repulsion Reviews

You Can Count on Me (2000)

A richly familiar work by Mr. Longergan

[17 December 2000]

The first fifteen minutes of Ken Lonergan's You Can Count On Me, although thematically important to the film, seem significantly out of place in the film. This has to due with the fact that the scenes have little visual urgency and seem inappropriately out of tune with the rest of film's quieter tone. Sammy and her younger brother Terry quietly watch television as their parents are run over by a truck. After a cursory moment that shows the young Sammy and Terry grieving at a funeral, Lonergan's film delves into a wonderfully observed tale of how the deadly accident retarded the lives of the older Sammy (Laura Linney) and Terry (Mark Ruffalo).

Terry, down on his luck and living with a loser girlfriend, sweeps into town and starts living with Sammy. Instantly, the brother and sister are forced to deal with their relationship in a new light. The greatest praise I can give Lonergan is that he exercises a lot of control in never mentioning the death of Sammy and Terry's parents. Everything that the two characters strive for in this film is a direct result of the pain and lost that greeted them upon their parents' death but nary a comment is made about the incident.

Sammy lives alone with her son Rudy (Rory Culkin), sheltering him from the reality of how much of a loser his real father is. Terry becomes very close to his nephew and assumes the role of surrogate father. He takes this instinctual need to be a role model to Rudy a little to far by introducing Rudy to his deadbeat father (Josh Lucas). It's a noble deed that is painfully and quietly rooted in the fact that Terry had his own relationship with his father truncated the day that he died in the car accident.

It's funny to see how much Terry thinks he knows about the world, ridiculing the small-time life that Sammy has decided to live. Although her life is obviously boring, his drifter mentality is about as scatterbrained as his sister's quiet existence, whose emotions are always threatening to boil over.

Sammy lives a painfully drab life that consists of nothing more than driving her son to school and going to work at a small bank. Such a peaceful existence is off-putting to the big-city man that Terry fancies himself to be and the problem isn't necessarily that Sammy is living small but that she isn't living at all. She is dating a man that she doesn't love, nor wants to marry, and soon gets sexually involved with her new boss Brian (Matthew Broderick).

There isn't a particularly strong aesthetic sensibility running throughout You Can Count on Me but the strength of the movie is the way that Lonergan's dialogue is so painfully familiar. Lonergan explores such simple truths that one can't help but relate to the lives of his characters. One great scene toward the end of the film finds Terry being forced to embrace religion by his sister. Here is a woman who is having an affair with a married man, forcing God onto a man who is far from perfect but a man who, nonetheless, has shown a more receptive need to get out and change his life and the life of the people around him. She is not being malicious, but merely continuing to play the role of mother figure to her brother; a role she learned to play with little training.

Linney, in an impressively nuanced performance, plays Sammy as an emotionally insecure woman who makes many a wrong decision. A woman that would otherwise shun adultery chooses comfort in the arms of a married man whenever she feels she is being pressured into marriage by a boyfriend she doesn't know if she wants to marry. The film ends with the two siblings fighting but ultimately coming to terms with the fact that even though they can no longer live together, the familiarity of their emotionally stilted lives will always keep them at arms link. No one speaks the titular platitude in the film aloud but the viewer is always aware of how the two characters' lives are emotionally and inextricably bound.

Chuck & Buck (2000)

One of the best, least-seen films of the year

[10/10 · 17 December 2000]

The emotional world of Chuck & Buck's titular Buck is explicated early on as Buck (Mike White), a 27 year old mentally-challenged individual, is shown living in a kitschy suburban home that is decoratively informed by his taste for childlike pleasures. After his mother dies, Buck decides to re-establish ties with his boyhood best friend Chuck (Chris Weitz), a record executive now living in Los Angeles with his fiancée Carlyn (Beth Colt). Buck packs up his belongings and moves to the West Coast, setting in motion a troubling series of events so grotesquely humorous and touching that I'm pressed to call the film the scariest film of the year.

When Chuck and Buck were 11, they were best friends, and a decade and a half later they find themselves leading decidedly different lives. The phony-looking Tom Cruise-type that Chuck has become apparently leaves him incapable of realizing that the sixteen years that have separated the two men has caused Buck to live in a child-like world of arrested development. There is a rhyme to Buck's pursuit of Chuck and as Buck begins to stalk his friend it becomes clear that there was something entirely more complex to their friendship than initially meets that eyes.

One wickedly morbid utterance by to his friend Chuck reveals that the two men, as boys, shared a sexual relationship. Buck's mental state has little to do with his childhood experimentation so his pursuit of Chuck has little to do with homosexual desire than it has to do with wallowing in a childhood comfort that has long been lost. Chuck, who viewed the experiences with Buck as nothing but the curious experimentation between two young boys, is forced to face the ramifications of the actions he made long ago and the film takes an interesting twist that says plenty about the repressed and inconsiderate desires of yuppie America.

Lupe Ontiveros, thankless owner of stereotypically Hispanic characters in films like Selena and As Good As It Gets, almost single-handedly steals the show as the manager that decides to put up a play written by Buck called Hank and Frank. The psychodrama presented in Buck's play is a homoerotic (and misogynistic) tale of child-lust that is given a Wizard of Oz spin that makes the proceedings all the more troubling. Ontiveros juggles the right amount of dry wit and maternal instinct as she prods into Buck's dangerously unstable mind.

There is a sense of dread in Chuck & Buck that is near chilling. This isn't a gross exaggeration because there is a scene in the film between Buck and a young boy that is so twisted and misleading that one is forced to wonder if the scene is an outtake from Solandz' Happiness. From the film's oddly addictive theme song to colorful performances, Chuck & Buck not only harbors the creepiest catch phrase of the year (and the one least to be uttered) but the most sardonic and challenging take on the truncated sexual persona.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

An accomplished film by Ang Lee

[17 December 2000]

The story begins when a renowned swordsman named Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat) travels to the palace of a peaceful king named Sir Te, whose security is maintained by his friend Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh). Mu Bai has just returned from a meditative excursion to a mountain that has left him spiritually unsound. Although his non-enlightenment was something that has left him in a state of unease, and at odds with the promise made to him by his dead master, Mu Bai still decides to renounce his famed sword, the Green Destiny, to the protective hands of Sir Te.

Ang Lee quickly establishes the social order of his characters when Shu Lien meets Sir Te's daughter Jen (Zhang Ziyi), a seemingly quiet girl whose secretly rebellious nature lies at the center of the film. A mysterious figure steals the Green Destiny and Mu Bai believes that the perpetrator is Jade Fox (Cheng Pei Pei), a female martial arts legend who was responsible for the death of his mater. The three women at the heart of Crouching Tiger all represent the vastly different paths the female can choose to follow in a world dominated by the fighting male. It's a world that these three women have longed for but one so inherently uninviting to the woman that it is very easy for these women to choose the path towards evil. Jen, arguably the film's center, is caught in the middle; needing to decide whether to follow the teachings of Jade Fox or bow before the open arms of Mu Bai and Shu Lien.

The Wuxia Pien, a category of the kung fu drama relying heavily on the presence of warriors with magical warriors, is something inherently melodramatic and ridden with archetypes and cliches. This is in full effect in Crouching Tiger, but Lee manages to stage the proceedings with such a gorgeous glow and pristine understanding of his characters pathos that their journeys toward self-actualization is something that is always within the realm of complete believability.

Take one scene in the desert, where Jen becomes romantically linked with the bandit Lo (Chen Chang). The flashback to the much younger Jen shows her pursuing Lo across the desert in an attempt to retrieve a comb. Her pursuit of the girly item (albeit a family heirloom) is at first troubling, considering how fiercely independent she is, but her journey becomes rooted in a mutual exchange of power between herself and Lo. Her love for Lo, erotically charged in ways that makes Minghella's The English Patient look like the cheap burlesque story that it is, becomes the source of primal strength that will drive Jen throughout the duration of her life.

Lee and Peter Pau, his cinematographer, stage their characters within their settings in such a way that their relationship to their environment becomes something from which the characters draw spiritual strength. Mu Bai and Jen's dance atop a forest's treetops, the film's visual centerpiece, could have been saddled with spectacle but Lee turns the choreographed bout into something much more urgent. It is a battle between a man completely at ease with his relationship to nature and a woman so driven to prove a point that she has failed to notice that her impulsiveness has not gained her the spiritual peace of mind that will make her a true master.

Many have singled out Michelle Yeoh as the centerpiece of the film. One would be hard-pressed to find an actress who can express so much with so little and even though Yeoh's tragic beauty seems to hint at a legacy of pain, Lee fails in truly center Yeoh's Shu Lien within the confines of a solid and three-dimensional narrative. It's always clear that she and Mu Bai gave up on love because of the respect she still harbors for her dead lover, but there is nothing to their relationship aside from a couple of longing stares. It's subtle, but too subdued to register as much of a passionately resonating impulse as the relationship between Jen and Lo.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon belongs entirely to Zhang Ziyi, a fierce creature that teeter-totters between the inviting force of good and evil. Her journey, which ends in a glorious display of spiritual self-sacrifice, is engaging because we never know at any given point in the film whether she will fall into the welcoming arms of Mu Bai or Jade Fox. She is to Crouching Tiger what Luke Skywalker was to Star Wars, and I'm sure many will find the mythos that is so deeply-rooted in the Lee film to be reminiscent of the world that Lucas created in his 1977 space saga.

The world of Crouching Tiger could very well be the world of China itself. It is a world of magic and intrigue, where men and women are bound by the ethos of honor and dignity. It is a land rich with the intricate history of all it's people, slowly enveloping its arms around the females of the land, long relegated to the role of servant and obedient wife. Many will no doubt flippantly brush Lee's film away as a mere post-feminist diatribe, catering to the Camille Paglias of the world who long for female empowerment in otherwise testosterone-laden tales. But let's not trivialize a film that is obviously grasping for something entirely more complex.

Crouching Tiger isn't a film about women beating each other up for two hours. Granted, there is plenty of woman-to-woman battle sequences, and they are all ferociously fierce of behold, but the film's quieter moments suggest that this is not merely a film about female empowerment but female solidarity. One of the film's least energized scenes allows us to feel sympathy for the otherwise loathsome Jade Fox because we understand that her chosen path was one that was necessary for her to take. It was a decision that was in direct opposition to the status quo but it was her only apparent means for self-expression. Her intended revenge on one of the main characters is nothing more than a misguided, although understandable, attack on a fellow woman who used thievery to impose above her the proverbial glass ceiling that is usually constructed by the male.

Wonder Boys (2000)

A great film by Mr. Hanson

[17 December 2000]

Wonder Boys is a glum screwball comedy with a ganja-addicted professor as its protagonist and it is the best kind of follow-up Curtis Hanson could have asked for after the success of LA Confidential. Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) is our main wonder boy, an English professor who hasn't produced a novel nearly seven years after his successful Arsonist's Daughter. It's a testament to his credibility as a writer that everyone from a precocious student (Katie Holmes) to a fellow professor (Rip Torn) still fawns over Grady whenever he gives them a chance.

Hanson's jaded take on the academic life of a Pittsburgh college is defined by a rich exploration of men whose emotional bonds with each other build over a series of chaotic events. James Leer (Tobey Maguire), one of Grady's students, is a gloomy lad who seems all but ready to join his professor on his quirky little journey to normalcy. The third wonder boy is Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey Jr.), Grady's neurotic book editor whose job is on the line if Grady can't produce another successful novel.

The problem with Grady is that his new novel is 2,000 pages long and he doesn't know how to end it. It's not so much that Grady is marijuana-happy but that he doesn't know how to deal with the turmoil in his life and therefore allows himself to go to seed. He toils away; incapable of understanding how he can let go of his third wife and allow himself to marry Sara (Frances McDormand), a professor's wife he is having an affair with and who has revealed to Grady that she is pregnant with his child.

Sara's husband Walter (Richard Thomas) holds a party at his house and Downey's fey character is instantly stricken by James uncanny ability to recite, alphabetically, the methods by which numerous celebrities met their suicidal ends. The seemingly fickle Terry is just as vulnerable as James so their relationship, culminating in a not-so-surprising romp in the hay, feels like a union of two lost souls who have oddly found their way home. But the meat of the story lies in the fact that the party at Sara's house ends with Grady and James needing to dispose of Sara's dead dog. Things also don't look too good for Grady when he discovers that James stole the coat owned by Marilyn Monroe on her wedding day, which Walter had secretly locked away in his bedroom.

The film is full of many surprises, like Grady's discovery of Marilyn's coat in James' schoolbag and how Grady's car ends up in the hands of a quirky, ex-jockey and his wayward girlfriend. The couple leads Grady on a softly cathartic and mythical journey that helps Grady lose his verbosity and take control of his life.

Michael Douglas, playing against type in a year that also brought us a surprise performance from Hollywood-heavy Julia Roberts, plays Grady with a sympathetically scruffy cynicism that reminds us why he is such a good actor. Things tie themselves up a little too neatly by the end of the film, as if one's relationship to marijuana was a main cause of writer's block, but it's an ending that is smooth on the stomach. Wonder Boys is about the commitments that we make to ourselves and the people around us and the fears that one must conquer in order to make the decisions that will emotionally mature us. Hanson's film has an undercurrent of pathos running throughout its very fiber that makes the journey richly rewarding and akin to opening a present on Christmas

Pollock (2000)

A flawed work about a great artist

[17 December 2000]

Pollock is a rather straightforward biographical tale of the life of Pollock as portrayed by Ed Harris, who also directed the picture. Pollock ascribed to the laws of Picasso, as did his equally talented wife Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden), even as he desperately fought to forge his own identity. His is the typical story of the struggling artist: fighting poverty and seeking fame while translating madness into art. The film comes full circle but falls a bit thin and offers little insight into Pollock's artistic process.

Clement Greenberg (Jeffrey Tambor), an abstract expressionist and art critic, serves as an interesting nemesis to Pollock. He critiques Pollock's paintings with the panache one would expect from a struggling painter, but his criticism of Pollock seems to be on key: Pollock's style, a cross between Picasso's Cubist Period and Blue Period, will wear out it's welcome if Pollock fails to find his own voice. Pollock, a sensitive yet emotionally unstable soul, doesn't take highly to criticism of any kind and usually takes his anger out on the people around him.

A better name for this picture might have been The Misadventures of Jackson Pollock: From Guggenheim Prophet to Long Island Drunk, as the film is nothing but a series of scenarios that finds Pollock making a fool of himself at every turn. His behavior is, for the most part, loathsome and the audience is provided with little opportunity to sympathize for the devil because Harris doesn't give us much to like in the man. Although it is clear that Pollock aspires to paint, there is little subtext in the film to show why Pollock has become the unstable, modernist rebel that took that art world by storm.

Also baffling is why Harris chooses to treat the film as a quasi art history lesson. One scene in the film finds Pollock experimenting on a canvas as Lee walks into the room only to start commenting on Pollock's work with terminology best fitting a college expressionist professor. Her brand of double-speak seems shrill and gratuitous, best fitting an art critic and not a woman whose husband is all too familiar with the glossology of the painting process.

Marcia Gay Harden is, in many respects, the heart and soul of the picture. She's a fine actress who has never gotten the kinds of roles that her talent deserves. Her character in Pollock is perhaps the only three-dimensional character. Although Lee is a woman who adamantly defends her place in the art world she puts her career on hold in order to act as a manager to Pollock. She takes him in, forces him to paint and tries to control his bouts with liquor. She selflessly defends her right not to have children but still nurtures her relationship with Pollock even as he slowly chops away at the foundation, flirting and sleeping away with an endless string of women.

Anyone familiar with Pollock's life eagerly waits for Harris to capture the full glory of Pollock's drip period. Equally reviled and praised during its time, his drip paintings are astounding works that feel like the coded blueprints of Pollock's internal, emotional climate. It's almost blasphemous to see Harris dubiously portray the discovery of Pollock's famous process in a scene where he accidentally splashes paint on a floor while working on a

nondrip painting.

Still, the moments where Harris portrays Pollock's drip process are the best moments in the film, if only on a visual level. The truth of the painting process is still shockingly absent. Pollock seems to find an identity during his drip period but for some reason his life continues to go to seed. I can relate to the moments of a man staring at a blank slate, searching for inspiration within the mind and soul, and loving the spectacular results when an impassioned brush meets the slate. Pollock's worthiness as a man and as an artist lies in the hopeful beauty of the finished art and they seem to promise transcendental hope. But there is a contradiction on the screen as Harris, the director, paints the transitional elements between his scenes so cloudy that his characters motivations seem nothing less than random and misinformed.

One horrible scene in the film finds Harris trying to elicit some kind of suspense by making us wonder if he can ride all the way home without a case of beer falling to the ground. See Pollock paint, see Pollock pee into Peggy Guggenheim's fireplace. See Pollock paint, see Pollock overturn tables full of food. This seesaw scenario escalates for the entire duration of the film and it adds up to very little. It's as if Harris, in an otherwise admirable performance, is more concerned with playing the more dramatic moments of the painter's life than the quieter, more informative moments.

We get a sense that this man hides his emotions behind a false display of bravado but we never, for one moment, get a sense as to why he embraces painting so much. I would have rather seen moments that explored Pollock's inspiration, motivations and the rationale behind his return to drunkenness than a series of incidents more fitting the life of the town bum. Certainly I don't expect something wholly blissful but everything portrayed on the screen seems incidental at the end, as if Harris is trying to translate snapshots of Pollock's life to the screen without focusing on the meatier connective issue.

Gladiator (2000)

Ridley Scott's lame take on a WWF bout

[1/10 · 17 December 2000]

The denizens of the Roman Empire were a particularly bloodthirsty lot, and apparently not that far off in mentality from our own culture. The vox populi, bored to the heavens with the multitudinous burdens inflicted on them by their government, seek escape in the mind-numbingly bland entertainment provided within the Colosseum. Gladiators fend for their lives against a series of uniquely dressed foes and beasts, all in the hope of winning their freedom. Everything about this testosterone-toned epic is meant to cater to a population who likes their filmed landscapes served to them WWF-style.

Maximus (Russell Crowe) is a top army general in the army of Marcus Auerlius (Richard Harris), a dying patriarch who (in predictable fashion) unwittingly causes trouble within the family ranks by offering his throne to Maximus instead of to his son Commodus (Joaquin Pheonix). Auerlius' son is the kind of whinny, pussy-whipped boy that your audience likes to hate because the character's moral fiber makes the character so easily expendable. Commodus' temper tantrums lead to patricide and the film turns into an interminably messy three-hour affair simply centering on the standard theme of revenge.

Maximus is sent to die in the woods but manages to get the upper hand and kill Commodus' henchmen. He returns to his homestead only to find his wife and son lynched from trees. Poor Maximus is denied the throne of Rome and is now being fueled to wage a one-man war against the sissy who wiped away his entire family. As Maximus works his way back to Rome, unbeknownst to the new king Commodus, our foppish king swishes around the kingdom ridiculously hitting on his sister Lucilla (Connie Nielson) and hovering inappropriately over his nephew Lucius (Spencer Treat Clark).

In the first hour Ridley Scott has expertly painted his archetypal figures, forcing us to love the brave Maximus, wifeless and sonless, and hate the creepy teenager with the thirst for forbidden fruit. Maximus, once back in Rome, manages to enter a gladiator troop manned by one Proximo, the late Oliver Reed. This little group of circus freaks will provide Maximus with the proper cover through which he can maneuver himself into the hearts of Rome's people. Not only is the man driven by revenge but he is also cocky enough to believe that he has what it takes to accomplish the sort of feats no other gladiator has been able to accomplish. By his side is Juba (Djimon Hounsou), the proverbial Black voice of wisdom. If not for Will Smith's more unfortunately stereotypical role in Legend of Bagger Vance, this would have been the kind of role that would have garnered the deserved scorn of people like Spike Lee.

For two hours, Scott inundates us with endless arena fireworks that would serve the acrobatics of the Rock and Hulk Hogan to a much better effect. The characterization of Crowe's character amounts to nothing more than a cocksure man, full of false bravado, whose only apparent skill is to raise his arm into the air and scream for his men to surge into battle. He is the kind of screen character who wages war against hundreds of foes within the course of a movie and manages to dispose of all of them with relative ease. He is also the kind of superhero archetype that garners the admiration of young boys like Lucius, something which causes our dear Commodus to go even further over the edge.

Scott is to be admired in the end for at least not being a hypocrite, as he practices what he preaches. Since the citizens of Rome seem only to live for bloodlust, Scott manages to paint Gladiator as nothing else than that: entertainment geared for audiences whose sole interest is seeing men and tigers beat the s**t out of each other for three hours. But if this is all there was to the film then one would see little complaints from my person but Scott makes the mistake of filling his film with arty flourishes.

The film opens with Maximus walking across a field, his hands slowly caressing tall blades of grass. These flashbacks, along with various cutaways to fast-moving skyscapes, amount to nothing more than pretentious attempts to add artistic credibility to an otherwise sophomoric film. Its as if he is aware of the fact that his film is devoid of any three-dimensional resonance that he tries to quickly interject soft touches of humanity into the proceedings. The end result is nothing less than visual illiteracy, ringing completely false and cowardly.

When it comes to epics none come better than Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev or Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, two masterworks from Russia's greatest directors that fully captured the three-dimensional scope of war. The bad guys in these films, unlike the one played by Phoenix in Gladiator, are the kinds of foes whose selfishly malicious journeys are never cartoonishly drawn. The landscapes created by the Russian masters were poetic and grand, full of visual and emotional urgency. Scott's film is amounts to nothing more than being beat over the head by a club for three hours.

American Psycho (2000)

Mary Harron one-ups Bret Easton Ellis

[17 December 2000]

Patrick Bateman, the yuppie serial killer du jour created by Bret Easton Ellis, is obsessed with all things superficial. Ellis' written world is full of super-attractive young men with secret killer ways. He wallows in his protagonist's masochistic behavior and only occasionally manages to step back and comment on his behavior on a larger scale. Patrick Bateman is intended to be the metaphor for Reaganism on the kill but somehow this message is muddled amidst the non-stop name-dropping and unending detail that Ellis gives to Bateman's ritualistic killings.

Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol) one-ups Ellis in just about every department with her screen adaptation. The fact that many designers did not grant Harron the permission to use their names in the film could have been a Godsend because it forces Harron to focus on the more relevant nuances of her character. Harron brilliantly establishes Bateman's attraction for all things narcissistic in a scene where he describes his daily facial rejuvenating process while standing in front of his bathroom mirror. If you combine that moment with Bateman's non-stop exercise regime and his desire to dine at the fanciest of restaurants, you have a Bateman that is concerned with nothing more than his own beautification.

The infamous threesome scene that slapped the film with an NC-17 rating is a great one because it shows Bateman, played with astonishing madness by Christian Bale, completely detached from the act of sex. Much like Ellis' portrait of Bateman, he is a man more concerned with performance than with the actual act of sex. While having sex with the women he looks at himself in the mirror. He is making love to himself, enjoying his muscular body as it masochistically berates the women.

Although Patrick Bateman is a completely loathsome soul, Harron appropriately adds a certain human element to her psycho killer. Even though Bateman admits over voice-over that he is devoid of any emotion there is a scene in the movie where we get a sense that he is seeking some sort of salvation from the world he has created for himself. After bringing his secretary (Chloe Sevigny) to his apartment, he has her leave after telling her that if she doesn't he might do something horrible to her.

Bateman's sadistic ways are certainly a product of some twisted childhood or adult experiences but Harron does not choose to focus on this. There is a tongue-in-cheek moment where Bateman apologizes to a dinner-date for being late by saying that he is a `product of divorce' but this is about the only glimpse we get into the character's pre-killer days. It's as if Harron is flippantly teasing us with the comment, knowing that we are itching for some sort of Freudian psychoanalysis of her character.

The gore is at a significantly lesser scale than one would be expected considering source material. Aside from one astonishingly executed sequence where a prostitute (Cara Seymour) flees from Patrick down some stairs, the killings in the film are handled in a comedic, albeit disturbing, way. The women in the film do not get much characterization but this is an appropriate thing when you consider that the film is shot through Bateman's eyes, a man that is little concerned with the motivations of his victims.

There is a moment at the end of Psycho's wonderful finale where the characters are watching a presidential address by Reagan. They blankly comment on the program and we basically learn that their lives will continue as is. I wish there were more of these moments because so much of Psycho's substance lies in the way that these men are seen as products of the society that was created under Reagan's America. Bateman's soul is one that is consumed by greed and it seems that he has been given a second chance by film's end. Whether he will take this exit or continue this masquerade is open to interpretation and perhaps dependent on whatever political shift should sway the nation.

The Ninth Gate (1999)

A flawed by admirable work by Polanski

[17 December 2000]

The Ninth Gate, Roman Polanski's first film since the highly satisfying Death and the Maiden, starts off innocently enough. Corso (Johnny Depp) is a detective of sorts. His job is to track down rare volumes of books for his clients. Boris Balkan, played by weirdo-loving Frank Langella, hires Corso to prove the authenticity of his most prized possession: the presumably satanically-inspired The Ninth Gate.

Corso is off to Paris to track down the two other copies of the book, finding them in the hands of two famous book collectors. He soon discovers that all copies are indeed authentic, and with careful investigation he comes to realize that each book has unique characteristics that were specifically designed by the devil. All of the books are needed in order to bring about the resurrection of Satan.

Things begin to go a little sour for our boy Corso when the tomes go missing or are all but destroyed, and with the help of his `guardian angel' (played boringly by Emmanuelle Seigner) he manages to get himself out of a bunch of devilish situations.

About halfway through The Ninth Gate it becomes rather obvious where it is going. Someone will eventually stumble across all of the needed pages from the book and will manage to figure out the chant to utter to bring about the revival of the Prince of Darkness. Polanski was surely aware of that and chooses to make the journey to the inevitable end as pleasant, if that is the correct term, as possible.

Polanski has always been one of my favorite directors. With the possible exception of Maiden and Macbeth, he tends to find a rather crass humorous element seething inside of his characters and chooses to amplify those elements to an oftentimes delicious comic effect. The Ninth Gate is no exception.

It seems rather odd that Corso would try to make an effort to be more meticulous in the way he handles his books. With books these old, Corso never finds it objectionable to flip through them madly or have ashes from his cigarettes fall on them. Polanski knows this all to well and at one point has his Baroness Kessler (Barbara Jefford) admonish the quietly rebellious Corso for his careless ways.

Rosemary's Baby worked effectively because Polanski is very much attuned to the perversities that run under the skins of his characters, oftentimes presenting their eccentric behaviors in a creepy, matter-of-fact manner. We suspect the evil in his characters and he rarely lets us down. Sure, the surprise may not be as strong, but Polanski is more concerned with journeys than with end results.

The Ninth Gate moves at a very steady pace. A huge part of the film focuses on Corso's searching for the rare books and, as expected, the journey is not as fast-paced as one might find in your average action-vehicle. Still, the gorgeous cinematography of Darius Khondji and the nonchalant direction of Polanski create an atmosphere so stunning that we relish every situation in which our protagonist is placed. Certainly not as deadpan as Fearless Vampire Killers, Polanski still manages to interject his trademark elements of humor into this film. The Ninth Gate is not a grand affair by any means of the imagination. It has no profound comments to make about life or death and it is sorely lacking in character development, but the journey to the rather opaque (yet unsurprising) ending is one that is full of a highly stylized camp that one can't help but sit back and enjoy.

In the Mood for Love (2000)

Possibly Wong Kar-Wai's best film

[10/10 · 17 December 2000]

It's easy to see why many people consider In the Mood for Love to be Wong Kar-Wai's best film. The toned down appeal of the film, centering on the studied view of a relationship put through an emotional ringer, is a retread into Happy Together territory but without the hyper-kinetic patchwork of jarring film stocks and hyper-saturated sequences that have become a trademark of Kar-Wai's films since Chungking Express. Like Soderbergh's The Limey, this is a different kind of curio for Kar-Wai; where dialogue and plot are forsaken by mood and composition in order to create a tale of two delicate lives in a seemingly confining emotional stasis.

It's a testament to the genius of Kar-Wai that he is capable to making such a simple tale so resonating. Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) move in next-door to each other within the same apartment building. He's a journalist who dreams of publishing martial-arts novels and she is a secretary at a shipping company. Their eventual coupling is obvious from the beginning but the pleasure here is the way that Kar-Wai ambiguously paints such a journey with his grand masterstrokes.

The key to the success of the film is Kar-Wai's use of the interior space, playing with foreground and background planes in ways that are similar to the works of Polanski. During the wooingly sensuous first half of the film, Kar-Wai isolates Leung and Cheung within shots in such a way that the second person in a conversation is never visible. Kar-Wai is concerned with environment and space here, creating a cramped emotional dynamic between his characters. It's also telling that Kar-Wai never chooses to focus on the physicality of Mo-Wan and Li-zhen's spouses. Their faceless partners are noticeably absent from the film, as they are tending to their own love affairs with each other.

This is not to suggest that In the Mood for Love is a confining experience because Kar-Wai manages to inundate his film with broad splashes of hypnotic camera movement and sound. There is one shot where Cheung's slow, sensual rise up a metaphorical stairway turns into Leung's descent down the very same stairwell; their movements perfectly compliment each other, bookending the shot and creating a sense of erotic duality between the two figures. Their souls have connected but they have yet to physically unite. The erotic displacement of these scenes is both fascinating and frustrating, as two star-crossed lovers reject physical consummation due to their humble fidelity.

Other scenes in the film are punctuated with brief slow-motion shots of Cheung erotically moving through her interior surroundings, set to Mike Galasso's hauntingly beautiful score. Cheung's dresses beautifully compliment her exterior space as she moves slowly through her surroundings. Her movements slowly build up to what seems to be an inevitable fusion between Li-szhen and her dream lover even though the seduction process seems to be entirely sub-conscious.

If I make it seem that these two characters are more like two birds unleashing pheromones on each other, it probably isn't that far-fetched of a statement. The tight bond these two characters have with their internal spaces is almost as intense as their relationship to the exteriors. The film rarely moves into an exterior space and when the camera does it is usually to peak through oval windows and symbolic bars that always remind us that these characters are like confined animals. Kar-Wai continues to tease us even when the lovers get close enough to touch, shattering the couple's proximity to each other by shooting them through mirrors or through gaps within articles of clothing located inside of a closet. Mother Nature even seems to respond to their love lust, often unleashing a soft crest of rain over the characters after their bodies have glided near each other.

Kar-Wai's hauntingly atmospheric shots of a waterfall allowed Leung's Lai Yu-Fai to experience a cathartic release in Happy Together, even if Leslie Cheung's Ho Po-wing was not there to enjoy it with him. By that film's end, love was so inextricably bound to the act of war that a third man's muted declarations of love signaled Yu-Fai's realization that his dreams of seeing a waterfall would bring him inner peace, even if it would not bring him back his lover. Mo-Wan's journey terminates within the confines of a crumbling temple. His own emotional depletion is paralleled nicely with the political climate of his country, and the absence of Li-szhen is only made tolerable by the fact that Kar-Wai allows Mo-Wan to experience a release of sorts. Mo-Wan caters to an ancient myth and his secretive release into a crack in the temple leaves him capable of living his days with the hope that all his loss and heartache somehow served a higher purpose.

Yi Yi (2000)

A marvellous motion picture

[10/10 · 3 December 2000]

Thanks to the Best Director prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival, and a more than passing similarity to Robert Altman's now-classic Short Cuts, Edward Yang finally sees one of his films receive the light of day in American theatres. Along with Hou Hsiao Hsien, he is the greatest living director whose films you have never seen. Take Yi Yi as your initial chance to introduce yourself to a true master. Then, if on a roll, get your hands on a copy of Brighter Summer Day, Mahjong and A Confucian Confusion.

Yi Yi is the film that Altman's A Wedding should have been. The Altman film, a multi-character farce made three years after the more accomplished Nashville, tries to wax significant meaning out of the wedding ceremony but ends up as nothing more than a trivial hodge-podge of `Three's Company'-style bafoonery. The Yang film, comfortably akin to sitting before a fireplace during a cold winter night, bookends the bulk of its contents with two different kinds of ceremonies: the wedding and the funeral.

Surprisingly accessible, at least in comparison to his prior work, Edward Yang's film is about as truthful a family film as your going to get. Much of the film's success lies in Yang's astute explanation of life's dichotomous nature. Yang-Yang, the youngest member of Yang's fictional family, is a boy desperately trying to grasp the duality of the world around him with the aide of his camera. He takes pictures of people's backsides because he wants to show them what they can not see. The boy's actions espouse the film's very philosophy: There is always a second side to every story and once the second side is perceived a character can achieve some sort of completion.

This is nowhere clearer than in the case of Yang-Yang's father, NJ. The man is forced to confront the reasons why he abandoned his first significant lover at the alter once he and the lover work their way back into each other's lives through mutual business interests. Once he presents his case to the embittered woman he cleanses himself of a pain he has never spoken of and, in turn, faces a truth he was not ready to accept: that he is still in love with his old flame.

Some might interpret the woman's departure after NJ's declaration of love to be somewhat vengeful, but there is something much more philanthropic to be read in her actions. Through his revelation she has learned to accept the fate that NJ set forth so long ago and she has, quite simply, returned the favor. What was done in the past can not be undone and the only thing NJ can hope for is a re-evaluation and improvement on the life he chose instead.

NJ's life, ultimately, has come full-circle and with that comes the death of his wife's mother. The woman is the matriarch of the family, from whom everyone draws their breath. The most loving of these recipients is NJ's daughter Ting-Ting. Yang uses a flower as the symbol of Ting-Ting's enlightenment. Her classroom laughs at her because she over-fed the flower but the flower comes back to life after a very cleansing and beautiful encounter with her grandmother. It's a beautiful moment and Yang has an uncanny way of conjuring up an immense sense of urgency from otherwise simple objects.

There is a great scene in Yi Yi where Ting-Ting breaks down for seemingly unforeseen reasons. When questioned by her father, she reveals that it pains her that her relationship with her mother consists of nothing more than two sentences spread out throughout the day. And this is at the essence of Yang's masterpiece, a film as culturally resonating and emotionally observed as the bleaker Short Cuts. It is a film of painful revelations and euphoric moments of happiness. It is a film of soft rhythms beautifully gliding over the lives of characters living their way toward personal enlightenment.

Chocolat (2000)

A simple trifle

[1/10 · 3 December 2000]

Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche) is a woman on a mission, opting to spend her life liberalizing the lives of the inhabitants of small French towns. Daughter in tow, she sets up chocolate shops and single-handedly brings down prudishness once her stodgy neighbors get a taste of her sweet, homemade chocolate delights. An opening voice-over reminds us that this is a fable and as long as the film stages its simple-minded tale within the confines of fairy tale devices it is mostly smooth sailing from there.

Lasse Hallstrom's mistake is that he bolsters his film's light-natured facade with a feeble attempt at giving the film a significantly serious moral thrust. It's the kind of plot that writes itself: conservative religious town finds the chocolate-peddling ways of the godless new citizen to be sacrilegious but by film's end everyone has learned to find that joy that lies within the cocoa seed. The film begins to take itself so seriously that one is forced to wonder if Hallstrom actually believes his material is controversial in nature.

Perhaps my general indifference to the film has something to do with my utter dislike for chocolate. Even though the substance always manages to look heavenly when glorified on the screen, I find it very hard to watch it portrayed as a potential aide to achieving sexual orgasm. Once Vianne's first customer manages to unlock the secret to her husband's long-repressed sex drive, via the chocolate truffles that soulfully correspond to her persona, all remaining townsfolk find themselves slowly submitting before Vianne's offerings.

It's never really clear why Vianne gets so upset when she is treated poorly by the town's citizens. In light of the fact that her work history is based on spreading the liberating love of chocolate throughout prudish towns, why would one town's hesitancy be anymore troubling than another's? The great Lena Olin plays a battered wife named Josephine Muscat who seeks refuge from her husband (Peter Stormare) in Vianne's shop, soon becoming Vianne's assistant. In what has to be one of the most unbelievable character arcs ever portrayed on screen, Hallstrom has us believe that Josephine is capable of going from kleptomaniac and paranoid schizophrenic to upstanding feminist at the snap of one's finger.

I have always viewed Alfred Molina as that special kind of actor who manages to creep into otherwise forgettable film projects when a director is itching for prestige, ala James Woods and Armin Mueller-Stahl. Molina has a meatier part in Chocolat then we usually see him in, playing the town's mayor and Vianne's moral opponent. He is the staunch supporter of uptight religiosity and makes it his mission to single-handedly drive Vianne out of the town. He's the savage beast that will undoubtedly be tamed by film's end.

Abortion was the hot-button issue in The Cider House Rules where Hallstrom wove a manipulative tale around Tobey Maguire's journey to pro-choice enlightenment. Here the issue is patriarchal religion and, although I am a proud agnostic, I find Hallstrom's approach to be condescending and trivializing, as if religiosity is inherently comical in it's staunch inhospitality, curable through a little bit of self-indulgence.

Binoche, bearing a striking resemblance to Julia Roberts in many of the film's scenes, is good in the film despite playing second fiddle to the chocolate that she hawks. Judi Dench is one of many actors with thankless parts, playing the role of the diabetes-afflicted martyr who opts to live her final days full of chocolate instead of insulin. The entire film is innocent in nature until it turn's manipulative when Johnny Depp's pirate character enters the scene and one is left to wonder if Hallstrom is going to have the entire town construct concentration camps in order to punish the undesirables. It's a film that takes itself entirely too seriously for a comedy and seems to beg that we be shocked by how scandalous it thinks it's being.

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

A Dreamy Trip Through the Hell of Addiction

[10/10 · 9 October 2000]

One of my favorite moments in cinema occurred when Cocteau's hero in Blood of the Poet desperately tries to rub off a pair of lips from the palm of one of his hands. Having rubbed the lips from the a portrait he has painted, the artist is told by the living statue in his studio that a scar like that is not that easy to remove. From there, the hero is thrust into a Kafkaesque dreamscape where he realizes that `sleeping or dreaming, the dreamer must accept his dreams.' There is such a sensibility in the new Aronofsky film, as characters seem to float between a harsh realities and dreamscapes.

If Darren Aronofsky is remembered for anything in the annals of filmmaking it will be for staging the definitive `drug movie.' It is a masterwork of cinema that manages to stage the act of drug use as a cacophonous act of self-destruction where the individual will scale the ends of a their seemingly shallow existence in order to further dissociate themselves from their self-imposed, pathetic lives.

Aronofsky goes for the jugular as he bombards the viewer with a dirty, lyrical pathos that is instantly reminiscent of the seemingly masochistic fashion that Paul Thomas Anderson greets his characters in the climax of both Magnolia and Boogie Nights. Take the final image of Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark and stretch that for nearly two hours and you have the gut-wrenching and harrowing effect of this film.

Manipulation is a word that is too easily thrown around when talking about films like this. Those who have suffered or have seen others suffer from the effects of addiction will no doubt find a very confrontational truth to this film. Aronofsky, whether personally familiar with the chaos of drug use, knows the desperation of the addict who seeks out the next fix like a vulture scavenging on a rotting corpse.

Eugene O'Neill's maternal figure in `Long Days Journey Into Night' was a sad, pill-popping woman who was hopelessly stuck in the past. Her only link to her drug-free past was a wedding dress lying quietly in her closet. Ellen Burstyn is that woman. Slowly wilting away in her Brooklyn apartment, her husband in his grave and her son catering to his growing heroine addiction, Sara Goldfarb finds herself compelled by the simple pleasures provided by a TV game show that promises self-actualization to its viewers in the form of fortune-cookie wisdom. One phone call later and the promise of being on the TV show has Sara shockingly falling into a vortex of self-imposed hatred as she desperately tries to fit into the red dress she wore to her son's high school graduation.

This is no dream that is being lived, but a self-imposed reality, and Aronofsky stages the descent into hell as an act of mourning. Clint Mansell, who orchestrated a phenomenal music for Aronofsky's Pi, creates some of the more dramatically effective crescendos imaginable; beautifully complimenting the journey these characters take into nothingness.

The final images of the film, focusing on the winter of the characters' lives, is admittedly extreme, but only in the sense that it spares the viewer nothing in showing them the degrading lengths people will go to, and the degrading end results that welcome them, at the hands of addiction. And when teachers instruct their students as to how to master the fine art of drama, let it be known that Ellen Burstyn will be remembered for having given one of the finest and most revelatory performances to have ever graced an image of celluloid.

The Straight Story (1999)

A Great Film

[10/10 · 16 October 1999]

David Lynch's "The Straight Story" is the tale of a 73-year-old man named Alvin Straight that travels from Iowa to Wisconsin in order to see his estranged brother who has suffered from a stroke.

Alvin Straight collapses in his kitchen and it's a sign that he must see a doctor and begin to take care of himself. He doesn't eat right and he smokes too much. He is a man who is clearly uncomfortable with his age.

His friends and his "slow" daughter, played by Sissy Spacek, try to comfort him to the best of their abilities. Alvin finds out that his brother has had a stroke and this incident drives him to take a journey to reclaim the relationship he has lost with him.

Being old, half-blind and without a license, Alvin begins to ride to Mt. Zion, in Wisconsin, riding on his lawn mower. Attached to the mower is a small trailer where he stores food, a chair and a blanket.

He begins the trek only to have his mower die. He buys another mower and is well on his way to make the trek that will surely take him weeks to accomplish.

The film is very slow in the beginning but it is not until Alvin begins to encounter individuals on his journey that you realize that this film is a masterful character study of a man coming to terms with the meaning of his life.

He encounters a young lady on the road and Alvin relates to this pregnant-runaway how family is one of the most important things that she has going for her. After imparting to her his views, the girl disappears the next morning. Alvin is happy that he has steered this girl in the right direction.

For the rest of the story, Alvin encounters such individuals. He tells a cyclist that "the worst part of being old is remembering when your young." In a town where he stays at after a near accident he teaches twin mechanics to appreciate their brotherhood.

Also in this town he tells one character his story of how he was in the war and how he accidentally killed a friend of his. This is a beautiful scene not only because it sets up the reasoning behind Alvin's alcoholism but also because Richard Farnsworth acts the part like a true master of cinematic acting.

Farnsworth easily gives the greatest male performance of the year as a man coming to terms with his life and the importance of all the time he has left on this earth.

It is a very slow film but utterly engrossing. Certainly vastly different from we have seen from Lynch in the past--but I won't dwell on that. Lynch captures landscape and the journey this man takes to re-claim stability in the final moments of his life with an introspection that is rarely seen in character-study films.

Farnsworth emits so much emotion through every movement, every smile and every tear. He is a humble and simple man needing closure in his life. This is the story of a man whose place in the world has been already carved but must amend the relationships that are scared before he goes into the gentle starry sky. A beautiful, heart-warming and touching film.

Boys Don't Cry (1999)

A Brilliant First Feature

[8 October 1999]

With `Boys Don't Cry,' a new voice in American cinema comes to life. Kimberly Peirce, the Columbia film school graduate who became infatuated with the life of Brandon Teena, brings this true-story of one girl's search for happiness and the American Dream vividly to the screen.

A beautifully composed title sequence shows us how Brandon Teena's friend helps her dress as a guy so she can go to a roller-skating rink and meet girls. It is clear from early on that Brandon is a self-hating lesbian, frustrated by the oppressive environment she lives in, and feels that her only solace is to don the clothing of boys in order to enjoy the women she can only dream of when dressed as a girl.

Brandon clearly has a sexual identity disorder, which is all-so-real when you consider how vividly Peirce illustrates it's cause. There is one point in the film where Brandon's male friend, and future rapist/killer, tells her about his experience in jail. He describes how in jail they would cut themselves with knives and how he was better because he could cut deeper. Essentially, these are men afraid of prison and use self-mutilation as a way of controlling their repressed anger. These are caged animals taking their aggression out on the world-intimidated by anything that is remotely different. The scene is a brilliant set-up to what most audience members know will happen-at least those who know the story.

The story is told quite simply but it's psychological depth is endless. Brandon dresses as a boy and runs away to a small town and their falls in love with Lana (Chloe Sevigny). Lana is genuinely in love with this pretty young boy and Brandon must deal with the fact that eventually Lana will discover her secret. It is a secret that, when revealed, leads to the brutal downfall of Brandon.

The film works because Peirce and her cinematographer compel us with images that brutally compliment the gripping screenplay. Throughout the film there are stunning cutaways of exterior shots shown in fast-motion. This is a world that Brandon can not keep up with. It is not until the end, when Brandon's world is no more, that mother nature returns to it's normal pace.

Peirce so adeptly explores the psychology of `white trash' and their entrapment in middle America that you are amazed that this is a first time director. These are young people working at dead end jobs, living for beers and cigarettes, frustrated because of the limbo that their lives are in. Brandon is the stranger that they all connect with-feeding off her stories of supermodel sisters (a brilliant lie that she tells to explain away her feminine features) and the way `he' just came into their lives, giving them a momentary release from their tragically pathetic lives.

And from all of this comes one of the greatest performances of the year. Hillary Swank, as Brandon Teena, stunningly captures the complexities of a young woman battling with the truth of her self and the lie of covering that self up. Her performance is one for the ages-one of those performances that Oscar so loves to ignore.

Peirce directs her actors like a true master. They inhabit their space and spew their words in ways that make you feel as if you were watching this film in real time. And you would never think that a film like this would come across so horrific from the first frame to the last. If you know what happens to Brandon Teena one can not help but feel this overwhelming sense of fear and dread dripping from each frame. A truly admirable film.

The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)

Waste of time

[30 September 1999]

The film opens--after a cheezy title sequence--with a young Joan confessing her "sins" to a priest. She goes to confession EVERYDAY--sometimes more than once. The priest loves this girl but seems concerned with her obsession. She tells him she sees visions. They are of a boy in the forest. He reassures her to listen to the boy. She runs from the church in and dances through the fields in a laughable "Little House on the Prarie" meets "Sound of Music" scenario and stumbles into the boy. She finds a sword and is invinsible against wolves and men on horses that prance by. This sequence is only interesting in the sense that this is the only scene in the movie where you get a sense that Joan's perception of reality is indistinguishable from her visions.

The soldiers are from England. They are at war with France. John Malcovich (the future king of France) plays the part very foppishly--with a cute, Tom Cruise look alike always by his side.

He hears of this 19 year old who has been foretold to be a savior that must be seen by him. She is summoned to his kingdom. Enter Milla and you expect her to start screeching like she did in the painful "The Fifth Element."

Never does Besson explore where Joan's obsession with Jesus comes from. Why does an 8 year old girl feel the need to run into a church, drink the blood of Jesus and want to be part of him? No exploration of that or where the visions come from.

Now comes the trite exploration of Joan as a woman and a leader. You'd think this would be explored intelligently, but we are greeted with five minutes worth of lines like "is she going to wear a dress to battle?" before they see how tough she is and they accept her.

The rest of the movie is nothing more than uninspired battle scenes where Joan comes across as nothing but a crazed woman. How much more interesting if Besson had actually made her more magical. Her visions of Jesus in the forest--dancing with her, bleeding, and instructing her--aren't as spiritual and overwhelming as they should. They come across as an acid trip from "Trainspotting" that border on the exploitational.

Instead of trully exploring the relationship she has with God contextually, Besson decides to have Milla utter the same lines over and over throughout the movie. "I am the messenger," "He sent me a message," "I've been to counsel," "Why aren't you fighting," and "listen to me." What a waste. And throughout the movie she just screams and screams and screams.

Besson feels that the only way to make the movie interesting at this point is to fill every frame people with big ears, people who look like Lyle Lovitt, people with bad haircuts, people with slanted eyebrows and people with oversized heads stand in the background doing nothing but staring at the camera. No rhyme or reason.

People like Dunaway do their best with the relatively worthless part that they are given. She plays Malcovich's mother-in-law and basically gives him meaningless advice while sporting a bizarre greyish vein on her forehead and no hair.

The film only gets points when Dustin Hoffman enters the pictures. He plays her "vision" in the jail cell and he interestingly makes her analyze her life and the meaning of her conversations with Christ. Did you really speak with Jesus or was that you projecting? Nicely done, but eventually his presense becomes laughable--especially seeing him "slide" into frames. You can't help but picture the dolly he must be riding.

In the end your left thinking of Joan as nothing more than a bland, naive woman. I mean, Besson makes the mistake at one point of having her being ignorant that people die in war and shed blood--ridiculous when you consider that she had just won a war the day before. Katheryne Bigelow was to direct this, and even though I'm not a fan, I know she would have done better. A hack job by Luc and an admirable attempt by Milla. You spend half the movie just waiting to see her burn

Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

Unique New Vision From Cinematic Master

[10/10 · 27 September 1999]

Martin Scorsese's "Bringing Out the Dead" can best be described as an acid-cool mix of "Taxi Driver" and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." It is a hallucinagenic fright trip that takes place in a couple days--tracking what transpires to EMS workers in NYC.

Frank Pierce (Nick Nolte) has been at this for a while. In monologues reminiscent of those uttered by De Niro in "Taxi Driver," Frank tells us that his job has really gotten to him. Most of the people that he and his partner reach are already dead. He has lost hope in his job because he doesn't see himself as a saver of lives, but as a mediator between life and death. He feels that his only purpose is to be present during people's demise--a witness, so to speak.

The movie can be divided into three sections--based on the three different partners he works with. The first is John Goodman, a man who is still rather detached to his experience--not yet having suffered the full ramifications that a job like his can inflict on a person.

The second one is Ving Rhames. He can be viewed as the one who realizes the torture behind the job, but tries to add a reason to it. They go to a goth club at one point in the film where they try to bring a kid back from his heroine overdose. While Frank administers the drugs, Marcus conducts a administers his version of drugs--religion. He is obviously a religious man, but that sounds a little simple. Although not explored much more beyond that--Scorsese seems to be saying that Marcus is one who will place God in the ultimate position of authority in these situations. Thusly, he is able to smartly escape any of the hardship that befalls Frank.

The third is Tom (Tom Sizemore). This is the man who Frank will become. His job is nothing more than a game to him. He has been driven mad by the lunacy of saving the lives of the "freaks" within the city that he comes across as an angel of darkness--almost expediating their deaths.

Mary is played Patricia Arquette, the daughter of a man who has just had a heart attack. Frank, like a man who has become very attuned to the inklings of dead souls, asks her to play some Frank Sinatra for the dead man and he suddenly awakens. From then on, the body of the man code blues throughout the entire movie. Every time it does, it comes back to life.

The way the man to vehemently clings to life creeps under Frank's skin. It gets to the point where the man even speaks to him. It gets to the point where the corpse asks him to kill him.

Franks relationship with Mary is similar to that of Robert De Niro's and Cybil Shepard's in "Taxi Driver" in that it is very atypical. There doesn't seem to be much of a sexual vibe going on between the two. Here it seems that Frank has connected to the woman merely because he is her father's savior.

Minor characters are interspersed throughout the film. Marc Antony, in a bravura performance, plays a Noel--a lunatic street ruffian who enters Frank's life at every turn, and is the target of a disturbing attack at the hands of Tom.

Scorsese brings beautiful complexity to many sequences--like the "Oasis" scene that takes place on the 16th floor of a project. "Take my pulse" says the black girlfriend of the man who owns the apartment. "Two beats per minute; perfect," says Frank.

The film is full of this kind of absurdist humor, and then is complimented with a beautiful introspective moment--like a man, contemplating his fall from a building, observing the "fireworks" over the Empire State Building.

Scorsese, yet again, amazes one with the complete and utter dexterity he has with his camera. Shot compositions are unconventional and the fast motion shots brilliantly capture the energy of the big city in which the film takes place. What else do you expect from Ralph Richardson?

Cage is stunning and makes you wonder why he doesn't stick to this kind of quality work. He's wonderful to watch as he goes from regular EMS worker, to lunatic--needing the very medicine and oxygen masks he dispenses on his patients for himself.

Admittedly, the film is all over the place--similar to "Summer of Sam" in that respect. But at it's center, unlike the admirable but heavily flawed "Fear and Loathing" is a film that beautifully captures the torments of one man's life as he is slowly being driven over the edge by the very people he is trying to save.