Al's Omniflick: Omniflick Commentary: Virtuality

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Omniflick Commentary: Virtuality

Virtual reality entertainment is nothing new; it's earlier, less-sophisticated predecessors featured crudely rendered animation, but technology and content have come a long way since then. The evidence supporting this claim has been made conspicuous at the Virtual Arcade at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. The event was covered by critic Neil Genzlinger in his article: With a Helmet, Who Needs Popcorn in today's New York Times Arts section. Eighteen virtual-reality "films" have been made available to festival patrons in a variety of genres: animated stories, short documentaries and short narrative films. Of course viewing is only made possible with viewing devices such as the one pictured above.

Genzlinger shares his viewing experiences, which seem wondrous, even to someone like myself who has yet to sample the technology. The article gives a brief synopsis and viewing description of the visual shorts available in the Arcade. One film is the animated short Allumette; a story about a girl in a cloud city. Genzlinger describes the virtual reality piece as such:

...and when the city appears, you are inside it. You can walk paths, look up at the sky, peer down at other levels of the city below. The film is viewed standing up, and you may find yourself ducking so as not to hit your head on that virtual bridge or stepping awkwardly to avoid treading on the vagabond sleeping under the bridge. When the ship carrying the young girl to the new land docks, if you walk over to it and stick your head through the side, you're suddenly looking at the interior rooms of the vessel...

And later in the article, he writes, "Overall, the room (the Arcade) invites you to contemplate the implications of this radical shift in how movies might be made and watched...:"

Though a full-length feature film has yet to be made for virtual reality, it's fairly clear where visual storytelling is headed. As movie theaters cede ground to cable television's copious offerings and whatever people seem to find so fascinating on their cellphones, images projected three-dimensionally in a helmet seem like a logical, technological progression. Being immersed in and being part of the story also seem like natural evolutionary steps in the movie-viewing experience. Genzlinger notes how the virtual shorts often coax a physical reaction from the viewer. He mentions making swimming motions with one's arms during a film about sea-floor exploration.

He briefly addresses the negative impact of virtual reality when he writes;

It's easy to see this depersonalizing us--we've already retreated from real life into our cellphone and tablet screens; will we next disappear into our helmets?

I don't know what impact the medium will have on our cognitive faculties or our consciousness, but I've learned people quickly overcome their aversion to technological phenomena (remember when people hated cellphones?). But he considers its positive aspects as well when he envisions a multiplayer-like scenario where participants share an experience.

As a life-long cinephile, I've seen movies withstand assaults from television, video and computer games but the medium's dominance may be at an end. It's only a matter of time before virtual reality becomes mainstream and when it does, it's easy to imagine headsets superseding flat screens in living rooms. If and when that happens, will anyone bother with movies or T.V. as we know them? Will classic cinema, like Lawrence of Arabia be forgotten; dismissed as quaint entertainment, or will it become absorbed into virtual reality? Will it be possible to ride next to Lawrence as he crosses the Jordanian desert alone? The thought of a hundred years of cinema vanishing in the wake of virtual reality "cinema" is heartbreaking. Given the Arcade patron's enthusiastic responses to the viewing, as noted by Genzlinger, one can't help but feel cinema's future is decidedly grim.

I can't help but be excited and curious about what virtual reality promises but the technology also leaves me feeling pessimistic. I'm not ready to give up The Seven Samurai or The Third Man just yet--or ever. Maybe I should enjoy the silver screen while it's still here; the future may belong exclusively to head-sets.

Neil Genzlinger: With a Helmet, Who Needs Popcorn?

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On DVD

Fury (1936)

Director: Fritz Lang

Though we might normally think of the films M and Metropolis when director Fritz Lang becomes the topic of conversation, less known is the legendary director's work in Hollywood. Having fled the ever-growing menace of Nazi Germany for America in the early 1930s', Lang eventually found himself under contract for MGM.

Though his work in Hollywood is very uneven, one standout is Fury, from 1936. Starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney, the film's condemnation of mob justice seems spectacularly daring now, considering lynching was still a reality in Depression-era America. We don't see one black person in the film entire but we know precisely for whom Lang film is sympathetic.

Spencer Tracy plays Joe Wilson, who is arrested in a small town while en route to meet his fiance, Katherine (Sylvia Sydney). Suspected of being part of a kidnapping of a little girl, Wilson is arrested on the flimsiest evidence. While he sits in cell; angry and indignant, Katherine is puzzled as to why her fiance hasn't arrived at their prearranged meeting place.

But Wilson's fortunes take a darker and more dangerous turn when a mob--already on edge--is roused to anger. Egging one another on, the mob moves on the jailhouse where Wilson is being held. As the angry gathering becomes a mass, drawing citizens of the town into their swelling numbers, a lynch-mob begins to form. The sheriff, determined to see due process take its course, refuses their forceful demands. Becoming angrier and angrier and bolder and bolder, the crowd storms the jail, overwhelming the sheriff and his deputies. Unable to unlock the cell doors to reach Wilson, the mob sets the jailhouse ablaze as an alternate method of lynching.

Katherine, having arrived on the scene, faints when she sees flames engulf the cell where her fiance is held.

In spite of the mob acting as a faceless entity, its principle members are brought to trial though the town and the defendants maintain a conspiracy of silence, hoping to escape convictions and censure.

A sure acquittal seems imminent until damning evidence assures their guilt. When the majority of the members receive death sentences, Wilson turns up at his brothers, having survived the fire. Knowing the public is unaware of his survival, he vows to stay in hiding to ensure the mob conspirators are executed.

The scene where Katherine, nearly insane from grief, comes face to face with Joe is a powerful moment in the film. As she slowly recovers from her state, she realizes Joe's vindictive determination to see the mob hang is in itself a great injustice.

The story climaxes during a stirring courtroom scene that brings the fascinating story to a close.

I would have never expected Hollywood to make a statement as powerful as Fury made in 1936. Given the fact that lynchings in America at the time went unpunished, the movie railed bravely, in spite of the main character being white rather than black, against what was then the status quo. The Oxbow Incident would make a similar and commensurately powerful statement seven years later.

The film's willingness to peer into the darker side of American life could be partly attributed to Lang, who co-wrote the story and who was no stranger to exploring the darker side of humanity. Having seen evil flower in his home country, it makes sense Lang would choose to tell this story.

Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney give wonderful, emotionally layered performances. Katherine's near descent into madness is depicted touchingly by Sydney. To see Tracy's mild-mannered Wilson become angry and vengeful is heartbreaking.

Even watching Lang's film on a small screen does little to diminish its power. Weeks after the viewing, I still can't shake its indelible images or its angry indictment of one of America's great crimes. One couldn't devise a better title than one it was given eighty years ago. Fury indeed.