LOTR and Torben Grodal

Somewhere buried in the hours of extended features in the Lord of the Rings box set, director Peter Jackson says that he hopes his films will inspire 9-year-old boys to become filmmakers, just as he was inspired at that age by the original King Kong (no wonder he went on to remake it).

Well, I may not be 9 or a boy, but The Lord of the Rings was the one film that made me think seriously about working in film. My sister and best friend and I have watched LOTR hundreds of times. We crack up at Pippin’s “second breakfast? Elevensies?” inquiry, and love turning to each other and saying “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!” And ever since my 14-year-old self marveled at the “how” of the scale models of Helm’s Deep and Andy Serkis’s motion-capture suit, I have wanted to know the “why” of films. Now, at least for this trilogy, I have an answer.

Last week, the University of Copenhagen celebrated Professor Torben Grodal’s 70^th birthday with a hyggelig symposium (in typical academic fashion). David Bordwell gave a pitch perfect presentation on mystery in 1940s Hollywood in his honor, and fellow Danish colleagues critiqued some of Grodal’s most influential articles. As a major player in cognitive and evolutionary film theory, Torben has published 3 or 4 articles consistently, each year, since 1968. Talk about prolific.

One of these recent articles, called “Tapping into Our Tribal Heritage: The Lord of the Rings and Brain Evolution” (available here) is especially resonant for me, because it proclaims that The Lord of the Rings film trilogy is basically the best thing ever (at least for evolutionary film theorists). He argues that the trilogy activates and uses the seven major emotional systems as its narrative and emotional core: the anger-aggression system, the fear system, the sexual lust system, the care-and-bonding system, the panic system, the play system, and the seeking system.

At its most powerful center is fear – in the form of a huge eye, Sauron. In the face of that evil eye comes an epic narrative about male bonding, adventure, heroism, fear, reward, and fantasy. Grodal writes, “a central motor of the fascination of the trilogy is that it evokes basic mammalian emotional systems which produce strong interest in salient scenes.” I think he’s right; it’s a combination of fascination and emotion that raises our experience to something innate and instinctual. We care deeply about the characters, while we simultaneously admire them for being braver than we could ever be.

So, again, cinema leaves its mark on me. It’s great to know that there’s a reason why I don’t get sick of LOTR after the 356^th viewing!

Loneliness and Life of Pi

It's no joke that my favorite pastime is movie watching. It's my go-to for any stretch of free time, and on weekend mornings you can often find me relaxed (or slumped) in front of the screen.

Movies are my adventures. I connect with fictional strangers every day, engulfed in their stories which are so vivid to me that characters feel almost like friends in my heart. Through films I adventure to the tips of the world, where my senses and feelings are heightened.

I am somewhat of an adventurer myself. I live in Denmark, where I am a foreigner. Being a foreigner means living outside of your comfort zone. And while it's usually fantastic and exciting, sometimes it gets lonely. So movies are also what I turn to when I'm feeling alone, because they are an escape from feeling lonesome.  It's rare that in a bout of melancholy I'll choose to take a walk in Fælledparken, despite my mom's well-guided suggestions. Instead of seeking comfort in nature or the city of Copenhagen, in these instances I tend to reach into another, filmic, world. It seems easier to displace my emotions onto a story than to tackle them head on during a walk where my own thoughts, not a character's, are front and center.

But today was different, because the filmic world became my own. My grumbling stomach pulled me into the kitchen of the kollegium where I live. I thought, I'll just make some quick lunch and then, I will work on my thesis. I had already watched part of a tennis match and Blå Mænd instead of working (being a film student makes you feel like any film you watch is justified as part of your "studies," even when it's a goofy Danish comedy about a recycling plant starring my Danish crush Thure Lindhardt). But my hallmates were starting Ang Lee's Life of Pi on the projector, and ooouuff I really wanted to see it. Plus, it was one of those listless snowy Sundays where a dour mood was winning against productivity. So I watched the whole thing, and it is dazzling. I don't need to tell you that much about this story of survival, beauty, and God; just see it.

I had a different reaction than most will have to this story. I think many will walk away from the film both struck by the gorgeous CGI, and thinking about religion, fragility of life, and whether or not the whole thing is an allegory. For me, however, it was Pi's loneliness that collided with my own. His need to survive after a shipwreck is of course something my comfortable life has never had (nor do I wish it!), but in some ways I felt his lifeboat was my own.

I think we all drift, alone, in our lives at some points--feeling isolated, warding off danger, and searching for companionship in our surroundings. Allegory aside, Pi had to tame and befriend a tiger to keep him sane and alive; perhaps in moments of deep loneliness we too feel fragilely human, and that the people who surround us are another species who do not understand us.

This is sometimes how I feel in Denmark when loneliness hits (thankfully it's not often). With my family far away, I think about the life I have here and wonder if choosing to live in a foreign country was in fact an act of isolation. My goals here--to learn the language, to make earnest friendships, to have new experiences, to create and sustain a life worth living--sometimes get lost in the loneliness of having to exist forever in translation. Because it's hard to connect, really connect, with another human being (or tiger), in a foreign language and culture.  But this is not just the case for ex-pats like me in the midst of mid-twenties self-investigation who have chosen to investigate far from home. I think it's true for everyone--beyond survival, we want to be understood.

Whoa David Bordwell

Yesterday I got lucky.

I got to sit and listen to David Bordwell speak for a whole hour and a half about film.

And you know what was great? Even though he was part of a symposium on metaphor in the art film at the University of Copenhagen, he didn't sound like an academic. Instead of using convoluted, rambling sentences that wind their way to a point, he distills his thoughts into pure film theory gold. It was so refreshing to hear him talk so simply, and make so much sense, which is all too rare in a theorist. And because it's useless to rhapsodize about him in my own words, I'll give you a few of his:

"Narrational modes become a conceptual frame that prompt us to make figurative meaning, so read the signs according to what the film itself sets up."
 

Feminist Guilty Pleasure: The Bachelor

Yes, I am ridiculous. I watch The Bachelor. I carve out a ghastly two hours a week when this show airs, even when exams and a thesis loom.

If you're unfamiliar with it, this reality television show features a hunky, toned-like-a-Ken-doll suitor going through the motions of dating 25 girls in hopes of finding a wife. NB: use the term "wife" loosely. Over 8 weeks (!) he is expected to propose to a fiancée by going on "group dates" and "one-on-one" dates all over the world in clichéd romantic destinations, and at the end of each episode he eliminates one whimpering girl at a "rose ceremony." The premise promises just as many cat fights as woozy romantic hyperboles, and the finale televises the ultimate choice between the two girls left standing. Can the man uphold his end of the bargain and choose one woman to be his (neverlasting) one and only? Which woman will convince herself she loves a man so much after two months that she'll say yes? Their engagement usually lasts just about as long as their 15 minutes of fame. Oh, and there's also The Bachelorette, the same idea but with 25 men and one woman.

Yet, although the show is steeped in inventive/insane delusions and producer-driven artifice--who can say "I love you" first? who has a boyfriend back home?--I watch the show because I am fascinated by the heteronormative gender roles it pronounces. Man: muscled, provider, family man, tough with a heart of gold. Woman: dolled up, husband hungry, destined for motherhood, emotional. Only recently (after about 10 years and over 20 seasons) have we begun to see any semblance of non-traditional paths, like--gasp!--unmarried single moms. In an era of groundbreaking television shows like Girls, The Mindy Project, and New Girl, which explore how varied (and also difficult) current young women's lives are, The Bachelor is stuck in a reality-tv deadzone that keeps gender in a box.

I don't know what it is that creates this changelessness on The Bachelor, but I've ventured some guesses:

• The producers actively cast naive women in their mid-twenties who were weaned on romantic comedies 
• Alcohol, cameras, and the promise of fame combine to lead the women to invent dramatic personalities that are an act 
• The producers peg the women against each other while making it seem like the Bachelor is perfect 
• Tricky editing makes us believe things happened as they didn't 
• Getting wined and dined on the world's most expensive dates will bring anyone to domestic dreamland just for a second 

Maybe I'm the one being naive for searching for some lingering truth in this "reality" show, but I do think there is something toxic but also telling about combining love and competition. It's a basic power struggle magnified twenty-five fold. The bachelor/ette holds the power over the 25 contestants, who jump through hoops to win affections. The girls bond/backstab, the men wrestle/worship, and it all plays out like mating or courtship behavior. You could call the gender performance here instinct or socialization (I prefer the latter), but there is definitely a ritualization of traditional gender roles that all the parties involved repeat. 

Finally, the show magnifies the great fears a lot of single people face: that we'll never fall in love, and that we'll be rejected. In this case, that can happen instantaneously, in a very public way. So, as a result, it's desperation mode. People go on this show searching for attention and hopeless love. I think the contestants who choose to air their dirty laundry on TV (both men and women) have an especially strong exhibitionist side, but then again, we're all on Facebook. 

So, mock me all you want, but the feminist in me isn't ashamed to admit that I am fascinated by this show. 

Take This Waltz

Take This Waltz, Sarah Polley's 2011 film, is not an easy film to write about. In general, but especially because it hits me so terribly close.

In the beginning of the film, Margot (Michelle Williams) watches a reenactment of an adulterer being brought to the gallows. She is asked to participate in the charade by whipping the adulterous pilgrim, which she shamefully performs. There, a man laughs at her and eggs her on. That man turns out to be her neighbor on the plane home and her new real neighbor, Daniel. She instantly likes him. This is problematic, because Margot is married to Lou. She's also, at 28, scared. When Daniel asks her why she was pushed through the airport in a wheelchair despite her ability to walk, she admits, "I'm afraid of connections. In airports. The running, the stress, the not knowing, the trying to figure it out, wondering if I'm going to make it. I don't like being in between things."

Even more than scared, Margot is restless. While the film emits a quietness that's not stifling but subtly beautiful, Margot is figuratively unable to sit still. She giggles with Lou like a child, picking at his face and biting his shoulder in a marriage that's friendly and non-sexual. She wants to write but can't seem to do it. At the same time, she's melancholy. All of this pulls her towards Daniel, who is new, persistent, and infatuated. But he notices her restlessness too upon their second meeting: "You seem restless. Not just now, but in a kind of permanent way."

I, too, have this permanent restlessness. It's so strong that a film professor recently suggested, out of the blue, that I try yoga to calm my nerves. This restlessness has helped me move to Paris, Brittany, Boston, and Copenhagen all within the last five years, never more than a year in each place. I desire the new and shiny opportunities that await overseas, in foreign languages.  Even film fuels this consumption of newness--I can throw myself into a new world even several times a day if am bored with my own. New experiences are my form of adultery; I cheat on the old ones when they become ordinary.

But as one of the women in Take This Waltz so simply says, "new things get old." What Margot and I are actually scared of is this change from new to old in our lives. As a result, we avoid having a deep intimacy with the everyday. We want to spin so fast, like she does at one point with Daniel on a fairground ride, but we end up turning in circles. I think this is partly a product of our age, where the desire for adventure has a certain immediacy. We can travel the globe at will if we have the means, or connect to it from our computers. But it's also just me. I end up speeding through life with a sense of urgency because I don't know how to actually hunker down and live it.

A Danish friend once told me that a year, now, feels like the same amount of time to him as when he was five. This gave me pause. It amazed me that he wasn't counting down the days and years until some distant future became his Life, where that projection of how he imagined things would go finally, magically came true. I could blame my '90s optimism or the economic cushion when I came of age that told the world that kids like me could have their dream job. I could accuse my tiny liberal arts college of demanding its students to be exceptional in a niche, not just laudable enough with a clear conscience. But instead of blaming, I want to fix. I want to learn to sit still, to stop climbing, to see what's there, to rely on myself for happiness.

At the moment outside my window, bundles of snow weigh on the trees in a post-snowfall stillness that muffles all sound. Tonight I'll wrap myself in the snow's weight, to hold in its quiet. Perhaps that will make it last.

On Flying

Flying has become commonplace. It’s a cramped experience, with our legs stuck under the seat in front of us, and our ears and eyes stuck to consoles. Whoever described airplane passengers as cattle had it right – we are corralled, spoon-fed, plugged in and complacent. No one complains about the food, while everyone looks motionless and unmoved. Only during moments of turbulence do we feel alive again, alerted to our mortality when the plane jolts back and forth in the sky. Everything on a plane feeds fluid, like liquid, like we’re moving in slow motion. I feel like I’m non-existent above the clouds, straddling countries and identities (travelling across the Atlantic always makes me feel like I’m negotiating my American-ness).

I miss soaring. I am too seldom weightless. Sometimes, on my bike in the evenings in Copenhagen, riding back from work, I peddle hard to see if I can break the complacency barrier. I remember moments of soaring as a kid, like my stomach dropping when Emma and I egged our dad on to drive a little too fast on “the bumpy road,” or when I pumped as high as I could on a swing just to get to that split second right as I began to fall again. A plane is now the closest I get to physically soaring (I’m not the rollercoaster type), or maybe dancing to a really good song.

But thanks to the movies, I do get to soar, as often as I like. Some people say that movies are manipulation; I say they help us fly. This is why it gave me much great pleasure to watch Hugo today, as I was on a plane, flying home for the holidays. The air turbulence was jolting only for a few minutes, but the film helped me feel alive long afterwards. Hugo is a movie lover’s movie – under the guise of telling the story of a children’s adventure, Martin Scorsese is really paying homage to the magician who gave the world its first moving pictures, Georges Meliès. Hugo, the boy who helps Meliès restore his own faith in the magic of the movies, is like the uninitiated cinephile, and I am a bit envious that he gets to experience Meliès’ wonders for the first time. On the other hand, I also feel as though I’m taking a fresh look at his magic by seeing it through Hugo’s eyes.

It’s quite funny, but also perfect, that Hugo was made using the most advanced digital equipment and tools out there, when Meliès only had analog film to work with. It’s a testament to Meliès that his cinematic spectacles are still awe-inspiring, and that his sleight of hand still works today. I’m sure Scorsese has his own sleight of hand in Hugo, but in an age of digital effects, we as audiences are immune to how they work. We are all believing and complacent with our effects these days, consuming them without notice on those small screens on the back of our airplane seats. So I’m super glad to see Scorsese put Meliès back on his pedestal, because when we soar during a movie, we have Meliès to thank. 

The Intouchables and Cinephiliac Moments

Yesterday I read this article by Christian Keathley called "The Cinephiliac Moment," in which he writes about the distinct ability of cinematic moments to take hold on our emotions and never let go. We all have moments from movies that have particularly ensnared our hearts. One example from my own cinephilia is the instant Jesse catches Céline's eye in a Paris bookshop in Before Sunset, where flashbacks of their fortuitous one-night romance nine years earlier in Before Sunrise wrap the moment in a decade of history, instantaneously.

If I had to think of one film that has recently afforded me a cinephiliac moment, it's 2011's The Intouchables, the French comedy that's reminded the world why France is so good at uplifting, truthful cinema.

Philippe, a millionaire who has become quadriplegic after a paragliding accident, employs Driss, a charismatic black man from the banlieue, as his caretaker. Philippe wants no pity from him, and Driss instead offers a pragmatic and lighthearted approach to life. Throughout their exchange, Philippe helps Driss see the finer things in life, while Driss gives Philippe some vestiges of adventure. The film watches them become unlikely but hilarious friends, and the appropriate life lessons are spooned out for us as they learn from each other.

Already the entire premise is cinephiliac - that people can come from difference to help each other - so our emotional heartstrings are already taut at the beginning of the film. And with a tasteful script, an expressive soundtrack and elegant cinematography, the film is visually and aurally easy to love.

But there is one sequence in particular in which I felt that my vast love of the cinema funneled into a sharp and emotional cinephiliac moment. Philippe needs relief from his claustrophobic body, so he and Driss drive to the Swiss Alps for some fresh air, which they get in the form of tandem-paragliding.

The beauty of cinema is almost overwhelming in this paragliding scene.  Colorful parachutes outlined against snow-topped mountains, sweeping birds-eye views, perspective shots in the open air, monumental music - we feel weightless ourselves, overcome by the joy that Philippe and Driss also feel.

Moments like these in cinema close the gap between viewer and film, so that our bodies feel transported into the diegesis and we intensely identify with the characters' experiences. Vivian Sobchack describes this relationship as a "carnal" one, where what's on screen is reproduced in our own skin. I think this is possible because of the sensory complexity of film; the magnitudes of sight and sound make us feel them physically, through touch and memory. The result is a momentary bliss, where we escape our own bodily presence and replace it with the feelings that come directly from the screen.

The escapism only ever lasts a moment, but that's another thing I love about it. If you try to hold on to it, it loses its power. So, I head back to the cinema as often as I can, seeking my next emotional and sensory thrill. If you do too, try The Intouchables, and embrace the moment when it surely comes.