January 2008
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January 7, 2008
The Cycle of Innocence Lost
Or: New Cinema Retelling An Old Lesson
Pan’s Labyrinth
The Host
Lust, Caution
No Country for Old Men
Warning: Major spoilers are involved so I would recommend renting these films and having an intense, despair-ridden weekend at home with your loved ones, before reading.
It felt like a mere coincidence that the young, brave, and beautiful protagonists of Pan’s Labyrinth and The Host (Mexico/Spain and Korea) were butchered at the end of their respective films last year. Now, after watching Lust, Caution and No Country for Old Men, (U.S.) I can see that this is no longer a coincidence but a reaction to the zeitgeist of current times as well as to the history of it.
In these films, we watch male filmmakers committing the ultimate patriot act: sacrificing their most beloved characters in both protest to, and warning of, the direction we headed into the last decade. It is not surprising that films from all over the world, not just the U.S., portray a similar response to a global failure of democracy and a war already longer than Vietnam. All four films have connections to war—or at least major governmental offensive attacks—and portray worlds of human darkness. We are presented various representations of these ranging from the fantastical (Pan’s Labyrinth) to the desolate (No Country for Old Men). Within them lie powerful men/monsters who are responsible for the depicted atrocities. However, it is in the portrayal of the seemingly weak and powerless young women, who get lost in a world not their own, that any source of humanity exists. That they are so lovingly filmed, yet ultimately crushed, might seem nihilistic, but we must realize that this is martyrdom. The directors believe this jolt is necessary; after all, these are the topics they have chosen present us. This is bad tasting medicine.
War has yielded similar responses time and time again during the relatively short history of film. It can be argued that it is the single biggest influence on motion pictures in historical, production, and artistic contexts. Film stock embargoes, censorship, and governmental intervention have all had significant influences on the development of filmmaking. Adding to this, WWII had an enormous role in the development of the modernist movement because it forced people to question everything that they took in. The effects of propaganda and montage became obvious, and this, in conjunction with the failure of modernity (the first phase of it) to bring the best out of humanity, led to a reevaluation of everything, including the "real". Soviet and German cinema swiftly became too effective for their own good and lost favor. Elsewhere, European cinema found itself distancing away from conventional narrative storytelling (Classical Hollywood filmmaking) because fluid editing in films came into question. Ambiguity found itself welcome because it afforded people the ability to come up with their own conclusions and think for themselves. These departures led to numerous artistic movements like Italian Neorealism. Even this went on to evolve to modernist European art which includes the French New Wave as well as Italian and Eastern European modernist cinema. The Cold War made it seem as though no lesson was learned from WWII, so a third wave of modernist restructuring followed. Other art forms, including literature, followed; with an example being Roman Neuveau writing, which in turn was cinematically personified by Alain Resnais.
The current Iraqi War has produced films in many styles and genres: the documentary (Fahrenheit 911), traditional modern Hollywood, (In the Valley of Elijah), and the absurd, (The Kingdom). The films I am discussing represent another method, one that gives a visible nod to its post WWII origins and uses both realist and modernist elements. Its hybrid qualities could fall under the postmodernist umbrella. They are modernist through their distinct settings and rules, and realist with their characters; especially the ones viewers most empathize with that meet a gruesome, heartbreaking, and logical end.
Due in part to mainstream Hollywood cinema, most of us are not prepared watch films end as bleakly as these do. Both audiences I sat with during No Country for Old Men were appalled and vocal about it, at the end, when it casually faded into black. The prevailing mood was one of being left cold and insulted; which is interesting to me because I thought that it was a film of great sadness and heart. It bothers me that people expect and demand happily resolved endings. Fairness is not guaranteed in real life; so why should it be in film? This was the dogma of the neo-realists and it is interesting to see the same reactions 60 years later. Only those suffering deserve to ask for a happy ending, not those on the privileged side of the tracks. There is a wonderful scene in No Country for Old Men that depicts the collision of the two worlds beautifully. Sherriff Tom Bell is outside the motel room door where he suspects Chigurh is hiding. He hesitates to go in, knowing full-well that his chances of coming back alive are not in his favor. The Coens hold this moment: both Bell and Chigurh stare at the same key hole contemplating what actions they are supposed to take. This reminds me of what a young John Barth once wrote in second-person narrative in his American modernist The Floating Opera,
“Come along with me, reader, and don’t fear for your weak heart; I’ve one myself, and know the value of inserting first a toe, then a foot, next a leg, very slowly your hips and stomach, and finally your whole self into my story, and taking a good long time to do it. This is, after all, a pleasure dip I’m inviting you to, not a baptism.”
Well, this is no pleasure dip. Bell represents the viewer at the edge the world overlooking the abyss of its darkest core. He knows early on that he cannot handle what has been presented to him; he is barely able to eat breakfast after merely discussing the horrific events that have transpired. Bell once executed a psychopathic young man and the fact that he had no remorse haunted him enough to mention it in voice over, another form of audience acknowledgment. This situation is far more serious. However, Bell has the sense of duty brought upon him from his badge and he goes in only to find Chigurh gone; we do not have the benefit of duty and watch because it is the new Coen Brothers movie. We have heard that it is a dark film but we have to see it for ourselves; it is escapism to us. Bell knows and we have to learn, which is why more is in store for us. The baptism will soon follow, and that is the point of the film.
“Ain’t anything new here –can’t stop what is coming” is the advice Bell’s mentor tells him near the film’s end. It is sage advice followed by Western lawmen for many generations, yet this way of thinking allows monsters such as Chigurh to co-exist with them. I am not saying that it is the cause of such problems since Chigurh is a psychopath and there is nothing, not even homeland security, that can prevent it from happening again. Humans are susceptible to damage, after all. Despite this, there is something poetic in what many of the victims, including Carla, say at the end of their lives, “It doesn’t have to be this way.” Carla refuses to give in and dies while Bell limps away knowing that the progressively civilized and illuminated terrain—that was beautifully shot this way at the beginning of the film—will continue to bring forth more monsters from its shadows. A theme of re-occurrence emerges.
Fear can also have the same consequences as the actions of the villains, and in turn, make them merely a proxy. It is not clear as to what exactly kills Hyun-seo in The Host. The question looms as to whether it was agent yellow exposure or trauma from the other man made monster that was responsible. It is ironic that agent yellow, created to combat a virus that does not exist, has no effect on the monster clearly visible to all. This, along with the formaldehyde bottles, creates a theme of perverted prevention and preemptive strikes. The color yellow is of significance because of its relation to contamination. Antonioni's Red Desert, a film in which color is of paramount importance, uses yellow in the same context. A yellow flag is used to warn others to stay away from a quarantined ship, and also, yellow smoke, explained to be toxic, rises out of the steam vents of factories plaguing Monica Vitti, who is dressed in green. It is a film in which a traumatized woman wanders through an industrial wasteland, the end result of human modernity, unable to connect to, or understand, that world or those of it. The Host undoubtedly works with these themes.
In the more traditional Lust, Caution, we bear witness to a woman completely destroyed by her country and fellow man. She is stripped to and forced to defend herself with the bare essence of her femininity, which ultimately proves stronger than the masculinity surrounding it. In all four films, the women make the final decision regarding their fate; this is the gift that the filmmakers give to them. This theme is amplified through the girl's youth in body and spirit. All are young in the film’s beginnings and grow up fast. Two are children, Wang is an adolescent, and Carla Jean Moss is most certainly child like. “You keep on talking and I am going to take you out back and screw you” cloyingly threatens her husband, yet nothing happens as if she is a sexual joke. Only Wang Jiazhi is portrayed as a sexually developed female, but only after half the film spends a considerable amount of time explaining what a true loss of innocence she goes through. Not a single one of these females belong to the world they are thrown into. Ultimately they all choose in one form or another to leave their pathetic world under their own volition. They each prove stronger and more alive than everyone who has accepted the world dictated by the dark nature of humanity. A cowardly existence like Bells (or ours) is no option. Their pathetically broken counterparts manage to control everyone in their lives except them.
The elements that create this mini movement can be seen in both modernist and realist cinema but let’s go one step further and acknowledge the film that all four films are indebted to. The collective messages of these films are seen in Victor Erice’s 1973 masterpiece, The Spirit of the Beehive, an intoxicatingly subtle film about the loss of innocence of two girls at the end of the Spanish Civil War. Pan’s Labyrinth can be seen as a loose reworking of this film: both bookend the same war and have young girl protagonists who learn lessons about man’s brutality from mythic monsters. It is one of the greatest of film experiences and should be considered the cinematic standard of these themes I write about. I in no way mean to take anything from these fine films, after all, a good lesson should be the foundation of a curriculum. This is after all, the purpose of history; and some of us didn’t learn anything from recent wars. Yet there is hope, the underlying sentiment behind all of these films is, “it [still] doesn’t have to be this way.”
Posted by Fran at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)