Coda: All That's Known

Over the last few weeks, several of you (plural, non-gender specific) have suggested that I (singular, gender-specific, sexy) pen an unofficial graduation speech. I lack the time, energy, and caffeinated beverages to embark on such an endeavor, but what I offer instead is a sort of coda to the hastily assembled but surprisingly well-received concerto that was my senior retreat lecture. That speech wasn't about sharing my wisdom--after all, I've just learned to drive, so it's no surprise the secrets of life continue to elude me--it was about sharing the wisdom of others and leading my peers to an understanding of said pearls of knowledge. If those quotes were meant as a guide for our senior year, then this one serves as both an excellent epilogue and a perfect prologue;

"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."-Ernest Hemingway

Don't thread through thesauruses, devour dictionaries, go spelunking down into the slippery depths of meaning, mythos, meditations on the human condition. Hemingway didn't sit down at the typewriter believing that the fate of humanity was dictated by the rat-a-tat-tat of his fingers on keys. He inhaled the world around him, took in what he liked and didn't like, and recorded it. Mythos, meaning, and meditations on the human condition came from his experiences, not the other way around. One day, he looked in a shop window. Than night, he wrote the world's shortest short story;

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

The imagery is a brittle, beautiful surface, the hot blood of heartbreak thrums underneath, and in thirty seconds or less, our understanding of the world, of its infinite joy and sorrow, has increased a little bit. These workmanlike words on a sign may be just another advert to passersby, but to the people who donated those shoes they mean the world. Hemingway saw, reflected, recorded, and from that came beauty.

This brings me to the point of this essay, perhaps my greatest social concern; our obsession with manufacturing meaning and truth and beauty, as if it could somehow be brewed, stewed, and squeezed out of an eyedropper. This weekend, Catholic school parents have spend thousands of collective man-hours cajoling their offspring into countless snapshots.

Oh my God, my kid's processing into the gym! Take a picture.

That gown looks good! Use flash, honey.

That dress is absolutely hideous. Hold still while I take one for that Facebook Mommy doesn't know how to use.

Candid photos are a wonderful thing; posed photos strike me as almost sinful in nature because they express a desire to capture that which needn't be captured. A photograph should be a document of something beautiful unfolding, not a document of you and your friends posing for a photograph. These pictures attempt to take something utterly forgettable and deem it worth remembering.

Which leads me to another thing I hate; the expression "We're making memories!"

We don't create memories on an assembly line. They find us when we least expect it. They walk into your life like a new friend, announce themselves quietly and permanently.

I will not remember that time I stopped on the way into St. Pius for a photo-op. I will remember that time two years ago when I drove home, and "Fire and Rain" came on the radio just as the sun sunk gracefully into its celestial cradle, and what I heard and what I saw became one. I do not treasure the video of me meticulously fixing my bowtie as I prepped for prom (the event, not the promising Disney film); I hope I never lose the one we took afterward, as we belted "Dog Days Are Over" with the windows down. These moments were not paid for or planned for. They were pockets of peace and piquant beauty in the frayed fabric of our world. I guess if I were to come up with a ring-a-ding slogan for what I've learned over the past 18 years, its this; "Appreciate what you can't anticipate."

And, of course, I've gotta finish up by relating it all back to the movies. In Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia, critic Jonathan Rosenbaum sorts his peers into two categories; the conquistadors and the explorers. The first party is concerned only with big victories, with capital-G-Great Cinema that will net Oscars and impact the very nature of the medium itself. The ladder group savors the Big Breakthroughs, yes, but also dives headfirst into smaller, less prestigious fare, seeking not necessarily a flawless final product but instead looking for little joys; the delivery of a certain line, the caliber of a supporting performance, the metaphorical diamonds in the rough. As I guide you through the world of cinema (and literature and music AND life, for that matter), I promise to always be an explorer, not expecting buried treasure everywhere I go but simply setting out and allowing the little glimmers of golden promise to awe, amuse, and astound me. And I encourage you to do the same.

The typical graduation quote: "Carpe diem. Seize the day."

My version is less eloquent, but it will do; "Let the day seize you. Let yourself be formed, challenged, changed. Set out to do great things, but do not let the drive to achieve them put you in a position where you cannot slow down, get out, smell the roses, sing along with the music, embrace old friends and create new ones. Realize that, to change the world, you must first be part of it. You must experience it a lot to alter it a little. Keep all this in mind, and, along the way, write the truest sentences you know. Live the truest life you can."

Mazel tov, graduates. Here's lookin' at you, kids!

Pirates 4/Bridesmaids

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is not an important film (though it isn't a bad one, either), but a quick look at the picture's Rotten Tomatoes page poses an important question; when did critics stop reviewing the movie and start reviewing everything else? Few seem willing to consider the stand-alone merits of this picture; damn near every review I've read relates it to its predecessors, similar franchises, or even the offscreen lives of its creators. Tell me whether any of the following snippets help you understand the picture, really gain some sort of appreciation for what makes it good or bad or worth your time;

-"But then, to be truthful, there was no need for this movie at all – except, perhaps, to finance paving Bruckheimer’s driveway in gold leaf. And really, Johnny Depp – how many chateaux in France do you need?"

-"Before seeing "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," I had already reached my capacity for "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, and with this fourth installment, my cup runneth over."

-"Why would the Walt Disney Company, which distributes these movies, and Jerry Bruckheimer, who produces them, ever want to leave well enough alone? In Hollywood, gratuitous excess — not necessity — is the mother of invention."

Indeed, a fourth Pirates film may not be "necessary". But, going by the principle that sequels should exist only to complete the unfinished business of the first half, Toy Story 2 was not necessary either, nor was Bride of Frankenstein decades earlier. The point is, everyone from the local Palo Alto gazette to Roger Ebert has basically panned this film (as well as damn near every other recent sequel) for existing. How about acknowledging that it has been made, does exist, will always exist, and then examining the actual movie?

Trumpeted as a refocused, rejuvenated reboot, it in fact adheres strictly to the blueprint of the first three films--we have the eternally aloof, rum-guzzling Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), his MacGuffin (the Fountain of Youth), his authoritarian enemy (King George and Co.), his outlaw opposition (in this case, Ian Mcshane's Blackbeard), and a naive, fiendishly good looking young couple (not Orly and Keira but Sam Claflin as a priest and Astrid Berges-Frisbey as the mermaid he falls for) whose doomed love plays out against the backdrop of the stormy seas.

Yes, it's the same-old same-old, but that encroaching sense of businesslike blandness that bogged down the last installment, that feeling that everyone was just going through the motions on the way to their respective paychecks, is out the window. New blood was needed. New blood was brought aboard.

Rob Marshall has yet to develop a distinct directorial style, but because of his stage experience he knows what to do with dialogue--the expository scenes never feel as cut-and-dry as they did when helmed by Gore Verbinski, who knew his way around an army of undead pirates but not a basic two-shot. Penelope Cruz shows up as one of Sparrow's old flames, and if they don't whip up the crackling love-hate chemistry of say, Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Mask of Zorro, they do strike sparks every now and then. Depp's as adept as ever with a one-liner, and, placed at the center of the story, he does some really solid work; this is closer to the perennially sozzled but endlessly inventive Jack we met in the first film, as opposed to the assembly-line, tic-dependent one we encountered in the last two. The action, as you'd expect from a Bruckheimer picture, is uniformly top-notch; the opening sequence with Jack darting and diving across the tops of speeding carriages is a real humdinger, and the much-discussed mermaid scene is vintage Pirates, an Indiana Jones moment for the Facebook generation. It's scenes like these, Rube Goldberg-esque explosions of ceaselessly kinetic one-thing-after-another inertia, that keep us coming back to this series. Not nearly as good as the first or second film, but lightyears beyond the is-it-time-for-the-wrap-party half-assery of the last installment, this is indeed a return to form for the series.

Having said that, this one lacks something the previous three had in spades; great villains. While the past two sequels were far from perfect, they did claim one major accomplishment--a hell of a baddie in Bill Nighy's tentacled terror Davy Jones. Curse of the Black Pearl also had a memorable antagonist, Geoffrey Rush's Barbossa. But with Jones down for the count and Barbossa popping up here as a sort of frenemy, all the evil-doing is left to Blackbeard. McShane kindles some of that Deadwood hellfire in his eyes and sports a bone-chilling baritone of a pirate's growl, but he's simply the weakest villain of the first four movies. Nonetheless, it's still a kick watching Jack go up against his other Great Enemy-the elements of time, space, and gravity, as he engineers an escape using coconuts, stages a prison breakout right under the nose of the law, or takes a spectacular nose-dive off a flaming tower.

As this point, I can see this series going one of two ways. It could turn into a constantly evolving, 007-esque mega-franchise, bringing in new characters, locations, and legends each time but keeping Depp at the swashbuckling center of it all. Or, it could get mired in its own mythos oncemore and sink, this time permanently. However, at this point in the series, Pirates is looking surprisingly fit.

On Stranger Tides is a franchise film, but it's not franchise filmmaking. If it never quite gives off that galvanizing charge of spontaneity and discovery the first film exuded (how could it?) it is still technically accomplished, winningly intelligent, and commendably free of Michael Bay cynicism or excessive commercialism . Those who dare write it off simply because they're sick of seeing Captain Jack on a movie poster commit mutiny most foul. B.

---

I never thought I'd say this, but get the Target Lady an Oscar. In Bridesmaids, easily the best Apatow-era comedy not directed by Judd Apatow himself, Kristen Wiig proves that she has what it takes. The entire movie is a laudable accomplishment, successfully capturing the modern Thirtysomething in their native habitat for the first time, and finally presenting an accurate, organic depiction of that girly-girl-best-friends-club cute-but-catty thing we've all seen by the watercooler, at a bar, even on the wedding aisle. But, as a critic, it's hard to focus on anything but Wiig. As Annie Walker, an eternally single, chronically bitter woman competing with perpetually perfect McMansioness Helen (Rose Byrne) for the right to plan her best friend Lillian's (Maya Rudolph) wedding, she surpasses even the most generous expectations, turning in a perfectly calibrated, wickedly funny, even quietly devastating perf. The conceivable comparisons are endless-a toned-down Kristen Chenoweth, a ramped-up Meg Ryan, and so on and so forth, but her pixiesh presence and ability to mine both sympathy and schadenfreude from her audience remind me of no one so much as the late, great Judy Holliday. Wiig's given the lion's share of the killer jokes--the scene where she gets hammered in an attempt to cure her flight fear is a classic, as is the shockingly explicit opener--but, as with Holliday, some of her best moments are non-verbal; watch the look on her face as Lillian flirts with her fiance on the phone, or the smile she gives during the perfect little scene where she attempts to bake away her sorrow to the tune of Fiona Apple's "Paper Bag".

A boffo ensemble rounds out the package; Rose Byrne and Melissa McCarthy are never anything less than gut-bustingly funny, especially when they're playing it straight. Maya Rudolph turns in the kind of gently witty, quietly piquant performance that's quickly becoming her hallmark. Jon Hamm and Chris O'Dowd, as resident douchebag and knight-in-shining-armor, respectively, make the most of their limited screentime. These are classic performances, but the film itself falls just short of greatness. As with all Apatow pictures, the third act is more than a little long in the tooth, and, with a story that traffics in sardonic commentary on life's blunt realities, a fairy-tale ending is wholly unnecessary. Still, it's hard to watch Bridesmaids and not feel good; about yourself, about this movie, about the future of mainstream comedy. The folks onscreen may be celebrating a wedding, but we have something else to rejoice over; the birth of a star. A-.

Let's do the Time Warp again

Tomorrow isn't so much the first day of the rest of my life as much as it is the last day of the first of my life. Baccalaureate, honors convocation and graduation are all commendable formalities, but Friday, May 19 is when it really ends. By "it", I mean the way of life I've been accustomed to ever since my mom overstuffed my Rocky and Bullwinkle lunchbox and trotted me off to first grade eleven years ago. The lock-step routine of up-and-at-'em, the twenty-second shower, the ritualistic tightening of the tie and lacing of the ever-so-comfortable private school shoes, the careful calculation of just how much daydreaming one can do and still net a ninety average, the naps, the whispers, the shouts, the sobs, the laughs, the notes, the votes, and of course the 525,600 formals, dances, and formal dances---all this is over for good. Knowledge is still out there, but now we won't just swallow what we're fed, we'll have to search for the fruit of enlightenment ourselves. And by "have to" I mean "get to", as I consider this intellectual independence a privilege. But before I wax poetically and weep prolifically, let's get down to brass tacks;

In kindergarten, I made a time capsule and buried it in our backyard. Filled with youthful naivete and WonderBalls (remember those?!), I swore to my mother I'd A) unearth the original capsule twelve years from now and B) make another one when I graduated high school. I won't be honoring the first part of my agreement for fear that I might dig up A) An anthill, B) My dead hermit crab (yes, you read that right) or C) Arnold Schwarzenegger's career (too soon?). But I will make a second one, albeit free of dirt and grime and inevitable physical decay--call it a cyber-time-capsule. I could write a book about the people that helped get me through secondary school---or a blog, and indeed I will honor them in writing towards the end of the summer. But, seeing as I have devoted so much of my life to consuming and critiquing art (which I believe to be of almost sacred importance), I thought I'd look at things from a pop culture perspective first. Here's what's goin' in the time capsule--

A Knight's Tale Soundtrack-My first review consisted of two sentences, composed on a '98 Dell in my grandma's den while everyone else was hunting Easter eggs; "Great soundtrack of rock chestnuts, and it suits the movie nicely. But on some songs ("Taking Care of Business"), the guitars and words are very loud and the length is not necessary." A theatre kid from the first.

"Hamster Dance"-I refused to see the humour in this song; it was my favorite, and when my parents talked over it, I was NOT pleased.

"Falcon Finito" from the Stuart Little 2 Soundtrack-For God knows how many years, I wanted to be a film composer. This track was the theme for James Woods's villainous talking bird, and, looking back on some of the pieces of"film music" I recorded (aka hummed into a recorder), little bits of this motif pop up in almost every one.

Space Cowboys-My first PG-13. My mom was delighted to explain to me what this "S-H-I-T" word that kept coming out of Clint Eastwood's mouth meant.

The Phantom Menace-Call it a cinematic false dawn. Was amazed by the Naboo pilot fighters. Dragged my parents to it four times. Saw it a fifth time, along with Tarzan, at a Hyatt resort, sitting next to a fellow toddler who I'm fairly certain was my first crush.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon-The real dawn. If you read my blog, you know it all started here.

"Double Trouble", Prisoner of Azkaban Soundtrack-My first Itunes purchase. "Son of A Preacher Man" by Dusty Springfield was my first non-soundtrack purchase. "Sitting, Waiting, Wishing" by Jack Johnson was my first Ipod download. I love all three songs to this day.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy-Incidentally, my first viewing of all three films proved memorable. My mom and dad previewed Fellowship to make sure it was appropriate for an 8-year-old, and they came home for dinner forever changed. My mom was speechless. My dad's conversation cup runneth over-it remains his favorite film. The Uruk-Hai in The Two Towers scared me speechless, until my parents point out that their teeth looked "like bad doggie-breath teeth". Now, I am the only person who laughs when they appear on screen. As for Return of the King, it represents the first tears I shed in a theatre. I was embarrassed--until I returned to school, and everyone else admitted they had cried, too. This trilogy was a journey, one we took regardless of our demographic or generation---whether we grew up with it or grew old with it, it remains an imperfect but staggeringly emotional and often brilliant cultural phenomenon the likes of which we won't see again for decades.

Ray!-My favorite film in my early middle school days. I was just getting into acting at the time, so I think the sheer number of great performances is what sold me. I dressed up as Ray Charles for a school party once. Looking back, I realize that A) No one knew who the hell I was and B) The only way that would work is if I partook in a little blackface, something I only do in private and on weekends.

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy-In 6th grade, my Ebert and Roeper obsession collided with a friend's cat fixation, and we made a trilogy of half-hour movie review "programs" called Two Paws Up. Replace thumbs with little kitty paws and you get the idea. This was the first movie we reviewed, and we both hated it. I came up with my first diss, that most powerful weapon in the arsenal of the pissed-off critic: "I didn't have a watch, so I checked my arm. After all, there was more going on on the surface of my skin that the surface of the screen." It remains to this day one of my favorite one-liners. Putting these shows together taught me alot about criticism---the most important lesson being that, if you over-praise or over-damn everything, you lose the respect of your audience. I also have too many great behind-the-scenes memories to list--setting off car alarms, sending a volleyball off a rooftop and across the street, dressing as Willy Wonka and doing perhaps the strangest dance I have done in the history of strange dances I have done etc, etc. I hope to reunite with my dear friend Alex, and our show, someday soon.

"Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine", The White Stripes-My indie friend liked this. Girls liked my indie friend. I tried to like it. I wound up liking it, and loving Jack and Meg. They remain one of the few modern bands this jazz standard addict truly loves.

Annie Hall-Woody Allen stared at the camera, spoke those first lines, and there was no turning back. I've seen half his films. One, Hannah and Her Sisters, is damn near close to my all time favorite. By the time I head for college in the fall, I hope to have seen all of them.

The Giver, Lois Lowry-My mom read Harry Potter to me, but this was the first novel I really read by myself--or should I say demolished by myself. I finished it in three days. It wasn't a fluke either--I'd read it again in a heartbeat. Issuing fiction this complex and ideologically robust to our kids is the only way to keep great literature alive!

The Phantom Menace-Call it a cinematic false dawn. Was amazed by the Naboo pilot fighters. Dragged my parents to it four times. Saw it a fifth time, along with Tarzan, at a Hyatt resort, sitting next to a fellow toddler who I'm fairly certain was my first crush.

"Not While I'm Around", Sweeney Todd-The first song I sang alone on a stage. Listening to the recording, I marvel at how much I've grown. It's not just the old voice-thin and nasally and unable to sustain a phrase. It's the show-offyness, the need to belt every other note, that I cringe at. Thank god Barbra, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, and, most recently, Adele, came along to teach me a thing or two about phrasing. I've sung this song on 4 different occasions over 5 years, which makes each performance an interesting benchmark of my vocal progress. I'll sing it again soon, if you get my drift.

"A Piece of Sky", Yentl-Here it is, kids. This splits it in half. Old Testament/New Testament. Pre-Babs/Post-Babs. As soon as that final note sounded, clear as a bell and as deeply felt as anything ever sung, I knew I had found my lifelong inspiration.

"Out There", The Hunchback of Notre Dame-This one's not so much an incitement to storytelling as a memo to myself. I'd like to remember this song.

"I'm Not Calling You A Liar", Florence + The Machine-With its refrain of "I love you so much, I'm gonna let you kill me", this song was always on if I wanted to stew in my adolescent angst. Through two breakups and three crushes, it was a constant-I'm sure it still will be.

"Show People", Curtains-I select this to represent every song ever sung in a BL Blackfriars production. Take one look at the lyrics and you'll know why, if you don't already.

Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison-So what if you all hate it more than I hate the Tea Party? The fact is, the effort it took to put together the scrambled pieces of this book taught me to read critically, Morrison's striking poetry-prose hybrid made a lasting imprint on my brain, and the theme of sifting through the past in order to determine one's future is one that moves me deeply, because it's at the heart of art itself.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Harold Kushner-I'll be frank. It made me believe in God.

"Hand in My Pocket"/"Totally Fucked"/"Girl"/"Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me"-Friendship songs. You know who you are.

"Rolling in the Deep", Adele-Yeah, yeah, here it is. My favorite song, probably. Certainly my favorite song of the last 20 years. I've danced to it in dressing rooms, sung to it in my car, drooled over its sheer brilliance with like-minded friends. We all have that song that comes to define the four years of triumph and terror known as high school; this is mine.

Touch of Evil will always be the last film I reviewed in high school.

"Someone Like You" by Adele and "Emily" by Barbra Streisand will always be the last songs I listened to as an everyday high-schooler.

and, finally,

"My Shining Hour", Barbra Streisand-Confession: I have listened to this song before every "last" this year--last rehearsal,last performance, last choir concert, even last retreat. Performed as the closing number during her 2006 tour, this song was culled from a hard-to-find Astaire gem, The Sky's the Limit. The melody always moved me to tears, but this year, the words really kicked in. The chorus is some kind of lyrical miracle; part lament, part celebration, part ode, part benediction, and all sheer beauty. And with that chorus, I close this post, cement my undying love for all those that have changed my life and made me a happier, more confident person this past 18 years, and write my final blog of my secondary school career;

This will be my shining hour
Calm and happy and bright
In my dreams your face will flower
Through the darkness of the night

Like the lights of home before me
Or an angel watching o'er me
This will be my shining hour
Till I’m with you again.

On Osama

This is not going to take any real form. This is not going to be eloquent. I'm not source-searching, so it may not even be accurate. Osama Bin Laden is dead; what does this mean?

In terms of the actual War on Terror, probably not that much. This killing is the martial equivalent of pulling up one weed and finding a hundred more. But if it is literally insignificant, the figurative implications are huge.

To kill Bin Laden, in a way, is to kill 9/11. He was not and is not responsible for all terrorism, but, as the single most important human factor in the destruction of the World Trade Center, he is forever the human face of the attacks. Killing his aids, his friends, his enablers was not satisfactory; it would be like killing a thousand Nazis and never finding Hitler's body. Like Hitler, like Mussolini, Bin Laden's name and face are inexorably linked to some of the world's darkest days--that's why, even now that he's gone, pictures of his face still exude a potent emotional charge. Bin Laden set the world as we know it in motion--the ramped-up patriotism, the stringent security, the virulent racism. He was a walking repository of all our country's ills, and as long as he eluded us, our sense of closure would elude us. The Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Department would always be mentioned with a sense of futility-after all, they were created to hunt down this man, and if we never found him, what was their purpose, other than to ceaselessly impinge on our former rights? The extremities of war now seem, if not justified, at least vaguely rational; history will look a little more fondly upon the Bush and Obama administrations now, and rightly so.

Thought; If we put up another "Mission: Accomplished" sign this minute, would the public react favorably? Was Osama's death our mission? (Let's be honest, we never wanted the man captured alive.) If so, what has it accomplished? At best, his killing will hammer home the continued strength of our forces, and knock those who dutifully deified him off their pedestals. At worst, it will trigger retaliatory action. The reality will most likely be somewhere in between.

There is one last significant point to make. Unlike Hitler and Hussein, the world's other two tyrants, Bin Laden was shot to death in a battle with American forces. The symbolism is obvious but striking; Bin Laden did not kill himself. He was not hung in the corner of some godforsaken shack. He was vanquished by Americans, and thus by America. It's not the lasting peace we need, but its the justice, or at least the equilibrium, we want.

In the days to come, we will undoubtedly need the news, need reality, need to understand whatever events unfold so rapidly in front of us. But we will also need escape. We will need enlightenment. We will need beauty. We will need the movies.

Much love,

Mason

Some Kind of A Man

TOUCH OF EVIL

It is a thousand things; a flawed masterpiece, a marvel of analog technical achievement, a tale of impotence both sexual and psychological, an imbalanced but indispensable piece of social commentary , and a mournful howl from a cinematic demi-God dethroned. However, for me at least, one of Touch of Evil's most important characteristics is that it is basically a re-hash of The Third Man, re-done and done correctly.

Both films feature deeply moral, self-righteous, slightly naive heroes who cross paths with publicly patriotic but privately corrupt men (played in both cases by Orson Welles) and as a result have their faith in their country, and by extension the world, shattered. I know, I know, The Third Man has long been considered one of the best films of all time, while Touch of Evil is often dismissed as an smartly directed, enjoyably garish piece of scuzzy drive-in noir. This never-ending love affair with The Third Man remains to me one of the most mysterious aspects of film-critic psychology; here is a film that desperately wants us to feel its existential fever in our bones, but that gives us a villain too cracklingly charismatic to really hate, a hero too bluntly inept to really pity, and a visual style that doesn't assist with the conveyance of mood, but instead replaces mood. It wants to take us into the depths of the human condition without getting its hands dirty; it over-aestheticizes its story and thus de-claws it.

Nine years later, Welles went behind the camera and basically put the same story up on the screen again, and what an improvement it is; Touch of Evil is a grungy, gutsy journey into the heart of darkness, but it's also a fiendishly entertaining potboiler. What makes the movie work is its lack of vanity; the characters are allowed to sweat and spit and smoke and drink, and the border town where they do all these things is presented pitilessly, as a hot, venal hive of sexual confusion and petty grievances. Here, two matinee ideals (Charlton Heston and Welles himself) team up to de-glamorize the kind of movies that made them famous, to strip them of excess idealism and bring the genre picture into the turned-on, pissed-off sixties. Old Hollywood dies here.

-----

The opening shot is perhaps the most famous in movies, so much so that those who've never even seen a Welles picture can identify it. We start off with a quick glimpse of a bomb being placed in a car. The trunk shuts, a clueless couple enters the vehicle, and they start off down this border town's Main Street. As we follow the car, we're introduced to the townspeople, the cops, and our two main characters: Vargas (Heston), a Mexican cop crossing over into the US to honeymoon with his American bride, Susan (Janet Leigh). It is only when the car explodes and Vargas dashes over to the scene of the crime that we realize this entire prologue has been one four-minute unbroken take. In the simplest terms, the picture is about this explosion, its aftermath, Vargas's quest to solve it, and the devastating consequences of his curiosity. Quinlan, a local celebrity cop (Welles) is put on the case; his unsound methods send Vargas searching for departmental corruption, much to the chagrin of Quinlan's loyal Sergeant Menzies (Joseph Calleia). Meanwhile, Susan checks into the local motel, and is subjected to a real night from hell, culminating in a drug-aided assault that ties all the divergent subplots together and sends the picture racing toward its increasingly inevitable conclusion.

A pulpy plot, yes but, to borrow a phrase from Pauline Kael, "kitsch redeemed" was Welles' speciality. After all, the downfall of Charlie Kane was melodrama to the bone until Welles saw the Shakespearean sadness at its heart; The Magnificent Ambersons would be a stew of cliche had he not spiced it up with operatic grandeur. And Touch of Evil would be a long-discarded hunk of scratched celluloid were it not for Welles's bleak worldview, as well as his encyclopedic knowledge of and general disregard for genre conventions.

This is noir informed by noir, with characters in a studio flick make use their experience viewing similar studio flicks. Their recognition of cinematic stereotypes isn't the driving force behind their actions-it's just one of the countless factors that determine their attitudes and actions-racial prejudices, unfounded phobias, past experiences, etc, etc. Take for example Susan's run-in with local kingpin Grandi (Arif Tamarik) and his lackeys. They don't strike out at the newlywed, though that comes soon enough. They simply circle her like an incensed snake, dropping little insults and vague threats. She'll have none of it.

"You know what's wrong with you?", she retorts, "You've seen too many gangster movies."

Less than a decade earlier, a line like this would've been unthinkable. But the deluge of crime and noir pictures released in the late 40's and early 50's (High Sierra, White Heat, Key Largo) meant that such trash talk was now common knowledge. These men can't intimidate Susan--she's seen it all on the big screen. By referencing pre-existing knowledge of genre, and thus indirectly alluding to individual films, Touch of Evil paved the way for the meta-movie--pictures like Pulp Fiction that use cinematic cross-referencing to deepen their characters, or the Scream series (side note: since the new one is legally titled Scre4m, do I call it "Scream 4" or "Scree-four-MMMM"?), where literally the entire plot is driven by the plots of previous horror movies.

It's not just the characters movie know-how that makes this one interesting-it's Welles's too. There's a standard-issue cop drama scene where a potential perp is interrogated, and, when things don't go well, he gets the bloody bejesus beaten out of him by a livid lawman. This scene has been done to death, portrayed in every way, shape, and form allowed by the ratings system. Welles', having made as well as seen his share of thrillers, knows this, and thus shows us what we haven't scene-the reactions of the other people in the room. We merely hear the noises from the thrashing (which, incidentally, allows us to visualize far more with our rampant imaginations than Hays Code Hollywood would've ever flat-out shown), and shift our gaze to men who have seen this hundred times before, but still flinch a little as if it were their first day on the job. The words are the same, but the illustrations have changed.

---

One word comes to mind when I think of this film; rot. Even fifty some-odd years later, I can think of few movies as explicit and effective in their portrayal of blight and corruption. Everything in this movie is decaying; the city streets, the country roads, the bars and alleys and windows and walls. The abstract, too--Susan's innocence, Vargas's naivete, and, hell even moral decay itself decays, as the local gangsters shed all traces of the honor-among-thieves philosophy and resort to half-baked drug runs and itchy-trigger-finger revenge schemes.

But no one is falling apart quite like Hank Quinlan. The local emblem of justice and vigilance, he so fears Vargas's campaign against him that his efforts to thwart it turn him into the very kind of monster he once prided himself on bringing to justice. By the end of the film, he's a fallen idol-but, then again, by this point in his career, so was the actor who played him. Welles was weighed down by his constant battles with his women, his studio, and his audience (his adaptation of Camus' The Stranger so infuriated some moviegoers that they hung him in effigy after they saw the picture). His endless struggles to fulfill his often difficult vision had stripped him of his pretty-boy looks, leaving him a moribund mass of flesh and bone and broken dreams. Perhaps that's what drove him to turn a piece of pulp fiction into a scathing meditation on the dissolution of all things bright and beautiful. It is Welles' understanding of Quinlan that makes his performance resonate, and lifts the movie from good to great. Watch the scene where a cheap hood tricks him into breaking his teetotal streak. As he contemplates the empty glass in front of him, his stubble-choked jaw sinks, his mouth twitches, his eyes are filled with years of dammed-up misery and self-loathing--this is powerful stuff, stuff that haunts your dreams. Welles' sadness becomes Quinlan's sadness becomes our sadness--and, in a scene all the more heartbreaking because it allows him a brief moment of satisfaction, his happiness becomes our happiness as he stands by an old pianola and reminisces with and old flame (Marlene Dietrich, of all people). Hank Quinlan is one of the most endlessly fascinating characters in the movies.

This leads me to the film's one major flaw; while Welles' clearly made it because he was drawn to the Quinlan character, the novel open which it is based, Badge of Evil, puts Heston's Vargas at the center of the action. Every character in the piece is more interesting than Vargas. To wit; Susan is an unusually tough broad. Grandi is evil but almost comically inept in the ways he implements his evil plans--until at last one is successful, with lethal results. And Menzies, while at first just a typical cop-with-a-conscience, ultimately becomes up the picture's only paragon of goodness and redemptive possibility, an almost Christ-like figure. How can a typical tough-guy detective stack up against that roster?! Nonetheless, I don't doubt Heston and Welles could've come up with something. But Welles' the actor was so busy losing himself in a part that was clearly an object of obsession that he didn't have much energy to devote to coaching his lead. As such, we're fully conscious of the difference between Vargas and the more dynamic supporting characters everytime Heston comes onscreen. He was a good actor, but not good enough to compensate for the fact that there's a great big black hole where a 3-D character should've been. Forget the fact that he doesn't look Hispanic--there are times in this one where he doesn't even look human.

But, as with works by everyone from John Milton to Peter Jackson, this is a creation of such unwieldy ambition that we forgive the flawed whole because so many of the parts are staggeringly successful. There is a weak lead performance. But there is solid ensemble work. There is a setting that enters the geography of our psyche as few movie towns really do. There is technical mastery that manifests itself in the smaller moments as well as the big action setpieces-that final chase, with Vargas trapped in the middle of an out-of-control oil derrick, is a doozy. There is a score by Henry Mancini that is one of my all-time favorites. There is a healthy dose of gallows humour. There are deep moral inquiries made without pretension or excessive deep-dish philosophizing. And, of course, there is Hank Quinlan. Marlene Dietrich speaks the final line, which serves as both an insult and a compliment to him; "He was some kind of a man." Yes, and because of him, this is some kind of a movie.

Welles in his youth.

Nota bene: Whether or not this is exactly what Welles' wanted us to see, we'll never know-Hollywood butchered his original cut. Luckily, he left a lengthy pamphlet detailing how one would go about reconstructing his damaged masterpiece, and, with an army of film restorers, critic Jonathan Rosenbaum spent years and years making sure his instruction were followed almost to the letter. Thus, a filmic phoenix, risen from the ashes. And they say critics are good for nothing!