Celebrating Cinema

Celebrating Cinema

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

The Fountain (2006)

by Darren Aronofsky


A Critique

Tommy's love for Izzi is his drive
Six years after Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky surmounts consider-able production problems to give us his third film, The Fountain.  In a golden wave of imagination, Aronofsky creates his complex vision of an immortality myth. Because these myths are timeless and ubiquitous, though varied among cultures, Aronofsky sets The Fountain in three time periods and in three very different places. Hugh Jackman plays Tomas, a conquistador captain in 1500 C.E.; Dr. Tommy Creo, a present day American cancer research surgeon; and a mysterious bald spaceman in 2500 C.E., a sort of celestial Omega Man. Rachel Weisz also plays Queen Isabel (past) and Izzi Creo, Dr. Tom Creo's wife (present).  

Tomas the Conquistador crosses an ocean, searches, and kills to reach the legendary Tree of Life. Dr. Tom Creo consumes himself in his search for a cure to Izzi's of her brain's cancer. The space man, alone in a biosphere spaceship orb--his Valley Forge--cares for and speaks to the orb's centerpiece, a magnificent old-growth tree. The Fountain demands at least two viewings with much contemplation in between.


The decision to write on The Fountain is difficult. I still do not feel I understand the film, but I wanted to give it my best attempt without consulting the writings of others.  Below is that attempt.



<<<  SPOILERS BELOW  >>>

Please see the film before reading further




A test for Tomas
Though our Fountain experience differs greatly from his previous two films, some of Aronofsky's patterns continue in The Fountain. His bold camera angles continue to excite his films. Aronofsky leaves his quick cutting technique behind, and strides boldly into a film not only filled with fantasy, but a film that is almost pure fantasy. Where Requiem repeats visual cues, The Fountain repeats dialogue and scenes (often involving one or more time-shifts.)  Aronofsky also returns Mark Margolis for their third collaboration and Ellen Burstyn for their second. He brings back his producer, much of his crew, composer Clint Mansell (their 3rd film), the Kronos Quartet  (2nd film), and director of photography Matthew Libatique (3rd film).


The story is difficult to decipher upon first viewing. In the story of the past, somehow the Mayans have hidden one of their massive temples at the midpoint among their three biggest temples. Atop the hidden temple, the Tree of Life grows.  Captain Tomas's quest is to find the Tree of Life so that Queen Isabel and Spain might somehow defeat the Roman Catholic Inquisition within its borders. Tomas's reward, besides eternal life, will be Queen Isabel's eternal hand in marriage. She has given him a ring to carry until his quest is complete. Only after drinking the sap is he to wear the ring as a symbol of their union. Tomas defeats the flaming sword, drinks sap from the Tree of Life, then instead of triumph, he turns into flowers that the tree will eventually absorb as fertilizer.  So far, so good, I suppose.


Dr. Tom and Izzie Creo in a museum
Next we're presented Dr. Tommy and Izzi Creo in the present. Tommy's wedding ring disappears after he looks into the nebula from the surgery prep room--goodness knows why the ring disappears or why a nebula does appear. Izzi has written eleven of twelve chapter of a book on the Mayan creation myth that starts in Spain. The story will end in the Orion constellation's fictitious golden star ("nebula, really") that the Mayans called Xibalba. After Izzi dies, Tommy, with the help of a sample from the ficti-tious natul tortuosa "that tree in Central America," develops the "cure for death," the fountain of youth. We do not see the cure come, but we know it is on its way. After the funeral, Tommy plants a sweetgum ball on Izzi's grave. We do not see it happen, but from the museum scene, we know the tree will grow and absorb Izzi.


Tommy with tree, in spaceship
Last is the future third of the film.  The mysterious bald man is actually Dr. Tommy Creo 500 years into the future. We know this from his memories / hallucinations of Izzi, from the quill from Izzi that he's kept 500 years, and from his original ring tattoo. Tommy probably gets his memories of Queen Isabel, however, from having taken a medicine created from the Tree of Life that consumed Tomas. The tree in the spaceship, with its bark like the neck hair of Izzi, is the American Sweetgum tree that grew over and around Izzi's grave. It is not just the essence of Izzi. To Tommy, that tree and Izzi are one and the same. Tommy has journeyed from earth in his spherical bubble of a spaceship to tend and transport the tree (Izzi) and himself to the Golden Nebula in Orion, Xibalba. The nebula surrounds a dying star that, upon its supernova, will give birth to more stars. Though immortal, Tommy and Izzi will be killed upon arrival to their destination, together forever. "Death turns all to ash, thus, death frees every soul."


The film, or my interpretation of it,  is derailed as soon as future Tommy reaches 1000 years to the past to retrieve the ring. Aronofsky may have derailed it even earlier when the Mayan guard with the flaming sword surrenders to Tomas due to a vision, or due to somehow sensing that Tomas is future Tommy.  Aron-ofsky has violated Roger Ebert's "Mysterious Object Antecedents Myth." He describes is as follows,


Whenever a movie involves time travel, there will always be an object that travels between the past and future without ever having actually come from anywhere. Example: in the beginning of SOMEWHERE IN TIME, an old Jane Seymour gives the young Christopher Reeve a pocket watch. He travels back in time to find her, taking the watch with him, and accidentally leaves it there. She keeps it, grows old, and—voilà—the cycle repeats itself. But where did the pocket watch come from in the first place?
   
Except this mysterious object is not an object, but a character that has come from nowhere:  future Tommy. Future Tommy does not exist without Tomas becoming part of the tree. But Tomas does not get to the tree without the aid of future Tommy.

The final 15 minutes will confuse and confound the most open-minded viewers--at least the ones whose minds are not so wide open that their brains have fallen out--and the rare soul who interprets the film as Aronofsky had intended. Aronofsky has made a creative film, shimmering with beauty, that is ultimately jarred free of logic's moorings and forever obscures any wisdom or story it was hoping to tell.  


To Mr. Aronofsky I say, "Please, leave me alone.  I know how it ends."

Trailer for The Fountain


Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

by Darren Aronofsky


An Analysis

Sara Goldfarb and son Harry

Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky's direction of Hubert Selby, Jr.'s novel, interprets the distinct spirals into addiction of four Coney Islanders--Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto) and the three closest people in his life: his mother Sara Goldfard (Ellen Burstyn); his best friend Tyrone "Ty" C. Love (Marlon Wayans), and his girlfriend Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly). Harry, whose life is going nowhere, aside from having a sultry girlfriend, occasionally steals his mother's television for pawning. Sara Goldfarb's life is without purpose and has little hope.  Financial support from Marion's parents is waning while Marion's fashion design career has yet to launch. Ty fantasizes about making his long-gone mother proud. Like Harry, Ty has done nothing with his life but land one of the hottest-bodied young women around, Alice (Aliya Campbell).



A requiem is music and ceremony for catholic funeral masses. This Requiem for a Dream is indeed a funeral service for its characters' hopes and dreams, and only we are in attendance.  


Harry and Marion cuddle
Requiem for a Dream's storytelling is driven by Aronofsky's cinematic leitmotifs -- styles that signify similar themes, places, or characters when seen or heard. Unlike in The Empire Strikes Back, where each musical style refers to a character (e.g. Darth Vader and his "Imperial March") Requiem's leitmotifs, both visual and auralsignify similar narrative themes and feelings within and among characters.



<<<  SPOILERS BELOW  >>>

Please see the film before reading further




Addiction


Each character endures one or more addictions. Sara has an addiction to TV, then to her newfound popularity among the gaggle of old women in the building, then to fitting into her red dress, and finally to her weight-loss pills, 3/4 of which are uppers. As an abandoned widow, she is the most vulnerable of the four.


Harry and Ty, hocking Sara's TV.
Harry is addicted to making his girlfriend happy. To make Marion's dreams come true, and to supply his "TV junkie" mother with a fix (a new TV, "from Macy's!"), Harry deals drugs on the street. Harry, already a heroin user, also becomes addicted to heroin, which literally costs him an arm, if not yet a leg.

Although Ty is a heroin user and dealer, the drug is not his downfall.  Ty's inner pressure to please his  fantastic mother becomes his addiction.  

Arnold with Marion
Marion, a heroin user, has lost financial support of her parents, due to reports from her unethical analyst, Arnold (Sean Gullette). Her dream of opening a storefront for her clothing designs pressures Harry into dealing drugs. Her newly-regular access to heroin becomes her second, more powerful addiction. Marion soon takes to being a prostitute-for-drugs to wealthy Big Tim (Keith David), and then as a hired pornographic party girl who finds herself in a double-dildo anal display, surrounded by engorged suits and fellow nude party girls. Fallen from her dreams as a clothing designer, she ends the film naked.  




Aronofsky-as-Auteur


Aronofsky, just two films into his career, has developed techniques and patterns as an auteur. He is loyal to cast and crew, returning many from Pi (2008).  Requiem's visual style is recognizably from the loins of Pi. And Aronofsky's fascination with hallucination and fantasy scenes continues.

Strung-out Sara Goldfarb shot with fisheye lens
Requiem's expressive visual feast betrays Aronofsky as its director; with a style similar to his debut Pi, but far more advanced, as Requiem has its own visual language. Aronofsky returns to the All That Jazz-like heroin-injection and pill-popping sequences from Pi. Requiem uses, as does Pi, a fish-eye lens. In Requiem it is used twice, first during Sara's experience of the lurching refrigerator, then in her next scene, a time-warped second visit to the diet doctor's office. Aronofsky has his actors, and one prop, wear the camera, including once in a Pi-like chase sequence, a technique used in John Frankenheimer's masterpiece Seconds (1966). Last, five times the screen fades to white.
  1. After Harry and Marion's split-screen love session, the screen fades to white.  
  2. Marion, bottom-nude before a mirror, is sad, injects heroin, then feels the euphoria of a heroin high as the screen fades to white.
  3. After Sara and the gaggle mail her TV application, the screen fades to white.  
  4. After Ty returns with the heroin score, he and Harry get high together.  Their euphoria fades to white.
  5. Harry's arm is sawed off, then the screen fades to white and into his Marion-on-the-pier fantasy.
These fades-to-white are probably a reference to Pi, in which a fade-to-white is a metaphor for Max staring at the sun, by which he metaphorically blinds himself. Perhaps Sara, putting her dream into one white envelope, and the three young adults who turn to heroin or each other for their happiness, are staring into the sun, blinding themselves to the world.


Mr. Rabinowitz
Aronofsky has Pi's primary cast return in Requiem for a Dream, albeit in briefer roles.  Mark Margolis (the mentor) is Mr. Rabinowitz, the pawnbroker (named after the film's editor); Sean Gullette (Max) is Marion's ex-sugar daddy Arnold; and Ben Shenkman (Lenny Meyer) is Dr. Spencer, who tends to Sara toward movie's end.  Requiem also returns much of Pi's supporting cast, including Samia Shoihib (Devi, the young woman next door) as Sara's diet nurse; Ajay Naidu (Farouk) as the mailman; and Joanna Gordon who reprises her role as the landlady, Mrs. Ovadia. Pi's original music composer, Clint Mansell, triumphantly returns for Requiem.  

Last, Aronosky seems to establish a trend of not trusting religion. In Pi, the Hassidic Jews were one of the two villainous groups. Requiem features an unseen drug connection named "Angel," who time and again provides the materials or information for Ty, Harry, and Marion to bring harm to themselves.


Leitmotifs

Aronofsky uses visual and aural phrasing, or leitmotifs, to emphasize relationships, to show fantasies, daydreams, & hallucinations, and to draw parallels between characters' emotions that each experiences at different times in the film, or to draw connections among characters at the same time in the film.

Aronofsky illustrates connectedness and relationships via several visual phrasings. Seen six times in the film, the split screen brings the two subjects in each half of the screen, already close, closer together, often illustrating a dependent, co-dependent, or enabling relationship.  

Split-screen: Sara's dependence on diet pills
  1. The first split screen occurs early. Sara locks herself in a closet while Harry demands the key for the locked-up TV that he is about to pawn. We later understand their co-dependent relationship as Sara, ever lonely, always buys back her TV from boardwalk pawn broker, Mr. Rabinowitz.  
  2. The second split screen shows Harry and Marion in bed in a creative and sensual scenes of caressing.  Though the scene is beautiful, we shall soon see that the relationship is codependent.  
  3. We also see Sara split-screened with the fridge--she craves the food inside.  
  4. Harry and Tyrone shoot up together, split screened and side-by-side on the couch. About to go into heroin-dealing together, they are co-dependent.  
  5. We later see Sara, who has abandoned the egg-and-grapefruit diet, split-screened first with her new diet pills, and then with her cream cheese roll--a sort of saying hello to the former and a goodbye to the latter.
  6. We do not see another split-screening until the very end, when Ty, curling up into the fetal position, is split-screened with his mother of years past. It is not a true split screen--it's two separate semi-transparent shots, but it looks like a split-screen.

As mentioned earlier, Aronofsky has three of the characters, and Sara's original TV, each wear the camera once. Aronofsky was forced to cut the scene he shot of Harry wearing the camera.
Marion, returning from sex with Arnold
  1. The TV wears the camera early, to show the faces of Harry and Ty, who are about to pawn it for heroin.
  2. After the hit on Ty's drug lord in the limo, Ty runs down an alley wearing the camera, face splattered with blood.  This technique keeps us focused on his terror-covered face as the rest of the world jerks about behind him.  
  3. As Marion returns from having $2,000 sex with Arnold, her corrupt therapist, and after we have watched Harry squirm and shoot up from the emotional pain of the Arnold situation, Marion, terrified of what this says about her and what it means to their relationship, wears the camera down the hallway and into the elevator. In the elevator she briefly wears the camera on her back, showing the doors closing in front of her, and showing us how small she feels.
  4. When Sara takes a personal-best four pills at once, and the fridge comes alive, bolting at her, Sara is wearing the camera, enhancing our sense of Sara's surreal experience of terror.

Twice Aronofsky uses an overhead, rotating camera, pointed straight down to connote romance, that the two lovers have enveloped each other. It also marks the last time the two involved in the scene are shown in love.
Marion and Harry high, together
  1. The rotating, "ceiling fan" camera is first used when showing Ty and Alice nude in bed, caressing. We never see Alice again.
  2. The last scene before Harry and Marion's first argument, we see their heads ear-to-ear, bodies opposed 180 degrees. They are high, but muster love. 
Introducing Marion Silver
Aronofsky's use of muted colors almost makes Requiem his second black-and-white film. His rare use of vibrant color often depicts a character's hope or dream. Marion is introduced to us wearing Yale blue, looking to the sky, shot against an Irish-green lawn. In cinema, looking up to a blue sky often represents hope for one's dreams. Not much later, muddling about a muted green and taupe apartment, Sara Goldfarb pulls out a bold red dress, signifying her television dream. Last, during Ty's daydream of his child self, running to his mother's arms, his mother is wearing a vibrant white-and-blue muumuu. She is his literal dream.


Sara, lost, with the world at high speed.
Sara an Ty share a leitmotif that shows them at low, helpless, confused times. When thrown in jail then prison, Ty's face is pressed between bars. His eyes wander, considering his place, as his cell-mates mull behind at a great, time-elapsed speed. Similarly, having popped her last ineffective pills, Sara stumbles the streets, grasping as pedestrians pass her at the same high speeds as Ty's cell-mates. 


Sara, after Electroconvulsive Therapy
The film ends with all four characters curling into the fetal position, one after the other, each alone.  Harry curls after he wakes to realize his arm's fate. Marion, back from her humiliating escapade, withdraws a sizable bag of heroin from her pants, then curls, pressing the bag to her chest with both hands, where Harry once was. Ty, in prison, missing his mother, curls up, and we see the aforementioned split screen with his mother of years ago. Sara, in the hospital, hair lopped off, and exhausted from ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy), curls up as well.  Each wants to be safe.


Harry and Marion, suddenly distant
Twice character spacing is used to connote distance in a relationship.  First, Harry's second scene with his mother shows a personal, uncomfortable distance between them, regardless of their hug. Later, after Marion has had sex with Arnold, she returns.  They sit on opposite sides of the couch.  Their bond has broken.




Ty and Harry playing Keep Away with a cop's gun
Aronofsky uses "If-only-I-could" fantasy scenes, much like we saw the previous year in Doug Liman's Go (1999) and would see in Stephen FrearsHigh Fidelity (2000). We see it twice, first when Harry steals the cop's gun and, with Ty, plays Keep Away. Did Aronofsky or Selby know that the game is sometimes called Piggy in the Middle? We next see this technique used in Marion's second dinner with Arnold, wishing she could stab a fork through his hand.

Daydream with Marion
Requiem also features pleasant daydreams. Harry dreams of running to Marion at the end of Coney Island's pier. Ty daydreams of childhood times with his mother.

Requiem displays hallucinations beyond camera effects, and they all belong to Sara and her food battles.  She sees through the fridge's door so as to view the food inside. After that, she attempts to sleep, only to imagine cupcakes and bagels flying at her.  Later the fridge lurches at her, demanding attention. It later roars as it turns into a giant mouth. Last, of course, the entire apartment merges with the TV show.  Addiction to wanting to be on TV, weight loss, and speed conspire to make Sara's life distressed as never before.


Marion, all better after shooting up
The theme that speaks to the relief heroin provides is shared by Marion and then Harry. Marion's experience is mentioned above, in the sequence that fades-to-white: Marion is forlorn, injects heroin, then feels euphoric.  Later, after Harry and and his mom have had their difficult second scene, Harry leaves in a cab, shaken and upset. He injects heroin in the cab, and we see him feeling that all is better.

Last among the leitmotifs is Clint Mansell's Kronos Quartet-assisted score. The first scene between Sara and Harry has sounds of an orchestra warming and tuning for a performance--we are about to experience a requiem. Aronofsky returns several times to Mansell's marching-to-the-underworld, strings-heavy theme that follows the orchestral warm-up. It is vital to the film's feel of anxious, imminent, unavoidable doom. That theme, after being introduced early, does not enter again until Sara and the gaggle mail the TV application--a seminal moment in her downfall. After much time away from it, the theme is thrust into Ty's running-from-the-limo scene. It is next heard during the aforementioned sequence of Marion returning from Arnold, Sara applying lipstick, and Ty missing his mother. It last is heard starting with Ty's return to the workhouse locker room, carrying through the end of the film and its credits.




Connection Sara and Harry


Though they live blocks apart, Harry and his mother Sara share only three scenes, and keeping them connected throughout the film is necessary for us to understand why both are in the picture.  For instance, so much in-film time elapses between Harry's visits--an entire summer--that we are surprised when Harry does not know about his mother's forthcoming TV appearance.  

Of course, scenes often alternate from Sara's scenes to Harry's scenes, and increase in frequency as the end approaches, but other techniques are used.  Not long after Harry decides to buy his mother a new TV, Harry and Marion's heroin shoot-up montage morphs into a montage of Sara's pill-popping. Later, the score, whether the strings theme or the rave-like theme, plays without break over several sequences of scenes. One example begins with Marion's return from Arnold's, to Sara's bad-lipstick application, then to Ty, clutching a picture frame, missing his mother. All three editing techniques serve to keep Sara and Harry connected.

Harry and Sara's final scene is the film's last.  Harry is able to rejoin his mother, if only in her TV dream--"I love you too, ma." This is her fetal-curled fantasy. The show was only ever in her head, and only she would dream of announcing Harry as about to be married, something she pushed in their second scene. She knows not of Harry's spiral. Of course, given that the reconciliation happens within the TV show, we question ECT's effectiveness. Sara somehow finds a bit of hope to grasp, but to what will she grasp when she learns Harry's fate?


Since Requiem for a Dream...

With a Hollywood-scale budget, Requiem is Aronofsky's first venture beyond low-budget films. While casting Academy Award winner Burstyn, rising stars Connelly and Leto, and comedic actor Wayans in his first dramatic part, Aronofsky has confronted the challenge of higher expectations. Requiem's impact on its actors has been substantial. Burstyn received her sixth Academy Award nomination for her difficult exploration as Sara Goldfarb, while Connelly used her success in Requiem to ascend to an Academy-Award winning role in A Beautiful Mind (2001) and is a consistent contender for the cinema's best female roles. Wayans has squandered his Black Reel-nominated performance  on a career of terrible comedies. And Leto has averaged one film per year since, choosing to concentrate on his band 30 Seconds to Mars and its three post-Requiem albums. Aronofsky has since made three more films, including Black Swan (2010), which many critics predict will earn a Best Picture Oscar nomination.
  
Each time one watches Requiem for a Dream, one sees something new and ingenious. Introduce it to your friends, and don't let any of them, or yourself, get away with saying of it the clichéd "it's depressing." There is too much cinematic mastery to behold for viewers to settle on such labels. 

Requiem for a Dream trailer

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Pi (1998)

by Darren Aronofsky 


An Analysis

Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) in his apartment
Brilliant number theoretician Max Cohen (Sean Gullette), who counts a mathematics mentor, the hot young woman next door, and a little girl upstairs as his only regular acquaintances, self-medicates his way toward the siren's song of numerology, as two seemingly different forces cajole then coerce for his rare abilities.  Darren Aronofsky's debut, Pi, scintillates with cinematic talent and a 128-bit-encrypted narrative.

Golden Spiral
The math and science history habitué will nerdgasm as Pi shows and tells of Möbius strips, Fibonacci numbers, golden spirals & rectangles, Archimedes, da Vinci, EuclidPythagoras, and more. Those unfamiliar will do well to seek counsel from Wikipedia, Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (1973), and Carl Sagan's Cosmos (1980). Lacking such knowledge, though detracting from one's enjoyment, will not hinder the viewer's understanding of the film.



<<<  SPOILERS BELOW  >>>

Please see the film before reading further

Fried by a literal computer bug--an ant--Max's supercharged P.C. spits out and prints a series of digits upon its death, a series Max believes is the first numbers of a 216-digit code. This series, and the quest for its completion, begins Max's descent.

Marcy lecturing Max
Pressured by unseen caller "Marcy Dawson from Lancet-Percy, a predictive strategies firm," to schedule a meeting, Max, a polite hermit, first hangs up, and only later takes to yelling that she leave him alone. Marcy and her henchmen, each dressed for Wall Street domination, corner Max, arranging to give him a military-secret integrated computer chip that, once installed, ranks Max's computer among the world's most powerful.  Lancet-Percy, in exchange, wants Max's numerical key to predict and exploit the stock market. 

Max (left) with Lenny
Max, a secular Jew, is soon befriended by Lenny Meyer (Ben Shenkman), a Hassidic Jew practicing Kabbalah among men who see the Torah as a mathematical puzzle--a sort of Old Testament version of the unfortunate 1997 best-seller The Bible Code. Aronofsky smartly waits until late in the film to allow us to notice that once Max leaves his apartment, Lenny always happens to be not far away, appearing at just the right time...  Lenny's sect wants Max's code to unlock the true 216-character name of their god, and do who-knows-what with the power that accompanies it.


A Messianic Max
We may be accustomed to interpreting financial firms and religious orders as antipodal organizations, but a closer look reveals a common fanatical desire for power, one via wealth, the other via divine decree. Max feels the pressure from both, but Max develops a messianic complex--he is the chosen one.

Pi's rave-like soundtrack, predating Doug Liman's Go (1999) and Greg Harrison's Groove (2000), and featuring Massive Attack's "Angel," emphasizes frantic, hypnotic tension in Max's relationship with worlds external and internal.

Opening shot, Pi.
Aronofsky's visual choices impress upon the audience Max's state of mind at least as often as Gullette's formidable countenance and speech.  From the opening shot, the only time we know Max to sleep, we understand a visual treat awaits. We can postulate different interpretations of Aronofsky's choice of a grainy, high-contrast imagery.  Perhaps he wants to make us feel we are watching via cheap security camera, helpless but to watch and worry. Perhaps he believes the lack of definition itself instills unease, that a crisper image would have made us feel safer. Does the graininess place Max in the past, present, or future, or in another world that resembles all three?


The oft-copied coffee cup from Godard's 2 or 3 Things...
Aronofsky's re-creates some of Godard's famous coffee close-ups in  2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, using cream to illustrate nature's spirals. In Godard's lengthy narration over the coffee cup scene, he whispers "when the lightning progress of science makes future centuries hauntingly present, when distant galaxies are at my doorstep..." Perhaps this was on Aronofsky's mind when he had Max's genius blow Lenny's mind, "I've never seen that before."

While vacant subway stations always, but not exclusively, indicate Max's nightmares, dream/hallucination sequences are not easily demarcated from actual in-film events--or is all of this so implausible (or unnecessary to the story's greater point) that there exists no in-the-film difference between the real and the imagined?  


John Randolph wearing the camera in Seconds
Aronfsky's camera helps us feel Max's emotion journey. Aronofsky again steals from the best. Early, a paranoid Gullette is wearing a harness-mounted camera that focuses back on his character, Max, similar to the opening of Seconds (1966), John Frankenheimer's paranoia-filled masterpiece. Chase scenes involving hand-held, jerky cinematography, sometimes coupled with fish-eye lenses, conspire to show Max's stress-infused frenzies.


Robert Duvall as THX 1138
Max's pill-popping, subcutaneous injection scenes look and sound like Joe Gideon's in All That Jazz (1979). Three times Max narrates the same story about himself at age six--he stared at the sun so long, it blinded him for hours. Three times in the film, each after a torrent of emotion overwhelms Max, the screen fades to a blinding white. The third fade-to-white shows a distant a shaven-headed Max suspended in white, reminiscent of George Lucas's debut, THX 1138 (1971). Aronofsky may want us to draw the parallel between Max's end to pill-popping and (Robert Duvall's character) THX 1138's avoidance of state-imposed medications, because both succeed in reclaiming their lives. The fades-to-white represent Max's new way of staring at the sun--Max stares at numerology so long, and it has blinded him.  


After literally or metaphorically lobotomizing himself, Max finds peace and becomes friends with little girl Jenna again--he has no need to be the math prodigy anymore. His life's balance has returned, and we are left with hope for Max's new life, possibly with the hot woman next door.  


Pi's teaser!



Saturday, January 1, 2011

Darren Aronofsky

Darren Aronofsky
Before reviewing Black SwanCelebrating Cinema  will review director Darren Aronofsky's entire body of work, one film at a time--the first Celebrating Cinema comprehensive review of a director's feature film catalogue! 
Stay Tuned!