Let Me Die a Woman (1978, USA)

Wow. I don’t even know where to start. Let Me Die a Woman is technically a documentary, though the level of artifice in the form is so high that it occasionally calls the entire project into question. The subjects are transsexuals and sex change operations as viewed through the VERY subjective lens of the late 1970’s and Doris Wishman's explotation cinema. Honestly, this may be one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen, and that’s even without considering the bizarre sexual politics of the text. The colors are saturated, the music would be more appropriate for a same-era horror film or melodrama, and the recreations of supposedly true events (a sexual encounter between a recent post-op subject and a Casablanca cab driver, the male-to-female transsexual who attempted self-surgery with a hammer and chisel, etc.) are luridly over-the-top.

As for the interpretation of gender identity . . . well, I hope to think that we’ve come a long way in the last thirty years. In general, the transsexual subjects are presented as sexual deviants, up until the point where they fully manifest/embody their desired genders - essentially, the change is seen as a quest to become “normalized” members of society. Homosexuals are actually the true deviants here – even some of the transsexual interviewees speak of homosexuals as abnormal. In fact, they’re all apparent abnormalities, as homosexuality, transvestitism, and transsexualism are seemingly birth defects, most often due to pregnant mothers-to-be ingesting too many hormones.

Yeah.

Despite (or perhaps because of) this outdated and often offensive text, Let Me Die a Woman is fascinating to watch, though occasionally hard to stomach – there is an extended sequence that shows a male-to-female sex change operation, and the sexual interludes might also bother some viewers. The subject matter is too serious for the film to be considered as true camp, but the style is too outrageous and filmic for it to be taken without question. Perhaps more interesting than an investigation of the sexual politics of Let Me Die a Woman would be an explication of what kind of film it really is. Even the latest generation of biased American documentary filmmakers (Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock) probably couldn’t imagine making a movie quite like this.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955, USA)

One of the things that makes Kiss Me Deadly so fantastic is its use of the noir genre for a story that may seem noir-conventional at first, but actually has bigger, more serious things in store. Mike Hammer is a sleazy Angelino private eye, accustomed to checking up on cheating spouses, but after he picks up a barefoot and hysterical woman on the freeway one night, his investigations take a more serious bent – but how serious doesn’t come out until the final minutes.

I finally got around to Kiss Me Deadly through Los Angeles Plays Itself. The documentary uses Deadly as a prime example of the realistic use of the geography of Los Angeles, along with the need for automobiles that this geography has created. Indeed, movement and transience are primary themes in Deadly – in his quest to uncover the mystery of his hitchhiker, Hammer moves literally all through the city, from downtown to Bunker Hill to Culver City, Hollywood, and finally, the beach. The sense of urgent movement is highlighted by the trick of placing the camera behind or in the back seat of Hammer’s vehicles, so that instead of always looking at the faces of driver and passenger, as in most films, the audience sees where Hammer is going and what he is headed towards – though most often, it’s a dark road.

Another kind of transience is also featured – a large number of the secondary and incidental characters sound as if they come from somewhere else. Greek, Italian, Irish, or from the American South, it seems that most of these people are transplants. What they come to Los Angeles for, however, is a question never asked, much less answered. In fact, motivations are scarce all around in Deadly. Why does Hammer embark on his quest in the first place, especially while everyone tells him not to? Was he genuinely moved by the plight of the girl he picked up? Is it a matter of pride – is he simply going after the people who made a fool of him, who made him disposable? The impossibility of ascribing a motive to Hammer’s actions may end up boiling everything down to curiosity – Hammer is an engine, driven to seek for no good reason at all, even though he must know that he won’t like what he finds.

Inland Empire (2006, USA)

Near the end of David Lynch’s Inland Empire – during the Hollywood burlesque club sequence, in fact – I got the feeling that I occasionally do during certain films, that this movie might in fact last forever, and that if it did, I would stay to watch.

I guess that this is my way of saying that despite the often-maddening non-linear nature of Inland Empire, Lynch has succeeded in creating a universe that is almost utterly absorbing. Not that it really makes much logical sense in the end, though perhaps like Eraserhead and the final section of Mulholland Drive (not to mention some of the dream sequences in Twin Peaks), the film’s dreamlike un-logic is what makes watching so compulsive. At least, this is true for me – I can see how some people might not make it through the first half hour, though the beginning of the film is probably the part that makes the most sense. After the first third, we’re really on our way down the rabbit hole – something like the paradigm shift at the center of Lost Highway, only on a much more massive scale.

As we left the theater, my friend commented that it was impossible to understand anything about what Lynch’s films are like from descriptions of them. In that case, perhaps this is just an attempt to explain Inland Empire through other Lynch films, since a simple description would be impossible, and a thematic explication too broad, at best. To paraphrase Jonathan Rosenbaum in his review for the Chicago Reader, it’s astounding that an artist who recycles so much of his material still manages to make his work seem fresh. Or, to crib again, this time from Pauline Kael – “Call me sick, but I want to see that again.”

The Devil Wears Prada (2006, USA)

Ugh. I liked this movie much better when it was leaner, meaner, and called Swimming with Sharks. Despite a fun performance by Stanley Tucci (Can he be cast in every movie, ever? Thanks.), I found very little to recommend The Devil Wears Prada. The heroine is not worth rooting for, it’s neither terribly funny nor a bit romantic, and Streep’s lauded performance is little more than a fairly rote ice-queen number, despite the weak attempt to grant her a sliver of humanity in the third act.

But what really drove me up the wall? The gender politics, particularly as telegraphed by the film’s ending. The heroine’s ultimate triumphs are intended to be twofold – first, she regains the love of her ex-boyfriend by admitting that she was wrong about all of the decisions that she made over the course of the film. And this is supposed to mean exactly what to the audience? If the only Andy the movie ever gives us is morally compromised, then why exactly are we supposed to care? The second part is just as difficult – Andy finally gains the ultimate sign of approval from her boss, but she never actually sees it. Streep’s seldom-granted smile is kept private, so the heroine has to make do with a much smaller triumph – a bitchy job recommendation. There is no suture between daughter and mother figures – Andy may have left the nest, but nothing has really changed in the world of catty, evil women that she leaves behind. Perhaps the worst thing about the ending is that these two threads – the romantic and the career – aren’t compatible in any way. Andy tells her boyfriend that she made the wrong career choices, but those are the very same choices that end up landing her the real dream job? What? The only sense I can make of the dénouement is that young women really can have it all, but only if they completely internalize their moral compromises and self-delusion. Yay!

Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003, USA)

Disclaimer – I love Los Angeles. I lived there for six years, through college and my early twenties, and no one who knows me will be surprised if I turn up there again at some point in the future. Thom Andersen, director of Los Angeles Plays Itself, clearly loves the city, too – enough so to compose a painstakingly-researched clip reel of film history, all about how the movies treat his home.

Andersen’s bias is actually quite refreshing – this is HIS vision of how cinema deals with Los Angeles (don’t call it “L.A.”!), and as he moves through his topics – the city as backdrop, character, subject, and so many more – he treats the city and the movies with care, if not always with praise.

I found the section on the symbolism of architecture (for example, how villains in such films as L.A. Confidential and To Live and Die in L.A. reside in modernist works of art) and revisionist histories (Chinatown, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and again, L.A. Confidential) to be the most interesting. Both subjects are likely rich enough to deserve their own full-length treatments. I was less satisfied with Andersen’s theory of “high-tourist” and “low-tourist” filmmakers, which essentially separates movies made by outsiders (be they New Yorkers, like Woody Allen, or Europeans, like Michelangelo Antonioni or Roman Polanski) into two categories. “High-tourist” films celebrate the city, even if they don’t always like it, while “low-tourist” films wallow in common stereotypes, like Allen’s (in)famous quote from Annie Hall – “why would I want to live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that I can make a right turn on a red light?” This dichotomy is reductive at best, and seems to work at cross-purposes to Andersen’s overall goal of expanding and exploring the topic of how movies treat Los Angeles.

Despite the film’s length, I felt as if there was a wealth of material not covered (only one mention apiece for Clueless and The Big Lebowski? Nothing at all about Mulholland Drive or Mulholland Dr.?), but then, it’s a pretty exhaustive subject, and anyone who loves both Los Angeles and the movies could probably come up with their own personal versions without much trouble. Los Angeles Plays Itself might bite off more than it can chew, and the final section on Black filmmakers, while appropriate, felt a bit odd as a capstone, but Andersen’s take is, on the whole, fascinating, funny, and quite thoughtful – I would love to pick his brain, and get his take on such recent films as Crash and Inland Empire. Until the city falls into the sea, the subject of Los Angeles and the movies will continue to grow and expand into new territory.