Seeing Superbad reminded me of many conversations with Steve Mackler. Steve was a foul-mouthed guy who was a year-older than me in school. I was on the debate squad, he did humorous interpretation, and so we had many weekends around each other at speech competitions. Steve had a knack for making the conservatives blush with his raw and frank sense of humor. He was also easily one of the funniest people I have ever known, with the ability to bring me to tears with his quips.
Jonah Hill is Superbad’s Steve, a foul-mouthed and horny high-school senior named Seth. Already dealing with the sad reality that he and his best friend, played by Michael Cara (to the delight of Arrested Development fans everywhere) will be graduating and heading to separate colleges in the fall, he is fairly myopic in his concerns. He doesn’t want to graduate from high school a virgin. He wants sex, and he wants it tonight.
What follows is a buddy comedy standing in a fairly deep tradition of similar comedies over the last 30 years or so. This one, coming from the same folks that brought us Knocked Up earlier this summer, is a good one, and in good I mean that it is extremely funny if you can handle that kind of humor. Seth Rogan and Judd Apatow have given us The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad, and in all cases my wife has reminded me that she’s not sure she wants to admit to anyone that she’s actually seen them. That’s OK, I caught her laughing.
To accomplish his mission, Seth commits at school to providing alcohol to a party that night. The party is hosted by the girl that he’s after, and Cara’s Evan finds out that his interest is heading there, and so their adventure must take them into the liquor store. They find a friend, Fogell, with a newly minted fake ID, and so they set out on their trail. The trailers give some of the zaniness away, but to spare you, I’ll suffice it to say that Fogell, or should I say “McLovin” winds up riding around with the strangest pair of cops since Reno 911, Seth winds up way over his head in a death match at another party, and Evan bumbles his way through much before they get back together. Their quest is not easy.
Admittedly, the nature of the comedy makes this a difficult movie to recommend blindly. I have friends that I know would enjoy it, and I have friends that I know wouldn’t. Either way, there are several things about the film that interest me. First, I wondered as I reflected on the movie whether it should be required viewing for parents of teenagers. I expect many of them would be shocked and horrified at the way in which sexual topics are explored, but my sense is that it is much closer to the reality of what teenagers are being exposed to than what parents assume their kids know. The film takes for granted the widespread access to sexual information that is a basic reality for many teenagers in our wired world.
Second, like Virgin and Knocked Up, the film takes a surprisingly conservative turn by the end. This genre, probably set in motion most by Animal House, has a knack for being a sustained celebration of sexual liberation in all its forms. This film isn’t. The path to freedom for these guys, mainly getting their objects of lust drunk so that they can conquer them, is a hollow dream, and by the end they seem to recognize that. Despite having a shocking amount of knowledge about sex acts and the female anatomy, they have very little wisdom about relationships, love, and the rich meaning of sexuality. This divide between wisdom and knowledge seems very prescient in our culture.
In the end, the movie is more a celebration of male friendship. Their friendship is what they understand most deeply and is what means the most. They still have sex on the brain, but in their more sane moments, they seem to recognize that their pursuit of alcohol and sex are mere distractors or coping mechanisms. The characters are pretty bankrupt in their pursuits, but they aren’t without hope. I think the success of the film and of these filmmakers in this brand of comedy is that they are drawing up imminently relatable people. We too often find ourselves bankrupt in our pursuits, but hope that there is something deeper, something more substantive that might pull us through.
Of course, it may be that Apatow and Rogan are just throwing in the heart in these films to justify a whole string of racy jokes and seedy adventures. I don’t think so, but even if it is, then they have just backed their way into something more substantive than they might expect. The deeper strain of these characters, from this and their other films, are strains that I can live with. There are certainly worse places from which to start a conversation.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
The Bourne Ultimatum: A Review
The Bourne Ultimatum is about responsibility. Sharing the spot with Ratatouille for the best reviewed mainstream film of the summer, it comes to us as one of the final “Part Three” films that seems to have defined the summer blockbuster lineup. Among those, it is undoubtedly the best of the lot.
The Bourne Identity introduced the movie-going public to Robert Ludlum’s much loved character Jason Bourne. We met Bourne at the end of an accident that left him with amnesia. Knowing nothing of his past, we slowly learned along with him that he had been a part of a CIA operation that trained the world’s greatest assassins and set them about performing some of the most seditious missions the government ever denied involvement in. As the mysteries surrounding his amnesia and the accident that produced it came to light, he became a hunted man by the very people who had trained him to be the killer that he is. In The Bourne Supremacy, Jason was thrust back into the espionage world by those within the system who sought to use his name to cover their own dark secrets. Where Identity was a journey of discovery, Supremacy was a journey that had a mixed bag of revenge and repentance, as Bourne was finding out more about his past and finding more to dislike about those discoveries.
In Ultimatum, the movie cleverly weaves its way into the final moments of Supremacy, taking us to a Bourne who is still on the run, still trying to discover more about his past as he is trying to stay ahead of the very people who have those answers. While Identity gave us Chris Cooper as a superb foil and Supremacy gave us Brian Cox as Cooper’s sleazy boss and Joan Allen as the virtuous agent who contends for truth, Ultimatum brings us David Straitharn as the exceptional leader who needs Bourne eliminated. As with Cooper and Cox, Straitharn gives us an agent who has little to redeem himself, who is an “avowed patriot” who seems to profit well from his patriotism. The villains of the Bourne films are enjoyable to watch because they have been played by such fine actors, but they are not ambiguous figures. We know who the bad guys are, and we are clear that they are bad.
Jason’s a bit tougher to figure out. Damon does well with the emotionally-stilted character of Bourne. While early on we might have excused his coolness as a function of his amnesia, as we learn more about him we see this as a product of his training. He has no emotion because he was trained to have no emotion. He was trained to have no emotion because he can have none to do the evil things he is called upon to do.
Of course, from the first film we have seen that the problem for Bourne is that there is something in him that can’t rest with this kind of withdrawn life. He bucked the system then, and he continues to buck the system here. What is interesting about this film is how it changes our perception of the system itself. In the trilogy as a whole, the government agencies are led by people who manipulate their underlings to serve their ends, ends which are often selfish and against the larger purposes of the country. This is a corrupt system that is broken because of a leadership that has no virtue (no political commentary there, I’m sure). Bourne is pitted as a hero who is standing against that system.
Here, though, the system is not entirely to blame for Bourne’s predicament. In a plot development worthy of the actor they use to develop it, we see in new ways how Bourne is what he is because Bourne wanted to be that way. While he was used by the system, it is harder to see that he was simply shaped by the system. The battle in Bourne’s life has not been man verses system, but man verses himself. He has a darkness within, and it is this darkness that is his greatest enemy.
While these ideas emerge from the film, it is worth mentioning that the pacing of the film makes them elusive. This is kinetic and energetic film making, with action sequences that at times border on the incomprehensible due to their fast pace. The great reviews for the film are probably evidence of the emotional excitement that this style of filmmaking produces. It is a fascinating combination of modern technique interpreting a very classic human drama. The freshness isn’t found in the special effects (a significant exception for a summer blockbuster) but in the energy in the story. The story lives or dies on our investment in the person of Bourne (I expect that some won’t like it because they don’t like the actor Matt Damon), and our enjoyment of the film hinges significantly on our visceral experience of the action. In other words, take your potty break before you enter the theater!
The ideas in Ultimatum need development in other places. In the end, it is an action piece that I expect many will take, enjoy, and leave without reflection. The nature of the film’s pacing doesn’t really invite that kind of reflection anyway. Nonetheless, the ideas are worthy of reflection because they strike me as particularly important.
In the last few months, I’ve had to have several tough conversations with people about the issue of responsibility. For all the good that our innovations in psychology and counseling have brought us, one of the challenges it has presented has been the way it has armed people who are prone to deny personal responsibility the language with which to rationalize that denial. Instead of exploring the past with an eye towards root causation and the way that sin has impacted our desires and the choices we make, we can instead find in our search the other people or events that can take the blame from us for the mistakes that we make. The basic sadness that I have seen in these situations is how it has fundamentally denied the ability to heal. We heal when we can acknowledge responsibility for that which we can and grow through the mistakes, not when we can lay the responsibility at other’s feet.
Bourne is a character with hope precisely because he is a character who seems to be trying to take that responsibility where he can. The films are not mere diatribes against the “system,” but instead a study of a life who is bearing the fruit from the seed that he has planted. Acknowledging that core responsibility, even in the backdrop of a complex system that manipulates and uses those bad choices and bad desires, is itself a significant statement in our contemporary culture.
The Bourne Identity introduced the movie-going public to Robert Ludlum’s much loved character Jason Bourne. We met Bourne at the end of an accident that left him with amnesia. Knowing nothing of his past, we slowly learned along with him that he had been a part of a CIA operation that trained the world’s greatest assassins and set them about performing some of the most seditious missions the government ever denied involvement in. As the mysteries surrounding his amnesia and the accident that produced it came to light, he became a hunted man by the very people who had trained him to be the killer that he is. In The Bourne Supremacy, Jason was thrust back into the espionage world by those within the system who sought to use his name to cover their own dark secrets. Where Identity was a journey of discovery, Supremacy was a journey that had a mixed bag of revenge and repentance, as Bourne was finding out more about his past and finding more to dislike about those discoveries.
In Ultimatum, the movie cleverly weaves its way into the final moments of Supremacy, taking us to a Bourne who is still on the run, still trying to discover more about his past as he is trying to stay ahead of the very people who have those answers. While Identity gave us Chris Cooper as a superb foil and Supremacy gave us Brian Cox as Cooper’s sleazy boss and Joan Allen as the virtuous agent who contends for truth, Ultimatum brings us David Straitharn as the exceptional leader who needs Bourne eliminated. As with Cooper and Cox, Straitharn gives us an agent who has little to redeem himself, who is an “avowed patriot” who seems to profit well from his patriotism. The villains of the Bourne films are enjoyable to watch because they have been played by such fine actors, but they are not ambiguous figures. We know who the bad guys are, and we are clear that they are bad.
Jason’s a bit tougher to figure out. Damon does well with the emotionally-stilted character of Bourne. While early on we might have excused his coolness as a function of his amnesia, as we learn more about him we see this as a product of his training. He has no emotion because he was trained to have no emotion. He was trained to have no emotion because he can have none to do the evil things he is called upon to do.
Of course, from the first film we have seen that the problem for Bourne is that there is something in him that can’t rest with this kind of withdrawn life. He bucked the system then, and he continues to buck the system here. What is interesting about this film is how it changes our perception of the system itself. In the trilogy as a whole, the government agencies are led by people who manipulate their underlings to serve their ends, ends which are often selfish and against the larger purposes of the country. This is a corrupt system that is broken because of a leadership that has no virtue (no political commentary there, I’m sure). Bourne is pitted as a hero who is standing against that system.
Here, though, the system is not entirely to blame for Bourne’s predicament. In a plot development worthy of the actor they use to develop it, we see in new ways how Bourne is what he is because Bourne wanted to be that way. While he was used by the system, it is harder to see that he was simply shaped by the system. The battle in Bourne’s life has not been man verses system, but man verses himself. He has a darkness within, and it is this darkness that is his greatest enemy.
While these ideas emerge from the film, it is worth mentioning that the pacing of the film makes them elusive. This is kinetic and energetic film making, with action sequences that at times border on the incomprehensible due to their fast pace. The great reviews for the film are probably evidence of the emotional excitement that this style of filmmaking produces. It is a fascinating combination of modern technique interpreting a very classic human drama. The freshness isn’t found in the special effects (a significant exception for a summer blockbuster) but in the energy in the story. The story lives or dies on our investment in the person of Bourne (I expect that some won’t like it because they don’t like the actor Matt Damon), and our enjoyment of the film hinges significantly on our visceral experience of the action. In other words, take your potty break before you enter the theater!
The ideas in Ultimatum need development in other places. In the end, it is an action piece that I expect many will take, enjoy, and leave without reflection. The nature of the film’s pacing doesn’t really invite that kind of reflection anyway. Nonetheless, the ideas are worthy of reflection because they strike me as particularly important.
In the last few months, I’ve had to have several tough conversations with people about the issue of responsibility. For all the good that our innovations in psychology and counseling have brought us, one of the challenges it has presented has been the way it has armed people who are prone to deny personal responsibility the language with which to rationalize that denial. Instead of exploring the past with an eye towards root causation and the way that sin has impacted our desires and the choices we make, we can instead find in our search the other people or events that can take the blame from us for the mistakes that we make. The basic sadness that I have seen in these situations is how it has fundamentally denied the ability to heal. We heal when we can acknowledge responsibility for that which we can and grow through the mistakes, not when we can lay the responsibility at other’s feet.
Bourne is a character with hope precisely because he is a character who seems to be trying to take that responsibility where he can. The films are not mere diatribes against the “system,” but instead a study of a life who is bearing the fruit from the seed that he has planted. Acknowledging that core responsibility, even in the backdrop of a complex system that manipulates and uses those bad choices and bad desires, is itself a significant statement in our contemporary culture.
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