Cronos begins with an explanation of the Cronos Device, a small bug-like object that was created in the 1500s by an alchemist in order to extend the user’s life. During the collapse of a church in the 1930s, the alchemist's withered body was found…and he was still alive (cue the scary music). The device was hidden within a sculpture and then lost. In the present day, a Mexican antique store owner named Jesús Gris (Federico Luppi) and his quiet, but loving granddaughter are opening up the shop and discover cockroaches crawling out of one of the new statues. Inside the statue he finds the device and uses it. The result is that he feels younger than he has in years, but various problems arise at the cost of these new youthful feelings (which he later discovers includes immortality) such as a thirst for blood and a dying wealthy businessman named Dieter de la Guardia (Claudio Brook), who sends his vicious nephew Angel (Ron Perlman) after it.
Cronos is a unique blending of various genres; in part it's a thriller as Jesús attempts to keep the device secret while being hunted by Dieter’s nephew Angel. At the same time, the film displays a variety of elements out of classic horror films, including vampirism, and fantastic gross-out effects from Jesús’ body as well as what exactly is inside the Cronos device. Yet through it all, it maintains a quirky sense of humor that keeps the film from feeling too much like one or the other. It’s this well-used humor that never feels out of place that makes this film particularly worth watching. In one minute you might be seriously disturbed, while in the next you might find yourself chuckling. Beneath all this too, is a religious undertone that's apart of the Latin culture.
Ron Perlman as Angel
Guillermo del Toro is a talented filmmaker and Cronos is an early example of his skill. The story is fairly simple and yet it’s still very interesting. This is in part due to the lead performances by Ron Perlman and Federico Luppi. The character of Angel de la Guardia is never fully informed as to what the device is or why his uncle really needs it so bad. Granted, he doesn’t really care, but his uncle is dying and he wants to make sure he inherits everything so he goes along with whatever task his uncle gives him; essentially he’s just a thug. His indifference and cruelty comes so naturally to him and Ron Perlman makes the character oddly charming, amusing and incredibly terrifying. When he’s onscreen you never know what he’s going to do or say because he’s so dead-pan and unpredictable. Federico Luppi is also very good as Jesús, and he plays the character relatively low-key. Despite all the terrifying and grotesque things that begin to happen to his body, he struggles to keep his sanity and humanity. Part of the tragedy of the character is that he had lived a happy and normal life until the device and all its misfortune was thrust upon him. The way he uses the Cronos device makes each use seem like he’s getting a fix of his drug addiction.
Cronos is a visually striking film with highly stylized scenes and color direction. Take for instance, the inside of the Cronos device: it’s like a golden clock tower packed with cranking gears and housing a disgusting larva-like insect. It’s a bizarre contrast that perfectly captures the dual-edge factor of the immortality that the device dispenses. The make-up in this film is another aspect worth mentioning. It has basically become a part of what Guillermo del Toro is known for, but here it's again very believable and gross. Without revealing too much, watching Jesús peel away his own skin to find another white layer underneath is pretty shiver-inducing. The film has very good pacing and runs only about an hour and a half, but it wraps everything up nicely and doesn’t feel too short. It’s an entertaining twist on a vampire story about the price of immortality and whether or not it’s worth having if you are no longer human.
After the commercial and critical success of Sin City, it’s no surprise that there would be another adaptation of one of Frank Miller’s graphic novels. I need to start by stating that 300 is not Sin City; it's a lesser work of Frank Miller. By lesser, I mean it's stupid and ridiculous. It’s a short and simple story that retells the famous Battle of Thermopylae from the point of view of a Spartan storyteller trying to rally his troops. In other words, it’s about as historically accurate as Inglorious Basterds. Of course the traitorous Ephialtes (in the film played by Andrew Tiernan) is a freak, of course Xerxes (played by Rodrigo Sontoro) looks like a giant with a gold fetish, and of course the Spartans fight elephants, rhinos, and monsters. That being said, it’s light and relatively fun to read if you're a fan of Frank Miller's style. I need to stress that if you have read and didn't like the comic, then you will not like this film.
Zack Snyder’s film is an incredibly faithful adaptation. Like Sin City, it attempts to follow the source material nearly panel for panel, and it's here that Zack Snyder’s particular use of slow motion is somewhat useful. I complained about an overuse of his slow and fast motion action scenes in Watchmen, but they feel right at home in this film, and again their use seems to slow down the images enough to linger on actual panels from the comic. It’s an interesting and over-the-top style which fits the nature of the story. I think one of the principle reasons that Zack Snyder's style works here better than it did in Watchmen is because of the content of the story. Just as the 300 comicis not Sin City, it's definitely not Watchmen. Everything in this film is portrayed as hardcore and pumped with testosterone and screaming. The battles are extremely violent, the message is about as subtle as an explosion, the characters are simple and as macho as humanly possible, every action that needs to be done is shown in the most over-the-top manner (for instance, in a scene where Leonidas (Gerard Butler) needs to visit the Ephors, who are shown as disgusting and lecherous lepers, he has to nearly kill himself climbing a steep cliff), and it’s about as homoerotic as a film about 300 half-naked, greased-up men can be (it’s interesting to note that often, in the comic, the Spartans were even naked).
Unfortunately (or fortunately) the source material is pretty short, and the subplot that the film added to the story in order to extend the running time is the actually the weakest part of the film. The subplot shows what’s happening back in Sparta as the 300 soldiers fight their sweaty battle. Apparently Leonidas’ wife Queen Gorgo, played by the sexy Lena Headey, is also fighting a political battle against Theron (Dominic West) in order to get support for her husband. Visually, these scenes are the least interesting as they all take place in relatively small spaces and don’t show off the CG city or landscapes as the scenes with the soldiers do. Instead what seems to happen is the film’s pace slows down to a crawl and these scenes sort of stop the movie dead in its tracks. I understand the point of these scenes to give a break in the excessive action, but they almost feel like they belong in a different movie. The acting in this film is fine for what it calls for. Gerard Butler with his pointed beard is great at screaming out lines that are now pretty recognizable like, “This is Sparta!” or “Tonight we dine in Hell!” and Lena Headey is also good as his wife with her own sense of strength. In general, I sort of enjoyed watching this film. It’s entertaining and ridiculous, the visual effects are generally impressive and interesting, and the style suits the film, but more importantly in the end I found myself caught up in some of the action. It’s by no means a perfect film or even great one, but it captures the feeling of the comic and runs with it.
At least since the beginning of the Silly Symphony shorts, the Disney name has represented many things. To some it is a feeling of happiness and nostalgia for childhood. To others, it is the standard for animation and entertainment, while yet for others it is the representation of the mainstream and a tyrant against originality and creativity; it is the representation of all that is bland and emotionless; a kiss-ass to "The Man". The Disney name (and I use the Disney name to refer to the company, not just the man) is certainly mainstream and powerful enough to be seen as so many things while being loved or despised. Backlash towards what Disney is and represents can be found in animation that is trying to be different from it. This can be seen most clearly in animated films that depict extreme violence and sex. Films like Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s Akira (1988) showed an attempt to prove how different Japanese animation is from the American cutesy-mainstream of Disney while other films like Ralph Bakshi’s Fritz the Cat (1972) display a direct and clear hatred of all things Disney. While there are many different sources to draw from, but I am going to focus more specifically on a couple of scenes from Akira and Fritz the Cat.In both films there are scenes to compare and view this animosity, but though they both have them, they are not quite the same. The “baby room” scene in Akira shows a very clear concept of how the film sees its own relationship to Disney while the “ghetto war” scene from Fritz the Cat is much more explicit and cruel in its message. The point remains, however, that in both films there is a clear message about Disney and what Disney represents.
The scene from Akira is, as mentioned, the “baby room” scene. This is the room in which the old-children reside and the first thing to notice about it is the mis-en-scene. The room is filled with stuffed animals, painted with bright colors in shapes and, most notable, a large white castle. The castle is obviously some kind of play set, but it, more than any other object in the room, is a representation of Disney, and this includes the cute stuffed animals (but more on that later). Aside from the numerous uses of some mystical white castle in their films (whether it’s the castle in the clouds at the end of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or the Prince’s castle in Cinderella), the “white castle” is what Disney uses as its logo before nearly every film. It’s symbolic of the brand name and the Magic Kingdom is synonymous with the theme parks and so forth. So this castle, a representative of all things Disney, is just sort of sitting there in the background of this scene in Akira and what happens to it? It’s not just destroyed, it is completely obliterated. Tetsuo and the children begin a violent psychic battle which results in the room being dismantled piece by piece. The psychic waves generated from their powers literally “warp” the environment. The colors and shapes become blurred and unrecognizable until they burst apart, not unlike Brophy’s description of the bodily explosion in anime being “the directing of concerns, fears, frustrations at the image of the body causing it to splatter under force, impact, intensity and pressure” (McCrea, 16) but in this case, I would argue that this same feeling can be applied to the environment as well. This action of reshaping and completely removing the colorful world of Disney from the film makes a powerful and clear statement: this doesn’t belong here. The character designs themselves are in part a statement against the wholesome Disney image. Children in a Disney film are typically small and cute, not unlike the anthropomorphic animals so frequently found in their films. They embody innocence, curiosity and very clear basic emotions. Like the designs seen in Osamu Tezuka’s work and made almost as the standard in the US (this includes Disney, Warner Bros., MGM, and others), the characters have large expressive eyes. This is crucial in developing characters usually associated with being cute and cuddly (such as the anthropomorphic animals). They have these big, expressive eyes that easily reveal emotion and make characters seem like they “feel” things. I would argue that the characters in Akira, though they may be much more aggressive and violent than anything with Disney’s name on it still, however slightly, resemble those designs. If anything, this subconscious recognition of a style usually associated with cute and family friendly animations only contribute to making the film more shocking.
Kiyoko
In Akira, the children are old people trapped in children’s bodies, yet they are still children (they fear blood and the baby room itself contributes to this). It’s a deforming of the image of the child that Disney represents. These children are also more than willing to destroy and kill (hence the fight with Tetsuo). Their cute anthropomorphic animals are also distorted into something dangerous and violent, as they were used as weapons in a previous scene. To make all this more disturbing, if it wasn't for the wrinkles, the children really wouldn’t look so unlike Disney characters. They feature the same large expressive eyes, as the anime style evolved from Osamu Tezuka who based his designs on Disney. But with their faces being the way they are it is more unsettling, they serve as a counter to the idea of anything seeming cute by appearing “babyish” and physically “non-threatening” (Moore, 125). A better description of what may be the view in general to the “cute” image is the way Japan has adopted it from America, telling us “there can never be a solely cute figure to explicitly evidence the word’s range of opposing qualities, that is, the figure is at once both attractive and clever, pretty and cunning, charming an shrewd, comforting and discomforting” (Moore, 120). In this, and the half-cute, half-old children fit this description perfectly, it seems as though Akira is trying to break away from the chains that tie it to Disney. There is something to note in what happens to the “magic kingdom” in the baby room. After it is quite literally obliterated, what lies beneath is nothing. The background of the room, when all the paint and colorful little toys are removed, is absolute blackness; a void. Here what the film is saying is that once the cuteness of the Disney images are blown away, what’s beneath the surface of the paint is absolutely nothing. Akira associates the Disney imagery with a hollow empty shell, just waiting to be destroyed. Once it’s destroyed the creative limits are endless. After destroying the room, Tetsuo literally flies away, free from the oppressive bonds of the tyrant that is the Disney imagery. There can be other, more simple interpretations of this particular part of the scene; the background could be black to emphasize Tetsuo’s conversation with one of the psychic children, bringing the focus exclusively on them, not unlike the monologue scene from Fritz the Cat. I think this is part of it, but the use of the room being designed the way it is demands a deeper reading. Why use a white castle, of all things?
Shrek is often described as a modern mockery of the old Disney fairytales and uses a very humorous twist on very familiar and established conventions. The reason that I chose to focus instead on Fritz the Cat, is because its resentment towards Disney, and all mainstream animation for that matter, is so much more aggressive and potent in every single shot of the film (and when compared to Shrek, that's really saying something). It takes its mockery of Disney to a whole other level and I would argue that it has much more to say than a film like Shrek about those it satirizes and parodies. The attention given by Shrek, while similarly hateful, is more humorous when compared to what Bakshi is willing to show (though this could also be merely due to the desire for a PG rating). Before discussing the war scene in the ghetto from Fritz the Cat, the obvious thing to notice is the animation. The characters themselves are all anthropomorphic animals with large eyes. They consist of cats, rabbits, and dogs in general, but there are others as well like a horse and the crows. The crows represent all black people, with no exceptions. This of course hearkens back to the minstrel show routine with crows from Dumbo. The animals in Fritz the Cat do drugs, curse, have gratuitous sex, and kill each other. This alone is a pretty shocking contradiction to the wholesome and helpful little creatures from the Disney universe, but there is, within the war scene, another more explicit statement: as the US Air Force bombs the ghetto (to illustrate that the way the US deals with minorities is comparable to the Vietnam War) the planes fly over the outskirts of the it where a silhouetted mouse, girl mouse, and duck wave an American flag and cheer them on. The silhouettes bare a striking resemblance to Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and Donald Duck. They cheer on the government that massacres the poor and oppressed black people in the ghetto because that is how Bakshi views Disney: a corporation that sucks up to the government and cheers them, even as they commit atrocities. Disney is the established mainstream and for that it can be seen as less original and so inoffensive that there is nothing remarkable about it at all in terms of animation. Bakshi sees it as something to avoid, mock, resent, and hate. The characters that represent Disney are in direct opposition with the ones in Fritz the Cat. By showing them at all he is adding even more emphasis to what the audience probably already associated the character designs with. It is not enough to show how drastically different his characters are, he has to say that the mainstream he is making fun of is wrong and evil. Since Bakshi would be sued out of the country if he used the actual likenesses of the characters he represents in the scene, they are silhouettes instead. In this, the way they are portrayed is not unlike what is behind the castle in Akira. They are lifeless black figures with no emotion and purpose (other than to support those who make the rules in the case of Fritz the Cat). Disney is by far the most mainstream and accessible animation studio in the US and that is exactly why Bakshi attacks it.
The purpose of representing Disney in Akira is in some ways similar to the depiction if it in Fritz the Cat, though by comparison the depiction in Akira seems subtle. Bakshi’s view of what Disney is is much more aggressive that Ôtomo’s, but both are similar in that they see the familiar Disney imagery as a façade. In Akira, after the Disney-esque background is stripped away and destroyed, beneath the surface there is nothing. Disney cartoons are pretty colors and smiling faces with nothing behind them. This is reminiscent of the shadow Disney icons shown in Fritz the Cat. Without their colors, they are lifeless shadows doing what they are meant to do, suck up to the powers that be. The two respective scenes in both films also show a sharp contrast to Disney in another more general way. Disney is a major part of why animation is generally assumed to be for kids and each film responds to this a bit differently in their scenes. They attack what Mariana Ortega-Brena refers to as the “preponderant Western attitudes toward the animated image or ‘cartoon,’ a medium that is still widely understood as intrinsically childlike,” (Ortega-Brena, 18) though while Akira destroys the assumption, Fritz the Cat defecates on it. In both of the two film’s scenes, violence and aggression is the method of choice in responding to these attitudes. In Akira, the baby room is meant to be a nursery littered with children’s decorations such as the toys, the painted walls, the castle, etc. but it’s also a prison where the children are kept and experimented on for their powers, again suiting the doubled sidedness of the cute image. All the characters in Akira stand out against the room and what it represents by screaming and lashing out at each other, thus breaking the structure of the room while simultaneously annihilating the misconception of animation being meant only for one type of person. The entire film is basically saying, “Anime is not meant for kids and I’ll prove it, no matter how many people I have to kill.” In the end it turns out to be just about everybody. This is similar to Fritz the Cat generally, but in the scene with the actual Disney mascots it’s a bit more personal and resentful of what Bakshi sees as “Disney.” During the midst of the bloodbath of the war on the ghetto, the Disney representatives stand proudly on a hill above the carnage and root for those in power. This makes sense within the universe created in Fritz the Cat because everything about the film has been meant to disassociate itself from Disney while also mocking it.
In Akira, the characters within the “baby room,” a sort of homage to Disney imagery complete with a white castle/magic kingdom, fight and destroy it leaving nothing but the empty blackness that rests under the surface of the colors that made up the background. While doing so it also makes a statement about what anime is; it’s animation that is not intended solely for children and it is certainly not Disney. In Fritz the Cat, the ghetto war scene depicts the corporate mascots of Disney doing what Bakshi sees Disney as the embodiment of: a suck up to the government and the so-called “traditional values” of the United States. Disney’s animations, specifically with, but certainly not limited to, the Silly Symphonies, were toned down in order to be inoffensive to children and parents alike. This included not using Jazz and instead relying on more classical orchestrated pieces. They had happy endings and showed the good guys win and the bad guys lose (or any character doing something that was against the norm, for instance in Fantasia during the “Pastoral” segment a fat and drunk Bacchus clamors after the centaurettes and eventually, mistakenly kisses his donkey on the mouth. The response to this is Zeus literally bombarding him with lightning bolts from heaven as punishment). By doing things like this, Disney has achieved its status as the champion of mainstream animation and has also designated the cartoon as something synonymous with children’s entertainment. Fritz the Cat in general is a response to this, but in the war scene in particular is this spelled out the clearest. While the scenes from Akira and Fritz the Cat are very different (from each other as well as within their respective stories’ context), both make a very aggressive and explicit statement about Disney and all that it represents in terms of animation style and in general.
Viewer discretion advised: scenes may contain violence and explicit language.
Sources
• Ortega-Brena, Mariana. Peek-a-boo, I See You: Watching Japanese Hard-core
Animation. Sexuality & Culture (March, 2009) Vol. 13, Issue 1. Springer Science + Business Media. December, 2008. pgs. 17–31
• Moore, Pauline. When Velvet Gloves Meet Iron Fists: Cuteness in Japanese Animation. The Illusion of Life 2: More Essays on Animation. Power Publications, Sydney, 2007. pgs. 119-150.
• McCrea, Christian. Explosive, Expulsive, Extraordinary: The Dimensional Excess of Animated Bodies. Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol 3, Issue 1. 2008. pgs. 9–24,
Written and directed by Michael Haneke and set in Germany between 1913 and1914 (right before World War I), The White Ribbon is a personal retelling of some events that took place in a small farming town from the perspective of a school teacher (played by Christian Friedel, though voiced by Ernst Jacobi as the narrator) during the year he met his fiancé. I stress personal, because the narrator admits that he was not present for the entire story and therefore is uncertain how much of what he says is true. During the opening narration, he explains that the events of this story possibly explain what came after it in terms of history. The narrator is probably the closest thing you get to a main character, though he plays a supporting role in the narrative.
The film focuses on a series of events and the way it affects the community by following many different characters. It’s a bit disorienting at first, but as you can begin to recognize them all the story flows much smoother. The incidents begin with the local doctor falling from his horse due to a carefully hidden tripwire outside his house. As time goes on, more and more unexplained occurrences seem to happen and no one can figure out why or who is doing them. It's a very dark film and the use of black and white suits the tone perfectly. The town is seen as a very hopeless, cold and unfeeling place and the citizens certainly prove this to be true. The visuals accentuate the black and white world of the inhabitants and in some ways it almost feels like a horror film. In one house we are shown the cruelty and severity of the pastor (Burghart Klaußner) towards his abused and suppressed children, while in another house we are shown a growing resentment and hostility towards other neighbors. The town, for all its dreariness, it a breeding ground for secrets, shame, hostility, malice, envy and brutality. The message of the film is pretty bleak as well, as it seems to suggest that these children, who are treated so coldly by their parents, are the generation that would later become the Nazis in World War II or at least those who allowed them to take power. There are various hints at this with the violence towards the mentally handicapped child, the jealously of the wealthy family’s son, and the use of the white ribbons. The pastor places the ribbons on two of his children as a punishment and a reminder. He emphasizes that white is a symbol for purity and innocence. The children all give good performances and really steal the show. All the scenes with the children are the most interesting and often unsettling.
It's a very disturbing film, but the nature of it is subtle. There isn’t any in-your-face action and often the violence takes place behind closed doors. It’s what you don’t se in this film that cements the creepy atmosphere and keeps you questioning what’s around every corner. Almost no one in the town, especially the children, is quite what they seem and some, such as the doctor, are alarmingly sick and cruel individuals. As a sort of balance during the film, there's also a subplot that shows the shy and friendly school teacher falling in love with a new nanny of the Baron’s children, but it almost doesn’t fit with the rest of the film and if anything seems to be there only as a break between the ugliness of the rest of the town. Cinematically, The White Ribbon boasts some impressive shots and nearly every inch in this town is shown in the film. Locations such as the pastor’s office are decorated with various objects that and an incredible amount of detail can be seen in every shot. Although The White Ribbon is a disturbing and haunting film, it’s also a well crafted story with an ending that will leave you thinking.
Cronos begins with an explanation of the Cronos Device, a small bug-like object that was created in the 1500s by an alchemist in order to extend the user’s life. During the collapse of a church in the 1930s, the alchemist's withered body was found…and he was still alive (cue the scary music). The device was hidden within a sculpture and then lost. In the present day, a Mexican antique store owner named Jesús Gris (Federico Luppi) and his quiet, but loving granddaughter are opening up the shop and discover cockroaches crawling out of one of the new statues. Inside the statue he finds the device and uses it. The result is that he feels younger than he has in years, but various problems arise at the cost of these new youthful feelings (which he later discovers includes immortality) such as a thirst for blood and a dying wealthy businessman named Dieter de la Guardia (Claudio Brook), who sends his vicious nephew Angel (Ron Perlman) after it.
