BANG BANG: Ryland Walker Knight

[BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.]

My, How Impermanent by Ryland Walker Knight

Earlier this week my Indiewire ballot appeared. I still stand by it, I suppose, but even just a week after publication I itch to change things. In fact, the whole enterprise gives me hives to a certain degree. The whole idea of absolutes in general, in any context. If you take a look at that list, you'll see a collection of films, I'd wager, premised on contingency, or some form of mystery or mess or exuberance. Even the more "straight" narratives (Cronenberg's & Jacobs' portrait-films) exhibit an interest in how things do not fit, or ever fix into reliable—much less accepted, normal—forms. Perhaps the best term I can reduce this idea to is a favorite on this blog: navigation. Life's not a maze, but there are hurdles every day, including waking up, not to mention the unexpected tidal wave every so often. We're so used to the narratives we're given or that we give ourselves that eluding the unwanted can wreck a day, a month, a year. (Lucky me: my year saw hiccups and headaches but nothing got wrecked. Truth is, I had a fantastic year. And I'm grateful.) Naturally, I'm attracted to films about finding ways through life.
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Finding a way to make movie-going more a part of my movie-watching has been difficult this year, the past couple years. Granted, I got to attend Cannes. But the pleasures of that were certainly "extracurricular" as much as within the salles and theaters. The dinners, the new friends, the jokes over whiskey and rosé with Danny and Adrian after long days. But I still cherish movie-going.

Early last week, in fact, I had the supreme pleasure to take in one of the best double bills in recent memory at the Roxie Theatre (with Brian, yes): the early show was Borzage's Moonrise followed by Renoir's first H'wood venture, the insanely under-seen and apparently under-recognized Swamp Water. Two films about the south made by not-southerners that understand the south and southerners in ways you rarely see anymore. (Of course, I'm not a southerner; I'm a Californian. My Okie roots are roots and my relationship to GA/SC is tertiary at best.) But aside from any obtuse anthropological/ethnological reading I can offer, the films exist and excel simply as films. Borzage's at his Murnau best and Renoir is at his dollies-everywhere (and "people as people") best. And they spoke to one another in delicious ways the way a double bill is supposed to work. Steve Seid usually knows what he's doing but this was a special program. The swamp has different narrative functions in the films, but in both the swamp is a hunting ground, a space of violence, something untamable that few can master or at least negotiate (or inhabit!). Again, this speaks to how I see the world at large. Life takes skills we never anticipate requiring, but nonetheless accrue. True to this optimism I harbor—inside an unavoidable but I hope healthy cynicism w/r/t life's obstacles, including people (above all people?)—both protagonists of these films find ways to join the world by their stories' ends.

Then again, not every path is a success. The film I felt worst about leaving off my "official" top ten was Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day. That movie's all about the disconnect we're forced to confront as we grow through adolescence. It's about a lot more, too, including light, but there's a violence in adolescence that it understands (something Haz and I talk about as he is a teacher). This is true of all the Yang pictures I've seen, but this one is obviously special. Its length affords its narrative the space for us to observe characters rationalize their way through choices good and bad alike (though mostly bad) all the way. This is what critics mean when they call a film novelistic: time affording space for character. Granted, that's a limited view of what "the novel" is or can be, but this film in particular, as with many likewise classified films, is after a Dickensian kind of scope forever grounded in place and details. This, too, is how best to think of something like Breaking Bad, which Jen talked about yesterday.

Television, after all, is serialized much how the early money-making novels were; both are strategized as much as constructed with plot doled out in delimited chunks. But, as Jen noted, one of the pleasures of BB is just how digressive it is, how much air time is given to behavior and go-nowhere episodes of bickering. And it's not like this show's hopeful. It's got a pretty grim take on human desire and nature and intelligence. As I've said before, these characters are idiots. Walter White seems to have figured out a few things watching Gus operate, like the cost of survival in such a dangerous game as the drug racket, but he's still a bald, selfish, myopic stranger to himself and his oh-so-beloved family by the end of this last season. And the person he's closest to has every reason in the world to want to slit his throat.
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I've been using my tumblr more than this home base throughout the year. Part of it is simply ease of use. Another is desire. The last is time. I like the scrapbook/notebook feel of the microblog. It feels like a repository of reminders. And it usually takes very little effort. Writing here is more work. (Writing anything is work!) Not sure what the new year will bring, but I'm not quite ready to quit my baby. But I quit making zines to make this blog and I may wind up quitting this blog to wind up making more films. Even if they're just little goofs about the sounds of seagulls or odd poems about light and memory. The future has more answers than me.
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One thing I know for sure: though I've made some great friends via emails (cf. this week), there's a lot I'm proud of from this past year outside the walls and tubes of the internet. Thank you to everybody who helped make those realities real. You know who you are.

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Ryland Walker Knight is a writer and filmmaker living in San Francisco. He has three names, which you can read above, at left, and all over this blog.

BANG BANG: Jenny Stewart

[BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.]

Breaking by Jennifer K Stewart

Even though television serials are the right medium with which to tell immersive character stories, it is still a pretty rare thing to see a show that isn’t primarily plot-driven.  What I mean is that our usual (pedestrian mainstream) experience in front of the screen is to be very quickly clued into certain archetypical/idealized characters, so that we may watch said characters react to a series of events (loosely, ‘plot’).  Nothing explains this better than the Hangover movies, where the whole point is to watch oh-so-subtly differentiated dudes responding to outrageous events.  Note that Hangover’s reverse chronology is just the ideal cinematic contrivance for getting the audience to salivate in anticipation of immanent character reactions.  We want to see that guy being that guy, etc.

And really, I shouldn’t be smug or cynical, because at the very least, all these structural conventions (i.e. beginning the film at its chronological end) are interesting, if only insofar as they get allied to other generic conventions (the dude movie, etc.)  Film itself mentors us into reading character and personality as popular film conventions have conceived them.  A show begins by showing us just enough characterization to clarify precisely what the character will experience and exactly how s/he will and will not change (ex: The Godfather trilogy), so that we may watch a certain stability of who they truly are prevail through all happenstance/fantastical events.  This film shorthand for characterization is itself highly formulaic, though it can still be interesting or even original – think of how There Will Be Blood showed you who Daniel Plainview is through his incredibly tense and impatient dealings with Paul/Eli Sunday.  The innovation being that Plainview was too horrifying to be legibly revealed all at once, and his character so graphically linked with the confusion of blood and oil (insights for another essay never written, alas). 

Anyhow, that this kind of storytelling continues to prevail – namely, 1. introduction of characters  2. embroil characters in plot machine so we can see them being themselves OR turning inevitably into who we suspect they are to be – is easily explained by how much we enjoy watching eccentric, essentialized, and/or idealized personalities undergo life and its passions. 

The past couple years, I’ve been thinking about how the advent of great serial television series has allowed groundbreaks from this tradition.  Pretty simply, serials have the requisite time in which to do so.  Even a film trilogy has such limited space within which to upset the normal character/plot formula.  This is because most of the disruptive work requires defamiliarizing who it was you thought was on screen, and a two-hour film simply hasn’t the time to lay groundwork.  Imagine trying to make a Breaking Bad movie capable of showing any of the central characters (Skyler, Jessie, Gus, Walt Jr, Marie, and Hank, let alone Walter).  Disastrous. 

Breaking Bad is doing something subtle and thrilling.  Think of how cursory the ‘plot’ is – nothing just happens, all events are a precipitated by complex backmoves and antecedents between combinations of characters, and virtually all of these on-the-fly miracles of impulse in the face of struggle and resistance from others.  Even Walt’s vainglorious inability to let Hank mistake Gale for Heisenberg owes to the same uncertainty principle (right?) as rashly swerving into traffic to keep Hank from Gus’ laundry.  If there is anything predictable about Walt, it is that he finds himself – much to his own horror – capable of unpredictability.  It is neither characteristic nor uncharacteristic, and this is what the show has been demonstrating from the start.  Consider Walt’s tortured and circumambulating dispensing of Krazy-8 in the early episodes of Season One.  Attempting to, oh, rationally persuade himself to murder the drug dealer bike-locked by the neck in Jessie’s basement, Walt composes a pro versus con list whilst sitting on the toilet.  But it took a sandwhich, a fall down the stairs, and a shattered plate shard in Walt’s leg; committed decision not being enough, he needed a chance for reactive adrenaline.  

Note how Skyler’s resolve against Walt was at first backed by steadfast principle, only to then just wear away.  She seizes upon the delusion that good (paying for Hank’s rehabilitation) justifies the means.  Welcomes it even, so that the war of attrition is over and she need no longer resist.  On any other show, once established that her character stood for any principled stance, there’d be no need to show any more of her.  Instead, she breaks, just like everyone else on Breaking Bad. 

By the end of 2011’s fourth season, we can see Walt’s now refined ability to premeditate complex manipulations on equal par with Gus.  Yet recall the heartbreaking scene between Walt and his son in S04E10, “Salud.”  It’s the morning after Walt and Jessie’s physical fight.  Junior’s calling and buzzing as Walt, disorientated, medicated, beaten, pulls back a sheet stuck to his face with dried blood.  The shroud comes away for a few precious minutes and Junior sees his dad unguarded.  At first Walt sticks to the story – “don’t tell your mother, I was gambling, can we just keep this between us?” – but when Junior asks who did you get into a fight with that’s the end of Walt’s posturing.  Walt sees Jessie where Junior is; the possibility of relief, forgiveness.  But as sobriety dawns Walt takes it all back and the layers of blood-caked cover go back on.  Now Walt asks Junior not for connection and forgiveness, but to promise to not take that unshrouded image as defining; the way the “empty spray-paint can” imagine of his rasping father dying of Huntington’s disease, is Walt’s only “real memory” of his father. 

W:  “I don’t want that to be your memory of me when I’m gone.” 

Jr:  “Remembering you that way wouldn’t be so bad.  The bad way to remember you would be the way you’ve been this whole last year.  At least last night, you were real.  Y’know?”

Walt is confusing the revelation of nothing beneath the shroud with emptiness.  RJ Mitte kinda steals this scene, and Walt junior is now the character to watch in Season Five…

p.s. Jessie.  No one’s been broken more than Jessie, in ways he has yet to fully discover.

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Jennifer K Stewart is a philosopher and yoga instructor living in Canada. She believes in the body.

Viewing Log #85: When you are the cancer

by Ryland Walker Knght

[Amidst a few other films I watched and writing projects I kept chipping away at in August, I finished the second season of AMC's Breaking Bad.]

Right off the bat: Skyler is the worst. Anna Gunn is brave, but Skyler is as unsympathetic a character as I've ever seen. So much so that I had to stop watching the episodes back to back, as is the common desire with instant/on-demand viewing. However, I quickly fell back into plowing through one episode then another, in part because I'm attracted to how condensed the story is compared to, say, Mad Men, where time's certainly not of the essence unless by dint of the television medium's format (seems there's a lot of "something's gotta happen eventually" in MM). It's not as condensed and rigorous as either Milch HBO show (to date) but then even Deadwood feels like years given all the time that passes in between its season arcs. Breaking Bad, on the other hand, though it plays with time some, is mostly driven by a consequential logic. In other words, I was surprised to see this season start precisely where the last one ended. But it makes sense.

The genius of the show, if I can use that word, is how much attention is paid to every step Walter takes towards villainy. We get to watch a basically good brain go, yes, bad. We see all the rationale behind his choices, sometimes without words. I told a friend it was like Dostoevsky and I meant it. But the delusion of doing wrong in the name of good isn't just a trope of the great Russian depressive; it's really rather common. The idea of "white lies" comes from somewhere not related to white nights. I think it comes from everyday life. One must contend, all the time, with too many compromising choices to remain moral. However, this show, unlike those Milch masterpieces, isn't concerned with the ethical life. No, this is just the wrong way to do things. Remember the title: it's forgoing the righteous path.

And if Mad Men is about television as advertising, Breaking Bad is certainly about television as a drug: a perfectly calibrated bit of magic that keeps you coming back for more, designed to hit you where it hurts and where it feels the best. (Why else watch more than one episode at a time, right? It becomes a compulsion, if not outright addiction.) This show, like The Sopranos, makes you complicit, designs a rooting interest in Walter, and dares you to not get excited with him and for him. Until, of course, he explodes and, as his brow lowers, all that venom bubbles up. The most obvious and scary instance of this is when he beats up that towel dispenser (see evidence above). Unlike The Sopranos, nothing is glamorous here. There's nothing sexy about two men making meth in a desert, or anything related to meth. Hell, the meth cooking passages are my least favorite parts of the show. Krysten Ritter may be sexy, but the show goes out of its way to make her unsexy by the end of her character's sad, pathetic, idiotic life. Her death, after all, is just another instance of Walter's growing selfishness as the root of his growing evil. For Walter's whole trajectory is about taking control of his life. But he's pretty lousy at that, too, since he's only ever looking for shortcuts. And, again, the show shows us that these are all myopic moves from a novice. That's maybe my favorite part: these people are idiots.

Walter is a chemistry genius, I suppose, but he's a child compared to Pollos Gus. (Giancarlo Esposito is so awesome at his two face it's incredible; yet another movie-quality actor brought to television and instantly upping the ante.) I suspect he will change the game going forward quite a bit more than Saul Goodman, though Bob Odenkirk is about as crucial an element as can be. After all, he's the only one expressly keeping the comedy going. He has his moments of clarity and seriousness but he's mainly there to act the fool, to play dumb—though he's not dumb, at least not as dumb as Walter—to show the other dummies how dumb they are. This vision of comedy is quite close to condescension. I get that. But nothing's so simple in this show. It's a black comedy, after all, where everything farcical is tied to horror. The horrific is often papered over by laughter in order to diffuse tension, but sometimes horrible things are just horrible. Like letting a girl choke to death on smack-induced vomiting. Other times, horrible things can be hilarious—because they're so stupid—like Saul's whole wardrobe.

Not sure what to do with the framing device of the season, but the tidy color coding of the teddy and Walter's sweater seems obvious. Walter is adrift, charred by wrong. And all that build up to that collision seems like a ploy, not plotting. I cannot imagine how that's going to actually effect the trajectory of Season Three other than Jesse's already rock bottom self-esteem flatlining a little longer. But maybe we're (I'm) in for another rise. Maybe Jesse will seize sobriety and do some things right. Worst case, which it usually is, he'll be a marginally better criminal because he'll be clean. Best case, it'll complicate how Walter sees him, because Jesse is certainly something in his life that Walter can and has controlled. I doubt Jesse will learn how to interpret his way out of manipulative moves by Walter, but he'll likely get better at staking a claim for himself in kind. Then again, Jesse's kind of the show's test dummy par excellence, a raggedy ann at the mercy of bigger and stronger and meaner people. His best episodes in the season were all about his sensitivity. Hope he doesn't get beat up so much that he loses it. Walt sure is trying to lose his.

—You are not okay here at all

Viewing Log #84: So rid of all your stories [9/9/11 - 9/18/11]

by Ryland Walker Knight

• Breaking Bad Season 1, [Vince Gilligan, 2008] So far, I'm a fan of the farcical elements that sharpen the edges of the drama and elevate the show past one of the stupidest (or most roll-your-eyes) pitches you can imagine. Oh, a failed chemist now teaches high school and has cancer and, get this, to pay for his chemo he starts selling the purest crystal meth ever thanks to his skills in and knowledge of chemistry? Yeah, that sounds like a party—when does it air? That train of thought is why I never watched. But my friend told me it was funny, actually, and since the first three seasons are all on Netflix Instant at present I thought I'd give it a shot. Turns out she was right and I was wrong! It's not dumb, it's funny. But it's dark, a black comedy. However, I can imagine things only get heavier as Walter White turns into more of a heavy. For now, I'm enjoying all the play on that line we draw between right and wrong, legal and not, good and evil. Plus, it's about money in the late oughts and that's bonus points right there.
  
  
• Drive [N.W.Refn, 2011] # I gave it a second chance and I'm still unimpressed. It simply doesn't add up. For a while, after I read the Sallis book a couple times, I thought it might be interesting to write an article all about adaptation using this as an intriguing example (as part of the pitch, too, I'll be honest). But the adaptation's strengths are lost in the haze of what Refn's after, which I think can be simplified to one of the weirdest ways to say, "I love you," to his wife (1). Even disregarding that mostly useless extrapolation of projection-as-interpretation, the object itself is rather basic, though pretty, and altogether empty—a film of integers arrayed, not added up, instead of the matrix of significance it seems to pose as in all those extra beats and drawn out googly eyes scenes. That is, there are a lot of "symbols" that don't add up to any kind of meaning. The most interesting motif—the satin scorpio jacket—is ruined, near the close, with that line of dialog that acts like a "looky here!" instead of letting the images and editing reinforce that the jacket is his armor, what keeps him alive, if not a second skin. He's not wearing it at all times, but when he's not wearing it, he's holding it across an arm. Or he's draping it on the kid, which is both an everyday gesture (keep the kid warm) and a gesture of protection (shielding the boy) (2). After all (spoiler), our "real hero" is stabbed in the gut while he's wearing this "trademark" and he doesn't die; that gratuitous act of violence just bloodies him, and the festishistic camera glides up his stoic face to reify this guy as alone, like so many "heroes" before. What Danny calls soulless, I call boring. I might even call it rote. But I must cop to the fact that I spent a lot of time anticipating the movie, and gabbing with my friends about it afterwards, but more in SF than Cannes because I felt I had to explain myself a lot more. Point is, there's obviously things there (Refn knows how to compose shots, if not film action) if it spawned this many words, this many hours of thinking and talking. Thing is, I still want more to warrant it all.
  
  
• The Driver [Walter Hill, 1978] # Hoberman called it schematic in his review of the Refn picture. I think it's great. My favorite scene might be the one where he trashes their orange Benz to prove his skills behind the wheel. And Isabelle Adjani is super hot. Total score. I've got "deeper thoughts" but this is all you get here.
  
  
• Curb Your Enthusiasm "Larry vs Michael J. Fox" [Alec Berg, 2011 "Thank God he didn't hand you his dick, you know what I mean? He coulda been shaking and shook that dick up, hand you the dick and the dick shot sperm in your face." Finally, a few truly great Leon moments and lines. And what an amazing guest spot: so awesome MJF can make fun of himself like that. And what about that "Paris" set? Priceless.
  
• Curb Your Enthusiasm "Mister Softee" [Larry Charles, 2011] A weaker link, but, granted, this one had some good Leon moments, too, to spice up the rather "predictable" convergence of threads.
  
  
• Contagion [Steven Soderbergh, 2011] American movie of the year? Maybe. Truly digital, truly D-G capitalism-as-schizophrenia, truly mosaic. A cheap shot of a human villain in Law, but it's the filmmaking (moviemaking? it's digital, after all...) that elevates the often obvious script. That and the actors. But more later. UPDATE: Here's more.
  
  
• The Runaways [Floria Sigismondi, 2011] It starts well, with all that messy sex stuff and Michael Shannon doing something flamboyant instead of all nervous everywhere, but it sure hits a wall when they get famous and it tries to slow down to get serious as if those two things were dependent on one another. Was really ready for this to join Whip It as this fall's grrl movie I have a place for in my heart but this one just isn't that one.

—The real star of the picture
(1) Refn basically said as much to Durga during their interview.

(2) Cambomb gave me this reading.