The Cinematography of Natasha Braier

I started discussing awards where the glass ceiling is still very much intact one of last month’s New Shows + Movies by Women. One of these is cinematography, where only one woman has been nominated by the Oscars. That’s only one nomination since the award was first given out in 1929.

That nomination went to Rachel Morrison for “Mudbound” in 2017. It was well deserved for a beautiful looking film. Morrison’s also been cinematographer for “Black Panther”, “Dope”, and “Fruitvale Station”.

It’s one thing to say more women have deserved this or that award. That’s obviously a true statement, but it fails to highlight the specific people who deserve it. So let’s do that, starting with my favorite cinematographer: Natasha Braier.

Argentinian cinematographer Natasha Braier is as dynamic as I can name. She filmed “The Milk of Sorrow”, a painterly Peruvian film that was my choice for Best Film of the 2010s. She shot “The Neon Demon”, a film that might best be described as sumptuous toxicity. She filmed “The Rover”, an Australian movie that treats the apocalypse as a banal descent into violence where only systems survive.

She has a rare eye for those scenes when a private moment for a protagonist meets the gaze of those who will never recognize how crucial it is. That private moment becomes something held between the character and audience. She highlights raw performance as a moment to find what’s common between actor and viewer, to hide both in that space even as the world around it continues in a clinical, procedural way. She makes scenes into air bubbles, the only place character and viewer alike can breathe. She does this in wildly different ways, across an incredible range.

The Milk of Sorrow

The opening two shots of “The Milk of Sorrow” might be my favorite in cinema.

We hear singing over a black screen for the first minute. When we finally see someone, it’s an elderly woman in bed. The age lines are highlighted on her face as she rests on a faded, floral-print pillow. The edge of it is worn, the seam folded near coming apart. The paint on the headboard behind her is webbed with cracks. It rests against a faded, floral-print wallpaper. As the camera ever so slightly tilts up, the edge of the wallpaper gives way to blank wall, the seam coming apart

This woman sings about the trauma she sustained in civil war – her rape and the loss of her husband. She pauses for just a moment, long enough for us to worry about whether she’s still alive. It’s just enough time for a second voice to join. It’s that of her daughter, Fausta. The timing of Fausta’s voice suggests that it’s the daughter’s devotion keeping her mother alive. It’s enough to re-spark the mother’s song again.

We cut to the second shot. We see the open window of the bedroom, the town beyond, a hill beyond that, the mountains further, a corner of sky. The empty space in the upper right is reflected here as well. The camera slowly dollies in, as if the universe knows what’s about to happen before Fausta does. She crosses from her mother’s side of the bed to the window side, singing as she does. She prompts her mother again: just Fausta, the window frame, and the town beyond in shot now.

The story of “The Milk of Sorrow” involves Fausta taking work in order to pay for her mother’s funeral, having done something medically horrible to herself out of fear of her mother’s songs, and having her art stolen through colonialism that still oppresses the indigenous population of Peru.

“The Milk of Sorrow” examines how trauma echoes itself into new generations. Everything in the first shot, that fractal repeat of age to flowers worn at the edge – serves as a metaphor for where the film delves.

Fausta’s crossing from her mother’s side to the open window, a life she’s been sheltered from waiting with all the fear that’s been drilled into her, tells us about her character and describes the story we’re about to witness.

Everything in “The Milk of Sorrow” is like this – thick with description and a quickly established visual metaphor that increasingly veers into magical realism. The experience of watching a film so thick with detail evokes reading a novel.

Obviously, this isn’t all a result of Braier’s cinematography. It owes to writer-director Claudia Llosa first and foremost. It owes to art directors Patricia Bueno and Susana Torres. It owes to Magaly Solier, one of the most overlooked actors working today.

Yet there’s an eye that brings it all together, that captures the edges that need to be caught, the corners that need to be seen encroaching, the natural light that gives it all context. That slow dolly as dramatic irony, telling us of the mother’s death right before Fausta realizes, immediately describes an authorial tone. “The Milk of Sorrow” wants us to know we’re being told a story, not pretending to “witness” one. In doing so, we’re not part of Fausta’s story, and we’re asked not to pretend as if we are. We’re part of that world outside. We’re that horror in layers, taught by story and song, waiting alongside the author for Fausta to realize what we already suspect.

Throughout “The Milk of Sorrow”, Braier’s camera makes us part of that outside world even as it lets us into Fausta’s guarded inner world. It makes us question what parts of our culture justify Fausta’s fears and colonize Fausta’s world.

The Neon Demon

Nicolas Winding Refn’s “The Neon Demon” is a completely different experience, a giallo/commentary about an underaged model who becomes the sexual target of seemingly everyone in the industry. Its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival simultaneously received a chorus of boos and a standing ovation. Based on the history of the festival, it’s fair to wonder if the boos were because they thought it was a bad film or because they felt specifically called out.

It’s a film that takes pains to be consciously obvious with its style, and in so doing achieves a dreamlike state where timing feels off. Dialogue can feel noncommital, characters often talk past each other to no one in particular. Environments are either frozen in time or so overtly slick they become wildly off-putting.

Much of this giallo-style is due to the Italian filmmaking that first propelled the genre in the 1960s and 70s. Actors often came from various European countries – this resulted in many reading lines in languages they didn’t know (the most famous example of this is Dario Argento’s 1977 film “Suspiria”.) They often didn’t know precisely what they were saying or what was being said to them. A dialogue could feel like two people awkwardly giving each other space for their intersecting monologues. Art design and gruesome set pieces were prized above dialogue scenes, complex sets needed to be filmed from certain angles creating a stagy feel, different countries censored a variety of scenes from many giallos, and dubbing in that era was often cheap and unfeeling.

The genre started off interested in unsettling atmospheres and surreal expressions of violence – all these technical issues only served to make the experience of watching them even more dreamlike. That’s what a modern giallo like “The Neon Demon” pursues with elements of deliberate line-reading, over-pronunciations, over-repeated reaction angles, intentionally disruptive visual and audio interludes, and editing that can sometimes feel like a scene has been prematurely cut. We often see a dialogue scene evolve through shot choice to bring us closer or further from the characters across a scene. “The Neon Demon” and giallo as a whole undermines many of those typical comforts. If actors don’t take that last step on making a character feel natural, if we don’t get the in-scene shot and editing evolution we expect, then we’re left with something we as viewers need to start defining or trying to place context onto. That can vary by viewer and that involvement in trying to define the surreal, organize the disconnected, and make what’s unnatural feel natural is what gives us that out-of-place, dreamlike feel.

That can offer the misconception that giallo is then easy to accomplish – just do a slightly bad job at everything. Yet it takes very conscious choices and technical coordination to create this off-putting environment in a way where what’s unsettling is consistent for two hours at a time. Everyone needs to be contributing to what feels unreal in the same way.

Refn is famed for his visual sensibilities and experimental storytelling, while also being justifiably criticized for prioritizing those visuals over any real storytelling. I find Refn’s ego and taste dominate his films and often obscure their points. “The Neon Demon” can walk a line where you’re not completely sure if it’s criticizing certain things or taking part in them.

It obviously calls out a largely male-run modeling industry’s targeting of underage models. Elle Fanning (17 at the time it was shot, playing a 16 year-old) essentially plays prey, a target moving through the film who everyone else is relentlessly focused on.

There are moments where it pointedly highlights the portrayal of dead women in high fashion as selling a social fantasy about the murder of women. If fashion photography idealizes the portrayal of women as gaunt, starving, unhealthy, and suffering violence, all without commentary, then fashion photography communicates this as a desirable norm. Refn makes this the other part of his target, ostensibly in a film about violence toward women.

This gets us into the territory any modern giallo like this faces – in a genre that’s historically relied on plots about violence aimed at women, how do you present a modern version? It’s crucial that Braier is the cinematographer here. This would have been a mess with a male cinematographer sexualizing the moments where Fanning is perused and assessed by others. Instead of observing those making the assessments, we would have been observing her, taking part in what the film seeks to criticize in the first place.

Giallos have often been a place where technical crew are highlighted – art directors, costume designers, choreographers, cinematographers. When some elements are made to feel underbaked or over-deliberate, it puts the onus on other elements to succeed at taking huge risks. In “The Neon Demon”, Braier presents a stunning, giallo-esque film world without losing track of women’s perspectives in it.

“The Neon Demon” becomes less about the violence itself – a place where Refn is happy to get lost and treat as thrilling in many of his other films. Uniquely in his repertoire, it becomes a reflection of what it’s like to fear that violence, to recognize the impending nature of it and progressively lose yourself either in legitimate, constant fear of it or by normalizing its presence in order to cope. Ultimately, the world of “The Neon Demon” is one where many of the women learn to normalize the presence of that violence, to redirect it at others in order to preserve themselves, and in so doing to enable it or even take part in it as the cost of having a successful career.

CW for following scene: off-screen sexual assault

The most unforgettable moment in “The Neon Demon” involves Fanning’s Jesse narrowly dodging a sexual assault simply because she gets to her deadbolt in time. She then overhears the man – a co-worker – choose the neighboring room instead. She overhears his assault of the 13 year-old staying there. That pan across the mirror is haunting because of what it says about Jesse’s experience being reflected back at her. Her silhouette listens at the wall, growing distant, fading at the experience. There’s something rarely captured about the feeling of trauma in this moment, and Braier’s work thankfully keeps it close to Jesse’s perspective.

Braier creates a darkly-lit, off-kilter giallo environment – an environment that’s often been predicated on and defined within the genre by the sexualization of violence toward women. She’s able to visually remove precise elements from that for criticism, while shifting the perspective away from the sexualization of violence to a fear of both that violence and the normalization of it. If this were easy, it wouldn’t be such a major component of giallo to begin with. If this was purely due to Refn’s work, then he wouldn’t be Refn to start with. He obviously does a ton of work on making the movie what it is, but it’s Braier doing the heavy lifting on the film’s perspective and how the film is coded.

It’s important to note that “The Neon Demon” is Refn’s 10th feature, but just the first one on which he’s worked with a woman as cinematographer. I don’t think there was another option if he wanted to do this remotely right, and that speaks to just how much Braier had a hand in shaping the film.

“The Neon Demon” is still controversial, because it participates in much of what it’s criticizing in order to make that criticism. There’s a tightrope to walk – don’t make it all the way, and elements that are meant to critique misogyny risk simply presenting it. “The Neon Demon” goes pretty far in making that critique, but whether it lands that last, most important step is a legitimate debate.

The Rover

Finally, you have Australian slow apocalypse film “The Rover”. As the world falls into disrepair and depression, a gang of thieves run their truck aground. It belongs to Guy Pearce’s Eric. He’s obsessed with getting it back. He chances into one of the thieves’ brothers – Robert Pattinson’s Rey. The younger man gradually becomes worshipful of Eric’s misanthropic attitude and violence. He idealizes Eric, even as Eric has nothing in particular to live for past getting his car back.

It’s a short story premise writ long in curt but meaningful conversations, in memories of a world that will never return, and in finding granular purpose when you know what you do no longer matters. It’s written and directed by David Michod. Its cut-out-the-heart prose is directed beautifully, and Pearce and Pattinson both gave Oscar-worthy performances in it.

It’s Natasha Braier who paints its diminishing world. She films Eric like he’s moments from becoming part of it, in sharp contrast to Rey’s verve, fright, eagerness, everything felt as much as possible. Pearce plays Eric as all but gone, Pattinson plays Rey as desperately wanting to mold himself after anyone, and Braier films each speaking to the other across an achingly large divide in a dying world. The only time Eric is lit more brightly than Rey is when Rey looks at him, engages him, sees this dangerous shell of a man as an icon. These are the first 11 minutes of the film.

Every exterior is too much light, washed out, dusty. Every interior is dim, shadowed, worn. Every time we see the outdoor world through a window, violence descends. It’s a film about men murdering the hope within themselves, within each other, and Braier knows how the world looks at them – as acts of violence that never see accountability, that when recognized are idolized. Her slow apocalypse doesn’t look that different from now when it’s just more of the same.

The visuals of “The Rover” might get dismissed as being dusty and dreary, but it’s the most practical and realistic presentation of an apocalypse I’ve seen. Michod’s screenplay sees systems survive even if humanity doesn’t, our trying to keep hierarchy and order over caring for others. It sees humanity in everything but people. Braier matches that. Where she presents fear, colonization, authorial presence in “The Milk of Sorrow”, where she connects on wild visuals and perspective-switching re-codifying of a genre in “The Neon Demon”, here her cinematography is patient, still, systematic, documentarian without playing at verite.

In just these three films, she is three completely different cinematographers, three completely different creative voices working within genres as opposite as could be. She gives voice to three extremely different directors by developing separate visual codes for each.

Natasha Braier also shot “Honey Boy”, “Gloria Bell”, “XXY”, and a number of other films. She’s shot music videos for FKA Twigs, Rihanna, The Weeknd, David Byrne & St. Vincent.

She deserves Oscars. She deserves the analysis and discussion that moves film ahead, and if we fail to recognize and listen to women when we move art ahead, then we’re not really moving it much of anywhere. I don’t want to highlight her as a woman cinematographer, I want to highlight her as one of the best and most overlooked cinematographers, period – but the reality is that she isn’t valued as much and we don’t get to see everything she can do because women cinematographers aren’t celebrated, recognized, sought out.

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Bits & Pieces — Musical Score, “Young Sherlock Holmes”

by Gabriel Valdez

One of the most exquisite and overlooked musical scores in film history belongs to Harry Potter Year Zero– er, I mean Young Sherlock Holmes.

When the 1985 film is thought of, it’s for its Academy Award-nominated special effects: it featured terrific stop-motion animation and brought to life cinema’s first fully CGI character – a stained glass knight. Written by Chris Columbus, its boarding school mystery mechanics would also one day serve as a rough draft for the first two Harry Potter films, which he would write and direct.

The standout for me was its music. I can’t remember how old I was when I first saw Young Sherlock Holmes. It was years after its original release – I was six, maybe seven. I’d encountered music that was beautiful as a child, and I had a particular fondness for classical, but music had always been accompaniment for something else. The score by Bruce Broughton was the first that made me yearn and hope, fear and loathe. The main theme could make me content in a moment, while its assertive suspense themes could rile me into nervous attention in a heartbeat. Listen to the ceremonial chant of “Waxing Elizabeth”:

Housed inside this scene is every fear I had as a child, suffused and purified into a single sound. It was as if every time I listened to it, I matched myself against some magical otherness and came out the other side. Why? Look at how the main theme is used throughout the rest of the film.

It’s often used playfully. Watch this scene from Holmes’ Defense Against the Dark Arts class as Ron Weasley and Draco Malfoy look on- I mean watch this scene from his fencing class:

The beauty of the score is how well it backgrounds the main theme to nearly everything else that’s going on. No matter how aggressive or creepy its other themes get, the main theme will find a way through. This is pretty important for a children’s movie (and Young Sherlock Holmes was a pretty dark one).

The main theme is the very first thing a child anchors to in a movie. It doesn’t symbolize a character or a thematic quality to a child, it doesn’t even symbolize hope – to a child, it just means normality, the starting point of a story. Normality is safety. So long as that safety is present, a child can let his or her mind run wild with the darkest and most dangerous possibilities. Listen to how that main theme is factored into the movie’s finale (the clip contains MAJOR SPOILERS):

That musical through line says, “Don’t worry, I’m still here.” It’s a musical trail of breadcrumbs that reminds children their starting point still exists. We forget that, as kids, we make a lot of decisions concerning how scared we allow ourselves to become when we encounter movies, books, and games. Young Sherlock’s musical reminder allows young viewers the room to be open-minded about getting scared. It’s what lets the film get away with a number of horror elements.

The only time that theme doesn’t poke its head out is during “Waxing Elizabeth.” It’s the one time that subconscious safety net is yanked out from under the viewer, but it’s executed with such captivating grandiosity and at such a crucial moment in the film that the viewer has no choice but to remain. It forces children to make the decision: I will go forward without a safety net. Here’s the full soundtrack version (complete with nonsense ancient Egyptian lyrics):

It still sends chills up my spine, even if I’ve seen the movie 20 times, but its impact in the film lies in glancing around, not finding my musical trail of breadcrumbs, and deciding to continue ahead anyway. The score is unique in that way. It asks children to be braver and trusts that they will be. Broughton’s score is a fine accomplishment on its musical merits, but how it interacts with children on a storytelling level by asking them to take an emotional chance – it’s risky and it’s textbook all at once. As far as watching movies goes, it was the most crucial musical moment of my childhood.

Bits & Pieces is a series that highlights overlooked technical and cultural accomplishments in under-seen films:

Fight Choreography as Philosophy, Jackie Chan

Rhythm Editing, Ariana Grande’s “Problem” and Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up”

Fight Choreography as Myth, “Troy” and “Serenity”

Dance Choreography, “Footloose” (1984) and “Footloose” (2011)

Production Design, “Curse of the Golden Flower”

Explaining the Ending of “Interstellar”

by Gabriel Valdez

If there’s one thing Interstellar does badly, it’s accessibility. You can slow things down and have characters explain each challenging scientific concept, or you can speed things up and just let the audience experience a film’s craziest moments in a more surreal manner.

Interstellar sometimes sits uncomfortably in the middle, so that if you haven’t watched countless hours of NOVA, read back issues of Scientific American, and written an entire script based around Lee Smolin’s fecund universe theory like some huge nerd (hi!) you might find yourself left a little in the dust. At the same time, there’s enough explanation left in the film that – like a rushed lesson – you fuzzily grasp at the basics while the plot moves on before you fully comprehend it all.

That said, I’ve been a bit disappointed in the critical community’s reaction to Interstellar. While critics have liked it, I’m frustrated that film experts have looked at something many don’t understand and, instead of criticizing Interstellar for rushing the explanations, they’ve simply said Interstellar is wrong or scientifically inaccurate. Because they’re experts in one thing (film), they don’t want to admit that they’re not experts in something else (astrophysics). They worry that lacking a reader’s trust in one area will influence the reader to distrust them in others. (That doesn’t put much faith in their readers.) They seem to forget that the first step to being an expert about anything is to say, “I don’t understand.”

There are plenty of things on which I’m not an expert. I am, at best, a talented layperson when it comes to astrophysics, but that’s enough to explain what Interstellar is doing.

OBVIOUSLY, THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR INTERSTELLAR. YOU SHOULD REALLY SEE THE FILM BEFORE READING ON, BECAUSE IT IS A RARE AND INCREDIBLE FILM EXPERIENCE.

Interstellar ends with our pilot, Cooper, falling into a black hole. He doesn’t die, however. Instead, he arrives in a complex built for him to see all of time at once in a fixed place – his daughter’s bedroom. It is built specifically for Cooper to be able to influence the time line of his daughter Murphy. He even says this out loud.

Critics have derided this as scientifically inaccurate because a black hole would tear your body apart before you got to any interior complex built inside of it. I hadn’t known critics were experts on building complexes inside of black holes that allow you to change time itself. Obviously, I’m not taking full advantage of the career.

It stands to reason that, if you can build such a complex specifically for Cooper to use, you can remember to flip the “Don’t tear Cooper apart on the way in” switch.

It’s said time and again in Interstellar that the wormhole is a tool sent from aliens. It turns out to be from future humans, but for the purposes of this next explanation, it doesn’t matter. Point is, it’s a tool. One criticism insists that the wormhole, like the black hole, would tear Cooper’s spaceship apart.

So the wormhole and black hole are both tools. If both are tools, then it’s safe to assume they’re user friendly. We don’t make hammers and screwdrivers that tear the user into shreds when he hits a nail or turns a screw. It stands to reason that if the black hole is a tool built for Cooper, and it’s on the other side of a wormhole, then the wormhole is a tool put there for Cooper, too.

If both the wormhole and black hole are tools designed to one day be used by Cooper, let’s assume they BOTH have “Don’t tear Cooper apart on the way in” switches. Future humans? Big on toggle settings.

Why build this time-hopping facility inside a black hole? Because, in astrophysics, black holes are the only things that are theoretically capable of inverting time and space. Supposedly, future humans might wander through time as they please, but Cooper’s a modern human. He still can’t – he needs a bit of help.

We see a black hole the same way an ant might see a car – as something that can’t be fully understood with the knowledge at hand. Ants get crushed if they get rolled over by the tire of a car. That doesn’t mean we humans don’t use the car as a tool to get somewhere, and if the ant climbs into the car and hitches a ride elsewhere, it doesn’t mean his journey is scientifically inaccurate.

The whole idea of the ending is that, if time is a dimension, causality can be designed. Just as Cooper floats through time to create the causalities that get him there – knocking books off his daughter’s shelf, writing coordinates in falling dust – the future humans create these tools (wormholes and black holes) as causalities intended for Cooper’s use.

In essence, future humans create causalities that allow Cooper to create causalities.

It’s a bit complicated, but if A leads to B leads to C, and time is as easy to walk through as your living room, then C can lead to B can lead to A without breaking a sweat.

Cooper doesn’t beat the universe with the power of love, as many critics have misunderstood. He is briefly given the tools to create new causes and effects in time itself. These tools are supplied him by a future human race.

Humans have taught dogs to drive cars in controlled situations (sorry about all the car metaphors). The car’s locked at 5 miles an hour in an empty parking lot and sometimes the human has to gesture for the dog to make a correction. Because it’s impossible for dogs to understand how the engine of a car works, however, does not mean the dog is driving that car with the power of love for his owner. They’re using their feet and specially designed pedals and why are we teaching dogs to drive cars again? But the point is, you have an animal using a tool that’s been adapted specifically for that animal to use in a controlled circumstance. That’s all the ending of Interstellar is.

Obviously, director Christopher Nolan wants this to be visually vibrant and metaphorically meaningful, so he doesn’t put Matthew McConaughey in an empty parking lot and have some magical future human energy being going, “No, left! Go left!” The sequence needs to be more intuitive than that, but when boiled down, that’s what’s happening.

The last complaint I’ll address is Cooper being transported back to our solar system at the end of it all. With everything else we’ve seen, I don’t think it’s a stretch that future humans might flip the “transport Cooper back because we’re not sadistic jerks” switch.

(The “transport TARS back because he’s awesome” switch was probably a given when future humans were blueprinting this. I bet it was the first idea they came up with. I can picture them in their future human conference room going, “TARS is going to be OK, right,” before anyone even introduced themselves.)

In brief, future humans build the wormhole and black hole specifically to draw Cooper there so that he can use the tools they’ve retrofitted for him to change his daughter’s time line so that she can save the human race so that there can be future humans who build a wormhole and black hole specifically for…causality, everyone. We might not understand causality that way yet, but dogs driving cars are probably going, “I am a pioneer bravely going into the unknown via the power of magic – look at me!”

Interstellar fits this all together very neatly. Many of the plot holes and scientific inaccuracies some critics complain about just aren’t there. It’s OK to not understand Interstellar fully, because that’s partly the movie’s fault. The blame for that absolutely lies with Nolan wanting to explain a little, but cutting a lot of it out for pacing. And sometimes composer Hans Zimmer couldn’t care less about you hearing the explanation because he’d rather you go deaf to his ridiculously awesome organ music.

There’s a difference, though, between not understanding fully because Interstellar doesn’t always explain things well, and pretending you understand everything perfectly and insisting it’s wrong. Criticize Interstellar for what it fails to do: explain. Don’t criticize it for what it actually does very right, very tightly, and far more bravely than most films would ever try.

Bits & Pieces — Fight Choreography as Philosophy, Jackie Chan

One thing I’m noticing about Jackie Chan’s choreography: he keeps his own unscripted mistakes on-screen. Obviously, there are many that can’t be kept – the unintentional hits and misses highlighted in the painful gag reels he shares during the credits. Yet when Jackie starts a kick too early and has to adjust, or adds a needless extra step or miscued move, he’ll keep it. These are minor imperfections, corrections, and hesitations, but there are enough of them to give his choreography – for all its acrobatics and complexity – an everyman feel.

Here’s what makes it work: he doesn’t keep the unscripted mistakes of the actors who play his villains. They represent an unassailable perfection, intimidating because they don’t miss a step. This reflects a concept often associated with Buddhism, and reflected through many Eastern martial arts, including the Southern kung fu, hapkido, and taekwondo in which Jackie specializes.

The idea is that perfection is something that can only be achieved for a moment. The very second you reach it is the very second you lose it. In accomplishing perfection, it now takes on a different meaning, because you can always go beyond something you’ve accomplished. Life is the pursuit of perfection, a constant moving of the goalposts further and further down the field. True mastery over anything is in realizing and understanding that you cannot master it, but rather let it flow through you. Thus, to consciously realize you are doing something perfectly is to become too aware of it; perfection slips away when recognized.

It’s a philosophy repeated throughout many kung fu films, but few choreographies represent this better than Jackie’s. His characters again and again are flawed, extraordinarily acrobatic one moment and tripping over themselves the next. Their techniques can rarely match up against those of his villains – it’s only through creativity, adaptation, and indomitable spirit that he can match them. It inverts the classic Western superhero trope – that heroes have to win all the time, and villains only have to win once. In Jackie Chan films, the onus is reversed. Since villains win all the time, it’s the heroes who only have to win once. Jackie’s opponents aren’t the villains he fights; his opponent is the perfection they embody.

It is the most often overlooked key to Jackie’s success – no matter how many times we’ve seen a Jackie Chan film, no matter how many times we’ve seen him win in the end, his kung fu is filled with so many holes and imperfections that we can never be absolutely sure it will defeat the taller, more limber, more technically perfect martial artists opposite him. Cinematically, it’s a lesson learned from Charlie Chaplin, who Jackie credits as one of his greatest influences – to root for the underdog, you’ve got to believe he really could lose.

This works because it transforms the fight into something we can understand. None of us can do the things Jackie Chan can do, so why make us root for him to do them well? There’s no tension there; we know how talented Jackie is and that he’ll always win that last fight. But we’re never asked to root for him to win. We’re asked to root for him to overcome himself in order to do it. Winning is secondary.

That personal challenge, surpassing your own capabilities, achieving that fleeting moment when you don’t master the moment at hand, but rather let it flow through you – that’s what we’re cheering for. We know how hard it is to overcome ourselves. It’s the most constant, difficult, and frightening challenge in life. Because it’s the fight we so rarely win, it’s the fight we can never be sure Jackie will win. Beating someone up – we know Jackie Chan can do that in his sleep. Overcoming ourselves…that can only be achieved for a moment. Every time we accomplish it, it takes on a different meaning, because there will always be something in yourself to overcome.

It’s what makes Jackie Chan’s choreography so universal, so meaningful. The acrobatics and flips, leaping off buildings and running up walls, are astounding, yes. Yet he’s made a career not of fighting villains, but of fighting himself and his limits in the same way we all fight ourselves and our limits. That’s why he’s transcended cultures. It doesn’t matter what language he’s speaking, we all know that fight when we see it. It’s the one that scares us the most, and it’s the one he faces for us over and over again. In that way, he demonstrated first to Hong Kong and then to a world of fans – very few of whom can leap off buildings or run up walls – how to surpass their own limitations and fears. He hasn’t pursued a career of being perfect. He’s pursued a career of being imperfect.

Since those limits and fears win all the time, we just have to win once. Then we find new limits, new fears, the goalposts move, and we start over again, better than we thought we could be yesterday.

Bits & Pieces — Rhythm Editing, Ariana Grande’s “Problem” and Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up”

Thank You, Gene Kelly

How did ’50s musical star Gene Kelly play a part in launching David Fincher’s career? To explain that, we’ve got to rewind all the way back to 1989. Before Paula Abdul was a beloved reality show superstar, she was a singer and dancer.

Back then, David Fincher wasn’t an Oscar-winning director responsible for Fight Club, The Social Network, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. He was a sought-after commercial and music video director who had worked with ’80s musical artists like Rick Springfield, Foreigner, and Gipsy Kings.

Neither Abdul nor Fincher needed the other, but they would each make the other’s career. Abdul got her start through a try-out for the Laker Girls, the L.A. Lakers’ cheerleading squad. She was quickly promoted as their head choreographer, shortly after which she was nabbed by the Jackson family to do their music video and tour choreography. Fans now think of her just as an 80s singer with a handful of hits, but Abdul’s history as a choreographer – especially with Michael and Janet Jackson – is often overlooked. She was one of the most important choreographers of the ’80s and ’90s.

Abdul made a demo in 1987 and – on the strength of her dance ability at a time when music videos were king – her singing career kicked off. Her single “Straight Up” was a megahit in 1988, fourth on the year-end Billboard Hot 100. It hardly needed a music video to make it relevant. She had worked with Fincher that year, creating a solid – but largely ignored – video for “(It’s Just) The Way That You Love Me.”

Fincher made his money directing commercials. He had made a name for himself as an edgy, subversive director whose ads could stand on their own as half-minute films. Sometimes, they barely featured a brand’s name.

“I’m totally anti-commercialism,” Fincher said. “I would never do commercials where people hold the product by their head and tell you how great it is, I just wouldn’t do that stuff. It’s all about inference.”

Fincher had also co-founded Propaganda Films with, among others, Michael Bay. He knew at a time when MTV made or broke careers overnight that the quickest route into feature film directing was music videos. He’d been at it since 1985, he was solid, incredibly productive, and he had vision, but he had yet to break out as a music video director the way he had as a director of commercials.

Then came “Straight Up.”

Aside from featuring Arsenio Hall and introducing America to Djimon Hounsou, it became one of the most heavily played videos on MTV, winning four 1989 MTV Video Music Awards – Best Female Video, Best Dance Video, Best Choreography, and Best Editing. It’s often forgotten because it was overshadowed by a music video Fincher directed later that year – Madonna’s “Express Yourself” – and one that was released the next year – Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got a Gun.”

It’s worth noting the video that stuck the longest in people’s minds from 1989, however, was Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” directed by Mary Lambert and winner of MTV’s Viewer’s Choice award. Lambert had earlier in the decade earned notice working with choreographer Abdul on a handful of Janet Jackson’s music videos. The ’80s were a small world.

Paula Abdul had already spent years as one of the music industry’s go-to choreographers, and she had a major hit on her hands before filming with Fincher. Fincher was, perhaps, inevitable – a year later, he held three of the four nominations for best direction in MTV’s 1990 Video Music Awards (for Madonna’s “Vogue” and Don Henley’s “The End of the Innocence,” in addition to the one for Aerosmith).

Yet Fincher’s first music video to truly catch the public’s attention was “Straight Up,” and the battlefield of MTV was littered with productive directors who never broke through. Paula Abdul was the route Fincher took in stepping up to major artists like Madonna and Aerosmith, and “Straight Up” was the music video that truly announced him, the connective tissue between one phase of his career and the next.

But before Paula Abdul was a reality show superstar, she was a singer, and before she was a singer, she was a choreographer, and before that – as she once told an interviewer – she was a little girl who had no idea she wanted to dance until she saw Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain, and then it’s all she ever wanted to do. So thank you, Gene Kelly, I really liked The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Get to the Part About Ariana Grande Already!

Look at this. If you haven’t watched “Straight Up” yet, watch it after. (On certain browsers, you’ll have to click through to YouTube.)

Congratulations, you’ll now have that song cycling through your head for the next month.

Notice anything? The two music videos are incredibly similar, down to the cutting philosophy of isolating featured dancers. It’s not as if no one’s used these techniques between “Straight Up” and “Problem,” but few music videos have echoed “Straight Up” so proudly.

They’re both edited with what I think of as rhythm editing – this isn’t a term used very widely in editing – but I liken it to choreographies themselves. A rhythm choreography is something that’s based on the music. You cut to the hard beats. “Problem” is a superb example of this. From the moment Grande starts singing, nearly every cut is made to either two or four beats. As she crescendos and we approach the chorus “I got one less problem without you,” the editing reflects the increased intensity, suddenly cutting on every one or two beats. Later in the song, we’re cutting on half-beats, as well.

How exactly does this reflect rhythm choreography? In many styles – jazz, tap, and hip hop – a rhythm choreography broadly means that the choreo is based on the musicality of a piece. Its inverse is lyrical choreography, which means the choreo is based on the meaning or story of a piece. They’re not mutually exclusive, but choreographers often prioritize one over the other based on the dance they want to create. As Dance Spirit described the difference between hip hop and lyrical hip hop, “hip-hop dancers hit the beat (one, two, stop). Lyrical hip-hop dancers ride through the beat while still accenting it (one, two-ooo).”

These are broad definitions. Hip hop, jazz, tap they each have countless style permutations, but for the purposes of understanding how a music video is edited, I think rhythm and lyrical editing fit very well. Rhythm values editing to the hard beat, reflecting the pace and intensity of the music itself. Lyrical editing prioritizes the story; you edit to the timing the narrative demands.

“Problem” wants a softer tone, but it still wants to be a rhythm-edited dance video, so it can’t use the severe overexposures and underexposures Fincher uses on “Straight Up.” Such severe contrasts are a dated effect anyway, evoking a style of glamor photography that is today more closely associated with commercial style – it’s the way we shoot iPads, Big Macs, and tractors now. Glamor photography in 2014 is far more informed by fashion photography, tabloid coverage, and theatre. “Problem” does reference Fincher’s black-and-white effects in Grande’s two-tone main set and pinwheel backdrop, while evolving it in the psychedelic tunnel effect of Azalea’s solos. (The pinwheel is used as a lighting effect in Grande’s separate lyric video for “Problem.”)

Grande (who, unlike some singers, is reportedly very involved in the editing process) and director Nev Todorovic also double down on Fincher’s film scratches, most notably at the edges of frame, while updating other imperfections to the digital era – those scratches are joined by digital artifacting (when pieces of information are dropped from the image, often in the form of visual static). A few faux-signal losses, like you might see on an old-fashioned TV, mimic edits as a way of simultaneously prolonging a single shot while maintaining the quicker pace of editing – your brain registers a cut, but the shot hasn’t changed. The psychedelic effect for Azalea further echoes the digital concept of constant screen refreshes.

Similarly, the dance styles are updated. The tap and isolation jazz in “Straight Up” – styles that typically require professional training – are replaced with styles more closely associated with street performance, like breakdancing and flexing (also called bone breaking). Abdul’s motorcycle is updated to some fancy Vespas.

From a song standpoint, a couple of quick notes – I appreciate that the song “Problem” itself is about a woman cutting off a difficult relationship, rather than pining for one or trying to get the guy. Iggy Azalea’s line “I got 99 problems, but you won’t be one” is the conclusive rejection to Jay-Z’s infamous and oft-repeated “I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain’t one” that I’ve been waiting 10 years to hear. The saxophone loop has seen credit given to Macklemore’s use of sax in songs like “Thrift Shop.” That’s fitting, but the sax loop in “Problem” has far more in common with the baseline electric guitar riff from C&C Music Factory’s “Everybody Dance Now.”

As we understand the evolution of storytelling on film, it’s important to understand the evolution of music videos as well. It’s still the medium from which many of our future directors arise, and through which endless new editing, design, and cinematography techniques are forged.

As a viewer, “Problem” is even more enjoyable when I can recognize all the little details that come together to make it. Like “Straight Up,” it may be popular for a year before fading away, but the artistry behind it deserves better. Most will never give these music videos credit for being smart, nuanced, studied pieces of filmmaking. They’re bubble gum, and that makes it easy not to afford them their places in the history of the medium. It’s too bad. The technique behind “Problem” is masterful.

Bits & Pieces — Fight Choreography as Myth, “Troy” and “Serenity”

We look at fight choreography and often think it’s just different ways for people to hit and punch each other, but stunt coordinators and fight choreographers put just as much thought and artistry into a fight as a costume designer does into a film’s wardrobe, or a cinematographer does into the film’s shots. Fights themselves can hit you down low, where you feel it in your bones, or can become a dance of mythic proportions that sparks the part of us that marvels at art.

Let’s take two well-choreographed films, Troy and Serenity. Why these two? Brad Pitt and Summer Glau, that’s why. The All-American character actor and the ballet dancer-turned-genre actress both played characters that fought with a sort of preternatural, psychic skill.

Pitt first – an adaptation of Homer’s The Iliad, Troy is a mess of a film. It’s an unintentional masterpiece of trashiness, despite never being all that trashy, in which a Trojan prince kidnaps a Greek princess and sets the two empires to war. It has gorgeous technical elements – I have no idea as to their historical accuracy (I’m guessing there’s not much), but its costume design and make-up remain some of the best ever seen in a sword-and-sandal epic. Troy also boasts Sean Bean (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring) as Odysseus, which teased in the minds of millions of fans the barest shred of a hope of a much better movie – The Odyssey starring Sean Bean. Alas, it was not to be.

What Troy did best, however, was fight choreography. It featured Brad Pitt as Greek warrior Achilles, the most famed of all warriors, and Eric Bana as the honorable Trojan prince, Hector. Watch an early battle sequence featuring Achilles:

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Stunning, right? Well, everything aside from Pitt’s acting, though I blame director Wolfgang Petersen more for that. At times in Troy, Pitt owns the screen; at other times it seems like he’s still rehearsing. What always delivers is that choreography, though. There are two elements at play here. The first is the Stunt Coordinator – in this case, Simon Crane. You can see his ability to choreograph large battle scenes. It’s his calling card, after all – the man choreographed the massive battles of Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. He’s also responsible for the fantastic and complex gun fu of Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the incredibly clever sword fights in Stardust. If the Academy gave out Oscars for stunts (which they should), Crane would be the Meryl Streep of stunt coordinators. (Jackie Chan would be Katharine Hepburn; just go with the metaphor).

Crane’s style does have a few interesting nuances. He tends to use extras instead of visual effects, and Troy only employs vast numbers of CGI troops in its biggest battle sequence. This makes Crane’s battles feel more organic, but using college kids playing hooky as your extras has its drawbacks. If you look past Mel Gibson in Braveheart as he gleefully hacks his way through enough Englishmen to fill an Olympic swimming pool, you’ll see numerous instances of extras half-heartedly swinging axes meters away from each other, or spearmen charging each other with their spears held out of the way. You can’t spend your entire budget insuring the extras, after all. It’s a necessary trade-off, and I still prefer organic battles to CGI-heavy ones.

One of Crane’s trademarks is in developing choreography suited to individual actors. Every central character in Troy – Achilles, Hector, Ajax, Menalaus – fights in a different style. All except Patroclus, whose emulation of older cousin Achilles causes Hector to mistake the two and slaughter Patroclus in battle. Cue Achilles riding to the gates of Troy to challenge Hector to a 1-on-1 duel.

These individual choreographies are developed separately from the large-scale battles. This is the second element key to these complex sequences: Crane employs a Sword Master, the excellent Richard Ryan, to develop specific choreography for each actor. Ryan makes a point of Achilles’ preternatural fighting ability. In the Greeks’ beach landing above, there’s a point at which Achilles places his shield upon his back just as an arrow buries itself where his kidney would have been. His choreography for Achilles is filled with moments like these – there’s a sense of either the gods watching out for Achilles or the warrior possessing a sixth sense for unpredictable threats.

When Achilles fights Hector, it’s really more of a ballet on Achilles’ part. He’s already positioned himself for Hector’s next attack before Hector makes it. There’s even a moment when Achilles rests his shield on the back of his neck, an utterly preposterous fighting position. It creates an iconic profile, however, as if Achilles is posing for his statue. Moments later, Achilles deflects a sword blow meant for his neck by spinning around – he’s planned that many moves ahead how Hector will combat him. Achilles is, essentially, fighting psychically. Watch:

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Now for Summer Glau – her choreography as River Tam in Serenity is an incredibly close comparison. The style of fighting is completely different, but the effect that’s achieved is similar. In writer-director Joss Whedon’s movie adaptation of the gritty sci-fi show Firefly, River Tam is a character who is powerfully psychic. Summer Glau, the actress who plays her, started out as a ballet dancer. Watch a later scene and compare it with the choreography given Pitt at the end of that beach scene.

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The Fight Choreographer for Serenity was Ryan Watson. The style he gives River Tam – while different from Achilles’ – is still based on moves that clear where her opponents’ weapons will be, and is centered around positioning herself in anticipation of how those opponents will move. It’s worth noting that Glau – like Pitt and Bana – performs her own stunts and choreography. Her training as a dancer also allows Whedon to use her in a way Petersen can’t use Pitt in Troy: the entire fight scene is done in one shot. It’s a shorter scene, but you’ll notice Whedon’s tendency for extended takes in the longer Maidenhead fight we’ll watch momentarily.

Now, if you’ve ever been in a real fight and you’ve had training, you’ll know that the fight – at least at first – takes place in your head. You seek the strongest position possible and, more importantly, you seek to put your opponent in as disadvantageous a position as possible. If you do a good enough job of that, the fight’s decided before anyone throws a punch. The physical just follows the mental via muscle memory. There is a real element of predicting and guiding your opponent into specific physical and mental positions, setting up your own moves and his reactions.

Both the choreography for Glau and Pitt are unreal extensions beyond this. In Glau’s case, it specifically highlights River’s ability to predict where a blow will land or how a new foe will arrive moments before it happens. In Pitt’s case, it lends Achilles the aura of a god, of a warrior truly blessed by the Fates. In both circumstances, an artificial choreography is created – one that has nothing to do with the willpower and physical reaction of a real fight, but has everything to do with the power of dance to communicate elegance and myth.

All of these choreographies, before they get to the actors, are refined using stunt specialists. Watson’s choreography for Glau was developed with Bridget Riley. She wasn’t originally credited in the production – many stuntpeople often aren’t, despite being key to developing much of the choreography that makes it into the final product. We are lucky enough to have video of Riley’s original blocking for the Maidenhead fight. Please note that Riley is a professional stuntwoman and martial artist, and could beat the living snot out of Brad Pitt and anyone else mentioned in this article in a heartbeat. Except maybe Katharine Hepburn.

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The original scene takes advantage of Riley’s extensive martial arts skills, as well as a decent amount of wirework. Each shot is isolated to an individual encounter and stunt.

With Glau, the scene changes. She’s not able to perform some of the moves Riley helped develop, but Glau’s ability as a dancer does allow for the scene to be shot in longer takes than were originally planned. Like Achilles, she avoids attacks in her blind spot through preternatural anticipation. This isn’t an oversight in the choreography – like Simone Crane and Richard Ryan did for Troy, Ryan Watson developed individual choreography for each actor in Serenity. Nathan Fillion’s fight scenes opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor are altogether different. As Captain Mal, Fillion is a scrappy slugger, essentially just doing his best to get one more chance to punch the other guy in the face. He often uses misdirection to do so. As the nameless Operative, Ejiofor keeps everything directly in front of himself – he fights efficiently, letting his opponents’ wrap themselves up. He reacts with precise, cleanly defined motions. Glau is the only one who fights in that preternatural style; it’s a conscious artistic decision. Watch what I mean in the final version of the Maidenhead fight.

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So what’s my point, at the end of all of this? It’s that fight scenes aren’t just whether you use Kung Fu or Muay Thai or Krav Maga. Fight scenes can also communicate messages through their art. In Troy, the fight between Achilles and Hector ceases to be real – it becomes representative, a metaphor for the characters of these two men. Achilles is like an animal, circling around his opponent and taking a quick test bite at the beginning, and he is like a god, reacting to Hector’s attacks even as they happen.

Hector, on the other hand, is a man who doesn’t value combat, but does value effort. There’s a moment earlier in the film when Hector betrays the honor of a duel by defending his brother Paris (Orlando Bloom). He doesn’t do so because Paris is his brother; he does so because Paris – despite not being a warrior – still showed up for the duel and put forth his best effort. When Hector later faces Ajax, a warrior twice his size, Hector is victorious not by skill, but because of his effort. He’s clearly outmatched but he doesn’t give up.

In the lead-up to his fight with Achilles, both Hector and the audience know he will not make it out alive. Achilles is an animal. Achilles is a god. Hector is a good man doing his best. The fight choreography isn’t about Hector and Achilles. That choreography is about our constant struggle just to come up even against forces greater than ourselves. It’s about facing nature and fate and knowing that we can never come out on top, but that’s not going to stop us from trying anyway. It’s not because we think we’re better, but rather because the effort itself is honorable, and gives the struggle meaning. Hector is a man going to his death knowing exactly how he’ll face it – as the best version of himself. He is effort, which means nothing to Achilles or to nature or to destiny or to a god, but which carries meaning only to Hector himself.

Fight choreography can communicate as much as a dance, as much as any other form of art can in five minutes. It can give us that same artistic reaction – that same chill up our spines when it suddenly dawns on us what’s being said and the passion behind it – that a beautiful vista in Lord of the Rings can, that a costume from Moulin Rouge can, that an immaculately designed Kubrick set can, that a line from a poem, or a phrase from a song, or an emotion caught in a photograph can.

Fight choreography isn’t just people beating each other up. Stuntwork isn’t just people diving in front of explosions. Fight choreography and stuntwork can be art, and the people behind it think of it as art, communicate in the same way that other artists do. Start to look at these scenes that way, and you’ll start discovering things about film that you never even thought were possible.

Troy
Stunt Coordinator – Simon Crane
Sword Master – Richard Ryan
“Achilles” – Brad Pitt
“Hector” – Eric Bana

Serenity
Fight Choreographer – Ryan Watson
Stunt Development – Bridget Riley
“River Tam” – Summer Glau

Bits & Pieces — Dance Choreography, “Footloose” (1984) and “Footloose” (2011)

Dance Choreography,
Footloose (1984) and Footloose (2011)
Choreographer (1984): Lynne Taylor-Corbett
Choreographer (2011): Jamal Sims

Footloose, in whatever version you watch it, is a fairly basic story. A young boy named Ren McCormack, fish-out-of-water if there ever was one, moves from the city to live with relatives in the country. The town he finds himself in, however, has banned dancing. What at first seems a religious intolerance is later revealed to be a fear of pain – the town lost several high-schoolers years before as they drove home drunk from a dance. A dance ban wasn’t the only reaction, but a curfew and ban on loud music were also instituted. In true 80s fasion, it’s up to Ren to bring dance and joy back into the town.

Most of the town isn’t on board with this idea. After he’s been given enough trouble by townies, police, and the local boys who (correctly) think he’s trying to hone in on one of their girls, Ren drives to an abandoned warehouse and releases his anger in an extended solo dance. The 1984 scene is famous, in large part because it helped launch Kevin Bacon’s career. The 2011 version was successful, but had no Kevin Bacon.

In the remake, director Craig Brewer asks choreographer Jamal Sims to replace the jazz choreography and gymnastics of the 1984 version with aggression. In the original, Ren’s act of dancing is a release, an escapist fantasy that allows Ren to take control of his reality once more. Bacon and his dance double Michael Telmont perform multiple jump kicks, slide down the hand rails of a flight of stairs, and swing on a chain from the rafters like Errol Flynn. Though Ren’s fighting personal demons, he’s clearly beating them. The choreography communicates re-assertion, a reclaiming of mental territory. The song is even triumphal, a high-speed 80s ballad with lyrics like “Never ever hide your heart,” and “It’s time to fight.”

When Kenny Wormald and his dance double perform the 2011 version, there is no less athleticism, but the gymnastics are replaced with a hip hop/contemporary choreography edited to The White Stripes’ relentlessly syncopated, storm-in-a-teapot “Catch Hell Blues,” which opens “Well if they catch me around/ You’re playing rock the boat/ I’m gonna catch hell.” The message is wholly different. Brewer and Sims repeatedly have Wormald spin out and lose control, or overstep edges and come crashing down. When he swings from the rafters, he doesn’t elegantly flip and land like Bacon. He’s yanked back and forth until he tumbles to the ground.

The remake’s dance solo isn’t a form of re-assertion through escapism; it’s a form of losing even more control through frustration. There is release, but the release here isn’t the key to a 1980s movie moment that gives you the confidence to win. The release here is that of ceasing to care if you lose. It’s a key difference in the two films and the two eras in which they were made.

The 1980s in the United States were defined by Reaganism and fire sales of the American dream. Realistic or not, everyone believed they could pull themselves up by their bootstraps. American movies were dominated by people succeeding in this American dream – even action movies like the Rocky sequels and Die Hard were about average joes overcoming insurmountable odds thanks to their sheer, American, wisecracking toughness. Director Herbert Ross would go on to direct Michael J. Fox in The Secret of My Succe$s, a solid comedy that nonetheless posits that if everyone was out for themselves, they’d end up with the girl of their dreams and be CEO of their own company.

Brewer’s story is darker. He came to his dream project, Footloose, after an allegorical drama about abuse, addiction, and recovery in the underrated and misunderstood Black Snake Moan. Wormald’s Ren is scarred by his mother’s death, a new character detail Bacon’s Ren never had to suffer. Wormald’s Ren is less self-sufficient, and what were amusing plot obstacles from local villains for Bacon are now turned into out-and-out bullying and social ostracizing for Wormald. There’s even a scene in the 2011 version in which the love interest, Ariel (Julianne Hough) is so afraid her townie boyfriend will dump her, she is pressured into having sex with him. Brewer’s is a story that acknowledges a reality to which the original Footloose didn’t have access.

It’s also a film made directly after the subprime mortgage crisis that launched the United States into a borderline financial depression. Ren isn’t just more frustrated, he lives in a world that’s been screwed over. Where the original Ren comes to control and dominate his environment through the warehouse solo, the remake’s Ren comes to learn he is trapped by his surroundings. He bounces off them. He makes no difference.

The rules Kevin Bacon’s Ren sets out to break in 1984 symbolized censorship and old-fashioned thinking standing in the way of social progress. Kenny Wormald’s Ren sets out to break those same rules because he sees his world for the first time as one split between those who follow the rules, and those in charge who don’t have to. The 1984 film was about the dawn of progress, a promising future, and new ways of thinking. The 2011 film is about struggling to stay above water and living restricted, fearful, cautious lives because of trauma.

In 1984, the reverend, Ariel’s father, who socially enforces these rules is simply doing what he understands to be God’s work. The reverend in 2011 acts from a more wounded place, from his own fear. He is certain that any deviation from the rules will curse him to repeat a moment of terror and loss that happened years before. Sound like a familiar tune?

Neither Footloose is a triumph of cinema. They’re both fun but fairly average movies wearing their allegories firmly on their sleeves. They aren’t complex, but they do both exist to communicate important themes. It’s easy to talk about the momentous films that challenge and confront our pre-existing notions and beliefs. It’s just as easy to overlook the intelligent and challenging moments in films that are otherwise unspectacular. The differing choreographic approaches between the original Footloose and its remake won’t likely change the face of cinema, but they’re important to notice and discuss because, after all, someone who sees them today is going to change the face of cinema tomorrow.

Bits & Pieces — Production Design, “The Curse of the Golden Flower”

Bits & Pieces is a new series that will focus on overlooked technical and cultural accomplishments in under-seen films.

Production Design, “The Curse of the Golden Flower”
Production Designer – Huo Tingxiao
Art Director – Zhao Bin
Costume Design – Yee Chung Man

by Vanessa Tottle and Gabriel D. Valdez

Upon its release in 2006, The Curse of the Golden Flower was the most expensive Chinese film ever made. Director Zhang Yimou, who began his career making sensitive dramas, was coming off two martial arts epics (Hero and The House of Flying Daggers) that had proved so successful they’d even garnered multiplex screens in the United States.

The Curse of the Golden Flower is an adaptation of Thunderstorm, a Chinese play published in 1934. Its closest Western comparison would be The Lion in Winter. Both concern a royal family’s internecine conflict, centering around a mother and father on the verge of war and the three sons vying for their affections and inheritance of the kingdom.

The plot is complex and seedy – it involves poison, insanity, assassination, and secret lovers. Chow Yun-fat (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and Gong Li (Farewell My Concubine), often regarded as China’s best actors of their generation, star as the Emperor Ping and Empress Phoenix.

Most importantly, Golden Flower is among the most beautiful films ever created. The costume and set design are a synaesthetic’s dream come true.

The film’s accomplishment is in Zhang’s use of set design to translate opposing themes. The movie’s central sequence, for instance, involves one army massacring another in the Emperor’s expansive courtyard, filled with pots of golden flowers for the annual Chong Yang Festival. Bodies are clearly shown piled up, the courtyard a mess of blood and debris. With the manpower at the palace’s disposal, however, it’s the work of a few hours to clean up the bodies, replant the flowerpots in perfect lines, and carry on with the festival on schedule, pretending nothing had ever happened. All evidence has simply vanished.

To Chinese authorities, who had the ability to censor the film if they saw something they didn’t like, it was a moment that spoke to the power and importance of unity. The replanting of the flowerpots represents the country’s ability to continue on unscathed. Despite a long history of war and suffering at the hands of neighbors and Western powers, the sequence hints that China is an idea continually reborn, always meant to be. To enough of the authorities, the flowerpot sequence symbolizes China’s strength, destiny, and resiliency while glorifying its sheer manpower.

To Western audiences and many Chinese viewers, the moment spoke to the dangers of empire and censorship. The same sequence is a stark and shocking reminder about the dangers of centralized power and how easily voices of criticism are erased from history. The notion of a massacre so quickly covered up is something viewers idealistically (if not always practically) oppose. To many audiences, the flowerpot sequence calls out and criticizes Chinese decisions to jail opposing voices and make political opponents vanish.

In fact, the entire movie is shaped in metaphors that simultaneously criticize the very same power structure they reassure. The victor feels inevitable the entire film. Some audiences interpreted this as a show of strength, while others interpreted it as the inevitable horror of politics, an echo of imperialism in the modern state of things.

The original play, Thunderstorm, is about how wealth and class shame corrupt a successful Chinese family. It’s needless to say why it’s considered a classic in a country that is, at least in name, Communist. Zhang’s period approach to this story keeps this theme intact. For all surface intent, the story is about the futility and tragedy of rebelling against the norm. Throughout, however, Zhang’s design team undercuts and turns this message on its head. Rebellion may be tragic, but its act in Golden Flower takes everything meaningful away from the ruling class. It poses a China bitterly divided between an upper-class government rejoicing at the spectacle of its own power and a poisoned, strong-armed culture struggling to take charge of its fate. In the end, Golden Flower suggests this leads to mutually assured destruction.

For this alone, The Curse of the Golden Flower is a unique accomplishment in cinematic history. It’s overlooked as one of the best films of the last decade and is overshadowed – popularly and critically – in Zhang’s own canon by the stunning martial arts sequences of Hero and the operatic sensibilities of The House of Flying Daggers. Golden Flower may have some martial arts sequences, but it’s really a talky drama. In the West, we’re not used to devoting our viewing time to Eastern drama.

Golden Flower is a more valuable film than either of those others. It creates one of the most overwhelming senses of place seen in cinema. The images posted here are beautiful, but they have nothing on the film in motion.

In his earlier Hero, Zhang ends the movie with a character sacrificing himself for the unity of China. The sacrifice made censors happy, while it played as a tragic and disagreeable decision to audiences. It forced viewers to question whether the individual sacrifice, a fundamental concept of China’s Communism, was truly worth it. In Golden Flower, Zhang found a way to amplify that feeling, to make an entire film out of a Chinese classic that expands that bittersweet moment of doubt into a haunting, lingering thought that follows you out of the theater.

And they slipped it all past the censors. This is what a good design team can do.