Hidden Figures (2016)

Director: Theodore Melfi

Distributor: 20th Century Fox

Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spenser, Janelle Monáe, et al.

Reasons not to watch this film

     This is an example that clearly shows what a "bad" melodrama is. I mean "bad" in a sense that this film does not stimulate any cinematic imagination. It is a story about three black women who overcame racial discriminations in the space race era. You cannot have a doubt about the idea since it is clear on the poster and the trailer. The problem is how the filmmakers unfold the narrative. First, the timings of narrative devices are conventional. Obviously, you cannot blame the director for putting excessive musics at emotional points in a timely manner since it is a rule between him and the audience. But if it is repeated too much, due to too much of narrative fragmentation, that is a different matter. It's like the filmmakers tried not to lose any possible melodramatic point to evoke the audience's emotion. Especially when the film reaches the point where Katherine faces one more racial discrimination before her final triumph, that moment made me fed up with her adversity and weeping. It is not important even if that event actually happened to the real model since no director keeps full fidelity to the original.

Reasons to watch this film

     Despite such typicality, the aspiration of space still moved me. That's why Mary Jackson's quote before the judge is appropriate and has an impact. I want to prolong this review but my idea is too simple to add something more. Space travel is the real modern myth of America and to depict its undiscovered participants is still exciting, because it shows the blood and sweat they made behind the stage. Watch the eighth episode of From the Earth to the Moon, if you want to feel a similar  degree of dramatization of undramatic & mundane life. Works like this and Hidden Figure insist life is still worth to live. In other words, this film has a kind of clear optimism that the films in the 1990s had. Even if it might look outdated, it is still a virtue, isn't it?

The Force Awakens: An Age without Father

It was too disappointing to watch The Force Awakens (henceforth TFA) for its chaotic structure. It appears as the worst case you can make out of a multi-protagonist film. Despite my distaste of the film, it was the late Carrie Fisher who let me watch the film again since I wanted to see her latest appearance. Though it is unexpected, the well-organized structure of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story made me to reassess the disorder of TFA. It is important to note that Rogue One is cemented by the father’s order while TFA is a conflated story of orphans. Not to mention those evident orphans like Ray and Fin, Luke has been lost doubting his capability to build a new Jedi order in the absence of any mentor (we know he also defeated his father, yeah!), Kylo Ren “wonderfully” dives into the realm of fatherless world, and Poe Dameron? Is it worth to mention this Wedge-like pilot guy here?

There are so many histrionic moments in the movie that audiences would not understand. Those moments are mostly meant to show how Ray finds out ways to feel the Force. It seems ridiculous that a novice (and a scavenger) like her easily resists Kylo Ren, uses Force mind trick to a stormtrooper, and wins the lightsaber battle. Especially when she lets go her Force sensitivity during the duel, the camera stays on her close-up for a long time and Kylo Ren generously waits for her to feel the Force with her eyes closed. For this unnaturalness, in my previous reviews of TFA and Rogue One, I assumed that Ray’s secret of birth would be finally connected to the Skywalker nepotism for her unexplained intuitive talent.

However, it might be understood as a way to find an order in the absence of father. How can we find an order if there is no sacred one like father to judge good and evil? It seems TFA suggests that the solution is supposed to be heuristic. If this is what the filmmakers meant, it is delving more into one’s inner mind than the conventional mode of melodrama does. A typical melodrama protagonist conforms to his/her predetermined psychic role (either good or evil) through his/her words and behaviors. However in TFA, it is not even to be manifested. It is just enough to stay in one’s inner world and does not have to be explained logically. In this sense, now I doubt if Disney would reveal who Ray’s parents are. It might be more disappointing if Ray has actual parents since it can cling Ray to a preexisting order as well as the conventional Hollywood narrative.

I hesitate to assert this, but based on this consideration, I guess Leia was supposed to free Kylo Ren from the dark side of the Force as the father’s attempt (Han Solo) turned out to be infeasible. But is this meaningful at this very moment when we can no longer see Carrie Fisher again? Even if that was Disney’s initial plan, they might have no choice but change it. Anyway, this new perspective of mine makes myself expect what will come in the next Star Wars episode. Of course, this does not cover the lack of creativity of TFA. My criticism against Jar Jar Abrams is still effective. I just hope the next director will show a new horizon of narrative without leaving obtuse cliffhangers.

May the Force be with Carrie Fisher and all of us.

Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned

Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned

Directed by: Um Tae-hwa

Distributor: Showbox

Starring: Kang Dong-won, Shin Eun-soo, Kim Hee-won, Kwon Hae-hyo, et al.


There were five to seven people in the auditorium today. Two of them were couples. They came late, left early. While watching the movie, these two lovers kept chattering in low frequency and that was a typical fate(?) of an unpopular non-Western film. But after finishing the movie, I came to understand the couple.

That is because this film is specifically for Koreans who remember the sinking of MV Sewol. It means they are ready to be trapped by the disastrous trauma. It is manifested by numerous allegories, such as the detonations for tunneling and the death of kids without being noticed by adults, that are posited by the filmmakers. I hate this kind of explanation the most because it is the easiest and superficial. But this time, I could not find a better one. As Isamail Xavier explained, allegory is used to reconcile the "fixed truth" of the past with the viewpoint of the present, while overcoming the temporal rupture between the two times ("Historical Allegory" 341). This is because the temporal gap gives a room for spatial and temporal conditions to interrupt the past teller's intention when it is interpreted by the present reader (338). For this reason, unlike symbolism which is universal, deciphering of allegory requires the reader's preliminary knowledge as a code as Xavier insisted:

"Here the reader and his or her cultural bias - that is to say, the pole of interpretation - become the major instance responsible for the allegory." (340)


So it is not surprising the couple (and another guy who came alone) left the theater in the midst of the film. The real question is; was the allegory effective to Korean audiences? My answer is no. The central sentiment in this film is the different passages of time between the survivor and the victim. As I remember, such a sentiment was represented either by quotes ("You should wear uniforms and enjoy school life. Don't abandon them for me.") or by the actors' cryings.

More to blame is the typical temporal order of the narrative. Although the narrative contains aspects of thriller, it was too bad that everything was revealed to the spectator too easily. I think a simple shuffling of scene could have accrued tension, but the story was shown so linearly as possible. So for me, the film became just a boring fantasization of the marine disaster.

Cited work:
Xavier, Ismail. "Historical Allegory." A Companion to Film Theory, edited by Toby Miller and Robert Stam, Blackwell Publishing, 1999, pp. 333-361.

Sailor Suit and Machine Gun: Graduation (2016)

     This film is an adaptation of Yaguchi Shinobu's novel with the same title. Like a course cuisine, the film contains typical Japanese cultural elements such as life in high school and Yakuza. On top of that, it also touches upon contemporary Japan's problem of silver society.

     I assume the filmmaker attempted to describe mental development the youth by the combination of a high school girl and Yakuza. Though problematic, it is a fresh try. However, while I like the film's theme, it is hard to agree with the way how the filmmaker directed it.

     There is a clear discrepancy between the aud's expectation (or just mine?) and the film's mood. In such a film like this, one might expect fancy action scenes in which the cute Hashimoto Kanna wipes out the evil Yakuza. On the contrary, this film is never frivolous. This is neither an action film nor a Noir. That's not bad. If it was a frivolous idol action movie, it could have been even worse, due to the uncanny combination between a girl and violence.

     

     The problem is, the film's tempo is totally loose. I understand that the filmmaker deliberately used long-takes in order to convey simultaneity (spectating Kanna in a real time) and to prevent emotional fissures. I buy the filmmakers's effort to take such long and well-tailored shots, but pertaining to the entire picture, those shots were not good with the nihilistic plot. Though I did not read the original novel, I guess the director used long-takes in order to solely depend on his actors's performance because bitterness of loss is what the original book says.

     In fact, it is a probable artistic option. However, I assume the film's box office score manifests that such a direction was incompatible with the taste of the aud, especially fans of Kanna. She was and is truly kawaii, but the film caused a controversy on her action because of it excessive dependence on her. Does she really have a capacity to lead a two-hour film alone? I doubt it.

Book Review: Food, Media & Contemporary Culture

 

Publisher: Palgrave Macmilan

Editor: Peri Bradley

This book provides an insight that enables you to see contexts, which are hidden under the surface, around modern foodie culture. I selectively read some of the essays to save time.

1. More Cake Please - We're British! Locating British Identity in Contemporary TV Food Texts, The Great British Bake Off and Come Dine With Me.

by Peri Bradley

This essay explains how British convention works within the shows not only with the foods but also with ancillary aspects such as location, judges, etc.

After reading this, I watched an episode of The Great British Baking Show (actually, I am sure this is the same thing that Bradley mentioned) on Netflix, and the notions of British standard and authority were important in the show.

2. Benidorm and the 'All You Can Eat' Buffet: Food, Bodily Functions and the Carnivalesque

by Christopher Pullen

This shows the idea of class that resides on consumption & digestion of food and body, but I felt like most of assertions were working only on the textual level, which means, the author interpreted elements of the drama, which are even obvious to undergrad students. Not bad, but other ones are more interesting to read.

3. A Pinch of Ethics and a Soupçon of Home Cooking: Soft-selling Supermarkets on Food Television

by Tania Lewis and Michelle Phillipov

"[...] Australian supermarkets have recently begun to actively intervene in the space of food ethics and politics, [...] Key here is the desire to claim a market-based, moral high ground in a context where supermarkets are under mounting media pressure and public scrutiny in relation to their practices of sourcing [...]" (121, emphasis added)

This essay explains how shows and campaigns that are sponsored by supermarket chains invisibly enhances consumer's trust and companies' image. Due to the exemplary program's cyclical structure in which the consumer can also become a producer, this essay reminds me of Professor Jung-bong Choi's lecture of affective labor. In other words, laymen's food contest can be interpreted as a transmuted form of consumption since it consumes customers' effort, not to mention their money.

4. Cooking on Reality TV: Chef-Participants and Culinary Television

by Hugh Curnutt

The chef contest show is beneficial for a chef for some reasons:

a) It becomes a part of his/her career.

b) Competing with one's contemporaries enhances his/her recognition in the community of chefs.

c) It helps running one's restaurants, vice versa.

5. Food Porn: The Conspicuous Consumption of Food in the Age of Digital Reproduction

by Erin Metz McDonnell

This explains imagery and contextual nature of food porn in regards to cinematography (e.g. Framing, orientation, depth of field). McDonnell is also highly sensitive to class: the purpose of food porn is to create a seemingly attainable illusion that is actually unattainable. 

Three Films of Renoir and Illusion of Love

     They say love becomes ephemeral in your 30s. Unlike your previous decade, it does not worth tackling for or make your life better. Now you know love is only a superficial and naive idea that actually annoys you. Yes, you may still love someone, but now it is not the only and foremost priority. Jean Renoir's three films - The Golden Coach (1952), French Cancan (1954), and Elena and Her Men (1956) - represent how much the fantasy of love is illusive in a deceptive manner.

     The spectator might feel uncanny after watching all of the three films. Of the center of each of them is an attraction. In The Golden Coach, they are the viceroy's brand-new coach and a traveling theater. In French Cancan, it is the dance of Cancan, obviously. And in Elena and Her Men, the subsequent events around a general and a princess catch the spectator's eyes. Characters revolve around such attractions, and the films seem to manifest innocent love stories: love-at-first-sight, a platonic love between an old man and a young girl, rectangular relationship among three fervent men and a woman. However, these films suddenly subvert their stories after leading the audience along the ordinary romance for about 70 minutes. When the audience realizes the slight change of tone, it turns out to be too late.

Henri Danglard looks like an innocent show producer
who suffers from the unstable financial support

     French CanCan presents a cabaret show producer Henri Danglard's rise and fall. Superficially, he and his pals are frivolous bourgeois who repeatedly keep meeting and breaking up. Danglard, who seeks and develops talents, is backed by his friend Walter. But as Danglard has a small argument with him, Walter draws back his financial support (and this does not happen only once). As an bohemian, Danglard does not get depressed and keep looking for new talents. An innocent girl Nini is one of them. After she was recruited by Danglard, she learns cancan only to witness his downfall due to her (unofficial) husband's violence on the producer in the opening event of a new cabaret, Moulin Rouge. Seeing Danglard's persistent optimism and love of art, Nini becomes his mistress and devotes herself to him. Upon the opening day of Moulin Rouge, she observes a solo singer who sang before her , behind the curtain.

     Aligning herself to Danglard, she realizes the way he perceives talents. And this is assured by what happens on the backstage before the climactic cancan show. In front of Nini's dress room, the characters' tableau is divided into two sides. One is Danglard's, where everyone except Nini belongs, represents their complicity in the rules of the entertainment world. The other side is Nini's, where only she belongs. Danglard reveals what he is so blatantly, and then Nini helplessly complies to the reality. However, this scene is not the most astounding.

     While Nini and her colleagues dances cancan, Danglard delves into the rhythm sitting on a armchair with a meaningful smile. Right after then, he encounters a female laborer who happens to witness him shaking his leg like a "vulgar" cancan dancer. Due to the gaze, he puts his leg down and lights up his cigar, which represents an elegant bourgeois appetite, as she disappears. Meanwhile, Nini crazily mingles around the cabaret showing her underwear and stretching her legs as other girls do. Compared to Danglard's confident and satisfactory smile, her exaggeratedly distorted laughter finalizes her demoralization. The crest of the moral downfall is manifested by the collective shots of the girls, especially the frontal ones. Row by row, they rush right to the film spectator lifting their skirts.

 

     This evokes the spectator's compassion for her. The overall story has little sadness. Though there was an attempt to suicide, every character achieves his/her goal. Every man who wandered around Nini meets his pair, and she eventually becomes a dancer as she has wanted. Despite such happy ending, there is an uncanny feeling that comes from the low class characters' masochistic satisfaction with reality. Nini seems to be a victor, but she is actually a victim of the entertainment industry  and  star system. The film alludes that its temporal background, so called Belle Époque, was based on the illusive and phallocentric society, which was created and maintained by bourgeois.

     This film reminds me of contemporary idol system and furthermore, Walter Benjamin's criticism on Hollywood star system in "The Work of art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility". Though the star seems to possess all possible wealth and fame, at the same time, he/she becomes a target of public repugnance and a servant for entertainment. The recent Korean contest Produce 101 has created heated debates about teenager exploitation, but such was already alluded in Renoir's French Cancan. The only reason why the contest was distasted is not because it took advantage of the young girls but because its manner was too flagrant and clumsy compared to Renoir's depiction.

Diaper fashion of Girl's Day in 2001

     But star system is not Renoir's the only and ultimate topic. Due to his subsequent unfolding of love stories, his films also evoke a pessimism of love itself.

     Elena and Her Men is another example. A Polish princess, Elena (Ingrid Bergman) has a mystery power to make one's dream come true with a daisy. After meeting her in his victory parade, the adept general Rollan believes in her magical power and stops thinking autonomously. Accordingly, everyone around the princess, such as the general's advisers and his friend Henri, strives to "pimp her out" to the general. In short, this film is a slight modification of the director's previous work The Rules of the Game (1939) in a sense that it also shows the stupidity of bourgeois. But more importantly, this film represents how admiration of woman and her clout are illusively constructed by phallocentrism. The two main male leads, Rollan and Henri, ask her for love but always try to exploit her body, either in the name of the state or that of the general. It is also strange that the princess always works and moves for the male characters' needs without any hesitation. This is because of Renoir's perspective, which depicts the French citizens, even Elena, in this work almost like Fascists. The general's love becomes a national secret. It is also a way of guaranteeing the state's triumph. For this, love becomes so ephemeral and void at the end whereas all characters in the scene caress and kiss each other.

     The Golden Coach is a case that makes me regard it as an afterwards story of the aforementioned stories. Its heroine Camilla (Anna Magnani) is the most powerful lady among the three films. Thanks to the histrionic setting, she enjoys her position as a dominatrix ruling both male and female characters by either her own energy or the theatrical language, if inevitable (e.g. the scene where she takes the golden coach from the viceroy). Ironically, however, her dominance suddenly ends as the curtain is drawn. It is truly worthwhile to cite her dialogue with Don Antonio, the pantaloon.

- Don Antonio: 

Ladies and Gentlemen, to celebrate the triumph of Camilla over the intrigues of the court I would have liked to present to you a new melodrama in the Italian style but Camilla is still missing. Camilla! Camilla, on stage! Don't waste your time in the so-called real life. You belong to us the actors, acrobats mimes, clowns, mountebanks. Your only way to find happiness is on any stage, any platform, any public place during those two little hours when you become another person your true self.

- Camilla:

Felipe, Ramon, the viceroy disappeared gone. Don't they exist anymore?

- Don Antonio: 

Disappeared. Now they are a part of the audience. Do you miss them?

- Camilla:

A little.

     It is pity that her dominance only exists in the theater within the film. But this also represents the existence of women's ideal ego in cinema. As Laura Mulvey argued in her essay, a woman is supposed to project her desire to her son, who is another male, due to her absence of penis. Likewise, the above-mentioned heroines - Elena, Camilla, Nini - employ other signifiers - her men (Elena), the golden coach (Camilla), and Danglard (Nini) - to signify their dignity and existence. Like Camilla's case, women's desire is not to be inherent in themselves but to be projected externally. And love is the very device that Renoir used to disguise such conspiracy.

   I do not intend to delve into the feminist ideology, but I was just sad to feel Renoir's pessimism of love, and even of all naive ideas of the world. I recently read a Facebook posting, which explicated some reasons why they do not start relationships after 30. It said that one's romantic experiences and distractions of life prevent him/her from wasting his/her energy for such high-stress low-return task. It made me depressed that Renoir, an artist who lived from Belle Époque to the two world wars to the Cold War, might have lost any belief in psychological understanding between individuals. Stories and films praise the sincere love, but how much do we know each other thoroughly? What else do we believe in other than romance?: the golden coach? Or a religion of daisy? If not, stardom and recognition? No matter how much the heroines, and we, suffer from these questions, the world looks so calm and consistent. The three films of Renoir make us stop and look back upon what we might have missed.

     

Eye in the Sky (2015)

Director: Gavin Hood

Writer: Guy Hibbert

Production: Raindog Films, Entertainment One

Starring: Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman

     The film unfolds the procedure of a UK-US joint counter-terrorist operation. Their initial plan was to capture two British and one American who flied to Kenya to join a terrorist group, but as it is revealed that they will take part in a suicide attack, the executives change the plan to kill them by using an UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) raid.

     Remote intervention in modern warfare was already depicted in Patriot Games (1992), but only with infrared images and close ups, it showed how much war can be indifferent and cold regardless of its impact. On the other hand, this film dissects the procedure of decision-making and foregrounds the gravity of the military campaign. As Laura Mulvey explicated, the film destroys the pleasure of spectacle by analyzing its procedure. This leads us to re-perceive the recent news about U.S. air raid on ISIS. We see such news every month and now it became somewhat commonplace. They say "U.S. air raid kills IS No. 2 (or something)"... and we casually think how powerful the U.S is and how easy to crash terrorists is. But this film reveals what kind of attempts and conflicts are at stake around a single attack.

     It also shows how much people are susceptible to image. [Spoiler] Colonel Powell lets her officer to manipulate the estimated casualty rate to get approval to attack from the headquarters. Her man emphasizes that it is merely an estimation and she says that she acknowledges it. However, as the casualty analysis is shown to the headquarters members in a diagram, they become convinced so easily. Through image, possibility becomes a fixed "truth". Its impact is so crucial because the heads kept tossing the responsibility to each other before the display of diagram. Ultimately, the film questions where the responsibility resides in the Fordistically fragmented warfare. The lives in the underdeveloped nation is determined not by someone in the site of battle but by those in quiet offices or someone in a cell with a joystick. In this sense, this film magnifies previously marginalized entities such as the indigenous residents and agents, who have been depicted in mainstream films as being primitive or gifted by Pax Americana. Showing the Mo'Allims firstly on the ending credits sequence can be understood by the same token. 

     Overall, it is not a tiring film. The director builds up thrill by constantly playing with the interaction between inside and outside of the frame. It is ironic that such shows the futility of vision despite the existence of various cutting-edge surveillance devices. And the entire film is wholly filled with such ironies like Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. I bet you will enjoy it.