satire

Four Lions

beth — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 21:33:00 +0000

Four Lions, produced and directed by Chris Morris, satirizes terrorists and the response to terrorism in modern Britain. Every character is flawed and every person is spoofed. No one is spared; police, politicians, local working stiffs, neighborhood religious fanatics, and the floozie next door are lampooned with great one-liners and riotous insults. This may sound insensitive, but the humor does not obscure hard issues. Rather, it makes them approachable: you’ll likely want to talk about this funny and unexpectedly sad film after seeing it.

The film’s strength is in offering a point of view that for most is simply unthinkable and unsympathetic: the perspective of four British Muslims who attempt jihad and plot suicide bombings. Morris’s incompetent and conflicted would-be martyrs are mostly likable oafs, the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, as if Harold and Kumar waged jihad under the tutelage of Twitter’s Al Qaeda. This sympathetic perspective is most disturbing as each meets his violent end, sometimes regretfully. The humor makes discussion possible.

I was deeply curious to see this film because I wondered whether the balance of humor and serious issues could be applied to this topic. I’m not convinced that such satire would work with more nuanced matters than suicide bombers or topics that are not thoroughly polarized. Polarization made Citizen Ruth work, but the difficulties presented by more subtle issues may be the reason that humor is rarely used to promote discussion. It’s not easy to be funny or enlightening, and to do so at the same time seems near impossible when talking about something, well, serious.

While Four Lions is a great discussion tool, it is less successful as entertainment. It’s funny, and the characters are always engaging, but the story wanders a bit because it’s both satire and buddy movie, and these elements do not entirely work together. The film does not have universal appeal. That said, the biggest downside is that you may never get rid of the earworm “Dancing in the Moonlight” after the movie ends.

Written by: Melissa Ditmore, November 5th 2010

The Extra Man

admin — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini

Magnolia Pictures

Based on the Jonathan Ames novel of the same title, The Extra Man is a film about, among other things, the amusing network of personal eccentricities that are produced when people engage with each other in society. The society in this film centers around a small cohort of men who live in the same apartment building: Henry Harrison, a self-proclaimed, unapologetic gentleman of yesteryear, who lives off escorting older New York City high society ladies; Louis Ives, a seemingly downtrodden young “gentleman” with a penchant for sexual deviancy (paying sex workers for spankings, cross-dressing) who rents a room from Mr. Henry Harrison and comes to admire the older man greatly; and Gershon, a falsetto-voiced man who dreams of singing melodies in a cave with his dream woman, but compensates for this dream by reading the dictionary, riding his bicycle, and masturbating ceaselessly.

The narrative follows Paul as he arrives into New York City after abruptly leaving his lecture position at an exclusive Princeton prep school (he was caught trying on a female teacher’s bra). Paul takes residence in the city with Mr. Harrison, played brilliantly by Kevin Kline, whose deft ability to perform deadpan comedy sparkles in this film. Positioned as a seemingly unwilling mentor to Paul, played by a mellow, soft-spoken Paul Dano, Mr. Henry Harrison teaches the young man how to become a gentleman—how to scam one’s ways into the opera; how to pee in the middle of the street via strategic hand maneuvers under one’s raincoat; and how, in particular, to regard women as objectified mediums to provide a gentleman’s grandiose, and somewhat garish, lifestyle.

Throughout the film, Paul seems unsatisfied with his life; he longs to be a writer instead of a lowly salesman, he longs to win the heart of his coworker Mary (Katie Holmes), and he longs to “find himself,” as do so many people who boldly move to a big city in an attempt for self-discovery. But Paul, no matter how often he partakes in his sexual fantasies, remains a depressed creature—his apparent happiness emerges only in those moments of interaction with the quirky Mr. Harrison. The denouement of the film occurs when Mr. Harrison discovers Paul cross-dressed as a woman, and so the two have a twenty-four-hour period of separation, in which the kid bemoans his woe-is-me, depressed existence. Of course, the two reunite after realizing that both enjoy each other’s company.

Kline, Dano, and John C. Reilly as Gershon, all perform wonderfully and make their characters memorable via how adeptly each embodies their respective role. The blending of genres, from British-inspired satire to melancholic realism renders the film baffling—as in, I kept looking at my watch, wondering when the film would come to a conclusion. To be honest, though, I don’t believe this reaction to be a fault of the film, but rather the film’s achievement. My guttural response was an effect of the layer of sadness that permeated the film. In other words, if you empathize with those nineteenth century decadents who ruminated on their melancholia for hours in their dimly-lit gray rooms, then, you’ll greatly enjoy this film. If you feel a Nietzschean aversion to this sort, like I do, then you’ll walk away from the cinema in full appreciation of what the film accomplishes, but feeling “mehhh...”

Written by: Marcie Bianco, July 10th 2010

Get Him to the Greek

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:00:00 +0000

Directed by Nicholas Stoller

Universal Studios

Aldous Snow (Russell Brand)—the uber-sexual, tongue-in-cheek (and anywhere else you’ll let him stick it) Brit-rocker introduced to audiences in 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall—is back in the latest film from yet another member of the Apatow Film Club for Boys. Based on characters created by Jason Segel, and written and directed by Nicholas Stoller, Get Him to the Greek is an often-comical, always offensive satire of the music industry, rock ‘n’ roll culture, and America’s reverence for all things celebrity.

Capitalizing on the fervor ignited by Brand, Get Him to the Greek succeeds in blurring the line between reality and fiction through inclusion of an original soundtrack and videos (performed by Brand and co-star Rose Byrne) and cameos by more than one recognizable pop artist and media outlet. Brand is refreshingly genuine as a privileged star struggling to gain control of his life, while Byrne offers hilarious support as Snow’s ex-wife and musical partner, Jackie Q. Effortlessly, she rivals Brand with her own sincere wit as she admits on Showbiz Tonight how bored she is with her husband’s sobriety.

I expected to like this film—and I did. Stoller bravely explores intimacy among men and, similar to I Love You, Man, his manuscript explores the complex dynamics of male relationships by offering glimpses of sincerity, vulnerability, and affection, elements often ignored in favor of more acceptably masculine attributes. However, as is often the case in Hollywood, without being well-versed in feminist values, what is meant to be ironic instead reinforces stereotypes and makes it that much harder for girls to be in on the joke.

Some attempts at humor are more problematic than others. While attempting to wrangle Snow in Vegas and escort him to New York City, music intern Aaron (Jonah Hill) is ordered by his boss Sergio (Sean “P Diddy” Combs) to have sex with a woman he’s just met, Destiny. Actually, Sergio commands Destiny to “[t]ake this man into the bedroom and have sex with him," and she readily complies. What follows is a pointless scene in which the petite Destiny forces the hefty Aaron to have sex with her. He says, “No.” He “protests.” (In reality, he could have easily tossed her off him.) Finally, he returns to his friends and announces, “I think I was just raped.” They laugh, and so does the audience. Gross.

In a perfect world, we can laugh about anything. Considering the world we live in, however, perhaps the more appropriate question is "who is allowed to laugh about rape?" When victims speak out with humor about their own lived experience, they are ridiculed or shamed, but when white men in Hollywood poke fun, its satire. Satire, by definition, is an exaggeration that is so far from reality that it is ridiculous to even consider. (The punchline to this joke being how ridiculous and non-threatening rape is for men – that men can’t be raped.) Unfortunately, this moment in Get Him to the Greek reinforces cultural myths surrounding the acceptance of rape. Instead of calling attention to the cultural, systemic, powerful epidemic of sexual violence, the "joke" nullifies its severity by applying it to the most powerful social group (white men).

The film industry is a site where creative potential can be harnessed to provoke meaningful change, and this band of brothers has the ability to lead the way for other Freaks and Geeks. But if we don’t start getting some feminist minds in on the action, these bright men are headed straight for the John Mayer Celebrity School of Shame.

Written by: Alicia Sowisdral, June 15th 2010

Death by Leisure: A Cautionary Tale

admin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:51:00 +0000

By Chris Ayres

Grove Press

Maybe the current economic meltdown the world-over has got me down, but I found Chris Ayres’ Death by Leisure: A Cautionary Tale a hard pill to swallow. Could it be that the time for cautionary tales has long passed? Every other fiction new release, it seems, touches upon environmental disaster, or endless war, or the disaster wrought by people living en masse beyond their means; this book touches upon all three. While the topics may be more relevant than ever now, Ayres would have done well to take a fresher approach if he wished to stand out from the ever-growing crowd of heralds trumpeting in the End Times.

Ayres paints a picture of Los Angeles through the eyes of an English transplant who is both repelled and possessed by the culture of consumption. The city is smothered in smog and mind-numbingly hot temperatures, while its inhabitants live out their lives blissfully unaware, drifting from air-conditioned apartments to air-conditioned cars. His L.A. is grit, sweat, anxiety, neuroses, and desperation, glossed over with a barely-there sheen of glamour and luxury.

Particularly in his romantic pursuits, Ayres exhibits a calculated level of self-deprecation and apathy. Sent to L.A. as a journalist and correspondent for a British newspaper, Ayres daily life is structured by assignments and demands from The Beast on the other end of the telephone line. It becomes clear that whatever journalistic zeal he arrived with, Ayres has lost. Rather, he uses his credentials to score access to exclusive parties, to which he invites women he hopes to woo. Ayres is no fool; he can see the writing on the wall, and the writing spells certain destruction, environmentally and financially. It’s his refusal to act outside of his own needs, in spite of this knowledge, that remains his least endearing quality throughout the book.

The real estate bubble of the United States is stretched to its limits, poised to burst, nowhere more obviously than in Los Angeles. Yet Ayres wheels and deals with reckless abandon to finagle a “piggy back” mortgage while the getting’s still good that will land him in a multi-million dollar home he has no prayer of affording. Reader, bear in mind, the protagonist has been hawking furniture on CraigsList to pay the rent on his apartment. Toxic assets, sub-prime mortgages, financial acrobatics—oh, what a twisted web, and all that. His high jinks couldn’t be more timely, or infuriating.

Yet, under the guise of a jaded Los Angeles satire, there are grains of wisdom to be found in Death by Leisure: A Cautionary Tale. When there is nothing left to be done, get the whole mess down on paper and don’t take yourself too seriously. Find someone to make a home with and try to be happy. Wean yourself off the things you don’t need. Have a baby, even if you’re not sure this is a world you want to bring a child into. That mess you got down on paper, however sarcastic or seemingly apathetic, might start to mean something. It may not be too late for that cautionary tale.

Written by: Kelly Moritz, April 29th 2009