Post Five

[Rec] 2 (Released 28^th May 2010 in the UK)

Directed by Jaume Balaguero & Paca Plaza 

Every once in a while, a film comes along that strikes a chord with the audience, whether it is through word of mouth, clever marketing, marking a new step with the evolution of technologies or otherwise. In 2008, a Spanish film about a reporter following the routine of a fire crew in Barcelona terrified audiences enough that Hollywood remade it as Quarantine within a year of it hitting the screens. That film was [Rec].

It utilised the same technique that had garnered Cloverfield (2008) so much attention, that of events unfolding before a first person viewpoint. In Cloverfield the camera operator was named Hud, (an acronym for Heads Up Display) but where Cloverfield covered a city under attack by an unknown entity, [Rec] drew more upon the fear of being in an unfamiliar place where something unexplainable is happening before the operator and by proxy the audience’s eyes.

The final shot of [Rec] is where [Rec] 2 takes over. 

The reporter who has discovered a creature in the attic of the apartment complex is dragged into the darkness, her fate unknown, the camera filming only black. Instead, the film cuts to a specialised police force en route to the complex, knowing little about what has happened except that the governing body wishes to have video documentation of the events.

The abiding “rules” of a horror sequel are in effect here; more story development, more action and more monsters. These boxes are all bloodily ticked off.

Where the original followed one group as their numbers steadily dwindled, [Rec] 2 splits the film between the police and a group of teenagers who, curious with the commotion outside the building, decide to sneak in armed only with the arrogance of youth and a camcorder of their own. In the age of YouTube phenomenon’s and people documenting their own lives, the teenagers’ dreams of fame (“This is our chance!” screams one) quickly turn into a nightmare they cannot escape.   

Further expanding on the single camera concept of the original, the police force have miniature cameras on their helmets and guns, capitalising on the burgeoning first person shooter computer games. However in games of this type, the person is in complete control. In [Rec] 2 the viewer cannot escape; they are trapped not only in the overall situation but trapped also by the choices the characters make. The directors incorporate some post-production effects to enhance the experience; the battery power display would not be visible but adds to the tension and in one attack, the camera freezes on a horrific image, with the zombie screech distorted also.

The film is by no means without its flaws. The search for test tubes of blood from which to create an antidote is laboured and dragged out; tension rapidly turning into frustration as one tube goes up in flames in an unintended farcical fashion. While the revelation of a ‘health inspector’ actually being a priest appears in the trailer, when seen in the film, the reveal seems to be more at home in a B-movie; he removes his luminescent jacket to show his dog collar underneath, bearing resemblance to Clark Kent undressing before Superman takes flight.

Even prior to [Rec], the concept of a zombie outbreak being documented via camera had been used in George Romero’s Diary of the Dead (2007) but it would be unfair to accuse the directors of simply just “cashing in” on a gimmick. The alteration the [Rec] films offer to the zombie sub-genre goes beyond the hand-held camera, these zombies are also possessed. Perhaps this altering of the conventional zombie means more to the home Spanish market than the foreign markets, as a poll undertaken in 2010 showed 75% of the population identify themselves as Roman Catholic. 

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1545017.php/Number-of-Catholics-declines-in-Spain 

The idea of an inner demon being awoken and able to possess different bodies at will is unlikely to translate as well to more secularized cultures, but fits well with the Spanish culture.

Despite having a running time of only 85 minutes, once the opening half hour zips past the film-makers seem to be caught in two minds between trying to keep up the frenetic pace or pause and allow their characters to catch their breath. This results in a continuing stop-start pacing for the remainder of the film until the final fifteen minutes where the focus is solely on tension and suspense that sets up the 3^rd installment quite nicely.

By no means an Aliens (1986) or an Empire Strikes Back (1980), but a solid enough effort that does no harm to the first and a worthy addition to the evolution of the zombie horror sub-genre.

Overall Rating - B-

Word Count -789

Post Four

Three films which critique the ideology of the ‘American Dream’ through the use of drugs are Traffic (2000), Requiem for a Dream (2000) and Scarface (1983), with each film covering different ground.

Traffic has the widest scope of the three as it not only examines how drug use and abuse potentially damages the individual and those closest to them, it deals with the difficulties in keeping drugs coming up from South American countries at bay as well as the American Government’s stance and method of keeping them at bay. The explicit message throughout the film is however much America may want to keep illegal drugs out and suppressed, the sheer scale of the number of people and agencies with their conflicting interests makes the war on drugs a near impossible one. Michael Douglas’ character is the man charged with trying to win the war for the American Government, however his own daughter’s escalating problems force him to give up on his dream appointment in the White House to rescue his daughter before it goes too far.

 

Requiem for a Dream is not as firm in its stance as Traffic however. It instead implicitly acknowledges that yes, drug use CAN lead to despair, but that is not always the case. The 4 main characters are in their own ways chasing their own American Dream; either through yearning to appear on television in their favourite dress, setting up a clothing company or by becoming drug dealers. The more the characters chase their dream, the more they plunge into the grips of addiction believing they are in fact getting closer to their dreams. As is the case with Scarface, an implicit message with regards to Ellen Burstyn’s character is the damage that isolation coupled with drug abuse can do to the person, as shown in the following clip.

Untitled from nikita g on Vimeo.

Scarface is the story of Tony Montana, a young Cuban who rapidly ascends the drug ladder; starting as a hired killer until eventually making sufficient connections and power-plays to become Miami’s most powerful drug dealer. 

His infamous mantra, “The World is Yours!” fuels his lust for the things that will eventually destroy him; money, drugs and absolute power. One scene in particular highlights how isolated his cravings have made him. As he sits alone muttering to himself in a circular bath, his wife and best friend having both left after being insulted, the camera rises above him and despite the luxurious surroundings, he is all alone. 

Montana’s drug-fuelled paranoia and egocentrism leads to a bloody and brutal climax as he is gunned down in his own mansion. The world is no longer his, the dream has become a nightmare. Despite the fate of Montana, all things Scarface have been embraced in popular culture with the focus on the rise and not the fall.

Addiction to any kind of drug is likely to do damage. Drugs are not limited to physical forms. Karl Marx once remarked that religion is the opium of the masses, and certain film industry critics have transcribed this meaning to the Hollywood machine. Relentlessly producing films for the consumption of belief that the American Dream is attainable, the idea has hooked in many and so such films as listed highlight the fallacy of this ideology.

Word Count - 543

Post Three

The German film Lola Rennt, (Tykwer, 1998) goes someway to challenging Laura Mulvey’s argument that female characters in films are “positioned for visual impact and erotic pleasure”. While it is true that there is significant visual impact due to the bright red hair of Lola, the colour itself is used several times to symbolise different things; red lighting to symbolise love, the red phone symbolises danger and the hair represents her speed as she runs through the city. 

http://www.oppapers.com/essays/Symbolism-Run-Lola-Run/176872

Lola also shows different conflicting emotions at various stages too. In each of the 3 runs, at one point she screams in a shrill fashion only to regain her composure and calmly carry on after the initial release, preserving a sense of balance.

Mulvey’s point regarding female characters being punished for resembling a threat is also contested, as in the first run she has arguably taken a masculine stance by assisting her boyfriend Manni in robbing a supermarket, only to be shot by a policeman outside. 

However this seems to be due more to the theme of how little choices can have large ramifications (http://www.oppapers.com/essays/Run-Lola-Run/142094) as it is Manni who is killed in the second run. By the very end, we are left with a little cliff-hanger, as it is not revealed if Lola tells Manni about her success in a casino, which is now inconsequential to getting Manni out of trouble and instead leaves Lola in a position of power over him.

The 2000 Christopher Nolan film Memento, though told through a fractured narrative and having an independent feel to it cannot be considered as a Counter Cinema film. That said, it borrows elements from what is considered to be Counter Cinema, namely the narrative technique. This would seem to imply a certain pastiche element emerging more and more in Dominant Cinema and perhaps signals a blurring between the two ideologies, something not altogether too surprising in a post-modern environment, where certain gimmicks not usually seen in Dominant Cinema films are employed to garner attention to the product.

The narrative structure is used so that in each of the three acts of the film, the audience goes on a journey by knowing less than the main character, Leonard, at the start, to then knowing as much as Leonard in the second act, until ending up in a position where Leonard is placed at the start of the events about to unfold and we as the audience know where his journey goes. As the film goes back and forth to different parts in the story, it is a film that demands the audience retain their attention the whole way through. Perhaps knowing that this would prove a challenge to patrons, it can be argued that this is also a technique to make people require a second viewing and re-invest in the film, which seems to be a strategic marketing and consumer driven notion common with the Dominant Cinema process.

However there is an option with the Limited Edition DVD version to watch the film chronologically, which seems a bit of a compromise and arguably reduces the impact of the story.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/trivia?tr0602401

Post Two

“It is the writer’s screenplay, but the director’s film – get used to it,” William Goldman, screenwriter/author.

One director whose work in whatever genre he may delve into, whether the work is an adaptation or original, has consistently retained his mark as an auteur is Martin Scorsese. Primarily known for crime and gangster films in his early years, he has been able to branch out into tales of sporting redemption (Raging Bull, 1980) and music documentaries (Shine A Light, 2008) while maintaining his own Scorsese-isms regardless.

Film-makers starting out in the business are encourage to write or draw upon things that they are familiar with for inspiration, and certainly Scorsese has carried this maxim with him throughout his career as the recurring themes of violence, redemption, Christian imagery and identity all make regular appearances in his work.

All 4 of these themes appear in Taxi Driver (1976) as De Niro’s Travis Bickle tries to do something with his life upon returning from Vietnam. His frustration at himself and his detachment from people regularly emerges, as there are several voice-over monologues airing his insecurity; (contains swearing from the start)

  

Despite his anger, there is also a hope in some sense of salvation when he says,

“Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets,” which reflects the cleansing power of water due to the connotations with baptism.

From an anti-hero searching for identity, to an anti-hero losing his identity, it can only be Goodfellas (1990), in which Ray Liotta plays Henry Hill, a man who grew up with the mob as his family (another recurring theme) and pays for the consequences of his violent actions by having to betray the mob which leads to him becoming,“...an average nobody, I get to live the rest of my life like a shnook.”

A film marked with truly violent scenes, Scorsese manages to give meaning to the violence so it is never just violence for the sake of it, but often to set-up either an atonement or as punishment, a strong reminder of his Catholic faith. As James Senft notes,

“Though the imagery is usually not obvious, religion and Catholicism do play important roles in many of Scorsese's films.”

http://www.millersville.edu/~wstudent/old/RESTORE_FILM/classes/samples/scorsese_sample_paper.php

As already noted, identity is a consistent theme in Scorsese’s work, and he was able to further push himself in exploring this theme in 2010’s Shutter Island, in which Leonardo DiCaprio’s character tries to locate a missing prisoner, only for it to be revealed that he in fact is the subject of a huge role-playing exercise to make him come to terms with the fact he killed his wife in a fit of rage. The notion that he has gone through this several times before can be seen to represent a stay in limbo as he refuses to atone for his past sin, tying in again to the religious theme.

However often these themes appear in Scorsese’s work, his skill as a film-maker ensures that they can be presented in a myriad of different ways.

Post One

Through the manipulation of music and lighting, this classic scene from Friedrich Wilhem Murnau’s 1922 film ‘Nosferatu – A Symphony of Horror’, still has a haunting effect even today. The menace of Orlok’s shadow plays upon the notion of not being able to see an assailant but being aware of a presence. At 00.59, there is a neat jump cut from the woman in her bed suddenly being gripped and falling asleep to a doctor being grabbed and shook awake. At 1.43, as Orlok turns after hearing a cock crow, the ambient noise of birds chirping breaks the domination of the musical score and juxtaposes the natural with the unnatural.

Paid homage to in “The Untouchables”, the iconic image of a pram tumbling down the steps in a city by itself from “Battleship Potemkin” (1925, Sergei Eisenstein) is still an enduring image to this day. Watched in the context of the scene, the heart-breaking notion of a mother being unable to hold on to her baby and not being able to prevent it hurtling down stairs into “death” is still poignant today. The quick cuts from 1.43 – 1.50 starkly contrast the innocence babies signify with the brutality adults are capable of, with the message of the scene being to care for the future and not let it descend into chaos.

A completely silent clip from “The Phantom of the Opera” (1925, Rupert Julian), but one in which the tension and then the reveal of the Phantom’s true face is executed to near perfection. The actresses’ facial expressions and general composure tell the audience how she is feeling at the start; calm and composed to then intrigued yet cautionary, before the mask is removed and the Phantom is seen in his true state. We as the audience are the first to see the Phantom’s face at 0.44 thus the audience takes the brunt of the shock before the character of ‘Christine Daae’ reacts.

Only 6 seconds long, the final shot from “The Great Train Robbery” (1903, Edwin S Porter) has stood the test of time for well over a century. The film itself is just over ten minutes in length, but the iconic image of the robber firing his gun straight at the camera, and in effect, at the audience is the most memorable part. It was one of, if not the first example of an actor breaking the ‘fourth-wall’ between the audience and what was happening on the screen, with the shock of it allegedly causing some cinema patrons to pass out in shock.

 

George Méliès’ 1902 film “La Voyage Dans La Lune” is still a remarkably unique film, which can also boast to be the first ever science-fiction film. Shot when film-making was in its infancy, it still managed to combine both live-action with partial animation; the rocket falling into the sea at 11.18 – 11.22. It also made use of characteristically theatrical sets by being able to move them in real time when the travelers see the Earth rise up once they have landed on the moon; 06.40 – 06.53. Despite only appearing for several seconds, the image of the Moon with a rocket in its eye is well recognised to this day.