In the last two days, I watched three movies. Two I watched for the first time, one I re-watched for the sake of the poor souls who hadn't seen it yet. All three of them are great enough to warrant my giving them a 5-star rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but they're all so completely different, in tone, style, and source material. I usually don't get lucky watching three movies in a row like that, so since I did, I thought I'd expound on why they're all so great in their own vastly different ways.
I should warn you about spoilers. There WILL be spoilers for The Shawshank Redemption, Annie Hall, and Oldboy. If you want to read one section but not another, just look for the title in bold and skip to the next one.
The first one I watched was The Shawshank Redemption. The fact that I hadn't seen it before now is a crime, but hey, at least I've seen it now. As you hopefully know, it's the story of an innocent man (Andy) thrown into a notorious prison for a very personal murder he didn't commit. From the point of view of Red, an older prisoner who quickly befriended the Andy, we watch as he slowly gains the friendship, respect, or loyalty of his fellow inmates, the guards, and even the warden, despite all odds.
Much of the film's midsection is padded out with various subplots, ranging from uplifting stories like that of Andy taking over and refurbishing the prison library, to the soul-crushingly depressing scene wherein an old man, released from prison after fifty years, fails to adjust back into society and kills himself. It comes to a head at the end of the second act, which combines the uplifting (Andy helps a new kid get his high school equivalency) with the depressing (the warden kills off the new kid to suppress evidence of Andy's innocence), which rolls into the extremely satisfying third act.
The film is big on payoffs. After an attempt to mislead Red (and the audience) that Andy is going to kill himself, it is revealed that he has escaped, in one of the more brilliant resurrection scenes I've seen put to film, as well as tied together with little bits of information collected from nearly every point in the film. He proceeds to sap the Warden of all his ill-gotten money and reveals the corruption and murder in Shawshank to the world, whereupon the bad guys get their comeuppance in spades; this is extremely satisfying as the Warden is brilliantly written as the kind of character you cannot help but hate with every ounce of your being.
So, what makes Shawshank so good? Most of it probably comes down to the payoffs, the cinematography and the humanity in the script.
The payoffs I mostly addressed, but I'll touch on them again in a bit. I haven't talked about the cinematography yet though. Every shot in the film seems both extremely thought out and grandiose without actually being too distracting. Whether it's the sweeping overhead shot of the prison as the bus of new prisoners approaches, or any of the shots illustrating Andy's escape, or the iconic wide, slow zoom out from afar as Andy and Red are reunited. Each shot is gorgeous without distracting from the content, and above all, it conforms to the style of the story. The story is slow-moving, long, mostly small and human-driven, with an air of quiet old-time grandiosity. The camera-work embodies that, with its long sweeping shots, slow panning and its attention to faces.
But cinematography is only one part. The humanity of the script is the cog without which the entire film would collapse. The plot helps, since the second act (and, really, most of the first act) consist of Andy's experience in Shawshank, without too much of a direction. He has goals, such as driving to build his library, but these are all subplots that add slowly build up the main plot until it's kicked into action.
Because of this, the second act can be used almost solely for character development, and it grabs this and runs with it. The script puts together a group of extremely human, relatable characters out of a bunch of prisoners, then tortures them to play with your emotions. That sounds sadistic, but it works; when you watch Brooks fail to integrate back into society, you're ready to crawl under a rock and die, which makes the payoff all the more satisfying.
The payoffs go hand in hand with the humanity, because that's the fuel to their fire. With what is probably the film's greatest achievement, the third act calls back on nearly everything else and drives home so many satisfying payoffs that you can't help but be completely satisfied. Some are obvious, like the Warden's comeuppance, but some are slightly less so; Red's reintroduction to society mirrors that of Brooks, up to the room he's given, but instead of succumbing to the outside world, the glorious hope and the promise he made to the friend who gave him this hope help him survive and, eventually, push him to find Andy.
But there are so many I can't even begin to address them all. The point is, the first two acts build up these extremely human characters and send them through hell, while the third act redeems everyone and everything while punishing everyone who stood in their way. It's this combination of humanity and payoffs that makes the film so popular among both critics and regular viewers.
So that's why The Shawshank Redemption is good. What about Annie Hall?
The quintessential Woody Allen film is the story of a man (he has a name but he's really just Woody Allen) trying to understand his relationship problems. He mentions previous relationships and marriages, but it mostly questions his problems through his relationship with the title character, Annie. The two hit it off, fall in love, fall out of love, fall back in love, fall back out of love and finally go their separate ways, except we don't see it all in that order.
To keep things consistent, I'll keep it at three main elements that make the film so great: The humor, the format and the ultimate tone of the film.
The humor is easy to address. It's everywhere, it's quirky and silly and nonsensical and full of silly neurotic-Jewish punchlines he does so well. It offsets the drama and does a huge part in creating the ultimate tone of the film, which I'll eventually get to. But, above all, it's hilarious and extremely distinct. I'm sure some of the jokes are things you may have seen before, but certainly not in the way they're handled in the film. Plus, I mean really, "Don't knock masturbation, it's sex with someone I love."
So, the format. Again, I could expound on how it effects the overarching tone, but I'll get to that. The best way I can describe the format is "stream of conciousness". It kind of resembles a stand-up monologue in a way, since it's less of a distinct narrative than it is a series of anecdotes occasionally tied together with Allen's narration. It also has this interesting disregard for reality, where despite most if the film seeming grounded in reality, occasionally they'll throw it all out the window for the sake of humor, or exposition hidden by humor. A great example of this is early on, when adult Allen appears in his own childhood flashback and gets in an argument with his classmates about Freudian ideas of sexuality.
But neither of these would mean too much without the overarching tone. It isn't uncommon for films to share similar tones, but Annie Hall has a very distinct tone, which is defined by the format and the humor.
The film opens with Allen using old jokes to frame his love life. He puts forth a silly joke, then puts it into perspective, which starts driving the tone; essentially, he uses humor to frame what would otherwise be a story of love and loss, and somehow this keeps the mood reasonably even instead of flapping around like it should in such an unstructured narrative. It keeps and enhances the unique format, and uses the humor to keep the mood in check. The result is an unusual interesting way to approach the romantic comedy, complete with an ending where the protagonist does not get what he wants, but still manages to end on what seems to be a happy note.
The film ends on the same note it starts, with Allen having looked back on his love life and reframing it with another old joke. It's a portait of the cyclical nature of relationships and the people dealing with them, just like the film itself, and it ends the film on a perfect note.
And now for something completely different. Oldboy!
So, this is a film that I'd recommend not spoiling, so go watch it right now. C'mon, it's on Netflix and Amazon Instant and all that jazz, go view it so I don't spoil it for you.
...watched it? HOW GOOD WAS THAT. If you've seen it already but need a refresher, it's the story of a loudmouth alcoholic (Oh Dae-su) who ends up kidnapped and locked in a hotel room for fifteen years. Then, on the verge of escape, he's released back out into the world and given a few days to find out why before killing off the only person to show interest or compassion towards him in fifteen years, Mi-do. He eventually discovers the captor was an old schoolmate of his (Woo-jin), whose sister killed herself after rumors of pregnancy and incest arose from Dae-su having accidentally spied on them and started the rumor before leaving for another school in Seoul.
...this is not the easiest film to summarize.
Upon finding this out, he confronts Woo-jin, who has clearly put far too much thought into this; he reveals that not only did he blame Dae-su, but that his revenge wasn't merely to lock him up; instead, the reason
Dae-su was locked up for so long was so that his (at the time) unborn daughter could grow up into the very woman he fell in love and had sex with. Upon dropping this bombshell, Woo-jin leaves and subsequently kills himself, and Dae-su attempts to mask this memory using the same hypnotist who worked on him in his imprisonment. The final shot is open, so as we watch Mi-do and Dae-su embrace and see Dae-su's face fall into what looks like anguished hysteria, we don't know if the hypnotism worked or not.
So, why was it good. Again picking out three specifics to go with the pattern, I'd say the biggest factors were the steady lack of information/sense of confusion, the distinct visual style and the ending.
I'll start with the visual style, cause it's easy: It's different, it's great, and it's exciting. It's prevalent through most of the film, but particularly when it's at its most distinct: The side-scrolling fight scene, for example, is one of the more brilliantly shot and choreographed fight scenes I've ever seen (I wouldn't call myself an authority though, so feel free to take that with a grain of salt). Also, little things like the date changing, or the shot with the hammer (you know what I'm talking about), or pretty much anything in the last five minutes (particularly the suicide and the final minutes in the snow). I could list so much more but I won't.
So I'll move on to the lack of information. Or, whatever the best way to put it is; the film's pacing, mostly in how it drops you into the dark and slowly drops you little strands of information here and there until finally, when you have enough to paint a blurry picture, the film beats you to death with the twist. I mean that, of course, as a compliment; the twist was brilliant and heartbreaking and almost hard to watch if it wasn't so brilliant.
And that leads right into the ending. For one, Woo-jin's recollection into his suicide was gorgeous and heartbreaking and brilliant, and the very end was perfect for the film. Not every film can effectively pull off an ending like that; most films have a tendency to end better on a solid definitive note (be it happy or sad or somewhere in between), but with the kind of mind-fuck-y movie that Oldboy is, an ending you have to question and discuss post-film fits with the rest of the film's tone. Plus, the film's ending itself it leaps and bounds ahead of most attempts at this. Inception, the most recent critically acclaimed implementation of this kind of ending, was pretty good, but felt like a cop-out. With Oldboy, the ending leaves a number of distinct possibilities, chief among them (in my opinion) that the hypnotist, instead of locking off the monster in his mind, instead locked off the rest of his mind, leaving both the murderous psychopathic killing machine and the memory of incest.
But maybe that's just me.
So, there are the films. I guess this is where I compare them all to eachother? I won't go too in-depth cause that'd just be annoying, but I'll go through a few little tidbits I noticed.
For one, the visual styles. Oldboy is extremely distinct and stylistic, Shawshank is much more subdued and sweeping, while Annie Hall's visual style is almost nonexistent, as the film focuses much more on the characters and story. I wouldn't say any of the films would be improved by a different approach; there's too much going on in Annie Hall for more distinct visuals to do much but distract from what's going on, while pulling back on Oldboy's visuals would be a step towards making it a generic foreign revenge thriller. I can't even say I prefer one film's visuals over the other; even Annie Hall has this kind of fly-on-the-wall vibe that does wonders towards enhancing the film's tone.
Then, the writing. All of them, I noticed after the fact, take place over a long period of time: Annie Hall is mostly in the space of a few years but stretches as far back to the character's childhood in flashbacks; Oldboy takes place over fifteen years, but the bulk of the movie takes place in the last few days of that; and Shawshank takes place over the course of two or three decades, and unlike the other two keeps a reasonably steady pace chronologically, considering the circumstances.
The stories are all just as varied. An inspirational, slow-moving story of a man's imprisoned life, the lives he touched and his eventual breakout; the musings of a neurotic Jewish-American comedian trying to figure out his continued relationship problems; and the twisted heartbreaking story of one man's revenge and fall into inhumanity within another man's revenge plot. The stories share a few minor similarities here and there - for example, both Shawshank and Oldboy look at what a man can do with patience and years upon years of imprisonment, the difference being that Shawshank focused on the human effects of this, while Oldboy obviously focused on the isolation. For the most part, though, they keep radically different in every way, from the way the story is told to the specifics and tone.
Can I say any of them are distinctly better than the others? That's tough. All three are brilliant pieces of cinema whose successes stem from completely different places. I don't think I can point out a clear 'Best', but if I had to pick favorites, I'd probably go with Shawshank by a close margin. I think that's a mood-choice though; I'm sure if I was in a revenge-mindfuck-thriller mood, I'd be going with Oldboy, or if I was in a Woody Allen mood, I'd be going with Annie Hall, but the old-fashioned Hollywood kind of inspirational charm that goes with Shawshank just feels especially fresh and exciting, particularly when implemented so well.
Have I accomplished anything here? Not really. It isn't exactly uncommon knowledge that movies are very different, but I like to think too many people take for granted how varied films can get, particularly in this cynical era of "oh boo-hoo remakes and adaptations and originality is dead and every story is the same" etc etc. That's bull-honkey, and you can use these films as an example; Annie Hall, the only original film, is admittedly from the 70's, but Shawshank is a mid-90's (post-Top Gun, I think that's supposed to be the death-knell for good original cinema or something) short-story adaptation, and Oldboy is technically a comic book adaptation, and you wouldn't know it if you watched the movie with no knowledge of that.
But that stuff doesn't even matter. The point is, quit being so cynical about the future of film. Just because you saw Thor and Captain America and they were the same movie doesn't mean all movies are the same nowadays. Hell, I could do the same kind of list with Midnight in Paris, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Win Win, which all came out this year and are all very different.
So quit complaining and watch some more movies.
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