Amost Famous

I know it took me far too long to see this film, but I've finally done it!

William Miller is a fifteen year old kid who's never been exactly normal. His college professor of a mom rejects rock and roll and commercialized holidays but encourages the intellectual development of her son, who is two years ahead in school. When his sister "escapes" from the oppression of their home she leaves her records for William, who falls in love with them. After managing to get an interview and hang out with a rock band called Stillwater William somehow scores a job writing a piece on them for Rolling Stone, which comes with a spot on the tour bus.


The film is basically a coming-of-age film. William gets swept up into a world full of flare and color, but with the mark of all great coming-of-age films--the experience dramatically changes him but leaves his life much where it started. It's an ellipsis to the real world, and it knows it. Almost Famous knows exactly what kind of movie it is. It doesn't glorify music, but the characters do. It's not overly sentimental, but sometimes it's characters are. Not every scene has a purpose for the greater plot of the film, but the whirlwind of action comes together in a fairly tight plot. It's funny, but only in the way that life can be really funny. Although the film does not feel overly scripted, it is conscious of its artifice as a film. Main characters each have a moment of the film to make a grand speech or declaration of purpose that creates layers in the film's driving forces.

It's all happening.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

As the title suggests, this film is about how Robert Ford assassinated Jesse James. The story begins with the James Gang's last train heist and there is little back story explaining how everyone came to be there. It's hard to nail down a plot description other than the fact that the film follows from this time through Jesse's assassination and on to a bit of the aftermath. It's a long movie, two hours and forty minutes, and it's slow, but it's also one of the most interesting and thought-provoking films I've seen recently.

Aesthetically the film is stunning. There are hardly ever two things to look at on the screen at once, and if there are, the shot is edited to look like a daguerreotype, an old type of photograph with blurred, darkened edges. At moments, the film has the feel of a History Channel documentary, with partially-related images keeping the eye entertained during a purposeful voice over--only, here, the intermediate images are remarkably artful without being distracting.

One of the remarkable tensions of this film is that it deals with two major killings--one that is an assassination, and one that is not. Celebrity culture becomes a central issue in this film as Jesse James becomes aware of his status as a public person. He seems bemused by this attention, and Robert Ford is one of the people who buys into every dime novel story of the murdering thief. In fact, it seems that the disconnect between the man and the myth might play one of the key roles in Fords' decision to kill James.

There is a lot to chew on in this film, and the pacing allows plenty of time to really play out each whim and expectation. The central characters have rich layers that the film does not attempt to judge with conclusions. As with life, there are many perspectives to be taken from this film and no clues or morals. Both James and Ford are fascinating characters. Motivation for Ford's actions are clear where James largely remains a mystery, but the interactions of the two men and the other members of the gang are fraught with complexities that fill the substantial length of the film.

Inside Man

Who doesn't want to be a bank robber? There is something so appealing in outsmarting the system and mastering each tiny circumstance that cinema returns to the familiar story all the time. What makes Inside Man different? These aren't bad guys we like, they're good guys.

A group of masked robbers (led by Clive Owen) take hold of a New York bank and use fear tactics to keep everyone inside hostages while police and detectives (led by Denzel Washington) try to keep the hostages safe without giving into the terrorism of the robbers. The film does not follow an entirely linear structure, but rather occasionally breaks to the future questioning of hostages from the bank to slowly enlighten audiences of the circumstances of the resolution.

The movie has several story lines running at a time, and it often leaves one or many for too long to hold interest. It may be an intentional strategy to keep audiences from constantly trying to draw connections instead of paying attention to the action of the film, but I had to remind myself to care each time one of the side stories was reintroduces into the film, which is never good. The film is very evenly paced. It is not action-packed or excessively tense, but it is thoroughly intriguing. The layers of the bank robbery are enticing and the mystery of the whole caper is well written and carried through.

Crash

While maintaining a roughly narrative structure, this movie is mostly about racial stereotypes. The film simultaneously undermines and reinforces these stereotypes and shows how connected we are as a race. Generalizations expand beyond racial judgments and every action can have unforeseen consequences for oneself and for others.

Several characters form the central cast of Crash. There are the black boys from the hood who hate everyone for judging them, though they live up to the judgments, a wealthy white district attorney and his wife, a responsible Mexican locksmith and his family, a black academic-turned-director and his wife, and several cops of varying races and dispositions.

What strikes me most in this film is how it depicts characters having grotesque flaws as well as shining redeeming qualities. Most of the characters could easily be classified as "good" or "bad" people at some point in the film only to have those distinctions reverse in the next scene. These characters have both heroes and monsters within them, and must choose at every moment which one to bring to the surface. I don't think I've ever run across anyone who's demonstrated the same degree of greatness and despicable undervaluing of other human beings as the characters in this film, but it works as a remarkable illustration of the folly of judging an individual's next action by their last one. These characters fit their stereotypes more often than not, but that doesn't isolate them from the potential to act against it, and even good people can give in to the worst within themselves. Brilliant gods-eye shots show scenes playing out as if their outcomes have already been determined.

The film also metacinematically reminds audiences of the artifice of enacting race on screen, bringing each viewer's predispositions of racial identifiers into question as characters act predictably according to their established character traits--both physical and intellectual.

Although this film claims the inevitability of people crashing into each other, literally and figuratively, due to the speed at which we live our lives and our need for interaction in our highly caged-off society, the complete breakdown of the power of external judgment leaves only the plea for individuals to take enough responsibility for their own actions to reach for the best of their potential instead of the worst. The rest falls into the hands of nature. One person's goodness positively affects even strangers in substantial but unexpected ways.