Creative detachment

I'm not an Ingmar Bergman fan. I appreciate his work and I understand why his admirers are legion, but much of what he produced simply never spoke to me in the same way as, say, Akira Kurosawa, whose themes actually frequently intersect with Bergman's. Both were fond of questioning the human condition and, in this respect, the film Bergman Island is no different.

The plot is a very Bergman-esque tale about unpredictable human emotions, the bowels of creativity, and the loneliness that often comes with that. It's set on Bergman's home of Fårö and is populated by characters who are great fans of his and the main two of which also happen to be filmmakers. In the course of the story, we're introduced to two more characters who are part of a story that one of our main characters is working on while on the island, so it's all very meta and self-referencing the whole way through. There is no breaking of the fourth wall, but you get the feeling that the audience is very much supposed to be in on the central joke, as it were. For as convoluted as that sounds, the plot is actually quite simple and, amusingly enough, led me to echo the question of Chris (Vicky Krieps) as she regularly wonders whether there's enough to her story to make a film. Perhaps that was the joke?

What initially attracted me to the idea of seeing this film were two things: 1. It has Tim Roth, of whom I've been a fan since Reservoir Dogs and have never been disappointed in whenever he's been on the screen. 2. The trailer presented the situation in a much more dynamic fashion, such that Chris' concerns seemed to be far more of a conflict arc that would need to be resolved. But it's actually much more of a Bergman approach (surprise!) in that the conflict is mostly within Chris as she struggles with certain elements of their living situation that don't have much to do with whether or not she's trying to write a screenplay. Indeed, Roth's role as Tony basically ends up being a sounding board for Chris and little else. He's supposedly the motivator for them being there, but he ends up being almost incidental to the story, as everything revolves around Krieps' character and the characters that she, in turn, creates who are then brought to life in the film. So, I didn't get much conflict and I didn't get much Roth, either.

There's nothing wrong with a story being simple. Some of the best films ever made have been quite small stories that the director explored with enough depth and feeling that they had much more impact than one might expect. As I mentioned Kurosawa, Rashomon is a perfect example of this approach. It's also a perfect contrast to much more complex (and in some cases, overwrought) stories like, say, Dune (just to pull a name from a hat.) 'Simple' doesn't mean 'simplistic.' Most of Bergman's stories were, on their face, fairly simple but it was his willingness to explore the deeper meanings of his themes and emotions of his characters that made them work. Director Mia Hansen-Løve, as you might expect, takes a similar approach here and ends it as soon as the emotional arc of Chris' experience is fulfilled. But the film's slow pace and length of two hours left me doing perhaps too much examination of those emotional themes and wondering if there was anything else to accompany them.

It's a well-made film and certainly something that Bergman fans will probably revel in. I just don't happen to be one of them and I think it kind of missed the mark for me, as a result.

Arrakis revisited

Dune is something of a landmark in the science fiction world. Most SF fans are aware of it even if they haven't read it or haven't sat through one of the film versions prior to Denis Villeneuve's 2021 effort. Consequently, almost everyone will have some kind of predisposition when they watch this version. Mine is colored by all four of the original novels (Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God-Emperor of Dune), David Lynch's 1984 film, the Sci-Fi Channel's limited series of 2000, and multiple sessions of the legendary board game from Avalon Hill (I even own an original copy. Woo! Nerd credit!) So, uh, the story is familiar to me. But one of my key departures from much of Dune fandom is that, despite it sharing the 1965 Hugo award for Best Novel, I've never been really impressed with Dune as a story. (In that respect, I think the book it shared the award with, Roger Zelazny's This Immortal, is better.) The writing is somewhat pedantic. The pace is slow. Character development that isn't demanded by the plot (e.g. Paul Atreides) is basically non-existent. But what made Dune into a landmark (and a franchise) is the exercise in world-building, which is phenomenal. Just like Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Frank Herbert drew heavily from history and the cultures of the Middle East to create a universe with an enormous backstory, languages, customs, traditions, and intricate political machinations that few others have matched and which certainly exceeded almost everything to that point in the SF genre. The Dune franchise exists because of the data dump that is the original novel. What makes it intriguing is that sensation of vast fields of unexplored territory that is only hinted at in most of the film and TV productions. Someone recently referred to this most recent film as "this generation's Star Wars", which is understandable because George Lucas did the same thing; creating a whole galaxy of history and peoples surrounding his B-movie Western about Luke Skywalker and a couple droids. But what that writer misses with that comparison is that Dune has been its own thing for over 50 years now, in the same way that Star Wars is still a thing for this new generation as it has been for the last couple. Yes, a whole new group of people will now be immersed in the concept of the kwisatz haderach, but it's been around for a while and, of course, given that it's basically a prophet/messiah concept, it's been around a long time before Frank Herbert, too.

First off, I think the decision to split the film into two parts was a wise one (Everyone is forewarned when the initial title comes onscreen as "Dune: Part One.") The novel is too long and too dense to be properly conveyed in two hours. Lynch argued furiously with Universal Pictures to include more of the tremendous amount of material that he had filmed so that the story wouldn't seem shallow. When they refused, thinking that SF audiences were too stupid to handle anything over two hours, he eventually took his name off the film, leaving the credit to the legendary Alan Smithee. But just as importantly, Villeneuve instead embraces the aesthetic and atmosphere of the novel; avoiding the 80s shine and glitz which distorted Lynch's work. While there are laser weapons in this film, the director heeds the book's insistence that they're quite rare and dangerous for the users, so we see a lot more visceral, hand-to-hand combat, which Lynch tried to sidestep with the ridiculous "sound weapons." And you can see right away that this is a Villeneuve film when he quickly demonstrates his trademark dialogue close-ups with very hazy backgrounds. It's a highlighting technique that shows up regularly in his films and which serves this story well because, in truth, most of the action is in the dialogue and personal interactions. Dune is a highly political story and that's not something that's normally explained at the end of a sword. If you really want to understand what's going on, you have to pay attention to who these people are and what they're saying.

Of course, what that often means is that the pace of the film gets a little laborious and the atmosphere is one of angst, especially in the scenes involving Paul. I never got to the point where I was doing the "move along" hand motion but Villeneuve takes his time with the emotion and drama of a number of different scenes. That's not a bad thing, per se, because the book is that way, too (and, really, much slower and more laborious) and if you're going to do the book justice, then you have to take your time. In truth, he still skips over a lot, as he doesn't bother to explain who the mentats (Thufir Hawat and Piter De Vries) are or why they exist or how Dr. Yueh circumvented his Imperial conditioning. One of my mild disappointments was actually how little screen time Piter (David Dastmalchian) gets as, even though his role wasn't large in the novel, one of the little pleasures of Lynch's film is Brad Dourif in that same role ("It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.") Also, one of the key moments of the novel is Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) interacting with the Shadout Mapes and learning about Fremen culture and, of course, first discovering the betrayal occurring within his house. That's almost completely glossed over here and Stilgar (an almost-unrecognizable Javier Bardem) is given a more prominent moment to suggest that he feels a connection with the duke, which seems like a place where something hit the cutting room floor that might've been important for story coherence.

Visually, it's spectacular, as you might expect from both a 2021 sci-fi film and one by Villeneuve (Arrival being his most notable other example.) The sandworms are impressive, the shield fights are exciting (although I question just how slow a lot of the lethal strikes were moving in most of them), and the depictions of things as functional as the ornithopters are really well done. The dramatic moments of the landing ramps and various groups' arrival; the massive presence and implicit threat of the Guild transport ships; the overview of the sprawling Arrakeen; all great stuff. However, I will say that I was disappointed to not see a scene similar to the one Lynch opened his film with: the arrival of a navigator to talk about the Guild's involvement in the overall plot. (That element is replaced by Gaius Helen Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling) coordinating with Baron Harkonnen (the eversteady Stellan Skarsgård) on Giedi Prime.) The appearance of a navigator in Lynch's film was both a great representation of how they'd been described in the books and a reinforcement of how important the spice was to the empire and what it did to its constant users. It's a very visceral element of the working mechanisms behind the empire and it helped make the spice into something more than a MacGuffin. It escapes that here because of the time they spend showing its effect on Paul as he breathes it in out in the desert, but for all of this film, the emperor, the Guild, and pretty much every element of that political life outside the catfight between the Atreides and the Harkonnens is just background noise. Again, it's a data dump and some things are going to get sidelined for the sake of a two-hour (presumably four-hour, if the expected Part Two is ever announced) production, but there are certain things that make the Dune universe what it is and I've always felt that the Guild is a big part of that. All of those visual elements are underwritten by an excellent score by Hans Zimmer, which is another notch in his impressive track record. He keeps the majesty and mystery of what's happening foremost in your mind and weaves in plenty of sounds that many would identify with musical styles that touch on the cultures that are part of the story. On a technical level, the film is really well done.

Overall, I'd say it's a better version of the story than either the 1984 or 2000 productions; in part because of Villeneuve's style, which incorporates enough spiritual atmosphere to really let that part of the novel shine through. Herbert wasn't shy about mining cultures for inspiration. The term mahdi, used by the Fremen to label (and often dismiss) Paul comes right from the Arabic term, meaning "the savior" or "the guided one" and whom is an expected unifier of the world before the end times in Shia and Baha'i traditions. The novel is draped in a number of Islamic motifs and Villeneuve doesn't shy away from those spiritual trappings, even if he doesn't call them out as starkly as Herbert did. In the end, it's a worthwhile effort to try to deliver a new version of the story. I wouldn't consider it groundbreaking or compelling, as there are no performances that really stand out and I am irretrievably jaded as far as the story is concerned, but it's definitely worth your while if you're a Dune fan. Keep in mind, of course, that it's also only half the story, so perhaps my assessment will improve when (if) Part Two is released.

The song remains the same

As I've mentioned here a couple times before, one of my all-time favorite films is the director's cut of Blade Runner (no voiceover, ends in the elevator.) Among the many things that make it a favorite are: 1. It leaves unanswerable questions unanswered, rather than trying to resolve everything with a happy ending. 2. It asks those questions in a subtle fashion, rather than beating you over the head with them. The film we saw tonight, I'm Your Man, takes a similar approach to a very broad topic. Whereas Blade Runner posed the question of what it actually means to be human, I'm Your Man asked its protagonist (and, in turn, its audience) what it means to love and be loved. As most who've been in and out of serious relationships can tell you, there's no simple answer to that question or even why it often is asked, internally or externally, directly or obliquely, by other people and by oneself.

The premise isn't hugely innovative. A driven, mostly isolated anthropologist studying Sumerian cuneiform is asked to participate in a company's test run of androids that they're marketing as the "perfect companions." Her task from her superior at her university is to spend three weeks with one and then write a report about the experience. As Jaime noted tonight, it's pretty similar to any of a number of TV shows and films that have preceded it, including an episode of Black Mirror. But the screenplay is very clever and the performances of the two leads, Maren Eggert as the anthropologist and Dan Stevens as the android, are excellent, as they maintain a very light touch on a very heavy question, even in the more emotional moments of the film. In some ways, it's not too dissimilar from Blade Runner, in that the detached, seemingly machine-like person is often contrasted with the more warm and sociable machine who is programmed to do everything he can to make her happy; an emotion that she doesn't always find herself willing or able to embrace.

It is, of course, often difficult to define exactly what makes one happy, in the same way that it's difficult to define what love is. Alma (Eggert) is immersed in her work, in part because that's who she is and in part because she's been burned by some personal circumstances that make it more comfortable for her to approach life in a very defined, professional, and mechanical fashion. Those circumstances don't make her "happy", per se, but she's accepted them as comfortable, as opposed to the uncertainty which could be even worse. Tom (Stevens) is programmed to be her perfect man and to do everything that his algorithm dictates that would make her life better emotionally, but that's not necessarily the kind of love or relationship that she's looking for. Indeed, at one point, she tries to test his ability to take her emotional abuse because she feels like she needs the friction, the personal give-and-take, that many people define as the essential energy of their relationships. But Tom's only feedback is positive, no matter how much pressure she applies, which leaves her with an emptiness that no amount of tenderness and concern can fill.

Now, a lot of people would probably recoil at the idea of a "perfect" companion who exists solely to make one happy. But Alma runs into someone who's also been paired with an android and whom has never had a good experience interacting with other humans on an intimate level and that person is overjoyed at the prospect of staying with his companion. Is that person's sense of love any less valid than Alma's? Part of what she recoils from is Tom's irreducible good nature because it reminds her that he's a machine and not what she considers to be "human." But many people confronted with poor matches or unceasing stress and conflict might be happy to indulge in the continual support and care that comes from having a companion like Tom. In some ways, it's like having a pet who is always thrilled to see you and be in your company. Is that kind of love any less genuine than that with another human who typically has more complex wants, needs, and emotional states?

Again, these are deep questions and it would have been easy to slip into a maudlin story about missed chances or the failure of some people to appreciate what they have. But director Maria Schrader kept the film moving at a steady pace; not lingering on moments of dramatic import, but instead continuing to push us forward, even when Tom stops to spell out the underlying reasons for Alma's reactions like a physician diagnosing a broken bone. Many would probably react poorly to this, thinking that the machine's lack of a lighter touch to those moments demonstrated a lack of feeling, both on its part and the storytellers'. But I found it to be perfectly in tune with the story being told, not least because Alma's whole career was about trying to show the underlying beauty of functional script in clay from 5000 years ago. The message there was not only that humans from ancient times had emotions and conveyed them in writing, but also that the past is, in many ways, just like the future. The human condition doesn't stray too far from its origins, whether you're communicating with shaped mud or AI. In the end, as with most relationships, there are no simple solutions and everyone has to find their own answers for how they define them. Along the way, the film remains very funny and leaves us always eager to see what's next; kind of like a good relationship. Highly recommended.