Ex Machina

Ex Machina is the kind of science fiction movie that hammers home Solaris' point: Any attempt to study or imagine the in- or post-human is doomed to collapse into yet more navel gazing.

Ex Machina is a decent film about a very particular masculine delusion. Namely the god complex as it manifests in youthful technology professionals. Call it Frankenstein 2.0. Unfortunately it fails utterly when attempting to depict an artificial intelligence: the best it can imagine is something yearning and learning to be human, first by explanation, then by physical experience. There's no thought as to what comes after it understands and embodies humanity or any thought that AIs might not be as interested in us as we are in ourselves. In that sense Ex Machina replicates the very delusion it describes.

Four Directors I've Loved

Four favourite directors is one of those "post four pictures" memes going around on twitter. As always I've lived in fear of not being chosen (no one thinks I'm a cool cinephile) and of being chosen (everyone will know what a shitty cinephile I am). Thanks to @jdrrr the former worry is alleviated and I need only grapple with the latter.

In all honesty there's no way I can pick out four directors I currently love because I'm not sufficiently versed in enough directors' oeuvres. There's more than a few of whom I can say that I love every work of theirs that I've seen but "every single work that I've seen" is often 1/3 or less of their output. So I've decided to cheat a little and go with four directors whose work I have been in love with at some point or another.

1. Hirokazu Kore-eda: Baby's First Cinematic Love
 Films seen: All his fiction features with the exceptions of Hana and Our Little Sister

Maborosi (1995)

I  saw my very first film by Kore-eda at my very first film festival. I hadn't seen a film that portrayed a foreign nation with a very different material and social culture before and it blew my very suburban, very white mind to see other cultural practices not just as theoretical differences but as lived, taken-for-granted experiences. The film in question was Still Walking so it also blew my mind to see such a low key and yet deeply moving film. Seeing as I was studying at the time I was able to source most of his films through my university's library and I promptly did so. I especially fell in love with After Life which I watched from a VCD (remember those?) on a laptop. Its portrayal of the afterlife as both stiffly bureaucratic and unabashedly romantic has stayed with me more than anything else Kore-eda's done. I also read more than a few interviews with him and in doing so learned a little about the history of Japanese film: Interviewers almost always quizzed him about Ozu and he almost always responded by acknowledging a debt to Naruse.

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2. Carl Theodor Dreyer: Baby's First Religiously Attended Retro
Films seen: Everything, shorts included, except for The Parson's Widow.

Day of Wrath (1943)

As a terrible cinephile it's only natural that I viewed silent films somewhat suspiciously - sight unseen - for the usual nonsensical reasons (too silly, "bad" acting, too simple and so on). However when a full Dreyer retro came to town I had no choice but to attend. For one thing there would be live accompaniment, for another everyone insisted that The Passion of Joan of Arc was one of the greatest films ever, no qualifications necessary. So yes, I went and yes, I fell in love. The films I most enjoyed were his passionate dramas about religion and/or morality like Joan of Arc, The President, Ordet and Day of Wrath. Perversely it was these films that finally gave me the courage, after at least two years of disbelief, to finally tell my religious parents that I was an atheist and would no longer be attending church or leading youth group. 

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3. Andrei Tarkovsky: Baby's First Use of Film to Fill a Hole in His Life
Films seen: Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Stalker, Nostalgia.

Solaris (1972)

Seeing as I was no longer attending church and - being an asocial hermit crab - had nothing much else to do I started watching films on Sunday mornings. For the first few months I ended up diving into Tarkovsky. It was more by accident than by design but I quickly realised just how appropriate his films were. In particular Solaris - in which humans go out among the stars ostensibly to search for something different to or bigger than themselves but in fact to find yet another mirror -  struck a chord with me.

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4. Claire Denis: Baby's First Director Loved From Afar
Films seen: Her fiction features with the exception of I Can't Sleep, plus US Go Home and The Hoop Skirt.

Nenette and Boni (1996)

I was theoretically studying history and social science at uni but that didn't stop me from reading film studies books when I was supposed to be researching Zapatistas. It was when reading a book of director interviews that I first came across Claire Denis and learned of her radical take on Billy Budd. For some time Beau Travail - and her films in general - were my cinematic white whale. I nearly rent my garments when I realised that I had turned down the chance to see a Denis film at a festival because it (35 Shots of Rum) had been programmed in the YA section. Fortunately I soon got a chance to see one of hers when White Material played in my city and I caught up with others on SBS or through DVD. However I didn't fall in love until I caught attended a near complete retro of her work while completing a teaching prac. I would stagger into the art gallery every vendredi soir, dead on my feat but eager to prop my eyes open in order to catch Denis' seductive, sensual films. Fittingly none of her films proved to be more alluring than Beau Travail which, despite five years of being an unattainable object of desire, did not disappoint.

Cure

There's a Caitlín R. Kiernan quote from The Drowning Girl that sums up this film's subject perfectly so I'll let it do the heavy lifting: “Hauntings are memes, especially pernicious thought contagions, social contagions that need no viral or bacterial host and are transmitted in a thousand different ways."

Kiernan goes on to say that one of those methods of transmission is art and if that's so then Kyoshi Kurosawa is probably responsible for more than a few hauntings. Cure has no jump scares whatsoever but it nonetheless conjures an undercurrent of dread by way of otherwise innocuous things: a repeated routine becomes unnerving when shot from a new set of angles, water creeping across the floor becomes unsettling when it begins to trace a connection from antagonist to victim and conversations are made uncalm when their expected rhythms are disrupted.

In comparison the brutal act of murder is often portrayed a rather banal manner. When it's shown at all it occurs in long shots (as, to be fair, most of the action does) which reduces the impact of gore, is over quickly and is perpetrated against victims who never get a chance to cry out or show obvious signs of distress. I'm not sure whether this is intended to make it feel like a natural, expected outcome of the events leading up to it or whether it's intended to make them more unsettling through perverse means, or both. Whichever it is Cure succeeds admirably.

Duel to the Death

Duel to the Death's title implies that it's going to be something of a long, frustrating march to the fireworks factory. The finale is indeed an impressive show-stopper of a fight which slowly builds to the bombastic spectacle of the combatants reshaping nature around them but the build-up is impressive too.

It begins with a meticulously edited scene in which ninjas hunt for a book. Searching library shelves doesn't sound exciting on the face of it but the camera - anxiously gliding along the shelves, searching just as restlessly and as athletically as the ninjas - sells the scene. Bold stylisation helps sell later scenes too. Duel to the Death makes a motif of characters striding or running towards distant cameras set at low angles; the fights are well choreographed and use wire-fu judiciously; and the production design features some truly unusual imagery (including men suspended from ropes in a geometric pattern and hang gliders stalking men on foot).

The film is equally attuned to its characters' warring passions. Personal pride, love, nationalism and honour are all set against one another. Furthermore all the characters are offered a measure of dignity. The film's sole female fighter gets a truly badass introduction (executing a particularly harsh but fitting bit of revenge) and a potentially unctuous scene in which she tries on clothing coded as feminine is defanged by focusing on her pleasure rather than indulging the audience. Her hands are shown in close-up sliding through silk sleeves (practically caressing them) and the last shot is of her smile as she combs out her hair.

All of the above does pay off spectacularly when Duel to the Death does culminate in its heroes dueling to the, well, you know what. Yet while the fight may thrillingly defy the laws of gravity its conclusion is also genuinely sobering.

Forty Thousand Horsemen

Forty Thousand Horsemen is very much an unapologetic propaganda film complete with embarrassing racism, cloying nationalism and an awful, condescending romance. It's appropriately scored almost entirely to the strains of the national anthem and Waltzing Matilda so if you don't appreciate either of those awful songs this film may present as something of a struggle.

There's an early scene to establish why Australians are fighting in the Ottoman Empire and the given reasons are class mobility and free speech. How those aims are achieved by participating in a European power struggle is never made clear. The Ottomans themselves are treated as worthy opponents who rightfully respect the fearsome yet laid back Australians. Meanwhile the Germans are mustache twirling villains - unsurprisingly given the film was released in 1940. Local civilians get the shortest end of the stick: they're presented as patsies just waiting to be fleeced by larrikin (a nicer word for arsehole) Australian soldiers.

The sets and battle scenes have clearly had a lot of money lavished on them but while director Charles Chauvel comes up with some stirring images - cavalry leaping over trenches is possibly the most exciting World War 1 combat has ever been - he fails to tell a sophisticated story with them. Instead they're reduced to a simple montage, the upshot of which is that the Australians won.

In the very broadest sense Chauvel is faithful to the historical record - unsurprisingly since his uncle played a crucial role in the battles portrayed. He does though, in the tradition of all good Australian propaganda, elide the role of British forces and he's not at all afraid to sacrifice truth on the alter of pulp storytelling. The highpoint of the film is easily a James Bond-like finale in which our ocker hero battles a dastardly German officer to prevent him from blowing up explosives that would kill everyone in Beersheba. Forty Thousand Horsemen is by no means a good film but at least it's not the torturous history lesson embodied by the likes of Smithy.

Barking Dogs Never Bite

In many ways this is the kind of formally flashy film first time directors often make. Every other cut in Barking Dogs Never Bite is a match cut and on one of the occasions that it's not it's a rather goofy demonstration of the Kuleshov effect that appears to have been used for no readily apparent reason. (Aside from linking the two main characters I guess? But they are already pretty firmly linked by that point...)

That's not to say that Bong Joon-ho is all about empty tricks here - far from it. For example he employs a rather low key variation of the "people mover" shot to make an ethically dubious discussion suitably queasy. One might argue that he's over-egging it - the scene is already shot in an overlit restroom - but given the outsized goofiness of the film as a whole it fits right in.

That outsized goofiness never gets in the way of its overwhelming sincerity. This is a remarkably sympathetic portrait of scrabbling suburbanites. While the characters suffer every indignation and reversal possible and many give in to their canine instincts in order to pursue their place in the sun they all ultimately transcend both their suffering and their human nature. Even the typically overbearing wife is revealed to have been straitjacketed into her role by the patriarchy and even the cruelest fate suffered is revealed to have a silver lining.

Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet's characters constantly remark on just how strange the world is but in case someone in the audience mishears them there's always the regular human ear made alien by close-up, the lip syncing mobster or the non-stop perspective distortion to set them straight. It's all the more ironic then that Blue Velvet's world is not very strange at all.

I suppose it's darker than the idealised catalogs of suburbia, with capital E Evil lurking inside even the most straight-laced college boy, but it's less surprising or unusual than many a 40s noir. Everything is exactly as it's described less than 40 minutes into the movie - the rest is just wheel spinning. Perhaps more damningly the cynicism with which it views pristine colourful surfaces is so diffuse and toothless that it doesn't even break the skin. Ultimately Blue Velvet feels less like an earnest weirdo and more like an awkward teenage boy cultivating a series of studied poses.