Better as a jumping off point

I'm not going to say that Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is a better movie than Gretel & Hansel, but I'm disturbed that I'm even considering saying it.

The former is a violent and silly action horror with one foot firmly planted in the realm of camp, while the latter is a serious and stylish vision from the man who directed one of my top ten films of last decade, The Blackcoat's Daughter.

The difference that benefits the former?

The former uses the classic Grimm fairy tale as a jumping off point. In the latter, well, the fairy tale is the point itself.

Say what you will about fairy tales, but they rarely would be confused for traditional narratives with a beginning, middle and end. Or at least with satisfying versions of those components. I can't tell you how many fairy tales I've read -- and we were doing that regularly a couple years ago, reading from this beautiful old book with illustrations that we acquired at some point -- where I thought the ending was abrupt and nonsensical.

As a matter of fact, Hansel & Gretel itself is an example of this, at least in version that appears in the book we have. After the children resolve the core conflict by defeating the witch, they still have to cross this lake on their way back to their house. There are a number of paragraphs devoted to this "set piece" and yet it ultimately is totally superfluous, as they successfully cross the lake and make it home.

Fortunately, Gretel & Hansel does not have the bit about the lake. But most of the rest of its action is restricted to the children being cast out from their home, wandering the woods, and coming to live with the witch, whose sinister plans become revealed to them gradually over the course of their stay.

It's all done with an incredible amount of style, and a few moments that might activate your sense of revulsion, but not very much forward momentum. Osgood Perkins, Anthony's son and the guy who directed Blackcoat, favors slow burns, so not having a huge amount of story is suited to his style. It's just that in a story you already know, it feels like a lot of time spent getting to its various points. The striking visuals sustain you, but only so much.

He seems to have not been following his own advice from Blackcoat, as well as the approach taken by Robert Eggers in a similar film, The Witch. The less you see of your primary antagonist, the better, and the fleeting images of that character are one of the best aspects of his previous work, and of Eggers' work. Make no mistake, Alice Krige is great in the role of this witch, and in fact, her gaunt face made her a good choice for the role. Krige's face has always made her suited for such parts, back from when she was in the little-seen movie Ghost Story to her casting as part of the Borg in one of the Next Generation Star Trek movies. But this film spends so much time with her on screen that anything ominous about her dissipates pretty quickly through sheer familiarity.

I'm not sure if the best way to translate Hansel and Gretel on screen is to having them dropping f-bombs and shooting witches with crossbows, as happens in Tommy Wirkola's goofy 2013 film. But it does seem like a good idea to do something with the characters other than just put them through the familiar arc of the fairy tale. As it turns out, it's not enough, even for a movie that's only 87 minutes long.

Which is Witch?

I’m usually pretty good at keeping different movie personalities straight, whether in front of the camera or behind.

But the confluence of three new(ish) young(ish) white men breaking through as horror directors in the past five years has thrown me for a loop a bit.

Those three men are Robert Eggers, Ari Aster and David Robert Mitchell, and the similarity may all be in my head. But bear with me.

The three came into our sphere of awareness in different years, but the fact that they’ve all had their follow-up to their breakout movie in the same year – this year – has kind of cemented their similarity in my head. Even though at least one of their follow-ups is not a horror movie. (Unsure about the third director’s follow-up as I haven’t seen it yet.)

Chronologically, the first to come on the scene was Mitchell, both in terms of his earlier films and also his breakout film. He’s also the oldest (45) and the one whose name I tend to forget because all three of his names are fairly indistinct in terms of the larger continuum of whitebread American names.

Mitchell grabbed our attention in 2014 with It Follows, which was the unlikely follow-up to a movie I still haven’t seen (but probably should), 2010’s The Myth of the American Sleepover. Suffice it to say that that one’s not a horror movie. Despite its flaws, It Follows really whetted our appetite for what Mitchell could do, and would do next.

Well, what he did next undoubtedly demonstrated a command of the language of cinema, but it was not a horror movie. Appropriately, it was also the first of the three follow-ups to come out this year, Under the Silver Lake. I admire that movie but boy is it tedious at times. I’m not sure how possible it is to like it, but it does present us a visual stylist at the top of his craft.

Next up was Eggers in 2015 with The Witch, or The VVitch, or however you want to write it. Although the subject matter is not at all similar to that of It Follows, I began to think of them in the same boat because they both represented new creative voices giving us something clearly outside of the standard way horror movies were being made by studios. And like It Follows, The Witch had significant flaws for a viewer to contend with, which similarly didn’t detract from the sense of being in the hands of a cinematic visionary. Eggers is also middle in age at 36, by the way.

Eggers’ follow-up to The Witch is the last of the three to be released, just this past week, which destroys a little of the nice chronological symmetry we had going. That’s The Lighthouse, the only one of the six films mentioned here that I have yet to see. Though I’m champing at the bit. It looks even weirder (in a good way, of course) than The Witch. I can’t find an Australian release date yet for that.

Then you have the prolific young prodigy, Ari Aster, who is only 33 and yet has now had buzzworthy horror opuses released in back to back years. Given the scope of the films he makes, it seems hard to believe that it was only last year that Hereditary came out. He followed it up this year with Midsommar, beating Eggers to the theater by a couple months. Both of Aster’s films can fairly be described as great, and both also have pronounced flaws. I see a pattern here.

I don’t actually have trouble remembering which guy directed which movie, though I do sometimes need to remind myself that it was Mitchell who started out with The Myth of the American Sleepover and not Eggers. If I’d seen that movie I’d probably recognize it as a lot more similar to the aesthetic of It Follows than The Witch, but I haven’t yet.

The point of this post is not really that I confuse them, but more, that we are living through an exciting period in which new horror names are regular presenting themselves as more than just any other studio hack. They’re coming with enough frequency that the possibility exists to confuse them. If we abandon my premise that I'm confusing them for one another, you could also mention Jennifer Kent, who has a similar career trajectory to date, having knocked our socks off in 2014 with The Babadook and then followed that up this year with The Nightingale – which could be characterized as a similar type of historical horror to the ones Eggers prefers. Then of course you’ve got Jordan Peele, who can’t be confused for the others in terms of his racial identity, but who has also had his sophomore horror film Us come out this year, following on the heels of 2017’s Get Out. He might be most similar in execution and aesthetic to Aster.

It is a rich time for horror indeed.

But it could be another white man who has me most excited, though we’ll have to wait until next year for his next. That’s Osgood Perkins, and a weekend rewatch of The Blackcoat’s Daughter – which has a release year of anywhere from 2015 to 2017 depending on festival/theatrical release – reminded me why I ranked it as my #3 movie of 2017. He’s also a bit different from the others as he had two movies come out practically on top of each other, the other being I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. That one kind of went in one ear and out the other for me, but considering that I saw it before Blackcoat mesmerized me, I should probably watch it again. Perkins has Gretel & Hansel coming out in 2020, and I’m really excited for it.

Who are your favorite horror visionaries to come on the scene in the past five years?

Which vvitch? The one with subtitles

When I first added Robert Eggers' 2015 film to my various lists of movies seen, it was before it was released or even before a poster was available. To see what I had to use when I watched it in August at that year's MIFF, and then wrote about it on my blog, see this post. That's the very definition of "placeholder."

And so I alphabetized the movie in the W's, knowing no reason not to. If I happened to notice that the title was stylized with two V's when I watched the movie, it wasn't a thought that was still lingering with me after the credits ran.

If I watched it today for the first time (rather than Friday for the second time), I might consider the V section. Those V's are an essential part of the title, though it does present an interesting problem of only really working when the entire title is either capitalized or not capitalized. You can't call it The Vvitch because it does't really look right.

The version of the title is not what I'm interested in today, though. It's the version of the dialogue, as in, with an assist from the written word or not.

The first time I saw The Witch (easier I think) at MIFF, subtitles were of course not an option. And in a way that was key to the movie's charm. You felt truly immersed in the 17th century, as if you'd stepped out of a time machine and started eavesdropping on a bunch of religious fundamentalists who had banished themselves into the woods. If you were really there with them, you wouldn't catch half of what they were saying. Why should watching them from the third row of your local movie theater be any different?

But I did miss a lot, I think -- a lot whose gist could be understood in context, from inference, but missed material nonetheless. It's sometimes useful to know the nuances that cause a family to tear itself a part from fears that one or more of them have been corrupted by the devil.

And so this time, when it was available for streaming on Netflix, I availed myself of the subtitle option. Which made the film both better and worse.

Better because there were indeed misunderstandings and moments of ambiguity that led characters down certain paths from whence they could not return. I had wondered why some were so credulous to believe the worst of others, and knowing exactly what was being said allowed me to appreciate why things unfurled the way they did. Besides, when you've got this type of antiquated speech, seeing it in print allows you to appreciate its poetry and beauty on a literary level as well.

But worse because knowing exactly what was said and done seemed to be putting too fine a point on it. Poetic the written words may be, but rob the events of some of their mystery they do. The first time I watched The Witch, it seemed like inability to fully understand the language might have been part of the point, part of the confusion inherent in a situation involving a bewitching. Those characters don't understand what's happening to them any better than we do. Having some of that clarified inevitably reduces the disorientation that works in the favor of this film's tone.

Still, I'd do it again. I can get a lot of things from context, but I don't want to have to. The other night I started watching the French film Things to Come on Kanopy, but I had to stop because the quality of the stream would go fuzzy from time to time, and the subtitles would almost become illegible. Now, I took plenty of years of French so I can make out some of what they're saying anyway, and fuzzy English words usually look enough like themselves for you to work out what they must be, especially in the context of other unmistakable words in the sentence. But I don't want to have to do that (I stopped watching Things to Come), so The Witch (or THE VVITCH or the vvitch) with subtitles was ultimately the way to go.

Which doesn't mean I liked it any better, and in fact, I think I liked it a little bit worse. With some of the mystery stripped away and an ending that I still don't like, expressly because there is not enough mystery in it, the movie's just a bit more pedestrian than I'd like it to be. While still of course being a singular type of vision, and a great recreation of an era.

It'll be interesting to see vvhich vvay Eggers goes from here.

Ranking knights, lobsters and witches

I'm much more likely to complain about the delayed Australian release schedule of certain films than celebrate the early jump we get on other ones, but 2015 has been an unusually good year in the latter regard.

Which makes it an unusually bad year in terms of some of my classic, and largely academic, list-maker dilemmas.

Interestingly enough, two of the movies currently giving me fits are indebted to Terrence Malick, one by virtue of actually being directed by Malick. 

Both Yorgos Lanthimos' The Lobster and Malick's Knight of Cups have already gotten releases in Australia, well ahead of expected 2016 U.S. release dates. Knight of Cups just came out Thursday, and since I'm reviewing it, I've already seen it. The Lobster came out two weeks ago, but I saw it back during the Melbourne International Film Festival in August, which is also when I saw the third film I want to discuss: Robert Eggers' The Witch, which doesn't come out in either country until 2016. This is the one indebted to Malick in some of its cinematography of nature in particular.

Since none of these movies will come out in the U.S. until 2016 -- and the U.S. release date is usually the yardstick by which I measure what qualifies to be ranked in what year -- I've been at a loss on whether to include these 2015 viewings in my 2015 rankings, or hold them back until next year.

Fortunately, I have good friends like Don Handsome to shake me out of my tendency to over-think such things.

In an email to me this week, Don wrote:

"It's a matter of truthfulness in list making. How can you see a movie now and rank it later? You must rank it now to know how it really fits in with this year's list. Next year doesn't make sense because you'll be comparing apples and oranges. Sure the movie won't be the same, but the circumstances of seeing it won't either. You'd be trying to recreate in your mind your thoughts upon seeing it, and then compare something that's inevitably gone stale for you with fresh films. It's not fair."

"I'm almost more in favor of ranking twice than not ranking in the year you saw it."

Except for the prospect of ranking twice, which is utter madness, Don's got a very good point.

I had already taken a split approach to the two festival films. I had inserted The Lobster in my 2015 rankings because I knew it was getting a 2015 release in Australia. That was the same logic I used in ranking What We Do in the Shadows last year, even though my American counterparts (theoretical though many of them may be) will be ranking it this year. (And it's something I sort of regretted, as you will remember if you read this post.) The Witch, on the other hand, seemed very clearly to be a movie that belonged with the year 2016, as no one (outside of film festival crowds) will see it until that year. That's an especially strange assessment to have to make about this movie in particular, because the first festival crowds saw it way back in January, meaning that it was actually finished and ready to screen in late 2014. The fact that it's not making it to theaters for more than a year after that Sundance screening is a mystery to me, especially since it was received so positively, but it also gave me the reasoning I needed to start my 2016 list early and place The Witch right there at #1 to start things off.

But Don is right. What chance does The Witch have in 2016, when I'll be finalizing my rankings (in January of 2017) about 18 months after I first saw this film? The same logic about the short memories of Oscar voters applies here, except even more so. If it's hard for a movie to get nominated for best picture if it came out in March or April, imagine how much more difficult it would be if it came out the previous August?

And yet it still pains me that my list can't be "conversant" with other lists in terms of our comparative rankings of The Witch. Of course, there's one list it will be conversant with: Don's. He was here in August and he saw The Witch with me.

The arrival of Knight of Cups was what brought the whole issue to a head. When I was reminded earlier this week that it was due to open on Thursday, my first question was whether I should just delay and see it on video next year so my ranking decision could be blissfully uncomplicated. (Which is what I did a year ago when I passed up David Cronenberg's thematically similar Maps to the Stars, which had a similar early Australian release date, ultimately watching it this past March.) But then I thought about how Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography would look nice enough that it really deserved to be seen on the big screen, and within a few minutes I'd become so certain I planned to see it in the theater that I actually got approval to review it, thereby putting it on this week's viewing schedule.

But because it is Malick and because Malick's 2011 film topped many year-end lists, I worried I'd be seeing an actual contender for my top spot and possibly ranking it as the #1 movie in a different year than other people ranked it as their #1 movie. It would be like if you had early access to Boyhood in 2013 and Boyhood became your #1 movie of 2013 rather than 2014.

Of course, I should remember that The Tree of Life was only my 44th favorite film that I saw in 2011, so what were the chances I was going to like Knight of Cups that much more than that? (And, of course, I didn't -- if you want to read my thoughts on Knight of Cups, my review should be up within a day or two and hyperlinked on the right.)

It's been a very "of"-centric week for me, as I saw Bridge of Spies and Quantum of Solace in addition to Knight of Cups. It's been a very "of"-centric career for Terrence Malick, who also directed Days of Heaven in addition to The Tree of Life and Knight of Cups.

But with his email that helped me sort out a problematic ranking dilemma, Don gave me a different kind of "of": peace of mind. 

MIFF: 17th century immersion

It's taken a couple days to get up my final MIFF post, and it's now been more than 36 hours since the carnies packed up all the tents and took the first train out of town. I'm feeling a little of the melancholy of the festival being over, as well as my friend Don leaving town.

But Don and I finished on a good note Friday night with Robert Eggers' The Witch at The Forum, the venue where I started two weeks earlier with The Lobster. In fact, at the start, I thought it could have been a great note -- for the first 15 minutes of this film, I was sure it was the best I had seen all year. I just hope it actually gets released this year. As of now, I can't even find a poster online, so what appears above is what you get. I almost think I'd have been better off with just the picture of Anya Taylor-Joy, and done away with the anachronistic looking text.

The reason anachronisms are so inappropriate with this movie is that it works so hard, and with such success, to plunge you directly into its world. The movie takes place in what would become Massachusetts in 1630, and I'm pretty sure that was also where and when it was shot. What? Time machines don't exist? Could have fooled me.

Eggers fastidiously recreates the era of this film's action, perhaps never more noticeably than with the dialogue, which is fairly close to one of Mel Gibson's experiments with using the real language of the characters portrayed on screen (in both The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto). The dialogue is full of dosts and doths and thous, and those are the easy ones. In fact, the dialogue is so dedicated to early 17th century realism that it frequently comes at the expense of coherence -- though not in a bad way. Sometimes I wouldn't understand a word they were saying for as many as ten or 15 seconds, and other times would grab hold of a single word and extrapolate a context for the sentence from that. Overall, it didn't affect my understanding of the plot, so it was a minor price to pay -- and a major boon to the film's overwhelming sense of realism.

I suppose I should tell you what the story is actually about. A devoutly religious pilgrim (Ralph Ineson) believes that the town he and his family are living in is too sinful a place for their religious freedom to flourish, so he builds a homestead on the edge of a wood that many believe is haunted. At first things go fine; William's pregnant wife Katherine (Game of Thrones' Kate Dickie) gives birth to a baby boy, and their crops thrive. But then the baby disappears while under the watch of their oldest daughter Thomasin (Taylor-Joy), and the crops die. Although a wolf is blamed for the disappearance of the baby, the persistent rumor of the cursed woods -- specifically, witches -- can't escape the characters' thoughts. Katherine wonders aloud if it's her own daughter Thomasin who is bewitched, while Thomasin sees suspicious behavior in the twins, who are around six years old and who have (what may be a pretend) nefarious relationship with a black goat on their farm. That leaves the father and early teenage brother Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) in the middle, and all of them looking for answers that will prevent their family's story from turning permanently toward tragedy.

What The Witch does exceptionally well is set a sense of mood. In the opening ten or 15 minutes, which are largely free of dialogue, the film feels a bit like Terrence Malick's The New World, only more authentic in its appearance. It captures these perfectly gray Massachusetts woods through dynamite camera work and a crisply matter-of-fact production design that gives you an immediate sense of place, and immersion. And without dialogue, it feels a lot like something Malick would actually make, without relying on the whispered voiceover that can sometimes irritate in a Malick film. We just get images of this world and their life, accompanied by a chilling sound design that features everything from eerie angelic voices to the jarring concatenation of brass and wind instruments. It's an orchestra of sensation indeed.

It's not that it becomes anything less than this after these first 15 minutes, it's just that they are clearly the film's strength. Story is not necessarily its strength, though that is certainly arguable. Where this story goes, objectively, is fine, and in fact some might find it to be the perfect realization of what this story is supposed to be about. As with any witch story, one of the narrative goals is to recognize the hypocrisy and short-sightedness of those who accused others of being witches with only the most circumstantial evidence to support their claim. That is certainly present here too, and by limiting the dynamics of such paranoia to just one family, it creates a terrific claustrophobia. Eggers also gives certain supernatural aspects of the story a chilling physical reality that is incredibly effective.

What ultimately leaves me a little cold, and with a slight hesitation about the wholly enthusiastic recommendation I want to give it, is that the story itself could probably never be a fully satisfying extension of what the first 15 minutes of The Witch gives me. Which doesn't mean it's a bad direction, or even the wrong direction, to take the movie. A movie can't be as scary as The Witch is with only ambiguous hints of what's happening to this family -- sometimes you have to get what's actually happening. And what's actually happening was inevitably a mild disappointment for me.

But should you see this movie? HELL YES. One thing I have yet to mention is the uniform superlative level of the acting, especially among young actors. Scrimshaw has one powerhouse scene, and Taylor-Joy is a true find, likely to break out from this movie in a big way. Much of the film's ambiguity lies in her character, and she brings a fecund earthy specificity to her performance that is at times startling. Simply put, you can't take your eyes off her -- she is confronting you with some kind of unspoken sexuality that's unsettling.

Let's just hope you will actually have the opportunity to see this movie sometime soon. It seems an unusually long gestation period for a film that was such a hit at Sundance this year, especially with Halloween barely two months off and no release date yet set for the film. To be sure, it's not your typical Halloween horror and may not ultimately be a hit, but the idea that it's languishing around without a release date seems kind of absurd, given the undeniable talent that is dribbling out of every pore of this movie.

Thanks for another great MIFF, MIFF! See you next year.