Review: Empathy Inc

If you have a bad day at work what do you do to turn it around? Vent to the wife? A swift half with the lads? Switch on the PlayStation and shout horrible slurs at 14-year olds? I’m sure we all have our ways of dealing with having an absolute mare. In case of venture capitalist Joel, whose multimillion deal has just gone the way of Orlando Bloom’s character’s in Elizabethtown (2005), things go beyond your usual hectic day at the office.

Forcibly moved in with his nightmare in-laws and with hardly a penny to his name, Joel (Zack Robidas) is in dire straits. That is until he meets an old friend with a fancy new scheme in the line of VR. What if you spend some time in someone else’s shoes? Someone who’s life is less than fortunate? Would that place your issues into perspective? Thus, the conceit is born. A VR system that places you in the shoes of someone who is desolate. By doing so, your hang-ups will become more manageable. And all those proverbs and maxims people like to band about would be justified.

It all seems too good to be true in Empathy Inc, the lo-fi, sci-fi head spinner from Yedidya Gorsetman. Of course, it certainly is, as the little bit greedy and all to nosy Joel soon finds out. With a conceit that feels a little bit Primer (2004) and noir style black and white that couldn’t help but remind me of Darren Aronofsky’s debut Pi (1998), Empathy Inc is the kind of askew, oddity that you’d use to find late nights on the weekend when terrestrial tele was our media gods and you were never quite sure if you saw what you watched or dreamed it. Safe to say, trying to tell your wife or the lads over a swift half about this flick may get you some strange looks.

It’s also safe to say that this is a very confident piece of filmmaking from a film that is seeing how resourceful it can be while on a very limited budget. It’s lack of expansive or varied locations not only keeps the focus on the characters but gives the entire film an inescapable, hemmed in vibe. It’s also notable that while the film is limited in funds the film's compositions and transitions highlight an eye for the cinematic.

Drenched in punchy black and white, giving the whole exercise a touch of the noir to its sci-fi leanings, Empathy Inc’s strengths lie in its simplicity. The film gives us just enough of its lofty idea to make the story compelling. The characters may be broad, but they’re never flat. Although the actors struggle with the tasks given as the film ramps up the tempo and twists later in the film. While Empathy Inc toys with deeper themes of haves and have nots, corrupt corporate investors and the identity of the self, it’s far more at home as being a moderately thrilling sci-fi that would fit comfortably on the same shelf as the films of Shaun Carruth. Although it may not get as far under the skin.

Empathy Inc is available now on VOD via Amazon Prime, Google Play and YouTube

Article: Digging for Answers

I remember first discovering Dellamorte Dellamore through an old horror film website around the time the internet was young and dial-up ruled supreme. Through a stroke of luck, I managed to record it off channel 4 a year or two later. Channel 4 being the prime location for film oddities at the time. Nowadays, the likes of Dellamorte Dellamore can be found through scrolling through Amazon on whatever home entertainment system you favour. At the time of writing, you can stream it free on-demand with Amazon Prime.

For a film nearing 30 years old, Dellamorte Dellamore has lost little of its macabre strangeness. Like so many cult features, it’s defined by not being forced into an anorexic space of specification. Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) is a cemetery custodian who is sick of having to kill the city’s dead a second time around, as they keep raising from their grave for an unknown reason.

While Francesco has grown weary of being the town’s sole caretaker of the living dead (his intellectually impaired assistant Gnaghi is of little support), the Gilliam-esque bureaucracy of the local administration seems uninterested in looking into his claims. Although as opposed to filing the correct paperwork, Francesco prefers dispatching the living dead with his revolver as not only he finds it easier, he also wishes to keep his job.

Francesco soon becomes fixated on an unnamed young widow (Anna Falchi) whom he encounters at her husband’s funeral. After a frosty reception, she responds in kind. Things become complicated however when the woman dies while consummating their relationship on the deceased man’s grave. Because this is an Italian zombie horror film that looks at the word taboo with a hilarious amount of disdain.

That speck of plot doesn’t even cover half of what Dellamorte Dellamore is about or is really interested in. In the same way, George A Romero’s zombie saga made satirical commentary on American society dependant of the era, Michele Soavi’s feature leans in towards surrealism and philosophical observations. The film’s English title; “Cemetery Man” sounds so infantile when you consider that the original title Dellamorte Dellamore is Italian wordplay which can be interpreted as either the rather literal “About Death, About Love” or the slightly more poetic “About the death of love”. No doubt the change to Cemetery Man for English Speakers was brought about due to some claptrap about being “more commercial”.

Dellamorte Dellamore is not as interested in being commercially viable as it is in surrealist and abstract alliterations and pontification between love and death. Both Francesco and Gnaghi are transfixed throughout the film with ideas of re-claiming the unclaimable. From fixing shattered skulls to falling in love with re-animated, decapitated heads of teenagers. The duo is somewhat obliged to both embrace and repeal the final float down the river Styx in a way that’s compelling as well as deeply humorous. An early scene has Gnaghi fighting against the wind as it blows away dead leaves. He ends up literally lying on top of them in a futile attempt to fight the inevitable.

The film appears to owe a lot to the surrealist movement with visuals that directly lift from Rene Magritte’s painting “The Lovers”. Meanwhile, Francesco keeps seeing his unnamed infatuation in different encounters as different women, although always played by Falchi. Each confrontation has Francesco delivers a new challenge to navigate, all the while each persona acknowledges Francesco as if they’ve met and loved each other before. The surrealist notions play out in a manner that feels like an offshoot of the cinematic works of Luis Brunel. More acutely Brunel’s final feature That Obscure Object of Desire (1977). Whereas Brunel interchangeably uses two different actresses to play the temperamental Conchita from scene to scene, both films use surrealist juxtapositions to heighten each film's quixotic sentiments of love.

While the film is as gruesome as one would expect from a particular type of Italian horror movie Dellamorte Dellamore has a dirty love for lobbing metaphysical pipebombs towards its viewer. “Hell, at a certain point in life, you realize you know more dead people than living.” Francesco rambles in a plaintive voice over. Morose, twilight life thinking from the proclaimed “engineer” of a cemetery with the Latin inscription “RESURRECTURIS” on the gate. Of course, this plays into the film’s dirt dry humour. One of the film’s earliest shots earmarks a snowglobe. We witness the visual that inhabits the globe later in the movie in a way that will either take viewers out of the film or have them embrace its eccentrics. As a good cult film does. Either way, the element encapsulates the circular patterns that inhabit the film but also slaps the viewer in the face with the film’s poignant final moments. When the film asks us to reconcile with a man whose obsession with the grave takes him to the brink. What is there beyond love, beyond death, and past our imagination? When we leave the comfort of our former ourselves past the point of no return, what else exists? Anything? In the morbidly wicked view of Dellamorte Dellamore perhaps not.

Article: Belonging on Beale Street

  

Forgive me for the weasel words at the start of this. I cannot remember for the life of me the many people who state that when writing about cultural commentary on media that it shouldn’t be personal. Apologises on this opening which is something that attribute to me and what I’ve seen. 

On one of the photography forums that I frequent, a woman made a post asking about what could be done to celebrate and encourage more female photographers on the site. Photography like so many creative endeavours can be considered top-heavy when it comes to gender, although of course there are many variables that should be considered. Almost straight away the inquisition came. Prods and pokes at a relatively harmless question. Nothing said held out and out aggression, but many replies held a clear defensiveness. The response that struck me more than anything was by one gentleman who stated:

 

“Call me biased as a middle-aged white male, who has not transgendered, and has all his limbs and hopefully faculties, but I really don’t even think about these things until people decide that the world is” unfair” in their eyes. Can we maybe just look at the quality of images.......?”

 

Isn’t this the sticking point? The crux of the argument? The problem? That the person of such a description can brush off the idea of celebrating a different group’s foray into creativity because they do not have to think about it? That because they are usually considered the target market, they can dictate the themes and hold the gates on what is worthy? Suffice to say, I ducked out of my forum lurking at that point. You can always see where such debates go. It was much better for me to go to the movies, another medium which suffers from similar trappings. Just go to any forum debating Captain Marvel…

Often the critique thrown at certain black films often sounds similar to the “I don’t see colour" argument. Not everyone will get something out of Films such as Get Out (2017) and Moonlight (2017), but the dismissive nature which sometimes comes from people when they observe such films, consciously or not, highlight their dismissiveness of racial identity. There have been films like Black Panther (2018) before and watching the many MCU entries help establish that point. But there’s rarely any colour represented films like Black Panther and this is where the discourse becomes fractured. In the same way, black audiences helped the likes of a problematic racial sitcom such as Love Thy Neighbour become popular, the latest glut of black-led movies have staunch support for the simple reason that in not seeing the racial aspect in such features is to erase swathes of people's viewpoints alongside it too. In the same way, a female photographer may have a different stance on how to create images thematically but can be ignored under a certain presence of “quality”. A white audience member can view movie concerns from particular viewpoints, safe in the knowledge that their next film is merely around the corner. For minority viewers, they have not been able to. Due to this, as a black audience member, I may now feel that I can be quick to dismiss viewpoints if I consider the commentator would be softer on a “white” movie for having the same faults. 

Berry Jenkins’ tales of unrequited love can and have been criticised by people and of course we can all do this, however, I would be interested in how many people who dismiss Moonlight would be doing so in contrast to its particular blend of unapologetically black queer cinema. As if there’s that many. The same would go for Medicine for Melancholy (2008) a black romance which riffs on the mumblecore movement, a group of films not particularly known for its diverse demographic. 

Jenkins’ If Beale Street Can Talk is very much more of the same when we consider his body of work. A matter of fact drama based on a novel by James Baldwin. With the inspiration of Wong Kar-Wai clearly in mind, the film ebbs and flows in a fashion which may be unfamiliar to those who expect a more typical sense of narrative structure. Characters we expect to reappear, do not, yet their actions and thoughts linger long after they leave the screen. Much like Jenkins’ previous works, this is not unexpected. For a viewer like myself, whose enjoyment of more typical modern features is at a slight point of contempt, Beale Street’s way is warmly met by me.

Bathed in the beautiful, warming glow of James Laxton’s cinematography, Jenkins captures the thoughts and emotions of his character's feelings in tightly framed, richly light close-ups. Shots so detailed they point out the needless endeavour of 3D or Secret Cinema to provide immersion. When Nicholas Britell's score soared, my tear ducts often swelled, as is Jenkins ability to deliver us in front of these simple characters leading complicated lives. The film explores the problematic themes of redlining, rape, and racism in America, yet it never preaches. It’s emotional moments never feel like they are pandering. The film’s expressions of love never feel cloying or plastic. 

The beauty in Jenkins work, for an admirer like myself, lies in his ability to show us lives that are being lived with no need for huge telegraphed scenes of sensation, yet plenty of moments to provide reflection. When we observe the intimate moments of our lead characters making love for the first time, it should be noted of how black male sexuality is captured as not only an expression of love but as a moment of vulnerability. The black male without aggression, something that could possibly be missed by viewers as it is an element which still feels alien to them. 

If Beale Street Could Talk, did not hold the same immediate emotional response as Moonlight did. The latter film lodged a lump in my throat so large, I felt it may never have left. However, Beale Street firmly establishes Jenkins as the most important black filmmaker for a viewer such as me. Being a sensitive soul, it is unsurprising that I hold a soft spot for many emotional and expressive features, but it is with Jenkins for the third time running, that I have watched a film of an artist and felt my chest would burst. The third time that a filmmaker has opened a part of myself and explored particular emotions that I myself have grappled with. It’s not to say that other filmmakers have not done this. They do. Just not like this. 

The point of this ramble, which has taken me too long to write and you perhaps too long to read, is that Jenkins’ framing of people of colour in Beale Street, like his other features, or even Charles Burnett's, highlight and frame western black cinema in a way that many other white filmmakers would quite simply be uninterested in. The quality is there. What he’s doing with it is celebrating us.

Article: The Pursuit of Pennies

*Spoilers are about.

The final shot of Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience (2009) floored me upon a recent rewatch. After spending just over an hour of it’s economical running time, observing the lifestyle of Christine; a high-end escort and her relationship with different clients as well as her boyfriend Chris, the film’s essence is boiled down to its purest moment in the film’s closing sequence.

The scene itself seems pretty innocuous. Christine (then real-time Porn Star Sasha Grey) is invited into the backroom of a Jewish Jewellers by the owner whom we identify as a client for the services that Christine provides. They talk briefly about the upcoming election, in which the client recommends Christine (or Chelsea if we go by her escort name) should vote for John McCain over Barack Obama. He dominates the conversation, she merely responds in rather basic platitudes. As they talk, they undress unceremoniously. For a film with a porn star as the lead, it only really displays Grey in any real sexual fashion briefly, although many conversations in the film highlight her attractiveness. Framed in mid-shot which captures two-thirds of Grey body in full but is set at a distance which halts the observation of her body as gratuitous or titillating, she walks towards her client, a heavy-set man and they embrace. He begins to sob.

Soderbergh’s movies often involve how people operate for the pursuit of money, yet what I found so striking with The Girlfriend Experience is how the film deals with the element of control the chase. Throughout the film, we’re supplied with a plethora of talk about the economy. It all comes from Men. Nearly every man within the film is telling Christine what she should do with her job. From how she should approach men, to trying to find out how she keeps her accounts. They all want a piece of her. They pull of ruses to try and pay less for her services or “get to know the real her”. Despite the boundaries which are set in place by people within the film, everyone is looking to break them. However, it’s in this small moment in which we realise that all the bluster and bravado. All the posturing. It all comes down to that base wish of getting an attractive woman to need you. An urge so powerful it can make a grown man weep.

One of Soderbergh’s more experimental affairs, The Girlfriend Experience came out to middling reviews, with much of the focus being fixed on Sasha Grey’s “coming out” to the mainstream. The choice of Grey here is a masterstroke from Soderbergh. Her flat portrayal of Christine is deceptive. It suggests a bad performance. However, in my eyes, having seen Grey in some of her pornography, as well as her rather limp performances in Entourage, her near unemotive turn here is a clear decision between actress and director for a character who is purposely not letting anyone into what she really feels. If the film had been given to another actress, there’s every chance that they could have overegged their performance, letting the audience know exactly what they’re thinking. Grey’s face, which at one point is covered by huge sunglasses as to hide her eyes, feels like a mirror, reflecting the emotions given by those around her.

The film seems to go on around Christine and to me, this seems to be the point. We jump from conversation to conversation which ranges from how the economic climate will affect her work, to gross clients trying to obtain freebies from her to guarantee good reviews. However, despite whatever’s being said, everything boils down to that final moment. She has what they want. Payment is negotiable, but there will still be paying. What’s fascinating is just how well Soderbergh has transferred some of the clear issues we are now seeing in the gig economy. Looking into my other hobby of Portrait and model photography, it’s more than a little concerning how it would only take a small amount of script tinkering to have it apply to the amateur photographer scene, and yes, I do mean some of the more dubious elements too.

After the release of the film, directors Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz took the material and turned the source material into a TV show, with new characters and storylines. The Girlfriend Experience TV series is far less of an experimental slice of life endeavour that Soderbergh devised and is a more familiar and explicit affair. Gone is the semi-provisional feel, and what we’re given instead is a political espionage show with a variety of different, difficult female leads which sometimes holds more in common with the erotic thriller genre than the more ponderous take of Soderbergh. 

In any case, what I found most intriguing about The Girlfriend Experience is how both the show and the film are invested in delivering agency to female characters who are hard to catalogue into simple terms. My favourite visual on the film comes around about halfway through when Christine, positioned centre framed, sitting on the edge of a hotel bed, is getting her feet massaged by a client; David, who is so low down in the shot he is almost out of it. It’s a moment which, despite some of the things which are about to occur, subtly hints at the metaphor which takes place in the aforementioned finale. The dynamics shift throughout the film, but it is within these moments that we gain a glimpse at what’s going on. Where the agency is. Why men write bad reviews of Christine when they don’t get their way and why they are sometimes so despondent when she gives them a chance to touch her. If the economy tanks, then there’s less money to go around. Less to brag about. Less to impress with. You can’t impress Christine if you can’t pay her. Maybe that’s why they cry.

Article: The Lonely Death of Dick Hallorann

Of Course Spoilers

The death of Scatman Crothers’ character Dick Hallorann in Stanley Kubrick’s seminal film adaptation of The Shining (1980) is possibly one of the most isolated deaths in mainstream horror cinema. He travels through brutal, treacherous terrain to heed the telepathic beckoned call of a terrified young boy. He never makes it. Moments after he reaches his destination, he is felled by a swinging axe to the chest. His demise is swift, violent and above all else, it’s near pointless. In other horror films, ones not made by obsessive, precise auteurs, such a death is often considered laughable. The most notable parody of The Shining lies in The Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror V (1994), in which Groundskeeper Willy is murdered by an insane Homer Simpson in a similar style to what occurs in the film. Hallorann’s death can easily be mocked. For myself, this is perhaps part of the sadness. This is a character whom we see near the start of the movie delivering a careful exposition of ‘The Shining’ to a fretful young scallywag in a poorly disguised Chekhov’s gun only to have the bullet skew wildly when it is fired. Danny Torrance (Danny Lloyd), the telepathic child, who uses his ‘shine’ to summon the wilful wannabe hero is only left with mental scars as his deranged father Jack Torrance (Jack Nicolson) drives an emergency axe through the elderly man’s chest mere moments after arriving back to his place of work, in a desperate attempt to save the child and his mother from the evil which has taken over the mind and body of Jack.

Dick Hallorann’s death is a tragedy in The Shining that feels easily forgotten and ignored, due to the grander context. Hallorann himself is only in a few scenes. In the beginning, he establishes himself as a person of trust. His final moments are devastating because the film invests so much time of his travelling to his final destination. When you isolate Hallorann’s time in the film, half of his scenes are spent with him navigating his way back to the snowbound overlook hotel. He travels by plane. He drives during the final third of his journey. We’re still aware of how long it took Jack Torrance to get to The Overlook and that was without the poor weather conditions which blight Dick. A few moments after Hallorann arrives, Jack swings an axe cruelly into Dick’s chest. The struggle is brief, the wound is severe and Hallorann’s heroic gesture, in which he came to aid Danny and Wendy, is quickly snuffed Out.

It’s easy to giggle at the futile effort. The film seems to set up a greater confrontation involving Hallorann and Torrance. His earlier, expositional scenes suggest that his knowledge of ‘The Shining’: a telepathic link between people, will become key. It is said shining that Danny uses to send out an SOS call to Hallorann. This gift is powerful enough to give Danny an aspect of foresight. He witnesses excruciating scenes of terror through this clairvoyant link. Elevators filled with blood. Dead bodies of the past strewn on the floor. However, the events which cause his dad to run riot and have Danny scarper as far as his legs can carry him, also ensure that the failed heroism by Hallorann is in vain.

It’s a difficult death even despite its futility. In both Stanley Kubrick’s film and Stephen Kings novel, the attack dutifully notes Hallorann’s race. Before the attack, Jack is advised by a spiteful spirit; Delbert Grady that a “nigger cook” is on his way to complicate the matter of Jack correcting his Wife; Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and their talented son. The performance by Phillip Stone as Grady has always been memorable to me due to the venom of the exchange which takes place in the men’s bathroom with Nickleson’s Jack. It’s here where the severity of Hallorann’s demise hits home, practically for me as it’s in this moment that becomes one of the first moments of explicit racism in a movie that I’ve witnessed. People often get frustrated with film adaptations as they place a face to a character that they find hard for their imaginations to shake off. Stone’s face and aggression have always been etched into my mind from a young age. But conversation which takes place also compounds an illicit agreement between two white men, to kill the film’s only truly likable character.

In the film Room 237 (2012); a highly subjective documentary showcasing how the film is viewed by various analysts, one theory establishes that the overt references in The Shining make the film about the genocide of Native Americans and American imperialism, with one of the film’s main highlights being that of an opening sequence involving hotel manager Stuart Ullman (Barry Nelson) mentioning that the Overlook Hotel is built on an ancient Indian burial ground. This becomes a challenging factor when we consider the films mysterious ending in Jack, the man who has “always been the caretaker” is seen in the last frame of the film captured in a picture which dates back to the 1920s. Hallorann, the only person of colour within the film, may not be native American, but the theory of his killing is perhaps due to the hands of a white man who may be possessed by spirits of America’s well known racist past make an impactful indictment of Torrance’s foul dismissal of the kindly African-American who treated his son to some ice cream. It’s possible to consider The Shining as a film which conspires to kill the film’s most solitary character, it’s only black character, through insidious white collusion.

Hallorann’s death conjures even more provocative elements when we consider his place within the film. His early exposition, as well as his psychic talent, could easily consider him the fabled “magical negro”. The sexless black stereotype whose role is to give the white protagonists value through his magical abilities. This is a cook whose purpose is to serve the rich white folk who come to indulge in the overlook, while his sole motivation in the film is to come to the aid of Danny, which he fails. When Hallorann receives the call from Danny, consider the mise en scene surrounding him. Framed pictures of young, naked ebony women are hung around his walls, but there’s very little about Hallorann himself to suggest that he’s a sexual person. In watching the film again, this scene is most indicative of the loneliness of Hallorann. Having explained the Shining ability to Danny, this seemingly asexual man, now surrounded by sensual imagery, has his sole purpose by this point in the film to be marked for death. To be killed by a man whose cavorting with naked bathtub spirits allows him to be possessed. Yes, we know that the woman who seduces Jack in room 237 turns out to be a rotting corpse ghoul, but still…

Hallorann is unceremoniously dispatched by Jack after hours of travel to reach his destination point. His body is not found by Danny, the boy he strived to save, but Wendy who’s bulging eyes cannot comprehend what she is seeing. Considering that what she’s seen only a few moments before have already been difficult to logically compartmentalise. It is Wendy who sees the elevator of blood in (her) reality over Danny’s vision. She finds bloodied guests laundering about the halls when it is only supposed to be her family inhabiting the hotel. But it’s the short sharp crash zoom to Hallorann’s body which has her really lose her proverbial poop.

Duvall’s Wendy has really taken a battering from detractors of the film over the years as for the most part she is nothing but a shrinking violet, yet it is through her face as well as Danny’s in which we see much of the film’s terror. Duvall has such an unconventional movie star features and it’s no surprise that Altman used her in tandem with Sissy Spacek for the evocative 1977 film 3 Women. Spacek who featured in Carrie another adaptation of Stephen King also holds the same characteristic that makes Duvall stand out. Those large eyes. They see all.

I bring this up because it’s her face, those eyes that water with fear when Wendy finally sees apparitions. She is also the only person who sees Hallorann’s lifeless corpse lying in the reception area. It is one of the last sights she sees in the hotel itself. By the time she sees it, she’s witnessed so many bizarre supernatural phenomena that she may not believe that the body is real. That’s the sadness. The last person to see Hallorann on the day of his death may be too wigged out to even believe he’s there. Struck apart by race, sex and sheer distance. Dick’s body may have been considered as much as an apparition as the ghostly guests waltzing the hallways. He dies by himself in the hotel’s reception. What a lonely way to go.