dudeify their lives to the fullest (pro tip: Always keep a Credence tape in your car). It’s a bona fide cultural phenomenon.

This begs the question, though, has Lebowski gotten too big? Does it’s widespread cultural permeation and easily identifiable trademarks draw it out of the dark and shady realms of cult notoriety and thrust it into the limelight? One could argue that it loses some of its cult authenticity when it’s no longer that hard to find, generally unwatched/unliked flick that just you and a few of your nerd friends watch at a midnight screening. Lebowski is beloved by two or three generations of white teenaged boys and/or potheads. 

Whether it deserves to be a cult sensation is not up to my judgment, but it’s status thoroughly permeates the social sphere of American culture, so clearly many would affirm its worthiness. It is certainly one of the stranger additions to the Coens’ repertoire, but one of the most lasting. I think boils down to Lebowski’s ability to be broadly comedic, but niche in some respects; more or less dark and edgy in it’s humor, but widely understandable; quotable; visually stunning and still narrative driven; and above all, effortlessly quotable.  The Big Lebowski had the odds stacked against it as a hit, but when the universe asked it to become a cult, well, “The Dude abides.”

I’ll toast to this cult classic getting a bit too big for its britches with 10 White Russians. What a ride. 

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Flight (2012), or Denzel, My Man.

Addict and pilot Whip Whitaker, played by the illustriously charming Denzel Washington even in this grim role in Flight, tosses on a pair of aviator sunglasses as he departs for his flight from Florida to Atlanta, Ga. He oozes the cool and the square-jawed composure we’ve come to expect of a Denzel character. Only the audience sees the bloodshot and dilated eyes beneath the shades – indicative of his drug and alcohol habits the previous night and even that day in the airplane. Washington does not shy away from the harrowing aspect of addiction in order to preserve his cool guy image, but rather, expertly harnesses the chill façade as a method of showing a man who has lost everything and yet has no remorse.

On the fateful day veteran flyer Whip Whitaker takes to the skies, he mixes some vodka into his orange juice, does a line of cocaine, and passes control to his co-pilot (Brian Geraghty as Ken Evans) as he passes out. He comes to during the most stomach-lurching and realistic plane accident scene I have seen in recent memory – that reminds me why I find air travel so unnatural and risky. Whitaker is able to invert the plane to pull it out of a perilous nosedive, then right it and crash land it in a field. As the plane passes overhead, heroin addict Nicole (Kelly Reilly) shoots up with a blend so powerful it’s called “The Taliban.” Whip and Nicole later meet in the hospital in the aftermath and kindle a romance. Only six people die in the crash, and Whip is lauded as a hero for his inspired maneuvering. He retires to his father’s farm for a time, attempting to get clean, but when tox screens done during his unconscious period in the hospital turn up positive for cocaine and alcohol, Whip is dragged into a legal battle of a lifetime.

Denzel Washington garnered himself an Oscar nod for his performance, and truly he is the force keeping this film aloft. Rather than a melodramatic and emotional performance, Washington takes the complex character fabricated by screenwriter John Gatins and portrays all of the falsity of the front of an addict with all of the palpable agony, seen only through Washington’s emotive eyes.

A strong ensemble duly supports Washington, and includes discerning lawyer Don Cheadle, Whip’s dealer and garish Hawaiian shirt purveyor John Goodman, and Justin Martin as a son who has lost faith in his prodigal father. Kelly Reilly’s performance as Nicole is believable; I take ire only with the decision on the part of Director Robert Zemeckis to introduce her via a completely detached cut to her and her drug deal in the midst of the foreboded flight. It left the interesting action and gave me a character I didn’t want to care about at the time, which doomed her to my apathy for the extent of the film.

Zemeckis’s first live action endeavor since the impressive feat, Cast Away (2000), reminds us all how well the man can create when he is not spending a decade or so of his time on dreary motion capture movies like Beowulf (2007). He certainly breaks no molds with Flight, but Zemeckis keeps the enormous beast of a film chugging along in the sky almost ‘til the bitter end. He partners with Director of Photography, Don Burgess, to provide secondary camera movements and visual narration that floats about lightly in a field, sprints down plane aisles, speeds alone the light of coke, and mires itself in heavy close ups. The crash scene walks the delicate line between nauseating and unrealistic to deliver a horrifyingly real experience. Outside of the action, a long, still close up on a miniature bottle of vodka captures all of the desperation for a drink that Whip feels the night before his trial, all of the yearning and internal conflict – in just a motionless close up.

Zemeckis does not, however, escape the quagmire of Hollywood narrative convention, and falls victim to pop culture in this instance, where he has played it to his own advantage in the past (see flicks like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Of 1988). Flight has alcoholic mood swings itself, from disaster drama to romance to family drama to courtroom procedural to inspirational tragedy in turn. It’s like the movie, with its impeccable woven character, Whip Whitaker, cannot decide in which genre to place him.

The ending too, while duly bitter and lonely, is a bit cloying for me yet. Whip confesses to intoxication and faces his sentencing without any regrets at his decision to do right finally, and then sobers up in prison in order to give a final speech about not feeling remorse for doing right, hoping to rekindle his relationship with his son. Hollywood probably wouldn’t allow an addict to be an addict at the end of a film, I suppose. There needs to be that redemption in order to seal the deal and give it ample opportunity to be a hit, which Flight arguably was indeed.

I can’t help but feel that the salvation obsession in cinema is not to the benefit of this particular film, though. The draw of Whip Whitaker is his uncomfortable reality. There are many scenes in this film that are striking in their attention to detail to real life, to the point that audiences could become uneasy with how familiar the goings-on are. The truthful portrayal of substance dependence is the engaging factor, so to have the two addict characters clean up and find love makes me grimace almost as much as watching a pilot snort a line before taking off. The ultimate convention of Flight causes the intricate machine that is the complexity of the film to shudder to a halt and crash land.

How about 3 lines of coke for our dear Flight attendants? One for Denzel, one for the return of Zemekis to live action, and one for the plane scene. Have fun.