Cinema Futura (edited by Mark Morris) Page 20
Notes:
(1)You get a regular round strip of paper and a smaller Moebius strip looped together.
THE WONDERFUL ICE CREAM SUIT
(Director: Stuart Gordon; starring: Joe Mantegna, Esai Morales, Edward James Olmos, Clifton Collins Jr. - 1998)
Mike Resnick
This is the story of five losers who, for one magical night, become winners. It’s really as simple as that – which is, of course, not very simple at all.
The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit has had quite a long history. Ray Bradbury wrote it and sold it to The Saturday Evening Post in 1957. It became a half-hour production in a television anthology series in 1958. It then became a stage play, and after that, a stage musical. And finally, in 1998, came the movie. Bradbury has been quoted as saying, ‘It’s the best film I’ve ever made.’ I’ve enjoyed Something Wicked This Way Comes and Moby Dick and some of his others, but I have no argument with that conclusion.
So: the five losers. Gomez (Joe Montegna) is a con man whose schemes work so badly that he’s dead broke and constantly being locked out of his apartment by his landlord. Dominguez (Esai Morales) is a wandering guitarist who can attract neither listeners nor women. Villanazul (Gregory Sierra) is a soapbox orator who couldn’t draw flies at a watermelon party. Martinez (Clifton Collins Jr., billed for some strange reason as Clifton Gonzales Gonzales) is young, unemployed, and in love with a girl who lives next door and doesn’t know he’s alive. And Vamenos (Edward James Olmos) is a bum who hasn’t shaved in years, hasn’t washed in decades (he claims he’s allergic to water), and is, as the Supreme Court might say, without a single redeeming social value.
What do these five losers have in common? Only their height, weight and measurements. They live in the impoverished barrios of East Los Angeles, and in a cheap men’s clothing store (run by Sid Caesar and Howard Morris in a pair of delightful cameos) there is a white suit, which represents all their hopes and dreams to them. And it costs $100, which none of them has (or probably has ever had) – but when they each toss $20 into the kitty, suddenly they can buy the miraculous ice cream suit that they know will transform their lives.
And, strangely enough, it does. They decide that on the first night they own it, each will wear it for one hour. Dominguez is the first. He goes out with his guitar, and women can’t keep away from him. Next it’s Villanazul, and he draws a huge worshipful crowd. Martinez has a smaller dream, but it comes true anyway: the girl next door finally notices him. Gomez plans to abscond with the suit and take a bus to El Paso, but instead the suit absconds with his greed, and he returns, chastened and humbled, to his companions. Olmos gets to do a wild comic turn as Vamenos: he must be shaved and bathed before being allowed in the suit, and then saved when he abandons common sense in favour of booze, juicy tacos, and an even juicier 300-pound girlfriend and her murderous boyfriend.
Doesn’t sound like it should be my favourite fantasy film, does it? But then, I haven’t mentioned that Stuart Gordon, whose work I have loved since he directed all three episodes of Warp in a small neighbourhood theater in Chicago almost 40 years ago, directed this film with love and style. You come to care for these five losers, and you find beauty everywhere in their poverty-stricken lives and neighbourhood. The score by Mader, ranging from a Mariachi band to a sad, sweet solo guitar, is exquisite, and some Disney exec is burning in hell right now for not releasing a CD of it. The credits are the finest sand animation I’ve ever seen.
The movie was made for direct-to-video release. It’s a pity, because a few million more people should have had the opportunity to fall in love with it – but because it went directly to video they didn’t feel the need to pad it out. It is 77 minutes long, exactly the proper length for this magical story.
The star, of course, isn’t Gordon or Mader or one of the actors, brilliant as they were. It’s Ray Bradbury. I have loved his work since I was a kid, which was a long time ago. I knew that he was a master of sentiment, and of terror, and of the evocation of childhood, and of wonder – but until I saw this movie, I never knew that he (or anyone) could produce such out-and-out totally unselfconscious charm. You are captivated a minute or two into the film, and you never want it to end, though it ends at exactly the right moment on exactly the right line.
Is it a fantasy film? After all, there’s not a single incident that you can point to and say, ‘See? That’s fantasy.’ To which I reply, 50 years ago Damon Knight and James Blish were excoriating The Martian Chronicles because the science was so wrong it clearly didn’t qualify as science fiction. To which millions upon millions of readers replied with their money and their devotion, saying, in essence: ‘When it’s this good, who cares?’ Which is my precise answer to the question of whether or not it’s a fantasy film in the strictest definition of the term. When it’s this good, who cares?
There is a point, after a wild scene in which Olmos, using the white jacket as a cape, is nailed and thrown through the air by a bull (well, a car that sports a bull’s horns as a hood ornament). The suit is miraculously undamaged, and as he is being carted off to the hospital after breaking his leg and almost destroying the suit, he asks, plaintively, ‘Can I still be in the gang?’ And the other four losers, all transformed by their experiences in the suit, agree that of course he can.
You know what? After seeing the movie, I want to be in the gang too.
THE MATRIX
(Directors: Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski; starring: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving - 1999)
Juliet E McKenna
What is The Matrix? It’s Larry and Andy Wachowski’s third film as writers, their second as directors, the one that got them noticed. Drawing on their experience of writing for Marvel Comics’ Razorline and EPIC’s Hellraiser and Nightbreed titles, it brought film and comic books together in a way that has enriched cinema since. It’s a showcase for that combination of American movie-making skills from the likes of Barrie Osborne with the Antipodean verve and audacity that’s given us SF&F classics from Max Max through Farscape to The Lord of the Rings. It’s the film that brought Hong Kong wire work into western movie combat and which took digital special effects to a whole new level with ‘bullet time’.
What is the Matrix? The Matrix is a system. That system is our enemy. So the enigmatic Morpheus tells our hero Neo, both of them apparently hackers in a shadowy cyber-underworld. It’s the system that creates businessmen, teachers and lawyers, work, the Church and taxes. Haven’t we all felt that alienation? Don’t we long to be so much more than a cog in a machine? To escape our own version of the cubicle-hell of Neo’s computer-programmer job, his humdrum life as Thomas A. Anderson?
The Matrix is the answer to all those feelings that something is wrong but you don’t know what it is. So the enticing Trinity tells Neo. When you understand the Matrix, you have control of the reality around you. You can look super-cool in black leather, with drop-dead shades and guns. Lots of guns. Want to know Kung-Fu? Need to pilot a helicopter? Effortlessly acquire the skills with a download to your brain. Enjoy shooting an office lobby into smithereens without guilt because, hey, this isn’t real. Isn’t that seductive?
Be careful what you wish for. Understanding that the Matrix is an artificial reality that people enjoy because they know no better, means knowing the truth of humanity’s future. Neo is reborn into a grey and ragged world, into a ship holding a handful of people who eat colourless, textureless goop and hide in the sewers. No one wears cool sunglasses after humanity burned the skies in a suicidal effort to kill the sentient machines that they had created. To no avail. Now people aren’t even cogs. At least cogs move. They’re batteries, plugged into dizzying columns that crackle with Frankensteinian lightning. Helpless as babies in amniotic baths, they’re pacified with the Matrix’s fantasies fed direct to their brains.
Be honest. Who wouldn’t share the cynical crewmember Cypher’s disillusion and wish they’d taken the blue pill that restores those illusions? Would super powers and sec
ret knowledge really be worth that price? Will humanity truly be better off if Morpheus and the rest manage to break the system as they intend to?
So does The Matrix tell us to follow the rules and stay inside the system? To shun change and choice? Far from it. As the Oracle tells Neo, the key is to know thyself. Then he can take control of his destiny, making life and death decisions wherever he might be. Because he’s not safe wherever he is and dead is dead regardless. As vindictive as any human, Agent Smith ruthlessly pursues Neo within the Matrix. This Artificial Intelligence reveals his true nature when he takes off his sunglasses just like everyone else. Outside in the sewers, sentinel machines seek to drill into Morpheus’s ship and kill the entire crew. It doesn’t matter what’s dream or reality; success means taking risks either way.
Neo’s first step to discovering the Matrix is following the girl with the white rabbit tattoo. Later he makes the choice to go through the looking glass. Or rather, he’s scarily consumed by the mirror that he touches. Other references recall the Technicolor wonders of Oz. Don’t we all recall our own longing to find such hidden wonderlands? We should remember the dangers that Alice and Dorothy faced. Tornadoes notwithstanding, monochrome Kansas is also where Dorothy’s family and friends are. Being with them means facing up to her problems, not running away. Thus while entertaining us with this graphic, violent, super-cool fantasy world, The Matrix explores the limits of escapism.
On the other hand, boundaries are erased. Throughout the writing, narrative roles are reversed. Neo is Dorothy and most overtly Alice, eating cookies and going through doors. An image of feminine allure, Trinity is an action hero throughout the film and wakes Neo with a kiss; mirror-image of fairy tale convention. Does it make a difference? None that matters.
The Matrix stands the test of time. Familiarity hasn’t yet bred contempt for special effects now seen in everything from advertising to Shrek. Virtual reality is far more readily understood than it was when the film was released. On their first viewing in 2006, my teenage sons instantly concluded that Agent Smith was a computer virus. Ten years on, we see media hysteria about the perils of people conflating reality and increasingly immersive and communal computer games. Only the film’s hardware looks quaintly retro with rotary dial phones and green-script-on-black computer screens.
Only those were retro in 1999. Windows 3.1 had long since relegated the DOS-based system to the corner of the office where I worked. That green waterfall display is more a reminder of apocalyptic 1980s news reports about computer viruses sending data dribbling down your screen, at least for those of us old enough to remember them. For viewers of any age, those rotary phones hark back to film noir, one of many cinematic influences on this movie. The opening sequence of phone tapping, surveillance, paranoia and police echo countless Cold War thrillers, until the hyper-reality of Trinity’s escape shows us something more extreme is going on. Visual references cite SF films from Blade Runner, with rain cascading down derelict buildings, to Superman, with Neo stepping out of a phone box to fly away.
These are no mere flourishes. None of these films is about people, real, alien or artificial, from distant planets or the far future. They illuminate the universal nature of humanity. The Matrix is about the here and now and how we choose to deal with it. Reality is the world where anything is possible.
DONNIE DARKO
(Director: Richard Kelly; starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Holmes Osborne, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Daveigh Chase - 2001)
Sarah Langan
The world of Donnie Darko inhabits the white, Maryland suburb of Middlesex during the 1988 American presidential election. Donnie’s dad (Holmes Osborne) is an upstanding, if creepy, family man. In an especially warming moment he tells his wife, ‘You’re not a bitch… you’re bitchin’!’ Donnie’s boozy mom (Mary McDonnell), despite the booze, has raised her kids with decency and grace. His pretty little sister (Daveigh Chase), dances in a group called ‘Sparkle Motion,’ choreographed by a self-improvement obsessed Jesus freak, whose big shot at success in life is sexualizing her daughter’s dance team and calling it empowerment. His older sister, a Harvard-bound, boyfriend-crazed firebrand played by real-life sister Maggie Gyllenhaal, nags and loves Donnie in equal measure. Finally, there is Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal), an extraordinarily bright Catholic High School senior with a history of weird behavior, who takes anti-psychotic medication. It’s your typical American family, only smarter, richer, and better looking. Hollywood America.
At the opening of the story, dad watches the presidential debates, sis moons over her boyfriend, Donnie gets mean-spirited, and mom downs some wine. Another day in the life, with cute girls, joyful potential, and lots of quirky remarks in the mix. Wackiness ensues later that night, when a demented-looking, life-sized rabbit named Frank rouses Donnie from his sleep. Just as a plane engine crashes through his bedroom ceiling, Frank lures Donnie out of the house. Our hero survives, but his existence has forced the world into a tangent universe that will collapse in 28 days. Unless Donnie can right that wrong, and restore the world to its proper dimension, life as we know it will end.
Though none overtly understand what has happened, the town of Middlesex collectively acts to push Donnie toward his destiny. Eventually, Donnie figures out how to engineer a black hole, bring the plane back, and crash it again. This time, he dies in his bed, and saves not just his family and girlfriend, but the world.
The movie was released a month after 9-11-2001, and it opens and ends with a plane crash, which is probably why it bombed at the box office. No pun intended. Its plot follows an intuitive dream logic. Watch it a couple of times, and you’ll see every kind of hidden message, from the sublime to the nonsensical. On the nonsensical end: How does Donnie suddenly gain the ability to create a black hole? Why is his mother on the plane this second time, and how is that possible? Is Donnie just nuts?
So why does the movie work? Why do voters at IMDB consistently rank it one of the top movies of all time? It’s not about the plot. It’s about something deeper than that. Kelly captures the robust, innocent-corrupt 1980s to perfection (‘Greed is good!’ Michael Douglas proclaimed in 1987. A year prior, Ollie North gave his charming, gap-toothed, following-orders defence, while the rest of us, vicariously, grinned).
Within the half-baked science fiction story of Donnie Darko, there is also wish fulfillment. Though Donnie’s friends are an assemblage of mental midgets, he finds his like-minded true love, and loses his virginity to her. He makes his younger sister’s freaky dance teacher cry. He sexually threatens his cold-hearted shrink. The principal expels him because he’s got morals, but the kids at school give him a standing ovation. He even burns down a child molester’s house, and literally takes a shit in the boy’s locker room. At the climax, he saves the world. Who wouldn’t want to be Donnie Darko?
Remember The Smurfs, Inxs, banned books at your high school, that feeling of terrible loneliness as you sat through yet another totally retarded general assembly, and everybody around you had drunk the Kool Aid? How about the fights you had with your siblings, mean enough to scare innocent bystanders, and yet, somehow, never so dark as to rend the family apart? Kelly remembers all of that. He even remembers how badly the Asian kids who moved into white suburbia for the good schools got teased back in the 1980s, when Dukakis didn’t seem like a total loser, nobody knew Kitty was a booze hound, and America was seriously worried about losing its edge to the Japanese.
Even the plants Kelly buries (Donnie takes his girlfriend to an Evil Dead, Last Temptation of Christ double feature; the Star Spangled Banner plays throughout; almost every scene shows an American flag) have resonance. It’s not just high school alienation or the 1980s that Kelly gets right, but a state of mind particular to the era. Remember when we thought America was good? Remember when Iran-Contra was shocking? Remember when greed was the dirty, secret pleasure of capitalism, and as a nation, America did not wonder if it had done wrong? We were so sure of ourselves that we believed any war we entered was justified
, any American worth twice, hell, a hundred times the lives of our foes. Remember that?
What perfect nostalgia.
As RJ Wheatpenny writes in his review of the Donnie Darko sequel, the 1980s were perfect nostalgia, but the following decades resist definition. (Journal of Interstitial Cinema, Volume 2). In other words, life beat us up, and our plurality broke into pieces.
Real art exists outside its era, and has its own, ineffable life. I’ve always felt that there was something supernatural about Donnie Darko, as if the movie itself is an artefact from a tangent universe. It visits us from the pre 9-11 world, in which expectations for happiness were higher, and nuclear families were still considered the norm. Where smart kids got alienated, but they still commanded respect. Where you longed for things that never existed, like a perfect Saturday morning in front of the Smurfs, complete with Sugar Corn Pops and family harmony and a predictable future, in which you had a destiny. This is nostalgia. What’s weird about modern, post 9-11 America isn’t that we’ve lost the myths; they were already dead. No, we lost the nostalgia. Donnie Darko is a record of that nostalgia, perfectly preserved.
My generation wants to believe that in some tangent universe, there exists a more pure America. But here, in 2010, it’s all gone. We have no innocence or moral authority, and we don’t aspire for unobtainable myths. The nation is in decline. Maybe that’s a good thing. From this hurt, disillusioned, fractured place, maybe we can do better. Still, I mourn that old world. I ache for it. Somehow, through a strange psychic magic, Kelly figured that out, and gave America its proper funeral.