Secretly Great Movies: The Shape of Things.

The story you know (or don't):

Neil LaBute gained some critical notoriety at the 1997 Cannes festival for his debut film In the Company of Men, a jet-black "comedy" (it's not "ha ha" funny) about the war of the sexes, featuring a wonderfully warped debut performance by Aaron Eckhart. LaBute, originally a playwright, followed up with the similarly dark-hearted Your Friends & Neighbors, which didn't fare quite as well with critics. The Shape of Things can be seen as the third in a kind of trilogy with these movies, and like In the Company of Men it's basically a filmed version of one of LaBute's plays. It concerns a schlubby geek (Paul Rudd) who catches the eye of a tempestuous artist (Rachel Weisz).

The shocking truth:

Shocking is right: The Shape of Things doesn't have any of the bloodletting or dismemberment of a good slasher film, but it's still brutal enough to qualify for honorary horror status. LaBute's films (by which I really mean these three) basically do a demolition job on human relationships, revealing the inherent cruelty, sadism, and self-serving sociopathy underneath all the anniversary presents and self-help books. There are still good guys in his universe, but they're nearly always victims. LaBute's writing is like what Jim Thompson's books might look like if you removed all the bullets and beatings, leaving just the hideous, hideous lies.

Much has been made in recent years of the "manic pixie dream girl" archetype, as exemplified by cardboard hipster Zooey Deschanel in tripe like (500) Days of Summer. Part of what's made The Shape of Things age so well is how devilishly it subverts this trope, which hadn't even been codified yet when LaBute's film was released. Weisz's volatile character does for the MPDG what John Jarratt's murderous Aussie predator from Wolf Creek did for Crocodile Dundee, turning the cliche inside out and giving it a set of flesh-ripping teeth. That's not a knife, this is a knife.

If Zooey is Morrissey, Evelyn is Sakevi from GISM.

As Evelyn (who we first meet defacing a piece in a museum), Weisz seems to promise adventure, danger, sensuality and all that to mild-mannered Adam, who we know instantly is the kind of nice guy who has probably never had a real girlfriend, and certainly never one as comely as Weisz. When Evelyn seems genuinely interested in him, Adam can't believe his luck. The rest of the movie plays out with the fine grain of real life: Evelyn convinces Adam to get in shape and take better care of himself, and his best friends (Frederick Weller and erstwhile love interest Gretchen Mol) are initially thrilled for their singleton buddy. But as time goes by, they suspect that Evelyn is exerting too much influence over an increasingly pliable Adam, and the tension mounts.

Seriously, if you haven't seen it yet, do it. Don't read any further--just watch!

[SPOILERS AHEAD!]

In the film's "shower scene", it is revealed that Evelyn has been using Adam for her MFA thesis, treating him as clay to be sculpted into a more attractive human being by encouraging him to lose weight, wear contacts, and even get plastic surgery. In order to "work" on this raw material, she had to feign a wide range of emotions, above all her attraction to and romantic interest in him--and for the project, she has even videotaped the two of them in bed. (Ecce homo, indeed.) In her presentation, she announces that she will not be accepting Paul's marriage proposal--instead, the engagement ring will become part of the exhibition.

Well?

The Shape of Things gets incredible mileage out of this twist, which is a classic "should've seen this coming" moment. Except that nothing Evelyn does up to that point is especially egregious or beyond the pale in terms of what really goes on in everyday relationships; the idea is that this could happen to anyone. Or at least, anyone dating an art student working on a mysterious project which Adam never asks too many questions about--perhaps out of respect for a cliche (and entirely MPDG) mystical process of communion with the muses, which must remain absolutely secret until it's finished. As we find out, the truth is anything but. In its reptilian bloodlessness, the end of The Shape of Things makes the sadistic climax of Audition seem almost touching by comparison: at least Asami cares for the man she's mutilating. (The two movies would make for a great double feature.)

As Evelyn betrays Adam, so the film betrays us. As viewers, we're nearly as shocked and hurt as Paul, which is a common enough response when a film reveals that everything you've been suspending your disbelief for was, in fact, a spurious fiction. But instead of "it was just a dream", Evelyn offers the excuse that "it was just art"--in her words, "I am an artist; only that"--and our knee-jerk response is to deny her. But can we? The film manages to put us in the shoes of stodgy old art patrons confronted with modern art's bizarre innovations: is the scandal of paint dripped on a canvas really art? Or a urinal, renamed as a fountain? Or Adam?

Tracey Emin, O(MPD)G.

The film also holds out the possibility that there was a quantum of truth in Evelyn's elaborate lie: a whisper to Adam early in their courtship, which we see but don't hear. When Adam asks her about it in the film's final moments, she says that she meant it--whatever it was. The lacuna at the heart of the story lets us wonder, and fill in the blanks with free-associations from our own lives and relationships. What's authentic, and what's artifice? Are our efforts to "improve" our mates really benevolent, or coercive? Is ignorance bliss? When it comes to love, what, if anything, is real? And what do we mean by "real", anyways? The rabbit hole beckons.

[END SPOILERS]

The Shape of Things is the best kind of "smart" film: it never revels in its ability to confuse you, and it still manages to feel like a punch in the stomach while dealing entirely in ideas. And, it does it all without cheating. It's a little-seen film, and one that I imagine a lot of viewers--maybe even most of them--will finish watching in anger. But that's kind of the point, isn't it?

Mind-fudging end note:

What did LaBute do after crafting this complex and sophisticated human drama? He directed the remake of The Wicker Man. Yes, the one with Nicolas Cage. As a friend of mine so elegantly put it: "Neil LaBute's gotta eat."

"So I'm thinking, like, bigger and more hysterical." "Yeah, that sounds great."

Revenge of the '00s: The Final Chapter (5-1)

5. Triangle (2009)Remember how at the beginning of this list I talked about how High Tension's twist ending totally undermines the movie and makes repeat viewings endlessly frustrating? This is the opposite of that. Triangle is a sharp, harrowing Mobius strip of a movie, with a mind-bending, quantum storyline that withstands the closest of scrutiny. Watching director Christopher Smith's previous feature, the satirical slasher Severance, you could be forgiven for going into this with modest expectations. But Smith delivers something exceptional here, in a chiller that's as clever and polished as it is haunting. It's hard to really talk about the plot, since it's best to go into Triangle with no prior knowledge--but suffice it to say that this is almost like a horrorshow take on the non-Batman Christopher Nolan films (most obviously Memento, but there are definite shades of The Prestige as well), and a flick with a seemingly endless number of rabbits that it pulls out of its hat. Surprising, smart, and very unsettling, Triangle is a cruelly overlooked movie that deserves a wider audience.

Note: if you liked Triangle's mind-bending style, try and track down a copy of a 2004 movie called Primer. The DVD seems to be out of print, or at least going for an obscene amount on Amazon--but if you thought Triangle was a mindfudger, Primer will well and truly do your head in, with a subtle sci-fi plotline of boundless, chart-requiring complexity. (Or, you could just watch it on YouTube.)




4. Ju-on/The Grudge (2000; 2003; 2004)

If The Ring is the father and Pulse the son, then Ju-on is the very unholy spirit. What defined J-horror as a style was imagery: while a lot of horror derives its mileage from the unseen, J-horror, like The Exorcist, was about showing you images you'd never forget--and Ju-on is very much the apotheosis of the style. Director Takashi Shimizu took Hideo Nakata's grim vision of Sadako and ran screaming with it, abandoning the strange mythos of The Ring for one of the purest, most nightmarish takes on the haunted house ever filmed. This series is infamous for its number of incarnations, and although many connoisseurs cite the first, straight-to-video feature as the best, they're all total screamers. And actually, Ju-on: The Grudge, Shimizu's first theatrical version (pictured above) is the definitive version: it dispenses with the gore and unnervingly glacial pacing of the original TV movie, but features the most coherent story and the most haunting visuals. Even the American remake is quite good, which is no surprise considering it's directed by Shimizu himself and is basically a "greatest hits" reshuffling of scenes from the two original movies.

But in any incarnation, Ju-on is nothing short of a master class in cinematic tension: the folktale themes and minimal plot are a skeleton that Shimizu fleshes out with sheer, oppressive dread. The scares are numerous and legendary; by the end of the sequence in Hitomi's condo you may need a clean pair of pants. And again, what really pushes Ju-on over the top is the imagery, as what is seen here cannot be unseen: a flash of Toshio reflected in a glass door, a bedroom suddenly filled with keening black cats, Kayako descending the staircase. A truly essential modern masterpiece.

3. Inside (2007)

As I neared the end of the list, I agonized a bit more over the ordering: should Inside really beat Ju-on, a movie I'd call a five-star classic? In the end, I decided yes, but the truth is that they're not that far apart, in more ways than one: both are movies about an average house where things go very, very wrong, and where cruelly wronged mothers seek their grisly revenge. Part Halloween, part Tenebre, and part Die Hard, Inside is a gruesome nerve-jangler that also functions quite well as pure, popcorn entertainment. In terms of "the new French extremity", Inside is very watchable: this is an altogether enjoyable thriller that will leave you feeling guilty about having so much fun watching so many people get butchered so horribly. I've seen a lot of violent movies, but Inside can quite honestly stake a claim to being the bloodiest there is (at least outside of played-for-laughs bloodbaths like Piranha and Dead Alive): it isn't especially shocking or transgressive for the seasoned viewer of extreme cinema, but this is a movie where the arterial spray is almost a character in its own right, dousing the scenery and actively transforming the look and mood of the film. In classic Sadean fashion, every time you think it can't go any further, the film throws some new, pioneering innovation in bloodletting at you. (The "zombie" scene towards the end is unparalleled in this regard.) Truly a scorcher, and as good as horror films get these days. Also: the DVD features one of the best "making of" featurettes I've ever seen, offering great insight into how hard it really is to make a movie like this.

2. Audition (1999)My original concept for the list was strictly movies in the last ten years--but I had to include Audition, and for a while I actually thought of giving it the number one spot. The overused horror superlatives used to describe Audition, a movie that became almost instantly legendary for its audience walkouts, are all completely warranted; Audition really is one of those movies that no one forgets. It's an outlier as well, almost to the point of being a satire (yet another level the film works on): the long-haired spirit of vengeance in this one is very much alive, and spends most of the movie smiling cheerfully (regardless of what's going on onscreen). The best compliment I've heard paid to the film came when I subjected a friend to it: during the film's climax, it offers a brief, illusory moment of respite before plunging you back into its unique brand of sadism, and at that point she turned to me and simply said, "Help me." If you've seen any of the promotional materials for Audition, you know something is coming--but it doesn't matter. You really can't prepare yourself for what happens in the last half hour, in an agonizing sequence that earns the oft-used comparison to the shower scene in Psycho.

To be honest, I find a lot of director Takashi Miike's work overhyped and insubstantial--but Audition is such a left-field masterpiece that it will nonetheless forever cement him as a great director in my mind. And truthfully, my favorite moment in Audition isn't actually the final scenes. I don't want to say too much in case you haven't seen it, but it comes midway through what, up to that point, has been a slow-moving, Japanese family drama. Along the way, Miike has been feeding you brief, eerie glimpses of Asami at home, waiting by the phone. But all of a sudden, we're hit with a scene that, visually, is so unsettling that it forces you to rethink everything you've seen up to that point--and then it really makes you jump. This is what makes Audition so great: it is a virtuoso performance in the art of audience manipulation, and its sheer cruelty to the audience would make Artaud blush. If you haven't seen it, watch it--you won't forget it.

1. Let the Right One In (2008)Let the Right One In is not just a horror movie, but a downright beautiful coming-of-age tale, a delicate love story, even a period piece. But it is also, unashamedly, a horror movie, and one that performs a miracle by finding new territory within that most moribund of horror tropes: the sympathetic vampire. Modern horror has had an ongoing love-hate relationship with the idea at least since the advent of Anne Rice's tortured vampire aesthete, and it's back on the rise again with fare like Twilight and True Blood. But Let the Right One In makes the idea of a humanized vampire seem wholly fresh again, thanks to the incredible character of Eli: a 12-going-on-300-years-old vampire who is simultaneously sweet, endearing and viciously murderous. Lina Leandersson's performance is uncanny, but it's also truly a composite: much like with the fully demonized Linda Blair in The Exorcist (whose blasphemous dialogue was actually delivered by veteran radio actress Mercedes McCambridge, who tragically had to sue for a credit in the movie!), all of Leandersson's lines were overdubbed by Elif Ceylan, giving the waifish vampire her appropriately world-weary voice.

But it's not just Eli that makes the movie great. Kare Hedebrant is every bit her equal as Oskar, a pale, fragile-as-porcelain boy struggling to assert himself and to figure out how to be a man. The film also looks absolutely gorgeous, with Swedish suburban scenery so icy and beautiful your breath will practically turn to steam in front of you. It's also filled with indelible, shivery images: Eli scampering up the wall of a hospital, or wreaking a bloody retribution on Oskar's tormentors. And as for the tenuous, innocent relationship between the two principals, I would paraphrase a famous accolade extended to Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita: it is one of the only truly believable love stories of our time.

Postscript: what, then, of the American remake, needlessly retitled Let Me In? The change of name says it all: while it's an extremely faithful remake, and it'll do in a pinch if you can't get your mitts on the original or just suffer from morbid curiosity, it loses a lot of poetry in the translation. In the US version, Eli is just a girl, with more special effects to make her scary, and all the gorgeously grey ambiguities of the original are smoothed over. Most notably, Eli's gender is never brought into question, and Oskar explicitly agonizes over his budding romance with a killer in a way that seems more like a Hollywood artifact than a real piece of characterization. On the up side, there are some interesting changes: the disfigurement of Eli's guardian is re-imagined in a pretty tense and suspenseful fashion, but it's not enough to justify a movie that simply did not need to be made. The original, as it stands, is perfect.


That's it, it's over...or is it? (Musical sting)