Blindspot - "East Of Eden" and "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?"

There are some who believe that Good and Evil are two very distinct objectively defined entities and that things and ideas are black or white, true or false, moral or immoral. Some would say that thought could be extended to define people in these terms and to categorize them in one of two camps: "Pure as the driven snow" and "Face of an angel" OR "Pure evil" and "Rotten to the core" (phrases we all use to describe people with no middle ground). Of course, these are a fool's definition and try to provide easy answers to explaining behaviours that please or enrage us. The "truth" is that it all depends on your perspective and viewpoint. The landscape is made up of thousands of shades of grey and they are all relative. And speaking of relatives...

The sibling rivalry within East Of Eden and the spousal feuding of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf traverse many degrees of that light to dark spectrum between good and evil. Hurting the one you love is always a complicated and confusing thing to do and that's certainly the case in both films. You could be forgiven, however, if you didn't see a lot of shading in that good/evil spectrum during the onslaught that is Virginia Woolf. From the first words spoken, it feels like a two hour blitz of spiteful bile and vituperative arguments. Most of the insult flinging occurs between the middle aged George and Martha, but they aren't shy in sharing it and spreading it around. George (Richard Burton) is a History professor who lives within the campus grounds with his wife Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) and after an evening at a school social (with a few drinks) they set about their favourite sport - a little verbal sparring with each other. It seems to begin harmlessly - a barb here, a curt word there - but as it escalates, one can tell this is much more than just tiredness and booze stirred together into a cranky cocktail. It seems to be their lifeforce. The only way they can get through the day at this stage of their lives together is by tearing each other down. Even the moments of true passion which still exist between them can't stem their craving for a verbal attack fix. "I disgust me" says Martha, sounding every bit like a drug addict. And when the young couple Nick and Honey arrive for some nightcaps (Nick is a new professor that Martha flirted with at the social event), the mixture of booze and disgust becomes downright toxic for all.

East Of Eden wallows less in that deep end of the cesspool, but still gets itself pretty dirty...Its tale of two brothers competing for their father's love and attention is a modern take on the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, with older brother Cal (James Dean) typically coming up short in the sweepstakes to gain his father Adam's (Raymond Massey) favour. The turning point is when Cal's younger brother Aron usurps him by announcing his engagement just before Cal presents Adam with the proceeds from his business as a gift. Their father rejoices at Aron's news, but scowls at Cal's offer of money: "I'd be happy if you gave me something like your brother's given me - something honest and human and good". The film returns to this perception of good and evil over and over ("Was she bad?", "Do you think I'm bad?", "He's good!") as people try to figure out which end of the spectrum they lie on. The film makes the case that there aren't really any absolute good or evil people since we are all capable of both. The choice of behaviour is ours. Throughout East Of Eden you can see the reasons for each person's behaviour: good intentions gone wrong, decisions based on immediate emotion, and longer term goals that don't show themselves right away.

Reason is a bit further removed from the world of George and Martha though...There are so many points within the film that they could stop the attacks and nastiness, but just as it threatens to peter out, it escalates to even further heights. Short of booze and pride, one never quite gets a handle on exactly why they behave in this manner (nor why Nick and Honey - after initially getting undeservedly pulled into these warped games - begin to go on the offensive with almost equal gusto). But that simply makes this examination of fragile souls so damn interesting and fascinating. It's not simply that car wreck that everyone strains to see, it's that YouTube compilation of Russian Road Rage videos. It's an exhausting film for the viewer, but the actors (in particular Burton and Taylor) are magnificent in their ability to continually wring more madness and anger and sarcasm from their characters. Mike Nichols (who passed away shortly after I watched the film) somehow juggles the ever increasing desperate attempts at lashing out of all 4 characters within fairly constricted spaces (the rooms of the house, a car, a bar, etc.). Tiring to experience, but oddly exhilarating.

East Of Eden didn't quite hit those peaks. It's not that it fails in any category whatsoever (top notch acting across the board, what felt like perfect framing of characters from scene to scene, glorious photography, etc.), but the melodrama on hand never quite seemed to go beyond the simmering stages. The film has reveals and characters going off deep ends, but as mentioned, you could always see the reasons behind their movements and reactions. Perhaps it's unfair because I'm comparing it to Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, but I wanted more escalation, more anger, more unbridled explosions of emotion, etc. It gave me a few too many moments to reflect on some plot points and relationship arcs that didn't quite flow naturally. In a great melodrama, I wouldn't have cared as much, but here it didn't quite sit as well.

Regardless, it tells its tale effectively and remarks on our perception of our own behaviours. Both films (especially through the eyes of family members) cover a wide slice of human actions and reactions - from kind to cruel and from logical to lunatic.

Blindspot - "Ride The High Country" and "Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid"

The Wild Bunch is not my favourite Sam Peckinpah film. There, I've said it. Even worse, though, is that I don't particularly like it. The stylized violence in the opening and closing battles is everything I expected and more, but it's all the stuff in between (if memory serves that is) that was thoroughly disappointing. The "characters" and their attempts at manly bonding felt forced and hurt the whole experience of the movie for me. Granted, it's been quite a while since I've seen it and I owe it a rewatch, but I found that two other views of the Old West by Peckinpah - Ride The High Country and Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid - provided much stronger and more interesting characters while still splashing the blood around a bit. But they did it in very different ways...

Ride The High Country is, for the most part, a classic Western. Told mainly via interactions between its male characters, its straightforward story reveals its themes of good, evil and redemption fairly early on and builds on them. Steve Judd (Joel McRae) and Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott) are two former partners who reconnect in their later years to help bring back a deposit of gold to the bank. With the Gold Rush winding down, many questionable characters are trying to get a final crack at a stake and the bank doesn't believe their gold will be safe without some protection. What Judd doesn't know is that his old friend Gil and his young impetuous associate (named Heck) plan to keep the gold for themselves - whether Judd wants them to or not. Along the way up to the mining town, they stop for a rest at a ranch run by a strict religious man and his daughter Elsa (an impossibly young Mariette Hartley). She's looking for a way out of the restrictive setting of the ranch she's never been allowed to leave, so she tags along with the men when they leave the next day. She's decided to go to the mining town to marry her fiancee who works there with his brothers. Somewhat predictably, all doesn't go as planned...Elsa's fiancee and his progressively creepier brothers see her presence as being useful for only so many purposes - mostly sex and cooking - and to be shared by all. On the way to the mining town, Heck and Elsa flirt a bit and Heck makes a pass at her. She rebuffs him, but he insists and she needs Judd to pull him off. Judd knocks Heck to the ground and is followed by Gil giving him the same treatment. Though it shows the goodness in these two old timers (both saving the poor "defenseless" woman), it creates an awkward follow-up scene when Elsa actually apologizes to Heck (I guess for not allowing him to fully take advantage of her) and he seems to be sulking. It is quite jarring from a modern day perspective to see Elsa do this, but it almost makes sense given the obvious hierarchy of man over woman in this early part of the 20th century and her desperation to keep moving away from her father's ranch. It also establishes firmly where Heck's morality is based and how he can only crawl up from there.

The morality in Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid is somewhat sketchier. Most of these men have done bad things, but their moral centres revolve around respect and honour to their friends and partners. Pat Garrett and Billy are old friends, but when Garrett goes to meet Billy at the beginning of the movie it is solely to give him a warning: that Garrett will be his executioner. They part on good terms and Billy considers several options for leaving the town and his gang behind. With deputies in tow, Garrett manages to capture Billy after a shootout, but Billy escapes by gunning down two of the deputies (one self-righteous fool and one honourable man caught in the wrong place at the wrong time). From here, the chase resumes until its foregone conclusion. There really isn't much more to the story than that. Given the scarcity of dialogue, some gorgeously shot scenes and an unspoken fondness for the Old West, one can easily understand why the film often gets described as being poetic, evocative and elegiac. However, the film as a whole is far too scattered and littered with half-drawn characters and scenes that it's hard to see it as a complete work. There have been a few versions of it though: the studio edited theatrical release which Peckinpah disowned, a "preview" version which TCM put together that attempted to pull together Peckinpah's vision (the version I saw) and a director's cut which theoretically comes closest to Peckinpah's intent. Along with numerous production issues, Peckinpah was in full alcoholic mode during the shooting of the film, so it ran over-budget, over-schedule and certainly caught the attention of the studio suits. And yet, for all its problems (e.g. way too many cutaway shots to Bob Dylan, an odd soundtrack, scenes left adrift, etc.), there are some absolutely glorious moments.

Many of those moments are created by the leads (James Coburn as Garrett and Kris Kristofferson as Billy) since how they say things (or more often, don't say) becomes extremely important due to the paucity of dialogue. Whether it was Peckinpah's direction or their own decisions, the actors bring these characters fully formed to the screen. Coburn's silent glares speak volumes and Kristofferson has a natural charisma that definitely surprised me. And then you have Slim Pickens...Now it's always great to see Slim in anything, but his short yet unforgettable appearance in the film is one for the ages. Even though we had just briefly met him a few minutes earlier, his death scene is both heartbreaking and beautiful. After being shot in a gun battle as another of Garrett's recruits, he stumbles to the river and sits and waits for his life to fade out like the setting sun. Most of the other famous cameos in the film, though fine, don't have any of that staying power. Perhaps Peckinpah was going for the feeling of a rich tapestry (mixing in a bit of Dylan, Jack Elam, Jason Robards, Barry Sullivan and more), but none of them are given much with which to play and instead they feel somewhat wasted. Ride The High Country, in contrast, does far more with its characters and provides enough meaty dialogue not just for its central roles (Scott and McRea), but also the supporting roles with weight (Heck, Elsa, Elsa's fiancee) and the rest of the cast (the brothers, the drunken judge, the brothel owner). Both Scott and McRea truly stand out and, like Coburn and Kristofferson, add a great deal more to their characters. They manage to create something perfect in the delivery of their lines. It's not that the line readings are particularly realistic, but just that the words seem to tumble effortlessly out of their mouths. Even when they say things like "The Lord's bounty may not be for sale but the Devil's is...if you can pay the price" (and other phrases that essentially state themes of the movie) it just sounds right coming from them.

Judd tell Westrum at one point: "All I want is to enter my house justified". By the end of the film, after Judd's consistent take on what's right and what's wrong, you feel as if he has succeeded in his quest and even tugged along Westrum and Heck while he was at it. Garrett, on the other hand, may very well have been trying to reach that same lofty goal, but by the time the opening scene replays itself at the end, you realize that he may have gone about things the wrong way. After deciding to throw in with the businessmen looking to clean up the West (in particular, to get rid of people like Billy), no amount of rationalizing his decision could make it feel right. Though we don't see his life between the killing and the years-later bookends, one gets the feeling that Garrett has struggled with trying to justify his actions and has paid a price. In High Country, there's an understanding of that grey area between good and bad: "My father says there's only right and wrong - good and evil. Nothing in between. It isn't that simple, is it?" "No it isn't. It should be, but it isn't". That seems to be a statement about how people are always in transition - becoming bad from their natural good state or trying to get back to being good through redemption. In Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid, it's more a statement of fact - everybody has some of both, so choose your actions carefully. Some have called Peckinpah's final Western a eulogy for the Old West, but it feels more like one for the films about the Old West. One that leaves you feeling quite melancholy.

If Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid didn't completely win me over with its ramshackle nature, it certainly left an impression - in particular in relation to its main characters. Ride The High Country has a much greater hit ratio (and even shows some early bits of Peckinpah's different view of violence), but also leaves its strongest impression through its two lead characters. And that's where The Wild Bunch left me cold - the characters. But both of these Westerns have left me considering Peckinpah's other films (in particular The Wild Bunch) and has made me eager to revisit them and fill in the ones I haven't seen (The Battle Of Cable Rogue and Major Dundee for example). I think that alone is pretty high praise.

Blindspot - "The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin" and "The Five Deadly Venoms"

You may notice a distinct difference in the quality of the screen caps contained within this post. 36th Chamber Of Shaolin has a proper widescreen aspect ratio and clear image (straight from the Dragon Dynasty DVD) while Five Deadly Venoms has a poorly cropped 4:3 image that was obviously recorded years ago off TV to well-worn VHS (and then transferred to YouTube where I found it). Was I desperate to catch that second film and willing to watch anything I could source? No. It was actually a bit of a design point.

Several months ago when I first mentioned this pairing of Shaw Brothers Kung Fu films for my Blindspot, it was suggested to me that I should swing on down to Chinatown and get my viewing copies there. After all, crappy, English-dubbed copies are how most people get introduced to Kung Fu in the first place. Though I completely saw the merit in the idea, I was against it for two reasons...First and foremost, I really can't handle cropped films and bad dubbing - hell, even Fellini films dubbed afterwards back into their own language (as Fellini intended) drive me a bit crazy since things like intonation never quite match up quite properly when dubbed. I've been a stickler for proper aspect ratios since realizing what they were (somewhere during the mid-point of the VHS years) and mostly seethe if I come across a film on TV or DVD in a bastardized form. Secondly, I already had that copy of 36th Chamber on DVD sitting at home on my stack of unwatched films. But the idea of watching at least one of the films in the format in which I would've seen my first taste of Kung Fu was still somewhat appealing. My knowledge of Kung Fu is not extensive (loads of Jackie Chan, the more serious Come Drink With Me, the much less serious Mad Monkey Kung Fu and all sorts of clips and scenes from Sunday afternoons long ago), but when I think of it, I do indeed think of desaturated videotape stock, people being cut out of the frame and halting English dubbed over to attempt to match with the characters on screen. Oh, and enough wooshing and whacking sounds to make a foley artist break into a sweat.

All of which can make a Kung Fu film somewhat hard to take seriously. But then I started to watch 36th Chamber Of Shaolin...Its opening sequence of Chia-Hui Liu (aka Gordon Liu) framed in different manners executing solo Kung Fu moves was enough to show that there was a great deal of artistic craft going on here. Not that I doubted there would be, but it completely settled me into being able to look upon the film as a complete entity. It also validated my decision to see this film on its full canvas - what a shame it would've been to miss the entirety of each of these opening shots. Not only the backdrops and art direction, but the perfectly sculpted body of Liu and each one of his refined moves. When the story starts, though, his character San Te is somewhat less attuned to the ways of the Shaolin monks than he is in those credits. He is a frustrated young student watching his surroundings get overrun and manhandled by the Manchus of the Qing Dynasty. His protests get him in some trouble and he manages to escape to the Shaolin monastery. He seeks to become enlightened in the ways of the masters of martial arts so that he may return and help get back ownership of his old village to its denizens. After being left to tend to menial jobs for awhile, he figures out that he can now ask to be taught Kung Fu. He discovers that it is a painstaking process and that he must focus on and master individual skills one at a time in 35 separate chambers. The film glides by quite easily as it works through a straightforward three act structure: young student in village; student at monastery working through the different chambers one at a time; monk leaving school to seek justice.

There's less straightforward about Five Deadly Venoms. The plot description is easy enough: a student of all five major disciplines of fighting (Centipede, Snake, Scorpion, Lizard, Toad) is instructed by his dying teacher to find 5 previous students. Each of the five had mastered one of the five styles and the teacher is worried that some of them may turn evil. The student knows all five styles, but has mastered none and so must team up with one of the five to ensure none of the others commit any crimes. The teacher does not know the names or faces of any of these masters, so the student is left to his own devices to find them. Like 36th Chamber, the film opens with some great montages as we see each of the five masters (in their masks) performing their specialized skills. The choreography and filming is definitely leaning to the sillier side of things (Centipede smashes plates falling from the ceiling, etc.), but it certainly sets up the rest of the film to be a battle between these five with the wildcard of the student thrown into the mix. And it is to a certain extent, but also continually falls apart into over-explanation, needless plot points and the occasional bits of goofy humour that don't work very well (at least not for me). Worst of all, there seems to be a definite lack of actual Kung Fu throughout the film. The final fight is great and helps to redeem things, but short of the little bits sprinkled here and there, it becomes somewhat tiring as we flit between Centipede/Snake and Lizard/Toad as they try to outmaneuver each other (while the student observes). Meanwhile, Scorpion is unknown to everyone.

Admittedly, I have to firmly blame the crappy quality of the video and the annoying dubbing as prime reasons for not enjoying Five Deadly Venoms as much as I likely should have. A pristine copy probably wouldn't have vaulted it above 36th Chamber, but with blurry faces continually being chopped at the edges of the frame and English sentences being chopped into odd meters, I found it hard to stay with the story and get pulled into the film. I expect it is still a few notches below 36th Chamber in terms of its action, story, pacing, cinematography, etc., but I feel I need to see it again in much better circumstances. The concept is terrific - 5 different styles of attack based on reptiles and insects held by 5 hidden masters and only one student left to find them. There are moments of real mystery as you try to figure out who is who at the same time as the student, but it never felt like a cohesive story. Only the final fight really gels as the student finally dives headlong into battle with and against the masters and we witness a variety of well planned choreography. As with 36th Chamber, there's certainly some "fantasy" in some of the moves (leaping on the sides of walls and staying there, hovering in air longer than gravity would allow, etc.), but it all fits into the reality of the worlds in the films so there's no issue. 36th Chamber's Kung Fu moments easily win out - the battles are more crisp, there are more elements in play (various weaponery for example) and even the training sections as San Te moves through the chambers are really entertaining. My favourite is probably the Head Chamber where he solely practices using his head for different Kung Fu moves (initially getting battered by having to bat heavy sandbags around with it) as well as the first time he crosses the water using only the floating pieces of wood. This is where 36th Chamber excels - in treating its slightly ridiculous set pieces with serious tones while finding the right mix of physicality from its actors and the added "effects" (e.g. editing, wires, and huge dollops of additional sound).

The foley editing of arms and weapons whooshing through the air and fists connecting with bodies is certainly overdone and can feel comical at times. It obscures and wears down Five Deadly Venoms (though with what feels like additional music, I can't say for sure how much is present in the original cut of the film), but feels just fine in The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin. I don't profess to be a Wu-Tang Clan fan (a neglected area of my musical background), but the seminal rap group was heavily influenced by 36th Chamber. It's easy to see how San Te building towards creating a new 36th chamber in order to share Kung Fu with the common man could have been inspiring to a group of diverse rap artists. One could also develop an entire philosophy simply from the words of wisdom spoken by the many monks from the different chambers. Five Deadly Venoms had much less depth, spirit and entertainment within its restricted walls, but there was still enough there to possibly draw me back for a revisit with a superior copy of the film. At the very least I could get some better screencaps from it...

Blindspot - "Best Years Of Our Lives" and "Ashes And Diamonds"

Though I was correct in assuming that an American viewpoint on post World War II would be, shall we say, slightly different than one from Poland, I was wrong in how I expected each film to handle the framework of their viewpoints. Best Years Of Our Lives (the 1946 film from William Wyler) takes the approach of covering personal individual stories to try to give a wider perspective of the variety of issues soldiers might encounter upon their re-integration into North American society. It does it with the expected melodramatic flair, but also manages to keep things reigned in enough to retain some actual emotional connection to the characters and enough engagement in their stories to keep things entertaining throughout the long 2 and a half hour run time (one of my main reasons for holding off on seeing this Hollywood classic). Meanwhile, the Polish Ashes And Diamonds (shot 12 years after Best Years in the late 50s) focuses less on the individual ramifications of having been at war and more on the direct impact to its society and culture - not to mention the continuing struggle its people faced in a post-war political landscape. But again it surprised by keeping the story very localized to a hotel bar and through the eyes of only a few characters during a single day.

Wyler's film tracks the return home of three different soldiers trying to restart their lives after they were put on hold at different times: Air Force Captain Fred Derry is newly married (less than a month with his new bride before shipping off); Army Corporal Al Stephenson has two older children, a long term marriage (with the always gorgeous Myrna Loy - talk about a reason to get back home) and a high ranking job at the bank; Sailor Homer Parrish returns to his family and the girl next door. The three men meet at the airport and share a ride back home in the gun turret section of a bomber. They quickly bond since they all come from the same city and vow to keep in touch after getting home. As the single cab drops each successive one off at their homes, the film sets itself up to be over the top melodrama and a top shelf weepy (I gauged it at half a box of Kleenex at least). Homer's house is first, but he's reluctant - he lost both his hands in the war and fears that he will be treated differently even though he can handle himself just fine. His girl welcomes him with open arms, but his parents can't hide their sadness and desperately try not to call attention to the hooks at the ends of his arms. Al finds it hard to reconnect with his now grown up kids, his wife and a position back at the bank, and so he takes to drinking. Fred finds it hard to get work and falls back to being a soda jerk at the pharmacy while realizing that his new wife may not be the woman of his dreams after all.

There's certainly some unnecessary swelling music at times, but it rarely begs for emotion like I half expected it to. Similarly Ashes And Diamonds also keeps the overt emotional scenes mostly at bay. In its case, though, it feels like the citizens are just so worn out from constant conflict that they just don't have any strength left to show much of anything. The film is set on May 8th 1945 (the day of Germany's surrender) as a political struggle for independence rages and a possible civil war looms. "The end of the war isn't the end of our fight" says a member of the Home Army as he waits to ambush a local district's Secretary named Szczuka outside a church. He and his partner wish for the old days of Warsaw and, as part of the resistance to the government, are trying to chip away at the new Communist rulers. Unfortunately, they end up killing the wrong men and only realize this later on back at the hotel. They now must wait for their chance to kill Szczuka after a banquet for the mayor. Maciek, the younger of the two men, spends most of his time flirting with the gorgeous, poker-faced young bartender Krystyna while his older superior is all business. They both assumed that they were fighting for Poland's freedom during the war, but now they question whether the results (ie. Communist leadership) are worth what they went through. On the last day of the war, a new skirmish within the borders of their own country is about to begin. People who fought side by side are now ready to fight against each other.

Filmed during "The Thaw" in Poland (a period when the communist government became a bit more lax in some of its social policies), Andrzej Wajda was able to flex some more "poetic" muscles throughout Ashes And Diamonds instead of the previously mandated "realism". A gunned down man bursts into flames, a row of vodka shots are set aflame to look like candles in a church and a drunken walk across a banquet table with a fire extinguisher are just a few of the images that are left with you long after the film has ended. The images tie together the upending of religion in the country with the confusion of national identity - even within the ranks of the 3 main Home Army sympathizers, we get a clash of views. One is a soldier fully dedicated to the cause, another an opportunist who will help the cause in order to help himself and the third (Maciek - played by the "Polish James Dean" Zbigniew Cybulski) begins to get conflicted as he spends more time with Krystyna and actually envisions a life with her outside of political struggle. Things become even more difficult for Maciek as he meets Szczuka and they quickly develop somewhat of a father/son relationship. In Best Years Of Our Lives, Fred (Dana Andrews) and Al (the great Fredric March) also become close - but their father/son bond becomes complicated when Fred falls for Al's daughter Peggy. The film particularly shines in a scene where Al and Fred meet at their favourite bar and try to talk through the issue of Fred being interested in Peggy while also being a married man. It's a conversation that feels real - each man listening to the other and pulling their thoughts together. Though the film loses sight of Homer's story (his treatment as a cripple by his parents is heartrending at times) and even Al's (Myrna Loy gets pushed off to the side a bit) to focus on Fred and Peggy, there are enough fully-realized moments and actual issues raised that the story never felt contrived or sentimental. Much of the film must have felt somewhat shocking to a 1946 audience. Harold Russell (who played Homer) was an actual double amputee, so his portrayal of the difficulties of re-entering society on your own terms (and not those which society wants to put on you) was more than just "realistic".

Both of these WWII films share what feels like an honest view of how it feels to come out on the other side of a war - from a nationalistic point of view as well as a personal one. Best Years Of Our Lives provides a great deal more hope in its conclusion than Wajda's film, but they both show that a great deal of effort must be put into finding those diamonds within the ashes of a war-torn society.