Movie Review: The Green Fog

The Green Fog **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson & Galen Johnson.

 

Every Guy Maddin movie is a like a trip inside of his very strange mind – a mind which sees connections in all sorts of them, where the ridiculous and sublime can co-exist. It is the mind of a movie obsessive – and Maddin’s films often use stylings of older films – silent films in particular – to tell deeply strange stories of deeply strange people. The Green Fog is a different sort of film for him in some ways – and yet it is very much a film that I can only imagine him making. The film is entirely found footage – all from movies and TV shows shot in San Francisco, for the most part with the dialogue cut out. Even when there is dialogue in a scene, Maddin and his co-directors (and editors) Evan and Galen Johnson – cur the dialogue – and just the dialogue out – meaning we see right up to the split second sound is going to come out, and right after it does. It is a very odd experience to watch. The structure of the movie is to retell Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo using only these clips of movies that are no Vertigo, but shot in the same city. If, like me, you’ve seen Vertigo more times than you can count – you can spot all the references, or at least most. You also may well be able to tell many of the movies being used here. And yet, it’s fascinating to see the film. Some will (and have) dismiss it as just a goof from a really talented, movie mad director like Maddin. The film, like everything Maddin does, has an undeniable, wicked sense of humor to it. But it’s more than that. It makes you look at Vertigo, one of the greatest and most talked about and written about films, in a different, new light.

 

It takes a little bit of time for you to kind of sink into a film like The Green Fog. It doesn’t operate like most films do, and even if (like me) you know the basic premise of the film before you watch it, you may not be prepared for just what Maddin is doing here – and the very meta way in which the film operates. Vertigo is, of course, a lot about watching – and so watching The Green Fog is about that as well. But now, we’re watching men watch women, and recall watching Stewart watching Novak in Vertigo, as we are watching these new people watch others. Maddin has some fun at times with this – so Rock Hudson watching a film reel as “evidence” becomes him watching a N’Sync video for instance with all of the seriousness you would expect when you watching something for evidence. Or when Michael Douglas from Streets of San Francisco watches Michael Douglas (naked) in Basic Instinct and tells him he’s looking good. Or when we get to the part of Vertigo when Stewart is basically in a catatonic state, and Maddin just plays minute upon minute of clips of Chuck Norris staring off into space. The Norris sequence is the best in the movie – in part because it is so funny, but also because it works. Drained of the sound, and the context of whatever the hell Norris is supposed to be doing in that movie, the clips work entirely in the context of what Maddin is doing.

 

The Green Fog is a massive feat of editing, and it is amazing how well it works. To be fair, it doesn’t really work as a film unto itself (at least I don’t think so – I wonder what someone who doesn’t know the concept of the movie, or have never seen Vertigo would make of this film – something I can never really know). It is an exciting film, a film that makes you reconsider the films it uses, the film it is referencing, and perhaps film itself – or at least the way we watch it.