In Which Johnny Depp And Amber Heard Look Through The Glass

Wonderland Diary

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Alice Through the Looking Glass
dir. James Bobin
113 minutes

Alice Kingsleigh (Mia Wasikowska) is a ship's captain for an international conglomerate. It is unclear what exactly she has done to earn such a title, but she is clearly good at what she does. She returns to the firm's partners with pressing news about possible new trade routes. They tell her actually this is her last voyage and women should stay at home where they belong.

Dispirited, Alice strolls into a mirror and reverts to her childhood self, as some of us are wont to do. She finds Johnny Depp wearing some appalling makeup. Depp is in the midst of a psychiatric episode, but he thinks everyone else is the crazy one. Director James Bobin and producer Tim Burton probably should have seen this coming from their friend. Dressing an abuser up in disturbed facepaint and making him appear like a lonely old crank fits basically with what we know of Depp's recent behavior.

When Depp left his partner of fourteen years, Vanessa Paradis, and later asked her to explain that he did not actually strike a woman she knows nothing about, Amber Heard, he did not lock himself up in a house like the Mad Hatter. He probably did wear makeup to look younger, for although Depp made an incredible amount of money from Walt Disney Pictures, he no longer possesses the youthful vibrancy which propelled his understated acting style in the early days.

At least with the Mad Hatter in 2010's Alice in Wonderland, there was a joie de vivre that obscured whatever disturbed sadness was at the heart of this father of two. In Alice Through the Looking Glass it could not be more clear we are viewing a deeply unhappy person in the guise of a children's comedian. It is not unlike watching the last days of Pee-Wee Herman's Playhouse or the time Mr. Rogers made that little girl cry.

The theme of Alice Through the Looking Glass is the oldest sexism imaginable: it is that women have no particular goals or person without men to serve in some fashion. In order to make the Mad Hatter happy again, Alice plans to journey into the past to prevent the events that led him to become sad. To accomplish that, she contacts Time (Sacha Baron Cohen), in a career move even more perplexing than The Brothers Grimsby.

At one point or another Amber Heard posted these really sad videos of her in bed. She is nude and in bed, but there is nothing really close to sexy about them. The viewer quickly realizes they are the desperate work of a profoundly lonely and unhappy person. Why she married such an older man in the first place would be unclear if Depp's personality were not just as manic as her own. Such individuals can never find a concord within each other, and are all extremes.

The couple took their Yorkshire terriers Pistol and Boo to Australia. It never seemed like such a big deal at the time, although they might easily have afforded a dogsitter. What was most reprehensible was the tongue-in-cheek apology video they were forced to record by the Australian government, where they both revealed themselves as half-chastened, half-impudent children. "If everybody minded their own business,' the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, "the world would go round a deal faster than it does."

Alice Through the Looking Glass posits that there is some utility in returning to what we were as children. This operates in a few ways: Alice is able to surmount any fear, apprehension or anxiety in decision-making. Alice has many friends who refuse to judge her and she doesn't judge them, either. Finally, the vocabulary the now-adult Alice uses in Underland is completely altered; by not having to use adult words she defuses the basic power of rhetoric. In Underland a regressive emotionality always triumphs.

After Alice Through the Looking Glass dispenses with its timely version of pretend feminism, it becomes essentially a time-travel film. In this confused movie's best scene, the Mad Hatter meets Alice for the first time when she might be meeting him for the last time. Sadly, neither has much to say to each other, since their relationship is more about the anxious enjoyment we exchange with people who we admire rather than a genuine connection.

Was this what brought Heard and Depp together in the first place? After the judge's preliminary hearing on the divorce proceedings, some awful photographer took a picture of Amber weeping in her car. Whatever form it took, Depp's abuse of her is an terrible, disgusting thing, and he seems to know it because he immediately made all his friends vouch for what a kind, gentle soul could throw a phone at another human being's head.

I was actually surprised to see Amber so affected by the proceedings. I have witnessed that when people are angry at each other in relationships it can turn to hate, disgust and disrespect almost instantly, but I find it so difficult to forget or abandon feelings of love, or even respect. Depp's decision to drag his children into the process — kids who naturally loathed their mother's replacement and heard Depp's now-deceased mother denigrate her on many occasions — was an interesting choice. Depp's only concern now is the impact this publicity will have on his career of marketing literature from disturbed old men not entirely dissimilar to himself as entertainment for young girls.

It makes sense that the infantile people who produced Alice Through the Looking Glass would see no real difference between childhood and adulthood. For that reason Alice's journey comes across as incredibly cynical, and her deliberate abandonment of the real world and real struggles for an alternate, fantasy universe quite cowardly. The children who wandered into Narnia did so by accident, and they stayed there out of love and necessity. Alice escapes to Underland when she doesn't get her way, and she stays there because it feels good.

This essential hedonism was possibly all that Johnny Depp and Amber Heard shared. In pictures the two genuinely look alike despite the difference in their age. Even the tone and structure of their bodies, from facial features to bone structure mirrors each other. Could that have been their biggest difficulty? We do not want exactly what we already have – or maybe we do, but not for so long.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

"Faint of Heart" - Tegan & Sara (mp3)

In Which We Sample Nostalgia From 2005

Our Actual Life

by ALICE BOLIN

21 Jump Street
dir. Phil Lord & Chris Miller
109 minutes

Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s remake of 21 Jump Street begins with a large title reading “YEAR 2005,” and Morton Schmidt (Jonah Hill) appears dressed in a style that has not been lampooned enough: peroxide blond Caesar haircut, white t-shirt, preposterous baggy jeans. It earns Schmidt the nickname “Not-So-Slim Shady,” and he is a dead ringer for that kid — every mid-2000s student body had someone who looked exactly like him. Just the sight of him in this get-up makes for its own comedic beat, but the humor catches us off guard — how could a look that was so ubiquitous to high school campuses and 7-11s seven years ago be so absurd now, such an easy laugh? Was 2005 really that long ago?

The point of 21 Jump Street is that it was a long time ago, and all the rules — of going to high school, or making a movie, or making a movie about high school — have changed since then. Schmidt and his partner Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum) are undercover cops assigned to investigate the manufacture and distribution of a mysterious hallucinogenic drug at a high school, and they learn that the social order is not so clear-cut as when they were in school. Back in ’05, Jenko was a jock who made fun of the nerdy Schmidt, but this binary of cool and uncool doesn’t apply in the same way at the school they’re infiltrating. And what a relief that is for the film’s audience — who could possibly be interested in that dynamic anymore?

The cool kids at their new school are crunchy and progressive, led by Eric (Dave Franco), who was accepted to Berkeley “early admish” and has a biodiesel Mercedes that runs on left over grease from Hunan Palace. He tells Schmidt that he and his girlfriend are not exclusive — “I just don’t believe in possession, jah feel?” — and plays a song about Mother Earth on his acoustic guitar. Schmidt, once a member of his high school’s Juggling Society, is thrilled at how the tables have turned, as he catalogs with wonder the things that are now considered cool: liking comic books, environmental awareness, being tolerant. Former jock Jenko is not so excited. “Organized sports are so fascist. It makes me sick!” Eric yells after a track meet. “I don’t get this school,” Jenko says.

Jenko claims to know why high school has changed: Glee. “Fuck you, Glee!” he yells in the lunchroom. But we may see this more broadly as part of Judd Apatow’s late-2000s loser coup, a real life revenge of the nerds that we ultimately have to thank for the phrase “Academy Award Nominee Jonah Hill.” This shift is an important reason why 2005 is so distant: the string of films Apatow produced in 2007 and 2008 revolutionized the stoner comedy, the high school comedy, and the buddy comedy. It’s Apatow’s classic but short-lived Freaks and Geeks, resurrected and taking revenge on the network suits who didn’t get it, with Knocked Up and Pineapple Express (freaks) and Superbad (geeks) reclaiming things for themselves.

A key feature of these Apatow productions is the study in male best friendship. As with all depictions of close male companionship, there is an element of the homoerotic (Frodo and Sam, hi), but in the bromance, it is not read indirectly, with sexual tension permeating through the friends’ brooding or aggression. It is not properly a subtext at all — bromance relationships are overtly tender, and how gay they are for each other is, you know, the joke.

With Jenko and Schmidt, it’s true love: they strap gun holsters under their ivory tuxedoes as they prepare to take down the drug dealers once and for all at the prom. “Jenko,” Schmidt says, looking over at him. “Will you go to prom with me?” At the end of the film, Jenko jumps in front of Schmidt and takes a bullet in the shoulder. Schmidt leans over him on the ground and says sweetly, “I fucking cherish you.” After they are forced to take the mystery drug at school, they run to the bathroom, desperate to throw it up. Their attempt to purge each other, sticking their fingers in each other’s mouths and making loud choking groans, is kinky as hell.

Where 21 Jump Street succeeds is in applying new conventions to old genres. This is a reboot, after all. Nick Offerman makes a hilarious cameo as the gruff captain who assigns them to the undercover division. They are reviving an old undercover program from the ‘80s, he tells them — “The guys in charge of this stuff have no creativity or imagination. All they do now is recycle shit from the past and expect us all not to notice.” The filmmakers seem aware of how silly remaking 21 Jump Street is — they share the reservations that have made reviewers and audiences unable to report that the movie is good without employing the word “actually.” “Report to Jump Street,” Offerman tells Jenko and Schmidt meaningfully. “37 Jump Street… No that doesn’t sound right.”

Ice Cube portrays the head of Jump Street, Captain Dickman (in the tradition of Ice-T, a once terrifying gangster rapper playing a police officer. Rappers get irony.), who describes himself as the stereotypical angry black captain. “Embrace your stereotypes,” he advises the future undercover officers. In some ways, the film employs this advice, taking the path of least opposites-attract comedy resistance. There is the standard training montage as Jenko and Schmidt go through the police academy, with brainy Schmidt helping Jenko with his exams, and sporty Jenko helping Schmidt with the physical requirements. Each has what the other lacks — it is the movie’s prevailing cliché. At the end of the film, Jenko describes what he has learned about covalent bonds in chemistry class. “It’s when atoms share electrons,” he explains. “They both need what the other has, and that makes them stick together.”

In other cases, though, expected tropes are played with and subverted. Ellie Kemper plays the chemistry teacher who is instantly, ravenously taken with Jenko. Her deranged advances are scene stealing, but she figures into the movie’s plot almost not at all. It is as if she exists simply because a horny teacher is something that would exist in a high school movie — even if it’s a trope that the filmmakers ultimately decide not to make use of. Other characters are comically under-used — the other officers in the Jump Street division, played by Rye Rye and Dakota Johnson, are shown from time to time wearing cheerleading or marching band uniforms and bragging about the cases they’ve closed, seemingly as effective at their jobs as Schmidt and Jenko are inept. We get the feeling that there is any number of possible storylines, that a lot of the action is happening just off-screen.

It turns out that 21 Jump Street is ideal for the tongue-in-cheek remake, as it was both a high school drama and a police procedural — two genres that are ripe for parody. But the crime fighting in the film seems less influenced by 21 Jump Street than the maverick cops in Die Hard, a franchise that envisioned police officers who said the word “motherfucker” more than any had before. The main bad guys in 21 Jump Street are a gang of motorcycling drug dealers with face tattoos, and they aren’t really sources of comedy — they are straightforwardly terrifying. As the film takes a turn for the graphically violent toward the end, there is another layer of genre that the filmmakers are referring to and reckoning with: the action film.

These different genre elements mingle and combust. In the final shoot-out at a hotel room during the prom, two members of the motorcycle gang reveal themselves to be undercover DEA agents — played by Johnny Depp and his former 21 Jump Street cast-mate Peter DeLuise. Depp’s character yells at Schmidt and Jenko for ruining the DEA investigation. “We had no idea,” Schmidt apologizes. “You’re an amazing actor, man.” Schmidt and Jenko reveal that they’re in the Jump Street division, forging a camaraderie with Depp’s and DeLuise. “You know we were actually Jump Street?” Depp’s character asks. All this self-consciousness is too much and Depp and Grieco are both shot to death during this banter. It is an inevitable and perversely satisfying consequence of taking on so many influences: the features of one genre will not allow for the features of another.

At one point, Jenko and Schmidt are in a car chase with the drug dealers, and they shoot holes in an oil tanker and a truck carrying cans of propane. In both cases, they’re amazed that the truck does not blow up — ultimately it’s a collision with a chicken truck that causes the explosion. This dynamic, of the explosions they anticipate versus the one they actually get, speaks to the careful game of expectations. It’s a kind of gentle parody: if they are poking fun at the conventions of genre, it is as admiring as it is critical. “We’re like in the end of Die Hard right now, but it’s our actual life,” Schmidt says to Jenko after their final triumph over the bad guys. In the end, there’s something remarkably hopeful about 21 Jump Street — that a comedy can use the best parts of Die Hard and leave the rest. That high school can be something more than jocks and nerds, and a high school movie can be too.

Alice Bolin is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Missoula. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here. She tumbls here and twitters here. She last wrote in these pages about Anna Pavlova.

"The Chamber & the Valves" - Dry the River (mp3)

"Weights & Measures" - Dry the River (mp3)

In Which We Enter Hell Through The Back

Onwards Satanic Soldiers

by ELEANOR MORROW

I still remember being dragged to the movies by a boy I had liked, or thought I liked. I knew absolutely nothing about what we were about to see. That would never happen today - the vast majority of films we see we know something about: a trailer, a story from the set, a history. But I was more interested in the boy than the film. This is what I surely thought, but turned out to be wrong completely.

It's rare that critics totally miss on a film, but from the moments that Wojciech Kilar's haunting score takes over in one of the greatest title sequences in cinematic history, these hacks missed on The Ninth Gate. God knows they should never underestimate Roman Polanski, one of our finest working directors, but they did, and North America missed the best film noir since Miller's Crossing.

I don't blame them, or the boy I saw the film with, for not getting it. Most people can't accept drama and comedy together, and adding a dash of horror stirs the pot to an almost unrecognizable place. There's the example of David Mamet's The Edge: director Lee Tamahori flatly misunderstood the script, and a hilarious satire never got the laughs it deserved.

An unsympathetic protagonist is the common element in both of these films. Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) is a specialist in the rarest of rare books. The opening scene of the film has him appraising a family's collection, picking off what he likes from it, and telling them all the rest of the collection is ten times as valuable as it really is. Critics have no use for sleazy antiheros, because their business is the sleaziest of all.

Depp and Polanski didn't argue about how he should play the malignant tumor that is Dean Corso, but Roman later admitted he didn't know his star would be so laid back with his performance. What was in the director's head might have made The Ninth Gate more money, but it would have made it a lesser film. Depp made a brave choice, and in doing so, created a hilarious not-Philip Marlowe that is more entertaining to watch than a debonair Daniel Craig. Understated is so rare in our cinema today that we should throw a party every time it happens.

Boris Balkan (a pitch perfect Frank Langella) hires Corso to appraise the four extant copies of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, a book by a writer named Torchia that contains nine engraved illustrations. When correctly deciphered and matched, the illustrations are supposed to raise Lucifer himself.

This is Balkan's goal, so believing only one of the copies real, he gives Corso one of the copies and asks him to prove it genuine or fake. He covers his expenses to find out if the other two copies are real, too. Corso immediately hangs out with an antiquarian bookseller, who is murdered in short order in a fashion that simulates one of the engravings in a book. He is treading a dangerous path, but who is after him?

From then on, Corso meanders through Europe on Balkan's say-so, while himself trying to figure out what exactly Balkan wants, and what sort of book this is. It's a mature premise, and that's where Liza Schwarzbaum's impossibly tiny brain got tripped up. Who could guess that this was a comedy? Since I didn't even have a college education at the time, I can vouch that it didn't take much.

I don't say I have such a great sense of humor. If I find something funny, I laugh, even if the music is dramatic and Johnny Depp has an expression on his face like he just smelled Kate Moss after a coke binge. The Ninth Gate starts as one kind of movie, and then it becomes several more. It resists genre, flauts genre, answers to something that is at once sillier and all too real. Everyone is evil and crazy here, which adds to the ludicrousness of the proceedings. There are more laughs in this movie than in the entire first season of Parks & Recreation.

People behave according to their baser motives, and they're not terribly good at hiding them is one of the lessons of this tale, and that's why Depp is right to hold back - we must at least guess what the mercenary Dean Corso is thinking and doing. Most of modern drama depends on us knowing more than our protagonist. In The Ninth Gate, compared to Dean, we know less, much less.

Connection with the devil herself is always dangerous business, but why should it be? We speak to God every day, or some of us do, but we can never commune with the devil. Do our interests never coincide with those of the devil? What if the devil found Amy Adams' nude scene from Sunshine Cleaning and posted it on its blog? Would we be violating ourselves if we viewed it and left a comment like, "thanks for the upload, devilbro"? Answer: not in the least.

At the beginning of the movie, we can't imagine why someone would want to go to Hell, to know the power that it offers and willingly set out on this dark road. By then, we're totally sure we want exactly what all these insane book collectors do - a method to the madness, a way out of the starched dullness of modernity, to a darker and more destructive future, near the setting of the sun.

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here. She last wrote in these pages on the subject of The Hangover.

"Cut The Cake" - The Fiery Furnaces (mp3)

"Staring at the Steeple" - The Fiery Furnaces (mp3)

"Even in the Rain" - The Fiery Furnaces (mp3)