Raiders
07-19-2014, 06:24 PM
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Black music is the deepest because they suffered the most. Them and the Jews.
In the three years since I first discovered Mike Mills’ semi-autobiographical film, it has sat in my head in bits and pieces, the melancholy permanently tangible. I have never fully considered it though, often mentioning it off-hand as a very fine film but going little beyond such a cursory thought. Watching it again, twice in the last two weeks actually, has turned it into something of an obsession. I adore this film in ways I do not know if possible to express. It should be hollow, it should be overly artificial in its “artiness,” it should be gaudy in its annoyingly twee sentimental overtones, it should be everything that Mills’ wife (Miranda July) could not avoid with her most recent film. But it is none of those things. It is so achingly tender to its characters and so successful at making sadness an artform in and of itself that I am taken by surprise when I feel the warmth of a tear rolling down my cheek.
If I were to attempt to locate the source of the film’s success, I think it would be in the way Mills works so seamlessly three separate timelines and multiple characters, most of whom never actually encounter one another. The only glue holding this all together is the central figure of Oliver (Ewan McGregor – Mills stand-in), a struggling graphic artist. He is there in his youth with his absent father and depressive and macabre mother who deflects from telling Oliver the truth to his questions through snippets of punchy cultural and behavioral insight; he is there for his father’s sudden late-life rejuvenation at his coming out of the closet following his mother’s death, and diving headfirst into activism and parties and clubs; he is there in the aftermath of his father’s death and struggling to overcome his fractured and formless existence and a sincere lack of experience with relationships as he attempts to make it work with a similarly stilted, frustrated actress.
The way Mills intertwines these temporal shifts, moving in and out of each story as Oliver moves forward with his relationship, gives off the feeling as though Oliver himself is recalling them as memories to try and find some guidance and hope from his past and finding only confusion. Multiple times the film presents a quick montage of images comparing the different timelines, Oliver narrating in a monotone, docu-style voiceover and displaying the interconnectedness of these various temporal shifts and how they are all working together to inform his view of life and history (his “historical consciousness” is amusingly rendered when he graffitis random historical facts on building walls as a form of self expression). In this way, the film brought to mind one of my favorite recent novels, Paul Harding’s Tinkers. The narratives are radically different of course, but both artists present a very specific story through fractured, recursive, and incomplete narratives strung across generations and filtered through memories. The object is the refreshing feeling of a humble specificity and lived-in emotions, not the expanse of a complete arc.
The film is also very effective in not only the portrait one of the individual being informed, driven and handicapped by his or her own past, but a nation and a society as well. The quip that Oliver’s mom “turned in her Jew badge” and his father “turned in his gay badge” upon getting married gives us a quick insight into the repressed emotions existing in the 1950’s. Equally cutting is his mother’s offhand remark regarding the emotional levels of the Jewish and black population, having suffered the most and thus producing the most powerful music. The film mirrors Oliver’s historical consciousness and traces along with him the “history of sadness,” as his centerpiece sketch is named, and finds that just as Oliver is stunted and uncertain of himself in today’s society thanks to his upbringing, so are we as a country and society. Those who pretend that we live in a post-racist environment are ignorant of reality and fail to understand the lingering and compounding impact of the past, and there is no greater civil rights movement of the last two or three decades than for sexual freedom and equality. And I think those hopeful moments in the film’s conclusion may only be specific to Oliver, but Mills has effectively tied this character to past and present social zeitgeist and we sense the expectation that we too can overcome the oppression and inequalities in our society; that at the end of the day, maybe this nation can turn in its fundamental and Christian badges once and for all.
Just like to close by saying this film represents some remarkably good acting. Christopher Plummer got the most buzz, and he creates in Hal, Oliver’s father, such a splendid personality that contradicts most of his typical baritone gravitas with a light and buoyant style that reflects the freedom from four decades of repression. As Oliver’s mother, Mary Page Keller is mesmerizing in little fits of beautiful and frustrating madcap behavior that belies her obvious depression. Hers is the most tragic of the characters, seeming as a cypher from Oliver’s childhood and dying off screen before the film starts, likely never experiencing the freedom of his father. McGregor in particular though is phenomenal, proving as he did as well in 2010 with The Ghost Writer to be able to perfectly capture a swell of emotions without ever having to go too high of a decibel. Oliver is confused, resentful, loving and longing all at once and almost at the same time.
Black music is the deepest because they suffered the most. Them and the Jews.
In the three years since I first discovered Mike Mills’ semi-autobiographical film, it has sat in my head in bits and pieces, the melancholy permanently tangible. I have never fully considered it though, often mentioning it off-hand as a very fine film but going little beyond such a cursory thought. Watching it again, twice in the last two weeks actually, has turned it into something of an obsession. I adore this film in ways I do not know if possible to express. It should be hollow, it should be overly artificial in its “artiness,” it should be gaudy in its annoyingly twee sentimental overtones, it should be everything that Mills’ wife (Miranda July) could not avoid with her most recent film. But it is none of those things. It is so achingly tender to its characters and so successful at making sadness an artform in and of itself that I am taken by surprise when I feel the warmth of a tear rolling down my cheek.
If I were to attempt to locate the source of the film’s success, I think it would be in the way Mills works so seamlessly three separate timelines and multiple characters, most of whom never actually encounter one another. The only glue holding this all together is the central figure of Oliver (Ewan McGregor – Mills stand-in), a struggling graphic artist. He is there in his youth with his absent father and depressive and macabre mother who deflects from telling Oliver the truth to his questions through snippets of punchy cultural and behavioral insight; he is there for his father’s sudden late-life rejuvenation at his coming out of the closet following his mother’s death, and diving headfirst into activism and parties and clubs; he is there in the aftermath of his father’s death and struggling to overcome his fractured and formless existence and a sincere lack of experience with relationships as he attempts to make it work with a similarly stilted, frustrated actress.
The way Mills intertwines these temporal shifts, moving in and out of each story as Oliver moves forward with his relationship, gives off the feeling as though Oliver himself is recalling them as memories to try and find some guidance and hope from his past and finding only confusion. Multiple times the film presents a quick montage of images comparing the different timelines, Oliver narrating in a monotone, docu-style voiceover and displaying the interconnectedness of these various temporal shifts and how they are all working together to inform his view of life and history (his “historical consciousness” is amusingly rendered when he graffitis random historical facts on building walls as a form of self expression). In this way, the film brought to mind one of my favorite recent novels, Paul Harding’s Tinkers. The narratives are radically different of course, but both artists present a very specific story through fractured, recursive, and incomplete narratives strung across generations and filtered through memories. The object is the refreshing feeling of a humble specificity and lived-in emotions, not the expanse of a complete arc.
The film is also very effective in not only the portrait one of the individual being informed, driven and handicapped by his or her own past, but a nation and a society as well. The quip that Oliver’s mom “turned in her Jew badge” and his father “turned in his gay badge” upon getting married gives us a quick insight into the repressed emotions existing in the 1950’s. Equally cutting is his mother’s offhand remark regarding the emotional levels of the Jewish and black population, having suffered the most and thus producing the most powerful music. The film mirrors Oliver’s historical consciousness and traces along with him the “history of sadness,” as his centerpiece sketch is named, and finds that just as Oliver is stunted and uncertain of himself in today’s society thanks to his upbringing, so are we as a country and society. Those who pretend that we live in a post-racist environment are ignorant of reality and fail to understand the lingering and compounding impact of the past, and there is no greater civil rights movement of the last two or three decades than for sexual freedom and equality. And I think those hopeful moments in the film’s conclusion may only be specific to Oliver, but Mills has effectively tied this character to past and present social zeitgeist and we sense the expectation that we too can overcome the oppression and inequalities in our society; that at the end of the day, maybe this nation can turn in its fundamental and Christian badges once and for all.
Just like to close by saying this film represents some remarkably good acting. Christopher Plummer got the most buzz, and he creates in Hal, Oliver’s father, such a splendid personality that contradicts most of his typical baritone gravitas with a light and buoyant style that reflects the freedom from four decades of repression. As Oliver’s mother, Mary Page Keller is mesmerizing in little fits of beautiful and frustrating madcap behavior that belies her obvious depression. Hers is the most tragic of the characters, seeming as a cypher from Oliver’s childhood and dying off screen before the film starts, likely never experiencing the freedom of his father. McGregor in particular though is phenomenal, proving as he did as well in 2010 with The Ghost Writer to be able to perfectly capture a swell of emotions without ever having to go too high of a decibel. Oliver is confused, resentful, loving and longing all at once and almost at the same time.