Author: Max Mayo

Isle of Dogs

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This is basically a defense of Wes Anderson, which is a position I’d never dreamed I would be in 10 years ago.

Wes Anderson, above all else, is an aesthete and his films are extensions of his personal style. I’ve come to terms with his output being more about presentation than what is presented. And in fact, only when we stop protesting what he isn’t and address what he is, can we actually criticize him.

Though there is nothing overly new or rich about the characters, story, or themes in Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, from an animation perspective alone this film is worth seeing. Anderson creatively synthesizes cutting edge stop-motion animation with Japanese woodblock print imagery, kabuki and bunraku theater influences to create images and sequences that are easily some of the best in his œuvre, and some of the best in animation.

Buried in Anderson’s style fixations is his ethos of individualism, personal duty, social civics, and common morals. Again, he’s not treading new thematic or psychological ground, but he is finding new, unique and interesting ways to express himself. That is more than most artists ever achieve. In his commitment to this ethos, and as an auteur with substance, I see much more in common between Anderson and Robert Bresson or Quentin Tarantino, than I do Michael Bay.

Now for the cultural appropriation question, for which this film has drawn much ire. Overall, I found this film’s approach to be well-meaning and indeed respectful of Japanese culture. The lengths to which Anderson goes to carefully emulate Japanese theater, woodblock printing and cinema speaks volumes. I liken this film more to his masterwork The Grand Budapest Hotel than The Darjeeling Limited. The latter film renders the Indian subcontinent as a colorful, exotic backdrop for white man-child angst, while the former is an example of a film that intelligently and creatively engages with a foreign culture. In fact, I would like to see more filmmakers attempt what Anderson is doing here. And finally, as a challenge for any criticisms, I think most of the claims of foul play could (and would) still be argued even if Anderson had made the opposite choices. This begs the question, is what is being criticized actually the problem, or is the problem that people shouldn’t create artistic projects that engage with cultures foreign to the artist. Obviously there is a line for cultural appropriation, but I do not think this film approaches it.

All of this is to say that I found Isle of Dogs to be a charmingly slight, or slightly charming, film and a must-see for animation fans. Oddly, my biggest complaint with it is that there are not nearly enough dogs in it!

The New Yorker

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In the Fall of 2012, my late Grandma Lydia and my father came to visit me in college at SMU. My Grandma brought with her several copies of a magazine called The New Yorker. I was vaguely familiar with this magazine, but had never actually held a copy before that point. On one of those afternoons, resting in their hotel room before heading out for the next activity, I eyed one she had left on the couch. Enticed by its colorful cover design, I picked it up, slumped in a chair and began to flip through it; within minutes I knew this was something I needed.

It was the September 10, 2012 Fashion issue. I really only turned the pages, reading little bits here and there, but I knew. In that issue, as in all of them, there were endless descriptions of New York City’s surplus of cultural events, trendy political commentary, personal essays by famous writers, long form journalism, long form culture articles, short fiction, poetry, cartoons and reviews of what at that time seemed like everything. My grandmother, noticing the glint in my eye, urged me to keep that issue. In the days that followed, I read that magazine from cover to cover, a rarity for anyone familiar with it. My thirst unquenched,  I then signed up for the trial subscription. And when that was finished, I became a yearly paying subscriber which has been the case for the last 5 years. In that time, I’ve received the magazine weekly, devouring and struggling to keep up with that relentless pile, often bringing my own stacks of back issues on vacations and holidays.

As of April 9th, 2018, I am no longer a subscriber. Without going into detail as to why, I instead want to use this space to reflect. The magazine was, without a doubt, one of the integral catalysts for my broader intellectual curiosity late in college. I can honestly say I wouldn’t be who I am today without it. Despite any criticisms that have led me to this decision, it is more true to say that my leaving the The New Yorker is a signifier of just how influential it has been. Perhaps I will be a subscriber again one day, and I will still be loosely following it online (within the 10 free articles a month constraint). But for now, a heartfelt goodbye and thank you to The New Yorker.

Week in Review: March 26th – April 1st, 2018

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The Constitution of the United States – I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it’s surprisingly short and simple, elegant even. The Founder’s laser focus on preventing future authoritarianism remains striking, though I’m most impressed with its inherent capacity for self-correction and evolution.

A Film Like Any Other – My first step in an effort to watch Jean-Luc Godard’s Dziga Vertov Group political films he made, along with Jean-Pierre Gorin, in the wake of the failed French student revolution of 1968. This conceptual film consists of nearly two hours of political discussions between a group of French communists sitting in a field, occasionally intercut with montages of the ‘68 uprising. There are two simultaneous audio tracks of independent debate one gets to read through, and the frame limits your vision to the backs of the comrades in the surrounding tall grass. . .only Godard. This is an excruciating sitting, recommended for Godard completionists only.

Kaili Blues – Bi Gan’s very beautiful Chinese drama from 2015. Set in a rural Chinese town, a doctor feuds with his step-brother over the raising of his nephew. The second half of the film, following the doctor on the road looking for his nephew, is punctuated by a roughly 40 minute continuous shot, the camera traveling several miles via two motorcycles, a car, a boat and then circumambulating an entire town on foot, all while following multiple characters repeatedly interacting. Its impressive stuff, though I was even more taken with the still photography throughout the film. Bi extracts a somber moodiness from the sort of detritus typified by a rural town undergoing uneven development. Wet concrete, cloudy skies, industrial materials, unfinished construction and slow motorcycle rides are expressionistic cues that build out the emotional thrust of the work. The Chinese title translates to “Roadside Picnic”, the same name as the Russian science fiction novel that would inspire Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. Though the influence of Tarkovsky is notable on Bi, that potent comparison doesn’t keep this first film from feeling a bit under-baked. Perhaps a re-watch would help but I felt there was too little going on plot-wise. Still, Bi’s visual instincts appear fully formed. This is an auteur to keep an eye on.

Barry – SNL alum Bill Hader’s new HBO show. Hader stars, directs, writes, and produces here, and surprise!, he’s good. Like, really good. Hader plays a lonely assassin, former marine, who rediscovers the joys of human connection in a hack L.A. acting troupe while honing in on his next mark. Like many of the dark, anti-hero led prestige television shows from the last decade, there’s a certain perversity baked into the concept. The show requires the viewer to root both for Barry’s emotional fulfillment and his professional success (i.e. killing people). If the pilot is any indication, these two things will rarely be aligned.

Colossal – The premise is unique: a woman’s self-destructive alcoholism in upstate New York personified as a rampaging kaiju in Seoul. In execution, this movie falls apart. The ‘fight scenes’ were often unintentionally laughable and tonally awkward. Worse, the film clumsily alternates between which characters are deserving of your sympathy during any given scene. I would normally leave it here, but in the wake of Barry, I have to mention Jason Sudeikis. The contrast with the talent and ambition of Hader is stark. I don’t know if it’s the script, the direction or him, but Sudeikis is unusable in this film. Every dramatic moment involving his character feels false, a cartoonish depiction of alcoholism and personal resentment. I like him, I find him hilarious at times, but at this juncture I’m skeptical that he has the dramatic chops to do anything but broad comedies.

Translations – Brian Friel’s 1980 play about the Irish-English cultural divide set the 1830’s. During this time, the British Empire was actively employing the Royal Engineers to standardize Ireland through language and cartography. Their job was in effect to rename the entire country. The majority of the characters are Irish people speaking Gaelic but this is all performed on stage in English. Likewise, the Royal Engineers obviously speak English. Thus, very cleverly the language and cultural barriers of that time are conveyed using a common language for the audience. Fitting too, as this play was a pointed commentary on the then ongoing Troubles with its central theme around translation. The question of how to translate a random street crossing with a nearby well becomes an existential dilemma of whether one should fight to maintain a cultural heritage or assimilate into what will be the future paradigm.

Week in Review: March 19th – 25th, 2018

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Conversations with Tyler: Martina Navratilova – This is my favorite podcast and I am lucky to live near where it is recorded. The guest was tennis superstar and LGBT activist Martina Navratilova. David Foster Wallace noted in his review of Tracy Austin’s autobiography that the greatest athletes usually lack the ability to express their genius through language, that their expertise lies in physical exertion and instinct. Navratilova certainly bucks that trend, yet there remained a lacking psychological depth in this conversation.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold – The 1981 novella by Gabriel García Márquez. This is either García Márquez at his most drawn-out or his most concise depending on where you fall on his style. I opt for the latter. García Márquez was a journalist before a novelist, and here he experiments with a journalist’s prose in a recognizably Garcimarquesian narrative structure. A few hours over a single night and early morning chronicling the murder of Santiago Nasar are meticulously detailed over a mere 120 pages. Our narrator constructs the event 20 years after the fact, jumping from perspective to perspective, and back and forth along the short timeline of events, only revealing at the very end what was foretold from the beginning. García Márquez is analyzing a society complicit en masse; No one body with enough personal responsibility yet dozens with moments where intervention was possible. This novella is a remarkable tracing of the contours of fate, and leads to some unpleasant questions about the trajectory of civilization. The political history of Colombia circa 1981, and the current events in the region more generally, cannot be ignored here.

The Death of Stalin – In the wake of Stalin’s death, the remaining members of Stalin’s committee – a pack of spineless, incompetent, morally bankrupt buffoons – squabble for control of the Soviet experiment. Armando Iannunci (Veep, In the Loop) directs this black satire, maybe the first comedy to encapsulate the Trump presidency. The slap-stick here is particularly good.

Yi Yi (A One and a Two…) – My favorite Edward Yang film and sadly his last. As mentioned in my partial reviews of Taipei Story and A Brighter Summer Day, this three-hour family melodrama is unique in Yang’s filmography for its embrace of a broad humanism. The fatalism and ennui that typifies his characters still remains, but no longer does Yang emote these feelings with them. The film follows the layered personal crisis’ of the Jian family after their matriarch goes into a coma. As with the earlier films, Yi Yi is an extraordinary document of a specific time in Taipei’s history that will only grow more nourishing as our world evolves. Yang’s use of glass here is a masterclass.

Doctor Strange – Mediocre movies are often the most frustrating movie experiences, as was the case for Marvel’s Doctor Strange, a lazy rip-off of The Matrix and a colossal waste of Tilda Swinton, Mads Mikkelsen and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

National Symphony Orchestra: Noseda conducts Verdi’s Requiem – My first time hearing and seeing Guiseppe Verdi’s Requiem, and doubtfully the last. At 90 minutes, with no intermission, this part opera, part choir, part symphony about mourning for salvation at the horizon of the apocalypse is both over the top and totally engrossing. Predictably, the Dies irae segments are most memorable, the few moments where nearly every player is turned up to 11. Verdi wrote the piece as a memorial to Italian writer Allensandro Manzoni and I’m also told that Verdi was likely a non-believer. That Christianity has so often been a conduit for great art begs the question: How often is that religion actually the subject matter for a work, and how often is it merely a veil for more personal expression?

Bluets – Maggie Nelson’s short book of over 200 short essays? poems? tweet-sized thoughts? All of the above? Whatever you label Nelson’s collection, Bluets functions as a meditation on the color Blue. For Nelson, the color symbolizes both her innate depressive nature and the intensity of a recent love. Her success here hinges on a montage effect, oscillating between a potent personal thread and an intellectual discourse on the color blue throughout art history.

Foxtrot

 

Foxtrot

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Warning! This movie is really, really good and this partial review spoils major plot points. I would advise not watching any trailers nor reading any reviews before going in.

The foxtrot is a dance where, “No matter where you go, you always end up in the same spot.” Michael Feldman explains this to his wife Dafna, late in the film Foxtrot, as he performs the steps in their modern Tel Aviv apartment. Right step, then back step, left step, front. Then right step again, then back step, left step, then front. Ad infinitum. . .

In the film’s first step, Michael and Dafna receive a knock at their door. Dafna opens it, looking straight into the lens, only to faint into a backdrop of spiraling squares. It’s the Israeli military, their very presence needs no explanation. With disquieting efficiency, Dafna is administered a sedative shot and carried to the bedroom. This leaves Michael alone with the officers, the pressure of shock and grief collapsing in him, as they explain that his son Jonathan was killed in action.

We learn that Michael is an architect by trade. Fittingly, he’s framed in disorienting spaces (some of which he likely designed) as he fails to compartmentalize this trauma, and we later learn, traumas awoken from the past. We witness Michael meet with his mother suffering from dementia, his brother, his sister-in-law and his own daughter, each encounter revealing a rapid retreat inwards that is visualized externally.

Michael seems on the verge of imploding irreparably when he gets another knock at his door. There’s been a mistake. A clerical error. It turns out that Jonathan is safe, it was a different boy who was KIA. This prompts Michael to instead explode, demanding his son be returned home at once. And then the film takes its next step.

Director Samuel Maoz utilizes nearly every tool in cinema’s arsenal to execute a severe formalism that pivots radically from tone to tone, act to act, character to character. It’s difficult to overstate just how jarring these shifts are during the experience. This film is a total assault of mise-en-scene, cinematography, music and editing, even space and time, which I found exhilarating.

On one level Foxtrot functions as a family tragedy, a reckoning between mankind and fate. On another, it’s an anti-war film, about the latent violence inflicted on every party in a conflict. But on its grandest scale, Foxtrot is depicting a multi-generational disillusionment of the Israeli project, a national identity crisis in progress. Maoz’s remarkable film acts like a mirror, or maybe a prism, refracting the entire dance across time.