The Huffington Post asks, how much can you watch?
I made it to 42 seconds on the counter. I might go back and watch more just for the sake of horror, but truly, the first 42 seconds sends shivers of shame down my spine.
"It really is special," exclaims Barbara.
(shivers)
I greet you with high spirits and massive jet lag upon my return from Europe! The trip was originally supposed to include a theater-going experience in both France and Italy, but in practice, on the uneven stone streets of Rome (to recall the final destination of the trip) this was a task that proved too difficult to complete given the amount of time before my plane swept off the runway at Fiumicino.
Maybe our plans for a movie abroad were dashed, but they were not in vain. Consider, in the last 12 hours of the trip we had either the option to see the Roman Forum or a flick that was being advertised on an entertainment news loop over the Roma Metro TVs with greater frequency than the screen's refresh rate (how is that possible?), one Ti Stramo:
So no contest there.
The trailer played again and again like a broken record--Italy really wanted me to see this movie! But it had nothing on Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" that was piped into the concrete tunnels of every Metro station from Paris to Rome. It's the theme song for the European Union, I think. Like that Night at the Roxbury song where Will Ferrell is whipping his neck to the beat, only this time it was a platform of well dressed Italians with a determined look of introspection in their eyes inspired by Chris Martin's melodious tune.
It really wasn't until I left France and Italy, the primary destinations of my trip, that I had my first European cinema experience. It happened at the Zurich airport during my commute from Terminal B to Terminal E where I was to pick up my final flight home to Chicago. Probably the cleanest and most enjoyable airport I've traveled through, Zurich not only has it right when it comes to proper coffee bars and duty-free chocolate shops lining the terminal corridors, but lo and behold they are pure cinephiles! Along the the tunnel walls of the underground airport tram are a series of still photos--a string of pictures taken of Swiss scenery: the great snowy alps, a thick forest of evergreens, an attractive Swiss blond giving you a kiss. She's super pretty.
It's a little deconstructed movie laid out as a "welcome to Switzerland" greeting. There are also cow sounds and horns accompanying the moving slide show; together, the experience is a bit like this:
I skipped the movie choices on the ten-hour trip from Switzerland to Chicago in favor of the unlimited mini-bottles of free wine available to me to drink while I pressed my nose against the window for a look out over England, Greenland and the spooky depths of the Atlantic. When the wine wasn't a strong enough substance to numb the pain in my neck from staring sideways through the window anymore, I thought, alright, let's check out the movie choices after all. To warm up for the Top Ten 2008 lists that will be posted here at Scarlett and its brother and sister sites starting on Friday, December 26th, here are the top 4 "classic" movies, per the Swiss Air movie menu:
Every once in a while, a movie comes along that just gets everything right. In fact, it gets so many things right that you remember not only what's so great about movies, but (if you're an aspiring filmmaker like me) why you wanted to make them in the first place.
Gus Van Sant's Milk is one of those movies.
Milk tells the story of the last eight years of the life of Harvey Milk, from his decision to leave his closeted life as a Wall Street analyst and move to San Francisco's burgeoning Castro district at age 40, to his assassination in 1978 by fellow City Supervisor Dan White. In between, Harvey became the first openly gay man elected to major public office in the United States, and played a crucial role in the fight to defeat Proposition 6, also known as the Briggs initiative, which would have allowed the firing of gay school teachers "and anyone who supported them."
On a purely artistic level, this film is an amazing achievement. Sean Penn (who, incidentally, is 48, the same age as Milk when he was assassinated) is simply phenomenal. He has utterly transformed himself. He has not only somehow found a way to make his nose and forehead bigger, but has captured the slightly awkward, slightly effeminate mannerisms, the way of speaking and even the way of smiling of someone else entirely. His chemistry with James Franco as boyfriend Scott Smith is so effortless and natural you almost don't notice it. Emile Hirsch disappears into his role as young activist Cleve Jones, as seamlessly as he did with Chris McCandless in the inexcusably underrated Into the Wild. Josh Brolin, who looks so much like the real Dan White that it's creepy, manages in the space of only a few scenes to show us a man coming apart in ways that are truly terrifying. In fact, the closing moments of the film, when we know Dan is about to kill Harvey, are some of the scariest I can remember witnessing in a movie theater.
Gus Van Sant has captured the look and feel of 1970s San Francisco by filming--gasp!--in San Francisco. Many of the existing storefronts of the Castro were decorated to look as they would have thirty years ago, including the original location of Harvey's camera shop. The protest scenes, filmed with large numbers of non-professional extras, including some participants in the original events, look and feel like real protests. (I'm particularly fond of the chant "Civil rights or civil war! Gay rights now!")
Van Sant's use of archival footage is pitch-perfect--it's never distracting, but he knows when to bow to reality. The only film I can think of to compare it to in its meticulous recreation of history is The Battle of Algiers--another fine film that was not a documentary, but often felt like one, because it was written by a participant in the events it depicted and reenacted by people involved in those events, often in the exact same locations where they happened. The blending of original and archival footage is never more powerful than in the film's concluding shot of the huge, silent candlelit funeral march from the Castro to City Hall after Harvey's assassination. That shot of the actors at the front of the march was filmed by Van Sant. But that next shot, where the deathly silent crowd stretches as far as the eye can see? That's real.
But best of all, and as it should be, the considerable artistic and technical achievements of this film are placed humbly at the service of a profound and moving story with intense relevance for today. On the one hand, Milk shows us how much things have changed since the '70s. It's there in the ashamed, averted faces of men arrested at gay bars during the opening credits, in the desperate phone call from a gay teen in the Midwest, or in a brief but intense moment of fear as Harvey, already well known by that point, walks to his store alone at night. On the other hand, we see that some things have not changed at all. You could excise Anita Bryant's and John Briggs's anti-gay rants from the movie and put in campaign ads for California's Prop 8 and have the exact same story.
Perhaps some of the power of the movie comes from the fact that Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black was himself one of those kids in the middle of the country who was inspired by Harvey's example. Aware of his sexuality at an early age, but faced with the triple threat of growing up Mormon, military, and Texan, Black finally saw the Oscar-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) as a college student in the mid-'90s. "Texas kept me very quiet," Black told the Bay Area Reporter. "I became intensely shy, I had thoughts of suicide. I was a pretty dark kid, because I had an acute awareness of my sexuality, and was absolutely convinced that I was wrong. In his Hope Speech, Harvey Milk says, 'There's that kid in San Antonio, and he heard tonight that a gay man was elected to public office, and that will give him hope.' And when I first heard that speech, it really did that. It really, really gave me hope, for the first time."
This epiphany drove Black to spend nearly half his life, including the years when he worked as the sole Mormon writer on HBO's Big Love, in a quest to turn Milk's life into a feature film. Numerous screenwriters had been hacking away at adaptations of Randy Shilts's biography The Mayor of Castro Street for nearly as long, producing as many as 20 drafts of a screenplay. Robin Williams, Kevin Kline, Daniel Day-Lewis, Kevin Spacey, Richard Gere, James Woods and Steve Carrell were all prospective Harvey Milks at one time or another, although seeing Sean Penn in the role makes any other choice seem almost laughable. Oliver Stone was attached to direct at one point. Van Sant himself was involved with the project in 1993, but walked away from it because he wasn't happy with the script.
Since Dustin Lance Black didn't own the rights to Shilts's book, he took a different approach. He contacted Cleve Jones and Anne Kronenberg and spend weekends driving back and forth between San Francisco and LA, meeting Milk's old friends and listening to Jones's stories. And, perhaps because he had once been a shy gay kid from Texas, he was able to find the emotional core of Harvey's story that had eluded screenwriters for so long.
Was it fate that led all the pieces of a film nearly twenty years in the making to fall together now? Whatever the reason, there has probably never been a more relevant time for this film.
I am not a movie crier, but there were a few moments in Milk that got me. One in particular was on election night for Prop 6. Everyone on Harvey's staff is watching the election returns, and there is a map of California on the wall where they're marking off the counties--red for pass (bad for gay rights), green for fail. I recognize that map. It's the same one that I studied with increasing dread on election night 2008, as the California returns came in and it became increasingly apparent that Prop 8, the ballot initiative outlawing gay marriage, was going to pass.
In 1978, LA County, where I live, was green. The Briggs initiative was defeated 2-to-1 there, as it was across the state. The organizers of the campaign to defeat Prop 8 (of which I was a part) have a thing or two to learn from Harvey. There is a scene in Milk where Harvey goes to a meeting with politicians who show him a flyer opposing Prop 6 on the basis of "human rights." This is garbage, he tells them. It doesn't even say the word "gay" on it. He puts the flyer in the fireplace and burns it.
This may sound woefully familiar to anyone who lives in California and witnessed No on 8's unbearably timid TV ad campaign, which featured not a single gay person and refused to even use the word "discrimination" until it was too late.
When the Briggs initiative first got on the ballot, polls showed over 60% support for it. Gay rights activists thought it might even pass in San Francisco. Only months later, the initiative went down in a stunning defeat. Why? Because Harvey Milk and other waged an absolutely unapologetic campaign that insisted on gay visibility and called the other side what it was--bigotry and hatred.
Milk is not a traditional biopic. It's far more ambitious--and a far better film--than any of the spate of celebrity biopics to come out in recent years. It is the story of a person who both shaped and was shaped by a movement. The personal can't be separated from the political here.
More than anything, Milk is a film about how history drives people to fight back against injustice, whether they expect to or not. Harvey starts the film as a cautious, closeted man who resorts to rendezvouses with strangers in subway stations. He ends the film exhorting his friends to come out, debating bigoted politicians, and speaking to crowds of thousands. What happens in between? A gay man is murdered walking down Castro Street, and the cops seem more interested in raiding bars than investigating it. Crazy Christians try to pass a draconian ballot initiative allowing the firing of gay teachers and anyone who supports them. A lover commits suicide. Something changes in this formerly quiet man and he decides he must fight back. Why? Not because there is anything special about him, but because the alternative is intolerable. He becomes a leader. Why? Not because there is anything special about him, but because he's just not willing to give up.
I saw Milk in New York's East Village, on an atrociously cold, rainy, windy Sunday. We arrived at 3:45 to find the 4pm screening sold out, so we got tickets to the 5pm, which was also nearly sold out. The theater was packed and the audience was rapt. In fact, I can't remember seeing a film where the audience was as "with" the emotions of the story in a long time. I think that is a hopeful sign.
Milk is rated R, although the sexual content and language are milder than what can be witnessed on an average hour of cable television. It's a shame, because this film should be played in every school in America. I can only hope that some gay teenagers in Kansas or Ohio or wherever will embody Harvey's spirit of resistance and sneak into the theater to see it.
Critics and studio execs across the country are currently in shock. A film written and directed by women, based on a bestselling novel by a woman, and largely marketed to and consumed by teenage girls, was the number one movie in America last week. In fact, this movie had the highest-grossing opening weekend for any US film directed by a woman, ever. “Teen girls rule the earth,” Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media by Numbers, told the Associated Press. “The teen girl audience will never be ignored again or underestimated.”
The movie in question is, of course, Twilight, the film adaptation of the first volume of Stephanie Meyer’s popular series of vampire novels. The success of Twilight is certainly a victory for director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), and indeed for all women working in an industry where women directed a mere six percent of the 250 top-grossing films last year.
Twilight is a hit, hopefully proving once and for all something that should have seemed obvious: girls like movies, too. Unfortunately, the movie that many of them like at this particular moment has some of the worst possible messages to offer young women.
Kristen Stewart, who seems to be a decently talented young actress, plays 17-year-old Bella Swan, a heroine with all the personality of dryer lint. Bella goes to live with her father in perpetually cloudy Forks, Washington when her mother (who the film portrays as nothing but irresponsible and flighty) wants to spend more time traveling around the country with her new baseball-player husband.
For most of the first act of the film, Bella wanders around in a passive stupor, barely opening her mouth as friends and dates find her as if by magic. Yes, I know, she’s the new kid in town, living with a father she barely knows. But the filmmakers miss a vital opportunity to tell us something—anything—about who she is as a person. What are her hobbies? Is she a good student? What classes does she like or loathe? How does she decorate her room? What music does she listen to? What does she do when not in school? She’s a junior—is she thinking about college or a job? What does she want to do with her life?
The film doesn’t get to provide the answer to any of these questions, because from the moment the sparkly, unblinking, pancake-makeuped Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) enters the school cafeteria, Bella has one and only one goal for the rest of the movie (and, indeed, for the rest of the Twilight series.) She and Edward are going to BE TOGETHER FOREVER, and every other ambition be damned. Of course, Edward is a vampire, and even the most milquetoast romance imaginable soon puts her in GRAVE DANGER, but what’s the point of falling in love with a guy if it doesn’t provide ample opportunity for him to save you from danger?
In this arena, Twilight does not disappoint. Bella wanders away from her friends on a shopping trip and within five minutes is in danger of being gang-raped by a pack of drunken guys who apparently hang out behind the local Native American bookstore. Of course, Edward shows up just in time to save her in his product-placement car. In the final action climax, Bella gets to lie helplessly on the floor, writhing in pain from a broken leg and a toxic vampire bite, while the Cullens take care of business.
In between the overwrought action sequences, Edward and Bella embark on a romance that would seem chaste even by the standards of his day. They can’t have sex, Edward explains, because he’s not sure he could control his superior vampire strength in a moment of passion and might hurt her. (Of course, Edward and Bella do have sex later in the series—when she turns eighteen and they get married.) What’s the message here? Hanging out with the undead—even falling in love with them—is fine, but premarital sex can kill you!
If Twilight were just a parable about abstinence (and really, what do you expect from a book written by a Mormon housewife?) it would probably be harmless, if not particularly realistic. Far more insidious, however, are the disturbing undercurrents in the relationship between Edward and Bella, which we’re told is true love.
Edward sneaks into Bella’s room at night and watches her sleep. (The myth of having to invite a vampire in does not apply here.) He does this for months before Bella catches him at it, and when she does, she finds it not creepy but romantic. In fact, she rewards him with their first kiss. Her relationship with Edward takes her away from her friends (they all but vanish from the film once Edward appears) and leads her to lie to her father. In later books, Edward sends his sister to follow Bella around, tries to keep her from talking to particular friends, and even takes the engine out of her car so she can’t leave town.
In any other world, this guy would be a stalker. But in the world of Stephanie Meyer, a borderline-abusive relationship becomes the greatest romance imaginable. He’s doing all this for Bella’s own good, of course, because he’s the only one who knows how to keep her safe. Yes, isn’t that what they all say?
Meyer, and many Twilight fans, dismisses criticism of the series’ gender politics by saying, “It’s just a fantasy.” But a fantasy of what? You can’t dodge the bullet by dismissing something as escapist fantasy when what we’re being invited to escape to is the 1950s. Twilight is the story of an obsessive, all-consuming romance with a controlling, manipulative older guy who’s constantly telling you what’s best for you and admits he’s “nature’s most dangerous predator.” Maybe some people find that romantic, but I find it creepy—and I don’t think it’s something to which any young girl should be taught to aspire.
To be sure, these troubling elements are not the fault of the filmmakers. Hardwicke and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg have done the best they could with inherently problematic source material.
It takes some real contortions of logic to paint Twilight as anything resembling a feminist film, but Kristin Stewart did try in a recent interview. “Bella wears the pants in the relationship,” she told Film.com reporter Laremy Legel. “It takes a lot of power and strength to subject yourself to someone completely, to give up the power….It’s very courageous what she’s doing.”
Um…yeah. I couldn’t quite follow the logic there, either.
Is the success of Twilight a victory for women in the film industry? Sure. Does it represent the dawning of a new era of gender equity in film, when tons of films made by women, for women, with strong, independent, positive female characters in them will suddenly appear? Sadly, probably not.
