- Until the Light Takes Us (2008) - C
- Directed by Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell
- Featuring Varg Vikernes, Fenriz, Hellhammer
- Lone Star (1996) - C-
- Directed by John Sayles
- Starring Elizabeth Pena, Chris Cooper, Kris Kristofferson
- Gosford Park (2001) - B+
- Directed by Robert Altman
- Starring Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Clive Owen, Helen Mirren
The Town That Was (2007)
Directed by Chris Perkel and Georgie Roland
Featuring John Lokitis, Todd Domboski, David DeKok
The Town That Was is a documentary that looks at the nearly uninhabited borough of Centralia, Pennsylvania, located in the east-central portion of the state. Centralia, once an active mining town with thousands of residents, became a ghost town after a mine fire started underneath its surface and quickly spread out of control in the early 60s. The fire could not be contained (and actually continues to burn today), and various health risks to residents, such as sinkholes and noxious gases, caused most of the populace to move away by the early 1980s.
The film states the facts of what happened to cause the town’s demise and talking heads are used to articulate the feelings of the townspeople on having to leave Centralia. The Town That Was does well to present the history of the town in a humanistic way. Rather than present Centralia as an oddity, the filmmakers do well to show that it was once a vibrant community with real people in it. The use of old video footage of town parades and picnics is well used in stark contrast to the nearly empty place Centralia is today.
The town and its peculiar situation makes the work of the directors much easier. The imagery is inherently eerie and off-putting. We see the few remaining homes of people too old or too stubborn to leave; the local cemetery; a solitary bench with stencil letters reading “Centralia, PA”. In the cemetery, former residents, who loved the town and called it home and died in some cases long before the fire started, are now one of the only markers that indicate there was even a town there to begin with.
A few former town dignitaries and residents are spoken with, but Centralia is largely represented by John Lokitis, a thirty-something man who still lives in one of the town’s few remaining homes as one of its remaining people. Lokitis refused to abandon Centralia, even though the majority of residents fled while he was still a child. In the film, he laments that everyone moved away and claims that the state government overstated the health risks involved with staying in Centralia. He continues to mow the town’s lawns and put its Christmas lights up. He seems possessed.
The film detours and spends a lot of time looking at the plight of Centralia through Lokitis’ eyes. He’s fascinating. He’s a dopey, single, still-young guy who for some unknown reason cares so much about preserving the town’s legacy in any way he can. He continues living there even after his parents and family have left, and he seems to hold genuine scorn for the people who chose to accept a government buyout of their properties after the town was declared unlivable. He is portrayed as a hopelessly unflappable champion of a town destroyed and forgotten, and the film rightfully allows us to decide whether he’s noble or foolish.
The Town That Was has a runtime of seventy minutes, barely qualifying it as a movie. The filmmakers have an annoying habit of holding the camera on a subject for a few seconds after they’ve stopped talking, as a clumsy way of trying to add gravity to whatever had been said. The film has stylistic and technical flaws, but it covers its subject matter both imaginatively and well. B.
(The Town That Was is available for free viewing on hulu.com.)
Inception (2010)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy
Otherworldly, mind-bending thrillers, by their very nature, ask viewers to take certain leaps of faith and suspend logic in particular instances. Depending on a variety of factors (the quality of the film and its acting, the egregiousness of the leap of faith in question) these suspensions of logic are either welcomed or laughed at, and they can either make a film like this or break it. Inception gambled, creating a film with a fantastical foundation that unfortunately tries to pile on too much mumbo-jumbo and quick-cut action, bogging the film down and making the whole exercise exponentially more confusing.
Before extrapolating on that, it must be said that Inception is an entertaining film. It is very inventive, both in terms of its plot and its special effects. It’s impeccably shot as well, with director Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Dark Knight) capably handling the difficult task of visually creating a dreamscape on film.
The premise of Inception is terrific. A team of skilled “extractors” (or dream-thieves) are tapped to plant an idea within the head of a target rather than extract information. Early scenes that discuss how the dream world works and how the dream areas are created are fascinating. It would take too long to relay the intricacies of how “inception” works, but for the most part, the first hour of the film lays out the rules and guidelines for the plot quite well.
The bulk of the film is spent following the planting of the idea in Robert Fischer’s head (Murphy), and that’s where things get tricky. New concepts, techniques, and procedures are brought up constantly, making it difficult to follow both what’s happening at that moment and how it figures into the timeline of the film as a whole. In order for the inception team to plant the idea into his mind, they have to go into a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream (seriously), with scenes occurring consecutively within different levels of the dream world. It sounds confusing because it is, and though when watching the film we receive sharp action scenes as distraction, it’s really difficult to pinpoint what’s happening, where it’s happening, and why.
The film’s final act, comprising roughly the last forty-five minutes, was particularly troublesome. Instead of a reasoned, understandable conclusion to the film, we’re treated to a maelstrom of action scenes set in different locales, pertaining to different aspects of the plot. Every shot within the last forty-five minutes is either an explosion, someone dodging gunfire, or a zany plot twist. What began as an inventive and interesting action-thriller goes full-tilt into craziness due to hyperactive imagination and a lack of patience. There is a brilliant film to be made with the jumbled pieces of Inception, but the way they were assembled makes it nothing more than an interesting, sleek, and ultimately empty action film. C+.
John Lacey
No comments:
Post a Comment