Viraj's Weblog

I wasn't sure what to expect seeing the trailers for Shutter Island portraying a Scorsese movie as a horror. I just knew I had to see it because it was Scorsese.

What made this film even more interesting is that I just read My Lobotomy and Great and Desperate Cures, both excellent books on psychosurgery, or lobotomies to the layman. In Shutter Island, the term 'transorbital lobotomy' is thrown around as if describing a monster. It's set in the 1950's, when indeed such surgery was mainstream even to the point of doctors like Walter Freeman making house calls to do them. I especially liked the reference to there being 2 psychiatry frames of thought during this time: psychosurgery and therapy/pharmacology. You had one camp that felt physical changes were needed to cure people (e.g. lobotomies), and another where it was thought Freudian therapy would work. Freudian therapy soon meshed with pharmacology, and it has been brought up many times whether drug treatment is just a "chemical lobotomy" (quote from Walter Freeman).

The film also mentions Chlorpromazine (Thorazine) which was the first of the pharmacological treatments for mental disorder, making the movie scientifically convincing. That's one thing that that impressed me about this, just how well it was done . I mean, it is Scorsese after all, and you can tell. Most scenes are just perfect in all aspects, from the music, acting, camera work, and overall immersion. I wasn't sure how Scorsese would do dream scenarios, but this movie is impressive how well it conveys hallucinatory drugs and withdrawal. I guess DiCaprio was made to play this ever since Basketball Diaries.

Scorsese's films all include some kind of meditation on violence. It's not so much that he glorifies it, but he portrays it as a human disease that we all suffer from. There's a short dialogue between two people that realize this in the film, and you can't help but think it is the director's view on the human condition expressed in a few sentences.

The unrealistic part of the movie is the idea that an institution would work so hard during this era to cure someone without resorting to the quick-fix lobotomy. A masterful plan is made to cure a patient, and it is unconvincing that such a plan would ever really be employed. In those days, an ice pick through the eye socket was much less expensive.

And that ice pick does come, after all, glimmering in the sun. There is a good quote at the end, "Is it better to die a good man or live life as a monster?"

Took a bike ride to the AMC Mercado today to check out Doubt. It's generally about a priest accused of improper behavior with a student. It is based on a play, and through some of the dialogue you can tell. In fact it's mostly dialogue. It's an intelligent drama that works well on the big screen. Meryl Streep's performance is just amazing. I mean, she plays a really mean person, but does it flawlessly. There are really interesting subtleties she does that add so much to her character, like the way her eyes shift and the tilting of her neck. She is filled with distrust, for everyone.

I was surprised at just how comical the movie was, taking some rather taboo subject matter and still being able to find funny moments. Though I've never been in a Catholic school, it seemed to capture it pretty well and had a standard mean nun against little boys theme. The 'battle' scenes are between the nun (Streep) and the priest, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, also a great actor.

There is a certain subtext in the film that almost makes fun of religion and its formalities. The scenes in the rectory are especially interesting. As the priest and nun argue, they take turns sitting in the seat behind the desk. It becomes almost like a circus, with each side swapping deference depending on their position in the room. The writer is definitely poking fun at religion and the fact that those considered holy fall to the same evils as everyone else. The one hope is the happy-go-lucky nun who initially loves everyone and is mean to no one. She undergoes a change by the end of the movie, and it seems almost brought about by the bureaucracy of religion.

I would even go so far to say the movie is anti-religion. Judging by the high reviews, it makes sense. These days you can't make a movie glorifying religion and get good reviews. Atheists will shoot your movie down. It reminded me of the religious attacks in There Will Be Blood. In that movie, religious corruption is attacked physically, again with a subtle attack on organized religion itself.

Doubt takes a different approach, as if it is saying there are some good things in religion. It says only pay attention to aspects like compassion and love. It says disregard the institutionalized formalities and illogical faith. It's really saying what most agnostics think: religious text is literature, nothing more. There are some great stories in the Bible, and some really bad ones too. The characters in the movie seem like a dying breed, forever walled inside their concrete garden shielded from the city's non-religion. Various infiltrations come in the form of technology like ball-point pens and radios. The nun refuses to accept them, and even accuses the wind of changing like never before. But these things creep in anyways as a constant threat, and it's inevitable that the religious figures will be overwhelmed. It's subtle, but I think this movie shows more of a death of religion than anything else. Caveat emptor.

Upon reading some reviews of this movie, it sounded like a feel-good racial harmony picture. I've liked Eastwood's directing and acting. He is a masterful storyteller, so I decided to check this out. What's interesting about this film was how gritty and real it felt. Eastwood has a knack for getting at the primitive feelings in characters. The lead character proudly says racist remarks, and at times he really means bad by them. It's those gut feelings that all humans have when they see someone that looks different from them. But it's not only other races he dislikes. It's generally anyone that's not like him, including his priest. Clint Eastwood can show hatred in his facial expressions like no one else.

The film is basically old war man meets gangland violence. Even though he's been through war, he's no match for the stupidity of kids with guns. He walks a tightrope pushing everyone's buttons, and eventually he knows what's coming. It's a good movie that shows the sign of our times. I especially like the comical parts. Some of them are racist and vulgar, but it's not done in a mean-spirited way at all. The characters understand they are different and are ok with brutally making fun of each other.

The plot has some unlikely dramatic events. But then again it wouldn't be a movie if it didn't.

I'm a fan of Primer, so this new movie about time travel intrigued me. It's another low budget flick. Turns out it was only playing in San Jose, so I decided to take the 30-mile bike ride (15 miles each way) to check it out.

First a word about my bike ride. I took this route and going there in the daytime was an enjoyable ride. Biking back on a Saturday night was not fun at all. I think I almost got killed twice. Both times were oncoming cars making left turns and not seeing me coming. I've noticed that drivers around here are getting worse, and today I need to buy a brighter light. As a biker, I'm also used to the standard yelling out of windows. One passenger tried to scare me by yelling "Boom!" like a gunshot as they passed me. Heh, maybe I should start carrying a gun with me?

Anyway, about the movie. It was pretty fun and dealt with the common doppelganger theme. These movies are funny because they try to portray recursion dramatically. I'm always interested in how they do it and whether it actually makes sense visually. Luckily this only recursed a few levels deep and was intriguing to follow. It's dubbed as a horror/sci-fi, and there are some scenes of blood, but not much. It's a case where a man finds a time machine. But he could not have found the time machine if he had not been led to it by a double that found it and went back in time. Repeat.

For a low budget film, it was nicely done. It's one of those films where things happen that don't make much sense. However, after some iterations, it does.

Upon first glancing at the IMDB page for this movie I thought it was a Bollywood one, and I'm not much of a fan of those. Then I saw the director 'Danny Boyle'. This guy did some awesome movies like Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, and 28 Days Later. One thing about all of those movies is the great use of music, almost as if the music is driving the movie. Slumdog is like that too, and the best way I can describe it is an Indian version of City of God.

I think most people didn't expect to see so much violence in the movie, but it really brings to light the fallacy of what many people think India is like: some exotic place where everyone is nice. The movie gets pretty brutal as it follows a boy rising out of the slums. Granted, there are other movies like Salaam Bombay! that also do a good job of showing the seedy side of India. However, the vivid cinematography in Slumdog is unmatched.

Boyle does a great job of filming the trains with the same technical fascination as a boy with a Lego set. Everything about the movie is just really nicely done.

Charlie Kaufman is a great writer who normally takes melancholy trips into the psyche. His earlier movies like Being John Malkovich and Adaptation have a fairly humorous tone about them. Synechdoche is labeled a 'Comedy' in IMDB, but I don't think I or the audience laughed once during the movie. There were some amusing moments, and they were funny in a way because they are true to human thought, but also uncomfortable to admit. Synechdoche is pronounced like Schenectady. Yes, I had to look it up because I wanted to know how to pronounce the movie I'm buying a ticket for.

I honestly wanted to walk out of this movie about 30 minutes from the end. It just became a bit non-sensical with characters becoming other characters. Then I realized Kaufman employs a similar technique in his other films: recursion. Adaptation had an author writing a book about an author writing a book ... In this movie he blurs the line between the characters people portray and the real characters (also actors). He's generally conveying the philosophical idea of humans constantly changing their portrayals of who they are based on interactions with others.

From Ebert's review:

Here is how it happens. We find something we want to do, if we are lucky, or something we need to do, if we are like most people. We use it as a way to obtain food, shelter, clothing, mates, comfort, a first folio of Shakespeare, model airplanes, American Girl dolls, a handful of rice, sex, solitude, a trip to Venice, Nikes, drinking water, plastic surgery, child care, dogs, medicine, education, cars, spiritual solace -- whatever we think we need. To do this, we enact the role we call "me," trying to brand ourselves as a person who can and should obtain these things.

The movie is dream-like, with time whizzing by without any indication. It's really about hopes and failures, and how we are all actors in our own plays. There was a bit too much self-pity. Just when I was almost fed up, the ending was something that really brought it all together. Philosophically it is not a new groundbreaking idea, but it's a good portrayal. It's a really sad and hopeless ending, but it made sense. The director becomes the directed. At every point there is a voice in his ear telling him how to respond to the world, until he is directed to let go and die.