Upcoming Films About Men

Anthony Hopkins (left) Alfred Hitchcock (right).

There have been a number of comments left; Trish and others, I will be getting to them in the order you have left them, I promise! My next post is on the romantic drama Casablanca (1942) as a part of the film noir series I have been doing, examining how Humphrey Bogart's Rick Blaine set the stage for the future of troubled heroes populating detective stories and American cinemas; this will be followed up by Double Indemnity. Next Friday is the release of The Raven, the story of the last strange days of Edgar Allan Poe's life. The working list of references I have going which the film invokes includes: The Tell-Tale Heart, Annabell Lee, A Dream Within a Dream, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven and The Masque Of the Red Death (I am also going to be reading The Cask Of Amontillado). On Friday, April 27th, I will be getting up a post on everything (I think) you need to know before seeing the film without actually having seen the film.

A bit of film news: Anthony Hopkins is playing famed director Alfred Hitchcock and director Martin Scorsese has announced he's teaming up with Leonardo DiCaprio to do The Wolf Of Wall Street. Initial reactions to The Avengers has been generally favorable so far thus and a trailer for the new James Bond film Skyfall (to be released in November) will be attached to Men In Black III. In the meantime, here are some trailers of upcoming films, and it's interesting how they have to do with men and masculinity. Pertaining to fatherhood, here is The Kid With a Bike, released last year in Belgium, it's just now making its way to the US:

In a turn around, the next two kids are abandoned by their mother after their father finally gets out of prison. Wild Bill shows us another man having problems being a dad:

These are only two films, yet two more films may give us an insight into why men are having problems being the men and the fathers they need to be. I am primarily interested in Magic Mike because Hollywood is building a rather substantial dialogue about male sexuality (specifically abstinence which comes from Immortals, Shame, Wrath Of the Titans, This Means War) and it will be interesting to see what Mike really wants to do and how, if at all, he manages a conversion (the point of all art is conversion of some sort):

We have seen Rock Of Ages before but this is the second trailer and while I don't like nudity in films, it hints at dealing with some of the problems starting in the 1980s being the reasons for problems today:

Similarly, Blackthorn, about the still living Butch Cassidy of outlaw fame, (was released in the US in February), provides us with a role model for men that might not be the best:

To re-enforce the seriousness of examining masculinity and the role men are called to play in society and the family, Babycall will probably show us how a bad man ruins three lives: his wife's, his child's and his own:

I know very little about The Gospel Of Us:  a big company moves in and tries to take over a town and the father who has been missing for 40 days does the only thing left for hm to do, sacrifice himself.

It was released in the US in February, but is getting around remarkably slow: Mozart's Sister.

For those interested in the auteur approach to film--the study of a particular director's way of making film--one name is usually on everyone's top ten list: Werner Herzog. With such films as The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser and Aguirre: The Wrath Of God, his newest film Into the Abyss examines killing in society:

The Island President draws our attention to the fact that not all countries are sinking just because of debt:

Even if we aren't getting a chance to see all the films coming out, it helps to have an idea of recurring topics and themes to connect with the films we do catch.

ICUI4CU: Lockout & Psychoanalytic Triples

I am happy to admit that I was wrong about this film because, if you are a Republican, there is an awful lot to like! I can understand some of the critical complaints against the film, but it doesn’t warrant the rotten ratings it has received; what would warrant rotten ratings, from a Democrat/Liberal critic at least, is the way it skips the psychoanalytic double and goes straight for the psychoanalytic triple to lay serious charges at the feet of President Obama.

We know all films are encoded because that’s what makes them art instead of documentaries, yet it’s a special little bonus when the film gives you a combination to unlocking what it wants you to find, and it’s the personage of evil in the film that actually does the unlocking and providing you with the mirror of what you should be seeing.

Snow (Guy Pearce) is seen to have shot an agent that he was supposedly protecting but the head of the investigation against him Langral (Peter Stormare) was actually seeing Snow in a mirror, hence, only seeing a part of what was really happening. Shaw (Lennie James) seems to be a good guy but when Snow hands him the briefcase containing state secrets that had gone missing, Shaw knows the combination; when Shaw opens it and sees there’s nothing in it, he’s mistaken: there is an invisible mirror in the briefcase, and just as Langral saw Snow in the mirror, so Snow sees Shaw in the mirror of the briefcase’s emptiness and knows that Shaw knowing the combination makes him the one selling out America. The false reflection of Snow committing espionage against America is countered by the accurate reflection of Shaw committing espionage against America. Why is this important?

My favorite scene in the film. The blond is Emilie Warnock (Maggie Grace) the president's daughter who went to the outer space prison to see if the prisoners were being treated humanely; while there, her bodyguard violates the rules and enables a prison riot to break out with her being taken as hostage. Emilie gets shot in the leg and her friend, a real doctor, gives Emilie her white doctor's coat to wear to help keep her warm; one of the leading prisoners in the riot, Alex (wonderfully played by Vincent Regan who played the Spartan Captain in 300) gets hurt and requires stitches, so Emilie is grabbed because, if she's wearing a doctor's coat, she must be a doctor, right? Wrong, and the film lets us know that this is exactly how the Obamacare legislation is at work. Twice, Snow had to play doctor to "bandage up" Emilie. As the president's daughter, she symbolizes what the president has "given birth to," that is, his administration, and Snow having to "bandage her up" comments on the wounded state of the president's term (much more on this below).

When a work of art (in this case, a film) uses a code as a part of the narrative (ICUI4CU, discussed below) it's going to employ other codes as well, and invites us, the viewers to unlock those codes; when mirrors are used, we are invited to look into the mirror and think about what we are seeing, and hold a mirror up to the characters in the film so we can enjoy a "deeper reflection" of them. Lockout does this throughout the entire film, consistently, delivering such a tight script that it's really enjoyable just seeing how the script plays itself out.

Why is his name “Snow?” Because there are two other important characters this year with the same name, Snow White (Mirror, Mirror) and Snow White (Snow White and the Huntsman; Vincent Regan is also in that). Both Snow White’s have wrongly lost their kingdoms and seek to get them back, just as Snow (Lockout) is trying to get back the secrets selling out our kingdom, the United States. So we don’t get the wrong idea, Agent Snow’s first name is “Marion,” because “My old man was a big John Wayne fan” (John Wayne's real name was Marion Robert Morrison). This is an important moment because John Wayne, an all-American hero (and conservative Republican) has a persona, a double (his real identity as Marion Morrison vs his well-known identity as John Wayne), and by using the star’s real name, we are reminded that we should be doing the same in the film, which is exactly what we are going to do in realizing that Agent Snow is a reference to Snow White. Just as the girls Snow White become more militaristic than the original Grimm Brothers' version (or the Walt Disney version, either), Lockout is also making Snow White--in the person of Agent Snow--more militaristic (not feminine nor effeminate) but willing to fight for the kingdom at stake.

There are two sets of codes needing to be broken in the film: encrypted codes and identity codes (who is who). The briefcase combination is one code that has to be broken in the film; the other is the mysterious encryption “I see you, I foresee you,” which has to be figured out to get to the briefcase to discover who the real spy is. Why is this little game important? Because, according to the film, someone in a very high position within in the government is selling out on America, and Lockout is saying, “I see you,” and what you are doing, and that means “I foresee you” in what you are going to do.  That person is the president of the United States, not just in the film, but in real life.

Don't believe me about the Snow White link? There's even an apple in the film, well, an apple supplement, it is in outer space, but it's not Snow getting the apple this time, Snow is giving the apple, and it's not poisonous, it's life-giving but it's also not taken (by Emilie). It’s not that identity is destabilized in Lockout, rather, identity is expanded to achieve the greatest possible exploration of a character possible. For example, Emilie wears a borrowed white doctor’s coat to keep her warm, hence, Emilie is mistaken as a doctor, just as legislators mistakenly took themselves for doctors in passing the Obamacare legislation. Snow is a CIA agent who is mistaken as a counter-terrorist (Republicans trying to save the country being characterized as terrorists because they are not socialists). Langral is mistaken to be selling secrets when he wasn't while Shaw was thought to be clean but is filthy. The levels are all throughout the film and great fun to find.

Please remember, that I am not intentionally grafting my personal political viewpoints onto the film: I will gladly admit to my interpretation of the trailer, how the film was going to use the prisoners to symbolize the Republicans who had re-gained control of the House of Representatives in the last round of elections, and the film was positing that American voters had acquired brain stagnation and now the Republicans were holding Obamacare hostage (the president’s daughter, that which he has “given birth to,” and bears his name, the health care program) and the near-sighted Republicans (the psycho inmate with a blind eye) were going to intentionally crash the prison into the eastern seaboard and destroy the United States. This is exactly the kind of insulting film I foresaw and I still went to go see it, fully prepared to have mud dumped all over me.

But that’s not what happened.

Hydell, the psycho inmate who starts the riot. There are some striking similarities between Lockout and Wrath of the Titans, for example, Hydell is the brother of Alex (the prisoner who assumes leadership and hunts down Snow and Emilie, pictured below) just as Hades and Zeus are brothers; chaos is unleashed when the prisoners take over the floating prison crashing towards earth just like Kronos is chaos being released in Titans. Whereas Kronos in Titans symbolizes the chaos of the American Revolutionary War, the prisoners rioting and the prison falling from the sky symbolizes the the general chaos that has been building as a result of decisions of the Obama administration; how can I prove this? President Obama basically ended NASA, the country's space program by ending funding for it and in Lockout, it's private companies that have been experimenting on prisoners for understanding long-term space exploration. I am a capitalist, but it seems the Obama administration (and Lockout seems to be making this point as well) is doing what it shouldn't (playing doctor) and not doing what it should (regulating outer space experiments). There will probably be a sequel, and the film does a great job of highlighting funding conflicts between Emilie's charity and the company funding the floating prison (it's privately operated, the government has nothing to do with it).  The prison falling out of the sky and potentially onto the eastern coast of the United States is, again, the general and backwards chaos from the way the administration has handled the Constitution (the eastern seaboard of the US is where the colonies were born and where this country and our ideals were born). There's another aspect to him: he continuously reminded me of Noah (Adrien Brody) from The Village in his mannerisms and intellectual ineptitude. Just as the villagers in that film had sought refuge from the violence of life in seclusion, so the people of the US sought safety in secluding the prisoners in orbit, but the boundaries were breached (films will reference other films like this to extend commentary so it doesn't have to waste its own time, but can still provide additional dialogue with its audience).

President Obama’s claim on history is that he is the first black president; congratulations to him, I am actually surprised that we haven’t elected a black president (male or female) sooner.  In Lockout, President Warnock is white but two polar opposite and pivotal roles are played by black men: Hock and Shaw (both black men in the film) very much appear to be psychological projections of the president (it's not just because they are black, that isn't it, but they are making a connection to a president who contends that everyone is racist if they don't like what he's doing). Hock is the bodyguard to Emilie Warnock  and Hock’s willingness to break the rules to protect Emilie is what starts the prison riot and gives Hydell the chance to steal Hock's gun and hold everyone hostage.

Oh, the very sexy Alex, well played by Vincent Regan (300 and the upcoming Snow White and the Huntsman).  Alex immediately establishes himself as being in charge and continuously tolerates his brother's psycho behavior; why? Deviant leadership and brain stagnation are one in the same thing, even though we tend not to think of it that way. The supposedly calm and efficient leadership Alex provides the prisoners is literally destroyed by Hydell because the same "mother" gave birth to them both (the same situation) but the psychotic will always be stronger than the (seemingly more) rational part.

It can be argued that, with 21 impeachable offenses against him, President Obama has been willing to break rules to protect his administration; the gun that Hock hid in order to take in with him to "protect" Emilie that was stolen was around his leg, and, as we know, the leg symbolizes our will; Hock's "willingness" to use force (and he beats on Hydell several times) is the opportunity Hydell wants to steal the gun. There are several references in the film to someone's constitutional rights being denied to them (it should also clearly be pointed out that President Warnock in the film is a Democrat). While Hock willingly dies to give Emilie a few more precious seconds of air (Obama willing to sacrifice something in order to get what he really wants, like trillion dollar economic stimulus plans and a socialist health bill) Emilie is all ready dead when Snow gets there to lead her out of the prison, and who do you think has to play doctor to the dying administration (symbolically speaking)? The namesake of John Wayne, Agent Marion Snow.

This is when Emilie has first arrived aboard the prison and she's questioning Hydell on the other side of the glass. Please note the reflection of the psycho inmate and that Hock, her body guard, is on the side with the prisoner, meaning, that part of the Obama administration willing to protect his administration (Emilie) is on the same side of the law as the criminals it should be protecting society from; Lockout offers this cinematography for our "reflection" just as Hydell is reflected in the glass above.

It's only by sticking a needle into her eye and then wiggling it around that Snow is able to bring her back to life. Why? Because the eye symbolizes wisdom, the ability to discern and see into situations, and the medicine administered is to get her alive again and, symbolically, that can only be done once the Obama administration "sees" what they are doing and the chaos they have unleashed and are willing to work with the ones trying to save it (when Emilie first sees Snow, she hits him in the head with a yellow extinguisher; symbolically, this is the Democrats knocking out all the arguments of the Republicans who were trying to save the country, but the Democrats wouldn't accept the help and now look at where we are).

There's a great deal more that can be said, but this is at least a start, and one more film that aligns itself against Washington. Towards the end, the president is asked to give permission to launch an assault on the prison and he refuses because his daughter is up there; even after she tells him to blow up the prison, he still won't, and so Langral has overthrown the president's power to preserve the safety of the country; maybe, instead of playing golf this weekend, the president should go see Lockout...

The Cabin In the Woods: Free Will, Husband Bulges & Jim Carrey

"Do we want it to go down?"
Dana asks an excellent question because, as we the informed viewers know (and Joss Wheadon's The Cabin In the Woods wants everyone to be an informed viewer about horror films and what they mean) "going down" always symbolizes a digression into the dark passions and appetites which is exactly what has been going on throughout the film and, quite frankly, the reason they are in this situation. (If you haven't seen the film, this post contains spoilers). As I noted, the film wants us to be informed viewers, and one of the first meaty bites it throws us is a year: 1998.

Remember, please, a house is a symbol for the soul, and since there are no "upstairs" to the house, the film makers want us to know that there is no higher level of thinking for any of these characters; the "control room" manipulating everything going on in the cabin, wants the group to go into the cellar because the cellar is the symbol for our lower passions, our dark desires and what we keep hidden, hence, the reason that's the room wherein they make "the choice" of how they will die, we are defined by our vices in horror films, not our virtues, and vice is a form of weakness which leads to death. Out vices weaken us and make us unable to choose greater goods, greater freedoms. This is not me reading my morality and Christianity into the film, this is what the film itself says, which is great, I love it!

There wasn't anything in particular that happened in 1998 which would have one think of a "glitch" as control room operators Sitterson and Hadley call it, but The Cabin In the Woods is a movie of movies, and the more movies you have seen, the more you will recognize, including a film that was made in 1998, The Truman Show starring Jim Carry. There were lots of great films made in 1998, why on earth would this one be sited? One, because The Truman Show formed the basis of what makes The Cabin In the Woods possible, a constructed reality (like in the arena of The Hunger Games).

Marty, the pot head, finding one of the control room's cameras in a lamp he has knocked over. Usually, a source of light will signal a "bright idea" or the "light of reason" entering, and Marty, finding the camera thinks, "I'm on a reality TV show," so he's close, but his thesis needs a bit of work. His thought is, "My parents are going to think I am such a burn out," because he is. At that moment, a zombie hand grabs him through the window and drags him out; windows symbolize reflection, so Marty has realized he's a zombie because he smokes pot all the time and that's why he can be taken by the zombies and punished and killed (because those are the rules of the horror genre, you vice is the very thing that kills you). Why doesn't Marty die? Marijuana, which he seems to always be smoking, is legal in a lot of states (up to a certain amount) so the legislative bodies of this country have changed the morality by making something legal that previously wasn't. That's why Marty can be a drug addict but survive a horror film.

If you think I am making a stretch, please recall that one of the people in the control room (the new guy) is named Truman (Brian White) and he's the one upset with how the kids are being treated on the other side of the control room screen (he's identifying with them to at least some degree). What would be the glitch that Hadley and Sitterson refer to connecting them back to The Truman Show? One, that Truman escaped his world as the kids in The Cabin In the Woods nearly do and, two, we the audience learned a new way of watching films and becoming self-aware of how they--and ourselves--are manipulated.

Sitterson with the coffee and cooler, Lin who says she doesn't bet on the proceedings but does anyway, and Hadley who wants to see a merman. They go about their own individual lives with no care or concern for the kids being butchered on the other side, only that they do their job well and make sure the kids die. There are a couple of glitches actually that makes them look bad. Marty finds one of their cameras, then he doesn't die when they thought Marty had and Marty finds a control room power panel that allows him some electrical control over what's taking place within "the grid." One way of describing the control room guys is that they are the masterminds of a satanic cult who use technology to insure the devil gets his food; there are other ways to look at them, too.

How do each of the kids dying reflect their sin?
Jules is the whore (the film names her this, I don't) and so, as the director (Sigourney Weaver) says, she has to die first because she taints everyone else (again, the film says this, I didn't). But that's absolutely true. Marty dares Jules to make out with a stuffed wolf hanging on the wall and Jules does it, quite erotically, and then they applaud her performance and she takes a bow. She later does a kinky little dance in front of everyone and her and later her and boyfriend Curt go off into the woods to have sex and they encounter the first of the red-neck torture family zombies that will kill them. The reason Jules doesn't think about making out with the wolf as being... abnormal (necromania and bestiality in one) is because she does it all the time: Curt is the wolf hungry for sex with her and she gives it to him.

Jules exhibits outrageous sexuality in the film; one might argue, and justly, that the blond hair dye she used had been treated by the control room to slowly release hormones to increase her libido, and hormone mist was released when her and Curt when into the woods to have sex; the point is, Jules was all ready going in that direction and if her free will--her moral base guiding her free will--had been stronger, she wouldn't have gotten killed. In the scene pictured above, Jules accepts Marty's dare to make out with a stuffed wolf and when she walks up to the wolf, she plays a little charade with it, telling the stuffed beast, "You don't need to huff and puff, I'll let you in," citing the story of The Three Little Pigs, and yes, we should be thinking of all the pigs that have been showing up in films lately (by coincidence) especially the one from Contagion. How can I prove that Curt is the wolf? Marty says compares Kurt to an alpha male, which is, of course, the designation for the leader of a wolf pack. So we can deduce that Jules names herself as a pig when, in reality, I thought she was going to cite Little Red Riding Hood instead, but the film steers clear of the successful little heroine (Riding Hood) and goes for the animal that best fits Jules, the pig.

When the zombies actually come and get Jules, they stick a knife (or some such sharp object) through her hand first when she's still in the foreplay stage with Curt. That's important, Jules and Curt haven't actually started intercourse, just Jules taking off her clothes for Curt is sufficient to constitute her as a whore and warrant death in a horror film. The zombie sticking the sharp object through her hand has layers of meaning. First, it symbolizes the sexual act (the sharp object piercing the skin) that Jules would be participating in, and her free will choosing that path means she's all ready dead, all ready a zombie to her moral responsibility. Secondly, since the hand is a symbol of strength, it shows that Jules didn't value her real "jewels," her brain and heart, but relied upon her sexuality as her main strength in life. The third reason will be discussed below regarding Patience Buckner.

Why is Curt able to survive the zombie attack? Two reasons, first, because Marty--being a drug addict--is supposed to die secondly, so it's just not Curt's time yet, but also because of a rule from video games: if there is some good in a person, that can keep them alive to help them overcome serious injuries that, in real life, would be fatal. It's the rewarding of what virtue may be in a character, but in The Cabin In the Woods, it's really just saving the character until the moment they are really supposed to die. Why does the zombie toss Dana Jules' head through the doorway? An open door symbolizes what we have "opened ourselves up to" especially in our hearts, and the head symbolizes the governing function of ourselves and our knowledge, so Jules had knowledge about Dana opening herself up to the professor that Dana had an affair with and how Dana could easily have been the whore instead of Jules. There are lots of ways to decapitate a person, especially in horror films, so why do the zombies utilize a two-person tree cutting saw to kill Jules? Because it takes two people to make a whore, the man and the woman. It's a cultural fallacy that men can't or shouldn't be responsible for chastity and celibacy in a relationship outside of marriage (and one that more films are challenging; case in point, Holden has the perfect opportunity to watch Dana undress when he discovers the two-way mirror but he abstains from it and alerts her to what is happening and she thanks him for not being a creep). If Curt valued and respected Jules beyond her sexuality, he could have insisted that they not be sexual, but that's not what Curt did, and it was Curt and Jules together that separated her brain from the rest of her body (her sexual organs to be exact). 

So if Curt has some good in him, why doesn't he survive the jump with his bike? There's an invisible boundary between dating and being married to someone, and the grid symbolizes that invisible boundary. Curt "made the jump" with Jules from boyfriend to husband without them being married, so even though, as Curt tells Holden, he's jumped a lot further with his bike in the past, he doesn't have the moral strength to overcome the power of the grid that is holding him back morally. In the sacrificial pictures, the athlete that Curt fulfills is shown with a spear, and that spear is the phallic symbol: athletes have to have good bodies to compete, the problem is, the body becomes their whole being (in art and stereotypes of them) and they then look at others as being only bodies as well, including Jules.

At this point pictured above, they have lost Jules and they think they have lost Marty. They were trying to make it out of the grid and almost succeeded when a "tunnel avalanche" caused by the control room makes it impossible to pass, and Curt, driving the mobile home rambler, quickly thinks and steps on the gas, backing out all the way out of the tunnel in reverse; pretty impressive driving. It symbolizes the unconscious thinking Curt has been doing because going into the tunnel (since Curt is driving) easily symbolizes the sexual act, and going in reverse means that he's wishing to undo what he and Jules had been doing because he realizes now that's why she died. The sheer rocks they are surrounded by? The "hardness of heart" that sin causes and is caused by sin. Even though Curt is being sweet and kind and self-sacrificing, it's too late for him, the grid, which resembles honeycomb (as in bee hives) invokes the work of bees, and how all our works will be held before us when we are judged, either for us or against us. This is the basis of The Cabin In the Woods, because each of them basically judges their own self by the way of death they were going to choose in the cellar. Because Curt, as the athlete, has played games all his life (as in sports) he dies on his bike in the game of trying to jump the cliff and loses his life.

"You can't tell me you don't want a piece of that," Curt says after Jules has done her little dance in front of everyone, and Marty replies, "Can we not talk about humans in pieces?" and this is a big point for Marty, because he's not letting Jules be dehumanized even though he and her had made out their freshman year (which is the reason why the zombie is able to drag Marty out of the window and do serious harm to him, Marty had physically used Jules years earlier so Marty has to be punished for that sin/crime). Curt talking about "having a piece of her" reveals what he really thinks of her but also what Jules has allowed him to come to think of her because of her behavior. This is a great illustration of how promiscuous sexual activity weakens men and women.

From left to right: Dana, Curt, Holden and Marty, Jules has just had her head cut off and it's waiting for delivery on the other side of the door. Dana and Marty get beaten up pretty badly, but survive; Holden and Curt get killed, and it seems like the should have died a couple of times before they actually succumb. Each person, as mentioned, fulfills a stereotype and each of the kids somehow fulfills that stereotype. Curt is called the athlete, and he is athletic, but when we first meet the sociology major, he's telling Dana the differences between the books on Soviet economic structures she should be reading for class; Holden appears to be just as athletic as Curt but he's labeled the scholar. The only real moment of scholarly activity we see in him is his deciphering of the Latin Dana had read from Patience's diary. How does Holden stack up as a man? He wants to watch Dana undress, but stops and does the right thing and lets everyone know about the two-way mirror; good for him, how many guys would have had a strong enough free will to overcome their inner struggle and do the right thing? But later, he and Dana are making out on the couch and Dana lets him know that she doesn't want to "go far," and he assures her that she doesn't have to do anything she doesn't want to; we could leave this scene at that, however, Marty walks by and, employing the phrase they got from Patience's diary, says out loud for the audience's benefit that Holden has a "husband's bulge" from making out with Dana. Jules and Curt had set the two up, and Holden and Dana mention that Dana has practically been sold to Holden has his wife even before they met, but they still are not married, so Holden shouldn't be participating in activities that are the husband's right.

Why does Holden die?
He does the right things, right? He doesn't peep on Dana when she's undressing, and he doesn't push her to go further than she wants, so why does he die?

Francisco de Goya's Witches Sabbath, not the painting hanging in Holden's bedroom in the cabin, but it does show (as we better see when Dana looks at it) how it presents the goat as a religious figure. In the cabin painting, there is a very large goat surrounded by a great pack of dogs and hunters and the goat is being torn to pieces by the dogs. This is how it should be in life, instead of the goat tearing people apart, us apart. Satan is the allegorical goat figure, and the dogs are the "dogs of God," the Dominicans (Latin for dogs of God, and it's okay to use Latin because Patience uses Latin in her diary). The religious will tear apart Satan as the dogs tear apart the goat, but Holden and Dana are disturbed by the painting because they don't realize the importance of what it depicts, which is the victory that they should have in their spiritual life but because they don't that is precisely why they are so easily victimized for their sins/vices.

As Marty pointed out, he got the "husband bulge" from making out with Dana; now we can say that in and of itself that's not enough because a zombie pulls him through the black room floor whereto Holden and Dana escape, but Holden escapes the zombie grip so why does the zombie in the back of the rambler get him through the throat?

Before Holden found this mirror, there was a painting covering this section of the wall that he decided to take down (discussed above), revealing the mirror. Holden pounds on the wall and lets Dana know to stop undressing and he shows everyone the mirror and Holden offers to switch rooms with Dana so she won't have to worry about him looking at her so they switch. Dana just gets into the room and turns around to face the mirror and Holden has started undressing... intentionally? Come on, he should have known that Dana wouldn't have had the time to get the mirror covered back up, but he takes off his shirt and starts taking off his pants, and Dana can't look away, well, she finally does, (exhibiting the same sexual appetites that the guy did, which is why she's attacked by a werewolf later, no sin, vice or crime is EVER forgotten in a horror film) and Holden tempting Dana with his body, the way Jules will do later with her little dance, is one of the reasons why Holden isn't a great guy.

Holden has a sharp object rammed through his throat meaning, symbolically, he wants Dana to give him oral sex and just wanting that is enough to get him killed. A film can't say something like that, but it can show us. That zombie (and we saw the bloody hand print of it when the kids first got in with Curt to try and escape) had been lurking in the back of the "rambler" the whole time, just like Holden's thoughts on how far he might get with Dana lurking in the back of his mind, rambling around back there. Holden has started dehumanizing Dana the same way Curt dehumanized Jules because Dana starts thinking out loud about what's been happening to them and Holden thinks she's going crazy instead of listening to how she's pieced everything together.

Holden being pulled up by one of the Buckners through the floor where he and Dana had escaped to.  I can't quite remember, but I think Dana saves Holden in this scene, using various devices in the black room--the Buckners' own torture room--against them. Why is this possible, to use the red-neck zombie family's own tools against them? Because they did not use them justly, as Patience mentions in her diary about what her brothers did to the strangers. They were probably innocent (at least innocent) and the brothers were killing the strangers for excitement (they get the husband bulge over their unnatural excitement of death and torture), and this is why the torture implements can be used against them.

Why, towards the end, is it that Dana gets attacked by a werewolf? The film does a great job of being consistent with people getting attacked by what they themselves are, and Dana getting bitten by that werewolf just before she's ready to shoot Marty to "save the world," is a reminder of what Dana did when Holden switched rooms with her and she saw him taking his clothes off in the mirror and she was watching (and basically drooling over) him. Dana was acting as the sexual predator which is usually attributed to men. Which brings us to the merman.

One very old depiction of a merman.

How many of us had heard of mermen before this film? Again, The Cabin In the Woods was made in 2009, but writing for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides with the man-eating mermaids was being written at the same time, so the flipping between the mermaids sexuality and the man's sexuality corresponds to Dana being bitten by the werewolf which usually happens to men.

Marty, Curt and Jules in the cellar. It is an interesting situation how they get down there. They are playing truth or dare and Marty dares Jules to make out with the wolf. It's then Dana's turn and before Dana can say if she wants truth or dare, Curt says, "Truth," and reasons that Dana always chooses truth because she's too chicken to do the dare, so, using her free will which has been seriously impeded by peer pressure at this point (to say the least) Dana says "Dare," and about that time, the previously unseen door to the cellar blows open and Dana is dared to go down into the cellar.

Why is the “Zombie red-neck torture family” always winning as the choice of death? The description is divided into two parts: the red-necks and the zombies, which, as the film itself points out, are two different monsters from mere, regular zombies. For my readers outside of the United States, the phrase “red-necks” is a cultural reference originally referring to farmers sunburned on their necks while working in the fields; today, however, it’s a pejorative phrase aimed at people considered “trashy” regardless of occupation. Symbolically, just as Mordecai is a false prophet, we can take the Buckners to be "false Christians," who twisted the Gospel and used force to preach rather than, like Patience will do, sacrifice themselves and use Love to preach the Gospel.

Dana after the rambler has crashed and the zombie waits to get her. Please note, if you will, the irony of a family of back hill red-necks knowing Latin--even at the age of Patience Buckner--and yet Dana doesn't, it's just nonsense to her, and many of us in the audience don't know it. This is how marginalization works in art, that which we do not know or cannot make sense of, we push off into the margins and forget about it, when, according to Jacques Derrida, those things we don't understand are the ones we should be focusing on, like the Latin incantation that raises the dead.

So the Buckners were farmers/trappers but zombies are those who go through the actions of life without any “life” in them, and this is another layer of irony about Patience Buckner, her father accused her of not believing in the true faith (being zealous), but the father and brothers were the ones mindlessly going through the sacrifices and rituals and Patience was alert to what was really happening. Patience is so alert to what is going on in life, even when she’s a zombie, she has the strength to do the right thing in making the choice the audience would and kill the director (Sigourney Weaver) who has caused all the problems (we’ll be seeing that axe again in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter). But this isn't the most important thing about Patience Buckner.

Very easy to read this: green usually means re-birth, hope; blue usually means wisdom. In Jules' and Dana's case, however, green means rotten--as in mold--and blue is symbolic of Dana's depression over her break-up with the professor. Why is this important? Sometimes, when we are depressed, it colors our choices, that is, we do things we might not normally do or we don't do things we normally would. This depression within Dana helps us to know why she choose Patience's diary to read in the cellar: she's wanting to read her own emotions and understand what happened in her failed relationship.

In the opening images of the film are scenes of human sacrifice, the Egyptians sacrificing and the Mayans and Aztecs sacrificing people to gods... but Patience sacrifices herself instead of sacrificing others, and that is the genuine human sacrifice. Why do we hear Patience telling Dana to read the Latin in her diary, or telling Marty to go for a walk? It's not, as Marty suggests, that Patience is trying to inhabit Marty's brain, rather, she's trying to save them. By the Buckners being released instead of one of the other forms of horror that they kids could have chosen, Patience (a virtue) can help them and save them even though she is dead because Patience is more alive than any of the kids.

This is how naive I am, that long silver thing Marty is holding is a bong, and I (silly me) thought it was a coffee mug, ha ha. In this shot, Dana has been getting tortured by a zombie and Marty miraculously appears and uses his bong to get the animal trap (pictured) away from the attacking zombie. This is a real problem for a horror film because, again, Marty has a problem with drugs and here he is saving the day, and I think that's a point they are hoping to make: when our legislative bodies decide to eradicate morality or redefine morality, these are the kinds of heroes we are going to be forced to accept because a council has decided how all of us should live and what the rules of survival have now become in society; what was once the horror of the horror film (unacceptable social or sexual behavior) is now heroic.

How do the items in the cellar reflect each of the characters? The necklace on the bridal gown is feminine and that’s what Jules tries to be, hence, dying her hair blond, but she's also hoping that Curt will marry her; Dana was going to take books to the cabin, so she goes for the book, the diary; Curt was playing football, so he goes for the round object that looks like a ball; Holden is there to get hooked up with Dana so that’s why he opens the jewelry box (a reference to the sexual act with her) and the ballerina refers to the awkward “mating dance” Holden and Dana are doing; Marty goes for the reels of film (he also reads the book about Nemo, after the Pixar film) so he’s always trying to get a “frame of reference” for something and that’s why he went for the movies (possibly also because of the drug culture depicted in the films, but more likely, because Marty has been feeling like something’s strange, as if they are in a horror film and that’s why he’s mentally referencing movies).

If the film is going to be consistent in saying that the control room can only get someone to do something that is all ready within them as an act of free will, how is the "gas" coming out of the ventilation system and changing Curt's idea from staying together to splitting up coherent with what control is doing? Curt isn't a natural leader, yet he's trying to be, and his inner indecision is coming through and the control room (as they would argue) is just taking advantage of that. We know Curt isn't a "natural leader," because Marty informs the audience that Curt isn't an "alpha male" which is a leader.

 The Cabin in the Woods is a movie about movies. Again, the more films you have seen, the more films you will recognize, including, I am so happy to say, the tarantula from The Incredible Shrinking Man (I told you that was important! ha ha ha! I was so happy to see it there!). This is the reason there is a control room and a space, a boundary, between "them" and "us," because horror films are rarely scary because there is the boundary there, the fourth dimension that The Cabin In the Woods successfully breaks down by Marty and Dana getting into the elevator and, just like the cubicle library of all the horror films ever made being stored, we store all the films we have seen; will they do us any good? That's for us to use our free will to decide.

I wish I could have found an image of Mordecai, the "gas station" operative who is in with the control room. Who is Mordecai? He's the "false prophet" and his Biblical name (Mordecai took care of the orphaned Esther of the same book) refers to a warrior, which is the reason why a "war" is mentioned when the kids are at his "gas station." Which war did Mordecai fight in? Marty jokes that it was the Civil War, an important reference we will be citing in later posts on other films (as this is becoming an important theme for this year) but it was probably Vietnam. Mordecai means "warrior" in Hebrew, but it can also be translated as "servant of Marduk," a pagan god, which is probably most accurate here because the ancient gods discussed in the film are the pagan gods. Mordecai, as a false prophet, can joke about the kids being "the fools of the gods," and the lambs passing the gates but just as Holden and Dana will not like the painting of the goat being attacked by the dogs, so none of the kids will listen to what Mordecai is really saying. Prophecy is always encoded language, but you can tell by the tone if it's negative or positive. The reason they control room puts him on speaker phone is because prophets should be on speaker phone, they need a general audience to hear what they have to say or it's not worth anything if no one hears the prophecy; the problem is, no one is used to prophetic language so, just like Dana skipping over the gibberish of the Latin in Patience's diary, so the control room skips over the gibberish of Mordecai's prophecy and him in general. He's a false prophet because instead of leading people towards good and towards God, Mordecai delivers them to the ancient evil (the opposite of the Mordecai of the Book of Esther who helped her to deliver her people from death). Remember, a house (or in this case, a dirty disgusting gas station) is a symbol for the soul: the dead animals and grime lets us know exactly what Mordecai is all about and the blood-shot eye means there is "blood" in his "prophetic vision." Mordecai can also say, accurately, that they have gas to get to the cabin, but they won't have enough gas to get back from the cabin, symbolically meaning that they have the inner energy to go to the cabin because of their anticipation for a good time, but after they have been there, they will not have the strength of free will to return and lead the life they need to in order to avoid becoming what they have all ready become.

 Looking back on the year when we get to December, I think I will remember The Cabin In the Woods as one of the most significant films of the year because of the moral impeccability of standards it offers us as well as its call to action for us to make sure that we are not falling into the animal traps of the Buckners when we entertain our animal passions, but we are truly worthy of being the heroes, not just for surviving a horror film, but life itself.

Had to get one more important picture in that was just posted to Twitter; this is Sitterson in the control room and behind him is "the list" employees at the "center" for insuring sacrifices to the ancient gods can bet on regarding which form of death the kids in the cabin will choose (yes, this is a total betting pool like the Super Bowl or something; please click on the image for greater detail). I still have some observations I am wanting to add to this post--it was such a great film, really, it'll be one of the most important of the year!--but I have to get Lockout up first. As always, thanks!

Sorry For The Delay

As you may or may not know, I sometimes take care of a man who has Alzheimers disease and I have been sitting with him. He has had some needs these last few days, so I apologize for not getting posts up; it means a great deal to me that you visit this blog and I genuinely try to keep something new up all the time, but I needed to put his needs first, so, again, I do apologize for the delays. The good news is, I saw Lockout and it was NOTHING like I thought it was going to be from the trailer! I'm starting to get the idea that Hollywood hates Obama....
Posts are coming, promise, and thank you for your patience!

I Saw The Cabin In the Woods

It was pretty good. It wasn't scary and it did have funny moments, but it was intended to be a cultural statement on the United States, not really a horror film. As you know, my greatest level for attraction is for film that is self-aware, and The Cabin In the Woods certainly is! There are lots of issues to discuss, so I am getting that post up asap! (By the way, if you are going to go and see it, could you pay attention to the Latin in the diary for me? I was so busy writing stuff down that I missed it!).

Build My Gallows High: Out Of the Past

Many would argue, and successfully, that if you were going to see only one movie from the film noir genre, Jacques Tourner's 1947 crime drama Out Of the Past should be it. Before World War II, heroes were heroes, they killed the enemy and protected the ones they loved and their homeland while risking their own life; that’s still the definition of a hero today, but during World War II, something dark was creeping into the idea of the hero, many in film simply call him “the anti-hero,” but that’s not enough, it’s far more complex than that. The “dirty war” American men were fighting was rubbing off on them and they couldn’t be rid of. Tournier’s 1946 classic film noir Out of the Past perfectly illustrates how even if you don’t pull the trigger, just being an accomplice is enough to get you killed because you’re all ready dead.

The opening is a road sign, and each destination is some place in the film where we are going to be taken, except one: Bridgeport, Los Angeles, Lake Tahoe, Reno and Bishop, and it’s the last of these places, named after a religious leader (a bishop who leads a flock) that we are NOT going to visit in the film. Whit (Kirk Douglas) is not “white,” and even though he runs people and the show, and even tells Jeff (Robert Mitchum) that he’s “back in the fold,” (as if Whit’s a shepherd), there is no high spot for moral integrity and that’s the point.

It takes a real smooth actor to pull off a part like Whit Sterling: he seems like a rich patsy, but you always know that he didn't get rich being a patsy, and while does seem to like people thinking he's a patsy, he doesn't like to be taken as one.

“The boy,” as he is called throughout the film, is “deaf and dumb,” but not so dumb; his inability to hear means that he’s the role into which the audience fits, because just like him, we are not going to hear everything that’s being said. If, like him, we can manage to “read lips,” and read between the lines, we might pick up on it, but the chances are, we don’t want to. The most important parts of the story are those lurking within the shadows and we just don't want to go there.

Miss Kathie Moffat, played by Jane Greer, one of many successfully wicked femme fatales of the era. What is the essence of the femme fatale, the fatal woman? A dumb man. Instead of being what a woman should be, like Kathie's counterpart Ann, Kathie is the gorgeous woman men want to be a saint, but never will; with looks like hers, she knows she can get away with murder, even several murders, and she almost does. Whereas Kathie leads men into darkness--call her Eve--the women like Ann were trying to lead men back into the light of reason and truth, that's why shadows play such an important role in film noir. Please note how her gloves cover her hands, the symbol of strength, because her strength comes from hiding her strength, and we'll see this again with the fur coat.

It’s an important illusion the title: Out of the Past makes it sound like it happened years ago, but in fact, it was still taking place. In film noir, there are usually two women, and one of them might only be an ideal (hence, an absent figure from the story line) or it might be that one woman has a dual image, as in The Maltese Falcon, but the reason it’s important is because one woman will symbolize what America was before the war, the ideal, innocent and beautiful; the other woman will be what America had become because of the war and, like Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer) of Out Of the Past, she will claim she had no choice about it, just as America not really having a choice about entering World War II.

There are just too many fabulous shots in the film to narrow it down to one "iconic" shot for the film, but this shot certainly portrays for us the concept of relationships in film noir: there are nearly never two people really present together at the same time. She's looking at him, and he's looking away from her; other times, it's reversed, although Kathie does a good job of looking at people, especially men, because how else will she know how far she can play them? Even when two people are looking at each other, they are never nearly "on the level" with each other, but at lest one is also figuring out a way to frame  or get out of a frame. The only thing higher than the body count in a film noir is the cigarette count.

The moment of “real poison” for Jeff, when he decides to go ahead and fall for Kathie, is when they have gone back to her place for the first time and they are running through the rain. She puts a towel over his head and starts drying his hair, hard. Then he does it to her, throwing the towel, knocking over the only light in the room and the door flying open, letting in the storm. Kathie drying Jeff’s hair so hard that he calls out to her to stop could be taken almost as a “brainwashing,” since hair symbolizes our thoughts, and Kathie is drying them like a washerwoman with a wash board, getting rid of any doubts Jeff might have.

Jeff can’t do that to Kathie because, even now as she will say at the end of the story, “she’s running the show” and she’s all ready decided she wants to run off with Jeff she just has to lead him in that direction of making him think it's his idea. When Jeff takes the towel and throws it onto the lamp, knocking it over, Jeff is “putting out the light of reason” that tells him if she used Whit, she’ll use him. When the door flies open and the storm comes in, that’s the door to Jeff’s heart, and he’s let Kathie and the stormy emotions she brings with her in through the front door.

A great moment of really seeing Kathie is when she thinks no one sees her. I think this is only one of two moments in the film when we see Kathie without being with someone else (the other being when she's finished packing and is leaving her room in the Tahoe home). In this scene, on Telegraph Hill, Kathie calls to make sure the lawyer Leonard Eels is dead and someone has found the body. Contributing to the murder of a man and Jeff's frame to send him to prison, Kathie casually goes to the fridge to get something to drink. Talk about taking care of her animal instincts! Jeff, of course, is in the dark about being framed but then, overhearing Kathie's phone conversations, brings him into the light.

Do Kathie and Jeff deserve each other? When Kathie and Jeff have a final drink together in Whit’s Tahoe home, and Jeff throws the glass into the fireplace, Jeff has “shattered” his own idea about being able to go back to Ann. We’ll see this exact same dilemma repeated in Shane with Alan Ladd in 1953. Yet, there was a lead up to Jeff breaking the glass: when Jeff meets Ann in the woods, the dead branches of the trees casting shadows upon them, showing the cracks and crevices in them better than any dialogue could, because the strain of trying to come out of “the frame” that Whit put on him was cracking Jeff just like the glass he would shatter, and the reports of Jeff killing two men had cracked Ann and her faith in Jeff.

Shadows give us the shadow of a person's true identity, either it can be the "dark side" of a person coming through or the darkness within them emerging, as with Kathie in this scene as she watches Jeff and his old detective partner fight. The shadows are bringing out the bad in her, and Tourneur has her smile while watching the two men fight, letting us clearly know that shes an animal and she's not being forced to do anything as she usually claims to abort her responsibility. There's an even more sinister side to this scene, if possible. It's reminiscent of Jeff and Kathie going to her place in Acapulco, but the man Jeff fights is a psychological projection of his own self that is now having doubts about Kathie (his old partner that he double-crossed makes a nice counter-balance to what Kathie is turning Jeff into). For example, in Acapulco, Jeff didn't like to gamble, but in San Francisco, we see Jeff and Kathie at the horse race when his old partner sees him, which indicates that Jeff has been doing some self-reflection on himself and Kathie; opening Kathie's check book and seeing the $40,000 balance assures us that his doubts were well-founded. Jeff fighting with his double--the part of him doubting his relationship with Kathy--is only a fight, until Kathie kills that part of him and leaves Jeff to bury him. That's just what she did to Whit, but Whit didn't have the "wit" (intelligence) to realize that she had killed a part of him, too, he just wanted her back.

What about Kathie?
Tourneur did a great job with pacing Kathie’s character for us, specifically her clothes. When we first see her, she’s wearing a white dress and hat, the picture of lovely innocence. When Jeff has gone to Telegraph Hill, after finding Eel's dead body, and hears Kathy on the phone, she’s wearing a sleeveless fur coat, the fur for her animal appetites that Whit’s money provides for and the sleeveless coat because she’s hiding her strength from Jeff and Whit (arms symbolize strength) no one being quite sure how Kathie will “play her hand” because her hand is hidden.

Many good critics will describe the "balance of good and evil" presented in this shot by the shadows and Kathie in the background, but that's nearly non-existent for me. Over Jeff's left shoulder is the painting of the Renaissance woman I was describing, and we see Kathie in her oddest outfit (one person even described it as "saintly garb,"); with Whit's dead body on the other side of the couch on the floor, Jeff knows exactly what's coming for him. The saying, behind every strong man is a strong woman could be invoked in this scene, because behind every bad man is a bad woman. The rule of art is that no one dies who shouldn't die, no one dies who isn't all ready dead. We can't say that Jeff Bailey/Jeff Markham is a good hero because he dies, he has committed crimes (maybe not as bad as the others, but he hasn't done anything good, either) and that association with evil and crime is what the tainted man of the film noir is about; it's not that redemption skipped Jeff Bailey/Jeff Markham, it's that Jeff skipped redemption. Gates and boundaries are also used extensively in the film, and the couch separating Jeff from Whit's dead body is just one more example of that.

When Jeff goes into Whit’s Tahoe home at the end, and finds Whit’s dead body on the floor, on the wall behind Jeff is the beautiful portrait of a woman who appears to be in Renaissance-era clothes. The painting is a fabulous “plant” because it reminds us that Jeff still thinks of Kathie has being like that woman in the painting, in spite of everything, until finding Whit's dead body, anyway: a woman of beauty and grace, yet Jeff knows it was Kathie who killed Whit. And then Kathie comes wearing that odd last outfit, the strange dark color and the odd, Renaissance style hat, absolutely contradicting the graceful woman in the portrait. The painting gives us a portrait of a true lady, whereas Kathie has "dressed up" her murder of Whit in the "noble" concept that she did it for them, when we know the threats that Whit had made against her for taking the rap for the murders and his threatening to have her killed. But no matter how Kathie dresses up her motive, it's murder.

Jeff picking up Ann at her parents' house, she standing on one side of the gate and he on the other. There is also the scene when Jeff stands outside the gates of Whit's Tahoe home and other, minor moments that contribute to boundaries and trespasses.

The structure of opposition is well played in the film. When we first see Ann and Jeff, there is a threat of rain, but they aren’t going to go in; with Jeff and Kathie, there is rain and they do go in; Ann and Jeff are fishing for fish, but Jeff and Kathie are “fishing” for each other. Ann lights Jeff’s cigarette for him, whereas Jeff lights his own cigarette when he’s with Kathie. Jeff hides with Kathie in a city, San Francisco, to avoid the thug Whit, but hides in the woods with Ann to avoid the law and the agent Jim. Both Kathie and Ann have other men interested in them and Jeff is just the middle guy, not as bad as Whit but not as good as Jim. Jeff has the “deaf and dumb” boy to help him, and Whit has Joe who is his own brand of deaf and dumb.  We could go on, but we don’t need to, the attraction of opposites is perfectly structured to weave the viewer into a claustrophic narrative.

Is Ann really going behind Jim's back to see Jeff? It might be that it's only a one-sided affair, Jim's side, but there does seem to be them sneaking around with each other, from Marny's dialogue about them (in the cafe), and that, too, would mirror Jeff and Kathie sneaking around behind Whit's back. There's another interesting aspect of  "fishing" used in Out of the Past:  Whit's thug, Joe, follows the boy from Tahoe to the river and, seeing Jeff, Joe pulls out his gun to shoot, with the boy using his fishing line to "reel Joe into" the water (rocks) below and save Jeff. This is a great trick by the director, because we are meant to identify with the boy, and our pulling for Jeff (because he's the main character and hence, the one we identify with) is what saves him in this scene because Joe's shot should have plugged him.

What about Ann?
Jim saying he grew up with Ann and fell in love with her when he fixed her roller skates is a clear symbol construction for Ann as the America of our hearts, the America before World War II. Jim, being a police officer, is what Jeff himself should have been, but got turned and ended up with Kathie.  Is it a good ending? Yes and no, but it’s not a satisfying ending. It’s not that Kathie and Jeff deserve each other, but they deserve justice, and the failure of the hero being redeemed is the unsatisfactory aspect of the ending, but one that would be employed continuously throughout the next ten years or more. Ann going off with Jim is justice, he’s a good man who loves her.

This is my favorite part of the film, Jeff has gotten back into Bridgeport to see Ann for the last time, and the branches are casting shadows over them in a "puzzle" effect that really shows how fragmented the strain of Jeff's past has created on them. It can be argued that both characters are defying what I said earlier, that two characters are never really present together, but Jeff knows how bad he is, and that's all he's really thinking about, and all Ann can think about is Kathie and how Kathie is coming between them, even in this, their last moment together.

Jeff does, at the end, make the phone call to set-up Kathie and try to bring her to justice; does that redeem him? No, by the film's own standards, because he should have made that phone call years ago, and if he had then redemption could have been his and he and Ann could have been married and he could have had that lakeside cottage. But that's not how it all played out, because the whole time, Jeff was playing his own hand, just like Kathie.

The last shot of the film with the small church in the background.

It can be argued, and I will, that I made a mistake; we do go to Bishop, or at least we have the option of going. In the last shot, when "the boy" is walking away from the camera, he walks towards an old church in the distant background, perhaps one that has been abandoned for years. Are we going to go the direction of Jeff Bailey/Jeff Markham, or will we go the way of the boy, the role we have been given in the film by the director. Out of the Past shows us the consequences of what was happening to the country and the people in the country and it leaves us with that choice that we have to make.