Buried, The Vanishing, and the latest casualties of war
***Spoiler alert: I reveal the end of The Vanishing in this post. If you haven’t seen that film and want to experience the sucker-punch that is the film’s penultimate scene, I suggest you watch it before reading this post.***
By now, any self-respecting horror fan should have seen a trailer for Buried, the Lionsgate distributed film starring Ryan Reynolds and directed by Spaniard Rodrigo Cortes. In case you haven’t, here it is:
Reynolds plays the film’s only onscreen character: Paul Conroy, a truck-driver contracted to work in Iraq circa 2006 and buried alive with only a Zippo and a fully-charged cell-phone. Unable to remember how he arrived in this predicament, the film uses the cell phone device to allow Conroy to come into contact with his captors, family, emergency dispatch, US officials, and his employers, gradually revealing the course of events that led up to the burial through these conversations. It’s a brilliant, minimalist concept, and by early accounts from its premier at Sundance, a successful exercise in suspense.
As Variety reviewer Rob Nelson points out, Buried also clearly draws from the excellent 1988 Dutch film Spoorloos (trans. as The Vanishing). That film involves the disappearance of a Dutch woman named Saskia and the efforts of her boyfriend, Rex, to discover what happened to her. After tracking down the killer–the seemingly normal family man Raymond–Rex agrees to succumb to the same fate as Saskia. We the viewers find out what that is in the penultimate scene. Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments offers a good summation:
The film proved so affective that Hollywood came a-calling for a remake. Despite both films sharing the same director, George Sluizer, the Hollywood version essentially neutralized the original, tacking on a rosy ending in which the protagonist’s girlfriend comes to the rescue. Roger Ebert articulates my feelings pretty well below (though I hate that he uses “slasher” as some kind of insult):
Still, surviving burial doesn’t necessarily make for a cliched plot point. Kill Bill, Volume 2 makes good use of the “buried alive” narrative conflict when the Bride lands herself in a coffin. Rather than limit the action of the scene to the coffin, writer/director Quentin Tarantino uses the Bride’s predicament as a jumping off point for a flashback depicting the Bride’s kung fu training by the legendary Pai Mei. Here’s what happens once the film flashes back to the buried Bride:
Because the Bride’s escape follows a flashback to training in which she gains the skills that enable her to escape, Kill Bill cleverly gives the unbelievable moment credibility within the narrative.
Several signals suggest that Buried will similarly develop its concept, avoiding the pitfalls of a film like The Vanishing remake in favor of a more nuanced approach. For one, the film’s credits suggest that it strictly adheres to the concept; other than Reynolds, cast members are listed as “voices,” suggesting that the film keeps all (or at least most) of the action to the interior of the coffin. The sparse trailer also hints at a confined space for the film’s action. If the filmmakers can pull it off (as reviewers like Jackson and others say they do) it will be an impressive feet worthy of Sluizer’s admiration.
The poster for Buried. Image taken from screenrant.com.
The film’s geopolitical context also suggests a myriad of possibilities. Because the protagonist works for Iraq War contractors, I expect there to be some fascinating commentary on the new civilian role in nation-building as well as the problematic corporatization of war. One might read the concept itself as a critique of the exploitation of the working-class by both sides of the war on terror: in the end, either side will bury you in a box to further their cause.
Adios Texas – A Tribute
Regular readers may have noticed the recent lack of posts. The reason: I’ve spent the last several weeks moving cross-country with spouse and puppy in tow. After several days of ten hours behind the wheel, we finally arrived in Oregon early this week and have been recuperating ever since.
Now that I have landed in the cool, lush Pacific Northwest, I am reflecting upon four years as a Texas resident with mixed emotions. While I certainly detested the dominant conservative views of the state’s populace, I appreciated the brash Texas culture that combined so many influences. I come away from the state with a greater appreciation for western cloths, country music of the Townes Van Zandt variety, spicy foods, and the greatest contraction ever, “y’all.” The place rubbed off on me, and I know that I’ll think back fondly on the many friends I made, SXSW dayshows I attended, bars I frequented (Hole in the Wall!), and daytrips to float the Comal taken over the past four years.
I feel especially blessed to have been in Austin at a time in which horror fandom flourished. I doubt that this blog would exist had I not cultivated my interest in the genre through coursework in media studies, conversations with like-minded friends, and late night b-movies at the Alamo Drafthouse. Because of the Terror Thursday (now Terror Tuesday) series, I saw such gems as The Stepfather, The Hidden, and Silent Night, Deadly Night along with some duds that shall remain nameless. I even saw a few of the genre’s famous faces at special screenings, including Eli Roth, Herschell Gordon Lewis, and Joe Bob Briggs.
The Alamo Drafthouse sign. Image taken from toplessrobot.com.
Most exciting to me was seeing the production of such movies right before my eyes. The fall that I arrived in Texas, Quentin Tarantino and crew were filming Death Proof in a neighborhood adjacent to my own. I actually spotted Tarantino at Jo’s Coffee Stand while looking for apartments in Austin. I reacted by quickly walking past, calling my brother so I could tell someone, and then walking back to the coffee shop to get a closer look. Later, I saw the trailer park of stars and crew assembled on South Congress and witnessed some of the shooting of the film in Guero’s Taco Bar, an early favorite of mine as I became acquainted with the area. Jungle Julia billboards dotted major streets in South Austin, and my bus trips home from UT would often include a drive past shooting locations. The next Spring, I scored tickets to see the regional premiere of Grindhouse with some friends, and we all met up at one of the film’s prominent shooting locations, the Texas Chili Parlor, before the screening. There, we ran into a group of roller girls (The Putas del Fuego), decked out in evening wear with beauty pageant sashes. We learned at the screening that the ladies of the league were honored guests. Better company for such an event I cannot imagine.
A scene from Deathproof shot at the Texas Chili Parlor in Austin. Image taken from lifeofandres.files.wordpress.com
What I discovered the longer I lived in Texas was the way in which Grindhouse merely elaborated upon an established connection between the state of Texas and the horror genre. Only after moving to Texas did I discover one of the greatest modern horror films of all time, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. That film’s director and co-writer, Tobe Hooper, taught at the University of Texas’s Radio-TV-Film Department, where I worked on my master’s. He shot the film outside of Austin, capitalizing upon the dry, central Texas terrain to give the film a desolate feel. Horror films continue to use this kind of setting to illicit the same feelings of isolation in viewers.
A still from the stirring final shot of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Image taken from dragonsheadinn.com.
So, while I may be thrilled to be back home in the Northwest, I will always reflect back upon my time in Texas as particularly formative. It may not have been New York in the fifties or San Franscisco in the sixties, but for me, Austin was the right cultural scene at the right time, and it made me into the horror fan that I am today.
Inglourious Basterds: The Review
***WARNING: REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. IT MAY BE BEST TO SEE THE MOVIE PRIOR TO READING THE REVIEW***
Long before Inglourious Basterds arrived in theaters last week, my husband dubbed it “Jewsploitation.” The much talked about trailer (linked through the picture below) prompted his assessment that the film would take the revenge concept of seventies grindhouse movies and apply it to World War II with typical Quentin Tarantino panache. Seeing the film over the weekend, my husband’s predictions were confirmed, and while both of us enjoyed the film overall, we couldn’t help but note the film’s various ideological and stylistic flaws upon exiting the theater.
The Inglourious Basterds promotional poster. Image taken from thecia.com.au.
But before launching into my critique, a brief plot summary: the film consists of five interrelated parts that basically revolve around two stories. The first story focuses on Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), a Jewish woman who narrowly escaped death by German Colonel Hans Landa (the stunning Christoph Waltz), called “The Jew Hunter” for his assignment to round up the remaining Jews in France. Fleeing to Paris and disguised as the owner of a movie house years later, Shoshanna meets a German war hero/movie star that leads to Joseph Goebbels deciding to use her theater for the premiere of his latest film. These circumstances lead to a chance encounter with Colonel Landa, who does not recognize Shoshanna. Meanwhile, American Leiutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) leads a group of Jewish American soldiers and German descenters called the Basterds in a Nazi scalping mission. His crew learns of the Paris premiere at Shoshanna’s theater and decides to take advantage of the event while Shoshanna plans her own kind of revenge.
In many ways, Inglourious Basterds represents the most conceptually sophisticated film directed by Tarantino, combining multiple genres (spaghetti western, revenge narrative, “man on a mission”) with the war film. As a result, it dispenses with any pretense that the film accurately portrays historical events by conforming to generic conventions rather than actual occurences. It’s a brilliant take on a genre so often caught up in the historical specificity and importance of the project.
Inglourious Basterds’ intertextuality also raises questions about whether older films in the war genre really do conform to reality. Language, for example, plays a key role in the film, with characters speaking German, French, English, and Italian, as opposed to signifying these languages through accented English. Tarantino discussed Inglourious Basterds’ use of language on a recent episode of NPR’s Morning Edition. His point–that the convention of English standing in for all other languages in American war films neglects the important roll that dialect played in the war zone–is aptly demonstrated in several scenes in which language enables or undermines a character’s efforts to pass for the enemy. Hence, Tarantino challenges the conventions of previous war films by deploying realism and fantasy in interesting ways throughout the film.
A promotional poster for Inglourious Basterds drives home the importance of language and cinema to the story.
And speaking of fantasy, I drooled over the metafictive qualities of the film. Film itself plays an important role in the story of Inglourious Basterds with the climactic scenes taking place at the Paris premiere of the German film. As a result, film becomes a weapon of war both literally and figuratively. Though I posted a spoiler warning for this review, I will resist going into further detail about the film’s climax out of the possibility that someone read on in spite of my suggestion. The final scenes are just too pleasurable to watch for the first time for me to ruin them. (For more on the subject, check out Terry Gross’ interview of Quentin Tarantino from yesterday’s Fresh Air).
But while the film certainly contains its pleasures, certain excesses in the writing weigh down what could be a far more entertaining film. Tarantino’s verbose dialog may flesh out the characters and offer up humorous and suspenseful moments, but it also draws out certain scenes to the point of making them drag. The third and fourth sections in particular feel cumbersome in spite of some great acting and plotting. Such mundane banter served Tarantino well in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, but Tarantino never quite adequately balances action and dialog in Inglourious Basterds (I would make the same assessment about his previous effort, Death Proof). I expect that years down the road, Inglourious Basterds will be admired more than loved.
One of the more dialog-heavy scenes from Inglorious Basterds
But the most problematic element for me proved to be ideological more than stylistic. While I understand Tarantino’s film to be a self-aware, cartoonish fantasy, I could not help but find its philosophy of war troubling. In Aldo Raine’s first monologue, he bluntly states “Nazi ain’t got no humanity. They’re the foot soldiers of a Jew-hatin’, mass murderin’ maniac and they need to be dee-stroyed.” While such a statement makes for an unambiguous action adventure, it fails to acknowledge that many Germans tacitly participated in the Holocaust, lacking little if any political investment in Nazism. This complicity does not justify the actions of those who perpetuated Hitler’s agenda actively or passively, but it does raise uncomfortable questions about the potential in any person to allow such injustices to occur. Aldo Raine’s ethic of justifiable cruelty denies such a possibility, buying into a comforting narrative of American exceptionalism and German specificity. In the current political mileau where debates on torturing of detainees still rage, this kind of rhetoric proves especially vexing.
Many will respond to my concerns by saying “it’s all in good fun,” and while it my be true that Inglourious Basterds dispenses with realism, its fantasy of unfettered revenge reveal much about the United States’ collective psyche.
