Through a Screen Darkly - Bonus Chapter - The Whole Wide World
[A consideration of Crash, Gosford Park, and Yi-Yi]
- Eight-year-old Yang-Yang, in the film Yi Yi (A One and a Two)
- U2, "When I Look at the World"
A Crash-Course in Cultural Prejudice
When writer-director Paul Haggis's film Crash won Best Picture at the 75th Academy Awards in 2006, some dismissed the event as a disgrace. They claimed that Hollywood was just too afraid to hand the award to Ang Lee's movie about homosexuality and prejudice, Brokeback Mountain.
Homosexuality has become such a headline-grabbing issue in our society that anything less than a dramatic victory for Brokeback Mountain was sure to be interpreted by many as a failure of compassion and conviction.
But I sincerely doubt that Crash won the big award because Hollywood liberals are liberal enough or audacious enough. Crash meant a great deal to a lot of moviegoers. The movie explores the many and varied forms of racism and prejudice thoroughly, and that probably inspired many to celebrate Haggis's vision.
And Crash does more than that. It also addresses the contemporary reality that even as we develop more and more ways to stay in touch, we are distancing ourselves from one another.
In a capitalist society, people indulge their personal freedoms in the pursuit of happiness, and become focused on consumption rather than communication. They install guards to filter out people they'd rather not engage. Their talk turns cheaper, quicker, more efficient, and less communicative. They buy things that they think will earn them status, respect, and personal advantages. When this doesn't satisfy them, they need someone to blame, so they reach for the most available targets - other kinds of people.
Prejudice spreads like a virus in Crash, so that all of Los Angeles seems to be infected with it. Everyone's miserable, and any exchange can transform people into raving bigots. It feels like watching 28 Days Later, the zombie-movie in which people turned ravenous and wrathful due to a highly contagious virus.
Raw with post-9/11 rage, a gun store owner judges a customer based on his appearance. An African American's resentment towards prejudice leads him to behavior that reinforces negative stereotypes - holding up two white folks and stealing their car. A wealthy Caucasian woman distrusts her Hispanic handyman. A white cop uses his status to take humiliate an African American man by abusing his wife during a traffic stop.
In each case, Haggis makes one person out to be a monster, and then, later, he surprises us by attempting to humanize them with revelations that are designed to challenge our assumptions.
Haggis had won the previous year as well, for writing Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby, which focused on three complex characters and challenging ethical dilemmas. Haggis is a writer preoccupied with ethics, portraying our day-to-day interactions as complicated and taxing. Both films exhaust the viewer. But Crash is doubly exhausting, simply because of its large host of characters.
You could call it a movie with a "God's-eye" view. We move through a vast, complex community, listening in on the private lives of numerous individuals in strikingly different circumstances. We get the whole picture, and everyone gets a fair treatment.
It's a method of moviemaking that few directors can pull off. Some who try only end up creating an overstuffed drama, in which many stories play out shallowly, without giving us enough time to grow attached to the characters.
But when this "God's-eye" method works, it can elevate cinema to another level, reminding us that our choices have far-reaching influence on the lives of others, and no one is too small to make a significant difference.
Further, in films that allow us to observe these complicated webs of relationships, the storyteller has a chance to encourage compassion for a wide variety of people. In order to do that, he must efficiently develop three-dimensional characters and avoid turning anyone into a scapegoat.
Even though he won the Oscar, director Sam Mendes and writer Alan Bell failed with American Beauty. They gave us many characters and multiple threads of story, but they played their game unfairly, excusing one incredibly smug and rebellious hero, while painting a gross caricature of a conservative Republican to be a target of our contempt.
Haggis succeeds somewhat with Crash. He avoids making a scapegoat of anyone in particular. We see evidence of discrimination all the time, recognizing it in certain forms that frequent news headlines. Under Haggis's microscope, the tumors of this cancer show up in people of all races, economic strata, and occupations, even in everyday business transactions. Many viewers will come away with a greater awareness of racism's complexity and the folly of believing that the government or the cops can fix the problem.
But In my opinion, Haggis's stories are too simplistic. Beyond their rage and their problems at home, his characters don't come to life in convincing ways. Their stories seem calculated to pile irony upon irony, shocking reversal upon shocking reversal, and the ideas in the film are anything but subtle. Insights are spelled out for us: "In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass," muses Graham (Don Cheadle) in the opening scene. Lines like that go too far into telling, leaving less and less for us to think about on our own.
Further, nothing in the film suggests that we have anything more than ourselves as resources to amend the situation.
Similarly, Lawrence Kasdan found some profound moments in the sprawling drama Grand Canyon. But his characters were prone to preachy, obvious dialogue and moments of sentiment that could only take place in a Hollywood movie. 13 Conversations about One Thing is a rewarding collection of short narratives characterized by strong performances and meditative examinations of ordinary relationships and ethical challenges. But, like Crash, the film was so burdened with purpose that it staggered under the weight of its own solemn purpose.
Other directors have demonstrated more restraint, letting us discover for ourselves what the story was about. And they've woven in enough humor and detail to make us believe in the world they bring to life.
I've discussed my favorite "God's-eye view" movie, Code Unknown, elsewhere in this book. Here are two more films that offer profound journeys that encompass many different life experiences. As they introducing myriad characters for us to compare and contrast, they both give us profound reminders that small moments of love and grace can send shock waves through a whole community.
Playing in Gosford Park
Robert Altman, who died in late 2006, may be the most celebrated director of "God's-eye" films. Most of his movies move us through a large community of characters. And he gave his actors a great deal of freedom to improvise and surprise him with their characters' personalities. In doing so, he discovered ways to surprise us with inspired moments and unexpected avenues of connection between characters.
His maverick style has earned praise, and many credit him as a master of deconstructing conventional stories. But close examination of his whole repertoire reveals that his strongest films (arguably Nashville, The Player, Gosford Park, Short Cuts) are those in which the improvisation and experimentation wind like ivy around a iron frame, a concealed narrative so strong that even if his characters dance around it, you can see its outline, and that outline brings coherence and focus to a wild and glorious display.
Those that lack a strong central story (Ready to Wear, Dr. T and the Women, Cookie's Fortune, A Prairie Home Companion) are still entertaining and comprised of memorable moments, but they may not be as rewarding when you revisit them.
2001's Gosford Park is a classic period piece and one of Altman's masterpieces. It guides us through a complicated, bygone world - a marvelous, labyrinthine, 1930s manor in the English countryside, the camera gliding ghost-like from room to room with such elaborate grace that it can make you gasp. And yet, it feels as though we're observing this controlled chaos through tinted glass. The sensation is akin to looking at old oil paintings in a dark room. Altman paints with a palette of dark brown and gold, similar to Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather films; the scenes resonate with the integrity of antique hardwood furniture, lacking the plastic sheen of contemporary films.
Screenwriter Julian Fellowes knows this world upstairs and downstairs. As he reveals in his enthralling DVD commentary, he grew up in it. Every word of his script contributes to a complex weave of storytelling that teaches us volumes about the class and culture of the period.
It sounds, in sketchy summary, like an Agatha Christie mystery, or a party game like Clue. Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon), a wealthy aristrocrat, finds his manor filled with family and friends for a weekend of socializing and not-so-concealed verbal sparring.
His imperious wife, Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas), is a vain and cruel woman who takes the credit for the phenomenal efforts put forth by her head cook Mrs. Croft (Eileen Atkins) and chief housekeeper Mrs. Wilson (Helen Mirren).
Those who hope to gain from his fortune include Constance (Harry Potter's Maggie Smith), a pompous countess who engages in Herculean feats of condescension and snobbery. She seems to live for the sole purpose of nonchalantly gouging those about her with searing prejudice and contempt. In private, she dazzles her longsuffering maid, meek and mild young Mary Maceachran (Kelly MacDonald), with stories of family scandal. Maggie Smith has always been a fantastic actress, but here she finds a role to match the brilliance of her beloved turn as Charlotte in A Room with a View.
The film's most hilarious moment comes when Constance cannot contain her glee over another's humiliation.
Sylvia's two sisters (Geraldine Somerville, Natasha Wightman) bring their husbands (Charles Dance and Tom Hollander), who are either sullenly obedient or hopeful to gain from the gathering. Sir William and Sylvia's son Freddie Nesbitt has a sweet but vulnerable wife Mabel (Claudie Blakley) who is doomed to suffer because she's upstairs but she can't afford her own maid. Sir William and Sylvia's daughter Isobel (Camilla Rutherford) has a face smudged with makeup and a life smudged with trouble. In fact, it's clear that Sir William and Sylvia's grown children have inherited their capacity for sexual recklessness.
Making this remarkable, miserable lot even more miserable are three "ugly American" houseguests - a famous American actor of the period Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam) who makes his living by pretending to be British; a homosexual Hollywood film producer (Bob Balaban) whose brazen arrogance and ignorance is a hoot; and his vain "assistant" (Ryan Phillipe). These three bring their own distinctly American poison to the punch, the producer asking Norvello, "How do you put up with these people?''
The story emphasizes that they're all addicted to William's money, but it's certainly not making them happy. The aristocrats are at least as unhappy as the servants, in spite of their excessive resources. And whenever weakness is exposed or a formality botched, it's blood in the water, and teeth flash in the dim lamplight.
The servants live in a shadowy world beneath the house, bustling about to meet the preposterous needs of their "superiors," and getting very little thanks for it. ''I'm the perfect servant," one of them boasts. "I have no life.'' They find their pleasures in fleeting escapes, sexual liaisons, and moments when they can pause and daydream while music from the upper levels filters through almost-closed doors and down the dusty stairwells. One moment like this achieves a painterly quality, as the faint light falls upon one servant's face who seems caught up in a sort of religious ecstasy.
Each and every character is interesting enough to carry a story all their own. Among the servants, we wouldn't think twice if the story suddenly focused on Jennings the head manservant (Alan Bates), George the footman (Richard E. Grant), or the valets (Derek Jacobi, Clive Owen).
But ultimately, it is Mary, Constance's maid, whose childlike eyes give us the fullest perspective on these proceedings. As the outsider, she wins our sympathy, responding with the quiet bewilderment and horror that we feel as we watch this circus of cruel and unusual punishments. Since Constance is versed only in manners and how to break them, it is up to another housemaid, the thick-skinned but tender-hearted Elsie (Emily Watson), to teach her. And the more we attend to Elsie's teaching, the more we see that her heart is a large and battlescarred territory. By the end of the film, while we see through Mary's eyes, it is Elsie whose patience breaks our heart.
You'll note I didn't even get to Dorothy, whose bravery I mentioned in Chapter Six. This place is full of characters capable of demonstrating both virtue and venom. What we come away understanding is that the world is not a place of good folks and bad folks, but of currents of love and hate, through which we clumsily splash. Those seeking their own advantage turns into beasts. Those who muster the strength to show mercy and care give up their worldly advantage and become fools... saints.
We also learn that even the stoniest hearts might conceal deep, deep love. In fact, sometimes that tough exterior was formed out of necessity, to protect one's broken heart from the harsh conditions outside. At the conclusion of the film, when the mystery is finally solved - don't worry, the solution is too complex for me to spoil - it doesn't just resolve the story, but breaks open a concealed drama that many won't see coming.
It's the kind of conclusion that demands we revisit the film a second time, to observe theses events with the benefit of the secrets we have learned. That second viewing, and a third, becomes a process of peeling back one layer after another, until we see just how lost and lovely these human beings truly are.
The film has been condemned by some Christians because it ends on a cynical note, as the young innocent takes her first step toward a life of moral compromise and situational ethics. But what burns brighter and brighter with each viewing is the beauty of those moments when someone sticks to their conviction and acts out of selfless love, no matter what the consequences. Love is a costly choice, but it cuts through the class barriers, the divisions between servant and master, man and woman, contemptuous elders and disillusioned youngsters.
A second viewing also helps us catch the conversations, and a dozen other storylines, that we missed the first time - Gosford Park demands a good sound system because all of the characters seem to be talking at once. There are so many people dancing through these corridors that it's just a matter of time before a bunch of them collide and go crashing from the lavish bedrooms to the mouse droppings in the pantry. And when the proud fall, and the humble rise, it's a beautiful thing to behold.
Yi Yi Shows Us the Backs of Our Heads
Grandma's in a coma.
Mom's having a mid-life crisis.
Dad's pondering the possibility of an affair, even as his co-workers coax him toward a questionable business deal.
Big sister is thinking about sleeping with her best-friend's boyfriend.
What's an eight-year-old boy to do?
The Jian family form a small solar system in the vast galaxy of lives in director Edward Yang's Taipei drama Yi-Yi (A One and a Two). The film, which won Yang a best director award at Cannes, Best Foreign Film of 2000 by the New York Critics Circle, and Best Film by the National Society of Film Critics, is still relatively unknown to the average American moviegoer. And, year after year, Hollywood celebrates family dramas that pale by comparison to this rich, mysterious, funny, heartbreaking web of stories.
Each character in the film plays their own sad, searching solo. Perhaps that is why Yang named it Yi Yi, which translates as "one one." Even when these characters pair up, they remain solitary souls in need of intimacy and understanding. Each couple plays a countermelody to the other, achieving exquisite moments of dissonance and harmony across generations. Together, they're as disconnected as their sour-faced wedding and funeral photographs imply. And yet, when you think back on them, these varying melodies seem to fuse into a simultaneous, harmonious roar.
The Jian family lives, like the characters in Kieslowski's Decalogue, in a massive high-rise full of isolated lives, vacuum-sealed troubles. Over the course of the film, we'll watch them drawn toward others' lives in hopes of making meaningful connections. But again and again, this will expose their betrayals and neglect of the relationships they already have.
And, once again, the one who can lead them is a child.
* * *
Yang-Yang, the eight-year old, is played by Jonathan Chang in one of the most charming performances by a child I have ever seen. Yang-Yang wanders through the family dramas wide-eyed. His endearing curiosity sets him part from everyone else. Sitting quietly in the car with his father, he's like Damiel the angel in Wings of Desire, consumed by the mystery of his existence. In great distress, he quietly asks his father, "How can I know what you see?" and there is such innocence, longing, and humility in the question that it breaks your heart.
While everyone is intensely focused upon their own problems and desires, he sees a larger picture, and becomes intrigued by the pieces that others don't see. Given a camera, he starts taking odd, seemingly arbitrary photographs, claiming that he's shooting "mosquitos." This evolves into a preoccupation with photographing the backs of people's heads - the parts of their world that they never see, that they forget, that they might never know is there if someone else doesn't show them. Like many great artists, he's intent on one thing, but his pictures reveal more than he knows.
Yang-Yang's curiosity is so healthy, it seems nonsensical and even threatening to those who are proud and self-absorbed. When the schoolteacher discovers Yang-Yang's remarkable photographs, he rashly condemns them as useless and ridicules the boy.
And thus, the film's director becomes, like little Yang-Yang, someone who shows us what no one else can see. Each scene is like another snapshot of people caught in revealing behavior.
There are many memorably poetic images. But once in a while, an artist happens upon a moment he couldn't have choreographed, and you wonder just who he might have inadvertently gained as a collaborator.
One of these moments in Yi-Yi stands out to me. Yang-Yang's mother, the daughter of the comatose grandmother, Min-Min, is a career woman who suffers a breakdown at work - part mid-life crisis, part spiritual despair. She stands at the window of an office in a high tower at night, and she turns out the light so she can stare into the vast constellations of moving cars on the interweaving network of freeways. We can see her silhouetted in the window, and the river of tiny lights winds through her body, a pulsing red light of an emergency vehicle throbbing where her heart should be - one of those happy accidents that seem to bless artists of superior vision. It's a moment of such potent poetry that it can give you chills when you see it. (The moment is echoed in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation to similar effect.)
Thus, the call of the film is specifically this - look closer. Look deeper. Do not turn away from what has been given to you and decide that it is insufficient or wrong. Be patient. Turn it in your hands and consider it from other angles. Look at things through different eyes. While out on their date, Ting-Ting listens adoringly to her boyfriend, who is enthusiastic about the power of cinema. "Movies are lifelike," he explains. "That is why we like them." And he goes on to describe that movies compress life into such fierce, concentrated revelation that we walk away having lived life more than once.
And Yi-Yi proves it, offering us many lives, and a world of truth and discovery. It overwhelms me.
The more you look, the more sadness you discover, and the more possibility for growth you find. These characters seem compelled to pursue happiness along the wrong paths. Desiring pleasures that seem "even better than the real thing," they slide down the surface of things and fail to ever make a connection.
* * *
The central event of Yi Yi is the collapse of Yang-Yang's grandmother into a coma on the night of his uncle's wedding. The old woman is deeply distressed by the wedding, since the groom, Ah-Di (Hsi-Sheng Chen), is marrying a woman he has already made pregnant. In her perspective, this is a humiliation to the family. (It's also a humiliation to Ah-Di's ex, who shows up to the wedding drunk and furious.)
Thus, the doctor orders the Jians to take turns talking to the comatose woman in order to try and lure her back to the land of the living. Their obligatory monologues quickly turn from uncomfortable rambling to heartfelt confessions that reveal what they've been hiding from everyone else.
It's remarkable just how powerfully spiritual the experience is, even though few of the characters address spiritual matters.
One by one, they begin their vigils. Each comforter talks to her in soul-searching confessions and questions. She becomes the common element, the unifier, like the song in Magnolia, or the mysterious stranger in The Decalogue. In these scenes, it becomes clear that these people are normal, marvelous, broken individuals seeking forgiveness, wisdom, love, and grace. Grandmother just lies there, perhaps listening, perhaps absent . . . provoking in her visitors the same doubts that every honest man or woman encounters at some point during prayer.
Min-Min weeps to her husband, "I have nothing to say to Mother. I tell her the same things every day. I have so little. How can it be so little? I live a blank." N.J. observes that talking to a comatose person is not unlike prayer-you're not sure someone's listening, and you're not sure you mean what you say.
Ah-Di boasts in his financial success, but he eventually implodes into his heart's vacuous core. After celebrating his wedding in the opening scenes, he quickly finds himself in bed with his former lover, and there is no passion there either. He ends up watching pornography, and it's clear that he's done this a thousand times before - it has no more effect on him than an infomercial. In his irresponsibility and self-centeredness, he has let anything that could possibly be meaningful shrivel up into nothing. He's a dead soul.
Yang-Yang resists addressing his grandmother until the film's culminating moments, and then we wonder if he's been holding back because it has taken him days to find words that express the enormity of his pained questions.
It would take pages to chronicle all of the similar stories of unfulfillmed lives, weaving in and out. But it's most important to note the film's central character - N.J. (Nien-Jen Wu, a formidable filmmaker and screenwriter in his own right.)
N.J. is a businessman fighting to maintain his integrity in the midst of his coworkers' dishonest business practices, and wrestling with regrets about an old flame. And when Sherry (Ke Suyun), his former girlfriend, shows up from her married life in America, and berates him for having walked away from a potential rendezvous, the door swings wide open for him to have an affair. He hesitates on the threshold, and the whole movie seems to teeter on the brink of disaster.
At the same time, in a mirroring that resembles Krzysztof Kieslowski's technique for having one storyline mimic another, N.J.'s daughter Ting-Ting opens the door to a sexual liaison with her best friend's boyfriend. For weeks, her loneliness has been accentuated by the way she's told to carry messages back and forth during a falling out between another couple. Eventually, while she's handing over folded messages, she's sending some messages of her own. This isn't motivated by wickedness and betrayal. It's an act of desperation and desire, a painful gesture that turns even more painful when you see what happens as a result of it.
Their pain is all the more palpable in contrast to the one spiritually enlightened character who walks into the fray.
* * *
N.J. works for a troubled computer company whose coworkers seem content to produce bad imitations of truly innovative programs. This doesn't sit well with N.J.'s conscience. He doesn't want to settle for a flashy imitation. He wants the real thing, and that goes for his life decisions as well.
Hope is personified by a most unlikely outsider - Mr. Ota (the great Issey Ogata, star of Tony Takitani), a successful game designer whom N.J. seeks to lure into a business agreement.
Like Yang-Yang, whose work is his play, whose play is his work, Ota does not distinguish between business and pleasure-he works as he lives, with passion, curiosity, and enthusiasm. While they're supposed to be discussing business, N.J. falls into a sort of jealous awe for Ota's way of seeing the world. Just as Yang-Yang wants to understand how his father sees the world, N.J. wants nothing more than to see how the world looks to an adult who walks through the world enthralled with a sort of childlike glee. They end up discussing life, the universe, and everything. N.J. envies Ota's joie de vivre and love of of art, which seems so impractical, so contrary to the rat race and family politics of N.J.'s existence.
Ota turns out to be the film's most surprising and fascinating character, a Japanese businessman more interested in integrity than business. Like Peter Falk guiding the detached Damiel into renewed wonder, Ota saves N.J. from his malaise and reminds him of the meaning of life. He's like the the ghost of Christmas past, present, and future... revealing what could have happened, what's missing, what yet might be, merely by manifesting all that is missing. And while Ota's weakness is a "seize the day" philosophy that would coax N.J. to indulge in an extramarital affair, N.J.'s hunger for authenticity rather than cheap imitation may be what saves him in the end.
In one moment, Mr. Ota stands in the light of a window and suddenly reveals an affinity with birds that makes me think of St. Francis of Assissi, a saint whose kinship with creation set him apart as an example to us all.
* * *
Some Christian viewers will probably steer clear of Yi Yi if they hear that one of the characters turns to a Buddhist guru for spiritual guidance, or that there is a suggestion of a character's appearance from beyond the grave.
But these inclusions make sense, considering Yang's cultural background, and we can see in them flickers of the truth - that we can restore our perspective by getting away from the busyness of our lives and meditating, just as Christ did; and that even when our loved ones have passed from this life, their lives continue to influence our own.
Furthermore, it is worth noting that Min-Min's time on the mountain with the guru does not ultimately satisfy her. She is looking for satisfaction from a religious teacher, while she misses out on the love available to her in her own home.
But the thing that impresses me most about Yang's storytelling is his relentless compassion for these characters. He looks so intently at each of them that we're never given a scapegoat. No one can be held primarily responsible for the troubles in this world. They're all guilty, and they're all capable of offering grace. Whether he knows it or not, this perspective is powerfully "Christian" in nature.
And he concludes allowing one of these characters to call out in a lament for all that is broken, in hopes that someone is listening beyond the grave, voicing answering that call from beyond the grave. We long for connection, and none of the connections we find on this earth is enough to satisfy. What are we longing for?
* * *
When such a small family can reveal to us a web of stories this complex, this revealing, it's almost too much for a viewer to take in.
We feel the weight of the burdens that the children carry, so we want to shout at the screen when Min-Min returns home and asks her husband about the kids. He replies, "Nothing's changed here. The kids are both fine." Are these parents blind?
It's enough to make us wonder what the world must look like to its creator, who sees us all - the pieces we understand, the things we choose to deny, and the pieces we miss entirely. No wonder his heart breaks. How vast his love must be, to commit himself to us in spite of so much blindness and foolishness.
It is nothing short of wondrous to me that I would come to encounter God's view of the world so profoundly through the work of a non-Christian artist. Jonathan Rosenbaum compares Yang's work to his favorite artists. And he says, "[Those great artists would] likely recognize a filmmaker who thinks that the highest ambition he can aspire to is to be absolutely clear-eyed about the people he puts in front of his camera, and still love them."
What could be more "Christian" than that - learning to intimately love everyone we can see?
I'm hearing from other cinephiles that Yang's previous film, A Brighter Summer Day, might be even better. I can't wait to see it.