Brave

As the father of a very independent little girl who wears pants, I've been excited about Brave for about a year. Her world is filled with Hermione Grangers–strong, independent, second-fiddle female characters.

And Brave truly is all about the female characters. It's about the tension between mothers and daughters, in this case Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson) and Princess Merida (Kelly Macdonald). And the conflict isn't about them having different ideas of who Merida should marry (although it's kind of about whether she should marry at all). Theoretically I applaud the choice. It's almost like the movie was designed to pass the Bechdel test. My only objection is: does she have to be a princess? Is that some kind of unbreakable Disney rule? Sigh.

Because the princess thing is feeling a little tired. If you've seen the trailer for Brave, you can pretty much arrive forty-five minutes late and miss nothing. Elinor just wants Merida to be all princessy and sew and sing and get married, and Merida just wants to ride through the forest and shoot arrows. It feels like a movie that would have been very progressive in 1972. What mother in 2012 wouldn't just go ahead and enter a daughter like that in all the archery contests? She's a better archer than Hawkeye from The Avengers. If nothing else, she might grow up to get a part in The Hunger Games!

And surely a really caring mother would never make her daughter marry anybody as buffoonish as the three prospective suitors who come seeking her hand? Here Elinor hints that Merida's being selfish and endangering the peace by refusing to marry, but suggesting that she's pimping her daughter out for the good of the realm hardly makes her seem like a better mother.

So a conflict that should be interesting becomes a conflict between a three-dimensional teenage girl (nudge nudge, wink wink) and her two-dimensional mother. There is, however, one truly breathtaking shot in which Pixar's superb animators show us exactly how alike these two stubborn women are. A lot has been made of Merida's red hair, but it is a real artistic achievement. I don't know if anything else about the animation really stands out, which is either a mild criticism or a backhanded compliment acknowledging that Pixar movies are all so visually stunning that we've become totally jaded.

Once the movie moves beyond the trailer, Merida does something she shouldn't out of teenage anger at her mother, and spends the rest of the movie trying to undo it. Part of the trick of making a children's movie is sweeping the audience away so thoroughly that they forget that the happy ending is guaranteed.


Brave never quite does that. We've waited so long for the movie to actually get going, and then it sort of limps along. Maybe the problem is that there's not really a villain. Merida is a wonderful character, brimming with energy, and she's breaking down an open door. She's so good with a bow, and yet she never actually shoots anything except a target. Where's the Angus McGhastly standing in the way of her dreams?

More critically, it feels like this awful event is just an excuse to teach Elinor the error of her ways. If Elinor had been less of a cardboard character, maybe this wouldn't have been necessary. Is it possible that Disney has finally bumped up against the limits of the princess genre? First we had princesses who waited for their prince to come; then we got princesses who wanted to choose their prince; then we moved on to princesses who got to fight for their prince. Now, finally, we have a princess who really just doesn't want a prince at all.

Merida repeatedly misses a good opportunity to take responsibility for what she's done, which, considering that she's a teenager, seems realistic–but, of course, movies aren't about reality. Screenwriting convention requires that Merida change, and I didn't really see that.

Instead, the rest of the world changes to accommodate her, which is a nice thought. The world is always changing to accommodate men, after all. But there's usually a price to be paid for that, even for the guys, and it's almost as if the writers were afraid to exact that price from a girl.

On the flip side, Chris Heller in the Atlantic says that it can't really be a coincidence that Merida stands up for young people being able to choose who to marry in an era when gay marriage is front and center in the national political arena, and he may have a good point.  Pixar films have always been good at appealing to adult sensibilities where humor is concerned, but maybe this one just wants to make the adults go "hmmmm...." while the kids clap with delight.

Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present

The performance artist Marina Abramovic declares in a manifesto, "an artist should not fall in love with another artist." I followed her advice, which often makes it difficult to convince my wife to watch movies about people like Marina Abramovic. I'll let my wife tell it: "if you'd told me you wanted to watch a movie about a woman who sat in the atrium at the Museum of Modern Art and stared at people for three months, I'd have said 'What? No way.'"

Performance art is a little like documentary film in that both are often obscure, hard to appreciate, and let's be honest, a little boring. But when well done, both are mesmerizing; and both Marina Abramovic's art and Matthew Akers' documentary are. 

Akers chooses to document an installation where Abramovic sat on a chair all day, six days a week, for three months, and museumgoers could sit on a chair opposite her and look at her, for as long as they wanted. This is a big challenge for a documentary, because film is about movement and Abramovic doesn't move. 

Thankfully, Akers is a cinematographer and he has made a beautiful film. Usually documentaries can't compete with narrative films visually–they're shot on crummy formats, they're underlit, poorly framed, and the camera is moving around like it's 1994 and NYPD Blue is really avant-garde. Digital video has made documentaries so much cheaper and easier, but often it doesn't do the genre any favors. Sometimes you feel like you're watching The Eleven O'Clock News: The Feature Film.


The Artist is Present does none of that. It's easy on the eyes, but don't get the idea that I'm so grateful I'd watch a documentary about anything if they used a tripod. It's a beautiful story, during the course of which you come to understand just what performance art really is. Maybe the most telling moment in the entire film is when James Franco comes and sits in front of her; Akers doesn't identify him, but he does show Franco talking with audience members afterwards (one of whom asks innocently: "are you an actor?") One woman says that what Abramovic is doing is very much like acting; Franco denies it, and having come to this place in the film, you realize he's totally right. The actor is playing a role, and the artist is playing herself. Actors may be motivated by realism but not reality; they may talk about exposing themselves, but they can't do it as truly as Abramovic does.


Or as bravely, or as selflessly. You may not leave the film understanding her art any more than you understand credit default swaps, but you will certainly appreciate the grit and fortitude that it requires. There is a religious aspect to Abramovic's performance, and there are many shots of people moved to tears by it, or inspired by it to stare intensely at each other in the hope of finding the same fleeting feeling. 


That's not to say that The Artist is Present doesn't have its tangents and its dull moments. Personally, I found the story of her romance with fellow performance artist Ulay to be a little thin, although it does eventually provide a huge payoff, which I wouldn't want to spoil. The film finds many such small moments of beauty, and it is refreshing to see a movie that can move an audience by crooking a finger rather than unleashing an earthquake.