Movies 2007 Roundtable Spectacular

Part IV: Lingering Character Studies

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Click here for Part II of this roundtable
Click here for Part III of this roundtable

Relishing the lowbrow, exalting in the highbrow, and ignoring the middlebrow is a pretty decent modern definition of a "snob" as it concerns popular culture. But then, I know that your taste for genre and b-movies are genuine and were built on comic books and Saturday afternoon Hammer films and the 4:30 movie (Planet of the Apes week! Godzilla week! Elvis week!)rather than the hip post-modern irony that attract so many to the low budget and bad movie fold. (And,I'm sure, there's a snobbery at work in the above statement on my part as well. Oh,well.)

Back to movie talk. There's been two movies this year that really rattled inside my head for days after I saw it: Ang Lee's Lust, Caution and Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (you know we've entered a "highbrow" discussion when I preface the movie, er, film, titles with the director's name). The key to both of these movies is that they contain intricate, complex and unique character studies of the main character. This is coupled with an intricate, complex and unique study of place. And all of this is established, in both movies, in the opening sequence. There Will Be Blood opens with an ominous buzz as the camera pans down from a mountain-scape to show a single man working. The scene ends with the man showing the desire to survuive (or, as we learn later, not fail)and the camera pans back up to the mountains and the ominous buzz kicks in again. A brilliant opener that casts the American west in 1898 and this man as inseparable and of a piece. As the story moves on through the decades, this relationship becomesmore entwined between the man, Daniel Plainview, and the oil rich, sun-baked California terrain.

Similarly, in Lust, Caution, the opening establishes place and character and sets up the tension of what will slowly unfold. Lee's camera cricles a majong game and follows the action on the table as the women interact. From this, at times catty and intense, exchange we learn much about the youngest women, Wong Chai Chi, and, as the movie back-pedals to lead back to this game, we see this game through a new lens.

The trajectory and choices of these characters is the main reason why these movies have stuck in my head. In Plainview's case, it's hard to pinpoint when the land - or what's in the land - transforms him. He seems a charming huckster at first. How much of the early Plainview is sincere? When did the greed steep in and turn him ugly? Was it always there?

Wong's main choice had me boggled for some time after. The scene is wonderfully played out and the aftermath heart-wrenching. Soon afterward, I realized that Wong reveals the answers to these questions in a an outburst of anger and frustration. Plainview, in angry and frustrated outbursts only hides himself deeper. Two very different movies, two lasting impressions.

Now, Nimero, quit beating around the bush, and finally get to your impressions of Brand Upon the Brain! and The Bourne Ultimatum.