Hello dedicated readers! BananaWho herself is here in chilled-out Austin, TX for SXSW 2010. I am delighted to be in the fabulous company of the filmmakers of Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture and NY Export: Opus Jazz, directed by Jody Lee Lipes and Henry Joost.

I just got here and must abandon my computer to consume BBQ, beer, and free libations of all shapes, sizes, and proofs. But check back in everyday for updates, because I will be covering premieres, giving brief reviews of the films I catch, and interviewing filmmakers. Leave a comment if you have an event BananaWho MUST cover. She’ll be there.
-CH

Similarly, we aren’t so much upset when, in Ordinary People, we learn that Timothy Hutton’s brother died tragically and no one’s allowed to talk about it, as we are thrilled, intrigued. What we’d really like is to give that tough little guy a trophy, we like him so much.

The advantages of a murdered spouse are limitless (see Mel Gibson’s great bit of Yiddish-style acting in Lethal Weapon).

Similar to the sensation of watching an orphaned child keep his chin up, we are afraid that we could also lose our loved ones while, simultaneously, we long for the kind of authenticity that such a drama would bring to our lives. We could add to this list avenging the death of/harm to a child. Liam Neeson’s performance in last year’s Taken was an almost comic exploration of how much merciless violence an audience will consume in the name of not without my daughter (see also Mel Gibson, this month, in Edge of Darkness, and, while we’re on the subject of Mel Gibson, we might mention his Oscar-winning film Braveheart in which William Wallace’s father and his wife are killed, making Braveheart, an exceedingly successful film by any measure, a kind of Rosetta Stone for what I’m talking about here.)

Alcoholism, though very-often gossiped about in real life, does not slice quite so cleanly. At first glance, it seems to offer as much ready-made conflict as the gallery of dead family members above: an alcoholic is irrationally bent on destroying himself. All appeals from the people who love him are useless. There is no cure. The only way out is a true reckoning with the self, a cathartic rebirth to a humble yet joyful, day-by-day existence. But the truth is, alcoholism just doesn’t get people off like murder does.

This fact was recently on display in the film Crazy Heart, in which Jeff Bridges plays Bad Blake, a drop-his-sunglasses-in-his-own-puke-then-pick-them-up-and-shake-them-off drunk. Bad is a country singer far, far past his prime who eats his steak dinners out of Styrofoam, with plastic silverware, in a towel. The movie is so goofy and homely to begin with that I was unprepared when it revealed its deep, ugly knowledge of the life of an addict. While the film is certainly receiving praise, there is an odd tone to it. The focus is always on the performances. Bridges and his unlikely love interest, Maggie Gyllenhaal, are both nominated for Oscars but the film itself did not make the engorged list of ten nominations for best picture.

The same is true of an earlier film on the same subject, Leaving Las Vegas, for which Nicholas Cage received an Oscar while the film itself failed to receive even a nomination for best picture. Everyone knows the Oscars are just a bad pageant but they are instructive about where the middle of the road is and, in the same way that Crazy Heart is being dismissed as mere background for its incredible performances, Leaving Las Vegas was dismissed, in some cases, as pretentious trash lifted up by wonderful acting. Glenn Kenney’s 1996 video review of Leaving Las Vegas found “the film’s studied depiction of emotional and material squalor tedious,” but he agrees that “the movie is worth watching for the actors.” A.O. Scott’s NYT review of Crazy Heart feels the same. It’s “a small movie” he says “perfectly scaled to the big performance at its center.” Later, patting the film on the head while rushing to shake Jeff Bridge’s hand, Scott says “there is always room for another version of that old song about the guy who messed it all up and kept on going. Especially when that guy can play the tune as truly and as well as Mr. Bridges.”

While its fun to pretend that we’d all line up to watch Jeff Bridges or Nicholas Cage “read from the phonebook” we wouldn’t, actually. Crazy Heart and Leaving Las Vegas are well acted but so were The Door in the Floor and Knowing and nobody showed up. Something beyond the acting resonates. While movies about alcoholism can be hollow, overly-tidy, redemptive tales (28 Days, When a Man Loves a Woman) Crazy Heart, Leaving Las Vegas, The Verdict and the great 1995 movie, Georgia, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh (as close a relative to Crazy Heart as Tender Mercies is) prove that the subject is fertile ground.

A lot of ink is spilled over mafia and crime stories and their ability to expose the dark heart of “the American dream.” But nothing indicts like alcohol. Crazy Heart eases slyly into its central conflict: Bad Blake is a lovable, goodhearted man, but he is poisonous. Having taken to drinking to keep up with Bad, knowing that she is putting her young son in danger by letting him hang around, Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal) describes her attempt to live with him: “it’s like living with a rattlesnake.” That’s a great line for her but it’s also a neat description of the way that alcohol can become familiar to a person but never give up any of its savage power. This is echoed in one of Bad’s songs: “whiskey has been a thorn in your side and it doesn’t forgive.” Both phrases have a twangy feel but there’s nothing pat about them. There’s nothing maudlin, or easy, about watching Bad suffer the way he does. And I don’t think people like it. So we say “What a great performance!” and dismiss the film itself as simple or maudlin. But I think this reaction betrays discomfort at what we’re looking at.

Not everyone is an alcoholic, but the feelings that can surround alcoholism are common: self-pity, denial, depression. No one likes to think of themselves in these ways, these are unattractive qualities and have, basically, no place in a multiplex, except in the direct service of a redemption tale. And if that is the case, we’d prefer that the film merely “suggest” the most gruesome details as we can “probably imagine how bad it got.” Crazy Heart skips not one gruesome detail, is fascinated by the irrational, repetitive cycle of addiction.

This goes against the fundamental principle of “relatability” that governs mainstream movies. An orphan’s situation is sad but it’s not repellent. We are very willing to imagine ourselves in that same situation and like to hope we’d be as plucky and soulful. And if our lovely wife or husband were murdered, wouldn’t our anguish be just as heartfelt and gutsy? But the anguish of an addict is shameful and unappealing. What’s worse is that there’s no concrete, outside force (no cancer, no killer) to justify the character’s anguish. Addicts don’t deserve pity because they are the cause of their own downfall. The irony of this tends not to be dramatic but disgusting. Films that are structured this way will have cyclical, punishing structures that are liable to hinge on the performer’s ability to make them compelling, because the subject matter is unpleasant. But these movies are not “simple,” or “backdrops for great performances,” they’re challenges that put good actors in tough situations which is a better “formula” for success than holy, heroic relatability.

Who’s not sworn, over the bowl of a toilet, they’d never take another drink? Who’s kept that promise? Georgia stars Jennifer Jason Leigh as the neglected little sister of a successful country-western singer (there’s a real trove of these movies, subtler, richer, crueler than the loud-mouthed Mafioso movies) whose own career is always derailed by her abuse. The film has the same casual, almost oblivious, manner that Crazy Heart has but it also has the hidden, poisonous teeth. The last scene cross-cuts between a worn-out, dead-eyed Leigh, singing at a bar and her painfully talented sister singing the same song, “No More Hard Times”, in front of a huge crowd. When a stranger at the bar sends Leigh a drink she thanks him with such easy gratitude, such indifference to the suffering that we’ve seen drinking cause her. It describes perfectly the quiet but incredible force of alcohol.

Crazy Heart’s conclusion is much sweeter. You could say that Bad is redeemed. But there’s a relationship between the endings of Crazy Heart and Werner Herzog’s goof-ball addition to the alcoholic-redeemed genre, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call—New Orleans, starring the above-mentioned Nicholas Cage. At the end of that movie, everything has gone mysteriously right for the Bad Lieutenant, but not from any action he’s taken. It seems a fickle god has decided to spare the rudderless Cage his life and satisfy his every desire. But we begin to wonder if this is really god’s mercy or some cruel punishment. If to live Cage’s cyclical, irrational and hopeless life is a worse punishment.

Otis “Bad” Blake is as surprised as anyone to find, at the end of the film, that he is a success, that the manager and the protégé he thought were his enemies are his friends and that his life in not finished but has, in a way, just begun. He even utters that pious mantra “one day at time.” Bad knows the pain of a hopeless life and his amazement and reverence for that phrase, the self-confidence and humility that it symbolizes, are instructive and uncommon to find in a movie. –Micah Bloomberg

Sadly, the critically-condemned Fun with Dick and Jane was released the same year as Rabbit and perhaps usurped the more appropriate title, but here it is in full, Rabbit:

Rabbit is a 21st century play on Dick and Jane, the trusty baby boomer era characters from post-war reading primers. Wrake subverts the innocent-enough act of learning to read into a fable about the repercussions of our society’s humanistic approach to consumption and greed, and our proclivity for capitalizing on death. Using Dick and Jane cut-outs makes for fun and interesting visuals that pay homage to Lichtenstein, Richard Prince, Warhol, pulp fiction, and pop art of the classic and the digital varieties, but they also provide a glaring generational context. Since Dick and Jane are baby boomers, Wrake may be condemning our parent generation for the exploitation of our animals and natural resources, a generation that accelerated the tradition of turning indiscriminate killing into wealth. Dick and Jane see the world in labeled objects for their use and kill accordingly, but Wrake draws the scenario back to the present day by tying in videogame-like sensibilities using archetypes, jewels, ink, feathers.

If this political exegesis of a harmless animation is a bit too caustic for your tastes, the violence from these cherubic tykes is pretty funny in its brutality, and Wrake takes full advantage of the animated format, achieving omniscient “camerawork” and apocalyptic skies that would have required animation anyhow if this was a live action film. Well done, Run Wrake. —Christianne Hedtke

Mia tears through her world like a wrecking ball, fighting, breaking with friends, and essentially raging against the machine. And even though all she does from the title card to the climax is make trouble, it’s impossible not to admire her brassiness, and her restless search for emotional and sexual intelligence through good old-fashioned trial-and-error. Hers is a neighborhood steeped in a mutated all-white hip-hop culture and sorely lacking in afterschool programs, and the weight of poverty and entropic summer vacation make for an under-stimulating existence.

But boredom leads to curiosity, and at 15 Mia is ready for a sexual awakening. When Connor (Michael Fassbender) arrives in her kitchen one hungover morning with his shirtless Adonis bod, puppy dog smile, and paternal constitution, she thinks she has finally found her Prince Charming. Best of all, he is plowing her mother, so she can exact revenge and quench her curiosity all with the same bone. The film builds a framework of sexual longing and a palpable chemistry that is more sexy than scandalous despite its pervy undertones, that is, until the two inevitably give into their urges and the bubble bursts.

Based on the post-screening outrage in the IFC ladies’ room, it’s apparent that pedophilia and adolescent sexuality are still American movie-goers’ favorite topics. Ours is a culture seemingly fixated on deflowering, still dumbly fascinated by Nabokov’s nymphette. The masses pretend to be rankled, and yet these movies keep making money and winning awards. 1999’s Best Picture Winner American Beauty re-opened the Lolita file, making way for films like Catherine Hardwick’s Thirteen, and Alan Ball’s failed follow-up to American Beauty, Towelhead, in which Aaron Eckhardt’s character has sex with a 13-year-old. 2009 yielded two Oscar-nominated movies that broach the subject, Precious and An Education, (both mentioned in the ladies room.) But why does shock and controversy prevail when, in truth, most young women have a shady early sexual experience? How else do women learn where to throw up boundaries?

While Fish Tank doesn’t quite claim the dubious sexual encounter as a rite of passage, other films cast these experiences as shameful and damaging. The “victims” in Thirteen, Towelhead, and Precious have a loving mother, a concerned neighbor, and a social worker, respectively, to intervene, but Mia has only herself. Even so she emerges from the situation marked, but stronger than before. Arnold’s story triumphs in territory where the others have failed because it is so commendably objective—yes, Mia has been taken advantage of, but no, she is not irreversibly damaged. Her sexual encounters are only a part of her “coming-of-age” and they don’t define her. She learned.

Perhaps the reason Mia’s metamorphosis is so well realized onscreen is that Arnold shot the whole movie chronologically, and only let the actors see script pages for upcoming scenes a few days in advance. Combined with the over-the-shoulder handheld cinematography, and the impeccable casting, Fish Tank has the feel of a documentary. The claustrophobia of their tiny apartment compounded by the film’s square aspect ratio pares Mia’s world down to its smallest size and accentuates her sense of confinement.

Any attempt to synopsize Fish Tank will make the film sound grim and dreary, but in truth, it is rife with fun, femininity, and an underlying sense of nostalgia, as though Arnold approached the subject matter fondly, and with forgiveness. Mia’s fuck-it attitude can be delightful to watch, and her abundant mistakes are ultimately instructive, allowing her to cheerfully embrace Nas’ wise words, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” -Christianne Hedtke

Writer/Director: Andrea Arnold

Jeff Bridges is Bad Blake, a country western musician who is drinking his way through the death rattle of his career. He deplores his agent for booking him at bowling alleys, and bemoans “Tommy,” the movie’s Keith Urban for all intents and purposes, who made it big because of Bad and then abandoned him. Bridges conjures a sometimes too-vivid lecher—drunk, puking, chain-smoking, a mess of sweat on stage—Bad Blake is the reason Smell-o-Vision never got off the ground. Even the Dude had dignity. But despite his disgusting demeanor and inability to keep it together, Bad still attracts a small but devoted crowd of folksy fans from an earlier time, who love him simply for his music.

It isn’t until he starts an unlikely relationship with Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a budding journalist and young mother, that Bad begins to show he is a man worth saving. It is exactly these gradually revealed insights and measured pacing that makes this conventional story so unusually told. The film plays with time, focusing on age, years, the past: Bad is continually reminding the world that he is “57 years old,” and his relationship with Jean and Buddy, who occupy the two generations beneath his own, seem to illuminate for Bad all he has lost over the years, with four failed marriages and an estranged son. It isn’t until halfway through the movie it is revealed he has a home, which, by that time, is surprising to an audience that thought they had Bad all figured out.

The film takes full advantage of it own temporal medium by investing time in unexpected ways. The first quarter of the movie is spent painting Bad Blake as such a disgusting creature that the movie itself is off-putting. It seems like a stylistic error at the time, but very slowly the film builds confidence in Bad, as if it had been digging a hole for itself to climb out of. The film has work much harder than most to reconcile itself, as do the characters, the actors, and the audience, but it earns its sense of elevation and transformation. Bad’s redemption is total, and by the end he is beautiful to look at, visibly golden. He is a man who has discovered time, “one day at a time.” Everything that surrounds him is touched by this reversal, from Tommy and his manager, who are revealed to be his true friends, to his physical surroundings that open up from the decrepitude of his motel rooms and stanky bowling alley bars into vast, exultant big-sky landscapes.

Bad Blake is imaginary, but the music is real—classic country that combines the spirit of Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, and Kris Kristofferson with a hint of Leonard Cohen—and even though the songs hold the ideas of the movie, they still come off as genuine, especially since Jeff Bridges and Colin Farrell do their own singing and playing. Bad’s first song of the film muses, “It’s funny how falling feels like flying…for a little while,” but when he closes with “pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try” we can see there is even an arc to the songwriting.

The performances were incendiary all around. Jeff Bridges easily deserves an Oscar for his command of the craft, and Maggie Gyllenhaal, girl of the moment, was perfectly cast. Colin Farrell does a dead-on western accent even though he is IRISH, and easily embodies a humble country star. Casting Robert Duvall as Bad’s friend-turned-sponsor was a small stroke of genius, not just because he added his own spark to the picture, but because he represents a nod to Tender Mercies, a film Crazy Heart emulates in many ways, and steers our minds, once again, to the passing of time.

Hopeful and devastating, and utterly beautiful, Crazy Heart delves, unembarrassed, into the culture of country western music, alcoholism, and redemption. Yes, it sounds like The Wrestler, but even if the plot is familiar, the storytelling is uniquely exquisite. -Christianne Hedtke

Director: Scott Cooper
Writer: Scott Cooper / Thomas Cobb

BananaWho polled forty of its finest film friends to determine the top films of the last decade. Those polled submitted ten films apiece, and all of them are accounted for below, with the exception of The Wire, One From the Heart’s re-release and CowTV, as none of these fit the criteria. It was excruciating not to tamper with the data, but all findings below are raw and true. Take a gander and see where your picks fell in the scheme of things.

(Titles in italics indicate films that won an Academy Award in their respective category, i.e. Best Picture, Best Documentary Feature, Best Animated Feature, or Best Foreign Film.)

14 Mentions
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

13 Mentions
There Will Be Blood (2007)

12 Mentions
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

8 Mentions
City of God ★ No Country for Old Men

7 Mentions
Adaptation ★ Almost Famous ★ Spirited Away ★ Kill Bill (Vols. 1 & 2)

6 Mentions
Punch-Drunk Love ★ Synecdoche, NY

5 Mentions
Amélie ★ American Psycho ★ The Dark Knight ★ The Diving Bell and the Butterfly ★ Grizzly Man
Lost in Translation ★ Memento ★ Mulholland Drive

4 Mentions
All the Real Girls ★ The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford ★ Children of Men ★ The Incredibles ★ Inglourious Basterds ★ Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring ★ The New World ★ Old Boy ★ Requiem for a Dream

3 Mentions
Birth ★ In the Mood for Love ★ The Lives of Others★ Michael Clayton ★ Silent Light ★ United 93 ★ Wall-E

Double Mention:
A Serious Man ★ Amores Perros ★ Antichrist ★ Big Fish ★ Bowling for Columbine ★ Caché ★ Capturing the Friedmans ★ The Constant Gardener ★ Dancer in the Dark ★ The Departed ★ Dogville ★ The Fall ★ A History of Violence ★ Hurt Locker ★ The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou ★ Man on Wire ★ Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World ★ Minority Report ★ Monster ★ Morvern Callar ★ No Direction Home ★ O Brother, Where Are Thou? ★ Pan’s Labyrinth ★ Talk to Her ★ The Triplets of Belleville ★ Waking Life ★ Wet Hot American Summer ★ Y Tu Mamá También ★ Zodiac

Single Mentions:
2046 ★ 25th Hour ★ 28 Days Later ★ 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days ★ The 40-Year-Old Virgin ★ 8 Women ★ A Lion in the House ★ A Very Long Engagement ★ Anchorman ★Apacalypto ★ Avatar ★ Badassss!!! ★ Before Sunset ★ Best of Youth ★ Black Dahlia ★ Blow ★ Brokeback Mountain ★ Bug ★ Chop Shop ★ A Christmas Tale ★ Closer ★ Code 46 ★ The Contender ★ The Darjeeling Limited ★ Dear Zachary ★ The Devil and Daniel Johnson ★ The Descent ★ Donnie Darko ★ Elephant ★ Fantastic Mr. Fox ★ Far from Heaven ★ The Five Obstructions ★ Fog of War ★ Freddy Got Fingered ★ Ghost World ★ Gladiator ★ Goodbye, Lenin! ★ Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ★ High Fidelity ★ House of Sand and Fog ★ I Heart Huckabees ★ I’m Not There ★ In America ★ In Bruges ★ In the Bedroom ★ Inland Empire ★ Into Great Silence ★ Into the Wild ★ Junebug ★ Juno ★ Lady Chatterly ★ The Last King of Scotland ★ Le Temp du Loup ★ Lord of the Rings: Return of the King ★ Lord of the Rings: Two Towers ★ Love Actually ★ The Man Who Wasn’t There ★ Margot at the Wedding ★ Me, You, and Everyone We Know ★ Millenium Mambo ★ Million Dollar Baby ★ The Motorcycle Diaries ★ Moulin Rouge! ★ My Winnipeg ★ Mysterious Skin ★ Mystic River ★ Napoleon Dynamite ★ Notes on a Scandal ★ Nowhere in Africa ★ Old School ★ Phoebe in Wonderland ★ Pineapple Express ★ Planet Earth (Series) ★ The Prestige ★ Primer ★ The Princess and the Warrior ★ The Proposition ★ Public Enemies ★ Rain ★ Saraband ★ Saw ★ Secretary ★ Sin City ★ Slumdog Millionaire ★ The Son ★ Spanglish ★ Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring ★ Stranger Than Fiction ★ Sunshine ★ Supersize Me ★ Tale of the Two Sisters ★ Team America: World Police ★The Pianist ★ The Piano Teacher ★ Together ★ Traffic ★ Tropical Malady ★ Up the Yangtze ★ V for Vendetta ★ War of the Worlds ★ White Diamond ★ Wit ★ Wonder Boys ★ Wreckmeister Harmonies ★ You Can Count on Me ★ Youth Without Youth

Based on this data, the most successful filmmaker of the decade is Charlie Kaufman, by a landslide. Kaufman wrote three of the films that earned a total of 25 mentions out of 40 people, including Synecdoche, NY which he also directed. P.T. Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood gave him 19 mentions, Wes Anderson 18, the Coen Brothers 13, and Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan tie for 11 mentions apiece.

These results would also indicate that people love symmetry. P.T. Anderson has worked with the DP Robert Elswit on all of his movies to date, and has never once wavered from his conviction that all shots should be completely centered and symmetrical. The symmetry is obvious in Wes Anderson’s films as well, and even though this is a device that is generally pooh-poohed by most filmmakers, it seems to strike a chord in viewers like you.

2001 and 2007 were far and away the most successful years for films between 2000 and 2009, although There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men account for the spike in mentions despite an average number of individual films named. The results would indicate a general love of films that are older. Perhaps films become dearer to us with the years and multiple viewings.

So to recap: If you want your film to be considered among the best of the decade, release it early on, make it with American money, stress symmetry, change your last name to Anderson, and have Charlie Kaufman write the screenplay!

Thanks to everyone who participated and Happy 1st Birthday BananaWHO!

-Christianne Hedtke

The scope of the film is entirely contained in L’Academie Nationale de Musique, captured in a series of lock-off shots of the Ballet’s workspace—the basement, the underside of the stage with its giant cogs and coils of rope, the plumbing system, the cafeteria, and the industrial machinery of the costume shop. These snapshots of workaday spaces appear throughout the film between rehearsal sessions and performances as if to ground the ballet in a material world. Within the Academie’s walls Wiseman has captured excerpts from performances and exclusive rehearsal sessions that painfully detail the choreographer’s micromanagement of the dancer’s every move, from the slightest muscular tremor to the thoughts in her head. The minutiae of these rehearsals and the mundane chores of putting on a show—vacuuming the theater, dying fabric for costumes, spooning up couscous to hungry ballerinas—are the real-life components of the ballet that the ballet itself works so hard to conceal.

Filmmaking is similar in it’s construction—every shot is carefully considered, everything that makes the final cut has been contemplated—and yet it always strives to mask its own making. But in La Danse, Wiseman seems to highlight its seams. The lens often struggles for focus, the camera readjusts in the middle of takes, the final print is boldly pixilated, and the camera even catches an image of itself in the mirror, complete with the crew’s equipment and a camera operator. This filmmaking style may come off as blasé, but more likely Wiseman is doubling up on his demonstration of an artistic process exposed, focusing for once on the process of achieving excellence rather than the final product.

This is not to say the film was excellent in its own right; the dancing took precedent over anything the filmmaking may have added or omitted, and aside from being an illuminating look at what really goes on behind those velvet curtains, the ballets featured in the film offer something for everyone, ranging from the most classical Tchaikovsky to ultramodern pieces with pop and lock and buckets of blood. Even though the film is stingy with story, ballet itself has never needed narrative to be enjoyed, and La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet is no exception. –Christianne Hedtke

This dominating force of CGI-oriented fantasy films was met by a small subculture of filmmakers who made deliberately lo-fi works. Let’s call them the handmaids of handmade, directors like Michel Gondry (always just a handshake away from Jonze) and Wes Anderson celebrate all that is handmade and colloquial in nostalgic movies like Science of Sleep, Be Kind Rewind, The Royal Tenenbaums, and a slew of music video animations made from Legos, fabric, and paper cut outs.

But there had to be a middle way, and Spike Jonze, director of Where the Wild Things Are, has found it—an elegant blending between costumes, sets, puppetry, and CGI that will put the $500 million computer world of Avatar to shame. Jonze shot the entirety of the film using live action Wild Things in costume, and then used CGI as a tool to create facial expressions instead of replacing them bodily with binary code. (Anderson adopted a similar approach in the animation of his forthcoming feature, Fantastic Mr. Fox). The effect is believable—it’s apparent that Max isn’t just reacting to a tennis ball on a stick, and this element of realism makes all the difference. The only thing left to choke down are a few shoddy motivations in the story that has Dave Eggers written all over it.

We’re all familiar with Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book about Max, the misbehaving boy who is sent to bed without supper and finds his way to the land of the Wild Things, but in Jonze and Eggers’ expansion of the picture book, Max’s imagined world molds to his psyche, and his wild emotions manifest in the Wild Things. The story is endearing and startlingly honest about the sadness and anger that childhood can foster, but the story also suffers from the aforementioned lack of motivation. The viewer blinded by the sweetness and beauty of the story would rationalize that a child’s fantasy isn’t necessarily motivated, and they would be right, but this is not the material that makes an excellent story. Dave Eggers doesn’t know this, but he has millions of dollars and a bestselling book so gets to produce scripts like these. Luckily, holes in the narrative are filled by the most astonishing images of the year, with surprising cinematography that doesn’t shy away from violence, and sprawling, authentic locations that are so clear and rich they expose the bare fantasy worlds of The Golden Compass and The Chronicles of Narnia for the greenscreen simulations they really are.

The actual production of Wild Things was reportedly a freeform experiment in its own right. Jonze tried not to call cut, rolling out on forty-minute takes with a second pre-loaded camera standing by to take its place. The majority of the cinematography was handheld, which is nearly unprecedented for a movie set to be digitally manipulated, but it freed the frame to explore the point of view of an actual kid, without the structure and unreality of telescoping crane-cams and dolly shots. Max Records, the actor in the lead role, often wore a microphone in his ear through which Jonze would whisper direction or play music to capture the tumult of a boy at play. Perhaps all of these indulgences in process are how the production budget ballooned to hundred million dollars. You get what you pay for.

It isn’t perfect but its faults are few and they are eclipsed completely by the arresting imagery, and surprisingly honest revisiting of childhood that doesn’t hide behind niceties but still lets the joy of playing shine through. –Christianne Hedtke

Director: Spike Jonze
Writers: Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers

Currently showing at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington DC is van der Werve’s 2007 film Nummer Acht: Everything Is Going To Be Alright (not, under any circumstances, to be confused with Crispin Glover’s handicapped-erotica thriller It Is Fine, Everything is Fine!!) Here is an excerpt from a shaky bootleg that barely does the film justice:

This goes on for 8 minutes, but the shot remains static: van der Werve walks, and the icebreaker ceaselessly and mechanically eats up his footprints, negating the evidence of his presence, annihilating his existence. It’s a modern read on the myth of Sisyphus, with an Arctic sea vessel standing in for his rock, but the questions the film raises are not solely of an existential nature but of a technological nature as well. The camera is somewhere is front of van der Werve, but he never seems to be getting closer or further away from the camera, the icebreaker is neither gaining on him or falling behind, and there is no dolly track or footprints of the cinematographer to give away their methods. As the film goes on for several minutes the mind relaxes, the reducing valve of logic opens a notch and the images start to change. The ship transforms into a menacing face, and van der Werve appears to be on a treadmill in front of looped rear-projection footage. Ironically, the artifice is all imagined: the smoke in mirrors is the Arctic Ocean itself, filmed on location by a steadicam operator who cleverly left the foreground fuzzy.

Van der Werve’s other works prove that non-narrative art film can’t all be desolation and loneliness. A certain element of slapstick in his film reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously:

Other projects of his capture various acts of conceptual art, returning a meteorite into space in a homemade rocket, playing piano on a raft floating in a lake, and, perhaps his most famous concept, 24 hours spent standing on the North Pole, turning against the earth’s rotation by following his own shadow.

So if the earth stood still for him for a whole day, did he age? Discuss. -CH

van der Werve’s website