trends

One theme I'd like to maintain in terms of film is the spotting of (hopefully) not-too-obvious plot/character/motif trends.

An old boss of mine once stated, wisely, that film is an inevitably technical field. This has always been somewhat of a bane to my ambition as I seem to hold a permanent aversion to technology-- especially in this rampantly technological age. As a few in my generation may concede, our transition from youth to adulthood seems to have just caught the tail-end of the analog era, meaning that those who followed us seemed to have been born into that foreign domain of the digital. The most obvious example of the gap is, of course, our generation's various voluminous record collections, which we all seem to stubbornly hold on to, stored in basements and attics, or displayed on shelves like museum pieces next to defunct turntables, which are also difficult to discard. (One of my favorite lines from Liz Phair, in a song about a fling with a younger man: Your record collection don't exist, you don't even know who "Liz Phair" is. . .)

Another manifestation of my being born in this archaic age bracket is the fact that I learned most of my film technique the old-fashioned way--including cutting on what-were-about-to-become- obsolete Steenbecks. I remember the editing teacher--who was a veteran in her field at the time--even claiming that she could still perform faster on the Steenbeck than on one of those now-primitive Beta deck programs, a concept that is now completely unheard of. Now this harks back to a time when the brain certainly operated in an entirely different way, when stories, scenarios, and concepts were worked out somehow in the brain before they were physically materialized. I remember hammering out papers on those rickety, ungainly "word processors", something that I even have a hard time imagining now. There are writers who claim that they still pen their works on good old-fashioned typewriters or yellow legal pads, but I would have to witness this to believe it. Another old boss of mine, however--and this was only about five years ago--still hadn't entered any of his phone numbers into any kind of electronic database, instead, he had them all memorized by heart, all stored in the good old noggin.

Back to my point about trends in film: if film is indeed a technical field, and as the credit lists increase exponentially, it becomes more and more technical. Gus Van Sant once gave a valuable insight into the difference between his first film and his fifth film to this effect: that as his crew increased in number, his creative vision became more and more compromised because each additional crew member--cinematographer, art director, editor, etc.--would have their own vision that they wanted to contribute to his. This applies to the even more technical niches as well. Each technical effect creates yet another opportunity for a frustrated director who is in another role to add in his two cents. I think this applies to everything from CGI to sound effects to visual stunts.

Sometimes the new availability of certain technical effects can add entirely new dimensions and create trajectorial trends in storytelling in film. The developments are too numerous to cover just in this one entry. But I will start with one that I've noticed recently.

Let me preface this section by warning that certain parts of films that I may be now referencing may be spoilers, so if anyone has not seen all of "Lost", "The Ex", or "The Good Night" they might want to see them before continuing (depending on how much time in your life you have left for such activities. I can, however, enthusiastically recommend them all.)

Plot construction, as any good storyteller knows, is all about the undermining of expectation. Just when you get the audience to feel like they're treading on safe ground, pull the rug out from under their feet. These events, by the nature of their arrival, usually take on the form of varying degrees of deus ex machina. In many screenwriting schools, the insertion of these mechanisms must be handled delicately, some even consider the use of them at all entirely taboo. However, they are often utilized as last resorts by many desperate writers (Hey, if it worked in the Bible--several times over--it can't be that bad, can it?).

A new interesting deus ex machina--in the sort of technical way that I've been describing above--is what I would like to coin, the "hit-by-a-bus" plot twist ("twist" is a bit mild, perhaps "whammy" or "blast" or better yet, "collision"?). The term is pretty self-explanatory: just when things, usually in the third act, are getting pretty hairy, someone, literally, gets hit by a bus (or a car), thereby providing a sort of narrative solution. In the case of The Ex, the nasty title character, played by the always delightful Jason Bateman, meets his fate just after he promises revenge. In the case of The Good Night, the protagonist Martin Freeman gets slammed by a passing auto, thereby winning back his estranged girlfriend, in a sense. And in Lost, in a particularly ominous plot "collision", the mysterious Juliet's ex-husband conveniently meets a fateful bus after Juliet has literally expressed the wish for such a tragedy to occur--foreshadowing the menacingly God-like position of the "others", who wish to recruit her at seemingly any price.

This effect, needless to say, packs a powerful punch. The effect seems to be of the CGI nature, although it could also be a revolutionary stunt, though this is unlikely. Most likely, it is a combination of the two. The obviously disturbing visual quality and shock of the effect makes it a bit unsavory (at least for me) to replay it in slow motion in order to ascertain this precisely (to those who are up for the unpleasant task, or who actually know how it works, I would love to know the secret).

But getting back to the point, this impact (pardon the obvious pun) of this effect is quite substantial in terms of storytelling; the force it has in a plot turn is quite immeasurable. It is arguable whether one can call it a gimmick or not. And the idea was probably attempted before the powerful effect was even created, but not very well executed, due to the lack of the effect. But the efficacy of this new technique is a demonstration of the merging of technology and storytelling that can take narrative to the next level. At any rate, it certainly brings up the question of the validity of deus ex machina back into the fore. When a writer creates a plot, he cannot help--whether it is intentional or unintentional--but propose a theory on fate and existence. Technical effects can add to the mix. How the filmmaker uses them is another story, but it certainly keeps things interesting.

new mission statement

Here goes another attempt to define this blog. In keeping with the title, I want to concentrate on two areas: film and Vienna. As these two subjects should be of interest to people, I would like to use them as guidelines for preventing the blog from foundering into personal topics, which I think is what can make blogs boring sometimes. Vienna I think will always be interesting from an ex-pat point of view, and one can always use a new perspective on films, and if they happen to relate to personal topics, the relation should keep it on a relevant level.

Since I've been in Vienna for two years already, I think I am at a stage where it is no longer novel and therefore, quaint. This I think is a better perspective from which to speak. I am currently struggling with the idea of whether I want to remain here for the rest of my life, but I think that Vienna still holds a certain appeal for me. What remains constant in Vienna is its tendency to be a bit stuck in the past. When it comes to everyday life (Alltagsleben), this can be obviously irritating, especially in terms of things like bureaucracy and customer service. But one cannot deny the charm of its old-fashioned adherence to civilized ways of life and the many lokales and locations that have not changed for years, decades, even centuries. This is a quality that is disappearing from this constantly developing world, such as New York, where things change radically every month, week, even day, practically. I would agree sometimes with Vienna that novelty can be way overrated, and some things just don't need to change, or at least, the opportunity to experience things the way generations past have is becoming more and more rare. I will try to comment on this aspect of Vienna in entries to come.

Back to film. Having studied film, and still holding an interest in incorporating this art of expression in my life somehow, I think it is important that I try to maintain at least regular comments on the films that I see and the trends that I seem to constantly pick up on each time. Let's say that it is probably my only field of expertise at this point, which hopefully merits my comments as noteworthy. I am going to use these commentaries not so much as general reviews, but an opportunity to define what it is that I think makes a good film and why film matters as a medium. And by film, I mean all films, both independent and commercial, and TV as well, which I contend is just a longer form of film when it it well done. Distinctions I feel are unnecessary, as the medium operates and is constructed pretty much the same way.

Last night I watched the film Into the Wild, and I was very moved by this film on several levels. I was pretty much seized by this film from the very first scene. Film is probably the only medium besides music that can appeal to one's emotional core and this I feel is art at its most advanced level. My evaluation of film (and of life in general) comes from two directions--emotional and intellectual. On the emotional level, I suppose one could crudely describe this approach as "going with the gut", but I somehow trust this level in terms of ascertaining the truth about things and defining my reality.

Into the Wild is an attempt to capture the most pure level of existence, or at least an account of a young man who tried to reach such a state. I feel that the film was successful in doing this in that my heart was immediately captured into the trajectory of the story and protagonist from the very start. The film, although it is an attempt to characterize that very youthful, idealistic phase of ultimate freedom and unwillingness to compromise, is successful at juxtaposing the complexity and pain that lurks behind such motives.

When a film is trying to expose an emotional truth, and does so successfully, the effect can be both transcendent and devastating. We've all been through that time in our lives when we want to be and stay pure, we want to reject the hypocrisy and corruption of the world at large, and we follow and are inspired by certain mottos and dogmas that we feel are loyal to this aim. Of course, for most of us, there comes a time when we must face reality and come to grips with our limitations and the flaws and inconsistencies and injustices that are thrown at us in adult life, but somehow we always reference that initial hope that we had in our youth as a way of coping with disappointments and difficulties in adult life.

This film depicts the idealistic scenario when this stage is never reached, or rather, this stage is distilled into a life that plunges headlong into the possibilities that the rest of us probably only briefly or remotely touched upon, when fear seemed to be a force that we could reckon with rather than submit to. For young men especially, this idealism seems to coincide with nature, with the idea of regarding nature as the fundamental foundation of reality. But as Werner Herzog has spent a lifetime examining (the comparison of Into the Wild with Grizzly Man is inevitable), nature is a harsh and merciless mistress, and man's eternal struggle is the idea of taming and/or concurring with that force.

The film brought up inevitable comparisons for me with the time I spent exploring this possibility, that is, sailing for a year and a half with my husband. Although I was only a companion and observer for the most part during this experience, the revelations that came with facing nature head on were not lost to me. In the end, one realizes that those who embrace this lifestyle permanently have accepted that they no longer want to be a part of or deal with society and civilization in general, and that was the part that we couldn't submit to in the end. Although our experience was by no means as dramatic as the protagonist's in Into the Wild, it was ended in a sense in the same way by that unexpected, quiet, yet equally powerful side of nature: by a random poison in a food source. While battling the raging seas and wild creatures, the true authority of nature exerts itself in the end in unsuspecting ways--in the form of the wrong plant, or in our case, a toxic fish. Not a bang, but a whisper, such is the awesome final word of nature.

endlich

The main thing that was preventing me from starting a blog was my fear that only extremely sheltered people write and/or read blogs. But after living here in Vienna for over a year, I realize that a legitimate excuse does exist: in a foreign country, one is in fact sheltered and one does not get to speak in one's native language as much as one would like to.

There's also another way of looking at it: in this technologically advanced age, one may as well keep one's diary online. There is a chance that people might read it, but in this day and age of keywords, those who read it may just have mutual interests. And after all, don't most people keep diaries with the secret wish that they might be read someday?

There is much that I would like to say about Vienna, but I am going to start with a very straightforward topic: the Viennale. This is my second Viennale, and I am enjoying it very much (except for the one screening where I failed to notice that there were no English subtitles beforehand). The nice thing about the Viennale is that one does get to see foreign films with English subtitles. Otherwise, it is rather difficult to get this opportunity, so one is limited to the OF (originel fassung) films in English. The other nice thing is that one gets to see films that will not be released for a while in Vienna.

As I tried to notice what had changed the second time around, I was amused to discover that basically nothing had (except the films of course): All of the promotions were the same, the same little packets of Sportgummi candies, the same strange oversized Erste Bank cultural magazines, the same rolls of green plastic tape (which I still have untouched from last year). Somehow I take comfort in Vienna's lack of promotional mania. It's like all the other things that don't seem to change here that I take comfort in. Vienna's motto seems to be: if it ain't broke, why fix it? I agree.

It's getting a little late, so I will reserve my commentary on the films that I have seen until tomorrow.

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