E. T. Has Legs… Or Does He?

bram towbin

7 min read

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Just now

REVIEW OF FILM Disclosure Day

“This is going to be hard to watch” - lead character in Disclosure Day to co-star regarding a video of government thugs torturing aliens

“Beware of false knowledge. It is more dangerous than ignorance” - George Bernard Shaw

“But he has nothing at all on!” - Hans Christian Anderson, the emperor’s new clothes

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I stepped into a time warp last week. I physically went to a movie theater to watch a Steven Spielberg movie about aliens; talk about deja vu. I had gone to movie theaters in my youth to see the debuts of Close Encounters and E.T. I was nervous about Disclosure Day when I glimpsed at the running time of 2 hours and twenty five minutes, but as a nod to the pop-film icon of our time… I decided to climb on board for the long ride.

A Spielberg film was a right of passage for late stage baby boomers. Many of his works have become cultural touchstones: Jaws, Close Encounters, the Indiana Jones franchise, E.T., the Jurassic Park franchise, Saving Private Ryan,Shindeler’s List… Spielberg’s corpus evokes a certain time and place and a walk-away catch phrase; “We’re going to need a bigger boat”, “ET phone home” or musical earworms such as 5 notes from Close Encounters or the string ostinato from Jaws or the Raiders March from Raiders of the Lost Arc. It would be hard to think of any other contemporary director who so effectively channeled the zeitgeist. Is there anyone reading this who has not engaged in conversations regarding at least a few of the films I mentioned? The challenge for someone with this unsurpassed track record is staying relevant. The last few releases have shown someone older and, do I dare say it, out of touch. Did anyone, aside of Mr. Spielberg, think a remake of West Side Story or War of the Worlds was a good idea? Ditto for The Post, a feature based on the release of the pentagon papers. Did anyone go and see BFG or Ready Player One? Or how about the cold war thriller Bridge of Spies or his bringing to life the European comic book Tin Tin? Attempts at social statements have also fallen short. AI Artificial Intelligence is barely referenced by anyone, even though decades after the film we are faced with the real thing. Ditto for Minority Report, a bloated bore which shed no light on the future or social justice. Nevertheless I felt a sort of obligation to join in the larger conversations. UFOs are back in the news — or more properly renamed UTFs — lets see if the old saw can deliver some new tricks…. Unfortunately the seasoned director might want to consider the tag line in the final scene: LISTEN!

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What is remarkable about Disclosure Day is its stagnancy. It is akin to running into an elderly relative at a family gathering and having them, once again, recite their theory on Big Foot. As a child, this might be charming, as an adult it is tedious. Mr. Spielberg thinks he has a great deal to say and, unfortunately, the commercial success and widespread praise of Schindler’s List and Lincoln gave him the self-confidence to weigh in on things that matter, rather than merely entertain. Prior to this recent work he directed a very personal coming of age film, The Fabelmans based on his journey to being a filmmaker. The serious Spielberg films are well crafted and beautifully rendered with world class performances. In effect he has become the Ken Burns’ of entertainment; wildly successful, professionally capable, but lacking gravitas. Fortunately for Mr. Burns can dependably deliver solid products with recognized experts. In Spielberg’s case he, via his script and choices, weighs in on the red meat of the matter. It is a meager feast of tasteless gruel as his collaborators are cowed by the master chef’s success.

One of the challenges of being so successful is a lack of candor from friends and coworkers. Who has the courage to say to the recognized master: even for a pop-culture movie, this is REALLY DUMB.. Better to take the pay check and the credit and move on with your career. Disclosure Day is weighted down by pretentious statements about religion and current events delivered in the stilted drama, which in terms of acting, dialogue and plot bears a striking resemblance to old style TV movies. Everyone knows this but no one is brave enough to speak truth to power. The irony is the theme of the film is — speak truth to power.

There is a great deal to say about the prospect that we are not alone. Sadly sifting through the hours of dialogue will yield no interesting insights into alien life. Instead there is a feast of insipid conversations squeezed between ham-handed chase scenes and set-piece escapes and near misses. The plot is too tedious to delve into particulars but the set up surrounds “evil” government officials & and corporate flak suppressing “the truth”. Some Spielberg’s troupes are revised in the telling: we have the earnest, clueless earthlings, the blinding white lights around the aliens; spoiler alert: the aliens themselves are plus-sized ET’s with legs and no magic finger. This omission speaks volumes. It is as if Spielberg is caught up in the conundrum of whether this movie is “serious”. The film is an attempt at gravitas that brushes against Spielberg’s bread and butter: catchy pop-culture set-pieces. It is as if a Taylor Swift song suddenly morphs into Theonious Monk solo for the chorus.

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The best examples of this thematic dissonance come with the strange plot twists. The director reprises the urban legend of President Nixon showing Jackie Gleason the bodies of dead aliens. We can all be thankful Spielberg chose not to explore the extensive number of urban legends surrounding extraterrestrials having sex with earthlings. We can only imagine how that dialogue would have sounded. The aliens, in this film speak a language akin to a very serious bout of indigestion. One of the characters can understand this speech as the english language, supposedly based on mathematical equations. He is bewildered when everyone else hears a human imitating a cat throwing up a hairball. And what are we to make of another lead character fleeing to a Christian convent and clutching rosary beads to fend off a bad guy using an alien device to read her mind. She clutches the small crucifix so hard blood is dripping from her hand Maybe he hit that note too hard? And what about the evil government men filming and torturing aliens? This thinly veiled reference to current events is particularly troubling as it might be read as exploitative virtue signaling. Whatever one’s view on US government immigration policy, is this particular film the right venue to sound a note on government exploitation? The director of War of the Worlds, HG Wells’ classic of alien invasion, never once considers the possibility of the not so little green men being a threat. What if E.T. is here to “Serve Mankind” in the twilight zone sense of the phrase.

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Perhaps the best approach to this film is to sit back and bask in petty drama. Imagine this is 2 ½ hours of TV commercial montages that happen to form a drama about aliens. All things considered, it passes relatively quickly. Spielberg isn’t making District 9, an interesting feature about “the other”. Unlike Disclosure Day, that film has resonance. It will get you thinking about justice and mankind’s honest reactions to difference. The characters and message of the Spielberg “drama” has the staying power of an office elevator ride. The remarkable forgettableness of this film lies in stark contrast to the resources available to this director. You have the ability to make and hire the best writers, actors and technicians and the result is an obvious turkey. In the “serious” films, Schindler’s List, Lincoln, The Fabelmans, the lack of insight was masked by the gravitas of the subject matter i.e. the Civil War, the Holocaust and his own personal journey to filmmaking. There was enough flash to pull things along and garner praise (think Ken Burns) Disclosure Day, although harkening back to his earlier work, is overwhelmed by an attempt to relive the past. Rather than being a springboard into new perspectives the channeling of themes from his golden period exposed an older artist recycling ideas with a lesser effect. Think of the Rolling Stones latest album. In the end we are left with no one-liners or earworms, just forgettable fluff from an old man who never bothered to do the work required. It’s tough reliving the past. This proves the isolation at the top. The trick is to know you’re in a bubble and step outside yourself to remember your own strengths. You need to LISTEN! Just like the alien says. Sometimes a trip down memory lane is best experienced in silent contemplation.

Review of Barbie (2023)

 The Barbie Outfit

Review of Barbie

“Fuck the patriarchy” 

• Taylor Swift, extended version of ‘All Too Well’ 

““She’s everything. He’s just Ken”

• Tag line for Barbie Movie

“Peace in patriarchy is war against women”

• Maria Miles

  
  
  
  

Barbie has been a strange tabula rasa since its creation in 1959. It was based on a German doll sold as a gag-gift to mostly men in European tobacco shops. One can only imagine the role play ideas for the original crowd. The American redesign was crafted by an aerospace engineer who worked on American military missiles. He also had been the sixth husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor and he died by suicide… this isn’t covered in the film. The force behind Barbie’s creation was Ruth Handler, who named the doll, and her companion Ken, after her children. The sibling roots of their namesakes were also not covered in the film. Ruth’s forced resignation from the parent toy company, Mattel, was mentioned, but financial fraud is not something you want to dwell on… which brings us to the strange questions surrounding the storyline of a Barbie movie. What to talk about?

Ms. Gerwig & Mr. Baumbach are art house sensations. How do the creator of Lady Bird, a film showcasing the struggles of girls in 21st century America and the co-creators of Frances Ha, a movie showcasing a struggling woman artist, keep their credibility? They will be making what is essentially a product placement film for Mattel, “the leading toy company & owner of one of the strongest portfolios of children’s and family entertainment franchises in the world”. The boilerplate from Mattel’s website reads like fodder for corporate shills, rather than respected artists. And then there is the doll itself… yes Barbie has “evolved,”  eschewing the pre-civil rights, Mad Men world of her birth by embracing careers et al. But does any woman, aside from the mentally ill , want to be Barbie? Isn’t the name itself still a pejorative term for any female over the age of 14? How on earth can Ms. Gerwig create a film that won’t end in career suicide or corporate disaster? Talk about building tension! 

Well they did it… sort of. The film is a smash hit. Warner Brothers is making bank. Mattel’s girl is on everyone’s lips and audiences are stampeding, many in pink, to the theaters. There are some humorless cranks who are offended, but this only adds to cache. Ms. Gerwig and Mr. Baumbach worked very hard… and you feel it. That’s the problem. The sweat of pleasing the many interested parties produces an extremely clever film… but not a good one. 

Things begin very well. Barbie parodies the paradigm cinema moment of man’s achievement from Kubrick’s 2001. Instead of the bone morphing into a space station, Barbie the astronaut floats above the world,. As we enter Barbieland, the portrait of this pink plastic paradise is… pitch perfect. Margot Robbie is a superb incarnation of the “stereotypical ” Barbie, with her trademark blonde locks. Sharing the synthetic aryan look is Ryan Gosling as the paradigm Ken. Both these characters are individuals, but they exist in a world of types. In other words Barbieland is ruled by the Barbies, plural, with a cast of supporting Kens (plural). Gosling's Ken rival is an Asian “Ken”. They both exist to attract the attention of the Margo Robie . The weird and wonderful land feels as if the Wizard of Oz’s Emerald City was dropped on the beaches of Malibu. 

There is a strange conceit that gives this world the simulacrum of an actual child’s play area. All liquids are hard or invisible. Imagine a little girl giving Barbie a “pretend” drink and you witness what it is like for stereotype Barbie to sip coffee in the morning. Ken tries  to “surf” the ocean and is blocked by hard plastic water . The playfulness and slick recreations are marvelous. Sadly the tone of the film shifts and we enter a very convoluted drama that relies on Barbie having an existential crisis, interacting  with the “real world”and confronting, for the first time, the dreaded PATRIARCHY. 

Ken, played delightfully by Ryan Gosling,  is the foil in the story, but this never quite works because he is, by definition, a subservient dolt. One can feel the screenplay writers bending over backwards to give this professional idiot some standing. Are we really to believe that upon entering the real world Ken goes to a library to read about patriarchy? The gags regarding male arrogance and macho foolishness are hysterically funny, but in the end there is a narrative pull for Barbie to say that things will change in Barbieland in terms of Ken. She feels she has taken him for granted. Ken can stand tall. Ummmm…. No. I’m sure of few things in life but one might be: no one will ever buy a Ken doll without him being subservient to Barbie… The movie forces a very adult notion that fails to mesh with child’s play. It’s never a good thing when kids are forced to act as if they are adults. It doesn't work dramatically either. 

This film is strongest when it simply plays, rather than preaches. The tone instead resembles that of the  social satire of Citizen Ruth, a film poking fun at both sides of the abortion debate. It would seem more appropriate, given that subject matter is a doll designed for pre teen girls, if the film had the spirit of a lighthearted musical comedy, like Mamma Mia, or issue-less social satire, like the original Batman TV Series. In both cases fun is paramount while concerns about messaging take a back seat. Obviously this is a tall order given Barbie’s odd place in the social order . As I write this a news story broke about a sports commentator who was fired for using the term “Barbie” to describe another reporter. How could the writer/director avoid making our heroine more than a… Barbie doll. Strangely this also forces the issue of Ken’s status a professional flunky. In the world of Barbie… who cares? but the real world has real cultural baggage. And how to manage the baggage-handler?

Whereas Ken is a miscast delightful character, Will Ferrell, the CEO of Mattel in the “real world,” and his male Mattel minions, are simply a drag. Their role as clownish, corporate villains is muddled. Their cartoonishness belongs in Barbieland, rather than the “real world”. Kudos for the real Mattel executives for green-lighting the project. Certainly the filmmakers pushed the limit in directing jokes at the corporation. They are openly marked as chauvinistic with Barbie’s outfits being dictated by taking advantage of social changes, rather than championing women.  The real life suits are now laughing all the way to the bank, but had Barbie laid an egg, they might have lost their jobs. There’s some real drama. 

As for Gerwig and Baumbach, their creation might not be an artistic triumph, but has been genuine gold for the bottom line.  The blatant errors are there and go beyond the odd storyline and the portrayal of the corporation. Does this film need to be 2 hours long? That’s the same length as the the bio pic of Alan Turing, and he invented computers.  And what are we to make of Michael Cera as Allan? Mattel never really knew what to do with Ken’s brief sidekick and neither does Gerwig. Then there was an odd technical matter. This is a first rate spectacle with the fantasyland brimming with state-of-the-art props and special effects. There is a divine smoothness to the fakery - the houses, the ocean, the campfires. These are moving dioramas that are really captivating. I felt like a child pushing my nose against the glass in the Museum of Natural History.  I also wanted to jump in during the choreography of Ken’s ridiculous battle where weapons never hurt… and despite all this I felt the character’s faces to be under-lit  in many of the scenes. It is as if the basics were ignored in order to spend artistic energy on complicated social satire.

Perhaps there would have been more gold for everyone if the film stuck to Barbieland and eschewed reality and its never-ending source of conflict. This fantasy world already had its strange corner of intrigue:  the character, “Weird Barbie”, played by the brilliant comedic actress Kate McKinnon. She represented dolls that were mistreated by their guardians. Interestingly when Barbie is faced with thoughts of death, the other Barbies point her to “Weird Barbie”. It seems not all little girls have wholesome role-play fantasies with dolls. In some cases Barbie becomes a whipping post for anger and aggression.  It is interesting to note that McKinnon is often splayed on the floor, as if being nearly torn apart is “natural”. Once again there is no need for this film to plumb the depths of all social ills, but it is interesting that the filmmakers felt the need to go outside. Perhaps they were channeling the Wizard of Oz’s use of a separate plane of fantasy. The failure of Barbie is that the split between Barbieland and “the real world” is cloudy and confusing. There is no neat black and white vs. color delineation that showcases the clear line between the drudgery of real world cruelty and the joy of escapist fantasy. Would Barbie, while experiencing Los Angeles, ever want to click her heels three times and return to Barbieland? It’s a complicated question and that’s a problem. Why not simplify everything? There is enough drama “in house” to shape a story about Barbie facing her demons. The arc of the story, however, needs to be rooted in the anodyne innocence of playfulness, rather than the meanness of adults. 

I might be the wrong demographic to comment on this movie but I did find the most profound aspect of the film lay in the audience’s laughter. In my years of going to movie theaters I have never heard so many older women guffawing. This film touches something, despite what I perceive as a strangely muddled script. I never played with Barbie dolls and maybe to get the overall joke, you need to really live that experience. I felt this modern take on the meaning of Barbie fell short… too much stereotypical Barbie, not enough Weird Barbie… too much real world, not enough Barbieland…. Too much talk, not enough dancing…. Too much figuring out, not enough enjoying the moment.… but maybe I’m just another Ken, without the looks; or worse yet… an exploitative male Mattel executive. But in the end Gerwig’s work has grossed over a billion dollars. For that, everyone can thank… Barbie. 

Review of Happiness is a Journey (2022)

 The Serfs in Our Midst

Review of Happiness is a Journey

"The best artist has that thought alone which is contained within the marble shell; only the sculptor's hand can break the spell to free the figures. -Michelangelo, Letter To His Father In Florence

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function.” -C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

“We will have to leave this planet, and we're going to leave it, and it's going to make this planet better” -Jeff Bezos

Link to 12 Minute Film, Happiness is a Journey

Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan’s Happiness is a Journey is a quiet 12 minute film with no real dialogue and made for a budget of less than $10,000. It features a poor, ungainly, anti-celebrity, Edie “Bear” Lopez, delivering newspapers in the middle of the night. That’s it. It sounds ponderous and dreary. In the hands of lesser artists it might have been, but Lucas and Bresnan manage to give Mr. Lopez’s life the dignity and beauty it deserves. They have also made one of the most scathing indictments of the current economic system since Walker Percy and James Agee teamed up for, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, the poetic documentation of depression-era dust-bowl poverty. This seemingly simple visit to a newspaper distribution plant in Texas packs the same punch as the much-ballyhooed Nomadland, the star studded feature film showcasing the harsh conditions for American’s army of transient workers. This film is a salvo against the constant drum-beat that we live in the best of times.

Lucas and Bresnan cloak their subversive narrative in classical form. This work is a masterclass in the “direct cinema” style. Starting in the late 1950s Filmmakers Richard Leacock and Robert Drew pioneered a handheld documentary approach that eschewed verbal commentary and fixed tripod set ups. Happiness is a Journey combines this form with the use of a split screen, something popular in the late 60s early 70s. Essentially the audience is given two “channels” to view the action, or lack thereof. It reenforces the feeling of witnessing a process unfolding, rather than an individual’s personal struggle. This is a film about a way of life, rather than a single story. In fact the first half of the film takes place with an ensemble of warehouse workers. This is an important introduction as we see Lopez’s journey is shared by an array of folks of varying ages, sexes races, disabilities…. They are united in the need to make twenty two cents per newspaper delivered, without any benefits.  

The filmmakers wisely chose Christmas Eve as the night to showcase the working life at the bottom of the economic rung. The atmosphere is friendly but there is no air of celebration, save some holiday cards doting the work areas. The filmmaker’s titles, occasionally appearing on top of the images,  explain that these independent contracts work 365 days a year. Holidays are an anathema to those in charge. The title of the film comes from a workspace gussied up with tchotchkes breaking the institutionalization. Amongst a collection of Monster energy drinks, gold bond powder and a black painted figurine of Bart Simpson, is a sign which reads: Happiness is a journey… not a destination.  This bromide captures the spirit of the friendly workplace where everyone, regardless of age or gender, loads and sorts.The congeniality is born of being in the same boat. Three generations of an African American family work next to an elderly white woman just down from a young man who looks like a roady for a Southern rock band. The protagonist, Mr. Lopez, wears a hillbilly beard complete with a Craftsman tool baseball hat and a Dallas Cowboys change-purse covering his neck. He wears his wealth on his hands with each finger covered with extremely large silver rings, many are adorned with skulls. He looks a decade older than his actual age of 60. His companion, a chihuahua, seems even more ancient. Both man and dog trudge through the night with determination. The grind occasionally showing through with Mr. Lopez stumbling a little on a small curb and the dog shaking in the early morning cold. Some of the co-workers are not as resilient, with one middle-aged man collapsed in a slumber on a pile of freshly sorted papers.  

The second half of the film shows Mr. Lopez making the rounds to florescent-green lit blue collar neighborhoods, drab institutions and gas stations. He stops for gas, begging the question about how many papers he must sell to fill up his pick up. The truck is an extension of Mr. Lopez’s cluttered appearance. The inside of the cab is as crowded as all the silver jewelry on his hands. Judging by the amount of stuff in the front seat it is clear there are issues with hoarding. This notion is reenforced at the end of the film where he finally arrives at his modest residence. The front area, too small to be called a lawn, is packed to the gills with things. When he opens the door a cat crawls to an assigned space amongst the debris between the gate and the trailer.  It is roughly 6AM Christmas morning and Mr. Lopez is finished until he has to get up again and arrive in the early evening at the newspaper distribution center. The final card for the film states that he has been religiously following this routine, going to work EVERY SINGLE DAY, for 21 straight years without a break. 

Those interested in defending the economic status quo would point to Lopez’ abundant material possessions as proof of his well-being. He has a decent place to live and access to calories. His vocation is his choice. This is HIS journey. This would probably be a minority opinion as most would consider decades of piecework with no benefits to be Dickensian.  Putting Mr. Lopez’s journey aside the filmmakers spent roughly half the movie showing the group, not the individual. Some might rationalize Mr. Lopez’s choices but what about the array of others? The most economically successful country in the world has at risk families, in addition to the disabled and elderly, spending Christmas working for pennies. There have always been economically disenfranchised forced to the margins to make ends meet. The genius of this film is the ordinariness that exposes the ever expanding numbers of vulnerable people. Whereas in the past this work might have been delegated to a specific group on the bottom rung, the warehouse crowd is remarkably familiar. These are people you know. And now, because of Lucas and Bresnan, you know their struggles.  Watching the quiet process of newspaper delivery, peppered by the occasional cue-card, produces an unsettling array of questions. What happens when Lopez’s pickup breaks down? Who takes care of the young child playing amongst the worker when his attentive father falls ill? What becomes of the lady in the mechanized wheel-chair when people stop buying newspapers? The answers become important as the distance between the audience and Mr. Lopez narrows. The filmmakers have captured the zeitgeist of this precarious moment by highlighting an unsung laborer with his ancient toy-dog, garish rings and friendly demeanor punching the clock 24/7. He becomes a fellow-traveller in early 21st century America, rather than a remote character in a documentary. Happiness is a Journey shows something is very wrong with the overall picture. The scenery grows bleak as we approach our destination. We might not end up on the metaphorical perpetual-loading dock, but their struggle is ours. The filmmakers aren’t making bold claims. Just bearing witness. This is a film about seeing the unseen. You won’t look at the ubiquitous newspaper vending machines the same way. That’s a good thing.