Written by James MacDowell. Published on Thu Jul 21 02:55:05 2005 in the Features section.
Printer friendly format [Normal view] This article contains some 'spoilers' for, Ae Fond Kiss, Annie Hall, Buffalo 66, Chinatown, The Happiness of the Katakuris, Magnolia, My Best Friend's Wedding, Psycho, Taxi Driver, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Dream-worlds I recently had one of those dreams in which I realised I was dreaming. Anyone who has had the same experience (perhaps most people?) will know that, whilst it's strange to realise that the feelings and thoughts you are having are not 'real', it is also simultaneously rather comforting: you know no harm can come to you. No matter what happens, you know the world you're in is safe. What followed this realisation in my dream is a rather pathetic reflection of quite how completely my mind is eternally occupied with films: my sleeping brain started to think about the similarities between dreams and movies. "Isn't this a bit like knowing you're watching a genre film?" the asleep-me thought, "Because I know the rules, there's no danger: I know that I (the protagonist) will survive and that nothing can hurt me." I said to myself: "This is nice, and - at the same time - slightly boring." Then I woke up and found myself in the real world, in which I was potentially unsafe and in which there were no real rules to keep me from danger. So how perceptive was my dream-mind being? When I realised I was dreaming, it was as if my subconscious had handed me a disclaimer to reassure me that no one was harmed in the making of this dream. It made any subsequent dream-events feel, as I have said, one hundred percent safe. I'm not just talking here about physical safety (though a legitimate nightmare would certainly be impossible under such circumstances), but any discomfort, emotional trauma or even excitement was now virtually impossible. The thought I had - that such a state of dull awareness is akin to being aware that you are watching a genre film - could seem, in the cold light of day, a somewhat simplistic and harsh judgement of a filmmaking practice from which I get much pleasure. I think it might be interesting enough, however, to pursue a little further regardless. Genre-worlds
Similar assumptions can be made about the film worlds of any genre with varying degrees of predictability, and are formed mainly from other films we may have seen that fit the same template. Even if we don't know what genre the film we are watching belongs to before we start it (which is unusual, what with the proliferation of trailers, posters and other promotional material all doing their best to give us a good idea), we can generally gauge pretty quickly what kind of genre-world we're in from clues such as music, imagery, setting, opening plot-points, even actors. These genre-world expectations create a sense of safety for us, and safety - although it can be pleasurable - can also be extremely uninteresting. Now, I enjoy genre films: I always like a good horror, adore the best musicals, am appropriately engrossed by a tense thriller, revel in the mood of film noirs, respond to the classic melodramas, get much from an intelligent western, and am even one of the few cinephiles I know who has a place in their heart for a well-done romantic comedy. However, I have to confess that the films I appreciate the most - the ones I really love - tend not to be quite so easily placed within generic moulds. The reason for this, I think, is that - essentially - when I'm watching a film (or experiencing any work of art), ideally, I do not want to feel safe. Just to clarify: that's not to say that a genre film cannot be unique, unpredictable and exciting. I believe that the best examples succeed because they manage to avoid being transparent in their obedience to conventions, but rather skilfully use them to create an engrossing story that feels fresh on its own terms. In such cases we are made to forget that the world we are in is being controlled by structures that stretch back into the mists of time, and are pulled fully into the events of the film as if they were merely happening organically. To return to the dream analogy, to watch a genre film which incorporates its genre's rules in a subtle way is much like dreaming but not realising you are in a dream: you are safe, but you do not necessarily feel so. Also like a dream, if a genre film has practised its rules surreptitiously, no matter how unlikely the unfolding events are, we will believe them unquestioningly, merely being forced to say afterwards, "But it all felt quite normal at the time."
I should point out here the obvious fact that when I talk about safety and danger, I'm not necessarily talking about the physical safety of the characters. If, say, certain assumptions about a particular character's usual place within his/her genre's world allow you to assume that he/she will be killed off, it makes you feel just as safe as when you know that a hero in an action film will not die: you understand and expect the death, therefore feel no real danger. Danger comes from being unsure about what genre world you are in, and therefore unsure of its rules and boundaries. This can happen in one of two ways - either by a film mixing its genres (which happens a great deal), or attempting to disregard them entirely (very difficult and arguable). Let's look first at an example of the former method. Mixing genres When audiences sat down to watch Psycho in 1960, they probably had a certain amount of genre assumptions: the film was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, therefore it was likely to be a thriller; it was called Psycho, therefore was likely to contain a psychopath, and so would perhaps have elements of horror. There was nothing, however, in these assumptions to suggest that Marion Crane, seemingly the heroine, would not survive the film - she was certain to be put in danger, yes, but not be stabbed to death forty-five minutes into the story. In the script notes for the shower scene, Hitchcock supposedly wrote, "The knife slashes down at the camera, as if the very screen is being ripped open", and such a description perfectly conveys the expectation-rupturing effect that the scene must have had on its audience. It marked the moment when Hollywood screen space became unsafe because what Hitchcock had done was created a unique and shocking combination of the conventions and logics of two genre-worlds: the thriller and the horror film. In the world of a thriller, people are murdered; in a horror film, they are killed.
 Mrs Bates, instantly making the world unsafe in Psycho. The first forty-five minutes of Psycho would have us believe we are inhabiting a thriller world (there is a robbery, a woman on the run, a tense semi-chase with a police officer), and we are therefore fully expecting that someone could be murdered. The brutal, sudden, meaningless death of Marion in the shower, however, feels not like a murder but a killing, an event that comes from an entirely different world. Hollywood killings of this abrupt nature hitherto tended to belong only in monster films or science fiction movies, usually committed by some kind of inhuman Other; here - although there is a visual shift towards the gothic and the macabre the moment Marion arrives at the Bates Motel - there is nothing supernatural about this killer. The moment Marion dies (and it takes a while to accept that she has not been cleverly faking, so ingrained are the rules), the audience realises that anything could happen in this world, that there is real danger, because any genre suppositions are now questionable. What happened with Psycho was that rare thing: the creation of a new genre - one that had its basis in a combination of others, yes, but a new one nonetheless. Of course, from this acorn grew the slasher film, which has since established its own set of codes and rules that have become just as predictable (if not more so) as those of any other genre. Thus, what was once a dangerous world, is made safe again. Hidden Genres So, apart from combining other genres, can a film ever avoid belonging to a genre at all, and thus recreate the potential danger of a rule-free real world that I felt on awaking from my dream? An immediate response might be to say, "Yes, you fool, you're only talking about Hollywood: just look at any 'arthouse' film made anywhere other than America-" Such a reply would seem valid: genre is often assumed to be primarily a Hollywood practice, and there are hundreds of 'foreign' (that ridiculous word) films that don't seem to fit into any of the genre-categories as we usually define them. This is often because they are attempting to be more like real life.
This response shows the limitations of what many people are thinking when they say genre. By no means does a genre automatically have to be so high-concept. Even when trying to simply portray the most mundane, realistic 'slice-of-life', a film - depending on its content - can often be defined as (for example) a coming-of-age tale, a romance, an ensemble drama - even a 'kitchen-sink' drama: all of which tend to have their own familiar worlds and conventions. What are Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies (1996) and Ken Loach's Ae Fond Kiss (2004) but a family melodrama and a romantic (or even that sub-genre 'doomed romance') drama respectively? This certainly doesn't make these films bad (absolutely not in the case of the wonderful Secrets and Lies), but it does make their worlds feel somewhat safer, knowable, understandable. And what about even more extreme, idiosyncratic 'arthouse' films and filmmakers: what of, say, a Peter Greenaway? For that matter, what of a Bergman, a Fellini, or a Godard: surely these, and other, revered auteurs manage to transcend something as seemingly restrictive as genre? Well, there is a rather convincing school of thought that says that the 'arthouse film' is in fact a genre itself, with its own set of rules - however combative and inverted they may be. A non-goal-oriented plot, unexplained character motivations, lessening of cause-and-effect storytelling, ruptures in the fictional world, overt symbolism: all these things can be reasonably expected to occur in the films of 'arthouse' directors and can easily contribute (often combined with expectations based on an auteur's previous work) to a sense of safety-via-fulfilled-assumptions that is not at all dissimilar to that which is created by complete adherence to a familiar genre. We know when we begin watching an 'arthouse' film that we will be not be given the norm, so we are not necessarily surprised when the abnormal occurs. Though they apparently exist at the opposite extreme to the stereotypical genre movie, such films can thus be just as transparent in their conventions, and the experience of watching them can be just as safe and underwhelming as my post-realisation dream was to me. Again, this is not to in any way unilaterally slight such films (as with the genre film, there are obviously many examples of 'arthouse' films that manage to be hugely exciting and unexpected), but merely to point out that - when it comes to providing a startling or dangerous moviegoing experience - staunch defenders of 'arthouse' cinema cannot automatically be so smugly weirder-than-thou. Unsafe worlds
Sidney So, what - you might be wondering - can be done to please me, and what are some examples of these films that are "not so easily placed within generic moulds" that I professed a special love for at the start of the article? Speaking, obviously, from my own sensibilities, I feel my most invigorated (my most unsafe) when a film manages somehow to change and evolve as I watch it, which can often happen by moving seamlessly through genre worlds in a way that I do not have the ability (or perhaps the inclination) to anticipate. Such a film can elude the safe complacency and dull reassurance that may accompany a straight genre picture by never finally settling in one world, but rather creating a new - fuller - world through a collision of many. I am not here talking so much of blatant genre-shift films like From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) or Audition (1999), with their mischievous and knowing bluntness; rather the ones that manage the shift with some degree of subtlety and create a sense that such shifting is merely natural in the world of the film as it just happens to be spanning multiple worlds at once.
All these films manage to surprise, and to feel fresh and dangerous, because they do not allow me the chance to second-guess them through knowledge of their genre-worlds. On a side-note: perhaps the fact that they are all Hollywood films reflects not only my own taste, but also that - as I have said - one can only be shocked if one is not expecting to be shocked. Being (stereotypically) a genre-based industry, Hollywood in a sense has an advantage: because each film is almost assumed to fulfil certain expectations, when it doesn't the result can be particularly jarring and particularly refreshing. To give a slightly more detailed description of how genre-mixing can create danger, I will now briefly indulge myself completely and discuss what is - I am entirely unashamed to say - my all-time favourite film, in order that I might try to tease out what exactly it is about these 'multiple genre' films that so attracts me. The film is Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (1999) - that much praised and equally maligned epic of late nineties Hollywood cinema - a film that is nothing if not a complex, yet subtle, genre roller coaster. Of course, I love the film for many small personal reasons, not merely the ones that link it with this essay's topic; I do think, though, that its approach to genre is probably a large factor in its appeal. Magnolia and the dangerous world
At the other end of the spectrum, however, lies the character of the innocent Jim (John C. Reilly), a bumbling, sweet and likeable cop who appears to have just stumbled out of an inoffensive New York-based romantic comedy (see his comic meeting with the eight-year-old rapper and the humiliating dropping of his night-stick). Jim is to cross paths with someone from another genre world: Claudia (Melora Walters), a strung-out coke addict who would not seem out of place in Anderson's earlier, harsher, porn drama Boogie Nights (1997). The uncertainty in tone continues across the board: there's a shady criminal figure seemingly from an urban crime drama ("The Worm"), a child-genius (whom we suspect may be being abused) from some kind of 'issue-drama' (Stanley), a Hollywood 'good soul' male nurse from something like Terms of Endearment (1983) (Phil), an American-indie-film sad-sack loser (Donnie), as well as other characters (Jimmy, Linda) who are more difficult to place in a genre-world. These characters and stories create a mix of conventions and assumptions so potentially unstable that, when we see Phil - the apparently kindly house-nurse of the dying Earl -watching porn on TV or ordering Hustler magazine over the phone, we just don't know what to think, thus a creeping sense of dread is allowed to prey on our mind. And you will know, if you've seen the film, that this is even before things start getting really strange, for there are two major set-pieces which blow apart genre conventions entirely, events that would be completely impossible to predict based on assumptions of what has been previously known to be likely in the film's world. On the off-chance that you don't know what I'm referring to (unfortunately, as with the surprises in Psycho, there are now few cinema-goers who have not at least heard something of them), I'll keep quiet; suffice to say, they are surprising. However, it's not just the unexpected nature of these events that is important to my discussion here (though they do obviously contribute to a further sense of danger and uncertainty about the rules of the world), but rather the fact that they act as a kind of levelling device that serves to highlight - via the effects they have on the different characters - the fact that all these people do inhabit the same world. Everyone is linked. Though the characters may seem to come from different genre-worlds, Frank is still the son of Earl, Claudia is the daughter of Jimmy, Jim falls in love with Claudia, Phil meets Frank, Jim saves Donnie, and so on: they rub up against each other, sharing worlds as they do so. When Frank, a satirical portrait of a sex-guru, finds himself by the bedside of his dying father, his emotional outburst comes not from his world, but from the world of his father's melodrama. Jim leaves Claudia's apartment feeling great about the promise of a romance, only to find himself immediately in a crime film when he is shot at by "The Worm". Claudia's desire to clean herself up by going on a date with Jim is an attempt to share in a piece of his optimistic romantic comedy world, an attempt to look at life that way for a change. The bottom line is: these very different people love, hate and exist in one world, a world not controlled by one set of conventions, but by many.
 Frank in his satire.  Earl in his melodrama.  Jim in his crime film.  Claudia in her harsh drama.  Jim in his romantic comedy. And this, surely, is as close as we can ever get to a portrait of an unsafe, rule-free, 'real' world. Obviously, Magnolia is not what anyone would usually call a 'realistic' film, but as I have said, a conventionally 'realistic' film follows rules too, and - tellingly - can often also in fact be fairly neatly slotted into some other genre (as my Secrets and Lies and Ae Fond Kiss examples suggested). The reason for this is that - as tritely postmodern as this sounds - our lives are indeed nothing but a combination of genres, or at least can feel that way. They are unsafe, ungoverned by knowable convention, because we have little control over when the genre will change. I hope it is not too wildly insensitive to mention here that many survivors of the London bombings on July 7th were quoted as saying, "It was like something from a Hollywood disaster film"; we can hardly deny them the fact that, yes - of course it was. That is how the real world operates: it shifts, morphs, changes its rules daily, hourly, for each of us, and seems an entirely different world each time it does so, depending on how new events have affected us. That, basically, is the reason why I so love a film that manages to make me feel unsafe: because that is how the real world can make us feel. For me, film is the art form that has the greatest potential to move me, make me think, make me react. Its potential for total immersion through sight, sound and movement means it can create a whole world in a fuller sense than any other medium, and it is from the completeness of this world that a film derives its power. A film that operates transparently in only one familiar world feels safe, understandable, knowable - like my dream. One that convincingly combines multiple worlds has the potential to create a more entire, more truthful, place: something like the world one awakes to after dreaming. |
