Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010): I don’t know what it is about that film…

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The people who make ‘teen comedies’ commit the same crime as those who write ‘children’s novels’. They imagine that to connect with a younger generation they need to somehow ‘come down to their level’, as if there exists a great pyramid of intelligence and experience with adults seated at the top and ‘youths’ rampaging around the lower steps throwing paper aeroplanes and having too much sex.

I don’t know why. Maybe it’s fear, contempt or jealousy. Whatever the reason, all it ends up doing is patronising the audience. And when your audience is the sharpest and most perceptive demographic there is, they sense it immediately.

It’s very rare that a film aimed at late teens/early twenteens gets it right. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World gets it so right. Set in ‘the mysterious land’ of Toronto, Canada, the film follows Scott Pilgrim (Age: 22 Rating: Awesome) as he falls in love with Ramona Flowers and consequently has to defeat her seven evil exes in order to win the right to date her. If that synopsis sounds hyperbolic, that’s because it is based on a series of graphic novels (by Bryan Lee O’Malley).

As such, the film is rife with fantasy, from the exaggerated bloodless violence of the battle scenes to the visual electricity (animated lightning-bolts etc.) emanating from the instruments of live bands.

Nobody could direct this film better than Edgar Wright. Famous for his British comedies with Simon Pegg, Wright’s work often employs a myriad of pop culture references to reflect on the lives of his characters – a generation self-defined by their (our) relationship with the media. One among this generation, Wright understands the Scott Pilgrim character and his hyperactive imagination:

‘I tried to re-capture that feeling… I remember as a teenager having lots of crazy wish fulfillment daydreams and doodling rock bands not unlike sex bob-omb on my schoolbook.’ (full interview here)

 Scott’s band’s name, Sex Bob-omb – an inspired choice, any Super Mario fan will agree – highlights the two subcultures dealt with in the film; live rock music and console-gaming. Set in a universe with comic book rules, one can start to see the potential for visual/sonic homage. The tone is established right from the off with an 8-bit version of Universal Studios’ ident, recalling the classic early console games of the 1980s/90s.

And it continues with martial arts, saturated colours and coinage rewards for defeating foes on the visual side and Nintendo motifs, Mac & PC error noises and bass guitar battles on the sonic side.

One of the most unique devices of the film is the text art. Recent comic book adaptations (think Spiderman, Superman and any 1989-present Batman) have avoided this, choosing to focus on realism. Scott Pilgrim embraces it; Kroww, Thok, Pow, Whak all abound in the fight scenes. But its not just onomatopoeic kicks and punches, text is also used to set up scene transitions, commentate on events and subtitle inaudible dialogue for comic effect. Here are my two favourite text art moments:

  • After ordering a package from amazon.ca (what’s the website for that?) just to have Ramona deliver it, Scott clicks his pen, signs for the package, grabs it, bins it and sets up a date all within less than 4 seconds – one of Edgar Wright’s signature ‘hip hop’ montages. Ending with ‘So Yeah, 8 o’clock?’, the scene cuts straight to snowy night sky emblazoned with the words ‘So Yeah’ and the camera pans down to Ramona waiting for Scott. S.L.Ick.
  • At the Battle of the Bands, Sex Bob-ombs singer, Stephen Stills becomes panic-stricken when their rival band, Crash and the Boys, start playing. Drowned out by the music, Stephen’s monologue appears as on-screen text. Beginning with whole sentences, the chunks of his speech flash up in smaller pieces as he gets more frantic, quickening the reading pace.

Maybe it can only work this well in films tied in with the comic book aesthetic but it adds such a new dimension that I’d love to see other directors using text creatively in combination with live action.

What tops it all off is the fantastic dialogue which keeps the excitement level high and maintains the film’s high-speed fluidity. The timing of remarks is spot on and every scene bursts with quotable lines. It’s a big part of why Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has gained such a cult following. Listening to songs from the soundtrack on youtube, I stumble upon comments such as this:

And if these go over your head, that’s the idea. Cult films provide a special way for like-minded people to communicate with one another – it’s why the film is so hard to review. The only way to share the experience is to say ‘Watch it’.

Terry Gilliam: 5 Things

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Terry Gilliam is one of the great auteurs of modern cinema. Very few directors leave such a characteristic stamp on their films. Here are 5 things that go towards explaining why his films are so worth watching.

Visual Style

Gilliam is interested in the way individuals process the absurdities of the external world inside their minds. Thus, the unique cinematography of his films is inextricable from the surreal imagery of his characters’ subconscious. While other filmmakers have their characters explain the content of their dreams, Gilliam shows us. And not just dreams. Any significant movement of the imagination is made concrete in richly detailed sets and costumes.

The strong symbology of these visuals cut right to the heart of the characters concerns. In Brazil (1985), Sam Lowry escapes the oppression of his waking life in dreams where he flies high above a green and pleasant land. Suddenly huge skyscrapers explode from the fields and shoot upwards. Simple and striking. The violent destruction of the freedom Sam craves and its connection with the bleak world of bureaucracy is immediately established.

 

Gilliam’s style is best understood when tracing his career back to its origins in animation; as a member of Monty Python, he was relied on to provide snappy links between sketches. It is this animation shorthand transferred to live action that gives his films their distinctive look.

 ‘I do think that everything I do there has a heightened reality to it, because I’m a cartoonist. I look at the world and distort it as any cartoonist would.’[1]

Championing the Outsider

Any director with big ideas requires funding in order to cover the costs of production. When those ideas are unconventional, that becomes a problem. When they’re transparently anti-business and anti-corporation that problem is nearly insurmountable. Terry Gilliam has a history of fighting with studios to keep his plotlines intact and his final cuts from being tampered with – and that’s if production is approved at all. Is it any wonder he identifies with outsiders?

‘It’s invariably somebody trying to fight against a system, somebody who doesn’t want to be limited. That seems to be the theme in all of them.’[2]

Whether it’s the homeless, the psychologically traumatised, the child, the criminal or the one human soul in a world of machines, Gilliam focuses on the ignored and marginalised – those who slip through (or break through) the net.

Contempt for Authority

True to his Monty Python roots, Gilliam has a strong irreverent streak which colours every film he has ever made. His satire is directed towards authority, especially when money and greed form the basis of the power wielded by cold institutions.

In The Crimson Permanent Assurance (1983), a group of elderly workers rebel against the big American Corporation that has taken over their firm. They transform their small office block into a pirate ship and sail it into London’s financial district to besiege the giant skyscrapers of the businesses that have eclipsed them.

In Time Bandits (1981), Kevin’s parents have no time for him. They are enamoured with kitchen appliances and TV but only interact with their son when exercising unjust rules and punishments. In an interview, the specific crime above all others that Gilliam accuses them of is not listening to Kevin – even when he tries to save them. The following clip reveals their fate (it’s the kind of controversial outcome that makes Hollywood bosses sweat – it’s a ‘family film’, remember).


Sinister Comic Twists

That brings us nicely onto Gilliam’s particular brand of dark humour. It’s about laughter in the face of doom. It’s about stacking up laughs against oppressive forces as if they were ammunition. It’s about using an entire film to play a trick on the audience, slowly persuading them that beneath the comedy, a serious struggle is taking place… and then puncturing the illusion at the last minute.

Of course, every Gilliam film is peppered with absurd images and funny moments – it’s half the reason I re-watch them so often. It’s just that somewhere along the way, the plight of the characters become important. Before you know it, you’re seriously rooting for them and it’s usually at the height of your concern that Gilliam delivers the shocking blow – they were never going to make it. They never really had a hope.

The proletarian pirates of the aforementioned The Crimson Permanent Assurance burst into a joyful sea-shanty after their victory over ‘The Very Big Corporation of America’ before the narrator announces that unfortunately ‘certain modern theories concerning the shape of the world’ are somewhat inaccurate. At this, the ship/building sails off the edge of the world into the abyss. It’s very funny visually and rich with metaphor. But it’s also full of pathos.

It’s the kind of ending that says “It was a sweet dream; if only the good guys did win. But they don’t. Never mind” – almost as if suddenly throwing away the hopes and dreams of the characters in a comical way should allow the audience to put it out of their minds and get on with their lives. The thing is, you can’t (and Gilliam knows it). There’s a bittersweet taste that lingers. It’s so persistent that, writing this now, I come to wonder if what I remember as extrovert comedies weren’t all tragedies after all.

Redemption Through Imagination

‘Imagination to me is the thing that you use to reinvent the world daily, to make it worth living in, or even escaping from.’[3]

Although his worlds are often fantastical and dream-like, Gilliam’s advocacy of the imagination runs much deeper than that. He sees it as a means of connecting with reality as much as hiding from it.

In The Fisher King (1991), Jack has to delve into the delusions of Parry, a homeless eccentric, in order to align himself with his skewed perspective. Only then can he deal with his past and help Parry come to terms with his wife’s murder.

Londoners are given the chance to find enlightenment through a travelling stage show in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009). Using Parnassus’ mind as a conduit, they enter the world of their own subconscious and are presented with a choice; one is difficult but self-fulfilling, the other is easy but vacuous.


The notion that imagination can somehow save someone from leading a negative, limiting life is ubiquitous in Gilliam’s work. His detailed visual style, surreal storylines and rebellious instinct are evidence of a preserved childlike naiveté. And if all that can remain intact for a man of 70, maybe there’s hope for every one else.

No Country for Old Men (2007): No Music?

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Even the most casual film-viewer is used to the conceit of a film’s ‘soundtrack’. Whether it consists of an original score or a set of handpicked pop songs, we give our subconscious over to it, allowing it to manipulate our understanding of the action we are seeing while realising that it doesn’t belong in the world of the characters on screen – they can’t hear it. In fact, the best thing you can do is pretend it isn’t there. And the best thing a composer can do is hide it from you for the majority of the time.

Then you come across a film like the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men (2007), and something jars against your senses. It’s probably a combination of many things to be honest but the most striking by far is the complete lack of music throughout, right up until the final credits.

Why would a director choose to do this? And what are the consequences? The answers lie in the subject matter, camera language and setting of the film.

No Country for Old Men, adapted from the novel by Cormac McCarthy, is a story of greed, sociopathic violence, cat-and-mouse-chases, police investigation and what Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) perceives as a state-wide moral decline. Violence? Chases? Don’t these tags describe perfectly the kind of scenes we’re used to see being enhanced by adrenaline-boosting music? Some stabbing brass maybe, a driving ostinato on strings or some techno-inspired electronic percussion?

Not in this film. Because the Coens are aware that when music is used to amplify particular emotional reactions, it is serving as a mediator between audience and visuals. While this can intensify the action, it often acts as a kind of sugar coated barrier which dulls the reality of the on-screen events.

And to the Coen Brothers, reality is a primary concern. One look at Fargo (1996) and their remarkable style becomes apparent. This is precision film-making with all the jagged edges of their characters’ lives exposed. Anybody who has ever harboured a curiosity for what murderous mercenaries get up to outside of their exciting line of work will understand the humour behind the Coens’ work. Every uncomfortably long shot is intentional, every mundane conversation is deliberate. After all, why should only the most extreme moments of someone’s life be a worthy subject for film? If directors have the power to pick and choose, why not add in a minute’s worth of a guy struggling with TV reception as well as the same man getting hacked to death with an axe? It’s out of context (and I can’t recommend the whole thing highly enough; it’s called Fargo, watch it) but hopefully the clip below gives some sort of idea how beauty can be divined from such humdrum moments:

The music draws you to the strange and brief connection between a kidnapper and his victim while something routine goes on in the background. No Country for Old Men goes further, giving nothing to help you interpret the image. It’s raw and stark; events are what they are, no more no less. I point towards the section 5.00-13.00 where Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) first discovers the drug money while hunting in the open plains of West Texas. The shots are wide, very wide. Llewelyn and the landscape – that’s all there is and the score gives us nothing. No sympathy for the dying Mexican, no joy or anxiety at finding the money, just gusty wind and footsteps.

Another highlight is around 54.00-1.02.00 and the first ‘meeting’ between Moss and Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). The vacuum left by the blank score is filled with the bleeps of a proximity sensor, Moss’ exhausted breathing and the cracks and smashes of a gun battle. There is no doubt it’s intense and with nothing to mediate between the situation and the audience, we have as little chance of escaping as Moss.

I have no idea if the Coen Brothers acknowledge/accept this but purely from watching their films, it is easy to draw parallels between their outlook and the philosophical state of Nihilism. Nihilists suggest that there is no objective meaning or purpose behind existence; qualities such as ‘value’ and ‘significance’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are complete fabrications designed by humans in order to fool ourselves into believing that things really matter.

Sound depressing? As a matter of fact, brilliant ideas have sprouted from this bleak-sounding attitude – take Absurdism for example. The point is, in the face of dwindling faith in supernatural deities, Nihilism has been one of the most widespread default moods for the last 150 years. Nobody likes to stay in the void for too long, but accepting the meaninglessness of life is a common crisis before stopping moaning and just getting on with it.

No Country for Old Men embraces the void of nihilism simply by passing no judgement on the exploits of its characters. Music plays a big part in this by not being there. There is no romantic theme attached to Llewelyn and Carla Jean, no dissonant doom-laden motif for close-ups of Chigurh and nothing grand to mark the death of any main character. Things just happen in a brutally realistic way drawing attention to the fact that any engagement you feel with people/events is purely a result of your own volition.

The Third Man (1949)

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Such is the iconography and conventions of the genre that even before watching a single noir film, the mind associates the term with shadowed alleyways, slick verbal exchanges and the navigation of an innocent man (for it is always a man) through a world of crime, corruption and a cast full of the most secretive of characters.

In The Third Man, these alleyways belong to Vienna – a city divided into four quarters, each presided over by a different nation. The double-crossing climate of this post-World War Two arrangement offers up the perfect noir setting; there is always a place to hide for those who might need one and plenty of language barriers to afford them protection.

But it is the confusion caused by the smattering of German – which seems to be the official language of mediation between the occupying forces – which makes the city such a baffling challenge to hapless American writer Holly Martins who finds himself stranded when the friend who offered him work, Harry Lime, is killed in a car accident just hours before his arrival. Martins is soon acquainted with Anna Schmidt, who doubles as the interminably melancholy lover of Harry Lime, and Martins’ translator as he attempts to shed some light on the mysteries surrounding his friend’s death.

Watching this film over 60 years after it was made, the thing that stands up best is the atmosphere conjured by the set and its framing by the director. Ancient architecture looms above empty midnight squares, grand staircases separate characters and their fractious dialogue and a maze of sewers ensure that only echo and shadow are aids in the search for both friend and foe.

Another highlight is the physical (especially facial) acting on show, particularly that of Ernst Deutsch (Baron Kurtz) and Orson Welles. When Welles finally appears, the film has been rolling along nicely for about an hour in a self-contained little world. His charisma and wit injects momentum into the narrative which takes it hurtling through the final third with style.

One last note on the music, which at first seems to clash painfully with the visuals. Anton Karas wrote and performed the score with a single instrument, the zither – a kind of many-stringed lap guitar/tiny harp. It has widespread acclaim, being described as ‘unique’[1] and ‘a hallmark of film music composition’[2]. Yet on first listen, the theme (which I’m sure I’d heard somewhere before) seems strangely jolly.

You can imagine it accompanying a comedy farce and suspect that if a similar film were made today, it would be scored with a brooding full orchestra. For me, it took a third viewing to appreciate its value, which is as much about establishing location (the zither is eastern European) as anything else. With just one instrument, Karas prevents the music from becoming attached to any specific character. Instead it provides a jarring unsympathetic backdrop for the sinister exploits of the plot as a whole.

[1] The Third Man Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_third_man)

[2] Good Information on the score. (http://www.soundtrack.net/albums/database/?id=3273)