The Re-Evaluation: Josie and the Pussycats

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 53%

IMDB Rating: 5.3/10

Josie and the Pussycats was released into cinemas in the spring of 2001 to compete with the likes of Bridget Jones’s Diary and Spy Kids, targeting itself as a broad family comedy particular suited for teenage girls and fans of teenage girls. It failed both commercially and critically, widely dismissed by the critics at the time as a bland, pop-orientated wish-wash of a film and grossing just over $14 million with a budget in excess of $22 million. The eminent Roger Ebert described it as “as dumb as the Spice Girls” and it seemed that audiences agreed; in fact, I am pretty certain its comparison with the high-kicking pop girl-power pop sensations were exactly the sort of associations the studio courted. Based around the titular all-singing, all-dancing heroines of the successful Archie comic books series and 1970s cartoon series, it seemed exactly the successful teenage-friendly family-film fodder in the same style as The Flintstones and Scooby Doo, both of which seem low on charm and high on box-office statistics. Throwing in a couple of ‘hip’ up-and-coming teen actresses that included Rachel Leigh Cook (fresh off the 1999 hit She’s All That) and Tara Reid (fresh from American Pie) and surely that would seal the deal? Perhaps they wouldn’t reinvent the wheel but they’d make a bit of cash. So where did it all go wrong? Well, perhaps it’s because that’s because the film didn’t quite deliver on what the studio ordered. Its actually rather good. Its actually rather interesting. On the surface, the film may look like the teeny-poppy-cheesy-schmaltzy-lovey-dovey-kissy-kissy-fest the studio probably wanted it to be and the critics dismissed it as but, if one delves a little deeper, this film isn’t about surfaces; it attacks those who dwell on surfaces. I believe the film to be a snappy, witty and, at times, almost scabrous satire of the consumerism embedded into mass-market media and the banality of populism. Its funny, its insightful and its toe-tapping entertainment as well. It may be not quite what the studio wanted but, as far as I’m concerned, its exactly what the film-buff ordered.

The basic plot is simple and silly enough: Josie (Rachel Leigh Cook) and her band mates Harmony (Rosario Dawson) and Melody (Tara Reid) are a struggling band in a small town whose distant dream is of one day becoming rock stars. This all seems very far-off and unattainable, that is until they met Wyatt Frame (Alan Cumming), who instantly offers them a record deal without hearing the music and whisks them off to the big city where, within a week, they become the next big thing with no.1 singles, pop videos, showbiz parties and adoring fans. What they do not realise is that Wyatt is involved in a sinister plot to control teenagers minds by embedding their music with subliminal advertisement and messaging so that the government can control the youth of today as well as keep the economy ticking along nicely. Will the band members be managed to realise the truth before its too late or will, etc, etc dramatic devices and stuff.

OK, its hardly Rashomon in turns of its plot construction and I would be hard pressed to argue that in terms of pure narrative alone there exists enough of the satire that I am arguing exists. But frankly, what I have described is just the train-tracks that the real ride takes place on, just the tip of the iceberg of writer/director duo Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan’s marvellous send-up of everything from boy band culture, the banality of the pop industry and the idiocy of the cult of celebrity. The film even aims a couple of its joke-spiced arrows at the movie industry itself, attacking these institutions for promoting conformity at the expense of individuality and for going after that which sells over that which has value. I’m not saying that these are particularly brave points or even complex ones. They maybe easy targets but targets that need to be attacked nonetheless, and what is admirable is that not only does the film actually have a consistency in its message - it never cops out or reconciles itself to these big corporations like so much mainstream satire is guilty of – but that it is not preaching to the converted. As discussed, this is a film aimed at young, teenage girls; it isn’t playing to a receptive audience of stuffy, over-intellectualising bores, like myself, who might consider themselves above popular culture anyway because they’ve skimmed through a couple of articles by Slavoj Žižek. These ‘safe targets’ are in fact exactly the institutions that a typical film like this would be in bed with. Instead of exploiting its target audience to watch the film, buy the merchandise and wash it all down with a giant coke, it is in fact inciting them to stand and rail against such things. The film mocks teenagers pack-like mentality, points out how ridiculousness of what is taken as meaningful at that age and suggests a utopian future where we all stop this nonsense. And it does all these things in a way that is broad enough, funny enough and briskly enough made to actually appeal to that audience. I think I’d have taken quite a bit of inspiration from the film if I’d seen it back when it was released.
The engaging script is aided greatly by a very good cast. Alan Cumming, playing the slimy music executive, is absolutely brilliant. He steals the show every single second he is on screen, knowing exactly what sort of pantomime performance is needed and turns what is a good part on the page into a brilliant part on screen. For my money its one of his best roles, certainly the role I smile the most about when I think of him. Parker Posey, the 90s “queen of the indies” according to Time Magazine, is equally fantastic as the villainess of the piece, really enjoying herself in the limelight of mainstream fair. The female leads all work well and enthuse their roles with the charisma and moxie needed (even if Tara Reid’s ditsy blonde routine does get a bit irritating at times) and there are great cameos appearances throughout as others get in on the lampooning, including Carson Daly, Donald Faison, Seth Green and Eugene Levy.

But most interesting about the film is its use of product placement. The film is littered with it, absolutely covered from start to finish with brands and slogans and brands on top of slogans. Throughout the film, characters will stand consistently stand in sets decorated with ludicrous and overt sloganeering, ranging from standing behind giant SEGA signs in the middle of the road and have conversations surrounded by Reebox products in an office without acknowledging it. Many accused the film of being hypocritical for lampooning consumerism whilst presenting so much of it in the film, but bless them, they’ve missed the point entirely. Not a single brand featured in the film was paid for advertising but instead was chosen by the filmmakers. This isn’t the movie trying to make some quick cash, it’s an artistic decision, and what’s the point? Well, by taking these brands that litter the visuals of the modern, advertising-infested world and blowing them up, making their presence even more over, it seems to illuminate on the grostequeness and absurdity of these branding exercises. Characters get out of the shower and stand in a bathroom covered with McDonald’s Ms. They visit the aquarium and see great signs for Evian water that fish swim by. It makes the products themselves seem dim-witted – contrasting the grease-stained implications of a hamburger with cleanliness and hygiene, pitting supposedly ‘natural’ mineral water against, well, the sea. Given these juxtapositions, the products themselves seem stupid, their branding stupid and those the use them because of such advertising stupid. The visual excess of it seems to me similar to the 50s melodramas of Douglas Sirk, a filmmaker widely praised for his ability to pierce through the banality of the consumerism of the time through use of elaborate and colourful mise-en-scene. Elfont and Kaplan seem to be doing the same thing here but, rather than turning utilising visual excess through the fashions of households decorations and dresses as Sirk did, their canvases are logos and branding exercises. Whilst the film sets up a narrative of the subliminal messages of conformity, it actually does the opposite, feeding the viewer subtly and alternative world view of the hideousness of it all.

Josie and the Pussycats is a much more radical film then perhaps people realised first time around. Go check it yourselves, see if you can find the entrist delights I notice more and more each time I watch it. And even if you don’t see that, even if you dismiss it as the girly nonsense it was seen as first time around, then at least you’ll have Alan Cumming to see you through it all. Oh, and a bit of music as well (which, according to my DVD copy at least, was awarded 4 Stars by Empire Magazine. I do not know what that means but I suppose it might be good). Girl power… I guess.

Great Scenes in Great Movies: Alex DeLarge Dancing like Gene Kelly in 'A Clockwork Orange'

The Set-Up

Like so many great films, A Clockwork Orange is a based on the novel of the same title. Unlike so many great films, the film expands, improves and obliterates the purpose of the novel. It smashes it from existence, taking all that was worthy, interesting and worth exploring in the original text and doing it far better via the visual power of cinema.

In my ever-accurate opinion, the film is the most well constructed and well executed, most rich, most powerful, most visceral, most thrilling, most shocking, most exciting, most philosophical and, above all other things, most cinematic piece of filmmaking the human race has ever created. In fact, I will go further than that. I would happily but the film in the upper echelons of the pantheon of human achievement, taking equal footing to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Homer’s Illiad, Van Gogh’s Starry Night and, dare I say it, lovely, lovely Ludvig Van Beethoven himself.
The plot of the film is a rather simple parable. It tells the story of Alex, a teenage boy living in a dystopian society where law and order has all but broken down. By day, Alex spends his time dogging school and listening to Beethoven. At night, he and his friends cruise the streets indulging in narcotics, beating homeless people, breaking into people’s homes and casually raping women. He is the scurge of humanity and the scurge of the state and when he eventually gets caught for his actions and sent to jail, he volunteers to join a guinea pig programme whereby he will be psychologically conditioned to do good. Under this scheme, he is let back out on the streets with a physical incapacity, rather than a conscience or sense of right or wrong, to do bad things to people and we watch the outcome of these experiments as he is humiliated, tortured and made to suffer by those he has wronged. On paper, it is a rather simple examination on the nature of morality hinging on choice: that without the ability to do great evil then great good is meaningless, reducing mankind to a wholly unnatural and pointless creation (an analogy involving mechanics and some sort of fruit is springing to mind).

It is what Kubrick then does with Burgess’s story that takes it into the stratosphere of glory. The complexities and majesty of the film can largely be summed up by the presentation and interaction between Alex and the film’s pronounced visual style. The character of Alex is not just unpleasant, not a tragic anti-hero that we can all really relate to. The boy is evil: he kills, he rapes and he shows no real remorse for his actions at any point. Ever. And yet, despite all this, you are drawn to him throughout the film and find yourselves routing for the boy. From the very opening shot of the film, with the piercing stare of Malcolm McDowell, the haunting electronic score, the hypnotic voice over and the strange visuals of the Korova Milkbar, you are transfixed by the workings and world of this individual. Kubrick grabs you by the throat, forces you into Alex’s mindset and just won’t let you go through the film’s running time. This is all aided by the vivid charisma of his leading man, Malcolm McDowell, who takes his early 70s persona of the iconic youthful rebel thanks to his work with Lyndsey Anderson’s If… and uses it to construct a tour-de-force of a performance, taking command of the screen like a general. This is contrasted with a supporting cast of unknowns playing characterutered bores that you can’t possibly relate to. Alex represents all that humanity can achieve: he is wonderful, he is charming, he is deep, he is artful, he is whitty, he is dynamic, he is complex but he is also capable of doing great atrocities to others. When he is transformed into the titular Clockwork Orange, its painful to watch because a vivid specimen of humanity has been transformed into something profoundly more ugly, yet it cannot be argued that society is not better for him having become this thing.
The film never solves this dilemma either. At the end of the film, he is proclaimed cured of the technique, but not cured of his ability to be evil. In fact, we’re back to square one, as a montage of atrocities is shown to the same classical backing track that accompanies Alex’s violence before a shot of McDowell’s beaming face. Kubrick denies the mint at the end of the meal. The film doesn’t give the audience to safe and easy answers: not in that wishy washy way that modern directors mean when they say this, when in reality what they actually mean is that their films doesn’t actually have anything to really say. A Clockwork Orange has a simple message: humanity, with all its capable of, is a thing worth preserving. What it doesn’t do is simplify this issue, doesn’t make the message easy by pretending that we can all could just get a long if everyone realised what a great big spongy cake the world is. The film doesn’t use the best of us to celebrate the value of existence and life and creation, it uses the worse of us, thus make its message all the more powerful. Kubrick’s view of humanity was famously pessimistic, a pessimism I don’t share, and so to make a film celebrating the human spirit with all these complexities thrown in is rather astonishing. No, it is astonishing. Its breathtaking. Its cinema.

And that’s also important to remember, it’s a film. Its not a spoke novel, a filmed play, a narrativised work of academia: it’s a film. The message is complex and engaging because it’s a film. We see the violence plain and simple because it’s a film. There’s no option of escaping the reality of Alex, like there is in the novel, because we see plainly what he does to people. We can’t help like Alex because of his visual magnetism and the enforced magnetism of the direction. I can try to intellectualise A Clockwork Orange all I want, and plenty of others have done it a lot, lot better than me, but, ultimately, what is magnificent about is its visual splendour. Watching it for the two hours plus of its running time is like watching the birth, climax and sum of all human achievement. Its magnificent, it’s wonderful, and I think I’ll stop now and watch it again.

The Scene (08.35-13.16)

It begins at home, or at least a place called Home - an example of the brutal symbolism the film delights in quite forcefully punching the audience with throughout. An establishing shot tells this delightful information whilst the docile tones of Rossini’s The Thieving Magpie fill the soundtrack. The use of classical music is important throughout this scene, as it is in all of Kubrick’s films. Just as in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the music serves to remind the audience of a sense of history. Music is mankind’s achievement and legacy and just as this seemed fitting as it accompanied majestic shots of spaceships, it is fitting now. The soundtrack, as with the protagonist Alex DeLarge’s attachment to Beethoven, reminds of thecapability of humankind: about what glorious heights the individual is able to reach through creating, which are then juxtaposed with what is to follow as the scene descends into destruction. The theme of the duality of man is played out before the scene really begins in the stylistic and operatic ultra-violence we have just witnessed in the opening coda of the film and, just as the audience attempts to find some sort of rhyme or rhythm in all this madness, this particular scene arrives
Stylism immediately begins to break apart as the scene begins, the music fading away to a muted soundtrack as Alex and his droogs con their way into the home. How do they do this? By relying on the compassion of a middle-class couple as Alex pretends to have been in an accident and in need of an ambulance. Is it sickening to us that this wicked man goes to such low ebbs to break into the home of a seemingly nice couple? Well, perhaps we don’t approve, but we can hardly be appalled by it; the film won’t let us. The couple are too bland, as they speak in a highbrow drawl and act unemotionally to Alex’s tale. Their repressive actions in comparison with the vivid enjoyment of Alex and his droogs and frankly this continues as they do force their ways in, cackling like wild gorillas in mating, while the woman yelps a bit and the man does nothing.

At this point, not only is the style gone from the soundtrack, but retreats from the visuals as well. No longer is the audience treated to the framed and staged compositions the film began with. Instead, the camera becomes handheld and altogether rather messy composition of frame as characters rush in and out of shot and the action becomes difficult to decipher. In this moment, the true reality of the situation comes crashing down. This is not opera we are watching, not something composed and ornate and intricate. What we are watching is violence, and the destruction of Kubrick’s stylisation in akin to the destruction of grace that is happening before our eyes. We are not invited to watch on high as a perfectly composed masterwork is shown respectfully. Instead, we are placed in the house itself as the camera struggles to keep up and capture everything.
And so they beat up the man and they beat up the woman, until they are both bound by the gang's force and give in to whatever they are about to do to them – perhaps slightly quicker than the audience wants to accept as guilty thoughts flash through our heads that accuse them both of cowardice. Then, as we brace ourselves for an altogether unpleasant experience, Kubrick does something that no one is expecting. Rather than simply displaying the violence in all its shocking totality, he instead invites back in the legacy of cinema into the room. The soundtrack does not return but the shots do become quite elaborately framed again, albeit in a much looser and ropier sense then before, as the man and wife are placed on either side of the shot and Alex takes centre stage. It’s not quite as theatrical as before but neither is it realistic either. It’s too ornately composed to be realistic. At this point, Alex begins to sing Singin’ in the Rain, Gene Kelly’s romantic soliloquy from the classical musical. Not only does Kubrick deliberately bastardise the meaning of this song, applying it to a wholly inappropriate circumstance, he does in a way so unpleasant that it’s hard to even admit the effect it has on you. As Malcolm McDowell quite literally dances around the shot and performs his rhythmical torture and destruction, the frame gets more constructed and laboured and the camerawork more elaborate, and cinema itself presents its infectious delights to the audience. It’s not the man and woman’s suffering we’re responding to in this scene; it’s the majesty of song and dance and the charisma of Alex. Despite everything he’s doing, you can’t help but be mesmerised by it. Cinema makes the violence intoxicatingly difficult not to watch, and this gets more and more uncomfortable as the acts get worse and worse, as he cuts the woman’s top open to reveal her breasts and her husband is gagged and forced to watch as she is stripped naked entirely. What makes the scene masterful is not that it’s a difficult watch, it’s that it’s actually quite an easy watch. In some places, it’s actually quite funny. You’re in the house, in Home, and you’re enjoying yourself. This is an all together more unpleasant aspect to have to struggle - the idea that violence is in someway interesting and engaging - as your own responsibility to that which is shown is thoroughly interrogated before your eyes. Kubrick tricks you into assuming the position of a droog. It would be much easier and much more cathartic to suffer through the scene and know that you’ve suffered, as close-up shots show the husband is about to do. As Alex leans down and speaks to the man, looking directly at the audience, he asks the camera to watch closely. Buoyed by this, we prepare ourselves to grimace through this awful event to atone for our guilt. However, because he’s a genius, Kubrick simply cuts away.

The scene sums up much of what is just brilliant about the film. It is shocking, it is violent but it is also profoundly graceful. The image has never been more complex and full as when composed by Stanley Kubrick and never so fulfilling as it is in A Clockwork Orange. Viddy well my brothers. Viddy well.

Announcing a Change in Format via Meta-Texual Musings

WARNING: This entry begins with a quotation from a literary critic whose work I’ve needed to read a lot recently. I make little apologies for this, as far as I’m concerned I am happy to let pretension ring out from the highest mountaintop. However, for those with perhaps a more grounded mind, I make this deal: If you’ll bear with me as I get all serious and pompous, I promise to end with a quotation from a Pixar movie. Hopefully then the dualities of culture with be appeased.

Tzvetan Todorov wrote some words in the early seventies about the role of the critic in relation to literature. He stated that, before anything can be analysed about literature, it is important to always remember that: “When the critic has said everything in his power about a literary text, he has still said nothing; for the very existence of literature implies that it cannot be replaced by non-literature.”
I think this quite poetically sums up some issues I’ve been struggling with recently as I tried once again to grind out another entry for this blog. It chimes with me because it seems they confront some rather deep neuroses that lie at the heart of me, and perhaps most people whose chosen profession/ passion/ hobby comes from enjoying and commentating on art. I love cinema and I love discussing and writing about cinema. When I write, I like to feed my ego by thinking that I am, in some way, shedding some insight into the topic and perhaps occasionally I or others do just that. However, cinema is cinema, and frankly it doesn’t need me or anybody else to unlock it for anyone. Nobody needs me to tell them why they enjoyed or didn’t enjoy a certain film, they just did, and that’s much, much more important then any theoretical or philosophical baggage I might want to throw at something to make me sound smart. Ultimately, I can write as many words it is possible to write about a film and I will have still said nothing truly valuable about it. Not really. Cinema, literature, or any art form one wishes to focus on, possess that a certain, indefinable core that makes it special, makes it worth commenting on, makes it art in the first place. Nobody can say or explain what that is, you just feel it and know it in your heart, I guess in some way like some people feel God or fate or karma. To close on another quotation, this time from the mouth of Anton Ego from the glorious Ratatouille (which frankly says everything I just tried to say with talking rats, so perhaps you should just watch that if you remain a bit lost): “The bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful then our criticism designating it so.”
I hope these musings explains my lack of entrees and why perhaps also why, on occasion, months and months will go by before I even update this blog. I sometimes find it hard to write about cinema knowing this, believing this. But, ultimately, I also find this knowledge quite liberating: Nothing I can possibly do will fulfil the requirement of explaining cinema, so it doesn’t really matter what I write. All I can hope is that my words get somewhere close to explain the magic of the moving image. With this in mind, I have decided a slight change in format to one of my sections. I’ve, in the past, to write about the cinema that has touched me the most and it’s been impossible. The one attempt I published on Pulp Fiction I really wasn't happy with and, as I re-read it, feels incredibly pedestrian and far away from any sense of value. Therefore, I’ve decided to focus instead on individual scenes/ moments I love within films I adore in the hope that by sacrificing an impossible breath I might include a trace of depth. Hopefully, this will bring me that ever-illusive sense of worth I’m craving. I will fail, but I might not fail entirely, and that little nub of ambition is enough to make me want to try.

 

At the Movies: The Expendables

Rating: * * *

In moments of pride and self-congratulation, I like to think that I have joined a group of individuals known as the cinephiles. We are a noble and strong race with a certain set of specialist skills, including knowing where our closest three art-house cinemas are and where to shop for the best in European and Asian new releases. We are well-versed in the works of Ingmar Bergman, we’ve been known to occasionally enjoy and an occasional Ozu film or two and we even think we know what the hell happens at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’ve worked hard to become a member of such an elite group of social outcasts and pretentious know-it-alls yet all my work is undone when movies like The Expendables are released. Beneath all my attempts at academic prowess, I sat in the cinema more excited than I had been than before any other release this year. Beneath all my explorations into a world of serious intellectual depth, it turns out that, deep down, I just want to watch Sly Stallone punch something.
For those not versed in the film’s essential selling point, the premise is simple: Sly Stallone plays Barney Ross, the aging leader of a band of mercenaries. This elite team charge millions per contract to take out/ save/ solve any problem they are required to face. The plot basically involves… No, there’s just no point. Its really stand B-movie stuff, the narrative basically a weaving path through explosions and one-liners and violence. What makes the film worth a cinematic release and my own giddy excitement is the cast list. Stallone has shopped around, made some calls and managed to populate the movie with action stars of past and present. This saliva-inducing roll-call includes the ghosts of movies past in the form of 80s star Dolph Lungren and an aging Jet Li (Jean-Claude Van Damme was offered a role, but sadly declined). We get the ghost of movies present with the ever-brilliant Jason Statham and the ghost of movies to come in the form of Steve Austin and Randy Couture (nope, I’ve not heard of the latter either). Therefore, what is set up is a glorious love letter to the collection of naff, silly, stupid and utterly, utterly brilliant action movies of one’s early adolescence or at least my adolescence. Movies like Red Scorpion, Under Siege, Timecop surely make up the primordial soup of anybody's love of the moving image and I am no expection. In fact, until a few years ago, I still believed that Commando - the eighties Schwarzenegger movie - was the greatest action movie of all time. I now perhaps see the error of my ways, I now perhaps have grown up and see that true value lies in substance, not style, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still occasionally enjoy watching such movies. B-Movies are just great when done well: their plots are ridiculous, their action set-pieces needlessly violent, their characters and acting as wooden as the Mary Rose but they do exhibit a kind of pure aesthetic of joy and fun and I was really, really excited about watching those actors sign off with a fun, campy send up and celebration of their careers. I even secretly had a phrase ready to write into this review if the film lived up to my insane expectations: I was ready to declare it: “better than Inception, because it knows exactly what its doing and does it brilliantly” and was happy to sit back and invite the controversy and the gnashing of teeth. Sadly, and I mean sadly, this phrase just isn’t applicable because Sly Stallone, in his role as Writer/Director, as messed such a great chance of glory.
It’s not without its joys. I mean, Li. Stallone. JASON STATHAM, it really is impossible to not get a kick out watching these action gods interact on screen, voguing off each other like prize stallions, and individual bits and pieces do jump off the screen and smack you with their gnarly, entertainment sticks. I particularly enjoyed the chemistry between Stallone and Statham (isn’t that just a glorious sentence!). Jason Statham has real, real movie charisma and I’d watch absolutely anything with him. I’ve seen him play a bank robber, a gangster, a man who has to pump adrenaline into his heart to stop himself dying, a convict turned speed racer. I’ve even seen him play a Turnip Farmer (In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale… seriously, go and check it out right now.) The two riffing of one other as bickering friends really works and is charming and engaging. Its also nice to see Dolph Lungren get the chance to ham it up again as an incredibly silly villain and Jet Li is also rather funny as Ying-Yang, yep, Ying-Yang. The veterans who have agreed to Sly’s project know exactly what’s expected of them and deliver it to the best of their loved abilities. There is a reason we loved these guys as spotty prepubescents.

The problem is with Stallone’s leadership. To you, me and anybody watching the film, its very clear what's needed to make it a jolly thrill ride: just make a well executed B-movie. Make it silly. Make it stupid. Make it fun. Throw in some ridiculous action set-pieces and some decent in-jokes about what’s really going on and we’re set. In the best scene in the movie, it just does that: Schwarzenegger arrives for his cameo and exchanges quips on his old career and why he can’t come along for the ride this time. It’s a meta-textual delight and exactly what is needed and expected. Stallone should think himself as a man making Crank or Rocky Balboa, both of which I enjoyed more then I was supposed to as a rationale human being. The problem is that Stallone has never really been comfortable with seeing himself as such a figure. Throughout his career he has tried on numerous occasions to move into intellectual areas, all of which have been disastrous. The man isn’t a particularly gifted writer, director or actor, what he can do is carry some action and deliver some lines. When this is used well it’s brilliant. First Blood is probably my favourite Stallone film and that’s a picture that really stands the test of time. It’s a fun action film that’s actually about something deep without ever really trying to be. It isn’t ponderous, it isn’t dull and it doesn’t take itself remotely seriously. Copland, Judge Dredd, the latest horrible Rambo film, they all think they’ve got the capacity to change the world and that’s why they all fail.
With The Expendables, I’ve got the sneaking suspicion that Stallone thinks that he is making his version of Unforgiven. Clint Eastwood managed to make a poiygnant examination of his legacy as an action star because he’s a great actor and good director; Stallone’s mediocre attempts at something similar are frankly bizarre. He crowbars a false morality onto the ridiculous story he’s concoted so that his character seems to spends a good twenty minutes in the middle of the film trying to discover the inner truth of the situation. There’s even a really strange Mickey Rourke (yes, he’s in it too) speech, ala The Wrestler, about the cost of their actions on their souls. It really, really doesn’t work. Not only does it stop the movie dead, removing all sense of fun from the proceedings, but it alerts the audience to the problems with what they are watching. How can a film preaching to be about a man trying to save his soul get off on the spectacle of violence like it does? How can a plot that wants to tackle some existential dilemmias be so ropey and make so little sense? You can’t ask the audience to get to grips with the metaphysics of what’s happening when what is happening defies the very basic principles of physics, and logic, and common sense. The excessive action therefore feels excessive, the cardboard characters are just cardboard and any sense of charm or whimsy drains out of the proceedings. It’s a real shame because without these ill-advised attempts at grandeur none of these things would bother me; I’d just let it all go and enjoy myself. But the net result is that the laughs dry up, the action gets dull and, with half an hour to go, you get the sinking feeling that’d you’d just rather it all stop.
And then it does. And yes, Inception is better. Shame really.

At the Movies: Inception

Rating: * * * *

“The smallest idea is a resilient virus, one that can grow to define or destroy you.” One such idea seems to indeed define my person in the cinematic ambience I currently find myself; a climate in which Christopher Nolan’s latest film has opened to rave reviews, tremendous numbers at the box office and has already stormed to number 3 in the IMDB's list of the Greatest Movies Ever Made. In this climate, where cinema-goers around the world are lining up to proclaim this work as the film of the year having only recently stopped championing The Dark Knight as the greatest film of 2008, a small idea echoes around my brain and possesses my train of thought: I don’t like these films as much as everybody else.
I have been at a loss to explain my aversion to Christopher Nolan movies for some time. In theory it seems like the two of us would make a lovely couple. I love movies, I love populist movies, I love populist movies made by smart people who have a respect for what they are doing. Christopher Nolan seems to make exactly these types of movies. He makes movies that experiment with ways of telling stories, that challenge the audiences to bring their brain to the cinema and who cares more about making good film than film that makes money. While the Hollywood powers seem to be convinced we are all too stupid to want to see good films and instead provide us with annonymous gruel to lap up while they search for the next novelty T.V. show to make, remake and then remake again in 3D. Surely I should be hailing the coming of Inception? So why do I think Memento is a perfectly average thriller that seems to have been sanctified by its fans just because it messes with its timelines a bit? Why do I think The Dark Knight wasn’t as good as Hellboy 2: The Golden Army? Why can’t I STAND The Prestige? I’ve been struggling with these questions for sometime now, lurching from arguments that accused Nolan of pretention to accusing him of stupidity: none of these I truly believed in my heart of hearts. But then, about two thirds of the way through his newest blockbuster Inception, I found the answer, buried deep within my subconscious.
But let’s backtrack a tad, a device I’m sure Nolan would be comfortable with given his penchant for twisting the rules of narration. Inception is an incredibly original, well-conceived, fun thriller with a brain in its head and ambition in its heart. The general conceit plays like a mixture between The Italian Job and Nightmare on Elm Street: Part 3 (the latter of which perhaps a slightly too specific a reference but a good film nonetheless) and the plot basically revolves around the premise that there exists the ability for some people to hack into someone’s dreams. With this special skill, teams of such people are hired to try and hack into important people’s brains steal vital pieces of information. The film follows a group of such dream-hackers, led by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Dom Cobb, who develop the idea of not just stealing information from a subject but planting an idea inside their brain instead. Of course, it’s immensely more complicated then that. The plot and the world of the film set up a cinematic sudoku of multiple layers of existences as dreams and reality, pasts and presents, all mingle together into an incredibly complex ride.
Let me state right here and now, plain and simply so as not to be misconstrued, that I really, really enjoyed Inception. Its central premise is fun, its delivery of said premise full of intelligence and complexity. Whilst the Michael Bay’s and Tony Scott’s of this world would happy to simply take this rather fun central idea and knock out a generic action-thriller with a few car chases, Nolan takes this what is essentially a B-movie conceit and pushes, stretches and expands it, imbuing it with a complex mythology based in part on psychological studies and in part on a detailed analysis of the dream-aesthetic already existing in the cinema, to create a twisting, contorting world. The film challenges its audience with an unwieldy narrative: it’s certainly not a film to watch whilst surfing the web, it’s a film to sit and stare at, and a film to be admired for having the courage to expect that from its audience in the age of youtube. It’s sharply and chicly directed and tightly and intelligently written. It’s also incredibly well acted by its committed cast of thespians, including the delights of Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy. Even Ellen Page is great in it, shedding that irritating Juno persona brilliantly and bringing a wise and old soul to a youthful character that on the page might have been a struggle as her role is primarily that of feeder lines of plot explanation. At its best moments, it reminded me of my first experience of watching The Matrix: a feeling that I was watching something most definitely new and that I liked it. It was a fantastically entertaining and satisfying movie experience that I would thoroughly recommend to anyone and am genuinely pleased to see do so well at the box office. If a film this complex and this intricately designed, a film so invested in story and character whilst also providing the grand spectacle that Hollywood does so well, then hopefully the studios will learn to stop treating its audiences like cattle. I’ve always campaigned that entertaining cinema doesn’t have to mean stupid cinema, that an action film done well is as deep and worthwhile as any art house entry. I believe passionately that people don’t have to choose between movies and films, that both are as important to cinema as each other. Inception proves me right on all accounts.
But, and this is important, Inception is not The Matrix, it just reminded me of it. The Matrix was an absolutely superb and important piece of work that loses nothing in its wonder as you revisit it time and time again. Inception is just a really good movie, easily Nolan’s best film to date, but not the best movie of the year so far. It’s not even the best film of the summer. And, after jumping deep into my own psyche and riding the kick back up, I finally know exactly why that is: Great films - great movies - all have at their core a solid thematic core. Great cinema doesn’t just entertain, it entertains in a way that probes the human condition in a manner that is engaging to its audience. It is this feature of it that makes a film touching, makes it poignant, makes it enriching and worthwhile, makes it worth revisiting. I don’t mean, therefore, all film have to provide meta-textual analyses and Brechtian alienation techniques to be great. The Matrix is a rollercoaster ride action film but it also engages at a profound level. It’s a discussion of the uncertainty of reality, the role of technology in society and the power of belief in the individual. It questions the nature of what is valuable in the modern world, what is worth fighting for, what life is all about beneath the banal comforts technology and modern life provide, taking as its basis the works of Jean Baudrillard. It is a film about the human condition that uses explosions and high-concept science-fiction. I’m not suggesting the majority of its audiences explicitly realise this when they sit down to watch films but they still interact with this aspect of the film without realising. We care because we see ourselves on screen.

Even something like Star Wars, which on the surface appearing to be just a fun film with great special effects, is a moral essay on what inspires good to do good and evil to do evil. It’s this that makes Darth Vader a great villain, because the audience find him interesting and see elements of themselves in his plight. Han Solo is so awesome because his moral ambiguity is engaging and speaks of truth. The light sabre battles are thrilling because their outcome means something about life. All films need this aspect to truly register, to truly matter, to be more than just a bunch of stuff on screen and it exists in great cinema whether one chooses to focus on it or not, and even if people don’t spend hours after discussing such themes afterwards.
Beneath all of Inception’s clever plotting and visuals, beneath its smart script and fun concepts, beneath the great acting and the cool shots and edits, what does all of this actually amount to? Nolan clearly wants to the film to be a discussion about the fine line between dreams and reality by the amount of time he invests in such ideas. On numerous occasions characters appear to almost stop what their doing, turn to audience and begin a discussion on the philosophical implications of what they are doing. But what does all this philosophising actually mean? The film comes to no conclusion, it simply waves around vague notions that dreams are sometimes confusing or intoxicating, all rather banal points really to anyone over the age of ten, and finishes with a teasing little shot and a wink to the audience that completely negates any point it might have been attempting to make.
Am I being unfair? Perhaps it’s not so much dreams that Nolan is interested in then using dreams as a metaphor. Could they really represent the reality of fiction, the unstable reality of sanity, the reality of hope or the reality of memory? These are all universal themes that would actually engage with life, ideas explored in other films that rely on a dream-like setting (Nightmare on Elm Street: Part 3!, but the film negates this universality with its obsession with the mechanics of dreaming. Its constant narrative wielding of dreams within dreams, with the role of the dreamer as controller, with the threats of waking from the dream and believing in its impossibility also confines any thematic point to a rather specific region. The film doesn’t let any part of its structure move beyond these concerns and thus its remains shallow and brittle. Ultimately, Inception is a film that simply warbles without any great substance.

And this is my problem with all of Christopher Nolan’s films. Memento, despite being all about memory in its narrative, has nothing profound to say about memory. The Dark Knight constantly sets up moral dilemmas but has nothing to say about morality. The Prestige has nothing to say about anything, even if it does have a clever structure and an unexpected twist. Nolan has passion, creativity and intelligence as a filmmaker but he channels all of his energies into their craftsmanship. He lacks the nuance to make his intricately created worlds actually mean something. To use a metaphor I’m perhaps more proud of then I should be, Christopher Nolan is a carpenter of a filmmaker. He makes perfectly built, ornately decorated chairs. Chairs that are smooth to touch and beautiful to look at, chairs that are comfortable to sit on and will last the ages. But chairs do not have souls. So what’s my film of the summer you ask? Well, it’s Toy Story 3. That is a film that true depth lies not in the intelligence it shows off but the intelligence it hides beneath its pastille shades. I could watch that film a dozen more times before I got bored with. It will be a while before I feel the need to watch Inception again. So endeth the sermon.