The Black Book; Stepbrothers; The Cell

Recently, I wrote about Paul Verhoeven and the need to possibly re-evaluate my views on his work. I haven’t rented Showgirls yet but we did see The Black Book, Verhoeven’s most recent film from 2006. The Black Book is, as with most Verhoeven movies, an exercise in extremes. It encompasses the best and the worst of Verhoeven’s impluses towards pulpy melodrama and excess.

The Black Book is a cartoon, basically. It reminded me of war comics, though of a particulary trashy sort. Though the characters suffer some awful and horrific things, I wasn’t as moved as I would have been had they been any semblance of a human being, a real person, and not the cartoony symbols that they were. But that’s focusing on the wrong things, really. Paul Verhoeven is not into subtley, veracity, or any kind of restraint. He is not into “real.” It would be as if I expected Sgt. Rock or Superman comics to thoughtfully and conscientiously portray a war. That isn’t to say comics can’t do this. Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus is the best and most obvious example.

I guess, however, that I’d expected more; perhaps that’s where I went wrong. Never expect anything from Verhoeven but extreme and explicit trash! I might have liked it more, then. But I got higher expectations since this was a return to his home country, his first film in Dutch since The 4th Man, which was an intriguing, stylish thriller, and a lot of fun. I had hoped it would be more like that! It wasn’t. It was more like Total Recall and Showgirls at once, with lots of tits and violent bloodshed and a vat of shit dumped on our heroine for good measure. Gross!

But in spite of these crass moments - some would say, because of them - The Black Book never bores. It races along its twisty, turny way at breakneck speed, tragedy after tragedy occuring with nary a pause for reflection, so that it feels like the characters are not psychologically affected by any of it. That’s how I felt, too: mostly unaffected by all the suffering. It’s just entertainment! But, well, did I already mention that the film is set during the Holocaust? It seems maybe too irreverent to speak of The Holocaust in terms of trashy entertainment. Just a thought.

So in the end, do I still feel that Verhoeven needs re-evaluation? He’s managed to convince me that his films aren’t necessarily worth writing off, but I’m not sure that I like them all that much.

And here’s a brief run-down on some of the other movies we’ve seen recently.

Stepbrothers. A horrible movie. Joe is the Will Ferrell fan; I think he’s great on SNL, but not really much else. Anchorman was pretty good, and my four-year-old son loves Elf. Usually, Ferrell often provides the only really funny bits in each of his movies, and two or three funny bits per movie, at best. Some, like Old School, have only one (I’m streeeeaking, I’m streeeeeeeaking!). Stepbrothers sucked all the way through, but got worse and worse to the end, plus oddly and inappropriately violent for a comedy. I don’t even know why we watched the whole thing. Really, run away from it as fast as you can.

The Cell. This was kind of like playing catch-up with movies I’d meant to see and had put off. But after seeing Tarsem Singh’s more recent and absolutely lovely The Fall, we wanted to right that oversight. Again, the art direction and cinematography are both breath-taking and surreal. But the plot was completely unoriginal, very Silence of the Lambs, right down to the last-minute race against time to save the latest victim, and so, the film failed overall to impress me much, beyond the visuals. But in the realm of the visual, Tarsem (as he’s now known as) does a great job with his highly inventive and imaginative settings.

The Fall

I had never heard of The Fall. Joe had been reading good things about it, but since it had barely had a release, we thought, how good could it be? Well, we were stunned and amazed. It is simply one of the most imaginative, cinematic, beautiful and clever films that I’ve seen in quite some time! The story, set in the 1920s, is about a paralyzed and heartbroken Hollywood stuntman who weaves a magical tale of five mythical heroes (a fey and fancy Charles Darwin with a monkey companion among them) to a little girl with a broken arm (Catinca Untaru in one of the best, most natural performaces I have ever seen by a child). There are telling and clever little details that illustrate the interactive nature of storytelling. For instance, when the stuntman tells of an “Indian” who has a wigwam and a squaw, the girl, who is from Romania and unfamiliar with Hollywood Cowboys and Indians, imagines a beturbaned Indian from India. The imagery blends fantastic and surreal elements throughout, and is so stunning that I was convinced it had to be CGI, but evidently it is not. This is the kind of whimsical, extravagant metanarrative that’s right up my alley, though I can see how one either buys it completely or hates it completely. But for me, all the threads work beautifully together to weave a tale of wonder and imagination.

So how is it that The Fall is virtually unknown? It first premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006, but didn’t receive a (very limited) theatrical release in the States until 2008, and went straight to DVD in most other countries. Tarsem, whose first feature was The Cell with JLo, made the movie himself over four years and in 28 countries… that is, he financed it completely himself, outside of any studio help, so as to have complete creative control. Tarsem was hoping to get a rave review from Roger Ebert (who was a fan of The Cell) when the film premiered, but unfortunately, Ebert was ill that week, so was unable to attend. Even more unfortunately, the generally negative responses to the film at the TIFF gave it a bad rep, which it was unable to overcome, even though Ebert later gave it four stars. The film is a meta-fairy tale for adults, which made it hard to peg down and market, according to several acquisition executives. Tarsem’s reputation as a commercial and music video director worked against the film, as many saw it as thus having more style than substance. And the fact that it was self-financed gave the film a reputation as a "vanity project," unworthy of being studio-financed or distributed. What a picture this paints of how the film market works in abominable ways! How it quashes originality while bolstering mediocrity! How many other gems of movies remain unseen because of similar situations?

Fortunately, the film is slowly receiving some recognition. It’s drawn comparisons to Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, and the DVD comes as “presented by David Fincher and Spike Jonze,” which lends it their stamp of approval. It’s a shame that as a result of one poor reception at its premiere, it hasn’t had the chance to gather the audience it deserves. I say, go see it ASAP! Maybe it can gain a second life on DVD.