Walking by BAM at Night

So I was walking by the Brooklyn Academy of Music the other night-- as is not so unusual--, and I did shoot video of it-- which is slightly less common. I then decided to try out the movie editing software on my new computer, and this was all the footage I had free of my old previous computer's hard drive. So. This clip. Not that the lights at BAM wouldn't otherwise merit their own posting or whatever.

UPDATE: wow, imovie automatically convert a 4:3 video into 1:1.85 "letterbox"...(is it time to start complaining about distortion into default widescreen the way we used to hate "panned-and-scanned" VHS tapes before DVDs made proper presentation the standard?)

New Kitten ("J.C.") and Pumpkins

My sister adopted a kitten from my aunt and is for now calling her "J.C." "J.C." does not mean "Jesus Christ" but rather "Just Cat."

This is meant to be an off-the-cuff video diary entry-type thing. So: does it strike you as off-the-cuff?

Autumn means Hawthorne

The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne


As I found with "The Scarlet Letter", this novel took a long time to get going. But I found that it very quickly became engaging from the point at which Westervelt enters the story; his entrance is the first of a number of the fascinatingly strange scenes for which I like Hawthorne.

[side note: I sometimes wonder whether the Danish director Carl Th. Dreyer had read Hawthorne. I recently saw his Day of Wrath, and was struck by how closely the feverish and obscurely allegorical atmosphere of portions of that film resemble my experience of reading Hawthorne. I also find them alike in that the works tend to be pretty boring for at least the first half...perhaps it heightens the reward when it finally -- finally-- comes?]


View all my reviews.

Been helping Nick edit together this video...

...of his mechanical instruments performing a cover song for a contest.

A book review

>>I've never before posted a review or comment of mine from another site on this blog. That's basically because I conceive of this page as being a place for self-generated content, and featuring any content (even self-generated) that is in some way "branded" by an outside source would seem to undermine that. That said, for the purposes of this experiment, I'm thinking of goodreads.com as merely a host-- in the same way that youtube.com is merely the host for the videos I've previously posted. Furthermore, goodreads' layout lacks any logos or other commercial paraphenalia. OK. End agonizing, begin transmission:<<

Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong

rating: 4 of 5 stars


I found this book really absorbing as 1) a window into life during the Chinese cultural revolution, the contradictions of which are evoked in a pretty subtle manner, and 2)a sort of documentary-like adventure story, with occasional exciting passages giving way to observation of the quotidian details life on the Mongolian grasslands.

While I didn't know a lot about the socio-political context for the story (and this may allow to my regard for the novel; I am aware that some reviewers are very critical on these grounds), I connected with the sense of melancholy the characters feel as they bear witness to the destruction of a very ancient ecosystem and a human culture deeply connected to that ecosystem; it almost seems as if the worst thing is the inability of invaders to appreciate the culture whose death they hasten. In some ways, the story resonates with American themes like Manifest Destiny and the assimilation/multiculturalism debate, themes explored in the more sensitive Hollywood westerns.

Additionally, WOLF TOTEM gives one a complex sense of living out politics in daily life. I think we sometimes conceive of life in a time/place like China at its most radically Maoist in terms of a more familiar "life in Germany under Hitler" model, as a story of either going with an evil regime (through action or inaction) or attempting to subvert it. But the conflicted feelings of the characters provide a fuller portrait of such a state than we usually get to see-- as much as they suffer in certain ways at the hands of petty officials and wrong-headed policies, I think there is some appreciation of the nature of the national project and the ways in which one's own work is connected to that project. While I would not describe the book as favorable of the Chinese government, it does humanize the government, and it does an excellent job of describing the not-evil motivations of those individual people.

The thing about the book I found most wanting was the style-- it's very repetitious (in both language and in the sense that it harps repeatedly on a number of points). At the same time, it will sometimes seem to curiously curl back and contradict itself, suggesting one thing about the behaviour of wolves and then asserting the opposite a few paragraphs later. I recognize, however, that some of this must be due to the peculiar alchemy of translation. And an even greater part must stem from Chinese writing traditions with which I've been unfamiliar. Due to the fact that it wasn't difficult to read, I generally gave it the benefit of these doubts. And there are a few extended passages of great power and celerity, electric passages where your eye cannot take in the words fast enough, such as the wolf attack during the "white-hair" blizzard.


View all my reviews.

UPDATE:

A concise negative review by Janice Harayda can be found here:
http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/man-asian-literary-prize-reality-check-%E2%80%93-jiang-rong%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98wolf-totem%E2%80%99/

She links to another review by Nicole E. Barnes on The China Beat blog that describes WOLF TOTEM as "nostalgic drivel":
http://thechinabeat.blogspot.com/2008/03/coming-distractions-wolf-totem.html

I disagree with these two takes on the novel-- find them a little oversensitive and oversimplified. But what do I know?

It's raining right now...

starring Kevin

NOTE: Apologies for the postage-stamp size of the video-- this was due to a error in settings of the editing software. Unfortunately, correcting it involves essentially re-editing the entire video. I'll post a slightly more legible version when I have a chance.

a rough draft...

"Dreams of pulling teeth, and of teeth falling out, are interpreted in popular belief to mean the death of a connection. Psychoanalysis can admit of such a meaning only at the most as a joking allusion to the sense already indicated.

In a sense, we think that Freud left out an important childhood phenomenon, namely: the shedding of teeth. Don't we all vividly remember a tooth losening [sic] in our mouths and the strangeness of that experience? And, as is nowadays recognised, that a baby and a young child regards his body, body parts...as his possesion [sic]]. Losing these possesions [sic]...can be a traumatic experience. An experience that perhaps is still haunting us in our dreams.

We also want to stress the relation between teeth, the mouth, and talking. We need our teeth to bite our tongue. And, showing one's teeth can be a form of agression and danger (not so different from laughing, but that is another theory!). In addition, dreaming of losing our teeth may be symbolic for losing our agression [sic], and the powerlessnes [sic] we experience in our lives."

- Jerry Gifford at http://www.tnnweb.com/mds/freudsdilemma.html

The Warren Quilt

"Buddha with Sunglasses a.k.a. The Warren Quilt" by Bonita "Bonnie" Frank.
From the Quilter's Guild of Brooklyn Brooklyn All-Stars 2008 Quilt Show.

Note the stitching around the base of the sunglasses, across crease of lips (detail).

Your Double...Nature?

Houston, Texas

"Winds of Change"
George Bush Intercontinental Airport

It's very difficult to capture in bronze a country-club blazer slung jauntily over the shoulder and into the "Winds of Change". As I learned from this piece, located in Terminal C. Photographs were immediately taken on my phone and sent to a number of friends and family whom I thought would particularly appreciate this particular execution.

Quick lunch at Hanlon's Barbecue. (Q: what should one expect from a BBQ joint situated next to a Starbucks kiosk in Terminal C of George Bush Intercontinental Airport? If you can't figure out the A:, you will probably be happier if I don't tell you.) I skim news about the Sundance Film Festival (it's opening day) as I walk to gate E20 and my connection to New Orleans.

Sitting on the plane, I begin reading Lawrence Block's The Sins of the Fathers, the first of his crime novels about Matthew Scudder, a non-P.I. who "does favors" for people in exchange for "gifts." I love the opening which, in describing the man seeking Scudder's assistance, makes us aware of the fact that we know nothing about Scudder; the first sentence tells us that the man was "about my height", and that he was searching the narrator's face for "secret messages". Us, too! It's not revolutionary, but it's good.

The plane was late getting in, and our escape is further delayed by "paperwork". A stewardess updates us at one point that there remained one document to fill out because there'd been a medical emergency "before any of us boarded", as if we might otherwise suspect one of the crew of poisoning the complimentary orange juice.

We back away from the gate, and the safety video comes on. It shows adult customer hands strapping a mask on the face of a child customer while reminding you to put on your own oxygen mask before assisting "other customers." We're stopped and I look out the window; it seems we've backed onto the lawn. The grass waves frenetically beneath the invisible jets.

The captain says that the weather in New Orleans is about what it is here in Houston. I hadn't been outside since New York, but I can see that it's starting to rain.

Take-off.

In the way that one will, I wonder at the regularity of the landscape; the lines that graph what seems like chaos on the ground become evident so soon after take-off. Even the forests are uniform, squared off at the edges like a tins of brownies. But there's a break in the grid: we pass over a little oasis of wild trees atop elegant low hills that roll like the Appalachian Mountains I'd crossed in the morning.

Then I realize that it's a golf course. But a beautiful one.

My Ten Favorite Movies of 2007

1 THERE WILL BE BLOOD
2 NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
3 EASTERN PROMISES
4 THE SAVAGES
5 KNOCKED UP
6 MARGOT AT THE WEDDING
7 INTO THE WILD
8 PERSEPOLIS
9 LUST, CAUTION
10 JESSE JAMES

Honorable mention
28 WEEKS LATER
ATONEMENT
CONTROL
HALLOWEEN (No, I'm not kidding)
I DON'T WANT TO SLEEP ALONE
I'M NOT THERE
JUNO
SUNSHINE
THIS IS ENGLAND
ZODIAC

Stay tuned for potential update featuring blurbs (provided I can find a way to make it more legible and spatially efficient than 2006's entry).

Grand Street

Reunion

(Untinted? Top and bottom.)

The Jesus and Mary Chain at Webster Hall

Here’s what I have to say about this: it was a good show. Though I could have done with a few more songs from the first two (i.e. the good) albums and also maybe some changes in tempo (to reflect the fact that the songs were not all originally recorded at the one speed at which they were played last night, especially considering that differences in tempo are almost the only thing to distinguish one track from one another, and even then...well: they were good at something and they stuck to it). Still, because singer Jim Reid seemed so in control of the stage and the performance, I took the mono-tempo as deliberate and a bit perverse, rather than as a sign of age or a lack of energy. The performance overall seemed designed to confound the expectation of The Jesus & Mary Chain’s famously wild “holocaust of white noise” on the one hand, and on the other (and conversely) to assert that the songs were and are, well, real songs. So while I had the sense that there was a punk rock refusal to give in and please the audience, I was also impressed: it didn't come off as a reunion "strictly from hunger." And "You Trip Me Up", with which they closed, was great.

He had it coming.

Today, this man...

...was selling these collectibles.

It sure is...

 

My Top Ten Movies of 2006

Okay: the top ten represents my ten favorite movies theatrically released in the US in 2006. This is the top section of this post, numbered in rough order of favor. Comments corresponding to each film are below the list (at the corresponding number).

The second section is a list of honorable mentions that I wanted to make some note about. Comments follow directly the title. (Why change the format? Because the top ten as such looks much more striking standing alone.)

The third section is a list of my favorite revivals-- films that played for at least a week as repertory at a theater such as Film Forum or BAM. Again, comments follow the title.

Do I think that these were the absolute best films of the year in some objective way? Or is their a reason I keep qualifying the top ten with the words "my" or "favorite"?

There is a reason I keep qualifying the top ten with the words "my" or "favorite." So, in particular order:

1. NAISU NO MORI (aka FUNKY FOREST: THE FIRST CONTACT)*
   
2. THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP
3. L’ENFANT
4. CHILDREN OF MEN
5. HALF NELSON
6. DAVE CHAPELLE’S BLOCK PARTY
7. UNITED 93
8. THE DEPARTED and INSIDE MAN
9. HOSTEL
10. LITTLE CHILDREN

*I know that I'll be instantly in trouble with my first selection, which actually only showed at the New York Asian Film Festival; an exception was made based on the fact that this festival is entirely open to the public-- it's not an "industry" event or otherwise restricted--, the film played several times in the festival, and, above all, I obviously thought the film was pretty great.

Comments

1. One of the strangest films I’ve seen in years. The unique “DJ mix”-like structure of the film creates a delirious and strangely satisfying layered experience. The film repeatedly bursts its seams with creativity and utter nonsense, like “The Far Side” meets KUNG FU HUSTLE with a sprinkle of “Naked Lunch.” It sometimes felt as if it’d been formulated just for me.

The reason this film is at the top of my list, however and ultimately, is that it definitely hadn’t been formulated just for me: despite its avante garde presentation, refusal to settle into a recognizable plot, and its 2 ½ hour runtime, it somehow managed to keep the audience totally engaged (or a loudly laughing half of the audience, at least). A number of the best films I saw this year brought home to me the importance of the theatrical experience itself—seeing a film in the company of an involved audience can add something to a film that’s just not there at home. And FUNKY FOREST is probably the most out-there film I’ve seen that still manages to spark that alchemy.

2. I have a particular fondness for films that do a good job of blending sadness and humor, and Gondry’s film joins a short list of favorites in this category like PUNCH DRUNK LOVE. And like FUNKY FOREST, THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP is an exhilarating celebration of the creative power of imagination, the charming handmade special effects a quixotic rebellion against the tyranny of both computer graphics and naturalism. At the same time, it serves as a warning about disengaging the power of imagination from the world around one.

The cast was uniformly terrific, with Gael Garcia Bernal again notable for showing himself unafraid to take chances.

My impression of the film is inexplicably tied to the circumstance of seeing it opening night at the Angelika; the audience was impossibly excited to be there, and I don’t think anyone left disappointed.

3. As for L’ENFANT, I can’t believe that I felt invested in the life of a man who sells his own child on the black market; at best, most skilled modern directors wouldn’t have approached the theme except by some Hitchcockian manipulation—conventional devices are used to lead the viewer to root for the success of a monstrous anti-hero—such that my nose would be rubbed in my own perversity as a viewer. But the Dardenne Brothers approach with their palms turned up; “no tricks here.”
4. This film has some of the most astonishingly staged set pieces I’ve ever seen; I think that maybe only Steven Spielberg (working with Janusz Kaminski) is today capable of a similar level of visual fluency. A classic instance of science fiction being used to show us something about our current world, it feels thrillingly fresh. Great performances across the board.

If I were to have a complaint about this film, it’d be the rare case wherein I actually thought the film was too short.

5. When the story of HALF NELSON was first described to me, I couldn’t imagine how it could be any good at all—it sounded like another well-intentioned indie movie that would bite off more than it could chew in presenting some ridiculous situation as having some bearing on reality. But intelligent writing and editing, remarkable performances, and general restraint all went into the alchemy that made it ring true—and larger than it’s ostensible subject—on the screen.
6. I saw DAVE CHAPELLE’S BLOCK PARTY at BAM, just a few blocks (and orders of magnitude in income) away from where it was filmed. People in the audience saw themselves, sometimes literally, on the screen, and were delighted. A beautifully put together, warm film that plucks the best from the documentary and fiction film traditions: a meandering embrace of the idiosyncracies of real people and places on the one hand and, on the other, Chapelle’s multi-faceted performance.
7. There was nothing delightful about UNITED 93, but it was certainly something given dimension by the audience experience. I admire the film for its rigor and ability to recapture the experience of the morning of September 11, 2001, to remind me of the confusion that everyone felt before that day before it became something called “9/11”. It can be a radical act to remove meaning—it’s true that it can be the re-opening of a wound but it can also, curiously, be the opposite of “it is as it was.”
8. I’ve paired these two big, star-studded, scripted-beyond-comprehensibility studio films together as one entry because they represent the return of the ability of two of America’s greatest directing talents to connect with the audience. They are clever but unpretentious and built upon a recognition of the delight that their wonderful stars can bring when they really act their asses off.

Because they work on a mass level (and without pandering), these two pictures are perhaps the best examples this year of what can be great about the theatrical experience. See Sturges’ SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS for more information.

An honorable mention in this category goes to CASINO ROYALE.

9. This clever and suspenseful horror picture was a gigantic leap forward for writer/director Eli Roth. I’m not sure how much further I’m willing to defend it once we’re out of the trenches of personal taste and into the no man’s land of objective criticism, but I think it’s fair to offer the following: 1) the film’s wicked thematic evocation of the relationship between the first world and the less developed is more than window dressing, and 2) though the skill of the filmmaking sometimes makes people remember a more graphic movie than they actually saw, there is a reason that the Grand Guignol has existed in civilized societies for so long. I don’t know what that reason is, but the film—and this is one reason why we today treat Hitchcock’s work with such respect today, despite occasional critical and public discomfort during his time—doesn’t avoid the question even as it carries out its work.
10. I have trouble explaining even to myself why I so much liked LITTLE CHILDREN (save perhaps for some of the narrative conveniences of the end). Certainly credit belongs to the fantastic performances of Wilson, Winslet, and Haley and some beautifully staged scenes (such as the night league football game and Haley’s pedophile’s visit to the public pool). But above all, I found this often grim film strangely refreshing, and this lies in the credible use of a serio-comic tone, and unexpected turns in an oft-told tale. This is especially true of the resolution of the film—which has our illicit lovers meeting neither a tragic nor a liberal ending.

Some runners-up about which I thought I might say something, in no particular order:

PULSE – Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s most famous, if not necessarily his best film, is finally given a theatrical release in the US after years on the shelf courtesy the Weinsteins. While the moment for the film had passed for most of the audience, there was the poetic justice in the utter failure of the remake.

THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON – deepened my understanding of another human being and my love of a hard-to-love music.

A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION –I loved the autumnal tone and fantastic performances in this film. Another exemplar of the pleasure of the theatrical experience.

STRANGER THAN FICTION – What terrific performances from Thompson, Hoffman and, entirely unexpectedly, Gylenhaal. An interesting script, some visual flair, Ferrell restrained, great music, and a studio film that dares to use expressionistic sets all helped to make this a rewarding trip to the theater. Though it happened to be one of the strangest trips I took this year—the sound in the theater was way too low, meaning some dialogue was lost to the crowds of teenagers who would periodically shift seats, and I sat behind an old man who kept alternately snoring and obliviously answering his cell phone.

CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER – I’m usually not a sucker for films that get quotes involving words like “ravishing” or “sweeping”, but Yimou’s new film really takes this to another level. I felt like I was hallucinating for the last half hour, as if my brain needed another channel to understand the complicated images I was seeing—they’re traumatic, their dimension only understood in recovery. And in spite of myself, I wasn’t at all put off by the Peking Opera style-ized performances, rather appreciating them as of a piece with the Shakespearian drama. It’s the RETURN OF THE KING to HERO and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS.

BROTHERS OF THE HEAD – a rare bird—“mockumentary” doesn’t seem the right word, as it’s more like a real documentary set in a slightly different dimension. It feels like a lost Maysles film, down to the perfect selection of film stock. And it stands apart as well in that most films like this don’t try to have great original music, settling merely to appropriately signify what is meant—“you know, it’s sort of like songs x and y”.

NACHO LIBRE – it’s really stupid humor, but that doesn’t mean it’s a stupid film. And would it be unreasonable to simply appreciate a comedy aimed at a mainstream audience that is so unabashedly bizarre? I like to imagine that it teaches people to appreciate more marginal art.

Much better than NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, in my opinion.

THE PRESTIGE—See discussion of THE DEPARTED and INSIDE MAN. The difference here is that Nolan is not making a comeback—rather, he just keeps getting better and better as a filmmaker—and that there’s actually a lot more going on in this film intellectually. Amazingly well calibrated to keep the audience one step behind—even the jerks who think going to a movie is an intelligence competition based on whether or not they can guess the ending before the movie gets there (not that they haven’t been trained to do this by cynical filmmakers and their enablers).

THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA – a film that I think I probably actually found more emotionally poignant for its rough-hewn quality. It’s flaw were honestly come by. And all that falls by the wayside when the job gets done.

Favorite revival runs (plays for at least a week)

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER – a revelation to me. I don’t think I walked away feeling that I’d “understood” the film—adding to the intellectual challenge is the fact that it directly references so many figures or works that have either fallen aside in relevance or never reached my consciousness—but rather that I’d recognized the world—the world I’ve grown up in—whose birth Godard was trying to describe and connected on some level with his feelings about it. A sadness about the loss of sacredness that accompanies the insistent availability of the products and messages of modern life, the blandly sunny imperative that the most efficient way is identified and taken, the commercial suggestion that human beings interact with objects as if they were other human beings, the commandeering of language, both visual and verbal, to these tasks. It is exhilarating because it is a visually beautiful film bursting with energetic ideas, but it also inspires a certain helplessness.

Is the frustrating complexity a strategy to prevent it from being absorbed into the system it limns?

MOUCHETTE – Bresson.

SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE – this is one of the films to which I’ve most often returned in my mind since seeing it. We have quite a few films about adolescents and sex, but relatively few about their relationship to death; even in films like BULLY or MEAN CREAK, the response to death isn’t nearly as complex as the exploration of the social dynamics of the events that lead up to it. Echoes can be felt in PAN’S LABYRINTH.

WOMAN IN THE DUNES – what fantastic cinematography. A fascinating and hypnotic film from a source I would have imagined difficult to film.

ARMY OF SHADOWS * – I have to own up to not quite understanding the fuss over this film; it seems a very solid and well conceived, somewhat novelistic, piece about the French Resistance. But I don’t include it here simply out of polite deference to the critical and popular consensus, but rather because having seen the film, I think it will likely repay the effort I will be both actively (reading the reviews, talking to people) and passively (letting it sink in) putting into figuring out what so grabbed people about it.

For now: I really liked the complexity of the characters, the illumination of the moral dimension of the action, and I think that the plainness of the style must be an asset. But I think the answer for surprise popularity of the film must lie in the recognition of a number of notably terrific scenes: Gerbier’s detention in and escape from waiting room of the Hotel Majestic; the execution of the traitor to the resistance, Gerbier’s trip back across the Atlantic that is to end in a parachute jump; the same character’s execution-turned-escape scene. There are more.

Having seen this film makes me eager to again see Verhoeven’s Dutch resistance picture BLACK BOOK. Both films deal with dissension and mistrust within an intense resistance group; though where Melville sees a cruel and complex imperative that must override humanity, a group dynamic that cannot recognize frailty, Verhoeven draws a general indictment of authority and power.

* OK, here's where the second fuss about how I designate a film's "theatrical release" could start; ARMY OF SHADOWS was never before commercially released in the US, which is why the New York Film Critics were able to justify selecting it as their top film of the year. I just think that's being too technical, though; the film is 37 years old, and it's perverse to celebrate it as a newborn just because it has only now received its birth certificate. (And further, isn't it a bit arrogant to award a new film prize to film when really it's just new to Americans? How do the French feel, having "discovered" the film back when the Beatles were still together?)

Thoughts on why no one likes THE NIGHT LISTENER

*If you mind such things, be warned that there are "spoilers" to come.*

As I was walking home from The Night Listener (2006, Patrick Stettner), I had a strange feeling I couldn’t shake; it was a mixture of turning over in my mind both the pleasurable strangeness of the movie itself and the strength of the audience’s negative reaction. At a few points people in the audience yelled out their guesses for what was going to next be revealed, but mostly had to settle for what was probabilistically determined by the characters. Audience members began to mutter to their companions about how stupid the movie was. After the lights came up, the friend who had come with me said that he, too, had thought it bad—“they made a really strong case that the child didn’t exist, and so they needed to do something else with the ending.” I didn’t argue, but I was also thinking that the way the film ended seems to be roughly how the real-life experience that inspired it, well, didn’t end, but drew to a close for the purposes of telling people about it, became a story. They didn’t catch Toni Colette’s character breaking into Robin William’s character’s house with a butcher knife because there was no parallel event in real life, and they didn’t get her to admit that there was never a child because, again, there was no such confession.

My interest in seeing the film had been rooted in the story’s relationship to real life (I was already familiar with the basic plot and some of the real-life events it was based on, partially due to all the publicity about the recent parallel case of JT Leroy), and so the accuracy of that depiction and the attitude the film brought to those events—emphasizing the sense of the uncanny that the idea of forming a relationship with a child and then finding out that that child may or may not be real, and the idea that there may be people out there like the character portrayed by Colette—was what I had been looking for, and what I had been fairly satisfied with. But based on the things they had called out—“that’s not the kid on the phone, it’s her!”, etc.—and what my friend had said— which I took to mean that they needed to ratchet up the tension with a twist of some kind—much of the rest of the audience seemed to be watching a thriller modeled on Bunny Lake is Missing and Flightplan. And the film itself encourages this interpretation, with a typical mystery-thriller structure: it’s explained that something material is at stake—a book contract—and a detective character—Robin Williams—heads out to investigate. Formal elements that reinforce this interpretation include the creepy Takemitsu-style music and the way scenes like that in which Williams breaks into and investigates the house are constructed to convey a sense of imminent danger (though there are a few points at which there’s danger—the over-protective cop, or when Colette’s character puts both herself and Williams in danger—what he mostly has to fear is a crazy woman’s irrational anger).

I imagined the director insisting that the film was a thriller: “It is a thriller, but the mystery is not whether or not there is a kid but the motivations of the characters. The tension comes from not knowing why people are doing what they’re doing.” Or something sort of pretentious, if not entirely inaccurate, like that. There are definitely some sequences that just don’t work, and a few even that are risible, such as Williams’ visit to the hospital where, after encountering the cancer patient who hisses like a demon, he twists his ankle in a fashion so contrived that Chevy Chase would cringe. The are plenty of problems with the film, in the final analysis. But the Problem with the Film, in the end, the Problem that caused people to declare it a Bad Movie, might have a lot to do with the mismatching of audience expectations with the nature of the film. Expectations, that is to say, encouraged by the script/formal cues described above and much intensified by the way in which the film was commercially released: it was opened on 1200 multiplex screens with the promise of a “Hitchcockian thriller”, to quote one quote in one ad. In the end, I don’t think that that aspect of the film is especially satisfying, nor do I think it was mostly what interested the filmmakers.

My personal opinion, then: It’s not an especially good movie, but I enjoyed it. Taken as a depiction of real events, I found the bizarre character played by Toni Colette fascinatingly creepy and the comparison between William’s character’s work as a writer and Colette’s as a compulsive fraud resonant (if perhaps a little pat in the way it’s presented). But upon reflection I can see that, taken as a thriller, Colette’s performance seems like a lot of psychotic sound and fury signifying very little, as in the end there’s neither a skeleton in the root cellar nor a child-prisoner in a deserted mansion, and that the commentary on fiction seems a poor lesson to take away from such a contrivance.

But whatever; I also liked and found interesting The Cell, and I’m still pretty much alone in my admiration for that film. And I thought a film I saw earlier in the weekend, The Descent, was just pretty good, while popular judgment has rendered it the second coming of Alien. So maybe with The Night Listener I just don’t know a bad thriller when I see one.

To briefly reflect once more on the commercial aspect of the film: some might suggest that if what I were really saying were accurate—that there’s something to the film, and that the context of fiction thrillers in which the audience was asked to approach the film were inappropriate, that the answer would have been to give the film a more gradual release, beginning with a couple art-house theaters where it might screen to a sophisticated audience that tends to be up on current events (such as the JT Leroy saga) and passes on word when it likes something. But, given the generally lukewarm reception by critics (I read A.O. Scott in the New York Times and Desson Thomas in the Washington Post), I’m not sure that things would have been better had they released it more slowly. The root of that problem might have been what was apparently a much poorer version of the film originally screened at Sundance. There was no mention in the reviews, but the version that opened in theaters had supposedly been much improved from what the critics had first seen. The executives in charge of releasing it might have devised the theater plan and advertising campaign knowing they were already beat by bad early word of mouth, and decided to simply do their best this weekend to cash in and get out the DVD.

Sabazushi. Kyoto, December 2005.