The Harder They Come

Peter Henzell's The Harder They Come presents a non-traditional character study of an ambitious musician who tries to build Rome in a day. The character's identity is established firmly on the basis of contemporary action rather than personal history as he reacts to his culture's power structures audaciously. Ivanhoe Martin (Jimmy Cliff) moves from the country to Kingston, Jamaica, in search of a job. His only significant talent is musical and although he cuts a hit single, it isn't enough to pay the bills. Frustrated by having to sign away the rights to his music, he tries to distribute it on his own only to be stonewalled by the system's monopolistic designs. Underground jobs and retributive punishments follow as he tries to fight for a better wage against the fat cats who control the city. After shooting at both police and fellow marijuana distributors in the same week, he soon gains the notorious public image of reckless fugitive and cult hero.

Ivanhoe Martin reacts violently to the barriers in place concerning his personal advancement. Not content to sit back and let the idle few receive the majority of the fruit harvested by the ingenuity of the many, he takes on the system by any means necessary. It's fun watching a wildperson throw caution to the wind and stick up for his idealized rights, and since he survives, the perennially dispossessed begin to revere and love him. As time passes, those in control try to suffocate the network feeding and housing Martin, and the results are as actively ineffective as they are passively revolutionary.

The Wrestler

Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler poignantly and poetically presents a multidimensional portrait of a professional wrestler's undesired retirement. Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) lives life the hard way and when things come crashing down does his best to reign in that which he unfortunately let go during the more belligerent days of his career. Dashing dancer Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) and estranged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) do their best to help piece together the puzzle, but it's a heartbreakingly byzantine panorama requiring a sincerely dedicated degree of patience to comprehend.

The film's strong and Rourke's performance is my pick for Oscar's best actor of the year. The grainy shots and promotional poster credits establish a prominent yet passionately melancholic aesthetic that aptly reflects The Ram's troubles. And it hurts to see him go through it, a spur of the moment man crippled by the financial and humanistic consequences of responsibility. Things happen, not everyone can deal, and not everyone chooses a comfortable career with a pension, regular pay, and wide ranging benefits. The Ram's predicament generally functions as a representative of the aging economic other, the dedicated destitute artist doing what she or he can with what little he or she possesses to bring a bit more cheer to the members of her or his community. And each particular performance electrifies and holistically humanizes what it means to live according to your own individual rules with their own attendant predilections.

There are feelings and points of view that get lost in the rush as you travel from one dimension to another in order to reconstruct daily routines, get by, important pieces of your personal constitution that lie dormant in the unconscious waiting for a specific smell/game winning touchdown pass/deal breaking decision/surprise dinner/work of art to bring them back to life. And The Wrestler really made me feel a lot of the convictions that I had been simply thinking for who knows how long (providing them with an outlet to be revitalized) and that's just one of the reasons why I found it to be such an exceptional film.

Rourke's powerful portrayal of a dislodged, dominant demon, stalwart yet dainty, determined yet spellbound, vigorously demonstrates what it means to succeed while simultaneously pointing out the lesions of loss. Aronofsky once again provocatively illustrates his evocative chops, presenting another infinite requiem for a courageously clandestine character.

There Will be Blood

Paul Thomas Anderson's new film There Will be Blood is a chilling, relentless portrait of one man's incomparable brutality. The iconic entrepreneur, Daniel Plainview has the knowledge, the means, and the implacable constitution necessary to serendipitously succeed in the hard-boiled oil business. Brilliantly acted by Daniel Day-Lewis (who demonstrates that he's in the same league as Gary Oldman when it comes to consistently mining new depths of character), Plainview will stop at nothing to achieve his ends, will never back down from a confrontation, and will never even slightly consider the interests of anyone but himself. The insatiable maniac, Plainview's portrait is dark and sinister, malicious and diabolical, mostly because he succeeds, he wins. At first, I thought Anderson was spending to much time highlighting details that could have been easily left out with no effect on the plot's development (a lot of time is spent in the beginning of the film lensing Plainview's first strike [reminded me of the wedding at the beginning of The Deer Hunter]), but as the film gushes forth, every bit of the manifested minutia builds Plainview's bastard of a character, meticulously managing the menace, sleekly saluting the irascibility.

There Will be Blood insightfully examines one man's unilateral determination, cunningly illustrating the alluring qualities of the wicked. Robert Elswit's beautiful cinematography oddly accentuates Plainview's macabre character, ironically challenging the cultural image of the genial capitalist, perceived as the good, remembered, as the remarkable.

Into the Wild

Sean Penn's directorial debut transforms Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild into a feature length film. The film chronicles the disillusioned mid-twenties crisis of Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch). McCandless finishes University, decides not to study law at Harvard, and, much to his parent's dismay, begins a reclusive voyage across the United States (with the pseudonym Alexander Supertramp). His goal is to reach and live within the wilds of Alaska. Along the way, he encounters several free-spirited individuals including Catherine Keener, Hal Holbrook, and the always entertaining Vince Vaughn. Supertramp's travels are fun to watch, his gritty adventurous spirit a free flowing flame glowing throughout the American wilderness. His insights and observations are thought provoking as well, as he hitchhikes along, using quotations from his favourite authors to guide and frame his experience.

Into the Wild is a coming of age film, about life and different ways of approaching it. There are many paths that one can travel and choosing one is not easy. Supertramp seeks one that is natural, living in the woods like Thoreau as a way to confront and discover truth. His pursuit is both bold and naive, the simply complicated consequences of not knowing where or how to fit in. He cannot escape the memories of his parents’ problematic marriage, and his travels are thoroughly haunted by them. Penn's direction juxtaposes their impact with the increasing worries of his family and insights from his sister Carine (Jena Malone), thereby depicting the troubling effects of individuality, and the ways in which hardship transforms relationships. Solutions to these explorations are by no means stable, and Into the Wild illustrates that one's existence is inextricably qualified by their convoluted relations to others.