VIFF 2010 capsule reviews: Armadillo, Biutiful, R U There (Day 3)

Armadillo (Metz, 2010) Denmark. Winner: Critics Prize at Cannes 2010.

It was a surreal experience watching Armadillo, especially on the heel of the Oscar-winning film, The Hurt Locker (a film that used a documentary, in-action style to explore a bomb squad's life in Iraq during the war). The line between documentary style film-making and fictional film-making has become thin enough that a real documentary like this would seem at times fictional (possibly due to the amazing editing work). The Danish film unfolded like an assured, dramatic, emotionally resonant fictional film, as it documented the life of soldiers at Armadillo, an operating base that was home to Danish and British soldiers in Helmand province, Afghanistan, where they supposedly were trying to drive out the Talibans and establish 'peace.' The soldiers were followed from the time they set out to say good-bye to their families to the end of their mission. We saw them bonded over porn and macho activities, waiting anxiously to face 'war' as they expected. Instead, they were treated to months of little activities other than the occasional interactions with the locals, many of whom weren't too thrilled with their presence and blamed them for the region's increased instability. The Talibans hid with the locals, and one really got a sense of how difficult it was to simultaneously on the defense/offense and not yield collateral damages. When they finally were tested in the extreme confusion of combat fires, the implications of their actions (did they really break the rule of engagement and "liquidate wounded people and pile up the dead to take pictures of [themselves] as heroes?") were profound, and caused quite a stir in Denmark. The soldiers were allowed to defend themselves in the film - through their words as well as the footage of them in combat. Perhaps Metz summed it up best when he said: "maybe we're looking at something that goes to the core of something very human. The soldiers are so close to death and they actually kill someone. The way they handle the bodies afterward maybe testifies to something at the very core of humanity – of our grubby human nature. War has always been there. It has always been part of us." (quote via The Guardian)

Biutiful (Iñárritu, 2010) Mexico.

Iñárritu aims high when it comes to finding misery in the world. His matrix of human connections is that of misfortunes (see his previous films: 21 Grams, Babel). Good people make unfortunate decisions to survive, only to end up with horrible consequences because, well, life is just unforgiving like that. Uxbal (Javier Bardem), true to Iñárritu's typical character style, was forced to make difficult choices every day of his life, as he lived in the shadows of human existence with a family strung together tenuously by the wife's bipolar condition. He had a terminal disease; his children were abused; his wife was a chaotic presence; his brother slept with her behind his back; his good friend sold illegal drugs but he had to provide covers for; his predatory business partners exploited him as much as they could; the people he helped using his psychic gift (he could see the dead and their last thought) were resentful of his message as often as they were grateful for it; and his well intended decisions just kept getting him further tangled in a never-ending web of suffering. The good times did not stay long, and they were never wholeheartedly created to be just so. Uxbal's descent into hell was gradual and torturous: even by the time his spirit was thrown a life line in the form of an imagined family face, it was not much of a relief. Iñárritu wants you to get that life really, truly sucks for some people, and perhaps misery ends only after life. It was an exercise in feeling helpless, albeit a beautifully shot one.

R U There (Verbeek, 2010) Netherlands.

It was a typical exotic love story: Caucasian boy traveled the world and fell for a beautiful, mysterious local girl. They had an ambiguous relationship both online and offline. Verbeek attempted to investigate the line where the virtual world met reality, but what he ended up with was a feature-length advertisement for Second Life. The problem was, Second Life was anti-cinematic, choppy, shallow, hollow, and awkward. The chemistry off screen was not any better, despite the leads' effort to look as though they belonged in the same movie. There was one brief moment where Verbeek almost had a decent film: Jitze (Stijn Koomen), a professional gamer who was in Taiwan to compete in a video game tournament, witnessed a motor vehicle accident that he did nothing about. Then, instead of cutting away, the camera lingered a little too long, going for that unnecessary sensational effect. Elsewhere, the film skipped ever too lightly and superficially on the virtual worlds its main characters occupied - both the virtual gaming industry and Second Life resembled ideas of what they could look like, according to outsiders. The film bore an interesting premise, but that was all it was.

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VIFF 2010: psychopathy and masculinity in Cold Fish (Day 2)

Title: Tsumetai nettaigyo (Cold Fish)
Director: Sion Sono
Language: Japanese
Year: 2010
Critical Reception: Variety's faint praise, screened at TIFF, VIFF, and Venice.
Psych Index: Antisocial Personality Disorder, Gender
In Brief: Cult director Sion Sono serves up a comedic melodrama horror fest not for the faint of heart and fans of sushi. There's some reason to the madness - namely, an opportunity to investigate the pure "id" incarnation of the masculine aggression - but you'd need to go along for the blood-soaked ride in order to make sense of its purpose. Even then, there's no guarantee you'd be liking what it has to say.

Comment (SPOILERS ALERT):
Cold Fish is loosely based on a true story about Japan's series of murders from the 80s committed by the owner of a dog kennel and his ex-wife in Saimata. Director Sion Sono decided to bring the story to the present time, and relocated the serial killer (Murata, played with creepy exuberance by Denden) to a tropical fish store. The count, as reported by the time they were given the death sentence in 2009, was at four dismembered bodies, but the film made it a lot higher (30 and counting), as the cold fish killers made a profitable career out of their killings.

The violence portrayed in Cold Fish was comedic and over the top, but not so silly that it was without bite. The film took the concept of violence dehumanizing people literally, as it stripped them to their animal form/carcass. It was quite nausea inducing at first, but since repeated exposure to violence has the potential to normalize it, the audience may adapt to the graphic images just as Murata predicted when he said to the dumbstruck Shamoto (Mitsuru Fukikoshi), "you'll get used to it." Some things should not be gotten 'used to' though. There were several disturbing sexually aggressive acts against women depicted, and while a case can be made for their inclusion, it was still a dubious decision to include at least two violent rape sequences (the third one with the ex-wife's rape status is debatable). The stylish way with which the film was directed, along with the exaggerated comedic tone, were more unsettling when applied to sexual violence against women than to general serial murders. Serial killing by the number is quite low, when averaged across the human population, whereas violence against women is much more prevalent. Making sexual violence into black comedy is a bit, shall we say, ill-advised. If the men depicted were not so rotten, it would have made the film much less tolerable for these acts.

As it was, the film made a point about being trapped in social gender roles, and the deadly effect of violence perpetrated on women and children at the hands of the confused, angry, bruised male ego. The other issue anchoring the film's story - psychopathology, or according to DSM-IV-TR, antisocial personality disorder - served as a back drop to the main social commentary. There seemed to be a suggested link between the two issues, but it would be erroneous to think that an emasculated male ego would lead to psychopathic tendency. The former is a case of misdirected aggression, and the latter an inherent psychopathic tendency. In this review, I'd be focusing on psychopathy and masculinity as presented in the film, with a particular interest in the former.

Psychopathy has a long and fuzzy history in the field of psychology. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association, after vague changes in the span of their four versions, settles on Antisocial Personality Disorder as the equivalent to the term 'psychopathy' (Gurley, 2009). There are disputes to the category being a stand in for psychopathy, since anyone who breaks the law would only need to satisfy three behavioural criteria to meet the diagnosis. For example, having just these three rather common criminal behaviours would be enough (in addition to 'evidence' of a conduct disorder before age 15) to be called the equivalent of a psychopath: (1) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest; (2) deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure; and (3) irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults. As you can see, it is not that difficult to achieve this diagnosis for your garden variety repeated criminal offenders, rendering the term 'psychopathy' meaningless in its severity and unique psychological properties. Furthermore, from a psychological point of view, psychopathy as it exists in the DSM points more towards the British tradition of defining personal abnormality in terms of social deviance and less towards the German idea of personal abnormalities causing personal or social distress (Blackburn, 2007).

In the field of forensic science, there are other sets of criteria being used to diagnose psychopathy, the most popular of which is the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R). A score of 30 and above on the PCL-R would indicate a psychopathic diagnosis. Notably, many repeated criminal offenders score around 22, allowing a much more discriminating diagnosis for this serious disorder. The four-factor PCL-R addresses a couple of issues that researchers have criticized the DSM for not placing enough emphasis on: the lack of empathy coupled with superficial charms believed to be the core traits of a psychopath, and, to a certain extent, the more successful psychopaths who do not get caught breaking the law (i.e. the Wall Street psychopaths). The anxiety level of a psychopath is also quite low, and often assessed in addition to the checklists or DSM criteria. However, some brain damages (hippocampal and prefrontal) that would lead to lower stress reactivity have been linked with the unsuccessful psychopaths, but not successful (uncaught) ones (Ishikawa, Raine, Lencz, Bihrle, & LaCasse, 2001), suggesting some variations within the diagnosis. (For a fascinating recent controversy regarding psychopathic diagnosis in research, see Skeem & Cooke, 2010, the reply from Hare & Neumann, 2010, whose threatened lawsuit delayed Skeem & Cooke's paper from being published by 3 years, and the subsequent reply by Skeem & Cooke, 2010).

Murata exhibited all signs of a psychopath, regardless of which set of criteria you want to use for assessment: he was sexually coercive and precocious (sexual activities with multiple women), callous (dismembering human bodies with glee), deceitful (lying to his business partner), manipulative (with the wife and the daughter to get them to turn their father in), aggressive (beating Shamoto up), impulsive (going to see Shamoto's fish store in the middle of the night), reckless with safety for both himself and others (implored Shamoto to beat him up, then did not express much physical or emotional struggle/pain when hurt), completely lacking in remorse (no regrets or emotional pain about the lives he took), superficially charming (his exuberance was contagious and useful in getting others to carry out his will), emotionally shallow (laughed manically without feelings), exhibiting a grandiose sense of self (believing that he was giving the girls a better second life), etc. He took great risks even when cooperation would have been beneficial (murdering his right-hand man). Psychopaths have been shown to take great risks in hope of rewards and exhibit insensitivity to potentially negative consequences (Weber, Habel, Amunts, & Schneider, 2008). An Iowa gambling task study found that highly psychopathic subjects behaved similarly to patients with orbitofrontal lesions (van Honk, Hermans, Putman, Montagne, & Schutter, 2002). Lack of fear for or response to negative consequences (somatic marker hypothesis) and lack of emotional response or sensitivity to others' emotional distress (violence inhibition mechanism model) are thought to be hallmarks of psychopathy (Weber et al., 2008). Murata was also revealed, in the course of the film, to have a history of circumstances that might have contributed to his psychopathic expression: psychosocial (poor parenting, though it might not have been as impactful as the film led us to believe), temperamental (prone to react violently), and psychodynamic (pathological narcissism).

Other characters qualified for this profile include Mrs. Murata (Asuka Kurosawa) and Shamoto's daughter, Mitsuko (Hikari Kajiwara). Shamoto, however, was not a psychopath (or at least, not a developmental one), as evident by his emotional and fear responses (first, about the crimes committed, then, a reluctance to do what he could've done to his daughter), and an assumed lack of previous criminal offense. A psychopath would tend to show lower generalized emotional responsivity compared to non-psychopaths (Day & Wong, 1996). Psychopaths are able to only understand the literal (denotative) meaning of language, but not its emotional (connotative) significance (Cleckley, 1976). Brain studies have shown reduced activity in the amygdala (thought to respond to cues indicating distress in others) during emotional moral decision-making process (Glenn, Raine, & Schug, 2009). In addition, when faced with negative emotional situations (such as people being murdered), the psychopath would tend to use less of their right hemisphere for connotative-emotional processes and more of their left hemisphere for denotative-linguistic processes (Day & Wong, 1996). Victim's distress meant nothing for Murata, for example, whereas Shamoto reacted to his daughter's verbal responses. Furthermore, while Shamoto did commit sexual assault on his wife, he did not exhibit a tendency towards coercive and precocious sexuality, considered a fundamental aspect of psychopathy (Harris, Rice, Hilton, Lalumiere, & Quinsey, 2007).

What Shamoto may have become, albeit momentarily, was a hypermasculine response to the constant threats regarding his perceived/accused lack of masculinity. ‘Masculinity’ is a socially constructed concept, and the masculine attributes usually include physical strength or power, aggressiveness, and sexual potency (Beesley & McGuire, 2009). 'Hypermasculinity' is an exaggerated sense of male identity (Beesley & McGuire, 2009). Some studies (Vandello, Bosson, Cohen, Burnafold, & Weaver, 2008) have shown that the state of manhood - more so than womanhood - may be threatened with challenges to its masculinity, and men may react in a physically aggressive manner to this threat. In particular, insecure self-esteem - exhibited by Shamoto - may make one more vulnerable to threats of self-image (Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996; Tedeschi, 1983). On a more psychodynamic level, the story bore some resemblance to the Greek mythological account of Oedipus, used by Sigmund Freud to develop his theory regarding the male ego. Oedipus killed his father and married his mother, and Freud believed on a symbolic level, this was part of the male ego development. In some ways, Murata took on the position of Shamoto's father as they role-played initially, and Shamoto eventually was forced to engage in sexual intercourse with Mrs. Murata.

Despite its penchant for violence and sexual violence, Cold Fish was an interesting look at the pure "id" incarnation of the male aggression, as the male ego struggled to develop itself (and failed). The under-developed male ego, in psychodynamic terms, was the culprit of the explosive expression of violent aggression in Shamoto (aided by a psychopath with undeveloped emotions). This was perhaps related to Japan's recent crisis of masculinity (Taga, 2006), the scope of which is beyond this essay (and this author's expertise). The black comedic aspect of the film allowed the audience a sort of protective wall against the madness - you can laugh, or you can be shocked into stupor at the terror unfolding. Sono mercifully chose the former, making Cold Fish a shocking but livable screen affair.

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References

Baumeister, R. F., Heatherton, T. F., & Tice, D. M. (1993). When ego threats lead to self regulation failure: Negative consequences of high self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 141-156.

Beesley, F., & McGuire, J. (2009). Gender-role identity and hypermasculinity in violent offending. Psychology, Crime & Law, 15(2&3), 251-268.

Blackburn, R. (2007). Personality disorder and psychopathy: conceptual and empirical integration. Psychology, Crime & Law, 13(1), 7-18.

Cleckley, H. C. (1976). The mask of sanity. St. Louis, MO: Mosby.

Day, R., & Wong, S. (1996). Anomalous perceptual asymmetries for negative emotional stimuli in the psychopath. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 105(4), 648-652.

Glenn, A., Raine, A., & Schug, R. A. (2009). The neural correlates of moral decision-making in psychopathy. Molecular Psychiatry, 14, 5-6.

Gurley, J. (2009). A history of changes to the criminal personality in the DSM. History of Psychology, 12(4), 285-304.

Hare, R. D., & Neumann, C. S. (2010). The role of antisociality in the psychopathy construct: comment on Skeem and Cooke (2010). Psychological Assessment, 22(2), 446-454.

Ishikawa, S. S., Raine, A., Lencz, T., Bihrle, S., & LaCasse, L. (2001). Autonomic stress reactivity and executive functions in successful and unsuccessful criminal psychopaths from the community. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 110, 423-432.

Skeem, J. L., & Cooke, D. J. (2010). Is criminal behavior a central component of psychopathy? Conceptual directions for resolving the debate. Psychological Assessment, 22(2), 433-445.

Skeem, J. L., & Cooke, D. J. (2010). One measure does not a construct make: directions toward reinvigorating psychopathy research - reply to Hare and Neumann (2010). Psychological Assessment, 22(2), 455-459.

Taga, F. (2006). Review of men and masculinities in contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman Doxa. Men and Masculinities, 9(1), 108-110.

Tedeschi, J.T. (1983). Social influence theory and aggression. In R.G. Geen, & E.I.
Donnerstein (Eds.), Aggression: Theoretical and empirical reviews Vol. 1 (pp. 135-162). New York: Academic Press.

van Honk, J., Hermans, E. J., Putman, P., Montagne, B., & Schutter, D. J. (2002). Defective somatic markers in sub-clinical psychopathy. Neuroreport, 13, 1025–1027.

van Honk, J., & Schutter, D. J. L. G. (2006). Unmasking feigned sanity: a neurobiological model of emotion processing in primary psychopathy. Cognitive neuropsychiatry, 11(3), 285-306.

Vandello, J. A., Bosson, J. K., Cohen, D., Burnafold, R. M., & Weaver, J. R. (2008). Precarious manhood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(6), 1325-1339.

Weber, S., Habel, U., Amunts, K., & Schneider, F. (2008). Structural brain abnormalities in psychopathy. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 26, 7-28.

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VIFF 2010 capsule reviews: Barney's Version, Hahaha (Day 1)

Barney's Version (Lewis, 2010) Canada.

Barney, a TV big wig sporting a caustic sense of humour and an insensitive persona, found the love of his life at the wedding to his second wife. It was not his wife to be (delightfully played by Minnie Driver); it was a guest in attendance, the radiant Miriam in blue (Rosamund Pike). What followed was a love story in the tradition of rom com's 'the one' mythology, with Paul Giamatti playing the role of the homely, cynical man wooing the sophisticated princess. The new romantic leading man in recent rom coms has only his unyielding love to offer and very few other qualities of note, but he would always end up inexplicably winning the love of some beautiful, complex leading lady. Barney's Version was created with the same conceit, framed from the perspective of an awestruck, self-sabotaging man. One never got the sense that Barney was in any way an equivalent or an equal partner to Miriam. His son even went so far as to state that Barney did not deserve Miriam in his life, a position the film never succeeded in dismissing, despite the attempt at trumping up his never-say-die love for Miriam. The cast members filled their roles in good spirit, but the film offered very little depth, originality or chemistry between the leads. Overly sentimental, and ultimately forgettable, Barney really did not need this version to be told.

Hahaha (Hong, 2010) Korea. 2010 Cannes winner - Prix Un Certain Regard (for "original and different" works)

Aspiring film director Moon-kyung and his friend, film critic Joong-sik, met up shortly before Moon-kyung left for Canada. They swapped stories of their recent trip to the seaside town of Tong-yeong over drinks. Along the way, despite their initial insistence on only skimping the pleasant surface of life, the two friends inadvertently ventured beyond the safety of their wading pool, providing us with a more complete picture of what happened to them over the summer. The two interweaving stories, told from Joong-sik's and Moon-kyung's perspective, were arranged in alternating sections, with each character taking turn stringing their interconnected experience together. The film gently made a case for our life story being a series of overlapping narratives. The meeting itself was presented in a series of freeze frames, as though the audience was rummaging through a photo book. Hong's honest but tolerant view of his characters' growth process made it possible for us to empathize with their struggle, however seemingly minute. The film offered an interesting peek at the Korean youth culture and its romantic aspirations, simultaneously poking fun at its naiveté and respecting its raison d'être. As a romantic comedy, it was as awkward, light-hearted and funny as their summer romance - certainly a welcomed fresh take on a genre overridden with cliché and conventions.

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How did you come up with that? Good ideas and creativity, in a nutshell.

Now you can feel better about spending hours on Facebook!

The creative process, first hinted at by Wallas (1926), consists of four stages: preparation, incubation (as talked about in the video), illumination, and verification. The first step could be found in normal non-creative thinking. The second step lacked coherent theories concerning its construct. Illumination and verification could occur between the linked minds, as suggested in the video, but the possible brain process involved in such activities is poorly understood by neuroscientists. While it is possible that interconnected minds could lead to creativity, the 'how' of this process needs to be understood before creativity can be claimed - or properly employed.

There's a new literature review (Dietrich & Kanso, 2010) examining divergent thinking, artistic creativity, and insight, as tested by EEG, ERP and neuroimaging studies. While I hardly think something as complex and context-based as creativity could be mapped out by picturing brain activities in a confined setting, the conclusions regarding these studies are nevertheless noteworthy.

Divergent thinking - or, the ability to come up with as many solutions as possible - does not seem to be a domain of either left or right brain hemisphere alone (laterality effect), as previously postulated. The majority of studies did not find activation from specific brain areas (other than the expected prefrontal cortex), even though some have pointed to the cerebellum, striatum, and hippocampus. Findings were scattered and dependent on the tasks used to test creativity, so perhaps these tests were too crude to measure the concept properly.

As for artistic creativity, the authors suggested that there were different types that required either an engagement or disengagement of the prefrontal cortex. In other words, creativity can come with trying really hard to think; it can also come when you just 'let go' of metacognitive thinking (or over-thinking) and use your intuition. This must be what the zen masters in all those Kung-fu or Wuxian films talked about, letting yourself be the flow of water and you're going to solve the problems that plague you the most (e.g., Drunken Master, 1978).

Studies on insight yielded much more consistent results. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC, see figure above) was particularly activated by insight problems. It was found to be important in getting you 'unstuck' from the wrong solution space. In addition, the superior temporal gyrus (STG, see figure below) apparently played a role in solving insight problems that involved verbal associations. These activities aside, there was no definite brain hemisphere being solely responsible for insight, as it was found by imaging studies.

Because of the lack of cohesive findings with regards to the localization of creativity, the authors also dismissed the notion that creativity could be linked to psychological disorders (e.g., bipolar disorder, autism) or altered state of consciousness (e.g., meditation). That is not to say there could not be subsets of creativity with viable links to these different mental states; rather, the authors argued that the notion of 'creativity' would have to be redefined in a way that allows for the multifacet components of 'creativity' to be captured. Sometimes divergent thinking may be linked to creative solutions, and sometimes defocused attention brings about an aha moment.

If there is one thing social networking and the internet can help with, it's the opportunity to come across ideas that could stimulate your own. Some studies suggested a need for suppressing stereotypical responses in order for creativity to occur, and the sprouting of various responses could help with such processes. However, the existing data on creativity would caution and contest the idea that more information would lead to creativity. It would certainly depend on what the consumers do with such information, and even so, it's difficult to predict if their engagement or disengagement of their network would lead to creativity. Coming up with different ways to insert a sad Keanu in every picture may not indicate a generalized creative current that would help with solving a company's third quarter crisis. It may help with gaining greater notoriety or expanding one's network, and perhaps that's an aspect of creativity put to good social use for now.

References

Dietrich, A., & Kanso, R. (2010). A review of EEG, ERG, and neuroimaging studies of creativity and insight. Psychological Bulletin, 136(5), 822-848.

Wallas, G. (1926). The art of thought. New York, NY: Harcort Brace and World.

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Casey Affleck: Phoenix's melt down constructed

According to the New York Times, Joaquin Phoenix's meltdown - the subject of I'm Still Here (Affleck, 2010) , screened at TIFF - was staged. From Casey Affleck, who directed the film:

Mr. Affleck, who is married to Mr. Phoenix’s sister and has been his friend for almost 20 years, said he wanted audiences to experience the film’s narrative, about the disintegration of celebrity, without the clutter of preconceived notions.

So he said little in interviews. “We wanted to create a space,” he said. “You believe what’s happening is real.”

As the film progresses, Mr. Affleck explained, subtle cues were supposed to provide hints of his real intention. Camera techniques, extremely raw at the beginning, become more sophisticated as the film goes on, for instance.

“There were multiple takes, these are performances,” Mr. Affleck said of unsettling sequences in which Mr. Phoenix appears to snort drugs, consort with hookers, and hunt to the ground an assistant who has betrayed him to the press — again, mostly actors.

But the movie never quite showed its hand. “There was no wink,” Mr. Affleck said.

Scathing reviews aside, having yet to see the film and no prior interest in seeing a mockumentary about Joaquin Phoenix's supposed downward spiral, I'm now intrigued that it was a staged event for a fictional film. I'll reserve my judgment of the film's worth until I've seen it, but in theory, this sounds like a brilliant way to examine the celebrity culture in the new media age (as I'm sure Phoenix and Affleck thought it did). A potential pitfall of performance arts of this kind lies in the gap of its disconnection. To experience a film properly is to suspend disbelief in order to engage in a story of fictional characters or non-fictional characters portrayed by appropriated figures. The double layers of falsehood presented by I'm Still Here may prove too challenging for the audience to engage in. Without engagement, the film's message may become inconsequential, thus failing its ambitious aim of meta cultural commentary. Nevertheless, it could still be a fascinating exercise in staging grand-scale performance art. Has Affleck been in talk with Lady Gaga?

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