Eat the Rich!

With all the Occupy Wall Street rallies going on, I’ve found it pleasing that some have taken the extra step and walked the streets dressed as zombies and holding signs asserting, “Eat the rich!” I wonder though. How many people get the joke?

George Romero has been making zombie movies since he revolutionized the genre in 1968 with “Night of the Living Dead.” And he’s been a man on a mission. You see, for him the zombies aren’t walking blobs of decaying flesh. They are us. Or more specifically they are those of us that have fallen on hard times and tumbled from the middle class into poverty. And from one film in the series to the next, their numbers have steadily, dramatically grown.

In “Dawn of the Dead” (1978), a scientist assesses the political situation saying, “This isn't the Republicans versus the Democrats, where we're in a hole economically or... or we're in another war. This is more crucial than that. This is down to the line. There can be no more divisions among the living!” Another character realizes the zombies – those struggling – kill for one reason: “They kill for food.” They are the hungry.

With “Day of the Dead” (1985), hopes of working with the government had faded. In a throwaway line of dialog discussing the failing phone systems, a character says, “We used to talk to Washington all the time. They could hear us then.” And the beginnings of revolution were forming: “It takes more energy to keep quiet than it does to speak the mind.”

This culminated in “Land of the Dead” (2005). The zombies have overrun the earth and the last CEO (played by Dennis Hopper who notoriously went from “Easy Rider” to one of Ronald Reagan’s biggest supporters) is barricaded in his high tower as countless zombies converge on the city. Beginning their march in a funny scene set in Main Street, USA, these zombies are different than their predecessors. They’ve learned to work together. And the last vestiges of the old way are memorably devoured.

In “Dawn of the Dead,” it was proclaimed “When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.” I think the true subtext of that quote has become all too familiar: “When there’s no more room in the unemployment lines, the unemployed will walk the earth.” And they’ll be plenty eager to “Eat the rich!”

Moneyball (and a bit of Big Windup)

Baseball gets a bad rap for being dull. There’s no clock. A pitcher can take all the time he wants and can attempt a pick-off at first base 30 times in a row if he feels like it. And the seventh inning stretch sometimes seems so named because it offers the crowd a chance to stand, work out the kinks, and yawn.

I’ve always been fascinated by the game though. While football is akin to gladiators and lions and bloody remains, baseball has always seemed more like a game of chess – or an evening at a poker table. The game is cerebral with pockets of thought lurking beneath every pitch-out, lead-off, and outfield shift.

I recently watched an anime television series with my daughter called Big Windup and we were totally absorbed. It’s about a Japanese middle school baseball team and focuses on the relationship between a pitcher and his catcher and all the mind games they play with each other and with opposing hitters. Entire episodes play out within a single inning which should, one would think, lead to boredom.

But it doesn’t. It reveals just how much thought goes into whether to throw a slider, a curve, or a fastball next. It reveals the heart of the game to be a catcher as Spassky, a hitter as Fischer, and a pitcher as a highly skilled pawn caught in the middle.

The terrific new baseball movie Moneyball is every bit as thoughtfully stimulating, but in a different way. To return to my casino metaphor, it portrays the General Manager Billy Beane of the 2002 Oakland Athletics (played by Brad Pitt) and his new chief assistant Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) – a stats obsessed computer nerd – as crafty card-counters playing the odds in a giant poker game.

The movie opens with an anecdote about how, if nothing changes, the Yankees will always beat the Athletics because they have vastly more money to spend on players. And this sets up the challenge: How can one build an affordable team that can beat the Yankees? Beane knows intuitively that it means thinking outside the box. Brand shows him just how far outside.

The answer is to stop paying for players and start paying for runs, runs being what win games. And you score runs by getting runners on base. The logic, which is almost diabolical and is often presented devilishly by computer printouts scrolling across the screen, is to find damaged, over-the-hill, and otherwise undesirable (and therefore bargain priced) players who possess one magic quality – a high percentage of at-bats that lead to their bodies crossing home plate.

It’s a bold experiment suggested by Brand and embraced by Beane, though not without reservations. He grasps for it like a drowning man and takes the heat from his entire staff of scouts for trying to reduce player analysis with all its human variables to an ice cold spreadsheet. And he must fight tooth and nail with his team manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who refuses to accept the idea that he should be starting a trembling former catcher at first base simply because the numbers say so.

And fight Beane does, but is he rewarded for his commitment? Does the grand experiment work? It is here that the film is at its most teasing and tantalizing. In two of its most beautiful moments, the human element finds a way to sneak back into the works, once to keep a winning streak alive and once to remind him why it is that he so loves the game.

Fall 2011 Series

October 6 - Waste Land
October 13 - Local Hero
October 20 - Of Gods and Men
October 27 - The Chorus
November 3 - Ikiru

All shows are at 3:00 and 5:30 at the Grand Theaters.

On Thursday November 10, Cinema 100 will be sponsoring a public forum/discussion on the theme of Community in the films of the series and relate the theme to our experience in the Bismarck and Mandan communities. The forum will take place in RM C of the Bismarck Public Library. Tayo Basquiat and Brian Palecek will moderate.

Uncle Boonmee

I’m not going to claim full understanding of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s latest film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, but it did something for me that went beyond understanding, I think. It made me want to increase my understanding.

Winner of last year’s Palme d’Or (top prize) at the Cannes Film Festival, it’s a gentle, deliberately paced, and visually sumptuous work. The Thai director who for quite understandable reasons goes by the nickname “Joe” has a distinctive style. Frequently, his compositions are filled from top to bottom, side to side, and corner to corner with foliage. He is closely in touch with nature and seems to be suggesting that we all exist amidst a never ending jungle, literal and figurative.

Uncle Boonmee shows us Boonmee during his final days as he succumbs to kidney failure. (It is based on the true story of man who appeared to Buddhist monks with claims of being able to see his past lives while dreaming.) He is surrounded by a fascinating assortment of caregivers and comforters including a male nurse who administers his dialysis, his devoted sister-in-law, the ghost of his late wife, and his lost son who returns in a not quite human, ape-like form that resembles Bigfoot with laser-like red eyes.

The film consists of quiet scenes of Boonmee receiving care and slowly slipping away seamlessly overlapping with visions of his dreams. The centerpiece is an extraordinary sequence from a time long ago of an aged princess carried by servants before a waterfall where she has a conversation with and ultimately has sex with a catfish. This occurs after she gazes upon her youthful reflection in the water and she rejects a human suitor. It’s a scene that mesmerizes with its folktale-like qualities, yet managed to escape my grasp due to those tales being outside my experience.

I’m fascinated by folktales, but so far have little exposure to those beyond The West. Uncle Boonmee constantly hints at a whole new folk tradition waiting for my discovery. I also have little knowledge of things spiritual outside of Christianity and detect something imminently worth discovery within the film’s lush, densely green frames.

I’ve never encountered a film that suggested so strongly a sense of the circular nature of things; of all living things living in close relationship; and of past, present, and future co-existing. There is a moment where Boonmee’s sister-in-law narrowly misses stepping on an insect and is warned to be more careful as if what’s once small may one day be large and what’s powerful could easily one day be weak, both in this life and in lives to come. That insect may have already spared her life, or may one day end it out of similar carelessness. (A scene where mosquitos are casually killed with an electrified flyswatter left me asking, “Just what are the boundaries in this belief system?”)

Joe has an affinity with nature, but with Uncle Boonmee that extends more than ever to man’s relationship with animals. The opening scene depicts a water buffalo breaking free of its bonds, wandering into the jungle, and then its owner gently retrieving it. Boonmee’s sister-in-law cavorts happily with her dog. Completely relaxed, Boonmee and his sister-in-law taste honey from a hive, bees buzzing all about them. His son returns with an ape-like appearance. And of course that scene with the catfish was one of last year’s most talked about love scenes, to say the least.

More than anything though, what left me wanting about the beliefs expressed in Uncle Boonmee is how all of the people, regardless of cast in life, treat each other with love and respect. I want to learn more, a lot more.

Blue Valentine

Blue Valentine is an achingly sad affair. It chronicles the final days of a marriage between Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams), seemingly held together only by a young daughter (hers, not his) and desperation (his, not hers). Don’t let this scare you away though. Sadness is an emotion of many colors, and this movie does a magnificent job of showing them all. It’s my favorite American movie in years.

The movie is structured as if from Dean’s point of view as he sorts through the events of their relationship, trying to discover what went wrong. It tells of their final two days separated by a night together in an all blue, futuristic honeymoon suite. This is all aching. It’s punishing. It’s angry and filled with denial that stops just short of acceptance.

These scenes are punctuated by flashbacks to their meeting, dating, her revealing her pregnancy to him, and their quickie wedding. These scenes display the other colors. There’s a scene of his serenading her late at night in front of a closed storefront that’s magical. There’s palpable affection between them. His reaction to her being pregnant is fear laced with determination. Her reaction to his proposal, immediately following a scene in an abortion clinic that sets a new standard for such scenes, is to tell him, “You don’t have to do this,” as she clings to him.

What went wrong? The answer he finds is pretty much everything. But it’s a very understandable sort of everything, or at least it was for me. In my twenties, I fell in love at first sight and ignored all the signals the pretty young woman was flashing before my eyes until we found ourselves sitting before a roaring fire enacting “the marriage proposal scene.” The woman, hand trembling, gave back the ring, stood up, and walked out of my life.

I was lucky. I was spared what I now know would have been years of sadness. And, if I hadn’t already known this, Dean and Cindy would’ve taught me once and for all. Watching the course of their relationship – meeting, falling into something like love, passionately never quite connecting, and not enough caring – hit me in some very sensitive places. Oh, only a few of the specifics were the same, but the emotions were all familiar.

I wonder what others think of this movie. I’ve heard many people young and old express how deeply it affected them, more than I’ve heard for any other movie. People in their sixties were shattered by it. My 19-year-old niece has proclaimed it her favorite recent movie. Would all of them have a story to tell similar to mine? I read that writer/director Derek Cianfrance spent 12 years developing the script and that his two brilliant stars contributed a great deal of personal pain as well. It really shows.

I came across something very interesting while discussing the movie in between my first and second viewings. I very strongly empathized with Dean. He seemed the White Knight to me and Cindy was the messed up, troubled one. And I found most men felt the same while most women felt just the opposite. I couldn’t understand. I chalked it up to some sort of gender thing.

But, while watching it a second time, I found myself agreeing with my wife and my niece. All of Dean’s jealousies and over-willingness to pass blame rather than share it became painfully apparent. I think I finally saw things from the point of view of that pretty young woman I wanted to marry 25 years ago.

America Lost and Found: The BBS Story

I’ve always loved Hollywood movies of the 1970s. It has something to do with my wishing I had been part of the student protests that opened the decade – like the burning of the Bank of America in my home town of Isla Vista, California. Wishing I had been at Woodstock to witness a generation’s high point, and the beginning of its end, also plays a role. Mostly though, it’s a reaction to seeing my parents trembling with hushed tones in the kitchen trying to hide these events from me.

American movies during those times of unrest and Richard Nixon were notable for taking their cameras into the real world, away from Hollywood’s sets and stars. Also characteristic were frank and free explorations of sexuality, downbeat, ambiguous endings, and conflicted characters that left audiences grasping and asking: Was I supposed to like that hero?

“America Lost and Found: The BBS Story,” a rich new box set that combines seven movies released from 1968 through 1972, some well-known – Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show – some not so well known – Head (starring The Monkees), Drive, He Said, and The King of Marvin Gardens – and one forgotten – A Safe Place, feels like a primer on 1970s Hollywood.

BBS Productions, named after [B]ob Rafelson, [B]ert Schneider, and [S]teve Blauner, was born out of the success of two productions: the television series The Monkees and the whirlwind known as Easy Rider. Monkees co-creators Rafelson and Schneider filled their bank accounts with enough cash to finance the Peter Fonda/Dennis Hopper pipe-dream of a biker movie. But first they tried to spin The Monkees into a theatrical movie. They planned to jokingly promote Easy Rider as being “from the producers who gave you Head.”

Now, thanks to this set, we can see Head, a box office disaster that forced one of the greatest taglines in movie history to be abandoned. It’s actually a fun and inventive movie, though far more politically serious than the television show, which explains it failure.

Jack Nicholson was on the verge of hanging up his acting gloves when he was cast as George Hanson in Easy Rider (he also co-wrote Head) and a star was born. He saved Easy Rider which would’ve been deadly dull without him. He owns this set as well, being involved in six out of the seven movies including his fascinating directing debut Drive, He Said. Watching these movies is like watching the birth of a major career that almost never was.

Idiosyncratic director Henry Jaglom seems an odd man out with A Safe Place, his meditation on loving and forgetting, until one notices the threads. Jaglom was the editor who helped simmer Easy Rider down from a four hour mess to a mostly taut 95 minutes. Jaglom and Nicholson made a pact that they would each act in the other’s first movie. Jaglom appears in Drive, He Said, Nicholson in A Safe Place.

Seeming the most out of place though is The Last Picture Show (the one without Nicholson). Its classical storytelling and black and white cinematography harken back to earlier Hollywood times of Howard Hawks and John Ford, but watching it within the context of this set makes it feel perfectly at home at BBS.

Peter Bogdanovich insisted on shooting entirely in the town that inspired Larry McMurtry. The pool party with Jacy stripping on a diving board perfectly captures the era’s freewheeling sexuality, and no ending is bleaker than its encounter between Sonny and Ruth Popper that dissolves into an image of the town’s desolate main street with one forever blinking traffic light.

"I knew two things for sure...

I'd love to include things like this from time to time. It's a reaction to the Cinema 100 experience by first time season ticket holder Kelsey Schable:

Throughout the course of this semester, I have searched for an opportunity to immerse myself in a different culture in order to complete my cultural event project. My efforts had been mostly futile, due to the low number of cultural events located in the Bismarck-Mandan area. It occurred to me that perhaps I was being too simplistic in my cultural views and should look beyond race and ethnicity to find a group of people with completely different interests than my own. To my chagrin, I did not even realize that I had been attending a significant cultural event every Thursday afternoon for months in the form Cinema 100, a club that regularly shows new and remarkable films at the Grand Theatres weekly. Cinema 100 is unique because the people who attend the showings of these films not only have their own culture, but they involve themselves in other cultures with the medium of film.

I was first introduced to Cinema 100 through my fiancé, a local director, movie enthusiast, and board member of Cinema 100. It was his first year working with the organization and every Thursday afternoon he would have to disappear to the Grand Theatres to take tickets and view a different film. The members of Cinema 100 took great pains to find the perfect blend of films in order to expose the people of Bismarck to captivating movies that range from foreign films to classics. On the first week of the Spring 2011 Cinema 100 showing, my fiancé halfheartedly asked me to join him, knowing that it was unlikely that I would give up my Thursday afternoon to sit in a crowded movie theatre. I surprised him and myself by accepting his offer.

The first week I attended Cinema 100, I paid six dollars to watch a documentary about Joan Rivers. Although the documentary was provocative and feisty, the electric atmosphere was more stimulating than the film. Veterans who had attended Cinema 100 showings for years lingered with one another before the movie and were the first ones out of the theatre, bursting with critiques. Newbies, like me, were more reserved. I liked the vibe, but I was cautious about giving my opinion about the film with so many vivacious personalities surrounding me. As I drove away from the Grand Theatres, I knew two things for sure: Joan Rivers was a dynamite comedienne and I was purchasing a season pass to Cinema 100.

In the weeks following, I attended four other films presented by Cinema 100. I enjoyed viewing films that were different than the romantic comedies and explosive action films one usually sees in theatres. As the weeks wore on, my misgivings about expressing my opinions gave way to the fun of debating with other Thursday afternoon film critics. I realized that the Cinema 100 culture is built on the idea that everyone has an inner film critic, and that those who attend have inner critics that cannot be satisfied by the regular blockbusters of the week. This culture is exceptional because the members may not be the same race, age, or religion, but they have the same yearn for education through film and spirited debate.

While my cultural event project may have been atypical, that is fine with me. In fact, it may even be preferable. Cultural diversity is something to be celebrated and explored, especially because the fact that all people belong to the same, human culture can sometimes be forgotten. I have found that not only does it pay off to expose oneself to different cultures, but that every once in a while one may find another culture to which one belongs.