The Wilhelm Scream

V-Day wisdom from Roger Ebert

There is much to be gleaned from the sagacious writings of Roger Ebert, including some relevant advice for those spending Valentine's Day with someone new. Not sure how to make that first move? Roger lays it all out for the less than romantically adroit young fellas in his review of Shopgirl:

"I've been around a long time, and young men, if there is one thing I know, it is that the only way to kiss a girl for the first time is to look like you want to and intend to, and move in fast enough to seem eager but slow enough to give her a chance to say "So anyway ..." and look up as if she's trying to remember your name."

And for those of you involved in a long-term relationship, contemplating the next step, Ebert advises:

          Never marry somebody you couldn't sit next to on a three-day bus trip.

Sound advice for us all.

I've also been trying to conjure a list of romantic films to recommend for this day of luuuvre, but it's been a struggle. Mostly because I kinda hate romantic movies - they tend to be saccharine and simplistic. I loathe meet-cutes, and usually the dramatic tension in these movies is based on some ridiculous misunderstanding that any normal person would have cleared up pretty quickly.

I could only come up with three good suggestions.

1. Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind - It's ironic a film centered on a science-fictiony plot device provides one of the most realistic depictions of a relationship I've seen. Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey's characters know how to love one another, and they also know how to hurt each other. In the end, they realize no relationship is perfect just like no person is perfect.  Love, the movie observes, is about accepting the ways your partner drives you crazy.
2. Me and You and Everyone We Know - Miranda July's quirky film is a mosaic of several eccentric lonely characters yearning to make a connection with someone who understands them. July is very wry in how she observes the interactions of the smitten, and how the fear of rejection can stanch a romance before it even begins.
3. L.A. Story -  Steve Martin's L.A. is a place where the surreal masquerades as the mundane, where absurdities become habitual. And yet there is a sweetness and humanity beneath the city's silicone veneer. There is a sooth-saying highway billboard; a boobalicious, young Sarah Jessica Parker whose character prefers an enema over dinner for a first date; and a radiant Gloria Tennant who plays tuba duets with her mother in England over the phone. Love in L.A. seems sort of like a contradiction, but not in Steve Martin's world.

How about you? Have any great romantic movies to help those lonely hearts out there make it through today?

"Day Night, Day Night" = Bore Dull Bore Dull

There is a growing movement in independent film that I've nicknamed the  Gazing-Out-The-Window-Towards-A-Bleak-Landscape genre. These films are minimalist and realist, usually shot with handheld cameras in grainy digital video (increasingly becoming the bane of TheWilhelmSream's existence).

Characters in these films are always laconic and Type B personalities who have trouble expressing their emotions much less even showing them. (Personally I think this is likely due to socially retarded, pale-faced writers subconsciously yearning to believe the world is full of people like them. But that's just a theory.)

The idea is that where there is a lack of exposition and expression, the audience will compensate for it by filling in the blanks themselves through the actors' emoting and directors' contextual hints. 

While the Dardennes brothers are examples of directors who excel in this mode, my sneaking suspicion is most directors use this style because it's cheap, and it allows them to stretch out a story that really should be a short into a full-length feature. Hence, my name for this genre - even the Dardennes' L'Enfant must have about 20 minutes of the main character staring wistfully out the windows of buses and trains.

"Day Night Day Night" is a film that abuses the minimalist style at the expense and betrayal of its characters. It tells the story of a 19-year-old girl who's been recruited by terrorists to blow up Times Square (and herself in the process). She is of an ambiguous ethnicity and speaks softly and fearfully with an American accent. The movie begins with her arrival from the West Coast in New York City, and trundles along at an arduously slow pace. We are treated to extended sequences of her shaving her legs, brushing her teeth, cleaning her only pair of underwear (Because Dear God! She only brought one pair of underwear! Because she's going to kill herself the next day! And doesn't need another pair!).

It's as though the filmmakers constantly expect us to be blown away by this iconoclastic depiction of a terrorist. Wow, this young, sweet, soft-spoken and inveterately self-conscious teenager is a suicide bomber! Omigosh, my whole world view has changed!

Within the first 10 to 15 minutes I understood their point, but they kept hammering away at it without adding any nuance or depth.

And by the climax of the film, I didn't buy it. We are given almost no background about the girl who is only named "She" in the credits. No explanation for how she developed the rage and anger that is need to desire to murder a few hundred people in cold blood. The character comes off as suicidal rather than homicidal. There is a difference.

The director is playing a dirty trick here. She's taking a highly implausible character and masking it stylistically in realism. 

Don't get me wrong - there are moments when the film is well-acted and well-directed, such as the heart-stopping sequence when the unnamed girl approaches Times Square with the bomb inside a yellow backpack hanging loosely from her shoulders. But in the end it's all window dressing for a film that's really just a simplistic, stick-figure drawing of a ghostly nightmare.