Animals

 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Is Jurassic Park an infinitely better film (and novel) than this half-hearted sequel of a sequel? Absolutely. Is the commentary in this film much stronger and straight-forward than Jurassic Park's muddled understanding of natural animals? Indeed it is. Whereas Jurassic Park was more enamored with the possibilities behind the science of resurrection and the monetization of extinct organisms, Fallen Kingdom is strictly posthumanist in its portrayals of dinosaurs. 

Both reviews -- in Roger Ebert and in the Guardian -- are certainly correct that the tired tropes of the Jurassic Park franchise exist in Fallen Kingdom, as well. The Lost World's plot point of selling dinosaurs is here, as is Jurassic World's idea of using dinosaurs as weapons; and the franchise's flashy action set-pieces permeate the film, bogging down some genuinely tremendous ideas of humanity's role alongside resurrected animals. Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm sets the stage for these ideas after we learn that the island of Isla Nublar, where both Jurassic Park and Jurassic World were located, is about to self-destruct via volcanic activity and effectively send dinosaurs into extinction once more. In a congressional debate, Malcolm argues that dinosaurs had no right to exist a second time anyway and that nature should be allowed to correct its course. 

On the other hand, Sir Benjmain Lockwood, former Jurassic Park partner to John Hammond, is determined to save these animals by funding an expedition to Isla Nublar that would extract as many species as possible. To do this, he hires CEO Eli Mills to spearhead the project, and Mills locates former Jurassic World employees Claire Dearing and Owen Grady to assist in the captures. This approach is not so much religious in nature as it was in Life of Pi; rather this sympathy for animals is built on close connections with them, on the idea that animals form bonds and feel emotions in virtually the same ways humans do. For Grady, the desire is to rescue Blue, one of the velociraptors he trained during his time at Jurassic World; for Claire, it is the destruction she witnessed at the demise of the former park, when the hybrid Indominus rex brutally murdered much of the park's population. 

Though the middle of the movie is muddled with off-the-rails plot points -- such as Mills killing Lockwood and then auctioning off the dinosaurs, the introduction of a new hybrid dinosaur known as the indoraptor, and the strange revelation that humans can now be cloned -- the ending harkens back to this driving ideology of posthumanism. Before the dinosaurs can be sold into private collections and militaries, Grady and the rest of the pro-dinosaur gang have the choice to free them all from their underground pens. If the dinosaurs are released, our characters know, they may have a genuine chance at life in the wilds of North America, but they will undoubtedly come into contact with people and kill many of them. After heavy consideration, their consciences get the better of them, and they release the dinosaurs into the wilderness of California. At the end of the film, we even get a few glimpses of how human life and dinosaurs are beginning to intersect, and the results are not encouraging. In this manner, however muddled the film's purpose may be, it makes a clear -- and bold -- statement through its major characters that human life is no more valuable than any other animal's. 

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Roger Ebert)

Jurassic World: Fallen Kindgom (Guardian)

Class

 Joker (2019)

Whether you find Joker horrifically tone-deaf or frighteningly on-the-nose, there is no denying that it details a sympathetic look at the structural inequalities and the hierarchical manner of American economics today -- a look that culminates in a bleak visage of what might happen if the majority that is the economic base were to take back the structure for themselves. 

Arthur Fleck is a loner, bound to the poverty evident by his mother's apartment and trapped by his own mental illness, which is a primary cause of his inability to connect with others. Despite his best efforts, he always appears to be too far removed from the normal to fit in, and escalating events quickly bring him to the realization that he can never escape his position in life. He may believe he can be a comedian, he may believe he can rise...but failures and setbacks continually seem to suggest otherwise, until he is eventually fired from his job. Crippled by defeat, he snaps when a trio of Wall Street brokers taunt him, and he murders them, sparking a revolution of clown-mask-wearing vigilantes tired of their economic oppression and hellbent on destroying the class of rich, ruling elite. Glenn Kenney, writing for Roger Ebert, did not buy into this idea, but that seems absurd to me, especially in a modern-day America where revolutionary rhetoric is commonplace.

Joker, however, makes an interesting companion piece to Us and Sorry We Missed You in the ways in which it approaches these violent solutions. Sorry We Missed You lays a devastating picture of the groundwork of the issue, while Us commentates on that issue without much judgement on the problems of violence. Oppression, Us seems to suggest, calls for drastic measures, violence included. Joker, for all its dark tones, does the opposite. While it charts an eerily similar path to Us thematically, it diverges at pivotal moments to show us that, although Fleck is a character average people may sympathize with, his actions are not redeemable. 

Joker (Roger Ebert)

Joker (Variety)

Identities

Captain America: Civil War  (2016)

Though incredibly popular, I think even the most intense Marvel fanatics would be hard-pressed to call these movies "films." Still, if any superhero franchise has skillfully approached the difficult contradictions in the identities of the heroes we love, it is Marvel; and if any Marvel movie has been sufficiently artful in its maneuvering of uncomfortable topics like vigilantism, it is "Civil War." 

When the United Nations demands that the Avengers sign the Sokovia Accords -- which would regulate the activities of superheroes -- following the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron and a botched Captain America mission in Nigeria at the start of Civil War, we immediately experience a clear "othering" as the rift between those in favor of the Accords and those against them widens. Captain America's view specifically arises from a place of performativity, as he believes that to sign the Sokovia Accords would render superheroes useless, unable to perform as they are required. Unlike Under the Skin which focused on more alien understandings of identity and The Rider which focused on deeply personal and specific identities, Civil War gives us a glimpse into an identity -- the Avengers -- splitting in half from the inside as a result of catastrophes arising from their superhero identities. This leads characters such as Iron Man, who was directly responsible for the AI Ultron and the destruction of Sokovia, to question their right to operate unperturbed by authority. The themes of The Rider, however, are not entirely absent here.

Another key cause for Captain America's stance arises from James "Bucky" Barnes, a super-solider friend who was brainwashed to murder political leaders and sow chaos. Throughout the film, Bucky deals with his splitting identities -- that of himself, and that of the Winter Solider, his brainwashed alter-ego who leads an attack in Vienna that kills the father of Black Panther -- and this struggle is compounded by the presence of the Sokovia Accords. If this aspect of the story were explored more, I feel that Civil War's status could more realistically be upped to a "film," but as it stands, the movie never quite steers enough away from its Marvel brand of humor and action set-pieces. Perhaps it is a comfort, however, that Bucky's struggles are detailed much better in 2020's Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Continuity, it seems, can be a blessing and a curse.

Captain America: Civil War (Roger Ebert)

Review: 'Captain America: Civil War' (Variety)

 

Globalization

Contagion (2011)

 

A film that mirrors reality a bit too well following the recent Omicron variant and my own contraction of COVID-19, Contagion follows a fictional respiratory virus modeled after the real-world Nipah virus called MEV-1, as well as the differing reactions to such an outbreak. Whereas First Cow centers on the growth of a business based on dishonest foundations and American Factory focuses on a race to the bottom (where workers and regulations are undercut in the name of generating a better profit), Contagion is a trifle more abstract in its retelling of globalization.

It is no secret that a direct outcome of globalization and the expansion of markets is growth, both physically and metaphorically -- and this former often takes the form of the destruction of the environment for natural resources and land. As a result, humans are brought closer to exotic animals, allowing zoonotic viruses to mutate in order to jump between species. In this way, the very circumstances that lead to the need for a spatial fix are the same ones that have and will continue to lead to pandemics. 

The intermingling of the global and the local -- glocalization -- can also be seen in this film, primarily in its theme of human responses to a pandemic. It is of course an oversimplification to assume that everything local can be extrapolated out to a global scale. But human emotion and irrationality, especially in the face of fear, is a common denominator that seems to extend beyond cultural and regional barriers. The filmmakers seem to understand this exceptionally well, as even the tagline of the movie reads, "Nothing spreads like fear." A fantastic example of this fear is when a conspiracy theorist in the film begins spreading his "story" online of using a homeopathic medicine made of forsythia to cure himself. Though he was lying, people violently overload pharmacies in search of forsythia. Using these ideas, Contagion is both the beginning and end to the themes of globalization found in First Cow and American Factory: it is one of the first direct results of growing economics and the inevitable end result if we cannot curb our consumption. 

Just Stand Over There and Wave (Roger Ebert)

Contagion (Variety)

Wilderness and Conservation

 Trophy (2017)

Directed by Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz, Trophy is a horrifyingly accurate portrayal of our capitalist world and the affect this has on conservation, particularly of large mammals that have a history of being hunted and poached. This film never shies from detailing reality, and it forces us to seriously question ourselves and the intersection between hunting and conservation efforts. In this way, Trophy is a perfect glimpse into the social construction of nature. 

On one hand, we have the protestors of hunting in first-world countries, individuals who have likely never been hunting nor seen it done in person; they certainly have no understanding of what it is like to live around large mammals (and oftentimes in fear of them). These individuals only see the endangered status on these animals, and that's enough for them to be against any and all hunting of them. On another hand, we have the (often poor) individuals in their home countries experiencing elephants destroying the crops they need to survive or lions killing their loved ones in the wilderness. Desperate to provide for their families, they also often see the dollar signs behind ivory, and many times, their desperation gets the best of them. 

Beyond this, things become even more complicated. We have hunters on canned hunts, in which the animals are basically dragged to the hunter for them to shoot, others taking trophies for sport, and still others advocating for conservation efforts and spending their money on hunts to make it happen. 

John Hume, with the world's largest rhino-breeding program, has a complex viewpoint, as well, insisting that ivory must be legal to sale if he is going to continue his operations and protect more rhinos. If he can farm ivory from them, he claims, then he can curb poaching and bring profit to his program. Farmed animals, after all, rarely go extinct. 

At every turn, it is clear that capitalism and money are the primary drivers of everyone and everything in this documentary -- including those attempts to carry out conservation efforts. It makes for an interesting and bleak idea: that although each individual's idea of nature and protection varies, they are all bound by the concept of money. In this way, nature is certainly a social construct, but its one that has very limited options for protections no matter the location. 

Trophy (Roger Ebert)

The Documentary 'Trophy'... (LA Times)

Communication and Media

 Nerve (2016)

Nerve is not a film to be taken too seriously, for it is too often flashy and informal in its approach to storytelling; it is clearly a relic of popular media, a film designed to be watched and consumed by the masses with little questioning of the concepts behind it. This is a shame, because Jeanne Ryan's original novel crafted a premise that could've served as a powerful commentary of today's world. Still, when one sifts through the (albeit fun) fluff of Nerve, we can begin to see a world that is horrifyingly feasible in the modern era of the Internet. 

Formed as an underground, live-action game of dares, Nerve allows individuals to use their phones to participate as either "players" or "watchers." Watchers pay to access the live footage, and their phones serve as a type of distributed server for the game to run. They are then able to chat in real-time with each other, and they are the ones giving the players the dares. As players complete these dares, the dares become increasingly more challenging, and the players begin to win money and stardom. If a player bails on a dare (or simply fails it), they forfeit their winnings and their time in the game is over. A more sinister aspect of this is the enforcement of the idea of "snitches get stitches." If a player goes to law enforcement, they lose their earnings and are taken in as "prisoners." 

If this concept had been carried to a darker fruition, the film would be fantastic. But for all its tropes, Nerve uses them as well as one could expect. It is natural that teenagers would find the idea of going viral massively appealing, and many of the early dares play into romance and public embarrassment. It is not illogical to imagine that in a network society like ours, such gamification may become commonplace. The gap between the online world and the physical world is one we are constantly trying to bridge, and concepts such as these would be incredibly effective, even if they are horrifying to some degrees.  

Lastly, Nerve touches on the concept of using one's digital reputation against them, most glaringly in the premise of the game itself, but also in the way in which dares are created. Oftentimes, they are pulled from players' worst fears, as indicated by their digital presence: searches, posts, and more. The watchers are always ensuring that the players do not forget that they in a game online, crafting networks of dares that play off one another and planting references to one's history in the real-world, such as Ian reading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, which Vee had listed online as her favorite book. 

Nerve (Roger Ebert)

Nerve (Variety)

Geographies of Postmodernism

    Fight Club (1999)

Author Chuck Palahniuk deals almost exclusively in the disorienting world of postmodernism, detailing societal deconstructions in dazzling arrays of simulated reality. Fight Club is no stranger to these ideas; it is no wonder then that director David Fincher and writer Jim Uhls were able to capture and amplify them in the often praised (and often hated) film adaptation. 

As with many postmodern films, Fight Club is a strange beast to nail down into one genre. Even its creators are split, with Fincher calling it a coming-of-age film and Uhls describing it as a romantic comedy. A dark comedy would fit in perfectly with this blending of genres, with the bleak quips from Marla and Tyler. In any case, the film is not afraid to fully realize the dark aspects of human life and behavior, and this disorienting mixing of genres and references is a perfect analogy for what the film sought to do in its story and filmography. Fight Club stands as a commentary on society's indulgence and pitfalls, taking them apart and restructuring them as Fight Club and Project Mayhem; but the film is also a painful evaluation of masculinity and what it means to men who find themselves searching for it (the testicular cancer moments, then, take on a deeper meaning). Roger Ebert described the film as "macho porn," but I think he's missing the point. The film is supposed to feel this way; that's what makes its message -- the antithesis of the so-called "macho porn" -- so effective.

Furthermore, Fight Club delves into the meta, even calling its main character "the Narrator" and allowing him to give exposition. This almost alien choice serves the film well in its reality-bending finale, but it is primarily used to drive a wedge between what is real and what is not. The viewer may find themselves confused at many times, but this is perfectly natural, for the Narrator himself is confused. At any given moment, what is real and what is hallucinatory is almost impossible to decipher. Tyler being a projection of the Narrator's twisted psyche brings some balance to these troublesome quirks, but it is never quite enough clarity to untangle the web of mystery. This inversion of reality allows the filmmakers to showcase the rise of this quasi-fascist system in believable terms, while hammering in the idea that is it a negative reality that the Narrator doesn't truly want. Only that part of him that is impulsive, destructive, desires the blood.

Lastly, Fight Club works in an air of intertextuality. Fincher describes the Narrator as the opposite of the archetype found in films like The Graduate, a man without possibilities for change and hope. In this way, the Narrator is a rejection of the typical tropes, while other characters serve as traditionally masculine archetypes in order to contrast this rejection. 

    Fight Club (Roger Ebert)

    Fight Club (Variety)

Justice and Geographies of Power

 Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976)

"We've been put in jail, we've been shot at, we've had dynamite thrown at us." So went the lives of those picketing miners and their families in Harlan County, Kentucky, in the 1970's. 

Being from Knox County, Kentucky -- just one more mountainous mining area -- coal-mining has always been a fascination and a disgust for me. It was my first brush with the powers of corporations and the ceaseless desire for energy, and the disrespect for a part of the country that shaped the foundation of modern-day America astounds me to this day. But it happened because it had to, because power was a necessity, because what were the poor and uneducated mountain-men going to do? It was ecological stereotyping to the highest degree. 

Harlan County, U.S.A., is a difficult film to watch primarily because it is real. Director Barbara Kopple and her team do a fantastic job of foregoing narrative touches to bring us a slice of life that could never be replicated in a script or with special effects artists. The words of these people and the events they experience strike hotter than fiction because they spark with lived wrongdoings, with all the anger and bitterness of losing loved ones and their own wellbeing. 

"Is it a fact that the Duke Power Company maintains housing for its employees that has no water and no indoor plumbing?" it is asked at one point, to which they reply cruelly, "Yes, sir." But this was merely the beginning of the hardships for miners, in a field naturally dominated by them. One often hears of "company scrip" with some level of incredulity, but to many miners, the idea of being paid in funds that could only be used at the company's own store was commonplace, a stark reality that such companies had what could almost be considered sovereign power over these people. In any case, surely they wielded a type of biopower. The famous "gunfire-under-darkness" scene, in which shots were fired at strikers before dawn, is but another striking example of the suppression of a people that wanted nothing more than respect and their own rights restored. In Roger Ebert's review of the film, he notes Kopple as claiming, "I found out later that they planned to kill us that day."

Though it may at first seem an impossibility that such events were openly occurring in America only a handful of decades ago, one only has to look at other examples, such as redlining, to realize that we are still uncomfortably close to our shameful pasts. Look to Son of Saul for a European example of human atrocities, if you wish, or Fruitvale Station for something even more recent. All too often, I feel we believe we are invincible, too far removed to revert back to the savage ways of our ancestors. It pays to remember that we are not so morally advanced, as a whole, as we may wish to believe. 

Harlan County, U.S.A. (Roger Ebert)

Film Festival: 'Harlan County' (The New York Times)

Sacred and Secular Spaces

 The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Based upon the 1900 novel of a similar name by L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz remains a cultural phenomenon that has hardly been rivaled before or since -- a film that scarcely needs any introduction. It is widely regarded as one of the most beloved films in history, with the Library of Congress even officially naming it the world's "most-watched move," and its influence has stretched far beyond the original expectation or intention of Baum or the creators of the film. As such, numerous interpretations of the story's themes have appeared both in the mainstream media and along the fringes of Internet discussion alike, much of it centering around religion. Though the themes are not as explicit as in the other two films from this segment, it is difficult to deny the presence of the sacred spaces in particular that appear in this work. 

From the beginning, the viewer experiences a clear sense of dualism in the Realm of Oz, with the "good" and "bad" witches that occupy different areas and draw from different magics within this fantasy world. In fact, magic seems to permeate the world immensely, and much of its inhabitants' "worshipping" stems from one having magical prowess. The Yellow Brick Road itself could even be seen as a sacred space, because it flows to the Emerald City, where the greatest "wizard" of the world resides. Of course, we learn that this wizard is nothing but a humbug, and yet the narrative point still stands: he was previously well-respected and revered, the ultimate authority of Oz. His rise to power is unknown and unexplored in the film (a shame, I would add), but his chamber is one that inspires religious awe, with the enormous floating head surrounded by flames, endlessly demanding respect all while holding the supposed key to fulfilling one's greatest desires. As such, the Emerald City feels almost like Rome in our world, where religion is state-sponsored, even if that religion is not wholly traditional. In any case, if the parallels to real-world religions were accidental, I would be very surprised. 

Many have made the case, however, that The Wizard of Oz is a criticism against religion, with the Emerald City's leader secretly being a fraud and the magic of each main character ultimately being found within themselves. Perhaps this is true; many Christian schools certainly saw it as such when banning the original book. In any case, this film takes a slightly more hands-off approach to religion than Agora, similarly to Martha Marcy May Marlene (the Wicked Witch of the West and her monkeys could be a stand-in for a type of cult mentality, even, though this is likely a stretch). Whether intentional or not, the sacred spaces bleed through the film's cheery elements and set-pieces in a way that is sometimes difficult to ignore and always shrouded in unanswered questions. 

The Wizard of Oz (Roger Ebert)

The Wizard of Oz (Variety) 

Mobilities

 The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Based on the novella by Stephen King, Darabont's big-screen adaptation lends the original material's message of hope and perseverance in dazzling fashion to an audience that might very well have missed out on what has since become a classic story. Though bogged down in places with unnecessary detailing, thanks to its lead actors, The Shawshank Redemption never loses its central theming of surviving within a system that is designed to break men, a system where brutal beatings and other hazing becomes commonplace and crime -- paradoxically -- runs amok. 

It may at first seem silly that under the theme of "Mobilities" one should choose a prison film, the type of film that is usually the antithesis of what mobility means. But the similarities between this film and the others this week are striking in their simplicity. In Wah Do Dem, we followed our main character through a period of statelessness, in which his official documents were stolen and he became stranded in the nation of Jamaica with few prospects on the horizon; in La Jaula de Oro, a group of characters experienced similar problems as they traveled from their home country and into another, in a desperate ploy to arrive in the US. The Shawshank Redemption tackles this idea from the opposite perspective, creating a life of simulated statelessness brought about by the hands of one's own country. It isn't so much a physical journey that brings our characters here as it is a spiritual one. Sentenced for life, the prison becomes something of its own community, a nation-state complete with its own type of umwelt and its own behind-the-scenes deals and rules. Though not sanctioned or even acknowledged by the outside world, the reality is very real for our characters. 

It is worth noting, however, that prisoners are still citizens of their nation. In this way, they aren't truly stateless, but because our main characters are felons, they will not be able to enjoy all the same freedoms of regular citizens even if they are released (as Red is towards the end of the film). 

Beyond this, we can see how imprisonment begins to alter the habitus of our characters. All but Andy can no longer imagine life on the outside, because the bulk of their lives have been spent in this drab space that has whittled away at their souls. Perhaps this is the way many of the Jamaican characters in Wah Do Dem felt, as well -- bound to their fates with no chance of escape. One could say the same of Samuel in La Jaula de Oro, who abandoned the group after they were deported back to Guatemala, or  Juan, resigning his life to work in America even after losing all of his friends. After all, what other options do any of these characters have? In this way, Andy becomes an outlier, the only individual who has found and held onto hope, that dull candle in the depths of the darkness. I think that makes The Shawshank Redemption something of a sigh of relief in this three-part showing. 

Lastly, this film gives us a small example of chain migration, such as when Andy orders Red to find a cache left for him in Buxton upon his release. In this, Red finds money and a letter describing where Andy went and asking Red to join him in the Mexican town of Zihuatanejo -- an offer which Red obliges. It's a minor detail, but in the grand scheme of these movies' themes, I think it creates a nice -- if not bittersweet, when we think of the things some characters endured -- send-off to the three of them as a group. 

The Shawshank Redemption (Roger Ebert)

The Shawshank Redemption (Variety)