CANCEL GONE WITH THE WIND?

Recently, in the wake of the civil rights protests going on around the nation, HBO decided to remove the 1939 film of Margaret Mitchell's novel,  GONE WITH THE WIND, from their downloading sight.  This was understandable, given, that the film unabashedly romanticizes the days of the antebellum South, complete with happy slaves who fight for the Southern cause.   A few days later, African-American film scholar Jacqueline Stewart announced that the film would return with an introduction by her that would help explain the inaccuracies of the film, and, I assume, will also explain the controversies around it.  This is also understandable.  GONE WITH THE WIND is, quite simply, a film that is too big, too popular (the most popular film ever when adjusted for inflation), and too influential to just pretend it was never made.
It should be mentioned that it was certainly not the first film to romanticize the South.  In fact, DW Griffith's THE BIRTH OF A NATION, which went even further, and which was also extremely popular, was released  way  back in  1915.   To his credit, David O Selznik, the producer of GONE WITH THE WIND consciously tried  to avoid making another BIRTH OF  A NATION, as he had all the source novel's references to the Klu Klux Klan removed.  Still, not making a film that sank to the level of one of the most racist movies ever made is still not all that impressive. And while both films are often defended as products of their time, it should be remembered that were also controversial and picketed at the time of their making.

Yes, Gone With the Wind could have been as bad as this

I first saw Gone With the Wind at a special screening for my junior high school class when I was just twelve years old.  My reaction to it then was actually very similar to how I still feel about it; I was dazzled by the first half of the film, with its gorgeous technicolor visuals, amazing sets and costumes and romantic, often poetic dialogue, with the fiery spectacle of the burning of Atlanta really making a deep impression on me.  And then I felt that the second half of the film lapsed into romantic melodrama, with too many big emotional moments piled together towards the end.  Still, I enjoyed it overall and understood why it was considered a classic.
As for the film's racism, I must admit that as a white upper middle class child, it didn't really register with me.  Yes, I of course knew about the evils of slavery and saw that all the black characters in the film were stereotypes, but it didn't occur how historically wrong the film was.  I just accepted that its depiction of the South was accurate, and it wasn't until I read thought provoking analysis of the film years later that I changed my mind.  And that is the real danger of the film.  To this day, the film's view of Southern plantation life has bled into our national collective image of that time, making us think that its depiction was real.  And so much of it is so alluring, with colorful fancy dress balls and beautiful, castle like mansions that it's easy to forget how those balls and mansions were paid for.
And much worse than those fancy balls and beautiful buildings are the scenes that show slaves happily working in the fields or cheerfully helping out the white characters.  And, perhaps worst of all, we see a contingent of slaves joining together to fight against the Union soldiers!  And yes it's true that Hattie Mc Daniel made history by winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, and her performance in the film is undeniably great, but just like the film itself it endorsed and influenced a stereotype that would last for decades.
I think HBO is making the right move here by bringing the film back with the commentary at the beginning.  This is an important and wonderfully made film that should still be viewed, but not without some context being placed on it.  Personally, I always like to hear about the context of the making of any work of art that I enjoy.  My interest in   Fred Zinnemann's 1952 film HIGH NOON, for example, is increased by the fact that the film's story was consciously fashioned to be a metaphor for the anti-Communist witch hunts that were going on in Hollywood at that time.  So people should still watch GONE WITH THE WIND, but they should also be aware about the controversy it has caused ever since it was made.

PARASITE (2019)

PARASITE (DIR: BONG JOON HO) (SCR: HO AND JIN WON HAN)

The ratings may have been low for this year's Academy Award telecast, but that didn't mean that there weren't any surprises.  I won't lie, when Bong Joon Ho's South Korean thriller PARASITE was announced as the Best Picture, I jumped to my feet in surprise.  Even though the film had already won three Oscars (for Best Original Screenplay, Best Director and Best International Film), I just couldn't believe that the Academy had, for the first time ever, awarded a foreign film the Best Picture award.  Now a cynic may point out that this could just be an example of Hollywood courting the foreign film market at a time when  international box office is getting more and more important to their bottom line, and it does raise the question of why the Academy has waited so long to award a foreign film when there have been so many great foreign films made over the years. Surely,  filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini have made movies that were the best of the year they were released.  Despite all of that, I think PARASITE won simply because it was indeed, the best film of last year.  It's an exciting, darkly funny and wildly violent movie with some raw social satire mixed in as well. 
Director Bong Joon Ho has actually been pretty well known in the American market since his entertaining monster movie THE HOST came out in 2006.  Since then he has also made another excellent thriller (2009's MOTHER) and two oddball science fiction films (2013's  SNOWPIERCER and 2017's OKJA).  Ho first came up with the idea for PARASITE while working on SNOWPIERCER when it was originally imagined as a play.  He based the story partly on his own experiences as a struggling young student tutoring for a rich family back in the '90's ("Every week I would go into their house, and I thought how fun it would be if I could get all my friends to infiltrate the house one by one." He told Atlantic magazine).  The script that Ho and his co screenwriter Jin Won Han completed was also influenced by Kim Ki-young's 1960 Korean film THE HOUSEMAID and the true story of Christine and Léa Papin—two live-in maids who murdered their employers in 1930s France.  Because the beautiful home that the poor family infiltrates is so crucial to the film, the entire building was created in striking looking sets in different locations.   The poor family's basement dwelling was also built on sets, with production designer Lee Ha-jun visiting towns and villages in South Korea that had been abandoned and were about to be torn down to get a feel for the set design.  Shot in a hundred and twenty four days mostly in the city of Seoul on a budget of around eleven million dollars, PARASITE has become a world wide hit.  Along with grossing around forty three millions in the US (a very high amount for a foreign language film), it has made over two hundred million world wide.

Kang-ho Song

It's plot concerns a family of four, father Ki-taek (Kang-ho Song), wife  Park Chung-sook(Jang Hye-jin), young adult daughter Kim Ki-jung(Park So-dam) and near college age teenage son Kim (called Kevin) Ki-woo(Choi Woo-shik) that are just barely surviving in modern day South Korea, squatting in a basement and doing odd jobs.  When a teenage friend of the son offers him a job tutoring the teen daughter of a rich family, he jumps at the chance and secures the job with documents forging a fake education.  Seeing that the family has an artistic young son, Da Song(Jung Hyeon-jun) he introduces his sister as his educated cousin and art therapist, and she too is soon hired.  Then the family manipulates the family's chauffeur (Park Keun-rok) and maid  (Lee Jung-eun), getting them fired and replacing them with the father and mother.  But one night when the wealthy family is gone and the whole family is relaxing and enjoying their new social status , the maid returns and reveals that her husband Oh Geun-sae (Park Myung-hoon) has been hiding in a secret bomb shelter in the basement of the house to avoid paying his debts.  She begs them to let him stay and give him food, but they refuse.  A physical confrontation ensues, which gets even more tense with the unexpected early return of the wealthy family.  The four of them manage to lock the maid and her husband in the cellar for the night and avoid being found by the family.  The next day there is a birthday party for  Da Song.  When Keven tries to let the maid and her husband loose, he finds her dead and the husband crazed.  After knocking  Keven unconscious, he wildly stabs Kim during the party.  In the ensuing chaos, Da Song appears to have a seizure, and his father begs Ki Taek to drive him to the hospital.  In a fit of rage, Kit Taek stabs his employer and hides in the basement.  Later, Kevin recovers from his injuries and discovers where his father is hiding.  He dreams of buying the house and releasing his father.

First of all, this is a great movie to rewatch: the first time I saw I responded mostly to the thriller elements, as I found myself wondering if the trickster family would get away with their scam.  And then, when everything seems to be going their way, the return of the family's maid set the movie going in a completely different direction.  In a world of predictable movie formulas, there's nothing I love more in a film than a story that moves in unexpected (but plausible) ways, so from the moment that the maid revealed her husband's hiding place I was hooked!  Ho has mentioned that Martin Scorsese is one of his directorial influences, but I found myself thinking of Alfred Hitchcock in the way that Ho builds suspense out of the simplest thing, like hiding under a table or walking down  a long, narrow staircase without knowing what lies below.   And the chaos of the climatic birthday scene is perfectly handled, with characters making sudden, shockingly violent choices that make sense upon reflection.  While the script sometimes can be heavy handed (the symbolism of the philosopher's stone, which brings the poor family both good and back luck, is a bit obvious, especially since Kevin refers to it as a metaphor!), and the fact that we don't know for sure if little Da Song dies at the end or not seems like a flaw (it could go either way), it's mostly perfect in both story and character.
On my subsequent viewings of the film, I was able to focus more on the more subtle elements of it:  I love the way that director Ho and cinematographer Kyung-pyo Hong keep the camera sleekly panning in the enormous house, often to reveal people hiding or spying.  Or the way that Kim's first visit to the wealthy household is shot likes he's entering paradise (for him, he is).  The house itself, with it's enormous window view and sleek modern look, is a triumph of production design.  Even the location of the basement door and the secret door beneath it is in the right place, becoming a constant reminder to the trickster family once they know what lies behind it.  I also love the clever wit in the way that Kim rehearses her fake story to herself before meeting the family, and then correctly guesses just what to say to impress the mother while "analyzing" her son's art. 
All of the performances are great: I especially enjoy Kang-ho Song (who's a big star in Korea, and has worked with director Ho several times now, stretching back to 2003's MEMORIES OF MURDER) as the father Ki-taek.  On my first viewing of the film, I found his act of violence at the end shocking, but upon repeat viewings I can see the anger and resentment simmering up under his usually taciturn demeanor.  And the moment where he almost seems mad enough to strike his wife, and then laughs it off is chilling, because we never know just how much he's joking.  As great as he is, my favorite performance in the movie is given by Jeong-eun Lee (who has also worked with director Ho before)  as the ill fated maid Moon-gwang.  At first, her character just seems like a prim and proper housekeeper, but then she becomes sad and  pathetic as she begs the family to let her husband stay.  Only moments later she becomes wrathful when she briefly  has the upper hand on them, almost transforming on screen .  She even gets some nice romantic flashback moments with her simple minded husband.  This is a wide range of complex emotions that Lee nails perfectly, and she's only a supporting character!

Jeong-eun Lee

So, excellent suspense, dark humor, great plot twists and wonderful performances throughout are part of this film's greatness.  But it also works on another level; biting class commentary.  From the opulent home of the wealthy family to the pathetic, crowded basement that the poor family is squatting in, the contrast between the rich in the poor in not only South Korea but also the rest of the world is always present in the film.  Importantly, we at first on the side of poor family as we see the terrible conditions they live in and menial work they have to do.  But as their plan progresses it's gets harder to defend the way they set up the innocent servants to get fired, although we can enjoy their ingenuity as they manipulate the family into hiring them(squirting chili sauce on a napkin at just the right moment is a brilliant detail!).  And we can't help but be on their side when they briefly enjoy their ill gotten gains by kicking their feet up and dreaming about actually owning a such a house  while the rich family are all on vacation. The real breaking point comes when Moon-gwang reveals her husband, and they refuse to feed him and let him stay, even though it wouldn't be hard for them.  So here we have an poor family that has moved up in the world refusing to help out someone who is in the same position they once were, a bleak look at how poor people moving into the middle class often ignore their roots.  Even more interesting is the fact that the rich family are not bad people, but then they have the luxury of being able to afford kindness ("They are rich but still nice."  Ki-taek tells his wife. "They are nice because they are rich." She replies).  Class is shown as such a defining factor with these people that even the literal stench of poverty that hangs over Ki-taek can't be washed off, and it leads to a defining moment when a reminder of his scent causes him to lash out at his employer, killing him.  Yes, wealth dispartiy is a tricky issue in this film, and even the title can be seen as having a double meaning, in which both the poor and the rich leech off of each other.

SO DID THE ACADEMY GET IT RIGHT?

Ok, it's pretty obvious that I love this movie and agree with the Academy's choice.  I personally didn't think that 2019 was a particularly great year for American movies, with only Noah Baumbach's well acted drama MARRIAGE STORY reaching greatness, in my opinion.  In fact, I think the only other movies that could compare with PARASITE are all from other countries, like Pedro Almodovar's excellent PAIN & GLORY, or Céline Sciamma's PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE.  And while both of those films are good, I don't think that they top PARASITE, which was not only a groundbreaking choice, but the right one.

THE 2019 NOMINATIONS, FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The nominations for the 2019 Academy Awards were announced this morning, and, as always, they were a mixed bag: the big surprise was that JOKER leads the pack with a whopping eleven nominations, despite the sometimes controversial nature of the film and its only somewhat positive reviews.  For me, the most positive development is that Bong Joon Ho's excellent PARASITE is up for Best Picture, a rarity for a foreign film.  It even garnered five more nominations, including Ho for best director.
I was also glad to see that Antonio Banderas's great performance in Pedro Almodovar's PAIN AND GLORY is up for Best Actor, although I wish that Almodovar's film had gotten more nominations.  (It's also up for Best International Film).  I found it interesting that Robert DeNiro was not nominated for Best Actor for THE IRISHMAN despite the film getting ten nominations.  Is it possible that this had something to do with the digital anti aging technology used on him in the film?  Does the Academy sees this as a bit of a cheat?  Perhaps, but then both Joe Pesci and Al Pacino are both up for Best Supporting Actor and that technology was used on them too.  So who knows.  I was also surprised and disappointed to see that Adam Sandler's gripping lead performance in UNCUT GEMS was unnominated (the film was completely shut out of nominations, which is  disappointing).  Perhaps Sandler has made one too many lazy, dumb comedies over the years to ever be taken seriously as an actor, and while I'm certainly no fan of those films myself, it's still a shame that his good work has been overlooked.  Also shut out was Lulu Wang's well received THE FAREWELL, despite Awkwafina's  good performance in the lead.
Other than the surprising admiration for JOKER, most of the Best Picture nominations were predictably films that garnered positive reviews and other awards.  I was a bit surprised to see  Taika Waititi's only pretty good JOJO RABBIT up, but then, it's usually a safe bet for anti Nazi films to get nominations.  Personally, I found Quentin Tarantino's ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD and Scorsese's THE IRISHMAN to be overlong and overrated, but given the popularity of those two directors with the Academy, there was almost no way they couldn't have been nominated.

As always, diversity is an issue in the nominations:  as the New York Times points out, "the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has mounted an effort to double female and minority membership, in large part by inviting in more film professionals from overseas. But even after four years of the initiative, the organization remains 68 percent male and 84 percent white. "  The big snub is that Greta Gerwig's charming LITTLE WOMEN is up for Best Picture (and got five other nominations) but Gerwig herself is not up for Best Director.   Two of the nominees in the acting categories  are people of color (Banderas and Cynthia Erivo for HARRIET), overlooking fine performances like the aforementioned Awkwafina, Luptiat  Nyong'o in US and the two lead performers in Melina Matsoukas's QUEEN & SLIM.
I've already mentioned my admiration for PARASITE, which I think should win Best Picture, but probably won't. ( It will almost certainly win the Best International Film award. ) And despite it's high number of nominations, I seriously doubt that a film as dark as JOKER could possibly win Best Picture.   Martin Scorsese's THE IRISHMAN probably has a good chance, with its critical acclaim and period piece details.  But I wouldn't rule out Noah Baumbach's excellent MARRIAGE STORY, with its two powerhouse lead performances.  In any event, I was glad to see that none of the Best Picture nominees were as bland and predictable as last year's winner, GREEN BOOK.  Whatever wins this year will be an improvement!