Häxan (1922)

Silent films, to me, represent a very unique time in film's history; this is the time when the job of director, producer, and screen actor was being developed, and it is amazing that films back then were more daring then any single film you usually get in a year in this millennium. Filmmakers back then explored the newest possibilities, particularly the German Expressionists who were probably the best Silent Filmmakers (F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Erich von Stroheim, and Robert Wiene are among the best from that time).

Häxan is such a silent movie, adventurous, daring, trying new things, but it is also one of the only films that defies any convention, any labeling. It is part documentary, part drama, part comedy, and part horror. Yet this movie comes from a Danish director, not a German one, and exemplifies the limitless boundaries of the imagination from that time.

The movie is told in seven parts, though most of them really don't mark the ending of one story. Chapter One is basically a slideshow, as director Benjamin Christensen shows us a lot of researched history on the paranoia of people from the Middle Ages that led to their belief in Witches (Häxan translates, more or less, to The Witches). We get drawings that illustrate hell, where demons put the damned into cauldrons (I couldn't help but notice one of the cauldrons was marked "Judei"), and hot metal liquid is poured down the damned's throat.

Part Two on is mainly recreated scenarios involving witches actually existing. We see the horrible hags in their coven, plundering dead thieves' bodies from the gallows and using their remains in potions. One witch requests a love potion and we get two imagined scenes in which a portly brother of the church chases the witch, madly in love with her.

The film also highlights how witches were ousted: being thrown, naked, into a pond to determine their witchhood. If they floated, they were recovered from the pond and burned; if they sank, the fathers would thank God for sparing this girl's soul (though no remark is made as to whether this woman is rescued).

The only part of the movie I would call a running story, or thread, comes when a man falls ill and his wife blames witchcraft. An old woman stops by for food, and the wife immediately has her arrested by the church, who proceed to torture a confession out of her. And she describes the Witches' mass.

The Witches' mass is introduced to us in the film's first chapter, and it is mainly something you kind of have to see to really grasp how paranoid everyone was back then. To partake, the women fly high up into the sky to some castle and garden, and proceed to frolic with the devil and his minions. Probably the most significant moment of this movie involves the witches proceeding one by one to the devil and placing a kiss on his derrière. This marks them as witches, and allows them to continue on their evil wicked ways.

What message this movie is trying to put out, what lesson it is trying to teach is unclear to me. I was never certain if the director believed all the findings he researched, or he was merely laughing at how paranoid everyone was back then, and how that paranoia made everything a reality. Really, he seems to be presenting the second part as his main point, but he also has conviction in the scenes involving the witches.

The movie breaks the fourth wall a lot, and in Chapter 6 or 7, the director mentions that the actress who played Maria the Weaver (Maren Pedersen, another witch) turned to the director during shooting and said, "The Devil is real. I have seen him sitting at my bedside." Her conviction in this story is resolute, which is why Mrs. Pedersen probably partook of this film.

This film was made before there were conventions and clichés in film. There were no definite rules of story that we learn today in our classes, and Häxan is a movie breathing with life and invention from its director's limitless research on the subject of Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. Even by today's standards I would say this film is very daring and I have really never seen anything like it in all the other movies I have ever seen.

50 Years of Janus

Recently I have gained access the Janus Box Set of 50 films, some of the greatest works ever made, and some that I have never heard of. Surmounting the task of going through 50 films is no small undertaking, but I have decided to make going through this list a little more interesting. I will write a review for every movie I see from the box set, including the movies I have already seen. There will be no set time when these reviews come out, they will just occur when I get around to seeing the next film. I have also decided to proceed through the set in Chronological order, so as to experience the evolution of film from 1922 to 1979. So tonight I watch the first movie in the set, Häxan.

At the Movies: Revised

Last week saw the premiere episode of At the Movies, the long running review show that Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel started in the 70s, that continued with Roeper, and was eventually passed onto the two Bens, Lyons and Mankiewicz.

Now, the show has returned to its roots: journalists, this time A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips, and what a blessing and relief this return was. When Roeper finally signed off, the two Bens took over, and ushered in what could have been a perpetual dark age of movie criticism. The show was focused more on glamor and sound bite reviews rather then thoughtful discussions on the movies. Ben Lyons, who is the film expert over at E! Entertainment, received the blunt end of the criticism because he was, well, a child.

Ben Lyons had declared the previous winter that I Am Legend was one of the greatest movies ever made, and maybe we were all being a little too mean to him for that claim. Of course, you are asking for it when you are essentially saying something is up there in the league of Citizen Kane or Seven Samurai. His reviews were awful, focusing mainly on deconstructing the plot for the viewer and then offering a surface level take on the movie. Mankiewicz was no better, really, but at least he had the air of knowing film, having hosted segments at Turner Classic Movies.

But somehow there is an invaluable lesson in writing movie reviews rather then quickly throwing out your opinion. You become stronger as a writer and learn to articulate your points better as time goes on, something neither of the Bens could do. With New York Times critic A.O. Scott and Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips now helming the show, you know you are at least getting the opinion of someone who can express it thoughtfully.

In viewing the first episode, I was happy to see the two journalists reviewing the films, with A.O. Scott even reviewing the movie The Burning Plain in the jumbled fashion the movie is apparently assembled in. Yet, these guys seem like good acquaintances and not yet at the point where they can spar with each other. They never directly disagreed with each other, with every movie getting two skip its, see its, and a rent it with another of those options. There is a beauty to going back and watching Ebert and Siskel disagree heavily on Baby's Day Out and the way they attack each other. Right now, the show feels like it needs to deconstruct that last layer to get these two really butting heads, and hopefully we'll get some good stuff in the coming year.

But, for the time being, the show At the Movies has been reinstated into its rightful place, and I look forward to watching this show again, as I stopped watching it when the Bens dominated the airwaves.

World's Greatest Dad (2009)

To put it lightly, World’s Greatest Dad may be one of the most shocking things I have every seen. Not shocking in a “look at how much torture I can throw your way,” but in a “people really act like this” kind of way.

Robin Williams, in his best role for quite some time, plays Lance Clayton, a poetry high school teacher whose course is suffering, whose girlfriend keeps blowing him off, and whose son is the greatest monster to walk the earth (Daryl Sabara, no longer a cute Spy Kid). When tragedy strikes, Lance somehow finds it is the greatest thing that every happened to him.

I don’t want to talk too much about this film because that would give away so much of what makes it so special. In the last month we have had some great trailers, for movies like District 9, Inglourious Basterds, and In the Loop which intrigue you but don’t tell you too much about the film. World’s Greatest Dad has another spectacular trailer that undersells the movie. It’s probably the blackest comedy I’ve ever seen.

I do feel the movie gets carried away in its second half, blowing everything to its biggest possible extreme, but it also feels strangely authentic. I urge those who haven’t seen the movie to stop reading and go see it now, for I fear cannot continue without spoiling the best parts of the film.

The movie is a great study in our morbid fascination with the dead, especially when death comes unexpectedly. In the worst people you remember the best parts about them, and lay them to rest in the most delicate and painless way possible. This movie feels like writer and director Bobcat Goldthwait reacted so strongly to the public’s reaction to Michael Jackson’s sudden death that he went out and made this movie. It has a certain timely and timeless quality about it.

When Michael Jackson died, everyone was stunned, because he was only 50. Farrah Fawcett’s death earlier that day came with smaller impact because it was known she would die, but people didn’t focus on someone who was probably a genuinely nice person, and instead focused on the pre-white Michael Jackson. From recent years until his death, the public hated Jackson, and when he died, he was our hero.

The same applies to this movie. It is so twisted, so morbid, yet so true. The movie is set in Seattle, but you would only know that if you were a Seattleite. The movie never tells you, but one wonders if there is some deliberation in setting it there. Williams walks out of the Guild 45^th and stares at a magazine stand downtown. Yet this made me happy, made me feel like there was an extra something in this movie for me. There are no shots of the Space Needle or of downtown at large, and the High School is no school I know of. But it is an interesting, deft touch.

People will go to see this maybe expecting a Disney comedy. When I first saw the poster, that’s what crossed my mind. This is a movie you are either totally for or really against, but no matter where you stand on the quality of the movie, you cannot dispute its important message about our culture and our times.

In the Loop (2009)

There is something inanely refreshing about a political satire that lets no one be the hero, instead letting every character serve as one way or another a villain. This is true of In the Loop, be it the witless Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), the aides Judy (Gine McKee) and Toby (Chris Addison), the press agent Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), the secretive Linton Barwick (David Rasche), the nosy Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy) or the soft Lt. Gen. Miller (James Gadolfini).

The movie opens with Simon Foster, the minister of something or other, making a gaffe on BBC radio, stating that war “is unforeseeable”. This starts a tumult, and Simon makes things worse by saying, later, the sometimes you must “Climb the Mountain of Conflict.” If anything, this movie is a prime example of why one small slip can ruin an entire political career.

The movie never states it, but one assumes that it is taking place in the days leading up the Iraq War, or war with another unnamed country in the Middle East. Director and co-writer Armando Ianucci cleverly never reveals the identity of the President, Vice President, or Prime Minister, and the exact crisis in the Middle East is left unexplained.

The movie is fast, using the documentary style now associated with The Office, and slings jokes at the audience quicker then machine gun fire. The plot is thick, sometimes hard to conceive, but the movie’s trick is it is never boring. Some compare it Dr. Strangelove (1964), and I think that is a fair comparison. Strangelove was a model for the paranoia of the Cold War, and brilliantly pitted the Americans and the Russians opposite each other. Here, it is the British and Americans arguing about going to war.

Maybe the movies greatest strength, and weakness, is that there is no one character you can really root for. Gadolfini’s Gen. Miller is definitely a soft type: he looks friendly, and calmly and cheerfully insults anyone who irks him. Capaldi’s Malcolm is a horse of a different color, blurting obscenities of high caliber imagination, and furiously berating everyone in his path. In one great scene, he goes to the White House to be briefed on a war committee, only to find that the person who is briefing him is a 23-year-old. His reaction and subsequent action is priceless.

There is also the part of the dueling assistants, Liza Weld (Anna Chlumsky) and Michael Rodgers (James Smith), and the scheming, loathsome Toby. Everyone is a backstabber, and I have to say if anyone in power is as clumsy or inept as the characters in this movie (as I do suspect a lot of our elected officials are), then it would explain some of the more outrageous things that have come to pass.

In the Loop also has the distinct honor of being one of the first satires of the Iraq War, and thankfully lands it right. Mishandled, it could have offended, but this way it is hilarious, insightful, and just makes you damn mad at the way things are handled in the corridors of power.

Not Rated, but contains many colorful swears