Movie Review: AntiChrist

This is not a movie that believes in moderation. This is not a movie that believes that violent images are best left to the imagination or that less is more. Let us be clear: this is a movie that shows in extreme close-up a women cutting off her own clitoris.

It may seem petty to begin a review of a movie which definitely has serious issues on its mind by pointing to its most brutal moment, but that moment and others like it are what linger in the mind. Director Lars von Trier (Dogville, Dancer in the Dark) has a well-earned reputation for artistry, but he also has one for being a provocateur. He has never shied away from material that is uncomfortable, disturbing, and shocking. Does the material here merit images like that described above, or are they shown merely to provoke?

Antichrist does not lack for ideas. It takes as its subjects nothing less than grief, pain, despair, women, and the chaotic nature of the universe. The plot is bare-bones. In the beginning, a couple is making love. Their infant son crawls out of his crib, sees them, climbs onto a window-sill, and falls to his death. The couple, played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg and referred to only as He and She respectively, are stricken with guilt and grief. They retreat to an isolated cabin in the woods so that they might work through their pain, but it is here that their relationship becomes increasingly violent and strange.

On one level, Antichrist is about two people punishing each other for their son’s death. He is a therapist and tackles the problem analytically, burying his own feelings to focus on his wife’s pain. He puts her through a battery of tests that are as much about exacting vengeance as they are about making her face her fears. She reacts more directly, becoming sullen and angry and getting him to engage in rough, painful sex. There is a lot of sex in the movie, and it is mostly graphic and violent. It is why She eventually does what she does to herself, to rid herself of the thing that cost her child’s life.

Or is it? Between all the interpersonal drama, von Trier weaves in a series of mythic images and themes. Acorns falling on the roof. A deer, a fox, a crow. It is eventually revealed that before her child died, She was doing research on feminine oppression throughout history, and the conclusions she draws may shed some light on what happens in and around that cabin. Is it the result of the bottled emotions of two wounded people? Is it the natural expression of her inherent evil, or is another presence at play, something more uncaring and omnipotent than either of them are prepared to deal with? The movie gives no clear answers, but it does get the mind humming and the senses pounding. It is difficult if not impossible to deduce what von Trier intended, but the movie’s most powerful images stay intact, to be picked at and probed, long after the final frames flicker away.

What is certain is that the movie is made with impeccable craft. Von Trier employs a number of techniques, from black-and-white film to slow motion sequences to handheld shots and more, to expertly tug our senses one way or another. Whatever its excesses, the movie is never boring to look at. Dafoe and Gainsbourg are both extremely good in a pair of nebulous roles that require them to engage in behavior many actors would balk at. He and She spend much of the movie stripped emotionally naked, but they are the only center we have in von Trier’s morally murky universe. Dafoe and Gainsbourg give risky, powerful performances both.

Gainsbourg’s performance is never riskier than when She mutilates herself. The movie has bided its time up to this point building a desolate and hopeless atmosphere. These people are not getting better. They are not getting over or even facing their problems. They are discovering horrible new sides to themselves and finding out just how much cruelty they are capable of. She’s mutilation is the final expression of this hopelessness, but it is merely the capper to a long and painful journey from which von Trier offers no reprieve. I stepped out of the theater exhausted. Antichrist is not a movie that believes in moderation. It believes only in extremes, but that means that it can affect an audience like few movies can, even if they aren’t ready for it. See it at your own risk.

War is Swell: Inglourious Basterds and The Hurt Locker

Two movies about war have recently debuted in theaters. One is set in the 21st century and takes place in Iraq. The other is set during World War II and takes place in Nazi-occupied France. One is directed by Kathryn Bigelow, probably best known for the Keanu Reeves cop movie Point Break, and the other is directed by Quentin Tarantino, probably best known for that scene in Kill Bill where Uma Thurman kills, like, a hundred ninjas. One is about the exhilarating, addictive nature of deadly situations and one soldier’s attempt to find meaning in life beyond the thrill of war. The other is about “killin’ knat-sies.” These films both approach war in their own way, but when one looks under the surface, are they really that different?

Yes. Yes they are. A lot.

The unhidden secret of Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino’s gleefully irreverent World War II film, is that it’s not about war at all. Like all of Tarantino’s work, it is about movies; the way they look, the way they move, and what they represent. This time Tarantino makes a movie about movies that are about war, but he makes little comment on the subject itself. His principle inspiration this go-around seems to be The Dirty Dozen and other “men with a mission” movies. The men are a group Jewish of soldiers named the Basterds, and their mission is to kill as many Nazis as possible as gruesomely as possible. Their commander is Aldo Raine, a Tennessee native played by Brad Pitt as a cross between John Wayne, George Patton and Ted Bundy. Other major players include Shosanna, a young Jewish cinema-owner with revenge on her mind, and Colonel Hans Landa, a ruthless and sardonic “Jew Hunter” who tries to stop them both. Eventually, even Hitler himself makes an appearance, and something happens to him that he surely did not see coming.

These characters spend most of their time talking, as Tarantino’s characters so often do. They talk about nicknames. They talk about Max Linder. They talk about King Kong and they talk about strudel. And then, usually, once they’ve talked a scene to the breaking point, they whip out guns and start to kill each other. This is Tarantino’s technique, to construct long, lovingly crafted conversations that finally explode in violence before the talking continues. Tarantino is interested in tension. Tarantino is interested in archetype. Tarantino is interested in violence but he is not particularly interested in war.

Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow, the writer and director of The Hurt Locker respectively, are very interested in war. Boal, who served on a bomb squad in Iraq, writes from experience. The movie is about a man named William James, a staff sergeant who defuses bombs. James is very, very good at his job, but does it with a lust and recklessness that alarm the other members of his squad. The theme of The Hurt Locker is not, like so many war films before it, that “war is Hell,” but rather that “war is a drug,” and James is addicted. Boal shows other sides of James’ life. James is married, perhaps unhappily, to a woman back home. He has a young son in whom he is not very interested. The only time he seems to come alive is when he straps on a many-layered blast suit and gets to work.

These characters do not spend most of their time talking. Bigelow builds incredible tension in scenes where James, faced with a bomb on the road, approaches it slowly, watched by hovering bystanders who may or may not have put it there, and tries to disassemble it as quickly as he can, knowing that at any moment it could splatter him all over the street. Bigelow does not shy away from showing us the bloody consequences of a bomb, and every second one doesn’t go off is another second the audience will be watching the screen through shuttered fingers. When the violence finally explodes, it hits us in the gut.

Tarantino aims a little higher, hitting us in the funny bone. Inglorious Basterds features scenes of monstrous violence, but it has always been the talent of its director to turn a gruesome spectacle into a gruesomely comic one. Many recall the ear-slicing scene from Reservoir Dogs: there is a scene in this film, involving someone’s forehead, that tops it. There is something about the larger-than-life characters, the walls of too-clever dialogue, and the elegant sweeping of the camera that renders the violence in this film something other than violent. Around the time that Tarantino rewrites a monumental moment in world history, the audience begins to understand why that is, if they didn’t already. This film does not take place in Nazi-occupied France but rather in a place called Movieland, where the men are heroic, the women are beautiful, and every Nazi past and future deserves whatever horrendous punishment the most sadistic of screenwriters can come up with. In Movieland, violence can be funny or even beautiful, but it cannot draw real blood.

Inglorious Basterds is completely apolitical, which should stop absolutely no one from seeing and enjoying it. It is provocative and hypnotic in the tradition of Tarantino’s best work. Just don’t expect any sharp insights into history or politics. Odd, that this is where Tarantino and Bigelow’s films finally find common ground. For all of its gritty, grounds-eye view pyrotechnics, The Hurt Locker is a very personal story of one man and his bomb suit. Boal and Bigelow judiciously avoid commenting on why James is in Iraq and whether he should be there, instead focusing on what he does and what it feels like. In the end, this approach may say more about the situation than any amount of sermonizing could.

The films likewise feature impeccable technical credits and top-shelf acting, though the filmmakers employ them in drastically different styles and to markedly different ends. It would be remiss not to mention Christoph Waltz’s performance as Hans Landa, surely one of the most smugly entertaining Nazi bastards (sic… oh wait) of all time. The important thing to remember is that there is a pair of very satisfying war movies in theaters, and whether you see them apart or as part of one very surreal double feature, you need to go storm your local cinema as soon as possible.

Final Fantasy XII: A Reaming

Final Fantasy XII has no soul. By that I don’t mean that it’s poorly made or that it lacks a certain funky urban flavor. What I mean is that although most of the game is fully functional and user-friendly, it never makes the player care. Featuring a shallow narrative and backboned by some interesting but unsuccessful design decisions, Final Fantasy XII is a well-made game that just isn’t any fun.

Let’s begin with the combat, which is where you’ll be spending most of your time. As anyone who’s stumbled into this dark corner of the internet is bound to know, FF XII axes the turn based battle system used by its long line of predecessors in favor of a real-time system not unlike the one used in the massively multiplayer Final Fantasy XI. Whereas in past games the player would walk around an area only to be whisked randomly away into menu-driven, turn-based battles, players in XII see their enemies in the field, walk up to them, and kill them. Said killing is executed via the gambit system, an inventive approach whereby players ‘program’ the characters to act on their own. It takes some time to amass a list of truly useful gambits, but by the one-quarter mark you’ll have gotten the hang of it. As players work through the game, they'll find gambits in the field and buy them in shops. Sure, its unrealistic (you’re basically purchasing the knowledge of how to look at things), but obtaining new gambits lets you experiment with new strategies, and it’s fun to mix and match until you find one that works for you.

Since the gambits basically fight for you, your main responsibility is that of strategist, not brawler. Despite the option to micromanage your party should you choose, the whole scheme leaves the player feeling disconnected from the action. In past FFs, battles could come down to mashing the attack button over and over until everyone was dead.  That system could be irritating, but at least it invited the player to join the characters in the thick of things. In XII, the player is off to the side somewhere, watching and taking notes, or possibly making a sandwich.

Imperfect as the combat is, the game could have gotten away with its banality by lowering its frequency. Most RPG fans are familiar with the concept of grinding, killing monster after monster for the sole purpose of leveling up. In Final Fantasy XII, grinding isn’t just an idea--it’s a way of life. Players will simply not be able to make any meaningful progress without committing mass genocide on the flora and fauna of Ivalice. You’ll constantly find that you’re not strong enough for the next area, or that you don’t have enough money to buy the latest weapons and armor for your party. Players who enjoy denial can pretend that the monster-tracking sidequests, called hunts, are anything more than grind-a-thons in disguise, but after a dozen or so it all bleeds into a dull, violent blur. The combat may be functional, but it’s nowhere near compelling enough to shoulder the weight the game puts on it.

Character development is likewise a mixed bag. For the most part, development takes place on the license board, Final Fantasy XII’s lamer version of Final Fantasy X’s sphere grid. As you win battles, your characters gain license points which can be used to purchase new abilities that run the gamut from spells and other skills to HP increases. Any character can get any ability without much trouble, which means there’s a huge level of flexibility when building your party. The problem is that by the end of game, after you’ve slaughtered more monsters than there are stars in the sky, every character will have conquered the license board and will be largely the same. The complete lack of specialization makes character development feel pointless, and gives players little reason to become attached to the characters themselves.

And believe me, these characters don’t need the help. I could forgive a repetitive battle system and a flawed development design if I was invested in the game’s plot and characters. Hell, I did just that with Final Fantasy VIII. But the true failing of this game isn't the combat or the design--it’s the complete failure to get me even the least bit interested in the story. It’s important here to make a distinction between character and plot. The plot of Final Fantasy XII is serviceable, even though it’s basically the same tale the series has been telling since day one. An evil empire threatens the peace. A rag-tag gang of adventurers sets out on a grand journey to save the world and learn about themselves. To its credit, XII tells its tale with a few less ridiculous plot twists than its predecessors; there are no time-traveling witches or giant fish monsters/father figures here, but the framework is the same as ever.

The difference is that past FFs elevated themselves above their cookie-cutter plots with memorable characters and unique, detailed fantasy worlds. The world of Ivalice is not without its charms, but it lacks anything truly special or interesting. Warring kingdoms? Check. Quasi-medieval setting? Check. FF standbys like moogles and chocobos? Big ol’ check. When wandering the wide-open fields and bustling cities of Ivalice, one can’t shake the feeling that they’ve been here before. And they have, in dozens of other games, books, and shameful late-night D&D sessions.

So if the plot and world are only just up to snuff, that leaves the characters themselves to carry the day. It is my unfortunate duty to tell you that not only do said characters fail to carry said day, they drop it off a highrise into a pit of lava-squirting spikes. The cast of Final Fantasy XII is the dullest, most vacant-eyed group of walking dead the series has ever been saddled with.

Let's start at the beginning, with our teenage “hero” Vaan. Now there’s a backstory here somewhere: Vaan’s an orphan or an urchin or adopted or something, but that isn’t important, because Vaan is really just the latest in a series of harmless, charmless FF leading men without enough force of personality to make players remember him even when he's speaking about himself. Presumably the protagonist of the game, Vaan actually just hangs out in the background most of the time, occasionally squeaking about how he wants to be a sky pirate while the other characters ignore him. Their apathy is infectious.

Vaan’s gal-pal Penelo fills the cheery teenage girl quota for the game and is every bit as dull as her friend, but at least she makes no claim to be the lead. Later, the player will meet Basch, a stalwart knight fighting for his kingdom’s honor, and Fran, a mysterious bunny-eared woman of few words. Read that sentence again. Congratulations, you have just absorbed all the information the game will ever give you about these two characters. Oh, okay, they both have painfully brief segments of the story devoted to their backgrounds, but those segments are so anemic, and the game itself is so long, that any impact they may have had is completely blunted by the end.

There are two characters who come close to making an impression: Balthier the sky-pirate and Ashe the deposed princess. While Balthier can’t claim a subplot any more interesting than Basche’s or Fran’s, he is well-spoken and provides pretty much all of the game’s humor. In a game which conducts itself with all the seriousness of an especially tragic funeral, this is much appreciated. Ashe is special: she is the only character in the game with any sort of compelling internal conflict that isn’t just up and forgotten an hour in. Without giving away the plot, I’ll just say that Ashe has to decide whether to use her power for good or evil. The resolution of this dilemma is telegraphed well in advance, but its existence is all the game has to keep players from switching back to TV and channel-flipping during the cutscenes.

Admittedly, the failure of the game’s story to be at all, y’know, good, may have less to do with character and more to do with pacing. I’ll break it down for you: the game’s pacing is fucking atrocious. Virtually all of the notable events happen near the beginning, when the characters are introduced, and the end, when the bad guy dies. In between, there is walking.  The characters walk from one end of the continent to the other in search of some magic rocks, then they walk it back to look for some magic swords, and finally continue to walk on a quest to find another, bigger magic rock.  The overuse of magical macguffins is pretty shameless, and gives the impression that the characters are walking from nothing, to nothing, for nothing.  On the way, they’ll traverse lush forests, foreboding dungeons and other impressively realized environments Square-Enix has created to distract from the fact that the journey means little if the destination isn’t worth reaching.

At this point I could describe some of the game’s redeeming qualities. I could say things like “the graphics are detailed and well-realized” and “the soundtrack really pulls you into the setting.” I could say those things.  I just did, and they’re true, but they don’t make up for the fact that at its core this game is empty. It’s got a battle system that doesn’t involve the player, a development scheme that encourages redundancy, and a story so devoid of inspiration that after playing the game for one-hundred hours I can’t think of one nice thing to say about it.  I leave you with this advice: when you wake up tomorrow, hug your loved ones, do your work with pride, and for the love of God don’t play Final Fantasy XII.

Movie Review: El Mariachi

Seven thousand dollars. That can buy you a decent used car. It could take you a world-wide trip. Or, if you’re director Robert Rodriguez, it can make you a movie.

In 1992, Rodriguez and a bunch of his friends round up two lights, a camera, a few rolls of film and went to work. The result was El Mariachi, a gritty, dirty little action flick about a fresh faced, good-natured guitar player and the merciless assassin the Mexican mob mistakes him for. Add a sexy love interest named Domino, a cold-as-ice villain and a few car chases and gunfights and you’ve got a perfect little cult classic.

The plot need not be described with any particularity. The pieces of it are mentioned above and should be familiar to anyone who’s sat in the back of a dark theater and watched Arnold Schwartzenagger jump out of an exploding helicopter. The characters, likewise, are cut almost whole from the cloth of other action movies. The story is dispensable. The action is not. The movie remarkably generates the same thrills on a shoe-string budget that bigger action movies so often fail to generate with several million dollars more. When the Mariachi leaps off a balcony, guitar case between his legs, onto a moving truck, it doesn’t matter how much the movie cost, only that it’s exciting.

Much of that excitement comes from the playful way Rodriguez uses his camera. The action scenes are shot in a rough, kinetic style and set against colorful, sun-beaten Mexican locales. Cuts are frequent. Long conversations uninterrupted by a bullet to someone’s brain are seldom. Rodriguez makes liberal use of “cheesy” techniques like slow motion, fast motion, and dramatic zooms. The result is a zippy energy that runs through nearly every scene in the film, action and otherwise. One short sequence finds a gang-leader’s two thugs opening the door to their boss’ shabby motel room. They’re immediately faced with a trio of gun-toting girls, woken from a nap with the gang leader, popping into frame from under a couch and pointing their guns straight at the camera to a chorus of “clicks.” Rodriguez holds the shot for a moment, cuts to the faces of the two surprised thugs, and then back to the girls as they collapse into giggles. The kind of quick tension and release perks the mind and distracts the eye, and that’s not even an action sequence.

None of this is to say that the movie doesn’t believe in its story. It does, and it provides just enough background for us to get emotionally involved with the characters without distracting from the gunplay. The unforced acting certainly helps; the performances of the actors playing both Domino, a sensual, street-smart bartender, and the Mariachi himself go a long way toward convincing us of the character’s reality. Like everything else in the movie, they came cheap. Neither had acted professionally before the film was made, and their performances have an unstudied grace that matches the movie's technique. The Mariachi himself is charmingly earnest; we believe him when he tells Domino that he can’t drink because “my voice is my life.” Domino plays off him nicely, hard-boiled where he is soft and down-to-earth where his head is lost in the clouds. It’s an old movie permutation, but it’s one that works.

Of course, we can’t let this distract us from the real purpose of El Mariachi: guns, attitude, and a seven thousand dollar budget. The tiny budget, indeed, often threatens to become the real star of the show. The movie is more than entertaining enough on its surface, but when one considers how little it cost it becomes something of a marvel, almost as much fun to think about as to watch. One can’t help but think: if he can do all that for that little, what isn’t possible? El Mariachi is an inspiration to aspiring filmmakers everywhere, and a great south-of-the-border action movie that will appeal to almost anyone. Give it a rent.