Fri, May 9, 2003

Fight Club

Fight Club is entry #1 in a series of films I really didn't anticipate all that much but I attended thinking "What the hell? Why not?" I knew I'd see it eventually, so I went. I was especially curious after the critical controversy surrounding its release. I didn't think the actual idea of the Fight Club was so great (I'm not into sweaty violent guys) so from a concept standpoint, I went in doubting. While Seven didn't blow me away, I definitely respected the craft it displayed, and The Game was a real favorite. And so I sat, intrigued to see what Fincher would toss at us next. I was delightfully surprised to see that the actual Fight Club dominated fairly little of the film's time, as more was devoted to the Tyler Durden/Narrator relationship and then Project Mayhem. I'm pro-consumerism, pro-capitalism, pro-materialism, so it was fun for me to abandon all that and live in Durden's world for a bit. I even became convinced that I could enjoy a membership in Fight Club for a little bit, but I knew I'd have to bail after the first few months and go buy all my stuff again. Beyond the tantalizing and entertaining message of the film, I was really impressed by Fincher's visual style. A big fan of the skip-bleach process (keeping blacks as dark as possible), Fincher always gets gritty images on the screen, but with the computer-generated enhancements, I was in ecstasy. The opening shot, moving up and down through the doomed banking skyscrapers, and the shot in which the Narrator looks around his apartment and sees the IKEA-esque catalog before him were really excellent.

The Straight Story

My experience with Fight Club emboldened me to try another film I had no interest in seeing, just for fun. I like Lynch okay, but I'm not really a fan. I had no interest in drippy lawnmower stories. But a friend (yeah, Andy) was going, so I went. And the film delivered. Two for two! I was on a roll!

While the film has been criticized for ladling the sentimentality on super-thick, somehow I found myself engaged in that. I appreciated Alvin Straight's goofy little speeches about life lessons such as how a family is like a bundle of sticks, fragile individually but unbreakable when united. I appreciated the languid pacing and repeated wheat-field visuals. Somehow it all got to me. I was really glad I saw this film.

Bringing Out The Dead

For the third time I attended a film I hadn't really expected to see because I thought it would be fun. After all, by now I was really on a roll. Well, nothing's perfect. Bringing Out The Dead is a Martin Scorsese picture and he doesn't want you to forget it. Besides the critically dopey practice of casting himself as one of the disembodied dispatcher voices in the ambulances (maybe James Cameron could get away with this, but among directors Scorsese's voice is by far the most recognizable – possibly second to Spike Lee), he takes every opportunity to try some weirdo film-stock trick or camera-speed manipulation. Maybe if I shoot the overhead shot sideways… he thinks. Scorsese just throws so much direction up on the screen that it's impossible to look away from it. And while the performances, particularly that of Patricia Arquette, are impressive, it's just too hard to see them through all the "direction."

Princess Mononoke

Not traditionally a big follower of the anime genre, I attended this film at the recommendation of my animation instructor who heralded the film's brilliance and spoke of its unending popularity in Japan. I was really fascinated by the approach, and it was great to see anime voiced by actual actors and translated carefully enough that the dialogue doesn't have that hurried, syncopated quality that I became familiar with in toddlerhood, watching Belle and Sebastian and The Noozles on Nickelodeon. Director Hayao Miyazaki's visuals were truly enchanting and really brought me into the mythical world of the film. Forest nymphs and elk gods are not usually something I spend a lot of time believing in, but it was all so real up there on the screen that I found myself entranced. It is a truly beautiful way of looking at the little critters of nature, and the film's sensibilities have stayed with me to this day.

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