Death in Cinema #3: Gerry

"So we were going east all right, which is a total Gerry..."

Release Year: 2002
Country: United States
Genre: Psychological drama
Director: Gus Van Sant
Screenwriter: Casey Affleck, Matt Damon, Gus Van Sant
Cinematography: Harris Savides
Music: Arvo Part
Editing: Casey Affleck, Matt Damon, Gus Van Sant
Actors: Casey Affleck, Matt Damon

One of the most important accomplishments of renowned arthouse and indie director Gus Van Sant is 'The Death Trilogy". It consisted of three separate movies (Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days) that acted as reflections on existentialism and death, filmed in an unconventional manner that emphasized time and space much more than character and plotting. Of the three, Gerry is the most acclaimed; a story of two male friends being lost in a desert, low on dialogue and action but extremely thick on atmosphere and philosophical implications.

The term "Gerry" refers to the nicknames of both main characters (their real names are never revealed), and also used by them to refer to something dumb in general (apparently, it can be used as either noun, verb, or adjective, as in "Stop being a Gerry", "We keep Gerrying this", and "You're so Gerry"). There is a lot of these 'Gerry-situations' in the movie, starting from how the two friends being lost in a desert, without having any food or water on them. From there, it's a (very) slow romp through the vast landscape as their hope of making it out alive steadily fades away.

If the idea of watching two people stumble along slowly and occasionally mumbling to each other for almost the whole movie's duration sounds terribly dull to you, then stay far away. Van Sant constantly favored long camera shots throughout, with each shot averaged 10 minutes in length; the grand total of shots is 100, which is a remarkably low number for a feature film. Majority of them are tracking shots of the two characters walking (often bereft of sound except for the steady, crunching, noise of footsteps) or simply shots that locked in a certain part of the massive landscape. Again, if you cannot bear having to stare at the same thing (sky, canyon, two people walking) for 5-10 minutes, Gerry will probably bore you out of your mind.


However, once we're willing to adapt with the extremely slow pace and soak in the atmosphere, we shall be able to appreciate what Gerry has to offer. The cinematography is oftentimes beautiful, but more importantly, it reflects a Human vs. Nature conflict in its purest. There are no hungry predators or natural disaster, yet the overwhelming canyon, boundless sand, and scorching sun all combine into Nature's ruthless punishment for living mortals stupid Gerry enough to underestimate it.

(the above screenshot, by the way, represented what I consider as the movie's best scene; it is when Gerry [Affleck] somehow got himself rock-marooned while Gerry [Damon] look at him from far below. The far-away angle of the camera, the quiet exchange between the two, and the laborious length make the scene so much more effective than it supposed to be).


The acting and characterization are as minimalistic as they could ever be, yet so much can be inferred about the two characters. Affleck and Damon, who also co-wrote and co-edited the film, establish their characters' relationship and behavioral dynamic not through lengthy exposition or dramatic moments, but through sparse exchange of words and--more importantly--through the many periods of silence, either the comfortable kind or the tense kind of silence. The deceptively flat and unemotional acting conceal a complex set of emotions beneath the surface, which culminates in the shocking ending.


The plot of Gerry never really becomes more complicated or dramatic than the premise of "two friends got lost, walk in vain", and yet the underlying themes brim with the density; of male relationship, arrogance, hopelessness, faith, and death as the ultimate form of mercy. Above all, it is a quiet and elegant observation of two mortals flailing around something so overpowering, ageless, and oppressive.

Halloween

"It was the bogeyman."

Release Year: 1978
Country: United States
Genre: Horror
Director: John Carpenter
Screenwriter: John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Cinematography: Dean Cundey
Music: John Carpenter
Editing: Charles Bornstein, Tommy Lee Wallace
Actors: Jamie Lee Curtis, Nick Castle, Donald Pleasence

Back in 1978, a man named John Carpenter directed, wrote, and provided the music for his little film project that would later had a huge impact to Hollywood's horror movie industry. The film is called Halloween, and it is about a boy named Michael Myers. A boy who killed a teenage girl at the age of six, spend the next 15 years in mental asylum, and escaped one day to revisit his hometown in Haddonfield, Illinois. A boy who then sets his sight on an unfortunate high-school student named Laurie Strode (Curtis), while being chased by his former psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis (Pleasence) who refers to him as the Evil itself...


There are lots of things that set Halloween apart from the numerous slasher/splatter/serial killer thriller movies where a bunch of attractive-looking teenagers are hunted and killed by a superhuman and super-evil psychopath. It may have a superficial similarity with its contemporaries' chase-and-kill franchises (Friday The 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc.), but it is a much different creature compared to the majority of them; mainly because it is just so much more elegant and accomplished. It does not provide cheap thrills and it does not have geysers of blood, random shock scenes, and excessive gorn (pornographic gore); what it does have, however, is a tremendous amount of craft, solid and memorable characters, and a very strong atmosphere.

Here, Carpenter created some of the most iconic and memorable moments in the history of American horror cinema. He used inventive set-pieces (who can ever forget the first 15 minutes of the film, where we are placed in 6-year old Michael's point of view?), tinkered with camera angles and placements to maximize tension, and utilized lighting (reportedly inspired from Roman Polanski's classic film Chinatown) to great effect. Then, there is the music, the most influential element to Halloween's mood and tension. It is a collection of dissonant and menacing ditties that hardly ever let up throughout the duration; always there, always remind the audiences that Evil is nearby, and always does a great job in scaring the hell out of me.


Michael Myers (his six-year old self is played by Will Sandin at the prologue, the face of his 21-year old self is provided by Tony Moran during a single brief scene when his mask comes off, but most of what we see of him is played by Nick Castle, eerily credited as 'The Shape') is one of a kind antagonist. The motive and reasoning behind his murderous intent are never explained here, he is simply just there to kill and violates nature; and THAT is precisely why Michael is one of the scariest character the cinema ever conceived. The way he is physically presented is just as brilliant: obscured by shadows most of the times, wearing that unnerving white mask, and the only sound that ever comes from him is the heavy and terrifying sound of his breathing. He is the embodiment of evil, and as some characters put it, the bogeyman; something that resembles human but does not posses a human's heart or emotion, an indestructible shape used by mothers to scare their kids from not staying outside too late.


On the other side, there is Laurie Strode. She is played to perfection by Curtis, an actress with great charisma and an ability to produce terrific and very convincing screams (earning her the moniker 'Scream Queen' among fans). Laurie is established early as an intelligent girl, more familiar with books rather than boys, and a much more responsible part-time baby-sitter compared to her less virginal friends, Annie Brackett (Nancy Kyes) and Lynda van der Klok (P.J. Soles). The presentation of the characters is hardly subtle (Laurie impressively explained F.E. Samuels' concept of fate in her class, Annie remarked snidely to Laurie, "You need trolley to carry all that books", and Lynda has a long rant where she derogatorily mentions the word 'books' as many times as possible), but there is no denying that Laurie is set up very effectively as the noble heroine. If Michael is Evil, then she (along with Loomis, whose single purpose is to find and destroy Michael) is the Good.

Yes, Halloween is practically a fairy tale in modern setting, only with an antagonist much scarier than any witches or dragons could ever be.


Operating under this Good vs. Evil motif, Halloween hardly wastes any time doing unnecessary stuffs. Michael is set free, Michael comes, Michael kills, and Michael faces Laurie; everything clocks in at only 91 minutes, mercifully free from a romance sub-plot or any other irrelevant embellishments. The ending fits really well with the whole theme; while it may ends in an apparent cliffhanger, it is actually a very elegant way to wrap up the whole thing and serves as a chilling reminder that Good may be able to defeat Evil, but Evil will keep coming back since it cannot really die.

Well, in the end there may be one thing that can truly kills Evil: money. Following this movie's success, a long list of sequels and remakes were eventually born to the world; none of them ever came close to the quality of the original film. Michael's motive is explained, gleeful amount of blood and violence is introduced, and the atmospheric set-up is replaced with the good old 'kill-them-all' formula. But, while it may had devolved to a cash-grabbing and brain-dead franchise, John Carpenter's first Halloween shall always be remembered as a horror masterpiece, made with so much skill and elegance; a dark fairy tale, featuring the Virgin Princess, The Avenging Angel....and The Bogeyman.

Happy Halloween.

Jurassic Park

"God creates dinosaur. God destroys dinosaur. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaur. Dinosaur eats man."

Release Year: 1993
Country: United States
Genre: Science-fiction thriller
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriter: David Koepp, Michael Crichton
Cinematography: Dean Cundey
Music: John Williams
Editing: Michael Kahn
Actors: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Richard Attenborough, Joseph Mazzello, Ariana Richards

Ideally, this blog's first real post would feature the very first movie that I watched. Or at least the first movie I ever saw in cinema, but the truth is I could not remember that moment. So, I decided to go with Jurassic Park: it may not be the first movie I ever watched and I am pretty sure I never actually watch it on the wondrous big screen (I was only 4-year old by the time it was released, although I did watch its sequel in cinema twice), but hell if it is not the very first movie that left an extremely powerful impression on me and truly introduced me to the art of movie-making: of crafting a fantastic world that mirrors and magnifies the many aspects of our mundane everyday lives.

JP had dinosaur lover and billionaire John Hammond (Attenborough) built a magnificent dinosaur park, following his company's discovery of a cloning technique that could resurrect the previously extinct creatures back to earth. Hammond then invited several selected guests for a pre-opening presentation and tour of his park: paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Neill); paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler (Dern); mathematician cum chaos theorist Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum); laywer representing the investors, Donald Gennaro (Ian Ferrero); and Hammond's grandkids, Tim (Mazzello) and Alexis Murphy (Richards). Although hugely impressed by the initial presentation, the guests voice their concern on how resurrecting dinosaurs could be considered as violation of nature that may lead up to a disaster. Their fears are proven to be true as a series of incidents left them stranded in the middle of the park, while the clever Velociraptors and the vicious Tyrannosaurus Rex are running loose among them.

The movie was adapted from a novel of the same name written by Michael Crichton, but there were so many changes made that the two versions practically had different stories besides the basic concept of "a dinosaur park is created and things went horribly wrong." Basically, the novel is a lot more informative, detailed, and darker in tone, while the movie is (understandably) a more condensed adventure tale that revised the ending, characters, and general tone in order to be more accessible to general audience. However, both versions are great in their own ways, and both told a genuinely terrifying and exciting tale with philosophical overtones.

One of the major changes is the portrayal and eventual fates of the characters. Hammond, for example, is a lot more sympathetic in the movie: he has good intentions and while misguided, we can certainly relate with his childlike enthusiasm and love of dinosaur (in the novel, he is merely a greedy bastard). This is a classic human vs. nature movie conflict: most of the cast are "the good guys" (there is only one clear human villain, who suffered a bloody and prolonged death fairly early), and as is the standard Hollywood operation back then, we can expect all the major and most sympathetic characters to survive the day. Characterization tend to suffer from an oversimplified stereotyping (the paleontologist is shown to be techno-illiterate, while the mathematician is an extreme pessimist), but the script is buoyed by many great quote-able lines and remarkable performances from the adult actors.

But of course, human characters are not the star of the show here. People did not watch Jurassic Park because they wanted to see a paleontologist debating with a mathematician (although it is interesting in its own right), they watch it because of the dinosaurs. And, my God, the dinosaurs really look fantastic here. The movie's special effects and computer-generated images are rightfully lauded by the time it came out, and it certainly still looks great even after so many years had passed.

Seriously, if when the T-Rex shows itself for the first time...

or when the Brachiosaurus majestically walk ahead of the awestruck visitors...

or when Sattler inspects the sick Triceratops...

or when the Velociraptors stalk around like the "clever girls" they are...

....if your eyes don't widen and your heart doesn't beat faster, then you clearly don't have a soul.

Sure, Spielberg may romanticized the thing too much (a common criticism aimed at him is that he is "too sentimental") and the happy ending/resolution may be too easy and unrealistic, but the director also successfully evokes a sense of wide-eyed wonder and enthusiasm that becomes the heart and soul of this movie. Detractors complaining about the scientific accuracies (the cloning theory, for example, is completely bogus) are not wrong, but they also missed the point. The main purpose of Jurassic Park (the movie version, at least) is to amaze us with this force of nature called dinosaur...and shows how Nature's most beautiful creations can also be the most dangerous ones. Using pure technology to achieve this effect is simply marvelous, regardless of the inevitable factual errors that stem from its fictional nature.

Despite the relatively disappointing sequels (I enjoyed The Lost World, but it does not live up to the magic of its predecessor, while I can barely remember anything about Jurassic Park 3 besides that it is...completely forgettable), Jurassic Park had left a huge legacy as a summer blockbuster movie. It turned many kids into dinosaur fans (I myself used to had a collection of dinosaur picture books and toys), and triggered a 'dinosaur boom' throughout the entire 1990s. As of now, the franchise and the popularity of dinosaurs can be considered 'extinct' (there were rumors about Jurassic Park 4, but it seems to have died down after Crichton's death in 2008), but this first movie will always hold a special place in my heart.

I love dinosaurs, and I love Jurassic Park.