I Don't Dance

Film: Ultimo Tango a Parigi (Last Tango in Paris)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

Certain films resonate with people. For instance, say “The Exorcist” to people talking about movies, and you’re guaranteed to get some sort of reaction. Ultimo Tango a Parigi, far better known as Last Tango in Paris is another film of the same stripe. Many people have heard about it and anyone who has seen it has an opinion on it. The main opinion is that it’s filled with the sort of prurient material usually available only in a plain brown wrapper behind the checkout.

You know what? I’m going to make this quick and simple, and I’m not even going to bother with character names. A guy who owns a hotel(Marlon Brando) goes through the trauma of his wife killing herself. Before her body is cold, he seeks out an apartment to rent. While there, he meets a young woman (Maria Schneider) also looking for an apartment for her fiancé and her. The guy rents the place and keeps it as a sort of love shack for him and the young woman, who hook up and have all sorts of increasingly kinky sex until the end of the film. Because he’s looking for some sort of escape, he refuses to talk or allow her to talk about their past lives. Keep in mind that the Brando character is—and I’m not exaggerating here—prowling for sex the same day his wife dies. When he gets back from his initial romp with the girl, one of the maids is cleaning up the blood.

Really, that’s the movie. He deals with the loss of his wife, she deals with commitment issues, and the sex gets weirder and weirder and more and more uncomfortable to watch. And then a huge event happens that changes both of their lives, and the film ends.

I don’t want to sound like a prude here, but this film made me really uncomfortable. It has both everything and nothing to do with the sex. I don’t mind the sex, although I’m not always comfortable with erotica, but sex scenes are just another type of scene. It’s the participants here that make me want to look away.

Specifically, it’s Brando. The problem is that this is not the Brando of A Streetcar Named Desire or On the Waterfront or even Guys and Dolls. This is Brando the same year he made The Godfather. He’s losing what remains of his wispy hair, he’s getting paunchy (although he’s still a few years away from his eventual planetary mass), and he looks a lot like he should be somebody’s father. And the girl is less than half his age. He’s pushing 50 here, while Maria Schneider is about 20.

So, the question to ask yourself before watching this film is, “Do I want to see Brando’s flabby, slacks-covered ass making humpy-humpy motions?”

The scene that everyone talks about is the butter scene. For the uninitiated, allow me to paint a picture. During one of their frequent discussions, the Brando character decides to bring the kitchen into sex by quite literally buttering the girl’s ass and essentially raping her. The scene that so many people find titillating is thus a scene of buttery ass rape; all that’s missing is prison guards. When did unwanted, unlawful penetration with an assist by a condiment become sexy? Did I miss a meeting? If the buttered butt sex wasn’t enough, we later deal with a dead rat and physical abuse that is supposed to pass for sexy and doesn’t, culminating in some of the most abusive speech from Brando while she turns the butter scene back on him without the benefit of the butter. There’s plenty of frontal (and backal) nudity, but even that is sexy for about five seconds and becomes just more to make the film feel dirty.

Any film that deals with such material has to walk a fine line between artistic expression and borderline pornography or at least catering to the prurient interests of the audience. Ultimo Tango a Parigi erases the line and heads so far into the prurient that it becomes a turn off. Even early on, before the sex gets nasty, I have difficult time taking this seriously. Early on, our two characters sit in a post-coital clinch and she asks his name. He responds by saying he doesn’t want a name. He grunts for about 30 seconds and says that he’d rather that be his name. She tells him that her name is a series of ululations. I just can’t take that seriously. A grunt or two might make the intended point and be fairly typical post-coital speech—but this is excessive, as is so much else here.

While the sex is absolutely the thing that everyone concentrates on, there are a couple of plots going on around us here. First, we’ve got to deal with the girl and her fiancé (Jean-Pierre Leaud). He’s trying to make a film that stars her. She’s not sure she wants to marry him—of course she’s not really sure about anything else, either. Additionally, the Brando character needs to deal with the death of his wife and his with his in-laws, who he seems to abuse—particularly his mother-in-law.

Looking back at this film, I see that everything that isn’t disgusting is ridiculous. This is slightly more than two hours of my life I don’t get to have back. At least I don’t have to see it again. This is an ugly film about ugly people, and about as sexy as cardboard. For the first time ever, I've seen a film that takes place in Paris that doesn't make me want to go back to Paris.

Why to watch Ultimo Tango a Parigi: Because everyone tells you it’s filled with sexy-sexy.
Why not to watch: It’s about as sexy as a high colonic.

Oh! Calcutta!

Films: Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished)
Format: DVDs from Fountaindale Public Library through interlibrary loan on kick-ass portable DVD player.

This task I have set for myself is difficult. There are times when it is difficult because the film in question is one that I don’t want to watch or have difficulty watching. Other times, it’s that once I watch a film, I find that I don’t have a lot to say about it. Such is the case with the first of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road).

This is one of those films that is on the must-see list because of what it represents, not because of the movie itself. Satyajit Ray is one of the truly most important filmmakers in the history of India, and this is his first film as well as that start of the Apu Trilogy. This film represents nothing less than India’s arrival on the world stage of cinema. It is the first time that Indian film became known and discovered worthy of study outside of India. In short, Bollywood and all that it represents began here.

The film focuses on a single poor family in the Bengali region of India. The family is destitute, and it seems like nothing they do can change this. The father of the family, Hari (Kanu Banerjee) works as an accountant, but is so worried about losing his job that he won’t ask for his pay. He’d like to be a scholar and work as a playwright and priest, but there isn’t much work for him, and the money he does get needs to go to food and repaying debts instead of repairing the house, which needs to be fixed before the monsoon season.

Trying to keep the family together is Sarbajaya (Karuna Banerjee), who does her best with what she has. Her husband has his head in the clouds and little real ambition, and her children are, well, children. Additionally, she has to look after Indir (Chunibala Devi) an ancient, wizened relative.

The children are older daughter Durga (Uma Das Gupta) and younger son Apu (Subir Banerjee). They, despite the desperate poverty suffered by the family, enjoy themselves as much as they can. They watch travelling minstrel shows, get candy from a wandering seller, and play. Durga also likes to steal things, most notably fruit from a nearby orchard, much of which she gives to Indir. The thievery seems to stem from many things. First, the orchard once belonged to the family. Second, Durga is constantly hungry thanks to the crushing poverty. Third, evidently Durga sees nothing really wrong with taking what she wants.

This becomes a problem when the necklace of one of Durga’s friends goes missing. The poverty and natural inclination to steal makes Durga the most obvious culprit, and she is accused, but denies the theft. And then it’s dropped, essentially. Work dries up for Hari, but he has a possibility of some employment, and he leaves to pursue it. However, it turned out to be nothing, and he keeps looking for work for months. While he is gone, the family suffers from increasing poverty, which culminates in what becomes inevitable.

What makes a film like Pather Panchali difficult is why it made the list. It’s here for no other reason than because of its importance to Indian cinema and its reception on the world stage. For that reason (and I think that reason alone), the film is noteworthy and worth watching for anyone really serious about film. In actual practice, though, this film is really very dull. Not much happens for long stretches of time. There are plenty of shots of nature, particularly when the monsoon season starts. While beautiful, this is not languid or impressive. It’s just there. I’m certain that this is because Satyajit Ray was still learning the craft of putting a film together and hadn’t really learned tricks like pacing yet. It shows. While certainly masterful in places (Sarbajaya battling against the monsoon, for instance), it also shows the lapses of a brilliant amateur.

Ultimately, this is not a film I can recommend. Anyone truly serious about film should watch it because of its influence, but anyone who watches strictly for entertainment will not find a lot here. It’s slow and the pacing feels like it could be sped up a few miles per hour just so that something happens every now and then.

Aparajito (The Unvanquished) picks up not too long after Pather Panchali ends. Now in a new location, the family continues to struggle. Hari continues to look for work, and makes a little money with herbal remedies and reading scriptures. One night, he becomes very ill, and rather than resting the next day, he heads off to try to continue providing for his family. He doesn’t make it all the way back home, leaving Sarbajaya as the sole breadwinner.

She attempts to provide by taking work as a maid, but the family soon moves back closer to the ancestral home. Apu (in this film played initially by Pinaki Sengupta as a child and then as an adolescent by Smaran Ghosal) asks to be sent to school, in a way to fulfill his father’s dream for him—in Pather Panchali, his intent had been to educate Apu himself. Apu excels at school and earns a scholarship, taking him to Calcutta and away from his mother.

This relationship—Apu and Sarbajaya after the death of Hari is one of the main points of Aparajito. Sarbajaya doesn’t want to let go of her son. She would prefer that he stay in the small village rather than leave for Calcutta while Apu wants only to get away from all of the pain of his life so far and start somewhere new. Sarbajaya eventually gives in and allows him to go.

Once in Calcutta, Apu starts his own life, getting a job ,and thus finding few reasons to return to his mother and finding many excuses to keep him away. As time goes on and Sarbajaya begins to become ill, Apu eventually realizes that he must return home for his mother. It is here that the main crux of the film really occurs. Apu is essentially offered a choice: he can follow in the footsteps of his father or he can attempt to truly create his own life and path. His father’s path is the traditional one, but has held nothing but heartache and poverty for Apu and his family. While the new path may be more exciting, it is also unknown, and would break Apu’s ties with his past.

Like Pather Panchali, Aparajito is a slow film, taking its own time getting from place to place and event to event. However, it also feels much more controlled than Pather Panchali, as if Ray had learned something in the creation of the first film that he carried over into the second.

Combined, these two films make a sort of bildungsroman of Apu. This isn’t immediately obvious, because Apu is a far more secondary character in the first film and becomes central to the narrative only after the death of Hari in the first part of Aparajito. I have not yet seen or located the third film in the trilogy, but I would imagine that Satyajit Ray completes the coming of age and moral growth of Apu. At least that makes a certain sense.

While interesting, the version of Aparajito I found suffers in the subtitles department. The subtitles are simple white text, and frequently the words are completely washed out against the backdrop of the film, making some conversations very difficult to follow. Fortunately, the film itself is not a complex story, and it’s not too tough to figure out from actions and some context what is going on. Sadly, there are times when snips of conversation are lost, and it’s easy to simply assume that nothing important has been missed.

Like Pather Panchali before it, Aparajito is difficult to recommend for anyone watching strictly for entertainment, simply because the film is not extremely entertaining. It is notable, and worth watching, and interesting visually. It’s just painfully slow. Both films are helped tremendously by an excellent soundtrack courtesy of Ravi Shankar.

For what it’s worth, the longer these films continued, the more I became interested in them. I very much want to see the final film in the trilogy, Apur Sansar in the very near future.

Why to watch Pather Panchali: For the same reason some silent films are still worth watching—for the history.
Why not to watch: Much of it is pretty dull.

Why to watch Aparajito: A continuation of the story started in Pather Panchali
Why not to watch: Expect only partial resolution; it’s the middle of a trilogy.

We're Gonna Get You

Film: The Evil Dead
Format: DVD from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Sometimes I am forced to watch a movie before I am prepared to see it. I’ve been really trying to concentrate as much as possible on films that I haven’t seen before for the last several months, and while there are a few exceptions here, most of the films I’ve watched for this blog this year were new to me. However, as a member of the 1001 Must See Movies Blog Club, the weekly assigned reviews plan out some of my viewing. The Evil Dead is coming up, so I figured I’d knock it out now rather than wait. It’s the same reason I watched Citizen Kane last week.

When I first looked through the Tome of Knowledge, I was mildly surprised and disappointed that The Evil Dead made the list while Evil Dead 2 did not. The sequel is in many ways the superior film. Buoyed by the surprise success of the first film and with a better and larger budget, the sequel has better effects, more effects, and more gore. It’s also far less a horror film and much more a parody. Sure, there are scares a-plenty, but it’s an homage to Moe, Larry, and Curly, and it’s campy as all hell. “Why,” I thought, “couldn’t the compilers of the book see that it was a better film?”

Having just rewatched The Evil Dead, I get it. Evil Dead 2 is a better film, but it’s not as important to the genre. Our original film set an interesting standard for low budget horror. It shows that a really good idea, creativity, and invention is all that’s needed to make a groundbreaking, entertaining film. Raimi, because he had to cobble things together and work with inventiveness instead of money, did some truly innovative work.

The story is simple. A group of five people, two guys and three girls, rents a cabin in the woods of Tennessee. While there, they discover a few artifacts from the previous inhabitants of the cabin, an archaeology professor and his wife. Specifically, they find a terrible book “bound in human skin and inked in human blood” as well as a tape recording of the professor talking about the book. They listen to the tape, which contains the incantations to bring terrible spirits into the world and allow them to possess the living. And so the quintet is attacked by the spirits, get possessed, and kill each other off for about an hour before the film ends. That’s really it.

The Evil Dead is, by definition, amateur film, but it’s never amateurish. Like many truly great independent visions of beginning filmmakers, it was made with whatever money Raimi and his cohorts could beg, borrow, or steal. High-interest loans, investments from local dentists, and cutting corners created this film.

Where the film really shines is both in Raimi’s imaginative playing with horror tropes and in his incredibly inventive use of the camera. Our opening shot, for instance, comes from the perspective of whatever it is that lurks in the woods. It skims low over the ground, tipping and swaying. Evidently, this was done by strapping the camera to a 2x4 and running with it through the woods. It’s a great shot, and such a low budget, creative way to do it.

Our five unhappy campers consist of two couples: Ash (Bruce Campbell) and Linda (Betsy Baker) and Scotty (Richard DeManincor) and Shelly (Theresa Tilly) as well as Ash’s sister Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss). Cheryl is the focus of most of the weirdness initially. She gets a few flashes of things to come, but it’s not until the incantations are recited from the tape that we get full-on weird. Things really switch into high when Cheryl wanders out into the woods and is attacked. She’s not attacked by a creature, but by the woods themselves in one of the most brutal and unpleasant rape sequences ever filmed.

Another example of the inventiveness here is Cheryl’s possession. While Shelly and Linda test Linda’s ESP with a deck of cards (Linda fails horribly, but Shelly pretends that she’s guessing cards correctly), it is Cheryl who starts guessing the cards correctly in an increasingly disturbed and disturbing voice. She then turns and has become a vision from hell—makeup that looks like a child applied it to a doll and completely white eyes.

As the film progresses, Shelly becomes possessed, then Linda, then Scotty, leaving poor Ash to battle them all with a found shotgun and a chainsaw. Linda is the most terrible, with her awful makeup and sing-song child’s voice, cooing “We’re gonna get you…” In the process of fighting them off, Ash is covered with more stage blood in varying colors than has ever been dumped on a poor, unfortunate actor before or since (or at least until the sequel).

The effects don’t hold up. They didn’t hold up when they were created thanks to the low budget that went almost entirely to some claymation effects at the end of the film. And so what? The Evil Dead is all about getting as much scare and gore and creeps as possible in a terribly short running time with a cash flow that paid for Karo syrup and non-dairy creamer instead of actual stage blood. And it works. It’s damned effective.

The Evil Dead, if nothing else, exists as a monument to what is possible with some imagination and some real dedication to create something. Thanks to this film, Bruce Campbell has made a career in fun, low budget films and has a huge cult following. Thanks to this film, Sam Raimi has gone on to direct big budget films like the Spider-Man franchise. Oh, and the assistant film editor for this was none other than Joel Coen, who’s had something more than a career in the business as well. Not bad for some guys from Michigan.

Why to watch The Evil Dead: Truly original, low-budget horror and the start of at least three great careers.
Why not to watch: Tree rape.

Month 17 Status Report/Meme Participation

I don't generally participate in movie blog memes because of how focused this blog is, but the current one is far too much fun to not join in. So, as a break from the typical status report, here are my answers to the 15 Movie Questions currently circulating.

1. Movie you love with a passion

...28 Days Later. I realize that many people dislike the third act of this, but I really like this film stem to stern. It's zombies, plus a completely new take on zombies!

2. Movie you vow never to watch

Hostel. Torture porn just doesn't swing it for me, and this seems like the most egregious example.

3. Movie that literally left you speechless

Idi i Smotri. I have never seen a better argument against war, or a more brutal lesson in the same. It not only left me speechless, I couldn't bring myself to move, and I watched the DVD menu for a good five minutes before I could turn it off.

4. Movie you always recommend

Hot Fuzz. I like it more than I liked Shaun of the Dead. It's a thorough skewering of buddy cop movies and plays all of the cliches perfectly.

5. Actor/actress you always watch, no matter how crappy the movie.

Either Audrey Tautou or Audrey Hepburn. I love them both equally. I almost said Cary Grant.

6. Actor/actress you don't get the appeal for

Renee Zellweger. When did sucking on a lemon become sexy? I don't condone abusive behavior, but seriously, she has a face that's absolutely dying for a slap. Second place, Katherine Heigl.

7. Actor/actress, living or dead, you'd love to meet.

Bruce Campbell. 'Cause he's the man.

8. Sexiest actor/actress you've ever seen (picture required!)

Salma Hayek. I did not have to think about this.

9. Dream cast

The cast of any Christopher Nolan film, but directed by Guillermo del Toro--especially if del Toro is adapting a Lovecraft story. How much fun would it be to see Joseph Gordon Levitt, Cillian Murphy, and Ken Watanabe fighting eldritch horrors from beyond space and time?

10. Favorite actor pairing

Groucho Marx and Margaret Dumont. Has there ever been a better foil for a better comic? I think not.

11. Favorite movie setting

Paris. I'd live there if I could, and every movie that takes place or has a scene there makes me want to go back. Sacre Cour (in the background) is my favorite place in the world.

12. Favorite decade for movies

The '80s. Not a popular answer, I know, but it was the decade I came of age in, and the movies that were critical for my formative years all come from this decade. It was a great decade for science fiction, too.

13. Chick flick or action movie?

Action. If I'm paying $9 to see something, I want bread and circuses. I want explosions and quality kill, dammit. I have money; entertain me!

14. Hero, villain, or anti-hero?

Anti-hero. I like my movie gods to be accessible and believable. I like them bad enough to be dirty, but not so bad to be despicable. Heroes are just too perfect.

15. Black and white or color?

How can I choose? I love both. There's a part of me that loves it when a modern filmmaker chooses to use black and white, though.

It Only Sounds Like Porn

Film: The Big Red One
Format: DVD from personal collection on itty bitty bedroom television.

I have no idea why I watched The Big Red One the first time other than the fact that it was a war movie, and when I was a kid, war movies were my favorite genre of film. I don’t think I knew then that the official museum of the First Division was almost literally in my backyard, or at least within a 15-minute drive. All I knew was that it was a war movie and that guys shot at stuff and got shot at, and bad guys died, and that was enough for me.

The film opens in the days at the tail end of World War I. An unnamed man (later referred to only as the Sergeant and played by Lee Marvin) is wandering the battlefield when he is attacked by a crazed horse. The horse destroys his rifle. The man then encounters a German soldier who tells him the war is over. Not believing the German, the man kills the German with a knife, only to discover later that he’d been told the truth, making what he did not killing an enemy, but murder, at least in his own mind.

We flash forward then to World War II, with a group of new soldiers heading for North Africa under the command of the Sergeant. Of this group and the Sergeant’s rifle squad, we are concerned really with four men: Zab (Robert Carradine), who is an aspiring novelist and also our narrator through the film; Griff (Mark Hamill), a semi-pacifist and sharpshooter; Vinci (Bobby Di Cicco); and Johnson (Kelly Ward). The other soldiers in the rifle squad come and go, but these four remain, fighting through North Africa, Sicily, D-Day, and across Europe until the end of the fighting.

And that is really all that happens here. There is no major overarching plot to keep us glued to our seats. While several of the characters—particularly Griff—experience some changes between our opening frames and the credits, this film is different from most World War II films and most war films in that there is not a particular mission or event that concerns the bulk of the action. Instead, the plot is the survival of these men in the squad—can they make it to the other side of the war with not only their bodies but their minds still intact?

There are a number of particular events that occur through the film, of course, to show us in the audience the true horrors of battle and of warfare. We see the men dig into foxholes at Kasserine, we see them fight German panzer divisions on Sicily. We see a vicious firefight in an insane asylum. All of this culminates in the liberation of a concentration camp and the realization of what has been going on far behind the German lines.

While both war and anti-war films have been made almost since films started rolling more than 100 years ago, The Big Red One is different from both in many respects. It’s almost neutral on the idea of whether we should fight in wars or not. War is treated not as something to seek for and find glory and honor. It’s also not treated as the greatest evil of Mankind and something that should be avoided at all costs. Instead, war simply exists, and men go to fight and die in it, and some of them live to see the end while others are killed along the way. In essence, war here isn’t objectively good or bad—that judgment is up to each of us individually.

Certainly war isn’t glorified here. The men are simply men—tough in many cases (Lee Marvin couldn’t possibly be something other than tough), dedicated, good soldiers, and even willing to fight for their country, but there is no tickertape parade or swelling musical strains here. At the same time, the theme of killing in war versus murder is played out multiple times, and Fuller’s conclusion seems to be that these two things are not synonymous—that there exists a very real difference between murder and death in war. Again, war simply exists, and the rules for it exist, and there is no objective judgment. What we learn by the end is that war exists sometimes because it has to.

In many ways, it feels like American war movies grew up some with the creation and release of The Big Red One. Instead of nationalistic chest thumping, propaganda, or pacifism, we get instead something that attempts to approach simple reality.

All well and good, but how is the movie? It’s a keeper. There’s enough going on here to keep a dedicated action fan watching. There’s enough “us good, them bad” for even the staunchest military hawk to clap hands and cheer. There’s enough “war is hell” for the doves. And despite this, it doesn’t feel scattered or difficult to follow.

I can’t say it’s my favorite war movie, but it was an important step in moving the film industry toward more realism in such films. That it does so without obvious moral judgment is even more impressive.

Why to watch The Big Red One: American war movies grown up.
Why not to watch: War is never pretty.

Robot Love

Film: WALL-E
Format: DVD from personal collection on middlin’-sized living room television.

Say what you will about Pixar, they aren’t afraid to take chances. This is a company that made a kids movie about monsters in the closet, people who created an engaging story about a sewer rat living in a restaurant, and a children’s fable about a cranky old man. It seems like the folks at Pixar go out of their way to craft stories about the most unusual, non-kid-film characters they can think of. WALL-E pushes that envelope about as hard as Pixar can push it, and the fact that Pixar pulls it off is nothing less than amazing.

In a future world, the Earth has become so covered in garbage and trash that it is no longer fit for human habitation. The humans all leave to journey out in space for a few years while the planet is reconditioned by hordes of little garbage compacting robots called WALL-Es (Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth class). The clean up is originally estimated at five years, but it takes quite a bit longer. In fact, as the movie opens, there is only a single WALL-E left functional on Earth.

Having worked around the refuse of Earth for so long, and now completely isolated, WALL-E has developed something of a personality. He has a penchant for old musicals and likes to collect interesting items that he finds in his wanderings. WALL-E continues to compact garbage, making massive towers of waste material, but also puts his more interesting finds into an old cooler that the takes back to his home every day. He collects anything that strikes his fancy—Rubik’s cubes, old lighters, a bra, a hubcap.

Everything changes for WALL-E with the arrival of EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Examiner) from the human ships still in orbit. While it’s not immediately evident what EVE wants, she appears to be searching for something. Alone for so long, WALL-E is immediately smitten with this sleek new robot, and he does everything he can to gain her attention.

Eventually, after taking a couple of high-powered explosive shots at him, EVE figures out that she can trust the little yellow robot. He tries everything he can to impress her, and finally does when he presents her with a growing plant. EVE shuts down when this happens, and is eventually taken back to space to trigger the recolonization of Earth by the generations still alive. These generations, with 700 years in space of pampering and massive bone density loss, have their own problems to deal with, including a ship’s computer that would rather keep the people in space.

WALL-E is amazing not because of or even in spite of the characters. What is truly astonishing here is that there is virtually no dialogue through most of the film. Only the people on the giant spaceship really have much to say—WALL-E doesn’t say much beyond his own name and “EEE-vuh,” which is about the amount of dialogue that EVE has. And yet, while our only other character for the first half hour or more of the film is a cockroach, there is not a single dull moment.

The second half of the film, with WALL-E trying to find and then rescue EVE, and EVE trying to find and rescue WALL-E is not nearly as entertaining as the scenes with WALL-E exploring the remains of civilization on Earth or the rather tender scenes in which he tries to impress EVE with his collection of junk. It’s not that the second part of the film is bad, but it loses a great deal of the innocence and sweetness of the film’s opening.

I very much expected to like WALL-E, this being another film that was built up in my mind before I watched it. I knew my kids liked it, which is why I purchased a copy for them the other day—it took them less than 48 hours to break it out and watch. Sadly, though, I’m not sure it hits my top tier of Pixar films. It’s better than several, not nearly as good as at least three of the Pixars I’ve seen (I still haven’t seen all of Toy Story 3 or Up). I really wanted this to rank with The Incredibles, Monsters Inc., and Toy Story. Instead, it comes in a little south of Ratatouille.

The first part of WALL-E is irrepressibly cute, but never cutesy. In the second half, we’re hit with message-message-message in terms of both environmentalism and the tendency for people to be fat and lazy. Good messages to put in front of kids, no doubt, but there were moments when it felt like I was getting hammered with them.

The film also makes some interesting comments about gender, probably without meaning to. WALL-E is male; EVE is female. How do we know? We simply do, but part of the reason is because of some subtle stereotyping. WALL-E is boxy and angular while EVE is curved with no angles. WALL-E is dirty and unkempt; EVE is clean and shiny. It's a nice touch that here EVE is the savior of humanity and the world. Still, is it a mistake that WALL-E is cute and cuddly and comfortable (and male) and EVE is sleek, pretty, and somewhat terrifying (and female)? I'm certain much of this is not intentional, or happened because such stereotypes are fully ingrained in us. And it's worth noting that in contrast to these stereotypes, EVE is also smarter and better with technology than her male counterpart. Unintentional almost certainly, but it's definitely there.

In short, WALL-E is good, maybe even great, but Pixar has been better. It’s still a better film than about 95% of “family” films ever made.

Why to watch WALL-E: It’s 100 times better than you imagine a movie about a garbage robot could be.
Why not to watch: The cuteness will make your eyeballs melt.

Tahitian Treat

Film: Mutiny on the Bounty
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

There’s something special about a film of men on the high seas, battling the most powerful of elements and each other that gets the blood stirring. While seagoing movies of wooden ships and iron men are no longer yearly fare, enough of them were made in bygone years to last us for a long time. Many of these films tell the tale of war; others tell of piracy (a very popular thing at the moment). Still others tell of treachery and mutiny. Some of the greatest sea pictures are of the mutiny or almost-mutiny variety. Mister Roberts and The Caine Mutiny both fall into that broad category. So too do all of the different versions of Mutiny on the Bounty.

The story of the Bounty has been filmed multiple times—as a silent film, as the version here with Clark Gable, another version in the ‘60s with Marlon Brando, and an updated ‘80s version with Mel Gibson. There may well be other versions as well—it’s a popular story not the least of which is because of the various themes that it explores. Mutiny on the Bounty touches on themes of loyalty and duty as well as ideas of cruelty and leadership. We have base human emotions, nobility, sacrifice, danger…in short, everything a “boy’s own” adventure should have.

Our ship, the HMS Bounty, is heading to Tahiti on a trade mission. The ship is to transport a cargo of breadfruit trees to the West Indies to be replanted for food for the slaves working there. To staff the ship, the crew takes men from jails and press gang others into service. Sadly for those picked up in the press gang, the HMS Bounty sails under the captaincy of Bligh (Charles Laughton).

Captain Bligh (one letter away from “blight”) is a great seaman and a sailor’s sailor. His main issue is that he’s a complete son of a bitch. Certainly capable of sailing a ship through almost anything and to almost anywhere, he is intensely dislike by his crew for his obstinacy and his nearly pathological cruelty to the men. Any slight is dealt with in the harshest, most unfair methods, and Bligh brooks no word against his own. He is always correct, never to be corrected. A man asking for water while working is given water—by being keelhauled and killed. We learn of Bligh’s insane “by the book” mentality when before sailing, he is tasked with punishing a man who struck his captain. Before the punishment is given, it is discovered that the man is dead. Bligh orders the corpse whipped anyway.

As the journey progresses, we learn that this is the normal state of affairs for Bligh. He expects not merely for his orders to be obeyed, but blind obedience to every word he utters. A lapse in his own memory means punishment for anyone who disagrees with him. Often, it appears that he exacts punishments merely for the sake of doing so, hoping to cow the men into complete submission to his every whim. Just as critically, once Bligh has his mind made up about something, no force in the world can change it.

Opposing him is Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable), who believes that the men onboard would be better served by a little thought and a little mercy rather than draconian punishments for everything up to and including doing their duty as instructed. He begins to openly oppose the captain, especially once the ship reaches its final destination. Less obvious in his opposition to Bligh is Byum (Franchot Tone). Byum struggles with Bligh’s cruelty as much as Christian does, and wants things to improve for the men as well, but he is also young enough and is enough of an idealist that he refuses to compromise on what he considers to be his duty to King and country.

We get a nice idyll in Tahiti, where both Byum and Christian find sweet, sexy, native love until it’s time for the Bounty to head off back to the West Indies. Not too long after this, Christian has finally had enough of Bligh’s mindless cruelty and stages a mutiny with many of the men onboard. Byum, trying to stage a counter-mutiny, is trapped below decks and is thus not able to be put into the longboat with the rest of those loyal to Bligh.

This sets up the interesting sequence in which Bligh proves his ability, sailing a tiny little longboat across 3,500 miles of open ocean to safety. Once there, his goal is to get a new ship and sail back to Tahiti, confront the men who disobeyed him, and see as many of them swing from a yardarm as possible.

Mutiny on the Bounty won the Best Picture Oscar in 1936, and all three of the principal actors were nominated for Best Actor, the only time in history such an event has occurred.

Having now seen the film, I wonder at its inclusion. Certainly it’s a fine film, and while the scenery and the beauty of Tahiti are something to behold, it hardly seems like enough. I can’t think of a solid reason to want to watch this again. Without a doubt, Bligh is a bastard coated bastard with bastard filling…and? Fletcher Christian certainly talks a good game, but here I find it difficult to side with him fully.

I guess what I’m saying is that if a mutiny film needed to be included here, I’d have preferred The Caine Mutiny. If it was more a wooden ships/iron men film needed, I’d have preferred Master and Commander. Ultimately, this is kind of a big so what.

Why to watch Mutiny on the Bounty: A rousing sea adventure.
Why not to watch: Bligh will make you want to punch through the screen.