Author: SceneByGreen

Wes Anderson | 1hr 45min

Buried beneath the deadpan line readings and self-aware framing devices of Asteroid City, there is a quiet, repressed grief, fighting to reach the surface. The story of the youth astronomy convention visited by extra-terrestrials is only the innermost layer of its narrative, framed within a fictional play which in turn is being featured on an exclusive behind-the-scenes 1950s television program. This nesting doll structure isn’t unusual for Wes Anderson, whose cinematic storytelling has always relished mimicking traditional forms of media, but the boundaries between his fictional layers here are far looser and more perplexing than we have seen before.

Augie Steenbeck is the widowed father of four who has been waiting for this family road trip to tell his children of their mother’s passing three weeks ago, while Jones Hall is the actor who plays him. Co-starring next to him is world-weary actress Mercedes Ford playing the equally jaded actress Midge Campbell, who has similarly been drawn to Asteroid City for her daughter’s participation in the astronomy convention. It takes us a few seconds to recognise when either actor breaks character, remarking on the greasepaint used for a black eye or an unexpected commitment to burning one’s hand on a hot griddle. In fact, the lines between performers and their fictional identities become more obscure the deeper we get, as Anderson gradually blurs them until they essentially become one.

There is an underlying logic to these fourth wall breaks in the metacontext of the television production, though they also heavily suggest a personal dissociation that lets these characters step back and question their own actions. “Why does Augie burn his hand on the Quicky-Griddle? I still don’t understand the play,” Jones questions at the chaotic climax of Asteroid City, before heading backstage to chat with the director.

“He’s such a wounded guy. I feel like my heart is getting broken, my own personal heart, every night.”

“Good.”

“Do I just keep doing it?”

“Yes.”

“Without knowing anything?”

“Yes.”

The exchange almost sounds like a man speaking to his own conscience, spurring him on to conquer the inhibitions that keep him from understanding the logic of the universe, as well as his own soul. It doesn’t matter if can’t intellectually comprehend the deep grief of the man he is playing, he is told. “You just keep telling the story. You’re doing him right.”

Anderson’s trademark self-awareness may be reaching a peak here with the metanarrative of Asteroid City. It is almost impossible to escape the confines of theatrical or televised media here, through which authentic emotions are filtered until we reach enough of a distance to consider their purpose, thereby letting us emerge out the other side as more conscious beings. That is certainly at least the experience that Jones undergoes as he sees parts of himself in Augie, and it is at the core of the enigmatic mantra chanted by the play’s cast in one surreal, unsettling dream sequence.

“You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep.”

Indeed, much of Asteroid City feels as if we are watching one of Anderson’s own dreams of eccentric characters and quaint visual designs, only to be woken up every now and again to recognise its artifice. The fictional play escapes into a world entirely distinct from the boxy aspect ratio and black-and-white cinematography of the television segments, even while Anderson’s crisp depth of field, symmetrical framing, and rigorous blocking are carried across both. In fact, it even transcends the limits of any Broadway theatre as well, unfolding across expansive desert sets saturated with faded pastel blues and yellows. The seams where the floor meets the matte paintings in the background are conspicuous, as is the theatrically curated design of those train and building miniatures that populate its dry, rural landscape.

Anderson’s camerawork matches the geometric precision of his mise-en-scène as well, travelling in parallel tracking shots, tilts, and pans whenever he breaks free of his static tableaux. These devices make up the entirety of the long take which first introduces us to Asteroid City before the convention guests arrive, noting its sparse features – a diner, a motel, a half-constructed overpass, and of course the giant crater which gives the town its lofty name. In the distance, atomic bomb tests occasionally disrupt the flat horizon, though these are of little concern to the locals who mainly consist of small business owners and astronomers. They are proud of their town’s small claim to fame, and don’t hesitate in capitalising on their national media coverage when they are unexpectedly visited by aliens.

From the long shots of the town’s 1950s architecture to the throwaway visual gag of the real estate vending machine, there is a thorough dedication to world building all through Anderson’s mise-en-scène, but it is also in his sprawling cast that he develops the rustic southwestern culture of the community. Steve Carrell, Matt Dillon, and Tilda Swinton are among a handful of residents with small-town mannerisms, while Tom Hanks, Liv Schreiber, and Jeffrey Wright fill in the roles of its curious outsiders. Another layer out, we find Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, and Jeff Goldblum backstage at the theatre, and Bryan Cranston hosting the television program itself, though the most substantial roles are reserved for those two esteemed actors playing Augie and Midge.

Within this enormous ensemble of A-list actors, Jason Schwartzman and Scarlett Johansson are the centre upon which Anderson’s deadpan drama pivots. Beneath their mannered affects is a mutual fatigue and sorrow, shared in conversations between their neighbouring cabins. The small windows in the side of each hem them into claustrophobic frames, effectively isolating them in their respective worlds, but even so there is a tenderness to their connection that promises a chance to break free of their emotional constraints. If only they had more time for them to explore this further.

It is hard not to see the parallels Anderson is drawing to the global pandemic lockdowns with the arrival of an alien that sends the entire Junior Stargazers convention into quarantine. He is not so much interested in what this “bewildering and dazzling celestial mystery”represents though than the repercussions it leaves in its wake, breaking up the milieu of these characters’ lives and offering them the time to re-examine their relationships. In effect, this is another layer of dreaming which cuts them off from reality, yet which opens new possibilities as romances are forged, school students befriend a travelling cowboy band, and Tom Hanks’ wealthy retiree finds a new respect for his son-in-law. Sleep is not a state of passive inactivity, Anderson posits, but rather renews our connection to the world when we eventually return to it.

This is crucial to Jones’ and Mercedes’ development as they sink into the fictional roles of Augie and Midge, only to find mirrored versions of themselves. Mercedes’ disillusionment with the industry is shown early in Asteroid City when she almost quits the play right before opening night, while the source of Jones’ heartache isn’t revealed until the end, though both emerge in their characters as Augie helps Midge to rehearse for an upcoming project. “Use your grief,” she instructs him after a lacklustre performance, and not only do we see Augie’s pain surface in the following line delivery, but Jones’ as well. In an even more obscure fourth wall break that could be spoken by either Mercedes or Midge, they finally realise what binds all four of them together.

“I think I see how I see us. I mean I think I know now what I realise we are. Two catastrophically wounded people who don’t express the depths of their pain because we don’t want to. That’s our connection. Do you agree?”

When Jones randomly encounters the actress who played Augie’s deceased wife before her scene was cut, he finds an even sweeter catharsis to his emotional turmoil, as they recall the lines that they might have shared together in a dream scene. After leaving one stage show, she has simply taken on a part in another, though there is no sorrow to be found in that departure – just new beginnings.

In Anderson’s grand metaphor for life and death, everyone is constantly performing roles that they may not fully understand how to play, whether it be as a father, a widower, or professional actor. These are not lies, but rather parts through which humans may understand their truest selves, should they fully submit to these alternate identities and emotionally reconcile them with each other. It is fitting too that a filmmaker so often accused of inauthenticity should find the sincerity in such artifice, and attach such a great spiritual significance to it. Through the union of dreams and reality in Asteroid City, Anderson crafts a cinematic model of this self-realisation, and reverberates a sweet, formal harmony across its sprawling layers of truth.

Asteroid City is currently playing in theatres.

Charlie Kaufman | 2hr 4min

For all the times that Charlie Kaufman’s characters cryptically declare that “The end is built into the beginning” in Synecdoche, New York, it wouldn’t be quite right to describe the film’s structure as circular. From the outside it looks far more like a mobius strip, forcing Philip Seymour Hoffman’s pitiful theatre director along paths that invert, double back on themselves, twist inside-out, and lead him back to the lonely, feeble life he has been trying to escape.

If anyone in this absurd universe has any power at all, then it is simply over the journey they will take to their inevitable grave. “It’s a big decision how one prefers to die,” one real estate agent glibly considers while selling a burning house destined to kill its buyer a few decades later, and indeed it may be the only decision that really matter. For Caden Cotard though, that is not enough. To create a piece of theatre that transcends life itself is to effectively become a self-autonomous god of one’s own artificial world, governing the rules of time and fate, and yet this construct is entirely hollow. Death is approaching, hastening with each passing day, and still he remains ignorant to what he believes is little more than a vague concept to be explored through actors and scripts. Kaufman’s mobius strip leads Caden everywhere he desires, only to remind him that he has always been the same sad, mortal being he was at the outset.

It isn’t that Kaufman had been particularly limited by his career as a screenwriter up to this point, but when compared to films like Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind it is clear to see just how much he had been itching to disengage his high-concept visions from any familiar reality. The formal ambition on display in Synecdoche, New York’s enormous, postmodern allegory for man’s self-obsessed ego is equal parts staggering and confounding, transporting us into a bizarre Kafkaesque reality that only gradually reveals its underlying insanity. Even in the opening moments depicting a seemingly ordinary morning in Caden’s family home, Kaufman applies an incredible attention to detail whenever the date is mentioned in the mail, newspaper, television, radio, or even on an expired milk bottle, seeing days invisibly slip by despite there being no breaks in the action. For now, Caden’s ignorance to the passage of time is relatively harmless, and yet its relentless acceleration will soon see his six-year-old daughter grow into a teenager in what feels like a few weeks, and years vanish overnight.

Maybe this is why he decides to create a simulacrum of reality within his untitled piece of theatre, funded by the grant he received for his acclaimed staging of Death of a Salesman. Time moves according to his will in this world that has been built entirely around him, allowing him to relive and dissect his past through actors who play out previous real-life scenes verbatim, while he starts and stops the action at his own whim. On one level, he is simply doing this to prove and glorify his intellect, but on another it is a narcissistic self-flagellation, viciously eviscerating himself on a public stage for the sake of his own ego.

“I will have someone play me to delve into the murky, cowardly depths of my lonely, fucked-up being. And he’ll get notes too, and those notes will correspond to the notes I truly receive every day from my god!”

Not that others need his artistic expression to see his flaws for what they are. If anything, he remains blindly ignorant to those insecurities that challenge his masculinity, refusing to confront his repressed homosexuality even as it is noted by multiple other characters, and convincing himself that his psychosomatic illnesses are real. Within the safety of the theatre, he can pick and choose which parts of himself are reflected in his art, making for some amusingly ironic encounters when he forces the self-realisation he is running from on his cast.

“Try to keep in mind that a young person playing Willie Loman thinks he’s only pretending to be at the end of a life full of despair. But the tragedy is that we know that you, the young actor, will end up in this very place of desolation.”

The self-awareness of Synecdoche, New York though continues to go far beyond Caden’s own consciousness – this entire project essentially boils down to Kaufman’s bitter confession of his own creative process, wrestling with his character flaws to create something honest at the expense of others’ time, patience, and sanity. This is nothing new for him, seeing as how he quite literally inserted himself as a character into Adaptation a few years prior, but of all his fictional self-representations Caden cuts the deepest. Part of this has to do with the remarkable formal complexity of his creation, completely blurring the line between reality and fiction as his actors play out seemingly genuine interactions in place of their real-life counterparts, though of course credit must also be given to Hoffman’s tortured, anxiety-ridden performance. Even within the context of his tremendous career, his portrayal of Kaufman’s self-loathing surrogate showcases some of his greatest acting, physically ageing into the body of an old man even as his mind remains stubbornly fixated on his vision of a world preserved in art.

Kaufman’s scathing critique of an artist’s psychology though does not cast as wide a net with its cynical aspersions as one might expect, as while Caden’s sets of streets and buildings continue to sprawl out through his enormous warehouse, his ex-wife’s paintings progressively shrink in size. These creations are every bit the inverse of Caden’s play – tiny, delicate expressions of beauty and humility, not seeking to claim a large plot of real estate in this crowded world, but rather letting its spectators lean in with their magnifying glasses and become active participants in their aesthetic appreciation. This is far more than one could say about Caden’s play, which seems to exist in a permanent state of writing and rehearsal, and refuses to engage with any potential audiences. As far as he is concerned, this work of art serves no one but himself, representing his bloated ego in the expansion of post-it notes across tables and sprawling urban infrastructure through his New York City replica.

If there is anything that distinguishes Synecdoche, New York as the product of a screenwriter making their foray into film direction, then it is the fact that Kaufman’s achievement primarily lies in the intelligent formal construction of such an intricately absurd meta-reality, while neglecting the development of any binding aesthetic. Unlike his later work in I’m Thinking of Ending Things, his visual invention here never quite matches the peculiar world he has created until its final scenes, where Caden shrinks against a giant, grey city, and the limits of his ambition are confined under an industrial ceiling where one might expect to find a boundless sky.

Decades continue to slip by in this space and Caden becomes an old man, yet it still barely matters to him that the real world outside has crumbled into apocalyptic dystopia, even as its corruptive influences infiltrate the dreary fantasy he has made his home. As one of its few remaining survivors, he wanders its bleak urban wasteland littered with burning cars and dead bodies, still delving layers deeper into his lonely existence – not as a vain, power-hungry director, but as an actor to be manipulated by another director superseding him. More specifically, he takes on the role of Ellen, his daughter’s custodian, while the actress who played her becomes his god, speaking directly into his mind. For what seems like the first time in Synecdoche, New York, Caden’s inner monologue is not just filled with regret for his own wasted time, but empathy for the misery of others.

“What was once before you – an exciting, mysterious future – is now behind you. Lived, understood, disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone’s experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone’s everyone. So you are Adele, Hazel, Claire, Olive. You are Ellen. All her meagre sadnesses are yours. All her loneliness. The grey, straw-like hair, her red raw hands. It’s yours. It is time for you to understand this.”

Caden’s anguish is not unique, and never has been. His is the story of every human to have ever lived, following a path back to the state of non-existence which preceded their birth, and yet for some arrogant reason he has convinced himself that he is the orchestrator of his own fate. In his final seconds, as he considers what might as well be the hundredth potential title for his play, the voice of his indifferent god who continues to direct him right to the end cuts him off with a short, sharp instruction. There is little more to be said about his sad, solitary existence when that word is uttered, finally dooming him to the obscurity that he spent his entire life running from.

“Die.”

Synecdoche, New York is currently available to rent or buy on Google Play and YouTube.

Warren Beatty | 3hr 20min

History buffs will recognise the name John Reed as that of the American journalist who travelled to Russia in 1917, wrote the most vivid firsthand account of its revolution, and published his observations in the book ‘Ten Days That Shook the World’, drawing acclaim and criticism from across the political aisle. If his Communist leanings manifested with full-throttled admiration in his descriptions of the new society as “a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer,” then Warren Beatty symbolically ties him even closer to the movement in Reds. It is an archetypal rise and fall narrative he follows, but one which is romantically mirrored across three separate layers in the evolution of early twentieth century socialism, Reed’s own political activism, and his love for fellow writer Louise Bryant. In this bright-eyed, intellectual man we find the living embodiment of a 1910s American counterculture, confidently promising a hopeful future of equality doomed to fall to bureaucracy.

Besides the epic storytelling structure, the other key to unlocking the brilliant form of Reds is in the interviews Beatty conducts with ‘witnesses’ who knew Reed personally, tempering his subject’s impassioned fervour with nostalgic reflections. With their faces framed off to the right against black backgrounds, these men and women offer an authenticity which distinguishes Beatty’s film from so many other historical epics.

As such, Reds practically verges on docudrama territory, bridging the gap between fiction and reality through formal rhythms that pulse with humour and sensitivity. Right after one woman fondly recalls the days when homosexuality and abortion were taboo, Beatty irreverently cuts straight to a man testifying that there was just as much sex going on then as there is now, playing to the amusing incongruency between personal accounts that keep us from forming an objective picture of the past. With such faultless historicity rendered impossible though, these different perspectives also make up a more complex view of our primary subject, Reed. As one witness states, “A guy who’s interested in changing the world either has no problems of his own, or refuses to face them.”

Beatty’s Greek chorus-style interludes are seamless, at times simply manifesting as voiceovers commenting on events while we are whisked from New York City’s bohemian Greenwich Village to the stunning white beaches of Provincetown, and further onto the frontlines of the Russian Revolution in Petrograd. The narrative scope is sprawling, and both he and his co-star Diane Keaton wear every bit of it in their performances, ageing Reed and Bryant from hopeful young radicals into disenchanted cynics.

For Keaton especially, this is an acting achievement that sits among her best, setting the screen on fire with feminist monologues lamenting how much society ties her success to her husband, and later proving her tenacious, unconditional love as she hikes through Northern Europe’s frozen wilderness to rescue him from prison. With Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, and Paul Sorvino confidently filling in supporting roles too, Reds stands as a testament to the power of excellent casting, representing significant historical figures with big names of 80s cinema.

Beatty does not stop there in his collaborative ambition either, pulling Vittorio Storaro onboard as cinematographer to instil his grand biopic with an antiquated, painterly quality. The period detail in his establishing shots of New York’s streets and the sweeping crane shots over Bolshevik crowds effectively establish the grand spectacle of Reds, but even more substantial is Reed’s association with them, manifesting the full scale of his political aspirations spanning entire nations. When the Czarist White Army attacks his train, he boldly runs right into the clouds of dust and smoke, while at a large Communist rally he steps up onstage to assure them of America’s favourable support. It could be the fact that he is once again working closely with Bryant, or perhaps it is the exhilaration of seeing history unfold around them, but the romance between both is also rekindled during their time in Petrograd, holistically revitalising his spirit with the fiery zeal of the Russian Revolution.

The novelty of such grand passion can only last so long though before its shine begins to dull and complications surface. The irony of Reed’s frustration with Russia’s new, inflexible governance isn’t lost on Beatty who correspondingly explores the journalist’s own fracturing socialist regime back in the United States, as his Communist Labor Party of America splinters off from the more centre-left Social Party of America. Reed’s efforts to have his new party officially recognised by Russian authorities are in vain – not only does Bryant threaten to end their relationship should he venture across the world for a second time in stubborn pursuit of validation, but the Bolsheviks reject his proposal anyway, and bluntly refuse to assist his illegal crossing of borders to return home. To Reed, Russia’s militaristic police state that spawned from a freedom-seeking movement has destroyed any hope of real communism, and in a single foolish decision, he effectively severs his ties to his homeland, his party, and his wife.

If there is any solace to be found at the end of Reds, then it is in that tenacious love he shares with the latter, sending Bryant across frozen wastelands and Reed through hostile territory to finally end up in each other’s arms. They look rough around the edges, but their eyes are also softer than ever, for the first time recognising the inimitable bond they share beyond the intellectual joys and constraints of their political interests. It is a reunion that comes far too late for their romance though. With Reed’s passing from typhus less than a month later, Beatty virtually canonises him as a saint of lost causes, illuminating his body in a white light through a narrow hospital doorway as Bryant’s silhouette kneels in grief by his bed. In this final shot, the death knell of American socialism is finally tolled, and Beatty signals the end of an era destined to live on in the wistful memories of Reds’ venerable witnesses.

Reds is currently available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, and Amazon Video.

Danny and Michael Philippou | 1hr 35min

The latest party drug to be passed between teenagers in Talk to Me is not a new strain of MDMA, but a pale, embalmed hand. Those who play with its supernatural powers must first open the gateway to the afterlife, before letting its spirits into their minds and bodies with a simple expression of consent – “I let you in.” What happens after that is wildly unpredictable. Perhaps the ghost that takes possession of their host is playful, amusingly forcing them to sing in Spanish, or they could be more nefarious and compel them to perform deeply humiliating acts. Either way, this relinquishing of power to some external force is ecstatic for those who participate, and incredibly entertaining for those spectators who eagerly record everything on their phones.

Brothers Danny and Michael Philippou are confident in their handling of this drug metaphor, made even more impressive by the fact that Talk to Me marks their feature debut as directors, having previously gotten their start making horror comedy videos on YouTube. Perhaps this is why its screenplay and setting feel so true to Australian rave culture, particularly among younger generations willing to risk their lives for a rush of adrenaline and the approval of their peers.

Though some of these actors may not be fully serviced in some underdeveloped character arcs, they each at least get their moment to shine when spirits begin to use their bodies as puppets, like grown versions of Regan from The Exorcist. The cold light that harshly beams down from phone torches at each possessed teenager even bears some resemblance to the frosty air that infiltrates the bedroom in William Friedkin’s seminal horror film, coolly illuminating these figures of corrupted innocence. Under the influence of whatever spirit has taken their autonomy from them, they lick their lips and take nasty swipes at each other, though it is what comes after that may be most of haunting of all.

Much of the tension here hangs on Sophie Wilde’s leading performance as Mia, a young woman reluctantly coming to terms with the demonic forces that she has unleashed on herself and others, yet who also can’t resist digging herself deeper into a pit of anxious delusion. If the embalmed hand is a drug, then she is responsible for the horrific overdose of her friend’s little brother, and she too finds herself in the grip of its addictive pull. Only by continuing to use it can she fix the problems it caused in the first place – at least, that is what she mistakenly believes, even after she is told that its effects will naturally wear away with time.

Through the camera’s shallow focus and tracking shots too, the Philippou brothers ensure that we are stuck in Mia’s uneasy headspace virtually every step of the way, hanging on the back of her neck as she walks through hospitals and hallways. The most significant instance where they land us with a different character though comes in the opening scene, marking the film’s stylistic highpoint as we find ourselves following Cole – another teenager whose fate is bound to the black magic of the embalmed hand. In one long take, he makes his way through a crowded house party to find his injured brother, who gives us our first glimpse of the horrific darkness in store for Mia and her friends.

With such incredibly subjective camerawork, Talk to Me often feels as if it is transcending the perspective of its human characters to instead peer through the eyes of a disembodied ghost. When spirits enter the bodies of teenagers, the camera violently tosses backwards with their heads, and there is also a formal poetry to the pair of overhead shots tying the end of Mia’s character arc right back to the start. The narrative may lose some steam in the final act when its starts relying on coincidence and leaves subplots hanging, but the Philippou brothers still keep the surprises rolling in right up until the end, paying off on their camera’s ghostly perspective. Willingly letting unpredictable forces take over one’s mind and body is evidently a dangerous game in Talk to Me, only leaving hope for those with enough self-control to tear themselves away from this supernatural intoxication.

Talk to Me is currently playing in theatres.

David Lynch | 2hr 15min

As far as fated high school prom queen Laura Palmer is concerned, the only supernatural forces by her side as she suffers through her final days are those demons driving her towards a violent, degrading death. They hide in plain sight within the idyllic Washington town of Twin Peaks, masking an evil so insidiously manipulative that even its victims try to disassociate them from the images of warmth and comfort they project. If there are any guardian angels working to defend innocent civilians from their influence, then they certainly aren’t looking over Laura while she sinks into a deep pit of self-destruction. As she kicks back one weekend with her far more naïve friend Donna, she can’t resist inserting herself into the hypothetical question she is posed of whether one would slow down or accelerate while falling through space.

“Faster and faster. And for a long time, you wouldn’t feel anything. And then you’d burst into fire. Forever… And the angels wouldn’t help you. Because they’ve all gone away.”

The end of her life is near, and she can see almost exactly how it is going to unfold, with no chance of some saving grace arriving in the nick of time to save her. Still, even with this pessimistic clarity, there is still a shred of hope in her lingering glances to the angel picture that hangs on her wall. Salvation is but a distant dream in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, even as its shallow façade casts a sleepy spell over suburban America.

David Lynch’s prequel to his television series offers an alternate view of the titular town – one which has not yet pulled in FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper to investigate Laura’s inevitable murder, and that keeps its darkest secrets contained to a smaller group of characters. This is not to say that Kyle MacLachlan’s detective is absent though, as the thirty-minute Deer Meadows prologue effectively bridges the gap between him and Twin Peaks, sending him down the dead-end rabbit hole of a previous murder in a neighbouring town that bears striking similarities to Laura’s own demise.

The extension of these formal parallels between Laura and the late Teresa Banks is striking, and this is quite significantly not some piece of dramatic irony that escapes the attention of Lynch’s characters either. Though Laura and Cooper never meet in person, a mystical, psychic connection forms between the two, allowing both a prescient foresight of their destinies and specifically giving the latter an image of who the killer’s next victim will be – another blonde, sexually active high school girl with a drug problem, crying out for help. “You’re talking about half the high school girls in America,” his colleague teases, though he isn’t exactly wrong. The surreal portrait that Lynch is painting of the nation’s corrupted innocence reaches far across modern society, exposing the lie that its supposed moral safe havens are impenetrable, incorruptible defences for the nation’s youth.

Further linking the detective and the subject of his future investigation is the limbo where both disappear to in dreams, encountering visions of each other along with a small assortment of bizarre figures. Lynch’s eye for eerie designs reaches a peak in this metaphysical plane referred to as the Lodge, enclosing its inhabitants on all sides with red curtains and laying out a black-and-white, zig-zag pattern on the floor beneath them. So too do his slow, long dissolves subtly emphasise the Lodge as the connective tissue between the two, fading from Laura to its red curtains and then onto Dale in one lethargic transition, and further inducing a soporific reverie through the formal repetition of this editing device. The lore of the Lodge runs much deeper than what is presented in Fire Walk with Me, but in essence it draws our two primary characters into another layer of existence between life and death, and occasionally hosts the demon whose presence has been haunting Laura since she was a child – Killer BOB.

Taking the form of long-haired, dishevelled man with a sinister smile, Bob projects the image of a man who anyone would easily believe sneaks into the rooms of teenagers at night, whispers his evil intentions in their ears, and takes advantage of them. That his nocturnal attack on Laura is accompanied by silent flashes of lightning without thunder should clue us into her numb detachment from reality, instinctually kicking in to preserve any remaining belief in evil as a foreign agent, and not a homegrown mutation of the familiar. After all, this is the image of malevolence that is easier to live for her to live with, even as it breeds a self-loathing which pushes her into underage sex work and substance abuse. Never one to address the psychological breakdowns of his characters through a literal lens though, Lynch’s subtextual implications begin to reveal themselves with the discovery of Bob’s true identity – or perhaps possessed victim is a more appropriate term. Laura’s own humble father, Leland, is the mortal through which this demon inflicts his sadistic cruelty on the world, but even upon learning this we are simply left to wonder: which man in this parasitic relationship is the true evil, and which is wearing the other’s face as a mask?

Given the occasional cruelty that Leland displays behind closed doors, it wouldn’t be hard to believe that he is more than just Bob’s puppet. At the dinner table, his torment of Laura starts with him shaming her for not washing her hands, though the implications of virginal purity don’t remain discreet for long once he starts calling her filthy for her promiscuity. Meanwhile in the corner, his wife is rendered powerless, incapable of protecting her daughter from his verbal rampage. Leland’s tearful yet shallow apology later sounds like the words of a man deeply struggling with his own psychological issues, yet unable to come to terms with how dangerously ingrained they are in his being. Within the seven days leading up to Laura’s death, she may finally grow cognisant of her father’s true threat, but to him these hostile outbursts might as well be the work of the spirit that has taken control of him.

In fact, this is the deluded narrative that most of Twin Peaks would want to preserve, and the perspective which Lynch adopts with his trademark surrealism. The peculiar townsfolk often speak in disjointed passages that dwell on insignificant matters, until they are interrupted by cryptic riddles which speak to some profound truth. When Laura approaches the Roadhouse bar one night, she is stopped by Margaret the Log Lady who feels her feverish forehead and offers an elusive warning of the teenager’s corrupted virtue.

“When this kind of fire starts, it is very hard to put out… The tender boughs of innocence burn first, and the wind rises, and then all goodness is in jeopardy.”

Inside the Roadhouse, her meaning is somewhat clarified. This is where Laura often meets her pimp Jacques, who exploits her illegal affairs with adult men. Its smoky haze is only pierced by Lynch’s red and blue stage lights, not unlike those used in Isabella Rossellini’s performance in Blue Velvet, and he even stages a similar musical act with Julee Cruise wistfully crooning ‘Questions in a World of Blue’.

The song is enough to move Laura to tears, briefly letting her mourn the loss of normalcy in her life before she picks herself back up to entreat a pair of clients. With Cruise’s melancholy song still playing in the background though, Lynch’s musical sound design continues to prove itself a crucial part of his psychological worldbuilding, underscoring her muted conversation with dreamy synths. Save for those moments that he is emphasising the emptiness of silence, he is often manipulating the blend of diegetic and non-diegetic noises around Laura, absorbing the low, steady thrum of a ceiling fan into Angelo Badalamenti’s droning score in one scene that suspensefully leads up to her discovery of Bob’s identity. On a broader level too, the main theme’s slow, lazy bass riff becomes a lethargic motif for the town in general, lulling us into a drowsy acceptance of its surreal mundanity.

Visually, the Roadhouse scene also develops the colour palette that Lynch formally has set out right from the Deer Meadows prologue with the blue rose and red shirt, and continues to weave into his costumes, lighting, and décor. The duality of this aesthetic is as cleanly divided as the moral binaries which govern this sheltered town, splitting good and evil right down the middle with no consideration for the space in between. Though it has entirely disintegrated within Laura, it takes everything in her power to preserve the spotless purity of those in her life who remain truly untainted. She is distraught to see Donna engage in the same debauched behaviour as her when they enter a sex club together, and later she breaks up with her secret lover James as she spirals faster than ever. “You don’t even know me. Your Laura disappeared. It’s just me now,” she ruefully asserts, recognising the hollowed-out shell of a woman she has become.

Still, when death finally comes for her, she does not submit to the pressing darkness without a fight. Lynch is a proven master of formal symbolism, tying mysterious threads through the recurrence of Teresa’s green ring, the Lodge, and mysterious masked strangers, but it is when Laura witnesses an angel hovering over her fellow sex worker Ronnie as they are tied up that he affirms Fire Walk with Me’s most powerful metaphor. Blessed by this heavenly entity, Ronnie just manages to escape Bob’s violence, though just as Laura expected, there are no angels looking out for her.

At least, not in this world, which would much rather brush over the traumas of those who publicly take on the celebrated image of the all-American sweetheart. Only when she is freed from those constraints and is ushered into the Lodge does she find the symbol of divine salvation she has been holding out hope for all along, recognising the goodness in her which saved multiple others from her inner darkness. After all, this is what sets her apart from men like Leland, who divide themselves into separate beings so they may simultaneously inflict their misery on others and remain guiltless in the process. When all is said and done for this tragically fated prom queen, she finds solace in her own virtue at the end of a tortured life, turning tears to laughter as the faint imprint of her angel hovers overhead.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to buy on YouTube.

Christopher Nolan | 3hr

The inklings of an earth-shaking idea are born in J. Robert Oppenheimer’s mind as a university student, and sparks begin to ignite. Beams of electricity arc out across darkness, bursts of flame dissolve into smoke, and rings of light excitedly vibrate. Physical reactions such as these are born from the ideas of great men, setting off a chain reaction that advances human civilisation one innovation at a time. It is also evident in Oppenheimer though that the excitement of manipulating raw matter is enough to cloud even the most intelligent physicist’s judgement. As the father of the atomic bomb is straddled mid-coitus by his mistress, psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, she asks him to translate a passage from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita she is holding, and all at once Christopher Nolan links the act of life-giving creation to humanity’s eventual destruction.

“Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.”

In Western culture, these words spoken by Krishna have since become more heavily associated with Oppenheimer, framing him as a god carrying the burden of seemingly infinite power. Indeed, the atomic blast which can level entire cities proves to be “a terrible revelation of divine power,” forcing those who wish to gaze upon its radiant brilliance to shield their eyes from its wonder and horror. It is a sight not easily forgotten, continuing to haunt Oppenheimer in visions as psychologically invasive as those brief flashes of kinetic energy we witness early on. If Terrence Malick’s elegant interludes in The Tree of Life marvel at the expansive cosmos of the universe, then Nolan’s are in total awe of its quantum processes, and the largescale devastation they produce.

Oppenheimer is only Nolan’s second excursion into the annals of history, and it may very well be his densest narrative yet. Still, there is no doubt to be had that this bleak biopic fits perfectly into his career of thrillers and science-fiction films. True to his formal fascinations, time distorts around his central character in non-linear configurations, all the while grounding his story in parallel timelines neatly labelled “Fission” and “Fusion.”

Fission is the nuclear reaction central to the atomic bomb, splitting a nucleus to wreak enormous havoc and giving its name to the 1954 security hearing subplot, where we follow the government’s efforts to frame Oppenheimer as a Communist and strip him of his clearance. Meanwhile, fusion is the merging of two nuclei into one, crucial to the far more powerful hydrogen bomb supported by Washington bureaucrat Lewis Strauss, who dictates much of the second timeline at his 1959 confirmation hearing for the Senate.

Both framing devices present alternate perspectives of Oppenheimer’s rise from his studies at Cambridge to leading the top-secret Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, though Nolan also visually distinguishes between them by presenting Strauss’ story in black-and-white. How the two connect remains somewhat of a mystery for much of the film, and yet as the final act arrives, Nolan skilfully fuses them with great formal precision.

To pull off such an immense feat of narrative structure though requires an equal achievement of editing, posing a challenge that Nolan has demonstrated himself more than capable of handling in the past. Jennifer Lame has now seemingly taken over from Lee Smith as Nolan’s regular editor, following up her astounding work on Tenet to craft what is essentially a 3-hour montage of increasing urgency, not unlike Oliver Stone’s political thriller JFK. Huge levels of stamina are required on Lame’s part to keep this momentum up for such long stretches of time, as she bounces multiple timelines off each other in her propulsive parallel editing, and intermittently cuts away to those tiny surges of pure quantum energy representing Oppenheimer’s inner thoughts.

The pounding electronic score composed by Ludwig Göransson plays a crucial part in maintaining this kineticism as well, barely pausing long enough to allow us any breathing space in our rush towards total annihilation. At the same time though, Nolan is wise in his selection of those sequences where he drops it out altogether, forcing us to linger in the uncomfortable, heavy breathing of those bearing witness to the product of Oppenheimer’s life’s work. As we sit in the incredible majesty of this climactic moment, it isn’t hard to see the existential allure that drew him into this project. Nolan’s rejection of CGI and commitment to practical effects pays off on a grand scale in Oppenheimer’s disturbing nightmares of a nuclear apocalypse, but it is most of all in his lifelike simulation of the Trinity test that we feel his historical impact on a painful, visceral level.

There are few cinematographers who have capitalised so well on modern IMAX technology as Hoyte van Hoytema over the past decade or so, and so of course credit must also be given to him for both the sheer spectacle of these set pieces and the tremendous establishing shots of Los Alamos. Few times before have we additionally seen this largescale format applied to close-ups as intensive as those captured here, staring right into Cillian Murphy’s glassy blue eyes stretched wide open with the guilt of knowing what he has done, and what he is about to do. It is often thanks to this framing that we can truly appreciate his studied performance as Oppenheimer, adopting the physicist’s deep voice and clipped intonations in his speech, and ageing from an idealistic student into a middle-aged man stalked by regret.

If Heath Ledger offers the best performance of any Nolan film in The Dark Knight, then Murphy surely sits at a very close second. The rapturous applause that his fellow Americans greet him with after his bomb ends the war rings silently in his ears, and rooms seem to vibrate with atomic vibrations around him, radiating his psychological disintegration out from his haunted expressions into his environment.

Oppenheimer may be Murphy’s platform to give one of the best leading performances in recent years, but it also proves to be a showcase for a whole ensemble of A-list actors making the most of their time in the spotlight, including Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Benny Sadie, Rami Malek, and Kenneth Branagh. After Murphy though, there is only one actor whose presence leaves a near-equal imprint on the film. Robert Downey Jr. has never been better than he is here as Strauss, Oppenheimer’s friend-turned-rival who becomes vindictively caught up in his own petty grievances. The final act is where he truly flourishes in his vicious spitefulness, cruelly plotting against the physicist and picking at his open wounds like a vulture. It is through his character development that the second line of the film’s opening quote is prophetically fulfilled, simultaneously immortalising Oppenheimer as a mythological figure, and dooming him to suffer at the hands of his guilty conscience and political enemies.

“Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.”

There may be no bleaker ending of any Nolan film than that which he delivers here, simultaneously turning back the clock to take an alternate perspective of a scene from earlier in the film, and looking ahead to the future that awaits us. If Dr. Strangelove presents a darkly comic take on humanity’s nuclear self-destruction, then Oppenheimer is its evil twin, leaving us shivering with existential terror. Just as the tiniest of quantum processes may produce vast, explosive reactions, so too can one man set off seismic ripples across human history. From his creation springs death, and under his shadow Nolan whisks us forward with a relentless pace to witness the tortured god that emerges out the other end – the immortal Destroyer of Worlds.

Oppenheimer is currently playing in theatres.

Greta Gerwig | 1hr 54min

If Barbieland is a bright pink reinterpretation the Garden of Eden, with Barbie and Ken as the Adam and Eve figures opening the door to corruption, then where in Greta Gerwig’s piece of cinematic confectionary do we find the snake who introduces it to them? Perhaps applying biblical metaphors to Barbie is a little kind – this is not a film that asks for audiences to uncover any rich symbolism or subtext, even while it is playing on narrative archetypes set by some of humanity’s oldest stories. Quite unusually for both Gerwig and her cowriter Noah Baumbach, this screenplay would much rather plainly state its message in unambiguous feminist slogans that were expressed with far greater finesse in Lady Bird and Little Women. Still, she is keenly aware of what she is setting out to achieve, even if the artistic stakes are a little lower and the popular appeal is broader than her previous films. Armed with self-aware humour and a kitschy production design, Barbie makes for a dazzling treat, balancing its satirical interrogation of the doll’s controversial place in pop culture against the innocent joy of everything it was intended to represent.

As for where the tension arises between those two contradictory notions, then we must consider that aforementioned source of corruption in Barbie – not any external force bearing malicious intent, but rather those innate flaws which we can only excise through idealised, plastic representations of ourselves. They set the empowering standard that the originators of the Barbie doll believed women should aspire to, encouraging them to become doctors, lawyers, and writers who may never be subservient to their Kens, and yet there is also a lack of nuance in this ideological thinking which Gerwig is sharply critical towards. Sixty years on from Barbie’s invention, she has become an icon of “sexualised capitalism”, rejected by girls looking for more relatability in their role models. Therein lies the existential crisis that Barbie faces when she ventures into the real world.

It is hard to imagine a pair of actors better suited to playing Barbie and Ken than those that Gerwig casts here. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling pose, strut, and roller skate their way through the film with magnetic charm and humour, individually set on opposing visions of utopia that bring them into conflict over what this exactly means for their respective genders. There may be some comedy which misses the mark in this film, but never when it is in either of their hands, and least of all when Gosling steals the show with his 80s pop musical number ‘I’m Just Ken’.

Even beyond its high-energy dance-offs and broad slapstick though, Gerwig embraces the camp theatricality of Barbie’s pop culture status right down to its dollhouse aesthetic, cartoonishly painted across an entire city. It is fortunate that we don’t spend too long following Barbie’s journey through the real world given how much of this film’s strengths lie in the absurdly garish design of Barbieland, setting the scene for an amusing battle of the sexes across pastel-coloured beaches and streets.

From the make-believe water running out of faucets to the open-air dreamhouses that disregard walls altogether, Gerwig accomplishes a beautifully curated feat of world building here, especially drawing inspiration from the artificial city that Jacques Tati built for his 1967 French satire Playtime. Even closer comparisons can be drawn when we reach the Mattel headquarters, with our similarly naïve protagonist striding down endless rows of grey, boxy cubicles to the heart of the bureaucracy that controls her image. This set piece in its entirety is wonderfully inventive, sending Barbie up to the top floor where Will Ferrell’s ditzy CEO meets with other executives, before plunging her to its basement where the company’s ghosts live on. At the same time though, it is also indicative of a larger trend in the film that lets its smaller subplots and formal threads quietly fizzle out, including the careless disappearance of Helen Mirren’s narration by the end.

Even so, there isn’t a second of Gerwig’s film that isn’t entirely dedicated to the love and appreciation of its central icon, revealing the depths of Barbie lore that no one besides a very niche group of fans might have suspected existed. One of the great running jokes comes in the homages to those bizarre, discontinued dolls that never quite fit the mould, yet even they find renewed purpose here as misfits whose mere existences expose the hidden prejudice of Barbieland’s rigorously high standards. The existential discomfort of being human is a small price to pay for the freedom that comes with choosing one’s own identity, and Barbie goes even further to revel in the delightful incongruency of that awkwardness against such overcooked perfection. The matriarchal paradise that Gerwig builds with careful curation and whimsy in Barbie is not a utopia to be protected from humanity’s flaws, but a dreamy vision that sees both come together in perfect, feminist union.

Barbie is currently playing in theatres.