Mother (Joon-ho Bong, South Korea, 2009)

Why is Do-joon’s mother dancing?

The joy of the perfect thriller comes with the reveal. A number of conditions – of course – apply. The image that will be revealed needs to be well hidden throughout the film, the truth must remain in

ellipsis right up to the denouement. There is nothing worse than reasoning out the mystery before the final disclosure. A caveat here: the ruse, the red herring. With an amalgam of satisfaction (at our own cleverness) and disappointment (at the filmmaker giving too much away) we think we’ve got it! Only to discover cinematic subterfuge, it was someone or something else entirely. Even subtler still, a ploy or stratagem is signalled as possibly being as such, or appears as a fake reveal. Thus propagating ambiguity with a self-reflexive quality before the true disclosure. In the second place, the exposé also needs to be a function of the narration. The conditions for the disclosure need to have been there all along, embedded in moments of the movie, hidden in plain sight. The twist should not be imposed from the outside. There is nothing worse (really, this time) than discovering the reveal was impossible to reason. Finally, the reveal must have a certain necessity. That which is disclosed by the actions of the characters – in retrospect – must be the only possible outcome. This does not strictly concern images and narration, but rather narrative. The perfect thriller does not simply reveal what happened, but through revealing what happened determines the situation. Anything other will simply be an arbitrary answer to any-old-question, rather than the completion and consummation of a permeating theme.

Mother is the perfect thriller. There is misdirection. There is a twist – and you do not see it coming. That which is revealed is not imposed from the outside, it appears both functional and essential; it is something that is integral to the narrative of the film, making the theme vital and vivid.

We can describe this type of film as an action-image of the small form operating through an index of lack.

To read the full exploration of Mother through the Deleuze's sign of 'index of lack,' see Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images

Ajami (Scandar Copti & Yaron Shani, Germany | Israel, 2009)

There is Omar, a young Arab who, as head of his family, must traverse the line of a deteriorating situation initiated by his uncle’s attempt to resist a Bedouin protection racket. There is Malek, an ‘illegal’ from the Palestinian territories, working in the kitchen of a restaurant, trying to earn money to support his ailing, dying mother. There is Dando, a Jewish cop, searching for news of his younger brother who has recently disappeared returning from an army posting. There is Binj, a dope smoking chef and all round party dude, an Arab dating a Jewish girl. There is Abu Elias, a respected community leader, restaurateur, a Christian who wants to stymie any chance of his daughter ending up marrying Omar.

Such are the coordinates of Ajami, a film named after a district in Yafa, Tel Aviv – the space in which the movie is accordingly set. This area, once predominately Palestinian populated, is a ‘mixing pot,’ with Muslims, Jews and Christians living alongside one another other, yet immediately riven with permeating temporal historical and contemporary forces. Accordingly, Ajami uses this location, and its people, to explore the state: Israel. Stressing this Ajami-Ajami matrix is essential. Directors Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani (one a Palestinian, born and raised in Yafa; the other a Jewish Israeli) mostly employed non-professional actors from the territory to play out the events of the film. Working with and within the community, their basic script was developed, improvised and eventually captured on film. Over eight hours of footage was created, guerrilla-style, taking over a year to edit down to the final on-screen presentation. All of which gives the movie – as its starting point – a certain documentary vérité look and feel.

However, it is the structure – the narration, the assemblage of images – that is essential. Ajami tells five stories, each based around one of five central and privileged characters: Omar, Malek, Dando, Binj and Abu Elias. These stories are organised into five episodes, each of which interpenetrates and comes to bear on the others; the central character in one becoming a minor character in another. Furthermore, while the events in each of the five chapters are parallel; at the same moment each advances the ongoing storyline across the whole film. Ellipses created in one episode are answered, echoed or reoriented in another. In this way, Ajami constructs a very powerful image of heterogeneity composing a homogeneous world, and the lines of force that traverse such a complex whole. This structure is an incarnation of what Deleuze, in his taxonomy of cinema, will name the vector.

To read the full exploration of Ajami through the Deleuze's sign of the 'vector,' 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...

The Killer Inside Me (Michael Winterbottom, USA, 2010)

Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is the picture-perfect West Texas gentleman (yes ma’am; no sir). Called
into the office of his boss, Sheriff Bob Maples, he is despatched to the home of notorious prostitute Joyce Lakeland. The town – riding a wave of economic prosperity in the wake of an oil boom – needs cleaning up. ‘I guess I want you out of Central City by sundown’ – Lou politely commands Joyce. But Joyce aint hearing him; so Lou attempts to be a little more persuasive, and is rewarded with a fierce slap across the face. Seizing the screaming and struggling woman, Lou forces her face down on the bed, and removing his belt, ripping down her panties, he whips her raw. Yet – his rage and her terror transform. Both become overpowered with sexual energies and they fuck. So begins an affair, Joyce and Lou fall in love, and together they explore the boundaries and line between sex and violence, the sado-masochistic realm. Time passes. Lou is once again approached about Joyce. Powerful construction millionaire Chester Conway wants her out of the life of his son Elmer, who pays Joyce for her services and has become obsessed with her. Lou visits Joyce. They have sex, and afterwards, as they talk, Lou slowly pulls on his black leather gloves, and tells Joyce she is going to die. As she laughs, believing this to be one of their games, he playfully slaps her a few times, before pulling back his fist and hitting her full in the face. Lou then pummels Joyce to pulp. His fist slams again and again into her head, shattering her nose, busting her eyes, ripping apart her flesh; all the while speaking soothing words, I’m sorry – I love you – It’ll soon be over.

Director Michael Winterbottom’s camera is cold and unflinching. The Killer Inside Me is glacial in its depiction of this violence. There is no frenzy here, no hyper-psychopathic hysteria (no canted angles, no stylistic flourishes, no jagged musical accompaniment). The frame, shot and editing, colour and sound have the most restrained of realist coordinates. In this way, the images mirror the behaviour of Lou. The camera dissects the beating, every impact of the fist is captured as it connects with Joyce’s flesh, and Lou examines his work as he proceeds, turning Joyce’s head to better see the extent of the injuries bestowed upon her. Winterbottom’s expresses Lou’s detachment through the formal production of images. The camera is always with Lou; the deputy sheriff is the privileged, subjective centre of the film, the image around which all other images revolve. Accordingly, the film is shot from Lou’s perspective, and his being in the world permeates every image on the screen. After he has beaten Joyce to death, he leaves her body in her bedroom and calmly removes his gloves, and awaits Elmer. When Elmer arrives, Lou immediately shoots him dead, placing the gun in Joyce’s hand.

It is this difference between the killings of Joyce and Elmer that are at the heart of The Killer Inside Me. One murder fleeting, momentary, clean; one depicted in all its brutal, dirty horror. It might be thought this difference is necessitated by the plot (of the film, and of the character) – in order to frame Elmer for the murder of Joyce, and make Elmer’s death the last desperate act of the dying woman. This is not the case. Winterbottom reinforces and reifies this difference as the film continues. Investigator Howard Hendricks suspects Lou, so does Maples his boss, and his fiancée Amy Stanton. Lou will go on to commit a whole series of murders in an attempt to erase these people and stymie the dissemination of such suspicions. However, while the men are dispatched with quick, instantaneous actions; the death of Amy will be another pitiless, vicious killing, enacted through the cruel ruse of a secret elopement. There is a whole world of difference between the way in which Winterbottom films and Lou enacts the murder of women and men. Accordingly, we encounter a fundamental misogyny within the images and the narration, a dire philosophy which permeates everything. Yet the question is not if it is the film itself which is misogynistic, or if this woman-hating is simply a function of the character. Such a debate attempts to divide an indivisible. Rather, it is if in depicting such misogyny The Killer Inside Me is complicit with or actively evaluates the situation it sets out to explore (a reactionary reification or an effective critique).

To approach a possible answer to this question we can begin by aligning the film with an element of Deleuze’s cineosis, the index of equivocity, a sign of the small form action-image...

To read the full exploration of The Killer Inside Me through the Deleuze's sign of the 'index of equivocity,' see Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images...