On First Man

Death is a constant feature throughout Damien Chazelle’s stunning follow up to La La Land (2016), First Man. Whether it is the actual act of dying or the constant threat of it arriving, death is as present as a shadow. From the killing of a fly that foreshadows near catastrophe, to the frequent phone calls that bring yet more news of pilots and astronauts killed in duty.

The film begins with us locked in a cockpit of a plane that is reaching the atmosphere. We don’t travel outside, instead we stay locked on the face of the pilot, Neil Armstrong; his reactions, his fear, his claustrophobia. The creaks and groans of the machine, the spinning dials are all closely focussed on. This is his world and we are to share it as this perspective sets the tone for the rest of the space travel. Rarely does Chazelle linger on the long shots, choosing instead the mechanics and realities of (as close as can be represented) the cockpit. The only time we see, in long shot detail, a rocket taking off is as Armstrong passes a small window.

What follows this opening slimmest of survivals is the domestic. The harsh and upsetting realities of a sick child. The death of a child and the heartbreak. This picture of domesticity, beginning in Texas is reminiscent of Terrence Malik’s free flowing camera; always watching, always moving, never interfering. Chazelle captures the details, such as the empty bed, the strand of hair wrapped around a finger and so much is said with hardly anything being spoken. There is much subtlety in these early scenes; they pack the same power as the later scenes of space exploration. And the two become intertwined. The more Armstrong absorbs himself in work, the more his domestic life suffers. The stresses of his job are shown to not just affect him, but the whole family.

It is the death of his daughter that hangs over Armstrong for the duration and again, here, Chazelle finds a way to approach this with respect, while developing his protagonist. His desire to reach the moon becoming the realisation of his inability to escape the pain and daily reminders. Only when he drops his daughter’s bracelet into a lunar crater does the film even get close to melodramatic, yet by this stage his closure is welcomed.

Themes of despair and death are prominent, but this is not a dark film, for there is as much hope and optimism in both the need to achieve the near impossible and the optimism of Janet Armstrong for repairing their family. There are few films that end at exactly the right moment, but First Man, with Neil and Janet on either sides of glass, unable to hear each other, touching fingers on either side is perfect. When this image is thought about alongside the one of a recent widow lost in her driveway as her son watches through the window, we can read First Man as an allegory for the merits of struggle.

There is also the excitement of and need for Nasa to succeed resonating through First Man. We want them to reach the moon whether we agree with space travel or not. The danger is so real and the tension so heightened within the cockpit scenes that just like Gravity (2013), our heartrate increases as the threat does. Objections at space travel are present and, like much in the film, handled in a manner that communicates a lot with the slightest of touches. The black poet discussing the diminishing quality of life as the white man soars, Kurt Vonnegut wondering why tax payers’ money is being spent reaching the moon while New York City is uninhabitable are effective reminders of the wider context that not everyone wanted them to succeed, despite millions being gripped. These are minor scenes in First Man, but neither is it the main concern. There is another story to be told in the merits, ethical and actual, of space travel.

And then there is the emotional and sublime moon landing. A stunning cinematic achievement.

On Hold the Dark

Jeremy Saulnier's new film, Hold the Dark, which is available on Netflix is bigger in ambition than he previous two features, Blue Ruin (2013) and Green Room (2015), which were set, respectively, in a small town and an isolated bar. Both these films were impressive exercises in restraint; they were relatively low budget and action was constrained often to small spaces, allowing Saulnier to display great skill in creating fear, tension and shocks in closed environments. This is especially true of Green Room, but much of Blue Ruin's suspense came in the small spaces of cars, houses, basements. These two films also clocked in around 90 minutes, whereas Hold The Dark just pushes the two hour mark. Bigger in size as well as ambition.

Hold the Dark (perhaps acting as an audition for Saulnier's directing work on the upcoming True Detective Season 3), focuses on ideas of cult and ritual. It is set in the Alaskan wilderness, making a point of saying that Anchorage does not count as real Alaska and includes a backstory that involves Fallujah in Iraq. Despite the intimacy of the story, its setting is vast. The cinematography is stunning, especially in Alaska where the landscape is shown to engulf the characters, whether they travel by foot or, in a beautiful piece of photography, plane.

Hold the Dark is a curious film. It seems to want to explore ancient mythologies of the wolf, but features the animal very little and makes little of threat the film suggests they are. These mythologies involve the manner in which certain members of this small community have adopted wolf like behaviour, although why is never made clear. Yet, there is plenty of killing, much of it graphic, in the name of the wolf and their way of life. In many ways it seems to do a disservice to the animal. If it is meant to be respectful, or reverent, which is the manner in which Jeffrey Wright's character seems to hold the animal, then this is unclear.

The central mystery focuses on the disappearance of a mother who has killed her son and blamed wolves, then brought in a wolf expert (Wright) on the lie she wants him to kill the wolf responsible, yet actually he is there to find the son's body. This threads of this never add up. Wright's wolf expertise seems to rest on a book he has written about killing a female wolf, but his expertise is never displayed. He mentions the direction once and that wolves at times eat their young, but that's it. His briefly glimpsed home contains images and paintings of wolves, and why he would want to kill another is the Alaskan outback is strange; his explanation that he wants to be near his Anchorage base daughter never sits as realistic. If, as he says, he does it to help with a mother's grief, why he sticks around after she brushes up to him, naked, in a terrifying wolf mask and makes him throttle her is anyone's guess. That is the true mystery here. He has no character to work with, just a presence that Wright brings with him and this is not enough. Yes, Wright did wonders with the contemplative, almost mute Bernard in Westworld (2016 -), but that doesn't mean he can fill in the gaping holes of his character here. There seems to be no reasonable explanation of why Wright's character actually exists.

The order of events, or the motivation for them is unclear and, this maybe acceptable for the characters who are meant to be mysterious, some explanation should in the end be offered. And it is not. That the body is stolen, buried and then dug up by the father returning from war begs the question why the mother and father, both believers in killing their young son, don't do it together, rather than create this whole murder/mystery unnecessarily. Simply, there are too many questions that make this not mysterious, but confusing.

Despite all of this, Hold the Dark is oddly watchable. The assumption that all of this is leading somewhere, not necessarily towards closure, but to some understanding, encourages one to stay with it. Plus, the atmosphere created early on is eerie and unsettling, but at the same time the landscape is beautiful. These contradictions are interesting. Saulnier clearly had in his head an ambition that he was aiming for with Hold the Dark and perhaps he can explain the strange and confusing motivations or narrative order. Unfortunately, for the rest of is, the end result is disappointing. 

On the Two Halves of A Star is Born

A Star is Born is a film of two halves. That may appear redundant or reductive to say where the theme is the rise of one musician and the fall of another and it comes in at a little over two hours. But, A Star is Born really is two different experiences, while remaining one very solid and consistent narrative.

The story is simple, but powerful. A musician at the height of his fame begins his downward spiral, thanks to drink and drugs, while the undiscovered singer/songwriter he discovered (and marries) flourishes into a Grammy award winning pop star. The star that she becomes is, like all stars, born under immense pressure and here that pressure comes from her husband’s disease that has very real implications for her own career.

The first hour of the film is exceptional. Utterly compelling, from the opening shots of Cooper’s Jackson Maine walking on stage to his meeting of Gaga’s Ally, which is perfectly delivered through an unusual song choice, setting the tone for their relationship. The film captures the early exhilaration of a new relationship and a possible new career with slight, but powerful touches. It is difficult not to feel twinges of excitement as these two are revitalised by each other. It is not melodramatic, but feels real and intimate and the direction is close without intruding. The film also has important things to say about fame and celebrity. By the time Maine pulls Ally on stage to surprise her with her own song, A Star is Born has you, emotionally. Then not long after, it spends the last hour pushing you away.

The story moves in the direction it should, this is not the problem. Ally becomes the singer/songwriter she always wanted, with Jackson’s support, but his fame has come at a price and he is ill. These are the struggles we want to see these two face. The issue is that the film doesn’t know how to capture what essentially becomes a very familiar and well told story, with any freshness. The second half becomes a slog. It is as if the film didn’t know how to make marriage and fame interesting, only the anticipation of both. Everything falls flat. And the decision to make Ally’s manager become a boo/hiss pantomime villain is odd and distracting. We spend too much time of the mechanics of her industry (performances, rehearsals) and not enough seeing them as people in their own lives, which are passing each other by. There are moments towards the end that show us what the film could have been. Ally visiting Jackson in rehab and his recognition in her and how own fear of saying it, that she might be thinking of moving on is very well handled.

Part of what makes the film so magnetic to begin with and watchable in second half are the two central performances which are, even when lumbered with tired scenes, fantastic. Cooper and Gaga are nothing less than believable and if the film regains any power in its ending it is only because of these two. Impossible to hate, but difficult to love.    

On Deadpool 2

What do we want from a sequel? Should it be a development of character from where we last left them, a new direction, a different film with the same people? Or is it bigger, louder, longer? The latter exhausting the platitude, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Deadpool 2, certainly and unashamedly embraces the latter. This is a very similar film to the first, and structurally follows many the blockbuster formula. What it essentially gives us is more of what audiences enjoyed the first time round, but sadly with slightly less edge. That its protagonist is in on the joke, with the constant breaking of the forth wall, makes it slightly more interesting, but no less repetitive. It makes money and almost guarantees a third time round, where it will be even bigger, even louder and even longer, but with a 12a rating. To make sure it is even more profitable.