It’s Halloween time, need I say any more? This is one holiday that is all about atmosphere, and I am a big fan of setting the proper mood, so please follow this recipe before making the jump and reading the rest of this post:

** Put on your favorite copy of Mussorgsky’s Night On Bald Mountain. Don’t have one? Pop Fantasia into your DVD player and forward to the Night On Bald Mountain section (it’s the final animation, with the giant demon). Play this very loud!

**Turn the lights very, very low… lower…lower…

**Make yourself a nice, warm glass of apple cider.

**Scan the room… Is anyone there? Hello? Sorry, I thought I heard something…

Everything set? Ok, there are a few films that I really think deserve mention around Halloween, films that deal with fear, fright, and scare the pants off of me. Try one of these for the long, scary nights of the Halloween season. You’ve probably seen them before, but hey, they’re still scary good!

This Film Is The BRM's Choice For Scariest Of All Time. Click below to read The Back Row Manifesto’s Top Halloween Films! Enter at Your Own Risk!!! Muuuuhahaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaa……

Intimacy is always a tricky subject for a film; there are a million and one representations of romantic and sexual connection committed to film that get everything all wrong. So, on that rare occasion when a movie gets it right, when the stars align and you leave the theater feeling like you have just seen something of the truth about human connection, there is a tendency to overlook a film’s flaws in order to remember and honor those seemingly real emotions. In a few, all too rare cases, a film strikes such a perfect harmonic balance between romance, melancholy and comedy that the movie ends up being a personal touchstone, the epitome of cinematic romance. The romantic comedy touches us in very private ways because it allows us to imagine our ideal selves operating in extraordinarily vulnerable circumstances; we see the beautiful people and the messy interactions that make up our on-screen dreams and strive to recognize them in our everyday lives. Is my boyfriend the type to cover the bed in roses? Does my wife understand me when I tell her I love her? There may be no more personal relationship between a film and an individual than that between romantic comedy and the personal, romantic ideal. To put it another way; If you want to know the depth and texture of my romantic dreams (although I am not sure why you would), you need simply watch Woody Allen’s Manhattan and Billy Wilder’s The Apartment to understand the way I imagine my inner-romantic to function.

But when things go wrong, when a film runs afoul of the personal code of desire, it can destroy an otherwise perfectly enjoyable movie-going experience. Just the slightest tilt off-kilter, an unbelievable plot twist or the condescension to an otherwise trusty romantic archetype, will banish the romantic comedy into the realm of melodrama (which, admittedly, can have it own campy delights) or, worse, farce. Hollywood has always presented itself as the manufacturer of America’s dream images, the place (along with its cousin on Madison Ave.) where the average man can turn to escape the mundane and find the sublime. Of course, as Hollywood focuses more and more tightly on the pandering art of making money and turns away from an actual understanding of its audience, no film genre has suffered more acutely than the romantic comedy. A look across the past few years shows no shortage of romantic misfires, which begs the question: Who do they think we are? Of course, a look at TV and popular music show similar trends; it’s all humiliation and fucking. Is the American romantic ideal to be found in the sexual obsessions of teenagers, the class aspirations of Jennifer Lopez, the gross-out comedies of the Farrelly Brothers or the never-ending stream of classic British novel adaptations? Where are Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts, arguably the faces of romantic comedy for this generation? Where is the glamour? Where is the love?

It should come as no surprise, then, that the loss of the romantic ideal and the quest for love in the lives of everyday people is the concern of the best romantic comedy in quite some time, Anand Tucker’s screen adaptation of Steve Martin’s novel, Shopgirl. The story of the film is elegantly simple; Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Daines), is a lonely girl from Vermont living in Los Angeles who works as a salesgirl at the Saks Fifth Avenue glove counter. On a visit to the local Laundromat, she meets the slacker cum amplifier stencilist Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), who asks her on what turns out to be a rather strange date. As Mirabelle confronts her own feelings about Jeremy, she meets the wealthy Ray Porter (Steve Martin), a man carrying the same emotional baggage his name implies. Mirabelle dumps Jeremy in order to explore Ray’s more refined attentions, and things slowly grow more and more confused for everyone. What separates this story from the typical romantic comedy is that Shopgirl represents a return to the serious consideration of emotional compatibility and availability in the context of sex and romance. Steve Martin may be best known for his early work as a comic actor in films like The Jerk and The Man With Two Brains, but it is Roxanne, his adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac that truly set the tone for his best screenwriting. Martin, unlike most of his contemporaries in comedy, refuses to go for the cheap laugh or for the gross-out, instead infusing his characters with the dignity required to deal with the ramifications of the comic and tragic in their lives.

I'm Waitin' For My Man: Claire Daines as Mirabelle Buttersfield in Anand Tucker's Shopgirl

Of course, if dignity alone were the soul of romance, Shopgirl would be one big bore, and happily, there is a great deal of comic relief on display amongst the heartache, mostly assigned to Jason Schwartzman, who plays Jeremy’s drippy struggles with irresponsibility and desire for every ounce of their potential. But Jeremy’s soul searching is merely an endpoint for the central conflict in the film’s love triangle; the arms length intimacy that is experienced by Mirabelle and Ray. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I experienced an instant recognition of something essentially male in Martin’s portrayal of Ray and this character’s refusal to give himself over fully to his relationship with Mirabelle. Even more recognizable (and equally male) is the film’s refusal to psychoanalyze Ray’s distance, to ascribe it as a mid-life crisis to be solved by his affair with a younger woman, or to ever even articulate his attraction to the obviously less worldly Mirabelle. Instead, there is a single discussion about the status of the love affair, and a quick representation of the ‘he said/she said’ misunderstanding it inspires, which lays out once and for all the doomed status of this relationship. The wisdom to avoid analytical trappings puts the audience on alert right away, but it also allows Shopgirl’s final scenes to ring absolutely true. There are no easy routes to a happy ending, and when Mirabelle faces the fork in the road in her relationship with Ray, a man who has never honestly articulated his own reservations to her, she eloquently summarizes the dilemma we have all faced in a relationship; “I can either hurt now,” she says, “or I can hurt later.”

Shopgirl is by no means a perfect film. Tucker presents us with several shots of Ray on his private plane, soaring to and from his West Coast mansions, deep in thought, but what is he thinking? Our insight into the truth of his feelings is limited to hindsight; a few bits of voice over narration and a couple of emotionally intense interactions with Mirabelle. Otherwise, the audience is pretty much left at sea as to the true nature of his desire. This doesn’t mean some stagy analysis is required, but Shopgirl would certainly benefit from some romantic feeling between its leads. Like all great romantic comedies, Shopgirl walks a fine line; overstatement would certainly undermine the film’s essential heartbreak. From Ray’s perspective, his only real connection with Mirabelle seems to be a sexual one, after which he rewards her with expensive gifts. “It’s easy for me,” he says, and without Mirabelle’s need (and ours) for a deeper articulation of Ray’s true feelings, the relationship might feel like one between a kept woman and her patron. But Mirabelle is no Pretty Woman. While she is not unreasonable to enjoy being treated to lavish gifts and flown all over creation, it is her conscious need to be wholly loved without regret or doubt, to be desired for who she is, that ultimately forces her to confront the reality of her relationship with Ray. In this way, Mirabelle is a great romantic heroine; comfortable in her own skin, desirous of what she deserves from life, flattered by Ray’s attention, but unwilling to compromise her true self. Martin’s script, allegedly written in response to his own romance with a younger woman, seems like a perfect gift to an ex-lover; a beautiful explanation for why things didn’t work out. Shopgirl is that rarest of on-screen romances, balancing hope and heartbreak, comedy and melancholy, and articulating the essential truth about a failed love affair. Finally.

It’s been a while! What is it they say about rainy days and Mondays? After the long Toronto/NYFF month, I needed a bit of a mental break from all of the blogging and the festival life in order to re-establish some sense of a thoughtful approach to film. I felt bombarded, so overwhelmed by high quality movies that I wasn’t sure how to think about them in relation to one another, to the previous work of the filmmakers, or even in and of themselves. After nine months of pretty much hit or miss film attendance, September and early October almost felt like too much of a good thing.

I took a few weeks away from going to the movies in order to read, cook, work, and relax. Plus, there is something about the constant rain pouring down on New York City that brings out the nesting urge, that makes me want to grab a book, get under a blanket, and pass the time slowly. This weekend, I made the trip out to the Hamptons Film Festival for the fourth year in a row. The fest was excellent as always, and I was able to find 2 or 3 films that I would really like to program later in the spring. One that stood out for me, that wasn’t much discussed in the press coverage of the festival, was Jaci Judelson’s Tina Barney: Social Studies, which follows at the photographer as she photographs the French aristocracy at home and at play. The film confronts some interesting ideas about privilege and opulence with a compellingly cavalier attitude, while at the same time echoing the long-standing art of aristocratic portraiture by showing some of Barney’s absolutely knockout photographs. Judelson has captured an artist comfortably at work among the ultra-wealthy, and the film gives a voyeurs-eye view into the process of the lifestyles of the rich and private.

I also caught Marc Levin’s powerful Protocols of Zion which I found to be a profoundly depressing statement about the way lies and ‘manufactured information’ become gospel truth in the world. I was impressed with Levin’s courage as a documentarian, constantly pitting his own rationalist worldview against the half-considered hatred and anger of some very sketchy people. As an example, when Levin confronts a white supremacist about Hitler and judaism, he points out that maybe the holocaust was an extension of Hitler's desire to kill his own rumored jewish heritage, to which the supremacist replies “I don’t think Hitler was in any way suicidal…” I will confess, that line made me laugh out loud. In the face of such ignorance, ignorance that is wholly adopted as fact and a way of life, Levin's film makes you fear for the survival of the rational humanist. I asked Levin about the rise in the social acceptability of extremist points of view and what freethinking, humanists can do in the face of empty, irrational ideas and he, and the film, left the question unanswered, which only seems fair. How could anyone presume to answer it? Levin keeps his own, compelling blog which addresses a lot of the film's ideas (be sure to read the comments). I couldn’t recommend the film more highly.

Marc Levin meets the National Alliance in Protocols of Zion

There were other films of note that I was able to catch, including Bob Fosse’s Liza With a ‘Z’ which was a compelling reminder of both Liza Minelli’s awesome power as an entertainer and how much Bob Fosse is missed as a filmmaker; were he alive today, I expect that he would have a lot to share with Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and the like. His camera seemed to be an extension of his dancer’s body, and no one was on the receiving end of more of his absolute adoration that Minelli. The combination of his cinematic understanding of the stage and her emotional connection to popular music makes for a stunning hour of performance. Showtime, who have always been a friend to the film festivals I work with, deserve a lot of praise for helping to rescue and restore this masterful film. The sound has been remixed to an achingly beautiful standard of quality; I have never heard film music sound so good. In addition, the images, shot on film (the first TV Special to be shot on film, according to Minelli) look as if they were tane straight off of Fosse's original camera negative; the sumptuous reds and clean blacks are clear indications of the care taken with the restoration. It was a fitting finale to my brief visit to the festival.

I drove home from the Hamptons on Saturday (how many Stella Artois can a boy drink?), but I felt replenished by taking it easy out there. Kudos to the filmmakers and the festival staff for what seemed to be a successful festival all the way around. As for me, I took my renewed sense of cinematic desire to the theater to see the highly-anticipated (by me anyway) Shopgirl, and tonight I plan on catching up with Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s Innocence. Now, if we can just stop the rain…

In The Trouble With Films That Try To Think, her recent document of the shortcomings of Hollywood films that take on political themes, The New York Times' Caryn James writes:

"The studios (and their artier specialty divisions) back [films that think] for the same reason celebrities double as political pundits: producers and studio heads like to be taken seriously, too. What's whispered, yet rarely said out loud, is that Hollywood producers know that most of what they churn out is junk, and they are happy to seize an opportunity - especially if it's cost-efficient and Oscar-ready - to prove they are people who think... What results is a genre of timid films with portentous-sounding themes, works that offer prepackaged schoolroom lessons or canned debates. Hollywood may be drawn to Big Ideas, but it is always more comfortable with sound-bite-size thoughts."

Never one to take such a thing lying down, my fellow blogger The Reeler takes issue with James' piece when he writes:

"When James flogs films like Good Night, and Good Luck or even A History of Violence for being Ideology Lite—stylized, dogmatic self-indulgences—I wonder what she would recommend as an alternative. Using Caché and Manderlay (and The Squid and the Whale to a token degree) as fodder, James' colleague Tony Scott recently deconstructed the class themes overriding this year's New York Film Festival; are these examples of the films she thinks Hollywood should be making? Or would their depths threaten James' didacticism—her own "schoolroom lessons" that prove irrelevant when applied in the specific context her targets deserve? In other words, do Hollywood "junk" producers—with their market, history and money—really have anything to prove to anyone, and if so, what would James recommend?"

It seems to me, these two agree; Whereas James is taking exception with what she considers the shortcomings of the Hollywood 'Idea' film, The Reeler seems to be asking her what she expects-- Of course these films are not good enough. Not much of an argument there.

I take a different exception to James' article; I don't think these films are about ideas at all, but about ideology. That is to say, I never have found films about political issues to be more than statements of personal belief shrouded in dramatized (albeit, in the case of many of these films, based on actual events) narrative context. What is so exceptional, and exceptionally wrong, about stating political ideas in Hollywood films? It seems to me that James is holding artists to a higher standard than the country holds it own political leaders; we don't expect nuanced debate anymore, and we certainly have become cynical when it comes to having our political questions answered in a truthful, meaningful way. Talking about ideology is talking about half-truth to begin with; as soon as an artist adopts a political stance, and especially in the context of a fictionalized dramatic structure, he sacrifices the perspective of presenting a nuanced, balanced, two-sided argument. Instead, narrative structure demands that we have protagonists and antagonists, and while a film like Good Night, and Good Luck doesn't present a nuanced view of American opinion during the red scare, I don't think of that as a limitation. Did All The President's Men present a 'fair and balanced' view of the Nixon Administration's case for its actions? Did it present a complex view of a nation divided by Viet Nam and Nixon's policies? Did that stop it from being a terrific movie? James commits another great sin in her piece by blaming historical context as somehow inadequate to describe current political equivalences. Where as All The President's Men was set in the recent past (and apparantly therefore politically legitimate in its exclusions) , Brokeback Mountain (Focus Features) is derided for being set in the past and therefore "timid" in its exclusion of "a lifetime in the history of sexual equality." I suggest she try telling that to Shakespeare. Or try and show me how The Crucible, which I discussed in my own piece about Good Night, and Good Luck, was an inadequate artistic response to the McCarthy era itself. What does James propose that history can teach us about the present? Nothing but truly unequivocal lessons? That was then, this is now? And if you dare make a documentary lambasting the current political climate, everyone calls you a loud-mouth. Seems like you can't talk about politics and win. That's because no political speech is taken seriously in this country; with our reliance on experts and ideologically charged pundits to make our news channels interesting, Americans have no forum in which to have their own political ideas heard. Movie stars, probably our most privileged (and envied) citizens, are mocked for bothering to discuss politics; just keep it on the screen, you liberal pretty boy.

Liberal ass-kisser or movie with ideas?: George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck

But the greatest shortcoming in James' piece, and where I agree with The Reeler, is the limitation of the 'Big Idea' film to the realm of the political; What about films that are actually about ideas, especially aesthetic ideas? That is to say, why isn't Hollywood actually talking about ideas and not ideology? An inadequately oppositional press, sexual harassment, CIA operatives destabilizing oil producers, manipulative governors; sure, these themes speak directly to our current political climate. But as I mentioned in my last post, the American art film has, in many cases, become a careerist calling card, devoid of aesthetics and just as dependent on genre and convention as its Hollywood peer. Interestingly, it is the "non-affiliated" distributors who have taken up the mantle of films like Caché (Sony Pictures Classics) and Manderlay (IFC Films); companies without studio backing doing good work by releasing important films. But there are a million other films about ideas, ideas that are not centrally political, that are out there. I look back on this year and see films like Arnaud Desplechin's Kings and Queen, Nobuhiro Suwa's Un Couple Parfait, Tsai Ming-liang's The Wayward Cloud, Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy, Philip Groening's Into Great Silence, and Werner Herzog's almost perfect trifecta of The White Diamond, Wheel of Time and Grizzly Man and I find plenty of successful films that are bursting with the Big Idea, many of which have seen or will see distribution, and all of which should be seen by a larger audience. So, the trouble is not with films that think, it is with a culture that is distrustful of public thinking about politics, of intellectual approaches to story telling, for whom aesthetic pleasures are less important than adherence to convention. Of course corporations will play to those prejudices, but when they do release sturdy, well-crafted and ideologically fueled stories (which are clearly a cut above the usual bullshit the studios release), why not take a moment to find what is interesting about these films instead of dismissing them en masse as the vainglorious products of condescending executives? Is the only difference between The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Good Night, and Good Luck really just subject matter? Beyond those films, there are several films "that try to think" that represent the best of cinema as an art form. The only problem is that there are nowhere near enough of them.

I am off tomorrow morning to Indiana for a lecture on Monday at DePauw University; very excited, but sad to miss the end of the New York Film Festival. Thankfully, I was able to see two films at this week's press screenings and they turned out to be my two favorite of the festival; Michael Winterbottom's hilarious Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story and the closing night film, Caché by one of my all-time favorite directors, Michael Haneke. I want to talk about both of these films as each in turn represents an intellectually rigorous sense of play (in the case of Winterbottom) and an austere, powerful thriller (in the case of Haneke) and both are unlike any film you are likely to see made by an American. The proof is in the pudding; While the fall season features sturdy, well-made American independent films like Capote, The Squid and The Whale, and Good Night, And Good Luck (all of which were discussed on this blog), each of these films draws upon well-tread directorial techniques, stories, and genres without establishing an original narrative vision or style anywhere near what is accomplished in Caché or Tristram Shandy.

Before discussing the specifics of these two films and the choices these artists make that distinguish them from their American peers, I think it is important to take a look at the state of the American independent film. In his report on the changes at Paramount Classics, Eugene Hernandez hits the nail on the head when he states:

'Gone are days when "classics divisions" competed to acquire and release foreign language, documentary, indie and art pictures. With the exception of Sony Pictures Classics, the divisions have evolved into mini-majors making bigger budget, star-driven movies and aiming for Oscars.'

Obviously, this has been going on for a long time. The product that companies seeking to make a profit choose to manufacture should come as no surprise; there is no question that conventional, star-driven vehicles are going to appeal to a broader audience and make more money. The disappointment that continues to resonate for me is not corporate interest (which seems obvious), but the career-oriented interests of American artists. There are fine examples of truly independent American films that represent a unique artistic temperament; I look at directors like David Gordon Green, Lodge Kerrigan, or a film like Phil Morrison's Junebug and see that there are American artists with distinctive, compellingly American voices. But, just like their foreign brethren, there are not a lot of commercial opportunities for these films. This occurs, it seems to me, not only because studios seek to find populist "hits" and make a lot of money, but also because, in America, success is defined not in terms of quality, but in terms of box-office. And so, one eye on the camera lens and another on Variety box-office rankings, lots of independent 'artists' end up not really having what it takes to make art. Independence and art are not the goals of the studios, the filmmakers, the actors, or the films themselves. Instead, most independent filmmakers choose to replicate genre films, to ape the style or subject matter of an already commercially successful filmmaker because the goal is not cinema. The goal is money. We see our lives as Hollywood movies, in the strict terms of convention, and not in terms of art (although the two are not always mutually exclusive). The other system that is sorely lacking from a true American independent movement is, of course, the co-production system. Where are the networks of independent producers who care about the quality of films? I know there are lots of individuals out there, but where is the American equivalent of an independent co-production? Of course, everyone wants to be successful, to be a star. But on what terms and at what price to American cinema?

So, with Eugene's clear assessment of the state of the mini-majors ringing in my head, my own concerns and doubts about the state of the American indie echoing loudly, I settled in to my screenings. First up was Tristram Shandy. Is there a filmmaker with a more diverse career than Michael Winterbottom? Welcome To Sarajevo, Wonderland, 24 Hour Party People, In This World, 9 Songs and now Tristram Shady; I am not sure I can name six films more unlike each other by anyone, let alone a single director. Certainly, there is a distinctive aesthetic at work in each of these films; a hand-held, intimate style that clearly transcends subject matter. This same style works well in his adaptation of Laurence Sterne's classic novel. With this adaptation, Winterbottom shows that the novel is essentially a story about writing a book about an undocumentable life; he then transposes that conceit to the film itself, making a film about making a film about an unfilmable book about an undocumentable life. This has been the subject of another film which resonated throughout the screening; Olivier Assayas' Irma Vep. As in that film, the attempt to re-create a great piece of art leads only to on-set dysfunction and a movie that turns in on itself; the story of the film, its characters, and the subject of the "movie-within-the movie" wind in and out of each other like a mobius strip.

Rob Brydon as Captain Toby Shandy and Steve Coogan as Tristram Shandy in Michael Winterbottom's TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY