Well shit, can't even make it one day without something terrible happening.
I love hardboiled fiction. Call it pulp, crime, noir, or whatever, I love them. As a result I loved Don Westlake. Westlake was simply one of the best. He wrote an ungodly amount of books, nobody really knows how many considering the number of pseudonyms the man used, most famously his Parker series which he wrote under the name Richard Stark, and his Dortmunder series which he wrote as Westlake. In between are about fifty kazillion paperbacks, screenplays, and God knows what else, all held together by the same lean propulsive style.
Westlake was simply put the man. A True Hardcase.
And he is sorely missed.
Pick up one of his books and then just try to put it down.
I know I suck, I’m trying to get better though. 2008 was a bit of a letdown film wise. Not that it was bad per se but 2006 and 2007 made film fans positively giddy, for awhile there masterpieces where just falling from the freaking sky. 2008 they just seemed a little thin on the ground. I didn’t get to the movies as much as I would have liked to, I’ve probably only seen about 50 or so and have yet to catch The Wrestler, Milk, or Burn After Reading. But there was a lot of solid stuff out there this year, and more then a few masterpieces, the stuff that was good was so good it almost hurt, and the stuff that wasn’t well...
Worst movie of the Year: The Spirit: This movie is bad that I no longer like movies or comic books. This will leave me with considerably less to write about, not that it would make that much of a difference lately. But dear sweet Jesus the pain. This is a movie that consisted largely of Scarlett Johansson and Eva Mendes in fetish gear and I literally got no enjoyment out of it. I’m a Frank Miller apologist of the first water the kind of guy who finds enjoyment in All Star Batman And Robin, but this was just too much.
2008 Southland Tales Award: For Movie I Like For No Discernable Reason:
Speed Racer: Sure every moment involving the child and the monkey is sheer distilled cinematic pain. Sure too many of the races are an indiscernible mess. Sure the movie goes dead for about an hour fifteen minutes in. Sure Susan Surandon looks like she’s on valium. Sure it stars Rain. Sure John Goodman looks drunk and angry. Sure the film often resembles a candy coated hellscape of my nightmares.
But… Still there’s something there. I doubt that there’s a more idiosyncratic big budget film out there. The whole thing is produced so strangely, this is what Blockbuster movies look like on other planets. So many rough edges and such a suprising amount of the Wackowski Kink in play. Whenever I say, watch Racer X battle a rocket powered/launching semi truck filled with tranny gangsters, or relive the saga of the racecar driving Viking Hitmen, tempted from their winter layer with chests of fur, or John Goodman call someone a Nonja, or watch Racer X punch a man in the face, as that man is crashing his car, I get a giddy rush.
Oh and in related news Christina Ricci: Fucking Fine.
Say what you will about it, but I’ve never seen anything quite like Speed Racer, and considering its dismal failure probably never will again.
I love this terrible terrible movie.
10 Hellboy II: Del Toro’s seemingly unstoppable run of kickass films continues unabated. Hellboy II shows Del Toro’s untamed imagination in full force, bringing to life a wondrous tapestry of a world.
9. Shine A Light: To say Shine A Light is a lower tier Scorsese movie is to say that it’s pretty great rather then say absolutely transcendent. The elephant in the room is the fact that Shine A Light has absolutely nothing either on No Direction Home, Scorsese’s definitive Dylan project, or The Last Waltz. However, being as one of those is an already legendary definition of an artist who has made his career by being indefinable, and the other is arguably the greatest concert film ever made, arguably filming the death of rock’s classic era, this is hardly surprising. Slightly more annoying is the slightly corporate air the entire thing had, SCORSESE. THE STONES, ON YOUR IMAX, AS YOU SIP NEW COKE, FROM PARAMOUNT, SPONSERED BY HILARY CLINTON. But despite this all the film is at it’s core a portrait of old professionals having a blast, both on the stage and behind the camera. They love what they do, and they take you along with them.
8. The Strangers: It’s real easy to become jaded as a genre film fan. There’s so much bullshit out there on both ends of the “quality” spectrum that you start to detach yourself from the visercial experience of going to the movies. You need something like The Strangers every once and again to remind you why you go. Why you really go. The Strangers didn’t change my life it didn’t give me any new insight into the human condition, it didn’t revolutionize the genre, what it did was scare the living shit out of me for ninety minutes and then sent me home to lock my doors. It reminded me how much fun it is to sit in the dark.
7. Doomsday: This gets the most fun I had in a theater award. Taking me back to my misspent youth rewatching battered John Carpenter and Walter Hill flicks for the hundreth time. Doomsday was Grindhouse for those films rather then seventies exploitation. Any film that opens with a big boobed blond lady snorting coke in a bathtub and shooting people with a shotgun, and ends in Scottish Castle where Malcolm McDowell leads over the most epic renfair ever, is going to be pretty awesome. Add in exploding bunnies and cows, Epic tank battles, Fine Young Cannibals who do dances choreographed to Fine Young Cannibals, and you have maybe the best movie ever.
6. The Pineapple Express: Pineapple Express made me laugh so hard that I thought I was in serious danger of cracking my ribs. Plus it gave David Gordon Greene some fuck you money. That’s all the justification I need.
5. In Bruges: This is one of those films, that it’s unfair to talk to much about, and since the marketing has already done a nice job of mis direction, trying to make it look like Euro Pulp Fiction, I will not bother to correct it. Suffice to say the film is worth your time.
4. The Fall: Like WALLE The Fall gave me hope for the future of pure cinematic storytelling. If Herzog ever made a fantasy it would look like this. Wonderful and tactile and so real it almost hurts.
3. The Curious Case Of Benjamin Buttons:
“I was just thinking about how nothing lasts and what a shame that is.”
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Buttons is in itself a Curious Case. I’ve been fascinated by the how the film has ended up as something of a Rorsarch blot for critics who have been using it as an opportunity to pick apart any damn thing they want. Depending on who you believe the film is either too obvious, or obtuse, too sentimental, or a case of Fincher draining the warmth from the film like a vampire, It’s a masterpiece and trainwreck, a serious Oscar contender and a debacle and I’ve kind of fallen in love with it. It’s tough to explain why which is strange because Fincher is a filmmaker I’ve always been able to verbalize. I can explain in great detail just why Fight Club, Seven, Zodiac, and The Game, get my cinematic juices flowing and why Panic Room is completely tolerable, and why Alien 3 is fucking awful. But Buttons has simply gotten under my skin, like The man who keeps getting struck by lightening it just is. I could point to Fincher’s magnificent style, or the soulful performances by the entire cast, I could talk about how this is I believe, the most Kubrickian film made since the great master’s death. But that would all be surface, not really getting to the heart of this melancholy, funny, soulful, alive little film.
2. The Dark Knight: There’s something astounding about seeing a myth realized. Not to get too Joseph Campbell but there is a reason some characters last while others fall by the wayside, a resonance that some have and the charge of Dark Knights comes primarily from watching one of those characters realized in full. There’s not much to be said about Ledger’s performance of The Joker that hasn’t already been mentioned (I think the AV Club put it best “that something appears wrong with him on a biological level.”) Suffice to say nothing needs to, it speaks for itself. So does the film.
1. WALLE: Like 2001 made by Buster Keaton. WALLE is at once a gorgeous tone poem, a stunningly funny and heartfelt story, and the most blistering social satire I have seen since Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Taking the “Shit we don’t need for prices we can’t afford.” Mentality to its logical extremes the way WALLE shows how our how culture is infantilizing us was stunning and a little sickening. Yet the film never comes off as mean spirited, only bitter sweet and hopeful, and at the end when mankind’s creations fight to give us one last shot at creating and being again, it becomes a wonderfully cathartic experience shot with Andrew Stanton’s poet’s eye. Benjamin Button’s might have told us nothing lasts but as long as cinema does, WALLE will.
It’s a rare month when there are five comics I am genuinely looking forward to, so having five come out on the same day makes this the best New Comicbook Day EVER. All five titles where ones I was excited about some lived up to expectations some didn’t. Here’s a quick look.
Oh and Spoilers...
Batman #681 Huh. Or to use that much hated phrase. Meh. The thing is whether it was good or bad I had no doubt that Batman RIP would be the (temporary) game changer that Morrison kept saying it would be. The run of the series convinced me of this, what with Bruce Wayne shot up with heroin and crystal meth, his friendly Ghost Hobo spirit guide, Bat-Mite, Talking Gargoyles, The Joker Cutting His tongue down the middle, and Batman dressed in rags dispensing justice with a baseball bat. I figured something truly epic and bizarre was going down in the final issue.
SPOILERS: A quick summation of the finale.
Dr. Paine: I am thez Thomas Wayne!
Bruce Wayne: Nos you ares not!
Dr. Paine: You are right. But I might be your father anyway!
Everyone else: Ohs Nos Teh Helicopter Crash!
Dick Grayson: I’m probablies Batman Now!!
Now two points.
1) After watching Bruce Wayne Bench press his way out of a coffin, I can’t get two worried about him surviving a plane crash.
2) The whole Dr. Paine isn’t Thomas Wayne thing is just two annoying for words. Now let me be frank I think Thomas Wayne turning out to be a wife beating, orgy going junkie, who murdered his wife would have been a pretty pathetic way to go. It’d be cheap and mean Morrison corrupting mythology that doesn’t belong to him. It’d be like someone at Marvel deciding that Uncle Ben was a whoremonger who beat his wife and the Burglar that killed him was just a loan shark recollecting a debt. That said the way it’s handled here is even worse, it’s just pointless. Say what you will about the whole Thomas Wayne thing, but it would have been a real reason for Batman to reconsider being Batman. The fact that everything he’s done and accomplished would be built on a lie would give Batman a good reason to reconsider being Batman.
And that’s really the problem, there really isn’t one anymore. While there are some fun moments, the afore mentioned Batman digging himself out of the coffin, The Joker, and then Batman turning the tables on the way too smug Black Glove, Bruce and Dick’s “final” fight together and The Joker’s speech in praising Batman. At the end of the day I see no reason why Bruce isn’t back at the Batcave the next week.
And when your title’s name is Batman RIP that’s a considerable problem. C+
Buffy #19
Inspeaking of considerable problems, when you do a cliffhanger involving a major character being evil it’s problematic when you can’t tell who that character is. For the life of me, I thought Dawn was the “madwoman” and it wasn’t until two issues later that I realized it was Willow.
As always Buffy was interentsing, Whedon’s spinning a great web here, and I have a feeling when he finally pulls back and reveals his master plan it’ll be pretty astonishing. The reveal that another character we thought was on the side of angels isn’t had a real punch to it. Though, it does ruin my number one guess as to who Twilight was. (At least I think it’s the character).
Still Whedon’s mix of horror, humor, soap opera, and action is potent as ever. I’m on this train till it ends. B
Daredevil #113
Ed Brubaker is so so awesome. Normally I wouldn’t have much more to say then that, but it’s worth mentioning, that occasionally there are detriments to not really reading any main stream superhero comicbook. There’s the death of an apparently major character at the end of this book. But it was tough to care about as I had no idea who she was, or what her relationship to any of the characters was. I knew I was supposed to care. I just didn’t know why.
Other then that great stuff. B+
Ultimate Spiderman #128
Comicbook death is one of the things that annoys me most about the medium. Not so much for what it is but as a symptom of the disease. In comics nothing is for keeps there’s nothing that can’t get retconned, revisioned, or flat out ignored. In the words of Will Rogers “Don’t like the weather? Wait a few minutes.”
That said, Bendis wrote such a good Gwen Stacy, and she added such a nice dynamic to the group that I can’t help but be glad she’s back. Not to mention the fact that Bendis finds away to make her come back without resulting to either A) Emotional Dildo syndrome (Ala The Dark Tower) or B) Denying what happened. It’s a good solution and plausible, (or at least comicbook plausible) and it that doesn’t float your boat there’s plenty of great action, great character work, and some truly freaky Cronenbergian visuals.
This book isn’t that well loved anymore, but there’s no other title I can buy month after month knowing that I’ll get my three bucks worth of entertainment.
B+
Umbrella Academy: God Save The President #1
Of course I just say that since this book isn’t a monthly. If there was any question that the Umbrella Academy was just a fluke, that Gerard Way really just was a pretty boy playing the sandbox they should be laid to rest with this little number which is just as great as the preceding miniseries.
For those of you who are not familiar with The Umbrella Academy, Take one pinch Salinger, a heaping helping of Wes Anderson. Apply liberal dashes The X-men, Clockwork Orange, The Twilight Zone, and Mike Mignola add A semi insane ten year old with more killing power then Lee Marvin in his prime and that kind of scratches the surface. Despite all of this Umbrella Academy possesses it’s very own brand of nutso, provided by Way, and is brought to life by Ba’s art perfectly.
This issue begins with a group of Preteens taking down a surly Lincoln Monument with the help of John Wilkes Booth, and ends with a ten year old killing literally hundreds with his bare hands. And what sticks them together ain’t bad either. This book is seven different flavors of bad ass.
A
We'll now return to your regularly scheduled programming of navel gazing and caring way too much about an old anime series. Happy Thanksgiving!
(Note: I should mention that if you haven’t seen Eva and want to, you maybe shouldn’t read this for there will be spoilers. In this and all the reconsiderations)
The Fifth Episode Of Eva begins with a timely reminder of just how fucking terrifying the Evangelions are. Flashing back to the past as Unit 00 has it’s first activation, and promptly flips right the fuck out. It’s a worse case scenario on a staggering degree. An Eva doing exactly what you tell it to is a bad enough proposition, one deciding to turn against you is a catastrophuck.
This brings up two key points about the series, one is as much as we like to bitch and moan about it Eva’s ambiguity often works in it’s favor as much as it’s determent. From the second episode on we know the Evas have their own personalites and through the series it becomes apparent that there are human souls inside them, specifically the souls of Shinji’s, Asuka, and Ritsuko’s mother. Having a character come right out and say this, would make the whole thing seem pretty stupid, as would taking us through the step by step process of shoving a dead person’s spirit into a giant war machine, although judging by Unit 00’s reaction upon awakening it’s a pretty horrific experience. Eva never does either, it just gives us hints and dark inferences, and let’s us come to our own conclusions, rather then being spoon fed we spring to the idea itself making it a lot more powerful.
The second point comes from what will be the centeral question of the episode and in many ways the series. Just what the hell is up with Rei? Rei has for better or for worse become the poster child of the series (hint it’s mostly been for the worse) but a lot of that has to do with the fact that she is a truly fascinating character.
As it eventually becomes clear Rei has been reverse engineered from Shinji’s dead Mom, (Why, aside from Gendo’s wacky sense of humor, is a pretty good question, as it’s revealed that Yui was the first Eva pilot, did they just think nobody else could do it? Once again ambiguity working in the show’s favor). But just how much of Yui is in Rei (Because she’s also in Unit 01 right? I mean did she just have a spare soul lying around?) and how much Rei knows about it, her reaction to Shinji and Unit 00 reaction to her suggest that there is something there, not to mention her rather blaise reaction to having to spend large amounts of time in a giant glass tube, suggests she’s not totally ignorant of her origins.
The episodes starts with a visit to the lab that’s been built around the corpse of the (pretty ripe smelling I'd wager) angel from two episodes ago. The revelation that it’s DNA is composed the same way as humanity's is another thing that’s interesting as it is infuriating. Later in the series it’s suggested that the Angel’s are basically other species who have undergone instrumentality. That’s a cool explanation but once again makes little sense, why then are they so pissed at humanity for trying to do the same thing? Is it some sort of hazing ritual where the angels have to test the new guys metal before allowing them to join their interdimensional higher conscience frat? If so then how come there are still so many of them floating around, wouldn’t they have all been killed off in there attempt to stop the last species from assimilating into the form of an effete gay teenager?
The episode continues with Kensuke, and Toji panting over their fanservice’d out classmates, the creepiness of the scene is compounded by the fact that their leering, red faced reaction to Rei is almost identical to a lot of fanboys who have enshrined the character as a sex symbol despite the fact that she is, A) Fourteen, B) Fictional C) Has a tank full of soulless often mutilated clones. Any one of these things has an aura of creepiness to it on it’s own, put them together and you have a perfect storm of icky.
More “Comic Relief” ensues and then Shinji has his first encounter with Rei. Once again their relationship is interesting because we’re not quite sure where she stands. The “sexual tension” between the two is a lot more palatable since it doesn’t seem to exist. Sure Shinji ends up around her naked a lot, but he doesn’t seem so much attracted to her as drawn by something he recognizes. Rei on the other hand over the course of the episode, scolds, awakens, feeds, and protects, Shinji in other words she mother’s him. Is it Yui? Or just the echoes?
Her somewhere beyond Spartan apartment and ultra laconic demeanor, contrast immediately and intriguingly with her attachment to Gendo’s glasses and her anger shown when Shinji gives him less then glowing praise. More then anything else Rei seems incomplete. Assuming that Gendo is the one who did the reverse engineering this raises some interesting ideas. To about half the characters on the show Yui represents the feminine ideal, but what did Gendo, a man so enraptured by her that he’d end humanity to see her again really know about her? It recalls Tarkovsky’s version of Solaris (Yes I’m painfully aware that that’s the third time in as many columns I’ve name checked a high falutin old foreign filmmaker. I am probably not going to stop.) He knows she loved him (apparently) but what else? Was she just a role to him? He’s unable to recreate her just the part of her that he knew, and as Rei’s interaction with the rest of the world, and her tormented inner dialogue shows, that’s not nearly enough.
Anyway before I dig myself any further into bullshit hole, an Angel shows up. Starting now the designs on the Angels become pretty extraordinary, (For the most part, there are a few duds in there). This isn’t to say that the first two weren’t cool, but they where pretty standard to Sci Fi and Anime convention. Despite the fact that we truly have no idea what life other then our own would be like, we do our utmost to portray it as humanoid, or scaly and with a lot of teeth. Eva is one of the exceptions creating beings that are truly alien, like this great big reflective diamond, how it works, or just what it is is unknown, but it’s implacable, smart, and creepy as hell and it has no trouble taking down Nerv’s first attack before it’s even begun nearly boiling our hero in LCL. Cue another great Eva cliffhanger.
The next Episode begins with a replay of Shinji’s defeat, this time with extra humiliation. Shinji’s body hasn’t stopped twitching when a big phallic drill drops from the Angel and begins the dirty business of penetrating the trembling circular Geo Front. Ok probably reading to much into that. College has ruined me.
The interesting thing is just how inefficient the Angel’s mode of attack is. It’s estimated to take 22 hours to penetrate the Geo Front’s open waiting void… OK I promise to stop. One of the cool things about the show is how the Angel’s gradually got a lot smarter as they approached different tactics to end humanity. It’s like the old Wile E. Coyote cartoons had a cast of Coyotes, and as they where busy scraping the latest of there brethren off the pavement, they came up with new and better ways to kill that cocky bird.
The slow pace also allows the battle to take on a slightly different pitch then the usual race against time. Rather then the usual two opponents bashing eachother to pieces, it’s really a game of chess (OK maybe an unusually good game of checkers). The players attack and counter attack, feint and maneuver, each really a series of distractions as each tries to ensnare the other in it’s masterplan. Or maybe GAINIX just didn’t feel like animating another huge battle so they just said “Oh fuck it have one use a drill then the other shoot it, I’m sure it’ll be fine. But god help you if the high school girls look anything less then glistening climbing out of the pool!”
Misato tries several plans they don’t work mainly because of The Angel’s high level of Badass Mother Fuckery, before coming up with one that does. Shinji wakes up, Rei demonstrates the worst bedside manner known to man.
Then after a minimum level of antipathy by Shinji (Once again what a pussy, what kind of fourteen year old kid wouldn’t leap at the chance to go face the thing that nearly killed him again, seconds after emerging from a coma. Am I RIGHT?!?) we’re at the mission briefing all composed in either extreme close up or silhouette it’s another good example of Eva using abstraction early on in the series. As is Shinji’s and Rei’s conversation of the ties that bind directly afterwards, introducing the idea of instrumentality, what would become the crux of the series (and also for the excellent Syndechone New York for anyone who has had the chance to see it).
The Climax of the episode is well choreographed and exciting, delivering a nice bit of tension through just how unable the characters are to react. Finally it all ends with a nice understated irony and a smile.
That smile would prove to cause a lot of shit. “Why is that Rei showed human emotion then and then went back to stoicism immediately after.” But this like Shinji’s cowardice strikes me as mature storytelling now. People don’t make progress in easy to follow, and story beat convenient plateaus. We backslide and fall back on old systems of behavior because they’re comfortable, and more or less go forward in loopy circles rather then a straight line.
Much like this column.
Sorry it took so long, I’d promise that I’d get to the next episodes sooner, but seeing as we’re coming on Thanksgiving and I work in a grocery store, well I just don’t know.
Well after the books written in the last two reconsiderations there’s not a whole lot to say about this pair of episodes. Episodes 3 and 4 are Eva at its most standard, the closest the show ever came to being a typical teenage Mech drama. In my opinion the closer to the standard Eva adheres the weaker it is. By design it more or less takes on all the weaknesses of the Giant Robot Show and none of the strengths
The episode begins with Shinji in a training program acting like a mannequin. When People say they hate Shinji this is what they’re talking about, the guy in suit rotely parroting his commands again and again acting like one of Skinner’s rats. It doesn’t help matters that Anno shoots him with a fish angle lens that makes it look like Shinji is piloting mechs for Diane Arbus.
Anyway Shinji ends up going to school where we meet two of the shows most uninteresting characters, Toji whose defining trait is he’s Mr. Brash N’ Angry, and Kensuke whose defining trait is that I want to kill him with a hammer, slowly.
Anyway drama ensues, The Hedgehog’s Dillema is discussed (isolation brings pain, the only way to relieve isolation is contact with others, contact with others brings pain, you’re fucked) and then mentioned about ten trillion times (It’s also the title of the episode incase you missed the fact that it’s supposed to be IMPORTANT) an Angel comes we get some cool ground level shots of Tokyo 3 sinking into the Geo Front, and a fight ensues that while well choreographed and possessing a nice sense of geography, doesn’t really have the intensity of Eva at its best.
By episodes end Shinji has had his first little mini breakdown and we’re ready to continue.
Things pick up in episode four. Now you might be confused as how I might find an episode which basically involves nothing but the protagonist wandering aimlessly to be more interesting then an episode were the he you know, saves the world, but such are the strange workings of my mind.
Anyway after his minor nervous breakdown Shinji decides to leave Nerv, and starts drifting around Tokyo. Meanwhile Misato worries, and Toji and Kensuke try to find him to apologize. Like I said the bulk of the episode is basically Shinji walking around Tokyo, so your mileage may vary. Personally I found the sequence to be a great piece of silent story telling, conveying it’s ideas a lot more effectively and subtly then when the characters monologue about basic philosophical and psychological constructs for five minutes, the way they did in The Hedgehogs Dilemma, as well as unfortunately the rest of the series.
Shinji’s Antonioniesque treck across the city and into the wilderness unfolds as basically a series of tableaus, with Shinji first witnessing the closeness of other human relationships before going into the wilderness, where the animation becomes strikingly abstract. It also introduces one of Eva’s best motif’s the image of one of it’s characters walking alone through a series of deserted Tokyo streets. Even as someone whose never been there, the city’s reputation as one of the busiest in the world precedes it, and seeing it almost completely deserted, immediately strikes you as wrong, it’s pretty fucking creepy in an understated and artful way.
The sequence continues as basically a series of pillow shots but they express Shinji’s isolation and confusion perfectly. This is also the kind of thing most people hate Shinji for it’s never really bothered me. As someone who’s had my own battles with depression, and whose ability to turn acquaintances into friends can be described as shitty, I can understand Shinji’s dilema. The desire to be close with people, part of something, yet having no idea how. It’s relatable to me. He doesn’t have the power of self validation, he seeks it from others finds hostility and withdraws, even further outside looking in. What can I say I get it.
The sequence comes to the end with a strikingly composed shot of a red sky with a foreground of beautifully etched wheat with a black form in between, of course that black form turns out to be Kensuke, and the whole thing kinda craps out there. NERV’s Gestapo division finds Shinji, takes him back to headquaters so Misato can yell at him, and then basically releases him so that he can go and do exactly the thing he was going to do before.
Shinji and Misato both reconsider, the oldest trick in the world is used at the train station and the “I’m home.” line that worked so well in episode two repeated to lesser effect. All in all these episodes aren’t what you would call bad, but you have to wonder why it took two episodes to get to where we already were. Episode 3: C- Episode 4: C+
(Note: I’m planning on writing about this series at about two episodes per entry. When it works to review them separately I will, when it works to write about them as one long rambling tangent, like today I’ll do that to.)
Let’s start with the theme song, in a lot of ways the series is summed up in that perfect ninety second mix of pretension, cheesecake, symbolism, violence, plot information, and striking imagery (some of which I’m still bitter never made it into the series). As bits of crucial information and terminology flit across the screen the delivery proves to be an object lesson, just enough to have you tantalized not enough to satisfy.
The series hits the ground running with a lot of what the series does right and wrong set from the beginning. There’s some striking stuff here, as well as some clumsy elements. An intriguing mix of elegance and amateurishness.
The series starts off with Shinji alone in a deserted city street mumbling about how no one wants him. Though many have complained about the main protaginist’s spinelessness looking back it only seems realistic. Take any fourteen year old boy with abandonment issues and have callous authority figures and peers literally put the weight of the world on his shoulders after shoving him in a giant monster to go fight another giant monster, it’s no surprise that he doesn’t take it well. Plus there’s a real vulnerability to Shinji that makes him work, little character moments like his sheepish pleasure at being told he’s home, make a truly rounded and to me at least, relatable character rather then a big bag of angst. Of course only time will tell if he’ll wear out his welcome before the series is up, but at the moment I can’t help but feel that the antipathy towards Shinji is due more towards Anime fan’s own insecurities then any flaws in the characterization.
The vision of Rei Shinji has in this opening scene, points out another frustrating technique of the show, the cool thing with many interpretations that is never mentioned let alone explained again. After the movie this vision could mean many things, is it a suggestion that the entire series is just Shinji’s remembrance of events during third impact? A projection by Rei in a time of distress? Or is it what’s left of Yui checking on her long missing son? Anyway you look at it it’s intriguing, and of course, it’s never gone into again. While thanks to a booming toy, fan fiction and art industry Rei gets a lot of crap these days, as symbolizing everything that’s wrong in anime fandom. A group of awkward males stuck in the cobra’s sway of a young, big boobed, teenage girl whose docile and gets beat up a lot. That said she’s one of the characters I’m most interested in getting a second look at. There’s a lot of stuff just below the surface in her character, the question of just what her nature is, and how much she knows about it are some of the most intriguing mysteries of the series.
Anyway back to the first sequence, the direction is top notch, shooting this and much of the first episode at ground level, when the battle between the UN Forces and the Angel cross paths with Shinji it’s truly a terrifying experience, shot entirely from his POV it only cuts away to wider shot to view the extent of the destruction. It gives the series an instant sense of scale, as the angel lays waste to everything in it’s path it’s clear that the stakes are high. Later shots, Shinji riding the escalator unaware of the giant hand he’s passing, the construction crews swarming over the giant broken Eva parts, Misato standing next to the bullet’s being loaded, Her and Shinji framed against the horizons of Tokyo 3 and The Geo Front, continue this neat trick of perception. Everything is shot just off center from where a normal series would focus.
The series always get’s a lot of shit for going off the rails with it’s stream of conscience rants. But if anything what impressed me this time out was how arch the style was from the beginning. The reunion scene between Shinji and Gendo, where he receives his orders to pilot the Eva is pretty faux Bergman, from the blocking, to the angles, to the bizarrely on the nose dialogue, the scene has almost a dreamlike quality to it. It plays like Shinji’s worst nightmare of the encounter, with his beyond distant father treating at him like a spare part and speaking in clipped one word commands as though Shinji’s a naughty puppy, and even the kindly Misato turning on him.
Unfortunately, the scene introduces another frustrating stock in trade trick of Eva, the use of quickly shouted made up jargon as a substitute for drama. Even at this low level I cringed at what I know will soon become whole scenes involving nothing but high pitched voices frantically citing made up statistics.
The film also brought out two more frequently used tropes, that of a beat up Rei and utterly shameless melodrama. On the latter let us not be too hard. It is after all a show made for adolescents, and as a result a fair bit of melodrama is to be expected. And whose kidding who? A bit of soap opera is always enjoyable. The moment really does give some nice character development to Gendo as well. A man who makes Dr. Venture look like parent of the year. “Sure it’s your decision whether or not you want to climb inside the giant creature to fight an unknowable unkillable menace, just know if you don’t I’ll shove this dying girl in your place.” That’s cold.
The awakening of the Eva is done with a great deal of style, also done “from the ground” it doesn’t quite allow you to see what’s happened until it’s all over, and Gendo has had his badass “I don’t blink for shrapnel” moment. The reveal of Shinji and the Eva in the same position, and life coming slowly to the depowered Evangelion’s eye are a prime bit of buildup.
Shinji finally consents to piloting the Eva, he’s inserted into the machine, shot to the surface, and stumbles out to do battle with a creature that has just destroyed the countries entire defense system, all with a body that operates about as well as a drunk on a bender. Things do not go well.
But before we get any further it stops, the second episode begins with a bitch of a cliffhanger, just as things get to their worst, the battle is over. It’s a good choice for what is a pretty slow and expositional episode, no matter how banal the on goings appear the knowledge that something terrible must have happened hangs over the the entire show.
The episode hums along, establishing character, soon to be reaccuring motifs (Another Unfamiliar Ceiling) and engages half heartedly in some “Comic Relief”. Evangelion has never been accused of being a particularly funny show and frankly the less time that is spent making dick jokes the better. The show also has some redundancies to get rid of, the first two episodes are packed with crew and officials who are never seen again. It also introduces “The Council Of Snide Guys” Just who these people are, the human avatars of SEELE, the envoys between The UN and Nerv, is never explained. It doesn’t really matter as they just come off as odd and then disappear halfway through the show. Their MO is always the same, they show up with some weird character design, say snide things to Gendo for awhile and then leave with a cryptic warning. My heart will not grieve when I see the last of them.
By the end of the episode, when we finally get back to what happened against the Angel we’re primed for it. And the show doesn’t disappoint.
Let’s talk about the Eva’s for a moment and what a fantastic and underrated design they truly are. Eschewing the usual high-tech and sterilely clean look that most Mechs use, the Eva’s from the beginning are clearly of a different breed. Huge, ungainly, clumsy, and brutal, these aren’t high tech war machines, but giant creatures, barely contained fueled by bloodlust, savagery, and instinct, without the faintest hint of reason. The way they are, both completely primitive, and utterly otherworldly, the way their binding’s crack or limbs casually extend when they get into the heat of battle.
The way the Eva’s move and fight is positively primal. It’s first tottering steps, piloted by Shinji, a newborn monster. And when “she” awakens, it’s like nothing that had ever been seen before, a newborn God. The Eva doesn’t engage in duels, or showdowns, it sees its prey and bludgeons it to death before fashioning it’s victim’s rib into a crude knife to finish the job. Unlike most mech’s whose ancestor is the duelist, the Eva’s predecessor is the Neanderthal and Mr. Hyde, and in the stunning climax Anno proves it. The Eva may occasionally use a weapon, but when it’s base nature is tapped, it wants no intermediate between it and the kill.
This style strikes a true and primal chord in the viewer and there are at least half a dozen times in the series when the Eva’s cause the hardest reaction to get in an audience, that of genuine awe. At the end the faceplate comes down, and self generating eye stares back at us. If we had any doubts at this point that Evangelion is just a typical Mech series, they should be erased at this point. It’s something different and the fact of the matter is that no matter how stunning the climax of the episode, we haven’t even gotten a hint of what’s to come. Episode 1: B+ Episode 2: B+
It’s a very tricky thing revisiting stuff from your past. Sometimes it’s there for a reason. Works that seemed so deep at the age of 15 can come off as trite. Things that resonated so strongly with who you were no longer really mesh with who you are. Things that seemed bracingly original just seem stale.
Neon Genesis Evangelion hit me big at fifteen. It was a crystallizing moment. I knew anime, I knew avant garde, I knew Philip K. Dick style “sci fi of the soul”. But I never knew them like this. A huge melting pot of teen angst, Jungian and Freudian psychology, Religion, symbolism, soap opera, sci-fi, and giant freaking robots beating the shit out of monsters. It started smacking me around with chess while I was still thinking in checkers. For a lonely fifteen year old kid, who identified with the main character more then I’m probably going to be comfortable with now, and had to walk three miles to the only video store that rented anime, I might as well have been receiving transmissions from Mars.
Maybe it’d be for the best if I cut my losses and left it in the warm forgiving recesses of memory.
But at the same time it’s important to know where you’ve been, the stuff that gets under your skin in your early adolescence never really leaves it. Call it nostalgia if you must, the fact is that we all have things that at formative periods in our life hit us like the proverbial ton of bricks. Shaping our taste rather then just fitting in it. Whetting our appetite by giving us that first scent of something that resonated so strongly in us that we had to pursue it. I can trace a clear line from my enjoyment of Neon Genesis Evangelion, to my love for Philip K. Dick, Lost, Antonioni (Watch Eclipse Sometime), David Lynch, Jodorowsky, Muramki, David Mitchell, and countless others. Maybe I would have come across these artists later in life, but maybe I wouldn’t have. And even if I did come across them maybe I wouldn’t have known what to do with them. Eva primed the pump, it taught me that stories didn’t have to be about three act structures and pat answers, it taught me to appriciate the unknown, to see narrative in a different light. And that is worth at least a second look. It’s probably been around seven or eight years since I’ve seen the series in it’s entirety. Perfect time for another look.
A Demon To Some An Angel To Others. Critic/Filmmaker/Factotum dedicated to engaging art on its own terms. Occasionally cruel but never incurious or dismissive. And always enthusiastic
Posts
