Woman in the Dunes

You need to see WOMAN IN THE DUNES as soon as you can.

Hiroshi Teshigahara’s masterpiece works in so many ways that it’s hard to determine where to begin.  You can see this movie as a really cool, extra-long episode of The Twilight Zone.  You can see this movie as a parable of the human experience.  You can see it as an anticapitalist illustration of the plight of the working man.  There’s so much here: the pressures of society, the sexual politics of courtship and marriage, the tension between our animal and intellectual selves, the brutal leveling of Japanese society.  And that’s just the first pass on the story.  The camerawork, the lighting, the music, the willingness to exaggerate points of view and ideas in light and sound, the achingly erotic and the terror of nightmare – it’s all here. 

Told in outline, the story seems to cry out for a Rod Serling introduction:  “Imagine, if you will, a man.  He carries a driver’s license, a library card, cash – the things he uses to reassure the world that he is who is.  He’s out for a walk in the dunes, followed by an afternoon nap.  But when he awakens, he’ll find himself … in The Twilight Zone.”  He learns that he’s missed the last bus.  A passing local offers to guide him to a home where someone will take him in for the night.  The home is in a deep pit in the sand, and he climbs down by rope ladder.  There’s a woman there, and she happily cooks him dinner and fans him while he eats.  Later that night, he awakens and sees her shoveling sand outside.  He goes back to sleep.  When he awakens that morning, he sees her again.  She’s sleeping on her tatami mat, her nude body dusted with sand and glittering in the morning light.

The rope ladder is gone. 

I’ve given you the teaser.  Now, I’m heading into spoiler territory.  If you’re intrigued but don’t want to know too much, now’s the time to click away and put this film at the top of your queue.

You’ve been warned.

Ok, back to it.  It’s too hard for a woman alone down at the bottom of that pit.  She can’t keep up with the shoveling and she needs a husband.  He’s it, and there’s no way out.  The villagers sell the sand and lower rations down to those who produce, so welcome to your life’s work.  At one point, he asks, “Do we shovel sand to live, or do we live to shovel sand?”  Well that’s just it, isn’t it?  If you aren’t fully invested in what you do, if your job is just a job, if you’re trapped, well, then what?  Are you doomed to labor so someone else can profit from your misery?  Does the whole point of your existence become the continuation of your existence?  And what if you buy into the trap?  What do you do if you get a chance to escape?  There’s a Japanese saying which roughly translates to, “The tallest nail gets the hammer.”  Do you put your head down and fit in?  Do you keep shoveling?  Do you have a choice?

This is the kind of movie you wish you could have seen in college, when you had all night to stay up and talk through its ramifications.  You know, however, that you couldn’t have gotten it, not really, while you were still in college.  You could have related to vision of the woman (or, later in the narrative, the man) with the light dusting of sand.  But the role of the individual in the family and the family in society, the web of responsibilities among all the players?  These are just ideas to you.  You need to live them for at least a decade or so for them to sink in.

I haven’t even gotten into the technical aspects of the film, the way it creates a living world in the sand, the way it photographs sand as a metaphor for responsibility or uses its dissonant music to jar the audience while reinforcing the narrative.  Here’s a film that understands points of view so clearly that it shows us not only what its characters are seeing, but what they’re focusing on and what they’re feeling and what they’re thinking about.  The camera isn’t just a clever audience surrogate here: the camera reflects and directs, it’s organic to the proceedings, a part of what’s going on.  You’ve heard of the God’s Eye View?  In this film, the camera sees what God sees.  Oh, and the lighting.  Wait until you see the light on the sand on the body – one of the most memorable images put to film.  Watch shadows play across faces and flashlight beams glare down brutal humanity in its cruelty and hope for redemption.  I would pay real money to see this movie broken down shot by shot.

So if you’re young, see WOMAN IN THE DUNES and marvel at the photography and the music and the construction and the story and the ideas.  If you’re older, see this film and marvel at the photography and the music and the construction and the story and the ideas and the truths and hopes and perceptions and vitality of the cycle of life.  See WOMAN IN THE DUNES and marvel.  See WOMAN IN THE DUNES and never be the same.

The Furies

Only a fool or a hero would name his ranch The Furies.  T.C. Jeffords is both.

New Mexico, 1875ish: T.C. Jeffords (Walter Huston) rules over one of the biggest ranches in the territory.  He’s larger than life.  He’s a hero on the range.  And he’s spending money faster than he’s making it.  His daughter, Vance, is unamused.

His daughter is Barbara Stanwyck.  She loves him.

But

you

do

not

mess

with

Barbara Stanwyck.

Which is the film’s strength and its weakness.

See, here’s a movie that takes these two iconic actors, Huston and Stanwyck, and sets them up in this great conflict: he’s promised her the ranch, but he’s burning through its resources so fast that the promise is turning empty.  She loves him, but she has to fight him to save his legacy and save him from himself.  And it’s great stuff, it really is.  The Furies gives us two smart and capable people and lets them have at it, and it’s here that it really shines.

But The Furies tries to have it both ways.  See, it gives Stanwyck this love interest who does things like slap her to put her in her place.  She accepts this, which seems totally out of character both for the young Ms. Jeffords and the actress playing her.  When she kissed this guy after his assault, my jaw hit the floor.  I expected her to put a knife in his gut – or, at the very least, swindle him out of house and home.  I mean, this is Barbara Stanwyck we’re talking about, here!  But no.  Later, there’s some business about the guy telling her that she’s going to shut her mouth and do what she’s told, she accepts it, and I sat there agog.

I’m not saying this isn’t a good story.  I’m certainly not saying there aren’t some great things here.  I’m not even saying that this isn’t a reasonable portrayal of how someone of Stanwyck’s character’s age and background might behave.  I’m saying that, given what I (admittedly, as much a prisoner of my time and culture as the next guy) know about women, it’s inconceivable to me that a woman like Stanwyck’s Vance Jeffords would respond to abuse as she does in this film.

So enjoy the foolish hero.  Enjoy the resourceful heroine.  Wince at the cavalier attitude toward domestic violence.  This is a flawed picture, but it works nonetheless.  The Furies is a damn fine western.

Kick-Ass

I didn’t laugh all the way through KICK-ASS.  Sometimes, I’d remember that young children sat in the audience, and the horror of that realization’d take me out of the film.  Then something ostentatiously ridiculous or violent or vulgar would occur, I’d laugh again, and I’d rock along quite happily until I happened to glance over, once again, at those little kids.

KICK-ASS is not a movie for children.  It’s bloodily violent, so foulmouthed it’d take a sailor aback (Sigh.  The Navy has changed.), and too graphically sexual for prepubescents.  It’s also hilarious.  From star Aaron Johnson’s perfect mix of idealism, enthusiasm and awkwardness to Nicholas Cage’s ridiculous Adam West imitation to Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s geeky riff on Mr. Glass, the character work here is spot on.  Add Mark Strong’s deadpan villainy as a New York mafioso and young Chloe Moretz as the astonishingly vulgar Hit-Girl, and you have one of the best comedies to come along this year.

Here’s the setup:  Dave Lizewski (Johnson) is a teenaged comic book nerd who wonders why nobody ever steps up, puts on a costume, and actually tries to help people out.  He decides to take the plunge and, for his trouble gets beaten, stabbed, and run over by a car.  But after months of hospitalization, a reinforced skeleton thanks to all the plates and pins installed after his massive trauma, and major nerve damage leaving him nearly impervious to pain, he’s ready to try again.  He’s ready to become Kick-Ass, defender of people who need defending, rescuer of kittens, getter of the girl, etc.  And it isn’t long before he meets Mr. Big and Hit Girl, a father-daughter team whose idea of quality time is dressing up in costumes and killing thugs.  So basically, he gets everything he wanted.  He’s got cool hero friends.  He lands his Mary-Jane.  He occasionally kicks ass.  And he finds himself in the sights of Mr. Big (Strong, a gifted character actor who needs to stop playing villains before it’s too late).  Mr. Big, of course, is ready to finance a nemesis.  And there we are.

Based on the trailers, I expected this movie to be violent and vulgar and over the top, but I didn’t expect it to be so funny.  Watch Strong and Mintz-Plasse argue over their plans for movie night.  Watch Johnson stumble from one adventure to the next, and watch him take on the baddies with gear that appears to be made from tin foil and lawn chairs.  Watch Cage apply his eye makeup before a big night of fighting crime, and watch Moretz do pretty much everything she does.  You will laugh and laugh and laugh.  Then you’ll cringe for a while.  Then you’ll laugh some more.

Either that, or you’ll cringe and cringe and cringe, then maybe laugh for a while.  Your mileage may vary.

Regardless, you must respect this film’s audacity.  KICK-ASS isn’t afraid to go for broke, and it delivers a rousing time at the movies.

Just don’t bring your kids.