The Brothers Quay & Tarsem Singh

(Cinemascope thanks guest contributor Ms. Camiele White for her latest contribution. This interesting article is on the Quay Brothers and Tarsem Singh, who have developed cult followings of their own. More details on Ms. White may be found below the post)

It’s been said that everyone has a twin roaming around this planet somewhere. Of course, sometimes those twins tend to be more than simply walking, breathing practices in physical congruency. What if, for instance, someone thought as you did, spoke as you did, had the same general understanding of the world around him as you? What a trip, right?

In the film world, while most major studios are on a never-ending trend of replicating scripts and storylines, there are a few with tickling bugs in their brains who happen to have a penchant for doing magic tricks with the cerebrum. This school of thought has found a resting place in two separate entities borne of two very different backgrounds.

One of my favourite films of all time is The Cell. I had the grand fortune to see this film back in 2000 when it was first released. I’ve always had a wide open space in my heart for psychological films and this film promised to be that and so much more. On more than one occasion I found myself warped, senses tainted and thrown into disarray. What Tarsem Singh managed to create with The Cell is a world in which the mind is incapable of seeking solace in corners or soft shadows. His is a mind that’s rational to the point of madness, pinning down, as it were, your every sensory cell and transmogrifying you into a beast in his scripture. Without a doubt, he’s one of the most compelling directors to come out of the 20^th century. All of his films follow in this vein --verging on self-indulgent, most certainly narcissistic.

I was ready to proclaim Tarsem one of the most original, if not the foremost, directors of all time. His work on small and large screen has given him an almost indelible stamp on the industry, making him one of the most sought after, if not one of the most underrated, directors in the business. However, as the old wives tale alludes, Tarsem has his own psychological twin to compete with. Somewhere in the world, he has a Siamese replica, a reflection stitched to him as a bit of membranous thought and creativity that once witnessed can’t be denied.

In fact, Tarsem’s double is a set of actual identical twins. In the early 80s, the Quay Brothers placed their stamp on the film world with their uncanny ability to get underneath the skin and do a dance as carnal as the perverse twitching of the mind of a sleeping schoolgirl. It isn’t so much that the techniques are complex – au contraire, mons amis. Their style is almost guerrilla, completely organic and unfettered with ostentation. One may go so far as to describe it as elementary. However, what sets the Brothers Quay apart is their sense of perception. They’ve managed to find the intricacies in natural movement and have augmented them to the point of combustion.

Using classic stop-motion, the Brothers Quay have stumbled upon a magnificent formula for making the simple more layered. Using household objects (old plastic dolls, push pins, buttons, etc.) they created one of the most bizarre films of the late 80s. Based on Bruno Shulz’s series of short stories of the same name, the short film The Street of Crocodiles transcended what folks were able to digest, even in the late 80s/early 90s, in which every media was heightened to its breaking point. It was a film that explored the existential crisis of existence, what it means to be living and breathing, walking a never-ending path towards a seeming oblivion. All very Maudlin and Morrissey, no? However, what separates this from the angst that was so en vogue at the time was its intelligence. No dialogue, no script, no human fallacy. It was probably one of the most cerebral films to come out of that era of high art, as it were.

When juxtaposed against each other, Tarsem and the Quay Brothers seem to follow a similar path to creation: find the details in the landscape and augment them until they’re ready to crawl into your body and create you brand new and part of the living masterpiece. Particularly, Tarsem’s The Cell pays a great deal of homage to the Brothers’ work. Most notably in the observation sequence in which child psychologist Catherine Deane is walking through serial killer Carl Stargher’s zoo of female victims.

It harkens to one of many scenes in The Street of Crocodiles in which our hapless professor is walking the streets of his delusions attempting to find his way out of his self-imposed maze. He trips a switch which in turn triggers the unveiling of a series of observation rooms. In it, we see baby dolls rigged to varying torsos dancing or genuflecting (I haven’t quite figured out which one yet). The cracked skin of the broken females’ matches in painful hue to the cracks one would see in a neglected doll (perhaps, then, that’s what we can glean from Tarsem’s effort – the female as a plaything to be broken into and explored).

Beyond The Street of Crocodiles lay hints of genius that is in the same breath unsettling and erotic. It’s something that marks the work of Tarsem Singh almost identically. In this world where everything is circular, it makes sense that at some stage the freak and fantasy of stop-motion would find its way in the living circus. Tarsem and the Brothers Quay share a bond that goes far beyond the sameness of the Hollywood jungle. However, being the arrogant animals that we are, we prefer to think of ourselves as individuals, superior in one area or another, completely unique. When we find our twin, in our rage we wrest the likeness from every limb of his body until we can build something so distorted that it defies the idea that there could ever be sameness between us and another. So goes the work of Tarsem Singh. While still maintaining the same human element as the work of the Brothers Quay, there’s something precise and exacting about his work that elevates it to something that, while often times “mainstream”, we as a visually immature audience are incapable of digesting fully.

All respect to the Quay Brothers for their innovation, foresight, and unparalleled understanding of form and function. This twisted sister pair helped give Tarsem a light with which to see the beautiful monstrosities of the human mind.

I have a keen interest in all things that shed light and colour in this dark and, at times, uninspiring world. I love film, all film --ranging from Japanese and Korean horror, to nonsensical action films. The one qualification is that it must, must entertain me. As much as I love watching film, I love even more to write about it. Right now, I get my jabberjaw jollies writing for Theatrical costumes. If you want to give me a buzz, I can be reached at cmlewhite at gmail [dot] com.

The Tragic Brilliance of Sylvain Chomet

(Cinemascope thanks guest contributor Ms. Camiele White for her latest contribution. This wonderful article is on iconoclastic French filmmaker & artist Sylvain Chomet and his irreverent body of work. More details on Ms. White may be found below the post)

Once upon a time in the mind of a poet, there was a small, dimly lit cottage. In this cottage lived a brain, two narrow eyes, a grinning mouth, and two crooked hands. The brain, the two narrow eyes, the grinning mouth, and the two crooked hands were sitting around the table for tea. While the tea was being prepared, there came a knock at the door. The crooked hands opened the door. At the opening stood a figure draped in a silk, black cloak and wearing silk, black gloves. Without saying a word, the cloaked figure walked into the room and made itself comfortable at the small wooden table. The brain began to shudder; the two narrow eyes became even narrower; the grinning mouth grimaced. The crooked hands, however, rested on the table, fingers interlaced, and waited. The cloaked figure pushed forward a small gilded chest, encrusted with ruby rose petals. On the top of the chest was inscribed the words: Offer me your most prized possession and I shall give you a special treasure.

Sylvain Chomet has created some of the most tragic, elegant, twisted stories in film history. Though his career has tumultuous, it would be irresponsible for any animator worth his salt to deny the sheer potency of the man’s genius. The above story seems to me a fable of talents. Is it the mind, the eyes, the mouth, or the hands that makes a man truly a master of his craft?

As far as artists go, Sylvain Chomet wasn’t any different than most students who want to make their mark on the world. He started in ordinary fashion – raised in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, near Paris, he attended a high school for the arts and published his first comic in 1986, four years after his graduation from high school. As many up-and-coming artists with an eye for the extraordinary (despite their surroundings), he moved to London to fulfil his destiny as an animator at the Richard Purdum studio.

The brain gave up its home in order to receive inspiration. In 1996, Chomet completed work on his first short film, La Vieille Dame et les pigeons. This is the tragic tale of a starving beat cop in Paris. He spends the day trudging through parks until he comes across a parade of corpulent pigeons. He finds out that these obese birds are being fed the most delectable delights that a French patisserie has to offer. While he goes home to a half nibbled sardine, these dirty birds are happier than pigs in shit, eating foods he can only imagine. He concocts a plan to infiltrate the woman’s home and eat like a king. He fashions himself an oversized pigeon costume, head complete with a trapdoor mouth, and follows the woman to her flat – full of doilies, heirlooms, and albums full of pictures of...pigeons? Never mind, he’s only interested in her refrigerator. And what a feast he encounters: sweets, meats, and all the luscious treats his heart desires. Soon he begins to show signs of his overindulgence. On Christmas Eve, our robust copper finds himself in a drunken stupor at la vieille dame’s flat. He sputters and wobbles about until he stumbles upon a room leading out from her kitchen. He finds her sharpening oversized gardening clippers and also discovers he isn’t the first to try this stunt of dressing up as an animal --as a fat man dressed in a cat costume also partakes in the butter and chocolate la vieille dame offers. Once discovered, the old woman is after the officer with her sharpened hedge clippers and traps him atop a cabinet next to her top floor window. In an attempt to escape, he wobbles, topples, and plummets five stories to the concrete below. Fade to black...

The two narrow eyes gave up friendship in order to receive vision. In 2003, Chomet released his first full length feature, Les Triplettes de Belleville. As a true masterpiece of subtle grotesqueness, the film is a marvel. We’re transported to the fictional American city of Belleville – a pisstake on New York City. We’re first introduced to the svelte Triplets singing in front of a packed house of oversized Americans. The story then fast forwards to the future where a grandmother and her grandson are watching this old black and white clip. Grandma notices her grandson is unhappy and soon discovers his love of cycling --perhaps a lingering memory from parents he never really knew. She buys him a used tricycle, thus beginning his obsession with Le Tour de France. When the grandson is all grown up and competing in the race, he becomes the victim of a betting scam in which bikers are kidnapped and forced to race non-stop on a makeshift bike track in front of mobsters betting on who will win the endless marathon. The film takes us through Grandma’s search for her grandson where she, and her corpulent puppy, Bruno, meet the illustrious Triplets one night in an alley. They devise a plan to rescue her grandson, infiltrating the mob headquarters and taking her grandson back. Along the way, the audience experiences twisted animation, surprising sound effects, and Chomet’s warped sense of humour. However, his notoriety came at a cost. Upon release of this cinematic masterpiece, his long time collaborator, Nicolas de Crécy accused Chomet of plagiarising his graphic novel Le Bibendum Celeste. At this turn of events, Chomet’s credibility was tarnished.

The grinning mouth gave up laughter in order to produce silence. It’s around the controversy surrounding Les Triplettes de Belleville that Chomet’s relationship with the film industry became complicated (to put it mildly). Three films that were intended to be released three years ago had been either stalled or scrapped entirely. In 2005, he was set to release a film tentatively titled Barbacoa. Production was halted because of lack of funding. Chomet had the desire to produce animating talent from his school of artistic philosophy, as he found most animators from the British ideology underwhelming. The Django Films studio was set up in Edinburgh, Scotland with the intention of employing 250 artists and producing incredible animation. Beset with early funding problems (the problems cited as holding back production of the first animated film to come from the studio, Barbacoa), and lacking the funding necessary to create what was to be dubbed “the Scottish Simpsons”, the studio was shut down. To top of a very turbulent seven years following his greatest cinematic success, Les Triplettes, his image was further smeared in 2008 by very public attacks on his character when he was fired as director of The Tale of Despereaux by the film’s producer, Gary Ross. Chomet was later cited as saying he “hated the creative environment”.

The two crooked hands gave up the company of the cloaked figure for the traits the others already possessed. In 2010, Chomet released L’Illusioniste, a film based on a script by Jacques Tati. The film is a love note from a father to his estranged daughter and is more traditionally animated than Chomet’s previous endeavours. Though its release was stalled for three years, the film is still heralded as a masterpiece, on par with some of the cinematic brilliance of his previous work. This was the Sylvain Chomet that everyone had come to adore and fear --a mind as brilliant as it was twisted and disturbed.

Our fable ends with the cloaked figure leaving the small cottage, all the gifts handed out. The brain, who could never return to his home, found his thoughts cluttered. The narrow eyes, lonely and depressed, saw muddled visions dance before them. The grinning mouth never laughed again, only being able to stay silent. The two crooked hands, patient and crafting, discovered that everyone else had given up their happiness in order to be given gifts they’d already possessed. The hands took these, his new gifts of wit, sight, and laughter, and created what amounted to the most marvellous masterpieces birthed from a poet and a con artist: two professions that tend to go hand in gnarled hand.

The moral: be wise enough to know your own inspiration; be shrewd enough to see your own vision; laugh as though the world is full of silence; and let your hands be patient enough to create.

There is pure beauty and raw sex in everything.

I have a keen interest in all things that shed light and colour in this dark and, at times, uninspiring world. I love film, all film --ranging from Japanese and Korean horror, to nonsensical action films. The one qualification is that it must, must entertain me. As much as I love watching film, I love even more to write about it. Right now, I get my jabberjaw jollies writing about Halloween costumes. If you want to give me a buzz, I can be reached at cmlewhite at gmail [dot] com.

Cinema Art: The Film Tapestry of Guillermo del Toro

(Cinemascope welcomes aboard guest contributor Ms. Camiele White, and thanks her for this wonderful writeup on visionary Mexican filmmaker Guilermo del Toro and his excellent body of works. More details on Ms. White may be found below the post)

Whilst listening to the ethereal voice of Björk, it occurred to me that those maestros of their craft have secured their indelible placements atop the rabble by finding the perfect balance of art, audacity, and genius. It is this balance that many have failed to attain in a desperate attempt to simply be taken seriously. Björk, along with a select class of musicians, artists, and filmmakers, has gone beyond the need to be validated in her aims. She has managed to seek the respect of the very gods and muses that created the lens through which humanity seeks to view the complexity of their lives.

In like fashion, Guillermo del Toro has managed to step beyond the scope of what is profitable and given voice and shape to the intangibly abstract idea of beauty. Though aesthetics seem to govern the manner in which we as humans gauge the truly magnificent, del Toro has, in as few as 20 years, given the seemingly magnificent a touch of pure beauty.

Del Toro’s kaleidoscope of colour and shade have shaken the mainstream film industry, so much so that the resulting images are nothing short of psychedelic palindromes – as gorgeous and frightening from the beginning as they are at the end. It’s one thing to sing the praises of a genius, it’s quite another to dare to delve deeper into his work to puzzle out the seemingly unbelievable and find that beauty of this magnitude is certainly accessible through the eyes of mere mortals.

This, my dear hearts, is what I will attempt to do right now.

Beginning with his own special effects company in Guadalajara, Mexico, Guillermo del Toro sought to bring maturity to the explosions and larger than life action sequences that were prevalent in the late 80s and 90s. Stemming from his love of the fantastic, del Toro aimed for a more innovative approach to storytelling that, while creating an entirely new perspective on the sensational, borrowed from the basic principles of storytelling: excitement, exploration, and imagination.

Doña Herlinda y su Hijo

Regarding his producing début, it can be said del Toro definitely had an eye for the emotional. Doña Herlinda y su Hijo is a film that delves into the story of two male lovers --Mancho and Rodolfo-- living under the roof of the latter’s mother. Though taboo for the time, 1986, it’s obvious that del Toro’s craft for detail and the personal are in the developing stages. It’s no great film by any means; however, del Toro knew how to give the story depth --even if the characters were lacking in it-- and give the audience a sense of connection within the confines of the film.

Cronos

This being del Toro’s first big-budget feature, I was surprised at the maturity and complexity that he was able to manifest with his take on the classic vampire story. Stemming from the loss of his grandfather, del Toro managed to create a film that not only expanded the very understanding of the vampire genre, but also managed to give even the soulless tenderness. As writer, director, and DP, del Toro already showed signs of being completely dedicated to the craft of making the fantastic equally gorgeous. Already one is able to glean del Toro’s profound understanding of lighting and shadow --pre-El Espinazo del Diablo, I truly understood that his attention to detail and adoration of ominous shadow is as much a part of the plot and story as the characters and the script. Telling the story of an antique shop owner’s encounter with an ancient machine known as the Cronos, this film proved to be one of the most promising debuts from any up-and-coming director/producer. It was a film of great promise, elegance, and courage (del Toro’s love of the unknown even extended to a relatively unknown American actor named Ron Pearlman). It’s del Toro’s fascination with intimacy that gives Cronos its deliberate staging and lighting, forcing the audience closer and closer to the moments in between the drama --the space in which breath is simply breath. It’s from this film that I began to truly see the intention of the man who would be considered an artisan among artists.

El Espinazo del Diablo

At this juncture in del Toro’s career, we begin to see the transformation from the simply entertaining to the challenging. He begs a very distinct question: how do you exploit the base fears of humanity while giving the wicked beauty? El Espinazo del Diablo manages to do just that. It was his intention to explore a very primal fear within all of us --the fear of decay of the flesh. By truly making the flesh a canvas for the spectacular beauty hidden within nature, he was not only able to create a film thick with eerie humanity, but also give the ghost in the ghost story a paintbrush by which he could communicate with the audience. One of a series of films that del Toro set during the Spanish Civil War, El Espinazo tells the story of a young boy named Carlos living in an orphanage until his father returns from conflict. Throughout the film, Carlos is visited by the spirit of an orphan murdered during his stay. Santi, our wandering spirit, reaches out to Carlos in order to gain closure to his afterlife. What is most apparent in this film is that del Toro understands that the psyche of the child is more willingly complex than an adult’s, and therefore creates richer labyrinths through which the audience must navigate in order to come to peace with their own mortality. Within the context of exploring primal fear, del Toro also further enhances natural beauty using marvellous lighting and shocking shadow rendering.

Blade II

The second in the popular Blade franchise, this film blended del Toro’s fascination with environment with the universal love of mystic action. Never mind the modern understanding of vampires, Blade had always been a mature and oddly realistic rendering of the genre. What’s so striking about the sequel is that, while the story wasn’t mind blowing, the visuals were unconscionably stunning. The most interesting aspect of the film was del Toro’s strategic placement of light versus movement. The silhouette became a palette of its own, a splendid twist on gravity --that which pulls also pushes. The lighting pulls the movement while the movement pushes the viewer’s eye to expand its scope and breathe in the expansiveness of each frame. His spatial perfection is worthy to be praised as something undeniably unique even in a genre that may have at that point been spreading itself thin.

El Laberinto del Fauno

Perhaps the most definitive mark of one’s genius is his ability to follow a formula without becoming at all formulaic. In the hands of lesser men this is an all but impossible feat. Very few have found a way to manage the nuances of their style and capitalise on them in such a way that they remain innovative. Del Toro has redefined himself by taking the helm in every respect and giving his audience the full breadth and scope of his imagination. El Laberinto del Fauno presented del Toro to the world as a maven of the craft. Writing, directing, and producing the film allowed him the opportunity to take his fantasy to the pinnacle and broaden the glory of phantasmagoria with his own interpretation of the child psychology. El Laberinto is again set in the era of Spain’s civil war. It follows the adventures of Ofelia while exploring the darkness that envelopes a country and a family in the clutches of a tyrant. El Fauno introduces Ofelia to the wonder of her imaginary kingdom, promising Her Highness the richness of her mystical land as well as her inheritance as the true heir to said kingdom. Throughout the film, I was spellbound by how utterly hypnotic every aspect seemed. I was drawn into the story of Ofelia’s desire to give life to the death surrounding her. In the midst of the Spanish conflict, her mother is also expecting to give birth any moment and her father --the tyrannical Vidal-- is of the school of thinking that worships the heir to his estate and takes little heed to the whims and fancies of a young girl struggling with the destruction she’s forced to live through each and every day. However, the most inspiring aspect of the film was del Toro’s unrelenting sense of the fantastic. Through his script he was able to mould a mature and complicated story, but with his direction and production he wove complex tapestries of environment and ambiance. It is this unrelenting sense of craft and pure beauty that makes El Laberinto del Fauno one of the most inspiring films of the last 20 or 30 years.

Splice

An artist is only as profound as his most recent work. Splice gave del Toro the license to explore sci-fi while maintaining a very human element that tends to go missing amongst the aliens and conspiracy theories. As with The Matrix 20 years before it, Splice was able to delve into the human psyche and produce something that explored our deepest fears, regrets, and grossest curiosities. What is it to want so desperately to love another that you’d go so far outside of the realm of morality and human decency to produce it? The primal question stems from the boundary between the moral and the socially revolutionary. Splice forced the viewer to find out if she could truly consider the fear of the unknown less intimidating than her internal sensitivity to what is essentially human. With del Toro’s production style, again you feel this internal struggle with each character. It’s his ability to tap into the genuinely human and explore the depths of that humanity that make this film much more than a scientific perspective of fiction. With each of his films there is great depth and truth.

Though Guillermo del Toro’s résumé reads like an expressionist comic book, it’s worthy of as much praise and adulation as can be mustered within the human spirit because it transcends the human spirit and gives the abstract form. It’s one thing to be in love with what you do, it’s quite another to give love to others through your craft. So, indeed, it was while listening to Björk that I began to write this blog. It’s also in the spirit of the album (Vespertine, should you be curious) that this blog was inspired. Consider it my love letter to uncorrupted art --that which embraces technique and produces something resembling the wings of a butterfly.

Article writer by day, renegade poet by night, Camiele White loves any and everything film. She chases only the original (or incredibly funny) and has been known to talk for hours about subjects that most people just don’t care about. Right now, she gets her jabberjaw jollies writing about costumes for Halloween. If you want to give her a buzz, she can be reached at cmlewhite at gmail [dot] com.