The importance of David Fincher

I was on pins and needles since I learned about Fincher's latest work, "The Social Network." For one I am a devoted fan of the man and second I was challenged by the fact that after a film that corresponded more to Classic Hollywood taste, he would follow again the path of the underdog who undermines any conventional ideas on cinema, society and life. And what's more, the film is based on the the life of the creator of facebook. So the first thought was, what will this director who deals with introvert personal experiences do with this topic? Well, with some help by the great Aaron Sorkin, he created a masterpiece that redeems him from the mediocre Benjamin Button (let us forget that he ever made what is merely a good suspense film, "Panic Room").


Let us concentrate on "Seven" "The Social Network" "Fight Club" "Zodiac" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." In these films, probably his best to now, there is I would argue a certain pattern of themes and expressive motifs. And I shall display how I believe that Fincher has marked with his unique signature the end of the 90s but as well the end of this decade.

The common thread between these films is the director's focus on his human subject, the protagonist who delivers a subjective outlook onto the world that is also the director's view of the world, moreover of a certain theme or idea. "Seven," the story of a serial killer investigation, is even more the story of one man's struggle, Detective Sommerset, to come to terms with this cruel world that seems even more like Dante's Purgatory. In the end this outlook is delivered simply, through literature, without any great dramatic overtone, but with the intensity of a quiet realization: "Hemingway said once that the world is a beautiful place and worth fighting for. I'll agree with the second." Here is then the first great film of a director who delivers his own outlook of the world, a sublime image of a dying century.




Similarly, In Zodiac we follow three men who drive themselves to the extreme through their obsession with the Zodiac killings in the seventies. Fincher demonstrates in this masterpiece another police investigation, which is the director's cause for delivering more sublime themes which are built gradually and through the personal experience of each character. The film pertains a bizarre pace, as primarily it is an account of true events, as in most films of the genre.


Gradually the narrative becomes even more loose, and the direction and general rhythm of Zodiac becomes even more hypnotizing, as we enter the psyche and obsession of Robert Graysmith. He becomes the penultimate cinematic hero of one man who seeks redemption and truth through an obsessive search for the real Zodiac. The film adopts the view point of a man who sees almost in every corner danger, suspects, conspiracies and that one truth which is so close yet so far. Not at all uncommon themes for a film that deals with the seventies, an era which Sydney Pollack and Alan J. Pakula scrutinized for its dark political conspiracies and secret wars. As in Pakula's 1974 "the parallax view"
one man seeks the truth where he sees it and is driven to a dead end through an obsessive search for this. In "Zodiac" we go deeper and deeper into one man's experience of this dead end, of this exploration of the darkest side of man but also of the darkness that dwelt in post-Vietnam and Watergate America.

In the aforementioned films I have described how personal view-points on certain themes are delivered to the screen. They are essentially different in meaning and context. Nevertheless, they are built on one common notion: People driven to extreme points. In "Seven",detective Mills is driven by the ugliness of the world to the sin of wrath and Detective Sommerset becomes the witness of this phenomena and suffers quietly. In "Zodiac" Robert Graysmith loses everything and in the end is left with a terrible longing for a resolution, although he has already become addicted to the chase and the madness of his quest. Paul Avery and David Toschi as well pay a heavy price for starring into the abyss as Nietzsche wrote. It is this longing and deep desire for some kind of truth that leads to a dead end for the detectives of Zodiac.

In Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjammin Button and The Social Network, through subjective outlooks and narratives, Fincher deals with universal themes and collective encounters. In other words, the director starts from something specific and distinctive only to conclude to a general theme and conclusion. This may sound arbitrary but on the contrary it is what makes these three films stand out from the other.

In "The Curious Case of Benjammin Button" one man's bizarre and extreme condition becomes in the hands of Fincher the ground on which one central theme is built. The lust for life. It is the first half of the film that focuses on the demonstration of this theme than on a narrative, a clear cut conventional story, which sadly is the case for the rest of the film (which is due to the scriptwriter Eric Roth because of whom many have labeled the film Benjammin Gump). For some inexplicable reason that no science or religion can perceive, Benjamin Button is born an old man that gradually becomes younger and eventually gives into mortality. Before the film dives head-on into all the schematic and conventional metaphors (the inevitability of death, what is life, what is death, a huge clock that ticks away) and the awkward melodrama that is so unworthy of David Fincher, we follow a man and his actions which deliver a sublime theme, through the textures of life itself and not some two sided didactic metaphor.

During his stay in the house, we identify with Benjamin's gaze. As he becomes younger, all the aging people who are dying, cling onto him for this bizarre quality that he pertains. A demented old man repeatedly tells him the story of how many times he got struck by lightning, and yet survived.
Benjamin leaves to begin his romantic quest, to experience life and all that comes with it. And of course, when the amazing Tilda Swinton enters the equation, how could there not be a moment of greatness?

Tilda plays a rich woman who travels the world with her husband and is disappointed from her vacant and boring life. When she meets Benjamin she has her first encounter with this mystery that surrounds his youthful transformation. Without any form of pretext or any dramatic announcement, we see how Swinton clings onto this mystery of life and youth, as though Benjamin's state is contagious. This is the lust for life, that romantic concept that has been passed on from Lord Byron, John Keats, to the beatniks, Hemingway and Jack Kerouac who expressed their own desire for life and the open road through many encounters and journeys, like those of Benjamin.

Swinton's heroin is one more encounter in Benjamin's journey but it has affected her profoundly. This again is not announced to us in a (melo)dramatic manner, but through her own actions that point to this sublime theme. She decides to swim through the Atlantic ocean and to regain her passion in life. What is it that suddenly motivated her to change her life? We have to go back to this encounter and see how a mystical spiritual process began in her soul to drive her. That is the lust for life, which can't be felt or given form but which becomes a strong driving force. That is the theme of the film, a universal theme which occurs from a specific context only to acquire this universal personality that can cross over the borders of a Hollywood narrative. If only the film were cut at this point.

Up to now, in his career, it seems that David Fincher has yet to find his identity, his role as an auteur. It is often said that he makes a good movie after a bad movie, i.e Panic Room and Fight Club, Zodiac and Benjammin Button and now the social network. However, As I mentioned, there is a trend in his films to depicting human subjects at extreme points and their experience of this extremity. If however I may mark two films that show a certain path that could be this man's directorial zenith and which also are a mirror of their time, those are Fight Club and The Social Network. Let us not forget that he initiated with Zodiac the use of the digital Thomson Viper Filmstream camera which became in his hands a unique tool and a means to an end but not yet his ultimate signature. But let us see how exactly these two important films are touchstones of their time.

Fight Club is again the story of one individual who reaches a certain limit and the account of this experience. Tyler is a man lost in himself, marginalized by a Machiavellian society. He seeks his place in the harsh modern world, of capitalists and modern day opportunists. Ultimately this is a film that delivers one man's encounter with the modern western world and its offspring, the corporations and the economical strongholds which breed slavery and alienation. Although the film encompasses many other characters and their happenings, the film's bizarre narrative focuses on Tyler and his struggle to fit in, to realize why he is on this earth and how to cope with this ugly world, much like detective Sommerset. The film surprisingly is not didactic, in other words doesn't seek to distinguish for us what is right and wrong, since Tyler denounces the revolution, this utopia that a whole generation these days proclaims amongst images of Britney Spears and the ghost of Karl Marx.

Finally this individual's quest comes to an end and with that the destruction of any walls and boundaries. With the oneiric and prophetic scene of economic pilars exploding, Tyler comes to terms with his life thanks to the encounter with a human, Marla. Yes, it is all for love. That is the only engine of survival as Leonard Cohen once said when predicting the future. However, this time the director has left an even more sublime theme to stir at the bottom of Fight Club's immense cache of ideas. As we saw years later in Benjamin Button one man's story and clash with a certain situation or even with the whole world becomes the basis for a collective experience. In Fight Club there is the collective experience of capitalism, unemployment, anarchy, revolt, mayhem and the desire of a whole generation of 30 year old men to change the world which has become devoid of any promise. We were sold the myth that we would become rock stars, famous and rich and now we are pissed off. Sheep sent to the slaughter. This collective experience is one of the scars that we brought with us in the 21st century and which still hurts us. This film waved goodbye to the 90s with the worst prospects for the 00s.





And now, when one decade is almost over, The Social Network, like a sequel to Fight Club, presents to us the collective experience of man's absolute loss of identity, immersed 100% in the modern world.
This is the true story of Mark Zuckerberg, a typical representative of his generation, a byproduct of lifestyle obsessions. Primarily this is an individual's account of his escalation to the top of the food chain, to a position of great power and loneliness. It is a classic tale that has been told by Ancient Greek play writers and artists like Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick in Citizen Kane and Barry Lyndon respectively.
One man's experience of deep envy, insecurity, pettiness and lust for revenge become the canvas on which Fincher, more apparently than ever, displays an array of characters and their happenings. 21st century western society has abandoned any notion of change or even revolution and has surrendered to the ideals which Tyler was fighting. Here is then the collective experience of total alienation and the loss of identity. This is such for all the individuals of The Social Network.

The most beautifully portrayed personality is that of Sean Parker, who comes across as the great mind who created Napster, who is immensely popular and hype. On the contrary he is a deeply insecure and weak man who has adopted the persona of a stereotypically cool person because only this title offers any prestige in this spiritually dilapidated world which is maybe no longer worth fighting for or resisting. This is a generation of students who seek superficiality through lifestyle, temporary popularity and self ridicule (the brilliantly dark and mortifying scenes of the fraternity trials at Harvard who promote empty ideals and the loss of human dignity).


Interestingly, the Facebook works as a means to an end and not as a core subject. It is a material reflection of our loss of identity and alienation. Hence the film's final chilling sequence of Zuckerberg waiting for a friend request acceptance from his ex girlfriend who warned him not to lose his integrity and friends for superficial fame and money.

Fincher has offered us striking testaments of two centuries and of our struggle to accept this changing and challenging world which we have created in our image. It is good to know that cinema will always offer a mirror of life to make us wonder and dream.

On Avatar part 2

I have been wondering furthermore about "Avatar's" supposed new technological leaps and what it precipitates for the future of cinema. These topics concern mainly the concept of the large screen as an attraction of the new age and technology reflecting the evolution of cinema.

Firstly, I have been hearing and reading a lot on how things will change in concern to internet downloading. It is rather obvious that you can't upload a 3D edition of "Avatar" on the internet. Again the notion of the screen-mediator is a visceral one since only the technology applied by the director himself can permit a proper screening and viewing of the film. In this sense, James Cameron redefines the theme of the auteur; he is a director who, besides the content and form of his film, has the rights of his film not on a bureaucratic level, but clearly on the artistic one. This is innovative and undoubtedly exciting.

Therefore, unless audiences choose to download an illegal 2D "screener" from the internet, they will have to go to the cinema inevitably."Avatar" is shown in 2D at small scale cinemas (usually with 2-3 rooms or even 1) and at huge multiplex and cine-plex centers which contain numerous attractions. These "disneylands" of cinema are where most often one can see 3D films in high definition etc. These theme parks (I am not aware of the exact term of the facilities),are host to even 20 screening rooms for all the recent 3D and 2D blockbusters, pizza hut restaurants, pubs, bowling alleys, accessorize shops, huge candy shops and awesome hot-dog stands with super size sausages.

I don't believe that art-house cinemas will perish. There has been and will be a big group of patrons and fans of the arts to support smaller cinemas for screenings of Orson Welles, Fellini and Tarkovsky. The issue at hand is that the multiplexes are antagonistic and don't care about the rules of the game. Thus, audiences, especially younger members, will choose to see big budget films like "Avatar" by giving a large amount of money only for the ticket of the film (this is another issue, the high prices of tickets that keep soaring higher and higher. Gradually, smaller art house cinemas will loose their appeal and might even become "cult." Moreover, "Avatar" has been dominating torrent sites in the internet at least for the last month. Evidently a number of people don't mind seeing the film in poor quality on their computer. It is merely to kill their curiosity concerning the hype of "Avatar."

The critics have been giving away their five stars to "Avatar" like crazy, mainly on the pretext of the film's technological advances. However, in the name of cinematic expression and art one film managed to make an even greater leap than "Avatar" did. Russian director Alexander Sokurov's 90 minute epic "Russian Ark" (2002). The film in a nutshell is about Russian history, from the era of Katherine the Great to the Communist Revolution in 1917. Sokurov filmed his complex narrative in a single "take" (one continuous shot), in the renound Hermitage museum in Moscow. Sokurov used 2.000 actors, thousands of costumes, props and pieces of scenery. "Russian Ark" was recorded in uncompressed high definition video using a Sony HDW-F900. The information was not recorded compressed to tape as usual, but uncompressed onto a hard disk which could hold 100 minutes. The shot was attempted four times and before Sokurov decided to stop, they tried one last time and it all came through.

Imagine a film about history and the passing of time and the alternating spaces that are included, all filmed in one single shot. Moving continuously through time and space, with a smooth pace and a flow that evokes the constant passing of time. Oh, and lets not forget that it was filmed in high definition etc.


Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Ark

Avatar and the sublime art of hypnotizing simulation

SPOILER ALERT
I mention in the description of this blog that I don't intend to look at popular box office films, but I feel compelled to write about James Cameron's new endeavor, not because I am a fan of Cameron or of "Avatar," but because the film illustrates all my fears concerning the end of cinematic art. Therefore, I violated my own vow of chastity and gave my 6.90 pounds to the multiplex which was showing Avatar (and evidently to Cameron's overflowing with cash pocket).So here goes.

First let me mention the positive aspects of the film, which it justifiably deserves. Avatar is a breath taking adventure of epic proportions. A film evidently about the concept of immersion (to which I will return later)that contains spectacular action scenes of bangs and booms and suspense. Moreover it contains kind messages about peace, respect, anti-racism and ecology. Of course lets not forget the new leap in technology that this high definition 3D-God knows what else-film is making. A step for cinema, a leap for the industry. Now lets get to the core of what goes on in Avatar.
Cinema, since the first Lumiere film, has been by and large a spectacle appealing to the senses, made to thrill and entertain audiences. When French audiences in the turn of the nineteenth century saw the Lumiere's short "L'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de la Ciotat", they were fleeing the cinema room because they actually believed that a train will run over them. Nowadays, it seems that the attempts of early movie makers to evoke the third dimension in their films texture has been perfected. But is it actually necessary and evidently, so spectacular as has been prophecised by its messiahs, like James Cameron? Speaking from personal experience, I find 3D cinema to be interesting in its uncanny reflexive nature which evokes the tactile quality of the screen and the image. But in the end it made me dizzy, I hardly ever jumped from my seat feeling that a train will run over me and what's more its quite pointless to show a man sitting eating a meal in three dimensions. At least one could argue that it works better for cartoons.
In the case of "Avatar," the technology is one that suggests an intense experience of simulation (something that the title itself implies). I don't want to get into details, but Cameron filmed Avatar solely in front of a "green screen", using a high definition camera which filtered the images through a virtual camera. The actors portraying the indigenous tribe of the Na'vi were wearing motion capture sensors like those used for the Golum in "The Lord of the Rings" (2001). As one can understand,the directors eye (and evidently his vision)is highly mediated and devoid of subjectivity, an important concept for delivering a personal cinematic vision. So I would argue then that the audience experiences through its immersion in the world of Pandora a simmulation of cinema, a false experience where by no matter how close the image is to you, you still can't actually "feel" it. And lastly, our peripheral vision allows us to see around our 3D glasses, the heads of other spectators and their surroundings, which are not in 3D. Personally i would take every 10 minutes or so the glasses off to rub my eyes. In a time where every image, moving or still, is mediated through secondary cameras, screens etc., "Avatar" stresses the issue of an image that has no clear and specific source.

So, after all it seems that the 3D package is exactly that. The plate on which the product is served. In "Avatar" what matters is the plate. It has to be big, flashy, full of colors and mind-boggling in its grandiosity. Indeed, one could argue that the third high definition virtual dimension serves a certain purpose in the scenes of Pandora. One should feel absolutely immersed in this ideal and hippie-LSD infused planet, in order to experience the experience itself. But as I mentioned earlier, even scenes of people sitting and eating are filmed in high definition 3D... oh God I can't remember what.
In addition, the film's title, the only probably sophisticated element of "Avatar", implies exactly the experience of the audience. The avatar is the foreign body of a native which carries the conscious being of a marine soldier. The actors of the film are a spirit in a foreign inhabitant, the body of the 3D green screen Na'vi. Nothing is authentic in this film; a representation of a representation. Like a Picasso painting on a postcard which shows in the back a smaller repetition of the image.

"Avatar's" story is quite simple and square. Good guys versus bad guys. The good guys are the kind and nature loving indigenous Na'vi. They are blue gigantic figures that resemble elves, African Bushmen and mainly Native Americans, especially Mohawks. The bad guys are American troops who have invaded the planet in order to excavate the land of Pandora for a fossil fuel which is extremely expensive to buy on Earth and is also environmentally friendly (a hint to nuclear energy?). The main bad guy is a stereotype of a general. Ex Vietnam-gritty veteran, with scars on his face with a square jaw who spatters lines like "kill these savages" "you want to be like the blue monkeys?". He is a very schematic and unlayered character. Another cliche in a vast collection of predictable cliches that Cameron has created in his films. The general has no respect for "otherness" and any other race than his own. Of course, Cameron is politically correct and doesn't mention the USA. but just the Earth, home. In scenes where he orders attacks to Pandora, he uses a number of names and soldiers laugh and grab their weapons, ready to kill blue elves. Such scenes are a matrix by now for the creation of simplistic notions of good and bad, basically black and white perceptions which have certain easy and familiar qualities (facial expressions, stupid lines etc.). The good guys on the other hand are the exact opposite. I don't have to explain really. Think of two other films which are similar to "Avatar" in their concept. "Dances with Wolves" (1990), "The Mission" (1986) and "Lawrence of Arabia"(1962). All more or less concern the conquest of the "other" be that here for example a foreign race, an indigenous tribe and their land. But apart from this topic, "Avatar" is nothing like the aforementioned.

The character of Jake Sully infiltrates as an avatar Na'vi the tribe and becomes one of them. Of course he falls in love with the local hottie, who very much like any female warrior figure, has a pair of perfectly shaped breasts, a rear end that is indulging even for Homo "Sapiens", long braided hair and has an accent reminiscent of African women. This is sexist and racist. Very simply basically. To apply such characteristics to a figure almost like an Ursula Andres African Bushwoman is patronizing and simplistic, almost childish. There are again the stereotypes that Africans, or indigenous Amazon tribes, live in the forests, ride large beasts and worship a deity of nature by performing a yoga-like ritual, holding hands and chanting. These are western stereotypes on primitiveness and tribal ways of life.
The clash of good and evil takes place mainly on an allegorical level. The bad guys are the Americans invading the peaceful Muslims of Iraq. They come in peace, maybe even to save them, but their main goal is to take the petrol from the land at any cost. The land of Pandora is the once beautiful planet Earth, covered in virgin green forests. This land is being attacked, burned and bombarded. A na'vi mentions at one point "you have destroyed your land". Well, indeed, these are "messages" concerning the salvation of the Earth and the animosity of war.One feels so immersed in "Avatar" that he/she might even feel depressed when returning to our true land which is an industrial wasteland.

However, is cinema an art or a means for creating messages and schematic binary ideas? The second is basically called propaganda and in a film that is absolutely politically correct (let us all remember Van Sant's "Milk")the director is merely a step away from creating grandiose propaganda. For the messages of the film are clearly patronizing. They don't allow the spectator to experience a sensation concerning war and the destruction of the earth (recall "Apocalypse Now" or "Come and See" and Tarkovsky's "Ivan's Childhood"). The messages are ready and processed, an offering for quick consumption. Such binary and schematic associations are at the core of the sublime nature of the film, which is horrifically clouded by the dominating spectacle of 3D action scenes, to which Cameron passes every time quickly after each ridiculous and childish dialogue. It is as if the audience have to be fed quickly, and stuffed with video-clips of the hero learning to become a Na'vi, always with a garnish of swift flying and bashing action. Lets not forget also that the notion of creating messages is forceful and disengaging from the opportunity of debate or even posterior thought. You can recall "Requiem for a Dream"(2000) where a virtuoso director and editor said: "Don't take drugs, otherwise your dreams and aspirations will be destroyed." Of course, if you have arranged to take with you a heaping portion of candy and ultra large hot-dogs from the bar,then maybe you wont feel anything. After all, how can we at all think when we are experiencing a simulation of a simulation of a Simulation of reality? There isn't any strict reference to an artistic source or vision.

"Avatar" is the ultimate film of our schizophrenic days. Every year another film will make its breakthrough. It will have the most amazing special CGI effects.One first example is "Star Wars" (1977) which now is in the pantheon of geek cult-ness a film which can be celebrated at least for its innocence in a period of American history where innocence was much more politically incorrect than activism. Then came the "Matrix" (1999), "Star Wars episodes" (1999), Lord of the Rings trilogy etc. Each film claiming to be the most impressive and with innovative effects, always in favor of the spectacle and not the sublime. Just as "Avatar," these films are advertised in any form of franchise. Corn Flakes, sunglasses, television, potato chips, t-shirts, you name it. Cinema, more than ever has become a capitalist consumption product, where by the the form of the screen doesn't matter, the art is lost to the breath taking appeal to the senses and the producers get richer and richer.

Maybe "Avatar" and 3D cinema are a great revolution that we should embrace. After all many directors are already taking on the lead given by Cameron. Yet this revolution has nothing in common with that of sound in 1928. Thanks to sound the art expanded and became a new category, that of the seventh art form.If the future of cinema is 3D then will we be seeing 3D editions of Chaplin or of Fellini? I hope not.

Image source: www.freakingnews.com