Alien (1979) - ★★★★★

2024-10-03T00:46:53Z

The film sets up a dichotomy between the inorganic—the ship and its reactor filled with ornamentation we are to assume is all for the realization of profit, contrasted with its intensely human (and feline) crew. The gorgeously-rendered hull of the ship acts as a prison and its corridors restrict the possibilities of its inhabitants. And yet, among the first thing we hear from this crew is the seeds of organization, of raging against their imprisonment.

But as soon as the film establishes this dichotomy, it begins to play with it. The titular alien's nest is an organic mockery of the ship, and once the xenomorph is aboard the Nostromo it begins to cut (literally) through the metal and plastic bonds, the hyperorganic coming to dominate the machine. Eventually, the crew itself begins taking action against the machine in self-defense but from it and from their pursuer.

Ripley as a character becomes elaborated along with this dichotomy. Although she's quiet at first, not one of the crew who draws attention in the first few scenes, the more we see from her the clearer her values become. She holds life in the highest esteem, even that of Jones the cat. In doing so, she stands in opposition to the "purity" of force represented by both the Nostromo and the xenomorph. In her, we see that purity is intrinsically a false goal—the true value is always in the impurities that make us people.

Rushmore (1998) - ★★★

2024-09-20T08:40:00Z

This film is doing something interesting in presenting Max as an almost unbearable human being—someone who marries total earnestness with total pretension, self-aware enough to put on airs but not quite enough to realize how obvious it is that he's putting on airs, who once heard the phrase "fake it 'til you make it" and decided to make that his entire personality—and then tries to inspire in the viewer an affection for him. He mellows out over the course of the film, but only moderately. He's still essentially manipulative and overbearing, and one gets the sense that the only reason Margaret is even able to cope with him is a tremendous stubbornness in her own right.

The film's real argument is that Max's sheer intensity, whatever his motivations, creates a more vibrant world around him. He's responsible for everything interesting we ever see at either school, he literally speaks Guggenheim back to life, and in particular he brings color into Herman's dull world. This film is an argument for vivacity no matter the cost, for action-in-itself as an antidote to emptiness.

There's even a kind of desperation in it, just under the surface, a terror of what might happen if even for a moment you stop moving. You could even read this as a tragedy of alienation, in which a man and a boy claw feverishly at some kind of real connection only to get subsumed under an endless tide of aesthetics and activities. Are Max's plays an expression of himself, or are they just another thrashing hand seeking something real but grabbing only empty air?

House of Nettles: #rushmore

Alien (1979) - ★★★★★

Rushmore (1998) - ★★★