Disturbing Rear Window

I didn't see it at the theater because I was one of the seven people in the country who chose to go see Grindhouse that weekend instead. The movie has a few effective suspense scenes, but for the most part it wasn't very good. It's premise is obviously derived from Rear Window (1954) – a housebound individual starts peeping on his neighbors and suspects that one of them is a murderer – but it felt like the filmmakers simply had no understanding of what made Hitchcock's version so effective and wonderful. Every change they made to the Rear Window template was a step in the wrong direction, betraying the central conceits of the story. So, I thought I'd jot down a few musings I've had about where Disturbia went wrong in its translation of Hitch...

First off, the central premise of the filming of Rear Window was that (with the exception of the final shot) the camera never leaves the room. In other words, the audience is stuck in the apartment for the whole film along with the James Stewart character, who has broken his leg. Much of the suspense comes from the claustrophobia of being in the room, and from the frustration of being unable to simply cross the courtyard to get a closer look in the neighbors' apartments. By tying his camera to the room, Hitchcock expertly monkeys with the conventions of Hollywood filmmaking: only James Stewart and his pals are granted close-ups; the rest of the neighbors are only seen in long shot. Big reveals in movies usually happen in close-ups. We also get to know more about the characters who appear in close-up. By denying the close-up for Stewart's neighbors – at best they are seen with a long lens from across the courtyard – Hitchcock interferes with the audience's familiar expectation of moving from wide to close shots to get a better look at things. Disturbia opens up the space a little more: Shia LeBoeuf's character is under house arrest and can move around most of his house and garden. That's all fine and good, as it gave us more places to explore and stopped the movie from just being a complete Rear Window clone. It made the mistake, however, of frequently letting the camera go outside the boundary of the house. In other words, the camera was given more freedom to roam than the character, and the audience never feels locked down like the character is. As a result, the film gave into the audience's desire to see more than the character can, and diluted the suspense by doing so.

This leads me to a second, related, complaint: like a lot of movies these days, Disturbia did not understand the concept of a restricted point-of-view. The whole premise of Rear Window works because we, the audience, are locked into the same point-of-view as the James Stewart character. We only learn things when he learns things. If we were to get ahead of him in the story, the film would be dead and would have nowhere to go. Disturbia blows this by allowing us get ahead of the Shia LeBoeuf character and see things that he does not see. Every time it does this, it drains the movie of suspense. The biggest impact this has is on our knowledge of the killer. In Rear Window, we are deprived of seeing the suspected killer in close-up until the very end of the film when he enters Stewart's apartment. In Disturbia, we are given lots of opportunity to see and get to know the killer, and we learn more about him than the main character knows – such as in the scene where he scares Sarah Roemer in her car or in the scene where the camera cuts to blood splatting on the neighbor's window (something none of the protagonists see). There is really no ambiguity about whether the neighbor is a killer or not because we know too much. Had the film stuck rigorously to LeBoeuf's point-of-view, and had it shown less of the neighbor, this would have been avoided.

The last point I'll discuss is the issue of voyeurism. Rear Window is all about the desire to look, and Hitchcock consciously implicates the film audience in James Stewart's voyeurism. Hitch is basically saying that all cinema audiences are peepers who get off on spying on other people's lives. By locking the camera to the room, by denying the audience close-ups, and by restricting our point-of-view to that of Stewart, Hitchcock is deliberately toying with our desire to look. And at the end of the movie, he is careful to punish Stewart's voyeurism by having him break his other leg. In this era of mobile devices and ubiquitous surveillance, Disturbia had the potential to explore similar issues about what it means to look in today's world. Of course, it doesn't seem to aim for that at all, and it ultimately ends up becoming something of a pro-surveillance movie: LeBoeuf is rewarded, not punished, for surveilling his neighbors; moreover, he even gets to use his surveillance prowess to get his revenge on the pesky kids across the street. I feel like I've seen a lot of movies in the past few years that offer up pro-surveillance narratives – Deja Vu (2006) and Next (2007) spring to mind – and this might be the most disturbing thing about Disturbia. Oh well, at least the neighbor wasn't Muslim...

Jeff Bridges in Jagged Edge

I know what you mean, Andrew, and I wondered myself; but I simply couldn't think of a fifth male whom I thought was better. I find Bridges' performance fascinating and disturbing: is it the actor's charm we respond to, or the character's? (AND HERE BE SPOILERS) Has he very successfully shielded his guilt from us, or is he genuinely deluded? That paradox holds me, and, though it isn't an obvious contender for one of the performances of the decade (I had Jack Nicholson in Terms of Endearment, Klaus Maria Brandauer in Out of Africa and William Hickey in Prizzi's Honor on my shortlist with Bridges), his underplaying and charisma do the job for me (I think).

As for the movie itself, I don't quite agree that it's Basic Instinct lite. Jagged Edge takes itself more seriously, and has a very effective thriller tone which makes me queasy. Its most powerful moments (e.g. the opening murder, the cross-examination of the training instructor by Glenn Close, and the ingenuity of the subplot involving the woman who was almost raped a year or so earlier) aren't matched by the later movie.

My one big problem with Jagged Edge is that, having carefully constructed its plot and successfully managed our changing allegiances for most of its running time, it gives up ten minutes before the end with Close's foolish response to the finding of the typewriter, her 'everything's okay' moment on the 'phone at her home existing purely so the final confrontation can occur. Even though I prefer Basic Instinct, and admire and enjoy its mise en scène, its general politically incorrect hi-jinks, and the strut of Sharon Stone's performance, Jagged Edge is a movie which I feel continues to hold up well.

And besides... 'He was trash!'

Code of the Virgin

I wonder if this was a coincidence or not...

Death Sentence (2007)

Death Sentence is the latest Kevin Bacon opus. It's a grim, nasty vigilante/revenge film that's a lot of fun if you like that kind of thing. Bacon stars as Nick Hume, a risk assessor whose rational world view and comfortable, middle-class existence is shattered when his son is the victim of a random killing at a ghetto gas station. He decides to take matters into his own hands by killing the gangbanger responsible for his son's death, but things don't quite turn out the way that he had imagined. The movie awkwardly tries to make some kind of half-assed statement about class difference, but it's a pretty vacuous and illogical film at the end of the day. It is, however, quite gripping and pleasingly bleak: unlike most movies these days, this is not a film where you should expect a happy ending with the dysfunctional family getting back together in recognition of the fact that they really love one another. It also features a strong, off-the-deep-end central performance from Bacon; and John Goodman adds some enjoyably theatrical gusto to his poorly written character.

The film is mostly aiming to resurrect the style and attitude of seventies-era vigilante/revenge cinema: e.g. Walking Tall (1973), Death Wish (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), Rolling Thunder (1977), Walking the Edge (1980), Death Wish II (1981), Ms. 45 (1981), Vigilante (1983). In particular, it is based on the sequel to the novel of Death Wish; the final sequence of the film borrows rather too heavily from from Taxi Driver; and the poster art takes its cues from Walking Tall (click image to enlarge). The pleasures of Death Sentence in this regard are of a second-hand nature, but it got me thinking a little bit about why I find these films pleasurable in the first place.

Vigilante and revenge films are often labeled right-wing fantasies: the individualistic, macho, white male protects what is his through violent revenge. The justice system is ineffective and operates like a nanny state for criminals, giving the bad guys more rights than the victims. This is certainly true of many of the aforementioned revenge films, but I think the politics of these films go deeper than this surface reading. In many ways, they are all modern westerns. The western as a genre usually focused on the tension between a lawless frontier and a building of civilization. Different westerns propose different interpretations of how those tensions played out in the foundational myths of America. For example, the final shot of The Searchers – arguably the most famous shot of any western – has John Wayne walking away from the camera and out into the wilderness, with the shot framed through an open doorway. In other words, our point-of-view is from inside the house, from within civilization; Wayne has proven by this point that he has no place within, and must take his place on the outside of civilization instead.

In vigilante/revenge movies, a similar set of tensions form the core of the narratives, only now we are in the present day. The laws and rules of civilization are presented as having failed us; the police protect the criminals. The lone vigilante, usually a mild-mannered, middle-class guy who's been playing by the rules until the rules have failed him, is a figure who snaps and comes to embody the pre-civilized qualities of the animal or the gunslinger or the warrior. He enters a heterotopic space on the outskirts of the civilized world, and he represents a return of the things that middle-class American society has repressed. He becomes a fierce beast demanding some kind of moral center in a society that's gone out-of-whack. (It is perhaps no coincidence that these films have mostly been popular during corrupt Republican presidencies!)

Death Sentence is a good example of this tradition, with Bacon's rational world view slowly unraveling, revealing his flaws as a father and husband, as well as his inner animal. I think it is this set of tensions that interests me in revenge movies. Even in the revenge films that skew more to the right in their politics, this basic set of tensions still leaves ample ambiguity and richness for liberal lefties like myself to enjoy.

It Begins

So far so good for my prophecy of a strong finish to the year in movies. I caught two over the holiday weekend...

I got hooked into this movie early on, not so much from the fact that the action starts right away but because I quickly liked the lead characters played by Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Your opinion of the movie will probably be shaped by how you feel about them as well, because the plot certainly isn't a mystery. The trajectory of the story is pretty obvious from early on, even if you haven't seen the trailers. The real trick is that the movie is still able to stay suspenseful and tense. In addition to the leading performances, Ben Foster is memorable as Crowe's 2nd in command. The dialogue is strong, and there are some cool action sequences. My only complaint is with the finale, in which believability flies out the window in far too many ways. But this wasn't enough to rob me of my overall enjoyment of the movie.


IMDB lists the year of this film as 2006, so I am not sure if the film has already played on the other side of the pond ages ago, but it was recently released in L.A. "Deep Water" tells the story of Donald Chowhurst, an amateur sailor who entered a race in 1968 to be the first man to sail around the world alone without stopping. I knew nothing about what would happen next before seeing the film, and I highly recommend being as ignorant as I was if at all possible. One of the great strengths of the movie is the deliberate manner of revealing plot progression and character development in a most suspenseful manner. There is also a wide scope of human emotions powerfully captured in the tight 90-minute movie. The filmmakers make great use of all sorts of media to keep the storytelling varied and engaging. But most importantly, Donald Chowhurst is a compelling figure, the kind of guy who would clearly capture the fascination of Werner Herzog. I really enjoyed "Deep Water", and would also love to see a Herzog dramatization somewhere down the road.

Movies in 2007 A.D.

I recently told Andrew that 2007 was a good year for movies, but then realized I only said that because I happened to see two good movies in one week (“Rescue Dawn” and “Sunshine”). At first I backpedaled from the statement, but I now assert that I might have been prescient in that observation. I think there are some very promising movies on the horizon…

3:10 to Yuma
(Opening September 7th, although I got tickets for a preview screening tomorrow)

I don’t know why, but I am in the mood for a Western. I also like Christian Bale, and have to admit that Russell Crowe is usually pretty good. I just watched the DVD of “The Insider” last night. That’s a damn good movie, and Michael Mann is a solid director.

Eastern Promises
(Opening September 14th)

Another David Cronenberg movie with Viggo Mortensen dealing with crime families. And Naomi Watts is in this one.

The Darjeeling Limited
(Opening September 29th)

I like Wes Anderson, although “The Life Aquatic” was kind of uneven and made me think he might be better when he doesn’t have the budget to do whatever he wants. Still, I am interested to check out anything Anderson does.

American Gangster
(Opening Nov 2nd)

Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe are pretty dope leads, it looks like an epic crime movie, and Ridley Scott will be trying to make up for the lameness of “A Good Year”.

No Country for Old Men
(Opening November 9th)

The second I saw the trailer for this movie, I texted Andrew from the theater with, “The Coens are back!” This looks like “Blood Simple” territory. So excited!!

Youth Without Youth
(Opening December 14th)

I miss Tim Roth and am excited to see him in the lead, as well as what Coppola is up to.

Sweeny Todd
(Opening December 21st)

I have seen this show live and it is really dark, particularly for a musical. Tim Burton directing and Johnny Depp starring definitely makes me curious.

There Will Be Blood
(Opening December 26th)

A new P.T.A. movie. Daniel Day-Lewis as the bad guy. Yessssssssss.