DOWN BY LAW (Jim Jarmusch, 1986).
A down-on-his-luck New Orleans disc jockey (Tom Waits) agrees to run
a dubious errand for a crook, and ends up in prison, sharing a cell
with a small-time pimp (John Lurie) who has been set up on a charge
of corrupting a minor. When they are joined by a third prisoner, a bewildered
Italian tourist and accidental killer (Roberto Benigni) an opportunity
for escape presents itself.
Jarmusch's films don't provide us with a protagonist representing "normality,"
a hero or heroine for the audience to identify with, as so many other
films do. The wry, off-beat humor of Down By Law reflects a view
of the world as irreducibly strange. Waits' character just wants to
be left alone, but is constantly suffering the intrusion of annoying
realities. Lurie's pimp seems tough, but he's like a kid who's just
pretending to be cool. The first half of the film is virtually plotless.
The pleasure (one that can sneak up on you) is in watching these weird
loners trying to navigate their lives. The long middle section of the
film brilliantly depicts the boredom and absurdity of life in a prison
cell -- the two self- absorbed inmates regarding each other with a suspicion
that only softens slightly as the story goes on.
The introduction of the clownish Benigni into the mix is just outlandish
enough to work. His hyper-alertness is an amusing contrast with the
slackerdom of the other two characters. And in the midst of increasingly
implausible plot developments (this very improbability being one of
the film's chief delights) one might fail to notice that Benigni's buffoon
is the source of all the threesome's good fortune. Is there a lesson
in this? If you want there to be. Jarmusch is not the didactic type.
Nor does he look down on his characters. "We all scream for ice cream"
is the closest he gets to a motto.
Shot in beautiful black and white by Robby Muller, the picture has
a style all its own -- off-hand, laconic, as casual as a torn-up jean
jacket. This is a refreshing break from the over-determined dramatic
methods that have conquered (and deadened) American film. For one thing,
Jarmusch defies the common notion that we have to "care" about a film's
characters: these people aren't good or bad, they just are. Down
By Law's style is to aim a flickering light at them, and step back.
Whether you laugh contentedly or scratch your head may depend on how
accustomed you are to making up your own mind about things.
SAFETY LAST!
(Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1923).
Even the greatest comedies sometimes have dull stretches, or bits that
don't work. But this Harold Lloyd film is one of the few that I find
almost flawless, with a stream of consistently hilarious, steadily building
gags lasting from beginning to end. Lacking the depth of Keaton or the
versatility of Chaplin, Lloyd can sometimes be a let-down. But not here.
He plays a country boy who promises to send for his girl (Mildred Davis,
Lloyd's real-life spouse) as soon as he makes his fortune in the city.
He finds work as a lowly clerk in a clothing store, but in his letters
pretends to be the manager. Then the girl makes a surprise visit, and...well,
the plot really doesn't matter much. It's just the framework for a series
of jokes and situations that are wildly funny and beautifully timed.
It all leads up to the famous climax in which the clerk, who has hired
an athletic friend to climb the huge office building as a publicity
stunt to help the company, ends up having to make the climb himself.
Lloyd's character - a bespectacled, resourceful, all-American nerd
- does not excite laughter in and of himself, but only through the perilous
situations he gets into. In the process of developing his style, Lloyd
invented a sort of "thrill comedy" where you're laughing and gasping
at the same time. In the climbing sequence, we are always shown the
street below, so that the danger seems real. When Lloyd climbs on to
a huge clock, and the clock face suddenly detaches, with Lloyd dangling
in thin air, the laughter is actually stimulated by the sense of risk.
He did all of his own stunts, of course, and there was certainly a platform
a couple of stories down to catch him if he fell, but this was a real
building on a real street, not a set, and that's exactly how it feels
in the film.
The Warner video I saw had a good musical score, which is so important
in order to enjoy a silent film. The picture is wonderfully paced and
the humor rarely seems dated. Safety Last's reputation as one
of the greatest silent comedies turns out to be well deserved.
SALESMAN (Albert & David Maysles, 1969).
The Maysles brothers pioneered what came to be known as "direct cinema":
a form of documentary without narration or interviews, allowing the
subject to develop in unplanned and unexpected ways. This film follows
four men employed by a company selling expensive, illustrated Catholic
Bibles door to door, in the Boston area and (briefly) on a trip to Florida.
Despite being imitated countless times in the years since it was released,
Salesman's style still seems startling in its originality. We
are taken into the homes of potential customers, and their behavior
- they often struggle to find a way to say "no" to the salesmen - is
extremely natural. Of course they were aware of being filmed, but this
seems to have had a negligible effect. (This took place well before
the era of "reality" TV and the popular craving for "15 minutes of fame.")
The contrast between the hard sell techniques of a salesman and the
religious nature of the product is productive of some humor, but the
Maysles aren't aiming for laughs. They just stand back and observe,
and the result is complex and fascinating. The main focus is on the
salesmen themselves. The brothers were particularly fortunate that the
oldest of the four men, Paul Brennan, turns out to be a compelling character
who almost seems to have stepped out of the pages of a Nathanael West
novel. Brennan is alternately sardonic, exuberant, and pathetic, and
his increasing sense of failure matches the mood of emptiness and futility
evoked by the salesmen's lifestyle.
This is one of those pictures that might seem overly dry while you're
watching it, but then starts to haunt you after it's over. We can see
how the methods of salesmanship always involve performance -- in short,
lying of one sort or another -- and how the connection between this
heightened kind of performance and the ordinary web of interactions
and relations reveals falsehood as a vital element of the social fabric.
To the Maysles' credit, the insights gained are not at the expense of
their subjects' humanity. However odd the reality of their lives may
be, the salesmen come off as real individuals with their own virtues
and flaws. While rigorously maintaining a matter-of-fact approach that
still seems novel today, Salesman allows us glimpses of the truth
under the mask.
JONAH WHO WILL BE 25 IN THE YEAR 2000
(Alain Tanner, 1976).
The third collaboration between the Swiss director Tanner and the English
writer John Berger follows a group of young people in Geneva who are
searching for new directions in their lives after the failure of the
revolutionary hopes of the 1960s. A former labor activist takes a job
as a gardener and handyman with some free-spirited farmers, setting
up a school in a greenhouse for the neighborhood kids, while his wife
continues to work in a factory. A disillusioned radical turns to gambling,
while having interesting conversations with his girlfriend, an adventurous
student of Tantrism. A history teacher uses radical methods in the classroom
to foster socialist ideas in his students. He hooks up with a grocery
store cashier who undercharges poor people and steals food from the
store to help her aging friend, a veteran of the Resistance.
The interweaving stories are presented in an elliptical style that
gradually creates a gently humorous image of youthful idealism in confrontation
with difficult realities. Interspersed throughout the film are brief
Brechtian interludes in black-and-white that offer what appear to be
subjective moments of truth, with cryptic dialogue or narration. The
film's unconventional approach requires the viewer's close attention,
but one's patience is well rewarded. This little world of individual
resistance to the status quo is portrayed with lightness, compassion,
and clarity.
Best among the performances are Jean-Luc Bideau and Myriam Mézière
as the cynical gambler Max and his endearingly off-the-wall Tantric
partner Madeleine, and Jacques Denis as Marco, the mischievous teacher.
(For some reason, all the major characters' names begin with the letter
M: a reference to Marx?) The film doesn't shirk from depicting its characters'
political ideas and dimensions, and it's one of the decisive differences
between this excellent movie and the later American film (and overrated
mush) The Big Chill. There is no condescension here, no simplification.
Looking at the 60s generation with humor does not mean indulging in
mockery. Jonah (the title refers to the newborn son of one of
the characters) feels remarkably true to life. And although some of
the narrative strategies seem a bit sketchy, this only serves to make
the picture's humanistic outlook more satisfying.
THE CLOUD-CAPPED STAR
(Ritwik Ghatak, 1960).
Nita (Supriya Choudhury) is the oldest daughter in a refugee family
in Bengal. She puts off her marriage to a student she loves, in order
to support her parents and siblings until they can get on their feet.
Her older brother (Anil Chatterjee) is lazy and only interested in music,
so he is no help, although Nita loves him and believes in his future
as a great singer. As time goes by, her sacrifice for the welfare of
others takes its toll on the possibilities of happiness for herself.
Ghatak was one of India's greatest and most admired directors, but
he is still little known in the West. This sensitive drama about the
ruinous effect of poverty on the aspirations of ordinary people works
on many levels - as social statement, psychological portrait, and spiritual
tragedy. The heroine, beautifully played by Choudhury, is that rarity
- a character of pure, convincing goodness. She genuinely rejoices at
the good fortunes of her loved ones, and believes in the happy future
that will come to those who love, and wait patiently. The tragedy is
that her commitment to giving and lovingkindness makes her too careless
of her own needs and desires. This amounts to an incisive critique of
a certain aspect of the Indian feminine ideal. Two other incomplete
aspects of femininity are represented by Nita's quarrelsome, self-centered
mother, and her thoughtless, sensual sister.
The black-and-white photography (Dinen Gupta) is exquisite, and Ghatak's
use of sound is quite adventurous, bordering on the avant-garde. He'll
use sound effects to accentuate sudden shifts in emotion, such as the
sound of a whip during an experience of betrayal. The style as a whole
is melodramatic, not just in the story elements, but in the way heightened
emotion is keyed precisely to the music and camera movement. Sometimes
this can be a bit much, as if the film suffered from an excess of feeling,
but most of the time the technique is extremely powerful. When the camera
swoops down to a face, with a sudden burst of music, and the person
starts weeping, the method has become one with the emotion portrayed,
as if the film itself was a direct expression of subjective states rather
than just a way of recording events.
Melodrama in this pure form is a way of gaining access to our deepest
joy and pain. The Cloud-Capped Star is one of those intensely
sad movies that doesn't hesitate to just rip your heart out. The acting
is excellent, the music bewitching, and there are, no doubt, many qualities
and themes that are so specific to Indian culture as to escape notice
by the average Western viewer. In the end, this is one of the picture's
strengths: grounded in a particular culture, it yet attains universal
significance. This profound, poetic film will remain in your memory
long after you're done watching.
©2003 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
