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Revisionist Melodrama

               The Hours, an enchanting film that follows the story of Virginia Woolf and how she came to write her novel, Mrs. Dalloway, portrays the protagonists of the film as characters in Woolf’s novel. Both characters, Laura and Clarissa, are on similar paths to the one that Woolf herself was on as she wrote her famous novel. They both discover their bisexual tendencies later in life. They are both depressed, contemplating suicide, and involved in romantic relationships that are seemingly going nowhere. The audience realizes at the end of the film that Laura’s son, Richard, is Clarissa’s former lover who is dying of AIDS. Once he dies, Clarissa briefly considers suicide, but restrains herself. Laura’s suicidal moment comes when she discovers she is bisexual; she also restrains herself, but flees from her family.

                Unlike earlier melodramas, which deal with the violation of the family unit within society, in the traditional venue of divorce and “rich-girl-marries-poor-boy”, The Hours introduces modern day variations of love into the film, which further violate the traditional melodrama family unit. In all three narratives of the film, Virginia’s, Laura’s, and Clarissa’s, the nuclear family unit is questioned in various ways. Virginia is in a rut with her husband: he is forcing her to convalesce in an environment which she doesn’t wish to be in. Her heterosexuality is then questioned when she kisses her sister. She has no children, unlike her sister, and because of her questionable sexual orientation and relationship with her husband, her traditional family unit is not typical to society. Similarly, Laura was a loner in high school, and she still doesn’t fit in to the typical upper class society that her peers are members of. She also is of questionable sexual orientation, and she flees from her family. Her flight ruins her children’s lives and supposedly causes her son to become gay: a definite violation of traditional families. Lastly, Clarissa discovered her bisexuality later in life, and is now in a dead-end relationship with her female partner. Her daughter is upset with her, and Clarissa is depressed. Her family is seemingly the most untraditional of all the families in the film. All three untraditional families in the film further extend the violation of traditional nuclear families in melodramas.

The "Quinn" In Dylan

                The film I’m Not There takes a novel approach to the classical biopic genre through using multiple characters to describe the different aspects of Bob Dylan’s life and personality. Each character in the film leads a very different life from all the other characters, and they serve to show how Dylan was a colorful person of many talents and abilities. For example, Woody Guthrie shows how Dylan was influenced by Guthrie’s artistry. Additionally, Jude Quinn demonstrates how Dylan was reluctantly chosen as a “member of the people”, to represent them and their sentiments. The other characters also serve to represent Dylan with their own backgrounds and individual stories.

                In the film, Jude Quinn represents how Dylan was the reluctant “voice of his generation”. In the film, Quinn is not cooperative with anyone, is angry with the media and the bureaucrats, and is constantly questioning why he has become so popular. He insists that no one understands him or his motivations, and that he doesn’t care whether they do. Mostly, he just wants to be left alone, like Dylan did during his early days. In the film, he is only happy when he meets the poet Alan Ginsberg, his hero, and when he is in his apartment flipping through magazines and admiring art. Quinn is an artist who becomes a voice of the people, just like Dylan was an aspiring artist whose music and artistry represented the feelings of the people. Some of Dylan’s fans felt betrayed later on by his switch to electric music mediums. This anger is portrayed in the character Quinn, whom some former fans yell at during a press conference. Reporters also try to extract information and quotes from him to explain his strange behavior, but Quinn is reluctant to give any information and only offers obscure quips, the context of which hint at the fact that he is an individual who is not only a public servant. Throughout the film, Quinn consistently represents the reluctant public voice of Bob Dylan. 

Mind Control in Inception

                Inception is a cleverly-crafted film about the ability to plant ideas in people’s minds through dreams. Cobb, the protagonist, is haunted by his late wife; having been accused of killing her, he can’t return home. Mr. Saito desires to dissolve the empire of his competitor, Maurice Fischer, and he hires Cobb to plant the idea in Fischer’s son, Robert Fischer, who stands to inherit his father’s empire. Cobb accepts the proposal, because Saito claims that he has the power to return Cobb home to his children.  Cobb hires Ariadne, an architectural student, to design the dream, since he himself is haunted by his late wife and his projection of her ruins the dreams that he crafts. He also hires a chemist, and they compile a team. On a flight from Sydney to Los Angeles, Fischer is sedated, and the team enters the dream that they have designed. There are many layers of the dream (dreams within dreams), which buy the team more time and help them to deeply-root the idea in Fischer’s head, since he becomes progressively more confused as they descend through the dream’s layers.  The team is ultimately successful, and Cobb is reunited with his family in the end, courtesy of Mr. Saito.

                The main, most heavily emphasized theme of Inception is the ideas about psychological manipulation that it raises.  Psychologists attempt to guide people in the right direction and to help alter their thinking so that they can lead normal, productive lives. However, in the film, Cobb acts contradictorily to the basic premise of psychology, manipulating people’s minds for his own ends, and destroying his subjects. The film may be seen as a statement about the dangers of the field of psychology and mind control. There is a very fine line between helpful psychological counseling and manipulative controlling, and it must be carefully walked by experienced, sure-footed doctors. Obviously, Cobb does not respect this boundary, and he ultimately destroys the financial success of his victim, Fischer. By comparing the psychological actions of Cobb to the common practices of trained doctors, one may see that the film is essentially an issue of the dangers and boundaries of psychological manipulation.  

Revisionist Screwball Comedy

                Intolerable Cruelty is a film about a greedy woman named Marilyn who is seeking financial independence, and Miles, a lawyer, who gets caught in her machinations.  Marilyn finds herself in Miles’s office, because he is her former husband’s divorce attorney. They go out to dinner together, and verbally spar with one another. Soon after, Marylin marries a wealthy oil tycoon, with the intent to divorce him ASAP after the wedding, so she can inherit his fortune. She engages Miles’s professional help, and utilizes his famed Massey Prenup, so that she can tear it up after the wedding and inherit the money. After the divorce, Marilyn falls for Miles, and the two marry with a Massey Prenup. When Marilyn tears it up, Miles discovers that Marilyn’s husband is just an actor, and not wealthy at all. Now his own wealth is exposed, and Marilyn stands to inherit half of it. When they meet to negotiate their divorce, Miles begs for another chance, and they sign a Massey Prenup, which Marilyn tears up yet again.

                Since classical screwball comedies place great value upon the institution of marriage, and this film emphasizes the values of divorce and single life, it should be considered a revisionist screwball comedy. Classical screwball comedies show two partners constantly trying to gain back the lost attention and love of their lover throughout the film. Miles prepares to give a great speech on the values of single life, and Marilyn enters nearly four marriages to gain independence and wealth, and she willingly turns over her body and herself to several men just to attain money. In essence, she is only a glorified prostitute. The last marriage in the film between Miles and Marilyn is a joke; they hardly know anything about each other, and their infatuation is only rekindled after several wild goose chases and Miles’s last attempt at rectifying his reputation. In this revisionist screwball comedy, the love, if it can be called that, was on again, off again, and the value of the institution of marriage was greatly discarded by both parties.  Additionally, the ending marriage gives no promise or hope of lasting; it is clearly infatuation, and the audience knows that. Because of the attitude toward marriage in the film and the little hope it gives of the final marriage lasting, the film should be considered a revisionist screwball comedy, since it is ultimately not about love, but about divorce. 

Choreography and Mood in Across the Universe

­­­­­­                Across the Universe tells the tale of Jude, a young man from Liverpool, who sails to the U.S. in search of his biological father, whom he has never met. Jude meets Max Carrigan and befriends him, and then falls in love with Max’s sister Lucy. While involved in a political protest, Jude is sent to prison, along with many others, but he cannot be released because of his illegal citizenship status. Lucy informs Jude’s father of the current events, and he comes to bail his son out from prison. However, because his status has been discovered, Jude is sent back to Liverpool. While home, Jude deduces from newspaper articles that Lucy has been killed in a homemade bomb. However, when when he learns from Max that she is still alive, he returns to the U.S. and to Lucy.

                The use of masks and puppetry in the film is strange, but it gives the musical the authentic feel of the 1960s, the time period in which it is set. Although the viewer is surprised at the use of artificial and computer-generated images in a non-animated movie, the choreography gives the film the atmosphere of the 60s, a time in which radicalism and drugs were the rule, not the exception. In the film, the most outlandish choreography directly correlates with the drug influence on the Beatles’ music. For example, in the beginning of the film, the early, clean songs of the Beatles are prevalent, and there is rare graphic design; it is only introduced later on.  However, as the musical progresses and the songs played are the ones in which the Beatles were most heavily influenced by substances, the use of masks and puppets increases. Strawberry Fields Forever, a song written by the Beatles in which they were heavily under the influence, is depicted extremely graphically and violently in the musical, and it gives the viewer the dizzying feeling which drugs induce. I am the Walrus, another bizarre song by the Beatles, was written by John Lennon while he was on drugs, and in the musical it is portrayed by sensational colors, lights, and the characters’ trippy actions. Because the 60s was a new era of experimentation, Julie Taymor, the director, created the film so that it gives the viewer the feeling of “being high”, which was reflected in the Beatles’ later music and which so prominent during the time.

Isms of the 1950s

Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a science fiction film of the 1950s, revolves around the idea of alien infiltration. When people seem different in the town of Santa Mira, California, general suspicion is aroused. Dr. Miles Bennell, the local doctor, tries to figure out the mystery, and eventually he does. Pods from space are spreading on Earth and overtake people’s bodies, turning them into non-thinking, non-feeling, barely human clones of themselves. As more people are being overtaken, the mission to clone people grows stronger with each person that is cloned, until only Miles and his girlfriend Becky are left. They find themselves in a cave, having fled, and when Miles leaves Becky for an instant, she has been cloned, and he finds himself alone in the world. Finally, he makes it to the police, and they take action to stop the invasion.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a science fiction film, is about the fascination of the American public with ideas of conformity, communism, and control. In a post WWII era, Americans were terrified at the prospect that they couldn’t guarantee control over their lives, just like Europeans couldn’t guarantee control over theirs. Soldiers had come back from the front lines, and they had seen graphic and horrific images of starved human skeletons. The Nazis had used mass-control and conformity to carry out their Hellish work, and people were intrigued and terrified. “Science fiction films presented indirect expressions of anxiety about the possibility of a nuclear holocaust or a Communist invasion of America. These fears were expressed in various guises, such as aliens using mind control, monstrous mutants unleashed by radioactive fallout, radiation’s terrible effects on human life, and scientists obsessed with dangerous experiments” (O’Donnell 169). The film is a reflection of these fears. It is not necessarily a fear of one specific ism, such as McCarthyism or communism, as many have claimed. America had changed drastically in the previous years, partially due to events abroad, and soldiers had brought back moral questions and dilemmas with them. The film is a culmination of these newfound American fears, as many aspects of the film reflect these new isms and the ways in which the world was changing.