KWIF: Civil War (+3)

 KWIF = "Kent's Week In Film", so...stuff he watched this week, or the week before and forgot to write about.

This Week:
Civil War (2024, d. Alex Garland - in theatre)
Perfect Blue (1997, d. Satoshi Kon - bluray)
The Great Muppet Caper (1981, d. Jim Henson - Disney+)
Patriot Games (1992, d. Phillip Noyce - DVD) 

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Despite being saddled with conceits mined from the modern shitstorm that people politely call "political discourse" this felt like a very 1970's-styled dystopian future road movie where the fears and anxieties of the current era are projected onto some skewed alt-reality or alt-future where they've completely gone haywire. It works for me like Soylent Green or the Omega Man or even a lot of Grindhouse B-movies.

We've seen so many dystopian/post-apocalyptic films (and TV) where the imagery of everyday America is a desolate or abandoned wasteland but we don't often see everyday America as battleground, and certainly not to this effect. Where some may shrug it off or alternately find it sensationalist or distasteful in it's gratuitously violent imagery, I found it potently discomforting to see battles waged in terrains that should otherwise feel so safe. Cities and towns, high rises and parking lots. There's a very blunt statement, delivered early (and in the trailer) by Kirsten Dunst's photojounalist, that can be interpreted as "I thought we were better than this" or maybe "I thought we were immune to this". But we'll get back to why America is not.

This film skirts around the specifics of the factions at war and what led them there very pointedly. I get why that angers some but I think it's meant more to extract it from any specific dividing lines, to not put the audience on one side of this fictional civil war or the other. It's really not about investing in whether one side or the other wins and I like it that way. That Texas and California form a coalition is just the start of the film's blend-of-both-sides-isms ... on both sides that proves perplexing to our current bisected left-right political reality. Yet there are little clues as to the breaking point....

Our protagonists clearly don't like the three-term president, the one who still claims to be winning in the face of defeat, the one who has reporters shot on sight, the one who inspires Americans to suicide bomb protesters running into the crowd with a massive flag of stars and stripes (did she yell "For America?" Or did I do a Mandela Effect). There's a clear extrapolation here, that a Trump-like figure has taken the office, loyalty-oathed a whole army of people, and sought to destroy all that was not bent to his vision. And people, under the banner of the two most secessionist states, have banded against it. 

Is it that the journalists don't seem to have any real leanings towards one side of the war or the other or that the Civil War is being fought, on both sides, by military and civilian alike that it's never clear, just by uniform, which side they're tagging along with? The character narrative is that they are compelled to do this, they're there to capture the story (and the photo) not purely out of a need to do news, but because there's a level of addiction to it, despite the associated trauma.

What many seem to be struggling with is "what is the point?" Or "what is the message?" Or "what should we do about this?"

I'm still processing it. I really don't know there's any singular point or message of the film. Is it a simple warning that America is not better than this or immune to it? There is a fairly basic character study of wartime journalists and their trauma, with no real surprises in terms of characterization. There's a study of an America viewed through smoked glass, where you can make out a recognizable but vague shape, but it's not exactly a clean image. Is it a warning? Sure. But is it entertainment? Yeah it's freaking scary, I was a bundle of nerves throughout. Nearly every encounter is a total step into the unknown, into engaging personalities who you have no idea what their ideals or motivations are. As wartime journalists they had gone to far flung places where they are outside observers, here they are members of that ecosystem at war and cannot maintain the distance or impartiality they're used to.

Garland also makes death a very hard thing to look at here. He doesn't shy away from the agony and brutality of war (or the outside elements that will capitalize upon chaos for their own purposes) even as it ratchets up in its final act. Throughout he kind of dares you to feel dispassionate, to step outside yourself like the characters try to, to just be the unaffected observer.

But back to America being immune to this sort of thing.... What hit me the most about the movie had nothing to do with political ideologies (or perceived lack thereof), rather the sheer amount of guns, mostly big, automatic weapons. There's an all too frequent sense that the people our protagonists encounter had the weapons at hand pre-war and have just been waiting to use them, for whatever reason. This is my takeaway of the film. Our scariest neighbours to the south have been arming themselves up for decades in what's supposed to be the safest, most prosperous country on the planet. Why? Because they expect something is going to happen, whether it's invasion, or rising up against a government, or to stave off some form of reckoning for a long history of abuses. Whatever. But nobody amasses that amount of weaponry without some desire to actually use it. And that's the backdrop of this film to me, that desire actualized, on both sides. And i think the final shot of the film, a single photo of militarized big game hunters proudly and triumphantly crouching around their kill that slowly develops in the frame beneath the credits, it hits that nail right on the head.

Too blunt? Not blunt enough? I get why people are divided about this film, but it worked for me.

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I have had a thorn in my paw about anime as long as I can remember. I've treated it like it's a genre, but it's just a category of moving picture that means "Japanese Animation".  It's not "all the same" as I have dismissively claimed in the past. Within that category can be all different types of styles, stories, characters, and genres. As well, within the category can be found all different types of artists.  Just because I saw Akira in my teens and loathed it, I shouldn't paint all anime with the same brush, should I?  

For some time, my only exception to my self-imposed "no-Anime" rule was the works of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.  I think it was a concession to the "That Guy" within me to say that I wasn't totally closed-minded.  But I still am. How many anime films have I written about in my share of the 2000 posts on this blog?  I've only used the "anime" tag 5 or 6 times (shockingly more Toasty).

My favourite "must listen" podcast, Blank Check, is covering the films of Satoshi Kon starting this weekend and my impulse was to just take a break from the show for a month as they cover the director's four films, but then, I thought, why not challenge myself. After all, Kon directed Tokyo Godfathers, a film I recall fondly from a screening at Toast and Marmy's flat, like, two decades ago (I tried to coax my anime-loving kid into going to a theatrical screening a couple months ago and was denied...they later regretted it and said "I sold it wrong").

So yeah, Perfect Blue. A filmed I knew literally nothing about going into it beyond the quote on the back of the package that called it a psychological thriller. I mean, I was intrigued. If I had to guess, I would have thought it was a neo-futuristic world with rain-drenched neon-lit cities...basically anime blade runner with someone questioning their humanity. But that's me being reductive in my view of what anime can be.

Instead what Perfect Blue delivers is truly an intense, Giallo-inspired, yup, psychological thriller about an aspiring pop idol whose management pivots her into being an actress, but the move upsets the most fanatical of her small-but-loyal fan base, leading to stalking and murder.

But it's not that straightforward. Mima is a young woman who doesn't have much agency in her life... her agents do. So the move from aspiring pop icon to actress betrays her innermost desire, but a need to please and a legit talent for acting propel her on this new career path. Following the path means shedding her flirty, not-so-innocent, bubble-gum image, and shooting a rape scene becomes a pivot point for her career, her psyche, and her obsessed fan who writes an online journal about Mima's life, except from the vantage point as if she never left her pop music girl group.

Mima herself becomes obsessed with both the identity of her stalker, and the alternate life that has been envisioned for her. The more she deviates from her good-girl image, be it in acting roles or nude magazine spreads, the more she obsesses over her alternate reality, seeing visions of pop-Mima everywhere.

Kon's direction, for his first feature, is masterful. It's an odd thing to say about an animated film, but it's all in the edit. The way Kon blurs the lines of reality, and time, with absolutely stunning and seamless scene and sequence transitions is the greatest marvel of the film. The first such "edit" (it's animation, where everything is storyboarded and purposefully drawn, so it's not like a live action film edit) I thought "how clever", and then they kept coming, and I was kept pretty rapt by the whole thing. It's largely an incredible production.

Story wise, things are a little more complicated. It takes place in the world of Japanese media (in the 1990's no less) and I don't really know much about how film and television get made over there, but have heard that it's not the same as the Hollywood system. But the concept of men controlling the movements of a woman through such an industry, using and abusing their talent and their image, it's not a regional problem.

That it deals with being a female celebrity in Japan is intriguing, and it's very pointed with the leering looks of men. The opening scene at one of Mima's pop concerts with half-full stands is populated, notably, entirely by men.  There's a total "ick" factor to the whole proceedings. The on-set film-within-a-film rape scene is almost perfectly handled in playing with the blurred lines of fantasy and reality.  The fact that Mima agreed to do the scene but internally was reluctant, does that make it just as traumatic even if it's only simulated. In between takes I kept waiting for the intimacy coordinator to step in and ensure it was safe and ok for Mima, but this was the 1990s and there weren't such people on set.

The after-effects Mima shooting the scene is basically the crux of the film in a way. It's a dividing line in Mima's public image, and the sense is that there's a taint to Mima having done such a scene, akin to victim-blaming.  I wasn't sure if this was a critique of something specific in Japanese culture, but one only needs to look at the heavy scrutiny America female teen pop stars undergo when they try to shed their youthful image for "I'm a sexy adult now" to see what Kon is mirroring. Mima's psyche seemingly fractures between her desires to press forward in her new career (which she is getting praise for) and deep regret for abandoning her puerile past.

I would give Kon more credit for tactfully handling all of this image and identity and sexual politics if he didn't fall into the anime trope of gratuitousness with his assault scenes. I'm not a puritan, but when you have full control over every image on screen, to purposefully orchestrate the scenes he did, in the way that he did, is, bluntly, gratuitous in a 70's and 80's exploitation cinematic way.  It's of its time but I always find putting titillation in scenes of violence disturbing and problematic.

These moments mar what is close to otherwise being among the best of classic psychological thrillers.

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I loved the Muppets as a kid, and have continued to love the Muppets as an adult. But I realize that I'm not a fan, I'm a tourist. The Muppets is just a pop culture space I like to visit, have a look around, buy a memento or two, and be on my way. I'm not one of those people who have tremendously strong opinions about the early films vs the 90's films vs the Disney films.  Some people have really powerful feelings around how the Muppets should be used in movies and television, I haven't taken the time to have such feelings.  I haven't studied the Muppets, and I don't know all the nuances of their trajectory.  While both The Muppet Show and Muppet Babies were an immense part of my youth, I haven't engaged with them much in my adult life.  My favourite Muppet film are 2011's The Muppets, 1999's Muppets From Space, and 1987's A Muppet Family Christmas, but according to Muppet fandom, there's something wrong with this opinion.

I know I've seen The Great Muppet Caper before, but I would hazard a guess that it's been about 40 years since I last watched it (Jesus I'm old).  The only thing trapped in my mind about this film was the bike riding scene (because it's constantly being shown as a clip for a multitude of purposes) and the vague recollection of John Cleese (Fawlty Towers).

The film opens with a very meta title sequence and song about starting the movie and getting into character. It's not the only time they break the fourth wall this film, but we'll get to that. Kermit (Sesame Street News) and Fozzie (Muppets Tonight) play reporters and twins. The gag of the frog and the bear being twins is an excellent one, but one not employed nearly enough.  It is a running joke, but there are so many missed opportunities to keep bringing it up and it pained me that it's employed maybe five times in the film.

So the reporters are on the scene when a fashion designer (Diana Rigg, The Avengers) has her jewellery stolen right before them. They travel to London, staying at a Muppet-infested dive hotel, where they follow up on the story. Kermit meets Piggy (Pigs in Space), who was just hired as an assistant to the fashion designer, but doesn't correct Kermit when he assumes she is the fashion designer. Keeping up the ruse is such a Muppet  thing for a bit. Of course, Kermit isn't the only one enchanted by Piggy (he isn't really), so too is the designer's bored gold-digging courtesan, played by Charles Grodin (Beethoven's 2nd). It is he, along with his trio of lithe, long leg, leggy lithe legged model cat burglar associates, who is planning the heist of the ultimate "baseball diamond".

It's a total farce, not without its charms or its laughs, but it's not nearly as charming or as funny as it could and should have been.  The pieces were all there, they just weren't played up, nor played out enough.  The running gags should have been ran into the ground, not held in precious reserve, and the meta comedy will be done better in the future.

But there's one scene that sticks out above all others that takes the Muppets to another level. Some might say it's the stunning technical accomplishment of Muppets riding bicycles, but no, I'm talking about a scene where Kermit confronts Piggy about lying to him, but then the scene starts blurring the line between the in-story Kermit and Piggy and the "real world" Kermit and Piggy, wildly leaping back and forth over the fourth wall until both character and "performer" are confused. It's a meta comedy perfection, performed brilliantly by felt figures.

Otherwise, not my favourite, but decently entertaining.

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Patriot Games came out when I was in my mid-teens. I had no interest in it even though it starred Han Solo AND Indiana Jones. To me, it was a total dad film, a movie for dads who enjoy those kind of dad movies.

I'm now in my late 40's and I'm a total dad, and I'm sure my teen+ kids look at the things I watch and consider them to be dad things. So why not lean into it and finally get around to watching the various Jack Ryan productions from the 90's? I just watched The Hunt for Red October, and Lady Kent's DVDs of the two Harrison Ford Ryan movies live in the binders, so they're readily at-hand.

And yeah, having seen it, total dad movie. 

Ex CIA agent Jack Ryan, in London on vacation I suppose, just happens to be on scene when IRA terrorists make an attempt on the Royal Prince's life. Ryan intervenes, getting shot in the process, but kills one of would be assassins. It's just a young man who turns out to be the brother of Sean Bean, a big time IRA guy.

Bean is also captured but is freed from prison, and vows bloody revenge on Jack Ryan, and the film is basically his campaign of terror against Jack, but also putting him at odds with his IRA colleagues.  Jack rejoins the CIA, at least temporarily in trying to hunt down the man who is hunting him.

While The Hunt for Red October is also a dad movie, it's transcendently so. It's a film that conveys an understanding of how everything works, from submarines to chain of command to diplomatic relations. Even if it just makes it up, it gives the appearance of understanding these things. Patriot Games is base level dad movie where it plays fast and loose with any sense of how things work in the real world, and puts characters in places they need to be because they need to be there. It's not terribly interested in its characters, except to have Jack Ryan get the bloody bad guy in the end because bad guys need to get got. The film toys with the idea of insight into Sean Bean's terrorist but any sense of empathy is all in performance an not the script. He's just the bad guy who needs to die a horrible Sean Bean-style death

This is a film the has Samuel L. Jackson in the pocket as Jack Ryan's navy buddy, but gives him only a couple lines and a gun to shoot. He's not a character and Jackson is a captivating presence (as always) but utterly wasted. James Earle Jones reprises his role as Jack's CIA boss Admiral Greer, but if he's in the film for more than 5 minutes I'll be surprised. Anne Archer and her magnificent mane of hair plays Mrs. Jack Ryan, and is relegated to something just marginally better than the nagging wife. She's so close to having agency in this film but never quite gets there. Thora Birch plays the Ryan daughter and is incredible. I dare say it might be a better performance than anything Birch has given as an adult, but that would be hyperbolic and rude because there's always Ghost World. Harrison Ford plays action-hero-Harrison Ford, and I wish that Alec Baldwin had kept the role. Ford's cinematic person can't help but dominate the character and so Jack Ryan doesn't feel like the same character as Red October, he might as well be Regarding Henry, or guy who is Presumed Innocent for all we care.

Patriot Games. It was a movie.