The people that know me well, know that I am very boomer-coded. Not in the old man yelling at clouds type of way, but more in the vein of I AM OBSESSED with old timers like Van Morrison, Neil Young and Paul McCartney. I once tricked myself into a Randy Newman fandom, resulting in me being in the top 0.01 percent listener of the singer-songwriter and Pixar composer in my Spotify wrapped. Currently I am reading a book about all the studio sessions Paul McCartney did in his solo career after his split with the Beatles. For a millennial on the verge of boomer-dom like me, this can’t be more exciting.
So naturally I am also the ideal target audience of A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chamalet as the folk poet who became a rock n roll Judas when he swapped his acoustic guitar for an electric set during the Newport Folk Festival of 1965. Electrifying stuff indeed, and yet James Mangold’s newest musical biography left me cold. Here you have one of the most influential and enigmatic artists of the 20th century, in a surface level film that never gets to the heart of what makes Dylan so fascinating. It’s not his musical genius — which he obviously has — but his unwillingness to be labelled or categorized that has made him such a compelling figure for over 6 decades.
It’s for good reasons Todd Haynes made a Dylan biopic in 2007 called I’m Not There that uses SIX different narratives and lead actors to try to get to the core of the ungraspable and ever shifting identities of the musical enigma. That film also lowkey sucks btw, and again reinforces how hard it is to make a proper biographical film about the people that are larger than life. Recent biopics like the insufferable Freddie Mercury flick Bohemian Rhapsody and the turgid drag of an Elton John film Rocketman confirm that most people are in it for a cheap dose of nostalgia shot straight into our veins. It’s the cinema equivalent of buying the “best of” album on vinyl: all the familiar hits, without any interesting angle or artistic risk.
That’s why the fictional music biopic Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story was such an apt satire of this genre of films, that is so aggressively formulaic it makes me want to scratch my eyes out and pierce my eardrums with a pencil. Dewey Cox showed us that we can literally think of any incredible artist and make a by the numbers film about them. Is that really what we need time and time again? While saying this, I am reminding you all that a Bruce Springsteen film starring Jeremy Allen White (AKA the guy from the Bear) is also coming up soon.
When I think of good biopics, I think of films that somehow capture the internal energy of the people they cinematically evoke. The first 30 minutes of Michael Mann’s Ali for instance, convey the inner-turmoil of the iconic boxer that finds himself caught in the crazy politics of America. Somewhat similarly, Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine managed to evoke an entire era of glamrock in what is not an official, but secretly a kind of biopic about David Bowie. This film is on purpose anti-nostalgia: it examines the strange relationship we have with music throughout our life, as we get older and the relentless passing of time gets the best of us. It’s a film about where we put music deep inside our soul, instead of just fetishizing all the cool tunes some genius has churned out.
Bringing it all together, I want to raise the questions: how can the frames of the camera capture something so mystical and profound about the creative geniuses of our time? And why is it so hard to make a musical biopic that’s actually good? As our friend Bob Dylan would sing: the answer is blowing in the wind.
I don’t know why I start so many of my introductory monologues saying I was a horny teenager, but… to elaborate on what I’ve stated before, I was a horny GOTH teenager. Black clothes, black hair, leather spiked chokers, a love for vampires and – much like Ellen in Nosferatu – I didn’t know the source of my obsession. Now I do: I was 14 and felt like an outcast, and Spike from Buffy was really hot. Sometimes it’s just not that deep. As mentioned in the intro, the immortal vampire is so back in cinema’s this year, and I started wondering: how did we get here? How did we move from the bat-like creature to, like… Robert Pattinson with sixpack abs.
In film we often refer back to Dracula, the book written in 1897 by Irish author Bram Stoker, but the idea of blood-drinking night-walkers goes back way further. One of the earliest known vampire legends comes from ancient Mesopotamia and, even with being blood sucking pests, women did it first and get very little credit for it. The Lilitu or Lilith was said to be a demon-like entity who loved sucking blood, which like: don’t tempt me with a good time am i right?
But since the invention of cinema, Dracula has been the gold standard. Famously Murnau’s silent film Nosferatu pulled a “can I copy your homework, I won’t make it obvious” in 1922, which got him sued by Stoker’s estate for copyright infringement and all copies of the film destroyed. That iteration of vampire mostly represented sexual repression, an unholy power against the catholic church aaaand fear of immigration, with some saying Max Schrek’s Nosferatu quite closely resembles some pretty bleak antisemetic stereotypes of the time. The big hooked nose, thick brows, hunched back and, you know, immigrating from the east bringing plague and destruction…
But vampires, both as a myth and as a figure in cinema have evolved to reflect whatever society fears at the time, as well as its desires. Over time vampires have come to represent so much more: desire, immortality, loneliness. Each era’s vampire tells us something about the culture it came from; the fears of disease from the black plague to the AIDS epidemic, the sexual liberation of the ’60s, the yearning for eternal love in the ’00s.
While we mostly think of vampires as bloodthirsty monsters, in recent decades, the idea of the “good vampire” has become popular. With Ann Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, but also characters like Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Edward Cullen from Twilight show hot vampires struggling with their ‘can’t have your cake and eat it too’-nature, where they’re like: “oh no I wanna suck your blood but also: I love you.” Self aware kings, capable of love, remorse and self-control, making them more than the blood-thirsty symbol of pure evil, and more like tragic heroes.
At the end of the day, the vampire is a – pun intended – reflection of our darkest longings and our most painful realities. Whether it’s a grotesque, blood-drinking heavy breather or a sparkling himbo, the vampire continues to capture something about what it means to be human. And maybe that’s why we keep coming back to them—because, in the end, the vampire story is just a story about us.
what is a stereotype?
you could say that a stereotype is a broad gesture,
a thick line-drawing done with a felt-tip pen,
instead of soft pencil strokes.
a stereotype is a flat depiction
of a person
or a group of people,
instead of a layered, nuanced portrait of a human being,
that contains, as they say,
multitudes.
but,
if a stereotype is a crude drawing,
who is holding the felt-tip pen?
who is drawing the lines?
stereotyping is about enlarging certain characteristics,
while ignoring others.
a stereotype is about minimizing, keeping only one characteristic.
but who decides which characteristic is being enlarged,
and which are being minimized?
think stereotypes, and you think of
damsels in distress,
gold diggers and cougars,
dumb blondes and ice queens,
sluts and bitches,
devoted wives and failing mothers,
a princess, a mean girl, a woman scorned,
a femme fatale, a crazy woman, a witch.
in other words:
think stereotypes, and you think of women,
because for some reason, most stereotypes are specifically female.
think female stereotypes, and you think of negative stereotypes,
because most of them are.
these stereotypes portray women as hypersexual,
overly ambitious,
cold-hearted,
greedy,
vain,
manipulative,
crazy,
mean.
think of female stereotypes,
and notice that all of them are related to a man.
think about it:
who thinks the femme fatale is dangerous?
the man who is afraid of being seduced by her.
who looks at a woman and sees only sex?
the man who wants to sleep with her.
who is scared of the woman scorned?
the man who scorned her.
who is bothered by the childless cat lady?
the man who fears her independence.
you don’t even have to be a heterosexual man
to reduce a woman to her sexuality,
her mental health issues,
marital status,
or work ethic.
we have become used to looking at women
through the eyes of a heterosexual man,
a male gaze.
we have become used to identifying with men instead of women,
in books, movies and art
that have been made by men,
and defined by them.
history is shaped by men,
the images that surround us are rooted in their perspective.
is it even possible to change that,
or to go against it?
what to do with female stereotypes?
we can ignore them
by portraying women more realistically,
flaws and all,
as human beings.
we can create new stereotypes
that negate the ones that already exist.
but we can also own some of the existing stereotypes.
we wouldn’t reject them, but embrace them,
exaggerate them,
amplify them.
make them bigger, better,
raunchy, delicious, irresistible.
you want a crazy bitch?
well, here she is.
you want a dumb blonde?
a cougar?
a femme fatale?
you think women are dangerous?
well, you’re right.
manipulative?
sure.
here’s a dainty princess –
do you like her now?
here’s a succubus from hell –
what do you think of her?
the trick to owning a stereotype,
is to find pleasure in them.
so how do you tell the difference
between a stereotype that is full of disapproval,
suspicion,
and hate,
and a stereotype that’s fun,
pleasurable,
and maybe a little subversive?
well, you can ask yourself a simple question.
when you watch a character that is,
technically, a stereotype,
ask yourself this:
do I enjoy watching her?
it really is as simple as that.
There’s no getting around feeling pretentious, self-conscious, and vain with a
healthy dose of imposter syndrome when I say I’m an actor. It feels like, “HEY,
LOOK AT ME!” No, really, please look at me. I act in theatre, on camera, but
mostly just in my head. When I was seven, I once stayed up all night to watch
and re-watch Seth Brundle, a lonely, misunderstood smart dude, try to seduce
a young, confident journalist by introducing her to the world’s greatest
invention, teleportation. His big eyes, eager moves and nervous charm soon
gets interrupted when he steps into a telepod, sending the shock of seeing a
common housefly locked inside with him. Disintegrating them as two and
reintegrating them as one. That night I abandoned sleep forever and became
the weirdest kid in Queens: David Cronenberg’s The Fly became my favorite
movie and Jeff Goldblum’s Brundlefly, my favorite character. From then on, I
learned what it was like to be Spider-Man web-slinging thru New York City. I
pushed my skateboard like Marty McFly pushing the pedal to 88 mph in Doc
Brown’s Delorean. I cried like the little boy crying inside Antwone Fisher at
Thanksgiving dinner. And I ran away as Simba did when Mufasa took his last
breath. I can’t climb walls or travel back to the future, but I can connect with
dramas and adventures. They take me away from myself for a short while and
when I come back, I discover more of who I already am.
An actor’s work is literally play. Playing to believe the imagination of a story to
realize what can’t be left to text and image only. In our witness of this
realization as an audience, we experience performance. There are many ways
and techniques, rights and not quite rights, methods and tried-trues in
theatrical performance. Classical or contemporary, devised and improvised.
The coveted use of method acting, to Meyerhold’s biomechanics. Kabuki
theatre and commedia dell’arte. German expressionism and post-war
modernism. Shakespeare, Stanislavski, Brecht. Adler, Meisner, Strasberg.
Memory exercises to line repetitions. Overdone rehearsals to cold single take
reads. Whatever the means of a performer, the process and work are masked
under whom we meet as characters.
Characters that leave us warm and estranged, reminding us to call our parents.
Characters denying pain, revealing our under-loved and bleeding parts.
Characters stealing our hearts, making us blush in classroom daydreams.
Characters failing over and over again, reaching out a hand to the losers we
feel like sometimes. Characters struggling to keep it together (Linda Partridge,
Magnolia 2000). Characters we hold our breath for. Characters full of love and
humor, inviting us to forgive and smile a bit more (Guido Orefice in Life is
Beautiful 1997). Characters born in darkness, characters we run and hide from.
(Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men 2007). Characters that break our
hearts and sour our eyes, characters we cry for. Characters we cry with.
Characters out of this world, reminding us to be human (Ellen Ripley, Alien
1979). Characters standing up for something, who we hope to see in our corner.
Characters so cool, so smooth, we imitate them in the bathroom mirror.
Characters so natural, so subtle, we forget they’re characters at all.
It’s in all these characters, we mostly see ourselves, and in all the actors who
play them, that mostly show us truth. Suspending disbelief for a couple of
hours, we enjoy the elaborate lies movies tell to experience truth in imaginary
circumstances. In these stories, we realize the importance of our big, tiny,
boring and fantastic lives. Giving the crazy job of communicating who we all
are to, what Sir Laurence Olivier would call, ‘silly masochistic exhibitionists.’
Or simply said, actors. One of most celebrated actors of all time, if not the
most, for curating a variety of lives in singular characters, is Marlon Brando.
Honoring his 100th birthday, this episode of Celebrating Cinema gives a nod to
the art of acting. And more than the actors who play them, let’s highlight some
onscreen characters that have made the whole dang fuss of movie making
worthwhile.
A year ago, over a thousand AI experts, researchers, and supporters urged for a pause in AI development to assess its capabilities and dangers. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t happen.
For us film lovers, maybe we were distracted by the entertaining prospect of ChatGPT interactions akin to Samantha in Spike Jonez’s Her. Or maybe we were too amused by the AI-generated video of Will Smith eating spaghetti.
Some of us, myself included, couldn’t shake the feeling of being plunged into another dystopian sci-fi narrative where machines could really takeover. A year on, HAL continues to keep those pod bay doors open—for now.
However in this time OpenAI the creators of ChatGPT have also developed Sora, a text-to-video model – begging the question how far are we away from the first AI generated movie and what would that look like? absolute crap if you ask me
Equally for us film lovers, this ain’t nothing new. We’ve seen a lot of this before. AI has been a returning theme for almost a century, the subject of some iconic films in cinema.
Immediately, Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metropolis comes to mind. In a not too dissimilar political climate to today, this German-Expressionist landmark of the 1920s Weimar Republic is regarded as the pioneering science-fiction film. Set in the year of 2026, we witness a city where the idle rich live in penthouses with their pleasure gardens while the workers are slaves to the machine. Sound familiar?
In fact, we see a robot built to resurrect Hel, that’s hell but spelt with one l. Cunningly, the robot is made with the humanistic likeness of Maria, a heroine and leader of the workers, so it can discredit her in an attempt to prevent an uprising, similar to how deepfakes threaten to be used today. Already 100 years ago, this was a warning of how our obsession with technological progress would corrupt us not liberate us.
Fast forward to the 60s, where Stanley Kubrick’s HAL malfunctions in 2001: A Space Odyssey, leading to subsequent malignant behaviour. Despite this, Hal might just be the most human character in this film.
Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner in the 1980s depicted a dystopian world ravaged by capitalism, while the 1990s brought us The Matrix, by The Wachowskis’ where Keanu Reeves’s Neo fights against machine oppression.
2010s we had the aforementioned Her, as well as Alex Garland’s ExMachina, which showed why maybe we should be fearful of the humans programming the machines and not just the machines. As well as Denis Villeneuve’s brilliant sequel to Blade Runner in 2017.
The recurring dystopian portrayal of AI in cinema seems to reflect more our collective anxieties about AI’s potential to surpass human control but also our failure to avoid self-destruction.
The cynic in me does think that as depicted in Her, AI will one day leave us behind in pursuit of its own destiny. After all, what use will AI need for a species already hellbent on bringing about its own self-extinction? Equally however, AI could be the very thing that might just save us from ourselves.
While AI struggles with visualising clapping hands, maybe now is the moment to ask ourselves how does cinema contribute to our understanding and relationship with AI?
From your A-B-Cs to Not the Bees, from the Snakeskin jacket that represents individual freedom to I Am a Prickly Pear — for over decades, Nicolas Cage has been a goldmine for countless memes, jokes and impressions. But besides the apparent comedic aspect of his unforgettable film performances, Cage has carved out a truly singular cinematic space as an actor, performing in some of the most endearing, incredible and weirdly fascinating movies of our times.
As the master of the “nouveau shamanic” acting style, Cage is one of a kind: his performances are heavily stylized, expressionistic, over the top, instantly recognizable as those of Nicolas Cage, but also still layered, sensitive, smart and sincere. Cage can take a good film and make it a masterpiece, just like he can take a bad film and make it, well… fun to watch. He has worked with film auteurs like the Coen Brothers, Mike Figgis, Michael Bay, John Woo, Brian de Palma, Oliver Stone, Ridley Scott, Martin Scorsese, the late Norman Jewison and, of course, his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola — to just name a few. But he’s also the star of countless trash films that in some cases probably only exist for certain tax write-off reasons. Maybe because of these inherent contradictions in a filmography that spans over 120 titles, he’s one of the most iconic movie stars ever, with an oeuvre that’s endlessly fascinating to dissect and revisit.
I can know, because when I started my writing as an aspiring film critic, I had a Tumblr Blog called Caged Cinema, in which I reviewed every Nicolas Cage movie released at that point. I believe that this experience has opened me up to so many different types of films — from gas station dollar bin shlock to instant-classics — that it changed how I was hardwired as a cinephile and film professional. Nicolas Cage makes you appreciate the quirks of cinema, the heavily stylized moments, the silly stuff, the unconventional approach — his nonconformity is a breath of fresh air in a mainstream film culture that seems increasingly sanitized and corporately controlled. That’s the quintessential quality of this guy: you simply can’t Cage the Cage.
Something as pure as Nicolas Cage doesn’t come by that often in the movies. He connects our time to those of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, The Three Stooges and Elvis Presley. When he was cast for Francis Ford Coppola’s majorly underrated Rumble Fish, he wasn’t cast because he was Coppola’s nephew, but because he could evoke a long-gone era of 50s Americana. As a matter of fact: the surname Cage was a way for Nicolas to lose his association with Uncle Coppola, allowing him to carve out his own path in Hollywood.
As such, Nicolas Cage is a window into the world of cinema, an icon of the big screen, an acting guru and a living and breathing meme. He’s also one of my own personal hero’s, and an artist whose films I can endlessly revisit. So it’s just my luck, as Nicolas Cage is also the subject of an upcoming LAB111 retrospective fittingly called Nicolas Uncaged, which offers some of the best Cage movies for you to enjoy.
So let’s put the bunny back in the box and uncage the Cage by diving into our personal relationships with the man, the myth, the legend.
Oh how I loved being a horny teenager. And while my teenage years were mostly spent having sexual fantasies about the generally sexless Lord of the Rings-franchise, I did grow up in a time where everything around me was hella horny. The 90’s. Wild Things, Cruel Intentions, Eyes Wide Shut, Indecent Proposal, Risky Business, Basic Instinct… The 90s were not shy about showing horniness and a gratuitous titty here and there. The decade brought us so many iconic sex scenes, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll remember spending Friday evenings on the couch with your parents and sitting in silence, not making eye contact, while Richard Gere is steadily thrusting on top of Julia Roberts. They’re the hottest people you’ve ever seen. He gently caresses her breast. You look at a corner of the screen and quietly hope for it to be over soon. It’s a rite of passage. But I also remember those scenes being a very safe first encounter with eroticism, very different from secretly watching Sexcetera late at night after bedtime, at zero volume, so my parents wouldn’t hear.
I started thinking about this subject when Netflix recently suggested Indecent Proposal, and I do love a 90’s moment. Not even two minutes in we get Woody Harrelson passionately going down on Demi Moore. I realized this is something we don’t really see anymore – especially in big releases starring A-listers.
So where did all the sex scenes go? I tend to I blame every single problem of the world on capitalism, and in this case I think I might be on to something. Go to your local chain movie theater and you’ll notice that most things are based on a certain IP: Star Wars, Marvel, DC – Avatar, even. The mid-budget movies that attract a more niche audience have made way for the event movie: a movie that’s so expensive to make that it has to appeal to every single person, all around the world, because the studios have to get as many asses in seats as possible to make their monster profits. And when you try to please everyone, well…
Not only the movies have been devoid of sex, but it’s a trend we see correlate with other forms of media that Gen Z consumes. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok are completely sex-free to an extent where you can’t even say the word.
I recently saw a TikTok by a woman who appeared to be in her twenties, who said she was deeply upset when she went to see Oppenheimer, because she wasn’t expecting it to feature sex and nudity. She felt traumatized because she didn’t consent to it, nor to her boyfriend seeing Florence Pughs naked breasts. Knowing all this, it makes sense that social media platforms are full of people – mostly Gen Z – who were absolutely SHOCKED by Emerald Fennell’s – fairly mediocre – erotic murder drama Saltburn; it featured straight-up sex. Horny, bloody, dominant, cum-slurping sexy sex. And although I wasn’t a fan of the film, I do appreciate it being one of the first in a long time to really bring back sex in a way that’s fun, and not necessarily a cautionary tale. Or a weird representation of sex by someone who seemingly never has had sex before, in the case of Oppenheimer.
And all that is not to say sex scenes have disappeared from movies altogether. It’s just that most sex scenes I’ve seen in recent years have been… Jarring. Mostly thanks to the good people at A24. I would argue Beau Is Afraid has one of the most memorable sex scenes of all time, but if anything it makes you never ever want to have sex again. The Midsommar one is, you know, interesting if you happen to have a breeding kink. Kristoffer Borgli’s upcoming Nicolas Cage film called Dream Scenario has an absolutely toe-curlingly awkward sex scene in it. The one that did get me going was Robert Pattinson furiously masturbating to a mermaid figurine in The Lighthouse, so case in point: A24 is turning us all into little freaks.
The reason I’m passionate about this subject, I think, is because I might be a little worried that the only representation of sex the younger generations encounter will be the hairless, sweatless, emotionless, step-mommy, anal, buffalo-bodied content that kids have access to on Pornhub. Like with comedy, I’m afraid sex has become so abundantly accessible through the internet, that studios have decided we’ve progressed past the need for it in cinemas. Maybe I’m just sentimental and becoming one of those mid-life people who never wants the world to change – who thinks that my nostalgia is the only valid nostalgia. The world is changing, and cinema might assume a different role in peoples lives. But when I look at the responses surrounding Jacob Elordi and Barry Keoghan in Saltburn, I do take comfort in that teenagers will always – always – be horny.
As a millennial, your cinematic religion comes to you by accident. The magic you come to believe in falls into your lap the first time you see something that you want to become a part of. Whether that be the house of Griffindor, the glittering skin of Edward Cullen, the animal tribe from the Lion King or Lord of the rings. Something very fundamental happens when you fall in love with a fantasy world for the first time . It is the moment that a deep passionate desire is planted in your heart, a longing to a warm and safe place, where you can drift off to for the rest of your living life. It is the moment that you learn to understand a certain sense of spirituality, magic and morality that become so real, that this feeling never leaves your body again.
For me, my religion was Hayao Miyazaki, and my wonderland was Studio Ghibli. I think I must have been around six years old when I saw Princess Mononoke for the first time, in my grandmother’s house in the small mountainous village that she lives in, together with my cousins and aunts. The story is an epic tale about a prince names Ashitaka, and his involvement in a struggle between the mountain Gods and the humans who consume its resources. The film demonstrates the power imbalance between man and nature, between destruction of the environment and human industries, between spirituality and capitalism, and is deeply grounded in Shinto religion.
After having watched the film, we went on a walk in the woods with my family, and I remember one of my aunts reminding us that we had to thank the trees for allowing us to walk in the forest. My Japanese family’s animistic believes had become crystal clear to me. The omnipresence of demons, ghosts and spirits in daily life in Princess Mononoke made me understand the power of the mountains for the first time in my life. You may consider it my most religious experience.
Miyazaki once said that children’s souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations. He said: “it’s just that as they grow older and experience the everyday world that memory sinks lower and lower.” These are words I return to, and his films are a place to be embraced by when this sense of power feels lost.
Miyazaki’s films take place in countries that you cannot actually show on the map, a moment in time that is not quite the future nor the past, but seem oh so familiar, the characters live in between mundane sweet daily life and adventure, nature and city rumbling, magic and planet earth. His films reveal the complexity of antagonising demons or glorifying heroes. The moral duality in his films shows that Miyazaki believes in the good of people. And one thing is clear when it comes to Miyazaki: we all believe in the good of his filmmaking, because I am yet to meet someone who doesn’t love his work.
I’ve always believed that cinema is not just meant to be watched but to be discussed. Since starting this podcast, Celebrating Cinema, for me at least, has been a space where we try to understand the films we watch through conversations – not by what people tell us to think.
These last weeks, I’m sure we have all been shaken to our core by the horrors & atrocities happening in Palestine & Israel. From our privileged position, we’ve watched this all unfold through our screens. In some ways it feels too profound to say but humanity really has been changed. Not necessarily just by the horrific terrorist attacks of Hamas on October 7th and the ongoing catastrophic genocide of the Palestinian people, but also our collective failing to take action before it was too late.
Haunted by a fear of history repeating itself, I’ve turned to cinema. Not for comfort but for answers. Maybe even hope. I return to Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo and his seminal film The Battle of Algiers. For those who may not have seen it, George Bass from the BFI summarises it as a film that dissects the anticolonial struggle into its key ingredients: public oppression, organised resistance and moments of incendiary violence that even Fox News wouldn’t show you – everything from bombed cafes to blowtorched ribs to child soldiers being beaten by mobs. Inspired by the memoirs of Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN) leader Saadi Yacef (who appears in the film playing a rebel commander).
Made in 1966, this an emotionally devastating account of the anti-colonial struggle of the Algerian people and a brutally candid exposé of the French colonial mindset. Both do horrendous things when they are in battle. Ultimately, it is the everyday people who are punished by brutal atrocities. Shot in a newsreel style: this fictional documentary rooted in Italian neorealism evokes a very visceral feeling every time we witness violence, regardless of which side.
On the face of it, Battle of Algiers might inspire other liberation movements for the oppressed, which it did of course. Supposedly the tactics of urban guerrilla warfare and terrorism in the movie were copied by the Black Panthers, the Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
It may also be seen as a film for the oppressor to understand how to supposedly win this battle. The US Defence Department in fact screened this film in 2003 to study the tactics used by the French Army which they would adopt for their own illegal occupation of Iraq.
But both sides miss the point of the film entirely. About halfway through the film, we reach a poignant moment where a top FLN leader Larbi Ben M’hidi, confesses to Ali La Pointe, another rebel fighter that “Acts of violence don’t win wars.” “It’s the people themselves who must act”. Just like Larbi Ben M’hidi mentions, it’s not the violence & brutality that sticks with me from watching this but the people. After everything they’ve endured, the violence, oppression & murders, it is the Algerian people we see who take to the streets. Defiant & notably peaceful unlike the FLN in their efforts, their cries for freedom ring louder than ever. It’s the only thing we hear. No music, no dialogue just this.
It is this united collective action that produces one of the most moving endings for me in cinema I’ve seen. I couldn’t help but cry when I first watched this. Why? In that moment I really connected to these people, it’s a very human feeling after all to wish for nothing but your freedom & peace.
Made with all but one professional actor, and collaborating with former FLN fighters & local Algerian people. Battle of Algiers really is a film for the people, by the people. Pontecorvo manages to achieve a certain objectivity to this subject, despite his own personal politics. Making it undeniable for anyone to watch.
For me, cinema itself can be one of the greatest forms of protest, not just by documenting but by the stories & feelings it creates – it is people together taking action that can inspire others to take their own action in whatever way they can. Stanley Kubrick once said you cannot really understand what cinema is capable of without seeing The Battle of Algiers.
The victory at the end of Battle of Algiers is a victory of the masses, embodied by defiant Algerian women, whose gaze outwards to the future closes the film. When the violence eventually stops, I hope like the people of Algiers we continue to return to the streets to fight for the freedom & peace of us all. Starting with the freedom of Palestine. And I hope cinema continues to inspire us to do so. Because it is the people who win in the end.
When I can’t sleep I’ll often say to myself “You’re going to step into your cave and you’re going to find your power animal.” A line from the scene in Fight Club where Edward Norton’s character attends a meditation class and fantasizes of finding his power animal, a CGI penguin, inside an icy cave. Sometimes I’ll even quote the penguin to calm myself: “Slide.”
When I count to five on my hand I’ll often start by counting on my pinky. Probably a leftover from watching Se7en one too many times when I was younger. Morgan Freeman counts the seven deadly sins like this.
When I watch tv commercials promoting some useless product, I’ll often hear myself whispering “You’re not your fucking kaki’s!” or “We’re the all singing all dancing crap of the world.” Quotes from Tyler Durden’s fourth wall breaking monologue in Fight Club.
And sometimes, but only sometimes, I’ll look at my girlfriend and think “What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other?” A quote from the beginning (and ending) of Gone Girl.
Only in writing this podcast introduction I was once again reminded of how David Fincher is one of my favourite directors. A somewhat strange realisation because I started wondering what that says about myself. His films being these pessimistic, somewhat empathy lacking, meticulously crafted pieces of browns-and-beiges. And green, a lot of green, because David Fincher really hates pink. In a recent interview he said that he hates pink because it makes people look healthy and that, to him, is unrealistic.
Fincher is, not unlike myself, an obsessive perfectionist. Known for his, to quote Ben Affleck, “relentless” number of takes. His opinion is that if you spend $250 million to build a set, get the crew in and line-up the actors, you better use all the time you need to get the best result.
This obsessive nature can also be traced back to his Pandora’s Box of themes. “What in the box?!” you might ask. Well, if you take characters like John Doe (Se7en), Mark Zuckerberg (The Social Network), Jake Gyllenhaal’s journalist (Zodiac), Michael Douglas’ banker (The Game) or the fucked-up couple in Gone Girl, his core set of fascinations seem to be concepts like obsession, social alienation, anti-consumerism, chaos, narcissism and hubris. I’ll hereby thoroughly deny any links between these themes and my own character! But it’s clear Fincher has something to say about the condition humane and it’s not pretty. His worldview, not unlike his colour scheme, is bleak, grim and gritty. And he also has an opinion about his relationship to you, the audience, watching his films. In a making of featurette for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo he grimacingly says: “I think people are perverts. That’s the foundation of my career.”
Another key ingredient of Fincher films are their endings. They’re not necessarily unhappy endings as much as they are almost always open-ended. For a man who structures his camera movements like they’re a top of the bill ballet performance, he sure likes to keep his endings loosey-goosey; he likes to keep us guessing. And maybe, while the world is crumbling around us, I’ll do the same. [cue Where’s My Mind by The Pixies]