Another Earth

From Siskel and Ebert’s thumbs up to Tookey’s turkeys all film critics have a way of rating movies. However, unlike wine buff Robert Parker’s 100 point method for reviewing fermented grape juice, most film systems are fairly opaque.

Most critics tend to focus on the individual movie at hand rather than say placing it somewhere on a scale between Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and Citizen Kane.

I too have such a system, I call it my gut and my gut tells me that I don’t like Another Earth. While it is true that in my view 15 minutes could easily be trimmed from the running time, I don’t think it’s a “bad film” it’s just one that I didn’t particularly enjoy.

What’s it all about?

The plot is straight forward enough Rhoda who is obsessed with space gets drunk and crashes her car into another while staring into space at a parallel world. Once released from prison having served a short jail term, due to the fact that a woman and young child died as a result of the crash, she tries to make amends for what she has done.

Along the way she enters a competition to win a trip to the alternative Earth and starts a relationship with the husband/father of her victims. Fortunately, in an Earth shattering suspension of disbelief, the husband decided never to go to court or read a newspaper report about the crash ruling out any chance that he might recognise her. The movie concludes with Rhoda making a personal sacrifice in order to atone for her sins.

Reinventing the laws of physics

Given the fact that the filmmakers have stated they had ditched a lot of the space stuff - I won’t dwell on the fact that they got the science wrong - I doubt you are reading this because you have a burning interest in Kelper’s laws of planetary motion or telescopic image resolution.

Mastering the craft

Let me be clear that while I’m ready to find fault with the film, I’m also willing to recognise its good points such as the performance of Writer/Producer/Actor Brit Marling and the camera work of Writer/Director/Cinematographer Mike Cahill.

I must qualify the last point however, as the beautiful imagery is occasionally let down by the lack of practical or misplaced practical light sources. I hear some of you cry “don’t split hairs, remember the scene in Gladiator where one of the extras is wearing jeans and it won the Oscar for best picture!”

Do you really think Ridley Scott was aiming for that effect? Does, cinematographer John Mathieson cherish this image above all others when it is projected onto a cinema screen or broadcast on television? I think not.

No one embarks on making a movie with the intention of making mistakes, although many arise along the way. Did Lord Pirrie and Thomas Andrews set out to build a ship that would sink? No. Is that any comfort to the passengers of the Titanic? Once again I think not.

The point is if the film is engaging enough you can get away with it and Another Earth wasn’t.

Refrigerator moment – spoiler alert!

While it might not have been transparently obvious to all viewers, at the moment the competition is first announced, that Rhoda would win and then let John go in her place surely we can agree that the gaping hole in the ending cannot be overlooked?

I am of course referring to the fact that John goes off to the other Earth to seek out the doppelgangers of his dead wife and child, conveniently ignoring the fact that his own doppelganger is there as well!

Imagine for a moment that you get to the end of Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader has just struck down the Emperor, saving his son and ensuring good triumphs over evil. But only for 5 minutes because someone forgot to blow up the Death Star and all the rebels are wiped out! Opps - hardly a satisfying ending is it? A bit like Another Earth and this review...

The most significant movie for the 21st Century Filmmaker

What’s on the menu?

Pick a film, any film it doesn’t matter, unlike audiences who go to the cinema expecting to be entertained, moved to tears or howls of laughter, filmmakers can always take something away from a movie. For a filmmaker watching a good movie is like eating a good meal, it might inspire them to try making something similar or to explore the theme in greater depth.

Not all food appeals to all tastes, are to my mind things that you might be fooled into trying once, but never ever again, tripe ice-cream and Barb Wire both fall into this category.

That’s not to say all films should be like the food in a 3 Michelin starred restaurant, it might taste great but it can be so rich, filling and on occasion pretentious that you just can’t bring yourself to shovel it down day after day. I enjoy Metropolis and Un Chien Andalou I don’t want to see them every week.

Nor do I want films to be just a bland mixture of vegetables and pulses which might be scientifically good for you, but are so safe and boring they run the risk of putting you off your dinner. Goodfellas, Sixth Sense and the Terminator may all have been outstanding when they were released but now they are all too much like a simple salad, safe and predictable.

Some films on the other hand could be compared to take away food, you know the sort of thing that you grab on your way home after a heavy night on the town. At the time it tastes sooo good and seems sooo satisfying yet when you wake up in the morning with your head pounding you wonder why you did it. I’d put films like Starship Troopers and Jennifer’s Body into this category.

Perhaps then the way to address the issue is to treat it like an elaborate tasting menu dipping in and out as personal preferences dictate.


Starters

Maybe the real question is where to start. Before 1900 only a handful of films were made. Film historians will no doubt differ in opinion but in my view it wasn’t until the release of D W Griffith’s Birth of a Nation in 1915 that the concept of a feature length narrative film really became established.

The film follows the stories of two families, one from the north and one from the south, during the American civil war. Sadly as the story unfolds the film starts to idealise the Ku Klux Klan and the negative reaction it received forced Griffith to respond with the film Intolerance a year later.

However, the plot line is less significant than the technical innovation Griffith introduced, tracking shots, crosscutting and dramatic close-ups were all firmly established by their inclusion in the film. So surely that makes it the most significant movie for the 21st Century Filmmaker. The trailblazer without which nothing would have followed – right?

But then how many people, outside a relatively small group of film nerds, have actually seen this film? Do they care about it when queuing up for tickets to the latest blockbuster? Have most people even heard of it? I doubt it.

So the question remains - where to start? Maybe with the Jazz Singer, the 1927 Al Jolson flick which tells the story of a young Jewish man who has to choose between his heritage and his desire to be a musician, widely accepted as being the first feature length sound movie. Unfortunately, while it’s the sort of film some people know as the result of taking part in a pub quiz, again I doubt modern audiences or filmmakers give it much thought on a day to day basis.

So the question remains unanswered. But, if people have such short memories maybe I should start there, at the boundaries of my own memory, with my earliest recollections of going to the cinema.


A new hope

Jump forward 50 years to the birth of the blockbuster. Jaws may have been the first but it was quickly followed by Star Wars 4 – A New Hope. Now here was a film that was so enjoyable, so popular that no one thought to mention the fact that they had never seen parts one – three. In fact cinema goers had to wait for over 20 years to see the back story fleshed out to the full.

It would be difficult to find someone completely oblivious to the story of the rebel fight against the evil galactic empire told through the eyes of two droids. The story is so embedded in our modern culture that an internet campaign around the time of the last census led to Jedi becoming a recognised religion.

I know it predictable and clichéd but I would be lying if I said that this film didn’t have a profound impact on me, igniting the spark of passion that still burns today. I’d also be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that I only turned to film when I realised that I couldn’t become a Jedi Knight.


Private Joker

It’s a well known fact that when you tell a child not to do something, you are in fact only encouraging them to do it. So I blame my parents, they were the ones who got the video player and then went out telling me and my older brother not to watch films like Salem’s Lot or Full Metal Jacket, so of course the tape was in the machine the moment their car pulled out of the driveway.

I don’t remember much about Salem’s Lot, I wasn’t interested in horror films then. But, Full Metal Jacket was something else. In retrospect I can understand that it probably wasn’t appropriate for a 12 year old to watch a marine decorate the walls of a toilet cubicle with the inside of his head but I didn’t have nightmares nor did it turn me into some sort of psychopath, something that always makes me call into question the studies on the link between films and violence.

But I digress. What I did take away from that film was the undeniable mastery of the medium that Stanley Kubrick possessed. Although his penultimate film is in the view of many, myself included, far better than his swan song – Eyes Wide Shut, his earlier works such as the Killing, Dr Strangelove, Spartacus and Barry Lyndon all stand the test of time.


Cake and fine wine

Growing up Saturday night was film night and I spent my formative years watching everything from box office hits like the Name of the Rose, Top Gun and Rain Man to cult classics like This is Spinal Tap, Scum, An American Werewolf in London and Drugstore Cowboy.

Two of the films that I saw at the time that had a great impact on me were If and Withnail and I. Lindsay Anderson’s If was the beginning of his collaboration with writer David Sherwin (who details the experience along with the tribulations that befall a screenwriter in his excellent book – Going Mad in Hollywood) and actor Malcolm McDowell which spawned 3 films.

If tells the story of a group of teenagers who rebel at their public school upbringing and so literally hijack the end of term ceremonies. There is an apocryphal story that a critic singing the praises of the movie to Anderson remarked on the ingenuity of his decision to cut between colour and black & white images throughout the film. To which he replied glibly that it wasn’t deliberate, he’d run out of money and just couldn’t afford to shoot in colour any more. What is known about the film for certain is that it was the first film to show full frontal female nudity on British cinema screens.

While Oscar winning screenwriter Bruce Robinson (who won for the Killing Fields) wrote and directed the fantastic Withnail and I, the film is made by the performances including that of Richard E Grant in the title role, Paul McGann as Marwood (the I in the title, the characters name is never mentioned in the course of the film) and Richard Griffiths as Uncle Monty.

The film reveals the life of two unemployed actors in the late 60’s who spend most of their time drinking or taking drugs, until the chance arises to leave London and spend some time in Monty’s countryside retreat. It doesn’t take them long to discover that they have gone “on holiday by mistake”. The holiday also serves as a turning point in their lives as Marwood finally gets offered a part in a play while away. The upbeat movie is tempered at the end by Withnail’s wonderful performance from Hamlet.


Main course

There are two movies which launched me into study of film properly. The first was Ang Lee’s the Ice Storm, this beautifully crafted drama set in the 70’s is about the relationships within and between two families where the parents set a bad example to the kids which ultimately culminates in tragedy.

The second is Titanic which, at $200 million, was the most expensive movie ever made at the time and, with worldwide box office receipts of $1.84 billion, the highest grossing film of all time until James Cameron beat his own record with Avatar.

The film tells the story of a young couple who meet and fall in love on the ill fated voyage, not really my cup of tea but, because it was such a success I felt compelled to watch it. Walking into the cinema, surrounded by a swarm of girls waiting to catch a glance of Leo on the big screen, I remember thinking that it just wasn’t credible for anyone to study film without having seen the biggest movie in history. All I can say is that I cheered when the ship went down!

Thankfully my study began in earnest with an introduction to world cinema, which consisted of the French New Wave (Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer and François Truffaut), Italian Neorealism (Federico Fellini and Roberto Rossellini), German Expressionism (Fritz Lang) before branching off to various other cultures.

Then it was on to Hitch. For a man that never won an Oscar (he received a lifetime achievement award at the end of his career, when he’d ceased to make the kind of film that deserved to win an award) it’s fair to say that his influence will continue to be felt for years to come.

Hitchcock’s obsession with detail was no doubt influenced by his work in various departments as he made way up to director. His talent can be seen clearly in his British films like Lifeboat, Blackmail and the original version of the Man Who Knew Too Much.

As an aside it’s worth watching both versions to see just how much Hitchcock did develop. It isn’t worth watching Gus Van Sant’s near shot by shot remake of Pyscho – Hitchcock could have shot the original in colour but choose not to and Norman Bates having a wank is hardly cause for celebration.

But, Hitchcock will always be remembered most for his creative peak in America. The triple zoom reverse shot that he employed to portray Scottie's (James Stewart) sense of vertigo, in Vertigo, which was so beautifully used by Steven Spielberg to convey Chief Brody's (Roy Scheider) apprehension in Jaws (Spielberg went one better than Hitchcock by doing it on location rather than in the studio), is just one example of his invention and refinements.

After Hitchcock, the focus shifted away from the director to the actor – if this was meant to be some sort of antidote to the auteur theory it didn’t last long. Although loosely tracking the career of John Wayne who appeared in 172 movies the truth is the core content centred on his collaborations with John Ford (who unlike Hitchcock won 4 best director Oscars – more than any other director ever and bagged another 2 for his World War 2 documentaries) and Howard Hawks (who was also robbed of everything but a lifetime achievement Oscar) before neatly segwaying into their other works.

While both men made fairly interchangeable westerns, with the exception of the Searchers by Ford, their true genius showed through in other films, The Quiet Man in which Ford directed Wayne as an American who has returned to his roots in Ireland and finds that his prospects for romance are hampered when he falls out with the brother of the woman he loves. Matters are made worse when he fails to conform to social expectations and fight for his honour.

Meanwhile Hawks directed a variety of films including the Big Sleep, Only Angels Have Wings, To Have and Have Not (probably the first film to be scripted by a Pulitzer Prize winning author based on a book written by another Pulitzer Prize winner) and of course his fantastic comedies including His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby.


Indigestion

I can’t remember the details but somehow I got hold of a ticket to the press screening of Star Wars 1 – Phantom Menace. As the film faded in the audience betrayed their bias by clapping. As the film faded out they were remarkably more circumspect.

The movie tells the tale of young Anakin Skywalker who has a good heart and acts with the best of intentions. Alas, all the time the spectre of his destiny in which he will become the evil Darth Vader looms large over him. He is taken on by two Jedi Knights who are in the process of trying to resolve a trade war centred around the planet Naboo alas they fail and deadly battle is fought for freedom in which Anakin plays a vital role.

I like most people present wanted to like the film, after all the original movie had spawned my interest in film in the first place, but I just couldn’t do it. Maybe it’s because I was an adult now or maybe Lucas had already spoilt us with the original trilogy. I don’t know for sure what it was, maybe the set pieces like the final battle where to reminiscent of the endings to A New Hope and Return of the Jedi, but the film was a disappointment and the blame cannot rest entirely on the shoulders of “Manakin Skywalker”.


A bad taste in the mouth

While many critics panned it, no one walked out during the course of the Phantom Menace. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the audience I sat watching a preview of Gardens of the Night with. The film tells the story of Leslie who is abducted as a child and suffers years of abuse before being reunited with her parents. The audience left not because it was bad, but because it was simply too good at portraying its subject matter, making everyone present feel uncomfortable.

The opposite is true of Blood Cabin which put simply is a horror by numbers movie that has been badly executed. You don’t expect the unknown cast of a low budget horror to be the best that the Royal Shakespeare Company has to offer, but you do at least expect them to die in an entertaining way, not like a limp fish. The director gets the pacing wrong completely failing to build suspense, creates laughable murder scenes and must ultimately take responsibility for the poor production. This film should become mandatory viewing for film students across the world so they can learn how not to do it.


Desert

Things are starting to draw to a close now. Two recent films stand out for the impact they should have on the 21st century filmmaker – Avatar and Monsters. The fact that they are such polar opposites is the very reason they belong together.

According to some reports Avatar cost $500 million to make, although more reliable sources suggest the true production cost was around a mere $300 million. The film puts its own slant on the age old tale of the soldier who falls in love with a native and finds himself fighting for the very people he was sent to destroy.

Special effects, CGI and 3D like it should be, Avatar had it all and its bangs generated a lot of bucks - $2.8 billion of them across the globe. The first of the sequels is currently expected to hit our screens in 2014!

Monsters on the other hand is a low budget sci-fi flick that focuses on the budding romance between a young photographer and his bosses daughter who he has to escort back to the US from Mexico via an alien infested jungle.

While even Gareth Edwards admits that the film was made for more than the rumoured $15,000 (it seems likely to have cost around $500,000) it went on to make $4.2 million in worldwide box office takings. This is largely due to Gareth’s marvellous monsters which he created on a computer after spending 10 years learning to master the technology.

These films matter because they represent the extreme ends of the filmmaking spectrum in the 21st century. Nowadays films tend to fall into 2 different camps, low budget (dominated by independent filmmakers) and high budget with little in-between. This doesn’t mean that $2 million movies aren’t getting made, just that by the time you add in salaries for the stars that help ensure bums on seats, particularly over the ever important opening weekend, just that there are far fewer of them.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. People will always gravitate to a good story which has been well told. Paranormal Activity was shot for a measly $15,000 and went on to make $1.93 billion at the box office. While most independent movies do not have this kind of breakaway success, it does happen often enough that they cannot be completely discounted.

Big budget movies can also be great, personally, given the amazing adaptations of the Lord of the Rings books I cannot wait for the release of the 2 Hobbit movies. There are so many other mega movies that I’ve seen and enjoyed over the years that I wouldn’t even know where to start listing them. But, I do know that it won’t be long before I settle down to watch another.


Last supper

Sitting on death row what film would I choose to watch as I ate my last meal? I could go back to earlier, simpler, happy days, sitting in the multiplex (the local cinema had 2 screens, something that was seen as appoint of pride and sophistication back then) watching Star Wars or I could try and lift my spirits by chipping in with witty rejoiners while watching Withnail and I.

Ultimately though, I think I would go for something new, there are so many films that I haven’t seen, some already immortalised as “greats,” appearing in lists by the BFI, AFI, celebrated critics and public polls, and some still to be made. And surely it is the last of these the film still to be made that is the most important movie for the 21st century filmmaker, for it is their opportunity to create something that matters rather than just reviewing something that has gone before. While, my final film may prove to be a turkey I guess there is no real way of knowing until you take a bite that Soylent Green is people!