Please, no more bad remakes!

Why bother making it at all? I wondered. Really. Some things should just stand alone as great works. Like The Day the Earth Stood Still. Some things just shouldn’t be remade. Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Some things should be remembered with a certain reverence—and not cheaply cloned later on for an easy profit. Like the seminal TV series V. In a world that is exploding with talent, fresh ideas and thousands of aspiring writers jostling for exposure, there’s just no excuse for bad remakes. If you agree, you’ll be amused and encouraged by Joe Queenan’s article “Why does Hollywood keep making the same films?” published in The Guardian. He hits the nail on the head, humorously detailing what we’ve all seen enough of:

“It is said that, after three days, fish and house guests both start to stink. The same is true of movies—by the time you get to the third in a series, the stench is palpable. This is true whether the series is Halloween, The Ring, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or paranormal romances starring Sandra Bullock.”

Queenan makes some interesting suggestions as to what we should demand more of, which really boil down to films that fulfill three basic criteria: originality, a bit of imagination, and a fully and cleverly developed plot that isn’t totally predictable. Is that really so much to ask for? As Pedro Almodovar says, “No biopics, no prequels, no sequels, no hero movies, no antihero movies, and definitely no superhero movies. Anything else I can handle.” As viewers, I think it’s high time we start saying NO to bad sequels, dumbed-down adaptations of foreign movies, budget-bloated storyless CGI spectacles inspired by video games, fourth rate comic books and, stooping to a pathetic new low, movies inspired by amusement park rides. Driven disproportionately by profit and deathly afraid of risk, Hollywood has become creatively bankrupt. But as Queenan points out, it doesn’t have to be that way. Read the article here.

The Art of Comedy

Of course, as an editor, it always helps when the guy on screen is the kind that makes you laugh so hard, you cry. When I was editing some videos for Rolling Stone recently, live at the Bonnaroo Music Festival, that guy was Aziz Ansari. If you haven’t discovered Aziz yet, give yourself a treat and watch a few episodes of Parks and Recreation—or watch Aziz doing his thing for Rolling Stone right here:

(Aziz Ansari pretends to be Bruce Springsteen’s road manager.)

Funny, right? The premise—a fast-talking, South Asian dude pretending to be Bruce Springsteen’s road manager so he can bilk a few festival vendors—is definitely fertile ground for comedy. But, believe it or not, the raw footage, while it certainly had its moments thanks to Aziz’s comedic talent, was not a barrel of laughs.

When my buddy Alexis Boling (director of photography) returned from the shoot, he seemed disappointed with the footage. He confessed that the skit hadn’t gone as expected and informed me with some regret that the material he had wasn’t as funny as he’d hoped it would be. When I watched everything myself, I could see why Alexis thought I had my work cut out for me. Aziz was so well known at Bonnaroo that just about everyone he was trying to fool for a laugh was on to him the moment he started in with his “I’m Bruce Springsteen’s road manager” bit. Hardly anyone bought the gag. At one point, a random passer-by even gave him a friendly, “love your work, man” pat on the back. I’m sure it didn’t help that he was carrying a microphone emblazoned with a Rolling Stone logo and had a cameraman in tow, but the problem was that everybody recognized him and knew damn well he wasn’t Bruce Springsteen’s road manager. A comedic hoax just isn’t as funny when the people being “punked” aren’t fooled.

The unfortunate part for me, with everyone being “in the know,” was that I had no hysterical reaction shots to amplify whatever humor was there. The people who played along, being non-actors, tried unsuccessfully to act shocked or outraged. Others just posed around or showed off in one way of another, trying to look cool in front of the camera—which was more lame than humorous. Clearly, I would have to find some way to cleverly draw out the humor, eliminate the posers, show offs and fanboys and create the illusion of authentic looking reactions. Artificial reactions from amateurs usually aren’t funny; what you need for laughs are either real reactions caught on “candid camera” or other professional comedians in on the act.

Fortunately, Aziz, who is a great improviser, came through with some genuinely funny material despite it all. Using my own reactions as a gauge—if I laughed at something, I figured someone else probably would too—I began assembling a collection of funny moments. Then I trimmed portions off those moments, tightening up the timing and creating a rhythm that made the jokes work better. I found that the more I cut out, going directly from one line or one action to another, the funnier it became. By eliminating extraneous material that wasn’t funny and piecing together two moments that didn’t happen sequentially, by some happy accident, when I connected what remained, the moment I “constructed” ended up being much funnier than what was shot in real time. It took some work and creativity to craft the comedy, building up moments that did not actually happen in the manner and order in which they appear in the video, and figure out how to seamlessly join things together that had been taken completely out of sequence.

Working on this video got me thinking about comedic editing—and comedy in general. Why do we find something funny? How do we make something that wasn’t meant to be funny, funny? How do we make something mildly amusing, hilarious?

Working on this video got me thinking about comedic editing—and comedy in general. Why do we find something funny? How do we make something that wasn’t meant to be funny, funny? How do we make something mildly amusing, hilarious? As I thought about this more I really began to appreciate comedy as a true art form. However crude or juvenile that “art” may be at times, anyone who’s studied it or performed it can verify that it’s an art that is practiced, and can be refined and guided by certain underlying principles.

Four Principles of Comedy Editing

When I’m editing, I always feel my way through the material, trusting my instincts for when and where to cut, how long or short to hold on something, and choosing images to juxtapose together for maximum effect. Here, I’m going to attempt to articulate this process for comedy editing, highlighting four important principles. Of course, none of these principles are solely the province of comedy, as they can be applied to every genre and to the process of editing in general. But I like to keep them foremost in mind when working with comedy.

1. Timing is key.

Timing refers to the choice, control or judgment about when something should be shown, cut to, or cut away from. Here I’m not only referring to a single cut or image, but to the internal pacing of a whole sequence. When you listen to a person who tells a joke well, or watch a comic who’s perfected his or her routine, you can see this principle at work. There’s set-up, rhythm, build-up, delivery—all executed with precision, suggesting that the act has been engineered and timed for a certain effect. Great comedians have mastered this principle, even going so far as to build in pauses for audience laughter and reaction.

When working with comedic material, an editor must simultaneously be both comedian and audience. If the performers themselves are funny and have great comedic timing, the job is easy. If the comedian or actor blunders a bit or the timing is off the mark, the editor then has to find opportunities to enhance the humor or create humor where no humor really exists.

When working with comedic material, an editor must simultaneously be both comedian and audience. If the performers themselves are funny and have great comedic timing, the job is easy. If the comedian or actor blunders a bit or the timing is off the mark, the editor then has to find opportunities to enhance the humor or create humor where no humor really exists. In that case, using his or her best judgment, the editor must select moments with the potential for humor and construct a sequence that an audience will hopefully find amusing, figuring out when and where to cut, and crafting a rhythmic, temporal dynamic of shots that will succeed in getting the biggest laugh. Achieving this is harder than it seems. While everyone has an individual sense of timing, you know great timing when you see it—when the joke hits the mark, coming not a split-second too soon or too late.

2. Use the right reaction shot.

The shot-reverse-shot sequence (for example, a person is shown observing something, then a reverse angle shot reveals the object being looked at, and finally a return to the person observing) is one of the most powerful and frequently used building blocks of film storytelling. When a character in a comedy says or does something funny, the film cuts to a reaction from another character, and then returns to the first character.

While the art of comedy lies in the juxtaposition (and timing) of these elements, I find that the right reaction shot is essential. Right doesn’t mean “correct”, but rather the most appropriate. An actor can give you ten different reactions, all of them “correct,” but what’s the most appropriate reaction shot to use in order to elicit the response you desire from the audience? Are you going for subtlety? Looking for affirmation of the joke or situation in the reaction shot, or playing against the joke and the expectations of the audience? Are you going for a giggle, a snicker, or an outright guffaw? How will you craft this joke or moment in relation to what came before and what comes after? All of these questions help to determine the right reaction shot to use. I frequently find that while there are technically many “correct” choices, there’s usually only one right one.

While the art of comedy lies in the juxtaposition (and timing) of these elements, I find that the right reaction shot is essential. Right doesn’t mean “correct”, but rather the most appropriate. An actor can give you ten different reactions, all of them “correct,” but what’s the most appropriate reaction shot to use in order to elicit the response you desire from the audience?

This viral video I edited shows these two principles in action. Promoting a new mouthwash, but also spoofing the hit show 24 in a mockumentary style similar to The Office, the timing quickens the pace and brings out the humor, while priceless reaction shots amplify the impact of the jokes. As in The Office, showing one character’s ridiculous over-the-top antics, followed by a cut to another character’s deadpan reaction almost always succeeds in making the humorous antics even funnier.

(The Office meets 24 in this spoof for SmartMouth.)

3. Let the audience in on the joke beforehand.

Sometimes it pays to let the audience know a key piece of information first. Hitchcock mastered this principle for suspenseful effect: By showing viewers important information (for example, a ticking time bomb) before his characters found out, he created a feeling of tension in the audience. Action and horror films today rely on this time-tested technique; when the killer is in the house and you find yourself screaming at the screen because the character is clueless, you’ll know this principle is at play.

But the same strategy can be used superbly in comedy. In an oft-cited hypothetical example from a Laurel and Hardy film,* the great editor-turned director David Lean advises using the old comedy maxim: “Tell them what you’re going to do. Do it. Tell them you’ve done it” to get the biggest laugh out of the sequence. This means suggesting to the audience what is about to happen in advance of the gag.

In an oft-cited hypothetical example from a Laurel and Hardy film, the great editor-turned director David Lean advises using the old comedy maxim: “Tell them what you’re going to do. Do it. Tell them you’ve done it” to get the biggest laugh out of the sequence. This means suggesting to the audience what is about to happen in advance of the gag.

In Lean’s example, Laurel and Hardy are running down the street and Hardy slips on a banana peel and falls. Rather than cutting the sequence simply for smooth editing values (for example, Laurel and Hardy running in a full shot, cut to a close-up of the banana peel as his foot enters the frame and steps on the peel slipping, then cutting back to Hardy crashing down on the ground) which would no doubt elicit audience laughter, prime the joke by showing the banana peel well in advance. So Lean’s version of the scene would look like this:

1. Medium-shot of Laurel and Hardy running along the street.
2. Close-up of banana skin lying on the pavement. (You have told your audience what you are going to do and they will start to laugh.)
3. Medium shot of Laurel and Hardy still running. (The audience will laugh still more.) Hold the shot on for several seconds of running before Hardy finally crashes to the pavement. (The odds are that the audience will reward you with a belly laugh. Having told them what you are going to do, and having done it, how do you tell them you’ve done it?)
4. A close-up of Laurel making an inane gesture of despair. (The audience will laugh again.)

As Lean shows, by giving the audience a heads up to the visual comedy, you set the joke up to be even funnier, eliciting multiple laughs and prolonging the audience’s amusement. We have an idea of what’s going to happen, and when it does and is performed well and edited for the right effect (notice shot 4 is a reaction shot from Laurel), the comedic impact is more powerful than if Laurel and Hardy were running and Hardy surprisingly slipped on an unseen banana peel. Why settle for just one comedic incident eliciting a single collective chuckle when you can build up to the big joke with a rich set-up, foreshadowing close-ups, and funny reaction shots that will have the audience chuckling all the way through and roaring by the time the gag is pulled off?

A less obvious but still illustrative example of this principle can be seen in part one of a viral video series I edited for Consumer Reports, in which a wiry goof, Brandon, challenges a low-key Consumer Reports test driver, Jake, to a car race. Jake’s mild-mannered personality is a great foil for Brandon, who comes across as a classic smartass. Timing and reaction shots are integral to the humor as usual, but the principle of letting the audience in on the joke beforehand is at work as well. Like the Laurel and Hardy example, where the audience gets a hint of the joke in advance by seeing a shot of the banana peel well before Hardy slips on it, we flash a quick shot of the Dodge Viper peeling out not long after Brandon announces he’s going to race Jake. When we see that Brandon will be driving a tiny, super fuel-efficient capsule called the Smart Car and Jake, by stark contrast, gets the muscled Viper, we already know what’s going to happen. Take a look at the video to see how the “let ‘em in on the joke beforehand” principle is used to dramatize the race and ramp up the humor:

(Consumer Reports Video 1: Dodge Viper vs. the Smart Car.**)

4. Less is More

As I discovered when editing the Rolling Stone video featuring Aziz Ansari, sometimes cutting things out and showing less amplifies the humor. This made me curious about how other comedic material is edited to see if the editors on a TV show, for example, would employ the same principles. Because I was amused by Aziz, but hadn’t seen him in anything prior to editing the video for Rolling Stone, I decided to check out the first season of Parks and Recreation.

Set in the world of local politics (the Parks and Recreation Department of Pawnee, Indiana), the show is the brainchild of Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, the duo behind the American version of The Office. Amy Poehler, from Saturday Night Live plays the lead character, Leslie Knope, an ambitious but bumbling mid-level bureaucrat at whose expense everyone gets a laugh. Aziz plays office slacker, Tom Haverford, Leslie’s self-serving (and irrepressibly horny) colleague. Poking fun at the absurd complexities of small town bureaucracy, the show abounds with all the ignorance, idiocy, stupidity, hypocrisy and general buffoonery that we’ve come to expect from both versions of The Office. Executed in the same, frequently understated mockumentary style, Parks and Recreation throws jabs at citizens and bureaucrats alike, revealing how petty and unnecessarily complicated local politics can be—especially when every player has his or her own personal agenda.

By shortening sequences, and eliminating stuff that isn’t quite working or very funny, you can go from mark to mark to build up the impact of the comedy and get bigger and better laughs. Less is literally more.

Two versions of the season finale are available for viewing on Hulu, the regular 22 minute episode and a producer’s cut that’s four minutes longer. Initially, I thought that the longer one might be funnier but after watching both versions I found the opposite to be true. While no whole jokes or sequences were excised, what was eliminated from the producer’s cut made the remaining material much tighter and funnier. Much as I’d discovered with the Rolling Stone video, the editors of Parks and Recreation cut out superfluous material between two funny moments, often going from joke to joke or from a humorous incident or line to a reaction shot. By shortening sequences, and eliminating stuff that isn’t quite working or very funny, you can go from mark to mark to build up the impact of the comedy and get bigger and better laughs. Less is literally more.

The Illusion of Spontaneity

Most of the time, when we’re watching comedy, we’re enjoying ourselves so much that we’re not tuned in to the details that reveal how the comedic effect was created—worse still, we may not even want to know, as, for some, that might spoil the magic of the moment. Comedy appears spontaneous, as if it were accidental or conjured up on the spot. Sometimes that is the case, but, frequently, it’s not. Like any performance art, comedy is planned, practiced, rehearsed and executed with skill. This is obvious if you watch any great stand-up comic. The more carefully you study comedy, the more you see that it is not only a finely tuned art, but something of a science as well. While the success of live comedy is overwhelmingly dependent on the performers, in film comedy, the resulting laughs are only partially dependent on the performers. Editing and sound are factors that, when done right, take whatever is there—whether it was working in real time or not—to a whole new level of humor through various manipulations and enhancements. As always in film, actors provide editors with the raw material, sometimes rough, sometimes a potential gem, but it’s the editor who shapes the scenes, builds the anticipation and polishes that material into cinematic gold.

_________________________

*Cited by both Ralph Rosenblum in When the Shooting Stops, the Cutting Begins (p. 77-78), and Karel Reisz in The Technique of Film Editing (p. 103-4).

**If you liked the Consumer Reports video, you can see more of Brandon and his antics here.

Set in 2004 when the Iraq War turned into a daily conflagration of improvised explosive devices (IEDs)—seen in the hydra-headed forms of roadside, car, truck, suicide and body bombs—the film focuses on the surreal, hair-raising experiences of Delta company, a US Army bomb defusing unit charged with what has to rank as one one of the most dangerous jobs in the world: disarming or safely detonating IEDs.

Defused IEDs

Controlled IED Explosion

(For those unfamiliar with the term, an IED is essentially a homemade bomb composed of conventional military-grade explosives that uses a variety of consumer electronic components and methods of detonation. IEDs deliver devastating blasts that can sometimes wipe out a whole city block or more and have been deployed extensively by insurgents fighting the coalition forces in Iraq. It is estimated that IEDs have been responsible for 40% of coalition deaths from 2003-2007, not to mention countless Iraqi civilians.)

Staff Sgt. William James, Jeremy Renner in a tour de force performance, takes charge of Delta company after the untimely death of its previous leader but is almost immediately at odds with the other two members, Sgt. J. T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty). Unorthodox and cowboy-like in his approach to defusing bombs, James throws both caution and protocol to the wind, opting instead for what seems like pure improvisation. In any profession, there are those who are masters of their craft but remain quite simply great technicians; then there are others who elevate the craft to an art form, who are like magicians, dazzling with their skill and inventing their own methods. James is the latter, and from the very first bomb he defuses—when he disappears into a smokescreen and into his own internal world— you get the sense that he’ll either come through brilliantly (just in the nick of time) or blow himself and everyone else to smithereens.

In any profession, there are those who are masters of their craft but remain quite simply great technicians; then there are others who elevate the craft to an art form, who are like magicians, dazzling with their skill and inventing their own methods. James is the latter, and from the very first bomb he defuses—when he disappears into a smokescreen and into his own internal world— you get the sense that he’ll either come through brilliantly (just in the nick of time) or blow himself and everyone else to smithereens.

As the film progresses, with each scene upping the ante over the previous one in terms of sheer danger and suspense, the characters of the three soldiers are thrown into sharp relief. Eldridge, though holding it together, wasn’t made for war and has a hard time dealing with the deaths he witnesses; he teeters on the edge of a breakdown and needs to talk with a military psychiatrist who is so out of touch with the combat soldier’s reality that he doles out absurd, platitudinous advice like “this doesn’t have to be a bad time in your life.” Sanborn, made of much hardier stock, is a well-trained soldier used to following regulations because, in his experience, rules and caution save lives. In contrast, James appears to be a loose cannon, an adrenaline junkie who seems to thrive, quite literally, on the risk and thrill of defying boundaries and doing things his own way. While both Eldgridge and Sanborn fall apart emotionally under different circumstances, James barely seems to bat an eyelash after even the most harrowing situation. It’s as if he’s wired differently, or completely at ease with the fact that he walks a constant tightrope between life and death.

William James (Jeremy Renner)

J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie)

Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty)

On the surface, William James’ character is an updated but quintessential portrait of the American Hero. He’s a man we’ve seen on-screen for decades played by James Cagney, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen—wise-cracking, cool under pressure, tough-as-nails and a bit unhinged. Jeremy Renner may have a boyish face, but his charisma and screen presence are, at first sight, pure bravado. Yet what becomes clear as the film progresses is that Renner has the depth and sensitivity as an actor to give his portrayal of masculinity the complexity of some of James Cagney’s finest performances—as opposed to, say, John Wayne’s one-note swagger. Far from being emotionally cold, James shows sensitivity toward both Sanborn and Eldridge at critical moments in the field, displays affection for an Iraqi boy who sells bootleg DVDs, and makes a desperate attempt to save the life of an Iraqi man with four children who is forced to wear a suicide bomb vest. While all of the characteristics signs of male toughness are visible on the surface—cigarette smoking, a preference for heavy metal music, nonchalance in the face of danger, flagrant violation of military protocol, and an inability to communicate with his wife—the film shows a different facet of James in almost every scene. To his credit, Renner peels away layer after layer of James’ persona until you understand that even the most hardened military type you might want to judge at first glance is a complex, living, breathing human being.

The irony of the character is that he is in touch with his sensitivity yet fulfills his highest calling in battle. In one of the most fascinating sequences in the film, we see James back home after his tour of duty. At one point, he’s standing in a large supermarket and is more disoriented than he’s ever been in Iraq. When his wife asks him to pick up some cereal, he stands in the breakfast aisle for a long time looking at an endless selection of cereal boxes, unsure of which one to choose. For me, this is the most powerful moment in the film because it suggests that the society we have created at this point in late capitalism (as represented by American suburban life) is so far removed from the basic survival needs of the human animal, so banal in its surface (and empty) forms of consumer complexity, and so sanitized, numbed and devoid of anything remotely threatening or unpredictable, that the theater of war in a battered, sun-scorched Iraqi city might just be preferable because of the stimulation it offers. In fact, the contrast between the Iraq scenes—shot in a frenetic, gritty style full of hazardous situations and a constantly shifting palate of characters—and the scenes of James at home in the US is so stark that, as a viewer, you would rather see more of the danger of battle than the prosaic and unremarkable non-events of everyday life in America.

the society we have created at this point in late capitalism (as represented by American suburban life) is so far removed from the basic survival needs of the human animal, so banal in its surface (and empty) forms of consumer complexity, and so sanitized, numbed and devoid of anything remotely threatening or unpredictable, that the theater of war in a battered, sun-scorched Iraqi city might just be preferable because of the stimulation it offers.

It comes as no surprise, then, that James chooses to return to Iraq for another tour of duty, and for this reason many will see The Hurt Locker as the story of a soldier addicted to war. In fact, the film easily lends itself to this interpretation because it begins with a quote by the war correspondent Chris Hedges: “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug…” New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis takes this view, saying the film is “an analytical if visceral look at how the experience of war can change a man, how it eats into his brain so badly he ends up hooked on it.” A.O. Scott sees things differently, recognizing that “James is something else, someone we recognize instantly even if we have never seen anyone quite like him before. He is a connoisseur, a genius, an artist.” To that I would add that, rather than being a war addict, James embodies the archetype of the warrior: He’s alive, alert, living out his destiny while at war and his “genius,” as Scott rightly calls it, thrives within that context. Yet, paradoxically, he’s not the warrior who was born (or simply trained) to kill, but rather the one whose vocation it is to save lives by dancing with death to defang the violence of the bomb.

But despite the film’s complex depiction of the main character, its examination of the dangers and stresses of war, and a surface reading of the film as a story of addiction, many viewers will think it glorifies combat because it’s an apolitical war film. At an advanced screening I attended at the Museum of Modern Art, director Kathryn Bigelow was asked the inevitable question why she chose to make an apolitical film and set it in this particular conflict. She explained that she wanted to stay very close to what Mark Boal, the writer of the film, experienced when he was an embedded reporter with a bomb squad in Iraq in 2004. This meant not only setting the film in Iraq but shooting it in the Middle East (Jordan), keeping the story confined to the experiences of the soldiers and, rather than staging for the camera, using a highly realistic, documentary style of hand-held shooting to capture the action. (In addition to four Super 16mm cameras, she used a high-speed HD Phantom camera that captures 10,000 frames/second for scenes depicting the pressure effects of bomb impacts.) With a carefully constructed audio track that blurs the boundaries between score and sound design, and pitch-perfect editing, the result is a hyper-realistic, fly-on-the wall experience that puts you right in the midst of the action.

With a carefully constructed audio track that blurs the boundaries between score and sound design, and pitch-perfect editing, the result is a hyper-realistic, fly-on-the wall experience that puts you right in the midst of the action.

It’s this realism that will, no doubt, strike some viewers—especially desensitized youth raised in a media saturated culture permeated with violence—as being an exaltation of the thrill of warfare. Certainly, the film’s flawless execution, high impact audio-visual experience and its focus on the one character who seems largely immune to the nerve-crushing pressures of war seems, unintentionally, to glamorize war. In this regard, perhaps the extraordinary strength of the film’s style is also a kind of Achilles heel, in much the same way that Sam Peckinpah’s use of slow motion violence, in Straw Dogs but especially in The Wild Bunch, frequently (but inadvertently) glamorized action he slowed down to provoke the audience and impact them viscerally.

A more insidious oversimplification may come from viewers with a political stance who might miss the character nuances and see the film as a style-over-substance missed opportunity to speak out against war. When considering the shaky foundations of the Iraq War—the fact that it was prosecuted on the basis of falsified evidence, greed, lies, fear mongering, and full-throttle media collusion—the criticism would be justified if there weren’t already a slew of films, particularly documentaries, that have addressed various aspects of this politically motivated and ethically reckless war effort. Personally, I’m not a fan of apolitical war films because I view wars conducted by rich, industrialized nations today as a collective sickness at best and delusional lunacy at worst. But what I responded to in The Hurt Locker, and what I think is valuable, is understanding the surreal, insane experience of soldiers we have sent to war, soldiers who are frequently young and inexperienced, under-trained in terms of understanding a different culture in whose midst they find themselves as the enemy, who are used as tools and cannon fodder by power-grabbing, profit hungry politicians, and who return shell-shocked and psychologically fragmented, if not maimed or disabled for life. James is the exception to the rule; soldiers like Eldridge and Sanborn are the norm. They are the ones who find themselves in “the hurt locker,” military slang for a place of complete and ultimate pain.

Filmed in one of the most ascetic hermitages in the world, the Grand Chartreuse monastery located in the French Alps, Into Great Silence enters and documents a world so different from our hyperkinetic, tech-driven, stimulus and spectacle-oriented society that, for some, it may as well be a trip to Mars. Although, like Mars, the world of the Carthusian Order is silent, still, and somewhat alien, that world slowly, yet hypnotically seeps into our consciousness. Image and sound—though sound more powerfully than image, as I will discuss below—enter where most of us would dare not go: the realm of silence.

As if God is present in all the small things, we see snowflakes fall silently, flames flicker in the dark, and dust particles float aimlessly on rays of golden sunlight entering a window. A monk prays with devotion while winter establishes its austere dominion outside. Slowly, a completely different sense of time emerges, one which is confident yet almost indiscernible, and can be experienced, it seems, only by leading a quiet life. Throughout the film, we see the simple and contemplative life led by the Carthusian Order, a life of prayer, meditation and reflection; even eating, sleeping, studying and manual labor are carried out in almost complete silence and solitude. As the seasons turn, the monks live their serene, hermetically sealed lives attuned to a universal rhythm that is radically different from what we know. Our version of time, an artfully contrived social convention, feels too frequently like a frantic countdown dictating daily priorities which cannot be ignored without consequence—missed deadlines, pangs of guilt or the creeping feeling that we may not ever have all the time we need to do all we had hoped. However, in the film, and it seems in the monastery itself, time moves slowly and life is not lived in haste. Every action, even the most routine or obligatory task, is undertaken with quiet purpose, so that the simple act of washing a plate, cutting firewood, or making a new robe takes on profound meaning.

“As the seasons turn, the monks live their serene, hermetically sealed lives attuned to a universal rhythm that is radically different from what we know. Our version of time, an artfully contrived social convention, feels too frequently like a frantic countdown dictating daily priorities which cannot be ignored without consequence—missed deadlines, pangs of guilt or the creeping feeling that we may not ever have all the time we need to do all we had hoped. However, in the film, and it seems in the monastery itself, time moves slowly and life is not lived in haste. Every action, even the most routine or obligatory task, is undertaken with quiet purpose, so that the simple act of washing a plate, cutting firewood, or making a new robe takes on profound meaning.”

That meaning is what the monks who live at the Grand Chartreuse seek. Following the dictum that “anyone who does not give up all he has cannot be my disciple,” the monks who belong to this nine-hundred year old monastery have taken a lifelong vow of silence and poverty so that they may contemplate and seek God in their daily lives. Although they are a community, the monks spend most of their time alone in small, Spartan cells, leaving their rooms only at designated times for prayer services, liturgical chanting, or Sunday (and feast day) meals eaten together but in silence. Once a week, the monks take an afternoon walk during which they may speak. Once a year, they are allowed a visit by families left behind in the outside world. What seems like a strict, regimented life—one that no doubt requires great sacrifice and discipline—appears to have its own sense of freedom because it is lived consciously in a perpetual, but silent, present moment.

But it is a misconception to think that, even in a place so removed as the Chartreuse, the moment is lived in pure silence. Like all things, silence is relative. Anyone who has ever meditated knows that when you quiet your surroundings and still your mind, a whole new world of sound emerges of which you were heretofore unaware: a bird chirping in the distance, the rustling of leaves as the breeze blows through the trees, the whirring of a passing car; then there are internal sounds of your body—gastric processes, rhythmic breathing and pulsing heartbeats. Although the monastery contains far fewer extraneous sounds than our world, the ones that exist are meaningful because they are caused by purposeful action. When a monk writes in a notebook or saws a piece of firewood, the by-product of his action is sound. Yet far from being disruptive to the overall mood of silence, sound in the film reveals a world of depth that seems more powerful than the visuals. While what we see is consistent and repetitive, sound made when a monk rings a bell or moves his hand across a piece of fabric as he cuts it, strikes through the surrounding silence as if we are hearing it for the first time. Due to the absence of audio elements like music, sound design or dialogue, sound is experienced in a way that is organic and pure—not the way it would sound in a controlled environment like a studio but in life under real acoustic conditions. The result, for the viewer and I would venture to guess for the monks as well, is an experience of sound as an object worthy of reflection itself.

Philip Groning, the director, stated that he intended the film to be a meditation. Rather than simply depict a monastery, he sought to have the film become one by using “silence,” “repetition” and “rhythm.” The use of silence alone is so powerful that, for me, it achieves his objective. While an ordinary film has layers of sound and story, both of which absorb the mind, Into Great Silence has neither, thereby allowing a direct contemplation of the subject matter through sound and image. Lacking a story, plot or drama to follow, I began to think about the meaning of the monks’ actions, the reasons why they perform certain rituals repeatedly, and how they are still a part of the greater world despite being sequestered and hidden in a monastery. For two hours and forty-nine minutes, I almost felt like I was in the monastery myself, living with the monks, together yet alone, honoring, in solitude and silence, a larger, slower, more profound sense of time.

While the repetition of imagery never bothered me—after all, the monks do live a limited and regimented life—the filmmaker’s choice of repeating title cards with religious dicta did not work. The first two times the dictum “anyone who does not give up all he has cannot be my disciple” were shown onscreen, they were meaningful because the text provided insight into the monks’ austere lives. Though, as the film progressed, the third, fourth and fifth repetitions of that phrase lost meaning because none of the images that preceded or came after the title card related to the aphorism. Moreover, the repetition of this text, along with several other phrases, did not help me better appreciate the monks’ repetitive, ritual-oriented lives; in fact, it began to detract from my experience of contemplation and communion with the subject. Although many of the title cards were initially informative and useful as a formal device, unnecessary repetition diminished the power and purpose of a good idea.

Similarly, I found the editing choppy, sometimes disorienting and generally lacking in rhythm. While the film succeeds in conveying a different sense of time, the episodic moments captured on film are often ended abruptly and no visual explanation is offered. For example, a monk who is a gardener at one point siphons water into a tube at a creek in the forest. He then connects this to another tube. Rather than showing us where that second tube may lead or what its purpose might be—is the monk bringing water to irrigate the garden or taking it to the monastery itself which has no running water?—the episode simply ends there and moves on to the next. While an explanation of monastic life is obviously not the documentary’s intention, the lack of simple establishing or reverse shots that would show us the purpose of an action are glaring omissions.

In a similar vein, I frequently felt that many shots were too short and others put together awkwardly. For example, when individual monks are introduced in the film, it is always after a title card and three at a time, with each monk looking into the camera, one after another. The pattern of introducing the monks in this way not only became predictable, but also proved to be dissatisfying. With so few opportunities to look directly at a monk’s face and see into his eyes, I wanted to gaze at each person for far longer than he was onscreen. One would think, with these more intimate views, the shot would naturally run long since it’s the only chance the film gives you to meditate on the actual person, rather than on his anonymous actions. Unfortunately, the shots are not very long and, coming in successions of three, merely condition you to expect the shot pattern rather than allow communion with each individual monk, which I believe is the intention.

“At times fluid, at times rough, the film lacks a cohesive pace and ultimately offers, not a tranquil journey, but a choppy ride…And yet, despite its shortcomings, this film must be celebrated for its intimate exploration of a place many of us will never know. That place is not simply the Grand Chartreuse monastery but the abode of silence we carry within ourselves yet seldom hear because the noise of our world is deafening.”

Likewise, various sequences of monastery establishing shots seem to lack rhythm in the way they are constructed. The length of individual shots often feels arbitrary: some are too short, others too long. More than once I noticed that a shot was unnecessarily repeated, usually from a dramatically different angle, thereby causing a jarring effect. Since these particular shots had no subject except for an empty hallway, I wondered if they were mistakes or if the editor (in this case, the filmmaker himself) was not very experienced. The result of these sequences is that they do not facilitate a smooth narrative flow, one that would have done much to facilitate the kind of meditative state the director wanted to induce. At times fluid, at times rough, the film lacks a cohesive pace and ultimately offers, not a tranquil journey, but a choppy ride. In my opinion, if Into Great Silence has one major flaw it’s the editing. I feel like a big opportunity was missed to craft a work of art, one that would have had its own unique and beautiful sense of rhythm, and would have provided not only a rare window into an insular world, but also succeeded as a profound meditation on time.

And yet, despite its shortcomings, this film must be celebrated for its intimate exploration of a place many of us will never know. That place is not simply the Grand Chartreuse monastery but the abode of silence we carry within ourselves yet seldom hear because the noise of our world is deafening.

Ostensibly about “[a]n uncompromising, visionary architect [who] struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism despite personal, professional and economic pressures to conform to popular standards” according to a logline, the 1949 film of The Fountainhead is, in fact, a stiff, wooden enterprise with characters so caricatured that you can practically see Ayn Rand speaking through their lips. Since she wrote the screenplay, I have no one else to blame for the melodramatic writing, which comes off more comical (unintentionally) than serious, and more cumbersome than fluid. As I’m sure is the case in the novel, characters are representative of “types” thrown together in the same universe to illustrate her philosophy of Objectivism, which, in her own words, is “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

The “heroic being” in the movie, architect Howard Roark, is played by a horribly miscast Gary Cooper. A Hollywood screen legend known for his rugged, cowboy looks and understated style of acting, Cooper’s stoic performance seems completely at odds with the passion required by the character. Roark, who literally fights the entire architecture establishment, turns down job after job, despite dire financial circumstances, because clients want him to design public pleasing buildings in an art-deco style devoid of individualism. Believing fervently that his architectural designs are an individual expression that must be accepted and built as intended, or else rejected outright (which they are in the early part of the film), Roark would rather perform back breaking manual labor excavating concrete from a quarry (which he does) than compromise his artistic vision.

While a person like Roark, in real life, would require a tremendous amount of passion (as well as a pretty large pair of cojones) to fight an entire profession, Gary Cooper’s delivery of even the most incendiary line is so restrained that if it weren’t for his powerful screen presence, one might easily find it laughable. Add to that the fact that we are supposed to believe that middle-aged Cooper is a college age architecture student at the beginning of the film and then subsequently an architect in his early to mid 20s, and the film borders on the incredulous, not to mention comedic.

But, perhaps, looking at it from another angle, the problem is not Gary Cooper’s acting, since he’s delivered a number of fine performances, most notably as Marshall Will Kane in High Noon and as Peter Ibbetson in the lesser known, eponymous 1935 film. The problem, I suspect, is Rand’s overly melodramatic writing. When dialogue is contrived, the acting suffers because actors have a difficult time connecting with the words and delivering their lines. As the old theater adage goes, if it’s not on the page, it’s not on the stage. Yet, given his experience and in light of what I’ve seen of his better performances, I’m inclined to speculate that Gary Cooper may have recognized the danger in playing the character like he’s written, with passion and fire, because taking the melodrama literally could have pushed the film over the top into a full-blown farce. Perhaps, then, he wisely chose to play against character, to underplay it rather than embody Roark with gusto. Either way, his character comes off bland and humorless, and Rand’s faulty writing is pretty evident.

If Cooper’s acting is at one end of the spectrum, then Patricia Neal’s is at the other. Playing his love interest, the mysterious, angst-ridden Dominique Francon, she gives a performance that, though outrightly laughable at times (due again to melodramatic writing helped along by a melodramatic score), has the color of alienation and the haughty air of a spoiled girl, or an ennui-soaked princess. A pessimist and a paradox, Dominique destroys what she loves because she does not want the object of her love “to be part of a world in which beauty, greatness and genius have no chance.” Sexually repressed but radiating a magnetic sexuality, she is the kind of woman no man can possess, yet when she herself can’t possess the man she wants, Roark, she takes it as a grave offense. In a famous scene that some liken to rape, she comes onto Roark by running away, causing him to pursue and take her by force, which was no doubt her intention. In parts of Neal’s portrayal, I see a precursor to Monica Viitti’s erratic and compelling performances in several great Micaelangelo Antonioni films, namely The Eclipse but especially Red Desert. And yet Neal’s performance suffers too from a lack of connection to the words; her facial expressions are sometimes blank and make you wonder if it’s vacuousness she wants to convey, or if she’s simply uncertain about what to emote.

“While the film comes close to making an admirable statement about resisting conformity and expressing your individuality through art, and of never giving up in your struggle to do so, in the end Rand’s heavy moralizing comes down like a sledgehammer.”

Perhaps my biggest problem with The Fountainhead is that Rand constructs a black and white universe to prove her point, a place where extremes are the only choices, where there’s never a middle way and no possibility of compromise. It’s either the client’s way or Roark’s, it’s either architecture or drilling granite, it’s either Roark give up architecture for his love of Dominique (which, as a bona fide Randian “heroic being,” I can assure you he does not) or he give her up instead. Virtually every scenario in the film is set up as a false dilemma so that the character has no choice but to be driven toward his own happiness, or face an alternative that is the very antithesis of his raison d’etre. While the film comes close to making an admirable statement about resisting conformity and expressing your individuality through art, and of never giving up in your struggle to do so, in the end Rand’s heavy moralizing comes down like a sledgehammer. When Roark, in what would today be called an act of “terrorism,” blows up a public housing project he designed because it was altered against his will and he was powerless to stop construction, he is brought before a court of law. In the climax of the film, Roark defends himself in a long, expository speech that sums up Rand’s philosophy and, of course, leads to his acquittal while simultaneously turning around public opinion that was rabidly against him.

Lest I beat up the film a little too much, I will say that King Vidor’s direction, Robert Burks’ cinematography, and David Weisbart’s editing make for visually pleasurable and easy viewing, as they should considering that all three were seasoned studio professionals. (Robert Burks photographed a number of Hitchcock films, including Rear Window and Vertigo, and David Weisbart cut Mildred Pierce and Dark Passage.) Raymond Massey and Robert Douglas, as billionaire newspaper mogul Gail Wynand and the delectably scheming, architecture critic Ellsworth M. Toohey respectively, are excellent. And Ayn Rand’s screenplay, despite its egregious faults, is well-plotted and has a clear three-act structure that any average moviegoer could follow.

In the end, though I obviously do not enthusiastically recommend this film, I’m glad I watched it. 114 minutes saved me the trouble of reading 752 pages I’d never get through, and I instantly got the jist of Ayn Rand’s philosophy: Never compromise, never give up, and always pursue your own rational self-interest and happiness as your own moral obligation–even if it might cause the unintentional suffering of others, be it one’s lover, the public good or the planet.