Letterboxd Litter #8

Seven Samurai / The Birdcage / Welcome to Marwen / Girl on the Third Floor

Seven Samurai (1954)

A classic, people say, is a movie that rewards repeated viewing; one that improves with age rather than degrades. I’m afraid my taste in movies still hasn’t quite matured to the point that I can easily be swept away by a film significantly older than I am, and the first time I watched this I found it a bit of a slog. But it proved its classic status to me on the second viewing.

The first time I felt a little bit like I had to try to like Seven Samurai — it’s an Important Piece of Cinema, I thought, so I should at least Appreciate it, if not outright like it. To be fair, in many ways I did like it; but much of it also bored or confused me, in particular the first hour or so.

Revisiting it though, with some first impressions to stand on (as well as a much stronger grasp of its historical and cultural context), my reaction was simply Holy Shit This Is So Good. I understood that this is a huge steam engine of a movie, and could see the multitude of heavy pistons slowly but surely coaxing it along.

And then once the thing does get going… man, it roars. As well it should, for it’s carrying a huge heavy load. Desperation and humor and class struggle and romance and a hot kinetic mix of slapstick, screaming and violence — epitomized in Toshiro Mifune’s performance, but really carried out by the whole ensemble in varying degrees.

When the whole world of a film hangs together in an utterly convincing way— when it takes the time to set up its rules and convince me of them, and then proceeds to follow them to an ending that’s both surprising and in retrospect inevitable — that’s a perfect film. And from what I can tell, every piece of this 3-and-a-half-hour behemoth belongs where it is.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s big and sprawling and messy (often literally). But that sprawl all rings of truth. (5/5)

The Birdcage (1996)

So here’s the thing about La Cage aux Folles, its various adaptations, drag queens in general, and most if not all gender-bending comedies: they’re entertaining because men are fundamentally not women, and cannot be women, and so their attempts to ape women (successful or otherwise) lead very easily to contradictions and revelations that are inherently comical.

In other words, ladies and gents, you heard it here first: The Birdcage is based.

You wouldn’t know it, however. This is one of those rare but blessed farces that treats all of its characters — including the ultra-conservative boogeymen — with genuine affection even as it lampoons them. It’s not really a satire, except in the gentlest and goofiest sense.

A lot of people saw this movie and its stage-play source material as either a) a celebration of LGBT identity and acceptance thereof, or b) a lewd revel in moral degeneracy. Both are way too reductive (although I suspect the filmmakers happily embraced the former label). It’s really just about a bunch of people getting smacked in the face with their own and each other’s dysfunctions, and struggling to come to terms with both.

Albert wants to be a woman; specifically, an alluring wife to Armand and a doting mother to Val. Unfortunately he can do neither. Meanwhile, Armand just wants him to chill out and be himself — effete, matronly, sensitive, self-absorbed, sure, but himself. Unfortunately he doesn’t know how to convince Albert of that or even tell it to him in the first place.

The dynamic between the two is a treat. Robin Williams does a wonderful straight man (so to speak, *cough*), his scowls and struts and terse smiles a great counterpoint to Nathan Lane’s hysteria. The latter knows how to command the spotlight without hogging it — impressive considering the volume and frequency of his anguished howls.

(Aaaand then there’s Hank Azaria, who probably should’ve been reined in more but fortunately wasn’t.)

I think the big sour note for me is the young couple who serve as the inciting incident. Although I doubt he’s supposed to be this dislikable, Val is a pretentious, entitled little prick and really needs a good smack upside the head. Unfortunately, neither his flummoxed father nor his hairy surrogate mother nor his waifish wifey-to-be are gonna give it to him.

For her part, said wifey-to-be kind of belies the movie’s more progressive affectations. Although Flockhart manages to eke a little sass out of her at points, Barbara is pretty much a non-entity. I’d say this movie is a solid Bechdel fail… but I guess that ultimately depends on whether men can be women. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (3½/5)

Welcome to Marwen (2018)

Like Mark Hogancamp himself (or this cinematic version of him, at any rate), Welcome to Marwen is imaginative but confusing, well-intentioned but misguided, and often irritating when it means to endear. Oh, and its admiration for women, while sincere, is about as grounded as that of a seventh-grader crushing on his teacher.

In short, the film is so sympathetic to its protagonist that it basically imitates him. I’ll admit that there’s something to be said for that; it evinces an earnestness on the part of the filmmakers that I can’t help but appreciate. Unfortunately, it also cripples the narrative.

Welcome to Marwen’s infatuation with its (honestly pretty unlikable) hero prevents it from giving him any meaningful arc. An arc implies change, see — usually for the better, in this kind of movie. But if your protagonist’s whole personality is constituted by his brokenness, and the coping mechanisms thereof, then growth, healing and wholeness are no fun.

Especially when said brokenness leads the hero into a fantastical alternate reality that, while presumed to be wondrous by the filmmakers, is cloying and more than a little bizarre to the audience. Why are the dolls’ expressions and movements lifelike, but their joints still articulated like toys? Is imaginary plastic Mark having imaginary plastic sex with his imaginary plastic retinue? What does the Flying Blue Allegory even… do, anyway?

These are dumb questions for me to get hung up on. Point is, it annoys me when movies glamorize mental illness. (2/5)

Girl on the Third Floor (2019)

I’m usually a sucker for this kind of splattery Freudian stuff (a haunted house that oozes semen like ectoplasm? Sure, sounds like a trip!), so I had high hopes for Girl on the Third Floor. And it got off to a good start.

I was immediately hooked by the look of the thing — a stylish, almost Giallo blend of camp and menace. Throw in a lead who looks and acts like discount Bruce Campbell, and I felt like a kid walking into a haunted corn maze.

But then I could never plug into it, at least not beyond a superficial appreciation for its aesthetic and gnarly effects. Girl has a lot of appealing pieces, but they’re left unmoored and disjointed by its flimsy protagonist. Although Phil Brooks is a likable lunk, neither he nor the screenplay make “Don” believable, and as a result the spooky theatrics surrounding him have no real stakes.

There’s an irritating trend lately of horror films that aim to rehabilitate women’s agency and dignity in the genre, but don’t actually know how to do so and instead settle for some variation on “toxic masculinity bad.” More irritating still is the praise that these movies nonetheless win from critics who mistake good intentions for good storytelling.

Girl on the Third Floor generally serves as an example of this, although it shows hints of wanting to be better. It gives Don brief — brief — flickers of actual pathos or at least relatability. And a sudden switch of protagonists in the third act, while still clumsy and confusing, offers a more interesting perspective than that of the stereotypical Insecure Man Who Doesn’t Want Anyone’s Help.

Anyway, I’ve seen enough of those men in movies. Men in real life are messier. So are women, for that matter.

Which reminds me — there’s really not as much cum in this movie as everyone says. I think it’s just that any of that stuff in any movie is too much for most people. (2½/5)