Tag: movies

How Mel Brooks saved my life

producers audience

Resolved: Jeffrey Imm is a moron, and so is anyone who wants to sanitize the power out of comedy.

Imm’s complaint is that Mel Brooks’ The Producers makes fun of Nazis, and therefore doesn’t pay proper respect to the horrors of the Holocaust.  As Walter Hudson points out in PJ Media, “The irony of protesting fascism with a blanket declaration of what can’t be laughed at appears to be lost on Mr. Imm.”

It’s not really worth arguing beyond that. If you’re a soldier, you use a gun to fight evil. If you’re a writer, you use words. If you’re a comedian, you use jokes — especially if you’re a Jew. That’s how it works.

Kathy Shaidle skewers Imm for his stupid protest, but then flashes her alien ID, saying:

Imm, in his own flaky fashion, is onto something. It’s not that those topics aren’t funny.

It’s that Mel Brooks isn’t funny.

This aggression will not stand, man.

I agree that Spaceballs, Men in Tights, and Dracula are unwatchable. The problem with these movies is that Brooks tried to skewer genres that he didn’t especially care about; whereas his love and devotion for his targets (including in High Anxiety —inexcusably missing from Shaidle’s list of Brooks hits) are the heart and soul of his funniest movies. And that’s where Mel Brooks really shines: when he’s in love.

Excuse me while I get a bit emotional about this, but this is why Mel Brooks is so great: he’s an optimist, and his exuberantly ridiculous jokes catch you up in his love of life, dick jokes and all. The jokes that “make sense” aren’t what make the non sequiturs and the fart jokes forgivable; they’re all part of the same sensibility.

Life is funny. Even when it’s awful (what with racism, and Nazis, and murder, and stuff like that), it’s kind of funny. Especially when it’s awful. Especially when you’re suffering.

Shaidle says:

Brooks always counters anti-Producers critics (no, Imm isn’t the first) by pointing out the obvious: that he was making fun of Hitler.

But what’s brave about that? Hitler managed to look pretty stupid without much help, and when it mattered, neither The Great Dictator nor (the far superior) That Nazty Nuisance accomplished sweet eff-all.

Well, he wasn’t just “making fun of Hitler” (and I don’t believe that Brooks considered himself “brave” for making The Producers, anyway). At the risk of overanalyzing humor, which is the worst thing that anyone can do ever, Brooks doesn’t just tease Hitler. He subsumes him.

This is obvious in The Producers, as Brooks deftly works the play-within-a-play angle, telling the world: this is how you do it. When you are a comedian, you make people laugh, and that is how you win.  People gotta do what they gotta do, and that’s why Max Bialystock won’t ever learn.

I don’t mean to crap things up by getting too analytical, but it’s hard to ignore: we’reall producers, and the worst mistake we can make is not to realize what kind of show we’re putting on.  In Brooks’ best films, he knows exactly what kind of movie he’s producing, and his glorious openness is what makes them so disarming. It’s what makes us laugh at things we don’t want to laugh at; and laughing at those things is what saves us from succumbing to them.

An even better example of how Brooks annihilates the enemy without losing his soul is in the underrated To Be Or Not to Be, where Brooks and his real-life wife Anne Bancroft play a pair of two-bit entertainers  (they’re “world famous in Poland”) who bumble into a plot to rescue a bunch of Jews from occupied Poland.

The movie is not great, but one scene makes up for everything else: The audience is full of Nazis, and the only way to shepherd the crowd of Jews out of town is (work with me here) to dress them up as clowns and parade them out of the theater right under the enemy’s noses. Against all odds, it’s actually working, and the Nazis are deceived — until one poor old babushka, her face pathetically smeared with greasepaint, freezes. It’s too much for her: so many swastikas, so many guns. She can’t make herself do it, she’s weeping and trembling, and the audience realizes something is wrong.

They’re just about to uncover the whole plot, when the quick-thinking leader looks the Nazis straight in the eye, and shouts merrily, “JUDEN!” He slaps a Star of David on her chest, takes out a clown gun, and shoots her in the head. POW.

And that’s what saves her. That’s what saves them all. The crowd roars with laughter and keeps their seats while the whole company flees. Juden 1, Hitler 0.

The same thing happened to me. Again, work with me, here!

Depression and despair have been my companions ever since I can remember. Most of the time, if I keep busy and healthy, I have the upper hand; but one day, several years ago, I did not. The only thing that seemed reasonable was to kill myself, and that was all I could think about. The longer it went on, the less escape there seemed to be. Too much darkness. I couldn’t pass through it.

Spoiler alert: I didn’t kill myself. I’m still here. Part of the reason for that is because, of all things, I suddenly thought of that scene in Brooks’ 1970 film The Twelve Chairs. I barely remember this movie — we try not to have a lot of Dom DeLuise in our house, out of respect for my husband —  but the plot was some ridiculous, convoluted story of someone trying to do some simple thing, and things getting worse and worse. At one point, everything has come crashing down around the hero’s ears, and there is no hope.

So what does he do? He responds by running around in circles on the beach and screaming, “I DON’T WANNA LIVE. I DON’T WANNA LIVE.” And that’s the line that popped into my head.

So guess what? I laughed. Just a little giggle, but it helped. It was a little shaft of light, and it helped. I still had to pass through the dark room full of the enemy who wanted me dead, but someone who was on my side had slapped a Star of David on my chest, made me a target — and once I was explicitly made into a target, I could survive. It was all a joke. It was a circus, and I knew I would survive.

Suddenly I knew what kind of show I was in. It was a comedy, and I was going to make it out of that dark room. I don’t know how else to explain it beyond that. Mel Brooks saved my life, fart jokes and all. That’s what kind of movies he makes.

Worth another look: Joe Versus the Volcano

joe vs volcano

“Dear god, whose name I do not know, Thank you for my life. I forgot… how BIG… thank you. Thank you for my life.”

The scene works because it shows so nicely how change of heart really comes about in our lives: not always in the clearly-defined moments of choice, but in the middle of the night, when we see with our hearts what the world is really like.

Read the rest at the Register.  **** movie still from Warner Brothers and Amblin Entertainment

Hollywood is Lady Tremaine: Why I love Branagh’s Cinderella

cinderella 2

Saw it, liked it!

I agree with just about everything Steve Greydanus says here. I do think the movie would be judged a bit more critically if it had been made in any other decade. Since it dropped out of the blue into hypercynical 2015, it’s notable mostly for what it refuses to do: it refuses to reimagine, to be sassy, to be in your face, or jarring, or ironic, or myth-busting. It is, in short, a work of mercy offered for an audience who just wants, for once, to hear a story.

It’s not flawless. The dialogue is lackluster: the Captain (Nonso Anozie), resplendent in a brocaded tricorn and silky knee breeches, says to the prince, “We better get a move on, your highness.” Klonk. But every other aspect of the movie is gratifyingly consistent with itself. The world of the movie is fully realized, and everyone involved in it sets out to do something very basic: to tell a pleasant story in an enjoyable way.

The overall look occasionally crosses the line from gorgeous to gaudy, and a few scenes fairly bulge off the screen with sparkles and butterflies, topiary and gilt. But mostly, it just bathes your eyes in sweetness and splendor, because human beings still like that kind of thing. I am grateful to the ten million yards of satin who valiantly gave their lives for this lush spectacle.

The casting was impeccable. Cate Blanchet as the stepmother, Lady Tremaine, is chic, bloodless, and cruel, and she delivers one of the movie’s two memorable lines. As the prince’s retinue is at the door of their house, Cinderella realizes that her stepmother knows she is the chosen one. Her own daughters have no hope of catching the prince, but the stepmother smashes the glass slipper to destroy Cinderella’s chances anyway, just out of pure spite. After years of quiet endurance and attempts to be kind, Cinderella finally challenges her, and cries out, “Why are you so cruel?” The stepmother replies, “Because you are young, and innocent, and good, and I–”  And they understand each other perfectly, for a moment. The stepmother has suffered, too. If her response to suffering has been precisely the wrong one, at least there is a reason for it.

I couldn’t help but think that Lady Tremaine is the embodiment of Hollywood right now. “What have we ever done to you, but buy movie tickets and DVDs and $4 boxes of Whoppers?” the audience cries out. “Why do you keep serving up these crappy, unpleasant, revisionist nightmares?”  And Hollywood replies, “It’s because all you want is a simple, decent story, whereas we–” We, what? We, the movie industry, are a desperate, bloodless widow, still beautiful, but long past the hope of ever being in love again. And we need to take it out on someone.

Well, maybe I’m over thinking it. The second line that caught my ear was spoken by the gawky lizard footman (and the magical coach transformation scenes are some of the best in the movie. This is how to use CGI to show impossible things in a believably earthy way). On the way to the palace, Cinderella admits,”I’m frightened, Mr. Lizard. I’m only a girl, not a princess,” and the footman responds, “And I’m only a lizard, not a footman. Enjoy it while it lasts!”

Good advice! The movie is not a profound existential response about modernity and the legitimacy of the patriarchy. It’s just a pretty movie that wants you to enjoy it while it lasts. So that is what we did.

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Related: Monique Ocampo compares the animated Disney film with the 2015 live action film

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Cinderella 2015 movie poster via IMDB

Oh, sweet mystery of life, at last they’ve found the 100 missing brains!

PIC brain depository

The 100 brains that were missing from the campus have been found, sort of. Blah blah blah something something turns out there isn’t much of a story here after all. Who cares? This is a clear mandate from the universe to rush right out and watch Young Frankenstein, one of the most perfect movies ever constructed. You’ll laugh, you’ll weep, you’ll make yummy sounds.

PIC brain Hans Delbrook

Quotes from this movie make up fully 60% of the conversation in my family. The other 30%* is all from Blazing Saddles, which CAME OUT IN THE SAME YEAR, can you believe that? Boy. *The remaining 10% of conversation consists solely of the phrases “I think I’m pregnant” and “I really think you’re pregnant.” DESTINY! DESTINY! NO ESCAPING THAT FOR ME!

Love, Blame and Hope in the Movie MUD

PIC Mud poster

This movie wasn’t about what is wrong with women, or what is wrong with men. It was more about how difficult love is, and how little it helps when we lie to ourselves. It was a sorrowful movie, but not a depressing one; and it left lots of room for at least some of the characters to learn from their suffering and to forgive the people who failed them. Yes, the snakes that have been waiting will get you in the end. No, you will not die. But don’t let yourself get bitten again — unless it’s for someone you love. And around it goes, and the sun keeps shining off the open waters ahead.

Read the rest at the Register.

Hooray for the African Queen!

Along with Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould, which I only put into our Netflix queue to see if my husband really loved me, The African Queen has been languishing in the “saved” category for over a year, waiting until the movie should be released on DVD.

We finally got to see it last week, and it was such a treat – all the more so now that I have 12 years of marriage under my belt, and can see that this is a movie about more than leeches after all (but still:  brrrrrrr).

I am  a little frustrated by condescending reviewers who sigh that the dramatic shift in the relationship between Miss Rose and Mr. Allnut strains their credulity.  Here’s something I would expect movie reviewers to understand:  The African Queen is a movie.  As such, it tells things in a movieish way– that is, it moves at its own discrete pace and choses scenes selectively, so that the viewer can understand what has happened without anyone actually running a camera over every breath the characters take.  It’s not that I can wink at what is obviously a phony but entertaining story; it’s that it’s a true kind of story being told, but at adventure pace.

The precipitousness of their newfound love is really the point of the movie:  here are two people who have so far only half-lived their lives.  If they fall together quickly, it’s because they’ve been waiting so long.  At the opening scenes, we see that Miss Rose has taken herself out of the stream of life, and Mr. Allnut travels up and down the river, but only to deliver other people’s mail.  It’s time for both of them to go somewhere, and the river is waiting.  What an artful and deceptively simple portrait of a marriage the movie is, from start to finish — and it’s all done in gestures.  Every time Katharine Hepburn touches her hair, it means something; and every time Humphry Bogart scratches his chin, you know what he’s thinking, and whether or not he’s relishing that thought.

The characters fall together because, like most well-matched couples, they need each other.  First they discover each other’s strengths (she turns out to be brave and passionate; he turns out to be clever and strong); and then, through the other, they discover their own, previously unchallenged weaknesses (she’s selfish, making him sleep in the rain; he’s not a coward, exactly, but his solution is to sit in a backwater and wait out the war).

Then they show their vulnerable points to each other (she panics and is useless when the flies swarm; he, over and over again, is much too ready to give up), and readily forgive each other for them.  Then they are angry at each other for those weakness (he thinks she just can’t understand how foolish their plan is; she thinks he is craven and all talk).  Then they accept their weakness, their own, and each other’s.  He really, really doesn’t want to go back into that leechy water, and she really, really doesn’t want to send him there.  But it has to be done.

They relinquish their claim on what they thought they wanted out of the adventure, and of life in general.  She prays for God to be mericful to them both, and they lie down to die.  Then comes a flood, they almost get hanged, and the boat explodes, and they swim away!  Oh man, what a great movie!  In the course of a few days, they go from being strangers to courting, to love, to surrender — right down the river they go.

I love this story because, even though there are irresistable symbols to be found, (like the river that looks so different, once you fight past a certain point, that it changes name, but it’s really the same river . . . ) it’s not a metaphor about a relationship — it’s just a great portrait of one.  It understands exactly what movies are for:  to show us things we already know, but in a new way.  With crocodiles!

 

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This post originally ran in Crisis in April of 2009

Stupid movie game for punsters!

Today, I’m letting Fozzy Bear be my spirit guide.  Here’s the game:  take one letter out of the name of famous movies, and describe the new plot. Got the idea here.

Here are my contributions. Warning: all are stupid.

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Ear Window A Being John Malkovich-esque metathriller in which Alfred Hitchcock witnesses a murder after crawling inside Grace Kelly’s head through her ear

Pats of Glory To you, they may just be pieces of ordinary butter, but to me, they’re . . . pats of glory

The Lives of Oters A frolicsome family of water mammals goes in search of their missing T

He Godfather  Tarzan must decide whether to resist his destiny as a mafia overlord

Even Samurai . . . get the blues

Oy Story A heartwarming story of friendship, loyalty, and gefilte fish

Das Bot A tense thriller set entirely on board software application that runs automated tasks over the Internet

Star Was A melancholy rumination by Mark Hamill on the fleetness of fame

Full Meta Jacket  A tightly knit band of overeducated hipsters wear jackets printed with pictures of other jackets

Madeus An angry black woman seeks to drive her musical rival to exhaustion in this rollicking, race-baiting tragicomedy set in 1823 Vienna

Some Like T Hot Some, however, prefer it with ice.

Chintown A buddy action movie starring Jay Leno and Bruce Campbell

Mr. Mith Goes to Washington When a lisping, cross-dressing Jimmy Stewart tries his hand at politics, he’s in for a rude surprise

Er Spike Jonez’ brilliantly re-imagined romcom, which explores modern ideas of love and intimacy, causing the audience to not know what to say

Hotel Wanda John Cleese and Jamie Lee Curtis star in this harrowing historical drama about courage in the face of genocide

Fining Nemo You lose track of your kid twice, you lose custody. First time, you just get a fine.

The Princess Brie In this fairy tale cult favorite, cheddar and swiss bow down to the Princess Brie

Back Swan  A young girl gets a tattoo, thinking she will never ever get tired of swans

All Abut Eve Are women individuals, in command our destinies? Are we truly free of the ancient past? Or when it comes down to it, don’t we . . . all abut Eve?

PIC Fozzie Bear

 

Wacka wacka! Thank you very much.

Okay, now your turn!

Help me load my iPad with freebies!

The other day, I was amazed and delighted to hear that I had won second prize in Catholic Vote’s contest. First prize was a trip for two two Rome for the upcoming beatifications, which would have been niiiice, but I am beyond thrilled at what I did win, as top referrer: a spiffy new iPad Mini!

PIC iPad “At first I was going to give it to someone, and then I thought I would raffle it for a good cause, then I thought it would make a great prize, and then I realized I WANT THIS.”

I understand its microwhatever is roughly as powerful as the International Space Station and that the touchscreen can, by analyzing the electrolyte content in my fingertips, predict the very moment of my death; but I mostly want to use it to read books and play music and movies.

My first plan is to load it up with free or very cheap books, preferably good read-aloud books. I can’t tell you how many books we’ve gotten 3/4 of the way through, only to lose track of them and never find out if Curdie rescued the Princess, if Pip’s sister ever found out who took the meat pie, and of course what the heck that Trinity thing is about.  Seriously, one of the main reasons we quit homeschooling was because we just plain lost all the books all the time.

So, help me get started, eh? What’s cheap or free and great?

Purity of Essence

Happy 50th anniversary to Doctor Strangelove!  I came pretty durn close to naming my book How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love NFP, with a special bonus chapter on p.o.e.

Yeah.  Imagine that cover.

I didn’t get DJANGO UNCHAINED.

My husband and I usually agree on movies.  We don’t have exactly the same tastes, but when we find a movie we both want to see, we generally agree on whether it was bad or good, and why.  Last night was an exception, though.  We watched Django Unchained (2012), and he liked it, but I sure didn’t.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

Disclaimer:  I was only halfway paying attention for the first half of the movie.  But that was actually one of the problems we both thought the movie had: the first half was a thousandfold more entertaining, even while I wasn’t even watching some of it, than the second half, which I saw all of.  When King Schultz (Cristoph Waltz) died, the movie missed him sorely, and I think it lost any particular reason for going on, after that point.

I had a really, really hard time dealing with a hero who was indistinguishable from the villains:  he had no more mercy, conscience, or humanity than the bad guys.  When he got his revenge, was just as brutal and cruel as his captors, just as hungry to torture.  (And it’s not as this is just one of those conscienceless gore and action movies.  Schultz has clearly struggled, and has fashioned his own set of rules about what is and is not acceptable; and even still, he has those ghastly flashbacks.  Django, however, is just a machine.)

My husband says that this is entirely typical of a spaghetti western.  The hero is not expected to undergo any character development, or to have any evident interior life.  He says that all the “splut, splat, gloosh” bullet wounds are an affectionate mocking ofSam Peckinpah,* and I can see that; but I don’t know how you tell the difference, in a Tarantino movie, between making an homage and just hopping on someone else’s train and riding it like a fool.

I get that it’s just telling a story, and doing a gorgeous, stylish recreation of a particular American genre of movie.  Not my favorite kind of movie, but I am okay with that.  All right, so if that’s all it’s trying to be, then how are we supposed to think about the fact that it’s a slavery revenge fantasy?  How is it not racist and exploitative to take a black couple and drop them into a genre where they don’t belong?  It’s like, “Hey, I’m going to re-tell the Iliad, except in my movie, the Trojans are all cats!”   Why would you do that?  American slavery is one of those things that, if you’re going to make it a major theme in your story, you absolutely have to address some of the issues around it:  what does it mean to be free, what does it mean to be cruel, what does it mean to be something.  This movie doesn’t do any of that.  It simply takes the spaghetti western and jazzes it up by inserting black slaves into the narrative.

Tarantino did the same thing in Inglourious Basterds, which I reviewed here:  he had Jews exacting a bloody revenge on the Nazis, but none of the Jews were discernibly Jewish.  They didn’t look Jewish, they didn’t talk Jewish, they didn’t think Jewish, they didn’t respond Jewish.  They were just Jews plopped into a revenge fantasy.  I can’t decide if that’s offensive or just stupid.  Either way, it’s lazy.

There is another problem with Django which is similar to a problem in Basterds:  the lavish revenge fantasy is supposed to satisfy some deep desire in your soul for certain wrongs to be righted.  So we watch the black man whip the white, and the slaves wrench their freedom away from their cruel captors, and the husband and wife reunited, and you see foulness and corruption getting what’s coming to them.  But the whole time, I’m thinking, “And this is exactly the opposite of what happened.”  Even the pagan and petty part of your soul is not satisfied by the fantasy playing out on the screen, because it’s so thoroughly false.

I think the vengeance could have been satisfying (again, to some primitive part of your psyche, at least) if there had been some attempt to make Django and Hilda into actual characters, who had some sort of individual story.  But they don’t.  What is their future supposed to be?  They’re just going to ride off and buy a house in upstate New York or something, and everybody will just shrug off the burning rubble and heaps of torn up bodies?

That being said, there were some good scenes.  The part where the posse can’t see through their white hoods, even though one guy’s wife spent all day making them, was pretty funny — almost worthy of Mel Brooks.  I liked the fact that there was really no exploitation of women in the movie.  They could have eroticized slavery, but they didn’t.  And I enjoyed watching a movie where the man has to go rescue his wife, and he does, the end.  When’s the last time any movie allowed itself to tell that story?

Probably what this comes down to is that I just don’t get this movie.  I haven’t seen a lot of spaghetti westerns, and I suppose I wouldn’t get them, either.  And I don’t feel that my life is especially impoverished because of that.

I’m still waiting for Tarantino to get it together.  This movie didn’t have his pseud0-intellectual, tawdry, masturbatory quirks stinking the whole film up.  He had a slightly more coherent vision than usual, and just told the damn story, and clearly let someone edit it for him.  I guess I hope he still keeps making movies, because he’s getting closer to doing something great.  But he ain’t there yet.

*My introduction to Sam Peckinpah came when my husband and I were first married, back when people still had to drive to the store to rent a movie.  I was pregnant and queasy and way too tired to go out in the evening, so I asked my husband to go pick out something for us to watch.  I said that I really didn’t care what it was, as long as it wasn’t too violent.  He was gone a long, long time.  And then he came home with The Wild Bunch.

I’m not saying I’m still mad at my husband for this, but I don’t think I’ll ever forgive Sam Peckinpah.