Best Shot: "Pariah"

On this season of Hit Me With Your Best Shot we've looked at 80s fantasy (Ladyhawke), 60s zeitgeist drama (Bonnie & Clyde), 40s musical (Easter Parade), 30s gamechanger (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), 00s science fiction western (Serenity), and a 90s Asian masterpiece (Raise the Red Lantern). For this week's film, I chose something up to the minute, Dee Rees' Pariah (2011) just out on DVD. 

I found this film so moving late last year that I cursed Focus Features for letting it be crushed in the December glut where it had no business being in the first place. The coming out story of a shy Brooklyn lesbian was far too small and ethnic and gay and feminine an indie to hook Oscar voters so why make it compete for that attention? This selection was my excuse to promote the film as it enters its second and hopefully warmly embraced life for home viewing; it gets better!

I say that with a wink but without a trace of sarcasm. You see though I didn't have time to rewatch -- I've been struggling lately offblog. Apologies -- my most vivid memory of the film visually, and what I thought I might choose, is either of the bookending shots on the bus. I still remember the curiousity and sympathy I felt near the beginning when watching "Lee" travel home on the bus late at night after visiting a gay bar and the cathartic mix of peace and tears I experienced at the finale when light floods on to our humble heroine. The two shots are like beautifully symmetrical start and end points on her gorgeously executed character arc, a curved frame if you will for Adepero Oduye's breakout performance. Not that this character arc is ending. Lee's journey has only just begun.

I'm thrilled to discover that both of these shots were chosen by one of our 'Hit Me' participants. Since Pariah is as much about Alike trying to find her community as it is about her self-discovery, I think this is an ideal opportunity to say a genuine and loud THANK YOU to the participating blogs that make "Hit Me" such a rewarding communal series I hope you're always clicking and reading them for multiple views on all these fine films! 

• FILM ACTUALLY looks at clothing as a public declaration of sexuality
• ENCORE'S WORLD finds light from within
• AWWW, THE MOVIES cocoons you in the moving poetry
• SKETCHY DETAILS finds Rees use of color masterful and compares it to the work of Dario Argento (!)
• CINESNATCH loves the performances but can't quite connect with the film
• THE FILM'S THE THING is disappointed in the acclaimed indie but found Alike's double life reflections interesting. 
• ANTAGONY & ECSTASY discusses the promise of Dee Rees and the bold recurring choices of artificial and "real" light...

...if all indie filmmakers thought about how to communicate visually as much as Rees has, American cinema would be in far better shape."

Next Wednesday on "Hit Me": The Exorcist (1973). Why don't you join in? I'll start early this week and make sure it happens. Nobody can ever believe that I've never seen it!

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "Raise the Red Lantern"

In the Hit Me With Your Best Shot Series we look at pre-selected films from all decades, genres and countries and choose the shots that mean the most to us. Today, Zhang Yimou's Oscar nominated masterpiece Raise the Red Lantern (1991) starring the exquisite Gong Li. You could stare at her face for hours and Zhang Yimou knows it, framing his sensational then muse dead center close-up in an unbroken shot for the film's very first moment, a conversation that's more like a self-annihilating monologue.

Introducing Songlian (Gong Li), the The Fourth Mistress...

Songlian: Mother, stop! You've been talking for three days. I've thought it over. All right, I'll get married.
Mother: Good! To what sort of man?
Songlian: What sort of man? Is it up to me? You always speak of money. Why shouldn't I marry a rich man?
Songlian's Mother: Marry a rich man and you'll only be his concubine.

Raise the Red Lantern is strange riveting look into the secluded estate of a rich man in China. Songlian, a 19 year old university drop out, becomes his Fourth Mistress. The Master is barely even a character in his own world, cleverly left on the edges of the frame or visible only in longshots. Raise the Red Lantern's true subject is the wives/concubines who vie for his attention, hoping that the lanterns will be lit at their house indicating his favor. The women compete for this honor partially out of boredom but also, clearly, due to their own patriarchal sexist indoctrination. One of the wives refers to her only child as "a cheap little girl" and even Songlian, the most educated among them, willfully resigns herself to a fate where she lives only to serve a man she cares nothing about.

Songlian: Let me be a concubine. Isn't that a woman's fate?

At first you wonder where Gong Li's performance could possibly go since she starts the film as an emptied out shell, already implacably sad. But the performance has unexpected range. Soon she's more lively, caught up in the psychological catfighting and attempts to please her Master and eventually the sadness curdles barely visibly into rage. The women play petty and truly vicious games for a prize that none of them want. It's as damning a screed against institutional sexism as I've ever seen and a profoundly sad portrait of the way oppressed people often become agents in their own oppression.

Though the film is completely ravishing too look at, with perfect symmetrical compositions, extraordinarily warm color and repeated closeups of one of the all time great screen faces, choosing a best shot seems perverse. Why? Because Raise the Red Lantern is pure cinema, it's images only gaining their true potency when lined up with the other images and juxtaposed with sound both expected and surprising from out of frame, revealing subtle differences of season, emotional flare-ups, or actual narrative shifts. 

The film's cumulative power is far greater than any individual moment but two shots completely unsettled me, my entire body seizing up as things spun out of control for the concubines and servants. The first was a profoundly sad shot of Songlian's maid Yan'er watching her own stolen lanterns burn to ash, their beauty snuffing out along with her dreams however impossibly tiny those dreams may have been. You know as you're watching that she'll die with them.

The second, and perversely my choice for "best" is the most atypical shot in the film's otherwisely stately composition and serene camera movements. Not since David Lynch's camera lept like a wild beast toward Club Silencio in Mulholland Drive has a shift in camera movement upset me as much. It's screen magic as I can't explain away its deep affect on me. In a sequence near film's end (I'll withhold spoilers) Songlian has witnessed (from afar) a disturbing event at "The House of Death" a mysterious locked room on the rooftops she was warned about early in the film. As she approaches the house we suddenly move to a shaky POV shot from Songlian the camera as unstable and fearful as her heavy chilled breath. 

Three frames juxtaposed (to approximate shaky cam) as Songlian approaches the House of Death

Songlian begins the film with something like youthful arrogance, a haughty contempt for everyone and everything (including herself). When she makes dramatic pronouncements like

Ghosts are people. People are ghosts."

it's difficult to separate the drama queen from a sharp truth teller. Songlian's initially shallow pronouncements and anger about the meaningless of her existence are giving way to a deeper understanding of how right she's been. Songlian is mad at the world and driving herself to madness. The locked room is the least of it. This whole estate is the House of Death.

Raise the Lanterns For
The Seventh Mistress...The Film's The Thing
The Eighth Mistress... Cinesnatch
The Ninth Mistress... Film Actually  
The Tenth Mistress... Antagony & Ecstasy
The Eleventh Mistress...  Encore Entertainment
The Twelfth Mistress... Okinawa Assault
The Thirteenth Mistress ... Pussy Goes Grrr

Next on 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot': Tomorrow  Pariah (2011); Wednesday May 9th, The Exorcist (1973); Wednesday May 15th, the original Burton + Depp fantasy Edward Scissorhands (1990); Wednesday May 23rd, Joan Crawford in Possessed (1947). Join in! Movies are too beautiful to experience alone.

We're Making Gong Li Wait...

Tsk-tsk.

This week's edition of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" has been postponed. It couldn't be helped. But if you've already watched it, start discussing over at The Film's The Thing where one entry is already posted. We'll do two episodes in a row next week on Tuesday May 1st  (this one, Raise the Red Lantern) and Wednesday May 2nd (Pariah, 2011). For more of what's on the "hit me" schedule, click here.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "Firefly / Serenity"

For this week's edition of Hit Me With Your Best Shot, the series wherein we invite everyone to get opinionated and choose the single best shot from pre-selected movies, we offered up an atypical two-for-one deal. You could either choose an image from Firefly's first episode (if you'd never seen the Joss Whedon series and wanted to start at the beginning) or an image from its movie spinoff Serenity. Or both if you're crazy about Captain Tightpants. I am but I chose only the latter in order to tie it into 2012's Joss Whedon film frenzy.

Though Whedon had been Oscar nominated for screenwriting (Toy Story, 1995) even before Buffy the Vampire Slayer bowed on TV making him famous, Serenity was his feature film directorial debut. You might even call it his audition piece for The Avengers. Transitioning between medium is rarely simple for creative talent and Whedon wisely made the leap by leaning right into his earned TV auteur status. 

I know. We're going for a ride."

I never read contributor posts until I've finished mine but I'll be surprised if someone doesn't choose the bravura post title scene. It's actually a four and a half minute long continuous shot reintroducing us to the entire Serenity crew from the shortlived but wonderful Firefly series. It begins by following Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) around as he barks order to his crew until its finally handed off like a baton to the stowaway siblings Simon (Sean Maher) and River (Summer Glau) at the heart of the plot. Whedon rarely resists self-mythologizing the Whedonverse and it's just perfect that the shot ends with the mysterious psychic River Tam promising you a good time at the movies -- "we're going for a ride" -- just as Joss's name materializes on her body like a branding. 

My two sibling choices for "Best Shots" are after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Coming Soon to "Hit Me..."

Have you been following along with season three of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot"? This series thrives on your comments and/or visual participation and dies without them. So don't leave us in solitary confinement staring at the movies obsessively. In season three we've already covered Snow White (30s Disney), Easter Parade (40s musical), Bonnie & Clyde (60s landmark) and Ladyhawke (80s fantasy). Because we aim for a true variety of genre and time periods in this series, here's the next six weeks of the movie schedule.

Please consider joining the fun.

Apr 18th Serenity (2007) and/or Firefly (2005)
Joss Whedon is having a huge film year (Avengers, Cabin in the Woods, Much Ado About Nothing) so we're looking back at his directorial (feature) debut. Or if you have never seen the TV series on which Serenity is based for this episode only of the cinematic series you can do "best shot" with a television pilot. Both are available on Netflix Instant Watch.

Apr 25th Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
This Oscar nominee and arthouse hit helped make international sensations out of the legendary director/muse pair Zhang Yimou & Gong Li. We love them both so let's dive into this sad gorgeous concubine's den in 1920s China.

May 2nd  Pariah (2011)
We've never done a brand new movie just as it hits DVD so I chose this one about a closeted lesbian teenager because it's a) very good b) underseen and c) not principally acclaimed for its visuals and those films can be interesting challenges in this series which tends to focus on more visually ambitious pictures.

May 9th  The Exorcist (1973) 
It was just voted the best horror movie of all time, it's a massive touchstone film, and if I don't force myself to watch it (I know I know) I never will. Will our heads spin until we're vomiting trying to choose the single greatest shot? Currently available on Netflix Instant Watch.

May 15th Edward Scissorhands (1990)
With Dark Shadows in theaters, we'll look at the Burton/Depp collaboration that started it all.

May 23rd Possessed (1947) 
I've been itching for some Joan Crawford lately and this acclaimed noir brought her her second Oscar nomination (shortly after the win for Mildred Pierce). I've never seen it so join me as Joan obsesses so hard over a man that she ends up in a psychiatric ward.

You'll be possessed by the love-madness of POSSESSED

Will you be joining us for any of these? Truly it's the more the merrier with this series. I can't be the only best shot participant that loves loves loves seeing the wide range of opinions when a lot of people look at the very same piece of art.

Sound off on this series in the comments. What do you think of it?