Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench

 

Writer/director Damien Chazelle

Chazelle with musical composer Justin Hurwitz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH                 B-                                                     USA  (82 mi)  2009  d: Damien Chazelle

I believe the musical is so well suited to expressing romance because songs begin and end and are completely separate from the larger movie world.  It is this kind of momentary perfection of existence that the characters are able to reach, but they always know that it is inherently an illusion.  So for me, there is something very beautiful but yet very sad about the great musicals, but that’s part of the point.                                                                                                   —Damien Chazelle interview, November 13, 2010, Black Sheep Reviews [Joseph Belanger] 

This rather raw and crudely edited early student film remains largely unseen, made on a shoestring budget, Chazelle’s senior thesis project was made with classmate Justin Hurwitz at Harvard, written, directed, shot, co-edited and co-produced by Chazelle, a song-and-dance social realist musical with vérité roots in the French New Wave, shot in various Boston locations in gritty handheld black and white on 16mm, featuring original songs by Hurwitz recorded by the 90-piece Bratislava Symphony Orchestra, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (Original Movie Score), scoring all his later films as well.  Much like the Léos Carax film Boy Meets Girl (1984), this is a modern take on the irrepressibility of romanticism that so often leads to the impossibility of love, with diverse cinematic references that are all over the map, exhibiting more of an experimental style, capturing the spirit of the stripped down, free-form style of John Cassavetes’ Shadows (1959), exploring similar themes of interracial romance half a century later, yet the kicker comes when a character breaks out into song in the most unexpected places.  A much more sophisticated version of this stylistic technique is Christophe Honoré’s DANS PARIS (2006), the first of his films where out of the blue one of his characters will break into song, complimented by original music written by Alex Beaupain, followed by several more musicals, including LOVE SONGS (2007), exploring the dynamics of a three-way relationship, La Belle Personne (The Beautiful Person) (2008), exuding in the pent-up passion of a Sirkian youth melodrama, and Beloved (Les Bien-Aimés) (2011), a real treat being able to see Catherine Deneuve work with her daughter Chiara Mastroianni.  Honoré’s films tend to leave audiences sharply divided, and his use of songs as an extension of the narrative is no exception, as he doesn’t accompany songs with traditional dance numbers, or a lively choreographed sequence, but instead delves into the downbeat psychological mindset of the character, often submerged in anguish, lost love, or grief, where musical numbers are used in the exact opposite manner of one’s usual association, which is happy and upbeat, such as Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) (1964), which just happens to be Chazelle’s all-time favorite film (Damien Chazelle names his favourite film of all time), as the entitled characters in this movie are borrowed from that film.  Demy is a great admirer of the Golden Age of MGM Hollywood musicals, where his films are basically a love letter to the Hollywood movies of the 40’s and 50’s, incorporating the dreamy music of Michel Legrand and bleak elements of poetic realism into his bursting kaleidoscope of colors that vibrantly come alive onscreen through movement and dance.  Demy is famous for making the black and white Lola (1961) with Anouk Aimée, described by Demy as a “musical without music,” stripped down to only one musical number, while also making the colorful musical explosion, The Young Girls of Rochefort (Les demoiselles de Rochefort) (1967), featuring the adorable sisters, blond Catherine Deneuve and her red-haired older sister Françoise Dorléac, where the line between euphoria and melancholia is a thin one, subject to change by random encounters or a sudden change of heart, where missed connections are built into the storyline, like ships passing in the night, calling into question certain aspects of fate.  Introducing a lost love theme that Chazelle would revisit in his later works, this film explores the protagonist’s inability to balance his musical aspirations with his love life, the same subject of 2016 Top Ten List #10 La La Land, while at the same time musical passages initially heard here would magically reappear in that film. 

Chazelle was born in Rhode Island to a French father and Canadian mother, both college professors, spending part of his childhood in Paris, with dual French-American citizenship, where his first love was becoming a jazz drummer, actually making an appearance in the film instructing the female lead protagonist on the correct way to hold drumsticks, Damien Chazelle Cameo in Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (HD) YouTube (1:23).  While the comparison to Cassavetes might seem apt, the difference is how essential building character was for Cassavetes, even with non-professionals, as his love and admiration for the craft of acting was an essential component of his naturalistic film aesthetic.  That’s largely what’s missing here, as viewers never really establish an emotional bond or connection to what we’re seeing onscreen, as the characters appear more haphazard or random, disassociated from any central dramatic emphasis.  This is a crucial distinction, something rectified in his breakout hit Whiplash (2014), which was all about establishing character, featuring an exceptional performance from journeyman J.K. Simmons, who simply inhabits the role, rising to public prominence immediately afterwards, where now he’s one of the more recognizable faces in the industry.  But this low fidelity film is comprised with non-professionals, starring Jason Palmer as Guy, a real-life jazz trumpeter who tours, records, and teaches at the Berklee College of Music, and Desirée J. Garcia as Madeline in her one and only screen appearance, simultaneously writing her doctoral thesis on musicals before publishing a book in 2014, The Migration of Musical Film: From Ethnic Margins to American Mainstream, and then in 2021, The Movie Musical (Quick Takes: Movies and Popular Culture), currently a film professor at Dartmouth.  In the first few minutes they are seen together on a park bench before he casually gets up and walks away, without any explanation, as the initial spark has gone out of their relationship and an ennui has set in, as neither one seems to really care anymore, spending most of the film in the company of others in what is essentially a breakup movie.  As they drift apart, we see their separate lives, as Guy plays in a small jazz combo in a dingy basement club setting, feeling very claustrophobic, allowing the music to fill the constricted space which almost feels suffocating, yet there’s also the social release of mingling with friends and well-wishers, as the camera lingers over clusters of loud conversations, never really getting the gist of what anyone is saying, yet the energy fills the air, having an alienating effect on viewers, who feel like perennial outsiders, never actually invited in.  Madeline, on the other hand, feels lost as she wanders alone through the park, like a stranger in a strange land, where she can sit and read, or simply watch others passing by, yet what’s emphasized is that she has no real connection to anything around her, as she’s simply a passenger in an unwritten story.  Alienated and isolated in the midst of a beautiful summer day, audiences are floored when she spontaneously breaks out into song, a clearly dubbed voice blending into the passing crowd near the Old North Church, downbeat and sad, a cheerless comment on her directionless life, yet the theatrical stylization mixes together an unadorned realism with a dreamy façade of artifice, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench - Before there was La La Land... (Clip) YouTube (2:10).  Leaving Guy behind, she briefly moves in with an older French jazz singer, Bernard Chazelle (singing in French), giving the filmmaker a unique opportunity to direct his own father.  What’s missing in this film is an actual script, feeling more like a series of random vignettes drowning in existential angst, as much of this is told aimlessly, yet the abrupt shifts of a constantly changing point of view never seem to have any real focus, leaving viewers adrift, though perhaps that is the intention.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is the introduction of a new character whose name is not even in the title yet she dominates a majority of the screen time, Elena (Sandha Khin), initially seen watching a juggler performance, actually trying to pick him up afterwards, curiously providing her own name before correcting it.  She feels more like the emotional center of the picture, exhibiting far greater range of expression, where her outgoing nature is really on display when she’s seen meeting Guy purely by chance on a jam-packed commuter train, both standing, holding the grab handles, eventually coming right next to one another, as they do this mysteriously erotic, wordless dance of starting apart, inching ever closer, seeing only the movement of their feet as they begin to face each other, slowly making eye contact and brushing against each other before finally touching affectionately, ending up sleeping together in Guy’s apartment.  While her bubbly personality gives this film a jolt of adrenaline, the same thing happens in this relationship as well, quickly growing sick of each other, as she fails to comprehend his self-absorbed passion and obsessive devotion to music, as that’s time he’s not spending with her, while he never mentions her to his friends and fails to introduce her to his visiting family, played, surprisingly enough, by the actor’s real family, so there’s an emotional disconnect, despite such a dramatically visualized effort to emphasize a near idyllic initial attraction.  It’s a strange shift of fate, which they never really discuss, as this is a film that eliminates any hint of intimate conversation, where the social awkwardness resembles the mumblecore films of Andrew Bujalski, who similarly came out of the Harvard Film School which features a very documentary-heavy program, becoming a choreographed ballet of shifting emotions, copying the template of Demy, yet the emotional indifference exhibited here is in stark contrast to the vivacious energy and elegant luster of Demy’s films, where each of the characters are more closely defined, and the spaces in-between shine with a poetic realism.  As Elena drifts apart, she’s once again alone in the city, seen in combatant situations with rudely overzealous young men on the street making obnoxious come-ons, where a strange older man named Frank (Frank Garvin) tries a less obvious technique, yet it’s a come-on just the same, simply presented in a more politely palatable manner, with rather amusing results.  Much of the film features street scenes, including street vendors, performance artists, and children playing in fountains, where there’s an interactive quality with the city of Boston, showcasing several of their parks and monuments, with the characters drifting around Copley, the Back Bay, and South End, yet one overriding feature throughout this film is a heavy reliance upon extreme close-ups, where an intimacy is achieved through the camera’s love affair with facial portraiture, while also exploring an interesting social dynamic, as Palmer is black, Khin is Asian, and Garcia is Hispanic.  The real showstopper, however, is a Godard-inspired musical number paying reverence to the iconic café dance, Bande à Part - Madison Cafe Dance Scene - Jean-Luc Godard YouTube (3:50), by Anna Karina in Band of Outsiders (Bande à Part) (1964), as Madeline is stuck in a monotonous waitressing routine at a mostly empty fish shack, taking orders from some clueless manager, yet suddenly she breaks out in another song, The Boy in the Park YouTube (4:55), adding an inexplicable tap-dancing routine (Boston tap legend Julia Boynton from the Harvard Dance Program was a dance consultant), joined by the rest of the wait staff, becoming an idealized vision of the kind of unbridled freedom she never has, all playing out in her mind, expressed with the kind of infectious joy missing from the rest of the picture, which may be what Chazelle imagined before shooting the film.  It leads to a very clever ending, which recalls the pitch perfect finale of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset (2004), as the couple reunites again under fortuitous circumstances, where in a single take the young director captures the beauty of wordless expression, exactly what this film has been searching for, while also discovering a new meaning in their lives.     

Postscript

According to the Trivia section of IMDb, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (2009) - Trivia, shortly after completing this film, a friend suggested Chazelle watch the Barry Jenkins film Medicine for Melancholy (2008), another contemporary black and white indie film, while around the same time a friend of Barry Jenkins told him to watch this film shortly after completion of his film.  Both directors were up for numerous Academy Awards in 2017 for their critically acclaimed films, Chazelle’s film 2016 Top Ten List #10 La La Land won Best Director, the youngest recipient to ever win at the age of 32, while the Barry Jenkins film 2016 Top Ten List #1 Moonlight won Best Film.  Neither was aware of these earlier recommendations until they spoke after the Oscar gala ceremony, discovering they were inextricably linked. 

City Hall

 

 

 

 

Director/editor/producer Frederick Wiseman

 

 

CITY HALL               B                                                                                                                USA  (272 mi)  2020  d:  Frederick Wiseman

The people who work for the city work for you.  They’re there to service you.                              —Marty Walsh, Boston mayor

Listed #1 in the Top 10 Films of 2020 by Cahiers du Cinéma (Cahiers du Cinéma Reveals Their Top 10 Films of 2020 ...), currently available for free viewing in its entirety on PBS (https://www.pbs.org/video/city-hall-ozdubs/), shot in the pre-Covid era of 2018 and 2019, Wiseman spent ten hours shooting, all compiled into a four and one-half hour film that examines Boston’s Democratic mayor Marty Walsh, an Irish Catholic, the central figure of the film, and his various legislative bodies in public meetings as they attempt to identify problems and outline solutions, where government’s primary function is to serve its constituents, making sure needed services are accessible and provided in a timely manner, whether it be immigrant groups, veterans, substance abuse, the disabled, or the elderly.  Questions are taken, with the mayor encouraging residents to take advantage of government liaisons who are specifically chosen to be their spokesperson in government, maintaining contact with ordinary citizens, identifying scams against the elderly, encouraging them to contact the police for follow-up, as the only real protection is an open and transparent system designed specifically to help them.  Like a civics class in grade school, the film is really a portrait of democracy at work, where the various government departments each reach out to their own constituents, maintain a two-way dialogue, with the mayor acknowledging the importance of the meetings, where personal stories take center stage, humanizing what they do, where each is encouraged to participate, provide their own story, and be part of the overall solution where they all work together to solve common problems.  Perhaps the biggest lesson is that no one is alone, as everyone’s connected by a phone call or an email, with someone on the other end of the line devoted to help them.  It’s an encouraging look, almost always a positive spin, because the city of Boston is not too big, and has not been devastated by financial shortfalls, like many other major urban American cities that are largely underfunded.  Just under the surface, and never really adequately addressed, is Boston’s notorious history of racism, especially with their sports franchises, with the Boston Red Sox the very last baseball team to integrate blacks into baseball, where Boston sports fans are known for making blistering racial outbursts, with many black athletes acknowledging being uncomfortable whenever they play in Boston.  Even the legendary Bill Russell, winner of 11 NBA titles, was called every nasty racial slur imaginable while playing for the Boston Celtics, revealing he learned to block that out, playing for the team, not the fans, and ended up refusing to sign autographs as a result. 

In a blistering economic appraisal, however, it was discovered that 55% of Boston residents are non-white, 28% are foreign-born, coming from 150 different countries of origin, where immigrants own 33% of city businesses.  According to the Brookings Institute, Boston is ranked #1 in terms of income inequality in the entire United States.  In the Federal Reserve Bank’s “Color of Wealth” report, the first to break down net worth by ethnic groups, the median net worth of black families in Boston is a mere $8 dollars, while the median net worth of white families is $247,000, an astounding difference.  How does this happen?  In reviewing various Boston employers, many still require a bachelor’s degree for 100% of all job applicants, in all positions, skilled and non-skilled, professional and non-professional,  By elevating the employment qualifications, employers not only discourage but disqualify otherwise eligible minority applicants, which sounds very much like the arbitrary standards used in the Jim Crow South to exclude blacks from voting.  Looking around the country, that’s not the normal reality anywhere else.   Boston has a peculiar ban on deficit spending, effectively capping city hall’s budget, which minimizes their expenditures, with the largest income source coming from property taxes, which allows for annual growth.  San Francisco, by contrast, is a city of similar population size, around 7 or 800,000, but more than double the budget.  There’s a public meeting with Cruz Construction Company, a minority non-profit that does outreach with youth, offering computer training while also serving as mentors, identifying the wealth gap between black and white families, with an average white family earning $275,000 to a black family’s $750, resulting in increased minority hiring as well as minority companies doing business with the city.  Community activists accentuate their role, claiming community benefits should be determined and driven by the community, and not the developer.  But what becomes patently clear is that money talks, so it’s actually the developers who have final say, as they’re devising the plans, constructing the buildings, and changing the look of the neighborhoods without much interference, whether it helps the community or not.  So much for democracy and community input.

Curiously, Boston, which has a black population of 24%, has never elected a black mayor, so the perception of racism persists.  Denver, by contrast, with a black population of only 10 or 11%, has elected two black mayors, as well as a Mexican-American.  Both are Democratic strongholds.  In the 1970’s, Denver and Boston were the first northern cities that federal courts ordered to desegregate public schools, prompting opposition from white critics of “forced busing,” where the reaction in Boston was violent, broader, and lasted longer, with children pelted with eggs, bricks, and bottles, and police in combat gear fought to control angry white protesters besieging the schools.  It wasn’t until black parents paired with white affluent suburbanites from seven different communities, sending their kids outside the city, that any peace prevailed.  Despite the rosy economic growth of the city, and the promises of better things to come, one lingering fact the city has not addressed is that one in six residents is still struggling for food.  Somewhat surprisingly, there’s very little public criticism of the current city administration, with no spokesperson from the opposing political party and no newspaper critique challenging their actions, allowing the mayor to pretty much dominate the film with his unchallenged assertions, putting his positive spin on things, and rarely holding the city accountable for its sins of the past, like avoiding the toxic influence of the Catholic Church cover up in very public sex abuse scandals highlighted in Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight (2015).  In terms of the unfathomable median net worth disparity, the mayor simply says they’re not proud of that, offering diversity aims when it comes to city business, but never effectively reigns in private industry which has a free hand to continue racial exclusion.  The film shies away from these details, for some reason, but continues to show the city from the mayor’s viewpoint, offering a sunny outlook, where he’s always got his own personal stamp when it comes to confessing his own story, a recovering alcoholic for more than 20 years, a child cancer survivor, where these personal details are his way of politicking, as it only adds to the humanization of his appeal.  But we never hear a contrasting voice of opposition who doesn’t feel things are going swimmingly. 

An example of late-stage Wiseman, now 90-years old, no longer just long uninterrupted takes with no commentary or narration, no music (other than street sounds), and no editorializing, but interspersed throughout are a few short transitional shots of the city’s architecture shot by John Davey, becoming a prominent feature, both in city buildings but also neighborhood homes.  Easily the most contentious scene comes when an Asian-American store owner seeks approval for a cannabis dispensary in a public meeting in Dorchester, the poorest and most racially diverse neighborhood in the city, already overwhelmed by crime and high incarceration rates, where the black residents, which include a large population of transplanted Cape Verdean Islanders who speak Portuguese, are openly suspicious, despite apparent good intentions by the owners, that this doesn’t exactly serve the community’s interests or needs, largely appealing to people from outside Dorchester, but may instead add to a series of unanticipated problems, as there’s already too much congestion and no place to park, police protection is stretched to the limits, and Asians don’t have a history of employing blacks in their business.  When raising their concerns, showing surprising depth and analytic detail, reflecting the views of a community that’s been overlooked and underserved, with few opportunities for black employment or advancement, the Asian owners try to counter their concerns, sounding like both sides are actually listening to one another, suggesting they will mentor blacks from the community not just in jobs but in positions of importance within the company.  Amazingly, the community activists are directly asking how this change will actually help and benefit the surrounding community, but it’s all just talk, as the community has no ability to vote up or down on the issue, as instead it’s all part of the city process of mandatory open public meetings prior to opening the business, where reports of the community input discussion will be sent to city hall for evaluation, but the city has the final word in dispensing licenses for these highly lucrative employers, where property, unfortunately, takes precedence over people.  More importantly, the city expresses no interest in relaxing the cannabis possession laws, freeing non-violent prisoners, or otherwise addressing the needs of people of color who have been blatantly targeted by racially oppressive drug-enforcement policies. 

The surprising real talk from black community residents is one of the few sequences in the entire film that isn’t filled with bureaucratic speak, as the film is heavy on city department meetings and mayoral speeches before various community groups.  Yet what’s perhaps most surprising is how the interest of the status quo continually gets authorized, with very little, if any, real social change ever enacted.  Nothing is done to address the high school-to-prison pipeline, black incarceration, police brutality complaints, social justice concerns, high crime, or address any of the racial disparities, where the film, despite its length, simply looks the other way and instead shows a city with good intentions.  Much like the recent Steve James documentary of Chicago, City So Real - made for TV (2020), the mayor in each film is given the role of the film’s central figure, where they are allowed to set their own agenda and frame it in a way that is favorable to them, as we never learn whether any of these discussed projects ever gets finished, while businesses are free to basically do what they want, regardless of gentrification concerns or community opposition, unrestricted by bureaucratic red tape, never providing the transparency needed or desired, with unanswered questions continually surrounding their mega-projects.  That’s just how business works in big cities, so long as they don’t get caught in criminal behavior.  The film hones in on a variety of city services, such as the performances of marriages at city hall, the 311 phone operators listening to non-emergency requests for something that needs to be taken care of, snow and sanitation removal, an on-site building inspector thoroughly doing his job, a rat exterminator, tree trimmers, roads are repaved, a camera surveillance system that evaluates traffic conditions, even identifying a double-parked car, sending a police crew out immediately, while also supporting cultural events, like the celebrations surrounding Chinese New Year.  Even a few people challenging the issuance of traffic tickets were successful in overturning their convictions, with the cameras chronicling police precinct meetings before they hit the streets.  The film just follows the mayoral lead, including the celebratory pomp and circumstance associated with the largely white city victory parades (surprisingly singing Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline after a World Series win), various luncheons for special interests, and many, many speeches, all wrapped in the American flag as proud examples of American democracy at work, with a military color guard and two uniformed policemen singing the national anthem as a duet before an invited gathering at a state of the city address where the mayor regales about the possibility of four more years.