The Haute Critique on Spout

Under discussion:

Jeremiah Johnson  (1972)

Into the Wild  (2007)

We went to the woods. Down the National Park road the direction Yogi told us. There was supposed to be a helipad there. The flat rock outcropping would suffice. We climbed up and smoked a bowl at sunset. Thousands of feet below a river ran. Its motion making static the vast forest in front of us. Next to the table-top flat stone was a fire ring that looked as if it had been recently used. We were not the first to rest here at dusk. As the darkness rose from the forest floor up to the stars we decided to head back. Instead of following the road, we would follow romance and the rugged path through the uncharted woods. Just in case, we kept an eye on the road to make certain we would not end up lost, stoned hikers. 20 paces further and the road had disappeared. For a split second we were there… primal purity.

The search for that sensation drives the main characters in both of the films in this double feature, the titular Jeremiah Johnson and Chris McCandless of Into the Wild.

Jeremiah Johnson hangs up the uniform in the mid 19th century to seek solace as a mountain man in the American West. We don’t get elaborate details of his motivations, but the spirit of jaded disillusionment runs through anyone that found dad eating Santa’s cookies or waited for that sophomore album after a glorious debut. Everyone at one time has caught a boot to the teeth. Jeremiah doesn’t need a backstory. He can borrow ours.

The cinema of Jeremiah Johnson is epic. The quiet solitude. Robert Redford’s eye creases. Bits of comic relief underscored by a Hollywood Studio Orchestra. Technicolor looks great through the cannabinoid lens. Sidney Pollack’s direction puts out a meal for your psyche with triumphs and failures told by a filmmaker craftsman with enough movie magic to make you feel satisfied. In the end, though, it is a period piece, but not of the old west. It is a period piece of 1972.

As the movie was being prepared for release, burglars broke in to the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Before that Vietnam. Before that civil rights. Almost 20 years of wrenching social turmoil. And what is a man to do? While Woodward was meeting with Deep Throat, Redford was in the mountains, purifying Jeremiah Johnson of the ills of society.

There is a subconscious feeling that this dark-side of humanity is the price paid for progress. Human cruelty increases with every txt message. For every new airbag and wonder drug, there is a trail of dysfunctional families. Families like that of Chris McCandless.

While Jeremiah Johnson meditates on solemnity and quaint virtues, Into the Wild is a new millennia of motion picture. The only character that was not a star (the libidinous 16 year old, Tracy) is the lead in the Twighlight series. The celebrity extends to the celebrity soundtrack by Eddie Vedder. Writer, Director Sean Penn.

Its the 21st century and nothing is as simple as it seems. Alexander Supertramp, nee Chris McCandless, claims to be on a spiritual journey, but his calculations feel much more like a cry for personal celebrity. Without the social strife immediate to the character of Jeremiah Johnson, Alexander Supertramp is on a reactionary anti-pilgrimage against society in general. As the movie progresses, my 4 hour buzz is waning, Into the Wild is getting me seriously aggro. His, aww-shucks schtick seems more like a veil to his imagined future as a Gen-X Kerouac.

Here he is, flaunting his inexperience in the face of unforgiving nature. His arrogance makes his quest for the rugged individualist epiphany seem like a self indulgent masquerade. The film has music for every segment. It all seems a bit contrived. His hatred of untruth and rejection of society seem cliche and tired.

Didn’t Hal Holbrook get nominated for an oscar for this movie? On cue, he hits the screen. After being taunted and emotionally bullied up onto the mountain with McCandless, he drops a fortune cookie, the way only an old man can. He tells the Supertramp that forgiveness brings love. And love brings the light of god. I know it is cheesy, but as selfish as McCandless was, I forgive him… more than nature ever could or would. And that makes me feel human.

Back in the National Park, we took a 90 degree turn and found our way back to the road. The instant of primal purity now a memory, we were heading home. Thinking back to that emotion, it was much better realized in Jeremiah Johnson. The intense explication of Into the Wild continually drove a wedge between me and the Supertramp. Forgiveness of these sins brought love, and maybe even the light of God, but it couldn’t bring back my buzz.

No related posts.

Under discussion:

Moulin Rouge  (2001)

Where to begin?  We are talking about a film that is eight years old, but if you’ve been there and done that you know that it is worthy of a Critique.  If not - then download it (with full surround sound of course) and watch it.  You will be glad you did.

The movie begins perfectly.  The red velvet curtains open.  Are we watching a movie, or a live show at the theatre?  Layers within layers within layers.  Its a movie about a show about a song about a story about a love between a boy and a girl who must disguise their affair in the collaborative writing of a musical spectacular about a boy and a girl who must hide their affair from  . . . you get the picture.   The higher perspective loves layers and Moulin Rouge is the gift that keeps on giving.

But it doesn’t stop there - oh no.  Baz Luhrmann decided to fabricate a musical almost entirely out of what we would now call “remix” songs.  Each of the major songs in the movie are alchemical concoctions of myriad pop hits.  Elton John, Madonna, David Bowie, Joe Cocker all make an appearance, mixed together in belle epoque cocktail that will leave your head spinning and your senses dazzled.  Try to follow the thread of exactly what boy and girl are saying when you constantly have to identify “material girl” as a Madonna song, remember what that song is about, how it fit into its cultural context and then link that back up to the phrases before and after it - within the context of the point in the movie in which it happend.  Beautiful.

Then there are the visuals.  Let me first suggest that you are well strapped in and with plenty of munchies on-hand *before* the green fairy makes her appearance. This is a Moulin Rouge spectacular spectacular, after all.  You have bejewled beauties swinging from high trapeeze (to the tune of Nirvana of course) and courtesans living on top of an elephant that must have been imagined by a string theorist.   You have song and dance numbers replete with vein-popping, foot-stomping energy and narcoleptic Argentinans stomping out a tight tango (yes, to the tune of Roxanne).  And if you’ve managed to keep your chin off the floor as the love story drifts past singing moons and animated frogs, you get the quasi-closing bollywood-meets-the-Bohemian extravaganza to make sure that you are right there with towelie having absolutely no idea what is going on.  But loving it.

And, of course, the characters.  We’ve already mentioned the narcoleptic Argentinian, but this film is full of em.  Jim Broadbent does an insane job gnashing his teeth and rolling his eyes as the owner of the Rouge.  But nothing comes close to John Leguizamo’s brilliantly absurd Tolouse-Lautrec who somehow manages to get cast as a magical sitar that only speaks the truth in the awe-inspiring conclusion.  And what a relief - in a film that is linked and cross-linked, fiction within fiction within fiction to, finally, run into the pure unvarnished, obvious Truth.

This is a film that has the wisdom to remind you in the end credits what it was about: Beauty, Truth and (most of all) Love.  Whew!  After all of that, you very much need the help.  And, amazingly enough, in-spite of the sound and fury, you really do get the sense that Love is somehow somewhere contained therein.

No related posts.

Under discussion:

Star Trek  (2009)

Star Trek

It is a wonderful thing to see what a talented director of Generation X can do with a piece of media.  In some ways JJ Abrams’ Star Trek is a revelation.  In other ways it is a vastly missed opportunity.

First the good part.  This haute critic had the good fortune to view the film in IMAX and it benefits from the facelift.  The visuals are (for the most part) gorgeous - filled with inspired architecture of what an optimistic and very human future might look like.  Abrams takes the look and feel of vintage 60’s Trek and resurrects it boldly into the 21st century.  Costumes have just the right flush of color to give you the feel that you are watching “in real life” what the folks captured “on TV” in the 60’s.  And the characters go there as well.  Abrams fully modern touch hangs real psychological depth on our once legendary two dimensional favorites.  Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Uhura.  Even Checkov, Scotty and Sulu come to us now suddenly as real people with real motivations behind their actions and desires.  The essence of the new generation.  In this dimension, Star Trek might even exceed Batman Begins and Spiderman - now, finally, you can understand Kirk’s almost salacious womanizing and fire-from-the-hip (lack of) strategy.  Bones’ growling and eye-bulging become the natural expressions of a real person from a real place that seems plausible.  The Shatner, Nimoy, Kelly characters presumably came from somewhere, but the GI Generation templates that must have been impressed on Gene Roddenberry’s mind in a flying fortress over the Pacific couldn’t translate through the stock personalities available in the 60’s.  Abrams seamlessly accelerates our favorite characters into his mythical universe without spilling a drop.

And, in a way, that is the bad part.  At the end of the day, Abrams fails to take advantage of the real power and heritage of Star Trek: it is the expression of a personal experience and vision from a generation that is almost fully passed from the Earth.  The greasemonkeys who looked back on the collapsing 19th Century world of their parents with confusion and dismay and forward to the Final Frontier that science, technology and American Gusto could bring to bear left their collective fingerprints all over Star Trek.  Hatching in the last warm glow before the tumult of the mid 60’s, Star Trek unselfconsciously and unashamedly projected a confident (even cocky) view of what the kids of WWII aspired for in a human future.  And from its earliest beginnings Trek managed to catch enough to keep it renewed and relevant through more than four decades — as the rest of the culture warped and spun all over the place.  There is a message to be found there - somehow more vital and alive than most that have managed to survive into our era.   In many ways Star Trek represents the last breath of a pure optimism from our pop culture - importantly birthed out of the lived experience of people who were children in the Great Depression and youths in World War II.

Its easy to dismiss Trek.  Its linear extrapolation of 50’s society and technology into a decently distant future seems absurd and implausible.  Vernor Vinge’s singularity compression curve makes us all too painfully aware of how near the future is and how implausible that the future will look anything at all like today.  But lest we forget - for the past four decades, that Roddenberry vision has been the ultimate self-creating future: generations of inspired kids have been working hard to make real that portion of Star Trek that most captured their imagination.  The deep sprit of Trek goes far beyond Klingons, communicators and transporter beams into a comprehensive vision of how we can go about building what we imagine to build.

FInding that deep spirit, reaching down into it and giving new life to it in a way that works for the children of a New Millenium; that would have been a true gift.  And the opportunity was there - Abrams had the opportunity to (and did) reboot the entire Star Trek concept - and he did so with style, panache and a real sense for the aesthetic of the world.  Unfortunately, he didn’t really take his shot.  The story was very much a re-tread and clearly was little more than an excuse for Abrams to fulfill his visual intent.  There aren’t that many Star Treks left in the world.  The door isn’t closed on what can be done with the franchise, but it will take a real effort to craft the right depth of story and sense to match the potential of what could be done.

A quality experience for the initiated, but nothing compared to the Watchmen and one suspects upcoming fare (Terminator, Harry Potter, Nine) will have more to offer those looking for a fully baked theatrical experience.

Related posts:

1. More Star Trek!