City on fire (rats in the streets!)

It has been shamefully long since I've updated. Rest assured, things have happened. My bed exploded, I fashioned a new one, I went to the beach a lot, the world lost two Kennedys, I joined a church choir (yep), a woman from home, whom I loved and admired, lost her fight with cancer, and my county has suffered the largest fire in its history. I've had a lot thoughts, but not the energy to order them into pleasant paragraphs. But, in the great tradition of our era, I went to the movies yesterday, to escape the heat, the smoke, and my own spirals of stress and anxiety. That mission was thoroughly accomplished, along with the side effect of giving me something to write about that is unrelated to the sturm und drang of the moment.

I initially went to see District 9. Sci-fi dork that I am, I had every intention of having an ass-kicking good time. However, it was apparent from early on that while District 9 might well be a good movie, it was too dark, the violence too "human", and the allegory too brutal for it to be fun. Perhaps it becomes more hopeful as the story continues, but I'll have to wait to find out until it's released on video. Weak stomached baby that I am, the jerky-wandering movements of the hand held camera made me so nauseous that 40 minutes in, sitting there with my eyes closed trying not to puke, I decided this wasn't the flick for me. I mustered my courage to go out to guest services and ask to exchange my ticket for another movie (I considered just sneaking in, but was immediately overwhelmed with fantasies of uniformed theatre employees entering with giant flashlights, finding me, and banning me from ever returning to the Grove again... a fate worse than death!), and although I lost all my nerd-cred with the obvious Scinephile behind the counter, it was worth is because I successfully finagled a free ticket to see the Time Traveler's Wife.

Despite its obvious girliness, I've known since I first saw the Time Traveler's Wife trailer that it was designed to make me weep (no, I haven't read the book, although having seen the film, it is now definitely on my list). I like Rachel McAdams, I like sentimental stories about true love, and I LOVE time travel . Also, this slate article that I tweeted a couple of weeks ago (http://www.slate.com/id/2225223/) about how the Time Traveler's Wife fits with various theories of time travel whetted my appetite for some relatively plausible space/time goodness. I was not disappointed. Although there is a scientific component to the protagonist's travels, and an inherent relationship between those travels and the laws of the universe, the film wisely aligns itself more with the structure of magical realism than that of science fiction, (along the same lines as Eternal Sunshine...) explaining the concept simply and completely early on, so that thence forth these trips through time are the catalyst for the narrative, rather than its subject. This frees the story to focus on the emotional rather than the technical, and eliminates the liability of creating lofty, convoluted exposition which runs the risk of either confusing the audience, or bastardising the underlying science.

The emotional journey of the central characters, so in tune and yet so out of sync, is the heart of the film. Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana as Claire and Henry are both so lovely and sincere that the few problems I had with the film as a whole (the inconsistent perspective being foremost, I found it odd that we followed neither Henry nor Claire's timeline, but a seemingly random mishmash of the two) were far out weighed by how caught up I was in their love story. I also must give major credit to all four child actors, each of whom played their parts with understated emotional honesty. Mad props to director Robert Schwentke (who also got a solid performance out of the little girl in Flight Plan, his totally awesome Jo-Fo thriller from 2005) for using the children so simply and beautifully, something you rarely see, especially when the little ones make up the supporting cast.

Many reviewers complain about the lack of practical development in the plot (there are no real attempts to stop or control the time travel, he can't change anything, he doesn't learn anything useful) but I think they miss the point. This is not an adventure story about a daring explorer making his way through time. This is a story about destiny, about the beauty and agony of a life in which it is a given that you have no free will. Henry states within the first few minutes of the film that as he grew up he tried to control his travel, tried to change the past, but he learned through trial and error (and advice from his older self) that such attempts were futile. Like legions of fictional Greeks before him, he had come to accept that his story had already been written. This isn't a film about struggling to overcome life's challenges, it's about living with the knowledge that you can't. This theme may be unengaging to some, and bitterly unsatisfying to others, but that doesn't make it any less valid.

Henry's acceptance of his fate allows him to live completely within the moments he's given, whether past, present, or future, without any agenda other than simply being. The best example of this, for me, was his travel back to the time of his early childhood, when he, as a grown man, encounters his mother on a train. He doesn't warn her about the future, attempt to explain who he is, or worry about the odd impression he'll make, he merely tells her that she's wonderful, and that he's sure her son loves her very much. So, while the physical (and metaphysical) journeys belong to Henry, the emotional arc is Claire's. Although she's had a general understanding of her husband's condition since he first visited her in her early childhood, the reality, the inevitability of it doesn't register for her until the end of the story. She's sad or angry when he goes, she believes he could find a way to stop, she fixates on how to undo the future. But, ultimately, she is as helpless against the cruelty of time as he is, as we all are, and she learns to make the most of what she has. I suspect there are many of us for whom this is an important lesson.

And so, I recommend the Time Traveler's Wife with the caveat that it is a film requiring an odd combination of predispositions from its audience. It is a love story, clearly, but one that doesn't conform to the questing, optimistic irrationality of the romance genre. It is resigned, without being cynical, (perhaps betraying Schwentke's German-ness), and faithful to the generally accepted principals of physics, without ever mentioning them. But as an un-"romantic" story about the significance of true love, and its powerlessness against the certainty of time (theoretical or practical), the Time Traveler's wife is deeply moving, and beautifully, purposefully unsatisfying.

ps- Yes, as far as I know, I did coin the term "scinephile", right here, right now, and yes, Jo-Fo is what I call Jodie Foster.

Life moves by pretty fast...

I'm not going to eulogize John Hughes. Lots of people have already done that very well, and I have nothing to add. I feel like over-arching analisys of his career are better left to people with a greater stake in it: gen x-ers, middle americans, people who really went to high school, etc. Since I am none of those things, I always viewed his tales of Shermer at a remove. As a child, I imagined that when I grew up high school would be like that, and then, it wasn't (and not just because I only went for a year).

Teens are still angsty and misunderstood, of course, but the phenomenon of high school as the students' entire social world had withered by the time millenials like my self were in the desks. Notorious for our extra-curricular-heavy schedules and cyber-socializing, high school was but one among many realms in which we forged our young identities. After-school jobs, volunteer organizations, non-school related sports teams, church youth groups, study in the arts, and connecting through internet communities took up nearly as much time as high school itself, and had the advantage of putting kids in groups where there was a shared interest. While many films still follow the Hughes model of the high school experience, television was quicker to acknowledge this shift. If you look at Buffy or Dawson's Creek high school was just a place they had to go each day, occasionally learning a lesson or two, but the real business of living took place after hours, and had little to do with how they felt they were perceived by the student body, or their place within that manufactured hierarchy. Even in a show like Gossip Girl, which puts the high school in the foreground, features several teen characters who aren't even in school, and the primary tool of student interaction is a blog that chronicles the scandalous behaviour of young people, apparently city wide.

If this seems like too hard a sell, maybe I'm just overly invested in this argument because it relieves me of the feeling that I missed out on an important cultural experience by being home schooled (which, for the record, I wouldn't change for anything). At any rate, to me Hughes' work in the high school milieu represents the teen experience as it was when I was a baby, simultaneously compelling and totally alien. However, there is one film from his Shermer period that I do relate to, and I thought that for my own mini memorial, I might philosophise about it for a bit.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off is a joyful and cunning film. Written and directed by Hughes, it delves into his pet theme of generational alienation (a subject which fell quickly out if vogue, or at least changed perspective, during the next few years when the boomer writers began having children of their own), but manages to keep the tone light by shifting the conflict to unlikely places. As Ferris glides through his life and this day untroubled by conflict (either within himself, or with others), his best friend struggles to over come the physically debilitating sense of worthlessness caused by the emotional distance of his parents. But the eye is misdirected from this weighty material by the giddy fabulousness of Ferris's antics. The action is guided by Ferris, the narrative shaped by him in his asides to the camera, but (as he explicitly states 3/4 through the film) this adventure is for and about Cameron, who needs to see something good, and learn to enjoy his life before he and Ferris are separated by graduation and college, and he'll have to drag himself out of bed without his best friend's help. When Cameron finally explodes during the scene in the garage the audience feels his anxiety, pain, frustration, and ultimately relief, but just as it begins to sink in that this was really his story all along, we're off again on a final mad dash with Ferris, exhilarated by his unbridled infallibility, and distracted from the gravity of what has just transpired.

What distinguishes this film from it's brethren is that it's more a coming of age story than a high school story. As stated gloriously by Grace the school secretary, Ferris's popularity is not limited to the jocks, the dweebies, or the motor heads; everyone thinks he's a righteous dude. Similarly, Cameron, Sloan, and Jeanie are not boxed into discrete categories of high school life (though, if I had to guess, they'd all wind up in different boxes) but they're together in this film because they're the people in Ferris's life, and whatever social disconnect there might be is never addressed. The school, as embodied by Principal Rooney, is not Ferris's world but rather his foil, and is comically out-matched at every turn. Ferris sees high school for what it is, a phase that's quickly passing and that needn't dictate the terms of his life.

Now, unlike most young girls who grew up on the Hughes movies, I didn't identify with Molly Ringwald, or even Ally Sheedy. I wasn't a princess, or a loner, or the sort of person who's ever gone unnoticed. But I could see a bit of myself in Ferris; I am preternaturally likable, whimsical, and good at getting away with silly behaviour. I often think of myself more as a character creating an exciting story than a person who needs to live by the rules of the real world (but, while for Ferris that quality is mere meta-cinema, in me it may suggest mild mental illness ;-), and while I lack his talent for confabulation, I have every confidence that I could hijack a parade if the opportunity presented itself. It also helps that he never sets foot inside a classroom.

On a personal note, I should mention that the day before my 20th birthday I e-mailed all my professors and told them that, since it was my last day as a teenager, I would be skipping classes to stay home and watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off. They were all surprisingly supportive. So I thank you, Mr. Hughes, for making a film that was not about the drama of outcasts, nor rebels, nor queen bees and wannabes, but the joy of an irrepressibly rakish spirit who's only quest was to have fun and help others do the same. This magic day that Ferris gives to Cameron was your most delightful gift to your audience, and we are all so thankful.

I forgot my mantra

So, I woke up this morning thinking about 500 Days of Summer, which I saw almost 2 weeks ago, and which has since been on my mind a lot. I have this compulsion that, when I like something while still recognizing its obvious flaws, I have to either justify them or put them into a context that makes them more acceptable. Many of you have been down this road with me, Titanic, the Star Wars prequels, the Matrix sequels, Twilight... when I like something I can't fully approve of, it creates a crisis.

Which brings us back to the film in question. 500 Days is a quirky romantic comedy, funny, relatable, and genuinely moving, featuring excellent performances from its very engaging lead actors. It is also very obviously the director's first film, stylistically disjointed, and not as original as it wants you to think it is.

The aroma of the neophyte hangs heavily around 500 Days. Director Marc Webb has a few music videos to his name, but this is his first venture into feature film territory. It was also the first major project for screen writing team Scott Neustadter and Michael Webber (who, incidentally, teamed up again on the Pink Panther 2 script). Together this group had a lot of interesting ideas, and as first timers often do, decided to use all of them. There is an omniscient narrator, the non-linear timeline is made (overly) clear by a flip book displaying the numbers of the days, there is a dance number with a cartoon bird, mid-film the characters do b&w talking head interviews about the nature of love, there is an entire scene done in spilt screen, one half representing what the character hoped would happen, the other half showing what did happen, and a handful of other "non-traditional" devices used to underscore the odd romance of these quirky characters. Several of these ideas were good, both in theory and in action, but the combination was over kill, especially for a viewer who recognizes that they've seen them before.

Because sadly, if understandably, 500 Days is a 21st century, Woody Allen-less mirror of Annie Hall. From the beginning when the narrator tells us that the characters are not destined to be together, through the back and forth of the good times and the bad, to the end when they see each other again, and come to realize that despite the failure of their relationship, they've helped each other grow into the people they needed to become, it's hard to escape the fact that you've seen this story before. Beyond the general scope and structure of the films, there are details in which the latter more specifically mimics the former: the fact that he decides to go for it when he sees her singing in a bar, or the use of the split screen technique to comment on the state of the relationship, scenes where the man tries to get over the break-up by going on awful dates with other women, even showing the emotional gulf between the two characters by demonstrating their varying experiences when attending a film together (although, I must admit, I loved the way 500 Days used the Graduate here).

Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I think it's clear that these guys are big Woody fans. And who can blame them? I wish I had made Annie Hall too, but (if you'll forgive my saying so) even Woody can't match the magic of that these days. And there are few endeavours as guaranteed to fall flat as the attempt to recreate someone else's originality.

All that said, you may wonder why I stand by 500 Days as a fun summer romance. The most important factor is the performances. Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt are young and beautiful, and they play their Ikea courtship scene with such enthusiasm that it's almost as charming as the lobster scene it wants to be. I have high hopes that they'll both go on to greatness. The director and writers also show promise, and I think it likely that now that they've purged themselves of all the self-conscious uniqueness of 500 Days of Summer, they might find in subsequent projects that they actually do have something to say that's genuinely new and different. And at the end of the day, there are so many cookie cutter love-stories out there, I do give this film credit for breaking the current mold, even if it got there by adopting an older one.