Captain Marvel

Usually, the best super hero films are about origins.  Captain Marvel (2019; dirs. Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck) is definitely an origin story.  But it’s not as straightforward as most: it uses jumbled chronology and suppressed memories.  It’s about the main character discovering who she was in the past as well as who she is in the present.  She remembers nothing of her past. It’s also about her discovery of her super powers, which are considerable. This makes the film more interesting than I would expect.  It’s also delivers a not too subtle message about political points of view and oppressed minorities.  In this case, the Kree, an alien race to which the main character belongs, is attempting to exterminate the Skrulls. The plot is more involved than I’ve made it out to be, so I’ll stop the summary there. 

Captain Marvel is so powerful that there’s hardly any question as to who will win in her various conflicts in the film—her side always wins, though because she doesn’t initially know how to use her powers, what she can do to her enemies isn’t always exactly clear.

Captain Marvel is a woman.  Not many super heroes are. The film deftly avoids assigning stereotypical female traits to her. She is firm, self-assured, and forceful. She shows little emotion, although she does show anger and concern about the alien race in danger of extermination.  The film ensures that she is attractive in her super hero suit.

What will our hero do after this film ends? We see her briefly in The Avengers: Endgame, but she departs before she can defeat Thanos, leaving that to others of the group.  She definitely doesn’t fit in as well as other Avenger members, and tin one brief scene other members of the group talk her into joining them. The fact that she doesn’t employ all her powers to destroy Thanos just doesn’t make sense.

The digital effects are extensive and spectacular.  DGI technology has advanced so far that you hardly notice the fantasy and the comic book universe.  The colors and visual design of this film are distinctive. It was fun to watch and entertaining overall.

Samuel Jackson plays Nick Fury, Captain Marvel’s close ally.  He’s been digitally altered in the film to look like a man in his 30s.  The transformation is convincing, yet his character seems artificial in a certain way, especially his face. The jive turkey lines he delivers don’t help.

8 1/2

Fellini’s great film 8 1/2 (1963) is a dreamlike, surreal vision of a director, Guido Anselmo (Marcello Mastroianni), at mid-career and mid-life.  He fears he has exhausted his creative impulse and that he has nothing left to say.  His marriage is a shambles, and his wife is ready for divorce. When the film begins, after a dreamlike scene in which he is trapped in his car filling up with gas on an expressway, while everyone in the cars around him stare at him ominously, he is staying at a sanatorium or a rest home.  Either he recovering from nervous exhaustion or is an alcoholic trying to dry out. Though he is there for a rest, to recover, his entire film crew seems to have accompanied him, especially his producers, who are pressuring him to make decisions and to choose a cast for a new film.

Everyone is pressuring Guido—guilt about his marriage, memories of his parents and their extractions, childhood memories, women he has slept with or is sleeping with.  These figures appear and disappear, mostly in Guido’s fevered imagination, sometimes in reality.

Everyone is trying to compel Guido to do or be something he is not.  That struggle between the expectations and desires of others, in conflict with his own self, is at the core of the film.

8 1/2 doesn’t distinguish among dreams, memories, hallucinations, fantasies.  One can sometimes tell the difference, but not always, and such distinctions are irrelevant in the film—all these impressions and sensation, real or imagined, make up Guido’s life. He contends with them all.

Guido’s struggle is with his authentic self and his impulses.  As a director, he is constantly creating fictions, illusions, lies.  He lies to everyone constantly, including his wife, his producers, and women he wants to seduce (he suggests that there is a role for them in his films). He lies to himself.  The film he is being pressured to make involves a rocket ship and a plot about people in a post-atomic apocalyptic world escaping to another planet.  It’s not entirely clear to me whether the film is a genuine plan or a kind of inauthentic joke, the sort of commercial film his producers believe will earn money.  He doesn’t seem to think much of the film itself, but he feels pressured to make it. Symbols and images of fiction abound: masks, backdrops, portraits, clowns, the huge artificial launch tower from which the movie rocket ship is supposed to launch.

It’s difficult not to suppose that 8 1/2 is Fellini’s self-critique.  I don’t know  whether there is a factual basis for that notion, but Guido’s role as a famous director like Fellini supports the idea. The film that Guido is trying to make (or avoid making) is his own self-critique as well.  It uses material from his own life, his marriage, his doubts.  So that 8 1/2 is a meta film twice over: a director’s critique of his life and vocation in the form of a film about an artist making a film that is his own self-critique.

Cinematography is a major aspect of this film.  Fellini especially favors long shots down hallways or in a forest or an enclosed square. I never fully appreciated Marcello Mastroianni until I saw this film: he inhabits his character fully. Nina Rota’s score is a strong element as well.

The final scene is intriguingly glorious. This great film alone justifies Fellini’s reputation. It has influenced such filmmakers as Robert Altman, David Lynch,  Woody Allen, Terry Gilliam, and many others.^[1]

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^[1] See https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/8-films-inspired-8

Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell

Orwell describes this book, published in 1933, as a study in poverty. By this he means his own poverty while living as a young man in Paris and next in London. He does not explain the reasons for his plight, nor does he suggest how he ultimately extricates himself from the situation. This is effective: the focus falls solely on his own experiences within a particular span of time.  Presumably he is a struggling writer, because he mentions several writing assignments he has had in the past.  In Paris he is most concerned with finding work at a restaurant or hotel.  His goals aren’t high.  In London, after a period of unemployment, he finds work looking after what he refers to as a “moron.” As it turns out, Orwell deliberately placed himself in poverty-stricken environments during the late 1920s so that he could experience living in poverty; at points he actually did lack funds.  In any case, the narrator of this book is a semi-fictional version of the author.

Orwell’s descriptive powers are striking. His descriptions of the rooms he rents in Paris and the restaurant he works in, the flop houses where he stays in London, are vivid.  No one would eat at a Parisian restaurant after reading his account of the place where he worked as a dishwasher and errand boy. The flophouses where he stays in London in conditions of deplorable squalor seem straight out of the 18^th century. Numerous character portrayals occur throughout the book.

Although Orwell seems to be flirting during this period of his career with socialism or communism, he does not stress any particular viewpoint.  Instead he emphasizes the helpless plight of the poor, ignored by government, exploited by charities and religious groups that supposedly care for them, taken advantage of by anyone with more money or privilege.

Casual anti-semitism frequently surfaces.  Individuals may be referred to as “Jews” and are described with stereotypical Jewish characteristics.  One could write this off as the endemic anti-semitism of the times in which Orwell lived, though he did not resist expressing it.

Avengers: End Game

In this three-hour film, Avengers: Endgame (2019; dir. Joe Russo, Anthony Russo), the first hour is relatively slow. Then things speed up. The film picks up some years (five?) after the end of the last installment, Avengers: Infinity Wars (2018), when half the population of the earth, including many Avengers, vanished into dust, the consequence of Thanos’ desire to improve the planet by depopulating it. The agenda of this film is three-fold: bring the plot-line of the Avengers series to an end, resurrect those who were dust bound at the end of the last film, and allow graceful ways for certain of the characters—Ironman (Robert Downey, Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and others to exit the scene. (Surely the actors must be sick of these films). A lot of loose ends are tied together and, perhaps unfortunately, readiness is made for a new series.

The film is entertaining. The plot is absurd, but absurdity is not the point here. Numerous high-production value, enhanced CGI action moments hold your attention. Quantum mechanics come briefly and unscientifically into play—pay no attention to scientific inaccuracy. The loose-end tying becomes tedious. One character throws herself off a precipice so that her partner can return to his family. Another character time travels into the past, marries his sweetheart, and returns to the future (the present-time) an old man. Ironman’s artificial heart wears out after a prolonged battle with the forces of Thanos. To show that this is a film which respects diversity, a group of superhero women go on the attack against Thanos. Characters from Black Panther (2018) also appear, and there’s a brief glimpse of Stan Lee. The film left me exhausted and stuporous. The ponderous funeral for Ironman, which allowed all the surviving characters to reunite one last time. Last time, that is, before the next series of films begins.