Intellectuals

December 19, 2011

In my earlier post about Paul Goodman, I pointed out that the only contemporary intellectual who has comparable influence in the U.S. is Noam Chomsky. This led me to a disturbing thought. Chomsky is in his eighties. When he is gone, who will be left? I mean, will there be any really influential intellectuals in this country? Will the deepest thinker that people have heard of be Anderson Cooper? It’s a depressing thought. However, I don’t know of anyone who can take Chomsky’s place. Slavoj Žižek is too European, and, besides, some of his ideas are, well, weird. There is Jared Diamond, of course, but a recent court case could do him irreparable damage. I know people who think that John Bellamy Foster should be as well known as Chomsky. He is certainly one of the more original Marxist thinkers around nowadays. Unfortunately, Foster is not a good public speaker. He tends to be long-winded, and he also tends to use a lot of academic jargon. One of the reasons Chomsky became famous is because he can discuss complex ideas in a clear and succinct manner, using (mostly) everyday English.

I suspect that one of the reasons for the current paucity of famous eggheads is that simply becoming an intellectual in our society is not easy. It requires being able to blot out a lot of noise. Let me give you an example. In one of the few amusing scenes in the otherwise dreary New Age film, I Am, someone asks Chomsky if he has ever seen Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. “Ace who?” says Chomsky, looking completely mystified. Lesson: you can’t be an intellectual if you watch movies like Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. I know it sounds elitist of me to say that, but it happens to be true. (Mind you, this bit of wisdom comes from a man who just watched a movie titled Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. I’m not making this up.)

Footnote One: Let give you an idea of how well-known Chomsky is. One night I went to my local Papa John’s to order a pizza. From where I was standing at the counter, I could hear a radio in the kitchen. The voice on the radio sounded strangely familiar. It took me a moment to realize that it was Chomsky’s voice. About what other intellectual could you possibly tell a story like this?

Footnote Two: I meant to write a scathing review of I Am. The problem is that every time I think about that film, my eyelids start feeling heavy. I’m afraid of slumping forward and damaging my computer monitor.

Posted in Education, John Bellamy Foster, Literature, Media, Noam Chomsky, Popular Culture | Leave a Comment »

Margin Call

December 17, 2011

Years ago I applied for a job as a financial advisor. The interviews went great. I seemed to be a shoo-in for the job. The hiring manager, however, told me that every applicant was required to take a personality test. He assured me that this was just a formality. I took the test, and several days later I received a phone call from the manager. I could tell from the tone of his voice that it was not good news. He said that they could not give me the position, because, according to the test results, I was “too nurturing”. I swear, I’m not making this up.

Today I have a job working in a warehouse. The company that told me that I was “too nurturing” was generously bailed out by the government following the 2008 financial crisis. No doubt they have given bonuses to their unnurturing employees.

I was reminded of all this when I went to see Margin Call, written and directed by T.C. Chandor, a loosely fictionalized account of the collapse of Lehmann Brothers, which triggered the global economic meltdown in 2008. Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) is laid off from his job at a financial firm. As he is being escorted from the building, he hands, as an afterthought, a thumb drive containing a program he has been working on to Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), warning him to “be careful”. Puzzled by this enigmatic comment, Sullivan begins crunching numbers with the program, and late in the evening he discovers that the company is in immediate danger of becoming insolvent. Right away, he calls his fellow employee, Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley), and senior salesman, Will Emerson (Paul Bettany), who then tells the head of sales, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), about this. By the early morning, a meeting has been convened with the top members of the company, including the head of risk, Sarah Robertson (Demi Moore), the head of securities, Jared Cohen (Simon Baker), and the CEO, John Tuld (Jeremy Irons). Tuld decides that the best thing they can do is sell off all of the company’s assets during the next trading day, even though this could cause a financial panic and put them out of business.

This film features fine ensemble acting. I especially liked Irons’s performance. He oozes smug complacency as he makes a decision that will ruin many people’s lives. Spacey is, as always, completely on the mark.

Margin Call quietly points out the insanity of an economic system in which bad decisions by one company can cause a global crisis. It also points out how non-productive and personally corrupting the financial system is. Rogers, for example, is strongly opposed to what the company is doing, but he ends up going along with it, because, as he explains, “I need the money”. The need for money guides the actions of all the characters in varying ways, while one gets the uncomfortable feeling that there is something lacking in their lives. In one scene, Tuld tries to console Rogers by telling him that he could have spent his life digging ditches. “If I had spent my life digging ditches, I would at least have holes in the ground to show for it,” Rogers says. This is one of the best lines I have ever heard in a movie. In another scene, Dale, a former engineer, reminisces about how he once designed a bridge. He inwardly yearns for a time when he made a positive contribution to other people’s lives. (Uh, would it be cynical to say that he wants to be “nurturing”?)

Margin Call is one of the best films of the year.

Posted in Capitalism, Cinema, Financial Industry, Wall Street | Leave a Comment »

Into the Abyss

December 16, 2011

Werner Herzog’s latest documentary is an examination of murder and capital punishment. Although Herzog makes no secret of the fact that he is opposed to the death penalty, he resists the temptation to editorialize in this film, instead telling the story through interviews and leaving it to the audience to draw their own conclusions. The result is a deeply moving and deeply disturbing work.

The film revolves around Michael Perry and Jason Burkett, who were accused of murdering three people. Perry was given the death penalty and Burkett was given a life sentence. As teenagers, Perry and Burkett decided they wanted to steal a red Camaro that belonged to Sandra Stotler, who was the mother of a friend of theirs, Adam Stotler. On October 24, 2001, they went to her house in a gated community near Conroe, Texas. They killed her and then dumped her body in a nearby lake. When they went back to get the Camaro, they found that the gate was closed. They waited around, hoping that someone might let them in. As luck would have it, Adam Stotler and his friend, Jeremy Richardson both showed up. Perry and Burkett told them that a friend of theirs had been injured in a hunting accident and they needed help. They led Stotler and Richardson to a wooded area and then shot them. They took the clicker from Stotler so they could open the gate. They also took the Isuzu Rodeo that Stotler had been driving, as well as Stotler’s wallet. They then went to the house and took the Camaro. (You can find a more detailed account of these events here.)

It was a stupid crime that was carried out in a stupid manner. Within a few day, both Perry and Burkett were arrested. There is no doubt about their guilt. Immediately after his arrest, Perry confessed to the murders and told where the bodies of Stotler and Richardson were. (Perry later claimed that the police coerced his confession. This is quite possibly true, but it begs the question of how he knew where the bodies were.) There were dozens of witnesses who saw Perry and Burkett with the stolen vehicles. Some said they heard them talk about the killings.

A large portion of this film is devoted to interviews with people who knew Perry and Burkett. Herzog takes us into a world where crime and punishment are everyday facts of life. While Burkett was growing up, his father was in and out of prison. The elder Burkett is currently serving a 40-year prison sentence for multiple felonies. One of Burkett’s friends tells us that he learned how to read while in prison. Jeremy Richardson’s older brother served time in prison. While he was attending Jeremy’s funeral, the police arrested him for violating his parole.

There are extensive interviews with both Perry and Burkett. They seem like human opposites. Perry smiles a lot and tells us that he will go to Heaven. (Herzog interviewed him eight days before his execution.) Burkett is poker-faced, and he only discusses things relating to his case. It’s hard to imagine these two plotting a murder together. Neither one of them discusses the killings, no doubt because they were both appealing their convictions. I suppose this shouldn’t be surprising, but it is nonetheless disappointing. The essential mystery of this story – why two seemingly sane persons would commit such terrible acts – remains unknowable.

In one scene, Herzog visits a yard where the red Camaro sits slowly rusting in the open air. “Three people died for this car,” a police detective observes. The sense of waste is palpable.

There are extensive interviews with relatives of the murder victims. Their grief is heartrending. There is also an interview with Burkett’s father, who turns out to be an interesting and articulate person. He blames himself for what his son did, and he expresses his sorrow for the victims’ families. He talks about how at one time he and his son were hand-cuffed together on a prison bus. He tells us that this moment made him feel like a “failure”. There is also an interview with a woman who married Burkett after he was convicted and who claims that she is pregnant with his child. In all honesty, I have no idea what to make of this person. And there is an interview with a man who supervised over 125 executions in Texas. After the execution of Karla Faye Tucker in 1998, he began seeing the faces of all the people whose deaths he presided over. He resigned from his job, even though it cost him his pension. “No one has a right to take another person’s life,” he tells us.

This film makes it clear that the execution of Perry accomplished nothing. It also shows the unfairness of our criminal justice system: Burkett didn’t get the death penalty, even though he was just as guilty as Perry, if not more so. At Burkett’s trial, his father gave an emotional speech asking the jury for leniency, which resulted in Burkett getting a life sentence. Perry had no one to speak for him, so he was killed.

Posted in Capital Punishment, Cinema, Crime, Death Penalty | Leave a Comment »

Paul Goodman Changed My Life

December 12, 2011

One rarely hears Paul Goodman’s name any more. You have to be of a certain age to have likely heard of him. Back in the 1960’s, he was, with the possible exception of Marshall McLuhan, the most famous intellectual in the United States. (The only comparable present-day figure is Noam Chomsky.) His Growing Up Absurd was a national bestseller. The book is a merciless critique of social institutions, exposing their inadequacy and arguing that people were becoming increasingly alienated from them. It helped inspire the counterculture movement of the 1960’s. It has long been out of print, but it is soon to be released on Kindle.

Goodman was a sort of thinker that we never see nowadays. He wrote on politics, sociology, psychology and urban design. He also wrote novels, short stories, poetry and plays. Jonathan Lee’s documentary tries to do justice to all these aspects of Goodman’s prolific writings, with uneven results.

Goodman came of age during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. He became an anarchist after reading Kropotkin, and this remained his basic philosophy for the rest of his life. He was a pacifist during World War II, a difficult time in which to be a pacifist. I would have liked it if the film had discussed this chapter in his life in more detail, but instead it moves on to Gestalt therapy, which Goodman developed with Fritz and Laura Perls. To give us some idea of what this is about, Lee shows us a clip from a film of Fritz Perls conducting a session. He invites a woman into his office and tells her to sit down. She lights a cigarette, smiles nervously, and tells him she feels “scared”. Perls tells her that because she smiled when she said she was “scared”, she was a “phony”. Not surprisingly, the woman takes offense at this. They go back and forth about this for a while, then Perls says, “So, now we are getting somewhere”. In all honesty, I couldn’t see the point of all this.

Fortunately, Goodman devoted his attention to other matters as well. Goodman had very strong views on education. He advocated creating small schools with no more than 25 or 30 students in each. (There is some logic in this idea. Any teacher will tell you that students tend to do better in small classes, because they receive more personal attention.) Goodman became an outspoken and eloquent opponent of the Vietnam War and of the nuclear arms race. He frequently spoke at college campuses during the sixties. However, Goodman’s traditional anarchism eventually brought him into conflict with the New Left of that period. He abhorred the ultra-leftism of the S.D.S., and he disapproved of the drug culture. By the time of his death in 1972, his influence on the left had begun to dwindle.

A large chunk of this film is devoted to Goodman’s sex life. There is reason for this, since Goodman was openly bisexual at a time when gays were often subject to legal harassment. However, this film told me more about this topic than I really wanted to know. Goodman was married and had three children, yet he spent a good deal of time having brief, meaningless affairs with men he met in bars, at the beach, and on airplanes. Just as you would expect, this behavior sometimes created strains between Goodman and his family. This is interesting – up to a point. I would have liked to learn more about Goodman’s anarchist and pacifist ideas, as well as about his troubled relationship with the New Left. Lee clearly wants to get people to read Goodman’s writings, but I don’t see how dwelling on the sordid details of his personal life is supposed to do this.

Posted in 1960's, Anti-Capitalism, Cinema, Education, Literature, Paul Goodman, Vietnam War | Leave a Comment »

Republicans

December 9, 2011

Up until now I’ve resisted the temptation to write about the Republican presidential candidates. This is because they just didn’t seem worth it. This is the sorriest field of candidates I have ever seen. That’s a remarkable statement considering that I’ve seen some truly sorry candidates in my time. (Does anyone remember Al Haig? One of my favorite throwaway gags on The Simpsons was when Homer went rummaging through his attic and found an “Al Haig for President” t-shirt. Of course, Haig would look like Abraham Lincoln standing alongside this current bunch.) These people aren’t even competent bullshitters. (There are 14 million adult Americans who can’t find work, and Newt Gingrich is talking about bringing back child labor.) Yet what gets me is the seeming credulousness that the media show towards these bozos. CNN is an endless parade of talking heads solemnly discussing every nuance of the drivel that comes out of these people’s mouths. It’s as though Dorothy and her companions have discovered the man behind the curtain, but they still think that the giant head is real. (Yeah, I know, that’s the second Wizard of Oz metaphor that I’ve used this week. You have to admit that it’s appropriate, though.)

Consider Rick Perry. He first came to national attention when he made a stupid comment about Texas seceding from the Union. He was than accused of allowing an innocent man to be executed. Yet when he announced his candidacy last summer, the media greeted it with a fanfare worthy of Caesar crossing the Rubicon. They seemed ready to inaugurate him right then. (Alexander Cockburn compared Perry to Ronald Reagan. Before that, he compared Sarah Palin to Ronald Reagan.) Almost immediately, Perry slit his own throat by attacking Social Security. (A large chunk of the Republicans’ voter base consists of elderly people. The one thing the Republicans can not attack is Social Security. I’m amazed that Perry’s handlers didn’t tell him that.) He then embarrassed himself during the debates, a remarkable achievement considering that he was on the same stage as Michele Bachmann.

And then there was Herman Cain. Here was a man with no political experience, whose only accomplishment in life was that he laid off employees at Godfather’s Pizza. (Strangely, it didn’t seem to bother anyone that his company’s name was based on an ethnic stereotype.) Yet reporters treated him as a serious candidate, a pretense that became increasingly difficult to maintain, as Cain didn’t try very hard to conceal his lack of interest in politics. (Concerning the sexual harassment allegations, should it surprise anyone that someone who runs a sordid company like Godfather’s Pizza would behave in a sordid manner?)

The news media do not exist to inform us. They exist to maintain the charade that is U.S. politics.

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Hugo

December 8, 2011

Hugo is a film by Martin Scorcese, based on the novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. Set in Paris during the 1920’s, it tells the story of Hugo (Asa Butterfield), who inhabits the Montparnasse train station in a manner similar to the way the Phantom inhabits the Paris Opera House. He keeps the clocks in the station running, a job that his missing uncle is supposed to be doing. He supports himself by stealing food and other goods from stores and cafes in the station. His life is made precarious by the presence of a Dickensian villain, Inspector Gustave (Sacha Baron Cohen), who want to put him in an orphanage. (Personal disclosure: as a film goer, I have a low tolerance level for Dickensian villains.) Hugo is caught stealing by Georges (Ben Kingsley), a toymaker who has a shop in the station. Georges makes Hugo work for him to make up for what he has stolen. Hugo meets Georges’s goddaughter, Isabella (Chloë Grace Moretz), and the two of them become friends. Through an elaborate series of events, Hugo and Isabella learn that Georges is actually Georges Méliès, the pioneering filmmaker whose works are now largely forgotten. Hugo and Isabella become determined to restore Georges’s reputation as an artist.

This film is a fond tribute to Méliès, one of the first film directors, who began making movies in the 1890’s. Towards the end, there is a montage of scenes from Méliès’s films. Even in this jaded age of CGI effects, they are fascinating to watch. Méliès had a visual imagination that makes most modern directors seem anemic. He was also a great technical innovator. (Among other things, Méliès made the first color films. Each frame was tinted by hand.) He made 500 films, most of which have, alas, been lost. I hope that this film will encourage a new generation to discover his work.

The film’s central conceit, that Méliès doesn’t want to be reminded of his past, is a bit thin and hard to believe. The main problem with this movie, however, is that at 126 minutes, it is too long. During the first half, the story unfolds with agonizing slowness, although the tempo does pick up during the second half. Also, the film is padded out with chase scenes that don’t advance the story, as well as numerous unfunny “funny” scenes featuring Inspector Gustave. (I know I’m not the only person who felt this way. The audience was mostly quiet during these scenes.) This character is played charmlessly by Baron Cohen, who at times seems to be doing an unsuccessful imitation of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau.

I would have liked this film better if there had been more scenes from Méliès’s films, and fewer scenes of Baron Cohen trying to be funny.

Here is Melies’s A Trip to the Moon. (Unfortunately, the tinting is washed out in this version.)

Posted in Cinema, France | 2 Comments »

The Way

December 5, 2011

The Way is a film starring Martin Sheen, written and directed by his son, Emilio Estevez. Thomas Avery (Sheen) learns that his son, Daniel (Estevez), has died in France. He goes to retrieve his son’s remains. There, he learns that Daniel died in a freak storm while trying to cross the Pyrenees as part of the Camino de Santiago, a centuries-old pilgrimage route through northern Spain. It ends at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, which purportedly contains the remains of St. James. While examining his son’s backpack, Thomas is suddenly seized with the idea of walking the route himself while carrying his son’s ashes. He embarks on the journey. Right away he meets a group of eccentric characters: a Dutch gourmand, Joost (Yorick van Wageningen), an angry Canadian who smokes a lot named Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger), and an annoying Irish writer named Jack (James Nesbitt). The film alternates between scenes of the characters engaging in not quite convincing dialogue and scenes of them walking through the Basque and Spanish countryside with obtrusive pop music blaring away on the soundtrack. (I thought the purpose of going on a pilgrimage was to get away from this sort of thing. I guess not.)

Just as you expect, the characters evolve over time. Thomas becomes less of a dick, Joost becomes less of a hedonist, Sarah becomes less angry and Jack becomes less annoying. Yes, this film will uncomfortably remind you of The Wizard of Oz (which is intentional, by the way), except that in this case the man behind the curtain is never revealed. When the group arrive at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, Thomas kneels in front of a silver casket that may or may not contain the remains of St. James. He and the others then look on in awe as a large, porous metal container full of incense is swung back and forth. The significance of this is never explained. Indeed, the significance of the Camino de Santiago is never really explained, except that it is good exercise for people who can afford expensive backpacks, as well as a plane ticket to France.

This film does touch upon issues such as Basque nationalism and prejudice against the Roma. And it does contain breathtaking shots of the Basque and Spanish countryside. All in all, though, I found this movie less interesting than one of those travel documentaries on PBS.

Posted in Christianity, Cinema, Religion, Spain | Leave a Comment »

The Hedgehog

December 1, 2011

The Hedgehog is a film by Mona Achache, based upon the novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic) is a precocious 11-year-old girl who lives with her wealthy parents in an apartment building in Paris. She believes that the people around her are shallow and stupid, so she decides to kill herself on her twelfth birthday, which is coming up in a month. A new neighbor, Mr. Ozu (Togo Igawa), a rich, retired Japanese businessman, moves in. Paloma meets him on the elevator. He is impressed to learn that she knows some Japanese. He begins inviting her to his apartment, and they become friends. (Paloma’s parents don’t seem concerned about a stranger showing such an intense interest in their daughter.) When the concierge, Mrs. Michel (Josiane Balasko), quotes Tolstoy to him, Ozu is immediately taken with her. He begins inviting her out to dinner and buying clothes for her. Paloma also gets to know Michel. She discovers that Michel has a room full of books, and she spends much of her time reading. She keeps her literary interests hidden from other people. (Michel is the “hedgehog” of the film’s title.) Paloma decides not to kill herself. When Michel is struck and killed by a van, Paloma and Ozu console each other.

The main problem with this film is that Paloma never really develops as a character. The only thing that has really changed at the end of the film is that she now knows an adult, Ozu, who is capable of amusing her. In all honesty, she struck me as cold and selfish. True, she does care about Michel, but the film makes it clear that she admires the latter for being withdrawn and secretive. As for Michel, she does begin to open up and become less misanthropic when she starts seeing Ozu, but since she is suddenly killed, this doesn’t lead to anything. Ozu is too perfect to be believable. He is clearly a Westerner’s idealized notion of a wise, old Oriental man. We are never told how Ozu made his fortune, no doubt because the filmmakers didn’t want to soil him with any mundane or unsavory details. (We are apparently not supposed to see anything incongruous about an admirer of Tolstoy having a musical toilet installed in his apartment.) The film does show some class awareness, in that the building’s rich residents largely ignore Michel. (The owner of the building fails to recognize Michel after the latter has had her hair done.) However, this is undermined by the presence of the inexplicable Ozu.

The Hedgehog is a “feel good” movie that doesn’t really make you feel good.

Posted in Cinema, France | Leave a Comment »

Take Shelter

November 30, 2011

Take Shelter, written and directed by Jeff Nichols, is a powerful and disturbing film about a man struggling to keep his sanity. Curtis (Michael Shannon) works for a sand mining company in Ohio. He and his wife, Samantha (Jessica Chastain), struggle to make ends meet, while raising their daughter, Hannah (Tova Stewart), who is deaf. Samantha has to struggle to get their insurance provider to pay for Hannah’s treatment. (Sound familiar?) Curtis begins having vivid and disturbing dreams about storms. In some of them, he and Hannah are physically attacked. Curtis begins to believe that the dreams are a sign that a terrible storm is coming. He becomes obsessed with the idea of expanding a storm shelter in his backyard. He takes out a risky loan to pay for it, even though he and Samantha already owe a lot of money. He “borrows” equipment from his workplace to carry this out, which results in his being fired. This strains his marriage almost to the breaking point. Curtis begins to question his own sanity. His mother suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, so Curtis begins to wonder if he is beginning to develop this illness himself. However, the growing hostility of his neighbors, who believe he is crazy, merely cause him to convince himself that his fears are correct. When a storm hits the town, Curtis believes that his dreams are coming true. He and his family rush into the storm shelter. After a good deal of time has passed, Samanth tells Curtis the storm has passed, but Curtis refuses to believe it. It is with a great deal of difficulty that she persuades him to open the shelter door.

Nichols is very good at creating a sense of foreboding. He has a remarkable ability to give the impression that a lot more is going on than what we see on the screen. In one of the dream scenes, for example, we basically see Samantha standing next to a kitchen counter with a knife on it. Somehow this scene conveys such a feeling of menace that it creeped me out. (I swear, I still get goosebumps when I think about it.) Shannon and Chastain give excellent performances. Shannon makes his character’s extreme behavior completely believable.

My criticism of this film is that it goes on too long. It should end right after Curtis and his family emerge from the shelter. Instead, it goes on to a “trick” ending that I found unconvincing and a bit too cute. Also, the family’s financial concerns, which are enormous, inexplicably seem to disappear towards the end.

Still, I highly recommend seeing Take Shelter.

Posted in Cinema | Leave a Comment »

The Skin I Live In

November 24, 2011

The Skin I Live In was written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, based upon the novel, Tarantula by Thierry Jonquet. Robert (Antonio Banderas) is a plastic surgeon who is haunted by the death of his wife, Gal, who committed suicide after being severely burned in a car accident. Robert is determined to develop a new type of skin that cannot burn. He carries out his experiments on Vera (Elena Anaya), a woman he holds captive in his mansion. The only other person who knows about this is Robert’s servant, Marilla (Marisa Paredes). Robert succeeds in giving Vera burn-proof skin, but then he realizes that he can’t tell anyone without revealing his criminal methods. (Apparently, he never thought of this before.) At this point, Vera starts making sexual advances towards Robert, but he resists her. One day, while Robert is out, his criminally inclined half-brother, Zeca (Roberto Álamo), shows up, finds Vera and tries to rape her. Robert arrives home at this point and kills Zeca. (Robert doesn’t know that Zeca is his half-brother. This gets really complicated. I will try to stick to the bare essential details.) Afterwards, Robert and Vera sleep together.

The film then jumps six years back in time. Robert goes to a wedding party with his daughter, Norma (Blanca Suárez). She meets Vicente (Jan Cornet), and they go out in the woods together. Vicente tries to rape Norma. When she resists, he hits her and knocks her unconscious. He then flees. Robert finds Norma and brings her to. However, Norma, who who is on drugs, thinks Robert tried to rape her. She has a mental breakdown and eventually kills herself. Robert decides to take revenge on Vicente. (He supposedly knows that Vicente is the culprit simply because he saw him riding away on a motorcycle.) He tracks down Vicente (the film doesn’t explain how) and abducts him. He then performs a sex-change operation on him. If you think that’s perverse, Robert then performs surgery on Vicente’s face to make him look exactly like his dead wife, Gal. (Why? The film never indicates what his motive is for doing this.) You guessed it: Vicente becomes Vera. The film then returns to the present. Matters come to a head when one of Robert’s medical colleagues figures out what Robert has been doing.

What lifts this above your average, run-of-the-mill mad scientist movie are the skilled direction, camera work and acting. (The performances of Banderas and Anaya carry the film.) Yet, for all his cleverness, Almodóvar can’t disguise the fact that the story is basically a lurid melodrama. What’s more, the dialogue leaves something to be desired. The characters say things like “I will report you to the scientific community”. (I swear, this line actually occurs twice.) The idea that Vera has burn-proof skin is never really used in any way. And, not surprisingly, the depiction of Vicente’s transformation into Vera is not convincing.

Some humor would have helped this film, yet Almodóvar plays it straight, despite the story’s absurdities. It might have been better if he had gone over the top and made the movie into something Ed Wood might have written. All in all, this is a disappointing film, especially after seeing Almodóvar’s brilliant Broken Embraces.

Posted in Cinema, Spain | 2 Comments »

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