(500) Days of Summer

The music of The Smiths informs the tone of (500) Days of Summer, which is an appropriate choice. Like that band, the film is steeped in self-pity and angst, but it's self-aware enough to routinely poke fun at itself. In what other film could a joyous, imagined song-and-dance number suddenly jump the timeline to show that same dancing man in a fit of depression? It opens not with the birth of a relationship but its breakdown; a narrator helpfully cautions us, "I should tell you upfront: this is not a love story."

Writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber have crafted with this non-linear, quirky movie an "anti-romantic comedy," one that follows in the footsteps of Annie Hall, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Graduate. The latter in particular is expressly mentioned and even shown in the film, with the explanation that protagonist Tom Hanson, like so many others, misread the ending of the film as a child. As with Annie Hall, the male lead, a traditional, button-down sort of fellow, falls for a quirky, progressive lady who has her own thoughts about what a relationship is and is in no hurry to enter into one.

Yes, she is unfortunately named Summer, which is the first glaring misstep of the film (and not the last), but the character is wonderfully written. Summer proves her oddball nature by expressing a love for Ringo Starr and let's face it, anyone who would cite "Octopus's Garden" as her favorite Beatles song marches to the beat of a different drum, or another instrument altogether. All throughout her life men have fawned over her and the mysterious "Summer effect," but she's kept few boyfriends. For her, relationships just lead to hurt feelings and break-ups, so why waste youth on the hassle?

Much of Summer is shrouded in mystery, and rightly so: Tom places her on a pedestal and thinks of her as his soulmate, but really she’s just there and different enough to attract him. The two slave away at a greeting card office they don’t like, which sets up some great gags and the film shifts between joy and woe. When things are going well for Tom, he runs about the place in a creative frenzy, only to fly into a crazed rant when his world crumbles around him. As he screams in a board meeting that this company and all the movies and pop songs are spreading lies about true love, it works as a great tongue-in-cheek stab at the film and its impeccable soundtrack even as it works as a sincere expression of this man's despair.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the finest actor of his generation, excels in the role. He has a way of slipping into his roles completely, and not over-the-top characters like Travis Bickle or Daniel Plainview either. His characters are usually offbeat, yes, but they are relatively normal. While his performance is no revelation, he flips between euphoric contentment and wallowing sadness as effortlessly as the film around him. He is completely relatable as the naïve, loverstruck fool who turns to callousness and sexism when it all goes south. Zooey Deschanel is the monarch of ironic detachment (Michael Cera, eat your heart out), but that undercurrent of sincerity and emotion in her performances makes her so endearing. You find yourself, like Tom, wanting to lose yourself into those blue doe eyes. Director Mark Webb certainly did, as he fills the screen with a large amount of light blue to complement them. This mix of deadpan and emotion made her stand out in another great anti-rom-com of recent years, David Gordon Green's All the Real Girls, but she's even better here.

“(500) Days of Summer” is steeped in irony and cliché, but they are used to convey complete sincerity. References to European art films and ‘80s and ‘90s pop abound, but they feel less like name-checks and more like the natural conversations and imaginations of these people. Clichés such as the pain of a break-up ending with “I hope we can still be friends” work because they are real. Also ringing of truth are the friends who encourage Tom to just get over it when one has been in a relationship since middle school and the other has never held down a steady girlfriend. The only truly grating, purely cinematic cliché is the young child who is wise beyond her years, and there aren’t enough sighs in the world to convey how tired that trope is.

There is also an event, near the end of the film, that is bewilderingly unexplained and seemingly there only to make Tom sadder. Then we hear the reasoning behind it, and it gives the film a simple truth that so many rom-coms, even anti-rom-coms, neglect to mention: true love can exist, but it might not be with the person you want. I’ve yet to decide if the final line is unbearably pat or charmingly hilarious, but I laughed, so that counts for something. It, like the rest of this wonderfully directed debut from Webb, treads the line between facile indie cuteness and something far deeper and more understanding, and the result in the smartest romantic comedy since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, even if it never comes close to the heights of that masterpiece.

The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

The importance of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal cannot be overstated. It was not the first film to set off the art-house movement of the '50s (Rashomon did it at the turn of the decade seven years earlier), nor was it even the first of the European art films (the Italian neo-realist scene was already thriving). Nevertheless, it opened up the possibility of serious, philosophical work in cinema. The neo-realist films certainly lacked any melodrama, but their goal, like the Russian constructivist movement before them, stressed fact in their work. While films like Bicycle Thieves certainly contain themes that can applied to all or parts of mankind, The Seventh Seal dealt with philosophy and spirituality directly.

I watched The Seventh Seal about a year ago. The old Criterion copy was rough, with lines and scratches on the film and hisses in the audio. Recently, they used new digital technology to restore the damaged print, and the new Blu-Ray of the film is truly one of the few times I can say without irony that the result is like watching a different film. I couldn't spot a scratch anywhere, and the light hiss was replaced with a solemn quiet in the film's many moments of reflection. What had been a distracting copy was now transformed into the crisp, beautiful work of art it always was.

That is not to say, however, that the film is Bergman's defining masterpiece. Quite the contrary, it clearly displays the auteur's youth and inexperience. Themes are handled too explicitly, and Bergman's affirmation of God's existence seems a touch ironic when the knight Antonius renews his faith at his end when only Death comes to greet him. Nevertheless, it remains a masterpiece, not simply for its importance but because it survives the endless parody and the reams of critical and philosophical debate, and it feels every bit as affecting today as it must have been back then.

That opening scene, of Death coming to claim Antonius Block (Max von Sydow), remains one of the all-time great shots in cinema. Block is returning from the Crusades with his squire Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand), and the atrocities of those wars has shattered Block's faith. He arrives on the shores of his native Sweden to find it covered in the plague. That Death should come in these circumstances is hardly surprising. Block tells the cloaked visage that his body is afraid to die, but he is not. Still, he wishes to see his wife, whom he hasn't seen in 10 years, so he challenges Death to a chess game to buy himself enough time to reach his castle.

Block's protracted game allows him to pass by a number of villages on his way home, all of which are devolving into mass panic from the wave of death sweeping through the country. Weeping men and women cry repents and flagellate themselves as they follow a group of monks. Jöns catches a robber attempting to rape a mute farm girl, only to discover that the man is the same theologian who convinced Block and him to join the Crusades in the first place. That might be the most unsettling implication in the film, though another scene, in which a girl condemned as a witch, who believes that she can see and converse with Satan, works herself into a silent terror at the stake not because of the flames, but because she sees, according to the atheistic and bitter Jöns, neither God nor Satan. She is alone in death, and that is far more terrifying that dying.

Block desperately looks for any sign of good in this terrible world, anything to prove that there is indeed a God, and that his life has not been a waste. If he finds only evil, then what was the point of fighting to spread Christianity? So, he fixates on a family of traveling actors (Nils Poppe and Bibi Andersson) and their newborn son, a picture of innocence in a world gone mad. Block requests that they accompany him to his castle, as much to give him a reminder that it's not all bad as it is to protect them from plague. When he at last does reach home, Death comes to claim everyone inside, and Block prays for help. The mute girl breaks her silence, and the next morning the actor family emerges alive to spot Death leading the knight and his followers in a solemn but slightly joyous dance of death.

For all its existentialist and religious struggles, however, I remain surprised at what a funny film this is. A cuckold finds the actor who stole his wife intent on revenge, but the two enter into nothing more than a shouting match, as Jöns feeds the simple farmer insults. Then it gets even funnier when the actor admits defeat and stabs himself with a prop knife; the farmer and his wife, unfamiliar with acting, believe him to be truly dead. "I was just starting to like him," the farmer moans. Later, that same actor climbs a tree, which Death casually saws down. "I have a performance," the actor feebly offers. "Canceled, on account of death."

That sense of humor and the undercurrent of creative passion make The Seventh Seal an enduring masterpiece even when Bergman went on to bigger and better things. Its affirmation of a God, compared to the almost imperceptible re-awakening of faith in The Silence, is too clunky and facile. Nevertheless, its renewal of faith comes via the realization of a man that some acts give life meaning, and they need not be grand gestures. That is a far better and more intuitive epiphany than a somewhat forced religious affirmation.

Still, the only other film to deal with a crisis of faith so effectively at the time is Carl Dreyer's (admittedly superior) Ordet, made two years earlier. It dealt with lad who appeared crazy because he believed himself to be Jesus, but in the end turned out to unsettle us only because he had true, unwavering faith, and that is frightening to those who don't have it. (Bergman's own Through a Glass Darkly veers closer to this plot than The Seventh Seal). Gunnar Fischer may not be Sven Nykvist, but his cinematography, at last appreciable thanks to Criterion's magnificent re-issue, sets the tone of the film as much as Bergman's contemplative dialogue and plotting. Even in these early stages, Bergman knew a great deal about camera placement and mise-en-scène, and it ensures that The Seventh Seal will live on forever as not just a leap forward in philosophical cinema but one of the most hauntingly beautiful films ever made.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

No one thought a film based on a theme park attraction would work. Now, of course, we know true artistic bankruptcy: Michael Bay churned out what amounted to nothing more than overblown product placement with his Transformers franchise and a planned Battleship movie is on the horizon. Then, however, this was about as low as you could possibly get. It was so garish and cheap that even I, a 14-year-old, was so offended by the notion of it that I never saw it in theaters.

What surprised me when I finally caved and watched it on DVD, and now that I re-visit it on Blu-Ray, is how damn good it is. As a piece of witty, escapist fun, few can approach it. It's so self-aware that there's actually a joy in recognizing scenes from the ride, most notably the dog holding a cell key. But there is also a story here, one simple enough to fuel a mindless action flick but also enough to make you care about it beyond its novelty value.

Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), the daughter of the regional governor of Port Royal (Jonathan Pryce), spots a boy floating in the wreckage of a destroyed ship as a young girl. In the present, that boy, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) works as a blacksmith's apprentice and pines for Elizabeth, who is set to be married to the up-an-coming naval officer, Norrington (Jack Davenport) against her wishes. After a mishap involving a corset, the pirate medallion Elizabeth found sends out some sort of signal, and later that night pirates swarm the colonial town. Elizabeth is kidnapped, Will vows to save her, and it's as easy as that.

It doesn't sound like very fresh stuff, I'll grant, but it all changes when Verbinski plays his ace in the hole. Captain Jack Sparrow, played with manic glee by Johnny Depp, turns what might have been a serviceable, forgettable blockbuster into one of the best action flicks of the decade. Depp finally has a film big enough to contain his eccentricities, and he unleashes every quirk and mannerism in his repertoire. A mix of Keith Richards and Pepé Le Pew, Jack is an unstoppable mix of dry sarcasm, deceptive idiocy and deft capability. He is always put-upon, and those who must bear with him are soon put-upon themselves. He wants to kill Elizabeth's kidnapper, Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) more than Will, though for entirely different reasons. That Depp never becomes just too much of a weirdo is a testament to his ability to stop just short of parody.

Depp buoys the film when it likely would have failed if placed squarely on Bloom's shoulders, as he brings the looks but not much else. He fits snugly into the role of a fresh-faced dolt who ruins Jack's carefully formulated plans through his blunt honesty and impatience, but the few emotional scenes involving just him and Elizabeth just short enough to prevent his lack of range from turning the whole thing into grating, unintentional comedy. Knightley has little to do but look pretty, but to her credit, she does so marvelously. Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook are also sublime as two pirates who serve as a constant source of comic relief in a film that didn't need any specific characters to lighten the mood in the first place.

As I sat down with this first installment, having only seen a single high quality BD in the excellent transfer for Coraline (which bumped up the film into the top tier of the movies I've seen this year), I had no idea what I was in for. The Blu-Ray of POTC is a revelation: the blues of the ocean practically leap off the screen, while the color timing Verbinski and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski use is greatly benefited by this picture upgrade. Obviously, a statement like, "This is the best Blu-Ray I have ever seen" means little, but assuming this film is near or at the pinnacle of what the technology can offer, I'm already in love with the format.

The action is big and glorious without losing track of itself, the plot is just deep enough to make it worth paying attention and the acting from Pryce, Davenport, Rush and especially Depp is magnificent. The Curse of the Black Pearl single-handedly revived the pirate genre (though perhaps it's not fair to call it a revival as they only subsequent pirate films were the sequels to this) by subverting the conventions of the genre: this is not a movie about finding treasure but of returning it, and that one little quirk gives it the spark it needs to make one of the most exhilarating thrill rides you'll ever see.

Mad Men — Season 1

It's rare enough to get a show with natural character development, but even they are fueled ultimately by plots. After all, what would Buffy be without her vampires to slay? If President Bartlet's administration ran smoothly and without incident, we'd still have wonderful characters, but would we care so deeply about them? Mad Men takes a bold new step; it is, quite possibly, the most slowly paced drama in television history. This, of course, could have heralded a disaster, a turgid piece of self-involved pablum that promoted its aimlessness as "art."


Instead, it might just be the best show on television in the massive wake of The Wire. A meticulously and gorgeously crafted recreation of 1960s America, Mad Men not only commits to the look of the era but depicts the sexism, racism, nationalism and rampant capitalist greed with frank honesty. The creator, former Sopranos writer and producer Matthew Weiner, does not inject an anachronistic character who reflects the P.C. views of today to let the audience know that he doesn't believe what these chauvinist men are saying. He's secure enough not to taint his art with numerous pleas that insult the audience's intelligence. (Then again, Joss Whedon's Dollhouse came under fire as misogynist for not clearly taking a side against the organization, even though anyone with half a brain could tell you that the Dollhouse is full of villains, albeit villains with redeeming characteristics. Stop make our head goo overhot, Joss!)

The title derives from the self-professed nicknames of the advertisers who worked on New York's Madison Avenue throughout the decade. Set in the fictional company of Sterling Cooper, it charts the lives of the company's employees through the '60s. This first season starts in 1960, and Weiner says that he will advance the timeline two years each season for a planned five seasons. If this season is any indicator, a major historical event will factor into the story; the Nixon/Kennedy race forms the closest thing to a recurring, purely narrative plot in the entire 13-episode run.

Central to the show is Don Draper (Jon Hamm), a ruggedly handsome, deep-voiced, high-ranking executive at Sterling Cooper. He knows just what buttons to push to get potential clients on-board, and he can find a way to market just about any product to the masses. Rarely does he lose an account, but his ratio of success to failure ensures that he never gets too down about it. At home, he has the perfect postwar wife, Betty (January Jones), and two adorable little family units. The only way life could be any better is if he climbed that last rung on the corporate ladder to the top.

Yet he is anything but happy. His interactions with his family appear stiff and insecure, far removed from his relaxed, commanding demeanor in the workplace. It's not that he doesn't love his wife and children, but he looks as though his only experience with dealing with a family comes from magazines and movies, as if he watched a training film before some unseen entity handed him his very own collection of people. Eventually, we're given shards of a dark past that he's spent the last decade or so burying from everyone.


Complementing Draper is a rich cast of characters that make Sterling Cooper a microcosm for the social climate of 1960 America. Draper is at a position where he still has something to strive for without having to push himself constantly. Providing him with a nice foil is Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheister), an up-and-comer who sets his sights on Draper's job from day one. Whereas Draper destroyed his past and made himself on his own (even when we see snippets of his background, they show a poor upbringing), Campbell exploits his family's wealthy ties to get his job; heck, if it weren't for their ties to some big clients, Campbell would have been quickly almost as soon as he joined. Kartheiser, who of course most know as the insufferable Connor in Angel, is marvelous as this oily snake in the grass; he spends all of his time trying to conquer Draper (not to mention any of the secretaries in the office), but underneath he's insecure about both his family and his new wife's wealth, and he wants to make his own way without living off of their "charity."

Most interesting, however, are the women. Caged in by a glass ceiling so low they practically must crouch to get around, most of the ladies of this world consider finding a well-off husband as their primary job, with the only promotion being a doting wife and mother. The secretaries are sexually harassed in such an open manner it'll turn your head, but they know how to play the game. In a world of gray flanneled suits, the women wear garishly bright colors, and it drives the fellas crazy.

Three women in particular showcase the narrow yet subtly shifting confines of the decade. Betty does all of the household chores, but she, like Don, is slowly unraveling. The pressure of turning a blind eye to Don's own issues and her inability to do anything in life other than clean and cook are taking a toll, and early in the season she begs her husband to let her see a psychiatrist. Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) rules over the den of secretaries and instructs them in the ways of flirtation. If Betty is boxed in by all the constraints, Joan knows how to play the game and bend those prison bars enough to get what she wants.


Most importantly, however, is new secretary Peggy Olsen (Elizabeth Moss). Introduced as a plain, timid, assumed virgin, Peggy falls under Pete's spell and enter in an on/off relationship dictated by Pete's sense of guilt over cheating on his wife. Joan gets her to buy nicer clothes, and she has a breakthrough when she suggests an idea for marketing lipstick to a group of men who can sell something to anyone in America, as long as it's not the 50 percent who are female. She finds herself placed in a position of importance no woman at Sterling Cooper has ever held, making her the character to watch as the show progresses through the '60s.

If I've neglected to discuss plot by this point, it's because I can't find one. This is a show entirely about character, in which the only major developments are insights or status changes. This makes the show move like molasses, but that only makes it all the more interesting. Watching character arcs form not only the heart of the show but the brain makes for television that rewards multiple viewings.

Everything about this show seems to be just right. The perfectly recreated sets, dapper suits and flashy dresses pop off the screen, especially on Blu-Ray. The falsity of American confidence in Draper's mannerisms make for an interesting allegory for the tumult that was about to explode in the country, while Peggy's slight social mobility also hints at what's in store for these blind chauvinists. While it could do with a bit of speeding up and some plot to move the episodes, Mad Men sets a new standard for period television, and I can't think of a show still on the air that can compete with it.

The Bourne Identity

Though published throughout the '80s, Robert Ludlum's Bourne franchise came to the big screen at the exact right time. When The Bourne Identity premiered in 2002, the spy genre was all but dead: the Tom Clancy adaptation The Sum of All Fears, not one of his more spy-centric novels, did well enough at the box office but felt stale and pre-packaged, and the Bond series had reached the nadir of its self-parody with The World is Not Enough (2000) and Die Another Day (2002). Even the spy piss-take Austin Powers mustered up a gag-inducing sequel to pad out its already-thin franchise into a trilogy; as if the genre needed a parody at that point anyway.

The Bourne series changed all that. The first franchise of the post-9/11 era, Bourne saw through the glitz and glamor of Bond franchises and the like and crafted a gripping, brutal series that favored realism over gadget and sex-filled fantasy. Jason Bourne does not chase people down in Aston Martins outfitted with machine guns and invisibility cloaks; heck, in this film, he's the one being chased. This is a world of "real" cars, of Minis and Peugeots and Ford's European models. The only gadgets at his disposal are items he rigs himself.

Perhaps the greatest shift that The Bourne Identity brings is that it actually engages as a spy mystery. Spy films had grown so bloated that they were either lame comedies or over-the-top action spectacles. The very first shot, like some homage to Sunset Boulevard, shows a man face down in the ocean, presumably dead. A fishing crew recovers his body and a doctor removes bullets and a strange device, and he also discovers some strange documents. The man awakens but has no memory of who he is or what his odd personal effects mean.

The mystery of Bourne's identity, especially when taken in context with the series' sequels, amounts to little more than a MacGuffin. Here, however, it forms the basis of a solid plot, one from which the action flows naturally without ever seeming like the script was built around big stunts. In fact, you could hardly call the action pieces of this film "big": Bourne fights like an actual person, using his martial arts and weapon knowledge to quickly and brutally dispatch opponents. He doesn't need to strap a henchman to a rocket or feed them to sharks to kill somebody. The car chases of the film come the closest to a grand scale sequence, but Liman stresses tension and suspense over action, to great effect. The only moment that ever stands as too over the top comes when Bourne must shoot his way out of a hotel and basically jumps from the highest floor on top of the body of a man he killed, somehow aims and shoots another hitman right between the eyes on the way down, and survives the fall. In an otherwise straightforward film, this is a bit much.

Nevertheless, Bourne's story is filled with perfectly cast, interesting characters who add just as much intrigue as the lead. Marie (Franka Potente), an American citizen who's been backpacking around Europe for years, finds herself caught up in the mess when Bourne offers her some serious cash to drive him out of Paris. Yes, there is an inevitable romance, but it feels plausible, a result of Bourne's kindness and his frequent attempts to get her out of harm's way. Potente, the star of Run Lola Run, knows a thing or two about being on the run for an entire movie, and she has an excellent moment when Jason sends her into a hotel to get his guest records -- he can't as he is presumed dead -- and lays out a complicated plan to sneak through and steal the files, only for Marie to walk out two minutes later with the info, calming stating that she simply asked for them.

Meanwhile, the C.I.A. and Treadstone characters all have a suitable level of sinister intrigue. Treadstone director Conklin (Chris Cooper) reveals early on that Bourne works for the C.I.A., but he doesn't let this spoil the mystery over what went wrong with the trained assassin. You believe Cooper when he sends out other killers (played by Nicky Naude and Clive Owen, who offers up some simple but poignant lines at the end) to terminate Bourne simply because he's a stain on the department's sterling record. His direct superior, Ward Abbot (Brian Cox), has been kept in the dark about Bourne's failure, so he too must sift through the jumbled lies to sort out just who's head will go on the chopping block.

Paul Greengrass would take over the sequels and infuse them with his shaky cam style of shooting (more on that in later reviews), but Liman, previously known for indie fare like Swingers and Go, does a grand job with the fast-paced action. His more traditional approach allows for disorienting chases and fights and calm, stately shots of people conversing or characters silently moving.

So, The Bourne Identity has all the ingredients for a great action thriller: it's contained enough to ratchet up the suspense, but visceral enough to maintain the adrenaline. It proved that Matt Damon, heretofore known for his roles as troubled young men, proves to be an able and bankable action heavyweight, and he's a sight more intimidating than Bond ever was. Despite a few glaring problems -- the aforementioned "flight" down the stairs and that final scene which is just too cute to fit in with the rest of the movie -- this is an engaging ride that wonderfully sets up the best action trilogy ever made.

Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916)

D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation resonates today as much for its appalling racism as its astonishing technical breakthroughs. Griffith's revolutionary editing and scope established the budding art form of cinema as a legitimate force in the artistic world, one that could entertain audiences past the length of comedy two-reelers and show something more audacious than slapstick and bite-sized melodramas; his depiction of the Civil War remain possibly the most realistic and inspiring war scenes in movie history. Sadly, the film's glorification of the Ku Klux Klan and the assertion that white must band together to protect themselves from the savage blacks.

Griffith reportedly had no idea what a terrible message his movie sent, and even felt regret for the manner in which it was triumphed as a confirmation of anti-black sentiment. (While it's good he felt regret, one has to marvel that not even a full century ago, someone could fail to see the offensiveness of some of The Birth of a Nation.) As a mea culpa, he took a planned film -- a poor woman separated from her husband when he finds himself a scapegoat of ruthless employers who falsely accuse him of murder so they can win support to beat down striking workers an -- and tacked on three new, entirely different stories to craft an epic concerning the evil of intolerance and its effect on cultures throughout world history.

If The Birth of a Nation collected every budding cinematic technique into one innovative whole, Intolerance is where Griffith got downright inventive. The four stories, each with their own color tint, are as follows:

1. The Modern Story: the aforementioned story about the woman struggling amidst a restless California.

2. The French Renaissance: Years before Henry de Navarre assumed the throne as Henry IV and passed the Edict of Nantes, the reigning Catholics targeted the Huguenots (French Protestants), culminating in the horrific St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

3. The Judean Story: As Jesus walks through Judea sermonizing, he attracts the vitriol and intolerance of the Pharisees, who ultimately coerce the Romans into crucifying him.

4. The Babylonian Period: Mountain Girl (Constance Talmadge) attempts in vain to save the peaceful Prince Belshazzar's throne as treacherous priests betray him to King Cyrus of Persia for not establishing their religion as the only legal one.

Each of these stories comes with its own set of costumes, sets and actors (though some actors are re-used). I know that's obvious, but Griffith made this in 1916. The Birth of a Nation wasn't the first feature-length picture ever made, and some of its innovative techniques had already been used by Raoul Walsh (who actually played John Wilkes Booth in the film and served as an assistant director), but it was still a more expansive than anything seen at the time. Intolerance makes it look like an indie film; made for an unheard-of $2 million, the film boasts jaw-dropping pieces in the Babylonian segment that practically laid the groundwork for every swords-and-sandals epic made since.

This segment, the longest of the four, lets you know you're watching groundbreaking cinema in all of its scenes. Extras ride real elephants, while the actors walk through lavish court sets. Mountain Girl moves through "outdoor" sets even larger, sets that overflow with action when the Persians finally arrive to tear apart the city. Directors can't seem to keep track of large-scale action scenes today; how Griffith corralled actual elephants and thousands of extras into staging fights bends the mind.

In contrast, the Modern Story lacks the physical scope of the Babylonian segment but makes up for it with an emotional effect. The unnamed woman, unfortunately a reflection of the sexist views of the day, is frail and an invalid without her husband. She gives birth to her husband's child while he languishes in prison, but a group of reformers, who view her as nothing more than the wife of a convict, come to her home without permission, accuse her of alcoholism and negligence and take her child. Her story takes some fascinating twists and turns, such as turning to the "Musketeer of the Slums" for help, only for her paroled husband to find her in the nick of time before the slimy man takes advantage of her, and then for the Musketeer's mistress to kill the man, thus leaving the husband implicated in yet another murder.

Sadly, the other two segments, likely because of funding issues, receive far less development. While there are some action scenes in the French story, it almost looks like an episode of Blackadder: men and women sitting around in costumes arguing over things. Jesus' story plays like a passion play on fast-forward; the shortest of all the segments, it never gets off the ground, which is a shame as it is obviously the story that would most appeal to the Southern Christians who were still coming up with excuses to justify their racism. There are also bizarre linking shots of a woman (Griffith favorite Lillian Gish) monotonously rocking a cradle. Presumably, this image represents a sort of eternal motherhood, of rebirth in the face of so much on-screen death and war, but these shots are too obtuse when played amidst the straightforward segments. Also, Griffith still relies far too heavily on intertitles to get the message across (often literally stated) when his images could have easily done the job.

Nevertheless, both of the weaker segments pay off when the stories begin to rapidly build and converge into one of the most thrilling endings in film history. The slaughter of the Huguenots is terrifying, while the fall of Babylon displays the folly of blind hedonism. Griffith's intertitles are too preachy, but the images of angels, pure beings of love, appearing over battlefields and inspiring calm and joy in warring soldiers is beautiful, and the transition of the prisons and battlefields of the world into tranquil pastures is unbelievably poignant. The only ending to a silent film I can think of more moving is City Lights'.

Intolerance has its flaws -- it's unfair to single it out for being dated, but the over-reliance on title cards and the underdevelopment of two of the four segments stand out even when you meet it halfway -- but it remains a marvel of silent filmmaking. Not only does it contain all of the techniques that made The Birth of a Nation so revolutionary, it increases the scale and introduces the concept of non-linear storytelling. The constant criss-crossing of the four stories and even that unnecessary linking image of the rocking mother are the work of a true artist, not someone just looking to make a quick buck off of uneducated fools who went to the movies because they were shinier than plays.

Tellingly, the film flopped upon its release, bankrupting a studio in the process (of course, this was in the days when there were more than just a handful of megastudios), perhaps because its ahead-of-its-time style confused filmgoers, or maybe the audience who'd flocked to The Birth of a Nation to have their views validated now felt as though they were being admonished for having those views. Whatever the case, we can now look back on Intolerance as the superior film, one marked by the weaknesses that always plagued Griffith's films but also filled with a creativity unmatched until Jean Renoir and, later, Orson Welles came to prominence nearly 30 years later.

1989 Rewind: The Decalogue

"God is very simple, if you have faith," says the aunt of a young agnostic in the first installment of Krzysztof Kieślowski's ten-part series The Decalogue. But that's the thing, isn't it? Faith is always easy for those who have it, those who have never paused to reflect upon it. The people who need it most, however, will only ever see madness and illogic of it. You likely wouldn't expect Kiéslowski, himself an agnostic if not an outright atheist, to write and direct a series on the Ten Commandments, but then how many of the atheist Bergman's films are the greatest movies on faith ever made?

Besides, The Decalogue reflects Kiéslowski and co-writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz's manner of handling themes metaphysically and intimately. These 10 films neither praise faith nor condemn it, nor do they deal exclusively with one commandment at a time. For example, Part III, concerning the commandment "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy," barely ties into that commandment and instead focuses on a lie. Many of the short films deals with more than one commandment at a time, with characters from other parts slipping in and out of the camera's peripheral vision as they move throughout the apartment complex the characters all share.

Each part was written by Piesiewicz and Kiéslowski and directed by Kiéslowski, but they used a different cinematographer each time to reflect the shifting tone of each chapter. Part III and its Yuletide setting are festive, while Part V, "Thou shalt not kill," is appropriately unsettling. Each of the films uses the sort of soft, cheap stock made for TV at the time, butKiéslowski makes them no less mesmerizing than his glorious Three Colors trilogy. He knows just how to light his characters, the angle and color, to emphasize his themes and their thoughts without being too obvious about it.

Each of the short films works because the director uses the Commandments as a loose guideline for an idea, not as the rigid backbone of the episode. Part VII, "Thou shalt not steal" revolves around a kidnapping, but it is the mother who takes her own child, away from the child's grandmother, who poses as her mom. A Jewish student reveals to a professor that she is the girl the woman denied shelter to when she was hiding from the Nazis in Part VIII. The lie of the professor's life sparks a conversation between the two that brings the truth to light, but not in a way you might expect.

You see, these are real people, not artistic abstractions. Kiéslowski has the ability to take Bergman's philosophies and torments and let them flow naturally through conversations, not the despaired outcries of creations every bit as manufactured and meticulously placed as the rest of themise-en-scène (not a criticism, mind you). The intelligent scientist and his genius son program a computer to tell them when the local lake has iced over enough to be safely skated. The two place their faith in the machine, to tragic results. When the father turns to God in the end, this is not the moral of the story but rather the outgrowth of a man who's previous faith was shattered. The entire point of Decalogue I is not to mock science but blind faith in any philosophy.

The actors are uniformly superb, precisely because none calls attention to himself. In Part VI, the best of the 10 films, a young postal clerk falls in love with a woman and begins to spy on her. When he finally professes his love, she humiliates him sexually to prove that there is no such thing as love, only sex. The lad, played by OlafLubaszenko, is believably timid and ultimately sweet-natured, while the woman (Grazyna Szapolowska ) is hardened and jaded without coming off as artificial or overly bitchy. The story takes a number of turns as the boy attempts suicide, only for the woman to fall for him after all. It becomes a sort of battle of wits between the two, one that moves far outside the framework of "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and becomes something far more resonant for it.

The plotting of this world is sublime. In the professor's lecture in Part VIII, a student brings up the philosophical debate of Part II, wherein a woman decided to abort her lover's child based on her near-death husband's outcome and placed much of the responsibility for choosing on the doctor. In eight of the episodes, a strange man sits outside the apartment complex, silently watching events unfold. The director admitted he had no idea what the man stood for, but the obvious and popular response is that he is either Jesus or an angel, watching with displeasure as these characters commit their sins though never intervening.

The Decalogue is by turns bleak and hopeful: Part VII shows our young mother stripped once more of her child, while the ethical discussion of Part VIII renews the student's faith in humanity. Part X is the closest the director ever came to outright farce. These stories always seem to hit just the right notes and effortlessly display the myriad of emotions of the human condition because everything is so natural and underplayed. What we have here is one of the greatest achievements by any artist of the 20th century. Though planned as a TV miniseries and shot with TV stock for little cash, it is one of the towering works of cinema. I sit here now holding my rental copies and resigning myself to returning them, forcing myself not to break out the debit card and order a copy of my own (I need a job). If you're interested in foreign cinema or film in general, you simply must view this extraordinary, moving, dense yet completely engaging work.