'The Ice Queen Cometh'

The September Issue

Directed: R.J. Cutler

Starring: Anna Wintour, Grace Coddington

A&E Indie Films, PG-13, 88 minutes

In the prickly world of fashion, few are allotted enough time to fully grasp what makes a seemingly frivolous industry the $300 Billion powerhouse that it is. A mere glimpse into that world leaves you as a mortal standing amongst a host of Greek gods. To understand the intensity of this world – the icons built – literally – from the ground up and the casualties left along the way– you need to be keenly aware of every decision being made behind closed couture doors. But with that being nearly impossible, the closest we can get is an insight into the person behind all of those decisions, if there even is a person to identify. Because Anna Wintour knows that she is less a person and more a manifestation of the industry as a whole: brooding, silent, undeniably influential. So when she sits in irritated silence waiting for an Yves Saint Laurent designer to show her the beginnings of a new line, her impatience is both palpable and understandable: Anna, like fashion, waits for no man.

“There is something about fashion that can make people very nervous,” she purrs in the film’s opening scene, in an accent filled with as much equestrian seriousness as there is ice-cold rancor. That same testament could be applied to Wintour herself, as the myth of her power, over both the magazine she lays out and the industry that lay before her, has now reached iconic status. It’s no secret that Meryl Streep’s deliciously cruel and Oscar nominated performance in The Devil Wears Prada was based on Wintour – a fact that everyone from Streep to Wintour herself adamantly denies. A variety of Prada’s name-checked designers and fashion notables even declined to appear in the film for fear of displeasing Wintour, furthering the rather concrete definition of her enigmatic power: the ability to control even those productions for which she has no role in.

And it’s that power that becomes The September Issue’s central focus, one that has the ability to either drive the fashion industry forward or halt it at her simplest of whims. Most quiver at her most basic of requests, citing it as the desires of a megalomaniac. But what director R.J. Cutler does is focus Issue not on Wintour herself, but the magazine she presides over like a cathedral’s head priestess. “More like the pope,” corrects contributing editor Candy Pratts Price in her fashion-savvy drawl, elongating all the ‘A’s of her words two syllables too many.

It’s industry clichés like those that prove to be true the longer Cutler fixes his gaze on Vogue as opposed to just the notoriously recluse Wintour. Likewise, during an intimate boardmeeting, where the staff discusses the unexpected revival of feathered garments as seriously as the discoveries of nuclear materials, – and with equal loathing: “What exactly do they expect us to do with these?” cries one editor. “Wear them,” another dryly retorts. – staff members throw around turns of phrase like “coat is the new jacket” with straight-faced seriousness. And why shouldn’t they? For Vogue, this is a matter of life a death: to remind them that “it’s not brain surgery, it’s fashion” would only further their stress, allowing daydreams of simplicity if they were to just follow through with a medical degree.

And it’s clear that Wintour likes it this way. But does this make her the ice queen, the Devil, she’s been painted as? No – it makes her an editor. And, from what Cutler shows us, a damn good one, giving Vogue half of its now famous totalitarian infrastructure. The other half belongs to Grace Coddington, the former British model whom, after a scaring car accident, took a job at Vogue (starting the same day as Wintour herself), eventually becoming their creative director and, as Wintour states, their resident genius.

Coddington manages to steal the show right from under Wintour’s dominating grasp, become the unsung hero of the magazine and, as a result, the film itself. Her befuzzled charm, preaching the rhetoric of an industry long since changed and emanating the essence of late-70s counterculture, allows her to be the middleman between Wintour’s illuminated throne and the throngs of workerbees that shuffle through the Vogue halls in mandatory high heels.

Don’t, however, assume that this means Coddington and Wintour permeate through a single lense. Far from it: Coddington may be the only voice that ever – ever – defies Anna’s now legendary orders. Where others hold their breath, partly out of fear and partly to allow Anna the appropriate amount of proximitized oxygen, Coddington is quick to disobey, even going so far as to admit she sometimes enjoys Wintour’s exasperation. In one scene, Wintour, perhaps jokingly, necessitates the airbrushing of an extra’s stomach in a photo (the extra, awkwardly enough, is the very cameraman filming the documentary). Coddington, desperate to maintain the ‘everyman’ juxtaposition in the high-glamour shot, quickly phones the retouch department, demanding they heed her order to cease any retouching, regardless of Wintour’s demands. It’s the equivalent of the unnoticed knight defeating the dragon. And it’s breathtakingly exciting – at least, far more than it should be.

But it’s their symbiotic, and arguably codependent, relationship that allows moments such as those to be exempt of any spite. Because what Cutler aims to show is that Wintour is only as good as Coddington allows her to be. It’s Anna who makes the decisions about what goes into her self-proclaimed bible, but Grace who provides her with the appropriate materials to make said decisions. In one scene, Coddington, while readying a model for a shoot, realizes that she is the last living editor to prepare a model’s wardrobe herself. It’s duties like those that grant the humble Coddington the title of ‘genius’. But it’s also those actions that force an indecent attachment to her work. Coddington’s gift is realizing the surreal, often fantastical, photoshoots that place Vogue above the rest. Wintour’s gift is her decisiveness, knowing when and how to actively moderate her enthusiasm.

And as viewers we can’t help but side with Wintour, regardless of if we really understand the decision being made. “That fur garment seems out of place.” Obviously – I mean just look at it! “Evening gowns are too overdone.” Sure, of course they are. “There isn’t enough color on that rack.” I suppose the rainbow is rather tame. We trust Wintour because while many have been quick to preach her abundance of authority, no one has ever been able to deny her intuitive brilliance. Predicting the death of the supermodel long before celebrities adorning the covers of magazines became, pardon the pun, en vogue, Wintour has managed to become the final word in fashion because she’s spent so long staying two-steps ahead of it. We are bound by Anna’s words because of the startling context she’s been placed in all these years before September Issue was filmed. So when Coddington whimpers at the realization that the world of Vogue has, much to her dismay, changed to alarming degrees (celebrity covers being one), we can’t help but assume that Anna simply knows what she’s doing. It seems just a little too late to introduce us to anyone else claiming they know it better.

Timing, in fact, riddles the entire film with deftly amounts of poignancy. Cutler chronicles the creation of Vogue’s now legendary September 2007 issue, which came in at a record breaking 800+ pages, the biggest in Vogue’s 114-year history. But we viewers watch this film in 2009, during the largest fiscal breakdown since the Great Depression, and during a time where the printed press is slowly going the way of the dodo. The people are clamoring with a demand so high,” says one Neiman Marcus executive, “that it’s outstripping the product.” Today, however, fashion houses are unable to spend the money to ship high-end couture to a country that rarely has the courage to proudly wear it. September Issue preaches the efficiencies of a time seeped in excess – one that serves as a sickening reminder of, perhaps, how we got into this mess in the first place.

But as Wintour herself reminds, “fashion is not about looking back, it’s about looking forward”. And after what seems like an ungodly amount of minutia-focused precision, the staff simply wipes the slate clean, and begins discussing October, taking only a brief moment to celebrate their record breaking success: over 13 million people are said to receive a copy of September’s Vogue, making it 1 in ever 10 women, an astronomical percentage. Coddington takes a look at the storyboards for the issue, counting something, but unable to get anywhere past “two”. Turns out, she was counting the number of spreads that she didn’t work on. She is clearly Cutler’s semi-protagonist, unfairly forcing one to label Wintour as the film’s “villain”, which is exactly what one would expect and Wintour would deny.

But there is an unmistakable fog that hovers over the film as we watch her exert her domineering control over every aspect of the magazine’s production: how then, after all, would Cutler ever manage to finish a film without her dominance rearing its head in the cutting room? It wouldn’t, and it’s perhaps alarmingly clear that the “fresh light” we’re supposed to see Wintour in is as orchestrated as the very photoshoots Cutler’s chronicled. But in one of the film’s final moments, Cutler pans over the final layout for the 2007 September issue, catching an image of an odd rubber dress from a “textures” shoot that Coddington had adored and Wintour had cut. Much to Coddington’s pleasant surprise, and ours as well, it has magically resurfaced, placed in the final print, bound for the newsstands. And it’s here that Cutler gives a subtle and remarkably untainted example of Wintour’s decision-making – one that could be argued for the betterment of the magazine or as a gift for a colleague. Could this mean the thawing of the ice queen? Like all of Wintour's decisions, it remains unquestioned.

The Kindness of Strangers

The cacophonous maze that is SFO (San Francisco International Airport) allows for vulnerability on a large scale. We, the flyers, are shuffled around from level to level, escalator to baggage claim, all in the hopes of sitting in a carpeted cylinder that hurdles through the air at ungodly speeds. It's no wonder I feel more connected to the people around me in an airport than I do anywhere else. Because in an airport, you are bound to find people going where you're going, all just as confused as you are. It's like being surrounded by people in their 20s.

There are numerous facadés: the clear "I know where I'm going" strut of faux-confidence, the subtle "I'm a tourist, enamored by the beauty of this building, but don't want to seem like one" eye darts, or the "I should have gotten here 40 minutes ago" mad dash. But with the various comings and goings that have people shuffling around the gateways is a kind of surreal comfort. I realize it more and more everytime: I love airports. They bring out the best and worst in people.

Flying in from San Diego yesterday, my checking in resulted in annoying wardrobe changes (suspenders are rarely a good idea when walking through a metal detector) and unneeded defending of my identity ("yes, security, that is me in my license photo. Yes, I am aware I look different. No, I haven't considered shaving. No, that's not a bomb, it's a bowling ball candle"). But aside from the post-9/11 formalities (the same ones that come with being a middle eastern with a desire to fly), the airport really is wonderful.

Upon landing, I had planned to take the first Marin Airporter back home, a travel of ultra-convenience considering there is an airporter terminal right outside Hamilton. However I somehow managed to miss the bus, even though I was a good ten-minutes early, resulting in me having to wait an additional hour for the next one. That is until Jesus took the wheel and granted me the gift of two strangers who happened to be driving to Petaluma, passing Hamilton on the way. They offered me a ride, and at first I kindly thanked them but told them it wouldn't be necessary. Eventually, they convinced me that it really wouldn't be a burden considering they were driving right through anyway. I obliged and thanked them profusely. Just to be on the safe side, however, I began to secretly draft an email to my stepdad where I typed up their car's license plate number, their names, descriptions of what they looked like, where they were from, any fact that could help find me once I was kidnapped and raped for days on end. But it proved unneeded.

David and Jennifer were coming back from what they affectionately dubbed their "second honeymoon" in the Victoria Islands, Vancouver. They have two sons, ages 17 and 20, and have been married for at least 25 years, if not more (David says 25, while Jennifer firmly believes it's been 27). Having gone to school in Mill Valley, they knew Marin County well, informing me of what my hometown was like before the dot-com boom hit San Francisco, making Marin County one of the most desirable locations in the country. "Mill Valley was just as rich as it is now," they assured me, "but people weren't in as big of a hurry. The town was a little more honest then."

David is a self-proclaimed comic geek, having become one in the later stages of his life. At 50, he is a wonderfully, cheery man, big in both heart and size. From what I gathered, he's a cub scout leader (perhaps for the very troop he was a member of as a child), whose Star Wars obsession has only recently begun to die down (mention that George Lucas lives in his hometown and he'll only begrudgingly mention that he still has yet to see him). But looking at David, you'd never guess him to be a follower of such things. He calls himself a farewhether sports fan, with no real interest in any of those national teams - something he and I were able to connect on. Throughout the duration of our far-too-short car ride, we spoke of comic books and their ability to aptly convey a social critique that is not possible in any other medium, his thoughts on the Star Wars prequels, his memories of the opening weekend of Episode I, and how he and I may have actually been in the same theatre for the premiere of Episode III.

Jennifer told me of their trip, recounting her desperation for a bear sighting that all residents of the Island claimed was inevitable (for the record, she didn't end up seeing one and is convinced that it's all a big lie). She told me of their hikes, their whale watching, their delicious meals and random cravings for Mexican, which she attributes to the "if I can't have it, I want it more" mentality. Their son is attempting to write a screenplay, something they're supportive of, even if they're unsure of its end result. She and David playfully bickered, but there was undeniable love between them, and it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. After a trip to San Diego and a week in Wyoming, I found myself more in awe of their relationship than any of the 'natural beauties' I've had the pleasure of seeing this summer.

They dropped me off and I begged them to let me either pay for gas or their airport parking, but they refused, simply asking me if I wanted them to stay until I was picked up. I told them it wasn't necessary and, after a thousand more thank yous, we parted ways.

There is a kindness that emanates from people in the strangest of times; potentially the same people who control, comment and condemn others whom they know nothing about. I wish, perhaps more than I can ever explain, that I could understand why that kindness shines through when it does, but the point is simply that it does. And I was lucky enough to experience it first hand. There are times when I loose my faith in the people I'm surrounded by. And, as a result, it takes those soul shaking interactions to remind me that my skin and clothes don't matter too much.

It's an honesty that comes with the strangers who help those that can give them nothing but thank yous and good wishes. And it says something when I experience these interactions in the strangest of places and the oddest of times. Had I not asked Jennifer to watch my bag as I went to break a $5 for the airporter, she would never have known where I was heading, never would have noticed the bus leave one level above where I was, and never would have bothered to offer me that ride. And whether she realizes it or not, her and her husband changed me.

My stubborn refusal to heed the warning of never talking to strangers resulted in an, albeit, temporary, interaction that has managed to leave a long lasting impression on me, reminding me that the most important thing we can do as people is to fill the void between us with random acts of kindness, small in theory but gargantuan in effect. In a time where disillusionment is plentiful and rewards are a rarity, I am lucky to have experienced this first hand.

I am luckier, however, that I wasn't kidnapped and asked to put on the lotion. Seriously, worst end to a summer ever.

'Tarantino and his G.I. Jews'

Inglourious Basterds

Directed: Quentin Tarantino

Starring: Brad Pitt, Dianne Kruger

Universal Pictures, R, 153 minutes

The first thing to understand about Quentin Tarantino is that his primary audience is Quentin Tarantino. That’s who he makes films for, and everyone else is just a bonus. Which is why the mainstream success he’s found has become so puzzling, considering that his film’s intricate layers– you know, the ones that make the movie going experience worthwhile – are so difficult to truly digest, as opposed to just discuss. Yet he still finds himself in the ranks of our top tier American filmmakers. And perhaps rightly so; aesthetically pleasing, superficially assimilated, nauseatingly referential and with a penchant for walking a fine line between homage and plagiarism, -- really, what’s more American than taking things that don’t belong to us? – Tarantino has cemented himself as a post-modern auteur.

Now, at 46 years old – seriously? – and five films later, Tarantino has finally managed to hone his craft, or whatever you call it. And, like it or not, Inglourious Basterds may be the result, a movie infused with Tarantino squire that at once proves to be too much and not enough.

In classic Tarantino fashion, Basterds is broken up into chapters, culminating in a climax that rounds up the independent storylines for one final blow to the screen – a phrase that quite literally rings true for the film’s finale. Set in 1944, roughly after D-Day, but before the liberation of Paris, we're introduced to an alternate World War II, dividing the film’s main narrative into three separate threads. The titular, motley crew of the Basterds is lead by Lt. Aldo Raine (a typically mediocre Brad Pitt), who commissions his soldiers with the debt of 100 Nazi scalps.

Pitt, who is the film’s sole A-list name, is a modern-day superstar in every way, exerting rugged good looks and arguable acting ability; he is our definitive movie star simply because we have no one else. And Inglourious just furthers that divide between who Pitt is and who he should be. His breathy, southern drawl is a wonderful character quirk— as is the unexplained rope burn around his neck – but there is always a clear sense of referential characterization in Pitt’s delivery, one that is all too aware of its role in the film’s narrative.

But with Tarantino, a director who makes films about film, that kind of psychosomatic awareness is feasibly acceptable. To relentlessly preach characateur in the context of a Tarantino production is to truly be in touch with the source material, as nothing is meant to be particularly natural. If traditional cinema is to be watched in reality, a Tarantino picture is to be watched within a film. It’s what characters themselves would enjoy: kinetic and free-flowing energy, with equal parts excitement and ego bursting at the seams.

Dianne Kruger, who plays Bridget von Hammersmark, a German film actress/British double agent, balances voluptuous and vulnerable just enough to put her in the ranks of Tarantino’s other leading ladies de jour. But it’s Christopher Waltz’s Colonel Hans Landa, also known as “the Jew Hunter”, who truly centers this exploration into genre geometry. His every move is calculated, hauntingly still and undeniably shudder-inducing. He exhibits the larger-than-life persona and European sensibility of a top-tier Bond villain, even possessing a few quirky accessories: an oversized tobacco pipe is an unsubtle metaphor for his masculinity, or lack there of; his fondness for milk seems both teeming with eerie innocence as well as a primal instinct. Waltz has been getting unanimous praise, even earning a Best Actor Award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. And deservedly so; from the tense opening scene that may very well be the best of Tarantino’s carrier, Waltz is a force to be reckoned with, leaving all who share a scene with him to be resigned to supporting characters at best.

That is, all except for Mélanie Lauren’s Shosanna, yet another in a superb cast of mostly unknowns. Played with furious subtlety, Shosanna, a French-Jewish runaway whose family was exterminated during a Nazi raid, calculatingly flirts with Frederick Zoller, a Nazi war hero whose recent exploits have been captured in a propaganda film premiering at Shosanna’s theatre. That theater, in fact, is the climactic set piece of the film’s final act, where the three separate narratives – the Basterds, the Nazis and Shosanna – all meet. In true Tarantino fashion, it takes a movie theatre to end World War II.

For all its historical liberties, Basterds is infused with a sort of filmic authenticity - Americans are cast as Americans, French actors as the French, Germans as Germans. And with Tarantino, a director whose films are often injected with a seemingly endless amount of hyperbole, Inglourious Basterds actually manages to become an exercise in restraint, a fact that speaks volumes considering, for example, the film’s cartoonish depiction of scalping. The Basterds’ modus operandi, scalping, is itself a perfect representation of Tarantino as a genre-centered filmmaker, visualizing the constantly referenced but never-before shown torture of choice for the spaghetti westerns of yesteryear.

There is a lot of that, as is to be expected. But things have changed since 1992, back when Tarantino’s constant sampling and pop culture references had resonance for an audience that was feeling the cynicism of an undefinitive decade. Now, Tarantino seems loved because he has to be. To understand him is to understand the basic consumed-cool knowledge of the new millennial film world: shallow in its value, but plentiful in its excess of ingredient. A cinematic masturbator through and through, he’s suffered the sentencing of any director who finds his or herself resigned to an adjective. For one to say a film is ‘Tarantino-esque’ results in head nods, but who really knows what that means, if anything?

Tarantino represents the fundamental postmodern question: can an artist who is so clearly the amalgamation of all that came before – he zooms into people’s hands, just like De Palma! Is that an aerial shot of a Mexican standoff? Here’s looking at you, Leoné – really be branded as original? Maybe, maybe not. But because of his impeccable casting and ability to turn the mundane into magic, or because his very awareness accuses his naysayers of simply “not getting it”, Tarantino gets a free pass.

What Tarantino’s really become is the middle ground of the hip: he’s not particularly original anymore, but he’s cool enough. A catalyst for the 90s independent film movement, he and a host of other film icons, like Kevin Smith, all follow a remarkably similar, but disconnected trajectory, inspiring those around them to be better, only to eventually have their protégés be better than they themselves were. There is certainly no denying that Tarantino influenced a generation of young filmmakers. The issue is that they just managed to outshine him.

Which is why there seems to be a touch of something more important in Basterds, and I think Tarantino sees it too: an unavoidable disconnect that is more present here than in any of his other films. It seems as though he’s become aware of what he’s created, something sprawling and stronger than what he’s use to. Which is why his classic Tarantinoisms are as scarce and sporadic as they are drawn out and repetitive. Tarantino seems to be adhering to our idea of him, not as he really is. He has begun to look at his films objectively, and with Basterds, a film so obviously near and dear to himself (the film’s last line – “I think this may be my masterpiece” – has Pitt staring directly at the camera for a reason), there seems a desire to separate from what we’re use to. So any moment of Tarantino-schtick – Samuel L. Jackson’s explanation of nitrate film’s flammability, on-screen text identifying characters in Tarantino's own handwriting, quick cuts to tangential backstory – seems almost forced, a gift to us from someone who would have preferred to have done it differently.

So forgive this wordy, roundabout praise/lamenting of Tarantino the filmmaker, but there is perhaps no other way to aptly critique a culturally referential marksman like himself. Basterds often hits that same plateau; it fluctuates between brilliance and desperation. But there is a calm that circulates, allowing it to settle as something completely different. Equal parts Aldrich’s Dirty Dozen and Truffaut’s The Last Metro, Tarantino has patience here, allowing his narratives to unfold as they should, his characters to develop as they need and the prickly subject matter to be taken as it may.

Whether it’s his best movie or not depends on which Tarantino you side with: the independently hip writer/director (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction), the homage heavy auteur (Jackie Brown, Kill Bill), or the filmmaker who has put much of his over-the-top style aside for the benefit of actual development. Impenetrable to critique as he may be – his originality is now somewhat secondary to his reputation – he is undeniably gifted, and Basterds marks a turn towards someone a little more aware of themself. For Tarantino, a filmmaker so astute in context, to finally realize his role in the very culture he pays constant tribute to, is in itself a glorious feat indeed.