EW #8: The Gold Rush (1925)

Charlie Chaplin and Mack Swain in The Gold Rush (1925).

Entry #8 on Entertainment Weekly's list of 100 All-Time Greatest films constitutes the first (and only!) appearance on the list of silent comedy legend Charlie Chaplin.

Now there is no denying that The Gold Rush is a comedy masterpiece, though so too are several of Chaplin's other features, including The Kid (1921), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940). My personal favorites of these are City Lights and Modern Times, and while I can understand the arguments in favor of The Gold Rush, both my personal taste and my film history knowledge convince me that Modern Times (which EW does not include in its rundown) deserves to be the highest-rated Chaplin film on any "best film" list.

In defense of its choice, EW writes that The Gold Rush contains "the most iconic performance by Hollywood's most indelible movie star," and that may be true, for Chaplin's gags in this film -- especially the dinner roll "shoe" dance -- are some of his most memorable and iconic. Yet a film is more than the performance of a single actor.*

The dinner roll dance, one of the most famous sequences in The Gold Rush and in Chaplin's career.

That said, there is much to love in The Gold Rush, and it surely marks a key moment in Chaplin's trajectory as a director. It is only the third feature-length film to star Chaplin as his "Little Tramp" character, and the first Tramp-centric film to be released by United Artists, Chaplin's co-venture with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D.W. Griffith. It is also a landmark film for silent comedy in general: film critic Luc Sante calls The Gold Rush "one of the first truly worldwide cultural phenomena" and notes that "it remains the highest-grossing silent comedy" bar none.**

Yet the film is not as coherent as the later Chaplin films I've already singled out as favorites, a fact that even Chaplin himself indirectly acknowledged by re-cutting certain scenes and omitting others in his 1942 re-issue of the film. I am a snobby purist who has never seen the 1942 version, so cannot comment on the relative merits of 1925 vs. 1942, but what I can say is that Chaplin's desire to tinker with the earlier version and to declare the later iteration his preferred, "definitive" cut speaks to the fact that the director was not totally satisfied with how the original hung together.

To be clear, I love the 1925 version and my pointing out that it is not as narratively tight as, say, City Lights or Modern Times is not meant to detract from how completely enjoyable, hilarious, and touching it is. I love watching The Gold Rush. I am simply saying that whatever its pleasures, and they are many, The Gold Rush does not mark the height of Chaplin's powers as a director, nor is it the most memorable, entertaining, or indelible screen appearance of the Tramp character.

The Tramp always represents the socially outcast and the poor, but whereas Modern Times is a sustained, scathing critique of U.S. capitalism, The Gold Rush leavens its critique by allowing the Tramp to strike it rich by the movie's conclusion. Sure, the Tramp (known here as "the Lone Prospector") never succumbs to greed, and is always motivated by "romance" according to Sante.*** Yet his ascent into the upper classes robs The Gold Rush of its reality principle, diminishing the bittersweetness that attends the endings of Modern Times and City Lights, in which the Tramp must uphold his trademark optimism and pluck in the face of unchanged, deeply impoverished material circumstances. I contend that The Tramp's comedy is funnier, and his pathos far more penetrating, when he remains an outcast and (somehow) a survivor. While The Gold Rush dares to show the Tramp being ostracized, marginalized, and mistreated during many touching sequences earlier in the film -- most notably during his failed New Year's Eve dinner party -- it cops out at the conclusion, sacrificing vulnerability and pathos for a more standard happy ending, which is satisfying in its own way but lacks the power and punch of the later Tramp outings.

The tragicomic ending of Modern Times, in which the Tramp 

puts a brave face on an all-but-hopeless situation.

So while I admire and enjoy The Gold Rush a great deal, and consider it a must-have for a "Top 100 films" list in general, I have to go with Modern Times as my pick for the top Chaplin film and probably the top silent comedy as well. Despite The Gold Rush's amazing special effects and its immense global popularity, I find Modern Times to be every bit as technically impressive, every bit as funny, and, in both an ideological and historical sense, more impactful than EW's chosen film.† Ideologically, Modern Times is the most direct critique of capitalism I have ever seen in a mainstream movie. And historically, Times is the Tramp's swan song and Chaplin's final "silent" picture, so is extraordinarily important to film history for both of those reasons.

Lastly, besides the possible fumble it represents in terms of accurately evaluating Chaplin's ouvre, the other problem that this entry exposes is the stupefying dearth of silent films on the EW Top 100 Films list as a whole. I say this not simply to be highbrow; I am genuinely baffled that a great many enjoyable, thrilling, and thoroughly entertaining silents have simply been omitted or ignored by EW, while drek like Return of the King is included on the list. This is ridiculous. Just in the comedy realm alone, I can think of several features -- the Chaplin titles mentioned above, Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality (1923) and The General (1926), and Harold Lloyd's Safety Last! (1923) -- that are much more entertaining AND historically significant than many titles that appear on EW's list.

A lovely shot from The Gold Rush that poignantly depicts the Tramp's 

perennial outsider status.

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* This focus upon a single performance rather than the whole picture also distorts many peoples' views of The Dark Knight, a film which taps the post-9/11 cultural zeitgest like practically no other (if we ignore Zero Dark Thirty) and is elevated by Heath Ledger's bravura performance but is simultaneously plagued by many other glaring structural and aesthetic problems.
** The Gold Rush Criterion Edition booklet (Criterion Collection, 2012), p. 7.
*** Criterion Edition booklet, p. 13.
† Anyone who wants to be blown away by the ingenuity of Chaplin and his cinematographer Roland Totheroh simply must get hold of the Criterion Edition of The Gold Rush and watch the "A Time of Innovation" documentary on the second disc of the two-DVD set.

Review: Godzilla (2014)

The recent remake of Godzilla is what I call a "noble failure." It tries hard to achieve many interesting things both visually and thematically, but it fails because it just isn't very entertaining or fun or, ultimately, coherent. To be clear, I (mostly) really enjoyed the film as it was unfolding before my eyes, and must state right away that I thought it was quite visually stunning. The MUTO attack at the foggy railroad trestle was one of the best paced and best looking scenes in this film or any action film I have seen in quite some time. The final showdown in San Francisco was beautifully lit and photographed, and most of the scenes of Godzilla -- even though they were too few and far between -- looked frikkin' awesome.

But the film is nevertheless a failure, if a noble one. It failings mainly stem from:

(1) Taking itself too seriously,

(2) Committing some of the worst characterization and character-arc blunders I have seen since The Dark Knight Rises, and

(3) Trying to do too much thematically (or at least not doing it clearly enough).

Going in, I gave this film a lot of benefit of the doubt due to the excellence of director Gareth Edwards' previous feature, the superb Monsters (2010). While I am not a rabid Godzilla fan in the holistic sense, I am a huge fan of the original 1954 Gojira and I have seen and enjoyed my share of other related films such as Rodan (1956), Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964), Gamera (1965), Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971), Godzilla 1985, Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002), and Roland Emmerich's 1998 "Godzilla" film. But most of my hopes walking into the 2014 Godzilla were pinned on Edwards, and at least in the visual sense, he did not disappoint.

Yet as Lee Weston Sabo puts it, the very skills which served Edwards so well on the low-budget Monsters were misapplied here, creating a distracting "identity crisis" at Godzilla's core:

Oddly enough, [Edwards] used the same techniques he used in Monsters to hide the poor CGI (which he reportedly did on his laptop) to hide the monsters in Godzilla, even though the budget was two hundred times larger, resulting in a lavish Hollywood production that is often obscured from view. Most distracting is a recurring motif where the monsters are shown on a television screen rather than in the flesh. The movie is so embarrassed by its giant monsters that it has to constantly show them on the news to make it seem real.

Agreed. Yet even these errors in judgment might not have seemed so egregious had it not been for the profound mistakes made simultaneously in the character department. Why on earth this film kills off Joe Brody (played compellingly by Bryan Cranston) a third of the way in is one of the most baffling decisions I've seen made in any film -- it is as bad and distracting a decision as the numerous similarly terrible choices made in The Dark Knight Rises.* Furthermore, once the film murders its best character and most logical candidate for protagonist, it subsequently utterly wastes the talents of Ken Watanabe as Dr. Serizawa, who, as the namesake of the original Gojira's protagonist, seemed to me the next best choice to step up and take the reins in Joe's deeply felt absence. But no, Serizawa stands around pointlessly while the straight-laced Admiral Stenz and Joe's boring son Ford get all the best lines and scenes.

Why, oh why, does the (potentially) interesting character on the left do nothing this whole movie while the boring character on the right is narratively centralized?

And, as Sabo points out, Ford's role in Godzilla is unmotivated and pointless: "there is no functional reason Dr. Brody could not have been the hero of the film – and, by extension, no reason why Ford Brody needed to exist as a character at all (for instance, even though he’s established as a bomb disposal expert in a plot that surrounds several nuclear bombs, it never actually comes into play)." So even though the main point in a monster movie is to enjoy the monster battles, Godzilla commits a dual sin by depriving us of the monsters AND providing us with a horribly lackluster, "droopy" human plot, as even this mostly positive review of the film admits.

Thus, despite its stunningly impressive visuals, the main problem with Edwards' take on Godzilla is its lack of compelling characters and its over-serious tone. To be fair, these problems are endemic to many contemporary blockbusters, as I have discussed before. In an Entertainment Geekly blog post titled "A Call for an End to Serious Blockbusters," Darren Franich writes that the new Godzilla film is disappointing precisely because it is "so, so serious. Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s mom dies and his dad dies and his wife is a nurse and his son misses his daddy. Godzilla is probably the first movie to not even have fun when it destroys Vegas."

Franich is well aware that this serious, boring, "dark" tone is not unique to Edwards' Godzilla but is a general trend in contemporary Hollywood filmmaking -- he writes that

this whole vogue for seriousness has become a tic: For the filmmakers, but also for the studios, for the marketing teams, for the whole apparatus behind Hollywood blockbusters. And for us, the audience, too. There’s a tendency to throw this seriousness on Christopher Nolan’s doorstep, but mainstream geekstuff was turning in that direction long before Batman Begins. You could start with Bryan Singer’s moody X-Men. Or you could point to Peter Jackson’s decision to de-Bombadilize Lord of the Rings. Maybe it’s George Lucas’ fault, devolving Star Wars from a fun-times space adventure to a mopey-faced parliamentary melodrama.

In any case, Franich bemoans this trend (in a very smart article I encourage you to read in full) and names Pacific Rim as a positive counter-example to this tendency, a view I wholeheartedly agree with.

Pacific Rim vs. Godzilla = fun vs. serious. 
As Darren Franich writes, "Godzilla wants so badly to make sense. 
Pacific Rim wants so badly for Ron Perlman to wear golden shoes."

Thematically, the new Godzilla appears to want to re-engage with the 1954 original's indictment of nuclear weapons, but seems confused about what its actual stance on this issue might be.** Is the 2014 version pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear? It is hard to tell. The film does not endorse Admiral Stenz's ruthless approach to detonating nukes in the San Francisco Bay, yet it is pro-military and does not seem all that troubled by the existence of nuclear weapons in general. Sabo labels this ideological muddle "a vague commentary on environmentalism" that ultimately means very little in the context of the film. And despite Robin L. Murray's contention that the film "provides a space in which to explore the complexities of a monstrous nature humanity both creates and embodies," conveying the message that "monstrous nature may also save us," I must agree with Sabo that the film carries self-contradictory and confusing messages along this line.

All that said, I look forward to Edwards' next attempt at the franchise -- he is currently contracted to direct Godzilla 2 and Godzilla 3 -- and hope he and his team will learn some valuable lessons from the mixed critical response to the 2014 Godzilla. If he can bring a bit more zip and fun to the next installment, if he can build upon his accomplished visual style to get us more invested in both his human and non-human protagonists, then he might overcome this noble failure and make the potential-laden Godzilla franchise so much better.

Bonus Afterthought: Though I understand why Godzilla purists despise it, I am not a hater of the Roland Emmerich Godzilla and am inclined to agree with Gabe Toro's claim that the much-maligned 1998 version is at least a rip-roaring good time.***

"Don't I seem more fun now, in retrospect?"

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* That is, the utter pointlessness of Matthew Modine's character, the severe, plot-crippling under-development of Talia al Ghul, and the totally disastrous decision to have Michael Caine's Alfred, the only remotely believable and relatable human being to appear in the entire Dark Knight trilogy, vanish for the bulk of the film's run time.
** Sabo calls the 1954 original "ham-fisted" and criticizes its "audacity and crudity [in] trying to seriously represent the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a man stomping around in a rubber dinosaur suit." Yet I find that audacity somewhat admirable and compelling, and would add that the dark, gloomy tone of the 1954 version helps its theme to "land" with me despite the film's exploitative dimensions.
*** Anyone interested in reading a more detailed discussion of the merits of Emmerich's 1998 version should read this Vanity Fair piece, which makes the bold claim that "if you love the 90s, you pretty much have to love 90s Godzilla."

Review: Mother (2009)

Poster for Bong Joon-ho's amazing 2009 thriller Mother.

Some while ago, in a post discussing several contemporary (and active) directors I feel are worth every filmgoer's time, I concluded with an "Honorable Mention" shout-out to Bong Joon-ho, my favorite South Korean director.

Since posting that, I have now seen Bong's 2009 thriller, Mother, and my estimation of his talent and abilities has only increased as a result. I am immensely fond of his two previous feature-length works, 2003's Memories of Murder and 2006's monster movie The Host, but now I might have to claim Mother as my favorite.

In fact, my initial reaction to Mother was documented via an email exchange I had with a good friend familiar with Bong's films:

ME: In prepping for teaching Bong this week I finally watched Mother a couple days ago. Literally the best movie I've seen in years, with the best "twist"/reveal EVER! 

FRIEND: I feel the same way. The most unique and arguably subversive take on monstrous motherhood I've ever seen, especially given the title character's star text as a popular character actor who mainly played lovable moms on Television. I think it's an important film to juxtapose with The Host to understand Bong Joon-ho as an auteur. 

ME: I think it is the greatest deployment of "trick" point of view and generation of audience sympathy since Psycho. And I agree that it pairs well with The Host as a precis on parenthood.

As this dialog (and my profile on the sidebar) reveal, I am a professor of film studies by trade, and in my "Film History Since 1945" course this spring semester, I taught a week on "The Global Blockbuster" which required the students to watch The Host. I have seen and taught that film many times and it is always a big hit with students. Not only is it a superb monster movie, it also functions as a kind of over-the top family melodrama about a slackerish dad who spends the whole film trying to make up for the fact that his carelessness leads to his daughter's being taken by the river monster in the movie's first act. The redemption of this father character is a primary theme in The Host, and is handled as well as (if not better than) the father-son sequences in Spielberg's Jaws, a film to which The Host is frequently (and favorably) compared.

Yet my appreciation for The Host was enhanced by seeing Mother. As its title indicates, the movie is a suspense thriller about the investigative efforts of the single mother of a young man named Yoon Do-joon. The son is arrested and  incarcerated for the murder of a neighborhood schoolgirl. The local police all believe they have their man, but Do-joon's mom never wavers in her faith that her son is innocent of the crime, so takes it upon herself to conduct her own dogged investigation of the events leading up to her son's arrest. The result is nail-bitingly suspenseful, beautifully shot, superbly acted, and ultimately revelatory in its brilliant deployment of a narrative "twist" that is not so much a twist as a catharsis for the characters and viewer alike. I am not kidding when I say in the email exchange above that Mother contains one of the best "reveals" I have seen in any film since Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960).

Do-joon's mother makes a crucial discovery during one of 
Mother's most suspenseful scenes. 

Like Hitchcock before him, Bong seems to have no great esteem for cops, for they often come across as corrupt, buffoonish, or a little bit of both in his work. This is a theme that ties Mother to Bong's 2003 serial killer mystery thriller Memories of Murder -- the cop protagonists of the latter remind me very much of the supporting police officer character in the former, and even though we are meant to sympathize with the two cops in Memories, the ending of the film tells us a lot about how Bong feels about the ways and means -- and ethics -- of police work in his home country.

One of the last shots of Memories of Murder, in which a police officer 

is shown possibly abusing his position of authority.

Similarly, cops and government officials are not to be trusted in The Host -- in that film, Gang-du's extended family bond together to rescue his daughter Hyun-seo, all the while evading the police and military personnel who would impede them in their morally necessary task.

All three films echo each other in certain ways: always there are young girls in danger, and always a different type of protagonist -- two cops, a father and his siblings, a lone mother -- seeks a solution to the crime and and end to the threat posed to the children. All three are strongly envisioned, well-scripted genre pieces (two crime thrillers and one monster movie) into which elements of family melodrama are artfully woven.

And then there are the visuals. The screenshots I've included here really cannot do justice to how beautifully shot and edited Bong's films are. No fetishist of the long take, Bong nevertheless knows when to allow for thematically appropriate long takes, as in the opening and closing shots of Mother or in the incredibly long steadicam shot that wends its way through the police station (and eventually outside to the parking lot) partway through Memories. Bong and his cinematographers Kim Hyung-ku (Memories and The Host) and Hong Kyung-pyo (Mother) are amazingly artful in how they compose shots, yet they never let that artfulness impede the forward momentum of these films' suspenseful, exciting scripts and plots.*

One of the funniest moments from The Host, in which Gang-du's family writhes around 

 on the floor in an expression of over-melodramatized grief.

The last component of Bong's work that really stands out for me is his sense of humor. Even in the middle of the direst of situations, Bong always allows for some silliness and human foible to leaven the tone a bit. In fact, one of the director's great gifts is his ability to introduce comedy without allowing it to puncture or nullify the suspense. This is perhaps especially true of The Host, which features the most outrageous comedy moments of any Bong film I've seen, yet also maintains its sense of paranoia and doom throughout, and even includes a few genuinely tragic and touching moments as well. Some of these involve character deaths so I won't spoil them, but my favorite of The Host's touching-yet-comedic scenes is when Gang-du's father explains to his other two grown children why they should cut Gang-du some slack and respect him, describing with great pathos how Gang-du suffered from malnutrition as a child. At the culmination of the father's speech, Bong cuts to the two siblings, revealing that they are asleep and not listening to a word of this profoundly moving speech. This is a moment that is both funny and subtly reveals the film's deeper agenda, which is to unfold that background information about the hapless Gang-du to us, the film's viewers.

It is artful touches like this, combined with Bong's films' sense of excitement and fun, that leads me to recommend his work to anyone who enjoys well-made suspense and/or monster films. Last I checked, The Host was streaming on Netflix, in Korean with English subtitles -- the DVD editions of Bong's films come subtitled AND dubbed.

"I gotta get out of here and go see Bong Joon-ho's latest film!"

UPDATE 8/5/2014: Here is a link to a superb video analyzing many of Bong's visual techniques in Mother.

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* The closest comparison I can make to an English-language director's work is probably to that of David Fincher, who, in most cases (including Alien 3, Se7en, Zodiac, and The Social Network but possibly not the hyper-stylized Fight Club or a few indulgent moments in the generally underrated Panic Room) lets his films' stories and characters drive things forward, interwoven with an abundance of rich visual artistry to be incidentally enjoyed along the way. Fincher also seems to like to work in the suspense thriller genre like Bong does.