nomoretitanic

I like Derek Lee and I really wanna like this movie. it starts out weird enough, with almost a high school propaganda portrayal of drug abuse, and then a hackneyed summary of drug abuse (you know, the one that goes "people abuse drugs to fill their voids"). Then the movie was followed by almost half an hour of great drama, detailing the main character Nick (played by Daniel Wu) and his interactions with the police, the drug network, and a single junkie mama (who looks more like a heroin model than a junkie mama). It introduces the great Andy Lau as a charismatic and very human drug lord. Then it suddenly switches back to the one-dimensional, almost laughable portrayal of junkies (followed by the worst makeup for a junkie I have ever seen and the worst motivation I've heard in a modern film for dope addiction), followed by a beautiful monologue by Andy Lau, explaining the modern Hong Kong drug chain...etc. This is when you realize that you're watching a schizophrenic movie. It is at heart some kinda simplistic anti-drug propaganda, determined to use any tool necessary to dissuade the innocent viewers of drug use, but at the same time, Derek Yee and the cast and crew seem to be far too intelligent and sophisticated to beat you over the head with the valuable life lesson. In the end we get a half-engaging, half laughably bad film. Derek Yee seems to have done his homework, and he seems to not only understand the world of drug both as a business and as a crime, but also to depict it beautifully and coherently for the average viewer. Unfortunately that understanding does not translate to the other half of the drug trade nor the movie, in which great actors do their best zombie/ drunk impressions in attempts to scare the viewers straight. It really is heartbreaking when something is only half good. It's a shame too, since real junkies live in much more pain and horror than the fake movie ones, and, for better or worse, anyone with any exposure to the streets (in any major city) these days can tell the difference between gritty realism and gritty caricature. Put it this way: if Zhang Jingchu's junkie reacts to withdraw the same way she reacts to a scary kungfu master in "Seven Swords", then it can't be that convincing. The good news is, you can always rent Half Nelson or The Wire, the latter pretty much is the movie The Protégé (and many many other movies and shows about drugs and crime) wants to me.

this was an hour-long mockumentary (pilot?) made for HBO counting down Larry's days to his HBO comedy special. It exposed Larry David to the rest of the world, with a few bits that would later re-surface in the HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm", most notably the death in the family bit. It was really funny from beginning to end. It had to be one of the most convincing mockumentaries ever made, through a clever fusion of celebrity cameos, a real solid technical understanding of the "documentary" aesthetics (from the slightly "imperfect" composition to occasional on camera interviews), and a pitch-perfect satire. It was obvious that Larry David was putting on a routine, but the tone of the film was so dead-pan that David seemed distant enough for those kind of neurotic reactions. That, unlike Woody Allen's neurotic New York comic reacting to the LA phonies in "Annie Hall", David's interactions with the people around him were passive-aggressive enough to take place in the actual LA.

Compared to the series, it was more subdued and unpredictable, which made it a little slower and less funny I guess.

just came back from it. the cinematography was beautiful. the movie itself was gleefully ignorant, indulgent, and exploitative.

it was gleefully ignorant because, as the filmmakers said so many times in so many interviews in prestigious film journals, it does not offer any "answer" to a high school shooting. It does not because the filmmakers didn't know the answers, and many critics started contending that nobody knew the answers, therefore Elephant was a great film because any answer would've done it injustice. So instead the filmmakers decided to do the next best thing it seemed: nothing. that's right, it was like Fred Wiseman's documentary "High School" with guns. The difference is that Wiseman's directed a documentary. He had real insights (not offered by himself, but by his subjects, which was organized by himself as the editor) into an actual high school. It was one of the first American "direct cinema" pieces, it was an attempt to capture "truth." Gus Van Sant had actors and fictional characters.

Which makes the film indulgent, because while a documentary of a REAL event, IF it strives real hard to stay unbiased, can afford to ask its viewers to "contemplate" on what was shown based on all the facts given--Elephant is imagined entirely by Van Sant and his improvising cast. He really is just asking us to contemplate what he's thought up, written, choreographed, and edited, which HE CLAIMS to be fair and unbiased because the usual bag of cinematic tricks is not present for the cultural police within us to point out "hey, that's a shakesperian foreshadowing" or "hey, that's a leftist motif against homophobia!"

So essentially it's a film that says nothing and claims nothing with a spectacularly filmmed massacre in the end (but whoa, check it out, it's DIFFERENT--there's no blood squibs and the gunmen don't run slow motioned sideways with doves in the background! This s*** is ART yo!), which makes it, along with another recent fave Irreversible, an exploitation film. It claims to be nothing, then asks the audience to contemplate on that supposed nothing, all the while building up tension via multiple POV (multiple POV?! Like cubism?) and the payoff is a massacre shot with arthouse sensibilities.

But the film had to be this way. It could only be ignorant because how can Gus Van Sant provide any insight into something he has no understanding of? It had to be indulgent or how else can "nothing" last a feature film's length (or any length at all)? And it HAD to be absolutely exploitative or otherwise how would it get funded in the first place and generate so much controversy/ publicity?

and I have no idea why the filmmakers were so afraid to contrive an emotional bond between the viewers and the characters, or to provide any understanding into the character's psyches. it's not like a total lack of insight is the only way to stay "balanced" or "in perspective." Look at two other controversial American films, Do the Right Thing and Dead Man Walking. Both were fair in a way that characters and events were portrayed as multi-dimensional, lively, and very well laid-out. In both films, the characters are displayed intimately, with their deepest joy and sorrow depicted on screen. In Elephant, there are long and amazingly timed and choreographed tracking shots of familiar American high school archetypes, branded by how they look, and never fully realized. this is not any type of avant-garde filmmaking, or some kind of breakthrough in film narrative; this is well-crafted laziness.

to its credit, Elephant does make the viewers think; people seem to be debating about not only the film, but columbine, once again. But the debate, so far, sounds like the same exact debate brought up when everyone got his piece of the columbine info via Time Magazine and Newsweek.

Gus Van Sant's proved twice before already with Psycho In Color and Gerry that he can shoot whatever the hell he wants, and this whole Elephant success is only encouraging him.