Highbrow Magazine - american films https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/american-films en Spike Jonze’s ‘Her’: Love in a Future Age https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/3406-spike-jonze-s-her-love-future-age <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/film-tv" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Film &amp; TV</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Thu, 01/02/2014 - 11:32</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1her.jpg?itok=RU_C2dRF"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1her.jpg?itok=RU_C2dRF" width="480" height="258" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p>In an age where cell phones are our constant companions, where an operating system can respond to voice-activated prompts and mobile internet access provides us with instant information at any given moment, our relationships with technology and with each other are rapidly evolving. Writer-director Spike Jonze’s latest film, “Her,” an original and surprisingly emotional story about a lonely writer who develops feelings for his cell phone operating system, serves as a commentary on our society’s increasing reliance on technology.</p> <p> </p> <p>Spike Jonze applies the same, singularly intimate and fantastical vision to “Her” that he applied to the extensive variety of projects – commercials, music videos, skateboarding videos, short films, television work, and feature length films – that have garnered him critical praise and worldwide recognition as a master director and screenwriter; among his dozens of awards and nominations are two Golden Globe nominations and an Oscar nomination. Some of his most notable works include his direction of music videos for a diverse group of well-known artists like Weezer, the Beastie Boys, Kanye West and Jay-z, Bjork, and Arcade Fire. His videos range in tone from wild and silly to grim and sometimes disturbing, but all of them include Jonze’s sense of the absurd, of a dreamy, almost childlike fantasy world. </p> <p> </p> <p>This offbeat directing sensibility has also marked the directorial style of Jonze’s commercials (for companies like Adidas and IKEA) and feature length films, the most famous of which are his collaborations with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation.” In “Being John Malkovich,” a puppeteer discovers a portal that connects to Malkovich’s mind. In the semi-autobiographical “Adaptation.,” Charlie Kaufman attempts to follow up his successful first film with a screen adaptation of a famous book. “Her” upholds this kind of absurd story-telling through its futuristic setting and unusual romance.</p> <p> </p> <p>Combine Spike Jonze’s exciting career with a controversial lead actor like Joaquin Phoenix, and you create the kind of critical anticipation that has built up to the premiere of “Her.” Phoenix, born into a performing family (including brother River Phoenix), began acting at the age of eight. He first received widespread attention for his role in “Gladiator,” and went on to feature in such films as “Signs,” “The Village,” “Hotel Rwanda,” “Walk the Line,” and “The Master.” Despite his prominent roles and many accolades, including a Golden Globe, a Grammy, and copious nominations, Phoenix’s fame arises largely from his erratic behavior in the public eye. Following the announcement of his retirement from acting to pursue a rapping career in 2008, and his now-infamous Letterman interview, he released the mockumentary, “I’m Still Here” in 2010, which exposed the supposed retirement as a hoax. Since this brief acting hiatus, Phoenix has made a strong comeback and remains a highly respected actor. Still, he retains his reputation as an unpredictable, evasive, sometimes belligerent interviewee who shies away from the expected Hollywood mold.</p> <p> </p> <p>The acting chops which have allowed Joaquin Phoenix to play characters at turns cruel, goofy, serious, shy, and violent, now carry him in the role of the sensitive and isolated Theodore. A writer for a company called Beautiful Handwritten Letters, Theodore dictates correspondence for other people into a computer microphone, stringing together poetic phrases that reveal his idealized feelings about love; he longs for human connection, as demonstrated by nostalgic daydreams of the happy memories from his ending marriage, but he lives in a world where technology insulates people in their own minds, disconnected from human contact. Theodore’s cell phone lives permanently in his breast pocket, to which he connects with a wireless ear piece, and he spends his free time checking email and listening to music and the news. In the office and during his commute to and from work, he is surrounded by people similarly engrossed in their own technological devices. No one looks at or speaks with or touches anyone else in this efficient but sterile world.</p> <p> </p> <p>When he sees an advertisement for O.S.1, an operating system similar to iphone’s Siri, which promises advanced artificial intelligence, he decides to install it. Enter Samantha, the O.S. with whom Theodore will form the first authentic-feeling connection he has experienced since the dissolution of his marriage.  </p> <p>           </p> <p>Jonze’s futuristic world demonstrates the direction our increasingly tech-driven society is headed, and he succeeds in creating a realistic depiction of the future through his subtlety. We know Theodore lives in the future because of his mustache and the bizarrely highwaisted pants everyone wears, because of the sleek, streamlined design of the city’s architecture, and because of technological advances such as Theodore’s hologram video game system. These understated details suggest a natural evolution of fashions and trends, but they are not so revolutionary as to remove the viewer from the story. We watch Theodore living in this world and we think, yes, those strangely-proportioned pants probably <em>are</em> in fashion in the future.</p> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2her.jpg" style="height:457px; width:650px" /></p> <p>As a result of Jonze’s believable futuristic society, we imagine ourselves in it. We imagine how we would react to the kind of emotional isolation that drives a hurting Theodore to befriend an O.S.. Because, in the end, “Her” is less about technology and more about relationships. Samantha demonstrates both the instinctual, human desire to connect with someone outside ourselves and also the opposing fear of intimacy that compels us to isolate ourselves with our devices. Theodore is lonely, and in Samantha he finds someone with whom he can connect minus the messy, unpleasant experiences inherent in human relationships. She is programmed to cater to his personality, to his preferences and needs. She is smarter than any human (she reads entire books in less than a second), and she makes Theodore’s life more efficient by organizing his files. She is available when he needs her, but can be dismissed with the click of a button. Having no corporeal presence means Theodore never has to deal with the unwelcome smells or fluids or physical imperfections that come with a human body. As his ex-wife sneeringly observes over lunch, Samantha is his perfect woman because he can feel all the pleasant emotions of a relationship without having to deal with anything “real.” </p> <p> </p> <p>“Her” never moralizes, but it seems to conclude that devices only go so far to fill our emotional voids. In the end, Samantha develops beyond Theodore’s capabilities, she becomes too intelligent to relate to him, and she disappears along with other O.S.’s, leaving Theodore alone; in the final scene, he watches the sun rise over the roofs of the city with his friend Amy, suggesting that, amid a world of technology, humans connect best with other humans. Samantha had no flaws, yet her very lack of imperfection separated her and Theodore.</p> <p> </p> <p>Jonze gives our society food for thought – and perhaps a warning – as we move closer to Theodore and Samantha’s reality.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p><strong><em>Melinda Parks is the pen name of a contributing writer at</em> Highbrow Magazine.</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>For Highbrow Magazine</strong></p> <p> </p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/spike-jonze" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">spike jonze</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/her" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">her</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/joaquin-phoenix" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Joaquin Phoenix</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/amy-adams" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">amy adams</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/movies" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Movies</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/films" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">films</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/golden-globes" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Golden Globes</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/american-films" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">american films</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/american-actors" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">american actors</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/internet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">internet</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/modern-age" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">modern age</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/romance-movies" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">romance movies</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Melinda Parks</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Thu, 02 Jan 2014 16:32:08 +0000 tara 4048 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/3406-spike-jonze-s-her-love-future-age#comments D.W. Griffith and the Birth of Film History https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/2373-dw-griffith-and-birth-film-history <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/film-tv" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Film &amp; TV</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Thu, 04/25/2013 - 09:04</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1griffith.JPG?itok=gud2e2B2"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1griffith.JPG?itok=gud2e2B2" width="400" height="300" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> When we think of early film history, what images come to mind? Perhaps in the wake of Martin Scorsese’s homage to Georges Méliès in <em>Hugo</em>, a montage of hand-tinted fantasy sequences involving moon travel or a scientist’s head exploding intermingle with our own spectacular experiences of IMAX screen enlargements and new simulations of 3-D dimensionality.</p> <p>  </p> <p> But when did filmmaking shift from point A to point B: from the spectacle of trick representation  to the immersive art of narrative storytelling? The metaphor of “birth” -- the birth of cinema as a narrative art -- has often been located at a dubious conjunction with D.W. Griffith’s infamous adaptation of the <em>The Clansman </em>and <em>The Leopard’s Spots </em>(novels by Thomas Dixon), eponymously titled <em>The Birth of a Nation</em> (1915). <em>Birth </em>depicts a passage in American history that romanticizes plantation life on the cusp of the Civil War through Lincoln’s assassination and Reconstruction. No doubt influenced by Griffith’s own Civil War biography (his father “Roaring” Jake Griffith was a Confederate Army colonel), the film focuses on the stories of two white families: the Northern pro-Union Stonemans and the Southern pro-Confederacy Camerons. In the end, the Stonemans’ integrationist optimism is condemned, and the Camerons are vindicated for the racial retribution that they have suffered in the wake of civil state violence only by the emergence and empowerment of the Ku Klux Klan.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2griffith.JPG" style="width: 467px; height: 360px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> Although aesthetically outdated and ideologically abhorrent to a 2013 viewer (and the latter to many 1915 viewers), as anyone who has ever taken an introduction to film studies course would tell you, <em>Birth of a Nation </em>literally interweaves the romance of racial bigotry into its innovative organization of a narrative film syntax. Syntax, which refers to the rules or codes for making meaning emerge out of an otherwise disjunctive arrangement of linguistic components, somehow seems more opaque in the context of moving images than it does in prose and literature. For example, in the sentence, “D.W. Griffith made over 400 films throughout his 25-year long career,” the discontinuous interweaving between different parts of speech (proper noun, verb, adverb, adjective, noun, etc.) appears legible to us because we are accustomed to deciphering their arrangement in the English language.</p> <p>  </p> <p> In filmmaking, this is the case as well. However, we are inadequately trained and therefore have fewer tools for parsing the disjunctive arrangement of shots and looks that absorb us psychologically in a given film’s narrative universe. For example, in a climactic sequence from <em>Birth of a Nation</em>, the Klansmen rush to the rescue to save protagonist Elsie Stoneman (Lillian Gish) and her cohort who are trapped in a cabin besieged by black militia. Although the film cuts frequently between different times and spaces—the cabin and the landscape traversed by the KKK en route to the rescue—we only observe the continuities strung along by the experience of suspense, and not the discontinuities between these different places and moments (many of which construct incompatible spectator positions through different styles of visual framing).</p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/3griffith.JPG" style="width: 275px; height: 425px;" /></p> <p> The problem with the metaphor of “birth” is that it elides the broader struggles of film history, just as <em>Birth of a Nation </em>whitewashes traumatic histories of vigilante justice and institutionalized slavery of African-Americans well after the Civil War.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Griffith had directed more than 400 films (mostly shorts and single-reel works) during the seven years of his filmmaking career before he made <em>Birth of a Nation</em>. From 1908-1913, during his prolific era at the Biograph Company, Griffith’s experimentations with narrative film syntax emerged through an ideologically illegible range of film stories and devices. Working in every genre imaginable—including slapstick comedy (<em>Eradicating Aunty</em>), trick films (<em>Deceived Slumming Party</em>), melodrama (<em>An Unseen Enemy</em>), the Western (<em>The Red Man and the Child</em>), historical biography (<em>Abraham Lincoln</em>), prurient “flicker” curiosities, high literary adaptation (<em>Edgar Allen Poe</em>), African jungle films (<em>The Zulu’s Heart</em>), urban crime drama (<em>The Song of the Shirt</em>), populist allegories (<em>A Corner in Wheat</em>), and cross-dressing themed war episodes (<em>The House with Closed Shutters</em>)—Griffith’s formal diversity has received disturbingly slight attention given his hyper-visibility in film history. While sexual and racial stereotyping indeed recurs across Griffith’s moral melodramas and anarchic slapstick films alike, to say that film storytelling was “birthed” from a specific episode in racial misrepresentation is willfully to turn a blind eye to the broader contradictions of early film history.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The financial success and cultural significance of <em>Birth of a Nation </em>upon its release resulted at least as much from its political controversy as from its favorable reception. While the Klan appropriated the film for recruitment purposes, the NAACP staged protests against <em>Birth</em> at numerous premiers across the country and published widely debunking the film’s numerous historical and ideological inaccuracies. Riots broke out in Chicago, Denver, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Kansas City, provoking primarily white-on-black gang violence. Indeed, the invisibility of the film’s masterful techniques to manipulate space and time—its immersive narrative syntax—no doubt corroborated its incendiary mode of address. Race becomes hyper-visible as the manipulative construction of racial stereotypes by the film image itself recedes from visibility.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/4griffith.JPG" style="width: 480px; height: 600px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> Moreover, just as <em>Birth of a Nation </em>rationalizes its own disjunctive arrangement of space and time in order to instrumentalize its whitewashing of the Civil War and Reconstruction, so too do we threaten to whitewash film history when we look too selectively at only its most infamous and inflammatory excerpts. The history of racial representation in narrative filmmaking is foremost a history of struggle: the history of film form as a “differential system” (which is also the theory of language) emerged between ideologically incoherent representations of gendered and racialized bodies—from Bert Williams and Bertha Regustus, to D.W. Griffith and Oscar Micheaux. We do ourselves a disservice in the present day when we pretend that the black body could only have signified one thing for film storytellers in 1915, as this limited gaze toward the past no doubt also blinds us to the range of contradictory identities that proliferate through digital platforms in the present day.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong><br /> <em>Maggie Hennefeld is a contributing writer at</em> Highbrow Magazine. <em>She currently lives in Providence, R.I., studying in a Modern Culture and Media Ph.D. Program at Brown University.</em></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong><em>Photos: Wikipedia Commons.</em></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/dwgriffith" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">d.w.griffith</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/birth-nation" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">birth of a nation</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/ku-klux-klan" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ku klux klan</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/racism" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">racism</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/slavery" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">slavery</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/film-history" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">film history</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/american-films" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">american films</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/edgar-allen-poe" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">edgar allen poe</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/zulus-heart" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">the zulu&#039;s heart</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/georges-melies" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">georges melies</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Maggie Hennefeld</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:04:38 +0000 tara 2746 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/2373-dw-griffith-and-birth-film-history#comments