Best Songs of 2011

[claps hands together] Okay, let's talk about the year in music. The albums have been listened to, the articles have been read, the annual "Best Of" lists have been scoured, and my personal mixtape has been made: it's time to think about how the most interesting and even perplexing music of 2011 addresses--or, as was often the case this year, argues--with where music has been and where we think music might be going.

Before we get to the point of this article--a rundown of my picks for the best songs of the year--I want to take just a second to offer some thoughts on the year as a whole, as well as the processes by which these songs were selected:

First, the year in review.  For me, 2011 was one of the most jarringly different years in music since I started paying closer attention to annual trends in 2004.  The move towards programmed synths, pop-ambience, and dance this year hit me as a total surprise, and as the year progressed, I found the indie-mainstream's (can that be a thing?) total embrace of chillwave in particular and reverb in general to be perplexing.  Of course, the solidification of chillwave as "a thing" this year also points to what made this year so fascinating, namely: it's not really new.  The sounds embraced in 2011 by bands like Cults, Lykke Li, Foster the People, and Youth Lagoon all have immediate predecessors in Animal Collective, Deerhunter/Atlas Sound, Panda Bear, etc., all of whom have been making records with similar sounds (meaning similar uses of drone in pop song structures, reliance on spectral vocals and heavy reverb, common moves away from traditional rock song structures and arrangements) for half a decade.  In short, there's not that much new in 2011's new sounds.  And yet, the year felt not just different, but almost revolutionary.  Why?

I think the answer is in the diversity of ways the chillwave and dance movements of the past 5 or 6 years are now impacting the development of newer bands.  Even more precisely, I think the reason 2011 felt different is because 2011 was the first year in almost 2 decades that didn't bear the distinctive imprint of the alternative music movement.  For 20 years, musicians have been responding continuously--in both direct and indirect ways--to the revival of DIY, 3-chord, distorted rock-and-roll...but 20 years after Nevermind, we're running out of 30-somethings who are still willing to live with those old ghosts.  What we're hearing in 2011 is a new wave of kids, really, who seem utterly intoxicated by the scope of what rock-and-roll has been, and what we're seeing now is not a shift in allegiances, but a multiplication of inspirational sources: blues (Black Keys), folk (Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, et. al.), country, (Wye Oak), R&B (Beirut), dance (The Weeknd), electronica (Cut Copy), teen-pop (Cults), 60s garage (Secret Cities), flat-out Bruce Springsteen impersonations (The War on Drugs).  In 2011, the game changed: it ceased to be about taking indie/alternative rock approaches to your parents' record collections--which is to say, making something from back then sound like something from more recently back then--and became about incorporating the sounds of those record collections into something that sounds like now.  Of course, "now" has its keystones (the most important of which is, apparently, REVERB!), but there's still a growing sense that the music of the 2010s wants to be a thing unto itself.  And that's something we haven't really seen since, well...1991.

As for how I arrived at the "mixtape" song-list below: this year, I tried to put together songs that sounded less like what I love about rock music and more like what 2011 seems to love.  I avoided a lot of my favorite artists, and even among artists I do love (Bon Iver, Dave Bazan, Efrim Manuel Menuck), I tried to select songs that sound like this year...even if they weren't my favorites.  Anyway, enough of my rambling.  I've listed the songs below with links to YouTube for each of them.  I've also written a few sentences about why I selected each song.  I hope you like the list, and most of all, I hope you listen to it.  If you have thoughts, type them up here or shoot me an email: I would love to talk.

Take care, all.  Enjoy 2012.

Oh!  One more note: if you listen to this mix, listen to it loud.  Trust me: it's better.


1)  Cut Copy -- "Need You Now"
2 things: 1) Cut Copy is definitely not my typical cup of tea.  2) This is one of my favorite album-openers ever.  The slow build-in mixes rock-synth rhythms and dance in a way that is propulsive without seeming artificial, and peak at the second chorus is, well, wonderful.  This song changed my mind about this band--I hope it does the same for you.

2)  Cults -- "Oh My God"
This song mixes all the things Cults does well into a single track: '50s-reminiscent, dream-pop female vocals; cute-but-not-precocious teenage lyrics; big-time hooks; and a crazy-good bassline.  If you like this, you'll like everything they do.

3)  Foster the People -- "Houdini"
Foster the People won this year's Vampire Weekend award (taking the crown from reigning champ, Phoenix) as the crowd-pleasing and quirky footstomper of 2011.  I echo pretty much everyone in saying "Pumped Up Kicks" is the weakest song on Torches, but I think I'm out on an island a bit by suggesting this is the best.  I absolutely love the clipping lead guitar line, and FtP demonstrates here that they can control their dynamic ranges better than either of those other bands.  This band--and this song--deserve a pretty big share of the praise they've been getting.

4)  St. Vincent -- "Cruel"
St. Vincent has now made three really, really good albums in a row, and, for me, the element that keeps getting stronger and stronger is her confidence in her guitarwork.  If you've seen her live, you know she shreds...and her produced material is catching up.  This song is great for the story, great for the hooks, but mostly, I love it because it fuses St. Vincent's penchant for the abrasive and disjunctive with rock-solid pop song structure.

5)  Hospital Ships -- "Carry On"
This song wins the "Buyer Beware" award for 2011: great song by a mediocre band with a sub-par album. Lonely Twin is, frankly, weak...and the biggest reason is because the guitar that explodes halfway through "Carry On" is nowhere else to be found on that record.  Listen to this, love it, and use it in all your future mixtapes...but steer clear of the record.

6)  Youth Lagoon -- "Cannons"
Speaking of awards, Youth Lagoon's The Year of Hibernation wins my inaugural "Sleigh Bells Award."  Here's the thing (before you get too excited): Youth Lagoon doesn't flat-out rock the way Sleigh Bells does...but man, I cannot stop listening to this record.  It's not all that helpful to describe it--filled with teen angst, immature, melancholy, uncomfortably close to what you imagine your ex might cook up with GarageBand in their college dormroom over a weekend--but there's just a simple sonic balance to this record.  This song gets everything right: the vocals are hushed (as are just about all the vocals this year), the keys are simple, and the guitar line is maybe 5 notes altogether...but "Cannons" proves that if you've got the right melody, sometimes the most important trick is restraint.  I love this song, and I love this band.

7)  Beirut -- "East Harlem"
I love what happens with the drums and the piano at the beginning of this song.  I find the horns during the turnaround to be a bit much, but you know what: this is some of the most confident songwriting we've seen from Beirut in the last 4 years.

8)  Akron/Family -- "Light Emerges"
This one (and the next one) were the tracks I wrestled with the most for this mix.  Here's the dilemma: I totally love Akron/Family.  But, aside from my friend Graham (with whom I share half of my brain), nobody else really seems to care about them.  This tells me that when it comes to A/F, my musical sensitivity compass (or MSC, natch), is broken.  So, my thinking here is that 1) you'd be a fool not to love the bass/electric guitar drive in this song, 2) the drums are unavoidably killer, and 3) the lines "Alley cat behind a garbage can / I bet you'll never catch him / Chase him up and down the alleyway / Faster feline" is the most awesome quatrain of the year.  Anyway, I hope you dig this, and I hope you dig this band; if it helps, you should know that Graham and I are almost always right.

9)  Deerhoof -- "Super Duper Rescue Heads!"
This song is weird, sure, and it's awesomeness is also fairly apparent, right?  But the reason it's on here is that I think, in addition to being one of the most cohesive Deerhoof songs I've heard in a few years, it's a great example of where things seem to be going: the wonkiness of the synths that drive this song are not something Deerhoof would have done 5 years ago...but it makes total sense now.  There's less of a rock underpinning here and more of something else...and that something else (whatever it is) is a lot more fun for this particular band.  I like "SDRH!" because it sounds like Deerhoof enjoying themselves; that's something I hope we see more of.

10)  Efrim Manuel Menuck -- "i am no longer a motherless child"
This song is the most confident thing Menuck has done since Silver Mt. Zion's Horses in the Sky and maybe the most confident thing he's done since Godspeed You! Black Emperor, if only because this doesn't sound like GY!BE.  Instead, the song is divided nicely into two pieces: the first half is a mournful solo guitar bit that's tighter than most of Menuck's recent work with Zion, and the second half is a looped, reverse-guitar track with a beautiful singing-in-the-round bit laid on top of it.  The refrain itself is just the right mix of mournful and ambiguous, but the layers of vocal harmonies do just the right trick: it's Menuck singing both with himself and over himself, and as the layers compound, the melody is eventually crushed and lost; it's a beautiful piece of work, and, for what it's worth, my favorite song in this mix.  A great, great piece.

11)  Lykke Li -- "I Follow Rivers"
First of all, I just found out that Lykke Li has been dubbed a "crossover success" this year; I willingly accept the hit on my hipster cred.  Also, this won't be a long entry: this was one of the first songs I loved this year, and I felt it earned its way onto this list.  I dig the chorus, and mostly, I dig Lykke Li's growth as a pop artist: her last album had beautiful moments ("Dance, Dance," for example, which was on my best of 2009 mix), but it seemed to veer alternately towards atonal songdrifts or repetitive bites of pop; this record is more developed and effective.  "I Follow Rivers" is just one of the record's standouts.

12)  Dave Bazan -- "Eating Paper"
Listen to this song 3 times in a row: tell me it's not the most bold and tattered song you've heard this year.  This is the song Bazan needed to open last year's Curse Your Brances--his vaunted "breaking with the faith" album--with.  It's raw, emotional, and ultimately flawed not through naivete but through ambition: there are too many chords, too many melodies, and too many hooks, and its Bazan's effort to wrange these elements in the song's structure which give his lyrics (and the crisis of faith they portend) so much weight:

       Why would you sweat my confession
       what I claim to be
       when you see the fruit as it hangs on the tree?
       While this may be the rare occassion
       where high tide lifts all boats
       I'm keeping my head down under the water
       'cause man, I've gotta get there on my own.


13)  Bon Iver -- "Calgary"
Here's what I hear about this song all the time: "I didn't think I liked that song..."  Exactly.  Bon Iver is this year's biggest indie crossover success story: he released a fuller, more complete, and intricately-produced album which received mainstream praise and enjoyed solid sales, and he did all of this while not only staying true to what fans loved about his first record, but also expanding and complicating his sound.  In short: Bon Iver is awesome, and this has certainly been "his year."  But the thing "Calgary" gets that other standout tracks like "Holocene" don't is that Bon Iver's songs have never really been about hooks; instead, they've always been about textures and moments.  It's easy to forget Justin Vernon's other band, Volcano Choir, but in many ways, that group "gets" him more: the dude loves creating vivid and affecting pieces of music...and then assembling them into musical "pieces."  Bon Iver is just such a piece, and "Calgary," although it may lack the hooks of a few other tracks, gets the parts right.  Listen closely: you'll be rewarded.

14)  The Antlers -- "I Don't Want Love"
Bad news first: This year's Burst Apart was a pretty big let down.  The Antlers' last record, 2009's Hospice, was my pick for the best record of that year (and one of the best of the decade), and so my hopes for this year's outing were incredibly high.  But Burst Apart trades quite a bit of the gravity of Hospice in for a more (relatively) upbeat tempo throughout and a heckuva lot more processed synths.  The highs are all still here: quavering, impossible male vocals; simple but effective clean guitar work; propulsive bass and complimentary drums.  But this time through, synths take over for acoustic guitars and do the bulk of the heavy rhythmic listening.  The results are at their best in songs like "I Don't Want Love," which finds a pop center in the midst of post-rock-esque instrumentation, and ultimately ends up as one of the more compelling pieces of evidence for my post-grunge thesis about 2011.

15)  tUnE-YaRdS -- "Bizness"
At last, a song that really does speak for itself!  Go.  Listen.  I can wait.

Back yet?  Cool.  That was awesome, right?  Yeah, the whole album (W H O K I L L) is equally awesome: bigger in scope than bIrDbRaInS without sacrificing even the slightest drop of manic energy.  Basically, it's the opposite of a sophomore slump: a follow-up that expands on the promise of the artist's debut album by giving them the tools and resources to complete the scope of their sound.  "Bizness" is a great song among great songs, and W H O K I L L is one of two great albums from this year.  Get yourself a copy.

16)  Secret Cities -- "The Park"
This song simultaneously represents the best and worst impulses of the chillwave movement.  On the "best" side of things, "The Park" has an almost unbelievably haunting and beautiful chorus, and this chorus is married to tight structuring, an unexpected (and awesome) organ, and an old-school garage rock lead line in the breakdown; even better, these parts are accompanied by a slipbeat drum part that allows the song to slide back into the 2 and 4 and roll itself forward like some kind of audio perpetual motion machine.  But there's the "worst" side, too, and it goes like this: "The Park" ought to be an anthem.  Take this song and put it in the hands of any of a 1,000 pop-rock bands in this world and it would have made it into a BP commercial by now at the very least.  The song has the hooks, but it's so submerged in the echo-cave of its production that feeling its groove is like tapping your foot to the band on the festival's third stage while the main stage is setting up the next act: it catches your ear, but not enough to sacrifice your seat.  If you're listening Secret Cities, I have a homework assignment for you: listen to more Deerhunter.  One of Cox's strengths is finding the balance between atmosphere and catchiness; you guys have the chops to take that skill a step further.

17)  The War on Drugs -- "Baby Missiles"
This was a late edition to the 2011 mix, as I only got my hands on this record about two weeks ago; however, I fell in love with "Baby Missiles" almost immediately.  This song might be the best song Bruce Springsteen never recorded: in fact, it's got so much energy it's hard to even listen to it without imagining Born to Run-era Boss dancing across a stadium stage while Stevie van Zandt sweats half his body weight into an oversized bandana.  During the song's chorus, Adam Granduciel sings, "I don't mind when all the pioneers go soft on me" in a Dylan-twang that's almost indecipherable; if "going soft" is the problem, "Baby Missiles" doesn't give any indication that The War on Drugs plans on giving in to it, or much of anything else.  Rock on.

18)  Wye Oak -- "Civilian"
This was a tough one, too.  I've had Wye Oak's Civilian for about 4 months, and during that time, I've probably listened to the record in its entirety at least a dozen times.  But despite all that time with the band, it's hard for me to put into words exactly what the band does so well.  On the surface, the appeal of the band--and why it fits in with a mix like this one--is pretty clear: they take country/folk and marry it to the reverb-heavy push of the contemporary indie scene, with results that are consistently winning but rarely memorable; as a result, their "sound" ends up being more important than their "songs," and the attention they have gotten and will continue to get in end-of-the-year lists reflects more of their effort than their accomplishment; to put it in teacher-speak, Wye Oak are the Honors-class kids in a subject where an AP-class is offered: likable, lovable, bright-enough B students.  But as a went through Civilian again this past week, I realized that "Civilian" is more than adequate; in fact, it's damn good.  The hook, I think, is the electric guitar, which rips in with a force the song never sets you up for.  It's a good trick...and it's one that speaks to where Wye Oak can go.

19)  Washed Out -- "A Dedication"
I'll end in uncharacteristically short fashion: this is just a beautiful, beautiful song: softly melodic, emotionally engaging, and driving, if only quietly; it's totally 2011...and maybe more, too.


Well, that's it, folks.  I hope this has been fun...and I hope you like this list.

Haiti Pictures

As most of you already know, I was in Haiti this past week.  These are my favorite photos from the week:

Pictures

The full moon last night; a few pictures from Annapolis, MD

Schizopolis

SCHIZOPOLIS
D: Steven Soderbergh

Wow, I'm honestly at a loss as to how to do this.  For a decade now, this has been one of my very favorite movies.  The reasons I first embraced it are typical, in some ways: it's well shot, the plot is idiosyncratic, the narrative devices are clever, the soundtrack and score are great, and it's funny as hell.  However, the reason the movie has remained so firmly stuck in my brain--and that really is the way to describe what this movie does to you: it sticks in your brain--has taken much longer to discern.

...but I think I'm getting closer.

There are two key scenes in the film.  The first is a brief scene late in the third act, when Attractive Woman #2--betrayed, frustrated, and lost in her own life--seizes an opportunity to perform the same "body swap" Soderbergh's Munson takes part in earlier in the film.  Like Munson, Attractive Woman #2 stumbles on a lookalike (played, of course, by the same actress) whose life--at first glance--seems infinitely more appealing.  In this case, her double is sitting across from her in a coffee shop reading a magazine.  Her demeanor and body language are relaxed, and she seems pleasantly distracted by her reading.  She is also wearing something new: whereas Attractive Woman #2 (AW2 from now on) and her lookalike, Munson's wife, have spent the entire movie in a plain cotton dress pulled over a t-shirt, this woman is dressed in a way that is both casual and mature.  Read: she does not have a husband or children.  Seeing her opportunity, AW2 closes here eyes and, through the magic of editing and shifting sound cues, she opens them as her alternate self: holding the same cup of coffee in her hand and glancing over the same magazine.  Instantly, she is at peace: her husband is gone, her parental responsibilities are relieved, and she is free.  She breathes a sigh of relief--and as she exhales, Soderbergh takes the seat across from her.  Although much better dressed, she has done it for the third time: she has ended up in a romantic relationship with a man who we immediately know will be self-involved, panicky, easily threatened and numb.  Her eyes widen slightly and the weight of her situation settles softly in them.  Soderbergh's unnamed third character begins to speak: his voice is dubbed in French.  We see AW2 (or is it AW3?) look him over and say quietly, "I want to get out of here."  Like Pavlov's dog, we have been trained how to read this line, and Soderbergh's off-camera tone of voice suggests he is reading her the same way.  But then she responds: "No--back to your room."  The scene cuts and we open in, presumably, his hotel room.  She is lying on the couch with her head in his lap as he strokes her hair.  She speaks: "I could just lie here forever and do nothing but this."  This, we must be clear, is not starting over.  But it is moving on.  In this way, Attractive Woman #2--whose very name attempts to marginalize and mute her--gets the last laugh: in a movie which cycles three times back through its own beginning, she has found independent--if tragic--agency.

The second key scene comes near the very end of the film, when the exterminator (and lady's man) Elmo Oxygen is being interrogated by two detectives.  The detectives are questioning him about his attempt to assassinate the film's keynote speaker, T. Azimuth Schwitters.  Their questions are obvious and--if they think they are talking to a madman--useless: why did you do it?  Were you angry with Mr. Schwitters?  Had Mr. Schwitters wronged you in some way?  Where did you get the gun?  Oxygen replies in his own language (and, incidentally, the only  successful language in the film): he calls them houseplants.  Oxygen goes on to ramble only semi-coherently about his role as the film's resident prophet, and, as we should expect, the detectives stare at him confused and befuddled.  His speech concludes in two parts.  The first is linguistic: he tells the detectives he can "make sense out of yesterday--can you understand how important that is?"  The second is both verbal and physical: he stands (his head above the frame) and begins to unzip the crotch of his jumpsuit.  We hear him say, "You will learn something from me," and then the camera jumps back to the full bodies of the detectives, both of whom are covering their eyes now and screaming hysterically as Elmo stands with his back to the camera, holding his jumpsuit open.  Now, obviously the scene is absurd: it plays for laughs, and (at least from me) it always gets them.  But I think the point here is necessarily aggressive--even more aggressive than Oxygen's "revelation": Elmo's phallus is the only thing these two "dicks" can understand.  Now, I apologize for that crudeness, but I think this pun is essential to the language games the movie plays: if what distinguishes Elmo from every other man in the film is his ability to communicate with women (an ability verbalized in an apparently non-sensical code of "aardvarks," "nose-armies," and "zygotes" which only he and the film's various housewives understand), it makes to sense to position him as Soderbergh's cypher.  Therefore, in his exposure, we see another anti-linguistic move which solicits a clear response: when he unzips his jumpsuit, the detectives see in him exactly the horror they went into the room expecting to find.

Schizopolis is littered with language games: dubbing, subtitles, half-heard conversations, doublespeak, psychobabble, and criticism.  Most of these deserve close scrutiny and analysis, and I have to admit my own sense of inadequacy in dealing with this movie, if only because I don't know that I can do even one part of it any justice.   But before I close, I feel obligated to a take a stab at that title.  Schizopolis is a compound word, built from the Greek "schizo," meaning "to split" and "polis," meaning "city."  Of course, it also carries psychological overtones connected to the disorder, "schizophrenia," which is commonly misunderstood as "split-personality disorder," although a clinical definition would more accurately characterize it as a disorder in which the brain struggles to accurately distinguish fantasy and reality.  In the case of this film, all three definitions are applicable and, to varying degrees, intended: the title references a "split city" that is itself inhabited by people of two (or three) minds, each wandering among the others, oblivious of (or skeptical towards) the possibility of connection.  The vision is cynical, and this cynicism is manifested in Soderbergh's use of a pants-less man to bring in title cards for the film which have been conveniently printed on his shirt(s).

However, there is more to the notion that these characters are of "two minds."  Pioneering linguist and semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure theorized that all language systems are built on a fundamental instability between a "signifier"--the sound-image used to refer to a thing or idea--and the "signified"--the thing or idea itself.  According to Saussure, all our communicative acts rely on the impossible notion that we can ever "name" a "thing" in a way which makes it possible to truly and completely communicate that thing to someone else.  However, the presence of language suggests this action is, in fact, possible.  To give an example: when I write the word "tree," I am thinking of a particular kind of tree--specifically, the tree at the end of my parents' driveway.  However, there is nothing I can do short of taking you to my parents' house to ensure that you truly "see" the tree I "mean;" instead, you are going to picture your own tree, forever changing the linguistic action ("signification") taking place between us and eliminating my tree from the equation altogether.  Obviously, the more words we introduce into our interaction, the more impossible the process ought to become.  But what Saussure found was that language is strangely tenacious, and that tenaciousness is rooted not in its codes but in its flexibility--it succeeds because we want it to, trading not on words and images, but on "Signs," or the combined forms of "signifiers" and "signifieds."  Now, I know that's a bit tortuous, but stick with me:

In Schizopolis, Soderbergh converts his characters--and us--into embodied "Signs."  We each contain two distinct parts of ourselves: the selves others see and the selves we believe ourselves to be.  The issue here is not that we don't listen to each other, but that we don't speak for ourselves.  That's what these (male) characters have lost: Munson, the speech writer; Kolchak, the platitudinous dentist; Schwitters, the arrogant mouthpiece of a pseudophilosophical cult.  But the movie isn't a motivational poster--the point here isn't to match our public personae to our personal goals; rather, the point is that our public personae are and have always been the only "real" selves we have: just as "my" tree became yours when I spoke it, we become ourselves when someone hears us.  We don't have a right to a private self...because we don't even speak our own language.  As the film's anonymous "host" (and secret speechwriter) tells us near the movie's end,

"We are who we pretend to be...because we pretend to be who we--really--are."

This is the theoretical move which grounds the paranoia these characters verbalize over and over again, and in this sense, Nameless Numberhead Man is right when he whines about feeling that he is at the mercy of forces beyond his control.  We don't determine ourselves--we are made in the Schizopolis.

All-Covers Disc

Here's the tracklisting.  Click for videos, when available:

1.  Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Bob Dylan cover) -- BECK
2.  I'm Waiting for the Man (Velvet Underground cover) -- DAVID BOWIE
3.  Glue (Gerbils cover) -- NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL
4.  The Sign (Ace of Bass cover) -- THE MOUNTAIN GOATS
5.  Sweet Child o' Mine (Guns N' Roses cover) -- TAKEN BY TREES
6.  Kid A (Radiohead cover) -- JOHN MAYER
7.  Where Did You Sleep Last Night? (Leadbelly cover) -- NIRVANA
8.  Heartbeats (Knife cover) -- JOSE GONZALEZ
9.  Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing (traditional) -- SUFJAN STEVENS
10. No Depression (Carter Family cover) -- UNCLE TUPELO
11. I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor cover) -- CAKE
12. Somewhere Over the Rainbow / What A Wonderful World (2x cover) -- ISRAEL KAMAMAWIWO'OLE
13. Atlantic City (Bruce Springsteen cover) -- THE HOLD STEADY
14. I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself (Burt Bacharach cover) -- THE WHITE STRIPES
15. Hung My Head (Sting cover) -- JOHNNY CASH
16. After the Gold Rush (Neil Young cover) -- THOM YORKE
17. Political Science (Randy Newman cover) -- PEDRO THE LION
18. Wonderwall (Oasis cover) -- RYAN ADAMS
19. Ocean Breathes Salty (Modest Mouse cover) -- SUN KIL MOON

* I did not include Buckley's "Hallelujah" because...well, obviously.
* I also didn't include Cash's cover of "Hurt."  Same reason.

Thoughts from the deliberate masses?

The Thin Red Line

The Thin Red Line (1997)

Recently, I watched Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line for only the second time since its release almost 15 years ago.  Again, I was surprised by how badly I misremembered a film.  At the time of its release, it seemed impossible to consider The Thin Red Line separately from Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, which was released a few months earlier and which seemed to me when I first saw it to be a far superior film.  Spielberg's war epic had everything Malick's movie seemed to be missing: a strong central character, a driving narrative, a sense of heroism rising from a visceral depiction of the chaos and horror of war.  By contrast, Malick's movie was overlong, spacey, and disjointed, meditating when it ought to teach and hesitating when it ought to use its special context to propel its plot forward.  Even after a few years' perspective (and exposure to Malick's other films) broadened my view of what genre-based films 'ought' to do, I still thought of The Thin Red Line as a misfire of sorts, lacking in focus and confused in plot.  It was an indulgent film, and it was obviously marred by a general sense of rustiness on Malick's part after more than two decades away from moviemaking.  However, after finishing my rewatching of The Thin Red Line last week, I realized my initial response was not only ungenerous, it was immature in a way that reflected my own biases as a moviegoer and, perhaps, as a person.

One of the scenes I remembered most clearly from my first viewing was the opening sequence of the film.  In this sequence, Witt (Jim Caviezel), who has gone AWOL in the South Pacific, swims in a blue crystal lagoon surrounded by hyper-romanticized native islanders.  As he swims, he meditates on his circumstances via voice over narration, pondering how and why the world of the West has fallen so far from its edenic beginnings.  The connection is clear: these people have it right--no war, no fighting, but most importantly, no distrust of one another.  For Witt, this is the West's great sin: we don't have any faith in one another, and as a result, we elevate ourselves and our own desires over the desires--and the rights to being--of others.  Witt's raison-d'etre for the rest of the film becomes living out the trust he longs to see in the world.  After being brought back to his unit, he accepts a disciplinary reassignment to a stretcher bearer unit, where he works with compassion and drive until he is called back up to his squad.  Once with his squad, he is an avid volunteer: he scouts, he leads, and in the end, he willingly sacrifices himself for his peers.  On my first viewing, the message seemed clear, and it seemed to be understood and enacted by the Christ-like Witt, whose sacrifice (we hope) opens the eyes of his comrades-in-arms.  Although interesting, one supposes, this argument seemed flimsy to me in 1997 and it continues to seem flimsy now.  Does the movie really expect us to believe that all we need, really, is a little more love?

But there was another scene I had forgotten since that first viewing, and for me, it changes everything.  Approximately two-thirds of the way through the film, Witt has another encounter with natives--this time, the natives of Guadalcanal.  Wandering the countryside during a five-day stint away from the front, Witt makes his way into a native village.  Once there, he clearly prepares himself for another return to paradise, removing his shirt and gun, smiling, waving, and making a quick offer of food to the first village child he sees.  However, this visit is met with hostility on the part of the natives: they glare at him, fearing his ability to act with violence free from accountability, but distrustful of his skin and face.  Witt is startled by this, and if The Thin Red Line had been directed by an inferior director, this moment may have been a sufficient rebuttal (or, at least, a challenge) to Witt's earlier fantasy.  But Malick directs the scene with tremendous care, and his decisions here shape and interpret many of the questions from the rest of the film.  Here's my memory of the shot sequence following Witt's rejection in the eyes of the natives:

Witt looks at a female villager, who refuses to meet him in the eyes.  Witt sees an older male, who glares at him while nonetheless backing away and lifting his hand up to protect children standing near him.  Witt sees a child, also refusing to see his face.  He looks past one child at another, this one starving and with dozens of bite marks from flies and other insects scarring its back.  Voices arguing quietly can be heard off camera.  Witt sees another fearful and hateful male villager, this one in his mid-20s--around Witt's age.  Voices continue.  He sees the dilapidated conditions of the huts.  Voices continue.  He sees the water, just through the trees; we see his eyes, remembering his first experience AWOL.  He finally sees the sources of the voices: two older village men, arguing with one another.  We realize that, were it not for his presence, they would be fighting physically and openly.

For me, this scene offers the skepticism I thought the film lacked 14 years ago, and it does so in a way that is both sincere and tragic: Witt's utopia is impossible in all places but the minds of men.  The "thin red line," it turns out, is not the line separating us from civility and barbarity, it is the line we are walking: narrow, bloody, and one from which it is impossible to deviate.  The sadness of the film--and the unity of the film--come from Witt's slow realization that his decision to look around himself and see his world does nothing to help him access it.  It's this underpinning which supports the natural beauty of Malick's movie, which I will refrain from going on and on and on about.  It also justifies (and makes useful) the visions we so frequently get of the natural world's role, proximity, and relation to the soldiers involved in this conflict: these aren't men hiding behind concrete barricades--these are boys crouched in tall grass, encroaching on a world that cares not a bit whether they are there or not.

One closing thought which, thankfully, remained consistent from 1997 until now: The Thin Red Line, like all of Malick's movies, is truly beautiful.  If you haven't seen it, it is streaming on Netflix in HD, and you honestly owe it to yourself to give it a look.  Even if Malick's vision isn't for you, there is an undeniable craftsmanship at work here that you ought to experience.  This is the kind of movie that confronts you--aggressively--with the magnitude of what movies are capable of.  Don't miss it.

Southland Tales

*An indictment of Richard Kelly*

Exhibit A:  "Man, American guys sure do (did) equate big cars with sexual prowess (in the 1950s)!  So, I've got an idea..."

Exhibit B:  "Man, we've got Justin Timberlake in this movie, and he's a great singer and a great dancer!  So, I've got an idea..."

Exhibit C:  "Man, Quentin Tarantino sure does write awesome dialogue about pop culture!  So, I've got an idea..."




Exhibit D:  "Man, Cheri Oteri...wasn't she great on Saturday Night Live??  So, I've got an idea..."




Exhibit E:  "Man, isn't it funny when Asian people get hurt by stuff??  So, I've got an idea..."



The prosecution rests, your honor.