FIRST 2009 COLUMN
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CLASSIC FILMS
BY GENRE
FIRST 2009 COLUMN
by Jeffrey P Nesker
2009…and now for something completely different.
So here is my first official post of the New Year. I know this column is billed as “A filmmaker writes about his climb to success”, but truthfully there isn’t much going on with Nightclub Story at present beyond the occasional acceptance to upcoming Festivals. To write about them now would amount to little more than a pat listing of when and where, which isn’t at all interesting…
I could also talk about the two films that were omitted from my “Top-Ten” list, Toronto Stories and Let The Right One In. But I think I’ve lost any and all credibility in this regard with my constant changes and updates. Room for improvement next time out, to be sure. Suffice to say that Let The Right One In, like Yeast, is the kind of film that burrows into your cortex and stays there like a virus. A truly unique gem of a film that finds a new spin on the tired old Vampire genre, and is still absolutely true to its rules and trappings. It satisfies the cynical fan boy and the unabashed romantic at the same time, not an easy feat. Toronto Stories inspired me, entertained me, and gave a needed shot of adrenalin to my civic pride. Here’s hoping it spawns numerous sequels. I would covet the chance to toss my hat in that ring. How awesome would it be to have this become an ongoing local franchise, mythologizing our great city?
And our city truly is great. Even in the grip of a cold snap, like we had on New Years Eve. Poised to become ever greater, if you believe the cover of this months Toronto Life magazine. They say that Toronto is poised to become one of the new global financial capitals, when the fallout from the recent “economic crisis” settles. They say this will make us all very wealthy. Or something.
Still recovering from New Years frostbite, I’m about to trade up my wall calendar for the 2009 edition, a moment that usually puts me into a reflective mood. I’ll assume this is true for most of you out there.
I’ll also assume that for many of you, the last nine years, or the “ought’s” as they say, have a special meaning. Living inside popular culture, as most of us choose to do, excels at generating such added meaning.
2000-2010, now almost a memory. This much is true: We are living in the future, as telegraphed by our past.
Long have the Science-Fiction writers, Sociologists, and Prophesying Financial Experts of the 20th century placed their speculative “brave new worlds” in this decade.
It begs the question: How do we measure up?
When I think to myself that we are now living in the year “2009”, a chill runs down my spine. To use our metaphor, we are now well beyond the Kubrick here (2001). In fact, we’re closing in on the vastly inferior Peter Hyams sequel (2010)!
To paraphrase the legendary Sci-Fi writer William Gibson, “Living in the future is a lot more complicated than we imagined.” As many of you will already know, William Gibson, the inventor of the “cyberpunk” genre and coiner of the term “information superhighway”, no longer writes in “the future”. To him, that future is now. It’s caught up to us.
But we can’t actually be in Blade Runner, can we?
I think in many ways that we are. We are indeed living in this promised future, only without certain big-ticket items. To be fair, though, I never really wanted a flying car if it looked as uncomfortable as the Spinner.
The future, the one as imagined by prior generations, has come to pass. But not all at once, and without so much as a peep to announce itself. The actual experience of living in the future is infinitely more complex than writing about it from behind the (relative) safety of a desk.
And I’m not even going to broach on how the imagined technology of shows such as Star Trek have inspired real science to create such devices. That could well be another six columns.
Sure, Kubrick (and it can’t be ignored, Arthur C. Clarke) got many things wrong, most notably that corporations such as Pan Am wouldn’t survive into this decade, but those mistakes and larger leaps such as human ability to send a manned mission to the planet Jupiter in 2001 are inconsequential. It’s hard to deny that our modern world has been shaped by the imagination of the past.
It’s just that here on terra firma in the year 2009 the future is too real, too authentic, and too subtle. Like how we don’t notice major physical changes in family and friends as well as strangers (would for our) familiarity with them. To appreciate just how far we’ve come, we really need to unplug ourselves and try to float above the stream, which offers us the unique vantage point of looking down.
I think we can all agree, exposed as we are to the steady flow of the alarmist news of the day, that the ribald pace of recent human advancement appears to be catching up to us. The system seems to be breaking down under it’s own weight, and every day brings with it another “game-changer”. All this as we enter the new calendar year.
The way I see it, the intangible tension and anxiety that oozed out of every frame of Blade Runner, the easy, tossed-off violence of Robocop, and the reptilian coldness of interpersonal relationships in 2001, have become real features of present-day society. For better or worse.The powers that be in Hollywood, without even realizing, have put the whole thing into sharp relief by their constant need to remake old films. The trend, of course, is to “deepen” and “modernize” these stories. What actually happens, though, is that these remakes, take “The Day The Earth Stood Still” for example, are adapting stories that, in the time since, have brilliantly telegraphed our collective future, and “updating” them takes them out of relevance and sends them back into the idealized gloss of so much Hollywood drivel.
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