5th Monday Ugh: The Wicker Man

Might I interest you in some bees?

In 1967, David Pinner published a horror novel called "Ritual." Six years later, Robin Hardy directed a very highly regarded (and very R-rated) horror classic based on that book he called "The Wicker Man." Over three decades later, Neil LaBute and Nicholas Cage thought maybe they could do it better. The result? A film I must admit I'm a bit obsessed with: the 2006 remake. Now, hear me out, I'm not saying it's a good film; in fact, everybody pretty much agrees it's one of the worst horror films ever made. When I say I'm "obsessed," I mean I am obsessed with its badness. I've seen this movie a lot of times (and I do mean a lot); I've even watched the director's commentary! So here's my two cents on what makes it bad, and what it is about that badness that makes it sort of irresistible.

Like the best bad movies, this film means well; LaBute is artistically-minded, if nothing else. The problem is he makes the wrong choice at pretty much every turn. There is some degree of talent involved here, but it is misused and poorly focused. You can feel the intention behind the screen, but what actually reaches us is impossible to take serious, confusing, and at times downright non-nonsensical. Why does this film take place in a reality so alien to our own? Why do the characters have such trouble just completing their sentences?? The humans here do not act like humans, so it's impossible to care about what's happening. They stutter around their thoughts and actions as if removed from humanity. They laugh and fight and smile and scream, but we don't have a real sense of them doing so in a logical progression based on what's happening. You've never seen people laugh about saying there's a shark in a bag until you've seen "The Wicker Man."

I don't know Nicholas Cage personally, and maybe he's a totally cool guy, but what I see when I watch this movie is someone who is extremely eccentric, maybe even a little disturbed, and it doesn't feel like acting. In the director's commentary, LaBute explains that drastic revisions were made during the actual filming because Cage would say, and I'm paraphrasing here, "No. This isn't how I would do it if I were really Edward. I would do such and such. I would do this instead." You can see the logic, right? As an actor, he's envisioning himself in the situation and saying it would be more realistic if he handled it differently. This might hold water if Cage were like you or me, but what we actually see is an inept policeman doing very little police work and a lot of erratic, bizarre, often somewhat hateful things. We see Cage lose his temper over and over. He punches people. He screams. He seems tense and frustrated, but we never really get the feeling that it's about anything. He simply has these feelings and does these things. Watching the film, you might find yourself thinking, "Hm. I don't think I would have thought to handle that situation in such a manner." Also, how can someone act so uninterested in what they are doing and yet so angry at the same time? Truly, he is a master.

Many times, I watched the film with the help of
the Rifftrax commentary. I even got Kevin Murphy
to sign my copy of the movie!! "Not the bees!"

My absolute favorite thing about the movie is how the opening scene has absolutely nothing to do with the plot as a whole. Clearly, SOMETHING supernatural is happening; Cage watches an 18-wheeler slam into a parked car, killing the two passengers (a woman and her daughter), and their bodies are never found. That's kind of interesting, right? Who were they? How do they relate to Cage being summoned to Summersisle to look for his missing daughter? Well, despite constant flashbacks reminding us of this traumatic incident, we get to the end of the film, to the plot twist about why Cage was coerced to coming to the island in the first place, and we find...nothing. The backbone of the film, the "ritual," the Wicker Man itself, has nothing--may I repeat this? NOTHING--to do with the mother-daughter tragedy from the opening scene. As a director, what could possibly be the appeal of doing this? Because it's weird? Maybe LaBute hopes to draw us in with the incident, and then let us forget about it, but how can we when he shows it to us no fewer than five times throughout the entire movie?

At every corner of the film there's something that might have worked, that maybe could get the juices flowing, the mind turning, but we always come up empty-handed. LaBute sets the stage over and over, he hints at a greater mystery, he makes promises, but in the end it all turns out to be a ruse. No, I don't mean a ruse to fool Edward, I mean a ruse to fool us. At best, this film is an insult to its viewers; at worst it is an unfulfilled, high-budget dream.

-MA

Some bonus Wicker Man fun!

Comedy trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_mW8mBzmHo
Who burned Nick's toast?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV-D60nRvCU
Conan's Nicholas Cage Terror Alert System: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C102uy70qA
The Rifftrax commentary: http://www.rifftrax.com/rifftrax/wicker-man

The Mass Effect Trilogy - Bioware (Videogame Series)

Now you know where all those "N7" t-shirts you see sometimes are from.

With the recent talk about the next Mass Effect game starting development, this is as good a time as any to cover a series I've been wanting to review for a while: the Mass Effect Trilogy. For the uninitiated, Mass Effect is an action RPG originally developed for the Xbox 360 and later ported to PC and PS3. Bioware (the company that created and produced ME) was founded by three doctors who had been friends since med school. They pooled together their resources and created their first game in 1996. Since then they have created hit after hit, filling what they perceived to be a void in the market with serious action role playing titles.

Set about two hundred years in the future, Mass Effect is the pinnacle of their achievement to date. You play as Commander Shepard, male or female, tough and reckless or thoughtful and empathetic--you choose. The major storyline, involving an apparently indomitable race of super-intelligent machines known as Reapers, doesn't actually change all that much on the large scale, but your decisions affect which characters live and die, how you get from point A to point B, and every logistic and interpersonal relationship in between*.

ME is not the first series to focus on the player being able to make decisions that affect the world around them, but it may be the game that (to date anyway) most capitulates the sensation of actually having made these choices and owning up to what becomes of them. At least when I played it, I know I really felt as if I were in some sense Commander Shepard. Partly this is because my character looked like me, but also because the games allow me to approach situations at least in the same ballpark as how I would if I were really there. They have even allowed for the development of romantic interests in each game that really add to the emotional interest of the gamer without getting in the way too much or being too cheesy to take seriously.

Liara T'Soni, one of the romantic possibilities in the game.

Another aspect of the games that is commendable is how familiar they get you with the different species that populate the Milky Way. There is a real sense of community in the galaxy as they have created it, with all the good and bad blood that entails, and you are right in the thick of it. You start to understand how the races are different; you learn about their pasts and what they--as a culture--value.

It is not perfect. The first game is rather glitchy and is almost impossible to play for those who are not familiar with video games in general, which is a real shame considering these titles could go a long way toward inviting new people to experience the power of video games. The choices can sometimes feel like damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't scenarios. Not every possible side quest is as thrilling as one might hope, but these are minor issues in a game so packed with interesting characters, ideas, and decisions that two hours can pass by in the proverbial blink of an eye.

I recommend these games to gamers, of course, but also to others; those who perhaps have wondered what the fuss is about video games. Think of it as an opportunity to expand your personal artistic horizons. And if that guy or gal you have your eye on is a ME fan, I can almost guarantee they'll give you the time of day if you ask them to help you go through the games, because watching someone play ME is almost as fun as playing it yourself.

-MA

*I don't think I'll ever get over the fact that "in between" isn't "inbetween." Between between between.

Survival In Auschwitz - Levi (Memoir)

Primo Levi’s “Survival in Auschwitz”, originally titled more evocatively as “If This is a Man,” documents the experience of the author as a prisoner in a Nazi war camp during World War II. Mr. Levi has chosen to tell his story in the form of memoir—meaning these events are simply as he remembers them, not meant to be a definitive listing of events as history remembers them—where he could have easily written a historical non-fiction account by citing sources, included various statistics, and speaking to others who experienced similar cruelties under Fascist hand. Such a book might have been viewed as more objective and comprehensive than Levi’s memoir, especially if he also included the thoughts and opinions of his leaders in the camp, or those sympathetic with the Third Reich. Instead, he has written a short, subjective account of events, permeated with his personal thoughts and opinions. He does not even include the number of Jews (or any other group) that were killed during the war; there are no wartime percentages.  

Levi as a young man.

Perhaps as important as what the choice of memoir is able to show is what it does not show.  Levi does not include the opinions of others, except as they where expressed to him, or as he assumed them to be. He does not describe in-depth his life before capture, and the book ends quite abruptly with the Soviet liberation. Thus, the book is explicitly the account of one man’s struggle in Auschwitz.  

Written in a lucid and powerful prose style, "Survival" is designed to show you the awful journey of just one man, the idea being that once the reader understands the ordeal of just one man enduring the camps he or she can apply that better understood suffering to the unimaginable number of millions of human beings who were murdered through the course of the war.

One of the most horrific aspects of the Nazi movement in particular was the mass killing of Jewish individuals. In order to help the reader understand this influx in a way that numbers cannot, Levi portrays the constantly interchanging masses—the musslemen, as they are known by their fellow prisoners—who come into the camp, then are replaced by a seemingly identical influx of men as they disappear to the ovens, die of dehydration or exhaustion, or (much less rarely) are shot or beaten to death. This creates a feeling of waste. There are always more prisoners coming in, no one leaves through the front gate.  

Every day Levi recounts about the camp we understand that more and more people are effectively thrown away like so much garbage. The fact that Levi cannot keep track of the days himself only adds to the impotent feelings of inevitable death for the majority of the men who come through camp. In addition to this, it is interesting to note that the gas chambers where much of the murder takes place are never described in much detail. Instead, the prisoners refer to it as “the selection” or the “going to the chimney.”  They may very well imagine what it would be like to go to the chambers themselves; the reader is never shown this. It is the book’s opinion that this is a lonely journey, almost sacred, and belongs alone to those souls who had to make it. It is interesting to note that there were no survivors of gas chambers once the gas had been released; therefore there is no record of what it must have been like.

Years after the ordeal,  Levi wrote his experiences down.
Like so many survivors of the Holocaust, he dealt with serious
depression the rest of his life.

             

Time is one of the many uncertainties of Levi's daily life. There are seasons, certainly, for these things affect comfort and the likelihood of survival, but there are not "days" as you and I know them.  The days bleed together, repeating themselves over and over.  On one page Mr. Levi has one bedmate, on the next he has another; these transitions are not clearly defined, mimicking the lack of purpose and control that Levi himself must have felt.

In contrast, some events which might seem minor—a conversation with an old man before a selection, a chat in the bathroom about washing, someone helping someone else lifting a heavy workload—are explained in explicit detail, showing how certain events would stick in the Levi’s mind. This is very different from what the reader would see in a diary, documenting the day’s events based on their perceived importance at the time. Levi chose to present his book this way because it is his sad tale. It is not a number, or a statistic. It is not the journey of every man and woman in the camps. It is his, and it enlightens the world to the fact that there are millions of such stories, each tragically unique.

I recommend this shortish memoir without reservation to those who have not yet had the chance to read it, and would like to remind those who have that it exists.

MA 9.3.2013