Review: 13 Rule-Breaking Films

For all the creativity and innovation that goes into making (some) Hollywood films, there are also a lot of ideas that get recycled time and time again. I’m not referring to stock characters or the sequalitis that hits multiplexes every summer. I’m talking about the basic building blocks of storytelling that are ingrained in the movie-going experience.

Every once in a while, though, a film comes along that takes an assumption about how American movies are supposed to be made and changes it, sometimes resulting in something truly memorable. Producers who want to make a film that breaks one of the unwritten rules of motion pictures risk a lot – studios might not want to fund the film, theaters might not show it, audiences might not respond to it. The reward for taking the chance, though, is recognition for being a really interesting experiment, or, in some cases, taking your place among the greatest films ever made.

(NOTE: I've been getting a tremendous response to this article, and based on a number of comments I feel I should clarify something: In no way do I think the following list is THE DEFINITIVE list of rule-breaking films. I did want to include movies that most people have heard of or would be reasonably available for those would want to seek them out. Nevertheless, I'm sure every film lover could add something to this list - the fact that this or that film is not on it should not be taken as an intentional slight on my part.

Some commentors have pointed out that my list is made up almost entirely of American films released in the last half of the 20th century. This was also not intentional, but mainly the result of my having been born and become a movie fan in America in the last half if the 20th century. --CE 5/13/08)

Time Code (2000)
Rule Breaking Idea: Show four frames simultaneously on the screen

When I go to a movie theater, I assume I will sit in a chair. I assume everyone will face the same direction, the lights will be turned off (or at least down), and I will look at a large rectangular screen onto which I will see one series of moving photographs at a time. Mike Figgis’ work, in which he shows the audience four scenes running at the same time, changes one of the basic expectations of watching a movie. Keeping track of different lines of action is an interesting experience, like being a building security guard who must keep tabs on a group of cameras, mentally sorting out the important bits from the mundane. I finished my viewing wondering how much I missed, or if maybe my brain could eventually get used to this kind of viewing, the same way all film viewers use persistence of motion to watch any film.

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Rule Breaking Idea: The good guys lose

In mass-marketed science fiction and fantasy films, from Flash Gordon to Superman to The Lord of the Rings, it’s an assumption that before the end credits roll the heroes will pull out some kind of victory by vanquishing the evil-doers, even if only temporarily. Perhaps that is a necessary assumption in a universe where a few deranged people can do a lot of damage with the firepower science and magic provides. The idea of the hero has been around since humans could tell stories, and in most of them, even if the hero falls, it’s not without accomplishing something worthwhile or going out with a noble flourish.

There would be no such victory for the heroes in George Lucas’ second installment of the Star Wars saga. In the previous episode, the scrappy Rebels scored a major victory against Darth Vader and his minions. In the sequel, the Rebels get their collective backsides handed to them by the Empire, militarily (the “battle” on Hoth wasn’t so much a fight as a delay action to allow the Rebels to run away), personally (Han Solo is betrayed by his friend and becomes a frozen dinner right after acknowledging his love for Leia) and emotionally (Luke Skywalker learns the biggest mass-murderer in the galaxy is his dad). At the end of the film, there’s nothing left to do but pick up the pieces, get a new hand attached, and move on.

By striking this cinematic minor chord, the franchise achieved a degree of resonance and depth it would not have had if it just presented a new way for the Rebels to stick it to the Empire. This kind of pathos was not achieved again until Episode III (Revenge of the Sith) when Anakin crosses over to the Dark Side.

Russian Ark (2002)
Rule Breaking Idea: Instead of making a film with 20-30 scenes, make a film with one 90-minute scene, shot in a continuous take.

Like Time Code, this film changes a fundamental part of movie-watching. Shot at the Russian State Hermitage Museum, the film is a triumph if only because it managed to pull off a logistical nightmare. Hundreds of cast and crew have to get everything right at one time, or it’s back to square one. As a viewing experience, I found the film a bit exhausting. I guess I’m just used to breaks in the narrative that cutting from scene to scene provides. Since it’s not possible to jump from one place or time period to another using this technique, the storytelling range is automatically restricted as well. It’s a beautiful film and well worth the time to see, but I’m not sure this technique would work on a regular basis.

Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Rule Breaking Idea: Make a heist film that shows everything except the heist

There’s nothing quite like watching a detailed, well-planned heist unfold on film. Criminal acts form the centerpiece of a lot of entertaining movies. (see: Heist, The Killing, Ocean’s Eleven, Rififi, Sexy Beast, The Score, The Sting)

In Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino’s adapted story of a bank robbery gone very wrong, things proceed from a different angle. The audience gets to see the planning, the botched getaway, and the brutal, bloody aftermath as the crooks try to figure out what to do next. The one thing that’s missing is a depiction of the actual heist. And that’s okay. A well-written film can go anywhere, and Tarantino’s writing talent, combined with a top-notch cast, is such that two people talking to each other can be an entertaining as an action sequence.

Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Rule Breaking Idea: Make a truly anti-drug film

Drug and alcohol abuse have been subjects for films for years. Movies like The Days of Wine and Roses, Leaving Las Vegas, The Lost Weekend, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Trainspotting provide ample opportunities for actors to exercise their dramatic chops with scenes of decadence and ecstasy followed by anguish and regret. Drinking and drugging, while destructive, are also presented as poignant, dramatic, and even humorous and cool in certain aspects.

Much more than these films, Darren Aronofsky’s movie presents drug use as first and foremost scary, depressing, and gross. The main characters are young and pretty the way most young people are pretty. What they are not, though, is smart, interesting, glamorous, lucky, or headed anywhere. Their experiences with drug use are sad, brutal, and not fun in any reasonable way. The only joy they seem to get from the drugs they use comes from temporarily not having to look at their crappy lives, which also holds for one character’s mother, who is falling apart from abusing diet pills. In this film, the audience gets to watch four people destroy their lives without a hip soundtrack, snappy one-liners, or a happy ending to cushion the blow. I still have a hard time watching this harrowing film, but it’s worth the effort.

Psycho (1960)
Rule Breaking Idea: Kill off the main character halfway through the film

This is a film that probably would not have gotten made if not for the fact that it’s Hitchcock. I heard on Turner Movie Classics that when the movie first premiered the director encouraged exhibitors to not let late-coming moviegoers in to see the film after a certain point. He wanted the audience to develop an attachment to the ostensible heroine before removing her from the narrative via the most famous murder ever put on film.

If this film were made today, Norman Bates would have gotten to kill off a few minor characters to show how evil he is, but Marion Crane would have found a way to survive, probably after a few close calls and some kind of one-on-one struggle with Bates before he’s dispatched at the last second. To try to do anything different shows just how radical Hitchcock’s idea was, and still is.

Memento (2000)
Rule Breaking Idea: Show the entire film in reverse scene order

This is a very effective film noir with a great cast. The premise, centered on a man who has lost his ability to remember what just happened to him, lends itself to the technique Christopher Nolan used. Unlike a lot of films, the audience has to concentrate to understand what’s going on and keep track of how the last scene, which they saw first, fits into the first scene, shown last. Other than a lesser episode of Seinfeld, I’m not aware of any other films or TV shows that have tried the same thing, which is probably for the best.

High Noon (1952), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), and Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
Rule Breaking Idea: Take one of America’s most sacred myths, the Western, and turn it on its head

Every country has its national myths. In America, the West represents freedom, adventure, and progress. The bad guys are swarthy, desperate, easy to spot, and more or less easy to defeat. The good guy rides in on a white horse and, with the help of, the decent local folks, cleans up the town from violent desperados or greedy corporate land barons, to the gratitude of the town folk. The landscapes are boundless and beautiful, the horses fast, and there’s plenty of room for anyone with courage and gumption.

Some films, though, cast a different light on the Old West. In High Noon, a movie that was made partly in response to McCarthyism, everyone in the western town where the movie takes place is basically a coward, wholly dependent on the sheriff (played by Gary Cooper) to save them. When it’s the sheriff who needs help defending the town from a group of bad guys, the townspeople present any excuse not to put themselves in harm’s way, much to the chagrin and ultimate disgust of the main character.

In the Ox-Bow Incident, the mob is not just passively hiding from danger, but actively seeking out ways to punish people who are innocent of a murder. “Frontier justice” is portrayed as antithetical to the American ideal. In Bad Day at Black Rock, the frontiersmen are violent, ignorant, racist thugs. The film’s hero (played by Spencer Tracy) doesn’t come in on a horse form the dusty plain, but on a train from the city. The urban places that are often portrayed as something to escape from now become the source of justice for the innocent who live in the Wild West.

Goodfellas (1990)
Rule Breaking Idea: Look at organized crime from the bottom up

Another of America’s myths is the gangster picture. Ever since films were invented Hollywood has cranked out stories of criminal syndicates and the people who run them. (see Little Ceasar, The Public Enemy, Scarface: The Shame of a Nation, White Heat). In these movies, gangsters are high-livin’, charismatic, and exciting. Francis Ford Coppola’s epic The Godfather trilogy is perhaps the ultimate portrayal of the Mafia in all its operatic glory.

With Scorsese’s masterpiece, he focuses on organized crime’s middle-management, the guys who aren’t the kingpins, but have to get up in the morning and hustle just like everybody else. Other than the obvious difference of getting killed if you get out of line, there are parallels between their life and that of any other corporate citizen – how to keep the boss happy, how to move up the org chart, how to keep it all going day in and day out. David Chase would extend this theme with his portrayal of Tony Soprano and his business operations. It’s not the larger- than-life figures that make these films interesting, but the details and dynamics of living in a wholly unique society and economic system.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Paths of Glory (1957)
Rule Breaking Idea: Make a truly anti-war film

Motion pictures use the theme of war in a lot of ways: War is an outward expression of inner struggle between our good and evil natures (Platoon). It’s a surreal journey that transforms mens’ psyches (Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter). It’s a sick joke (Dr. Strangelove, The Great Dictator). It’s a thrill ride/videogame (Pearl Harbor). It’s a testament to the bravery and sacrifice of soldiers everywhere (The Big Red One, The Longest Day, Saving Private Ryan, Das Boot, Letters from Iwo Jima, and hundreds of other war films over the years).

These films do not glamorize or celebrate war, but there are only a few films that leave out the metaphors and symbolism and take the position that, in the end, war is nothing but people killing each other and destroying civilizations. There is nothing to be learned from it or gained by it. And there are no heroes, only survivors.

Ever since All Quiet on the Western Front was released it has been censored by countries going to war. At some point in history the film has been banned in Germany, Poland, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, New Zealand, and Australia, and has been re-cut in the U.S. to give it a happier ending. The movie is a straightforward story of young men who go off to war with their hearts full of bravado and theory (provided by a rhetoric-spouting school professor) until they experience the horror and misery of combat.

Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory shows what happens when soldiers are caught up in a bureaucracy that maintaining order even if it means killing its own innocent soldiers. The film’s main character, Colonel Dax, is a front-line infantry officer who sees the process of death both from his enemy’s guns and from his own outfit’s brutal code of discipline. Kubrick was not only critiquing war itself, but also the way higher ranking officers, represented by General Broulard, treat their own soldiers like chess pieces, throwing them into the meat grinder while those with power remain comfortably behind the lines.

These two films are based in World War I, one the least popular wars from an American movie-making perspective. The most well-received films concerning America’s current military conflict, the war in Iraq, tend to be documentaries. For reasons that have yet to be definitively determined, fictional portrayals of the Iraq war have not done well in theaters.
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