Joanna Chlebus

Biutiful

caitlin — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s latest film, Biutiful, survives on the quality of its performances but suffers under the morose weight of Iñárritu’s bleak worldview. It is not a surprise that Biutiful is obsessed with the darker side of life—after all, this is from the same director that created Babel and 21 Grams. Yet it remains a surprise that Iñárritu’s direction fails to actually believe in what it’s saying; though the film seeks to illustrate the personal redemption and spiritual acceptance of its protagonist, its uplifting moral is beaten down by Iñárritu’s apparent desire to fill the film with as much awfulness as possible.

Biutiful tells the story of Uxbal, a father of two who makes his living as a middleman organizing work for illegal immigrants in Barcelona. Uxbal is also able to speak to the recently deceased, passing their final messages to those left behind, a task for which he reluctantly accepts payment. The film follows Uxbal as he comes to terms with his impending death, trying to prepare himself, his estranged bipolar wife, and his children for what is to come.

Unfortunately, Iñárritu’s direction seems to work against the narrative thrust of the film; as Uxbal accepts his mortality and attempts to leave behind a positive legacy, the film becomes more focused on the horrors of death. Halfway through the film the viewer has seen Uxbal urinate bloody urine (multiple times), a close-up of a decaying corpse, and an image of Bardem’s wasted figure wearing a diaper in the shower. All of these horrible images undercut Iñárritu’s narrative of redemption and acceptance.

The film sustains itself on the strong performances of its two leads, Javier Bardem and Maricel Álvarez. Javier Bardem provides the perfect mix of darkness and light in his portrayal of Uxbal. His portrayal is earnest, and it is hard to imagine any other actor so skillfully portraying a man decaying physically while strengthening spiritually. His performance is matched only by Maricel Álvarez’s portrayal of his bipolar wife, Marambra. Álvarez, a well-known performer in Argentina, shines in her first film performance. Her portrayal of Marambra is rich and complicated, and not the caricatured representation of bipolarity often portrayed on screen. She does more than hold her own against the raw power of Bardem’s Uxbal. It is unfortunate that such outstanding performances are drowned by Iñárritu’s melancholic direction. It’s perhaps more unfortunate that Iñárritu seems to have drowned his own message under the weight of his telling it.

Written by: Joanna Chlebus, November 29th 2010

Literary Readings: Nicole Krauss and Cynthia Ozick (11/8/2010)

brittany — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

92nd Street Y

New York, New York

During a recent reading of their works at the 92nd Street Y, Nicole Krauss and Cynthia Ozick proved as charming and witty in person as their words are on the page. Stepping up to the podium to read from their latest works, the authors were self-effacing, deferential, and clever. The event, which featured brief introductions to the authors, readings of excerpts from their latest works, and a short Q&A segment, proved an insightful examination of the writing process. The event programs featured reproductions of the authors’ manuscript pages, allowing the audience a gaze into the editing process. It was a thoughtful touch that added to the richness of the event.

Ozick and Krauss were introduced before each read from her latest work. Professor Nathan Englander delivered a thoughtful introduction to Krauss’s work, referencing her “radiant thoughtfulness” and the success of her second novel The History of Love. Krauss stepped up to the podium, seemingly overwhelmed by Englander’s heady praise. As she prepared to read an excerpt from her novel Great House, Krauss reached for a glass of water, quipping: “My water has my name on it. I drank from Cynthia’s.” As she began to read aloud, however, Krauss’s humor was replaced by her evocative prose, rich language, and lilting voice. The excerpt she read concerned a father’s estranged son, the nature of mortality, and the acceptance of death. As Krauss’s voice filled the auditorium, her words mesmerized the audience into a quiet stillness.

Krauss’s reading was followed by a brief introduction to Ozick’s work, provided by writer Lore Segal. Ozick, a bespectacled white-haired woman, stepped up to the podium and promptly disappeared behind it. Her head barely visible behind her totem, she remarked on its size. Smilingly wryly, she suggested that she and the thirty-something Krauss represented a “May/December romance,” though she wished she were a bit less December. Reading a portion of her latest work, the novel Foreign Bodies, Ozick was in her element, relishing the cleverness of her words, emphasizing the humor in her work. Based on the Henry James novel The Ambassadors, Ozick’s work was sharp and quick, a rich examination of what it means to be American, and to feel alienated from one’s own nation.

A short and insightful Q&A segment followed the readings and allowed the authors to speak about the nature of the writing process. Krauss and Ozick, who both began as poets, spoke especially eloquently on the difference between the poetic and novel forms. As Krauss noted, “Poetry, which seems so small and yet is something that can contain infinity [has this] sense of seeming perfection, while a novel is inherently flawed.” Krauss finds this imperfection satisfying, suggesting artfully, “poetry is as a room,” while novels are “houses you can live in.” Ozick noted that she finds most contemporary poetry dissatisfying because it is too casual, and does not seek the “transcendence” inherent in the works of classical poets like Robert Frost.

Though Krauss suggests the novel is inherently flawed, it is hard to find fault in either her and Ozick’s novels. Throughout their works, their use of language is particular, evocative, and compelling. If novels are houses, then clearly Krauss and Ozick are skilled architects—the houses they design are well worth a visit.

Written by: Joanna Chlebus, November 13th 2010

The Things We Carry

admin — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Directed by Ian McCrudden

Lono Entertainment

The Things We Carry tells the story of two sisters coping with the death of their drug-addicted mother Sunny (Alexis Rhee). After leaving her mother and sister Eve (Catherine Kresge) to travel the globe, Emmie (Alyssa Lobit) returns home upon news of her mother’s death. The sisters are forced to confront both Sunny’s drug-addicted friends and each other while searching for a mysterious package.

The film is loosely based on the real-life experiences of sisters Athena and Alyssa Lobit; Athena produced the film, while Alyssa wrote the script and stars as Emmie. As Eve and Emmie, Kresge and Lobit execute their roles with a muted intensity that speaks to the internal struggles of their characters. Lobit’s nuanced turn as the rebellious Emmie presents a woman whose antagonistic exterior hides a sensitive interior. The rest of the cast's performances are largely forgettable, as the other characters are merely meant to serve as catalysts to Emmie and Eve’s introspection and confrontation.

The Things We Carry alternates between scenes from Emmie’s memory and the sisters' present-day reunion, illustrating how they reached the point of estrangement. These vignettes are artfully articulated, as visual cues from the present (such as an image of a jacket or a yellow cab) serve as links to Emmie’s past. Flashback sequences on film tend to come off as confusing or campy, so it’s a testament to Ian McCrudden’s direction and Alyssa Lobit’s writing that the flashbacks are so effective at enhancing the storytelling and building narrative tension.

The film is saturated in yellows and browns, and features unnaturally bright lighting that emphasizes Emmie's discomfort in returning to her hometown. These blown-out images are placed in counterpoint to the beautiful violin and bass compositions of Timo Chen, whose score ebbs and flows, entering moments of reflection and heightened emotion and serving as an aural bridge between remembered past and lived present.

What is perhaps most impressive about the film is its complete lack of didacticism. Emmie may feel morally superior to her mother, but the film does not necessarily agree. The Things We Carry does not make moral judgments about any of the characters' actions; though the film centers on the detrimental effects of Sunny’s drug use, she is not presented as merely a drug addict—she is also a mother, a wife, and a friend. Ultimately the film is not without its flaws, but The Things We Carry survives on its earnestness and engrossing narrative structure.

Written by: Joanna Chlebus, August 19th 2010

The Cinematic Life of the Gene

admin — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 01:00:00 +0000

By Jackie Stacey

Duke University Press

The Cinematic Life of the Gene is a challenging and complex collection of essays that uses cinematic representations of genetics and cloning to consider the cultural impact of genetic breakthroughs. Jackie Stacey draws on some of the most well known theoretical works regarding cinema, art, and the body to consider the fascinating link between cinema and genomics. Her essays cite everything from feminist and psychoanalytic theory to theories of passing and reassemblage. It is the text's interdisciplinary nature that makes it both challenging and significant; cinema scholars, scientists, and feminists alike will find this work compelling. Still, The Cinematic Life of the Gene roots its examinations in the moving image, and serious scholars of the cinema (and particularly of science fiction cinema) will benefit from this “cultural study of film.”

Stacey’s work centers on an interesting premise: that cinema is uniquely tied to the science of cloning, since both are “technologies of imitation” which illustrate “a fascination with the boundary between life and death, and with the technical possibilities of animating the human body.” More than their fascinations with life and death, however, Stacey is interested in how scientific conceptions of cloning and genomics work concurrently with cinematic representations in creating “aestheticized forms of envisioning the human body.” In other words, scientists and filmmakers alike have visually codified genetic manipulation as a means of understanding and coping with its cultural and social ramifications. Stacey examines these attendant fears and desires surrounding genetic manipulation, referring to them as “the genetic imaginary,” a theoretical and cultural space in which “the fears and desires” around cloning and genomics are expressed and explored. She utilizes analyses of films from multiple genres (science fiction, the art-house thriller, feminist independent film, and body horror) to examine how fears surrounding genomics are expressed through both narrative and visual structure.

Stacey's explorations of the cultural impact of genomics on the psyche are fascinating but rather overwhelming, particularly because of her heavy dependence on prior theoretical works by the likes of Jean Baudrillard and Walter Benjamin. Unfortunately, Stacey focuses so heavily on explicating her predecessors’ works that she tends to obscure her own thoughts; her contributions to these theories get lost amongst the jargon of her theoretical ancestors. Stacey serves her reader well by anchoring her arguments in popular works like Gattaca and Alien: Resurrection, making her work more approachable and comprehensible. She succeeds when she pares down her writing and engages with fewer theoretical texts in an essay; for example, she provides an inspired and fascinating examination of feminine masquerade in the science fiction film, applying the theories of well-known feminists Luce Irigaray and Mary Ann Doane to constructions of men in narratives of cloning.

The Cinematic Life of the Gene is not for the novice cinema or science fiction scholar, but those seriously engaged in a cultural study of the moving image or genetics would serve themselves well to tackle it. Scholars aligned with feminist and queer theories will also find rich fodder for thought in Stacey’s attentions to feminism, gender, and sexuality on screen.

Written by: Joanna Chlebus, August 12th 2010

Leading Ladies

admin — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 07:58:00 +0000

Directed by Erika Randall Beahm, Daniel Beahm

It may seem quite an impossibility, but the film Leading Ladies is, simply put, a quietly revolutionary dance musical. While most dance musicals (think Dirty Dancing, Save the Last Dance) center on the boy-meets-girl heterosexual love match, Leading Ladies is a beautifully wrought girl-meets-girl story. It is simultaneously a dance musical, coming-of-age story, and coming-out narrative. The power of the film comes from its ability to maintain the generic conventions of the story while completely rejecting the hetero-normativity that is typically the narrative thrust of the genre. What’s perhaps even more amazing is that Leading Ladies succeeds at thwarting convention within a conventional structure while simultaneously being a whole lot of damn fun. Lesser films would sink under such weight.

Helmed by first-time directors Erika Randall Beahm and Daniel Beahm, this joyous film tells the story of the Campari women. The matriarch of the family is ballroom-dancing stage mom Sheri, played by Latin and Ballroom Champion Melanie LaPatin. Sheri has two daughters: like-minded drama queen and dancing champion Tasi (Shannon Lea Smith), and Toni (Laurel Vail), Tasi’s practice partner and the wallflower of the family. The film centers on Toni’s relationships, particularly with the emotionally volatile Tasi, and an unexpected romantic attachment to Mona (Nicole Dionne), a bubbly and outgoing woman Toni meets at a dance club. While LaPatin’s acting is a bit stiff, Smith’s neurotic and self-obsessed Tasi is played to high-pitched perfection. Vail might be the real star of this film, however, as she says more with her eyes than many actors can express with a word. She artfully plays the Ugly Duckling, the quiet witness to familial squabbles and the glue that keeps the Camparis together.

Leading Ladies has an ebb-and-flow, alternating between slow and quietly stirring scenes and vibrant, fast-paced dance numbers (most notably a hysterical and boisterous number set in a grocery store). The heart of this film beats loudly and quickly, and it leaves the viewer invigorated and deeply moved. To learn more about her hopes for the film, its generative process, and the ideological concerns that lead to its creation, I recently spoke with co-director Erika Randall Beahm.

Beahm co-wrote the film with Jennifer Bechtel, a friend and LGBT youth advocate in Champaign, Illinois, and Bechtel was struggling to find mainstream films that spoke to the young gay community. As Bechtel and Beahm perceived it, most gay and lesbian cinema tends towards violence or explicitness, while mainstream cinema features gay characters as “the sidekick.” Beahm and Bechtel thus sought to create a “family-centered gay and lesbian film for the mainstream market.” Their hope is that Leading Ladies provides gay youth with a positive portrayal of gay romantic love and thus “open a dialogue within themselves” and perhaps between gay youth and their families.

The film eschews aggressive and explicit representations of gay love for a romantic and “joyful falling in love which... straight kids get to experience in movies all the time.” Indeed, Leading Ladies treats its same-sex couple as any movie musicals’ heterosexual pairing: they meet, they dance, they fall in love. The romance is beautifully articulated through an artful juxtaposition of two dance sequences. Toni and Mona’s meeting is shot like a typical dance movie sequence—bright lights, loud music, and overhead shots looking down on the dancers. This film could be Dirty Dancing, if it weren’t for the same-sex couples dancing on stage and in the audience. Indeed, this is the goal of the film: to illustrate that dance (and by extension, romance and love) is the same for same-sex couples as it is for heterosexual partners. Toni leads Mona through a raucous, enthusiastic dance, and as convention dictates, the two find love while dancing. In a beautiful inversion of this sequence, we next find Toni in Mona’s lush apartment, where the more romantically experienced Mona takes the lead in the dance of romance. The lovers’ embrace is gorgeously shot in sensual blush tones and shadow.

For choreographer and dancer Beahm and youth musical programmer Bechtel, dance served as an obvious choice of backdrop for the love story. Beahm choreographed the film’s dances with Melanie LaPatin and Benji Schwimmer, the former So You Think You Can Dance! winner who also plays Toni’s best friend in the film. For Beahm, dance has an inherently transformative power: “There’s this kind of kinesthesia with dance that gets people to literally be moved on a physical level, and I believe also on an emotional and intellectual level.” The love scene between Mona and Toni, for example, is highly choreographed to match the non-diegetic music; Beahm suggests that this emphasis on “energy shifts… and the musicality” of the scene helps the spectator “lose sight of this being a gendered duet, and it just becomes two people moving together, falling in love.”

By emphasizing the movement and musicality of the scene, then, Beahm hopes to ease the fear of spectators who are uncomfortable with same-sex coupling and perhaps open a space for internal dialogue within the spectator: “For people who might have a hard time seeing two women... make out, it becomes this kind of transference of two bodies going through these really emotional and tender but also choreographed spaces, and so gender becomes less important.” By shifting the spectator’s focus from gender distinction to the movement of the body the film illustrates how little gender matters and how love—like dance—is a universal language. Thus the film utilizes dance to open up a space for shifting “people out of the fear they may feel if they’re watching from an outside perspective.”

Though the idea of dance as a catalyst to ideological and personal transformation may seem unusual, Beahm is quick to point out that dance has often added a “queer element” to the movie musical. In West Side Story, for example, the spectator sees groups of men “snapping and skipping” and yet the dance isn’t “sexualized, it’s charged and it’s activated.” Dancing is particularly subversive in moments of unison dancing, she suggests, when members of both sexes dance the same movements, suggesting a unity of the sexes and the democratization of the body. Leading Ladies takes this democratization one step further, rejecting the hetero-normative ballroom dance structure of male lead and female follow and replacing it with same-sex couplings. In doing so, Beahm simultaneously feeds off of the democratizing nature of dance while rejecting the rules of a dance form that reinforces gendered performance.

It is the inherent queerness in dance that Beahm finds so appealing and in tune with her views on feminism. For her, dance and feminism are “compatible” because they are both “hard to pin down” terms; their “slipperiness” as terms allows them to create spaces for dialogue and questioning. She likes her feminism to work “from the inside out,” enjoying the notion of becoming part of a system, and breaking it down from within. This is why her personal mantra is the cheeky suggestion to “wear pearls to the country club and then talk dirty.” Ultimately, Leading Ladies represents a filmic expression of this mantra—by placing non-conventional characters within a conventional generic structure, the film wears its pearls but then lets out a glorious, enthusiastic expletive as it sits down to dinner. Swearing has never been so much fun.

Written by: Joanna Chlebus, July 15th 2010

The Horse Boy

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Michel O. Scott

Zeitgeist Films

The Horse Boy is an emotionally stirring, thought-provoking examination of autism and its effects on familial life. Based on the autobiographical book of the same name, this powerful documentary examines the life of Rowan, the autistic child of journalist and horse trainer Rupert Isaacson and his wife, psychology professor Kristin Neff. The film documents Isaacson and Neff’s struggle to understand autism and bring comfort to their son.

Rowan suffers from severe tantrums, but his anxieties seem to disappear when he approaches horses. After countless Western treatments fail to ease Rowan’s symptoms, Isaacson decides to seek Eastern therapies. Isaacson and his wife travel with Rowan into the heart of Mongolia on horseback, seeking the spiritual aid of shamans. The film is, as Isaacson himself says, “a story about how, as a family, we did something crazy…in search of a miracle.”

The Horse Boy follows the family’s journey through the steppes of Mongolia. Their hope is that shaman’s can help heal Rowan—not to ‘cure’ his autism, but to ease his painful and dysfunctional behaviors. At its most basic level, The Horse Boy is about understanding autism, but the film is really about the bond between parent and child. The success of the film (and the power of the couples love for their son) is that the spectator understands why Isaacson and Neff are willing to be whipped by a shaman during a ceremony merely for the hope of bringing comfort to their son. The love they have for their child is evident in every frame of this film.

The Horse Boy offers no solutions or answers, but it does offer hope. Rowan’s transformation during this trip is powerful and real—he returns to the States a happier, calmer child. Whatever the cause of Rowan’s healing, it is clear that he has found some element of peace during the trip. The Horse Boy suggests there is hope of understanding autism and providing healing to autistic children.

Written by: Joanna Chlebus, June 2nd 2010

When You're Strange: A Film About The Doors

admin — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:01:00 +0000

Directed by Tom DiCillo

Wolf Films, Strange Pictures

When You’re Strange is director Tom DiCillo’s loving yet flawed homage to The Doors. The film is comprised almost entirely of original footage of the band, shot between 1966 and 1971. It follows members John Densmore, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek, and Jim Morrison from their first performance to heated recording sessions, and ultimately, to Morrison’s tragic death at the age of twenty-seven. When You’re Strange survives on the momentum of the bands’ energetic presence and explosive sound. Footage of live performances prove entrancing, with Morrison’s unpredictable behavior and chaotic energy filling the stage.

The film portrays the band as the voice of a generation—musical innovators voicing the anxiety and hope of the 1960s youth movement. DiCillo places the personal narrative of The Doors against the national narrative of the United States, illustrating how The Doors’ music fed off of the violence of Vietnam, the hope of the Civil Rights movement, and the anxiety of a nation at war. DiCillo is perhaps too enamored with the idea of Morrison as a tragic hero, as the narration refers to Morrison as a “shaman” with a poet’s soul “trapped between heaven and hell.”

Unfortunately, the frenetic pace of the original footage is undercut by the stilted narration, provided by Johnny Depp. Even Depp’s thoughtful reading cannot surmount the series of bland factual statements and flowery metaphors that comprise the script. Throughout the film, the band (particularly Morrison himself) is visually and aurally described in relation to fire and flames—an obvious and groan-inducing reference to The Doors hit “Light My Fire.” These aural metaphors are reinforced by the image of an extinguishing flame.

Ultimately, When You’re Strange is an enjoyable and reverential examination of The Doors that accurately presents the zeitgeist of the time. The film sustains itself on the vibrancy and charisma of the original footage, which keeps the film from sinking under the weight of its fragmented narration. Doors fans will enjoy it for its rare glimpses into the band’s history, but the film itself lacks the verve of its subject.

Written by: Joanna Chlebus, April 9th 2010

Stromata

admin — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 19:25:00 +0000

By Charlotte Martin

On Charlotte Martin's latest album, Stromata, the songstress presents her most experimental work to date. Stromata presents Martin's typically earnest and honest lyrics against a complex background of synthesizers and electronic beats. Her influences on the album are so varied - from techno to folk to Middle Eastern - that the album lacks a sense of cohesion. Martin is a classically-trained singer with a powerful voice that cuts to the core, but even her aggressive vocals get lost in overproduced techno-infused tracks like "Little Universe."

It is when Martin strips the background - and gets back to her On Your Shore roots - that she shines brightest. Tracks like "A Hopeless Attempt" and "Inch" have simpler melodies, which showcase her adept vocals and create a more intimate sound. At times her vocals echo those of Bjork and Tori Amos - fans of Amos' From the Choirgirl Hotel will appreciate the album's melancholic sound. Lyrically, Stromata is an intriguing and insightful examination of sexual desire and love, the "forbidden fruit" and "demons" she acknowledges in "Redeemed." One of Martin's greatest strengths in this album is her refreshing candor. In "Keep Me In Your Pocket" she asks her lover to "sink your teeth into the taste of me and squeeze hard/til you can feel me splitting and you want more." "The Dance" is a meditation on a relationships end, in which she decides she "better stop crying/hello and goodbying...you get your time and the other half's mine."

Stromata features some lyrical misfires; "Drip" being the worst offender with "can't train myself to hold back any longer/breath mint fornicator." Despite this transgression, however, the album is largely intriguing and insightful. With infectious hooks ("Four Walls") and lyrical gems ("Redeemed" and "The Dance"), Stromata is worth your attention.

Written by: Joanna Chlebus, July 22nd 2007

The Films of Su Friedrich, Vol. 3: Sink or Swim

admin — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 23:52:00 +0000

Directed by Su Friedrich

Microcinema, Outcast Films

Su Friedrich's Sink or Swim is a beautifully complex film that quietly sneaks up on the viewer, draws her in and, ultimately, leads her to a place of intimate introspection and intense analysis. The film follows Friedrich's development from "The Girl" to "The Woman" through a series of anecdotes involving her father. The viewer follows Friedrich's maturation as she celebrates birthdays, mourns her parent's divorce and struggles to reconnect with her father after he remarries.

Many of the film's anecdotes center on water, a force of nature which is at once a source of great pleasure and pain for Friedrich. It is from one such memory that the film gets its title: when Friedrich tells her father she would like to learn to swim, he takes her to the water, explains the methods of swimming and then throws her into the deep end to Sink or Swim. The film is comprised of a series of equally powerful and arresting interactions between father and daughter, each of them important to Friedrich's development in its own way.

The power of the film lies not in the recollection of the memories, however, but in the way that Friedrich uses them to move beyond the personal to the universal. Friedrich weaves narrative upon narrative, using her past as a lens through which she may gaze critically at everything from the construction of the Self, to social definitions of femininity and womanhood, and the ideals of the American family. Friedrich considers these issues with a tenderness and subtlety which is at once astounding and breathtaking. Sink or Swim is simply brilliant.

Written by: Joanna Chlebus, April 23rd 2007