Author: SceneByGreen

Jane Campion | 2hr 5min

“What kind of man would I be if I did not help my mother?” ponders young aspiring veterinarian, Peter Gordon, in the opening lines of The Power of the Dog. He is an image of masculinity not often found in westerns like these – thin, effeminate, intelligent, and standing out drastically among the loud, boisterous farmhands who sneeringly make jabs at him. The only reason he has ended up on this farm in the first place is because of his mother, Rose, whose recent marriage to wealthy rancher George Burbank has forced him into close quarters with his step-father’s particularly nasty brother, Phil. Several times through the film Jane Campion shifts our perceptions of who exactly is the main character here, which although at times leads to a little unevenness in the storytelling, is crucial to the final crack of the whip landed in the final scene, forcing us to reconsider our notions of what sort of men held real power in this period of pioneering American history.

It might have looked like Campion was done with making feature films after her 2009 film Bright Star, but The Power of the Dog marks one of the more remarkable career resurrections of this century. As a director with a flair for unhurriedly building out the inner worlds of rich characters, there are many times during this film that we might assume her wandering focus on seemingly irrelevant aspects such as Phil’s careless disregard for wearing gloves or Pete’s surprisingly clinical attitude towards dissecting animals are simply there to flesh them out in fascinating detail. This purpose is certainly served, and very effectively at that, and yet the macabre manner in which the pieces all fall into place within this deliberately paced plot lends it an almost Hitchcockian bent.

Until this moment though, The Power of the Dog simmers with mesmerising tension between each of our four main characters, pushing their interactions agonisingly close to boiling point before letting them cool back down with some new shift in dynamics established between them. Benedict Cumberbatch often acts as the oppressive force in these situations, delivering what will go down as one of his great film performances in the role of the cruel, brow-beating Phil. This is a man who tauntingly calls his brother “fatso”, maliciously burns the delicate paper flowers that Pete designs, and in one scene, silently intimidates Rose in a musical duel between their instruments. Unlike him, she is not as refined a musician, and to him her lack of confidence becomes a prime target. As she plays her piano and Campion’s camera drifts forward, we begin to catch onto the quiet sound of a banjo expertly mimicking her melody from upstairs. Each time she stumbles, the camera and banjo both similarly pause as well, the latter purposefully mocking her own insecurity. Without so much as a word, Phil continues to make his terrible presence known until she gives up entirely, and even then he continues to play forcefully through the empty space previously occupied by her music.

The depth with which Campion eventually grants this cruel character isn’t quite an act of empathy, but rather one of understanding, using him as a vessel through which she can pry into the history, customs, and fabrications of American masculinity. Phil’s nostalgic yearning for an era where “real men” ran society is not so much an assertion of specific gender ideals as it is a wistful longing after one particular man, Bronco Henry, whose heavy presence still hangs over the farm. The suggestions of some sort of romance between Phil and his once-mentor are more than implied, especially when he tries to set himself up as a similar sort of idol and takes his antagonistic relationship with Pete in a new direction.

Such vulnerable depictions of the Old West and its masculine “protectors” play right into Campion’s strengths in capturing stunning, wild vistas in soft natural light. Though The Power of the Dog is set in 1925 Montana, the South Island of New Zealand is her choice of shooting location, and indeed this film belongs among the most beautiful shot in this nation’s crisp, picturesque landscapes. Her majestic establishing shots are certainly worth marvelling at, but it is those images caught from the dark interior of stables looking out upon the flat planes and rolling mountains that truly astound in their compositional magnificence, calling back to The Searchers in the elegant framing of characters within bright, open doorways and windows.

It is the struggle for dominance over this delicate beauty that lies at the heart of The Power of the Dog. Just as pioneers tame and cultivate the land, so too do they assert control over the society that lives off it, but it is also those with tender hearts and practical minds who carry the power to destabilise that authority. Within the mesmerising power plays between brothers, musicians, ranchers, and family members, Campion paints out duelling images of the Old West, neither of which clash in violent shootouts so much as they quietly manipulate each other according to their own visions of America’s future.

The Power of the Dog is currently available to stream on Netflix.

Wes Anderson | 1hr 48min

In English, the quaint French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé translates to ‘Boredom on Apathy’, a wry suggestion that this may be the last place in the world a journalist would want to work. Yet it is here where the foreign bureau of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun newspaper is stationed, led by editor Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray), and where its team of American reporters are tasked with finding stories that may be of some interest to the general public. The subjects of these articles often go about their business with all the deadpan indifference that the name of the town would suggest, and so it is entirely up to the correspondents of The French Dispatch to find life in its streets and buildings. Wes Anderson has surely closely identified with his protagonists before, but never has he tied his ethos as a storyteller so closely to characters who similarly view their profession as an opportunity to offer a jaded world their fresh insights into its own unique, distinctive beauty.

In structuring The French Dispatch as an anthology film served up in three separate episodes and a framing device concerning Howitzer’s death, Anderson reveals that he is far less concerned with any individual plot as he is with the people and culture of Ennui which these stories make up. As the newspaper nears the end of its run, there is also the nostalgic feeling that an integral part of this community will be lost, and from now on will only live on in the words of the men and women who believed in the rich history of this ordinary town. Much like the layers upon layers of flashbacks that frame The Grand Budapest Hotel, the multitude of narrators in The French Dispatch maintain an ironic detachment from the events that take place, as it is through lectures, columns, and talk show interviews that these journalists let us into worlds that one would have never otherwise expected to exist in this small, quiet corner of France.

When it comes to Anderson’s artistic construction of this town, his connection to the cinematic masters of architectural mise-en-scene and physical comedy has rarely been so pronounced as it is here. It goes without saying that all his usual stylistic idiosyncrasies are on display – the rigorous symmetry of his cinematography, the short, sharp camera movements, the heavily-curated pastel colour palettes – but when he chooses to let us sit in a wide shot to observe a man ascend multiple flights of stairs, only allowing us glimpses of him through the tiny windows scattered across the face of a diorama-like building, one can’t help but point to the use of the exact same visual gag from Jacques Tati’s French comedy Mon Oncle. In spite of these direct homages though, there isn’t much of an argument to be made that The French Dispatch comes from any filmmaker but Anderson, especially when his dogmatically formal aesthetic turns experimental in its switching between black-and-white and colour schemes within each featured article.

The first of these, ‘The Concrete Masterpiece’, is orated by J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton) and follows a prisoner, Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro), whose abstract nude paintings of a guard (Léa Seydoux) capture the attention of fellow inmate and art dealer, Julien Cadazio (Adrien Brody). ‘Revisions to a Manifesto’ is the second, and sees journalist Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) engage a little too closely with the young leader of a student revolution, Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet). Reporter Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) narrates the third, ‘The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner’, in which the son of the Ennui police force’s Commissaire is kidnapped by a notorious gang leader (Ed Norton), and resorts to sending in legendary police officer and chef, Lieutenant Nescaffier (Stephen Park), to save him.

The greyscale palette which dominates these retrospective vignettes builds even further on the nostalgic distance with which Anderson interprets these stories, and yet his occasional flashes of vibrant colour reveal small breaks in this wistful demeanour, whereby the past is brought transcendently into the present and affectionately embraced in its immediate, tender beauty. There are no firm rules dictating when exactly these switches occur, but there is a consistency in the emotional beats with which they are presented – an awestruck wonder when gazing upon Moses’ paintings, facing Zeffirelli’s bright-eyed idealism, or visually feasting upon Nescaffier’s delicacies. While the black-and-white newspaper format dominates much of these flashbacks, such vivid bursts of rich hues indicate the presence of some magnificent splendour that each journalist is particularly enchanted by and may have printed in colour, or otherwise playfully depict in amusing animated sequences representing back-page comic strips.

As perfectionistic a director as Anderson is, he equally delights in the quaint imperfections of his characters and their odd fascinations, absorbing these peculiarities into his own effervescent style. Several times in The French Dispatch does he choose to freeze a scene mid-action and catch it in an immaculately staged tableau, though as he tracks his camera across it we notice the small tremors of his actors trying to remain deadly still, as if re-enacting the moment for a publicist to photograph. His love for the artifice of print journalism is only outdone by his love for the artifice of film itself, both being bound together by the passion of writers and stylists for discovering parts of the world otherwise deemed ordinary, lifting these up on public platforms for others to appreciate, and embellishing them with some modest spark of creativity. After all, no matter how tethered to the truth they are, no storyteller can resist letting a small dose of artistry creep into their work – or, if you are Wes Anderson, an enthrallingly sizeable measure of imagination.

The French Dispatch is currently available to stream on Disney Plus, and available to buy on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Video.

William Wyler | 1hr 43min

It takes a special kind of artistic flair for a stage play to be brought to cinematic life without expanding its story too far beyond the confined walls of a single location, and William Wyler is more than up to the task in his adaptation of Detective Story. To focus the scope of this narrative even further, it remains restricted to the sequence of events that unfold over the course of one day, where multiple plot threads emerge within a single police station and drive our short-tempered protagonist to his absolute limits. As Detective Jim McLeod’s personal and professional worlds collide and the walls close in, Wyler’s deep focus staging of his cast brings layers of both visual and subtextual significance to the film.

His emphasis on this sizeable ensemble may be somewhat surprising given the concentrated character study he is conducting here, though it is through the intricate construction of this police station where petty thieves and felons alike face the consequences of their sins that we see the fuel for McLeod’s inner fire. As the son of a criminal himself, it is his mission to bring down the hammer of justice upon those who maliciously destroy the lives of others, making sworn enemies out of lawbreakers who continue to elude his grasp. It is quite ironic then that it is also in this environment that his own cruelty and anger surfaces, as he gets caught up in his stringent obedience to his own rigid moral system and loses focus of the bigger picture – a picture which Wyler is sure to draw out in intricate detail, effectively putting us at a distance from McLeod to assess his character from the perspectives of others.

And beyond this one man, there is indeed a rich world of characters out there that he is all too happy to divide into good people and villains. As separate conversations overlap in multifaceted scenes that evoke those chaotic ensembles which Robert Altman would perfect twenty years later, Wyler staggers his actors across layers of his frames, developing them simultaneously or otherwise fluidly shifting his camera from one corner of the office to another. In the background we often find a shoplifter sitting on her own, watching other stories develop in horror and taking them as moral warnings. When McLeod himself isn’t dominating our attention, he is similarly often relegated to these positions as a consistent presence among the other narrative strands, which bounce around and off each other in the foreground. Wyler also continues his remarkable depth of field in his consistent low angles, often emphasising the hands of his characters in close-up whether they be cuffed to a chair or threateningly clutching at another’s face further back in the frame.

With this handling of such a busy professional setting, one might almost hope that Wyler affords us some time to delve back into McLeod’s seemingly happy home life that we glimpsed at the start, and yet in this tight, cutting screenplay, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that even this comes back to bite us. As a man who takes each crime that falls within his purview as a personal insult, and who is at times even more passionate about seeking justice than the actual victims, the ultimate twist of fate is that his work actually does begin to edge into his private life in unexpected and horrific ways.

Such easy categorisations as good and bad become obsolete when loved ones get involved, and questions of potential compromise only further drive McLeod further into his stance of self-defensive moral purity, even as close friends and colleagues beg him to ease off. Though he abides by a strict code, he is not a man who possesses the ability to think situations through clearly, and so words that he throws out in fits of anger inevitably come back to haunt him as he sets in motion his own rotten downfall. At some point in Detective Story, this “cruel and vengeful man” may have been a redeemable figure, but in Kirk Douglas’ blazingly impassioned performance and Wyler’s magnificent direction, McLeod becomes an unsalvageable figure of stern resentment, encompassing those criminal qualities that he so loathes in the people he seeks to brings to justice.

Detective Story is available to stream on The Criterion Channel, and available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Stanley Kubrick | 2hr 16min

The labels of cynicism and disillusion often stuck to Stanley Kubrick should not be taken to imply misanthropy, as even here in A Clockwork Orange where he expresses perhaps his most scathing condemnation of humanity, there is still a wonder and adoration of that which makes this species so vulnerable and unique. With our right to free will comes our liberty to conduct truly heinous acts, but tied to it is also our potential to create and appreciate works of art, as well as to stand up against other evil. It isn’t just an inalienable right in this film – it is the very source of human life, as crucial to each person’s welfare as it is vulgar and repulsive. To cut that off is essentially a form of castration, or as Alex DeLarge’s victim, Frank Alexander, puts so succinctly:

“When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.”

It is from this philosophical reasoning that Kubrick’s inspired, repulsive aesthetic explodes outwards, marking nearly every corner of this dystopian British society with phallic symbols as overt as explicit paintings, lollipops, and bulging jock straps, or as subtly suggestive as long-nosed masks, canes, and Alex’s snake Basil, who mysteriously dies the moment his masculine assertion of freedom is revoked.

From the very first shot in which the camera tracks backwards from Alex’s disturbing gaze and slowly reveals a tableau of young men dressed in white, drinking milk atop tables fashioned out of naked female sculptures, his own character is established by the perversity of the environment. Through his voiceover in a drawling, Russian-tinted dialect we gain a very specific, youth-oriented view of this society that has fallen prey to its pleasure-seeking instincts, and left to rot by weak, materialistic adults who focus more on decorating their homes with garish, mismatching designs than cleaning up the garbage and crime-infested streets outside. They have retreated into their homes out of fear, but even these private spaces are no longer safe as Alex and his droogs make a hobby out of invading and terrorising them, relishing these deeply immoral acts with a wicked sense of humour and a touch of musical irony. At least for the first act of A Clockwork Orange this is well and truly his world, and Kubrick frames him as such in commanding positions that tower over others, or otherwise centres him in shots with wide-angle lenses that seems to radiate his surroundings out from his body. Whether the speed of the film is cranked up to fast-motion in an exhilarating sex scene or slowed right down as he launches a vicious attack on his droogs, everything we see or hear is stylistically in service of Alex’s own dominance and immediate pleasure.

Oftentimes when talking about mise-en-scène it is easy enough to link a film back to its influences, but besides the expressionist impact evident in long, stark shadows and haunting silhouettes, A Clockwork Orange very much stands alone in being a truly original piece of visual art, unbridled in its obsession with depicting sexuality in the most literally objectified manner possible. In rendering such sensitive, personal parts of our bodies in hard, inorganic materials, so too does Kubrick paint out a vision of humanity that has itself become a cheap, manufactured product of its own making, devaluing that which allows us to create life. Even beyond the physical rape that takes place, we watch as Alex weaponises a sculpture of a penis, debasing its artistic purpose by beating a woman to death with it. This is a culture that has slipped over the years into unrestrained hedonism and corruption, and it is only after thoroughly setting up this rotten, futuristic civilisation that Kubrick confronts us with something even more provocative – the notion that physically removing its criminals’ worst impulses will only lead to something far worse.

Kubrick is sure to indicate that the evils we see unfold here are not contained within this one fictional setting, but are rather ingrained in our own history as seen in Alex’s daydream of being a Roman soldier whipping Jesus, and the archival footage of Nazi Germany used to torture him into submission. Consequently, the scientists’ erasure of any desire to commit sin from his mind also inadvertently cuts him off from the rest of the world which shares his sin. These medical, legal, and government authorities who proclaim sovereignty over the laws of nature are just as prone to their own shortcomings as him even if they don’t admit it, though the truth is evident in our witnessing of furtive affairs going on behind closed curtains in hospitals, and the slimy political manoeuvring with which the Minister of the Interior goes about his work. Although Alex is deemed fit to return to society as a reformed citizen, society continues to thrive off the same evil that he too once prospered under, and as such subjugates him to its own depraved torture.

In a show of tremendous narrative form, each person who Alex wronged in the first act returns in quick succession in the third, delivering over-corrective punishments against this man-turned-doormat who no longer has the ability to defend himself. Now visually removed from all traces of phallic imagery, Alex is effectively neutered, unable to sin but also equally unable to fight against the sin of others. Furthermore, his sensitive appreciation of classical music, which was once his last remaining connection to the best of humanity’s potential, has disappeared too. In short, Alex becomes the soulless, mechanical contraption fashioned out of an organic entity that is teased by the title – the clockwork orange, which has the basic essence of life stripped from it so that it may tick along to its manufacturer’s forced rhythm.

It is just like Kubrick to omit the source novel’s last chapter to avoid any hint of a potentially bright future in this hauntingly pessimistic ending. “I was cured alright,” Alex teases upon regaining his former glory and finding his new place in society as a political poster boy. The Minister of the Interior feeds him like a servant, as with the return of Alex’s free will comes power, and his connection to a world that has no place for pushovers. These different forms of evil may possess separate objectives, but Kubrick recognises in this finale of A Clockwork Orange how similar it all really is in its origins and, quite cynically, how necessary it is for humanity to have any hope of moral salvation.

A Clockwork Orange is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Denis Villeneuve | 2hr 35min

It is no coincidence that those literary classics considered unfilmable often make for some of the greatest displays of narrative put to screen. Peter Jackson proved the filmic potential of The Lord of the Rings in letting its dense story breathe over a 12 hour series, the Coen Brothers did the impossible in effectively adapting a Cormac McCarthy novel with No Country For Old Men, and now after multiple directors’ failed attempts to give Frank Herbert’s epic space opera Dune the cinematic treatment, Denis Villeneuve succeeds on a grand scale, digging into its Greek mythological archetypes as a compelling canvas upon which he paints out intricate civilisations, landscapes, and worlds of historic and futuristic significance.

On this level of raw narrative and visual metaphor, the impact of Francis Ford Coppola’s classical filmmaking is particularly evident. Certainly Herbert must receive the credit for conceptualising the intricate political conflict that springboards his story into the tale of a son rising to the role of family patriarch and a “Chosen One” grappling with responsibility and ego, but Villeneuve’s recognition of the power behind such archetypes allows for some especially rich visual connections back to The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. In its potent use of spiritual symbolism rooted in legends as ancient as Homer’s Iliad or the Succession Myth, Dune measures up to such cinematic classics that similarly harken back to more traditional forms of storytelling.

At the centre of Dune’s grand narrative is Paul Atreides, a young hero whose great potential is evident in his mysterious, clairvoyant abilities, and his practicing of a form of mind control known as the Voice, though at this stage of his development he does not yet wield a steady power over either. Villeneuve does well to keep his exposition to a bare minimum in this setup, a tough feat in itself given the complex mechanics of the world he is adapting, and as such it is almost entirely through his efficient visual storytelling that his majestic artistic take on Herbert’s source material reveals itself. We don’t need to be told that the mosquito-like hunter-seeker poses a lethal threat to Paul when it invades his home – the silent, nail-biting tension that accompanies its arrival is enough, just as Paul’s decision to remain deadly still to evade detection indicates its motion sensor-based functionality. In more action-heavy scenes, Villeneuve refuses to risk letting the key details of these characters and their environments disappear in the frenzy of battle, choosing to colour-code their shields to effectively indicate whether a blow has penetrated their defences.

Just as significant as Dune’s efficient narrative progression is its measured, deliberate pacing, which carries the enormous weight of the world-ending stakes at play and allows intensive attention to the development of each character and their relationships. In more energetic scenes Villeneuve bounces several subplots off each other in skilful displays of parallel editing, but otherwise he takes his time soaking in awe-inspiring establishing shots of massive ensembles, sloping dunes, and the imposing, geometric architecture that defines each location.

In House Atreides’ castle on the ocean planet of Caladan, the synthetic, pitch-black décor and costuming of its people carries an air of Gothic expressionism about it, particularly in one scene set in the dead of night where wraith-like nuns of the Bene Gesserit religious order march through an ethereal fog. In stark contrast, the planet of Arrakis is a glaring, spacious desertscape brilliantly lit by a blazing sun, throwing bright shades of yellow and white across a vast, dusty wasteland and flashing dazzling lens flares across the frame. Upon these worlds, gigantic spaceships descend from skies and rise from oceans like concrete leviathans, and yet even these manmade structures cannot stand up against the natural terrors which haunt the planes of Arrakis. Monstrous sandworms tunnel their way through its earth like water, turning these great desert vistas into unpredictable, rippling seas, threatening to swallow up humans and spaceships alike. “The desert isn’t kind to equipment,” Dr Liet-Kynes puts quite mildly. “It isn’t kind to humans either.”

Returning to collaborate with Villeneuve from Blade Runner 2049 is Hans Zimmer with his most experimental score yet, and also undoubtedly one of his best. If turning down working with Christopher Nolan on Tenet meant that this could be written, it was a worthy trade (especially given Tenet’s already fantastic score from Ludwig Göransson). In his blending of otherworldly sound effects, Tuvan throat-singing, tribal percussion, and Middle Eastern harmonic scales, Zimmer crafts a soundscape that effectively underscores the tension between the historical and futuristic conventions at play in the film, and stretches the scope of the film even further than what its commanding narrative and cinematography can achieve alone.

Though Dune ends on somewhat of an open-ended cliff-hanger to leave room for future sequels, it does not come with the feeling that we are being cheated out of a complete story. There are pay-offs to plot and character arcs here worth savouring, especially in Paul himself whose chilling turn down a dark path in the final act coincides with a leap in his own ego, as he edges ever closer to becoming the prophesied Messiah figure so often teased. The world of Dune may have originated in the mind of Frank Herbert, but this cinematic interpretation of it comes solely from Villeneuve, whose command over blockbuster spectacle carries both the substance and artistry so often lost in this tier of epic moviemaking.

Dune is currently out in movie theatres.

Julia Ducournau | 1hr 48min

The first two feature films from French body horror devotee Julia Ducournau are very much parts of a whole, as here in Titane she effectively backs up her own credentials as an auteur with an interest in carving out her own cinematic niche of feminine sexuality, carnal violence, and acutely affecting metaphors. The use of identical character names between both films does not so much indicate a mirroring of specific traits as it does suggest a common underworld of dark secrets shared by her female characters. But where the lead of Raw, Justine, finds herself gradually being consumed by ravenous cannibalistic urges, Alexia from Titane follows a messier journey that is harder to pin down. With her protagonist’s intense attraction towards cars, her string of cold-blooded murders, and a fraudulent identity to be upheld, Ducournau sketches out a portrait of a character as unpredictable as she is brutally misanthropic, and who prefers the cold sheen of metal over the soft touch of a human.

The car collision that opens Titane and sees a young Alexia get a titanium plate fitted into her head feels strangely fated to happen. Was it she who beckoned this accident in existence, as if to bind her soul to the motor vehicle? Or was it the car who called out to her, and then sent her back into the world with a part of its own metallic substance forever grafted into her head? Either way, organic and inorganic matter are fused into one being, and even as she dances provocatively at motor shows as an adult, she maintains a steely-eyed hatred about her, detesting all things human. In a backstage shower, we watch as her hair gets caught in another woman’s nipple piercing, this knotted union of biology and steel only being resolved by Alexia forcefully ripping herself away, much to her co-worker’s physical pain.

It is also in these early scenes that Ducournau puts on her own great show of visual artistry, as she weaves her camera seductively through the show room where exotic dancers thrust and grind against the shiny surfaces of cars, conflating the objectification of women with the humanising of vehicles by lingering lustfully equally on both. Similarities may be drawn between this device and a similar long take in Raw, as both hit these cinematic highpoints rather early on and then let this aesthetic commitment fall by the wayside as they progress further.

This isn’t to say that Titane lacks style – beyond the shocking body horror of Alexia’s vehicular pregnancy and motor oil bodily fluids, there is the infrequent split diopter shot, neon-lit interior, or slow-motion dance that briefly pulls us into Alexia’s own fragmented mental state. There is also Ducournau’s glorious sound design, where clanging metal noises play out irregular beats and deep, choral vocals reverberate in stiff minor chords. But the French director’s strength is clearly in developing subtext-loaded narratives, and letting them play out in unpredictable, explosive encounters.

That said, there is an unexpected softness to Titane which only reveals itself late in the game, as Alexia finds unexpected companionship in a man she has developed an unusual relationship with. To a certain extent, this connection is founded upon a mutual self-deception – his wilful conviction that she is actually his son, and her hopeful belief that he doesn’t secretly believe otherwise. In the confusion of where they both stand with each other, there is also a common recognition of each other as lonely souls uncomfortable in their flawed human bodies. Where flesh and metal meet, both find moments of ecstasy in its cold, hard perfection, though it is in the messy, twisted bond that they form over this that they are ironically tied even deeper to their own inexorable humanity.

Titane is currently playing in theatres.

Howard Hawks | 1hr 32min

There may be screwball comedies that can match His Girl Friday in its sheer narrative lunacy, but Howard Hawks’ satirical take on the newspaper industry stands unparalleled in its breakneck pacing which, when combined with its rhythmic, rattling screenplay and the verbal gifts of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, becomes an accelerating effort to keep outdoing its own hysteria. Hawks himself can turn a phrase and orchestrate performances like he is the one delivering them, as his actors breathlessly zip between lines to the point that their dialogue begins to overlap and multiple conversations emerge all at once, creating similar chaotic soundscapes to those that Robert Altman would innovate thirty years later. It is curious that Altman never used this device to create a film about journalism though, as within this newsroom setting Hawks discovers the potential of its seemingly permanent state of urgency, and charms his audience into a whirlwind of words and wits.

Even as the master of gender comedy sets a ridiculous standard in his own madcap narrative pace, his leads are more than up to the challenge of pushing it even further, all in service of their characters who insistently chase up crucial information and loose ends across a number of plot threads. This complex balancing act poses a tricky challenge for Russell in particular, as although former reporter Hildy Johnson finds herself drawn towards a quiet life of marriage and children, she also simultaneously falls prey to the temptation of re-entering her old career as a newspaperwoman, where her spark of passion ignites into a full blaze and lures her into a primal feeding frenzy.

From the moment she walks into the newsroom in her matching zig-zagged hat and coat as if they were entirely normal fashion choices, Russell owns every moment she is onscreen. Not only does she prove her ability to match Grant with every comedic beat, but at one point she even demands that Hawks’ camera keep up with her as she frantically moves side to side, switching between concurrent phone calls. It is a well-timed dance she is leading here, and one that points to her own skilful characterisation of a competent woman so entranced by her work that she barely hears her fiancé, Bruce, threaten to leave her.

Not only is the promise of good news story too much to pass up, but when the escaped convict at its centre winds up in her own office, the chance to use her own unique position to take down a corrupt politician is entirely irresistible. Of course, it takes a few minor manipulations on the behalf of Walter, her ex-lover and editor, to keep her around. In a hilarious running gag that he sets in motion, he ensures that Bruce continues getting arrested so that he remains out of the way, though this situation only escalates when the heavily foreshadowed arrival of his mother finally transpires to complicate things further.

As this kidnapping sublot contributes to the overall tapestry of this narrative, it is just one of several irreverent plot threads dealing with the darker side of humanity, including attempted suicide and death threats. There is a certain hint of amorality here, as while such weighty topics pass through the story, these journalists brush them off with comical ease as nothing more than minor distractions to be dealt with in the moment and never considered again.

Rapid montages and brisk camera movements can be found here to match the pace of dialogue, but for the most part it is in deftly staged compositions of actors within this office of low-slung lamps that the film is visually elevated to a level that few other screwball comedies have reached, pairing some of Hawks’ greatest direction with one of his most masterful screenplays. Even as doors slam open and shut in markers of narrative threads jumping in and out of this story of their own accord, he never once loses control of His Girl Friday’s eccentric rhythms, sparring, and effervescent chemistry.

His Girl Friday is available to stream on The Criterion Channel and Amazon Prime Video, and available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Satoshi Kon | 1hr 27min

While Hayao Miyazaki was leading the animation industry in the 1980s with his pantheistic, surrealist films Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and My Neighbour Totoro, Satoshi Kon was watching and learning, formulating his own style of surrealism that would soon place him among the great auteurs of animation. His visionary style of dreamlike absurdity is on brilliant display in Millennium Actress, though in his journey towards developing his own voice separate from Miyazaki’s, we witness him here picking at more existential questions regarding reality, fiction, and human purpose.

The documentary interview conceit of the film is simply a springboard for a magnificently collaged narrative that runs across several genres of Japanese cinema, as its subject, the elderly actress Chiyoko Fujiwara, recounts the story of her life. Or is it the story of the characters she has played? Such distinctions aren’t so easy to draw here, as these threads of truth and fiction interweave in a tapestry of history, touching on real events such as the Sino-Japanese war, and then forcing us to question the authenticity of this account as we follow her pursuit of an enigmatic artist through samurai stories, monster movies, period pieces, and science-fiction settings. Meanwhile, our documentarians – the fanatical interviewer Genya Tachibana and the confounded cameraman Kyoji Ida – remain present in the background, and although their slightly saturated colouring stands out in otherwise washed out flashbacks, their interactions with other characters inside these realms only further tests our belief in her objectivity.

It is this demolishment of barriers between disparate historical accounts which Kon so joyously relishes in his narrative structure, particularly as it smoothly flows through time in match cuts dissolving between graphically corresponding shots, and edits in the action disguising crafty shifts in environments. In one scene we watch Chiyoko trip over as a samurai, but then as Kon cuts to the ground where she falls she suddenly becomes a geisha, this subtle transition taking place without so much as a pause for us to catch up. She has clearly lived many lives, as each role she plays ingrains itself in her own identity and drive to pursue a singular goal – to find the artist who gave her a mysterious key all those years ago, and who inspired her to become an actress. Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain makes for a suitable comparison here in the deft weaving together of separate realities, especially as Millennium Actress approaches its finale and disintegrates Chiyoko’s reality around her in a skilfully orchestrated montage that sees her run through each setting she has vicariously lived in, obsessively searching across all time and space for the missing man.

And yet even as her memories and imagination expand across all human history, she still remains under the sway of a reality far beyond her control. The collapse of her internal worlds mirrors an earthquake taking place in real time, and just as she departs life having made peace with her lack of resolution in her quest, so too does she blast off in a rocket from a planet somewhere deep in space, confessing her gratefulness for the life she led.

“What I really loved was the pursuit of him.”

Such is the nature of celebrity that hordes of fans will pursue a seemingly unattainable figure, but even within this idealised icon of fame, that yearning desire still exists. All throughout Millennium Actress there remains an endless craving for more love, more life, more answers, or at least something greater than oneself, and Kon never fails to match that ambition in his own audaciously experimental narrative structure, blending together eras, genres, and settings in a loving dedication to humanity’s never-ending striving for greatness, even as that goal remains beyond the reach of both reality and imagination.

Millennium Actress is available to stream on The Criterion Channel.