4/17/04:

Today was the last of my four-movie days. It was long, and the movies were of uneven quality, but still plenty of fun.

The theater was relatively sparsely populated when my girlfriend and I arrived to see our first movie. But the presenter was pleased to see so many people there, and praised us as "not the kind of people who'd see Kill Bill 2." This annoyed me slightly, as I am indeed the kind of person who would go see Kill Bill 2, and I in fact did go see it as soon as I had the chance. I don't think it's fair at all to put Kill Bill 2 in the same class as brainless action movies, as this woman obviously was. But soon enough the movie was beginning and my anger was forgotten.

Films I saw today: Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, Guard Dog, Hair High, Picadilly, and The Man of the Year

Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself

Here's a film with a rather confusing nationality. It's Danish, in that it was directed, produced, and generally "made" by Danish folks. But it's set in Scotland, all of the dialogue is in English, and all the actors are British or Scottish. Go figure.

Anyways, this one's about a very quirky fellow (Wilbur, played by relative newcomer Jamie Sives) who is constantly trying to kill himself, and constantly botching it. The botching is thanks in great part to his brother, Harbour (Adrian Rawlins, who plays the title character's father in the Harry Potter movies), who insists on saving him. Wilbur is so selfish and unlikable that even his suicide support group hates him ("It's more humiliating every time I survive," Wilbur grumbles), but his brother is his complete opposite. Harbour is willing to put aside everything to help Wilbur. He takes him in to his own place (which is above a used bookstore which he owns and runs) and attempts to remove from the premises all implements with which Wilbur might hurt himself--knives, ties, drugs, hair dryers. He even turns the gas off.

Wilbur and Harbour's father just died, but that's not the reason Wilbur's trying to kill himself. It has more to do with guilt over his mother's death, which happened many years ago when Wilbur was young. Wilbur is still like a big child. He doesn't seem to take other people's feelings into account at all. His brash, blunt, devil-may-care attitude is attractive to some; kids, for instance, love him. Some women are also turned on by him, but few of them really interest him (when a woman at the hospital licks his ear, he walks out on her, angrily shouting that he would have bought a dog if he wanted that kind of thing).

But soon Harbour and Wilbur meet a woman named Alice who will change both their lives. Alice (Shirley Henderson, who plays Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter movies) is a single mother struggling to keep her daughter Mary and herself alive. She works as a cleaner at the nearby hospital. She comes into the bookstore again and again to make some money by selling old books. Inevitably, she finds Wilbur in the middle of one of his many suicide attempts and manages to saves him. Harbour and Alice fall for each other quickly. Unfortunately, Wilbur and Alice start to fall for each other, as well. Then Harbour discovers that he is deathly ill, and tries to hide it from everyone, even himself. As always, he is selfless, and doesn't wish to burden anyone with his problems. But inevitably it comes out, and Wilbur realizes all of the sudden that he cares about people, and has something to live for. Of his brother he says, "I'd rather die than hurt him. You might not think that's much coming from me..."

For a movie filled with suicide attempts (some of which end up successful) and intense feelings of guilt, love, and sadness, Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself is surprisingly funny--in a wonderfully dark and ironic way, of course. But this film is also very moving. We feel for Harbour, who cheerfully gives of himself to everyone, usually receiving for his trouble not thanks but betrayal, from his friends and from fate. One of the most painful scenes in the film is when Harbour reveals that his father mistook him for Wilbur during his last days. "So I was Wilbur," he says. "Everybody always loved Wilbur very much."

But the movie succeeds in making us feel for Wilbur, too. He's a selfish, tactless prick, but he's also very funny, totally human, and completely understandable. All of the characters, even secondary ones like Horst (Mads Mikkelsen)--a rather moribund doctor with ghosts of his own who ends up providing psychiatric help to both Wilbur and his brother--are fully realized and believable. And this film itself feels very real and true. It is not simple and pat at all; it does not dissolve into a Four Weddings and a Funeral-type romantic comedy. The ending of the film, the details of which I will not reveal, is at once very sad and very happy. Yes, this is a melodrama, in its own way, but it is carefully and expertly done. It shows us, with joy and with pain and with humor, the terrible and wonderful truth that life goes on.

My Poll Rating: Excellent

Intermission

This film hit my girlfriend and I pretty hard--my girlfriend especially. It's pretty intense, and she actually considered it more deeply than I did. I'm the kind of person who likes to let a film do to me what it wants to do. If a film presents me with a "hero" or protagonist that I'm supposed to like and sympathize with, I will do my best to go along. I give movies the benefit of the doubt. So I kind of went along with the ending of Wilbur without thinking that much about how awful and painful it really was. My girlfriend pointed this out to me, and I was taken aback a bit. I still think it's a very good film, but I feel a bit uneasy about where it asks us to put our sympathies at the end.

A cab ride across the city took me to the Prince Music Theater and a very different kind of film--Bill Plympton's latest full-length animated feature. This film was, unfortunately, preceded by an introduction by Mike Enright--whom I have come to loathe for various reasons--and a short film that I'd already seen. Even worse, the film itself wasn't very good. But Plympton himself was there, which was neat, and it's always cool to have the chance to see this kind of film.

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Guard Dog

I'd already seen this one. Check out my review here.

Hair High

I've talked about Plympton before. He's a cool guy and sometimes he does some really cool stuff. But his work is uneven, and his humor is pretty straightforward and lowbrow. He doesn't have a lot to say. He just likes to do some fantastically surreal and gross animation, throw in some sex and fart jokes, and then be on his way. Which is fine. Unless you try to stretch that out for an hour and fifteen minutes, which is what he tries to do here in the often disgusting, frequently funny, occasionally confusing, sometimes boring, and always very, very odd Hair High.

The basic premise of the story is a very familiar one. It's a classic, romantic '50s high school love story. The nerdy new kid at school, Spud, gets on the bad side of the star quarterback of the football team, a jock bully named Rod. As penance, Spud is forced to become the slave of Rod's girlfriend, Cheri--who is, inevitably, the captain of the cheerleading squad. He must carry her books, do her homework, etc., etc. At first they hate each other and bicker and fight incessantly, but of course eventually they fall for each other and then it's off to the big dance and the showdown with Rod.

A lot of this should sound familiar. We've all seen our share of movies about the couple that fights until they suddenly end up in each other's arms. And every high school romance is about the fight between the jocks and the nerds, and ends with a showdown and a big dance. The difference here is that this is a Plympton animated film, so it's constantly crossing lines other films never even get near, and constantly taking inexplicable detours into the gruesome and the surreal. Take, for instance, the scene in which the chain-smoking science teacher, Mr. Snerd (voiced by David Carradine of Kill Bill--his half-brother, Keith Carradine, voices another character in the film; Keith, incidentally, has an actress daughter named Martha Plimpton, no relation to Bill Plympton), coughs up all of his organs and Spud must use his nerdy knowledge to direct the class and help reassemble the professor. Or the scene (which as far as I can tell is not in any way connected to the rest of the plot) in which a girl's body is invaded by tiny UFOs as she sleeps.

And then there are the filthy, filthy sex jokes. The football game is particularly excellent example of this part of Plympton's oeuvre. It's the Fighting Cocks versus the Beavers (argh!), and Rod's buddy, desperate to get a date for the dance, is tricked into taking an aphrodisiac. He then goes out on the field as the Fighting Cocks' mascot, but spends the entire game running around rutting with everyone and everything in sight. As the commentator puts it at one point, "That cock's full of spunk." He even eventually lays some eggs, and then, to my surprise, actually dies. His funeral is an insane, depressing, and hideously funny disaster. No one there--including the boy's mother--can think of a good thing to say about him. Then a fire starts, and the priest ends up in the casket with the dead body, and pretty much chaos ensues.

So yeah, Plympton will go there, even if no one else will. And that's cool and all, but damn. Sometimes there's a good reason why nobody goes there.

And besides, the movie's pacing and continuity is ruined by all of these random detours. The plot is so familiar that we all know generally where it's headed, and it's a bit painful to have to sit there as it starts and stops and swerves off to the side and then finally heads off in the right direction again. And then, near what should be the end, the story suddenly takes another insane Plympton-esque detour, as the two main characters die in each other's arms and then come back as parasite-infested zombies a year later to have their revenge, and to celebrate their endless, disgusting love.

So the movie is a rather unfortunate combination of predictable elements that take too long to develop, and unpredictable elements that can be amusing, but often tend to be stupid, disgusting, or just confusing. Which is not to say I hated it. There were still funny scenes and some really inspired surreal animation. But I was a bit disappointed.

My Poll Rating: Good

Intermission

After the show, Plympton was there to talk about the film, so I hung around for a little while, but eventually left before he did. I wanted to meet my girlfriend in the lobby (she skipped out on this film, but was coming back to join me for the next one), and plus I don't really care much for question and answer sessions. They can be awkward and embarrassing, and I didn't even really much like the movie that this one was about. I did, however, hang around long enough to learn one cool fact: Plympton's fellow animation giants Matt Groening ("The Simpsons") and Don Hertzfeldt ("Rejected") had cameos in the film as the voices of tertiary characters Dill and Hill, respectively.

Then it was back out to the lobby where I met my girlfriend and we got into our respective lines. While I was in the lobby, I happened to see local filmmaker Andrew McElhinney just leaving. This guy has become kind of an in-joke among my friends and I. A group of us saw a terrible film by him called A Chronicle of Corpses at the festival one year. One of my friends was bad mouthing the movie later when he happened to walk by. Now she is constantly in fear of running into him whenever we talk about the film.

As I was waiting in line, I had a conversation with a few people about (what else?) movies. A volunteer at the festival mentioned to us that people were forging press passes and all access badges. I was a little shocked by this. Why go to all that trouble just to get in to see a movie without paying?

When we got inside, I took a look around and thought maybe there was a higher percentage of older folks in the audience this time, but I could have been making that up; it's something I assumed would happen with an old film like this one.

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Picadilly

Picadilly is a silent Hollywood classic that was originally made in 1929. The print we were treated to at the festival was a restored version made just last year. This version had to be put together from prints instead of the original negative because the negative was so decayed. (Insert diatribe about the importance of film preservation here.) But the restoration was very well done; this print is beautiful. If it weren't for the dated style and content of Picadilly, you might mistake it for a recent film.

This screening of the film was accompanied by live music from local keyboardist Don Kinnear, who also provided a live soundtrack for last year's The Man Who Laughs. Mr. Kinnear does a pretty good job, though I was a bit uncomfortable with the stereotypical Asian-sounding music he used for the Chinese dancing girl's theme.

But now for the movie itself. I was impressed with Picadilly from the very start, when it used the clever device of placing the opening credits on the banner ads of passing double-decker buses. It continued to impress me throughout with its cleverness, its beauty, and its subtlety.

The movie's story is a pretty simple one. Vic (Cyril Ritchard) and Mabel (Gilda Gray) have a song and dance act that's the talk of London. They perform at Valentine's club. Everyone assumes that Vic and Mabel are an item--including Vic--but in fact Mabel has eyes only for Valentine (Jameson Thomas). One night during the performance, everyone is distracted by a loud patron complaining about a dirty plate (the patron, described in the credits as "Greedy nightclub diner," is played by Charles Laughton, before he was famous; according to the IMDB, a young Ray Milland is also hanging around somewhere in the nightclub as an extra, though I'm afraid I didn't spot him). The scene is doubly interesting, because it underlines the clientele's decreasing fascination with Vic and Mabel's act (a loud customer is more interesting), while also setting the plot in motion and leading us to the introduction of another of the main characters. The blame for the dirty plate gets passed down the line until it reaches back to the dishwashers in the scullery, who are being distracted from their work by the dancing of a stunning Asian beauty named Sho-Sho (Anna May Wong) who also works at the club. Her manager, having finally found an employee who can't pass the blame on to someone else, promptly fires her.

Meanwhile, Vic suffers yet another rejection from Mabel, and decides he's not going to take this anymore. He knows he can make it on his own and quits for a job in America, warning the angry Valentine on his way out that Mabel is washed up, and the act will die without him. Valentine is glad to be rid of the arrogant Vic, but also recognizes there is some truth in what he says. He needs a new dancer, a new act to keep people coming to his club. It isn't long before he hits on the idea of hiring back Sho-Sho, this time in a different position. But Sho-Sho, in classic vamp fashion, knows an opportunity when she sees one, and decides to play Valentine for all he's worth. She strings him along, and teases and seduces him, until she has him in the palm of her hand. Her boyfriend/agent, a young Asian man known as Jim, helps her along the way, but is jealous of, and frustrated by, her new relationship with Valentine, the rich white club-owner with whom he cannot possibly compete. Sho-Sho even shames Jim further by making him model her dancing costume for Valentine. Meanwhile, Mabel is starting to feel the pangs of jealousy, as well--of the professional and personal varieties. When she sees Sho-Sho's first dazzling, entrancing performance, she is overcome, and collapses in a faint.

Having set up a dangerous and juicy love quadrangle, the movie moves quickly towards its conclusion--a violent, tragic showdown, and a dramatic courtroom sequence.

The movie is filmed beautifully and, surprisingly enough for a film made before the method acting revolution, acted beautifully, as well. In fact, Picadilly--though it is certainly an over-the-top melodrama--is often surprisingly subtly done. Movies are often most successful and powerful when they show us things instead of telling us them, and silent movies are more likely to do this, simply due to their format--it's hard to fit a lot of words onto one of those inter-title cards. Picadilly shows us a great deal about its story and characters with simple, wordless photography--the close-up of Vic's hand after it's slapped away by Mabel, for example.

Which brings us back to the fantastic photography in this film. The camera often moves in a freeform manner, following the movement of the actors and the story in a dynamic way that seems a bit ahead of its time. And when it's not moving around, the camera is capturing amazing Hollywood close-ups of its stars. There are more than a few breath-taking, luminous celluloid portraits of the stunningly beautiful Anna May Wong in this picture.

But Picadilly isn't all beauty and loveliness. For one thing, despite my discussion of its subtlety, it is an old melodrama, so it does occasionally get a little ridiculous. The ending, for instance, with the courtroom showdown and such, is a bit unbelievable and way overdone.

And then there's that strong theme running throughout the film about the danger of miscegenation. The movie does admittedly make an effort to portray Jim and Sho-Sho as complete human characters with strengths, weaknesses, and emotions of their own. But all the same, Jim is ugly, and Sho-Sho is a conniving seductress, and ultimately (warning! Spoiler ahead!) it's the Asian people who kill and are killed at the end of the film. Valentine comes off as just a decent guy who was lead astray, and Mabel as his fragile flower, constantly fainting at the first sign of violence or tension.

A particularly illuminating scene in this regard comes near the end of the film when Valentine and Sho-Sho visit a dirty, crowded speakeasy. Here they witness a black man and a white woman violently thrown out of the club for dancing together. Disturbed by what this might mean for them, Valentine and Sho-Sho beat a hasty retreat.

Still, the movie is certainly not as bad as it could be. Although things turn out pretty much as we might expect for the Asian characters, the film doesn't just give us stereotypes. These are fully developed people with real personalities in a powerfully visual film. Their tragedy is fully realized, and we do not find ourselves hating them--we instead find ourselves sympathizing with them and the very human mistakes they make in their desperate attempts to succeed. The ending of Picadilly is poignant and meaningful--we watch as this violent human drama becomes just another lurid headline, disappearing quickly into the background as the tide of life rushes undeniably onward.

My Poll Rating: Very Good

Intermission

I had some time before my next movie, so my girlfriend and I met up with a few friends and went out for some dinner at a great Thai place in old city. Unfortunately, it took a bit longer than I'd hoped to get back across town to the Bridge, and I was a little late for my next movie. Luckily, the credits were still rolling as I came in and it didn't look like I'd missed much.

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The Man of the Year

Here's a film from Brazil, based on Patrícia Melo's novel, that has one of those "twist of fate" storylines. A "regular guy" by the name of Máiquel (played by a fellow named Murilo Benício, who looks--to me, anyway--quite a bit like Highlander star Christopher Lambert) dyes his hair blonde after losing a bet. This one act sets off a series of events that totally transform Máiquel's life, sending him into a spiral of crime and drug-use that eventually leads to the destruction of pretty much everything and everyone he knows.

The immediate effect of the hair dying is to make Máiquel feel stronger, better looking, and more confident. He picks up the pretty girl who did his hair and takes her to a bar. But there he meets a local thug named Suel who laughs at his new hair and calls him a fag. Máiquel takes an almost ridiculous amount of offense at this (the main character in another Hispanic film from last year's festival, X, was also really touchy about homosexuality, to the point of being violently homophobic--what's up with that?). They set up a time to meet later so they can fight it out. Máiquel obsesses over the appointment and shows up armed with a gun. Suel has clearly forgotten all about it and doesn't take Máiquel seriously, even when he sees the gun. He dares him to shoot. So Máiquel does, killing Suel right in front of his underage girlfriend (a fifteen year-old named Érica).

Máiquel is a bit horrified at what he's done, and very scared. He assumes he'll have to make a run for it. But it turns out that Suel was a thief and an all-around scumbag and everybody in town wanted him dead. Máiquel starts getting gifts left at his door. He gets discounts at stores. Even the local police congratulate him. In a particularly funny sequence, one of the gifts left at Máiquel's front door turns out to be a young live pig, which Máiquel names Bill and takes in as a pet. He makes a bargain with the animal: "Don't eat my sneakers and I won't eat you."

Eventually Érica shows up at Máiquel's door, too, demanding that he either kill her or provide for her, since he murdered her previous caretaker. Since he's not willing to kill her, he's forced to put up with her presence. In fact, Máiquel will continue to inherit things from the lives of those he's killed--and, yes, he will continue to kill.

The next murder takes place because of a toothache. Máiquel gets such a bad one that he's forced to visit a dentist. The dentist, a Dr. Carvalho, tells him he'll have to have it out, but Máiquel doesn't have enough money to pay for it. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it) Carvalho has heard about Máiquel's good deed and offers him a bargain--a favor for a favor. He explains that his daughter was raped, and that if Máiquel will kill the man that did this, he will fix Máiquel's teeth.

Máiquel feels like he has no choice. He heads out to do the deed, armed once again. Carrying a gun, he says, feels like you're wearing a crown.

But after following his prey for a while, Máiquel decides he doesn't want to kill the guy, and turns to leave. Unfortunately for him, the man has sensed he's being followed, and shoots at Máiquel. Forced to defend himself, Máiquel kills again. This time, he ends up inheriting the man's job--clerk at a pet store.

Máiquel tells us in narration that he only ever wanted to be a normal guy with a regular life--to marry, get a good job, have a kid. But he doesn't seem to be able to manage it. Part of his wish comes true, though perhaps not in the way he wants, when his girlfriend Cledir reveals that she's pregnant and he ends up marrying her. His boss, the extremely bitter and hateful pet shop owner, doesn't think much of the whole business. "Marriage is baby shit," he says. "All marriages are the same--just different shit. Women are pretty until you marry them, then they become fat, vindictive cows."

Did I mention that the movie is loaded with misogynist and racist language? It's hard to say for sure whether the film actually buys into these hateful ideas or not, but the pet shop owner's prediction does indeed come true: Cledir starts to grow larger almost immediately. She also becomes controlling, demanding, and generally oppressive.

Meanwhile, Máiquel discovers that Carvalho is a member of a group of rich local businessmen who have joined together to find some way of fighting back against the crime that they see all around them. They feel like they are at war, under siege, and they think they've found their perfect soldier in Máiquel. Soon enough, despite Máiquel's attempts to resist it, he and his friends have become a gang of assassins working for the dentist and his friends. Eventually Máiquel and his group decide to go professional and start their own "security" company. Killing becomes normal for him--it's just a job.

Further complicating Máiquel's life are his newfound addiction to cocaine, and his relationships with Cledir and Érica (who rather suddenly finds religion). Each of the women in his life wants the other one out. Violence, as always with Máiquel now, becomes the only solution. "Learning to kill is like learning to die," Máiquel tells us. "One day you do it, and that's it."

The movie neatly bookends itself by concluding with Máiquel eliminating all ties to his previous life and starting a new one by dying his hair black. Máiquel's final bit of narration can be paraphrased as follows: Life can be a river or a horse. Choose your fate. Flow along with it, or ride it where you want to go.

Máiquel says this with the confidence of one who thinks he is riding life like a horse, even though throughout the film he has found himself pushed into things mostly against his will. And yet it's hard to call him a victim of fate. He never had to do any of the terrible things he did in the film. He was just never a strong enough person to avoid doing them. In reality, it's no twist of fate that leads Máiquel down his path of violence and destruction--it's he himself.

Man of the Year is a rather strange and twisted little film. It's bitter and dark, violent and intense, ironic and funny. It does some clever and surprising things with its story and dialogue, but the general structure of its story is very familiar (a reviewer on the IMDB compares it to Scarface, and with good reason). And, as I suggested above, I am left uneasy by the seeming tone of the film. It is undeniably true that a movie can depict racism, misogynism, violence, and so forth without actually condoning such things. But I often got the sense while watching Man of the Year that at least some of those things were being condoned here. Are they really? I don't know for sure. In a way, it hinges on whether we are meant to understand Máiquel as a victim of fate, or as a victim of his own flaws. I state above unequivocally that Máiquel is not a victim of fate, because that's how I feel, but is that how the movie means me to feel? Is Máiquel a not-so-clever, but likable loser who is thrown into a position of prominence--and ultimately almost destroyed--due to a twist of fate? Or has he always just been a stupid, violent thug waiting to happen?

The problem is, I don't know. So the film leaves me feeling a bit queasy. I don't trust it or its point of view. I feel like it's trying to force a dark perspective on the world onto me, while smirking at its own cleverness. But here's the thing--it is pretty clever, at times.

Man of the Year is certainly no candidate for movie of the year--or even movie of the day. But it's worth a watch.

My Poll Rating: Good

Epilogue

After the movie came my usual day-ending ritual--a cab ride back home from the Bridge Theater. I was tired, but, as I mentioned above, this was the last of my four-movie days, so I could relax a little bit. Sort of.

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Jim Genzano