Dry Ice Factory

I finished weeding the traffic circle yesterday, huzzah! Once again I had several people stop (or slow down) to thank me for doing the work. One guy offered to dump compost and barkdust on it, but I'm not sure yet if he followed through. Yesterday a robin kept me company, darting around where I had just been weeding to spear bugs and worms with its beak. All told, it probably took me close to fifteen hours to clean that circle of weeds, over the course of four weekends. By the time I finished, there were new weeds sprouting in the area where I had started four weeks ago.

After that, I mostly just watched movies. First up was the Busby Berkeley musical, Footlight Parade (1933), which for some reason I insist on calling Footlight Serenade. Well, it rhymes, I guess. Unlike the first two Berkeley musicals, 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, this one doesn't have Ginger Rogers, which is a big minus. It compensates somewhat by de-emphasizing Ruby Keeler, who is famously lacking in star power or charisma. Anyway, this one is about the production of live action "prologues" for these new-fangled talkie movies that are killing stage musicals. (When movies first developed sound, there was a big burst of movie musicals to show off the new technology.) James Cagney plays the hard-driven, fast-talking artiste of the prologues, and there's all manner of backstage connivance, both personal and professional. Lots of leggy dames running around in scanty clothing, too. Berkeley structures the thing to end with three big production numbers, one piling on top of the other, and they really are amazing eye candy. His thing was to use masses of female bodies to create architectural and abstract design patterns. Some of the effects he gets this way look almost like mandalas. It's absolutely incredible stuff. I think I still prefer 42nd Street for the songs and a snappy Ginger Rogers, but this one definitely hits a new level in terms of the big show pieces. Famous pre-Code line: Joan Blondell, as she's kicking a gold digger's ass out the door, "Outside, countess. As long as they've got sidewalks YOU'VE got a job."

Next up was Ang Lee's Hulk. In the wake of the new Hulk movie, there's been a wave of people saying, "I'm apparently one of the few who actually liked the Ang Lee version." It's true that I didn't like it when I saw it in the theater, and it was a big disappointment, because I had become a huge fan of Ang Lee with his previous movie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. So I figured it was time to give it another try, and I picked up a used DVD on Friday for the purpose. The verdict? Actually, it is a pretty damned good movie. It's very stylish visually, and very smartly structured. Lee's great preoccupation in all his films is repressed feelings and repression of the self. That's true here, with the Hulk representing a repressed side of Bruce Banner's personality. It allows Lee to examine issues of male rage and fear of the Father. It's almost Oedipal on that level, but balances it with the different issues that Betty Ross has with her own macho father.

I suspect that what put me off the first time was the angst-ridden tone of the film. It's very hushed and earnest. I remember disliking the number of close-ups of anguished faces. At the time, I had just been clued in to how modern directors use a lot of close-ups in anticipation of home video, where details in longer shots are harder to see. (Try watching one of the LOTR movies with this idea in mind sometime.) Sure enough, the close-ups in Hulk work just fine on a smaller screen, where the faces aren't as big as a wall. They aren't quite as oppressive. Also, the oppressive tone of the film makes more sense to me now. There is a strained quietness that bespeaks dread of the repressed. Everything is very dark. It's frequently hard to see what's going on, because what's going on is fundamentally mysterious. It's happening on a cellular, chemical level, and Lee does a great job of delving into that level of things cinematically. Come to think of it, he hits some mandala effects that way himself.

Even the first time I saw it, I was impressed with the way he uses split-screen to suggest comic book panels. Visually, it is a masterpiece, no doubt. Over all, it's a much better movie than I first thought, and Lee remains a fascinating director who has tackled a wide variety of genres. I'd love to see him do a musical sometime, and I think he's said he'd like to. Hm, he might have been an interesting choice for Sweeney Todd.

Update: The Projection Booth has a more astute consideration of Hulk than my own, particularly in its analysis of the use of close-ups in the film. Some great screen caps, too, which give a strong sense of the visual style of Lee's movie, which the writer ends up calling "almost great."