The Masterpiece Test: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Year of Release  2001

Country  USA

Length  146 min.

Director  Steven Spielberg

Screenwriter  Steven Spielberg (adapted from the short story “Super Toys Last All Summer Long” by Brian Aldiss)

Cinematographer  Janusz Kaminski

Editor  Michael Kahn

Set Design Rick Carter

Visual Effects  Stan Winston

Score  John Williams

Cast  Haley Joel Osment,  Frances O’Connor, Sam Robards, Jake Thomas, Jude Law, William Hurt, Brendan Gleeson

A.I. Artificial Intelligence had one of the most unique inceptions of any project in the history of cinema.  Initially the film was developed by Stanley Kubrick, who hired a small army of screenwriters and storyboard artists to help him adapt a Brian Aldiss story called “Super Toys Last All Summer Long.”  At various stages of the project’s three-decade development, the plan was for Steven Spielberg to produce while Kubrick directed, or vice versa.  After Kubrick passed away in 1999, shortly before the completion of post-production on Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Spielberg crafted his own screenplay based on the mountain of A.I. preparatory work completed by Kubrick and his collaborators.  Working with his usual ace technical team (cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, special effects wizard Stan Winston, composer John Williams), Spielberg managed to film the elaborate, decades-in-gestation production in a handful of months.

There has been relatively little collaboration between name-brand directors in the history of cinema, and fewer still made on a blockbuster scale.  Certainly there have been cases of filmmakers picking up where others left off, as when Claude Chabrol filmed Henri-Georges Clouzot’s unrealized script for Inferno as L’enfer (1994) or when Tom Tykwer took over the Krzysztof Kieslowski project Heaven (2002).  The closest comparison to Kubrick and Spielberg’s collaboration of A.I. is probably Robert Flaherty and F.W. Murnau’s co-development of Tabu (1931), though Flaherty left that project fairly early on after a number of disagreements with Murnau, and few traces of the pioneering documentarian’s aesthetic remain in Murnau’s final product.

 The oddest thing about the collaboration between Kubrick and Spielberg is not simply that two massively renowned directors worked together (and separately) on the same film, but that the two filmmakers in question seem completely at odds ideologically.  Kubrick and Spielberg’s films do share some common superficial traits, such as a virtuosic mastery of the technical side of filmmaking and a predilection for science fiction and military settings.  But the attitude that the two filmmakers have about those settings, and the way that they approach “perfectionism,” could not be more different.  Kubrick’s films are all, on some fundamental level, about complicated flaws in human nature, which ironically prevent “foolproof” plans (the heist in 1956’s The Killing, HAL in 1968’s 2001:  A Space Odyssey, the rules of society in 1975’s Barry Lyndon, the family unit in 1980’s The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut) from working despite the protagonists’ best intentions.  Spielberg’s films tend to be reassuring statements about man’s importance in relation to awe-inspiring nature (the shark in 1975’s Jaws, the aliens in 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 1982’s E.T., the dinosaurs in 1993’s Jurassic Park), in which the audience surrogates are either able to conquer or befriend the forces of an unruly world.  Where Kubrick’s films deal with emotions so convoluted and discomfiting that we don’t have names for them, Spielberg’s works tend to be nakedly sentimental and comforting even when he is dealing with ostensibly heavy subject matter.  While 2001’s narrative structure pointedly (and reasonably) posits the human race as a mere “missing link” in an ongoing evolution, E.T. is a celebration of human compassion, with its titular alien functioning as a sort of pet/kid-brother hybrid. 

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about A.I. is that it consistently carries simultaneous traces of both Kubrick and Spielberg’s opposing aesthetics while maintaining a mostly coherent point of view that isn’t obviously the product of either individual.  Anyone hoping that A.I. would simply be another Kubrick or another Spielberg film would undoubtedly be disappointed – which probably accounts for the mixed reaction that the film received from critics upon its release, and the ambivalent stature that the film holds over a decade later – but the hybrid of two very different aesthetics creates an utterly distinctive tone that neither individual could’ve created on their own.  This makes A.I. difficult to analyze in some ways; with the idea of artistic intentionality thrown out the window (or at least made highly speculative), the film can’t be reviewed under traditional auteurist guidelines.  But the best works of art always make their own rules, and being confounded by complicated ideas is the first step to understanding them.  Whether the fusion of competing ideologies was part of either director’s intentions for A.I., the awkwardness that results registers, for the most part, as a purposeful and pointed embodiment of the film’s ambivalent and questioning attitude toward the philosophical and moral quandaries it proposes.

The odd clash of tonalities in A.I. aesthetic creates a unique tension not unlike that experienced by the people forced to deal with David (Haley Joel Osment), a robotic boy programmed to feel human emotions.  David is a walking contradiction; an unlikely cross between 2001’s HAL 9000 and E.T.’s titular alien, he is able to feel a superhuman amount of love for the human beings he worships, but is dangerous and destructive when he’s confronted by anything that confuses his basic emotional programming.  In the first act of the film, David is adopted by a couple (Frances O’Connor and Sam Robards) who are using him to compensate for the void left by their comatose son (Jake Thomas).  During the early scenes where the Swinton family is struggling to get used to their new living situation, David is consistently filmed in ways that emphasize his alien nature.  But after the robotic boy gains the trust of his mother, and undergoes an “imprinting” process that forces him to love her forever, the cute little boy half of his personality is brought to the fore, making it easy for the Swintons (and the audience) to perceive the protagonist as human.   This idealized vision of the nuclear family is frequently brought back to reality by startling flashes of David’s mechanical nature, such as when he holds a laugh for an uncomfortably long time at the dinner table. 

The complicated tone that the film establishes in its early scenes suggests a sentimental Spielberg film being interrupted with jarring frequency by the icy creepiness of a Kubrick film (or vice versa), and the unbalanced feeling that this creates in the viewer makes the Swintons’ ambivalence toward their robot son palpable.  It is unlikely that either director could have achieved this bizarre tenor – which might be referred to as “visceral ambiguity” – on their own.  Kubrick likely would have kept emphasizing David’s strangeness, while Spielberg would probably have humanized the character to the point that his robotic background would seem moot.  The once-in-a-lifetime combination of the two approaches is perfect for the character and for the film’s complex moral inquiry, because it destabilizes any attempts to read the character as obviously robotic or obviously human.  It should also be stressed that Osment’s outstanding performance is consistently tuned into the disturbing contradictions inherent in his character.  Osment’s portrayal of David is one of the most impressive child performances in all of cinema.

Of course, great science fiction is never merely about robots.  The genre’s great strength is its ability to defamiliarize certain aspects of humanity in order to tell us something about ourselves that we couldn’t learn from a more conventionally “realistic” story.  A.I.’s view of us is very dark indeed.  The film presents a disturbing vision of a human race desperate to receive love but categorically incapable of giving it.  Almost all of the human characters are defined by their pathological (though distressingly understandable) need to hang onto the feeling that somebody cares about them.  It is revealed in one scene that David’s creator, Professor Hobby (William Hurt), modeled the robot boy after his own deceased son, a plot point that simultaneously makes it easier to understand and harder to accept his smug joy in discovering that his experiment in emotional robotics was successful.  The toy boxes of the David model and his female equivalent feature the tagline “at last a love of your own,” a slogan that sums up the sadness that drives the characters to pursue a destructive form of one-sided love that backfires when the creature providing the affection becomes inconvenient. David’s relentless, unblinking affection is a nightmare version of the undying devotion that all of us want to feel from our loved ones, even though that type of obsessive love would inevitably prove untenable and insufferable.   

 Much of A.I.’s plot is set in motion when David’s mother/owner abandons him in the woods (in a wrenching, frightening scene that probably would’ve been too emotionally distanced in a Kubrick solo project, and too watered-down and sappy in a standard Spielberg film).  David’s quest to reunite with his mommy leads the film into a series of episodes that are admittedly a bit uneven, and sometimes awkward in unproductive ways.  A lengthy sequence devoted to a “flesh fair,” an elaborate carnival event where human/robot hybrids are tortured and destroyed for the amusement of an enthusiastic audience, is a didactic and garish blemish on an otherwise poetic and visually stunning film.  There are also a few distracting voice cameos by famous people (such as Chris Rock and Robin Williams) and a few uninspired visual homages to films such as Night of the Living Dead (1968).  At times, the film’s clash of ideologies produces out of place moments such as the one where an advanced alien species tells David that “humanity must be the key to the universe,” a sentiment that certainly doesn’t belong in a film with such a bleak view of the human race.

Ultimately, A.I.’s flawed moments are forgivable, and heavily outweighed by its many brilliant scenes.  Certain allowances need to be made for the film’s unusual production history, and the utterly distinctive tone that results from the partnership of two very different directors is more than fair compensation for the inevitable handful of incongruous bits.  The film works on a number of different emotional and intellectual levels simultaneously, combining traces of Kubrick’s and Spielberg’s very distinct aesthetics to create something that neither director could have made on their own.  This is the most emotionally visceral film in Kubrick’s oeuvre, and the most thoughtful and moral one in Spielberg’s filmography.  Spielberg’s gift for smooth blockbuster pacing allows the film to temporarily gloss over certain disturbing thematic suggestions that nonetheless are so heavily ingrained in the film’s very design that they inevitably surface when one thinks about the film later, in much the same way that David’s convincing boyish appearance can never entirely conceal his true nature. 

 The odd clash between Kubrick’s and Spielberg’s aesthetics reaches its height in A.I.’s controversial finale, which has the exact feel and appearance of a typically sappy Spielberg ending, and an undercurrent of the intense and uncomfortable ambiguity of a Kubrick climax.  David fails to reunite with his mother, and is trapped underwater for many years before being discovered by an advanced alien race.  The aliens explain that an ice age has killed off all of humanity, and that David’s memory banks provide the only remaining evidence of the human races existence.  The aliens grant David one wish, which of course is to be with his mother.  Naturally, David’s mother isn’t the real Monica Swinton, who died along with everyone else in the ice age, but a projection based on data retrieved from David’s memory.  David now has his own super-toy, an idealized version of his mother who exists solely to love him.  Monica and David lie in bed together, and the robot boy is able to shut his eyes for the first time.  The implication is that David has finally become a “real boy,” which would seem to be a happy fairy tale ending.  Except that the film’s suggestion of what a real boy is – obsessive, self-involved, wanting to be loved at all costs while being oblivious to the desires of others, full of raging and frustrated Oedipal desires – is not so sunny.  The ending of A.I. is all the more subversive because it isn’t even clear whether the film’s credited director understands its full, dark implications.

A.I. passes the Masterpiece Test

UP NEXT  A comparatively direct challenge to the Auteur Theory, Orson Welles’ F for Fake.

Catching Up With 2011: Music

The increasing ease of hearing new music, whether through streaming services, legal or illegal downloading, or CDs burned by friends or bought in stores has made it relatively easy to keep up with the state of the art.  Still, so many releases come out every year that even the most devoted Pitchfork columnist can’t possibly hear everything that’s worth hearing.  Here are some of the most interesting 2011 albums that fell through the cracks for me until I caught up with them in the early months of this year.

Cass McCombs – Wit’s End

Cass McCombs sets himself apart from the singer-songwriter pack with his unique nasally voice, his predilection for dense productions, and his willingness to let his songs run as long as they need to in order to make the loneliness and despair of his lyrics physically palpable.  Wit’s End finds the singer evolving from a relatively conventional broken-hearted troubadour (opener “County Line”) to a bored, debauched libertine straight out of Edgar Allen Poe (closer “A Knock Upon the Door”).  B

Clams Casino – Instrumental Mixtape

Some of the high-end praise for this collection of hip-hop beats has gotten out of hand.  New Jersey producer Clams Casino’s debut solo project doesn’t revolutionize instrumental hip-hop the way that DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing did, nor does it flow as elegantly as J Dilla’s classic Donuts.  Still, while the modest title of Clams Casino’s album sums up its content accurately, it doesn’t hint at its cohesiveness or polish.  Without the vocals of regular collaborators like A$AP Rocky and Lil’ B, Clams Casino’s eerie minimal beats reveal him as one of the most promising producers working today.  B+

Colin Stetson – New History Warfare, Vol. 2 (Judges)

Bass saxophonist Colin Stetson has worked with everyone from avant-garde jazz conceptualist Anthony Braxton to arena rockers Arcade Fire, yet his music is so distinct from anything happening in modern music that it’s hard to even determine what genre it belongs to.  Stetson uses a circular breathing technique that allows him to create swirling, impressionistic loops of sound, and he puts the microphone close enough to his instrument to turn the sound of his fingers tapping the keys into percussion.  The periodic attempts to vary the sound of Stetson’s extremely specific aesthetic have mixed results – a creepy take on the traditional spiritual “Lord I Just Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes” with vocalist Shara Worden works better than most of the poetry readings by Laurie Anderson – but even if the tracks do become a bit repetitive, this is still undeniably one of the most distinctive albums of last year.  B

Four Tet – FABRICLIVE 59

Motor City Drum Ensemble – DJ-Kicks 37

DJ mixes are minor works by definition, and the fact that these albums are, respectively, the 59^th entry in the FABRICLIVE series and the 37^th DJ-Kicks would seem to highlight their inessentiality.  But the tracks on each disc are so smartly chosen, and the flow from one track to another is so seamless, that these mixes are at least as compulsively listenable as the best of 2011’s electronica “artist albums.”  Each mix has its own strengths – Four Tet’s, which focuses on obscure European house music, has a pair of excellent originals by the British producer, while the Motor City Drum Ensemble set boasts an impressively varied mix of soul, jazz, disco, and R&B.  (Grade for both albums):  B

Frank Ocean – Nostalgia, Ultra

Frank Ocean has somehow simultaneously maintained a position as the singing member of shock-rap collective Odd Future Wolf Gang and a ghostwriter for pop artists like Beyonce and John Legend.  Idiosyncratic perversity and undeniable pop smarts share equal space on the singer’s debut solo project, which wound up being self-released after Def Jam dragged their feet on sample clearances.  Nostalgia, Ultra is a mixtape rather than a proper solo album, with original songs sharing space with tracks where Ocean puts new lyrics over famous backing tracks (from a surprising group of sources, ranging from The Eagles to MGMT), but the curious mix of decadence and sensitivity belongs to Ocean alone.  B

Iceage – New Brigade

On their debut LP, Danish quartet Iceage take the arty songwriting style of Wire and Gang of Four and drag it, kicking and screaming, through a bruising instrumental assault that would make most thrash metal bands wince.  The results are viscerally exciting; aside from noise specialists Lightning Bolt, it’s hard to think of another band whose sound is this consistently ferocious.  It’s possible that Iceage is a one-trick pony, and that the 24-minute length of this album is designed to disguise their limited range as much as it is to avoid filler.  But even if Iceage never expand their sound or fully live up to their promise, New Brigade will stand as one of 2011’s most impressive debuts.  B+

Julianna Barwick – The Magic Place

The Magic Place’s gorgeous soundscapes are as haunting and otherworldly as anything released in recent memory.  Julianna Barwick’s music sounds dense and detailed, despite being made up almost entirely of loops of her wordless vocals (with occasional spare piano and acoustic guitar accompaniment).  There is something rough and ghostly about Barwick’s style that keeps her music out of Enya territory and puts it more in line with what Werner Herzog would call “the ecstatic truth.”  A-

Kendrick Lamar – Section.80

Kendrick Lamar is an ambitious, visionary MC with a smooth, elastic flow and an eclectic taste in beats.  Unfortunately, on his official solo debut (after an EP and a few mixtapes), Lamar keeps getting in the way of his own talent, smothering many of the tracks with ill-advised choruses or subpar guest verses, and giving the album a conceptual structure that is too muddled to be interesting.  While Lamar’s ambition is laudable, he tends to be at his best when he sticks to nimbly rapping over smooth productions, as on “Rigamortus” and “HiiiPower.”  B-

Moonface – Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I’d Hoped

Spencer Krug has received a lot of acclaim for his work with Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown, but he won’t be winning any points for originality with his solo project Moonface.  It’s impossible to imagine the lengthy, keyboard-heavy tracks on this album existing without the influence of Joy Division and Gary Numan, but the lyrical and musical quality of tracks like “Shit-Hawk in the Snow” justify Krug’s theft from the darker side of ‘80s New Wave.  B

Timber Timbre – Creep On Creepin’ On

With Taylor Kirk’s lonely croon and swelling strings sitting on top of eerie midtempo ballads, Creep on Creepin’ On sounds like it was somehow recorded in black and white.  But Timber Timbre’s debut LP is not a nostalgia trip, and it also doesn’t sound particularly indebted to any current indie rock.  The band has a few kinks to work out – the modern classical instrumental interludes are impressive in their own right, but seem to belong on a different album than the more conventional songs – but Timber Timbre seem like they are on the verge of a monumental breakthrough.  B

Understanding Auteurs: Hayao Miyazaki (Ponyo)

The quality and complexity of the animation has improved steadily with each of Hayao Miyazaki’s feature films.  Princess Mononoke’s (1997) epic canvasses seemed to represent a perfection of Studio Ghibli’s aesthetic, if not hand-drawn animation in general, until Spirited Away (2001) took their distinctive brand of surrealism to even more ornately detailed heights.  Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) seamlessly blended computer-generated images with Miyazaki’s trademark hand-drawn style, resulting in what was arguably the most visually sophisticated animated film of all time. 

Given this consistent increase in graphic ambition, it is somewhat surprising that Miyazaki has chosen a fairly straightforward, classically hand-drawn look for his tenth feature film, Ponyo (2008).  The animation techniques used here seem scarcely more advanced than those seen in the director’s first feature, Castle of Cagliostro (1979), and there is no indication that Studio Ghibli set out to top the spellbindingly grand vision of their previous adventures.  And yet, Ponyo feels in many ways more lively and enjoyable than Howl’s Moving Castle, and is ultimately one of Miyazaki’s most sublimely pleasurable films to date.  Where the dark epic Howl occasionally felt disconcertingly like a greatest hits collection of Miyazaki’s favorite tropes, Ponyo gives the impression that working on a relatively low-key children’s film revitalized the master animator’s creative energies by allowing him to bring the pleasant eccentricities of his aesthetic to the forefront.

Just as My Neighbor Totoro (1988) brought Miyazaki’s style to the surface following the bloated epics Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Castle in the Sky (1986), Ponyo succeeds by clearing away the thick, ultimately unmanageable plot of Howl and telling an elegantly simple yet highly quirky story.  Adapted loosely and freely from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Little Mermaid,” the plot follows the relationship between a five-year-old human boy named Sosuke and a goldfish he dubs “Ponyo.”  Curious about Sosuke as soon as he adopts her as a pet, and smitten with the boy after he shares some of his ham sandwich with her, Ponyo quickly develops an insatiable desire to become a human.  Ponyo is able to achieve her goal with surprising ease, thanks to her hereditary skill with magic, but her transformation threatens to undermine the balance between the earth and the ocean, causing a huge tsunami.

The basic outline of Ponyo’s story makes it sound like a fairly straightforward fairy tale, but the simplicity of the plot (at least relative to many of Miyazaki’s other films) allows plenty of room for the kind of lovably odd details that set Studio Ghibli’s films apart from those of any other animation studios.  Most of the things one would expect to happen in a children’s film with a similar storyline do not even seem to have occurred to Miyazaki.  As is the case with most of the director’s films from Totoro onward, there are no real villains in Ponyo; the titular character’s father, who spends most of the film desperately struggling to prevent his daughter becoming a human, initially seems like an antagonist but is eventually revealed to simply be a concerned parent.  (He also happens to have the film’s most eccentric and memorable character design, with unkempt strands of red hair spilling over his striped suit).  There aren’t any dreary scenes of adult characters accusing their children of making up stories; Sosuke’s mom is surprised by Ponyo’s transformation into a human, but she quickly accepts the situation.  Nor are there any rational explanations as to why a tsunami causes the ocean to become suspended in midair, perilously close to the moon, or why a nursing home’s submersion under water rejuvenates its elderly inhabitants rather than drowning them.  The casual surrealism of Ponyo’s narrative makes the film feel like it has a direct pipeline into the absurdist fantasies of young children, a tone that far too few films aimed at a young audience manage to achieve.

That tone is aided immensely by the relatively simple animation style that Miyazaki uses in Ponyo.  It’s hard to imagine what a more advanced hand-drawn film than Howl’s Moving Castle would look like, but history suggests that Studio Ghibli could top its overwhelmingly sharp detail if they wanted to.  The animation style of Ponyo is reminiscent of drawings that a skilled and imaginative child artist might make, which is a perfect look for a film about very young children.  And while the style isn’t as obviously sophisticated as that of most of Miyazaki’s action epics, the skill of the animators is apparent in every frame.  The film opens with an absolutely dazzling wordless sequence that introduces the viewer to the underwater world where Ponyo lives, with an incredible array of crabs, various colors of fish, and jellyfish glide gracefully around the goldfish’s father as he drops inexplicable potions into the water.  A later scene involving the aforementioned tsunami is one of Miyazaki’s most impressive setpieces, with an oblivious Ponyo gliding on top of huge, fish-shaped waves as she chases after the car of Sosuke’s mother.  The animation in this film is scaled down to an appropriate level for the film’s kid-friendly story, but it’s still incredible.

Ponyo is a triumph of craft over technology, and its imagination and wit outpace that of virtually all of the computer-animated films being made today.  The story takes off on many odd, inexplicable tangents, and completely avoids the obvious moralizing and inane pop-culture referencing that one expects from modern family films.  It’s possible to argue that the stakes feel a bit low – when Sosuke’s mother disappears into a heavy rainstorm, there’s little question of whether the boy and Ponyo will be able to find her alive – but the calm, carefree pace is another aspect of the film that seems perfectly scaled to the film’s child’s-eye view.  Simply put, Ponyo is the best of Miyazaki’s light children’s films (the others being Totoro and 1989’s Kiki’s Delivery Service), as well as being among his most charming films overall.

Having seen all ten of Hayao Miyazaki’s films to date, I can say with confidence that he is one of the very best working filmmakers.  While a couple of Miyazaki’s early adventure films found his distinctive brand of surrealism constrained by generic fantasy tropes, and some of his latter films continue to have structural problems, the great animator has yet to make an outright dud.  Everything he’s directed from his stylistic breakthrough My Neighbor Totoro onward is essential viewing for any cinephile, particularly those interested in animation.  (Though it isn’t a particularly mature or representative work, I would also say that Castle of Cagliostro is a must-see).   Miyazaki’s vision is equal to that of master cinema fantasists such as Georges Melies, F.W. Murnau, and Jean Cocteau, yet he doesn’t seem to have taken any obvious influence from any other filmmaker.  With many of the high-water marks of Miyazaki’s oeuvre being produced in the second half of his career to date, there seems to be no ceiling on the quality of the master animator’s output.  Where I once avoided Hayao Miyazaki’s films for fear that they would be too impenetrable, I now eagerly anticipate his next wonderfully baffling production.

FINAL GRADES FOR HAYAO MIYAZAKI

Castle of Cagliostro (1979) = B

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) = C+

Castle in the Sky (1986) = B-

My Neighbor Totoro (1988) = B+

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) = B

Porco Rosso (1992) = B+

Princess Mononoke (1997) = B+

Spirited Away (2001) = A

Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) = B

Ponyo (2008) = B+

TV on DVD: The Shield (Season Seven, Disc Four)

Episodes covered:  Possible Kill Screen, Family Meeting

“Possible Kill Screen,” the penultimate episode of The Shield, climaxes with what is undoubtedly the finest scene of the entire series.  Vic has managed to work out his deal with ICE, offering to work as a well-connected undercover agent in exchange for immunity on anything he confesses to.  After taking a deep breath and pausing for what seems like an eternity (though it really only takes up about 45 seconds of screen time), Vic launches into a thorough and detailed account of his and the Strike Team’s many wrongdoings, from the Terry Crowley murder to the Armenian Train robbery to the murder of Lem.  Vic has once again masterfully slithered out of a seemingly inescapable hole, but in doing so he has finally been forced to drop any pretense of being a good cop, or even a decent human being. 

I haven’t given a lot of attention to Michael Chiklis’ performance in these posts, mostly because it is already so celebrated and has unjustly overshadowed the outstanding efforts of CCH Pounder, Jay Karnes, Walton Goggins, Michael Jace, and others.  But this confession scene is a true tour de force for Chiklis, and simply one of the finest acting moments I’ve ever seen anywhere.  The sequence works largely because it finds seven seasons of deceptions finally coming to light, and because its relatively slow pace and quiet tone stands in such sharp contrast to the show’s default jittery pulpiness.  But it takes an actor of Chiklis’ caliber to really sell the full weight of Vic’s actions, as he goes on a complicated emotional journey from devastated shame and guilt to resigned defeat to nostalgic borderline-joy, and finally back to a shield of cocky defiance.  The scene is brilliant because it completely unmasks Vic, showing all of the ugliness behind his “ends justify the means” brand of law enforcement, and then puts the mask back on, giving insight into just how skillful this villain is at compartmentalizing his many flaws and presenting a heroic façade.

By the end of his immunity-granting confession, Vic seems to have convinced himself that he’s once again gotten away scot-free, perhaps only alienating Olivia (the ICE agent played by Laurie Holden, who is suitably shocked as she is recording Vic’s confession).  But, even more so than usual, Vic’s actions have a profound effect on many of the show’s other major characters, and series finale “Family Meeting” is largely dedicated to the repercussions that Vic’s confession causes for himself and others.  Let’s look at where each of the major character ends up, one at a time.

Ronnie Gardocki:  Vic’s agreement with ICE doesn’t extend to Ronnie, who is obviously completely thrown under the bus by his mentor’s confession.  Ronnie is arrested by Dutch in the Barn, and Claudette smartly arranges events so that Vic is forced to watch his last remaining friend get hauled away, aware that he has been betrayed.  Ronnie’s belated character development in the last several seasons didn’t make up for his complete blankness in the first half of the series, and after seven seasons I’m still not sure whether David Rees Snell is even a particularly good actor (“tight-lipped stoic guy” seems like kind of an easy role, honestly).  But Ronnie’s final scene brings his muted character arc to a surprisingly strong conclusion, and the moment where he briefly confronts Vic about his betrayal is one of the finale’s high points. 

Shane Vendrell:  While Ronnie’s fate isn’t exactly happy – at best he will serve life in prison, and at worst he will probably be killed by Antwan Mitchell or one of his associates – he gets off easy compared to his former Strike Team comrade Shane.  Exhausted and no longer able to drag his injured, pregnant wife and their sick child along on his escape attempt, Shane decides to finally turn himself in.  But when Shane warns Vic about his plans, his mentor and former friend tauntingly informs him that it’s too late, as Vic is already immune from any charges that Shane’s confession could result in.  Disgusted by the prospect of a free Vic visiting his family while he’s in prison, Shane allows the police to find him at home, and then shoots himself in the head before they can arrest him.  What the officers find in the next room is more disturbing.  Shane’s wife and child lie in the bedroom, dead of apparent drug overdoses.  The image of Shane’s family, together in the worst possible sense, with his wife clutching yellow roses and a fire truck tucked under his son’s arm, is the most tragic moment of the finale, and it is all the more disquieting for being strangely beautiful.

Claudette Wyms:  Dying of Lupus and legally unable to stop her arch-rival Vic, the morally righteous Captain of the Barn nonetheless winds up achieving a level of satisfactorily heroic justice at the end of the series.  Claudette gets Vic in the interrogation room of the Barn, pointedly insisting that he sit on the criminal side of the table, and reads him Shane’s suicide note while showing him photos of his former partner’s dead family.  Afterwards, she forces Vic to watch his one surviving Strike Team partner Ronnie get hauled off to jail by her former partner Dutch.

Holland “Dutch” Wagenbach:  In addition to putting handcuffs on Ronnie – a highly satisfying moment of one of the Barn’s good cops finally getting a win over one of its most corrupt ones – Dutch is able to definitively mend his sometimes strained relationship with his former partner Claudette, who helps him goad a confession out of the junior serial killer that he’s been hunting for most of the season.  This isn’t a straight-up victory – the child’s mother is missing, most likely killed by her son’s hand (a situation possibly exacerbated by Dutch’s personal interest in the case) – but at least Dutch appears to have prevented a potential killer from claiming more than two victims.  And with Dutch being able to arrest a disgraced Strike Team member in full view of the rest of the Barn, he will undoubtedly be less of an outcast in the future, restoring a sort of moral force to The Shield’s universe.

David Aceveda:  The writers never quite figured out what to do with Aceveda after he left the Barn to join the City Council.  Still, the finale gave the mayoral hopeful an interesting one-off side story that brought his character’s smug moral rot into focus.  Aceveda is opposed in the mayoral race by a charismatic independent candidate who fans may remember as the comic book store owner from the season three finale (Andre 3000).  While Aceveda’s proposed solution to Farmington’s gang violence epidemic is to put more cops on the street, the independent candidate’s street level approach involves hands-on activities such as picketing outside of a crack dealer’s house.  That personal commitment to change causes the independent candidate to get shot and die for his cause, while Aceveda comfortably makes empty promises to TV reporters (and later gets told off by Claudette in another of the finale’s many satisfying moments).

Julien Lowe:  Julien was one of the show’s most intriguing supporting characters in The Shield’s early seasons.  The writers were wise to eventually move away from his struggles to reconcile his religious beliefs with his closeted homosexuality, as that storyline started to seem a bit repetitive somewhere around season three, but they never really came up with anything compelling to replace it.  While the material that Michael Jace was given in the last several seasons rarely lived up to the quality of his performance, the way that the writers used Julien sometimes provided interesting commentary on the other characters.  Many times throughout the last season while the Strike Team members were busy trying to cover their asses, Julien could be seen in the background quietly but very competently doing his job.  Julien’s only notable moment in the finale finds him silently observing a happy gay couple as he drives by in a cop car, a small grace note that suggests that his internal struggle will continue to have a profound effect on his life.

Danielle “Danny” Sofer:  Like her former partner Julien, Danny tended to get lost in the shuffle as the writers introduced more and more auxiliary characters into their increasingly convoluted storylines.  She is more or less quietly back to work in the finale after Vic alienated her earlier in the season by refusing to grant her sole custody of their bastard child.  It’s a shame that the writers couldn’t find more for Catherine Dent to do after season two, since her performance was always strong and her character’s mix of vulnerability and reflexive conservatism was often compelling.

Corinne Mackey:  Cathy Cahlin Ryan, who played the estranged wife of Vic Mackey (and is married to Shield creator Shawn Ryan in real life), was one of The Shield’s unsung heroes.  Family drama side stories on crime shows are often less compelling than the major cops and robbers plots, but Corinne’s relationship with Vic was consistently interesting, and used sparingly enough that it never became tedious.  Corinne’s story was one of the most unique looks at spousal abuse that I’ve seen anywhere – mainly because the abuse was never physical (that seems like the one line that Vic would never cross), and almost entirely unintentional on the part of the abuser.  In a remarkably unglamorous performance, Ryan allowed Corinne to become increasingly unhinged as the series went on, making her eventual decision to help Dutch and Claudette bring Vic down wholly understandable.  It isn’t clear whether she’s happy where she ends up – in Witness Protection in Rockford – but knowing that she will most likely never see Vic again is as close to a happy ending as her character could realistically get.

Vic Mackey:  As a result of his confession, Vic gets his immunity and his job with ICE.  But he also loses all of the things that made him feel good about himself.  The Strike Team is destroyed, through actions that Vic now has to acknowledge are almost entirely his fault.  Other cops hate him.  He’ll never see his family again.  And his ass-kicking undercover ICE job turns in to a strict and confining desk job that requires him to type ten-page, single-spaced reports every day for the next three years.  Vic may have escaped from prison with his life intact, but there is a great deal of poetic justice in the show taking everything away from him in the process.  In the final scene, Vic is working a late night at his desk job as he sees cop cars speed by outside.  Seemingly on the verge of tears, he grabs his gun, adopts his signature scowl, and ambiguously heads out into the night.

The Shield is a terrific and groundbreaking television series, but I wouldn’t put it in the same league as The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood, Mad Men, or Breaking Bad.  The plotting was often unnecessarily convoluted and messy (it isn’t hard to imagine a more tightly structured series that completely excised the Armenian Money Train plot, for example) and long stretches of the show (most notably all of season three) were frustrating in a way that the aforementioned shows rarely were.  Although The Shield was a frequently nuanced study of corruption, it didn’t pursue its themes as rigorously or as consistently as The Wire or The Sopranos.  Breaking Bad has certainly surpassed The Shield in terms of stakes-raising plotting.   And though The Shield has an impressively stylized aesthetic, it was tonally a lot more one-note than Deadwood or Mad Men.

Still, I can’t think of another long-running series that closes with as strong a one-two punch as “Possible Kill Screen” and “Family Meeting.”  Every question that a fan could want resolved received a satisfying answer, and the corrupt main character was held fully morally responsible for all of his actions despite escaping legal punishment on a legal technicality.  And many of the show’s ace performers – particularly Michael Chiklis, Walton Goggins, CCH Pounder, and Cathy Cahlin Ryan – were given career-best material that they each completely nailed.  The Shield is an imperfect, uneven series, but it is worth sitting through the occasional frustrating sections to get to the tremendously gripping and powerful conclusion.

Quick Thoughts:

-   Laurie Holden’s character Olivia never became much more than a plot point, but at least she was a pivotal plot point, unlike Laura Harring’s season five lawyer, who served a purpose but never seemed like an essential part of that season.  The most underused season-long guest star was Michael Pena as Shane’s Vice Squad partner in season four, who was given so little to do that he didn’t even register as a plot point.

-  The best of the show’s returning guest stars would be either Anthony Anderson as Antwan Mitchell (throughout season four and a couple of times in season five and season six) or Forest Whitaker as Jon Kavanaugh (all of season five and the first two episodes of season six).  Even though neither character appeared in the final season, they definitely had a major impact on the overall story arc of the series.  Glenn Close’s season four role as Barn Captain Monica Rawlings was equally interesting and well-performed, but her story arc had little bearing on the show’s major plotlines.

-  The fact that ICE didn’t check in with Claudette before signing off on his immunity deal is a pretty major plot contrivance.  But unlike some of the show’s other leaps of logic, it was totally worth it for the outstanding confession scene and the resulting fallout.

-  The award for most extraneous storyline goes to Vic’s season three affair with the dog handler, a completely pointless subplot that neither started in an interesting place or went anywhere whatsoever.

-  Although Kenneth Johnson gave a nice, soulful performance as Curtis “Lem” Lemansky, and that character’s death at the hands of Shane was one of the series’ most wrenching moments, I can’t honestly say that the absence of his character from the last two seasons changed the show’s dynamic all that dramatically.  It’s true that Lem’s death was a major turning point for The Shield, to the point it basically fueled the last two seasons worth of plot, but the character was never fully developed enough for the show to seem fundamentally different without him.

-  What about the few Barn members introduced after the pilot?  Steve Billings, who first appeared as a background character in season four, gradually developed into The Shield’s one reliable source of comic relief, giving the show a much-needed wrinkle in its tone.  The writers and David Marciano gradually turned Billings into a full-fledged character capable of delivering the occasional dramatic moment as well.  Billings never played a major role in any of the series’ important storylines, but he was one of the few successful late additions to the show.  Tina Hanlon, first seen as a trainee in season five, seemed like an interesting new face at first, as her rookie insecurities and traditionally feminine appearance and attitude introduced a new element in the show’s dynamic.  But the writers never found a way to incorporate Tina into any of the show’s important storylines, and the character didn’t really take off despite the best efforts of Paula Garces.

-  Season seven was probably my favorite overall, despite a surprisingly slow first half.  Five would be the other contender.  Season four was essentially a side story that fleshed out some of the show’s themes without really advancing its master plot, but it was nonetheless one of the more consistently gripping stretches of the show.  It seems almost undeniable that season three is when The Shield was at its most frustrating, although it should be said that The Shield at its worst is still better than 99% of what television has produced.

The Masterpiece Test: Greed

Year of Release  1924

Country  USA

Length  Studio-Edited Theatrical Cut:  140 min

TCM “Restored Version:”  239 min.

Lost Director’s Cut is rumored to have lasted at least 8 hrs

Director  Erich von Stroheim

Screenwriters  Erich von Stroheim and June Mathis (adapted from the novel McTeague by Frank Norris)

Cinematographers  William H. Daniels and Ben F. Reynolds

Editor  Joseph Farnham

Art Director  Cedric Gibbons

Cast  Gibson Gowland, ZaSu Pitts, Jean Hersholt

Greed is a tricky film to analyze, because MGM’s indifference to (or hatred of) director Erich von Stroheim’s original vision for the film lead them to burn the vast majority of the footage intended to be included.  Early preview screenings of Greed are said to have lasted anywhere from eight to nine hours, but the version that the studio released to theatres was less than two-and-a-half hours long, even though it included all of the footage that studio head Irving Thalberg deemed worthy of saving.  What survived is a powerful and impassioned statement about the corrosive damage that money lust can cause.  But because so many scenes have been lost forever, we can only speculate about what was lost with MGM’s mutilation.

Though MGM’s destruction of the majority of the footage that Stroheim shot makes a “director’s cut” of Greed impossible, there are still some clues that suggest what the shape and scope of his original cut might have been.  Various drafts of Stroheim and June Mathis’ adaptation of Frank Norris novel McTeague are still in circulation, as are a great deal of production stills depicting scenes not present in MGM’s edit.  In 1999, Turner Classic Movies broadcasted a “restored version” running approximately four hours long.  The extra 99 minutes don’t contain any rediscovered footage, since again, it has all been destroyed.  Instead, film restorer Rick Schmidlin took one of Stroheim’s early continuity screenplays and combined the original release version with hundreds of the aforementioned stills, which were rephotographed and occasionally treated with pans, zooms, and opening and closing irises.

The restored version is obviously of note to anyone interested in film history in general and Greed in particular, but while it clarifies some of Stroheim’s intentions, it obviously can’t be considered a full-blown restoration of his original vision for the film.  As film historian Stewart Klawans points out, “the film envisioned by Stroheim can’t be seen at all.  Greed therefore exists primarily as an idea about filmmaking, which has passed among directors and writers, critics and moviegoers, for three-quarters of a century.”

What exactly is this idea that Greed represents?  It has something to do with what Klawans describes as “exhaustive veracity,” which in this case means a passionate and obsessive dedication to accurately depicting the story’s settings down to their last detail, as well as an inclination to lovingly depict the minutiae of the main characters’ lives that more conventional narratives might ignore.  Stroheim was clearly driven by a desire to outdo the historical spectacles of his mentor, D.W. Griffith, whose Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) are clear stylistic forbearers of Stroheim’s extravagantly detailed style.  This passion to get as much on the screen as humanly possible has led to such disparate works as Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman (1975), which observes the day-to-day rituals of its titular character in excruciating detail; Bela Tarr’s Satantango (1994), which takes nearly eight hours to give the viewer the feeling that they are a part of the impoverished village where the film takes place; and many of the films of Jacques Rivette, who seemed to keep the cameras rolling until he had exhausted literally every angle of his narratives. 

The story detailed in Greed is actually fairly simple in its rough outlines.  Two men, Mac McTeague (Gibson Gowland) and Marcus Schouler (Jean Hersholt), have their friendship tested when Marcus’ cousin, Trina Sieppe (ZaSu Pitts), who marries Mac, winds up winning $5,000 in the lottery.  The fallout from this unexpected event irrevocably corrodes Mac and Trina’s briefly happy relationship, with Trina gradually going insane from her miserly paranoia and Mac letting his anger over Trina’s behavior lead him to alcoholism and spousal abuse.  Meanwhile, Marcus’ jealousy over the couple’s good fortune destroys his relationship with both of them.  Mac eventually murders Trina in a blind rage, and winds up on the run from the law in the middle of Death Valley, while Marcus leads the authorities in a hunt for his former friend.  The two heat-exhausted men meet up in the middle of the desert, with no water in sight.  Mac beats Marcus to death, only to discover that he has already been handcuffed to his friend, and the film ends with an image of the two men chained together in the middle of a desert with no hope for survival.

That story sounds like it could be told rather quickly, and the theatrical edit of the film does manage to depict it powerfully.  Though I would never want to defend MGM’s decision to defy Stroheim’s wishes, it should be noted that their streamlined cut of Greed is coherent and logically put together, with the story’s meaning and morality left more or less intact.  Where RKO cut out the brutally sad planned ending for Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and replaced it with an abrupt and unconvincing happy conclusion that seems utterly out of place with that film’s style and outlook, MGM retained Stroheim’s memorably bleak scorched-earth conclusion.  And where Universal’s “Love Conquers All” TV edit of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) turns that film into a wildly incoherent mess, MGM can at least be said to have retained the basic direction of Stroheim’s narrative, if not necessarily its radically digressive shape.

It isn’t possible to know for certain whether the lost cut of Greed would have ultimately been “better” than the final theatrical edit.  But while the theatrical cut feels more or less like a fully formed and relatively uncompromised film (considering that less than a third of it survived), it is important to note that the many digressions that Stroheim had planned for the narrative were clearly intended to give a holistic and specific weight to the main characters’ lives that would probably have made their gradual descent into outright barbarism all the more tragically powerful.  It is true that many of the departures that Stroheim had intended for the story – ranging from depictions of what the protagonists and their relatives enjoy doing on a Sunday afternoon, to entire rhyming storylines featuring happy and spiteful romances – are not strictly essential for the narrative to work, and they are the type of scenes that would be excised in a conventional adaptation of a novel.  But the bits and pieces of this digressive material that do survive in the MGM edit (and are much more evident in the TCM version) definitely add layers of weight and moral force to the depictions of the main characters.  One of the most memorable scenes in the film involves a down and out Mac attempting to beg the estranged Trina for some food which she refuses to give him.  This scene works in the theatrical cut, but has more emotional and ethical nuance in the TCM version, where there is more context for Trina’s cruelty, both because the extent of Mac’s recent physical abuse toward her is more evident and because more of their early happiness has been shown.  Who can say how much more nuanced and powerful this and other of the film’s most iconic scenes might have been in Stroheim’s original cut?

No matter what complexities may have been removed from Stroheim’s vision for the theatrical cut, the surviving footage is still undeniably powerful and gripping.  It could be argued that certain plot developments and character beats feel a bit abrupt or poorly motivated in MGM’s edit, but the movement of the narrative is mostly logical and consistent with the heightened realism of Stroheim’s aesthetic.  There is something iconic and definitive about well-performed pantomime, where the force of physical action makes the need for dialogue or method acting “naturalism” moot.  Gibson Gowland makes Mac the very embodiment of dumb, hulking sweetness, as well as its ugly flip side, blind brute force; he’s like a cartoon bulldog.  ZaSu Pitts does a great job of gradually stripping away Trina’s shy kindness and revealing the paranoia and spite underneath her demeanor; it is only in retrospect, or on repeat viewings, that it becomes obvious that those traits were there all along, and only exacerbated by her circumstances.  It’s difficult to think of dramatic silent performances that are more effective than those of Gowland and Pitts, aside from Falconetti’s justly revered portrayal in The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928).  It isn’t hard to imagine Mac and Trina existing in between their onscreen appearances.

Stroheim rarely moves his camera, but here he has mastered the art of the static shot invented by the Lumiere brothers and developed by D.W. Griffith.  There are countless moments of highly ornate physical beauty in Greed, from the glimpses of Mac’s cluttered and highly stylized dentist office to the final sun-scorched shots of the actual Death Valley.  Whether Greed is a great work of art is not really in question.  What we will always wonder is how much greater it might have been in Stroheim’s original conception.

Greed passes the Masterpiece Test

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TV on DVD: The Shield (Season Seven, Discs One, Two & Three)

Episodes covered:  Coefficient of Drag, Snitch, Money Shot, Genocide, Game Face, Animal Control, Bitches Brew, Parricide, Moving Day, Party Line, Petty Cash

“Coefficient of Drag” gets the seventh and final season of The Shield off to an appropriately breathless and intense start.  In the opening five minutes, Shane comes home to find that his wife and child have been bound and gagged by Vic and Ronnie in retaliation for Shane’s quasi-kidnapping of Vic’s family at the end of season six.  Shane only convinces Vic to spare his family by convincing him that the Armenian gang that Shane’s been working with (and against) is ultimately the bigger threat to Vic’s livelihood.  While no blood is ultimately shed in this scene, it’s abundantly clear that the split in the Strike Team is permanent and irreparable.  It’s also clear that Vic and Shane’s multitude of double-dealings aren’t going to be as successful as they were back when everybody on the Strike Team was on the same page. The complicated fallout from Shane’s warning of Armenian vengeance leads an increasingly scary Ronnie to calmly dispatch of a hitman immediately after receiving important information from him; Shane, who needs the hitman alive to maintain his Armenian connection, is forced to mutilate the body so that his death looks like the work of a rival gang that removes the feet from their victims.  The sickening thud of Shane’s ax against the hitman’s ankles is a classically grungy Shield moment, and the fact that it takes several whacks before he’s able to cut through the bone reinforces the reality that the problems that these men have made for themselves are not going to be easy to get out of, and that the “solutions” to those problems are only going to create further violent headaches for the Strike Team.

After that incredible season opener, The Shield surprisingly settles into a series of several episodes that do very little to advance the master plot and that largely repeat overly familiar character beats.  Once again, Danny is put in danger by Tina’s inexperience, as the rookie fails to clear a room that the new mother is entering.  Dutch is concerned about the increasing signs of physical and mental fatigue that Claudette is showing as a result of her ongoing Lupus crisis.  Julien feels morally conflicted about the Strike Team’s peculiar brand of justice.  Aceveda’s political ambitions (he is beginning a campaign for mayor) get him in to bed with some dangerous people.  There are some nice moments amid all of this aimless busyness, such as Claudette’s riveting tongue-lashing of a young gang member who loves to say “nigger.”  And certain ongoing storylines that aren’t directly related to the Strike Team’s fate have been entertaining.  Dutch’s personal interest in a boy who shows early signs of serial killer behavior is his most intriguing extended case since the serial rapist/murderer from season one, and the fact that Dutch is willing to cross the line into “dating” the boy’s single mother while grilling her for information about her son gives some interesting shades to the Barn’s most honest detective.  Meanwhile, detective Billings’ attempts to sue the department for an extremely minor injury suffered toward the end of season six continue to amuse, as do his constant attempts to do as little work as possible while still earning a day’s pay. 

Still, too much of the early half of this season is taken up with uninvolving standalone cases, gratuitous appearances from unmemorable recurring or one-off characters from earlier in the show’s run, and unnecessarily convoluted gang rivalries that don’t seem to be headed toward any sort of payoff.  “Genocide,” the season’s most frustrating episode, revolves almost entirely around the barely coherent minutiae of Farmington’s warring gangs, which would be less of a problem if any of the show’s gangs registered as anything more than plot points.  Honestly, if I were rewatching The Shield, I would have no trouble skipping straight from “Coefficient of Drag” to “Animal Control” (in other words, from the first to the sixth episodes of the season), and I don’t think that a first-time viewer would have much of a problem doing the same.  A lot of stuff happens in the early episodes of season seven, but very little of it is of any real consequence.

That said, the run of episodes beginning with “Animal Control” and extending through all of disc three find The Shield at its absolute best, with each elaborate double-cross and violent plot-twist leading to the nail-biting tension that the show has often been masterful at producing, and bringing with them the promise of real consequences that the show has spent too much time avoiding.  The intense focus of these six episodes – which revolve almost entirely around an on-the-run Shane being chased down by Vic and Ronnie (who want to kill him) and the rest of the Barn (who want to arrest him), all while Claudette, Dutch, and Julien hatch a plan to arrest Vic – has made for the most satisfying group of episodes that this show has produced to date.  I can’t think of another series that has come into its home stretch with a run of episodes that are almost unquestionably its best, and I can’t wait to see how the final two episodes wrap everything up.

Quick Thoughts:

-  What happened to Franka Potente’s character from season six?  I honestly don’t remember, although I seem to recall her still being alive.  Considering that the Armenian storyline seems to be completely resolved by the end of “Animal Control,” I’m not expecting her to come back, but her absence is a reminder of how many unnecessary storylines and characters have been introduced over the course of this series in the interest of keeping it going for seven seasons.

-  Laurie Holden is this season’s big guest star.  Her character plays a fairly pivotal role in the season’s running storyline – she’s an ICE agent who Vic is hoping will help him get a job as an undercover officer within that agency (a job that he desperately needs, now that he’s turned in his badge and lost his pension)  - but she still seems more like a plot device (a la Laura Harring’s lawyer from season five) rather than the full-fledged characters that Glenn Close, Anthony Anderson, and Forest Whittaker have played in past seasons.

- Here is how Steve Hyden of the AV Club predicted things would end up for Vic at the conclusion of the series (in his 2008 review of “Coefficient of Drag”) – “Vic (finally goes to) trial for the murder of Terry Crowley and gets off on the kind of legal technicality he normally despises, depriving him of the justice he deserves and exposing him as a killer and liar to his fellow boys in blue.”  That seems like a pretty ideal conclusion for the show, but given the final two episodes’ reputation for “sticking the landing” and the writers’ penchant for swerving in unexpected directions, I won’t be surprised if The Shield ends up in a very different but equally satisfying place.

Understanding Auteurs: Hayao Miyazaki (Howl's Moving Castle)

Though it’s an adaptation of a British novel by Dianna Wynne Jones, the cinematic version of Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) is essentially an amalgam of Hayao Miyazaki’s previous films.  The protagonist is a young woman who learns to grow up over the course of the narrative, similar to the heroines of My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), and Spirited Away (2001).  She lives in a village that has old-fashioned architecture but is surrounded by futuristic technology, bringing to mind the settings of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Castle in the Sky (1986), while the war being waged just outside of town resembles the background action of both of those films as well as Princess Mononoke (1997).  One of Howl’s main antagonists is an imposingly blobby old lady who recalls the bathhouse owner from Spirited Away, and her shadowy henchmen feel like they could’ve stepped out of that film as well. 

The comparisons between elements of Howl’s Moving Castle and previous Studio Ghibli productions could fill an entire blog post.  For better and for worse, this may be Miyazaki’s most characteristic film.  Some of the variations on the director’s usual tropes are inspired, while others occasionally make Howl feel like a time-marking greatest hits collection.  The familiar coming-of-age structure gets an inventive workout, with heroine Sophie being literally forced to grow up after being afflicted with a curse that turns her into a 90-year old woman.  Her occasional sudden changes in age and appearance are as unpredictable as they are vividly animated.  Many of the other characters undergo transformations – the titular castle owner, for example, turns into a sinister, hulking bird before flying into combat – and while this is nothing new for Miyazaki fans, it does play to Studio Ghibli’s undeniable skill for vibrant, colorful imagery and Miyazaki’s talent for creating memorably surreal creature animations.  Other warmed-over Miyazaki tropes fare less well in Howl.  The ecstatic “everybody turns into their true form by finding their one true love” ending doesn’t have the emotional resonance that Miyazaki was clearly aiming for, largely because it feels like a rerun of the endings of both Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away.

The biggest problem with Howl’s Moving Castle is not its overly familiar feeling – and it should be noted that although the film feels very typical of Miyazaki’s style, it couldn’t be mistaken for the work of any other director – but its convoluted narrative and occasionally awkward pacing.  A number of critics, including Roger Ebert, found Howl to be baffling; when I saw it during its theatrical run, I felt that it was almost completely impenetrable.  On second viewing, I realized that the film is not hard to follow so much as it is overstuffed.  While the film’s epic expansiveness is part of what makes it feel so breathtakingly cinematic, there is simply too much going on, and the themes and characterizations are ultimately less focused than in Miyazaki’s finest work.  A lot of plot and thematic elements are introduced without being followed through on.  One scene has the conjuror Howl petulantly complaining about an accidental and unwanted change to his appearance.  The scene is exceptionally well realized in its own right, with Howl surrounded by a baroque array of random trinkets like the world’s most fantastically spoiled teenager, but the character’s vanity, which is given so much weight in this moment, is barely mentioned in the rest of the film.  It’s fine that Miyazaki didn’t turn Howl’s character arc into an obvious “don’t be a narcissist” message, except that one has the impression that this was the original intention and the film simply ran out of room for it.  Later on, a climactic revelation that a haunted, radish-headed scarecrow’s true form is a handsome prince that is in love with Sophie is an awkward conclusion to a storyline that was never really introduced.

Narrative has never been Miyazaki’s strong suit, and it’s no surprise that his masterpiece, Spirited Away, is also his least plot-heavy film (aside from perhaps My Neighbor Totoro).  Spirited Away is Miyazaki at his best because its dream logic structuring requires only the thinnest thread of plot, allowing the mesmerizing animation to take over without any unnecessary story elements getting in the way of the experience.  Contemporaneous mood pieces like David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) and Wong Kar-wai’s 2046 (2004) are hardly less dense than Howl’s Moving Castle, but they use their minimal plots as launching pads for their directors’ spellbinding tangents, while Miyazaki’s singular imagery is weighed down by an excess of story.  Many of Miyazaki’s previous fantasy films, from Nausicaa to Mononoke, are poorly structured, but it is especially disappointing to see him revert to heavy convolution so quickly after he successfully abandoned conventional narrative structure with Spirited Away.

Despite these flaws, Howl’s Moving Castle is a must-see for anyone interested in animation or the fantasy genre.  There are enough extraordinary images in the film to make up for the randomness of the storytelling; even when a stale Miyazaki trope is the focus of a scene, there is usually something amazing to look at somewhere on the screen.  As usual, Studio Ghibli has somehow managed to top their previous work in terms of sheer grandeur and exotic beauty, and they have ambitiously incorporated a few computer-generated images into their mostly hand-drawn frames.  The titular castle, an enormous shambling mess of rusty gears and oddly jutting metals, may be the single most impressive of all of the studio’s creations.  Even at its most familiar, Hayao Miyazaki’s work is tremendously offbeat and charming.

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