Hitch, Marty and Chris: Vertigo and Its Spiritual Descendants

Warning: Spoilers for Vertigo, Shutter Island and Inception Follow

In 2010, Leonardo DiCaprio starred in two films that were linked not just by his presence but by their obsession with reality versus dreams, the deconstruction of professionalism through emotional turmoil, the way romantic desire can be twisted by the mind and...obsession. The two films were Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island and Christopher Nolan's Inception. While Comparing the two of them would be fascinating, I'd like to link them back to Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo. Shutter Island and Inception, arguably moreso than the other genres and films they refrence, contain significent thematic similarities to Hitchcock's film.

All three films are essentially mazes crafted by their respective directors, and also by characters in the films. for their protagonists to travel through, reaching an emotional chararis or realization about themeselves. The catch is the characters don't know they're in a maze or think they know what kind of maze they're in. In Vertigo former detective John 'Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart) feels he understands what's happenng every step of the way At first, he believes that Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) just has an active imagination, that his wife Madeline (Kim Novak) couldn't really be possessed by a sprit- but as he learns more about Madeline's great-grandmother Carlotta Valdes, he begins to believe there's something to Elster's story.

What Scottie fails to understand is he's part of  Elster's plan to murder his real wife. The Madeline Scottie follows is just a decoy. Scottie sees what he believes to be Madeline committing suicide from jumpng of the top of a bell tower. What he actually sees is the dead body of the real Madeline Elster. With Scottie a witness, Elster gets away scott free.

Scottie is also part of Hitchcock's maze, which ties the plot and the psychological aspects of the Scottie character together. Htchcock takes Scottie on a journey from a man emotionally detached but curious former detective to a man obsessively in love with Madeline, so in love that he makes over Judy (Novak again), the decoy Madeline, back in to Madeline. Hitchcock eventually leads Scottie to finally overcoming his acrophobia. Hitchcock also brings Scottie to a revelation about his obsessive love for Madeline: it can never be real because Madeline was never real, at least not the one he knew. By makng Judy over all he's done is, like Elster, strip away Judy's identity for a dream. Men, and I speak as one myself, sometimes cling to a fantasy woman rather than something tangiable in front of us. What's disturbing is in Scottie's case the fantasy woman and the real woman are the same. He comes to the realization about his obsession, it's too late to go back- and as Judy falls to her death, for real this time, Scottie loses the real woman he could not love. As Scottie is standing outside the bell tower, he's come out of the maze- what kind of man and what his future holds remains one of the great mysteries of film.

In Vertigo, Scottie is a former detective, spendng most of the film outside of his profession while still taking part in it. In Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a former US Marshall who is a patient at Ashcliffe Hosptal for the Criminally Insane on Shutter Island. His real name is Andrew Laeddis and he went insane after killing his wife Dolores (Michelle Williams) who in turn had murdered their three children.Teddy spends the movie outside of his profession yet taking part in it as well. He has created a reality where he is still a US Marshall and has come to Shutter Island to invetigate the disappearance of a patient named Rachel Solondo (Emily Mortimer).

As with Vertigo, the plot mechanics of Shutter Island are a fabrication. In this case, a fabrication made by Teddy to esccape from his guilt of not helpng his wife who he knew was mentally ill. Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) allows Teddy to play out his fantasy, which also includes Nazi experiements done on the island, so that Teddy can come to realize the truth and come to accept what's he done. Vertgio takes us through what seems like several genres, thriller, mystery, ghot story, gothic romance until it reveals itself to be a character study about obsessive love. Shutter Island travels through film noir, paranoid conspiracy thriller, horror and romance, and, at the top of a lighthouse, reveals itself to be a story about the way film narratives comfort and help us escape from reality. Scorsese creates a tribute to the films he loves and also ties them in to the pyschology of the Teddy character. Teddy has created a world that, uncomforting as it is, is more bearable than the truth.  Horror movies can scare us but they do so in mangeable ways. Film noirs have a cynicism to them but they also have style to burn.

I think the strongest link between Vertigo and Shutter Island are the themes of lost love and trying to reclaim that love through fantasy. Teddy constantly dreams about and imagines Dolores. Part of his illusion is that Dolores died in an apartment fire started by ''Andrew Laeddis," who Teddy is looking for on Shutter Island. Teddy has preserved Dolores the way she was rather than what she became. He preserves her in time like Scottie preserves Madeleine and just as Scottie made over Judy, Teddy has made over his subconscious. Teddy, like Scottie, has to come to the realization, that his love is a fantasy. The real Dolores, and his relationship with her was destroyed when she murdered her children. Teddy has to confront the real woman, not the dream, not the fantasy.

Vertigo and Shutter Island are both about the crumbling of professionalism through romantic desire. Scottie is at first a detached but curious observer but things become more complicated when he falls in love. Teddy's mission, while a fantasy, is complicated by the appearance of Dolores, who feeds in to his paranoia, thus making his fantasy much more dangerous.

A dead wife who appears in the protagonist's dreams is the most humourous connection between Shutter Island and Christopher Nolan's Inception. Nolan has been compared to Stanley Kubrick and drew inspiration from Ridley Scott and Michael Mann for his Batman films. For me, I see him comparisons between him and Hitchcock. Like Hitchcock, Nolan's films exist in a heightened reality. On the surface are films driven by twists and turns, elements that have led Nolan to be labelled a shallow director -"amusing but mechanical"- according to critic Jim Emerson. In his time Hitchcock also seemed to be the victim, I and I think still is, of being labelled shallow.  But, like Hitchcock, beneath Nolan's plot mechanics lie interesting psychological studies of obsession.

I think Inception, out of all Nolan's films, has the strongest thematic links to Hitchcock, which brings me back to the role of the dead wife in the film. Leonardo DiCaprio again has a lost love on his mind. He plays Dom Cobb. He's an extractor, a man who is hired to steal infomation from powerful people. He does this by having an architect build a dream world he and the subject can enter. Once inside Cobb can extract the information needed. Things are complicated by the constant appearance of Cobb's deceased wife Mal (Marion Cotillard).

Cobb and Mal spent 50 years in the dream world known as Limbo. Mal began to lose track of reality, which led Cobb to perform inception on her, convincing her that they needed to kill themselves in order to wake up. Once in the real world Mal still believed she was in a dream world, which led her to suicide. In Vertigo, it was partly Scottie's guilt for what he believed was Madeleine's death that led him to make over Judy in to his lost love. In Inception, it's also guilt that causes Cobb to hold on to the memory of his wife, to create a vision that doesn't blame him for anything, that's preserved in time, even moreso than Madeleine or Dolores. Like Teddy, Cobb has made over his subsconscious, and even stays in it to visit and be with Mal.

Inception is all about mazes. The dream worlds Ariadne (Ellen Page) create for the job to incept Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) are all designed to be mazes- and ultimately the film is a maze that not only the Cobb and his team send Fischer through, but that Nolan sends Cobb through as well. The maze in case requires Cobb to downwards, both literally and metaphorically. "Downwards is the only way forwardss" he says- which speaks for his character arc. To let go of his guilt and the fantasy he clings on to, he must go downwards back to Limbo.

All three films end on the top of a building of somesort. In Vertigo, it's the bell tower, In Shutter Island it's the lighthouse and in Inception the film ends on the top floor of a building in Limbo. In in these places where everything is revealed and the characters reach an emotional catharsis of sorts. It's in this building that Cobb tells Mal

"I can't imagine you with all your complexity, all you perfection, all your imperfection. Look at you. You are just a shade of my real wife. You're the best I can do; but I'm sorry, you are just not good enough"

 Cobb realizes he can't bring back Mal back from the dead. Like Scottie, all he can do is create an image, a fantasy. There are echoes of Andrei Tartovsky's Solaris in Shutter Island and Inception, and Solaris may owe much to Vertigo. All four films are about a romantic desire that's can't be completely fullfilled, how you can never really know who the person you love really is.

Vertigo, Shutter Island and Inception all concern the nature of dreams and their relationship to filmmaking. Much has been made of how we never see how Scottie got down from the roof at the beginning of the film. Is everything after the first scene some kind of dream. The film almost moves like a dream, with plot points that don't make sense and several concidences. The scenes of Scottie following Madeleine also have a dreamy quality to them. Shutter Island's dream sequences evoke different genres, from melodrama to horror, relating to the movie Teddy has crafted for himself in the real world. Inception combines several genres, the heist film, the spy thriller, film noir, sci-fi and even a little bit of Fred Astaire. Nolan does this to emphasize how movies themselves are like dreams.

All three films also involve continous loops, relating to the constant loops films are on- when we rewatch them the characters go through the same motions even if we know the story. Scottie ends the movie standing over an abyss, where he began the film. Cawley compares Teddy to a tape that's on a endless loop. Inception begins with Cobb in Limbo and eventually returns to that scene at the end. Teddy breaks this endless loop by pretending to regress again, making the surgeons perform a lobotomy on him. Cobb makes Saito (Ken Watanabe) realize he's in Limbo, making Saito shoot himself and Cobb to wake up.       

The last shot of Inception is Cobb's totem spinning on the table. The film cuts to black before we know if it topples. Cobb, while happier than Scottie is at the end of Vertigo, is suspended between dreams and reality. We're always suspended between not knowing what is real and what isn't. Are we constantly dreaming? We ultimately have to accept what is given to us- if life is a dream, make it a happy one.

How "The King's Speech" Foreshadowed This Year's Oscar Race

When The King's Speech won Best Picture at the Oscars last February, and ever since then, the academy hs been criticized for being too traditional and "safe" in their choice. The other nine contenders included more modern fare such as David Fincher's The Social Network, which chronicled the creation of Facebook, the website that has shaped a generation, and Christopher Nolan's Inception, which played with narrative structure and created a unique take on the heist film. The Kids Are All Right told the story of a lesbian couple and 127 Hours took a risk by telling the true story of a man who was trapped in a canyon.

I think there was a nostalgic, "they don't make them like this anymore"factor to The King's Speech's victory. Interestingly enough, this year's Oscar race is very much based on nostalgia. I wouldn't call every film nominated for Best Picture this year "traditional" but several of these films, including the winner, appeal to the academy's sense of nostalgia for films and filmmakers of old. This year's winner The Artist, while unique for a film in 2011 because it was silent and in black and white, still appeals the nostalgia for the silent film era and stars of that era. What makes Jean Dujardin's Oscar winning performance so moving is how he reminds us of movie stars from the silent era. The film also has an uplifting ending which tells us that despite "talkies" taking the place of silent films, the artists who made those films have the ability to cross over to "talkies" and create art.

Martin Scorsese's Hugo, while using the very modern technique of 3-D, like The Artist, appeals to nostalgia for the silent film era and more importantly for the pioneers of film including George Melies, played in the film by Ben Kingsley. Christy Lemire and Ignaty Vishnevetsky, co-hosts of Ebert Presents At The Movies, have also said they feel Scorsese's film captures the style of silent films better than The Artist.

Other nominees also have a nostalgic/traditional quality to them. The Help is reminiescent of an old fashioned social issue film. Steven Spielberg's War Horse has been compared to the work of John Ford. Vishnevetsky also said there is nothing in the film which wouldn't have gotten past the Hays Code from the old studio film. Woody Allen's Midnght in Paris, while critical about nostalgia, still creates nostalgia for a bygone era; and as critic AO Scott points out in his review of the film, audiences also have a particular kind of nostalgia for Woody Allen..

Even Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, the most modern and daring film of the nominees, is essentially about a man looking back at his childhood in the 1950s. The film, in part, is a tribute to growing up in that era. Moneyball, The Descendants, and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close are actually the only three Best Picture nominees to take place completely in the present, though even  Moneyball and ELIC  both take place about 10 years ago.

I found this year's Best Picture line-up, with a strong focus on the past, in opposition to last year's more modern day line-up. The King's Speech stood out a little bit last year; this year it would have fit right in. I feel The Artist is consciously going for a traditional style whereas The King's Speech just falls in to that style but I think The King's Speech did foreshadow The Artist's victory. I'll be interested to see if the academy goes back to honouring edgier fare as they were doing with films like No Country For Old Men or The Hurt Locker. Can Christopher Nolan's final Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises be the first superhero film to win Best Picture. I think that's a little bit too much to hope for, particularly this far out; but if  any of the academy members are feeling nostalgic for Batman...

The Look on Their Faces: Some Thoughts on "The Prestige"

This is a revised version of a review I posted on another blog in the summer of 2010- Spoilers Follow

I think Christopher Nolan will always be closely associated with the Batman mythology due to Batman Begins, its sequel The Dark Knight, and of course the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises. This isn’t a bad thing; the first two films are two of the finest superhero films of recent memory. Nevertheless, I feel The Prestige, along with Memento and Inception, are the films that I believe epitomize his interests as a director. Nolan likes narratives which work as puzzles, both literally and existentially.  Some dismiss his films as gimmicks and nothing more. I disagree.  Once the films reveal more about themselves, the viewer can find genuine depth, thematically and emotionally. In this review I want to focus on The Prestige.  This was Nolan’s first film since Memento where he was fascinated with creating a puzzle narrative. His previous two films were Insomnia, the remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name, and of course Batman Begins, his biggest and most ambitious film at the time. The Prestige came out the year after Batman Begins. It was a good film to do before embarking on another Batman adventure. In some respects, despite the intelligence and craftsmanship of Batman Begins, Nolan needed to do a film which stood apart from any franchise expectations, to remind audiences who he was as a director.

The Prestige is an elegant and atmospheric film. It puts us into what is both an authentic and yet slightly stylized version of the Victorian era. I had a similar reaction to what critic A.O Scott felt about Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood.  He said the film captured the time period not exactly as it was, but as a heightened version of itself. Nolan and Wally Pfister, his cinematographer since Memento, create a look that immediately draws the audience into this world. You want to look at everything in detail, particularly since the opening line of the film is “Are you watching closely?”

 Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) are the two magicians at the heart of the film. They represent the kind of protagonists which inhabit Nolan’s films. They are obsessive in regard to their profession and occupy a morally grey area. Jackman and Bale give very strong performances, creating two unique individuals that are always compelling. The last time I watched the film, I found myself more interested in the secret behind Borden’s identity, which is a twin brother- and his life with Sarah (Rebecca Hall), particularly with Sarah’s knowledge of when Borden actually means that he loves her and when he doesn’t.  The brother who does not mean “I love you” is the brother who eventually falls in love with Olivia (Scarlett Johansson). Sarah’s intuition works as a clue: both plot-wise and emotionally.  On repeat viewings these scenes carry even more emotional weight than they do the first time one views the film.

Borden seems to be the protagonist of the film. Unfortunately, the film seems to decide on this a little too late.  I want to focus on a moment that is simultaneously a little too obvious yet supports Borden is the protagonist. It’s when Olivia gives Angier Borden’s diary. She wants to get it back to Borden’s shop before he knows it’s gone but Angier needs to figure out how he does the transported man. Olivia tells him it won’t bring his wife back, to which Angier responds, “I don’t care about my wife, I care about his secret.” That moment seems a little bit too obvious, almost as if the film was trying too hard to say Angier had become an obsessive. Still, Jackman’s look of regret at his words saves the moment from being too shallow. It supports that Borden is the protagonist. Borden’s love for his daughter and Sarah, and the other brother’s regret for Sarah’s death, contrasted with this moment with Angier, emphasizes the ultimate difference between the two men. By the end of the film Borden can still deeply care for the people in his life, whereas Angier’s obsession with being the better magician trumps his anger towards Borden for possibly killing his wife. Angier’s speech at the end of the film about the look of wonder on people’s faces when an illusion is performed is one of the film’s finest moments because it both humanizes Angier and shows how much he has lost his humanity. The only people in his life who matter are the audience.

Another reason why Borden is the protagonist of the film is that, as some have pointed out, his trick does not cheat, and Angier’s does. Borden’s trick involves using an actual twin, whereas Angier goes outside the normal constrictions of doing illusions by using Tesla’s (David Bowie) machine. Many view the science fiction element of the film as a cheat; yet they may not consider the idea that the audience is supposed to take this a cheat, to see that while Angier is a great showman, Borden is the better illusionist. I also feel that Tesla and his machine are introduced early enough for the audience to have the seed planted that something beyond the realm of traditional Victorian era magic is afoot.  Moreover, if one takes the film too literally as a magic trick, one that has to have a rational explanation, then one misses the larger theme of science as a new form of magic. I also feel the sci-fi element actually goes well with the Victorian era setting; the film can possibly be seen as homage to H.G Wells or Jules Verne.

I think if the film had focused more on the themes of science and the Tesla character then it would have been an even stronger film, one that is clearer about the relation between scientific magic and illusionist magic. As it stands, The Prestige is still an effective mood piece, and on repeated viewings it becomes more than just a fascinating puzzle. It’s themes of obsession in terms of being the greatest magician relate to the issues of how far people go to be famous today. This, coupled with its horrific view of how science can fuel these obsessions, makes The Prestige a very contemporary film.

Some Thoughts on "Overrated"

If James Lipton of Inside The Actor's Studio were to ask me what my least favourite word was, I'm pretty sure I'd say "overrated." Everytime I see or hear the word, it just kills me inside. The fact that it's become such an overused word is what makes me hate it. When a word like "overrated," is overused, it doesn't lose it's meaning but the meaning does lose its power and its relevance. If every movie is "overrated" then what's the big deal? It's the same thing as calling a movie "contrived." SO many movies have been labelled with that word that it doesn't seem to matter if a movie is contrived or not. In fact, I think almost every movie is contrived- but that's a different discussion.

"Overrated" has become so overused that it's even been directed at film which haven't been universally praised. I've seen Hanna, Joe Wright's film about a teenage assassin played by Saorise Ronan, on a few "overrated" lists. This is surprising because while the film got mostly good reviews from critics, it didn't strike me as a film they loved with an intense passion. It had a pretty quiet release in April of last year. And it only started being talked about again at the end of the year when it appeared on some ten best lists, as well as the "overrated" lists.

My favourite film of 2010, Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, also appeared on an "overrated" list.. Personally, I'd put that on my "underrated" list. I can't see why the film was overrated. While it wasn't a total critcal disaster, with Roger Ebert, Richard Roeper and Peter Travers giving it very positive reviews, Michael Phillips and A.O Scott both thought it didn't work, as did others. It seems that the only reason why Hanna and Shutter Island were labelled overrated was because some people thought that anyone liking either film was "overrating" it. If that is the case, there's a certain arrogance to this logic. If you didn't like a film then you didn't like it. That some people did doesn't make it overrated.

Even when a film does get universal praise I still think it's a little arrogant to say a film is "overrated." It suggests this person knows the truth about the film while others don't. It fails to consider the notion that film viewing is a lot of the time based on an emotional response as much as an intellectual response. I think the reason while many films are "overrated" is because critics or general audiences have a strong emotional reaction. It not's that they can't or don't think. It just means that whether or not the film is the greatest thing since sliced bread, the emotional reaction to the elements that really worked become the focus rather than what didn't work. Not everything about Inception was the most groundbreaking or amazing thing but certain scenes and moments, the shifting gravity fight, slow motion van drop, Paris street folding and the infamous ending, are what stick with the audience afterwards and are what really counts.

This is why "overrated" also strikes me as a somewhat reductive phrase. It almost wants in to reign in any emotional reaction or praise on part of the viewer. Again, every time people start liking a movie, it becomes overrated. Why can't a movie just be well recieved instead of being made in to the bad guy, being told it has no business being liked. The word also suggests a mechanical reaction to film viewing, as if a movie has to be "properly" rated. It's almost impossible to do this because people are going to have wildly different reactions to a film- things they liked, things they disliked. Two people can love a movie for different reasons.

I think my main gripe with the word "overrated" is that it doesn't really say anything about the actual film, it's themes, it's characters, it's actors or direction. It almost falls under "padding the word count." It's not direct or to the point about the film.

It's award season, which means this word is going around a lot, particularly in regards to The Artist. I think this has to do with people seeing the film after hype has been built up. Unfortunately, it's hard for anyone, including me, to go in cold to movies due to the hype, either positive or negative, which sometimes surround them. I sympathize with people who use the word but I hope one day people get bored using it. There's so much more exciting and interesting things to say about a film.

Some Thoughts on "The Dark Knight Rises"

The Dark Knight Rises is my most anticipated film of 2012 and probably the last super-hero film I'll be forward to for some time (I have some mixed feelings about The Amazing Spider-Man). It was always an enevitable film but it took sometime for it to get off the ground. I think Christopher Nolan is the kind of director who doesn't want to do a film unless he's interested in the story. For me this is emphasized by his statement that he didn't want to do another Batman film unless he had a good story. The fact Nolan has made this film gives me confidence that he has found a worthwhile story to tell rather than just a cobbled together, obligatory third chapter.

The hardest part about doing another Batman film after The Dark Knight is trying to find a villain who won't pale in comparison to the Joker, which is hard because the Joker is Batman's arch-nemesis, the villain who challenges Batman more than any one else in his rogue's gallery (and we clearly saw what an impact he made on Batman and the rest of Gotham in The Dark Knight), and also because Heath Ledger's Oscar winning performance was truly remarkable. The villain in this film is Bane, played by Inception's Tom Hardy. I haven't read any Batman comics that feature Bane and sadly I'm mostly familar with the Bane from Batman & Robin, a not so bright Frankenstein like character. Bane from the comics is much smarter, as having brute strength. I think Hardy showcased this combination of smarts and toughness in Inception, also directed by Nolan. Eames, the character he played, had an almost James Bondian combination of wit and mercenary roughness. Imagine that combination taken to a much more sinister level and I think Hardy will give a terrific performance. The way Hardy describes Bane's fighting style sounds brutal to sayy the least:

"The style is heavy-handed, heavy-footed, it's nasty. Anything from small-joint manipulation to crushing skulls, crushing rib cages, stamping on shins and knees and necks and collarbones and snapping heads off and tearing his fists through chests, ripping out spinal columns."

There's something scary about the way Bane fights which I think will make Batman's physical challenge when going up against Bane also a psychological one, expanding upon the psychological struggles he's faced in the last two films.

Just the other day Nolan provided a crucial detail regarding the plot of the film, which is it takes place 8 years after The Dark Knight. This emphasizes Batman's physical challenge due to the possibility that  Bruce Wayne may have retired from being Batman during those 8 years. I was a little surprised and disappointed that Nolan was skipping this much time in the series. For quite some time I was thinking this trilogy was primarily about the early years of Batman, with the concluding chapter looking forward to other characters and adventures this Batman would have. I think the story can still end that way but people are already speculating Batman has fought some famous foes in those missing years. Only time will tell.

While it's starting to become clear what role Bane has in the story, I'm still wondering what role Anne Hathaway's Catwoman will play in the film. Catwoman is not strictly a villainess nor heroine so I don't think there'll be a villain team-up nor a team-up between Batman and Catwoman I'll be interested in how Nolan ties the Bane and Catwoman storylines together in a satisying way.

It's a little weird to think of another Batman film in this franchise after The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight was so ambitious and was truly epic, bringing Gotham to the verge of total anarchy. My biggest question regarding this new film is will Nolan be able to create a film which doesn't feel small in comparison, particularly with the absence of the Joker. The Dark Knight was almost too big, if this film tries to top it, it may completely fall apart. I believe in Christopher Nolan though. Through these last two Batman films, he and his writing team clearly care about creating something special with these established characters and their city. 

A Scream Within a Dream: "A Nightmare on Elm Street"

Warning:  Some Spoilers Follow

If Psycho made you afraid to have a shower and Jaws made you afraid to go in the water, then A Nightmare on Elm Street made you afraid to go to sleep at night. In the film teenagers are killed in their dreams by a mysterious man with knives on his fingers and a burnt face. All three films take something relatable and relaxing and turn it in to something nightmarish, the former two films offer some kind of escape: don't take a shower and don't go swimming; but A Nightmare on Elm Street doesn't offer that kind of escape. You can't stay awake forever. Writer/director Wes Craven's concept for the film is ingenious in this respect, and genuinely scary. It's the ultimate boogeyman story and while it's hard to view the film without thinking of its legacy, the sequels, spinoffs, and remake, the film still stands as an inventive and engaging horror film, and one of the best of its era.

The man in these teenagers' dreams is Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), a child murderer who was killed parents within the community after Krueger wasn't able to be convicted of his crimes. Now Krueger is back to kill the children of the parents who murdered him. What's interesting about this backstory is how it's not revealed until later in the film. While knowing this backstory before watching the film, I still admired how Craven keeps this backstory close to his chest, revealing it just when things have reached the boiling point. I also liked how sparse Kreuger's backstory is. The psychiatrist from Psycho is no where to be found here. Craven isn't interested in psychoanalzying Krueger but in making him a symbolic figure. Krueger is an interesting blend of the symbolic and the literal. Krueger is literally killing these teenagers but he's also symbolic of what a nightmare is; I think this combination of symbolism and literalism is what makes Krueger so timeless.

What I found interesting about this film, considering the legacy of the series, is that much of the focus of the film is on the character of Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp). It takes some time to get a good look at Freddy. When we do it's when Tina's (Amanda Wyss) death scene. After that scene, we don't see much of Freddy aside from his glove in Nancy's bathtub or his hat when Nancy is able to bring it out of the dream world. It's quite effective not always seeing Freddy. It enhances the symbolic nature of his character and allows the film to be about the Nancy character as she loses her innocence and has to face her mother's past. I think after this film Freddy was featured more prominently in the sequels. I also think he became more of a jokester. In this film, he's more serious despite taking pleasure in killing.

Langenkamp gives a fine performance as Nancy, effectively going from a innocent teenager to an angry and sleep deprived fighter. It's fun to see Johnny Depp in his first film role as Nancy's boyfriend Glenn. He gets one of the most famous deaths in the series when he's eaten by his own bed.

It may sound odd but A Nightmare on Elm Street reminded a little of Christopher Nolan's Inception. Hear me out. In that film, the dream worlds the characters entered were very rooted in the real world. In A Nightmare on Elm Street the dreams, despite Freddy's presence and some haunting imagery, resemble the characters' waking life. This creates suspense as to whether someone is dreaming or not and makes familar places very threatening.

A Nightmare on Elm Street has some wonky logic which doesn't always explain itself; but like a dream, a nightmare, we're just along for the ride. In this case, it's a very thrilling one.

On Christopher Nolan, Condescension, Shallowness, and Jim Emerson



I once told a girl my favourite director was Alfred Hitchcock. I remember her telling me that she thought his films "were clever, but..." That "but" of course signified the emptiness she probably sound in Hitchcock's work. This relates to a problem I have with some film criticism today, which is the tendenacy for some critics to act with condescension towards films and filmmakers that are clever in how they are plotted. We accept that films can be multiple things at a time. We can accept a film as funny and dramatic, epic and intimate, romantic and funny, but it seems that cleverness and thematic depth or resonance are mutually exclusive for some people. I think Hitchcock, despite his status as a great filmmaker, still faces this problem. I also feel another, contemporary, filmmaker suffers from this kind of condescension: Christopher Nolan.

Nolan of course is the director of Memento, the last two Batman films, and most recently Inception. He's a director who has achieved both commercial as well as critical success, even being compared to Stanley Kubrick. This type of success almost always leads to some kind of backlash for filmmakers, and unfortunately it has happened to Nolan. I think the backlash started some time after The Dark Knight opened in the summer 2008. The Dark Knight was the sequel to Nolan's first Batman film Batman Begins, and while Batman Begins was well recieved, the hype for The Dark Knight was extraordinary, particularly due to the excitement over Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, a role which would turn out to be the actor's final complete performance. I was swept up in the hype and definitelty taken in by The Dark Knight's immersive Gotham landscape as well as haunting ending.

Jim Emerson on the other hand, who is the editor of rogerebert.com and runner of the blog scanners, was not taken in by The Dark Knight, and in the months following The Dark Knight's release, wrote numerous blog entries on the film. Many of them were critical of the film, particularly its formal aspects. Emerson is a die hard formalist. As a filmmaker, the way to his heart is to make each shot, perfect, and make the shots last long. Emerson criticized the way Nolan shot the bus escape at the end of the bank heist which opens the film, dedicating quite a few posts to the topic.

I feel I'm digressing a little bit. While I have some issues with Emerson's formalist critisms of Nolan's work, I think my main problem with Emerson's criticisms of Nolan is his condescension towards Nolan. My god, the condescension. The Dark Knight hasn't been the only Nolan film Emerson has targeted. Inception has also gone under Emerson's microscope. Emerson has been critical of that film's literal mindedness in terms of how Nolan presents the dream worlds. In his first post on the film, Inception: Has Christopher Nolan Forgotten to Dream? he concluded with this statement:

"Nolan makes crafty little puzzle boxes (and sometimes big ones), but they never quite get beyond merely clever. Like "Sleuth" or "The Usual Suspects," they're not about characters or emotions or ideas or human experience at all; they're just self-contained gadgets, amusing but mechanical."

This statement reeks of condescension. I know, I know, I use that word too much, but its central to this entire post, so bare with me. I think its okay for Emerson not to connect to Inception, or any of Nolan's films, and he could have said that, but what Emerson does here is basically look at a man's work and say there's hardly any worth to it. Now, to be fair, Emerson has said he enjoyed Memento and Following,  and even elements of The Dark Knight, but I don't think that's strong enough of a defence when you begin saying things like this. I mean, it's a little insulting and even lazy to say there's absolutely, no ideas, no characters, emotions, or ideas in any of Nolan's work. It generalizes Nolan as a fillmaker and I think that goes against what film criticism should. More on this later.

I want to look at some of Emerson's word choices. First, "mechanical." This is one of Emerson's buzz words that he's used often when describing certain kinds of films. I believe what he means by mechanical refers to the feeling he gets when a movie is driven too much by plot mechanics, and not enough by human emotion. It's think its interesting that Emerson's favourite film of the last decade was the Coen Bros's No Country For Old Men, which can be argued to be a cold and mechanical film itself, a film more concerned with formal perfection than human experience. Aren't the Josh Brolin and Woody Harrrelson characters as much chess pieces as some of the characters in Inception? How do any of the thriller elements in the film relate to what it means to be human? Critics Michael Phillips and A.O Scott, when they discussed the Coen Bros's work, actually dismissed No Country for Old Men as nothing more than a good serial killer film. Emerson, when the film was first released, wrote a post about how certain critics couldn't approach No Country For Old Men's formal elements and content as a single entity. I think Emerson's problem was that by seperating, the film's form and content, critics could praise the formal aspects of the film, without really going in to the film's deeper meanings. In another entry on the film, he says just praising the formal elements without any connection to what they represent, was meaningless.

Again, I'm digressing. I was playing devil advocate's earlier when I was talking about No County For Old Men. I do have a problem with Scott's dismissal of the film and do feel that beneath its thriller exterior, No Country For Old Men is quite a haunting film about an old man asking himself if he can confront indescriable evil. The point I want to make is that it's strange how one of Emerson's favourite films could be praised by some critics for it's plot and formal mechanics and fall under the same type of criticism he directs at Nolan's work, the "nothing more" criticism. I think Emerson probably understands the frustration of having a film or filmmaker you admire dismissed so flippantly.

Ironically, I think Emerson does with Nolan's work what he criticizes other critics for doing with No Country For Old Men, seperating Nolan's form from his content. It is true that several of Nolan's films do have a puzzle like structure but I think separating the puzzle structure from the films' deeper meanings misrepresents Nolan as a filmmaker. One has to look at the puzzle structure and see what its doing thematically or emotionally. How does the fractured narratives of Memento and the Prestige affect the way we watch the events on screen? How does their structures reflect what the films are about? One can say by moving backwards, Memento puts us in the same mindset of its amnesiac main character Leonard Shelby, not knowing how we got to a specific or why we're there. The structure of The Prestige can be argued to reflect the structure of a magic trick. One can also Nolan wants to create a more impressionistic story than a straightforward plot, though plot is alway important in Nolan's work. I see the dream-within-a-dream structure of Inception, as well as the whole film, as a reflection of how movies can be like dreams, with their shifting perspectives internal logic. Inception is also about having to go deeper in to the subconscious in order to confront one's demons, which does happen to the main character Cobb in the film.

Is there a mechanical quality to Nolan's films? Yes. But there's also a fludity to the way the narrative moves in The Prestige and there is genuine sense of epicness to Inception. To me, mechanical strikes me as more of a descriptive term than a term that's either positive or negative. Emerson certainly uses in the negative sense. For me, it depends on the mechanics. Nolan's films have plots that go in different directions so even if the mechanics can sometimes override the human elements of the films, I'm grateful Nolan is not interested in reguritating the same old plots. I believe he genuinely likes to surprise the audience and wants to them to keep us guessing.

Emerson's use of the word "self-contained" is the one that really gets me. Aren't movies by definition self-contained? Don't certain directors like Jean-Luc Godard, Hitchcock, David Lynch, and yes, the Coens, create self-contained universes in their films. How does The Big Lebowski relate to the real world? I'm sorry, now I'm picking on the Coen Bros! Certainly, Nolan's films aren't slice of life dramas; they often take place in a heightened reality and can be very maze like. This doesn't mean they can't relate to the real world. The point is to look underneath the clockwork of Nolan's films and find the actual heart at their center. When one puts aside the backwards structure Memento, it's a film about the uncertainity of memory and trying to create meaning in a life that's been disrupted. The Prestige is about the obsession that goes in to being an artist. It's a Faustian tale which only completely reveals its Faustiness near the end. Nolan's arguably most epic and personal film Inception is a story about a man letting go of the memory of his deceased wife, as well as his guilt about being responsible for her death. And The Dark Knight? Wow, arguably more than any super hero film to date, that movie is just dense with ideas about the political and soical landscape of America.

I'm not out to bas Emerson. He's an intelligent critic and I've quite a bit from him. I just feel he's been a little too harsh on Nolan. Hopefully Emerson will eventually make peace with Nolan's filmmaking as Nolan develops as a filmmaker. I think the ''nothing more" should be banned from every critic's vocabularly. As a critic, you should always be willing to enagage a work on its deeper levels. The statement from Emerson which I've quoted strikes me as contrary to how a critic tells us why a film is great, good, bad, or somewhere in the middle. Emerson just tells us there's nothing there and ends his post with that. To be fair, he has gone in to detail about what he doesn't like about Nolan's work but I still feel he's too dismissive of Nolan as a filmmaker. As I said, I hope Emerson can come around to Nolan eventually. It's unfortunate that as critics we sometimes hate the people who try to entertain and move us.