Uncertainty

Uncertainty opens with the Brooklyn Bridge and our protagonists must choose whether to travel west to Manhattan or east to Brooklyn. The decision is ultimately made by a flip of a coin, propelling us into a sudden and powerful dash towards both destinations. The remainder of the film bounces back and forth between Manhattan and Brooklyn as both protagonists play out what would have happened given either course of action.
In Manhattan we are treated to a telling family drama about a semi-well-to-do immigrant family complete with a domineering mother, an ailing uncle, and an ambitious younger sister anxious to follow in her sister’s (protagonist Kate, played by Lynn Collins) footsteps. In this situation Bobby (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), our other hero, plays the bumbling and unloved fiancé. Across the water we are plunged into intrigue as Bobby and Kate are chased through Brooklyn by drug dealers and hit men in hopes of a five hundred thousand dollar reward.
Each vein is divided not only spatially and thematically, but optically, taking on the colors green and yellow respectively to visually differentiate the two stories. These visual cues become important as the film progresses because, as one would expect in a film entitled Uncertainty, the stories consist largely of the main characters sitting around and not really deciding anything at all. The result is a lot like a Friday night that starts with big plans and ends with an argument over which Bar to go to.
The film’s opening provides a lot of momentum and promise as the initial indecision and novel structure provide a degree of suspense and tension that is able to carry the viewer through the initial lack of substance. The suspense is compounded as the either pair finds a lost object and is forced to decide what do with it. But as the film pushes through the to the second act, uncertainty only increases, and the lack of agency and the constant wavering begin to grind on the viewer. This is not to say there is no action, there is plenty of it, but the lack of cognizant choice on the part of the character’s results in major plot turns that are empty of value. By the third act, when decisions are finally made and the initial point becomes apparent, the film has already lost its audience and the resolution feels contrived and pointless.
This is upsetting, because the characters involved, especially those in the Brooklyn thread, are deep and rich individuals, whose stories, motivations and relationships are well conceived and compelling. The film’s images are beautiful as well. Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel sturdy and unified images that contain all the necessary details and are coded with thematic colors, but don’t become gimmicky. The failure of the film comes purely from a flawed concept: its just not interesting watching people not make decisions.

2/5

Afterschool

Afterschool is the next in a long line of movies dealing with the increasing digitalization of the public optic. Taking place in a private boarding school in New York, the film deftly navigates the divide between analog and digital, and the new spectator/spectacle relationship that has become so confused in recent times.
Afterschool opens with a series of viral videos, moving from the nonsensical to the bizarre to the violent, culminating with a low quality (though possibly high definition) amateur porn in which a girl with a hand around her neck informs her mother that she is going to be “fucked for money”. Just as the girl’s shame and fear become palpable, the camera reveals that this footage is being played in a computer screen, the only illumination in a dark dorm room, and giving us the unmistakable outline of a young, masturbating high school boy. Thus the duality that will structure most of the film begins: the disturbing combination of sex and violence, but also the confusion of what is real and what is not.
Written and directed by Antonio Campos, Afterschool tells the story of Robert, a young, alienated boy who only finds solace in the thousands of videos steaming to him over the Internet. He is picked on by his drug-dealing roommate and appears awkward with the opposite sex until he is forced to work with a female classmate for his audio-video club. It is only with camera in hand, literally, that he seems to begin to open up, taking turns with his partner in reality show-like interviews to question each other about their sexual histories. However, all this comes to an abrupt end when, while taking B-roll of a hallway, Robert finds two senior girls violently overdosing on cocaine and Robert is forced to deal with the hardship of seeing a horror in real life.
The confusion and tension of the analog vs. the digital is the films strongest leg. Using important image queues such as depth of field, image grain, pixelization and exposure, Afterschool oscillates between images that are overwhelmingly digital and others that are highly filmic, hitting every level of confusion in between. Seamlessly moving between the two, Campos manages to create a film that at once plunges the viewer into the depths of the protagonist’s inner world while at the same time isolating him from any intrusion. The confusion between the reality before one’s eyes and the spectacle mediated by the digital perfectly mirrors and augments the unavoidable awkwardness and anxiety felt by adolescence. Indeed, the over-complications of already difficult circumstances is foregrounded when Robert, stumbling through his first moments of a physical relationship with a girl, attempts to recreate the sex scenes he has seen on the Internet.
As an examination of teen angst and anxiety in the digital age, Afterschool is a superb film. It is in scenes such as the through-the-camera interviews or Roberts first sexual experience that film really accomplishes its goals. So it is unfortunate that Campos chooses to convolute the movie with melodramatic twists such as the double overdose and a weird sub/side plot dealing with corruption and incompetence in the school system. As Campos tries to structure the film around these events, the film begins to feel contrived and stretched, lacking the mass or the will to fill such a complex and unnecessary niche. Still, even with these contrivances, the Afterschool still manages to maintain a level of raw verisimilitude that can only be found through eyes and lens of an actual teenager.

3/5

Shutter Island

Warning: Contains slight spoilers.

Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island is not a bad movie, but it is not a great one. It is important that I make this distinction because I have found that when anyone likes something to a large degree (and there will be many who love this movie), they are like to take any marks of dislike as grave personal affronts. So, as to avoid the polarizing effects of any discussion pertaining to what is ultimately opinion, allow me to commence this review with a clear statement: Shutter Island is not a bad movie, but it is not a great one.

The film is based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane, and tells the story of two U.S. Marshals sent to investigate the disappearance of a patient at the eponymous secluded island mental hospital. The film opens with Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) suffering from a severe bout of what appears to be seasickness as he and his new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), travel to the island to begin their investigation. It is in these initial scenes that Scorsese begins to swathe the film with a host of historical references to 1950s pulp, 30s and 40s noir and early twentieth century German expressionism. Whether it is stylized digital composition, simple image manipulation or actual optical printing, the ocean and sky vistas of this opening scene and nearly all that follow lack the digital invisibility and sharpness of most conventional films and act as both a formal and contextual reflex to the films constructive themes.

Upon arriving at the prison/hospital, the story begins to plunge into a series of flashbacks/memories/hallucinations of Nazi death camps, burning women and dead children. There are pools of blood, pools of water, ash, flame, embers, papers, ice and just about every other surrealist/macabre convention. The images are certainly stunning, regaling the audience with the hyper-saturated color of a 1950s apartment and the stark and frigid realism of frozen body piles in Dachau. The sudden shift from the northeastern seaboard to these seemingly otherworldly locations is echoed in the basic the construction of the film. Not a scene passes without a slew of visual jump cuts: a man turns, and in the reverse turns again; Marshals raise their badges and in the next shot have their hands in their pockets. This visual tension is supported by the Indeterminate and Minimalist score that beats, bangs and lingers a bit too fast, a bit too slower, a bit too soon, a bit too late. This frenetic construction propels Marshal Daniels’ twisting investigation into the madness that surrounds the mental hospital and all of its inmates.

However, like a train gaining too much speed, this feverish style fails to hold itself cleanly to the rails and delivers what is at best a rather bumpy ride. Even the initial flash backs fail to be mysterious and intriguing but rather become jarring and disjointed. The score is mixed slightly to high in the sound track, and its chaotic energy leaps ahead of the viewer and, rather than leading the audience down the rabbit hole, jams them forcefully through it. The length and narrative information revealed in the initial flashbacks removes much of the mystery (and thus the potential energy) of the film. This is not to say that they give away the movie’s ending (not that any film taking place in a mental hospital could truly disguise what its inevitable ending will be), but rather that they simply resolve too much of the atmospheric tension. The time spent in these stylistically different areas makes their surrealist and unnatural qualities seem mundane, and result in formal confusion for the viewer.

In retrospect it is easy to explain these jarring and juxtaposed images as the basic ravings and delusions of a mad man, but this explanation is not found within the film, but is instead forced by the viewer to write off the discomfort found throughout the viewing experience. Once again, this is not a bad movie, and indeed its formal strategy is not a complete failure. Its just that the numerous small missteps that permeate the entire film build to the point that they weigh down what could have been a great achievement into a mediocre and chaotic thriller.

3/5