sistermagpie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sistermagpie) wrote2006-06-27 12:26 pm
sistermagpie) wrote2006-06-27 12:26 pm
Around the World and American History X
I finally saw a movie I've been curious about for a long time--Black Narcissus. Deborah Kerr leads a group of nuns into the Himalayas to start a convent, only you can't have convents in the Himalayas because the thin air and the wind make the nuns go funny. There's one nun in particular, Sister Ruth, who's barely sane when they show up and just deteriorates until she's completely crazed and wearing lipstick and a red dress! In a climactic scene she bursts onto the bell tower and I couldn't help myself from thinking, "And THAT is so what Draco should look like at the end of HBP in the movie!" The skinny, the crazy, the shadowy pink eyes, the pasty pale skin!
Much better than Jean Simmons playing the local (possibly half-white) girl who crawls around sexily like a cat and never speaks and wears lots of exotic clothing and jewelry, as well as a black wig and dark skin make-up. I know next to nothing about authentic jewelry, but her nose ring looked like a clip-on earring. Sabu, on the other hand, is a young general who at one point shows up in this white fur coat with shoulders that Joan Collins would have envied in 1984. David Farrar mostly goes around in little shorts and a smirk.
I also recently saw Around the World in 80 Days, where I learned an Englishman and his Mexican butler can span the globe while barely ever having to speak to non-white people. At one point they rescue an Indian Maiden educated in England from being burned on a funeral pyre...an Indian Maiden educated in England who's Shirley MacLaine in a black wig with a dot on her forehead.
I was actually surprised when a real Asian man showed up for a speaking part in Hong Kong. Then I realized he was a real Asian man is because the scene had David Niven addressing him in painful pigeon English so that the man could respond in perfect English and embarrass him. The joke wouldn’t work with a cameo appearance by Bing Crosby (or Peter Lorre, who played the other Asian speaking part). If we're going to believe Fogg's addressing someone in pigeon English they need to really be Asian--otherwise it's not incongruous when they can actually speak well. Yay! It’s just sort of funny the way the European/American places are cast mostly authentically (lots of British actors in Great Britain, French actors in France, American actors in America), but in between Europe and America it’s Shirley MacLaine as the Indian princess! Peter Lorre as the Japanese steward! Gilbert Roland as the sheik!
One other movie I saw I've been trying to think about why it didn't really work for me, and I think I've started to figure it out.
The movie is the story of Danny (Edward Furlong), a 16-year-old skinhead whose older brother Derek (Edward Norton) has just been released from prison after killing three black men. What surprises me about this movie is that Edward Norton in particular is so good, and the story seems so good, yet I didn't really feel it. Maybe part of it was the pacing, which seemed really off.
But today I started thinking maybe the problem is that to me, the story is a straightforward tragedy. Derek comes out of prison a changed man, but now must save the younger brother he introduced into the skinheads as well as protect himself from his former gang. In the end Danny does not follow Derek's path by to prison and Derek is not killed. It's Danny who is killed by a black classmate whose own gang pressured him to kill Danny (who had been intentionally provoking to him, as a skinhead). It's the black classmate who becomes Derek's heir, as it were, by making the same wrong choice that Derek did. Danny's death, if one sees it as the true punishment for the murders Derek committed, comes after he's already learned from his mistakes.
With that kind of set up it just seems like the movie should be more dramatic than it is, and I think maybe what happens is it gets a little distracted with the whys of racism and white supremacist. So we see Derek's father lecturing him on the evils of affirmative action before being killed putting out a fire in a crack house. We hear that fatherless Derek was then manipulated by Cameron who ships white supremacist literature from his house. In jail we see in flashbacks how Derek begins to doubt the sincerity of his fellow white racist prisoners, and stands up to them when they try to gang-rape him into submission. And we see Derek form his only real friendship in jail with Lamont, the black prisoner he works with in the laundry. Lamont is funny, he got a raw deal on his sentencing (perhaps proving the racial bias in the system Derek had always denied), and he ultimately is the one who makes sure Derek gets out alive.
All this stuff is part of the characters situation, but honestly, I think it might actually weaken the story. It doesn't really matter why Derek became a skinhead or why he changed his mind--I think it might have been more dramatic to just let us see how he used to be and see how he is now. First, you can't really give us a good reason why. It's *still* bizarre that Derek becomes a skinhead regardless of his father's death. What's going on is only really superficially related to the discussions of whether or not the Honors English class reads "Native Son." It's not that race relations in America aren't the driving force, but it's not really politics that's driving the skinheads.
Edward Norton is a good enough actor that we don't need to learn through flashbacks or exposition how Derek's changed, we can see it the moment he appears out of prison. His body language and what he does and doesn't say makes it obvious we're now dealing with somebody who's ashamed and puzzled by his own bad behavior and trying to take back his old role--he's not crazy anymore sums it up pretty well. We don't need lots of scenes of Derek's racist rants, imo. Maybe it's good to see a scene of him at his hateful worst since it makes it real, but we don't really need much of it, since racist rants tend to run together and it's not like we're being shown discussions about the issues where Derek is wrong. He just shouts everyone down with empty propaganda.
Because the storyline seemed like a tragedy I kept thinking of it in terms of Shakespeare, like Macbeth. Had Shakespeare been writing this script we might barely hear about what things led to Derek's change of heart. He'd probably just come on stage and do a monologue about the man he was then and the man he is now. I think if the movie hadn't been torn between wanting to tell the story of Derek's efforts to save his brother and the story of how smart boy Derek got into racist rhetoric and then changed his mind again it would have been able to concentrate on the more dramatic story of what post-change Derek was facing.
It's like the thing I was reading about Macbeth--he may have a lot of doubts, but he acts anyway, and it's his actions that set things in motion. That's basically what Derek's story is about to me. At a time in his life this is what he wants to do, and he recruits a lot of people into his group. Then he has to face all the consequences of his actions: jail, the realization that his beliefs have been wrong, the realization that his bad acts go on even after he's changed his mind, the threat that he might not be able to stop the worst from happening. It's a good tragic ending too, with Derek losing Danny indirectly through his own actions. He can only judge the boy who killed him so much since he himself did exactly the same thing. I wonder if the movie had stuck to just that storyline it would have played more quickly and effectively.
Much better than Jean Simmons playing the local (possibly half-white) girl who crawls around sexily like a cat and never speaks and wears lots of exotic clothing and jewelry, as well as a black wig and dark skin make-up. I know next to nothing about authentic jewelry, but her nose ring looked like a clip-on earring. Sabu, on the other hand, is a young general who at one point shows up in this white fur coat with shoulders that Joan Collins would have envied in 1984. David Farrar mostly goes around in little shorts and a smirk.
I also recently saw Around the World in 80 Days, where I learned an Englishman and his Mexican butler can span the globe while barely ever having to speak to non-white people. At one point they rescue an Indian Maiden educated in England from being burned on a funeral pyre...an Indian Maiden educated in England who's Shirley MacLaine in a black wig with a dot on her forehead.
I was actually surprised when a real Asian man showed up for a speaking part in Hong Kong. Then I realized he was a real Asian man is because the scene had David Niven addressing him in painful pigeon English so that the man could respond in perfect English and embarrass him. The joke wouldn’t work with a cameo appearance by Bing Crosby (or Peter Lorre, who played the other Asian speaking part). If we're going to believe Fogg's addressing someone in pigeon English they need to really be Asian--otherwise it's not incongruous when they can actually speak well. Yay! It’s just sort of funny the way the European/American places are cast mostly authentically (lots of British actors in Great Britain, French actors in France, American actors in America), but in between Europe and America it’s Shirley MacLaine as the Indian princess! Peter Lorre as the Japanese steward! Gilbert Roland as the sheik!
One other movie I saw I've been trying to think about why it didn't really work for me, and I think I've started to figure it out.
The movie is the story of Danny (Edward Furlong), a 16-year-old skinhead whose older brother Derek (Edward Norton) has just been released from prison after killing three black men. What surprises me about this movie is that Edward Norton in particular is so good, and the story seems so good, yet I didn't really feel it. Maybe part of it was the pacing, which seemed really off.
But today I started thinking maybe the problem is that to me, the story is a straightforward tragedy. Derek comes out of prison a changed man, but now must save the younger brother he introduced into the skinheads as well as protect himself from his former gang. In the end Danny does not follow Derek's path by to prison and Derek is not killed. It's Danny who is killed by a black classmate whose own gang pressured him to kill Danny (who had been intentionally provoking to him, as a skinhead). It's the black classmate who becomes Derek's heir, as it were, by making the same wrong choice that Derek did. Danny's death, if one sees it as the true punishment for the murders Derek committed, comes after he's already learned from his mistakes.
With that kind of set up it just seems like the movie should be more dramatic than it is, and I think maybe what happens is it gets a little distracted with the whys of racism and white supremacist. So we see Derek's father lecturing him on the evils of affirmative action before being killed putting out a fire in a crack house. We hear that fatherless Derek was then manipulated by Cameron who ships white supremacist literature from his house. In jail we see in flashbacks how Derek begins to doubt the sincerity of his fellow white racist prisoners, and stands up to them when they try to gang-rape him into submission. And we see Derek form his only real friendship in jail with Lamont, the black prisoner he works with in the laundry. Lamont is funny, he got a raw deal on his sentencing (perhaps proving the racial bias in the system Derek had always denied), and he ultimately is the one who makes sure Derek gets out alive.
All this stuff is part of the characters situation, but honestly, I think it might actually weaken the story. It doesn't really matter why Derek became a skinhead or why he changed his mind--I think it might have been more dramatic to just let us see how he used to be and see how he is now. First, you can't really give us a good reason why. It's *still* bizarre that Derek becomes a skinhead regardless of his father's death. What's going on is only really superficially related to the discussions of whether or not the Honors English class reads "Native Son." It's not that race relations in America aren't the driving force, but it's not really politics that's driving the skinheads.
Edward Norton is a good enough actor that we don't need to learn through flashbacks or exposition how Derek's changed, we can see it the moment he appears out of prison. His body language and what he does and doesn't say makes it obvious we're now dealing with somebody who's ashamed and puzzled by his own bad behavior and trying to take back his old role--he's not crazy anymore sums it up pretty well. We don't need lots of scenes of Derek's racist rants, imo. Maybe it's good to see a scene of him at his hateful worst since it makes it real, but we don't really need much of it, since racist rants tend to run together and it's not like we're being shown discussions about the issues where Derek is wrong. He just shouts everyone down with empty propaganda.
Because the storyline seemed like a tragedy I kept thinking of it in terms of Shakespeare, like Macbeth. Had Shakespeare been writing this script we might barely hear about what things led to Derek's change of heart. He'd probably just come on stage and do a monologue about the man he was then and the man he is now. I think if the movie hadn't been torn between wanting to tell the story of Derek's efforts to save his brother and the story of how smart boy Derek got into racist rhetoric and then changed his mind again it would have been able to concentrate on the more dramatic story of what post-change Derek was facing.
It's like the thing I was reading about Macbeth--he may have a lot of doubts, but he acts anyway, and it's his actions that set things in motion. That's basically what Derek's story is about to me. At a time in his life this is what he wants to do, and he recruits a lot of people into his group. Then he has to face all the consequences of his actions: jail, the realization that his beliefs have been wrong, the realization that his bad acts go on even after he's changed his mind, the threat that he might not be able to stop the worst from happening. It's a good tragic ending too, with Derek losing Danny indirectly through his own actions. He can only judge the boy who killed him so much since he himself did exactly the same thing. I wonder if the movie had stuck to just that storyline it would have played more quickly and effectively.