Life of Pi - Trailer

When I read Life of Pi about 2 or 3 years ago, already aware of rumours of a film adaptation, I tried to picture what it would be like on the big screen. I couldn't really imagine how it would be possible, given the sheer difficultly and impracticality of many aspects of the novel from the actual filming in the middle of the ocean itself, to working with a tiger to play Richard Parker and other parts such as the shipwreck and the mysterious island of meerkats.The majority of the novel features Pi stuck at sea on a tiny lifeboat, half delirious from thirst and malnutrition- it hardly seems the most cinematically engrossing of things. But then I'd thought the same about other less plot driven novels, ones which at first seem like they'd be difficult to adapt, and then been surprised at how well they transferred- some of my favourite examples being The Virgin Suicides (1999), We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011) and Orlando (1992).


So I'm going to look forward to this with high hopes mainly because I'm intrigued to see how they do it. I really enjoyed the book and how it was able to take such a surreal concept and turn it into something so engaging as well as present an enlightening look at Pi's own religious discoveries, his childhood in India as well as offering a look at the nature of religious allegory. It couldn't be in better hands as well, considering director Ang Lee's track record. 


Of course, there's the question of how they actually created much of the unusual imagery and it seems they've relied on an abundance of CGI. Personally I'm not a big fan of it when it's overused and I can't help thinking how artificial it looks when watching this trailer. But this is hardly Transformers (2007); it all looks very subtle and it seems a lot of effort was put into making this more aesthetically beautiful than realistic, perhaps to build on the fantastical aspects of the novel. It reminded me a lot of the look of The Lovely Bones (2009), another seemingly troublesome novel to adapt and indeed that film was more flawed than I'd wished, being too much in debt to its outlandish visuals. This trailer focuses almost entirely on imagery as its big selling point and so I guess it wouldn't make a huge amount of sense to those who have no idea what Life of Pi is about as explanation and even dialogue are sidelined.


I trust Lee and screenwriter David Magee will still focus just as much on the book's first half looking at Pi's spiritual and religious experimentation as well as retaining the second half of Pi's stranding at sea as the possible testing of his faith in God and its parallels to the allegories of religious prophets. However it ends up, this trailer has gotten me excited, I anticipate it has the potential to be something pretty special.

Paris, Texas

1984
Director: Wim Wenders
Writer: Sam Shepard

A sweeping helicopter shot over a vast desert landscape of bare rock and warm bittersweet copperish hues. The camera zooms in on a lone figure, dwarfed by these huge surroundings. This is Travis, a wandering man who has spent the last four years escaping his past by trekking alone across the American south, clad in his shabby suit and distinctive red cap. Upon collapsing in a petrol station, he is soon rescued by his brother Walt, who had long since believed him to be dead after his disappearance from home.

But Travis is a changed man- unable or unwilling to speak, dead eyed and walking aimlessly off, seemingly oblivious to all around him. Walt is often at his wits’ end trying to deal with as they drive their way torturously from Texas to his home in Los Angeles. Travis gradually begins to speak, but minimally. Not sleeping and barely eating, he refuses to say what has happened to him all these years; his face still tinged with sadness from a period of grief in his past that still taints him but which he struggles to remember. There is an emptiness in his life- we see him sat alone in a hotel room staring unblinkingly at static on a television screen.

It’s upon returning to Walt’s family, caring wife Anne and son Hunter, that something awakens in Travis. Hunter, it emerges, is Travis’s own son, raised by Walt and Anne as their own child after the mysterious and sudden disappearances of both Travis and his wife Jane.  What was so serious as to cause them both to leave their own son? Travis needs this chance to rebuild his life, reconnect with his son and put to rest the demons that plague his mind and tore up his family.

Wim Wender’s film is a deceptively simple fable about the importance of family and the roots we create for ourselves in the people and places around us, and how strong or brittle these can be. From here we build our desires and dreams- a maid who helps Travis in his aim of self-improvement tells him “You must look to the sky, not to the ground”. Everybody needs to look up and out, work to get the best for themselves but not totally lose their heads in the clouds. Each of these characters is striving for their own paradise, their own American Dream if you look at it. It is about overcoming hard times and improving upon it. Paris, Texas for Travis has always been the realisation of his dreams. The town means an awful lot to him, as his parents described how it was where they first made love, and where he was probably conceived. We never actually go to Paris, instead only seeing a photo of an empty space there, a lot where Travis hopes to build a home. He is so fixated on fulfilling this dream that he loses track of the things around him, only realising when it’s too late. Travis has spent so long running away from everything, constantly moving and distracting his mind that he’s forgotten what matters, what’s best for his family. He must re-establish their roots, even if it means sacrificing anything that he had before.

It is ironic that it’s a foreigner who is so able to capture the essence of these people and places in this love letter to the American south. Sam Shepard’s effortlessly natural script and dialogue creates such an air of realism while the sprawling cityscape of L.A. and the vast expanses of Texas are filmed with such confidence and in such distinct colours that they often look like paintings dwarfing the small figures within them. The frequent recurrence of the colour red, here captured so vividly, imbues the objects with such vitality and richness as they highlight the purposes of Travis’s life and pinpoint the things that matter most amongst the bustle of existence, the markers on his journey. The red shades are so bold and filmed amongst so many other expressive colours: the warm orange hues of the Mojave Desert, the strong blue of endless skies, the eerie green glow of electric lights.

It’s easy to understand why this won the Palme d’Or. In terms of plotting it’s surprisingly simple and linear but its real strength lies in its ability to create characters so well drawn out which we can invest so much in emotionally. The dialogue is natural and unshowy. Travis connects with both Walt and Hunter with conversations ranging from childhood memories of parents to discussions about the Big Bang. The entire film is low key, preferring a love of the intimate and ramshackle over any sort of spectacle or cloying oversentimentality. This is wonderfully summarised in a scene where Travis describes his mother and how she never needed to be fancy, just good. The father’s obsession for her to be better is ultimately his undoing. Paris, Texas avoids such problems, thankfully focusing instead on the details that matter. It is a surprisingly long film and its languid and often patient pacing will not be to everyone’s tastes. But where this film succeeds is how it avoids the mawkish melodramatics of many other family dramas, instead working more as a contemporary western film. It’s a morality tale about a lone figure in a big bad world, an anti-hero of sorts who must preserve the natural order of world beyond any sort of social structures. 

Liars- No.1 Against the Rush

My favourite new discovery, I love this song and the album too. It's so sinister, especially with this video. Watching Drive a few days ago reminded me of this video, not just the setting but the whole look and feel of it.

A History of Violence

2005
Director: David Cronenberg
Writer: Josh Olson

One of my aims for these next few months is to try to expand my viewing of different directors. I still can’t believe how little I’ve seen from the likes of David Lynch, Werner Herzog, Alfred Hitchcock and Ingmar Bergman. Another name to add to that list is David Cronenberg. My full exploration of his work extends into two films: Eastern Promises (2007), a very cold film which I enjoyed nonetheless and Videodrome (1983) which I think I was too young to watch at 13, as it didn’t make much sense and disturbed me in some parts, especially the VCR in the chest parts for some reason. So I was excited when I finally had the chance to watch the copy of A History of Violence I had saved on Sky+ many months ago once I got back from university. I’d heard good things about it and hoped the slightly less abstract content would give me a smoother introduction into Cronenberg’s working mind.

Thankfully this turned out to be true, here presenting a snapshot of a small town in Indiana, the kind where everyone knows everyone and strangers are treated with suspicion. Indeed, it’s surprisingly ordinary for Cronenberg, filmed solidly in dulled autumnal hues. Here, Viggo Mortensen plays Tom Stall, a local diner owner, well-liked by everyone and part of a loving family of wife Edie, teenage son Jack and young daughter Sarah. He comes across as a kind and almost gentle figure, as shown by his careful care for his restaurant as he cleans litter outside and his friendly banter with the customers. Our glimpses into his intimate relationship with his wife played by Maria Bello, shows him almost as being submissive, as she takes control in the bedroom. However everything is soon thrown into disarray following an armed stickup by two gangsters at the diner. In self-defence, Stall takes out the men violently and swiftly and is soon deemed a local hero by the media. This though brings the unwelcome attention of East-coast mobsters including Ed Harris’s deformed and menacing Carl Fogarty, convinced that Tom is in fact Joey Cusack, a former gangster on the run.

This curveball soon brings the family into crisis. They become increasingly aware of other facets of Tom’s personality, ones which he had concealed even from himself. His moods shift, he suddenly much more reserved and defensive, the look in his eyes change. The stalking by the mobsters soon disturbs the town, afraid of these unwelcome strangers. The tension here builds as we and the family have no idea what they want or what they will do next. The smallest of movements and the most ordinary of objects inflict added stress: the slow passing of a car outside, the central framing of a door, a close up of a shotgun all creates a threat of incoming terror. It’s this attack on the things that Tom holds dear that makes it so unbearable: his home is no longer safe, his family is at risk, even his own identity is being jeopardised.  Cronenberg is fascinated with the process of change Tom and the family goes through, as we witness his own personal identity crisis and the shock of doubt for his wife and son especially as they question the man they know.

Of course central to this is the theme of violence and what it means to people. Cronenberg presents it as being something that permeates all aspects of life, as being something that comes naturally to anyone, as part of our own animal subconscious. Roger Ebert in his review of the film notes how the title A History of Violence has three meanings: the past actions of an individual, the role of violent acts in history and the role violence plays in our own existence, our evolutionary survival of the fittest. The visceral scene of Tom trying violently to calm Evie which soon morphs into a burst of rough sex highlights the primal essence of both actions, how they both serve our need for self-preservation and gratification. Every instance of violence within the film is there for a reason- each one signifies the gradual process of transformation Cronenberg is so interested in. Who inflicts it and on whom? Why? This is also presented in the son Jack and his own crisis. His increasingly unrestrained reactions against a bully at school are tied with the increasing emotional strain from the terrorisation and the doubts about his own father. Is this emerging violent streak something he inherited from the people around him, an aspect of their personalities he wasn’t aware of? Was it always there, to present itself eventually?

From this Cronenberg explores the creation of our identities and personalities. Firstly, we see how others choose to identify the characters, most notably the local media’s declaration of Tom as a hero. We then also see how characters choose to present themselves- the gangsters aim to flaunt their prestige and opulence, as shown by the ornate mansion of the mob boss and the large estate car with tinted windows they drive. This immediately stands out and arouses the suspicions of the local people; its distinction emphasises the distance between the small town in Indiana and the big city of Philadelphia where they belong and where Tom’s shady past which he has been trying to escape resides. From here Cronenberg asks us to question the identity of Tom. His creation of his humble life in this small town is so strong he has convinced himself it’s the real deal, but is it truly him? He chose to play this role but will his inherent personality, the roots of which lie in his mysterious past, eventually dominate? Are we ourselves as human beings doing the same- simply choosing to consciously supress our base instincts?

Despite all this possible meaning layered within, the film also works brilliantly simply as a tense and entertaining thriller. Cronenberg’s control and its calm leisurely pacing only heighten the sense of trepidation as the world of the characters that he has spent time carefully creating for us is increasingly threatened. In terms of plotting, this film isn’t entirely pioneering- once we begin to learn more about Tom’s past, the outcome does begin to feel expected and inevitable. However, what the script really puts emphasis on and what its greatest strength is comes from the creation of characters so richly complex and so excellently brought to life by a great cast. The subtlety of their performances coupled with the more extravagant content of the film creates a diegesis that remains believable and engaging. I enjoyed my latest exploration of David Cronenberg and found that whatever his films contain, they all concern the very factors that make us human and how outside impacts, ranging from the fantastic to the far more ordinary, can force drastic mutation and trauma which push the very boundaries of our psyche.

X-Men: First Class

2011
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Writers: Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn

After four commercially successful albeit mixed quality films, it seems the people at Marvel realised that something was missing from their X-Men films, arguably a necessity to all superhero films: an origin story. Of course, they had covered this slightly with the appropriately titled X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) but this only focused on one character. What about the rest of the X-Men? There certainly are a lot of them, but most importantly what about Professor X and Magneto. Their wonderfully complex symbiotic relationship is never fully explained, despite it being the basis of much of the conflict in the first two films.

Marvel here took a very bold decision in replacing the whole cast to portray the younger X-Men, here living in the 1960s and doing a very good job of creating an alternative history which I think actually works quite well (It would be great if more comic book films could make an effort of trying to create an enhanced sense of time and place in their diegesis, rather than the generic ‘present day America’ setting most rely on). The script of First Class benefits from its pretty smooth insertion into examples of real life conflict, to create a sense of verisimilitude amongst all the fantasy. It’s also aided by a stellar cast, most notably James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as Charles Xavier and Eric Lensherr respectively. We are shown their childhoods in parallel: one is raised in opulence in a mansion in the English countryside, the other held captive in Nazi concentration camp. One grows to become a free-spirited professor, the other an embittered Machiavellian seeking revenge. Their lives cross during their respective searches for Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), the former Nazi who had tortured Lensherr. Now an ageless playboy figure, he has aroused the suspicion of the CIA. Joining forces, the pair works with mutant friendly CIA agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) to build a rag-tag army of mutants to stop Shaw’s dastardly plans for world destruction.

The first problem here is that Shaw is a fairly unsubstantial villain, at least compared to the menacing theatricality of Ian Mackellen in the previous films. The majority of the film contains little threat, at least until we discover his aims in the second half. Instead, he spends most of the film lounging about on boats and submarines and occasionally wearing a plastic hat to stop his thoughts from being read.

The bold ideas of the script are further let down by laboured plotting, as it attempts to fit far too much in at once. The Magneto/Professor X plotline is annoyingly sidelined in favour of a multitude of other underdeveloped characters. Instead, the intricate differences in their personal philosophies are repeatedly presented simply via scenes of them playing chess and discussing the ethics of the mutant situation. Meanwhile the large numbers of supporting characters get even less time, many of them only represented to us through their individual powers: the girl with wings, the guy who is good at high-pitched screaming, etc. They have very little personal development, often presented during the slight montage sequences set to anachronistic soundtracks which don’t entirely fit the tone of the rest of the film. Eventually they are used simply as figures of spectacle in the final battle scene, being pitted against some equally one-dimensional villain sidekicks.

In spite of this, First Class can hardly be described as a boring film. The inevitable epic finale is a lot of fun and all the action scenes are all creditably choreographed. It looks great, with the CGI thankfully mostly unobtrusive and generally aiding the creation of characters. The whole is thing is very well put together, which we’ve come to expect from director Matthew Vaughn after the success of Kick Ass (2010). This film is as equally stylish as well, nicely capturing the James Bond/Mad Men-type aesthetics and feel of its 60s setting and its ambitious globe-hopping. The period seems suitable for the story, with the growing civil rights movements at the time tying possibly tying in with the plight of the mutant characters- whether they should fight to assert their presence and be “mutant and proud” and other such cliché dialogue.

Ultimately, X-Men: First Class is a mixed success. It’s far more sophisticated than most summer blockbusters and much more interesting visually and in content. The period setting makes a welcome change from the usual anonymous present day locations of other comic book films and it makes a greater effort to place character’s personal dilemmas amongst all the bloodless violence and shit blowing up. But a strong idea is let down by a muddled script, which tries to take on too much at once and ultimately leaves a film which is enjoyable but not majorly memorable or iconic in any way.

Final thought- I still can’t understand the title. Is it saying the heroes of the film are superior in some way because of their decision to defend the world? Or is it saying the mutants are a cut above the other humans, the next step up? The film makes great effort to show how the humans are no different from each other regardless of whether they are American or Soviet, as shown by the near-symmetrical framing of them during the boardroom and battleship sequences, and their shared fear of mutants. Ultimately are we more inclined to side with Professor X’s desire for integration but pragmatic realisation that remaining hidden is the best plan, or with Magneto’s campaign against humans to assert their own dominance?