For those with a strong constitution, Lars von Trier's Antichrist has much to recommend, despite its obvious flaws. Elsewhere, Where the Wild Things Are astonishes, and A Serious Man is a quiet marvel of agony and dread.
I haven’t seen Saw VI, but my hunch is that Antichrist will be the scariest movie to come out this Halloween. It’s got gore and shocks, but most of the horror will occur in your mind. You’ve been warned.
Antichrist (IFC Films)
It would be nice to report that all those who booed, mocked or walked out of Antichrist at Cannes were wrong – that they again couldn't keep up with Lars von Trier’s audacity and brilliance, but as much as I admired his latest provocation, I can see all the problems. As always, the guy refuses to separate his genuine thematic concerns from his willingness to do stuff just to get a response. At his best – Breaking the Waves and Dogville – those dueling impulses go hand-in-hand, and for large portions of Antichrist, they do as well. But not always. You either lament the still-greater movie that Antichrist could have been or you simply admire the film that’s here in front of us.
Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg are terrific as a married couple grieving over their dead son in very different ways – he’s clinical, she’s emotional. The film starts in familiar von Trier territory – the oppression of an innocent woman by a male-driven society – as Dafoe’s therapist tries to instruct his wife in the logical course of the grieving process. Then he gets the bright idea of having them visit a cabin in the woods so she can more acutely face her pain. As you can imagine, no good can come from this.
From the outset, you have to acknowledge that von Trier has brilliantly rethought two moldy film set-ups – the grieving parents visited by tragedy, and the scary rustic cabin out in the middle of a deeply creepy forest. And while I won’t pretend to fully understand all the religious and metaphorical asides going on, even the simplest viewer can deduce that this is a top-flight psychological horror film – one where everything doesn’t need to entirely add up because, hey, the fun is trying to figure that stuff out on the third or eighth viewing.
It’s been nearly impossible to avoid plot spoilers on the web about this movie since Cannes – entertainment blogs seem to enjoy ruining the film’s shocks in their headlines – but if you can keep from learning about some of the more egregious offenses, I’d advise it. Not because that will help justify their inclusion – rather, because this film is almost dream-like in its execution, you’ll want to experience everything as fresh as you can.
Does this mean that this gorgeously-constructed, increasingly sinister movieisn’t also seriously flawed? No. Von Trier’s provocations can feel like acting out, and the film’s heavily symbolic nature doesn’t really add up to much. But as a portrait of grieving and a snapshot of the evil men visit upon women, Antichrist is pretty stirring stuff. Those who can’t abide the man won’t bother. But for the few who don’t fall into the previous category, there’s too much art and pain here to deny.
Where the Wild Things Are (Warner Bros. Pictures)
I’ll join in with anyone who wants to start a backlash against hipster preciousness. And I’m definitely in the camp that detests the desire of thirtysomethings to glorify and fetishize their childhood totems. So imagine my surprise when I flipped for Where the Wild Things Are – and my greater surprise when I started reading the scathing diatribes against it. Contrary to what a vocal minority will tell you, director Spike Jonze has for the first time balanced his penchant for quirkiness with a wiser, deeper sadness about the limits of your own cleverness. Put plainly, Where the Wild Things Are is Jonze’s and his cowriter Dave Eggers’s way of announcing that childhood has to end sometime – and as with Max, their immature main character, that knowledge makes them despondent but also leads them to a greater wisdom.
I only faintly remember the Maurice Sendak book that inspired the film, not that it matters much since there’s so little narrative in it. In the movie version, Max (Max Records) is a bratty, wounded little boy who feels abandoned – his parents are divorced and his absent father was undoubtedly a huge figure in his life. From the beginning, Where the Wild Things Are makes very clear that while we’re to sympathize with Max’s outcast status, he’s also annoying and a pest. In other words, he’s like most young boys you might have come into contact with. Angry that his mom (Catherine Keener, very good in a small but crucial role) is dating, Max takes off into the night, finds a boat by the river and sets sail to … well, he’s not sure. But he ends up on an island with eight giant creatures that seem ferocious but are childlike in their innocence and easily expressed feelings. So, right, these creatures are meant to represent different aspects of Max’s personality but, in another encouraging development after the smug meta-nonsense going on in the third act of his Adaptation, Jonze doesn’t get bogged down in psychobabble. In fact, I’d wager that most people don’t even necessarily make the connection between Max and the creatures on a conscious level – they feel it rather than having it be spelled out.
Ordinarily, a film with as little story as Where the Wild Things Are leaves me restless, but I can forgive that some if there’s a compelling emotional throughline, and Max’s inner journey works in that regard. Much like Eyes Wide Shut or a David Lynch film, Where the Wild Things Are works on the level of the conscious and subconscious – it’s like a dream, except it’s largely lucid. And it’s very emotional – James Gandolfini is exceptional as Carol, the softhearted leader of the monsters. And note that I haven’t even bothered telling you how magnificent the creations that the Jim Henson’s Creature Shop have come up with are. They’re just the beginning of what this movie offers, and by no means the most worthwhile or rewarding.
A Serious Man (Focus Features)
In the pantheon of their movies, where do you stick the Coen brothers’ latest effort? A Serious Man isn’t one of their heist films, isn’t one of their rubes-on-the-loose comedies, and isn’t quite one of their we’re-making-a-serious-film dramas. No, this is, like Barton Finkand The Man Who Wasn’t There before it, one of their character-study films. This is good news for me since I like the Coens in this guise – these films tend to be their oddest and the ones that seem to emanate directly from their subconscious. In other words, in a body of work that prizes its braininess and precise technical control, this subsection of their movies gives off the most genuine uncertainty and mystery, which helps to offset the smugness that’s never far removed from even their greatest works.
A Serious Man is the story of Larry, a Jewish father and professor struggling with philosophical and ethical issues in a suburban Minnesota town in the 1960s. He doesn’t understand why God seems to have it out for him, he’s not sure why his wife wants to leave him for an overbearing ass, and he’s a touch unsettled by his German neighbor who doesn’t like him. And something has to change.
Because the Coens, who are Jewish themselves, habitually enjoy pointing and laughing at their characters, it’s easy to see some of Larry and his cohorts’ farcical interactions as the filmmakers’ way of eviscerating their religious heritage, but I couldn’t help but see it instead as indicative of a larger indictment of the dangers of closed-in communities created by religion or culture or geography. (Without much notice, the Coens have made a the-suburbs-are-hell satire and a boy-the-'60s-sure-changed-everything commentary in the same film without the usual predictability one associates with those two well-worn genres.)
Like Barton Fink and The Man Who Wasn’t There, A Serious Man works best when it pits a questioning, slightly melancholy main character against a world that seems out to get him. As Larry, Michael Stuhlbarg portrays all of the man’s quiet frustration without resorting to the usual big-explosion moment such a polite, put-upon character usually gets in these sorts of films. But also like those two other films, A Serious Man doesn’t entirely add up or flow effortlessly from scene to scene. Subplots don’t work, bits fall flat, payoffs aren’t always as rich as they could be. But the agony and dread that permeate this film never waver, and it creates an anxiety that feels more genuine and organic than the highly-constructed set pieces that have made these filmmakers icons. Put another way, one of the things I like most about A Serious Man is that the Coens don’t seem to entirely understand what they’re trying to say. That’s not the same thing as not having anything to say or not knowing what they want to say. Not by a long shot.
(Untitled) (Samuel Goldwyn Pictures)
Anybody who’s found himself seated at an avant-garde piece of theater without warning has had that feeling: Am I not smart enough to get this, or is this really just that terrible? Even if you know that (Untitled) is about the cutting edge of New York art culture, you may still walk away from the film with a similarly uncertain reaction. Sort of a parody of the scene but also a defense of it, director Jonathan Parker’s comedy has its moving moments when its characters grapple with acceptance and ambition. In truth, everybody in (Untitled) is a grown-up version of the snobby kids who are the bad guys in high-school movies, except now they wear better clothes and name-drop more furiously. Adam Goldberg plays Adrian, a willfully difficult musician who isn’t interested in compromising – he doesn’t want to simplify his clattering art-noise projects into digestible pieces for the masses. So once he meets Madeleine (Marley Shelton), a successful and hip gallery owner who takes an interest in his combative work, the film becomes a battle between Selling Out and Expressing What’s In Your Soul. But Parker doesn’t make this a fair fight because he never really decides what we’re supposed to make of Adrian. Is his outsider spirit something to be commended or mocked? Anyone who’s wrestled with the notions of conforming to make others happy will feel sympathy for the denizens of (Untitled). Unfortunately, you won’t feel any more enlightened or understood after the experience.
35 Shots of Rum (Cinema Guild)
In 35 Shots of Rum, director Claire Denis introduces us to people we normally wouldn’t care to notice in real life – a cab driver, a train worker – which is appropriate since her film is all about the small moments we tend not to recognize for their importance at the time. Less a story than a close observation of small moments that unfold chronologically, 35 Shots of Rum is about a college student (Mati Diop) and her father (Alex Descas), with whom she lives. Nobody in the film says it in so many words, but it’s time for the daughter to move out into the world, and it’s time for the father to prepare for retirement. Actually, throughout 35 Shots of Rum, characters tend not to say things that are explicit – we piece together bits of information from here and there, and we’re left to draw some conclusions on our own. Don’t worry if you’ve missed something while you’re watching this film – maybe what doesn’t make sense will become clear later. Or maybe it won’t. Sort of like real life, right?
Consumables is a regular overview of popular culture.
