Seeing Belief: a visual aid to a brilliant book

There’s a moment in Alex Gibney’s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Disbelief when Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigate journalist who authored Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Disbelief, explains, “My goal wasn’t to write an exposé. It was simply to understand Scientology, to understand what people get out of it, you know, why do they go into it in the first place.” That’s pretty much the difference between Gibney and Wright, between this new HBO documentary and Wright’s masterfully calibrated, sensitive and expansive 2013 book: Gibney’s in it for the exposé. His approach is far more blunt than Wright’s. Which, it turns out, is just fine, because the documentary, though its title is inexplicably foreshortened, forms a welcome audio-visual aid to the book, and because, frankly, there is sooooo much to expose. 

Mr. Hubbard

Where to begin? I’d suggest you begin with the book, of course, which wasn’t released in Canada (I ordered mine from the US), but perhaps the reverse will work just as well: think of the doc as a teaser. The basic trajectory of doc and book are in any case the same, using the highly publicized 2011 resignation of Canadian filmmaker Paul Haggis from the Church of Scientology as a framing device, tracing the batshit crazy life of galactically prolific science fiction writer and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and examining the transformation Scientology undertook when Hubbard died and an equally crazy if less creepily charismatic man named David Miscavige took the celestial reigns and conquered the Internal Revenue Service, who has been demanding millions from Scientology and finally had to cry uncle when Scientology finally managed to get classified as a religion, thus apprehending their financial holy grail: tax exemption! Along the way we hear testimonies from various former Scientologists, such as actor Jason Beghe, John Travolta’s liaison Sylvia “Spanky” Taylor, and Mark Rathbun and Mike Rinder, who both worked their way to Scientology’s upper echelons. They confirm every litigious thing you’ve ever heard about Scientology, the kidnapping and child labour, the coercion and torture, the billion-year contracts and other elements of the Church’s risible mythos. Along the way we also, through archival footage, meet a gentleman by the name of Tom Cruise, the all-powerful evil robot with the eerily strained laughter, who, after shedding his infidel spouse Nicole Kidman, became Scientology’s favourite son and reaped all the benefits. 

Mr. Haggis

Gibney makes several problematic choices in how he assembles the material, a fairly obvious example is the way he’ll make a hard cut from Miscavige giving a dumb-sounding speech at some expensively tacky Scientology event to an audience bursting into applause, creating a relationship between what’s said and its response that may not represent what really happened. Gibney focuses almost exclusively on the most sensationalistic incidents reported in Wright’s book—though there are so many jaw-dropping stories to choose from that those hungry for dirt will still find their appetites sated should they read it. You won’t leave Going Clear feeling any lack of outrage, but you may, alas, feel slighted with regards to fascination. Gibney shows less interest in the allure of Scientology holds for so many perfectly intelligent, credible, ambitious people, something Wright illuminated beautifully and respectfully. In short: see Going Clear, but also read Going Clear. There’s a far more complex—if no less damning—story to be found here. 

          

Wayward paths to devotion

JB's a bad blogger! It's true, I have been neglectful of late with the posts. Genuine busyness and occasional cynicism are my only excuses. I will heretofore attempt to make amends, dear readers. (That was plural, which implies my cheerful assumption that you are more than one in number.) Now that we are in the hazy hot days of summer, let us turn our attention to winter... monochromatic winter! And Poland. And nuns...

Ida follows a young orphan raised in a convent who, on the verge of taking her vows, learns that she has an aunt living in a nearby city. The orphan shows no curiosity but her Mother Superior obliges her to visit this aunt before devoting her life to Christ. The orphan’s name is Anna, but upon meeting Aunt Wanda, a former state prosecutor, Anna learns that her real name is Ida, and, what’s more, that she’s Jewish. A revelation under any circumstance—especially if you’re about to become a nun!—but this is Poland, 1962, where being the orphaned daughter of Jews automatically supposes a link one to the single greatest atrocity of the 20^th century. Ida’s parents disappeared during the war, and hardboiled Wanda has just enough information and just enough sympathy for her reticent niece to initiate what will become something of a road movie and something of a detective story, a journey to unearth the truth about Ida’s parents.

Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski (Last Resort, My Summer of Love) and written by Pawlikowski and British playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Ida, clocking in at a trim yet unhurried 80 minutes, unfolds in the exquisite, captivating manner of a precisely sculpted novella. Every scene is infused with quiet mystery, yet in hindsight every moment is essential. Credit for the mystery and compaction both should be divided between numerous artists, of which I’ll name just a few. Ida is played by Agata Trzebuchowska, Wanda by Agata Kulesza. With her opaque, liquid eyes refusing entry, that chin dimple like the mark of some chosen one, and those wide, childlike planes of her face always catching the ashen winter light, Trzebuchowska is a presence at once luminous and demure. Kulesza conveys a wizened weariness that gradually shifts from sly cynicism toward something more heartbreaking. Ida and “Red Wanda” make a fascinatingly idiosyncratic pair, one a genuine innocent protected from earthly vice by her stoicism and nun’s habit, the other a lonely, cold-eyed if still seductive woman somewhere on the far side of middle-age who smokes too much, drinks too much, and sleeps with men out of habit—a character made by complicated by her past participation in the 1950s show trials that brought opponents of socialism to their knees.

Confined—and liberated too—by the boxy, Academy ratio frame, Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski’s stunning silvery black and white cinematography frequently places the characters at the bottom of the image, leaving space overhead for architecture, freshly dug earth or the heavens to loom like some elusive god, uncertain future or harrowing family legacy. Before it even begins Wanda teasingly warns that their journey might end with Ida discovering that there is no God. And indeed, as this story makes its serpentine way there are moments when faith seems in question and unholy new routes open themselves for Ida. Whatever routes she follows, whatever distance she travels, there is however always a sense that Ida is about wayward paths to devotion. And to self-realization, for this young orphan, and for a country still reeling from one trauma and deep in the grips of another.

           

If only I could make it better with just my mind

The sheer existence of this third adaptation of Stephen King’s debut novel is a baffling phenomenon—as difficult to explain as the blood that's somehow drawn from a porcelain Jesus by the titular telekinetic teen. The film’s being hyped as more faithful to the source material, as though that meant anything. King himself stated his own confusion as to why Screen Gems/MGM would pursue the project when the original Brian De Palma-directed Carrie (1976), featuring a genius lead performance from Sissy Spacek, was so good. Conceding that it would at least be fun to cast, King suggested Lindsay Lohan as Carrie. Which would be ridiculous. But trust me, ridiculous would be vastly preferable to this new Carrie, which is dull and pointless.

Shorting out fluorescents and exploding her high school principal’s water cooler within the first ten minutes, our new Carrie (Chloë Grace Moretz) displays her special abilities—spurred by her menstrual cycle’s belated inauguration—early and flamboyantly. Relentlessly teased by her peers and chastised daily by her mentally ill religious zealot mother (Julianne Moore), Carrie is a hapless outcast even in her own home. As with old Carrie, new Carrie tracks its heroine’s fleeting illusion of social acceptance, public humiliation and eventual climatic vengeance. Strangely, while new Carrie more or less follows the same narrative trajectory as old Carrie, its ostensible heroine barely registers as a presence; this time around, it seems like Sue (Gabriella Wilde)—the girl who feels bad and convinces her boyfriend to take Carrie to the prom as repentance—is actually the protagonist. Too bad Sue is also boring.

This is partly due to the miscasting of Moretz, who seems unable to navigate Carrie’s emotional journey. She offers the same slack-jawed, wounded expression in scene after scene, switching to an unconvincing demented smile during her reign of terror. Where Spacek’s Carrie was a tormented, naïve yet intelligent girl on the cusp of womanly self-actualization, Moretz’s Carrie reads as mere victim, so withdrawn as to be opaque and nearly impossible to empathize with. Butt empathy she gets, from boring Sue, from Billy (Alex Russell), Sue’s boyfriend, and from Miss Desjardin (Judy Greer), the gym teacher. The performances from Russell, whose posturing is endearingly hilarious, and Greer, who deftly plays her ever scene for laughs, are easily the best things in the movie. The scene where Billy teaches Carrie to slow-dance is sweet.

There are reasons why a 21st century Carrie could have been relevant, such as the story’s potential engagement with rising concerns over bullying, especially via the internet, or Carrie’s mom’s alliance with the religious right. But, aside from an video of a terrified Carrie being uploaded onto YouTube—an act of very little consequence to the story—new Carrie might as well have been set in 1976. Its paucity of fresh ideas is kind of astounding, as is the absence of any envelope-pushing for a young audience accustomed to more gore and degradation. (No, you won’t see Moretz’s “dirty pillows.”) Spacek’s Carrie was far scarier and De Palma’s version was far more sensationalistic and sexualized, right down to the all-but-explicit homosexuality of the gym teacher. Even the special effects in old Carrie are more effective than the limpid, ultra-phony CG on display here. Watching so much lazy craft on display here—the uninspired coverage, the cuts that don’t match—you get the impression that director Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry, Stop-Loss) just gave up. The film was originally slated for a March release and the delay seems to have been prompted by reshoots to make the final result even stupider. As in art, so in life: Pierce got bullied. And now everybody has to pay.  

              

Sex and the synthetic girl(s)

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Haunted housework

Ed Warren was the only non-ordained demonologist recognized by the Vatican. His wife Lorraine claims to be clairvoyant. The couple founded the New England Society for Psychic Research in 1952 and made a career out of conducting investigations into—and, when required, interventions with—the paranormal. If their names ring a bell, however faintly, it’s probably on account of their most famous case, one involving a house in Amityville, Long Island, the subject of a movie I used to sneak behind my parents’ couch to watch late at night when I was a child and it seemed to be on TV all the time.

The Conjuring, on which Lorraine Warren served as consultant, renders another of their remarkable cases into a “based on real events” horror film. To what degree those real events have been exaggerated or wholly invented, either by the Warrens or by screenwriters Chad and Carey Hayes, is hard to say. There were times in the second half of The Conjuring where I felt that more restraint would have gone a long way toward helping me suspend my disbelief. Still, the film, directed by James Wan, is easily one of the most effective entries into the haunted house subgenre in years.

The Conjuring takes place on Rhode Island in 1971. The Warrens are played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, costumed to resemble Puritans making some lame attempt to look semi-hip. Their performances exude respect for the Warrens and their claims, though Wilson’s willingness to let Ed come off as something of a well-meaning square imbues the role with some pleasing texture. The Warrens’ services are solicited by Carolyn (Lili Taylor) and Roger Perron (Ron Livingston), a working-class couple who recently moved into an enormous bargain-priced farmhouse with their four rambunctious daughters. The house needs many repairs, but such tactile concerns are quickly dwarfed by inexplicable rancid odours, pictures that keep falling off the walls, and clocks that keep stopping at 3.07 a.m. Carolyn starts developing enormous bruises she can’t account for and one of the girls sees a figure standing behind her bedroom door declaring that it wants her family dead. For a while, at least some of these unnerving developments could be regarded as manifestations of the sorts of anxieties any family might feel when relocating to a secluded place and starting a new life without much financial security. Like so many ghost stories, The Conjuring plays as a cautionary tale about dubious real estate investments.

Of course, the creepy incidents accumulate well past the point of ambiguity, and things get bad enough for the Warrens to call in an exorcist. But even as The Conjuring starts to exhibit full-on supernatural phenomena, Wan wisely measures the atmospherics. In keeping with the period, the film derives a certain flavor from horror films of the ’70s, in its use of devices such as ostentatious push-ins, for example—though an incredibly elaborate follow-shot feels very much of this century. There’s a clever POV shot taken from under a bed, and a sequence in the Perrons’ basement that shrewdly limits the soundtrack to only what is picked up by Ed’s microphone. Wan’s mature style (as opposed to the style employed in films like Saw) is put to much better use here than it was in the overrated, undercooked and fussily designed Insidious, and thanks to Taylor especially—who really gets put through the ringer—the film’s engagement is sustained to a substantial degree on account of the cast, which is not a claim most contemporary horror films, so often dependent on tired tropes and boo moments, can make.     

                 

A Life like no other

Though he was by this point considered washed up by many of his fellow Japanese, the 1950s saw the flowering of director Kenji Mizoguchi’s finest—and final—period. The last four years of Mizoguchi’s life—he would die in 1956, at age 58—seemed to yield one masterpiece after another, earning him belated international acclaim and epitomizing a certain idea of late style. These last films—most notably The Life of Oharu (1952), Ugetsu (1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954)—were less formally severe than some of his earlier work. This shift reflected not a lack of rigour but rather the exact opposite: an artistic maturity, a master’s confidence that every moment in a film has its own special requirements that trump the author’s urge to impart a signature. Criterion has just released a deluxe edition of The Life of Oharu on DVD and Blu-ray, and this heartbreaking, unspeakably beautiful, cool yet compassionate picaresque about the life of a “fallen woman” in 17^th century Japan gives us an opportunity to observe Mizoguchi at his very best.

With the very first image, already there is movement: the camera follows Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka) as she walks through the crepuscular outskirts of Kyoto, one of several middle-aged prostitutes attempting to procure clients. The film is based on Ihara Saikaku’s 17^th century novel The Life of an Amorous Woman, which is narrated by an unnamed protagonist. In Mizoguchi’s radically personal re-envisioning—even the title is revisionist: the protagonist has a name—there is no narrator’s voice-over, yet, even though the camera is so often at some distance from the protagonist, every moment of the film feels aligned to her perspective. In the opening scenes Oharu enters a temple—spiritual wisdom being a crucial theme in Mizoguchi’s revisionism—in which countless statues gaze down upon Oharu like spectators in bleachers. Oharu imagines that the face of one of these statues is a face from her past, and the past then comes flooding back: in her youth she was a lady at court, but a humble retainer (Toshiro Mifune) declares his love for her with disarming sincerity. Oharu can’t help but respond to this love, and this response marks the beginning of a string of tragic misfortunes that will come to define Oharu’s life, which is maimed ceaselessly by cruelty and patriarchal oppression, leading to loss, humiliation and separation from loved ones. (Lars Von Trier must surely be a fan—but Mizoguchi is so much more sympathetic to his heroines.)

With its gorgeous, often gloomy imagery and immaculate gliding camera, The Life of Oharu exudes a complex but utterly perfect fusion of form and content. Eschewing close-ups altogether, Mizoguchi’s camera observes devastating emotions from an unusual distance, but this approach doesn’t muffle emotion—it heightens it, give it space to breathe, gives us space to enter into the feeling of the scene, and allows the emotion to spill out from the characters and spread out into the landscape. I worry that readers unfamiliar with Mizoguchi may be turned off by what might sound like the film’s almost perversely insistent sadness, but that sadness is balanced by an equally insistent beauty, and because Oharu’s story is so long, because Mizoguchi follows her with such solemn devotion, there is in the film’s unforgettable final spectral scene a sense of genuine transcendence. Oharu’s life is brims with grief, but she abides, as does Mizoguchi. Someone is watching, telling her story, and the telling itself, so lyrical and embracing, brings consolation.