Stephen King’s It

If you know the novel on which this two-part made-for-tv film is based, you’ll know it’s impossible to transfer the story from one medium to another. I guess we should give Warner Bros. kudos for even trying. The result, though, is neither scary nor compelling. I imagine that if this were the first horror movie you ever saw when you were a teenager it might have been quite creepy – and you’ll be traumatized for life by that clown. “They all float down here!” The story follows a group of kids, “The Loser Club” (later re-baptized as “Lucky Seven”) during a life-changing summer in 1960 – and their reunion thirty years later. In that fateful summer in some New England smallville, all of them have frightful encounters with their worst nightmare in the form of shape-shifting Pennywise the Dancing Clown, who also appears as a werewolf, a mummy, and whatnot. Children disappear in sleepy little town of Derry, Maine, but no one seems to care or do much about it. Grownups apparently don’t notice what is going on in their town every thirty odd years. The losers’ leader, Bill is determined to avenge the death of his younger brother Georgie. When they all have shared their encounters with “It” they agree to help him. Obviously they have no idea how to go about, but the bonding experience is the heart and soul of the story.

Unable to kill the monster, they vow they will one day return to finish “It” off should it ever come back. And coming back it does, as children sing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and disappear again thirty years later. Mike Hanlon is the only one of the Lucky Seven who remains in Derry and contacts the others; Bill Denbrough (doubtless modeled after Stephen King himself) still tells scary stories; Richie Tozier now makes a living cracking jokes as he always did; that little fat kid, Ben Hanscom, who used to build dams so well, is now a slim, successful architect; hypochondriac Eddie Kaspbrak still lives with his overbearing mother; the only girl among the Losers, Beverly Marsh, has found a man to replace her abusive father; Stan Uris, once the goody-two-shoes boy scout and now a successful businessman, rather commits suicide than face “It” again. There’s no explanation why they are still able to see that freaky Pennywise the Clown now that they’re adults, and there certainly aren’t words to explain the dramatically poor ending. Somehow the clown’s true earthly shape is that of a giant spider that feeds on humans. Mike and Eddie die, while Beverley slings silver slugs at the monster, while Bill, Richie and Ben disembowel “It” and rip it’s heart out. What a letdown. After sitting through three hours of build up, this crock o’ shyte is a real anti-climax.

There are some obvious staples of Stephen King’s usual fair in the film: the everyman smallville setting in Maine, the coming-of-age of a group of misfit adolescents over a summer in the 60s, the inexplicable terror, and so on. The scenes with the teenagers are perhaps the most interesting, while the adult actors remain stiff and unconvincing. Watching it now, the movie also suffers from its painfully out-dated effects. But what bothers your Cricket most are the blatant rip offs from J. R. R. Tolkien and H. P. Lovecraft. The giant spider in the subterranean cave, feeding on humans paralyzed in cobweb cocoons, clearly derives – however unconsciously – from The Lord of the Rings’ Cirith Ungol’s Shelob. (And if you’ve seen both movies, you’ll probably agree that Peter Jackson stole it back for his version.) The cosmological back-story about the ancient extra-terrestrial monster terrorizing New England, hunting small towns for prey, taking shapes and forms that will terrify anyone who dares looking straight into the “deadlight” of its very being so much their stupefying madness will kill them, certainly comes directly from the Cthulu Cycle, which itself in a way was inspired by Arthur Machen. Moreover, there’s no subtext, no deeper meaning, beyond the great adventure that bound the Losers’ Club in their quest to fight Evil incarnate. And we already knew that clowns are Satan’s spawn. No cheeping chirps for this one.

Spirited Away

As most of you probably already know, Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is a beautiful animated movie about a ten-year old spoiled little brat of rich parents and her journey into the realm of ghosts and spirits in search of herself. The pouty girl, Chihiro, and her parents become lost while driving with their car through the woods. When they stop the car, and walk through a dark tunnel, they find themselves at an abandoned amusement park. In this empty ghost town, her father finds a sumptuous buffet and her parents eat all they can until they turn into pigs. Whiny Chihiro finds help from a little boy, Haku, who indicates they have met before. They are now in the world of ghosts. Haku smuggles her into a bathhouse for the gods, worked by spirits, run by the witch Yubaba, and he tells Chihiro to make sure she finds employment there until he comes back to rescue her. In the bathhouse, the clumsy girl gradually learns to become resourceful, help the spirits and make friends under straining circumstances. The story unfolds against a backdrop of fantastic, well-nigh psychedelic dream pastel colors. This fairy tale for grown-up kids is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, but this Cricket was also reminded of Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil – if that makes sense.

Chihiro’s journey represents a quest for moral individuality in a world inhabited by faceless spirits, nameless ghosts, voiceless soot sprites, wicked witches, dangerous dragons and stink gods, all with their own absurd rules. Underneath the girl’s rite-of-passage there is another story: a social critique of sorts. The abandoned amusement park hints at the Japanese economic bubble of the late-twentieth century, while the buildings in the park, particularly the bathhouse of the gods, hark back to the Meji Restoration. The rich and young of the twenty-first century have lost their respect for tradition, have lost their connection with their past – filled with magical mystery. This commentary on modernity subtly runs throughout the film: Chihiro’s parents gorge themselves on food so much they turn into pigs; the river-god is mistaken for a stink-god, because he is covered in waste, and proceeds to vomit all the trash that humans dump into the river; the faceless spirit bribes everyone at the bathhouse with his gold, but makes no friends save the little heroine – and he, too, starts vomiting when Chihiro asks him if he has no home to return to. The gorging, bribing, and vomiting are obvious allusions to the ills of modern consumerism.

The beauty is that Miyazaki succeeds in keeping his fairy tale filled with ambiguity – nothing is what it seems: a stink-god turns out to be a river-god, parents turn into pigs, a dangerous dragon turns out to be Haku in disguise, an enormous baby turns into a mouse, weird creatures turn out to become friends, a piece of flying paper turns into a witch, a threatening faceless spirits turns out to be a lonely soul; what seemed frightfully evil turns out to be good and friendly. Such moral ambivalence keeps this film from becoming standard Disney fare. Through the Looking Glass of Miyazaki, there is good in all creatures, but there is also evil lurking everywhere. If we overcome our fears, trust our instinct, return to our innocence, find our inner selves and retain our individual moral uprightness, we can face reality and live meaningful lives. If somehow you have missed Spirited Away – like your Cricket did – it might be time to catch up and enjoy this wonderful movie.

Danger After Dark II

Noriko’s Dinner Table (2006) by Sion Sono is a companion piece to Suicide Club (2002). However, it’s neither a prequel nor a sequel. Noriko is an awkwardly shy town girl, desperate to break away from her boredom. Her only friends she meets online. In voice-over narrations she tells us how it is she came to Tokyo. When she first meets her online pal (about half an hour into the movie), you just know things are going to get seriously weird. The pal introduces herself as Kumiko. And just so you know we’re talking seriously messed up we flash forward straight away to half a year later when fifty four girls cheerfully jump in front of the 7:30 train at Shinjuku Station. Meanwhile, Noriko’s family has no clue where she is. Her sister Yuka is still in Yokohama, too, happily telling her boyfriend how her sister may have been one of the suicide girls, and that she knows how all the girls arranged to meet at the station. She shows him the screen with the red and white dots: red for female suicides, white for male. Suddenly the screen turns black with the text, “Am I connected with myself, Sis?” She leaves home, too, but leaving her father clues that he manages to put together: the Suicide Club does exist. For her part, Noriko idealized Kumiko’s happy family: they are connected and share their love at all times. She learns to connect with herself – and empathize with others. Kumiko works in “family rental” pretending to be some client’s family member for money. In his own search to find his daughters, Noriko’s father learns that he really is in search of himself. Like its predecessor, this film thus explores computer-age alienation, the loss of connectedness, and emotional isolation in modern urban society. If you were expecting another splatterfest, though, you will be disappointed as the movie is more of a psychological drama. It is also one of the rare occasions where the cinematographic effects (fast editing, dangling cameras, etc.) actually work well to convey the emotional landscape of the characters.

Aragami (2003) by Ryuhei Kitamura is the counterpart of Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s 2LDK (2002). This film, too, features mainly two actors battling, set within a single set, and was produced within one week. But that is where the similarities end. Interestingly, while the cinematography (as well as the continuous electronic pop rock synthesizer soundtrack) is decidedly modern, the story is set in a once-upon-a-time far-faraway, reminiscent of a traditional Japanese tale. A samurai regains consciousness in a remote mountain temple after falling at the entrance with life-threatening wounds. He learns that his companion did not survive, but the inhabitant of the temple invites him to stay and entertains him with a luscious meal, French wine and Russian vodka. He regales the samurai with frightful stories about Tengu (long-nosed mountain goblins) and Aragami, the Raging God of Battle. The samurai soon discovers that his wounds have all healed, but how? His host explains he gave him his friend’s flesh! But who is this host? He was once the legendary Miyamoto Musashi, the greatest warrior ever known, but now has become none other than Aragami himself! They duel, but even when Aragami runs his blade through the samurai’s stomach, it leaves only a scratch. His wounds heal due to the cannibalistic meal, but he is not immortal, as the head or the heart will kill him dead. Aragami has become weary of his existence and hopes this samurai will be the one to kill him honorably. Although the sword-fighting acrobatics are worth the watch alone, it’s the increasing psychological tension that makes this film a satisfying experience. Quite a feat considering the constrained conditions of two actors in a single set!

Before we get to The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai (2003) by Mitsuru Meike, it might be useful to first discuss (however briefly) the pinku eiga genre. Pinku eiga emerged in the 60s as a genre evading Japanese censorship laws by blocking or blurring genitals while maintaining a required minimum quota of sex scenes (some four or five per hour). Terms such as “soft-core” or “sexploitation” are somewhat misleading, as the genre often contains elements of action, thriller, violence, horror, and/or political commentary. In this case, the titular Sachiko Hanai is a role-play call girl specialized in playing home-tutoring. What sets the narrative is that Sachiko next gets hit by a bullet in the forehead while trying to take a picture of a shady business transaction running foul between a North Korean and Middle Eastern in a cafeteria. Miraculously, she survives, but the bullet lodged in her brain spurts her intelligence to ponder the abstract universe and subjective truth in mathematical equations. Plus, she can foresee future events, which involve sex and violence – and she finds she has a much delayed taste sensation. We are bombarded with musings about situationalism, rationalism and the Platonist view on Christianity, objective reality and Japan’s lack of a nuclear military strategy to match that of Russia or the U.S, all combined with sex (not the sensual erotic or even graphic pornographic kind, but of the prosaic, romping, five-minute sort – including six gallon ejaculations). Sachiko also discovers a silver cylinder containing a clone of George W’s finger. He appears to her in a reflection urging her to defend world peace and democracy. I’m sure you can guess where that finger is going. While she is climaxing, we are shown images of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue, and of Bush inspecting his fleet. Meanwhile, the North Korean who shot her in the cafeteria hopes to retrieve Bush’s finger, for it controls nuclear Armageddon. In the end, after abstract infinity, cogito ergo sum, beef stew, dues ex machina, and more sex, Sachiko walks out of a primordial cave straight into nuclear obliteration. A must see!

Alice in Wonderland

I’m probably the last person on earth to watch Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010) one of the world’s highest grossing box office movie successes. So, it’s probably redundant to offer much of a plot synopsis. The dream story is framed by Alice’s real life in Victorian England, where she’s faced with society’s expectations of a nineteen-year old girl. The fabulously fantastic events that unfurl after falling down the rabbit hole are in essence a girl’s quest to find herself, or, her “muchness” in the story’s parlance – not to be too small and not too tall, know right from wrong, face her demons, befriend the Bandersnatch, not to live her life pleasing others, imagine six impossible things before breakfast, slay the Jabberwock on frabjous day, and find her way back home. Callooh! Callay! It’s a story to which we can all relate, because we are all on a quest to find ourselves amidst society’s expectations. I’m impressed that Burton and his writers created an actual story from Carroll’s source material of deliberately unrelated nonsensical yet funny events. It smacks a little too much of modern female empowerment, but you might say that makes the story more relevant – just as the rebellion against terrorizing tyranny has a contemporary ring to it.

The fantastical landscape, while Disneyfied, remains recognizably Burton – and in a way is a character all by itself. It lives, sometimes literally, in the sense that for instance the Red Queen’s palace is filled with animals functioning as furniture. However, the main characters themselves are what make the film. Mia Wasikowska’s performance as Alice has just the right combination of naïveté and determination for the part. Johnny Depp seems to be stuck in acting weirdos (Jack Sparrow, The Libertine, Willy Wonka, Sweeney Todd, etc.) – to the point of getting predictable. Here, his Mad Hatter Tarrant Hightopp has an interesting blend of craziness and sadness, but I found his flow of accents rather annoying. Supposedly, that was meant to reflect the character’s moods, but it hardly came through – at least not for me. Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen was, on the contrary, spot on: a spoiled toddler with absolute power to make everyone’s lives miserable. Anne Hathaway as the White Queen seemed entirely miscast. I can’t tell what they were going for, but she has little in common with Carroll’s illogical, absentminded White Queen who lives her life in reverse and thus can remember future events. I would have wished that Crispin Glover’s Knave of Hearts was more evil, instead of such a spineless weasel.

For Carroll die-hards there are several irks, too. I’m not saying that I’ve caught them all, but, to give you an example, “Jabberwocky” is the name of a poem about the Jabberwock (without the –y suffix), “with eyes of flame,” that “came whiffling through the tulgey wood, and burbled as it came!” Depp mispronounces “borogoves” as “borogroves” (with an additional –r- in groves). Similarly, I was surprised by the pronunciation of “upelkuchen” like “uppelkutshen” (which sounds like the Dutch word “huppelkutje” that I best not translate), while “kuchen” must have been borrowed from the German word for cake (pronounced “kookhen, [kuːxən]),” with a velar fricative like the Spanish j or the English “loch”). In all, I am left with mixed feelings. Some aspects were enjoyable: the story itself was entertaining, some of the performances were good, and they did honor to the original without sticking too closely to Carroll. Yet I do have qualms about other aspects: the story lost some of the absurdity of the original, the animations didn’t mash too well with the real life actors, and some performances were fairly lame. It’s not a film I would enthusiastically recommend, but then again, everybody else has already seen it.

City of Lost Children

If you’ve ever seen the movie City of Lost Children (La Cité des enfants perdus, 1995), you know that I’m talking about yet another surrealist dystopian nightmare, much like Delicatessen (which is basically by the same crew) or a Terry Gilliam film (such as Brazil or The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen, as well as some odd similarities with Jellowbeard), or even a Wes Anderson flick (such as The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). The main story is about mad genius Krank (“Sick”) who abducts children to steal their dreams, with the hope of reversing his accelerated aging because he himself cannot dream. And then there’s the carnival strongman (Ron Perlman), who – with the help of the streetwise orphan Miette (“Little Crumb”) – searches for his little brother who of course has been kidnapped by Krank’s henchmen. This is one of those crazy, weird, dark movies you have to be in the mood for. I thought the acting was a little lame, but the story poses interesting questions about the incredible ways coincidences and accidents add up to important events in life. Maybe you’d like to give this one a try.

Pan’s Labyrinth

A little while ago I finally saw Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno, 2006) by Guillermo del Torro (Blade, Hellboy), yet another dark fantasy film. I can’t say I know what to make of it... Much Ado about Nothing? It’s set during the Franquist repression in Spain at the end of the Second World War. A woman named Carmen travels with her young daughter Ofelia to her new husband, the Falangist Vidal. To escape her new life with this brutal military stepfather, and to escape the general violence in her war-torn country, Ofelia retreats into a fantasy in which she is a long-lost princess of the Underworld. A Faun in an overgrown labyrinth gives her three assignments to test if she really is the daughter of the King of the Underworld.

It’s true that the girl’s fantasy world (a reversed Platonic Cave allegory, if you will) contrasts poignantly with the horrors of the real world. Her pregnant mother grows increasingly ill. One of the servant maids who took the girl into her care turns out to be an agent of the guerrilla resistance. But other than as contrast with and escape from reality, Ofelia’s fantasy barely interacts with her real life. So the two stories mostly remain separate, neither one of them very compelling... Nor am I sure what to make of the names of the female characters: Carmen (the gypsy factory girl who seduces a soldier, only to fall in love with a bullfighter); Ofelia (Hamlet’s potential bride who met her untimely death)... How far am I to take the significance of their names? And does that mean that the girl’s fantasy is a death wish, suicidal ideation, a mortal hallucination? I can’t make sense of it all...

Dark City

Dark City (1998) is another one of those noir postmodern dystopian futuristic science fiction films. It’s directed by Alex Proyas who also did The Crow and I, Robot. We get a stellar cast that includes William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connolly, Ian Richardson, and Rufus Sewell in the lead. We’re also treated with cinematic references to Metropolis, M, Nosferatu, The Twilight Zone, Blade Runner, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and even his short The Crimson Permanent Assurance, not to mention the Rocky Horror Show and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. There are literary references to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” to Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, and Frederik Pohl. With a set up like that, it’s hard to go wrong! The plot involves parasitical extraterrestrials maliciously manipulating human memories as well as the perpetually nocturnal urban landscape in an attempt at discovering the essential nature of the human soul in hopes of saving their own species. If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, don’t watch it! Hahahaha!

Delicatessen

Watching Man Bites Dog the other day made me realize that I’ve been meaning to check out Delicatessen for a while ... and then wondered if I had seen it before ... it all seemed so familiar... (Did I really see it before?) The setting is some post-apocalyptic France seemingly circa 1950, with much if not all of civilization, politics and economy burned to cinders. The plot centers on an apartment building run by the local butcher. I don’t think I’m giving anything away when I add that most animals have become extinct due to hunting, and that therefore the butcher doesn’t trade in animal meat, if you know what I mean... The best-known sequence is also the funniest, in which we see and especially hear tenants in the building play cello along a metronome, pump a bicycle wheel, beat a carpet, paint the ceiling, knit, drill holes in those little animal-call boxes, all in the rhythm set by the landlord making love to his mistress atop the squeaking bedsprings... Hahahaha! Definitely worth watching if you care for dark humor, but you have to be in the mood for weirdness... (And I haven’t even mentioned the Troglodists!)