Metro Manila (Sean Ellis, UK | Philippines, 2013)

The transformation in form and twist in the tale of Metro Manila – no matter how effective – may tempt us to believe we have encountered betrayal and excess. Oscar, Mai and their children escape the toil of the rice terraces in Benguet province for the big city – and things go from bad to worse. Their exodus is a consequence of a rural mafia controlling, at the sharp-end, the economics of the farmers’ market. Obliged to sell the grown, harvested and husked rice at a reduced rate (now two centavos a pound down from ten the year before) it becomes clear the Ramirez family will not be able to afford seed for the next season. In Manila, the family witness their remaining savings plundered by con-artists, lose their accommodation, and must walk dangerous streets, tipping up in the slum. Oscar is ripped off and abandoned after a day’s work shifting rubble; Mai lands a job as a dancer and hostess at Charlie’s, the children hanging out backstage while mummy grinds down on Euro-detritus with Yankee dollars for G-strings (…‘smile’). Such narration, filmed hand-held in close-up down on the streets, has a social-realist feel. The milieu, revealed through the trials of the family, is proven time and time again as corrupt, as exploitative, as fundamentally uncaring. Yet, as Steve Rose identifies, ‘the tide starts to turn when husband Oscar lands a job with a security-van company, a development that slowly, stealthily leads the story out of social drama territory and into a crime-thriller realm’ (Rose, The Guardian, 19/09/13). We move, in this way, from eternal misery and social-realism to classical-realism and overcoming, toward a narration with gangsters, guns, and a heist, where Oscar’s heroic sacrifice allows Mai and their children to flee Manila with a tasty amount of pesos. And it is such a transformation in form that tempts us to see a betrayal, a turning away from the social-realist political stance which first engendered the story.

Samantha Lay has outlined some of the essential features of social-realism, which always depend upon – it seems – an oppositional relationship with classical-realist structures. For example, while in mainstream cinema ‘the monster is killed, the criminal is caught or gets his or her comeuppance, mistaken identities are unravelled, the romantic couple are united, and so on,’ social realism has ‘something to say about “things as they really are”’ (Lay, 2002:20). Mainstream cinema ‘merely entertain[s]’ creating ‘more or less stable resolutions.’ Social-realism, cannot discover such triumphs in the real world, it ‘resists resolutions and the future is rarely bright’ (Lay, 2002:21). For Sophie Monks Kaufman the transformation in forms in Metro Manila is thus a betrayal, Ellis ‘doesn’t give Mai's plight the screen time to emerge as she (and the social realism her presence represents) is sidelined by the emerging thriller driven by Oscar's job as an armoured truck driver’ (Monks Kaufman, Little White Lies, 2013). Yet perhaps there is another way to look at Metro Manila. The movie begins in social-realist mode, with the family leaving the country for the city, and this mode extends well into the urban environment. Eventually, however, there is a divergence. Oscar’s narration increasing moves into heist movie territory, as Mai and her children continue the social-realist line. Oscar’s sacrifice terminates his trajectory along the classical-realist line. But through his sacrifice, Mai can abandon social-realist suffering, and move toward a classical-realist resolution. Now rich, no longer having to return to Charlie’s, she and the children can escape the city. Metro Manila, in other words, does not simply transform from social-realism into classical-realism, but rather – in the middle section of the film – sets up a discourse between the two forms. It is such a dialogue that we can explore through the Deleuzian cinematic concept of ... the limit of all action-images.

To read the full exploration of Metro Manila through the Deleuze's sign of the 'limit of the action-image ,' see Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images...

Monsters (Gareth Edwards, UK, 2010)

Who are the monsters? This is the question for director Gareth Edwards: the aliens, or humanity? NASA once sent a probe to investigate the possibility of extra-terrestrial life in the far reaches of the solar system. Six years ago, upon its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, the probe crash landed in the jungles of northern Mexico. In so doing, an alien species was let loose upon the planet. Growing from wee fungus pods into massive squid-like beasts, a vast area of the border between the USA and Mexico is now known as the Infected Zone. At the South American end, a soaring metal fence cuts across the continent; while a reinforced concrete dam divides the zone from humanity at the US border. Inside, the area has been abandoned by humanity. Cities, towns, villages have been reclaimed by jungle, now the home of the alien horde. And with each passing year – as the beasts breed and their population surges – the threat of a breaching of the boundaries becomes an ever more likely event. Accordingly, US and Mexican planes traverse the skies above the zone, laying down poison into the jungles below, in what is increasingly being seen as a futile attempt to corral the animals. Enter Scoot and Whitney: he a photojournalist who will do just about anything to hit the front page; she the daughter of the owner of Scoot’s US based newspaper. Caught up in the evacuation of Mexico where the containment barrier is first breeched, their journey takes them into the heart of darkness and out the other side: from San Jose through the Infected Zone and – after a number of close encounters with the alien beings – into the heartland of Texas. Holed up at a deserted service station awaiting transport home, they now believe themselves safe. However – just as in Mexico – the aliens overwhelm the defences. Scoot and Whitney are the first to witness aliens on US soil. Edwards plays out this scene perfectly – riffing off Jurassic Park (1993) and War of the Worlds (2005), Whitney hides beneath the counter of the shop as alien tentacles weave through the environment, searching out the nooks and crannies of the room. However – this attack is a ruse – the alien is seeking contact with its mate. Edwards creates a scene of incredible beauty as two of the aliens entwine, their tentacles enfolding tenderly, their bodies aflame with electricity, inner luminescence creating astonishing patterns in the night sky. Scoot looks on with wonder – then he and Whitney kiss for the first time.

Such a mirroring of humanity and the aliens has – in truth – been unfolding from the very beginning of the film. In the first instance, our heroes and the aliens are both adrift in the zone, in an unfamiliar environment they are not naturally disposed to. Each are attempting to survive the world which has been given to them. In the second instance, the aliens are under constant attack from the humans with their bombs and chemical weapons; while the humans are essentially prey to the alien predators. The environment describes a situation which devolves into a duel: aliens versus humanity. This mirroring – accordingly – creates a certain reciprocity. Thus the question at the heart of the film: who are the monsters in Monsters? Such a question is made possible through a cinematic process Deleuze will describe as the extreme limit of the large form action-image...

To read the full exploration of Monsters through the Deleuze's sign of 'the limit of the large form action-image,' see Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images...

Brooklyn's Finest (Antoine Fuqua, USA, 2009)

Three cops: Eddie, Tango, Sal. One will suffer a futile death. One will get what he truly deserves. One will – at the very end – redeem himself.

Eddie: Twenty-one years on the force. One week from retirement. His fellow officers won’t miss him when he finally walks out the door. A burn-out. Suicidal. Stopped caring about the job a long time ago. He just wants to get through these last five days as easy as he can. But the commander – twisting the knife – assigns Eddie, a rookie, as ride-along. Abandoning this new partner in a situation beyond his experience, he accidently kills a young kid. Tango: Deep undercover. As a gangster, a drug dealer. Except the role is becoming his life. He finds himself behaving like the people he has been assigned to bring down. This has taken its toll. His wife has left him. He’s done his time, he wants his promised promotion, he wants a desk job. One final task – take out the gang’s boss, Caz. Trouble is, Caz once saved Tango’s life. And he has more respect for Caz than he does for his chain of command. Sal: Married. With five kids. And twins on the way. The house is too crowded, old, falling to pieces, rot causing his wife breathing problems. Just needs to find the deposit for something better – for his family. Each attempt to raise some deposit fails – and ever more desperate, he uses his badge to break the law. Then Sal’s wife is hospitalised. Theft escalates to murder.

Brooklyn's Finest. Eddie, Tango, Sal – three cops in crisis, three cops walking the road to hell. One who’s lost it, one gone native, one turned killer. Three different characters exploring three different situations, three different stories with which director Antoine Fuqua creates a singular cinematic endeavour. From the very beginning, the film is composed of three isolated narrations – each of which is decomposed into sequences which intercut with one another; yet the film will continually resist bringing these three series into direct contact. It seems inevitable – from the very beginning – that the three narrations will somehow come together, dovetail in some pay-off. Indeed, the final scene appears – at first – to deliver upon such a promise. The three protagonists cross paths in one location, an inner city tower block. Yet this crossing of paths is fleeting, a ruse. Fuqua maintains the independence of each of the three lines of narration to the very end. We must therefore ask, what is the purpose of such a feint, and such separation?

Deleuze, in his taxonomy of cinema, describes a type of film at the extreme limit of the small form action-image...

To read the full exploration of Brooklyn's Finest through the Deleuze's sign of the 'extreme limit of the small form action-image,' see Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images...

Capitalism: A Love Story (Michael Moore, USA, 2009)

That Capitalism: A Love Story has been produced in the uber-capitalist nation-state par excellence is an achievement equalled only by its reception. It is being watched, and debated. The procedures of American capitalism are vividly dissected: kids in Pennsylvania sold to detention centres for profit… ‘dead peasant’ insurance taken out by corporations who can turn a tidy sum from the death of a worker… a coup d'état by the board of directors of Goldman Sachs at the US congress to bail out the banks in the wake of the economic crisis… home repossessions by the very banks the government has propped-up and the low-rent vulture-capitalists that sell on those homes for an instant return. The whole complex bloody machinery…

Yet nothing quite prepares you for the end of the film: ‘capitalism is an evil, and you can’t regulate evil. You have to eliminate it, and replace it with something that is good for all people.’ What needs to happen now for the United States of America, says director Michael Moore, is that capitalism needs to be replaced… with democracy.

On the one hand, a clear statement: capitalism is evil and must be replaced. On the other hand, what is to replace capitalism? Democracy? Wait a minute… hasn’t the USA always been democratic? That’s rather vague. Surely Moore wants to say – gulp – ‘socialism’? The alternatives explored in the film sound like socialism. The bit where he says ‘something that is good for all people’ sounds like socialism too. Yet Moore doesn’t come out and say it (and indeed, he is consistent in avoiding saying subsequently). Is this a failure of nerve? Many socialist reviewers, most of whom believe Moore to be one of the ‘good guys,’ think so. He is guilty of naïve tub thumping without clearly articulating the alternative; guilty of cowardice, of not being willing to speak out loud his socialist vision to the American people.

Perhaps, however, before jumping to these conclusions based upon what he has not said, we should explore what he does say? In order to do so, we can begin by thinking through the central problem of his concluding manifesto…

The central problem is this: capitalism is a political economic system while democracy is a political ideological system. Political ideology and political economy are linked, inextricably so in most cases, yet they remain different in kind. Thus the question arises… how can a political ideology replace a political economic model? Especially if the political system in question is already is in place and on the face of it the very condition of the existing economic model? Indeed, surely the economic system (capitalism) is one of the practical applications of the theoretical ideology (democracy)? Is Moore, in other words, guilty of ignoring the differences and interactions between political institutions (ideology and economics)… Let us first answer ‘yes’ and try and understand why this might be the strategy of the film.

Love stories, in American cinema, seem to require a series of assumptions. A man and woman meet, fall in love, pass through a series of trials and tribulations until the end of the film when the situation is resolved. This occurs through an invisible heterosexuality, the aspiration of a monogamous relationship, a bourgeois-esque setting and an overtly melodramatic realism. Most usually a happy ever after results… though, of course, that is the beauty of the end of the film, for while it resolves everything it does so by becoming timeless and unverifiable.

The crucial point about the love story of American cinema, however, is that it operates within a binary logic in order to describe the hopes and fears of the milieu. Gilles Deleuze, in his great cinematic taxonomy, offers us an insight into this kind of filmic organisation. He calls it the large form action-image and it obeys five laws. A general situation is established that will need to be resolved. The resolution of the situation can only occur through the actions of characters within the film. The action proceeds through a number of duels. These duels are a preparation, the limbering up of the characters to become equal to the situation they find themselves in. It is the final duel between the two main characters at the end of the film which resolves the situation.

In other words, this kind of action-image works through a formulaic simplification at the level of structure. Yet, it is this very procedure that gives the narrative its power. What is crucial is this: that while the focus is the great central duel between the lovers, there are lots of other duels ( with the rival, the mother-in-law, the job overseas, the play-station). However, all these duels are in the service of the great duel, which when it finally plays out resolves everything.

Is this not exactly what is happening in Capitalism: A Love Story? It is the 1980s. One of the lovers, the American people, is captivated by the promise of dosh by the delicious Regan (and – subsequently – the Bush double act). This rival will de defeated by Obama (as an embodiment of the constitution), who represents the true love of the American people… preceded by such figures as (a heavily revised) FDR.

Thus in suggesting the replacement of capitalism with democracy Moore is simplifying, obeying the tenants of the action-image. This kind of simplification is not a problem for Deleuze: ‘it is easy to make fun of Hollywood’s historical conceptions. It seems to us, on the contrary, that they bring together the most serious aspects of history as seen by the nineteenth century’ (C1:149). Don’t be fooled that this is a backhand compliment. It is not. Deleuze explores this claim through Nietzsche’s analysis of history. For Nietzsche there are three co-ordinates of what he calls universal history: the monumental, the antiquarian and the critical. The monumental looks at parallels between the present and the past, between civilisations, between great men (we see this in Moore’s comparisons of America with the USSR, Japan and Europe, as well as looking back to FDR). The antiquarian takes a past as hermetically sealed, creates origins which constitute the true traditions (here, for example, we return to the constitution). With the ethical conception of universal history, the monumental and antiquarian dovetail. As Deleuze puts it ‘the monumental and antiquarian conceptions of history would not come together so well without the ethical image which measures and organises them both’ (C1:150).

Quoting Cecil B. DeMille, Deleuze sees this as ‘a matter of Good and Evil’ (C1:151). Here ‘the… past must submit to trial, go to court, in order to disclose what it is that produces decadence and what it is that produces new life; what the ferments of decadence and the germ of new life are, the orgy and the sign of the cross, the omnipotence of the rich and the misery of the poor. A strong ethical judgement must condemn the injustice of ‘things,’ bring compassion, herald the new civilisation on the march, in short, constantly rediscover America…’ (C1:151). The battle must reduced to a binary of good and evil. Yet, in the final analysis, for Deleuze ‘the marvel is that, with all these limits… [the American cinema] has succeeded in putting forward a strong and coherent conception of universal history’ (C1:151).

However, while this analysis plays out, the central problem still remains. Moore is simplifying the situation and is ignoring the differences between a political ideology and a political economy. What then, if we approach Moore’s manifesto head-on, and ask the question, ‘what does he actually mean by replacing capitalism with democracy?’ What if he is not ignoring the differences between ideology and economics? Once again, we can turn to Deleuze. As well as describing the organisation of the large form action-image, he goes on to explore how it can extends itself, transforms itself. How it goes towards its limit and becomes a discourse-image, the very limit of the large form action-image. Here it is not simply that a situation is inexorably resolved by pre-determined actions. Rather, the situation is explored as ‘the givens of a question which is hidden in the situation, wrapped up in the situation’ (C1:189). In this way ‘the “response” therefore is not merely that of the action to the situation, but, more profoundly, a response to the question, or to the problem that the situation was not sufficient to disclose’ (C1:189). It is a ‘secret question’ that must be discovered, and once discovered it will change the obvious conclusions that were originally to be drawn (C1:189). The response would thus be a ‘considered response’ and only arrived at through the process of the exploration, ‘the dogged search for the question and its givens through the situations’ (C1:190).

In other words, rather than cowardice or simplifying the argument, Moore is doing something far more strategic. In arguing democracy needs to replace capitalism, he is claiming capitalism is undemocratic. What Moore has attempted to do, then, is this. First, break the ‘natural’ link between the ideology of democracy and economics of capitalism. Second, instead, link the economics of capitalism with an ideology of authoritarianism (or at least semiauthoritarianism, or quasi-democracy: democracy as a façade). Third and finally, reveal the economic system that true democracy inherently delivers: socialism. It seems that just as the ideology sustaining capitalism is left unspoken but illustrated on screen, so is the economic system behind democracy. The strategic silences of a mass-media realpolitik… Or in terms of the cineosis, the limit of the large form action-image which while going beyond the action-image, extending it, serves at the same time as a mask. As Deleuze writes in another context, on the face of it there is a ‘fairly mundane humanist message,’ but really there is ‘something quite different… putting something into circulation, as much as possible, however little it may be…’ (C1:192).