Machinery of War: Violence in Sherlock Holmes 2: Game of Shadows

I love the latest Sherlock Holmes film.  One thing I noticed during my second viewing was the intriguing representation of weapons.

I won't attempt to guess the actual goals and motives of Guy Ritchie and his team in making the film, but I feel that the aesthetic choices around the weapons make a powerful and somewhat surprising statement about modern warfare.

One could say the film presents violence as the aesthetically pleasing pursuit of our heroes.  Both Watson and Holmes kill or injure others through hand-to-hand combat and the firing of guns.  But in Holmes' first fight, he actually doesn't hurt any of his opponents any more than he has to in order to defend himself.  And when Watson shoots it is always in self-defense.  And maybe it's true that violence on a small, person-to-person scale is favorably portrayed in the film.

But I think that the film does not present war and large-scale weaponry in a favorable light.  The moment that stood out to me is when Holmes, Watson, Sim and their friends are running away from the weapons plant where Moriarty has just tortured Holmes.  As they run, the German forces at the plant prepare an enormous cannon of some sort to fire at the fleeing group.  

We see Holmes and Watson in slow motion, from the side, and as they slow almost to stillness all sounds fade until we only hear their breath.  The human faces, beating hearts, and rapid breath of the fragile human body comes into sharp focus.  This imagery and aural effect contrasts sharply with shots of the preparation and firing of the enormous new weapon.  In those shots we see the minutiae of the machinery, the tiny and seemingly insignificant cogs, wheels, pressure-releasers, levers, switches, that will unleash a horrific explosion. We hear the tiny clicks and whirrs of the pieces snapping into place.  And then they fire.

Those fragile bodies we've grown to care about receive the impact and slowly, ever so slowly, soar through the air.  They look so small.  They look so vulnerable.

They land, recover, and they're all right.  But the cinematography and editing of that sequence create an enemy for us in addition to Moriarty: weapons and war themselves.  The heartlessness of machinery is matched with Moriarty's heartlessness.  His cold calculations are like the tiny clicks and whirrs of the deadly machines.  Holmes's mind could be seen as mechanical as it is so brilliantly logical, but his relationship with Watson and his constant concern about preserving life and eliminating evil mean that he is the human one.  

And his humanity is all the more emphasized in the film by his many injuries.  He gets a bruise on his face in the first few minutes of the movie, then gets cut on the face, tortured by Moriarty, etc.  By the final confrontation between the two he is much the worse for wear and looks it.  He is a human.  Brilliant, but human, with a human heart, human compassion, and a fragile human body.  Moriarty is unblemished, polished, mechanical.

Moriarty is the owner/manufacturer of weapons and the would-be creator of war.  Holmes stops him through his understanding of the human psyche and of human behavior.

I'm so encouraged by the fact of this action-adventure film with an anti-war, anti-weaponry message whispering in its heart.  Some may disagree with my conclusions, of course, but I will cling to them optimistically.

After a very long hiatus

To those of you who were frantically checking my blog, wondering what had happened to me and why I wasn't writing, you can breathe deeply and relax at last.  I'm returning to discuss the total flawlessness that is Danny Kaye.

I just rewatched The Court Jester for the umpteenth time.  A tiny part of me was worried that finally, after all this time, I would have the experience that I sometimes do watching movies that I've loved as a kid, when my grown-up eyes see things differently and movies that seemed hilarious and charming are revealed to be cheesy or even painful (in the case of the notorious Tom and Huck and Jungle 2 Jungle).

But no!  In fact, I think I enjoyed The Court Jester even more than I have in the past.  It is so beautifully ridiculous!  It would take me forever to list everything that is so wonderful about this movie.

But I think one of my favorite things that really hit me this time is that part of the point of the movie is that the hero is a bufoonish clown with a good heart who stumbles around trying to do the right thing while everything gets tangled up in a jumble of mistakes.  But all those mistakes, which came about through sheer bad luck, get untangled by good luck, partly it seems because the hero-clown is such a good person that "the fates" want him to succeed.  This man is not aggressive.  He is not courageous.  He is not a fighter.  But as Jean tells Hawkins, "Kindness and tenderness can also make a man.  A very rare man."

How wonderful that in a decades-old film there's a tiny nugget of wisdom about the complexity of masculinity.  How wonderful that the man who wins the day is gangly, goofy, funny, and knows how to lull a baby to sleep.  And it's obvious to any viewer that he would have completely failed if not for the cunning and courage of Jean.

In short, this film will never die and Danny Kaye's comedic genius will live on forever because it offers both truly hilarious comedy and a story we can still love with our jaded grown-up hearts.

A Hunger Games trailer!

Hooray!!

Let's take a look:

1.  Thank you, Jennifer Lawrence.
2.  Thank you, whoever cast Jennifer Lawrence.
3.  I appreciate the understated visuals.  I mean yes, there's fire and falling trees and whatnot, but they didn't bust out the big special-effects shots (maybe they're not done yet, actually), which is nice for the first trailer.  It means that we're really just focused on our hero, Katniss Everdeen, which I like.
4.  Okay, why am I hearing some dude's voice?  Yes, I know it's probably Gale, saying perfectly reasonable things that the character would say.  Or maybe it's Peeta.  The point though: I don't care what those dudes think Katniss can do or, in fact, what they think about anything.  Can we lose the (kinda blah) music, can we lose the irrelevant male narrator and get either some good old-fashioned feet-running-through-the-woods sounds, maybe some warrior-girl-breathing-a-little-rapidly-'cause-she's-running-like-the-awesome-woman-she-is sounds?  Or maybe she could narrate, since the whole freakin' book is from her perspective???
5.  Bow-and-arrow!  Check her out!  She is so cool!!  Whatever she just aimed at and shot in two nanoseconds is toast!
6.  Thank you, Jennifer Lawrence.
7.  Thank you, Suzanne Collins.

Hello, Jo Calderone!

Ok, first of all, the pop cultural moment in question: http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/684905/you-and-i-live.jhtml#id=1668980

 

So it appears Jo Calderone is the alter ego of Lady Gaga, who is the alter ego of Stefani Germanotta. 

My initial gut response: You go, girl.  Lady Gaga has become known for flashy concerts, flashy clothes, and flashy stunts like arriving at an awards show in an egg.  But those people who say everything she does is "just for publicity" fail to realize that everything EVERYONE famous does is just for publicity, but that each thing they do still has a purpose.  In Lady Gaga's case, she creates new themes and trends for and with her alter ego over and over depending on what she's experimenting with at the time.  

For awhile there it was "Dead, Injured and Trapped Women Killing Men", a trend which my feminist self very guiltily enjoyed.  In her Bad Romance video she was sort of semi-tortured in a bathrub, sold as a prostitute/object, and then lit a dude on fire in the bed with her sparkling bra (female-only body parts as weapons).  In her Paparazzi video she got pushed off a balcony and brokenly got up from a wheelchair with arm braces, and throughout the video intermittent images of dead women appeared.  Then she poisoned the dude who threw her off the balcony and reported herself, which landed her in jail.  And lastly, in her Telephone video (featuring a--let's face it--gutsy performance from Beyonce, who isn't usually as off-the-wall as Gaga), she starts off in the prison (not sold, not injured, but trapped), gets broken out by her girl B, and then poisons a whole diner full of innocent people (except for one dude who was not innocent, 'cause he wronged the Honey Bee).

This trend, I thought, represented the oppression of women's bodies by systems and societies full of patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism (three related but different things) through images of violence.  It also offered a symbolic solution to the problem: take down (poison or incinerate) patriarchy and misogyny as represented by The Dudes Who Get Killed in Gaga's videos.

Recently she's shifted over into a trend about the birth of a new generation of people/aliens, who accept everyone, no matter how "weird", because there really is no normal or weird, we're all just Born This Way.  Thus, emerging from the egg, her bizarre video in which she's got an eye on her chin and there's aliens floating around and giving birth, etc.

But that trend really didn't last long: it was nowhere to be seen in the Judas video (which overall was pretty blah conceptually compared to her others.)

I'm still trying to figure out what's going on in the "You and I" video, but one thing I know: Jo Calderone is in it.  And he also performed the song at the MTV Video Music Awards.  So could he be the mascot of her next trend?

What I liked about Jo at the MTV VMAs:

A drag performance/male alter ego seems like both a natural/fitting and creative next step for Gaga.  What interests me is that through Jo we get a take on Lady Gaga from Lady Gaga.  He talked in his opening speech about Gaga's artifice, that she's not real: this from the very same person who is Lady Gaga while dressing up as a man.  Whoa!  I like that kind of reality/theater/fiction/gender-bending confusion.

What disappointed me:

For the first time I've ever seen (not claiming I've seen all her performances) she occasionally let her act get in the way of her singing, and she sometimes sounded out-of-breath.  But more importantly, I feel like she didn't completely commit to Jo.  There he was, and overall I thought her physicality was really impressive.  It was clear to me that she had some gut instincts or good training about how to move like a man in general, but then she added some very theatrical mannerisms (smoothing the hair, hunched shoulders, big obvious showy gestures) that made the drag act very much an act, definitely a show.  She wasn't Lady Gaga, with the crazy costumes, but she was still giving a very external performance.  

 

I think it would have been even more compelling and fascinating if she had gone out there and actually tried to disappear into Jo and actually make us buy it.  What if Jo had been chill, just walking around and talking about Lady Gaga?  What if he had smoothed his hair, but not with such a big "look-at-me" gesture?  What if he had just...been there?  How cool would that have been, if we saw an alter ego who was not only male rather than female, but "real"/truthful rather than highly stylized/theatrical?  I think that would have been a really fantastic move on Lady Gaga's part, because of course the kick would be that the most "real" thing she does she does as a man.  Giving us a great gender-is-an-ocean-we-can-all-swim-around-in moment, which I think really lies in keeping with her overall philosophies.

But whatever.  She didn't ask me.  Jo, if you're reading this, I can coach you so you can chill out on stage and do some awesome subtle stuff.  Have your people call my people.

At last, a post

I have neglected this blog for far too long.  Shame on me!

I return to make a short and simple observation.  I can't believe I didn't really think about this until now.

One of the sexiest and most badass women on television right now (in my not-so-humble and biased opinion) is the fantastic Alex Kingston as River Song on Doctor Who.  AND...(drumroll please)...she is not in her twenties or thin as a rail!  I actually don't know how old she is, but she reads as a woman, a properly grown-up woman, not a young woman or an overgrown teenager.  Her hair is fabulous.  Her clothes are fabulous but NOT super revealing or skintight.  She is a beautiful curvy lady and more importantly River is clever, strong, brave, funny and complicated.  She is a woman I can look up to and love, question/criticize and support.  Woo-hoo!

Now, it's true that she still "has to be sexy", that her physical appearance is focused on a lot, etc.  It would be lovely to have a badass sci-fi woman on television who just gets to be a person and doesn't have to perform sexual objectivity.  BUT, and this is just my opinion, I think River really owns her sexuality.  It seems to me that often she is the one enjoying her own sexiness--like the gaze she's interested in is her own.

That's subjective, of course, and others wiser and more perceptive than I may feel that there are more troubling problems going on and not as much cause to celebrate....but too bad.  This is my blog.  And thus I conclude by saying:  Hip hip hooray for River Song, one of the coolest characters I've had the pleasure to meet, and in my opinion a decided step forward for women in sci-fi!

You know we're stepping forward when there's a lady on TV who is actually as fascinating as the Doctor himself.  (Gasp!  I know!  I can't believe I'm saying it!)

And so, my childhood is over

Okay, not really.  Depending on how you look at it, it was over when I went to college, graduated from college, hit puberty, or learned to drive.  Or perhaps it will never be over, as I plan on being an actor, and acting is basically playing pretend full-time.  But no matter how you look at it, I've definitely crossed a threshold; I finally saw the very last Harry Potter movie ever.

I've had a very tumultuous relationship with the Harry Potter movies.  I usually left the theater fuming and frustrated, wishing I could give the director, screenwriter, producers, or preferably all of the above a piece of my mind.  How DARE they miscast the role of Dumbledore and make him a weirdly mean and in my opinion totally unlikable character?  How DARE they make Hermione's hair look so gorgeous?  How DARE Daniel Radcliffe grow up stocky and rugged instead of awkward and skinny? (Just let me at his genes and they won't know what hit them!)

But when it came to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One I was pleasantly surprised.  I actually liked the movie!  Though I still had many of my same complaints (curse you, Daniel Radcliffe's genes!!), overall I thought the film successfully captured the grim and gritty atmosphere of the book, and that the three main actors were more compelling than in previous movies.

Part Two fell right in with its predecessor for me.  I was pleasantly surprised by most of it.  But I did, of course, have some issues with it.  And why have a blog if not to air my grievances with random films that I watch?  Maybe someone at Warner Bros. will actually read this and realize that all along, I've been right about everything.  ("Why oh why didn't we consult this brilliant young woman on every facet of these eight movies?  How could we have been such fools?")

This probably goes without saying, but major spoilers lie ahead.  Book spoilers, film spoilers, they litter the path before you.  Don't proceed unless you've already processed the movie yourself and you're ready to read someone's at times delighted, at times infuriated opinions.

I'm going to do this list-style, touching on every point that I was concerned/curious about before I saw the movie:

The Snape Revelation

This may have been my favorite moment in the entire book and I was REALLY invested in how the film handled it.  I was incredibly satisfied with what they did.  I thought Alan Rickman was fantastic.  It was like, after seven movies in which pretty much all he got to do was be ice-cold, he busted out every other emotion he hadn't been able to convey.  It broke my heart.  I don't remember if this scene was included in the book (and I don't have my copy with me to double-check), but I thought the moment when Snape is shown finding Lily Potter dead was particularly moving.  They managed to capture the most fascinating thing about Snape and his story: he really hates Harry because Harry is James's son, but he also--at lest sort-of--loves Harry, because he is Lily's son.  Harry is the representation of the union of James and Lily that causes Snape endless pain, but he is also the only living descendent of the one person Snape loves.  I thought the filmmakers and Alan Rickman did a beautiful job portraying that cognitive dissonance and making Snape the bizarre hero he is in the books: a truly mean and horrible person, but also an incredibly brave and loving person.  That's what makes him so fascinating.  Bravo to all who made that moment excellent!  

Ron and Hermione Finally Give In to Their Overwhelming Passion

I wasn't incredibly invested in this moment, mostly because I didn't expect it to move or surprise me, and then lo and behold--it did!  I thought the placement of the kiss--in the Chamber of Secrets, when Ron and Hermione are alone--was just right (even though it differed from the books).  Both actors did a good job with it, too--it felt sincere and spontaneous.  The grins from each afterward were pretty adorable as well.

Mrs. Weasley Detroys Bellatrix Like It's NBD

And here, for the first time, I was disappointed.  What I remember from the book is that Ginny and Bellatrix are fighting, and Ginny holds her own for a while, but Bellatrix is after all an incredibly evil and powerful witch, so Ginny begins to falter and it looks like she might become yet another casualty, when Mrs. Weasley appears, hollers her famous line with power and passion, and then takes Bellatrix after exchanging a few blows.

In the film, it didn't seem as if Ginny was in that much danger, and then Mrs. Weasley didn't so much holler the line as growl it (if memory serves).  And then she and Bellatrix went back and forth a bit and then Bellatrix sort of...shrived up.  And that was it.  How disappointing!  And surprising, that a moment full of satisfying drama in a book could actually be less dramatic in a film.

Harry's Long Walk of Doom Complete with Ghosts

I was really worried about this.  I was concerned about how Daniel Radcliffe and David Yates would choose to handle the big moment when Harry Potter walks to certain death.  How to do it without seeming melodramatic?  But also accurately capturing the intense emotions someone would experience walking to their death?

Given my concerns, I was relieved and surprised to find that Harry's Walk of Doom worked beautifully.  I think it was an incredibly smart move to play up the fact that deep down Harry had always known his days were numbered.  Melodrama was avoided because instead of freaking out, he was more resigned, which made sense with the fact that he had sort of known all along.  But it also wouldn't have seemed right if there were no strong emotions at all, so I think again it was a wise move to let Hermione carry the weight of emotions when she and Ron find out Harry is going to die.  Because Hermione was upset, I, the audience member, could identify with her and allow myself to be upset, without Harry having to be the one getting upset to catalyze catharsis.

The appearance of the ghosts was beautiful, too, I thought.  And I LOVED how Ralph Fiennes played the moment when Voldemort kills Harry.  It was like he understood that on some level he, Voldemort, was actually losing.  Voldemort may have been "winning" in that he was about to kill Harry at last, but ultimately he was clearly the weaker man because Harry could face the one thing Voldemort most fears: death.  Thank you, Ralph Fiennes.


Neville Longbottom is a BAMF

I have always loved Matthew Lewis.  I have always been pleased with his performances.  And in this one, we got a slow-motion shot of him slicing the head off a ginormous snake.  Awesome.

Voldemort Finally, FINALLY Bites the Dust

SO anticlimactic.  He just sort of...dissolved.  What??  It was so undramatic!  Once again, the book actually succeeded in being more theatrical than the movie--not the way it's supposed to work.  Why couldn't he have died in a huge, satisfying burst of light, and THEN dissolved into thin air?  In the book, Voldemort dies when his own killing curse ricochets back at him (if I remember correctly), which makes his death interesting in that Harry doesn't actually directly kill him.  In the movie I wasn't sure what was going on.  Why did he suddenly start disintegrating?

To quote a brilliant fellow Harry Potter fan: "Who knew Voldemort was made of paper mache?"


Harry Rocks the Love Magic

I thought Daniel Radcliffe did a really great job delivering that all-important line in which...wait...what?  Where was that moment?  They didn't include it??

The moment I'm talking about is the one in which Harry (sort of awkwardly, it must be said) explains that Voldemort can't hurt all the people Harry died for because by sacrificing himself Harry called up the same deep magic that Lily activated when she died for her son.  Just as Harry was protected by his mother's love, the people fighting at Hogwarts are protected by Harry's love.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought this was, you know, kind of the whole point of the entire series, put in one little moment.  And yes, it was a bit blunt, hit-you-over-the-head, etc., but also really moving.  And satisfying, because Voldemort wasn't just defeated in that he was physically destroyed, but he was defeated in that all his power was sapped away by the deeper power of love-protection.  That's where he really got beaten; his physical death was almost less important.

I don't know why the filmmakers chose to cut this.  I think the ending of the film would have benefited from its inclusion.  The climax would have been more dramatic with a symbolic/psychological defeat of Voldemort as well as a physical defeat.

The Epilogue

I felt ambivalent about the epilogue when I read the book. I didn't hate it like some people did, but I wasn't incredibly taken with it, either.  I didn't really understand why it needed to exist.

The epilogue wasn't perfect in the movie, but I think I understand now why it needed to exist.  As I watched the grown-up Harry, Hermione, and Ron usher their children onto the Hogwarts Express, I felt a tug in my heart and my tears started flowing in earnest for the first time.  It was like Joanne Rowling was saying to me, "Peytie, it's okay to grow up.  Just as you've fought with Harry, cried with Harry, failed and succeeded with Harry, you can grow up with him too.  Hogwarts is not gone; your children will go there.  You haven't lost Harry and his friends; they are grown-ups with you, too."

I think I needed to be 22 years old and embarking on my post-college adult life to fully feel the weight of this final moment.  I continued to cry as the credits rolled, not in grief but in gratitude for the series that defined my childhood.

This young woman is so freaking talented

And delightfully geeky.

http://gingerhaze.tumblr.com/