Viewing Journal - May 2016 #5

Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman, United Kingdom, 2016)

I'm now convinced that Whit Stillman was born to write and direct Jane Austen adaptations. While watching Love & Friendship I realized he's been making Austen stories all along - comedies of manners that are both satirical and affectionate - only in contemporary settings. His unique wit flourishes even more in the 1790s, and when matched with Austen's beautifully drawn characters. I haven't yet read Lady Susan, which Love & Friendship is adapted from, but in some ways it's an atypical Austen story. Lady Susan is a devious and cheerfully amoral character, a social climber with a genius for manipulation. She begins and ends the film unrepentantly horrible, but she is so witty and charismatic that we can't help but be impressed by her scheming ways. Kate Beckinsale clearly had a blast playing this character, delivering Lady Susan's politely wicked dialogue with virtuosic comic timing. Love & Friendship also has a welcome absurdist, irreverent streak, more reminiscent of Oscar Wilde or screwball comedy than Jane Austen. Yet, more than any other Austen adaptation I've seen, Love & Friendship captures her humor - her genius for mining comedy out of the gap between what people say and what they actually mean. It's one of the funniest movies I've seen in ages.

Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, United States / Hong Kong, 1973)

Despite considering myself a fan of Hong Kong kung fu flicks, I had never seen a single one starring the legendary Bruce Lee. Clearly I needed to correct this oversight. Enter the Dragon is a collaboration between East and West - made in Hong Kong with a local crew, but filmed in English with an American director and co-stars. It's a genre hybrid as well, both a martial arts extravaganza and a James Bond-style espionage thriller, with influences of so-called "blaxploitation" and psychedelia. About every B-movie genre popular in America or Hong Kong circa 1973 shows up in Enter the Dragon in one form or another. This democratic blending of East and West is typical of Lee, a citizen of both Hong Kong and the United States who was passionate about spreading the philosophy of martial arts across the globe. Enter the Dragon is also a total mess, though an exuberantly fun mess. I now see why Bruce Lee was such a star. He's not only an astonishing athlete but a magnetic screen presence. There's a mischief and wily intelligence in his eyes, and his lightning quick movements are mesmerizing. His body zigs when you expect it to zag; his bird-like shrieks in battle are amusing and terrifying.

The Most Dangerous Game (Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel, United States, 1932)

I love these horror-thrillers made in the early 30s, before the Production Code clamped down on what Hollywood films could show. Though tame by today's ultra-violent standards, The Most Dangerous Game remains an entertaining thriller that must have shocked audiences of 1932. Based on a famous and influential short story (which I have yet to read) with a perfectly simple, sinister premise: a wealthy madman and big game hunter entraps shipwrecked people on his private island to hunt them. If they survive a single night, he will release them - but none have survived before! Though it's only an hour long, The Most Dangerous Game spends much of its runtime building up to the hunt, as shipwrecked survivors are trapped inside Count Zaroff's gothic castle. The evil Zaroff is played by an over-the-top Leslie Banks; his bug-eyed expressions and preposterous Russian accent are difficult to take seriously but quite entertaining, especially next to Joel McCrea's stiffly stoic leading man. The really good parts arrive in the final twenty minutes, in a cat-and-mouse showdown in the jungle. The Most Dangerous Game was filmed on the same sets as King Kong - Kong would use the sets during the day, and Game at night. It's clearly an artificial jungle, but with all the grandiose charm and dream-like exaggeration of Old Hollywood. It's the perfect setting for an action-packed climax, as our heroes set elaborate booby traps, flee from hounds across logs bridging canyons, and do battle at the edge of a giant waterfall. The final fight is unusually realistic for the time, with sweaty, flailing desperation that looks unchoreographed.

Flirting (John Duigan, Australia, 1991)

Ignore the frivolous title. Flirting is the rare teenage comedy that treats its adolescent characters with dignity, as intelligent and thoughtful people. In 1965 Australia, two boarding schools, one all male and one all female, face each other across a lake. Danny is a gawky kid, intelligent, not athletic, teased by fellow students, though he's mostly unfazed by them. Thandiwe has just arrived to Australia from Uganda, and stands out from her peers for her race, her sophistication and irreverent humor. Both are attracted by the rebellious qualities of the other, and over a series of awkward and charming encounters grow to love each other. Flirting is the kind of well-observed film where even minor characters come alive as real, specific people, where you will laugh and cringe with fond recognition at their behavior. Noah Taylor and Thandie Newton give sensitive, lively performances as the leads, while Nicole Kidman and a baby-faced Naomi Watts appear in small early roles. Director John Duigan brings to Flirting a quiet beauty unique for its genre - like when Danny sneaks out at night to meet Thandiwe, rowing across a shimmering starlit lake out of a fairy tale.

The Films of Wong Kar-wai: In the Mood for Love

Hong Kong, 2000
Directed by Wong Kar-wai

In the Mood for Love took a turbulent road to its completed form. Wong originally envisioned a film set in mainland China in the mid-20th century titled Summer in Beijing, to be a triptych of stories similar to his Chungking Express and Fallen Angels. Eventually he realized that shooting a film in China set during that time period would be too difficult because of vigilant Chinese censors, and relocated to Hong Kong, also narrowing his focus to only one story - a love story. In the Mood for Love took 15 months to shoot, an unusually lengthy production, especially for a film with such an intimate focus. Wong shot largely without a script, improvising, creating and re-creating the story as he went along. The post-production was, by all reports I've read, rushed and confusing, with the film barely completed in time for its premiere. Enough footage was cut out to have made an entirely different film, and perhaps a radically different one than the final product. For all the chaos of its creation, you'd expect In the Mood for Love to be haphazard or unfocused, if not an outright disaster - but it's not. Actually, In the Mood for Love is among the most controlled, elegantly composed films I've ever seen. Every shot and every edit is purposeful and beautiful, and contributes to a whole that is basically perfect.

Like Wong's earlier Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love takes place in 1960s Hong Kong. Two married couples, the Chows and the Chans, move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Separately, Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) begin to suspect that their spouses are having an affair with each other. They form a tentative friendship, trying to figure out why they were betrayed by those closest to them, and finding some solace in a sympathetic confidant. Quickly it becomes clear that more feeling exists between them than just sympathy, but they both deny it and vow not to be like their cheating spouses. They find excuses to spend time together, Mrs. Chan helps Mr. Chow write the martial arts novel he's long dreamed of making. Though their relationship remains platonic, eventually they can no longer ignore their growing feelings and decide to stop seeing each other.

In the Mood for Love is maximalist in style but minimalist in its approach to character and story. There is little in the way of traditional plot development or exposition. We learn about the main characters from brief snatches of dialogue, their expressions and body language. Wong's films usually contain voiceover from the characters, communicating their stream of thoughts, but In the Mood for Love eschews any narration - we must guess what these people are thinking and how they feel, since they rarely communicate it directly. The characters of In the Mood for Love are often situated within doorways or windows, or partially obscured from the camera by walls or other people. I felt like I was spying on them, and even caught myself trying to peer around a corner to get a better glimpse (a sure sign that I was engaged by the film). Watching In the Mood for Love is trying to solve a mystery, where each gesture, each polite conversation is loaded with more meaning than is apparent on the surface. Wong's decision to position his characters within frames also expresses their entrapment - within marriages where they're been betrayed, within a society that is quick to gossip, and within themselves and their own principles, noble as they may be.

While Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan don't express their feelings, the film does it for them. In the Mood for Love is gorgeously expressive. Shigeru Umebayashi's stirring strings score and Christopher Doyle's colorful cinematography communicate their yearning and their lovesickness. Mundane sequences, like Mrs. Chan going out for noodles, are made achingly beautiful through the music and camerawork. All of Wong's films are more musical than literary in their structure - they are built on repetitions and refrains instead of A-to-B plot developments - and in their impact, which is more emotional and visceral than intellectual. Wong has stated that if Chungking Express is pop music, than In the Mood for Love is chamber music - which seems a perfect comparison to me. It is simple, elegant, and melancholy.

All this stunning artistry would have a hollow center if Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan's relationship didn't work, but Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung have tremendous chemistry together. Their beauty is certainly a part of it - Tony Leung makes smoking look cool again, and watching Maggie Cheung sashay about in her various form-fitting dresses is mesmerizing. Both Leung and Cheung would have been terrific actors in the silent film era - they express great depth and subtlety with very little dialogue, mostly through their eyes and their posture.

Ultimately, In the Mood for Love is difficult to write about. Words don't really capture its hypnotic effect - this is a film whose power comes less from its ideas and more from how the music, the editing, the camerawork and the performances draw you into its mood, and into sympathy with two good-hearted but very private and very lonely people. I've seen it three times now, and each viewing has cast a spell on me, unbroken from beginning to end. It's a masterpiece of filmmaking, one of the very best films of the past 20 years.

The Films of Wong Kar-wai: Fallen Angels

Hong Kong, 1995
Directed by Wong Kar-wai

Wong Kar-wai originally conceived his two-part Chungking Express as three stories, but once the first two were developed, he decided that they were enough for a full film and cut out the third. This third story, about the relationship between a hitman and his female partner, developed into his next film. Fallen Angels could be seen as a continuation of Chungking Express - both are split into two stories, take place in the same Hong Kong neighborhood, and revolve around similar themes. But Fallen Angels is also a darker, weirder, more stylistically experimental film than its predecessor - the night to Chungking Express's day.

The first story is about a hitman (Leon Lai) and his partner (Michelle Reis). She tells him where his next hit is, collects cash for him, and cleans his apartment hideout, but they hardly ever meet in person. Despite wanting to keep their partnership an impersonal one, they grow infatuated with each other. Both characters are romantically alienated loners, taciturn and cool. The hitman kills his targets nonchalantly, in shoot-outs filmed with woozy style, not caring who they are or why they've been targeted. The second story stars Takeshi Kaneshiro (one of the cops of Chungking Express) as an eccentric mute who breaks into closed-up shops at night and illegally runs the business, aggressively (and amusingly) coercing customers into buying whatever he's selling. He falls in love with another spastic oddball (Charlie Yeung), but his affection is unrequited.

Even more than in Chungking Express, the two stories of Fallen Angels are strikingly different from each other. The hitman's story is surprisingly violent for Wong. The hitman and his partner are classic Wong characters - cool, introspective loners - but taken to a darker extreme. They are entirely detached from everyone and everything, nocturnal creatures living by their own codes, beautiful but doomed. Wong's style is moodier and more experimental than ever. He often films characters with a fish-eye lens, their faces looming in the foreground against a distant background of neon lights and colors. It's a disorienting but perfect way to portray their alienation through visuals, loners drifting through the seductively dangerous world of Hong Kong at night.

The second story is far more sentimental and funny, even becoming an outright slapstick comedy at points. Much of its charm is due to star Takeshi Kaneshiro, reminiscent of a young Cantonese Johnny Depp. His character, though he cannot speak, is quirky and extroverted. Where many Wong characters put protective barriers between themselves and others, the mute forces himself into others' lives, in amusingly obnoxious ways. He takes his failed romance with Charlie in stride, finding happiness wherever he can. The sweetest moments of Fallen Angels involve the mute's relationship with his father, and their odd but loving friendship.

Fallen Angels is an exuberant mess, digressive and tonally all over the map (it should be noted that this sort of 'messiness' is not unusual for Hong Kong cinema, which often combines comedy, action and drama in ways that might seem incompatible to those used to Hollywood standards, which generally sticks to one or two genres per film). Fallen Angels is more about individual sequences and moments than any overarching plot or theme. These moments are sometimes funny - like Takeshi Kaneshiro harassing unsuspecting passerby into becoming his customers despite their protests. And sometimes they are mesmerizing - like when Michelle Reis leans against a jukebox as a strangely sinister pop song puts her in a trance, and for a few minutes Fallen Angels becomes an abstract music video, lingering on Reis's languid swaying as the machine's fluorescent lights run across her reflective dress. Any narrative is forgotten in the hypnotic interplay of music and color and movement. One downside to Fallen Angels's scattershot approach is that the film is, understandably, uneven - the subplot about the hitman and his other love interest, Blondie (Karen Mok), falls flat. But any dull sequences quickly give way to some new wondrous moment of discovery.

Once again, Wong Kar-wai's love for his home city shines through. Like Chungking Express, Fallen Angels is a cinematic love letter to Hong Kong, though a far stranger and more fantastic one. Fallen Angels takes place almost entirely at night, in a frightening but beautiful vision of Hong Kong that seems more like a science fiction metropolis than a real world city. The mute says that "all the weirdos come out at night" - the characters are these nocturnal weirdos, scrounging a living outside the law and the mainstream, hoping to find simple human connections in the urban purgatory they live in.

The Films of Wong Kar-wai: Ashes of Time

Hong Kong, 1994
Directed by Wong Kar-wai

 Ashes of Time was a difficult production. The shoot took place in the middle of the scorching desert, and went way over budget and over schedule. Even after its initial release in 1994, the movie's journey was not complete - over a decade later Wong Kar-wai discovered that the original negatives of the film were in terrible shape, and desperately needed saving. In the process of restoration, he re-scored and re-edited the film, releasing it in 2008 as Ashes of Time Redux. The Redux version is, as far as I'm aware, the only available way to see the film in the United States, so I cannot compare the two versions.

In either version, the general response to Ashes of Time has deemed it beautiful but incoherent. I don't agree (with the latter part, at least), but it's an understandable response to an aggressively unusual film, and one whose context might be lost on western viewers. Ashes of Time is based on the fantasy novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes, which Wong has compared to The Lord of the Rings in terms of its popularity and influence in China, but is largely unknown elsewhere. It is not a direct adaptation of the book, but a sort of origin story. Wong wanted to explore how the characters became the legendary figures they are at the start of the book. Ashes of Time belongs to the wuxia genre, mythic stories of swordsmen and the chivalric codes they live by. However, Ashes of Time is not a straightforward wuxia adventure, but a deconstruction of the genre, less a tale of battle and honor than a classically Wong meditation on memory and loss.

 

Ashes of Time is similar to Wong's earlier film Days of Being Wild in structure. Both center around one man played by Leslie Cheung who meets other people and becomes involved in their stories. Like Yuddy in Days of Being Wild, Ou-yang Feng in Ashes of Time is cool and cynical on the surface, but trapped in his own feelings of heartbreak and rejection. Ou-yang Feng is a lone swordsman in the desert wilderness, who makes a living by hiring assassins for people with grudges. The traveling swordsmen he meets are formidable killers with supernatural skills, but are every bit as miserable and haunted by their pasts as Ou-yang.

Ashes of Time is all about memory, and the impermanence of things. Nearly all the characters live in regret, either running away from or wallowing in memories of lost love (the sole exception, Jacky Cheung's character, is the only one who finds happiness by the end). The film takes place over the course of a year, as time slips away through the passing of the seasons. Visual motifs express the temporary nature of the world - Ashes of Time constantly returns to images of shifting sand, billowing water, the movement of shadow and light.

Needless to say, if you're looking for a thrilling adventure you should probably look elsewhere. There are fight scenes in Ashes of Time - good ones too, though filmed in a way that renders them nearly abstract - but action is not the focus here. The characters' battles with others do not matter so much as their even more embattled and conflicted inner selves - the film opens with a Buddhist proverb, "The flag is still. The wind is calm. It is the heart of man that is in turmoil." This inner turmoil is made incarnate in one character, Mu-rong Yang (Brigitte Lin), a woman who claims to have a twin brother Mu-rong Yin that she wants dead, yet they are actually the same person. In the film's most ecstatically gorgeous sequence, Yin / Yang magically walks across the surface of a lake and battles her own reflection, because she has found no more difficult opponent elsewhere. Her sword thrusts are so powerful that the surface of the lake erupts into geysers of water with each strike.

Even by Wong Kar-wai's stylish standards, Ashes of Time is a gorgeous film. Daunting landscapes and close-ups of faces are filmed with equal beauty and detail. The colors have a hallucinogenic vibrancy, and the dreamy images are edited together like a kaleidoscopic collage. It's a beautiful enigma, a film where it is a pleasure to get lost in its rich textures and moods.

The Films of Wong Kar-wai: Chungking Express

Hong Kong, 1994
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai

During the making of his wuxia epic Ashes of Time, a difficult production that went way over schedule and budget, Wong Kar-wai took a three month break to direct another movie, just to re-energize his creativity. The result is Chungking Express, which was completed and released before Ashes of Time. The movie was a hit, and for many western audiences their introduction to Wong Kar-wai. Quentin Tarantino was a huge fan and proponent, and helped to bring the film to the States. It's clear why Tarantino is such a fan; like his Pulp Fiction released the same year, Chungking Express is a kinetic blast of moviemaking innovation for its own sake, giddy with the possibilities of what movies can do. The quick, on-the-fly production shows in the film's spontaneous, experimental energy and in its unusual structure. Chungking Express is split in two parts, each a separate short story unfolding in the same hectic Hong Kong neighborhood.

The first story centers around the freshly heartbroken Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and a female drug dealer (Brigitte Lin) who always wears sunglasses and a blonde wig. Cop 223, when he's not chasing down criminals, wallows in amusing self-pity and expresses his heartbreak in odd ways - calling up every girl he's ever known, collecting pineapples because they were his ex-girlfriend's favorite fruit. Meanwhile, a drug deal goes sour for the mysterious dealer and she must go on the run. A few chase scenes, shootouts, and a very innocuous kidnapping occur, but the details of the double-crossing and criminal underworld don't matter, Wong is just having fun splashing punchy pulp fiction cliches across the screen. Cop 223 and the Woman with No Name eventually meet in a bar late at night, knowing nothing about each other. You expect that they will hook up, and there will be a dramatic reveal about lovers on the opposite sides of the law - but what actually happens is far simpler and sweeter than that.

The second story is the longer of the two, and is a straightforward romantic comedy without the crime thriller flourishes of the first. Cop 663 (Tony Leung) has also recently been dumped, and now morosely sleepwalks through life. While on duty he often drops by a food stand where Faye (Faye Wong) works, a mischievous scamp who takes a liking to him. After his ex-girlfriend drops off her keys at the stand, Faye starts breaking into Cop 663's apartment while he's not there, cleaning it, restocking his pantry and replacing his old and broken-down belongings. Cop 663 is so oblivious that he initially doesn't notice.

The vision of mid-90s Hong Kong in Chungking Express pops off the screen. It's a world of neon lights, bustling markets, Chinese and British and Indians rubbing shoulders, cramped apartments and 24/7 chopsocky food stands. It's bewildering and loud and seedy, but overflowing with life, and filmed so beautifully by Wong and cinematographer Christopher Doyle. Despite the mass of humanity in this crazy metropolis, all the characters are quite lonely. Perhaps because of the overwhelming zoo surrounding them, they create their own private worlds to cope, out of whatever flotsam they can cling to. Cop 223 obsessively collects tins of pineapple that expire on May 1st, his birthday and the one-month anniversary of his breakup. Faye loudly blasts the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin" on the radio at her tedious job, creating a protective bubble of sound so she doesn't have to think. Cop 663 talks to the inanimate objects in his apartment to cheer himself up. Wong views his characters' self-created little worlds with fond amusement.

Both stories in Chungking Express are about the miraculous connections that can happen in such a sprawling, chaotic place, when the paths of isolated people somehow intersect. Sometimes these connections are brief ones - Cop 223 and the Woman with No Name remain strangers, but now with a treasured memory about a moment of shared kindness and relief from loneliness. And in the second story, we hope that Cop 663 and Faye will find their way to romance, despite the (often self imposed) obstacles in their way. Watching these oddballs circle closer and closer to each other is great fun, and leads to one of the great romantic endings in the movies. The final scene of Chungking Express puts a big blissful grin on my face every time.

This is easily Wong Kar-wai's cheeriest film, not just because of the sweet stories and likable performers, but because of Wong's giddy style. Chungking Express is as mid-90s in its MTV aesthetic as it is possible to get - it's dated, but in a nostalgic and charming way rather than an embarrassing one. There's even a Cantonese cover of the Cranberries' "Dreams" on the soundtrack (sung by star Faye Wong, who is a popular pop artist in Hong Kong). The synthesis of cool editing tricks, lovely camerawork, and catchy pop songs make Chungking Express addictive to watch. It's the kind of idiosyncratic movie that not everyone will enjoy, but those who do will love it with a cultish fervor. 

The Films of Wong Kar-Wai: Days of Being Wild

Hong Kong, 1990
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai 

 Wong Kar-Wai is arguably the most popular, internationally acclaimed and influential Hong Kong director of all-time. He is known for his distinctive style, driven by music and color, and for his films' consistent themes of romantic yearning and memory. Wong's debut film was the 1988 gangster melodrama As Tears Go By, starring Maggie Cheung and Andy Lau. It's an entertaining, well-crafted movie, with hints of the stylistic verve and melancholy romanticism that would become Wong's trademarks, but on the whole is mostly typical of its genre. His second film, Days of Being Wild, is the first to fully display Wong's unique personality as an artist.

Set in Hong Kong in the early 1960s, which vividly comes to life through small details - bright red Coca-Cola coolers, form-fitting print dresses and bob hairstyles, Western cafes, lounge and latin music. Days of Being Wild immediately draws you into an immersive sense of time and place. You can almost feel the humidity radiating off the screen, the oppressive heaviness of tropical nights. In this languid and lush atmosphere, a romantic roundelay unfolds among an ensemble of Hong Kong's most iconic actors. At the center of it all is Yuddy, played by the late Leslie Cheung, a troubled, detached young man. He was adopted by a high-class escort (Rebecca Pan), who refuses to tell him who his biological mother is. Yuddy is a womanizer, seducing the quiet Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung) and showgirl Mimi (Carina Lau), before dumping both when they become too attached for his liking. And during their worst times of heartbreak both women are pined for by other men - policeman Tide (Andy Lau) becomes friends with Su Lizhen, and Mimi is pursued by Zeb (Jacky Cheung), a friend of Yuddy who is jealous of his influence over women.

On paper, the web of relationships in Days of Being Wild sounds like a tangled soap opera; however, Wong structures his film like a series of interwoven stories. The story of one relationship flows into another story, each one like free-standing but connected movements in a symphony, always circling back to Yuddy. Leslie Cheung's performance as Yuddy feels iconic. He's often been called the James Dean of Hong Kong because of his good looks and his troubled-but-cool persona - in fact, Days of Being Wild's title was taken from the Cantonese title of Dean's Rebel Without a Cause. But unlike Dean's handsome misfit in Rebel, Yuddy is not a heroic character but a tragically misguided and destructive one. He is both protective of and cruel to his adopted mother, a manipulative woman who is hardly perfect, but cares for him in her own flawed way. He enjoys the thrill of seducing women but has no interest in them beyond that. Twice in the film his narration tells the story of a bird: "I've heard there is a kind of bird with no legs. All it can do is fly and fly. When it gets tired, it sleeps on the wind. This bird can only land once in its whole life. That's the moment it dies." Clearly he pictures himself as the bird - a vagabond and free spirit, coolly detached from everyone and everything. Late in the film he tells the story to Andy Lau's character, who mocks Yuddy's tragically romantic self-mythologizing. "You think you're some kind of bird?" Yuddy may be a loner but for all his posturing he's really just an angry kid who feels rejected by the world. He envisions a separate life where he was not given up by his family in the Philippines, one where he truly belongs somewhere. Yuddy's 'cool and charismatic' act is magnetic enough that it's clear why people are drawn to him, yet it's the silent moments where Leslie Cheung shows his vulnerability that make him engaging.

What connects all the characters in Days of Being Wild is their search for belonging. Yuddy wants to find his biological mother in the Philippines, his mother wants a man to support her, Su Lizhen and Mimi want Yuddy and Zeb wants to be him, Tide wants Su Lizhen and becomes a sailor just to wander and find his place. Several of the characters have relocated from somewhere else, like the Philippines or Macau. Days of Being Wild captures the dislocation that many must have felt in Hong Kong in this era, where so many people had to relocate after the huge upheavals of World War II and the Chinese Civil War. A sense of yearning hangs over Days of Being Wild as thickly as the tropical humidity.

Wong Kar-Wai takes all his characters' dissatisfaction and melancholy and tells it with the wistful, bittersweet romanticism of a good pop song about heartbreak. The smooth camerawork, intimate close-ups and gorgeous soundtrack give Days of Being Wild a hypnotic quality. Considering that it's only Wong Kar-Wai's second film, Days of Being Wild is remarkably confident, a beautifully crafted gem and early example of his brilliance as a filmmaker.