Two Rode Together: The Cannon

The image that follows is one of my favourite shots from Two Rode Together, a late-career John Ford Western starring James Stewart and Richard Widmark as two hard men hired by the U.S. army to aid in the rescue of several white children captured by a group of Comanche. However, the rescue, its political machinations, and the re-integration of these now-adults back into white society proves far more complicated than anyone could have guessed.


Prior to this shot, Widmark's character, Jim Gray, has returned to the white settlement with one of the two "rescued" white youth; but, Running Wolf, as the boy now calls himself, is much older than when he was captured, has adopted the culture and look of the Comanche, and wants nothing to do with this past life. Furthermore, his actual identity within the town is in question as several parties make conflicting claims on him. Meanwhile, Stewart's character, Guthrie McCabe, waits in the wilderness, about to do battle with the Comanche husband of the captured white woman he's leading back to town.

Now, in the shot itself, townspeople meet with representatives of the Army to decide what to do with Running Wolf.

Notice the way in which Ford visualizes the potential for conflict, and even violent conflict, in this shot: the townspeople, on the left, oppose the Army men, on the right. They're face-to-face, as the saying goes; and they're squaring off over Running Wolf, who sits in between. Incidentally, Running Wolf's seated position, lower than the other characters, and in the background, suggests his own impotence with regard to his own future. It will be decided by others: the winners of this brewing conflict.

At first glance, it would appear that, in this squaring-off, the townspeople have the upper hand, and it is they who will dictate the fate of Running Wolf. After all, they occupy more screen space than the soldiers. However, this is an illusion! For, notice the cannon—that crucial and carefully positioned piece of Ford's mise-en-scene. It is an extension of the soldiers, and carves out a nice chunk of space in the townspeople's area of the screen. Call it a large and secure beachhead, an established base deep in enemy territory. Even more important, though, is where the cannon is pointing: right at the people!

The townspeople have the numerical advantage, but the Army has the weapons. Or, as Jim Morrison sang for The Doors:

They got the guns,
But we got the numbers.

Except, it's the guns that are key this time.

Two Rode Together is a middling John Ford film (in terms of artistic and technical value, as well as ideology), but this is one of several moments of genius sparkled throughout.

300

Zack Snyder's 300, a film adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae told from the points of view of Spartan King Leonidas and his Queen, made a lot of money and a fair bit of noise when it came out in March. In other words, just as audiences were paying oodles of money to see the film, critics were extracting political and ideological meaning from it. Depending on a particular critic's reading, 300 was fascist, pro-war, pro-Bush, jingoistic, racist, homophobic, anti-Iranian, anti-Eastern, anti-Muslim, and other adjectives. On the crest of a sudden and ironic interest in the truth, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad even denounced Snyder's film as a conscious effort to "tamper with history" and make Iran "look savage".

Although I'm too late to join in a meaningful discussion of these aspects of 300—if such a discussion ever even existed—based on reading a handful of interviews with Zack Snyder and one with Frank Miller, I'm convinced that rather than being a piece of super-propaganda, the film is simply an empty vessel: a finely-crafted, nicely-painted jug signifying nothing. As Snyder says in one of his interviews:

I wanted to make any Frank Miller work that I could. We would talk about 300 like film students, "Wouldn't it be cool if we made this shot? It'd be awesome."

I certainly follow some of the arguments put forth by various critics, and see the fun in arguing them; but, ultimately, the arguments are so many that they weaken rather than reinforce each other. For instance, wouldn't it be great filmic fun to argue that, in addition to being preparation for an American invasion of Iran, 300 is pro-abortion because the Spartans, the undisputed heroes of the story, are shown discarding disfigured infants down a jagged-looking ravine?



However, maybe it all comes down to this: what do you see in the above still? A funky silhouette and cheeky lens flare; or, the heroic figure of a man towering against an image of two twin towers, obscured in a dust-red sky, as, amongst the remnants of war, he refuses to give in to the axis of evil and stands, to the last of his might, in the name of freedom, liberty and democracy (while, back home, the scared politicians plot to stab him in the back)?

Now, with that formality out of the way, on to a few interesting observations:

The element of 300 that caught me the most off-guard was part of the film's editing strategy. Although Snyder and his editors don't employ this strategy at all times, there are several key moments in the film when I was waiting for something to happen—something that would and does happen in most Hollywood action films—but it never arrived: rapid cutting.



This image, for example, comes from an unbroken battle shot that lasts 1 minute and 10 seconds. That it's probably inspired more by beat 'em up video games than Tarkovsky is beside the point: it's a long take! And, although Snyder slides and zooms and bends time to give the illusion of cuts, the shot remains an unbroken whole. Questions of violence aside, the technique on display here is impressive; it's an effective, well-constructed, intricate shot.

Another aspect of the film that deserves mention is its composition and lighting. Granted, some of this may be due more to Miller's frames than the eyes of cinematographers and artists, but it remains majestic, nonetheless.



I like these two shots not only because, like the rest of the film, they're operatic and unabashedly un-subtle; but also because they show off two different uses of what could be called a cinema-palette. The colours and light-dark proportion in both are similar despite the difference in content and shot type: the first is a long-shot landscape, the second a medium close-up portrait. Taken together, both images illustrate one half of 300's lighting schemes; the other half, a golden scheme, is evident in the first two stills.

On a personal note, I'd be hard-pressed to say whether I enjoyed 300 or not. I appreciated many of its visuals, and was impressed by the battle scenes; however, the story, the characters and everything else around those battle scenes was recyclable. Hence, I enjoyed the build-up much less then the battle, and the "home front" politics much less than the bloody head-bashing. The fantasy mixed in with the history made 300 akin to a compact Lord of the Rings at times, too. After the credits ran, though, I did feel slightly queasy from all the violence (even the credits in 300 are bloody); but only when the idea of cutting off someone's head was divorced from the cartoonish way it was presented in the film and put back together in my mind as something that has an ugly place in reality. Finally, in terms of ideology, I couldn't pick out a discernible effect: I certainly didn't want to enlist in the army or attack random Iranians on the street, but I also didn't get the "war is hell" feeling that comes with some war films.

If I were to liken 300 to another film (and I am) I'd pick the equally violent and equally operatic Saving Private Ryan. Both films have the rousing score, the distinct lighting and crisp, ambitious cinematography, the big lines delivered at big times, and that carefully-engineered apolitical tone that realizes hey, it's all just business; so let's leave the political stuff at home.

In terms of films about ancient civilizations that milk the cinematic possibilities of yellow light, soft music and wheat fields, I liked it more than Gladiator.

Michael Haneke: A Historical Analysis of a West German Urban Guerilla

There's an interesting sentence in the introduction of Roy Grundmann's recent article Auteur de Force: Michael Haneke's "Cinema of Glaciation", which appears in the Spring 2007 issue of film magazine Cineaste:

"[Haneke's] aim is to debunk the desirably normal as the oppressively normative that gives rise to violence and dysfunction in the first place."

The phrase that especially struck me was "oppressively normative". It sent me searching through my memory; I had read something similar before. And, after some digging, I proved myself right.

From a section of Tony Judt's Postwar about 1960s West European radicals and intellectuals:

"The complaints of an early-nineteenth-century Romantic like Marx against capitalist modernity and the dehumanizing impact of industrial society were well adapted to contemporary protests against the 'repressive tolerance' of post-industrial Western Europe. The prosperous, liberal West's apparently infinite flexibility, its sponge-like capacity to absorb passions and differences, infuriated its critics. Repression, they insisted, was endemic in bourgeoisie society. It could not just evaporate. The repression that was missing on the streets must perforce have gone somewhere: it had moved into people's very souls—and, above all, their bodies."

The problem facing West European intellectuals in the 1960s was two-fold. First, the official brand of Communism emanating from the Soviet Union, which many Western intellectuals had thus far championed, was, by 1956 (the Soviet invasion of Hungary) and then by 1968 (the Soviet invasion of Prague) all-but debunked. Only the most hardened West European Communists could, at the end of the 1960s, still defend the Soviet Union or blame its "excesses" strictly on Stalin. Second, Western Europe's remarkable recovery after WWII had given most West Europeans very little to feel angry or dispirited about: their economies were doing very well, their welfare states were giving them unprecedented levels of social support and services, and programs put into place to help along underdeveloped parts of the continent, such as southern Italy, made sure that everyone's life was improving. This was all famously summed up by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan when, in 1957, he told a conservative rally: "Most of our people have never had it so good."

In other words, West Europeans unsatisfied with capitalism and with the new, post-WWII way of life could hardly bring up any tangible faults in the capitalist system: it, quite simply and openly, provided well. Furthermore, there was no real physical repression and much less exploitation than was to be encountered on the other side of the "iron curtain". Hence, no longer could the example of the Soviet Union be used as a more desirable ideological counterpoint.

As a result, the intellectual left turned back time and and set to re-reading Marx, the core ideologue of their beliefs; and, as Judt points out, especially his youthful, early writings. In these, they found what they were seeking: a new way to attack and criticize the capitalist countries in which they lived: "repressive tolerance". Since any Marxist worldview holds that bourgeoisie society must be repressive, if one didn't look the part, you just weren't looking hard enough. If everything on the outside was rosy, then it's the inside that must be rotting away.

I'm linking these ideas of "oppressive normativity" and "repressive tolerance" not only because they are ideologically-similar, but also because they're battle calls for the same type of revolution: a revolution of the inner person. Your happiness, say the 1960s Marxists, is your repression—not whips and chains and guns. Also important is that both ideas are counter-popular, meaning that their proponents have to convince society of its own mistaken view of itself before they can convince it to take up arms in support of its own destruction. These are not views that tap into societal undercurrents, but seek to create them.

Now, to tie this historical background into Michael Haneke:

Michael Haneke was born in 1942. This would place him at age 18 when the 1960s began and 28 when they ended. He, therefore, came of maturity and was educated in exactly this political and ideological climate (and partook of its economic prosperity). His first theatrical film, however, was not released until 1989—an entirely different historical moment: coming after a wave of West European conservatism and coinciding with the crumbling of the Soviet Union and its empire. Unlike Jean-Luc Godard (b. 1930) or Rainer Werner Fassbinder (b. 1945), who were making films about "repressive tolerance" in the moment of its blossoming, Haneke is, so to speak, participating in the discussion via tape delay. Many of his films, however contemporary they seem on the surface, are ideologically time-displaced by +30 years.

And there is more. Not only is Haneke of the time when intellectuals were embracing the idea of "repressive tolerance", but he is also of a place where that idea was expressed in its most extreme and violent form: Germany.

As Judt explains:

"Thus for Rudi Dutschke (born 1940), Peter Schneider (1940), Gudrun Ensslin (1940) or the slightly younger Andreas Baader (1943) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945), West Germany's post-war democracy was not the solution; it was the problem. The apolitical, consumerist, American-protected cocoon of the Bundesrepublik was not just imperfect and amnesiac; it had actively conspired with its Western masters to deny the German past, to bury it in material gods and anti-communist propaganda."

Consumerism, American international influence, and cultural amnesia are all themes that appear and re-appear in Haneke's films. In Haneke's lastest work, Caché, for example, we see all three: money-driven class distinctions that make it easy for rich Georges to forget poor Majid, but difficult for them to relate; shots of the Iraq war on television; and, the film's main interest, the French "national forgetting" of its Algerian past. Haneke, in 1989 as much as now, is continuing to explore ideoligical fascinations born and firmly-rooted in the very specific time and place of his youth.

Back to Judt, and the history of German political terrorism:

"In most of Western Europe, the airy radical theorems of the 1960s dissipated harmlessly enough. But in two countries in particular [Germany and Italy] they metamorphosed into a psychosis of self-justifying aggression. A small minority of erstwhile student radicals, intoxicated by their own adaptation of Marxist dialectics, set about 'revealing' the 'true face' of repressive tolerance in Western democracies."

Considering that Haneke's films so often rely on violence, and especially shock violence, to argue his points, it's uncanny how close in form (and not only content) Haneke mirrors Germany's urban terrorists; and especially Andreas Baader's own Red Army Fraction (RAF). Notice, for instance, even Baader's choice of the acronym, an intentional reference to Britain's Royal Air Force, which bombed Germany during WWII, and which Baader took as a symbolic model: showing that he would bomb Germany again, but this time out of submission. This corresponds to Haneke's choice of genre—and even his use of genre at all. By fitting his films and their messages into packages resembling generic thrillers, Haneke, like Baader, uses the outward appearance of an enemy (the generic thriller propagates "oppressive normativity") for opposite ends. Haneke's plan to re-make his film Funny Games in Hollywood is yet another step forward in realizing the same idea.

The link between political terrorism and Haneke's aggressive cinema, however, goes further. For, just as Baader justified RAF's violence via his own interpretation of Marxism, so Haneke justifies the often-brutal violence in his films with ideology.

In an interview with Haneke conducted by Karin Badt for Bright Lights Film Journal, Haneke responds to the question of violence in his films:

"The society we live in is drenched in violence. I represent it on the screen because I am afraid of it, and I think it is important that we should reflect on it... My films are also a protest against the mainstream cinema, a response to the films screened in theaters today. If mainstream films were different, my films would be different as well."

(source)

Haneke's films, then, are not the violent spectacle of actual thrillers; but, instead, they are a response to violence, both as it exists in those films and in society at large.

Compare this justification with the following excerpt from The Urban Guerilla Concept, the 1971 manifesto of the RAF:

"The Urban Guerilla Concept should be seen as an armed struggle taking place in the light of police shoot-to-kill methods and the class justice that managed to free Kurras. The system would bury our comrades alive if we didn’t stop it. We will not be demoralised by the violence of the system."

(source)

The RAF, too, in its own opinion, is a reaction, and a reactionary violence. If police methods and German society were different, the RAF could have added, our reaction would be different as well. And anyone who believes that Haneke's comic qualities—the sarcasm of his films—negate any parallels between his cinema and the acts of Germany's urban terrorists need only read Michael "Bommi" Baumann's memoir How It All Began: The Personal Account of a West German Urban Guerilla or take a look at some of the RAF's own communiques to understand that a very distinct brand of comedy was very much a part of "urban guerilla" identity.

A final point of comparison between Haneke and the German political terrorists of his generation is how each was treated by their corresponding intellectual elite. And, here, once again via Tony Judt, we find a striking similarity:

"Much more worrying was the extent to which the Baader-Meinhof Group in particular was able to tap into a fund of generalized sympathy for its ideas among otherwise law-abiding intellectuals and academics."

I liken this to the elevated status Haneke has achieved among a range of film critics and arthouse film fans—many of whom actively criticize both similar ideological positions (such as in the films of Lars von Trier) and violence (300 is a good, recent example) in non-Haneke films. How either the RAF or Haneke manage to gain this support, I'm not sure. What is certain, however, is that while the RAF ran out of political steam when its leaders were captured and killed in the 1970s (and officially disbanded in 1998 after a long stretch of irrelevance), Michael Haneke is still making films and still being lauded for them.

As I recall someone once saying, Haneke's is a cinema of cruelty—cruel towards its characters and cruel towards its audience. To this, I'd add that it's also an ideologically anachronistic cinema, a great cinematic flashback to Western Europe in the late 1960s by means of a transplanted, displaced West German urban guerilla.

Perfume: Pseudogenes

In the August 2006 issue of Scientific American, there's an article by Mark Gerstein and Deyou Zheng called "The Real Life of Pseudogenes". At the end of this article is a sentence that could explain the magnificent smelling power of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the hero of Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume and the similarly-titled film adaptation by Tom Tykwer.

However, it's best to start at the beginning; and, in the beginning, the question was: what are pseudogenes? To answer, Gerstein and Zheng introduce this analogy:

"It is already clear that a whole genome is less like a static library of information than an active computer operating system for a living thing. Pseudogenes may analogously be vestiges of old code associated with defunct routines, but they also constitute a fascinating record contained within the overall program of how it has grown and diversified over time."

A little later, they get more specific:

"Pseudogenes are the molecular remains of broken genes, which are unable to function because of lethal injury to their structures. The great majority of pseudogenes are damaged working genes and serve as genetic fossils that offer insight into gene evolution and genome dynamics... Recent evidence of activity among pseudogenes, and their potential resurrection, suggests some are not entirely dead after all."

Now, aside from that being interesting in its own right, here's the kicker—the part that corresponds to cinema:

"Slight differences in the pseudogene complements of individual people have also been found—for example, a few olfactory receptor pseudogenes straddle the fence: in most people they are pseudogenes, but in some they are intact, working genes. These anomalies could arise if random mutation reversed the disablement that originally produced the pseudogene. Might they account for individuals' differing sensitivities to smell? Perhaps, although it is too early to guess at the scope or significance of this unexpected source of genetic variation among humans."

Olfactory master Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, one begins to suspect, might have been one of these variations. Not that this would have any effect on the story (nor could it: Süskind wrote his novel in 1985, a mere handful of years after pseudogenes were first discovered in the late 1970s, and when, as their name suggests, they were simply thought of as genes with no function).

Still, it's pretty neat.

The Big Heat: Review

A good cop named Bannion goes after a rotten system run by a rich sleaze named Lagana, and both pay the price, in Fritz Lang's 1953 noir classic The Big Heat.

Hey, that's nice perfume.

Something new. It attracts mosquitoes and repels men.

If there's one thing to be said about The Big Heat, it's that the dialogue crackles and the plot never sleeps. This is one hard, well-written film. It also has some great performances: some good-looking lips to take the well-written words from the page and turn them into good-sounding noise. What the film lacks, however—and this caught me most by surprise—is creative direction. Now, I'm no expert on Fritz Lang, and this is his first American film I've seen, but, based on the impeccably-directed M and the visionary Metroplis, what a disappointment The Big Heat is!

Having said that, there are a few cinematic highlights sprinkled throughout, which the snappy lines and engaging (and surprisingly brutal) story tie together rather well into a decent package: not the greatest present anyone ever gave you, but you won't fake your smile and return it to the store the next day.

For instance, the following is my favourite cut in the film. It comes at the climax of a violent scene in which Vince Stone, one of Lagana's henchmen, is roughing up Debby, his girl, because she's been out with Bannion. I like the cut for three reasons: it's a clever bit of visual wordplay, it's an external image of internal emotion, and it serves a clear narrative purpose.


By now, as you can probably guess from the still, Stone is pretty angry. He's starting to get hands-on in his violence, too, in addition to giving it pretty good to Debby with words. However, it's about to get much, much worse.


Cut to: a pot of hot coffee! Stone's about to boil over, you might say. And, when he does, he'll grab the coffee and throw it in Debby's face.

Another touch I like in The Big Heat is Lang's creative treatment of the intense violence he can't actually show on the screen, due to the Production Code. The scalding coffee to the face of the previous stills is an example (we only hear the impact and the see the aftermath; we don't see the impact), but there's an even better one earlier in the film.

The syndicate of corruption has tried to scare Bannion off, to no avail. They, therefore, turn to a more drastic solution: kill Bannion. Their method of choice is the old bomb-in-car trick. However, the plan doesn't quite go off as planned. Because, instead of Bannion turning the ignition and setting off the explosives, it's Bannion's wife who gets blown up.


Lang plays the scene from inside the house, with Bannion reading his daughter a bedtime story as his wife goes out to the car. The stationary shot lasts some time until we hear any evidence of what's about to go down: Bannion's wife opens the car door, then starts the car, and then—BAM! A flash of light, the window shatters, the actors react. Once Bannion runs outside, the fireworks are over, and, again, all we see is the aftermath.

And, finally, there's a neat camera movement at the very beginning of the film: the shot begins on a photo camera, which flashes, then pulls back to reveal a dead man on his desk, stops, turns about twenty-five degrees to the right, and moves forward again to join in the conversation by two policemen. The result, if seen from above, is a V.

Those flourishes aside, however, I was disappointed with The Big Heat. It has a sharp script and a good performance by Glenn Ford in the main role, but Lang seems to be coasting. Based on the fragment of Lang's German, Expressionist output that I've seen, I think I know why: Lang prefers bombast to subtlety, and thrives in the surreal and grotesque rather than the commonplace. And, beyond a few details like Lee Marvin's vicious turn as Vince Stone and Debby's facial disfigurement, The Big Sleep cuts things fairly subtle and fairly mundane. In fact, the film's best moments—the times Lang appears to actually be interested—come whenever Debby's burnt face is on the screen. It's in these moments that Lang ripples the surface of the film, and comes closest to breaking through it.


With older, well-known films there's always the issue of reputation. It often dictates expectations and colours judgements. The Big Heat is no exception; and its reputation is decidely high—both as a film noir and as a Fritz Lang film. Hence, while I was disappointed by The Big Heat, I still consider it good, entertaining filmmaking. I simply wish someone would have held a pin in its inflated repute for a few seconds before I hit the play button. Not knowing who the director is might have helped, too.

NB: I wonder how important The Big Sleep was to the American vigilante film of the 1970s, a genre perhaps best known as Dirty Harry.

The Big Heat: A Story

Listen, stranger. Let me give you some advice, up front, free, off the record. Get the hell away from me, away from this table, away from this bar, away from this city. It's no good here. It never was. What do I mean? I can explain it to you, but I advise against listening. It's a dangerous story. No, you won't hear anything that'll get your head caved in some day when you make a wrong turn coming out your driveway. It's a different kind of dangerous, a more dangerous kind, if you know what I mean.

You sure you want to stay and listen, kid? Because I'll tell you. All of it. Every last rotting piece of it. It's good for me to tell it. That's what my psychiatrist would say. You ever been to see one of those head shrinkers. Actually, nevermind, kid. You just have to buy me a drink to help me get over my conscience, and I'll talk. Talk, talk, talk. Little poisoned knives through your ear and into your heart, that's what words are. You know, twenty years ago, I had a kid just like you. A daughter. She's off somewhere now, married, working, happy. Doesn't keep in contact. I don't blame her. What, a grudge? Yeah, something like that. Something exactly like that.


My name? My name's Dave Bannion. B-a-n-n-i-o-n.

Since I already said I had a daughter—that's right, I said had. I don't insist on keeping people past when they want to be kept—I should start by saying I also had a wife, and a house, and a car, and a nice, cushy job working in the police. I was a detective, with a badge and a gun. What? No, I don't have the badge anymore. About the gun? I already said I don't have the badge anymore.

Back then, my job was to keep justice, keep the status quo. That's Latin, by the way. Why don't you write it down? No, you don't need a pen. Write it down in your head. Anyway, it was an easy enough job, and pay was enough to keep us decent enough to be able to enjoy each others company and keep us happy. But then it all started to unravel. Maybe that's the wrong word, there. Unravel. Because string unravels. And this wasn't string. My life wasn't string. My life didn't unravel. My life cracked, like a whip. Fast and vicious and stinging.

It began run-of-the-mill. At least as far as crime runs. A suicide. A suicide by one of the higher-ups in the police department, someone I had seen once or twice but didn't know, a man by the name of Duncan, but a suicide nevertheless. He left behind his wife, an elegant woman named Bertha. Bertha Duncan.


I met this wife, now a widow, after the suicide, and what she told me made enough sense to get me to sleep at night, get me to believe the official story, get me to lay off. Duncan killed himself because he was a sick man, she said. I believed her.

But I kept digging around. Don't ask me why, I just did. Maybe it's intuition, maybe something else. Luck, coincidence? No, it's not coincidence. I don't believe in coincidence. Sometimes we make choices at fateful moments and we call those moments coincidences. But it's not coincidence, it's choice. You say you're here by coincidence? You're not, and I can tell you that much, kid. In this case, though, I kept digging because I wanted to keep digging, because I chose to keep digging. I could have stopped, but I didn't. And I dug where you have to dig to get the real dirt. In the gutters.

Eventually, I pulled out a nice-looking piece of trash named Lucy. Or was it Faye? No, it was Lucy. Lucy, alright. Lucy as clear as day.


And Lucy starts telling me that she and Duncan had been having some fun in the sun at his summer home away from home, away from his wife, if you know what I mean. Which is none of my police business, and I tell her as much. But Duncan, this Lucy tells me, wasn't a sick man. Not sick at all. Just finished finalizing his divorce, too. And there's your clink. The official story now has a wrench stuck in it. The gears were moving all greased up are bending out of shape. And I got a choice. Do I buy this girl's story or do I pretend it's rubbish and keep my hands off the whole deal even if it stinks? Well, I let off.


Until this same girl, Lucy, turns up dead. Thrown from a speeding car, all bruised up and battered, cigarette burns all over. Just real worked over. Meanwhile, I try to raise a bit of a fuss about this and suddenly my superiors, ain't that a fine word, start telling me to keep my voice down on account it's a small city and voices carry far. Do your job, they tell me. Except my job is to do justice. And now two people are dead, things are going all fishy, and everywhere I turn I get angry glances and sweating foreheads. That's symptoms of injustice. Your job is to follow orders, they even clarify for me, in case I had gotten mixed up in the purpose of my noble occupation. Thanks, I say, and I go home. It stinks a lot less at home if you've got a good home, and I've got a good home.

The whip's pulled back now. I can't see it, but it's stretched up above my house as I'm eating dinner and talking to my wife. I spill everything to her, too. I always did. Maybe it's my conscience that's bothering me, I don't know. That's what she says in not as many words. Real curt, she was. I don't know much about those kinds of things, but I know women, and I trusted that one more than a man can trust his own shadow to show up in the morning, all punctual. She reassures me. You're doing the right thing, go with what you think is right, don't compromise, etc. I feel good. I feel good about digging around in garbage if it leads to something cleaner. Even if I get hassled for it.

So I don't compromise. Very next day I go straight to the dark heart of corruption of our foul city. The honourable mister Lagana presiding, over his daughter's social gathering. He's got about ten beat cops doing rounds on his driveway, too. Tax money for his own personal protection. Ain't that funny? And funny how once you decide that something's corrupt you know exactly where to go, too, no? Just follow your nose. Problem is everyone's got too many flowers in their gardens. Just planting them day after day after day. A city overflowing with flowers is what we got. Red roses covering the streets, flying out of open windows. Even paint comes in flowers nowadays. And it's all to kill the putrid smell that's everywhere. The smell of corruption. Because no one wants to clean it up. It's enough to cover up. We're living in a giant cover-up born of laziness and complacency, as the dictionary calls it. At least we were back then, when I paid Mr. Lagana a visit, during his daughter's social gathering.


The visit doesn't last long. I lose my cool, I say some things that expose the stink a bit. And I get a beefed-up henchman loosed on me. I give him a few hooks to the side of the face and he gets the dizzies and sits down. I show myself out, thank you very much, but I've made my intentions public now. I'm going to dig into this mess with Duncan and Lucy and Lagana knows it. He knows more than I do, too. He knows it's a much deeper hole than just two people. And he knows he's right at the bottom of the hole if I ever find a flashlight strong enough to shine that far down.

Soon enough the harassment starts. My wife gets obscene phone calls, real nasty stuff. I know who it's coming from, too, but what can I do? I've been bullied before, and it doesn't work on me, so I figure I stick it out. I'm out of my depth, though, this time. Yeah, this time I'm messing with too much money and too much power. And I have no one to back me up. My cop friends are telling me to cool it and the rest of the world's staring down at its feet while it twaddles around each and every day for its turn at the water fountain. If I go down, there's no one to mourn for me. Maybe I'll even commit suicide, like Duncan. That's a clean way to do it. For a bunch of dirty men they sure like their killing clean.

But they don't do it clean. And they don't do it to me.


I'm in my daughter's room reading her a story and my wife's going out to the car the bedroom window's open and as I read the silly words in the silly book and my daughter laughs I hear the car door close and then I hear the car turn and then I see and hear and feel the explosion. It's over in seconds. The window shatters. I tell my daughter to keep low and I run outside to the car but I'm too late my wife's already dead. Already dead. "She's on a trip," I tell my daughter later, "Mom's on a trip."

This part I can't explain to you. They'll just be silly words to you, like a story about four bears on a picnic. So I won't try. It doesn't matter, anyway. This part's personal, it's mine, it belongs to me and me only. All you need to know is that I knew I was going to hunt these men down, erase them, annihilate them. I didn't have to do it. But I chose to. It's like your hand. You can do anything with it, and sometimes you make fists.

Now, if you know anything about corruption, it won't surprise you that as soon as I walked in the old police station the next morning, I was taken away to the biggest office in the building and checked for loyalty. This is the party line, the chief told me, now repeat after me. I didn't repeat and they took my badge. Rather, I tossed it on their table, between their cups of coffee or piss or whatever they drink. But not my gun. No, not my gun. I paid for that myself.

Investigations like this take time. But I give a lot of mine, and I make progress. I track down some mechanics, checking for the punks who took ten dimes to fill my car up with dynamite. Problem is that even when I get somewhere where the air's all fouled up, no one talks. That's right, they keep quiet, mum. They've got to make a living, and eyes and ears and mouths, if they get opened too often, aren't good for business, aren't good for making livings.


Maybe I understand that, maybe I don't. Maybe if I was in their place, I'd play blind. But I'm not in their place, I'm in my place. And I'm as far from blind as you can get with two eyes. I get a name. Larry. Larry who wears lots of colours. That'll do. That'll do just fine.

There's a woman, too. Vince Stone's girl. Did I tell you about Vince Stone? Anyway, it doesn't matter. He was a hood, a ruthless one-in-a-hundred goon who'd follow orders just so long as he had some of his own to give, too. And, like every other rotten punk in that rotten city, his orders came from Lagana.

But this girl, name of Debby Marsh, she thought she had it all figured out living it up real ritzy with Vince Stones' dirty money. Of course, she didn't think about the money. Left the room when the boss came in, she told me. Didn't want to hear the truth by some accidental trick of acoustics, so she just shut the door and went out to get her legs waxed. Just cared about the clothes and the expensive life. "I been rich and I been poor," she told me once, "And rich is better." Not that I really blame her. They were all like that. Content to turn the other ear.

Beyond that, though, she was a real sweetheart. Real pretty, on the outside and on the in, if you know what I mean. Had a real change of heart, too, after Vince Stone got a little feisty one night and introduced her pretty, young face to several cups of hot coffee.


Vince was like that, always looking to do some meanness to someone couldn't defend themselves. Especially to pretty women. Debby's face, though, it got burned real bad. Or half of it. But must have been the half that lived the rich life, because after she got herself all bandaged up at the hospital, came straight to see me, in tears, mad at Vince, mad at herself, mad at life, she wasn't so content to turn the other ear. "I could live my life sideways," she said, on account of half her face being scarred. Which might right well be true. Except when you're living sideways, there's no other ear to turn to. You have to change your whole philosophy, or whatever you want to call it, of life if you're going to live sideways.


Now I got a theory about scars. Big scars, scars you can't miss. You see, I think everyone's scarred, somewhere, from something. Only difference is that some people got theirs on the outside, and others on the inside, and the inside scars don't show up until you get close to the people who have them, get to know them, get to love them. Me? Sure, I got mine, just like everybody else. I'm no better than the rest, other than that I exercise my free will a bit freer. And, yeah, mine aren't on the outside. You see, no one person has both kinds of scars, either. It's one or the other. Real neat, like, tick or tack, but not tick-tack. So when that hot coffee burned up Debby's skin, the scar got up and moved itself from the inside to the out, just like that, overnight, bang.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking right now. But it wasn't anything like that. There was nothing between us other than a mutual, burning hate. For Vince Stone, for Lagana, for the whole stinking lot of them, with everyone in their pocket and eating the crumbs they dropped, as if we were all children who just reached up to their knees, and licking the leather soles of their shoes for desert. Sure, a pretty dame's a pretty dame, and I like pretty dames, but I also love my wife. Besides, hate hits a man no different than a bucket of cold water, if you know what I mean.

Do you still want me to continue? Yeah? How about I buy the next round, then. I feel guilty taking your money like that. You said you were a fireman, didn't you? No? I thought you did. Not that it matters. I'm paying for these next ones.

So, anyway, this Debby girl, half-cheerful and half-cuckoo at the best of times, now spends some days in my hotel room, just cowering in the shadows like some sort of bat caught up in the attic, just curled up and dodging all the light comes in. On account of the eyes, too. The burns made one of them real sensitive to light. I want to make her feel better, but what do I do? I don't feel good myself. Finally, I decide to start to keep her informed about the case, passing on details, running ideas off her. I figure if she's sticking to me, I might as well make her useful. And she soaks it all up, downs it like it's water and she's just come out of the desert after forty days, if you know what I mean.

The real break comes when I finally track down rainbow Larry. Turns out to be a mac named Larry Gordon. Like all the rest of the scum, works straight out for Lagana. No surprise there. A sweet old lady identifies him for me, and then I bust into his room, and put the hurt on him. Not real bad, but just enough to make him talk. Around the throat. He tries some funny stuff, but he's not much of a joker. And it doesn't take me long to get what I need.


And all the time I have my gun pointed right at his heart, at where it should be, and once he stops squawking he starts trembling and I don't lower my gun but just keep it trained on him right on him finger right over the trigger just stroking it like you stroke a woman's hair. I know that this is the bastard that killed my wife and I swear to God I feel like letting that bullet fly right into his chest. Except I don't. Not because I'm not like them—because I am, and so are you, and so is everyone else, if they want to be—but because I make the choice not to. It's all about choice. Besides, once word gets out that rainbow Larry Gordon spilled his guts, they'll get spilled for real by his own people, his own pack. This is what I'm thinking. And it was true. And I don't regret it.

What did I learn? Everything. What I learned was the glass key to the iron lock on the rusted door to the whole goddamn operation. When I get back to the hotel and start remembering and putting pieces together, I realize I have enough to set loose Lagana's white-knuckle-tight grip on the entire city, for good. And it all rests on Bertha Duncan, the dead policeman's widow, if you remember the name. Turns out she's on the payroll, on Lagana's payroll. Why? Because the good cop that Duncan was, before unloading one into his brain, leaves enough paperwork to expose all of Denmark! Every corruption, every dirty deed that Lagana ever ordered can be traced back to him. And Lagana's paying the greedy old widow off, every week, so she keeps the paper trail all locked up, real neat, real cold. Plus, the kicker is that the old dame's smart, and she knows the first thing Lagana would do was get rainbow Larry or Vince Stone to pay her a little visit in the early hours of the morning, if you know what I mean. So she makes this convenient arrangement. If she dies, the papers go public. If she's alive, they stay buried along with Mr. Duncan and she takes her cut. She'd rather be rich than poor, as Debby would say.

And I'm in a rut now. I don't know what to do. I have it all figured out, all crystal right in front of my eyes so close I can breathe on it, but I have to kill the old woman to make it work. It's like the dominoes are all set, but I have to knock one, the first one, over to get everything rolling. I even drive over to her house, steeling myself, promising myself that when I get there I'll get her to confess, make her feel right awful about what she's done, and get her to beg me to kill her, so I can shoot her right there in her own stinking living room, the one she pretends to mourn her dead husband in every day of the week, like a little round of daily theatre for the neighbours. I tell myself that'll make it easy. But it ain't easy. I don't do it.

Like I said before, life's just a case of exercising your free will more or less than the next guy. In this particular time and place, I didn't score so high. But Debby, she exercised her free will all the way. All the crooked way up the road to Bertha Duncan's neatly-pruned home and through a bullet right into Bertha Duncan's belly. That's what I said, yeah. Debby shot Bertha Duncan. Shot her dead.


Then she took her free will and her gun and brought it over to Vince Stone's place. Just like that. I guess she had time to boil the water, too, because Vince Stone got a jug full of it right in the face. Payback, real clever. But she didn't get him good enough with the water, or else Vince Stone was more than playing at tough guy, because by the time I got there it was almost all over for darling, half-crazy Debby. She'd gone and sprawled herself on Vince Stone's carpet with blood pouring out her stomach and a piece of led that wasn't doing a good job keeping it in her body.

You're asking about Vince Stone? Yeah, I took him down. Didn't kill him, just pulled his scarred face down from the fire escape by the legs and was putting the business to his ribs when the cops came in.


Do I regret not popping him? No, I don't regret not popping him. Not too much. I regret Debby. That's what I regret. Sure we called a doctor, but he only gave warning on the end of the line when he got there, didn't offer any solutions for stopping the train, if you know what I mean. And I looked right at her face when she died, and I knew she was worth the whole lot of them who were still alive even though she had done wrong herself. She asked me if she was dying before she did and, knowing she was a girl who went for the cleverness more than the weepy stuff, I told her that if I told her she'd live a hundred more years she'd have thought I was fooling her. Then she died.

And I'll tell you something else that's important, that you should write down. Debby Marsh died sideways, exactly like she told me she wanted to live. She died with the good side of her face up, the half Vince Stone hadn't mangled up with his pot of hot coffee.


That's how people are with their scars. Most of us live front-to-back, just like I'm looking at you now, living both with our scars and without them. We aren't real good or real bad, just people. But then there's people who make the choice to live sideways—it's all about the choice, isn't a thing we're born or not born into, earn or don't earn into—and they're the special ones. Some of them live with their scar-side, people like Vince Stone and Lagana and rainbow Larry. But others, the few of them, live with their good side, like Debby Marsh.

Now, I know you're thinking that Debby went and shot the late Mrs. Duncan in cold blood like a good person shouldn't properly do if they want to keep on being a good person, as the vicar would say, but—but nothing!

You've gotten one too many drinks in me, kid. I'm starting to ramble on, real on-and-on like. Vomiting words. Maybe I'll have a hangover tomorrow morning and it'll be my jaw that hurts, and not my head. Am I done? Why, am I boring you with my life? Oh, I see, kid. People always want to know how things turn out.

Sure, I got my job back. Sure, Lagana and Vince Stone went to jail or the penitentiary or the cozy, comfy heated chair they reserve for some of us. I'm not sure which name matches up with which destination, though. I never really followed the legal chatter along in the papers, and I was never asked to testify against the foul character or putrid activities of the men in question. As for Larry Gordon, he got the cigarette treatment, of that I'm sure. No, I don't have any proof other than a born-again faith in the uncorrupted nature of the justice system of men like Lagana. No one gets a reprieve from the executioner in that court of law, if you know what I mean.

What's so hard to understand, kid? I laugh about this stuff all the time now. No, not about my wife. That's different. Like I said, I don't talk about that. Talk is cheap, so I like to spend it on the Laganas, and even the Debby Marshes, but not on anything real dear to me, see. But Vince Stone and Larry Gordon, what do I care what ever befell their blasted fates, as Shakespeare might say. No, kid, you're wrong. You don't care, either. No one cares. Do you know why? Because everyone knows it doesn't make a camel lick's difference in the great scheme of things.

I know Lagana's gone, kid. But I also know he's still here. His name's just not Lagana anymore. Maybe it's Smith, or Fisheye Moses, or Johnson W. Brown. And just like that there's another Vince Stone. And another Larry Gordon. And there's a pair in each city, like a pair of shoes in each closet. And more than one pair in some. And a thousand more behind those. Only thing changes is the name.


I told you my story's dangerous. Remember that? Well, you should have cut my head off before I finished telling it. Now you're doomed. Doomed like everyone else. Doomed to spend your nights in bars, slamming your empty glass against the table until you're numb enough to smell the flowers all over the streets. In here, too. Can you smell them? They smell good, don't they? Enjoy the smell. Enjoy it, because the price for digging up the roots isn't worth the trouble. Ain't worth the trouble at all.

Shooting Range

Vladimir Tarasov's 1979 animated short Shooting Range is late Soviet anti-American propaganda, with a twist—or perhaps, more precisely, a complication. The story, based on a play, is typical enough: a poor, urban American youth is hired by a satanic capitalist to work at a shooting range, where he becomes the target. The images, however, argue with the message: New York City as visualized through the filter of America magazine and American comic books. In essence, then, Shooting Range is both a condemnation of American capitalism and a celebration of American visual culture. And it's all set to the tune of a jazz score!


New York City, from the air. I'm not sure why the red tint, though, since the message is that the city isn't communist.


A street filled with advertisements. This still illustrates the magazine roots of the film.


A traffic jam. America is shown as crowded, toxic. Once the light turns green and the cars clear out, a poster for Iron Butterfly will become visible. This is a hint at the approximate time period Tarasov's depicting.


Condemnation, or loving recreation? There is no clear answer. Advertising, brands, logos appear repeatedly in the film. Our main character seems to take solace in his Camel cigarette, however, after his car breaks down.


Another street scene. Here, our hero walks away from us, a sign reading "job wanted" hanging around his neck. Later, there will be more people in need of jobs, presumably a way of taking aim at both American unemployment and the predatory nature of American workers: just waiting to take each others' jobs.


Tempted by greed. Capitalism—depicted as a short, fat, ugly man—invites both us and the main character into his shooting range.


Inside, the guns are big. Reminds of Potemkin's guns, too, doesn't it?


Money shots. Interesting to note that the capitalist, despite what he charges for entrance fees (and these double and triple as humans and eventually children become targets), does pay his worker.


The hero meets a girl and falls in love. She'll become pregnant a bit later, and she'll imagine what family life will be like for them. In this flash-forward, we'll see domestic life set amidst the shooting range: daily chores, such as carrying dishes and making food, made into a dance of dodging bullets—very stressful.


The idyllic family, before the reality of capitalism sets in. There are some neat touches in the scene, such as when one of the children inspects a flower: the camera suddenly becomes a cross-hair, and "we" shoot the flower. In response, it turns black.


The capitalist takes aim at peace, too.


Eventually, capitalism turns its people into targets. The image is symbolic, but the message is not. And, to boot, capitalism mocks its victims:


Thankfully, with the help of a cuckoo clock that's been a supporting character in the film, the main character and his wife snap out of their slumber (quite literally: she opens her eyes after the targets have been painted on her cheeks). The cuckoo dies as a result, but the heroes walk away. What awaits them, we don't know. Perhaps they'll take the next steamer to the Moscow. What is shown, however, is that the capitalist already has new "workers" lined up. The exploitation, the violence, the greed don't stop with one couple; they're systemic.

Shooting Range is one of the more interesting propaganda films I've seen. It's not as crude and extreme as much of the WWII-era propaganda can be—no doubt a reflection of being made in a Soviet Union already well on its way to crumbling—and, as I already mentioned, the images and music seem to complicate its message. That the animation itself is well done also gives the film artistic value beyond its role as propaganda; some of the compositions and effects are quite startling. And, like in all good and effective propaganda, there is, behind the stinking flesh, a kernel of truth.

The Holiday

I'm sure it's a sign of expectations and prejudice when I want to begin a review with a justification. But, here goes: the day was hot, the movie was set during Christmas, and I needed something cold-looking to point my eyes at while I rode the stationary bike. What I didn't know was that half the film takes place at Christmas alright, but Christmas in Los Angeles: warm Christmas, sunny Christmas, bad Christmas—a Christmas not nearly as refreshing as the England blanketed in fluffy snow Christmas that lured me in. Regardless, I watched the whole thing. No excuses.

If I remember my TV spots correctly, Nancy Meyers' The Holiday was advertised as a romantic comedy. This is misleading; there is little comedy in the film. Instead, "romantic comedy" in this case serves to differentiate (I guess) the serious romance from the less-serious one. And The Holiday isn't at all serious. It's light, frothy, stupid, schmaltzy.

It's also two stories in one: a rich woman from L.A. fresh off a break-up with her boy-friend exchanges homes with a nerdy woman of a similar age from Surrey who's in love with a man who doesn't love her back. Meyers alternates between the two tales throughout the film, trying, but not really succeeding, in making them seem connected. As for the plot: eventually both women end up falling in love in their vacation spots—the American with the Brit's brother, and the Brit with an American film composer. The Brit-in-America half of the film is the better half, due in equal parts to Eli Wallach as an old film writer with whom the Brit strikes up a friendship and a lack of annoying British children.

What The Holiday does demonstrate is what makes Hollywood films so damn enjoyable: use of refined genres, and an emphasis on execution rather than expectation. In other words, it's obvious what's going to happen, to whom, and why, but you still follow along, and the scenes you know are coming can still stir emotions. The Holiday isn't original, well-acted, well-directed, well-written, sincere, funny, "realistic", or clever; but, once it was over, I was happy. Whether that says something about me or about the film, or about both, I don't know.

Some random points:

The Brit works at The Daily Telegraph, Britain's most popular "serious" paper. Its title is visible in several of the early scenes, and then never crops up again.

Sony has a nice advertisement near the beginning of the film, too, as one of the characters works at a Sony laptop. I always wonder which I prefer: hidden, sneaky product placement, or product placement that's blatantly obvious. The latter is certainly more honest.

An internet search, a chat, and several phone conversations occur in the film. While all three are decidedly un-cinematic (and often "spiced up" through editing—although trying to employ fast-paced editing to a Google search seldom works), they are becoming such a huge means of communication in the real world that filmmakers are increasingly choosing to include them in their film worlds. Or, perhaps its just laziness.

Time to stop: I'm beginning to feel dumber for trying to write about The Holiday than for watching it in the first place.

Limite

Brazilian filmmaker Mario Peixoto made Limite in 1931, when he was just twenty-two years old. Inspired by time spent in Europe and exposure to the modernist European avant-garde of the 1920s, it was to be a film in the manner of what he regarded as "pure cinema". At least in the form of a script, for Peixoto initially wanted to simply write the film and then offer it to another filmmaker to make. However, after he was turned down by several filmmakers, and with both the advice of his friends and collaboration with cameraman Edgar Brazil behind him, Peixoto eventually decided to undertake the realization of the project himself...


Limite begins on a haunting, enigmatic image.


Bound, inverted fists rest across a girl's shoulders. Her gaze, however, is pointed directly at us.


A few moments later, it fades to an extreme close-up of another pair of eyes. These, in turn, slowly fade into the sea.


Sunlight sparkles over the calm waves. Again, we fade.


A girl's back. We're in a small rowboat now, drifting in the middle of the ocean.


There are three people in the rowboat. Who are they? We're not sure. Where are they going? We don't know.


All three are young, however. They look sombre, tired. Their clothes are tattered. They don't speak.


Then, another location: a memory, a flashback, a fantasy? We'll never truly find out. Meanwhile, the girl in the image looks caged, jailed. Indeed, we will learn about a jailbreak soon. After some time, the camera begins to drift to the left.


The girl walks. Notice the low angle—something Orson Welles and his cinematographer Gregg Toland became famous for about a decade later, in Citizen Kane. In its visuals, as perhaps its themes, Limite is a film filled with extreme angles and their distortions.


The camera pointed up, at the trees. We're moving forward: the leaves are moving, it's windy; the sun is trickling its light through, bouncing off the lens. Akira Kurosawa will use the same shot with the same movement twenty years later in Rashomon. Point of view, however, remains ambiguous. We have no reason to suspect the walking girl is looking up.


Notice the dark hydro pole against the gray, distant mountains.


We're on top of it now. The girl remains visible as the dark speck on the white road. Adventurous, creative shots like this one typify much of Limite. As most, this one serves no particular narrative purpose.


A close-up of a moving train wheel. Once again, we've changed location, perhaps time, perhaps even more. Soon we'll be in a small room—a jail cell? Inside, a girl will be sewing. Peixoto will give us an intriguing, beautiful series of close-ups.


An egg of some sort.


Detail on a sewing machine.


A spindle of string.


A button.


A tailor's measuring tape.


Scissors. Notice the extremely shallow depth of focus.


The girl runs her thumb against the scissor blade. She won't draw blood. Peixoto's gaze will remain on the scissors even after the left hand is gone. This is one of several examples when a dreamlike mood is suddenly shattered by a violent image. In most cases, the violence will be shown through the weather—strong winds, storms, dark clouds.


Peixoto seldom shows entire figures. in terms of body parts, shots of feet and legs like this one are second only to shots of faces.


A beach framed through the rudder of a boat opens the next section of the film, my favourite.


Check your bearings: the camera is rotated ninety degrees and held against the wall of a long building. A disorienting shot edited between the otherwise straightforward action of a woman walking.


And here she is, walking. The streets are empty. Although we saw a couple of people at the beach several minutes ago, Limite is strangely devoid of people. The entire film has the feeling of the opening dream sequence in Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries.

Now, one of my favourite sequences. The woman, whom we have recognized as one of the three people on the rowboat, enters a house carrying a basket of food that has been transformed, mere shots ago, from nearly empty to overflowing with food.


A man wearing a hat on the stairs. We're above him. The girl will enter from the lower level, which is at the top of our frame. Again, slightly disorienting. The cinematic possibilities of stairs, so often exploited by Alfred Hitchcock, will be demonstrated.


Our present situation. We will now go on explore it from different angles.


The girl looks up at the man in the hat. The camera has moved between them to get the shot.


The hatted man looks down. Again, the camera is between them.


An extreme close-up of the girl's hand. Notice the ring on her finger. There are many symbolic and narrative interpretations here.


One more shot of the girl, this time from under and beside her—probably from the lower floor, next to the stairs. Overall, notice how Peixoto establishes the position of each figure, and the distance from one to the other, and uses his camera to play in the spaces between.


Eventually, the girl sets down the basket of food by the foot of the stairs and leaves. Outside, possibly on her way back to the boat she arrived in, she meets a man. They stop and exchange words. Peixoto cuts from the shot above to the shot below. Once again, keep in mind the hydro pole to get your bearings.


An extreme low-angle. Absolutely breathtaking.


We keep following the girl. In this shot, we have an example of canted framing: the frame is not level. From another perspective, the sticks look jagged, menacing.


Again predicting Citizen Kane, Peixoto approaches a figure on a mountain-top in the same way as Welles the lit window in Xanadu: through a series of ever-closer fades.


The view from the top. On the summit, the wind ruffles the girl's shirt; below, it disturbs the surface of the water, off which sunlight bounces. In a few moments Peixoto will go genuinely berserk with his camera, waving and flipping it as he captures more of the same magnificent view.

The handheld camera is a staple of Limite's style, which is often mobile but seldom smooth. Although, there is one memorable distinction: a slowly rising shot at the mouth an urban street that wouldn't be out of place in Tarkovsky's Nostalghia.


The girl beside a large plant. Or is the plant simply closer to the camera lens?


Cut from the girl on the mountain: a man's fingers play piano in extreme close-up. The same type of shot will reappear later, along with the piano player, during a montage. This time, however, all the piano player gets is a drink.


Light sparkles as liquid's poured into a glass.


And here's the piano player's face, from a strange low angle.


Returning outdoors, Peixoto juxtaposes two plants: a big one and a small one. He repeats this several times, almost as if the plants were having a conversation.


An Ozu-like, contemplative shot. Still, notice the spiky plant. Spikes seem to meet this girl wherever she goes. Incidentally, she is no longer on a mountain-top. She is now at sea-level.


Ominous shadows fall on a chair piled with books. The shadowy figure will add another. Is this our piano man?


Regardless, our piano man is back, and he's watching a silent Charlie Chaplin film. Moreover, he's playing the score in a movie theatre! And he has an audience.


And a shot of them all together.


True to his technique of cutting up the body into cinematic parts, Peixoto does the same to the faces. He focuses on their mouths, their teeth. The result is strangely frightening, especially when divorced from the actual sound of laughter.


Meanwhile, back on the rowboat, which we've now recognized as the framing story—even if we still can't identify an exact temporal relationship between the narrative parts.


By the man's hair, we can tell the wind is picking up. He's playing with two sticks, which become associated with him as the film progresses. Near the end, he'll toss them away and dive into the sea, never to resurface again.


A long-shot of the Brazilian landscape.


As Peixoto cuts from that shot to the next, of a couple walking on the beach, the slow fade gives us a neat in-between image of two giants seemingly walking right over the Earth.


At times, Peixoto cranks up the contrast of his images. Here we have only black and gray.


Some time later, we'll get the inverse: the negative, and flipped horizontally.


A canted angle wheat field, leading up to a beautiful composition.