My Green Romance

The Sorrow of Young Werther

Over at The Onion, someone coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG), defined as the kind who “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures”.  But even before Elizabethtown, MPDGs existed and have a long history as this Amazing Girl post shows.  MPDG’s are sometimes attainable (film representations of Pocohantas suggest this type) but something of the term conjures up the kind of whimsical, flighty girl with artistic pretensions who is quite unattainable and quite casually and deliciously shatters a sensitive boy’s heart.  Think Anna Karina in all those Godard movies for example. The apogee of the type is possibly (500) Days of Summer, a film that is a bittersweet ode to manic pixie dream girls everywhere and is aimed at a certain kind of male audience.  Less commonly, manic pixie dream girls sometimes pop up in women’s films too, as the ditzy kind of girl lent weight by a partner with more nous and gravitas, e.g. Confessions of a Shopaholic.   Bridget Jones was - well at least a MP - with significantly more poundage and a great deal more clumsiness. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is therefore an enduring type. As long as young, dreamy women with long hair and poetic affectations exist, so shall the MPDG.

Imprisoned on long flights awhile back and quite completely brain dead, I sampled some of the recent romantic films on offer.  And my extremely random yet completely true survey of recent romantic films indicates that for the moment the MPDG is lying very low indeed, at least in films aimed at women. Instead the recent movies are full of perfectionist careerists with lonely, sad sack lives. The ring, the wedding, the perfect man are secret desires sublimated under an air of confidence and a career in good shape, though keeping true to the type mind numbing and detailed wedding plans are covertly drawn up.  All these women wear sharp designer power suits, impossibly high heels and have everything terrifyingly and worryingly in order. It is possible the type exists though I have never met one, maybe they have arrived as an antidote to the Bridget Jones era.  It is another kind of enduring stereotype after all, the prim miss literally letting down her hair.  But the type has mutated (or is the word transmogrified) into a harridan for our times so that Ms. Super Efficient is often humourless and uptight and must face all the loneliness and angst traditionally ascribed to the successful man before finding true love.  These women in fact are like a rash all over the guy movies too. In a movie like Knocked Up their appearance can be put down to residual misogyny or more charitably as a catalyst for the maturation of the protagonist but their appearance in women’s films is a bit puzzling, if not a mild exercise in self-flagellation. But women apparently want this if the success of these films is to be believed.

The Farmer Wants a Wife

So who is cast opposite these women? It turns out that this century’s idea of the hot, desirable man one can jump into bed and matrimony with is Green Earth Man. If he is not actually growing tender plants in moist fertile mud and generally communing with nature, he is at least doing something related that requires him to be gruff, vaguely hirsute, attractively dishevelled and having some kind of organic matter up his fingernails. He is often younger and quite possibly earning much less than Ms. Super Efficient.  In The Back-up Plan he is running a cheese farm (truly!), in Leap Year he owns a picturesque, rustic pub and at one point does some gardening, in Valentine’s Day one of the leads is a florist and in Something New he is landscaping in picturesque, autumnal surroundings.  The new Australian film, Summer Coda, appears to have an orange farmer. Once in  awhile - and this is the most regrettable part of the films - he also dishes out Petruchio-esque humiliation. By the end of these films the heroine, if still in her Louboutins and Prada (for we also live in an age of unbridled consumerism), has managed to sufficiently unwind and find true love in the arms of Green Earth Man.  In fact these men seem to be popping up with alarming regularity outside of the typical romantic film. In the super lush art-house flick, I Am Love, Green Earth Man manages to tick an astonishing number of boxes. He is much younger, has a veggie patch, cooks and runs his own restaurant - though here I note that he is cast opposite Tilda Swinton who looks less like a harridan and more like an extraterrestrial beamed down onto the streets of Italy (and I also note that I adore ze Swinton). In the lesbian arthouse drama, The Kids are all Right, he is more a disruptive romantic  - and a organic restaurateur.

The appearance of the type is not altogether surprising.  Everything “eco” is suddenly fashionable.  Broodingly soulful young men are as likely to fall prey to the romanticism inherent in Green Earth Man as to Manic Pixie Dream Girls. In fact in real life MPDGs are all over the internet writing for a female audience where they blog their fashions, their essential whimsicality, their prettiness, their artiness and are often accessorised by a cute Green Earth Man who puts in an appearance once in awhile on the blog.  So why are they cast opposite shrill harridans with kind hearts in the movies? Is it because these films are aimed at older women who jumped onto the career merry-go-round and the wealth of the last decade and are now wanting to step off a little, if at least by way of a chilled out partner?  And as part of the new zeitgeist, are the men also younger and more relaxed and happier to leave the controls in the hands of a woman? Not long back Mills & Boon celebrated its anniversary with a film, Consuming Passion: 100 Years of Mills and Boon.  In the film Emilia Fox’s character matches up the type of M&B hero with the social milieu of the time. For example, in a Post WWI world of few men,  the heroes were much younger. The 60s counterrevolution resulted in romances set in foreign locales with swarthy Sheiks and Counts. So are the new films aimed at a particular generation of women tired of their own pool of suitors (many of these films also have a negative male lead who is an insensitive corporate sort) and is the modern career woman still secretly marking time before settling down to marriage with Green Earth Man? Films aimed at an older generation for e.g. are different, as a whole slew of Meryl Streep films like Mamma Mia, Julie &Julia and Its Complicated show the post 50 woman looking for romance is an earth mother who can bake a great cake.  Whatever be the case, Bitchface Harridan with a tender heart is not in the least bit interesting and I for one will not be mourning her hopefully imminent passing.

So will Green Earth Man himself persist in our cinemas ? As a protagonist there is something to be said for him for he is a lot better than the creepy benefactor of a movie like Pretty Woman but I won't hold out for his longevity.  Also given the rumoured allure of MPDGs it is likely he will next mutate into whatever it is that the MPDG wants and her sisters will merely follow.

As a postscript, I note that the tart literary girl rarely ever appears in romantic films. The only one I can recall is Fiona in Four Weddings and a Funeral (who was properly tart and not cutely tart) and she unfortunately was left holding a torch for a supposedly unattainable Mr. Grant.  But their absence in the chick flick is fortunate.  For if my assiduous study of subtitled movies on SBS is any indication, the tart  literary girl is having a very good time indeed and can often be found in these films right in the midst of a supremely decadent ménage à trois.

In Bed with Six DVDs

Last week the Sydney spring flu hit and I ended up staying at home for a couple of days.  A day watching bad telly wasn’t very appealing so I took myself off to the local DVD store and somehow got conned by the pleasant person behind the counter into a “look its so cheap” 6 DVD deal.  Apart from the fact that selecting 6 movies is a drag, let me just say that watching 6 movies over 3 days is not easy and I can only imagine the endurance of the fabled viewers of yore who went to the theatre and saw two shows in a row. Indeed I have known women who have gone into the theatre at 12 pm only to emerge at 9 pm! It’s not a feat I plan to repeat but here for what it is worth, in no particular order, are my thumbnail sketches of the movies.

An Education:  A precocious schoolgirl nearly forsakes a proper scholastic education for an education of another kind i.e. a 60s schoolgirl falls for the charms of a much older conman in this bittersweet tale.  It is a charming film, nicely acted by most of the cast and quite watchable. But not the kind of movie you want to watch all over again once the end credits roll.

(500) Days of Summer: Possibly the most hyped hipster romance of late but it lives up to all those glowing reviews.  Boy falls madly in love with girl who likes him well enough but – surprisingly – is not too keen on the ring on the finger. Surprising given the dire world of recent rom-coms keeps suggesting otherwise. The beginning credits have a pleasant f..k you to the girl who presumably inspired this story, that kind of sets the tone.  Sort of a go watch film if you are young but if you are past 40, a nice enough snapshot of modern love in the Western world.

A Single Man: I should have liked this. It is based on a story written by Christopher Isherwood.  It appeared to be on the nature of love and grief. Even those who didn’t like it praised its look and the recreation of a 60s American campus.  Instead it was incredibly dull. Even the much vaunted look was meticulous but lifeless.  It drowned in its tastefulness, in its desire to be a serious film.  Colin Firth’s performance was much praised but really playing repressed Englishmen must be second nature to him. As must playing boozy, conflicted American women for Julianne Moore.  Exactly the kind of movie you are forced to pick up on the 6 DVD deal and then regret the 2$ you spent on it.

Revolutionary Road: I didn’t expect to like it and I didn’t. It had its moments but it’s about time movies about the hollowness of the American dream and the neuroticism induced by a confinement to the suburbs are retired. At the least a moratorium for the next 10 years might help.

Caramel:  Four women in a salon learn some life lessons and find love. In Beirut.  The forgettable, harmless chick flick variety were it not for its Beirut setting.

Becoming Jane: The last movie I picked up in a desperate attempt to make it to 6. Not as bad as I had feared.  Provided you forget this is about the life of Jane Austen or even about a novelist of any sort. Really they might as well have given history’s most famous spinster a man at the end and it would have made no difference. Plus confusingly, the guy who seemed the template for the bad boys of Austen’s fiction like Wickham and Frank Churchill, inexplicably became the great love of her life. And the guy who was repressed and silently hot, a proto Darcy to speak, remained the thwarted suitor.  Like I said, this is not Austen but a fanciful construction of the author for our times.  Just go along for the ride - but watch out for the many bumps.

Boonmee up Joe

Tropical Malady is a very strange ride but ultimately a mesmerising one. The movie is split into two seemingly disconnected halves. To me the first part of the movie is full of the quotidian – an immersion in modern Asian life so to speak – and the second half is like the details of an oral folk tale of some ancient past resurrected out of the surrounding forests. Somehow the two just mesh - it's a pity that Indian cinema cannot conjure up anything that is so verite and yet so feverish and mystical. Apichatpong's (aka Joe) work is not for everyone but it is truly original.

Well, the director has been at it again and this movie seems to have been a Cannes winner. I have a few of the director's films thanks to a Thailand visit but they are generally thin on the ground. Maybe the Cannes win will change it, though I can't exactly see a stampede, even amongst art house afficiandos.

Lit from Within

The glittering performance at the heart of a film is usually the one rewarded. It’s what can be called the Anthony Hopkins/Cate Blanchett school of acting in which we are called upon, nay compelled, to laud a great actor at work. Why then do these performances leave one cold? In contrast, some performances are subtle and do not call attention to themselves yet you are certain that you have witnessed a small miracle. The same goes for films.

The subtle, the unfussy, is rarely rewarded. Generally we watch to be dazzled, even if a hollowness lies at the heart of the film or performance.

Two films that I saw last year fall into the unrewarded category. The less flashy of the two is Two Lovers in which a depressive Jewish man is torn between two very different lovers - one a wild, damaged child and the other a warmly sweet Jewish acquaintance. It’s quietly sublime, expert in both setting up emotions and it's Brooklyn locale. And at its heart is an equally quiet and astonishing performance from Joaquin Phoenix. Sure it turns up in critics’ lists here and there but it is hardly an instant recall. Is it the better or the worse for it? It is hard to say. Perhaps it would wilt under the white heat of intense adulation.

Quiet is not a word one would associate with Jane Campion, whose choices as a director are bold. Campion is in fact the glittering centre of her films, her visual stamp so distinctive that no one can mistake it for anything else. Her latest film, Bright Star, based on the last three years of Keats' life, is however a quietly glowing work. And its performances, especially from Ben Whishaw who plays the poet, achieve depth by omitting anything overt. Its period details are lyrical, beautiful but never overwhelm the characters or the story. Bright Star is slow and for its 110 odd minutes, Campion chooses to place you in the slow minutiae of everyday life within which the poet’s work and love flourish. And yet the film is transcendental in its romanticism. Even aspects that could be showier – Abbie Cornish as the flirtatious fashion plate who captured Keats' heart and Campion’s signature visuals – are muted and therefore wondrous. Whilst Campion is always brilliant, even at her most flawed, here a mellow, mature vision has come to fruit. Campion’s film too has thus far been unrewarded except for generally positive reviews. Both Gray’s and Campion’s films are however so subdued, so honest to their directors’ vision that perhaps putting them in an awards race is to drag them down to the commonplace.

Food - Fast, Cheap, Dirty

I have little interest in films that deal with the politics of food/food production partly because it makes the very act of eating a moral issue. Whilst criticism of McDonalds and the agricultural-industrial complex is not entirely misplaced, anxiety about food in an age of plenty is a bit of a luxury. Plus food has become a fiercely moral pursuit often at the expense of those not economically privileged or with limited means to procure food that has been duly sanctified as organic, allottment grown and the like. Fast Food Nation was therefore not high on my DVD list, I ended up buying it merely because it was part of a bundle of DVDs that I got on the cheap. The fact that I am blogging on it is obvious indication that it did provoke a couple of thoughts.

The movie, directed by Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise), is based on the book of the same name which I haven’t read. But if the movie is faithful to the vision of the book, it would appear that it intends to cover all aspects of food in present day developed societies from the meat factories to food companies to the people who fuel this vast enterprise, be they middle class professionals, cheap immigrant labour, the underclass that is the backbone of the food service industry or activists seeking a more ethical way of making food. It also looks at the people left behind by the modern food industry like small farmers and cattle men. This it does by way of a plot where the inventor of a best selling burger called "Big One" is dispatched to the meat factory in the fictional town of Cody, Colarado due to a suspicion that the meat in the burger contains merde (it does, the obligatory Latina who works for an oldtimey cattle type announces that everyone knows the meat contains shit). For all its aseptic appearance, the meat factory has more than one dirty secret to which everyone involved turns a blind eye. A parallel story has illegal immigrants from Mexico who are employed by the factory and stay despite the harsh conditions at work because it is far better than wages back home. Yet another story strand has a student working at the burger outlet who is awakened to the realities of her job and gradually falls in with a bunch of activists out to close down the meat factory (one of whom incredibly is Ms. Lavigne).

It would therefore seem that the film is a fictionalised version of Schlosser's book (itself a nod to The Jungle, Upton Sinclair however, reflecting the concerns of his time was writing about the plight of workers rather than food per se). The problem is that none of the characters seem real, a situation exacerbated by dialogues that appear to be chunks of text from the book. The worst is reserved for the illegal Mexican immigrants who are not given an ounce of resourcefulness but for the most part are merely herded into their fates. And like all food polemics, it is entirely silent on the consumers who patronise fast food. Part of my problem with food politics is that it equates consumers to the cattle they consume. The consumer therefore has little or no agency both in decoding the messages they receive on fast food or in deciding the food they eat (in an aside I was amused by Powell’s piece which indicates that buying ready made meals from Whole Foods is fairly common. The fact is cooking is an arduous process and most technology is aimed at reducing the drudgery of the kitchen which is precisely why there has been an inexorable shift towards food that is partially or completely prepared). It also seems reasonable to assume from the reviews that the book is intended as a scathing attack on the food industry in the US, in particular McDonalds. The movie however appears to occupy an uneasy space. It is by turns earnest, morally improving in tone, horrified and gently meditative on the nature of modern society as represented by a small town in Colarado. As it happens, Linklater is more effective when he adopts the latter approach. Cody, for example, is a bit of a nowhere town dominated by the meat industry and Linklater evokes this expertly by way of the white and fluorescent factory, the little bars, the roads, the accommodation the immigrants live in, the motels for executives who fly in, burger outlets and the like.

The centrepiece of the film is a workplace accident and the “processing” of a bewildered and very much alive cow into chunks of meat. In fact these scenes render the movie so Dickensian that ultimately it seems the movie is not so much about the food we consume and the pervasive influence of corporations in our century as much as the fear and dread that accompanies our relationship with machines. Like in a Victorian novel, the machine consumes both man and beast and spits them out maimed or dead. And in the film’s ending scenes more sacrificial victims crossing the border wait to be fed into the engines of industry.

Andrei Rublev

I haven’t been able to get the images from Andrei Rublev out of my mind, disconcertingly they appear in my dreams. It is hard to think of a better movie than Tarkovksy’s film, then again it is no ordinary movie. It’s a beautiful composition, the invented history of a Russian icon-maker, a treatise on art and artistic integrity, a meditation on life, a recreation of medieval Russia and much more. It has all the pleasure of a novel, dragging you into its world, making you seek meaning in its images and lingering long after it is over. And yet it is pure cinema, each frame full of beauty and meaning, each frame nothing less than that overused phrase - the human condition. And in an age of rationality (Tarkovsky after all filmed in Societ Russia), it is full of the mystery and passion of faith – how we lose it, how we regain it and how it influences the course of our life. And I use the word passion advisedly, both in its conventional sense and as understood in Christianity. Is it possible for cinema to leave you in a state of grace? Astonishingly, Tarkovsky's film does just this.

Today I passed by a Greek Orthodox shop and stopped and stared for a long time at the icons in its window display simply because for a minute the images in my head and in the display were synchronized.

Andrei Rublev is much discussed so I won’t write any further. Here are some links 1, 2, 3 and 4. And here is Tarkovsky himself on the film.

Must Love (or Hate) Slumdogs

The little film that went to the Oscars is suddenly the subject of intense debate. Mr. Rushdie, whose book was really "The Memoirs of a Malabar Hill Superdog who married a Dung Goddess" found the tale of a Dharavi dog in deep dung who found a pot of gold and a pretty girl quite implausible. Ms. Roy, purveyor of poetic prose on Matters of Serious Concern like Poverty, also weighed into the debate (there is a lot of money in writing about poverty after all). Slumdog has been called touristic, poverty porn, life-affirming, Bollywood goes to Hollywood and the like. It has no particular politics of its own but has been read politically. India, quite at ease with its drains but very sensitive about the drain inspector’s report, appears to alternate between self-congratulation and phoren/self loathing. Suddenly, the film is freighted with everyone’s hopes, fears, neuroses and anxieties.

Mr. Boyle is a well-known filmmaker but he is not from Hollywood, indeed he himself went to a modest, homecoming celebration of sorts. His movie nearly went straight to DVD till it had its own fairy tale culminating in the Oscars. Slumdog happens to be set in the slums of Mumbai but is hardly a statement about poverty or the slums and that’s an important distinction. The film and screenplay simply marries the source novel with the improbable conventions of Bollywood (transplanted to another genre you see how wildly unrealistic yet good natured these are) and his kinetic style. But it could have really been set anywhere - public housing in Britain, favelas in Brazil, rural China - with the requisite cultural modification. In fact, the film has something of the zeitgeist of the day, an arthouse film set in a non-white country without the standard elements of the white saviour. This zeitgeist maybe cliché tomorrow but for the moment Slumdog rules. Also, the film has some precedence in Black Orpheus, set in Brazil's favelas and directed by a Frenchman and responsible for popularising Bossa Nova (much like Jai Ho reverberates around the globe today). And both Slumdog and Black Orpheus show that a film may be expunged of white characters but not racial politics.

Additionally there seems to be some confusion between making a film and being indebted to the source material. One would think from reading the papers that the betterment of Dharavi's children lies solely in the hands of the makers of the film. Indeed, it is almost as if expiation for making the film, they must pour all the money back into the slum. It is an interesting line of thought, particularly since Dharavi has been extensively filmed, photographed and written about.

In the end, Slumdog is just a film and the Oscars a marketing exercise that awards prizes to popular, well behaved dogs with gravitas. Yet, every year the Oscars are treated with the utmost importance as if they are indeed the final arbiters of great cinema, as if they are life itself. One good outcome of the Oscars may well be that dogs, like monkeys, will enjoy a better reputation in India. Let's start with the cricket. A rebranded Pups of Punjab (Clarke naturally included) may well win the Twenty20 and Vijay Mallya's private jet really should be emblazoned with Bulldog Millionaire.

Image: Afternoon at Dharavi Slum

Tu Chiami Una Vita

Having had to spend time at home in the weekends, I have been having a bit of a Jamesian moment. More accurately, a Henry James on Film moment. Perversely, given that hardly any film adaptation is an improvement on the book, I make it a point of collecting DVDs of films based on books. Watching James back to back, as I did, can be faintly disorienting if you are confined to the house - you almost walk out expecting carriages and bonnets on the streets.

I couldn't quite decide what to make of Jane Campion's adaptation of "The Portrait of a Lady". It is not Henry James but that is hardly a disqualification. The point is to take liberties with the text. But Campion's visual and ideological signature is so strong, if muddled, that eventually what we see is a Campion film that seems to have a tenuous connection with James at best. It strays so far from anything Jamesian that really only the kernel of the story is left. Even watched purely as a Campion film, it is somewhat wanting, you never quite engage with it in the way you did some of her previous films. Like all Campion films, it has a strong undercurrent of the violence implicit in a romantic relationship (by this I mean that is possible but not necessarily inevitable or desired) - she does seem to be drawn to the theme. Apart from some strong performances from the actors who play Madame Merle and Isabel Archer's cousin, all it really has going for it is Campion's absolute command over the images she chooses to put on screen.

Wings of the Dove is universally held to be one of the better adaptations of "unfilmable" James and it doesn't disappoint. It admirably manages the tightrope of paying homage to the source material and yet making the film its own beast. Its helped along by its cinematography (less ostentatious than Campion's), a pitch perfect performance from Helena Bonham Carter and the general structure and intelligence of the film. Lots of money, sex, deceit (few novels are little else but these seem to be constants in James) and also one of James' innocents in Millie Theale and the faint possibility of redemption through someone like her. Which brings me to the last of the movies and another of James' innocents - Catherine Sloper in Washington Square. This movie is fairly faithful to the book apart from a few changes, especially the ending. But its also a bit uneven and at times a bit broad in its depiction of characters (though this is after all an early James novel and not as elliptical as the later ones). Still, at the end of the film I felt I had made more of an emotional investment in this film than the rest, you feel for Catherine Sloper. Inspite of a few false notes, Jennifer Jason Leigh is effective in doing this. And I don't care how inauthentic Tu Chiami Una Vita is for the period - its still charming on film :-).

PS: Writing this I realised that all films seemed to have been made at the same time (96-97).