35 Rhums - a film by Claire Denis

Something is off about many of the synopses I’ve read for this film:

Imdb: "The relationship between a father and daughter is complicated by the arrival of a handsome young man."

Netflix: "This heartfelt slice-of-life drama by filmmaker Claire Denis tells the story of widower Lionel (Alex Descas), a train driver, and his grown daughter, Josephine (Mati Diop). The two spend most of their time together, but change is in the cards. A neighbor (Grégoire Colin) becomes attracted to Josephine, a family friend retires and Lionel tries to maintain a friendship with his ex-girlfriend (Nicole Dogue)."

Metacritic: "A widowed conductor, looking forward to retirement, lives with his grown daughter in a Paris suburb. When a neighbor starts to show interest in his "little girl", the conductor tries to adjust."

None of the synopses are “wrong” so to speak, but I think trying, with a series of brief words, to make explicit what is deeply implicit in the film does a certain injustice to the film’s story, if "story" is what it should be called. It is a film, in so many ways, in which nothing really happens, and all of the above synopses seem to be trying to explain the film in terms of “what happens.” Part of the problem with those synopses, unless you are already a fan of the director, is that they fail to stir up any kind of interest because “what happens” sounds, well, pretty boring, right? I couldn’t help but be reminded, with those synopses, of the Seinfeld episode, “The Comeback,” in which Elaine, rents a film, with a title, clearly inspired by art-house cinema, called The Pain and the Yearning, and the film’s description is “An old woman experiences pain and yearning.” 35 Rhums might sound, if you try to describe it, very much like The Pain and the Yearning. And if you try to describe it with any kind of enthusiasm to your friends, they’ll perhaps think a) your life must be very dull indeed, b) you are a film snob who has lost touch with reality, or c) you are trying to be a film snob and not fooling anybody.

35 Rhums, I think, defies any succinctly worded description; it must be experienced on its own terms and in its own time. But if one is willing to do that –let the film be what it is – the reward is immense. I admit, when I first sat down to watch it, I had to make a conscious effort to relax into the pace of the film. During the first several minutes – watching train tracks run and weave, watching a man smoking a cigarette, watching the tracks again, from day into night – I knew I would have to re-set my internal film metronome; the pacing and storytelling of this would be much different than the film I had seen most previously, Star Trek, every scene of which urged me to BE EXCITED. (And Star Trek was, actually, a lot of fun. )

After having said 35 Rhums is not a film that submits easily to words, I guess I’m going to have the audacity now to try to write about it. I expect I’ll fail in many ways, but I want to try nonetheless because the experience of the film was such an extraordinary one, and I want to try to respond in some way. I had a halting conversation afterwards with the friend I was with – we both began sentences and finished them lamely and then sat in silence. And then tried to speak again. However much we failed, though, to express ourselves and our thoughts, our silences were peaceful somehow, not awkward. That may say more about our friendship, which is a close one, than about the film, but I think it does say something about the film, too, which had nestled its way somehow into our experience of being for that evening.

But I haven’t said much about the film itself yet. As the synopses indicate, it is, indeed, about a father and a daughter who live together in an apartment in Paris or on the outskirts of Paris, certainly not the Paris of films we usually see, but one that is contained by the bounds of the rather small lives this father, Lionel, a train driver, and his daughter, Josephine, a student. And so what we see is relative to their day-to-day life – their apartment, the train tracks, a favorite bar/café, a classroom, a neighbor’s apartment. The film beautifully, in small ways and with very few words, builds our conception of the relationship between the two and of the significance of each to the other – the buying of a rice cooker, the cooking and sharing of a meal, the fetching of slippers, the listening to the sounds of each other going about some household task – we don’t need to be told that these two, in their quiet rhythm of life in the apartment, are deeply at home with one another.

Their bond and the satisfaction of that bond is set against three other characters in the film who live, in contrast, in a kind of isolation and loneliness:

Gabrielle, a neighbor, who drives a taxi by day, who seems cheery and kind, but who is alone when at home, and though she seems to have known Lionel and Josephine for a significant amount of time, cannot quite break into the bond they share, though clearly she longs to;

Noe, another neighbor, a young man, who lives alone in his dead parents’ apartment, and whom we first meet when he comes home, hears music coming from Lionel and Josephine’s apartment, and begins to move towards their door, but backs away and continues up the stairs, stumbling over a bike before he enters he own dark, untidy apartment;

and last, Rene, a co-worker of Lionel’s, forced into retirement, and even while surrounded by his well-wishing co-workers giving their loving farewell gifts, cannot quite hide his loneliness and despair. Each of these three are alone, and while they live, continuing on the track set before them, they seem to go doggedly, without purpose.

Lionel and Josephine’s relationship alone is what perhaps keeps them from the same lonely isolation and purposelessness. Lionel’s job is a job, that’s all; he seems to genuinely care for his fellow workers, but one doesn’t sense anything deeper in the relationships beyond the general camaraderie that comes from sharing a particular job’s world. Josephine appears to be a diligent student; she speaks intelligently and with some interest in the classroom; she plays soccer; she has a job - but as with Lionel, these activities don’t seem to bring her any particular purpose or joy. Josephine might be Noe, had both, instead of one, of her parents died; Lionel might be Rene if he did not have Josephine. Their love for and care for each other is a gravitational center to which they can always, and do, return. But Josephine is a young woman at the beginning of life and Lionel is closing in on the end of his, and it’s clear, the film says to us, that they cannot remain indefinitely in this circle of quiet warmth that they are to each other – and they are both conscious of this.

Noe’s and Josephine’s attraction to one another is one indicator of the inevitable break between Lionel and Josephine that must happen at some point. And I love the way the film sets up this tension among the three characters, a tension that is both immediate – in the sense that the three must interact with each other in social situations – and far-reaching because it indicates something deeper, something that must eventually change between the father and daughter.

Noe is an odd character. While I felt at home with Lionel and Josephine – though both are to some extent inscrutable, not least because they speak so little – Noe’s presence brings an unease to the film, both because of who he is personally and because of what his presence indicates for Lionel and Josephine. The unease stems partly from physical space of his apartment – uncared for and untidy, old couches and bits of trash on the floor – he doesn’t seem to belong there. He never has milk; he doesn’t know where his aspirin is and when he’s asked for some, he shuffles for it aimlessly among the random items on his shelf. He leaves his window open when he leaves for a few days, and Lionel must go up and shut it when it begins to bang in the wind at night. Noe’s apartment stands in another contrast to the neat, if small and rather spare, space where Lionel and Josephine live. Their space clearly belongs to them in the way that a home belongs to people who love each other – the home is cared for because they care for each other and that space is an extension of themselves, for each other. Noe would never paint his walls as Josephine has done to hers.

And yet, Noe is not, in the end, a character one mistrusts – he is directionless and alone, and who he is builds our unease, but he is certainly not a threat because of who he is personally – the threat that he is comes primarily from his potential in breaking up what has been a close party of two. The film delicately moves us back and forth between an unease with Noe and an attraction for Noe (and he is decidedly attractive), a back and forth that surely mirrors Josephine’s own feelings. One scene perfectly captures this back and forth – a scene in which Lionel, Josephine, Noe, and Gabrielle are all together – “together as a family again” as Gabrielle says at one point with a forced brightness and longing – Noe kisses Josephine, and she kisses him back, but then pushes him away; but when he begins to leave – as if accepting her rejection - she pulls him back to her, and they sit down together, at an awkward distance, against a wall. The scene is beautifully understated – the feeling and drama runs almost entirely beneath the surface, but it says so much about the primary tension in the film. With Josephine, we feel it’s so difficult to know what to want – we want Noe for her, and yet we do not want her to leave the solid warmth and security of the relationship with her father. We know what she is leaving – we do not know, quite, what she is moving towards. We know, only, that she will need to move soon.

The film builds so slowly and with such small moments (indeed, it didn't feel as if it was even building at all), I was not quite prepared for the emotional impact of the end. To say it held emotional impact is strange, however, because nothing really happens - nothing specifically on screen, that is. The genius of the film is such that it was able to overwhelm me at the end by virtue of the small moments that had come before and to make me weep when that “nothing” of the end happened – when Lionel’s friend plays the piano and I hear the sounds of a party in the background, when Lionel drinks his 35 shots, and when Lionel takes the rice cooker out of the package from which it had never been removed. Those nothings were, beautifully, everything.

Prologue to the Prologue: In Which I Talk to Myself:

(Note: These next three posts (a prologue to the prologue, a prologue, and a review of Adaptation) were originally written for the Filmspotting forum. On the forum once a month, those who would like to, participate in what we call "The Movie Dictator Club." Each person dictates a film to another person to watch - the dictatee must watch the film and report back with some thoughts about the film. I was assigned Adaptation for July's dictator club - I put off writing and put off writing until I finally published my write-up, two months later, in September. The prologues reflect my problems in getting started in writing - and interestingly, the film, Adaptation, dovetailed beautifully with my writer's block.)

[Kaufmann]:"To begin... To begin... How to start?
 I'm hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin.
Okay, so I need to establish the themes. 
Maybe a banana-nut. That's a good muffin."


Me: [Yes, how to begin? Hmmm, . . . hangnail, there – ooo, like that shot of the jagged skin on the finger of Kaufmann in the movie – yes, yes, there’s something about that shot that captures an essential part of the movie, I think . . . ] 

Me: [Ok, but talk about that image later maybe. Here goes:]


There’s something infinitely comforting . . .  


Me: [“infinitely”? no, that won’t work, pretentious – less is more. Ok, go again.] 


There’s something comforting about Charlie Kaufmann’s neuroses and self-doubt as I sit here trying to write about Adaptation. 


Me: [wait, should I say “Charlie Kaufmann” or “the Charlie Kaufmann character”? Does it matter? Yes, . . . but that question is part of what the movie’s about isn’t it? Errr, ok, get to that later. Maybe. Go.]


There’s something comforting about the self-doubt, the ordinariness, the neuroses, the paralysis of the character of Charlie Kaufmann as I sit here trying to write about Adaptation . . . 


Me: [I think Aoife’s crying. Should I go check? . . .  I’ve [i]gotta [/i]get this write-up done. This was a July assignment, Melissa, July. You slacker.]


[Kaufmann]: "If I stop putting things off, I would be happier. All I do is sit on my fat ass. If my ass wasn't fat I would be happier . . ."


Me: [Heh, both true. Go.] 


There’s something comforting about the self-doubt, the ordinariness, the neuroses, the paralysis of the character of Charlie Kaufmann as I sit here trying to write about Adaptation – he couldn’t begin, I don’t know how to begin. He was afraid of being cliché: "My life is a walking cliché."
I’m afraid of being cliché, of being boring. A little bit afraid of being so almost every time I speak, write, post something online, on the boards, on Facebook, wherever. Of course, Kaufmann - both the character and the man – has much less reason to doubt his writerly abilities and wit than I do, but he, the character at least, acts the way I feel when I’m supposed to be creating something, especially writing something . . . 


Me: [Yes, she is crying. Dang. When am I going to get back to this?] 


[6 hours later . . .]


Me: [Where was I? Errrgh. [/re-reads] 

Me: [Sigh. This is stupid. What am I trying to be, Kaufmann? Heh, very funny, just write already. Edit out the edits. Go, go, go.]

Prologue: In Which I Indulge and Write about Myself, Not the Movie

There’s something comforting about the self-doubt, the ordinariness, the neuroses, the paralysis of the character of Charlie Kaufman as I sit here trying to write about Adaptation – he couldn’t begin, I don’t know how to begin. He was afraid of being cliché, I’m afraid of being cliché, of being boring, of being a cheap imitation of someone else. A little bit afraid of being so almost every time I speak, write, even post something online, on the film forum, on Facebook, on Twitter (there’s some real paralysis there), wherever. Of course, Kaufman - both the character and the man – has less reason to doubt his writerly abilities and wit than I do, but he, the character at least, acts and thinks the way I feel and often think when I’m supposed to be creating something, especially writing something. The hesitations and falterings, the bursts of words that seem profound and perfect at first but then quickly reveal themselves to be what they are, shallow, pretentious, imitative, and stupid. On the forum I can’t compete with the quick, omniscient wit of a member like pixote or the dry, confidence of an sdedalus (long-time forum member) or the fluid, wonderful charm of a worm@work (another long-time forum member) or any others of all the amazing Filmspotters. And I guess I don’t want to, compete with them, that is. I’m quite happy to admire. Mostly, it bothers me that I can’t compete with myself, my best work - hmmm, the stuff I wrote in grad school, I guess that would be? A very long time ago. Where is it now, anyway? Moldering away somewhere in a box in our garage? So I’m haunted by that old stuff, paralyzed in trying to write new stuff ‘cause it’ll never be as good or interesting or original. (If it ever was.) And yet, on I go.  I will force myself to write about this film, Adaptation, because I loved it, because I love films in general and love to think about films – and because writing forces me to think more deeply than I would otherwise. I say that to my writing students, and I believe it. I believe with E. M. Forster that “I don’t know what I think until I see what I say.” So I’d better try to see what I say about this thing. Here goes: (see next post)

Adaptation (Spike Jones, 2002)

**CAUTION: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD**


Adaptation: In Which There Either Is or Isn’t


Why am I here? How did I get here?

Adaptation is now the last in the line of Kaufman films I’ve seen. I suppose I shouldn’t call them “Kaufman films” – they’re Gondry/Kaufman, Jonze/Kaufman, and only one Kaufman/Kaufman – but the themes and ideas are so similar in all four films, it’s difficult for me to focus on the directors over Kaufman’s screenplays. And with the exception of Eternal Sunshine, which I first saw some years ago, I’ve seen Synecdoche, Malkovich, and Adaptation in pretty quick succession, in that order, relatively recently. So in some ways, it may be difficult for me to stop the urge to trace the similar threads in all the films as I try to write about just Adaptation here, but I’ll indulge just a little here and there. The images and quote above is part of one thread that runs through all the films (though maybe more obliquely in Eternal Sunshine), I think - those often asked, so very human questions coupled with the main character’s sense (but also the side characters’) of being out of place, uncomfortable in, and out of sync with his own body and mind. We’re “All trapped in our own bodies, in moments in history,” he writes – he feels trapped rather than at home. After the brilliant opening voiceover by Nicholas Cage as Charlie Kaufman (the film had me, absolutely, from those opening moments), highlighting the character’s discomfort and frustration with his own body and mind -

- Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald head. . . . Fat ass. I should start jogging again. Five miles a day. Really do it this time. Maybe rock climbing. I need to turn my life around. What do I need to do? I need to fall in love. . . . Why should I be made to feel I have to apologize for my existence? Maybe it's my brain chemistry. Maybe that's what's wrong with me. Bad chemistry. All my problems and anxiety can be reduced to a chemical imbalance or some kind of misfiring synapses. I need to get help for that. But I'll still be ugly though. Nothing's gonna change that – 

- we move fairly quickly to the set of Being John Malkvovich, where Charlie feels out-of-place and uncomfortable though it’s one place of all places he should probably feel most comfortable, in a set built to a design of, essentially, his very own. If my sympathies weren’t with Charlie, the character, that is, in the voiceover, they certainly are now in this scene in the beginning:

And then later in the film on the same set, Charlie attempts to be friendly, confident, and nonchalant,

but is effectively rebuffed by the blank looks from Cusack and Keener and by his own insecurities surging beneath the surface.

So painful and absolutely identifiable even from the opening moments. Doesn’t matter if I’m not a famous screenwriter, I know all too well those same humiliating kinds of moments. In places, with people in/with which I ought to feel at home, I still say to myself, “Be confident, be yourself, be friendly” – then, ha! Internal mortification and misery with myself. My only desire is to get away, get away, get away:

And so the film has begun. With Charlie feeling alone and on the outside. And when the film turns in, and turns in, and, wonderfully, turns in again on itself so that I don’t know what is real world and what is film world, who is character and who is real person, what is fiction or fantasy and what is reality, Charlie, as that utterly sympathetic character, remains the core of the film experience. From the very beginning, with the words “screenplay by Charlie and Donald Kaufmann,” I know, because there is no Donald Kaufman, that I am entering a world where classic conventions are being overturned – those conventions that direct me as a viewer as to how and when I should suspend my disbelief are upended. The boundaries aren’t the same boundaries anymore if I can’t take even the credits at face value. And yet still, this Charlie Kaufman character, played by Cage, is a steady emotional core – I’m on the journey with him. Really with him.


The film constantly draws attention to itself as a film, as a thing that is, or once was, a process of creation – a few recurring phrases spoken by different characters at different times come to mind at once: 
“Laroche is a fun character” and “Who’s going to play me?” 


The Laroche line demonstrates that real people are made into “characters” in the film (and in films in general), made smaller – caricatured – made larger – made into something that may or may not reflect the real person at all. 
The “who’s going to play me line” reflects something of the same thing, and more. It draws attention to Meryl Streep playing Susan Orlean, Chris Cooper as John Laroche, Brian Cox as Robert McKee, and, of course, Nicholas Cage as Charlie . . . and Donald. 


And in Donald’s presence throughout, I am kept, as a viewer, on unsure footing, in a state of unease about the boundaries of the film. Streep and Cooper are playing just one real life person each. Cage is playing one real life person and one fictional person – what does it mean? Does Donald represent something? Maybe he, with Charlie the twin brother, represents the two real halves of Charlie Kaufman the real person in some way? Is Donald even real in the world of the film, or is he in the film maybe a figment of Charlie’s neurotic imagination? A split personality maybe? When Charlie calls home at the end of the film, at the scene of the accident, he says only, “Mom?” And she doesn’t say, “Is this Charlie or Donald?” She assumes it’s Charlie. So is there no real Donald? Was Donald’s screenplay actually Charlie’s? The film leaves those questions essentially unanswered, and ultimately, I didn’t really care whether I knew the answers or not - though I like asking them anyway. Even if the questions are unanswered, both Charlie and Donald, whether one person or two, are absolutely sympathetic – the one insecure and neurotic and probably brilliant as an artist, the other confident and charming and probably fairly generic as an artist. 


The interplay between Charlie and Donald is some of my favorite stuff in the film. Charlie both winces at Donald’s attempts at screenwriting, a screenplay rife with Hollywood clichés and happy mediocrity, and looks on enviously at the happiness and freedom Donald finds in his writing and in his life. 
The contrast between the two men is wonderful: Charlie, a successful screenwriter, awkward socially, unhappy and tortured by paralysis, brought on by insecurities, insecurities related both to his writing and to his relationships with women; 

Donald, unsuccessful from a career-related perspective, but charming socially - moving at ease on the Being John Malkovich set and apparently unselfconsciously befriending Catherine Keener as well as becoming involved with Caroline, the make-up girl – he is happy and secure in himself as a writer of typical Hollywood fare (even though he cheerily bows to Charlie’s genius) and in his relationships with women. 

Donald is, perhaps(?), the kind of person I think most of us want to be; Charlie is, perhaps, the person we most often are(?). 


Another theme of the movie that runs throughout all the Kaufman movies I’ve seen is the theme of what I’ll perhaps call solipsism, and, ultimately, an awareness of that solipsism (Charlie identifies his own screenplay as solipsistic) and the attempt to deal with it. This solipsism and, especially, the awareness of it, is most exemplified in Charlie, but there’s a telling scene featuring Streep as Susan Orlean and Cooper as John Laroche that beautifully captures the idea, too:
Orlean is riding with Laroche in his van, ostensibly interviewing him, notebook in hand. Instead of writing down Laroche’s words, Orlean writes about her own reactions to what she is experiencing: Laroche says one thing, and Orlean writes down something else – her own interpretation of and thoughts about Laroche. 

She can’t, at this point in the film (or ever perhaps?), really see or care much about anyone but herself. It’s much easier to say, “Laroche is a fun character” and leave it at that – though she seems uncomfortable with that particular designation by others - than to truly engage with him as a real person. Her written words are things that keep Laroche contained, keep him in that purely professional space, keep him away from her personally.


Charlie does the same thing – he is absorbed in himself, and his written words are things that contain, encapsulate others - on a much larger scale. His task as a screenwriter is to adapt a screenplay from Orlean’s book, The Orchid Thief. He wants to write about orchids or even about Orlean, but his repeated attempts fail, and he finds that instead of writing about something else or someone else in a real way, 
“I’ve written myself into my screenplay. It’s narcissitic, solipsistic. . . . Because I’m fat and I suck.” 


Instead of writing a screenplay about a real other, he’s found he cannot write about anything except himself. He spends hours dreaming about who Orleans is, and he creates images of her for himself, relative to himself: 

so that when he has the opportunity to meet her, he simply cannot go through with it:

 The very idea of getting outside his own head is terrifying even though he knows he should, and he’s weighed down by the guilt and failure of not really engaging with others.


There is a longing in the film, for all the characters, I think, to somehow get outside of their own heads and bodies and be truly connected with someone else or with something else – to find a way to be passionate about someone or something outside of themselves. There is the sense that the three most central characters – Charlie, Orlean, and Laroche – want to find a way to get away from themselves – the selves they are so tired of - but also to, perhaps, find themselves more truly, by being in a real relationship with something or someone outside of themselves. The question of the movie is, in part, whether that relationship is possible. They are, all three, lonely characters. Donald is the only character in the film – one that has no real life counter-part – who knows who he is and is happy with himself but is not obsessed with himself either; he has easy, happy relationships with others. 


Orlean is alone even in her marriage:

Laroche is alone, having killed his mother and being left by his wife:

Charlie is alone, trying to find empty comfort in his sexual fantasies – born of his own imaginings, not out of real relationship. 


He murmurs under his breath at one point when he is in the room with Donald, “You and I share the same DNA. Is there anything more lonely than that?” 


Charlie writes, “It is the journey of evolution, adaptation, the journey we all take, the journey that unites each and every one of us. Darwin writes that we all come from the very first single cell organism. Yet here I am, and there’s Laroche, and there’s Orlean, and there’s the ghost orchid.” 
And so there is the sense that all living things are united even while there is a terrible loneliness. And with the loneliness, while there should be adaptation, change, survival, there is only this heartache and this sense of standing still, this paralysis, so that the characters want to go back, not forward, and start over:
Orlean, with the dead or dying Laroche in her arms says, 

“It’s over. Everything’s over. I want my life back. . . . . I want to be a baby again. I want to be new.”


Part of the question of the film whether adaptation is really taking place at all- 
Charlie remains stuck in his writing – his failed adaptation – until Donald takes over. But then the question is, is what the film becomes something new or merely more of the same? For it does become, in the last 30 minutes, something that follows all the clichés of a Hollywood genre – 
with drugs,

a kidnapping and guns, 

a chase,

a violent death 

or two, 

the central character who has an epiphany about himself, 

the central character who finds love. 

Charlie’s screenplay, the film itself ends by following McKee’s 10 commandments after all

. . . with a few small exceptions. 




But in the end, as we see Charlie, happy at last, and saying, “I know how to finish the script now,” I come back to the same kind of question about whether Charlie is a Charlie with a split personality or Charlie is just Charlie who has a twin brother named Donald, because here’s the thing: I don’t think I really care and I don’t think the movie wants me to care whether Kaufman has succeeded in truly adapting, in changing, in producing something brand new and in being something new. 
What matters, I think, are two things:
Charlie’s made a connection – one that feels real – with someone who loves him

And he’s succeeded in creating something that is whole, that is complete, “conclusive,” that feels right, and he can say, “I like this. This is good.” 


He knows it: he is a creator of some thing, and it is good. 


I think it’s pretty good, too. But I don’t know if that really matters.

Dead Man Walking (Tim Robbins, 1995)

**SPOILERS**

I had seen this film before but only once and at least 12 years ago. The impact of the film then was pretty devastating – the scene when Matthew Poncelet is executed, intercut as it is with scenes of the Walter and Hope killings – has haunted me all these years, and I admit I felt some trepidation in revisiting it now; I wasn’t sure I wanted those images refreshed in my mind. I was curious, however, to see if my memory would match a renewed viewing of the film. I remember thinking then that one thing I most appreciated about the film was that though it was what we might call an issue-driven film, I didn’t feel pushed or manipulated towards one conclusion or the other. I very much dislike issue films – I hate being preached to and mostly, I hate the fact the issue films often overwhelm the story and the characters.

This film though, absolutely, holds up; the characters and the story are vivid and central, and while it is a film about capital punishment, while it does push the idea that the use of capital punishment seems mostly to be driven by politicians who want to be re-elected, while it does push the idea that capital punishment is meted out only to those who can’t afford high-powered lawyers so that the poor are at a disadvantage, ultimately, the film raises a question or questions (namely, I think, “if a murderer is a human being, is it just or satisfying to take that human’s life?”) that it doesn’t presume to answer in an absolute way.

Matthew Poncelet, played brilliantly by Sean Penn (and I’m not really a big Penn fan), is not presented as merely an innocent from a disadvantaged background who has been taken advantage of by the system– yes, he came from a poor family, yes, he was mostly without a loving father, but the film doesn’t really offer those things as a justification or even reason for his crime. It doesn’t give a reason, in fact, for his crime, and as Sister Helen Prejean (played, also humanely and delicately, by Susan Sarandon) discovers, Poncelet gives us and her very little to love in himself (though she is determined to do so because of her conviction that he is a human being who can be loved, who can be redeemed). He spews racism and misogyny; he is callous, it seems, to the suffering of the victims’ families (even in the end when he apologizes to the families, it’s not clear what his motivations are – is he truly sorry or is he just afraid of death?). He is, truly, repellent, and the film highlights rather than hides from this fact. I still have the image in my mind of Poncelet’s heavy, hooded eyelids,

and I have to shudder.

The film also faces, head-on, the grief and devastation of Walter and Hope’s respective parents. The structure of the film works wonderfully in this respect as the first part of the story dwells only with Poncelet and Sister Helen, the development of their relationship, and then Sister Helen is brought up short when the parents ask her why she has not bothered to hear their side of the story. The scenes in which she visits the parents, sees pictures of the young Walter and young Hope, hears about their life hopes and dreams, and sees the emptiness of the grief-stricken homes are absolutely moving, and the anger of the parents is completely sympathetic, never heavy-handed. The film will not/does not excuse or justify the murders.

The scene of Poncelet’s execution, too, is powerful and beautifully done, if horrifying, on several levels: Poncelet, at this point, has become a human being for us – a human being who has committed a horrifying crime, but still a human being, not a monster, (a term for Poncelet used throughout the film by the parents and by politicians – a term which helps, the film implies, to justify his execution), a frightened human being who has, just moments before, shown us his love for his family (there’s a beautiful scene in which Poncelet spends his last hours with his mother and brothers – they don’t really know what to say to each other, but they clearly love each other) and shown us the tears and emotion and fear he has kept from seeing until now. The execution scene, though, does not allow us to feel only sympathy for Poncelet – as I said earlier, it’s intercut with images of the murders of Walter and Hope, murders we have not seen in full until now, and as Poncelet dies, ghostly reflections of Walter and Hope shimmer on the glass which the separates the execution room from the viewing room, where the parents sit, hoping for some kind of relief from their burden.

The film does, ultimately, come down on the side of anti-capital punishment – Poncelet’s death is, again, not the death of a monster but of human being and we see that the parents do not really get any relief from Poncelet’s execution. Walter’s father’s struggle, in particular, speaks to this when at the end, we see him watching from the side at Poncelet’s funeral and speaking with Sister Helen – still longing for some kind of resolution, still angry, but not knowing how to find peace: “I don’t know why I’m here,” he says. And we see that the grief of the parents has not been lessened but grief generally has only increased as a new grief is given to another set of human beings: Poncelet’s family – his brothers and his mother.

In sum, I have to say that this was still a difficult film to watch – but it’s difficult for good reasons – I didn’t feel I was told what to think and I felt the reality of each of the characters, so well-acted, and their respective struggles.

The Iron Giant - A Film by Brad Bird (1999)

**SPOILERS**

I was eager to watch this film as I’d not seen it before, and as I had been convinced by a number of people I trust that it was worth my while. I admit to a bit of a disappointed “oh” when I first began the film; I think because I am so accustomed to the glossy Pixar look that this animation felt outdated. BUT I soon found myself swept up into this magical story, and I rather reveled in the relative simplicity of the animation than otherwise.

I suppose the film is not without its stock characters and near-clichés – the spunky little kid (bullied at school) as the main character; the struggling, doing-her-best, but sympathetic single mother; the artist (a beatnik) on the fringe of society with pearls of wisdom to offer (“you are who you choose to be”) and a heart of gold, ahead of his time (he drinks espresso) and willing to think outside the box; the unimaginative, egoistic, bullying government man – but all of these characters were somehow fresh enough, fun enough, within this story to make me forget they were or could be clichés.

The story itself is well-told and it captured me, and there are any number of especially effective or poignant moments. The opening is great: a “meteor” flashing past the screen, past the Sputnik satellite (a nice move that immediately orients me to the era), hurtling towards earth – cut to a lone fisherman on a raging sea, unable to see the lighthouse – then a light that is not the lighthouse, but our first introduction to the Iron Giant – the terror of the fisherman – then cut to a red dawn and a peaceful seaside town just waking up and a small boy cycling through town towards a place that just says “Diner.” We follow him inside and in the scene that follows we are introduced to (most of) the main characters and themes of the film.

There are some really wonderful moments, too, between the boy Hogarth and the giant. I loved this one:

There is something irresistibly sweet about the giant crashing ungracefully to the ground in order to sit across from Hogarth (it’s a moment that delighted my then 5-year-old daughter, too – and convinced her, finally, that the giant was “a nice giant”).

The film also brilliantly, but not heavy-handedly, sets the stage in terms of the atmosphere of the times – the paranoia about foreigners, about Sputnik, about being spied on, about the nuclear threat – and atmosphere that produces the strike first, think later mentality that precipitates the crisis for the giant and (because the giant only arms itself when threatened) for the people themselves. I loved the scene in the classroom in which the students have to watch an appallingly perky, cheery film about what to do in case of an “Atomic Holocaust”:

Some things did feel heavy-handed about the film, particularly, the government/military people – the general, for example, apparently likes killing (he’s got animal heads on his walls and an animal rug on the floor – these things contrast with the scene in the forest when the hunters kill a beautiful deer and the giant learns about the horror of death) and he probably thinks of himself as a grand cowboy in the Wild West (he’s watching a show with a shooting cowboy racing across the screen).

But ultimately, the heart of the film is the relationship of the giant and boy coupled with the awakening (self) consciousness (and conscience) of the giant. The rather trite phrase “you are who you choose to be” gains a beautiful freshness at the climax of the film when the giant gently pushes the Hogarth away and chooses to be “Superman,” instead of “Atomo,” zooming up to stop the nuclear bomb with his own body and so sacrificing himself. It sounds bland on paper, but the sacrifice of the giant was incredibly moving. Overall, just a captivating, wonderful film I’m eager to recommend as I know it’s one that has passed under the radar for so many people.

Winter's Bone - A Film by Debra Granik

Hush-a-bye, my baby, go to sleep on mama’s knee.

Journey back to these old hills in dreams again with me.

It seems like your mama was there once again

and the old folks were strummin’ that same old refrain.

Women with hard, lined faces

Doors that slam open and offer no entrance, or dubious entrance

Children who learn to spot and gut a squirrel, but still jump, laugh, play in the cold air on hay bales taller than they

Yards with stray shoes, scattered and broken toys and cars, clothes hanging in the wind, and ramshackle coops where hens cackle

Men with closed faces and a heavy presence

Thick blood, hardening in its maze of lines

One mother gone quietly and sweetly mad

And this girl-woman with a round face and wary eyes and hands wrapped tight around what she wills not to lose

Winter’s Bone, the story of this girl-woman, Ree, opens with a lullaby – a lone, unaccompanied voice, singing out its tenderness and warmth, heartache and years. And while the story and the characters here are driven forward by a particular need, a particular mystery, what this film really does is immerse me in a place and a people and a feeling, at once utterly foreign to me and somehow deeply familiar – as foreign as an unknown, winding road in the night and as familiar as my own mother’s voice.

This film feels like music, but not like the complex density of a Bach fugue – it’s something at once simpler and less traceable than that. There’s a scene in the movie in which Ree, on her quest, steps into the home of friend – here, other friends, family, neighbors, perhaps, have gathered to celebrate a birthday. The rooms are full but the celebration is quiet and unassuming –and in one corner a group of musicians is playing, as much for themselves and their pleasure as for anyone else - country instruments and a woman singer, a woman with a face that would never sell an album but with a voice so sweet and low that I at once fell under her spell. Like that music – particular music I’ve never heard before but feel I must have because it so quickly embedded in my bones – this film burrows deep.

Way down in Missouri where I heard this lullaby

when the stars were blinkin’ and the moon was shining high,

and I hear mama callin’ as in days long ago,

singing hush-a-bye.

(To hear the full lullaby, go here: http://www.wintersbonemovie.com/soundtrack.html )