Östlund’s The Square was a favourite of mine the year it came out, and like that film his new one won the big award, the Palme d’Or, at the Cannes Film Festival. I don’t think Triangle of Sadness is quite as good — it would be hard to match the skewering of modern masculinity in both The Square and Force Majeure — but the film works as a wilder kind of a movie, an uproarious class comedy, this time setting a lacerating eye at the One Percent.
It starts like it’s going to take its shots at the fashion world, which Robert Altman’s Pret A Porter proved isn’t always easy to do well — though maybe Zoolander had a little more luck — but as we follow the bickering couple at its centre (the recently and sadly passed away, Charlbi Dean and Denis Shapovalov-alike Harris Dickinson) onto a yacht cruise for the super-rich, the film really sets sail.
The upper deck/lower deck divide is where the tension (and humour) lies, between the clueless toffs and the hard working crew who do everything they can to make the cruise comfortable because, you know, money.
The satire is blunt, but the laughs come thick and fast, and the picture has no trouble mixing low-brow, physical humour — it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie so in love with body fluids that didn’t also qualify as gore — with more political concerns.
There’s something particularly Scandinavian about it. Östlund is pointing and laughing at his characters in a way that reminds me a little of Thomas Vinterberg and Anders Thomas Jensen‘s recent work. It doesn’t give the audience a pass, but recognizes the hypocrisies of the world we live in. I’ve read a few takes that see the film as insipid and insulting because its targets are so obvious — as if that’s any reason not to take a whack at them. If Triangle of Sadness makes you angry, maybe check your privilege.
A supporting appearance from Woody Harrelson as the perpetually soused captain is fun, but things get really interesting in the final act.
The film seems to suggest the thirst for power and status is universal, no matter what your station in life. I’m not sure I’d be so cynical about it, but I’m willing to hear it as a point of argument. That mid-movie farce might be most satisfying as a metaphor for the desperation of late capitalism in the face of climate change and the inevitable end of our globalized system.
Either way, see it with a crowd and your favourite cinepanions and make time for a conversation after the lights go up. This is a movie with quite a lot on its mind.
Title: The Harder They Come Release Date: 5 June 1972 Director: Perry Henzell Production Company: International Films Inc. Summary/Review:
The groundbreaking soundtrack from The Harder They Come has long been one of my favorite albums, but I’d never seen the movie until a 50th anniversary screening at The Brattle Theatre this week. Reggae legend Jimmy Cliff stars as Ivanhoe “Ivan” Martin, a young man who arrives in Kingston, Jamaica and tries to make ends meet while trying to break into the music business. His repeated attempts at honest work fail and he eventually becomes a marijuana runner for a local gangster. When he kills a police officer in a panic he goes on the lam and finally achieves the fame he desires as an outlaw.
The story is familiar and predictable but nevertheless well-told. The story and style seems to have drawn influence from French New Wave movies like Breathlessand it shares similarities with Senegal’s Touki Bouki, released the next year. I particularly like the first half of the film which captures the feel and rhythms of early 1970s Kingston with a neorealist touch. The latter part of the movie feels more like a hasty pastiche of Bonnie and Clyde. Ivan’s gleeful embrace of his outlaw status feels almost psychotic and he swiftly becomes a character hard to sympathize with. Nevertheless it’s a fascinating period piece and a groundbreaking movie for Jamaican cinema.
[Note: This article, which is both a film review and critical analysis, contains spoilers. If you haven’t seen Miracle Mile, we encourage you to do so, then come back and read this afterward.]
For the longest time, I thought I was the only one who loved the 1988 film Miracle Mile. Turns out it has become a cult film. For good reason.
This taut, suspenseful, low-budget movie received little promotion, and was barely seen in theaters. I only discovered it years after its release on VHS/DVD rental racks, lured by an exciting-looking cover image where a man stands atop a car in the midst of a chaotic traffic jam.
Miracle Mile is an example of a film that you could watch the first 15 minutes of and have no idea where it’s going. It starts when Harry (Anthony Edwards) spends an afternoon exchanging distant, flirting glances with Julie (Mare Winningham) while they separately browse a paleontology museum.
They’re both shy, but they have a “meet cute” outside the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum, agreeing to a date while looking over the bubbling oily pitch that preserves animals from thousands of years ago in what is now central Los Angeles.
The La Brea Tar Pits are part of the Miracle Mile district, an arts and shopping hub near where Wilshire Boulevard intersects Fairfax Avenue. Nearly all of the movie’s action takes place in and around Miracle Mile, starting when Harry oversleeps and accidentally stands Julie up for their third date, during which they intended to, uh, consummate their attraction.
Instead, Harry takes a call at a phone booth outside a late-night diner, becoming the first person in the city to find out nuclear war is imminent — or might be.
Bombed because of bombs
Miracle Mile should be a classic, as it works on multiple levels: It’s a fast-paced suspense story with a romantic heart and the guts to steer toward devastation. The film shows the best and worst of society under stress, earning big effects out of a small but varied cast. Along the way it’s a visual feast, carefully plotted and storyboarded, with inspired details loaded into nearly every frame. Few films are as ambitious.
I’m going to double up on a Spoiler Alert and repeat: If you haven’t seen the film, track it down and watch it without knowing much upfront.
That out of the way, it’s obvious why Miracle Mile didn’t get the accolades it deserved: It’s utterly downbeat. The movie starts as a dream and ends as a nightmare.
Written and directed by Steve De Jarnatt, the script had been circulating since 1983, with buzz about its high quality, but no studios would make it because of the ending. The hook is that Harry (Edwards) may have inadvertently started a chain-reaction of panic based on a hoax. He could be a modern-day Chicken Little. The movie gives you hope, then pulls it all away.
Though the main characters are sweet, and a few people demonstrate nobility in the midst of chaos, we also see humans at their worst. Road-raging maniacs with nothing to lose are scarier and more menacing than zombies. Roger Ebert concluded his review with: “What the movie confirmed for me is something I’ve always suspected: that if there’s ever an hour’s warning that the nuclear missiles are on the way, thanks all the same, but I’d just as soon not know about it.”
How do you promote a movie with such a massive tonal shift? You can’t call it a horror movie without ruining its surprise, and you can’t market it as a romance without a mass audience backlash. The movie cost $4 million to make and barely earned $1 million.
De Jarnatt, who had previously made the visually inventive sci-fi movie Cherry 2000, could have or should have become a major auteur director. Instead, the failure of Miracle Mile sidelined his career, despite it being a tour-de-force of creativity.
A little out of time
In early voice-over narration, Harry describes his new love Julie as being “a little out of time.” He means she’s timeless, but his word choice becomes ironic. It’s also an apt term for the movie: It was a couple years short of the indie-film explosion of the 1990s, when pictures like Slacker and Reservoir Dogs invigorated the market for adventurous, hard-to-categorize, formula-shattering stories.
Miracle Mile was also “out of time” on its subject matter: It proved to be the last hurrah in that era’s focus on Cold War fears. When Miracle Mile‘s script was written, in 1983, nuclear annihilation was a viable topic for successful movies like WarGames (1983) and Red Dawn (1984). By 1989, when Miracle Mile had its full U.S. release, the U.S.S.R.’s glasnost reforms under Mikhail Gorbachev were taking root, leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and 1990. The public mood had waning interest in a movie about everything blowing up.
Alas, with global tensions on the rise in the 2020s, Miracle Mile is relevant again.
The movie also feels out of time stylistically. The Tangerine Dream soundtrack, among their best, also feels lodged in the 1983 spirit of Risky Business and its “Love on a Real Train” digital sensuality. Several of Miracle Mile‘s bit players look like they stepped out of the early ’80s new-wave era instead of the matured hip-hop fashions and proto-grunge styles on the cusp in 1989. At one point, a woman shows up wearing blue eye shadow while sporting a slicker and a fedora, like she just discovered the Eurythmics in the age of Nirvana.
Getting big results out of a small cast
Now that Miracle Mile is a resurgent cult film, the cast’s anachronistic vibe has given way to timelessness. Anthony Edwards had honed his “ordinary guy turned leading man” charm, and Mare Winningham was winning (and not hammy) in a bomber jacket and a choppy haircut that gave her a punkish-chipmunk appeal. In numerous scenes, such as when she tries to walk in spite of a leg that’s still asleep, Winningham seems like a nice person you’d want to know. For his part, Edwards has to establish the basis of the story via a difficult acting task: Incredulity turning to dread during a confusing and alarming phone call, then an overlapping recitation of that call to a diner full of skeptical strangers. All while seeming like a smart, sympathetic, ordinary guy. He nails it completely.
The diner scene introduces nearly a dozen bit players who bring the night-owl city to life. Sitting at the counter, a transvestite (Danny De La Paz) and a plain-looking man (Earl Boen, best known as the snide psychiatrist in the first twoTerminator movies) use noodles to map out L.A. streets ala people in the Saturday Night Live skit “The Californians.” A mouthy waitress (O-Lan Jones) and gruff cook (Robert DoQui, who was also terrific as police chief in RoboCop) also feed two streetsweepers (Claude Earl Jones and Alan Rosenberg), a wannabe flight attendant (Diane Delano) acting out an air emergency, and a mysteriously Mensa-smart stock broker (Denise Crosby) who multitasks by speed-reading CliffsNotes for Thomas Pynchon’s impenetrable novel Gravity’s Rainbow.
Even brief scenes boast distinct performances, as when Harry and a stereo-hoarding burglar (Mykelti Williamson) get into a standoff with a shotgun-wielding watchman (Edward Bunker, a gritty actor later seen in Reservoir Dogs) at a taxicab gas station. Later, as Harry roams a fitness center trying to find a helicopter pilot, he encounters the spandex-clad Brian Thompson, who volunteers but insists on bringing a gay companion, also in full spandex, asking, “Got a problem?” From wandering homeless ramblers to a bitter, ranting man on a skysraper, Miracle Mile paints a big picture with just a few distinct strokes.
Location becomes a character
One of my favorite things about Miracle Mile is the way it proudly highlights a section of Los Angeles, using buildings and landmarks as points of reference to each other, as well as thematically.
The La Brea Tar Pits aren’t just interesting to look at, they set the stage for a tale about evolution and destruction. The human characters are framed in front of the extinct mammoths as foreshadowing, and then people die in the same pits where the mammoths were trapped. (For good measure, figurines of tusked, mammoth-like elephants are seen at the base of the bedside lamp in Harry’s hotel room.)
The Pan-Pacific Park, with its Art Deco backdrops, evokes the Pacific Theater of World War II, where atomic bombs were dropped and hydrogen bombs tested. In an early scene, Harry plays trombone there alongside a jazz band, doing Count Basie numbers from the war era. Numerous shots frame palm trees, some carefully lit from below, building to a final image of a palm tree on fire like a mushroom cloud.
The area’s geographical focal point is the 5900 Wilshire building, a 30-story totem with a vertical design that’s all the spookier for its resemblance to the World Trade Center towers destroyed on 9/11/2001. Scenes constantly frame the building in the background, looming over the movie like the rising stalk of a future atomic blast. The building’s name, emblazoned at its crest, is Mutual Benefit Life — a phrase evoking an opposite term, Mutual Assured Destruction.
Interestingly, the 5900 Wilshire building now features at its base a section of the Berlin Wall, covered in mural art, from the same time period when Miracle Mile made the building its focus. (Coincidentally, soundtrack artists Tangerine Dream originated in Berlin.)
Miracle Mile gets additional mileage from Park La Brea, the residence of Julie (Winningham) and her stubbornly separated parents, in their own Cold War from an argument nobody remembers the reason for. Also frequently seen is the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, or LACMA, as a backdrop for characters running to or fro, or even being pushed in shopping carts.
Shopping carts are a frequent sight throughout the movie, sometimes showing up in the edge of a frame for no clear reason, perhaps as symbols of America’s consumerism outpacing its political consciousness. The movie makes no attempt to explore why nuclear war is happening, and it seems few characters have any insight into the tensions that led up to it, even though a newspaper headline mentions failed arms talks. (The recent, also-catastrophic film Civil War has a similar emphasis on effect rather than cause.)
Consumerism is the pivot point for a final scene, in a department store. Characters die there in confusion, trying to go up the down escalator, then hiding out in a room full of clocks as time is running out. The store where that scene was filmed has since been torn down and replaced with the curvacously modern Petersen Automotive Museum.
Johnie’s Coffee Shop
The Miracle Mile location that stands out most of all is Johnie’s Cafe (also known as Johnie’s Coffee Shop), the movie’s hub of exposition and microcosm. Johnie’s, on the northwest corner of Fairfax and Wilshire, has been featured in numerous movies, including Reservoir Dogs, The Big Lebowski, American History X, and Gone in 60 Seconds.
Johnie’s was given the full makeover treatment for Miracle Mile: Production designer Christopher Horner filled both exterior and exterior with visual references to nuclear war and destruction. Early on, Harry and Julie kiss in slow-motion in front of Johnie’s shimmering yellow lights in a way evoking a bomb exploding behind their heads.
The outer statue, resembling a Bob’s Big Boy chain restaurant logo, is named Fat Boy, and holds aloft two rotund, rotating cheeseburgers. The name “Fat Boy,” along with the two bomb-shaped burgers, references Fat Man and Little Boy, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. (A movie with the title Fat Man and Little Boy would be released the following year, in 1989.)
Inside Johnie’s, a mural depicts an erupting volcano and an ancient city, hinting at the no-warning destruction Mount Vesuvius wreaked upon Pompeii in 79 AD — an event with a level of thermal energy often compared to hydrogen bombs. (An earlier scene references the 1932 movie Bird of Paradise, which also depicted a society-destroying volcano.)
Nearby are several missile-shaped vending machines, which tie in very briefly to an entry-area booth that is only seen once in the movie, where a woman is slumped over. The woman (Lucille Bliss) appears passed out, or possibly even dead, and she has Tarot cards strewn out in front of her, as if she saw the future and died of shock. The presence of Tarot is interesting because of its link to the book Gravity’s Rainbow, also seen in the diner (as CliffsNotes being read). That novel, which uses Tarot as a theme, is also about Nazi-era V-2 rockets, and ends with an atomic blast in Los Angeles. (The gag prop CliffsNotes also serve a visual purpose: Their yellow and black design is similar to the signs indicating radiation fallout shelters.)
Story symmetry
One of my favorite things about Miracle Mile is how much thought went into every aspect of its production. The plot is clever, the scenes are exciting, and the cast brings the city to life in its nocturnal form. But writer-director Steve De Jarnatt wasn’t satisfied with that alone: He constructed the movie with the intricacy of clock gears, putting small touches and ideas everywhere possible. Movies are collaborative, and production designer Christopher Horner, conceptual designer David L. Snyder, art director Richard Hoover, and many others likely deserve a portion of credit for these details.
Miracle Mile is loaded with thematic mirror images and parallels. For one, the story is bookended by blasts: It shows the Big Bang and evolution at the start (using imagery from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos program), and ends with a destructive “big bang.”
At the museum Harry purchases a prism, holding it in his hand to make rainbows (another link to Gravity’s Rainbow), and at the end he imagines himself and Julie being transformed into diamonds, a kind of prism. During an early date, Harry and Julie are framed through the water of a lobster tank, with the camera rising to reveal them. At the end, inside the submerging helicopter, the camera lowers to view them again through water.
The young lovers, at the beginning of their romantic journey, are mirrored by the old couple (John Agar and Lou Hancock), on the tail end of theirs. Characters are seen twice in elevators under different circumstances, twice on stairs (in one, briskly ascending, in another getting nowhere), and police are seen twice in a state of falling, as law and order fall apart.
Early on, Harry stands in front of a TV that is signing off, and it shows fighter jets leaving streaks through the air, including an image of three jets streaking apart in three directions. At the end, as nukes are about to destroy the city, we see three fanning missiles in the same formation.
When the plot’s chain reaction starts, from a flicked cigarette, a pigeon carries the lit cigarette to its nest and sets its own eggs on fire. Later, we see Harry eating scrambled eggs, soon tainted by drops from his bleeding nose. The idea of destroyed eggs, ruined from outside events, is certainly a metaphor for what happens to Harry and Julie’s embryonic love story.
Mushroom clouds are everywhere
Let’s talk about Miracle Mile‘s richest visual motif: Its ongoing mushroom-cloud imagery.
For a low-budget movie that can’t afford a lot of special effects (besides a few basic green-screened and matte-painting images), Miracle Mile does the next best thing: It sneaks some sort of smaller-scale mushroom cloud into every scene possible. Sometimes it shows an actual explosion in an atomic-bomb shape, and sometimes it’s a subtle visual composition, but there’s no doubt Steve De Jarnatt and the cinematographer, Theo van de Sande, put extraordinary effort into this element.
Mushroom cloud images include the following:
Mare Winningham framed by tusks
The La Brea Tar Pit’s gas bubbles
Cumulus clouds behind the 5900 Wilshire building
Colored balloons at Park LaBrea
The burning birdnest
The hotel’s electrical explosion
The moonrise
Smoke emanating behind Harry’s head as he sleeps
The top half of the spinning globe at Julie’s apartment (resting at Africa, where the opening scenes of evolution occurred)
Johnie’s rotating cheeseburgers
Harry pouring creamer into a full coffee pot in the diner
The gas station explosion(s)
The traffic-jam explosion
The burning palm tree
A deer in the headlights
One final mention: The first time I saw Miracle Mile, the moment I realized it was an enjoyably higher grade of filmmaking was when Harry was lying on the freeway on-ramp, and the headlights of an apparent automobile were racing toward him. He braces as if expecting to be run over, and in the next shot it’s revealed that the two headlights are from two motorcycles, which pass on either side of him.
As it turns out, that scene’s concept is from the 1921 Buster Keaton film, Hard Luck. Numerous other films have used the sight gag, including: Are We There Yet? (2005) and Mr. Nobody (2009), but Miracle Mile uses it with especially playful, one-thing-leads-to-another momentum. This is one of the many fine details that make Miracle Mile well worth cult-film, watch-and-rewatch status.
You think it’s a simple hamburger. You think it’s merely a matter of personal choice: You eat the hamburger, or you don’t, and if you don’t eat the hamburger, it’s got nothing to do with you. The blight of candy-colored fast-food joints blotting the landscape may be unfortunate, but what are you gonna do?
Eric Schlosser’s horrifying muckracking book Fast Food Nation showed us that there’s nothing simple about that burger, that we are all impacted by the hegemony of the McDonald’ses and the Burger Kings (and the Pizza Huts and the Wendy’ses…), and that disparate threads of modern life that seem to have nothing to do with one another actually are intertwined: we do indeed live in a nation transformed by the fast-food corps. And now Richard Linklater (A Scanner Darkly, Before Sunset) has boiled the book down into a just-barely fictional narrative that hits all of Schlosser’s high points through a series of loosely connected characters involving in bringing you those 99-cent hamburgers. To say that Fast Food Nation the movie is less horrifying than the book is accurate, but not fair to the movie, which is plenty horrifying enough. To Linklater’s credit — he directs and wrote the script with Schlosser — he does not attempt to show us all the many greedy tentacles that the fast-food monster sends out at us; that would have made for an unwieldy movie. Instead, by giving us characters to focus on, Linklater puts a human face on a situation that is so huge that it just about paralyzes you. It’s like this: “This isn’t about good people versus bad people,” says a cattle rancher played by Kris Kristofferson (Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story, Blade: Trinity) here. “It’s about the machine that’s taken over this country. It’s like something out of science fiction.” And it is: we have characters like Greg Kinnear’s (Invincible, Little Miss Sunshine) marketing exec for fast-food chain Mickey’s (any resemblance to an actual corporation is entirely deliberate), who starts off to investigate why Mickey burgers are, in laboratory tests, setting off alarms for their high fecal-coliform count, which is exactly what it sounds like: there’s shit in the meat. And — not to reveal too much about where things go, because you really must see this for yourself to believe it, must revel in the real-life nightmare of it — he discovers that he is on a hamster wheel he can’t get off without entirely ruining his own life. (A mortgage supported by his fat paycheck is, in the end, a powerful incentive to shut up and keep his head down.) We have the employees at the Colorado meatpacking plant that supplies Mickey’s with the gazillion frozen burgers it needs every day. They’re mostly illegal immigrants — as one bitter Mickey’s employee says, “there’s a reason why it only costs 99 cents” — and their employee handbook might as well be Catch-22, for many reasons I won’t reveal: it would spoil the finely tuned self-perpetuating machine of irony that Schlosser showed us exists in this industry and that Linklater depicts so perfectly. One of those meatpackers is played by the sublime Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace) — her character gets caught up as a tiny cog in that irony machine by the film’s end, and her lovely performance is that bitter smack that makes you realize how deeply the fast-food nation has its claw in all of us: it is enabled by good, decent people just trying to make a living. It might be easy to condemn the Kinnear character for trading his integrity for a nice house, but it’s a lot harder to say the same about a woman struggling to simply survive.
And then there’s the Mickey’s counter employee played by Ashley Johnson (King of the Corner), who does get brave enough to take a stand and try to effect some kind of change for the better. All she gets for her trouble is rude wakeup call that — again, you must see to appreciate the clever metaphors that the script deploys in order to make its case — depresses her… and us. It’s not just that Fast Food Nation may make you want to never, ever eat at a McDonald’s or a Burger King ever again: that goes without saying. It’s that the film, depressingly but honestly, wonders if there’s anything we can do that will make everyone realize that there’s a cost to those burgers that goes way beyond 99 cents, even way beyond anything that can be quantified in dollars and sense.
Long before he became the German filmmaker whose somber, ironic narrations and bleakly beautiful and humanistic documentaries turned Werner Herzog into a pop culture icon, he was a cult figure among international cinema fans.
In his early years of fame, Herzog’s movies could be dark, naturalistic poetry, or ambitious, cast-and-crew-testing living nightmares. His alter ego in the latter films was the bug-eyed maniac Klaus Kinski (“Aguirre: The Wrath of God,” “Nosferatu the Vampire, “”Woyzeck,” Fitzcarraldo”). Herzog later made a documentary tribute to their difficult working relationship, “My Best Fiend.”
But his co-conspirator/muse for the strange, personal and very human character studies “The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser” and “Stroszek” was the eccentric, troubled forklift driver and self-taught street musician Bruno Schleinstein, known in Herzog’s films and to the film world as simply “Bruno S.”
“Stroszek” is a tone poem of a shattered life that comes to cling to one last broken dream. It’s a statement on the disconnect between 1977 Europe and America, particularly rural America, as seen through a delusional and alcoholic street musician with no visible means of support who moves from Berlin to BFE, Wisconsin in a country where “everybody gets rich” and The American Dream, at least as Cold War-weary Germans saw it, could come true.
It’s bleak and tragic, and funny in the darkest ways. It’s the sort of film that seemed very much of its time in its time, but that inspired generations of indie filmmakers to seek out the unheralded inhabitants of whatever underbelly of life was close at hand, and the sort of eccentrics who might be living in it.
Bruno is a theatrical goofball of inmate who loudly jokes through his entire paroling out of a Berlin jail. Some of his warders want to know, after all the time he’s served, if he’s been “dropped on the head?” The warden hectors him over his “beer” and goes on and on (in German with English subtitles) about how he should “never touch another drop” and “never set foot in a pub.”
Garrulous Bruno seems to agree, right up to the moment he rolls into his neighborhood watering hole on his way home.
A couple of brutish pimps are berating and knocking around Eva (Eva Mattes), whom Bruno sees as his “girl.” He doesn’t even try to defend her. But he invites her to live with him, with hopes of taking care of her. It’s just that his cluttered flat full of musical instruments which he’s taught himself to play, from the piano and accordion to the mellotron and glockenspiel, seems to defy that expecation.
And Eva’s lot gets worse when her pimps drag her out and back to work, and then bring her back, beating Bruno and humiliating him in front of her as they do. Their only way out may be accompanying their elderly neighbor (Clemens Scheitz) to stay with his nephew in Railroad Flats, Wisconsin.
So that’s what they do, losing Bruno’s mynah bird in U.S. customs, buying a used station wagon and trekking cross country to this place they can barely find on a map.
Clayton (Clayton Szalpinski) is a simple Air Force veteran running a garage in a one-stoplight town on the Northern Plains. He scrapes out a living, adds Bruno to his garage staff (Ely Rodriguez already works there) and shows them around a tiny, dead town where “murders” happen, where farmers feuding over a tiny parcel of land between their adjoining farms ride their tractors with a rifle in their spare hand.
But at least there’s a local truck stop where Eva can wait tables. As Bruno and Eva set up housekeeping, buying a new single-wide and a ruinously-expensive Sylvania TV, Eva is almost certain to have to resume her old career if they’re to make ends meet.
“Stroszek” is a leisurely, contemplative character study with music, as Herzog gives Bruno S. room to let us see into his soul through his musicianship, his fondness for playing and singing to no audience in big, echoey, empty courtyards and such. The Country Muzak of guitarist Chet Atkins’ instrumentals underscores many of the North American scenes.
One evokes memories of the Old World, where the buildings and people seem ancient and set on life’s path by their circumstances. Bruno S., playing a version of himself, is an orphan whose prostitute mother didn’t want him. Life in both worlds has its tests but the nature of the struggles are different, with the promise of America, a land of plenty undercut by the never-ending quest and need for money, which the “proletarian” Bruno starts to see as a “conspiracy.”
In its day, “Stroszek” was celebrated as a soulful bolt out of the blue in an American film landscape just turning itself over to the blockbuster. Lore grew up around the film and the seat-of-the-pants way Herzog filmed it (driving scenes with no camera truck/trailer) and scripted it, working around his screwy leading man’s moods, filming much of it Nekoosa and Plainfield, Wisconsin, with a conjured up tourist-trap-in-winter-finale filmed in Cherokee, N.C.
Viewed today, its whimsical charms stand out more than its tragic overtones. Even back then, critics and culture observers were pondering why American cinema made so little effort to find and celebrate the Brunos in our midst.
But documentary filmmakers Errol Morris and Les Blank, early disciples of Herzog and credited in “Stroszek,” are Americans who achieved their first fame for finding and lauding the quirkiness in the vast United States between the coasts.
And then the indie cinema of the ’80s and ’90s came along and amplified queer lives and rural despair, urban struggle and generational angst. By that time, their acknowledged or unacknowledged icon, the pioneering Herzog, had shifted more to the documentary side (“Grizzly Man,” “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”) and become an actor and personality far more famous than the movies that first made him.
But quaint as it sometimes seems now, “Stroszek” remains one of the touchstone films of an era whose very look on screen — grey and gritty and forboding — is as instantly identifiable as its often more sober-minded and cynical subject matter and the inimatable characters inhabiting it.
The animation in this film is a weird psychedelic hodgepodge of various styles. It seems both very cool and experimental at the same time.
Synopsis: In Wizards After the death of his mother. An evil mutant wizard Blackwolf discovers some long-lost military technologies. Blackwolf claims his mother’s throne, assembles an army, and sets out to brainwash and conquer Earth. Meanwhile, Blackwolf’s gentle twin brother, the bearded and sage Avatar calls upon his own magical abilities to foil Blackwolf’s plans for world domination — even if it means destroying his own flesh and blood.
The Story
Wizards begins with the destruction of the earth via a nuclear explosion. After several thousand years. The few survivors of humanity have become mutants and hide in the shadows. But from the ashes the fae folk of long-forgotten earth is reborn. They live in peace and tranquility for many thousands of years until their Queen gives birth to twin Wizards. Avatar a goodly and kind Wizard and his evil brother Blackwolf.
When their mother the Queen dies. The two brothers fight and Blackwolf is defeated by Avatar and journeys to form his new kingdom of Scorch. While in exile for 3000 years. Blackwolf sends his demonic forces out to search the earth for old technologies that he can use to defeat the forces of good and ultimately defeat his brother.
Meanwhile, in Montagar Avatar and his girlfriend, Elinore are blissfully unaware of Blackwolf’s plans until one of his soldiers Necron 99 attacks and kills their President.
Voice Acting
The acting throughout this films is really solid. Bob Holt is excellent as the kindly Wizard Avatar who justs wants to live a peaceful and hassle-free life. His interactions with Elinore (Jesse Welles) are a lot of fun and full of innuendo, which is something the film features a lot of. Richard Romanus puts the swashbuckler in Weehawk the soldier Elf who will fight to the death to defend his lands.
We also get Mark Hamill in perhaps his shortest animated role ever as Sean the ill-fated king of the Fairie folk. No sooner as he introduces himself. He gets wasted by one of Blackwolf’s soldiers.
Finally, special mention must go to Steve Gravers who puts in a great performance as the evil Wizard Blackwolf.
Animation
Directed and produced by Ralph Bakshi who is better known for his more adult-orientated animated films and series such as ‘Fritz The Cat’. ‘Wizards’ was supposed to be Bakshi’s first attempt at doing something for a family audience. Although we’d have to agree to differ on that front given that within the first five minutes we meet three fairy prostitutes. And Then we get Elinore sporting curves that would make most glamour models jealous.
The animation in this film is a weird psychedelic hodgepodge of various styles. It seems both very cool and experimental at the same time. I particularly loved the Rotoscoping effects that are used fairly heavily in the film. Especially when it came to the use of it with old world war 2 footage of tanks and planes. For its time, which was the late 70s. The animation in this movie was likely cutting edge. And I think it holds up pretty well considering.
Overall
Some of the themes and storylines within this film are probably more for the older kids than for younger viewers. How Bakshi managed to get a PG rating for this film will forever be a mystery. Especially given how little Elinore is wearing. Added to which the debate about Technology versus Nature and Magic while fun would probably go over the heads of younger viewers.
The film was made in a time where things like duck and cover were still fresh in the minds of most adults that saw the film at the time. If anything it was a film warning about the threat of nuclear war and it was very on the nose in that respect. I was about 12 when I first saw this movie as a video rental back in around 1982 and it stuck in my memory because this review is based on only my second viewing of the movie since back then.
That said though. The more mature version of me did spot a few contradictions in the film. The ones that stand out are to do with Avatar and his land of Montagar where technology is supposed to be outlawed. In the scene that establishes Avatar, we see him conjure up a jukebox. And later on as we get to the final battle. He uses a gun. Now back when I was 12 I wasn’t to bothered by this. But the grown-up me thinks Avatar is a hypocrite and a cheat for breaking his own rules.
Overall though. Despite those two issues I spotted. It is still quite an enjoyable film with some killer 70s funk and prog-rock guitar licks making up a killer soundtrack.
I first encountered Michael J. Paradise’s “The Visitor” at an after-hours, by-invite-only screening curated by my local video store.
You see: The managers of said video store would, on a weekly basis, acquire whatever 35mm prints they could get a hold of for cheap and/or free. These prints consisted of obscure German comedies, weird sex films, lost genre oddities, sci-fi epics with missing reels, and, in one baffling bout of programming, “My Giant.” Then, in conjunction with a helpful projectionist at the movie theater next door (where I worked at the time), the store managers would invite over employees and friends of employees to view said films, eager to talk aloud in the theater and openly discuss the insanity on screen. These were magical nights of baffling cinematic exploration, and I’m glad to have been invited on several occasions.
It was in this milieu that I was introduced to Michael J. Paradise’s 1979 sci-fi epic “The Visitor,” perhaps one of the most baffling films ever produced. It was such a moving experience that I rushed to my (now long-neglected) criticism blog to review it. That was in 2007. The time has now come to re-visit “The Visitor” and see what new lessons can be learned. Luckily, the film is just as brain-melting as it always was.
Michael J. Paradise is the nom de cinéma of director Giulio Paradisi, an Italian character actor and assistant director who only made four features in his career (one of which was a crime comedy called “Spaghetti House”). “The Visitor” was his second feature, and, from the looks of it, the most ambitious. Tapping into many of the “2001”-inspired sci-fi trends of the time, Paradisi made a film that sought to tie together the cosmos with spirituality, Jesus with space aliens, and apocalyptic genre tropes with an all-star cast.
“The Visitor” sets its sights on the entire universe, the nature of good and evil, and how humanity is the plaything of warring ancient space deities. The “big questions,” however, are mixed into a psychedelic bouillabaisse of confounding imagery, bad plotting, and weird-ass performances, at least one of which was done entirely under the influence of alcohol. “The Visitor” is insane.
The plot of the film centers on a young girl named Katy (Paige Connor) who is poised to be the next Christ or the next Antichrist, depending on which timeless deity can influence her fastest. On the light side is John Huston and Franco Nero, who oversee an ultra-futuristic space lounge populated by bald children. Nero dispenses Christ-like wisdom while Huston does the legwork; Huston sets up shop on modern-day Earth atop a Los Angeles skyscraper with a cadre of performing space cultists. Many of Huston’s scenes involve his direction of their performance art and his manipulating the stars with his very mind. He wants Katy to become a vessel for – who else? – Yahweh.
On the dark side, we have Lance Henricksen, owner of the Atlanta basketball team, who regularly attends creepy board meetings in a modern high-rise to discuss apocalyptic details with a shadowy cabal of high-powered executives. Henricksen is urged by this cabal (headed by Mel Ferrer) to magically influence young Katy into becoming a vessel for Zatteen, a.k.a. Satan. Katy, meanwhile, has already displayed a propensity for evil: Not only does she have telekinetic powers, but at her birthday party, Katy received a gun as a present (!) and shoots her aunt.
Shelley Winters also appears as a recently-hired nanny for Katy, but I was unsure if she was in the employ of the Huston cult or the Henricksen cult. At the film’s conclusion, she does give a tearful farewell to the Huston character, but that adds no rhyme nor reason. To add a much-needed human element to “The Visitor,” much of the film is seen through the eyes of Katy’s mother Barbara (Joanne Nail), who serves as our protagonist. She will eventually be felled by a gunshot and will spend much of “The Visitor” in a wheelchair.
The above synopsis only emerged in my mind after several viewings of “The Visitor.” While in the midst of actually viewing this Frankensteinian monstrosity, however, one may find themselves totally lost. “The Visitor” takes very long intermissions wherein portentous music pounds at the soundtrack but not much of ultimate consequence happens. The star-manipulating scene mentioned above is neat, I suppose, but it has no influence on the characters or the story as far as I can tell. There is another sequence wherein Katy is particularly at risk at an ice-skating rink, and the film’s poor sense of spatial continuity might have one believing that John Huston is scurrying down 3000 flights of stairs to stop it. At the end of that fateful descent, nothing notable happens.
The most mind-blowing celebrity cameo is provided by Sam Peckinpah who, in 1979, was in dire straits. In 1978, he directed “Convoy,” often seen as the least of his films, and it’s been posited that he accepted make “Convoy” only due to his addictions to booze and cocaine. He appears in one scene of “The Visitor” as Barbara’s ex-husband and Katy’s biological father. Peckinpah’s dialogue appears to have been dubbed, and, as we posited at that midnight screening so many years ago, it may have been because he was too drunk to remember his lines. He certainly seems tipsy and unhappy in his scenes.
In 2007, I was happy to let “The Visitor” melt my brain without much in the way of analysis. It was instantly classified by the midnight audience as a “Holy Fucking Shit” movie, and it still, to this day, enjoys a coveted spot on the “Holy Fucking Shit” shelf at CineFile Video.
In 2018, having now seen more bonkers, psychedelic 1970s sci-fi epics, I have a better context for it. Thanks to “2001: A Space Odyssey,” audiences enjoyed nearly a decade of incredibly ambitious sci-fi movies that sought to unlock the deepest philosophical questions about eternity, humankind’s place in the cosmos, and how our consciousnesses may be a vital piece to a vast, astral puzzle. If one is swallowing tabs of acid while watching Carl Sagan interviews, one could easily conceive of something like “The Visitor.”
I can’t say that the bulk of 1970s psychedelia was necessarily successful – they were big on histrionics but short on actual logic, character, historical theology, filmmaking acumen, or even basic entertainment value – but one can at least admire them for being willing to tip into the surreal to reach something higher. The movies often suck, but I can see why someone might have written something like, say, “God Told Me To” or “Zardoz.” I just couldn’t say how they did.
“The Visitor” will ever remain an oddity, but wow, what a rush! This is one of the crown jewels in baffling psychedelic 1970s freakout cinema and should be shared immediately. Drafhouse Films put out a handsome Blu-ray of it a few years back, and I encourage the purchase of it, sight unseen. I have my copy.
This article will certainly contain spoilers. You have been warned.
There is so much to say about Possession (1981). It was written and directed by Polish filmmaker Andrzej Zulawski. First of all, this film is difficult (but not impossible) to find. It’s worth the effort though. It’s currently showing at Metrograph theaters, and may be available on their streaming platform. I have not seen it on a big screen but I think that would be the ideal way to see it, if you aren’t susceptible to panic attacks.
Possession doesn’t fit cleanly into any specific genre. It’s equal parts drama, thriller and horror…maybe with a sprinkle of sci-fi. If you haven’t seen this movie, it starts out with a husband and wife who are dealing with infidelity and separation. But it devolves into something nightmarish, feverish and horrifying.
Right off the bat, we have to discuss Isabelle Adjani’s performance. It’s intense and exhausting and a performance that will stick with me for a while. Adjani has many memorable scenes, but one that comes to mind is when her character, Anna, enters a subway. Her continuous panting and heavy breathing (reminiscent of Midsommer), slowly erupt into screaming, laughter and blood and…so much more. The physical toll that this roll must have taken on Adjani is immense. There is no reprieve for the actors.
Everything about Possession is exaggerated, which makes some of the scenes hard to watch. But at its core, the allegory is quite clear. The monster which we are introduced to about halfway through the film represents the resentment and growing agony of divoce. Zulawski turns this common experience into grotesque body horror and upsetting desire. Though, I am sure you could watch this film over and over again and find new meanings and layers.
The film also stars Sam Neill in the role of the husband. Adjani plays her own doppelganger, as does Neill. The doppelganger element creates a circular, never ending pattern. A fairly unfavorable take on romantic relationships. Essentially, as one attraction wanes, another waxes. Side note: Zulawski did go through a divorce before he made Possession. Not very surprising.
It’s a film that’s meant to invoke a very specific emotional reaction from the audience. In a lot of ways it reminded me of how I felt watching Aronofsky’s Mother!. Both Mother! and Possession are films that I like and respect, but do not necessarily enjoy watching. But these films aren’t meant to be entertaining, they’re meant to take you on a very specific, guided emotional journey.
Beyond the plot and acting, the filmmaking is stunning. The cinematography is dizzying, in a good way. Often the camera moves freely around the actors, bringing additional elements to the drama that’s unfolding, One of the final scenes is filmed in dramatic vignette. Other shots are stark and clinical, until they are blood soaked. The filmmakers use sound here in a unique way. The actors breathing or moans or over the top noises add another layer to the soundtrack and rhythm of Possession.
In one of the final moments of the film, the husband and wife’s bloody pre-death kiss, was one of the hardest to watch for me. Not to mention the way Anna bends her arms backwards to try to end them both. A tragically horrifying yet somehow fitting end.
From a filmmaking perspective, Possession (1981) should be on everyone’s must-watch list. But it will soon also be on your what-the-fuck-did-I-just-watch list. Possession is like being in a bad dream. From the start, the way the actors move is slightly off. They always seem to be wearing the same outfits day to day, or very similar colors. The way the plot unfolds is familiar but surprising. It lures us in under the false-pretense of a drama and whacks us over the head with body horror and tentacle fueled sex scenes. Only to leave us with a cynical feeling about love and modern relationships.
Possession was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1981. Though it didn’t win, Isabelle Adjani won best actress that year at Cannes for her role. Andrzej Zulawski has said that he makes films about “what is torturing” him. I think Possession is an excellent example of a highly successful exploration of one’s person torture. So be warned, what you’re feeling at the time you watch this film will undoubtedly impact how you perceive it.
Possession begs us to ask the question, who really is the bad guy?
After the Crash 