The Piano: Music of the Mind, Music of the Soul

The world of film making has many faults and short comings. Perhaps the most grievous fault is the fact the vast, vast majority of well known film directors are White males, to any even greater degree than many other art forms which are also White male dominated. Anyone who denies that this predominance has greatly colored the world of film making and led film goers towards a certain definition of what is and is not a "good film" is fooling themselves. Seeing the film Do the Right Thing opened my eyes to how different the world of film could be with more Black directors. Now, Jane Campion's The Piano has shown me how much shallower the world of film is for its lack of female directors.

The Piano was an absolutely incredible film. I admit that going into this film I expected it to be over-hyped. I thought that this film might have garnered more acclaim than it deserved simply because it was directed by a woman, which is so rare (and also because it is a film about someone with a "disability," another favorite of the Oscars). However, now that I have seen the film, I can say that is one of the most deeply layered, passionate and emotionally powerful film watching  experiences I have ever had.

I think the best way I can summarize this incredibly dense film is to say that is about Walls: The walls between those who can speak and those who cant/wont, the walls between the female world and the male world, the walls between the White world and the world of native peoples, the walls between the animal world and the human world, the walls between the adult world and the world of children, and of course the various walls that separate individual people.

At its heart the film is about a young woman who cannot, or will not, speak. This causes her to be disconnected from many of the people around her, as they cannot communicate easily. However, this does not entirely bother our heroine, played by Holly Hunter in an Oscar and Golden Palm winning role. As her daughter, played by the also Oscar winning Anna Paquin, informs us, "Mommy says that most of what people have to say is rubbish, and isn't worth listening to." If she must talk, she will write something down or speak through her daughter. The only person whom she initially wants to talk to, her daughter, she can communicate with through sign language. Still, it does bother her that most people think her muteness means that she is dumb or insane (film buffs might notice similarities here to the film My Left Foot). So, to protect her emotions from the cold, uncaring, not understanding outside world, she remains silent and distant from most people, and is very austere.

 Well gee, she doesn't really stand much of a chance at looking happy wearing all that black, now does she?

The barriers between the male and female worlds is brought up in many ways throughout the film. At the very start we learn that Hunter is being forced into an arranged marriage by her father. She arrives in New Zealand surrounded by male sailors who curse, spit and piss with abandon. When she meets her husband (played by Sam Neill), it is clear that he does not understand her at all. He will not take her piano back home with them, even though it is clearly important to her. As she continues in her austerity towards him, he makes no effort to understand her emotions. He merely makes vague references to his servants about how he hopes she will become more "affectionate" over time (sexual frustration is another big motif of the film), as if love will simply develop from nothing. Later, when one of the husband's servants (played by Harvey Keitel) takes her back to the piano, he sees that the main way this mute woman expresses herself is through playing the piano. Infatuated with her, he buys the piano and asks her to come teach him how to play it. In reality, he only wants to watch her play and, as time goes by, get her to show off more and more of her body, an hopefully get to sleep with her. This starts out very creepy, and Hunter's contempt is clear at first, but they slowly begin to understand and love one another, with Neill being at first none the wiser.

"What do you think Harvey? She seems a little to short and pale for me." "Meh, I'd do her."

So many other groups fail to understand each other in this film. The native Maori people do not understand the ways of the Whites around they (attacking an actor in a play thinking he is really hurting another woman in the play) and Neill makes no attempts to understand their culture. Keitel plays a White man who knows the native's language and acts as translator, which is appropriate, as he is also the character who acts as translator between the male and female worlds and the world of speakers and non-speakers through his relationship with Hunter. When Hunter's daughter sees her having sex with Keitel, her child's mind does not understand what is going on, and interprets the situation by creating a game where she and the native children hump trees in the forest. This leads to a hilarious scene where Neill, claiming she has "shamed these trunks" forces her to scrub down every tree trunk she touched in such a way. In a hilarious switching of places, Neill's character himself is put back into the role of a child throughout the film. It is clear that, though he thinks of his mute wife as being dumb, he is the dumb one, being completely emotionally and sexually stunted. When he discovers his wife having sex with Keitel, he watches through the door in the same way that Paquin had done before, and it is clear that he is just as confused and attracted to the sight as she was. He allows himself to be controlled by his emotions like a child. And, when his wife does start make sexual advances towards him (due to her frustration that she cannot be with Keitel) the way she treats him is almost as if he were a child himself.

"Ohhhh, so that's where the penis goes! Huh, you learn something new every day!"

The film even shows that, despite how much proper Anglo-Saxon society in the 1800s tried to separate itself from the "savage" world of natives and animals, it was no different at heart from either of those groups. When their passions are inflamed, the men and women of this White world act little different from the more emotionally and sexually free natives. As for animals, when one servant woman squats in a bush to pee, despite the fact that she asks the other ladies to cover her with blankets, when she is done the camera focuses on the way she scrapes the dirt in which she pissed with the foot, the same way a dog might do. When Neill watches Keitel eat out his wife, a dog comes up and licks his cupped hand, again showing the lack of difference between the human and animal world. I could write an entire term paper on how this motif of walls between groups and people plays out in this film, but I will try to stop here.

The acting in this film is absolutely superb from all actors. Harvey Keitel plays a coold and in control Italian-American gangster who... wait, I'm sorry, I've confused Keitel's role in this film with his role in every other film he has ever made. Yes, I must say, despite the fact that Keitel does give a great performance, at first I though he seemed out of place here. Seeing him with native Maori paint on his face, speaking in a Scottish accent, was quite disconcerting at first. Also disconcerting was his constant tendency to get naked in front of the camera. 

You get to see a LOT of Keitel's dick and ass in this movie, whether you want to or not.

Sam Neill also gives an incredible performance. His sheer emotional stupidity, his lack of ability to understand the emotions of those around them, his lack of desire to even attempt to get to know those close to his, his sheer dumbfoundedness and confusion at the actions of people that seems completely understandable to anyone with some connections to human emotion, is played very well by Neill. He is at turns laughable, pitiable, ridiculous, and terrifying. 

Anna Paquin as the daughter gives one of the best performances by a child actress ever put on film. This was a role that, if done poorly, could have ruined the film, and her ability to realistically display a range of emotions while still being believably childlike is phenomenal. He relationship to her mother is key to the film. At first, she is the only person her mother is close to. Paquin's character clearly resents it when her mother becomes closer to Keitel. The times when her mother is with Keitel are the first times in her life where she is not welcome to share in her mother's inner life and emotions, and when her mother forces her to do things she does not want like deliver messages to him for her. She is so upset by this that she gives a love letter meant for Keitel to Neill, a grand act of betrayal. The whole changing dynamic of their relationship raises an important question: "Can a woman be truly a woman and truly a mother at the same time? Are the two really compatible? Does the sacrifice of being a good and loving mother force a woman to sacrifice her own personal sexual and emotional fulfillment?" I am sure these questions have been asked in countless Women's Studies classes, hopefully after viewing this film. 

"La la la, look at me, I'm so full of whimsy, you know you just want to smoosh up my pretty face and give me an Academy Award, I'm just so pwecious!"

Of course the finest performance of the film comes from Holly Hunter. Without speaking a single word on camera she conveys a depth of emotion that most actors could never obtain in a thousand monologues. The incredible layers of her emotions are expressed through looks, body language, sexuality, facial expressions, and other means. So many other films with romances in them rely on cheesy and cliched dialogue to get their fake emotions across. The powerful emotions in this film, ranging from love to pure lust, are made so much more potent often because they are not directly spoken of. Myself, I found the sexual and emotional awakening of the main character in the book The Awakening to be very poorly done, and for a long time this caused me to have a lack of respect for much of feminist literature on the subject. Seeing the same motifs play out here shows me how powerful they can be when done well, and the talents of Hunter have much to do with the film's success.

God damn you Keitel, you lucky bastard!

This film would, I believe, have been vastly different if made by a man. So often male directors and screen writers fail to portray female characters in a way that seems realistic to me, especially in sexual situations. The feminine quality of this film allows it to be more emotionally impacting than most films I have seen. The layers of emotions are so dense and yet so clear in a way I though impossible. Multiple layers of symbolism are piled on top of each other, yet a keen viewer can understand it all because the emotions they are meant to symbolize are made so clear and understandable by the fantastic story and direction. The film is also more beautiful than most I have seen as well. Many shot seem like fantastic paintings, with objects focused one by the camera both to establish their symbolic meaning and simply to revel in their inherent beauty. This is, flat out, one of the greatest films I have ever seen, a must watch, must repeatedly watch film. I consider it an Essential film, and give it an official rating of 10/10.

A Fish Called Wanda and 2 Pythons Called Cleese and Palin Make Comedy Gold

The members of UK comedy group Monty Python have given the world some truly stupendous films. Together they made three uproarious films, with The Holy Grail (1975) and Life of Brian (1979) both being included in The Book. Both of those films were directed by Terry Jones, with Terry Gilliam assisting in the direction of the first, as well as himself directing The Book-worthy film Brazil (1985) as well as 2 films which are part of the book 101 Cult Movies You Must See Before You Die, the hilarious Time Bandits (1981) and the renowned Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), both in my opinion deserving of a place in The Book. And now, with A Fish Called Wanda (1988), we can add another hilarious Book-worthy film that was directed by a Python to the list. Wait, what's that? You though Charles Crichton directed this film? Well, that is true, but John Cleese, who also co-wrote the screenplay and starred in the film, assisted in the direction but went uncredited. Personally, the fact that this is Crichton's final film, the only one of his in The Book, and the fact that the comedy of the film seems so akin to Monty Python makes me think that Cleese played quite a pivotal role in the making of this film.

The film starts out as your basic Heist Film. Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Palin, Kevin Kline, and Tom Georgeson (whose character's name is George Tomason, hahaha) steal some diamonds. Curtis and Kline tell the police Gergeson did it so they can take the money for themselves (and Curtis plans to double-double-cross and knock out Kline to take the money for herself), but Georgeson has already hidden the diamonds away with the help of Palin. Cleese, playing the barrister defending Georgeson, is being seduced by Curtis in an attempt to get information out of him. Kline, a jealous and stupid American (aren't we all?) who likes to pretend to be intelligent by quoting Nietzsche, is not happy about this and keeps interrupting the two lovebirds, saying, "If you touch his dick, I'll kill him!"

"Oh dear, my dick is burning. Someone must be talking about it! Or it could be the herpes..."

I must say, before watching this film, when I saw that it was Kline who received the film's only Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, I was surprised. With 2 Pythons in the film, how could Kline be the funniest guy on screen? Well, after watching the film I must say Kline earned his award. His buffoonery, his sexual jealousy, his Ugly American way of thinking, and just everything about him is hilarious. Some of the funniest parts of the movie are when he and Palin are together. Firstly, Kline continues to torture Palin, at first figuratively by making fun of his hilariously exaggerated stutter, and later literally by eating his beloved fish in order to get some information out of him. Midway through the film Palin starts to suspect that Kline and Curtis, who claim to be brother and sister, are actually lovers, and to throw him off the scent, Kline pretends to be gay by hitting on Palin.

You don't want to know where he is going to stick that fish.

Of course the other characters in the film are great as well. Palin's exaggerated stutter is a constant source of hilarity, which pleasantly surprised me, as I thought it would get old after a while (it doesn't). The character's other defining trait, his love for animals, is also a source of laughs, because he keeps killing them, much to his dismay. For example, Palin is commanded to kill an old woman who is the only witness in the case against Georgeson. This old woman has 3 dogs. Each time Plain tries to kill her, he ends up killing a dog instead. In one case he watches helplessly while an attack dog he meant to attack the old lady instead sinks his teeth into one of the adorable puppies.

"Oh sh... sh... sh..., oh shhhh... shh... shi..., oh shhhhhiiii... oh bollocks!"

Curtis does a fantastic job in the film as the femme fatale, who flirts with every single male lead in the film in an attempt to get something out of him. Her kiss has the power to make suave mobsters go dumb, jealous boyfriends to hang men out of windows, shy guys to lose their stutters if only for a moment, and pompous old lawyers to go all wobbly. Ah, but she does have a weakness of her own. She gets completely wet for any man who can speak a foreign language, even if they are saying complete nonsense like "Mozzarella Parmigiano" or comparing her breasts to what I believe translates out to "The 2 beautiful cathedrals of Milan." Perhaps her most interesting relationship is with Cleese. At the start she is clearly just using him for information, but after a while his genuine love for her (and his ability to speak both Italian AND Russian) causes her to fall in love in what is actually a believable romance. Still, she gets all of her lovers into trouble, such as when Cleese gets caught stark naked by the owners of a house he is using as a getaway for his encounters with her, and has to cover his manhood with a picture of the lady of the house...in front of her kids and husband no less!

"Ah, welcome home! What, me? Why, I was just admiring the back of your wife's head. Oh dear, that didn't come out right, did it..."

Of course Cleese is indispensable to the film. His uncredited direction is fantastic and his written dialog is absolutely hilarious. Of course, in his own acting, he brings a lot of his considerable comedic experience to the table. In one scene when he is prancing about in his underwear his movements clearly mimic his famous "Ministry of Silly Walks" sketch from his Python days, to hilarious effect. The portrayals of his sad, repressed, henpecked home life will remind Cleese fans very strongly of his work on the British sitcom Fawlty Towers. And, of course, his presence brings moments of unbridled silliness that lead to big laughs.

This picture requires no comment.

Of course the picture isn't perfect. The cinematography is unspectacular, with too many angled shots in the heist scene in particular. It suffers from some cliches of 80s films, such as text at the end telling us what happened to all of the characters. But, seriously, who gives a shit. This is a comedy, and the only thing I want out of a comedy is laughs, and boy does this films deliver in that department. This is one of the funniest films I have ever seen. The laughter is nearly constant. Not a scene goes by without at least a chuckle, and some scenes had me laughing so hard I had violent coughing attacks afterwards. The humor ranges from visual to dialog-based, from subtle to insane. Even the predictable jokes are funny when these guys do it, a difficult task that I have only seen achieved by some of the better Mel Brooks films. As a comedy, it is one of the best. If you are looking for a laugh, definitely check this move out. I consider this movie to be an Essential film, and give it an official score of 9/10.

Subtlety Meets Insanity: Luis Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Before viewing Luis Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), I had already seen his early film collaborations with the great artist Salvador Dali, An Andalusian Dog (1928) and The Age of Gold (1930). With 44 years separating his first film entry in The Book and his last (this film, obviously), Bunuel has the longest career in making Book-worthy films, even beating out The Book's most prolific filmmaker, Alfred Hitchcock, at 43 years with Blackmail (1929) and Frenzy (1972). Obviously, even for a filmmaker with a much shorter career, their early pictures are bound to be different from their late picture. That is true in many ways for Bunuel, but not in all way. Discreet Charm certainly differs from his early films in the fact that it is in color, it is a "Talkie," it is over 90 minutes, and it actually manages to have a plot. However, what it has in common with his early, surrealistic masterpieces is the sheer insanity of many of its surrealistic images, but this time given the added punch of being perfectly missed with often very subtle (and often very unsubtle) comedy/social commentary.

The films mostly follows a group of 6 upper-class friends living France. One is an ambassador from the completely fictitious nation of Miranda in South America. His two friends/cocaine-dealing business partners, along with their wives and one sister-in-law, set out on a single, seemingly simple mission: have a nice, pleasant meal together. Throughout the film, however, they are thwarted at every turn in this endeavor.

These are our 6 main characters. Plus the maid. But she's a dirty commoner, so she doesn't matter.

What thwarts our friends in their efforts to dine together are a combination of simple misunderstanding, restaurants that run entirely out of tea and coffee, hosts too busy fucking to attend to their guests, army maneuvers  taking place outside, the fact that often the meals they are attempting to have are only occurring in someone's dream (or their dream of someone else having a dream), and a series of unexpected guest ranging from patricidal lieutenants to mobsters. Confused? So am I. Here are some examples. At one point, the groups goes to a local inn for a meal. Despite the fact that the place is locked and no customers are there, someone lets them in and assures them that they will be served, explaining the the inn is "under new management." Before they can even order, they hear weeping in the next room. Upon investigating, they discover that the inn owner has died, that his corpse is in the room, and the funeral is currently taking place. Despite the fact that the men still want to eat right next to a funeral (WTF?!) the women insist on leaving. On another evening, the group is unexpectedly interrupted by a troop of Cavalrymen, who were invited to stay at the house the next day, but had to come early. Before the meal can start, the Marijuana-smoking commander immediately has to take his troops to go participate in military maneuvers right outside the house...but not before he lets one of his privates tell them all about a dream he had last night where he was searching for his dead mother.

Whoa, man, is that, like, some food? My men and I totally have the munchies! Hey, ya wanna hear about Bill's dream? It's, like, totally trippy.

For the most part, the first half of the films takes place in "reality" while the second half takes place in a series of dreams that characters in the film have. I placed the word reality in quotation marks because the non-dream world of this film in no way resembles actual reality. The stuffy, upper-class characters of the film respond to incredibly random and nonsensical events without batting an eyelash, which adds much of the comedy to the film. For example, in one scene, the three women are out at a restaurant together, when a young soldier comes up and asks them if they had happy childhoods. He tells them he did not, and asks them if he can tell them a long but interesting story about it (without so much as giving his name). He then tells them about how, as a child, the ghost of his mother asked him to poison her husband to death because he was not really the boy's father and had killed her only true lover in a duel. He does so before going off to military school. Then, story told, he begs their pardon and takes his leave, with the women acting as if he had done nothing more interesting than talk about the weather. Later, a Bishop come up to one of their houses, dresses up in their overalls, and asks if he can be their gardener... and of course they agree, while still always remembering to respectfully address him as, My Lord.

This woman doesn't actually think she's Napoleon, but even if she did, she'd still be the sanest person in the film.

And the insanity of the "real world" doesn't stop there. There is a subplot in which the ambassador is being hunted down by a young, sexy female assassin. When she tries to kill him at his house in the name of Mao Zedong, he sneaks around behind her and forces her to give up her weapons, taking his opportunity to fondle her afterwards. When someone sees her standing in the street outside his office playing with a toy dog, he takes out a rifle and shoots the toy dog to scare here away.

It's okay folks, he said he knows what he's doing. He looks sane enough right now, right?

So, if reality is this messed up, you know the dreams have to be pretty crazy for them to be obviously dreams. Usually if somebody important dies it is a dream. In one dream after the 6 friends are arrested (again interrupting their dinner), they ghost of a dead police chief who liked to torture young men by placing them inside of electrified pianos comes around and frees them from jail. In another dream, their dinner is yet again interrupted when they find that they are actually on a stage, and that their dinner is actually part of a play. Of course, none of them can remember their lines, and despite some valiant efforts to save the show by the Bishop, they give up and again leave without eating.

Gives new meaning to the term "Dinner Theater."

Now you might be surprised to learn that despite the description of this film's insane, surreal plot, it actually managed to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. This is for two reasons. Firstly, though insane, the plot points I have described and more are completely hilarious in context. Secondly, there is a lot subtle visual humor and other more appreciable comedic points throughout the film. Of course, there is the social satire. When the rich couple try to throw out the Bishop when he is dressed in overalls, only recognizing him when he returns dressed in "proper" religious garb, and then hire the impoverished man as their gardener while still addressing him as My Lord, that is pretty biting. At one point they invite their driver to come inside and have a drink so they can mock they uncivilized way in which he drinks his martini, and all the while one of the high class ladies has gotten staggeringly drunk to the point of vomiting in the space of 5 minutes. Also, as a matter of course, the ambassador and his friends are involved in illegal cocaine smuggling. There is also a lot of subtle humor that, if recognized, is truly hilarious. My favorite part is when the Bishop continues to misappropriate landmarks in the ambassador's homeland of Miranda. The ambassador assures him that Bogota is not in Miranda, nor are the Pampas, nor are the Pyramids, to the Bishop's increasing dismay. The hilarious things is that of course the Bishop is getting confused, because Miranda does not really exist.

The film's biggest preoccupation, however, and its biggest weapon in its assault on the mannerisms of the rich, is sexual politics. The ambassador is of course shagging his friend's wife, and though he discovers his wife in his house he thinks nothing of it, and the brash ambassador even tries to sneak a quickie in before they all leave together. One couple leaves their guests to go have sex in the garden, and return with grass in their hair that the Bishop is kind enough to point out for them. At one point, the young girl states she cannot stand to look at an old man playing the cello in the restaurant, and a zoom-in to his hands reveals that his playing suspiciously resembles a man playing with a woman's clitoris. The woman comments by saying, "It's too bad he isn't younger."

In utilizing comedy to attack an upper class that is shallow and preoccupied with empty hyper-sexuality, Discreet Charms often closely resembles Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (1939), as well as the films of Italian directors Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini. However, the madcap surreality of Bunuel's film makes it much more fun to watch than Antonioni's slow, often boring pretension and even manages to out-crazy Fellini's often carnival-like atmosphere. In conclusion, the film is superbly acted, incredibly well shot, and just plain fun to watch. Not everyone will "get it," but the film is much more accessible to an average audience than his early films, and I would recommend it to anyone I though had any appreciation for film. I give this film a personal grade of an A and an official grade of an 8/10.

Final Note: I have my own grading system. It Goes as follows:

B=Bad, I did not like it and did not even want to finish the film.

F=Fine, I finished it, it was OK, I'm glad I saw it, but do not want to see it again.

Go=Good, it was worth watching and I might see it again, but it had nothing special.

Gr=Great, I loved it and would see it again in a heartbeat, though it did lack anything truly remarkable or unique

A=Amazing, this film is not only fantastic but it does something that no other film has done before or does things better than most other films

E=Essential, I will tell everyone that they MUST see this film in their lifetime, no exceptions.

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