Sex and the City

Carrie and the gang are back again, this time in the cinema! When I heard the news for the first time, I was jubilated. Do I need to tell you I've been a die-hard fan of Sex and the City since it came out in its TV series avatar like a decade ago? At that time it provoked a lot of debate and criticism, as the show was one of the first which dealt with the subject of sexuality quite frankly. It was fun watching these four women in their early thirties talking about good and bad sex.

Ten years later, SATC made it into a bigger screen and for some reason I just don't think they have that fizz anymore. I mean, it's still a fine movie with great dialogue, but the audience who have seen all six series would love to see some surprises. However, there're not a lot of 'great surprises' that make you ponder deep into the issues of sexuality and relationship, but somehow the film is just an extension of an average episode. I know there'll be SATC fanclubs out there that will stone me to death but I need to say it: the film doesn't go anyway and it seems that it just comes in circle. Love, breaking up, making up, and friendship. Perhaps these are all life is. Perhaps I'm expecting too much.

Perhaps, when I come to seriously think about it, is it possible that all the six episodes have pretty much covered everything? Perhaps making this film is not a good decision, as the ending of these series is already perfect? That's why the ending of the film exactly corresponds with that of the last series, with Big and Carrie finally made it in a fairy-tale style. Would've it been better if they, let's say, become more adventurous, like making Carrie face an early menopause or having Samantha really die of cancer? These twists would be realistic in their own right and would provide the director and his whole team a lot of ground to explore. But perhaps, true to its own style, SATC may want to remain what it is, a contemporary fairy tale with a glaze of sex and fashion.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull

How many people out there would (care to) know that the real name of Indiana Jones is actually Dr Henry Walton Jones, Jr? I just knew about it when I was collecting some information before writing this entry. I saw the latest of the Indiana Jones series, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull, a while ago, but due to an enormous amount of paperwork and other stuff that I wouldn't care to mention I didn't have time to write anything about it until today.

I'm sure it's a film that people have been waiting for and along with this wait have gathered a significant amount of expectation. Director Steven Spielberg did a great job in providing us with a fun-filled flick but I regret to say that it's just that. If you don't expect too much, I'm sure you'll come out of the cinema feeling you've had a great time. But if you expect something like a parody or a political revision of the film's ideology, you'll be sadly disappointed. Spielberg is great in making an irony-free epic film which aims for a tear-jerking or jingoistic effect. But when it comes to a rather I'd say 'ironical' film, I have yet to see his masterpiece. I guess that's because Spielberg belonged to an earlier era when people are less cynical and more (I'm at a loss for a word here) ... 'faithful'.

For the modern crowd with no faith but a hell lot of cynicism, his film fails to reach their expectation. Sad to say, I'm one of this crowd and I expect Spielberg to at least question what's going on without saying in the film. The film is still very patriotic and unashamedly makes manifest the discrimination against the Eastern bloc, epitomised in Cate Blanchett's odd character and parodied accent. I know the director would have justified that it was the Zeitgeist at the time when the Eastern bloc was the arch enemy. But we're now in the twentieth-first century and have come a long way from that! The thing is ... you can still make a good retro film but you don't need to sport the outdated ideology. To play fair, Spielberg could have at least shown how Indiana Jones himself was equally an intruder into the sacred realm of the 'exoticised' natives. Yet, the whole film still glorifies the old man and death become the whole lot of the natives and people from the Eastern bloc.

I couldn't help but wonder why Spielberg has invested so much in this Indiana Jones character. Is it possible that he sees himself in this character? Is it possible that if Indiana Jones still thrives despite his old age, it also means that the director himself can likewise triumph amidst new directors who are good at doing irony? Perhaps we're touching on something very delicate here.

Pink Flamingos

I just don't know what's got into me lately. My choice of films is increasingly more transgressive. Perhaps it's a male monopause. Perhaps it's stress from work. Perhaps I overworked. Perhaps I'm bored of films that show the problems and complexity of middle-class people or those experimental films that want to appear more clever than they actually are. So yesterday I picked up John Waters' Pink Flamingos and it proved to be one of the most enjoyable films I've seen this year.

Of course I'm sure a lot of people who have heard of the film will probably think that I've gone out of my mind, choosing to watch this epitome of trash (which of of course has been banned in many countries) rather than a complex French film full of complex symbols, deep emotional subtlety, and multilayered plotlines. Somehow Pink Flamingos with its simple plot and the incredibly flat yet grotesque characterisation of Divine, Crackers, and the Marbles, turns out to be a breeze of fresh (well, quite stinking actually) air. It's purely irreverent and angry, and its prime target is (like Funny Games in my previous blog entry) the middle class. I really like the scene when Divine and her "son" go into the house of the Marbles and lick everything to put the curse on them. Of course a lot of people will certainly think this is bad taste. But it's precisely what John Waters sets out to do: to transgress what the bourgeois deems proper. If their identity project is to create a clean, proper human, Divine and her clans are simply the opposite, as they want to be 'the filthiest people in the world'. Her politics is simple: 'Kill everyone now. Condone first-degree murder. Advocate cannibalism. Eat shit.'

Of course, needless to say, this is not my personal politics. But this film is perhaps a good index of how middle-class lifestyle has entrapped people, becoming more like a norm that imprisons the public. Pink Flamingos in this case can be considered a carnivalesque play that enacts an imaginary, yet wistful scenario.

However, there's one scene that I don't like. It's the scene when Crackers and Cookie have sex and a couple of hens die in the process. Despite my liberal outlook, I personally don't condone violence, especially when it's done to people or animals who are unaware of what's going on. This is the same argument I would use in paedophilia and domestic violence, when the victims are underaged children who are not aware of what this might have damaged their mentality in the long run.

Funny Games

Are you bored of those slasher films in which annoying teenagers are victims like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer? Do you want to see 'normal' middle-class people being killed instead, not because they are loud and talk like American kids, but simply because they are just normal they should deserve to die? If you like this idea, I recommend you watch Funny Games. Directed by Michael Haneke in 1997, the film addresses the issues of bourgeois complacency and fragility -- complacency because they think that everybody should be like them, fragility because it's in fact so hard and difficult to uphold that facade of bourgeois perfection without realising that it's all just a game. Haneke did a perfect job in turning the whole thing around and surely making viewers feel ill at ease about their own bourgeois conditions.


The premise is simple: one family goes to their second home during a holiday and lets two guests in their house out of pure bourgeois courtesy. They are, however, unaware that these guests will invade their territories and play a series of violent games that lead to a tragedy. The invasion of these guests is significant: they are not robbers wanting to steal their money, but are purely there to take revenge on this family, simply because they are perfectly middle-class and seem to fit in so well with social rules. In fact, they are what the ideal family should be like: two loving parents, one pleasant boy, and a lovely dog. They seem to be well-off enough to have a second home and arrange to play golf with their neighbours. It's this complacent condition that is perhaps oppressive, especially as it sets a rule for other people who are 'different' to follow suit. Perhaps it's this reason why they should die ...


What is interesting about this film is that Haneke seems to be reticent in giving details of this family (who are they, what work does the father do, etc.) and the two guests. We don't know where they're from and what they say in the film should be taken with a pinch of salt. I guess these two guests function somehow like 'avenging angels' in the modern era who control our fate and serve as perpetrators of poetic justice. But what's chilling about all this violence is that the middle-class family deserves to be punished simply because they exist. The moral of this story is perhaps this: don't be too perfect because you just make people around you jealous and uncomfortable (as you set the rule where other people need to follow). Poetic justice has changed: it's not being good or evil in the traditional sense that counts, but being too perfect and becoming a stepford family are perhaps the evils of the twenty-first century.

The film uses surreal techniques at times (such as the actual rewinding to undo an event and the asides by one of the guests) to let us know that it's highly ironical and self-reflexive and this elevates the status of the two guests as 'God' or 'the director'. In this way, Funny Games is aware of its own status as a film and the audience is exposed as a group of conniving participant-cum-voyeurs, with whom one of the two guests occasionally talk. Of course it can't be denied that most of the viewers are quite likely to be middle-class and this film will function like a slap in the cheek of the audience themselves. Perhaps, when I come to think about it thoroughly, the whole film is one of Haneke's own funny games.

Madeinusa

Madeinusa is an interesting film from the Latin American continent that touches on native Peruvian Indians. When I say 'interesting' I mean that it chooses to portray the natives from a different vantage point: it does not show how these people are oppressed by the State but how they as well can be corrupt and fall prey to their own desire.

Madeinusa is a name of our female protagonist who grows up in Manayaycuna, a small town that is not even on the map. However, what perhaps distinguishes this film from other films of overt political nature is its choice to portray the village not as an idyllic place, but a rather underdeveloped space where the mayor manages to have his own daughter elected the Virgin in the annual Easter procession and where Christianity has made an indelible mark at its most superficial. We are led to believe that perhaps these Indians in the Andes do not really understand the true message of Christianity but practise it as a kind of superstition. In the film we see these interesting rituals and processions, such as Jesus being blinded, symbolising his temporary death, and Madeinusa herself dressed as the Virgin.

Perhaps this is why the director Claudia Llosa is under attack from various fronts, especially those who disagree with her biased representation of the Indian natives. But this criticism should not blind you to the film's merits, especially if we try not to see these people as oppressed Indian natives but as a human. They are victims of their own desire and this victimised state is clearly put on show during the carnivalesque three-day Festival where there is no sin as Jesus is dead. We see the corrupt Mayor who tries to rape her own daughter and the daughter herself, who is clearly desirous of leaving this small oppressive town and can't help but feeling excited when there's a man from Lima who happens to get in her way.

Taking this perspective, I think the dimension that the director chooses to tackle these village people is not only racial, but sexual and social. Madeinusa is not oppressed solely because she is a native Indian, but also because she is a female and because she is a daughter. Also worth pondering is that her desire to flee the village is perhaps 'made in USA', the country which supports the ideologies of freedom and individuality. The complexity of this representation is perhaps why we should consider that the film's merit actually outweight its criticism.