Category: Cinema

Amelie

On By Michael TolbertIn Cinema, Culture, Family, Philosophy, WritingLeave a comment

Amelie is my hidden gem. Hidden, not in the sense of film obscurity or lack of critical appreciation, but the understated power of its magic. Amelie is not a child, though she retains a youthful way of looking at the world, a kind of purity of vision that most of us lose the ability to retain, not from cynicism, though it can feel like that, or from trauma, though that too can impede progress. But progress to what? Not adulthood. Amelie does not need a man to make her grow up. This film is not about growing up. What Amelie lacks is authenticity, the power of self-generation, a kind of fixation on others around her which allows her to act as Angel/Devil dispensing a kind of divine justice on the undeserving world. Her morality doesn’t apply because all the other characters are sub-morality. They do not fit together, but happenstance can make them fit together for awhile. She is God to all but lacks the ability to set her own life in motion. But she knows the reason for her failure. She is unloved. Her lack of love and her lack of authentic life are one and the same.

But what a dangerous world this creates, for her and for us. Most of us talk in terms of self-empowerment, self-actualization as if this is some innate power within us all. A question of will power, of mind over matter. Others rarely factor into this ideal, and then only tangentially where idealized romantic/domestic life is seen as a way to complete ourselves. But we are not masters of our hearts. The power to grow, to self-actualize depends on this external force known as love. In truth, our condition is far from ideal and we are subject to the whims of happenstance. But we can believe there is an Amelie for us, a God with the power to remove the sting of loneliness and take our first tentative steps towards the authentic life.

The Man Who Laughs

On By Michael TolbertIn Cinema, Culture, WritingLeave a comment

A truly remarkable feat, spawning the all-too familiar paint by numbers form of conventional storytelling, a pastiche of every stereotyped and derivative film ever produced. Yet it was the first! And to be the first is everything, a genius and a success! To provide the very palette and template that blended genres must follow, the formula that is the logic of staging entirely for action and effect. This is why it can’t be neatly typecast. It is equally horror, melodrama, love-story, swashbuckler fantasy, comedy, adventure. I am tempted to anoint it the grand eponym of the tradition, the film of films, the first genuine film ever made, upon which every subsequent reincarnation must be subsumed and pay homage. A fitting baptism for both the history of film and the bloodbaths and carnage of the 20th century and beyond: the rictus.

Historie(s) du Cinema

On By Michael TolbertIn Art, Cinema, Culture, WritingLeave a comment

“May every eye negotiate for itself.”

“Do not show every aspect of things. Allow yourself a margin of indefiniteness.”

“A film is a girl and a gun.”

The promise of cinema: “The world for a nickel.”

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act with beauty and courage.”

“Perhaps all the terrifying things are something helpless things that need our help.”

“In effect cinema is not part of the communications industry, or the entertainment industry, but of cosmetics, the industry of masks.”

“Cinema has always yearned to be more real than life.”

“Film needs two reels one that gets full or the other gets empty, the master and the slave.”

“To say is to see.”

“A movie projector has to remember the camera.”

“Cinema is only an industry of escapism, because it’s the only place where memory is a slave.”

“The image will come at the time of Resurrection.”

“On the eve of the 20th century, technology decided to reproduce life, so we invented photography and Cinéma. But since morals were still strong, and we would take everything from life, even its identity, we mourned, this killing.”

“Is the man on camera real or already the fiction of a man?”

“If there’s an easy way, the fool chooses the difficult way.”

“And deep inside each love story lurks the story of a nurse.”

“We got rid of perspective, the vanishing point.”

“Art is like fire, it’s born from what is burnt.”

“What is cinema? Nothing. What does it want? Everything. What can it do? Something.”

“Things are there. Why manipulate them?”

“Man has in his own heart places that don’t exist yet and where pain enters so they can be.”

“This is what I like about cinema generally speaking. A saturation of wonderful signs, that swim in the light of their lack of explanation.”

Notes on Sirk

On By Michael TolbertIn Art, Cinema, Culture, Family, History, Philosophy, Politics, WritingLeave a comment

“Perhaps no more monstrous children, outside horror films, were ever seen in Hollywood than those who interfere grotesquely with their parents’ lives in “All That Heaven Allows” and “There’s Always Tomorrow.” Sirk’s lesson has a long throw—politics motivated by a demagogic plea “for the children” is a code for reactionary moralism.” – Richard Brody

Much of American history has been dominated by the overt. reactionary moralism of the middle class. Book banning, anti-pornography, abortion restrictions, etc. – all sold as necessary draconian measures to protect the virtue of children. But the only virtue of childhood is getting to be young. The rest is whistling past the graveyard.

Los Olvidados

On By Michael TolbertIn Art, Cinema, Culture, History, Philosophy, Politics, WritingLeave a comment

The task is simple. In order to create a geography of hunger, we must throw away the ordinary map. Clear markers are gone. Lines of demarcation have been obliterated. Surveys are useless and contradictory. Boundaries become topography; topography creates new and surprising boundaries. We are forced to trace the characters on an entirely new trajectory and plane. This is where their lived reality occurs. This is the authentic space in which they (we) are forced to inhabit.

Tragedy + Modernity = Melodrama

On By Michael TolbertIn Art, Cinema, Culture, WritingLeave a comment

Tragedy is a very difficult art form to master in the modern world. All too often the narrative can veer into contrivance. At first glance, the reason why isn’t straightforward. It’s not a problem of plotting, per say, but has more to do with cinema as a form of self-reference and self-understanding. More and more, we moderns come to understand the meaning of our lives through the lens of cinema. Our understanding of a particular film’s meaning is shaped by our past filmic experiences, connecting points inside a common shared space, a larger cinematic map we learn to orient along a plane. Tragedy is not the end result of a series of unfortunate events or plot points, but is framed within the larger context of this shared cinematic universe. It is a daunting task. The obstacles we place before our tragic heroes may well be too high for the audience to scale, and there is always a danger they will give up and refuse to climb along the journey. To experience the modern world is already an ironic gesture, a self-referential reification. The ironic pose of tragedy culminates in its highest expression: melodrama. But melodrama creates precarious footing upon which the narrative can slip beneath our feet. Every new ledge along the precipice, each toehold we create for safe footing becomes a tired well-worn path which advanced cinephiles like us reject as trite. Been there. Done that. The thirst for novelty threatens to plunge our story into increasingly strange and bizarre twists to keep the excitement level high. Melodrama is the addiction, but like all addictive drugs, we are forced to increase the dosage to maintain our high.