The second wave of graduates from New York University's film program yielded the likes of the Cohen brothers and Spike Lee, independent virtuosos well versed in the history of cinema. This immense knowledge of the medium's stylistic repertoire gave way to a synergy of past avant gardes, mutating into a new dialect of film that would be eventually accepted by mainstream audiences. Then there's Jim Jarmusch. A punk with a camera, concerned more with the expression of realism then the limits of narrative. Jamusch's affinity for visual simplicity lead to his unmistakable cinematography, series of still shots closely framed to his actors. The sound and story elements of his movies also follow this pattern, while straightforward, engaging the viewer with a complex versatility of the non-chalant. Jim Jarmusch's films bleed the sense that he himself doesn't care whether or not you love them, its not up to him to explain his genius, but genius it is all the same. Deadman is a perfect film, and a befitting masterwork for the apprentice of the western pioneer Nicholas Ray. While his style can be exhausted upon watching his films back to back, it is an originality unequaled in his approach and in the movie's thematics. While Jarmusch's films hearken back to french cinema of the 50's and 60's, they completely break away from their foundations and Coffee and Cigarettes is the perfect example of the difference between great films derived of previous auteur's and true creativity that resembles past conventions. It looks like Shadows or Don't look back, it focuses upon open-ended conversations between a small cast of characters, the movement of the film's pace relies almost solely upon the performances of his actors, and it focuses upon the realistic relationships established by the characters/surroundings. Yet, it feels vastly different then the humble beginnings of the independent film. Jarmusch is the master of making the audience assimilate the humor, profoundness, and the idea of life's unequivocal nature of matter-of-factness. Each character represents the foreigner in all of us, how we are aware of ourselves, but still unsure of our place within our surroundings. We are ourselves flummoxed by our own sensibilities, even when just sharing a smoke and a cup of black coffee with another stranger who wears the same shoes. And like every good punk rocker, Jarmusch is self-indulgent and pretentious, but never does he try to hide these imperfections, his aim is true. 100% genuine New York cool, abstracted to perfection, like Basquiat and Warhol before him.
Reviews
4 Reviews
Bubble
(I) (2005)
The Changing Idioms Of Independent Cinema
4 April 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Independent Cinema of the past fifty years has always played the part of challenging conventions of the mainstream, whether its the studio system's vertically-integrated Hollywood machine, or it's habituated stylistic standards. In the past fifteen years independent films genre has seen unprecedented exposure and larger market avenues have yielded greater profit margins, garnering interests from big business studios. This has to the founding of studio subsidiaries (i.e. Miramax, Lions Gate), a testing ground for less-conventional, but potentially marketable, films. Accordingly, along with Hollywood's adoption of the independent audience it has also taken an interest in it's talent pool of directors, actors, and writers. Steven Soderbergh is an example of an independent filmmaker bridging the gap between these two genres, from the success of his feature Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1998, winner of Canne's Palme D'or, Independent Spirit Awards) that in eleven years lead him to be the first director to have two of his films nominated for an Acedemy Award for Best Picture (2000, Erin Brockivich, Traffic). His latest project, a series of six films made for 2929 Entertainment and HDnet productions, is a return to the independent market and stylistic medium. Bubble, the first film is the series, examines the hemisphere of small town life and the social circle of the impoverished American proletariat. Soderbegh's cast is made up of amateur actors hand picked from Parkersburg, a small town in West Virginia that is the film's shooting location and cost 1.6 million dollars to create. Continuing this departure from the mainstream, Bubble is shot on a Sony CineAlta 950 HD digital camera accompanied by a score of acoustic guitar vignettes written by Robert Pollard (formerly of Guidied by Voices). The films visual syntax is constructed from LoFi cinematography: 3rd person perspective shots, unconventionally framed (using the background to create lines/shapes, never showing all of its subjects, slanted perspectives) with natural lighting ( with exception of colored light) creating a blending of colors that create a saturated haze over the crisp digital photography (think a genuine, color updating of Noir chiaroscuro). Coleman Hough's narrative thematically tackles the way in which we perceive people and the distance between individuals public/private lives, scripting the interaction of a small sect of factory workers striving to survive small town life. The film's three main characters all are prevented from an unachievable goal of their private conscience: Martha's lust and unrequited love of a younger co-worker, Rose's want of a financially better life that fuels her kleptomania, and kyle's unwillingness to break free of adolescences. Soderbergh chooses to paint this story as realistic portrait, paralleling the simplicity of its framework, sound and amateur actors. He lets the film develop through the viewer's actualization of the main characters, bringing the narrative to a boiling point, ending the film with both the conflict and resolution. Bubble's dialog is improvised, during the scenes with the actors only natural sound is used, the scores is inter-played with the cut sequences. All of these factors stray not only from Hollywood conventions, but from Soderbergh's personal creative-outputs, yet he renters the independent realm with the greater maturity of an established director, giving layers of complexity the simplistic facets of his film. These qualities are what create a new understanding of what classifies a film under the independent genre, as not just an avenue for up-in-comers or those without the bottomless pockets of the studio system, but rather a medium for the creative artistry of cinema regardless of the setting in which it is filmed and conversely the statements it puts forth. And this is so pivotal for a genuine artist, such as Soderbergh, to create his work for its own sake, above the classifications and trappings of stylized genres or production means.
Living in Oblivion
(1995)
Living In Oblivion
4 April 2006
How would you classify Tom DiCillo's film Living in Oblivion, metafilm? The narrative of a film within a film dissects the difficulties experienced during the process of creating an independent motion picture, set with a focus upon cinema's dichotomy between the director as the creative author and film being a collective effort spilt between many hands. While the narrative's structure (conflict/climax/resolution) is paced and moved by the soap opera-esquire exchanges amongst the cast and crew of the project, it is still unsure if DiCillo believes that cinema's nature is either of the aforementioned, but rather a synergy of the two. He makes arguments for both cases, showing how the multi-faceted approach to film-making can slow/change the intended vision and that the director can also not understand how to portray his own vision. As a conclusion Dicillo posits the idea that the ends, more or less, justifies the means. That a film can be made in many different ways, in many different hands and the same juvenile disputes, short comings, technical problems will be met along the way. This is not to suggest that these means are not important, Dicillo's makes them the entire plot of Living in Oblivion, but he rather he wants to give a window for an audience to view (while dramatized) into the world of film production. While this is a seemingly contradictory statement, Living in Oblivion is a contradictory movie, and DiCillo leaves the audience with the feeling that a film has been made and the future of that film will in no way reflect the journey the cast/crew took to get it there.
Manifestations of science fiction and the modern world of mutable slavery
4 April 2006
John Sayles film, The Brother From Another Planet, uses the arhcetypes of science fiction to examine the stunted evolution of history. His story stands as a character study of a alien slave who crash lands in earth's culture epic center of New York City. Through this window into the life of the ultimate foreigner Sayles analyzes the social barriers that segregate people culturally, these divisions stand as an allegory for slavery, paralleling the nature of history, positing that it does not repeat itself so much as it evolves into different manifestations. The starting point begins with "the brother" character running from intergalactic slave traders while assimilating into the American lifestyle (an attempt to start his new life and blend into the society around him), along his way he observes the supporting cast of everyday characters and learns that several societal institutions (immigration, the drug game, sex) are mutated tools of civil control. Sayles is interested in the construction and roots of these devices, the primary barrier between human rational and animal instinct, and begs the question, is it within are makeup as human beings to fear/control the differences between people or are we predisposed as animals to exercise a Darwinian ideology of the strong dominating the weak? From his film it seems to that he believes that latter, that although we can rationally say "people are people" we can not morally explain social injustices and that there is an automated response of "dog eat dog" that restricts history from changing. While Sayles is strong in his assertions, the end of his film leaves the audience with a resolution that the subservient can only offer survive in their convictions, the just will be rewarded in their brotherhood and imperial control is fleeting/incapable to separate the plight of the many.
Tell Your Friends