Sleepwalking

So there were some good things and some bad things about Sleepwalking. On the good things list is the camera, which regularly perfectly frames a face. Is it fate that I read the following in David Thomson's The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood before seeing Sleepwalking? “... the chemistry that exists between photography and the face maintains a depth or mystery that is without rival.” (Pg. 86.) For Thomson, the image of the face, or images of the face as it moves through time, lie at the heart of an understanding of cinema. Sleepwalking adheres to this theory, to its benefit. Also interesting: Charlize Theron again makes herself – not exactly unpretty – but not the glamorous image she is well capable of being. Red eyes, tragedy makeup, and the right kind of light; if it works on her it will work on anyone.

On the bad things list is the plot. A melodrama about family relationships, Sleepwalking manhandles our emotions as characters lose their jobs, their homes, their children, etc. I felt manipulated, especially by a scene near the end. I caution you, what follows discusses a major plot development. In the final act, a man murders his own father. Such is the power of narrative that a fucked up situation like patricide become satisfying, completing, wholesome. As the son bangs away at the father yelling “its all your fault” we believe it and the violence is cleansing. No blood, which might engender sympathy, is shown. This could have been played out differently, it would have been sufficient for the son to stand up to the father some other way. One thing I liked about In the Valley of Elah was that violence done by anyone served only to worsen, never to resolve. In Sleepwalking violence begets violence, and violence solves the problem, with the force of a happy ending and narrative resolution shoving this “solution” down our throats. The violence in either American Psycho or Kill Bill could never be this disturbing, even if it is more prevalent and graphic, because stylization always put the killing in quotes. Sleepwalking never allows for a question mark.

The Other Boylen Girl & Acadamy Award Nominated Shorts: Animation

Creators of The Other Boleyn Girl: you spent so much money on beautiful costumes, on castles, on banners ... why do you insist on obscuring everything behind grates or shoulders or moving the camera every freakin' moment? Polanski, for one, did stuff like this, but he know when to do long takes as well. He had rhythm. TOBG loosely tells the story of the sisters Boleyn, who in the 16th century both bedded Henry the XIII. Anne Boleyn became Queen of England and mother to the throne's eventual successor, Queen Elizabeth. The plot has all the loose ends and inaccuracies of condensed history, but it also has the emotional density of good melodrama. Besides the camera thing, TOBG has some merit as a work of craft, and I found it surprisingly likeable. Eric Bana as Henry pulls off the difficult combination of being alternately lupine and oafish, and Scarlett Johansson conveys as much depth as Natalie Portman, the two appear as petty pretty girls, strong women, predators, and victims. Some trick of how TOBG is shot makes many of its images look golden, which conveys a moral point: if everything is gilded then what is the value of anything?

—

Animation is close to the heart of film. Each frame is individually crafted, twenty-four frames per second. All the Academy Award nominated shorts in the animation category are now showing at the Embarcadero. In the wonderful stop-motion Madame Tutli-Putli, the Madame experiences an increasingly sinister train ride that ends somewhere a lot like Heaven. The eyes of the Madame are beautifully expressive, for portrait painter Jason Walker invented a method, used in the film, to superimpose images of real human eyes onto the eyes of puppets. The high artistry and style of Moya Lyubov (My Love), from Russia, will be familiar to viewers of the series Masters of Russian Animation, and the mostly playful stop-motion rendition of Prokofiev's Peter & The Wolf, the award winner, was enjoyable. Two other films also show, I Met the Walrus, an animated version of an interview of John Lennon by 14-year-old Jerry Levitan, and Meme Les Pigeons Vont Au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven), so there's a lot of value for your money.