by Oscar O’Sullivan

Monday – Liar Liar, Rear Window and Airplane!

While Jim Carrey has often proved perfectly capable of giving grounded, dialled-back performances when the film called for it, this is an interesting beast – a perfectly ordinary, straightforwardly sentimental story that Carrey plays to the absolute maximum of his comic buffoonery. It’s as if his insanity warps the world of the film around him, gradually drawing the rest of the cast into his lunatic orbit as his inability to lie results in larger and larger outbursts. Considering this is a film where a little boy’s birthday wish inexplicably comes true, the juxtaposition of the ordinary and the absurd works surprisingly well. That said, Carrey can take it too far, and often does, harming the believability during the middle act as the comic misadventures overshadow the actual story. Still, it manages to tug at the heartstrings well enough, thanks in large part to Justin Cooper as the cute but sympathetically sad neglected son. Also – a fine example of the lost art of putting outtakes over the credits, a practice I think should be standard for all comedies. Always fun to get a peak behind the curtain and see how Hollywood funnymen deal with mistakes on set, and what happens when their improvisations are a little too much for the final cut. 8/10.

Possibly Hitchcock’s most primally satisfying film, a fairly low-stakes little murder mystery in a limited setting that still manages to feel monumental through the sheer skill of its presentation. Adventurous photojournalist L.B. Jefferies (Jimmy Stewart) is wheelchair-bound and confined to his New York flat after an automotive accident, and whiles away the hours spying on his neighbours through the rear windows of their apartments. We see glimpses into the lives of the various colourful characters, our only real knowledge of them being the contextless events we witness and the often unflattering opinions our hero shares about them. Hitchcock isn’t shy about reprimanding his idle voyeurism, yet this same unwholesome habit may prove key to solving a murder most foul when a bed-bound woman in the building across the way suddenly vanishes in the midst of a flurry of suspicious activity by her husband. Here is where the genius of the film truly lies – the crime seems almost too neat and obvious, as Jefferies’ associates are quick to point out, so obvious that you’d be silly not to second-guess the supposed setup in spite of the rapidly mounting evidence. By presenting a mystery that essentially solves itself, the film invites you to question your own desire for answers, as well as allowing for a rather relaxed structure, where the lack of immediate stakes allows for perfectly justified breaks in the action to check back in the other neighbours (and perhaps wonder what secrets they may be hiding while all our attention is on the suspected murderer). A must-see mystery. 10/10.

I always struggle to think of what to say about comedy films, especially ones so purely parodic as Airplane!. Comedy may be subjective, but funny is funny – and this is funny, above all other things. What makes it work so perfectly? Tone is a major factor, as the film never breaks character – this may sound contradictory, but here is a film that takes absurdity seriously. Many of the best moments don’t even draw attention to themselves, simply passing by in a flash and trusting the audience to pay enough attention to catch them and react before the next moment of masterful imagination. To describe any of the jokes or why they work would be an exercise in redundancy. 10/10.

Tuesday – The Substance

A divisive film and unexpected awards contender this year, The Substance aims to provoke on all levels. Subtlety has no place here, a fact which should be immediately obvious from the opening montage of Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore)’s Hollywood Star crumbling and ignored as the years pass. This is a story about how age completely alters the way women are treated, most especially famous women. That’s why casting the stunning Moore as a woman discarded for reasons of appearance is scathingly intentional, and why Dennis Quaid is made to look so exaggeratedly hideous in both his form and manner as the executive deciding her fate – even the most beautiful and talented woman has to struggle to hold onto her position as she naturally ages, while a man can be as grizzled and disgusting as he likes and still be on top of the world. And see the obvious difference in the way Sue (Margaret Qualley) is treated by every man in the film, simply because she’s younger and therefore, according to societal standards, more desirable. Sue and Elisabeth, despite being the exact same person, live two entirely different lives simply because of the way they are treated, both professionally and personally, based on their looks. This is why the camera becomes borderline pornographic in the way it shoots the female body – director Coralie Fargeat wants us to confront the most extreme possible image of how the body is objectified and commodified. While some may think the film’s cruel comedy and overt sexuality may undercut the intended message, a certain level of disassociation is required to bridge the gap. Depiction does not equal endorsement, and while you may disagree that this film hits the mark in its discussion of sensitive issues, to claim it had bad intentions from the start is an unfair accusation. The most provocative film of the year, and coincidentally one of the best-made as well. 10/10.

Wednesday – Vertigo and The Man Who Knew Too Much

If, as I suggested above, Rear Window is an exercise in pure satisfaction, then we could say that Vertigo takes an opposite approach – a twisting denial of catharsis or pleasure, a film that confronts us with a seemingly ordinary thriller and approachable characters that will shock us with the depths they sink to. Even the title alludes to the film’s trickery – protagonist John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson (Jimmy Stewart) is a detective who suffers from the titular condition, forcing him to retire after an attack of dizziness prevents him from saving the life of another cop. The title and opening sequence would suggest that Scottie’s condition is the central conceit of the film, as he is hired by an old acquaintance to investigate the strange behaviour of his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak). However, heights don’t come into play at all – instead a new and baffling angle presents itself, as Madeleine is seemingly possessed by the suicidal spirit of an identical ancestor and Scottie finds himself falling for his tragic subject. Another late-game revelation spins things off in an even more unexpected direction – one that I won’t discuss here, because the less you know about how the film plays out the better. I will say that the film obviously looks excellent, Hitchcock combining simple and effective framing with standout moments of visual innovation, including a dream sequence that is startlingly surreal for the 1950s – perhaps inspired by the magnificent sequence from Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries only a few years earlier. Then there’s the lead performances – Jimmy Stewart brings all of his usual charm to the role, but gradually reveals an unsettling intensity in the way he doggedly pursues Madeleine, first as a case and then as a romantic interest. Novak as Madeleine is captivating, flipping between the fragile, trance-like state of her ‘possession’ and her ordinary personality, becoming more emotionally unstable as the walls between these split selves break down. A daringly ambiguous and bleak thriller that uses romance not for levity, but to increase the depths of the suffering it causes. 10/10.

For another more lighthearted Stewart/Hitchcock collab, here’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, a remake of one of Hitchcock’s own early films. On a surface level, the stakes are still quite harrowing – an ordinary married couple accidentally stumble into an assassination conspiracy while on holidays, resulting in their young son being kidnapped under threat of death. Stewart and Doris Day play the fear and anxiety of the scenario, and the stakes are certainly kept at the forefront of your mind, but there is also an ever-present element of fun to balance things out tonally. As great as the film generally is, one sequence manages to overshadow all else – the climactic assassination in Albert Hall. All sound is excised except for the music of the orchestra, the film perfectly cutting together the action in a way that accentuates the music, and vice-versa. Doris Day watches helplessly from the crowd as Jimmy Stewart frantically tries to access the upper floors. In the viewing balcony, the fox-faced assassin calmly watches the show, keeping an eye for the place in the music that has been marked as the moment for him to make his shot – a moment the audience has already been shown in the film’s very opening scene, heightening the tension further. And sat innocently in the orchestra, the cymbal player, waiting patiently for his big moment, utterly unaware that his clattering clash of the instrument will be used to conceal the death of a Prime Minister. A masterpiece of contained, calculated suspense. 9/10.

Thursday – Naked Lunch

As with the recent Queer, knowledge of the author William S. Burroughs is sure to add an additional resonance to the events of Naked Lunch (in fact, the two films even adapt several parts and passages from the same novel and feature the same lead character). Where Queer bets everything on the themes of love and emotional connection, Naked Lunch instead keeps us at arms’ length, using the semi-autobiographical adventures of the drug-addled Lee (Peter Weller, of Robocop fame) to create an utterly unpredictable atmosphere. Insane without ever becoming absurd, the line between fantasy and reality is blended with such subtle grace that it eventually becomes unimportant which is which. Has Lee actually fled to the fantastical land of Interzone to escape justice, or has he even fled the country at all? His plane tickets are later seen as a vial of hallucinogenic drugs when his writer friends come to visit during a pause in the insanity. After the accidental(?) shooting of his wife, Lee processes his trauma and deteriorating grip on reality through ‘mission reports’, delivered through his living insectoid typewriter to his ambiguously alien handlers, who at one point offer him a job in American Intelligence. He carouses with other writers and reprobates, seeming to oscillate between a wary distance and a whole-hearted acceptance of his new role as a hard-boiled gumshoe trapped in a web of deceit. Like any good noir, there’s a mysterious femme fatale to lead our hero astray, the spitting image of his dead wife (both roles played by Judy Davis). Cronenberg has a reputation for gory excess, but his real power is in the calculated and often beautiful stillness of his approach. Moments of ludicrous puppetry and bodily mutilation are so effective because he presents them with the same calm realism as everything else on screen. Watch it without any notions of receiving easy answers. 9/10.

Friday – Hamlet (1948)

It’s time to shake off the old notion that Shakespeare plays are stuffy, dried up drivel to torture students with – his best works remain some of the greatest stories in the English language, so much so that even an entirely straightforward production such as this one can still break through and feel at moments like you are seeing it for the first time. It’s helped in this department by the intelligent use of filmic technique to elevate the staged material – far from just plonking the camera down and letting things play out like a live production, Laurence Olivier is deliberate in where, when and how he places and moves the camera. Is this moment more effective if we are right alongside the character or viewing them from a long ways away? How does the scale and density of a crowd affect our response to the scene that takes place? Is a monologue of offscreen events more effective if we see a silent enactment of them alongside it? How can a disruption of the camera enhance the supernatural effect of the ghostly apparitions? All these may seem rudimentary questions by modern standards, yet they were likely tough ones for Olivier to answer – his boldness has payed off in spades, though there are still places where he could have gone further. Almost certainly the definitive filmed version of the play as written. 8/10.

Saturday – The Prisoner

A psychological thriller that shows it’s roots as a stage play, The Prisoner‘s biggest weakness is its seeming embarrassment about those theatrical roots. Every time it expands its scope to become more filmic, introducing extraneous characters and subplots outside of the prison, it flounders. The strength of the story lies in the confinement of it’s setting and characters – a prisoner, an interrogator and the jailor, engaged in a battle of wills and a dance of deception that works better without any of the outside context that the film burdens it with. Alec Guinness stuns in the title role, performing the deterioration of a man’s body and spirit as isolation takes it’s toll. The Interrogator (Jack Hawkins) is a surprisingly realistic character, reasonable and even kind, who performs mental torture not out of hatred but out of loyalty, earnestly entreating his captive to surrender and make things easier for them both. As uncomfortable truths are dredged to the surface by Guinness’ breakdown, The Interrogator loses respect not only for his subject, but for himself, realising that he is to blame for these secrets seeing the light of day at all. Should a man’s soul not remain private, no matter what cause you may think you are unveiling him for? Never quite as gripping as it should be, but fascinating to comb back over. 7/10.

Sunday – Killer’s Kiss and The Killing

Finishing up the week with two early films by Stanley Kubrick, the similarly named Killer’s Kiss and The Killing. The former barely qualifies as a feature, coming in at just under 70 minutes and being included as a bonus feature on discs of the latter, but it works as a surprisingly inventive noir in spite of it’s truncated scale. A grounded, tightly scripted romantic thriller about a washed-up boxer Davy (Jamie Smith) who falls for pretty but tragic dancer Gloria (Irene Kane) and decides to get away from it all and live a quiet life with her. The simple wants of the heroes, no ambition greater than their last pay checks and a quiet farewell, spiral into violence and intrigue at an alarming rate, with an ominously alone Davy reminiscing on recent events in a classic noir voiceover. There’s an awkward sloppiness to the camera and editing, but also an earnest and impressive ambition, with many standout visual sequences to complement the airtight script – for just one example, Gloria’s backstory is delivered through an extended monologue accompanied not by flashbacks, but by ethereal footage of her late sister performing ballet on a dark stage. An excellent little crime thriller for what it is and a huge step up from Kubrick’s debut Fear and Desire. 8/10.

The Killing is where Kubrick really comes into his own as a director, establishing what would practically become his routine – he tackles a genre and takes executes it to practical perfection, then never directly touches it again. Here, it’s the heist film, with Kubrick crafting a dazzlingly complex plot and making sure we get to see each and every individual element pay off. A collection of strangers are brought together by stern but charismatic crook Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) for an outrageous scheme to knock over the racetrack in broad daylight, making off with at least 2 million dollars from the cash room. Not only interested in the beautiful mechanical functionings of the crime, Kubrick also dives into the motives that drive these men to plan the daring job – one member has a sick wife, another is a cop with big debts, while another is desperate for the respect of his domineering wife. In only ninety minutes we manage to become intimately familiar with each of these men, their role in the plan, and finally witness the wondrous execution of the heist itself. Kubrick’s intricate perfectionism is perfectly suited to the genre, to the point where I have to wonder how much further he could have pushed it if he hadn’t been so determined to leave his mark on every conceivable form of the medium. 9/10.