Zulawski Dies

Yesterday, Andrzej Zulawski, the director of my favorite film, died.

He wasn't the greatest director or even a very consistent one. I doubt he'll appear on the Oscar death montage. He was never much interested in entertaining or educating. Instead, he strived always to transcend: to get behind and beyond the limits of story, character, intellect, morality, sexuality and even the very medium itself. More than anything he brought intensity to cinema, to a degree that often drove his films into incoherence and himself into bout of madness.

His films include the monumental unfinished sci-fi epic On the Silver Globe, which got his expelled from communist Poland, bizarre but compelling adaptations of authors as diverse as Dostoevsky and Madame de La Fayette and a quartet of unrated/NC-17 films starring his wife Sophie Marceau (probably best known as the bond villain from The World Is Not Enough).

I've been a longtime fan, once checking out an English language libretto translation of the Russian opera Boris Godounov so I could follow along with a bootleg of his adaptation.

Possession (1981), the art-horror cult film most often atop my fluctuating top ten favorites, is his masterpiece. Back when the film was a rare collector's item, I found it at an old library on VHS and gathered together a group of like-minded friends for our first viewing. It left me dazed and overwhelmed. It was the moment I realized cinema would be a lifelong passion.

Almost a decade ago, I wrote a long and loving review.

Zulawski's obituary in the NYT.

His final film, Cosmos, an adaption of Witold Gombrowicz's novel, was finished just last year. I look forward to it.

Winter's Bone

Meth labs, child neglect, chill weather, cattle shows, Cardinal’s regalia, squirrel hunting, military aspirations, yards full of trucks, bales of hay and barbed wire, framed pictures of cats, bad roots and worse facial hair.

Yup, “Winter’s Bone,” already being declared one of the best films of the year so far, is definitely set in my adopted home state of Missouri. It won the top prize at Sundance this year.

Ree Dolly is a young girl in the Ozarks who’s become a rather self-sufficient parent to her younger siblings in lieu of their mentally absent mother and physically absent father. When she learns that her dad, who until recently was serving a jail sentence for drug production, put up their home for bail and then skipped town, she has no choice but to hunt him down through his unsavory relatives and coconspirators. Her questions stir up a hornet’s nest. The resulting nightmare is film noir served Missouri-style.

Jennifer Lawrence is superb in the central role and the supporting cast is memorably colorful without sacrificing the degree of development and realism necessary to avoid the usual ‘evil hillbilly’ clichés. The plot builds with just the right level of mounting suspense and foreboding and plays out like a Coen brothers film without the amused detachment.

Daniel Woodrell, author of the source novel, has previously had his novel “Woe to Live On” adapted by Ang Lee as “Ride with the Devil” (released by Criterion this April).

Cannes 2010 Summary

Multiple forewarning are in order for this post. First of all, I've never been to Cannes nor have I seen any of the films this year. If you are interested in first-hand information, you're probably better off reading indieWire or whatever. All I can offer is some perspective on the director's past works, with recommendations and random opinions.

Which leads me to the second caveat. This post started as an email, a Cannes summary that I've been doing for a couple of years (but almost didn't happen this year because I forgot about the festival) and which grew rather large and started to include pictures. That being the case, bear with the strong opinions and schizophrenic writing style.

Cannes 2010:

This year's jury presidents was an interesting set of personal favorites, all directors: Tim Burton, Atom Egoyan and Claire Denis.

A lot of attention was focused around the director who wasn't there, Jafar Panahi. Panahi is an Iranian directors whose films implicitly criticize the religious, class and gender divides in his country and since his arrest in March on presumably political grounds he's been the focus of attention and support from cinema-lovers, directors and film programs the world over. I've only seen his most recent films, "Crimson Gold" and "Offside," both quite excellent. Now is a great time to get more familiar with the work of a filmmaker who really puts his neck on the line.

This year's golden palm went, only mildly surprisingly, to Apichatpong Weerasethakul (who just goes by Joe if you're not Thai), who probably couldn't stop winning prizes if he wanted to. His latest is "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives," an arty ghost story of sorts. I've kept up on Weerasethakul's films over the years, but he's one of the few directors who I almost wish would just stop. He has these amazing concepts that never really work for me and drag along in the most tedious manner. Yet I can't help watching his movies. His fans, typically high-brow critics, go into ecstatic fits over every shot and he's generally considered one of the greatest international directors to emerge from the last decade.

YouTube trailer, which accurately conveys his trademark pacing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk-EoUb0nvg&feature=player_embedded

The only Weerasethakul film I've genuinely liked so far is "Tropical Malady" which plods along like a typical dreamy queer cinema indie romance until halfway through when one character apparently morphs into a murderous tiger and disappears into the jungle and the other characters follows him on a sort of naked spirit-quest hunt. Or something. I've been trying to get people I know to see the film just so I can have someone to talk about it with. His latest one sounds interesting, but usually that ends up being a evil trick.

Best director went to Mathieu Amalric, everyone's favorite unsavory Frenchman (Quantum of Solace, Munich, A Christmas Tale, The Heartbeat Detector, etc), who only very occasionally steps into the director's chair. His film, "On Tour" is about a travelling burlesque show with Amalric as manager. Enjoy the poster:

Lee Chang-Dong won the screenplay prize for "Poetry" about an elderly South Korean woman with Alzheimer's who discover poetry, for better or worse. The buzz is that it's much better than that sounds, but I can't help thinking Chang-Dong should have won the screenplay prize back in 2000 for his more political "Peppermint Candy." The film is famous for ordering its scenes in reverse, beating "Memento" to the screen by a nose. Chang-Dong sat on the Cannes jury last year, so you just know the whole thing was rigged (just kidding).

The actor prize was split between Javier Bardem in Alejandro Inarritu's "Biutiful" and Elio Germano in Daniele Luchetti's "Our Life." Neither sounds particularly interesting outside of the performances, but most of the press says otherwise.

The actress prize went to Juliette Binoche in Abbas Kiarostami's "Certified Copy," which has been getting mixed reviews. I love Binoche, but Kiarostami is very hit or miss for me. His work in the 1980's and 1990's from his Koker trilogy to "Taste of Cherry" is excellent, but everything since then has tended to repeat itself and get progressively slower and preachier. I think Binoche has some masterplan to work with every major director in the world: Godard (France), Kieslowski (Poland), Haneke (Austria), Hou (Taiwan) and now Kiarostami (Iran) to name a few. Of her recent stuff, "Summer Hours" by Olivier Assayas is quite good, though her hair is awful. Binoche has the dishonor of being on this year's shockingly crappy official Cannes 2010 poster.

Other interesting films in the main competition:

Takeshi Kitano returns to familiar yakuza grounds with "Outrage." After "Fireworks," "Sonatine" and "Brothers" I'm not sure what he has left to say on the topic, but like Suzuki's yakuza pics and Scorsese's gangster films, it never really gets old.

Im Sang-soo's has remade the crazy 1960's South Korean classic "The Housemaid." I recently watched the original and I absolutely adore it. You can watch it free online at MUBI (formerly The Auteurs). I don't think there's anything the remake can offer, but Sang-soo might be just the right person to try it. His "The President's Last Bang" is a brilliant dark comedy deconstruction of Park Chung-hee's 1979 assassination that shows he knows how to handle serious material with a wry touch. The poster for The Housemaid sucks, so here is The President's Last Bang:

UK social realist Ken Loach continues his penchant for controversial political films ("Land and Freedom" and "The Wind that Shakes the Barley" being solid examples) with "Route Irish" about two pals who join a private security force in Iraq. I love Loach's work so I give him the benefit of the doubt, though I tend to prefer his films about heavily-accented locals living on the brink of poverty and crime ("My Name Is Joe," "Riff-Raff," "Sweet Sixteen"). Route Irish was actually was an early favorite for the top prize (in the Western press) along with...

... fellow Brit Mike Leigh's "Another Year." Maybe they split the vote? Leigh manages to lay bare the private hopes and fears of working class Britain in his semi-improv dramedies like "Naked," "Life is Sweet," "Happy-Go-Lucky" and his masterpiece "Secrets & Lies." Recently he has tried his hand at a variety of historical and biographical topics, but this sounds like a return to his contemporary preoccupations.

Bertrand Travernier, an understated director who doesn't seem to have very many champions in the America, has a new film called "The Princess of Montpensier," a romance set in the 1562 French Wars of Religion. It will probably be pretty good. No one will see it.

The only other director I'm familiar with from the main competition this year is Doug Liman and he doesn't bear talking about. See one reason below:

Un Certain Regard:

Cristi Puiu finally follows up his 2005 arthouse smash "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" (a key film in the burgeoning Romanian New Wave) with "Aurora," the second installment of a planned six part series. At over 3 hours long, expect it to be brilliant, but exhausting. From Wikipedia: " Puiu spent five months searching for an appropriate lead actor before deciding to cast himself."

Jean-Luc Godard's lastest film "Socialism" had its debut, after being the subject of some excitement for almost three years. I expect it to be a free-form meditation on whatever topics come into Godard's head, similar to his other 21st century works like "In Praise of Love" and "Our Music." These always tend to be pretty interesting, but I'm on board with 99% of the population in preferring his work from the 1960's. When you get right down to it, I'd probably rather just look at pictures of Godard muse Anna Karina:

Jia Zhang-ke continues to regularly stamp out intriguing works and now has "I Wish I Know." He's regarded as the best of the Chinese 6th Generation and I've recently been exploring his work. "Still Life" would be my recommendations for those who are considering giving him a try. I suspect his importance as a modern filmmaker will only continue to grow.

Manoel de Oliveira, who at 101 is cinema's oldest active filmmaker (no one ever fails to mention this when talking about him, so why should I?), is showing "The Strange Case of Angelica." I wish I could find more of his enormous oeuvre, but it all seems rather rare. I watched "Abraham's Valley" in a mediocre dub and it only just whet my appetite without really satisfying me. As far as Portuguese directors go, I suspect de Oliveira is more worth seeking out than his fellow arthouse favorite Pedro Costa, whose stuff is just mind-numbing.

Out of Competition:

Opening the festival was Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood" which has already hit theaters in the US and word is that it is pretty awful. Other films outside the competition are "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger," another Woody Allen film on the same old Allen romantic entanglement themes and the usual all-star cast that deserves something better, "Tamara Drewe" by Stephen Frears ("High Fidelity," "The Queen") and Oliver Stone's sequel "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," set during the 2008 financial crisis (I actually kind of want to see it).

Why does everyone love getting Russell Crowe dirty?

Sundance 2010

Sine I've not posted this year, I've let slip the chance to have topical discussions about the 2009 year-in-review, various Oscar-related issues and my experience at Sundance. But to assuage my guilty conscience I will briefly summarize the latter.

Katie and I stayed in the mountains next to Salt Lake City with our good friend Exactly Why at her gorgeous home and got to try a lot of local cuisine. We made it to 6 movies, already ably reviewed over at Exactly Why's blog. I'll give a quick rundown in my own words:

The Red Chapel - A subversive documentary about a 'spastic' Danish comedy team that travels to North Korea for a tense and awkward cultural exchange. The film says as much about the ethics of the comedians and film crew as it does about the country and ultimately runs the gamut from outrageous to depressing. Wry and thought-provoking, I can't fault Sundance for awarding this their International Documentary award.

Obselidia - A gentle road-movie romance about a reclusive collector of obsolete things and a woman who runs a silent movie theater. While it was thankfully not overly-precious (like too many of the recent rash of 'quirky' indie hits), it can be a bit on the preachy side, though I felt its heart was largely in the right place. Great acting, a comfortable script and an assured pacing made this a very charming and worthwhile little film.

Enter the Void - Gaspar Noe (Irreversible) brings his latest experiment to its third audience (after controversial Cannes and Toronto screenings) and it is both his most abrasive and most visually daring yet. Enter the Void is told primarily from the drifting perspective of a drug dealer's disembodied soul seeking reincarnation as he shifts in and out of his past and the grim present of his sister's deteriorating life as a stripper in neon-lit eye-searing Tokyo. Noe's trademark whirling camera antics are impressive, and yet unpleasantly dizzying and ultimately tedious. Working with an interesting concept and no shortage of auteur flare, the film struggles to find somewhere to end and, after 155 minutes and half a dozen opportunities to walk away with a dignified finish, bellyflops into an audacious, ill-adviced and hilarious finale (think orgasms, CG and a verrry intimate POV). Noe came out afterwards and confessed that we weren't supposed to laugh. For all that, I kind of admire the film, in that no-holds noble failure type of way.

Incidentally, when asked during the Q&A about his next project, Noe shyly admitted it would be an out-and-out porno. He didn't sound like he was kidding. With Lars von Trier (Pink Prison), Steven Soderbergh (The Girlfriend Experiment), Crispin Glover (It Is Fine. Everything Is Fine), and Kevin Smith to name a few, there seems to be more of an uptick in serious artists interested in the subject matter than I can remember since P. T. Anderson's Boogie Nights .

Tucker & Dale vs Evil - A spot-on horror comedy that presents a common film scenario (teens on a campy trip beset by villainous locals) from the sympathetic side of the rednecks. Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk (Firefly) are perfectly cast as two lovable hillbillies who rescue (not kidnap) a beautiful psych student and befriend her while her former pals get themselves killed with such persistence that Tucker and Dale believe them to be a violent suicide cult. The semi-gimmicky plot actually manages to sustain itself pretty well and the film earned constant laughs from me, my friends and the entire audience. It is actually more entertaining than most of the films it riffs on, such as Friday the 13th, The Hills Have Eyes, Wrong Turn and even Deliverance.

Buried - Ryan Reynolds wakes up in a coffin and soon receives a cell phone call that if he can't arrange for a million dollar ransom, he will be left to suffocate. The camera never cuts outside of his tiny confines, creating an incredibly tense and utterly claustrophobic nightmare scenario that manages to stay exciting during every minute of depleting oxygen. The films even manages a good deal of creative visual variety through changes in angle and light source; the yellow of a lighter's flame, the faded red of a flashlight, the cold blue of the cell phone, the eerie green of chemical glow sticks and the amble use of pitch black create a balance of mood and practicality. Though contrived, it is easy to overlook the weaker plot points. The film easily earns a spot amongst the great low budget horror films of the digital era.

Splice - Speaking of which, Vincenzo Natali, the Canadian wunderkind behind low-budget high-concept horror classic Cube, unleashes his new genetics-experiment-gone-wrong thriller. Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley play a pair of married researchers whose gene-spliced anti-body incubator becomes a beloved pet and eventually a surrogate child. The film plays like an even-more-allegorical modern-day Frankenstein where far more than just medical ethics gets ludicrously violated. The acting and effects are top-notch, but the script may be an acquired taste. Fans of early Cronenberg or anyone willing to mix parenting woes and childrearing psychology with science-fiction and horror conventions will certainly enjoy.

Overall Sundance was a wondeful experience and I felt like all the films we saw were either highly entertaining or at least very interesting. I hope to go again next year. Katie has recently moved out to Vernal, Utah (where there's a good chance I'll one day join her) so we may be "right next door" in the midwestern 3-4 hour sense.

SLIFF 2009 Overview

It’s time I came out of my book-buried retirement, at least temporarily, to cover the St. Louis International Film Festival, one of my favorite local events of the year. Showing remarkable restraint, in my own opinion, I saw only 13 screenings. I’ll do capsule reviews of them over the next few days.

This year’s festival had more than 250 films and my guess is that it was the best-attended year yet. Most screenings I attended were pretty packed and almost every major film and even some not-so-major films sold out (good for the festival, bad for audiences). I was too slow to get tickets for “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus,” which goes on my list of regrets along with accidentally missing the undistributed “The Headless Woman” due to my own clerical error. In retrospect, I also wish I’d seen “Beeswax” by mumblecore icon Andrew Bujalski, but I’ll look for it on DVD.

The best films I saw were “Terribly Happy” (a highly engrossing dark-comedy noir) and “Three Monkeys” (a Turkish masterpiece also of a noirish persuasion). Nothing I saw this year was particularly bad, though my least favorite is the current metacritic darling “35 Shots of Rum.” I lived up to the goals I laid out about a year ago: I saw documentaries (“24 City,” “We Live in Public”), shorts, local St. Louis work (“Edgar Allen Poe’s Ligeia”), the latest by several great directors (Jia Zhangke, Claire Denis, Nuri Bilge Ceylan) and a film from a country whose cinema I’ve never seen before (Ecuador).

For the first time in three years, I did not see or predict the winners of the main festival prizes. “Precious,” which I actively avoided (I am willing to admit I may have been wrong, but it was coming out in regular theaters the very next day so there was no rush), took the top prize. “Marcello, Marcello,” which I actively avoided because it looked overly cute and corny, took the ‘Best International Feature’ award. Best documentary went to “9500 Liberty.”

As usual, the commercials were the only really bothersome aspect of the festival, especially odious to viewers like myself who have to see them repeated 10+ times (maybe I wouldn’t be bothered if I watched more TV). Stella Artois continues their theme of misguided pretentiousness, Metromix St. Louis has not backed down from (or even changed) their loud and obnoxious ad claiming that St. Louis has a nightlife and SLIFF’s Coolfire Media spots again focus on genre movies (although to be fair they had many more this year and the ad was much better), but the standout newcomer is a cheesy promotion from some St. Louis culture center which has the gall to suggest that a weekend in St. Louis is the equivalent of touring the great cities of Europe. Incidentally, a live volunteer came out before each showing to ask that we all thank these and other sponsors. So, um… thanks.

Anyway, it really was a good time. Three of my friends from out of town stayed with me for the first weekend and we kept up a pretty constant diet of fine films, delicious food and erudite conversation (like whether Hugo the Hippo could beat Razorback in a fight). I was satisfied with the films I saw without exhausting myself utterly. I look forward to next year!

Upcoming SciFi Adaptations of Note

I’ve been doing a lot more reading lately than in the past few years and indulging two of my literary loves: science fiction and great classics. Inevitably, I’ve been borrowing the free time from my movie-watching fund and that’s led me, in turn, to fewer posts of late. I plan to maintain the slower-than-previous rate of about once weekly for the near future, and I apologize if there’s anyone out there disappointed.

I tend towards prolonged binges (I cite my peak obsession periods with gialli, Czech New Wave, animations as examples) and my reading habits are no exception. During high school I read for leisure voraciously, while in college almost not at all (recreational reading had little appeal with all the assigned reading to deal with) and I can feel myself entering a renewed upswing. I blame my friend and fellow literature-lover Josh for enabling my born-again bookworm habits.

So I thought I’d spend some time on something I’ve rarely done on this blog: looking at works I’ve read and participating in the growing buzz surrounding their cinematic adaptations. My specific goal today is to infect a few readers with my enthusiasm for contemporary sci-fi, both in book and (upcoming) film forms.

The most rapidly approaching of what I’ve recently read is “The Road” (written 2006, release date Oct 2009) by Cormac McCarthy. I had to read McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses” (1992) back when I was in high school and I pretty much hated it, perhaps because of my mild aversion to westerns or my strong distaste for works “exploring issues of masculinity” or the pedantry of my teacher. But a slew of “Year’s Best” awards, followed by a Pulitzer prize (the only science fiction book to yet receive one!) convinced me to give McCarthy another try. I was quickly won over.

“The Road” is the seemingly futile journey of a man and his son, the latter of which was born shortly after an unexplained disaster that has put an end to civilization. A miserable decade or so has passed in the meantime and all plant and animal life has been extinguished. Only a few human survivors are left wandering a nightmarish landscape of desolation, despair, hunger and fear. McCarthy’s prose, blunt and stripped down but endowed with a poetic precision, was born to describe canvases of post-apocalyptic debris and intimations of abhorrent inhumanity. As an enthusiast of the end-of-the-world subgenre, I can acknowledge that “The Road” isn’t particularly original, but Cormac’s writing blesses it with greatness.

I watched the movie trailer shortly after finishing “The Road” and was a bit torn. There is a chance, looking at the grim imagery, that the film could capture the bleak atmosphere, arguably the most important element of the book. Less promising is the role of Charlize Theron. I admire her acting, but I’m skeptical of her character’s implied screen time: in the book, she only appears in a handful of brief flashbacks. Viggo Mortensen has the lead role, and I’m more than a little excited about that, especially given his recent successful collaborations with Cronenberg.

Interestingly, “The Road” wasn’t even nominated for a Hugo award, often considered the premier prize for SF literature. (Incidentally, “Spin,” by the shockingly yet-to-be-adapted Robert Charles Wilson, won the 2006 prize and would make a fine film.) However, 2008’s Hugo winner “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” (which also swept the Nebula and Locus Awards) is slated to be directed by the Coen brothers, perhaps sometime in late 2010. What’s odd about this book winning these particular prizes is that “YPU” isn’t really SF at all. It’s alternative history. Here’s the premise:

In 1940 a proposal was circulated to grant a portion of Alaska to Jewish refugees fleeing WWII and the Nazi genocide. In real life, the idea never came to fruition, but in Michael Chabon’s novel, Sitka, Alaska is now a bustling Jewish metropolis while Israel lacked the manpower to maintain itself. Meyer Landsman is a down-and-out, divorced and drunken detective who wanders the urban milieu of “the Frozen Chosen” trying to find the killer of a junky/chess prodigy/messiah before the city reverts back to US control. The utterance on the lips of every character is apt: “Strange times to be a Jew.” The style is hard-boiled noir, the writing flowery and liberally sprinkled with Yiddish (a glossary is included) and the plot well-laden with cynicism, conspiracies and revelations.

It makes a neat little circle to consider that the Coen brothers recently adapted Cormac McCarthy with “No Country for Old Men” (2007) and I can’t see any reason why they wouldn’t also make a cinematic masterpiece out of material as strong as “YPU,” too. My biggest concern is that the plot’s first half is so dense with groundwork and setup that it really tends to drag (though it all becomes important later). The first action scene is about 180 pages into the 400 page book and mystery doesn’t start to reveal itself until well after that, though it’s a pleasure to soak up the charming language and witty metaphors in the meantime. The Coen brothers will likely have to rewrite the complicated story if they want to get a more conventional modern-noir pacing, though they’ve got enough fame, financing and natural iconoclasm to defy Hollywood’s expectations. Whatever they come up with, I’m confident it will be compelling.

Michael Chabon will probably see his works adapted quite often (his “Wonder Boys” (2000) already initiated the trend) given that he’s such a well-regarded contemporary writer of the “serious” vein while simultaneously a pioneer and champion for popular genre literature. He’s also supposed to be at work on the script for the Edgar Rice Burrough’s (“Tarzan”) adaptation of “A Princess of Mars” titled “John Carter of Mars.” If it meets its 2012 release date, it will hit the centennial of the 1912 planetary romance novel, which was a major inspiration to the golden age SF writers and several NASA members, but which is a thoroughly awful book by contemporary literary and scientific standards. I’m encouraged only by the prospects of a major rewrite and the selection of Andrew Stanton (“Finding Nemo,” “WALL-E”) as director.

But coming back to more recent (anything after 2000 being recent on my scale) SF novels, I noticed that Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go” (written 2005) is being set for a 2010 adaptation. The premise involves children being raised at an isolated boarding school where mysterious incidents hint at a disturbing purpose. I read it after Time magazine included it amongst the top 100 novels written since 1923 (it was one of the most recent to make the list) and, despite a twist that may intentionally elude no one, it is quite stirring and strangely satisfying. Ishiguro is a stellar writer who has already gotten acquainted with adaptations: “The Remains of the Day” and “The Saddest Music in the World” being brilliant films that emerged from his work.

Mark Romanek (“One Hour Photo”) is in the director’s chair and I’m happy to see the great Charlotte Rampling as one of the teachers. I drew back with fear when I saw that Keira Knightley headlines the cast, especially considering that she doesn’t have the lead role. I don’t consider Knightley to be a particularly strong performer, but I’m willing to cross my fingers and see how the whole thing goes.

All told, I’m pretty excited about the potential SF we could see hit theaters in the near future. I’m sure I’m missing plenty of other novels on their way to the screen, but my SF specialty is really more grounded in the 1950’s-1970’s, decades that haven’t been treated particularly kindly by recent adapters. Anyway, please chime in on the comment section if you want to alert me to other SF you’ve been anticipating.

Bootlegs, Ethics and Navigating the Grey Zone

Today I’d like to talk a little about a subject that can make a lot of cinephiles, film bloggers and internet users in general a little squeamish, if not outright defensive: copyright issues. I’m going to write about it at length, because I think it’s important and that there are a lot of misconceptions and misjudgments out there.

I’m going to try and make a distinction about what’s legal and what’s ethical based on my own knowledge and experience acquiring non-mainstream films and writing about them. I’ll finish by discussing some of the iffy “grey zone” questions I've had to ask myself.


What pop-culture has to say

First of all, let’s talk about the most common case, which is downloading a movie from the internet. Let’s assume this is a relatively recent (last 30 years) movie made in America by someone or some company that has not divested its copyright prerogatives and that it is widely available from a distributer on a modern format like DVD. The way I understand it, this describes most movies that are pirated. There is no question, none whatsoever, that downloading such a film is illegal and unethical.

I don’t think most people pirating movies have any doubts that what they’re doing is illegal, but they still manage to rationalize it. Downloading media has become so widespread that there is an “it’s OK because everybody’s doing it” atmosphere. It’s like drinking during prohibition, right? As I was attending college various techniques like direct connect and torrents became ubiquitous and many, many students I knew, otherwise ethical in other areas of their lives, had no qualms with amassing huge collections of illegal works. Most of my cinephile friends have downloaded a film at least once.

But doing something that is wrong just because lots of people are doing is about the worst logic I can think of and shows a weakness of character and general cynicism that it pretty contemptible. That’s why almost anyone who regularly violates copyright usually convinces themselves that what they are doing is not actually wrong. Perhaps illegal, but not particularly unethical. “Nobody gets hurt except maybe some corporate fat-cats.” Some of the rationalizations I hear people spout make me madder than if they’d just admitted they didn’t want to fork over their money.

A Chinese coworker of mine once explains how I should actually be on his side (pro-piracy), because bootlegging only hurts the big studios (who I’m always pillorying) and helps the common man see more movies (which I’m often advocating). In this popular self-serving fantasy, video pirates are technological freedom fighters committing heroic revolutionary acts. “Down with oppressive capitalism! Up with communal sharing of artistic works!”

Right. I’m sure self-interest never even enters into it. Much as I mistrust the rich and powerful, I don’t have much love for self-proclaimed Robin Hoods who steal from anyone who has what they want and give to themselves. If anyone, it’s the uploaders and free download sites who could claim to have society’s greater good at heart (though their substantial banner ads and popups make me think otherwise), but let’s at least not pretend downloading is about anything other than wanting to see a free movie.


What the law has to say

Any work, as soon as it is recorded in a fixed form is immediately protected by copyright. Films made for studios are considered “works for hire” and the rights belong to the producer and/or studio, not the director or screenwriter. No registration necessary. No copyright logo (©) necessary. No FBI warning necessary. These three things are included by major studios and distributers solely because they provide additional leverage when suing violators.

The copyright is held for 70 years after the author’s death (if made independently), 95 years from first date of publishing or 120 years from creation (whichever comes first).

In essence, you can not copy, distribute or display a film without permission if the rights are still in effect, subject to fair use. Fair use is a nebulous concept that takes into consideration the purpose, portion and influence on profit that a reproduction incurs. For instance, the screenshots that I take for use on this blog are explicitly protected because they are used for the purpose of a review, are not exploited for my money and represent a tiny fraction of the film in question.

But don’t get the idea that copyright is a simple matter. It is the realm of lawyers and complicated exceptions and elaborate flowcharts. (Though who doesn’t love a law that distinguishes separate treatments for parody and satire?) It can take a great deal of research to discover if a film’s copyrights have lapsed, putting it in public domain. I recently bought a 12-movie collection of silent “public domain” Hitchcock films from Best Buy. I’ve since discovered that most of them actually do have rights retained on them, but if the distributer, Best Buy and a reasonably sharp film blogger like myself didn’t know, can Joe Consumer be expected to do the research?

Well, copyright law does make provisions for people who commit what is called “innocent infringement” if the person was not aware and had no reason to believe that the work was still under copyright. You’d only be liable for about $200 per work. Willful infringement (most of what goes on online) is another matter, and if the work is registered, could result in as much as $150,000 per work. The law is much harsher on those who make a bootleg than it is with people who knowingly buy a bootleg. Downloading a film, by the way, counts as making an illegal copy. “Time-shifting,” recording a film off of TV to watch later, is covered by fair use.

There is no active agency that enforces copyright, which is one reason why most people get away with it. A complaint has to be issued from the authentic rights holder who must send a cease and desist letter and press suit themselves. If the work in question is not registered, they can only hope to recover the loss of profit they suffered, which often makes the effort worthless. If the work was registered, they can hit you for the numbers mentioned above.

Now here is something I want all the free film revolutionaries to pay close attention to: because the big studios register all their works, monitor a lot of internet sites and possess an army of lawyers with decades of experience, they are the ones mostly likely and most able to enforce their copyrights. They go through a lot of trouble to ensure that they do not lose profits because of piracy. They hire lobbyists to secure laws in their favor. They hire lawyers to sue companies and individuals. They raise the prices on DVDs to help recoup their losses.

They might still do these things to some extent even if piracy was not such a problem, but the more piracy goes on, the more they will react with aggressive business strategies. The bottom line is that when you score a point against a big studio by downloading one of their films, they will just take it out on people, often times the ones who are paying legally. It is the little companies and independent filmmakers, who are less able to defend themselves, that actually get hurt. Even if these victims are interested in fighting to enforce their copyrights, they have to pay court fees and waste time that could have gone to their continued creative output.


What ethics has to say

So if you actually care about making artistic works available to a wider audience then there are productive and ethical ways of championing that cause that are more credible than self-interest motivated piracy:
1) Support movements to change copyright law.
2) Help research and publicize lists of films that have not been renewed and are in the public domain.
3) Research films that are not available and not in public domain and organize campaigns to request those movies be released. When a large enough fan base makes itself known, there’s a much greater financial impetus to distribute unavailable films.
4) Support studios, distributors and filmmakers who make quality films available at reasonable prices.
5) Politely contact rights holders for permission or carefully utilize fair use provisions to present films in a non-profit, educational environment.
6) Make your own creative works and get them out to the public.

Complicated as copyright law is, the ethical questions surrounding the issue are even more slippery. At least in today’s culture I suspect that people are much more likely to obey their own judgment than the law, so talking about the ethical standpoint might be more convincing. If someone says they don’t believe in copyrights, they aren’t likely to hold back just because a rarely-enforced law says so.

So let’s look at some fundamental premises that copyright law takes for granted:
1) An artist’s work belongs to the artist or whoever commissioned the work and took the financial risk for it.
2) Artistic works such as film have value.
3) The person(s) in (1) has the sole right to modify, sell, exchange or license the work and to otherwise obtain the financial value they believe it to be worth.

I know a lot of people who claim to disagree with one or more of these ideas. For example, you might say that a responsible government has a duty to provide free access for its citizens to at least some of their culture’s creative heritage much the same way as it should ensure universal education and medical care for the poor. You might argue that fixing a price for a work of art is subjective, or disagree over why producers/studios have exclusive rights while the crew has none or quibble about the exact extent of the artist’s moral rights to their work (an area where the US trails a bit behind Europe).

I understand these and similar disagreements, but if you just plain don’t accept any of the basic premises above, you probably can’t be convinced of the need for copyrights. But if you’ve at least thought about the issues and developed and a worldview that isn’t merely self-serving, than at least you’re not obliviously taking bootlegs for granted.

Believe it or not, copyright law did originally have the public good in mind. It’s a balancing act: on one hand, you want to protect an artist’s copyright so that it is profitable and sustainable to create artistic works and on the other hand you want as many people as possible to have access to these works.

The original copyright act of 1709 issued rights for 14 years with a one-time optional renewal for 14 more years. This has since been extended to a rather ridiculous 95 years since its first publication (in our case, screening) which accounts for pretty much the entire history of cinema. I doubt if most people could even name a feature film from before 1914. Clearly the law has come to favor the rights holders over the public. Not coincidentally, those rights holders are largely giant media corporations with Washington influence. Indeed, supported by special interests groups like Disney, a succession of laws derisively called the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” has continued to push back the expiration date indefinitely.

At least with film, where a huge proportion of the profits are made within the first weekend of the release and most of the money even from rentals happens within a couple of years, I consider the lifetime of copyrights to be irrationally out of control. But if a studio or distributer continues to make their films widely available for reasonable prices and on modern formats, I still think it’s tough to violate copyrights and still allege the moral high ground. Especially these days with library’s stocked with classic films that are freely available to the public.

To me, the ethical question of rather it is OK to violate copyrights only really gets interesting when you look at films that are not widely or reasonably available or which aren’t available at all.



What I have to say

This is where I come in and start talking about my opinion on the ethics of unauthorized film distribution. It suffers from my own rationalizations and compromises, but I try to be honest about it and to hold myself to high standards, common sense and best intentions. I do think pretty much every film should be available to the world at a reasonable price (say, ~$50 or less), and in that sense I am guilty of my generation’s renowned sense of entitlement, but I’m not asking filmmakers or distributors to give something for nothing.

Solipsistic as it may sound, I’m going to conduct a Q&A with myself. That way, if anyone else wants to, they can copy just the list of questions and answer them based on their own convictions or present them to others as discussion points. Both might make for good exercises.

Q: How do you feel about borrowing movies between friends?
A: If money doesn’t exchange hands, I’m all for it. In fact, it’s one of my favorite ways of shaping cinephile converts.
The strict wording on some FBI warnings I’ve seen implies that you can’t even watch the film with your extended family. I think that’s just ridiculous.

Q: How do you feel about showing films to clubs or other organizations?
A: I think screenings of legal copies in small, non-profit clubs and educational organizations is fair use and utterly grand (obviously, considering my film club history). My college gets permission to show DVDs and 35mm prints to the community for free in exchange for not advertising the screenings, while my brother’s college runs licensed, low-cost screenings that have permission to advertise. I think that with anything smaller than those venues, especially if you’re showing something that most of the audience wouldn’t have even known about otherwise, you’re not cutting into anyone’s profit.

Q: Should you avoid bootlegs (from here on to include downloads and any other unauthorized acquisition of a film) even if there is no other option?
A: There’s a lot of circumstances I try to take into account. The simplest case, where a film is not available in any home format and is not shown on TV in your country, is one where I easily approve of bootlegs (presumably sourced from tapes of foreign TV airings). You are still responsible for confirming that the movie is not available.

Q: What if a film sometimes plays on TV, but isn’t otherwise available?
A: Wait for it to play on TV and watch or record it. If it requires cable/satellite that you wouldn’t otherwise buy, having a friend record it has never seemed a cardinal sin to me.
However, if a station owns the rights for a film and never (or almost never) plays it, do what you want and make your own peace. Previously I would give TCM (who owns an enormous amount of the unreleased films out there) about 6 months to a year to play a film before I sought other means, but if TCM follows through with their plan to make their entire library available on DVD by request, then I no longer need to make furtive back-alley deals.

Q: What if a film is available only on an old format like laserdisc?
A: Personally, I keep a VHS player around so that I can still watch the huge number of films that are available on tape but not disc. For films only previously marketed on obsolete formats like laserdisc, check whether the distributer is still around and considering a rerelease. Failing that, I generally seek out bootlegs sourced from the obsolete format.

Q: What if a movie is only available from another country, in PAL format and/or with incompatible region codes?
A: I found that a great investment is a region-free, any-standard DVD player (which are perfectly legal) that can play movies from anywhere in the world. Since region encoding is not backed by law – it is purely a way to increase profits by giving higher prices to wealthier regions – I never feel bad buying the film and stripping the silly limitations off with computer software (the distributor still got their money).
That said, I think that this is a case where the rights owner stupidly limited their own profits by not giving you a fully authorized option to pursue, and so I understand if people feel that getting a bootleg isn’t harming the company more than they harmed themselves.

Q: What if a movie is only available in another language?
A: You can often times find free subtitle files, which are legal to create and distribute. Minimal tech savvy is required to apply subtitle files to movies viewed on your computer.
Fansubbed bootlegs are illegal, but I still consider them a reasonable option if the current rights owner has no plans to provide a version in your language. I consider people who provide high quality fansubs to be doing a service to the cinema community.

Q: What if a film is only available for an exorbitantly high price, like a 35mm rental fee of or a festival/promotional/educational purposes price?
A: I’ve seen a lot 35mm rentals as high as $1000, without even taking into account the cost of the equipment you would need to project it. Festival/promotional/educational copies, which often pertain to experimental films, tend to be in the $100 to $250 range. That’s a sign that the distributor is doing outdated celluloid copies not intended for the general market. Sometimes you just have to wait for them to get their distribution branch in order for the price to drop.
If the rights owners posses digitized copies of these films that could be written to a DVD-r with little hassle, I consider the prices quoted above to be unreasonable and beyond the means of the general public (though exceptions exist). I have occasionally resorted to bootlegs in that situation, but often I just ignore these films.
If a movie is just plain expensive, like a Criterion release or the latest Blu-ray blockbuster, that doesn’t count as unreasonable in my book. You need to just commit to the price tag or wait for the cost to fall and used copies to become available.

Q: What if the rights owner wants to restrict who sees a film or how it is displayed?
A: If the rights owner in this case is the original author (preferably the director), then you should listen to their explanation, if one is given, and preferably respect it. I don’t usually agree that a film must be seen in theatrical conditions (as some filmmakers and critics insist) to be correctly understood and fully appreciated, but that is one expression of an artist’s moral rights over their work.
Sometimes I give in to moments of weakness and watch bootlegs of these films anyway, but I promise myself that, even if I don’t like it, I will give it a proper chance on the silver screen given the opportunity.
If the rights owner is a special interest group or religious organization that has acquired the rights for the purpose of preventing distribution and suppressing the original artist’s message, I side with the artist.
If the rights owner is a company utterly unaware or uninterested in distributing the film and unwilling to sell the rights to someone who is, I look for a bootleg. I’ve heard that the rights to some Peter Greenaway films went through several bankruptcy and repackaging sales and are now bundled into some obscure Japanese investment holding. If that’s true, then it’s a good example of a copyright not serving anyone’s idea of the public good.

Q: What if you think a film is in the public domain?
A: If it really is in public domain then it is legal to download and copies sold by anyone can’t be considered bootlegs. However, you should do at least some research into the matter. If I can’t find any glimmer of extant copyrights for a film during an hour of internet searching, I’ve satisfied my own conscience. The United States Copyright Office will conduct a semi-conclusive search for $150, or if you live near D.C. you can search their records for free. I’ve never gone that far.
Just because a film is in the public domain, though, doesn't mean it's not worth paying for. Most free and budget releases of public domain films are god-awful lazy transfers. I've found myself paying extra to get a definitive edition in more than one case.

Q: What if a film is only available on the grey market?
A: The grey market is usually meant to refer to internet sellers, called dealers, who sell movies that no one else has actively asserted copyrights for. Sometimes rights are not renewed, get trapped in limbo by a legal dispute, disappear with a distributor who goes out of business or get sold piecemeal only to specific countries. Dealers often times have a message like this one on their websites:
“The United States Berne Act states that: Films unreleased in the United States, including original version of films altered and/or edited for release in the United States, are not protected by American copyright; thus, they are considered public domain.”
That’s BS, although for years I believed it, mostly because I wanted desperately to believe it and never bothered to check. Having since read the Berne Convention Act and related copyright laws, I can safely say that it states the exact opposite: Movies copyrighted in foreign countries (or at least the majority who signed the Berne Act) are fully protected by U.S. copyright law.
Still, if you have decided for whatever reason that this is the best way to get the film, then it is less illegal than downloading the film since the lion’s share of the liability is on the shoulders of the dealer. Most of the dealers I’ve worked with are good people and will immediately withdraw items from their catalogue if you can show that another entity owns the rights.

Q: What if you acquire an unauthorized version of a movie when nothing else was available and then an authorized version becomes available?
A: My personal code of ethics is that I have to buy the authorized version when if it becomes available. This is really hard for me if I didn’t even end up liking the movie when I saw the bootleg.
The same philosophy has served me well with videogames. In college, I downloaded emulated roms (bootlegs of old videogames that run on a computer) from obsolete systems, but now that Nintendo makes many of these available legally on the Wii’s online store, at very reasonable prices, I’ve squared myself with the company.

Q: Is it OK to make copies of rented material?
A: Generally, no. I have at least two friends who rip all their Netflix movies to their computer so that they can send the discs back the same day. The way I see it, if you watch the film multiple times on your computer or lend it out, you are getting all the benefits of buying the film at only rental prices. If you are just watching the films at a later time and then deleting them, that’s probably just fair use time-shifting.

Q: Be honest, how many unauthorized movies do you own?
A: If you’ve tried to get a movie I’ve reviewed on this blog, odds are good that it was suspiciously absent from Netflix or Amazon. I’ve bought a bit over a hundred grey market bootlegs, most of which I can justify in keeping with the answers I’ve given above. I really do try to make sure that the artist and/or rights owner is compensated for their work whenever reasonably possible. I plan to be even more careful in the future.
The one black market bootleg I own, “Kill Bill Part I,” was purchased in the Philippines by a roommate and given to me as a gift. I keep it around because the creative English subtitles are hilarious, and probably constitute an original work in themselves.


The conversation continues, with particular emphasis on the anime community, over at The Grump Factory. John shares some his own thoughts and reactions on the issue of downloads and bootlegs.

Review of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

For those of you in or around St. Louis, you might check out the Chantal Ackerman exhibit, “Moving Through Time and Space” at the St. Louis Contemporary Art Museum. It opens tonight and runs until August 2, 2009. It’s a rare (and free!) opportunity to see the work of one of the great sleeper-hit avant-garde filmmakers. I'll try to be there, but if I’m not I won’t be able to see it for at least a couple of weeks, because I’ll be merrily tromping about in London and Belfast. (So don’t expect any posts for a while!) I’ll try to put up some sort of update after I have a chance to check it out.

The works in this exhibit include “From the East: Bordering on Fiction” (1995), “South” (1999), “From the Other Side” (2002), “Down There” (2006) and “Women of Antwerp in November” (2007). Several of these combine multiple screens at once, like the screening of Andy Warhol’s “Chelsea Girls” (1966) that the contemporary did a while back. Ackerman, by contrast, is much more socially conscious.

The exhibit brochure linked above begins its bio with, “Chantal Akerman is widely regarded as one of the most important directors in film history.” That’s a fairly bold statement that smells to me of museum propaganda, but it’s a shame that there are few chances for cinephiles to decide for themselves. Her work has rarely seen region 1 release (Update, 2010: Thanks to Criterion this is now no longer true. See comments section.) and is most often experienced through museum and university presentations. That said, my single experience with Ackerman’s work, a not-altogether pristine bootleg of “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” (1975), impressed me a great deal.

Review

“Jeanne Dielman” is Ackerman’s most famous work and is rightly cited as a landmark of both feminist and experimental cinema. It’s self-assured, challenging, controversial, intimidating and so arty it explodes if brought into contact with summer blockbusters.

The plot, what little there is of it, consists of a day-to-day, often minute-by-minute, visual transcript of a single mother’s life, presumably the Jeanne Dielman of the title (played by the wonderful Delphine Seyrig). The film’s structure is as rigid as its protagonist’s routine, relying on long static takes only occasionally broken by rectilinear editing. We watch Jeanne Dielman cook, clean, shop and prostitute in uninflected, somber semi-silence.

For about three and a half hours…

If you have dabbled in experimental art appreciation at all then you are doubtlessly already familiar with works about nothingness, next-to-nothingness, abstraction, minimalism, meditation, sensory-deprivation, self-conscious boredom and so on. These works of art, while terribly profound in the mind of their creators, tend to strike me and the rest of the ignorant public as dull, lazy, uninspired and, in the age of postmodernism, played out. Nor are our enthusiasms particularly reinvigorated when told that “such is the whole point of the piece.”

So I hope you can appreciate the level of cynicism with which I approached “Jeanne Dielman” and the surprise when I found myself actually drawn into its rhythm. This is a very difficult work and I admit that I found my attention drifting and my opinion wavering throughout; even to the point where at times I started pre-composing the pithy smackdowns I planned to issue should I write a review. Ultimately I came to see its point and, more importantly, to feel that the point was not trivial (as it is in, for instance, Andy Warhol’s 8-hour shot of the Empire States Building).

Yes, “Jeanne Dielman” purposely bores us, intentionally repeats things and stubbornly refuses to give us emotional catharsis or intellectual access with regard to its lone protagonist. But there is something powerful in the way it accomplishes both detachment and intimacy. A certain camaraderie builds up as we share Jeanne’s stifling monotony and one traverses a range of reactions through recognition, resentment and resignation that allows us to empathize with her existence in a way that is not possible in packaged entertainment or even traditional tragedy.

Our ability to distinguish details is, at times, heightened by the length we spend staring at flat mundane slices of her lower-middleclass apartment and at the same time diminished as our vigilance (trained by traditional cinema to expect cues telling us what is important) gradually wanes. Ackerman plays on this softly, by gently introducing glitches into the well-established pattern. These deviations during our third day within Jeanne’s world, at first as minor as dropping a spoon, build towards a brutal climax. It is an ending both unexpected and yet foreshadowed by hours of uncomfortable, almost subconscious, tension.

Far from being lazy, Ackerman’s film is painstakingly crafted to deliver a mixed reaction that is actually insightful, nuanced and just as compassionate as it is cruel. I’m not sure I fully appreciated the film or that I was paying enough attention by the final third to understand the ending or that I’d ever want to see it again. I know that doesn’t sound like a rave review, but if you have the right mix of patience, open-mindedness, curiosity and masochism, then this is a film that may yield unexpected rewards.

Walrus Rating: 3.0 and 8.0 (the two rating existing simultaneously within me)


Note: In case I did not make it clear, “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” is not one of the films showing at the Contemporary. In case the review only scared people off, I’m told the works at the exhibit are shorter, more accessible and more documentary in approach.

Update, later the same day:

So I made it out to the exhibit with my two sisters and a friend. The multi-video displays were definitely the most engaging. "Women of Antwerp in November" features black and white and color screens (1 large and 4 smaller on the opposite wall) depicting scenes of women smoking. It has wonderful atmosphere and texture (like very fashionable vintage noir) with a intuitive feel for mystery and sensuality, but not a great deal of meaning or substance as far as I could tell. It certainly succeeds as a collage of themed images, but I doubt many stay through the full 20 minute loop.

The next two rooms contained "The Other Side" a series of snippet on over a dozen flat-screens that contain a narrated documentary on illegal immigration. The directness of the approach and the experience of walking through film as an actual journey through space was an excellent metaphor and Ackerman makes strong symbolic and literal use of the wall running along the US-Mexico border. The audio, which emanates independently from each TV interferes with itself too much to add much, especially amidst the noise of the opening night crowd. I may have to return to experience "The Other Side" fully, but it definitely worked on a viceral level.

My favorite piece was a similar 24-screen room called "From the East: Bordering on Fiction" which was described as an exploration of Ackerman's East European Jewish identity. It is largely expressed through graceful tracking shots showing crowds of people standing and waiting around on streets, in train stations, etc. The juxtaposition of people, camera movements and old world settings made for arresting combinations, perhaps coincidental, but no less striking for being so, that held me for longer than the other displays. From reading the expressions in the grim crowds to observing the way lighting lends different emotional weights to similar scenes, there was plenty to ponder in the long, spacious gallery.

"South" is a feature length documentary on James Byrd, the victim of a racially motivated hate killing in Jasper, Texas. "Down There" is also feature length and plays on the same screen at different times. These films were a little less appropriate to the museum setting where few attendees will be able to sit and watch through the whole work. The exhibit closed about ten minutes after I arrived at the room. Perhaps another time...

Anyway, it's well worth the visit if you are in the area. Chances to see Ackerman's work are not likely to come this way again anytime soon.

Review of Flatland

It might be a little obvious that I’ve been catching up on animation recently (see “Grendel Grendel Grendel,” “The Legend of the Sky Kingdom” and "West and Soda"), which has always been a subject of interest for me. My tastes have been shaped by the requisite American Disney upbringing, an enduring friendship with eclectic anime enthusiast Mad Dog, my career-fueled programmer’s interest in CG and my genetically-coded, but previously dormant affinity for Czech puppetry and stop-motion. This last month or so I’ve stepped up my animation ingestion with plans to eventually make a top 100 list more interesting than the few I’ve seen and, of course, I’m reviewing occasional features along the way.

Animation often gets shunned from highbrow film circles. The perception seems to be that American animation is for kids, Japanese anime is for adolescent males and European animation can safely be ignored as an inconsequential niche market. I’ve never agreed with that assessment, but it’s become almost a self-fulfilling prophecy that prevents any film unwilling to conform to these expectation from getting wide distribution or recognition.

[Image: Highbrow circle.]

But times are changing. We’ve had an Academy Award for animated features since 2001 and there’s been enough mainstream competition that Disney’s never even won. Anime has long since moved from subculture to pop culture, even if it only rarely gets admitted into high culture. Even European works are seeing occasional DVD releases, though we still have a loooong way to go. Don’t get me started on Russia. And while it used to be that animations of all stripes were few and far between, it's actually hard to keep up with them nowadays.

The technology has changes as well. In the same way that handheld 16 mm cameras in the early 1960’s and digital cameras in late 1990’s opened up greater freedom and accessibility to independent artists, improved off-the-shelf software has changed animation. It used to be that animation required so much time, money and staff that filmmakers couldn’t pursue individual interests or take artistic risks. There are few precedents for solo (or near solo) animation (Piotr Kamler’s 1982 “Chronopolis” is a rare exception) until Bill Plympton in the 1990's and the last few years with the emergence of films like Nina Paley's "Sita Sings the Blues" (2008), Tol's "Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space" (2003), M. dot Strange’s “We Are the Strange” (2007), John Bergin's "From Inside" (2008) and Ladd Ehlinger’s “Flatland” (2007).

Some of my readers might remember that I was once eagerly anticipating “Flatland: The Movie,” which also came out in 2007, but which is actually a different movie entirely. Flatland: The Movie had a celebrity voice cast going for it, but ran only 34 minutes long, cost $35 and was released to mixed reviews. Ehlinger’s “Flatland” faired much better and I was pleased with the copy he makes available.

The original 1884 novel by Edwin A Abbott follows an unassuming square living in the 2-dimensional world of Flatland. He experiences several dreams in which he imagines 1-dimensional and 0-dimensional kingdoms whose denizens are unable to comprehend his own reality. The square’s own presumptions are then challenged when he is visited by a sphere, who pulls him out of his plane so that he can experience the previously indescribable reality of the 3D Spaceland. Although he initially mistakes the sphere to be a god, he experiences the revelation that there must be dimensions beyond even the third, an epiphany that outrages the sphere and gets him imprisoned as a raving heretic in Flatland.

[Image: A Sphere, as his cross-section appears in Flatland.]

The screenplay by Tom Whalen updates this story into a modern context, though wisely maintaining most of the original concepts about how a 2D society would function. He adds a great deal of extra detail and several subplots to round things out, although little of it adds much to the film and most of the ideas are left hanging. Squares rebellious hexagonal daughter, the death of the king’s irregular-sided son, a suicidal radical female, shiny mysterious glowpoints imported from a Northern kingdom, a campaign in Spaceland to destroy Flatland (with no convincing motivation), Sphere’s religious corporation “Messiah Inc.” (which doesn’t seem to have an income source or purpose) and many other elements are presented, but not really developed into a satisfying whole.

[Image: The number of sides on a polygon typically indicates intelligence or caste. Triangles are the grunt soldiers while circles are the politicians and priests.]

Whalen does deserve credit, however, for his narrator intertitles. Especially near the beginning of the film, he inserts his wry commentary into the action to explain the setup (rather than wasting time with an intro) and demonstrate a certain level of self-consciousness about the book’s shortcomings (particularly its chauvinism and bluntness). I actually kind of missed the little text interruptions when they more or less gave way to the action as we enter Spaceland, but at least it isn’t overdone.

The core ideas about geometry and dimensionality still remain the compelling edge to “Flatland” and Ehlinger/Whalen do a good job translating (and rotating) them to the screen. You don’t get material that lends itself this well to visualization very often, so it’s worth talking about how Ehlinger’s computer animation brings Flatland and Spaceland to life.

Of the 2D and 3D realms, I felt Flatland was surprisingly more compelling and I’m glad it gets the lion’s share of the runtime. Careful attention to props, layout and background give these scenes a clean graphic design neatness that turns the low-budget into an asset.

Better yet, Ehlinger manages to interpret simple polygons like triangles, squares and circles into character designs that are really quite original. Seen from an overhead view, the audience is treated to the internals of each flatlander, including their viewing eye, waving flagella feelers, blood vessels, brains (with tiny sparking synapses), pumping heart and so on. It gives the viewer an eerie god-like feeling, like looking at angular amebas on a slide, which makes Sphere’s messiah complex easily understandable.

[Image: Senator Chromatistes, an irregular polygon and the leader of a colorization faction.]

The camera zooms into Square’s brain for dream sequences or pulls back to reveal the highly symmetrical architecture. By keeping the camera perspective along simple normals and parallel lines, Ehlinger mimics the strictness of Flatland’s rigidly structured society while still leaving room for plenty of subtle gags in the presentation.

[Images: Entering into Square’s mind for a dream sequence.]

The transition into 3D makes for a nice change-up in the plot, style and graphics, but Spaceland lacks the charm and quiet beauty of Flatland’s design. Ehlinger’s rendering of Sphere’s hovercraft, floating citadel and billboard strewn skyways doesn’t match the originality of his 2D work.

While admirable for the work of one man modeling imagery alone, it’s impossible to overlook the reliance on simple shapes and repetition. While this is arguably an artistic decision meant to focus our attention on the geometric foundations of reality, it lessens the impact of bursting into a greater dimension. The smoothness of shapes (I think little to no bump mapping is used), the scarcity of textures and the high light reflectivity used for every surface, gives Spaceland an artificial plastic look that isn’t very appealing.

[Image: Sphere introduces Square to Spaceland.]

But most of that is just pickiness when you consider the level of polish that is achieved with only one animator and in only 18 months. Ehlinger never really pushes graphics as a primary concern anyway; it isn’t intended to dazzle so much as to illustrate the adventure, satire and thought-experiments. When it does rest too long in a single place, one can feel the emptiness start to creep in, but Whalen’s screenplay smartly keeps the characters more mobile and active than the novel. Elsewhere a couple of special effects like surface warping, plenty of quality voice-acting and a good deal of humor (I could have done with more geometry puns, though) pick up the slack between this and large-scale productions.

Flatland may not be a masterpiece in its own right, but it’s a forerunner of what I hope will be a growing movement. Fans of the novel or of DIY CG should definitely give it a chance and support the independent spirit and personal determination that is pushing alternative computer animation forward.

Walrus Rating: 7.0