Review: "A Serious Man"

I've come to accept that some of the films that sneak into Fantastic Fest under the cloak of a Secret Screening have only the most nebulous connections to the genre world. I mean, last year's "The Brothers Bloom", despite its merits, of which there were a handful, doesn't really feature zombies, kung-fu fighting, aliens, psycho killers, giant Japanese robots, Korean gangsters, or any of the other things we've come to expect in the typical Fest flick. But at least it was a madcap caper, and there's some precedent for those to be shown here.

I have no explanation for why "A Serious Man" was selected, unless (and I am most reluctant to entertain this theory) the programmers, in a moment of weakness, succumbed to the increasing Hollywood attention being directed their way and simply scheduled it just to bag another claim to a big premiere. I would hate to see the Secret Screenings degenerate to that level, where some studio looking for a little bit of hipster buzz manages to cram some mainstream schlock into our beloved gathering.

I'm not saying that "A Serious Man" is schlock, although had it been, it would've proved more entertaining. No, this movie is well-made and features solid performances (particularly on the part of the dude who played Sy Abelman), but it is apparently about Big Ideas, and those themes are presented in a completely aimless way. The movie keeps promising that it is about something, and clearly intends to provoke thought, but it turns into an endless waiting game where things are suggested but never developed or completed.

Clearly, the Coen Brothers want to replay the tale of Job here. The protagonist, of a sudden, is beset on all sides: his bid for tenure is being threatened by an anonymous source making serious allegations about his character, his wife asks for a divorce, his unemployed brother is leaching off him, his neighbor is slowly taking over his backyard, and one of his students is trying to extort a passing grade out of him. Obviously, if he had a herd of cattle, it would be contracting hoof-and-mouth disease, just to complete the Jobian parallel.

Desperate, he seeks advice from rabbis and legal aid from lawyers. But the first two rabbis he consults prove to be no solace, and his lawyer can only promise that he's in for a tough time. There is a revered and aged senior rabbi in town, but he refuses to see our hero. And just as a senior partner at the law firm is about to deliver a cunning plan to help fight the neighbor's property grab, he drops dead without ever saying a word. (I have to guess that these two senior citizens are stand-ins for God: the rabbi, who is reputed to be a fount of wisdom, makes himself unavailable, and the veteran lawyer never delivers his insight to our beleagured protagonist. Thus the Job stand-in remains essentially alone and must be reliant only upon his own faith and resources.)

The story of Job is really one of the most bizarre tales in the Bible. It's one of the few times we see God in non-smiting action, and what is he doing? Cheerily chatting up Satan and making a bet with him about how a random sucker will react when his world falls apart. God is keenly interested in making a point to Satan, but rather less so when it comes to dealing with Job himself. When Job finally cracks, God pimp-slaps him nine ways to next Sunday in one of my favorite passages, which basically boils down to "Yo, when I was, you know, designing and building Earth and the birds and volcanoes and rain and hedgehogs and peanut butter and what-not, I surely don't recall you hanging around, offering advice. Were you there? Are you God? No? Then how about taking this giant cup of STFU?" Which may have been the first documented case of being told both "You'll understand when you're older" and "Because I said so."

There are a lot of dimensions to the rendition of the woes of Job and a hell of a lot to consider, but there are few straight-forward conclusions. There's no nice and succinct message to be kind to others or to give money to the poor or to honor your elders. You could maybe take away that this corporeal existence is meant to be one that both blows and makes no sense, except there's that little coda where God, as a kind of after-thought, gives Job a bigger ranch, a larger herd, more money, and a totally cooler family. Which in our times just seems a bit creepy on His part: "Hey, Job, I killed your wife, but here's a replacement for her--and as a bonus, she's really smokin'." Ultimately, I sometimes wonder if the whole story is one giant Zen koan.

So, not really the best source material in terms of coming to any sort of tidy, logical, and meaningful resolution, happy or otherwise. And the end that the Coen Brothers ultimately thrust upon us, after a great deal of plotless rambling, is pretty abrupt and very much in the spirit of "Life sucks and then you die." This may be a particularly Jewish conclusion. Not being Jewish myself, I can't say with any certainty, but this is unabashedly an extremely Jewish film, so I may completely be missing some major cultural nuances that would help inform my viewing.

There's also a prologue to the movie which involves a dybbuk, and that part is excellent. And completely unrelated to everything else, except to indicate that no one can actually know anything in this world, and however you choose to act, you're probably wrong and will end up just screwing yourself. So, on second thought, it may have *everything* to do with the remainder of the film.

"A Serious Man" did succeed in making me think, but mainly about how the Coen Brothers have about a .200 batting average, which is barely tolerable for a Golden Glove shortstop, but not so good for major filmmakers. This is a complete misfire and in its amorphous and interminable rambling doesn't even hit the smirking level of "I don't know--what do *you* think it means?" To be avoided by any except those of a Germanic nihilitic bent.

Review: "Terribly Happy"

I would venture to say it was the Year of the Zombie at the 2009 incarnation of Fantastic Fest. I saw three zombie-themed movies myself, and that did not include headliners "Zombieland" and "Survival of the Dead". Besides the profusion of epics devoted to shambling brain-eaters, chop-socky actioners abounded: I saw three movies that would best be tagged to the martial arts genre, and three or four others had kung-fu escapades as essential parts of their plots. (Yes, I realize the martial arts world is rich and complex and is filled with hundreds of disciplines, schools, and styles, including judo, karate, capoeira, muay thai, taekwondo, savate, and so on, but I use kung-fu here as a shorthand. Primarily because while my nerdness is strong, I don't want to take it to the level of the martial arts geek who can knowledgeably discourse on assorted open-hand versus closed-fist attack modes, the virtues of knee strikes versus grappling, and whether Jackie Chan could defeat Jet Li.) (Besides, personally my martial arts hero is longtime Captain America foe Batroc the Leaper.)

Perhaps because so many movies were swimming in the same pools, as it were, I found that the ones that most impressed me were those that offered up something that was new to me, or that zigged when I zagged and then circled around to sucker-punch me in the kidneys (with a closed-fist blow, after which they swept my legs). And so it is that the Danish "Terribly Happy" has lodged itself in my brain for several days now.

Comparisons to various Coen Brothers films, and particularly "Fargo", have been made, and these are apt (although the actual Coen Brothers movie shown at the Fest this year, "A Serious Man", was godawfully bad and infuriating in its interminable plotlessness). You have an isolated small town with its own rules and ways, suspicious of and hostile to outsiders. You have a bunch of oddball locals and strange incidents that are barely hinted at. And you have a flawed POV character (I certainly wouldn't say "hero" or even "protagonist") who has his own secrets and who isn't entirely on the side of law and order, despite being a police officer. Because in this case, he's a disgraced cop sent to be the one-man police force in a backwoods town in the middle of nowhere, serving penance and laying low until he might get called back to the big leagues in Copenhagen. He quickly finds that the town doesn't really want him and that it has its own code of behavior and ways of enforcement, the most extreme of which is to escort the miscreant on a one-way walk to the local bog.

The pace is measured and deliberate without being somnambulent, and the isolation of the wide-open muddy wastes and brooding skies is very well-captured. Characterization is subtle and developed through suggestion and nuance rather than delivered through broad strokes hammered over the viewer's head. Almost no one is what they seem at first glance, nor is anyone "good" or "bad". They simply just are. And this is true of the lead character as well, especially in the conclusion of the second act, when there is a most unexpected development that changes up the whole thrust of the story.

This twist is nicely and naturally delivered, and the ensuing consequences are intriguingly played out. It all leads up to a conclusion that mainstream Hollywood would be loath to embrace, which just makes this movie all the better in my estimation.

After last year's "The Substitute" and "Just Another Love Story", I've got to say that the Danes are developing a nice sideline in oddball little movies. True, they lack zombies and have few martial arts duels-to-the-death, but they have a lasting and offbeat charm, and for that have been among the better offerings over the last couple of years. I look forward to the 2010 Fest to see if Denmark can keep up this winning streak.

Review: "Rampage"

I found that a lot of the movies at 2009's Fantastic Fest were variations on standard themes and were executed competently and in many cases with enthusiasm, but were without the fresh vision, startling twist, or new angle to lift them from serviceable to memorable. This becomes all the more apparent when one takes in 20 to 30 movies over the course of the festival, as I typically do. Almost all of them are pretty good--very few are flat-out bombs without any redeeming features. But the sheer viewing intensity endured during this compressed period means that any given movie really needs to fight hard to rise above simply being the best available selection for the three o'clock slot on Tuesday. After awhile, it's easy for a bit of numbness to set in and for the movies to blur together. So what I'm looking for is those that manage to stick in my mind afterwards.

With that being said, is "Rampage" actually a good movie? It's...good enough. Not great, not excellent, but competently directed (by the usually reviled Uwe Boll) and with some nice performances. What raises it above the background noise is that it subverts the experience of viewing a horror movie. We have no problem watching a group of young people bumble into trouble and get slaughtered for their transgressions, howsoever minor those might be, down to the level of just being naive and dumb enough to fall into a killer's snare, as in this year's "Macabre". Of course, the implicit pact of most such slasher flicks is that escape is possible, and there's a fighting chance for the clever and determined, and there will at least be a Final Girl. The Other is vanquished, and the social order usually gets restored until the next sequel.

With "Rampage", we follow not the victims, but the killer, and suddenly the viewing experience becomes far less comfortable. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of the victims have done nothing to merit their fate--no one has committed the usual minor sins that invoke a slasher's vengeance, and none of them are trespassing into the forbidden backwoods or that old creepy house. They're minding their own business, walking around on errands in the middle of a drab small town, and they're just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They have no hope of fighting back and are simply relentlessly gunned down left and right. And it's very chilling to watch.

Of course, this is not, by any means, the first time any filmmaker has tried to rub in our collective face the fact that we enjoy watching people get hacked up in the standard horror flick. But here, at least, the approach is very matter-of-fact, without the smirky superiority of a judgmental "Funny Games". And Boll has another reversal or two up his sleeve to flip the perspective yet again and show the events in another light.

"Rampage" definitely provokes the obvious question of what you would do if you saw this guy coming--would you run, hide, try to be the hero? How can he be stopped? Incidents like this are not at all far-fetched (and the L.A. bank robbery of a few years back by a team of body-armored thugs with automatic weapons is a clear inspiration). But in raising the additional question of why we are watching in the first place, and why we enjoy movie massacres and buckets of the red stuff, and by doing so without artistic pretensions and histrionics, "Rampage" at the very least succeeds in sticking around in the memory longer than the bulk of this year's offerings.