Movie Review: Lessons from a School Shooting: Notes from Dunblane

Lessons from a School Shooting: Notes from Dunblane *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Kim A. Snyder

 

Director Kim A. Snyder’s last film, Newtown (2016) was a devastating, hard to watch documentary about the aftermath of the Newtown shooting in 2012, that didn’t so much concentrate on the crime itself, but how the community struggled to put itself back together in its aftermath. Her new short documentary, Lessons from a School Shooting: Notes from Dunblane digs a little deeper into one of those stories that didn’t really make her previous film – about how an Irish priest, living in Scotland, reached out from across the ocean, because his own town of Dunblane had experienced a very similar massacre back in 1996.

 

The film basically follows two priests – Father O’Sullivan, from Scotland, and Father Weiss from Newtown, as the pair start emailing each other in the aftermath of Newtown shooting. The basic message O’Sullivan wants to convey is that nothing will ever truly heal all the wounds, but you have to keep pressing forward, and take care of yourself or else you will be no good to anyone else. Both priests walk through the cemeteries, noting the children they help bury. For the one-year anniversary, O’Sullivan comes to visit Newtown himself to help out.

 

The underlying message of Snyder’s films is about gun control – or the lack thereof. In this film, Father O’Sullivan notes that in the aftermath of the shooting in his town, they passed some of the strictest gun control legislation in the world in the UK to try and prevent it from happening again. “But that doesn’t seem to be the prevailing thought in America” he opines – stopping short of directly criticizing America, although his implication is clear. He also talks about the lasting impact this had on him in the 16 years between the shootings – in ways both large and small – like not being able to watch his beloved John Wayne films anymore.

 

Lessons from a School Shooting plays like what it kind of is – an outtake from a larger narrative. I don’t think a lot of people saw Newtown – I don’t blame them per se, it is a film that is very hard to watch, and most people wouldn’t want to put themselves through that. But it was an important film – and one that should be watched. This is a small part of that story – an interesting footnote if you will. And even then, it’s still hard for me to get through the film without crying.

Classic Movie Reviews: Norman McLaren Shorts

The Short Films of Norman McLaren Begone Dull Care (1949)
Neighbours (1952)
Blinkity Blank (1955)
A Chairy Tale (1957)
Pas De Deux (1968)
Synchromy (1971)
Directed By: Norman McLaren (with Evelyn Lambart on Begone Dull Care and Claude Jutra on A Chairy Tale).

Norman McLaren was born, raised and educated in Scotland, but did most of his famous work in Canada – for the National Film Board. He was a pioneer in animation and enjoyed tremendous freedom at the National Film Board – probably because over the course of his career he won pretty much every award he could – an Oscar for Neighbours (and three other nominations), a BAFTA for Pas De Deux, a Short Film Palme D Or for Blinkity Blank and many, many others. He directed over 70 shorts in his career, and I choose to look at six of them – I enjoyed them (or was at least fascinated by them) so much, I think I`ll watch some more.

In Begone Dull Care (1949) McLaren and co-directed Evelyn Lambart paint – as well as scratch – directly onto the film itself. The result is a strange, flowing, colorful 8 minutes film. You could write the whole thing off as being random – but that would be ignoring the way McLaren and Lambart use music – provided by the Oscar Peterson Trio. The visual flow along with the music – starting off simple, and gradually getting more complex. McLaren and Lambart add colors, each corresponding to different instruments, on the soundtrack – the colors play off of each other just as the instruments do, and everything is in perfect sync. Then McLaren and Lambart change – as the music slows down, and gives each note its own line, that gradually fades into the background as the note fades. The music speeds up again and the visuals match – becoming more chaotic, and the visuals rush to keep up with the music. None of this really describes what the film is like to watch – which is somewhat hypnotic and visually stunning – the colors are beautiful, and while they appear to be random at first glance, you gradually realize how perfectly in sync they are with the music.

Neighbours (1952) is McLaren’s most famous and celebrated work – the one that won him an Oscar in 1952 for Best Documentary Short (although how the hell it qualifies as a documentary, I do not know). The film is unlike anything else of McLaren’s – it’s not abstract art, but actually has a plot and characters, and a very simple, easily digestible anti-war message. To some, this actually makes it McLaren’s worst film – the argument goes that McLaren was good at the abstract, not at something this pointed. The story is relatively simple – two men, with nearly identical houses, are sitting side by side on their lawns reading their papers. A flower sprouts up on the ground in between them – and the two argue, bicker, fight and eventually murder to try and gain the right from their neighbour to possess the flower – and, of course, in the process kill the thing they wanted most. The film is done is wonderful stop motion animation – the flower dances, fences get built and destroyed with the flick of a hand, women and children are murder and tossed aside (not in a bloody way). The message is exceedingly simple – love thy neighbour. The film worked for me not because it’s a complex movie, but precisely because it isn’t. The look is simple, the message is simple and direct – and as such, the film is quietly effective. I can see why McLaren didn’t go further down this road though.

Blinkity Blank (1955) won McLaren the short film Palme D’Or, and is certainly more like Begone Dull Care then Neighbours, in that it is an abstract work, but done in a completely different way. The film has abstract objects, plants and chickens flash on the screen momentarily, sometimes merging into each other, sometimes wiping each other. McLaren also uses blank frames in the film, showing us that even in empty frames there is some sort of movement – something there.

A Chairy Tale (1957), which he co-directed with and stars Claude Jutra, is a simpler film. Jutra plays a man with a book who simply wants to sit down. The chair however will not co-operate, and keeps dodging him. Undeterred, Jutra continues to try and sit on the chair – and eventually the chair will retaliate and try and sit on him as well. It’s all very amusing – the stop motion animation of the chair is done quite well (by Evelyn Lambart), and Jutra is amusing. Like Neighbours, the film has an actual message – co-operation is better than confrontation, a lesson Jutra learns at the end of the film. It’s only 9 minutes long – but unlike most of his films, it felt padded even at that length. There`s only so long one can watch a man and chair dual.

Pas De Deux (1968) may be McLaren’s most beautiful film. Shot on high contrast film stock, the screen in entirely black except for a lone ballerina, dancing by herself – and later with images of herself, as she splits apart and merges back together again. Later, she is joined by a male dancer, and the pair speak to each other through movement. The film is 13 minutes of beautiful movement, choreography and music, at turns touching and hypnotic.

 The last film I watched was Synchromy (1971) which was one of McLaren’s most experimental films – but in some ways brings us right back to Begone Dull Care, as the animation and music in the film are in perfect sync. That is because of the way the film was made. McLaren utilized graphical sound (a process I don’t really understand) to “compose” the music of the film visually, through drawings lines and boxes. He then took these drawings, and added color to them, for the visuals – creating a strange visual and aural film that feels like something a computer would invent.

These films, of course, are just the tip of the iceberg for McLaren – and I worry that I haven’t done them justice. They are abstract works of art, and though sometimes they overstay their welcome by a minute or two (really, the longest film here is 13 minutes, so you have the time) they are all unique and interesting works of art. I have a feeling you already know if you’ll enjoy these or not.

Classic Movie Review: Arthur Lipsett Shorts

Arthur Lipsett Shorts
Very Nice Very Nice (1961)
21-87 (1963)
Free Fall (1964)
A Trip Down Memory Lane (1965)
Directed by: Arthur Lipsett.

Arthur Lipsett worked at the National Film Board of Canada throughout the 1960s – and left behind a handful of short, avant-garde films that have left a lasting impact on film culture – whether or not most people know who he is (and until recently, I was among those who didn’t). His first short, Very Nice Very Nice, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short – and he found an admirer in Stanley Kubrick, who wanted Lipsett to edit together a trailer for Dr. Strangelove – and although Lipsett turned the offer down, it is said that the resulting trailer, which Kubrick edited himself, shows the influence. George Lucas was inspired by another Lipsett short – 21-87, most notably when making THX-1138, but he also includes a reference to the film in Star Wars. Lipsett’s films are strange – collage and montage, with sound and visuals that don’t directly match, but complement each other to give the viewer a different impression than either gives on their own. If you’ve seen the films of Bruce Conners, that should give you some idea of what to expect – although not completely, as Lipsett uses sound much differently. The films are mainly downbeat and cynical. But they are not thoroughly depressing – Lipsett has a playful side as well, and he offers a few moments of hope in his shorts. Lipsett left the National Film Board in 1970 – his films were “too weird” for them, who either didn’t “get” them, or didn’t want to. His films were critical of society, and perhaps the government just didn’t want to fund them. Lipsett apparently struggled with depression and mental illness throughout his life – and it got worse as he got older. He came back to the NFB in 1978 – and left, saying he had developed a “phobia” of sound tape. He was later diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, and committed suicide before the age of 50.

Very Nice Very Nice started as an experiment in audio – as Lipsett constructed the soundtrack first, and later added visuals (which is not how these things normally work). The visuals are mainly made up of still photos and outtakes from other documentaries, while the soundtrack has unseen voices talking about the downfall of our culture – often over images that represent what they are saying in ironic fashion. Shots of dead bodies, nuclear explosions, and stacks of American warplanes are intercut with regular faces, with people on the street going about their lives, and not noticing the images Lipsett places around them. To Lipsett, these people are not thinking, not seeing the world around them for what it is. The film acts as a critique of the mass media and consumerism – sure – but also about the effects of war, and “progress”. Lipsett offers a sliver of hope at the end of the film – not much, and perhaps meant ironically, but it’s there just the same.

In 21-87, Lipsett taps into some of the same fears he addressed in Very Nice Very Nice – envisioning a world where everyone would become a number, not a person (this, not surprisingly, is the one that seems to have influenced Lucas). The film is about how machines are taking over, and modern man is passive and simply allows it to happen. It is a frightening, dystopian film – made all the more frightening, because like Very Nice Very Nice, it uses real images and sounds to construct this world. The film also functions as a critique of religion – that either offers no comfort, or purely lies to the people. A startling sequence near the end shows a group of men – one after another – coming off an escalator, to be confronted by the camera – at a low angle. The men raise up for below the frame, but are so dispassionate and uniform that it’s depressing, not a sign of transcendence as the shot indicates. In 21-87, humanity has willingly ceded their freedom – and don’t seem to realize it. This is probably the bleakest film of Lipsett’s I’ve seen – and to me, the best.

I have to admit that Free Fall (1964) confused me more than the others did. Done in the same style – part found footage, part footage shot by Lipsett, mixed with a soundtrack that places those images in a different context, Free Fall is more of an assault on the senses that the other films – the soundtrack is loaded, full of more industrial noises, and strange music. The images are once again of people – many of the streets, who are surrounded by people yet utterly alone. The film is memorable, and penetrates your mind, but left me rather dazed and confused – which may or may not have been the intent.

The final Lipsett short I watch was A Trip Down Memory Lane. Clocking in at 13 minutes, it’s the longest of the four – and the only one in which Lipsett didn’t shoot any original footage himself. The film is made up of 50 years of newsreel footage, edited together in collage as a “time capsule” of images and sounds. It is, once again, about the rise of technology, the diminishment of religion, the effects of war and technology – and a commentary of the rich and powerful. The film is surreal, and by places images of beauty pageants next to religious ceremonies, John Rockefeller at “leisure”, cruel animal testing, and Richard Nixon, construction, science experiments, and everything else Lipsett edits together, paints a disturbing portrait of humanity in the 20^th Century up until that time.

The four films I watched are all very interesting (for the record, they available free of Vimeo – along with some other of his films) – but the first two, especially 21-87 for me – are the best. After that, Lipsett started to become a little more abstract – and to be honest, to repeat himself a little bit. All four films offer disturbing portraits of their time and place – and remain relevant now, 50 years later. Lipsett isn’t a name you hear very often – but he was an important figure in Canadian film avant-garde and otherwise – and deserves more attention than he gets.