Rampart (Moverman, 2011)

[shariqq]

Sophomore effort from Oren Moverman, the director of The Messenger, again starring Woody Harrelson (yeah!).

The movie follows veteran police officer Dave Brown (Harrelson), the last of the renegade cops, as he struggles to take care of his family, and fights for his own survival.



The movie also stars Robin Wright, Sigourney Weaver, Steve Buscemi, Anne Heche, Ben Foster in supporting roles.

From the initial words at Toronto International Film Festival, can't wait to see this. Considering Moverman directed Harrelson in his best performance I have seen to date, expect another powerhouse performance.

Link to Trailer

[kaytee]

If the clips are anything to go by, he is hitting this one out of the park too...time for Woody to get his due...

[X.]

Oren Moverman's sophomore effort is a stark, sometimes inscrutable record of LA cop Dave Brown's meltdown. Co-written by James Ellroy, the pitch-black irony and socio-political subtext of the story's place and time (Los Angeles, 1999) adds an extra tension to the elliptical structure. Bobby Bukowski's bold cinematography, the edgy editing and sound design also help to transcend "the American indie" and push RAMPART into the fringes of the avant-garde. Highly Recommended

[kaytee]

Did we watch the same film?

[fizz]

The cinematography and the editing were frankly either over the top (like the silly club scene that looked like something from Gasper Noe) or experimentally amateurish (like the scene where the camera swirls in a spiral on the faces of Harrelson, Weaver and Buscemi). I thought neither of those things worked to help set the films tone any better.

[X.]

We saw the same film, Kaytee; just differently.

Fizz, I agree with you wholeheartedly regarding that nightclub scene -- in fact, why is it that every film has to inevitably show a night of debauchery/self-destruction via a trip through the dark nasty, underground club? Whatever happened to just eating shiploads of McDonald's combos and overloading your system with sugar? Isn't that what most regular people do? That or blow their brains out? (Wait. Dave Brown tried that...then laughed!).

Re. the visual style, they take chances. Some of the techniques are gags and don't work, I admit (the nightclub scene is a misfire, noted), others are amusing (the circular panning in the conference room)....but what Moverman and cinematographer Bobby Bukowski are doing with light, framing and movement throughout the film is integrally married to the themes of the film and perfectly attuned to the mind of Woody Harrelson's Dave Brown.

RAMPART is going to be misread and under-appreciated for a while, because it offers no clear narrative and a hugely unlikeable protagonist (who begins and ends at exactly the same place -- as in, no character transformation). Most viewers do not like this. What the film has going for it, for me at least, is the absolute confidence of director Moverman and his team (particularly his actors and cinematographer) to take the theme of alienation and social maladjustment to its extreme...the subversion and masterstroke of planting the corruption within the law enforcement and justice system. Dave Brown is a walking-talking system of social dysfunction and it doesn't make any sense to him why people don't see things his way. He does not change even at the end because it does not make sense for him to change.

RAMPART is the most unexpectedly nihilist films I have seen recently. For me it's the contemporary of TAXI DRIVER, THE CONVERSATION and PLATOON set in the urban jungle of LA circa 1999. Basically, the new millennium has no place for Dave Brown.

[fizz]

Interesting comments ak, we certainly didn't see the film the way you did. I think I gave up pretty much at the half way mark and everything else was part of enduring it and keeping up with the personal policy of finishing what you started. You talk about framing - I'm interested in this. Since picking up photography, I've been interested in framing (from a portraiture point of view primarily) and I usually do very tight, but close crops in camera - but these are always straight. After the film, I commented to both kaytee and shariq about how I thought the director framed it all wrong (this is my layman perspective). The angled framing where the camera was always on the side and never facing striaght, really bothered me. This wasn't like the Dardenne's over the shoulder, silent spectator perspective, it just seemed oddly incorrect to me.

Another point is the unclear narrative. I can live with ambiguity, if there are deeper themes to read (or if I can read them). I think I completely missed the point of the film and didn't really see what it was trying to get to. There was some decent bits, but nothing noteworthy I can remember. Thematically, I was expecting a sort of anti-Serpico, but it didn't even explore that bit (about corruption), in fact it kept flirting with themes of corruption and redemption and there was a distinct lack of clarity (and this is not a good thing in my opinion).

[X.]

RAMPART's got what I call a "messy aesthetic." It's not a perfectly composed or terribly jolting film. And this its strength. It's messiness is organic and derived from two sources: 1) the shifting state of Dave Brown's life and mind; 2) the filmmakers decision-making which became more and more intuitive and less contrived because they didn't preplan everything. Kubrick and Hitchcock made films with meticulously constructed compositions (exclusively derived from preplanning). David Fincher is more or less in this category, although he's less "dramatic" and works more in subtlety. Fincher's extreme version is Michael Mann, to my mind, the king of cool sophistication and minimalism when it comes to visuals. Darren Aronofsky is on the other-other end of the spectrum. A filmmaker that wants you to believe that his hysterical filmmaking style is planned yet created in-the-moment (he fails on both accounts, in my personal view). Anyway, I seem to be digressing (always love kicking the shit out of Aronofsky!) so let me get back on point...

RAMPART is framed using wide-angle lenses which change the perspective depending on the camera's distance from the subject. If you use *long* lenses (higher focal-lengths) you compress space, and changing the camera position (bringing it closer to further away) does little to alter perspective; it mostly changes the depth of field.

Without getting technical, RAMPART used mostly wide-angle lenses and the cinematographer/director chose to frame the action from varying angels depending on what was going on in a particular *scene*; or more accurately, the intent of the scene. The lighting was also different depending on the situation (compare the lighting when Dave Brown is in his hotel room -- stark, white -- to the light at home -- moody, contrasty). Point is there is a lot of stuff going on visually, that is not necessarily in-your-face.

Sure, they make mistakes (that nightclub scene is the worst cliche), but there are subtler moments when the visual style really takes flight: the compositions of the back of the head against another's face, blocking our view, a framing device borrowed from one of my favorite American photographers William Eggleston whose influence on THE MESSENGERS and RAMPART is pretty clear; I love the fact that the director and cinematographer are borrowing, but they are borrowing from *art* not other movies. Or consider the way the film starts with Dave Brown framed in his car smoking his cigarette and ends with him smoking his cigarette...both scenes of him doing basically the same thing but the camera lenses and lighting has changed. Dave Brown is the same person he was when the film starts and he is the same person when it has ended. But the world around him has changed (the light, the lenses, etc).

I could keep going on and on, but it will take forever and I wish had forever so I could just spend 25 years focusing on film criticism, my first love, and not making fucking movies! I thought War was the toughest shit in the world; until I started making movies. Trust me, those fucks in Afghanistan have it easy! ("Date Rape" Dave Brown, on the other hand...)

[fizz]

I think the use of wide angle lenses for a suburban set film is...quite odd. One of the best uses of it (wide angle lenses) was in No Country for Old Men where it conveyed the sparse openess of the desert set scenes brilliantly. Owing to the distortion that wide angles produce, I'm surprised why it was considered in Rampart. I would think primes (like 85 or 135) would have been better suited for the job, but then I'm not really well versed with the technicality of videography. The visual elements you talk about were never really noticed by me. I thought it was a hodge podge of various techniques - most of which didn't work, narratively especially. I wasn't aware of William Eggleston or his influence (thanks for that) but if you have to know it to appreciate it, I'm not sure how good it is for the...average viewer

If I were to compare it to anything it would be (quite obviously) the brilliant Herzog version of Bad Lieutenant, which had a similar structure (not much happened, but still did) and also began and ended in much the same situation (if not place). That film however had more to say and was just fantastic to watch. Rampart, not so much in my humble opinion.

P.S. You should write more...and longer.

[X.]

Landscapes, by default, have to be shot on wide-angle lenses (to capture the wide vista). But when wide-angle lenses are use for portraiture, there is a very definite reason for it. When such lenses are used for closeups, there is distortion. BAD LIEUTENANT is the best example, because the distortion comments on the delirious/zany state-of-mind of the character in the scene (or the director!).

Anything under 35mm will be a wide-angle, but I do not think on RAMPART they went under 40mm (which is "normal").

And yes, most cinematographers like using the 50mm to 135mm range, but it is generally an American trend (also, because it's just "nicer" to look at). Most European filmmakers like normal or wide-angle lenses because it preserves the human eye's perspective and allows for the environment to become part of the portraiture (I have a mandate to use the equivalent of a 40mm on all my directorial efforts; it's more challenging but I like that creative stress and it makes me work in a novel way).

[fizz]

40mm is still....quite wide. My favourite length is 80mm (50 on a crop). I love how images look at that focal length and any film shot at that range immediately catches my attention.

[X.]

Like most things, focal lengths and lenses are a matter of taste. Also, as a side note, I do both motion and still photography and this also affects the choice of lenses. For the latter, my personal preference is almost always the 50mm (for its just-right shallow depth of field, and the slightly "boxy" framing it allows me).

Plus, remember: even if you use a full-frame lens that is a 50mm on a DX sensor (1.6x crop), you are technically on a 80mm but only in terms of *angle of view* (you lose visual information due to the narrow view) but other factors such as the depth-of-field and perspective and focal length are exactly the same as a 50mm. So, if you like a 80mm (with crop), chances are you actually like the look of the 50mm which it really is!

Anyway, I am sure we have bored others with this technical nonsense; so I will stop right now.

[shariqq]

Plus, remember: even if you use a full-frame lens that is a 50mm on a DX sensor (1.6x crop), you are technically on a 80mm but only in terms of *angle of view* (you lose visual information due to the narrow view) but other factors such as the depth-of-field and perspective and focal length are exactly the same as a 50mm. So, if you like a 80mm (with crop), chances are you actually like the look of the 50mm which it really is!

Greek!

But it was very interesting to read the layman technicality of cinematography until that para caused an overload. Do carry on here (or any other thread), the understanding of what goes on behind (or within) the camera is fascinating!

[fizz]

Since Shariq has asked to continue - I love the look that the 50mm gives, in fact, it is my go to lens for all portrait work. I am actually in the process of upgrading from the nifty fifty to the 50 1.4 soon. I already have the 30 1.4 (Sigma, not Canon) so next up is the 85 1.8 (Canon, not Sigma). Once I've got all three I'll have completely my acquisition of the poor man's holy trinity of lenses (as they are known).

[animatedude]

is it better in 3D?