WEIRDLAND

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Noir World, Raymond Chandler's Moral conscience

Film noir is often referred to in spatial terms, as a world or a universe. The classical canon is itself replete with enigmatic aphorisms about it, whether “a blue, sick world” (Dead Reckoning, John Cromwell, 1947), or “a bright, guilty world” (The Lady from Shanghai, Orson Welles, 1948). In The Big Sleep (1939), the novel in which private investigator Philip Marlowe makes his first appearance, Raymond Chandler gives us this condensed, haiku-version: “The tyres sang on the moist concrete of the boulevard. The world was a wet emptiness.” As the novel reaches its climax, the wet has gained momentum: “The tumbling rain was solid white spray in the headlights. The windshield wiper could hardly keep the glass clear enough to see through.”

The nocturnal drive described by Chandler is exemplary in this regard, for this passage also describes the most identifiable of credit sequences in the films noir to come: the view through the windscreen shot from the interior of a car tunneling down a dark road, sometimes with a pair of eyes framed in the rearview mirror. The flickering cones of the searchlights do not so much reveal what lies ahead as they make the surrounding darkness visible, charging the unseen with foreboding presence. Through rain-washed glass and slashing wipers we sense, rather than distinguish, the phantom shapes passing by. It is a subjective shot, yet we haven’t been introduced to the source of that subjectivity. Rather than identifying with a character, we’re pulled by this motion, transported into a space that is familiar precisely in its lack of clarity. Described in this manner, this also marks a departure from the palpable space of Classical Hollywood Cinema.

At some point, Marlowe reaches an outer limit where social space ends, yet something is evoked beyond or beneath it. The hallmark of Chandler’s prose, Fredric Jameson argues (in his essay 'The Synoptic Chandler'), coordinates this social environment with and against “the presence of some vaster, absent natural unity beyond this ephemeral set of episodes in punctual human time.” Jameson demonstrates how the novels move toward such fringe areas at the end of the road, or, in the Heideggarian sense, at the end of the world. The “cognitive map of Los Angeles,” charted through his investigations, “has no grounding or resonance unless it circulates slowly against the rotation of that other, deeper anti-system which is that of the Earth itself.” -'The Phenomenology of Film Noir' essay by Henrik Gustafsson, included in "A Companion to Film Noir" (2013) by Andrew Spicer & Helen Hanson

The difficulty Marlowe faces in The Big Sleep lies in restoring the balance between public and private worlds. Despite his sense of guilt at having concealed her murder of Rusty Regan, Marlowe considers himself to have acted honorably in enabling Carmen Sternwood to receive psychiatric treatment, thereby protecting her and her father from the public ordeal of a trial. The schizoid behavior of Carmen Sternwood, who is unable to communicate her feelings of rejection except through killing, that is, through acting only on materiality, represents the beginnings of Chandler’s attempt to explore the identity and status of the individual in the twentieth century.

In The Long Good-Bye, Marlowe is increasingly aware of the meaninglessness of his task, not, as Jameson suggests, because some long forgotten crime makes his restoration of the distinction between public and private, of an old order, worthless, but because the opposition itself is no longer feasible. Rather than implying, therefore, a concealed presence, the surface life of objects has become all that there is. Marlowe’s description of life in jail demonstrates this point. There, stripped of material belongings, he finds himself unable to communicate; the objects by which even he defines himself turn out to conceal only absence. Marlowe’s faith throughout the novel that Lennox might be possessed of a personality with which he can engage is misjudged and the contrast between them becomes clear. Whereas Marlowe continues to struggle to balance private with public, Lennox, as the novel progresses, makes several attempts to obscure or erase his identity and his past. Unlike Carmen Sternwood whose past, in the form of Rusty Regan, the man she has murdered, trails behind her until it is discovered-and uncovered-by Marlowe, Lennox succeeds in losing contact with his, existing, in the end, in his materiality alone. Source: chrisroutledge.co.uk

Claire Trevor plays femme fatale Helen Grayle in "Murder, My Sweet" (1944) directed by Edward Dmytryk, based on "Farewell, My Lovely" (1940) written by Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler did not feel satisfied. He considered "Farewell, My Lovely" his best book, not bettered by any that followed, and his films had never achieved the level of artistry he aspired to. He had, at times, increased his drinking to dangerous levels, and he had put his marriage at risk.

The Little Sister had benefited from Chandler’s intimate knowledge of Hollywood, a world he knew far better than the Los Angeles underworld. Chandler was not Hitchcock’s first choice, or his second, or even his third. Hitchcock was determined to have a big-name writer attached to the film ("Strangers on a Train") and a treatment circulated around Hollywood for months: John Steinbeck was mentioned, but turned it down. So did Dashiell Hammett. The contract was generous, paying $2,500 per week, plus $50 for secretarial expenses. It also allowed Chandler to work from home, still something of a rarity in Hollywood. Hitchcock was even willing to accommodate his refusal to drive to the studio in Burbank: script meetings were to be held in La Jolla.

Farley Granger and Ruth Roman in "Strangers on a Train" (1951) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, script by Raymond Chandler, Czenzi Ormonde and Whitfield Cook based on Patricia Highsmith's novel.

The trouble was, though, that Hitchcock’s manner of dealing was to be obtuse, pointing out problems or adding small suggestions, rather than tackling the big issues directly. This left Chandler puzzled by quite what he wanted, and he described the experience as being akin to that ‘of a fighter who can’t get set because he is continually being kept off balance by short jabs.’ Chandler called Hitchcock a ‘fat bastard’. Chandler, used to the director’s confusing and contradictory behaviour, continued to write the script, unaware that Hitchcock wanted nothing more to do with him.

Hitchcock was interested in building cinematic tension and in creating a thrilling experience for his audience. Chandler, in contrast, was much more interested in character and motivation (probably closer to the spirit of Patricia Highsmith’s original novel).

Marlowe has changed: he has the total realisation that not only is he alone in the world, but that the connection he had thought he had found was a fallacy. What hope he had for companionship, or rather, true friendship, is extinguished in the last pages of The Long Goodbye. In Marlowe’s eyes, Terry Lennox seemed to share his vision of the world. Part of Marlowe does want Lennox to turn back because he is so lonely but, in the end, his moral conscience wins out. He knows that he is on his own and he recognises that his own choices have brought him here, and he is content that he has done the right thing. Chandler wanted him to feel driven to an inevitable conclusion against his own instinct; he wanted him to be betrayed and to understand why.

Marlowe was a knight with a code of honour that was unshakable, even in the most testing times. Chandler recognised that he had put him in a situation that might be hard to understand for many of his readers, if treated in the usual way, and so took on the challenge to reveal Marlowe’s own motivations and ways of thinking. The honourable martyr was, of course, also the sort of man Raymond Chandler imagined himself to be. -"A Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life of Raymond Chandler" (2013) by Tom Williams

Monday, November 11, 2013

Happy Anniversary, Robert Ryan!

Happy Anniversary, Robert Ryan!

Robert Ryan, portrait by RKO studio photographer Ernest Bachrach, 1942

In The Set-Up (Robert Wise, 1949), veteran boxer Stoker Thompson (Robert Ryan) hides out in the deserted “Paradise City” venue, which a few moments earlier had been oozing with carnal and visceral presence. Meanwhile, his troubled wife (Audrey Totter) leaves the bustle of the “Dreamland” penny arcade by a flight of stairs to the complete isolation of a downtown walkway.

Noir of the Soul: On Dangerous Ground (1952), Nicholas Ray’s tale of a city cop gone rotten, departing into the country to work on a rape and murder case, highlights all of this powerful filmmaker’s stylistic strengths, from his knowing and caring work with performers to his keen eye for setting and his meshing of the arc of dramatic flow to both human feeling and situational design. Ray, who had studied architecture with Frank Lloyd Wright, was long fascinated with horizontal design, and so this film is a blunt contradiction of the principle of vertical obliquity so firmly stated by Schrader. Here, whether he is racing through the alleyways of the city in order to find low-life criminals to pummel and insult or, slowly softening and losing his anger, meandering in the snow-covered fields or the pine forest of the country to chase the rapist–killer, Robert Ryan’s Jim Wilson centers a cinematography that spreads action out laterally, giving us the incessant feeling that the conditions of the drama are not bounded by the arbitrary limits of the frame.

A simple narrative device accentuates the visual strength of the frame and enlivens our optical engagement with the action once Jim is out of the city: his meeting and slowly developing familiarity with the woman with whom he ultimately falls in love, Mary Malden (Ida Lupino, in one of the signal performances of her great career), a blind young woman who is the sister of the adolescent boy who committed the crime. The city in this film, more than the setting of the establishing scenes early on, is the locus of despicable behavior, greed, anxiety, and mistrust that Jim carries in the depths of his heart even while he is running through the snowy fields under a brilliant, open sky. -"A Companion to Film Noir" (2013) by Andrew Spicer & Helen Hanson

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Pale Blue Eyes: Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon

Frank Sinatra - Mr. Ol' Blue Eyes

THE BAD NEWS FOR BLUE-EYED BLONDES: Blue eyes tend to be more sensitive to light, says Marchetti. ‘There’s less pigment in the eye so more light is let in,’ she explains, adding that this is why blue-eyed people are statistically more likely to develop age-related macular degeneration, a condition in which the light sensitive cells at the back of the eye begin to die out, leading to sight loss. Meanwhile, fair-skinned people are more prone to rosacea, and over half of sufferers will experience the symptoms in their eyes, known as ocular rosacea. ‘This is what is often behind recurrent blepharitis,’ says Ali Mearza, consultant ophthalmologist at Imperial NHS Trust. ‘This inflammatory skin condition can spread to the eyelid, causing the oil glands to become blocked.’ Learning and avoiding the triggers of the rosacea can help, or it may be treated with steroid drops and antibiotics. Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

The meanings of blue are often associated with serenity, calm and spirituality. But color symbolism can be strangely contradictory and Blue is no different. Blue also brings to mind sadness and loneliness for many. Surveys show it is most people's favorite color especially men. For many the darker shades such as navy blue, are thought of as ultra-masculine, associated with success, authority and corporate color meanings. We also think of cool crisp blues in relation to water sports such as sailing. Source: www.color-wheel-artist.com

The significance of eye color may have evolutionary roots. Blue eyes only originated 10,000 years ago and were a rarity which made everyone who had them a hot commodity. So if men were pursuing blue-eyed babes more frequently than ladies with brown eyes, they may have cared less about other facial features which indicated trustworthiness. In the process, these less-trustworthy facial genes may have been passed on in blue-eyed men and women. Source: shine.yahoo.com

Leonardo DiCaprio, Details magazine, January 2013

Matt Damon in GQ Japan magazine, November 2013


More than a week after Lou Reed's death, a tribute has arrived that's too poetic and touching to be overlooked. Patti Smith has been vocal about honoring her fellow New York rock trailblazer, telling Rolling Stone the former Velvet Underground frontman was "a very special poet" and highlighting "Pale Blue Eyes" as a personal favorite Reed song in a chat with The Hollywood Reporter. [She said that the fragile, weary ballad reminded her of her late, blue-eyed husband, guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith. "I never fail to think of him and his gaze when I'm singing that or hear that song," she said. "Lou had a gift of taking very simple lines, 'Linger on, your pale blue eyes,' and make it so they magnify on their own. That song has always haunted me."] She also reflects vividly on her encounters with Reed, over the years and just recently before his death ("his dark eyes seemed to contain an infinite and benevolent sadness"). Source: www.spin.com

Friday, November 08, 2013

Barbara Stanwyck (new biography by Victoria Wilson): Steel-True 1907-1940

"My only problem is finding a way to play my fortieth fallen female in a different way from my thirty-ninth." -Barbara Stanwyck

Frank Capra claimed he would marry Barbara Stanwyck if she divorced Fay. “I fell in love with Stanwyck, and had I not been more in love with Lucille Reyburn I would have asked Barbara to marry me after she called it quits with Frank Fay,” Capra would write in 1971, when he and Lucille were about to celebrate their fortieth anniversary. When Barbara, Lucille, and the two Franks were all dead, biographer Joseph McBride would claim Capra and Stanwyck were lovers for nearly two years, that it was Barbara who in the end rejected the director. Without saying outright he was Barbara’s lover, Capra would admit he was very close to her, that their relationship was both important and rewarding: “I wish I could tell you more about it, but I can’t, I shouldn’t, and I won’t, but she was delightful.”

Barbara never admitted to any affair. Sentiments aside, a liaison stretching into the fall of 1931 seems unlikely. Frank Capra and Lucille were a sane presence, symbols of moderation and rationality for whom all-night drinking and gambling were unthinkable. Fay, Capra, Barbara, and Lu saw a good deal of each other and of Jack Gilbert. Barbara learned that if acting onstage is a matter of mannerism, screen acting is done with the eyes. “Mr. Capra taught me that. I mean, sure, it’s nice to say very nice dialogue, if you can get it. But great movie acting… Watch the eyes.” “She can give out that burst of emotion,” Capra would recall decades later. “She played parts that were a little tougher, yet at the same time you could sense that this girl could suffer from her toughness.” -"Stanwyck" (2001) by Axel Madsen

Rumors circulated for years and persist today about her marriage to Robert Taylor, and that it may have been manufactured as something as a “lavender marriage” by the studio system to quell talk about the sexualities of both Stanwyck and Taylor. Clearly, it would be very difficult to say for certain whether or not this was the case, especially as so many years have passed. In addition, Stanwyck seemed to be very much in love with Taylor, never remarried, and took his 1969 death extremely hard. In your research, was there anything you found that would lead you to believe that these persistent rumors about their marriage had any truth to them?

Stanwyck and Taylor came together at opposite points in their careers, which most people don’t know. She may have been successful and by that time been around Hollywood for six or so years, but her career was in trouble when she met Taylor. He was the big big star, just exploding into real fame and overwhelmed by it all. If anything, she needed him, for lots of reasons, which I write about in the book. And he needed her – just not as his beard.

The last thing Metro wanted was for Robert Taylor to be married, until they did, and it was not as a cover up for his sexuality. When people read the book they will see in detail how Stanwyck and Taylor came together, and what it did for both people; how it helped both and changed both. Volume Two portrays the shape of the marriage and how and why it ultimately fell apart, which, as in real life, happened over time and grew out of a set of subtle and complicated circumstances – and out of two people changing and changing out of different needs at different stages of their life, and their work.

On November 12, Simon & Schuster will publish A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True (1907-1940), volume 1 of the long-awaited first complete biography of Barbara Stanwyck. 15 years in the making and running a whopping 1,056 pages in length, author Victoria Wilson has created a colossal piece of literature covering the first 33 years of Barbara Stanwyck’s life. Source: backlots.net

Tuesday, November 05, 2013

Joel McCrea's Anniversary, Post-War Alienation

Happy Anniversary, Joel McCrea! Born: Joel Albert McCrea (November 5, 1905) in South Pasadena, California - Died: October 20, 1990 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California (USA)

Nancy Kelly and Joel McCrea in "He Married His Wife" (1940) directed by Roy Del Ruth

Veronica Lake and Joel McCrea in "Sullivan’s Travels" (1941) directed by Preston Sturges

In a sea of photographers and flashing lightbulbs, Sullivan is greeted in a Kansas City hotel. Over the loud din of the crowd (many of whom are carrying his next project's source, the book: O Brother Where Art Thou? by Sinclair Beckstein - a play on two author's names - John Steinbeck and Sinclair Lewis), the Girl tells him how happy she is and grateful that he is no longer married or obligated to his alimony-demanding ex-wife. On the commercial airliner returning to Los Angeles, Sullivan assures the Girl that his ex-wife will have to give him a divorce - and he will be set free. -Sullivan: ...Otherwise, it's bigamy, unfaithfulness, alienation of affections, corpus delecti. -The Girl: And then you'll be free. -Sullivan: And then I'll be free. But not for long, I hope.

Joel McCrea stars as an American journalist in London in 1938 who covers the war and discovers an espionage ring and assassination plot. Hitchcock outdid himself with the action-packed set pieces, using all manner of camera trickery and special effects, from a fatal fall from high atop Westminster Cathedral to mysterious goings-on at a windmill in the Netherlands to an inventively staged plane crash. McCrea's impassioned, Edward R. Murrow-esque radio monologue during the London blitz finale even impressed the opposition — Nazi Germany's Joseph Goebbels thought the film "a masterpiece of propaganda." Six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Source: www.afi.com

The Cold War was a primary influence over all aspects of American life from the end of WWII through the collapse of the Soviet Union. The cold war abroad may have been run by the military and the government but cold war ideology at home was most effectively disseminated by psychiatrists and advertisers, groups that depended for their livelihood on their ability to predict and control the actions and desires of their biggest market: housewives. Mary Beth Haralovich has insightfully traced the way advertisers trained and exploited middle-class women consumers, but less attention has been paid to the extraordinary growth and influence of the psychiatric industry during this period. In 1954 and 1955, the number one identified health problem in the United States was ‘emotional disease.’ In 1954, 150,000 adults entered mental hospitals and 700,000 mental patients received hospital care (in comparison, physical disorders accounted for only 600,000 patients). That same year, over a billion dollars was spent for the care of people diagnosed as mentally ill. In 1955, the year minor tranquillizers first became available outside of hospitals, 75 per cent of patients were being treated in hospital settings, over half a million people, compared to 150,000 in 1980. And although the wide availability of tranquillizers meant that hospital stays decreased by the late 1950s, there were still over a quarter of a million people employed in the industry, and hospitals continued into the late 1950s to report staff shortages. Over half of the patients in these hospitals were women, the majority married.

Like the advertising industry, the mental health industry depended on its ability to convince people that their happiness and well-being required the consumption of the industry’s products. Warren’s work supports Chesler’s contention throughout "Women and Madness" that women were often diagnosed as mentally ill because of their perceived ‘sex role alienation.’ Several of these expatients were rehospitalized by their husbands primarily because they had refused to function properly ‘domestically’. Indeed, the husbands who readmitted their wives ‘expressed significantly lower expectations for the total human functioning of their wives. They were willing to tolerate extremely childlike dependent behaviour in them as long as the dishes were washed.’ These studies suggest specific ways in which post-war women’s anxieties were socially constructed as ‘mental illnesses’ in a manner that served both corporate America and the cold war nuclear family ideal. -"Small Screen, Big Ideas" (2002) by Janet Thumim

Saturday, November 02, 2013

Jake Gyllenhaal in talks to play boxer in "Southpaw"

Jake Gyllenhaal in Talks to Star in Former Eminem Boxing Movie ‘Southpaw’ (Exclusive)

Fresh off an acclaimed performance in the thriller “Prisoners,” Jake Gyllenhaal is in talks to star in the boxing drama “Southpaw,” which Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”) is directing for the Weinstein Company, multiple individuals familiar with the project have told TheWrap.

Eminem was once attached to star in the movie, which serves as proof that Hollywood can’t keep a good project down.

A fighter of a film, “Southpaw” was originally sold as a pitch to DreamWorks. The studio hired “Sons of Anarchy” creator Kurt Sutter to write the script. When DreamWorks tapped out, MGM swooped in planning to distribute through Sony, though the film was eventually put into turnaround, which is where the Weinstein Company rescued it.

If the deal gets signed, Gyllenhaal will play a left-handed prizefighter who wins a title but suffers a tragedy soon after and must put his life back together to earn the respect of his young daughter. While the film is set against the backdrop of the boxing ring, Fuqua previously told the Los Angeles Times that “the heart of the movie is about a man learning to be a father.” “Southpaw” is expected to start production next year. Source: www.thewrap.com

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Matt Damon, Identities & Noirish Subjectivity

"Rounders" (1998): Matt Damon's first lead following the success of "Good Will Hunting," "Rounders" was mostly ignored on its debut, but has evolved into something of a cult hit over the years. The actor plays Mike, a poker whiz who's promised his girlfriend (Gretchen Mol) that he'll give the game up and focus on his law school studies. But when his no-good best pal Worm (Edward Norton) is released from prison, he's dragged back into gambling to save his pal from the sinister Russian mobster Teddy KGB (a ludicrously enjoyably over-the-top John Malkovich), the same man who ended Mike's career years earlier.

While it's beloved most by poker fans (it's probably the best depiction of the game to date), the film in general is firmly entertaining -- director John Dahl gives a terrific noirish tinge to the film, the script is zingy, and most of the performances -- Norton and John Turturro in particular -- are excellent.

“The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1999): It would have been just too easy for Matt Damon to trade in on his matinee idol good looks and collect paychecks for action movies and rom-coms. Instead, he pushes himself to physically disappear into his psychologically complex roles, using physical characteristics -- a paunch, a crew cut or a pair of horn-rimmed glasses -- as his entry into such enigmatic characters. His glasses are the totem of Tom the imposter in “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” the transformative role as the insidious grifter that announced Damon as a serious thesp, no vain pretty boy. He’s made a practice of playing characters in identity crisis (“Good Will Hunting,” ‘Bourne,’ “The Informant!”) and ‘Ripley,’ was one of the first times he displayed his true virtuosity in embodying this conundrum.

Damon’s most indelible characters are always striving to achieve some station in life that is almost impossible for them to gain, and Tom Ripley is the ultimate showcase for his ability to display the many emotional states of such nuanced, complicated people. He is simultaneously dorky, naive, seductive, hopeless, creepy and terrifying in Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel; the different emotions effortlessly cascading across his face.

“The Departed" (2006): While far from Scorsese's best work, "The Departed" remains a well-crafted, hugely enjoyable pulp crime flick, that certainly improves on its subject matter, the Hong Kong film "Infernal Affairs." The film's chock-full of pleasures and Damon's performance, while not the most immediate, is the one that lingers long afterwards. Simply put, he's astounding, the best he's ever been, and looking back now, it's astonishing that he was overlooked in awards season in favor of co-star Mark Wahlberg.

Damon effortlessly portrays the self-loathing and turmoil that comes from living a false life without any of the histrionics of his co-lead, Leonardo DiCaprio. The elevator scene at the end, in which Damon switches on a dime from self-righteous bravado to pathetically pleading to be put out of his misery by his captor, is a masterclass in screen acting.

“The Good Shepherd” (2006): Told through the prism of the founding of the CIA, Damon plays Edward Wilson, an agent of the newly founded organization whose work takes him around the world and has him bear witness to operations most Americans could and would never know about.

But the film is as much about the machinations of the wheelings and dealings of the spy agency as the personal sacrifice Damon must make as a person and in his relationships (particularly to his wife played by Angelina Jolie). As William Hurt’s character points out, the agents spend their lives looking over their shoulders for "pennies" in compensation. Wilson is forced to choose between his country and his family and the cold realization is that such a choice can’t be made because selecting one means losing the other. Damon here is a revelation, coldly embodying a spy who at work and at home can’t give away the roiling emotion beneath his poker-faced facade. It’s a stirring turn in a film that that was largely misunderstood.

Matt Damon and Mark Whitacre attend "The Informant!" New York premiere on September 15, 2009 in New York City.

“The Informant!” (2009): Damon has never been funnier than as Mark Whitacre, the delusional whistleblower who broke open a price-fixing scheme at his lysine-producing company, under the illusion that he was a top secret spy. “The Informant!” establishes Whitacre as someone who thinks there are prizes for “being the good guy,” oblivious to the reality around him. Steven Soderbergh’s tone is mostly amused farce, as if the delicate balance of real-world big business and the cartoonish sight of overweight Midwestern rube Whitacre is always threatening to topple.

Credit to Damon’s overlooked performance, a wonder of tics and mannerisms of surprising depth, capturing a damaged psyche while keeping him in the realm of believable folksiness.

“True Grit” (2010): It's not the showiest or even the most nuanced character in the Coen Brothers' rapturous "True Grit" remake, but Damon's dickish Texas Ranger LeBoeuf still manages to be an indelible oddball. Between his typically Texan self-aggrandizing (this writer was born and raised in the state, so this especially rung true), the marble-mouthed cadence that he adopts after he's partially bitten off his tongue, and his combination of heroic tendencies and borderline cowardice, Damon makes the role totally unforgettable. Source: blogs.indiewire.com

"Basically, everyone is a victim of corporate crime before they finish breakfast," Whitacre tells an FBI agent (Scott Bakula), who says, "That's not a business meeting, that's a crime scene." Soderbergh wanted The Informant! to go down the rabbit hole of Whitacre's mystifying mind. As Damon embodies him, he seems the sunniest symbol of corporate America and middle America: smart, pleasant, undemonstrative, with a supportive wife (Melanie Lynskey) and two kids. But we get the earliest glimpses of Mark's gift for fooling people, and perhaps himself, in the movie's voiceover, in which Mark wanders blithely into logical cul-de-sacs and exotic trivia: The whole movie is Mark's brainscan. It's shot and acted in a bland style that, you only eventually realize, is deeply askew, and darkly, corrosively satirical. What game, exactly, is Whitacre playing? Whose side is he on? How much of what he, or the film, says is true? Source: www.time.com

Part V - Identities in Film Noir (Film Noir and Subjectivity by Christophe Gelly): Sarah Kozloff insists on the predominance of the narrators’ voice-over comment as an authority to which the film narration must be referred. However, it is also possible to interpret these character discourses as narrations competing with the framing narrative voice. These multiple voices demonstrate the instability of the narrative pattern. In demanding that viewers ascribe voice-over narration to several separate narrative agencies, the variability of the “subject” to which the voice-over attaches is foregrounded. As well as these multiple voices, Kozloff identifies a “most unusual rhetoric strategy” in the “narrator’s habit of addressing comments to the characters, as if he were off to the side, watching every move they make and reacting with teasing questions, or advice to which they are oblivious.”

This technique further blurs the voice-over status as within and/or without the story, and it points to the film’s reflexivity, and – as Kozloff notes – shows the narration to be conscious of its own artificial, unrealistic nature. She argues that the identification between voice-over and the viewer through various “humanizing” devices (narrator’s voice-over comments, addresses to the characters on screen) may mimic what viewers themselves may very well feel towards the story. Yet the transgressively unstable status of this voice-over, both homodiegetic and heterodiegetic, further enhances the subjective riddle it represents for the reader. The concept of subjectivity as individual is problematized in film noir aesthetics as it cannot help integrating other elements within this identity.

Film noir is always constituted of heterogeneous elements: the subjective expression of a character’s feelings or confession along, however, with a doubt as to the source of these feelings in the enunciation; its aesthetic features present in their original identity but integrated within a commercial frame. Similarly, the modernist literary movement occupies a position that is in-between aesthetic elitism and popular culture. As J.P. Telotte argues, “Neo-noir seem[s] less about a character than about the very mechanisms of character in which we invest so much.” -"A Companion to Film Noir" (2013) by Andrew Spicer & Helen Hanson