the groundhog day project

I was born in 1976. This is what babies looked like: (Yes, that's me.) This is what politicians looked like: This is what fashion looked like: This is what music looked like: This is what movies looked like: And there is where my record of the "connective tissue as well as the abyss between the present and the past" ends.* * quote from Sheila O'Malley's review of 20th Century Women . See, those movies... Rocky has been recently rebooted (after five sequels). Carrie has been remade twice (after one "sequel"). A new version of A Star is Born is being made now (I believe it's the fourth iteration of this story). Hollywood is stuck in nostalgia mode. I must make two things clear: 1) I'm not necessarily complaining about this. For every remake of The Magnificent Seven there's The Lobster . For every Ghostbusters remake, there's Swiss Army Man . If you bother to pay attention beyond the big studio films, there is plenty more th...

20th Century Women begins with an aerial shot of the ocean, then a subtitle: "Santa Barbara, 1979." Importantly, that subtitle includes the period. Narration immediately connects the present to events in the past, Jamie's father, Dorothea's husband, their marriage, his car, their divorce. Other bits of narration and voiceover later will put various characters into the context of their history but even more, late in the film, we are offered specific facts about the future lives of these characters. That the title references the time period is no mistake, of course. This is about a specific time, a specific place, geographically as well as metaphorically within these lives. This is where Jamie and Dorothea and Abbie and Julie and William are at this moment. This is what their lives are like now . Now being 1979, of course. Summer. The film even begins on Dorothea's birthday. She is turning 55. Jamie tells us about her life so far. Later, Dorothea will tell us abo...

20th Century Women offers up multiple narrators and the convergence of several stories. A mother. A son. Their tenants. His girlfriend (of a sort). The mother, Dorothea (Annette Bening) tells the story of the son, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) and vice versa. Others tell their own stories, though not in the same kind of voiceover. (Mike Mills trivia note: the family name here, Fields, is the same as in Beginners .) Dorothea has a fairly open-door policy about the house. She invites a fireman over to her birthday dinner, for example, after he helps put out their car fire. The girlfriend, Julie (Elle Fanning) comes and goes as she pleases, even when Jamie is not home. Dorothea asks Julie and Abbie (Greta Gerwig) to help her raise Jamie as a good man. (Then, interestingly, she tells Jamie that she asked them.) Though it's a common theme, it's done especially well--these people form a family even though they are not all related. Jamie tries to spread his wings with friends, but k...

Rebecca: "The ocean contains 97% of the world's water and generates over 70% of the Earth's oxygen and replenishes our fresh water through the clouds. If our oceans are failing, then so are we." Just obvious and trite enough as to be passed off as winning. Not profound, though. The camera lingers later on the debate lines from Justin that are supposed to be profound. The thing is, this is a weak ending to an argument. But, all of the debate in Thumbsucker is fairly weak, simplistic to the point of being meaningless. Ashley: "The mark of a secure nation is not that conflicts are resolved quickly, but that conflicts do not arise." Seriously, what does that mean in any practical sense? A nation can only be secure if it has no conflicts ever? Sure, she's likely talking about military conflicts specifically, but the film takes these debate bits out of context and expects them to make sense. Which would be fine, if we were literally just hearing the las...

Thumbsucker does not have the voiceover (and accompanying cutaways) that make Mills' Beginners and 20th Century Women what they are. That necessarily makes the film a little less charming. (I wonder if the original script had that stuff, and Mills didn't have the clout to get away with it yet.) It's good, but it's not as... Yeah, charming was probably the right word. Or maybe the problem is that focusing so much on the teen here means there isn't the more experienced perspective of Beginners or 20th Century Women . Or maybe I just don't buy Keanu Reeves as a dentist.           There is a sort of cutaway, but played more like slightly odd establishing shots. Closeups on name tags, for example. And, maybe it's not fair to judge this film for its focus on the teen. The point of this film seems to be that the adults are just as unsure of things, just as undeveloped, just as incomplete as Justin is. His mother wants to win a date with an actor. H...

The dog gets my favorite line in Beginners . The full subtitle (because, of course, the dog doesn't actually speak) is: "Tell her the darkness is about to drown us unless something drastic happens now." I've been there. Felt that drowning sensation, the darkness, and had drastic things happen. (By the way, I'm not actually watching Beginners tonight. My Netflix was having some issues, so I moved on. #FirstWorldProblems) I've been diagnosed with depression, been offered prescriptions for medication to deal with it. Mostly, I've learned to deal with it on my own. I've gotten good at compartmentalizing different parts of my life, and I've learned to take time to do fun things. For example, today I went to the Renaissance Faire with friends with whom I play D&D. I also (in case some future reader hasn't noticed the jump in dates or some past reader is confused) restarted this blog, ostensibly as if nothing had changed. I picked up the ...

Beginners quite deliberately echoes itself. The movie begins with daisies in a vase on the windowsill. We'll learn later that is Oliver's mother's vase. We'll learn even near the end of the film that she had a photo of an arm holding daisies that Oliver used to remember as his arm handing her daisies. In the present he imagines it is her arm handing him daisies. Early on, Oliver gives Arthur (the dog) a tour of his apartment. Nearer the end of the film, he gives Anna a tour as well, and even later Anna gives him a tour (over the phone) of her apartment. As a child (and early in the film) Oliver's mom plays as if she's shooting him and he has to perform his death. Nearer the end of the film, of course, it is Oliver's father who dies and Oliver must play... must be the grieving son. Oliver meets Anna and she has no voice (she has laryngitis). Later, when he goes to her place in New York (that tour mentioned above), she is a disembodied voice. And, Olive...