Friggin’ Harry Potter

Harry Potter had a wretched beginning. Its fair to say that Rowling upped her ante  – as the series progressed each book she delivered was more mature and developed than the one that proceeded it. I appreciate Rowling for building a complete and well realized world and for creating memorable fictive ideas and characters. I appreciate her more to improving her craft as she wrote. Her’s is as important a contribution to literature as the Lord of the Rings.

The film series developed along similar lines. Chris Columbus’ early entries are affairs for children – highlighting the fanciful (read: trivial) elements that defined those early books. After the series’ directorship passed on to more talented and capable directors the films took off. I’ve been a fan since David Yates took over. I remember watching the 5th film and thinking to myself: “aha, this is why people like these stories.” The last Harry Potter (film # 7) was an achingly beautiful, melancholy, and convincing story framed with gorgeous and daring images. This film is not as contemplative as its predecessor. It isn’t mulling over any ideas and it is as weighted with backstory as the concluding piece of an 8 film series presumably must be. It is, however, a meditation on heroism and sacrifice.

SPOILER WARNING

Harry Potter #9: The Philosopher's Mustache

I think JK Rowling is a deeply cynical woman but I’ll give her credit for being a good writer. In Severus Snape she created an incredible secret hero for her multi-volume Harry Potter series. I kept thinking about Snape during the screening of Harry Potter 7 part 2 that I attended. Near the end of this film there is a reveal. He is viciously attacked by a giant computer generated image. Moments before he expires, he implores Harry Potter to bottle one of his tears. Later, while his friends and teachers are being murdered, Harry uses magic to view Snape’s memories. He learns that he owes his life to this man, for whom he had previously possessed nothing but hatred and contempt. In fact, for the first three books of Rowling’s series we’re maneuvered into disliking Snape as well. But I never did and I want to comment on this.

I was too old to ever see myself in Harry. I’ve taught teenagers. I know how despicably arrogant and self absorbed they are. Harry is no different. Up until the final moment of the film he’s really still only thinking about himself. I always felt bad for the teachers at Hogwarts. They are teaching children how to warp the fabric of reality and the children are more interested in eating snot-flavored jelly beans and living frogs made of chocolate to listen to what they have to say. I always thought the great irony of Harry Potter is that its ostensible hero (the aforementioned Harry Potter) is kind of a terrible person (being a teenager and all). Harry refuses to submit to authority. He’s rude, pushy, abrasive, and obnoxious to other children and to adults. He doesn’t listen to anyone.  Harry’s not especially book smart. He’s not a particular bright or apt student – at school we only ever see him ignoring his homework to fart around with his best friend Ron Weasley. In fact he actually drops out of school at the end of the series 6th book, which makes him the wizarding world’s Tom Cruise.

Although I am a doctor, I could not independently verify the claim made by this photograph.

We watch a heartbreaking montage and learn that Snape, who loved Harry’s mother, has been watching over Harry since his parent’s death. He has protected him, saving him from death at several points over the series’ course. JK Rowling is a secret genius. She gives us Harry Potter – who is fated to save the world by accident because he isn’t really capable of saving the world. It seems like a cheap trick but some how it works. Rowling has assessed the human condition and revealed the truth: we’re incapable of effecting any kind of change unless it is an accident. We’re expressly told this in the new film. Snape’s memories reveal that the adults around Harry had formed a conspiracy. They were keeping him alive long enough to let the series’ villain kill him in hopes that the villain would kill himself in the process. See where Rowling earns the cynicism? Yet she hands us Snape, who’s moral complexity redeems the entire story.

There is a larger cycle at work here which deepens Rowling’s cynicism. The rise of Voldemort (the most evil wizard who ever lived!) was preceded by the rise and defeat of another most evil wizard who ever lived! The conclusion of this film suggests that a peace of sorts has settled over Hogwarts but I wouldn’t be too sure that it will last. Rowling’s world presumes the necessity of artificial divisions between persons of magic. Students at Hogwarts are divided into classes and made to compete with one another. Major sources of conflicts in these stories arise between students  simply because they are members of different houses. Griffindor hates Syltherin. Why? The stories’ heroes – the characters who make the clearest (and most difficult moral choices) are all members of Slytherin. Ironically these characters (Severus Snape and Draco Malfoy) have been promised and rewarded with everything they desire if they will only serve Voldemort. Dumbledore and Hogwarts offer them nothing but contempt and, in the one scene where I laughed out loud, a place in Hogwart’s dungeons. What kind of a world is this?

This is a dark film. Following an attack by monsters and evil wizards and hipsters we are shown a ruined Hogwarts who’s hallways are littered with the dead bodies of its students.  Many, many fictional characters died in the making of this movie. At one point we see Ron Weasley’s ex-girlfriend being eaten by an angry looking homeless man.

Yep - the one in pink. Eaten by a homeless man.

In a poorly rendered purgatory, Dumbledore tells Harry to “not pity the dead… pity the living and above all, those who live without love.” If this series has a moral, then Rowling seems to suggest that life offers no reward for moral virtue or heroism. This movie indicates a larger epistemological truth. There are only the inevitable realities of death and loneliness and in the Harry Potter-verse heroes must suffer them the same as villains. I’m at a point in my life where I’ve seen starry eyed optimism meet cold reality. As an expectant figure, Harry Potter doesn’t help me consider this reality with anything other than icy resentment. If there is any benefit to heroism (real or imagined) it is that heroes endow the world with real hope. I don’t believe in Harry but I do believe in Severus Snape.

Super 8 was not so great

I think I’ve figured out JJ Abrams. See Abrams loves boxes. He gave a TED talk about them. Imagine that each of his films is a box, covered in exquisitely beautiful gift wrap. He hands it to you and he says, “Hey! I’m JJ Abrams. I’m famous and I’m a genius. Here’s a present. For $8.50 its yours.” The box is entrancingly beautiful. You decide that you must have it. Decision doesn’t even enter into it, your response is visceral. You dig around in your pocket for the money. He takes it and disappears in a whiff of smoke clutching your money. See, you just got had.

You take the box home. You put it on your mantle. It’s much to lovely to be unwrapped you reason. Secure in your have of uncomplicated thoughts, you fall asleep. But what if you opened the box? What would you find inside it? Nothing friends, absolutely nothing. JJ Abrams is all flash and style and no substance. His films are glossy and lovely and filled with beautiful people but they don’t mean anything. Hell, even Transformers 3 had ideas about heroism and responsibility and special needs robots but Abrams? The best his protagonist can manage in Super 8 is, “bad things happen.” Uh huh kid? Wait, what? That’s it? That’s what 7,000 years of human culture has produced: JJ Abrams and Super 8.

The movie’s plot is derivative of a 1000 predecessors. A big ugly monster comes to town and inexplicably destroys everything while eating everyone it meets. The military comes but they are too busy shooting at each other to actually fight it and why bother? The monster is bullet proof. We’re told that its technology defies the laws of physics. Keep that in mind for later. There are complications – we aren’t really sure of anything in this false document. For example, everything we learn about the monster comes to us through the filter of an apparently indestructible psychotic middle school science teacher who is moved to free the alien after forming a psychic bond with it. Did I mention that the alien is psychic? That’s right, physically touching the alien melds your mind with it such that you and the alien are “one” (whatever that means).

So this alien gets free in small town USA. It eats some people. The town’s deputy sheriff walks around and frowns and yells at people. All the dogs leave. Dakota Fanning JR pouts. We learn that the alien monster was kept by the government and experimented on for a long time and that made it pretty angry. We cut to Tom Petty (who looks awful, by the way).

I know its not Tom Petty - but isn't it more fun to think that Ron Eldard is playing Tom Petty in this movie?

The alien eats some people and steals some car radios. The military sets the town on fire. Toby Emmerich crashes his bus and gets eaten. Some kids go back into town to rescue Dakota Fanning JR. Then their dads go into town to rescue them. It turns out the alien just wants to go home.

Here’s the thing though – the alien is intelligent enough to build a spaceship from hubcaps and power lines and microwave ovens and to outsmart every other character in the movie. But the alien is neither empathic nor mature enough to not punish people who have absolutely nothing to do with its suffering. The alien is psychic (remember, I said this would be important). It knows that its victims had no idea it was being hurt. It knows they weren’t complicit in its pain. It knows they are completely innocent and yet, it captures them, ties them up and hangs them upside down, crushes them and devours them whole. The alien is an asshole.

But it is the idea behind the movie that irks me. The message of this movie is fantastic. Because the military is too incompetent to kill the monster, it flies away in its spaceship. Are we expected to root for the monster? It’s a monster for crying out loud. It eats humans and possesses superior technology that defies the laws of physics. However, we’re expected to side with the monster because it was grumpy. Ok, does that mean I can eat people if they cut me off in traffic? If I’m having a bad day can chew off your leg? See here’s the thing; JJ Abrams doesn’t understand human emotion. He doesn’t realize that if you’re bummed out its no ok to lash out at the person nearest to you just because they’re there. There’s no growth or maturity in this film. I’m convinced the only reason the alien didn’t eat the little boys and girl in the end is because it had eaten two adults seconds before their confrontation.

This is one of those movies where the bad guy is really the good guy and the good guys are idiots. Toby Emmerich was smart. He might not have been nice but he was right. Why shouldn’t the military study the alien? We can’t be sure how it arrived on earth. Is it a scout for an invading force? The alien eats people. So when it leaves Earth at the end of the movie it has presumably returned to its planet with news that it has discovered the universe’s largest all you can eat buffet. Have you seen Cloverfield? Consider Super 8 a Lizzy Caplan-less prequel. Why would you want a Lizzy Caplan-less prequel to Cloverfield?

Why wouldn't you call her if you had her phone number?

Why JJ Abrams? I guess my biggest problem at the heart of this movie is that there’s actually a pretty decent idea at its heart. Whenever he remembers to, Abrams comes back to his ostensible subjects – a group of middle school kids who are making a movie. Then, because he can’t help himself, he derails his subjects at every point with stupid subplots (the alien, the science teacher, ANGRY DADS, and an eye-rollingly dumb romance).  Why couldn’t someone have said to JJ Abrams, “look – just stick with the interesting characters and idea you have there. You don’t need a giant, gross monster that is exactly like the other giant gross monster you already made a movie about.”

Can you tell the difference? I bet JJ Abrams can’t either.

I wish they had. I could be a whimsical reflection on childhood and friendship – the movie could entertain us and make us laugh without the exploitation of cheesy CGI and unrealistic SFX. The movie might help us feel something or think. Oh wait, they did make that movie and no one watched it.  Its called Son of Rambow and it is 1,000,000 times better than this movie (if you couldn’t tell) because it has a heart and a brain and courage.

If it had Lizzy Caplan it would be perfect.

Seriously, she makes everything better.

Alas perfection is an inheritance reserved for us in high spheres.

I have some ideas about how JJ Abrams wants to be Steven Spielberg and some really good jokes about the Stay-Puff Marshmallow man that will have to wait. After so many angry posts this week I think I’m going to can it and just say that I’m disappointed in him. I think Abrams is a lot like M.Night Shyamalan. They’re obviously talented directors who have a lot of good ideas. Unfortunately they drank the Kool-Aid and they think they’re auteurs. An auteur is a filmmaker who writes, directs, produces, shoots, and edits their own films. Steven Soderberg is an auteur. Wes Anderson is an auteur. Francois Trouffant was an auteur. You may not like these directors, you may not have even heard of them but if you have then you’d be a fool to argue that their movies weren’t trying for something other than bigger box office receipts. Abrams and Shyamalan are not auteurs. They’re not. In fact, they can hire me the next time they sit down to make a movie. My job will be to say to them – don’t write this movie. You’re terrible, terrible writers. Hire someone else to write your movie. Hire someone who is not a hack. I’ll do this job for free if it means I don’t have to sit through another big dumb alien monster movie featuring Slusho drinks by JJ Abrams which means in 2014 we’re guaranteed another big dum alien monster movie featuring Slusho drinks by JJ Abrams.

Transformers 3: Less than Meets the Eye

Spoiler alert: there are no robot balls in Transformers 3. If that is disappointing, I feel your pain. I’m filing this spoiler away in Wewatch’s “unsolved cinematic mystery file” next to Mystique’s unippled self.

Have you ever read the Bible? I prepared an elaborate table of notes about how the plot of Transformers 3 compares to the story of the Bible. Imagine if God sided with the Devil and Patrick Dempsey against humanity. Our only hope rests with Jesus, Tyrese, and Stone Cold Steve Austin. Now imagine most of those people are giant, special needs robots. That’s the plot of Transformers 3 in a nutshell. Ok, back to the bible. St. Peter said a lot of good things. In his own part of the Bible (one of two) he warns Christians that many of them will fall into apostasy and return to their former sins like dogs that eat their own vomit. That metaphor has always struck me as an especially vivid description of how repeating harmful behavior looks to people who know the difference. I quote this scripture when my parents bug me about dating. It never sticks. But it makes me wonder. Does the dog eat its vomit because it is a dog? Is it bound by its nature? I wonder if the dog is aware of how disgusting its actions are. Or does the vomit taste delicious in a way we can’t fathom because our own taste buds are conditioned to like other things? Eating vomit would be easy enough. I suppose it appears to generally have the color and consistency of avocado and I know lots of people who eat avocado. Some of them even get after me because I don’t. And why would I? It reminds me of dog’s vomit!

I’m beating around the bush here because I’m ashamed to admit that even after reading the reviews I’m still kind of excited about Transformers 3. I almost bought the first season of Transformers: Beast Wars at Walmart today (It’s a late 80’s/early 90’s thing. You wouldn’t understand unless you’d been there). I held out until I had at least seen The Tree of Life. I would have already gone but I hate Sean Penn for breaking up Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansen. She’d finally found someone to class her act up.

About the film? What can I say that hasn’t already been said? One doesn’t expect nuance or surprises in Michael Bay’s work. I think that’s why he’s so popular. You can count on Michael Bay because you know exactly what you’re getting into when you watch one of his films. Bros, babes, and booms. This is fine for what it is, but this film surprised me somehow. Maybe its the state of things in the world. When pollution, war, disease, poverty, disasters, collapse are sandwiched in our mind between “popular uprisings” and suicide bombs watching giant special needs robots destroy Chicago is so unreal as to lack any kind of impact.  I’m not saying that the movie was meaningless. This is probably the best live-action giant, stupid robot movie I’ve ever seen. But, the film means nothing because although Bay is surgically precise in showing the effects of the robots’ devastating terrorism the real world is even worse. Paramount spent 195 million dollars to produce this film. That’s small potatoes. It was a dull,  tired, and ragged experience. The internet is abuzz with news that Bay recycled several CGI-intensive shots from earlier films. Why would he recycle shots? Was he all Michael Bay-ed out? Was he too lazy? Wouldn’t they give him money? I don’t get it. Has the malaise and rot of this 21st century world finally reached Hollywood? If even Michael Bay is forced to act with restraint we might be heading for the end guys. Seriously.

Wasteland

I lived in Sao Paulo, Brazil from 2003-2005. Sao Paulo’s an interesting city. For Brazil (and most of South America) it is like New York, Chicago, and LA rolled into one sour biscuit full of traffic, crime, and the glamorous allure of a better life. The city spreads from both ends of the horizon. It is an incredible place to live and be, but not for everyone. In capitalism for everyone who wins there is someone who is losing. Every time some one moves up the ladder someone else is moving down it.

There is a class of people who live in Brazil who are called “catadores de lixo.” Catar is a Portuguese verb that means “to pick up,” “glean,” or “gather.” In Sao Paulo these catadors are people who push carts along the city streets gathering metal, plastic, and paper for recycling. They sell what they gather to dealers for a pittance. Beside the drunks and the gypsies, they were the most pathetic people I met while I lived there. They occupied the lowest tier of their society. They are invisible. I know – I saw one get hit by a city bus. There was no ambulance called. The bus didn’t even stop. It is an awful thing to see a man die like that.

No one chooses this life. Its forced on them by birth or bad luck.

Oh yeah bro, its full of all kinds of poop.

Wasteland is a documentary about a group of catadores who live on the edge of the largest slum in Rio de Janeiro. But it isn’t really about the catadores. It is a movie about a Brazillian artist who comes to Rio de Janeiro ostensibly to make a film about making art from the experience of these catadores. Wasteland challenges its audience in two fundamentally different ways. First it fills the audience’s mind with images of people who literally live in garbage. They live in garbage every day of their lives. Their homes are made of garbage. They wear garbage. In one of the movies most poignant scenes we meet a woman who scrounges food from the dump, cooks it, and sells it to the catadores. Talking head interviews confirm what this scene leads us to suspect: they eat the garbage too. When the camera crew follows one picker back to her home we see that they even make their homes from it. We’re never really shown the people who produce this mess. But we are shown the people who have to deal with the mess they create. We watch a scene where the workers divide bags of trash into rich trash and slum trash based on its weight. The film challenges us again when we watch Vik Muniz state  that its success is not in telling the story of the catadores or honoring their struggles through representation but in allowing some of them to have access to wealth sufficient to escape the garbage dump.

Muniz is a smart man. He might also be a wise man. During the film he is accused by the film’s producer of exploiting the workers by exposing them to the idea that their lives might be beautiful. He responds as honestly as he can by saying that it is his intention to shock them out of the dump. That’s something to think about. This is a good film to find things to think about. To quote Matt Damon circa Good Will Hunting “[it] will knock you on your ass.”