Tag Archives: Paul Thomas Anderson

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 337 – Licorice Pizza

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We’re remotely joined by filmmaker, previous guest, and, crucially, Mike’s brother, Stephen Glass, for a discussion of Paul Thomas Anderson’s period romance, Licorice Pizza. Stephen last helped us explore Anderson’s previous film, Phantom Thread, and again brings his knowledge of and passion for the director’s work to our discussion.

We consider the efficiency with which Anderson creates rich portraits of characters and their lives from few details; how the blossoming love between the protagonists, a boy of 15 and woman of 25, avoids feeling exploitative or uneasy as the age difference suggests it might; how the film is able to feel loose and free despite conforming to its genre; the likability, or otherwise, of the setting and era; Anderson’s focus on faces and use of reflective surfaces; and whether one particular running joke that begins as hilariously, stunningly outrageous, overplays its hand and ends up in the realm of the unacceptable.

Licorice Pizza is a sweet romance draped in a loving portrait of a particular place and time, and laced with good jokes. Still, your mileage may vary, as Mike’s devoted, grumpy intransigence in the face of José’s and Stephen’s enthusiasm demonstrates, but even he has to admit it’s a very good film.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

‘Inherent Vice: A Mellow Trip’: Video Essay by Adam Vincent

 

 

Inherent Vice: A Mellow Trip’ – Creator’s Statement

 

‘A Mellow Trip’ is, without doubt, a passion project. Stemming from my deep attachment to Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, Warner Bros., USA, 2014), the video-essay is an unashamed attempt at conversion. My own experience with the film can be characterised best by a growing sense of warmth and connection. Upon viewing the film for a second and third time, I felt myself gently drawn into its hallucinatory orbit, shaking off any initial irritation surrounding the film’s narrative obscurities. Subsequent revisits cemented this affection, leading me to the conclusion that Inherent Vice is a film which benefits greatly from multiple viewings. As a result, I want fans and detractors alike to re-watch and reconsider Inherent Vice in the light of the video-essay’s contextualisation. I would like viewers to approach the film with fresh enthusiasm, using the framework of subjectivity which I have proposed in order to advance their own interpretations. Although my video-essay does not directly reference a multitude of scholarly sources, I feel that it is resolutely academic in its attempt to inspire further research.

Further, I have also framed ‘A Mellow Trip’ in such a forthright manner because I see the video-essay as a singularly persuasive medium, offering an alluring blend of a film’s most arresting images and sounds. The potential to crystallise these audio-visual stimuli into an overarching argument was the primary reason I chose Inherent Vice as my subject matter. To elaborate, I believe Inherent Vice is a film which can be more fruitfully analysed through the lens of its affective and sensorial appeal, using the very images and sounds which attracted me in order to entice the viewer of the video-essay to return to the film. I have positioned this style of critique in opposition to much of the film’s negative reception. This reception focused the majority of its ire on the confusion and frustration caused by the film’s narrative wanderings. Shedding the pragmatism of plot descriptions for a slightly more poetic approach felt like a liberatory exercise, affording the video-essay a degree of emotional expression which I would find difficult to replicate in prose. I rarely situate the evidence for my ideas within its broader narrative context (unless completely necessary), as I feel this would contradict my desire to move away from a narrative-centred critique of the film.

Academic Context

I made the decision to elide academic quotes from the video in order to maintain sharp focus on the textual evidence present in Inherent Vice and keep my video-essay accessible to a wider audience. However, various pieces of film criticism were central in the creation process, guiding my methodology and informing my decision-making. It is first necessary to acknowledge the huge influence of Susan Sontag’s ‘Against Interpretation’. Sontag’s clarion call to “learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more”[1] forms the life-blood of ‘A Mellow Trip’, pulsing through every frame and informing every decision made in the process of its creation. Her appeal for acts of criticism which offer an “accurate, sharp, loving description of the appearance of a work of art”[2] particularly struck me. I thought that any act of criticism in prose would inevitably fall short in this regard. Although an evocative written description may offer a sense of an art object, I felt that the shift in medium would inevitably result in a dilution of the original audio-visual artifact. The shared medium-specificities of the video-essay and cinema, namely their multi-sensory appeal, meant that this project was the perfect opportunity to attempt this slightly esoteric, yet captivating, form of critique.

The last section of my video-essay on Doc’s heightened sensory appreciation draws on the work of influential affect theorists such as Vivian Sobchack and Laura U. Marks. Their work on the embodied responses of a spectator to the sensory information presented onscreen is absolutely fundamental in my analysis of Paul Thomas Anderson’s recreation of Doc’s drug-addled senses. To be specific, Laura U. Marks’ concept of the “haptic image”[3] which invites an embodied reaction from the spectator had a direct impact on my choice to emphasise certain images. For example, Doc stroking the carpeted wall in the massage parlour seemed to be a moment that highlighted this concept in a succinct and straightforward manner.

Although deeply flawed in its uncritical nature, Andrew Sarris’ conception of the auteur theory provided a groundwork for the contextualisation of Inherent Vice within the wider filmography of Paul Thomas Anderson. Sarris highlights “recurring characteristics of style” as a feature which distinguishes an auteur and serves as their “signature”.[4] Despite my misgivings surrounding Sarris’ work on the auteur theory, I think his simple conceptualisation is enough to briefly ground my exploration of Paul Thomas Anderson’s previous work. Taking the reflection of his protagonists’ subjectivity as a recurring stylistic feature, I was able to place Inherent Vice more easily in a lineage with Anderson’s earlier films. This was another attempt to combat a criticism of Inherent Vice, namely, that it lacked the sheer intensity or focus which characterised the rest of Anderson’s career.

Playing with Form

‘A Mellow Trip’ represents a dualistic impulse in terms of film form and image use. First of all, I wanted to explore the capability of the video-essay medium to recontextualise images in a striking and dramatic manner. This impulse can be seen most clearly in my use of montage throughout.  From the drama and beauty of the electronic Four Tet track which soundtracks the Paul Thomas Anderson montage, to the jittery and rapid editing of the paranoia montage, these moments audio-visually reflect their content on a small-scale, while also working in parallel with the video-essay’s broader theme of subjectivity. While these montages may suggest a suspicion surrounding the ability of the film image to explain itself, other moments in my video-essay are a paean to the virtuoso filmmaking at work throughout Inherent Vice. I have often left the film’s images and sounds largely untouched and allowed them to speak for themselves. A key example of this would be my analysis of the Harlingen reunion scene. The rewind device which leads to my (re)consideration of this scene, far from a gimmick, is a combination of both of these key impulses. Self-reflexively highlighting the process of creation behind a video-essay, this moment demonstrates the necessity of an author who can curate a film’s most evocative images and place them within a new context in order to foster an interpretation. On the other hand, the essay rewinds back to the beginning of the Harlingen reunion clip which, with the added effect of Jonny Greenwood’s score, is able to express itself without the necessity for further contextualisation.

Each section is clearly modelled around the primary mood or tone which it concerns. The ‘Confusion and Paranoia’ segment opens with a sharp stab of offbeat psychedelic rock which abruptly cuts off as the montage begins. The ‘Melancholy and Nostalgia’ section on the other hand, includes longer pieces of footage and a Neil Young song from the film which poetically conveys my ideas. Again, as with the use of montage, I wanted the idea of subjectivity to be conveyed not only cognitively, but visually and aurally too. Most importantly, I wanted to be playful in my use of visuals and music as my entire mission statement revolves around enticing an imagined viewer to watch and reconsider Inherent Vice. For this, I was always looking for exciting ways to visually present an idea without resorting to voiceover to state my interpretations. Examples include my acknowledgment of Jonny Greenwood’s paranoid score, suggestively placing a red waveform over a smoke-filled screen with a murky still of Doc in the background.

Conclusion

To put it simply, I have looked to create a piece which captures the spirit of a film I love very much. I hope to inform and seduce, drawing viewers from academia and beyond to engage in a dialogue with my interpretation of the film. I see the framework of subjectivity as integral in bursting open the enigmatic surface of Inherent Vice, leading to revelations about the film’s inner mechanisms and its exploration of broader socio-cultural concerns. Inherent Vice is a film which feels loose in sensibility yet thoroughly controlled in execution. This is what I hope to have replicated. I truly hope you enjoy it.

[1] Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays (London: Macmillan, 1966), p. 10

[2] Ibid., p. 9

[3] Laura U. Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 2

[4] Andrew Sarris, ‘Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962’ in Barry Keith Grant (ed.), Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader (Oxford; Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2008), p. 43

Eavesdropping at the Movies 47 – Phantom Thread – Second Screening

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Phantom Thread offered us so much to think about that we decided to revisit it, this time with Stephen Glass, who is both a filmmaker and Mike’s brother: very handy. This is our second viewing, Stephen’s fourth. We note how little time these great films now remain onscreen in Birmingham but focus on various aspects of mise-en-scène and performance: are the dresses meant to be not quite right? How fantastic is the Chelsea Arts Ball scene and the wonderful superimposition from the Alps? We discuss the power struggle between Alma and Cyril; the connection between Alma and Reynolds’ mother; the changes of lighting in relation to the characters from the beginning of the film to the end; the narrative deployment of the Barbara Rose character and the use of music. A film that’s endlessly interesting.

 

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José Arroyo and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

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Phantom Thread gives us a lot to talk about; films about recessive people trying to communicate, the superb use of sound, quite extraordinary performances from all three leads; the beauty of the images, the complexity of the themes, the extraordinary ending, the coolness of the tone; filmmakers who excel at inciting thought versus those who excel at inciting feeling (and the full spectrum in between. We discuss the film in relation to Anderson’s ouevre and we will bring Mike’s brother into a further podcast on this film to help us delve into it further. The film makes you want to do that.

 

José Arroyo

The podcast can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes.

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We’ve been receiving quite a lot of comments and we welcome them. Keep them coming. They’ve led to some changes we hope you see as improvements. And it’s always great to have a dialogue on film.

 

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

The Iceman (Ariel Vromen, USA, 2012)

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Littered with spoilers so do not read if you don’t want to know the ending.

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From the first ten minutes of The Iceman we know that Richard Kuklinski (Michael Shannon) is ‘in a lonely place’, that he’s got ‘a touch of evil, that he’s got ‘no way out’: that he’s ‘D.O.A.’ Perhaps only in the period of post-war noir has American cinema been bleaker or better than it is at the moment: Blue Valentine (2010), Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik, 2010), Killer Joe (William Friedkin, 2011), Drive (Nicholas Winding Refn, 2011), Mud (Jeff Nichols, 2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (Derek Cianfrance, 2012), The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012) , Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik 2012), Magic Mike (Steven Soderbergh, 2012), Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012), to name but a few examples. Dystopian views now are not just limited to genres like science-fiction or horror but seem to have seeped right to the centre of the culture. However, although other films might have as bleak an outlook, none has a darker look than The Iceman.

 

 

Our Cultural Past as Mythos of a Fictional World

 

            The film spans the period of the early 60s to the early 80s but most of the action takes place in the 70s in Hoboken, New Jersey, where Frank Sinatra was born, and in the various boroughs of New York where he started his career. Atlantic City, in the middle of getting a gambling license that will enable it to try to compete with Vegas, is another Sinatra association and buying a condo there is Kuklinski’s dream. The film references the Gambinos, the Calleys, the Lucchese and other legendary Mafia families Sinatra’s name was often linked to. The places where Kuklinski lives and kills are ones John Travolta’s Tony Manero might have walked through on his way to the disco at this time, and it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine Manero working for DeMeo (Ray Liotta), the gangster who’s got Kuklinski on hitman retainer,  or even in porn if his dancing career in Manhattan had fizzled out.

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The world of The Iceman is like the underbelly of Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, USA, 1977), ethnic working men strutting in platform shoes, tight high-wasted flared trousers over printed shirts with pointy collars, on the fringes of society and trying to get out of their situation in different ways in the same streets and to a similar disco beat. The Iceman makes much of Kuklinki being of Polish origin and its mix of Poles, Irish, Dutch, Italian, and Jewish characters, probably because it’s an accurate historical reflection, but perhaps also because it enables the picture to makes claims about a world and not just one community within it (the way it seems in other mafia films and TV shows from The Godfather films to The Sopranos). The Iceman is telling the story of an individual and one within a very particular context but it’s also operating within and making use of a very potent American mythos – that of the urban gangster — and making use and a particular formal vernacular — that of film noir. I’ll return to the genre and cultural tradition through which the Iceman tell us its story later. But let’s first look at the beginning.

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Beginning Thesis:

‘Mr. Kuklinski, do you have any regrets for the things you’ve done?’ asks a nameless voice over a tight close-up of Michael Shannon as Richard Kuklinski, famed mafia hitman. We are shown Shannon’s head slightly to the side, half-hidden in darkness; a still, strong, tightly-coiled face with calm calculating eyes; a rough grit-and-granite face, all angles that simultaneously illuminate and enshadow. It’s a perfect question to start the narrative. The diegetic sound has already indicated he’s in jail, so what has he done? And what’s to regret? That play of light and shadow on the sharp planes of Shannon’s face constitutes an ideal image with which to start giving shape to Kuklinski and his world. The Iceman will return to the same scene at its end, when Kuklinski will give us his answer and the film its final nudge to the audience’s judgment of Kuklinski as a person and of Shannon as an actor.

The film then cuts to April 29, 1964 via a high wide shot of a dark urban setting at night; lampposts shine brightly but can barely pierce the darkness. We’re then shown the outside of a cheap diner in a dark street. As we go inside, however, the lens seems to soften and makes the people we see inside seem young, attractive, vulnerable. When I first saw Shannon in Shotgun Stories (Jeff Nichols, USA, 2007), his lanky frame, soft and measured way of speaking, his ability to be emotionally transparent and unquestionably masculine, reminded me of Henry Fonda. He brings a little of that to this scene: Richie, for that’s what Deborah (Winona Ryder), his date, calls Kuklinski, is soft-spoken, awkward, bashful. ‘You ask a girl for coffee, you should have something to say,’ she tells him.

When Kuklinski looks at Deborah, and this is a testament to Shannon’s achievement as an actor in this part, his face seems to melt and soften as if from metal to flesh. He’s got a neatly combed side-part and wears a mod polo with geometric white piping on the collar. He’s been after her a long time and wants to impress her but can barely get a word out. She’s also neatly dressed; hair bouffed up as was the style then, but not extravagantly so; she wears a neat blouse with a lacey collar — she’s a respectable girl. He likes that kind of good girl. Kuklinski finally finally mumbles that she reminds him of Natalie Wood, only prettier; she ‘aw shucks’ the compliment but she likes it; and as Natalie Wood’s Judy in Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, USA, 1955) most certainly would, Deborah gets a little thrill from the kind of guy that’s got a grim reaper tattooed between thumb and forefinger. He offers a toast but it’s with water, and she pulls back, saying toasting with water is bad luck. ‘I don’t believe in bad luck,’ he tells her. In fact he doesn’t believe in anything except her.

Just as her aunt arrives to pick her up, he asks Deborah whether he can see her again and she says yes and pecks him quickly on the cheek, even if her aunt is looking: they’re in love. The film is so precise in telling us day, month, and year because it’s the day that changed Kuklinski’s life, brought meaning to it: Deborah’s love, and later that of his children, along with his own love for them, will enable him to latch onto whatever humanity he has left to him.

Second Scene: Anti-Thesis

The second scene shows us Kuklinski playing pool with his buddies. Here it’s all elegant, extreme wide-angle shots of frames within frames within frames, in light browns and muddy yellows. Kuklinski and his buddies hustle a guy who refuses to pay. Kuklinski’s cold stare makes him change his mind but the guy doesn’t know when to shut it and he can’t resist a final insult before leaving, one involving Deborah. In The Iceman, when someone pushes Kuklinsi to the point of no return, his face becomes still and hard. In this case, the first instance we see it, the camera moves in to one of the great images in this film, a key one, in another tight close-up. Kuklinski’s shown to us slightly from below, his face turns to his right, digesting what the fool’s just said, then to his left as he makes a decision. As he does so, his face and the camera come to a stop, the face lit so that exactly half of it is in darkness. The image could be that of Two-Face in the Batman comics with darkness replaces the scarring. Kuklinski’s scars, as we will soon find out, are all internal but this sense of being split into darkness and light in a consciousness that can barely contain that polarity and is always threatening to explode because of it is very important in the film.

I’ve taken some time over the first two scenes of the film not only because they’re crucial in the depiction of the fictional world we will be seeing and in introducing us to the main character but because they also set out the structure of the film and its main themes. First we get the questions. Then we get nice Richie in love followed by the ‘rise’ of Killer Kuklinski. This idea of the double or, perhaps better put, the dark half of a split whole is a structuring idea in the film. It not only enables the type of story already familiar to us from The Sopranos (David Chase, HBO, USA, 1999-2007), the Mafia hit man who’s leading a double-life as a happy family man in the suburbs, but goes deeper into more existential questions: Is evil inherited, is it shaped, why bother to be good at all in a world without God?

‘You gotta feel something for somebody’

When Richie first meets Deborah he tells her that his job is dubbing movies  (as in the making of copies rather than the lending of his voice) for Disney but really it’s dubbing porn for the mob. One day when they come to collect and he doesn’t have them ready (they have the wrong date), they rough him up. Roy Demeo (Ray Liotta) is so impressed by Kuklinski’s cool, even with a gun on his face, that he puts him to a test. A few days later, Roy takes him for a ride, makes his sidekick Josh Rosenthal (David Schwimmer) give a homeless person some money, then points a gun to Kulinski.  ‘Look at that fucking guy, he’s cool as ice’ he tells Josh. Then turning to Kuklinski, ‘you gotta feel something for somebody’. ‘I’ve got a wife and children’. With that Demeo puts the gun away and offers him a deal: if he can kill the homeless man they’ve just given change to, he’s got a job working exclusively for him.

The moment when Kuklinski kills the helpless hobo is an early turning point in the film, one that propels the rest of the narrative until another turning point, on which more later. At this moment, however, the darkness enshrouds the image and half of Kuklinski becomes what the film tells us he might always have been, the ruthless unfeeling hit-man, steeped in a darkness so deep that the screen fades to black. This is then followed by an exciting montage –  thrilling in its editing, jolting in its content — of his hits in various New York/ New Jersey locations overlooking the Hudson and/or the Manhattan skyline. A leap into the dark, an embrace of it, can quicken the pulse and carry its own excitement

 

A Visual Relationship to Noir

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The film looks like a combination of The French Connection (William Friedkin, USA, 1972) and a television documentary: the image is thin and underexposed; sometimes hand-held, sometimes with elegantly composed images, always with a loose feel that foregrounds character against lots of black, as if darkness is oozing into Kuklinski’s world and threatening to swamp it. The hand-held camera is usually used during a hit; the steadier but usually still-mobile shots characteristically showing Kuklinski with his family. Light levels are designed to communicate as well, darkness alternating with light but even the light within the home getting thinner and darker as the film progresses. There are moments where a scene fades completely to black (the murder of the homeless person for example); other moments were the characters turn and become two-dimensional, hard silhouettes momentarily disembodies of their humanity like in that moment in Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946, USA) where Ballen George Macready) subtly threatens Johnny (Glenn Ford). The Iceman is a tour de force of expressive cinematography (by Bobby Bukowski).

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Doubling, Halves, Structural Opposites

Ideas of doubling, of complementary halves, of equal but opposites seem to structure almost every aspect of The Iceman, from minor points to themes to structuring elements. For example, De Meo likes to meet at The Gemini Club; Deborah to Kuklinski is his better half and saving grace; the film asks us to compare Kuklinski to his brother Joey (Stephen Dorff) in Kuklinski’s favour (he’s not sadistic and doesn’t accept contracts on women and children) and the same later on, when Demeo puts a momentary halt on business and Kuklinski has to team up with a scarier, more brutal and sadistic hitman , Mr. Freezy (Chris Evans), from whose practice of freezing bodies so police can’t trace the time of death Kuklinski is misnamed ‘The Iceman’. Kuklinski believes he’s better than them, more moral.

The film’s point-of-view and the spectator’s understanding are not always the same as Kuklinki’s. Winona Ryder’s sideways glances, and her hiss at him when their daughter gets run over, hints at her knowing more about what her husband does for a living than she lets on; that her ignorance is as much a feign as his currency dealings. Also, his brother is right when he says Kuklinski will end up right there in Trenton State Prison with him. Lastly, Mr. Freezy might be more sadistic than Kuklinski but Kuklinski has no problem adopting his methods when his condo in Atlantic City’s at stake.

From the moment that Kuklinski starts working for DeMeo until the film’s other turning point, when he’s hired to kill Marty Freeman (James Franco) but leaves loose end, we see first an exciting montage — thrilling in its editing, jolting in its content — of his hits in various New York/ New Jersey locations overlooking the Hudson and/or the Manhattan skyline; after this, such hits are alternated with a happy home sequences of suburban family life in Jersey, as if the dual sides of his nature are perfectly  balanced. He seems to be a happy commuter Dad (though I’m sure some of his hits must have taken place closer to home). But it’s interesting that the film’s second turning point, the beginning of his descent conjoins two ideas, both pertinent to American culture now, but not usually brought together: that of a loss of faith and that of a loss of job.

The Second Turning Point and Descent

Kuklinski, by his own terms, leads a balanced life; he manages to alternate the happy suburban home life and the urban killing very successfully until the film’s other important turning point. Plot-wise the context for it is that Josh Rosenthal, the local capo’s best friend and right hand man, has not only been waving Demeo’s name around without authority and at some risk, but has actually just gone and robbed large amounts of cocaine from two Hispanic dealers. However, those he thought were merely lowly Spics end up being connected to one of the ‘families’ and thus their death requires extracting traditional restitution from DeMeo: the body of the person that did it in a bag. Marty Freeman (James Franco) has been blabbing about that person maybe being Rosenthal. Earlier in the film, when Demeo caught wind that Rosenthal was using his name he told him: ‘You and I have a history together. It means something to me’. Because of that, Demeo, in order to protect Rosenthal and himself, puts out a hit on Freeman; and to make sure it gets done, and without Kuklinski’s knowledge, he puts another hitman on the case, Mr. Freezy (Chris Evans).

Thematically, the turning point is set-up by a scene where Richie and Deborah are spending family time with their children. They’re in the bedroom, the television news is showing coverage of the Vietnam War, and Kuklinski’s eldest girl says that, according to one of the nun’s at school, it’s God’s will for people die in Vietnam. The family has a discussion about this with Deborah saying that God is so busy that he can’t take care of everyone and thus the family has to look after each other. But Kuklinski was an altar boy; ideas of Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell, and the existence of God are what he was raised with. When he goes to kill Marty Freeman and Marty begs for his life, Kuklinski makes him an offer, he’ll give him thirty minutes to pray and if God stops him, he’ll spare his life and take the consequences.

One of the wonderful things about American cinema at the moment is that we see actors’ hunger to perform in a way that we haven’t seen for a long time. They’re taking risky roles in small films, seemingly for the love of it. Here we get the opportunity to see an unrecognizable David Schwimmer as Rosenthal (the audience does giggle when they finally recognize him but only briefly. He’s superb); Chris Pines looking almost unattractive but more manly and dangerous than I’ve ever seen him on screen as Mr. Freezy; a magnificent Stephen Dorff, also completely unrecognizable and truly creepy, slimy, dangerous – I’ve loved him more in other films such as Somewhere   (Sofia Coppola, USA, 2010) but I don’t remember him ever being better. We also get to see Robert Davi, whose very face is as Demeo tells him, an association with bad news, a reason he’s now been a joy to filmgoers for decades; and of course Ray Liotta, who must have recently hired the best script-reader in Hollywood because after years of working in dross, in the last year alone he’s appeared in Killing Them Softly and The Place Beyond the Pines, which is to say the very best of current American cinema. And not least, a much desired return of the glorious Winona Ryder to the screen in a leading role. One just sighs with pleasure at the sight of her; and she’s very good here – there’s a core of steel under that lace collar. But the greatest scene in the movie is almost ruined by James Franco.

Detour into Franco

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I love James Franco and think he’s been unjustly criticized for interests that should in fact be praised: an interest in art in general first; then for actually writing, painting, performing, directing; then for wanting to extend himself as an actor in a variety of parts. I loved him in Oz, The Great and Powerful (Sam Raimi, USA, 2012) and thought nobody else could have captured the shabby, kind-of-ladies man but too honest and goofy to be a lady-killer, gauche, sweet not-innocent Oz; the loveable, sexy but not dangerously so, two-bit conman: He’s just perfect in that role. But he’s not here. His performance as Marty is lazy, as if he’s just arrived from something more important on his way to something more important still, plopped himself on his knees and told Ariel Vromen to hurry up and get on with it.

This, in the most important scene in the film and playing with and against Michael Shannon, whose performance here must stake a claim to his being one of the very finest actors working in American cinema today. Star or not, if Franco, can’t deliver, particularly in a small but crucial role such as this one, he should have been re-cast; and I hold it against the production that such a crucial role should end up so amorphous and lifeless on screen. As if, instead of Rod Steiger, it was the winner of some hick high-school acting contest that ended up opposite Brando in the ‘I could have been a contender’ scene in On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, USA, 1954).

Existential Kuklinski

Kuklinki’s a walking existential question. Like Camus’ Merseault in The Stranger  (1942) he feels no connection to others, but he doesn’t particularly seek meaning, though his family gives him that. Yet in his offer of mercy to Marty he’s pushing his daughter’s question, ‘why does God let innocent people die?’ further: Does God exist at all? Whilst Franco’s busy being an inert blob, Shannon, filmed from below, like Satan himself challenging God, urges him to pray. ‘Go ahead’ he says quietly, ‘Our father….’. ‘I’m not feeling nothing,’ he warns Marty, ‘nothing at all’. ‘Pray harder’. ‘Your last chance,’ he warns .

Jean Paul-Sartre dramatized alienation in works like Nausea (1938)and more systematically explored the question of Being in a world without God in works of philosophy like Being and Nothingness (1943). But films, even not quite great ones like The Iceman, sometimes offer moments of better emotional understanding of such existential questions, of understanding and feeling, even if only briefly,  the void that opens up in the moment that Kuklinski tells Marty, ‘I think God’s busy’ and offs him.

In Being and Nothingness, Sartre wrote, ‘“I must be without remorse or regrets as I am without excuse; for from the instant of my upsurge into being, I carry the weight of the world by myself alone without help.’ Arguably, Kuklinski has known this from the very beginning.  But it is from this moment that his sense of responsibility for his family supersedes, erases, justifies, a loss of taking responsibility for his own actions; it’s the moment where he stops to shape his world and it starts to shape him.

From then on, it’s a descent into the same place we first met his brother both physically and emotionally, though Kuklinki is perhaps more aware of this, and will feel it more acutely. First, Richie loses his job, and the loss of his job, leads to a lack of self-worth and a loss of status in the home. To recover some of that, he becomes ‘The Iceman’. But the stresses of doing this type of work, then means he loses his family (the one thing he regrets) when they start seeing him as Jekyll and Hyde figure (which he’s never been in his own mind).  Finally we’re made aware of the full extent of loss of self when his square face turns almost to the camera at the end to assert that hurting his family is the only thing he regrets.

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It seems that recently I’ve seen a whole series of films about men in America (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines, Killing them Softly) where the loss of a job is tied to crime, or the job is crime. What types of ways men are allowed to perform a  particular type of masculinity is tied to their having a job or not, to them being criminalized or not and when that happens. There’s a racial and ethnic dimension to this as well that The Iceman hints at through its ethic mix but doesn’t quite explore. James Baldwin has a wonderful passage in The Evidence of Things Not Seen where he quotes a black spiritual that goes ‘When a woman gets the blues Lord, she bows her head and cries/ When a man gets the blues lord, he takes the train and rides.’ But Baldwin reminds us that we should ask ‘Why does the black man take the train and ride, why does he flee from his responsibilities’. Baldwin’s answer is that America posits normative and idealised ways of being men in America and then doesn’t allow Black Men inhabit those norms or ideals, thus the ‘take the train and ride’. I think these films are raising very similar questions today. What is an ideal way of being a man in America today and does a normal working joe have to kill someone in order to be that guy.

The Iceman is not a great film but it’s a serious and satisfying one, with Shannon’s performance sure to become legendary. It has  a beautiful use of light and shadows from cinematographer Bobby Bukowski, and memorable dialogue. Immediately after I saw it, my view was that Shannon was superb but the film itself no great shakes. I still think that to a degree; but it’s a rare film that inspires me to write at this length, rarer still in a film I don’t particularly like. It’s a film that but for the actors, and that of course is the biggest but, one can’t divorce them from the film, but if one could, The Iceman is almost more interesting to think about than to see. Maybe further viewings will bring out yet more. It’s a film to ponder, and in thinking about Shannon, to ponder with awe.

José Arroyo