The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Despite their being cultural touchstones for many a smart, nerdy chap I’ve known over the years, I’ve never gotten around to reading Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” novels, the first of which came out in 1979.   Now comes this many-years-in-the-making screen version, for which Adams, who died in 2001, was a co-screenwriter.   A friend of mine who’s read the books reckons that only about 40% of what’s on the page made it into the movie.    

One would have to be mad to try to summarize the plot.  So let’s have a run at it: after Earth is blown to smithereens to make room for an intergalactic highway, English everyman Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman, always a pleasure) finds himself careening around the galaxy with a motley crew searching for the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything.  

I’m no judge of how well filmmakers Nick Goldsmith and Garth Jennings (a.k.a “Hammer & Tongs”) have translated Adams to the screen, though I can say that they’ve brought a keen visual imagination to bear on the material.   Furthermore, if, as I’ve heard tell, so much of the humor of the books is in the narration, then the film is well-poised in that it’s got excellent voiceover narration from Stephen Fry (who played Jeeves so perfectly in Granada/PBS’ P.G. Wodehouse adaptations).  

Speaking of the great Wodehouse (one of Adams’ favorite authors though their milieus couldn’t be more different), it strikes me based on this movie that the two writers share much, including a gentle farcical tone which, though never mean-spirited, nevertheless utterly deflates all pomposity.   True brutality exits not in their universes.   Though constantly “in the soup”, their characters hang on in quiet desperation, implying that there’s no crisis that can’t be gotten through so long as we don’t succumb to the true enemy of the human spirit: humorlessness.  

I’m looking forward to catching up with Adams' books after all these years.    

- May 15, 2005

Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room

Here’s a fascinating documentary on the remarkable rise and breathtaking collapse of Enron Corp.   All proponents of deregulation and the glorious magic of the market should take a gander at this film, which shows in painful detail just what happens when capitalists are let loose and sectors of the economy that should be run in the public interest are instead run like a huge casino.  

As much as it throws light on Enron’s fraudulent business machinations, the film intentionally works on a human canvass, painting multi-dimensional portraits of the key players, chief amongst them Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and Andy Fastow.   Skilling in particular is an interesting study, the “visionary” who had the idea to transform Enron into essentially a financial institution which traded in shares of energy.   Skilling always seemed to be overcompensating for his bookish youth by creating an ultra-macho corporate culture in which the worst tendencies of human nature were exulted.   Fastow was the CFO in charge of setting up “special purpose entities” to mask Enron losses from outside scrutiny.  

Of special interest to Californians will be the long section of the film that deals with Enron’s role in California’s power crisis in the wake of that state’s energy deregulation.   That crisis was largely manufactured and exploited to the hilt by Enron.   Enron traders would call power plants and command them to shut down, thereby creating scarcity and driving energy prices up (and of course greatly imperiling the public in the process).   The film includes startling audiotapes of phone conversations between Enron traders: “Burn baby burn,” exults a trader as forest fires ravage California, shutting down a core power line (and thus raising demand, which is a good thing by definition--regardless of human cost).  

We know the sordid end: employees’ accounts were locked while executives cashed out, so that ordinary workers watched helplessly as the product of their lives’ work spiraled down the drain.   Enron stock plummeted from $90 a share at its peak to 40 cents.  

What I find most admirable about the film is that is refuses to allow us to easily point the finger.   It would be easy to sit back and feel superior to these loathsome traders, but the film says that, in a sense, we’re all the problem.   It shows clips from Stanley Milgram’s famous “obedience to authority” experiments from the early 60s, in which 65% of test subjects administered what they believed to be potentially lethal doses of electricity to another person (though not without considerable anguish), simply because they were repeatedly told to do so by an authority figure.   We’ve a capacity to do what we’re told, regardless of human cost.   In the case of Enron, that instinct was married powerfully with another unsavory aspect of human nature: greed.    

The film turns Enron’s corporate slogan, “Ask why”, on its head to become the mantra they want us to go away with.   It interviews a bespectacled trader who seems like a decent guy.   He says that even though he knew what they were doing was wrong, he didn’t ask questions –  because he simply didn’t want to know the answers.  

Most of the reasons why I remain a socialist can be found in this film.   Absolutely essential viewing.   Written and directed by Alex Gibney.

- May 6, 2005  

Kung Fu Hustle

From the director of “Shaolin Soccer”!   “Hustle” is a mad martial arts comedy from Stephen Chow, who directed, wrote, produced and stars as a hapless petty thief in pre-revolutionary China who aspires to join the fearsome Axe Gang in its feud with the surprisingly resourceful residents of a run-down housing project called Pig Sty Alley.   According to “Hustle’s” website, Chow is the most popular comic filmmaker in Asia, having made over 50 films, and is credited with inventing the “mo lei tau” (“nonsense”) genre of Hong Kong comedy.  

Many of “Hustle’s” featured actors were apparently beloved action stars in the 70s, many of whom haven’t appeared onscreen in years. This was lost on me in that I’m only a casual fan of Hong Kong film, but it’d be a treat for aficionados.   Chow lingers on their iconic faces in Leone-esque close-ups.

Chow’s definitely got a nice touch with mise-en-scene: bodies fly, speed, fight, dance, and shift shape, with a kineticism matched by Chow’s camera moves.   More than any other live-action feature that I’ve seen, it captures the manic spirit of an early Bugs Bunny cartoon (to which it’s often been compared).  

There’s no doubt that this movie is a great time.   I had a big smile on my face pretty much throughout.   That said, it didn’t transport me to the state of nirvana-like bliss that some of the critics seem to be experiencing. Basically, if you find Roadrunner cartoons to be the “acme” of hilarity, then this will have you in paroxysms of laughter.   If slapstick isn’t your thing, you can give it a miss.      

- Apr 29, 2005  

Winter Solstice

Here is a modest piece that in its own small way is quite a success.   It doesn’t break any new ground in the family drama genre, but it’s nicely acted and observed.   It’s not out to jerk you around with a plot but rather observes the lives of a suburban family consisting of a landscape contractor, Jim (Anthony LaPaglia), and his two sons: the directionless high school student Pete (Mark Webber) and Pete’s older brother Gabe (Aaron Stanford), who’s preparing to pull out of the Jersey suburb to move to Florida.   Allison Janney is a house-sitter down the street who befriends Jim.   The boys’ mother died a few years back in a way that is not revealed until towards the end of the film.     What I liked about the picture is that events don’t seem to be happening based on the exigencies of a script formula, by which I mean there’s no feeling that on page such-and-such of the script you must hit a “plot-point”.   Perhaps a closer examination of the film would reveal that the traditional structure is present and accounted for, but it doesn’t feel that way.   Situations that in mainstream films would lead to a resolution or “payoff” are left open-ended.     Not essential viewing by any means, but a fine piece of craftsmanship.   Written and directed by Josh Sternfeld.

- Apr 29, 2005

Head-On

Throughout the German/Turkish film “Head-On” there are interludes in which a female singer backed by a traditional Turkish classical ensemble plays to the camera on the banks of Istanbul’s Bosphorus strait.   Director Faith Akin has said that these interludes are meant to show the audience when a new act is beginning and also that the traditional songs “are about how you can love somebody so much you go insane, you feel so much passion that you want to hurt yourself.”   “Head-On” sings of a suicidal German-Turkish couple, young Sibel (Sibel Kekilli) and middle-aged Cahit (Birol Unel).   Cahit was born in Germany while Sibel immigrated with her conservative, traditional Muslim family.   They meet in an institution where they’ve been sent to quell their appetites for self-destruction.   Sibel chafes at the repressive culture of her family so much that she has slashed her wrists, whereas Cahit has purposefully rammed his car head-on into a wall.  

They set up a platonic marriage of convenience so that Sibel can escape her family.   She celebrates her new freedom by indulging in what might in a family forum be called “interpersonal relations”, but not with Cahit.   Her means of rebellion is also her yoke–the means by which men exploit her.  

The characters return to their native Turkey for the final acts of the film.   Sibel has fled there from the men in her family who have decided to kill her for “dishonoring” them (which raises the question, if she so desperately wants to die then why does she run when her brother comes to kill her?), whilst Cahit, who has been in jail for accidentally killing one of Sibel’s lovers, gets out and goes in search of her.  

For me, the film is ultimately about the life force overcoming the death wish.   Another word for the life force, the film suggests, is love.   There’s a moving scene in which Cahit explains to Sibel’s sister, who is reluctant to divulge Sibel’s whereabouts, that Sibel gave him the will to live.   Though he's in Turkey, he speaks in halting English as though to emphasize the weight of his words.   Sibel herself emerges transformed in a way that I shan’t reveal, except to say that love plays a part in her healing and redemption as well.  

The acting is strong throughout.   Birol Unel reminded my movie buddy of Klaus Kinski, with some justification: he has a similar explosiveness and volatility.   Newcomer Sibel Kekilli gives a raw, indelible performance for which she won Best Actress at the German Film Awards 2004, although she’s been the subject of controversy in Germany ever since the inevitable revelation, much to her chagrin, that she appeared in porn before being discovered for “Head-On”.   (In a sad case of life imitating art, I read that her conservative Muslim family burned their photos of her, just as the family does in the film.)    

Though heavily hyped, I wouldn’t call this film essential viewing.   There’s something a bit too familiar about a lot of it.   As Bernard Hemingway has written, Sibel and Cahit are “the Sid and Nancy of the Turkish-German diaspora”.   You may also be put in mind of Fassbinder.   Still, there’s no denying that it’s strong stuff.   Word of warning: a lot of blood flows and spurts in this film, as though to symbolize the life force that the characters treat so cavalierly.   So don’t go if you like your films less “rare”!  

- Apr 22, 2005