Month: February 2020

“Sometimes there’s a man,”…or two for that matter. Joel and Ethan Coen, a package deal, are two of the best movie directors of all time, and they are pioneers of new, innovative styles of film as well as revivors of timeless settings and plots. Defined by southern and midwestern settings, desperate criminals in search of wealth, a trademark blend of darkness and comedy, and articulately bumbling dialogue, Coen masterpieces have now been in the making for over thirty years. Some of their best films include plot-heavy westerns in No Country For Old Men and Fargo, outrageous “down-and-dirty” comedies in Raising Arizona and O Brother Where Art Thou, and nostalgic takes on styles and works of the past in Miller’s Crossing and True Grit. However, the Coens’ masterpiece, and perhaps the film that deviates the most from their typical settings, is The Big Lebowski. This movie, though not received notably well at the time of its release, has grown to become a cinema classic, even inspiring a religion in its ascension. This film is truly the Coens’ best work, and it evokes memories and unifies people in a shared relishment like no other movie has ever done. The Big Lebowski has been solidified as a cinematic treasure and perhaps the funniest film ever made in its unmatched, masterful crafting of relatable and hilarious dialogue, and in its deft characterization of one of cinema’s all-time great protagonists in the Dude.
The dialogue of Lebowski is the glue that holds the film together, and, to the great surprise of many, it was not ad-libbed at all. This is because the Coens, in fact, employ a strict “stick to the script” policy for all their films, and thus, each and every movie they release plays out just as they wrote it. This is almost unfathomable in the context of Lebowski, as the ocean of stutters, “um’s”, witty syntaxical pairings, and, of course, “f-words” incline viewers to believe that least some lines had to be tweaked in the heat of the moment. However, these viewers would be mistaken. This is truly remarkable, as the Coens are able to capture exactly how real people talk, or at least how these kind of people talk. It is clear that the Coens are amazingly skilled writers who are able to capture the very essence of humanity in its most bumbling and emotional. As great as they are, however, it is evident that all of the phrases and conversations they write can not accumulate solely from their minds. This inclines me to believe that a great deal of research goes into the Coens’ development of dialogue, particularly in Lebowski. Perhaps the brothers read volumes of texts detailing speech patterns and colloquialisms prevalent in southern California, where the film takes place. Or perhaps the directors gained their insights simply by travelling to Los Angeles and “listening around.” However they did it, the brothers craft lines and interactions that arouse paradoxical feelings among their viewers that they have witnessed conversations just like these while also being swept up in a brand new and outrageously funny way of communicating. The dialogue of Lebowski is vastly different from many other films in that it doesn’t depict its characters as speaking elegantly and skillfully. This type of dialogue is very common and effective, and a unique, “simple but sophisticated” version of this skillful speech can be observed in the films of esteemed writer-director Quentin Tarantino. I call Tarantino’s dialogue “wish-I-would-have-said-that” talk, because everything his characters say, even if it’s concerning the simplest of topics, is said in such a cool and skillful manner and is something we normal people can only ever dream of being able to come up with. In Lebowski, the Coens go for the exact opposite, but generate an even better effect than does the “cool-kat” dialogue of Tarantino. The Coen’s have their characters talk like normal people, and perhaps even like bums, as the main characters are, indeed, deadbeats. Throughout the film, our protagonists argue and fail to come to resolutions, lose their train of thought, repeat themselves, and articulate their outrageous plans in sentences full of stutters and incomplete clauses. This unique and skillful relation of speaking serves not only as a hilarious outlet on which to build on the comedic plot we are watching unfold, but it also allows the audience, as normal people, to relate to the characters in a way no other film does.
Now onto the aspect of Lebowski that truly solidifies it as an all-time great: the Dude. The Dude is a post modern hippie clinging to the remnants of the “hitchhiker” era of the 60s in southern California. He lives a simple life and has simple tastes. Living in a small apartment in Los Angeles, he enjoys bowling, smoking his joints, and drinking white russians. The Dude is not greedy or in search of great success like the bustling city around him; rather, he is simply at peace with the world…that is until his rug is soiled by two petty gangsters who mistake him for a millionaire that shares his name. The rug “really tied the room together”, as the Dude insists, and on the advice of his fiery Vietnam-vet bowling buddy, Walter Sobchak, he attempts to get this rich Lebowski to compensate him for the rug. This sets off a chain of events in which the Dude is yanked out of his element and gets all mixed up in a kidnapping scandal that has him eluding the wrath of German “kidnappers”, porn-filmmakers, and the millionaire Lebowski himself. The context the typically peaceful and easy-going Dude finds himself in makes for hilarious bursts of anger, bumbling ploys at getting out of trouble, quotes for the ages, and the construction of a character the cinematic world will never forget. The Dude’s nonchalant means of handling his troubles coupled with the discrepancies and incohesive plan-making he practices with his bowling buddies yield situation after situation of misfortune, revelation, odd dream sequences, and slapstick humor. The audience grows to love the Dude (although they can’t help but laugh at his misfortunes), and the ending that sees our main character being restored to his natural habitat of existence and serenity make for an audience satisfaction that comes around once in a blue moon.
The Coen Brothers wrote and directed many fantastic films throughout their three-decade stint, but The Big Lebowski is undoubtedly their masterpiece and could very well be the funniest movie ever. The thoroughly-researched and roaringly funny dialogue makes for an aura of relatability and memorability that is unique to Lebowski. The peaceful and lovable characterization of the Dude and the unfamiliar world into which he is tossed make for one of the funniest and most memorable protagonist performances to date. The Big Lebowski, though a rare work of art, is a prime example of how remarkably simple elements of storytelling and characterization can be pieced together in a kind of “universal language” to create mediums people will remember forever.

“How can you move faster than possible, fight longer than possible, without the most powerful impulse of the spirit? The fear of death.” This quote from the film, The Dark Knight Rises, though derived from a fictional setting, illustrates a point that is all too real. The fear of the sheer nothingness, the uncertainty that is death has been one of the most prevalent and yet most buried terrors human beings have faced since their dawn. For millennia people have developed and passed on stories of a life after death to mask this fear, but it has endured nonetheless and is just as great a stressor today as it was thousands of years ago. Many writers and thinkers throughout the ages have attempted a different approach than classical religions’ “distraction tactic” to cope with this ultimate anxiety; this tactic involves embracing this fear through storytelling rather than burying it. Fictional tales and urban legends involving encounters and “agents” of death have been around for as long as language itself. The most obvious motive for these myths and narratives is a means of entertainment, but I believe they also came to fruition as a response to the need to embrace the natural and powerful fear of death through a medium which people inherently understand. This identification with the ever-present anxiety of dying is a key to “being human,” as it enriches life and fills our experiences with color and meaning. One of the greatest ever to delve into the realm of “making death come to life” through writing stories is also one of the most recent to do so; the man I am speaking of is none other than America’s own Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was a gifted poet, well known for his long rhyming tales replete with sorrow and chills in works such as “Annabelle Lee” and “The Raven,” both of which revolve heavily around the theme of death. Poe is also established as one of the great prose writers of all time and is even credited by many as the inventor of the short scary story. Perhaps the greatest example of Poe’s eerie yarns, and a tale that clashes adeptly with the topic of death, is “The Tell-Tale Heart.” This story follows a deeply disturbed young man who commits to the idea of murdering an old man, an acquaintance of his, for the sole purpose of never having to see his “vulture eye” again, which so vexed him. The tale offers a simple and yet wildly intricate recount of the young man’s plot to commit this dark deed, the thrilling execution of this plan, and the stunning and unearthly sequence of events that comprises the aftermath. If you have never read this brief and spine-chilling story, I strongly encourage you to do so by clicking the link below. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a masterfully chilling and utterly captivating tale that remains one of the strangest and most praiseworthy short stories ever written. The methods Poe uses to craft this tale into the masterpiece that it is are a remarkable blend of oppositional literary devices and an overwhelmingly intriguing ambiguity of the context from which the story is delivered.
The most prevalent tactic Poe puts into action in this classic is his blending of adversarial concepts. Throughout the tale, Poe brilliantly clashes seemingly incompatible ideas to elicit a number of emotional responses from the reader and maintain an aura of uncertainty and a desire to discover what happens next. Some of these conjunctions are relatively obvious and can be pulled directly from the text, such as imagery of light and divinity juxtaposed by imagery of chilling bleakness and hellish delusions: “I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth,” (paragraph 1) “…it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me.” (paragraph 5) However, many of these oppositions are not as apparent and require some analysis. For example, Poe utilizes a skillful blend of inevitabilty and uncertainty throughout the entire story. From nearly the very beginning, the speaker reveals that he had a plan to kill the old man, and the story is constructed as a recount of the entirety of events that unfolded as a result of this plan; as a result, it is reasonably assumed that the tale the speaker is about to relay will surely involve the slaying of this poor old man. However, despite this assured inevitability, the narrative is very heavily defined by a recurring sense of uncertainty. From the steadfast suspenseful build-up on the night the old man is murdered to the troubling perplexity of what will happen as two police officers make there way into the house where the murder took place, the reader is made to remain on the edge of their seat for the entirety of the yarn. A number of other “blendings” can be observed throughout the narrative, such as the characterization of the speaker as both a malignant, delusional madman and an amiable craftsman, and the convergence of the speaker’s feelings of pity and disdain for his helpless victim. These contradictory elements make for an advanced relation and understanding of events, the likes of which the reader has never experienced before; this tactic produces a sense of captivation that cannot be replicated.
Another method by which Poe shapes this tale of fright is through his implementation of a context composed of ambiguity and speculation. The story begins with a brief prologue in which it is made known that the events that are to be told have already happened, and this narration is simply a relation of things that have been rather than a progression through the sequences as they occur. In addition, the introduction reveals that the speaker had plans to commit a murder. Several times in the first few paragraphs, our conniving narrator openly tries to argue that he is not a madman, despite what the reader may think. Besides these few clues, no other information is given as to what lies outside the text. The speaker’s whereabouts as he relates the story, what became of him after he confessed his hideous crime to the police, and his motives in recalling this window into the past, all of these are left up to the speculation of the reader. Perhaps the speaker was arrested and confined to a prison for the rest of his days as he relates his experience to a visitor. Perhaps he was shanghaied to a mental institution upstate, and his motive for telling his tale is simply a tactic to convince the guards that he does not belong there. Or maybe, in a fit of delusional rage, the narrator made a violent escape after his confession, leaving the two officers for dead and fleeing to the wilderness to live a life of concealment; the story he is telling is simply his schizophrenic mind recounting the events in an effort to keep his senses at bay. Whatever the answer is, each new possibility considered, each crazed explanation the reader allows their mind to journey into sends chills down their spine. This ambiguity opens up a whole new realm of senses and further deepens the reader’s immersion in the narrative. In a sense, this open-endedness allows the story to never end, and that is something truly spectacular.
Edgar Allan Poe’s famous short story, “The Tell-tale Heart” is truly one of the best ever written, and it offers a sense of fear and engrossment that is second to none. To craft this tale into the original and soul-shaking work of art that it is, Poe uses a realm of juxtaposition in which unlike elements are articulately blended to yield a sense of bewilderment and engrossment that is one of a kind. Poe also solidifies this story’s dazzling and unique status by employing an air of mysteriousness and uncertainty concerning the world in which the story takes place and the condition of its speaker, and this unique tactic makes for a self-perpetuating range of possibilities that will drain the color from the reader’s face while keeping their mind locked in a trance of captivation. The far-reaching, sometimes inexplicable implications of this tale and Poe’s many other works not only piece together to tell mind-bending stories, but they also stem from a basic human need to face death while being enthralled with life.

 

 

“We all have a monster within; the difference is in degree, not in kind.” This rather frightful view of the human condition is exemplified cunningly in the famous series Breaking Bad. This show follows a middle-aged New Mexican, Walter White, who is a grossly underachieving chemistry genius struggling to make ends meet as a high school teacher. When diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, he comes face to face not only with death, but also with the idea that his family will be left in financial ruin, a vision that torments him even more. Backed into a corner of utter desperation, Walter decides to team up with a former student and try his hand at the drug trade, cooking crystal methamphetamine in an attempt to accumulate enough money for his family after he bites the dust. This new line of work takes Walter down a path of excitement, agony, loss, and eventually, great success that neither he nor the audience saw coming.

Throughout the series, Breaking Bad inclines its viewers to root for Walter at every turn, and it does a brilliant job at initiating this loyalty by garnering a boatload of sympathy for him at the start. In the very first episode, the audience is made aware that Walter once signed away his rights to a company that would come to be worth billions. As if this weren’t bad enough, the pilot heavily juxtaposes what could have been with the sorry excuse for a life Walt leads. Because of this, the audience is heavily inclined to view Walter as a morally-centered man whose illegal actions can be greatly justified by righteous motives. However, as the show progresses, Walter’s actions become harder and harder to condone, and there comes a point at which no one can deny that he has transformed into a truly despicable man and one of the most evil characters in a show full of drug lords and murderers. Yet even at his darkest moments, the audience is made to cheer for Walt just as much as they had in the first episode. So the natural question that stems from all this is, “Why do we continue to root for Walter despite his wickedness?” I believe the answer is twofold. First, Breaking Bad compels its audience to deeply hate most of the characters that oppose Walter. Two, unlike almost all of the other characters of power in the show, our protagonist builds his empire from virtually nothing, making viewers admire him so much that they continue to stick by his side.

Breaking Bad treats its viewers to wave after wave of brilliantly stylish, cunning, and, most of all, hateable opponents to our protagonist. From psychotic cartel gangsters with little control of their temper to Neo-Nazis without a trace of empathy for others, Walter certainly has his work cut out for him. Forced to cooperate with many of these shadowy crooks in order to further his business ventures, he inevitably has some falling-outs along the way. Though Walt isn’t a good guy by any means, the fact that the events are shown from his perspective coupled with the tendency of these villains’ actions and motives to be worse than his own instills in viewers immense feelings of animosity toward the antagonists. By besting each of these villains, Walter manages to climb to the very top of the drug world in a very short span, and he is able to do so with a few simple and yet momentous schemes. Walt’s brilliant toppling of his rivals inclines viewers to both relish in the defeat of the characters they’ve grown to hate and admire the brilliance and planning of the main character, solidifying him as the guy to root for throughout the entire show.

The best example of this pattern can be seen in the season-long rivalry between Walter and Chilean drug-trafficker, Gustavo Fring. In a connection offered by crooked lawyer, Saul Goodman, Walter begins to work for Fring at the end of season two. Operator of the biggest drug empire in the southwest for over two decades, Gus is certainly not a character to be trifled with, and his sneakiness and calm, business-like demeanor make him the scariest villain Breaking Bad has to offer. For a while, the Walter-Gus partnership works like clockwork, and the business is very profitable for the both of them. But when Walter disobeys a direct order from his boss, killing two of Gus’s gang-bangers in an attempt to save his partner, Jesse, Gus decides he can no longer trust his meth cook and sets off to exact revenge and rid himself of the threat he believes Walter has become. This decision makes way for an enduring chess match between Walter and Gus in which each man will stop at nothing to kill the other. From a truly unbiased perspective, perhaps Walter and Gus can be viewed as equally evil drug-runners whose relationship grew to a point at which they could simply no longer co-exist. However, the lense through which viewers see the show does a shrewd job at making Gus appear to be the one taking drastic measures, and Walter’s actions are seen as a desperate, necessary reaction that should be forgiven rather than an act of egotistic rebellion. As the audience grows to hate Gus, they are made to root even harder for Walt, even as he continues down the dark path on which he has embarked.

An entire season of this standoff ensues, the majority of which sees Walt as a battered underdog sure to meet a grizzly end in the near future. However, in one crafty ploy, our main character is able to lure an unsuspecting Gus into a nursing home, where the Chilean kingpin meets a sudden end as one side of his face is blown to bits by a homemade bomb. Just like that, Walter moved from the primary target of the biggest drug empire in the southwest to the main supplier of an entire region on track to profit tens of millions of dollars, and the viewers love it. They love to see Gus go, who they grew to despise with a deep passion. But more than that, they are awed by Walter’s tremendous ability to become “the man” in one fell swoop, and it doesn’t matter what he’s done or what he will do, because he’s just too damn cool.

 

 

 

What does it mean to be insane? Of course we all know that in general terms, this word means having a deviation from normal brain functioning that results in strange and often unacceptable fields of perception and behavior. However, insanity is not exactly measurable and is a very subjective concept. Is this condition determined by behavior alone? In other words, does the practice of a certain behavior, for example, murder, always require an at least moderately insane mind at the helm? Or can heinous actions be mandated by a perfectly normally functioning brain in instances of knowing disregard of societal conventions? On the other end of the spectrum, can one be insane without exhibiting at least a degree of odd behavior, or are distorted perceptions alone enough for this title? These frequently considered and widely divisive ideas construct the basis of another controversial debate: is there a difference between atrocious actions of insanity and crimes of evil/immorality, and if so, where is the line drawn? It is a commonplace that some people can simply not be held accountable for their actions due to severe disabilities and mental disparities. But how this “lack of accountability” is determined is remains an incomplete and hotly debated methodology. The issue of insanity and its many implications in relation to crime is an overarching theme in the movies, The Dark Knight and Joker, particularly in relation to their common villain in the infamous Joker. Each of these films offers a “real-life” interpretation of the famous comic foe, portrayed masterfully by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight and Joaquin Phoenix in Joker. Both movies bring the Joker to life by offering a glimpse “inside the mind” of the villain. However, the two brilliant portrayals make for vastly unique characters, each differentiated by its film’s use of hinting and analyzation of the Joker’s mental state.
The severe mental afflictions the Joker suffers is a key to understanding the character in both The Dark Knight and Joker. However, I believe Phoenix’s portrayal of the villain exhibits far stronger and more numerous mental illnesses than does Ledger’s. In Joker, a unique method of developing the character is employed that is unheard of in every other interpretation to date. This method is the relaying of the Joker’s backstory. For most of this movie, Phoenix portrays the Joker before he “transforms” into the vile criminal that we all know. He is a man by the name of Arthur Fleck, and the audience’s attention is immediately drawn to his severe depressive symptoms and other mental issues. Fleck sees a social worker for his disease, takes a boatload of medications, and is typically seen lost in a cloud of cold and empty sadness. This antihero also bursts into uncontrollable fits of laughter that do not match how he feels quite often, and it is evident that he has some severe issues that likely stemmed from traumatic past experiences. Later in the film, these ailments appear to transform into raging bursts of anger, the likes of which fuel Fleck’s evolution into his vile new identity. This detailing of the Joker’s mental ailments not only inclines the audience to sympathize with him, but it also provides a logical thread by which his metamorphosis can be understood, making for a dark and unique take on the timeless character.
The characterization of Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight follows a drastically different path in the illumination of his degree of mental soundness. No backstory concerning this villain is offered in the slightest; we don’t know where he’s from, what his real name is, or why he does what he does. Therefore, we have no formal information on whether this Joker experiences clinical mental ailments, and the audience instead has to rely on their own scrutiny of context clues. Throughout this film, the Joker if referred to as a “psychopath,” leading the audience to believe that he does, in fact, suffer some kind of mental disease. However, I believe that Ledger’s Joker suffers no such ailment. I believe that The Dark Knight’s Joker has a completely normally functioning mind, and his heinous deeds and purposes instead derive from a fully conscious and yet sickly twisted view of the world. For starters, this Joker does not exhibit any symptoms of depression. He is always portrayed in a fervent and upbeat manner, and everything he does is carried out with the utmost enthusiasm and attention to detail. Although much of this Joker’s agenda seems to be comprised of utter disorder, and the Joker himself claims to be an “agent of chaos”, a bit of digging and analysis of his many schemes reveal that almost every action he takes is calculated in the most precise and thoughtful manner. This not only assures the audience that the Joker is not troubled by an inability to rationalize and plan, but it makes the chances that he suffers from depression or some related ailment slim to none, as the thoroughness and continuous motivation to do great work he exhibits are almost always contradicted by depression. Concerning the issue of psychopathy, I believe the Joker is not plagued by any such disease, despite what many viewers and even characters in the movie assert. The Joker is a mass murdering, conniving villain who finds his wicked acts very entertaining and even funny. Because of this, people are quick to label him as “psychopath” in an attempt to understand his actions. But if we take a deeper look, we will find that the Joker, in fact, has an entirely normally functioning brain in this area as well. A key to being a psychopath is the absence of any ability to sympathize with others at all, and this disease is virtually always defined by a life lived in complete pursuit of self-gain. At first glance, this can appear to apply to Ledger’s Joker, but with a bit of dissection of key moments in the film, it is clear that it, in fact, does not. In a defining moment of The Dark Knight, the Joker is in a hospital room with severe burn victim and District Attorney of Gotham, Harvey Dent. Dent has not only been disfigured for life, but he has lost the woman he loves to an explosion, and it is the Joker’s fault. In a successful attempt to turn Dent to pursue revenge and plunge into a world of chaotic evil, the Joker allows the former face of Gotham to point a loaded gun at his head in an effort to incline him to begin a spree of vengeance. The Joker is completely prepared to die to accomplish this, and he only is allowed to live through the sheer luck of a coin toss. This proves that the Joker is not a psychopath, as psychopaths, in their interminable pursuit of self gain at the most severe expense of others, would never leave their life to chance for such a cause. Since Ledger’s Joker is, in fact, not plagued by any mental illness, the character’s horrid actions can only be attributed to his unique view of the world as a purely terrible place that hides its awfulness under the “mask” of society. This perspective makes sense of the Joker’s goals, which centered around proving to Gotham that everyone is ugly deep down by exposing their district attorney as a revenge-crazed monster. This dissection of Ledger’s Joker in a light of fully-aware pure evil makes for a truly bizarre and captivating villain that is as troubling as he is stylish.
Both The Dark Knight and Joker feature magnificent and timeless portrayals of one of the most renowned and thought-provoking villains ever to appear on the big screen. Both Joaquin Phoenix and Heath Ledger bring an entirely new dynamic to this character, and their performances will serve as precedents for any future interpretations of this killer clown. Though these Jokers share some defining aspects of the comic character in their common belief that humanity is naturally bad and their love of instigating chaos through gruesome violence, the diverging portrayals of these characters’ mental states make for two entirely different characters. In Joker, the relation of the villain’s backstory and incorporation of his severe mental ailments into his slow transition yield a character that the audience can deeply sympathize with while also fearing and resenting his heinous unpredictability. Heath Ledger’s take on the character, however, follows a lack of any backstory and is shaped by hints and defining moments that reveal the character to be of a completely sound mind; thus, the Joker’s evil nature is magnified in a thought-provoking and sickening nature that solidifies him as one of the best villains ever to tread the big screen. These contrasting and yet unifying depictions of the Joker reveal just how delicate and far-reaching issues of mental illness are. A simple difference in the integration of this one issue into the same essential character makes for two rare and emotionally mixed outcomes. Whatever standpoint we take on mental illness in its relationship to crime and evil motives, there is one thing everyone can admit: the consideration of these two elements in relation to one another makes for a realm of philosophy whose captivation is rarely matched.