Fantastic Planet - Taking a Break From the Conventional

Blegh.

Blegh blegh blegh.

Some straight talk.  Last week wasn't a very good week for me.  I hit a whole lot of down spots, turned some self-loathing on myself for extended periods of time, and basically wasn't in a good mood for the vast majority of the week.  I'm doing a little better now, but the fact is that I missed Friday's review entirely.  This is, in a way, my fault.  I totally had time to do it Friday, but I opted not to because I'd spent most of the day in a negative haze, and decided once I came out of it that spending as much time with the comic book club as possible was better than spending a little time, then coming home to be by myself and write the review.  I got some comics to read, went to see Age of Ultron again, had fun with friends, felt better.

Now, I could have gotten around to the review Saturday, or maybe even Sunday if I was really pushing it, but I just don't feel like talking about this one.  My uncle watching Danger Mouse pulled up a bunch of shitty children's films on his account, and I rolled up Star Wars: The Clone Wars from it.  You know, the one that was the first four episodes of the TV show strung together in a movie and then released to theaters because someone really wanted to make money off of it.  The movie barely made an impression on me when I first saw it seven years ago, and it barely made an impression now.  It's just the pilot to a show I never got into and couldn't stick with before it got good (though I understand that when it did get good, it got REALLY good).  I'm normally not one to shirk from a review - hell, I gave Transformers and Melancholia a chance, didn't I? - but after a week of general downness, I just didn't feel like talking about it.

And I still don't.  I'm not in any kind of mood today to just faff about and go "Eh, s'alrgith, nothing special," and I don't want to take any gambles with Netflix and see if anything decent comes up.  So, instead, we're breaking formula to talk about a movie I'm actually interested in talking about, 1973's Fantastic Planet.  I grabbed it out of the school library last week, and it was really good, so we're gonna take a swing at it.  So here goes.

(Fair warning,  I might do this again Wednesday for Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Or maybe we'll go back to formula.  Who knows.)

Anyways, Fantastic Planet is an animated film from the mind of French director René Laloux.  A former psychiatric care worker, he got his start in animation by helping the inmates create their own short film as part of their therapy.  The early influences of non-neurotypical thinking on his work really shows in Fantastic Planet, which doesn't look like any kind of conventional animated film, even for a sci-fi picture.  Every aspect of the landscape, the creatures, the Traag culture, all of it looks and feels completely and utterly alien.  Seriously, just look at the trailer.  There's some real creativity at work here, and I think it's a great example of how animation and science fiction can expand our horizons of what's possible.

The animation style, too, is pretty damned unique.  There's a bit of sketchiness to it, but not in any way that looks cheap or rushed like many of Disney's films of the same era.  Instead, the cutout stop-motion lends the movie a slower pace that compliments the narrative, and a bit of an off-kilter aesthetic, one that adds to the alien sensibilities.  I don't want to say it's "dreamlike" because pretty much everyone and their mother says movies like these are "dreamlike," but it's most definitely fascinating to watch.

Speaking of the narrative, there's nothing too terribly groundbreaking about it, but it's told in a fairly captivating style.  In the distant future, Earth is largely uninhabitable, and most humans (now called Oms, a play on the French word for man) live on the planet Ygam as either pests or pets to the much larger blue-skinned Traags.  Traag science and culture is far in advance of anything we ever had on Earth, much less as the largely disenfranchised Oms - they're focused largely on the art of meditation and contemplation on the universe.  However, the increase in popularity of Oms as pets, as well as a rise in wild Om incursions into Traag territory, threatens their way of life in the eyes of the elders.  As such, the total extermination of the Oms is frequently on Traag lips.

The whole story is told by taking us through the life of Terr, an Om boy whose mother was killed while he was a baby, and was adopted by the young Traag girl Tiva.  Again, I wouldn't call any of the narrative new or groundbreaking - if you're at all familiar with these kind of sci-fi stories, the whole "human beings as pets slowly being abandoned by their owner and striking it on their own for a better chance at life" thing is well-worn.  But it's well-worn for a reason, and Fantastic Planet's slow pace and unique feel give it enough time to develop as its own story without feeling cliché.  I can recognize the common story in retrospect, but in the moment I'm completely caught up.

Tropes might get annoying at times, but if we didn't have 'em we'd be starting from scratch every time we tried to tell a story, and wouldn't ever get to the point where we need innovation.

I don't want to go giving the impression that Fantastic Planet is bad because the story isn't the most innovative, though.  There's some great thematic stuff going on regarding whether or not humanity can ever hope to achieve real peace with a higher alien power, or if the only compromise is through a show of force.  Given the movie's Czechoslovakian animation team, I've seen some people claim it's an extended metaphor for Czech occupation by the Soviets.  While there are mitigating factors that prove this isn't the intention (work on the film taking place mostly before the invasion started and the book it's based on well predating the occupation), it's always nice to see a sci-fi story with enough universality to it become applicable to real world events.  Good to have meat along with the potatoes every now and then, you know?

(Yeah, I know I'm haphazardly using metaphors, what are YOU gonna do about it?)

I really liked Fantastic Planet.  If I didn't, I would've rolled up a movie for tonight instead of tossing this blog's whole gimmick out the window in order to talk about it.  It's definitely a slow-burner, but it's one of those few movies where I feel compelled to pay attention to every second.  The soundtrack makes for some great studying music as I found out the other day.  And dammit, it's just a plain fun ride to go through.  The movie isn't on any of the streaming services as far as I'm aware, but it's definitely worth tracking it down and checking it out for yourself.

(Assorted thoughts:

- The version I watched was entirely in French with English subtitles.  That might have played a roll in why I felt the need to pay attention the whole way through, but  I like to think it would hold up even in the English dub.

- Speaking of the version I watched, it calls the aliens Traags, while most other translations and dubs apparently use Draag.  The original book calls them Traags too, but I'm only going with Traag because it's what I saw it as.

- I'm still trying to work out what the hell that weird lava lamp bit with the four Traags is.  It's clearly not meditation, and based on what we see in the movie adult Traags don't have much time or patience for recreation, so I'm not sure what function it serves.  But it certainly enhances the "this ain't Earth, buddy" aspect of the movie.

- Ygam's landscapes are some of my favorite backgrounds in an animated feature, now.)

For the record, I am doing better than I was earlier.  Last week just kinda hit me like a trainwreck.

Melancholia - Lars von Trier depresses me with planetary annihilation.

Amazon Insant's visually sumptuous category brings us today's flick...

You do realize that part of the reason I run this blog is to stave off depression, right?  Like, if I don't have something structured going on, I kinda fall into a rut and have a hard time getting out of it and alternatively consider killing myself and verbally lashing out at people, so I need something to do to occupy my time.  So I sit down, watch a movie, and then bang out my opinion on it to keep myself writing something and stave off the problems of my mental state until I can find a more permanent solution.  It's working out intermittently, but I think it's working.  All of this is a nice way of saying:

I DON'T NEED YOUR SHIT, LARS VON TRIER.

Backing up a bit.  From what I've read about him since I had reason to care about him as anything beyond the guy jokingly credited as the pie in Too Many Cooks, Lars von Trier is a bit of an eccentric film director who tends towards a minimalist style for his movies (so much so that he created Dogme 95, an entire movement dedicated to making movies with the barest of possible bones), and a really, really dark streak.  We're not talking super dark and edgy dark, we're talking "humanity is a blight on this planet and it'll be better off the second we're gone" dark.  I mean, emo kid grew up and refined his poetry into something compelling and meaningful without losing any of the original intention, downright, straight up bleak.  He also apparently makes jokes about Hitler that get him blacklisted at Cannes.

And boy howdy does that dark streak show in Melancholia.  I was a little bit worried going into this review, because I didn't pay the movie as much attention as I feel it deserved.  I had other stuff distracting me at the time, and the slow pace and quiet audio put me out of it for a little while.  What's more, I've actually known about this movie and been interested in seeing it ever since I caught a review in the paper back when it came out.  So I was feeling as if I'd just wasted a solid two and a quarter hours and wouldn't be able to say anything intelligent about the film without binging on Wikipedia and imdb in order to put together a half-coherent synopsis and a few small opinions.

But then something happened.  While walking to and from class today, I took some time to think about the film, reflect on what I remembered and piece it together that way.  And in doing so, I came to a conclusion, one that justifies the all-caps boldly italicized statement up there - I feel like I totally get this movie.

The set up this time around involves the wedding of Justine and Michael, two young lovers whose idyllic life isn't quite as idyllic as it seems.  Justine's parents have long since split apart, and her mother doesn't approve of her marriage in the slightest.  Her sister Claire and husband John act supportive, but John's liable to snap and give up on Claire's side of the family at the drop of a hat.  And worst of all, Justine suffers from clinical depression, which strikes her on the night of her reception.  These factors, along with a whole host of other mitigating conditions brought on by the other guests, causes the night to splinter apart - never quite breaking, but definitely destroying any illusion of a happy life.

The film's second half shifts to pay more attention to Justine and Clair's relationship, as well as up the focus on the oncoming collision with the giant planet Melancholia.  It's still as character oriented as the first act, but draws the characters in broader strokes and introduces a somewhat mystical element as the planet draws closer and closer.

Before I get into any of my analysis, I'd like to get a few things out of the way, including the one thing I think pretty much everyone who's reviewed this movie has gotten at - the opening sequence looks great.  Melancholia opens with a series of slow-motion, almost completely still images depicting key events from the movie in both literal and metaphorical terms.  At times I thought it WAS just a still image, until a planet blotted out a star's light, or someone's foot sank a solid six inches into the ground.  It's all very, VERY well shot, and culminates in an image of Melancholia impacting Earth, effectively setting up the movie's tone of depression-born inevitability.

It also serves as a good contrast to the movie afterwards.  In contrast to the opening sequence, largely made up of well-composed, slow moving stills, the rest of the film pulls in much closer and focuses in on characters with a slightly shaky camera.  None of it ever stops looking good (this was in the Visually Sumptuous category, after all), but it highlights Justine's uncomfortableness with the situation, likely born out of her depression.  As those of us who suffer from it and related mental disorders, it's not easy dealing with social situations, and von Trier uses the camerawork as an effective way of demonstrating this.  I'm sure it says something that the method is still employed in the second part, when the cast is cut down to just four people.

And speaking of the cast, they all do great jobs.  Seeing Kiefer Sutherland here makes me want to get through Peace Walker faster so I can hear him do Big Boss in Ground Zeroes and the Phantom Pain, and seeing John Hurt here reminds me that I made a good decision in liking John Hurt.  I really don't have much to say about the rest of them, just that they did a good job and I figured the acting worthy of praise.  Sometimes I don't have much to say about something I want to work into the main review.  I'm not about to push central credited performances into the assorted thoughts section.

But anyways, that analysis I promised earlier.  As I said at the start, despite not strictly paying attention to every tiny bit of the movie, I still feel like I completely understand what von Trier was going for here.  Wikipedia's plot summary includes a whole bunch of stuff about characters standing in for the sins of mankind, and given some of the elements in the movie I can definitely see that.  Yet for the way my reading of the film works, it really only requires the characters who stick around for part 2.

See, the way I see it, Melancholia's central question is, "Does normal, run of the mill depression work any differently that completely apocalyptic depression?"  And over the course of the film, I think it comes to the conclusion that no, there is no central difference.  Justine never gets better throughout the course of the movie.  The inbound armageddon doesn't do anything to shake her out of her thought patterns, or convince her to rebuild ties with her family, or do anything but silently accept her oncoming death as she bathes naked in the planetlight.

In fact, Melancholia seems to argue that depression is the most logical, rational mindset one can take when faced with the inevitable.  Part two focuses more on Claire and how she deals with the inbound impact, believing whatever she's told for as long as possible before finding irrefutable proof that she, along with everything and everyone she's ever known, is doomed.  As the supposedly more rational sister, one would expect her to figure out some means of dealing with the situation.  But instead, she breaks down, completely out of places to hide, unable to accept that there's nothing she can do to stop it.

Central to all of this is a character I've neglected to mention until now, Claire's son.  Throughout the second half of the film, he's aware of Melancholia's approach, but never seems to fully comprehend its meaning.  Even when his father reassures him of their 100% assured survival, he doesn't seem to quite GET it.  By the time the ending rolls around (if I may indulge in spoilers for a moment) and his mother has placed herself and Justine in a magic cave to protect them from the planet, he seems to finally figure it out... and take Justine's side.  He's completely silent and acceptant of the inbound destruction, as if he's adopted her mindset and accepted what his mother cannot.  Maybe he has depression too or something.

You can probably see why I was reluctant to review this movie, even beyond my lack of attention given to it.  "Hey, extreme, pervasive depression is totally a valid thing for you to feel because the whole world's small and insignificant and you're going to die anyways, so why bother?" isn't exactly the sort of thing I want the movies I watch here telling me.

It is entirely possible that I've misread Melancholia entirely.  There's some crucial shots of Earth as small and dark and insignificant against Melancholia's grand blue magnificence, so it could just as easily be a call to rise beyond petty emotional strife and work to appreciate the beauty of the universe, with the depression aspect driving the difficulty of the task.  I'm not entirely certain.  What I am certain of is that this is a really good movie; thought provoking, well acted, VERY well shot, and an interesting introduction to Lars von Trier's work, Melancholia is a film I can heartily recommend to those of you who have Amazon Instant and think you can make it through the bleak runtime.

I'm just hoping Friday's movie is a mite bit less depressing.

(Assorted thoughts:

- Wikipedia's article on Dogme 95.  It's a pretty interesting concept, and I've occasionally wondered how one would go about making a movie under these restrictions.  Never really associated von Trier with it until now though, despite him founding the damn movement.

- It's another one of those movies where I know a bunch of people from superhero films and genre fiction.  Kirsten Dunst from Spider-Man, Stellan Skarsgård from the Thor movies, I know a bunch of John Hurt stuff but I know him best from Doctor Who, Kiefer Sutherland from Metal Gear...

- Is it weird that I was at a wedding on a golf course last week?  I know it doesn't mean anything, but it just feels odd that I go to one of those and then roll up this movie.

- "The brother-in-law who is an astronomer committing suicide rather than live to see the most awesome astronomical event ever, even if it was the last thing he would ever see. Makes no sense to me. You'd think that he would want to at least see it." Why do I go on TV Tropes.  Why.

- This movie is apparently part of a thematic depression trilogy von Trier was working on, starting with Antichrist and ending with the recent Nymphomaniac.  Antichrist is one of the Certified Weird movies over at 366WeirdMovies, so maybe I'll track down a way to see that at some point.

Anyways, small announcement here.  Elena has decided that the stresses of daily life are too much for her to be able to find the time to contribute articles, and will be leaving us.  I'm sad that she never got around to publishing a review, but I respect her decision to go, and wish her the best.  Not sure who's going to fill the Tuesday/Thursday slot, especially given the blog's small readerbase, but I'll manage.

Anastasia - The finest example of historical revisionism since Pocahontas!

We're on Netflix again today, my account, and the popular selections give us today's animated feature film...

S'kind of funny.  Last week we opened up by looking at a movie produced by Richard Rich, a disgraced Disney animator who's spent the rest of his feature film direction and production career endeavoring to prove to his old bosses that he could do just as well without them.  And this week, we're opening up with a film by Don Bluth, a disgraced Disney animator who oh wait.

The thing is, Don Bluth seems to have had a fair deal more success than Rich did.  After leaving Disney in the early 80s due to distaste with the company's current direction, he founded his own animation company and started making movies the way he thought they should be.  His early forays with his personal production company - notably The Secret of NIMH, An American Tale, and The Land Before Time, all of which achieved critical acclaim and are still touted as some of the best animated films, Disney or otherwise - and for a time seemed like a legitimate rival to the most famous animation company on the planet.  However, success for those who try to take on the House the Mouse Built usually doesn't last that long, and the early 90s weren't all that kind to Bluth.  His studio folded, his work with other companies failed to achieve success, and, probably most damning of all, all of his good films recieved crappy sequel after crappy sequel on DVD.  Not exactly his proudest hour.

Fortunately, Bluth was given another chance through 20th Century Fox, looking for a way to break into the animation scene and give Disney a run for their money in the same way the director had in the 80s.  So it was that Bluth partnered up with the burgeoning Fox Animation Studios to produced 1997's Anastasia.  The film was a reasonable success (140 million worldwide) and again it seemed for a while that Don Bluth would have a chance at squaring off against his old employers and potentially winning, especially given the state of Disney animation at the time.  Then they made a shitty direct to video sequel to the movie, Titan AE failed to recoup its budget, Fox Animation Studios folded, and Don Bluth never made a movie again.

So things go sometimes.

Although Bluth's 90s work isn't exactly fondly remembered, Anastasia seems well enough liked.  I rarely see too many bad words spared for it online, and the film often finds itself on "remember how great the 90s were?" lists, so maybe it's good.  Maybe not.  Who knows.  I do, seeing as I've seen the movie and I'm here to give you my opinion on it.  So opinion away with us.

The film's plot is basically revisionist history in order to get the kids in the audience involved.  It involves the Russian Communist Revolution and the fall of the Romanovs ACTUALLY being the result of an evil, reimagined as a wizard version of Rasputin just really, REALLY hating the royal family.  So all that stuff about a dissatisfied lower class and the rise of a communist system?  Didn't happen, evil wizard made everyone mad.  Anyways, in this alternate history, the young Anastasia is separated from her grandmother by the chaos of the revolution, and grows up in an orphanage, yearning to learn of her real past and identity.  Fortunately, as she's striking out, a young former servant boy, Dimitri, and his older former nobleman assistant, Vladimir, are searching for the real Anastasia to present to the older woman in order to claim the reward.  They get together, coalesce a plan, and strike out for Paris, all while under attack from the now-dead Rasputin, attempting to make sure the last of the Romanovs really IS dead.

First off, I really have to criticize the film for the whole evil wizard thing.  Christopher Lloyd does well enough as Rasputin, but he seems far too out of place.  The main conflict is strong enough without needing to say "a wizard did it," and Don Bluth's tendency towards dealing with darker subject material makes it seem really odd to me that he'd shy away from the realities of the Revolution for the kids.  Most of the historical violence is confined to the prologue anyways, so all the explanation does is weigh us down with scenes where evil green energy bats cause havoc every now and then, before a rather unsatisfying and unnecessary final battle at the end.  Maybe it was the studio imposing it on him in order to be more Disneyesque, but it just doesn't gel with the rest of the film.

The rest of the plot, though, isn't all that much better.  I can't say it's BAD by any measure, but it definitely is sort of cliched.  Anastasia fits the mold of the stereotypical 90s Disney princess far better than any of the actual princesses they pumped out during the decade - yearning for a new life, generally pretty, snarky in danger, helpless around the main bad guy, etcetera etcetera.  Dmitri and Vlad don't fall into the trap on their own too badly, but the romance subplot between Dmitri and Anastasia ticks off all the "no, no, see, DISNEY has romance subplots in their films, so..." boxes, which doesn't do the film any favors.  There is SOME interesting stuff when they're teaching her how to be the Grand Duchess, but beyond that there's not much here you haven't seen before.  Still competently executed (unlike some overly cliched films featured here...), but nothing special.

Fortunately, I don't have to bitch and moan for too terribly long, because there are elements to the film that I like.  The music, for example, is a pretty solid effort.  None of it is as instantly memorable as anything Disney pumps out (they were clearly trying to be like Disney in this movie, so yes I do think all the Disney comparisons are apt), but that's like saying the wire-fu isn't all that great because the Matrix did it better.  Some of the tunes, like Once Upon a December and In the Dark of the Night, are definitely catchy enough to warrant having around, and the big show-stopping crowd songs (Rumor in St Petersburg and Paris Holds the Key) seem like they'd work really well with a few more go-arounds.  I can't say it's a favorite soundtrack of mine, especially since it falls into the usual animated musical traps of not actually functioning as a musical - if the songs aren't the primary insight into the characters and plot points, why are we making a musical at all? - but it's solid enough.

The animation works out pretty well too.  There are some elements I find distasteful, especially the way the leads' faces constantly look like they're scrunched up for no reasons, but the characters are designed well and move in a way that looks good to someone like me who has absolutely no formal education in the art form.  Unlike Alpha and Omega, there aren't any moments where I'm taken out of the film by ugly characters or poorly composed shots - in fact, there's some really neat animated camera work in places.  The scenes on the boat where they have what looks like a computer generated set rocking back and forth with the ocean, and this one shot where they swing around the front of a car both struck me as being really good.  Even if the studio folded due to a lack of financial success, you can't say they didn't know what they were doing.

It's a pretty alright film, all things considered.  I can't really say it washes over you like I have with other films I've used that phrase on.  Some bits might even count as really memorable to certain people.  But I just can't get past the revisionism at the start that saddles the movie with a pointless bad guy.  The drive to be like Disney is understandable, but most non-Disney animated films that found long lasting success did their best to not be like Disney, Bluth's included.  It feels like the studio saw their competitor floundering after the release of Pocahontas, and brought in the first guy they could to slap together all the traditional Disney elements into one movie in order to take advantage of an incoming vacuum.  As such, they needed a villain, because all the Disney films have an obvious villain, and we wound up with Rasputin bouncing around set every few scenes.

Gad, I hope this wasn't the result of studio interference.  A little reigning in is fine once in a while, but creators really need the room to breathe.  I'm guilty of liking stuff that winds up the way it is because of corporate mandate (cough Marvel Studios cough), but I really do think that a studio stepping in and telling the director what to do in order to increase profits is more likely to ruin a film than enhance it.  Short-term profits are important, sure (filmmaking is a business, after all), but there needs to be SOME consideration to whether or not the choices made will result in a good movie.

Personal digressions about creative freedom in the art world aside, I think I can recommend Anastasia.  It's not really to my personal tastes, but I can definitely see the appeal.  If you haven't seen it before, I think there's a solid chance you'll like it.  And if you have, then it's on Netflix and that's always a good place for revisiting childhood favorites.  I was surfing around earlier and saw they had Zathura, which I'm totally gonna watch later this week, so I feel you completely if that's what you wanna do.

(Assorted thoughts:

- So as a kid I had this toy that we got from Burger King or someplace of Batrok, the little white bat thing, and he had an eye clutched in his arms and legs, and you could pull it out and watch it slowly reel back into his grip.  It was a neat toy, and I never knew why he had an eye until I saw the movie today.  Turns out, there's a five second scene where they're playing with the fact that Rasputin's a walking corpse, and Batrok accidentally pulls his eye out of his head.  Bit of a morbid thing to base a Big Kid's Meal toy on, but if I'm gonna criticize the movie for not being grim enough for its creative team's reputation, then I suppose it's a good toy by that measure.

- I don't think Rasputin works as part of the movie as a whole, but the whole thing about him being a magical, falling apart corpse is pretty neat, and leads to some fun moments with body parts winding up in places they don't belong.

- I honestly don't understand why Batrok winds up with a lady bat at the end of the movie.

- There's this bit when they get to Paris where Anastasia just goes "SHOPPING!  IN PARIS!" and over dramatically swoons, and... look, it was the 90s, the world was still working on the whole "not all women are exactly the same person with different sized tits" thing.  We still are, but I'd like to think we've gotten better.

- Someone on the soundtrack for the movie is credited with "finger snapping."  I don't know why that interests me, but it does.

- The Incredible Hulk's early companion Rick Jones did voice work for this movie.

- Swiping directly from Wikipedia here: "Some of Anastasia's contemporary relatives also felt that the film was distasteful, but most Romanovs have come to accept the "repeated exploitation of Anastasia's romantic tale ... with equanimity.""  Imagine having to be these people and constantly have your legacy exploited because the version everyone's familiar with makes them feel better.  Imagine how fucking awful that must feel.

- Today I learned that Fox Animation Studios was based out of Phoenix.  I don't normally take part in any kind of state pride thing, but Arizona represent.

- Best part of the movie: Rasputin delivering the usual "NO ONE CAN SAVE YOU NOW!" line before Dmitri comes out of nowhere, goes "WANNA BET?" and decks him in the face.  It's completely ridiculous, and me and my roommates played it over like four times before getting back to the rest of the movie.)

Apologies for the lateness of the review.  I had some family stuff to take care of over the weekend, and got hit with a pretty bad bout of depression and bad luck on Sunday.  I'll try to make Wednesday's come a little earlier, but I don't have a holiday to fall back on this time, and tomorrow's open mic night, so I'm not gonna make any promises or anything.

Apocalypse Now

The following review, brought to us by Amazon Instant's military and war category, contains spoilers.

War has never been a huge factor in my life.  It has, of course, always served as a backdrop of sorts - the 9/11 attacks occurred only a few short years after I gained self-awareness, and the United States has been entangled in one overseas conflict after another in these last fourteen years.  However, it has always been a distant reality, never something I have ever needed to directly confront.  It has only ever served as news reports and discussions in classrooms.  No members of my immediate family who I identify closely with have served in the armed forces during my formative years, and I personally do not ever wish to see active combat, much less enlist for any reason whatsoever.  War, to me, is a nebulous thing, and one I hope to God I never have to confront.

Media, however, has played a major role in my life.  For years I replaced friendships in school with endless readings, both for schoolwork and pleasure.  My teenage years were heavily occupied with reading about stories I knew of and was completely unfamiliar with on various online sources.  More recently, much of my time is occupied with video games and movies, hence the reason for this blog's existence.  I am simply not a good people person, and directly facing the world unnerves me, so I turn to the cinema and world of fiction instead.

As such, my perception of war is shaped largely by what I encounter in various movies, books, and games.  For just one pertinent example, my opinion on boot camps was practically nonexistent until I saw Full Metal Jacket a few years back.  The depiction of R. Lee Ermey's gunnery sergeant as a relentless psychological abuser of a man clearly unsuited to military life, to the point of murder and suicide, cemented my distaste for the whole basic training process far more than any description from a soldier who experienced the same could.  Perhaps this speaks to something deeply wrong with me.  Personally, I think it does, and I should like to note, just for the comfort of people who I know frequent this blog, that I am aware of the issue and working to get more real world exposure to counter it.  But this receptiveness to movies has shaped who I am, and there is nothing I can do to change those past experiences.

Of all the military fiction I have consumed, the Metal Gear series of video games has influenced my perception on war and conflict more than any other single work or body of work.  I only hopped on the bandwagon this last February, but the past six months of playing and analyzing have proven some of the most enriching and rewarding experiences I have had with a story in quite some time.  For a series I started into because a meme I saw made me laugh, it has proven surprisingly impactive, especially on my views of how war should be.

Allow me to elaborate.  Much of the series centers around attempts to control the entire world to bring it into line with one's ideals, and the inevitable failure of these attempts.  A world controlled by iron-fisted power and military might can only slip away or shatter under the steel grip. In the end, it is the understanding ways of Solid Snake that save the world.  Unlike those before and around him, he fights not to eliminate an enemy and shape the world to his standards, but to remove a threat and allow the world to develop as each person living in it sees fit.  More importantly, while he will fight and do what is right to save the world and finish his mission, he endeavors to understand his enemies, and provide them the closure and understanding they did not receive in life.

There is a kind of purity to Snake's actions, a lack of judgement on the way his enemies operate.  Obviously they must be taken down, removed from the world so that they will not endanger it further, but their thoughts and feelings on how it should be matter just as much as anyone else's.  Their life stories deserve to be heard.  The failure to understand this principle, both in the series' primary villain as a concept, and by Snake as an active thought, drives much of the story's action and drama, and when the two of them reconcile in the final chronological game and at long last understand the need for that purity of judgement, it's incredibly beautiful.

I feel the need to mention all of this because in the final twenty minutes of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, I noticed some parallels to this idea.  Colonel Kurtz is portrayed as a man who fought for his country and did his homeland proud by enacting the worst of brutalities on those he was tasked to fight.  He rose as a man perfect in every way for a commanding position in an amoral, power drunk army that enjoyed the slaughter of innocents for a strategic position and a place to surf, reveled in the opportunity to rape the rare non-combatant women who came across their sights.  Another man in his position might have simply taken it and joined with the rabble, content to spend the rest of his days in a cozy general's armchair.

But Kurtz, for better or worse, was no ordinary man.  He could not stand the terrible deeds he had to perform in the name of victory, and had to find a way to understand it all, or else go completely mad.  While it is debatable whether or not he succeeded in avoiding madness, his speeches clearly show he found a way to make it through.  Upon seeing the arms of children he and his men inoculated hacked off by Vietnamese sticking to their principles, he found both the horrors of war and the way to navigate them.  It takes, again, a purity of judgement.  A conviction to do what you believe must be done, and ONLY what must be done.

It shapes Kurtz into the kind of man who won't even raise a finger against a fly as it buzzes all about his face and will take legions of the enemy under his wing as a divine figurehead - and will chop a man's head off and deposit it at the feet of his comrade if that man poses even the slightest threat to his beliefs and way of life, all without a hint of anger or regret.  Purity.  The enemy is who you judge them to be, and only they are worthy of the monstrosity war makes a man into.

Maybe Kurtz was right in his way of thinking.  Maybe it was just a philosophy he developed in order to survive.  With his limited screen-time and air of mystery, there's no way to know for sure.  But it is easy to say that his methods and philosophies had no place in the Vietnam War.  Being driven into madness and giving up one's ideals for the sake of victory, even if victory proved impossible, was the norm.  And so it is that Kurtz had to die.  Thankfully at the hand of a man who came to understand his mindset and brought him down in a manner he would have approved of, ritualistically and with the cold brutality of a monster; but he had to die regardless, and with his death the world lost any potential insight it could gain from his alternative take on the horrors, madness, and reality of war.

It's a horrible, horrible outlook to take on the world, but I can't help but feel there's an element of truth to both perspectives.  Understanding one's enemies, as in the Metal Gear model, serves to humanize them and offers deeper insight into why war shouldn't be waged, for the sake of the human condition.  But cutting through the hatred and bloodlust to operate as a distant, high-minded killing machine may very well be the only way to preserve one's principles during a war one has no way out of.  Attempting to stop the horror of battle and sympathizing with the enemy is all well and good, but if brass tacks come to brass tacks, taming the monster and unleashing it at will on those you feel deserve it is quite possibly the only way to stay sane.

Maybe that's what war's about.  Maybe I'm completely off-base and have misread the film in the worst manner possible.  I need more time to digest, but I have a feeling Colonel Kurtz's methods and ideologies will play some major part in the way I view war from now on.

Apocalypse Now has deeply impacted me as a viewer, but I am not quite certain how to process it just yet.  I have a wedding to attend tomorrow (I'm writing this review on a Thursday night), so I'll have to clear my thoughts of anything to do with the darkness of the human condition and the horrors of war for the sake of being able to function properly.  However, this means I will not be able to condense my impressions of the movie into a more coherent form before Saturday rolls around.  Since this blog exists primarily to keep me on a schedule, I'd rather not miss my day long deadline because I'm trying to figure out if my thoughts on the movie make sense or not.

As such, the above serves as a look into the parts of my reaction that I feel best reflect my overall impression of the film and potentially add a new take to the discourse.  It is, of course, an incredible film (one you should all see wherever and whenever possible), and while I found myself fading in parts, the ending more than makes up for any fears I had of not liking the movie and having to write even a word of negative criticism.  Anything I have to say about the overall story, characters, filming style, or cultural impact would be moot by this point, given its status as one of the most critically acclaimed and deeply analyzed films of all time.  Giving you my raw, immediate thoughts, however incoherent and potentially off the mark, feels like the right thing to do.

After all, this is the sort of film that encourages deep thinking about its overall plots and themes.  Colonel Kurtz's appearance in the final half hour put me in mind of my analysis of the Metal Gear series and the way media has impacted my perception of the world around me, and so those are the thoughts I have chosen to share with you, as I feel they are not likely to have come up much in discussion of the film.  With any amount of luck, it's coherent and accurate enough to serve as a thought-provoking and engaging read.  If not... oh well, I suppose.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go find something to do that's not so fucking BLEAK for the rest of the night.  I'll add some assorted thoughts and try to keep this from being "Gilbert Raves About Why The World Is Terrible When Really He Don't Know Nothin': The Article" in the morning.  Good night, and thanks for reading.

(Assorted thoughts:

- Marlon Brando may have been one hell of a bastard to work with at this point in his career, but damn if he doesn't deserve his recognition as one of the greats.

- Reading the story about making this movie's like reading through a fucking comedy of errors, except people are actually nearly dying and attempting suicide.

- That scene with the dog, man.  Almost broke my water bottle in two clenching it so tight, and it's made out of rubber, so that oughta tell you something.

- Robert Duvall: Second best part of the movie.  Agreed?  Agreed.)

Without a Paddle - At least the creek isn't full of what you'd expect.

In what is becoming something of a trend on this blog, we once again have action adventure chosen from Netflix, this time my account, as the category from which today's film hails.

As cathartic as it is to tear down a movie in a negative review from time to time, I really wouldn't want it to be the ONLY thing I do on this blog.  Having to write a bad review means I have to watch a bad movie, and that's only fun if it's bad in an entertaining and interesting way.  If it's just dull and poorly made, like Alpha and Omega, then all I'm doing is subjecting myself to an unwatchable film I can't recommend.  And I really do want to recommend films here - find interesting stuff to write about and hope other people want to watch it based on my write-up.  If every film I watch is Alpha and Omega, I'd quickly fall into a pattern of "don't watch this" and "stay away from that."  It'd get boring and depressing real damn quick.

I had all the above in mind when I rolled up Without A Paddle for today.  Based on the Netflix rating and various reactions online, it didn't seem like a fun ride.  Seth Green's a good actor, and I liked him in Buffy, but otherwise it struck me as nothing but another mediocre mid-2000s comedy film nobody had heard of.  Hitting play, I fully expected a massive piece of shit movie full of stoner references and piss and shit jokes, the sort of thing you can only get into with a few buddies and excessive amounts of alcohol.

With the movie done now, I can happily say it's OK.  Not a great comedy, not a bad one, not really offensive in any way, just OK.  It happens for around an hour and a half, delivers some good laughs, and it's over without any pain or lasting memory.  I don't regret watching it, even though it's not anything special, so there we are.  If you'd like a little more detail than that, read on.

Three grown-up friends from back in the 80s - neurotic doctor Dan (Green), mild jackass Tom (Dax Shepard) and character trait I don't remember Jerry (Matthew Lillard) - meet up again after their friend Billy dies, and find a treasure map he left for their planned childhood adventure to find DB Cooper's lost treasure.  Dissatisfied with their lives for one reason or another, they decided to go out on a journey in Billy's memory and have one last childlike adventure together before giving into the pressures of adulthood.  Naturally, anything and everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and the trio must fight to survive in the Washington wilderness in what I can only describe a series of "wacky hijinks," eventually learning several valuable lessons about life.

You've seen the story before.  I've seen the story before.  I don't even watch all that many films of this sort and I've seen this story a million times before, mostly in cartoons. It's not in any way an original or interesting plot, but I can't fault the movie for it.  There's around four or five major sequences in the film involving a bear attack, pot farming hillbilly murderers, some hippie all-natural girls in a tree, and...

Before I go on, can I just take a moment to talk about the hillbillies for a moment?  I'm only bringing it up in its own paragraph because I JUST did Tucker and Dale vs. Evil last week, and this is exactly the sort of "haw haw all hillbillies are evil freaks" thing that movie was against.  They both even go so far as to reference Deliverance, which popularized the trope.  I know this one was made six years before Tucker and Dale, but having seen both now, I totally get how quickly the joke wears really fucking old.  Even though there's a bit at the end explaining why they act the way they do, the movie still has an air about it implying that yep, all backwoods country folk are just over-the-top murderous bastards.  Stay away from 'em, city folk!  Don't wanna end up man-raped scare quotes go here, do ya?!?

Sorry about the interruption.  Anyways, back to the review.

...a southern sheriff who lives in Washington state for some reason, and none of them are really bad.  They land a few jokes here and there, and the best most of the rest get are a slightly amused smile.  It all functions about as well as you can expect a comedy film without any major ambitions to function, so it's hard to say it fails on any level.

The characters, too, are largely stock, but they're at least endearing.  They play off of one another well-enough to form the sense we're watching lifelong friends, and pull the right "Oh come ON" faces when called to.  I personally think Green gives the best performance of the three, but that's really only because he's the only actor I know and have reason to like prior to watching this (Burt Reynolds has a small roll towards the end, but I didn't realize it until looking it up - probably because I know jack dick about Burt Reynolds).  All the side characters play their parts without any special flair, but still do a good enough job - yes, even the hillbillies - to pass muster.  Special mention to Bart the Bear 2 as the bear.

(Yeah, Wikipedia pages for two bear actors.  I'm as surprised as you.)

If I had to fault the film for anything, it'd mostly be for a few jokes I personally find distasteful.  Some stuff with pissing and bear shit, but nothing I can really hate on too much.  Outside those two bits (which are at the beginning and end of the film) and the hillbilly characters, there's nothing much in this film that aims to shock or offend anyone.  I suppose the half-naked huddling in the rain bit, or the jokes about being able to see the hippie girls' downstairs might not play well with some, but I didn't mind them much while watching.  It's not a clean comedy film by any means, but it's not intentionally offensive or disgusting beyond a few elements, so...

It's just an alright film, is what it is.  There's an appropriate level of 80s nostalgia sprinkled here and there, they use their soundtrack songs well, and it's got a good message about treasuring what you have rather than chasing something you can never get.  The whole thing is by the numbers comedy with the right amount of effort put in to get you to laugh maybe a dozen times throughout the whole thing.  I really wish I had more to say, but I just don't.  Without A Paddle occupied my attention throughout its running time and made me smile a little, and that's the highest praise I can bestow upon it.

Consider this another one of those "if what I just described sounds like a good time to you, check it out" movies.  Otherwise, I don't think you'd be hurt by giving this one a miss.  Sorry for the brevity, but that's all I have to say without stretching and trying to figure out the true pain behind Dan's obsession with a C-3PO figure.

(Assorted thoughts:

- I've never smoked pot in my life, and I have no intention of doing so, but I am fairly certain based on what I know that it does not make you hallucinate.  And I'm only slightly less certain that dogs inhaling marijuana smoke are gonna die rather than get stoned.

- If all of the bear's scenes are an actual bear, and if all the main actors did the majority of their stunts, then Seth Green's still one ballsy guy for letting a live bear pick him up in its mouth and carry him off.

- DB Cooper's Wikipedia page, just in case anyone's interested in learning about the guy.  Stole a bunch of money, jumped out of a plane, vanished without a trace. S'pretty interesting.)

Not really a whole lot to say down here.  Short review, few busy days, no big thing.  I'll try to make Friday's review a touch longer.