The Allegory of Clothes

(Please take this with a grain of salt…)

I slacked off this week because I have had some difficult movies to deal with: Hotel Rwanda, Ray, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Hitch, and Contantine, to be exact. How does one write about such powerful movies?

Through allegory, of course.

I will focus on Hotel Rwanda for right now and leave the other movies for later.

Kevin Dettmar has a great essay about Clueless and Wayne’s World that argues that these movies are allegories of music. How do we know whether a person is “good” or “bad?” By the music that is played when they enter. Good music, good person. Sorry music, sorry person. It makes sense.

And then there is the allegory of clothes. The title of Thomas Carlyle’s 1833 work Sartor Resartus means the “clothier reclothed” or “tailor retailored,” and it establishes the allegory of clothes. It tells the story of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, whose name translates to “god-born devil’s dung,” who describes how the world (especially Britain) is ready for a new set of clothes. Clothes represent revolution of the French kind, and Carlyle establishes that the same should go in Britain. He is tired of philosophy and wants people to act, almost inciting revolution himself: “Thou foolish Teufelsdröckh! […] Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand this much: The end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest?”

Hotel Rwanda, too, is an allegory or clothes, although not quite the same way. Here, the main character, Paul, is immaculately dressed. It does two things: it shows how much he has bought into the West’s business ideals, and it paints him as very different from everyone else. While the rest of the people are dressed very modestly, if not poorly, Paul always wears a suit. By the end of the movie, however, he is unshaven and barley able to put on a shirt. It’s a neat transformation, and the movie charts the progress of the country through Paul’s own clothing degeneration. It’s an allegory of clothes. By the end, he has no longer bought into the West’s ideals. He no longer has to look his best, because, well, he’s just trying to stay alive.

The most powerful moment, besides all of the killing, is when Paul has to change his clothes because they are bloody. He puts on a shirt and begins tying a tie, but he does it incorrectly. So he breaks down. It’s as if the clothes just don’t work anymore, just like the West. Or they just aren’t worth it, just like the West. Or they’re too difficult to maintain, just like the West.

Do the business models of the West translate to Africa? Not when the country’s in chaos, they don’t. Of course it’s much more than that, but Hotel Rwanda is also an allegory of clothes.

Rating for Hotel Rwanda: 8

These Are Real Women

I generally don’t enjoy films that are merely snapshots of people’s lives. Too often, these movies have no controlling plot, at least not one that is woven throughout. Real Women Have Curves is a snapshot of one girl whose plot traverses just a few weeks but encompasses the girl’s entire life. And that, I can appreciate.

The main character, a young girl from a rather poor immigrant family, graduates from Beverly Hills High School and must deal with her conflicting pressures to go to college, to work at her sister’s factory, and to get married. Her life is foreign to me, for I’m more like her boyfriend, from a standard middle-class family whose parents share his same views on life. The main girl's family, however, just doesn't understand her. The girl's mother turns out to be the villain, but it’s not because she’s actually villainous; it’s just because she tries to hold onto a lifestyle that is difficult to maintain in the United States.

The part that I really can’t understand is that the mother doesn’t seem to wish that her daughter will have a better life than she had. She has this idea that her life was difficult and she managed to plow through it, so now it’s her daughter’s turn to follow in her footsteps, to get married and take care of her children. There’s something to that, I guess, but I just can’t understand it.

Not with my daughter, I kept thinking. Sure, she’s only one year old, but I want her to have much MORE than I had. She should have someone there to tell her that graduate school in English is NOT the way to go…Alright, so I’m projecting, and I’m basically doing what the mother in this film does, I know. Even though I pretend to want my kids to be independent, some element of me wants to control them just like every parent. The difference, I guess, is rather minor, but it means that I don’t want my kids to be just like me. I know my life isn’t perfect, and I understand where I screwed it up, and I don’t want the same thing to happen to my kids.

If a movie can inspire this kind of dialogue within me, then that’s gotta be a decent movie, or at least provocative. And Real Women Have Curves is definitely a decent movie.

I have one complaint, though, which is also a kind of praise. The title is heavy-handed enough, but most of the movie doesn’t hit you over the head with the idea that real women with curves are beautiful, too. One scene, however, is way too much, as it tries to hammer it home that these are real women, and they don’t have to look like models; they’re beautiful just the way they are. It’s funny, but it also made me wish that they would stop. Not because I don’t believe it, but because I’m a chauvinist pig, I mean because I can’t stand it when a movie simply preaches. Overall, this film is pretty subtle, but this part was just way too preachy. If it’s Michael Moore, I expect it. When it’s a narrative, I don’t want it.

That same scene, and the rest of the movie, however, did make me appreciate the way people are, including myself. It's cheesy, I know, but there's something really pleasing about this movie. It's provocative, yes, but it's also rather nice. I won't say "feel good," becuase then I won't like it, but there's something about this film that makes me appreciate who I am and what I have. And it's still a good movie.

Grade for Real Women Have Curves: 8

The Art of Bridget Jones

Consider this blog entry a response to one reader who told me the following:

“You … criticize whatever intellectual wankery is thrown your way but you review these movies that are like the dross of popular culture. … You should check out The A List by Jay Carr and start going through that or Ebert’s The Great Movies. I want to see your critical mind deal with movies like Red by Kieslowski or Ikuru by Akurasura or Through a Glass Darkly by Bergman. I think you would have more fun with these.”

I take these responses to heart, so I am now changing the format of “My Life in Movies.” In light of this change, I will now review that little-known art house flick, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. This movie not only fully engaged me but made me question my own perceptions of beauty and reality. The title’s provocative ambiguity sets the stage for a film that moves through dream and reality to make a statement about people’s need for affection…

Ah, I can’t keep this up. This film sucked, big time. This movie is the worst of the “dross of popular culture,” as my friend called it. Sometimes popular movies can be subtle comments on morality, reality, or temptation, but this one is none of those things. Whoever decided to throw this movie together had already fallen off Bridget Jones’s edge of reason.

I enjoyed the first one because it was atypical, but this one is merely a cheap rehash of the first one. In fact, everything about this one is exactly the same as the first one: woman looking for love can’t choose between two men, even though she knows she should choose her sense instead of her sensibility. The only thing vaguely interesting about this movie is seeing how much weight the waifish Renee Zellweger put on. But then we’re forced to watch her waddle around in some terrible shots that are designed to highlight her weight. There are several plot turns that are new here, but they are completely ridiculous. I normally don’t use words like “stupid” to describe movies, but this one deserves it. It’s stupid, pure and simple.

So, my friend, I won’t keep up prattling about Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. This movie is terrible, and shouldn’t even garner a review. Maybe next time, I will get a chance to review a Werner Herzog film…

Grade for Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason: 0

The Horror and the Thrills

Rewatching Jaws has spawned a new debate within me. Basically, I can’t figure out what to call this movie. Is it a horror film, or is it a thriller? Is it a thriller with horrific elements or is it simply a thrilling horror movie? In the past, I have discussed horror as a wide genre that incorporates Psycho, as well as Halloween and The Sixth Sense. But that may be too broad. Is The Silence of the Lambs a horror film? It certainly scared me, and in some ways, the movie is very similar to Halloween, which no one can deny being a horror film.

I think Spielberg may have the key here, but in some ways, he's misleading. He said that when he read the script for Jaws, he thought it was basically the same story as one of his previous films, the wonderful made for TV movie Duel. It's about a semi-truck that terrorizes this a salesman, who acts as a kind of everyman. The whole movie is kind of like one big tense car chase, but the truck itself is quite horrific. Jaws is the same thing in the water, except that the mechanical beast has become a living beast, one that will not stop pursuing the Orca and its crew.

It sounds like a great horror movie to me.

What are the elements of horror? Scares? Jaws is scary, but I don’t think it’s all that scary, at least not past watching it the first time. For most of the film, the guys on the boat are perfectly safe as they walk around the boat with Jaws safely in the water, out of reach. The only way one would get killed is if he were to fall in. The shark itself looks pretty mechanical, too. Not very scary looking. The opening scene could be scary, but not once you know what is going to happen.

Blood? Yeah, there’s blood, but Jaws is not exactly a gore-fest. The disembodied leg that floats to the bottom is pretty gross, but it’s not Texas Chain Saw Massacre-gross. Even when Quint buys it at the end, we don’t see the guy get cut in half. It’s pretty gross just because you watch him fight to keep out of the shark’s mouth, kind of like when Hooper is in the tank and Jaws breaks through it. You just know they’re going to die, and yet you watch them try to fight to stay alive. Yeah, that gives me the creeps.

But I’m still not sure. My impression now is to call this a thriller and not a horror movie, even though it scares me so much I can’t stand to go in the ocean.

Maybe next time I will talk about Edmund Burke’s notion of the sublime and how terror and horror fits into that. Or may I will talk about how what my one-year-old daughter and terrorists have in common.

As Kurtz says, "The horror! The horror!"

Why I Hate Water

My favorite line in Jaws is when Brody’s wife (Brody is the chief of police, played by Roy Schneider) tells Hooper (the shark guy) that Brody won’t go near the water. She says that it’s something from his childhood, and she asks him for the clinical name for his phobia. He mumbles one word: “drowning.”

That’s genius.

If my wife asked me why I hate to go in the ocean (or sometimes even lakes and swimming pools, especially at night), I would probably mimic Brody and mumble one word, but my word would be a little different. Mine would be “Jaws.”

I remember seeing Jaws when I was way too young, probably around six or seven years old (what were you thinking, Mom!), and that film freaked me out. Of course, I didn’t even have an opportunity to go to the ocean until I was older, about six years later. And at that time, I didn’t really think about sharks. Yeah, I guess I remembered the movie, but my fun in the ocean overcame whatever residual fears I had. But then I saw the movie several more times, read the book and its sequels, along with other Benchley books, and now I am completely freaked out by the ocean. In fact, it’s only getting worse as I get older.

Yep, I blame Jaws. I know it’s a cliché, but that movie really did make me afraid to go in the water. Like Brody, I have read about the ocean, and I am mystified that they still don’t know what’s down there. Oh, great, yeah, they finally got live footage of a giant squid. Yeah, that makes me feel a lot better. Did you hear that? A GIANT FREAKING SQUID. Those are supposed to only exist in Jules Verne books, not actually in the ocean. But they’re down there, and there could be other despicable things down there.

Here’s my take on it. The ocean is like space. In general, mankind is not meant to be there. We can’t breathe in either environment, and if the technology screws up, we’re dead. There are two main differences between space and the ocean in my eyes. One is that you don’t have people “swimming” in space for fun. Nope, that’s left for professionals. In the ocean, anyone can just jump in, no telling what is under there. And that brings me to the second difference: we have no proof that creepy things live in space. Yeah, it’s scary because it’s space, but we should be relatively certain that nothing is going to fly under us and bite us in the keister. In the ocean, there’s all sorts of creepy stuff under, and like space, they’re not even sure what’s down there!

That’s my view of it, and that’s why, the older I get, the more afraid of the ocean I become. Last time I went out on a boat in the ocean, we jumped off to go snorkeling, and I tool one look under the water and saw that it was so murky that I couldn’t see anything. So I began hyperventilating and jumped back onto the boat. No thanks.

So this one isn’t really a movie review, but it’s inspired by Jaws, which I’m in the middle of rewatching. I will give my complete review later.

Maybe Revenge Isn’t So Sweet

This entry will be short (thank goodness, you say!). I wrote the last entry sometime last week about The Count of Monte Cristo and The Italian Job, and then the sermon at my church on Sunday happened to be about relationships. The pastor touched on revenge, of course, and it made me think about the films through this light.

It seems that revenge is one of those things that I never really think about, especially in film. Whereas whenever I see adultery or other things like that, I immediately balk and begin ranting about how a movie can glorify such things, I never really consider how the notion of revenge is very similar. There are tons of films that are based solely on revenge; in fact, it is a common tenet in most movies—a person is wronged and must get back at the wrongdoer. Nearly any action film has a component like this, and they generally make the wrongdoer the villain and the person seeking revenge is the hero. But this isn’t the way the Bible sees it.

There are plenty of passages in the Bible that condemn the notion of revenge, leaving that for God to decide. There are some others, especially in the Old Testament, that call for revenge, but I think we have to read those as if the people are called out to do God’s direct will. We don’t really have that luxury today, I think. (I understand that there are lots of theological points here that could be debated, and I would love to hear anyone else’s point of view.)

Yet it seems that we still yearn for justice, which is a good thing, right? The desire for revenge may be wrong because of our self-righteous or angry motives, but the underlying desire for justice is right. Of course we want the guilty to be punished. It’s like when someone cuts me off in traffic, and I secretly want them to get a ticket. My dad curses them with “I hope all of your children are born without hair,” but I can’t quite get past simply wishing that they will crash and burn—literally.

But that’s just not right, is it? And it isn’t right when Mel Gibson does it, or Inigo Montoya does it, or Al Pacino, or anyone else. Maybe I need to start thinking about what these revenge movies are telling me, and perhaps even doing to me. Until now, I am ashamed to admit, I have always taken them at face value. They’re just action movies, after all…

Sweet Revenge in France and Italy

Due to the life-upheaval that we Houstonians knew as Hurricane Rita, things are just now beginning to settle down. Therefore, I will begin blogging again! Not that I haven’t been watching movies, mind you, for I have watched quite a few while staying with family and then back at home.

For this installment, I have decided to join two movies of similar caliber and overarching plot: The Count of Monte Cristo and The Italian Job.

The Count is the newest one with Jim Caviezel and Guy Pierce, which came out several years ago. Overall, I think this movie is pretty good. I don’t remember seeing Jim Caviezel in anything before The Passion of the Christ, so it was nice to watch him portraying an actual flawed human being. I couldn’t get Jesus out of my head while watching him, especially every time he would brood, and he does aheckuvalot of that here. Yep, this movie is all about revenge. The story is by Alexandre Dumas of The Three Muskateers fame, so this film is a historical action drama concerning the double-crossing of Jim Caviezel and his consumption with revenge.

I’m not sure if the premise translates too well to modern times, however. I felt kind of like I was watching Ethan Hawke’s Hamlet again, even though The Count sticks to its historical premise. Still, when Guy Pierce (spoilers here, but most of you have probably seen SOME version of this film) betrays Jim Caviezel’s character, I’m not sure if the motive really comes through. Supposedly, he does it because he envy’s Caviezel’s character, who is of lowly birth, which Pierce’s character is of noble birth. But that reasoning doesn’t really work nowadays, especially with our American dream and all that crap…I mean, stuff. It’s just that we don’t really believe so much in that—people are not held down by their birth status, at least not to the extent that they were back then. And most rich people don’t begrudge people who work their way up. Yes, I’m simplifying here, and I realize that we do have a kind of embedded class system, but it’s still much easier for a person to make good, even if their parents did not. I could have a whole blog about this, but I’m afraid I will say something upsetting.

So we leave France and go East to Italy, even though most of The Italian Job doesn’t take place in Italy but in L.A. I have mentioned before that heist films are one of my favorite subgenres, so I naturally enjoyed this film, even the second time around. This movie basically wants to be Ocean’s Eleven, and it couldn’t quite do it. The snappy dialogue just wasn’t there. And the heist wasn’t all that compelling, either. They spend just a few hours planning it, and then it happens and that’s really it.

I have two favorite parts here: one is when the jewelry store clerk talks about the mercantilism centered around Venice in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I enjoyed that historical fact, and I loved the way the guy realized where the spoil was from. It really was a nice touch. My other favorite part is every part with the Russian, who was awesome. I loved the way, it just kept showing him, although we had no idea how he would fit in until the end. That was clever.

The Italian Job is way too much like a long commercial for the new Mini, however, and the film came out right as the Mini came out, which was not a coincidence. I know it’s a remake, and someone told me that the old had the old mini’s in, but this one didn’t even really need the cars. The original idea didn’t even pan out, so it was just three people driving around in supped-up Minis. I didn’t like that aspect.

The Count of Monte Cristo: 6
The Italian Job: 7

Both these films are flawed, but they’re still enjoyable, and I really enjoyed both of them.