“Implying.”
“Implying, then.”
“I don’t know. In the car from the hospital you were talking in kind of a folksy manner. There was a point when you were responding to me only with Bible quotes.”
“I am the work of someone or something, and so are you. So God created man in his own image. Genesis 1:27.”
“See, I feel like you just added that quote because I reminded you that you do Bible quotes.”
“You are to be the only witness to this film. When you have viewed it in its entirety, I will destroy it. Or if I am dead, you will destroy it for me. Those are the rules.”
I nod, but of course I will not destroy it. I am Max Brod to Ingo’s Kafka. This film, even if over the next three months it descends into incomprehensible drivel, must be protected for posterity. The world must see it. But most important, I must see it seven times.
“I will destroy it after I watch it seven times. There is method to my madness in this regard—and some other regards! Ha ha! You see, any film of substance, to be properly understood, must be viewed at least seven times. Years of trial and error in critical viewing, first as a cub critic at The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper of Harvard University, where I went, then for various imprints, journals, ‘zines,’ and an experimental two-month stint as the film critic for the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog, have allowed me to perfect my viewing technique. It has been a hard-won battle for dominance over the form. Let me explain: The first viewing is to be accomplished utilizing only the right hemisphere, the so-called intuitive brain center. Years of practice have allowed me to allow the film to wash over me. I remove my critic ‘hat’—you know all about hats!—and watch the film as a layperson might, that is without accessing the enormous library of film history within the very center of my brain center, without searching for the director’s filmic references or ‘echoes,’ as some might call them. That type of viewing will come later. For now I am Joe Everyman or Everywoman or Everython. This go-through I refer to as the Nameless Ape Experience, named thusly for an ape’s lack of intellectualism and ego and thon’s unrestrained savage passion. In the end, ‘feeling’ the movie must come first and is perhaps the most essential viewing. So Step One: Yes, this film causes me to weep uncontrollably or to laugh uncontrollably or to ponder uncontrollably. Step Two: Why? In this second viewing, I doff my Nameless Ape ‘hat’ and put on my psychologist’s ‘hat,’ which is not a literal hat—hence my air quotes—but rather an attitude or approach toward the film, although I do, for the sake of full separation of the viewings, imagine myself in various hats during this process. The psychologist ‘hat’ I see as a sort of modified trilby, since du Maurier’s novel is at least in part about human psychology. I have often said that I am both Trilby and Svengali and yet, at the same time, I am neither, but rather du Maurier himself. Ah-ha! This ‘why’ viewing requires me to dig deep into my own psyche and find my personal connections to the movie. How is this movie about me? I must ask. This is perhaps the most essential viewing. As you may know, Ingo, my now famous essay on The Royal Tenenbaums, entitled ‘Fathers and AnderSons’—which is itself a play on the title of Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons in which I add Ander as a prefix to Sons as a nod to Anderson’s surname, which is Anderson, but also to reference Ander Elosegi, the Spanish canoeist—is a result of the important personal work I did in Step One. That I relate to all the sons and all the fathers—as well as daughter Gwyneth Paltrow, ooh la la—in Anderson’s films is no secret to anyone. That I relate navigating my psyche to Elosegi’s ability to navigate river rapids might be less known to lay readers. Step Three is how. Here is where I tap into my vast filmic knowledge to explore how the filmmaker achieved his/her/thon’s results. What does that ‘pan’ signify? How is that ‘zoom’ essential? Why a ‘24mm lens’ here? I also examine ‘juxtaposition,’ ‘mise-en-scène,’ ‘blocking,’ and ‘dance numbers’ to determine how these and other cinematic techniques forced me to cry, laugh, or ponder uncontrollably in the aforementioned Nameless Ape viewing—which, remember, was Step One. In addition, here is where I take note of the director’s references to other films. In the case of a Scorsese or a Tarrantinoo, this will be a massive undertaking, so encyclopedic are their knowledges of the form. Granted, I am not a great admirer of Tarrantinoo’s oeuvre, as his infatuation with a false, stereotypical African American culture as well as his adolescent obsession with violence leave me cold. He is, however, expert in devising unusual camera ‘angles,’ most notably the astounding ‘trunk shot,’ which is known as the ‘boot shot’ in the UK, the ‘coiffre de voiture shot’ in France, and the ‘suitcase bin shot’ in American Samoa. Step Four: backward viewing. Designed to look at the film as a ‘non-narrative avant-garde experiment in a foreign language.’ In other words, it allows me to see the film as a pattern of images unencumbered by meaning. This, dear Ingo, is my chance to see the film as a purely aesthetic construction. The human animal has it programmed into his/her/thon’s DNA to ask why. The assignment of causality is hardwired into our brains. But ‘why’ is undoubtedly only a human construct. It is my belief that why is not an independent feature of the universe. The universe does not have questions. The universe does not wonder how a microwave works. The universe simply is. So by removing narrative, the concept of causality, the why is removed, the assumed order is removed, and the film can be seen—at least it is my hope—as it is viewed by the universe itself. Step Five: upside down. We as Americans take gravity for granted, I think you’ll agree. Perhaps this is true in other cultures; I do not feel qualified to say. But here gravity is just whatever: Stuff falls, get used to it. By ignoring its effects on us and on the physical world, we ignore its effects on our psyches. Upside-down viewing allows me to focus on that aspect of a movie. Some filmmakers don’t consider gravity any more than the average American does, but in a precious few cases—Apatow!—we get to witness a filmmaker grappling with gravity in every frame. Had I not watched This Is 40 upside down—by the way, it is no accident that upside down it is This Is 04. Children having children! Right?— I never would have caught the deeper meaning of Paul Rudd sitting on the toilet while talking to Leslie Mann. He is literally keeping his shit from flying all over the room. One can see he has been directed by Apatow to pretend to be sitting casually on the toilet, and there is the surface humor of a couple who have been married so long there is no mystery left; they talk without embarrassment while they shit. But watch it upside down and suddenly Paul Rudd is struggling mightily to keep the feces from spilling out all over his life. Your Tarrantinis, for all their pyrotechnics, will never explore gravity in the manner of an Apatow joint. After the upside-down viewing, in Step Six, I watch the film one more time in a conventional manner to cement my reaction and to establish the film’s ranking—if any—on my many lists: best films of the year, best films of the decade, best films of the century, best films of all time. Then all of the above in each genre: horror, comedy, western, thriller, action, drama, science fiction, war, foreign. Then by performance: actor, actress, thon, supporting actor, supporting actress, supporting thon, ensemble, thonsemble. Then by direction, cinematography, editing, score, writing, casting, best LGBTQIA films: best thon, best thon, best supporting thon, best supporting thon. It is a terribly time-intensive task, but necessary. Without these lists by truly educated critics, laypeople would find themselves at the mercy of Hollywood marketeers and celebrity sycophants. The seventh step is to not watch the film. This is the seven-step method toward a clear-eyed viewing of any film. Oh, and Ingo, it’s funny that your film is a comedy—oh, hey, that’s funny! I’ll have to open my lecture ‘The Apatower of Song’ with that; I’m presenting it to the music supervisors’ union next month on the second floor of the West 4th Street McDonald’s. But what I was saying is that comedy is not about wisdom and kindness. It is about gravity and idiocy. A man in control of his environment is not funny. A man who understands his life is not funny. So why is a person falling funny? Why is a person acting stupidly funny? And is it really funny? Is it funny in real life when someone gets physically injured? Is it funny in real life when a person is overwhelmed and confused? The answer for most people would be no. So why does it elicit laughter in a movie? The reason is complex. In part, perhaps, it could be argued that one understands in a film that it is make-believe, that no one is really getting hurt. Of course there are those illuminating