Other directors whose names are (or should be) adjectives

When David Lynch passed earlier this year, I described him as the man whose name became an adjective. That was suggesting a sort of exclusivity that may not actually exist. Lynch may have been on the leading edge of that trend, but there are plenty of other directors whose names we use that way -- or might, based on a couple criteria:

1) They have something very distinctive about the sorts of movies they make in either approach or subject matter, which might lead us to name drop them when we see another movie with those characteristics by some other director;

2) They have to be well enough known that you recognize their name when you weren't necessarily expecting it to come up, and when that name is turned into an adjective;

3) Their name can actually be turned into an adjective with reasonable ease.

It's that last one that helps us narrow down our list a bit. You might think that a particular movie bears the traits of a film made by Francis Ford Coppola, for example -- though Coppola has made different enough movies that he might actually fail the first test -- but "Coppolaian" or "Coppolan" just do not work as adjectives. They don't pass the sniff test. Quentin Tarantino has the same problem, though I'd argue you might break the rules a little bit and come up with a word like "Tarantonian" just to get around it. (And I think maybe some actually have. In fact, I think I have used that word before.)

On Wednesday night I watched a movie by a director who definitely does qualify in at least two of the three respects -- to be honest, I didn't think of the one I've listed as #2 until after I started writing -- which was the inspiration for this post. And after talking about him, I'll get into some others that I think we either use or should use. 

The movie was Fireworks Wednesday, the oldest movie I've seen in the directing career of Iranian master Asghar Farhadi, and seventh overall that I've seen. I've seen the last seven now -- in reverse order, that's A Hero, Everybody Knows, The Salesman, The Past, A Separation, About Elly and Fireworks Wednesday, taking us back to 2006 -- leaving only two other features I haven't seen: Beautiful City (2004) and Dancing in the Dust (2003). 

I wasn't sure at what point he found his particular voice, which I will expound on in a moment, so I thought this film from 19 years ago might be in the vein of other Iranian masters whose names you would know, like Jafar Panahi and Abbas Kiarostami, though both of those directors have films that are replete with formal challenges, while Farhadi's are not. Or maybe I just thought it would be more like the most common form of Iranian film, by any director, that we saw in this period, in which children were often the stars as a way of avoiding the scorn and potential censorship and/or retribution of the government. 

Nope. Even in Fireworks Wednesday, Farhadi was making intricate social dramas that play more like mysteries, where semantic disagreements and misunderstandings among characters lead to escalating consequences that result in (usually minor) tragedies for everyone involved. Simply put, this was Farhadi's dominant mode in all the movies listed above that I've seen -- you might say it was his only mode if that didn't sound like a criticism. With a filmmaker like Farhadi, we cherish each new instance of this and would not ask him to vary up his style in the slightest. 

So I think "Farhadian" is an adjective that should definitely enter our vernacular among cinephiles ... and even more so if there were a significant number of other directors making films like the films he makes. (Though it's possible that only in cinephile circles would his name be recognized completely out of context ... which is why I said I'm not sure if he meets criterion #2.)

Who else we got?

1) Hitchcockian - Films like this feature clever narrative suspense, interesting camera tricks, ordinary people out of their depth and possibly a cameo by the director. 

2) Spielbergian - Films like this feature a sense of childhood wonder, often set in and around suburbia, which is endangered by the mysteries of our world (or others), often supernatural in nature. 

3) Andersonian - Films like this feature a quirky ensemble of characters, often against lovingly fussy sets and backdrops, usually involving some sort of Russian nesting doll narrative structure. (Note: There is a slight risk of confusing Wes and Paul Thomas, but context should usually help sort that out -- and it also means Paul Thomas has to give up his claim to having an adjectival name, because he is just not as distinctive in style as Wes.)

4) Scorsesian - Films like this are epic in length, showcase audacious camera technique, use classic rock in memorable ways, and contain organizational infrastructures that either are, or resemble, organized crime.

5) Kaufmanian - Films like this involve a no-confidence schlub as a protagonist and likely a deconstruction of the ordinary rules of filmmaking and/or narrative structure, with an emphasis on the self. 

6) Gondrian - Films like this feature a lot of DIY technique involving construction paper or the equivalent, and often a bit of dream logic.

7) Fincherian - Films like this involve sleek camerawork and editing, and look into the darker parts of our souls. 

8) Hughesian - Films like this involve teenagers coming of age in situations usually involving high comedy (context helps for this one). 

9) Von Trierian - Films like this involve masochism and possibly mild to heavy misogyny. 

10) Shyamalanian - Films like this feature a labored twist, a high concept, some amount of horror ... and possibly a cameo by the director. 

I could keep going, but the adjectives might get more obscure and ten is a good place to stop. 

I'd like to include someone like Robert Altman for his very distinctive style and subject matter, and "Altmanian" does sort of work as an adjective ... but I just don't think I could ever see myself using it. You just know if it works or if it does not work. I think "Burtonian" has the same problem. (Which is probably why I didn't think of this post idea a few nights earlier, when I rewatched Edward Scissorhands for the first time in a quarter century.)

I also thought of Orson Welles, and "Wellesian" certainly does work ... but I don't know that I could focus in on a signature Welles style that would warrant the use of the adjective.

In fact we may have more examples of directors (or directing duos) with distinctive styles who don't work than who do. "Bergmanian" and "Coenian" also don't work, though we would absolutely want to use those adjectives if we could. Single-syllable last names often don't work. Just try "Croweian" or "Leeian" and you will see what I'm talking about. Then again, David Lynch has a one-syllable last name. Or, had. 

Overall I guess it is a select group that meet all three criteria, possibly not including the actual inspiration for the post. So while in many cases, we might still be inclined to make the comparison when writing about film, but we are more likely to have to use the more ungainly phrasing "it resembles the films of Joel and Ethan Coen" than that it is "Coenian."

Remembering the man whose name became an adjective

I haven't had a chance to reflect on David Lynch before now. When I learned of his passing on Thursday due to complications from emphysema and having to be relocated from his home during the fires, at age 78, it was right at the beginning of a cavalcade of year-end posts that were ready to go up and were going to consume the next four days on this blog. And while some cinephiles might consider Lynch's loss to be reason enough to interrupt that freight train, I am not one of them, which I will explore more in a minute.

I thought of not doing a Lynch in memoriam post at all. I don't consider myself to be the "blog of record" in the sense that I need to note the passing of any influential member of the film community. I don't consider it, or at least don't want to consider it, a sign that I don't care enough about that person if I fail to write a remembrance post. Sometimes the timing and my schedule just don't work out.

But even if Lynch was not always my favorite filmmaker, he was the favorite filmmaker of the most cherished other cinephile in my life, who does the year-end rankings with me and has known me for nearly 50 years. (I've only been alive for 51. In reality, it's more like 48.) Plus, there's absolutely no denying the singular impact David Lynch had on the movies we've watched for the last 40 years, even if he made comparatively few of them himself. 

After all, this was a man whose last name was an adjective.

If you were to call a movie "Lynchian," people would instantly know what you were talking about, if they themselves were the right level of cinephile. And I'd argue that the people who knew what that meant might extend even to people who weren't cinephiles. Twin Peaks had such a cultural moment that even people who had only seen snippets of it knew that it represented a new sort of perspective on storytelling, or at least the first time this perspective had reached a wider audience.

Defining what it means for a film to be Lynchian is an imperfect exercise. It's a "you know it when you see it" thing. Any film that is "weird" might invite the Lynch comparison, but there are a lot of "weird" films out there that are not Lynchian. To be Lynchian, a film must also have sort of gothic noir overtones, and preferably a haunting score. If a character speaks in tongues, all the better. If a beautiful woman dies, all the better, though that probably only applies to Twin Peaks and its various movie versions and rebooted TV versions among Lynch's variegated output.

I do love certain Lynch films. Oddly, I often called his least Lynchian film, The Straight Story, my favorite, though this has since been eclipsed by Eraserhead. I also have a strong fondness for Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man, and have come around on Mulholland Drive after being more befuddled than entranced on my first viewing.

There are also, of course, Lynch films that I struggle with. My one viewing of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me left me perplexed, and I couldn't crack The Lost Highway either, even though I owned its soundtrack for years before I saw it due to Trent Reznor's involvement. And of course his Dune is a trainwreck. Then again, I suppose I am not alone in having these opinions about these films.

Even the two features I haven't mentioned I am more than mildly positive on. Those would be Wild at Heart, one of the last ones I saw, and Inland Empire. Having not yet taken to Mulholland Drive at this point, I was all prepared to hate Inland Empire considering it is also three hours long. Yet I felt myself bewitched by it largely in the way the director would have intended.

The fact that Lynch has not made a proper feature since then, which is nearly 20 years ago, indicates how little he was interested in being any one sort of thing. In the meantime he directed the Twin Peaks reboot series -- which some people love but which I gave up on, even before Nine Inch Nails played -- and numerous shorts. Heck, he was even a weatherman for an LA radio station for a while, mostly as a joke but played straight by him, albeit in his strange, inimitable style. And of course he was also an actor. Despite all these other hats he wore, I know my friend was hoping for at least one more feature, because that was the essential Lynch as we all first came to know and love him.

Because I didn't know and love him quite as much as some other people did, I will leave a better analysis of his art to other people. In fact, since I'm late to the game on this remembrance, they've all already done it, I'm sure some of them quite beautifully.

I will say, however, that Lynch represents somewhat of an unusual case for me: A director with nearly ten feature films (he fell just one short), all of which I've seen. Yes, I am a David Lynch completist, if you are counting only feature films and not all the other stuff from his prolific output of a career that started in the 1960s. 

And you can't be a completist on a director with that many films unless you are acknowledging there is something great and worth reckoning with in those films. I'll say that every time I started watching a David Lynch film, I knew there was a chance that he would reframe my entire understanding of cinema, even the world. 

If Lynch had that impact even on me, one of his lesser disciples, then just imagine how he blew the minds of those who truly love him ... and how hard the past week of knowing he would no longer be with us has been. 

Rest in peace, you weird and wonderful iconoclast. 

Denis Villeneuve's remake of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and other original Dune thoughts

What the hell am I talking about with that subject?

Well I'll get to that in a moment, but first, a little prologue. 

And also:

Dune spoilers to follow.

So I figured the perfect way to wrap up my Dune experience of the past three months -- which started with my October viewing of Jodorowsky's Dune, followed by the concurrent reading of Frank Herbert's novel and viewing of the Denis Villeneuve adaptation -- was to go back and watch the David Lynch film that I thought was so hilariously awful when I watched it 15 years ago. Almost exactly 15 years ago, in fact. My records surprised me by showing that I watched the 1984 Dune on January 26, 2007. 

On January 28, 2022, I watched it a second time, and you'll be glad to know I got more out of it having read the book. That still doesn't excuse the poor storytelling choices, which I think would be completely lost on someone who wasn't familiar with the material (which described me in 2007), but it's not the inept mess I once made it out to be. It just has some really funny individual choices that stand out and fatally undercut it.

But first, what the hell am I talking about with that subject?

As I was watching Dune I determined Denis Villeneuve must have had a crush on Sean Young when he was growing up. I noticed that Young plays Chani, the role assumed by Zendaya in the Villeneuve remake.  

What else do we know about Young? Well, her most memorable role was probably as the android Racheal in Blade Runner -- a film Villeneuve has also rebooted.

Now 54, Villeneuve would have been about 15 when Blade Runner came out and about 17 when Dune came out. Good ages to still be working out your crushes, methinks. 

My natural conclusion is that Villeneuve is working on a remake of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective -- where Young plays Lois Einhorn/Ray Finkle -- right about now. (If you have a different choice for the third most prominent role in Young's career, don't tell me.)

Some other thoughts:

I didn't know who Sting was

Even after finishing the book and getting to this character's big scene, I didn't actually know who Sting was supposed to have played in the movie until watching it on Friday night. 

Now obviously, the portrayal of the other Harkonnens, in both the book and Villeneuve's film, makes them out to be corpulent and repugnant, even potentially unable to walk on their own without the use of suspensor suits. That would not describe the image of Sting in this movie, which shows every inch of the physical discipline that makes him excel at tantric sex, as his body is lean and finely chiseled -- a fact we can't help but notice as he is pictured wearing only the interstellar version of a speedo.

But maybe it's an indication of the weird role Feyd Rautha Harkonnen plays in the book that made me unable to initially make the connection. His role is very backloaded, so much so that Villeneuve did not even feel the need to introduce him as a character in his adaptation of the novel's first half. Even Herbert's book would have no use for him until its final 20 pages if it had not introduced him in a random scene just after the halfway point, a scene that seems there only to lay groundwork so his role in the novel's climax does not feel so out of left field.

Maybe the film's peculiar usage of Sting -- which was actually straight out of Herbert's text -- was one of the things that prompted me to judge the film so harshly. I was like "You've got Sting, and then you barely use him?" I should have directed that question to Herbert probably.

The whispered voiceover still sucks

One of the byproducts of needing to fit so much novel into only 137 minutes of movie was that Lynch had to take shortcuts in his exposition, the most famous of which was to have the characters' thoughts appear in voiceover. More often than not, these are whispers -- an apparent attempt to remind us they are only thoughts, though I don't know how that could escape us given that the characters' mouths aren't moving.

More than any other questionable decision Lynch made, this was the one that really undermined my ability to appreciate the film, and in fact turned any instinct to appreciate it into derisive laughter. It just doesn't work, and 15 years later, it still doesn't work.

I guess the main difference now, though, is that I understand this was not just a bad creative choice. It was an attempt to solve the unsolvable problem of how much information needed to be communicated in such a short amount of time. Villeneuve solved that problem by turning the story into (an expected) two movies, each of which will be longer than Lynch's film. Lynch wouldn't have had that option in 1984.

I think the funny thing about it is that so many different characters' thoughts are heard this way. If it were limited to the main character, Paul, that probably would have been more defensible. But even random side characters we've only just met reveal their thoughts to us. There just had to be another way.

And it seemed like once Lynch had committed to this being necessary, it prevented any instinct to show rather than tell. A number of these thoughts can be deduced from characters' expressions and needn't have been explicated. Like when Kyle MacLachlan gets a stunned look on his face upon first seeing Young's Chani, we don't need to hear via his thoughts that he thinks she's beautiful. Duh. Do you think we've never seen a movie before, David?

I remembered "Remember the tooth!" as funnier

The biggest howler from my first viewing was the scene where Dr. Yueh (Dean Stockwell) implants the poison tooth in Leto Atreides (Jurgen Prochnow) and tells him to "Remember the tooth!" when he crosses paths with Baron Harkonnen (Kenneth McMillan). Of course, I didn't know who any of those people were or what the hell they were talking about in 2007 -- I was already out by this point.

In my memory, the phrase "Remember the tooth!" gets repeated about five times. In reality, it's only said once. But the part that probably really made me laugh at the time -- and did again on this viewing -- was that after Yueh utters the full line, Lynch goes in to a close-up of Stockwell's mouth as he repeats "The tooth! The tooth!"

Still, I had hoped to get more satisfaction from the "Remember the tooth!" moment when a paralyzed Leto does come across Baron Harkonnen. But the word "tooth" doesn't even get uttered again, unfortunately. Leto's thoughts include something like "What did Yueh say?", which is also funny -- if you had just had a poison tooth implanted in your mouth, you would not soon forget it. But it wasn't the awesome sticking of the landing on that bit that I hoped it would be. 

Predating Jean-Luc Picard by three years

Patrick Stewart has had a long career, so I could not say for certain that this was his first trip to outer space. But a quick scanning of his credits indicates that indeed, Dune appears to be his sci-fi debut, just three years before he would be chosen as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Did one have anything to do with the other? Hard to say. The internet would probably tell me. I can't be bothered.

The thing I find really funny, though, is that Stewart was cast to play a man of action, a fighter, in Gurney Halleck. Even when he was cast as Picard, it was not because he was seen as deft in hand-to-hand combat. No, his brains and regal quality were what made him right for Picard, not his skills with his fists. Ditto for his work as Professor X. 

Fists aren't totally required in this role either, but from the book I know Halleck is considered to be a great fighter, and indeed he does have a sparring scene with Paul in which they are protected by shields. 

This might have been one of the funniest scenes, though, as the 1984 visual effects for a personal body shield were so clunky that the bodies of the combatants are almost completely obscured. Maybe that was a blessing in disguise as it hid the fact that this is just not Stewart's forte. 

The worm stuff is good

I expected the worms to look like crap. They did not look like crap.

In fact, their breaching of the sand and the flower-like opening of their mouths were accomplished with exceptional technical skill for 1984.

Alas, some of the rest of what's depicted doesn't nearly measure up to it. The visuals involving outer space or green screens are extremely variable in quality. 

Overall, a reasonable effort

It was tempting at the time to think that Lynch's famously eccentric sensibilities caused him to wildly misstep in his conception of Dune. The reality is that this is a pretty straightforward attempt to adapt the material, and its greatest sin might be that it's boring.

Indeed, while I definitely thought that a revisit of Dune would be "fun," I found it pretty tedious.

Oh I liked it better for sure. When you know who the characters are and what's at stake, you don't just think this is a hopelessly impenetrable text filled with goofy people saying silly made-up words. That's definitely the impression the uninitiated would get, and did get in 1984.

But I was hoping I would like it a lot better, and that's just not the case. It actually probably needed to be more of a Lynch film rather than less of one to really resonate. 

David Lynch himself would tell you that. 

                                                            ***********

One final thought about my three-month Dune experience takes us right back to where we started.

I read all of Herbert's novel certain I was aware of one big spoiler that would not be revealed in Villeneuve's film:

Paul Atreides dies.

It's something that Alejandro Jodorowsky, cheeky bastard that he is, reveals in his conception for what would obviously be one of the film's final scenes. I thought at the time "It's too bad I found that out, but then again, I was the one who chose to watch this movie before I had read the book, and with only a vague recollection of the Lynch film."

If I'd thought to consult those vague recollections of that film, I would have realized I have no memory of Kyle MacLachlan's character dying because you know what? He doesn't. 

I obviously got it wrong. He must have been talking about the death of Leto Atreides, a scene with lots of possibilities of how to stage it.

But it's funny in retrospect to have been thinking the whole time how Paul was going to die and how enough stuff needed to happen in the story for the legend of MuadD'ib to have reached sufficiently legendary status before this happened. And when his fight with Feyd Rautha starts near the end of the book, I knew this had to be where he died but also that I didn't think his legend had really grown enough to warrant it in a narrative sense, given all the little chapter-starting histories of Muad'Dib written by the Princess Irulan. 

But no, he just sticks a blade in the underside of Feyd Rautha's chin.

So I really have no idea how many of the Dune sequels Herbert wrote Paul will appear in. I may not find out until Villeneuve adapts them, if he does.  

Although I ultimately enjoyed the experience of reading Dune -- I thought the appendices were an especially illuminating look into the depths of Herbert's mind and his bottomless capacity for "silly made-up words" -- it was, in the end, a slog to finally finish it so I could move on to my next book.

But whether I get to Dune Messiah or Children of Dune or whatever all the others are called, I feel like I now have a really good understanding of this world, its characters, its unique terminology, and a whole conception of how to give birth to a distinctly considered science fiction franchise.

I'll be back for any and all movies even if I'm not back for any more books, and then I'll at least go into those movies without knowing any spoilers. 

Breaking with tradition

In the past six years, I've developed a little Wednesday-before-Thanksgiving tradition that was broken this year.

As a special start to what in some years was a four-day weekend, and some years (like this year) was not, I'd go see a movie after work on Wednesday afternoon. Since I was usually getting dismissed early -- as early as 11:30 at my last job, more like 2 o'clock at this one -- it meant I could see a movie and still have plenty of time to get whatever I needed for the next day organized.

I guess saying it was "broken" this year is somewhat misleading, considering that during that six-year period, I failed to do it twice -- 2005 (reason unknown) and 2007 (leaving that night to fly to Chicago). But every other year I came through: The Station Agent in 2003, Sideways in 2004, The Queen in 2006 and Religulous last year.

I was looking forward to it this year, with Precious as a possible target. But soon after I got in to work on Wednesday, I could tell it wasn't shaping up to be the kind of easy day I'd penciled in. In fact, I didn't even slow down all day, juggling ridiculously timed requests when I wasn't doing short work-related errands around town. I left at the normal time, 3:30, and never even got to figure out if there was a conveniently timed showing of Precious or any other movie.

I figured we'd at least watch a movie at home that night, since my wife and I had both stocked up at the library with the maximum three titles apiece, in addition to the couple other movies we each had sitting around from Netflix and Blockbuster. (Yes, our household has one account of each. Silly, I know.) But my wife wanted to starting clearing stuff off the DVR as early preparation for her three weeks out of the country at Christmastime -- I'll be in Australia, where she grew up, for a week less than that, as she both leaves before me and returns after me. So I acquiesced. I have to admit, it would have been hard for me to summon any sympathy for my movie cause -- I'd seen at least one movie a day for about week running.

But I did hope to outlast her that night and start something after she went to sleep, and I had the perfect candidate in mind: David Lynch's Eraserhead, which I'd never seen, which was one of my three library pickups. I knew my wife had already seen it, so I could watch it solo. And this kind of movie demands to be seen late at night anyway.

But she showed surprising stamina for a person who had slept fitfully the night before -- in fact, according to her, had not fully gotten to sleep until close to 5 a.m. When it was 10:30 and she said she still had another hour-long program in her, I feared I'd see no pre-Thanksgiving movie, either in the theater or at home.

I guess my own stamina was reasonably impressive as well, for a guy who started working at 7 a.m. that day. I did outlast her starting at about 11:30, which was enough to watch the first 30 minutes of Eraserhead. It was a bit of a gamble, as I didn't see any way I was supposed to get through a 100-minute movie starting this late at night. And true enough, as my eyes began closing despite the wild images that were penetrating them, I soon realized I'd either need to call it a night, or try a "nap." I love those "naps" we try to take at 12:15 a.m., somehow sure that we'll be able to close our eyes for just 20 minutes, and then be rejuvenated for two more hours of nighttime activities. But I did really hope to succeed this time out -- I was convinced that Eraserhead couldn't be nearly this eerie with my Thanksgiving morning coffee. The enthrallingly disturbing imagery and sound design just couldn't spook me as much in the bright morning light, could it?

But that's what happened -- I watched the rest of the movie before my wife awoke the following morning. And was still chilled as hell by it. So, another tradition broken: having to watch a creepy movie at night, because I didn't trust it to have the physiological impact I desired in the cold light of morning. Apparently, this shouldn't be a worry. I'm sure it helped that the shades were still drawn in the living room, and there was nothing else going on in the house to distract me or provide a semblance of daytime normalcy.

While we're add it, I guess I broke with another tradition as well: distrusting David Lynch. Ever since I saw Mulholland Drive, which most people liked, I have felt frustrated with the way Lynch doesn't feel obligated to providing catharsis or accountable to making sense. And even though I've seen Inland Empire since then, and inexplicably liked it a lot more even though it is arguably less accessible, I've still held that skeptical view toward Lynch. (I've also seen The Elephant Man since seeing Mulholland Drive, but that's a pretty straightforward movie.)

Eraserhead reminded me that you don't have to make perfect sense, or much sense at all, as long as the way you're not making sense is this visceral and gratifying. And I won't soon forget any of the images of this movie, each twisted and nightmarish metaphors -- the weird alien baby, the clumps of dirt and grass around Henry's apartment, the radiator lady with the jowly cheeks, the weird alien embryos that look like brains with tails, the pencil factory, the attempt to eat a chicken dinner with the in-laws. It's all etched in there, a disturbingly wonderful new part of my brain.

And then I went to slow-cook a bunch of yams for Thanksgiving dinner.

Sometimes, a tweaked tradition is an unexpected blessing.