A Hard Day's Night

Hot on the heels of massive success in both the UK and the States -- where the lads' ability to show up and turn the country's young women into sexually charged powder kegs really made the term "British Invasion" the most apt label to apply to them -- United Artists signed a three-picture deal with the Beatles to further capitalize on Beatlemania (and in the hopes of wooing the band's American output away from Capitol). I wonder what the general concern was among fans who must have thought of poor old Elvis when the movie deals were announced; the critics of course sharpened their talons, but at least a portion of the group's admirers must have drawn a sharp breath. After all, Elvis' move into the pictures derailed his career, trapping him in an incessant series of tame, underwritten movies that barely tied in the King's music and forced him to play a watered-down, non-threatening model youth. For the Beatles, then, this would surely signal the beginning of the end.

What audiences got instead was rock 'n' roll's first great film, indeed perhaps the greatest of all rock films, or at least the best narrative picture. The band chose director Richard Lester, whose short film with Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film, greatly impressed the lads. Lester frames the film as a documentary, drawing from the Free Cinema movement that emerged in England in the '50s. Spearheaded by legendary directors Lindsay Anderson and Tony Richardson, it built upon Italian Neo-realism as a foundation and sought to make films with neither commercial intent nor propagandistic messaging (i.e. Michael Moore). Indeed, some of their films -- Richardson's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Anderson's This Sporting Life -- offer an interesting insight into the Britain in which the Beatles came of age.

Lester, though, clearly dabbles in both propaganda (he simplifies characterizations to magnify the effect and visceral connection to Beatlemania) and commercialism (it's a film starring the Beatles at the height of their popularity). But his use of documentary techniques, from dizzying editing to moments of New Wave-esque tracking shots, in the service of carefully constructed sequences makes it one of the most immediate musicals ever made. The end result, far more than a simple cash-in, is perhaps the most "fun" cinematic masterpiece you will ever see. Of course, that's all subjective -- I think that the slow-moving 2001 is more exhilarating a ride than anything Michael Bay ever made -- but in terms of pure reaction, it, like the very best musicals, combines innovation with such a carefree whimsy that you never spend a moment focusing on the technique over the feeling it creates.

A Hard Day's Night is such a freewheeling frenzy that it opens with the Beatles running for a few seconds before the credits appear, as if they're outpacing the very titles themselves. That opening montage, of the group running, hiding and disguising themselves from mobs of screaming ladies, is iconic comic brilliance, so immediately recognizable that it has been relentlessly parodied these last 45 years. Without any words (or even the sound of screams until the very end of the sequence) it conveys the hysteria of Beatles better than actual footage of the group stepping off that plane from Liverpool.

After finally ditching their throngs of fans, the group boards a train, where they look forward to a bit of relaxation. On their way to a London TV show, the band makes their way to their compartment, only to find a old man sitting in it. But it's OK, he belongs to Paul. Paul's grandfather is played by Wilfrid Brambell, better known to British audiences the foul father Alan Steptoe in Steptoe and Son (see if you can guess what show this became when it was remade in America). In a cheeky move, writer Alun Owen makes numerous references to him as a "clean old man," an inversion of Steptoe's identification as a "dirty old man." Paul's grandfather only compounds the band's annoyance, and their train trip consists of keeping an eye on him, dealing with stuffy older passengers who detest them and dealing with their overbearing manager.

Paul's grandfather proves to be the most antagonistic force in the film. Those descriptions of the "clean old man" quickly fade to the reality of a rascal who exploits his grandson's fame and manipulates the band seemingly to entertain himself. Late in the movie, he preys on Ringo's open nature to convince him to strike out on his own, just to stir a bit of trouble. Brambell is outrageous as the granddad, a gambling charlatan who rivals the lads in sexual drive. In one terrific little moment, he is dragged away from a baccarat table, and Lester briefly cuts to a much younger woman morosely waving goodbye to the disappearing codger. The band aren't natural actors -- John and Paul get by on charm and wit, but George and Ringo clearly aren't meant for the silver screen -- so Brambell buoys scenes that might have otherwise fallen flat without him. He gives the film something to hang on besides just the musical numbers, even though those are enough.

Most striking about the film, apart from its impressive technique, is its edge. Elvis' movies hurt him because they packaged him to the biggest possible audience. That meant "cleaning him up" for the parents and just relying on name recognition to get teen butts in seats. But Owen and Lester play up the Beatles' rakish, boyish charm, most of which is played out through John, the best actor of the bunch. In one sketch ripped right out of classic comedy bits, Lennon sits in a bubble bath playing with toy boats, disappears underwater, and when the manager drains the tub to find nothing, John casually walks up from behind and asks what he's doing. When that same manager announces that the station will be surging with girls when the leave the train, Lennon asks, "Please, sir, can I have one to surge me?"; later, a reporter asks him if he has any hobbies. John grabs a pad, scribbles something, and shows the woman, whose jaw drops in horror. That might be my favorite moment of the entire film, because I just couldn't believe they'd throw in such an open acknowledgment of the band's promiscuity in a film meant to break them to the conservative mainstream.

Elsewhere, the band plays up their image further; Ringo uses his malapropisms -- they inadvertently got the title from him, as well as that of the later song "Eight Days a Week" -- in the service of cheek, declaring himself to be neither a Mod nor a rocker but a "mocker." George stretches his "quiet one" persona into terrific hyperbole by frequently leaving the scene for some peace and quiet when things get stressful. In a fantastic bit, Lennon is stopped by a woman who recognizes him, but he manages to convince her that he just sort of gets that a lot, and by the end she agrees, "You don't look like him at all." John almost reminds me of an Office-era Martin Freeman in the film: cheeky, moon-faced and constantly put-upon. He betrays hints of exasperation with the demands of fame even in this giddy satire of it, but that only feeds his wit.

Far more interesting, however, is the thoroughly British injection of class commentary into the mix. The Beatles might be millionaires (or at least sold millions of records -- I don't know what kind of deal they got for themselves), but they firmly align themselves with the working class. That stuffy old man on the train, though almost surely poorer than the group, is clearly set up as an, to steal from Python, upper class twit. When a stage hand messes with Ringo's drums and tries to condescend to him, Starr dismisses his words as "bourgeois clichés." Throughout the film, the band members trade jibes directed at the pompous adults who surround them, and Harrison spews out the majority of his dialogue on-screen in one fell swoop arguing with a TV producer who tells Harrison that "the new thing is to care passionately, and be right wing."

A Hard Day's Night never outstays its welcome. Its self-deprecating humor, satire and ability to turn the limited range of its musician turned actors (not to mention surrounding them with supremely talented performers like Brambell) keep things fresh throughout. The impact of Lester's direction cannot be understated: his edited cuts set to the beat of the performance of "Can't Buy Me Love" can be seen in proper documentaries (Scorsese's The Last Waltz), the creation of the music video, and even in other comedies (it's best homage can be seen in the perfectly choreographed Queen sequence in Shaun of the Dead). So much more than a simple document of a fad, A Hard Day's Night is a breathless combination of invention and youthful joy. Even with an earlier catalog as upbeat as the Beatles', it's hard to believe how completely fun it is.

The Beatles — With the Beatles

With the Beatles, released a scant 8 months after their debut, cemented the band as the biggest act to ever come out of Britain. Prior to their numerous chart successes with Please Please Me as well as the band's first singles, the only acknowledged British rock classics were Cliff Richard's "Move It" and Johnny Kidd's "Shakin' All Over." Notice that those are singles; Please Please Me was a whole album of mostly gold, with 4 tracks ("I Saw Her Standing There," "Love Me Do," "Please Please Me" and "Twist and Shout") that could justifiably be called classics then and haven't aged a day since. The Fab Four began knocking US mainstays such as Roy Orbison off the top of the charts, establishing themselves as the first true British rock gods. Naturally, this got people interested, and pre-orders for With the Beatles hit the half-million mark, and the album shifted a further half million units over the next two years. At the time, it was only the second album to do so in the UK, after the soundtrack to Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical South Pacific.

More important than numbers, of course, is the quality of the material. To be honest, the rush on the band shows. With the Beatles is shamelessly structured to ape Please Please Me, right down to the rollicking cover to close out the proceedings. With the Beatles, then, is evidence of the first industrialized pop product, formulated, indistinguishable albums produced on an assembly line to keep those teen dreams out on the road charming the ladies right out of their milk money.

Of course, even as they are being made into the first example of the capitalist frenzy of the music industry, the Beatles manage to put their own spin on it. For all of the album's same-y feel, for all the disturbing connotations about the future of the music biz, wherein individually exploitative producers and businessmen (think Colonel Parker's leeching of Elvis) gave way to an oligarchy run by such people, With the Beatles shows the band growing in confidence and ability even if it never hits the same highs as Please Please Me.

The first side, undoubtedly the stronger of the two, is taut and fierce. "It Won't Be Long," with its precise, alternating John's shout of "yeah" with Paul's gentle echo an octave higher, is the album's best track, and one of the shining gems of the band's early canon. It builds a feeling of anticipation -- we're back baby, and better than ever, it practically yells at us -- then Harrison fills the bridge with descending chords and the vocals back off, turning from a sexually charged rocker into a more romantic piece halfway before ramping back up in the end.

"All My Loving" repeats the love letter motif of "P.S. I Love You," but McCartney is blossoming before our eyes. A marked improvement over his previous effort, "All My Loving" is a strong challenge to "It Won't Be Long" for the title of the album's best track. Where McCartney's lyrics and vocal styles on Please Please Me typically followed a more melodramatic style (and worked), here he begins to work in subtler ways: his vocal here is tinged with a bittersweet edge that shows the boys -- who haphazardly tried for passion on covers of "Anna" and "A Taste of Honey" but chiefly betrayed their youth -- grappling with a more adult voice and succeeding. George Harrison also gets his first chance to start setting himself up as the dark horse of the group with his excellent "Don't Bother Me," a downbeat number with a massive sound thanks to some modestly paced but thoroughly busy drumming and reverbed vocals.

More impressive than the group's broadening songwriting skill, though, is the way in which the members are coming into their own as musicians. Harrison demonstrates on tracks such as "All My Loving" and his excellent, if by-the-numbers rendition of Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" broadcast his understated genius with the guitar. A disciple of Carl Perkins, Harrison demonstrates an ability to play well-rehearsed, inventive riffs, chords and solos within the frame of the song. It's funny to see some people jamming these days to his songs, drawing out their solos for technical displays, when Harrison displayed so much technical proficiency without ever needing to steal the spotlight. McCartney's bass -- if the first two remasters are any indicator, the single greatest beneficiary of the improved sound -- is rarely prominent in the mix, but with the remastered sound proves itself to be a tightly-coiled spring anchoring Harrison's riffing.

But it is Ringo, yes Ringo, who truly drives the album. We've all had a good laugh at one point or another at poor Starkey's expense, but if the remasters bring out McCartney's bass as the instrument that keeps the band rooted in pop as Harrison subtly branches out into new territory, then one can only hope that they also prove once and for all that Ringo was a powerhouse every bit as understated as all the other players in the band. Listen to his rollicking, full sound on "Don't Bother Me" or how he gently guides "It Won't Be Long" through its shifting moods to see a drummer who knows his stuff, and his bongo work on "Till There Was You," aided by the lush softness created by engineer George Martin moves the song as much as Paul's gentle vocal.

Ringo also delivers one of his better vocal performances on the snarling "I Wanna Be Your Man," originally written by Lennon/McCartney for the Rolling Stones. Harrison's guitar has a serious bite, and Ringo plays like a sedated madman, and even the harmonies have an edge. "Money," that shameless stab at repeating "Twist and Shout" never comes close to the fever pitch of that classic, but where "Twist and Shout" was open and anarchic, "Money" is darker and scheming. Lennon's vocal has an audible contempt and condescension, while the subtly unsettling backing shouts and warping piano line underline the band's true feelings toward the song's subject matter, and perhaps the way that they were rapidly becoming product in the eyes of the record company (though that feeling doesn't openly pervade a Beatles album until Beatles For Sale). All in all, it's a fitting stand-in for the album itself: not really as good as what it's meant to copy, but with a heretofore unseen ability to add nuance and improved craft to the proceedings.

The Beatles — Please Please Me

[With the reissue of The Beatles' discography today and the mounting hype that preceded it, I've decided to go through each album as well as films such as A Hard Day's Night for the next few weeks because I'm so caught up in the excitement. Unfortunately, I lacked the money to reserve a mono set, so I'll have to wait for the next issues of those to get one, but I do know someone with a mono set who will let me burn his onto my iPod until I can get a mono set of my own, and I can buy the latter, stereo-only albums myself. So, hey, why not get lost in Beatlemania '09?]

Released in March 1963, Please Please Me is not by any stretch the start of the Beatles' legend. No, by this time they'd had a good three years of hard touring under their belts, honing their craft in the seedy dens of Hamburg for two years before returning to Liverpool's Cavern Club to shame everyone playing on the British Isles. By 1963 the group already had a legend, built upon those Hamburg shows, which stretched for hours and demanded that the band stretch out their tunes to incredible lengths through solos and restructuring (supposedly, one gig saw them push their popular cover of Ray Charles' "What'd I Say" to a staggering 90 minutes in length). Please Please Me was as much an attempt to cater to the mythos of the band's early days as the later Introducing... The Beatles and Meet the Beatles! were to prime the U.S. for the impact of, well, Please Please Me.

Recorded in a single day after the single "Please Please Me" hit the top of the U.K. charts and rushed into stores as quickly as humanly possible, Please Please Me, if nothing else, demonstrates the group's astonishing ability to churn out material with hardly any time to spare. We call an artist prolific these days if a musician puts out an album ever year or so, but the Lennon-McCartney team was so efficient they cranked out singles with regularity and managed to put out 4 albums and star in a movie within two years. They of course did all of this while touring extensively in both the UK and the States. Even when the pressure got to them and they quit touring to focus on the albums, they still managed to keep an economic pace, at least until all the bickering got to them.

But the Beatles' debut album is so much more than a simple testament to their ability to toss out a record in a pinch. Though no studio can ever truly recreate the conditions and feel of a live performance, especially the sort that stretched for two hours back in the days where LPs only ran about 30-40 minutes, Please Please Me is a fantastic distillation of the group's deceptively simple pop facade. Featuring self-penned lyrics on 8 of the album's 14 tracks (McCartney also revised some lines on the Bobby Scott/Ric Marlow standard "A Taste of Honey"), it was an impressive artistic statement at a time when rock 'n' roll artists still based much of their albums around covers.

It also happens to be book-ended by the two most hip-shaking slabs of early rock that the group ever put out. McCartney opens the album with a rushed "1-2-3-4!" that suggest a different band altogether (a band wouldn't come along with a count-off that fast until the Ramones started tearing up CBGB's 15 years later) before launching into the chugging riff of "I Saw Her Standing There." It draws openly from black artists, with McCartney not only copying the bassline in Chuck Berry's "Talkin' About You" but aping Little Richard's falsetto whenever he sings "ooh!" But Lennon and McCartney display their ability for pop subversion even in this first song, breaking from the typical riff in the giddy chorus before leading up to that terrific shriek that might as well come with a sign marking it as a placeholder for the screams of wild-eyed teenage girls that were just on the horizon.

The closer, "Twist and Shout" is a cover, but ask the average Joe who wrote it, and they'll think of no-one but the Beatles. That's because John Lennon's anarchic screams, aided by a sore throat and head cold, blast the more melodic versions by the Top Notes and the Isley Brothers right out of the water. When he screams himself raw on "Come-on-come-on-come-on-come-on baby, now" you get the sense that the face of rock music has changed just as much as it did when Chuck Berry duck-walked on-stage and strummed out the riff for "Johnny B. Goode" or Elvis danced on The Ed Sullivan Show. (Of course, the Beatles themselves would soon appear on that same program and, whether they intended to or not, blasted the specter of Presley off the stage and announced themselves as the new kings). Their version of "Twist and Shout" blends primal rebellion and irresistible melody that you won't know whether to dance or throw a trash can through a window.

Those two tracks alone signal the arrival of a force to be reckoned with, but the meat of the album is just as satisfying even though much of it is filler. "Misery" is a far cry from later self-critical Lennon gems such as "I'm a Loser" or "Help!" (to say nothing of the whole of his first solo album Plastic Ono Band), but it displays that quirky Beatles trait of mixing a depressive lyric with a bubbly sound, albeit without the ironic juxtaposition that made "Help!" so great. The bolstered mono remaster adds punch to rockier numbers such as "Chains," which now reveals a distinctive edge in Harrison's normally thin vocals, as well as "Boys," Ringo's moment to shine at the mic.

Things get really good, though, starting with the jazzy "Ask Me Why." Not a number that rises to the lips of many fans when recounting favorite songs, it contains perhaps the best harmonizing on the album. The singing drops out every few lines, but they don't miss a beat coming back in for the next few lines. This is complemented by the doo-woop harmonizing on drawn-out words such as "you-u-u-u-u" and "mi-i-i-i-i-ne." "Please Please Me" and "Love Me Do," the singles that lit the fire under the boys to write this album, are just about perfect. Both sport superb uses of harmonica, particularly in "Love Me Do," in which it has such a soulful, swinging sound that it might as well be a saxophone. "Do You Want to Know a Secret" displays that Lennon wasn't always the screaming rocker to McCartney's sweet soul and could craft a loving ballad just fine.

Not everything works, mind you. Lennon's vocal on the syrupy "Anna" veers between passion and insecurity with the material; McCartney's take on "A Taste of Honey" makes better use of such melodrama, though it too is one of the weaker numbers. I'm also not too keen on their version of the Shirelles' "Baby It's You," which lacks the memorable qualities of nearly every other tune on the album. But the bolstered sound of the remaster shocked me in its revelation of the bite of Please Please Me: the early Beatles were not simply a group of smiling mop-tops, as those of my generation might see them on our way to Rubber Soul and the "real" start of the Beatles. No, these cats came to play, and they do so with vigor. It's far from a perfect album and even the better cuts have their weaknesses, but there are cunning minds at work here, and Please Please Me is, upon actual inspection, worthy of respect outside of its context as the Beatles' first album.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

The name of heavy metal group Anvil's drummer, Robb Reiner, is only the first of many connections to director Rob Reiner's seminal rock-mockumentary This is Spinal Tap. That classic came out in 1984, the same year that Anvil! The Story of Anvil opens upon, when the band was at the top of the world. That was then, and this is now. Anvil! is at times unbearable, a portrait of a band who never really made it, still plugging away 20 years after everyone forgot about them. That the film ultimately emerges as a celebration of the artistic spirit, then, is a testament to the skill of director Sacha Gervasi, an admitted megafan of the group in question.

Gervasi is an accomplished screenwriter, having penned The Terminal for Steven Spielberg, but he confesses that, when he met the group in 1982, he introduced himself as "England's number-one Anvil fan." Ergo, it's only natural that he would choose the group as the subject of his first directorial gig. For a band that few contemporary metal fans could identify despite their impact on the genre, Gervasi managed to accumulate an impressive amount of footage and critical evaluation arguing for the group's importance in the history of metal, with thrash gods Lemmy, Scott Ian and Lars Ulrich (among others) discussing how Anvil lit a fire under all of them to step up their game.

However, Gervasi's obvious love of the band does not blind him to the harsh reality of the band's modern existence. Where the film opens with a massive metal festival in Japan, with names like Bon Jovi and the Scorpions co-headlining with the group. Those bands went on to megastardom, but Anvil never really took off. Gervasi cuts from that moment of triumph in 1984 to the stark winter of Ontario, back in the hometown of the band's two founding members. Lead singer/guitarist Steve "Lips" Kudlow works for a catering company delivering food, while Reiner spends his days breaking bricks. They hate their jobs and their co-workers have never heard of their band, but by night they come alive, slamming at local dives as though they just formed and were cutting their teeth on the club circuit.

The sad fact of their touring life comes right out of Spinal Tap: the lads ship off to Europe, seemingly a victorious return to the land where metal still reigns supreme. They even open up for a festival in Sweden. Backstage however, it all starts to come undone. They try to reconnect with old colleagues -- Michael Schenker of the Scorpions, Ted Nugent -- but hardly anyone remembers them. (The few who do, though, re-affirm what the musicians in talking heads say throughout the film: that Anvil were the rockinest band that never made it). One of the tag-alongs is dating the manager, who constantly gets mixed up and brings the band to the station just as their train pulls out. They arrive to one gig late but still play, but the club owner refuses to pay because of their tardiness. A lawyer gives them his business card, and advises them to fire their manager and get proper representation.

What originally seemed like an impressive tour, promising 1500 Euros for each, ends with the band fighting over stresses and returning from "vacation" to their day jobs. Apart from Spinal Tap, there's an unwitting nod to The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II in the form of the dreaded mother of the metal musician. Mrs. Kudlow isn't nearly the specter of spiritual and physical decay that defined the mother WASP's Chris Holmes, who sat beside the pool her son drunkenly splashed around in like a visage of Death waiting to claim this decrepit soul. Still, when the kindly, proper mom shows up in a film about the hard rocking rebels, it takes the wind out of you a bit. The film's bleakest moment by far, though, is contained in a scene wherein Anvil shows up for a gig they believe will be a packed house, to be treated only to a single fan rocking out (while sitting down, no less).

But damn it, these guys will never stop. When Lips gets back from the European tour, he acknowledges the problems, but is exceedingly grateful for the experience and even has kind words for the manager. "At least there was a tour to go wrong on," he says with the perfect balance of optimism and fatalism. As the band frets over raising the sizable fee to hire the big time producer who produced their seminal '80s work, Lips gives an impassioned speech to the camera about how he, Reiner and their other two bandmates all face big debts and compounded mortgages, but somehow they'll find a way to keep plugging away.

That dogged, some would say foolish, refusal to quit, that fleeting moment of happiness that can only come from perforation regardless of whether the venue hosts 100,000 screaming Japanese metalheads or just a single headbanger in an empty bar, makes Anvil!'s closest cinematic analogue not This is Spinal Tap but the 2008 Mickey Rourke vehicle The Wrestler. Sure, they should give up the dream, but who are we to decide when someone should stop doing what they love? Everyone close to them identifies Kudlow and Reiner as brothers, which of course means they fight like brothers. But when tensions explode in the recording studio -- this is a film about musicians, remember -- it ends up bringing out their bond more distinctly than any descriptions of their friendship ever could.

Gervasi's direction throughout is sturdy if perhaps too rote: the gentle piano soundtrack he plays over some shots is too shameless an attempt to project a mood onto us when the icy calm of the band's home base in suburban Toronto and the shots of band members arriving too late for trains do that just fine on their own. He also could stand to study the art of editing, or at least find an editor who's good enough that he can get by without having to supervise; too many happy moments suddenly careen into hard times without the steps that lead the first scenario to the second, and I found myself scratching my head at times wondering if everyone in the band was bi-polar.

But the director also lets some humor slip in without being mean toward the band. To raise that album money, Lips takes a second job as a telemarketer (adding to the ignominy is the fact that his boss is a massive fan), but quits after a day because he's simply too polite to force product on people. And it's OK to laugh at some of the darker moments because the band takes it in such stride that you're simply following suit by chuckling it off.

Despite Gervasi's inexperience and the somber nature of much of the film, Anvil! The Story of Anvil is one of the most inspiring and uplifting films about contemporary music ever made. Normally, artist evaluations are limited to the fringe geniuses of art and music (Scott Walker: 30th Century Man, Crumb) or a megastar like Dylan provided the artist is mysterious enough. For someone to make such an affecting movie about a bunch of leather-clad dorks grinding away with a never-changing formula of riffs and songs about sex, masculine actions, or both, is just precious. (I have to admit, my head bobbed to more than one song played during the film). So, yeah, Anvil might not be able to say that their glory days are behind them because they never had any in the first place, but by the end it's nearly impossible not to feel a sense of validation and personal triumph. And besides, take one look at these dedicated cats and tell me their existence is half as pathetic as Mötley Crüe's Vince Neill doing the Chicken Dance at a state fair or going on The Surreal Life to supplement the millions these guys never had in the first place.

Stranger Than Paradise

If Permanent Vacation hinted at a director to watch, Stranger Than Paradise put Jim Jarmusch on the map, and then some. For many, it is ground-zero of the modern independent film movement, intentionally giving off a hipster vibe, at least partially defining itself through its soundtrack, and filled to the rafters with bleak, bone-dry irony. The characters in Stranger Than Paradise play poker, because there's no more appropriate activity in this deadpan universe. Every minimalist shot, perfectly set-up for aesthetic effect and then left there until the scene ends, captures the stifling ennui of this world, a boredom that pervades every frame without ever making the experience boring for those watching this world.

In the center of all this is Willie (John Lurie), who lives in a ratty New York apartment watching T.V. all day. His Hungarian cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) comes to visit, and he promptly shuts her off from the world. He doesn't want here in his apartment, but he also can't stand the idea of going outside to take her on a tour of the city, so he bids her to just stay in the room and be seen and not heard. If she can manage also not to be seen, more's the better. Then Eva nicks some food from the grocery store, and her cousin begins to show signs of respect.

Jarmusch structures the film through a series of vignettes, grouped into three acts, though he certainly doesn't need to do so because of the movie's plot-heavy nature. Large swaths of nothing happen in the film, which is of course the point. Willie and Eva lounge around and watch television, and Eva never sees anything of New York other than the inside of Willie's apartment. Willie's friend Eddie (Richard Edson) develops a crush on Eva, though perhaps not in the sense that you would think -- later, he and Willie tag along on a date Eva has with another man and he seems nonplussed. When Eva leaves to live with Aunt Lottie in Ohio, both men are clearly upset even though their frozen demeanor never changes. So, they decide to travel to Ohio, "rescue" Eva and, ultimately, move to Florida.

It sounds like a rebellious youth picture, something you'd expect James Dean or a young Brando to be in, which is why Stranger Than Paradise is so funny. Willie and Eddie spend all of their time indoors, yet when they get to a Cleveland blanketed in snow, Eddie hysterically deadpans, "You know it's funny. You come to someplace new, and everything looks just the same." There are no punchlines in the film, only ironic juxtapositions and subtle payoffs: we are presented with Willie, hipster scum who sits in his darkened apartment, the lowest of the low. Then we meet Eddie. Jarmusch sets up Willie's slight moral advantage in how the two pass their time: Willie bets on the horse races, but Eddie goes to the dog tracks.

But there is also a current of, not drama, but what would certainly be drama in another film. Willie decides to go to Eva because he's bored in New York, and when he finds himself just as bored in Cleveland he fixates on that brief flash of fun he had with his cousin. Thus, he aborts his trip to Florida, correctly realizing -- with the help of Eddie's straight-faced proclamation -- that a change of scenery isn't really a change at all. His paradise is Eva, though obviously not in a romantic way. Eddie too wants Eva, though his desire almost surely includes romance. For Eva, her paradise is America, the land that birthed her favorite artist, Screamin' Jay Hawkins.

As a series of mishaps build in the final act, all three characters see their ideas of paradise fade in their ennui-filled perspectives; Eva, bored with the U.S.A., attempts to book a flight back Europe, while Willie accidentally ends up on a plane himself. The final shot, of one character returning to their motel room to find it empty, is as filled with pitch-black humor as it is a moment of serious regret. The unrelenting bleakness of the film does not posit that this is what life is really like, but that these characters, unable to take true pleasure in anything, can't attain paradise because they don't even know what makes them truly happy.

Jarmusch almost completely hones his minimalistic style with Stranger Than Paradise, and he has an incredible gift for, without moving the camera or throwing any sort of effects into the frame, suggesting a comedic undertone when nothing on-screen would inherently create one. His camera stands outside of America, looking in on its own country with interest and scientific objectivity; Jarmusch does not use his outsider feel to break down the "illusion" of America but to attack those who would blindly believe in that image without looking inside oneself first.

The Steel Helmet

Samuel Fuller's third film, The Steel Helmet, is generally considered the moment where the director pulled it all together. His previous features -- I Shot Jesse James and Baron of Arizona -- pointed toward his auteur stamp of following outsiders with an economic, sparse visual style, but they lacked the gruff, tabloid lyricism of his later work. The Steel Helmet, made in 1951 and set in the still-raging Korean War, is unprecedented in its audacity. Even today, Hollywood generally discourages films set in wars that are currently being fought, and when filmmakers do produce them they tend to under-perform at the box office (see the returns for just about every Iraq War film short of The Hurt Locker). Upon its release, The Steel Helmet was decried by the Pentagon as left-wing disloyalty and conversely by Communist newspaper The Daily Worker as a Right-wing fantasy.

That disparity reflects the brutal honesty of Fuller's film, one that addresses ideological and racial concerns in blunt language and unflinchingly depicts the gruesome nature of war. Its protagonist is introduced in the opening credits, though we don't see him until the end. Fuller opens the film with a lingering shot on, naturally, a steel helmet, resting in the center of the frame dirtied and with a bullet hole in the side. Then the helmet starts to move, and the grizzled face of the man, Sgt. Zack, wearing it slowly rises into view. Fuller's film attracted controversy because it does not distinguish between the man and the helmet: both are weathered, hardened (even "steeled," if you love puns that much) and blunt, but also -- as evidenced by the bullet wound on both -- still vulnerable.

Gene Evans commands your attention as Zack, a WWII veteran who found himself in yet another war. Always chewing on a cigar, he speaks only in direct, short bursts, usually with an insult or two to make sure the person on the other end pays attention. Wounded in a skirmish that left the rest of his platoon dead, Zack survives only thanks to the intervention of a young South Korean boy whom Zack dubs "Short Round." Zack attempts to lose the boy but realizes that he's too banged up to go on without assistance, so he lets the fawning kid tag along. Soon, they stumble across Thompson, a black medic who also survived a bad ambush, and Fuller sets the three up as an odd little trio working their way through Korea trying to hook up with an outfit.

Of course, the multiracial group allows Fuller to address issues of race, concerning both foreigners and those of different colors within America. Fuller cut his teeth reporting for tabloid papers and writing pulp novels. Ergo, his writing plays favorites yet portrays his character's with a blunt honesty. When Zack meets Short Round, he uses the term "gook," and the boy immediately defends himself; "I am no gook," he declares, "I am Korean." The trio stumbles upon an outfit of stereotypes, from the intellectual officer to the former conscientious objector to a Japanese-American Nisei. The officer asks what happened to Zack's unit and is satisfied with the sergeant's answer, but he regards the black Thompson with suspicion.

Zack immediately butts heads with the officer struggling to apply logic to the war. Continuing the equation of the helmet with the soldier at the start of the film, Lt. Driscoll asks Zack to swap helmets, hoping for whatever luck has blessed the sarge. The two argue over Zack's insubordination, and Zack gives a devastating speech about how the only officer to whom he'd give his helmet was the colonel on the beaches of Normandy who stood in front of Nazi gunfire and rallied the men with that famous line, "There are two kinds of men on this beach: those who are dead, and those who are dying." His helmet is a reflection of him, and he'd never just give it away on whim. But to a man like that colonel, who knew the blunt truth of war and would risk his life to tell it to his men instead of foisting speech after lofty speech at them, Zack would hand over his steel pot "any day of the week.

Though the dialogue is about as subtle as a punch to the face, Fuller manages to subvert the stereotypes that he's helping to cement: when the outfit stumbles upon a Buddhist temple that offers an impressive vantage point of the surrounding landscape, HQ tasks them with defending it from use by the North Koreans. The men manage to capture a high-ranking North Korean officer, a sure ticket to a nice bit of R-and-R. But the POW seeks to divide them further: he asks Thompson why he would fight for a country that will not even allow him the freedom to choose where he sits on a bus, and later how Tanaka, the Nisei, how he could serve a country that rounded up Japanese-Americans and placed them in internment camps -- this was the first mention of internment in an American film. Both answer in a similar fashion, which is to say that neither gives much reason at all. Both come to the conclusion that, hey, things ain't perfect, but they'll do until the times change. Their willingness to fight for a country that doesn't value them as equals simply because it's their country is contrasted nicely with the decision of the conscientious objector to join the war effort.

Much of the unification comes through Short Round, who is always writing Buddhist prayers and pinning them on the backs of himself and the soldiers. In the film's most beautiful shot, the camera gently moves in front of the boy and rises higher and higher as Short Round walks toward the Buddha statue in the temple. Fuller then cuts to a POV of the soldiers watching the kid, and we see just how massive the statue really is. (When they entered the temple, Driscoll informed the men not to harm the building, and they promptly threw their gear all over the place without a care in the world. Yet they look upon the statue with awe in this scene.) In that sense, Short Round is the personification (incarnation?) of Buddha, selfless and pious, moving among the men and praying for their safety and cutting through whatever denominational differences separate them by bringing them into a religion that is entirely new to all of them (though Zack does call Tanaka "Buddahead" all the time).

As infiltrators and, eventually, wave after wave of assaulting Koreans whittle down the small group one by one, the distinctions between the soldiers slowly fade. All those distinguishing stereotypes dissolve as the faces and actions of each man blurs. When Thompson can't revive a soldier manning a machine gun, he throws off his red cross-emblazoned helmet and jumps on the gun to resume fire. The final shootout is one of the most impressive early action scenes ever filmed; it lacks the technical mastery that would define the showdown at the end of Seven Samurai but, like Kurosawa, Fuller injects all of its deceptively thrilling moments with an undercurrent of tragedy. Whenever one of the samurai or one of the small unit is killed, it genuinely hurts.

Much of this can be attributed to Fuller's visual style, which is every bit as curt and effective as his writing. Though he edits rapidly through the shootout, his camera doesn't move too terribly much in each shot, giving the scenes a strange dichotomy between a breakneck editing pace and a drawn-out style that allows us to study these characters more closely. He never lingers over the dead -- early in the film, Zack says, "Dead man's nothin' but a corpse. No one cares what he is now" -- but their presence is still felt, the weight of each corpse bearing down on the survivors and the audience. In the act of ultimate separation, between life and death, the living are brought closer together by the simple mathematics of shrinking numbers.

When another outfit makes their way to the aftermath to relieve the survivors, they ask the men what outfit they belong to. "U.S. Infantry," the survivors respond. In a perverse sense, these men have truly become an "Army of One," albeit at too high a price. There are no patriotic, nationalist sentiments in this declaration, only a deeply ironic conformity to match the gray flannel nightmare of the '50s. Then Fuller relents, and in the last scene gives us a moment of poetry as a counterpoint: Zack walks over to Driscoll's fresh grave, pauses, then places his helmet on the lieutenant's rifle. But even that scene has an underlying darkness, for if the helmet represents Zack, then the sergeant left himself behind at that hell.

Goodbye Solo

In the commentary track for their new film Goodbye Solo, director Ramin Bahrani and cinematographer Michael Simmonds note enthusiastically that this, Bahrani's third film, features their first use of a shot/reverse shot setup. Most would scoff at the glee with which they report using in the director's third feature what is generally taught within the first few weeks of film school, but to me it only proves Roger Ebert's assertion that Bahrani is "new great American director." Though it may lack that thoroughly verité feel of Man Push Cart or Chop Shop, Goodbye Solo feels every bit as real and vital as those other two triumphs.

It opens in the middle of a conversation between Solo (Souléymane Sy Savané), an ever-smiling Senegalese cabbie, and his old white passenger William (Red West). William offers Solo $1,000 to take him to the top of a mountain in two weeks and leave him. Solo jokes at first, then asks if the man is going to kill himself up there. William doesn't answer. Concerned, Solo decides to be the old man's personal driver for the next two weeks in an attempt to talk William out of it. All of this is established within the first two minutes, as Bahrani posited that people would read a description of the film before going to see it or on a festival program anyway, so why draw it out? Besides, Goodbye Solo is not about whether William will commit suicide, or how, but the strange bond the two leads form.

And what leads they are! For the first time, the director hired professional actors -- though all but the two leads are still locals -- and what's impressive is how both men are every it as natural in their environment as those who genuinely live in the area. Savané's Solo dreams of becoming a flight attendant -- the real Solo actually worked for Air Afrique -- and he sees his polite and charming interactions with his customers as training for his dream job. Solo gives his personal number to "preferred clients," for whom he will do anything. Need some drugs or some "company"? Solo's your man. He's not some sinister pusher, mind you; he just wants his friends to be happy.

William is another matter entirely. Gruff and impersonal, he rarely even bothers to look at Solo when he speaks. As Solo attempts to strike up a friendship to reach the old man, William rebuffs him. I can think of no other person who could have pulled off the role like Red West. West was one of Elvis' childhood friends, and later his bodyguard. The two had a falling out when Red broke the foot of Elvis' cousin for trying to bring the King some dope, then told the poor sod that he was going to slowly work his way up to the face. Afterward, he became a stuntman and country singer as well as a character actor. Now, at age 72, he at last has his first leading role, and he commands it. Much rides on the simple nature of his face, which is a work of art unto itself. Sporting thinning red hair, a gray moustache and a leather hide, every wrinkle has a story to tell. West looks like Jeff Foxworthy, if Foxworthy had run the Hell's Angels instead of gone into comedy, and despite his age he still has a forceful presence. But there is also a kindness in his eyes, which may explain why he only looks at people when they impress him enough to warrant consideration.

On a surface level, the promise of an "unlikely friendship" between the two might smack of good ol' buddy film generics, but Bahrani has a far gentler and subtler touch than the typical "buddy" movie. West perfectly calibrates his performance, right down to when he chooses to look at Solo. When he lets the younger man in, he does so gently, never once acknowledging the gesture with anything other than a curt remark that barely hints at a deeper kindness. He never lets down the barrier, but he does open up enough to let Solo slip in.

As Solo scrambles to find something to convince William that life is worth living, Bahrani brilliantly juxtaposes Solo's conflict with William against Solo's relationship with his pregnant wife. She tells Solo that his dream job is just that, that he needs to stay so he can take care of his child. Solo re-assures her over and over that he will never leave them, but that he needs the freedom to make his own choices. In another film, the character of Solo's wife would be nothing more than a nagging shrew, written in solely to be mocked and reviled by the audience. But Bahrani stealthily contrasts Quiera's valid concerns with Solo's own intrusive desire to help William; as Solo rifles through his friend's possessions and even contemplates reaching out to a potential relative of William's, how can we sit there and judge Quiera for checking her husband's mail to make sure he's not applying to become a flight attendant again?

Bahrani's strength as a director, which Simmonds effortlessly bolsters, is the ability to use impressive camera movements and framing without ever calling our attention away from the action. Every pan, track and reverse shot aids what is happening on-screen, and when Bahrani lingers on a shot, it's not simply because he's seen Tokyo Story. The climax of the film takes place on Blowing Rock, a cliff where wind currents blast up into the sky like an airy geyser. Solo's stepdaughter, Alex (Diana Franco Galindo, in one of the best child performances since, well, Alejandro Polanco in Chop Shop), wants to test a rumor she heard that a stick thrown into the gale will fly right back into the hands of the person who tossed it. As Solo shuffles carefully toward the edge, the camera moves in front of him, almost reaching the edge and peering over, and I actually found myself leaning forward to see if somehow I could see over the rock that only just blocked the camera's view. Not many films can so immerse me that I attempt to see outside of the frame.

Goodbye Solo ends on a tragic note, yes, and one that offers little message of hope, yet it's unfair to call it a cynical film. Bahrani's movie has a profoundly realistic, humanist feel, and I don't say that because I believe that "sad" endings are more true to life than happy ones. This, like the director's other two films, is the work of a true independent, whose characters are always American but see themselves (and the audience sees them) as outsiders. Bahrani was born American but raised in an Iranian family in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where everyone else was, according to him, white or black. In that sense Bahrani can easily tap into the "American as foreign observer of America" vibe that Jarmusch shoots for, though they're styles are far removed. A certain kinship can also be drawn to that other great modern director from N.C., David Gordon Green, though where Green approaches his clear-headed depictions of human interaction through the filter of Terrence Malick's tone poetry, Bahrani works through the ecstatic truth of Werner Herzog. Make no mistake: Bahrani's on a roll, and this quietly devastating, truly independent drama is as moving a film as you're likely to see this year.