Paul Schrader's Cat People and Light Sleeper: Films Driven by Issues - Movie Review Example

American Film Directors Table of Contents Introduction 2 Cat People (1982) 3 Best Scene 5 The Light Sleeper (1992) 6 8 Best Scene 8 Similarities and Differences in Schrader’s Movies 9 Conclusion 10 References 11 Introduction Paul Schrader, the celebrated and acclaimed American film director and screenplay writer is more recognized for his screenplays rather than his directorial pieces. Paul’s works are influenced by Robert Bresson, Yasujiro Ozu and Carl Dreyer. His more inclination towards screenplays has always made his work aesthetic but at the same time Schrader’s films also renders a food for thought. Some religious dilemmas, spiritual controversies and quest for the search of existence have remained some of the central motifs in most of his films. There are many films through which Paul tried to bring forth some particular social or religious agendas. Two such all time great creations by director Paul Schrader are Cat People (1982) and Light Sleeper (1992). Cat People (1982) ‘Cat People’ was directed by Paul Schrader and is based on the film with the same title released in 1942. Unlike its prequel, this version directed by Paul is more cinematic and has lot to say like his other movies. Cat People is an erotic horror movie about a women who discovers that her sexual urges turns her into a monstrous black leopard. This remake of the 1942 classic originated way back in time, when humans used to sacrifice their women to leopards to be mated with them. Cat people looks like Humans but it becomes essential for them to mate with their own kind. ‘Cat People’ casts Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell and John Heard. Other actors included in the film are Annette O’Toole, Ruby Dee, Ed Begley Jr, John Larroquette and Jerry Bruckheimer. The film apparently displays a similar kind of passion and a sexual chic brought to the explicit horror movie like the director’s similar creation, American Gigolo. But more than a mere sexual appetite and activity of a human feline, this movie cuts deep into the soul and psyche of the entire human race. Schrader’s films are not exactly what they seem. They have a lot more to cater to its audience and this is one of the main reasons for the limited number of viewers for any movie directed by Schrader (IMDB, “Cat People”). More than a remake of the 1942 version, this film explores and tickles at a thought about which any average human is ignorant. Cat People have a particular motif behind. Cat People explore “Animal in Us All”. The lovers in the movie are more than a lover and less than human. This puzzling exploration forms the basic motif and theme of the film. Cat People by Schrader deserve a full 10 only if we consider the film on visual terms. The cinematography, production designing and lighting are nothing less than a genius. Cat People compelled its audience to pause and give a close reading to almost all the scenes in the movie. The director of photography, John Bailey never stops to find interesting and intriguing perspectives, angels and tracking in every scene. The sets are constructed elaborately and exquisitely for visual impacts. In collaboration with the lighting, the film is stalled in rich and loud platted colors. It is quite obvious that the Schrader version of Cat People is more graphical than the old version of the movie by Tourneur. The film is decked up with blood, gore and nudity and bears a unique mark. Only resemblance or impact of any other film is found in the scene where blood runs by Irena’s shoes and run down to a drain bears a resemblance with the shower scene of Psycho (1960) by Alfred Hitchcock. Cat People is not just about visual aesthetics, it is more than that a surreal story displayed with a strong spiritual issues that breaks the conventional icons and social inhibitions. The intriguing story is performed by odd-range of actors starring. Schrader has an appropriate understanding of character portrayal. He never misfits his stars and dumps them into a wrong attire. In Cat People too, Schrader displays the story with a stylish glossy production banking on Kiniski who has superbly thrown her kittenish gesture and the European body language went appropriate with her character portrayal. No other actress of that time would have been able to display the cat walking on two legs better than Kinski. Her green eyes thick lips and European attitude towards her body appropriately supported plenty of poster-art nudity in the film. Best Scene The film encapsulates many horrifying scenes but the scene where the big cat turns wild seeing Joe with Irena was one of the most powerful scenes of the film. Foolishly Joe tried to beat down the feline with the electric prong and the dangerous cat – like animal pounced on Joe and ripped of his arm from his body just like a child breaks the arm of his toy as if made of rubber. This scene is not only one of the most horrifying scenes in the history of entire motion picture but is symbolic from Schrader’s scheme of things. Jealousy, along with many other primitive instincts like sexual appetite is present in any animal. Schrader actually wanted us to see that Irena and Paul are not any exceptions. They are hidden primitive instincts present in all human which we cloth with our sophistry and social conventions that easily comes out whenever any one triggers them just like Irena’s sexuality evolves out at the presence of her own kind. ‘Cat People’ is more than an erotic fantasy, symbolic of the hidden primitive instincts present in all of us. This is the reason for the choice of the setting also. A primitive dreamlike imagery in a desert which makes it more captivating aesthetically was selected to serve the purpose. Robert Hudson rightly comments that “Cat People doesn’t really make all this come together, but it’s always interesting to look at, and the dreadful mood lingers.” The Light Sleeper (1992) This film also bears all the mark of Schrader’s canon. The film voices strong social issues and again transcends and transports its audience beyond the realm of reel life and launches them in to a paradigm which is more humane. ‘Light Sleeper’ is a film about a drug dealer who deals with upscale clientele and is undergoing some moral obligations and dilemmas regarding his daily deliveries. Light Sleeper is a “story about the discovery of the spirit, Lure of Decadence and the Chance for Escape.” Light Sleeper, written and directed by Paul Schrader casts a bunch of brilliant theatrical artists like William Dafoe, Susan Sarandon, David Clennon, Dana Delany and Schrader’s wife Mary Beth Hurt who appears as the fortune teller in the film. Light Sleeper is a story about a reformed addict who has not seen his girlfriend for a long time. The twist of the plot occurs when few women killer appears in the city that kills women with some apparent drug related issues. Light Sleeper falls typically into the group of films written and directed by Schrader centering on a spiritual insomniac. The film will always leave an impression on its viewers mind, not for the display of the plot dynamics but for the fantastic projection of human mind and its spiritual crisis. Thematically, Light Sleeper focuses on the midlife crisis of a drug pusher. He passes through purgation and ventures towards a quest for redemption. He plans to quit his present career and make his fortune in musical world. William Dafoe playing John Le Tour works under his boss named Ann, played by Susan Sarandon. She also has the strong pursuit to escape but for her the field is into the world of cosmetics. Through the powerful pursuit of both the dealers and his boss, Paul tried to show a general pursuit of escapade to a utopian world is desirable for every human mind tired with the job he is executing. Through John, Schrader tried to show the entanglement of a man in existence with only a dark past and redeeming present left completely without the insight for the future. The film dealing with human psyche is Schrader’s cup of tea and for this the character portrayal becomes more important. An eagle-eyed director reestablishes his eye for characterization in Light Sleeper. The gap-toothed Dafoe is perfectly casted for the role of John, the drug dealer selling narcotics all around the country. Critics admire Dafoe as “white prune – skinned horse toothed beauty”. He is pale and this paleness suggests that he can only work at night. This character bears all the mark of another character created by Paul. Julian Kay as the narcissist in American Gigolo and Travis in Taxi Driver also echoes this midlife spiritual crisis of soul. The supporting cast of the film is equally excellent. The most notable among them is Susan playing Ann. She perfectly displays the glamorous supplier who remains un-besmirched by the nature of her work. Light Sleeper is full with religious overtone. This film is Schrader’s favorite film and most personal too. This film very importantly reveals Schrader’s background and upbringing explicitly than any of his works. During his early years and before the success of Taxi Driver, he himself has spent nights in porn theatres and faced drug abuse. Le Tour is not a complete self portrait of Schrader but the drug dealer is a person with whom the director himself sympathizes because Schrader himself underwent a similar kind of spiritual crisis by facing the same kind of self-disgust. The film has an extra ordinary elegance and a cold classicism that creates a kind of unique style and features of the director that co-ordinate with the content of the film. The director places his camera at a distance and suggestively moves the camera through the alleys and corners of the Le Tour’s world. There are almost no jumps, cuts or any sort of abruptness in the film. The camera moves through the nook and corners of Le Tour’s world as if it is trying to assess the events with its own deliberation. Here, Schrader again assures that the camera of a screenplay writer moves with a unique glide and subtleness. The exterior work of the film mostly recalls Taxi Driver. Best Scene The best scene in the film is the one in the hospital cafeteria. The scene encapsulates the heart touching conversation of LeTour and his ex-girlfriend whom he has not seen for a long time. This scene is the most memorable and powerful in the film because here both the actors indulge into immaculate performance where they display so many things that go unsaid. Another powerful scene in the film is the final scene which Schrader nicked from a French film and had applied it earlier in the American Gigolo is very close to any viewers soul cause it is based on the idea that a man whether captivated or nor has no relation with his freedom. Freedom of soul is something really different and hard to achieve. Similarities and Differences in Schrader’s Movies Blue Collar (1978) has been the directorial debut of the screenwriter Paul Schrader and it is the film about the working class and American Dream. American Gigolo (1980) by Schrader is a smash hit and a thriller written and directed by Schrader based on a French film Pickpocket (1959) by Robert Bresson. This story depicts an American male prostitute and his narcissist feelings that lead to his spiritual crisis and at the end attains redemption. Patty Hearst (1988) is a biographical film showing the protagonist physically imprisoned but beginning to think about a new phase in her life at the end of the film and Comforts of the Strangers (1991) is a film based on an English couple who sort out their distance and coldness of relationship and rediscovers it during their holiday at Venice. Any great director leaves a kind of his own unique signature and Paul Schrader is not an exception in this regard. All these films are typically casted into Schrader’s scheme of things American Gigolo or Patty Hearst depicts similar kind of ending which is based on a particular kind of ideology that Paul follows. He believes that the physical freedom has got nothing to do with the freedom of soul. A person captivated physically can aspire for his mental freedom and plan for the future. Another repetitive theme noticed in all these films are the spiritual crisis which Schrader’s characters undergo. This spiritual crisis is also a very personal feeling of the director. Typically, Schrader’s most successful films and all these creations too encapsulate a social outsider at the centre. These individuals either needs to justify themselves or needs to be justified. “An unstable war veteran, a male prostitute, a burnt out paramedic, in turn they stumble through an insecure world, a personal earthbound hell, or ‘a world on fire’.” Schrader brings forth repeatedly the issues of social crisis or personal as we see in Comforts of the Strangers but in any situation, his films are human and they are all a mirror which is capable of showing our inner selves and delve deep into the unfathomable ocean of human soul and psyche (IMDB, “Light Sleeper”). All these films are similar from thematic perspective and repeatedly through his works Schrader has come out of complex themes like male obsession and estrangement, and also many harder issues like “melancholia, trauma, complex linkages of violence and guilt that bind individuals to places and each other”. Conclusion Paul Schrader truly creates cinema going beyond the affirmation of directorial vision. He produces films driven by “issues of obsession, memory and the difficult nature of experience”. George Kouvaros has rightly said, “Schrader was a representative of a new generation of writer-directors of the 1970s; Schrader’s films highlight the tension between old and new ways of telling story and between the maintenance of commercial formulas and openness to individual expressions” (University of Illinois Press, “A searing study of an important American writer-director”). References IMDB, “Cat People”. 08 December, 2009. Overview. Cast and User Comments. 2005. IMDB, “Light Sleeper”. 08 December, 2009. Overview. Cast and User Comments. 2005. University of Illinois Press, “A searing study of an important American writer-director”. 08 December, 2009. Paul Schrader. 2008. Read More