Even after all the dream sequences and absurd tangents that The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie goes on, somehow it still stands high above the rest of cinema history as one the greatest demonstrations of film form. There are certainly some scenes that stand about the rest, but its success cannot be nailed down to one singular moment. Rather, it is how each successive scene builds on previously established motifs and ideas that gives the film such formal rigour, and which serves to bolster Luis Buñuel’s acidic attacks on Europe’s wealthy ruling classes.
The repetition of a dinner party that never quite gets going is the main running thread, coming to represent the affluent’s unyielding dedication to preserving their social status. These are cultural rituals filled with vapid conversations and obsessive demonstrations of superiority, and yet each rude interruption reveals the meetings to be nothing more than façades masking gluttony, insecurity, incompetence, debauchery, and narcissism.
Dinner party after dinner party after dinner party – what else is one so wealthy and carefree supposed to do with their time? Each one comically interrupted by some absurd intrusion.
Buñuel continues to strip back the layers of class and civility in the second half, probing into the nonsensical nightmares of his six central characters and exposing their greatest anxieties. Most of these dreams play out in extended sequences, escalating towards the public humiliation of these men and women. The first one involves a sudden recognition during a dinner party that they are onstage in front of an audience, and they have forgotten their lines. This dream is nested inside another, in which Rafael, the ambassador for fictional South American country Miranda, is uncomfortably confronted with questions about his nation’s failing economy – not at all like the frothy small talk he is used to.
It’s all one big show – the aristocrats caught out, the artifice of their lives exposed.
These continue to escalate, eventually leading to the execution of all six aristocrats during a dinner party. Raphael escapes by hiding under a table, but he can’t help reaching up to grab a piece of meat, feebly falling prey to his own gluttonous impulses and thereby giving himself away. Once again, Buñuel reveals the emptiness of the threat by revealing this was yet another dream, playing with his narrative structure to consistently give these aristocrats the easiest way out of any tricky situation. After all, this is the closest any of them will get to real danger.
Buñuel’s world is larger than these six people though. We spend a fair amount of time with a Bishop, who only ever seems to gain respect while dressed in his robes, and through his character, religion at large is branded with its own specific kind of hypocrisy. He is called to be a pious, benevolent servant of his community, but he only ever seems to serve the wealthy. At one point when asked to deliver the last rites to his father’s killer, he only does the bare minimum before landing a vengeful, killing blow. Buñuel goes on to savagely attack the ruling elite classes of business, state, and military industries, exposing the irrational egocentricity that structurally holds them together.
The Bishop, perhaps the most interesting character of them all, acting as a scathing indictment of the church.
Built into the connective tissue of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie are scenes of the six aristocrats walking down a long country road, far away from the opulent mansions and restaurants they are so comfortable hiding in. Out here in the middle of nowhere, they exist in stark contrast to their surroundings, their lavish clothing and mannerisms holding no social sway or purpose in this environment. In the final moments of the film, Buñuel returns to this comically sad image, and this may be his most pointed jab of all. With all the glamour stripped away, life as a self-satisfied aristocrat is nothing but an endless trudge along a depressingly empty road.
These hollow, directionless aristocrats walking along an endless road – a thread of surrealism running through the film, and capping it off.
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is available to rent or buy on YouTube.
If there was ever a serious challenger to auteur theory, it would be the collective group of the Marx Brothers. Leo McCarey is a decent director, and certainly brings a good eye for symmetry to some of Duck Soup’s ensemble musical numbers, but there’s no mistaking the mark of the Marx’s. Rapid-fire gags, tightly coordinated slapstick, subtle witticisms that undercut authority – this is 1930s comedy at its most zany and brutally eviscerating.
Whether one finds this sort of humour funny or not is a matter of taste. Though I have softened towards the Marx Brothers over time, I still don’t find myself laughing at every joke. Some physical gags run for longer than necessary, and bring everything else to a grinding halt. But it’s hard not to admire the go-for-broke commitment with which they attack every single quip.
Groucho Marx, the rare comedian who is both a gifted physical actor and a rapid-fire wordsmith.
Groucho, Chico, and Harpo’s characters are agents of chaos with streaks of blatant incompetence, and yet they are tasked with responsibilities of national significance. Rufus T. Firefly is appointed leader of Freedonia, “land of the brave and free” as its citizens proudly proclaim in their vague, generic national anthem. He announces upfront how terrible a leader he will be, but his followers celebrate him regardless, dancing along to his jaunty tune. All three of the brothers are easily distracted, going off on comedic tangents that incidentally make the high stakes of the narrative secondary to whatever has caught their immediate attention.
Doppelgangers, role switching, physical comedy, culminating in the brilliant mirror gag scene.
Firefly is a man of pettiness and great ego, riling himself up over a perceived insult from a foreign leader that never occurred, and thereby declaring a completely avoidable and unnecessary war. In a bombastically patriotic musical number, the rest of Freedonia is brought down to his level in their excitement for the coming conflict, falling on their backs and kicking their legs in the air like children. The chaotic absurdity of the Marx Brothers is infectious, and no one in Freedonia is immune to the hysteria they whip up.
Never afraid to match the ludicrousness of their real-life political targets with their own outlandish satire.
In the thick of battle, Firefly doesn’t distinguish between ally and foe, shooting happily at whoever is unfortunate enough to get in his way. While his soldiers die on the frontlines, the madman stays up in his tower, pulling down blinds as if that will stop the bombs flying through. There might be better comedic sequences elsewhere in the film, but this final act is where the full weight of the political satire sets in. This war doesn’t end with one side winning over the other, but with Firefly capturing his foe in battle and pegging fruit at him. By applying their knack for satire to the incompetent, narcissistic political leaders of the western world, the Marx Brothers ultimately hit on comedy gold and deliver perhaps the best work of their careers.
The absurd war finale, these political leaders acting like self-serving children.
Duck Soup is available to rent or buy on iTunes and YouTube.
Harold Ramis’ talents clearly lie more in writing than directing, but it is hard to ignore the formal accomplishment here in the theme-and-variation narrative structure of Groundhog Day, which itself has become a template for so many other variations of the same concept. It follows the standard set by It’s a Wonderful Life and Back to the Future in using a time travel/parallel universe conceit to mirror different realities within a single location, and furthermore using that in its struggle with cynicism to eventually reach an optimistic depiction of small-town America. Any misgivings one might have about Groundhog Day’s relative visual blandness are immediately made up for in this economic structure, lean screenplay, and Bill Murray’s career-defining performance.
Not an especially stunning film, but the design of this diner is fantastic. Stopped clocks everywhere, Phil caught in a moment in time.
Ramis wastes little time getting into the meat of the narrative, as it is only 7 minutes in before we hit our first Groundhog Day, and 17 minutes before we get our first variation. Almost everything we see in this introduction has a formal counterpoint later on – “I Got You Babe” playing on the radio, the frustratingly peppy presenters, the landlady checking in on his stay, Ned Ryerson, “Bing!”, the puddle, and the polka song keep turning up with slight divergences, each time being filtered through Phil’s fluctuating state of mind.
Then there are the variations within variations, especially as Phil tries to charm Rita by following the same formula every night, constantly fine-tuning their interactions. This type of formal repetition would usually just make for a cohesive film, but here it becomes mind-numbingly inescapable, actively trapping us with Phil in this milquetoast limbo. Even the groundhog itself aptly shares his name, helplessly and insultingly tying him even further to this one day.
Trapped in limbo, and forced to encounter the gratingly cheerful Ned Ryerson every day – a man who embodies everything Phil despises about Punxsutawney.
Beyond the remarkable narrative structure, Groundhog Day develops Phil’s character arc through its exploration of solipsism – by definition, “the view or belief that the self is all that can be known to exist”. Phil has always assumed this his life is more significant than everyone else’s, and his newfound immortality seems to prove that is true. The universe singles him out as someone “special” while everyone around him dies at the end of every day, only to be replaced with a new person when the clock strikes 6am.
And yet what he wouldn’t give to escape this mindless repetition and return to normality. While everything around him remains the same, he runs through the full gamut of emotions and mentalities. Confusion, concern, recklessness, manipulation, disappointment, depression, narcissism, self-improvement, selflessness – there is a lot that rests on Bill Murray’s shoulders in bringing authenticity to Phil’s wild, mood-swinging journey, and he carries it all with ease, grounding each development in Phil’s outspoken, self-reliant, but ultimately insecure manner.
Much of this world literally revolves around Bill Murray, and he delivers with a hilarious, dark, and moving performance.
Though at first Phil learns the personal details of everyone in this town just for his own entertainment, this eventually leads to the recognition of the flaw in his solipsistic perspective. A single day to him is their entire existence, and at this turning point he realises that his immortality is only relevant in how he can improve their transient times on Earth. The homeless man who dies every day and who Phil keeps trying to save becomes a motif representing the citizens of Punxsutawney, as Phil eventually recognises that there is nothing he can do except comfort these people before they disappear into oblivion, only to be replaced with younger versions of themselves the next day.
With Phil finally bringing his life down to everyone else’s level, balance is restored – he is no longer immortal, and neither does the rest of the world cease to exist at the end of every day. For the first time they are all on equal footing, and Phil’s arc from self-proclaimed god to man is complete. In using its tremendous form in repetition as the basis for such a rich character arc, Groundhog Day just keeps allowing for more surprising revelations on each rewatch, giving it, quite ironically, a “timeless” quality.
Groundhog Dayis available to stream on Binge Australia, and available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.
Nosferatu isn’t as loaded with disturbing expressionist images as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, but it’s the slow-burn narrative tension along with F.W. Murnau’s astounding silhouette and shadow work that puts it up among the best of the silent era. Max Schreck plays the titular vampire as a freakish rat-like creature, a true silent gothic monster to rival the madman Dr Caligari. Gaunt-faced, wide-eyed, hunched over, his mere profile strikes a terrifying image that has persisted in our collective consciousness for almost a century.
Shadows and dreams are woven through the narrative as a motif, both visually and as a device to describe the being himself.
“Beware that his shadow does not engulf you like a daemonic nightmare.”
Gaunt-faced, wide-eyed, hunched over. Max Schreck delivers a grotesque, physical performance, and Nosferatu is just as much an accomplishment for him as it is for Murnau.
Throughout the film we see people sleepwalking, having surreal visions, and going mad, painting Nosferatu out as a monster who doesn’t just threaten his victims physically but psychologically as well. He is the “daemonic nightmare” that they all fear, exerting control over the minds of others like a lurking threat finally rising from some repressed trauma. Though he sleeps his eyes remain open, constantly alert. He is not at the mercy of his subconscious like the rest of us – he is the subconscious. Shadows and nightmares are thus tied together, not just as places where Nosferatu dwells, but where the very fear of what he represents spreads.
Though he brings death in his wake like the traditional Dracula story, Nosferatu himself takes on more animalistic than corpse-like qualities. Heavy-handed metaphors abound in these comparisons, though the lack of subtlety only reinforces the overwhelmingly pervasive fear that seems to spread like an infectious sickness. Indeed, Nosferatu brings pestilence with him, both through the diseased rats which seem to materialise wherever he goes and through his penchant for blood-sucking.
We step outside the narrative at times to join scientists in their study of vampirism, drawing similarities to carnivorous predators like the Venus fly trap or microscopic organisms which are “transparent and ethereal, little more than a phantom.” Knock observes a spider at one point, wrapping an insect in its web to be devoured later, considering its own vampiristic qualities. Yet even as these comparisons to the plant and animal kingdoms are made, Nosferatu still isn’t accepted among them. At the mere mention of his name, hyenas and horses run for the hills. He is a depraved mutation of humanity, both part of the natural order and an abomination to it.
This then brings us back to his representation of the human subconscious – something that is entirely natural, yet widely feared for what disturbing terrors it may be hiding. The tension as his ship docks in the harbour is on another level, as this repressed “other” is nearing our main heroes. Upon discovering Ellen he is intent upon claiming her as his victim, his shadow creeping up staircases and around corners, eventually being cast across her own figure. His clawed hand leads in front of him, and upon reaching her chest it crushes her heart. The darkness, the repressed subconscious, the mental sickness, whatever it is, has finally come to claim our innocent heroine.
No discussion of Nosferatu is complete without mentioning this terrifying shot. The peak of German Expressionism, and an immortal image.
If the shadow is the subconscious, then light must be the conscious mind, and by shining it upon the shadow the threat disappears. Nosferatu is only powerful when hidden in the darkness, and by bringing him into the daylight where he can be seen for what he is, he is finally defeated.
“Obliterated by the triumphant rays of the living sun, the Great Death came to an end, and the shadow of the deathbird was gone…”
Much like The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Nosferatu thus becomes a tale of repressed depravity and its bubbling to the surface of society, feeding off people’s fear and destroying them in the process. Only by confronting the fear directly and without inhibition can humanity stand some chance against their own hidden evils. Some sequences of Nosferatu appear somewhat goofy by modern standards, but those aren’t what stick in the end. It is the stark shadows, the warped, pale face, and the deformed shape of Nosferatu’s being that persists, planting itself in our own subconscious and growing like some mutated carnivorous plant.
Poetic archetypes and justice. Darkness personified, defeated by the light.
Nosferatu is in the public domain and available on many free video sharing sites including YouTube.
It is evident that Joe Wright isn’t all that interested in creating a straight page-to-screen adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, as the 1995 BBC television miniseries is already there for anyone looking to scratch that itch. His cinematic interpretation of Jane Austen’s novel brings a stylistic and formal flair to Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy’s terse romance that we haven’t seen before, efficiently constructing the world of 19th century England in long takes that soar through lavish ballrooms, hallways, and mansions.
As we glide alongside his characters, we occasionally find ourselves detaching from one and hooking onto another, as if trying to eavesdrop on a little bit of every conversation going on. When we reach the ball scene, Wright’s camera sways and twirls around Elizabeth and Mr Darcy’s dance, binding them together in a whirlwind of tension that separates them from the rest of the crowd. By constantly adjusting our frame of reference Wright heightens the romantic impressionism of Elizabeth’s world, and keeps finding new ways to paint her and other characters within intricately blocked crowds and gorgeously adorned rooms.
Wright’s camera is just as much a part of the dance as Elizabeth and Mr Darcy, circling and swooning with them in this moment of unison.Mr Darcy’s country estate, Pemberley, is an especially attractive set piece. The painted murals as backdrops and opulent decor here make for striking imagery.
Given how much the literary format lends itself to directly conveying a character’s personal thoughts, there is a challenge that Wright takes on in visually establishing the coldness of our main couple’s relationship while imbuing it with a touch of sensuality and yearning. He emphasises Mr Darcy’s hands in cutaways, usually betraying some sort of emotion that he is too taciturn to express. When the two lovers dance together at the ball, Elizabeth is one of the few women to not be wearing gloves, accentuating the skin-to-skin contact taking place between them.
All of this comes to a head in the final profession of love between the two. As Mr Darcy emerges from the early morning fog, Wright refuses to the push the camera forward like he has in almost every other scene. Instead, it is Darcy who makes the decisive movement to approach us, signifying his momentous opening up. When he and Elizabeth finally embrace, she notes the coldness of his hands, tying off the motif that has finally turned from subtext to text.
Wright hangs on this shot for 45 seconds, for the first time letting Darcy approach the camera rather than the other way round.
One must certainly give credit to Jane Austen for providing Joe Wright such a rich piece of literature to begin with, but it is the extra dimension of cinematic world building that lets this adaptation of Pride and Prejudice flourish. No doubt there were plot points were removed or condensed to fit the entire novel into two hours, but considered on its own there is nothing here that feels incomplete or missing. This is a full-bodied period piece brimming with visual detail, from the rolling green hills of the English countryside to the 19th century ballrooms, and there is little that can detract from the power of its romanticism.
Pride and Prejudice is currently available to stream on Binge, and available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.
When young, affluent socialite Anna disappears on a boating holiday, little changes within her social circle. Her friend, Claudia, and lover, Sandro, wander the Sicilian coastline together, leisurely tracing any clues that might explain what happened, but this new gap that has opened up in their lives barely registers. The emptiness they feel has always been there; it is now just a little wider than before. They flirt and make love, trying to fill it in with something, anything. And yet everything they grasp at disintegrates in their fingers, leaving them nothing but a haunting, existential ennui through which they are paradoxically both isolated and unified.
In L’Avventura, Michelangelo Antonioni’s characteristic use of architecture extends beyond the angular, modernist structures of the 1960s, as the breath-taking Aeolian Islands rise up into the scenery to permeate the landscape with rocky outcrops and cliffs. The metaphor of individuals as lonely islands in an expansive sea isn’t easily lost in the unambiguous dialogue, but its true power lies in the crisp, greyscale imagery. Harsh blacks and whites are almost non-existent, as Antonioni opts for low contrast photography which matches shades so closely that the permanently overcast sky virtually blends in with the sea.
An arresting greyscale palette in this harsh, coastal landscape.
When it comes to framing his affluent characters within these gorgeous compositions, his deep focus lens is the tool he returns to again and again, staggering bodies from the foreground to the background, turned in all different directions. For these men and women, merely the act of making eye contact requires mental effort. Instead, they are left to morosely wander through natural landforms and artificial structures, unable to find any connection to each other, let alone their lost friend.
Disconnection through blocking. Staggered across layers of the image, and not a hint of eye contact.
At one point on their meaningless quest for answers, Claudia and Sandro venture to a church where ropes stretch across its rooftop balcony. With Anna no longer between them, the two are left to consider how their relationship may evolve from this point on, and upon this sacred ground the prospect of marriage is raised. It is an off-hand comment, thrown out with little thought, and the contemplation that follows only cheapens the spiritual union by appealing to it as nothing but a cure for their chronic loneliness. During this deliberation, Claudia leans on one of the ropes, and accidentally tolls a church bell. In response, church bells from across the city start chiming in response, and suddenly a wide, honest smile stretches across her face. Though it is brief and arbitrary, she rejoices in this connection, this small moment of belonging to the larger world holding more significance for her than any other relationship she has encountered.
Like his Italian contemporaries, Antonioni firmly roots his style in the neorealism of the 1940s and 50s, shooting on location to ground his settings in a world he and his viewers are familiar with. The primary difference here is that Antonioni’s focus isn’t on the struggles of the downtrodden, or the heartbreaking impact of war and poverty. Rather the direct opposite, in fact, as Claudia, Sandro, and their friends lack any experience of earth-shattering events that might justify their constant state of discontent. For the Italian bourgeoisie who sit untouched above the rest of society, there is such a thin line between existence and non-existence that the disappearance of a friend barely registers. The only tangible truths out there are those huge, material constructions which tower over the city, like odes to the superfluity of human progress.
Antonioni always believed that social problems should remain secondary to cinema itself, which would certainly earn him criticisms today of “style over substance”, if that accusation actually meant anything. The vapidity of his characters should certainly not be mistaken for a flat artistic vision, as L’Avventura poignantly expresses a broad dissatisfaction with society, modernity, and above all, the fact that one even feels dissatisfied in the first place.
An immaculate melding of both natural and artificial landforms in the final shot – lonely souls lost in a harsh, modern world. An all-time great ending.
L’Avventura is currently available to stream on Kanopy, Mubi Australia, and The Criterion Channel.
It is a worthy conversation to have regarding where the line between movies and television sits, but when it comes to film directors bringing their unique voices to a miniseries it is hard to argue that the art they create is anything but cinema. As for The Underground Railroad, it is tough to imagine any serious discussion of Barry Jenkins’ greatest artistic accomplishments that doesn’t touch on this 10-hour epic.
On one hand, the bleakness of the antebellum South is horrifyingly realised in the executions, massacres, and torture scenes ridden all throughout this series. But in Jenkins’ re-invention of the “underground railroad”, which was actually a network of secret routes and safe houses to help African Americans escape slavery, he injects a dose of magical realism into the setting. Rather than undercutting the authenticity of the Black struggle, the historical revisionism of the railroad manifests as a retro-futuristic gift of modern-day resources to those who worked in secret to free slaves. The curated selection of contemporary pop and hip-hop songs which close out each episode emphasise these anachronisms, further drawing the connection between the past and present of America’s Black innovators and artists.
Harsh, desolate landscapes. Jenkins has created powerful character drama before, but nothing as sprawling as this.
Where so many miniseries fall into the trap of stretching out a feature-length narrative into a multi-hour marathon, Cora’s escape from Joel Edgerton’s black-clad, drawling slave-catcher, Ridgeway, takes on appropriately epic proportions that could only ever be recounted in a project of this size. There are a couple of episodes which sag in their middle acts as they hit similar plot beats a few too many times, but these are minor given the ten hours of pure cinematic ambition and storytelling. In fact, certain episodes which divert from the main narrative and delve into the backgrounds of supporting characters often end up being among the strongest. Rather than feeling like interruptions, these allow us insight into Jenkins’ world beyond Cora’s immediate point-of-view, giving depth to the lives and experiences of several supporting players.
One notable flashback episode strives to understand how Ridgeway became the rotten, empty man he is today, and in a remarkable subversion we come to realise that his own corruption was not born of cruel parents or a difficult childhood, but of his own inherent weakness. His father employs freedmen on his farm and preaches about the “Great Spirit”, which he believes holds the universe together. Where Ridgeway fails to understand the concept, Mack, a young African-American boy, becomes invested in keeping it alive through a small, lit match. Even when Ridgeway’s envy and cruelty sends Mack to the bottom of a well, that flame still burns strong, lighting up the darkness with its tiny, warm glow.
Evoking images of the railroad in in its gold-and-black colour palette, this shot looking down into the well represents a mere microcosm of the underground network stretching across the southern states – a system of people who, like Mack, believe in some version of the “Great Spirit”, shining brightly even in the most smothering shadows. Jenkins has previously proven his flair for lighting in Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, but his warm illumination of the trains, tunnels, and lamps in the underground settings are entirely unique in his oeuvre, seeming to exist in a fantastical alternate world separated from the brutal reality above.
The warm, golden lighting of the railroad lends a tone of magical realism to this setting, offering a reprieve from the bleak horrors of the surface.
Jenkins effectively plays right into the surrealism of this imagery, at his most direct plaguing Cora’s sleep with uneasy dreams of her deceased mother and a flourishing underground station, and in quieter, subtler moments, cutting away to portraits of supporting and minor characters standing in open plantations, houses, and stations, staring down the lens of the camera. He calls this motif the “gaze”, and in these Dreyer-like tableaux we are given the chance to look right into their open, honest eyes, the fourth wall entirely non-existent. These aren’t quite flashbacks, but rather memories of people removed from time, acknowledging the presence of an audience looking back at their stories. While they remain motionless, Jenkins’ camera is constantly tracking in, out, and around his subjects, restlessly intrigued by their silent expressions.
The “gaze”, as Jenkins calls it. It is a haunting visual motif, inviting but also implicating, evoking a connection to those who lie just outside the periphery of this narrative’s boundary.
This dynamic camerawork doesn’t draw attention to itself in many insanely long takes, but Jenkins frequently makes the choice to move through scenes without cutting. In quiet moments, he will drift from face to face, underscoring the austere tension between characters. His framing of close-ups in intimate scenes is like so few others of his generation, at times peering right into the souls of characters with front-on angles, and at other times letting them peer right into ours. In more epic sequences the camera will rise off the ground in unbelievable crane shots, capturing the devastating scope of a village on fire, or a blooming vineyard stretching across acres of land. Wherever it moves, Jenkins’ powerful imagery is sure to be present, often sharply pinpointing a specific subject in shallow focus while everything else melds into soft, painterly backgrounds.
Few directors have been able to capture close-ups like Jenkins. A perfect combination of framing, shallow focus, lighting, and background scenery.
Despite its aesthetic beauty The Underground Railroad is far more confronting than Jenkins’ previous works, not just in its depiction of a grim era fuelled by foul beliefs, but in its sharp indictments of white folk whose “helpful” attitudes mask insidious intentions. Cora moves from town to town across southern America, each one governed by its own set of rules regarding the rights of African-American people, and each one thus posing a different, unique danger. In a South Carolinian city, freedmen are encouraged to “perform” their persecution as education for white people. In North Carolina, a cult-like village executes any person of colour who sets foot within its borders. Even an all-Black community which abides by self-determinist politics relies on the protection of a white judge living in the next town over. You can’t blame Cora for wondering whether there really is such thing as a safe space in this world. The only times we truly believe she is ever free from harm is when she is in the dark, sunken tunnels of the railroad.
The camera moves smoothly from the ground into this overhead shot of a burning village.
It wouldn’t be right to discuss The Underground Railroad and ignore the consistently excellent work of Nicholas Brittell, whose collaborations with Barry Jenkins have always brought out his most mature, affecting scores. His melodies here are as tenderly moving as ever, but the dominant motif of the series is a descending sequence of four notes, often rendered with intense tremolos on string instruments. It is usually tied directly to the railroad, musically painting out a descent into the unknown, though its versatility allows for lighter renditions to reveal its more fantastical side, offering an escape from the horrors of the surface.
And indeed, the railroad itself is a complex concept to fully wrap one’s head around. At times it seems to be a perfect, dreamlike utopia, existing completely separate to the white people above. At other times it is lonely and dark, and the only way through it is by a handcar that must be manually operated. Barry Jenkins’ vision of a world where a phenomenon such as this needs to exist is chilling, but even at the lowest points of Cora’s journey, there remains the hope that an opening into the underground network is near enough for her to reach safety again. This metaphor for supportive Black communities stands strong all throughout The Underground Railroad, and with this as his central tenet Jenkins crafts an immense, era-defining cinematic epic.
The Underground Railroad is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman | 1hr 56min
Just when we thought Pixar had knocked off its serious mainstream competition, a superhero movie from Sony astounded us all with an animation style unlike anything we had seen before. The comic book influence shines through in its split screens, panels, and onomatopoeia, and the urban street art styling raucously announces itself in its bold, at times even abstract, imagery. It is a perfectly curated aesthetic to accompany Miles Morales’ Brooklyn-based hero journey, which fittingly begins in an abandoned subway station scrawled with colourful graffiti. It is here that he is bitten by a radioactive spider, and it is also where that radioactivity starts to colour Miles’ world with vivid fluorescence.
An animated comic book, right down to the onomatopoeia, thought boxes, and Ben-Day dots.
There is no need to explain the existence of this radioactive spider in Spider-Verse, not just because it seems like such a natural phenomenon to emerge from this luminescent vision of Brooklyn, but also because the origin of Spider-Man is so baked into our culture, it has essentially taken on mythological significance. Of course, the path to becoming Spider-Man is just one template of the traditional hero’s arc, but Spider-Verse demonstrates how broadly its conventions can be applied to a huge range of culture and identities, tying them together under a common set of values.
Several times we see alternate versions of Spider-Man introduce themselves and their backgrounds in the same format, beginning with some variation of the line “Let’s do this one last time”, as if to assume their own story is the definitive one. Though each of their lives varied greatly before they took on the mantle, we recognise from the patterns in their introductions that they all share a set of characteristics which led them to becoming Spider-Man: a bite from a radioactive spider, the death of a loved one, and growth from that grief to become a fighter for justice. Establishing each of their identities in these theme-and-variation montages is an exceptionally imaginative way to bring form to this ensemble of characters, effectively defining their individual and shared traits without getting caught up in over-exposition.
Great form in repetition of the same origin story – not to mention the deviation in genre and animation styles.
With an outline of the journey to becoming Spider-Man effectively sketched out, a path is set for Miles. Likewise, a similar shadow path is set for Wilson Fisk, AKA Kingpin. He too is imbued with his own complete emotional arc motivated by the death of his loved ones, and in his struggle with grief he proves to be an effective foil to Miles. Here is a man who has suffered immensely, just like every iteration of Spider-Man out there, but rather than growing from it to defend others, he has let it fester into bitterness. He would tear apart New York City if it means getting his family back, and that indeed becomes his plan, but in the process of enacting it he unwittingly becomes the sort of violent, resentful monster that they would have despised.
Miles, on the other hand, comes to a similar crossroads when faced with his Uncle Aaron’s cold-blooded murder. Aaron is also a fully-developed character, complete with his own set of affable quirks and tragic flaws, but our discovery that he has a dark side only makes his death all the more impactful. “The hardest thing about this job is you can’t always save everybody,” Miles is told in his mourning. Learning this lesson is a rite of passage for the path Miles is on, and it is only when he falls into the pits of despair and builds himself back up from it that he is able to reach the final stage of his transformation into Spider-Man, becoming a mature, confident, and empathetic hero.
The following scene where Miles dives upside down into the shining lights of New York City is jaw-droppingly beautiful, but there is also a good reason for why this specific image feels like such a significant part of his journey. From the moment Miles first gets his powers and meets Peter Parker, the cinematography starts to get more experimental with its off-kilter angles and lack of orientation, at times losing all sense of up and down as Miles and Peter walks across walls and hang from ceilings. Without any gravity to hold Peter or the other Spider-Men down, they perceive an entirely new world, and it is in this moment when Miles finally embraces the title and responsibility of Spider-Man that he fully grasps it too, gliding weightlessly through the city, untethered from the Earth below.
Weightless, powerful imagery meeting Miles’ embrace of his new identity.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a rare breed of non-auteur driven film that displays a genuine affection for the art form, and producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller can be given much of the credit for that. Their dedication to constructing its style from a blend of traditional and computer animation pays off immensely in the final product, lifting from conventional comic book styles while reinvigorating them with the sort of dynamic movement and effects that could only ever be rendered digitally. With one foot in the past and one in the future, Spider-Verse reflects its own deconstruction of the hero in its visual artistry, examining the patterns and core values which transcend cultures and generations to bind together those who engage in a common fight for justice.
The fluorescent colours in this finale – jaw-dropping pop art.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is currently available to stream on Netflix Australia, and available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.
No doubt a landmark of visual effects, but even if all of these were taken out (and I would hate to imagine doing so), Inception would still be Christopher Nolan’s greatest achievement in mise-en-scène. He had already established himself as a master of experimental narrative form by this point, and he continues to demonstrate that here in exploring the internal dream worlds of his characters through a nesting doll-like structure. But it wasn’t until he combined this with the sort of epic, ambitious visual style he first fully displayed in The Dark Knight that he became a generation-defining filmmaker, shaking the world with this mind-bending exercise in sheer imagination.
Clean, luxurious architecture and lighting. No doubt Nolan’s most beautiful film to date.
The lighting and set dressing of Nolan’s interiors are as sharply arranged as ever, announcing themselves loudly right from the start in a conference room lit by rows of hanging lanterns and translucent golden walls, providing a sullen backdrop to the meeting between Cobb and Saito. The two men and their surroundings are reflected in a giant, glass table, consuming them in this sleek, angular modernist architecture which continues to define the rest of the film’s luxurious aesthetic. It also helps us through some stretches of exposition, demonstrating the complex rules of the dream world in practical, reality-bending illusions not unlike those that Stanley Kubrick innovated in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Kubrickian illusions, bending reality to create action sequences unlike anything else in modern cinema.
Nolan doesn’t stop there though. The epic establishing shots of Inception are among the best of his career, if not the decade, and the fact that this narrative just keeps moving from one expansive, detailed setting to the next gives him the perfect opportunity to keep building fully-detailed worlds in large-scale compositions. A military fortress on a snowy mountainside, a high-end hotel, an empty, crumbling city – as disparate as these locations are, Nolan continues to bind them all together with the parallel editing he has always possessed such a fine control over, and yet up until this point had never executed nearly as well.
The “kick” is an especially effective conceit that allows his intercutting to reveal the interactions between each dream layer, whereby obstacles in one echo further down the line. Nolan draws a direct line of impact from a car falling off a bridge, to a weightless fight in a hotel corridor, and further along to an avalanche erupting from a mountaintop, formally earning his set pieces by establishing the interconnectedness between them. On top of this, Nolan demonstrates the variable progression of time between each dream layer in playing out some of these set pieces in gorgeous slow-motion, stretching and manipulating time to let some plot threads take a backseat while new ones emerge, and eventually wrap back up in reverse order.
Gorgeous slow-motion, stretching and compressing time between parallel narrative threads.
Just as the smaller, more personal narrative thread concerning Cobb’s deceased wife, Mal, serves the larger story in making his unresolved trauma a constant threat to his team’s mission, so too does it bring personal stakes to the act of inception, revealing the catastrophic damage that can be done in altering others’ subconscious. Nolan hasn’t always poised the personal against the epic so masterfully, but when he strikes that balance we get something just as moving as it is dazzling. As the growing number of plot threads of Inception emerge and intertwine, Nolan continues to keep his surreal vision of worlds existing within worlds all under precise control, thereby crafting the sort of imaginative, ambitious cinematic concept that only he could have pulled off.
Rows upon rows of golden lights in this beautiful opening set piece.
Inception is currently available to stream on Netflix Australia, and available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.
Describing a piece of fiction as Orwellian has become some sort of vague platitude to acknowledge a scathing attack on totalitarianism, yet few films fit the descriptor better than Brazil. The very concept of a man and a woman escaping an authoritarian government, making love, and falling right back into the government’s clutches is no doubt a familiar narrative to those familiar with ‘1984’. Where George Orwell’s Airstrip One was ruled by the indomitable force of Big Brother though, Terry Gilliam’s dystopian city envisioned in Brazil is a hilariously incompetent bureaucracy, far too caught up in its own procedures and trivialities to run a functioning society.
Overhead shots, always turning an eye of surveillance down on Sam.
Jonathan Pryce’s protagonist Sam Lowry is introduced via his own dream as a winged knight, soaring through clouds and seeing visions of a mysterious woman. Later, he dreams of monsters roaming city streets, and a large robot used to subdue citizens. These fantasies may suggest an imaginative man out of step with his surroundings, yet their manifestations in reality also suggest something more surreal at work. Is Sam prophesising the future? Do his dreams actually have power to shape reality? Perhaps if this city could put its mind to something other than blunt commercialism and nonsensical data he might actually get answers.
The machines that this society has built to assist humans in their quest for rigidity are barely efficient themselves. Sam’s coffee machine swings around wildly, pouring boiling water over his toast. The elevator at his work malfunctions at the worst possible time. Even the catalyst for Brazil‘s entire plot stems from a fly falling into a teleprinter, causing it to stamp an incorrect name on a form. Few people are able to look past this clerical error and see the truth. Whatever is printed on a form becomes law.
Nothing signifies the distortion of something meaningful into a consumerist spending spree like the birth of Jesus Christ, and Gilliam is all too aware of the implications in setting this story at Christmastime. Tinsels, trees, and fairy lights are pathetically scattered around this depressingly grey city, and even a sign that hilariously reads “Consumers for Christ” mocks a society that has become stupidly aware of its own vapidity.
Of course, everything is constructed as one giant distraction though, and the utter disconnection between citizens and the social issues that surround them are milked for all their comedic value. There are terrorists on the loose, yet their explosive activities are nothing more than background noise to restaurant patrons who continue chatting away. As a string trio play a rendition of Hava Nagila, emergency responders gather quickly to put out the fire and rescue the wounded, and all the restaurant manager can do to maintain the feeble illusion of normalcy is place a partition between the his customers and the surrounding fuss.
Maximalist clutter through the foreground and background, all in the name of absurdist comedy.
This absurdist comedy was perfected by the Monty Python troupe, but Terry Gilliam simply extends on that in Brazil with his audacious visual gags and maximalist production design. In cluttering his frames with clunky machines, metallic pillars, and ducts, he traps Sam behind these enormous constructs, making him a prisoner of his own life.
With the urban scenes in particular marking a tremendous feat of sci-fi world building, Brazil very much seems be Britain’s response to Blade Runner, building on its cyberpunk noir aesthetic with a heavy dose of surrealism and comedy. So convincingly detailed are the square block miniatures of this futuristic civilisation, it is easy to forget that these skyscrapers aren’t hundreds of metres tall – at least until Gilliam plays his own trick on the audience by pulling the camera back, amusingly revealing the falsity of one such miniature.
Surrealism and visual gags through miniatures – this is Metropolis, Blade Runner, but also distinctly Gilliam.
Most impressive of all Gilliam’s maddening set pieces though is the torture room – a large, cylindrical space that drops down into jagged, metal spokes fanning out from the centre. To lift this lunacy into the realm of complete insanity, Gilliam’s wide-angle lens distorts everything that little bit more. Jonathan Pryce’s face is the perfect canvas for these warped, low-angle close-ups too, as everything around him seems to spread outwards from his bulging eyes.
From here on, Brazil descends further into chaotic surrealism, with Sam making his eventual escape to live a content life in the countryside with Jill. It is suspiciously rushed and unearned, though everything falls into place with the crushing reveal that this entire sequence has only unfolded in his lobotomised dream state. As witless as the state is, their blunt power more than makes up for their incompetence, leaving Sam to happily indulge in his own imagination. Terry Gilliam’s construction of a futuristic Britain is visually daunting, but Brazil never shies away from the dark comedy of a government desperately out of touch with reality.
Maddening wide angle lenses only intensifying Gilliam’s formidable production design.
Brazil is currently available to stream on Mubi Australia, and to buy or rent on iTunes and YouTube.
