Stalker Guilt Syndrome

I find it surprising that Marc Maron hasn't gotten more roles over the years. He was great in this little film that I first saw on the HBO Comedy channel some 8 years ago. The channel would fill time between movies or comedy specials with short films of various quality, Starker Guilt Syndrome was one of the best. I loved this short so much I managed to tape it on one of my beloved long-gone 8hr VHS mix tapes. Even though the first time I'd watched this I wasn't the every-day public transit commuter I am now, I had already run into the Stalker Guilt Syndrom scenario more than a couple times. It's an awkward situation that I'm sure 90% of the people who've lived in an urban environment have experienced at one time or another. I'm happy to see it preserved on the web...

Stalker Guilt Syndrome

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Rolling Thunder (1977)

Dir. John Flynn

I'd never be one to advocate for the remake of a movie that holds up perfectly fine some 30 years later, but if timeliness were ever to be taken into consideration for such things, one might look to 1977's Rolling Thunder as a prime candidate for a relevant reinterpretation. In the film, two soldiers return home to Texas after years of being POWs in Hanoi. When one loses his wife and child, and one of his hands, to a group of thugs, he enlists some friends' help in tracking them down and exacting bloody revenge. Sounds like the stuff of a typical 70s-80s b-movie and maybe a vehicle for a Norris, Stallone or Bronson under the watchful eye of a Golan or a Globus. There were some highly entertaining movies made under those conditions, don't get me wrong, but Rolling Thunder comes to us with a different pedigree -- it's a Lawrence Gordon production (yep, the same Gordon behind the Watchmen rights fiasco) of a John Flynn film written by Paul Schrader and Heywood Gould, and starring William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones. I couldn't tell you much about Flynn, but even though it was released a year after Taxi Driver, and there are many differences, it feels like Paul Schrader, with the help of Gould, was taking an initial run through at that film here -- it's definietly a variation on a story and theme and one that feels perfectly suited to today's society where PTSD is far too commonplace. "We tell a soldier or veteran of war "welcome home" because the battle never leaves us..."

Rather than following our vet through a clausterphobic New York City, we're following Major Charles Rane (William Devane) around San Antonio as he tries to adjust to civilian life. We know things aren't going to be easy from the very first scene: As they are getting off the airplane, fellow POW Sergeant Johnny Vohden (Tommy Lee Jones) mentions that the aviator sunglasses will make it easier to look people in the face. While Devane is being celebrated around town and given a new cherry red Cadillac convertible and a box of over 2,500 silver dollars (one for every day he was imprisoned), he's discovering that his wife has begun a new relationship with a local police officer, one that she isn't too eager to put an end to now that he's back home. There's an interesting serenity to Devane's performance, especially in the first act s he absorbs all this. It would be easy to play the part with a clenched jaw and a certain desperation, but Devane plays the scenes with a Zen-like calm that makes them even more tense, especially when the violence erupts.

Devane's homecoming gifts catch the attention of some local thugs who suddenly show up at his house looking for those silver dollars. It's a particularlly tough scene to take in as we just got through watching Devane explain that the way to beat your torturer is to "learn to love the rope", and you can tell that once the punches start flying, Devane is back in his element and maybe even happy to be having these senses reawoken. That is, of course, until he loses his hand after this captor proves to be less patient with him than his previous ones. Worse than loosing his hand for refusal to give the location of the silver dollars is having his wife and child walk in on this and seeing them quickly taken away in a cold-blooded fashion.

These thugs, of course, unwisely leave him for dead on the kitchen floor and we're soon in revenge movie gear with Devane learning how to use his new hook-hand while laid-up in the hospital (sign of 1977: this involves him picking up loose Marlboros and putting them back in the pack). His visitors are Cliff, the cop his wife began seeing who is more than a little disapointed Devane can't (or won't) tell him anything about who these killers were; Jones who basically tells him to look him up when he's ready to go after these bastards; and Linda, his frequently bra-less "groupie" who wore a bracelett in his honor while we was away and was the one to present him with his car and money. Linda is very much in the manic-pixie-dream-girl mold, albeit a dark, 70s alcoholic version, but Schrader and Gould give her a proper backstory, explaining why she would be throwing herself at Devane, even if her character does get somewhat discarded in the end. But even before we find out her character's history, Linda is given a warm charm by Linda Haynes who unfortunately called it quits after only ten years as an actress. She's wonderful in the movie, practically the only beam of feminine sunshine in an otherwise permanently overcast, testosterone driven film. Her work here makes me want to revisit The Drowning Pool, Brubaker and Coffy again to see if she was always this good.

After Devane gets out of the hospital we're quickly stocking up on guns, sharpening our hook hand and hitting the road to Mexico with Linda. Things don't go so smooth once she realizes that she's more or less being used by Devane to help him greese informant's wheels with her looks rather than to help him sip margarita's on a beach. They have some good make-up sex and bond while taking target practice -- this is where we learn that Linda was a military brat and daddy's little girl. Linda practically steals the movie from the "macho son of a bitch" Devane during these scenes, giving us a dose of heart and soul before the Peckinpah-esque bloodletting that soon follows. It's great stuff. Actually, there's more than a little bit of Alfredo Garcia flavor in their two day trip bouncing through Mexican border towns in a Cadillac.

Once Devane finds the men he's after, holed up in a whore house in Juarez, he puts his uniform back on and picks up Jones who is far too eager to dive into his closet, suit up and arm himself to the teeth. At the brothel, Jone's interrupts a practitioner mid service when he pulls out his shotgun, "What the hell are you doing?" she asks. "I'm going to kill a bunch a people," he dryly says and enthusistically proceeds to do. Jones may look 30 years younger in the film, but his voice is beautifully the same.



The ass-kicker of an ending might make you forget the thoughtfulness that preceeded it and the fact that it's more about finding purpose in life than it is about finding revenge. When Jones pays Devane a visit in the hospital he confesses that he signed up for another 10 years with the Air Force and somehow it isn't all that confusing as to why. Devane's explination about "learning to love the rope" is just as much about learning to love the routine and embracing the discipline involved in enduring daily tourture. If there's one thing that the Hanoi Hilton and the military offer it's a tight routine schedule. Upon returning, Devane jumps into a punishing workout schedule, sleeping on a cot in the tool shed and sitting in the corner in the dark because of the comforts it provides because without it he's simply drifting along, rudderless. Finding his family's killers becomes a mission not unlike Operation Rolling Thunder, the name of the Air Force bombing campaign that landed them in captivity. It gives them a reason for being because family dinners and having people doting on you isn't a way of life.

Crafting genre films as a way to sugar coat your message isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's nothing pleasant about Rolling Thunder, it doesn't pull any punches or bury the lead but it's far more watchable than any number of films that have come out recently about returning home from war. And for all it's revenge movie trappings, it feels far more realistic than most -- but that's largely due to William Devane's understated performance. I'd suggest that if you want to draw attention to an important and relatively unspoken of issue like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, you might want to make a movie that people might want to see. I'm not saying you should dumb your movie down or even give your story a happy ending, but give them a cinematic story not a heavy-handed one.

Breaking Bad

I think it is now safe to say that, after the rather stunning conclusion to its second season, Breaking Bad is one of the best television shows being made these days and on the short list for best ever. The only serious competition currently out there for the top spot, a show that equally blazes new trails in proving what can be done in one weekly hour of television, would be Mad Men (and Wipeout, of course). But it wasn't always that way. The first season, while good TV, was more predictable in its characterizations and no where near as heartbreaking for me to watch as this past season that just wrapped up last Sunday. In case you've been unaware of this brilliant show (it is on AMC after all), it's a one hour drama about a high school chemistry teacher (Walter White – played with heretofore unknown gravitas by Bryan Cranston) who's diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and decides to make and sell crystal meth in order to pay for his hospital bills and ensure his wife and son will be financially secure after he's gone. I'll be picking at the final episode of this season here so if you've yet to watch it, you may wish to return some other time.

It's rare for a television show to be at the top of its game in its first season. Shows like Mad Men, Deadwood and The Wire managed to hit their stride after only a few episodes, just enough to establish their cast of characters, but should be considered the exceptions since we're talking about the best shows ever to be made for TV. More often then not a show will take a look at its first year, what worked and what didn't, and refine and improve. There's usually a grace period involved where the writers synchronize with the actors and their particular strengths -- it's rare that a show like Deadwood comes along where every character comes out the gate feeling well worn, lived in and fully realized. The second season of Breaking Bad is a perfect example of taking a character to the next level. Jesse was fun enough in the season one, but he and the actor Aaron Paul were a revelation in the second season -- practically stealing the show from Walt and Cranston.

Jesse started off as a fairly typical teenage tweeker character; inept comic relief for the most part and Walt's guide into the world of meth. But something happened this season and he became the soul of Breaking Bad. The show found a sweet spot and it resonated all season long as we watched Jesse realizing his limitations at the same time Walt discovers his limitless ambition. At the end of last season Walt stepped up and became something of a badass, but it turns out to be a slippery slope for him and it isn't long before Badass Walt becomes Ruthless Walt. People start dying but Walt keeps pushing until Jesse reaches his breaking point -- finding solace in heroin and his enabling would-be girlfriend, Jane. But Walt's tunnel vision can't see that his actions have consequences until they explode in the sky above him and come falling to his feet.

Ultimately it comes down to a choice Walt makes at the end of the penultimate episode. He finds Jesse and Jane once again passed out after shooting heroin and as he's trying to shake Jesse awake he accidentally bumps his girlfriend onto her back causing her to begin choking. He can either put her back on her side or allow her to choke to death. Now you're not exactly sure about Walt's motivations for being there in the first place. Has he really begun to look at Jesse as a second son or does he just want someone he can boss around with o questions asked? Does he want a confidant or a servant? Does he let Jane die for Jesse's own good or does he let her die to get rid of his competition for Jesse’s allegiance?

How you view the murder of Jesse's girlfriend will have a lot to do with how you respond to the big season finale. It turns out Jane's father is an air traffic control operator and on his first day back to work, after weeks off to grieve, during which time Walt recuperates from a successful surgery, he ends up causing two planes to collide in mid air. Just so happens that air is right above Walt's house. Now, leading up to this point we've been shown little flash-forward glimpses of body bags and rubble scattered around Walt's house and a burnt teddy bear floating in his pool. Many episodes have started off this way. (If it wasn't for these little flash-forwards I doubt there'd be any animosity towards the season ending at all.) They're effective little teasers and it made it easy to assume Walt’s house had exploded or some such disaster had befallen the White household. Therefore, it makes it easy to look at the final moments of the episode as the writers thumbing their noses and having a good laugh at pulling a fast one over on us. But another look at the disastrous event is that it is in fact a logical conclusion to this season. Walt’s been killing people all season. None directly, but every one of the deaths this season has been the end result of Walt’s actions. He hasn’t had to directly deal with the mess these deaths have caused, only Jesse’s reaction to it all. He’s been a wall that’s collected all the bad karma and upon Jane’s death, the wall has collapsed. The collision of two planes over Walt’s house is that karma raining down on Walt. A season’s worth of death and destruction has caught up with Walt, it accumulated like a brewing storm, and it has broken open. A year's worth of questionable, fuzzy morality, of selfish, myopic choices has been answered and it has been unavoidably dropped at the feet of Walt - he can't tell Jesse to deal with this problem and that makes it a perfect ending for this season.

Oh, and the addition of Bob Odenkirk as semi-regular Saul Goodman: Lawyer to the Criminals --pure brilliance.

The Reflecting Skin

Dir. Philip Ridley

Viewed: From the Couch

About ten years ago I was able to spend some time living down the street from one of the better video stores I've ever come across. Having worked at a couple of video stores in the early and mid 90s, I always appreciate a good one and felt at home spending spare time browsing the aisles looking for treasure. So it was at Northampton's Pleasant Street Video that I stumbled across this peculiar film, The Reflective Skin. It was the cover that did it for me -- an odd looking boy with a harpoon across his lap and the jaws of some large fish mounted ominously behind him -- very gothic and creepy looking. And the title is one that promises you the film is going to be anything but dumb. In the early and mid 90s I was absorbing films at a rate that I doubt I will ever match, so I didn't take much for me to bring a movie home with me. Ah yes, the 90s, when independent film had yet to succumb to a sissy-pants formula and your evening's entertainment could be determined by a good video cover. Those were indeed the days.

Until today, that cover and name were the only things I remembered about the film aside from a gruesome suicide that ended with a burning gas station and some images of a boy running through across a large open field with a big blue sky overhead. I remember lying on my bed and putting the film on, but earlier that evening a guy stopped by the house and sold me some mushrooms for that following afternoon's planned trip to the mall to watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Well, a good portion of those magical mushrooms were consumed that night and The Reflective Skin was used as a means to chill out, as the kids like to say. That would be the last I'd thought about the film until a few weeks ago when I was turned on to the excellent blog that the folks behind the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are are running. They made reference to the film Paperhouse -- another film I hadn't thought about since 10 years ago. But this one I do remember as I used to have a copy of it on one of those 8 hour vcr tapes along with three or four other films. Paperhouse also features young kids, a fire and shots of rolling hills and big skies -- but it wasn't the film I had watched that night up in the attic bedroom. No... That was some movie with a different creepy kid on the cover... Something Skin? Thanks should go to, IMDb, for cracking another mystery and helping this old man's fuzzy memories become a whole lot clearer.

As it turns out, The Reflecting Skin doesn't lie in complete obscurity, only next to it. The writer/director Philip Ridley also wrote The Krays, a memorable, well received, violent British gangster film that I also had on one of those 8 hour tapes when I was in high school -- meaning it got a fair amount of play on cable back in the day. Both films came out in 1990 and that seemed to be the year for Philip Ridley. Since then he's only written two other films, one of which he directed. But from the sound of his bio he may have been keeping busy writing novels and plays. The film also features the a young Viggo Mortensen in his first starring role, so I'm sure his fan club holds the film in high regard.

The real star is 9 year old Seth Dove, played by newcomer Jeremy Cooper. The film opens up on Seth and his two buddies playing a prank on their neighbor, a creepy (everyone in this film is creepy, by the way) widow whom Seth becomes convinced is a vampire, by filling a big toad with air by sticking a straw up its rear end and shooting it with a slingshot, causing the neighbor lady to get a face full of frog guts. Yeah, that old gag. The seems to take place in the 50's when young scamps with slingshots cause mischief and give their neighbors headaches. But Dennis the Menace this is not. And Seth's parents are no Ozzie and Harriet. They run a gas station out in the middle of nowhere, a job his mother seems to detest as she is first seen in the middle of a fit over being unable to escape the smell of gasoline. Seth remarks early on that all he has to do is look at his mom and she'll break down crying. His father isn't much better off, he's a meek shell of a man, but at least he's kind to Seth and doesn't force water down his throat until he pisses himself like his mom does.


There are a fair amount of odd juxtapositions going on in The Reflecting Skin. You're never told here exactly in the US the film is taking place but by the amount of dusty, flat terrain and the amber waves of grain you get the impression that we're not far away from the badlands (the movie was filmed in Alberta, Canada). Yet water plays a major theme in the film. Seth's father is always going on about the importance of water (lest he "turn into dust"), his brother is in the military stationed on an island in the Pacific, the creepy widow's house (her name is Dolphin Blue, naturally) is where we find that harpoon and those jaws, the first murder victim is found floating in water -- and in the film's most bizarre scene a couple of chirping ladies walk by Seth carrying a dead seagull. All of the four elements play an important role in the film but the mysteries are all tied in some way or another to water.

When Seth discovers one of his friends floating in his family's pool of drinking water, the sheriff's deputy immediately starts pointing a finger at Seth's father. It turns out there was an incident with a young boy some years ago and the threat of this secret getting out is too much for him to bear. Seth watched as his father takes his own life in a gruesome and destructive manner involving a gas pump and a stubborn book of matches. But the murders don't stop after his death and when Seth's brother Cameron (Viggo Mortensen) comes home things don't get any better for his family. Soon Seth's other friend shows up dead by the side of the road and because the one-eyed, one handed sheriff was so sure it was Seth's father, the only solution the townspeople can accept is that he's somehow still alive.

Any hopes for Cameron being the clear-headed salvation for the family are immediately dashed as he tosses the American flag that greets him into the dirt and quickly pushes Seth aside in an effort to keep miserable company with Dolphin Blue. Viggo is particularly heart-breaking in his portrayal of the cold, unsympathetic brother. Cameron is just as lonely as everyone else in the town and, as the story goes, finding personal relief is more important than the problems of some stupid 9 year old. Even if that 9 year old might know who's killing the kids in town. Cameron's obliviousness reaches great absurdity when he gets annoyed with Seth's insistence and asks him, "Why aren't you off playing with your friends?" To which Seth responds quite matter-of-factly, "All my friends are dead." Just another day at the little house on the prairie.


The film could easily be looked at as a disturbing rebuttal to the warm fuzzies of The Little House on the Prairie. Surely that show was given exposure overseas in the 1980s and The Reflecting Skin could very well be the British response. It's always interesting to see Americana from a contemporary European point of view, but the Dove family may as well live on Mars. It's in this bizarro world that the film works - if it were shooting for Eugene O'Neil the film would be laughable. Instead, it goes for the kind of dark and violent America you see in David Lynch's work (Roth reprotedly described his movie as "Blue Velvet with children") and even (gulp) Tideland. In fact, the power of a child's innocence as a coping mechanism is as much at the heart of The Reflecting Skin as it is Gilliam's far more off-putting and unfocused Tideland. There's a particularly cutting moment following the suicide of Seth's father. The gas station is ablaze and we're looking down upon Seth in the glow of the fire and a smile starts to form on his face as he becomes enchanted by the glowing embers flying through the night like lightning bugs.  And in an effort to make the movie seem somewhat accessible (it is, I swear!) I won't get into the fetus Seth adopts like a precious handed down toy doll.


The Reflecting Skin isn't a movie with broad appeal. I'm sure certain people will decide they'd rather see something else at about the five minute mark when the lady gets sprayed with frog guts. But the film is not overly bleak or insistent with it's dark subject matter, it's actually quite poetic. A lot of this is due to having the always remarkable Dick Pope behind the camera. If there's anyone who knows how to make dark material approachable it's the guy who's shot two decade's worth of Mike Leigh films. But I don't think Pope has ever shot a movie quite like this one. It's a rare opportunity to see him work outside of the U.K. and he makes the fields, skies and frosty breath of Alberta, Canada a wonder to behold. Equal parts attractively dreamy and foreboding, The Reflecting Skin is a lost treasure of early 90's cinematic weirdness. If you give it a chance it's a strangely affecting film, far more personal that you would expect and one that sticks with you.

Great trailer below, but beware there are some big spoilers in there.



And someone's gone and put all of Viggo's scenes on youtube...

Samedi the Deafness, by Jesse Ball

Jesse Ball's Samedi the Deafness begins with a man's agonizing death and ends with the possible conflagration of the country. In between, there are some low moments.

The novel's reluctant hero, James Sim, discovers the dying man and through a series of either bizarre coincidences or contrived deceptions finds himself at a country house that serves as the base of a revolutionary plot to overthrow the government. Or, maybe it is just a mental hospital. Or both. There are many many more plot twists along the way, including several serial liars, a few mistaken identities, one seriously dysfunctional family, and what seems like a dozen people named Grieve (including the most important Grieve, whom James falls in love with, but who is not to be confused with her twin Lara, and who is actually called Lily Violet, but whom James meets as Leonora Loft).

In trying to figure out just what is happening at the compound (which was a mental hospital at some point, and so contains endless floors, rooms and hiding places) our protagonist is of little help and even more confused than the reader. It is a nice irony, since James is a professional mnemonist, and can therefore commit to instant memory everything he sees and reads (a sort of learned eidetic, or photographic, memory). His occupation raises just one of many interesting questions posed by Samedi: What good is a perfect memory if you have no way to tell if what you learn is true or false? Can you learn a lie?

As James navigates his absurdist universe, it is difficult to tell how much of his predicament is personal, and how much is circumstantial. Aside from a few flashback to our hero's childhood, when he escaped to the woods with his imaginary friend (a pet owl named Ansilon), his biography and personality are mysteries. Kafka gets mentioned twice in the book's blurbs (along with Lewis Carroll, David Lynch, Hitchcock, Ian Flemming, Graham Greene, and Gogol!), and it's not too difficult to see Ball's James as another K., caught up in a mysterious world of arbitrary decisions, empty of logic and reason. More Castle than Trial, Samedi drops a cipher of a character into a very strange world, and leaves both its central character and the reader to figure it out.

Figuring out the mystery - for those who like that sort of thing, this is not your book - is made more difficult by a rigid style that relies heavily on contradiction, interruption, and non sequitors. James seems easily distracted, and his attention drifts maddeningly while important information is being revealed. Even the writing itself is fractured, with an extra line of space between each paragraph, compound sentences split into two paragraphs, and several odd figures (they look like clothespins) marking out each new section.

The idea behind all this would seem to be that we are very very confused people in general, and that without a lot of cheating - ignoring stuff we don't like, lying to ourselves - this is what the world would look like. Or maybe this is what the world has become when so many people lie to themselves and others, and we just don't know it because we are such good liars. The compound at the center of the novel, independent of its possible use as a radical headquarters, was after all founded on the idea that lying could be eliminated through a set of strict rules, like forcing people to wait 15 seconds before speaking, or relying on notes. The thought was that the demands of communication placed unbearable pressures on people, causing them to constantly make up their responses. Through conditioning, they could learn the simple act of thinking before speaking.

There is a notable lack of modern communication in Samedi, and I don't think it's a coincidence that the entirety of the communication in the novel is either personal or in the form of notes. There are many random encounters in hallways, and the written communication is staggering - not just the manifesto that's been written by the compound's founder, but also the complex series of notes that James receives, either slipped under the door or placed in his pillowcase. Indeed, there are notes that summarize other notes, texts hidden in plain sight, and reference to a probability theorist (invented, of course) from the fourteenth century who wrote his masterpiece in the margins of Bibles and which went unnoticed for nearly seven hundred years.

To say that older forms of communications allows us better access to truth would be a vast imposition of my own thoughts onto Samedi, but it would be interesting to consider the message. The people who practice this form of "thinking before speaking," after all, may be behind a series of suicides and a plot to unleash a major attack on the American population. Though the group certainly has their sinister aspects, by the end of the novel James seems more interested in the girl than in foiling the devious plot. Maybe it's because he believes the conspiracy is a fait accompli, but it's also possible that after exhausting the powers of reason and logic to try to save the country, he decided it was better to cut through all the bullshit and follow his heart.

The Limits of Control

Dir. Jim Jarmusch

Viewed: From the Balcony

I think it's reasonable to call Jim Jarmusch's latest film a test of the viewer's patience. It may sound odd to say that I don't really mean this as an insult or to cast a negative light on the film. In fact, I found Jarmusch's quiet, deliberate, repetitive pace nearly transcendent. Nearly. And it wasn't the inactivity or lack of a real script that causes the film to miss the mark for me. I honestly feel that the tipping point is Christopher Doyle’s cinematography, his skewed eye in this case, being at odds with Jarmusch's pinpoint contemplative story -- what there is of a story anyway. In the end, you're left with a film that's much more interesting as a subject of post-film debate than it is to actually watch.

We follow long time Jarmusch collaborator Isaach De Bankolé as he goes through the day to day routine of his job. It just so happens that he's an assassin of sorts. This entails flying to Spain and picking up tiny messages in matchboxes from one person to the next until he finds his target. But more than that, it entails a daily regimen of tai chi, espresso, abstinence and singular doses of fine art. I'm sure there's a back story to De Bankolé character, and I'd be fine with that story remaining a mystery, if only we were allowed catch a glimmer of character behind his shiny suits and stoic expressions. It's quite perverse in a way (most of the film is in one way or another), how Jarmusch designed this exercise in minimalism around one of the most expressive actors in the business. The film is set-up in a similar way to Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes. Each morning De Bankolé wakes up, exercises, goes to the museum, get's some coffee and meets someone with a new matchbox containing an encrypted message. The film could be described as four one-sided conversations over coffee tied together by trips to the museum and tai chi. Even more perverse is that the "conversations" (De Bankolé rarely says more than one word to the people he meets) are all variations on a theme -- everyone's saying the same thing, just using different words.

What dialog there is revolves around the cellular (or Molecules, as one character goes by in the credits) memory of the instrument, the role of bohemians in the art world and the reflection meaning more than the source -- but what it all adds up to is fuzzy and untenable. I enjoyed the idea of Bankolé being as much an instrument as the classic acoustic guitar that changes hands throughout the film. There is a sense that his routines, his shiny suits and his deflective demeanor are all in place to prevent his surroundings from influencing him. And of course, the film makes an attempt to show us that, try as he might, he is affected by his job and his surroundings and the people he meets. De Bankolé has such a fascinating face that it's a pleasure to watch even when it's doing nothing -- or softening as it tends to do as the film progresses. The more obvious signs that his environment is creeping into him is watching his suits soften from shiny blue to earth tones. But aside form a few interesting ideas spouted form eccentric characters, what is it -- is it the flamenco interlude that finally cracked his wall? Is it the ominously coincidental paintings that he returns to -- do they reflect upon his life in a way that causes him to open up? Do all these things come across in the film as less than meaningful, therefore making his adventure rather boring? Yes and no.


What really both helps and hinders the film is Christopher Doyle's cinematography and the music of Japanese drone maestros, Boris. Doyle has been working magic with his cameras for years, perhaps hitting his apex early on with his work for Wong Kar Wai - especially In the Mood For Love. He's amazing with colors and movement (two of the last words I would use to associate with Jim Jarmusch) and can make just about any setting look like art. He does some great stuff with the tiny, graffiti tagged sidewalks of Spain and manages to take the discussion of cellular memory to the level of the buildings and apartments we come across. Unfortunately, and this may be the reason even die hard Jarmusch fan’s may be left cold by The Limits of Control, the film feels more like an uneasy collaboration between Jarmusch and Doyle than it does a Jarmusch film – I’m just not convinced that the two were operating on the same wavelength. (Actually, after watching the documentary In the Mood For Doyle, I doubt anyone else on the planet is really on the same wavelength as Doyle.) The films of Jim Jarmusch have never been briskly paced, they’ve all taken their own sweet time to sprawl out, but usually the photography is stubbornly inert, forcing the moments and extremely limited when it comes to inserts and similar edits, always preferring the long, fixed take. Something about handheld cameras and a Jim Jarmusch story just doesn’t sit will with me and there’s a fair amount of Christopher Doyle calling attention to himself in this film when we’d normally just be relaxing in the moment with Jarmusch’s characters.

The handling of music in the film, on the other hand, remains one of Jarmusch’s strongest talents. If it weren’t for the perfectly timed intrusions of Boris’ growling guitars and overall menace, the film could very well slip by a viewer like a whisper in the wind. What drama the film is able to summon up from its matchbox sized, encrypted story is due in large part to the rumble created by Boris. If The Limits of Control achieves only one cinematic footnote it most likely will end up being the realization of Boris’ potential as epic soundtrack music.

A movie this perverse in its minutiae can’t go down as a complete failure (more fiasco, really). It’s been a few days since I’ve watched the film and it’s still a lot of fun to think about – which is strange since it really wasn’t all that fun to watch. The movie has some great photography, even if the style doesn’t quite suit the film, great music and if it wasn’t for the fact that Jim Jarmusch only makes two or three movies a decade the film would probably be an agreeably thought provoking film. Instead it’s a frustratingly thought provoking film.

The Girlfriend Experience

Dir. Steven Soderbergh

Viewed: From the Balcony

[A very special 'thank you' is order to Prof. Kelikian and the Film and Visual Media Studies Program of Brandeis for this screening.]

Director Steven Soderbergh hasn't just made a film starring adult film actress Sasha Grey, he's gone and based a movie around Sasha Grey. But there's very little sex and only a brief glimpse of nudity in the film. What there's a lot of is conversations about relaionships and money and where the two shall meet. Sasha Grey dosen't play a porn star in The Girlfriend Experience, she plays a high-end call girl, the kind that offers the title experience: conversation over diner, a movie, even hanging around for a morning-after breakfast. The film likes to linger in these moments and spend the rest of the time lingering on the question, can a girl who gives the best girlfriend experience around actually have a functional relationship?

Sasha Grey does a better-than-you'd-think/not-as-great-as-you'd-hope job with her role and you have to wonder if there'd be a better performance if she weren't basically playing herself. There's a kind of disconnected cool to her throughout most of the film and in an odd way it works and jibes with the film's voyeur feel. The camera sits back at a distance in many scenes and lets the talking speak for itself, so to speak. The rest of whatever magic there may be is done in the editing room. The timeline is spliced up, leaving you spending the majority of the running time wondering where the pieces fall into place. If you were hoping that the film might give you something else besides figuring out chronology, it's slim pickins. There's a lot of rumbling about the economic crisis, and Grey works some angles to try and improve her own career by getting a better webpage. One of the best scenes in the film involves a business meeting between Grey and film critic Glenn Kenny, who plays a popular online escort critic willing to give Grey a favorable review if she does him a favor or two. The scene is mostly one long take and Kenny is wonderfully sleezy and makes the encounter a memorably uncomfortable one.

It's a funny highlight in a film that is otherwise interesting primarily for its experimental efforts that approach a skewed Dogme 95 sensibility. But like most cinematic exeriments, some of it works and some of it falls flat -- unfortunately the stuff that falls flat here comes off as indulgent and boring. At its best it's a unique day-in-the-life look at a woman trying to find meaning in a life that's filled with artifice. At its worst it's a luke warm hodgepodge clumsily trying to seem relevant and meaningful. A killer final scene has you leaving the film on a high note and you wish more scenes would do such a great job at showing us the marriage of sex and money and its imperial value in modern society. Or something like that.