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Welcome to the Dollhouse - "Special People's Blog"

Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)

H: This movie finally gave me a definition for what '90s means. Before now, I didn't have a clear concept of what it was. Prior decades were much easier to classify, but this movie epitomized the '90s. You had the Macintosh SE30 (which my family had), you had the print pants, the long haired singer with earrings as the male ideal of beauty, you had the old Chevette, the bad makeup, the insistence on making home videos - all of this was the '90s.

K: Not only the look, but the feel of the movie. I would say, and I am saying, that the '90s were a point of either total confidence or lack of. Let's generalize another decade, the 50's. The 50's had the greasers, and the goody goodies (Thanks, American Graffiti!) I think the three main characters that epitomize these two feelings are the brother and of course, Dawn.

H: Yeah, Steve (the singer/badass) is even more confident. At the same time, every generation has the jocks vs the nerds. As in American Graffiti, we have the thick glasses nerd, only this time he's not successful with girls. The way the '50s treats nerds is hopeful. By the time we get to the '90s treatment, it's more real and at the same time hopeless. They don't get the attractive person, they don't become popular, they just try to make it with the other nerds.

K: Sure every decade has its misfits (Thanks, Breakfast Club!) The approach to Dawn was realistic. Here is a misfit that is a reflection of her society. She repeats the slurs thrown at her, she's found her role as a bully, and continues her role as a *pushover (not sure this is what I want to say...but she's still a geek) So is she a likable character?

H: Yes, you commiserate with her and you agree that life is inherently unfair (or rather her life, because my life is sort of fair). We've all been the ugly sister to a barbie doll, right?

K: If you think about it, this movie is about as old as Dawn was. And yes, Henry, you have been an ugly sister.

What did you think about the relationship between Brandon and Dawn? Take out the threats of rape, and it's almost sweet.

H: I agree. At first I hated him and that little jelly stain of a cut on his face, but at the end I liked him, since he wasn't dealing drugs and his dad was obviously the source of his meanness. Their relationship is what I meant when I said "they just try to make it with other nerds", although I suppose he's more of a tough than a nerd. What did you think about sibling relationships in the movie?

K:The sibling relationship was realistic, they interacted with each other like an office sitcom, really sharing space with each other rather than having to interact.

The younger sister didn't need to be a fully developed character, more of a caricature. While the older brother had a bit more depth. His few scenes alone gave him some motivations, and of course his need to get into a good college. They also don't seem to be fueled by their parents, which I liked. Sometimes it seems siblings are used as an extension of parents.

H: We don't really understand why the parents are the way they are. In that way, they're like a force of nature or another source of unfairness like a school principle. Parents are inherently unfair like all of the other structures in Dawn's life. Who knows, maybe she'll become a total hottie when she grows up and things will improve.

K: I think what really worked for this movie is how it approached it's character's goal. There are so many films where the character wants to be popular, because popularity means being loved, and that is the real goal. At least in this movie everything is soaking in realism. Everyone wants out and get to the big city, or a good college, or just survive middle school.
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Alexandria, Now and Forever (Iskanderija, kaman oue kaman)- "Beggars Can't Be Directors Who Can't Be Actors Who Are Choosy"

Iskanderija, Kaman oue Kaman (1990)

H: I couldn't remember what happened to Alexander the Great's body, but it's even more interesting than I remember it. I bring that up because I found the scene where Yehia discovers Alexander's tomb was really affecting. He's in the glass sarcophagus and all of a sudden a huge drill bursts through the ceiling and into the coffin, spilling his blood. Needless to say, this film is loaded with symbols.

K: It's a fully loaded film like Alexander's body, and it continually sprayed its symbolic blood full of symbolism all over. I liked this part too, but I think this last movie from his trilogy of Alexandria films, was his most obvious. (Yes, I am keeping in mind Egyptian Story taking place in a human body.)

H: Overt, yes, but I don't know about obvious in all cases. You have to have knowledge in lots of places for this movie to be obvious: the history of cinema, the history of Egypt pre-Islam, the history of Egypt in the 20th century, Shakespeare, musicals, labor issues. One review claimed that the musical with Alexander was a spoof on Jesus Christ Superstar which seems pretty accurate, actually. One thing I find really interesting about Chahine is he never overtly deals with Islam.

K: This was what I was thinking about the film. It feels like a catch-22 for a non-American director. If you are from that culture, do you have to make films about it? What's your responsibility?

H: Exactly. We don't ask Tim Burton why he's not making films about being white and weird in America. He can make movies about things that don't exist, like Beetlejuice. We seem to hold foreign directors, particularly those outside Western Europe, to a higher, stranger standard where they can't just make art, they have to speak for their entire country and all of its issues, presumably because theirs is the one movie from that country that'll ever be viewed outside it. That's a lot of pressure.

Still, Chahine rises to that occasion by talking about democracy in Egypt and the problem of hero/king worship in his obsession with Alexander. He in a way turns this expectation on his head by making a movie as much about American movie culture and historical British theater as it is about Egypt. Really, this movie is about everything. So, now he's free to make a movie about nothing (art's ultimate aspiration). Too bad he's dead.

K: I think you liked this movie more than I did, which is fine, but I think if he were making films today, he would still be making them about himself. I would much rather have this director make movies about himself than Tim Burton, but at the same time, I think once that line is crossed, it's hard to take anything he makes after these films seriously.

H: We'll have to watch Destiny (1997) to find out. I don't think it's impossible to take a director seriously once he's made autobiographical films, plus you have to remember we've only seen movies from near the end of his life. We haven't seen the movies that made him great and lead up to (maybe justifying) these three culminating films. A lot of directors begin their careers with autobiographical films (Four Hundred Blows, etc) and the subject of film in films isn't exactly untouchable. In short, we need to watch his early films, none of which are at the library.

I like how confident and true to his vision he is in this movie. He's like a joyful Werner Herzog in his dedication to vision. Every shot is him hauling a boat up a mountain.

K: True, it's not impossible. But how accessible are his autobiographical movies? We've noted that they are steep in symbolism, and for someone like me, it's almost too much. Uh oh...did I just give away my ignorance? As for my ignorance, I am happy that's it's a good story on it's own. I can enjoy it without ever having to learn about the struggles of Egyptians...ever.

p.s. Wernor Herzog is plenty joyful. full post

Stranger Than Paradise - "Hungarian Blues"

Stranger Than Paradise (1984)

K: This is Jim Jarmusch's first movie. It's divided into chapters and he used one of those as a film thesis for college. He then expanded it into a movie. It doesn't feel like a first movie, not monumental like Star Wars and then with nothing more to show after that.

H: It's not his signature movie.

K: No, but it very much has all the settings, and characters, and the look that we come to expect from him.

H: So it's not a defining movie or the one thing that he did that he's known for. But in another way, it's a good beginning movie because it sets the themes for his career.

K: It establishes the unexpected that he likes to play with in his movies.

H: In this movie, what's the unexpected?

K: The crazy coincidences, like the cousin looking like the guy that people are looking for in the funny hat and jacket, when she's given the money. It's out of nowhere, where this one event changes every character. It has nothing to do with them changing, it's something external. He does that in movies.

H: So much of the movie is relatively harmless. Nothing bad happens to the girl, nothing bad happens to the guy or the friend. They just go along. Their lives kind of suck, but it's not that bad. It then takes this one event to raise the stakes and only at the end when they've taken money that's not theirs. Now they're in danger and things change and split.

K: But the danger doesn't even feel that dangerous. The other guys don't know where it came from, only she does. That's when most people would start talking about the movie at that point, but there's so much going on before all that.

H: The beginning is a slow build-up to that.

What did you think about this movie only having three characters, maybe four?

K: Including the Grandma, four. The three characters thing

H: The thing that it makes me think of is the chamber play, like Ingmar Bergman's films. This movie is Bergmanesque because the first two thirds of the movie, you ask "What is this movie even about?" It's just about people talking. It reminds me of Wild Strawberries (1957).

K: They're interesting enough characters though.

H: I'm not saying it's a bad thing.

K: A lot of people couldn't do that. They'd want to build the dialogue with crazy things, they can't just keep things quiet. These characters are really interesting. The main character, the guy, is a gambler and a cheat. And his friend is his accomplice. That could be a whole story right there, but that's not what it's about.

H: There's also, under everything, is Hungary. He's Hungarian but he doesn't like people knowing it. His friend kind of looks like him but is completely American. Then you've got the girl who is completely Hungarian in America. It's kind of like an evolution, not that it's progress. You see how the three of them interact.

K: You also have the older Hungarian.

H: The balance of the movie is shifted toward what it means to be Hungarian in America, but not in a cheezy way, or an overt way, or in a way that matters.

K: It's not even "American", it's how is it to be Hungarian outside of Hungary?

H: You don't get an American sense from it? The whole being on the road and driving from New York to Cleveland to Florida, and the hamburger stand - it's not like the fourth of July and they're shooting fireworks off, but...you have a good point too. It has to do with being an ex-patriot and what that means.

What do you think about the use of that Blues song over and over?

K: Can I ask you that question?

H: I thought it was a really cool song and another element of Americana. She sees America through her cousin and through the song and through working at a hamburger stand. That's how she relates to the culture, but otherwise she doesn't. The American dress that he gets for her she throws in the garbage. She wears big, loose, black, baggy clothes. Part of being Hungarian for her is not being the typical picture of femininity. She wears that goofy hat and those baggy clothes, even on the beach. They all look really strange on the beach because she's wearing the big black clothes, he's wearing a suit, and they look like urban people.

K: They don't fit in anywhere, they're misfits in Ohio.

H: Maybe in New York, because New York's full of misfits.

K: They don't fit in in Florida.

H: Cleveland is less like Ohio than it is like New York. It's a big city. When you say "Ohio", I think of small town, rural Ohio.

K: Seeing them out in the winter and seeing them on the beach with black and white, it looks the same. It's just this vast nothing.

H: You think of Florida as being this pretty, green place, but where they stay is crappy Florida. When they go on vacation, they go to Cleveland in the middle of the winter. They're always inhabiting these vast, vacant spaces. Even in Cleveland you don't see anyone on the street, you just see snow. In Florida, you don't see anyone either because no one stays in that backwater where they went. They're just going from one desert to the next. It's not surreal, it's just symbolic.

You talked about how they were gamblers and cheats, what is there in that?

K: He's taken his Hungarian self and hidden it. He's not going to do the Hungarian thing. He's taken this gambling persona, like "I can fend for myself". So, when she comes, he hides that from her. He doesn't want to take her to the tracks, he doesn't want to let her be involved in that. It's interesting that he's these things that he doesn't want to share with anybody. When she goes, he still wants her to be a part of him. It's really hard because when they get to Florida and here's the chance where they're going to go to the track and win a bunch of money and he can bring her, he pushes her away again. The friend is the foil, saying let's go we should bring her.

H: She shows him that she can be a better cheat than he can, because they come back having lost a lot of money and she comes back with all this criminal money. She didn't earn it and the most she did wrong was accept the money, but she shows him that she's a better criminal than he is.

The common conception of America is that we're either cowboys or we're gangsters. He chose to take on the second, not a gangster necessarily but a grifter, a conman, a cheat. He's taking the "American is the land of opportunity" - it's an opportunity to better yourself, but it's also an opportunity for you to steal from the people who are bettering themselves. It's a criminal paradise.

He and his friend look menacing in an awkward way, but they're really harmless. They're completely sensitive guys. For vacation, they go to visit the guy's cousin. They have no teeth.

What did you think of the ending? Were you frustrated by it?

K: I wasn't frustrated by it. I liked it. It wasn't a big statement about life, it was playing with the idea that things can change pretty big for them. There are huge changes, but that's not what the story's about. You're not going to see the result of those changes.

H: You wouldn't want to see that. It was a good place to end the story. So, why did he go to Hungary?

K: The easy thing to say would be, "Oh, he just really wanted to look for her and he followed through too much." Maybe she reminded him or gave him a sense of what he needed and what he liked. Maybe going to Hungary would help him.

H: He didn't treat her that well when they were living together. He always treated her like a kid that didn't know anything. Why, then, was he so interested in following her around?

K: When she left, he realized that he liked having her around.

H: It definitely seemed nonsexual though. Even the friend was kind of interested in her, but never in a way that he would ever act on.

K: No, she was like their little sister. But, she didn't think of them in any sort of way except guys she knew. She went to the movies with them and they acted like her big brothers but she wasn't interested in any of them.

H: She was only interested in what she wanted to do. It didn't really matter what other people thought. She was sort of defiant.

The friend ends up getting stuck holding the bag. The real question is what is he going to do?

K: He's screwed.

H: Yeah, because he's a follower. He just did what the other guy told him to do.

K: What do you think she does?

H: Goes back to working at the hamburger stand probably.

K: I think she goes to New York. She took a lot of the money.

H: She probably wouldn't go back to work, but maybe she'd go back to living with the aunt. She wasn't too crazy about Cleveland though. She didn't seem that crazy about New York either.

K: Maybe she'd stay in Florida. She really wanted to see Florida and they did it for her, but she really wanted to see real Florida.

H: Maybe she'll go to Hungary.

When I try to say the title of this movie, I always say Trapped in Paradise (1994) instead of "Stranger than Paradise". It would be really funny if you switched the three characters in that movie (Nicholas Cage, Dana Carvey, and Jon Lovitz) with the three characters in this movie. It would be funny if Jon Lovitz played the girl. full post

WALL-E - "Say Anything"

WALL-E (2008)

H: I was intrigued by what I'd heard about this movie, namely that there were lots of silent parts. What drives me nuts about modern animations is that, because they're typically made for kids, there's nonstop jibber jabber. Sure enough, the part of the movie that takes place on Earth is very quiet, allowing us to enjoy what we see.

K: I like the minimal noise, because it allows for these mechanical objects to use other ways to communicate, like the hand and the eyes. The hands were really important – that's how they communicated. Plus they didn't have lips, so they couldn't kiss. They had to go "bzzzzz".

When they first met, they were trying to use words but couldn't understand one another because they couldn't form the words correctly. They had to keep repeating and refining what they were saying until the other robot (and we) understood.

H: This movie seems meant for those of us lucky enough to grow up in the 1980s, what with cassette tapes, Nintendo, Johnny 5 (from Short Circuit (1986)), and E.T. (1982).

K: You know how all those other Wall Es existed on earth but broke or were shut down and he's the last one? Do you think it's saying something about fate and destiny, that he's the last one to survive? The Wall E slogan says he was built for one reason, it took him 200 years to find that reason. Are they trying to make a statement? Do you think the makers of this film believe that? I didn't think that until I read the slogan. I thought he was just a robot, but maybe his fate was to save the earth.

H: As far as the filmmakers' intentions, I think it's fairly common for movies aimed at kids (or movies where kids are welcome) to have fate/destiny as one of the main themes, because it's a simple theme to understand. When people teach kids about existence, they tend to present an ordered universe, where everyone has a purpose and their purpose is something to contribute.

K: The second time I saw this, I noticed with the rogue robots, even though they're messed up or function properly, they end up helping. It doesn't feel like a regular kids movie because it doesn't feel like they're cramming it down your throat. In stories like the Ugly Duckling, it feels forced. Mulan (1998) and Pocahantas (1995) are other examples, where the unlikely girl accomplishes more than we thought she would.

H: In those female hero movies, it's still a man that helps them out. In this movie, Eve ended up saving Wall E as much or more.

K: They're both pretty equal characters. If we talk about this in terms of Romantic Comedy, she has an established goal and he comes along and changes her way of thinking. He also has an established goal at the beginning and she becomes this brand new directive for him.

H: This movie is about how outcasts can triumph, despite being out of touch with what's now. It still does the typical thing of showing the outcast/underdog succeed, albeit in an enjoyable and appropriate way. Someday, though, I'd like to watch an animated film where the unlikely hero fails, like Wernor Herzog's Woyzeck (1979). What is it about animation that makes it necessary for happy endings? Also, how did animation and children become intrinsically linked? It's not like once photography was invented, people stopped painting for adults and only painted for kids.

K: Maybe it's because the stories for children would be drab on film when acted out. Animation was colorful and cheery.

H: But I think that's only true of the type of animation I'm talking about, that meant for kids. There are lots of scary colors in the crayon box that don't get used.

K: Adults like Comic Books, so I don't know where the link between adults and animation breaks. Is it because it's drawings moving around? Now we adapt comic books to live action, rather than animating them.

H: And the few mainstream animated films just for adults end up being mostly raunchy. I may be framing Roger Rabbit here, but…

K: We did see Grave of the Fireflies (1988) and that was an adult story.

H: Maybe it's an economics thing, as in it's more expensive to animate a movie and the only thing that pays is kids movies.

K: What about animation is attractive to kids?

H: I think it's the color, as you mentioned, but also the ability to make animals talk.

K: The ending reminds me of It Happened One Night (1934) because BAM, they get to hook up and then it's over. You don't have to see that fairy tale ending.

H: The fairy tale ending gets converted into a trippy animated spectacular that walks us through art history, which is cool.

K: And I find it fitting that Peter Gabriel wrote a suitable song to guide us on that journey.

H: It was like the "In Your Eyes" moment of Say Anything (1989). full post