Sisters

Spent some time in the company of sister duos. 

So we won’t be talking about “The Three Sisters” or “The Makioka Sisters”?

Not this time.

How different is a relationship between female siblings compared to male siblings?

Judging by this group of movies, polarities are highlighted. One is usually more dominant than the other. One tends to be deemed as “good” more than the other - that just means one conforms to a traditional female role more than the other. I can sense in these works that there are deeper psychic bonds among sisters compared to brothers. But I’ll never know that since I only have brothers. Guys tend not to be that emotional. We just fight it out.

Spoiler alert: A lot of these works deal about death.

Indeed, spoilers ahead. Because a sister usually dies. 

These might as well belong in grief narratives.

It’s a plot point to show that even in death the sisterly bond is strong.

In the case of Shirley Jackson’s “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” the narrator turns out to be a ghost.

Reading rule: Never trust a first person narrator.

She may turn out to be the bad seed who poisoned her family with Amanita phalloides.

The dominant sister and therefore bad sister turns out to be the youngest one, Merricat. The older sister takes the blame for the earlier crime. But even in death, they have a strong bond. 

They are ghost sisters. The tagline for the rest of the works we’ll talk about should be “One dies at the end.”

Save one movie.

We’ll save that one for last. 

The starting point for all this was Brian De Palma’s “Sisters.” Twin sisters.

(d. Brian De Palma, 1972)

And one of them turns out to be dead.

But such a strong bond they had being Siamese twins and all that the dead one lives in the live one - splitting her mind -

Splitting the screen literally.

Classic De Palma move. At first we are led to believe that there are two sisters, one having a healthy sex life in 1970s Staten Island.

And the other is a hot mess. Obviously borrowed from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”

Another classic De Palma move.

There’s another work here titled “Sisters.”

A book by Daisy Johnson. The sisters are almost twins. Named July and September. Ten months apart in birth. The dominant one is also the screwed up one.

Or is she?

One of them dies. But at the end of the book, they share so much in their head that one becomes indistinguishable from the other.  I love her wordplays. “Howlingbanderlootinggrifter” is how the dead dad is described. And wouldn’t you like to call people “ranksalivafaces”?

I appreciate the way she injected Gothic horror elements to a contemporary setting.

I don’t think the plot twists provoked surprise in me. But it unsettled me. It’s a dysfunctional sibling relationship. The violence builds insidiously, starting out as children’s games then psychological terror. What’s worse? Physical violence or psychic violence? 

It should have a trigger warning.

Speaking of horror, I can’t believe I have not seen “A Tale of Two Sisters” until now. Probably because at the time it came out I had higher esteem for Japanese horror.

(d. Kim Jee-won, 2003)

It’s Gothic-Korean. An isolated country house. Ghost sightings. A dead bird. Creepy photos.

The movie’s sister bond becomes complicated by guilt. The polarities are not as extreme. One’s more protective than the other. You think she’s the stronger one, but she’s actually the one who’s more destroyed because of her guilt.

If you want to write a comparative lit paper, you can write about ghost reveals.

When characters reveal to the audience that they’re actually dead? I’m sure someone has written that already. Is it more surprising when it’s cinematic? Like “The Sixth Sense” or “The Others”? Or is it more surprising in literary works? 

The next four films explore themes of female roles in society and use sisters to highlight them.

We spend almost half of "Hum Aapke Hain Koun ...!" in preparation for a wedding. Not the wedding for Madhuri Dixit’s character, Nisha, but that of her sister. It’s a movie where nothing happens but there’s a wedding, a baby shower, and a funeral.

(d. Sooraj Barjatya, 1994)

Dare I say it? Like Edward Yang’s “Yi Yi”?

But big-ly. Because it’s Bollywood. The main plot point, quite late into the movie, is when Nisha’s sister, Pooja, falls down the stairs and dies. Does Nisha take the place of her dead sister and marry her brother-in-law and not his brother so the baby could have a mother and a father?

The dog solves their problem. 

I mean, each family member has a role to play.

But not interchangeably!

The movie spends a lot of time extolling the family unit. But the ending is quietly revolutionary. Madhuri Dixit and Salman Khan’s characters don’t conform to what the family originally wants - or what the society in general dictates.

With the help of the family dog.

The polarities between sisters here aren’t as extreme. Madhuri’s Nisha is modern because she wears roller skates and doesn’t need a matchmaker.

“Housekeeping” has one sister step in to a role, much like Nisha would have done.

The children are older when their aunt steps in.

(d. Bill Forsyth, 1987)

The story is really about two sets of sisters. 

So yeah, Ruth and Lucille don’t die, but their mother, Helen, drives her car into a lake at the beginning of the movie. Their Aunt Sylvie returns to take care of them. What plays out when Ruth and Lucille grow up is what might have played out when Sylvie and Helen were growing up. Lucille rejects the non-traditional lifestyle that Sylvie follows, which Ruth also grows into.

The title says it all. 

Lucille will become a housekeeper, have kids, and maybe drive a car off a cliff?

While Ruth and Aunt Sylvie separate from conformity and live as transients.

The sisters in “Invisible Life” are also separated.

The separation is sadder because you feel the strong bond between them. That they actually love each other and root for each other.

(d. Karim Ainouz, 2019)

Although they both live in Rio de Janeiro, they are separated by the worlds they occupy. The banished sister, Guida, lives among prostitutes, while Euridice is married with children and nursing a dream of being a concert pianist.

They are also separated by time.

Guida is already dead by the time Euridice finds out they live in the same city. It’s a bittersweet reunion. But the coda works because of Fernanda Montenegro. I haven’t seen her since “Central Station” more than 20 years ago.

Spoiler alert: neither sister dies in “Seeta Aur Geeta.”

(d. Ramesh Sippy, 1972)

Identical twin sisters! The same year De Palma's "Sisters" was released. It’s a Bollywood movie, so it’s an identity switch comedy. The polarities are played up to comic effect. One grew up poor and streetwise, the other is rich and meek. When they switch identities, comedy ensues.

I think all the songs are sung by Geeta.

Because she’s the dominant one. The sister who’s more fun. Assuming a role is more literal here. Geeta, who has more spunk, tries to fit into Seeta once she assumes the name. Seeta has a more traditional, feminine role.

I loved it because of Hema Malini.

She embodies a valuable point throughout the movie. As an actress, a woman can contain the polarities the movie ascribes to Seeta and Geeta.

It doesn’t have to be one or the other. A woman can roller skate and cook, too.

ACA

I bunched these works under the name “ACA.”

As in Obamacare?

Yes. The Affordable Care Act. But more than half of these works are set before that act became law.

Let me guess: Not much has changed.

Correct. There are 50 years between Frederick Wiseman’s “Hospital” and the docuseries “Lenox Hill.” The hospital as an institution has not evolved in half a century. What I like about “Lenox Hill” is that they discuss the business of running a hospital. Talent attracts surgeons who will do procedures that will generate income for the hospital system. Caring in a capitalist society is a business, whether you’re a safety net hospital such as Metropolitan Hospital or a fancy community hospital such as Lenox Hill. So Richard Widmark’s Chief of Surgery character in “Coma” can feel justified in his shady scheme.

(d. Frederick Wiseman, 1970)

(2020)

Do you think Paddy Chayefsky saw Frederick Wiseman’s “Hospital” and then wrote “The Hospital”?

They’re set in the same hospital. Most likely yes. As much as I love Chayefsky (a fellow DeWitt Clinton High School graduate), “The Hospital” has not aged well.

Because of the hospital murders?

A message with a blunt scalpel: Hospitals kill because they don’t care. I enjoyed that. Also got a kick out of seeing Frances Sternhagen asking for insurance information from a patient in the emergency room. And Stockard Channing as an ER nurse. The main reason it hasn’t aged well is Diana Rigg’s character, Barbara. She’s an ex-nurse, a counterculture foil to George C. Scott’s Chief of Staff MD. She works out her daddy issues / institutional issues with him overnight.

(d. Arthur Hiller, 1971)

Not a good portrayal of nursing in the media.

Nor is Elizabeth Ashley’s nurse in “Coma.”

Well, she’s scary in person.

The nurses in “The Student Nurses” are more exemplary.

Isn’t that a soft core flick?

Yes. But they were drawn better than Chayefsky’s nurses. My nursing professor would’ve probably failed me if I admitted to liking “The Student Nurses.”

(d. Stephanie Rothman, 1970)

Tell me a moment when you were a student nurse. Did you fantasize about marrying a doctor?

No. “Grey’s Anatomy” had just premiered and our nursing professors demystified a lot of their storylines in class. As soon as we did clinicals, that demystified a lot of Hollywood Hospital. Believe it or not “The Student Nurses” really did remind me of being a student nurse. 

Where were their preceptors?

I know, they had no preceptors! They were student-nursing on their own! Independent learning. They were assigned to different clinical areas, the way we as student nurses were. But it shows you that nursing’s purview is wide. I think the movie is so insightful about that. The student assigned to community nursing  became part of a social justice endeavor. Nursing can go beyond the hospital.

That nurse falls for a radical in a poor community.

It’s a skin flick with a lot on its mind. Maybe because it was a skin flick that its director Stephanie Rothman managed to get away with a lot. Like talking about abortion honestly.

Could you imagine paying to go see this movie to get titillated and then bump into an abortion subplot?

You got a lot of sex before getting to that plot point. It showed you what an elective abortion was during that time.

If you knew a doctor who could come to your house ...

True. Abortion runs through this group of works. “Coma” has a therapeutic abortion in its plot. When the patient ends up in a coma, how you feel about her depends on whether you’re pro-choice or pro-life.

(d. Michael Crichton, 1978)

If one were pro-life, one would think she deserved to be hung in wires, like the comatose patients in the movie?

I must say that was a lot of OR manpower for a therapeutic abortion. 

It’s not that intense anymore. “Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always” walks you through the 3-day process. 2 days if you had an early appointment.

(d. Eliza Hittman, 2020)

I thought that would be a nail-biter like “4 Months, 3 weeks and 2 days,” but it’s not. And then I realized we are not 80s Romania yet. Abortion is still legal in this country, but access has become difficult. There’s no shady doctor in “Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always.” The obstacles are also not easy. 

The movie talks about the abortion procedure in a factual and non-judgmental way.

The most painful part of that movie was the questionnaire. Not the procedure.

A good questionnaire can mine the truth.

That scene is pure acting. Reminds me of some Acting I exercise when we were given the most ordinary words and act it as a scene.

If there’s a main theme that courses through these works it’s that of access. That’s what Obamacare was supposed to do, right?

Access to abortion in “The Student Nurses,” “Coma,” and “Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always.”

Also access to care.

Metropolitan Hospital is still around, thank God. There are two moments in Wiseman’s “Hospital” that stand out. The doctor calls New York Hospital (now New York Presbyterian - Cornell) and complains about sending a patient from there to Metropolitan’s ER. The implication is that the patient was probably not a desirable patient financially for them. The other moment is when a psychiatrist phones for help to prevent a gay hustler from ending up in an institution.

Access to the top, in the case of “The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir.”

The author of that book, Michel Harper, writes about being passed for a promotion because she’s black and a woman. Her experiences as an emergency medicine MD are similar to the scenes in the emergency room in “Lenox Hill.”

(2020)

Tell me a moment when you were breaking.

Breaking as in crying? Like that neurologist in “Lenox Hill”? A night when my patient died surrounded by his family and I cried with them. I cried some more in the staff bathroom. Then I received my new admission later that night. He was a patient I had taken care of before and lost his vision because of his worsening disease. He didn’t see me cry because he was blind. But I went to the bathroom again and cried some more.

What was the beauty in that?

Michele Harper likens it to kintsugi after you piece yourself back together. You don't have access inside me - You can’t see it, but I’m mended with gold, silver, and platinum inside.

Vampires

We shall talk about vampires.

A month late. Halloween was a month ago. 

But vampires are timeless. That’s why they’re appealing.

Tod Browning’s “Dracula” was not appealing.

(d. Tod Browning, 1931)

I was mildly disappointed. That must be what the play was like. Very stagy. I haven’t seen the play. And I probably wouldn’t. After having seen Frank Wildhorn’s “Dracula” and “Dance of the Vampires,” I’m done with vampires on stage.

Browning made another vampire movie, “Mark of the Vampire.”

(d. Tod Browning, 1934)

Which I liked much more than “Dracula” even though they seem to have the same sets.

If they were plays, they could be played in repertory.

Neither of them were scary. I’ve never found vampires to be scary. I was more curious about the emphasis on females as prey. Does “Dracula” only feast on women and not men? Is that a rule? Vampires can only drink blood from the opposite sex?

Is that in Bram Stoker’s book?

I don’t know. I’ve never read it.

That’s shocking.

We weren’t really allowed to watch “The Wizard of Oz” as a Bible Baptist kid because it had witches. I had to read Anne Rice books surreptitiously. I saw a bit of the Francis Ford Coppola version, but I was more dazzled by the costumes. So no, I don’t understand vampire drinking rules.

Bela Lugosi plays vampires in both Tod Browning movies.

And yet all I can think of is Martin Landau’s Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton’s “Ed Wood.” I kept wanting to hear him say, “Be-vare.” He had the Transylvanian accent, I guess. But he wasn’t terrifying.

Horror movies reflect their times. What contemporary fears were in the Browning movies?

In both movies, I suppose the fear of foreigners was strong. That “civilized” women should be attracted to foreigners is cause for fear. Fear of sex sounds too easy. But it’s there.

Is “Mark of the Vampire” a horror movie or a mystery movie?

That’s why I like the second Browning movie more. It’s both!

Like Type AB blood?

The tone is slightly jarring in the middle as the movie morphs into a different genre. But I liked that you didn’t end up where you started. Also always nice to put a face to the name of Jean Hersholt. I always hear his name during the Oscars, but forget that Jean is a guy and that he was an actor.

I can imagine the audience getting pissed off at the end of the movie. 

It’s a movie with the audience in mind. Made me admire Tod Browning more for flipping the script. It’s like he was making fun of his own “Dracula” movie four years later.

On to Roman Polanski’s “The Fearless Vampire Killers.”

“Or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck.”

(d. Roman Polanski, 1967)

They made really long titles in the 60s.

So this wasn’t on my radar until I read an autopsy of “Dance of the Vampires.” That musical flop was based on this movie. And I am willing to bet that it influenced Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder’s “Young Frankenstein.”

It’s a comedy. 

Slapstick comedy. And it works. Even with Roman Polanski acting as the assistant to the professor who is investigating Count von Krolock.

Sharon Tate is the vampire’s victim.

It’s the sixties so sex isn’t so much the fear. The count lives in a castle. The fear is about the higher class abusing the peasants? 

Communist-lite.

To watch it now feels so eerie.

Seeing Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate in the same frame. Knowing what happens two years later.

I easily dismissed it because of the title. But I was hooked from the opening Cinemascope snowy landscape. 

Shot by Douglas Slocombe. Who went on to shoot “Raiders of the Lost Ark” among other things.

If “Dance of the Vampires” was as cheeky as this, I would’ve enjoyed it more.

Not a work of art that the vampires in “Only Lovers Left Alive” would be proud to produce.

Not a huge Jim Jarmusch fan. “Night on Earth” remains a favorite. “Only Lovers Left Alive” equals it. I guess I’d have to be in the mood to watch a Jarmusch movie to enjoy it.

(d. Jim Jarmusch, 2013)

The humor is cheeky and dry.

I love that they made Christopher Marlowe a vampire and maybe the author of some of Shakespeare’s plays?  The vampires are creators, not mere consumers. Possibly responsible for great works throughout various ages? I wish I could read books the way Tilda Swinton’s Eve reads books. Just by touching them.

A most desirable vampire super power. I like those little details in the movie. They have to wear gloves because their hands are sensitive.

Not because of COVID-19. And the most nourishing blood is Type O negative. 

Your blood type?

Tom Hiddleston’s Adam would be attracted to me.

Now that I think about it, when Tilda Swinton shows up in “What We Do in the Shadows” and refers to a Tom who’s not in the scene, was she referring to Tom Cruise or Tom Hiddleston?

I thought she meant Tom Cruise, the Vampire Lestat.  

But it makes more sense that it would be Hiddleston who starred in the same movie as her.

Adam and Eve’s survival depends on human blood, which has become more contaminated in our time and is not as nourishing.

So if Tom Hiddleston bit you, he would be poisoned.

Afraid so. I would be a fearless vampire killer.

I’m sure that’s not in Bram Stoker’s book. Maybe this would have been a good time to pick it up.

Too late now. Maybe next Halloween.

House of Women

What do you think about when a house is full of women?

That it’s a brothel? Isn’t there some old law somewhere that a certain number of women under one roof is considered a brothel?

I think that’s a myth. But if you were a woman, where would you rather live? A women-only boardinghouse, a sorority house, or a brothel?

Is the boarding house like the one in “Stage Door”?

No Ginger Rogers. No calla lilies. But Kathleen Freeman would be in it!

If it’s “The Ladies Man” boarding house, then yes.

You would want to live in a dollhouse?

Like a Barbie Doll.

One of the best movie sets ever created. 

Too bad it’s a Jerry Lewis movie. 

Starring Jerry Lewis. Directed, produced, and written by Jerry Lewis. After watching it, I still don’t understand what the French see in Jerry Lewis. I don’t care what Cahiers du Cinema says. And that set, as gorgeous as it is, screams misogyny. It conceives the ladies in the house as nothing more than living dolls. It’s definitely a doll house I would like to own.

What do you expect? It’s from the 60s. Peak “Mad Men” era.

The female characterizations are as flat as paper dolls.

It’s a dork’s dream. To be the only man in a house full of women and be fawned over.

But he was great in Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy.”

And as a telethon host.

Can’t say I was an avid annual viewer of that. I guess I like more restraint when it comes to comic acting. He was always mugging for the camera in “The Ladies Man.”

 

You wouldn’t live in a sorority house?

No. It’s usually featured in a horror movie or a skin flick. Sometimes both.

Tell me a moment when you had a black Christmas.

I associate a black Christmas with death. Just like the movie “Black Christmas.” Not serial killer deaths. But I’d say Christmas was black after my brother died. Isn’t that always the case when a family member dies? The first holiday after they’re gone seems like a black holiday.

It’s going to be a black Christmas for many the way COVID-19 cases are rising.

The movie reminded me about “Silent Night, Deadly Night.” I remember seeing that in the movie house when I was in first grade. My mother’s friend brought me to see it. I think it was after a Christmas party.

That must have scarred you as a child. Watching Santa Claus killing people.

I don’t think it destroyed Christmas for me. Sunday school in Bible Baptist Church already burst that Santa Claus bubble for me. I like movies that blend genres.

Is “Black Saturday” a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie?

Depends on the mood you’re in. Like “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

Do you care that Olivia Hussey’s character is the final girl?

Considering her acting ability, no. But I guess audiences at the time will care about the character depending how they feel about abortion.

My question was - are they graduate students? Because Olivia Hussey, Andrea Martin, and Margot Kidder do not look like  undergraduates.

What I found more chilling was whenever the camera switches to the killer’s POV. Yes, like “Peeping Tom,” but somehow more disturbing because as an audience member you’re filling in motives which the movie leaves unresolved.

Total B movie. Which one would you be in the sorority house?

I’d like to think I would be the final girl. The survivor. But we don’t know if she survives.

I would be Margot Kidder’s character, the boozy sorority sister.

Too bad Andrea Martin didn’t have a solo number …

But she had a fabulous death scene.

If you were a courtesan in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s “Flowers of Shanghai,” which flower would you be? Crimson, Pearl, Emerald, Jasmin, and Jade?

All of them.

Whoever Tony Leung is with. For a movie set in 19th-century Shanghai, I was surprised how fiercely feminist those women are.

I loved all of them. They understood economics more than the men did.

Because it’s a matter of survival for them. All of them had some agency in their fates. I thought they would be tragic opium-addled figures. And they weren’t. Totally went against my expectations. I'm a delicate flower, so I wouldn't survive in that Shanghai.

And so beautiful to look at.

That camera hovering like an opium haze. Courtesy of Mark Lee Ping-Bing. Even more beautiful with the restored print.

Makes me want to see the restored “In the Mood for Love,” which he did with Christopher Doyle.

Now, can we restore other movies shot by Mark Lee Ping-Bing?

"The Vertical Ray of the Sun!"

“Millenium Mambo” and “Three Times”

***

WORKS

THE LADIES MAN (1961, dir. Jerry Lewis)

BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974, dir. Bob Clark)

FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI (1998, dir. Hou Hsiao-Hsien)