I Am Guilty (2005, Christoph Hochhäusler) – 6.8
I’ve yet to be blown away by any of Hochhäusler’s films (the others being This Very Moment, The City Below, and his Dreileben wrap-up, One Minute of Darkness), but I don’t think I’d hesitate in calling him my favourite active German filmmaker (if you’re reading this Maren, know that I still like both of your films more than any of these). I’ll quickly surmise that whyever that may be probably has to do with how terrorized I am by the palpable dread laced throughout his mise en scène, whether that’s placed in a rural (Moment), urban (City), or suburban (Guilty) environment. They also all have the remarkable ability of skirting comprehensible critiques of middle and upper-middle class lifestyles, while still remains cryptic as all hell; that said, I don’t think any of Herr Hochhäusler’s four features so far have been as elusive of easy answers as this sophomore film has (the ending of The City Below actually makes perfect conceptual sense in retrospect). Which is to say, Armin’s motivations, behaviours, and – uh – urges, are so sketchily drawn that they can never really be interpreted or rationalized in a finite, or even meaningful, way. For instance, I have no explanation for why he fantasizes about doing (or does?) submissive sexual favours for the – very male – biker gang vandals, nor whether it actually ‘happens’ in the reality of the film. Nor do I think deciding one way or another would do me or anyone else any good. It almost begs to be left alone as an effectively unsettling mood piece, albeit one that likely has a very valuable sensibility to the ‘coming-of-age experience’ found in this particular (quite common) social context.
Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock) – 7.6
I didn’t fully realize how awesome Hitchcock is until this catching up (long overdue) with some of these classics in the Fall season at the Lightbox. I took a course on his cinema in undergrad, but that didn’t leave much of an impression for some reason (if there is anything in print from me in which I mention Rebecca, Notorious, Spellbound, or North by Northwest, please disregard it). I have a pretty unorthodox history with Psycho, though it’s probably somewhat common with my generation: my first encounter was with, egad, Van Sant’s remake. Whoever it was I was in the theatre watching it with had seen the Hitchcock version, and obnoxiously leaned over to me 15 minutes before the end and said (and if you’ve not seen it, don’t read, and why are you this far into this paragraph already anyway?) “I bet he’s his mother.” Not even able to process the line of thinking that could have led someone to tell me that, I was, at that moment, dumbfounded and amazed at this unbelievably clever twist ending. Flash forward to my undergrad years when I finally see Hitchcock’s original, and I was dumbfounded and amazed that I hadn’t figured it out from the beginning when I saw it the first time; typical of most revisitations of films with twists, it all seemed so overstated.
Watching it now (second time for Hitchcock’s, third time total), no longer viewing the movie as one long buildup to a wicked twist ending, focusing more on everything else that Hitchcock is doing, I see it as the masterpiece that it is…until the damn ending. I’m not just thinking the idiotic exposition where the guy stands there and provides us with a psychoanalytic reading of the film we’d just seen, but also, and especially, the climax of the film, when Norman Bates stumbles into the basement dressed up as his mother. Essentially perfect until this point, I’ve struggled to figure out what feels so wrong here. I like everything about this scene on paper, but what I remember as being shocking, terrifying, disturbing etc. now just seems lame and almost funny – tonally the opposite of what it should be. Going back and looking at how this scene was handled in Van Sant’s version, which I only saw that one time during its release (aside – holy shit, Julianne Moore is in this? holy shit pt. 2: Vince Vaughn gets paid to act?), and I’m surprised to find that I actually do think that Van Sant’s take on the ending works far better for me, and it comes down to a single element: Bates’ face. Sacrilegious for sure, and likely wrong, but for the time being, I’m certain that Hitchcock over-directed Mr. Perkins here (of course, until this point, he is utterly remarkable). Sure, Van Sant didn’t need to turn the basement into Damien Hirst’s production studio, nor extend the reveal into a fight scene with broken furniture and several cuts to additional points of view; but, he seems to understand that it’s not the crazy look on Bates’ face when he enters the basement that is so chilling, but rather the ideas behind what we learn in this moment.
Original:
Remake (skip to about 3/4 through the timeline to get to the scene I’m talking about, or watch the whole thing to be reminded of how bad this movie is):
Twelve Monkeys (1995, Terry Gilliam) – 6.9
Such a haunting film – more so for me than Marker’s. It loses me a bit with a saggy middle act and some annoying logic holes that every time travel movie suffers from – it’s their varying degrees of toying with these holes that make them more or less obtrusive. The last half hour feels like those dreams I have where I’m being chased by someone and can only move as if I’m wading through quicksand. It’s so clear what’s coming, and so irritatingly futile to hope for a positive outcome. I still don’t know if ‘the deed’ is done when David Morse – creepier than ever – opens the tube for the security guard, or if Bruce Willis getting shot down really is as tragic for mankind as it appears. In fact, there’s a lot I don’t have a firm grasp on in regards to what actually happens in this movie. I’m okay keeping it that way, too.