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Film Commentary

“Command and Control” Review: Kenner / Schlosser Will Blow Your Mind

Command and Control Review: Earth-Shaking Revelations Abound

by HelenHighly

Synopsis:

Command and Control, which premiered at the Tribeca 2016 Film Festival, is a high-stakes documentary thriller from Robert Kenner, director of the Emmy-award-winning film Food, Inc, which was based on Eric Schlosser’s best-selling book Fast Food Nation. The docu-drama duo has teamed up again to bring us Command and Control, based on Schlosser’s critically-acclaimed book of the same name. (The book was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for History.) In this film, Schlosser and Kenner explore the deadly “human error” that led to a catastrophic accident at the Titan II missile complex in Damascus, Arkansas in 1980, the stunning details of which have only recently been revealed.

The chilling documentary details the unlikely chain of events that caused the accident and the feverish efforts to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States. Command and Control exposes the terrifying truth about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal, demonstrates what can happen when the weapons built to protect us threaten to destroy us, and probes how mutually assured destruction might actually mean self-annihilation.

One might wonder if, in today’s post-Cold-War era of disarmament and new advanced-technology drone warfare, this story is still relevant. If it feels like old news, consider: The United States has about 4,700 nuclear weapons in its current arsenal – enough to completely obliterate this country more than 20 times over. And once a nuclear weapon is fully assembled, its safety is never absolute.

Harold Brown was Secretary of Defense when the Damascus accident occurred, and he only recently revealed to Command and Control filmmakers, “Accidents were not unusual in the defense department. There must have been several every day.” As stated in this documentary: “Nuclear weapons are machines, and every machine ever invented eventually goes wrong.”

The filmmaker warns, “Every one of them is an accident waiting to happen, a potential act of mass murder. They are out there waiting, soulless and mechanical, sustained by our denial – and they work.”

More Than a Synopsis:

“It’s a spy-movie thriller that pivots on a horror-movie trick.”

There is a special category of films at Tribeca 2016 that I called “You Think You Know But You Don’t.” Command and Control is a perfect example of this category. Even when you already know how it ends, and even though you just now read the synopsis, and even if you have some experience with this topic, this film still warrants your participation as audience – to sit for 92 minutes and watch and listen to how this story unfolds as told by these two immensely talented men, Screenwriter/Director Robert Kenner and Screenwriter Eric Schlosser.

You have to hear the tremble in the voice of the guy (not a portrayal – the actual man) who is still alive but was only 21 years old when the socket dropped from his wrench as he did routine maintenance on the Titan II missile and almost blew up our country – his country. On top of that missile sat a warhead three times more powerful than all the bombs dropped in World War II, including both atomic bombs. You have to hear David Powell himself explain how he was just a kid – “a proud hillbilly from rural Kentucky,” whose first thought as he reached for the falling socket but couldn’t catch it, was that he “didn’t want to get in trouble” and have to tell his mother.

You have to see his work partner, who was only 18 years old at the time, explain how he “had no fear” and was excited “to play with the missile fuel” in the most powerful weapon that had ever existed – “a monster ready to go off,” and that his training included “preparation to destroy an entire civilization – without hesitation,” and he was “willing to do it” (determent only works if you’re actually willing to drop the bomb), but he had never considered that our own warhead might detonate on our own continent.

You have to hear the aching tone in the voice of this man who tells how he “was ready to take on the world” when he joined the PTS team, but on that fateful day, he stood helpless next to his co-worker as they watched that socket fall 70 feet down the length of the missile and bounce off the platform and puncture a hole in the fuel tank skin, and how they didn’t fully report what had happened – what was happening (highly explosive rocket-fuel pouring out of the missile), because they didn’t want their commander “to freak out.” When they finally admitted the truth, more than 30 minutes later, the situation was out of control. By comparison: Once launched, the missile could reach a target over half a world away in less than 30 minutes.

You have to endure the excruciating, minute-by-minute details of what happened next and then next and then unfathomably next, until a few hours later the missile completely exploded, destroying its underground silo and blowing the nine-megaton warhead … to literally God-only-knew where. (Note: one megaton = one million tons of TNT.) “We escaped the cold war without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion,” said General George Lee Butler of the U.S. Strategic Air Command.

This film will pound your heart and rattle your brain; it will pound your brain and rattle your heart. These are the things:

The image that haunts you — the green-grey glow that surrounds the majestic missile – 10 feet in diameter and more than 100 feet tall, like a giant gleaming bullet, loaded into a concrete gun barrel, cocked, ready to go, and pointed at the sky.
The sound of manual typewriter keys, as data is spelled out on the screen – the metallic clickity-clack of what we now recognize as an antiquated and imperfect machine but was a “high-tech” business tool at the time.
The word that, when spoken, will make you never hear it quite the same again: “When you’re working on a weapon of mass destruction, you’re counting on everything to work perfect all the time, and things just don’t work perfect all the time.” – First Lieutenant Allan Childers, who was there that day.
The context given to simple facts that make you appreciate how complicated those facts really are: It would take fewer than 200 nuclear missiles to annihilate the entire Soviet Union. In the mid-60s we had 32,000. (We have thousands still hidden around the U.S. Do you wonder where they are? And who is doing “routine maintenance” on them now?*)

You have to be present to comprehend all the little revelations that cannot be captured in a synopsis but that slowly expose themselves and stack precariously, one on top of the other. These are the moments that you will take to bed with you and that you will tell your friend the next day. One revelation that strikes in this film (as well as in another important and Helen Highly Recommended documentary at Tribeca 2016, National Bird, which is about the U.S. drone program) is this brazen reality:

America routinely puts its most powerful weapons and its most dangerous decisions in the hands of virtual children who are patently ill-equipped for the responsibility.

Command and Control is a must-watch film because you must experience the juxtaposition of vigilant precision-on-a-minuscule-scale against the gargantuan-danger and gross-miscalculation that created this event. You have to see the way these men actually light a match and burn the little slip of paper on which is written the daily code that opens the 740-ton door into the missile silo – the spy-movie level of secrecy to safeguard against enemy intrusion, and then come to realize that despite all these preventative measures, it is a horror-movie trick that gets them in the end: Don’t lock the door! The Killer is Inside the House! The danger is not our enemy; the danger is us.

These are the things that make Command and Control a captivating movie and are the reason you should watch it. And despite all the “spoilers” I have written, they barely make a dent in the mass of shock and awe contained in this film. This is truly a movie – not just a news story for the history channel. Although, PBS American Experience already owns it, so… that’s good and bad. But it’s mostly good because that means more people will see it, and this is something you definitely should see. Nonetheless, my point is that this film could sustain – visually, intellectually, emotionally, it could sustain — the size and expectations that come with a large screen in a movie theater. Despite being an astounding documentary, this film is also a dramatic thriller.

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Watch It: As of 2019, the film is available on Amazon and Netflix and it appears that PBS American Experience is allowing free downloads: click here. (See movie trailer below.)

∗One of the interviews included in this movie answers this question about the country’s current nuclear arsenal, ominously: Harold Brown, previous Secretary of Defense reports, “the degree of oversight and attention has, if anything, gotten worse.” Separately, on November 14, 2014, the negligence was acknowledged when Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel spoke at a Pentagon news conference: “We just have kind of taken our eye off the ball here,” Hagel said.

Watching the Command and Control documentary ignited a private memory of my own — something that connected me personally to that tragic story, and after going home and doing a little Googling, a series of nuclear bombs exploded in my childhood. So, I’ve researched and written my own spin-off essay (or, Command and Control Commentary — Part 2) that could almost be its own documentary. Here’s the intro:

Helen’s Own Highly Explosive Nuclear Crisis

I was “a space-age baby.” That’s what my mother wrote in my baby album. I grew up being told the story of when we were in the hospital after she gave birth to me: There was this amazing few minutes when all the infants were left alone, even if they were crying, and all the nurses and mothers (along with millions of other Americans) turned to the TV to watch The First American be Launched into Space. It was a spectacular, patriotic event, and my father helped to make it possible. Click here to read more.

Watch the Command and Control movie trailer:

Sophie Goodhart’s “My Blind Brother” Review: A Shrewd Romantic Comedy

May 3, 2016Film CommentaryAdam Scott, Best of Tribeca 2016, director Sophie Goodhart, Goodhart director, Goodhart screenwriter, Jenny Slate, love triangle, My Blind Brother, My Blind Brother movie, My Blind Brother review, My Blind Brother Tribeca, Nick Kroll, romantic comedy, Sophie Goodhart, Sophie Goodhart My Blind Brother, South by Southwest, Southwest My Blind Brother, Starz Blind Brother, Starz My Blind Brother, SXSW, SXSW My Blind Brother, Tribeca 2016, Tribeca comedy, Tribeca Film Festival, Tribeca reviewhelenhighly

Helen Highly Recommends Sophie Goodhart’s My Blind Brother as One of the Best of Tribeca 2016

Nick Kroll and Jenny Slate in "My Blind Brother — Nick Kroll and Jenny Slate in My Blind Brother

Droll My Blind Brother Premiered at SXSW and Cracks Up Tribeca 2016

“I’m a superficial narcissist”
“I’m lazy and judgmental.”

This is how the two romantic leads in My Blind Brother introduce themselves to each other, and I fell in love with them both immediately.

HelenHighly also wants to watch TV all day. — HelenHighly also wants to lay in bed and watch TV all day.

Then, when they both reveal that they perversely wish they could be invalids so they’d have an excuse to lay in bed all day and watch TV, I fell in love with screenwriter Sophie Goodhart. Add in a blind guy, jaded and bored with his own infirmity, who is smoking weed unabashedly in public, even with the police nearby, who says, “I could shoot up in front of cops and they wouldn’t do anything,” and I love this movie in full. It manages to be morbidly dark, joyfully funny and unsentimentally touching all at the same time.

The storyline itself is genuinely fresh; unlike so many other films at this festival, I can’t think of another previous movie to compare it to. Robbie (Adam Scott) is a champion blind athlete and local philanthropic hero doted on by the community (and his parents) and seemingly incapable of wrongdoing. His apparently well-earned egotism is fed by his frequent, televised crusades to rise above his “disability” while also raising money for charity, where after each successful feat, he is surrounded by gushing reporters who never seem to notice that he tells the same, lame joke every time: “You look beautiful today,” Robbie the blind guy tells every female member of the press.

Robbie’s hapless, unassuming brother Bill (Nick Kroll) knows the real Robbie to be arrogant, selfish and rude, but he still guide-dog-faithfully runs every marathon by Robbie’s side and never makes a peep when he doesn’t receive any accolades, or when even his own parents continually criticize him. One night, Bill escapes the relentless Robbie-worship by hitting up the local bar, where despite his best efforts to present himself as unworthy and unappealing, he gets lucky with an attractive and like-hearted woman named Rose (Jenny Slate). Bill is guilt-ridden because Robbie’s blindness was the result of a childhood accident in which he was involved. Rose is guilt-ridden because immediately after she told her fiancé she wanted to break up with him, he distractedly crossed the street and was hit and killed by a bus.

After one pitiful, anti-romantic (yet soul-soaring) night together, Rose flees without leaving her phone number. Nonetheless, Bill thinks his karma might finally be coming around and that he’s found his sad-sack love-match. But his fantasy is soon squashed when his brother introduces him to his own new paramour – the very same Rose, who (without knowing he is Bill’s brother) has started dating blind Robbie in an attempt to make herself a better person. Now Bill must decide if he will put himself second again or finally stand up to his blind brother.

"My Blind Brother" gives a new twist to the Love Triangle — My Blind Brother gives a new twist to the Love Triangle

Kudos to writer/director Sophie Goodhart for opting against a “when bad things happen to good people” script and instead going with “when good things happen to bad people.” Goodhart’s two, guilty, self-loathing characters are amazingly charming and lovable. Robbie makes a wonderfully heroic antagonist, whose capability and determination we slowly come to dislike more and more as the story unfolds. (The fact that actor Adam Scott looks quite a bit like a smugly smiling Tom Cruise doesn’t hurt.) And Goodhart’s ingenious twist on the conventional love-triangle takes the sentimental weight out of the usual wet blanket that hangs over traditional romantic comedies. This movie is bright and buoyant and makes us laugh at ourselves more than at mere jokes.

Goodhart’s head-on attacks of our socially-correct attitudes toward both the physically handicapped and noble self-sacrifice are deftly executed dark humor that captures what’s funny about resentment, bitterness, and condescension. Her sharp jabs at “those less fortunate” never feel like bullying and never fall into rude buffoonery. Even as the movie escalates into full-blown wackiness, it still maintains its shrewd edge.

Another strength to this film are the secondary characters. Rose’s prissy, eye-rolling, sarcastically unsympathetic roommate (Zoe Kazan) ends up with the stoner blind guy. Ha! It’s just another delightful quirk in this defiant film where apathy and under-achievement are treated as virtues and perfection is the problem to be overcome. Finally: a romantic comedy with mutually flawed lovers, where no sacrifice or self-improvement is necessary for them to win happiness and each other.

Just to be fair, I will say that there are a few small spots where the script veers into impossible interactions – stupid things that could or would never actually be said. These mini-moments wouldn’t stand out so much if all the other moments in the script were not so true and all the other lines were not so witty. I am not usually a great lover of comedies, and the fact that I am calling this film One of the Best of Tribeca 2016 means it is truly something special. Unfortunately, my opinion doesn’t count for much, and this film may not get a broad theatrical release, so keep an eye out at your local art theater and on television.

News Update: Starz is nearing a deal to pick up Sophie Goodhart’s SXSW premiere My Blind Brother, Variety reports. The outlet shares that the acquisition “will likely be the biggest sale out of this year’s South by Southwest” and is estimated to be in the low seven-figure range. The comedy was reportedly the subject of a bidding war among distributors like Netflix, The Orchard, Sony and Gravitas Ventures.

“Untouchable” Documentary Interview w/ Director David Feige and Editor Jay Sterrenberg

April 27, 2016Film Commentary2016 Tribeca Film Festival, Albert Maysles Award, David Feige Director, David Feige HelenHighly, David Feige interview, David Feige legal documentary, David Feige sex documentary, Derek W. Logue, Feige Documentary, Feige Maysels, Feige sex abuse legislation, Feige sex offender interview, Feige Untouchable interview, Feige Untouchable review, Helen Highly, Helen Kaplow, HelenHighly, HelenHighly David Feige, HelenHighly documentary interview, HelenHighly Untouchable, Jacob Wetterling, Jay Sterrenberg interview, Jay Sterrenberg Untouchable, Lauren Book, legal justice documentary Untouchable, Megan's Law, Once Fallen, OnceFallen, OnceFallen.com, Patty Wetterling, pedophile film, pedophile movie, Ron Book, Ron Book lobbyist, sex abuse legislation film, sex crime documentary, sex crime recidivism, sex criminal documentary, sex criminal registry, sex offender documentary, sex offender recidivism, sex-offender film, sex-offender laws, sexual abuse laws, Sterrenberg Meerkat, Steve Meyer cartoon, Tribeca Albert Maysles, Untouchable Albert Maysels, Untouchable Documentary, Untouchable documentary review, Untouchable Feige, Untouchable Film, Untouchable Interview, Untouchable Meerkat, Untouchable Movie, Untouchable review, Untouchable trailer, Untouchable Tribeca, Wetterling Act, Wetterling Crimes Against Children Acthelenhighly

Helen Highly Alarmed by the Shocking Revelations in Untouchable, Interviews the Documentary Director and Editor

Ricocheting from the halls of power to the cardboard homes of a marginalized pariah people, “Untouchable” is an enlightening documentary that defies expectations and challenges assumptions to argue for a new understanding of how we legislate sexual abuse and think about sex offenders.

Shawna Baldwin, sex offender, watches her children board a school bus.

David Feige is writer, producer and director. Feige was winner of the Albert Maysles New Documentary Director Award at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, for Untouchable.
Jay Arthur Sterrenberg is editor and writer. Sterrenberg, of Meerkat Media Collective, was consulting editor of Five Star, winner of the Best Editing award at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival.

Interview by HelenHighly

Untouchable Film Synopsis: When the most influential lobbyist in Florida discovers that the nanny has sexually abused his daughter, he harnesses his extraordinary political power to pass the toughest sex offender laws in the nation. Untouchable chronicles his crusade, and its impact on the lives of several of the 800,000 people forced to live under the kinds of laws he has championed.

Attorney-turned-filmmaker David Feige delves fearlessly into a confounding and taboo issue, weaving together stories of sexual abuse victims with those of sex offenders as well as the advocates and academics who argue the many sides of the situation. The result is a strange sort of documentary-thriller that reveals a surprisingly twisted public health crisis where the victims and perpetrators are inextricably linked by a legal system gone awry.

“…a meticulous fairness that is bizarrely unsettling.” – HelenHighly

HH: A film about sex offenders. Not exactly an appealing outing to the movies. Why did you choose this unlikable topic, how did you get funding, and do you really expect people to go and see it?

Feige: Why this issue? Because I didn’t think anybody else was going to pick it up. I worked 15 years as a public defender, and even as the Trial Chief of the office, I tended to take on the most difficult cases. That’s what I do. Look, there are lots of people who are willing to take on certain issues – innocence, the death penalty, the drug war. All of these things already have a built in constituency and already have a lot of people who are willing to write and talk and make movies about them. In a way, they are the low-hanging fruit of the criminal justice reform discussion. This is not.

David Feige, Director of "Untouchable" — David Feige, Director of “Untouchable”

This is about as difficult a subject as you can find. It is complicated terrain and few people are willing to venture out into it. For that reason, the film was nearly impossible to fund. Basically, no one would fund it. But I made the film for exactly the reason that nobody would fund it – because I was interested in the most complex and most difficult questions. I was interested in the hardest questions in the criminal justice system, not the easy ones. The film is still in debt but… at least it got made.

Will people see it? Well, when people do see the film they react positively and strongly and they recognize the value of what we’ve done here. It’s an extremely thought-provoking film that makes you see the entire subject in a new way, and I believe that despite the subject matter, it’s really engaging and emotionally satisfying, which makes it absolutely worth seeing.

HH: And what is the status of the movie now? You won the Best New Documentary Director award at Tribeca. Has the film been picked up for distribution or broadcast yet?

Feige: Nope. We are still looking. We are talking to distributors, and we are also interested in finding a broadcast partner. It’s my hope that the film will have a wide release and a vibrant life and reach a huge and diverse audience. That’s my hope.

HH: Jay, talk to me about the structure of the film. When watching it, it was almost like a thriller in that you saved the most powerful punches for the end. I mean, I was so profoundly shocked by all the “twists” that come late in the film that I almost wanted to go watch it again because I felt I had been watching it wrong, or with the wrong assumptions. Why did you opt to keep the audience in the dark for so long?

Sterrenberg: It’s interesting that you saw it that way. That was not specifically our strategy. But it’s a very complicated issue, and people tend to come into it with preconceived notions and very strong feelings. So, we thought it was best to meet people where they are. We wanted to leave room for the audience to have a lot of different opinions and perspectives and then bring them along slowly, through the complexity, point by point.

We bring you in through Ron and Laura’s personal story. They have had this nightmare experience where she is repeatedly sexually abused by her nanny, and as her father, he has a desire to punish the offender as harshly as possible and forever. And it’s a sensible and legitimate desire. And any audience can totally relate to that — the horror and outrage. So, we wanted to start there. And then we slowly take the audience on this journey down the rabbit hole of part of the criminal justice system that no one wants to engage with.

Feige: You gotta remember, we’re making a movie, which has to have a narrative and an emotional flow to it and so you can’t just… I could make a movie like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and just do a PowerPoint with a bunch of numbers, but that’s not going to be effective with this subject. So, we do present a lot of data, but this film is fundamentally character driven. It’s about delving into the life experience of people. It’s not a science lesson. It’s not a polemic. It’s a very complex and emotional look into the lives of people on several sides of this issue, who have all suffered tremendously.

Sterrenberg: It needed to be a carefully paced process, introducing these people who are considered monsters by society and looking at them as if they are human. It’s not that we are showing these sex offenders as sympathetic as much as human. That’s why we have three characters (real people) who are parents of children who have been abused as well as three characters (also real people) who are sex offenders. And it’s a dramatic evolution, the way these characters themselves transform in their own stories and their own attitudes. And different people watching will have different reactions, but we do take them through a range of perspectives.

HH: You talk about transformations, and one of the most jolting is Patty Wettlerling, who is the mother of a boy who was kidnapped at gunpoint by a masked man, never to be seen again.

Sterrenberg: Right. That case resulted in the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children Act — the first national sex offender registry.

HH: But after we go through her heartbreaking story and see how she had dedicated her life to advocating for the memory of her son, we finally learn that she has changed sides in the legal battle; she no longer supports the law that was named for her own son. That felt like a bomb exploding in my brain.

Sterrenberg: Yes, she says that she feels that the law named for her son has been “hijacked” and that now it has become counter-productive. The Wetterling Act was about police notification. It was later that Megan’s Law and other public notification laws were enacted, and those have become extremely controversial.

OnceFallen Rally Against Myth-Based Sex Offender Laws

Feige: I want to be clear that I’m not advocating any particular position on this. It’s important to me that when I’m talking about this I’m talking about either what the science shows or what the experts in the film argue rather than my own point of view. I want to raise the questions, flag the social science, and then I want people to agree or disagree as they see fit. That said, the social science is quite clear.

HH: Yes, but the misunderstanding has been enormous. So, the data the film presents is truly amazing. Astounding, actually.

Feige: Right. And so many people want to discount these numbers by saying they were done by some, you know, some pro-sex-offender social scientist or something, but what’s so amazing about these numbers is that they are almost all done by departments of corrections, and probation departments and such.

HH: And the irony is that the opposite of that suspicion is true. The facts as we all think we know them – have repeatedly been told are facts – are actually completely erroneous and unsubstantiated. The movie explains that the phrase “frightening and high recidivism rate” for sex offenders came from an old Psychology Today article in 1986, which was simply invalid and dead wrong.

Feige: Exactly. 80% was the number that was in the Psychology Today article. And that recidivism rate, and that exact phrase, is still used today to justify, over and over and over, these very, very stringent laws – hundreds of laws across the country, which have enormous impact on people’s lives. And that article had no backup data at all and was not even written by a social scientist. The guy was a “rehabilitation counselor.” But he doesn’t have a PhD, and he’s not a social scientist. And there was no study.

That is why, in every place in the film that we quote a statistic, I felt it was extremely important to make clear where we were getting it, so we actually show the cover page for each report that we quote in the film.

HH: And the actual recidivism rate, according to recent, legitimate studies is not even close to 80%. It’s not even double digits.

Feige: 3.5% is the most reliable number. We took the biggest study – that’s the 1994 DOJ study that followed literally everybody released in 15 states, and that had a number of close to 10,000, so that is really the best three-year recidivism number around, from the study with the biggest sample size. It’s the study done by the United States Department of Justice.

HH: And you’ve explained to me that this 3.5% recidivism rate is the lowest recidivism rate for any crime other than murder. Lower than any other violent crime.

Feige: Correct.

HH: And this is information that wasn’t even included in the movie. The movie is full of dramatic statistics, and still there is more.

Feige: There are a lot of other subjects – related subjects that we cut out of the film, which deserve their own treatment. We didn’t dig into all the data because … as I’ve said, it’s an extremely complicated story.

Sterrenberg: And it was most important to follow the characters and understand their diverse experiences. That’s what makes the numbers make sense.

HH: Okay, so the film does address the issue that we have a completely different category of restrictions and continued punishment for sex offenders after they have been released from prison than we do for any other type of criminal, even other violent offenders, all based on false beliefs.

Feige: Today, a large part of the misunderstanding comes from the way people count. If you count re-incarceration due to “technical violations,” you get a much larger number. Technical violations might be drinking alcohol, associating with another sex offender, not having compliant housing, staying at an unapproved address, or if you’re still getting polygraphs, there is one called “masturbating to an unapproved script,” where if they don’t like what you thought about when you masturbated, you are in violation – you go back to prison. In the movie, we show one man who was eight minutes late arriving home (he was wearing a GPS ankle bracelet), and he was sent back to prison for four years.

Homeless sex offenders squat in an industrial zone on the outskirts of Miami.

HH: I remember that. He was late because he was on a bus that was running late, and he was returning from his low-paying job that was two and half hours away, due to the legal restrictions that prevented him from living anywhere near civilized life. And he actually phoned his parole officer at the time, while on the bus, to explain that he would be a few minutes late. And still he was sent back to prison. For a ten minute delay. It seems unbelievable.

Feige: It was actually only eight minutes, to be exact. And that’s not an isolated incident. His story is fairly typical.

If you’re counting actual sex-crime convictions for previous sex-crime offenders… For every 100 sex-offender prison releases, 70 are sent back and only one of those is for a sex crime. That’s according to California Department of Corrections data.

HH: You turn on TV any night of the week and there is an episode of Law & Order or such, and they are always telling us this misinformation – that the recidivism rate for sex offenders is dangerously high; they will always re-offend. We hear that over and over, so we believe it. It’s mind-blowing to realize that these people are essentially being forced into a lifestyle that is unlivable, where it’s nearly impossible not to have some sort of technical violation.

Sterrenberg: There are multiple areas of misunderstanding. Let’s say you’re a 17 year old teenager dating a 15 or 16 year old teenager. When you turn 18, and your girlfriend or boyfriend is now 16 or 17, suddenly you are a sex offender. And you are treated by the law the same as a violent rapist, and you will live under these same sex-offender restrictions for the rest of your life. These laws are forever. And they paint all offenders with a very broad brush.

In the film, we meet Shawn Baldwin, who is an example of this type of situation, and we see her many years later, now trying to raise her own children but unable to even accompany them to the playground because of her sex offender status.

HH: I think the general public has no idea that this type of confusion is going on. And what I learned in the film is that there is a significant shame factor that prevents people like Shawna from speaking up and arguing for her own justice.

Feige: And these miscalculations and misunderstandings have severe consequences, because they are used to validate these draconian laws. Residency restriction laws in particular – for example, sex offenders cannot live within 2500 feet of a school or park, which often leaves little to no viable real estate where these people can live. This is what pushed a lot of folks under bridges and into makeshift homeless encampments. These laws have a devastating and destabilizing effect on the population because they are so effective in preventing people from forming relationships, getting homes, keeping jobs, etc. They actually decrease the ability of released convicts to be successful. And so that perversely suggests that they are increasing the likelihood of recidivism.

In addition, it appears that Megan’s Law and public notification have essentially no effect on suppression of sexually related violence, and what that in turn means is that we are subjecting three quarters of a million people to some very serious penalties for no real gain.

That begs the question: Then why are we doing it? And it may be that it’s because it feels good. And it also may be that that’s not a sufficient answer to justify what we’re doing.

HH: The details we’ve discussed here are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the insights and revelations in your film. (Truly: I want readers of this interview to understand that there are so many pieces to the story this film tells, more than even an educated person can imagine, and each is more startling than the next.) You have really succeeded at shattering this mass of misinformation and misconception and then intricately examining all the shards.

Your background as a criminal attorney definitely makes its mark on this movie. The film has an indisputable logic to it, and a kind of relentless veracity that threads through the various emotions and personalities that are presented. You are quite the legal mind and also quite an excellent writer.

Feige: I jokingly say that I’m one of the only people in America who made more money as a writer than as a lawyer.

HH: How would you compare your two roles? Do you feel you’ve had more impact as a lawyer or as a writer and filmmaker?

Feige: Being a public defender, I had a profound impact on a relatively small number of lives. Being a writer or filmmaker, I have a much more diffuse and tangential impact but on a far larger number of lives. I think a robust democracy relies on civil discussion and honest debate, and there is real value in promoting that, especially on topics as complex and emotional as this one.

HH: And you have truly made this an honest discussion. It’s not manipulative; it’s not a tear-jerker.

Feige: I didn’t want this to be one of those movies the viewer has to suffer through.

HH: Well, your intention to involve the audience in a legitimate conversation is apparent. And it is indeed compelling. I’m writing about it because I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

Feige: Most people come away saying “It was challenging and interesting and I couldn’t stop talking about it.” Everybody who has written to me says they couldn’t stop talking about it.

Watch the Trailer:

Update: Untouchable Documentary Doesn’t Go Far Enough & Ron Book is A Monster Yet to Be Slayed, According to OnceFallen.com

HH: I recently saw an online comment about this film, posted by Derek W. Logue, founder of the Sex Offender Advocacy Site OnceFallen.com — a group that fights against what it considers to be unfair and unconstitutional laws, such as those championed by Ron Book, who is the central figure in this documentary. (A Newsweek article called Book, “The Lobbyist Who Put Sex Offenders Under a Bridge”.)

Logue is also shown, briefly, in the documentary; he is the one who organizes the sex-offender rights rally. But his own story is not shown in full in the film. A visit to the OnceFallen site shows just how passionate and hot a topic this is, and gives an indication of how scary-powerful Ron Book is as a lobbyist and political force. The website has an extremist tone, but it merits a look. And Logue’s comment also merits a read (if only for its understandable outrage), so I am posting it here — as I found it on the web, without any fact-checking or endorsement, along with my own comment back to Logue, at the end:

Logue: I was in this film briefly, protesting the Book family. This film didn’t do anything to challenge those monsters. The Books are responsible for forcing hundreds of Miami’s registered citizens into homelessness. It is disgusting to see clips of Ron Book attending fancy dinners, eating steak tartare and getting his shoes shined knowing his policies force hundreds of registered citizens to live by the railroad tracks behind a warehouse.

The film fails to discuss Ron Book’s plea of no contest to a theft charge in the 1980s and a guilty plea for illegal campaign contributions in the 1990s. Ron Book was recently under FBI investigation. Lauren Book is literally BUYING a senate seat, yet she can’t even answer her own questions during a post-screening Q & A. Lauren is inept and nothing but a puppet for daddy Ron and his political cronies.

It is here where Feige fumbled the ball worse than Cam Newton in the Super Bowl. In order to guarantee he wouldn’t get sued by the Books or have them pull their support of the film, Feige had to cater to Ron & Lauren. Thus, instead of any direct challenge to the Book family, Feige’s film dances the issue around them. The Books are never grilled about anything in the film. Feige minimized my rally in the film out of concerns that our message was “too harsh.” He asked me to be nice to Lauren Book because she is “skittish.” I guess it was because Daddy wasn’t there to do the talking for her.

Ultimately, this movie was an utter disappointment. The Books get away again like the bad guys from a Saturday Morning cartoon to return and continue their wicked ways.

Sex-offender humor from OnceFallen website. But…not so funny because it’s true.

HH: I don’t doubt that much of what you say about the Book family is true. But the Books are revealed in this film to be something very different than they originally appear. Feige handles their story, and others, with amazing sensitivity, while carefully and slowly building his case that essentially everything we think we know about this subject is FALSE. When you come into the issue cold, like most of us do, and watch it from beginning to end, the film packs a powerful punch. But it’s smart and dispassionate, which leads to a kind of meticulous fairness that is bizarrely unsettling. In my mind, Feige is like Solomon, but he actually cuts the baby in half.

Peggy Guggenheim & Janis Joplin in “Art Addict” & “Little Girl Blue”

January 15, 2016Film CommentaryAmy Berg, Amy Berg director, Art Addict, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Big Brother and the Holding Company Janis Joplin, Big Brother Holding Company, Big Brother Holding Company Janis, Big Brother Holding Company Joplin, Degenerate art, director Lisa Immordino Vreeland, feminist film, feminist pioneers, FilmRise, guggenheim hitler, Guggenheim Max Ernst, Guggenheim Pollock, Guggenheim Titanic, Helen Highly, Helen Kaplow, Helen Kaplow film review Little Girl Blue Art Addict, Helen Kaplow Janis Joplin, Helen Kaplow Peggy Guggenheim, HelenHighly, HelenHighly film review Art Addict Little Girl Blue, hitler degenerate art, Janis Joplin, Janis Joplin BIrthday, Janis Joplin documentary, Janis Joplin film, Janis Joplin January, Janis Joplin Little Girl Blue, Janis Joplin movie, Janis Joplin Ottis Redding, Janis Joplin PBS, Janis Joplin Pearl Anniversary, Janis PBS American Masters, Janis: Little Girl Blue, Joplin pearl 45, Joplin Pearl album, Joplin Pearl Anniversary, Lisa Immordino Vreeland, Little Girl Blue, Nazi degenerate art, PBS documentary, Peggy Guggenheim, Peggy Guggenheim Art Addict, Peggy Guggenheim documentary, Peggy Guggenheim film, Peggy Guggenheim Jackson Pollock, Peggy Guggenheim Kandinsky, Peggy Guggenheim Marcel Duchamp, Peggy Guggenheim Max Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim modern art, Peggy Guggenheim movie, Peggy Guggenheim Nazis, Peggy Guggenheim nose job, Peggy Guggenheim Sex Addict, Richard Goldstein Vogue, shipwrecked damsels, the eye has to travel, The Hollywood Reporter Peggy Guggenheimhelenhighly

Gotta Gotta Gotta
or
Shipwrecked: Degenerate Damsels in Distress

By HelenHighly

Surrealism is to Peggy Guggenheim as Heroin is to Janis Joplin?

I happened to see Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict, a documentary about famed art-collector Peggy Guggenheim, directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, back-to-back with Janis: Little Girl Blue, a documentary about rock-and-roll star Janis Joplin, directed by Amy Berg. I never would have put the two together in my mind, but seeing their stories so close together, I was amazed at how many unlikely similarities there are. One film makes the case that Peggy Guggenheim was addicted to art itself, and I think the same can be said about Janis Joplin. And the parallels continue, adding up to a sort of double-wide (and double-deep) insight.

Initially, I had planned to compare Peggy to Diana Vreeland, whose daughter, Lisa Immordino Vreeland, made an excellent documentary about her mother, called The Eye Has to Travel. And now Lisa Vreeland has made this documentary about Peggy Guggenheim, using never-before-heard interview tapes of Peggy – with her classy, haut monde dialect (and this is reason enough to see the film). Given their shared filmmaker, it seems impossible not to compare the two female, trailblazing, cultural tastemakers from the same era – Guggenheim and Vreeland.

Janis Joplin, "Little Girl Blue" — Janis Joplin, “Little Girl Blue”

But the comparison between Peggy and Janis is more surprisingly and offers a different type of angle.

[For those who want a simple thumbs up or down: Yes, both films are worth seeing. The Hollywood Reporter writes that the film is “so stuffed with connections and allusions to fabled eras that it’s hard to imagine any [arthouse enthusiast] being bored.” Which film are they referring to? That enticing statement easily applies to both equally. These are both important and fascinating women who lived in legendary times. And both women could fairly be called “feminist pioneers,” although the films about them have a tone that is less historical and more gossip-column.

Neither film will win a Best Documentary award, because they cannot escape being dressed-up biopics, but if you care about art or artists, you will want to look into the lives of these women. And if you already have looked at these lives – through previous films or books, this is an opportunity to refresh your amazement. And both of these films do an excellent job and add new perspectives, or at least new interviews (or newly collected personal letters).

The Guggenheim film is a bit more studied and the Joplin film is a bit more sexy. Neither is as comprehensive or complex as it could be, but… still. Whether you are a fan of modern art or music, or just someone who couldn’t get in to whatever else is playing, Helen Highly suggests you see either or both films. You will be highly entertained and hardly even notice that you are also being educated.]

Now, let’s get to what is interesting:

The fundamental concept in both films is that “art is a drug” – whether making it or collecting it.

The Peggy Guggenheim documentary is actually titled Art Addict, and in it Peggy herself says “I became an addict and couldn’t help it” (and she’s maybe 1/3 joking).

A friend of hers says, “She had an intense hunger for life, and an undertone of unbeatable sadness.” Then Peggy explains how she literally is “most happy when connected, physically, with art,” and demonstrates by actually clutching a sculpture. Similarly, in the Joplin documentary, it is repeated again and again that Janis was happy only when on stage. The stage was a tangible touchstone for Janis, the way a thing of beauty was for Peggy. Nina Simone, whom Joplin highly admired, said that “Janis became an addict because she got hooked into a thing, and it wasn’t drugs. She got hooked into a feeling.” So, both these women felt a bodily attachment to their experience of art. (It was under their skin.) They reveled in these attachments; they lived in them.

But here’s where the plot thickens:

It was widely known in her day (and since then has been extensively written about and discussed) that Peggy Guggenheim had sex with many of the artists she patronized, as well as others in her literati circle – all the more scandalous because of her homeliness.

Peggy Guggenheim was homely., — Peggy Guggenheim was homely.

“Peggy was in bed with Samuel Beckett for four days!” we are told. “She had an affair with Brancusi!” And Ms. Guggenheim made no effort to hide her sexual escapades. In the film, she calls herself “a nymphomaniac.” She claims (not entirely convincingly) to be proud of her immoral exploits, counted at roughly 400 in her own memoirs, and she doesn’t care that her friend Mary McCarthy wrote a very thinly veiled story that essentially called her a slut. The film provides torrid details such as “Peggy Guggenheim lost her virginity at age 23” (printed in text on the screen) and “Peggy had seven abortions.”

But Peggy explains in an interview that she loved these men because they were artists; for her, sex and art went hand in hand. (She collected both art and artists.) So: she was an art addict and a sex addict. And all these sensational details of Peggy’s sexual compulsions are relevant because…? Well, bed-hopping with artists + sexist backlash = damaged reputation. And this brings us to one of the central messages of this film:

Peggy Guggenheim’s addictive lust for art (and artists) cut into her credibility and ultimately obscured her accomplishments.

And the same is true of Janis Joplin, who is perhaps best known for being a drug addict.

Her heroin-and-amphetamine-and-bourbon fueled performances were the signature style that made her famous. And that drug use may have made her great. She was great, but certainly her reputation and legacy as an addict obscured her accomplishments, same as with Peggy. She’ll always have the word “junkie” attached in front of the word “singer.” And finally, her addiction killed her; she died from an overdose in 1970.

In a way, both these women sacrificed their lives to their addictions … to art.

Both documentaries tells us that these women were defined in their youth by their unattractiveness and lack of desirability, and each is described as “insecure,” “vulnerable,” “self-conscious,” and “full of suffering” as a result. (The identical words are used in both films.) In both cases, the women’s indelicate and unconventional looks pushed them to explore new ways of defining themselves and gaining acceptance.

Janis Joplin was profoundly hurt, over and over.

Janis Joplin was teased mercilessly by the boys in grade school, and as a cruel joke in college, the student newspaper named her “Ugliest Man on Campus.” She is described in the film as being “profoundly hurt, over and over.”

Peggy Guggenheim said, “My childhood was excessively unhappy. I have no pleasant memories.” In a classic Peggy story, we are told that she grew up with a nose she hated, and when she finally tried to have it fixed, the plastic surgery was botched and she was left even more unpleasant-looking than before.

Peggy Guggenheim "gutsed out" her bad nose. — Peggy Guggenheim “gutsed out” her bad nose.

She decided not to fix the failed repair and just “guts it out.” She ignored her lack of beauty from then on and focused on her work – her work as a champion and collector of beautiful things. Even then, the documentary explicitly states that she was “the subject of ridicule and disparagement,” due to her perceived desperate attempts at recognition. She was called a narcissist, a pushy rich girl, etc.

Early on, both Peggy and Janis sought to escape their bourgeois lives. Janis called herself “a misfit.” She moved from Texas to San Francisco as a way of breaking out and being free. Peggy moved from the U.S. to Paris and became a bohemian as a way of finding herself. Peggy found herself in modern art, and Janis in music. Both dropped out of college in pursuit of an alternative life. Both were self-educated and self-made.

In the film, Peggy calls herself a “lost girl,” looking for something to fill her life. She was “the wayward Guggenheim.” She tells us that she used modern art to express her inner world and her emotions (and, we assume, to escape the outer world of social expectations and judgment). Peggy is described as “always a rebel,” so it makes sense that in Paris she started her art addiction with Dadaism – the language of disillusionment. Dadaism rejected logic and reason and prized the abstract and psychological. Dadaism was Peggy’s gateway drug into surrealism, which was similar in what it stood against, but was more a language of freedom. (Surrealism is to Peggy as Heroin is to Janis?) It is said that Peggy sought art that was “strange and outrageous.” She wanted to feel “the cutting edge.” (The same edge that appealed to Janis.)

Yet, there was no precedence for women working in the art world; this was Peggy’s own liberation. She created this new identity and purpose for herself. And she didn’t just follow movements; she followed her own intuitions and tastes. The film does make much of the fact that Peggy was advised by some very savvy artists – such as Marcel Duchamp, but Helen Highly suggests that being given advice is a very different thing from selecting which advice to accept, and then implementing it, as Peggy had already proved when she rejected her docile, dignified upbringing. Whoever first had the notion that a certain genre might have potential, is mostly irrelevant; history belongs to the one who Highly Devoted herself to it, who pursued the outlandish, developed the bizarre, and brought them to fruition. While some critics are questioning this film’s gossipy chatter about Peggy’s sex life, Helen is Highly concerned about the film’s continuous insinuation that Peggy was “perhaps” a dilettante who was molded by the men around her rather than a true guiding force in defining what we now call Modern Art. (The fact that Peggy suggests this herself is not valid evidence; self-report is never a credible source, especially when we know that Peggy was quick to tarnish her own reputation.)

Let’s just take three examples from the many artists that Peggy helped introduce to the world, who are now recognized as modern art’s greatest talents (a list very swiftly breezed over in the film):
1) Peggy gave Kandinsky his first show at her gallery. When she tried to persuade her uncle, a prestigious art collector, to purchase a Kandinsky, he foolishly refused and called it “trash.”
2) Peggy also presented the first Rothko exhibition.
3) Peggy is credited with discovering and essentially inventing Jackson Pollock.
Right there alone… (okay, let’s add in Mondrian, Dali, Calder, Miro, Magritte, and more), it’s almost as if without Peggy Guggenheim, there would be no modern art.

Peggy Guggenheim with Jackson Pollock paintings

And that statement is not entirely far-fetched, because one chapter in the loose and lascivious life of this Jewish-American princess is the tale (which is told in the film all too briefly) of Peggy remaining in war-time Paris as others fled, and assembling a collection of 125 modern masterpieces that Hitler officially deemed “Degenerate” and sought to destroy, and then narrowly escaping Paris two days before the Nazis marched into the city, and getting the art out too. Note: Ms. Guggenheim had first asked the Louvre to help her by storing the paintings and sculptures (which included Picasso paintings, btw), but they declined, saying that these pieces were not worth saving.

Brancusi "Bird in Space" — Brancusi “Bird in Space”

Brancusi’s “Bird in Space” sculpture was among the pieces Peggy saved, and I personally would like to thank her for that one. Rumor has it that Peggy had to sleep with Brancusi in order to negotiate a price she could afford, and again I say: Thank You for Your Service.

Peggy didn’t just devote her heart and soul to modern art; she put her life on the line for it. In addition, Peggy saved her lover, Max Ernst, who “didn’t give a damn for her,” by marrying him to get him out of Europe and into America. This makes her a noble figure – a savior of art and artists, even if she was a lonely lady with a disastrous romantic life.

Yes, in her day, she ruined her reputation by reckless fucking (a word Peggy used herself). But in today’s day, I would expect the documentarian to challenge the legitimacy of those judgements. (She liked to get it on with brilliant and talented men. That doesn’t make her stupid, or inept.) Director Lisa Immordino Vreeland tries to stand neutral at a place where Helen Highly believes she should assert her opinion. But I digress.

Let’s go back to: Peggy made a trailblazing transition in her collection and patronage – from surrealist painting, anchored in WWI, to abstract expressionist painting, anchored in WWII – bridging the divide between Europe and America, and she took the art world with her. She discovered new artists who were thinking and working in new ways, and she funded them and encouraged them and presented them to the world. She was a kind of collector that never existed before.

In Little Girl Blue, we learn that Janis Joplin made a similarly significant transition from folk to blues to rock. She started singing folk songs like Joan Baez and Judy Collins, but their gentle sound did not suit Joplin. In San Francisco, Joplin hooked up with Big Brother and the Holding Company, and it wasn’t long before she assumed a leadership role in the band, where she became a pioneer of psychedelic rock. Big Brother and the Holding Company’s appearance at the now-legendary Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 received immense acclaim – particularly for their version (Joplin’s) of “Ball and Chain.” Janis’ wild style and raw, gutsy sound blew the collective mind of the audience. But all of the attention on Janis caused tension between her and her bandmates. Janis Joplin finally went out on her own and has been labeled “the first lady of rock and roll.” She was a kind of singer that never existed before.

Ottis Redding also appeared at the Monterey Festival, and Janis has said that she was strongly influenced by him and his “gotta gotta gotta … try a little tenderness” when she later sang “try try try … a little bit harder.” Both songs share a sense of urgent emotion, but Janis takes it to a whole new level.

Richard Goldstein wrote for the May 1968 issue of Vogue magazine that Joplin was “the most staggering leading woman in rock… she slinks like tar, scowls like war… clutching the knees of a final stanza, begging it not to leave… Janis Joplin can sing the chic off any listener.”

Stevie Nicks considers Joplin one of her idols, and says, “She sang in the great tradition of the rhythm and blues singers that were her heroes, but she brought her own dangerous, sexy rock and roll edge to every single song. She really gave you a piece of her heart.”

It’s worth noting that this documentary does not include a lot of Janis Joplin music. Unlike the recent movie about the Beach Boys, Love and Mercy, which had an inspiring and extensive soundtrack of true Beach Boy tunes, this film relies more on commentary and quotes, such as those above. And at its core is a collection of letters that Janis wrote to her family and friends, which do indeed provide a candid view of the troubled and tender person behind the famous name.

According to the two movies, Peggy had a lot more sex than Janis did (surprisingly). But both women were haunted by the same distressed efforts to find love and affection. Both suffered many romantic disappointments and are said to have lived very sad lives. Janis is seen onscreen saying:

“I want to be happy so fucking bad.”

And at another point in the film she explains that her career ambition is all about her “need to be loved.” One widely quoted critic wrote that Joplin had “desperate mating calls from every song.”

One more thing united these two unique women – their honest individuality. Janis said that her artistic ambition was to be true to herself. She sang raw because that was how she felt, and she wouldn’t pretend anything prettier. The film makes a point of insisting that Janis refused to “lie” in her music, or follow anyone else’s rules.

Of Peggy Guggenheim, her film stated that for all her eccentricities, she was a woman “without guile.” Her yearning and her passion were sincere, and she held herself to a high standard of honesty, especially because her mentor, Marcel Duchamp, preached the merit of being a self-actualized individual without artifice. The film quotes Duchamp as defining his code of “individualism” as “everyone for oneself – like a shipwreck.” It’s ironic that Peggy’s father died in a shipwreck; he went down on the Titanic when the ship sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1912. Peggy was barely a teenager, and she was forever traumatized by the event. (Just an interesting detail.)

So, where does this leave us?

Both women were sad and lonely and desperate for attention.
Both women were addicts.
But their insecurities and addictions propelled them to greatness.
They each accomplished something never-before done.
In response to their own addictions, each changed the world of art (otherwise known as “the world”).
And then their addictions ruined them.

And Helen Highly suggests that the least we can do, as recipients of their greatness and inheritors of their legacies – Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart” and all the soul-searching music that has been inspired by it since, and the war-and-peace-making avant garde art that Peggy Guggenheim nurtured and saved and promoted and shared, and all that came after and was inspired by those works… the least we can do is remember them with appropriate respect and appreciation, and without judging with our traditional conventions and morality.

They suffered and we reaped the rewards. When we think of them, we should try a little tenderness.

Click For News: January is Janis Joplin’s Film, Birthday & “Pearl” Anniversary Month

Click For News: Janis Joplin Documentary “Little Girl Blue” to Air on PBS’ American Masters Series

News Update: “Janis: Little Girl Blue” will premiere May 3 on PBS, a day before the DVD and Blu-ray will be available via FilmRise. The companion album, Janis: Little Girl Blue (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), is on sale now.

For Fun: Who Was the Bigger Addict? Janis Joplin & Heroin vs Peggy Guggenheim & Art Click the image below to VOTE and see results:

Carrie Fisher and the “Star Wars” Review I Didn’t Write

January 3, 2016Film CommentaryAging Carrie Fisher, Carrie Fisher, Carrie Fisher Body Criticism, Carrie Fisher death, carrie fisher news, Carrie Fisher quit acting, Carrie Fisher quit twitter, carrie fisher review, Carrie Fisher Rolling Stone, Carrie Fisher Star Wars, carrie fisher twitter, Carrie Fisher twitter war, Carrie Fisher Twittter, Carrie Fisher Weight, Carrie Fisher weight gain, change galaxy, Debbie Reynolds death, Disney Carrie Fisher, Disney George Lucas, Fat Carrie Fisher, George Lucas white slavers, Harrison Ford, Helen Highly, Helen Highly Recommends Carrie Fisher Quit Twitter, Helen Kaplow, Helen Kaplow Carrie Fisher Star Wars review, Helen Kaplow Star Wars Review I Couldn't Write, HelenHighly, Kyle Smith Carrie Fisher, Kyle Smith New York Post, Mark Hamill, new star wars, Old Carrie Fisher, quit twitter, star wars film review, star wars movie review, star wars news, star wars review, Star Wars Review I Couldn't Write HelenHighly, Star Wars The Force Awakens, star wars trilogy, stop tweeting, The Force Awakens review HelenHighly, Young Carrie Fisherhelenhighly

Helen Highly Recommends Carrie Fisher Quit Twitter
or
Am I That Guy?!

by HelenHighly

Q: Is it true that HelenHighly, a self-professed socially-and-politically-conscious woman, walked out of the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and immediately made a comment about Carrie Fisher’s body?
A: Yes. Should I feel guilty? Not sure yet.

Q: Was it rude and inappropriate for journalist Kyle Smith to publicly suggest to Carrie Fisher that she give up acting if she didn’t like continually having her body scrutinized and criticized by everyone and anyone due to the way she aged?
A: Yes. I think we can all agree that disrespect is always the wrong approach for a professional when speaking about one’s subject, and certainly the wrong way to speak about a beloved Princess.

Q: Did Carrie Fisher show us all up by replying with simultaneous wit, candor, and bada-bing punch, thus reminding those who criticized and/or gossiped that she is better than them (us), and that she still has it – “it” being bright, lively talent?
A: Yes indeed. Go Carrie!

But the harder question remains: That nasty reporter guy judged Carrie Fisher’s body, and HelenHighly also judged Carrie Fisher’s body. Am I that guy?!*

Here’s the story:

I am no Star Wars fan. However, I got an assignment to write about the new movie “Star Wars:….mumble.. whatever.” The assignment was for The Film Box, the mostly action-movie website where I occasionally post commentary. (I provide balance.) To counter the geek perspective, I had been asked to write from a non-fan woman’s point of view. But until now, I have not completed my Star Wars assignment, because I couldn’t think of anything interesting to say.

“Do I feel guilty? Hell no; Lucas made $4 billion.”

Correction: In an effort to deliver something, I did write a news blurb that unfairly attacked George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, for jokingly using the term “white slavers” in regard to the Disney Co., to whom he sold the franchise for $4 billion in 2012 and now is criticizing for their handling of his “kids.” And then I wrote another news story announcing that he had apologized, but I doubted his sincerity. So, I got two articles out of Lucas, both based on over-blown nonsense. Do I feel guilty? Hell no; Lucas made $4 billion selling overblown nonsense (named Star Wars). He’s filthy rich; his feelings don’t matter. (Although, it might bear mentioning that during this attack on what Lucas said, no one commented on what he looked like.) But back to this story:

I did want to see the movie just because it got so crazy-much attention in the media that I felt I was obligated to see it, as a U.S. citizen and occupant of our galaxy. I admit that the film itself did nothing for me, but I did enjoy watching the audience respond enthusiastically each time one of their old favorites (and old, favorites – with comma) – be it actor or spaceship – made an appearance.

The Beloved "Star Wars" Trilogy — The Beloved Star Wars Trilogy

These old favorites, brought back from the cult trilogy (1977 – 1983), include male leads, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill. And also there is the female lead, Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) – the adventure-heroine and super-hot It-Girl of the original Star Wars, and an idolized icon because of it. I am told that a generation of teenage boys grew up with posters on their bedroom walls of Carrie Fisher in a gold bikini– the same metal bikini she wore as a costume in the second film. That poster is from a photo-shoot Fisher did with Rolling Stone, back in 1983, when she was a 27-year-old starlet. Pretty hip to be on the cover of Rolling Stone – twice, actually.

Carrie Fisher Rocks with "Rolling Stone" — Carrie Fisher Rocks with Rolling Stone

Fisher has gone on to have a successful career in the industry – as an actress, producer, and screenwriter, including writing the semi-autobiographical film Postcards from the Edge, (based on one of her own hit books) in which the Carrie-ish character is portrayed by none other than Meryl Streep (the best actress ever). Carrie Fisher is Somebody.

But to the people in the movie theater with me, watching the latest Star Wars film-phenomenon, Carrie Fisher is and always will be Princess Leia, the great and legendary… (I don’t know; this is where they lose me). And those people literally cheered for Carrie Fisher – not only with excitement when they first saw her in this new film, but also after each scene in which she appeared.

So, Carrie: People love you. They love seeing you on screen. Don’t doubt that fact.

And I will say that, for me (and I believe for most others as well), Carrie Fisher brought an authentic warmth and humanity to a movie that is… mostly metal. Okay, I probably stand alone with my “mostly metal” comment, but I challenge anyone to say they did not both enjoy and respect Fisher’s performance in this film.

“For Carrie to escape the unfair cruelties of this world, she would have to get on a spaceship and find another galaxy, far, far away.”

Well, I never wrote the film review because I decided that I am not Star-Wars-knowledgeable enough to say anything intelligent about the movie. And I was going to walk away and start writing my next commentary – slated to be a combo-review of two different documentaries about great women– Peggy Guggenheim and Janis Joplin (who seem to me to be surprisingly similar). But then, I couldn’t escape the buzzing news about the great Star Wars woman. Here’s what:

On Tuesday, January 29^th, Fisher, age 59, sent a message to her 850,000 Twitter followers, asking them to stop scrutinizing and criticizing how she has aged over the past 30 years. Apparently there had been a relentless stream of unkind and insulting comments.

To those haters she shockingly said that they could “blow us”. (!!!)
(“Us” means Fisher, her body, and her character Leia)

“Please stop debating about whether or not I have aged well. Unfortunately it hurts all 3 of my feelings. My body hasn’t aged as well as I have. Blow us.”
[Twitter text abbreviations and jargon have been translated, but that was her message.]

Then Fisher re-tweeted statements from supporters who claimed that her co-stars, Harrison Ford – age 73 and Mark Hamill – age 64, do not face the same level of scrutiny. In another tweet, Fisher shared her sentiments that “youth and beauty are not accomplishments, they’re the temporary happy.”

Okay, my first thought was: That’s a Twitter Win for Carrie. Good for her.

But, my second thought was: Eegads. I remembered (and here I confess) that the first words out of my mouth when I left the theater were about Carrie Fisher’s body. (Am I a hater, like those others?!*) I commented that the film almost never showed her full body. As I recall (and I could be wrong, because honestly, the movie did not hold my close attention), it seemed to me that she was always in close-up – just her head. And at one point they (awkwardly, I thought) cut to a close-up of her hand. The few times that we did see her body were in distant wide-shots. So, I concluded, they must have used a body double for Fisher – someone thinner, and then only used her for head-shots, and hand-shots.

Carrie Fisher Before She Lost Some Weight

I noticed this because I had recently seen Fisher do the talk-show circuit and had observed that she had become a large woman (which is perfectly understandable; she is no spring chicken anymore). I hear tell that Fisher lost weight for the film and then unfortunately gained it back before her publicity tour. Hmm…even if true…Obviously, her starlet days are behind her (it’s been 38 years!). I was just wondering about why they chose not to show her true body in the movie – why they made her look thinner than she really is, or was. Are Star Wars royalty not allowed to gain weight?

I did also make the somewhat snarky comment that Carrie obviously “had a lot of work done” and it doesn’t look real. She’s so smart; I thought she would be wiser than to go that route. And so I judged that Carrie Fisher is vain and definitely looks worse for wear. And Disney is shallow (duh) and doesn’t want fat heroines. The company probably only cares about profit (as Lucas later accused). That was my brilliant sidewalk analysis.

I could think of nothing to say about the movie itself because… it’s not my thing. However, I personally have repeatedly gained and lost (and lost and gained) weight throughout my many years, and now I am almost as old as Carrie Fisher, and I have indeed considered the possibility of plastic surgery. I have nothing against it in principle. I just worry that it usually doesn’t look good and ends up making the person look older. My point is this: The Empire and/or The Alliance mean nothing to me. And the thing I could most relate to in the film was how Carrie Fisher (and I) have aged. (Am I her in this story?*)

Carrie Fisher Has Had "Work Done" — Carrie Fisher Has Had “Work Done”

A few days later, Kyle Smith, some nasty troll from the New York Post, responded to what he called Fisher’s “Twittantrum” (Twitter-tantrum) with a message to Carrie that she should “quit acting” if she isn’t prepared to put up with her looks being judged. And he wrote:

“Fisher is a public figure. If she didn’t want the public to talk about her, she could have spent the last 40 years teaching kindergarten. As for whether it’s ‘messed up’ for Hollywood to prefer pretty people to appear in its films, Fisher made millions off being pretty. Far from being bitter about this, she and other actresses who profited nicely from their looks should be grateful they had a turn at the top.”

Ouch. That’s hard-core. (But doesn’t the part about “if you get rich off your work, you are fair game for unfairness” sound a bit like what I thought about George Lucas? Is this unfairness exclusively allocated to women?)

Carrie did not back down. She then tweeted:

“Ok, I quit acting. NOW, can I not like being judged for my looks? Tell me what to do & who to be, oh wise New York Post columnist, you GENIUS.”

Ha! Carrie wins again!

She won because she has gotten smarter and funnier as she has aged (due to her years of experience), so she out-wits the brat reporter, and she out-earns him too. In the contest between brains and beauty, I always prefer brains. Although, clearly, Disney always prefers beauty. And also Hollywood at large. Does Carrie’s winning against the troll and even Disney mean that she will be spared hurt feelings? Alas, that responsibility is hers. I am sorry to drag out the hackneyed advice, but dear Carrie Fisher: “Other people can only hurt your feelings if you let them.”

You did have your turn at the beautiful top (and you rocked it – with Rolling Stone), and then you also went on to be a writer and a true creative talent. And in your old, unattractive age, you actually got paid an awful lot more to appear in Star Wars than you did when you were young and beautiful, didn’t you? If you will only click your heels three times, you will see that you had already won, before this twitter war started.

Helen Highly suggests that you quit your twitter account (rather than acting) and stop listening to the peons, and then continue with whatever career you choose.

Note: I am sure that if a full media search were conducted, it would be proven true that more people were more quick to comment about Fisher’s age and looks than they were her co-stars’. However, Helen Highly asserts that the second thing out of her mouth upon leaving the Star Wars movie was an unflattering comment about the appearance of Mark Hamill and his bad facelift. (C’mon.) And then, soon after, Helen also Highly analyzed the dilapidated appearance and infamous personal life of Harrison Ford (who, over his many years, has been gossiped about at least as often as he has been praised).

Is it true that ageism and sexism continue to exist in Hollywood as well as throughout the worlds of business and romance? Yes. Is it true that some inferior people will take every opportunity to say something nasty about those better? (sigh) Yes. And will those problems be corrected during Carrie Fisher’s lifetime? No. For Carrie to escape the unfair cruelties of this world, she would have to get on a spaceship and find another galaxy, far, far away.

*Footnote: Am I that guy? Am I a hater? Am I Carrie Fisher? Well, as they say, you are actually everybody in your dream.

Carrie Fisher died unexpectedly 12/27/2016, and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, died one day later. Read my combo obit and film review of their recent documentary Bright Lights.

Click for News: George Lucas Says Disney White Slavers to Charlie Rose.

Click for News: George Lucas Disney Apology for White Slavers Comment.

Quentin Tarantino’s Hateful Eight Review

December 27, 2015Film Commentary70-mm format, Abraham Lincoln letter, blue speckled coffee pot, blue speckled enamelware, cowboy coffee pot, enamelware, Ennio Morricone, film catharsis, Hateful 8 film review, Hateful 8 movie review, Hateful 8 review, Hateful Eight 70-mm, Hateful Eight 70mm, hateful eight carrie, Hateful Eight Extended, Hateful Eight film, Hateful Eight HelenHighly, Hateful Eight Hell is other people, Hateful Eight miniseries, Hateful Eight misogyny, Hateful Eight Netflix, Hateful Eight Netflix review, Hateful Eight No Exit, Hateful Eight review, Hateful Eight review HelenHighly, Hateful Eight Sartre, Helen Kaplow Hateful Eight review, Helen Kaplow Quentin Tarantino Hateful Eight Review, HelenHighly Hateful 8 review, HelenHighly Hateful Eight, HelenHighly Hateful EIght miniseries, HelenHighly Hateful EIght review, horror in the wild west, horror western, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jennifer Jason Leigh Daisy, Jennifer Jason Leigh Hateful Eight, jennifer jason leigh sissy spacek, Jennifer Jason Leigh Sissy Spacek blood, Killer Coffee Pot, Lincoln letter, movie catharsis, Panavision 70mm, Quentin blood, Quentin Tarantino, Samuel Jackson, Sartre No Exit, Sergio Leone, Sissy Spacek Carrie, Tarantino 70-mm film, Tarantino 70mm film, Tarantino 70mm movie, Tarantino blood, tarantino thriller, Tarantino western, The Hateful Eighthelenhighly

Hateful Eight: Horror in the Wild West

By HelenHighly

"The Hateful Eight" with Cowboy Font — “The Hateful Eight” with Cowboy Font

I will follow Quentin Tarantino’s lead, and like this movie, The Hateful Eight, I will allow this review to be indulgently long. And like Tarantino, I will break it into “chapters,” using titled headers.

[Note: This review was originally published in 2015 but is being updated 5/2019 because of the new, Netflix release of The Hateful Eight Extended Version as a miniseries, now available for streaming.]

Prelude: It’s dreadful and wonderful

“Damn. Tarantino never fails to amaze,” I wrote in my book, breathless (having just gasped my heart into my lungs). It was only intermission, and I was already getting high off the crazy-violent depravity-fumes that Tarantino was releasing into the theater. I was glad for the break, to get some fresh air. But hey, he went more than an hour and a half (the running time of most other films) before a shot was even fired. He (and Samuel Jackson) made us wait. And it was hot-blooded, high-tension waiting – like the most highly-charged sexual foreplay that brings you right up to the edge of the cliff, and then, still not giving what you crave, hangs you perilously over the side, where you are clutching for your life and consummation. It’s dreadful and wonderful.

Part One: The Eighth Movie by Quentin Tarantino

First there is an orchestral overture. This movie is being presented as an old-fashioned 70-mm cinematic roadshow, complete with overture and intermission – in limited release. (Only about 40 venues will get this added razzle-dazzle, which adds up to 3+ hours. Most theaters will show the 35-mm version, without the intermission, and slightly shorter.) The grand-opening music is by Ennio Morricone, the legendary Sergio Leone collaborator and the iconic master of scores for the most famous old Westerns (including The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Fistful of Dollars). The much-discussed twist of the movie is its underlying mystery plot, but the biggest mystery might be how Tarantino got this musical giant, who is now pushing 90 years old, to create a score for one of Tarantino’s unabashedly bad-taste, gore-fest films. For this alone, Tarantino is amazing.

The film opens big – a sprawling view of snow-covered mountains as wide and vivid as you’ve ever seen. And a six-horse stage coach is racing across the white, barren landscape, trying to outrun the howling blizzard that pursues it. Tarantino got at least this one epic shot from his much-touted, Ultra-Panavision 70mm-format camera. (“These are not the same kind of lenses used to shoot Ben-Hur; they are the same lenses,” Tarantino has boasted.)

Click: More about the 70-mm format, from Tarantino, including, “Man, that is going to the movies, and that is worth saving, and we need to see more of that.” – interview with Mike Fleming Jr. at Deadline Hollywood (2nd paragraph)

Click: What Is 70-mm Film, and Why Is It Worth Seeing on the Big Screen? by Sarah Gorr

When the opening credits are plastered up on the screen – static, not scrolling, they are bold red and black, vintage, cowboy-movie lettering against a bright white background, like an old-style movie poster. The Hateful Eight (nod to Leone), along with an intro line: “The 8th Movie by Quentin Tarantino.” Wow. This guy is proud of himself, and in addition: This guy loves movies! He is putting himself all-in and relishing every classic going-to-the-movies moment. And it works; I start off excited, like I am going on a cinematic adventure, led by someone who definitely knows the way.

"The Hateful Eight" with Tarantino — “The Hateful Eight” with Tarantino

So: The dazzling, white-snow wide-shot is held for a long time – plenty of time to take it all in, and then he cuts to a tight close-up of an old, rotting skeleton hanging from a wooden cross (in 70-mm vibrant enormity). Snow blows across the skull as Tarantino pulls the camera out very, very slowly, finally showing the cross standing isolated against the immense, empty landscape. “Think about it,” I can almost hear him saying. “It’s a skeleton, and a cross, and snow – primal.” (Tarantino does actually take to narrating his own film in the second half, which is surprising and quirky.)

"The Hateful Eight," a rare extrerior shot — “The Hateful Eight,” a rare extrerior shot

Part Two: The Door is Nailed Shut

What follows the grandiose and traditional opening is a crazed mash-up of Wild-West cowboy-hats-and-shotguns (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) and an Agatha Christie whodunit-mystery (And Then There Were None), an over-the-top blood-splattered horror flick (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), plus another blood-soaked film for good measure (the revenge-horror classic, Carrie), lines of dialogue as witty and well-crafted as Shakespeare (let’s go with Titus Andronicus, his bloodiest tragedy), and Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential play No Exit.

About the latter: Characters are punished by being locked in a room together for eternity. The original title of this 1944 French play is actually the French equivalent of the legal term “in camera,” referring to a private discussion behind closed doors. English translations have also been performed under the titles No Way Out, Vicious Circle, and Dead End, all of which would have been appropriate titles for this movie.

“Hell is other people” – Sartre

The movie begins vast and spacious, as I have described, and then quickly goes indoors and claustrophobic. The travelers from the stage coach take shelter from the storm in a remote, one-room roadhouse, which already holds some questionable characters and is now filled with a motley assortment of killers (some outlaws, some lawful). The beloved owner of the roadhouse is suspiciously absent, and the only door is literally nailed shut. (The latch has recently been broken, so wood planks must be nailed across the door and the wall, to keep the blizzard winds from blowing in.) No one can enter or exit without breaking the boards away from the door. And it’s a full house. Sartre’s famous line, “Hell is other people” might as well have been painted on the cabin wall in blood – Charlie Manson-style.

And this is the brilliant and evil genius of the film. It starts as a customary, wide-screen Western (with what one would wrongly assume are stoic and laconic cowboys) and converts to a theatrical, dialogue-driven parlor drama (with a sadistic twist). And that spectacular 70-mm camera, made for the broad, epic outdoors, is used to create a small, interior, human-face epic, depicting a brutal, cabin-fever-dream that is sweating with saturated details.

Does this story offer an insightful socio-political look into the heart of America – then and now? Is it saying, as Matt Singer writes, at Screen Crush, that America is “a melting pot where everyone gets burned”? Or is it a giddy, gruesome mess full of miserable mayhem, that goes on for way too long? Yes. And Yes. And toss in a few more theories, and it’s those as well. It’s a gluttonous feast of rich genres and saucy conceits– just in time for the holidays, where gluttonous feasts are the way we roll.

Click: Tarantino talks about how TV Westerns were his inspiration, more than movies, especially in terms of the guys-trapped-in-a-room storyline. – interview at Deadline (4th paragraph)

Part Three: Abraham Lincoln is a BFF

Introduce Samuel Jackson and Jennifer Jason Leigh, and you need not even mention any of the other excellent cast members (although they all kick ass); these two steal the show. One highlight is when Samuel Jackson delivers a long, slow (+ slower, + longer) monologue that is increasingly horrifying and devastating and ultimately beyond-beyond shocking and unbearable. And it is magnificent. I don’t think I can reveal the big, shocking element without spoiling it. But I will say that it is a deadly monologue. Jackson literally destroys a man with these words. And you see that man – a one-time great army General, melt down in front of Jackson, like the Wicked Witch melted and burned when Dorothy poured the lethal bucket of water on her. It’s one of the most astonishing speeches I can remember hearing – masterfully written and masterfully delivered.

Samuel Jackson in "The Hateful Eight" — Samuel Jackson in “The Hateful Eight”

I don’t think I will be spoiling anything by revealing that Jackson’s character, Major Marquis Warren, a Civil War ex-Union officer turned bounty hunter, is a brutal and pitiless man. We learn early on how he burned down an entire jailhouse where he was imprisoned, killing both his captors and his fellow soldiers, so that he himself could escape. And this Major Warren carries with him, throughout this Civil War interbellum (turmoil-continues) story, a letter written to him by Abraham Lincoln. That letter is reverently kept inside Warren’s breast pocket, close to his heart.

During the course of the film, the letter is admired, spit on, chased through the snow, and so on. Then, in what I will call the last great moment of the film, after Warren has completed a series of bloody, ruthless acts, the full letter is read aloud. And as I watched Jackson’s face – silent and listening, I felt myself tear up. Minutes before, Jackson had wreaked ferocious havoc, and with a quick shift, I was deeply moved by and for him (and by Tarantino’s poetic writing). That’s the way this movie goes; it is savage and then touching and then hilarious. And Samuel Jackson plays a major role in all of those emotional leaps and pirouettes. It is a stunning performance.

“It’s a big, splashy thriller, and a wild ride.”

And then there is Jennifer Jason Leigh. If she doesn’t win an Academy Award for this role (and she won’t), there is simply no justice in the world (a truth that Tarantino woefully keeps telling). She plays Daisy Domergue, a spitting, snarling, murderous outlaw-turned-prisoner who begins the movie with a swollen eye that has been punched purple. Kept in chains, she continues to be arbitrarily and mercilessly beaten and abused throughout the movie; her teeth are knocked out, her nose is broken, and her jaw is fractured. Eventually, she is covered in blood – both her own and the blood of others, and even has some brains splattered on her, yet she remains magically (black-magically) defiant. She can take a punch and come back seething. She is terrifying, she is sympathetic, and she is funny. And no, I don’t believe that because Tarantino makes the only female character the punching bag of the movie, he is a misogynist. Daisy is the smartest character in the movie. And the most fascinating. And Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the Hell out of her.

Just for fun: Compare Jennifer Jason Leigh in Hateful Eight to Sissy Spacek in Carrie. below:

Jennifer Jason Leigh in "Hateful Eight" and Sissy Spacek in "Carrie" — HelenHighly compares Jennifer Jason Leigh in “Hateful Eight” and Sissy Spacek in “Carrie”

Click: There is an actual thing called Quentin Blood! Fake movie blood is a niche specialty. Ethan Sacks at New York Daily News explains the range of colors and viscosity that different directors want in different films and for different purposes.

Click: A Brief History of Fake Blood, including a pro’s movie-blood recipe, plus Tarantino asking for “Samurai blood” in Kill Bill, Vol. 1. – Forrest Wickman, Slate

Part Four: The Bull Doesn’t Really Die

The details of who kills whom and when and how and why… it’s Quentin Tarantino. Why say more? People will always argue about the issue of gratuitous violence in Tarantino’s movies, no matter what. Nonetheless, I want to add: It’s no spoiler alert to say that far more people die in the new Star Wars movie than in Hateful Eight. But no one will ever accuse Star Wars of being overly violent.

Yet, more-criticized, the violence in Hateful Eight is better, because it is cathartic. It’s stylized and perverse and comically outrageous, but still – you feel it, and deeply. (That’s why it’s so repulsive to so many people.) Spaceship battles in the sky may be entertaining, but they are not cathartic. In Tarantino’s film, blood gets on you. And that redeems it. It elevates the film (despite its apparent depravity).

"The Hateful Eight" have trails of blood. — “The Hateful Eight” have trails of blood.

Let’s review our Aristotle: Catharsis is an emotional purge through which one can achieve a state of moral or spiritual renewal or achieve a state of liberation from anxiety and stress. By watching an exhibition or imitation of fear and violence the audience is able to cleanse themselves of their own repressed fear and violence. Aristotle used the term to explain the impact of tragedy on audiences, saying that catharsis was the ultimate end of a tragic artistic work and marked its quality.

For me, Tarantino is like a watching a bullfight. Consider the bazaar, stylized reality of a prized bull being stabbed for mass entertainment, and bleeding and falling and dramatically dying. And yes, bullfights are controversial too, largely because there is never any doubt that the bull will die; it doesn’t have a chance. It’s the same. There is never any doubt that people will die in a Tarantino film; it’s only a matter of how and when. And it may indeed be unfair to the bull, and inappropriate for modern life, but I don’t think a solid argument can be made against the tragic catharsis that the audience experiences at a bullfight. It’s something that people have felt and acknowledged for centuries. However, the wonder of art is that you can imitate violence and get the same emotional cleansing. In a movie, the bull doesn’t really die.

“There is an actual thing called Quentin Blood!”

And no one understands this better than Quentin Tarantino, who is constantly reminding his audiences that they are watching a movie; what you are seeing is not real. It is a make-believe game that nonetheless has powerful effect. And Tarantino loves to play with that paradox – the tension between what you know is not real and what you really feel. And he takes that to the most extreme and extraordinary places he can go. He’s outrageous, but he’s mindfully so; he knows what he’s doing. And that’s what his fans love about him. He’s smart. His movies are smart, even when they are low and dirty and ugly. (And yes, even because they are low, etc.)

Plus, in modern American life, we have “evolved” to a point where we are numb to so much ordinary and expected violence. It has lost its potency. So we need something more frightening and more terrible to help us achieve that catharsis. And art can offer that, while still being safe.

"The Hateful Eight" is Violent — “The Hateful Eight” is Violent

So, when Tarantino stages a bullfight, you feel as if you are right there, watching the real thing, and then, just as the bull is about to die… suddenly the most unpredictable and terrifying and absurd thing – the thing you could never imagine… happens. And that’s when you get that crazy, horrifying-and-also-satisfying shock; that’s when you gasp your heart into your lungs. And I challenge anyone to watch The Hateful Eight and not gasp in full at least twice.

Conclusion: It’s Sexy

HelenHighly: I'm just saying. — HelenHighly: I’m just saying.

I’ll go one step further and say, not only is it cathartic… it’s sexy. This is not late-breaking news: sex and death go very well together. And even though the movie has no actual sex in it whatsoever, I think it’s a turn-on. It’s hot. And, btw, there was nothing sexy about Star Wars – romantic maybe, but not visceral. I’m just saying.

Epilogue: Killer Coffee Pot?

HelenHighly is Highly interested in the things in movies. I love it when an object becomes a key part of a film plot, or when it makes such an indelible impression that it changes the way people think of or feel about that thing.

Click: See my commentary on “Holiday Shopping in the Movies: Where to get the goods to make your classic Christmas-movie memories come alive,” in which I write about iconic Christmas gifts that were defined by movies.

In Hateful Eight, there is an object that is central to the plot – the blue-speckled cowboy-style coffee pot, and investigation uncovers an amusing irony. I won’t say exactly how the pot enters into the film’s intrigue, but I will wonder aloud if the pot’s infamous history was an inspiration for that detail of the story (and I’ll give a small clue).

“People started to become suspicious of poisonous ingredients.”

The type of pot used in the movie, which was historically accurate, is called enamelware. It was invented in the mid-1800s, when people wanted a way of coating iron to stop metallic tastes or rust from getting into food. They wanted something acid-resistant and easy to clean without laborious scouring, and something more durable than the tin linings used inside copper. So, manufacturers of kitchenware started coating everything from cast iron to steel with enamel. When fired, the enamel glazed, creating a non-porous surface that was easier to clean than exposed metal. Plus, it had a smooth, glossy finish that looked appealing. Originally, enamelware was bright white because it looked most sanitary. Then, speckled blue became popular because it was more cheerful.

But: Were enamel-lined pots really as clean and safe as they seemed? After a while (actually, Helen is Highly amazed at how many years it took) people started to become suspicious of poisonous ingredients leaching into their food. Unfortunately, it turned out, enamel surfaces were prone to cracking, which would expose the metal beneath, causing it to rust. Ultimately, consumers were scared away from both the metal and the enamel, due to claims of lead, antimony, and arsenic turning up in their food and coffee.

Today, modern science has solved the poison problem, and enamelware is still used in country kitchens and vintage-chic homes. And because they can handle a direct flame and don’t require electricity, enameled coffee pots are still a staple at well-equipped camp sites. (Just don’t ever let Quentin Tarantino anywhere near your coffee pot.)

Finally

Yes, we have just crossed the three-hour mark. And I will stop writing. But Helen Highly encourages YOU to drink some strong coffee (maybe with a shot of booze in it) and high-tail it over to your local theater and see The Hateful Eight. It’s a big, splashy thriller, and a wild ride.

Click for News (2019): The Hateful Eight Extended Version is now a Netflix Miniseries, available for streaming

Click for News: The Hateful Eight Opens Big with $1.9 million on Christmas Day

Click for News: Hive CM8 Leak Pirated Copies, Then Apologize (sort of)

Click for News: Hateful Tweets About Hateful Eight 70mm Roadshow Projection Problems

Best Film Review: “Carol” vs “Brooklyn”

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HelenHighly Critiques the Film Carol and Compares it to the film Brooklyn

Cate Blanchett in "Carol" — Cate Blanchett in “Carol”

The movie Carol, a lesbian romantic drama that is based on the book The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, is getting named Best Film of the Year by just about everyone, it seems, and making all the award short-lists. And Helen is Highly disappointed. Let me add up front that the film was costumed by Sandy Powell, art directed by Jesse Rosenthal, and filmed by Edward Lachman, who will all likely (and deservingly) receive awards for their work here. But in this review, I have issues with director Todd Haynes and screenwriter Phyllis Nagy.

Mundane, overly precious, pointlessly detailed movie.

I saw Carol at the 53^rd New York Film Festival, where just about every film was more interesting than this gigantic slice of Boring. After watching the film, I assumed most people would dislike it as much as I did, so I was shocked when I did a quick Google search and saw the Variety review pop up saying “High expectations don’t quite prepare you for the startling impact of Carol, exquisitely drawn, deeply felt…” No way! (I usually like Justin Chang, but I disagree with him and nearly everyone else about this film.) My first order of business is to change Variety’s intro line: “High expectations don’t quite prepare you for”: the slow emptiness of this mundane, overly precious, pointlessly detailed movie.

Listen, I adore Cate Blanchett as much as anyone. And no one can say she is not gorgeous. At one point in the film – at a party, her estranged husband concedes to her that she is the most beautiful woman in the room. Well, that never changes. She is the most beautiful and the best dressed and best accessorized and best groomed person in every scene. So, let’s all agree to put Cate Blanchett’s face in the dictionary under the word Perfection, and then we can all go home and save ourselves two hours of lifeless artifice. And if Cate were selling lipstick, or stockings, or fur coats, I would buy them all. But I would not recommend this movie to anyone.

I’m happy for Blanchett that she got such a glamorous star vehicle in which to show off. But why is no one else stating the obvious – that this is essentially a vanity project for Cate Blanchett? Unfortunately however, in this movie, we cannot see Cate’s rich inner life through the heavy cover of makeup and fur.

Remember the final season’s opening episode on Mad Men, where Don Draper is trying desperately to find the ideal, alluring model to put in his fur coat ad?* Todd Haynes’ Cate Blanchett should get that job! She is precisely what Don was looking for – an impossibly beautiful fantasy of aspirational glamour and exquisite opulence. Women want to be her and men want to have her, exactly because she is so flawless and empty; you feel nothing for her or from her as a character – no complicated emotions to ruin the high-gloss facade. And honestly, Cate, you are better than this; you don’t need to advertise your quintessential (surface) beauty. That Don Draper gig, and this movie, are beneath you; you can act.

The book was ground-breaking and radical; the movie is strictly conventional and banal.

This brings me to the lesbian theme of the story. Helen Highly objects to Haynes’ portrayal of Carol and her younger lover (played by Rooney Mara) as a Hollywood male fantasy of woman-on-woman sexuality. Due to Haynes’ decision to maintain the look-and-feel of a 1950s flick, the movie refrains from overtly explicit sex scenes, but still it has the tone of cheesy pin-up porn – made for men, and not about real-life women who have ambiguous thoughts and difficult feelings. Highsmith’s 1953 book, The Price of Salt, became a lesbian-love cult-novel, due largely to its being the first authentic expression of a lesbian relationship that did not have the punishing ending that was prescribed by 1950s morality. Highsmith was a lesbian herself (a fact she denied throughout most of her career), and this story is semi-autobiographical, telling the tale of when she was a shop girl who fell into a romantic obsession over an older married woman who was a customer at the store. But let’s stop there for a moment. (Well, there’s not much else to tell; the movie mostly repeats variations of the same scene.)

Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara in "Carol" — Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara in Carol

Part of Helen being Highly annoyed is that so many people are eager to say how this film is “important for women” – as if it were still the act of sexual bravery and social revelation it was in the 1950s. And that is simply not the case. Today, the storyline reads as old news and naively obvious. The book was ground-breaking and radical; the movie is strictly conventional and banal. And this is the fault of the screenplay and the direction, which do not capture the emotional intensity or poetic eroticism of the book. (Watch Dec. 19th’s Saturday Night Live and see their skit about how a male director is ruining an otherwise good 1950’s movie about two lesbians. Ha.)

The book meticulously detailed the inner lives of these two, passionate yet confused women; the film, instead, meticulously (and ploddingly) details a story that was only loosely referenced in the book — because Highsmith was interested in tortuous desire and fearful loneliness, not a who-gets-the-kid divorce case. In the movie that Nagy and Haynes made, the tale becomes a simplistic, self-righteous, politically-correct after-school-special. Haynes attempts, it seems, to depict the women’s emotions with an endless series of long, silent gazes. The film becomes tedious quickly, as we see the same posed, passive expressions played over and over – against a range of sumptuous backgrounds. And so it seems that Haynes cares more about his visual style than he does the psychology of his characters.

Todd Haynes is no Hitchcock.

Now, because of all the unwarranted hoopla about this movie, it becomes important to discuss Highsmith’s other books, several of which were made into highly successful movies, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train among them. Highsmith published The Price of Salt under another name and disowned the book for many years, not wanting to derail her career as a successful mystery writer. Other than this one-off erotic lesbian tale, Highsmith wrote thrillers. Margaret Talbot, at the New Yorker, recently wrote a fascinating article about the background of the movie, in which she explained: “In 1952, Coward-McCann published The Price of Salt. Harpers & Bros., which had released Strangers on a Train two years earlier, turned it down, perhaps because it wasn’t another thriller.” So, for all you devoted Highsmith fans, just be aware: this one is not like the others — not the book, and definitely not the film. By the way, The New Yorker article is very worth reading and includes many quotes from the book, which are strikingly different from the minimal, stilted language of the film.

And to my smart-yet-in-this-case-incorrect friend, and others, who like to say that Carol is comparable to the brilliant and classic Strangers on a Train, I say two things:

1) Haynes is no Hitchcock. Yes, Hitchcock and Highsmith shared an affection for frosty blondes (and perhaps Todd Haynes does as well). But Hitchcock was a master. He knew how to make an ice-queen come alive on the screen.

2) Carol is no thriller. Hitchcock also understood plot; he knew what was a compelling story and what was not. Carol is not.

So, Cate Blanchett and Todd Haynes can wish she were Grace Kelly or Kim Novak all day long, but she’s not going to touch a hair of their blonde locks with this script and this director.

It takes a drag-queen to understand what is wrong with this movie!

The other night, taking a break from writing this review, I went to Joes’ Pub at the Public Theater to see a wacky Christmas cabaret by Justin Vivian Bond, called Angels We Have Heard When High (HelenHighly was highly intrigued.)

To my surprise and delight, much of the comic element of the show was based on the movie Carol. It takes a drag-queen to understand what is wrong with this movie! Bond smartly comments at one point, “The Price of Salt was at least based on something real.” Bond scoffs at the notion that there is anything true or sexy in the film and hilariously explains that despite the director’s meticulous efforts to create 1950s verisimilitude, he neglects the important detail of Cate Blanchett’s fingernails.

Bond says that it’s clearly apparent that Carol has a gel manicure – something only recently invented and very different from the nail polish the character would have worn in her day. Ha! That is so true! (Gel “no-chip” polish and processing essentially bake the color onto the nails and have been a game-changer in the world of manicures. The color lasts for weeks instead of days and is a major 21st-century advancement, which would have been nothing but a sci-fi fantasy to any 1950s woman.) Bond goes on to insist that at least during the several-day-long road trip, where Carol is living out of a suitcase, she would have had a couple chips in her perfect nail color. But Haynes did not allow that, keeping Carol a phony character instead.

Bond also bemoans the film’s false portrayal of the “May-December romance” (which is important in the book). Mx Viv is all for older men or women getting it on with young, hot things, but alas she was once the May and is now the December part of that equation. And she knows what that feels like and looks like (and so does HelenHighly), and there is no way that “December” looks like Cate Blanchett’s perfection. Bond resents now having to live up to Todd Haynes’ unrealistic depiction of a December lover. Once again: Helen Highly agrees!

In Brooklyn, the design supports the characters instead of glossing over them.

While watching the screening of Carol at the New York Film Festival, I made very few notes in my book, because there was nothing interesting to write down (IMHO). But soon after, there was a screening of the film Brooklyn, another historically-accurate, sentimental love story that was adapted from an acclaimed book (screenplay by Nick Hornby). I made quite a few notes about that movie. Remarkably, the two films take place in the same year and in the same city (New York and its environs) and both generally deal with the problems of pulled-in-two-directions love and related family pressure. The big difference: I care about the characters in Brooklyn!

"Brooklyn" movie poster. — Brooklyn movie poster.

In the movie Brooklyn, the main character is Ellis Lacey (played with heart by Saoirse Ronan), and like Carol, she struggles with a love dilemma and is nearly torn apart by it. Both stories also include a theme about secrets and spies who reveal those secrets, plus the themes of betrayal and nasty gossip. Watching Ellis, I ached for her. Carol’s plight left me cold.

Both films have been critically applauded for their lush cinematography and vivid, vintage design. But in Brooklyn, the design supports the characters instead of glossing over them. Interestingly, in an interview after the screening, director John Crowley explained that he wanted the film to “seem artless,” and he did not cast the roles “for looks,” but rather for “inner truth.” And that inner truth is indeed expressed in the film, which rises above its sentimentality by letting the characters earn their emotions. Crowley brings the audience close and lets us follow the inner workings of the characters. Haynes maintains a passive distance throughout.

"Brooklyn" looks real. — “Brooklyn” looks real.

There is a scene in Brooklyn where Ellis takes her first trip to the beach at Coney Island, and when she comes out from behind her towel and reveals her “swim costume,” it is a glorious moment. I felt myself beaming for her. I wrote in my notes, “Rapture!” And the feeling of rapture is exactly what was needed and missing from Carol. When Ellis’ sister dies, I was devastated. I felt her pain. For Carol, I could only yawn (and sneer at suffering that seemed so fake).

Todd Haynes, I know you are a skilled and well-regarded filmmaker (and thank you for the movie I’m Not There, where Cate Blanchett is put to much better use, btw), but Helen Highly suggests that you watch the movie Brooklyn and take a few notes.

///

* And just for fun, here’s that Mad Men scene with the fur. Listen to Don “direct” the performance. Don’t you think Cate’s Carol is made for this role?

“5 Flights Up” Review, with Helen-Gets-a-New-TV Commentary AND Holiday Greeting to My Readers

December 16, 2015Film Commentary, TV Commentary5 Flights Up, 5 Flights Up Diane Keaton, 5 Flights Up film review, 5 Flights Up review, 5-flight-walk-up movie, 5-story apartment, 5-story walk-up, 5-story-apartment movie, Brooklyn apartment movie, Diane Keaton, Diane Keaton apartment movie, Diane Keaton Morgan Freeman, Diane Keaton natural beauty, Diane Keaton no plastic surgery, Diane Keaton's face, film commentary, film review, Five Flights Up, Five Flights Up review, Helen gets a new TV, Helen Highly, Helen Kaplow, HelenHighly, HelenHighly Lou Lumenich, HelenHighly new to New York, HelenHighly new TV commentary, HelenHighly new TV settings, HelenHighy holiday greeting, holiday greeting, living in Brooklyn, living in Manhattan, Lou Lumenich 5 Flights Up, Morgan Freeman, movie review, new television screen settings, New York apartment movie, picture settings, Stephanie Merry, Stephen Holden New York Times 5 Flights Up, television picture, television settings, TV color settings, TV settings, Vizio television, Vizio TVhelenhighly

5 Flights Up Film Review, with Helen-Gets-a-New-TV Commentary AND a Holiday Greeting to my Readers

by HelenHighly

I recently got a new television. My friend helped me set it up but didn’t have patience to go through all the detailed settings with me.

So, one day, the day after Thanksgiving, it was quiet and peaceful, even in my apartment where it is usually busy and stressful and has got me constantly popping delta 9 gummies from Budder to cope. And I took the time to carefully, meticulously yet leisurely, adjust the complex color settings in order to get my ideal picture on my new TV.

I sat in my newly furnished, all-white bedroom, in my TV-watching seat — the sleek white leather-and-chrome chair I have in my “parlor area.” And I put my feet up on my new big furry ottoman – covered in grey-and-white super-long fake-animal hair, standing on lucite legs. That was the first time I’d sat there for more than five minutes. But that day, I sat for hours and watched a whole movie. It just came onto TV while I was flipping channels. I’d never heard of it and had no idea what I was watching at first (and I missed the first few minutes).

The movie was 5 Flights Up, with Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton, and it was shot in New York and is about living in Brooklyn, and maybe moving to Manhattan. So despite not being a commercially well-received film (or I would have heard of it, right?) I thought it was perfect for me, who just moved to New York. It’s a movie about a borderline-elderly couple (where does one draw the line?) who put their apartment up for sale – a classic, old, 5-story walk-up in Brooklyn. (My uncle, who is beyond borderline and is fully elderly, explained to me that long ago there was a law dictating that any residential building over five stories must have an elevator. Thus all those 5-story walk-ups — the max allowed without an expensive elevator.) Morgan and Diane – who, it seemed to me, didn’t bother to play characters and were just themselves – have lived in that apartment all their married lives, from the time they were college kids together. So it’s a sentimental tale about Brooklyn and the idea of “home” and how an apartment itself becomes a member of the family.

“Thanks Diane Keaton for looking beautiful and real.”

I enjoyed the movie, despite it being unambitious and overly sweet. In addition to the topic that was personally relevant to me, I have always liked both those actors – Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton, and it was good to see that they have both grown old gracefully. They have no visible signs of plastic surgery, and they both have a comfortable calm about them that comes from having lived long, accomplished lives. Now I have Googled 5 Flights Up and found these quotes that say what I might have written about the film except that someone else already has:

“5 Flights Up would be nothing without its stars (very true), whose humanity warms up a movie that otherwise portrays New Yorkers as coldblooded, slightly crazy, hypercompetitive sharks.”
Stephen Holden, New York Times. Click for full review.

I agree with Holden about the actors, and my impulse is to also agree about his objection to the portrayal of stereotypical New Yorkers. But a new friend who is a longtime New Yorker keeps telling me how hyper-competitive New York is, and how I better be ready. So I will consider the possibility that he and these filmmakers are correct. Although, of course my friend is intensely competitive himself, and insists he must be in order to “make it” here, so even if the competitive environment is a figment of his imagination, he helps to make it true just by believing it’s true and behaving in a coldblooded manner. But that’s another subject.

“Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton have unexpectedly great chemistry in this warm and funny comedy.”
Lou Lumenick, New York Post. Click for full review.

Yes, they are a pleasure to watch together, and they helped me to calm down and sit quietly and watch this very pleasant movie.

“It weasels its way into your heart and ultimately claims sweet, sentimental victory over your better judgment.”
Stephanie Merry, Washington Post. Click for full review.

Yes, normally this is the kind of movie I would dislike on premise. But… right time right place and it worked for me.

BUT… my point – and I do have one, is that I used the natural, soft and variable face of Diane Keaton, with her multi-faceted expressions and nuanced, dynamic complexion, to set the picture features of my new Vizio TV. And I am pleased that I got to do that. I think that now I do indeed have a subtly refined Perfect Picture on my television screen. So, thanks Diane Keaton for looking beautiful and real. And I want to point out just how complex and intricate those screen settings are.

I have outlined a list of each feature about which I was able to individually make a choice (and not just an on-or-off binary choice – usually multiple or full-spectrum choices). The list below has more than 50 lines – 50 options and choices to make about my Vizio television picture. And keep in mind that as one changes one option, one needs to go back and adjust the previous options, because they now look different. I recall now that a friend of mine once hired a specialist, paying him $150., to come to his home and program his new TV screen for him. Now that is beginning to make sense to me. Perhaps the concept of a fine-tuned screen picture has become an industry in itself. I wonder if that is intentional.

Anyway. Here is the list of options that I leisurely strolled through, with Diane Keaton’s face on freeze-frame, watching her appearance subtly shift, as she contemplated her existence in New York while I also contemplated mine.

“The better to see you with, my dear Diane.”

Picture:

Mode

Standard

Calibrated (I chose this one.)

Calibrated Dark

Vivid

Game

Computer

Auto-Brightnesss

Off

On (I chose on.)

High

Med (Went with medium.)

Low

Backlight (Number range: I chose 95 out of 100)

Brightness (Number range: 50)

Contrast (80)

Color (50. But when I adjust one option, then all the others look different, and I am compelled to go back and adjust them again.)

Tint (0)

Sharpness (50)

More (Yes of course, more.)

Color Temperature

Normal (I want to be unconventional, but Normal is the only reasonable selection here.)

Color

Computer

Black Detail (Must research what this is and come back.)

Off

Low

Medium

High

Active LED Zones

On (Hell yes; this was the reason I selected this Vizio TV – for it’s much-touted “active LED zones.”)

Off

Clear Action

Off (I chose off. I’m getting tired, and I think this is a sports thing.)

Reduce Noise (Again, not sure and losing interest.)

Reduce Significant Noise

Low

Medium

High

Reduce Block Noise

Low

Medium

High

Picture Size and Position (It’s fine the way it is.)

Film Mode

Auto (Ok. Whatever.)

Off

Gamma (Really?!)

1.8

2.0

2.1

2.2 (Chose this. Don’t ask me why.)

2.4

Wow. What a complex ecosystem my TV screen is. The better to see you with, my dear Diane. Ms Keaton, I hope your real life is as lovely and happy as your life in this movie. And I hope the same for me. My new life in Manhattan (not Brooklyn), among the sharks, should be warm and interesting like Diane Keaton’s, as well as bright and active and clear, with deep blacks and bright whites. This sounds like a holiday wish on a greeting card. So, I say to you, patient reader:

May your new year (and your TV screen) be bright and active and clear, with deep blacks and bright whites. And may you always have the best Gamma value.

Nanni Moretti’s “Mia Madre” Review

November 11, 2015Film CommentaryChicago Film Festival Mia Madre, film review, Helen Highly, Helen Kaplow, HelenHighly, international film festival mia madre, italian film review, Italian Moretti film, John Turturro Mia Madre, Leonard Cohen Moretti, Margherita Buy, Margherita Buy Mia Madre, meaning of life movie, Mia Madre, Mia Madre Amazon Prime, Mia Madre film review, Mia Madre film review HelenHighly, Mia Madre movie review, Mia Madre Nanni Moretti review, Mia Madre New York Film Festival, Mia Madre review, Moretti, Moretti film review, mother daughter movie, mother film, mother movie, mother's death movie, movie review, My Mother film, My Mother Moretti, My Mother movie, Nanni Moretti, New York Film Festival, Nino Rota Moretti, Turturro Morettihelenhighly

by HelenHighly

“Those Italians, they understand Sorrowful Life and Comical Death in ways that Americans just do not.”

"Mia Madre" movie poster — “Mia Madre” movie poster

When was the last time you heard a great closing line in a movie? Endings are always difficult, even for the best filmmakers, but when that final moment manages to take your breath away, it is a special kind of bliss. The final line in Nanni Moretti‘s Mia Madre is not a brilliant sentence in itself. Then again, is “rosebud” profound in itself? But in context – the way it calls back to an earlier conversation in the film, sums up the theme of the movie, and also creates a definitive and significant end to the story, in that way, this line was magnificent. It was profound. It was probably the best final line to a movie that anyone heard at the 53^rd New York Film Festival. And it literally made me cry out loud.

Basically, this is a story about a woman whose mother is dying. But don’t imagine grim or depressing. In fact, this film is nothing if not charming. Those Italians, they understand Sorrowful Life and Comical Death in ways that Americans just do not. It feels like writer/director Nanni Moretti (“The Son’s Room”) is tapping into an ancient source of emotion — pure and essential and untainted by sentimentality. And he handles the film’s emotional flow like the precious and potent elixir it is, dispensing it gently and intently.

Moretti moves gracefully, mingling pain with mirth. The film is nimble and deeply astute. It is not as much smart or telling as it is wise and stirring. The lyricism in the language adds to the effect; Italian is linguistic music. Plus, the film score mixes Leonard Cohen, Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, and Nino Rota. It’s all part of an organic sensation that lives in this film – a gorgeous feeling that planted itself in me and during the course of the movie seemed to grow up from my gut and bloom in my chest.

In conversation after the screening, Moretti actually said that he wants the audience “to feel the movie is digging inside of them.” That’s exactly what I felt. Or, I felt the movie carving into me. As I watched, I felt like I was being sculpted. It was as if a great master was carefully cutting, chiseling into me, and thus he – the sculptor, director, writer – is making us, the audience, into his beautiful carved creation. And in that way, Moretti is elevating us with his talent, his vision. He is making us sublime.

Italians understand Life and Death in "Mia Madre" — Italians understand Life and Death in “Mia Madre”

I know I am not telling much about the narrative tale. Other critics will surely focus on the events and activities in the film. Although I assert that the flesh of the film is its emotions, and the story is like a tendon, binding the muscle to the bone.

But here is the central scenario: the lead character (played with glorious subtlety by Margherita Buy) is an Italian filmmaker who is shooting a movie while her mother is dying in a hospital. Actually, this is a semi-autobiographical film in that Mortetti had his mother die while he was shooting a previous film. Again, I expect other critics will make much of that parallel. However, I think that is more significant to the personal life of Moretti than to the body of this film. I believe it is more relevant to explore the content of the film than to rummage around in Moretti’s life, trying to guess what inspired him. Clearly this mature film is the culmination of a rich life; it presents a seasoned perspective and is influenced by much more than any one event.

"Mia Madre" by Nanno Moretti — “Mia Madre” by Nanni Moretti

Having an experience and elevating that experience to an art form are two very different things. Many filmmakers have had a parent die. Transforming that loss into something as vital and gripping as this film… that ability comes from a deeply rooted life, a unique mind, a special soul. I say this film is not about Moretti’s mother. It is about Moretti’s vision of humanity.

“Death is breathing life while life is killing her.”

In this movie, the action functions unlike a typical tale; it is more a mechanism to bring the outside world into a small hospital room where the true story unfolds — to bring life’s pressing realities and complexities to bear on the characters as they wait for death. The specifics of what job Margherita has is mostly inconsequential. Although, what is important is watching her persistent and diligent return to the stress of her work environment after each vigil beside her dying mother.

Margherita Buy in "Mia Madre" — Margherita Buy in “Mia Madre”

The film seems to question if those immediate troubles-on-the-job are trivial in comparison to the life-and-death world inside that hospital room. Or do they actually matter more? Margherita’s attention can make a tangible difference in the future of her career and those of others who work with her, but her presence with her mother will change nothing; that outcome is predetermined. Either way, Moretti illustrates how life’s busyness and necessities go on no matter what profundities mortality reveals in its private moments.

The action also serves to insert humor into what might be a bleak scenario in lesser hands. In addition to his finesse with the emotional heaviness itself, Moretti provides balance with healthy doses of laughter. John Turturro plays an American who is a hilariously bad actor in the Italian film that Margherita is trying to make. Turturro’s approach is broad and exuberant, which is startling in this otherwise quiet movie. At first it seems abrasively out of place. But ultimately Turturro’s excited persona becomes a key part of Moretti’s message: I am laughing, I am crying, I am laughing, I am crying… I am exalted.

John Turturro in "Mia Madre" — John Turturro in “Mia Madre”

A rather wry running joke in the film is when our protagonist director repeatedly tells her actors to “be the character you are playing at the same time as you stand outside the character.” No one understands this instruction; they ponder, try, don’t get it. Finally, late in the movie, the director herself admits that she doesn’t know what she means by that command — that desire for something more than regular acting. But I know what she means, having seen Moretti’s film.

Mia Madre is a palpably intimate movie. It made me feel one with it — as if I was living it or it was living me, at the same time as I was observing the film from the outside and trying to “review” it. It was a strange experience as a critic, but Moretti’s paradoxical life vision plays out in the way the film expresses itself and in how it engages its audience. The death of a parent is a universal experience for all adults, but this film manages to make it feel singular — uniquely personal. In your next breath, however, you are contemplating the larger nature of existence. It’s quite a directorial feat.

John Tuturro provides comic relief in "Mia Madre." — John Turturro provides comic relief in “Mia Madre.”

Fundamentally, this is a story about life and death – beautiful and heartbreaking, devastating and inspiring. It was excruciating to watch a scene where Margherita has a violent argument and is emotionally stripped naked and exposed; she’s made vulnerable and cut to shreds – destroyed. Then, she goes back into that hospital room and sits silently beside her dying mother, and that gives her new life. It revives her. It saves her. Death is breathing life while life is killing her.

Being in the presence of her dying mother revives Margherita in "Mia Madre" — Being in the presence of her dying mother revives Margherita in “Mia Madre”

In the press conference, Moretti was talking, with his lovely Italian accent, and I heard… “love erupts in solitude.” I don’t even know what that means, but I totally felt it. I left the theater feeling newly alive.

Update: After playing at the 53rd New York International Film Festival, this movie played at the Chicago International Film Festival, and then virtually disappeared from the U.S. But look for it to return in March 2016, at your local art / indie /foreign-film theater. The film was nominated for the Palme d’Or prize at Cannes Film Festival and won Best Non-U.S. Release at the Online Film Critics Society Awards.

Click: The New York Times asks Nanni Moretti 5 Questions

Click: Moretti Film Canceled in Paris Attacks

Mia Madre is now available for streaming from Amazon Prime, iTunes, and elsewhere.

Laurie Anderson’s “Heart of a Dog” Review

October 29, 2015Film Commentary9/11 film, 9/11 Heart of a Dog, 9/11 HelenHighly, 9/11 Laurie Anderson, 9/11 movie, 9/11 remembrance, Best Documentary, film review, HBO documentary Heart of a Dog, Heart of a Dog, Heart of a Dog 9/11, Heart of a Dog CD, Heart of a Dog documentary, Heart of a Dog film, Heart of a Dog film review, Heart of a Dog HBO, Heart of a Dog HelenHighly, Heart of a Dog Laurie Anderson, Heart of a Dog movie, Heart of a Dog New York Film Festival, Heart of a Dog news, Heart of a Dog review, Heart of a Dog review HelenHighly, Heart of a Dog sountrack, Heart of a Dog trailer, Helen Highly recommends Heart of a Dog, Helen Kaplow Heart of a Dog review, Helen Kaplow Laurie Anderson documentary review, Helen Kaplow Laurie Anderson film review, Language is a Virus, Lauri Anderson documentary review HelenHighly, Laurie Anderson, Laurie Anderson Best Documentary, Laurie Anderson documentary, Laurie Anderson dog, Laurie Anderson film, Laurie Anderson Heart of a Dog, Laurie Anderson HelenHighly, Laurie Anderson Kierkegard, Laurie Anderson Lolabelle, Laurie Anderson movie, Laurie Anderson philosophy, Laurie Anderson soundtrack, Lolabelle, movie review, New York Film Festival, Only an Expert, The Walk New York Film Festivalhelenhighly

by HelenHighly

In her poetic film collage essay, Heart of a Dog, which I saw at the 2015 New York Film Festival, Laurie Anderson is more beautifully and thoughtfully herself than ever.

“It seems the movie is often shedding its own tears… as if life itself is crying.”

Anderson has had a long career, but she was most well known in the 80s as an experimental performance artist, composer and musician who especially explored the mix of spoken word and music. Those who know her albums such as “Big Science” and “Home of the Brave” will appreciate the return of the fragmented rhythm and quizzical tone of Anderson’s speech, opening with voice-over sentences such as “This is my dream body – the one I use to walk around in my dreams,” and “It’s like one of those old movies…” It’s like one of Anderson’s old albums, only … Much, Much, Better (to quote Anderson in “Language is a Virus”).

Despite the film’s seemingly stream-of-conscious, no-plot, hodge-podge approach, Anderson has meaningful ideas to express, and she’s woven together an elegant and smartly structured tone-and-picture poem. The movie combines her personal stories and musings with quotations from renowned philosophers, ink drawings on paper, printed words, animation, scratchy old 8mm home-movie clips, new footage of landscapes, surveillance camera footage with time codes, graphic images such as computer icons, and her ingenious use of music.

As always, Anderson excels at language, and here she combines various types of on-screen text with her own lyrical voice-over. I often leave a movie wanting to run home and download the soundtrack, but in this case I am yearning for a transcript. These are words worthy of reading and contemplating. “Try to learn how to feel sad without being sad,” is just one of the many sentences that could use more time to resonate than one viewing allows.

But one of the surprises of this project may be Anderson’s sophisticated and inventive cinematography. As the film explores a variety of deaths – the death of Anderson’s dog, the death of her mother, the death of her husband (Lou Reed), and the mass deaths of 9/11 in New York, it seems the movie is often shedding its own tears. Many sequences are shot through a pane of glass that is dripping with water, like life itself is crying. And then she turns footage of an ocean upside down, with the foreground still raining, so the sea that has become the sky is weeping too. Anderson seems to be saying that in front of everything is a gentle, pervasive sadness.

"Heart of a Dog" sheds its own tears. — “Heart of a Dog” sheds its own tears.

And yet, the movie is not even remotely maudlin. It discusses 9/11 in way that actually adds fresh insight, which seems impossible after so many anniversaries full of remembrance ceremonies, and so many other films that have integrated that tragic event. In fact, this movie would have made a much better selection for the Opening Film of this year’s New York Film Festival than “The Walk,” which is ostensibly about the man who walked a tightrope between the world’s tallest pair of buildings, but is mostly a sentimental homage to the Twin Towers, complete with golden reflected sunset footage of the Towers and seemingly endless talk about their dramatic importance. For all the The Walk’s telling us how we should feel, and trying so desperately to rouse emotion, it fails in that regard. Laurie Anderson is a long-time New York resident and artist, and this film speaks so sincerely to New Yorkers in particular, that it would have made an intensely appropriate opening for the New York Film Festival, which took place so close to 9/11. Of course, the film is also relevant to all Americans, and all human beings, at any time of year.

“I want to tell you a story, about a story.” — Laurie Anderson

Perhaps the strongest moment in Anderson’s film is when she takes her dog outdoors in a big field and enjoys watching her run and play in tall grass and aromatic dirt, as dogs do. The camera pans up to the bright blue sky; it is such a beautiful day. And then we see pretty white trails in the sky, moving in circles. Anderson tells us they are birds. And then she sees that they are hawks. And she describes the look in the eyes of her dog, Lolabelle, as the dog peers up and realizes that she… is prey. The dog understands that these birds have come for the purpose of killing her. And Anderson bemoans the new reality that now the dog must not only be aware of the ground and the grass and the other earthbound creatures, but also that huge, untouchable expanse of sky. The sky is now a danger. And the dog will never view the sky the same again.

Cut to footage of 9/11 as Anderson compares her dog’s feeling to hers, and ours, when we suddenly understood that “something was wrong with the air”; the sky brought danger and those flying planes were there for the purpose of killing us. And “it would be that way from now on.”

Anderson goes on to talk about the strangeness of living in a post-9/11 surveillance state, where we are always being recorded. But she does not take the obvious path of complaining about the social injustice. Instead, she takes a clever twist and points out that all your actions are now data. And that data is always being collected, but it will not be watched until after you commit a crime. Then your story is pieced together, in reverse – footage of where you went and what you did, being viewed backward from the most recent moment. And then she throws in a quote from Kierkegaard: “Life can only be understood backward but must be lived forward.”

Intermixed with philosophy, Anderson keeps her wry sense of humor. At one point, she talks about a dream in which she gives birth to her dog. She illustrates the tale with bizarre comic drawings, and then she tells us that the dog looks up at her and says, “Thank you so much for having me,” as if it has just been invited to a tea party. Ha.

“This film has heart.”

Later she talks about her own childhood memory of a trauma and reveals how our minds naturally clean up memories, leaving out certain details, and in that way you are holding onto a story and every time you tell the story, you forget it more. Cut to the computer icon of Missing File. The associations keep piling up, and they do indeed add up.

The unfortunate irony is that Heart of a Dog will be classified as conceptual filmmaking and dismissed, by those who won’t see it, as too cerebral, while it actually uses a complex and intellectual style, very astutely, to access emotional and intimate realities that are difficult to reach through overt methods.

This film does tell a story, in its own subtly layered way. It is sometimes a meditation on how to go on living despite despair – “the purpose of death is the release of love,” but it is also clearly Laurie Anderson’s own personal tale. This is a tender memoir. It’s Anderson’s love story, about her dog, her mother, her husband, and her city. In the most uncommon and evocative way, this film has heart.

Note: This film is available for streaming on HBO.

Watch the trailer for Heart of a Dog, below:

Click: The complete soundtrack recording of “Heart of a Dog” is available from Nonesuch Records. The Nonesuch album is the full audio recording of the film, including all music and spoken text.

Click: Heart of a Dog shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature in Oscar Race.

Click: Heart of a Dog nominated for a Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary.

Click: The New York Times review by Manohla Dargis. It’s a beautifully written review that will give you more reasons to see the film or just to remember it better. The review includes one of my fave lines that didn’t make it into my review: “Every love story is a ghost story.”

Click: An insightful review of Heart of a Dog by Roberto Friedman. And he’s right: Gotta go get that CD!

Command and Control Review: Earth-Shaking Revelations Abound

by HelenHighly

Synopsis:

More Than a Synopsis:

America routinely puts its most powerful weapons and its most dangerous decisions in the hands of virtual children who are patently ill-equipped for the responsibility.

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Helen Highly Recommends Sophie Goodhart’s My Blind Brother as One of the Best of Tribeca 2016

Droll My Blind Brother Premiered at SXSW and Cracks Up Tribeca 2016

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Helen Highly Alarmed by the Shocking Revelations in Untouchable, Interviews the Documentary Director and Editor

Update: Untouchable Documentary Doesn’t Go Far Enough & Ron Book is A Monster Yet to Be Slayed, According to OnceFallen.com

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Gotta Gotta Gotta or Shipwrecked: Degenerate Damsels in Distress

Surrealism is to Peggy Guggenheim as Heroin is to Janis Joplin?

The fundamental concept in both films is that “art is a drug” – whether making it or collecting it.

But here’s where the plot thickens:

Peggy Guggenheim’s addictive lust for art (and artists) cut into her credibility and ultimately obscured her accomplishments.

And the same is true of Janis Joplin, who is perhaps best known for being a drug addict.

In a way, both these women sacrificed their lives to their addictions … to art.

“I want to be happy so fucking bad.”

They suffered and we reaped the rewards. When we think of them, we should try a little tenderness.

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Helen Highly Recommends Carrie Fisher Quit Twitter or Am I That Guy?!

by HelenHighly

Helen Highly suggests that you quit your twitter account (rather than acting) and stop listening to the peons, and then continue with whatever career you choose.

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Hateful Eight: Horror in the Wild West

By HelenHighly

Prelude: It’s dreadful and wonderful

Part One: The Eighth Movie by Quentin Tarantino

Part Two: The Door is Nailed Shut

Part Three: Abraham Lincoln is a BFF

Part Four: The Bull Doesn’t Really Die

Conclusion: It’s Sexy

Epilogue: Killer Coffee Pot?

Finally

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HelenHighly Critiques the Film Carol and Compares it to the film Brooklyn

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5 Flights Up Film Review, with Helen-Gets-a-New-TV Commentary AND a Holiday Greeting to my Readers

by HelenHighly

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by HelenHighly

“Those Italians, they understand Sorrowful Life and Comical Death in ways that Americans just do not.”

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by HelenHighly

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Helen Highly Recommends Carrie Fisher Quit Twitter
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Am I That Guy?!