Book Review: Britton on Film

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I'm happy to be able to provide a link to downloadable version of a book review I wrote for CineAction; the book in question is the indispensable Britton on Film: The Complete Film Criticism of Andrew Britton, edited by Barry Keith Grant. Britton is one of my very favourite film critics, so it was a pleasure to be able to delve in detail into his work and argue its merits. Thanks to editor Richard Lippe for permission to reprint the article online.

Here's a brief extract to give a flavour of my approach:

Andrew Britton believed in setting out his stall. A merciless critic of hypocrisy and evasiveness in others, in his own work he sought always to declare his attitudes and assumptions as explicitly as possible, often opening articles with declarations of principle that served as landmarks for the field upon which battle was soon to commence. As he writes in ‘The Philosophy of the Pigeonhole: Wisconsin Formalism and the “Classical Style”’, “If readers do not know where the critic stands in relation to the work, they have no means of defining or assessing the critic’s judgments” (p. 125). In tribute to such candor, let us begin this review with the conclusion I hope will be reached by anyone upon closing this book: the marginalization of the work of Andrew Britton by the field of film studies must be regarded as nothing short of a scandal. This review will in large part attempt to argue why I consider such a conclusion unavoidable.

Originally published in CineAction no. 84, (2011), pp: 44-49.
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"For me, the root cause of this mindless selfishness is [...] a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society - people allowed to feel that the world owes them something, that their rights outweigh their responsibilities, and that their actions do not have consequences."

- David Cameron, 10/8/2011
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Notes on Empathy in the Quirky: Bunny and the Bull

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In his book Wes Anderson: Why His Movies Matter, Mark Browning objects to Anderson's supposed occasional shifts from 'ironic' detachment to moments of 'sincere', melodramatic engagement with characters' emotions:

It is very difficult to maintain a dominant tone of detached quirky irony and then expect audiences to engage emotionally with characters to the level where tears are expected. This kind of tonal seesaw does not really work. (62)

I remembered this passage whilst watching one of the first British films to be transparently influenced by what I've defined as the quirky sensibility of American indie cinema, Bunny and the Bull (2009). If Wes Anderson is guilty of mismanaging his tonal ironic detachment to the point of seriously endangering our ability to empathise with characters at moments of pain and suffering, then Bunny and the Bull should be convicted ten times over.

In my view, Anderson is on the whole extremely skillful in the way he envelops his entire films in largely the same melancholic, yet gently amused, tone. Comic moments tend always to still be slightly sad, sad moments still slightly comic. Even the funeral in Darjeeling Limited (2007) is dealt with using the director's trademark slow-motion-and-retro-song combination, which encourages us to reflect on the extent to which the film is in a significant sense performing this gesture of transcendence and seriousness. (I'd need more time to get across this completely convincingly, but allow me to take this point as read...)

Bunny and the Bull, by contrast, is a film which most certainly for the most part strives to "maintain a dominant tone of detached irony". Strongly cribbing from the quirky - and particularly Michel Gondry/Jared Hess - most of the film is told via a flashback that takes the form of highly stylized cut-out-cartoon locales and unreal landscapes. See, for instance, the restaurant near the opening:



There's nothing to say that, just because the places they inhabit are always patently artificial, we couldn't empathise with this film's characters - it could mobilise any number of conventions or devices to try to bring the viewer into a close empathetic relationship with its central figures. However, despite the seemingly clinically depressed nature of the movie's main character, Stephen, the film is determined always to undercut the integrity of its world and the feelings it potentially has at its disposal - often via either absurd surrealist humour that places us near the realm of Monty Python (see: Julian Barratt's dog-suckling cameo), or through bathetic bawdiness (at the moment when our hero finally goes to bed with the girl of his dreams, the camera pans away and we hear "Hmm, nice penis!"). Basically, this seems to be a film that is unconcerned with placing us into a relationship of empathy with its characters and reality - more Mighty Boosh than anything else.

And that would be fine. Except that, very close to the end, the film reaches the primal scene it's been hinting at throughout: Bunny's fateful encounter with a bull in the field. And at this moment, the film really wants us to feel something. The problem is that the trauma comes so suddenly, emerging unheralded from beneath the veneer of "detached irony", and doing so all but literally.

The sequence begins with us in the artificial, naively-rendered fantasy world that the majority of the film has taken place in, with Bunny on the field with the (at this point mechanical) bull...



...and Stephen watching from the wings by a nearby fence:



However, just when it seems that Bunny might have bested the beast, dark music begins. At this, we begin quickly intercutting shots of what we have till now seem only as a Mechano-like toy (on a patchwork rug) with a real-life bull (in a real-life field)...





As it begins to charge Bunny, this pattern continues - frantic cuts between the stop-motion animal and its real-life counterpart...





From the moment it makes contact with Bunny, we're exclusively in the 'real world' - a world we've never before seen in this film. Stephen scrambles terrified over the fence, pursued by a handheld camera (a further aesthetic signifier of 'real'), over to his fallen friend, who is now dead...





So, seemingly believing that - if it wants to elicit empathy from the viewer (which it quite clearly does) - it is necessary to strip away 'artifice' wholesale, the film at this moment transforms itself into an entirely different sort of aesthetic object than it has previously been. The result is a huge tonal lurch which the movie cannot handle, feeling entirely unearned - precisely the kind of "seesaw" effect Browning claims takes place in Anderson's films.

But no Anderson film attempts anything as clumsy as this. Indeed, Bunny and the Bull makes you realise quite how impeccably nuanced and coherent Anderson's approach tends to be, reminding us that the reason the quirky sensibility works (at least, when it does) is that it is concerned above all with tonal balance, not tonal shifts. While clearly a descendent of the sensibility, Bunny and the Bull doesn't have enough faith in this fundamental lesson of quirky cinema: empathy doesn't require a 'real', merely consistent relationships and attitudes towards the 'real'.
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V. F. Perkins on 'Inception'

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"‎ANATOMY OF A MURDER could run for another three hours after the end titles, cover another three years in the life of its hero, and we should still be no nearer the truth of the case. In LA NOTTE the ‘real ending’ is knowable, but has been withheld. The picture would need to cover at most another two or three hours in its protagonists’ lives in order to resolve the ambiguities of its last sequence. In Preminger’s movie the story ends with a major issue unresolved. In Antonioni’s the story is abandoned when it has served the director’s purpose."

- Film as Film (1972: 148)
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On the Feminism of Sucker Punch

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I have a new article over at Alternate Takes about the much maligned and misunderstood Sucker Punch. I think that there have been few more fascinating Hollywood blockbusters, so I was very pleased to be able to delve into this movie - both its strategies, and its reception. An extract from the piece:

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Sucker Punch seems to me to be one of the most widely misunderstood films of recent years. By this I don’t just mean that it’s underrated - though in my opinion it is also that. I mean that an alarming number of commentators (i.e.: almost all) somehow seem to have failed to grasp its basic aims, and thus haven’t been able to assess it appropriately.

Other than the many complaints about the lack of narrative tension and rounded characters (neither of which, as I suggested in my short review, need necessarily be seen as significant problems), the main objections to the film have, of course, tended to be made on the grounds of its sexual politics. I want to address this matter head-on, looking at some recurring complaints about the movie’s approach to gender, and argue that most of them stem from a fundamental misperception of what the film is trying to do. I should also say that I’m certainly not going to argue that the film is unimpeachable - only that it’s far more interesting than it has usually been given credit for. My point is essentially that, before we call a film a failure, we first need at least to be sure what exactly it is failing at.

The thing that seems to drive people crazy about Sucker Punch is that it appears to offer “faux feminism” but in fact constitutes a “fantasia of misogyny”. Yet I think that the film, far from offering something like lipstick feminism, does in fact genuinely strive to be a rather forceful and angry feminist film, and comes closer to earning the title than most have acknowledged. The thing is: its attempts at feminism aren’t to be found in the areas where people have generally been looking. Stated briefly, this film is primarily about itself - that is, it’s about the problems involved in trying to find positive images for women within the kind of popular culture which it itself embodies. Of course, given that this strategy naturally involves irony and flirting with having-your-cake-and-eating-it, this is a difficult and dangerous game to play - and one that Sucker Punch is perhaps only half-successful in. But it is frankly bizarre that so few people seem to have noticed that such a game is even afoot - preferring to say that the movie’s problems stem from stupidity rather than over-cleverness (which would be closer to the mark). But this is to get ahead of ourselves...
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Read the rest of the article here. Hope you enjoy!
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Does the Hollywood Happy Ending Exist?

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I am happy to be able to provide a link to a downloadable version of my first published piece on the Hollywood 'happy ending' - the subject which was the focus of my doctoral thesis. This essay, the opening chapter of an edited collection called Happy Endings and Films, offers an account of the invariably negative critical reputation that the 'happy ending' has acquired in film studies, arguing for the need to interrogate this reputation. Along the way we touch on David Bordwell, 'Screen theory', the 'self-consciously artificial' happy ending, and Sirk's Written on the Wind (1956).

A brief extract:

"We tend to assume we understand the ‘happy ending’ of Hollywood cinema – both that it exists, and what it is. This essay will question that assumption. [...] Although the term is used again and again in discussions of Hollywood, it is startling to realise that the cinematic ‘happy ending’ has received barely any sustained critical attention, nor has an adequate definition of it ever been agreed upon. [...] It is my belief that most film studies discussions of the ‘happy ending’ reflect less a wish to meaningfully discuss the feature than a widely-discernable desire to construct it as a critical ‘bad object’."

Many thanks to the editors for giving me permission to reprint the piece online.

MacDowell, James. 'Does the Hollywood Happy Ending Exist?' Happy Endings and Films. Eds. Armelle Parey, Isabelle Roblin & Dominque Sipière. Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2010. 15-27.
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Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism - Issue 2

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For anyone who may not have come across the news elsewhere, I'm very pleased to announce that Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, of whose editorial board I am a member, has published its second issue (available here).

One thing I find particularly exciting about this issue is the form of our tribute to the late Robin Wood: several rare pieces by Wood, including his first published article - on Psycho (from Cahiers du Cinema, published here both in its original French and in English) - as well as several pieces he wrote for the Times Educational Supplement during the 70s.

The contents of Issue 2 are below; I hope you enjoy it.

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Contents:

Susan Hayward in the 50s - by Edward Gallafent

Madame Bovary, C’est Moi – Signed, Vincente Minnelli - by Mark Rappaport

Fritz Lang Dossier, Part 1 - by the editorial board

Notes on Metropolis - by Michael Walker

M: Leading the Blind - by Douglas Pye & Iris Luppa

Das Testament des Dr Mabuse - by Michael Walker

Robin Wood: A Tribute - by the editorial board

Psychoanalyse de Psycho / Psychoanalysis of Psycho - Robin Wood

Attitudes in Advise and Consent - Robin Wood

In Memoriam Michael Reeves - Robin Wood

Sense of Dislocation - Robin Wood (about Last Tango in Paris)

Signs and Motifs - Robin Wood (about High Plains Drifter)

Moments of Release - Robin Wood (about Cries and Whispers)

Call Me Ishmael - Robin Wood (about Fanny and Alexander)
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