Reviews

Crime doesn't pay. Just ask the sociopathic poor Kim family featured in the dark tale PARASITE, an overrated, B/B- slasher film dressed up as high art: the latest runway walk sporting the Emperor's new clothes.

First the perps hoodwink a nice wealthy family, taking out the nice poor chauffeur and loyal kind poor housekeeper along the way, then make life a living hell for a third nice family. Ouch. Don't get in this ruthless mean family's way or you'll be sorry.

I am.

I liked the movie's opening shot. Painterly. Black writing appears on the right window pane of the Kim family's semi-basement hovel. For a while, everything was going OK. I liked the first act. Then WTF. Talk about bad choices. What an artistic, intellectual, sense-and-sensibility nose dive.

Tough to give this harsh and disappointing mean-spirited flick higher than a 7. Because even if I give it a 7 for FORM (nice production values, acting, and visuals, but an achievement of FORM at best only slightly better than the architectural quality of the deluxe modernesque house that PARASITE features as the main stage set of its story), I can't give the movie's STORY more than a 6.

Which averages a FORM & STORY score of 6.5.

That's about where it left me when I left the theater: pleased on an emotional and artistic level about 6.5, a bad taste in my mouth, feeling played. But at least I know what all the hyperventilating groupthink hype's about.

But then the filmmaker didn't give himself the awards. The overblown fanfare isn't his fault. He just wrote, directed, and made the best movie he could.

And a 6.5 isn't a bad score or in any way derogatory in my book, especially for a story that feels like a stage play more than a motion picture. For me, any movie that gets a 7 is darn good.

So. Enjoy. See PARASITE over and over if it's your cuppa tea and you find the movie relevant to your life, your vision of the world, your artistic aspirations and work. Different strokes for different folks.

But here's the thing: Actually, all we know for sure is that PARASITE may not have been--and most likely wasn't--the majority of the 10,000 Academy voters' first choice for Best Picture but somehow still managed to eke out a win for that misleading category. PARASITE may have merely been the majority of the 10,000 Academy voters' second and third place choice for Best Picture, thanks to the complex "preferential ballot system" (Google it), pushing PARASITE over the top to KO works that may have gotten more first place votes.

How else can we characterize this non-transparent balloting paradigm, based on non-disclosure of the balloting results, than Fakery Afoot?

Or to steal a line from THE GENTLEMEN, "F*%@ery Afoot."

The Academy won't tell us the truth. How many first place votes did PARASITE get? How many first place votes did the other 8 nominated movies get? Why won't the academy show us the math?

We can handle the truth.

Instead, the Academy treats us like sheep, preferring to keep us in the dark, misleading us, relying on our gullibility and the necessary illusion (as they see it, in their screwed up marketing way) that PARASITE was the top vote getter for #1 film.

Maybe.

But unlikely.

I ask the Academy to prove me wrong.

Show us the math.

Truth be told, who knows (other than The Academy's Threshold Guardians) how many other so-called Best Picture award winners since 2009, when the Academy expanded the number of nominees from 5 to as many as 10, won an award not for what we're led to believe, Best Picture, but for a category that would be more accurately named Top Consensus Picture.

Or, oxymoronically (and moronically), Top Second and Third Place Picture.

Or how about Most Preferred Picture.

Academy Awards are a self-promotional corporate crap shoot, fueled by politics, social trends, self-interest, personal biases, PR, hidden agendas, mass mind meld, and money. PARASITE simply reflects the latest Academy enabled intellectually dishonest connection between the secret and screwy preferential balloting system results and the name of the award--the fake connection between what goes on behind the curtain and what goes on in front of the curtain in the merry land of Oz.

In other words, to use an analogy: Like our federal elections for President, the Best Picture award doesn't go to the popular vote winner. The award goes to the Electoral College winner. But in our elections for President, though we might not like the set up and feel it's unfair, at least we know how the system works, it's fully disclosed, and the vote tallies do not remain behind closed doors.

My hunch?

PARASITE, true to the meaning of the word, ironically enough, benefited by deriving nutrients at the expense of other movies.

I suspect that PARASITE landed the award for Top Consensus Picture/Most Preferred Picture not by leading in the number of first place votes but by siphoning off lots of second and third and maybe even fourth and fifth place votes, thereby outflanking films of more surpassing quality like LITTLE WOMEN (8.0) and ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (8.75).

Again, I ask the Academy to prove me wrong.

Show us the math.

I don't know which force-feeds us a bigger Monster In The House, PARASITE or The Academy of Motion Pictures.

At least PARASITE's ugly monster roams the house out in the open.

(Aside: For Best International Film, PARASITE oddly beat out the brilliantly written, shot, and acted, truly modern and original, artistically and socially astute no-false-note gritty LES MISERABLES (8.5). I haven't yet seen Almodovar's PAIN AND GLORY, also nominated for Best International Film, but I'm guessing I'll like that more than PARASITE too. And, by the way, how did the Academy manage to overlook the remarkable unnominated edge-of-your-seat film-wonder UNCUT GEMS (8.5)--too cutting edge? Not good enough to make the empty 10 slot? Really? And you got robbed Adam Sandler.)

PARASITE not only trots its monster, the downtrodden Kim family, out in the open, painting the family with a thin brush, hiding nothing, and therefore leaving little if anything surprising to foreshadow, reveal, or shock us about their inner life, history, motivations and what makes them tick besides inept pizza box folding, manipulation, high jinks, and greed.

PARASITE also does another thing really well, which goes hand-in-glove with the story's two-dimensional nefarious family. PARASITE reminds us that pressure reveals character--and the arc of the parasitic self-serving Kim family's character is simple.

None.

Nasty family starts out F'd and poor. Nasty family hits the jackpot through fakery and fraud but hits a snag. Nasty family turns violent then becomes poor again and more F'd than before.

Unrepentant.

Unchanged.

And all an empty way for the filmmaker to set us up for some nasty, gratuitous horror and gore.

I was almost ready to accept the poor family's mooching off the rich family as an inspired metaphor for capitalism mooching off society, doing whatever it takes, including lie, cheat, steal, smile, swindle, and kill, to parasitically feast off our commonwealth.

But then capitalism wouldn't likely end up back in the basement.

...........

One final thought. PARASITE tells a story about rich and poor that goes beyond the obvious economic one.

The story takes place mostly inside of a house. A house is a metaphor for human character: Character is a house. You have your interior and exterior. I speak as an architect when I say that in terms of the quality of architectural design, the house has a rich, developed interior but a poor, undeveloped exterior. And I speak as a screenwriter when I say it's the opposite for the quality of the character design: PARASITE's characters have a rich, developed exterior but a poor, undeveloped interior. They are little more than paper-thin characterizations.

The movie's building architecture and character architecture are reciprocally related, creating a kind of symmetry, conflict, clash but not a pleasing kind--because in Story Architecture, what matters most isn't the quality of the stage set design but the quality of the character design. And that's where PARASITE fails most glaringly as a work of art.

The filmmaker created a monster, patching together a subpar exterior building architecture and subpar interior character architecture to create a FORM & STORY 6.5 Frankenstein.

Christopher Vogler, the famous Disney story guru, says every good story has a One-Word Theme. What about KLAUS? And how does its OWT connect to the meaning of the Title and Hero's Name--the other two corners of what I call The Symbolic Triangle?

The secret of a story's thematic unity.

I'll give you my three cents. But first . . .

A friend of mine watched KLAUS four times--three times in one day! And she was so eager for me to see the movie too. So I texted her as I watched.

And here they are, my texts as I thrilled to the wonder and wit, pratfalls and laughs, setups and payoffs, sights and sounds, and the welling up of emotions delivered by Sergio Pablos's fantabulous KLAUS.

"i love this movie... what a beautiful story beautifully told... the transforming power of the Christmas spirit... the "Klausmas spirit"... so clever... Santa Klaus origin story... and hits so close to home

klaus just told jesper about lydia... the big reveal (part 2)... klaus and lydia... build a house... build a future together... a future that never happened... total sadness... but hope and joy restored by the spirit of giving and a selfless heart

and jesper's school teacher romantic interest now gonna show jesper why he can't leave, look what he's done to the town... and my own work (purpose), i have jesper-people to thank for helping me rebound like klaus

at the 45-minute mark, 1/2 way into the 90-minute story, when the reindeer and sleigh join for the first time and thrill jesper and klaus (and us) on their first sleigh ride... so great... and from that point forward, for those who do not know ahead of time where the story is going, we finally get a clue... a clue bigger than north-pole vicinity huge-bodied toy maker with white beard... and we confirm: the story that could be called JESPER is called KLAUS for a reason

we knew it all along kind of but marvel at how the filmmakers' polaroid snapshot of their story developed slowly and magically and deftly before our very eyes to show us this sleigh ride of a story we find ourselves on... buckle up

great stretch of about 17 minutes from the sleigh ride at 45 minutes to the end of the "Invisible" theme-song scenes... 17 minutes of major turning points and heart

movie magic"

........................

Well, those texts to my friend are about as honest as I can be about KLAUS. I've now watched the movie twice. I know why my friend watched it four times. And why we'll both watch it again and again.

So much to see and appreciate. The story and screenplay. The animation, artwork, visual creativity and skill. The soundtrack. Amazing.

KLAUS is a buddy movie: the selfless woodsman and the selfish postman. The sad toy maker and the spoiled brat. Two men in trouble. And only one knows it (Klaus). Two lost souls on the sleigh ride of life. One from a broken heart, the other from no heart.

The Christmas spirit shakes them and wakes them, freeing the angel of their true name and nature: Jesper means "treasurer." "Bringer of treasure." Klaus is a form of Nicholas. Klaus means "'the people's victory' and implies someone who serves his community and devotes himself to the greater good."

Together they bring the treasure of joy and goodwill to the unhappy ill-will soaked land of Smeerensburg, changing it from the Isle of Glum into the Island of Fun.

Treasure Island.

"A true selfless act always sparks another." What Klaus told Jesper at that mid-point of the story, on their first sleigh-ride.

"A true act of goodwill always sparks another." What Jesper finally learned too.

Both men learned to give. Give, not get (Jesper). Give, not keep (Klaus). Both men no longer would lead lives doomed to sorrow (Klaus) or self-interest (Jesper). Their lives bloom with meaning and purpose (why Jesper's concerned father sent him to Smeerensburg in the first place).

In KLAUS, the selfless Christmas spirit that takes hold of Klaus and Jesper rekindles the hearts and reshapes the actions of an entire town. Naughty kids become nice. Then grownups too. Peace and goodwill rescue the townspeople from the curse of generations of the mirth & merriment of fight and spite.

Klaus and Jesper's selfless spirit of serving the community for the greater good brings about a people's victory. The treasure of joy and giving. "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men" and women.

And here's another meaning of the name Jesper: a name "traditionally assigned to one of the wise men (also known as the Magi, or three kings) who were said to have visited the newborn Jesus."

Jesper the Magi.

Jesper, a most unlikely hero--destined to become Jesper the selfless, Jesper the wise--came to Smeerensburg for a reason he didn't know: to visit Klaus. To cause Klaus to feel newborn. Jesper heralded the newborn spirit of Christmas for the joyless town of Smeerensburg by resurrecting Klaus from emotional death, unbearable grief. The dominoes of transformation then fall one by one, each good deed leading to another, transforming the people of Smeerensburg from the inside out.

Klaus's protégé, Jesper--who, figuratively speaking, becomes the "town treasurer"--undergoes a change of heart, a reversal of values--and therefore a reversal of fortune. He starts out as a lazy do-nothing rich kid who craves deluxe creature comforts. He ends up with a radically different viewpoint about what really makes somebody rich. Jesper learns, and helps others learn too, how true it is, as Jesus, the central figure of Christmas, said, "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

KLAUS reminds us, What treasure could be more priceless than a golden heart? A heart full of love and generosity. A kindhearted and gentlehearted attitude toward other people, toward one's neighbors. A good heart, a heart that treasures selfless acts and giving.

A heart like Klaus.

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others," said Mahatma Gandhi. And that's sure what happened to Klaus. Never able to give the toys he made to the children that he dreamed of one day having with his wife, Lydia, who he lost, Klaus lost himself in the service of other people's children instead. And Jesper, the self-serving service worker? The postman who couldn't (or wouldn't) deliver the mail? The spirit of Klaus(mas) rubbed off on him too. Both men were lost. But the Christmas spirit, the spirit of giving, found them. And in turn, they experienced newfound meaning and purpose. Self-worth. And received love in return.

Jesper even ended up receiving love from his well-meaning but strict father, who had Jesper's life all planned out. Jesper awakened in his father the treasure of goodwill, defined as "a kindly feeling of approval and support."

All thanks to the selfless, redeeming, contagious spirit of Christmas. And the spirit of Lydia pulling the strings behind the scenes to give Klaus a clue. Who else swooped up through that swirl of snow, which happened three times in the movie, swooped up that first letter from the ground and gently carried it into the hands of Klaus? . . . forever changing his heart and therefore his destiny . . . and Jesper's too . . . and also the townspeople's of glorious battle-weary high-jinks Smeerensburg, stand-in for the North Pole.

I love ERIN BROKOVICH, RUDY, and ALI--examples of movies where the title character is the main character. But some of my other favorite movies do what KLAUS does: set us up for a journey by the main character who isn't the title character. Movies like HER, MOTHER, COCO, and ANNIE HALL.

Storytellers are Magi, bearers of gifts--to us. Magicians. And Magi/Magicians often put their cards on the table face down and wait for us to turn them over, knowing that treasures of insight will be ours if we dare to do so. I'll turn over one more card.

KLAUS's screenplay helps me see that writers are Jespers: treasurers of imagination, illumination, and art, bringers of gifts to our soul, mind, and heart. Writers rescue us from self-absorption, confusion, and despair, rousing in us the saving grace of purpose and love. Writers deliver letters written in the ink of Klaus-spirited generosity, empathy, humor, insight, joy, and goodwill. These letters change the world.

Just as letters do in KLAUS.

___________________________________________

The Symbolic Triangle of KLAUS:

1. Title: KLAUS

2. One-Word Theme: GIVE

3. Hero's Name: JESPER

I like other choices for the One-Word Theme too: Goodwill, Purpose, Selflessness, Christmas, Love, Service, Heart, Joy. And also . . .

Help.

Jesper's dad helped his son. Jesper, Santa's helper, helped Klaus. So did Lydia. Klaus helped Jesper. Each action sparked another. Two men and a town in trouble, all calling out for help without knowing it, got the help they needed. Kids helped their families. The teacher helped the kids. Everyone helped one another.

Help and Give are two sides of the same coin. I like that both are verbs. Imperatives. I like that Help doubles as a noun and can be a plea, a prayer. I like that Give and Help both ask us to honor the call of the Christmas spirit, the call of the human hero-spirit, the benevolent universal spirit as old as time--and turn our goodwill into action.

"A true act of goodwill always sparks another." "A true selfless act always sparks another."

Act.

Act is a supporting OWT, too vague for the lead OWT. I really like Help (the buried thematic treasure in the story). But I lean toward Give. The iconic message of Christmas.

KLAUS lifts our hearts and reminds us that the only practical way to spread Christmas cheer throughout the year is to summon our inner Jesper and Klaus: Treasure others and on their behalf, for the greater good, Act. Help people.

Give.

Like the hymn says, "Give of your heart's rich overflow, And peace shall crown your joy-filled day."

KLAUS sure crowned mine.

What a gift.

1. If you haven't seen DUNKIRK, don't read this. And if you have seen DUNKIRK, go see it again. Ideally, 70mm film (not digital), 2.20:1 widescreen.

Because DUNKIRK presents far more than a thrilling visceral spectacle and dramatic reenactment of an historical event. This movie must be seen twice--at least twice--to fully grasp its clockwork architecture.

2. For screenwriter and director Christopher Nolan, Cinema is Art--a grand creative chess game costarring Form and Story. On the rectangular chessboard of the silver screen, the White Knight of Form and the Black Knight of Story (my terms) engage in collaborative "conflict"--"the basis of every art," as Sergei Eisenstein said in Film Form (1949).

Nolan knows, A movie is a game, and a game has rules. And in DUNKIRK, a Bobby Fischer level expression of the Chess Game of Art, Nolan plays by very special rules.

3. My second viewing confirmed things I saw the first time about Nolan's One Word Theme: Time. (And sidekick, Place.) And revealed far more I didn't see.

Time serves as Nolan's OWT throughout his work--for example, MEMENTO and INTERSTELLAR. Specifically, Story Time. Which in DUNKIRK, Nolan elastically shapes, bends, staggers, previews, rewinds, fast forwards, accelerates, and compresses . . . through his RASHOMON-like artistic filter . . . most obviously conveyed by showing us the downed British pilot's water landing twice.

Think about it. Nolan shows us that water landing twice!

4. Through titles, Nolan posts the Place & Time structure of his story up front. Events on the Mole (Land) take place over a week. On the Sea, in a day. In the Air, in an hour--virtually real time relative to the duration of the movie. Slow Land and faster Sea take place in the Past relative to fastest-of-all Air, which takes place in the Present--the Future relative to Land and Sea--until one fateful moment.

My second viewing revealed methodical nothing-is-random telling and retelling of key scenes as the Past of Land and Sea catch up with the Present of Air. Land and Sea time moves faster and faster, compression accelerating, to the second act climax when BAM, KABOOM . . . the German bomber (Villain) goes down. Conflagration ensues (signaling False Victory), the Moonstone rescues Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) . . . and action rebuilds until Land and Sea and Air intersect, EXPLODE, for one split second into a synchronized convergent Present of cheers at the end of the second act . . . when the three Place & Time Zones crisscross into a reversal, Sea and Land moving forward into the Present and Future . . . and Air gliding into the Past. All Place & Time lead to that crucial climactic Moment . . . when just when he thinks they're safe, startled--the Villain rising to strike one last time--Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) closes his eyes, resigned to their devastating fate . . . and the frame starts to go white . . . then suddenly, this False Defeat turns to Victory as the last German fighter plane gets shot down.

5. On first viewing, how could we know, Follow the Moonstone--captained by Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance)--which first-time viewers will unlikely spot in the frame of Nolan's first unspooling of the plane's water landing. How could we know, Follow the trawler--the beached bullet-riddled fishing boat--that we see sinking long before we see the soldiers climb into it. But on second viewing, we can see more clearly Nolan's magic act, his sleight of hand, his deft design, simultaneously concealed and revealed, of the Architecture of Place & Time.

6. The stunning Hans Zimmer score and the sound design reinforce Nolan's exacting choreography of Time. Listen for the tick tick. And watch how many times characters look at their watches, including British pilot Farrier (Tom Hardy), who checks his watch and chalks the time on his control panel to calculate how long his fuel will last.

See how beautifully Nolan edits the film at the end, collating the frames of Hoyte van Hoytema's breathtaking cinematography so that the slow peaceful heroic descent of the airplane onto the beach--when Air and Land and Sea again poetically merge--parallels the same slowing down, the same timing, of the train with our mole. (Nolan plays on the meaning of mole, threading our stand in, Tommy, through the story from beginning to end, seen from the back in the first frame and from the front in the last frame. Mole in a figurative sense: The mole is our spy, one of the main ways we get inside the story. He spies for us.)

7. I need a third watch to unravel Nolan's Möbius strip moves. When does Farrier shoot down that last fighter? Does he loop back after he glides by Bolton? Or does Nolan pull a MEMENTO, showing the sequence backward-because Farrier shot the fighter down before gliding by? A riddle signaling how Nolan ups the complexity of his artistic chess game of Form & Story at this dramatic moment. Not only crisscrossing Time and Place . . . but also Direction and Space.

8. Yes, a movie is a game, and a game has rules--rules that the magic of movies can sustain, bend, and break that the Place & Time-bound reality of life can't.

But at the same time, the Form & Story art of DUNKIRK presents a creative demonstration of the scientific truth of the relativity of Space and Time.

And Observation.

Nolan riffs on Akira Kurosawa's RASHOMON (1950), gathering witnesses inside and outside the story, summoning us to witness the film's deep structure as we sort out what's happening . . . where . . . and when.

9. My Silver Knight Rating of DUNKIRK:

White Knight (Form): 8.5

Black Knight (Story): 7.5

=

Silver Knight (Form & Story): 8

8 Cameras

(I explain my Silver Knight Rating system in my IMDb commentary on ARRIVAL.)

© copyright 2017 by JEF7REY HILDNER

Divorce can crush you.

No, I'm not talking about Meru. That's the lead I wish I'd written for my commentary on Her. www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/reviews-734

But IMDb won't let me revise my commentary, because I hit the max tweaks IMDb allows.

So, undaunted—a fan of non sequitur, incongruity, Russian Formalist "strange-making," and eccentric creative leaps!—I won't bury the lead this time. Even though the lead doesn't go with Meru.

I know, go figure.

But I did get something right in my Her commentary: I introduced the concept that I call The Symbolic Triangle.

Her spins around a One-Word Theme*: Divorce. The only way through the dark labyrinth of divorce? Acceptance. Her presents a Rite of Passage story that requires the hero, Theo Twombley, to move through the heartache and grief of divorce into an emotional space where he accepts his fate.

And the simple geometry of Her's story triangle helps us see through the sizzle to the substance of the movie's deft thematic structure.

THE SYMBOLIC TRIANGLE. 1. TITLE: Her (secondarily, the digital-woman played by Scarlett Johansson—the attractive distractor; primarily, Catherine, the real-life woman who dumps the story's hero). 2. ONE-WORD THEME: Divorce. 3. HERO'S NAME: Theo Twombley (screenwriter Spike Jonze's artfully chosen name, which I translate: "A Man For Whom Women Are 'Deities Unknown'").

Which brings us to Meru.

Meru prompted me to reconfigure the geometry. I shifted to an iconic geometry shared by architecture, painting, literature, and cinema—the archetypal shape of windows, walls, and rooms, of canvases, books, and movie screens.

Enter —

THE SYMBOLIC RECTANGLE.

Anchored by four cornerstones of thematic unity crucial to the art of story design:

1. TITLE | 2. ONE-WORD THEME | 3. SPECIAL WORLD | 4. HERO'S NAME

Same as The Symbolic Triangle—except I added Special World.

I learned about the Special World from David McKenna​, who co-wrote with Christopher Vogler​ the book ​"Memo from the Story Department," in which Vogler presents the concept "one word theme​.​" I took David's screen writing course at Columbia University. And one day during a class break, we walked and talked. I'd just watched All the President's Men, and I asked David, "What's the Special World?"

Now, I was thinking along the lines of The Washington Post, Investigative Journalism, Political Corruption, Abuse of Power...

You get the picture.

So imagine my surprise when David said, "The Wasp & the Jew." Ah! Woodward & Bernstein. That blew me away. And stuck.

My contenders for the Special World of All the President's Men play a role in story design: ARENA. And thanks to Barbara Nicolosi, who unpacks this concept in her screenwriter talks (catharsis.com), we can distinguish between Special World and Arena.

But where does Arena fit into The Symbolic Rectangle? Well, I had to mull that over. And I didn't want to turn the rectangle into a pentagon. For symbolic reasons, rectangle makes wayyyyy more sense. As an architect, a painter, and a screenwriter, no way I'm going to base my work on a pentagon! So it hit me: Make the Arena the space defined by the four corners of The Symbolic Rectangle.

Think of a story's Arena as Central Park. Or as The Lawn at UVA. The space the sacred space defined by the perimeter. The stage on which the drama unfolds.

Back to Meru.

THE SYMBOLIC RECTANGLE: Meru

Four Corners:

1. TITLE: Meru—Meru means "High"

2. ONE-WORD THEME: Trust

3. SPECIAL WORLD: Team

4. HERO'S NAME: Conrad Anker—German origins: Conrad means "bold" and rad "counsel" (rad: "very appealing, good radical"). Anker means "anchor"—a person who provides strength and support.

Space:

5. ARENA: Mountain Climbing

Sure, Meru's a documentary, but the filmmakers clearly signal their awareness of story-design concepts encompassed by The Symbolic Rectangle. (Talk about luck for the hero's name!)

Meru tells a story about a trio of brave-beyond-measure mountaineers. But Meru also tells a story about us. Because as Robert McKee says in his workshop and book, Story, every movie is a metaphor for life. A metaphor for my life and your life.

Meru sends us the message: To reach our high goal, we too must act boldly—guided by radical good counsel—and provide strength and support for a team in whom we place our trust.

Meru asks: Like Conrad Anker and his team, do you have the wherewithal, courage, and bold character to sacrifice everything to achieve your worthy ideal? And when your goal's finally within reach, do you have the humility, wisdom, and grit it takes to retreat? Like the mountain climbers—and filmmakers—did just 150 feet short of the summit? (The filmmakers didn't have a movie after team Anker's 2008 unsuccessful climb.) Or are you so hypnotized by your goal that you blunder, ignoring wise counsel, your inner GPS? Do you have the brains, heart, and guts to hit the reset button? To regroup? To "fail, fail again, fail better," as Samuel Beckett put it? Can you endure an ordeal that doubles or triples in magnitude as you scale your mountain?

Because a mountain can crush you.

Meru's heroic story impels us to more fully realize our own heroic story. We climb to the summit of the human spirit. And return to base camp transformed, dumbstruck by a team of people powered by audacity, tenacity, foresight, mettle, and trust. And love.

McKenna taught me, "The only power of a storyteller is to withhold."

Where does WITHHOLD fit into The Symbolic Rectangle? First take: the Perimeter—the line that connects the four corners and outlines the Arena. Because that line? That's a story's Power Line.

Dimension six of The Symbolic Rectangle.

Meru's Perimeter?

6. WITHHOLD: (See the movie.)

______________________________________

* See "Memo from the Story Department," by Christopher Vogler & David McKenna

© Copyright 2015 by JEF7REY HILDNER

All I'd heard about HER was that it was about a man who gets romantically involved with a digital girlfriend. But that isn't what the story is really about.

That isn't why Spike Jonze deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Let me warm to my theme.

HER not only entertains through its pleasing visual design--from the understated film architecture of futuristic cool-toned LA to the vivid palette of protagonist Theo Twombley's warm-toned spring-season threads.

More important: HER educates through its equally pleasing story design. Which illustrates what I call THE SYMBOLIC TRIANGLE: the thematic correlation of a story's TITLE, ONE-WORD THEME*, and HERO'S NAME.

For example, what's The Symbolic Triangle of James Joyce's famous novel "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1916)?

1. TITLE: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 2. ONE-WORD THEME: Freedom ("To discover the mode of life or of art whereby my spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom," sings Joyce through his alter-ego hero.) 3. HERO'S NAME: Stephen Daedalus (Greek: Stephen means "crowned one." Daedalus = the mythic Greek artisan-hero, inventor of the labyrinth and wings).

Here's The Symbolic Triangle of HER--and how the meaning of the story's title, the story's one-word theme, and the story's hero's name (i.e., the main character's name) all fit together in a work of symbolic and artistic unity that pulses with subtle emotional truth.

1. TITLE: HER

HER refers only superficially to Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), the digital girlfriend--the virtual woman. Samantha is only a decoy: story-wise for us and emotionally-wise for Theo (Joaquin Phoenix). HER refers more deeply to the physical woman, Theo's soon-to-be ex-wife, about whom Theo is heartbroken: Catherine Klausen.

At its emotional core, HER isn't mainly about a fantasy love story in which futuristic software conjures up through artificial intelligence a beguiling Google Assistant. HER evokes the pain and futility of an all-too-common everyday love story in which age-old real-ware cannot conjure up sufficient relational intelligence between men and women to ward off divorce.

2. ONE-WORD THEME: Divorce

Screenwriter Spike Jonze tells a classic three-stage Rites-Of-Passage Separation story: Life Problem, Wrong Way, Acceptance (Blake Snyder's "Save the Cat!" classifications). The theme of divorce plays out primarily with Theo and Catherine (Rooney Mara), secondarily--analogically--with Theo and Samantha, and lower down the ladder of priority, with Amy and Charles (Amy Adams and Matt Letscher), a third couple that goes through a divorce.

Amy herself takes up after her divorce from Charles with a female OS--another Her--then gets dumped. Can we see, Jonze implies, that HER refers to all women in the story? To all women?

Jonze distracts us with the futuristic look and feel of artificial intelligence to blind us--momentarily--to the deeper and timeless mystery of genuine human-relationship intelligence that we'll always require if we hope to share with a significant other the joys of happiness, intimacy, and trust. The filmmaker blinds us to this core human-relationship challenge to better show how the story's hero, the emotionally withdrawn and confused Theo (the story's EveryMan), is blind to what love requires. A professional letter-writer who knows what love requires in the lives of others, Theo is clueless when it comes to what love requires in his own life, what women require of love.

Technology can help men (and women) with lots of stuff. But not this. Not marriage.

Jonze distracts Theo (and us) from the core theme and Life Problem, divorce, by the "attractive-distractor" experiment of Theo's relationship with a non-human: Theo's Wrong Way of dealing with his Life Problem. Caught up with the false "Her"--Samantha, a machine--Theo temporarily dulls the pain he feels from his dead marriage with the real "Her"--a human being, Catherine.

Samantha is the wizard of HER. And just as Dorothy's misplaced hope in the wizard of Oz has little to do with her eventual triumph over her ordeal, her growth and development, her return home, so too Theo's same-old-pattern emotionally-remote escapist relationship with Samantha will not bring him to a place of maturity and relationship intelligence he needs to become a member of the 20% club of successful marriages.

But unlike Dorothy who grows and changes, Theo doesn't.

Experience along the yellow-brick road teaches him little about women or marriage and male-female relationships, little to spare him the same ordeal if he chooses to take another crack at marriage. A man without a flight manual. Winging it. Consult a book? "The 5 Love Languages"? "Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay"? "The Way of the Superior Man"? Not Theo. And by the end of the story, he accepts life as it is. Ready to move on. Still clueless about EveryHer.

Here's how Jonze visually bookends Theo's journey to Acceptance:

Opening Shot: Theo inside, office cubicle, looking at his computer--a nearsighted contracted view of life, alone--writing a letter for someone else about their life while he himself (Theo) faces a huge Life Problem: divorce.

Closing Shot: Theo outside, rooftop of a skyscraper, looking out over the city, a farsighted expanded view of life still alone inside himself (interior-wise) but not alone exterior-wise because he's with Amy, another casualty of divorce, Theo having finally written a letter for himself about his own life to the woman he loved--a man finally resigned to his failure and fate: divorce.

And Jonze hints that Theo (and Catherine) might have to accept much more. Did the couple lose their baby? Did a tragedy contribute to their doom? Does that explain their unspeakable pain?

3. HERO'S NAME: Theo Twombley

(A Man For Whom Women Are "Deities Unknown")

Given his painterly celebration of color, expressed through his wardrobe, and his fuzzy contemplation of life and its emotional tension between what's fanciful and true, could Theo Twombley refer to artist Cy Twombly, whose signature scribbles of mythically inspired canvases and drawings represent the confused scribbles of Theo's inner life as he braves through his ordeal?

Add that the meaning of the surname Twombley is unknown and that the meaning of Theo relates to God or deities, as in "theology." And we see how Theo Twombley's name reflects his incapacity to successfully traverse the labyrinth of marriage. Theo Twombley: A Man For Whom Women Are "Deities Unknown."

Because marriage is a mysterious religious experience, requiring the relational intelligence of deities for Him to get it right with Her.

______________________________________

*Credit Christopher Vogler for the concept "one-word theme" ("Memo from the Story Department," by Vogler & McKenna).

© Copyright 2015 by JEF7REY HILDNER

Every good story coils around a one-word theme.* And you can feel a one-word theme churning the tide of John le Carré's story "A Most Wanted Man," his spy novel adapted by Andrew Bovell for the screen.

The one-word theme?

Betrayal.

As a fellow spy warns the film's protagonist, Gunther Bachmann, masterfully played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Watch your back."

And then there's the title: "A Most Wanted Man." A good title backs up the one-word theme. Unpack the title, and you ideally find another key to a story's deep structure.

I've been thinking since seeing the movie a second time, maybe there's a deeper meaning of the word "wanted" embedded in John le Carré's story title--another meaning that would shift our ambivalent focus on terrorist sympathizer Abdulla to where we seek rightly to put the focus of the title, squarely on Gunther Bachmann, the tragic hero.

Gunther signals the break from act two to act three when he sits at the piano in his small lonely apartment and knocks out a few clumsy measures of Bach, evoking Gunther's nature and work: his guarded and melancholy German-precision interior wiring and the point-counterpoint contrapuntal complexities of the fugue-like game of high-stakes espionage.

And so throughout the film, as part part of the spy game surely intended by the story's designer, we can't help but wonder: In what way is this complicated Bach man more deeply "A Most Wanted Man"? Beyond the unsatisfying sense of the default meaning of "wanted" that we naturally infer-- the meaning of "wanted" signaled by a mug shot on the wall of a post office: "Wanted, Dead or Alive."

I looked up the word and found this: "(with object) (Chiefly used in expressions of time) be short of or lack (a specified amount or thing): it wanted twenty minutes to midnight" (New Oxford American Dictionary).

Aha! There it is. The meaning I've been fishing around for, trying to put my finger on, so I can decipher more fully the character of our hero, his nefarious friendly-fire circumstances, and the symbolic link between his identity and the deeper meaning of this story, signified so brilliantly, sure enough (I now see), by the title. A meaning that parallels the familiar sense conveyed by the 23rd Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."

Gunther is not only a most wanted man--the most wanted man--in the same sense as and along with suspects Abdullah and Karpov: needed because crucial to the operation by the CIA's Martha Sullivan and German Intelligence's Deter Mohr, the backstabbing agency villains, who enviously act in their own personal, turf-protecting self-interest, cavalierly betraying our safety in favor of their personal power as they give boilerplate lip-service to making the world a safer place. When in fact their sanctioned incompetence, their ego-driven dumb-ass "C student" pattern of F'ing everything up all the time, their brutal betrayal of Gunther's integrity and "A student" service-to-humanity competence, sinks our world further into the abyss of risk and danger.

Gunther himself is also "wanted," as the definition above suggests (fittingly, a more covert meaning of the word), in a different sense that has nothing to do with outside forces that want to betray him: Gunther wants.

Gunther lacks.

Our hero Gunther finds himself and his mission "most wanted" of what it takes to succeed. Gunther lacks what it takes to prevail against villainy: time. Gunther lacks (finds himself wanting, deprived of) the three hours to turn Abdulla that he and we the audience expect him to get after succeeding in trapping Abdulla. Gunther's mission wanted three hours before midnight--fell short three hours before its appointed date with destiny.

And though brilliant, despite his keen emotional intelligence, uncanny intuition, and warranted distrust of rival agencies, Gunther falls short of summoning the necessary personal qualities crucial for victory, including cunning that flows from airtight foresight.

Unable to measure up to the ideal that he expects of himself so as to keep the forces of darkness at bay, Gunther finds himself wanting--in a sense, self-betrayed.

And now the title and the story click into place. The hero, Gunther, is truly A Most Wanted Man. And so we too are most wanted men and women. Because without Gunther at the helm of operations, we want for our own security. We find ourselves betrayed--wanted a few hours short of greater safety.

*NOTE: For more about the one-word theme of stories and other insights into the architecture of storytelling in movies, see "Memo From the Story Department" by Christopher Vogler and David McKenna.

I enjoyed "The Searchers," especially some of John Ford's and cinematographer Winton Hoch's stunning shots, beautifully framed, of Monument Valley, but I found the incongruous music, bad acting, and Hollywood sound stage scenes distracting. Confusion between drama and melodrama threads its way through the film, as displayed by various actors, including Jeffrey Hunter (Martin Pawley), Vera Miles (Laurie Jorgensen), and Dorothy Jordan (Martha Edwards). So the film fluctuates between serious art and silly entertainment. Cliché and comedy kick against naturalism and tragedy. But sometimes it works: The offbeat court jester character, Mose Harper, for example, shows how Ford and screenwriter Frank Nugent use an archetype well (the glee Mose Harper displays in the face of battle reminds me of the antic samurai in Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai," made three years before "The Searchers").

But the film's minuses pale in comparison to the film's pluses. I was moved by the grand vision and the grandeur of the film. I felt the sweep of the epic landscape and the epic story. I felt the visual romanticism of the West that Ford and Hoch painted on film. I felt the calculated contrast and fusion of shadow and light, deep and shallow space, human body and rugged terrain. Man and earth. I felt the grace and menace of the film's handling of terror and violence--deftly implied and left to your imagination, stirring in the viewer a sickening comprehension of horror unrivaled by ghoulish displays of blood and gore that you find in less mature works. I felt the subtly of John Wayne's acting and the simmering intensity of his character's (Ethan Edwards's) quest. I felt the power of the story. A classic hero's journey. A loner and outsider on a relentless quest. A quest to find a lost child. A quest for vengeance.

But vengeance motivated by what? More than I thought when viewing the film without benefit of the special features and commentaries on the Blu-ray DVD.

The commentaries educated me about the film's intelligence. I now have a far greater understanding and appreciation for the film's achievement in terms of directing, technique, editing, themes, and story. I understand what Peter Bogdanovich calls the film's intentional "complicated ambiguity" about racism, which oozes through the film's action and dialog. Ethan Edwards is a racist, a character flaw corroborated, I realized, by the exposition at the film's start where we learn about his service on the Confederate side of the Civil War.

I learned that Ford's visual influences include artists roughly contemporary with the film's late 19th-century setting: painters Frederic Remington (1861-1909) and Charles Russel (1864-1926), and filmmaker D.W. Griffith (1875-1948). I learned that Ford didn't storyboard, he simply saw the film in his head, shot swiftly, in one or two takes, didn't shoot from several angles for coverage, never rehearsed action sequences, and assembled the film the way he shot it. Sure and efficient, Ford edited the film before he shot it. Effortless mastery.

But I learned most of all about the story. I suddenly realized during Peter Bogdanovich's commentary that Ethan Edwards's (Wayne's) quest is motivated by more than a relentless search for a lost child. Bogdanovich didn't spell it out, but he told me what I need to know to connect the dots. He told me what I didn't pick up on at all my first viewing--that Ethan Edwards and his brother's wife (Martha Edwards) love each other. Wow. And once you're told this, you watch and see how Ford and Nugent reveal Ethan's and Martha's love clearly at the very beginning of the film. And then you understand--Ethan Edwards wants to avenge the brutal rape and murder of the woman he loved.

Ethan Edwards searches not for just any child, but for his lover's child. He searches for the daughter (at first daughters, Lucy and Debbie) that he could have had if he were more like his brother, a homebody, rather than a "prodigal brother"--a rebel. Martha married the backup man rather than the man she really loved, just as Laurie Jorgensen (Vera Miles) almost marries the backup man rather than the man she really loves, Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), Ethan's surrogate son and sidekick.

Ford, Nugent, and Hoch tell a tale of unrequited love and love avenged. A classic tale told so inferentially, subtlety, deftly that I didn't even get it at first. Ethan Edwards makes a journey of obsession. He runs on racist-fueled hatred for the Commanche (Scar) who butchered his (Ethan's) lover . Ethan's morally confused vengeance runs so deep that he seeks Martha's lost daughter not to save the daughter but to murder her. But the dark side of his nature loses. The hero side wins. I don't know if we can call it forgiveness. I think we could simply call it love: Ethan's love for Martha trumps the racist vengeance he feels toward Scar. In the end, Ethan saves Debbie, and in so doing he not only saves his love for Debbie's mother, his true love, Martha--he saves himself. "Just as sure as the ... turnin' of the earth."

© copyright 2007 by JEF7REY HILDNER