Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Beau Travail (1999)

 

Audition (1999)

 

American Beauty (1999)

 

All About My Mother (1999) ****

Fight Club (1999) **1/2

(I’m pretty sure there are spoilers in this post.)

The first rule about Fight Club (1999) is that you do not talk about Fight Club. The end…

Since that wouldn’t be a very constructive blog post, I suppose I must talk about director David Fincher’s highly creative and unusual movie, which was adapted from the 1996 Chuck Palahniuk novel of the same name.  Edward Norton plays an unhappy white-collar worker who suffers from insomnia and consumerism. His entire life is focused on having a condo completely decorated in IKEA and covering up safety defects for the automobile company for whom he works.  He can only feel anything when he goes to disease support groups—even though he doesn’t suffer from any physical affliction.  When the disaffected Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) starts attending the same meetings (even one for testicular cancer), Norton’s character relapses and returns to his insomniac ways.  Marla and Norton’s characters are emotional wastelands, who both despise and commiserate with one another. 

And, then there’s Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt).  Tyler is a sociopath who is one part philosopher and three parts madman.  Tyler and Norton’s characters meet on a plane and begin living with one another after Norton’s apartment explodes.  They live in a cesspool of a dilapidated house and start an underground fight club.  Tyler uses the club to recruit men to his Project Mayhem, which consists of making bombs with chemicals used in soap and then planting them in credit card buildings.  Eventually, Norton’s character realizes how insane Tyler is and tries to stop him, and this is when the film really gets interesting.

Make no mistake, Fight Club is a graphically violent film. Watching people have their faces beaten to pulps is not a pleasant experience.  There is lots and lots of blood and the occasional skull blown out by a bullet hole.  If you have a weak stomach, this is not the movie for you, because the fight scenes are quite realistic and the blood looks like blood. 

Fincher and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth used Super 35 to film Fight Club. It gave the movie and unusual look, which played well against the fact that most of the scenes were filmed at night.  It is a gritty looking movie, which on a second viewing has so much to offer.  Why on a second viewing, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you, but this is where the spoiler comes into play—and it’s a BIG one.

Tyler Durden and Norton’s character are the same person.  Yeah, it was sort of like The Sixth Sense (1999) when you realize that Norton’s character has created an imaginary persona to release him from his unhappy life and to launch him into a world of chaos.  As such, when you watch Fight Club for a second time you pick up on all of Fincher’s inserted visual clues. Those odd flashing splices that you couldn’t totally make out before Tyler enters the film—that was Norton’s subconscious beginning to insert Tyler into the frame.  Why does the screen sort of shimmer when Pitt is in a scene (yes, he’s hot, but so is Helena Bonham Carter in a dark, weird way)?  It’s Norton’s mind.  Why are all the un-Tyler scenes flat and somewhat bland—this is Norton’s reality.  It is a highly inventive way to present two different cognitive states. 

The acting is good, but not great.  Bonham Carter is a particular favorite of mine, so just about anything she does is fine by me.  Her Marla is flippant and morose at the same time.  Norton and Pitt play extremely well off one another—as they know they are playing two different sides to one man.  There is a psychotic twinkle in Pitt’s eye throughout. And, it is a delight to watch Norton transform his character from a boring pencil pusher to an all-out badass.  My favorite scene comes when he blackmails his boss into paying him to work from home. In it, you see the complete disintegration of Norton’s character.

Overall, I liked Fight Club. Still, the story is a bit far-fetched and the film is way too gratuitously violent for my liking. 

Being John Malkovich (1999) ***1/2

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman was nominated for an Oscar for the ingenious script he penned for Being John Malkovich (1999). The only reason his imaginative and brilliant screenplay lost is because it was up against Alan Ball’s American Beauty (1999)—which was just a tad more brilliant. While I am not known for my unadorned adoration of “art” films, I do regard Being John Malkovich as one of the best films of the 1990s.  From the inspired and riveting opening scene until the wickedly bizarre ending, I was thoroughly engrossed in this unique film.

If you’ve not seen Being John Malkovich the story might seem too out-there, but Kaufman’s script works because director Spike Jonze adeptly handles the complexity of the plot with a steady hand.   Like Kaufman, Jonze was rightly nominated for an Oscar, too—which creates an Academy Award conundrum for me. How can a film be nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director but not for Best Picture? Ah, but I digress…

Now, without giving away too much for those who’ve never seen this, I will attempt to give a cogent plot overview. Craig Schwartz ( John Cusack) is a depressed and underworked puppeteer who takes a job as a filing clerk at Lester Corp to supplement his wife Lotte’s (Cameron Diaz) pet menagerie (which includes an adorable chimp named Elijah). Lester Corp is on the 7 1/2 floor of the Mertin Flemmer Building in NYC—which has ceilings so low that just about everyone has to duck their head to maneuver.  Craig instantly becomes obsessed with an aloof and unethical woman named Maxine (Catherine Keener, who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar). After Craig discovers a secret passageway that is used as a metaphysical portal into the mind of John Malkovich, Maxine suggests they should charge other people $200 for the surreal (but real) experience of being Malkovich for 15 minutes.  Not long after this, one of the most twisted love triangles in the history of film develops as Lotte and Maxine act out their mutual sexual attraction through Maxine engaging in sex with Malkovich.  This enrages Craig, so he takes over Malkovich’s being and controls him as though he were a puppet. That’s all I can say without giving away too much. Yes, it sounds completely unbelievable and outrageous, but it works.

So, why do I admire such an outrageous movie? Simple: it’s a wicked dark comedy based on a uniquely smart concept.  Of course, Jonze had my undivided attention from the moment Being John Malkovich began with a riveting puppet show—that’s right, a one-man puppet show that was so viscerally raw that I sometimes just watch it for pleasure (as I also do with the tango scene from Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge). From there it just gets stranger with the miniature stage of the 7 1/2 floor and then the voyeuristic portal leading to Malkovich’s mind. There are many standout scenes, but two are, at least for me, wildly memorable.

The first scene is when Malkovich enters his own portal and finds himself trapped in a crowded restaurant where everyone is John Malkovich—men, women, and children alike.  As actors are known for their narcissism, this scene is laced with underlying meanings as well as a postmodern interpretation of self. When faced with his inner desire to be able to become anyone and anything as an actor he encounters the uncomfortable realization that such a desire leads to madness. Suffice to say, Nietzsche and Sartre would have had a field day with this movie.

Some might find my admiration for the second scene silly, but I don’t care. Throughout the film Lotte keeps referring to taking Elijah (her chimp) to psychotherapy because of a childhood trauma.  This alone is funny but seems like a meaningless story element until Craig ties Lotte up and locks her in a cage with Elijah.  As Lotte struggles against the ropes Elijah has a flashback to when his parents were tied up and he couldn’t get the ropes untied before the whole family was captured by hunters.  It sounds stupid, but when Elijah frees Lotte it really affects me. 

All of the principal performers do splendid jobs with their respective parts. While Cusack deserves some recognition for how well he plays Craig’s descent into madness, it was not much of stretch from the other disaffected young men he’d played before (and after). In complete contrast is Diaz—who is almost unrecognizable as the dowdy, repressed Lotte.  Still, the standouts are Malkovich and Keener.  It is never easy to play yourself, let alone portray yourself in such a complex way. Not only does Malkovich have to be himself but he also has to transform himself into Craig’s personhood when his conscious mind is taken hostage by Craig.  And, Keener is scathingly delightful as Maxine. Physically, vocally, and internally she displays who Maxine is to the audience.  While her character is obviously morally bankrupt, Keener also makes Maxine likable—which in a lesser actress’ hands would have never happened.

So, why didn’t I give Being John Malkovich  four stars if I liked it so much?  It’s a small thing, but the section of the film when Malkovich becomes a renowned puppeteer is too drawn out. While I find it hilarious that people would pay to see a performance of Swan Lake where the Prince is played by a puppet, it just seemed as though things had just gone too far at this point. Yet, while this less than desirable element slightly tarnished Being John Malkovich for me, I am still a huge admirer. 

Attack the Gas Station (1999) *

I’d like to say that the meaning of this 1999 South Korean film was lost in translation, but due to it being dubbed in English I can’t.  At first I could only surmise that director Kim Sang-jin was attempting to make an anarchic comedy with Attack the Gas Station. After watching this I went in search of answers: what the hell was it about?  I read that Kim was making a statement about Korean carmakers laying off workers and criticizing American economic imperialism.  Okay, so some of the story made sense after that bit of context.  Still, that didn’t make me dislike the film any less.

The story (written by Park Jeong-woo) is about four young Korean men who rob a gas station because they are bored.  Having just robbed the station a few days prior, the thugs show the viewer very quickly that they are not what one would describe as master criminals.  As a matter of fact, three out of four of them are pretty damn stupid.  Mad Dog (Yu Oh-seong) carries a stick around and hits anyone who calls him stupid—a lot of people get hit.  Rockstar (Kang Seong-jin) is a failed musician (probably because he dresses like a bad big-hair 80s band singer) who makes hostages sing so he can hear music.  Paint (Yoo Ji-tae) is an artist who likes to paint lewd images and then throw red paint on them and shout, “Finished.”  Of the four men, there is only one that I found even remotely substantive: No Mark (Lee Sung-jae).  An orphan and a gifted baseball pitcher, No Mark is the leader of this traveling insane asylum, and the only one I could ever envision being a productive member of society.

Kim tries to tie the senseless violence these men inflict on others together by showing past events in each man’s life that might have turned them into psychopaths.  I was not convinced that these “incidents” were enough to warrant such depraved behavior, and that’s a big reason I really disliked the movie.  While I haven’t read this anywhere, I am convinced that Kim and Park saw Michael Haneke’s deranged Funny Games (1997) and decided they should do a film with similar themes.  I didn’t like the senseless violence of that film, and I most assuredly was not enamored with it here, either. 

What makes this movie even more disappointing to me is that the few Korean films I have seen have all been pretty entertaining.  For example, The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008) is a smart modern spaghetti western with a compelling storyline.  Oldboy (2003) is an inspired revenge tale. And, The Host (2006) is a strange but scary story that leaves you on the edge of your seat.  And, then there’s Attack the Gas Station, which has now diminished my appreciation of Korean cinema.  Oh, and there’s a sequel, too. Really?