Movie : Citadel, or: Did you know blind people are BLIND?!
Link : Citadel, or: Did you know blind people are BLIND?!
Citadel, or: Did you know blind people are BLIND?!
Citadel (2012)
Directed by Ciaran Foy
***SPOILERS***
Patton Oswalt makes a great proposal in his special Finest Hour. He speaks of being approached to play a role in a romantic comedy as the “GAY BEST FRIEEEEEEND!!!!” He refused because his character said every gay-best-friend joke in the book, offering life-affirming quips that were witty and conveniently in tune with pop culture. He said the only way he’d agree to play the role was if he could be the “first dumb gay best friend in the history of cinema.” I agree with him that at this point in the game, come on, it’s like blackface. I’ve got gay friends…and about half of them are stupid (just like my straight friends!).
Oswalt went on to call this stereotype “dehumanizing” for a gay person, which, yeah, it’s really gotta be after this much repetition. And, in actuality, it stretches way beyond gay people. It’s like whenever a white person tries to make a movie about black people. It’s never black people living their life, but it’s The Help, or it’s The Blind Side, and it’s white people helping black people to overcome their problems…of being black. And Danny Boyle can’t make Slumdog Millionaire (with notable douchebag screenwriter Simon Beaufoy) without eroticizing the streets of Mumbai, coming off as colorfully experimental pornography.
And, as I was watching Ciaran Foy’s debut feature film Citadel, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for another misrepresented segment of the population: blind people. I know the situation is out of control because as soon as Marie (Wumni Mosaku) took the time to candidly announce to Tommy (Aneurin Barnard) that Danny (Jake Wilson) was blind, all I could think to myself was, “Wow! I wonder if that will come back to have any significance?”
You know it’s bad when blind people start protesting movies based on their descriptions alone, like when there was outrage over the Julianne Moore vehicle Blindness, where “blind people are portrayed as monsters.” But honestly these protesters seems to be missing the point. “Blind people as monsters” doesn’t really have anything to do with blindness, and I find it to be much more offensive and dehumanizing when you find sub-characters’ blindness merely serving a thematic fodder. Sort of like when there are black people in your movie to make white people feel better about that whole civil rights thing.
Most of the instances relating to blind people involve horror movies, which isn’t too surprising, as most horror films explore the recreation of fear through images or personification. Like in The Eye, where the female character lose her sight, gains it back…and can see dead people. Upon discovering she received the eyes of a young girl in a mysterious village, her sight suddenly becomes a life lesson as the film attempts (again, attempts) to become an intelligent observation of the invisible gap between the living and the dead and…anyway, there’s also The Village, which was M. Night Shiyamalan's piss-poor attempt to preach to us once again, this time utilizing a young blind girl who just couldn't see the light. While also employing her lack of sight for some tasteless tension, her blindness does nothing more than reinforce the "blindness" of her fellow villagers, who all enjoy their blissful ignorance away from contemporary society.
Tommy is centered on a guy who goes blind as a child when he witnesses a murder and his parents tell him, "You didn't hear it, you didn't see it, you won't say nothing to no one ever in your life." He then goes on to become a spiritual cult leader as he preaches the revelations he experienced in his blindness, unable to be influenced by the world's ugly teachings. By not seeing, he's able to see. Get it? Even good ole Charlie Chaplin took his turn at this somewhat dehumanizing extravaganza in City Lights, where the blind woman, yes indeed, helps Chaplin "see" things clearly. It may have produced one of the most heartwarming final scenes in the history of cinema, but it also adds to the list of countless films that seem intent on never simply owning a blind character with no thematic attachments.
Unsurprisingly, the master of horror Dario Argento is one of the few directors I've encountered that can take a blind man and simply utilize him as another character, as seen in his tragically underrated Cat o' Nine Tails. It recalls exactly what Oswalt so desires, which really isn't that difficult to accomplish: I want the world's first dumb blind guy. Franco is a great investigator, no doubt about it, but his best days are surely behind him, and in all honesty his blindness comes to get in the way as often as he helps Carlo. Franco is never utilized for a cheap scare, but instead to build his professional relationship with Carlo. There's a scene where Franco believes he is being cornered in a tomb by Carlo, who is unable to recognize the fact that there is blood dripping from the knife hidden in his cane. These moments test the relationship between two men working towards a common goal. Here, blindness is the product of one man's distrust for another. In the examples listed above, blindness takes center stage, becomes the puppeteer and controls the action, thus doing no service to the character it plagues.
So now we have Citadel—a film about a man who grieves his wife's murder and develops agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is a bit misunderstood, as most associate the word with fear of "open spaces". But really, agoraphobia relates to the fear of any environment the individual associates with anxiety. So for Tommy, the most extreme portion of his agoraphobia pertains to the apartment complex where his wife was murdered, and his fear becomes less pronounced the closer he travels to his new suburban home. And even there he's fucking terrified of every creak in the floor.
So how do you portray agoraphobia? There are many ways to do it, such as a straight-up day-in-the-life format as seen with blindness in Scent of a Woman, or seen with cancer in 50/50, but Foy has opted for a horror approach in his particular film. Thus, every character and image occupying the frame is fair game in enhancing Tommy's sickness. Every miscellaneous sound can set off alarms in order to thrill, and other people's actions can be see as the result of Tommy's mindset.
At its very core, there's a lot of heart behind Citadel. Foy is adept in recognizing the branching effects of disease, as Tommy's fear of the outside world often affects those he loves most. His wife's murder was out of his hands, but his subsequent panic attacks increasingly put those around him in danger, pronouncing the effects of his disease as loudly as any directly dramatic format. In the end, Tommy must conquer his phobia and walk through a group of ghost thugs without fear, which is the close to his character arc. By doing so, he is able to guide Danny and his child to safety. But before then, Tommy's fear trickled into his daily activities, resulting in the murder of the Priest (James Cosmo), the bludgeoning of Marie, and the kidnapping of his child. In turn, each of these actions carries a contextual relation to Tommy's fear and various methods he could choose to conquer it: the Priest's murder being the abandonment of religion; Marie's beating being the denial of a romantic relationship; and his daughter's kidnapping being the only remaining human attachment to his wife. After his daughter disappears and his human contacts (aka the extraneous themes and motifs intrinsically bound to Tommy) have abandoned him, he's left only to conquer himself by entering the very building that took his wife and destroying it from within.
With that compliment in mind, the manner in which Foy uses these people and their thematically relevant attributes bothers me, and I think it can be traced to his typically Hollywood-esque employment of blindness. Danny is a strange force in Citadel, staring at Tommy even when he can't see, creating an unreasonable, yet undeniable panic in Tommy. And then, bringing out that "significance" I assumed would result from Danny's glaringly obvious presence, his blindness becomes a parallel to Tommy, as the Priest proclaims he must "learn to see!!!" by...closing his mind. Or, you know, his eyes. Because with blindness, he has the ability to tap into other senses. Not Daredevil-style, but you get the idea. Essentially, Tommy must learn to not fear these ghost thugs (aka his attachment to the past), hurdling him into a series of narrow hallways that have the personification of fear (those pesky demons dressed in hoodies) lurking around every corner.
Essentially, each and every physical prop and person within Citadel could be a figment of Tommy's imagination and still hold the same significance. It'd be like Mulholland Dr. if the film never provided a hazy resolution to Betty's dream of a Hollywood career. Everything has to mean something, which rips Tommy's journey free from reality and entirely contains it within his detached mindset.
The Journal of Medicine and Movies (yes, that exists) performed a fantastic study on the role of disease in film. One of the tables featured in the report discusses the roles of disabilities in film and how they pertain to the blind character at hand:
Two of the films discussed in the report—Scent of a Woman and Dancer in the Dark—form a nice little sandwich on each side of Citadel for me to evaluate (and devour). Lars von Trier's Dancing in the Dark is unsurprisingly committed to the central female figure, with the report noting the film scored a "4" because it represented "people with visual impairment who had unique personalities, since they played roles that showed a longing for independence and for not wanting to be pitied." Essentially, the film is about a blind person and the results of being blind, rather than blindness shaping the forthcoming events, thus transcending the presence of blindness. The same cannot be said for Scent of a Woman, which instead puts more emphasis on the disability than the person with the disability, as Frank's blindness comes to establish and define the relationship with Charlie. In turn, the movie is much less about how blindness affects the individual, but instead becomes an exploitation of disabilities to dictate emotion.
Now, granted Danny is not the main character in Citadel, but his presence—much like every extraneous prop and character surrounding Tommy—is rendered one-note in regards to Tommy's psyche. Whereas the characters of Betty's dreams in Mulholland Dr. were discovered to be recreations of people already flooding Betty's (or should I say Diane's) real life recast as characters in a movie and owned unique characterizations, the "people" of Citadel all share a congruent presence. Mulholland Dr.'s characters all gained a paralleled definition as they were developed within Betty's dream and outside of it. Citadel's characters all share a rating of "1" with Danny on the Journal of Medicine and Movies' chart, not only revealing the presence of blindness to be just another prop, but also every character in Citadel to be just another prop in enforcing Tommy's illness. Citadel literally ranks below Scent of a Woman, as Foy's film could not even establish a single character without attaching some internal motif or theme to each individual or prop.
So my initial fear of the announcement of a blind character proved to be justified, but in retrospect, it's a bit disheartening to realize that the misrepresentation of blind people—which can also be associated with the misrepresentation of any select group of people—normally results in contrivance throughout the entire film. The minions of Citadel bear a striking resemblance to the aliens of Attack the Block, but their relation to the characters at hand is anything but comparable. While the aliens in Attack the Block represent the physical and mental oppression these young boys experience daily on a societal level, they remain a separate entity that's nonetheless relentless in its grip on these boys' lives. The thugs in Citadel represent Tommy's agoraphobia, but also carry the same meaning as every human being surrounding Tommy. Thus, the one-note characters are integrated into a one-note experience within Tommy's mind. Citadel is just far too internal for its own good. Foy seems to understand the sprawling reach of disease, but shows no signs of exhibiting it. I guess I could make some ironic joke about blindness in this regard, but what's the point?
Remember, Cinema Beans' and Modigliani Movie Inquiries' 2011 book is available on laptops, tablets, and smart phones. It's a collection of our analyses of 2011 films, and a 2012 edition is coming soon. You can also rent it for free, or you can buy it for $2.99. Think of it as a donation. Thanks!
Tommy is centered on a guy who goes blind as a child when he witnesses a murder and his parents tell him, "You didn't hear it, you didn't see it, you won't say nothing to no one ever in your life." He then goes on to become a spiritual cult leader as he preaches the revelations he experienced in his blindness, unable to be influenced by the world's ugly teachings. By not seeing, he's able to see. Get it? Even good ole Charlie Chaplin took his turn at this somewhat dehumanizing extravaganza in City Lights, where the blind woman, yes indeed, helps Chaplin "see" things clearly. It may have produced one of the most heartwarming final scenes in the history of cinema, but it also adds to the list of countless films that seem intent on never simply owning a blind character with no thematic attachments.
Unsurprisingly, the master of horror Dario Argento is one of the few directors I've encountered that can take a blind man and simply utilize him as another character, as seen in his tragically underrated Cat o' Nine Tails. It recalls exactly what Oswalt so desires, which really isn't that difficult to accomplish: I want the world's first dumb blind guy. Franco is a great investigator, no doubt about it, but his best days are surely behind him, and in all honesty his blindness comes to get in the way as often as he helps Carlo. Franco is never utilized for a cheap scare, but instead to build his professional relationship with Carlo. There's a scene where Franco believes he is being cornered in a tomb by Carlo, who is unable to recognize the fact that there is blood dripping from the knife hidden in his cane. These moments test the relationship between two men working towards a common goal. Here, blindness is the product of one man's distrust for another. In the examples listed above, blindness takes center stage, becomes the puppeteer and controls the action, thus doing no service to the character it plagues.
So now we have Citadel—a film about a man who grieves his wife's murder and develops agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is a bit misunderstood, as most associate the word with fear of "open spaces". But really, agoraphobia relates to the fear of any environment the individual associates with anxiety. So for Tommy, the most extreme portion of his agoraphobia pertains to the apartment complex where his wife was murdered, and his fear becomes less pronounced the closer he travels to his new suburban home. And even there he's fucking terrified of every creak in the floor.
So how do you portray agoraphobia? There are many ways to do it, such as a straight-up day-in-the-life format as seen with blindness in Scent of a Woman, or seen with cancer in 50/50, but Foy has opted for a horror approach in his particular film. Thus, every character and image occupying the frame is fair game in enhancing Tommy's sickness. Every miscellaneous sound can set off alarms in order to thrill, and other people's actions can be see as the result of Tommy's mindset.
At its very core, there's a lot of heart behind Citadel. Foy is adept in recognizing the branching effects of disease, as Tommy's fear of the outside world often affects those he loves most. His wife's murder was out of his hands, but his subsequent panic attacks increasingly put those around him in danger, pronouncing the effects of his disease as loudly as any directly dramatic format. In the end, Tommy must conquer his phobia and walk through a group of ghost thugs without fear, which is the close to his character arc. By doing so, he is able to guide Danny and his child to safety. But before then, Tommy's fear trickled into his daily activities, resulting in the murder of the Priest (James Cosmo), the bludgeoning of Marie, and the kidnapping of his child. In turn, each of these actions carries a contextual relation to Tommy's fear and various methods he could choose to conquer it: the Priest's murder being the abandonment of religion; Marie's beating being the denial of a romantic relationship; and his daughter's kidnapping being the only remaining human attachment to his wife. After his daughter disappears and his human contacts (aka the extraneous themes and motifs intrinsically bound to Tommy) have abandoned him, he's left only to conquer himself by entering the very building that took his wife and destroying it from within.
With that compliment in mind, the manner in which Foy uses these people and their thematically relevant attributes bothers me, and I think it can be traced to his typically Hollywood-esque employment of blindness. Danny is a strange force in Citadel, staring at Tommy even when he can't see, creating an unreasonable, yet undeniable panic in Tommy. And then, bringing out that "significance" I assumed would result from Danny's glaringly obvious presence, his blindness becomes a parallel to Tommy, as the Priest proclaims he must "learn to see!!!" by...closing his mind. Or, you know, his eyes. Because with blindness, he has the ability to tap into other senses. Not Daredevil-style, but you get the idea. Essentially, Tommy must learn to not fear these ghost thugs (aka his attachment to the past), hurdling him into a series of narrow hallways that have the personification of fear (those pesky demons dressed in hoodies) lurking around every corner.
Essentially, each and every physical prop and person within Citadel could be a figment of Tommy's imagination and still hold the same significance. It'd be like Mulholland Dr. if the film never provided a hazy resolution to Betty's dream of a Hollywood career. Everything has to mean something, which rips Tommy's journey free from reality and entirely contains it within his detached mindset.
The Journal of Medicine and Movies (yes, that exists) performed a fantastic study on the role of disease in film. One of the tables featured in the report discusses the roles of disabilities in film and how they pertain to the blind character at hand:
Table 2. Categories for the assessment of the topics of the films selected.
Personality of the character with a disability | Inclusion in the community | Interpersonal relationships | |
1 | The personality of the character with a disability is not developed. It is focused on visual impairment and not on the person. | The character with visual impairment is not integrated in any of the areas of community life (examples: education, work or leisure activities). The character rarely leaves home. | The character with visual impairment only has contact with hired carers or with his/her family. |
2 | The character’s personality is slightly developed. It is more focused on the disability than on the character’s personality traits. | The character sometimes leaves home to attend leisure activities but is not integrated in the community. | The character has acquaintances and/or hired carers, but no close friends. |
3 | The character has clear personality traits. The character is a person with a disability but is not only defined by his/her disability. | The character is partly integrated in the community, or in his/her workplace, education and/or other leisure activities. | The character has friends and acquaintances, and natural means of support. |
4 | The character’s personality is well developed. The viewer can “step into the character’s shoes” and see his/her reasons, hopes, dreams, likes and dislikes. | The character is completely integrated in his/her community. There are several ways of representing participation in the community. | The character has friends and acquaintances and at least one close personal relationship together with several natural means of support and a group of friends. |
Two of the films discussed in the report—Scent of a Woman and Dancer in the Dark—form a nice little sandwich on each side of Citadel for me to evaluate (and devour). Lars von Trier's Dancing in the Dark is unsurprisingly committed to the central female figure, with the report noting the film scored a "4" because it represented "people with visual impairment who had unique personalities, since they played roles that showed a longing for independence and for not wanting to be pitied." Essentially, the film is about a blind person and the results of being blind, rather than blindness shaping the forthcoming events, thus transcending the presence of blindness. The same cannot be said for Scent of a Woman, which instead puts more emphasis on the disability than the person with the disability, as Frank's blindness comes to establish and define the relationship with Charlie. In turn, the movie is much less about how blindness affects the individual, but instead becomes an exploitation of disabilities to dictate emotion.
Now, granted Danny is not the main character in Citadel, but his presence—much like every extraneous prop and character surrounding Tommy—is rendered one-note in regards to Tommy's psyche. Whereas the characters of Betty's dreams in Mulholland Dr. were discovered to be recreations of people already flooding Betty's (or should I say Diane's) real life recast as characters in a movie and owned unique characterizations, the "people" of Citadel all share a congruent presence. Mulholland Dr.'s characters all gained a paralleled definition as they were developed within Betty's dream and outside of it. Citadel's characters all share a rating of "1" with Danny on the Journal of Medicine and Movies' chart, not only revealing the presence of blindness to be just another prop, but also every character in Citadel to be just another prop in enforcing Tommy's illness. Citadel literally ranks below Scent of a Woman, as Foy's film could not even establish a single character without attaching some internal motif or theme to each individual or prop.
So my initial fear of the announcement of a blind character proved to be justified, but in retrospect, it's a bit disheartening to realize that the misrepresentation of blind people—which can also be associated with the misrepresentation of any select group of people—normally results in contrivance throughout the entire film. The minions of Citadel bear a striking resemblance to the aliens of Attack the Block, but their relation to the characters at hand is anything but comparable. While the aliens in Attack the Block represent the physical and mental oppression these young boys experience daily on a societal level, they remain a separate entity that's nonetheless relentless in its grip on these boys' lives. The thugs in Citadel represent Tommy's agoraphobia, but also carry the same meaning as every human being surrounding Tommy. Thus, the one-note characters are integrated into a one-note experience within Tommy's mind. Citadel is just far too internal for its own good. Foy seems to understand the sprawling reach of disease, but shows no signs of exhibiting it. I guess I could make some ironic joke about blindness in this regard, but what's the point?
Remember, Cinema Beans' and Modigliani Movie Inquiries' 2011 book is available on laptops, tablets, and smart phones. It's a collection of our analyses of 2011 films, and a 2012 edition is coming soon. You can also rent it for free, or you can buy it for $2.99. Think of it as a donation. Thanks!
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