Hal Ashby: Being There

Hal Ashby: notes on Being There

(United States, 1979)

The late Hal Ashby had a brilliant stretch as a director through the 1970s - and Being There was a career-capping peak, following an eight-year run of thoughtful successes which also included The Landlord, Harold & Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound For Glory and Coming Home.

Starring Peter Sellers and Shirley Maclaine, this sublime philosophical and political satire revolves around Chance the gardener (Peter Sellers), a mentally handicapped man who knows only gardening and what he sees on TV. He is inadvertently thought to be a genius when he accidentally stumbles into political fame - his very honest and unpremeditated responses to what he sees (or to any of the oft-amusing conversations he ends up having) are interpreted by the self-appointed VIP's around him as brilliant, Zen-like wisdom. The dissonance between appearances and reality throughout the film deserve note - here we have a simple-minded and enigmatic manual laborer, who is taken to be an important person, simply because he accidentally ends up near the center of their inner circle.

The film's title itself plays on this disconnect - Chance (he somehow becomes Chauncey Gardner amid the myriad other misapproriations) seems to be, in many senses - living in the moment, and doing so in a fashion that is pure and uncontrived. In this, the gnomic Chance becomes something of a mirror to other characters in the story (save for one): rather than see this simple-minded man as what he is, he becomes a tabula rasa, upon which varied characters project their own desires, hopes and ambitions. Given the varied agendas expressed through the behavior of other characters as they make of Chance what they will, Being There lends itself to vague spiritual interpretations (built specifically upon minor characters) - I've run across specifically Buddhist and Christian readings of this film, and both are approriate. The film's famed closing scene brilliantly literalizes what had been suggested through the film's entire length.

But there is more to this film than the spiritual. Ashby's 70's films are all filled with a creeping sense of unspecified unease. This background quality situated beneath specific narratives is reflective of a certain collective cultural dread that lingered through a sizable chunk of the 1970s: all of Ashby's 70's work seems to be shaking off a Vietnam/Watergate/Civil Rights/Sexual Revolution hangover of a sort. The quesion of "What happens next?" is always suggested, though never explicitly asked.

In this, and in other ways, Being There ties many of Ashby's thematic concerns together. This film is literally autumnal, but this is a symbolically prescient quality as well: the film sweeps us through glimpses of machiavellian political games, class politics, inner-city decay, and sexually liberated individuals who turn out to be needy in critical fashion. As seen in this film, those qualities (and the characters who carry them) are essentially dead-end extensions of narratives surfacing in earlier Ashby films. Chance, meanwhile, simply blends the haphazard enlightenment of Elgar (The Landlord), the nonchalant transgressiveness of Harold (Harold & Maude), the innocence of Larry (The Last Detail), and at least the potential of some the childlike - and childish - anarchism of George (Shampoo).

At the finale, the film would seem to turn explicitly towards the spiritual, or a quiet satire of it. This is definitely a valid interpretation of things, but there's something darker as well: each of Ashby's 70's films, end with the key character, walking off and out of the film in a sense. With this, a question is posed: "Has this individual - unprepared in some critical way for life in an unpredictable society - been transformed meaningfully, in ways that will matter?" The question posed in these films is implicitly directed at us all.

Without doing so explicitly, Being There is the first of Ashby's films to hint at an answer, which is yes, but there's no guarantee that the result will be anything great. It's basically an accident of timing that this film appeared 12-18 months before an enormous shift to the Right occurred in American politics and culture, but in Chance's transparent aphorisms once could catch a glimpse of a coming reality: an era of telegenic social and political leaders whose vapid, meaningless charm became their most marketable attribute.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Mysterious Object At Noon

Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Mysterious Object At Noon

(Thailand, 2000)

I first saw Mysterious Object At Noon shortly after its' 2002 US DVD release, and eventually purchased the disc, which has been subjected to many viewings. There is nothing really quite like it.

Based around the surrealists' 'Exquisite Corpse' party game, the film was assembled over 3 years from mostly improvised footage, with everyone involved a simultaneous actor/collaborator/creator of this grand experiment. The footage was then edited down to the final 85 minute running time.

Beginning with a series of travelling shots along a freeway through Bangkok, exiting onto successively smaller side streets, before ending in a neighborhood, Mysterious Object begins with a look and feel that is familiar, if low-budget. However, the narrative that begins to emerge begins to fragment as quickly as it appears, with tangents spiralling through Thai folklore, and into the realm of improvisational science fiction. Through it all, a gradual process of deceleration sets in, as if to suggest that the arbitrary imposition of meaning onto an independently evolving creation is futile or cruel. This does make demands upon the viewer: you are forced, rather absolutely, to get into and engage with this film, as it progresses towards an ever more wordless visual expressiveness that draws from a radical redefinition of silent cinema as heavily as it draws from experimental film (or from documentary film).

Thus, the final results are only vaguely coherent, but narrative coherence is beside the point. Two usually contradictory things are going on here - one, an attempt at the autogeneration of folklore, and the other an audacious piece of experimental filmmaking - simply put, Weerasethakul has brought together an avant-garde, and a world of folk storytelling (including bits of the Thai folk epic The Ramakien) that would seem to rarely coexist, much less fluorish in the others' presence, which is precisely what happens in this magical excursion into dreamlike, non-narrative impressionism. Many themes that form the foundation of Weerasethakul's subsequent body of work emerge here: memory, improvisation, and life as some grand flux - an ever-simmering molecular stew, which is here linked with the specific mechanisms of the creative process. Meanwhile, Weerasethakul's own background - first trained as an architect, with subsequent study of film and theater - offers some insights into the ideas that shape his work: interests in shape, unusual structures and organic narratives that tie disparate elements together.

In this particular construct, Weerasethakul has created something that I think will be heralded as some kind of classic - though not in the short run. I note that most reviews I've run across, even from normally intrepid critics, seem to be completely flustered by this film, and don't mind seeming mildly hostile about it. So be it - this film's casual, absolute obliteration of familiar divisions: between folk and avant-garde, between fiction and documentary, between crafted narrative and free-flowing improvisation may take a little time to sink in.

Weerasethakul's regard for roots and his homeland deserve mention as well - he very clearly loves Thailand, and this film, which traverses highly variable landscapes from urban to village, from coasts to mountains, views and records both land and people with a genuine affection. Weerasethakul's parents were doctors, and this film, and his subsequent features also all feature brief clinic scenes, perhaps honoring his own parents in oblique fashion. These unassuming devices and subtle qualities give this bold and formally demanding film a tremedous warmth and depth, which is - more precisely - why I think this film will ultimately find it's place and recognition in cinematic history.

Hirokazu Kore'eda: Distance

Hirokazu Kore'eda: Distance

(Japan, 2001)

Hirokazu Kore'eda's creative career continues to evolve, and this expansive and meditative drama may be my favorite among his films thus far.


All of the Japanese films I've seen that would seem to psychologically touch upon the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo gas attacks in Tokyo ago do so in oblique fashion, turning into complex meditations on the idea of terrorism, specifically of an unseen and unexpected variety arising from within, and what that says about a society (and not necessarily just Japanese society) that likes to think of itself as secure and a success - most of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's films beginning with Cure do this, as does Shinji Aoyama's Eureka. Kore'eda's Distance is perhaps the most successful example of this reflective sub-genre, examining the whys and hows of society's darkest impulses, when those impulses happen to surface unexpectedly.


In this sparse, Dogme-like film, individuals who lost loved ones to a cult-inspired act of terror and mass suicide, gather for a memorial reunion at the place their loved ones died (a former cult compound in a remote location), only to meet the cult's lone survivor. The idea of blame is subsumed by other needs very quickly, replaced by a more meditative sense of trying to logically and emotionally comprehend an event that is literally incomprehensible; thematically this film has a very intense global relevance, perhaps more now than when first released.

It is noteworthy that cult members depicted in the film are just as everyday and as ordinary as the survivors reflecting back upon tragic events - to turn certain individuals into monsters would simply be the easy way out. Kore'eda challenges us to think of ourselves as potential victims, and potential perpetrators of our (as humans) own worst impulses. I happened to first see this film as I was also reading Haruki Murakami's Underground for the first time, and in both, I was struck by how ordinary in many ways all involved parties (victims and villains) were. In both works, this quality is very chilling, and you aren't ever allowed to sidestep it.


Kore'eda's shifts between hand-held cameras (the actual story) and more polished/composed flashback sequences (watch for a brilliant restaurant scene) illustrating the allure of the cult to it's former members is dazzling, blending the techniques used in his earlier after life (1999) and Maborosi (1996). Kore'eda's roots are in documentary film-making, and a fairly unique style has evolved from that background (one can trace that style through the two earlier features; here it really begins to coalesce into something personal and unique): like Errol Morris, Kore'eda prefers the unobtrusive, allowing characters to reveal themselves in naturalistic fashion, with many precise insights emerging during quiet, seemingly random moments. This makes for film-making that is languid in tempo, enigmatic and elliptical in its narrative structure (certain characters here actually seem to become more inscrutable as the film progresses), but here the results are often mesmerizing.


Like Kore'eda's other work, there's a fairly limited commercial appeal in this extraordinary film; it has gained no distribution in US (though region-free imports are inexpensive and easily found), which is very unfortunate - I think a lot of American viewers would be quite stunned by this film, given the opportunity to see it.

King Hu: A Touch Of Zen

King Hu: A Touch Of Zen

(Taiwan, 1971)

Sublime and sprawling, A Touch Of Zen is perhaps the greatest in King Hu's series of ground-breaking, metaphysical period dramas.

In the most elusive fashion, A Touch Of Zen is a martial arts film, and it's greatest influence was on other wuxia films (and later international crossovers like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hero and House Of Flying Daggers). But it approaches martial arts as Tarkovsky would have done it - the film is set up in three methodically paced, long sections (it's a 3 hour film), which all feature a bit of action but devote considerably more attention to character, landscape and narrative. In this, Hu is expanding and advancing ideas hinted at in landmark earlier films Come Drink With Me and Dragon Inn (or Dragon Gate Inn, as it is occasionally known); the collective influence of all three films has only grown with the passage of time.

The focus of each section falls upon different characters, with the central character in each section embodying different virtues: the humility and creativity of the artist (the focal point in the first act), courage and confidence in the second act, and an assured, intuitive enlightenment in the third. The three acts are linked by tightly controlled and far more explosive bursts of action in an otherwise meditatively paced film.

Hu emerged as a director after stints in the 1950s and early 60s writing and acting in Hong Kong, and his background was in music and comedy - seeming unlikely beginnings for a seminal action auteur. But here - and in other films - those roots are evident in subtle ways: Hu's groundbreaking sense of choreography incorporated aesthetic sensibilities drawn from a knowledge of Chinese opera, and his very sharp sense of musical rhythm and comic timing informs action sequences that - carefully placed within lengthy meditative or mystical narrative excursions gives them an explosive yet artful intensity that was at the time a striking new development (though it should be noted that Kurosawa and numerous westerns would be precedents, and Hu was conscious of both).

Hu explores other elements as well - the first act, mostly devoted to the artist, eases viewers into a framework of intrigues that will shape the plot; this section of the film is very slow, but in hypnotic (and definitely not dull) fashion, with an abundance of careful set detail and some rather astounding landscape photography. A Touch Of Zen was loosely adapted from a number of Pu Songling's gently surreal stories, collected in the anthology Strange Tales From A Chinese Studio; Songling's proto-magical realism (17th century, specifically) is another significant influence upon all of Hu's work. Thus, palace intrigues and suggestions of the supernatural drive the slowly coalescing plot. Intriguingly, the ghost story elements explored early in the film are satirized a bit later, adding a discrete layer of obtuse irony and genre spoofery to the overall proceedings.

Gradually shifting into a second act, which moves the focus to an imperial fugitive (Yang Huizhen) who is being tracked in the area. Here another of Hu's advances surfaces - Hu made strong and complex female characters a trademark, and the fugitive seen here is one of the most memorable; definitely a touchstone for memorable future characters in films made by Ang Lee and Zhang Yimou, among many others. A Touch Of Zen is divided with an intermission (on the DVD - more on this later) into two halves, and this 'second act' is split by this division. A semi-famous, and much imitated, action sequence is to be found here.

During the third act, the focus shifts again, to a group of monks that make a brief but memorable appearance earlier, and - as the level of action gradually rises, so does the level of mysticality, with Hu's complex and highly personal take on Buddhism recalling Andrei Tarkovsky's similarly mystical and oblique Christianity. Throughout, we have Hu's sense of humor, a sort of greatly modified slapstick providing extra charm - the very playful sense of humor (sparingly used) would seem to be a strange addition, but it somehow works, giving an otherwise slow, meditiative film a breezy sense of rhythm. Again, I would point out the influence of Pu Songling, whose work blends spiritualism, surrealism, unexpected humor, political intrigues, horror and hints of the erotic - and Hu is unafraid of blending these seemingly disparate qualities into a vast, and sublime, cinematic endeavor.

This is a beautifully shot film, on my personal short list of the most gorgeous ever, even if the US/R1 DVD is a serious disservice to its' real glory. The Tai Seng DVD does present the film in widescreen (which beats all currently available international editions), but the film seems to be otherwise unrestored, with an indistinct print and several spots of faded colors distracting from some exquisite compositions and landscape shots, of a variety that would've made John Ford jealous (with at least one explicit visual reference to Kurosawa as well). I would hope to see a fully cleaned-up DVD available at some point in the future. But - washed-out DVD or not - this is something every cinephile out there should see.