Baroque-en

If you're a writer, you're probably conscious of any number of words whose definition you basically know, but which you don't quite feel comfortable using in your own writing because there's that small part of you that doubts your nuanced understanding of the word.

One recent example of that for me is "glib." When I hear the word in context I basically know what it means, and it's a word I tend to like. However, when the opportunity arises to use it myself, I shy away, because of some lingering uncertainty that I'll be using it correctly. Well, I kind of got over it this week when I used the word in my review of Cafe Society, perhaps because I used it in a broader sense and talked about something that was not glib rather than something that was. If you're interested to see if I actually used it correctly, check out my review here, but either way, it felt like something of a watershed moment for me. (So, keep it to yourself! Heh.)

I may not have been as conscious of my lack of comfort with the word "baroque," but as soon as I heard it in a podcast on Friday, I mentally added it to that list. Great word; sort of know what it means; unsure about using it myself.

After watching Crimson Peak on Saturday night, I think I'm good with baroque now too.

It was my first "horror movie" for October, about two weeks out from Halloween. I put "horror movie" in quotes because those who defend the movie claim that we were misled by what it was supposed to be, and it's more like a gothic romance than a horror. After watching it, though, I don't really understand anything about the perspective of "those who defend the movie."

The dictionary definition of "baroque" is as follows:

"Relating to or denoting a style of European architecture, music, and art of the 17th and 18th centuries that followed Mannerism and is characterized by ornate detail. In architecture the period is exemplified by the palace of Versailles and by the work of Wren in England. Major composers include Vivaldi, Bach, and Handel; Caravaggio and Rubens are important baroque artists."

Definitions like this drive me a bit crazy. I'm a guy who likes to follow recipes to a T when I am cooking, so similarly, I worry about using a word like "baroque" unless I can be 100% sure that the criteria outlined in this word's "recipe," so to speak, are being met. But the word does cast a fairly wide net in what it can relate to, and it's the "characterized by ornate detail" part of the word that speaks to the way we should use it in a general sense. Though I think art that evokes that period was the way the guy was using it in the podcast (about a movie that I would not otherwise characterize as baroque -- maybe he was using it wrong?).

Crimson Peak is strangled by its use of the baroque. This movie has ornateness upon ornateness, but it's shot by Dan Laustsen in such a stagy way (with such oddly poor lighting) that it dies up there on the screen. It feels two-dimensional, digital. Perhaps some of the baroque central mansion, with its hole in the roof letting a constant snowfall through, is actually digital, which is why it looks so bad. Actually, no -- Guillermo del Toro built a mansion just for the occasion, I'm reading.

What's especially strange about the strained and stilted atmosphere of this movie is that I normally love baroque movies. I tend to gravitate toward period pieces, and I've even given my own name to movies featuring the type of production design we find in Crimson Peak -- I call them "wax stamp movies." The name is inspired by the appearance of a letter sealed by a wax stamp, and one such letter does indeed appear in Crimson Peak. That gave me hope, but the hope was soon dashed.

"Baroque" would probably extend to the much-criticized overblown acting style of Jessica Chastain in the movie, as well. And though someone really should have reined her in, Mia Wasikowska is also pretty bad here too. Her lack of agency seemed really disturbing and made it impossible to cheer on her character. But before you think I only have a problem with the women in this movie, I'll say that del Toro really needs to stop throwing work to the bland Charlie Hunnam. Tom Hiddleston probably acquits himself best in the cast, as you might expect.

Before this post just devolves into a spray gun approach to random criticisms of the movie -- of which there are many -- I'll try to get myself back on track.

If this were just a boring, over-long ghost story it might be one thing. But the rococo stylings of this movie just bludgeon you, making what could have been a neutral experience actively negative. It manages to be both overwrought and flat at the same time. Some achievement.

When I was a radio DJ back in college, we played a series of public service announcements about seatbelt safety that consisted of comedic repartees between two crash test dummies. I still remember that in one of them, there was an exchange about architecture where one of them says "Is it baroque?" And the other says "I don't know, did you ba-reak it?"

Crimson Peak is baroque-en indeed.

The actor's modesty

I was listening to an interview with Tom Hiddleston about his Hank Williams biopic I Saw the Light, which is now in theaters, and he made an innocuous comment that struck me.

Talking about his experience on another film, Hiddleston said, "I made a film with Guillermo del Toro called Crimson Peak," and then continued on with whatever his point was.

It struck me as incredibly modest, even though in the wrong hands it could have seemed like false modesty.

Two things about that comment showed charming modesty, I thought. For starters, he was reporting it as news, that he had made a film with this well-known director, like almost everyone listening to the interview wouldn't already be aware of the latest film by the director of Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and Hiddleston's involvement in it. The second charming part was that he revealed the name as though that in itself were a piece of information that needed to be divulged, never once taking for granted that the listener might already know of the movie.

But it occurred to me that this type of thing doesn't always work. There comes a point where a movie is well known enough that to pretend your audience doesn't know it would just be insulting them.

Like if Harrison Ford said, "I made a film with George Lucas called Star Wars," you'd say, "Duh, Harrison -- we know what Star Wars is." And you'd be a little bit annoyed because you'd know Harrison knew you knew. It wouldn't help much to switch it up to, "I made a little film with George Lucas called Star Wars," because even though the word "little" changes the inflection of the comment -- now we know he's joking, because everyone knows Star Wars is not "little" -- it still has the effect of kind of big-upping himself. The very acknowledgement of its size indicates that you are overly proud of that size.

So in that case, to seem normal, Ford would just have to say, "On Star Wars we ..." and get on with the comment or anecdote. There that would be okay. It wouldn't be modest per se, but it wouldn't insult our intelligence either, and when you've appeared in four Star Wars movies and four Indiana Jones movies, excess modesty probably doesn't fit very well anyway.

But Crimson Peak is about the perfect sized film to maintain that modesty, and Hiddleston about the perfect level of star. He's not a household name yet, and with his underlying eccentricity, may never become one. But he did play Loki in The Avengers, one of the highest grossing films of all time, so it's not like he's Mr. Anonymous either.

Hiddleston continued to charm me with his lack of pretension about himself and his genuine humility. Later on the interviewer made a comparison between his character in I Saw the Light and his character in Only Lovers Left Alive, and Hiddleston was so chuffed by the comparison (even though it didn't take any particular display of cleverness by the interviewer to make it) that he revealed an anecdote from the set -- an anecdote he would have held back if the interviewer hadn't prompted him by mentioning the Jim Jarmusch movie from 2014. It was an interesting anecdote that had a lot of relevance to the discussion, but he would have kept it tucked away if the interviewer hadn't given him a clear opening. Why? Modesty. You don't tell war stories about other movies during an interview unless given a darn good reason -- it's kind of the equivalent of name dropping. (And lest you consider his original mention of Crimson Peak to have been a case of telling war stories/name dropping, I can assure you it did not come across that way -- though neither do I remember the point he was actually making.)

Another time he seemed genuinely flattered by the interviewer's praise of his performance, like he might have been receiving such praise for the first time in his career -- like he had never before considered the idea that someone might consider what he does to be good.

There was an interesting secondary display of modesty in this interview, this time by the director, Marc Abraham, who did the interview alongside his star. Rather than modesty, it was actually a way to display your pride over your own work without seeming in the slightest like that's what you're doing -- and in fact seeming quite magnanimous in the process.

Abraham said that both Hiddleston and co-star Elizabeth Olsen were "so great" in the film, or something along those lines. To be clear, this didn't strike me at all as bragging about the quality of the film, because the praise was clearly directed at the stars, as if he himself bore no responsibility for extracting good performances from them. However, if you unpack the comment, it is a suggestion that something about the film itself is "great," so as the de facto author of the film, he is indeed sort of praising himself. It's funny that creative types can get away with this, heaping praise on one another without implicitly also praising themselves. Just to reinforce his own sense of personal modesty, Abraham, while describing certain directing luminaries whose styles were an influence on him, explained, "I'm not saying at all that I am that quality of filmmaker" -- not those exact words, but something more succinctly self-deprecating. And indeed, it honestly didn't feel like he was saying that.

The interesting thing is that both these genuinely refreshing personas must be an act on some level, even as genuine as they seem. If not Abraham, a guy I've never heard of before, then certainly Hiddleston, who has been through numerous press junkets already in his five or so years of high visibility as an actor. You do so many interviews and get so many questions from interviewers who are each trying to find something profound and unexpected to ask, but are invariably covering much of the same territory. It can't really be possible to be genuinely charmed by and appreciative of each interviewer, though Hiddleston did it masterfully, and his director followed his lead.

And now I really would like to see I Saw the Light, a biopic of a person who otherwise wouldn't interest me (and seems like a strange fit indeed for the effete Hiddleston), just to see how good of a job these two guys really did do in their respective roles.