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Notes on The Black Dahlia, The Illusionist, Pulse, The Descent 9/20/2006 5:05:53 PM
Notes on the structures of some recent films. The Black Dahlia
posted 9/19/2006
The Black Dahlia is Chinatown without Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Roy Jenson, and Roman Polanski. The film is a large collection of plot threads that come in waves, but not with a deeper, potent unity that connects them. The tone wavers from realistic to camp, the acting from inexpressive to over the top. The Black Dahlia murder investigation is actually a very small part of the story; the actress who plays Betty Short in film tests, Mia Kirshner, makes a strong, subtle impression as a not very talented young woman trying to make it in Hollywood.
Visually interesting.
The Illusionist
posted 9/1/2006
I make a distinction between story and plot; that story is an issue of human need or idea about life that is fulfilled by the action or events of a story; and plot is about what happens, and offers resolution. In The Illusionist, a young, poor boy is forceably separated from the young girl he loves because she comes from an aristocratic family. He travels the world and becomes a great magician and returns to turn of the century Vienna, where he discovers his young sweetheart is now a princess about to be engaged to the crown prince, who considers himself a rationalist. The plot question is, will he be able to help his renewed sweetheart 'disappear' in a way that he couldn't as a young boy. The story appears to revolve around whether the main character is a magician or has special powers to raise the dead and do other unexplainable-by-magic feats. As more and more people flock to his performances, the question arises whether he might become the focal point for a new kind of society that doesn't need crown princes or monarchs.
The film, which is artistic in design, brings up issues of class, but the focus is mostly on the magician and his efforts to get his beloved away from the prince; and the realization of a police inspector that he can be a detective or the prince's toady, but he can't be both. That ties into the issue of class, but presenting an idea is not the same as doing something with it. When the prince talks about the different types of common folk needing a monarch to rule them, it doesn't particularly fulfill something vital. Hence the film has a weak ending. Resolution, but not a deeply felt fulfillment.
The film is a pleasure to watch.
Snakes on a Plane
posted 8/23/2006
The title sums up the movie and the embedded plot question, who will survive and how? And the first wave of attacks do have some visceral, scary jolts. Then the movie seems to be running down a check-list for different parts of anatomy snakes can bite, then the expected plot complications happen in the expected order. The action is solid and the dialogue is servicable, but nothing special.
There are a few moments of feeling among the characters, but nothing that rises to the level of giving the action a purpose that ties together what's happening to who the characters are. For example, an opening sequences demonstrates that a main character is a thrill seeker, but that doesn't connect to anything else in the body of the film.
Pulse
posted 8/14/2006
I went to see this film in spite of the weak reviews. The structure of the film has a classic flaw; what it's about is narrated as the last line of the film, about the dead having a will to return to life equal to that of the living trying to survive an onslaught of the dead. But, for the first half of the film, the main characters simply respond to increasingly strange events. Since there's no real story or plot (since the characters are unaware of what's really happening), the actors can only respond to events in lieu of playing characters who define themselves based on what they want, and what they are willing to do to get what they want. This leaves the actors with little to do except pose for the camera and try and emote whatever a scene calls for.
I've read that the original Japanese film this is based on is an exercise in creepiness and looming dread. That kind of tone can be hard to make 'work' in a Hollywood style film aimed at a larger audience. The shooting style of extreme close ups happens in a void. It didn't connect to anything that was happening.
The movie does toss out the idea of characters being connected in so many ways with cell phones and email and the ghosts attacking through these devices. But tossing out the idea isn't the same as doing something with it.
The Descent
posted 8/10/2006
This is a well-made, thoughtful horror film. It's also a lesson in how a group of characters can be made distinct through visual cues and a few lines of dialogue that define characters. The film is in the mold of Scream in that the audience is asked to relate to the characters instead of a typical Hollywood horror film where characters exist to die in unusual ways.
The main character here is a woman who's been unable to overcome her depression after the untimely death of her husband, which comes about in a freakish accident caused by her awareness that something is seriously wrong with her marriage. The story then jumps forward a year to a regathering of women with the goal of taking the depressed woman on a journey into a safe cave exploring experience. But someone decides instead to take everyone into an unexplored cave.
There's much tension here when things go wrong and some of the characters grow more desperate. Then some cannibalistic, humans evolved to live in caves show up and it becomes a nightmarish, bloody quest for survival.
In the end the main character finds within herself a primal will to survive.
At one point I felt sorry for the human monsters closing in on the transformed heroine.
This is powerful storytelling, but not for everyone. People who are claustrophobic or not used to movies that evoke real terror should give this a pass.
