Merry Christmas!

It would be wrong to write that Halloween post and then not do a Christmas post. So here we go!!

Guys, watch this trailer:

I'll give it a moment to sink in.


There's this trend with movies right now, where, when you hear the title or see the trailer, you realize immediately that it's going to be a fantastic film for one of two completely opposite reasons: it's either going to be legitimately epic, well done, thoughtful, and entertaining, or it's going to be so entirely off the handle ridiculous that it will still be thoroughly enjoyable to watch.


This movie...may have been both of those things?

Let's talk about it.

Ok, in case you didn't catch it from the trailer, the film is about finding a monstrous Santa Clause buried deep in a hill somewhere in Finland. This is that Christmastime horror that I was talking about before--already, the story is somewhat unorthodox. It is also a premise that leaves room for so, so much badassery.

The main characters, a group of working class Finnish men living in the Arctic, originally have no vested interest in the whole Santa scheme--they are, as you saw in the trailer, upset because something--or someone--has killed all of their reindeer, which they herd for meat and fur. It is only a group of Americans and one small child who are concerned with the Santa situation.

One of these people tops my list for 'Most Badass Characters of 2011'

It is only appropriate that a Christmas film focus on a child, which is where the main quirk in this film really comes through--even though it is a Christmas movie, it is also an action film, so the typical child main character of the Christmas aspect of the film somehow manages to also become a totally competent action hero.

For the first half of the film, nobody believes the boy, Pietari, that there is an evil Santa buried in the mountain--until, of course, a creature that appears to be Santa is found in one of the illegal wolf-traps set up by Pietari's father. It is only then that people begin to believe the child, and he leads three middle aged Finnish men into battle not only with their American opposition, but with a group of bloodthirsty elves and an enormous frozen goat monster. Throughout the film, the child completes various nearly superhuman feats and gives the men instructions one would only expect from the most experienced of action heroes.

Yeah, secretly a crazy action hero. Obviously.

This is only the very, very basic premise, however--and from that, as well as from the heavy handed one-liners in the trailer, you would have trouble believing that it managed to be a quality film as opposed to a ridiculous and over the top piece of cinema.

The part that doesn't fit into the basic premise, however, is what gives the film it's depth, and it's all very surprising. The strange, epic main plot is a vessel for two thoughtful and complex themes.

Pietari's mother died long before the story we see occurs, and much of the film shows us the struggle his father has being a single father and providing a warm and parental touch to the little family's life. It is simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking to see the gruff butcher try to provide for his child not only materially but emotionally, as well, particularly at Christmastime. This sub-plot revolves around the father only having gingerbread cookies for dinner for days on end--in theory, a child's dream, but a meal that ultimately is not practical or nourishing.

 And, as Pietari points out, in his adorable, tear-jerking way, they aren't as good as mother made them. Perhaps, however, this mano-y-mano relationship is what eventually allows Pietari to prove himself to his father, so that he is no longer treated like such a small child.

The other sub plot is only hinted at, because the film is mainly from the point of view of a small child. In a To Kill a Mockingbird-esque way, social and political turmoil is hinted at when the reindeer are killed, and when the men notice something strange happening on the mountain that is eventually revealed as Santa's tomb. The adults are constantly discussing the potential that Russian agents had killed their reindeer, or were working on some secret project on the mountain. Though it is never clearly explained in the film, there is a very complex undertone of the Finnish-Russian political relationship, which, as far as I can tell from the internet, is mainly stressed by border control issues, which are the focus in this film.

So, this Christmas, when you're debating between Santa Clause is Coming to Town and It's a Wonderful Life, make the unorthodox choice--pop in Rare Exports for a surprising, action-packed, touching and thoughtful holiday movie. Think of this movie as your Aunt Jill's pumpkin pie--you were really looking forward to the iconic sugar cookies and the decadent eggnog, but in the end it's the pie you go back for seconds on.

...or, you know, don't think of it that way. Maybe it's best that you don't.

Happy Holidays, everyone!! 



Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is owned by CINET and Petri Jokiranta, copyright 2010. 

Chinatown, Roman Polanski, Noir, and a discussion of ART.

Guys, I have been a Noir fiend lately.

I keep going back to watch a slasher movie, but something else on my Instant Queue always catches my eye instead--Scarlet Street, The Third Man, The Stranger, Double Indemnity, the list goes on and on. Noir is like the slasher films of the forties and fifties. Low budget, not necessarily respected in its time, very, very genre-riffic (I just made up that word,)...all fantastic. Perhaps I will blog about the similarities and the importance of low budget movies sometime in the future.

Today, however, I'm going to write a bit about Chinatown, because I decided that I'd watched enough Noir that I'd understand it.

And I think, as much as one ever can understand Chinatown after watching it only once, I do.

Spoiler time.

A little summary for you--as far as I understand, Chinatown is a modern-noir, which is now almost forty years old, but that's fine. It's not shot in black and white, which is very important to the genre, as far as I can tell, but you've got the hard-boiled private eye with all his catchy lines, a Los Angeles that I fully believed was in the forties, the gorgeous, GORGEOUS femme fatale (Faye Dunaway ohmygoodness) and a murder for everyone to get tangled up in.

The standard plot was set up and followed very well, with various surprises around every turn. I suppose the trick to noir is that you have to know the surprises are coming, but you can't know what they are--right? Perhaps?

In any case, that's how this movie worked, and it was thoroughly enjoyable. There was also a big discussion about government corruption and capitalism which I was really invested in, but don't feel any need to get into here. The various societal commentary, the biblical allusions, the structure of Chinatown has been discussed plenty, and unless you're my film studies professor, we aren't going to get anywhere by me repeating all of it.

The thing about Chinatown that hasn't been discussed is the fact that it deals very directly with pedophilia and was directed by Roman Polanski.

This is something I've been trying to grapple with--when an artist has created something brilliant, but done something that our society considers evil, how much are we to separate the artist from his art? On one hand, we want to appreciate the art without it being colored by our perception of the artist, and examine its merits and its impact objectively. However, we also want to maybe see how the artist's moral ambiguities affected his work, and even just give an artist credit for something beautiful they've created regardless how much we disagree with their other actions or even the message they are sending in the work.

I addressed this issue in a play I wrote this year for a class in which D.W Griffiths was a character.  D.W Griffiths made the film Birth of a Nation, the first American feature-length film, which naturally had a huge impact on the ways films were made and distributed. Also, it was super racist and about the KKK.

And, unfortunately, except in very film-savvy circles, that's what he's remembered for, which is a shame, because he made plenty of other movies. Another, more common example in film is Walt Disney--made great movies, changed the way we see animation and television and mice, also was a Nazi.

Do we accept the fact that these brilliant men had flaws, and appreciate their work regardless? Or do we pretend that they didn't have those flaws at all? It's a difficult conundrum, especially when they directly address their asocietal (made up that word tooo) morals in their work, the way Griffiths did with Birth of a Nation or Disney did with Song of the South.


For those of you who don't know, Roman Polanski is largely considered to be a pedophile--in 1977, three years after Chinatown was made, he was arrested for unlawful sex with a thirteen year old girl, plead guilty, and fled to London. In Chinatown, it is revealed near the end of the film that Faye Dunaway's character was raped by her father at fifteen, which becomes a major plot point in the film.

It's fascinating to me that no one has discussed the similarities about this aspect of the film and how they connect to Roman Polanski's sex scandal in the seventies; the girl in the movie was in her early teens, raped by an older man after his wife died. Polanski's victim too was just a teenager, and his wife was killed in 1969.

However, the director is much more associated with the main character than with the character of the father--the background of Jack Nicholson's detective is that he failed to save a woman in his previous career in Chinatown and as a result, she was killed, and he became rather despondent and apathetic. This lines up fairly well with Polanski, who cites not being at home the night his wife was murdered as his biggest regret and says that it left him pessimistic and with "eternal dissatisfaction about life."

Perhaps it is out of respect for Polanski and the film that nobody has made this connection, which would be, in my opinion, the best way to deal with the situation. The crime he committed was a mistake, and the worst of his character, while this is one of the most brilliant things he created, if not the most brilliant. Hopefully, years from now, it will be looked upon as such, and hopefully someday we can look at other artists' work the same way.

A Treatise on Harry Potter

I was five years old when I read the first Harry Potter book, and to this day I picture Hogwarts as the house in which it was read to me; the house belonged to my friend, and it was a significant part of my childhood. It was an amazing house, and reading The Sorcerer's Stone in her yellow-painted bedroom of the three-story, renovated barn is one of the many happy memories I have from the house.

For a long time every book release was quite a bonding experience for her and her mother and my mother and I. When she grew out of it, it became an event that some other close family friends of ours and my brother and I did together, and it was the only time we'd get together. Book, and later movie releases, were bright spots in my mundane summers, where I could have an excuse to sit down and read for a week straight then reunite with childhood friends and stay up late talking and reading and analyzing every aspect of the series.

I was, for sure, as obsessed as anyone--and it's easy to see why. Harry Potter defined much of my childhood, and even to this day, as an "adult" to some degree, who can recognize the literary and filmic downfalls of the franchise, I cried when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two in Imax 3D closed with a three-shot of Ron, Hermione, and Harry. For me, and for thousands of other people in my generation, Harry Potter has been a constant--as, for the class of 2011, who started Kindergarten the year the first book was released and who just graduated, has been school. The painfully obvious tagline--"It all ends Summer 2011--" poetically punctuates not only the end of a series I have grown up with, but the end of my time living in the little town where I was born and going to school with the same group of people.

Regardless of my emotional connections to the story, I wasn't as psyched about this release as other people were, and until I was actually sitting in the enormous IMAX theater, after having waited in line for an hour when I could have been home doing something productive, I didn't care to see the film at all--in fact, I never saw Deathly Hallows Part One. People have been going on and on about how a huge chunk of their childhood is ending, about how a little part of them died, about how it is, in fact, all over, and how much of an effect that is going to have on their lives.

For me, that feeling has long passed. While a lot of people--especially those a little bit younger (current sophomores, my brother's age,) who were five when the first movie came out--have grown up with the films as much as with the books, if not more, definitely see the movies as entirely a part of Harry Potter, I still can't.  I felt the way so many people are feeling now when we got the seventh book at midnight, and when I closed the back cover at one in the afternoon the next day. Equally poetically, it was the summer before I began high school--in a parallel to the story, I was ready to move on.

Of course, not many other people were--HP continued to define our generation, most clearly shown in a pep rally skit performed by my class, the theme of which was, of course, Harry Potter. I saw the sixth movie at midnight, and I, like everyone else, still find the best way to explain many things is to use Harry Potter analogies. ("you know, he said it like...like Ron says to Hermione in the sixth book," or, "Maybe the little boy at the end of Turn of the Screw wasn't killed, it was just a Harry Potter kinda thing," or, "The only parallel to the rise of Hitler is Voldemort.") All in all, though, the franchise and the fandom became sort of a nuisance to me. I have things to do. I am a grown up lady and I won't bother myself anymore with this nonsense.

Not true, of course. But my cynicism of all things enjoyed by the masses has led me to be a lot more critical of the series, and, in turn, the movies.

Part of the brilliance of Harry Potter  is that, for my generation, the books aged with us perfectly. The Sorcerer's Stone is like a gateway book to a lifetime of reading for so many young kids, and The Deathly Hallows is a dark, dramatic, and complicated fantasy. This brilliance also becomes a bit of a downfall for the series, and especially for the poor characters. There's a massive disconnect that comes in the end of the fourth book. The first three stories are whimsical, spooky, and fantastic for children. There's a clear good vs. evil, the plot follows a formulaic, episodic model that's already familiar to the audience (summer, school, Halloween, Christmas, Spring sports, finals, and so on.)

By the end of the fourth book, I was eight, and kind of ready for the shock of an almost main character getting killed by the big bad guy. By the fifth, I was ten, and, even though it was traumatic, almost ready for the angst and death that marks Order of the Phoenix. Almost. What had been a fun and whimsical tale set in a fun and whimsical location was suddenly a story of political intrigue, of abandoned houses and prophecies and such, but still sprinkled with fun and whimsical things like pixies and bogarts and the like. Harry's frustrating and inexplicable angst was somewhat incongruent with the stories we knew.

The sixth book continued with the drama, but at least still at Hogwarts, to some degree; the seventh book could be part of a completely different series. There are two ways to look at this: one, the audience got to old for the fun and whimsy, the universe got so big that there had to be an epic fantasy/war book in order to get things wrapped up, and Rowling wrote the book long after the directors of the films had switched from the lighthearted Christopher Columbus to much darker directors and was being influenced by the style somewhat. This is one of many criticisms, and opens up a discussion about the simplicity of the plot and characters and the simplistic, unchallenging writing, the dependence on a franchise and strong fanbase, and the lack of vitality that the story has.

Alternatively, one can look at the entirety of Harry Potter as following a similar pattern--if with a more Disney ending--as Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, or Greek Tragedies, or Film Noir--because, by the seventh book/movie, the entire world of the three main characters has completely crumbled. As in Things Fall Apart, the majority of the first part of the story is marked by episodic plots controlled by specific dates, dotted with dramatic adventures that make the characters grow some, but in the end, it is an outside force that the characters feel they need to singlehandedly defeat that entirely destroys their way of life.

This is an emotional moment for those of us who are emotionally attached to Harry&company. It mimics our own realization that the world is not necessarily all whimsy and fun, and somethings things to fall apart entirely. Ultimately, the whimsical, wizarding setting of the series is incidental; the stories are about death, what happens after death, dealing with the after life and with mourning; it is about a group of non-muggles who are still mortals, who cannot beat death even though they have infinite luxuries of magic and such. This is philosophically somewhat simplistic, but it hits home for the audience of adolescence who, developmentally, are realizing the idea of mortality themselves. Not only that, but it emphasizes the fleeting nature of adolescense and school; no matter how dramatic it may be, you may only be one white page labeled "epilogue" or one black screen titled "19 years later" away from a pleasant adulthood. Harry's life reflects our own in many ways, and while he says the well acted line that so easily could have been cheesey, to Voldemort, "Let's finish this the way we started it--together!" he says to us, the crazy high schoolers who so many times have banged our heads against a keyboard in sincere imiation of his puppet self, chanting "angst, angst, angst, " who grew up with JK Rowling and Harry&Co fixing our problems:"Let's finish this, the nonsense battle with the world that is puberty and public education, the way we started it way back on the first day of first grade--together!

Overall, the movie itself greatly exceeded my fairly low expectations. IMAX 3D was much more impressive than I expected, and I can now see it as being a tool for innovation in cinematography rather than a novelty tech toy. The combination of light and dark  and long and close-up shots was much better and more balanced than the usual (dark field. dark castle. black dragon. Emma watson. Field. Dragon. Castle. Emma. More Emma. Some castle. Field. Castle. Emma.) They didn't dwell too long on many things, the movie didn't feel drawn out as some of the others in the series do. Helena Bonham Carter had to act like Hermione, which was brilliant. The battle scenes and the epilogue, were, dare I say it, better for me in film form than in the book--again, possibly because Rowling had the films in mind when she wrote the seventh book (all the unecessary description in the epilogue does make it read somewhat like  a script.) The casting for the whole franchise is quite brilliant. I really enjoyed the whole audience clapping when Ron and Hermione kissed, and when Molly Weasley yells, "Not my daughter, you bitch!" I wasn't  even too bothered by the fact that Daniel Radcliffe is 22 and not 17, and that Harry Potter is the most pretentious character in modern film.

Actually, Harry Potter's pretentiousness did bother me, some. I suppose that's something that also plays to teenagers developmental tendency to be as egocentric as a four year old--three characters, your age, who probably fill enough types that you can relate to at least one of them, who are literally the center of the universe. The movies, especially, are very Harry-centric. Fair enough, he is the eponymous character, and, again, the center of the whole wizarding world. But still, there are some scenes--such as snapping the elder wand in half and throwing it into the lake as his average friends stare in disgust--where his haughtiness is just overwhelming. My favorite part of the movie may very well have been when Neville stepped in after Voldemort had allegedly killed Harry and said something along the lines of, "The forces of good don't simply cease to exist because Harry Potter is dead, you guys..." and everyone was like "wait, what....oh yeah! Stuff happened here before the kid was born too!" (Even though, to be honest, as soon as Voldemort said, "I've killed Harry Potter!" I really wanted  Radcliffe to just stand up and yell something like "Think again, bitch! Avada Kadavera!" [or, Voldemort style, ahhvahdah kadahhha!"])

 In my opinion, the most interesting part of the series is the backstory of Voldemort--again, and seriously, it is very close to the rise of Hitler, and feels similar to study--how is it that these villians that we hold in this special, "he who must not be named" spot, in reality or literature, come to be as evil and as powerful as they are? I'd like to see a film directed more around Tom Riddle, personally. I did love in the seventh movie when Harry called Voldemort Tom to his face...that was quite the scene.

The hype is still a little much for me, but again, I do have an emotional attachment. I'm glad that, in the future, even though I won't be able to say I saw any classic bands playing live, I will be able to say that I saw Harry Potter in theaters when it first came out,and got the seventh book at midnight, and lived through a phase of fandom that was, at the time, rivaled only by Elvis and The Beatles.  And I did cry during the film, not only at seeing Ron cry over his brother's body or at the first shot of Dobby's grave, but also when Olivander echoed his line from the first story, "The wand chooses the wizard," and whenever the main theme came in, and in the last shot of the three friends holding hands.

In an emotion that, again, poetically mimics that of Harry himself as he walks into the forbidden forest, I realized walking out of the gluttonous theater that while I am sad, I am ready for this part of mys life to be over--but I also know that it will not be. Literature and film are written about in the present tense, so any day that I want to relive a sleepover in my best friends bedroom in her old house, or the night I stayed up all night with an old pal finishing the series, I can pick up one of the easiest books to read, and Dumbledore and Dobby and Voldemort will still be alive, it will still be up in the air whether Hermione ends up with Ron or Harry, and the terrible epilogue will not yet have occured.

Also, does anybody really believe that WB and JK Rowling are going to stop sitting on that comfy pile of ever-growing cash created by the franchise? I think not.

I'm sorry I doubted you, Wes Craven (with some spoilers.)

(Correction--a dear critic corrected me, saying that there are A LOT of spoilers. So be warned about that.)

Thank you, Wes Craven. Thank you very very much.

You have pulled it off.

I have just returned from actually viewing Scream 4, as opposed to just judging it...

It MASSIVELY surpassed my expectations. I should not have doubted Wes Craven's ability to be amazing.
I am sincerely impressed.

Furthermore, I don't even know where to start with this film--besides being accessible for a genre audience, it's actually a really challenging film critically.

Spoiler alert.

The film starts out with what you'd expect a Scream film to start out with--two stupid girls picking up the phone and being subject to murder by a stalker. The title rolls in--Stab 6. What?

Ok, cute. Wes Craven's doing a sort of Nolan-esque thing, starting us off in a film within a film. Two blonde girls, (actresses whose names I do not know, but who were recognizable,) sit on a couch, discussing the metaphysics of horror films. In an amazing way, I might add--I was very pleased to find that the movie was mostly self aware even to the point that it was discussing the now overdone cliche of being self aware in a horror movie, and making fun of overly long franchises, which, now that it has left trilogy status, Scream has technically become.

Suddenly! One of the girls is killed in a rather creative way, but the killer is also revealed--we are confused. Don't we have an hour and forty seven minutes left? How come you just killed her? Regardless, I was totally willing to watch the movie with the new introduced plot .
BUTWAITTHERE'SMORE. Another title, Stab 8, rolls onto the screen, and the camera again zooms away from a flat screen television onto to more girls sitting on a couch.

What. What is happening. My mind has exploded. So great. The new two girls discuss Woodsborough, and the fact that the Stab movies are based on Sidney Prescott, (introducing the fact that the Stab movies are the Scream universe's version of itself,) and set up the fact that it is the anniversary of the plot in question. Both girls are killed, more dramatically than any of the previous, and we are pounded with the dramatic white block lettering of our real title, with much more of an impact than it would have had when the other titles rolled onto the screen.

Perfection. It was rather ridiculous, but it was clearly supposed to be ridiculous. It set up for the almost all of the major themes in the film, such as
-self awareness in movies
-making fun of franchises, therefore, making fun of itself (more self awareness)
-the importance of movies in culture/a microculture
-the importance of culture's influence on movies
-the fame of Sidney Prescott's story in Woodsborough
-whether or not it is a good thing to turn tragedy into horror
-how awesome Wes Craven is.

These themes were, of course, continued strongly throughout the rest of the film. The media was analyzed and criticized appropriately; the current generation received the same treatment. Particularly under examination was technology--from the first minute of the film, we saw stupid teenagers using facebook on their cellphones (/iphones, yay product placement!) and getting killed immediately thereafter. The trouble with identity  confusion that can come from  a digital world where everybody is inherently connected to their phone number and facebook account was used  to an almost Shakespearean level.

This, of course, made it more difficult to find out who the killer really was--as per usual, everyone was a suspect, but having phones constantly stolen from supposed "victims--" and we know that, in this franchise, you can never really believe what you see--made one wonder who was at the other end of the text message.

Technology was also used with plentiful webcam views, which was overemphasized in ads, but still an important part of the movie and very effective. Particularly poignant was one drunken victim, watching the live feed from his handheld webcam on his phone--so he saw the killer in the screen before he did in real life...still on the screen.

There's one big thing I want to discuss that is a HUGE spoiler, and I'd really hate to ruin it for you, but I will--the killer is female. I won't name names, because I was actually really surprised. Craven leads us so brilliantly to believe that he's doing the same thing he did in the original--and since, in this movie, all the characters have essentially seen the original, in the form of the fictional Stab, they too believe that the killers will fit the same type. I did know something fishy was up--the suspect boyfriend's character was never developed quite enough, and the actual killer was weird throughout the film--something I simply attributed to bad acting.

Having the killer be female is a huge statement for horror film. It isn't as if this is the first time we've had a female killer, but having it be so otherwise traditional, and having the victims still be female--was quite intense. This is, at once, empowering and victimizing to the female character, in positive and negative ways. Scream has always been the most empowering slasher franchise for women, I think, because you don't have to do any sort of analysis to understand the survivorgirl status of Neve Cambell, emphasized by her ridiculously badass, almost action movie-esque clincher lines. However, this is particularly empowering--although the movie focuses a lot on whether Sidney is a victim or not, as a (apparently still virginal? quote, "Sidney's problem is that she never gets laid," so it would appear so?) woman, but it is clear that women are not only victims because the aggressor is also female.

However!! The female killer has been created, ironically, by Sidney herself. Her motives lie in wanting to live up to Sidney's fame, in a world where fame doesn't necessarily come from talent, but from "having f*cked up sh*t happen to you," a technique which Sidney is a perfect example of--but that rings very true in our culture today. The killer is ultimately a victim of Sidney's victimization.

Most importantly, I think, this movie discusses in depth the "new rules" of horror. Wes Craven has as much authority to discuss these as he did to discuss the "old" rules, having remade many of his movies himself. The basis of the new rules is that, to successfully scare audiences, you have to reverse the old rules. You must anticipate the audiences expectations, and simply destroy them. This new movie does that, and discusses it, very effectively. The beautiful irony is that, arguably, the original Scream is what nullified the "old rules." Once a movie like that comes out, revealing all the secrets to the audience, essentially, in an official sort of way, you can't seriously make a film that follows those same strategies.

The thing that Scre4m doesn't discuss is that you still do have to adhere to those old rules, somewhat, to satisfy the audience. No, they're no longer pleased with a straight up slasher, but they do still want that moment of "don't open the door!" that characterized the old films so much. In a genre with as visible a progression as the slasher genre, it is almost impossible to make a film without paying homage to the other movies that made that one possible--even this movie has at least three shout outs to Psycho. Audiences expect that nostalgic feel when they see a slasher movie, and this one puts that out there very effectively.

My favorite thing about this franchise is that it points out to a mass audience something that I already know. By being presented as a real horror film--ie, one in which all the characters, in it's own universe, are real and to be taken seriously--but also discussing every step of the plot, it shows something very important that any genre fan believes--we are all, essentially, living in a movie.

"I judge life by its cinematic counterpart. It makes it worth the seven dollars I paid to get in." -ZS 

Just how much can Leonardo di Caprio hallucinate in one year?

Newspaper-style review for my Journalism class: 

It seemed that, in 2010, the bar was set fairly high for films to shock their audiences with extreme realism in animation and special effects or over-the-top plot twists. This, of course, is a brilliant way to have a film become “what everybody is talking about.”

            The best example of this is Christopher Nolan’s Inception, where the audience is left wondering what parts of the movie were simply figments of main character Leonardo DiCaprio’s imagination. But before audiences were left to wonder what scenes in Inception took place in DiCaprio’s head, they were left to wonder which scenes in Shutter Island took place…in DiCaprio’s head.

            Shutter Island, directed by Martin Scorsese, came out in January of 2010, five months before Inception’s high-grossing release. It follows the story of Marshall Teddy Daniels, (played by DiCaprio,) who is sent to an isolated island off the coast of Boston to investigate the escape of a mental patient from a somewhat experimental criminal institution. He is given a new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo,) for the job, and the men trudge through the gray weather of the Atlantic while discussing their military history in thick Bostonian accents. Soon after reaching the island, they learn that things have gone amiss.

            The thing that people talked about most in this movie was the plot twist in the end, which is almost Shyamalan-esque. Scorsese very effectively leads up to this, and setting the audience just a bit off balance throughout the film. Within thirty seconds of reaching the island, DiCaprio and Ruffalo are greeted by guards armed with loaded machine guns. The escaped patient leaves both pairs of her shoes in her room when she flees. All of the patients in the asylum are very clearly reciting their testimonies from a script. And when our dynamic duo tries to leave the island, DiCaprio’s hallucinations of his dead wife, and then a severe hurricane, stop them.

Unfortunately, regardless of the build up, the twist is quite disappointing—in my opinion, the disconnect from the main story is too great and it ends a foul taste to the end of the film. The point of view even changes; throughout the film, we follow along with the adventures of DiCaprio in a series of flashbacks and intense close-ups, but when the twist occurs, the camera turns on a dime and we spend the rest of the film looking, confused and almost accusatorily at the main character.

            The plot arc in the rest of the film is that of a typical psychological horror downward spiral, with his hallucinations of his wife and gory, grainy flashbacks to the German war camps becoming more and more severe as the movie progresses. This is brilliantly foreshadowed, and the central theme of the movie embodied, in a single line: when the local sheriff describes how rigorous the security measures are for “Ward C,” the building for especially violent patients, DiCaprio replies, “You would think insanity was contagious.”

            This, as well as the paranoia that comes with a film taking place in 1954, is what I consider to be the best part of the film. The plot is threaded through with straight-up Cold War crazy, which interacts beautifully with the themes of insanity intrinsic to a film taking place in an asylum. About half way through the film, DiCaprio essentially abandons the task of finding the escaped patient and instead focuses on uncovering the government conspiracy and medical experiments he is convinced are taking place on the island. His lunacy is fed by his post war paranoia that Nazi like experiments are happening at the hospital, and uncited evidence that HUAC is funding the project. Juxtaposed with this is the unwavering hallucinated image of the wife, dressed in a perfectly housewifely yellow dress, and the marshal’s occasional descriptions of and flashbacks to their picturesque suburban life together. The subtext of the movie, which I consider to be much more fascinating than the puzzley plot, exposes the ugly underbelly of paranoia and fear that is such an important part of the era that we remember as I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver.

            Even though Shutter Island and Inception have similarly twisty plots, Leonardo DiCaprio, beautiful cinematography, and hallucinations of tragically dead wives, the former made about half as much money as Nolan’s blockbuster hit. This has a lot to do with the marketing of Shutter Island, and the fact that it’s somewhat in between genres; it has the romance that directors are trying to work into “masculine” movies to appeal to a female audience (plus Leo), it has the plot characteristic of a psychological horror, almost (but just almost,) enough guns and explosions to be an action movie, and enough historical references and implications to be historical fiction—and it was marketed as a slasher.

            However, considering the reputation of Scorsese and the quality of this film, it certainly deserves more credit than it was given when it was released—though the failed attempt at mind-blowing plot twist does take away significantly from the film, it redeems itself with the thoughtful themes of insanity and paranoia. It was over shadowed by Inception, but in terms of plot, visuals, and especially the nearly identical performances of Leonardo DiCaprio, this movie should have earned just as much credit as the Oscar winning box office hit. With the plot twist, this film gets a three out of five stars, but if we were just rating the first hour and forty five minutes, I’d give it a solid four. 

You're Jammin' my Frequencies-Poltergeist and Ronald Regan

I have a confession to make.

I am in love with Zelda Rubenstein

This Zelda Rubenstein

I recently watched Poltergeist for the first time. Until now, I've kind of written it off as a quirky, fun family horror movie where there are some spooky ghosts in a house with some cute little kids. A Halloween movie. Fun, cute, but not fantastic. Cheesy. Certainly not scary. 

BOO

I was pretty incredibly incorrect. This movie is very, very scary. It's a little strange that Tobe Hooper's other most famous film is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I'm pretty sure is widely considered to be the most gory and inappropriate of the classic slasher films. They play Poltergeist on ABC Family. It's rated PG, for goodness sake.

Honestly, I think this is a pretty brilliant move on Hooper's part--there's no real nudity, only one incidence of the "s" word, an I guess because there's no direct human-on-human violence, it somehow gets away with this rating. Because, for the first half of the movie, it has that happy, family feel that Stephen Spielberg (writer and producer,) is so apparently good at capturing, it can play to the target audience of that film--then BAM! Scary time!

BOOO!

Brilliance. Pure unadulterated scare the pants off of children brilliance. And I hate children, so I love scaring them. The fact that the scary part opens with a tree coming into the kids' window is so terryifyingly wonderful, and certainly intentional--what are kids in 1982 more afraid of than the creepy tree outside their window?

There were parts in this movie that legitimately freaked me out. It is cheesey--a result of its time, I think, more than anything else. It fell victim to the terrible effects available in 1982, but considering how bad it could have been...it's ok. And again, some parts were really very creepy. Like the following, which I literally had to turn away from because it was so disturbing and went on for so long:

PG rating, you guys...

Or this thoroughly creepy scene, which occurs after JoBeth Williams (pictured) gets a nice implied rape from an invisible spirit:

Even better than the horror in this movie, though, is the hilarious satire that makes up the beginning of the movie--which ends up being relevant to the horror as well. The whole movie is mocking American suburbia--from the starting notes of the national anthem that we hear in the first shots of the film, to the degradation of the family as the spirits take over their house--a house that is, of course, the basis of their entire family structure. The father, played by Craig Nelson, is a real estate agent for a suburban development in California in which he lives--and where his home is ground zero, if you will. The satire that comes from this is subtle enough that, I believe, millions of happy families were tricked into believing this was just a nice film about them--"satire" or "humor" is not listed in the genre notes on Netflix, nor is it mentioned in the summaries or FAQ's on IMDB. I thought the jokes were hilarious, and I noticed a lot of them, but they were often subtle or visual.
For instance!
 In the scene where the poltergeist first shows itself, the last shot is of the kitchen chairs stacked precariously on the table--which then fades to an empty table in the same room, and zooms out so we see that the father is showing another identical house to an old couple. In an earlier scene, the father argues with the neighbor over TV channels--because the families have the same remote control, they can control each other's televisions. ...More on the importance of TV in this movie later. Then of course, there was my personal favorite visual joke about suburbia, the new right, and how silly California is:

As the mom laughs over her small box of marijuana. Just say no!

It also mocks how suburbia feels about and treats death, which ends up being an incredibly important set up for the rest of the movie. One of the first scenes shows Heather O'Rourke walking in on her mother as she goes to flush the recently dead canary. ("Oh shit, Tweety, couldn't you have died on a school day?"). When the family goes to dig in their backyard to build an in-ground pool, we see the shoe-box coffin of the dead bird being carelessly shoveled away with the dirt.

Little do they know! (SPOILERS). After the infestation of ghosties and beasties has begun, we witness a conversation between the father and his boss, the CEO of the development company, offering the father a promotion and a bigger house on the hill. Neilson looks behind the hill where they are standing, indicating and expansive graveyard--"Not much room for a pool..."

It is at this crucial point that it is revealed how the development company builds their neighborhoods so cheaply--they build them in places where graveyards used to be. The new neighborhood, for which the family's new house will, again, be "Phase one," is built over a graveyard, as well as the neighborhood where the film takes place. The father is concerned about this, but the CEO is not, and reassuringly utters some famous last words--

"Nobody has ever complained before."

It doesn't take an above average analyst to realize that this is the root of the problem--the poltergeists in the house clearly are the unhappy spirits of those buried under the suburbs, entering into hyper perfect American life to take revenge on American progress by attacking the most important part of it--the family.

Or, wait a minute. Although they do capture the young daughter, their real target is the house. The mother of the family, a stay at home soccer mom who spends all of her time taking care of the kids, is deeply upset by this, and through the film and the beyond-the-grave kidnapping of her daughter, she undergoes a transformation and rebirth, and, very obviously, emerges from some yonic imagery covered in gloop. The father, however, does not under go this rebirth and replaced importance on family. He is, arguably, the center of the humanized American-ness in the film--as we movie into the eighties,  the new right is taking over and the ERA and the sexual revolution of the previous decades fade into the background. So is it the father who the spirits are really attacking? Stealing the daughter is possibly just a side effect of their true victim--the house. The father's life centers around the house, it is not only his home but his entire source of income and a symbol of his manhood. So while it seems that the center of the suburban family structure is, well, the family, it is in fact the house itself--materialism!

And what better way to enter that house, that pure symbol of American suburbia, which is in a development full of identical abodes, the perfect symbol of Californian ridiculousness, than through the essence and symbol of Western progress, a virtual tangible synechdoche for the American Way of Life--the television. 

I was going to stop there, but lets keep this going! Let us take a step back from the movie--literally. Imagine that you are sitting in your house, sometime in October, and the film in question is playing on ABC family, as it does every year, as part of their thirteen nights of Halloween gimmick. The camera of your mind, your visual screenshot, is focused on the TV, but let's say it starts zooming out--and there you are, in your house (the symbol of your fathers manhood and ability to provide for his family,) enjoying the mostly uncensored entertainment really only available in the West in such a form, on the American Family channel--perhaps it is at this point that you realize the magic of Tobe Hooper and Stephen Spielberg--Poltergeist, like so many films, has become a mirror of its audience. You are watching television if you are watching this movie! The visual and auditory information of Poltergeist is invading your mind like so many little angry spirits, and perhaps the scary pictures will prevent you from sleeping to well, or perhaps your brain will be invaded with the social commentary!

Mind. Blown. 

........

..................

.....

Zelda Rubenstein!!

This house has been cleaned!

Possession: the most fun a religious person can have...?

Today I am feeling POSSESSED to blog about religious horror films. Screw carpal tunnel and my missing wrist brace and my refusal to get tested for arthritis...I've got stuff to say.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of watching a fantastic religious horror film, Stigmata, directed by Rupert Wainwright. For those of you who aren't weirdly into religion (by which I mean, fascinated by religion in a nerdy way, not in a evangelical way,) stigmata is the name of the phenomenon where a deeply faithful person suddenly erupts in all of the wounds of Jesus.

Like, as a reward...from Jesus..because he loves you so much...

Like any good religious horror flick, the plot of this movie deals with the constant battle between faith and science, and it does it quite effectively. Our main man is a organic chemist-turned-priest who goes around the world trying to assign scientific explanations for miracles. Of course, being stigmatic is a miracle (fun stuff?) so he ends up going to our main lady, Frankie...(?) and trying to scientifically explain her random flesh wounds. Of course, Frankie isn't faithful at all, but in fact a self proclaimed atheist...plot ensues.

It appears that this movie was clearly made by folks who believe in God--the message seems to be that faith (even spirituality, dare I say it?) is an important part of life, whether or not it is necessarily, scientifically true.

Fascinatingly! While this movie certainly has its Gody message to give to us, it's main idea is that the organized church is, for the most part, an ineffective and corrupt vessel for Godliness and faith to be brought to humans. Woah! My mind was blown by the fact that this movie was aware of that. On the one hand, we have Frankie, as a pretty moral-lacking, uneducated twenty something in Pittsburg, clearly in need of some direction in her life (at least, it's portrayed that way...lots of partying, etc. The movie is actually complex enough to portray that her lifestyle choice is her own and that it's wrong to judge, but still have the implication that it's not fantastic.) On the other hand, we have the church repressing history and real religious texts in order to stay in power and get what they want, as well as a criticism of fanatical, literal Christianity--the idea of "Jesus on toast," etc, is taken down pretty early on in the film with organic-chemist/priests scientific explanations.

The other thing I found interesting was how similar the symptoms are when you're possessed by the devil as opposed to possessed by Jesus. Frankie speaks in tongues, has little conniptions, moves around in terrifying ways, adopts a predatory male voice, etc....all of those lovely things we saw in the Exorcist.

Pretty similar....

We've got the eyes rolling back...

The weird flying thing...the list could go on if I felt like taking more screen shots. 

I was quite intrigued by this--how could it be the same thing, essentially, to be possessed by two completely opposite things?

Of course--(we've been talking about binarisms in English class...get ready for some rantin'), I know that Jesus and the devil are not opposite things. One cannot exist without the other, and Jesus had to do some pretty devilish things before he figured out how to be...well, Jesus.

Another very un-Jesus like thing that Frankie does while possessed is to try her (his?) very hardest to seduce a priest...

Come on now, lets not do this...God will strike you down...!

Movie actually does a very clever job of explaining this, as well as the demon/Jesus possession similarities, by saying that people who are close enough to Jesus to experience stigmata are also closer and more open to demons and temptations gettin' in there and infecting their souls and stuff. Is that true, in religious lore? Who knows. But Movie says it is.

God will still strike you down and eat your face off!!

The movie pays some well-deserved homage to the real, historical Jesus, because about halfway through the film it is discovered that the tongues Frankie was speaking in and the words she wrote on the wall were the same words that were in a secret Gospel, that was thought to be the "secret sayings" of Legit Jesus.

Legit Jesus? 

Allegedly, the papacy says that these scrolls are heresy, further blocking out "real" faith and "real" belief in Jesus and his words. The last twenty minutes or so of the movie actually focuses on this issue, and the conflict between the lower levels of the church (priests who are actually scientists and scholars) want to translate and be aware of these words, and the upper levels want to keep them as confidential as possible. If you have crazy possessed young adults running around and writing them on stuff, that's hard to do.

The movie then ends with a little description of what went down with the actual scrolls, which I described before, which is interesting, but also adds a weird tone of propaganda to the whole film. I, personally, hate religious propaganda, so at first I was a bit turned off by this, but since it's propaganda for historical research and against the church, I felt better about it. 

Also, it would probably be worth it anyways, because this movie has some fantastic 90's style surrealism. Very impressive cinematography...a lot of lights and darks, some cool special effects, etc. It depends a lot on close-ups to emphasize thematic elements and to set the mood, which makes it seem a little dizzying (appropriate, since Frankie is having seizures pretty much constantly in the movie,) and trippy. Very 90's, but actually in a good way. 

High recommend this movie for your vacation viewing experience, or for anytime you feel like getting a little bit of church-bashing in to your day...add The Exorcist, The Omen, or Rosemary's Baby for extra fun!

Seriously, though, if Jesus actually looked like Christian Bale then I'd probably convert to Christianity right now. 

[Stigmata is owned by MGM, The Exorcist is owned by WB, and Mary, Mother of Jesus is owned by Hallmark.]

Disney does Communism

Ok, false. Don Bluth does communism. But it's almost Disney. People pretend that it's Disney a lot.

For those of you who aren't scholars of nineties animation ( or don't watch Nostalgia Chick obsessively,) I'm talking about Anastasia, a wonderful animated film. It is wonderful both in the sense that it's weird and hilarious, but also that it's really well done and touching at spots.

The concept of the setting is really interesting, and it makes me wonder--why does Disney and Bluth/Fox choose to take on these historical events that are not kid friendly, and make them into kids movies?

Pochahontas, for instance. The Europeans invading America was in no way something you want to portray to little kids--the real story of Pochahontas is even less kid friendly than say, the story of the pilgrims in New England. Everything was very violent, very nasty, and very unpleasant.

 Same with the Bolshevik Revolution. In kids movies, there has to be a good guy and a bad guy. In the Bolshevik Revolution, there was no good guy or bad guy, it totally depends on who you ask. Now, obviously, in America, we see the communists as bad guys, because of that whole Cold War thing that was the twentieth century. Therefore, portraying the revolutionaries as the good guys in a kids movie about the Russian revolution is out. However, the Romanov's were in no way the good guys either--just like Marie Antoinette wasn't the good guy in the French revolution.

In any case, they made the decision to portray the Romanov's as the good guys in this movie, mostly because they've got the princess, and princesses sell. The movie opens up with a nice little bit about how happy and luxurious it used to be, before all those silly poor people were starving to death in the snow and had to rebel...

The historically accurate shot to have after this would have been some children dead from malnutrition and hypothermia

And, I guess, to keep it more neutral and kid friendly, they didn't talk much about the communist party either. It is portrayed in a negative light, with images of the beautiful city of St. Petersburg full of unhappy people and pollution, and one of the main characters saying "That's what I hate about this government; everything's in red!" but it never says that the communists were responsible for all the Romanovs getting killed. 

Their solution is to sort of synthesis of all evil or communist things, or anything that motivated the Bolshevik revolution, into one superhuman villain. He's sort of a mixture of Faustus, the real Rasputin, and American views of Communists, all-in-one.

I believe it. 

Obviously the historical inaccuracy of this is off the wall. IRL, Rasputin was a crazy enough character--he was a healer and a monk, (it is mentioned that he used to be a man of god in the movie, before he went insane,) and was a close friend of the Romanovs because he fixed up their sons hemophilia. When they tried to kill him, he would not die, leading to his portrayal in this movie as a perpetual near-corpse that never actually dies, even though he should. (source)Cute, right? Hyperbolic interpretation for kids is fun!

Not cute. This movie is like weird propaganda for the Romanov family.  Just like they were actually pretty terrible to their subjects that rebelled against them and killed them, they were pretty terrible to Rasputin too, and killed him for a kind of arbitrary reason after he saved their sons life who knows how many times and became one of the Tsar's best buddies. You can spin a story any way you want, but really, the Romanovs were wrong in this situation. 

It's very strange that they made the Romanovs seem like such good guys in this movie, even though that is almost the opposite of historical truth. Obviously America is anti-communist, but does that make all of our media immediately pro-imperialism? Kids grow up--I grew up--with all this input that princesses, in any context, were good, and it was all fun and games to be royalty. Sure, there were evil step mothers, but they were pretty easy to deal with. Again, spinning this story in the other direction and having some romance between some revolutionaries is out of the question, since if Don Bluth did that HUAC would probably be reborn and they'd eat him right up, but when there's no good guy...why would you make a happy Disney style movie out of it? 

I guess they had to portray the Romanovs in a good light to lead into the rest of the film, which is also based on a true story, about what kind of really did happen. It's less of an inaccuracy at this point and more of a re-imagining of what would have happened if Anna Anderson (cruel, cruel parents,) was actually Anastasia Romanov. That's actually a totally ok thing to do, in literature. I'm cool with that. 

But come on, guys. Anti commuist propaganda? It's 1997, not the eighties. 

Another thing that's a little bit off about this movie is that it came out in a time where CGI existed, and wasn't terrible, but wasn't advanced enough to make a whole film out of for the kind of budget that Bluth must have had. The result? Random chunks of this movie are done in CGI. And its weird. 

Maybe if we put this shot right at the beginning, they'll be tricked into thinking the whole movie looked this real

Hey Anastasia! Welcome to the future! Too bad you're still animated like it's '96!

Wait, is that real fire in our animated world?

Yup, that's definitely real fire...

And as distracting as that is, they do do some really cool stuff visually. The movie doesn't pledge itself to realism, so besides the normal cartoon gags, there are some really cool surrealist scenes. Which is appropriate for the time it takes place in. For instance, Anastasia has some pretty hallucinations:

 And Rasputin lives in this nifty underground...planet...

And my favorite--they do an entire song about Paris around 1920 (do you know how much I want to live in Paris in the 1920's? Probably a ton.) and they do a lot of the backgrounds like Van Gogh's "Starry Night.

It's really a beautiful piece of animation, and it captures the spirit of the 20's really really well in a couple of shots (not that I was there...) Plus, a nod to Van Gogh? And there are other allusions to twenties culture, my favorite being "Where not even Freud knows the cure." Who watching this movie would understand those?

The person I originally saw this movie with, actually, my best friend's grandfather, probably would have understood it, but we left the theater halfway through. (We were four at the time.) Our leaving was a result of the fact that this movie is actually terrifying--as a result of these guys:

"AHHHH!!!"-any four year old who sees this movie

They're really conceptual things, but I guess they're sort of goonie demons that come from a little stick full of green fluid that Rasputin gets his power from (speaking of Freud...) In any case, they're horrifying, and they attack the train, and it's probably the scariest thing ever. 

"Ohh no puppy!! AHH!!"-four year old 

I was legitimately entertained by this movie, both back in the day and now, as an (almost) adult. The characters and relationships are quite fun and a little bit complex. Anastasia is suffering from some serious post-traumatic stress and repression (more Frued!) and throughout the film her memory returns, and as it does, Demitri, the con man bringing her to the dowager princess of Russia in the guise of the real princess, realizes as well that she may be the Anastasia he knew as a child working in the kitchen of the palace. The two of them have a Harry and Sally sort of relationship, (which is hilarious, because Meg Ryan is the voice of Anastasia,) and in the end Anastasia has to choose between being with him or taking her place as the new duchess of Russia (which is now under Communist control, so it's really just a title...) His being uncomfortable being in love with her once he realizes she is the princess, since he is a kitchen worker/con man, is the only time caste is mentioned in the movie. 

So, fun for its historical inaccuracy, fun for both it's weird and beautiful visuals, and fun for it's plot and plot holes. 

BUT WAIT! Something I reccomend even more is this, the Nostalgia Chick review of the movie. I watched this a long time ago, and honestly didn't remember that she said so much stuff that I said here. But! She says it even better and with more hilarity. Watch it.  Now. 

Black Swan, etc, etc...

Yes, yes: as promised, and as should be expected from every movie blogger, a little chat about Black Swan.

The really interesting phenomenon that this film is at the center of is this seemingly new theme where the movies that are the most popular are also the movies that "high brow" film audiences like the best. The Golden Globe nominees weren't the subtle, almost indie or entirely indie films that you didn't even notice were in theaters, but  the movies that people were talking about--Black Swan, The Social Network, The King's Speech, etc.

With that in mind, I went into the first showing of Black Swan that I saw with a question: Why is this film so popular but also so praised by critics and "high brow" film audiences?

The answer became very clear very quickly, and it is my only criticism (and, apparently the only criticism, considering the incredible reviews it got.) The film lacks a lot of subtlety in plot and symbolism. The conflict, though very deep and thought-provoking, is also straightforward--it is an inner conflict, but it is still white vs. black, good vs. evil. This was reinforced, of course, by the gorgeous but obvious visuals in the film--Nina wears light, soft colors, Lily, Beth, and the mother wear all black. Everything the director, Thomas, owns, is black and white. Reflections are used almost obsessively, (but well,) to, again, reinforce the conflict--mirrors and reflections have been used in film for many, many decades to represent the two sides of a character, and this movie isn't always so adept with it--for instance, when Thomas is explaining the role of the swan queen, the camera cuts decidedly from a medium shot of him in the studio to a shot of his reflection in the dance mirrors.

There are other moments and things that could have been more subtle. Nina has a weird rash on her shoulder blade--and by some coincidence, it is exactly where a wing would grow were that to happen. A shot of the ballerina in her music box, with head and leg broken off, is shown after her legs break and she hits her head. She puts on a black shirt when she goes out with Lily. The list goes on.

Woah guys it's a mirror!!

However, this is why, in my opinion, it was so accessible to a mainstream audience and critics (as well as the fact that it's all daring and stuff with the various sex scenes which aren't often shown on screen--more on that later.) The symbolism was there, the mise-en-scene and cinematography reflected the intent of the story perfectly, but in a way that you didn't really have to think about--this way, the mainstream audience (who, presumably, don't pick apart visual symbolism while watching movies,) and the critics, (who potentially do? I will when I'm a film critic?) could both enjoy it and understand it's full value.

Oh my gosh. Another mirror. 

When I saw this movie with my film appreciating friends, they saw that problem with it, too, (as well as the problem with the lack of gay male dancers...) but my dancer friend, who spends less time than we do analyzing movies, thought the symbolism was very clever (although she also saw the problem with the lack of gay dancers...) So, case in point.

I loved a lot about this movie though, including the visuals. Last year, my school put on the musical Curtains in the winter, and one of my favorite things that the director and costumer did was to make all the backstage scenes, with the dancers in their dance clothes, in grays, whites, and blacks, with red accents. I adored those costumes, and knitting some legwarmers to go with them, just like I adored the costumes and colors in this movie. The soft grays, pinks, creams, and blacks were so gorgeous together and invoked very well the idea that Nina was still locked in a childhood dream to be a ballerina, and that she still saw it as beautiful, gentle, and feminine, while the other dancers (who all wore black,) saw it as competitive and vicious.

Also, all of Nina's costumes looked sooo cozy. I wish I were a dancer, because I want to wear various knitted tubes on my legs and arms all the time. Some of the knitted things were so unnecessary seeming but soo beautiful--for instance, the lacy gray top that was knit probably with lace weight yarn and size twenty needles that she wore in her last practice scene, where the piano player leaves her in the dark and she really begins hallucinating. Why was she wearing that? I don't care, it was awesome. She always has one leg warmer or one arm warmer--why? I don't care, they look so comfortable. Amazing knitwear in this movie. Amy Wescott, the costume designer (famous for such films such as The Twelve Dogs of Christmas and Porn n' Chicken....hopefully this is her big break, she deserves it,) is a lady after my own heart and must have had a great time knitting up all sorts of amazing things.

The knitwear, though, along with the soft colors and the gray brick walls that were the backdrop for most of the scenes, perfectly captured the atmosphere of New York in the winter, (have I ever been to New York in the winter? Nope.) and made the whole movie feel very cold and raw, which made the scenes in her bedroom appear that much more warm. Very skillful.

The second thing I loved about this movie is also what I think makes it so scary--it is entirely first person. In most movies, we get at least two points of view--usually one a third person or third person omniscient--but in this movie, we know only what Nina knows and see only what she sees. This, of course, leads to some serious confusion when she starts hallucinating, and at only one point--the long shot of her on stage as a human instead of a swan after her solo as the black swan--do we see what we can know is really happening. This point of view makes every surprise, from the shocking notice of her mother while she is masturbating, to the simple event of her walking into a nurse at the hospital, just as surprising for the audience as they are for her.

I also loved how the various aspects of the black swan--the things she needed to be "perfect," were displayed in the other female characters, particularly Beth. I think Beth is the most undervalued character in the movie, because though she's on screen less than ten times, she's as important as Lily in representing the black swan. Nina's transformation to the black swan is also her transformation into Beth, as embodied by her jealousy of Thomas being with other girls, her paranoia that Lily is trying to steal her part, her destructiveness, and her...taking over Beth's dressing room and stealing all her stuff. More subtlety.

This is actually awesome--the framing makes it look like a mirror. 

Thomas says that Beth's "dark impulse" was what made her so "thrilling to watch...perfect at times, but also so god damned destructive." At that point, Nina begins letting her own destructive tendencies and ticks--her habit of scratching and biting her cuticles, and her bulimia, overcome her much more, presumably trying to be more like Beth. The first move she makes as the black swan, asking Thomas for the role and then biting him when he kisses her, is done wearing Beth's blood red lipstick. The major shifts in the movie--her getting the role, her becoming entirely consumed by hallucination, her "claiming her position," as it were, as the lead girl in the company and taking over the dressing room, all happen after an encounter with Beth.

I was also super impressed by how they used the Swan Lake music. Tchaikovsky has been my favorite since I was a tiny tiny child, and they used it very very effectively in the movie.

And the last bit that I'm going to rant about is the presence of sex scenes. Not the scenes themselves, but the fact that they made it onto the big screen. This shows a major change of standards in the rating system, one that I consider to be for the better.

A while ago, I watched a documentary released in 2006 called This Film is not yet Rated. It detailed (with a lot of bias,) the process of rating films, and how and why some films get an NC-17 rating and can't be released in theaters. The director of one of my favorite movies, But I'm a Cheerleader, was interviewed, and talked about how her movie couldn't be released by a major company because of its rating--a rating that came from a lesbian sex scene with no nudity shown, an girl masturbating over her clothes, and a maybe three second long shot, in the dark, of two men laying on top of each other, also fully clothed. Obviously we've crossed some major bridges in how okay we are with seeing homosexual sex on screen, and I think that's fantastic. How much of the film's audience saw the movie only for the sex scene? What was the intention of the director? I'm not sure, but I think it's a big statement for the progression of film that it's in there.

The entire movie, really, is a pretty positive statement for the state of film right now--even thought the symbolism was forced, it was there. The plot was accessible and somewhat easy to follow, but still scary and complex. And, of course, just the fact that such a terrifying movie made it into the Golden Globes, the Oscars, and the hearts of film audiences makes me very, very happy.