The Films of Buster Keaton: The Rough House (1917)

The Rough House (1917)
Directed by: Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle & Buster Keaton.
Written by: Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle & Buster Keaton & Joseph Anthony Roach.
Starring: Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (Mr Rough), Al St. John (Cook), Buster Keaton (Gardener / Delivery Boy / Cop), Alice Lake (Mrs Rough), Agnes Neilson (Mother-in-Law).

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was already a star in 1917, when he met the young Keaton – then a hit in vaudeville – and offered Keaton a job. Keaton was skeptical at first, but after spending time with a camera, he decided to give up his higher paying job on stage to work with Arbuckle in films. In total, the pair made 14 “two reelers” (twenty minutes, give or take) together from 1917-1920 when Keaton got to make his own movies. During that time, according to Keaton, he became Arbuckle’s “second director” and his entire gag department – although strangely, only this film – their second together – did Keaton receive a co-director and co-writer credit along with Arbuckle (and even then it’s not “official” – but it’s the only one IMDB and Wikipedia list as Keaton as co-directing, so it’s the only one that will be in this series). The two were well suited for each other – Keaton more downbeat to Arbuckle’s more manic style – and Keaton remained loyal to Arbuckle even after the scandal that ruined his career.

Like most two reel comedies, there isn’t much of a plot to The Rough House – just a series of gags. The film opens with Arbuckle waking up, and accidentally starting a fire in his bedroom by dropping a lit cigarette on some newspapers. He tries, unsuccessfully, to put it out by bringing one teacup at a time full of water – before Keaton, as the gardener, eventually puts it out. In the next scene, Keaton is a different character – a delivery boy – who comes to the house, falls down a lot, gets into a fight in the cook (frequent Arbuckle co-star Al St. John) and is eventually arrested – but instead of going to jail, the police give the pair the option of becoming cops themselves – which they agree to. Eventually, Keaton will find his way back to Arbuckle’s house, when a fire starts, and a pair of dukes try to steal some jewelry.

The first half of this film is the best – with Arbuckle hilarious as he tries to put out the fire with the teacups, and doing a routine with a couple of rolls that Chaplin is more famous for – albeit a few years after this film. The comic highlight is the fight between Keaton and St. John – which Arbuckle becomes embroiled in – as St. John looks truly, homicidally maniacal – and Keaton being (slightly) more expressive than normal. The trio pretty much destroys the house, and it is hilarious.

The second half drags a little bit – the scenes of Arbuckle preparing dinner for the Dukes are nearly as funny as what came before, and there is an absurdly long (for a 20 minute short) sequence of Keaton, St. John and another cop running to Arbuckle’s house (which does have a few good pratfalls). Basically, the first half of the movie works, the second doesn’t.

Does the movie show much of the promise of what Keaton would become in just a few years? A little – but Arbuckle is clearly in charge here – he’s the star, and the driving creative force in the narrative. Keaton is clearly playing second fiddle (third, actually, as St. John has more to do) to Arbuckle – but considering this is only his second credit, that’s probably a good thing. Keaton learned a lot from Arbuckle – and eventually the student would surpass the teacher – but for now, he’s content to let Arbuckle shine – which he does in the first half of the film. If for no other reason than to see where Keaton started, The Rough House is worth watching.

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: The House is Black (1963)

The House is Black (1963)
Directed by: Forugh Farrokhzad.

It is easy to describe what happens in The House is Black, but impossible to describe its impact. The film was the lone one directed by Forugh Farrokhzad, a female poet in Iran, who died at the age of 32 – 4 years after making this film – in a car accident. For years, the film wasn’t well known outside of Iran, but inside Iran, it’s impact cannot be overstated. It is now seen as the start of the Iranian New Wave – and filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami cite it as a major influence on his work. Watching the short (22 minutes) documentary 50 years later, the film is truly haunting.

The film is about a leper colony in Northern Iran. Some critics have compared the film to Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932), and the comparison, while only partially right, is a good one. Both Browning’s film and this one look at society’s rejects – people who have been discarded from society because of their physical appearances – yet have built a society – a family really – all of their own. The film is basically 22 minutes of footage of day-to-day life in the leper colony, with some voiceover narration – first, the dispassionate male voice that reminds the audience, more than once, that leprosy is curable if caught and treated in time. As the voice tells us this, we are treated to some tragic shots on people’s swollen faces, or faces missing noses, gnarled stubs where they once had hands and feet. The images are initially shocking, and feel the viewer with sadness – as well they should. There is no reason why these people have had to suffer like this – to be permanently scarred, disfigured, disabled.

The second voice that comes onto the soundtrack is Farrokhzad’s own, and she reads her own, beautiful poetry over these images. After the initial shock of the images, the film settles down into a more normal pace – and shows just how like “regular” society this leper colony is – old men playing board games, children joking around in school, and many, many scenes of the people praying. Despite everything that has happened to them, their faith in God remains unshaken.

The film in many ways is deceptively simple – as are the ideas behind it. As Farrokhzad says at one point “There is no shortage of ugliness in the world. If man closed his eyes to it, there would be even more”. Remarkably for a first time filmmaker, Farrokhzad’s images are potent, and the editing captures perfectly the rhythm of her words spoken on the soundtrack. The film does not exploit the people in the leper colony, but the film is more than mere sentimentality as well.

This is why I say it’s hard to describe in words the impact of watching the film. When I first heard about the film, it didn’t sound like something all that interesting to me. And I bet there are many people reading this right now who will say the same thing. But the simple power of The House is Black makes it one of the best documentaries of its time – and one that should be seen by more people outside of Iran.

The Films of Buster Keaton: An Introduction

Two years ago, I put together what my own Sight & Sound Ballot would look like had I been given a chance to vote for my 10 favorite films of all time. One of those films was Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. from 1924 – one of the greatest screen comedies in history, from perhaps cinema’s best director/actor in history (really other than Keaton rival/friend Charlie Chaplin and Woody Allen, it’s not even close). According to IMDB, Buster Keaton had 147 acting credits in his career, and 46 directing credits – those numbers sound large (because they are), but they are inflated somewhat by the fact that many of the credits are shorts from the 1910s and 1920s.

I have always been a fan of Keaton’s – and gradually, he even took over from Chaplin as my favorite of the Silent Clowns. I still love Chaplin mind you (I may do a similar series on him at some point) – but in the film buff world you can either be a Keaton person or a Chaplin person – NO ONE like both equally. I’m a Keaton person. I don’t mind the sentimentality of Chaplin’s movies – he was one of those directors like Steven Spielberg who can make sentimentality work. Yet, I like Keaton’s slightly melancholy tone more. He was the “Great Stone Face” – his expression rarely betraying any emotion, no matter what situation he found himself in. And he found himself in every insane situation imaginable.

His films are not heavy on plot – they are, and Keaton admitted this – built around his visual gags and stunts, and then a plot was added around them. In The Dissolve’s discussion of Sherlock Jr., it was suggested there are two ways to watch a Keaton movie – the first being to sit there and wonder how the hell he pull off the stunts he did with no special effects except his own body, and a willingness to abuse it, and the second being to just sit back and laugh, because his films are hilarious.

Although I’ve seen most of his features, and many of his shorts, the one thing I have never done is go through them methodically – one film at a time. So I decided to do that. I decided to stick with the films he directed on (uncredited or not) – and rely on the IMDB to tell me which ones those were. As mentioned above, that means 46 credits. I am going to skip 4 of those – Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), Easy to Wed (1946), In the Good Old Summertime (1949) and Excuse My Dust (1951). These are features, where he didn’t receive any credit and are usually omitted from the Keaton canon anyway, so I’ll follow suit. I will add one short he didn’t get directing credit for – Film from 1966, his collaboration with Samuel Becket, because if nothing else it deserves to be seen, considered and talked about.

There will be six basic sections – the first being just one short – The Rough House from 1917 – Keaton’s second acting effort, and the only film he made with Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle that he had a directing credit on (according to IMDB), the second being his 19 shorts he directed between 1920 and 1923, the third being his 12 features directed between 1923 and 1929 (starting with Three Ages and ending with Spite Marriage), the fourth being his work for Educational Pictures in the 1930s, where he made 16 shorts, and received directing credit on 6 of those (I’ll review the 6), the fifth three shorts he directed he the late 1930s – all about 10 minutes each and the sixth and final, two odds from the 1960s – The Railrodder (1965) made for the National Film Board of Canada (which IMDB lists him as an uncredited co-director) and the aforementioned Film (1966).

One of the greatest tragedies in cinema history is that Keaton decided to sign with MGM in 1928 – a decision even he would call the worst decision of his life. They let him direct only one film the way he wanted – The Cameraman (his last masterpiece) – although he also directed at least parts of Spite Marriage (an underrated gem to me). After that, he barely directed again – and never with the same freedom he had in the 1920s. Who knows what Keaton could have done in the sound era had he been allowed to let his genius run free. Were we deprived of a few sound masterpieces – like Chaplin made in The Great Dictator, Monsieur Verdoux or Limelight (which Keaton, in a supporting role, nearly steals from Chaplin)? We’ll never know.

But enough of the depressing stuff – let’s start looking back at the films of Buster Keaton.

Movie Review: Maleficent

Maleficent
Directed by:  Robert Stromberg.
Written by:  Linda Woolverton based on the story by Charles Perrault and the story by Jacob Grimm & Wilhelm Grimm and the screenplay by Erdman Penner & Joe Rinaldi & Winston Hibler & Bill Peet & Ted Sears & Ralph Wright & Milt Banta.
Starring: Angelina Jolie (Maleficent), Elle Fanning (Aurora), Sharlto Copley (Stefan), Lesley Manville (Flittle), Imelda Staunton (Knotgrass), Juno Temple (Thistletwit), Sam Riley (Diaval), Brenton Thwaites (Prince Phillip), Kenneth Cranham (King Henry), Isobelle Molloy (Young Maleficent), Michael Higgins (Young Stefan).

Maleficent is one of those movies that is good enough that you wish it was just a little bit better. There is a lot to like about Disney’s new movie, which looks at the Sleeping Beauty story from the point of view of its villain – and almost all of it has to do with Angelina Jolie. Her performance finds her in full movie star mode – and helps to make the case of why we still need movie stars, even while so many people seem to be writing them off. There is a scene of shocking brutality and power in the movie – which will likely stand as one of the most memorable of the year. Yet, surrounding Jolie and that scene is too much crap – too much heavy, CGI imagery that does nothing to distinguish itself from the CGI imagery we saw at the movies last weekend, or what we’ll likely see next weekend. The story kind of sputters and stalls – it doesn’t really have anywhere to go. The ending is one of those Disney cop-outs – that punishes the wicked, while letting the hero retain their moral superiority to them. I wanted to like Maleficent more than I ultimately did – if for no other reason, than I kind of admire Disney’s willingness to try and make movies aimed at children centered on strong female characters, after decades of making movies aimed at children with passive female characters – none more so than the original Sleeping Beauty.

The movie begins with Maleficent as a young fairy – living a peaceful, happy life in the Moors. It’s there that she meets a peasant boy – Stefan – and the two develop a friendship that grows into love over the years. Stefan has grand ambitions – he wants to be King – but as an orphan he has no chance of that. The current King is Henry – and he wants to invade the Moors, and take the treasures there for his kingdom. Maleficent doesn’t allow that – a huge, CGI laden mess of a battle happens, with Maleficent and her backing of mystical creatures winning quite easily. Henry, now close to death, say he will give his crown – and his daughter’s hand in marriage – to anyone who can kill Maleficent. Stefan, a servant, overhears this and hatches a plan to get what he wants.

It’s here where the movie’s most shocking – and best sequence – takes place. A scene with obvious overtones of sexual assault and violation – and scene that leaves Maleficent shocked, alone, violated and deformed. The scene is well handled by director Robert Stromberg – one of the few moments of subtlety he displays in the whole movie (there have been reports of reshoots by John Lee Hancock, and given how much better this sequence is than the rest of the movie, one has to wonder if this is one of things he reshot). Stefan’s betrayal has, to some, seemed like it’s too abrupt – that it comes out of nowhere, but I think that works for the movie – making the movie all the more shocking. It’s impossible to watch this sequence and not think of rape and its traumatic effect on its victims – which puts everything Maleficent, does after that in a new light. It’s the best work Jolie does in the movie – as she, and sequence itself, walks the fine line between being scary and traumatic enough to have an impact, but not so much so that it will send the young fans in the audience running from the exits. It’s a shocking, and brilliant sequence.

The movie doesn’t come close to matching that sequence at any other time in the movie however. Jolie is always wonderful to watch in the movie however – her big castle sequence, where she curses baby Aurora proves that had Disney wanted to make a straight up version of Sleeping Beauty, with Maleficent as a sneering villain, she would have been more than up to the task. With her impossibly high cheek bones, she seems otherworldly, and though the screenplay constrains her, she gives a complex performance that gets at a lot of issues of being a woman.

Nothing else in the movie really works though. Sharlto Copley as Stefan is basically stuck becoming a paranoid madman, with no hint of complexity. Elle Fanning has to sit around and smile and giggle as Aurora – I would have preferred a little bit of complexity to her character, and Fanning is a good enough actress that she could have provided it if given the chance. The three fairies – played by talented actresses Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville and Juno Temple – are similarly stuck in one note, comic relief roles. Sam Riley looks lost as the human version of Maleficent’s raven sidekick. The film’s action sequence are CGI laden messes – with a lot of swooping, swirling and fast cutting that simply makes everything confusing. The ending tries too hard to punish the wicked, while keeping our main characters hand’s clean.

In the end, Maleficent is both too ambitious and not ambitious enough. There is a great idea at its core, and at times it hints at the movie it could have been had Disney followed through and made it a truly feminist fairy tale. But in the end, Disney seems to want to make something a little bit safer. It ranks as a disappointment, because this could have been a great movie, but the film itself comes up quite short of its goal.

Movie Review: We Are the Best

We Are the Best
Directed by: Lukas Moodysson.
Written by: Lukas Moodysson based on the comic book by Coco Moodysson.
Starring: Mira Barkhammar (Bobo), Mira Grosin (Klara), Liv LeMoyne (Hedvig), Johan Liljemark (Kenneth), Mattias Wiberg (Roger), Jonathan Salomonsson (Elis), Alvin Strollo (Mackan), Anna Rydgren (Bobos mamma), Peter Eriksson (Bobos papa), Charlie Falk (Linus), Lena Carlsson (Klaras mamma), David Dencik (Klaras papa), Ann-Sofie Rase (Hedvigs mamma).

Lukas Moodysson’s debut feature – Show Me Love (aka Fucking Amal, 1998)  is one of the best coming of age dramas I have ever seen – a tender, honest portrait of female friendship, which turns into romance. His follow-up, Together (2000) is about a family living in a commune in the 1970s, which again, was more touching and honest than that brief description leads you to believe. Lilya 4-Ever (2002) took shocking subject – the underground sex trade – and didn’t make an exploitation movie out of it, but again something strangely touching. After those three films, he looked like he was going to become one of the new darlings of European art cinema. But the 12 years since, haven’t really shown that – A Hole in My Heart was an ill-advised movie about an amateur porn shoot. Container (2006 – unseen by me) didn’t really win much accolades. Mammoth (2009) was his venture into America – with stars like Gael Garcia Bernal and Michelle Williams – that felt like second tier Alejandro González Iñárritu. His latest film, We Are the Best, then comes as a relief – it’s his best film in years, and he’s made it by going back to the types of films he made in the beginning of his career – which feels like his more natural mode. It isn’t an overly ambitious film – it is largely plotless, and doesn’t have any real point to make – but it’s a pure and simple joy to behold. Sometimes movies come along at just the right time – and after seeing one CGI blockbuster after another in the past ,this simple story of three young teenager girls in Sweden in the early 1980s, their punk band and their simple friendship felt like a breath of fresh air.

In the film’s first scene, we see the two main characters – Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin) sitting at a table in the library with two other girls – and the contrast is striking. Klara has a Mohawk, and Bobo has cut her so short that it almost makes her look like a boy. On the other side is two “girly girls”, dressed in pink, with long blonde hair who tell Klara it’s a “shame, because you could be real cute if you didn’t have that haircut” and also “don’t you know, punk is dead”. All Klara and Bobo can do is roll their eyes, and storm out. To them, punk is alive and well. The pair of girls will eventually decide to start their own band – and write their own song (Hate the Sport) – despite the obvious handicap of their having no idea how to play instruments. At the fall concert, they’ll see Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne) – a Christian who has no friends, but can play the guitar brilliantly. Too bad she’s play “classical garbage” – and is a Christian. But maybe they can turn her away from God, and then she’d be cool enough to play with them. And hey, since she can play, maybe she can teach them as well.

Not much happens in We Are the Best – it’s basically the three girls hanging out, and acting like 13 year old girls – which means a lot of playful giggling, talking about boys and how clueless their parents are (refreshingly, the parents in We Are the Best actually seem like pretty cool parents – especially Klara’s – although as we all know, no matter what kind of parent you are, your teenager will think you’re hopeless). The third act introduces a couple of boys – from another school in the suburbs - who also have a punk band – which will inject a little bit more drama, as Bobo and Klara have their eyes on the same one.

We Are the Best doesn’t need much in the way of plot though – it’s interesting enough just hanging out with these three girls – who all have distinct personalities, and are brought to life in a trio of fine performances. The film gets their relationship just right – and is refreshing in the way it sees teenagers. You are never as close to anyone as you are to your best friends when you’re 13 – when your whole life is ahead of you, yet you’re still kind of powerless to do anything. We Are the Best remembers this time better than most movies of its ilk does.

The pleasures of We Are the Best are relatively minor – but they are still very much real. The film has modest ambitions, but achieves them all. In a summer where every week it seems like another city has to be destroyed, where one superhero after another has to save the world, I enjoyed watching We Are the Best more than any of them. It’s a downright charming little film.

Criticwire Survey: Half Time Top 5

Q: What are your five favorite cultural experiences of 2014? They can be movies (or screenings), TV shows (or episodes), music: You name it. (A tally of the most popular responses can be found at the end of this post.)
 

I’ve probably missed quite a bit this year so far – with the new baby and all – and will spend much of the summer catching up. But in terms of movies, my top 5 would be 5) Enemy (Denis Villenueve), 4) Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie), 3) Locke (Steven Knight), 2) Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer) and 1) The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson). Now, technically, I saw both Stranger by the Lake and Under the Skin at TIFF in 2013, so throw in Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch) and Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier) if you want to get what I saw only in 2014 so far. Two other TIFF 2013 films – Joe (David Gordon Green) and Blue Ruin (Jeremy Saulnier) – and one I just saw this weekend – We Are the Best (Lukas Moodysson) – would most likely round out the top 10.

I don’t write about music at all, and TV only a little – because I’m always so far behind in TV (and I won’t go on here about older shows – just two new ones I liked) I only got to see the first two episodes of True Detective – what I saw struck me as something that could develop into something great or something utterly pretentious – and the verdict seems to be split about which way that went. I am (mostly) loving Fargo so far – with great performances, and a look and feel that is close to the Coen brothers masterpiece, but not an exact copy. Some episodes have dragged just a little, and sometimes they overdo it a little on the Coen references, but for the most part, I love the show.

Movie Review: Night Moves

Night Moves
Directed by: Kelly Reichardt.   
Written by: Kelly Reichardt  & Jonathan Raymond.
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg (Josh Stamos), Dakota Fanning (Dena Brauer), Peter Sarsgaard (Harmon), Alia Shawkat (Surprise), James Le Gros (Clerk), Katherine Waterston (Anne), Clara Mamet (Jackie), Logan Miller (Dylan), Kai Lennox (Sean).

The film’s director Kelly Reichardt have made up until now are the type of slow, subtle movies that those who don’t pay attention often complain that “nothing happens” in them. Films like Old Joy, Wendy & Lucy and Meek’s Cutoff are certainly slower than most films, but so much is happening beneath their surface that the charge that nothing happens in them is absurd. No one is going to accuse Reichardt’s latest film – Night Moves – as being one of those “Nothing happens” films. The film takes the form of a thriller – and even includes one (off-screen) explosion, and murder. Yet, while the film is certainly a more mainstream effort from Reichardt, it is also undeniably one of her films – it is still about people outside mainstream society, and it still requires the audience to pay attention, because much more happens in the movie than it appears like on the surface.

The movie is centered on three eco-terrorists (or activists if you’d rather) who plot to blow up one or Oregon’s many, many dams. The exact problem they have with that particular dam is never really stated – just caustic remarks about killing the salmon so everyone can have an iPod. In fact, they never really speak about their ideology at all – there is one scene, at an underground screening of a documentary about the evils of corporation pillaging the environment, where the filmmaker says that she isn’t focused on one large thing – but rather countless small things, everyone can do to help. That’s probably about as close as you’re going to get to specific reasons in this film – the three principles are doing their “one small thing” to help.

The film opens with Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) and Dena (Dakota Fanning) at that screening, and eventually hitting the road – where they buy a used boat for cash – Dena, it seems, is one of those trust fund kids with a conscience. The exact nature of their relationship is left unstated – largely because Josh doesn’t seem to like to talk at all. They head up into the Oregon woods, where they meet up with ex-Marine Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) and set their plan in motion. The boat with be packed with fertilizer, and when it explodes, in the middle of the night, it will destroy the dam. It’s the offseason, so no one will be around – no one will get hurt.

The movie is neatly divided into its two halves – leading up to the explosion, and its aftermath. There are several scenes where the suspense becomes almost unbearable – all the more impressive because of how Reichardt achieves this through little dialogue and without the aid of phony theatrics. A scene where Dena has to buy a lot of fertilizers for example – and has to talk the skeptical clerk (James Le Gros – a character actor who seems to specialize in these wonderful, tiny roles) into why she needs it. The scene at the dam itself, when an unexpected car stops too close for comfort as the ticking clock winds down in also expertly crafted by Reichardt. This may be her first thriller, but she has the chops to handle the genre elements amazingly well.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the movie is just how good Eisenberg is in the lead role. We all know Eisenberg is a talented actor – but he has been typecast into movies that rely on his motor mouth skills – he is a natural for the dialogue of an Aaron Sorkin, which is why his performance in The Social Network is one of the best of the decade so far. But in Night Moves, he doesn’t speak much – and when he does, it is slower and more deliberate – he weighs the words he says, and never says more than he has to. It is altogether more impressive than that he makes Josh into a fully rounded character – and his regrets and grief that slowly take over in the second half are down with subtly as the weight of his actions slowly threatens to crush him. Fanning is also very good – in that scene in the fertilizer store in particular – but she is pretty much shunted to the background in the film’s second half. Her off screen actions drive the plot in that half, but they remain off screen until close the end. Sarsgaard is even more back grounded – showing up well into the first act, and other than an occasional voice on the phone, all but absent in the second half. The film is Eisenberg’s from start to finish – and he delivers an excellent performance.

The film itself is not quite as good as Reichardt’s previous work. I admit, I prefer the previous movies, which lacked narrative, but were more interested in human behavior. Reichardt isn’t quite as adept at handling narrative as she is her characters. Still though, Night Moves remains an uncommonly intelligent thriller – one that sticks close to its characters, and doesn’t fill the movie with phony suspense. Yes, it’s a thriller – a damn good one – but it is also a Kelly Reichardt film in all that implies.

 

Note: I saw this film at TIFF in 2013 - as far as I know, nothing has changed in the version I saw, and the one opening in limited release today.