Persona (1966)

Movies sometimes have a funny way of slipping profound context into your life, even if they echo their message from decades gone by. There is definitely a sense of happenstance to it, as the time in your life and the way you view a film vary greatly, but when the planets align just right and all the traffic lights are green, a revelatory experience waits to be unleashed in movies. It's the testament of great art in action - an audience the filmmakers never even dreamed about now enjoy their work on entirely new levels. These movies have become disembodied entities - always with the signatures of their creators - but now more of an ephemeral reincarnation, more of a personally refreshed experience.

I felt this way when I watched Ingmar Bergman's Persona for the second time in my life, just about a week ago. The film is primarily a disheartening free-fall into existential identity theft, but it carries with it many social observations on the cowardly, deceptive nature of how people interact with each other. Bergman highlights the moral dilemma of acting selfishly (and the act of never bothering to justify it), with the ultimate form of consequence - total theft of the self. Sure, a few of the technical stingers and awkward transitions don't quite hold up, but the hokey qualities of the film are vastly outweighed by a clear articulation of the pitfalls found in social complacency.

With brief, abstract bookends of flashing imagery (from spiders to old cartoons to dicks), Persona tells the story of an actress, Elisabet Volger, who chooses to be mute, and her small-minded but dedicated nurse, Sister Alma. Elisabet forces herself into silence after a stage performance, where she was unable to speak, making her feel humiliated and lost. Tasked with watching over her, Alma finds Elisbet's silence to be unnerving. Despite her reservations, Alma forges ahead and the two are sent to a seaside summer retreat for Elisabet's recuperation. Alma quickly learns that her paitent is not actually looking to recover, but to appropriate her personality as if she were studying for a role in a play or film.

Persona is a film that slithers under the skin, right into the dark recesses of the subconscious. You can tell from the sheer animosity of Elisabet and Alma that Bergman desperately had a bone to pick with the hypocritical machinations of society. Elisabet is a kind of moral abyss, choosing to remove herself altogether from the masquerades that people put on daily. Liv Ullman plays the actress with an eerily satisfying glibness, her devilish smirks and glassy-eyed desperation speak volumes above Alma's incessant barrage of complaints, desires and admissions. Bibi Andersson casts Alma in numerous masks - politeness, compassion, devotion - but quickly devolves her into a toxic mass of deceit and resentment.

In my favorite scene of the film, Alma is compensating for Elisabet's lack of speaking, by telling the actress some of her deepest held secrets. As she reclines awkwardly in a chair, Alma discusses an infidelity she never acknowledged to her soon-to-be husband. She explains that she was at the beach with a friend, laying naked in the sun, when she noticed two teenage boys spying on them nearby. Alma describes all the intimate details of the encounter, how her friend beckons the boys over and they all engage in wild, frivolous sex. Alma admits to Elisabet that it was the most pleasure she had ever known, that she had never been truly satisfied by her fiancee.

Alma's admission of deceit is made all the more palpable by the heavy silence in the beach house - the hypnotic swish of the sea in the background driving it all straight to the gut. Her confession is a disturbing realization of human impulse and weakness. There is no entity there to chide her or wrap her back around to her morals, which gradually deteriorates her mental state. In a sense, this scene exemplifies the brutal dynamic of Persona. There's a presiding feeling in the film that nothing can be done to turn people into creatures of sincerity and truth, and so Bergman eagerly opens up the path to hell.

The way Bergman applies layers of light and shadow in such a simple space as a beach house is pretty astounding when you think about it. The brooding visual aesthetic expertly reflects the conflict between the two women, as well as Alma's gradual synthesis into Elisabet's repertoire. From the sun-bleached stones of the beach, to the dense darkness barely penetrated by lamps or sunlight within the house, the location is an abstract resemblance of each woman's state of mind.

There's a scene where Elisabet quietly emerges from a bright hallway into a dark room where Alma is sleeping, which is just so powerful to watch. Elisabet takes a moment to look over Alma, then moves on, but Alma wakes up and the two gaze at each other longingly. It's just one instance (aside from the blatant scenes of Elisabet necking Alma) that points to not only an emotional attraction, but a sexual attraction between the women. It's an interesting aspect considering the issues of women's liberation at the time, but I think the sexual energy points more to the vanity of Elisabet, she's more in love (and lust) with the idea of taking on the role of this damaged, struggling woman that looks after her.

Persona also plays with time and pacing, adding a hefty helping of disorientation to the film. It starts off as a fairly straight-forward narrative, but a little while after the two women reach the beach house, scenes begin to meld into each other and break off abruptly, as well as disintegrate into abstract transitions and rear-projection tricks. Bergman plays with the idea of fusing scenes with vastly different tones and lighting aesthetics - when Alma gets upset at Elisabet in the kitchen, runs off to her room, and then the actress later comforts her - to give off a bizarre progression of time. Then there are scenes, such as Alma's breaking point in the middle of film (before she tries to get Elisabet to cut her foot on the glass), which cut-off without warning. Such uneven pacing might have caused most films to fold in on themselves, but you can tell Bergman took his time in making sure the editing reflected the mood and message he was trying to convey.

I would say the doctor at the beginning of Persona sums the film up with such a severe articulation, indicative of Bergman's (usually) fantastic writing: "I understand, all right. The hopeless dream of being - not seeming, but being. At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace...you can shut yourself in. Then you needn't play any parts or make wrong gestures. Or so you thought. But reality is diabolical. Your hiding place isn't watertight. Life trickles in from the outside, and you're forced to react. No one asks if it is true or false, if you're genuine or just a sham".

Those sharp, painfully honest words expose the social conundrum of living selfishly, while desiring to appear altruistic, successful, stable, smart, appreciated, etc. It's a ripped band-aid off the pretense that so many people employ in their routine lives - the idea that even honesty and proactive self-awareness have been relegated to convenient social masks. It's an observation that is perhaps slightly too cynical, but it comes from a genuine place all the same. With Persona, I don't think Bergman is asking, "why are you so selfish?". I think he's really asking, "why bother pretending?".   

La Collectionneuse (1967)

With La Collectionneuse, I've now seen five of Eric Rohmer's six moral tales, which include the likes of My Night at Maud's, Chloe in the Afternoon and Claire's Knee. I've been consistently impressed by the director's ability to rattle off insightful dialogue on a whim and to craft well-rounded male protagonists. In each of his moral tales, Rohmer cast's his leading men as scientists studying the essence of women. They attempt to dissect, circumvent, adore and classify the fairer sex in order to explain their hypothesis' on love, lust, romance and obsession.

La Collectionneuse follows this same path, sketching out the story of a handsome art dealer named Adrien. Tired of being consumed by his job and at odds with his girlfriend, he takes a vacation at his friend's villa on the Mediterranean Sea. Adrien plans on doing absolutely nothing while at the villa - he desires only to take in the beauty of the area, go for morning swims and to sleep undisturbed. When he learns from his friend Daniel that a young woman, Haydee, is coming to stay with them, his temporary peace is ended. It isn't long after that a series of events push Adrien to become increasingly enamored with the girl.

The French Riviera is beautiful in and of itself, so the film was predestined to be an idyllic visual distraction. Still, the slight yellow-white tinge of the cinematography gives La Collectionneuse a very nostalgic "home movies" feel, without the grit and grain of low-quality consumer cameras. It's the same oven-baked visual aesthetic that appears in Rohmer's equally gorgeous film, Claire's Knee, which is set in a similar coastal villa. The look of the film gives off a warmth that settles you in for an evening of lazily profound reflection.

Adrien and Haydee's interactions provide a well-conceived play on relationship dynamics. With Adrien, you get to hear all of his inner-thoughts, his plans and designs, his guesswork about Haydee's ultimate intentions. Haydee, on the other hand, is an enigma like the rest of the female characters in Rohmer's moral tales. I feel Rohmer avoids meta-insight for his women as a sort of artistic expression of their unknowable intrigue. The true insight of his films comes from the perception that you can't ever truly know someone, no matter how well or how long you've been acquainted with them.

Adrien finds his interest in Haydee almost deplorable. He doesn't want to be lured in by her loose, reckless lifestyle, yet, he finds himself inextricably drawn to her all the same. Throughout the first section of the film, Adrien actively berates Haydee for her actions, attempting to get her to react and pursue him. In one scene, Adrien just flat out asks Haydee what the point of slutting it up is, when no meaningful relationships can come of it. Haydee replies, almost bashfully, that she's searching for something, but she doesn't know what it is. She admits that she wants a deeper connection with a man, but that she feels she always screws something up before it reaches that point.

It's this kind of earnestness that makes Rohmer's films so satisfying to watch. You can tell the man has labored long and hard in his own life on the subjects of women and romance, and he is baring all of it - his mistakes and his triumphs - on screen for the world to see. Rohmer loves women, regardless of any inconsistent or contrary behavior they might fall back on. He realizes that when feeling uncertain or being dragged around by impulses (instead of actively riding around on them), the women in his life would act conversely in order to guard themselves from men with the same types of impulses.

Since forthrightness between the genders is gravely disproportionate (due in part to biology and sociological upbringing), constant disingenuous validation from men only reinforces upon "revolving door" women the desire to be selfish, to skirt accountability, to forgo decency. Haydee encapsulates this kind of woman perfectly. Rohmer casts her as a naive waif, sloshing blindly through a bog of insincere men, female liberation and self-doubt. She is both assured in her adventurous lifestyle and also deeply insecure about the type of man she desires to be with.

Adrien merely bumbles his way into Haydee's life - at times successfully obtaining her attention and other times scorning her inadvertently. All of his plans and predictions about her intentions are made irrelevant by the girl's killer combo of low-esteem and a whimsical nature. Not to mention that, technically, Adrien is volunteering infidelity against his far-flung girlfriend. This works as a sort of moral backbone of the film, exposing Adrien as inherently hypocritical and undercutting any good intentions he may have for Haydee.  

Rohmer also weaves general, but very perceptive observations on social acceptance into the film, using them as venn-diagrams for the behavior of young men and women. At one point, a man speaking to Daniel remarks that the Victorian era gave rise to the idea of people creating an image of "distance" around themselves. This superficial "distance" was manifest to create the intrigue and adoration that these people so desired from others. This resonated with me quite a bit, as especially today, people utilize this passive aggressive behavior in all facets of their social life, not just romantic. To me, it's a dishonest intrigue, very selfish in nature, that does not lend itself to healthy, fulfilling relationships. Since it comes from a deeply selfish and shallow desire to be loved but to not necessarily return it in kind, Rohmer emphasizes the idea that the more self-involved people are the less happy they become, but the surface gratification is nice all the same.

La Collectionneuse may be just a bit long-winded and a touch sloppy in it's technical execution, but it doesn't detract from the meaty love philosophy that resides within. Adrien and Haydee's on and off fluctuations provide a satisfying uncertainty, where confidence is undone by recklessness, naivety foiled by intelligence and everyone is at the mercy of everyone else. You know, like reality.

Prometheus (2012)

I'm pretty sour on most of what Hollywood has produced in the past decade, including what's being made these days. The sense of plot-plowing, lazy archetypes and the marketing double cheeseburger (ala The Deathly Hollows, Part 2) have completely choked any true meaning (which, in this case, is thrill and spectacle) out of blockbuster films. It's just about the transient gratification and the social hype - studios will always scramble for new ways to pander and squeeze every last dollar out of consumers.

Despite this, I still find bits of ingenuity, slivers of good storytelling, dashes of satisfying action, remnants of full-fledged character development and smatterings of well-choreographed special effects within the Hollywood spectrum. These are elements that come no where near the territory of "memorable" but they do present an intriguing potential all the same. With Ridley Scott's Prometheus, there are murmurs of promise, but the uneven pacing, inconsistent acting and an ultimate desire to impress a wide-ranging audience seals the film's fate as a gun that goes off into your toes instead of your face.

The film is a precursor to the Alien series, taking place well before the events of the 1979 classic, before the eventual evolution of the xenomorphs to their iconic movie-culture image. It revolves around the crew of an exploratory space vessel, Prometheus, and more specially, the lead scientist, Shaw. Set out to a distant planet, Shaw hopes to uncover the secrets of human existence by interacting with an alien civilization that she feels may have created humans in the first place. Naturally, when they arrive, things don't go as planned.

Perhaps the best and worst thing about Prometheus is the acting. Noomi Rapace fills in Shaw with an intriguing mix of idealism, ambitious curiosity and politeness. She is definitely the heart of the film, and Rapace, being a talented actress regardless, does her damnedest to provide a fleeting sense of weight to the film's overall context. Michael Fassbender as the android, David, also makes a strong performance. Fassbender plays David as a mincing enigma, at turns courtesy, heroic and devious, he plays a key role in setting the Weyland Corporation's agenda into action. Guy Pearce also stands out as Mr. Weyland, though his role is extremely brief.

But then you have this cadre of ham-handed support roles - almost like all the creative juice was spent on Shaw and David. Rapace shares the protagonist spot with Logan Marshall-Green, a dead ringer in looks for actor Tom Hardy, but not at all as talented as him. Marshall-Green plays Shaw's love interest and fellow scientist, Halloway, as a sort of...bro scientist? The glaring inconsistency is that he's supposedly sensitive to the trappings of science, yet he provides the cowboy bravado of the crew and berates David, a pure product of science, at every turn. Throw in a goes-nowhere villianess performance by Charlize Theron, a contradictory ship captain played by Idris Elba and an inane crew that is made up of cookie-cutter caricatures (two guys that have some weird bet with each other, the spiky crewman who wants no friends, the doughy crewman who only wants to be friends with the guy that wants no friends) and you can imagine why Prometheus feels very unbalanced.

However, even more inconsistent is the way the film is paced. The first 30 minutes of the movie has this very measured flow to it, leading from Shaw's expedition on Earth to a cryo-sleep sequence where David takes care of the ship, watches old movies and shoots hoops while riding a bike. It's a strong build-up with time for the characters to breath. Right after the crew's briefing with Weyland, the film begins to jolt forward in very strange intervals. There are weird turns where important information is tossed in, then resolved within a matter of minutes (such as Shaw's infertility). It feels like the plot and subplots have all been smooshed and funneled down to fit a tight run-time, acceptable for most audiences. By the time Prometheus careens down the hill to it's inevitable conclusion, you find yourself wondering, "did all of this serious business just happen in a matter of 20 minutes?"

Even with the rampant issues of the film, there's no denying that Prometheus is a great bundle of cinematography, set design, special effects and refreshingly intense horror sequences. The ship interior is a great mixture of white bulkheads, stylish digital interfaces and glowing orange-yellow lights, the crew's exploration suits have a satisfying mix of bulky armor plates, well-placed LEDs and streamlined diving suit underlays. (SPOILERZZZZZZZ) There is a gorgeous sequence where Shaw gets caught in a sort of metal sandstorm, with small sharp chunks of shrapnel cascading around her as she hangs on to the ship for dear life. Of course, the craziest sequence has to be where Shaw finds out she has been impregnated with a monstrous-DNA fetus and must use an advanced medical pod calibrated for men along with self-injected anesthetics to extract the thing before it kills her.

All in all, Prometheus is a half-cleaned up mess. It looks good and it sounds good, the acting is good...sometimes, the plot is paced well...sometimes, the characters are interesting...sometimes. I feel the lesson to be learned is that all the hype and viral marketing in the world won't save a film from it's financial obligations or its attempts to satisfy everyone at once. Prometheus is ultimately a good idea crushed down by the massive car pile up at the intersection of art and commerce.

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

I feel that, in order to judge a film like Breakfast at Tiffany's fairly, I need to take it at 95% face value. I think part of accurately valuing art is seeing just how it stands up to the ultimate test - time. So, how does this massively popular film, with one of the most iconic female characters in Hollywood history, stack up today? Not well. It has nothing to do with the technical elements of the film - cinematography, editing, pacing, music. The disaster lies in the portrayal of Holly Golightly, a character supposedly being criticized for her reckless spirit, but in actuality is celebrated for her idiosyncratic unaccountability and glibness.

The film centers on an upscale apartment complex in New York, where Paul, a struggling writer, moves in and meets Holly Golightly, the building's resident high school thesp (over-the-top acting is Audrey Hepburn's forte, naturally). Intrigued by her quirks and flippant socialite lifestyle, Paul begins to spend more and more time with her. The two eventually begin to confide in one another and emotions are thrown around, but Holly's tendencies soon send her flying back to her careless, gold-digging ways.

Breakfast at Tiffany's features some very well-constructed camerawork and gorgeous cinematography, that would have been better served on a character study with three-dimensional mirth. All the scenes in and outside the apartment complex have a very careful, lock-and-flow alternation that frames the meticulous set design with grace. From Holly's apartment of curiosities to the austerity of Tiffany's, the film seems to craft a diverse range of flora and fauna, all within a five or six block radius.

The film is obviously supposed to be a cautionary tale, but with the glitz of New York, an alluring actress like Hepburn filling Holly's shoes and the delightfully bizarre decorum of her apartment, I think most people are too dazzled to care. In essence, you can think of Holly Golightly as a prototype for the wanderlust pixie image that so many women have adopted and distorted over the years. Constantly strutting around like life is entitled to them, surrounding themselves with men under the pretense of "friendship" and wrapping it all up in a bow of eccentricity and tomboy elegance. Holly echoes these behaviors with her wild and superficial parties, her interest in marrying up to ease her financial burdens and her "dangling the keys" over Paul, the only man that genuinely cares about her.

Underneath that freewheeling exterior is a mass of insecurities, selfishness and a gnawing sense of hypocrisy. Holly is a woman with no direction, no direct claim on her life and she knows it. In a sense, the woman is tormented by her "nature", writing off any form of stability or authenticity as a "cage". With the right tone, Breakfast at Tiffany's could have been an extremely interesting portrait of a troubled woman, attempting to figure out how she wants to spend her life. Instead, it comes off as a shallow celebration of "wild hearted" women, with virtually no consequences to be found.

Even at the climax, where Paul, frustrated that Holly won't even acknowledge the great times they had together, finally tells her like it is: "You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself". Not moments before this, Holly was considering flying on a whim to Brazil, even after she finds out the rich suitor she was trying marry didn't want her.  And yet Paul just accepts her back? After playing the jilted fool for so long? Would she really learn anything from such a quick turnaround? So, there is this retrograde acceptance of her behavior, even when the film purports that her spontaneity has only led to unhappiness.

It would have empowered the film immensely if there were white-hot consequences for her actions - something to really drive into her skull that such a frivolous lifestyle has a wide range of pitfalls. However, Breakfast at Tiffany's fails to send up the signal flares that so deserve to be shot, leaving an audience of uninitiated women to only take away the glamor of a wild existence. I get the feeling that generations of women have mistakenly identified Holly as a beacon of women's liberation and a personification of their vibrancy, when, in actuality, she is nothing more than a mirror reflection of the most disregarding qualities of men. She is not at all an early icon for feminism, which is about equality and ethics between the sexes. It's a distinction that I feel not enough will care to make then, now or in the future.