First off, in no way would I ever claim that filmmakers do not intend to inject messages and metaphors into their films. I think Cloverfield’s 9/11 imagery is fairly obvious and clearly intentional. HOWEVER, I must say that my eyes have rolled on numerous occasions during discussions of phallic imagery within slasher films. So when I came across these short Volkswagen ads on Slashfilm today, I was reminded of how horrible film school COULD’VE been if we’d focused more on theory. These ads manage to celebrate film as an art form that’s worth discussion and debate, yet takes the shit out of pretentious, over analytical film theorists. I truly believe you can connect ANYTHING to a film if you really tried, which is what annoys me about most academic film theorizing. How ’bout them apples? You can check out of few of the videos below.
As a student of film theory, I of course have the opposite view on this. I love that I can argue that war films are homoerotic and that HBO's True Blood show is a metaphor for homosexuality in the 90s. I love that Sex and the City is simultaneously feminist and misogynistic. I love that Toy Story is a metaphor for puberty and Mary Poppins is an exorcist... wait, what?
Stanley Kubrick would have turned 80 two days ago, so I have compiled some essays from his textual website. All of the essays are worth reading, but something in each of them caught my eye. And I apologize that most of them are for 2001, but it's the greatest movie ever made and deserves any and all discussions about it.
2001 and the Motif of the Voyage by Claudia Zimny -- quite an extensive look at the fascination of voyages, linking back to Odysseus and Theseus, but also HAL's obsession with the mission.
The Case for HAL's Sanity by Clay Waldrop -- talks about the chess game, conversations concerning the failing AE-35 unit, and the threat of disconnection.
Comments on 2001 by Margaret Stackhouse -- presented in outline format, Kubrick said of Stackhouse's observations that they "are perhaps the most intelligent that I've read anywhere, and I am, of course, including all the reviews and the articles that have appeared on the film and the many hundreds of letters that I have received." Stackhouse discusses the monolith, HAL, and themes of 2001.
2001 and the Culture of Youth, a Newsgroup discussion -- this is the essay I would like to have written. (But for fun, here are the directions for the Zero Gravity toilet.)
Another Odyssey: Design and Meaning in 2001 by Mark Martel -- the most interesting part is about the mythos of the Cylop's eye and how it relates to HAL and A Clockwork Orange.
Kubrick, King, and the Ultimate Scare Tactic by Michael Dare -- in discussing The Shining, Dare notes that Kubrick does not go for cheap rushes of adrenaline. It doesn't matter the audience doesn't scream when Jack throws his ax into the bathroom door; what's scary is that Jack has an ax and is trying to kill his family. Also, it includes multiple-viewing observations at the bottom (did Jack kill the twin girls?).
The Shining and Transcendence, a conversation between Tim Fulmer and Rod Munday -- interesting ties to Buddhism and the Minotaur. They also conclude that intelligence saves lives, which is amusing but very true.
But if there's anything you read here, read Kubrick's Words and Movies. His aesthetic intelligence will astound you.
This image is from idealist.blinkr.net, and it asks, "Would you want an alarm clock with Jack saying "Here's Johnny" and Shelly Duvall screaming?" Because yes, yes I would.
I've been reading The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey (Modern Library Films didn't italicize the film's name...), and I recently read a few chapters chronicling Arthur C. Clarke's experiences before and during production. Clarke and Kubrick had such a wonderful kinship, one of intellectual stimulation and exciting curiosity and respect. Kubrick is famous for being a perfectionist, and Clarke even admits that, at times, he was ready to be done with the movie. He had allotted two years of his life for discussing, drafting, writing, and making both the novel and the film 2001, but it ended up taking over four years. It's exciting to read excerpts from Clarke's journals, and I've included some of the stranger and more interesting thoughts, not necessarily having anything to do with the movie.
May 31, 1964. One hilarious idea we won't use. Seventeen aliens -- featureless black pyramids* -- riding in open cars down Fifth Avenue, surrounded by Irish cops.
July 9. Spent much of the afternoon teaching Stanley how to use the slide rule -- he's fascinated.
July 11. Joined Stanley to discuss plot development, but spent almost all the time arguing about Cantor's Theory of Transfinite Groups. Stanley tries to refute the "part equals the whole" paradox by arguing that a perfect square is not necessarily identical with the integer of the same value. I decide that he is a latent mathematical genius.
July 12. Now have everything -- except the plot.
July 28. Stanley: "What we want is a smashing theme of mythic grandeur."
September 7. Stanley quite happy: "We're in fantastic shape." He has made up a 100-item questionnaire about our astronauts, e.g. do they sleep in their pajamas, what do they eat for breakfast, etc.
December 10. Stanley calls after screening H.G. Wells' Things to Come, and says he'll never see another movie I recommend.
March 8, 1965. Fighting hard to stop Stan from bringing Dr. Poole back from the dead. I'm afraid his obsession with immortality has overcome his artistic instincts.
October 15. Stan has decided to kill off all the crew of Discovery and leave Bowman only. Drastic, but it seems right. After all, Odysseus was the sole survivor...
November 10. Accompanied Stan and the design staff into the Earth-orbit ship and happened to remark that the cockpit looked like a Chinese restaurant. Stan said that killed it instantly for him and called for revisions. Must keep away from the Art Department for a few days.
Clarke was quoted in Newsweek as saying, "There is nothing we wanted to do we couldn't do or wouldn't do. Stanley would say, 'If you can describe it, I can film it.'" And that is why this friendship brought us the ultimate science-fiction film to which all subsequent movies would be compared.
* From the chapter "Monoliths and Manuscripts," Clarke explains that "in the beginning, the alien artifact had been a black tetrahedron -- the simplest and most fundamental of all regular solids, formed of four equal triangles. It was a shape which inspired all sorts of philosophical and scientific speculations (Kepler's cosmography, the carbon atom, Buckminister Fuller's geodesic structures...)" but "somehow [it] never looked right, and there was also the danger that they would arouse wholly irrelevant associations with the pyramids." So it seems Kubrick and Clarke had pyramids on the brain.
Just when I've made a bold statement like "greatest homage to Kubrick ever," my statement is proven premature. The UK's Film 4 channel is showing an entire season of Stanley Kubrick's works and their promotion spot features a recreation of the set of The Shining (one of two movies that actually scares me). It is comprised of one continuous tracking shot from the POV of Kubrick. It is filled with allusions -- or easter eggs or whatever you want to call them -- and my favorite cameo is the man dressed as a bear, which is arguably the most bizarre scene from the film. The man, who is intended to be a man in a bear costume and not simply a bear, is engaged in a sexual activity with a man in a tuxedo, and they only occupy one scene that is less than five seconds. The scene is isolated and strange and unexplained. (If you've read the book, however, you know the backstory of Harry Derwent and the reason for the costume.)
I don't freak out about too many things, but this is particularly squeal-worthy. There's just so much attention to detail.
Technically, this isn't a review. There are enough reviews of WALL-E out there, and by now, I imagine that everyone has already seen it and developed opinions of their own. I decided to wait a week after first seeing it (that's right, I went opening day) because I wanted to let the imagery and philosophy really sink in, and I will not address the whole "it's pushing a liberal political agenda on children" because, really, why is caring for your planet a political thing? It's about survival and even Republicans want to survive. Right, but I'm not going to go into that... The following are aspects of WALL-E that floored me.
Visual Parallels: The Two Worlds Although the allusions to commercialism and capitalism were blatant (BNL is the only corporation, come on), WALL-E subtly mirrored our future world on our present world. I've heard people gripe that the items WALL-E collects are all from the 20th century, but I think that was intentional. I don't think the Pixar crew just decided "let's choose things the audience is familiar with." I think the creative team made a conscious decision to make the statement, "In the future, there are these billboards and advertisements, and humans only care about commercial objects. But that's not so different from now." We look at the Rubik's Cube as something of the past, a toy, and everyone wanted one. Can you name one household that doesn't have in their possession a Rubik's Cube? It is an object that we own, but the product really owns us. And WALL-E's home is literally made up of his collection of objects. Sure, for WALL-E it's about curiosity and not monetary value, but we are not robots and we have walls comprised of toys and gadgets and other products. WALL-E's "junkyard" mirrors the futuristic world, where he is surrounded by commercialism. It reminded me a bit of John Carpenter's They Live!, where ideology is no longer subconscious but an outright "directive." In both worlds, he is surrounded by objects and ownership. In both worlds, people are defined by what they own.
The Hello, Dolly! References Before I saw the movie, I snickered at reviews mentioning WALL-E's adoration for the dated musical Hello, Dolly!, but once the movie opened with the song "Put On Your Sunday Clothes," it was no longer funny. It was magical and beautiful. The basic concept of manifest destiny took on matters of space (as opposed to simple, physical, earthly land) as well as ambitions in love.
Put on your Sunday clothes, there's lots of world out there. Put on your silk cravat and patent shoes. We're gonna find adventure in the evening air. -- from "Sunday Clothes"
For those of you that saw the movie and still snickered at references to the musical, the film is not silly for the musical it chose. Both share similar story-lines. Hello, Dolly! is about a matchmaker (made famous by Barbara Streisand) who inadvertently falls in love with the man she's try to match up. There is also a pair of males, Cornelius and Barnaby (the greatest names ever), who aspire to rise in social class and find love. WALL-E has a bit of both characters in him, representing both his amorous and adventurous sides. Cornelius and Barnaby make a pact (in the song "Sunday Clothes" no less) not to come back to Yonkers until they've kissed a girl. And, throughout WALL-E, our little mechanical hero never leaves EVE's side. He courts her. She doesn't immediately fall in love with WALL-E, who is literally of a lower status. And he does not leave her until he gets to hold her hand -- the robot equivalent to kissing, I suppose. I wouldn't necessarily say that Hello, Dolly! inspired WALL-E or that they perfectly mirror each other, but like all classic story lines, there are enough parallels to make it critically interesting. And to make your heart melt a little when WALL-E spins around his cabin, dancing with a top hat.
Of course... the 2001 References And, boy, were there a lot of them! I've only seen the movie once, so I probably missed a few of them, but I am proud to say that I knew the character Auto was modeled after the HAL9000... thirty seconds before it was blatantly obvious, but still. I realized the similarities instantly when Auto told the captain he couldn't go back to earth. HAL's "I'm sorry, Dave, but I can't let you do that" rang in my ears. A moment later, there is a close-up of Auto's RED EYE. It's seriously one of the creepiest images to me. Despite my love for HAL (I mean, he's the hero of 2001 in my eyes), there is just something innately haunting about that uncomfortable close-up of an omniscient glaring red eye staring back at me. Auto shows a video that only he knew about -- a direct reference to HAL but, if you haven't seen 2001, you wouldn't know was a reference. Then, a bit later, Strauss's "Thus Spake Zarathustra" came on as the captain learned to walk again, which is the perfect hybrid baby of hysterical and ironic. One of the most famous images from film (let alone 2001) is the ape playing with his new tool, a bone, which enabled him to kill predators as well as members of his own species. Sure, the bone gave us a spaceship, but it also taught us to kill one another. And then in WALL-E, it's retrogressive progress. That bone -- that tool that gave us a spaceship -- created a machine that allowed us complete lazy luxury, and 500 years in the future, we've forgotten how to walk. Then we revolt against the very machines we created (another theme in 2001, and any sci-fi movie with a robot, actually). So the idea that we're learning how to walk -- again, in the future, after we had made so much "progress" -- is absolutely brilliant, and Andrew Stanton gave us the greatest Kubrick homage ever.
The Closing Credits: The Evolution of Art Who says evolution is just a theory? (Seriously, why do people attack the actual word evolution? There are commonplace examples of evolution every day...) It starts with ancient forms of art -- I don't remember specifically where it started, but I would imagine Mycenaean or Minoan, something basic -- and then moves on to hieroglyphics and impressionism and pointilism. It's just so beautiful and clever. Pixar could have done the evolution of machines but that would have been predictable. Choosing to show the evolution of art showed Pixar's love for art, the love for telling a story than spans the history of humanity. It's not just the evolution of art, you see; it's the evolution of humans and how we've viewed our world, how we interacted with our surroundings, how we perceived ourselves. Whereas the film showed us the future, the closing credits reminded us of our past.
EVE is Kick-Ass EVE has a gun. And she uses it. A lot. WALL-E is the sentimental and romantic character (which really makes him lovable and huggable, but hugging an 2D animated metal robot poses a lot of problems), and EVE is his masculine counterpart. Like many people in relationships, namely men, she shuts down (literally) when things become too romantic or personal with WALL-E. It's analogized by the phrase "directive," which is repeated throughout the movie. It represents commitment-phobia and the refusal to allow your heart to redirect your logic. During the entire courtship, EVE has shut down and does not experience any of it. (If you think I'm reading too far into this, which I may very well be, think ahead to when EVE decides against her "directive." She chooses to be with WALL-E, for her heart to win out over her purpose. She gets a new personal directive: to love.) But right, EVE is the opposite of most "female" characters represented in film. (Of course, we're presuming that EVE is female and WALL-E is male because their names are gendered in our society, but robots don't technically have genitalia to determine their sex, so they could be two asexual beings in love. For our purposes, EVE as a female is an accepted premise.) There is nothing particularly female about her. Her "body," which is meant to resemble Macs, does not have breasts and even her curves connote advanced mechanical evolution, as opposed to thighs or hips or, gasp, the buttocks. She's simply a machine who sets out to do her job, no questions asked. But then WALL-E changes her wiring and she becomes her own person (used in the loose, non-literal sense, of course). She's a fantastic female portrayal.
The Character MO I'm sure all the OCD-parents in the audience were thrilled with this little guy. He was such a wonderful addition.
And just for fun, from 1997, here is "Geri's Game," my absolute favorite Pixar short:
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