12 greatest living narrative filmmakers

Richard Brody revisits a topic Jonathan Rosenbaum first wrote about in 1993: who are the twelve greatest living narrative filmmakers? 

This is not a list of the greatest directors in the world, because not all great artists are innovative. Nor is it a list of my favorite living directors, though there’s an inherent element of value judgment. These are the living directors who most changed, for the better, my way of perceiving. Also “influential” may well be the opposite of “imitable.” (I reached rock bottom editing and still had thirteen.) In alphabetical order:

• Chantal Akerman
• Wes Anderson
• Andrew Bujalski
• Pedro Costa 
• Jean-Luc Godard
• Jia Zhangke
• Abbas Kiarostami
• Jerry Lewis
• Terrence Malick
• Elaine May
• Jim McBride
• Alain Resnais
• Joe Swanberg

Some of the directors from Rosenbaum's list have passed away, like Antonioni. I would concur on Godard, Kiarostami, and Malick.  David Lynch would find a spot on my list. Using innovation as a primary criterion reduces the possibilities quite a bit.

We also live in an interesting age for distribution with the rise of the internet as an alternative or companion medium to the big screen. I've yet to encounter a filmmaker whose vector of innovation capitalizes on that development beyond simple marketing ploys. I suspect we will soon, though. 

That Chanel handbag means "hands off my man"

Scientists have known that purchasing designer handbags and shoes is a means for women to express their style, boost self-esteem, or even signal status.

In a new study, University of Minnesota researchers discovered some women also seek these luxury items to prevent other women from stealing their man.

Researchers used five experiments featuring 649 women of varying ages and relationship statuses to discover how women’s luxury products often function as a signaling system directed at other women who pose a threat to their romantic relationships.

“It might seem irrational that each year Americans spend over $250 billion on women’s luxury products with an average woman acquiring three new handbags a year, but conspicuous consumption is actually smart for women who want to protect their relationship,” says associate professor Vladas Griskevicius.

“When a woman is flaunting designer products, it says to other women ‘back off my man.’”

More here on the research methodology. Perhaps the reason women buy new purses so often is to renew the signal strength, indicating the persistence of both income/status and devotion from the mate. As a guy I have a tough time decoding the price and brands of women's handbags so it seems likely the signal is meant for other women.

It is intriguing to decipher the differing symbols of status among different tribes. On Wall Street it's designer brand suits and wristwatches and street addresses, in Silicon Valley it's Twitter followers, IPO's, and invitations to exclusive conferences. 

Thinking in Numbers

Slate published an excerpt from the Daniel Tammet book  Thinking In Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, and Math:

It seems the Pirahã make no distinction between a man and a group of men, between a bird and a flock of birds, between a grain of manioc flour and a sack of manioc flour. Everything is either small (hói) or big (ogii). A solitary macaw is a small flock; the flock, a big macaw. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle shows that counting requires some prior understanding of what “one” is. To count five or 10 or 23 birds, we must first identify one bird, an idea of “bird” that can apply to every possible kind. But such abstractions are entirely foreign to the tribe.

Lest anyone should think tribes such as the Pirahã somehow lacking in capacity, allow me to mention the Guugu Yimithirr of north Queensland in Australia. In common with most aboriginal language speakers, the Guugu Yimithirr have only a handful of number words: nubuun (one), gudh-irra (two), and guunduu (three or more). This same language, however, permits its speakers to navigate their landscape geometrically. A wide array of coordinate terms attune their minds intuitively to magnetic north, south, east, and west, so they develop an extraordinary sense of orientation. For instance, a Guugu Yimithirr man would not say something like, “There is an ant on your right leg,” but rather “There is an ant on your southeast leg.” Or, instead of saying, “Move the bowl back a bit,” the man would say, “Move the bowl to the north-northwest a bit.”

We are tempted to say that a compass, for them, has no point. But at least one other interesting observation can be drawn from the Guugu Yimithirrs’ ability. In the West, young children often struggle to grasp the concept of a negative number. The difference between the numbers two (2) and minus two (-2) often evades their imagination. Here the Guugu Yimithirr child has a definite advantage. For two, the child thinks of “two steps east,” while minus two becomes “two steps west.” To a question like, “What is minus two plus one?” the Western child might incorrectly offer, “Minus three,” whereas the Guugu Yimithirr child simply takes a mental step eastward to arrive at the right answer of “one step west” (-1).

There is something profound here about how the languages we use constrain the possibility sets we consider: it has a parallel in how the software we design affects the work we produce with it.

China, movies, censorship, and The Act of Killing

From Priceonomics, Hollywood's New Chinese Censors:

Some of the changes made to placate China’s censors are the type of harmless edits only a bureaucrat could love, like tweaks to Kung Fu Panda to ensure that the image of China’s beloved panda was not slighted. Others are for graphic content. Quentin Tarantino’s film Django Unchained had to remove some violent scenes and nudity. 

But other changes demanded or encouraged by censors are not as harmless. The pandering to China in Looper (portraying China as a strong superpower) and in Iron Man 3 (flying the protagonist to China to seek out a particularly skilled surgeon) fits nicely with China’s desire to strengthen its global image.

Chinese censors removed a line from the movie Life of Pi, “religion is darkness,” for fear of angering the devout. This suggests that former President Hu Jintao’s concept of a “harmonious society” and avoiding polemic issues motivates the censorship board. 

Censors also successfully demanded changes to the zombie flick World War Z. Originally, the movie cited China as the source of the zombie outbreak. Quartz writes that the script also called for characters to discuss how the Chinese government covered it up - a plotline that censors probably found far too reminiscent of accusations that the Chinese government covered up a SARS outbreak in 2003, as well as more recent viruses. The moviemakers changed the location of the outbreak to Russia.

Indonesia is not anywhere close to the size of China as a movie market, so the question of censorship when it comes to the recently released documentary The Act of Killing is still being answered.

Counting Errol Morris and Werner Herzog among its executive producers, The Act of Killing was the most fascinating movie I saw at TIFF last year. It's a documentary about former Indonesian death squad members who are still alive and thriving in modern Indonesia, but what sets it apart from other documentaries is its approach to driving at the truth.

Instead of simply interviewing the former death squad members about what happened, or sifting through archival footage or photos (I'm not certain if any such material exists), the director asked them to re-enact their atrocities as Hollywood-inspired movies.

Some have criticized the documentary for a dearth of hard historical facts and narrative. That's fair.

However, this documentary is less just hand-wringing over a historical atrocity than an examination of the interplay between narrative and memory. He could've asked these murderers what happened, but it's not clear that they'd be any more truthful than they were when asked to recreate those events. What's shocking is how much they actually embrace the exercise and cast their movies in the genres they love: gangster films, musicals, and westerns.

In one particularly unforgettable scene, the death squad member we spend the most time following, Anwar Congo, takes the film crew to a theater where he recalls swaggering out after an uplifting Elvis movie and then crossing the street to a building where they killed several people while still flush with the emotional high from the movie.

What Oppenheimer does with Congo and others is essentially lead them through a crude sense memory exercise. It's using method acting as a way of tunneling into the past and trying to bring about an emotional reckoning for these men. 

The most famous instance of this is a fictional one, of course. Hamlet has a theatre troupe act out what he suspects was the murder of his father in front of the suspected murderer, his uncle Claudius. In this case, Anwar Congo and others are themselves the actors, and they write their own narrative. Given those differences, does Oppenheimer "catch the conscience of the king"? It's worth seeing the documentary to judge for yourself.

Here Joshua Oppenheimer talks about how he avoided having The Act of Killing banned in Indonesia (video).  How people receive it in Indonesia is the most important response, and what little I've read so far suggests it is causing Indonesians to rethink their history.

The internet, as I've noted many times before, is greatest at increasing the accessibility and distribution of information. Given the importance of information in construction of narrative, it's not surprising that China would put up a Great Firewall, and the censorship of movies that come into its market from abroad is simply another type of information that must be filtered.

If you visit China, what's disturbing when you speak to many of the people there is that the censorship works. To the victors belong the illusion. 

The chemical composition of socioeconomic stratification

A new study in Environmental International looked at the association between income level and the presence of 179 toxicants. It found that the Poverty Income Ratio was associated with 18 chemicals—with different toxins found in both the poor and the rich.

Individuals with higher socioeconomic status had higher levels of mercury and arsenic. I would’ve expected higher levels of silver poisoning from the spoons they’re born with in their mouths, but apparently argyria isn’t much of a problem these days.

Those of lower socioeconomic status had higher levels of lead, cadmium and three types of phthalates—compounds commonly found in plastics.

The reasons for these disparate chemical levels point to disparate lifestyles and environments.

From here. Important data  should you ever have to resort to cannibalism. Just like wines, I guess humans taste of their terroir.