Robinson in Ruins (2010)

 

Director: Patrick Keiller

Screenplay: Patrick Keiller

Cast: Vanessa Redgrave

An Abstract Candidate

 

As films go, Robinson in Ruins will be very unconventional for many even with a taste for "abstract" films. An essay film, Ruins was my first film from Patrick Keiller, closing out a trilogy he began in the nineties. At the start of the 1990s Patrick Keiller, who is also a lecturer and writer, created a character named "Robinson" for a pair of essay films documenting the sociological state of Britain, first with London (1994), focused on the capital, and Robinson in Space (1997), expanding out into the rest of England. Robinson himself was never heard from, and the unnamed narrator, played by the late Paul Scofield, was our guide into Robinson's excursions. Keiller belongs with a film like Robinson in Ruins in the territory called "psycho-geography", a concept of interpreting a concept of interpreting geography in their history and sociological terms, alongside what has transpired in both in their creation and shaping. I became fascinated by this concept, at the right age in my early twenties, from Ian Sinclair, a filmmaker and author whose London Orbital (2002), chronicling a series of trips he took tracing the M25, London's outer-ring motorway, on foot left a rewarding mark. Despite the inherent weight to that text, dealing with the ramifications of Britain's political elite on the landscape, which Robinson in Ruins also does, there is also something very British in a profound, profane and quaint way in both examples, where there even the most seemingly banal of motorways, as London Orbital was about, allowed one to peel back the historical and sociological influences that marked the landscape, all the tensions also found here, able to be peeled back even in the pipeline markers spotted in land overgrown by nature itself.

Robinson in Ruins, which is made in knowledge Paul Scofield passed away in 2008, was left without the voice from the films before, and in context of Robinson being depicted here now as a literal ghost having left his mark, we are also in the midst of the 2008 economic crisis that happened in real life. A huge event globally that left a lasting effect, this is also when Robinson, before he vanished was assigned to a project on environmental collapse, industrial capitalism becoming his obsession, only to disappear. Film canisters and his diaries are found in his last know living place, a caravan, and those who found it have put the material together, the narrator (as voiced by Vanessa Redgrave) connected to this project as the original narrator's lover. Contextually this is, as with London Orbital, seemingly banal to the extreme, as the brown and green land collides and one of the first locations seen a Lidl, a supermarket chain found where I was growing up and is something you would living in ordinary working class England without batting an eye at its symbol. Then the narration brings up their problematic work practices, and you see the layers being peeled back of how even the banal is marked in tensions.

The metaphor which ties together the film, which could win a person over even if they find Robinson in Ruins too dry in its construction, is the repeated image of lichen, a fungal species here, repeated with the same one, that has survived and adapted to human progress with ease as the rest of nature has; the image in question has lichen growing on the letters of a motorway sign, curling around the letters itself, as we see the struggle between the natural landscape and human development in a severe economic downturn. Having grown up with autism, my own spatial awareness of environments as a result has made a concept like psycho-geography compelling for me, where so my awareness of environments is always with intrigue having to adapt to new stimulus, even old sights gaining new layers and emotions depending on that particular day. This film itself finds layers where political and social tensions have broken out, and been left, in the tranquil shots of natural landscape in agricultural and motorway territories, evoking old Peter Greenaway experimental shorts from early in his career without the critique of the filming structure.

This film, in truth, does feel dry, entirely because whilst London Orbital, as a novel or the Chris Petit adaptation co-directed with Ian Sinclair as a 2002, was a freewheeling and expansive work which could include pithy put-downs and humorous comparisons as it dealt with the seriousness of some of its subject matter. In contrast, Robinson in Ruins, shot in celluloid film, is structured around spatial shots of isolated locations, with only the natural landscape and Redgrave's narration the closest to a soundtrack. This in itself is enough to easily put some off who may find the subject - the death knell of post-liberalism in this economic downturn - still fascinating, because there are lengthy pauses literally examining a field, buildings and plant life among other details, contemplative in a minimalistic form with no human beings ever depicted onscreen baring vehicles. If you can find your way past this, as I did, there is to these images a contemplative and peaceful form matched by a rich narrative text which would have to be picked through over multiple viewings of. It is a project, baring the use of celluloid film, that could have been an ambitious YouTube video, but the moments which strike out in look - the close up of a spider weaving its web over a monologue about the economic collapse itself, to watching farming machinery working in the field - are also contrasted by what the narration reveals about seemingly banal images. The wasteland of derelicts, power stations and even poster covered boards with penises crudely sprayed on them in graffiti would be ignored by most people, but here gain more weight as this fictional narrative with real world essay material adds context to the images. We pass rape seed oil crop fields, and their connection to importation, to nuclear missile silos from the nineties, to 18th century traveller inns turned into banks. The irony of British opium fields we see onscreen, for medicinal purposes, is contrasted by the narration bringing use the opium fields found in Afghanistan, which is later developed as heroine imported into Britain itself.

Even if re-creatable with the modern technology of digital phones, even at this time in 2010, there is a beauty in Keiller's film to contrast its vast text of intersecting worlds, one that would fill a cinema screen with its minimalism. Thematically it is of its era, the economic crisis at the time still having a lasting impact but something that was once such an impactful concept in the news, and this film also name checks Britain Conservative politician Boris Johnson, who here is just the newly elected mayor of London, not the future Prime Minister into the decade after. The environmental concerns have sadly not aged, still severe in the text here as its talk of the dying throes of neo liberalism, contrasted by fears of environmental destruction which are now creeping up to us in mainstream conversation. In contrast, however, it was always surprising how relaxing watching this film actually was, a perverse serenity to an extreme close up of lichen, turned into these bio-alien life forms that Robinson possibly can hear here as is talked of. As much as this rings the dreaded bell of our fault in damaging the Earth itself, it is mirrored against scenes of woodland; whilst there is a legitimate fear still with us of environmental collapse, you however see nature still finds a way to continue. Orchids still grow near motorways, and even in the fingerprints of human interference, creeping in-between the areas once newly built but merely in the background or even abandoned.

The contrast in its peaceful veneer against the chaotic history the film talks of - nuclear protests by wives in the nineteen eighties, protests in the 19th century about claim to land - is something which requires patience with, but if you can find it is compelling. It could be ignored if you struggle with the seemingly ultra minimalistic aesthetic the film has. With the visuals and the narration together however, the film does gain a great deal to it. For a film that was clearly a holdover of the 2000s in culture, it is surprisingly relevant still. The landscape baring a few differences is the same still in Britain, and the environmental concerns are growing every day. Certainly as well, though Patrick Keiller might raise an eyebrow to this, the film even as the most stoic in presentation does have an innate eccentricity to its advantage. There is some deadpan humour still here, and again, the choices of locations, seemingly the less profound choices to talk about the history of, has something innately eccentric to them as choices if with a real significance found. It is not Swandown (2012), director Andrew Kötting's own travel essay film in which he, with guest stars like famous comic book/graphic novel/novel writer Alan Moore and Ian Sinclair himself, pedalled a swan-shaped pedalo from the seaside in Hastings to Hackney in London, via the English inland waterways. There is, however, something still very English let alone British in a film like Robinson in Ruins, where someone made an essay film like this in which lichen on a road sign is the main selling point in the trailer, and actually proves the most symbolically synchronizing point to tie its themes together.

 

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

William, the New Judo Master (2016)

 

Directors: Omar Guzmán and Ricardo Silva

Screenplay: Omar Guzmán and Ricardo Silva

Cast: Arak Bernal, William Clauson, Edward Coward, Pako Houston and Hoze Meléndez

An Abstract List Candidate

 

Beginning with a prologue, of a body of a being split in two after defeat, one half landing into the seas and the other to the earth below, the Mexican avant-garde film William, the New Judo Master to be frank does not go the direction you would presume, but for myself also becomes disjointed. The prologue sets up an immortal being who moves forwards in their existence in a world of continual death, and we can definitely establish the Devil is here too, with his head completely covered with black fur, with horns and glowing red eyes, watching on in his beige suit at the world around him.

Among the many tangents is of Swedish-American singer William Clauson, one of the first people to introduce the song La Bamba outside of Mexico in the fifties, here playing himself an old man who lives in exile in Mexico, eventually moving to a place of care whilst his home is completely ransacked by removal people, a mysterious safe becoming their obsession as they cannot open it. Among such tangents includes an older musical impersonator of Clauson, who has hired three male sex workers to love him, who get the most prominent scenes but is one of a few. In the middle of all this are various different pieces. We see the oldest tree in existence, at 95550 years old, the voice over from the immortal being (also playing a fictionalised version of the real Clauson), almost becoming the lament of the tree itself as it contemplates 9,550 years of existence and what transpired since then. We see a ship being sunk deliberately and shots of nature among many.

A lot of the film does evoke the many films of this ilk from the 2010s, many from the film festival and especially becoming much more easier to witness on the likes of the MUBI streaming platform, the many prolific films which defy a real categorisation that are a series of vignettes and aspects, blurring documentary with other factors. Some succeed, but there are many and they can seem completely disjointed in context. The theme that William... is grasping at, for me personally, is very simplistic. Quite nihilistic, as we vary between an older man who talks of removing his ten dollar bill from a collection plate at a church when it is passed among the church congregation a second time, to the immortal being lamenting over tombstones everyone they know being dead. It does, frankly, come off as sycophantic as a lot of films and media from the time it comes from have this same mentality, losing profoundness as a result.

There are also many scenes which never seem to connect. What is the connection, with a startling sequence, of a military boat being deliberately sunk, with the cameras inside allowing us to see its first person sinking into the ocean, to the older Clauson impersonator, whose life seems mainly to drift among bars at night and has a couple of musical numbers, one breaking from the static still camera shots with a gliding camera around his performance? Or the scenes of quad and motocross bikes on roads at night, soaked in orange-yellow street lights, and even involve a quad bike dragging a casket behind itself, again another vivid image? It evokes Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1983), a work of seemingly separate fragments which yet connected together with profoundness in his chronology mostly based in Japanese culture of the early nineteen eighties, but the vividness of that essay film was stronger whilst here, with its scenes involving cuts to microbes under a microscope in monochrome and tangents with fishermen swatting off squid, the images fascinate, but they do not fully connect. Even Clauson's story feels like it could have been expanded further, as his narrative intertwines Mexico and Sweden alongside the United States, including the fact he opened a Mexican restaurant in Stockholm later in his life, after a career with popularity and even some film roles, and that William... briefly goes to Sweden itself to a sanatorium that has long been abandoned he went to.

The structure of the film itself was what failed me on this, with disparate pieces that, separate, would be compelling by themselves stretched out. As they are, a lot of them do feel lacking for everyone which does stand out. Some, especially the man with his three rented lovers, especially could have been more fleshed out and compelling, only reduced to fragments including a scene involving violent use of a plastic bag. Even the striking nature of the film, in capturing distinct visuals, does suffer from the sense of the film not fully connecting. The film, neither quite documentary nor fiction, does fascinating but also frustrates at the same time.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Contemplative

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Balnearios (2002)

 

Director: Mariano Llinás

An Abstract List Candidate

They are places made to be near water.

Starting off with old home movies of Argentineans splashing in the sea, so blue it is unreal and set to jazz, the film immediately tells you what the point of it is, a documentary of the idealised past of balnearios ("beach resorts"), the "country's childhood". This is just a prologue, to a film which from the director of Extraordinary Stories (2008) which soon reveals itself not to be a conventional documentary, but with a gently voiced female narrator, and even black and white footage going further back in time, this sets up various chapters based in various sides of the balnearios, real or fantasised.

A male voiceover set over driving footage introduces us to the section on "Mar Del Sur", an abandoned town and specifically "the arrogant and mysterious mountain" that is the old and unused hotel, an enormous building that just from the windows is a place of ghosts falling to pieces. Like a prelude to Extraordinary Stories, three separate stories in four hours (with tangents) that feels like a cinematic epistolary, this segment follows the tale of its owner "Mr. G", once a young G who became part of defrauding the businessmen who worked with him to run the hotel, accidentally giving G and his wife (a French singer) ownership. This blurs the line between what is real or pure fabrication from old footage and imagination. One which escalates to a lawyer getting ownership of the hotel and letting crime take over, leading to a baker being murdered for trying to uncover this and a painter from Uruguay committing the murder as a partner.

The Beach Episode is not as dynamic, but as an essay film in itself, set to recorded footage, it struck a cord for me as we see the life of the Argentinean beach. At first their environments are dead cities when out of season, seeing shots of the town as fading entities until life returns, with the odd realisation, yes, in the Southern hemisphere when the patrons come, December is a warm period, and not cold and wet. Talking of the millions, even priests, rolled off in stats, there is so much I can write from the narration and I have barely recorded most of it in this review for description. That parasols have a masculine attitude to them due to men obsessing where to position them, or the long and vain walks which cause perpetual traffic. We see footage of young boys moulding a racetrack for toy cars in the sand, even getting down to the ground with an improvised tool to smooth and level it, whilst the mysterious and foreign scenario these beaches are for dogs is shown in the shots of our canine friends.

Starting with the moral criteria of flags warning where the tides are dangerous or not, this was where Balnearios kindled a love for English beaches as an Englishman, where there are surprisingly not that many differences culturally between them then you would think, a place equally of the sea for all people even if fraught with jellyfish and the wind blowing objects away, as witnessed with a red and white striped parasol being blown along the beach. All of this involves footage of regular people in a seaside town, such as the night-time scenes of the amusements and cotton candy machines. The narrator is whimsical, openly playful, and sometimes mean in its anthropologic tone where here he talks of singers of yesteryear and second rate television actors being the night-time entertainment. In the segment about arcades for video games, now a rare entity sadly, the words are actually affectionate and respectful even if intentionally making it absurd and sounding like an anthropology documentary David Attenborough could narrate, the jungle of scoreboards where the champions take domination over cabinets for hours, destroying "laughable enemies" with elegant playing, hunting opponents and challenges whilst in this digital ecosystem the onlookers watch over their shoulders like an alternative species of animal.

This entire segment by itself would have been a great gem by director Mariano Llinás itself, as much as between the "thousands of sand buckets and shovels", because everything at a seaside has to be sold in the thousands, or the shots of a gift shop full of shell art and a corkscrew with the screw positioned in the crudest area on a nude figure, there is not that much difference between Argentinean and Britain in their seaside, itself an entity of its own nature between both continents with its own culture and symbolism. The only thing that stands out is the churrero seller who carries wafers in a metal cylinder on his back on the beach, which I have never seen in a place like Skegness, or that the English usually built cafes or stands to sell hot dogs from.

The story of Miramar adds a real piece of weird real storytelling, an anecdote of a peaceful and calm town where the original happens to be submerged under water, cutting immediately to a lamppost sticking out of the sea. With images above and below the waters you could image Werner Herzog voicing this segment, as we learn of the likes of Hotel Venecia being under the water along two others, images of posts and slides and houses in shots barely above the surface visibly real images from a freak incident, whilst the underwater imagery, in orange lit ocean darkness, turn an undersea petrol station into a surreal abstract image. That the narrator cannot give the reason why this actually happened - a storm or a nearby dam development two theories - adds to the mystery, the point instead the surrealism of regular life witnessed, emphasising in it what Llinás would explore in a fictionalised context with Extraordinary Stories.

The last part of Balnearios, closing it out, is its own distinct piece, in mind Llinás would continue with documentary and short film work in his career. Heading to the provinces, we meet Zucco, setting up the location first win an old fifties documentary about the promise of dams and irrigation channels which would be evoked later in Extraordinary Stories, where one of its stories is set up with a similar looking public information film. Set now in the world of resorts of concrete and swimming pools, of civil engineering and hydropower than natural tides, Zucco is a regular older man on the street and our central lynchpin here, an artist whose work varies between painting and metal art of marine gods, Lord Neptune and fish beings, a segment which in itself does also emphasis Llinás as an admirer of ordinary people, as interested in shots of Zucco cooking shown in detail as he is the process of the metal craft in his workshop.

Note by here, I have come to adore the work of Llinás in both style and his writing, whose work has sadly not been easy to see, a shame as with the things I have seen, he is distinct. Especially as with La Flor (2016) being thirteen plus hours long, his interest in sprawling epistolary films, managing it here in just eighty minutes, led him to push against traditional rules of film length, which will present an issue in distributing these productions. All the segments in Balnearios interconnect in a beautiful and fun ode to a piece of Argentinean culture that could be ignored. Befitting it ends with a man whose "disturbing worship of water" intertwines with a love of alcohol, drinking where the music is live and from the soul. By this point he even shatters the documentary tag fully by having a snapshot of one of Zucco's dreams, about a Hell where everyone is however cheerful, a Hell of pods to swim in and stone manmade waterfalls, even a mermaid presiding over everything. These distinct images, even in the final shot in black-and-white of a young woman swimming by herself in the sea, could be easily ignored within the constantly quotable narration, but cements the virtues of the film.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Epistolary/Playful

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Saving Christmas (2014)

 

Director: Darren Doane

Screenplay: Darren Doane and Cheston Hervey

Cast: Kirk Cameron as Kirk; Darren Doane as Christian White; Bridgette Ridenour as Kirk's sister; David Shannon as Diondre; Raphi Henly as a conspiracy theorist; Ben Kientz as St. Nick

Ephemeral Waves

...and I love hot chocolate!

Covering this notorious Christian Christmas film, most reviews would immediately take this time to shoot fish in a barrel. Instead, during this Christmas period where this review would be best to read this review, let us make this a morality tale, a frank ones that sometimes are still told at this time of the year, as necessary alongside the hot chocolate that keeps us warm, the good cheer needed after all the stress of the year previous, to drop a form of reality check to improve for the New Year. The moral of this tale is the dangers of lack of speaking without thinking, and the tale immediately begins in 12th October 1970, the birthday of the executive producer/lead star Kirk Cameron.

Cameron, a child actor whose biggest claim to fame in his youth was the ABC sitcom Growing Pains (1985–1992), became an Evangelical Christian in his youth and began starring in films like Fireproof (2008). He begins Saving Christmas speaking directly to the viewer in a room from a Hallmark Christmas card about his love for Christmas, "even growing out the winter beard". He definitely adores the season, just hot chocolate alone, which whilst other reviews will possible mock him, this tale I am telling is ultimately a tragedy. Of someone who clearly had a good childhood with Christmas, and is well intentioned in this curious documentary/essay/fictional seasonal drama, but also unfortunately showed so much in his character by accident, flaws and traits from the worst of human beings which include an inability for constructive argumentative work, and not responding to criticisms with the virtue that a Christian should offer his other cheek to be smote and learn from the issues raised. He also looks reminiscent, in dress sense and unshaven look, to my older brother which adds weirdness to watching the film, baring the fact that despite once being a choir boy in his youth my older brother is definitely not an Evangelical Christian.

How does one practice Christmas as a Christian? That is the main concern of the film, or should be with mind to some issues that will be raised, but you can imagine that Cameron, likely with a wide eyed naive love for the season took it upon himself, with his own studio Camfam Studios and funded by the Liberty University¹, to work on this project with his co-star/director Darren Doane. The tale of Saving Christmas is Kirk Cameron showing concern that the Christmas he adores, of roasting chestnuts and turkey, is too materialistic in the eyes of others of the same faith, alongside other concerns of whether it has pagan aspects, such as whether his beloved chocolate was invented by druids.

This does hint at a good debate to have, as fellow Christians believe Christmas has completely misinterpreted the festival, something even non-Christians can show a concern of. The animated opening credits, set to a ska version of Silent Night, offers the promise in itself of a warm, well-minded work. Even if the title sadly has a more negative weight to it than one would hope, the fantasy would be that, if this was a smart introspective debate on the subject from a Christian perspective, the title would be a more humorously toned choice similar to the title to a family film about rescuing Santa Claus.

What Saving Christmas actually is - essay, Christmas drama, religious discussion, none of the above - is a misguided attempt at tackling a much more complicated subject, wide-eyed but without greater wisdom. It surrounds Cameron trying to help his brother-in-law Christian (Darren Doane) who hates Christmas, clearly suffering through a severe depression, requiring a therapist, which has latched onto an existential crisis about being a Christian but seeing Christmas as full of "perverted symbols with hidden meaning", "needless spending" and (with more humour) "elf worship", which requires a priest. It does not need Kirk Cameron to bend his arm in the front seat of a car which they spend most of the film within, all with a calm smile on his face of confidence, unless Cameron was to turn this into It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and properly help Christian find new meaning as his Clarence. The Christmas party his wife has set up would have been expensive to decorate, which if this was ever realistic would have not helped violent depression further especially as a religious man, "a slap in the face of the true meaning of Christmas" the thing he has latched onto in what is clearly an existential "dark night of the soul" in a well thought out film.

I can see the ideal and sympathise with Kirk Cameron - wanting to be a reassurance that Christmas cheer and charity has not been lot even today - but I agree more with Christian which immediately causes problems, that "this is not what God wants" when, for the Judeo-Christian faith, Christmas usually means now spending too much and advertisements for productions which puts off even the non-religious. Christian even brings up a sad symbolism, from the sad image of a Nativity snow globe buried in the corner hidden by a giant tree, a sad image just from merely having to picture it, which does have too much power to be easily dismissed. The moment however Cameron says he is wrong, that he was "drank the Kool-Aid", is when the film becomes a tragedy of him drinking his own, a solipsist form where, in a long conversation, Cameron has some good thoughtful ideas and constructive metaphors you can work with in wisdom, such as the swaddling clothes at Jesus' birth and death symbolically connecting, but there is not enough provided to lead to the needed conclusion.

There is also the tangent which feels out of place, that the film gets into references of the apparent war of Christmas, as a couple of the people at the party are planning to protest the cancellation of crazy shirt Friday at their work place. This concern for me has always been a contentious thing in whether it actually existed, as we have in the British Isles occasionally talks of this, but at times, it has felt from my insignificant vantage point whether this is just an odd thing that happens in the big metropolises. Where did this apparent belief in the cancelling of Christmas come from? A bigger concern for myself, whether this will have note or be a completely straw man argument in its nature, is that never is it asked whether someone who is not Christian (or of a different faith or celebrating Haneka) is ever offended if someone says "Merry Christmas" to them in the street or at work, but that it apparently exists as a concern to cancel Christmas, never asking where the evidence from either those who are threatened, or those blamed responsible, comes from in terms of how regular people on the street with their own faiths or lack thereof react to the Christian holiday. As much of this belief for me, even if bias, stems from living in a working class English town which is predominantly Caucasian environment of Protestant background, whilst multi-ethic and diverse, where Christmas cards which say "Merry Christmas" are a dime a dozen everywhere at the winter season, and no one really bats an eye on the subject regardless of whether they even have spiritual faith or not. In itself, like the entire issue of whether Christmas is too materialistic, we have these debates, or whether Fairytale in New York by the Pogues has to be censored due to certain un-PC language in the lyrics for a specific example, but never does it get brought up enough whether there are really any debates to figure out the solution, instead always coming off as solipsism in that neither side ever consider the wider question.

It neither helps that Saving Christmas with this pointless digression, requiring this huge tangent in the review, seems to make this all a joke but still be fixated upon it. It is a joke, much later on, with the character of Diondre (David Shannon), a friend of Cameron's who is the most charismatic person of the film, alongside a co-worker at the party, start commenting on things like there being an Area 52, where all the Christmas decorations are hidden away? It is actually a funny joke, but what about when they start trading off between them, behind their mugs to stay secret, ideas like Chem-trails or even the conspiracy that all the burger meat in fast food is merely "pink slime" rather than the real thing? On the surface this scene, which is presented comically, would be a parody of this mentality, but tonally there is a question of what the intention is, especially with the question why the scenes and references were even made.

If this had been a subtle documentary about breaking down how to worship, including where Christmas symbolism originates from, and issues like why we celebrate Christ's birth in December, the film would have been welcomed even if it was entirely from a Christian perspective. Cameron pulls some long bows, like The Garden of Eden's stand-in being a Christmas tree lot, but sometimes his personal interpretation have something of note which is sweet, such as it better we have trees than more crosses, as Christ hung himself off one to forgive Adam taking an apple off the Tree of Knowledge. It may cause people to roll their eyes, like the one I have just included, but this is not the problem. The problem is when he presumes this is enough or makes assumptions, batting off difficult issues which need to be tackled.

Interpretation has been a huge part of Christian text, but as someone who has had an interest in religion in general since I went to a primary school where the local vicar came frequently for assembly sermons, the most profound ideas tend to not try to win an argument but offer introspection. Cameron comes off as a big kid who really had good Christmas memories, but he skips huge and dangerous amounts of detail which, even if some would still cause him grief, would have given him greater wisdom and strengthen the interesting moments of introspection if he forced himself as the executive producer to tackle them.

Even with some of the obvious ideas - like reminding people of St. Nicholas being a true Santa, not the construct in red garb by the Coca Cola Company - is not dealt with enough. Director Darren Doane goes for a grubby realism, of a man in pelts and a beard brooding, but it leads to an unintentionally funny moment which, if the film was not gun-ho at being right, would have been an amusing fictionalised and human take on the figure. One where St. Nicholas will beat up a heretical priest, for saying Christ is not immortal, then suddenly go off to give gifts to the poor with a cheese eating grin on his face. Even if Cameron had gone for the obvious, i.e. ideas which Charles Dickens did perfectly well in A Christmas Carol of charity and that virtue can be found even in the spectacle of Christmas, he would have done better, but this is all left on the table.

The added, uncomfortable detail is found in the type of language used. "Drinking the Kool-Aid" or throwing about the word "heretic". You can have your unexpected, silly hip hop Christmas dance at the end scored to Family Force 5, but it cannot be hidden how this attitude of headstrong righteousness is when this all sounds sinister. This is where the American Evangelicals in pop culture become an entity which is looked to in suspicion, and even without this, unfortunately a film like Saving Christmas has not aged well further after the presidential nomination of Donald Trump, a figure bolstered by the Evangelical right in spite of nothing in his background recommending him as a very virtuous figurehead. It is an accidental coincidence Kirk Cameron was behind Trump in the 2016 elections²; some of the aw-shucks charisma, blunt with disregard attitude to conflicting opinions the film has is the kind which has become more acceptable by the end of the 2010s and has run amok in politics in a more toxic form.

This film's issues can be boiled down into Cameron's infamous banana argument against evolution, although let us correct one detail - Cameron was merely co-hosting the television show Way of The Master with Ray Comfort, a New Zealand Creationist/host/Evangelical who was offering the argument the banana was an "ironclad argument" of God's intelligent design³. I am not here to debate the subject of evolution, when the bigger issue is how, even for someone arguing for evolution, you need to accept that a debate will not be won by bringing literal piece of fruit into the debate, or that (for the Creationist or Scientific side equally) winning the argument will reward everyone in the end when the introspection and ideas considered should be the point. Yes, the banana, even if we have generically bred them into what they are, are curiously perfect in their form just from how to open one, but even wishing to win the argument is not a goal worth striving for as it gains nothing. It would have been more profound, even if it pissed scientists off still, to just raise a banana up and ask them how on Earth it came to be, even if said angry scientists would have scientific theories to retort back. Back-and-forth debate with mind to grow on both sides should have been the point.

The problem with Saving Christmas is the same, where through less arguments but empty bravado, Kirk Cameron convinces Christian he is right rather than come to a new meaning between them, to storm into the house and belly surf the floor nearly into the Christmas tree. Kirk Cameron did not want to actually debate this subject, just go for material that is not even obvious, but ill thought out. Glossier than I expected, nothing about the film in its low budget style, like a low budget Christmas drama, or the music and casting etc. is an issue, but that as a production desiring to argue, it does not provide an argument to begin with. The sense of intellectually head butting others rather than trying to deal with the conflict is what corrupts Saving Christmas in itself entirely right down to only being eighty minutes with little friction, with a quick and frankly illogical resolve that changes Christian.

Cameron would sadly be doing this still even after the film was criticised and I have not even gotten around to the fact the film effectively celebrates the materialistic and indulgent nature of the season, and merely placates the notions of charity and goodwill. A close thing to a warning is Cameron informing the viewer to not run their credit cards to their limits, but this aspect is the most egregious. It also is where the sense of Kirk Cameron's wide eyed, child like nature coming into this, from how he perceives the subject, is ultimately his undoing, to the point that whilst Saving Christmas was savaged, he did not come back with an argument against his critics and have a debate, but say it was part of an "atheist conspiracy"⁴.

Sadly he did not use this to grow and mature, and whilst we can argue that a lot of the worse aspects of Western culture in the late 2010s onwards comes a variety of things (corruption, anti-intellectualism) also add to that list an unwillingness to accept failure, a juvenile attitude that one does not continually change and learn in the face of subjects, one that does not learn a subject cannot merely be conquered, with the knowledge it may have never been meant to be completed. Kirk Cameron sadly did not learn as, in December 2020, as an anti-mask and lockdown supporter he went to stage mask-less carol singing protests during the season, twice with mass crowds, during the COVID-19 pandemic⁵. Most reviews, if they time stamp themselves, may never consider the opinions of those on the opposite side of the argument, but this morality tale of mine, for a film which is misguided as its reputation suggests and for only the morbidly curious, is not meant to be another burial of an American right wing Evangelical either.

In fact, truthfully, I will argue the left wing are as capable of this type of ignorance and misguidedness, in a worse capacity behind moral righteousness and common sense to shout down their opponents in the same way Kirk Cameron does to Christian in the front seat of a car, their own vocabulary replacing the phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid" with a similar unwillingness to debate a subject. In mind to the likes of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens forced his protagonist and the reader to experience the cruelty of real life before there could be a happy ending. This particular morality tale does not ignore the real difficult nature of the world, particularly as this review to stamp it to December 2020 comes from a miserable era in human society. The moral however is one I feel is important, whilst also being a very simple one - that we really need, even on an amateur level, better critical thinking and debating skills. I am sure, one day, I could easily write a very long polemic about a film from a left wing perspective this ill advised and ill-thought-out, which makes this a moral I want to learn as much as any of my dear readers should.

 

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1) "Training champions for Christ since 1971"

2) An example from the 2020 re-election of this can be found HERE.

3) An article on this, though from the scientific side of the debate, can be found HERE.

4) As talked of HERE.

5) HERE.

In Danger and Deep Distress, The Middleway Spells Certain Death (1974)

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Doggiewoggiez! Poochiewoochiez! (2012)

Directors: Everything is Terrible!

Cast: Hundreds of dogs and James Belushi's reaction faces

To begin with, this compilation of existing footage comes from Everything Is Terrible, a video blogging website whose origins go as far back as 2000 but properly launched their website in 2007, collecting together various pieces of filmed ephemera, for YouTube and online videos, publics screenings and DVD releases. In this case they can be can be seen as cinema's version of "plunderphonics", a term especially with the group Negativland who used existing sources to subvert their content and wider meanings.

Everything Is Terrible were likely helped through their existence by the burgeoning fascination with eighties VHS culture, purveyors and archivists of all the bizarre self released material even into the nineties that was available in the United States, even commercial tapes from that era onwards that we look on in hindsight at on YouTube dumbfounded with. The British like myself know this through anything from exercise videos and instructional films, but the United States is a significantly bigger country, with a bigger industry, and Everything Is Terrible can also add to this the likes of public access television, able to draw on the religious (Christian work about a dog puppet praying to Jesus) to whatever odd things are possibly found at the back of a garage.

Poochiewoochies admittedly, in its tale to retell Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain (1973) with dog videos, pulls from more Hollywood films and straight to video work, but when you see the likes of the dog message segments, that's the type of work EiT is famous for, cutting out some of the choice titbits alongside the most banal of dog films to create this production. Also, yeah, let's step back as The Holy Mountain in cult circles is a big film, Jodorowsky off the back of funding from the Beatles manager Allen Klein making a tale of spiritual discovery which was surreal and truly bizarre. The initial text is already weird, so this framework retold with dogs is admittedly intriguing. It is one of Doogiewoogiez's crutches to hinder it however as, whilst it could work perfectly as a template for an odyssey, it's barely used and vague here as a structure.

Why was it used? Possibly the idea of "God = Dog" joke and there is the scene where the group of followers wishing to become enlightened have their consciousnesses connected to an actual dog, a sequence whose sound clip to first person dog shots from various sources does work in Doogiewoogiez. As a result, the vagueness of the structure means this still requires the other film to work, which wouldn't be an issue weren't it not for the fact that it's left as a disjointed collection of pieces which can tire without context. The structural choice only works occasionally when it's explicitly pulling from the source material, including the introduction of those followers, who were given little stories each within The Holy Mountain, here used to go into segments such as dogs and sex, dogs in sports etc.

It does tap into the really questionable attitudes we have when it comes to our pets, and I say this as someone who grew up with dogs (specifically boxers) all my life and love them. Alongside our habit to fixate over animals even over fellow human beings - such as is the case with us British - alongside the complacent view we have about how unique human beings are. This works both ways as, in one of the best aspects of the film, the research done, you see just how much embarrassing material our four legged friends have had to put up with, be it being forced into costumes or a cavalcade of badly animated mouth movements plastered over their faces. Even before I consider my own opinions, that as there is no Dr. Doolittle available, and thus we cannot truly talk to dogs and gauge a similar intelligence to ours or not, the deep pit of dog films and television churned out since the dawn of cinema, be it monochrome scenes of dogs being dressed like cowboys to Marmaduke's artificial distorted facial features, is a real sign of how we've come to abuse this is cinema, even before the film shows all the times in fiction dogs were kicked, threatened with being shot or having a blowtorch to their face in stories.

I say this as someone who argues no idea, even a dog being allowed to play American football as in one film here, is inherently bad, and that a great funny dog film can be made, but that the evidence here shows all the ways we miss the mark without having to see the entire length of them. Some pretty infamous material makes its appearance. Poochinski (1990), a failed TV pilot about Peter Boyle being killed and returning back as an English bulldog puppet, or Karate Dog (2004), one of Bob Clark's last films about Chevy Chase as a dog who has eventually has a fight with Jon Voight in the finale. James Belushi also becomes the unofficial mascot for all the reaction shots he has over the film, all possibly because (like Cuba Gooding Jr and even older Vincent Price) he made one film involving a dog, K-9 (1989), which is gone to constnalty through the film for clips.

Many mainstream films like Snow Dogs (2002) and Air Bud (1997) appear. With all the narratives excised, you forget how bizarre a lot of these films are in hindsight, and there is a good moment where, in pain staking research, the same plot points are repeated together from these films, from child protagonists always losing parents to vague film disease/car crash incidents off-screen or how dog related genital/buttock trauma is a common joke throughout these films.

The reference to Negativland is appropriate as, honestly, there was many missed opportunities in terms of subverting their material. Negativland can be humorous but also hit salient points, and the only time Doogiewoogiez stands on that band's shoulders, heavy handed but perfectly justified, is the segment that starts with racial stereotypes (both dogs literally dressed as stereotypical African tribes people to the obsession with "urban" slang even from young male characters let alone dogs) before getting into the idea of dog breeds I myself have always had a concern about. The idea that the obsession with breeding exact breeds and marginalisation of "mongrels", if applied to human beings, would be eugenics, which EiT in their one great moment here don't pussyfoot around mocking, alongside bizarre clips like a British woman being interviewed and presuming because she has a Chihuahua, a dog of Mexican origins, it presumably likes Mexican food.

Mostly Doogiewoggiexz goes for obvious jokes, some choice cuts of weirdness that are too many to pick out, from farts being used to stop dog chupacabras, to dogs playing baseball. It does cause one to be amused that, in a hundred years, we've covered so much with dogs you can have the aforementioned brawl between Jon Voight and a CGI dog, or that certain actors like Cuba Gooding Jr. appear in these films in their long, varying careers. It's a shame the structure isn't enough still, the weakest material all the manipulation of used images into psychedelic video collage material, not exactly compelling to be frankly. The only aspect of those sequences, which look like the kind of online videos that became dime a dozen on YouTube, is how Harry the Bigfoot, from Harry and the Hendersons (1987), is an honorary member of that collage despite being a cryptozoological ape creature that the creators clearly were obsessed with since childhood.

The other issue is that frankly Doggiewoggiez is ironic to a fault. A sarcasm does feel pronounced throughout, and it's felt especially with the use of Christian material as there's always a cheapness to the humour, a laboured nature when the material itself, when bad, should be allowed to hang itself on its own petard, and other moments like the humanoid dog puppet who prays to God, who in scenes is panicked and scared, would be far more fascinating for me to see in their original context to unpick. Material like a young boy dancing and singing Magic Dance by David Bowie with actors in dog costumes, after a talking well has told him he can do so if he wishes to, is weird but there's a charm too, a production like this not realising that for every eyebrow raising and questionable piece there's others which are more sympathetic for me beyond taking lines of dialogue out of context for crude jokes or to be just laughed at. Yes, some of it deserves to be questioned, like Tim Allen in a family film being naked in front of his wife and kids after turning back from being a dog, but even the dippy and strange things like people who believing their dogs are psychics and reincarnated spirits are still human beings to be considered. And all of this is in knowledge that the project was always meant to be fun first; it's just that it needed to be more focused and sharper.

Abstract Spectrum: Kitsch/Psychotronic/Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Two Or Three Things I Know About Her (1967)

From http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/post_images/
19813/1967_TwoorThreeThings_Italian.jpg?1446724861

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Screenplay: Catherine Vimenet and Jean-Luc Godard

Cast: Marina Vlady (as Juliette Jeanson); Roger Montsoret (as Robert Jeanson); Anny Duperey (as Marianne); Raoul Lévy (as John Bogus, the American); Jean Narboni (as Roger); Juliet Berto (as Girl talking to Robert); Christophe Bourseiller (as Christophe Jeanson)

Synopsis: For over eighty five minutes Jean-Luc Godard depicts the cultural climate of Paris and France in 1967, following a housewife, Marina Vlady (Jeanson), who has to moonlight as a prostitute for additional income. Following primarily women who cross Marina's path, an unseen narrator voiced by Godard himself assesses how language has changed, in brightly coloured scenes, now advertising and magazines exist.

After years of transitioning from viewing Jean-Luc Godard as an overrated director for me to being a highly admirable one I hold highly, a huge point to make from my perspective after having to work hard viewing his films originally is that it's not a good idea to try to explain every theme, quotation and image in a single Godard film in terms of having a single, complete connection and meaning, as if they are solidified quantities in only one form. Godard not so long after starting his career, at beginning with Contempt (1963), decided to make his films even if they had plots hung over them the cinematic equivalents of his personal journals; the quotations and techniques meant to interconnect with every other one in the films but, like a stream of consciousness if you wrote whatever came to mind in a diary, his work gladly jumps to each one by what felt appropriate for the mood at the moment of each scene. When he claimed cinema was dead with Week End (1967), and went onto the Dziga Vertov group and then onto the video made essay work with his future collaborator and life partner Anne-Marie Miéville, not even his "second debut" Slow Motion (1980) would be like the films he made before as he continued diving further into the deep end of his style, refusing to come back.

From http://designobserver.com/media/images/Two_or_Three_Things1.jpg

In depicting the life of a wife, happy in her life with two children but working on the side as a prostitute, over a small span of time, Godard is able to weave in the many things that exist within her timeframe, the clothes shops and cafes in their colourful details to the words found on both billboards and spoken aloud by people around her. The Vietnam war is looming over the film, as if the state of France at the time which Godard is heavily critical of in his narration.  With Two Or Three Things I Know About Her, like Godard's other work, a huge factor with viewing them is continually having to absorb materials and ideas that are thrown in rapid quantities every minute. A lot has to be absorbed in his films, and baring the time dated content of France at the point this film was released, a year before the May 1968 riots that shock the country, Godard wanted to tackle the state of modern society in full detail in only a very short length. He does however sum the film's point early on, helping the viewer, when a character says language is a house people live in. Language and its use, and misuse, is a huge theme for his work that would continue onwards, the barrage of visual and audio stimuli in his films at this point in his career as much a permanent, ongoing obsession with the vagueness of language, culminating decades later by the time of Film Socialisme (2010)  reduced to a YouTube clip of two kittens making noises as if they're talking to each other in the middle of a work saturated in language.

From http://deeperintomovies.net/journal/image14/23things6.jpg

Parodies of Godard's filmmaking style and French art cinema eventually fail when you go beyond his obsession with shooting actors speaking obtuse proclamations whilst smoking, as from the moment he used jump cuts in his debut, originally seen as mistakes due to bad editing, he discovered how to manipulate everything within a film and what made such a film in creation. He could even manipulate the opening and ending credits - finding words in the middle of others, playing with their colour and font - and took a swan dive into using anything visual or audio related, everything with a film itself, in his work to explain his views and how language could be distorted.  (A testament to this is that his last film in his eighties, Goodbye to Language (2014)  was made in 3D with a camera he had built personally to be able to do so). As a result of this, not only does this film still have relevant moments to the current day, the level of visual stimuli in billboards and advertisements worse with the internet, but his almost pop-art colours and inventiveness help were the ideas may be difficult to understand clearly on a first viewing, the depth of the little games he plays expansive. Allusions in allusions, double meanings and references, a break taking and prolonged sequence with the bubbles in a black coffee becoming like stars in a galaxy, as Godard as the narrator admits language has become vague and difficult for himself to use, next to moments that are clearly absurd and humorous such as the man who checks the water meter appearing when the female occupant is in the bath.

From http://www.unsungfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/
2012/08/2-or-3-things-i-know-about-her_03.jpg

Technical Details:

The scope in how much Godard manipulates his film texture could compile a whole book just to chronicle this single film. Important for this film thought particularly is editing, particularly as within the content of each scene being depicted he is careful to make every detail, every passing comment made by a bystander stand out, all coming together for the theme of a very consumerist world. Moments when he lets the camera slow move across a scene without the heavy editing, such as a scene when Juliette takes her daughter to day care, allow both the film to breathe but still have a lot of details in the background to pay attention to too.

After his debut Breathless (1960), a scrappy and energised work where the tracking camera shots were memorably created by using a wheelchair the crew got hold of, Godard would take advantage of how he became successful and had access to what Orson Welles called the "giant train set" in the type of technical quality he had at hand by using everything from the CinemaScope lens to the colour to a greater end than with other directors. The dynamic nature of his films, particularly when they get to the colour entries, have a greater pop than a lot of his contemporaries, paradoxically the most esoteric director of the French New Wave besides Jacques Rivette also being the most colourful and playful of many in terms of how energetic he could be. A reason why I grew to admire Godard eventually, which you see in this film through its ability to pack so much into its short length, is how he is able to convey a message both concisely but offer multiple meanings in one image or statement within a single moment.

From https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3570/3798000394_3c1bec6d3e.jpg

Abstract Spectrum: Experimental/Expressionist

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High

Godard managed to make films entirely of his own genre, Godardian, but it depends on which particularly films which are the most "Godardian" of the lot. Détective (1985) [Reviewed Here] was a narrative feature which was still primarily influenced by its plot despite its many tangents. Week End on the other hand, even though it has a narrative thread, takes its lead from Alice In Wonderland and entirely throws its protagonists into an extreme direction, a series of jokes, political provocations and absurdities that wash over the viewer forcing them to follow its logic completely. With Two Or Three Things I Know About Her, while a later work like Film Socialisme would take its structure and style further, the older film from the sixties is still completely unpredictable in how it manipulates and changes directions in what it does, its theme of language and popular culture filtered through the many issues and mediums that were there at the time; aptly, shots of two men behind a giant pile of books, one of them recording down a random paragraph the other reads from various types of literature to make one text, is an appropriate metaphor for the film around the duo  as a whole, the scramble of tones and words around the characters shown in unfiltered form with Godard himself trying to make sense of it for himself as much as for the viewer.

It is a film where a random female bystander, one of many, can suddenly talk directly to the camera about her life, forcing the viewer to engage with her about her life, where an incredibly young Juliet Berto can suddenly appear in a cameo scene as well as if a prequel to her character in Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974). Bertolt Brecht is immediately quoted in the opening and Godard already undermines the forth wall soon after this when the narrator introduces the female protagonist played by Jeanson twice as two people and describes head movements that he later says are pointless to inform the viewer about. For Godard, in the early beginnings of his career, there was already a disregard with conventions about what tone and style in conventional filmmaking should be, leading to films like this one which he would build upon throughout the decades after.  

From https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2489/3798002994_bb2610490a.jpg

Personal Opinion:

A difficult film, one I don't recommend as the first Godard you see, but the rush of invention once you get used to his style makes it certainly one of the most memorable. Personally I find Breathless, his most known film, to be pretty inadequate and lacking in comparison to what he would make onwards, a debut that Godard would drastically improve upon when he could manipulate everything seen and heard onscreen. Now that I can appreciate the director's work I anticipate viewing a Godard film I've never seen before because nearly every one of them, including shorts without any subtitles, are going to bring something unique in how they are made and, importantly, in the ideas and content within them. As he's dissected politics over the years in films like Two Or Three Things I Know About Her, he's done more with cinema in one film compared to a handful from other directors in terms of invention and scope, and that he has made many films of this quality is an even more impressive feat.