I would have to say that Spider-Man is not only the best adaptation of a comic book film that I have ever seen, but is among the greatest, big-budget, SFX summer popcorn movies ever made (gee could it be that the key to sucess is not so much a marketig blitz, but good casting, a good director, a good screenwriter, etc., etc.,), a brilliant example of pop art, an almost avante-garde like fixation on the joys of pure movement, and, as of right now, the Best film of 2002. For a relatively short movie, it packed so much in, but it did so with a sure sense of economy, clarity, pacing, and wit (the use of montage and digital superimposition to illustrate the creation of the Spider-Man costume, the montage sequence of Spider-Man fighting crime and the New Yorkers giving testimony to their feeling toward the city's newest crime-fighter), that for me, the film had the depth and texture of a film twice as long (plus, I felt as time itself was suspended, as I swooped along the concrete canyons of Manhattan, defying gravity, I felt like I wanted to holler in exuberance, just as Peter Parker does; or even in another movement, as the film deftly navigated the relationship between Mary Jane and Peter/Spider-Man). It all seemed so seemlessly integrated, action scenes, which demonstrated how CGI could be put the work successfully (to compare it with the scenes I complained about in Blade II, the CGI was no less obvious, though most of the time I was too caught up to care about it, but the way the camera swooped and spun around, even if those camera movements where themselves digital creations, they swept the audience along in the sheer impossibility of it all; it was like an animated film that was not cartoonish; compared to Spider-Man, the camera in Blade II might as well have been bolted to the ground), blending, refracting, difusing into quiet, scenes featuring some great acting (it helps that I'm a huge fan of Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and Wilhem Dafoe) that are both emotionally, and at times, morally complex. Whoah, I'm running out of superlatives here, but I should note how funny the film is; and not in an ironic, post-modern, wink, wink, hipper than thou to the material attitude. This is not cynical humor, though it can be knowing, but grows out of the characters and the situations (I loved JK Simmons as JJ Jameson, especially his lines about how he loves his barber, and how he objects to Peter's usage of the word "slander," it's libel). In short, I loved this movie, and I plan on seeing it again, probably this week. Will probably post more later.
Detractors of auteurism always emphasize, wrongly, IMO, "repetition," which implies simply repeating onself ad nauseum with no variation, rather than a quality that I think is more proper, that being "reoccurrence," which has less negative connotations, principally because "reoccurrence" implies, at least to me, a re-happening of sorts, a return to a prior form, yes, but one that can have several variations and that can occur in different contexts (how does something simply repeat in wildly different contexts?). Is this simply semantic quibbling? I don't think so, I think it is a useful distinction. Howard Hawks, the auteur par excellance, essentially remade his 1959 film Rio Bravo twice, in 1967 as El Dorado and again in 1971 as Rio Lobo, and while all of these films share similar plotlines, actors, character types, settings, and even entire sequences, all are very different from each other, these elements don't simply repeat, they reoccur (and going back into Hawks's oeuvre even further, you find elements that appear in Rio Bravo in such earlier films as 1939's ,,,Only Angels Have Wings, for example the final lines of dialogue between Cary Grant and Jean Arthur echo those of John Wayne and Angie Dickinson, and why not, it's a good sequence of dialogue to crib from, IMO, but the subtle alterations in the dialogue reveal the differences between the characters played by Grant and Wayne). Also as allyn points out, many critically lauded writers (not to mention many others, such as visual artists and composers) have distinctive themes and styles that they return to time and time again, and while I can surmise that their critics most frequent complaint was simple "repetition," I hardly think that this is a fair charge, or one that is easily proven. In my experience, most evidence of "repetition" is superficial at best, and grossly out of context at worst, and to my mind, no detractor of auteurism has successfully made the charge that a given auteur is guilty of simple repetition. Reoccurrence with variation, guilty as charged.
Auteurism, atleast in the popular version exposed in America by Andrew Sarris, sought to elevate Hollywood cinema to an artform by establishing the presence of singular, artistic personality responsible for the mise en scene of the film; previously, and at best, the American cinema was considered "entertainment," not art (especially when compared with the valorized European and Japanese art cinemas), the product of largely anonymous craftsmen and artisans, who worked as a group in a depersonalized, industrial framework. The exact idea that the director was the primary artist reponsible for the cinema was not a very controversial proposition, in and of itself, having been used in various contexts since the 1910s, and even earlier; it was just who this was applied towards that was the controversial part. Auteurism emphasized looking at the entire body of work, to pick out the distinctive elements (usually in the mise-en-scene, but if auteurists had been more astute in their research they would have put more emphasis on the affect of the auteur in pre- and post-production, especially since most auteurs, after the 1940s were producer-directors; still the images of an artist struggling against the stifling system is a useful, and romantic, ideal) that reoccur across a given directors' oeuvre, using the logic, that since the director would be the only factor that transcended a series of films, that that director would be responsible (also assuming, that the reoccurrences were more than just chance); admittedly, even by Andrew Sarris, this gave viewpoint tended to exclude such elements as genre and generic conventions. In short, the reality of the auteur is that it is, in the words of VF Perkins in a 1975 article called "The Return of Movie," a critical construct. An auteur is not a transcendent personality that is found behind every film they direct (even if those interests actually coincide with the actual person), but a critical tool, a locus of meaning. The auteur is not a person, but a practice, a pattern, and interpretative stance (see how the "personality" of Howard Hawks changes in the pages of Cahiers du Cinema, from the Catholic, phenomenalogical, conservative 1950s to the politicized, ironic, Brechtian 1960s). Sarris and other auteurists regarded auteurs as "real," in the sense that these personalities existed; this is a by product of the metaphoric nature of human reasoning (especially in a philosophical milieu that tended to deny this role of metaphor, so these metaphors were "literalized'), to borrow a term from George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, the process was thought of as an object, an ontological metaphor, in this case a person (a less fancy-pants way to say this, is that they anthropomorphized a process). But for me, historically, the importance of the auteur theory, which is not much of a theory, but is a relatively good methodology, was the change it helped foster in the cultural discourse. To get a bit more philosophical, it was a paradigm shift (a la Kuhn), were change occurred because the theory won over the younger generation, instead of converting the old guard, who either had to modify their positions (Kael) or flail about into obscurity (Bosley Crowther). Which, I guess is good for me, since I don't see the distinction between high and low art anyways, besides that of a cultural discourse.
Watched several films this weekend, mostly on DVD/VHS, short comments as follows:
Carla's Song (Ken Loach, 1996) --Not my favorite Loach film, but still pretty good, the film exposes the horrors of CIA-supported Contra atrocites (and we speak of being anti-terrorist) and extols the virtues of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua through the personage of a European outsider, a Glasgow busdriver named George, who is played by Robert Carlyle. George meets Carla, a dancer who came to England to raise funds for the Sandinista cause, but stayed behind due to the traumas of her past. George falls in love with her, and because of her nightmares and suicide attempts, resolves that they must return to Nicaragua together to find her ex-boyfriend, Antonio, who has gone missing. Extremely polemical at times, especially the character played by Scott Glen, Carla's Song works best in it's Glasgow scenes, even if I could barely understand what the Scotish characters were saying when they spoke to each other, and in the scenes in Nicaragua where George interacts with the people he meets along his journey, captured in documentary-like scenes that have the air of improvisation.
The House on the River (Fritz Lang, 1950) --A B-movie of the best kind, well directed, atmospheric, thriller about an effette sociopath who exploits his own murder for profit, while laying the guilt on his upstanding brother, who helped cover up his crime. Reflects Lang's continual fascination with the procedures of the American legal system (in a lengthy inquest sequence), as well as continuing his masterful use of shadows and sound.
Dead Alive (Peter Jackson, 1992) --Oh baby, I've wanted to see this film since I saw Re-Animator and Stuart Gordon said that his record for the most stage blood used in a film was bested by this one. While, I thought Re-Animator was a superior film, Dead Alive is gross, disgusting, cartoonish, vulgar, a little bit scary, and often really, really funny ("I kick ass for the LORD!!!") I liked how Jackson lampooned middle-class life, with the hero vainly trying to keep some sense of bourgeoise, familial normalcy (the scene in the park with the demonic baby was hilarious). And Jackson out-Hitchcocked Hitchcock with a domineering monsterous mother, who actually becomes a monster.
Fudoh: The New Generation (Takashi Miike, 1996)--I've always wanted to see a film by the current, and prolific bad-boy of Japanese genre cinema, Takashi Miike. Fudoh is based on a manga comic about Riki, an 18 year old son of a yakuza crime boss, who is out to avenge his brother's death, who was killed, to make amends with a rival yakuza clan, by his own father and the leadership of the Nioh clan. Riki is a criminal overlord, running his empire from the confines of his high school. One by one, Riki has his minions eliminate the leaders of the Nioh clan, with a combination of second-grade assassins and a duo of Japanese schoolgirl killers, one of whom has some amazing muscular control with a blow-gun, someone has been working on those Kegel muscles (oh, did I mention that she is also a fully, functioning hermaphrodite who has sex with the substitute female English teacher, who not only manages to wear the tightest possible leather clothing, but is actually a yakuza assassin and the former lover of Riki's brother). He also runs the Nakamasu Entertainment district, with it's massage palors and strip clubs. Riki, also manages to recruit a 20 year old delinquent, who must be the Japanese equivalent of Andre the Giant. When Riki begins to take on the rival Yasha clan and their leader Nohma, it leads to more strife, and Riki's father must kill his own son, again. He does this by recruiting his other son, Gondo, a Korean special forces operative whose really particular about his Kimchee. And then the battle begins. Bloody, violent and stylishly directed, I look forward to seeing more of Miike's work.
Changing Lanes (Roger Mitchell, 2002)--A hell of a lot better than that horrible trailer. Well directed, with a good screenplay and some great acting; one of the few films of recent vintage that I know that deal with ethical responsibility and moral culpability. Still, I couldn't decide of the ending was a bit of irony, using the tools of capitalism against itself, or an ideological cop-out (or both), as the corrupt edifice is left intact and Affleck is allowed to maintain his bourgeoise life-style. Still, a pretty good thriller.
Baise Moi (Coralie Trinh Thi and Virginie Despentes, 2001)--A hardcore, pornographic French Thelma & Louise that embraces nilhilism, feminist rage, and female sexual desire. The two girls, a porn star from the beur and a white, middle-class, porn-loving prostitute, steal, kill, and fuck their way across France with no real goal in sight, all the while high on drugs or booze. Grungy, raw, brutal, dingy, angry, disgusting, vulgar, unerotic, the list goes on, but this is not to damn the film, it's actually compelling to watch, if never easy (and the two directors will never win any awards from their technique). At times, the film even get's self-reflexive, the two vamp for the camera as they dance in their underwear, or as Nadine strikes poses from Besson's La Femme Nikita in the bathroom, or when the two comment on how their quips during their murders suck.
Blow-Out (Brian De Palma, 1981)-- My favorite film of the weekend, De Palma's reworking of Blow-Up captures his themes of how media technology and capture and reconstruct reality. My favorite scene among many, is when Travolta is on the bridge with his Nagra and microphone recording sounds, and how the camera expands it's scope as the the film cuts rythmically to every repeated sound; the sequence is virtually replayed again, from a different perspective later in the film, as Travolta's character reconstructs the events of that night from his audio-tapes. Also, I liked the hommage/competition with Carpenter's Halloween for the movie within the movie.
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