Bad Education

Pedro Almodóvar's new film, Bad Education mixes genres in delighfully subversive ways, adopting the conventions of the traditional film noir, but replacing the femme fatale with a mysterious gay actor who re-enters the life of his first love, now a director. Or so that's how it seems. The film starts with Enrique (Fele Martínez), the film director, trying to find an idea for a new movie, when in walks Ignacio (Gael García Bernal), his first "love," who now wants to be called "Angel," with a screenplay about their youth. The film then recedes into a series of flashbacks about the boys' experiences in a Christian school, where Ignacio is molested by the head priest, the two boys find and explore each other, and Enrique gets sent away. The plot takes so many twists and turns, role-reversals, assumed identities and double-crosses as it spans the late 70s and early 80s, and their childhood early 60s that a plot synopsis would be utterly unhelpful and beside the point.

The film gets divided between childhood flashbacks, a chance meeting later, and, we come to find out later, the film of the experience, which culminates in a fantasy of revenge thwarted by instutitional power and ruthlessness. When the film-inside-the-film concludes, another phase opens when the priest comes back to confront Angel, who plays the main lead in the film. The genius of this is the self-reflective quality of the overly dramatic acting and clichéd plot of the interior film, contrasted against the dark background of the events to follow. Almodovar plays with the film noir genre in the tortuous plotline and the seemingly never-ending shifts in identity, but in case the viewer doesn't get it, the two antagonists, in flashback, go to a theater showing a "film noir week," complete with posters of Double Idemnity and other films noirs, after which they walk into a dark, rainy street.

The film works, I think, as much as any of Almodóvar's films, due to an apt eye for style combined with a tragic tenderness on the part of the characters, especially Enrique, who seems to be the only one moving on in his life in anything approaching a healthy way. The self-reflexivity and genre bending work to complicate a story that is ultimately about passion, forbidden or otherwise, and the pain of remembering lost love. From Enrique's initially unrequited love, to the priest's seemingly uncontrollable passion, to Angel's manipulative sexual endeavors, passion becomes an unfulfillable desire, and, ultimately a tool of penance, rage and desperate grasping. That all of the main characters are men is important, but seems inconsequential in the end. This is not about homosexuality so much as loneliness, revenge, and remembering the past, true themes of film noir, no matter the sexuality.

Dark city

Kevan V was having trouble posting to the blog, so he posted this in comments. I have pasted it here, so it can be on the front page. -erik

Dark City (1998), under the direction of Alex Proyas, was a film that sought to question the legitimacy of memory and our relationship to the past. Progression is slow in the beginning, but speeds up later. This is because it takes a while to establish the setting. The plot begins with a monologue by Dr. Schreber, wherein all we learn is that he is a sort of slave, forced to betray his fellow man working for beings who have control over all matter.

The story begins with a man who wakes up in a bathtub with no memory of who he is or why he is there. He soon learns several things: His name is John Murdoch, he is married, Dr. Schreber wants to see him, detective Bumstead is chasing him down for several murders, and bald men in trenchcoats (strangers) are hunting him down. These elements create a dynamic mystery that the audience is invited to solve with John Murdoch, as he tries to find out what is going on. Eventually Murdoch pieces together a theory– that there is only night, no sunlight, and every twelve hours is a new day, wherein each new day brings new memories and identities for all. Everyone he meets is somewhat confused, and has no solid recollection if the distant past (Schreber later explains the city is a zoo the strangers are using to find the human soul). Murdoch eventually befriends Bumstead and the two enlist the help of Dr. Daniel Shreber to lead them out of the city. The three break down a wall, and learn there is nothing outside of the city but empty space. Strangers appear, Bumstead falls out into outer space, and Murdoch gives himself to the Strangers to save his purported wife, Emma. In a pivotal scene shortly thereafter, Murdoch is strapped to a table as a prisoner of the strangers, who instruct Dr. Schreber to inject a lethal coctail into John’s head. At the last moment Schreber switches syringes and gives Murdoch the tools he needs to defeat the strangers and bring order to Dark City.
Dark City can be said to mix two genres.

The first is film noir, keeping with such elements as the darkness that enveloped the world of the movie and the cynicism exhibited especially by detective Bumstead. This film also has a foot in the genre of science fiction for its inclusion of telepathy, aliens, memory injections, and the setting within a huge spacecraft made to look like a city.

The narrative leads us to certain expectations early in the film, and with each new revelation one is forced time and again to recalculate these expectations. Light and time were two elements for which manipulation was utilized the most. The entire film, minus the last 5 minutes, is shot entirely in the dark. This creates a dirty city atmosphere very common in film noir. Time is manipulated in a way that makes it a wholly arbitrary factor. Because it is always night, and midnight is the only time any true change takes place, the clock becomes a signaler that foreshadows the next change.
Over all elements of the film are well balanced, and culminate into a product that is both fun to watch and thought provoking.