Harold and Maude (1971, Hal Ashby)

"Harold and Maude" manages to take seemingly opposite elements – death and love, black humour and a Cat Stevens soundtrack -- and combines them all to tell a fascinating, timeless story that had me questioning my own ideas of love.

The film starts out with Harold (Bud Cort), a somber, round-eyed, well-dressed and wealthy 20-year-old who lives with his mother, staging his own suicide.

In eerie ritualism he puts on a Cat Stevens record, lights candles, prepares the noose, and times his fall to correspond with his mother’s entrance into the room.

“I suppose this is your idea of a joke, Harold?” his mother says, unfazed by the fact that her son is swinging from a noose, and obviously accustomed to such behaviour.

From there we get an idea of Harold’s fascination with the macabre, as he fakes his own death numerous times, all for the benefit of his socialite mother – or perhaps for his own benefit, as he seems to get pleasure from trying to upset her.

In one grim scene, Harold floats face down in the pool, by all appearances dead, while his mother casually swims lengths a couple of metres away.

He’s a strange, depressed young man who seems to have little to lose when he meets Maude, through their shared pastime of attending the funerals of people they don’t know.

Though almost 80, Maude (Ruth Gordon; Rosemary’s Baby) breathes new life into Harold, taking him on adventures such as rescuing a tree in the city and replanting it in the forest – essentially defying the rules of society and showing Harold how great it can be to be alive.

In one touching scene, while they sit on a rug smoking a sheesha pipe in Maude’s converted railway-car home, Harold explains how he became obsessed with death after causing a massive explosion in the science lab at boarding school.

He ran away and returned home, convinced his academic career was over, then watched secretly while his usually cold and detached mother was informed of his death by two policemen.

“She put a hand to her forehead, and with the other she reached out as if groping for support, and with this long sigh she collapsed in their arms,” he explains, moments before breaking down in tears.

“I decided then that I enjoyed being dead.”

Maude’s response serves as a perfect description of her character, and seems to represent a turning point in Harold’s life.

“A lot of people enjoy being dead,” she tells him gently. “But they’re not dead really. They’re just backing away from life. Reach out! Take a chance! Get hurt even. Play as well as you can. Give me an L, give me an I, give me a V, give me an E. L-I-V-E, live! Otherwise you’ve got nothing to talk about in the locker room.”

Harold and Maude, though separated by generations, are soulmates and their friendship turns to love as they find common ground through their apparently opposite infatuations with death and life.

While sitting by the ocean, Harold gives Maude a gift, inscribed with the words ‘Harold loves Maude.’

“And Maude loves Harold,” she replies, before throwing it into the water.

“So I’ll always know where it is,” she says, her explanation serving as a touching reminder that the evidence of true love lies in the heart, not in things.

The Lookout (Director Scott Frank, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has come a long way from the goofy, somewhat nerdy and culturally confused alien/kid who grew up on “Third Rock From the Sun.”

The film that first brought him to my attention was “Brick,” a neo-film noire directed by Rian Johnson. It’s set in a high school and comes complete with a clever, snappy vernacular invented for the students, a teen-aged femme fatale and jocks, druggies and art geeks all convincingly transformed into feuding factions.

Gordon –Levitt is the protagonist; intense and single-minded as he penetrates headfirst into the dark world of high school crime to find out who killed his ex-girlfriend, and get revenge.

I think I was three quarters of the way into the film before I finally figured out that he was the kid from Third Rock, and I was suitably impressed by the transformation.

In “The Lookout,” too, Gordon-Levitt seems to crawl inside a new skin and transform himself into Chris Pratt, a troubled, disabled young man who once had everything – money, a beautiful girlfriend and a promising athletic career.

“It only happens once a year, and then they die,” he says at the start of the film, while racing down a country road in the middle of the night with his friends. He then switches off the headlights, revealing a mesmerizing sky filled with fireflies.

Soon after, tragedy strikes, and Chris’s life changes dramatically.

We catch up with him a few years later. He now lives with a physical and mental disability that has left him only a shell of the high school hero he once was, and he simply exists, bitter at the memory of what he once had and struggling just to survive, cohabitating -- and co-depending -- with Lewis, his blind roommate played expertly by Jeff Daniels.

Increasingly bitter at his life – or lack thereof as he sees it – Chris is targeted by bank robbers who rope him in with the promise of friendship and power.

“Whoever has the money, has the power,” says Gary, the charismatic and charming but still creepy leader of the gang, played by Matthew Goode (Match Point, Chasing Liberty.)

With little to lose, as he sees it, Chris is easy pickings, and becomes the key to their plan due to his part-time job as a night cleaner at a small town bank.

I didn’t know what to expect with this film. I couldn’t predict where it was going to go. At one point, I thought it would end with Chris helping pull off the heist, then living with the guilt from his involvement.

At another point I was sure he would be killed and the film would end darkly and realistically with bloodshed.

But you quickly realize that little is predictable or simple for Chris – whose disabilities make it nearly impossible for him to carry out simple tasks, such as sequencing what he did during the day, much less formulating a plan of action and carrying it out.

As a result the film isn’t predictable or simple either. Chris’s personal challenges give the film a sense of frustrated urgency and lend it a volatile, exciting quality that kept me on the edge of my seat until the dramatic conclusion – much like “Brick.”

Watch out for Gordon-Levitt. Thus far his film choices have been impeccable, and it’s refreshing to see a young, promising actor who hasn’t yet sold out to the highest bidder, but seems committed to making good films.

Here’s hoping he keeps it up!

The Danish Poet (Director Torill Kove)

I gained a new appreciation for storytelling when I lived in North Africa. The people of Morocco and Mauritania maintain an oral culture that we in the west have lost, for the most part, in the age of television and the Internet and iPods and Wiis.

I remember sitting on a train from Marrakech to Casablanca, listening as a tiny, old, frail looking woman held an audience of young businessmen spellbound for 20 minutes as she told them a story about someone in the market trying to swindle her earlier in the day.

Another time, my friend Ahmed and I sat in a café in the medina in Casablanca, and he listened for ages as I recounted the beautiful story of the Prodigal Son – at the end, when the father runs out to meet his son who has squandered his inheritance and come home in shame, there were tears in Ahmed’s eyes and he was genuinely touched.

It was amazing! I don’t think that would never happen here.

But I think inherently, deep inside, we still have an appreciation for the simple, beautiful, storytelling of the type done in “The Danish Poet” -- an animated short film with Canadian connections.

The film, which probes the nature of coincidence, is a joint venture between a Norwegian director, the National Film Board of Canada, and is set largely in Denmark. I, obviously, am from Canada, and two close friends whom I travelled with in North Africa, are from Denmark and Norway. Weird eh?

I watched “The Danish Poet” today at one of the personal viewing stations at the NFB on Richmond Street – to which my friend bought me a yearly membership for my birthday. Thanks Amelia!

The film, which is only 15 minutes long, starts with the Scandinavian-sounding narrator posing some of the key questions of the film over a softly glowing, animated starry sky.

“I used to think everyone was adopted from outer space,” she says. “That before we were born we were little seeds floating around in the sky waiting for someone to come and get us. The selection process was random and there was no rhyme or reason as to who our parents would be. In a way I was right because our chance to be born hinges on our parents.”

Then she begins telling the story about the fascinating series of coincidences and timely intersections that led to her parents meeting, all the while providing very funny insight into Scandinavian relations, and with brilliantly simple, mesmerizing animation that I couldn’t look away from.

A Danish poet named Kasper has writer’s block. At his wits end, he visits a psychologist who tells him to take a vacation.

“But where can you go if you have no money and you don’t speak French?” he replies.

“What about Norway? It’s cheap and they’re practically Danish,” the doctor replies (It’s a joke my Danish friend Daniel would find hilarious, but my Norwegian friend Gjermund would reject outright.)

So Kasper takes the advice and starts doing some research about Norway. He comes across an epic novel by a Norwegian writer that tells the tale of a young man who falls in love with a girl who is engaged. Despite her father’s wishes she breaks off the engagement to marry the young man, and regrets the decision for the rest of her life.

Inspired by the story, Kasper plans a trip to meet the author.

I’ve been to the Copenhagen harbour where Kasper sets out from for Norway, and it’s captured beautifully and realistically – though in caricature-style -- in the film, complete with colourful, tall narrow buildings, beer-swilling, jolly Danes and vivid, watercolour skies, contrasting with the solid, chunky colours used in the animation.

After arriving in Norway, Kasper gets caught in the rain, and takes shelter at a local farm, owned by a family, it turns out, that is related to the writer whom Kasper was planning to visit.

He quickly falls in love with Ingeborg, the farmer’s daughter, who “tends to the chickens and romantically maps the stars above the farm,” and regains his inspiration.

“Ingeborg you changed my life. Ingeborg please be my wife,” he writes in a poem dedicated to her.

But she reveals that she, like the heroine in the novel that inspired Sigrid to come to Norway, is also engaged.

“This is exactly like when Kristen Laurens can’t marry Erilund because she’s engaged to Syran. But she breaks up with him and marries Erilund anyway in spite of her father,” Kasper says, excitedly recounting the plot line of the famous novel.

“Not exactly,” replies Ingeborg sadly, explaining that she has read the book, and has learned from the moral of the story and won’t make the same mistake.

Though her husband is killed randomly by a falling cow soon after, a series of post-man errors and goat incidents prevent the news from reaching Kasper and much time passes before the two are brought back together again and their romance is once again sparked – this time by the death of the writer, whose funeral they both attend, though perhaps unwittingly.

“You must go to the funeral,” Ingeborg’s friend tells her.
“Why?” she asks.
“Because she was your relative.”
“But she’s Danish!”
“When a relative dies, you go to the funeral, whether she’s Danish or not,” she is told matter-of-factly – a joke my Norwegian friend would appreciate.

And, thus Kasper and Ingeborg begin their happily-ever-after life together in true Hans Christian Andersen style.

Later, in the final coincidence of the film, the same friend who urged Ingeborg to attend the funeral, while travelling to visit the couple in Copenhagen, meets a young poet on the train who is on his way to Copenhagen to gain inspiration from Sigrid, who has become quite a successful writer.

So, like any good old-fashioned story, we have some clever twists along the way that eventually lead to a happy ending, and an intriguing exploration of coincidence and fate and how they affect our lives.

“Had it not been for the Danish poet and Sigrid Undset, a rainy summer in Norway, a slippery barn plank, a careless mailman, a hungry goat, a broken thumb and a crowded train, my parents might never have met at all. And who knows, I might still be a little seed floating around in the sky, waiting for someone to come and get me.”

This film won the Academy Award for best animated short and is definitely worth paying $2 at the NFB to go see. I recommend it!

Mother Night -- 1961 (In memory of Kurt Vonnegut)

My father first introduced me to Pink Floyd when I was about 11 years old.

I remember listening to it on my Walkman, lying back on the bed late at night. I expected rebellious rock-and-roll but instead I got helicopters and screaming, the sound of a cash register clanging open and heavy, deep soundscapes that reverberated in stereo sound from one ear to the other.

I thought: “What is this??” and wondered if I was too young to be listening to it. (I probably was)

But my dad had recommended it and that carries great weight between a son and a father, so I kept trying, kept listening, and slowly I began to understand, appreciate, and finally to love that album, and the band -- the kind of appreciation that some people call blissful, because it takes work to get there, but is always worth the effort.

I had a similar experience the first time I picked up a Kurt Vonnegut novel, also on my dad’s recommendation, and again, probably at too young an age.

I think it was “Slaughterhouse-Five” – a semi-biographical account of Vonnegut’s experience during the Second World War, combining science fiction, satire and black humour in a tale that mixes time travel and a first hand account of the aftermath of the fire bombing of Dresden.

As with Pink Floyd, my senses were bombarded and I was overwhelmed and I wasn’t sure I liked it. But I was stubborn, and somewhere about halfway through I began to see the beauty in the short sentences and clever vocabulary and simple but smart storytelling that painted such vivid pictures.

Since then I’ve read almost all of his novels – many of them several times. And in honour of his death just over one month ago at 84, I have just finished re-reading “Mother Night” for the third time.

What a brilliant book. I recommend all of Vonnegut’s work – you should read them and own them too – but Mother Night, as a novel and a concept, is incredible.

Vonnegut’s introduction to the novel begins as follows: “This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don’t think it’s a marvelous moral, I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

It’s about a man named Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American playwright living in Germany, married to a beautiful German actress named Helga Noth, prior to the Second World War.

The story begins in an Israeli prison where Campbell is awaiting trial on war crimes, and writing his memoirs, but as he tells his story the scene quickly shifts to Greenwich Village where Campbell lived-out the post-war years in obscurity, for the most part all alone, his family dead and his existence forgotten.

As the story develops, we learn that Campbell is considered a war criminal because of the work he did as a propagandist for the Nazis. He was an anti-Semitic radio broadcaster all through the war, and was responsible for some of the most fantastic, unbelievable lies ever fabricated about the Jewish people.

But we also learn that before the war began, Campbell was recruited by an American spy to broadcast secret messages – using strategic pauses and stumbled sentences as his means of delivery -- over the radio to U.S. agents, which he did consistently throughout the entire war.

“From the simplicity of most of my instructions, I gather that I was usually giving yes or no answers to questions that had been put to the spy apparatus. Occasionally, as during the build up for the Normandy invasion, my instructions were more complicated and my phrasing and diction sounded like the last stages of double pneumonia,” he explains.

Simultaneously, Campbell was the best spy the Americans ever had, and the greatest Nazi who ever lived.

The story raises big questions about truth and identity and whether an inherently good act can compensate for a lie, but in typical Vonnegut style it’s caustic and cynical and bitterly funny all at the same time, and provides no clear answers to any of the questions it poses.

I like the fact that the story begins with a moral -- a simple, humble truth presented more as a nugget of wisdom than as a point in a sermon, then sets about proving it in gentle terms through Campbell’s life.

I like that style of story telling. Vonnegut was a master at it, as proven in Player Piano, Sirens of Titan, Deadeye Dick, Breakfast of Champions, and many more.

It’s sad to say goodbye.

But here goes…

Goodbye.

Kurt Vonnegut
Born: Nov. 11, 1922, Indianapolis, Indiana
Died: April 11, 2007, New York

Spider-Man 3 (2007, director Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst)

I had such high hopes for Spider-Man 3. I looked forward to it for months, imagining how the third and supposedly final installment in the trilogy would build on the plot lines of the previous two, further explore the relationship with Green Goblin and delve into Spider-Man’s dark struggle with Venom.

There was so much potential!

And it was such a disappointment.

Now, to be fair there were some positive characteristics to this film, and I’ll start there just to avoid bumming myself out all over again.

The relationship with Harry Osborn – son of the Green Goblin who takes on the role after his father dies – is treated really well. Harry’s deep resentment and bitterness is still there – affecting his friendship with Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) and eventually spilling over into his romance with Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst).

But as both Peter and Harry overcome their demons the relationship comes full circle and friendship eventually prevails. And this is nice to see, because through the series, despite their ups and downs, I always got the feeling they cared pretty deeply for each other.

Hmm. What else was good? Oh, the technology definitely drives this film. The fight scenes are amazing. The introduction of Sandman – though definitely an unnecessary complication to the story – provides some of the most incredible CG seen yet in the trilogy. One very cool scene in particular has Spidey and Sandman fighting in a sewer – with some very cool melting involved.

Also, Venom is done pretty well, despite being played by Topher Grace – Erik from “That Seventies Show” – whose character doesn’t exactly break new ground from that role.

But my overwhelming feeling walking out of the film was…huh??

My friends Jed, Ahmeda and Jared and I stood around for half an hour outside the Rainbow Cinema with puzzled looks on our faces, analyzing all the things that went wrong, and wondering if director Sam Raimi had forgotten to do test screenings before releasing the film.

I mean, at one point, meant to be the emotional climax, as a weeping Parker holds his dying friend in his arms and the camera zooms in on his emotion-wracked face – everyone in the cinema broke into spontaneous laughter. I was too upset at how painfully bad the scene was to actually laugh, but I couldn’t blame them for doing so – it was really ridiculous.

Parker cries about 10 times in the film, and it’s just too much.

I was expecting the film to really focus on Parker/Spider-Man’s internal and external battle with Venom – the evil alien force that gives him new powers but threatens to turn him into a villain.

This was a great opportunity to do what the Spider-Man franchise has always done well – explore the self confidence issues and personal struggles Peter Parker has always dealt with, providing a really interesting reflection to his super-hero side.

But instead, there’s a 20-minute montage in the middle of the film with Parker – sporting a cheesy new emo-style haircut and black clothes – strutting around John Travolta style, leering at girls and jutting his crotch out at creepy angles.

And that’s supposed to be how the Venom persona affects Spider-Man?? They could have done something so much darker, and so much better.

My solution to the problems of this film are as follows:

* Cut out some characters. Sandman, though I loved how your face got grinded away sandblaster-style against a moving subway, you were an unnecessary complication. My apologies to Thomas Hayden Church of “Wings” and “Sideways” fame, who actually did a pretty good job!
* Topher Grace’s role as Venom needs to be darker. He needs to be less annoying, but more evil.
* The whole Staying Alive montage needs to GO!

In good conscience, I can’t recommend going to see this film. But, on the other hand, the trilogy has become such a part of the pop culture fabric of this decade, that you might regret not seeing it on the big screen.

I leave the choice in your hands. But always remember, “with great power, comes great responsibility.”
-- Ben Parker