Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003)

The following is my May entry for Blindspots.

Elephant’s Steadicam tracks last so long and move so languidly that they frequently curve backward in time, each shift of character focus drifting back a few minutes or a few hours to show the parallel movement of different students as they cross each other’s paths. This structure, modeled on Béla Tarr’s Satantango, repeats shots from changing perspectives, adding new information to established scenes to reconfigure their context.

Each of these connective curves adds a third dimension to configurations, not merely illuminating the interlocking nature of seemingly disparate clusters of students within a confined space but the emotional states of those previously seen in glimpses or even longer takes that nevertheless failed to reveal something as simple as the tears in the eyes of a boy who just endured a tongue-lashing because he could not bring himself to put the deserved blame for his tardiness on his alcoholic father. Incessant close-ups and frantic editing are regularly singled out for their obscuring qualities, but distance and shot length cannot by itself bring clarity.

Promised Land (Gus Van Sant, 2012)

All I gotta say is, when I get around to Elephant this year, it better undo a lot of the damage of Van Sant's last decade. I still haven't seen his largely ignored 2011 effort Restless, but it cannot possibly be worse than Promised Land, a smug liberal tract about going green financed in part by oil. For a brief time, it almost works, setting up the arrogant, manipulative natural gas company rep with an equally officious and pushy environmentalist, until a twist derails its vague hints of intelligence to set up a truly embarrassing, back-patting speech that may be the worst monologue of last year. Heinous.

My full review is up now at Movie Mezzanine.

Paranoid Park

Gus Van Sant hit big last year with his static yet ultimately moving portrait of gay rights martyr Harvey Milk, his most successful film since Good Will Hunting. But he also released another film, one made back in 2007 and fitting into his artier side. Paranoid Park is the latest of his works concerned disaffected youth, and I imagine it will jar anyone who might stumble across it coming off of Milk.

Its protagonist, Alex (Gabe Nevins), spends the film documenting his accidental manslaughter in a journal. The victim was a security guard who tried to chase him and his buddy Scratch off a train, so Alex hit him with a skateboard, causing the guard to fall into the path of an oncoming train. On the way home, he throws his skateboard off a bridge into Williamette River and tries to forget anything ever happened. Then the cops find the skateboard and start interviewing the known skaters at the high school.

Alex, dictating the story to us via his thoughts, tells his story out of order. "I never did well in Creative Writing," he sheepishly admits to the audience. That's nice, because no one can ever collects in the proper order. Ask anyone who writes: even these pathetic reviews are re-arranged, trimmed, cut altogether and restarted from scratch every time I sit down at my computer. It makes his recollections feel more realistic, touching upon important issues but also spiralling into asides and tangents that flesh out Van Sant's vision of Portland.

This vision results in some beautiful, if unoriginal by art-school standards, photography that fuses Van Sant's experimental side with the stately shots of cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who's lent his talents to Wong Kar-wai and Zang Yimou. Backgrounds shift from vivid and colorful to cold and bleak, while lighting occasionally blinds in its intensity. Objects often appear out of focus, yet Doyle even manages to shoot blurs with clarity. I cannot for the life of me figure out why this wasn't nominated for Best Cinematography (well, other than the fact that Academy voters never watch half the films that paid critics do, nor do they even watch all of the ultimate nominees).

Nevins captures the essence of Alex perfectly. He slumps around with his hair in his face, which parts to reveal a dead-eyed stare. Yet there is pain in those eyes, misery and fear, which make you read deeper into his monotone dialogue. The world around him is cold, and so he attempts to project coldness, but this film wouldn't work without an emotional core, and he provides it without ever laying it on too thickly. Sadly, he's the only one cut out for the task, as the actors who surround him play at indifference but only sound stilted. Worst of all is Alex's girlfriend, played by Taylor Momsen, who sucks the life out of an already drab, arty movie every time she appears on-screen.

Another big problem is the soundtrack, which is haphazardly chosen and drowns out the dialogue in too many areas. Leaping from Elliot Smith to Nino Rota in the course of a film is certainly possible, but it's just incongruous to keep switching between what Alex might listen to and old Fellini scores. Non-diegetic dialogue and sound effects also abound, but they distract rather than deepen.

There weren't many films released that year that could even hold a candle to Paranoid Park when it comes to cinematography: only Slumdog Millionaire and The Dark Knight come to mind. But its intentionally emotionless delivery gives you little to care about when Nevins isn't on-screen or even when he has to share it with others, and the poor mixing of the soundtrack will only further remove the audience from the film. Nevertheless, its story is a worthy addition to Van Sant's repertoire of social outcast movies, including such gems as Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho.

Milk

It’s hard to watch the story of Harvey Milk and not think about recent issues in the country, particularly in California, the state where he left his mark. The recent passing of Proposition 8 is sure to weigh in the minds of all who watch this biopic, and it lends an importance to an already great film. As a matter of fact, a lot of Harvey Milk’s life eerily ties in with today’s events.

We meet Milk as a closeted Republican living in New York City in 1970 patrolling subways for potential partners, one of whom (Scott Smith, played by James Franco), becomes his boyfriend. The two decide to move to San Francisco in the hopes of being able to live out of the closet. However, as they move in and set up a camera shop only to find that even San Francisco is no haven. Slowly, Milk builds ties in the predominately gay neighborhood. Before long, he can rally the denizens of Castro Street for anything, from helping unions to driving anti-gay establishments out of business. You might call him a sort of “community organizer.” Hmmm.

After the police raid Castro Street and beat homosexuals for no reason, Milk is incensed to the point of running for city supervisor and, after a number of failed bids, finally wins it in 1977. Surprisingly, yet perhaps not altogether unexpectedly, this final act of the film, the one in which Harvey Milk made history, doesn’t feel quite as important as his days running the Castro Street like a friendly, nonviolent mobster. As with most idealists, he must deal with the cold, sobering reality of bureaucracy. His biggest political enemy is Dan White, a fellow city supervisor and an ardent conservative.

Dan White is most interesting character in all this tragedy, even moreso than Milk. He is played by Josh Brolin, who has been on a hot streak for the last two years and shos no signs of slowing down. Rumors abound concerning White’s sexuality, and whether his role in the assassinations could be perhaps traced to his own self-hating homosexuality. Van Sant certainly hints at this; White is ever opposed to gay rights, but seems to genuinely want to befriend Harvey. He even seems open to voting with Harvey, provided he backs some of White’s proposals of course. When Milk backs out his end of the bargain, White grows to hate Milk. Was Harvey an exit to Dan? A path out of his lie of a life into being able to live in happiness? I do not know, but at any rate it sends an already unbalanced man over the edge.

While “Milk” must inevitably follow the well-tread, clichéd road of biopics, Gus Van Sant manages to buoy the film above most. Dustin Lance Black’s script is full of tender moments, and the anecdotal research he put into the project gives the film a more personal feeling; I did not feel like I was watching an historic figure, but a man, and that makes me identify with it more than the usual slice of hero worship that defines such films. Van Sant mixes documentary footage with the film, making the voices of those who condemn homosexuals all the more affecting. Anita Bryant, a pop singer who famously championed the removal of gay rights, is wisely never portrayed by an actress; we see her as she actually decries gays as child molesters (despite the evidence even then that most molesters are heterosexual) and we feel the rage that many must have felt watching her at the time.

But the film rests squarely on Sean Penn’s shoulders, and he delivers magnificently. Penn is an actor of little, if any subtlety; he throws himself into a role and infuses it with such melodrama that he either triumphs (“Mystic River,” “21 Grams”) or fails spectacularly (“I am Sam”). Here, he is energetic and warm; you can’t help but love Harvey.

There is a tendency for these kinds of films to praise the messenger for the message and not its merits. For example, while I thoroughly enjoyed the romance of “Brokeback Mountain,” I found the film itself to be a meandering, poorly paced jumble that placed more focus on Ang Lee’s visual prowess than the actual emotions. But “Milk” gets it right, and it becomes perhaps the first great mainstream film to deal with gay rights. I don’t think it will convert any homophobes, but it just might galvanize the gay and gay-friendly crowds, who need something to unite them in the wake of Proposition 8.