In researching RRR and other Tollywood movies this week, I kept thinking about the ending section of the movie, in which Raju Rama is shown to be an incarnation of the actual Hindu God Rama. In a Western cultural context, this seemed absurd––if a character in an action movie turned out to secretly have been Jesus or Moses the entire time, it would undoubtedly be met with eye rolls and and bad reviews from the audience (if played straight).
In RRR, Raju Rama being Lord Rama just happens as part of the movie. Why? What? I needed to know.
There is no prohibition or social taboo against presenting Gods on screen in South India, and there is a concern that younger people do not relate to Hinduism or it’s Gods. Therefore, to get them back in the fold, and to present broadly-known cultural agendas on screen, there are Gods. A lot of Gods.
I recently had the pleasure of rewatching Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989). Amidst the comedy, heartbreak, and social commentary, I was left asking one question–what is going on with Vito (left)?
Vito (played by Richard Edson) acts as a foil to his brother, Pino (played by John Turturro). Pino is brash, openly racist, and cruel to Mookie. He repeatedly says the n-word, bashes Bed-Stuy as a neighborhood, and more. Relatively soft-spoken Vito is the opposite: kind to Mookie, and defiantly anti-racist (by which I mean he is the one major white character in the film who never says the n-word).
Pino bullies Vito constantly, sometimes physically harassing him. He pushes back, but never majorly, especially granted the advice he’s being given by Mookie (namely to beat up his brother).
This refusal to push back is exemplified at the end of the movie–really, in this shot:
As Mookie is about to cross into the rioting crowd, we get a glimpse of Vito, looking sullen more than angry, yes, but sandwiched comfortably between his brother and father, his allegiance to his group––his race––never in question. Despite his friendship with Mookie and more positive view of the neighborhood than his brother and father (being the only one of the family to actually leave the pizzeria during the events of the movie), Vito’s final placement falls along racial lines.
This ties into the broader theme of the movie about race as an inescapable, inexplicable feature of personality and life. Vito may have been the best white person, but he was still a white person. I am curious, though, about what everyone else thinks––is that pivotal shot mostly an accident? Do I give Vito too much credit, even?
Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning (1990) follows an ensemble cast of performers in the Harlem Ball scene, each of whom finds a different outcome (death, fame, resignation, etc.). Willi Ninja, the film posits, is the one who made it out.
I was fascinated by Paris is Burning‘s portrayal and framing of Ninja. In contrast to the fate of it’s other major protagonist (if the figured can be considered as such), Venus Xtravaganza, Ninja’s apparent success story is a sliver of a very external form hope in a film which is largely about disadvantaged people needing to create hope for themselves.
Ninja probably did “make it out” more than anyone else in the film. He went on to teach dance, be on TV, and shape the Ball scene going forwards. But he did not escape, not fully. The figures of Paris is Burning talk often about wanting a “normal life”. Ninja died of AIDS-related complications at the age of 45.
According to the Google Arts and Culture article about Ninja, he will be remembered thusly: “[his] legacy is the legacy of voguing, and the exquisite form of dance and expression that he brilliantly developed. Ninja passed away on September 2nd, 2006, in New York City, but remains deathless in his art.”
He may remain deathless in his art. He would today have been 64.
Clue (Lynn, 1985) is a classic comedy-mystery film based on the classic whodunnit board game. The movie is absolutely hilarious, but it’s also very unique as far as mystery films go. Clue has three endings. Not narrative jumps, not fake-outs, but three actual solutions to the whodunnit mystery. On theatrical release, each theater was sent a different ending, and on streaming, they are all presented as possible realities. At first, it would seem like this absolutely throws away any sense of a consistent plot or narrative (any proper diegesis)––how can a murder have three different killers, three different distinct sequences of effect?
Clue is a genius film because it doesn’t have one narrative, one sequence. It cleverly builds up a giant front of nothing, then builds it’s entire narrative in less than five minutes. How? Diegetic narration.
Clue is a restricted film, in that we never know more than one character. Specifically, we never know more than the murderer knows–-we see the killings as they happen, but we never know who does them. At least one characters always knows more than us. And that character is usually the man above, Wadsworth (Tim Curry). He is the butler of the house, and the story’s effective narrator.
Throughout most of the film, the characters make absolutely no progress towards finding out who the murderer is. They search the house repeatedly, deal with guests, and discover murder after murder (eventually totaling six), but never get any closer to finding the truth. In this sense, Clue completely disregards the notion that characters are causes of events––the murderer in Clue might as well be a force of nature (faceless, unknown, unfeeling, and unseen), and the plot is otherwise driven by seemingly random occurrences (the motorist’s arrival, the singing telegram, Mr. Boddy not being dead). Clue‘s plot, when pared down, is nearly non-existent: the characters move around the house discovering nothing for an hour as random things happen, until Wadsworth explains the entire thing to them.
This is not a plot. It’s a sitcom set-up. Which is why Clue‘s comedy takes center-stage. Comedies don’t necessarily need plots, and Clue can sometimes feel more like a Who’s-on-First-esque stand-up bit rather than a film.
I don’t want to claim that Clue has no elements of narrative story; like all mysteries, it hides it’s causes without hiding it’s effects, while it has no actual flashbacks it does have an extended scene where Wadsworth acts out the beginning of the movie, functioning as a flashback, and it does have a climax (or, more accurately, three––each of the three moments when Wadsworth unmasks the murderer(s)). But it barely has a rising action, if at all. It mostly shuns exposition, giving one detail each per character and nothing else until the very end, and while it theoretically has a goal-oriented plot, nothing happens. The narrative of Clue moves at a speed of zero until the very end, when it suddenly launches through every stage of a plot in five minutes.
Clue, to me, is a fascinating example of a refusal of narrative. The story of the movie is so completely not-the-point, instead being there only to provide moments of shock and comedic set-ups. I’m curious what others think––is Clue a seminal masterpiece in non-narrative writing? Or just a mystery that leans a little too heavily on humor? Either way, this whodunnit mystery film is a classic for a reason––and that reason isn’t the mystery itself.
Singin’ in the Rain (1952), directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, is a musical comedy about the fictitious Monumental Studios’ attempt to copy Warner Bros’ successful “talkie” movie. The movie is, in almost every way, about sound: the film is the story of a studio converting to movies with sound, it is itself a musical, and the second half of the plot concerns the dubbing of sound in a film. Singin’ in the Rain is also unique in using sound as a double metaphor: it is both representative of entertainment, and representative of real art––even as these things are seemingly put into conflict with each other.
Sound as Entertainment
Upon hearing the news that The Jazz Singer is a smashing sensation, studio head R.F. Simpson rushes to turn his in-production movies into talkies. This obviously frustrates the director, whose artistic vision is presumably compromised by this choice. At the very least, he’s clearly not thrilled to be taking on this new challenge. Simpson states that every studio is “getting on the bandwagon”, not even allowing his current productions to finish before making the switch. In this exemplative scene, we see sound in films running directly counter to art. Here, sound is for entertainment. It is for business.
Sound as Art
But sound isn’t only for business. Early in the film, we see the interaction between Don and Kathy, where she insists that silent movies are basically artless––that “when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all”. This sentiment is echoed later by Don’s friend Cosmo. Kathy, apparently a theater actress, argues that the conventions of silent film make it inherently less artful then theater, because theater has lines––spoken word. Shakespeare, she mentions, was a master of the line, and his plays are definitionally art.
Don, at first, denies this––then quickly comes to accept it. Sound eventually brings the movies closer to theater. Don’s terrible improvising is replaced with more soliloquy-type dialogue. The sound of the talkie makes the film more into art.
So is sound––talking––a force for entertainment, for art, or both? For a film that seems to pit these two forces against each other, I think it’s principle plot topic points to art and entertainment being far more aligned than they seem. I’d be curious to see what other films say about the matter, and what the writers and directors of Singin’ in the Rain say too; this middle-ground, both-can-work approach is interesting, unexpected, and possibly completely based in unreality.
While watching All that Heaven Allows (1955), I kept thinking about how it was supposed to be a “bad movie”. It is a “weepie”, it is unserious, it is “trash” (as director Sirk would positively call it later). I was so interested in the Sirk quote we looked at together—about crazy trash being much closer to high art than we’d like to think—that I went looking for more of his interviews.
This interview, while not directly concerning All that Heaven Allows, is very much a commentary on it, and Sirk’s other “bad films”. He rebukes this “bad” claim, offering his own set of criteria as to what makes a film good or bad: it must have imagination, must be interesting, must have a theme, must be consistent, and must trust the audience just enough (which is to say, not at all).
What I like the most about this clip, and his criteria, are how they end. Sirk moves from talking about imagination—that every film must have one, that a film without one is a waste, or not even a true film (piece of art) at all—to talking about why he makes “bad movies”. According to him, he makes “preaching” movies: the antithesis of bad.
”The moment you stop preaching in a film, the moment you want to teach your audience, you’re making a bad film.”
Sirk seems, here, to be eschewing the concept of subtlety in film, and based on All that Heaven Allows, it seems that he followed that command. Whether it is the treacherousness and turn-facedness of the children, the incessant nature of the friends, or the unending charm of Mr. Kirby, nothing in AtHA is subtle. Every emotion and character is a metaphorical brick to the face of whatever emotion Sirk wants you to feel. It calls back to something else he said in the interview
“[A movie] should have its own kind of finish, its own kind of theme”.
All that Heaven Allows has finish. It has a theme. And it’s certainly enjoyable to watch. In the wake of AtHA, can we really deny Sirk’s definition of good and bad? And if we enjoy AtHA, why would we?
Last friday, I went to see the LDOD shadowcast production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Plaza Theater. I’d seen this movie a few years ago, but that was back in pandemic times. I wanted to refresh my memory, and in browsing through the Plaza’s website I found my opportunity.
For the uninitiated (“Rocky Horror Virgins”), RHPC is a “midnight movie”––it was terribly panned at release in 1975, but quickly gained an extreme cult following (largely through midnight showings). The movie is an incredibly cheesy sci-fi comedy musical with intense Queer themes (quite the shock for 1975), including crossdressing, bisexuality, lots of gay sex, trans and gender non-conforming characters, and more. It was also made on a budget of just over a million dollars and was shot in less than a month.
Knowing details of the production in advance, I decided I’d try to pay attention to how the producers of RHPC scrimped with their costumes and production design; if Star Trek can put a horn on a dog and call it an alien, surely the good people of Rocky Horror can pull something off.
(The aforementioned cone dog.)
I was able to get in two observations before I mind fell into the time warp itself.
1. They definitely blew the entire budget getting Tim Curry to agree to do this movie. There is none left for anything else. Observe this laser effect. Also the “laser” is the head of an actual pitchfork.
2. These cheesy costumes and bad effects are somewhere in the realm of purposeful. Faced with a tiny budget and absurd production schedule, the filmmakers chose to lean-in to camp and cheese. These special effects are terrible––this is one frame, but as the camera shakes in the scene, the special effects stay static. They were clearly drawn on in a great rush. What’s stranger, though, is that it also doesn’t draw us out of the story. If you’re at all willing to believe in the absolutely absurd reality of this film, then an actor who forgot to smooth their contour or a group costume that is quite literally a pack of birthday hats won’t pull you out.
…
You know what will? Dozens of people in the theater shouting at the screen. And shooting water guns at each other. And acting out the movie. And being incessantly horny.
These shows are an absolute ton of fun. High art? Absolutely not. But a great blend of terrible cinema, live theater, and the power of fifty years of cult fandom? Absolutely.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show runs every Friday at 11pm at the Plaza Theater. Tickets are about $18. Go see it.
Also they have raffles and I won a set of the game Clue.
I’ll start with this: I promise I usually watch “good” media. I like quality television. I also love Suits, a fairly trashy legal drama from the late aughts. Suits is, in my film-student view, terrible. But Suits isn’t always empty collars and ties. The show has some incredible moments of Mise-en-Scene (“what is in a scene”): the combination of it’s lighting, setting, blocking, costume, and action.
In trying to understand why I love this show, and as application and practice of my understanding of this week’s Film Art reading, I’m going to examine the mise-en-scéne (setting, lighting, costumes, blocking, composition) of the first forty seconds of the pilot of Suits––and maybe, in the process, prove its brilliance.
Suits opens with a shot of the Manhattan Bridge. Not it’s famous cousin (the almighty Brooklyn Bridge), but it’s functional, steel sister. The lights are bright enough to see the cars, but it’s still dark. Here, Suits has set the aesthetic tone: this is going to be professional, dark. We see cars drive over the bridge, then hard cut to the Chrysler Building. Now we immediately know the setting––no narration or title card required. Even if you don’t recognize the Manhattan Bridge, you know the Chrysler. We’re in New York City, we’re in Manhattan.
The third shot is the most telling. We cut again to an empty wall, then pan down. We’re looking at a skyscraper (Citigroup Center, for all interested), and somewhere around the fiftieth floor, we see men in suits dancing. They’re centered and bathed in an orange light, a sharp contrast to the blues and blacks of the previous shots. This, the show says, is what you should pay attention to. These people are different.
So, within literally sixteen seconds, just based on what is physically in the shots, we know where we are (NYC), what type of people we’re going to be watching (Rich People), their status (High), and what we’re going to be watching––not the most beautiful, polished conduct (not the Brooklyn Bridge)––but the functional, real, beautiful-and-terrible lives of these people.
We cut in to the office floor and see that they aren’t dancing, but arguing. Every character in the titular suits, all chatting excessively––except one. Even in the chaos of this scene, again without a single word, we know who to focus on. The camera settles on the non-arguing man, waiting patiently in the corner. His body language is sharp, he stands tall. He is our focal point, and we know it.
The frame at 0:36 (above) is, to me, a work of art. Our focal character is the only one lit with low-key contrast; it’s so far from the soft, relaxed light of every other character that we could infer his mixed emotions based only on the lighting. On the scale of importance, he sits at the very top, further highlighted by a silhouette comprising the entire left half of the frame. And, with such a shallow space, our focal man becomes the entire background. The actor’s highly individualized (but not overly-stylized) performance stands out too––he fits in, mostly, but he is clearly different from the rest of his cohort. His hands are laced together. His head is tilted down, almost a slight Kubrick Stare. He’s wearing the costume of everyone else in the room, but he isn’t with them. He’s not like them. We linger on him, confirming with time: he is unique. He’s worth paying attention to.
Each element of mise-en-scene: setting, costume, lighting, staging, spacing/composition, and time; they are all done perfectly here. We know this man. We know his attitude. We know his world. All this, without a single word––just by what’s in the shot.
So, in light of all this, is it okay for me to like Suits? Is this an over-read of fairly obvious filmmaking, or a brief glance at a masterclass in mise-en-scene?
