continuing:
Transcendence: Magnets, How Do They Work?
Neither of these religious films requires much commitment to the traditions in question, Christianity for The Tree of Life and Buddhism for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. That is, the religious question isn't about doctrine, but the mystification of life, what tends to be called spiritualism. Both films attempt to conjure up the transcendent in quotidian living as the eternal questioning without an answer. The former is in the register of awe (juxtaposing the cosmic and microcosmic to middle class life in Texas) and the latter, contemplation (nearly still life depictions of Boonmee's family, both alive and dead, at a dinner table, at his bedside or watching TV in a hotel room). Why is there something instead of nothing? What does this something mean? Why do some brothers die while others live? Why is there a guy in cheap ape suit at the dinner table? To appropriate McLuhan, the question is the answer. Or, in the words of the Insane Clown Posse:
Pure magic is the birth of my kids
I've seen shit that'll shock your eyelids
The sun and the moon, and even Mars
The Milky Way and fucking shooting stars
[...]
No one was tempted to reference Martin Heidegger to defend "Miracles" from the media lashing that went on last year (I did find this juggalo existentialist referred to as the Heidegger of the movement, though), but isn't ICP saying the same thing as Terrence Malick in Tree of Life? Scientific facts and reasons are a form of domination; a child-like wonderment is the authentic existence. Grace over nature. Apichatpong Weerasethakul makes the same point formally. Uncle Boonmee's interminable, flat, static scenes of people talking about not much of anything (when they're talking at all) are supposed to elicit mystery. As J. Hoberman says, "The movie doesn’t mean anything -- it simply is." Just like water, fire, air and dirt. Plots are bad, and semantics, evolution or special relativity are dominating plots, hegemonic discourses. Salvation comes through mystical revelation. Being reveals itself. Only positivists would mock white rappers in clown makeup.
In War Horse, the audience cares about World War I only as it pertains to the life of a horse. In We Bought a Zoo, the audience cares about the animals only as the dramatic locus for typical familial difficulties. Unfortunately, what's interesting about wars isn't the animals and what's interesting about zoos isn't the humans.
To quote LBJ, "the ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there." Each of these comedies promotes its own brand of stupidity from opposite ends of the standardized political spectrum. Hall Pass is, as I've already covered, a comedy for the depressed upper middle class where love and family have been reduced to exchange value. It says that no matter how much commodification has replaced all human ties, the joke is on the lower classes, because you have more of this than they do. Thus libertarian utopianism, where the best of all possible worlds is already here -- optimism being the hope that there's someone below you on whom to spit. Our Idiot Brother accepts that the capitalist reduction is the rational way of life, so insists that knowledge is immoral, cupidity can only be resisted through a bubble of stupidity. (I remember back in the 90s having to explain who Al Gore was to a nuevo-hippie sprout farmer.) The titular brother is an idiot Gandhi, leading by example his three avaricious and scheming sisters (the kind of women who marry the assholes in Hall Pass). He trusts everyone (even a uniformed cop who wants to buy some dope) despite being constantly fucked over. They'll all come around eventually: A revolution through ignorance, with change to occur one moron at a time. These films together map out contemporary political debate in the States.
The two greatest dads in the whole world die. One leaves behind an automaton which can only be activated by a missing heart-shaped key, while the other leaves a key without the lock into which it fits. Suspecting some encrypted, posthumous message, their respective sons have to go on a search. After which, the former has brought more than the robot to life and the latter has unlocked the post-racial heart of post-9/11 New York. The heart expands with sentiment, then stretches some more. The left ventricle weakens, causing fluid to back up in the lungs. One day you're coughing blood into toilet paper, the next, complete cardiac arrest. For the rest of your life, you'll need an artificial heart, which requires a reduction in activity. Excitement will have to be monitored, or you just might die.
The quirk is genre filmmaking's version of exotica. Exotica is the appropriation of folk music from around the world into a form that allows the listener to feel as if he's transcending cultural barriers while remaining within his own. Martin Denny and Les Baxter are examples from exotica proper, but today the same sort of pseudoindividuation exists in the obsession with psychodelica and garage rock from around the world -- only, in the latter example, it's actual foreigners supplying the Western-styled version of their own traditions. But it matters little who the producer of the music is, just that the product is being sold as alterity based on its connection to what the consumer is already comfortable with. Thus, when Wong Kar-Wai has one of his protagonists in Chungking Express quirkily eating large quantities of canned peaches that expired on the day his girlfriend broke up with him, the viewer is supposed to feel he's in the presence of art, not some hackneyed genre film short on ideas.
Bellflower is yet another movie about a breakup. That's all there is to it, really. It's supposed to feel like something else -- maybe an independent art film -- because the lovers do quirky things like driving to Texas for low-grade barbecue on their first date, or the protagonist and his best friend are obsessed with the Mad Max films so much that they make a flamethrower to put on top of their rebuilt muscle car in preparation for the ironic apocalypse. They say "dude" a lot. They probably took some screenwriting classes and are the kind of guys who use terms like "big reveal." The dystopia comes in a fugue state, where the forlorn hero envisions the death of his friends and lovers. "Dude, what the fuck is going on!?!" Then it's revealed that, oh, yeah, he's feeling really sad, because a girl cheated on him, and we're watching yet another film about a breakup.
Transcendence: Magnets, How Do They Work?
Neither of these religious films requires much commitment to the traditions in question, Christianity for The Tree of Life and Buddhism for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. That is, the religious question isn't about doctrine, but the mystification of life, what tends to be called spiritualism. Both films attempt to conjure up the transcendent in quotidian living as the eternal questioning without an answer. The former is in the register of awe (juxtaposing the cosmic and microcosmic to middle class life in Texas) and the latter, contemplation (nearly still life depictions of Boonmee's family, both alive and dead, at a dinner table, at his bedside or watching TV in a hotel room). Why is there something instead of nothing? What does this something mean? Why do some brothers die while others live? Why is there a guy in cheap ape suit at the dinner table? To appropriate McLuhan, the question is the answer. Or, in the words of the Insane Clown Posse:
Pure magic is the birth of my kids
I've seen shit that'll shock your eyelids
The sun and the moon, and even Mars
The Milky Way and fucking shooting stars
[...]
I see miracles all around me
Stop and look around, it's all astounding
Water, fire, air and dirt
Fucking magnets, how do they work?
Stop and look around, it's all astounding
Water, fire, air and dirt
Fucking magnets, how do they work?
No one was tempted to reference Martin Heidegger to defend "Miracles" from the media lashing that went on last year (I did find this juggalo existentialist referred to as the Heidegger of the movement, though), but isn't ICP saying the same thing as Terrence Malick in Tree of Life? Scientific facts and reasons are a form of domination; a child-like wonderment is the authentic existence. Grace over nature. Apichatpong Weerasethakul makes the same point formally. Uncle Boonmee's interminable, flat, static scenes of people talking about not much of anything (when they're talking at all) are supposed to elicit mystery. As J. Hoberman says, "The movie doesn’t mean anything -- it simply is." Just like water, fire, air and dirt. Plots are bad, and semantics, evolution or special relativity are dominating plots, hegemonic discourses. Salvation comes through mystical revelation. Being reveals itself. Only positivists would mock white rappers in clown makeup.
Only Audiences Were Harmed
In War Horse, the audience cares about World War I only as it pertains to the life of a horse. In We Bought a Zoo, the audience cares about the animals only as the dramatic locus for typical familial difficulties. Unfortunately, what's interesting about wars isn't the animals and what's interesting about zoos isn't the humans.
Evil Comedy
To quote LBJ, "the ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there." Each of these comedies promotes its own brand of stupidity from opposite ends of the standardized political spectrum. Hall Pass is, as I've already covered, a comedy for the depressed upper middle class where love and family have been reduced to exchange value. It says that no matter how much commodification has replaced all human ties, the joke is on the lower classes, because you have more of this than they do. Thus libertarian utopianism, where the best of all possible worlds is already here -- optimism being the hope that there's someone below you on whom to spit. Our Idiot Brother accepts that the capitalist reduction is the rational way of life, so insists that knowledge is immoral, cupidity can only be resisted through a bubble of stupidity. (I remember back in the 90s having to explain who Al Gore was to a nuevo-hippie sprout farmer.) The titular brother is an idiot Gandhi, leading by example his three avaricious and scheming sisters (the kind of women who marry the assholes in Hall Pass). He trusts everyone (even a uniformed cop who wants to buy some dope) despite being constantly fucked over. They'll all come around eventually: A revolution through ignorance, with change to occur one moron at a time. These films together map out contemporary political debate in the States.
See, the Key is a Metaphor
The two greatest dads in the whole world die. One leaves behind an automaton which can only be activated by a missing heart-shaped key, while the other leaves a key without the lock into which it fits. Suspecting some encrypted, posthumous message, their respective sons have to go on a search. After which, the former has brought more than the robot to life and the latter has unlocked the post-racial heart of post-9/11 New York. The heart expands with sentiment, then stretches some more. The left ventricle weakens, causing fluid to back up in the lungs. One day you're coughing blood into toilet paper, the next, complete cardiac arrest. For the rest of your life, you'll need an artificial heart, which requires a reduction in activity. Excitement will have to be monitored, or you just might die.
The Quirk
The quirk is genre filmmaking's version of exotica. Exotica is the appropriation of folk music from around the world into a form that allows the listener to feel as if he's transcending cultural barriers while remaining within his own. Martin Denny and Les Baxter are examples from exotica proper, but today the same sort of pseudoindividuation exists in the obsession with psychodelica and garage rock from around the world -- only, in the latter example, it's actual foreigners supplying the Western-styled version of their own traditions. But it matters little who the producer of the music is, just that the product is being sold as alterity based on its connection to what the consumer is already comfortable with. Thus, when Wong Kar-Wai has one of his protagonists in Chungking Express quirkily eating large quantities of canned peaches that expired on the day his girlfriend broke up with him, the viewer is supposed to feel he's in the presence of art, not some hackneyed genre film short on ideas.
Bellflower is yet another movie about a breakup. That's all there is to it, really. It's supposed to feel like something else -- maybe an independent art film -- because the lovers do quirky things like driving to Texas for low-grade barbecue on their first date, or the protagonist and his best friend are obsessed with the Mad Max films so much that they make a flamethrower to put on top of their rebuilt muscle car in preparation for the ironic apocalypse. They say "dude" a lot. They probably took some screenwriting classes and are the kind of guys who use terms like "big reveal." The dystopia comes in a fugue state, where the forlorn hero envisions the death of his friends and lovers. "Dude, what the fuck is going on!?!" Then it's revealed that, oh, yeah, he's feeling really sad, because a girl cheated on him, and we're watching yet another film about a breakup.
