Denouement Renouement

Tag: drama

  • Theme!: Disaster Movies — The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

    By C. Ramsay

    Much time is spent on characterization during the opening of The Poseidon Adventure, and though it is unclear whether or not this was the intention, it overwhelmingly involves traits that are negative. The vast majority of the characters are curmudgeonly, nosy, hyperactive, abusive, or any combination of, and it’s certainly an accomplishment that in opening the movie this way most viewers will still end up rooting and caring for the people we eventually follow.

    This counterbalanced characterization is successful because of how effectively the disaster components of the film are handled, which stem from the SS Poseidon being capsized by a wave from an undersea earthquake while on her final voyage before being decommissioned due to her age. The degree of peril is established, the fear of which the viewer can relate to more strongly than any amount of disaffection that might be experienced through dislike of the characters. The shift from a joyful New Year’s celebration aboard the ship to complete panic is instantaneous, and there is some inventive camera and stunt work implemented to portray the ship capsizing. It’s the eventual sinking of the ship that works as a built-in timer to fuel audience anxieties, and the mix of this countdown with semi-regular catastrophic sequences as the ship comes closer and closer to fully submerging adds to the tension that the characterization can sometimes detract from.

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  • Theme!: Disaster Movies — The Impossible (2012)

    By C. Ramsay

    María Belón, her husband Enrique Álvarez, and their three children went on vacation to Khao Lak, Thailand in December 2004, facing separation and near-death experiences when a massive tsunami devastated multiple countries in the region. Based on these real-life events, The Impossible follows the survival efforts of Naomi Watts as Dr. Maria Bennett, Ewan McGregor as her husband Henry, and their three young sons—Lucas, Thomas, and Simon—played by Tom Holland, Samuel Joslin, and Oaklee Pendergast, respectively. Aside from some basic characterization, next to no time is spent with the family before the tsunami occurs, throwing the audience just as unexpectedly into the turmoil as the people in the film. A path to deeper characterization is achieved through exploring the misunderstandings and misjudgments that can arise in times of communal crisis, particularly when people are experiencing shock and do not have access to immediate medical treatment.

    The tsunami itself is harrowing, having been shot mostly using practical rather than digital effects to create an extended scene that results in Maria and Lucas being separated from Henry, Thomas, and Simon, with both groups being completely unsure of whether the others have survived. The degree of destruction is exemplified through different means, with close-ups generally being used to emphasize the panic, discomfort, exhaustion, fear, and overall sentimentality of the people at the forefront of the disaster, and much wider shots being used to capture how jarring the scope of the chaos is. The casualty makeup is quite graphic and there are a few deeply unpleasant sequences in which the gruesomeness of certain injuries is underscored rather than shied away from. What’s most gut-wrenching about the aftermath of something so suddenly incomprehensible are the minute details: the sound of a crying baby drifting away, a toy half-buried in debris, or torn clothing nestled at the top of a tree. The visuals of the film are designed to resolutely impact the audience, on our end triggering survival and organizational questions that are relevant but may not be readily answerable by following the people we do, allowing us to better identify with the confusion and worry that these characters experience.

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  • Theme!: Disaster Movies — The Towering Inferno (1974)

    By C. Ramsay

    Taking its sweet time to situate the audience, even occasionally going so far as to lull us into distraction with the lighter, spoken character dramas the film begins with, The Towering Inferno is two hours and forty-five minutes of slow, creeping tension capable of being set off at any moment. Standing at a total of 138 stories, a short circuit causes a fire on the 81st floor of the tower during the evening of its dedication ceremony, trapping dozens of guests celebrating on the 135th floor and leaving the building’s architect, Doug Roberts (Paul Newman), and San Francisco Fire Department Chief O’Hallorhan (Steve McQueen) as the individuals best equipped to navigate the situation.

    From the opening sequence of a helicopter traversing San Francisco to eventually deposit a well-dressed and nonchalant Roberts onto the roof of his creation, the level of chicness and style in the film is palpable, conveyed as much through how scenes are pieced together as through the set design and costuming. There are many background details used as a means to better inform the viewer about the time period and the primary class of people involved in the story, and different areas and aspects of the tower have different colour schemes to help orient the audience while the film moves around its central setting. Burnt orange is most often shown in association with the architectural offices of the building, marking a convergence of industry and artistry. Sage green is regularly used in guest-facing areas, particularly acting as the backdrop for the opulence of the Promenade Room where the guests are celebrating. Pastel yellows or neutral whites are typically used in liminal areas like hallways or stairwells. Candy red is used to mark interactive technical components throughout the building, such as buttons, knobs, and handles, whereas pale blue tends to mark the paneling behind which the broader mechanical and electrical layouts exist. Newman’s character is also notably clothed in a burnt orange dress shirt and pale blue suit, relegating his authority to only stand within the sections of the building viewed as being of lower status by those in charge. Despite his expertise and persistence, his social sway is also weakened until it’s too late.

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  • Highlight: Hamnet (2025)

    By C. Ramsay

    Unexpectedly, this came across much more as a horror film leeching from the elements of a traumatic family drama than it did as purely an overwrought romance. Many other horror films came to mind during the runtime, including The Witch, Midsommar, and Mother!, but none more so than Antichrist. There is a world that exists outside of the core family, and other people we see them regularly interacting with, yet they feel ultimately, and unknowingly, confined to their tableaux, unable to integrate into broader society in any meaningful way for the audience to see. It’s as if they live within one of the miniatures from Hereditary, toiling endlessly toward some sort of meaning, some stability, in a world that can only support incomprehensible grotesquery masked by striking beauty. Agnes, Will, and their children are players who are unaware of their roles, trapped in a Hellish limbo, and fated to process loss in incompatible ways.

    The Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, in which Orpheus tries and fails to retrieve his partner from the underworld, is introduced early on in the film and regularly evoked as a through line as the familial hardships worsen, but this is not the only embedded mythology. Death, too, is conveyed as a character through camera motion—always present, always hovering, but quiet, patient, and waiting. Yet, this characterization is obfuscated as being distinct from the audience due to the shared perspective. We are, and it is, unable to leave the family. We know what we are here for, and though we may wish otherwise, we get exactly that.

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  • Hooptober 12: We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021)

    Film #28 — 3/3 Wildcard Films

    By C. Ramsay

    Jane Schoenbrun has a knack for capturing such a specific melancholic type of nostalgia in their films, with World’s Fair ramping it up uncomfortably high. Centered on a teenager named Casey, we quickly learn she spends most of her time in isolation in her attic bedroom with no friends to really speak of and a neglectful father who seems to find her presence a frustration. Like many kids who have found themselves in the same circumstances, Casey turns to seeking community through unsupervised Internet access, diving too deep into niche rabbit holes of horror-based subcultures and exacerbating untreated mental health struggles in the process. After taking part in the initiation process of the “World’s Fair Challenge,” we stay with Casey as she lives day by day, continuing to record videos of herself possibly experiencing post-initiation changes, and striking up a relationship with another World’s Fair participant who goes by “JLB” and happens to be a middle-aged man.

    There is such a deep sadness surrounding Casey. Her depression and loneliness are palpable to viewers, especially those who can relate more explicitly to the specifics of her experiences, but all of it is rooted in empathy. The film also capitalizes on more deeply immersing the viewer through exploiting what can be accomplished via multi-sensory experiences, and the format of including videos within videos makes the audience feel involved through the sense that we’re accessing videos of Casey the way she is of others. 

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  • Hooptober 12: It Comes at Night (2017)

    Film #26 — 2/2 Post-Apocalyptic Films

    By C. Ramsay

    Opening in medias res, with high stakes and no information other than what is directly visible to the audience, It Comes at Night is a drawling, shambling, slow burn of a character study. Surprisingly relevant to the hyper paranoia that has festered since the arrival of COVID-19, the film seeks to escalate by exploiting the uncertainties of the audience and characters alike. We never get much context around what’s happening or why, we only get a vague idea: a disease has ravaged the world, or at least the microcosm accessible to us, and we are introduced to the aftermath through two families and their experiences.

    Bruegel the Elder’s The Triumph of Death is featured at the beginning of the film, a painting depicting a browning landscape, charred by fire and littered with bodies and their useless earthly possessions. Legions of undead have come to lay waste to people of all classes and backgrounds, whether they accept their fate or vie against it. As with the families we meet, there are options for how they can respond to the threat of death, but there is ultimately no real chance of escape.

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  • Hooptober 12: I Am Legend (2007)

    Film #21 — 2/5 Zombie Films; 8/9 Decades

    By C. Ramsay

    “Please say hello to me.”

    Considering the creatures in this adaptation of I Am Legend are stylistically hybridized as vampiric zombies, I’m considering it enough of a fit to be included in the Hooptober zombie category this year. 

    There’s a lot to like about this one, contrary to what some might argue. The pacing throughout most of the film is consistent and contributes to the atmosphere, blending introspective scenes with stress-inducing action sequences, and splicing in flashbacks during well-suited moments. The news segment that’s used to open the film, with the audio filtering in before we see the accompanying video, is great for providing enough exposition to inform the audience of what went wrong before cutting to the present day to allow us to visually witness the aftermath as we’re introduced to Will Smith’s Robert Neville, an immune army virologist. The worldbuilding layered into the advancing plot is rich, with extra details for information we’ve previously learned about being peppered in to shift or deepen context. The logistics of how Neville gets through his days are considered highly important, not only in how he physically survives and sustains himself, but also in what he does to try to stay sane as the supposedly last remaining uninfected person. Whichever expository details might be missing from inclusion as a focal point in different scenes can often be found in the set design, perhaps never outright discussed, but waiting nevertheless to be discovered in the background. The interior of Neville’s home, for example, is flooded with objects that are revelatory to his personality prior to the virus, something we’re never witness to otherwise, and which then also act to more deeply contextualize his current interests and goals. Although the score and soundtrack are good, and feel utilized to continue to round out Neville’s characterization, it’s their absence during key scenes that’s most effective. The quiet, occasionally accentuated by the sounds of rapid breathing or animalistic wails in the night, is what’s most deafening.

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  • Hooptober 12: Paperhouse (1988)

    Film #19 — 1/1 Film with Dreams as Part of the Plot

    By C. Ramsay

    From Bernard Rose, director of the original Candyman, Paperhouse is about a young girl named Anna who uses a dreamworld she’s created by drawing in her school composition notebook to escape her struggles in real life. Using a touch of Solaris to establish this, the quiet emptiness of Anna’s initial visit to her dreamworld is then juxtaposed with the suffocating and endlessly busy city of her reality, made worse by the fact that she is trapped in a car with her mother driving while being scolded for her recent behaviour. Tonally, however, the film is most reminiscent of The Babadook—Anna being annoyingly whiny but still endearing, the script a touch repetitive in its dialogue, and the editing a bit too choppy to fully come together in a polished way.

    Although the concept of drawings coming to life or generating an alternate realm is not unheard of, it also isn’t the most popular basis for a storyline. Relatedly, as the film is only loosely adapted from a novel, Bernard Rose was able to establish the lore and mechanics of the dreamworld as he desired, which was incredibly interesting to experience unfolding without knowing what would come next. The set design is gorgeous, with the house itself being faithful to the wonkiness of Anna’s drawing capabilities. Having been drawn with regular pencil, every part of the house is in drab sepia tone and is disorienting and cavernous, the walls only meant to create a sheltered space to contain the most imaginative components of Anna’s world. The dreamworld set and its dressings are stylistically similar to Terry Gilliam’s designs, and do a great job of solidifying the imagination of their creator, reflecting whimsy along with the underlying fear and unease that so easily creeps into the minds of children.

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  • Hooptober 12: The Devils (1971)

    Film #10 — 1/4 Films Based on Novels (or Books); 5/9 Decades

    Also filed under: A-One

    By C. Ramsay

    Though it might be cliché to quote Shakespeare’s “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here” as the truest sentiment this film embodies, there’s no closer description of the nearly two-hour frenzied descent into sacrilegious hedonism that it presents. Set in 1634 France and following Urbain Grandier, a priest who has temporarily inherited control of the fortified city of Loudun from its deceased Governor, as well as Sister Jeanne des Agnes of the city’s Ursuline convent, the film intertwines the country’s conflicting religious fanaticism with an outburst of mass sexual deviancy.

    Featured throughout are colossal but stark sets, their architecture illustrative of the people most commonly frequenting them—rounded and enveloping for Sister Jeanne, jagged and commanding for Father Grandier, all of it cavernous and empty. The streets of Loudon, the space of the masses, are where the excesses are found: an orgiastic cacophony of visual opulence that in detail is built of disease, rot, and poverty, swelling to consume all who wade through it. 

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  • Hooptober 12: Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

    Film #8 — 1/3 Cult or Conspiracy Films

    Also filed under: A-One

    By C. Ramsay

    A reverie of dread that’s a much more difficult watch than it first appears. While in no way uninteresting, the first thirty minutes begin slowly, the true degree of escalation only noticeable in retrospect once things have already begun to surge out of control. With the film being highly reliant on visual storytelling, the set design and costumes are well curated, allowing the viewer to quickly assess married couple Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse before getting to know them better through conversation. Since we originally see the apartment that much of the film takes place in when it’s still furnished from the previous tenant—who happens to be one of the cult members—the audience is further able to learn about some of their characterization, as well as some of the cult practices through context clues, without ever meeting the deceased occupant. 

    Ruth Gordon gives a phenomenal performance as Minnie Castevet, one of the Woodhouse’s neighbours and a key cult member. Her apathy for Rosemary, concealed only through a caricature of temperament that’s barely interested in feigning authenticity, is replicated by Guy in a moment that is such a sudden pivot in behaviour from him that it’s sickening. The tragedy surrounding Rosemary is reinforced through her perpetually heightening fear and lack of ability to do anything about it, though she tries desperately to. At first, she’s trusting and accepts the explanations she’s given, preferring to assume she’s misunderstood something than to advocate for herself at the risk of offending others and realizing she’s wrong in her accusations. Rosemary is not meek, though, and speaks up regularly. The problem is that everyone capable of helping her is either only pretending to or helps with an immediate issue without following up in addressing the larger problem. Any support she does receive stops at being verbal when it needs to also be material.

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