Week 4: Bhutto and Bad Teacher

Bhutto, 2010

Bad Teacher, 2011

Cultural stories are full of men developing.  The genre known as the bildungsroman is the catch-all term used to discuss the development of boys becoming men.  A more common term of "coming-of-age" film catches the idea in simple terms, but an analysis doesn't mean literal aging.  As the boy develops, he struggles with the expectations of society, putting himself in conflict with the world around him.  Themes genre include a loss of innocence and taking of responsibility.  The evolution of the individual boy into the world of men (or his failure to develop) creates the dramatic arc for a story. 

The concept of applying the bildungsroman to female protagonists is controversial.  Feminist literary critics think applying the concepts of "making the man" to women's stories demeans them by not recognizing the difference of female experience.  Author Annis Pratt argues that many stories about women prize "growing down" a surrender of autonomy and independence in order to fit in a larger structure.  Because our stories have limited tools with which to discuss women's development as women, women's stories are placed in male genres.

Bhutto is a documentary tracing the life of Benazir Bhutto, the first female Prime Minister of Pakistan who was killed in 2007.  As Prime Minister of a country of 180 million people, nuclear weapons, a near autonomous security service, and hard-line radicals, Benazir's rise to the office was nothing short of amazing.  The film describes Benazir's youth briefly before talking about the death of her father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was tried and killed by the government of General Zia, Pakistan's military leader in the 1970's.  After her father's murder, Benazir pursues a career in politics, hoping to return democracy to Pakistan.  Although the film spins off into tangents, Bhutto tries to tell the story of a political rise, the fall at the hands of enemies (and herself), and a return cut short by some of those same enemies.

Political development stories are always complex.  Films like Che follow the actions of a figure instead of showing ideological development.  Documentaries often try to focus on the facts of a situation, but Bhutto attempts to make the story of politics about a child carrying on the legacy of the father.  Zulfikar wanted a democratic Pakistan to encourage its entrance as an important player in the world, but General Zia's compromises with the most hardline Islamists plunged Pakistan into a swamp where it behind other nations, especially India.  Benazir fought not only the Islamic traditionalists but a military culture to restore her family name and legacy.

The handing of a father's legacy to a daughter raises questions of gender and power.  Pakistan (along with many Western nations) thinks of power as a masculine trait, and political power comes from "male" activities like competition and domination.  Traditional female roles forbid women from taking power in public, so women who desire political power must break their prescribed role in favor of masculine displays of power.  The abandoning of femininity to take power allows critics of female politicians to attack them by claiming the woman in charge acts "mannish."  Struggles between the need to appear powerful and feminine at the same time creates a "double-bind" for women.  Political cultures expect female politicians to wield power without losing their womanhood.  When the status of "woman" means "submissive" or "less powerful," then women must deal with this double-bind to become powerful.

Bhutto implies that Benazir inherited leadership from her father.  Benazir was Zulfikar's eldest daughter, but she needed to defend her political legacy from her brother Murtaza.  The murder of Murtaza allowed Benazir to retain the spotlight, but the legacy of the dispute with her brother (and accusations that Benazir was complicit from Murtaza's daughter Fatima) are the commonly-cited pieces by other critics to show the balance of the film.  Benazir's legacy as a feminist or democrat is suspect at best.  William Dalrymple of The Guardian claims Benazir was more princess than populist, and the Islamists rebel against her not only because of her status as a woman in power but because she represented a monied-class that treated Pakistan like a feudal kingdom. 

Like many executives, Benazir found the limitations of her office stifling.  The widespread corruption and degredation were unsolvable, in part, because networks of military/intelligence people were unwilling to concede power.  Government officials were involved in graft and corruption, but the political process became about score-settling after every election.  Benazir's exile to Dubai occurred as a compromise between herself and the new government once she was forced out of office.  The inability of the government to make change and a Prime Minister's struggle to do so would have made a good story, but it would be false.  Bhutto could never become a story of naive outsider entering the system because Benazir always had access to power.  Bhutto accurately present Benazir as an outsider because of her gender, but it's critical to remember that Benazir inherited better connections than most men in the country.

Obstacles related to gender, however, were not always trivial.  Bhutto's goal is to spread the idea of Benazir as a symbol for women, and she struggled with the double-bind.  Her arranged marriage allowed her to continue a political career where she would need to meet with men.  Some in the military struggled against saluting a woman.  Despite her struggles with gender, Benazir is credited by many with the preservation of her father's legacy.  Bhutto shows Benazir as becoming her father by taking his place and dying for his cause.

Bad Teacher's main character Elizabeth (Camron Diaz) focuses on herself rather than any cause.  In a rebellion against the Inspirational Education Film, Bad Teacher takes the Bad Santa model and places a woman at the center.  Elizabeth wants a man to take care of her, so she decides to raise money for larger breasts to attract that man. At the same time, Elizabeth attempts to snag Scott Delacourt (Justin Timberlake), a handsome and wealthy new teacher.  She thinks (and knows) her power comes from sexuality and manipulation, the tools of the weak.  Elizabeth always flirts, tricks, and steals her way through life, thus subverting and avoiding confrontation with power.  Aside from her physical attractiveness, Elizabeth has the same drinking, drugging, cursing, and lazing habits as her male counterparts in similar films.

Where Bad Teacher struggles is character development.  Most comedies starring a male lead take the three-act structure like this: 

Act 1, The immature character is introduced to society

Act 2, The immature character begins to adapt and grow until a major setback

Act 3, The immature character must mature to overcome this setback.

For men in comedies that follow this structure (and there are a lot), the goal is maturity.  A female love interest is either the reason for maturity or a reward for maturing.  The sexual politics are secondary to the man's struggle with society's expectations of him.

Bad Teacher changes the structure by having Elizabeth pursue a man through immaturity.  Unlike traditional comedies, however, there is no growth in Bad Teacher.  Elizabeth's change from uncaring, superficial person never really comes.   Elizabeth spends a scene with a nerdy kid with a crush and says to him, "You'll never get her, I was that hot girl.  Hotter even."  At the end of the second act, the nerdy kid professes his love for the crush and is soundly rejected.  The nerdy kid flees the scene and Elizabeth, uncharacteristically, chases after him.  Elizabeth delivers a kid about how his crush is the type of girl to go for flash and money.  This all takes place in a few seconds, but this is supposed to be the growth point for Elizabeth where she gains new insight about how to behave in the world. 

The problem with the insight is two-fold.  First, it feels unearned and out-of-character.  Elizabeth probably would have sided with the attractive girl (little changed to make her relate to the nerd) to warn her about men.  One might say this insight was needed to attract Scott, but I think the manipulation in favor of the weak was forced rather than genuine.  Second, Elizabeth reverts to her manipulative ways to escape the third-act crisis.  Rather than using her insight into the victim's world to deal with problems honestly, Elizabeth uses threats, tricks, and luck to resolve the crisis, just like Act 1 Elizabeth.

Critics complain about the gender politics of the movie, but the real problem is the cheap character development.  Nothing really forces Elizabeth to change or grow.  Bad Teacher came out the same year as Bridesmaids, which did the gross-out comedy develop arc with women just fine.  There are stories for women, and women can be funny in masculine-styles, but Bad Teacher's shallow character development fails in ways many male-centered comedies succeed without effort. 

The "building of the woman" genre has few examples in film.  Bad Teacher lacks the writing and overall story to demonstrate real development.  Bhutto has the story of a powerful woman advancing, but the need to make her a symbol of power rather than talking about her actual power limits the ability to see the woman develop.  We can forgive Bhutto for not developing fully because its star's life was cut short, but Bad Teacher's static character was the result of bad plotting.

Other Films:

Highlander, 1986
Ivan's Childhood, 1962
50/50, 2011

Week 3: The Most Dangerous Game and The Debt

"The Most Dangerous Game" is an adaptation of the short story of the same title.  The story follows Bob Rainsford (Joel Mcrea), a big game hunter, finding safety on a mysterious island.  Bob finds himself in a castle owned by Zaroff, (Leslie Banks) a wealthy Russian who escaped the Second Revolution and big game hunter.  Zaroff's castle also holds survivors from other shipwrecks, Martin and Eve (played by Robert Armstrong and Fay Wray).  Zaroff complains that hunting became dull, so he chose to hunt a more thrilling game: Man.  Bob realizes he may become the game in this hunt, and he accedes to become prey for the night.  Should Bob survive the night, he will win freedom for himself and Eve.  Much of the movie deals with Zaroff hunting Bob, with Bob attempting to elude Zaroff and setting traps.

The "Criterion Cast" did an episode on "The Most Dangerous Game" and its role in film.  Much of this post on "The Most Dangerous Game" owes a debt to this podcast, so take listen.  The hosts claim this film can be seen as a companion piece to "King Kong," for it features a similar cast, crew, and directors.  The commentary track on the disc talks about how the film was made as a side project while "King Kong" was filmed.  It's likely that the film, while successful in its day, was overshadowed in film history by the groundbreaking film about a giant ape.  Although "King Kong" certainly ranks as a great film, it wouldn't be the first time Hollywood spectacle overshadows something literate and small.

Contemporary audiences will notice the short running time (just over an hour).  Filmmakers assumed audiences in the early 1930's would never sit through something more than an hour.  The hunt begins very quickly, making most of the film a chase sequence.  With less than a third of the film dedicated to establishing the characters, the film relies on dramatic presentation.  From the first appearance of Leslie Bank's Zaroff, a contemporary audience will recognize he's the villain.  The Criterion Cast hosts argued that audiences in the 1930's were less familiar with Russians (or didn't have decades of anti-Soviet propaganda directed at them).  It's easy to see how Banks' interpretation of Zaroff, the sinister sophisticate, set the blueprint for other evil characters:

Zarkoff

Dr. Han Zarkov, Flash Gordon

Evil Spock

Hans Gruber, Die Hard

"The Most Dangerous Game" has some issues with acting.  Bob is the only survivor of his shipwreck, and he recounts this fact to others in the manner one would say his friends couldn't attend the party because they had an early morning.  The lack of emotion and connection to others can be forgiven, for many modern action movies dispense with the death of others in order to start the action right away.  The theatrical acting style may turn off those accustomed to current film, but the film needs to be seen as an action movie, which rarely focuses on character development.  A weakness of film as a medium is the difficulty in portraying the inner thoughts of characters, so I assumed the lack of depth came from a quick change from literature to film.  The short story had little in the realm of character development, for it had only Bob and Zaroff as major characters.  Eve plays no major role in the outcome of the film, except as a damsel in distress, so I never understood why Bob drug her along because Eve seemed like more of a burden than help.  They claim that Eve "isn't safe" in the castle with Zaroff's minions, and they both conclude she was MUCH SAFER in the jungle with an armed master hunter stalking them.  The logic flaw doesn't ruin the film, but the scriptwriters spent less time dealing with her than they did with other characters.

The lack of character development is the biggest flaw in the film, and the result is Bob's inability to grasp the irony of his situation.  While being chased by dogs, Bob remarks, "This is how most of those animals must have felt."  This line represents the apex of Bob's thoughts on hunting, thus limiting the scope of the film.  The story ends with Bob taking the role of apex predator by killing Zaroff and sleeping in his bed, but the film requires the implied escape of Eve and Bob.  Stagnant characters are common in melodrama, so we should view the film as a well-made example of the form.  Most action movies act as melodramas (with simply drawn heroes, dames, and villains) and "The Most Dangerous Game" is no different.

"The Criterion Cast's" variations on a theme focused mostly on films like "Predator" or "The Running Man," where the idea of hunting humans wasn't explored in depth.  "The Hunted," a film about a mad special agent being hunted by his former trainer, attempts to deal with the psychological ramifications of hunting people.  Benecio del Toro's character's mental breakdown causes him to use his skills to hunt men.  Zaroff in "The Most Dangerous Game" mentions having the idea of hunting men after a significant head injury.  These stories both allow for the idea where the motivation for a person to hunt from another person is insanity.  Other films work on the conceit that men hunt other men for revenge and pride.  "Munich" focuses on the moral degradation of those men who hunt other men.  The costs of people hunting for political purposes comes up in "The Debt."

"The Debt" deals with man-hunting and a love triangle.  Three Mossad agents attempt to capture and spirit away Diter Vogel (Jesper Christensen), a former Nazi war-criminal known as "The Surgeon of Burkenau," from his home in East Germany to be put on trial in Israel.  The team of Rachel (young Jessica Chastain/old Helen Mirren), David (Sam Worthington/Ciarian Hinds), and Stephan (Marton Csokas/Tom Wilkinson) successfully kidnap Vogel, but their plan falls apart and Vogel escapes.  All three agents agree to tell a story that Rachel killed Vogel, a story that propels the team to fame.  Thirty years later, Stephan finds Rachel to tell her that Vogel may have resurfaced in the Ukraine.  The possible return of Vogel undermines not only the team's prestige but the career of Rachel and Stephan's daughter, who recently completed a book praising Rachel's bravery.  The film focuses on the psychological implications of promoting a noble lie and amending history.

Others have written great reviews about the love triangle in "The Debt," so I won't bother to cover it.  The initial plan and its unraveling is more useful in examining the theme of hunting people.  "The Debt" is a fictional story with Vogel based on Dr. Mengele and the entire operation based on the kidnapping of Adolph Eichmann by Mossad agents.  Like the team sent to kidnap Eichmann, both David and Rachel lost relatives in the Holocaust.  David, having lost his entire family, wants to put Vogel on trial so the world will know the atrocities Vogel committed.  Stephan, as team leader, seems to care about accomplishing the mission and never struggles with the moral weight of the task.  Rachel's mother died in the war, but the film implies she was selected because she could enter Vogel's gynecology practice and strike where he was vulnerable.  All three know the importance of their mission to the state of Israel and the need to locate those responsible for the Holocaust.

The original plan involved a quick escape from East Berlin, but the plan (no surprise) fails.  As the team decides what to do, they hold Vogel in the small apartment.  Time passes and the characters struggle forward coming up with an alternate plan.  All three think of their mission as morally right, but those beliefs come from different places.  Sympathy for the victims motivates Rachel, Stephan wants to advance the reputation of Israel, and David wants truth to come out.  Because Stephan never interacts with Vogel as a person, Vogel focuses his manipulations on Rachel and David.  Vogel's claims to David, "Four guards led thousands of Jews to the showers," making David consider the possibility that Jews were weak.  David responds to the manipulation by brutally beating Vogel.  Rachel's sympathy for weakness has Vogel playing up his infertility and relationship with his wife.  The compassion Rachel shows to Vogel eventually aids his escape. 

What unites all three is their belief in the righteousness of their mission and its importance to Israel.  Vogel asks Rachel why the team doesn't kill him, for he didn't believe he had much chance of being acquitted in an Israeli court.  He argues that the team will kill him by handing him over just the same as if they murdered him in the apartment.  The complexity involved in bringing him to trial was about honor for Israel and their image as a civilized state.  To accomplish their legal trial, the team must sneak across another nation's borders, tap phones, impersonate civil workers, kidnap a person, and sneak across the borders again.  When the plan goes awry, the team winds up assaulting and killing innocent border guards.  In the apartment, Stephan revels in torturing Vogel with an off-key rendition of "Deutchland uber Alles."  The decaying apartment, with increasingly leaking roof and cockroach-infested sink, symbolizes the moral decline of the high-minded mission into murky territory.

Writer Michael Ignatieff claims that torture comes from intense morality rather than immorality.  It's hard to sympathize with a monster like Vogel, but we must consider the extent to which these characters hunt, capture, and detain Vogel based on the belief that their cause is right.  Their version of morality allows them to treat Vogel like a beast, chaining him to a wall, force feeding him, and preventing him from moving.  When Stephan puts a bag over his head, David claims the bag could suffocate Vogel but Stephan no longer views Vogel as human but a problem.  After the escape, the team agrees Vogel will never resurface, so the lie of his death will make the mission worthwhile.  David struggles with the lie and hopes to find Vogel, keeping in line with his desire for truth.

The older David's later hunt for Vogel takes a toll on him.  He never marries, has no friends, and loses his health.  David states he was hospitalized in Mexico, perhaps for psychiatric reasons, but he finds Vogel very late in the film.  He asks the older Rachel if she had the chance, would she kill Vogel rather than try him.  Rachel, knowing the truth would shatter her daughter's career, says she would rather the truth remain buried.  The hunt has no benefit for her, so she leaves it alone.  In this way, Rachel was right to hunt him the first time and right to let him go later.

Although the morality of the team in "The Debt" seems easy to grasp, Zaroff hunts people according to his own code of ethics.  Zaroff believes hunting is true living, thus he thinks a challenging hunt is a true test of his skills.  He is motivated by what he believes to be supremely right, the law of the jungle and that life must be lived at the extreme, and acts on that motivation.  Judging Zaroff's actions is easy because his moral code is abhorrent to most people, but the situation in "The Debt" is no less ambiguous.  Vogel believed the Jews should have died because they were inferior, thus replicating part of Zaroff's outlook.  Because Zaroff wants good sport, he couldn't chase someone he though was subhuman for that would negate the purpose of his hunt.  On the other side of "The Debt's" conflict, Stephan needs to find Vogel (and later maintain the lie) to extend the myth of Israeli skill in hunting enemies.  Stephan thinks the story of Vogel's death demonstrates strength and nothing proves the worth of someone like a successful hunt.

By no means do I intend to trivialize the Holocaust by claiming the pursuit of war criminals is wrong.  Justice should be done, but intelligent people can disagree about if the rendition of Vogel (and the tactics used) are just.  Stephan has no reservations about the hunt or the lie, for he believed in Israel with the same clarity Zaroff believes in the nobility of hunting, but Rachel and David have more complicated feelings.  Hunting people is a strange thing made stranger when done by other people.  If nothing else, these films show how noble ideas, like honor and justice, can cost us our humanity.

Other films:

"Crossing Arizona" 2005
"The Spaghetti West" 2005
"The Architecture of Doom" 1993   

Week 2: Ip Man 2 and Enlighten Up!

 The struggle in writing about the body is trying to assess where meaning originates.  Naturalists claim identity comes from the body's physical structure.  The basic wiring of people determines much of their behavior and abilities, so changing the person requires changing the body.  If a body's practice alters or changes, the person will change to the extent change is possible.  Humans are limited, and determined, by their individual bodies.  Some naturalists assert the body exists prior to society, so social practices have a limited impact on changing bodies.  I will discuss this week's films, Ip Man 2 (2011) and Enlighten Up! (2008), in the context of the body and its relationship to identity and power.

Ip Man 2, another chapter in the VERY LOOSE biography of the life of Bruce Lee's instructor, opens with Ip Man (played again by Donny Yen) settling in British-controlled Hong Kong.  The third act of the film focuses on an illicit boxing series set up by a British official between Chinese martial artists and Twister, a British boxing champion.  The brutal physicality of Twister's punches overwhelm the deflection and parries necessary for the Chinese boxers to land effective attacks.  As you can see in this clip, the violence and raw strength of Western boxing contrasts with the gentle, fluid moving of Chinese martial arts:

Because the subtitles didn't work in this clip, the conversation between Master Hung (the man in the ring) and Ip Man has Hung explaining that he can't permit Chinese martial arts to fail.  If Hung surrenders the match, he will acknowledge that the Chinese are weaker than the British.  Hung's death in the ring motivates Ip Man to fight Twister for revenge against a foreign person.

Self-Discipline vs. Raw Power

The theme of fighting a foreigner bent on proving the superiority of his race motivated Ip Man in the third act of this films predecessor Ip Man but with the Japanese standing in place of the British.  Each film had a non-Chinese villain asserting his culture's dominance by demonstration physical superiority.  The inability of the Chinese martial artists to hurt Twister stands in for the notion of racial superiority.  Twister's physical strength overcame the years of training held by Hung and the students, thus proving the inherent superiority of Western people.  The cultural, spiritual, and social practices of the Chinese failed when faced with the European body.  Twister mocks the Chinese practice of lighting incense before a fight, for Twister believes culture's inferiority is proven by their inability to harm his body.  Twister's body represents Europe's ability to dominate others not through force of culture or ideas but brute strength.  The Western body's superiority trumps the disciplined training of the Chinese.

Enlighten Up! reverses notion of Western cultural superiority by examining yoga as a transformative practice.  Documentarian Kate Churchill, a woman who practiced yoga for years, wanted to prove doing yoga would profoundly change the person's spirit.  She selected unemployed journalist Nick Rosen to journey through the world of yoga and its various forms, hoping Nick will be fundamentally altered by his experience.  Nick thinks of yoga as a decent exercise routine (and clearly enjoys meeting women at yoga sessions), but he thinks the spiritual aspects are hooey.  Kate has Nick trying different yoga disciplines and styles of yoga, and Kate hopes Nick will have a breakthrough and become a different person.

The idea of the body as constructed through cultural practice says biology makes few determinations on the body.  Constructionists say the discourses put upon the body create the body.  Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote in The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life that performed action creates meaning for the body, and our gestures impact our meetings with others.  Gestures have a social meaning, and the gesture articulates power and meaning within established practices.  While Goffman studied human interaction, his principle of meaning through performance works if one assumes divine beings act as people do.  Kate acts as if yoga is an established practice and anyone can access divinity through yoga.  The project's approach of, "any-and-all yoga could lead to enlightenment" means any gesture could eventually lead to spiritual awakening.

Most yogis in the film, however, disagree with the primacy of the gesture.  Every yogi claimed the mentality was important and practice meant nothing.  Only the willing mind could enter enlightenment (if it was possible at all), so no person could access divine power through posing alone.  In all of the interviews with yogis, Nick made his lack of spirituality clear.  Some yogis took a "fake it 'til you make it" approach, but other people said Nick wasn't doing yoga.  The most prominent of these accusers is Kate, whose frustration with Nick's lack of spiritual progress becomes the central conflict of the film.

Although Enlighten Up! seems like a vanity project, the eventual conflict between Nick and Kate becomes the most critical piece of the film.  Kate wants Nick to have an awakening, but Nick appears content to enjoy the physical benefits.  Part of the film has Nick talking with historians and anthropologists to investigate the roots of yoga.  Despite the various claims that yoga is an ancient practice, the academic consensus in the film is that yoga as we know it is only about 100-200 years old.  Kate confronts Nick about his investigations and Nick claims he wants to find "the truth," something which can be measured or observed rather than experienced.

As the film progresses, Kate feels frustrated and believes Nick isn't cooperating.  Although Nick is doing all the correct motions, Kate and some of the yogis think Nick's spiritual blocks prevent him from becoming enlightened.  Pushing Nick to attend more yoga classes had the feeling of Foucault's Discipline and Punish and its ideas of power.  Foucault claimed a person's body could be molded from a peasant to a soldier through repeated gestures.

Critical to the process of change through gesture was the idea of correction by a superior force.  Ip Man 2 has martial arts students submitting to the authority of a master in order to increase their abilities.  Every potential student starts by supplicating before the master.  The master then guides the students' entire body through various gestures with the idea of transforming it.  The movements help students avoid direct attacks and choose feints over offense.  Ip Man's style relies on dodging and parrying rather than strength and power.  Ip Man rarely uses physical force or intimidation, even holding his temper when confronted with obvious insults or bad behavior.  His power comes out only when necessary for his safety (or national pride in the third act), for he follows the ideal of martial arts as a physical and spiritual practice.  Each student volunteers to have his body disciplined to have the power Ip Man has, but students eventually understand that Ip Man's power comes from restraint rather than exercise.

All of Ip Man's students come voluntarily, and Nick was a volunteer as well, but Nick's circumstances differ from .  Many reviews complained that Kate forced Nick to find enlightenment, which is a valid argument.  Yoga has thousands of forms with gazillions of teachers, and most forms take a lifetime to master.  For purposes of the film, Kate had Nick tour various forms for a few sessions over the course of six months.  Forcing the body may work for martial arts, as demonstrated by Foucault and Ip Man, but spiritual enlightenment is different.

Augustine wrote in Book IV of On Christian Doctrine that a speaker receiving applause has not touched the hearts of people, for physical actions demonstrate understanding of a message and appreciation but not change.  Tears, said Augustine, were the true proof of changing someone's heart.  During Nick and Kate's time in India, Nick has an experience where he broke down and said he missed his mother, a kooky spiritual healer whose worldview seems alien to Nick.  He realizes that he should spend more time with his family and their value.  The emotional moment of the film was insufficient for Kate, for her frustration with Nick continues.

Guru Saran Ananda, taken from Enlighten Up!'s website

Kate had little help from the yogis in India, who claimed the poses had little to do with enlightenment.  Divine forces, according to the yogis, don't behave like human society and don't ascribe meaning based on physical gesture.  Guru Saran Ananda believes enlightenment comes from living for oneself.  His analogy is that one could cook to survive or one could cook for others and be happy, but being forced to cook for others will not make a happy cook.  Guru Saran Ananda's views imply that our social world makes enlightenment impossible, for social meanings are forced upon us.  Nick asks Guru Saran Ananda if poses were the fast track to enlightement and Guru Saran Ananda says, "No, it would be easier just to have it," and points to his head.  He doesn't say that he was born enlightened but indicates that being born with enlightement would be easiest of all.

Repeated actions can mold the body, but there is limited evidence that it can mold the spirit.  Without mechanisms of control and punishment, Foucault's worldview falls apart.  Society exists because of those controls on the body.  Both films question the idea that our body determines our identity, but each film shows how society ascribes meaning to the body.  Each film connects exercise to spiritual practice, but only Enlighten Up! shows gesture alone is not enough to achieve enlightenment.  The conflict in Ip Man 2 is more exciting to watch, but both films show how people's bodies determine their relationship to power.  However, our bodies shouldn't determine our worth.  The yogis in Enlighten Up! frequently say there are many ways to spiritual connection and well-being.  Perhaps it's moral to resist the social identity placed upon bodies (as Ip Man does with his fists and various yogis claim to do through their practice).  As Ip Man says in the end of the film, "Though people have different statuses in life, everyone's dignity is the same."

Other films:
Green for Danger, 1946
Tabloid, 2010

Week 1: Silmido and The Desert Fox

 





 With the recent passing of Kim Jong Il, I wanted to watch something about Korea.  My Netflix browsing turned up this film:

The description becomes relevant later

At first, I thought the film was taking a risk.  The idea that anyone would make a film about a North Korean commando raid was astounding.  I wondered if any director, especially a South Korean one, could create characters and story with a topic like this.  I watched the film to discover I was misinformed.


The actual plot of Silmido opens with a North Korean unit entering South Korea while attempting to kill the president.  Cut within the war violence near the DMZ was a sequence of a murder which took place in South Korea by a group of gangsters. Both the gang and North Korean unit had one captured member (In-Chan and Kim Shin-Jo), and each received a death sentence from the court.  As each awaits trial (unaware of the other's existence), the gang member is offered a way out of his death sentence by joining the Republic of Korea's military's special unit.


Much like The Dirty Dozen, the film focuses on a unit of convicted criminals tasked with an impossible mission.  In the case of Unit 684, they are asked to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.  The film progresses with the recruits being whipped into fighting shape by a ruthless commander.  As the recruits push their way through basic training, they predictably bond with their trainers and win the respect of their officers.  However, a difference between The Dirty Dozen and Silmido was the brutality visited upon the recruits in the latter film.  After one sequence where two recruits escape and rape a civilian woman, the entire unit was forced to endure a beating at the hand of their trainers while one of the rapists watched.  The beating ceased when a member of the 684 charged forward and beat the rapist to death.



Silmido varied from The Dirty Dozen by preventing the 684 from beginning their mission.  During an interesting tease, the 684 set off for North Korea during the middle of a rainstorm.  An order to abort came from the government, and the training soldiers stopped the now-fanatical 684 from continuing.  As North/South relations thawed, the existence of 684 became an embarrassment.  High government officials decided the unit needed to be eliminated by their trainers.  If the trainers failed to kill the soldiers, the South Korean government would send military units to kill both the 684 and all the soldiers.

The film caused some controversy in Korea because of its dramatization of the 684 and the discussion of how South Korea operated during the years of Park Chung-hee.  (Normally, I would say SPOILER WARNING, but the 684 was a real unit, so the ending is a matter of record).  Most records about the 684 sprang from the investigations of Baek Dong-Ho, a safecracker who encountered a Silmido survivor known as K.  Baek dilligently traced the rumors to tell the story which became the novel and screenplay.  The ending of the film had every member of the 684 dying in a Wild Bunch-style gun battle.  However, the tracing of the story began with Baek hearing rumors from K, meaning there was at least one survivor. 

Baek's tour of rumor and the subsequent film explored the darker side of Park's regime.  Although it seems impossible now, South Korea was once, in essence, a dictatorship. Park was "our guy," but he ruled South Korea with little respect for human rights or individual freedom.  Silmido's senseless waste of human life and brutality served as a metaphor for the South Korean government's inhumanity during the sixties and seventies.  The casual cruelty of intelligence and government officials struck the noble and mission-focused soldiers as abhorrent.  When each solider was forced to kill the recruit he supervised, each solider fell into the position faced by most military men under dictatorships.

The 1951 film The Desert Fox portrayed Erwin Rommel (James Mason), the WWII German field commander, facing a similar situation during the depiction of El Alamein.  Rommel wanted to fall back and take a new position, but the orders from Berlin stated Rommel was to remain with the slogan, "Victory or death."  Rommel carried out the order because it came directly from Hitler, but the film's progression followed Rommel as his doubts about Hitler grew.  Rommel attempted to maintain himself in the war but saw the chance for survival and peace diminishing.  His choice to oppose Hitler and involve himself with the conspirators who eventually carried out the July 20 plot (which was briefly but extremely inaccurately depicted in the film).


Some critics of The Desert Fox panned the film for its sympathetic portrayal of a Nazi.  A New York Times review of the film said, [The] anxiety to make a rousing picture has overridden moral judgement and good taste."  The film was in terrible taste, but not for its depiction of Rommel.  Much of the film relied on stock footage, some lifted from other films, to add excitement.  I assumed someone used stock footage to prevent staging an expensive battle sequence, but the effect of unrelated footage shot in a different style was jarring rather than engaging. With one exception of a solider falling dead on a beach, the stock footage showed bombs falling and guns firing without showing the aftermath.  The raid in the opening sequence (a British attempt on Rommel) had people dying of gunshot wounds in the classic grab-my-chest-grimance-and-fall-dead manner.  Music during the landing included US martial themes like "The Marine Hymn," "The Air Force Song," and "Anchors Aweigh," with little reference to German music of the time.  The film appeared to make Rommel, a committed solider to the German cause for most of his life, seem noble in the eyes of the American audience of the time.  The film ends with none other than Winston Churchill's words of praise for Rommel.


The Desert Fox, like Silmido, was based on a biography written by an observer who tracked down "the real story."  Desmond Young, a former British POW in Africa who briefly encountered Rommel, wrote a story attempting to explain the truth of Rommel's life and death.  Young's book was rather complementary toward Rommel's myth, and the book betrayed Rommel as a humble man who treated others with respect and dignity.  An early sequence in the film depicts Rommel as taking a personal interest in the habits of his staff and cordial disagreements with other officers.  Newer accounts than Young's paint Rommel as a difficult and vain man who loved the spotlight.  Both film versions were changed to make the story more palatable to audiences, with a bitter end for Silmido and a glorious retelling for Rommel.  Each film "took liberties" with history to create better film for its time.  The best part of each film was the forced questioning of popular perceptions of war and its perpetrators.

Rommel is still admired in certain circles.  The Netflix description (along with other sites) of Simido never moved past the North Korean intrusion.  Netflix inverted the roles in the description, thus misrepresenting the entire film.  Imagine if someone read the description for Patton and then watched The Desert Fox.  Several comments under the film showed the problem, but I assumed Netflix had little interest in correcting it.  I watched the film believing that I would see a film treating a North Korean unit with dignity and respect.

The last line may seem stunning to some readers, but take a look at films like Letters From Iwo Jima or Downfall.  Both took decades and distance to make, for both examined the war from the perspective of the "bad guys."  Film, as a medium, matured after the Vietnam War, which made The Desert Fox perhaps ahead of its time.  Silmido's success in South Korea came because it roused discussions about past atrocities.  It may take years to get a film discussing Iraq or Afghanistan from the perspective of the locals.  Time allows for deeper introspection, but it can also cause us to forget.   

Other Films Watched This Week:

Thor, 2011
Four Lions, 2010

Introduction

As a creative writing exercise, I decided to blog about the films I watched each week.  Every Saturday, I will publish a list of the films I'd seen during that week.  I will attempt to write an essay connecting each film together.

I took several films classes in college and always enjoyed writing about film.  Although I have experience teaching literature, poetry, communication, and rhetoric, I have little experience teaching film.  For those of you interested in my background, I currently teach English and Communications courses at a small school in the southwestern United States.  I would love to teach a film class someday, so I view this blog as practice.  I think the ability to teach something comes from engaging with the material.

I appreciate (nice and germane) feedback on my blog.  Although I love to receive recommendations for films, I want you, the reader, to understand that I live in "Middle America."  When I hear podcasts about films that are unavailable to me (more about my favorite podcasts later), I must wait until they become available on Netflix or my library.  My difficulty in accessing "new" films means this blog will have some older films and "available" films.

I have little desire to review films for three reasons.  First, I think every film has something valuable.  Even films I hate (like romantic comedies) have something to teach.  Distinctions between good/bad sometimes force deep, intelligent discussion of film to become a consumer report.  Second, there are lots of great critics on the Internet.  Putting up an amateur movie blog is silly enough without me attempting to dictate quality to others.  Finally, the ability to review a film isn't something I wish to develop with this blog.  My goal is to discuss film as art, propaganda, communication, commerce, or theme because those concepts are worth teaching.

I hope to see you this Saturday with my first entry.