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Zero for Conduct

Armond White — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 17:53:39 +0000

High Information/Low Interpretation in Bigelow’s yellow journalism comic strip

Zero Dark Thirty opens during the second age of yellow journalism which is the same as in the 1890s when the press shamelessly sought readership through sensation, innuendo and jingoism (its news pages were indistinguishable from the lurid, tinted pages of comic strips).

This comic-strip account of U.S. agents hunting down and killing Osama Bin Laden in revenge for the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center has received both praise and condemnation due to the media’s confused ethics and aesthetics. Through yellow journalism’s prevailing biases (the oligarchic will of conglomerates seeking to control the way people think) news and history get distorted into propaganda.

“High information readers” and “High information viewers” consume limitless propaganda while thinking themselves “engaged,” “enlightened” or Internet “smart.” This includes film critics who award Zero Dark Thirty and those pundits and politicians, such as Senators John McCain and Diane Feinstein, who disparage it. Both sides want confirmation of their feelings about Obama’s unmentionable war on terror; they see in the film what they want to find.

Yellow journalism’s routines have stunted their interpretive abilities but director Kathryn Bigelow just wants to practice her craft. Zero Dark Thirty partly resembles the semi-documentary tradition once famously practiced by 1940s producer Louis de Rochemont. Because we like to think we’re smarter today than Rochemont’s obvious socially-conscious dramas (Lost Boundaries, The Fighting Lady, Booomerang, House on 92nd Street) Bigelow’s skills end up serving a cynical topical awareness and polarized sense of urgency.

A bigger budget and a more definite subject improves on the muddled “war is a drug” pathology of Bigelow’s now-overrated The Hurt Locker. She almost personalizes this story, using her first female action-hero since the 1990 Blue Steel. As played by Jessica Chastain, mostly in mime, this undercover cipher hides her political feelings behind job-proficiency. Calling herself a CIA “motherfucker” she gets closer than the all-male The Hurt Locker to articulating Bigelow’s trademark interest in the androgynous erotics of violence.

Chastain’s character’s enigmatic patriotism that will please or irritate viewers depending on their politics. Her post-IED comment (“I believe I was spared for this mission”) suggests a messianic devotion that comes out of nowhere. Zero Dark Thirty gives no sense of her background or who she really is which vitiates the film’s emotional effect, unlike Bigelow’s Soviet submarine movie K-19: The Widowmaker which was richer, more effective storytelling.

Zero Dark Thirty is unambiguous action-filmmaking. Yet its vague politics are vexing. Throughout the long Bin Laden manhunt, it takes on the bland procedural manner TV viewers favor, not the morally-defined action of post-9/11 films like Munich, From Paris with Love, the Taken series and War of the Worlds which moved audiences to reassess politics, patriotism and global relations. Bigelow’s action emphasis, inflated to epic length, recalls insincere post-9/11 agit prop like Syriana and Rendition. She gainsays connection between killing and politics through a mind-numbing series of searches, bribes and attacks staged no differently than generic horror movie tropes, only set in Middle Eastern black site locations and government offices. (Her gotcha climax quotes Silence of the Lambs.)

Hardly more superficial than Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down and the sloppy Argo, this, unfortunately, is no better. Except when Seal Team Six arrives to deal Bin Laden’s death blow: they’re as amusingly beefcake-sexy as the surfers in Bigelow’s best film Point Break. Sensualizing violence doesn’t clarify the political ramifications–or, as some have charged, the political truth–of the Bin Laden killing or the purported (off-screen) funeral rites and burial at sea. Plus, sexy warfare lacks the wit and complexity of Godard’s 1960 torture essay Le Petit Soldat.

In one of the CIA pow-wows where the amped voice level is close, loud, intimate, forceful, an agent declares “We don’t know what we don’t know. It’s tautology.” That’s also Bigelow’s position on the history she recounts. Her cool distance from confirming facts makes Zero Dark Thirty a tautology, perfect for yellow journalism’s “high information” dupes.

Follow Armond White on Twitter at 3xchair

A Woman’s Worth: Jessica Chastain Gives This Heiress Her Due

Doug Strassler — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 22:35:26 +0000

Never before has the musical clippity-clop of horse hooves sounded as petulant or mocking as they do in Moisés Kaufman’s newly opened production of The Heiress, the second Broadway revival of Augustus and Ruth Goetz’s play. When Catherine Sloper (Jessica Chastain) hears those hoof beats galloping right on by the opulent townhouse in which she lives under the intimidating shadow of her father, her fate appears to be sealed. And yet this proto-feminist work, which reverberates as clearly now as it did when first presented in 1947, shows that the choice Catherine makes for her future is not a reaction but very much her own.

Heiress has always been a work surprisingly jam-packed with texture, given that it was based on Henry James’ slim novella; the author himself decried his own work for its comparative slightness to his other writing. Part social commentary and part subtle gothic horror, Heiress is the story of a woman manipulated by men who think her only worth lies in her dowry, until she decides to be malleable no more. That Chastain, a Juilliard grad who became a household name in the past year after appearing in roughly seventeen thousand films a week, is more physically alluring than poor Catherine has been drawn to be in the past (most notably by Olivia de Havilland’s Oscar-winning role in William Wyler’s film adaptation and Cherry Jones’s Tony-nabbing turn in the last revival eighteen seasons ago) is rendered moot early on, and not just by the unflattering kinky hair and hollowed out makeup Paul Huntley has designed for her. (Other designers, notably set designer Derek McLane, costume designer Albert Wolsky, and sound engineer Leon Rothenberg deserve major plaudits as well.)

No, what Chastain communicates so artfully, if simply, is what it is to be a woman, regardless of appearance, made to feel small and unworthy. She’s not the first beautiful actress to project inner deflation on the outside: Michelle Pfeiffer bled oceans of victimization in the too-often-ballyhooed Frankie and Johnny film adaptation. And Gwyneth Paltrow, in Shallow Hal, showed what it was to look like someone who had been ostracized her entire life when the actress wasn’t in plus-size costuming. And so it is that Chastain shows how Catherine has grown up a prisoner in the house of her overbearing father, the well-respected doctor Austin Sloper (David Strathairn). She’s been a thorn in his side since the moment she was born, literally, as his revered wife died in childbirth. Austin has resented her existence as well as the fact that she hasn’t grown up with more charm and cunning, unaware of the fact that he is the very force who has stymied her emotional and social growth all along. (Catherine is what Rory Gilmore might have become had she been raised by her grandparents from birth.)

Long of the opinion that his daughter will remain an old maid, Austin is skeptical when Dan Stevens’ Morris Townshend begins courting her, and what is remarkable about Strathairn’s measured performance is how well he can signal Austin’s transformation from protective parent to monster. He would rather cut his own daughter off than welcome Morris into the family, so convinced is he that the man could only love his daughter for her inheritance, causing greater hurt than any other he could want to shield her from. Kaufman wrangles complex emotional excavations for all four of the show’s principle characters. It’s a joy to watch Chastain inject the bubbles of emotional effervescence one feels from first love, and it’s tragic to finally watch her harden like cement. And the letter-perfect manner in which both Stevens and Judith Ivey, in the perpetually scene-stealing role of Catherine’s widowed Aunt Lavinia, approach mercenary resourcefulness, show that in the world of social climbing, there is no such thing as right or wrong, just those who succeed and those who do not. (Virginia Kull strikes wonderfully unexpected grace notes as the family maid as well.)

This Heiress isn’t as dynamic or definitive a show as some of the revivals currently playing the Main Stem. Kaufman knows that the power of Catherine’s maturation comes not in explosive moments but in quiet ones. When she eventually sizes up the men in her orbit, she has no need to lash out at them; she has already realized how easily she can live without them. Before the final curtain falls, though, we’re watching more than just a defiant woman climb a staircase. We’re witnessing the Ascent of Woman.

The Heiress

Walter Kerr Theater, 219 West 48th Street. (212) 239-6200. Through February 10.

Armond White: Weinstein’s “Lawless” Presents U.S. History as Torture Porn

Armond White — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 15:04:00 +0000

Tom Hardy and Jessica Chastain in Lawless. Via City Arts.

Harvey Weinstein called for a summit meeting on movie violence soon after the Dark Knight Rises massacre. It hasn’t happened yet but Harvey’s word becomes cultural law. So, instead, The Weinstein Company this week releases John Hillcoat’s Lawless, the most promiscuously violent movie since The Dark Knight Rises. If you go to see Lawless, duck.

About the three Bondurant brothers of Virginia who were moonshine runners opposing corrupt Feds during Prohibition, Lawless (which premiered at Cannes months before the Aurora catastrophe) defies concerns about movie carnage by showing off an array of ultra-violence: a high body count, several punched-bloody faces, numerous Tommy gun shootouts, rapes, throat slitting, even a detailed tar-and-feathering. This fake folk tale, recalling the history of violent Americana, combines the period nostalgia of Western and gangster sagas with the extreme ghoulishness of a horror flick.

Lawless contradicts Weinstein’s stated concern for the Colorado-Batman slaughter. The film’s acquisition and distribution follows the Weinstein Company’s usual procedure. As Weinstein said on July 26 “It‘s a question that I wrestle with all the time. I‘ve been involved with violent movies, and then I’ve also said at a certain point, ‘I can‘t take it anymore. Please cut it.’ You know, you’ve got to respect the filmmaker and it’s really a tough issue….I think as filmmakers, we should sit down–the Marty Scorseses, the Quentin Tarantinos, and hopefully all of us who deal in violence in movies–and discuss our role in that.”

It must pain Lawless’ director John Hillcoat, that he wasn’t included in the rarefied company of Weinstein’s short-listed violence-meisters. Hillcoat has worked at shaping a career of misanthropy, ferocity and perversion ever since his nihilistic western The Proposition and his apocalyptic Cormac McCarthy adaptation The Road. His movies are not meant to be fun. He literalizes the violence described in the murder ballad folk tunes favored by musician Nick Cave who wrote the screenplay for Lawless based on Matt Bondurant’s fictional account of family history The Wettest County in the World. Hillcoat has directed several Cave music videos and his feature films extended Cave’s casual fascination with death and violence.

That’s the problem with Lawless: it’s casual about Prohibition’s bloody history, Hillcoat’s relentless display of ruthless behavior and scary hostility exceeds concern with social accuracy, familial empathy–and the effect of violent sensationalism on audiences. Like the makers of gruesome horror-core movies and post-9/11 nihilistic dramas, Hillcoat pushes the shock of violence, pretending a basic expression of mankind’s cruelty.

To read the full review at City Arts click here.

Unnatural Disasters

admin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 22:07:40 +0000

By Tom Hall

Take Shelter looks at a man overtaken by real, and perceived, anxieties

There is an ineffable fear lying just beneath the surface of the modern American experience, a sense that powerful forces beyond our control are conspiring to have a profound impact on our lives. A visit to any of the 24-hour news channels only serves to reinforce the anxiety; images of war and revolution only make way for stories of political gridlock, missing children, true crime and natural disasters. The uncertainty fomented by these images populates our nightmares, spinning its own terrible narrative. How do we act rationally, how do we keep our cool, when everything seems to be falling apart around us?

Jeff Nichols’ extraordinary new film, Take Shelter, stands this proposition on its head; what happens if our anxiety overtakes us, if the rational world suddenly falls away and disaster looms everywhere we look?

Curtis (the astonishing Michael Shannon) is an Ohio construction worker with a beautiful wife (Jessica Chastain), a daughter (Tova Stewart), a modest house and visions that, very soon, it will all be swept away in an apocalyptic storm. Curtis’ nightmarish hallucinations inspire him to action and he scrambles to prepare for the coming disaster and protect his family at all costs. But the more time he spends in preparation for the apocalypse he perceives as imminent, the more his real life begins to suffer; his working life, his role as husband and father—all of it pales against Curtis’ burning need to find a haven from his nightmares.

But where? As the clouds gather around him, Curtis responds by undertaking the construction of an underground shelter, a massive project that draws the scrutiny of his family and, crucially, his employer. But when the local news channel announces an impending storm, Curtis and his family descend into the darkness of the buried sanctuary, riding out the storm, terrified of what may await them when they get back above ground.

Nichols’ premise takes on an added spiritual dimension by his decision to place the audience in complete cinematic empathy with Curtis, legitimizing his fear as more than just the panicked delirium of a troubled soul. Take Shelter is ambiguous about Curtis’ visions; tension is formed by the thought, planted ever so carefully inside each of us, that perhaps what Curtis sees is indeed prophetic. This is not a film that plays games with perspective or has a bag of tricks up its sleeve—we see what Curtis sees and we fear what might be true. The decision to honor Curtis’ point of view is crucial to the dramatic success of the film and pays massive dividends as the movie spirals toward its harrowing climax.

In addition to a formally adventurous use of CGI effects in an otherwise low-budget American independent film (Take Shelter would be a unique cinematic experience if only for its use of effects), Shannon’s performance as Curtis, a rational, working-class man who can scarcely believe what he’s seeing in the world around him, is electrifying, a wide-eyed descent into the unknown that should garner award season attention.

The film, which premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival, seems all the more prescient after the storms of 2011, when several American communities experienced devastating tornadoes and flooding. Take Shelter does not exploit that experience, but instead elevates it to the level of great cinema, a powerful reminder that art’s examination of human subjectivity, the darkest places inside each of us, remains fertile, uncharted territory.

In a time of both manmade calamaties and bizarre acts of god, Michael Shannon gives a stunning performance as a construction worker father who becomes obsessed by what he believes is an impending apocalyptic storm. Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics