The Scariest Thing about Paranormal Activity

The scariest thing about Paranormal Activity is what it illuminates about normal activity. Yes, the audience screamed three times when I saw it – quite a reaction – but for the reflective viewer the really scary part comes later, when you realize that this movie could be about how into every relationship both partners bring their demons. Some are just more demonic than others.

The action is gritty and claustrophobic. The hand-held, wobbly camera angles (we saw this in Blair Witch as the reviewers will note) reminds us of our own home movies, the kind we used to make in the nineties before our phones became video cameras. This and the introductory text commentary on the screen and generally low production values put us into an amateur documentary mode which makes us feel that everything we are about to see is very real.

When you focus on two people in a relationship in a closed place for a period of time with very little distraction, except, of course, the major one, you begin to see things:

A relationship that seems simple and straightforward at first grows increasingly complex and troublesome over time. I don’t think you need extraordinary events like the ones depicted on this screen for this scary phenomenon to be believable.

What some might consider a typically male reaction to a situation stands out in greater relief as events progress. The male character wants to “solve the problem.” He enlists technology ranging from cameras and computers to a Ouija board. He rejects the opinions of “experts,” insisting on direct engagement. Naïve, well- intentioned and fearless, he turns the drama into a contest of egos with an unknown force.

At least that could be the position of what some might consider the usual female reaction to that male reaction. In other words, “he just doesn’t get it.” The female character is in tune with a reality of greater dimension than the one the male character sets out to conquer; in this film, that’s an understatement.

The contrast between these two views, forget male or female, and their inability to understand each other in everyday life is scary. There is something positive, charming and deeply American about attacking daunting problems with confidence and optimism, which we cannot give up without reducing our national character. At the same time we hope that such an approach would be informed by a reasonable though not paralyzing sense of limitations, otherwise the prospect of whatever we call success when the target is as large as a global financial crisis or a fourteenth-century conflict in a faraway country, our “success” will indeed be limited. That’s scary.

This is a sighting, not a review. It’s not about how good or bad the film is, but about what insights we can draw from it. Imagine a time before photography when the only images of ourselves were paintings and sculptures; the static visual arts of that time had great power, inconceivable to us who peruse photos on Facebook every day. Go back beyond the cave paintings to the constellations; left on their own, the earliest stargazers searched for meaning and human patterns in the night sky. Our images are on electronic screens; think of these as raw materials. They reflect our preoccupations, values, anxieties, hopes to a degree that those who process them – producers and directors – may not even be aware.

So, do we feel today increasingly preoccupied with forces that operate mysteriously in ways that we cannot understand or control? What do you think?

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A Serious Man: The Coen Brothers Get Serious

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Uz is not Oz, but then Oz was not Oz either, which is a very brief description of the Coen brothers’ newest movie, possibly the most serious comedy ever written for the screen.

Uz was the land inhabited by Job of biblical fame, where every manner of misfortune was visited on a just man. And Oz was, well you know… the promised land where no promise is kept, and pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

I heard an astonishing radio interview of an American GI who had just returned from tours in Afghanistan to find himself unable to pay the mortgage on his house. He complained about the stress. When asked to compare it to dodging bullets, he said it was much more stressful, because he knew what to do in the field.

It seems wrong to minimize life-threatening situations by putting them in the same paragraph with domestic challenges, but there you are.

Every movie deserves its time, and now we have this one.

None of the main actors is recognizable, which makes for easy identification for the audience. Only Adam Arkin and Richard Kind, who plays Uncle Arthur, do we know from other roles. Michael Stuhlbarg does such a great job as the central protagonist that throughout his trials and tribulations, we keep wondering where else have I seen this guy.

Thousands of reviewers will focus on the Job reference and spend time telling us that the Coen brothers grew up in an intensely Jewish community in the Midwest. Every realistic story about social interaction must plunge into a world, with believable specifics, and this happens to be one the Coen brothers know very well (but they’ve already shown us so many others). More important than the colorful language (the website for A Serious Man includes a Yiddish glossary), is the way this particular world outlook and this film articulate simultaneous struggles: how to deal with the demands of the world while searching for meaning while trying to be a good man. This story is universal; it’s for everyone, especially in this country at this time.

The characters surrounding Larry Gopnik are as helpful to him as Job’s neighbors who do nothing more than blame him for his troubles. In the midst of all, Job cries out: “My days are swifter than a runner, they flee away.” See this movie.

The Weight of Water

I was driven back to The Weight of Water by the Hurt Locker, simply because, different as they are, they had the same director. I am as guilty as Rich in his exchange with Adaline when he expresses doubt that a woman would be capable of choosing an axe for a murder weapon. She responds with Lizzie Borden, and he responds that she was acquitted, and she responds yes, by a jury of men who could not conceive of a woman wielding an axe. I was first surprised that a woman had directed Hurt Locker, and then doubly surprised that she had also directed The Weight of Water, a film I had already seen three times. I went back for a fourth time.

This conversation between Rich, playing the brother of Thomas (Sean Penn), is light fare compared to the one between Adaline (played by Elizabeth Hurley) and Jean (Catherine McCormack), wife of the Sean Penn character. It is presumably about poetry (Thomas is a poet), but both women know it goes much deeper.

Early in the film, Thomas makes this comment: “Women’s motives are always more concealed.” I suppose those words could set off a raging debate, which I would not mind staging here if anyone has read this far.

This movie interleaves two stories better than any other I can remember. Jean is a photographer commissioned by a magazine to take pictures of the scene of an unsolved crime that took place more than a hundred years ago. Like many journalistic types in many movies she involves too much of herself in the reporting, and the juxtaposition of the past and her present simultaneously illuminate and destroy each other.

There is only one word for how the action reveals the truth – visceral.