I figured that it was about time that I check out Game of Thrones. So I got the Complete First Season and watched the first two episodes. These things are always nice in seeing old character actors who I admire, like Mark Addy as the king, and Iain Glen as some other guy who seemed okay until I learned he was caught selling slaves. Of course, I’m sure Addy is not long for the series, because the queen is having an incestuous affair with her brother. And the heir apparent seems like he came from the brother and sister and not the king and queen. And then there is Sean Bean, who is, as usual, marvelous. We can assume that he is not long for the series either, because he’s a star. But there’s something else: I saw a joke, I think on The Colbert Report, about how George R R Martin, the writer of the novels, takes a perverse thrill in killing off characters you like. So I’m sure the heir apparent is likely with us to the end.

Other than just feeling that I can only avoid popular culture for so long, I also watched the show because I’m a big fan of Peter Dinklage. And I know that he survives because he’s become the symbol of the show, the same way that Maggie Smith has for Downton Abbey. In the first two episodes, he is what pulls the whole thing along. He seems to have a great interest in Sean Bean’s bastard son, because, as he put it: dwarfs are always bastards to their fathers. I remember James Cameron mentioning that audiences like smart characters, and Dinklage is that. But because he is also a freak (he mentions that if he had not been born to royalty, they would have just left him in the woods to die as a baby), he has to be smart to keep alive. Oh, I guess I didn’t mention: he is the brother of the incestuous sister and brother.

Now if this all sounds very I, Claudius to you, then I’m with you. I’ve made it a point not to research Game of Thrones to find out what will happen and what Martin was thinking. But the heir apparent seems an awful lot like Caligula, there is very much the same kind of palace intrigue, and Dinklage is playing very much the Claudius role: the smart guy who everyone stupidly underestimates because of a birth defect. But unlike Derek Jacobi playing the stuttering Claudius, Dinklage gets the best lines. For example, in the second episode, the bastard son asks him why he reads, and Dinklage responds, “My brother has a sword, and I have my mind. And a mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone.” In addition to everything else, there’s a double entendre there because he clearly knows his brother is having sex with his sister the queen.

But the dialog is worth noting. Much of it is dreadful. But maybe it’s just me because more and more I find dialog wanting everywhere. It annoys me when I know how a sentence or a speech is going to end. And that’s also largely true of the plot. After an altercation between the heir apparent and a little girl who is basically the same character as the one in Brave, I thought, “Now you throw the sword in the stream.” Of course, she then did just that. And the end of the second episode was cut in such a cliched way. There is a little boy who was thrown from the window of the castle because he saw the brother and sister in flagrante delicto who is somehow in a coma for a month without food or water. His father is forced to kill a blameless wolf. So I thought, “Boy in bed with eyes closed, cut to father slitting the wolf’s throat, cut to boy whose eyes open, fade out.” Of course, that was exactly how they cut it. It’s effective, I’ve just seen this so much that I’m getting tired of it.

The art direction, costumes, lighting are all really good. And the acting is really great. Of course, it needs to be because it is all pretty silly. What’s more, many of the characters are cartoonish. The heir apparent, is especially so. At least with Richard III and Iago, you had actually brave men who were willing to do their own dirty work when necessary. Even Caligula wasn’t a coward. This character is over the top. And then there’s the incestuous couple, who have been copulating for decades and who still go at it like they are teenagers in love for the first time.

I can see why people love the show though. I’m not sure if I will watch any more of it. I already have a low opinion of human nature. Game of Thrones does not help.

The other night, I watched, Me and You and Everyone We Know. And I loved it. But it is not a typical film, so as I went to write about it, I needed some help remembering what I had been thinking. So I went to Wikipedia where I found that the consensus is, “Miranda July’s debut feature is a charmingly offbeat and observant film about people looking for love.” Really?! That was not what I thought at all. But I often find myself in this position. Movie reviewers normally get press kits that tell them what films are about. This is why reviews often mention the same things about films and view them in the same way. I didn’t get the press kit.

Is Me and You and Everyone We Know about love? Well, sure. Every work of art is about love on one level or another. But what it is really all about is the rules that we create so that we can interact. And the film looks at this question in many different and highly creative ways. But ultimately, it paints a picture of life as very lonely because we see almost only the negotiation and not the continuity that it (hopefully) leads to.

The core of the film is found in a single scene. A father and daughter exit a fish store with a gold fish in a bag. But the father forgets the fish and drives off with the fish on top of the car. Christine (Miranda July) and Michael, an old man she is driving, notice it. She wants to alert the driver and Michael says no. If they do, he will stop quickly, throwing the fish on the ground, killing it. Michael says, “The best thing for that fish is if he could just drive steadily forever.” Yes, that would be best. But of course it is impossible. The car must stop. This is the question that the movie poses: do we continue on as we have in a suboptimal situation or do we risk hoping for something better.

Me and You and Everyone We Know is a film filled with incredibly brave characters. The two main characters are Christine and Richard (John Hawkes). Richard has just separated from his longtime wife. He works as a shoe salesman. He meets Christine when she brings in Michael to get a pair of shoes. Michael is unhappy because in the past salesmen took your feet and put them into the shoes. Richard explains that they are no longer able to do this. But he goes through what he can do, like hand Michael a shoehorn if he wants one. But above all, what he can do is touch the foot through the shoe to tell how it fits. These are the rules of engagement. They define the relationship. And Chistine and Richard spend the whole film negotiating those rules for their blossoming relationship.

But it isn’t just them. This issue is brought up again and again. For example, Christine happens to run into the curator at the modern art museum. She tries to give the curator a video sample of her work. The curator gives her a card and tells her to mail it. Christine responds that the address is where they are. The curator responds that it will get lost and it is better if she sends it. Christine replies, “But I’m so close.”

The film also deals with pedophilia, but not in ways that I’ve ever seen. One, that is unintentional, leads to what is probably the high point of the film—a truly magical moment that I won’t spoil by trying to explain. The other deals with the issue of an older man’s attraction to to a pair of flirty teen girls. There is nothing especially creepy about this; in most times and places these girls would be married off to men of his age. But he is very much aware of the law even if he is a bit slippery on our mores. So he sets up clear boundaries. The relationship will go nowhere, even if the girls are still too immature to realize that.

If this all makes the film seem episodic, that is no accident. The film has a strange kind of dramatic momentum, but it isn’t really going anywhere. It shows a number of people interacting. They are negotiating their relationships and they will continue to do so. They are like the goldfish on the roof the car. But they have some amount of control, if they choose to use it. And they do—as I said, they are brave. And the film does provide satisfying, if mostly murky conclusions.

Afterword

Don’t be surprised if I write about this film again in a year. I know it’s going to be bouncing around in my mind a long time.

Last night I watched the 2012 animated feature Brave. It is what it is. Visually it is stunning. But it’s curious. Much of the background animation could be mistaken for live action. The rendering of a waterfall was absolutely fantastic. But then in that environment exist all the characters who by and large look like they were designed by the people who created Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. There’s nothing wrong with that—it’s just interesting.

“Interesting” is the word for this film. It’s representations of men are just terrible, although given men in reality, not exactly undeserved. So the film focuses on women, and indeed, the three primary characters are women: mother, daughter, and the most charming witch, I mean woodcarver, you will ever see. But the narrative itself is a mess. The film is half over before the viewer gets clued in as to what it is about. And that issue—female intergenerational bonding—is a welcome one, especially given the film’s obvious appeal to girls. But it meanders, making seriously tired Scottish jokes that by this time ought to be at least a little blue. And then the mother gets turned into a bear.

That strikes me as just odd. But it does have the advantage of providing what would commonly result in strong dramatic momentum. The daughter is responsible for turning her mother into a bear and they both want to turn the mother back. There is even a ticking clock. Yet the film continues to meander. If you knew that you only had a day to cancel the spell that had turned your mother into a bear, would you really spend it teaching her how to catch fish? Then there is much mindless action. But I was surprised by the ending when the mother stayed a bear for the rest of her life after eating the daughter. Okay, so that was a joke. They all live happily ever after as computer generated quasi-humans.

I used to really like it that animated features tended to be so well scripted. But that is less and less true, as animation studios have learned that they too can just wing it with a bit of action or a musical interlude. What’s more, the scripts—and most definitely the script for Brave—depend upon dialog to explain what’s going on. There is a second bear in the movie (not the mother), and the daughter has to explain that the bear was actually the son of legend who didn’t listen to his father. This was already fairly well established, and it really didn’t require any dialog—just some more information to drive it home.

None of this is to say that the film is bad. It works well enough. And it’s short: only 84 minutes if you don’t count the credits that go on and on and on. Kelly Macdonald voiced the daughter, which is just perfect, because it seems her voice will always sound like she’s 14. Emma Thompson as the mother is good and pleasant as always. But it was Julie Walters who had the fun part as the witch, I mean woodcarver, who really stood out. The two songs in it were as inoffensive as they were uninspired. (Can we all just agree that in the future, all films having anything to do with non-modern Scotland can just use James Horner’s score from Braveheart?) Finally, as I said: it really is beautiful to look at.

From a political standpoint, it’s a mixed bag. How can it no be? It is about a princess. Other than the aristocracy, everyone in the film is either part of the kitchen staff or the army. The one exception is the witch, I mean woodcarver. She is the most interesting character, and she isn’t in the film nearly enough for my tastes. She reminds me of something that Terry Eagleton once wrote, “To any unprejudiced reader—which would seem to exclude Shakespeare himself, his contemporary audiences and almost all literary critics—it is surely clear that positive value in Macbeth lies with the three witches.” In Brave, none of the men are creative (as I indicated before, perhaps an earned representation). Creativity is left to the women (You could have a fine time analyzing that!) which is left to the mother and finally the daughter when they reconcile. But most of all, it is the witch woodcarver who is creative, although her spells do tend to all end in someone turning into a black bear. So there’s your standard fairy tale: the important aristocracy, the happy peasants, and the outcast. I can hardly complain given that most “adult” literature only deals with the first two of those groups. And I was pleased that Brave presented its outcast in a very positive light.

On the DVD of Brave are two short films that are far better than the feature. The first one was directed by Brave story supervisor Brian Larsen, “The Legend of Mor’du.” It tells the backstory of the other bear who disobeyed his father’s wishes. Other than the opening and closing, which are done in the Brave style with the witch, I mean woodcarver, telling the story, it is done in that old fashioned kind of animation with still images. Even today, I find that to be some of the most compelling stuff because the images can be much more interesting. Here it is:

The attributes of the four sons are interesting: wise, compassionate, just, and strong. One of these things is not like the other. What exactly is strong doing in that group? Of course, I suppose the point of the story is that the strong one is not any of wise, compassionate, and just. And he’s the one who screws everything up.

The other short is Enrico Casarosa’s fabulous La Luna. It is about three generations of a single family: grandfather, father, and son. And it is their job each night to… Telling you would not spoil it, but just watch it:

It looks a lot better on the DVD. (Also: it isn’t reversed!) And really, buying the whole DVD just for La Luna is probably a great deal.

I recently watched Akira Kurosawa’s film Kagemusha. It is one of his films that gets neglected—at least by me. I think I’ve watched it once since seeing it in the theater when it was first released. But as I was watching it, I got really excited. I thought, “This is the best Kurosawa film!” And then I thought that was just silly. The truth is my favorite Kurosawa film is pretty much always the last one I’ve seen.

I know, I know. I hate how much I like Kurosawa. It seems like such a cliche. But it isn’t like he’s the only director I love or that he’s the only Japanese director I watch. I’m pretty fond of Japanese film generally. I’ve written about Masaki Kobayashi’s Samurai Rebellion as well as Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy and Vengeance Is Mine (a modern story about a serial killer). But it is true that Kurosawa does stand out as one of the top couple of directors who tend to make me giddy.

I think that Kagemusha may well be the best film to use to introduce people to Kurosawa. Unlike a lot of his films, the story of Kagemusha is very simple. There are three war lords in Japan, fighting over control of the country. One of them dies due to a fluke, and in order to not allow the entire Takeda clan to be destroyed as the other war lords use the chaos of this power vacuum, the other Takeda leaders use the deceased war lord’s kagemusha (impersonator) to play the part full time. That sounds complicated, but really all the film is about is the kagemusha’s evolution from a petty thief to being in a sense, the lord (not “war lord” because of course he doesn’t act in that capacity except as a symbol). This is ultimately, his downfall. The film ends with a tragically beautiful gesture by the kagemusha.

Here is the trailer, which gives you a small idea of how visually stunning the film is, but not much more. And it is cropped. And it doesn’t include what I think is the most stunning scene. And it doesn’t give you much of an idea about what the film is really all about.

The film stars Tatsuya Nakadai as the war lord Takeda Shingen as well as his kagemusha. You may remember him as the villain in Yojimbo, Unosuke who has a pistol. But he is probably best know for his lead role as Lord Hidetora Ichimonji (the King Lear character) in Ran, which was made five years later. I also know him from other non-Kurosawa films like Harakiri and Samurai Rebellion. He’s a great actor, and at 81 years old, he’s still working—a lot! I think he is at his best in Kagemusha because it is a subtle part. Although the film has big and beautiful battle scenes, it is the slow evolution of the kagemusha that we care about.

Despite the film’s epic feel, I noted that there were scenes where Kurosawa was clearly cutting corners. The film had a reasonable budget for the time, but considering the hundreds of extras and the enormous costume and set needs, it’s amazing what he managed to get on film. So if a couple of scene seem notably less inspired, it can be forgiven. And these scenes are only early on, so they probably don’t stick out to a first time viewer. Kurosawa also saved some money by not showing so many battle scenes as just the results of the battles. But I also think this was a choice. After all, the film is not ultimately about the destruction of the Takeda clan, but about how the kagemusha eventually comes to see himself as a member of that clan.

Kagemusha is the only Kurosawa film currently available on Netflix instant watch. And as is quite common, the print is not great and the subtitles are actually on the print and they are of middling quality. I’m looking forward to getting the film on the Criterion Collection DVD, where I’m sure it will look fantastic. Regardless, it is worth checking out. I know that the basic idea of the film is tired—poor man takes the place of the great man, from The Prince and the Pauper to Dave. But Kurosawa does something really different with it. Netflix users gave it an average rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars. But it’s “best guess” for me was 5.0 stars. And it was right, as usual. Kagemusha is a great film.

A couple of days ago, I was commenting on The Q Filmcast episode on Ichi the Killer after writing my own review of sorts. In the crew, I think of James Savage as the intellectual. He was, for example, the one who made them watch Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. (Have I mentioned that I’ve made up a song for that?) But during the episode, he mentioned that he just didn’t get Japanese films. This shocked me coming from him of all people.

But I understand the sentiment. There are a lot of problems with enjoying Japanese cinema. Part of it is just the language—I can always tease out a little Italian or German or French, but I don’t know any Japanese. A bigger problem is that the cultures are quite different. But you could say the same thing about just about any country’s films. When I first saw Satyajit Ray’s Charulata (“The Lonely Wife”) I really didn’t get it. It seemed like a whole lot of nothing was going on, but now I consider it riveting. But the biggest problem with Japanese films is our lack of understanding of Japanese history.

The most popular Japanese films are those about samurai. But the samurai class existed in varying incarnation for hundreds of years. At one time it was all about the sword. Later the bow became the symbol of the class. And then during the Sengoku period, the gun becomes a big part of it all. And the issue isn’t just with the samurai pictures. A lot of films were made in the context post-WWII Japan and a lot of modern crime pictures require an understanding of the Yakuza. Clearly, people are not going to study Japanese history to enjoy Japanese films. (But those who do enjoy them may do so.) Luckily, it isn’t necessary.

Movies are wonderful in that you can sit through many of the greatest ones and have an expert explain it to you. I mentioned this to Savage, encouraging him to check out especially the Criterion Collection releases of Japanese films that add enormously to my enjoyment of all Japanese films. You simply don’t get this kind of opportunity if you want to improve your enjoyment of music or art. But this is generally only true for older art films. If Kurosawa were alive today, they would probably have him do the commentaries and he might provide a few insights but it would be nothing compared to what an academic like Stephen Prince provides.

So here is my list of DVD commentary types from worst to best:

Actors

Actors have almost no insights into move making. They might be able to give you a little insight into the characters, but that’s good for at most ten minutes. Comedians are the worst because they will just riff during the film, perhaps being amusing but not worth the time.

Directors

It depends upon the director, of course, but in general they provide a lot of stories about the production. “Oh, a funny thing happened during the shooting of this scene…” Really, I don’t care. The one thing that I’ve learned from listening to director commentaries, however, is that most directors are fairly unconnected to the film. They are like kings. They say what they want done and it is done. And most of them don’t have much of a reason for why they want things done. There is an exception here for low-budget directors because they do have to be involved in all aspects of the movie making. But they too tend to focus on trivialities. I would add producers to this group, although they are generally a bit better than directors.

Department Heads

Editors especially can provide some interesting insights into not just the filmmaking process but also the story itself. Sometimes cinematographers have interesting things to say. Composers can also be interesting. But these commentaries are rare regardless.

Writers

Screenwriters are often very informative, because they understand the context for the story and what at least they were trying to do. But they are so often pushed to the margins of filmmaking, that their eagerness can be downright embarrassing, “You mean you actually want to listen to me?!” And better than screenwriters are the writers of the original source. Sebastian Junger’s commentary for The Perfect Storm is a great example.

Experts

In general, I prefer academics—film historians who not only know the film but its full context including everything about the people who made the film. But experts don’t have to be academics. An ex-CIA agent did a very useful commentary for RED; I didn’t learn anything about that comic book film, but I learned a few things about how CIA agents work. Number one asset for an agent: knowing how to steal a car.

That’s more or less how I see it. There are exceptions. Any person can in theory make a good commentary track. Just the same, I don’t always like academics. Michael Jeck, for example, annoys me because of his full embrace of the auteur theory. But I am willing to put up with that because he also says a lot of non-annoying stuff and I’ve learned a lot from him over the years.

I know that a lot of people think that commentaries are just for nerds. And I suppose that is to a large extent true. But pretty much everyone I know who is really into film is a nerd. The non-nerds are out dancing or having sex or whatever it is that non-nerds do, because how would I know? But commentary tracks really can be like attending a lecture in a film history class. If you are interested in understanding film as art, these commentaries are a great addition to your viewing experience.