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Sunday, 10 December 2006
Ennis is Anus When You Say it Out Loud
WARNING!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! After posting this blog I am now stricken with guilt. If you have not yet seen and intend to watch either Brokeback Mountain, Twentynine Palms, The Brown Bunny or Tiresia you will find this blog full of spoilers – particularly in the case of Twentynine Palms whose 'plot', such as it is, I completely ruin. To anyone who read it before I posted this warning I humbly apologise, but may I just say in my defence that I thought I was the only one lunatic enough to watch these movies. That's it, I'm done now.
Jesus Christ, what a weekend I've had. If I never saw anything else in my life resembling Art it would still be too soon.
I've never been able to bring myself to watch Brokeback Mountain. Because of bad fangirl associations I lost both the inclination, and the incentive, thus proving that Tim Burton was right when he said that some people are put off films if too many (or the wrong) people seem to like them. I ended up with the poor thing reduced in my head to some awful piece of fan fiction where two pretty boys, dressed in pastel Stetsons, swore undying love to each other and cried a lot as they plaited each other's hair.
Understand, I knew it couldn't possibly resemble that (surely?) as Ang Lee had directed it, and I'd always admired his work. But nevertheless, that bad fangirl aftertaste seemed to be unshakeable and I knew I couldn't possibly watch it impartially.
So I left it, and left it… and left it.
In fact I left it till the desire to see it started to materialise again. I'd spot it in Woolworth's, the hire shop, and find myself thinking "Mmm… wonder if I should get that?"
But I didn't. I went on leaving it and leaving it and leaving it… until last Friday when it showed up in my library (that's the lending library) and I found myself pouncing on it.
At last, it seemed I was finally ready to watch it.
Oh, rue the day.
I've already told you I like Ang Lee. I also like Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. I'm talking as actors here, not sex symbols. I find both actors attractive, charismatic. I even find Heath Ledger sexy. In short, there was no reason why this film shouldn't work for me except... it was bloody terrible.
I remember reading somewhere that Ang Lee had been uncomfortable with the idea of doing sex scenes for the film, and, by Christ, doesn't it show?
What was he doing? Guaranteeing no-one would mistake him for a poof because his masculine distaste is so self-evident?
We get one, laughingly-called 'sex' scene. It's so fast it hardly constitutes as sex at all. Well handled, beautifully acted, but blink and you'd miss it. We get plenty of substitute sex scenes, lots of manly fighting in their place, along with inarticulate angst, again well-acted. But no sex.
You do have to ask yourself why.
As readers of this column know I have only skim-read Annie Proulx's story. I don't like her writing style, finding it too self-conscious, constrained by constant striving for academic cleverness. Annie is one of those writers that likes to buy 18 volume dictionaries and then use a new and very obscure word (maybe two) in every chapter she writes.
All this is fine. If you enjoy learning new words and having your fantasy universes laid out in carefully controlled prose then she's your girl. But, like any other work, you have to be aware of what it is you are being told under all that carefully-wrought artistry.
Now Annie didn't make the film, but she is recorded as saying she likes it, it catches her book. So we have to assume that she finds nothing wrong with its message, its moral slant, its tone.
And the overall tone of Brokeback Mountain is one of righteous, straight, middleclass America. Look at the poor, tragic faggots, victimised by their own guilt and their inherent knowledge of their wrongness. We know they've 'done sex' because we got a tiny glimpse of them succumbing to their wrongness, looking every bit as angry and wrong as they should, but after that initial scene their love affair turns into a sleepover party. Albeit a wrong one.
They go fishing. Yep, that's apparently what they do. Even although we are told at one point that they never actually do any fishing we never see anything to the contrary. They're like some kind of middle-aged couple going off up Brokeback Mountain in their Winnebago. They're certainly not going up anywhere else.
In fact, they are so placid in each other's fishing buddy company it's hard to see why they're getting their knickers in a knot in the first place.
First, bizarrely, the attraction is not suggested, and then, suddenly, they do it, quick as they can in case someone in the front row gets turned on, and then all is… vanilla. Lots of vanilla. Even more vanilla. And then he dies.
That's it. They have a 'tortured' scene where one confesses to the other that he doesn't know how to 'quit' him (what? And lose all that fishing?). And then he dies.
After that the inarticulate one swears undying love to his shirt.
No wonder the 'public' loved it. What's not to love? They're gay but they look like any other redneck, and act like them too. They're well-nigh completely inarticulate so we never have to see ugly emotions. When we do get ugly emotions the sexual aspect of them is so absent we're not entirely sure if it's actually there. We never have to watch them having sex or even kissing (we see that once, from a shock-horror revelation viewpoint). They fish. A lot. They still fuck their wives but get distanced from them exactly like any straight man, no sexual conflict involved. We see mountains, horses, sheep. We see just enough ugly, redneck intolerance (and a childhood trauma) to feel sorry for them, being as how they haven't offended us with any sex, emotion or gayness at all.
Hell, it's a winner. What the hell could you find offensive in that? Two faggots who only do it once, fish the rest of the time then die (or are left friendless and alone), thus restoring the balance of the Universe.
Ennis (Ennis? Was that a Freudian slip or what? When she heard that dialogue in her head, anus never occurred to her?) is a peasant. Ignorant, unreasoning and inarticulate. Every single bit of suffering he endures is self-induced. Jack, for his part, just follows along, although he knows it's stupid, but he can't help himself because he just loves Ennis's… what? Ignorance and stupidity?
Okay, maybe we're meant to see that the tragedy is that he is never aware of his own futile stupidity. Fair enough. But that point was made early on in the film. To then watch it for another hour or so was well-nigh unbearable. By the end you just want to wring Ennis's scrawny neck. You feel as much sympathy for him as you do for a belligerent drunk starting a pub fight.
And it's boring, God damn it. Watching two people repeat the same pattern, with virtually no dialogue, till they die (or you do) is not entertaining or enlightening.
When you're left thinking that the best thing in a film is the scenery you're in trouble.
And that brings me to Twentynine Palms. I wish it didn't but it does.
And here we have another Scenery is the Star movie. These are the filmic equivalent of those novels that give you endless descriptions of settings. The ones that are supposed to give you an 'idea of place' but just make you irritably skip pages till you find the story.
Remember the story? That's supposed to be the writer/director's job, but if my weekend was anything to go by apparently not.
Twentynine Palms was an 'experimental' film. Oh, fear those words, viewer, fear them well.
And, sure enough, it lived up to expectations.
You know, strangely, although these directors (Bruno Dumont in this case) are supposed to be 'pushing the envelope', 'true originals', 'edgy' (feel free to add any hype of your own) they always conform to set rules. You get a bad feeling when you pick up the box. It goes something like this:-
"Hmm, 'Deliverance meets Psycho' eh? Sounds interesting. Okay, I'm game, let's read on, see what else it's offering. 'Genre-defying'. Oh-oh, that usually means structureless, even plotless. 'An experimental horror film'. Fuck, the 'experimental' word. That means unintelligible, long longueurs (trust me, these longueurs are long – I wouldn't say it otherwise.) Quick, put it back."
So you put it back. But it calls to you.
I desperately crave people who do new and different things. Despite many (too many) years of watching films, reading books, looking at art, I am still a sucker for anything that claims to be different. I've got a little wiser, I tend to hire rather than buy these days (I bought this – oh, the pain), but I still do it.
I'm the eternal optimist, you see. Can't help myself. And they nearly always disappoint.
All these new, great, original, genre-defying bastards are all the same.
Explain to me what is new, precisely, about a film which is comprised of long, continuous shots where nothing happens? Or about weird angles, where nothing happens? Or about actors improvising bad dialogue? Or about badly-handled, weird sex scenes? (Twentynine Palms has some doozies.) Or about scenery, lots of scenery, where – you guessed it – nothing happens.
The plot of Twentynine Palms runs thus, and, trust me, I'm not spoiling this for you in sharing.
There is a couple, kind of washed-out and irritating. Like the kind of twats you'd see in a highly-priced coffee-house where style reigns over content. They are driving in an unknown American desert – hot, arid and bleak. They drive into the desert. They stop. They pee. They have sex where he always says "Open, open" or talks about his cock in a weird artificial way like a bad phone-sex junkie. They lie naked on rocks. They drive. They fight, about absolutely nothing, in random disassociated fights. They drive. They have sex. They go to the motel pool. They have sex where he says "Open, open" and nearly drowns her by shoving her head under the water to get a blow-job. They fight. They drive in the desert. All the scenes are very long, with lots of scenery and very little ad-libbed dialogue. In the last ten minutes, whilst in the desert, they are set-upon by three men who rip her clothes off but butt-fuck him (they don't touch her). We go back to the motel. She gets pizza. He hides in the bathroom. She comes back from a long shot of getting pizza. He stabs her frenziedly. The film ends.
Wow, experimental man.
Like I said, the Scenery is the Star.
And Deliverance? That would be the butt-fuck.
And Psycho? That would be the stabbing in a motel.
Don't anyone ever come anywhere near this blog again with criticisms of comparisons made between DANNY and Wuthering Heights, or any other damn thing for that matter. I could find more comparisons between DANNY and Die Hard than there was between Twentynine Palms and Deliverance or Psycho.
By now I wanted to watch Mission Impossible 24, a Pepe le Pew cartoon, Dragnet. But I had no popcorn movies in the house. What I did have was a Vincent Gallo self-directed, written and funded movie (how come he's 'indie' and cool and not vanity-produced?). I like Vincent Gallo, but I'd only bought this movie because - always researching DANNY the Movie - it has 'legendary' explicit sex scenes.
Well, let's burst that bubble right away. Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny has one sex scene, which is, indeed, explicit. Vincent gets a blow-job from Chloe Sevigny who, I hope, was dating him at the time, otherwise they didn't pay her enough.
Vincent's cock is lovely. A nice, big, well-shaped hard-on. You get to see lots of it. You get to see Vincent coming. If you're a straight bloke no doubt there is some pleasure to be had in seeing Chloe give head. I wouldn't presume to know.
Unfortunately that is the total, and single, highlight of this film. Which, at least for me, was almost spoilt by Vincent doing exactly the same thing as the hero in Twentynine Palms – going on about his cock in porno-speak.
Have I missed something here? Do most men like to do this only I've never somehow encountered them? Or is this these men's idea of what a sex scene should sound like? Trust me, gents, us ladies are too busy admiring the firmness of your equipment to listen to what's coming out your mouth. And if your compulsive dirty-talk does impinge it damn well better be something more interesting than a monologue that runs thus, "Do you like my cock? Do you like it? My cock. Ooh, my cock. Do you like it…" etc etc.
Yes, Vincent, I liked your cock very much. It was quite delicious and if you would just shut up about it I could concentrate on it even harder and I might come through this – if you'll pardon the pun – still kind of half-liking you.
The entire plot of Brown Bunny is Vincent driving (ring any bells?). Driving across America. Gosh. Vincent is lost and disassociated. We see a lot of Vincent's hair, blowing, ever-blowing. (It should have got a co-star credit). Vincent has meaningless conversations with stray whores (any more bells?). All the scenes are very long. The scant dialogue is improvised. Nothing happens. Right at the very end there is a 'violent' sex scene. Then there is a slight twist, very clumsily-handled and curiously badly-acted. And that's it.
Anyone else seeing similarities to Brokeback and Twentynine Palms here – or is it just me?
By now I'm howling at the moon, screaming "No more Art. Don't make me watch it. I take back everything I ever said about mainstream cinema."
But I have a problem. It's midnight, Saturday night by now. All I have left to watch is another foreign art film. Tiresia by Bertrand Bonello.
Now, truthfully, this film is better. Not so many longueurs and it sounds scripted. Good actors. But still we get pointless confusion. The same actor playing two roles to no effect. Gibberish, 'deep' dialogue, 'meaningful' mysticism that can't mean anything because you haven't a clue what's going on. Oh, and the hero dies, but we don't get any weird sex.
Maybe if I hadn't seen the other three tortured efforts beforehand I might have been able to enjoy this more. Although it still wouldn't have meant a great deal to me. I'm educated, have some rudimentary knowledge of Greek myth (Tiresia is from Greek myth), have no hang-ups about subtitles, foreign movies or Art, other than years of having my fingers burnt. But it does make me wonder what someone 'ordinary' makes of this shit. Are these directors trying to put people off their movies? Does it make them feel special to be misunderstood? Is it a fail-safe for them? Make absolutely sure no-one can understand your work then if they say it's bad you can fall back on "You just don't understand me."
Who knows? I'm just glad that all those fangirls who put me off Brokeback in the first place never compared it to DANNY. Having finally seen the movie I can say, hand on heart, that I am gratified beyond measure to have failed to live up to its standards. And if my work never gets referred to as Art, that will be just fine.
Now, wanna buy some dirty movies?
Not yet read DANNY? The price rise for Volume 1 is imminent, and I mean imminent, so if you need a copy check it out now at Poison Pixie where you can read a BIG extract for Free! Or grab a copy on Amazon here.
Once you've bagged your masterpiece you can rub shoulders with DANNY's other rich and famous readers at Chancery Fans
There is also an independent Live Journal DANNY Discussion Board run by fans, C Stone's DANNY. If you would like to talk about the upcoming new volumes or find out why you should read Volume 1 (and you should) Jill & Jodie are experts, so please go along and badger them with questions and unreasonable demands for proof that it's worth reading before you part with your readies. I guarantee they will provide the most hardened literary cynics with a reason, or die trying.
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