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.

 

In The Zone

REVIEW OF FILM THE ZONE OF INTEREST

“”No. Only two and one half million — the rest died from disease and starvation.””

- Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp when asked if he’d kill 3.5 million people

“The man sitting next to me was Hitler and he made so little impression on me I can’t remember a second of it”

• Orson Welles, On Meeting the Führer in the 1920s

“I did not see any murders, I did not see any torture. I did not know at all such a thing there”

- Adolf Eichmann, at his trial in Jerusalem

Paradise, for most people, would not consist of millions of people being tortured, killed and incinerated just over the garden wall. Not so for Hedwig Hoss, the wife of the Auschwitz commandant, obersturmbannfuhrer Rudolf Hoss. Even her mother-in-law, an overt anti-semite who gleefully mused about her former boss being in the death camp, found the constant burning of bodies to be… a bridge too far. Yet the rest of the Hoss’ family seemed quite at home adjacent to the carnage. The children played in back yard with the slave labor, while Ms. Hoss sorted clothes confiscated from inmates, who were probably dead by the time she tried on the coats etc…. Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is certainly a different take on the nadir of 20th century barbarity…. Yet there is no overt violence, only the humdrum family drama. The couple has disagreements. The prospect of a sudden reassignment triggers raised voices. There is the occasional angry jab when “the help” slips-up. And yet there are sounds….. haunting sounds just over the wall. The film is about distance… or maybe the wish for distance. Sylvan domesticity is pitted next door to Dante’s Inferno… and yet everyone manages to play house without a hitch. The result is a terrifying portrait of the capacity for ordinary people to become monsters beyond the imagining of any fiction writer’s sociopathic villain.

Glazer opens the film in complete darkness. It goes on for so long an audience member might think something has gone wrong with the projection. Is this supposed to happening? Yes. This film will be an inquisitive experience going beyond simply following a well drawn linear narrative. It is a akin to the opening of Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, which consisted of 5 minutes of washing a tiled floor. It is as if the directors are signaling the audience to leave if they can’t be bothered actively engage in ALL aspects of the film.… listening as well as seeing. The soundtrack is as critical as the visuals in parsing meaning. The never-ending black leader is accompanied by a chorus of voices. Is it murmuring? It’s nor quiet threatening… or is it? The whispering swells into a terrifying off-key dissonance. Something is desperately WRONG. Given the context we might think we are in a box car filled with human cargo awaiting the terror of selection. Perhaps we are within the infamous gas chambers themselves at the moment the Zyklon B gas is dropping. Then, in the midst of trying to decipher the ghoulishness, an image of serenity appears. A domestic setting of a family in the midst of a sylvan bliss. A casual picnic outing which seems set in an Hudson-River school oil painting. Once again Glazer never permits too much comfort. The pater familias, fishing mid-stream without a shirt, is too white. He is separate from the pastoral background. The distinctly military buzz-cut adds to a sense of foreboding regarding the nature of his character.

The film continues to meander through the dissonant, tranquil domesticity. The children play in the make-shift back yard pool. The father’s equestrian passion is revealed with a number of rides, accompanied by his eldest, through the lush vegetation. A beautiful family on beautiful animals riding down to the river… except the sounds of yelling and the awkward encounter with a work detail. I remember as a child driving on a family vacation in Florida witnessing a chain gang along the highway. Nothing was said but… the overt cruelty of the adult world drifted, momentarily, into endless-summer fun. A sour chord in an otherwise lighthearted ditty. The children in this film play in the same way all children play but even in their innocent fantasies the creepiness of their circumstance rises to the surface. They are lying in their bunk beds and fooling with some things that they picked up in the garden. It turns out that ash for the crematorium is used as fertilizer. They are toying with a human jaw bone…. At least I thought it was…. It’s hard to tell when nothing is in close up.

Distance is at the heart of this film. It would be difficult to recognize any of the central actors outside of their roles as we never really see anyone except through a broad wide shot. They are metaphorical… everybody. Unexceptional in their demeanor, yet terrifyingly extraordinary in their wicked lack of empathy. The only intimate moment where the closeness creeps in is, strangely, between the commandant and his… horse. It is part of the bizarre dynamic of this portrait of a inhuman human that somehow, despite his obvious psychopathology, there is connection with any sort of living soul. The intimate moment of saying goodbye to his horse contrasts with his somewhat formal relationship with his family and his professional attachment to his soldiers. The troops throw him a birthday party but it has the same staid quality that permeates his domestic life. Much of the life takes place in his “villa”, which posses the charm one would expect of well-off upwardly mobil family with some means. There are ‘servants’ strutting around the garden and acting as domestics. It is only when the Frau of the house makes the remark to a misbehaving charge that she could “have my husband spread your ashes all over the field” that the audience understands the conceit behind all the seeming normalcy. The setting might evoke simplified elegant country living, the context renders it a portrait of hell on earth. It is the film equivalent of Karl Hocker’s photo album. This SS officer put together a photographic record of all of his comrades performing formal official duties and kidding around in their spare time. It all looks fun and funny… until you realize the people laughing at the Solahutte resort south of the Auschwitz camp were key player in perpetuating the Holocaust. The film’s protagonist is pictured in the album standing next to Jospeh Mengele. They are in the front row of a chorus of officers singing in front of an accordion player. The bulk film is metaphorically taken from the same home-movie angle. But there are key moments that depart from the script.

The film leaves the seemingly staid tranquility to launch into abstract sequences that evoke the angelic little girl in the red coat in Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. There are eerie black and white negative images of a little girl who secretly gathers the bountiful fruit of the commandant’s garden to clandestinely deliver to the starving work gangs. The transition features a red flower morphing into a blanket of red then the abstraction of a photographic negative of the little girl on her mission of mercy outside the window of the house. The ending of the film also breaks from the domesticity. Our hero is in the city with Nazi big-wigs accepting his promotion to an eponymous mission to kill over 700,000 prisoners waiting for transport. It is an odd moment where we see the commandant awkwardly mingling with the dignitaries in an elaborate building. He breaks from the festivities to call his wife and gossip. After the call he descends into a labyrinth akin to the setting in Orson Welles’ The Trial. A landscape of hallways and stairways leading nowhere and everywhere. It all ends as we reveal the building is now the site of a holocaust remembrance. The institutional setting is now a warehouse of horror. There are neat glass sealed dioramas of suitcases, glasses, shoes…. The jetsam and flotsam of lives ripped from everyday living by an ideology of hate that recruited an army of thoughtless, colorless bureaucrats such as Rudolph Hoss.

The Zone of Interest is a fable resurrecting the central point in Hannah Arendt’s essay Eichmann in Jerusalem. The mundane masks the horrific. One can comfortably distant themselves from Hannibal Lecter, a ruthless cannibal hiding behind the facade of an erudite doctor. But what if an upscale suburban neighbor, the logistics chief for a Fortune 500 company, turns out to be even more savage? Rudolph and Hedwig are forgettable yuppies and yet they posses the ability to supervise the gruesome slaughter of millions. The film is a seemingly quiet meditation on the remarkably unremarkable people who find a comfortable path of normalcy in a seat of unspeakable depravity. It reminds us that polite society is rooted in power, not justice. Being the instrument of slavery, deprivation, famine might very well bring status and riches. The key is telling ourselves we’ve never overtly crossed the line into being the Hoss family, with a chateau nestled next to their human crematoriums. As we watch the solidly middle class family play and go about their days it raises an eerie specter about questions we might not be asking ourselves.

Ten percent of the planet goes to bed hungry. Most people in first world countries have house-hold products and food staples made and or harvested by enslaved people. The film asks us to examine our very own zone of interest. Once again distance is what brings it all home. How big is our zone? At one point does the proximity to evil blur our morality? How close do we have to be to make up stories that justify our actions? These questions linger and make The Zone of Interest a film that hits too close. Horror films scare. Films about horror haunt. Rudolph and Hedwig are the stuff of nightmares and day dreams. On a tranquil sunny day while out with the family on a picnic, do you ever hear anything in the distance?

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.