Will the Real Alfred Hitchcock Please Stand Up?

It's Alfred Hitchcock's birthday today—he would have been 125. And there was a day last year, when I suddenly became besieged with a lot of Hitchcock documentaries, all purporting to use his words to get at the mystery behind the director of so many mysteries and thrillers. Even the names of the documentaries were creepily similar, confusingly so, which would have made the old guy sniff at the lack of originality, rather than chuckle.

But, the name is the thing. The name "Alfred Hitchcock" was a brand and more people knew his name and the type of entertainment he made than any other director. Like an irony in one of his movies, it was both a blessing...and a curse.

I Am Alfred Hitchcock (John Ashton McCarthy, 2021) A career overview, the type you're likely to see if someone has no real access to the subject and merely a large collection of clips to cull from. Think of it as an "Entertainment Tonight" career overview...with a little bit of speculation about what made Hitch "tick." But, not much.

 

And it's extensive: from home movies to his interviews—both filmed and merely audio as well as with some confederates, old and new—starting from Hitchcock's childhood, including (invaluably) his time in early British silents and German studios. And a lot of unseen talking heads. A couple of snatches of past Spielberg interviews are included, but most of the comments are from Eli Roth (for some reason), William Friedkin, Edgar Wright, and John Landis. Ben Mankiewicz weighs in. Much mention is made of Joan Harrison (as it probably should be, given the work she did for him in his American transition and on his television shows) and there is a lot of nice footage from the AFI salute to the man, including his extensive tribute to his secret weapon, wife Alma Reville. There are nice touches throughout, and it's quite entertainingly put together. But, as an exploration of the man, his movies, and how they all relate, it's pretty basic stuff.

 

 

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (Mark Cousins, 2023) The iconoclastic Irish documentarian (he made The Story of Film: An Odyssey and The Eyes of Orson Welles) makes his look at Hitchcock (for his first film's 100th anniversary) with a conceit that he's used in some of his lesser-known films, as a conversation between the filmmaker and the director-subject (voiced by Alistair McGowan and quite convincingly). Oh, some of the things that McGowan-Hitchcock says in the film are a matter of record, but Cousins uses this conversational version of "Alfred Hitchcock Explains It All To You" to build on themes that might have gotten lost in the chases and cameos, the Blondes and the wrong men and the usual accoutrements of a Hitchcock film—"the core of things" (as the faux-Hitchcock states). These are Cousins' personal thoughts and observances being seduced and manipulated by Hitchcock, who used the mechanics of cinema, the psychology of photography, and his own neuroses to dredge up our fears, raise our blood-pressures, and ponder our natures (while pandering to them, as well).

And so, though they're Cousins' observations through the voice of Hitchcock, one could hardly help thinking that Hitchcock is being misinterpreted ("You do know that movies are lies, don't you?" says the faux-Hitchcock at one point) as he was one of the most obvious of directors—what he intended he put on the screen. It's just that nobody had done things quite like that before, made movies like that before, thought thoughts like that and confessed them so nakedly like that before.

Cousins is generous with clips as he focuses on six themes that thematically run through the director's films: Escape, Desire, Loneliness, Time, Fulfillment, and Height. Just reading that list, one can tick off random instances from Hitchcock films that will prove the point, but that they run consistently through his work, even fleetingly more than proves Cousins' point.

 

At the same time, Cousins' Hitchcock has a marketer's point of view on making films. This version emphasizes "stars and glamour" as the motivator for attracting audiences, as they already have a sympathetic, empathetic view of the actors, doing a lot of the leg-work to get them on "their side." To the point where Cousins' Hitchcock avatar never mentions character's names in his movies, only the thespians. "When Cary Grant" does this or "when Grace Kelly does that."

 

Double Take (Johan Grimonprez, 2009) 

"You think all the way through that cinema is going to be killed by television or television is going to kill cinema or America is going to kill Russia or Russia is going to kill America. But at the end, it’s the third one, the new one, the younger one, the YouTube version, that comes along and kills them all."

Jose Luis Borges' initial short story August 25, 1983 

 

"They say that if you meet your double, you should kill him. Or, that he will kill you. I can't remember which, but...the gist of it is...that two of you is one too many. By the end of the script, one of you must die."

 

The wildest of the Hitchcock documentaries, Double Take is a "found-footage" documentary using even the very grain of the image to tell the story. Based on a Jose Luis Borges short story, "August 25, 1983" and expanded from Grimonperez's* earlier short Looking for Alfred, it is a long story, narrated by another Hitchcock sound-alike, Mark Perry, of an encounter a fictitious Hitchcock has in 1963 with himself from 1980. It's a shaggy-dog story, recreated with a Hitchcock lookalike, and a lot of editing between Hitchcock footage...from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and other sources, interspersed with news coverage of geo-political events and Instant Folgers commercials (which turn bad coffee into domestic drama). It's a bit of a satire about the new replacing the old, but not changing much for the transition. It doesn't precisely nail its thesis, events being difficult to bend to one's advantage. But, there are moments of wit and some lost opportunities.

 

Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail (Laurent Bouzereau, 2024) Writer-director Bouzereau has made a career out of directing films in support of other films; watch any DVD of any "important" film of the last 30 years and Bouzereau has directed or produced it, even producing anniversary-soundtrack expansions of some film scores. His work has given him a rolodex of contacts and access to some of the great directors and the archives of many a film. His style is breezy, entertaining and imaginative—when he wants to get to the bottom of a story, he'll get there and make it as memorable as its subject. And when doing a documentary of, say, Mark Harris' Five Came Back, he'll shed the customary upbeat promotional stance required to gloss up the subject to a glittering press-release, and risk being too revelatory, even to the subject's disadvantage, in order to drive home his point and make it the definitive word on the subject. He's good. Very good. It's no wonder so many high-profile directors and producers trust him telling the story of their work.

And in his film for StudioCanal and TCM, Becoming Hitchcock, he also tries to get to the depths of what made Hitchcock not only unique but "a brand."  His thesis being that Hitchcock's 1929 film Blackmail was the first of what one could call "a Hitchcock film" with the tropes of wronged people, distinctive weapons, arresting blondes, landmark chases, eroticism, food fetishes and such being firmly in place as they would be for the rest of Hitchcock's career (what, no mothers or enclosed places?)

It's true to a certain extent, even considering there is some cherry-picking going on. But, if one is looking for "the" first "Hitchcock" film, Blackmail is the most likely suspect (the only reason it doesn't loom larger in peoples' memories is it was in his British period, on the cusp of the sound era, and—being in the public domain—it seems less valued as a marketable property than his other films (which is a bit ironic).

 

But, some elements that are discussed—the tropes—are in his earlier films, because what made Hitchcock Hitchcock were his obsessions and his neuroses, which were there in little sparks at the beginning with even his first film, his vulnerabilities only growing full-flower when he had more confidence in the control of his films (how's that for irony?).

But, sure, say it was Blackmail because of the chase through the British Museum (all done in studio, by the way). But, the film is also notable for being the director's first sound film—he did another version for silent cinemas that were not speaker-wired-up while making this one, sometimes shooting alternate footage for scenes where title cards needed to do the talking. There are, frankly, radical transitions using only sound, showing how freakishly ingenious Hitchcock could be playing with new toys. 

 

And how's this for radical? Hitchcock's "blonde" for this one was a Czech actress named Anny Ondra whose English was so heavily-accented that she was directed to just mouth the words while actress Joan Barry performed the vocal part out of sight of the camera. The illusion is almost flawless, noticeable only if you're looking (and listening for it). You come away from Bouzereau's film maybe not so assured that Blackmail set the template for what was "Hitchcockian" in the future, but certainly convinces that the man was a genius for figuring out ways for telling stories pictorially, psychologically...but also sonically.

But, then...we already knew that.

* Grimonperez was nominated for the "Best Documentary Feature" Oscar last year for his documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

 

Daddio

I will—sporadically (which is all I ever do)—be filling in gaps of movies I wanted to see, or felt I should see in the past year, but for one reason or another passed on the opportunity (which was usually a short window of availability) for some reason.

All's Fare

or

It took a while, but she looked in the mirror
Then she glanced at the license for my name
A smile seemed to come to her slowly
It was a sad smile just the same

 

Daddio (Christy Hall, 2023) This is one where, when I described the movie ("The whole movie takes place during a cab-drive from JFK airport to mid-town Manhattan and it's  starring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn") got the response: "That sound like Hell."

 

Still...Johnson's choices (outside anything with the words "Shades" and "Web" in the title) have been at least interesting—and she produced this one—and that it managed to coax a disgruntled Penn out of self-imposed retirement says something about the material. Sometimes, the risk of going to Hell is worth it. Daddio, although it won't be to everybody's taste, was certainly worth the risk...especially as it's nested itself in Netflix for awhile. I've been ignoring Netflix—and it's time to sharpen my algorithm and cull the "My List."

Girl (Johnson) disembarks a flight from Oklahoma home to New York. Gets a random cab—the last fare of the night for Clark (Penn) who's been doing this for twenty years and "knows people." It's a flat fare from JFK so he's not running the meter and after some pleasantries and some business ("44th and 9th street—"Good ol' Mid-town"), they settle in for the trip. Music? No. She notices in its absence that he likes to drum his fingers on the steering wheel to some unheard tune. He notices she's not glued to her phone ("It's nice...") and gives her points for that—although her phone is parked on a texting conversation with her "boyfriend" and is never too out of reach. It's Clark's ("I'd prefer to be a 'Vinnie'") last call, so he's relaxed—and doesn't give a shit about his salty language—and in a mood to talk. 

After some pleasantries—"You can handle yourself""How could you possibly know that?""It ain't that difficult to read people.You gave me cross-streets, instead of some recited address from your phone n' I can tell you're not concerned with the meter 'cause JFK's a flat-rate") The lack of screen-time leads to a discussion of people in bubbles of technology and how the tipping situation is screwy (and detrimental to the server) now, less casual and random and he finds out she's a coder—isn't that a coincidence—and he asks if that's a tough line for a women to crack and endure (yeah, it always is) and then just (out of curiosity—"I can't be a know-it-all if I don't known nuttin'") says although he uses all this stuff, he doesn't "get" it. She does, so what's it all about. It's just 1's and 0's endlessly—either "on" or "off" or "true" of "false" in an atomization of language and command and instruction. Clark applies that to foundations—we start answering "yes/no" questions just to navigate daily life.

Given that context, Clark is always "on". With no music to fill the void, he's the music (with intermittent drum-solos), talking, espousing, bloviating—he's been around, he's done things, but not so much that he's using it for memory-fodder so much as context and learning material. He's good where he is, but he's as good a listener as he is a talker, and their back-and-forth turns into a teasing competition of who's got the advantage (with no winners or losers and no reward).

But, she keeps looking at her phone and that text-string. Her man-friend wants to hook up—she JUST got off a plane!—but, he keeps pushing it. He wants sex; she just wants to get home. And her expression changes so much that even looking through the rear-view mirror, Clark picks up on it. "What's his name?" Clark asks. "I'm not going to tell you THAT!" she says. "He's married" Clark deduces. She's silent, trying to not give anything away. "Yes...." she says, and the discussion turns to that. "You didn't say the "L" word to him, didja?"

Of course, she did. And then Clark is off, a long discussion about men, women, class, manipulation...and the crux of the matter, how people hide. How they put up a mask, how they put up a presentation ("The suit, the house, the car..."), and how, nowadays, "lookin' like a family man is more important than being one." Clark is more than a trip from the airport to Mid-town, he's a trip through time. He's been doing this for twenty years. The city has changed incrementally, but he hasn't, and people—they change a lot, but not really. And he's seen it all. And driven through it. He's not about giving advice, really, but, his observations make her think...and as it's a flat fare, it's less expensive than an hour of therapy.

And unlike her boy-friend, they're both open and frank (it's New York!) and not putting on airs—they're not going to see each other again, so there's no future consequences or repercussions, so they're frank with each other—not unguarded, but open. They're driving through a judgement-free zone, and traffic's not good. But the conversation has no pileups, and everybody knows how to merge.

It's two people in a cab for a whole movie; the cast has to be good for the movie to be work and Christy Hall, through the good luck of her writing a knock-out script (it started as a play and ended up on The Black List), got Dakota Johnson and her production company involved and Johnson's dream-casting for Clark was Penn. Good instincts all around. 

The two of them do more things with glances through rear-view mirrors than most actors could achieve nose-to-nose (Penn rehearsed with Johnson working with a rear-view mirror, supposedly). Body language is minimal, but when it happens it has an out-sized effect. Penn is mercurial, but relaxed with all the possibilities. And his eyes, man, they have their own-sub-text. Johnson has the breadth that she can look like she's aged twenty years with a passing thought and shifts conversationally fast and fresh. And the two riffing off each other is like watching the deftness of Tracy and Hepburn, they're that good together. And you totally buy that they're in a cab making their way down the Van Wyck Expressway.

Except...they aren't. Yeah, there was some location shooting and you see shots of a cab driving down streets just for some perspective now and again, so you can stretch your legs. But, the whole thing was shot in a studio surrounded by LED screens surrounding the cab-set...and it's amazing. Shot by Phedon Papamichael (who's been shooting for Clooney and Mangold and Alexander Payne), nobody's had so much fun playing with the kaleidoscope of traffic lights since Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

Yeah, so first-time director/first film-project. Shot in 16 days. Physically-limiting/imaginatively-challenging staging. It does sound like Hell. But, it works so great and the actors are so riveting, nothing else matters. Maybe you get your sensitivities tweaked a little bit, but the journey's worth it...and there are seat-belts for the squeamish. Ya won't need an air-bag.
 

And the cab-ride? What can I say, they made good time.

Merchant Ivory

Merchant/Ivory (Stephen Soucy, 2023) The name of "Merchant Ivory" has long been prejudiciously associated with a certain type of Oscar-bait movie, long on dialogue, high on landscapes, and attracting English actors of such a high caliber that they usually end up on Oscar short-lists for their performances. They have such a high pedigree that you'd never know that the films were lower budgeted than what was evident on-screen, and that the films were made by the skin of the teeth of Merchant Ivory Productions, sometimes risking scuttling the projects before they could be finished, and leaving the actors with a malevolent "Never again..." ("It required an immense amount of stamina" says Emma Thompson "to work for Merchant Ivory") only to be entranced, seduced, cajoled and convinced by either Merchant or Ivory to come back for another go-'round. And despite suspicions that they were being flim-flammed (once again), they did come back. Because to be in a "Merchant Ivory" film was a prestige gig.

The team (which wasn't just producer Ismael Merchant and director James Ivory, but screenwriter/novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins) wasn't afraid to buck current movie trends, go its own way, and chart its own course, self-assured that there was no down-side to going high-brow. And the new documentary Merchant Ivory quite giddily tells the story of the mess in the kitchen that provides the elegant meal. "It'll probably be something you're wildly proud of" says costumer Jenny Beavan of each MP project, "but...."

The beginning of the story involves the meeting of James Ivory (from Klamath Falls, Oregon) and Ismail Merchant (born in Mumbai—although it was Bombay at the time) at the Indian Consulate in New York, where there was a reception for a documentary Ivory had made in India. The two became partners, personally and professionally, their first project together an adaptation of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's "The Householder"—her husband told her not to get involved with them, but she became enchanted with Merchant's Bali-hoo and "I liked the razzmatazz." It was not the smoothest first film of the partnership as the money ran out, but Ivory hated shooting in the Delhi heat, and when it came time to edit the film, they turned to Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray to put it together. Merchant sold it to Columbia Pictures "by some miracle" and used the profits to make their next film Shakespeare Wallah.

They made four films in India and then went international with some weird choices: Savages, The Wild Party, but then settled down with such high-brow fare as 1979's The Europeans, 1983's adaptation of Jhabvala's Heat and Dust, and 1984's The Bostonians, until things exploded (mind you, it was an elegant, mannered explosion) with 1985's A Room With a View, which not only received tremendous critical acclaim and great box office, but also was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Rather than sign with any studio, Merchant Ivory chose to stay independent and in 1987 took the company public.

Produced by Cohen Media Group (which now owns the entire Merchant Ivory catalog) Merchant Ivory tells the story of the film-making team: Ismael the producer, James the director, but also, essentially and unquestionably, in what one of the participants calls "the Merchant Ivory vortex," Ruth the writer and Richard the composer. The four of them, each with a different personality—Ismael voluble and hyperbolic, James "quietly determined," and "unneurotic," Ruth the arbiter of taste and Richard the musical soul—formed a social and working club-house of essential ingredients, each with their specialty, but in close collaboration that influenced their projects and shaped the direction of the company and the films produced by it.

It's divided into six chapters, but, like the company itself, doesn't seem to adhere to each chapter's subject matter, cascading into other stories that spring to mind, but essentially telling the overview of the story in a chronological order, with particular asides for projects that garnered particular attention. They are:
 

Chapter One The Wandering Company: how two opposites in temperament and origins joined forces as independent film-makers—each had made documentaries by that time—and as a couple and began making relatively inexpensive films in India, the first of which brought Ruth Prawer Jhabvala into the mix (she adapted her own novel for them) as Muse, Arbiter of Taste, and the Book-Cracker, who would boil things down to essentials and if something wasn't up to her standards, she'd fix it.

Merchant's first visa to the U.S.: notice how he scratched out "Profession"

 

Chapter Two: the Mystic Masseuse: the story of Ismael Merchant, a man of Big Dreams and wide contradictions—gay, Muslim, a wheeler-dealer and con-man ("Yeah, sure, he was" says Ivory), extravagant in his ideas and juggling deals in order to achieve them, but never selling out to a studio in order to maintain independence over his company's work. Crew members talk of his being on the set constantly imploring Ivory—"Shooot, Jim! Shooot!"—shaking their head in astonishment "This rascal has done it again!" Hopkins ruefully smiles as he says "He can talk the birds out of the trees."

 

A Room with a View (1985) A water-shed moment for the company when international success comes to them after years of defying expectations and scraping by financing their films. Their dedication to authors like Henry James and E.M.Forster pays off and brings them critical and audience acclaim as well as much attention from the many awards groups. They are still financially rocky, but are no less dedicated to their favorite authors.

Chapter III: The Unspeakable Vice of the Greeks James Ivory, being the last survivor of the Merchant Ivory core, talks about his growing up as something of an outsider—adopted, intellectual, closeted—but collaborators and actors talk about how he's the least problematic director they've ever worked with and he comes across as easy-going, honest, unapologetic, with no regrets and certainly no resentfulness.

Maurice (1987) Ivory wanted to make an adaptation of Forster's posthumous novel of homosexuality and class, which Merchant had qualms about—after the success of A Room with a View, why risk it—but "the vortex" went ahead with it with Jhabvala begging off, calling it "sub-Forster" but coming back to fix a crucial plot-point.

Chapter IV Only Connect The film looks at the life and accomplishments of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, winner of the Booker Prize for her own work, and her essential partnership with Merchant Ivory—she garnered the most Oscars for her work of the group (along with the costume departments) and her ability to write illuminating dialog for any character, no matter how repressed—and her screenplays are notably free of descriptions—made her the foundation of so much of what was great about Merchant Ivory.

Howard's End 1992 It was Jhabvala who raised the challenge to the team that this Forster work was "a mountain you have to climb" and the film garnered multiple Oscar nominations and an Oscar for Emma Thompson and she and Helena Bonham Carter and Samuel West go into vivid detail about the challenges and memories of working on the film, which was immediately followed up by

 

The Remains of the Day 1993 Most of the people being interviewed agree that this was the apex of the Merchant Ivory group and quite a few focus on Anthony Hopkins' performance for special mention, with Thompson calling out a particular scene with how Hopkins set up the tone and flabbergasted her with his performance. At one point Hugh Grant says "If someone said to me show me perfect film acting, I'd show them Tony Hopkins in Remains of the Day and, in fact, The Remains of the Day is one of the best films I've ever seen let alone been in.

 

Chapter V You Mean a Great Deal to this House This segment focuses on the life and career of Richard Robbins, who was something of a musical savant and began composing for the Merchant Ivory films with The Europeans and worked on every score up until The White Countess in 2005. As is stated in the film, his was probably the most notable director/composer collaborations since Herrmann and Hitchcock or Rota and Fellini.

Chapter VI Head and Heart The last segment talks about the Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Merchant Ivory began to work with big-time studios and working with bigger budgets, which made what they could do a bit easier, but the team began to splinter—Merchant began directing his own films (with Ivory ever-present as an advisor)—and then, time took its toll: Merchant died in 2005, Robbins in 2012, and Jhabvala in 2013. 

 

Only Ivory survives to tell the tale, and he's still working—he's the oldest recipient of an Oscar for his screenplay of Call Me By My Name, directed a film in 2022 (at the age of 94) and he's executive produced four films that are coming out in the next year. It's a fascinating story, with ample amounts of clips, and interviews with some of the finest raconteurs in entertainment. And it does exactly what Cohen Media Group wants it to do—it makes you want to seek out these films and the books they're based on.

The Critic (2023)

Critic, Critique Thyself

or

The Mystery of the Missing Curtain Call
 

To read online reviews, Anthony Quinn's mystery novel "The Curtain Call" is a cracking good read, set in 1936 London with a background in the theater-world amidst it's denizens, while at the same time being something of a manifesto on giving the downtrodden some agency. It sounds like it would make a great movie.

 

The Critic is the movie based on Quinn's book...and it isn't. A great movie, that is. I don't know what happened, but whole plots, characters, whole gists of the book have gone missing in the transition from print to screen and one can only wonder who the culprit is.

 

Or the why of it. But, someone has done a great crime to the book. And somebody's responsible.*

But, one shouldn't review what isn't there, one should review what is. What we've got is a character study with a little bit of blackmail/murder thrown in. Jimmy Erskine (Ian McKellen) is a renowned theater critic for London's Daily Chronicle, known for his bitchy reviews scratched out with a poison pen (and typed up for submission by his assistant, played by Alfred Enoch). Jimmy relishes his job and his high-handed witticisms ("I do not enjoy the theater. I am the chief drama critic of the Chronicle!") and the perks of having his reserved seats at the theater and reserved table at the club, but his publisher, the Viscount David Brooke (Mark Strong)—having taken over the paper from his late father—has reservations of his own and would like Jimmy to "tone it down. More beauty. Less beast!"

Jimmy, though, has high standards—in everything but the "rough trade" he dabbles in—and between his lack of cooperation in kinder, gentler reviews and his frequent violation of the "morals clause" in his contract, he finds himself sacked. The Viscount has had enough of the paper's "old guard" and wants to bring in fresh blood. For Jimmy, being a pensioner is not enough to keep him in the decadent lifestyle that he's become accustomed to. So he hatches a plot.

One of the actors that he's been regularly slagging in his reviews is ingenue Nina Land (Gemma Arterton), who is pretty and game, and wants nothing more than impress the Chronicle's drama critic—she's a fan of his taste and his writing—but one more bad notice from him and she has the pluck enough to confront the man (catching him trolling in a nearby park) and she makes her case through flattery and some implied blackmail, both of which impresses Jimmy. "There is art in you, Miss Land," he confides in her. "My disappointment is in your failure to access it." He decides then and there to take her under his wing and tutelage. She could be useful.

What he doesn't know is that Land is having an affair with the publisher's son-in-law, a portrait painter of some repute, and that complication makes things a little dicey for what Jimmy has in mind for his scheme to get his old job back. Trouble is, he's a critic, and having observed enough theater in his profession, one would think he would immediately spot a weak plot, even if it's of his own devising.

The Critic premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year and there was less buzz than murmuring, and so some tinkering and tailoring was done with re-shoots and another ending prepared and there's just enough dissonance in the film that the seams show. One can't fault the performers, all of whom do the job with McKellan deserving the lion's share of the praise for a performance so venal done with obvious relish.

But, it isn't enough. The plot's spread awfully thin and what's there is lingered over and emphasized, like the shot that director Anand Tucker keeps coming back to—an overhead shot that zeroes in right on the performer's forehead (to what purpose, you wonder, other than to show somebody thinking). And you wonder where it started to go south.

 

Any movie adaptation of a book should make you want to go to the source to get more of what drew you to the story in the first place. The Critic makes me want to read "Curtain Call" to see what it is I'm missing.

* Yeah, it sounds weird, but then, so is the source: Plan 9 from Outer Space, Ed Wood's notorious science-fiction opus once dubbed The Worst Film Ever Made. At one point, a detective discovers a corpse in a grave-yard and says (quite seriously) "But one thing's sure. Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody's responsible." 

 

Well, technically, that's three things, but you can't quibble with Plan 9, or you'll end up wasting your life.  As a matter of fact, it occurs to me that I don't have a post for Plan 9...yet. Well, Hallowe'en month is coming up...

Robot Dreams (2023)

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day, but this Saturday, we'll make an exception with this wonderful little animated film.

"Do You Remember..."

or

The Counter-point to "Rust Never Sleeps"
 

"What a piece of work is a man!"

William Shakespeare

Interesting way that Shakespeare says that. "Piece of work"...like a construction. A machine. And what is our relationship with our machines, to whom we are both master and slave? 

 

When Stanley Kubrick was working on the story that would be completed by Steven Spielberg as A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, one of the push-backs he got was whether human beings could love mechanical beings. He found nothing odd about it. How many of us anthropomorphize our devices: how many of us name our cars or festoon our work-stations with family pictures and beloved ephemera? A high percentage in my experience. 

And it's been the subject of many movies of late: her and Blade Runner (both versions, but especially Blade Runner 2049 with its "Joi" holographic companion) or the lesser-known Robot & Frank.

Pablo Berger's amazing Robot Dreams (based on the graphic novel/children's story by Sara Varon) looks very retro, employing a deceptively limited animation style (but within a complex background of New York, circa 1980's) to tell a tale of emotion, companionship, complexity and Fate without a word of dialog...a feat that belies any lack of sophistication in the process. That the world is populated by animals, well, that's a once-remove to push a point, the same way Zootopia does. 

Dog (that's his name..."Dog") lives in New York City, and it's dull, solitary existence. He plays pong. He makes a TV dinner in his micro-wave (which he drinks with "TaB"). He watches TV. He looks out the window and sees happy couples. He's lonely, as lonely as one can be in the most populous city in the country. An ad pops up asking "Are you alone?" and before you can say "but, wait, there's more!" he's ordering what they're selling—a robot companion, the "Amica 2000." It arrives and he spends much time on the construction and deciphering of the instructions.

But, once Robot's lights all turn green, they become fast friends, walking around Manhattan, Central Park, and doing the things one does in New York—eating hot dogs, roller-skating in the park, sight-seeing, going home, watching TV...it's Fun City, and all set to the happiest song ever written: Earth, Wind and Fire's "September" (the movie makes great use of the song, breaking it down, and using it in various forms throughout the movie).

Dog and Robot became constant buddies and inseparable friends. Then, Dog takes Robot to Playland, where they spend a great day on the beach, flying kites and swimming. A nap in the sun for both of them ends with Dog indicates it's time to go. But, Robot can't move. He's rusted. Dog tried to get Robot off the beach, but he's much too heavy, so they agree that Dog should leave Robot there, find a way to repair Robot, and in the morning, they can go home. But, when Dog rushes out there to get Robot, he finds the beach shut down for the season and he can't get to Robot and is charged with trespassing. Another attempt, he gets arrested. When he appeals to the Parks department, he is denied. All he can do is wait until next year when Playland opens again.

In the meantime, Robot is left on the beach...and he dreams. What else can he do?

 

Pretty simple story-line, but Berger imbues it with detail and much humor, reminding one of the ingenuity employed by directors of the silent age—while also paying homage to such diverse directors as Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Allen.

We'll leave the synopsis there, as where Berger and his co-scenarist Varon take the story becomes more complex and richer, having to do with experience and nostalgia and how you never really lose those no matter what else you lose along the way. it could be a fanciful rom-com if the trajectory of events didn't run counter to the expectations of that genre. It's sweet and sad, but has a particular life-affirming quality that warms the heart and is instantly relatable, even if you're nothing like the denizens of this animated New York and merely a poor player of a human being.

I can't recommend this one highly enough and one hopes that you get the chance to catch it in a theater where it should be seen.

 

And as for the question of emotional attachments to our devices, it's not so fanciful an idea, either. Every computer, lap-top, smart-phone, and pad you own has memory. And it's all about you.