Spring Breakers

Harmony Korine has pulled one of the greatest bait and switches in film history. The advertising for Spring Breakers was expertly designed to lure in teenagers and twenty-somethings with the promise of a wild T&A party movie a la Project X. Well, in a way it delivers on that promise. It gives audiences the nudity and the chaos that is expected from a film like this, but it doesn’t feel quite right. It feels dirty and wrong, as grimy as the drops in its dubstep soundtrack. It’s a college T&A movie, but it’s not the one most people want.

The film opens with four college-aged friends, Faith (Selena Gomez), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson), and Cotty (Rachael Korine) trying to figure out how to raise the money they need to go to Florida for spring break. While Faith attends Bible study (and is warned of how wild Candy and Brit are), the other three rob a local restaurant and make off with enough cash to hop a bus to St. Petersburg. 

After a night of partying the group is arrested for possession of cocaine, but they are quickly let go when the evidence doesn’t hold. They then meet rapper/drug dealer Alien (James Franco) who promises to show them a good time, but instead acts as the gateway to a criminal underworld.

Make no mistake Spring Breakers is an arthouse film. To those familiar with writer/director Harmony Korine this is no surprise, but for those who have never heard of him I’ll just say that he’s responsible for a movie called Trash Humpers (and that title should be taken literally).

One aspect of the film that has turned off a lot of audiences is that it plays out like a deranged nightmare. The editing is choppy and nonlinear, full of droning narration repeating phrases like “Pretend it’s like a video game” and “spring break forever” ad nauseum, digging them deeper into your skin with each reframe. It’s like something made by the Bizarro World version of Terrence Malick.

But the editing serves a purpose. Franco’s constant whispering of “spring break” casts a dark specter over the film. Spring break becomes this sinister concept where hypersexuality reigns and oppresses. Women seductively suck on lollipops, men hold beer bottles to their crotches, everybody’s drunk and looking for sex. But to the audience it isn’t titillating. It feels disgusting and perverted. Were this exact footage being shown on MTV or in a Girls Gone Wild video it would be praised and even enforced. But in Spring Breakers it becomes dark and twisted. The veil covering the rape culture of spring break is torn down and revealed for what it is.

Spring Breakers may be the most purely American film of the 21^st century thus far. It’s an exploration into excess and greed that shows a depravity that makes Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas look like a family vacation. Korine holds a mirror to us, the college kids who partake in this yearly ritual of hedonism and debauchery. Of sex and violence. He shoves our faces in our mess. We made our bed and now we must sleep in it.

Some may disagree with me on this, and I wholly understand it. I’ve read several reviews from critics who found the film to be incredibly sexist, and I’m sure plenty more people are going to see it and feel the same way. Harmony Korine has always been as aware of social issues (as in Kids) as he has been intrigued and in admiration of those who indulge in their most primal instincts (the aforementioned Trash Humpers), and Spring Breakers is a bit of both.

The characters of Candy and Brit are sociopaths who show no remorse for their actions. They always want to dig deeper and deeper into the underworld of spring break. They lead their friends, and the audience, on a Heart of Darkness-esque descent into Hell, each step of the way peeling back another layer of the sex-violence conglomeration.

The film’s climax feels like the bastard child of Girls Gone Wild, Grand Theft Auto, and Michael Mann. “Pretend it’s like a video game” becomes words to live by. “Spring break forever” becomes a mantra. Candy and Brit are the people that the spring break lifestyle is made for. They’re the ones without empathy, who care nothing about the dignity of others, who have no regard for human life. They only want to satisfy their own selfish desires.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that Spring Breakers has been misrepresented in its advertising. Those going in hoping for something fun and light are going to be sordidly disappointed and they may not know why. They’ll say it’s because of the unconventional free-flow narrative. They’ll say it’s because it’s too dark and creepy. But hopefully it’s because they’ve finally been shown the true darkness hidden within the culture they’ve come to idolize, and that takes time to digest.

Idea for a Film Festival

Strike (1925)
Metropolis (1927)
Modern Times (1936)
On the Waterfront (1954)
Salt of the Earth (1954)
Harlan County, USA (1976)
Killer of Sheep (1977)
Blue Collar (1978)
Matewan (1987)
Office Space (1999)

The Legend of Bigfoot

Obsession. It’s a force of immense power that has guided men to greatness, and driven them to madness. Some strive for wealth, others pine for love. Many become devoted to art, music, and literature. And then there are people like professional animal tracker Ivan Marx, who spent his life looking for something else, something thought unattainable. He wanted Bigfoot.

Marx’s long struggle to prove the existence of the legendary Sasquatch is documented in the obscure 1976 film The Legend of Bigfoot, which can be watched on Youtube. It’s a curio of a movie, like something found off the last exit of a desert highway. Watching it feels like a dream, as if this movie can’t possibly exist and it’s all the result of some weird delirium, and yet there it is.

Not much is known about the film. It was put together from footage shot by Ivan Marx himself by director-for-hire Harry Stuart Winer, whose other credits include several episodes of Veronica Mars and Dawson’s Creek.

As Marx begins the narration which encompasses the entire movie, he tells the audience that the film chronicles the past ten years of his life, which has been spent tirelessly globetrotting in an attempt to document incontrovertible proof of Bigfoot’s existence. Ten years. A decade. Marx’s journey is fueled by an unnatural mania. It’s the perfect mixture of obsession and insanity that has the makings of a Werner Herzog protagonist.

It becomes clear that this is a man who is not only attempting to prove something to the world, but is trying to prove something to himself. He often expresses self-doubt, even questioning his own sanity at times. He will become energetic over what is most certainly undeniable footage of Bigfoot, only for it to be revealed as a bear. When discussing the experts who claim there’s no sufficient evidence, he becomes bitter, speaking with venom. 

Eventually he comes to the conclusion that Bigfoot must be a migratory animal. Following the path, he is led to Alaska, where natives tell him bizarre stories about the creature, such as the time a hunter killed a Sasquatch only to have its spirit come back to bring its wrath upon the people. Rivers of blood flowed from the sky turning the snow red and the “battle of a thousand warriors” was fought.

At times Marx seems to lose his direction. Much of the footage is of various wildlife. There’s a minutes long sequence of a squirrel attempting to pull another dead squirrel out of a road, edited so that it appears that other forest animals are watching. Marx also has a way of trailing off into philosophical rambles on nature, the frontier, and life – but somehow always managing to connect it back to Bigfoot. More than once does a deep discussion of his own life suddenly leap into confirming the existence of Sasquatch.

It’s almost impossible to judge The Legend of Bigfoot on the merits of its filmmaking because the clumsiness of the production feels entwined with its subject. It’s a personal journey, a window into the mind and emotions of a man who has devoted his life to Bigfoot. When we finally see the beast on camera it’s ethereal, even dreamlike. It’s as if I have been fully absorbed, in as much awe as Marx. It doesn't matter that it's fake, because with the entirety of his being Ivan Marx believes it is real. To him the footage is the evidence he needs to prove the experts wrong. We don't know if he just got so fed up with being called crazy that he staged the scenes himself or if he is being duped by somebody else. It's kind of beyond the point. What this film does is open you up to the world of a strange and dedicated man. By the end, despite all scientific evidence, despite his dumbfounding jumps in logic, you want to believe with him. And it’s beautiful, truly beautiful.

Winning Your Wings

Since it's Veteran's Day weekend, I thought I'd share this. The film is called Winning Your Wings. Made in 1942, it was directed by John Huston and is essentially James Stewart telling the audience to join the Air Force. It's classic American propaganda.

What's striking is you can see the ways the film attempts to manipulate it's viewers. Clearly the target audience is men in their late teens to their mid-twenties, and so how do you go about winning them over? Well, you make them feel special. Stewart talks right to the audience, as if he's addressing you. Yes - You! And don't forget about all the pretty ladies you'll woo with your air force pin. 

But what sets Winning Your Wings aside is that it's a fantastic film in it's own right. The cinematography is phenomenal, particularly the flight choreography. There's one shot in particular near the end where lines of planes appear out of the fog. It's mesmerizing - like T.E. Lawrence emerging from the desert.

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, and frankly, it deserved the nod. It may be have been a recruitment tool, but it's engaging and enjoyable nonetheless. The way the in-the-air shots are framed, the way eager young cadets are so effectively painted as heroes, the way Stewart breaks down at the end into a flurry of rage. Plus, you've got to love the way the filling station attendant reacts when Stewart tells him he "could grow wings any minute."

Some Thoughts On The Grey

At its surface, The Grey appears to be a simple tale of Man vs. Nature. But in actuality, it is a tale of Man vs. Self. It is about Ottoway’s struggle to survive, or whether he should he even try to survive. 

We begin by seeing him with a shotgun in his mouth. And we end by seeing him with broken bottles of whiskey in his fists.

The wolves are harbingers of death. An unstoppable force than can be staved off, but is ultimately inevitable. They are Grim Reapers, who with their mere touch cause men to die where they stand. And they are collectors, who harvest the body and souls of those who falter along the way.

There is a recurring poem:

Once more into the fray
Into the last good fight I’ll ever know
Live and die on this day
Live and die on this day

I think more of Dickinson:

Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me
The carriage held but just ourselves
And immortality

When Ottoway yells to the sky demanding something real, something tangible, there is silence. But is there already something real? Are the wolves that sign, that tool of God? A symbol of the destructiveness of God and nature itself? He giveth and he taketh away.

There may be no way to outrun death, but it is up to the man whether he tries. 

200 Motels

Aside from his hardcore fans, most people are likely unaware of Frank Zappa’s dabbling in film. In the early 1970’s, he teamed up with director Tony Palmer to produce a film that would show what happens to a band after they’ve been on tour for too long. What came out of that collaboration is a cacophony of rainbow nightmares and incomprehensible skits.

200 Motels stars Zappa’s backing band, The Mothers of Invention, playing versions of themselves as they go stir crazy in a small town named Centerville, desperately trying to get laid and/or drunk (or as they put it, trying to find that magic elixir).

On top of that, it also features Theodore Bikel as Rance Muhammitz, a man who has “many names” and might also be Satan, Keith Moon of The Who as a groupie dressed like the Flying Nun, and Ringo Starr as Larry the Large Dwarf who spends his time impersonating Frank Zappa.

Zappa himself only appears in the film a few times, never speaking or singing. However, the band members do believe he’s an omnipresent figure who is always watching them through an empty beer bottle.

The actual narrative of the film is made up of various skits, which look like they were shot after hours on the set of a PBS kids show, live concert footage, and general freak outs where deciphering what is happening is pretty much impossible. Nothing makes sense. The combination of screeching music and screeching visuals are enough to induce a migraine. It’s like something out of Videodrome

    

   

It manages to keep that visual style up throughout the whole thing. This works at times, but after awhile it wears out its welcome.

Most bizarre head trip films tend to give the audience something to hold on to while watching it, like a floating piece of the wreckage after the ship sinks. That stray sense of relatable normality or recognizable narrative that makes the movie accessible despite its psychedelic nature. 200 Motels has barely anything resembling that. The entire time you’re wildly grabbing at the air trying not to drown in its absolute chaos.

Despite frenzied visuals and bizarre storylines, films like Hausu or The Holy Mountain work because they give you relatable characters and create a world full of images that are at least comprehensible. 200 Motels is what happens if you throw spin art in a blender.

It’s not all bad though. There’s many times where the film does manage to work, even if only for a scene or two before getting lost again. The concert sequences are highlights, and are really when the visual style works the best. There’s also a really funny animated bit halfway through about a guy trying to get drunk and high, delivered to the audience under the guise of a dental hygiene cartoon.

If the screenshots intrigued you, then 200 Motels is certainly worth a look. But don’t expect any sort of masterpiece, or any sort of plot for that matter.

200 Motels is currently available to watch on Netflix Instant. A DVD exists but it appears to be a collector’s item.

Breeding the Super Soldier: Captain America as a Propaganda Piece

In all likelihood I’m not the first person to realize and write about this (after all the film has been out for almost a year now) but Captain America: The First Avenger is military propaganda at its finest. It seems that in recent years a New Wave of propaganda films has begun. Blockbuster films like G.I. Joe and Act of Valor, which glorify the American military, are becoming more and more commonplace, and Captain America is just another helping of militaristic, patriotism-inducing images.

I really shouldn’t be surprised that a movie about a man who is dressed in the American flag is being used to glorify the military, but at the same time I am. I like Captain America as a character, but I’ve always been more interested in him as a conflicted hero. Someone who stands for everything America is supposed to stand for - all those ideals fed to him by Fourth of July parades and the Pledge of Allegiance, but is then forced deal with the reality of an oppressive and corrupt government that has bastardized the stars and stripes and no longer represents the morals that it once stood for.

Captain America: The First Avenger is instead ripped right from a 1940s war serial. It returns the character to his original time and once again utilizes him for the exact reason he was manufactured in the first place – to instill in young children a strong pro-America, pro-military mindset.

Captain America feels like it wouldn’t be out of place in a World War II era movie theater, being played right after the newsreel telling audiences about whatever military victory happened that week. The entire film is soaked in propaganda. In fact, what impresses me the most is the movie’s earnestness. It knows it’s a piece of propaganda, and in a post-modern musical montage, the character within the film becomes a propaganda piece himself.

In the film, he travels with a troupe of showgirls performing a song and dance bit while encouraging his audience to buy war bonds. So within a film designed to win the hearts and minds of young Americans, Captain America is being used to win the hearts and minds of fictional young Americans.

This acknowledgment of the movie’s doctrine is taken even further by the filmmakers. After the final scene, what is the first image flashed across the screen, even before the “Directed by” credits appear? Uncle Sam saying “I Want You”. The credits sequence may very well be the most important part of the film; it’s made up of authentic American propaganda posters from the war. It’s almost as if the movie is telling us, don’t think of this as a film, think of this as a recruitment tool.

But ultimately, what drives the pro-American message home is how unbelievably pure and relatable Steve Rogers, the man who becomes Captain America, is. Anybody who has ever felt weak or bullied will see themselves in him. But in addition to the meek little figure that he is, he may very well be the most cartoonishly noble man to ever walk the Earth. He stands up for what he believes in no matter what the consequences, he’s kind, likeable, and he’s even willing to die for his country. Hell, for the first half an hour of the film his only real character trait is that he wants to join the military. So what is the message to little kids? If you want to emulate Captain America, you need to join the Army.

And, if you do enlist, you’ll no longer be small and defenseless. When he reunites with his best friend Bucky, Bucky is amazed at Steve’s physique. He asks him “What happened to you?” Captain America’s response? “I joined the Army”.

It should be noted that, in a manner befitting of propaganda films, the horror of battle is casually glanced over in order to glorify America’s superior strength and nobility. Death isn’t depicted as particularly gruesome or painful – instead, thanks to sci-fi energy weapons, it’s just a quick disintegration and it’s done with. There’s no suffering in Marvel’s World War II. During several battle sequences, disposable American soldiers run into combat with the evil HYDRA’s enemy troops. But while the camera focuses on Captain America taking out enemy henchmen, soldiers are consistently killed in the background. They’re hit a by a blue laser, then they’re gone. That’s it. No blood, no agony. Just a split second of screaming and it’s done with.

These background soldiers are nothing. Nobody in the movie pays attention to the men dying around them. Nobody mourns the loss of fellow soldiers after the battle. The film can’t ignore that death during war is inevitable, so it instead downplays it. It makes it something that just sort of happens in the background while everyone in the audiences projects themselves onto Captain America. Captain America isn’t the nameless extra who’s shot, killed and then forgotten, he’s the one riding a cool motorcycle and bashing people’s faces in with a shield.

It had potential. It really did. It could have been a deep satire of old jingoistic war films that tried to rally everyone into the American Bandwagon. Instead it proudly joins their ranks, bringing old time conservative ideals to modern audiences. Should you think independently? Not according to Captain America: The First Avenger. When the Red Skull tells Cap that his reign will be a world without flags, the good Captain tells him it’s not a world he’d want to live in. So join the Army and die for your flag. It’s all that Steve Rogers wanted to do with his life, why shouldn’t it be what you want too?

I wouldn’t let a child watch this movie. It would be dangerous to their development.