Introduction

Joseph Campbell’s seminal 1949 work on mythic structure, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, postulated that there was only one myth in the world (the “monomyth”) which was told and retold with endless variations by every culture on earth. Heavily influenced by Freud and Jung, he argued that the monomyth is universal because it presents and solves the various crises of the unconscious that must necessarily be overcome by each individual in order to move from an infantile state into a higher realization of self. “The Hero archetype represents the ego’s search for identity and wholeness. In the process of becoming complete, integrated human beings, we are all Heroes facing internal guardians, monsters, and helpers.” (Vogler 35) Bruno Bettelheim, who explored similar ideas as Campbell, but studied fairy tales instead of myth, described it thus: “the fairy tales’ concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner processes taking place in an individual.” (Bettelheim 25)

Campbell’s work has been widely influential in scholarly and literary circles, and although it was written as a work that attempted to explain why all mythic structures bear similarities, it was eventually used as a blueprint for stories that were written subsequently. For example, it was the basis for Christopher Vogler’s 1998 book The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, which is a staple screenplay handbook in Hollywood. What was once the explanation for the organic growth of fiction has become the topiary form into which the fiction is cut.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a television show developed by Joss Whedon, which ran in the United States from 1997 until 2003. The show, which was based around a female hero, inspired deep devotions from its fans, and has also become a sub-genre for pop culture studies in academia. It deals with the mythic structure with both devastating maturity and light-hearted humor, which is equally valid: “Humor is the touchstone of the truly mythological as distinct from the more literal-minded and sentimental theological mood.” (Campbell 180)

I would like to compare and contrast the main character in the series, Buffy Summers, to the monomythic hero described by Campbell. Buffy both conforms beautifully to the archetype presented, while at the same time rebuking and rejecting portions of it. Campbell’s work focused almost exclusively on male heroes, relegating female heroes to a more passive role within the myth, that a masculine hero’s journey is “the son against the father for the mastery of the universe,” while the female hero’s journey is “the daughter against the mother to be the mastered world.” (Campbell 136) As Buffy is both a woman and a warrior, her subconscious crises lead her to have a unique reaction to her hero journey.

I am looking at Buffy’s journey through the entirety of the seven seasons of the series as one continuous story arc, which roughly follows the five-act structure that was used for both individual episodes, and season-long arcs. These five acts may be roughly defined as Act I: The Call to Arms, Act II: Frustration and Opposition, Act III: Nightmare, Act IV: Climax and Act V: Resolution. I have overlaid these five sections with the three-part (or three act) rites of passage explored by Campbell: Separation or Departure, The Trials and Victories of Initiation, and The Return and Reintegration with Society. Figure 2 shows roughly how these different criteria apply to the seasons and dramatic arc of the journey.

The Separation or Departure

At the beginning of the monomyth, the hero must leave the ordinary world and journey into a new and frightening reality. The five subsections within this beginning portion are the Call to Adventure, the Refusal of the Call, Supernatural Aid, Crossing of the First Threshold, and the Belly of the Whale. This first and brief portion of the hero myth is mostly exposition, a way to introduce the character of the hero and to incite him or her into action. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this portion is covered within the first season.

The Call to Adventure

In the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer we see Buffy attempting to be a normal teenage girl, even though she knows through previous (unseen) adventures that her future is to be a Slayer. Buffy believes she has escaped this future by changing locations, but destiny will not be subverted. It’s already too late. Campbell explains, “…the call rings up the curtain, always, on a mystery of transfiguration– a rite, or moment, of spiritual passage, which when complete, amounts to a dying and a rebirth. The familiar life horizon has been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for passing the threshold is at hand.” (Campbell 51)

For Buffy, the call is given by Rupert Giles, whose role as a mentor and advisor will be discussed later. In her attempt to emulate outmoded norms of teenage behavior, she goes to the library for a textbook. Instead, she is presented with a large book with the word “Vampyr” engraved on the cover. Frightened, she says, “That’s not what I’m looking for.” Giles asks, “Are you sure?” (Welcome to the Hellmouth)

In actuality, Buffy is fairly committed to her calling within the first season, as long as the danger to her person is not too great. She has not yet reached the true mark of the hero, which is the sacrifice of self to the greater good. “People commonly think of Heroes as strong or brave, but these qualities are secondary to sacrifice– the true mark of a Hero. Sacrifice is the willingness to give up something of value, perhaps even her own life, on behalf of an ideal or a group.” (Vogler 38) Instead, she is still fighting to keep her life as “normal” as possibly, which delays a final decision in response to her call. “Thereafter, even though the hero returns for a while to his familiar occupations, they may be found unfruitful. A series of signs of increasing force will become visible, until… the summons can no longer be denied.” (Campbell 56)

Buffy cannot ignore her calling completely, as her new home, Sunnydale, is located on a “Hellmouth,” or a portal between a place of high mystical energy (demon dimensions) and low mystical energy (the human world.) In addition to making this area attractive to supernatural creatures, it is also constantly threatening to open, which would create, as Campbell put it, “the shocking transformations that take place when the insulation between a highly concentrated power center and the lower power field of the surrounding world is, without proper precautions, suddenly taken away.” (Campbell 225) The threat of opening the Hellmouth by an ancient vampire called The Master is the cataclysm which eventually forces Buffy to choose once and for all if she is going to accept her call to arms.

The Refusal of the Call

Commonly, the hero of the monomyth is reluctant to accept the call to adventure. The hesitation “serves an important dramatic function signaling the audience that the adventure is risky. It’s not a frivolous undertaking but a danger-filled, high-stakes gamble in which the hero might lose fortune or life.” (Vogler 107) For Buffy, the impetus to her refusal is a prophesy that guarantees she will die trying to stop the Master.

Confronted with the possibility of losing her own life, Buffy says, “I’ve got a way around it. I quit.” Her lover, Angel, tries to explain that “It’s not that simple,” but she counters, “I’m making it that simple! I quit. I resign, I’m fired, you can find someone else to stop the Master from taking over…. I’m sixteen years old. I don’t wanna die.” (Prophesy Girl) As a symbol of her rejection, she takes the cross from her neck, a symbol of her aggression against the supernatural forces that threaten her, and places it on the desk.

Campbell makes it clear that the refusal of the call is always for fundamentally selfish reasons: “The myths and folk tales of the whole world make it clear that the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one’s own interest. The future is not regarded in terms of an unremitting series of deaths and births, but as through one’s present system of ideals, virtues, goals and advantages were to be fixed and made secure.” (Campbell 59-60) The hero, in rejecting the call, is obeying the dictates of the id and ego, which call for self-preservation. However, we want to see “a superego-dominated ego which has become so cut off from the selfish id that it is ready to risk the person’s very existence to obey a moral obligation.” (Bettelheim 88) Any attempt to maintain the status quo when a call for change has been made is futile. “Peace then is a snare; war is a snare; change is a snare; permanence a snare. When our day is come for the victory of death, death closes in; there is nothing we can do, except be crucified– and resurrected; dismembered totally, and then reborn.” (Campbell 16-17)

Naturally, Buffy’s refusal is temporary. When faced with further atrocities committed by the Master, she realizes that she has no choice but to put her life on the line. When reminded that she will die if she fights the Master, she picks up a crossbow and says, “Maybe I’ll take him with me.” (Prophesy Girl) Only when she accepts her call does she finally find peace.

Supernatural Aid

The introduction of a mentor, or supernatural aid, is necessary to propel the plot of the journey forward. “The supernatural helper is masculine in form… who appears, to supply the amulets and advice that the hero will require.” (Campbell 72) The relationship of the mentor and the hero is also an important dynamic that facilitates the hero-journey. “The relationship between Hero and Mentor is one of the most common themes in mythology, and one of the richest in symbolic value. It stands for the bond between parent and child, teacher and student, doctor and patient, god and man.” (Vogler 17)

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this bond is one of the strongest in Buffy’s life, with her Watcher, Giles. Giles begins the series by representing the heavily masculine Watcher’s Council, a group that both trains and contains the feminine power of the Slayer. As time goes on, however, he becomes a strong father-figure to Buffy, whose own father is absent and neglectful. “The Mentor archetype is closely related to the image of the parent…. Many heroes seek out Mentors because their own parents are inadequate role models.” (Vogler 48)

Moments of closeness and accord between the hero and her mentor are frequently interrupted with rebellion and conflict, but the relationship is essentially affectionate. In various episodes, Buffy demonstrates that she believes that Giles is her father-replacement, from “Helpless,” when she tries to convince him to take her father’s place on their traditional yearly outing, to “Something Blue,” when she asks him to be in her wedding: “I’m not crazy, and I know that you probably don’t approve, and my father’s not that far away, I mean, he could— but this day is about family — my real family — and I would like you to be the one to give me away.” (Something Blue)

Giles’ affection is rarely so openly expressed, although Quentin Travers, the head of the Watcher’s Council, says it aloud for him: “Your affection for your charge has rendered you incapable of clear and impartial judgment. You have a father’s love for the child, and that is useless to the cause.” (Helpless) Perhaps the most telling moment in unraveling Giles’ feelings for Buffy are in the episode “Restless,” where we are privy to Giles’ undiluted subconscious, as he dreams about Buffy. In his mind, she is little more than a child, in pigtails, to be protected and given treats.

Giles is pivotal to the first few seasons of the series, when he acts as Buffy’s moral compass, motivator, teacher, and trainer. As she develops and needs guidance less, his role becomes more passively paternal. Eventually, her dependence on him becomes a crutch that inhibits her psychological growth, which leads to his eventual abandonment, which will be discussed in depth later.

The Crossing of the First Threshold

For Buffy, it is not enough in her hero-journey to accept her possible death; to truly embrace her calling, she must actually die. Campbell points out that “the really creative acts are represented as those deriving from some sort of dying to the world; and what happens in the interval of the hero’s nonentity so that he comes back as one reborn, made great and filled with creative power, mankind is also unanimous in declaring.” (Campbell 35-36) Buffy’s encounter with the Master leaves her temporarily dead– an event that changes her materially. After she is revived by her friend Xander, she gets up to fight. Frightened, Xander cautions her, “You’re still weak.” She responds, “No. No, I feel strong.” Then, tellingly: “I feel different.” (Prophesy Girl)

The first threshold that the hero passes is the point of no return. Once that step is taken, the hero journey has finally begun. The threshold is always guarded by a creature that must be fought, or turned, or out-witted. Although crossing the threshold is a necessary step on the heroic journey, it would be oversimplifying to accept it as a “good” choice. After all, it is always safer on the original side. “One had better not challenge the watcher of the established bounds. And yet– it is only by advancing beyond those bounds, provoking the destructive other aspect of the same power, that the individual passes, either alive or in death, into a new zone of experience.” (Campbell 82) Seen from that perspective, the threshold guardian isn’t a monster at all, but someone put there to protect the world, and the hero, from potentially cataclysmic change.

The Belly of the Whale

By crossing the first threshold, the hero places herself in a position of great danger. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, accepting her death and being reborn means that Buffy must fight against the Master, whereas before she was simply putting herself in a position to be killed. She has answered her call to adventure, finally, with a resounding “YES.” From here on in the series, she is the Slayer. She sometimes struggles with the peripheral difficulties, but she has accepted her destiny and learns to enjoy the journey.

“The belly of the whale” is a metaphorical expression meaning that the hero has been symbolically devoured by the new world. However, this figurative consumption is often mirrored literally. Buffy, when fighting the Master, has already actually fed him with her own blood. Often, in the series, the feeding of a vampire is delineated as “eating” as opposed to “drinking.” It’s seen as a more complete and violent absorption of the individual. So, in Buffy’s “belly of the whale,” her life-blood is coursing through the Master’s body as she kills him. This devouring is compared by Campbell to “the passing of a worshipper into a temple– where he is to be quickened by the recollection of who and what he is, namely dust and ashes unless immortal.” (Campbell 91)

By way of being consumed by the beast, and by confronting her enemy, Buffy transcends her human boundaries and is jettisoned into a new world. “Once inside he may be said to have died to time and returned to the World Womb, the World Navel, the Earthly Paradise… the passage into a temple and the hero-dive through the jaws of the whale are identical adventures, both denoting, in picture language, the life-centering, life-renewing act.” (Campbell 92) Having been destroyed and reborn, Buffy is ready to move beyond the first portion of her mythic journey, the Separation or Departure, and enter the Trials and Victories of Initiation.

The Trials and Victories of Initiation: The Road of Trials

This portion of the myth generally contains the bulk of the story. Our hero is in a new world, and must slowly learn the rules and gain experience and maturity. Buffy is faced with a sequence of larger-than-life shadow villains, whose minor emissaries provide many of the monster-of-the-week challenges that she faces. They all seek to protect Buffy from further growth and development. “That is why the approaches and entrances to temples are flanked and defended by colossal gargoyles: dragons, lions, devil-slayers with swords, resentful dwarfs, winged bulls. These are the threshold guardians to ward away all incapable of encountering the higher silences within.” (Campbell 92) In this portion of the journey, “the world is usually dominated by a villian or Shadow who is careful to surround his world with traps, barricades, and checkpoints. It’s common for heroes to fall into traps here or trip the Shadow’s security alarms. How the hero deals with these traps is part of the Testing.” (Vogler 137)

There are a few important mythological steps that Buffy encounters in this portion of her journey, but it also gives her time to gear up for the troubles to come by various means. For one thing, an important dramatic event that Campbell overlooks is that this is the portion of the story where the hero makes friends. In Vogler’s work, he spends more time on this aspect, delineating between allies, side-kicks, and teams. These various labels are also important to the characters involved in our adventure, whom the series whimsically nicknames “The Scooby Gang.” Although they often express reservations and have identity crises about their place in the adventure, the truth is that the gang is a team, and whenever Buffy forgets that and treats them as something less, she is emotionally, and sometimes physically, punished. Vogler explains the dramatic importance of the team thus: “Many stories feature multiple heroes or a hero backed up by a team of characters with special skills or qualities. The early phases of Act Two may cover the recruiting of a team, or give an opportunity for the team to make plans and rehearse a difficult operation.” (Voger 138)

The team gathers together in what Vogler calls “a watering hole,” or a place to rest and refresh in between minor adventures. “The crossing of the First Threshold may have been long, lonely, and dry. Bars are natural spots to recuperate, pick up gossip, make friends, and confront Enemies. They also allow us to observe people under pressure, when true character is revealed.” (Vogler 140) Perhaps the most obvious “watering hole” in the series is The Bronze, the dance club that figures in predominantly in all seven series. The Scoobies have several other, more private watering holes where they meet and plan. In the first three seasons, it is often the library of the high school. In the fourth season, it is Giles’ apartment. In the fifth and sixth season it is The Magic Box, Giles’ and Anya’s retail establishment. In the final season, it is Buffy’s house. The Scoobies consider these locations to belong to them, even if they are public. When an interloper enters the library or the Magic Box, the team is offended and antagonistic.

This portion of the story also gives Buffy a chance to practice at romantic relationships, something that will be marginalized later on, when her life becomes more chaotic. As a heterosexual woman, Buffy is subconsciously seeking her animus, or the repressed masculine elements of her own subconscious. Buffy herself is what Vogler would call a shapeshifter– a character who changes her identity depending on audience. Her role as a slayer is a secret, which consequently leads to a complicated series of lies and deceptions she feels compelled to live. Her suppressed animus is also a shapeshifter, because she identifies most strongly with someone who is as changeable as she. It’s not unusual for the romantic interest of a story to be a shapeshifter of some sort, as “it’s natural for each sex to regard the other as ever-changing, mysterious. Many of us don’t understand our own sexuality and psychology very well, let alone that of the opposite sex. Often our main experience of the opposite sex is their changeability and their tendency to shift attitudes, appearances, and emotions for no apparent reason.” (Vogler 67)

This changeability does not create stable or enriching relationships. “Shapeshifters change appearance or mood, and are difficult for the hero and audience to pin down. They may mislead the hero or keep her guessing, and their loyalty or sincerity is often in question.” (Vogler 65) As is often the case in the show, the metaphorical aspects of myth are rendered literally. The men that Buffy involves herself with are changeable in emotions and behaviors, but they sometimes literally change their shape, specifically; vampires. Some change moral sides in ways that are fairly minor; such as Parker in season 4, who seems like a sensitive and caring individual, only to shapeshift into a crass and unfeeling cad. Other changes are more material; such as Angel shapeshifting in season 2 into a villain bent on destroying Buffy’s life. The important thing for Buffy is that her romantic interests must constantly change in order to remain interesting to her. When Riley goes from being a shapeshifter in season 4 (a Midwestern farm boy on in one facet, and a secret government agent on the other) into a more straightforward and solid individual in season 5, she becomes bored and shuts him out emotionally. As Spike rather crassly puts it, “The girl needs some monster in her man.” (Into the Woods)

Several important steps of the heroic journey take place during the “trials” period. “Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials. This is a favorite phase of the myth-adventure…. The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before his entrance into this region.” (Campbell 97) The steps that are undertaken in the portion of the journey are The Meeting with the Goddess, The Woman as Temptress, The Atonement with the Father, Apotheosis, and The Ultimate Boon. It encompasses roughly seasons 2 through 5.

Meeting with the Goddess

It is in this section of the hero journey that Buffy’s path becomes significantly differentiated from the monomyth presented by Campbell. Within the temple of the mystical world through which our hero is traveling is the ultimate feminine power. “The mythological figure of the Universal Mother imputes to the cosmos the feminine attributes of the first, nourishing and protecting presence.” (Campbell 113) The encounter by a male hero with this feminine force is often a “mystical marriage,” or sexual in nature. She is both beautiful and dangerous, and should not be underestimated. “For she is the world creatrix, ever mother, ever virgin. She encompasses the encompassing, nourishes the nourishing, and is the life of everything that lives. She is also the death of everything that dies.” (Campbell 114)

Within the mythology of Buffy the Vampire Slayer the power of the slayer is heavily feminine. Slayers have always been women. Buffy’s meeting with the Goddess is then with the ultimate matriarchal creatrix of the Slayer line: the First Slayer, also called The Primitive. She is someone Buffy seeks more than once in the series in a quest for answers: “Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known.” (Campbell 116)

It is perhaps important to note that Buffy’s first meeting with The Primitive takes place during a dream state, in the episode “Restless.” As all action within the hero myth is essentially a playing-out of the individual battling the subconscious mind, dream sequences are important because they allow the subconscious to surface and become an active factor in the story. “Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche.” (Campbell 19)

Instead of a sexual encounter between the two women, they attack each other and fight physically. (This is certainly not the first or last time on the show that those two physical actions are blurred.) The argument is over a set of morals; the Primitive is telling Buffy that the role of Slayer is a lone one, and that Buffy is showing weakness by relying heavily on her friends when they fight. The Primitive says, “The Slayer does not walk in this world.” Buffy rejects this ideology, countering with: “I walk. I talk. I shop, I sneeze…. Now give me back my friends.” (Restless) Psychologically, Buffy is encountering the crisis presented by different value systems between parent and child. The Primitive is her mother-slayer, remote and dangerous, and is imposing her ethics on her daughter-slayer. Although Buffy has accepted her call, she still has the ability to accept or reject the ideology of those who seek to impose their will upon her.

Woman as Temptress

The masculine hero in Campbell’s work must also reject the feminine presence. Psychologically, it is unhealthy for him to remain bonded to the mother. In order to be a hero, he must leave her. The joining was a sort of mastery, a subconscious acting out of the Oedipal complex, but after that he must reject her. “A monastic-puritanical, world-negating ethical system then radically and immediately transfigures all the images of myth. No longer can the hero rest in innocence with the goddess of the flesh; for she is become the queen of sin.” (Campbell 123)

After her physical encounter with The Primitive, Buffy rejects fighting as a solution to their differences: “Are you quite finished? It’s over, okay? I’m going to ignore you, and you’re going to go away. You’re going to have to get over the whole primal power thing. You’re [i]not[/i] the source of me.” (Restless) This disassociation protects Buffy psychologically from the emotional pain of rejecting her mother. If The Primitive is not her matriarch, then she has no right to impose her value system on Buffy. If Buffy chooses to be her own creator, then she can create her own rules. Rather than continuing the fight, The Primitive leaves abruptly. She reappears a couple of seasons later, and instead of seeming angry or hurt by Buffy’s rejection, it instead has allowed them to address each other as equals and peers.

It is also perhaps important to note that within a few episodes of her encounter with the Goddess, Buffy loses her mother. The emotional bond between Joyce and Buffy is too strong for Buffy to reject her (a theme that will be repeated later with her father-figure, Giles.) However, dependence on a mother-figure is an inhibitor to Buffy’s heroic development, and Joyce’s death, although emotionally devastating, gives Buffy room to mature and develop into a mother-figure herself (to her sister, Dawn, and later to the Potentials.)

Atonement with the Father

After the psychosocial estrangement from the mother-figure, the hero must come to some sort of terms with the father. Often, in myth, this is a God figure. Psychologically, the individual must deal with the dual nature of how he or she perceives his or her father, as well as how he or she perceives God. On the one hand, the father-God is seen as protecting and safe, on the other, abandoning and dangerous. The fact that both views blind us to the true nature of the father perpetuates this conflict; “the fixating idolatry of that pedagogical nonthing is itself the fault that keeps one steeped in a sense of sin, sealing the potentially adult spirit from a better balanced, more realistic view of the father, and therewith of the world. Atonement (at-one-ment) consists in no more than the abandonment of that self-generated double monster.” (Campbell 130) Thus, atonement with the father doesn’t mean to reconcile one’s will with his, but to accept him as a flawed and human creature.

Buffy’s relationships with the father-God involve a sequence of rejecting and, most of the time, reaccepting. There are four main men or groups of men whom represent father/God/authority during the course of the series: Giles, Wesley, the Watcher’s Council, and the Shadow Men. In a way, these father-god figures are all descended from each other: the Shadow Men’s descendents eventually became the Watcher’s Council, which assigned Giles and subsequently Wesley to Buffy. The Watcher’s Council, although we are shown a couple of women involved, is a primarily masculine functioning force, made of rigid rules and ancient codes, which is much different from the feminine functioning force of the Scooby Gang, which is fluid and adaptable to various situations.

The most intense father-God relationship that Buffy has is with her Watcher, Giles. During the first three seasons, Giles acts as a representative of the Watcher’s Council, but that relationship breaks down in the episode “Helpless,” referenced above. Giles is fired from the Watcher’s Council, but remains with Buffy in an unofficial capacity. The bonds of affection between them are strong enough that Buffy eventually develops an unhealthy dependence on Giles by season 6. He becomes increasingly concerned about the fact that she will not step up and act like an adult, but instead continues to rely on him. As he (ahem) sings in “Once More, with Feeling”: “I wish I could say the right words to lead you through this land. Wish I could play the father and take you by the hand. Wish I could stay here, but now I understand. I’m standing in the way.” (Once More with Feeling) Giles’ decision to leave Buffy to her own devices is one that shocks and hurts her, but is absolutely necessary to her heroic development. When he returns, months later, he finds a woman who has learned to take control of her own problems. Her love for him is undiminished, but they now have the freedom and space to come and go out of each other’s lives without emotionally devastating each other. Like Buffy’s relationship with the Goddess, they can be colleagues and allies instead of a child and a parent.

Buffy’s rejection and subsequent reacceptance of Wesley is more straight-forward, because she doesn’t have the emotional attachment to him that she has to Giles. He is sent from the Watcher’s Council to replace Giles, but he is never completely accepted by the group. In the beginning, Buffy obeys him, but never without checking with Giles first. He is a parent in name only, and does not wield the psychological power over her that Giles, as her father-figure, does. He is an object of annoyance and contempt. Her full rejection of him is also a rejection of the Council, when they refuse to bend their ancient codes to help her friends. Wesley says, “The Council’s orders are to concentrate on…” but Buffy interrupts him, saying, “Orders? I don’t think I’m going to be taking any more orders. Not from you, not from them…. Go back to your Council and tell them, until the next Slayer comes along, they can close up shop. I’m not working for them anymore.” (Graduation Day, Part I) Buffy only reaccepts him when he turns his back on the Council and humbles himself to her level, so that he is an ally instead of a father-God figure: “I’m not here for the Council. Just tell me how I can help.” (Graduation Day, Part II)

Buffy’s reacceptance of the Watcher’s Council follows the now-familiar pattern: she will not be subjugated by them, or honor them as a father-God, although she will accept them as allies if they provide her with anything useful. In the season 5 episode “Checkpoint,” the Council attempt to reestablish dominance. In response, Buffy shows how far she has come to mastering her own destiny: “You guys didn’t come all the way from England to determine whether or not I was good enough to be let back in. You came to beg me to let you back in. To give your jobs, your lives, some semblance of meaning…. So here’s how it’s going to work. You’re going to tell me everything you know. Then you’re gonna go away.” (Checkpoint)

Far after her Trials period is over, Buffy confronts and rejects the Shadow Men, in the season 7 episode “Get it Done.” These are the men who originally imbued The Primitive with her Slayer powers, and they are the antecedents of the Watcher’s Council. With them, there will be reacceptance as colleagues. Her rejection of them is total. Realizing that they chained The Primitive against her will and infused her with a demon spirit, she says “You think I came all this way to get knocked up by some demon dust? I can’t fight this. I know that now. But you guys? You’re just men. Just the men who did this… to her. Whoever that girl was before she was the First Slayer…. You violated that girl, made her kill for you because you’re weak, you’re pathetic, and you obviously have nothing to show me.” This total rejection is a break from pattern, and shows no atonement between Buffy and the male authority.

Apotheosis

Apotheosis means, literally, the elevation to divine status or Godhood. This is more than mere death– the hero must become a Savior. “The Hero facing an Ordeal has moved her center from the ego to the Self, to the more godlike part of her. There may also be a movement from Self to group as a hero accepts more responsibility than just looking out for herself. A hero risks individual life for the sake of the larger collective life and wins the right to be called ‘hero.’” (Vogler 177) The attractive and life-affirming message of myth is that divinity is something that anyone can attain, through trial: “This is the release potential within us all, and which anyone can attain–through herohood.” (Campbell 151)

Buffy dies again. This time, however, her death is not only accepted, it is embraced. Her mother-slayer, The Primitive, tells her “Love will bring you to your gift…. Death is your gift.” (Intervention) The moment that Buffy realizes that her death would save the life of her younger sister, Dawn, she becomes extremely calm. She does not hesitate. She is not the grieving, frightened child who drowned in the first season. She is The Slayer. She is a hero, who has gone through her Trials stage, and she understands her path. “This image stands… at the conclusion of the hero-task, at the moment when the wall of Paradise is dissolved, the divine form found and recollected, the wisdom regained.” (Campbell 154) This call will not go unanswered.

Another pattern that is eerily reflected in the show is the image, associated with the Apotheosis, of the dual-sexual God. Buffy dies in the place of her sister, who was being sacrificed by a God (instead of a demon or vampire, like other seasons) who was both alternately male and female. After overcoming the crises of both the mother and the father, the individual is faced with this androgynous deity. “This is the meaning of the image of the bisexual god. He is the mystery of the theme of initiation. We are taken from the mother, chewed into fragments and assimilated to the world-annihilating body of the ogre for whom all the precious forms and beings are only the courses of a feast; but then, miraculously, reborn, we are more than we were.” (Campbell 162) Buffy is searching for a way to save her sister; what she finds is herself. “It is found (or rather, recollected) that the hero himself is that which he has come to find.” (Campbell 163)

The Ultimate Boon

Dying, the hero finally attains his greatest reward. The fleece is snatched, the amulet taken, the wisdom gleaned. In death, the hero has become divine.

All we know of Buffy’s sojourn in the afterlife is what we are told later. The woman who has dealt in death and destruction since she was a child has found peace. She says, “I was happy. At peace… I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time didn’t mean anything. Nothing had form… but I was still me, you know? And I was warm, and I was loved, and I was finished. Complete. I don’t understand about theology or dimensions, or …any of it, really… but I think I was in heaven.” (After Life)

The Return and Reintegration with Society

Could the series have ended at this point? No. Despite how much peace may be found in death, the hero must return. “The full round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess, back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet, or the ten thousand worlds.” (Campbell 193)

Vogler and Campbell disagree on the tone of the return. Vogler sees it as a time of celebration, bonfires and drinking. The great storm is over. Campbell believes, however, that it is a time of great pain and readjustment. Who, having found peace, would renounce it again? This is the beginning of the third act of the series, the one aptly named “Nightmare.” (See Figure 2)

This portion of the heroic journey contains The Refusal of the Return, Rescue from Without, The Crossing of the Return Threshold, Master of Both Worlds, and Freedom to Live. It encompasses roughly seasons 6 and 7 of the series.

The Refusal of the Return

Buffy has no wish to return to life. Following her description of “heaven” above, she continues, “I was in heaven. And now I’m not. I was torn out of there. Pulled out… by my friends. Everything here is hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch. This is Hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that, knowing what I’ve lost…” (After Life) Nobody goes through what Buffy did unscathed. “Heroes don’t just visit death and come home. They return changed, transformed.” (Vogler 160) “For if he has won through to the profound repose of complete enlightenment, there is danger that the bliss of this experience may annihilate all recollection of, interest in, or hope for, the sorrows of the world, or else the problem of making known the way of illumination to people wrapped in economic problems may seem too great to solve.” (Campbell 36-37) Is it any wonder that Buffy’s journey out of the grave involves her going back up on the scaffold that saw her death? She wishes to return to the land of peace, and only the cries of her sister draw her reluctantly back.

Rescue from Without

As Buffy does not wish to save herself from death, the rescue must come from someone else. “The hero may have to be brought back from his supernatural adventure by assistance from without. That is to say, the world may have to come and get him. For the bliss of the deep abode is not lightly abandoned in favor of the self-scattering of the wakened state. ‘Who having cast off the world,’ we read, ‘would desire to return again? He would only be there.’” (Campbell 207)

Buffy’s abduction from “heaven” is enacted by her friends. They have, of course, good intentions. They believe that her death was mystical and unnatural, and that they therefore have an obligation to “rescue” Buffy from what could be a hell dimension. Several clues are given, however, that this enterprise is not as benign as it appears. In order to enact the spell, Buffy’s best friend Willow kills an innocent creature, and then lies about it. Benevolent spells should not involve such violent acts. The incantation itself is frightening and suggests that Willow was less than honest with the remainder of the group regarding the cost.

It has not occurred to the Scooby Gang that Buffy would not want to return. “If the hero… is unwilling, the disturber suffers an ugly shock.” (Campbell 207) Her friends end up suffering a great deal of guilt and hurt as their attempt at righting the wrong of the universe ends up breaking one of its fundamental laws, leading to various evils that beset the group for the next couple of years.

Nevertheless, the return was fundamentally necessary. “[The hero’s] consciousness having succumbed, the unconscious nevertheless supplies its own balances, and he is born back into the world from which he came. Instead of holding to and saving his ego… he loses it, and yet, through grace, it is returned.” (Campbell 216) No matter how needed it is, though, it is a painful process. Campbell calls it “the paradoxical, supremely difficult threshold-crossing of the hero’s return from the mystic realm into the land of common day.” (Campbell 216)

The Crossing of the Return Threshold

At some point, the hero must accept that he or she has been returned to the normal world if they are going to progress. “The two worlds, divine and the human, can be pictured only as distinct from each other–different as life and death, as day and night…. Nevertheless–and here is a great key to the understanding of myth and symbol–the two kingdoms are actually one. The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know. And the exploration of that dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero.” (Campbell 217)

This is not a simple choice. It is journey, fraught with pitfalls. “The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive the impact of the world.” (Campbell 226) Buffy’s disorientation leads her on a quest for meaning and sensation. She is emotionally distant from her friends, and begins a destructive relationship with Spike simply to try and provoke a response in herself. The world doesn’t feel real to her. “The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausible, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss?” (Campbell 218)

It is difficult to pinpoint one particular event during this process as when Buffy is finally healed and reaccepts her life. However, there are two moments that indicate that she is making progress. Both episodes have titles that suggest this return: “As you Were” and “Normal Again.” In the first, Buffy finally makes the progressive decision to end her relationship with Spike, because she finally lets her superego overpower her id, and realizes that sensation is not worth the hurt she is causing. “It’s over…. Being with you makes things simpler. For a little while… I’m using you. I can’t love you. I’m just being weak, and selfish… and it’s killing me.” (As you Were) The choice she makes in “Normal Again” is even more direct. Because of a hallucinogenic drug, Buffy is able to choose between the real world and a dream-psychotic state that in many ways mirror her heaven-world. She is loved there, with both her deceased mother and her absent father. She has no hero-quest, and no obligations. Her choice to return to the real world is inspired, ironically, by her delusion of her mother begging her to stay in the false world. Joyce says, “You’re too good to give in, you can beat this thing. Be strong, baby, okay? I know you’re afraid. I know the world feels like a hard place sometimes, but you’ve got people who love you… You’ve got a world of strength in your heart. I know you do. You just have to find it again. Believe in yourself.” (Normal Again) Buffy realizes that the “real” world isn’t the easy one, but the one where she still has to fight.

Master of Two Worlds

After leaving the divine world and returning to the secular world, the hero becomes the master of both. “Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal deep and back–not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other– is the talent of the master.” (Campbell 229) The hero has learned not only the difficult lesson of death, but also the near-impossible lesson of rebirth. He or she has reconciled the lack of death-fear with a true desire to live. “The life-wish… and the death-wish… are the two drives that only move the individual from within but also animate for him the surrounding world.” (Campbell 164)

Buffy finally reconciles her psychological crises and becomes confident and self-reliant. She also finally resolves her battlefield guilt, i.e., the fact that she only lives by the death and destruction of those who oppose her. “The battlefield is symbolic of the field of life, where every creature lives on the death of another.” (Campbell 238) Before her Apotheosis, Buffy dealt with this bloody enterprise with a less-mature emotional crux, imagining humans as ‘good’ and demons and vampires as ‘evil.’ “Instead of clearing his own heart the zealot tries to clear the world. The laws of the City of God are applied only to his in-group (tribe, church, nation, class, or what not) while the fire of perpetual holy war is hurled (with good conscience, and indeed a sense of pious service) against whatever uncircumcised, barbarian, heather, ‘native,’ or alien people happens to occupy the position of neighbor.” (Campbell 156) This is a gross oversimplification of a complex situation. The first blow to this world-view is, of course, Angel, who is a hero in his own right. Although a vampire and a shapeshifter, he represents things that are good and noble. As the series progresses, demons and vampires are shown as less and less noble, and more and more “human.” They have their foibles and habits and loves and lives. The first non-humans that are accepted as ‘not evil’ by the Scooby Gang are the changed and penitent, but as the series progressed, they allow to live those who are simply non-hostile and neutral. (For example, Clem, the loose-skinned demon, who does not fight for the forces of good, but it genial and harmless.) Even Spike, who is capable of much evil, is eventually spared, less through penitence and more through familiarity. When Spike tries to stake himself, Xander callously remarks, “He wants to die. I want to help.” Willow chastises him, “It’s ooky. We know him, we can’t just let him poof himself!” (Doomed)

After her Apotheosis, this line between good and evil becomes even more muddied for Buffy. She says, “I was always brave, and kind of righteous. Now I find I’m wavering.” (Once More, with Feeling) By becoming the master of both worlds, Buffy is able to accept death as something that must happen in order to preserve divine balance. “The goal of the myth is to dispel the need for such life ignorance by effecting a reconciliation of the individual consciousness with the universal will…. Powerful in this insight, calm and free in action, elated that through his hand should flow the grace of [the divine], the hero is the conscious vehicle of the terrible, wonderful Law.” (Campbell 238-239)

By becoming the master of two worlds, Buffy has also finally reconciled herself to her own fears, and where she would formerly have wallowed in self-doubt and the anxiety of self-preservation. When, just before her final battle, she is confronted with the threshold guardian known as The First, it appears to her in her own form, and speaks to her in the terms of her former infantile neuroses. “Into every generation a Slayer is born. One girl in all the world. She alone will the strength and kill to…” The First taunts, then needles: “There’s that word again. What you are. How you’ll die. Alone.” Instead of being crippled with insecurity, as an actualized self, Buffy responds “I just realized something. Something that had really never occurred to me before. We’re going to win.” (Chosen)

Freedom to Live

As the resolution to the heroic journey, the hero has earned the capacity and ability to live. “The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he [i]is[/i]… He does not mistake apparent changelessness in time for the permanence of Being, nor is he fearful of the next moment (or of the “other thing”), as destroying the permanent with its change… thus the next moment is permitted to come to pass.” (Campbell 243)

For Buffy, the freedom to live is not only psychological, but literal. Her final rejection of the father-God that was the Shadow Men and the Watcher’s Council comes in breaking their first and most foremost law: that there be only one. Through Willow’s appeal to the Goddess, she enables the powers of the Slayer to pass simultaneously into all those with the potential and capacity to receive it. By starting these hundreds of girls on their own hero-journey, Buffy changes the world forever. “Another aspect of the [power or prize] is that the wisdom which heroes bring back with them may be so powerful that it forces change not only in them, but also those around them. The whole world is altered and the consequences spread far.” (Vogler 228) This change gives her the possibility, for the first time, of making her own destiny. After the battle, her sister-slayer, Faith says, “You’re not the one and only Chosen anymore. Just gotta live like a person. How’s that feel?” Her sister, Dawn, asks, “Yeah, Buffy. What are we going to do now?” (Chosen) In response, Buffy only smiles. She has gained the freedom to live, and has every choice in the world.

Thus is the final object of every hero journey accomplished: “Where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” (Campbell 25)

Conclusion

Can any story have a happy ending? Campbell believes that “the happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved.” (Campbell 25-26) Bettelheim, on the other hand, insists that all endings must have an edge of happiness: “Tolkien describes the facets which are necessary in a good [story] as fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation–recovery from deep despair, escape from some great danger, but most of all, consolation. Speaking of the happy ending… however fantastic or terrible the adventure, it can give to a child or man that hears it, when the ‘turn’ comes, a catch of breath, a beat and lifting of the heard, near to tears.” (Bettelheim 143) The truth of the matter is that all endings have elements of both the tragic and the consoling. The war has been won, at great cost. The road is open with possibilities, but the way back to the life you had before is permanently closed to you. The child has grown up. The world has changed.

***
Works Cited

All images are the property of the legal owners. No copyright or trademark infringement intended.

Books:

Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Vintage Books, 1975.

Cambell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Princeton University Press, 1949.

Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, 2nd Edition. Studio City, CA: Michael Wise Productions, 1998.

Episodes:

“After Life.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Jane Espenson. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar. UPN Network. October 9, 2001.

“As you Were.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Douglas Petrie. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar. UPN Network. February 26, 2002.

“Checkpoint.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Douglas Petrie, Jane Espenson. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar. WB Network. January 23, 2001.

“Chosen.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Joss Whedon. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Eliza Dushku, Michelle Trachtenberg. UPN Network. May 20, 2003.

“Doomed.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Marti Noxon, David Fury, and Jane Espenson. Perf. Nicholas Brendan, Alyson Hannigan. WB Network. January 18, 2000.

“Get it Done.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Douglas Petrie. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar. UPN Network. February 18, 2003.

“Graduation Day, Part I.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Joss Whedon. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alexis Denison. WB Network. May 18, 1999.

“Graduation Day, Part II.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Joss Whedon. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alexis Denison. WB Network. July 13, 1999.

“Helpless.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By David Fury. Perf. Harris Yulen. WB Network. January 19, 1999.

“Intervention.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Jane Espenson. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar. WB Network. April 24, 2001.

“Into the Woods.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Marti Noxon. Perf. James Marsters. WB Network. December 19, 2000.

“Normal Again.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Diego Gutierrez. Perf. Kristine Sutherland. UPN Network. March 12, 2002.

“Once More with Feeling.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Joss Whedon. Perf. Anthony Stewart Head, Sarah Michelle Gellar. UPN Network. November 6, 2001.

“Prophesy Girl.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Joss Whedon. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar, David Borneanaz, Nicolas Brendan. WB Network. June 2, 1997.

“Restless.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Joss Whedon. Perf. Amber Benson, Sarah Michelle Gellar. WB Network. May 23, 2000.

“Something Blue.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Tracey Forbes. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar. WB Network. November 30, 1999.

“Welcome to the Hellmouth.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Joss Whedon . Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Anthony Stewart Head. WB Network. March 10, 1997.

SPOILERS ALERT

3:10 to Yuma (Mangold, 2007) could have been great. It could have been about a perverse desire of the Good Man to be the criminal he sought to bring justice to, the man who could take what he could and feel free of judgment or ties to a simple life. At one point, something in Dan Evans (Christian Bale) spoke to that desire. But that was not the plan for this film, and what Evans wanted was a little bit more sentimental than that: a chance to rewrite history, to be the hero he felt he needed to be. It still made for a really thought provoking, well made Western yet.

Mangold’s competent, somewhat low-key (despite the presence of an electrifying cast) remake of another film of the same name from the same short story by Elmore Leonard (admittedly, I haven’t seen the original or read the story to make any proper comparisons) told of a struggle by a family man to gain his rightful place in life. Dan Evans, limping on his one leg (though he tried his utmost to hide that fact, even when walking), expected himself to be able to protect and provide for his family on his own. He made a lot of compromises to keep himself out of trouble, while maintaining a bit of his manhood or dignity somehow. There were many chances where he could have just tipped over to one side or another to make the struggle less torturous. Yet, he persisted, insisting on doing things “right.” This involved bringing a notorious criminal, Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to justice.

It was not as if Dan Evans concerned himself solely with the thought of justice served; he knew better than that. Evans appeared to want something else altogether, the surface of which was the monetary value of the job’s reward, the sum of which could help provide a more comfortable means for his family to live on. And it seemed as though he rather enjoyed the company of Wade, despite himself.

Amidst the popping final battle, Evans revealed the motivation for his stubbornness (that he insisted he was not stubborn was played out as a joke to himself and the audience). The difference between Evans and Wade was that while Wade did not bother with the struggle to be righteous, Evans struggled with the desire to earn his rightful place. Wade turned himself into the man he was so that he could be free from the struggle of keeping one’s head above the ground and doing good deeds, when the environment obviously was not favouring the latter. Evans felt that he needed to earn what was his, and faced that dilemma head on. Yet, as Wade struggled to snuff this difference out of Evans, to kill the recognition that Evans did what he, perhaps, could not do, he finally realized that Evans in his own way, was similar to him in his struggling for his own manhood in his eyes - probably a lot less noble than the intention to protect justice and provide for his family. The essential distinction between the good guys and the bad guys, as presented in the film, dissolved. Ironically, the final favour Wade did for Evans had a bitter after taste to its just appearance.

Wade’s right hand man, the sharp shooting, sharp dressing Charlie Prince (Ben Foster), was as loyal as any right hand man could be. His loyalty, in the modern era, could be interpreted as bordering on the homoerotic. It’s interesting that Ben Foster, whose previously played Angel in X-men III: The Last Stand, took on another role steeped in sexual ambiguity. As it was, Charlie Prince had only one love beside his taste for bloodlust, and that was Ben Wade. Being Wade’s right hand man, Charlie Prince took it upon himself to free his “boss”, at all cost. It could be that he feared the repercussion of not attempting a rescue, but the film never gave that impression. Instead, one had the sense that Charlie Prince really believed in his role as Wade’s to-go man. It could very well be the only thing that made him human.

And that was why the final betrayal really got to me. His one stab at human feelings fed him right into the lion’s jaw. Wade’s action may have brought a sense of tragedy to Charlie Prince’s character, an otherwise murdering bastard. While I wondered why Charlie Prince, being as smart as he was, could not figure out that his “boss” simply did not want to be rescued. He must have known that Wade could have easily freed himself instead of running alongside Evans amidst the bullet spray. It could be a plot hole, or it could be that his devotion blinded him to the fact that his man could betray him. Was it justice served, or another instance of human relations gone awry?

In delivering this final blow, Wade gave Evans the story book ending he gave his life for. 3:10 to Yuma was a good film not because it depicted an ideal world, even with its seemingly ideal ending. It depicted the way manhood has been realized in the Good Man’s archetype. I was slightly disturbed at Evans’ selfishness in fulfilling his own desire to be a hero at the risk of putting his family in harm’s way, and making a widow out of his wife. This man’s heroic chase ultimately meant the ruin of his family. Wade’s attempt to wrap up Evans’ life as he wanted made me think of the way our society has been sanctioning this kind of manhood dream. The Good Man’s ultimate demise was inevitable, as he attempted to fulfill his ideal. Yet his incomplete heroism was forged into an ideal - with the complicity of the wolves that he chases down, and the grease of the hands that pay for his apparent heroism.

As M. I. A. in her recent single “Boyz” asked, “how many boyz to start a war?” Apparently, all we needed here was just one.

This German film won the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Picture the year it released (2006). It came out of nowhere and beat out the front-runner Pan’s Labyrinth for the prize. It shocked me at the time, but having seen the film now I understand why it was favoured by the Academy. The film was essentially a love letter to the Arts, a pat on the back for its presumed power in bringing out the “good” in people. The writer/director, von Donnersmarck, had said it himself that the film was created so that he could force Lenin to listen to the Sonata that may have stopped the revolution.

The story was rather simple: a Stasi man (known in his reports as HGW) was assigned to spy on a couple of artists in East Germany during the communist era. In the process of recording every minute details of this couple’s life in their apartment, the man found his principles shaken by what he witnessed. He became unexpectedly involved after having heard a piece of sonata played in the apartment. The film then became a romanticized tale of how art saves the soul, complete with the saving grace of a central character by the name of Christa-Maria Sieland. In some ways, Others was a love story between three people. The number three also bears some religious significance, as alluded to by the presence and sacrifices of a Christ replacement, Christa-Maria. The love of a good woman - their guardian angel - brought two men together, as they battled what the lust for a woman brought to them. This fit in with the tendency of the film to romanticize and simplify the struggle between our good side and our bad side.

Art therapists will tell you that they have no doubt in the ability of arts to transform people. Von Donnersmarck seemed to believe that his work was like some sort of art therapy, in which he could instill hope and lift his audience up. As such, the film felt like a walk down an ideal memory lane, both thematically and stylistically. It was still green and austere, but with infused warmth and humanist idealism. It was also a bit too optimistic. The idea that Lenin could somehow be forced to listen to a beautiful work of art and be inevitably changed by it maybe too hopeful for the real world.

At one point during the production of the film, Others had an alternate title: Sonata for a Good Man. This would have been just as fitting for the film, though some changes would have to be made to the use of music throughout the film (i.e. more music intervals). The director opted for a less musical version, though no less lyrical. It had an elegant script, though in certain places , the dots were connected a little too strenuously (one too many plot line conveniences such as the meeting of HGW and Christa-Maria, the goofy spy sidekick’s easy suggestibility, the lemme-tell-you-how-horrible-things-are-going-to-be-for-the-prisoner scene before HGW was to make his choice regarding his reporting).

As a whole, there was very little surprise to the film, from the drugged-out woman who sold herself to survive to the typically corrupted officials and men struggling to be good. The depiction of a woman who was rather dependent on men and social structure, with little will of her own to stick to any principle other than her very last act, would’ve been quite cringe-worthy at times if not for the wonderful performance by Martina Gedeck. She was sensual and tragic, despite her being a bit of a wallflower at times. Of the three main characters, she represented the pure live-by-one’s-emotion side of humanity. She served as a counterpoint to the principled HGW, who had to learn over the course of the film to live with his emotions. Dreyman, the writer cum boyfriend, seemed to be the ideal man for the film - he who got to the truth by investing in both his emotions and his principles. It was telling where the director’s view of the humanity placed in this trifecta by the end.

For all its moral sense, the film benefited from an understated style of directing, defusing the need to resist morally uplifting stories of an audience that’s used to more grim political ventures. Others fit in with other type of films that the Academy usually would extend its applause to. It featured an ordinary-people-in-war-time situation, celebrated the power of art, alluded to film artists (there was a line in the film read “what is a director if he doesn’t direct? Nothing.”), and believed in good triumphing evil. It was a well done story, but one wouldn’t say it was magic on screen.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. My first front page review here at Icine, something I’d slightly anticipated, thinking it’d begin with Fleck’s ‘Half Nelson’, or with Lynch’s sweet and simple ‘The Straight Story.’ Now here I am reviewing a film that wasn’t even on my radar before last night, only knowing it as the one that upset a certain boxing biopic almost thirty years ago… but here I am. It’s no masterwork of a Marty Scorsese (and that will be the last he or his film will be mentioned); instead this section of the front page will cover the greatest work Robert Redford will ever give to cinema, the remarkable achievement that is ‘Ordinary People’.

The setting is established instantly with vivid and vibrant colors of the fall foliage of a northern town, but at first I wasn’t certain I’d like this film. The characters, a mother and a son - there was no chemistry at all between them. Zero, and heck if Lester and Jane Burnham didn’t look like family of the year members by comparison. Mismatch in casting? The story goes on, and we begin to realize who these two really are. The son is a tortured soul, a poor teen dealing with horrific trauma; the mother is incapable of compassion or empathy, almost callous in her neglect as a parent when he needs her most. I was wrong, they weren’t meant to have any noticeable mother-son bond.

Mary Tyler Moore, her legacy I’d only heard about, lives up to the hype in her terrific performance as Beth Jarrett, a woman so concerned with appearance and pleasing others she overlooks her own guilt-ridden son. While guys his age are out-and-about looking for fun and laughs, Conrad (Timothy Hutton, whom I’ll get back to) is living a life of pure misery and aloneness. Young Conrad blames the death of his older brother on himself to the point of unsuccessful suicide, his father (Calvin – Donald Sutherland at his best) helpless at this point. His best advice is to send his only surviving son to therapy.

Therapy: simply mentioning this to his friend during a neighborhood party will get good-hearted Calvin into trouble. He’s an honest man who holds no secrets, casually telling a friend his son is in therapy and on the road to recovery. Understandable, one brother had witnessed the other’s drowning; no child should ever go through that. With the mere mention of her child in therapy, Beth snaps to attention, “lovingly” rushes to her husband to defuse the topic for something more cordial and pleasant (re: make her family life look good). The loving façade covers bitter scorn Mary Tyler Moore’s Beth had for her husband at that moment. Wonderful actress, and Sutherland is good, too… but a young Timothy Hutton is waiting to be discussed.

The leaves that were once graceful in autumn are dying with winter, and a discouraged Conrad is in need of help. Apprehensive like his father and cautious like his mother, this gifted young man is now driven almost to madness. He misses the hospital, he can’t relate to his friends now. On top of that comes the pretentious life he wants no part of, where image is everything and insincere smiles are commonplace. Why should he listen to his mother wanting him to clean his bedroom closet and make it look neat? Months earlier he was in a hospital being treated for attempted suicide. This inner turmoil, the struggle young Conrad Jarrett is forced to deal with, it’s the heart of ‘Ordinary People’ and why it’s better than the next film. The relationships he has, why he is the way he is. We’re all made a certain way, affected entirely by past experiences and those around us. His older brother is dead, he blames himself. His mother is foreign to him, she offers what he doesn’t need, and can’t give him the comfort and care an ill child must have. His father does his best, he sees the problem and offers sound solution to what Conrad needs. And Conrad needs help.

And help he receives with the guidance of a Dr. Berger, played as best as the character could ever be presented by Judd Hirsh. It’s a quiet, subtle role for Mr. Hirsch, playing the observant, professional psychiatrist who intends to do his job to the fullest and then some. With Berger we are reminded the importance of his discipline, how a suicidal life is his to save. Conrad has a friend he knew from the hospital who could have used therapy, but has the sad misfortune of having a father who’d talk her out of seeking help in favor of self-help. Conrad can’t help himself, he’s at the edge, and with that we appreciate Calvin all the more for his pushing his son to Dr. Berger’s door. This isn’t Williams and Damon in ‘Good Will Hunting’, it’s not their doctor/patient relationship. Their exchange, like in life, is all on the troubled boy, poor Conrad an emotional wreck looking to be salvaged.

There is a small moment in the film that is crucial in knowing Conrad’s psyche. He is noticed by a girl who stands in front of him at choir, she is astounded by his singing voice. He’s mellow about it, but he likes her, they go on a quiet date. She wants to help, and he’s surprised she cared enough to ask how he felt on his brother’s death, the moment that boiled Conrad’s soul. In a wonderful, poignant moment Conrad tells her his feelings, his troubles… then came her reaction. And then his reaction to hers, his driving her home afterward couldn’t have been more heartbreaking. Powerful work! It’s the performance of a lifetime, and as Conrad a 20-year-old Timothy Hutton won the Academy Award for best supporting actor, the youngest of any actor. Good for him!

Now, there are no wildly hilarious scenes in this study of the Jarrett family, no lighter moments to ease our minds. ‘Ordinary People’ is heavy drama thru and thru, as emotional as could be expected for a family overlooking such a traumatic event. It’s about scarred lives, how they interact and cope and help each other, dealings with loss and pain, regret, remorse, helplessness. It could be taxing, much too melodramatic for some; that’s fine, movies aren’t expected to be liked by all. But curled up to a blanket almost two feet from the television screen, the lives of these people – Conrad, Beth and Calvin – could only grab and force my full attention on what was in front of me. The strength of the film doesn’t fall entirely on Conrad’s shoulders, it’s not just his dealings with a selfish mom and guiding father. The personalities of the parents are starting to clash since their tragedy and its aftermath: “Because I’ve always wondered in some needling way what it mattered what I wore. I was crazy that day. We were going to our son’s funeral. And you were worried what I wore on my feet. I’m sure it sounds like nothing to you, but it sticks with me… and I just wanted to tell you about it.”

An emotionally draining film, as you could expect by now. The relationships involved, the dynamics that play between Beth and Conrad, who these two are. With Calvin and his son, his son going into therapy, Dr. Berger being an angel of a man, Conrad no different as a young man, only he is deeply wounded and needs help. Calvin and Beth. Oh Beth… Mary Tyler Moore does deserve much credit for turning this layered role and making it her own, Sutherland and Hirsch no different. But the two stars of ‘Ordinary People’ are of course Timothy Hutton and the director, Robert Redford. Before now I had only known his films as the charming ‘The Horse Whisperer’ and a mediocre ‘A River Runs Through It’ (in fairness it’s a film that shows clouded misdirection with age). Here I see Robert Redford making the most of his talent, bringing these wounded personalities at the forefront of his film, all else not so much taking a backseat but not even in the same car. Much credit in Redford’s direction goes to what he had to work with, an inspiring script written by Alvin Sargent, based off the novel by Judith Guest. All of this comes together, the script, an enchanting score, clear direction on Mr. Redford’s part, superb acting an inspiring casting (especially with a surprising Hutton, but even Moore with such an unorthodox role given her prior work), and editing that makes it all fall into place. Make no mistake about it: this film of complicated people looking to get their lives back to ordinary is one of its decade’s best!

What Conrad, Calvin and Beth Jarrett go through is indeed a journey with revelations to who they really are, one with changes no different than the season around them. *****please read no further if you haven’t yet watched this film***** In the end, with patches of snow around the ground, it’s parent saying to child the words that matter most. What all children, no matter their mental state, should hear and know. With this culminating moment we see the importance of parenting and family, of consequences and the necessity for empathy and strong, sincere compassion. “I want this to be a nice Christmas.” “I do, too. I want all of them to be nice Christmases.”

Preliminary weekend figures show that the industry narrowly crossed the $4 billion threshold over the weekend, according to box-office tracker Media By Numbers. Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers, estimated that the weekend’s business would bring the tally from the first weekend in May through this past weekend to $4,003,000 in sales. The summer season runs from the beginning of May through Labor Day.

Dergarabedian said the running total could be below the $4 billion mark when final figures come in later Monday, but the industry should be close to the milestone when all is said and done. At the very least, he said, the total will beat the $3.95 billion recorded for the entire summer season of 2004, and Labor Day is a week away. It had been estimated that mark would be reached by midweek.

Some of that record box-office revenue is due to the endless stream of “three-quels” that packed the season — six franchise films that offered up the third installment in their respective series. But that wasn’t the whole story. Many of those films set quick box-office records but flamed out in a hurry, and dreams of hitting the $4 billion mark were laid to rest.

Saving the day, though, was a succession of original films such as Paramount/Dreamworks’ (VIA: 37.49, -0.92, -2.4%) “Transformers,” Fox’s (NWS: 22.25, -0.20, -0.9%) “The Simpsons” and Sony’s (SNE: 46.30, -1.10, -2.3%) recent “Superbad,” all of which fared better than expected over the past several weeks.

“We’ve had unusual late-summer [activity], and that has made the difference,” Dergarabedian said.

The $4 billion mark represents an upturn from lackluster summer movie seasons in 2005 and 2006. Thus far this year, sales are up 10.2% from 2006 and 16.9% from 2005.

But some of that is due to a 30-cent increase in average ticket price. That’s the largest annual increase since 2000, when ticket prices climbed 32 cents from 1999.

Dergarabedian estimated that 606 million tickets would be sold by the time the season ends. Attendance now stands at 584.4 million tickets sold.

source: ContactMusic

The source spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. A decision on whether to bring the show back, probably for a midseason run, is imminent, the source said.

“We are tired of the networks (not just CBS) tossing aside quality programming,” was the message carried by jericholives.com, one of several web sites protesting the cancellation. “Enough! We’re going to fight for this one.”

Clarke Ingram, a “Jericho” fan from Pittsburgh, Pa., and a spokesman for jericholives, said he was optimistic that CBS would find a way to revive the drama about a Kansas town isolated by a nuclear terrorist attack.

“People would paint this as teenagers in tinfoil hats” rallying behind the show, said Ingram, 50, an operations manager for two radio stations. “That’s not what this is. These are educated professionals.”

The show’s daring premise, its writing and acting make the case for its survival, he said.

Several factors could work in the show’s favor: It appeals to the young adult viewers sought by advertisers and was one of CBS’ most popular shows streamed online, indicating an audience beyond that measured by traditional ratings.

CBS may also be considering the dent a long hiatus put in the show’s viewership, the same scheduling misstep that hurt ABC’s “Lost” and NBC’s “Heroes.”

The network apparently has been impressed by the display of viewer passion, which included the delivery of 50,000 pounds of peanuts to its New York offices. In the season finale, a character replies “Nuts!” to a demand that the beleaguered town of Jericho surrender.

That’s the same response that a U.S. general in World War II made to a German demand for surrender at the Battle of the Bulge.

There’s already been one positive outcome: CBS is donating the protest peanuts to charities, including one that sends care packages to troops overseas.

source: AP via Forbes

Kowalski is delivering the star of the movie, the white 1970 Dodge Challenger, from Colorado to San Francisco. Pumped up on speed (the drug, not velocity), he decides to drive it as fast as he can. Kowalski is the hero with a mysterious past that is slowly revealed in flashbacks over the course of the film. The dialog, frankly, is rather substandard. But the movie makes up for it with the action, stunts, cinematography, music, and speed.

The cops chase Kowalski (Barry Newman) through each state. Super Soul, Cleavon Little (Blazing Saddles), a blind black DJ at a radio station, becomes his guide. No one understands why Kowalski is doing this but he becomes a recognized hero. People along the way sometimes help him out. It becomes a counter-culture spiritual journey through the desert southwest.

Some social issues seem to be artificially injected into the plot. But it doesn’t get too heavy-handed. It’s a serious movie, unlike car chase comedies like Eat My Dust or Smokey and the Bandit. Despite this, I don’t think it takes itself too seriously. It has about the same mix of seriousness and humor as Mad Max. I’m certain that the director of Mad Max, George Miller, drew inspiration from this cult classic.

This is a classic ’70s car chase movie. It’s also a counter-culture movie in the same vein as Easy Rider. If I had seen it before, it’s a vague memory of some late-night cable rerun during the ’80s or some Saturday afternoon matinée on broadcast television during the late ’70s. If I had seen it, I’m certain that the visual experience would have suffered due to the inevitable pan-and-scan butchering of the magnificent cinematography. Yes, the visuals are fantastic. There are plenty of times where the vanishing point of the road is integral to visual compositions. Lots of low camera angle “white line” shots. Plenty of beauty shots of the Challenger.

One aspect of this film I personally enjoyed was the appearance of Theodore Bikel, as a pentacostal preacher. Although he doesn’t seem to be credited in the IMDb, I’m certain that was him. This man’s career spans from the 1950s to the present and seems to have been in everything. Whenever he pops up in movie, it’s always an amusing surprise for me. Dean Yeager, who also has been in every movie ever made, makes an appearance as Kowalski’s snake hunting “spiritual guide.” This encounter with Yeager and Bikel underscores Kowalski’s mad dash to outrun his own demons. The movie isn’t a brainless, campy cross-country chase movie like Cannonball Run. It actually has a point. A vanishing point.

The music soundtrack rocks. I can’t emphasize this enough. Even though the movie is from 1971, I recognized one song, “Mississippi Queen,” by Mountain. I recognized nothing else but I am purchasing this movie’s soundtrack right now.

If you appreciate hard-driving car chase movies or you enjoyed the action in Death Proof, see this movie. See it on a 50-inch television, if possible. Crank it up with a good sound system. It’s worth it.

Like any Bond film, Casino Royale is given context not only by the period in which it was made, but by the films that directly preceded it. The Brosnan films to which Casino Royale is the heir slowly disintegrated from enjoyable camp to not-so-enjoyable schlock, the nadir of which may have been the casting of Denise Richards as hotpants-clad nuclear physicist Christmas Jones. Though, in all fairness, at least Christmas Jones was memorable in some way, if only memorably awful — in writing this review, I was starkly reminded how little I can tell the last three (or was it four?) Bond films apart.

Casino Royale is a much-needed “reboot” of the Bond franchise, and infuses the Bond mythos — which had become weighed down with painful puns, preposterous scripts, and an increasingly obvious lack of self-awareness — into a new, stripped-down, simplified Bond for a new century.

Daniel Craig, who is undoubtedly the least pretty Bond since Roger Moore, inhabits the curiously uneven 007 continuity — it’s present day, but Bond is a fresh agent, just given double-oh status by M (the transcendently cranky Judi Dench). After the lengthy and explosive expository sequence that has become a Bond-movie hallmark, 007 heads to Montenegro to participate in a multimillion-dollar high-stakes poker game at Casino Royale.

What’s remarkable about Casino Royale is how few of the weary Bond tropes it includes. There is no Q in this film. Bond relies mostly on his wits and contemporary items like cell phones and laptops; nothing that will seem unbelievable or quaint in five or ten years. The lack of science-fiction gadgetry in Casino Royale is bemusing — by eschewing the kind of far-fetched gizmos that catapult most Bond films firmly into the realm fantasy, the film roots itself in the present, lending more weight to its relatively low-tech grittiness.

Other elements of the film are equally as refreshing. Throughout the action, David Arnold’s score constantly lurks around the edges of the well-known Bond theme — never quite fully indulging until the final moments of the film — leaving the viewer with the impression that this film is a kind of proto-Bond — the beginning of something new, rather than a retread of something intimately familiar.

Craig’s Bond — played with a sort of rugged, hangdog aplomb that I personally found very satisfying — also spends less time killing people and blowing things up than his counterparts. Rewatching Tomorrow Never Dies recently, I was reminded not only of how awful the Bond franchise had become (Tomorrow is a loud, garish, nonsensical mess, with a cliched villain and far too much Joe Don Baker), but how unbelievably terrible a spy Bond had become. The Brosnan Bond’s idea of intelligence-gathering seemed to amount to walking up to his nemesis and coyly inquiring, “so… heard anything about secret stealth boats?” Capture and explosive escape inevitably ensues. By the end of Brosnan’s tenure as Bond, the character had become less of a spy than another mindless action-hero from the Book of Schwarzenegger — uttering a few groan-worthy puns while spraying machine-gun fire in every direction.

By contrast, Craig’s Bond not only does more genuine espionage, but is, character-wise, simultaneously more masculine and vulnerable than Brosnan — he rarely jokes, bleeds a great deal, drinks too much, and is emotionally cut off. Previous Bond iterations were just as emotionally deranged as Craig’s, of course, but for the first time since a passing attempt at self-awareness in GoldenEye, the film seems to genuinely deal with Bond as a human being, with genuine foibles and shortcomings, instead of a comic-book superman in a tuxedo.

While Casino Royale’s departures from the deeply-worn ruts of Bond mythology are heartening, the film is not without a few shortcomings of its own. There are a few timeless 007 cliches still in full effect: the disposable first Bond girl, lots of talk about martinis, the fetishistic attention paid to the 1964 Aston Martin. These are not bad things, of course; Casino Royale wisely refrains from throwing out the entire Bond playbook, keeping what works and deftly tossing aside everything else. But there are still a few blemishes. The movie’s second act feels more like the third, the villains are underdeveloped and too quickly disposed with, the final battle is deeply underwhelming, and Eva Green is probably one of the least memorable Bond girls since Tanya Roberts.

Despite a slightly pokey ending and a pace that might be slightly too indulgent in places, Casino Royale is a bold take on the franchise — one with the potential to go in interesting new directions. The last decade or so had more or less stripped me of my enthusiasm for 007 — Casino Royale gave it all back.

Recommended. 8/10

The double feature began with Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. No, rewind that. It began with fake prevues of non-existent films, notably ‘Machete’, a Mexican outlaw film that was hilarious in brief and probably nauseous in full length (Rodriguez entertained the idea of making a real film out of this; to that I can only say, to paraphrase another brilliant fake prevue, ‘Don’t'). The two directors went to great length to recreate effects of cheap films in cheap grindhouse tradition: cheesy prevues of exploitative films, cheap advertisement, scratches, oddly coloured film sections, missing reels, etc. were all there in all their glory. That was the homage part, a remake of sort of the grindhouse pictures.

Planet Terror served up a giant dose of cheap, but raw thrills. It was an all-out gore-fest, the cartoonish kind that belonged to yesteryears rather than the video-game one served by Hollywood’s neo-horror directors these days. It featured a soon-to-be-iconic one-legged go-go dancer by the name of Cherry Darling (Rosie McGowan has never been sexier). In politically correct terms, Cherry was not a cripple or a disabled person; she was differently abled, armed with a formidable gun in place of a prosthetic leg. Heroes with missing limbs are not all that unusual. What was not so common was the fact that she was a bad-*ss one-legged girl armed with a deadly weapon in a testosterone-driven picture of a decidedly male-targeted genre (James Cameron’s Terminator films came to mind as precedents). That was Rodriguez’s one memorable twist to the arm (other than a shocking side commentary on kids with guns) in an otherwise direct reconstruction of the grindhouse’s zombie pictures.

As fun as it was, Planet Terror did not stand up as an artistic statement of reinvention cinema on its own. Remakes and homage films are a different beast these days. With the existence of Far From Heaven, Casino Royale, King Kong, The Host and Tarantino’s own Kill Bill, remakes or movies paying homage to older films do not just exist so new stars can latch on to familiar films for a quick buck anymore. The old pictures are re-imagined, through loving, if not nostalgic film geek lens. It’s an opportunity to bring the old world back, if not to relive a more innocent time (the past is always golden for some reason), then to re-explore the ‘what could’ve been’ these older pictures hinted at but did not fully realize, ideas that would be especially relevant to the modern culture.

Thankfully, Tarantino’s Death Proof rescued the double feature’s artistic integrity - if such a thing could be said for exploitative pictures. Whereas Planet Terror behaved like the loud, lively ten-year-old on a sugar rush, Death Proof was its more confused, but deliberately complex older sibling. Tarantino maybe a fan of the genre, but his ego - or artistic inclination - kept pushing him to recreate things the way he’d seen them, or would’ve liked to see them, rather than just letting them be. The pacing of Death Proof sometimes slowed to a halt, and while that may have been quite accurate with some grindhouse pictures, the conversation that filled and moved the film forward in such moments sure as hell was Tarantino-flavoured. It was a rather strange mix of modern and older film artifacts, as the picture veered not-so-steadily between the familiar (genre conventions that included girl eye candy and fast cars, Tarantino dialogue, etc.) and the new (genre subversions, film structure not previously explored in Tarantino’s films, etc.). It was a slow build up to a tantalizing car chase sequence, but it brought along its way a host of issues for film geeks to dwell on.

It is perhaps not a bold thing to say that Tarantino is a woman’s director. His love for strong women is apparent in almost all his films (with the obvious exception of the male-driven Reservoir Dogs). His lead women had individual strengths and personalities that more often than not shamed the men in Death Proof. However, Tarantino is no Ingmar Bergman: he has a long way yet to go in perceptively exploring women’s psyche and characters, although whether this is his aspiration or not is uncertain. He still views these women from an adoring straight male perspective, rather than from a woman’s point of view, understandable enough. When Zoe (played by the real life stunt-woman Zoe Bell) strapped herself on to the car, and thereby puting herself in a vulnerable position to be exploited as typical of exploitative films, I had a sneaking suspicion that she was going to be given a more respectable Tarantino treatment. And she was. If there’s one predictable thing about Tarantino’s films, it’s that strong women will not meet stupid ends, because he loves them.

Which brings me to a second issue concerning Tarantino’s love for women. To Tarantino, perhaps there’s nothing more despicable (as crimes related to women) than rape - the violation of basic human integrity and dignity. The perverts in his films often meet very extraordinarily terrible ends (although Planet Terror was Rodriguez’s, I could see a definite Tarantino touch with the dripping-ball rapist). That sounds fine and nice, but why does he make a repeated point of this? What arouses my curiosity further is the fact that he would often volunteer for these roles (he was a pervert in another film that wasn’t his own). Although the graphic violence done to the first set of women was arguably necessary to help the audience justify the latter set’s outrageous avenging act, I could not help but wonder if there was something more to his apparent affection for women. More pointedly, I wondered if Tarantino was not exorcising his own demons on film, doling out punishments that served not just as subliminal messages to the perverts in his audience, but also as a restraining order to keep himself in check. There were some questionable scenes that suggested something darker at work (such as the one in which the three girls left one girl behind to ‘get acquainted’ with a burly, perhaps ill-intentioned man). The dark side of devoted love is, after all, hateful resentment. I would not be surprise if this was indeed his shadow. However, as it was, at face value, Death Proof was a very lovely girl-power gesture - if not a bit overboard with the punishment for the men in his audience.

The end shot provoked spontaneous applause from the audience I was with, and I found myself hollering and clapping along with them. For now, Tarantino retained his title as the ultimate film geek with a formidable ego and the skills to harness his creativity. Furthermore, the peculiar nature of Death Proof established Tarantino as an auteur in his own right, as he respectfully inserted his own stamp on the film and went beyond just paying homage. Grindhouse did not disappoint, though I did not expect everyone to love it. In fact, many decent folks should be appalled by it, and many folks with dubious intention may get a pure and scary adrenaline rush out of it. Wherever you stand though, don’t be fooled by its subject matter. There’s definitely something there beyond gratuitous shots of booties - even in the old grindhouse pictures. You just have to want to look, and not close your eyes in disgust at the uglier, cheaper art seemingly exists to serve our collective id.

“Join me! Kill Nicolas Cage and we will rule the horror genre together!”

Personally, I’m a huge Hilary Swank fan. Have been since The Next Karate Kid (1994), believe it or not. For me, there was no question that I’d go see her star in any film. Her fans should not be disappointed, despite the mediocre quality of the film.

It seems that Swank is adhering to the tried and true pattern of Hollywood stardom. She is a star that has two well-earned Oscars. But she has also been a part of less-than-stellar films. The Core (2003) is the first to come to my mind. Luckily, The Reaping makes no pretense of scientific explanation for it’s featured miraculous events.

The first sequence seems to portray Swank as Lara Croft in an X-Files episode. Promising, so far. But then it segues to her giving a sort of Da Vinci Code PowerPoint presentation that establishes her as an Indiana Jones of religious studies. Thank goodness for that. Otherwise, you’d wonder why the hell David Morrissey is bugging her to come visit Summerisle a small Louisiana town.

The movie goes down the list of the Ten Biblical Plagues. The first one, a river of blood, is brought to the attention of Katherine Winter (Swank), a professor at LSU who specializes in debunking miraculous religious phenomena. So she and her partner Fox Mulder Ben (Idris Elba) investigate this X-Files case strange phenomena. Something sinister is afoot involving a little girl that may be the target of a blood sacrifice by pagans satanists. Katherine doesn’t believe any of this pagan biblical nonsense. In the end, the towns folk sacrifice the bewildered Katherine to the Goddess Satan by shutting her in a giant wicker effigy of man and burning her alive. Well, okay, the ending wasn’t that big of a rip-off of Wicker Man. But it’s damned near close enough.

“It all makes sense now. I’ll kill Dakota Fanning and then take her place.”

The movie is very conventional. Experienced film viewers and horror fans will not be surprised by the plot. It’s much too predictible. Hilary Swank, as always, does a fine job. Anna Sophia Robb (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 2005) held a very strong screen presence and is a young actor that should not be overlooked in the future. Idris Elba (Sometimes In April, 2005) did a fine job as Swank’s sidekick. However, the script was rather flat and contrived. And dispite the skill of the actors, I didn’t sense much of a spark between any of them. David Morrissey (Basic Instinct 2, 2006) was a plank of wood.

While doing a little research, I noticed that the original score was composed by Phillip Glass. Say what? I don’t remember that. Further research revealed that Glass’s score was rejected and another was used. I can’t help but wonder how much Glass’s work would have dramatically changed the feel of the film. I can only imagine that it would have improved. I genuinely wonder what they were thinking?

There’s plenty of suspense. For the guys, it’s an excellent date movie. And the Biblical nature of this southern-gothic should attract a substantial church-going crowd. It was released on the weekend of Passover, after all. And it ties in great with that Exodus theme. I’m sure it will attain a modest amount of success in the theater and the video store. But it simply isn’t that spectacular. Look for it on cable TV next year. As a matter of fact, I’m betting that The Reaping would make for an excellent double-feature with another southern-gothic horror film featuring Swank, The Gift (2000) Few people will be talking about it around the water cooler this Monday.

Fires on the Plain (Nobi) is one of the most powerful Anti-War movies I have ever seen. Which is surprising because it’s not about the war itself, as the soldiers hardly do any battle in the film. Taking place in the Philippines near the end of WWII, it is very a bleak and uncompromising look at abandoned Japanese Imperial soldiers trying to survive in a harsh environment, but without any hope of ever being truly rescued. The Japanese have clearly been beaten, but because of the insane logic of Bushido they cannot allow themselves to consider surrender. They are near starvation, stuck in a foreign land that does not want them, and collapsing under the weight of superior American firepower.

At its core, the film is about how far humans will go to maintain their own existence. The lead character Tamura is a good soldier who can’t abandon his humanity, though he is as frightened and lost as his comrades. Before he departs for a hospital that will reject him as too healthy, Tamura is given a hand grenade by a superior who recognizes the hopelessness of their situation and advises Tamura to kill himself. But the will to survive, along with the fear of death is too strong. Is he willing to deceive, murder, or even resort to cannibalism like some of his comrades have just to live a little bit longer?

This is one of those films that will stick with you for well after you have seen it, as it is horrifying in its depiction of these events. It’s a truly powerful film. Ichikawa produced a stark representation of the victimization of soldiers by a confluence of bad political decisions and cultural pressures.

Aurens: At this point, I think I should just spin the bottle and kiss whatever film it points to. WHO THE HELL KNOWS? I used to think Babel got it in the bag, but it’s like an international version of Crash and they already crashed last year. I’m not feeling Letters at all. I want to bet against The Departed. It’s not a traditional ‘Oscar’ movie. AND it’s a remake. Little Miss Sunshine and Babel would seem to be where the duking is. The problem with Babel is that it’s not a huge film in terms of b.o. The problem with Little Miss Sunshine is it’s not serious enough. When was the last time best picture went to a comedy? ARGH. Babel it is. No wait. *looks at predictions* Babel can’t win if it’s not a front runner in any other category. Bah. I change my mind. The Departed then.

Grizzly: Babel is the “important” film, the stereotypical kind of film that wins Best Picture. Scorsese never won Best Picture with films like Goodfellas or Raging Bull, so why would that change? The Departed is a violent movie, not really what the Academy picks as top dog. So i’d say either Little Miss Sunshine or Babel. The only thing that throws me off predicting Babel is that it doesn’t really feel like it’s a frontrunner to win anything else, and the Best Picture winner usually wins at least two or usually three additional categories. It could win that many if it’s getting Best Picture though. But yeah, it kinda feels like you could just as well spin the bottle too.. But to make a prediction, I’m going for Little Miss Sunshine.

Aurens: Well, what about Crash last year? It only got editing and script. Uh, this year, Babel could win … editing? I think the key this year is going to be in editing and script. Babel is up against The Departed for editing, and Sunshine for script. If by the time those two awards are handed out and Babel misses both, then we know that it’s Sunshine winning. There really is no sentimental favourite this year. At least Crash had its vocal supporters? We’re completely ignoring the other two nominees eh? Do you feel the love for any of these pictures? The Academy votes with its collective heart, and I think The Departed may have an edge in this department. Although, Little Miss Sunshine is certainly a crowd pleaser. However, it just won the Spirit Award and that can’t be good.

Grizzly: Well, I would like to think that whatever film wins Best Picture, it at least wins two more on top of that. Before Crash last year, I think the last film that won BP with as few as three wins total was Rocky in 1977. Only two wins total is probably unprecedented in modern Oscar times, so whether it’s Babel, The Departed or Little Miss Sunshine, the winner will probably win three total, at least. From that viewpoint, The Departed has it easiest, since it practically has Director and Adapted Screenplay in the bag already (and Editing wouldn’t be too unlikely either). Little Miss Sunshine could take Original Screenplay and Supporting Actor, while Babel could snap up Original Screenplay and Editing. You’re absolutely right in that the Editing and Original Screenplay categories will definitely be guiding lights on Sunday. The Departed could still win BP even if Babel takes both Editing and Original Screenplay though. As long as it wins it’s categories, that is. As for the other two nominees, I’m just not feeling it. It could happen, who knows, but they definitely feel like they’re a step or two behind the other three.

Read more on Icine Oscar Blog.

Oscar snubs are more often than not of the horrible kind - great works overlooked for more middling affairs seems like the norm. However, we often forget that Oscars also makes some smart decisions (we’ll talk as though it is of one mind, even when it really is just a voting body). This year, that smart decision is the decidedly huge and deserving snub of Dreamgirls in the Best Picture race. Seeing the film made me realize how the Oscars is only 1/10th as lame as the Grammys. I probably wouldn’t have predicted Dreamgirls to score a nod despite the hype if I had seen it before the nomination day. It is very much a TV-movie-of-the-week kind of film. The film is overlong, oversung, and overdirected. During the Family number, Condon (director) got into his head that somehow doing a 360 shot five times in a row would help him out-Luhrmann Luhrmann in Moulin Rouge (the elephant sequence comes to mind). The sincerity displayed by Beyonce and Jennifer Hudson is touching, but I could only care so much before being induced into hysterical laughters against my will. The film is long on diva attitude, and short on actual substance - or just plain entertainment. At least Chicago was fun! I did like the dance and the outfit though?

Read more on Icine Oscar Blog.