The International

The International (2009)
Dir. Tom Tykwer
Starring Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl

I had sort of wanted to go see THE INTERNATIONAL when it was in theaters, but the poor word-of-mouth kind of bummed me out and I never did get out to do it. Then, when it came out on video I tried to download it, but --unbelievably-- couldn't find a torrent. I mean, there are almost a dozen torrents for PUMPKINHEAD 4: BLOOD FEUD, for fuck's sake. How disappointing does a film have to be before no one is even gonna go through the effort of stealing it?

I had another reason to be trepidacious about this one: It's directed by Tom Tykwer. You remember, Tom Tykwer, the guy who made the visionary, kinetic modern masterpiece RUN LOLA RUN, and apparently expended all his energy on that one because he then made a whole series of pretentious arty snoozefests like WINTER SLEEPERS (apparently he actually made this before LOLA, it just came out in America afterwords and I assumed it was a follow-up) PRINCESS AND THE WARRIOR, and HEAVEN. I was excited going into every one of those films and they ended up just boring the piss out of me, even when I could acknowledge the thought and artistry which obviously went into them. I'd forgotten that he recently directed the odd but excellent PERFUME, so the thought of him doing a 70's style paranoid thriller just seemed so awesome that I was certain he would bungle it into some kind of boring metaphor art project.

Turns out no, this one actually delivers. It's not the stylistic follow-up to LOLA that everyone would like to see, but it is an extremely classy and deftly made old-fashioned thriller about a topic which is both old-fashioned and torn from today's headlines: evil bankers (not so fast Mel Gibson, they're British and German).

Clive Owen plays an Ex-Scotland Yard INTERPOL guy who is has been trying for years to prove maleficent behavior on the part of the IBBC, a conglomerated European bank which barely bothers to hide their evil intent. They go about murdering one person after another, knowing they're entirely safe behind a thick wall of intragovernmental bureaucracy and callous extralegal skullduggery. And here's the cool part: they're absolutely right. They hold every ounce of power in this relationship. They're almost completely unconcerned that Owen's Louis Salinger is on their trail, because there's not a single god damn thing he can do about it. Every bit of evidence he collects will be undermined, every potential ally will be scared off, every good intention will be recontextualized as fanatical paranoia. Who is the world going to believe, scruffy, wild-eyed Clive Owen with his wild theories about bank assassins, or smooth-talking bank lawyer Michael White (Patrick Baladi) who represent the soothing forces of accepted reality.?

I never cease to be amazed how hostile middle America is to the idea that there are powerful forces in the world working in secret on things which will make them rich and make the world a worse place. I mean, I'm not a crazy person. I don't see much evidence to suggest that there's a secret society working to perpetuate Jesus' bloodline into a New World Order. On the other hand, both Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr, killed within a five year span, all by mentally unstable lone nuts for basically no reason? That doesn't sound suspicious to anyone? I mean, I feel crazy just saying it, but folks, if that shit doesn't set your alarm bells ringing, what in fuck's name is wrong with the world? Which is not to start claiming that I have secret proof that there was a third shooter at the grassy knoll, or that Dick Cheney shot a missile at the pentagon or whatever. I don't know. But I'll be damned if there aren't some things out there that seem mighty suspicious. With a conspiracy which is properly successful, you can't prove it. And even if you could, people don't want to believe it. Give them any possible way out, and they'll choose a comforting fiction. Some things just challenge people's perception of their world too much for them to allow.

It's not that all conspiracies are true (oh god, no.) It's that Americans are hostile to the very notion of conspiracies. Despite plenty of indisputable historical evidence of some fucking crazy ass shit, Americans reject the very notion of such activities as suspect. And that's after the Gunpowder Plot, CIA's MK-ULTRA experiments, the Tuskegee experiments, COINTELPRO, The General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy, Iran-Contra, Operation Ajax, and of course the true events which obviously are referenced in the film, the murder of Italian banker Roberto Calvi in 1982 and the assassination of dissident writer Georgi Markov in 1978 just to name a very few in which it's basically impossible to argue against a conspiracy. Most of these conspiracies were exposed only when the perpetrator were either caught red-handed or achieved their desired aims and felt no need to continue in secret.

It's not faith in the system that keeps people from believing, I think, but rather fear of what it might mean if we really started wondering about what forces are conspiring against us. And so Americans violently resist such notions and marginalize even the vaguest suggestion of such things. The American public does half the work of conspirators for them! We create a spiral of silence which ensures that it's the people who ask hard questions that will suffer, not the people they're asking those questions about. Hell, the argument has always been that keeping secrets between a group of people is too hard for conspiracies to be plausible. But if everyone's implicated and you keep it simple enough, exposing conspiracies is such a difficult task it's hard to believe there aren't more of them. Or maybe there are. I guess the point is that if they're done well you can have all the suspicions you want, and in the end it's just you that will seem crazy.

The genius of this film is that it successfully presents the enormity of the odds stacked against poor Clive Owen. The deeper he goes and the more outlandish the conspiracy gets, the more obvious it becomes that no one is ever going to believe it. The Sisyphean nature of his task becomes more and more obvious as his enemies get bolder and bolder. They shoot up the goddam Guggenheim and get away with it! There are bodies and machine gun rounds blanketing one of America's most famous and celebrated institutions, but one look from Owen and you realize that if he claims this is the work of a conspiracy of international banking assassins, he'll be the one locked up.

This is a powerful feeling to evoke in this crazy modern time. The system has gotten so out of control that it's gone beyond the bounds of what most people allow themselves to believe is possible. People violently defend the status quo because believing the alternative is just too horrific. The forces stacked against us are so overwhelming and so utterly devoted to furthering their own ends that stopping them is basically an absurd idea. Often, stopping them would essentially entail destroying most of the basic institutions of our government and economy. They have us at gunpoint -- if we fuck with them, they can completely destroy us and make it look like it was our fault all along. Tykwer emphasizes this point with his fixation on juxtaposing tiny humans with monolithic monuments to modernist architecture. Everything in the film is bordered by clean, neat lines and grids, and menaced by towering modernist citadels. They lurk above the horizon like predacious giants; like tombstones to ideals that don't yet know they're already dead. The Guggenheim itself, with its spiraling minimalism and austere spaciousness, is the perfect metaphor for the escalating violence against humanity wrought by the faceless powers represented by this disaffected monument to grandiosity.

All that works beautifully, and Tykwer drives the narrative along at a tense, kinetic clip, pausing for impeccably executed setpieces (of which the Guggenheim shootout is the most spectacular). That sequence in particular is so immaculately constructed in terms of acting, story, cinematography, editing, and score that it will probably be considered a classic film sequence somewhere down the line. The acting is excellent, even if both Owen and a needless Naomi Watts both fall a little short of being fully realized characters. So why didn't people like this thing?

The problem, it turns out, is that the film's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Tykwer masterfully convinces you of the hopelessness of the situation he's created, but then finds himself painted into a corner. He's so expertly crafted an impossible situation that there doesn't seem to be any good way out. In order to explain the unsatisfying result, I'm going to have to describe the conclusion, so the next bit is gonna be in my ever-popular Ulta-3-D- SPOIL-O-VISION!

So, after this long multinational chase to get evidence to bring down the bank, our heroes are left with exactly fuck all. An accusation as extraordinary as they're attempting to make is going to require extraordinary evidence to move on, and the people working against them are simply too good at obfuscating and confusing the picture to leave extraordinary evidence. Oh sure, they've got plenty of suspicious connections, plenty of innuendo, coincidences, odd happenings, evidence which contradicts the official explanations, and even a guy who's willing to go on record. But it's not ever going to be enough. The bank will be able to control their message, change the facts, and turn the whole thing into an incomprehensible jumble of international court hearings which will ultimately lead to some minor fine and no admission of guilt. Owen and Watts will die in some suspicious way which can't quite be proved to be the result of anything except happenstance, nothing will get any better, and anyone who thinks their deaths look like foul play will face instant ridicule and derision as a conspiracy nut.

With this setup, the director has two choices. Option A: Go the cynical route, follow the obvious logic of the film and aptly demonstrate that they're right, there's not a single damn thing you can do to make anything any better. Or, option B: Say fuck it and go for the Hollywood ending where somehow against all odds they succeed in bringing the bastards down, likely in a hail of gunfire in a secret volcano lair.

What Tykwer unwisely chooses to do is go with option C: Have Owen admit the system is untenable and take matters into his own hands, but then only do an OK job of it. Basically, Owen goes rogue and pits the mafia against the bank, so they send a dumpy middle aged guy to sort of easily shoot two of the bank's managers who for some reason don't have body guards or cell phones, and then that's it. So it kind of undermines the whole paranoia thing most of the film does so well, but also isn't a big enough win to give you the kind of payoff you'd want from an ending this unlikely. It's well put together just like everything in the film, but ends the film on kind of a shrug instead of a climax.

You can remove your SPOIL-O-VISION glasses now!

Still, the film is pretty good and bordering on great. It's a powerful, unique and exciting film which is a perfect vehicle to describe the major issues of our times, and indisputably the work of a supremely gifted and thoughtful filmmaker. It may well be the first great international thriller, that has at the very heart of its story a keen understanding of an increasingly post-national power structure juxtaposed against a stubbornly nationalist legal structure. That alone makes it a worthwhile use of your time, and a few great setpieces seal the deal. Tom Tykwer, it turns out you were already off my shit list because of PERFUME, but I'd forgotten that* so this time for sure, I'm officially excited for whatever it is you're doing next. Which, um, seems to be some kind of crazy religious epic with Tom Hanks and the Wachowski brothers? Sounds like exactly the kind of thing a cadre of evil international bankers might force on you. Call me crazy.

*Apparently this is why Santa always checks twice.

Madhouse (1973)

Madhouse (1973)

Dir. Jim Clark

Starring Vincent Price, Peter Cushing. Robert Quarry, Adrienne Corri

MADHOUSE is an odd little sorta surreal slasher/maybe a weird meta-joke kind of film. It’s hard to know exactly what it’s up to, and I like that. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a film which has quite the same vibe to it. And it kinda works, too, in its own weird way. Not really as a slasher, not really as a postmodern genre joke, but as just as weird kind of movie with its own inexplicable dreamlike potency. Possibly, that’s because it was apparently adapted extremely loosely from a novel called Devilday. They were originally going to title it RETURN OF DR. DEATH --which would be accurate, if not exactly poetic-- but worried that title would sound like a sequel. So instead they went with a title which made absolutely no sense. We hear that Price’s character Paul Toombes did spend time in a madhouse after his wife was killed, but a more appropriate title would be PETER CUSHING’S HOUSE, which is where Price stays during the film.

The hook is essentially this: Vincent Price is a famous, beloved horror actor known for appearing as the title character in a fictional horror series called “Dr. Death.” Cushing is his friend and the writer of the series, who gave up a promising acting career to work on the project. There’s also a seething ex-wife, a slimeball American producer, (Robert Quarry) and a demented ex-lover who lives in a basement and identifies with spiders (played by CLOCKWORK ORANGE rape victim Adrienne Corri). On News Year’s eve, Price’s new trophy wife (a bleach-blonde spray-tanned botoxed parody of bombshell) gets murdered, minutes after Price is informed (by said scuzzball producer) that she had a career in the adult industry prior to her relationship with him. Did Price do it? Or is he being set up? We don’t know, and actually neither does he. He claims he’s blanked out and isn’t sure if he did it or not, and is understandably broken up about the whole thing. Funny thing: the trophy wife is a total parody of an empty-headed plastic fake, and that’s all the script needs her to be. But she’s not played as a grating body count. She seems sort of sweet, actually, and genuinely upset that her husband has suddenly discovered this embarrassing fact about her past. So when she bites it, it’s actually sort of sad and we can identify with Price’s devastation.

Price plays it pretty devastated, too. While he’s been able to avoid conviction, everyone assumes he’s guilty and he himself has his doubts. He has a few moments of glorious mega-acting* but mostly plays the character as withdrawn and broken. This gives him a legitimately tragic feel, but also keeps him mysterious enough for us to wonder if he actually is guilty, either unknowingly or by using his apparent amnesia as a convenient cover. It’s an awkward job to keep your main character a suspect, and the film mostly cheats at it by limiting what the audience sees, but there’s a opaqueness to Price’s performance which manages to be sympathetic but elusive.

Ciphers do not always make great protagonists, but Price manages, remarkably, to be emotive but also possibly unknowable. He manages to make a cohesive performance out of a character who might be an innocent victim or a sadistic liar. Either way, though, Price plays him tentatively; he looks like a man who’s afraid of himself and tired of his life. It’s a performance which is curiously both nuanced and outsized, just like the man himself. Price is a performer who is very aware of his body; here, he uses his large stature as a tool of vulnerability, slouching his wide shoulders, stooping, turning his body inward, melting into chairs with world-weary exhaustion to emphasize the extent to which this previously huge character has dwindled. It’s a performance which plays to his strengths but also gives him the opportunity to put a little humanity in the mix, with surprisingly affecting –if not quite poignant-- results.

So we’ve got that AND the usual gaillo-inspired slasher/stalker scenes --mostly pretty good-- but the real unique factor here is that the film is about a beloved horror icon played by Vincent Price. This is not a minor detail; fully a third of the film time seems to be people talking about his career, suggesting new projects for him, watching his old films. We see a few long clips from “Dr. Death” which are actually taken from Price’s old films, leading him to reminisce about working with Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone in a weird blurring of fiction and biography. Add Cushing and COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE’s Robert Quarry and you end up with something of a reunion tour and last hurrah for the horror icons of the 70s (and also for studio American International Pictures, working with Price for the last time here).

So there’s a not-so-subtle layer of meta-joke lurking underneath it all (there’s a costume party where Price wears his “Dr. Death” costume, Cushing dresses like Dracula, and Quarry dresses as Count Yorga). What are we to make of this, given that the slasher element seems intended to be taken in all seriousness? I honestly have no idea. In the big climax of the film, Price ends up fleeing from a killer who may or may not be imaginary into a TV studio, where he escapes through a door – and into a interview with British TV icon Michael Parkinson, where he sits down, talks about his career, and watches a few clips of old films. If there’s a metaphor here, I couldn’t quite make it out, but it does serve to concoct a somewhat unique mix of nostalgia and serviceable slasher action. It builds to an ending which is so totally surreal that I can only assume it’s supposed to mean something, but I’ll be damned if I could tell you exactly what. It possibly has something to do with the emotional strain of creating and inhabiting evil characters in horror movies, but whatever point may have been intended arrives too murky to really pin down. In order to explain, I’m going to have to spoil the big reveal at the end so the next bit is in magically


SPOILERIFIC SPOIL-O-VISION


When the poor spunky gal played by Natasha Lynne (absolutely adorable here) gets knifed before she can reveal who the real killer is, Price goes nuts, drags her body onto the Dr. Death set and sets her up at a dinner table where he torches her and himself in a giant maelstrom of fire. We cut to his friend Cushing, who has been given the job of taking on his role. He sits at home and watches the same footage that we --the filmgoers-- watched of Price burning up, when suddenly a slightly toasted but very much alive Price comes out of the projected image on the screen and accuses Cushing of being the real killer, which he admits he did out of jealousy. In the ensuing old-man fight, Cushing ends up face down in a Spider pit. Granted, that all makes perfect sense. But then suddenly his corpse turns into a desiccated skeleton, Price sits down in front of a mirror, and begins putting make-up on. In time, it becomes clear that he’s recreating Cushing’s face over his own using makeup. What the..? Then finally, he sits down for a big meal with Cushing’s insane fire victim spider-loving wife (long story) and they explain they’re about to have a big meal of ….red herrings. And that’s it. Cut to credits of Price (!?!?) singing a song.

How in God’s name is anyone supposed to hew some meaning out of that? I don’t think anyone is seriously going to mistake Price for skinny little Cushing, even with a new face, so the assuming-his-identity is out. Maybe he’s taking on the character of an even crazier killer than the one he previously portrayed? That might kind of tie in to the main theme I guess. And wait a second, Cushing is supposed to be the killer, but he’s clearly visible in the crowd at the TV interview when the poor young lady is getting murdered. That’s obviously not some kind of goof, you don’t need to hire Cushing to fill out a crowd. So what’s the deal? And what about Price coming out of the film? It seems like it has to be a metaphor or a dream or something, but then it just keeps going. And ending on a red herring pun? Is that a hint that we’re not supposed to think about this too hard, or is it a clear sign that all of this is actually meant to be interpreted as some sort of meta commentary on genre and meaning? I’d tell you but honestly I have no fucking clue whatsoever.


YOU CAN TAKE OFF YOUR SPOIL-O-VISION GLASSES NOW

Still, as full of winking oddities as it is, the film seems genuinely serious about its atmosphere and characters. The Dr. Death costume is a visually striking design, and the film is full of that exaggerated nightmare atmosphere that I always go for. The actors seem to be trying harder than they technically need to, the horror is well-executed, and the postmodernism is handled with affection rather than smirk. Mostly, though, the film is memorable for its odd touches and the completely inexplicable ending. The incoherent tone is probably the result of incompetence in the filmmakers (as these things usually are) but here, director Jim Clark (editor to many films including recent efforts like KISS KISS BANG BANG and VERA DRAKE but director of only four, this being his last one) at least really knows how to stage sequences so they work. Put a bunch of sequences like that together, and even if they don’t make much sense the impact will carry you through. Pleasantly, that’s the case here. It may not be quite cohensive enough to qualify as the kind of career capstone for Price that it may have been intended to be, but that’s OK because it captures its own kind of weirdly mordant charm. Like Price himself, the thing is a lumbering --but fascinating—original which is worth watching even when it can’t always be called respectable.

*copyright Vern at outlawvern.com