Ramblin' 'bout Amblin: Schindler's List

The list is an absolute good. The list is life.

Steven Spielberg did not want to direct this film. The filmmaker doubted his maturity level and saw the film as too important for him to leave his mark on. He tried to pass the project onto a number of other filmmakers including Roman Polanski who's mother was killed at Auschwitz, as well as Sydney Pollack and Martin Scorsese. Scorsese was actually attached to direct the film for some time before Spielberg's conscience got the better of him. Spielberg believed he'd "given away a chance to do something for my children and family about the Holocaust" and using Cape Fear as a bargaining chip, was able to re-establish his place at the film's helm. His final push to direct came from the rise of neo-Nazism after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the growing numbe of Holocaust deniers. Already having gotten more in touch with his faith while raising his children, Schindler's List may have actually come at the perfect time for Spielberg. He pushed Jurassic Park to the top of his priority list knowing he wouldn't be able to move to a new project for a long time once Schindler was completed.

Moving into production Spielberg left no stone unturned to make sure audiences felt the personal and political weight the story carried for him. He sought out a number ancestors of the Schindler Jews to play roles in the film. The script itself boasts 126 speaking roles and over the course of shooting over 30,000 extras were hired, many of which were Holocaust survivors themselves. The film's producers were tasked with finding as many of the people portrayed in the film as possible after Spielberg conceived the idea of the film's epilogue.

I realize that's a lot of trivia but I think it's incredibly important to know how personal this film was to Spielberg. Looking back on his career prior to Schindler's List it's hard to believe that he'd even be capable of a film that took on this type of subject matter. Even his most personal films up to this point had been lighthearted if not adventurous. Schindler's List is not only one of the most important American films ever made but also a clear turning point in Spielberg's career. A point where, save for a few films, many of his projects became much darker and more serious in nature. What's amazing though is despite the film's heavy nature it's still incredibly watchable. Spielberg has this incredible ability to make cinematic masterpieces from even the darkest material and never pulling punches. Schindler's List never lacks in its ability to wrench the heart and it does so often.

My favorite thing about this film is the way that Spielberg decided to shoot it. He partnered with Janusz Kaminski (the cinematographer Spielberg now works with exclusively) and told the film's story the way that history does: in black and white images. Like photos from books or a museum, Schindler's List presents a story told in timeless fashion. Using handheld, almost gonzo techniques, the film looks more like a documentary than a prestige picture and because of this doesn't have any kind of time stamp on it. Watching this film with no knowledge of the few famous faces within gives no sign of what year it was created and it makes the material presented all the more powerful. You can't pull out bad CGI from the 90's. You can't pull out that famous single that was all the rage when the producers were trying to figure out how to market the film. Schindler packs so much more of a wallop because of all these choices. I truly feel its one of his most "Spielbergian" films. By that I mean there's nothing diluting his creative process. There are no crane hots. There are no silly action scenes. This film is pure Spielberg and paired with the fact that it's undoubtedly his most personal film, Schindler's List is one of the most important films out there.

Up next:

"And So His Watch Is Ended" - Game of Thrones season 3 closes in high bloody fashion.

Scout Lets talk about filmmaking for a minute because I'm currently experiencing a state of destabilizing grief not dissimilar to Arya Stark's and I can't really even bring myself to consider the implications of the horrorshow we as an audience were just witness to. So instead let's talk about a consistency of craft, shall we? Way back in Season 1, I believe it was episode six but hey sometimes my memory fails me, Tyrion goes looking to a hostile crowd for someone willing to take his place in a trial by combat. Up steps Bronn, an unlikely ally, in what is to date still my favourite moment of the series. From the back of the hall comes Bronn's call "I'll stand for the dwarf."

And so commences one of the best edited and staged sword fights I've ever seen. What the director and sound editor did was take something we expect from a show with a vague medieval setting (two well-armored knights fighting with broad swords) and fills it with excitement and tension, but more importantly they make it seem real. These guys are big enough to throw these big fucking swords around but not without some difficulty and not without the people at home feeling nervous for everyone's life. The sound guys do astonishing work making us feel how heavy the swords are against every surface they touch and what it would really mean to get killed here. Victory feels hard won and the show gains gravity because we see how ugly and dangerous legends are when you're stuck in one. And we don't really know either man so the fight could go either way. You won't find anything comparable in Lord of the Rings or the bulk of 80s fantasy cinema like Krull or Ladyhawk (which I maintain must be an inspiration for the Game of Thrones crew, as evinced by a last minute aviary transformation in this last episode) because the heroes who die need to be in good enough shape to have a last word to a comrade or to have their bodies ferried down waterfalls. There is no such comfort here. If you die, you're goddamn dead because those swords don't make mistakes and neither do the show's artistic team.

The first time the show goes back on this idea was an occasion indeed. The Hound, the only guy on the show who I wager could give Bronn serious competition, finds himself in trial by combat with the shifty Beric Dondarion. Once again the direction and editing are topnotch. Shot in a cave, claustrophobic and dark except for a campfire and the fire that Beric douses his sword in. The hound's fear of fire had been established previously so with that clouding his senses the playing field is now as level as its going to be. Their sword fight is visceral stuff, having no room to maneuver and no way to see each other properly. Smart money's on the big guy because we know him and he's never lost yet, but his opponent is some kind of wizard. The camera maintains a perfect distance from the fight: close enough to be terrifying, far enough to be clear and legible. We know what's going on and that makes the hindrances all the worse and the outcome is now completely up in the air. And this is all in what feels like actual darkness thanks to the high speed film they use and the truly masterful job the Cinematographer does simulating real darkness with a few lamps (Here I'm reminded of Roland Emmerich's underrated Anonymous). And so when the fight ends and the vanquished is brought back to life via something close to magic it has the borrowed graveness of the fight we just sweated our way through. These two are too interesting to die so this is the only acceptable outcome. The writers playing fair and the filmmakers playing like pros.

The Red Wedding reverses this dynamic. The writers have been playing the long con all season long, doling out clues and half truths when it suits them. They were building our expectations for something but using enough misdirection to keep the uninitiated off the scent of The Red Wedding. Lord Boulton dicking around with Jamie was an expert touch. That guy better get his legs cut off and be forced to crawl through the desert.

I'll skip the setup, which is heartbreaking, subtle and terrifying. What I want to focus on is the lighting. Once the doors close and the band plays 'Rains of Castamere', it suddenly dawns on the audience how dark it is in Walder Frey's hall. Robb and Talisa being romantic looks wrong, because they're lit by the same ugly orange that illuminated Tyrion's post-wedding outburst an episode earlier. The scene, like the trial by combat in the cave, takes place in a womblike space, lit by that sick, vaguely organic orange color, like bodily fluid where light can't hit it. And just as the hound regresses to childhood for a moment when confronted by fire, so to does the talk of what to name a child while in this dark cavernous hall make us in the audience get nervous. This is the wrong place for this talk. There are many strands of family issues running through this scene, but the betrayal of mothers and the perversion of motherhood is the most prevalent (Talisa's unborn child, Cat's eldest son, the mother of Walder Frey's children, the offscreen interruption of Edmure during conception, the mother of five, seven if we count technicalities, believing she's lost four of them). So fittingly the heroics the show has so far shied away from, are notably absent in the most crushing moment in the entire series, and this include Ned's death.

The lighting, the color of blood, the sound of arrows and blades cutting through flesh all seem true even if they're exaggerated for effect because they communicate hopelessness. Here again I'm reminded of films like Ladyhawk, Flesh + Blood, Lancelot Du Lac or even Braveheart, who try and sometimes succeed at showing the awful guessed-at truths of living in the Middle Ages. They have a desperation and a disgusting banality that serves them well. I mean most of Ladyhawk is silly nonsense but I'm talking mostly about the final confrontation, which has a ring of truth that's always stayed with me. It's the best moment in the film and transcends the Alan Parsons-scored lows of the rest of the film. Game of Thrones frequently nails that kind of high, in showing how bad things can be. The only film I can think of as precedent, that has this kind of guts is Lucio Fulci's wonky take on the genre, Conquest, which has an admirably bold end to its heroes journey.

The Palour of Talisa's skin after dying of her stab wounds (and by the death of her unborn child) the confused look on Robb's face and finally that last shot. Cat lets out an anguished cry we didn't think her capable of and then, more because she promised to than because she means it, cuts the throat of Walder Frey's wife, and then waits for the man in the corner to kill her. It's the ugliest moment I can remember on a show filled with them, but the ugliness is perfectly achieved. Cat's framed in that harsh orange, reminded of the lie of motherhood, her failure to protect her children, and when she falls out of frame the orange and darkness is all we see: an empty womb.

Fox Cinematography has always been one of GoT's strongest attributes but I have to fully agree with you on your comments. The entire Red Wedding sequence is a visual onslaught of blood effects, incredible sound and film editing. But somehow even as we're watching pure horror the feeling still remains in the back of our minds that everything is done for a reason. These shots were methodically preconceived. The lighting and gore effects were painstakingly checked and checked again to ensure their full power so that even amid this chaos the smoke catching torch light, the skin tones of the dead and dying, the blood's oil-like consistency, and even Cat's final plunge out of frame are all beautiful and masterfully executed.

I came across The Red Wedding three summers ago when I was plowing through the novels. The first season had aired so I had a number of familiar faces to help me understand who these people were and in a book series like GoT, with its all too real number of enormous family trees, that was essential. But more importantly it made me love these people. GoT is one of only a few shows that I truly can profess my love for its characters and thoroughly mean it. Yes, many of them are complete and total rat bastards but because they're existing in a wor'd so much more real than almost anything currently portrayed on tv or in film, I feel empathy for even the darkest hearts GoT's has to offer. Except Joffery. So when I came to the Red Wedding sequence I actually had a moral dilemma: Do I read faster, skim the gruesome details, and come out the other side with a paraphrased just the facts version of the horror that was about to ensue, or do I read slowly, absorbing every detail like I'll be assigned to solve the murder shortly after I'm done reading it? I think I wound up on the rapid page turning side of things but not for the reason I listed above. It was much closer to Shelley Duvall flipping page after page of Jack's writing in The Shining. She's desperately afraid of what she's seeing but she can't possibly stop. It'd be scarier to leave some pages unturned; to leave Jack's thoughts a mystery.

So I watched them kill and decapitate Rob. I watched Cat's throat get slit. I watched them murder Grey Wind and sew the wolf's head onto Rob's body in place of his own. The true horror of the novel is that the entire sequence retains a sickly jovial nature. It truly is as celebratory as a wedding. Once the death and destruction is dealt out they return to play. Sadistic play. And it's hard stuff to get through. I've had numerous conversations since Sunday night with fellow book readers about how even though we were so excited for the sequence to take place it was definitely something we found we weren't happy to revisit a second time. Because now characters who had existed only on the page were now right in front of us and whether we meant to or not we'd grown to love them. GoT's ultimate power is that it always remains as morally gray as life itself. And even though every being with a beating heart will do its utmost to hope, the universe finds a way to keep a balance. Even if that balance is the most devastating thing any of us could think of.

Reading the Red Wedding forced a visceral reaction from me. I physically threw my copy of the novel across the room. It hit the wall so hard, that one of my roommates came to check on me. And having seen the horror onscreen I feel guilty admitting that my initial reaction had nothing to do with Rob, Cat, Grey Wind, or any of the Stark's banner men. It was because of Arya. Since the very beginning she's been my favorite of all the great characters in the series. Many people (myself included) often say that Sansa has the shit end of the stick but I put it to you now that Arya's situation is no less dire. She's just got a more adaptable disposition. I blew through most of the sequence because I had to make sure Arya wouldn't see it. I needed her to be okay. Then she takes an axe to the back of the head. The ultimate low blow taken in the novels that I thank the maker was left out of the show, is the possible death of Arya Stark. The Hound hits her in the back of the head to save her in the show and it's a hopeful drop in the bucket during the massacre. But in the novel the scene is told from Arya's perspective and she doesn't see it coming. And then she disappears from the novel for about 300 pages. That's the reason I threw the book. I couldn't believe I'd just watched someone who'd been through so much attain no sense of closure or revenge. All of the adults who've died have done so in some way because of their own actions. I couldn't believe I'd finally encountered one of the very few innocent (I'd call her that) people in this universe because killed for no reason. So I must thank the show's writers for not trying to drive an extra nail into the Stark coffin. I don't think I would've been able to take it again. I sat on the edge of my seat the entire episode waiting for the scene to begin and when Roose Bolton has Catelyn pull back his coat to reveal the chain mail he'd worn in preparation I got goosebumps all over. Even knowing it was coming couldn't stop the reaction I had. My jaw was on the floor. I couldn't make a noise if I tried. And that's when you know you've adapted material the right way. When even the initiated can't help but shake with rage and sadness as they're forced to watch as they lose their loved ones all over again.

Scout Portent. The finale of Game of Thrones is all about portent. Not much happens because after the nation suffered collective heartache (and much worse in some cases) they couldn't do much more but stand back and stare with the rest of us. That doesn't mean the show was coasting, by any means. There are unforgettable scenes. What will probably stay with me is Tyrion and Tywin discussing their relationship as frankly as they know how to. "I wanted to take you out into the waves and drown you." Happy Father's Day! But there's also the truly tragic scene of Cersei admitting that when she looks at Joffrey she no longer sees the child she once loved, who once was her whole world, and she his. Realizing that we're now stuck with the Lannisters, for better or worse, moments like this go a long way toward making sure we understand all 360 degrees of their personalities. I can't be the only one who was immensely moved by Jamie finally walking into Cersei's bedroom. Like Jean-Pierre Denis and Wes Anderson before them, the writers of Game of Thrones have made me super ok with incest on screen. You gross bastards.

But all this, touching as it is (and The Hound essentially taking over as one in a long line of short-lived father figures for Arya is nothing if not Insanely touching), is calm before one hell of a bloody storm. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that no one is safe, so, while it's comforting to watch a few loose ends tie themselves up, we know that ultimately even though we have to wait a year before the story starts again, in Westeros, it'll only have been a day. And in a day, anything can happen and nothing is safe.

Fox Game of Thrones has this great method of using their finale to cool down. Even though they've become formulaic in having "the shit" go down in episode nine of all three seasons it becomes almost essential (The Red Wedding being the best example of why) that we have an hour with these characters where we can be as close to sure they won't die as possible. It's an incredibly ballsy move on the writer's part to utilize a finale for something other than grandiose dramatic gestures. They treat finales in very much the same way that they treat premieres. They need to let viewers know exactly where everyone stands so that they can spend the next tortured ten months ruminating on exactly what that position will lead to. Especially working with the storyline presented in the current novel being adapted. It's an 1100 page story with enough ups and downs for several season's worth of climactic episodes. One of my favorite parts of the third season was how restrained the writers were about not letting themselves get overexcited with their finale. Instead they utilize patience to set up all the pieces again after so viciously knocking them down.

"Too much of a good thing is..."

And so Steven Soderbergh bids farewell to cinema, not with "Goodbye" but with "Too much of a good thing is...wonderful." Why Behind the Candelabra makes for such a frustrating exeunt from the medium of film (or TV movies. Whatever) is that I feel like Soderbergh had just started making a full circle back to the kind of film he stopped making when he started shooting and editing his own work in the late 90s. Which, for me (and Keith Uhlich), is a good thing. If I have a complaint about late Soderbergh (specifically the futurist mode he's been in since The Girlfriend Experience) it's that he abandoned little moments. His films have lately been all meat. This didn't used to be the case, but when at first he drew out his narratives to be sprawling and inclusive (Traffic's divergent narrative threads, Che's grand historical scale), he had to justify each moment. Every second had to tell the story, rather than telling its own story. Not exactly a fault, because you never wonder why you're seeing anything. Look at Haywire. Lem Dobbs essentially gave Soderbergh a blueprint for inclusion to get from one beating or chase to the next. But the problem for me is that this doesn't give me much to bite into or care about. I liked the beatdowns, (I really liked them, actually) but at no point does Dobbs' script or Soderbergh's direction encourage me to know or care about who this woman is unless it has to do with her eventually killing the guys who set her up. And there's an awful lot of dialogue (and crucially, not character development) that needs to be spat out to get us there and it's all by people we don't know. It works in something like John Frankenheimer's Ronin because the action sequences take up huge chunks of the running time and make us forget to care who's who. It won't matter anyway because there's a Macguffin to forecast the eventual gap where there ought to be a satisfactory conclusion. Sodebergh, by contrast, just gives us a final beating, which, while certainly in keeping with the spirit of the piece, can only be as satisfying as the talking we've seen up until this point. We don't know her, so we don't really know what she stands to lose. Not enough, for my liking. Even Contagion, which is hands down my favourite of his late work, and in my opinion something of a minor masterpiece, lacks full emotional bite because we don't know everyone quite as well as we ought to. The bad stuff starts going down before they get a chance to show off who they are divorced of context. 

A perfect Soderbergh little moment - 2/3 of the way through Out of Sight, Jennifer Lopez's federal marshall goes to question a known associate of a suspect. After finishing up her talk, the woman's boyfriend appears to shake Lopez down. After a suggestive threat, spoken spectacularly low and menacing, Lopez beats the man with a portable baton and leaves, tossing a one-liner over her shoulder as she goes. The man could have been trying to get her off the scent of the suspect she's chasing, or he could just be an abusive jerk. Doesn't really matter. The point is the moment works, has nothing to do with the story, and everything to do with letting us into Lopez's world and the world of the film. It's also one of the few times that the atmosphere of a scene isn't palpable. Whether it's a grimy boxing gym, a Florida prison or Albert Brooks' palatial manor, we always have a really clear sense of where we are and what it's like for the characters. That the house where the altercation takes place is defined more by the characters and a vague feeling of unease is a welcome break from the production scheme and it invites us to pay attention to just the behavior of the two characters. 

Now look at Magic Mike, where everyone's in a perpetual state of "over it." It's accurate and thoroughly watchable, but there's very little opportunity for us to learn much about the characters or grow with them. We're a step ahead of them because we know what the narrative calls for. It's still a darker, realer and better film than most US films released in 2012. But it's missing shades of grey, and I don't just mean in the cinematography. The leaping from one 'important' scene to another is narratively efficient, but leaves me just the slightest bit cold. And rendered exclusively in Soderbergh's trademark tobacco brown, it all feels like just one color of the spectrum of experience. As soon as every piece is in place, we can guess how it will turn out, so it's up to our auteur to make sure that the puzzle will look unique when put together. It always does, but they used to be more intricate. Side Effects' greatest pleasure is in seeing just what the central mystery turns out to be and discovering it right along with our duped protagonist. Once it's been solved, the film ends, having done no more or less than a great job taking us from Point A to Point B, placing the low high and the high low, and depicting modern life in the few seconds between plot points. I can't help feeling like ten years ago, I would have gotten a better sense of what Rooney Mara, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Jude Law stood to lose, and sympathized with them more than I did. I do get a sense of where his characters will be, based on how we begin to see their evolution in the final act of the movie. In fact he's gotten very good at broadcasting final acts he doesn't deliver. Magic Mike ends just before a cathartic love scene, Side Effects before prosperity or insanity can fully take over, Haywire just before the final kill, Contagion before normality fully returns. Things move too speedily for the narrative to want to keep up, so the endings come before they've truly ended, allowing a fully formed idea of the future to be the true conclusion, as Soderbergh doesn't want to, or won't bore us with what we already know. 

So when I heard that his last movie was going to be based on the true story of someone who is dead, my brain couldn't quite get around to imagining what on earth that would look like. Che, after all, was what all about being objective and marked the turning point toward futurism. Here he had to spell a few things out in a way he hasn't done in a while. Even if we understood what Scott Thorson and Liberace's relationship would turn into, with the details of its ups and downs the only real surprise, we couldn't exactly skip to the important part. It's all important or none of it is, by non-fiction standards. So what in the world was he going to do faced with ten years of detail he couldn't jog through to the ending? Well, it turns out that the saving grace here was that he had to make it for HBO rather than a theatrical release (cannes competition slot notwithstanding, though let's not forget that component just yet). TV is a medium that must be still. And this is a very specific kind of stillness. Often for budgetary reasons, only a few set-ups can be used to make shooting and editing a quicker and cheaper process, but also because a TV audience won't sit still if the camera's going to jerk around like Spielberg's D-Day footage, or totally lose subjects as he sometimes does with shallow focus and lighting. There are very few instances of the camera doing anything like this during Behind The Candelabra, and the most showy example is to communicate a paranoid, drugged-up breakdown, which an audience will appreciate and forgive if not expect. There's one shot of shallow focus where the actors have to walk into frame, and another where he can only see the dark outlines of actors in a well-lit room. Other than that, the camera has to be still, and thanks to the HBO broadcast, it will also take on the sheen of a TV show, which I can't help but feel like he expected, because it helps his cinematography mesh with the production design. 

Soderbergh, or Peter Andrews, as he calls himself behind the camera, usually shoots with cutting edge digital in very expressive lighting, meant to look both natural and unnatural, essentially showing the future of life in apartments by catching his actors in baths of primary and secondary colors, or in darkness against bright backgrounds. If it's not how they appear, it's how they are taken, by whoever would really be in the room. He's performing sleight of hand, in a way, by making us lose track of the subject of a shot. This has the effect of making his compositions look like they're rendered in still-wet water colors, and that if you touch them, they'll smear. With Candelabra, the particular stillness of television post-production, making them up-to-snuff for a home viewing audience watching on the small screen, and the film's interest in the era being a kind of prison, means that the paint is no longer wet. Instead, what Soderbergh achieves is a kind of stuffing, embalming and mounting of Liberace's 70s and 80s. Scott Thorson and Liberace themselves go through this with their surgical alterations, becoming trapped in their own glittery, kitschy homes, stuck in outfits tailored too tight and unable to recognize themselves. They're no longer people, they're dead foxes for the world to draw conclusions about. How did they live? Why couldn't Liberace find the right girl? The glamorous lifestyle is a ruse, like the open eyes of a stuffed animal. If the show they get to see is fame, money, drugs and sex, then the price of admission is silence, misery, aging and uncertainty. 

All that's fair enough; the performances are all genius, I enthusiastically believe Matt Damon as a 17 year old, I love Michael Douglas turning his back on the alpha male shtick he's famous for, Rob Lowe deserves an Oscar, the events depicted are so insane you have to believe them and it certainly makes for one hell of a ride, but I was beginning to wonder why in the world Soderbergh chose to do it. You can't broadcast with this story. Liberace's long dead, after all, AIDS the only secret he couldn't keep and Thorson's breaking the silence is the reason there's a story to tell. So after six films of cool detachment, could that be all there is to his final long-form offering? I thought so, until the last scene. At this point I could offer those with spoilerphobia the chance to look away and skip to a few lines, but there's really nothing I can spoil - it's all public record at this point. It's just how he decides to present the ending that provides the surprise. Thorson sits alone at Liberace's funeral and rather than hearing a eulogy, he hears an intro to the entertainer's final show, and then watches his lover fly in with wings to play one last encore. Suddenly you see what Thorson saw in Liberace, beyond the showmanship: someone with a gift directing entirely at him. He might have been a father, brother, lover, best friend, whatever, but what mattered was that Liberace made the world appear in front of him on a silver platter and he took all of that and gave it to Scott Thorson. The hands that made the name Liberace famous, moved just for him. And the tragedy, or perhaps the most fortunate part, was that he could never tell anyone what they meant to each other. He had to keep Liberace's legacy safe, like a fly in amber, and in doing so he would be the same thing. He'd never get to hear him play again, nor experience someone shifting an empire to make room for him. All that was private, just for him. And really because he'd spent so much time lying to himself and the world about his life and experiences, Liberace probably didn't enjoy those moments half as much as Thorson, who was, at the very least, much more aware of their situation and able to enjoy it as it happened. So the only person who could truly understand the great pianist's legacy sits, enjoying one last number while the world keeps on thinking what it wants to. 

And that's the only time a Soderbergh film threatened to make me cry (King of the Hill came close), which, considering my skeptical attitude going in, is something special indeed. His deciding to take a break from feature films is now not only the sadness it would have been, but doubly so because Soderbergh's pulled another futurist trick by showing us the direction his films might have taken in this last moment. Real closure is back. A little moment of reflection is back. The compositions and spot-on costuming, art direction and production design, suggests a kind of appropriation of classicism, if not a full return to it. From winning the palme d'Or for his first film, which is all about laying emotion bare using technology, to finally, through the most cheesy, obvious artifice, arriving at an emotional climax to his career and debuting his made-for-TV effort at the Cannes film festival, where it stood no chance of taking home the top prize; that's maybe not a happy ending, but I bet Soderbergh sees what a satisfactory, near-perfect cycle it's been. I'd have bet good money that his next feature would have marked a return to the his old method of filmmaking, pre-Out of Sight, mixed with his new understanding of storytelling and image making. The last few years would have been one more specific period in a career filled with them, and Candelabra would have been the turning point. From classical (sex, lies and videotape through to Gray's Anatomy) to post-modernist (Schizopolis to Full Frontal) to post-strucuralist (Solaris to The Good German) to structuralist (Ocean's 13 and Che) and finally this last mode, about to give way to something else. We may never get that next period, but I hope to christ Soderbergh understands how badly his fans want it, and want him to keep evolving. Because whatever my concerns about the relative strength of his work, there are few other major American filmmakers I love to discuss, analyze and think about as much as Steven Soderbergh. So perhaps, this isn't farewell. Maybe, it's just too much of a good thing. Thanks for everything, Steven. 

Side Effects

Taken as a movie, Side Effects takes a straightforward, very specifically 80s thriller/horror plot (Soderbergh cites Fatal Attraction as his primary influence, but Body Heat and Schrader's Cat People are distantly in its lineage) and outfits it with a moral/political dilemma audiences today can't help but recognize. Anybody with even a hint of awareness about the modern pharmaceutical industry will know the score as soon as the film starts, but the film exists beyond the big-pharma milieu. He's boldly of the moment in his craft, what with his up-to-the-minute digital equipment and tackling time-sensitive bird flu or pharmaceutical intrigue, but stylistically he's outside of time. Soderbergh doesn't make message movies; he makes genre films that can't function without subtext. He understands that if, for instance, you make a movie about male strippers you cannot help but mention the fact that it's an economic neccesity and that most anyone who falls into the line of work is using it as a placeholder. But for cinephiles, the reason to watch a Soderbergh film is because he acts as his own cinematographer and thus has a very intimate relationship to the image. Everything you see is at the forefront of how films can present familiar things. He's been taking advantage of new digital cameras to help reframe cinematic convention and things as basic as architecture and conversation. No one in modern American film, and certainly no one dealing with name actors like Channing Tatum, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta- Jones and product that will play multiplexes, takes the risks he does. He pushes his actors to far corners of the screen, he puts their faces in near total darkness while the backgrounds light up. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky called Magic Mike abstract, but I think it's something more purposeful. He uses the modern world as if it were a studio set from the 50s, and treats faces and bodies like pillars in a building plan. His films would be just at home in a museum, surrounded by beautiful, alienating white walls, treating this form of digital painting as a tool worth admiring on its own. From the deep greens and reds of Haywire to the pale gold of Magic Mike, he's inventing or building alongside camera innovation, testing the limits of lighting for digital, a format that lets him get away with murder, and framing in genre fare; what shapes and angles he can get away with before it becomes 'art' in the public's mind - Girlfriend Experience on one side, Side Effects on the other. Long after the issues in the film change, it will still be a fascinating and timeless look at a director with no real peers. He uses light like only Michael Mann before him (David Fincher uses darkness in the same way), works at a rate practically unique to Americans (Japanese director Takashi Miike, South Korea's Hong Sang-Soo and Brit Michael Winterbottom are his only competition), and none of his films look quite the same. It's only in their relationship to reality, the way that he's presenting the world as it feels, rather than as it looks, that they find commonality.

Life and how to Die

I realized in my lists that one or more of these films needed qualification. I'm thinking specifically of my life-affirming films section. For years the notion of a movie that I was told, from the ads and promotional material and from the recommendations of friends I couldn't believe had actually seen the movies, was going to make me think about life differently. When I walked out of whatever movie it was, my life was going to be affirmed, whatever the fuck vague-ass thing that's supposed to mean. Seriously, there's nothing I hate more, especially today, of a consensus about a film's power to change lives. Lives, plural, cannot be changed all by the same repeated set of tragic/quirky circumstances that lead to the same heartwarming conclusion. The only thing more insulting than the idea that one film is going to have the same impact on everyone who sees it is the list of films who generally get stuck with the label 'life-affirming.' Think back to every movie that promised to change your life for the better. The ones that spring immediately to mind (Simon Birch, My Dog Skip, Pay It Forward) not only failed to change my life, but they also failed to not annoy the shit out of me. The one thing most of these falsely comforting movies have in common is that they all resolutely cheat you out of a real confrontation with death. Each has death in it, but the way in which they handle the subject is so nauseatingly earnest that it verges on pornographic. To address death is not enough and to treat it as the most profound thing in the life of a family (community, fictitious mob of candle-wielding followers, what have you...) is cheap. What of the survivors in the minutes that follow? The hours? Entire days with nothing to think of but what they've lost and what awaits them? That even in death they won't see those they've lost again. Death is a huge deal to everyone, that's why people have religious beliefs, but where movies supposedly about life fail is to treat that concern as anything other than internal and individual, to treat it as a spring board for discussion and box-office receipts. The reason I bring this up is to talk mostly about one of the movies toward the top of my Life movies list. Oh, and if I list a movie below and you haven't seen it, don't read on because I'm going to spoil it for you.

A Single Man
by Tom Ford

I knew as soon as it was done that it had an obvious kin-ship with the others on the list and then I started thinking about why it's so. Why should relative tragedies like A Single Man or The Diving Bell & The Butterfly be the ones that make us (me and a few other people I've spoken to about the films) appreciate life when they are ostensibly about death? Well I think it's because they're ostensibly about death. Diving Bell gives us life through one eye in the last months of its mind's life. Jean-Dominique Bauby knew he was nearing the end of his life but more importantly he knew that if he were ever to enjoy himself again, he would have to adapt to the shit hand he'd been dealt. Suddenly every detail becomes imperative, every second becomes crucial, every memory precious as gold. It took his death sentence to both see everything new as beautiful and everything he'd lived as really quite special and fulfilling. Stephen Soderbergh's Guerrilla or the second half of Che has a similar attitude towards death. In what amounts to no more than a minute of the film's 135 minute running time, Che, disguised for his trip to Bolivia, says goodbye to his children and then a wordless goodbye to his wife. Soderbergh does not make us privy to Che's inner-monologue (making Che almost certainly the first war film with a purposely objective view of its heroes) so we do not know what he thinks when in the end he is shot and killed, but I wouldn't hesitate to think it was the few seconds sitting wordlessly with his head pressed against his wife's. Soderbergh frames his death from his subject's point-of-view, the closest we get to being in his head, so that we can experience the man's passing first-hand. It is a grave and shocking moment that forces us to confront our own mortality and what must have been going through his head as he closed his eyes for the last time. It also takes about as long as the scene on the couch with Mrs. Guevara. But rather than tell us (Soderbergh 'just tells' us nothing), we are forced to think about his journey and our own.

Steve McQueen's Hunger (a film I might just have to start referring to with possessive adjectives, so frequently do I profess my love for it) goes the extra step in Bobby Sands, the movie's subject's death-throes. In much the same way as Soderbergh, McQueen sets up the dying moments of Bobby Sands in a piece of dialogue with almost no more importance than any of those surrounding it but when it appears just before Sands' death, it is clear that it does have importance for Sands. We are allowed in his head to see a vision of paradise before the nothingness takes hold of him. Sands spent his life as a violent, murderous revolutionary, yet McQueen posits (rightly, in my opinion) that what would come back to him, and to us, are little moments of personal significance. The memory Sands relives is one that means something to him - a personal victory and a time of sublime realization - and nothing of his struggle. Sands' life, though hardly as extraordinary, was certainly as colorful as Guevara's and that their deaths are the conclusions to their respective bio-pics is crucial. Suddenly every detail of the Maze prison becomes important because these are the last walls he'll see. And where should a boy like to be if he is to die in prison? Outside, free, a boy, innocent, the sun going down. Though the moment doesn't sound particularly heavenly, it is in its simplicity, it's every detail shining through like the last rays of the descending sun, that it becomes transcendent. Our lives probably don't flash before our eyes (Soderbergh and McQueen are in agreement here) because the cruelty of it is too sudden to be defended against. If we have time to approach it, we'll probably deny it out of fear or stubbornness. Sands is lucky enough to be visited by one final memory, a pleasant one. Guevara probably wasn't so lucky - he and Sands both lived in hellish environs before their deaths. With the memories of loved ones or incredible times in their heads Bauby and Sands pass easier than Guevara, whose head we're never privileged enough to see into. Soderbergh's ending is the most practical and thus the hardest but not the saddest of the three. Bauby has what he'll be leaving behind right in front of him so it's the most tragic when his world goes dark. Sands made a choice to die and though he attempts to escape his self-imposed death sentence in his final moments, his death isn't so tragic as Bauby's because McQueen's film is about fighting what's been given to you. Sands fights incarceration by killing himself and only fights death by putting himself out of the prison walls before it comes for him. Guevara fights death itself by swearing at his executioner. The tragedy is how unfair it is that this man, who we've lived with for the last several hours (if you've watched the whole movie, which you should have), who is so extraordinary, should be killed in so brutal and short a fashion. He was meant for more.

In A Single Man the end of life is the film's conceit, but really that's not what it's about. Based on Christopher Isherwood's novel, the story is simple enough: George Falconer, a middle-aged gay English professor loses his lover of 16 years Jim and decides to kill himself rather than fight the loneliness that's been plaguing him for another day. The film is set in the 1960s, which is important for a few reasons. Firstly it allows director Tom Ford to recreate a chic Los Angeles neighborhood in splendid and lush detail, and second it allows us to consider mortality and legacy from a time itself long dead. The details of George's day are simple and with good reason: He wakes, he eats breakfast, he teaches a class, talks to a flirtatious male student, takes all his money out of his safe-deposit box, chats up a young, Spanish hustler, sees an old-flame, a woman, goes out to buy a bottle of scotch before he kills himself but runs into the male student, they go swimming naked, then go back to George's house, they talk and appear ready to have sex but George passes out before they do so, then just after deciding not to kill himself succumbs to a heart-attack. Like Diving Bell, the movie is told through new observations and a few carefully chosen flash-backs but A Single Man is fueled by a sense of dramatic irony, that we know, because George puts a pistol in his briefcase, that he is planning to kill himself, though he never out and says it. So as we follow him throughout the day we see him really taking in, really relishing every detail of his otherwise very ordinary existence. Ford and cinematographer Eduard Grau hit upon an ingenious strategy to render their protagonist's mindset. In fact considering this is Ford's first film, the way he utilizes his camera is really quite impressive (though I understand he is a rather talented photographer, so I suppose it's not wholly unprecedented, but still...) George (played with wonderfully dry candour and tragic poise by Colin Firth) is usually framed in a dour grey, his surroundings apparently just as sad as he is. When George sees something that pleases him or engages someone and appreciates them (verbally or internally) and it brings him out of his depressed state of mind, the colors come alive too. Suddenly he's not grey and brown, but beautiful amber and flush reds and awash in heavenly hair-light. It's a brilliant technique and coupled with Firth's observations the viewer can't help but be staggered. Tom Ford makes George and us appreciate the little things.

A word about Ford. Ford is apparently a designer of some repute but such is my ignorance of that world I had never heard of him. Most commentators are wont to bring up his background as if to explain away the film's look and feel. I want to say first of all that one's background doesn't preclude you from being able to enter into any kind of discourse or a change of mediums with lessened success. Critics are the first to treat film like something sacred that bad directors or those who don't take it seriously are defacing when they throw their two-cents in. If you can make a movie as powerful as A Single Man it doesn't matter where you came from. Second of all, I do find it pretty interesting that Ford's background in fashion apparently led to some of the film's more striking visuals. Could anyone else have presented George's home (a thing of Sirkian beauty, the house I've wanted to live in since I was a boy) with such crushing simplicity and effectiveness? Well if they could, they haven't, so I'll have no disparaging talk about Mr. Ford's background. Until you people make a film as good as this, I think I'll take my movies from directors and leave prohibitive guidelines or pre-existing prejudices at the door. In fact, A Single Man makes perfect sense coming from Ford, because it cuts to the core of the things that surround us and what matters by the end isn't the stunning house or beautiful clothes we dress ourselves in, it's when we're naked and alone that it's people and our memories of people that matter.

What A Single Man does rather beautifully is to basically approach two different ends while pursuing the same thesis, that we don't appreciate life quite as much as we ought to and that surviving is the hardest thing to do. It's there everyday but when we take the time to tell people how beautifully they really look, we get strange looks because it's not expected, least of all in the conservative early 60s (free love hadn't yet arrived, though the threat of Elvis' hips do get lip service from professor Falconer). The style and design recalls Mad Men (as does an apparent cameo by Jon Hamm as Jim's brother) and the music strikes a terrific balance between the period and timelessness. Abel Korzeniowski and Shigeru Umebayashi's music is a heart-breaking entity unto itself and taken with Grau's camerawork, the lovely performances and Ford's all-seeing directorial eye, the movie is pretty flawless. There are moments in the film that make A Single Man not just a vital film, but also a key piece of motion picture history. Take the scene in which Umebayashi's variation on Bernard Herrmann's "Scotty Tails Madeleine" from Vertigo plays while George and the hustler/James Dean look-alike talk about Spain and broken dreams in front of the gorgeous blue Psycho poster in the grocery store parking lot. It's like a dream come true. One thing that is rather interesting and I don't know if this is Ford's meticulousness as a designer and director, but I found it very hard to find even the dreary scenes between each of Falconer's epiphanies to be anything less than gorgeous. More than once I was put in mind of L'Eclisse, which considering the importance of fascinating architectures and vast interiors to Antonioni's film is no mean feat. But I digress. George is in pain because Jim has died and left him alone - it takes the decision to follow him for George to realize that there is beauty all around him. Knowing he'll soon know nothing of it, he allows the scenery, the beautiful hustler and the cute boy in his English class enchant him. He does whatever seems a good idea because though he has resigned himself to death I think he's looking more for a reason not to. Even though reliving the memories he has of Jim seem designed to make him tighten his grip on life. Ford wants us to see that though George is careening towards a destiny he chose, he is open to life's little charms. He also comes to see the impact he has on the world he admires. When he visits his friend Charlotte (Julianne Moore, who I believe owns the rights to the 1960s because she seems to appear in every film that explores the underbelly of that decade. Don't get me wrong, she's excellent in these roles, and in this film particularly - who knew her posh English accent was so good? - but I do find it funny that no one makes a film about the sadness of the 60s middle class without asking her along) he sees that her happiness depends on him and though she has selfish motivations for doing so, cares for him deeply. Moore is pretty thrilling and nearly steals the movie with her maybe twenty minutes of screeentime. It is here that the film takes its most intriguing detour. As in L'Eclisse and countless other films about and during the early 60s, there is a break to dance. George and Charley dance to Booker T. & The MGs after dinner and like Marcello Mastroianni in La Notti Bianche, George abandons himself for a beautiful few seconds and I think it's here that he decides not to go through with his plan. Ford confirmed my thesis when we see the contents of George's troubled mind just before the end and we're given a flash of this scene. The scene is beautiful, not just in composition and photography, but in its showing George as willing to embarrass himself for his friend until it's no longer anything he has any self-consciousness about. This scene and George's last memory of Jim are the film's most beautiful moments - though the last conversation with Kenny the English student comes close.

Charlotte and George argue about George's inability to love her as more than a friend, but ultimately return to memories and in this become friends again. He leaves her in a haze of memory and promises to see her soon - the one place they can both hide is the past, though they know they need to escape it. Charlotte wants to use George as an escape, a new future, but George wants to believe she'll be fine without him given his plan. She is fragile and has been eternally good and patient with him and probably wouldn't survive his loss - it's a problem that could maybe be solved but not in the few hours he's allotted for himself. Their encounter takes it out of him - he needs scotch but he's out. He runs to the bar where he first met Jim, the most important thing in his life, and here he meets Kenny. Kenny had flirted with him and tried to enchant his professor earlier in the day; even bought him a colorful pencil sharpener, which George produces when they sit down to a glass of scotch each. "Enjoy the little things,” he says, placing it on the table. The film's thesis made concrete. Ford seems to be letting us know that someone as sly and sensual as George here couldn't leave behind a world he seems to know all the secrets of. They swim naked, George cuts himself somehow, and they wander back to George's home nearly naked. Here, in the firelight, is the beauty of two people together. George and Kenny never kiss or make love, but they hint at the possibility. George drinks himself quietly to sleep and wakes up a few minutes later. His flashback of his and Jim's last meaningful conversation is both a little too naked and terrifying in its frankness. Jim and George sit together reading, discussing plans, the neighbors, the upcoming trip, which will claim Jim's life. It's in the banality, the well-meaning back-and-forth, the freedom to read what they want, to love each other (to live in such a gorgeous house) to be, to exist, to do nothing with their days, that is most beautiful. Jim knows it and says so, sending ripples into George's future; it's why he has such trouble surviving, because Jim is gone. He gave so much of himself to the idea that he would be able to spend evenings with Jim, reading quietly and now he has to live past perfection. I think it's plainly those words that made George walk through his last day making sure to let every sensation knock him over with its very being. One fire-lit scene gives way to another and George finally sees what Jim meant for him - not to give up, but to find beauty in everything, to let the world in. Jim was able to find it in their simply existing in the same space, their lives wonderfully entwined. To leave it all behind would be to prove the love of his life wrong, which is the last thing George wants to do.

He burns his "read after my death" letters and prepares for another day but the only problem is how could another day be as precious as this. Jim is still gone but more importantly he lived today like it was his last, believing it was, how could tomorrow measure up? We only get one of these, Ford seems to say. By the time any of us thinks to live like George does, to find beauty in the everyday it is of course too late. Jean-Dominique Bauby, Bobby Sands, Che Guevara and George Falconer - the odd, fictitious man out - all see too late that life has all we're looking for. Jim steps out of his memory and kisses George's softly, as if to say that he had earned this gesture, that he had done all that Jim could have hoped for. His kiss and the last memory both resemble scenes in Solaris another rumination on love, death and loss. George's memory, something unreal and floating in his mind, and his dance with Charlotte both bring to mind the scenes of Kris and Hari floating above their bed in Solaris. They are out of time and out of place - memories come to life, like George's. When Jim steps out and becomes concrete for a moment, it has the same impact as Kris' final goodbye in Tarkovsky's sci-fi epic - they must escape the past to understand what it meant to them. George had learned and lived for his love, fulfilled his wish in death, and lived beautifully, even if only for a day. He finally learned what Jim meant that last night by the fire, reading together, living the same life. He learned to embrace life. His reward: one last memory, one final moment with Jim after the most beautiful day he had ever lived, the one he really been alive for. If he had seen it during Jim's lifetime, his death wouldn't have come so hard for George. Jim needed to die for George to see what Jim saw when he looked around the living room that night.

I'm a young person as I write this and though it’s safe to assume I do have a long life ahead of me, thoughts of dying are inescapable. I've been obsessed with death for much longer than is healthy or recommended for kids, but I don't guess I can help it. I do know that the times I'm in no danger of thinking about it are when I'm with people, specifically people I love. It seems every few months I see a movie that makes me take a long hard look at how I live (Time of the Wolf, Synecdoche, NY, Let The Right One In, The Road) and I encounter movies that always promise to do that and fail to by design. Yet this year especially seemed to produce an uncanny amount of films about how precious life is. No one else has changed - we're still ruining the earth and keeping marriage illegal, aren't we? I guess it would make sense for me to not change, to keep on, to not appreciate what I have until I die like the heroes of so many of my beloved films. But for once I feel like maybe I'm living like I should. I can't say I don't waste time - whole days, even - but I feel as if I get why movies like A Single Man are so absolutely necessary and profound and why they have the effect they do on me. There is no changing that it must happen or that I'm not wild about the idea, but I can see now (thanks in large part to films - call me what you will but it has to come from somewhere, doesn't it?) that shying away from it isn't the answer. It's time to start letting the little things become big things only when they promise happiness. I know that I have to let life and all its wonders wash over me. I'm lucky enough to be able to thank my friends for being that to me and letting me find meaning in their kindness and being able to take nice feelings away from their successes. I know I only have so much time and that I have to admire them and everything else I encounter before one of us disappears. This is why I watch films and why I want to make films - it might be meaningless, but there is so much to be loved and enjoyed that I would be stupid not to try to both see and capture it all. It's also why I take so much comfort in being able to spend time with some people, because I can just enjoy the best parts of the world by being with them. I may not be climbing the Himalayas or taking pictures of myself in front of the Eiffel Tower, but the beauty of people is the same everywhere. I don't have to go anywhere to know that - I don't even have to watch a film, though that won't stop me.

Note

In mentioning the films with my favorite examples of cinematography, I realize now I forgot to mention my favorite technicolor film of all time (in photographic terms. All That Heaven Allows might be a better movie, but Korda's Thief of Bagdad is just so majestic).

Directed in part by (small wonder) Michael Powell, master of outlandish colour schemes and pointy facial features, this film is one cinema's great fairy tales (from a time when they could still be done innocently and beautifully a la La Belle et la Bete and les Enfants du Paradis). George Perinal's photography honed by Natalie Kalmus's color direction brought out the best in Vincent Korda's production design. The many, many matte artists who went to work on this film really did a hell of a job. The blues in particular are tremendous.

The Best Cinematographic Achievements in Film, dated 9/5/08

A while back I began noticing that I stopped viewing the natural world around me as I once did. I started looking at things, really looking at things - trees, ditches, fields, snow-covered flora - and began imagining them in different ways. Slowly my appreciation became deeper, in a twister sort of way it's no longer a simple matter of "this is nice looking", it's now "this is beautiful, it would look gorgeous on film. How might I film this?" An occupational hazard, I suppose. I'm not really a cinematographer - technically speaking of the three short films I've taken part in in the last year, I only photographed two of them, and only one of them I can say I really had a sense of what I was filming - it's more the sense I've been given since giving myself an education in cinematography slightly more in depth than the one I've been given twice in two different schools. I like my own self-imposed knowledge better because it meant watching all the movies that get roped in together as the best. I'm not saying that these estimations are incorrect, I just happen to think looking beyond the same five films in every summation is always a good idea. For example, in looking at the humbling work of master photographer Nestor Almendros, the film he gets most credit for is undoubtedly Days of Heaven. While I agree that the work is unrivaled in it's technique, I think more can be gained watching his first feature film La Collectioneusse, a film done without a single electrician or industrial light. I think the greatest feature of cinematography is that a film needn't be good to have rich photography. For example I greatly admire Roger Deakins work (on every one of his films, but especially) on The Village and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, two films greatly wanting in other areas. I will say that I have favorites, those who have honed their craft into the purest of art forms, but the other redeeming feature of the field is that a novice can do just as beautiful work as a seasoned professional. Look at Mihai Malaimare Jr., who cut his teeth on three short films in his native Romania before taking on the dubious Youth Without Youth, a film that couldn't look more beautiful if the cast were all greek nudes. I think it's probably all the more impressive when Cinematographers can make as splendid use of shadow in Black and White film as shades and hues in color film. The Third Man (nay, the whole Noir genre) would be nothing without the work of it's light and shadow men. Imagine Detour, M, The Lady From Shanghai, or Kiss Me Deadly without their notorious shadowplay. Cinematography is often responsible for a film's most striking aspects. Picture a less competent man than Frederick Elmes behind the lens of David Lynch's flooring Blue Velvet, or someone with less experience in the expressionist movement than wunderkind Fritz Arno Wagner filming the famous stair sequence in Nosferatu, or most terrifying, imagine if David Lean had hired anyone other than cinematographer Freddie Young when filming Lawrence of Arabia, someone who wouldn't have had the resources to get ahold of a 482mm lens to film Omar Sharif's awe-inspiring entrance. I shudder to think. Below are my fifty favorite instances of cinematography in feature length films and their accompanying cinematographers, or really what I think are the most technically accomplished/beautifully filmed movies of all time. I've given descriptions of the top ten, as reading descriptions of fifty films might get as repetitive as writing them. How many synonyms are there for gorgeous, anyway?

1. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – Roger Deakins

This film has something of a mixed reputation. I personally think it a bit heavy-handed and melodramatic at times and I think it could have done without the prosaic voice over narration, but one thing is absolutely without question: the movie is stunning to watch. Right from the start when we see the James Gang knocking over a train, while Brad Pitt strides past the steam of the locomotive, while the light from the passenger cars douses the bandits in gold, while the dark wood of the cars clashes with the shining metal of firearms, while the silhouettes of every member of the gang closes in on the brightly lit train cars. It's amazing and Roger Deakins made sure to fill every frame of the film with otherworldly beauty. While director Andrew Dominik's tribute to the westerns of Anthony Mann and Samuel Fuller lingers in the past, Deakins makes a showing for the age of technology. The leads in their eccentric costumes standing like pillars of marble in the blazing scenery Deakins photographs. The blue-hued snowy landscapes, the dusky fields and farms of James' hometown, the exquisite dinner scenes we're drawn into. The film's screenplay may lack subtlety, but Deakin's photography needs none.

2. The Double Life Of Veronique – Slawomir Idziak

Anyone who's seen Amelie is in the dark if they haven't seen The Double Life Of Veronique. Bruno Delbonnel employs much the same tricks and color schemes as Slawomir Idziak did in 1991, but without the porcelain skin tones or constancy of the light quality. Idziak delivers what is probably the most colorful non-technicolor film before the advent of digital editing. The colors of this film, deep, alluring greens and almost erotic reds run throughout unexplained, but never unwanted. Idziak manages to bring to life Director Krzysztof Kieslowski's intimate compositions and manage to make slightly extraordinary things look unabashedly enchanting. He certainly succeeds in making Irene Jacob look like the most beautiful woman on earth twice in one film. Between Kieslowski's fairy tale screenplay and Idziak's super-saturated colors, this film is something of a minor miracle; the most romantic movie ever made.

3. La Collectioneusse – Nestor Almendros
Almendros will forever be immortalized as one of cinema's greatest eyes, but he'll rarely get the credit he deserves for his best work. His work with Barbet Schroeder and Eric Rohmer far outshines his work in America in almost every case. With the aforementioned exception of Days of Heaven, his best work was done in France. This film, his first, is the deceptively simple tale of one man's struggle to conquer his feelings for a promiscuous girl as she learns to settle down. I'm not the least bit ashamed to admit that I was a little too preoccupied with Almendros' camera work to pay close attention to the story (the ending's happy, if memory serves). At times Almendros had ony two pieces of equipment while working on La Collectioneusse, a 35mm camera and a particularly bright bedside light (the bulb was intentionally replaced with something industrial grade). The rest of the time he had natural light and reflective surfaces. Any given still from this movie could easily be mistaken for some lofty Renoir-esque painting. He'd may have gotten cleverer, but his work never got more flawless than it did on his first feature.

4. Children of Men – Emmanuel Lubezki
Ok, so it's no secret in the film world that this movie is brilliant. As my friend Lizzy said after her first viewing "I wasn't expecting much, but...". The movie really didn't scream "genius" when it made it's pitiful rounds of American multiplexes and so expectations were all but erased by the time it hit DVD, but it was cinephiles who had the last laugh. This movie is, and I don't mean to hyperbolize, the most technically exceptional movie ever made, where live film is concerned. Emmanuel Lubezki, hands down my favorite cinematographer, manages to revolutionize the real-time tracking shot while still doing wonders with he and director Alfonso Cuarón's trademark green hues. His active lens makes sick situations frighteningly real and all the more nauseating; his camera seems to trigger the release of endorphins, like a rollercoaster, because when the ending titles began flashing, I couldn't help but feel both mildly ill and like I needed to see it again; it was all I could talk about for days. Lubezki's greens are a favorite of mine (you'll notice his name five times more on the list) and they're subdued just enough here not to take center stage like they do in Cuarón's earlier work, but they still manage to catch the eye despite the chaos that consumes the frame. Lubezki and his crew should have been given nobel prizes for their work on this film; not just because they manage to stay on a battle for 6:18 without ever making it obvious that cuts are being snuck in, but for making the most horrific things in the world look so vivid and unforgettable. If viewers never forget what they see, they may just act accordingly later in life.

5. Autumn Sonata – Sven Nykvist

I'd seen a few of Nykvist's collaborations with Ingmar Bergman before I saw Autumn Sonata, but I had no idea just how well the two men understood each other. I don't know that there's a team that had such insight into the world of the other anywhere else in the annals of film history. I suppose Greg Tolland and Orson Welles came close, as do Cuarón and Lubezki, but the difference between any other teaming and this one, Bergman's entire life came out of Nykvist's camera. So when Bergman makes a film with an Autumnal motif, Nykvist came through beautifully. The movie looks effectively like the fall has come to life in Liv Ullmann's house. The faded pastel colors and rich outdoor scenery are truly remarkable and as someone who admires Autumn more than any other season, this is a wonderful thing.

6. The New World – Emmanuel Lubezki

If you paused any given second of The New World and squinted, you'd think you were staring at an oil painting. Lubezki outdoes himself at his better-than-reality camera work, and easily steps into Nestor Almendros' shoes as the undisputed master of natural light photography. There's one scene in particular that comes to mind when I consider Lubezki's work in this movie; it's the last one in the film. Thanks to director Terrence Malick's set-up and romantic reverence for (almost deification of thanks to the camera work) of death, what we have is a scene that easily qualifies as transcendence, if we adhere to Paul Schraeder's definition. Lubezki manages to craft a convincing picture of heaven without ever leaving the realm of the living, which I call a job well done. He and Malick understand that death is not an end, so much as it is a celebration of the middle. With a good camera man, it's not hard to do so.

7. Last Of The Mohicans – Dante Spinotti

This movie is probably responsible for my appreciation of nature. It's why while riding in trains or cars I'm constantly tempted to get out and become part of my surroundings. Michael Mann's tribute to the ways of the Native American (as some kind of bastard Native American myself, I get to relate on more than one level to this movie), namely their constant graciousness toward the kind earth they live on. All you really need to understand the genius of this movie and of Dante Spinotti's lens; Hawkeye, Uncas, and Chingachgook run through the woods chasing after a buck. Their surroundings whir past them, occasionally giving us glimpses of the deep greens, browns, and blues of the woods. Finally they settle on a good spot to take the animal down. In a clearing, with water running through a small brook, rich foliage both living and dying, the sun nearly down, providing minimal light. There they claim their prey and then they give thanks, while all around returns to it's usual stillness and the beauty of the natural world is restored. These men do not top the food chain, they are merely one rung; nor do they stand out against their background, they are merely one piece of a sensational picture.

8. Sweet Movie - Pierre Lhomme

This movie is little known in the United States outside of the ravenous cineastes who hunger for each new Criterion release. This, friends, is a damn shame. The movie, a madcap fusion of political theory and sexual politics in the extreme, is made all the more poignant because the beauty of its most puzzling and challenging images is identical to that of its most serene. Take for example that a scene of two people copulating in a vat of sugar is just as clear and breath-taking as that of a long shot of a boat made out trinkets and political artifacts with Karl Marx as the figurehead tooling down a crowded canal. The movie's incendiary nature wouldn't be half as effective without Pierre Lhomme's beautification of every dirty detail, and this movie gets pretty dirty.

9. I Fidanzati - Lamberto Caimi

Black and White photography is easy to make look good, easy to look sloppy and incoherent, and hard to make perfect. Would you believe that one of the most mesmerizing sequences in the history of black and white film was shot by a first-time cinematographer. I guess technically I Fidanzati was Lamberto Caimi's third film, but his work on his first movie, Il Posto, was essentially identical to his work here. Ermanno Olmi's films, which were Caimi's first gigs, evolved out of work-place documentaries their factory produced, which were amazingly well-realized and insightful. Even more impressive was that the photography was just as impressive as anything that showed up in any of Fellini's films of the same period. The sequence I described earlier takes place about midway through the film. The protagonist walks from a beach to a tired-looking derrick nearby. It looks like a precursor to the kind of work Robert Elswitt would do in There Will Be Blood. The textural capabilities of black and white film are as pronounced as I've ever seen them.

10. Apocalypse Now – Vittorio Storaro

I once tried to explain to someone why I loved cinematography so much, using Apocalypse Now as a sort of exhibit A (my actual wording was fairly juvenile, but it was only to get my point across). I've often thought of the film as DP Vittorio Storaro's as much as director Francis Ford Coppola's because he's half the reason this movie is so outstanding. When Martin Sheen reads over Kurtz' dossier while "Satisfaction" blares on Clean's radio, there's nothing better. The contrast between Sheen's tanned, hairy skin, and the crystal blue waters below him have long symbolized the genius of the film; light vs. dark, American men vs. the natural world. The point becomes clearer minutes later when Robert Duvall's Air Mobile unit shreds the bejesus out of VC target zone so that he can surf a six foot peak. The overwhelming violence stood out to my friend, which is of course the point of an anti-war film. Another viewing or a little more knowledge of cinematography and she'd see that the reason anti-war films of this caliber work is because, like Children of Men, the violence is shrouded in so glorious a light, because that's how it appears to the men who make war and because that is how a clear picture is crafted. How do you make someone remember your anti-war message? You give them images they'll never forget - they can be violent, they can be troubling, but they can also be beautiful.

11. A Very Long Engagement - Bruno Delbonnel
12. Master & Commander: The Far Side Of The World: Russel Boyd
13. Birth - Harris Savides
14. The Thin Red Line – John Toll
15. Maitresse – Nestor Almendros
16. Down by Law – Robby Müller
17. Au Revoir Les Enfants - Renato Berta
18. The Third Man - Robert Krasker
19. Gate Of Flesh - Shigeyoshi Mine
20. Broken Flowers – Frederick Elmes
21. The Village – Roger Deakins
22. Lawrence Of Arabia – Freddie Young
23. Y Tu Mama Tambien – Emmanuel Lubezki
24. The Straight Story – Freddie Francis
25. Manhattan - Gordon Willis
26. Days Of Heaven – Nestor Almendros
27. Great Expectations – Emmannuel Lubezki
28. The Conformist – Vittorio Storaro
29. Sleepy Hollow – Emmannuel Lubezki
30. Contempt – Raoul Coutard
31. Cries & Whispers – Sven Nykvist
32. George Washington – Tim Orr
33. Youth Without Youth - Mihai Malaimare Jr.
34. Fargo – Roger Deakins
35. Brief Encounter - Robert Krasker
36. Blowup - Carlo Di Palma
37. Pierrot Le Fou – Raoul Coutard
38. McCabe & Mrs. Miller – Vilmos Zgismond
39. Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix – Slawomir Idziak
40. A Little Princess – Emmanuel Lubezki
41. Gosford Park – Andrew Dunn
42. There Will Be Blood – Robert Elswitt
43. Interiors - Gordon Willis
44. Port of Shadows - Eugen Schüfftan
45. Ivan's Childhood - Vadim Yusov
46. Let Sleeping Corpses Lie - Francisco Sempere
47. Blood For Dracula - Luigi Kuveiller
48. 28 Days Later – Anthony Dod Mantle
49. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – Peter Pau
50. The Mission - Chris Menges

My Favourite Film Number 4

This is part of my effort to write about my 100 favorite films in two pages or less. This one is still in it's rough stages.

The Last Of The Mohicans
by Michael Mann

In order for one to understand my love for this film, one must know the role it has played in my life. My childhood had a very definite incidental soundtrack; my parents loved music and movies more than anything else I can think of. Along with the music of Richard Thompson, R.E.M., and Talking Heads, there were films that both my mom and dad loved enough to watch regularly. The film that enthralled me most of these white noise pictures was Michael Mann’s Last of the Mohicans. As a child it was easy to understand why I loved it: the sound of cannons and muskets firing, that visceral score, swordsmen on horseback, chaotic atmosphere, intense fighting with knives and hatchets, what’s not to love? As I got older and began to remember the film, I felt I probably had an incomplete picture as I don’t think I had ever sat down and watched it all the way through. When I finally took the time to view our battered VHS copy, I was amazed there was so much I had missed. It took a few years to appreciate the nature of the romantic direction it takes, the criticism of the colonial mindset, and that the reason I loved watching every second was because of the unbelievably gorgeous cinematography, but I did know that this film was going to last forever because at its core was unbridled passion the likes of which I’d never encountered before and have rarely seen since.

The plot, though idiosyncratic to boot, might be the most satisfying love story ever filmed. In the forests of an America caught in the midst of the French Indian War, a white man raised by Mohawk Indians and the daughter of a Scottish general fighting the French meet by chance. When the English regiment assigned to protect the woman, Cora Munroe and her sister on their way to their father’s garrison, they are ambushed by a Huron war party. The man, Hawkeye (Nathaniel by birth), his adopted father and brother come to their rescue and escort the sisters and Cora’s inept suitor Duncan to the fort. Nathaniel and Cora do not understand each other, and are at odds for a time due to their differences. When they see that perhaps they are not so different, they begin to fall in love, unfortunately this happens to coincide with Nathaniel’s decision to lead the colonial militia stationed at Munroe’s fort to leave the fort to check on their families (the Huron war party has evidently been busy). Nathaniel is nearly hanged for conspiracy to aid sedition, but a brief truce with the French leads the English army out of the fort and into the arms of the waiting Huron. It seems their leader, Magua, has a blood feud with Munroe and wishes to see both the man and his two daughters killed. This proves to be a greater obstacle than British shackles for Nathaniel, who must rescue Cora after she is taken north to the Huron land by force, but it is also the single greatest display of love ever filmed.

As a kid, I got that this movie was different from most others; I returned to this before I re-watched many of the movies intended for my age group. I know that this is due mostly to my love of the film’s soundtrack. Trevor Jones’s half of the score sounds like the musical equivalent of thunder and makes everything on screen ten thousand times as urgent and romantic. It was because of the music that I understood that though the violence is what attracted me to the film, it is the boundless love between the heroes that makes this film transcendent of its time and constraints. The movie is powerful enough, for example, to leave its weak source materials behind (which include James Fennimore Cooper’s unwieldy novel and the 1936 movie starring Randolph Scott). This is a movie that benefited from the time of its conception as much as it did the people who crafted it. There are the two composers (Randy Edelman was brought on due to time constraints to score lighter sections of the film, the standout being the scene in which a courier is dispatched from the fort), Jones’ music being some of the greatest ever written for a film (the source of his recurring theme was a Celtic traditional). The two greatest scenes of the film (Hawkeye’s race across the battlefield to rescue Cora, and the final clash between the Mohicans and Hurons) would be flat were it not for Jones’ compositions. His music is so important because so much goes unspoken. Michael Mann and co-writer Christopher Crowe were smart enough to leave much of the feelings (the resentments especially) silent so that the resolution of these conflicts could be simple and effective. When Magua murders his enemy, he makes a point of telling him why; when he fights with Chingachgook, Hawkeye’s father, they have no need for words. When Hawkeye and Cora first kiss passionately to Jones’s swooning strings, they don’t utter so much as a word. Mann knows that words aren’t always good enough, nor are they always necessary.

Who better to capture the urgency and passion of a man who discovers how much he will do for love than Daniel Day-Lewis. He may have spent 8 months in the woods learning how to run and fire a musket at the same time, but what makes his performance is the fire in his eyes when Cora is in danger. Today’s stable of leading men simply pale in comparison to Day-Lewis, who is at much at home throwing a knife as he is madly declaring his love with what little language his Hawkeye knows. Because we love the character, because we wish him to succeed, we suspend our disbelief. Could three men continually outfight entire regiments of armed soldiers? When the outcome is so pleasing, it’s hard to answer truthfully. With the music pounding, the brilliantly choreographed battle raging in the background, and the heroine in danger, belief is happily given over to the beauty of the film. Michael Mann has always been a master of building tension, and here he shows the simplest way to achieve it; two lovers are apart, one is in danger, the other starts running and will not stop.

Dante Spinotti may not have a lot of other work to his name, but he more than earns his place among the world’s greatest cinematographers here. Spinotti succeeds in making the woods and water that surround the characters as beautiful as the story itself. In a film about an America untainted by capitalism or the age of industry, he shows just how flawlessly and effortlessly gorgeous the natural world is. His footage of the North Carolina woodlands is stunning and has few rivals. While Mann’s compositions are doing their part, it’s the fathomless color of an endless world that captures the eye. From the opening pursuit of a buck, where every flash of moving bodies swims in a chasm of glorious, untouched scenery. The surroundings lose much of their charm when the greedy English occupy the frame (in one striking example, a perfectly composed shot of a bridge and its reflection on the pond below is slowly crossed by horse-drawn carriages). When the soldiers transporting Cora and her sister are ambushed, the scene is dark, dusty, and surrounded by dying foliage. The makeshift road is a pale brown and the forest is enshrouded in gun smoke and the red from uniforms and blood (as in the mesmerizing clash between the Hurons and the English refugees). When Nathaniel and his family take charge and lead the three survivors to Munroe’s fort, they immediately happen upon a small river framed in a rock bed. Between the deep green of the forest that extends for miles around, and the pristine water and stone, it is perfection. The lesson that Cora learns by falling in love with Hawkeye, that one must abandon material foibles and the petty English gentrification of the land, is one that Spinotti’s camera has already taught the audience subconsciously. This is a film that not only celebrates the love between two disparate people, but also declares its love for the land like fire from a cannon.