If You Can't Laugh At Yourself...Well, You End Up With a Bad Flick

This article is dedicated to Cody who's been waiting for me to write a bad review of a film. Weirdly enough, it was a film he recommended to me.

I tend to enjoy these types of films. Couple of guys plan an easy going, yet exciting evening, of intoxication and maybe some light-hearted and harmless “boys being boys” chaos like getting kicked out bars and the type. However, what the night turns out to be is a force within itself. The characters get into ridiculous situations, seemingly trying their best to avoid, but cannot because the night has become its own entity. This is why I like these films, it’s a great twist on comedic setting where the night becomes somewhat of a character that has just as much significance in the film as its human counterparts. Films like Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle (2004) and Pineapple Express (2008) come to mind when talking about this young genre. I can still smell the marijuana coming off of almost everyone present at these two films’ screenings. Now comes The Hangover (2009), a film that takes this idea and, instead of focusing on the night of debauchery, skips ahead to the day after. No harm in innovation, except when it’s a bad idea.

To celebrate their friend’s marriage, Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Stu (Ed Helms) arrange a night in Las Vegas. The groom, Doug (Justin Bartha) brings along his soon-to-be brother-in-law Alan (Zach Galifianakis), a grown-man a bit on the mentally handicapped side and is by far the most lovable and funny character in the film, but that’s not saying much. The four guys check into their Caesar’s suite, have some brotherly shots of Jaggermeister on the roof of the Palace and head out for the night. Skipping ahead, the film shows the group waking in their destroyed suite with a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet and their friend Doug missing. The three start retracing their steps when they begin to worry about the groom’s whereabouts which leads to shootings outside of wedding chapels, a naked Asian man jumping out of a car trunk and beating the three to a pulp, Mike Tyson making an appearance and shots to the head with a stun gun, among many other things.

So, what’s the problem? This film is completely uninspired. Cheap slapstick and tiring bathroom humour are abounding in this film. Yes, I’ll admit, bathroom humour is funny, but only for so long. The Hangover’s physical comedy is incredibly tedious, not entirely due to the stunts, but mostly because the characters are so uninteresting that one doesn’t care when something humourous happens to these men. Phil is incredibly annoying, though I believe the film’s intention was to portray him as such (I think of him as a failed version of Vaughn’s “Beanie” from Old School (2003)), Stu is simply boring and offers nothing much to the film and the character’s chemistry, Doug is never really present, and Alan gives a few good laughs by himself, but with the others, is just as dull. Not only can I not imagine these people hanging out with each other, I don’t want to see them hang out with each other.

As can be assumed from its title, The Hangover focuses on the morning after a wild night. Through out the film, we’re given glimpses of this night with photographs, security camera footage, etc. and I can’t help to think that a film about that night would have been much better than a film about the morning after. Having an entire film about retracing steps after a wild night doesn’t sound like a bad plot, but I would honestly rather watch these ridiculous events occur as the characters enjoy a carefree air filled with scenes of absurdity, instead of watching them look back in disgust and shock at what they had done. The characters, much like the film, take themselves to seriously to realize their situation and laugh at themselves. The films previously mentioned in the beginning are films that took their job seriously all while poking fun at themselves, realizing how ridiculous the film’s situations are and making light of them. The Hangover does not do that. It’s a film that is incredibly over the top, but it doesn’t acknowledge it and poke fun at itself. The film feels like a machine, simply pumping out gags that it believes to be statistically funny, but really aren’t. This results in a very cold atmosphere that doesn’t allow the audience to be sunk into the characters’ world, causing us to be completely passive towards them. There’s simply nothing to latch onto so we can comfortably enjoy the ride.

Allow me to make something clear. I do not hate Hollywood productions that are sure-fire hits (you’ll see that in my next review of Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell), I just hate films that feel totally sterilized and cookie-cutter like The Hangover. The film’s plot is very much predictable and when it isn’t, is absolutely ridiculous in a way that feels unnatural. The film is on auto-pilot, to quote a famous Ebert phrase, and we’re stuck with people one really couldn’t give a damn about.

Ingmar Bergman's Trilogy

After Bergman's international successes of The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957) and The Virgin Spring (1960), he decided to attack his next projects with a little less visual trickery and complex narratives. This resulted in a group of films many critics consider a trilogy of sorts. The constant theme of these film's is how they deal with religious uncertainty, a situation Bergman himself was in and wanted to address in his projects. The trilogy's three films, Through A Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1962) and The Silence (1963) were pumped out at an incredible rate and often involved many of the same actors and actresses. I've yet to see the final installment, but based on the previous two, I can say that this is a trilogy amongst the other art house series like Kieslowski's Three Colors or Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy. I highly recommend this series, along with the others I've mentioned if you haven't already.

On The Other Side

The Edge of Heaven asks a very large question in its narrative and themes, but instead of answering this question, the writer/director, Faith Akin, allows the narrative to flow naturally in order to reach a conclusion that is both suiting and open to interpretation. The question posed is, to some degree, how are we all connected? This is, as I said, a very large question to pose and a question that is clearly indecipherable, but the important thing to recognize is that Akin recognizes this fact and decides not to directly pose this question, but instead takes a couple stories that intertwine and see how they unravel into one cohesive and interdependent piece. Though I said Akin doesn’t present an answer to this question, I must mention that what binds these stories together is death. Akin has proposed in the past that he wishes to create a trilogy that includes “love, death and the Devil” explored in three films that will explore them exclusively. Akin’s 2004 effort, Head-On, a film I’ve seen a long time ago and can’t comment on, was the first of the trilogy and dealt with love. As previously mentioned, Heaven deals with death, but it would be wrong to assume that Akin believes that death is the sole thing that binds all humans. After all, human existence and thought is heavily based on the balance of life and death, therefore if death binds all humans, shouldn’t life as well? This question must be considered when looking at what occurs to a certain character when another dies.

Heaven is divided into three chapters, two of which give away their conclusion in the chapters’ name. The first chapter is called, “The Death of Yeter,” the second, “The Death of Lotte” and the final chapter, “The Edge of Heaven” or its direct translation from German, “On the Other Side.” The film divides its settings between Turkey and Germany, the latter being Akin’s birthplace and the former being his cultural background. The first chapter, set in Germany, tells the story of an old man, Ali Aksu, who is a Turkish immigrant who becomes obsessed with a Turk prostitute who is first introduced as Jesse and later discovered to be named, Yeter. Ali’s obsession builds to the point where the widower decides to pay Yeter to live with him. Ali’s son, Nejat, is at first dismissive of this absurd situation, but he soon grows closer to Yeter when the two have to deal with Ali's stroke. The second chapter, which is set in both countries, shows Turkey in political turmoil. Ayten Öztürk, a female rebellion in Turkey associated with a “terrorist” group, is put into a situation where she must leave Turkey and meet with the activist’s group’s branch in Germany. Ayten is given the alias, Gül, by the German branch, but she ends up offending the male dominated activist branch and is kicked out of the safe house. Ayten soon meets a German student, Lotte, who welcomes the mysterious Turk into her house where Lotte lives with her mother, Susanne. Charlotte and Ayten soon develop a strong and romantic relationship until it’s cut off when a routine vehicle check results in Ayten fleeing from the car, scared that the police could discover her true identity. Under arrest, Ayten fails to convince the German government to allow her to stay there and is sent back to Turkey. Lotte feels like it’s her duty to move to Turkey and attempt to free Ayten by learning the Turkish legal system. I won’t divulge how the two are killed, but as a result of the deaths of Yeter and Lotte, Susanne decides to continue her daughter’s fight to free Ayten from the Turkish women’s prison, while Nejat quits his post as a professor at a German university and moves to Turkey and spontaneously buys a small bookshop. Just as a reminder, many details were left out of this summary especially plot points concerning each character’s connection to the others.

Heaven is a stunningly beautiful film. Akin uses many wide shots showing the environment that the characters are in. It’s very rare to see a close-up in this film, which is perfectly suitable to the film’s themes and nature. Akin wants to show the grand web in which the characters live in and how these settings are a significant factor in how each one of the characters interact with each other. One scene in particular that truly stuck with me was the scene where Lotte and Ayten act upon their attraction to each other and begin to kiss during a party scene. Akin uses a wide shot, allowing everything and everyone in the crowded frame to be in focus and then the camera slowly pans towards the couple. Filmed in slow motion, the scene’s sensuality truly blossoms under these filmic conditions. In order to cement that feeling of connection between the characters, Akin uses a technique where a film’s shot is shown twice, but with a different character in each individual shot. This can be seen when the shot of Susanne leaving her apartment is exactly framed and set up with the same setting and extras of a previous shot of Lotte leaving her apartment. This technique of repeating a shot’s aesthetic further develops the idea of interconnectivity, regardless of one’s death.

The Edge of Heaven is an incredibly daring and yet simple film. Every scene is calculated to such a large degree that it warrants more study than a single viewing, yet the characters and story is so well plotted and developed that the film can be enjoyed as a great and simple tale about everyday people and how they interact with the world we live in. This is an incredibly strong that I highly recommend to anyone looking for a story about politics, love and suspense, to the cinephile who’s looking for something that will challenge the ideas of narrative, editing and cinematography. Faith Akin is a director that deserves much attention and one I will follow for many years to come.