<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/" > <channel> <title>Winona Ryder – The-Solute</title> <atom:link href="https://www.the-solute.com/tag/winona-ryder/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /> <link>https://www.the-solute.com</link> <description>A Film Site By Lovers of Film</description> <lastBuildDate>Thu, 28 Apr 2022 21:28:30 +0000</lastBuildDate> <language>en-US</language> <sy:updatePeriod> hourly </sy:updatePeriod> <sy:updateFrequency> 1 </sy:updateFrequency> <item> <title>Film on the Internet: Lydia Lomeli on LITTLE WOMEN</title> <link>https://www.the-solute.com/film-on-the-internet-lydia-lomeli-on-little-women/</link> <comments>https://www.the-solute.com/film-on-the-internet-lydia-lomeli-on-little-women/#respond</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Sam "Burgundy Suit" Scott]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 28 Apr 2022 21:28:30 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Christian Bale]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Gillian Anderson]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Kirsten Dunst]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Lydia Lomeli]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Susan Sarandon]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Winona Ryder]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.the-solute.com/?p=95976</guid> <description><![CDATA[I have to begin by saying that it has been decades since I read Louisa May Alcott’s original novel Little Women, so my essay will only be my opinion about the 1994 adaptation by Gillian Armstrong, which I first saw it when it first came out in 1994. Written by Robin Swicord, it’s the fifth […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="font-weight: 400">I have to begin by saying that it has been decades since I read Louisa May Alcott’s original novel </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Little Women</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, so my essay will only be my opinion about the 1994 adaptation by Gillian Armstrong, which I first saw it when it first came out in 1994. Written by Robin Swicord, it’s the fifth feature film adaptation of the classic story.</span></p> <p><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Little Women</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> is based in Concord, New Hampshire, where we come to know and love the March family: four sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, who live with their mother, whom they call Marmee, their father, and their housekeeper, Hannah. They are clearly a forward-thinking, progressive family. Marmee, who is outspoken for a woman of her era, is clearly raising the girls to be strong in the tough times of a war-torn country, but also kind, compassionate, and ladylike. Mrs. March also seems to encourage them to embrace who they are and pursue their dreams. They are struggling financially, and their father has been sent off to the Civil War to fight for Yankee territory. Some characters mention that the Marches “have views on slavery” which they make very apparent are abolitionist.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">The cast of this film is top-notch. Susan Sarandon as Marmee, Trini Alvarado as Meg, Kirsten Dunst as Amy, Claire Danes as Beth — and oh yes, let’s not forget the early work of Christian Bale before he became the Dark Knight. These were all very popular and in-demand actors in the ’90s, and they all have tremendous screen presence and dedication to their characters. Winona Ryder’s work is the stand-out: her performance as Jo is captivating. She evokes sympathy and compassion from the audience as a wild-spirited young woman, desperate to be a writer, but also to find who she is and get away from the confines of her small town.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">There are so many reasons why I loved this movie and still do. Besides being a huge fan of Winona Ryder’s acting, I find this movie lovely and endearing. I seldom enjoy period pieces. In fact, I can think of only two that I really enjoy and own: this and </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Sense and Sensibility</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">. I find it hard to relate to the characters and the times they live in. The dialogue in this movie reflects the times, but it isn’t overly archaic, and the family, perhaps because they are poor, are interesting to watch in their daily lives. I also enjoy watching Jo attempt to grow: to assert herself as a writer, but also as an equally intelligent female in a male-dominated society.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">We as the audience, are privy to the intimate lives of the women of this film and this time. They grow, they change, they face poverty, war, sickness, and uncertain futures. They face constant pressure to follow “proper” feminine behavior. They faced society’s restrictions on female potential and the reality that it may be impossible to achieve their goals. As we follow Jo, we get to see her live out her dreams as she finally starts a life in New York, live the life of a writer, and experience a society where she can participate equally with men. Her relationship with a German professor she meets in New York helps her grow and change as he supports her in their shared passions and pursuits. He is kind, he is wise, and they enjoy each other’s company as equals.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">Jo’s story and the story of the March family is one of my favorite coming-of-age movies. Not only is it a magnificent story of life as a woman in the Civil War era, but it is heartwarming in its exploration of life and death, family, and the rights of women to pursue their passions.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">Little Women </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">is streaming on Netflix</span></i></p> ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://www.the-solute.com/film-on-the-internet-lydia-lomeli-on-little-women/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Year of the Month: Miller on Alien: Resurrection</title> <link>https://www.the-solute.com/year-of-the-month-miller-on-alien-resurrection/</link> <comments>https://www.the-solute.com/year-of-the-month-miller-on-alien-resurrection/#comments</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Sam "Burgundy Suit" Scott]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 29 Nov 2018 18:00:13 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Features]]></category> <category><![CDATA[1997]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Alien]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Brad Dourif]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Dan Hedaya]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Horror]]></category> <category><![CDATA[J.E. Freeman]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Jean-Pierre Jeunet]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Joss Whedon]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Miller]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ron Perlman]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sci-fi]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sigourney Weaver]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Winona Ryder]]></category> <category><![CDATA[year of the month]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.the-solute.com/?p=44934</guid> <description><![CDATA[“Hateful day when I received life!’ I exclaimed in agony. ”Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><i><span style="font-weight: 400">“Hateful day when I received life!’ I exclaimed in agony. ”Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.”</span></i></p> <p><i><span style="font-weight: 400"> Mary Shelley, Frankenstein</span></i><i><span style="font-weight: 400"></p> <p></span></i></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">Not many people like </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Alien: Resurrection</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">. </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Alien</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> is the scary one, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Aliens</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> is the awesome one, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Alien 3</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> is the really dark one that’s secretly good.</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400"> Resurrection</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> is the one that, contrary to the title, ended the original franchise, leaving only prequels and Predators. Not even the previous movie –which actually killed the main character — could do that! </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Alien: Resurrection</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> is the rejected child of parents who probably shouldn’t have been together in the first place.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">It wasn’t supposed to be this way. A script from hotshot nerd Joss Whedon! Direction from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the Gilliam-esque visionary behind </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">City Of Lost Children</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">! A stacked cast of character actors, from Dan Hedaya to Ron Perlman to Brad Dourif to my man J.E. Mother Fucking Freeman! Also Winona Ryder! And lured back into the fold after pushing for Ripley’s death in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Alien 3</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, Sigourney Weaver herself! On paper, it’s a can’t-miss scenario. And here’s the thing: It doesn’t miss, even though it doesn’t hit in the way its creators planned.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Alien</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> is the horror movie, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Aliens </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">is the war movie, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Alien 3</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> is the prison movie. One of the few</span><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/alien-resurrection"> <span style="font-weight: 400">appreciations</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400"> of <em>Resurrection</em> notes some similarities to</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400"> Day of the Dead</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> and that points to its genre: the chaos movie. Zombies, serial killers, and monsters can all find a home here, where an organization (often the military, although private labs are involved too — see </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Jurassic Park</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">) attempts to control an Obviously Bad Thing and fails miserably. The chaos movie is built to fall apart, it makes you anticipate and crave the carnage and fury of its X factor unleashed on the hubristic fools who thought they could control it. And then it has to deliver said carnage, hopefully with imaginative kills and gore. </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Resurrection</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> more than makes the grade here. It is obsessed with spilled fluids — blood, acid blood, water, formaldehyde, afterbirth — that reinforce the idea of seeping, spurting destruction through the thin skin of bodily order as what was secure becomes something else. Chaos reigns!</span></p> <p> </p> <div id="attachment_44936" style="width: 650px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Yell.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44936" loading="lazy" class="size-medium_large wp-image-44936" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Yell-768x320.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="267" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Yell-768x320.jpg 768w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Yell-300x125.jpg 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Yell-1024x427.jpg 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Yell.jpg 1365w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-44936" class="wp-caption-text">Game over, man! Wait, that was the second movie.</p></div> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">But order must rule first. Instead of wild destruction, the movie opens with carefully controlled creation as military doctors on the spaceship USS</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400"> Auriga</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> clone Ellen Ripley — for the eighth time, it’s implied — using a sample of her blood taken from the planet she was imprisoned on in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Alien 3</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, which takes place 200 years earlier. They’re not interested in her; they want the alien queen that was growing in her body and that she died to destroy, and they are successful in their harvest. Ripley is kept alive as an afterthought, though not without concern. The cloning process has made her a hybrid, and while she looks the same as ever, she has a xenomorph’s strength and acid blood and possible disregard for humanity — Weaver expertly shows through movement and gaze the not-quite-human consciousness living inside Ripley’s head, staring down her captors and shifting her limbs with the eerie ease of a xenomorph.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">The doctors — led by Freeman’s cold and abusive Wren and Dourif’s enthusiastic Gediman — insist they aren’t like those bad old Weyland-Yutani corporate stooges (“Bought out by Wal-Mart,” we learn). And they have nothing but the best plans for the queen they’ve grown and the children she’s already had. Their unique biology will lead to all sorts of scientific advances for the betterment of all mankind — the military just needs a bunch of human hosts to keep growing their xenomorphs. Enter a rag-tag group of space pirates who’ve hijacked a shipment of cryosleeping miners and are willing to sell their cargo for a price. Despite an extremely wacky basketball showdown between Ripley and the pirates, everything is still under control. But all the pieces are in place. Time to get nuts.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">Jeunet has kept things moving nicely so far, paying more attention to the janky, steamy design of the ship than its layout and mostly letting actors play their roles with at least 10 percent more emphasis than normal and this leads to some major tonal confusion in performance. Hedaya in particular is in a much goofier movie and Ryder is flailing around out of her league. But Jeunet is not really interested in the details of architecture or character development. What he is interested in is the messy ways human and alien bodies can collide with each other. Here is a partial list of incisions, eviscerations and other brutalities in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Alien: Resurrection:</span></i></p> <p> </p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400"><span style="font-weight: 400">Aliens use their tongue-heads to tear apart one of their own, in order to escape via the hole in the floor created by its acid blood</span></li> </ul> <p> </p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400"><span style="font-weight: 400">Aliens bite human heads off</span></li> </ul> <p> </p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400"><span style="font-weight: 400">Humans shoot alien heads into goo</span></li> </ul> <p> </p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400"><span style="font-weight: 400">Aliens turn escape pod containing strapped-in humans into blender</span></li> </ul> <p> </p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400"><span style="font-weight: 400">Aliens blast soldier with dry ice, freezing his arms off</span></li> </ul> <p> </p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400"><span style="font-weight: 400">Alien impales man with tongue-head, leaving a gaping chest cavity that allows for…</span></li> </ul> <p> </p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400"><span style="font-weight: 400">Human sticking gun through corpse and blowing alien’s head off</span></li> </ul> <p> </p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400"><span style="font-weight: 400">Man with chestburster in gut holds other man’s head to his torso, chestburster tears apart both rib cage and face</span></li> </ul> <p> </p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400"><span style="font-weight: 400">Alien blasts man with tongue-head squeezer to the dome, man reaches around and pulls chunks of brain out his shattered skull</span></li> </ul> <p> </p> <div id="attachment_44935" style="width: 650px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Alien-Resurrection-Dan-Hedayas-expressive-face.png"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44935" loading="lazy" class="size-medium_large wp-image-44935" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Alien-Resurrection-Dan-Hedayas-expressive-face-768x318.png" alt="" width="640" height="265" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Alien-Resurrection-Dan-Hedayas-expressive-face-768x318.png 768w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Alien-Resurrection-Dan-Hedayas-expressive-face-300x124.png 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Alien-Resurrection-Dan-Hedayas-expressive-face.png 850w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-44935" class="wp-caption-text">This is your brain on Aliens.</p></div> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">This is chaos. This is gross. This is treating sentient beings like meatbags and it is gnarly as fuck. It’s important to note that a lot of this is scripted: Whedon is not averse to gore by any means. But Jeunet is the one who realizes it with a keen interest that is detached from (oh the) humanity. If he was shot in the head, he’d definitely try to pull his own brains out just to see what they’d look like. He’s aided in this by Darius Khondji shooting the dinge of the ship with warm colors gradually darkening and coating the aliens’ heads with extra KY jelly to get reflective pop. An old punk band name comes to mind — the Day-Glo Abortions.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">And while this is generally a celebration of goop, Jeunet and Whedon’s sensibilities merge in the movie’s one moment of true horror when Ripley discovers her sisters, the previous unsuccessful clones, all mangled mixtures of alien and human DNA kept alive in stasis pods. Except for one, a twisted carpet of flesh with Ripley’s face that is out on an operating table and desperately, breathlessly whispering, “Kill me.” This is what the desire to perfectly engineer offspring and the intolerance of failure, the desire for control, gets you. The mostly male scientists mining her for genetic material — and the ship’s onboard AI, not so subtly named “Father,” as opposed to the “Mother” on </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Alien</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">‘s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Nostromo</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> — paint a picture of a patriarchy that doesn’t even have the decency to madly consume its offspring like the gods of old. It merely rejects them if they don’t serve their purpose while keeping them around for spare parts, catalogued and filed as a few more inanimate objects. Ripley torches the room. The pods burst open, releasing the static fluid preserving a perversion of life and letting it drain away.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">So the movie is now walking a weird line. We have the carnage we came for, but also a few characters that we theoretically are interested in. The fake Firefly crew joins up with Wren and a surviving soldier (a baby-faced Raymond Cruz) in a classic we-need-to-put-aside-our-differences scenario, and they meet the sole survivor of the hijacked miners, who is alive but has an alien in his gut just waiting to burst out (this guy is played with sweaty panic by Leland Orser, who between this and</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400"> Seven</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> had pretty much the worst psychosexual few years in 90s cinema). And of course there is Ripley herself, who decides to worry about who she is another day and concentrate on surviving today first. She’s the one who leads the crew through a fantastic setpiece where they make their way through a flooded and completely underwater kitchen area — more fluids flowing everywhere — only to be first attacked by swimming aliens and then led to a chamber full of eggs waiting to hatch.</span></p> <div id="attachment_44937" style="width: 493px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alien-resurrection-screen-1.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44937" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-44937 size-full" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alien-resurrection-screen-1.jpg" alt="" width="483" height="316" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alien-resurrection-screen-1.jpg 483w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alien-resurrection-screen-1-300x196.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 483px) 100vw, 483px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-44937" class="wp-caption-text">Not pictured: LL Cool J, parrot</p></div> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">If that wasn’t enough to deal with, Ryder’s whiny mechanic Call is revealed to be an android (really, people in this franchise need to expect this by now), one of a new generation that was recalled by the government but instead went on the run. But Call still has her programming and a bad case of self-loathing crossed with human envy. She hates doing anything beyond human ability — no knife dance over an outsplayed hand for her — and can’t stand being humanoid but not human herself. “Why do you go on living? How can you stand it? How can you stand yourself?” she asks Ripley. “Not much choice,” is the reply.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">What choices does Ripley have? As the heroes are close to escaping, a few aliens grab Ripley and ferry her with loving care her through a writhing orgy of their fellow xenomorphs on the way to meet the queen that was pulled out of Ripley in the first place. And Ripley is strangely passive during this, as she was passive watching some of the crew die at the hands of her children (siblings? nieces and nephews?) earlier. This is who she is too, and she had no choice in the matter. She watches as the queen gives birth via a womb that comes from being mixed with Ripley’s DNA — it is hard to convey how awesomely gross this is — and instead of an egg, a new creature emerges. This Newborn is superhumanly large and has an elongated head like a classic alien, but it also has far more humanlike limbs and facial features, including eyes, than its siblings. And it has a human baby’s petulance, immediately ripping the queen’s jaw off and trashing her corpse. But when the Newborn sees Ripley, it approaches cautiously. Licks her face. This creature didn’t ask to exist either — no one has that choice. But it’s choosing her. And she could choose it.</span></p> <div id="attachment_44938" style="width: 650px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alienresqueenwhoa.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44938" loading="lazy" class="size-medium_large wp-image-44938" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alienresqueenwhoa-768x1148.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="957" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alienresqueenwhoa-768x1148.jpg 768w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alienresqueenwhoa-201x300.jpg 201w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alienresqueenwhoa-685x1024.jpg 685w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alienresqueenwhoa.jpg 1285w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-44938" class="wp-caption-text">I tell ya, having kids is murder.</p></div> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">It’s worth pausing here to return to Whedon’s original script,</span><a href="https://www.avpgalaxy.net/files/scripts/alien-resurrection-1996-07-22.pdf"> <span style="font-weight: 400">which is available online</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400">. There are plenty of minor changes but much of this is intact, with a few big exceptions. One is a more in-depth conversation between Call and Ripley: what we get in the movie has thematic resonance but doesn’t make a lot of actual sense. The largest difference is the ending, which in the script takes place during a battle royale on Earth — it likely would’ve added a huge amount of money and time to the shoot and was almost entirely axed, something I’m sure was frustrating, but bean counters gonna count beans (and I think what we ultimately get is more interesting anyway). The most important change, though, is this confrontation. In the script, the Newborn kills the queen and approaches Ripley, but then tenderly tries to fuck her with a dick that “looks mostly like a giant earwig” and gets pissed and murderous when Ripley is not dtf with said earwig dick.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">It reads as incestuous and vicious and sends the Newborn down the path of being just another monster. What’s on screen is more maternal, which echoes Ripley and Newt in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Aliens</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, but in a much weirder way. Ripley is not entirely human herself. She’s a being created solely to hatch this creature’s mother and then largely abandoned by her creators, who are only somewhat related to her. This alien/human hybrid recognizes itself in her far more than it does in its birth mother. The connection here is real, and Ripley’s decision to run away and abandon her child carries real weight. Not that you can blame her — Call has programmed the ship to crash into Earth in order to wipe out the aliens onboard and while Ripley isn’t big on living as she is, it’s better than the alternative. So she flees, meets the surviving gang at the escape pod and they book it out. But the Newborn has hitched a ride too. He wants his other mommy!</span></p> <div id="attachment_44939" style="width: 650px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alien_resurrection_4.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44939" loading="lazy" class="size-medium_large wp-image-44939" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alien_resurrection_4-768x329.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="274" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alien_resurrection_4-768x329.jpg 768w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alien_resurrection_4-300x129.jpg 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alien_resurrection_4-1024x439.jpg 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alien_resurrection_4.jpg 1329w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-44939" class="wp-caption-text">Are you my mother?</p></div> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">So Ripley can’t just run away from this thing that’s part of who she is. But she doesn’t have to accept it either. After an embrace, and with sadness in her eyes, she scratches herself and flicks her own acid blood at the pod’s window, causing it to rupture and suck the Newborn out into space through a baseball-sized hole. This is truly gruesome, the Newborn shrieking in pain as its guts are spewed through a hole as an agonized Ripley (holding on to some nearby chains) watches. Last to go is the Newborn’s head — stripped of flesh, the skull is surprisingly human-shaped. But it breaks and flies out as well.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">This echoes several previous confrontations in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Alien</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> and </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Aliens</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, of course. But this time, it’s personal. Ripley already destroyed her clone sisters as an act of mercy, now she’s destroyed something she helped to create as an act of survival for others — it’s clear that Call and the remaining humans would be fucked if the Newborn lived. But it’s unclear if its life meant her death. This isn’t quite the same as the excellent “abortion” scene in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Prometheus</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, where an alien’s “mother” frantically tries to remove the product of a rape from her body before it can kill her by being born. Ripley, an unwanted misfit, could live with this creature. They were brought into this world because their creators had specific intentions, intentions that neither wants to meet as they live according to their own plans.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">But Ripley’s plans don’t include a Newborn, and the Newborn won’t live apart from her. So it has to go. But not without a final hug goodbye, and a recognition of what is being lost. And while this isn’t the most emotional separation that ends in unimaginable gore in cinema (Cronenberg’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Fly </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">is not likely to be topped), it’s a moment of sorrow that both Weaver and the Newborn, courtesy of FX specialists ADI, make real for the brief moment that the Newborn is disemboweled by the vacuum of space, one final splurt of bodily fluids and one final change as the clone of Ripley becomes herself, not beholden to anyone she does not choose.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">Whedon has spoken about his problems with the final film at length and he certainly went through the wringer working on it — going from the original concept of the heroine being a clone of Newt, not Ripley, through numerous rewrites as execs changed their minds. But it’s worth looking at</span><a href="http://www.bullz-eye.com/mguide/interviews/2005/joss_whedon.htm"> <span style="font-weight: 400">his dismissal</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400">: “It wasn’t a question of doing everything differently, although they changed the ending; it was mostly a matter of doing everything wrong. They said the lines but they said them all wrong. And they cast it wrong. And they designed it wrong. And they scored it wrong. They did everything wrong they could possibly do. That’s actually a fascinating lesson in filmmaking. Because everything they did reflects back to the script or looks like something from it. And people assume that if I hated it then they’d changed the script…but it wasn’t so much they changed it, they executed it in such a ghastly fashion they rendered it unwatchable.”</span></p> <div id="attachment_44940" style="width: 650px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alien-4-4.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44940" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-44940" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alien-4-4.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="271" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alien-4-4.jpg 640w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alien-4-4-300x127.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-44940" class="wp-caption-text">I defy you to tell me this is not watchable.</p></div> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">One of the first things to note is the appearance of Whedon’s old friend “they said it wrong,” last seen defending a certain line about toads being struck by lightning. But look at the totality of this rejection. Everything wrong! Whedon speaks elsewhere about disliking Freeman and Dourif not for their performances per se, but because their personas are indicators of Evil and Crazy, respectively, and he thought his evil and crazy characters deserved more nuance. There’s no appreciation for what is there — Freeman’s flat lizardy menace, Dourif’s fervor and mad joy at the horrible beauty of his creation (he also does one of those prison-visitation-glass-wall kisses with an imprisoned alien. He is bonkers). The gore and violence and many chestburster penetrations in Whedon’s script — they’re all there! But they’re “unwatchable.” Look at what I gave you, Whedon is saying, and you turned out like </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">this</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">. You’re no child of mine.</span></p> <p><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Alien: Resurrection</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> is the Newborn, it is Ripley. Disowned by its creators, rejected by society — the movie has become what it depicts. It’s a mish-mash of various interests that became its own thing that demands to be taken and even loved on its own terms. Dourif’s Gediman, encased in black goo and about to be eaten alive but more in love with the spawn of his awful labors than ever, hangs next to Ripley and watches the queen give birth with ecstasy, greeting the the Newborn with “You are a beautiful, beautiful butterfly!” He at least respects the essential grossness of change, the possibilities of the new, and the beauty that can come of letting the freak fluid fly.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">NOTES</span><span style="font-weight: 400"></p> <p></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">The pirates aren’t a one-to-one match for the crew of the </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Serenity</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> but there is definitely overlap. Ryder’s petite mechanic Analee Call suggests Kaylee Frye and Gary Dourdan’s stoic second-in-command is not unlike Zoe Washburne. Michael Wincott’s sharkish captain is a cruder but still charming version of Mal. But the real tell is a tough, mean, mercenary-even-for-these-guys badass named Johner, played with assholish charisma by Ron Perlman.</span><span style="font-weight: 400"></p> <p></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">And speaking of Perlman, he’s one of the few people who seems to know the exact tone to play his character in. He has the right blustery confidence to nail Whedonisms like “I’m not a man with whom to fuck!” or “Earth. Man, what a shithole.” Ryder is less successful; her default mode is aggrieved petulance. Bill Paxton’s Hudson in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Aliens</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> also whined a lot but no one really bothered with his gripes. Here Ryder is expecting to be taken seriously but unable to command attention.</span><span style="font-weight: 400"></p> <p></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">“There is only HER womb and the creature inside! She is giving birth for YOU, Ripley, and now she is PERFECT!” Dourif is amazing.</span><span style="font-weight: 400"></p> <p></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">I give Whedon a fair amount of crap above so some credit where it’s due. The ship’s namesake, Auriga, is a constellation, the Charioteer. So far, so straightforward. But said Charioteer is specifically a guy named Erichtonius, who was born when Hephaestus tried to rape Athena but could only ejaculate on her thigh after she kicked his ass; Athena wiped the spooge off but it grew into a baby when it hit the ground (said baby eventually became really good at racing horses). So a ship devoted to unnatural birth in a movie about men trying to force creation and the women who defy them is named after a bit of angrily rejected jizz. Pretty slick, dude.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">Less slick: Jeunet originally intended for the Newborn to have extremely visible male and female genitalia. These were modeled but ultimately airbrushed out, which was probably wise for many reasons.</span></p> <p><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Alien-_Resurrection_-_Newborn.jpg"><img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-44941" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Alien-_Resurrection_-_Newborn.jpg" alt="" width="223" height="297" /></a></p> <p> </p> ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://www.the-solute.com/year-of-the-month-miller-on-alien-resurrection/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>19</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>The Scorsese Experience: The Age of Innocence</title> <link>https://www.the-solute.com/the-scorsese-experience-the-age-of-innocence/</link> <comments>https://www.the-solute.com/the-scorsese-experience-the-age-of-innocence/#comments</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Sam "Burgundy Suit" Scott]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Thu, 17 Sep 2015 18:09:18 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Features]]></category> <category><![CDATA[BurgundySuit]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Daniel Day-Lewis]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Martin Scorsese]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Michael Ballhaus]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Michelle Pfeiffer]]></category> <category><![CDATA[The Scorsese Experience]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Winona Ryder]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.the-solute.com/?p=8892</guid> <description><![CDATA[“What has always stuck in my head is the brutality under the manners. People hide what they mean under the surface of language. In the subculture I was around when I grew up in Little Italy, when somebody was killed, there was a finality to it. It was usually done by the hands of a […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: left"><span style="font-weight: 400"><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/AJTMsnr-e1442512737210.png"><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9054 aligncenter" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/AJTMsnr-e1442512737210-300x132.png" alt="AJTMsnr" width="400" height="176" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/AJTMsnr-e1442512737210-300x132.png 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/AJTMsnr-e1442512737210-1024x450.png 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/AJTMsnr-e1442512737210.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /></a><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/KNPrkpj-e1442511422920.png"><br /> </a>“What has always stuck in my head is the brutality under the manners. People hide what they mean under the surface of language. In the subculture I was around when I grew up in Little Italy, when somebody was killed, there was a finality to it. It was usually done by the hands of a friend. And in a funny way, it was almost like ritualistic slaughter, a sacrifice. But New York society in the 1870s didn’t have that. It was so cold-blooded. I don’t know which is preferable. I grew up thinking in one way, but in my own private life the past 10 years, I’ve started to appreciate the ability to say a little in certain emotional situations and mean a lot.” – Martin Scorsese<a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/KNPrkpj-e1442511422920.png"><br /> <img loading="lazy" class=" wp-image-9042 aligncenter" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/KNPrkpj-e1442511422920-300x125.png" alt="KNPrkpj" width="401" height="167" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/KNPrkpj-e1442511422920-300x125.png 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/KNPrkpj-e1442511422920-1024x427.png 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/KNPrkpj-e1442511422920.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 401px) 100vw, 401px" /><br /> </a></span><span style="font-weight: 400">In his third straight collaboration with Martin Scorsese, Hitchcock’s great title-and-poster designer Saul Bass creates an opening sequence of roses hidden behind lace. Brilliant evocation of the repression at the heart of the story, or blatant middle finger to the fans and critics who expect Scorsese to deliver violent machismo? Well, why not both? After all, if there’s a theme that’s as important to Scorsese as manhood, it would have to be self-denial, of the life that bursts out in all directions but can’t quite penetrate the outer skin. It can be heroic as it was in The Last Temptation of Christ, or fatal as in Mean Streets, a character denying himself when it’s obviously not necessary as in Taxi Driver, or indulging himself against the laws of the universe as in After Hours. And then you have Newland Archer and company in The Age of Innocence, who, in a lot of ways, combine all these opposites. Archer and Ellen steamroll over their one chance at true love, but they do it for the protection of the people around them. It may be a noble decision, or it may be a destructive one. In the film’s bittersweetness, Scorsese suggests it may be both.</span></p> <p><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/pBJjaxa-e1442511657276.png"><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9043 aligncenter" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/pBJjaxa-e1442511657276-300x134.png" alt="pBJjaxa" width="401" height="179" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/pBJjaxa-e1442511657276-300x134.png 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/pBJjaxa-e1442511657276-1024x458.png 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/pBJjaxa-e1442511657276.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 401px) 100vw, 401px" /></a></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">But returning to those expectations: the truth is, The Age of Innocence fits into Scorsese’s career every bit as comfortably as his gangster films. As much as he has the gangster stories of film and life in his blood, this kind of sumptuous period piece is just as much a part of him. Those are the movies he says inspired him to make his own: </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">The Leopard</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">The River</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, the Cinemascope and Technicolor spectacles of his childhood. Sure, he counts the intimate indie filmmaker John Cassavetes and </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">The Godfather’s</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> Francis Ford Coppola among his mentors, but one of the most important out of all of them was Michael Powell. The director of the legendary “Archers” epics like </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">The Red Shoes</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, and </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">A Matter of Life or Death</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, Powell is a filmmaker in love with color, spectacle, and scale. It’s not just a little in-joke that Scorsese recreates the Archers logo at one point, and it’s not because the protagonist is named Archer either. This is Scorsese’s version of an Archers film. It would be easy to dismiss the refined respectability of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">The Age of Innocence</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> as Scorsese being corrupted by money or softened by age. But the truth is, the experience and resources Scorsese had in 1993 allowed him to make the kind of movie he had wanted to make since his childhood.</span></p> <p><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1w9WZMB-e1442511724304.png"><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9044 aligncenter" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1w9WZMB-e1442511724304-300x128.png" alt="1w9WZMB" width="401" height="171" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1w9WZMB-e1442511724304-300x128.png 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1w9WZMB-e1442511724304-1024x436.png 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1w9WZMB-e1442511724304.png 1905w" sizes="(max-width: 401px) 100vw, 401px" /></a></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">Scorsese’s friend and collaborator Jay Cocks had known for years that Marty had visions of Powell dancing in his head and knew exactly where he could put them to use. He gave his friend a copy of Edith Wharton’s original novel and said that this was what a Scorsese costume epic would look like. As different as it is from the blunt and violent world his previous films took place in, it was full to bursting with the themes that obsessed the great director. More on that later. For now, it should suffice to say that </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">The Age of Innocence</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> is the story of Newland Archer, a lawyer and society scion in the “gilded” New York of the post-Civil-War age (a time and place Scorsese would come at from a very different perspective in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Gangs of New York). </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">He is a success in every visible way: he comes from a good family, he has good taste and good connections, and he is about to be married to a good woman. That would be Winona Ryder as May Welland, a nonentity not for lack of effort on Ryder’s part, but rendered in perfect blankness by her. This is the character that attracted Scorsese to the story, that reserve of hidden strength that all his heroines have. She hides it more deeply than Jodie Foster in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Taxi Driver</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> or Cathy Moriarty in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Raging Bull</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, but the subtle moments when she expresses her unshakable character are the ones that fascinated Scorsese. They’re things as simple as catching Newland in a lie without saying so, or getting up from a conversation, a scene so impactful that Scorsese repeats it, describing the scene as a moment, then the memory of it. </span></p> <p><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/7CcJjr0-e1442512066288.png"><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9045 aligncenter" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/7CcJjr0-e1442512066288-300x127.png" alt="7CcJjr0" width="399" height="169" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/7CcJjr0-e1442512066288-300x127.png 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/7CcJjr0-e1442512066288-1024x433.png 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/7CcJjr0-e1442512066288.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 399px) 100vw, 399px" /></a></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">Newland is a bit of a blank himself, at least in Day-Lewis’s performance. He is a man of deep, consuming passions that are always hidden behind his stoic respectability: behind lace as it were. He speaks with the flat, almost bored affect of David Byrne or Michael Stipe, even when professing the most burning desires. But while those musicians are counterculture figures, Newland’s flatness comes from conformity around him: he sounds like an automaton programmed by high society. These tics persist even as he meets someone who comes from outside his rigid world and throws it just so far out of balance. This character is May’s sister, Ellen Olenska, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. She doesn’t obey the rules of the New York elite simply because she hasn’t learned them. She comes from a marriage to a duke of what the voiceover calls “the wicked old society,” not the “refined” one of Fifth Avenue. Like Ryder, Pfeiffer gives her character an exquisite pain and bruised resolve, bringing in the haunted eyes and wild hair she had used to such effect in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Batman Returns</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">. She is both wiser and more naive than Newland: she understands the wider world, but she has no knowledge of the rules that can mean life or death in this microworld. Newland can’t resist. But he has to. They carry on a secret affair that’s never quite as secret as Newland hopes, and one without any of the physical intimacy we expect. Scorsese says what fascinated him in Wharton’s novel is “The idea that the mere touching of a woman’s hand would suffice. The idea that seeing her across the room would keep him alive for another year.” And with his skill at subjective filmmaking, he makes Newland’s mindset the viewers’ mindset. He leaves out the softcore sex scenes that modern filmmakers graft onto their “bodice rippers” even though they take place in times where bodices remained stubbornly fastened. Scorsese takes that moment of Newland touching Ellen’s hand, and makes just the removal of a glove sexier than full frontal nudity ever could be.</span></p> <p><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/csTpCZO-e1442512974821.png"><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9057 aligncenter" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/csTpCZO-e1442512974821-300x124.png" alt="csTpCZO" width="402" height="166" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/csTpCZO-e1442512974821-300x124.png 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/csTpCZO-e1442512974821-1024x425.png 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/csTpCZO-e1442512974821.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 402px) 100vw, 402px" /></a></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">Scorsese told Roger Ebert, about a confrontation between Newland and May in their carriage, “I asked myself how to place a hand in terms of camera placement, the size of the actors in the frame, the correct camera movement the emotional level of performance. It was so funny; it was like painting miniatures. It was really fun.” He is describing a creative process miles away from the soul-bearing pain he experienced on the sets of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Raging Bull</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> or </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">The King of Comedy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">. His previous work mostly consisted of intimate, personal, even therapeutic movies. He made them because he had to, either to understand himself, or to understand the world, or to stay financially and artistically afloat. As he moved into the nineties, he started making movies because he wanted to, or even more so, because he wanted to see them. My colleague Grant “Wallflower” Nebel describes a major shift in the energy of Scorsese’s work after </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">The Last Temptation of Christ</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, his first real historical epic and the last movie he made because he </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">had</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> to, and maybe this is where it comes from. There’s always been a touch of Old Hollywood crowd-pleaser even in Scorsese’s prickliest, artiest work, and at this point in his life he had the confidence to fully indulge it. “He once told me he could not go to Venice again, because of romantic associations,” Ebert writes, “and that he could not see the films of a certain studio, because of memories of a woman who had worked there. He smiled when he told me, he even laughed at himself, but still, he would not go to Venice. He did finally go to Venice in August, however, to show his film in the Venice Film Festival..And he now looks at the films of all the movie studios.” There’s plenty of room for debate about whether good mental health makes or breaks great artists. But as many classics as Scorsese produced in his younger days, there’s something brilliant about the assured grandiosity of these later works.</span></p> <p><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Y6HYZn5-e1442512234484.png"><br /> <img loading="lazy" class=" wp-image-9048 aligncenter" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/UYWG3lm-e1442512316522-300x125.png" alt="UYWG3lm" width="405" height="169" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/UYWG3lm-e1442512316522-300x125.png 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/UYWG3lm-e1442512316522-1024x427.png 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/UYWG3lm-e1442512316522.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 405px) 100vw, 405px" /></a></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">To put it another way, this film, like </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Cape Fear </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">before it, is truly operatic. And like </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Cape Fear</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, Scorsese tips his hand by including opera on the soundtrack, and even less subtly than he had before. In a technique he borrowed from Luchino Visconti’s brilliant </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Senso</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, Scorsese opens the movie in the middle of an opera, and borrows the prismatic lighting of the stage scenes in Powell’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Red Shoes </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">as well. Michael Ballhaus’s camera pulls out to reveal that this is an artificial scene on a stage, and it becomes apparent before long that it was an opera within an opera, a sumptuously beautiful stage for the larger-than-life passions of forbidden love to play out on. But while the emotions are on the same level as an opera’s, the expression is much more subdued: there’s that image from the title sequence again. </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Futurama</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">’s Robot Devil gave us the definitive description of literal opera, “You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!” Well, he wouldn’t be angry at all with </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">The Age of Innocence</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">. “What has always stuck in my head is the brutality under the manners,” Scorsese says. “People hide what they mean under the surface of language.” If the characters can’t proclaim their emotions by singing and dancing the way characters in an opera would, the music, camera, and setting fill that role instead. While the sex and violence of this genteel world is all under the surface, we still see it manifest itself in the murder scenes and scandalous nudes that hang above the characters.</span></p> <p><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sUdgcSg-e1442512877876.png"><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9055 aligncenter" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sUdgcSg-e1442512877876-300x125.png" alt="sUdgcSg" width="401" height="167" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sUdgcSg-e1442512877876-300x125.png 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sUdgcSg-e1442512877876-1024x427.png 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sUdgcSg-e1442512877876.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 401px) 100vw, 401px" /></a></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">The characters aren’t just defined by Gabriella Pescucci’s costumes: the colors they wear turn them into symbolic figures. Newland Archer is always in dull, dead brown or grey. May wears pure white, a color that brings with it positive associations with innocence and purity, and negative ones with blankness and dullness. It’s the color of paper without words, and even when she’s not wearing it, she’s still connected to it. She wears blue when Newland takes her to the zoo and tries to move up their wedding date, but everything around them is white, especially the cages that reflect their own constriction. Ellen, of course, goes further out into the spectrum, appearing in vivid colors like lifeblood-red. Her sympathetic aunt Mrs. Manson Mingott is part of the same universe, holding court from a red room. And then there’s a shift: when Ellen agrees to sacrifice her freedom for May’s happiness, she too starts wearing white, and meeting Newland in a snow-covered cabin. For good and for bad, she has started to accept her sister’s world and become less of an eye-grabbing outsider.</span></p> <p><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/lRDfJMI-e1442513058760.png"><img loading="lazy" class=" wp-image-9058 aligncenter" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/lRDfJMI-e1442513058760-300x126.png" alt="lRDfJMI" width="400" height="168" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/lRDfJMI-e1442513058760-300x126.png 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/lRDfJMI-e1442513058760-1024x430.png 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/lRDfJMI-e1442513058760.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /></a></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">The characters are defined by their surroundings in other ways too. They keep beautiful houses, designed to flaunt or hide their wealth and taste. Scorsese relishes the tension between the beauty and cruelty of this vanished way of life. In scenes reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman and Sven Nykvist’s gorgeous work on </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Fanny and Alexander</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, the settings of the film are seductively beautiful no matter how much we may worry about the social inequalities that created it or the values its people hold. This world will eventually turn oppressive, but even before that feeling sets in, Scorsese communicates it subliminally by filming a dinner conversation where each cut is a match cut. No matter who is talking, they’re fenced in by the silver candlesticks on either side of them. The fire inside Archer and Ellen is never expressed, except by the literal fire they stand in front of, which subtly dies or flares up at the appropriate moments.</span></p> <p><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/mNOAmLv-e1442512542261.png"><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9051 aligncenter" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/mNOAmLv-e1442512542261-300x123.png" alt="mNOAmLv" width="400" height="164" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/mNOAmLv-e1442512542261-300x123.png 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/mNOAmLv-e1442512542261-1024x420.png 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/mNOAmLv-e1442512542261.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /></a></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">To look at another art historical style, this is the most Expressionistic movie Scorsese has made since </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Taxi Driver</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">. Newland may not be able to say what he feels, but we still experience it. When he talks to Ellen at the opera, every voice but theirs disappears and the screen around them is blacked out. Scorsese describes the transitions as brushstrokes sweeping across the canvas, and when he needs emotional color to move us out of the scene, he returns to a technique from way back in his student film </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">The Big Shave </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">and fades to pure red, yellow, or white instead of the usual black. There’s just a hint of unreality to this universe, too: Scorsese makes heavy use of Old Hollywood-style matte paintings and rear projections that give the whole thing the feeling of a dream or a storybook. The scene of Newland seeing Ellen on the faraway dock looks less like a moving photograph than a painting by someone like Bierstadt. Sunsets are beautiful, but they rarely look quite like </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">this</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">.</span></p> <p><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/i20-copy-e1442512618586.jpg"><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9052 aligncenter" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/i20-copy-e1442512618586-300x131.jpg" alt="i20 copy" width="401" height="175" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/i20-copy-e1442512618586-300x131.jpg 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/i20-copy-e1442512618586.jpg 1006w" sizes="(max-width: 401px) 100vw, 401px" /></a></p> <p><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Taxi Driver</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">’s Bressonian fixation on details carries over too, as Ballhaus lingers over images of name cards, jewelry, and polished-silver plates. Just like in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Taxi Driver</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, and just like in Bresson’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Pickpocket</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, this all serves to create an almost religious sense of ritual. These are people who go to see the very same opera every year, who live by a code as rigid as the ones that lay out the Mass. Just look at the scenes of the traditional after-dinner cigar, portrayed in an almost Freudian montage of clipping, lighting, and smoking. Sometimes a cigar is not just a cigar. The story is structured around the ritual of the dinner, the center of these characters’ social interactions. The food is prepared carefully, according to extensive research, and Ballhaus puts equal thought into the photography that makes it look almost hyperreal. He uses what Scorsese calls “the priest’s eye view,” showing these meals in the same context as the sacramental bread and wine. As in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Last Temptation</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, there’s a specificity and foreignness to these period details that leaves no doubt to the authenticity. You can’t make this up. “I discovered,” Scorsese says, “that the more detail you know, the better you know the people.” And that’s true: </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">The Age of Innocence </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">is just as much a story of the setting of the people who live there. More accurately, you could say that each is an extension of the other.</span></p> <p><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/r1pwxSx-e1442512665318.png"><img loading="lazy" class=" wp-image-9053 aligncenter" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/r1pwxSx-e1442512665318-300x126.png" alt="r1pwxSx" width="400" height="168" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/r1pwxSx-e1442512665318-300x126.png 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/r1pwxSx-e1442512665318-1024x430.png 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/r1pwxSx-e1442512665318.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /></a></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">What fascinates Scorsese about this world, among the many infectious fascinations he brings to the project, is the world of fine art. Not only does he shoot this vanished world with colors and compositions taken from the paintings of the time, he seems as fascinated with the paintings as the owners. Ballhaus’s camera lingers over them, drinking in the glittering play of light across the canvas. In its sense of spectacle and setting, the film really is a museum tour, and at times Scorsese can be like a tour guide taking us through the art gallery these people live in. The artwork becomes an extension of the characters as well. “Edith Wharton talked about certain paintings in the book, especially the Beauforts’, who were lavish and tinged with decadence in their tastes; whereas Newland Archer’s mother had more bucolic paintings, featuring farms and cows…We had to let a modern audience know that there was something very different about this woman [Ellen] from the paintings she had on her walls. My researcher found the school of Italian painters, pre-Impressionist, called the Macchiaioli School. One featured a woman with a parasol but no face, which would certainly be shocking to the audience.”</span></p> <p><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/bVzOCXh-e1442513122675.png"><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9059 aligncenter" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/bVzOCXh-e1442513122675-300x124.png" alt="bVzOCXh" width="402" height="166" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/bVzOCXh-e1442513122675-300x124.png 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/bVzOCXh-e1442513122675-1024x425.png 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/bVzOCXh-e1442513122675.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 402px) 100vw, 402px" /></a></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">I’ll admit that I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on the technical aspects instead of the story and the setting instead of the characters. But I think that’s because of how important each one of those pairs is to the other. Besides, I don’t know if I can properly express the rich inner lives that Scorsese makes so heartbreakingly personal in this film. Certainly, I can’t get across that wonderful gut punch of an ending, at least not without ruining it for anyone who hasn’t been lucky enough to have seen it for themselves. Scorsese’s next movie, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Casino</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">, is a gut punch another kind, taking all the violence that bubbles under the surface of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">The Age of Innocence </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">and putting it right up front. It’s hard to imagine too many other directors making two such different movies back to back. But that’s the thing about Scorsese: he has no trouble switching rapidly between completely different types of filmmaking. But no matter how far afield the style is, the soul of his work, the emotions and obsessions, remains thrillingly the same.</span></p> <p><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Up next: </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">Casino</span></p> <p><img loading="lazy" class=" wp-image-9049 aligncenter" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/FHmBNEn-e1442512406601-300x126.png" alt="FHmBNEn" width="400" height="168" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/FHmBNEn-e1442512406601-300x126.png 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/FHmBNEn-e1442512406601-1024x430.png 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/FHmBNEn-e1442512406601.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /><br /> <em>Images credited to http://www.bluscreens.net/age-of-innocence-the.html</em></p> ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://www.the-solute.com/the-scorsese-experience-the-age-of-innocence/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>19</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Halloween Psych-Out – Part 4: A Scanner Darkly</title> <link>https://www.the-solute.com/halloween-psych-out-part-4-a-scanner-darkly/</link> <comments>https://www.the-solute.com/halloween-psych-out-part-4-a-scanner-darkly/#comments</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[John Bruni]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 28 Oct 2014 14:00:48 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Long Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[A Scanner Darkly]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Keanu Reeves]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Philip K. Dick]]></category> <category><![CDATA[richard linklater]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Robert Downey Jr.]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Winona Ryder]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Woody Harrelson]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.the-solute.com/?p=2728</guid> <description><![CDATA[Directed by Richard Linklater, The Waking Life (2001) uses rotoscoping—the film first shot on digital video then each frame drawn over by computer-aided artists—to explore different philosophies about existence. The colors and shapes dance together, each movement opening a perspective on a philosophical universe, suggesting connections among ways of living. The Waking Life seems almost […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Directed by Richard Linklater, <em>The Waking Life</em> (2001) uses rotoscoping—the film first shot on digital video then each frame drawn over by computer-aided artists—to explore different philosophies about existence. The colors and shapes dance together, each movement opening a perspective on a philosophical universe, suggesting connections among ways of living. <em>The Waking Life </em>seems almost defiantly optimistic, as it challenges us to join in the dance.</p> <p>Revisiting this technique five years later, the film I will now discuss goes in the precisely opposite direction: reminding us that paranoia is a <em>more negative</em> reaction to the idea that everything is connected. Inspired by Philip K. Dick’s novelistic channeling of his own drug-damaged life, what we will see onscreen is a powerfully terrifying desire for redemption.<a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/scanner-5.jpg"><img loading="lazy" class="alignright wp-image-2731 size-medium" src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/scanner-5-188x300.jpg" alt="scanner 5" width="188" height="300" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/scanner-5-188x300.jpg 188w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/scanner-5.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 188px) 100vw, 188px" /></a></p> <p><strong>“Slow Death”: <em>A Scanner Darkly</em></strong></p> <p>(dir Linklater 2006)</p> <p>In the film, there seems to be something missing, as if crucial footage were mistakenly left on the cutting-room floor. Challenging the narrative logic of horror films that tend to rely heavily on plot, <em>A Scanner Darkly </em>unfolds as a series of rotoscoped hallucinations, some perhaps shared. The question of what is real becomes a punch line for a cosmic joke.</p> <p>The opening scene throws the first curveball at us: an undercover narcotics agent gives a speech at the Brown Bear Lodge. Introduced as Agent Fred, he stands out from the suit-and-tie-wearing crowd by wearing a “scramble suit” that conceals his appearance behind split-second flashing images of multiple faces and outfits. Underneath the disguise is Bob Arctor, who argues with his boss, via remote feed, about the text of the speech: he is to act as a cheerleader for the latest war on drugs, this time against Substance D, the most addictive drug yet seen. Deviating from the prepared text, he ends the speech in front of a now stunned audience:</p> <blockquote><p>Substance D. ‘D’ is dumbness, and despair, desertion—desertion of you from your friends, your friends from you, everyone from everyone. Isolation and loneliness… and hating and suspecting each other, ‘D’ is finally death. Slow death from the head down. Well… that’s it.</p></blockquote> <p>Arctor is played by Keanu Reeves, who demonstrates why he should be the first on the call list for any role that features a dim realization of being in over one’s head.</p> <p>His assignment, already in progress, is to spy on the users who are living at his house. They are James Barris, a sarcastic pharmacological expert who moonlights as an informant, and Ernie Luckman, a hyperactive surfer dude. Also in Arctor’s immediate orbit is Donna Hawthorne, a dealer and his girlfriend.</p> <p>While Hawthorne, played by Winona Ryder, illustrates that living in one’s head is not an exclusively male trait, nearly stealing the show is Robert Downey Jr. as Barris, who rips into his putdown lines, such as this one directed at Luckman, played by Woody Harrelson:</p> <blockquote><p>Alright, I’m gonna give you a little feedback since you seem to be proceeding through life like a cat without whiskers perpetually caught behind the refrigerator. Your life and watching you live it is like a gag-reel of ineffective bodily functions.</p></blockquote> <p>The scenes featuring Arctor, Barris, and Luckman are not just some sort of twisted comic relief but the emotional center of the film: we feel how hard it is to make personal connections when not only do we not know who the people we are trying to connect with are, but we are not sure of who <em>we</em> really are. And not knowing which side of the law they—or we—are on.</p> <p>Their arguments memorably illustrate what happens when paranoia gets out of control, turning our frame of reference upside-down and inside-out as each person has an equally bizarre and obsessive way of looking at things. But the comedy flips into horror as we start to get a sense of the moral emptiness these arguments try to hide. The lives of these people all revolve around—and are thus connected by–drugs. It is the stark and rather unfunny logic of addiction. Our laughter at these episodes makes us feel somewhat uneasy, almost as if the film is mocking us for our inability to take addiction seriously. If we did, we would have to ask: <em>why are these characters, in fact, so paranoid?</em></p> <p>The answer the film gives: <em>why are you, the viewer, not?</em> Because the surveillance in the film has long been a feature of our own daily lives, whether we choose to acknowledge or react to it. As the film would remind us, it can seem a rather small step from “just say no” to being judged as guilty before being proven innocent.</p> <p>When Arctor is asked to look at the scans of his own house, his alarm at this ethical conflict is met by his boss telling him to edit out most of the shots of himself, leaving just a few images for reference purposes. His spying on himself, internalizing the police state apparatus, parallels the effects of Substance D, which he has been taking as part of his undercover work, that has caused him to not know whether he is Agent Fred or Bob Arctor.</p> <p>Doctors explain to him that there is crosstalk between the left and right hemispheres of his brain. Is this the internalized chatter of the surveillance scans? Thought of in this way, language is ultimately disruptive, a theme that, in a horrifying way, <em>A Scanner Darkly</em> takes far beyond that of Hollywood films. For, typically, a film uses language to tell us what characters are feeling and thinking. Now, recall the earlier scenes in <em>A Scanner Darkly</em>. We have no idea what these characters are feeling, because they are in various states/stages of denial; we have no idea what these characters are thinking, because they are succumbing, to various degrees, to psychosis. Language therefore does not bring anyone together in this film; nor is the impression even given that language holds self-identity together.</p> <p><a href="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/scanner-6.png"><img loading="lazy" class="alignleft wp-image-2733 " src="http://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/scanner-6-300x168.png" alt="scanner 6" width="357" height="200" srcset="https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/scanner-6-300x168.png 300w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/scanner-6-1024x576.png 1024w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/scanner-6-640x360.png 640w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/scanner-6-320x180.png 320w, https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/scanner-6.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 357px) 100vw, 357px" /></a>The ending of the film brings this horror into sharp relief. Arctor/Fred has fallen apart to the point at which he becomes an ideal patient for The New Path, a popular drug recovery program, that his superiors want him to infiltrate to trace its possible ties to the manufacturing of Substance D. In the last scene, he is taken to a field by a program assistant and sees the blue flowers that are harvested to make the drug. Then the following text in white appears against a blank screen:</p> <blockquote><p>This has been a story about people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. I loved them all. Here is a list, to whom I dedicate my love: To Gaylene, deceased To Ray, deceased To Francy, permanent psychosis To Kathy, permanent brain damage To Jim, deceased To Val, massive permanent brain damage To Nancy, permanent psychosis To Joanne, permanent brain damage To Maren, deceased To Nick, deceased To Terry, deceased To Dennis, deceased To Phil, permanent pancreatic damage To Sue, permanent vascular damage To Jerri, permanent psychosis and vascular damage …and so forth In memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; There are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The ‘enemy’ was their mistake in playing. Let them play again, in some other way, and let them be happy. Philip K. Dick</p></blockquote> <p>This is the end of language, of meaning, a virtual gravestone.</p> ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://www.the-solute.com/halloween-psych-out-part-4-a-scanner-darkly/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>3</slash:comments> </item> </channel> </rss>