Films for the Trump Years: Chasing Ice/Chasing Coral

            It is a hard and, at the moment, acutely painful task to try and picture the future of our race and our planet. It would be bad enough if the harms inflicted by the current wave of reactionary conservatism sweeping the West were just limited to the domestic affairs of individual countries.  Sadly, that will almost certainly not be the case.  At this crucial point in human history, a true internal breaking in either the United States or Europe would not only spell tragedy for people living in those respective countries, it could all too easily spell catastrophe for the entire human race and, by extension, most life on the planet Earth. 

            The crux around which the development (or destruction) of our species and life in general is, of course, global climate change, and all its strange, unpredictable, and increasingly violent effects. Everyone- EVERYONE- alive now will be judged by future generations according to one, overriding question; when all the evidence lay on the table, the immense scope of the challenge made clear, and the time came to decisively act, what did humanity do?  Who had ears and heard, had eyes and saw, and who fought with every fiber of their being to prevent disaster?  And who turned away, and stuck their heads in the ground?  Who, at the critical juncture, willingly accepted the suffering of their children and grandchildren as the price to keep their comfortable ignorance? 

              The announcement by Trump that the US will formally leave the Paris Climate Agreement (as well as his abandonment of the TPP), while most likely the death knell of American’s status as a relevant global player, also carries the potential of unraveling much of the positive environmental momentum that been building over the past few years.  A true collapse has not happened yet- internationally the agreement is still holding (thanks in no small part to China’s continued support), and several of the largest and richest states within the US have committed to sticking with and expanding the goals and targets laid out in the agreement, which in the long run could make formal involvement by the federal government a moot point. 

            Despite that bit of good news, we can’t afford to let up, not for a second.  For all the good that has happened over the past decade, we are still far behind where we need to be, and much of that hinges on continued ignorance of either the very existence of global warming or of just how far-reaching, intricate, and advanced its effects already are.

            While most of us are not in positions of political or economic power, and thus can only indirectly influence overarching government policy (like refusing to support candidates and parties that ignore the existence of the problem), what we all CAN do is continue to educate ourselves and each other, using every opportunity to spread good, reliable information and raise awareness, and film is a crucial part of that effort. 

            There are a LOT of great documentaries out there stretching back over a decade that explore climate change and possible solutions, but for this post, there are two in particular I want to recommend- the Netflix-produced documentaries Chasing Ice (2012) and Chasing Coral (2017), both directed by Jeff Orlowski.    

            The first of these films to come out was Chasing Ice, where the director follows and documents the remarkable efforts of James Balog and his crew, dubbed the Extreme Ice Survey (or EIS), to regularly photograph the retreat of glaciers across the Northern Hemisphere over a three-year-period.  Despite a number of technical and weather-related hiccups, they were able to succeed in this staggeringly large and complicated task, and the end result is a series of videos that allow you to literally watch massive, ancient ice structures wilt and melt away before your very eyes.  It is some of the starkest and most viscerally powerful visual proofs of climate change yet produced, and although many of their videos are being widely shared online, there are still far too many people who haven’t seen this film. 

            One person who did watch and paid attention was a former business marketing manager turned coral activist, who immediately saw how the same technique of long-running photography could be used to document another depressingly visible from of climate change- the slow bleaching and dying of vast stretches of the world’s coral reefs, some of the most biodiverse places on the planet and the foundation for entire ecosystems, economies, and cultures on the lands surrounding them.  He contacted Jeff, and mapped out a similar project to photograph several reef stretches expected to be hit hard by a new wave of bleaching.  The result was this year’s Chasing Coral, which packs every bit as much of a visual gut punch in its presentation as its predecessor.    

            While these are both excellent films on their own, they work best as a double-feature, allowing one to get a sense of scope of the problems we face by going from the coldest reaches of the North to the depths of the seas, and seeing how a common thread of slow-burning degradation connects both.  They are hard movies to watch- how can they not be- but that makes them all the more necessary if we are to ignite a large enough fire within ourselves to spur proper action. 

            Knowledge and facts are our greatest weapons in this fight, and ignorance our greatest enemy.  Watch these movies, share them, spread the word, and never stop thinking about what steps you can take next, because the work doesn’t end.  We will not abandon this planet to Trump and his ilk.  We can’t. 

-Noah Franc

Previously on Films for the Trump Years:

Part 1- Selma

Part 2- Good Night and Good Luck

Part 3- 13^th

Part 4- Get Out

Review: mother!

mother! (2017): Written and directed by Darren Aronofsky.  Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, and Michelle Pfeiffer.  Running Time: 121 minutes.  Based on: Fie on you if you can’t guess it. 

Rating: 3.5/4

            mother! is one of those movies that is, for several reasons, damn near impossible to review properly, not the least of which is that my autocorrect keeps insisting I must be mistaken about that uncapitalized “m” and the explanation point that keeps popping up in the middle of full sentences. 

            Tiring as it is, though, autocorrect can be worked around.  What can’t be worked around is that any discussion of the most interesting and important aspects of this movie- i.e., everything that makes mother! worth seeing as one of the most bizarre and frustrating cinematic creations of 2017- can’t be so much as touched on in a spoiler-free manner.  Which I very much want this review to be, partially because this is a movie where not knowing how deep the rabbit hole goes until you’re in it is a key part of its effect, and also because if I did try to spell out the depths of this movie’s madness, you all wouldn’t believe me, and would have me packed off to the madhouse before I could utter the words “auteur schmauteur.”

            Well, let’s at least try, shall we?  There is a house, still bearing the scars of a recent fire.  Two people, an older poet (Javier Bardem) and his much-younger wife (Jennifer Lawrence) reside there.  She struggles day by day to rebuild the house to something resembling its former glory, while he sits in his office and grapples with a particularly nasty case of writer’s block.  The house, much like its cousins in films like Crimson Peak, is place filled with nooks, crannies, and small rooms aplenty, enough to constantly make you feel like there’s always more to the place you haven’t yet seen, places which will inevitably be revealed in the most unpleasant of ways. 

            Their stable, if not necessarily happy, routine is broken up when an older couple they don’t know turns up out of the blue one night.  For reasons neither we nor the woman can fathom, the man acts as if his best friend has returned from the dead, and welcomes them into the house like family.  They proceed to make themselves increasingly at home, despite the woman’s very agitated attempts to get them to leave.  Then their sons show up, and an apparently very nasty, long-running family feud breaks wide open in the worst way possible, much to the woman’s horror. 

            And it is right about then that every semblance of normalcy the film initially possessed is cast to the four winds, the baby of rationality is tossed out with the bathwater, and an orgy of insanity soon descends upon the house, the theater screen, and the poor psyches of every unsuspecting soul who wanders into a theater seat expecting a by-the-numbers horror flick.  And it is here that I will not say any more.  If you want to learn the truth, you’re on your own. 

            Now don’t misunderstand me- it’s not that the ideas or thematic overtones within the movie are too obtuse or impenetrable- the overall structure of the film (and what Darren Aronofsky is playing at) is not very hard to make out.  It becomes very clear very early on that he’s using a rough template of several biblical stories, particularly the creation stories in the book of Genesis, to tie together clear religious and spiritual themes with reflections on the struggles inherent in unequal gender roles in marriage and the world of art, and how popular culture always carries an inherent, dark tendency to simply consume all it can of whatever person or thing it latches onto, no matter the cost to those caught up in its relentless maelstrom. 

            What IS amazing, baffling, exhilarating, and terrifying all at once is seeing just how far the people making this mini marvel commit to taking it all to its logical extreme, and that they found a way to lay it all out on-screen in excruciatingly graphic detail.  The rising tension within the film- brilliantly conveyed by tight cinematography that rarely leaves the taught, stressed, and later frightened face of the woman- begins to snowball early in the second act, crashes into what would be the emotional highpoint in most other movies, plateaus for just a bit, and then starts rolling back up again, picking up steam and careening into a mad frenzy of a third act that, in terms of the sheer technical wizardry needed to make it function as a piece of filmmaking, is one of the most daring artistic endeavors I’ve ever witnessed. 

            I ultimately feel at a loss to judge whether or not all this really works as a functional narrative- the way many of its elements were so violently mashed together will struck some as too over-the-top, and its depiction of religion (specifically Catholicism) will be too crass and blunt for others- but that it took amazing skill and gumption to think up, create, and release this to the public is beyond question.  I would much rather see a film try and fail to create this sort of experience than something that plays it by the numbers any day of the week. 

            It is also an immense relief to see Jennifer Lawrence back in a role that suits her talents.  This may very well be the film that nets her a second Oscar, and unlike the David Russell tripe she’s been wallowing in for the past 4 years, this time around she’ll have earned it.  I had begun to have my doubts about her, but this movie puts quite a few of them to rest, and thank the Creator for that.   

            I have no idea who will like this film, and I know many people who would only hate it, but let there be no doubt- nothing else coming this year, or in many years prior, is anything like this, and if the experience of the unique is something you prize in a movie above everything else, this is where you need to be. 

-Noah Franc 

Review: Death Note

Death Note (2017): Written by Jeremy Slater, Vlas Parlapanides, and Charles Parlapanides.  Directed by Adam Wingard.  Starring: Nat Wolff, Lakeith Stanfield, Margaret Qualley, Shea Whigham, Paul Nakauchi, Jason Liles, and Willem Dafoe.  Running Time: 100 minutes.  Based on the original (and vastly superior) manga of the same name by Tsugumi Ohba. 

Rating: 0.5/4

**spoilers for the movie Death Note follow.  Which doesn’t matter, because you really shouldn’t see it anyway**

            When making a movie based on pre-existing source material, there are two special pitfalls you can’t afford to fall into.  One is to stray so far from the story’s origins that you contradict or spoil what made it good in the first place, thus pissing off legions of pre-existing fans.  On the flip side, pander too much to said fans, and the end result will be too stuck up its own lore to make sense to new viewers, thus depriving the franchise a chance to expand is audience. 

            The new live-action, Netflix-produced version of Death Note (directed by Adam Wingard) is the type of sheer disaster that somehow manages to sniff out every possible way to do both.  Nearly everything about it- the casting, writing, development of characters, editing, music choices, pacing, and beyond- will be utterly odious to anyone with even the slightest respect or affection for the original manga and anime.  And yet the movie tries so hard to rack up Fanboy Brownie Points by dropping one pointless Easter egg after another and never bothering to explain itself that I can’t imagine anyone NOT coming in with detailed knowledge of the original story being able to make heads or tails of the damn thing. 

            Now, if you DO indeed happen to be reading this as an Uninitiated, here’s the skinny; a bored high school student named Light, frustrated with the state of the world, one day finds a magical notebook that, according to the rules printed in the cover, allows its user to kill people in whichever manner they see fit.  After being visited by a Shinigami- supernatural beings that normally use Death Notes to control human life spans- and having this spelled out to him, Light resolves to use this power to kill off all those he deems evil, so as to create a new world free of crime or corruption. 

            The surge of mysterious killings that result gets the attention of both law enforcement and the world at large, dividing society between those who support the idea behind Light’s actions and those who simply see him as another wannabe serial killer who needs to be brought to justice.  A police task is formed to stop him, led by a mysterious, genius detective known only as ‘L,’ who soon starts to suspect Light.  The race is soon on to see which one can figure out the identity of the other first and kill/arrest them before their own safety is compromised. 

            Except in the case of this film, it’s less of a “race” and more of a particularly drunk auto-pileup on the freeway.  And instead of the high-level, intellectual chess match that characterized the back-and-forth efforts of Light and L to out each other in the original series, here the second half devolves into a (literal) running competition between the two characters to see who can be the biggest dickwad to random civilians they happen to be passing by in a given scene. 

            This movie manages to fail so amazingly in ways both large and small that I’m honestly at a loss as to where to begin, but unlike the people who made this sucker, I will at least make an honest effort.   

            To whit; the editing is haphazard and nonsensical, with characters simply appearing on-screen as needed.  The deaths Light arranges, especially at first, are gruesome and graphic just for its own sake.  Whoever pieced together the pop-filled soundtrack deserves to be shot in the kneecaps.  The worst offender in that last regard is the track that provides the down beat for the film’s climax, a narratively and technically garbled mess that hinges on a gob-smackingly stupid error of judgment by Light, and is set atop a collapsing Ferris wheel (because, you know, nothing says Death Note like THEME PARK RIDES).  That particular scene was so egregious to everything I hold dear as a lover of good storytelling, it’s one of the only times in my life a movie has left me well and truly speechless. 

            Much of the fire thrown at this movie has centered on its whitewashing of a Japanese story by supplanting nearly every character with a white actor.  The only character that remains Japanese is Watari, and even that’s ruined by his treatment being more than a little racist; of COURSE Watari is his real (and ONLY) name, because those silly Japanese don’t have last names, amiright?  And while all those criticisms are justified, what frustrates me the most is that making the characters American didn’t NEED to be a problem; there are a lot of ways Death Note (or at least a similar concept) could be set in White America and work just fine.  Even the idea of having a white Light and a black L (the only non-white cast member outside of Watari) is actually kind of interesting all on its own; it could easily function as solid social commentary by flipping around real-world dynamics of racial inequality before the law, if you’re creative enough.  Sadly, the people making this movie weren’t, and aren’t, and likely will never be. 

            As bad as all of the above is, the way L is treated is probably the biggest sore point for me.  The guy they cast to play him (Lakeith Stanfield) was one of the few good casting choices in the entire film; at first, he puts on a different, but still interesting, performance, and more or less gets L’s mannerisms down well while still putting his own spin on the character.  But halfway through, some bumhole throws a switch off-screen, and when he reappears, L has turned into a different person entirely.  Gone is the crime-fighting mastermind, and in his place we’re stuck with a frantic, impulsive, bumbling moron who couldn’t solve his way out of the back of an open van.   

            Amazingly, this exact same problem plagues the one other really good casting decision the filmmakers made.  Willem Dafoe as Ryuk is absolutely an inspired choice- his voice is PERFECT for the character- and I dearly wish there were a better live-action Death Note film with him in it.  Sadly, there is not, and here again, while the performance and the voice fit like a glove, the screenplay misses the boat entirely on what his character was supposed to be. 

            Part of the whole point of the original story was that everything that happens comes about only because Ryuk was bored and wanted to play around with some silly humans to kill time.  There was no grand destiny, no greater spiritual or metaphysical purpose to what Light did- he just happened to find the Note by accident, used it until he got in over his head, and then Ryuk heads back to the Shinigami world to shoot craps with his pals, rinse, wash, repeat.  Light came up with the idea of creating a new world on his own to soothe his addled ego, and the identity and concept of Kira was later given to him by cult followers on the internet.  Meanwhile, Ryuk just stood in the background, eating apples and yucking it up. 

            Here, Ryuk shows up and mumbles some gobbledygook about it being his JOB to find human owners for the Note (wait, huh?), then proceeds to use his Force powers (oh yes, didn’t you know? Ryuk has effing FORCE POWERS) to directly push Light to become Kira and create scenarios where he’s forced to use the Note in increasingly slapdash ways.  That the filmmakers managed to so utterly sour the only two good decisions they chanced upon in the exact same way tellingly reveals that pretty much no one involved in this project bothered to actually try and understand what made the original Death Note so great, and why it continues to hold up today. 

            Christ almighty, I’m onto my third page typing this, and I still haven’t gotten to the mandatory love interest.  Right away, this character should have scored easy points with me for NOT being Misa Amane, one of my most loathed characters in any medium, but somehow- my God, SOMEHOW- she ends up even more useless and badly written.  Both her attraction to Light (we get exactly ONE GLANCE to establish her crushing on him before they start boning) and her insatiable bloodlust for using the Note are without purpose or reason.  She and Ryuk are basically there just to play Shoulder Angel/Shoulder Devil with Light, except that they’re both devils, and they both can’t be bothered to explain why.  Because reasons are for suckers, y’all. 

            This movie is a complete and total failure as both an adaptation of a great story and as a stand-alone movie.  It’s too sloppily-made and convoluted in its narrative to make a lick of sense to anyone not already a fan, and if you ARE already a fan you have even less reason to watch it, because truly, only fury and pain awaits you.  Yes, it’s only on Netflix and is therefore *technically* free to watch, but it’s not even worth the click in the Netflix database.  Don’t make them think people want more of this, because believe me, none of us do. 

-Noah Franc