Film Reviews by Philip Beck

Thor

2011-06-20T19:35:00.000-07:00

Here's something worth thinking about: if you could be any movie superhero, which one would you choose? Would you like to have actual super powers, such as Superman (alien living on earth), the X-Men (genetic mutation), or Spiderman (radioactivity, spider)? Or would you prefer to remain completely human and be aided by science and technology, like Batman or Iron Man? There's a third alternative, too--superherodom by way of being a god. The world's religions are filled with interesting deities, and the movies have a comfortable history with a few of them. Jesus has been a star of the screen since the silent era. Greek gods and goddesses have kept busy in supporting roles over the years (Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans). But for the rest of the almighty spirits out there, cinematic work has been hard to find--at least in Hollywood. Good news for them all, therefore, that Thor, the first of the summer's intended blockbusters, is a blockbuster.

Based on another of Marvel Comics' seemingly endless line of costumed crimefighters, Thor is the latest to make a splashy big screen debut in theaters (following closely on his heels, Captain America is set for a July release). Although we officially honor this god every Thursday, he really isn't very familiar to American viewers. A few Norse gods have had illustrious careers on the world's opera stages, thanks to Richard Wagner, but the God of Thunder makes only a brief appearance in The Ring of the Nibelung, and under a different name at that. Fortunately, Stan Lee and his associates at Marvel saw something Wagner didn't, and beginning in 1962 signed him to a long-term contract.

The story, according to the Gospel of Marvel Comics, tells of Thor (Chris Hemsworth), prince of Asgard--heavenly stronghold of the gods--and heir to the throne of his father, Odin (who else but Anthony Hopkins?). Thor is handsome and strong, but incredibly rash, a source of worry to his aged father, who is nearing the end of his life but hesitates to hand over power to his reckless son. To safeguard the cosmos, Odin must be sure that after his death peace will continue between the gods and their mortal enemies, the inhabitants of Bifrost, a forbidding world of ice and perpetual darkness. The malevolent Bifrostians are monstrous ice-men bent on destroying the gods and turning the entire universe into the same kind of frozen wasteland they inhabit, but they're held in check by Odin's authority. It's an uneasy truce, however, and when Thor defies his father and leads a raid on Bifrost, it threatens to result in all-out war. To preserve order in the universe, therefore, Odin banishes his beloved son to earth, where he loses his supernatural powers. Confused and heartbroken, Thor must adapt to a strange new world and learn to accept his fate.

Fortunately, he meets a girl--no less a one than beautiful astrophysicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), leader of a team studying the heavens in a remote part of New Mexico where Thor falls to earth, and literally into her life. Disoriented and raging like the angry god he is, Thor doesn't try to make friends with his rescuers, but Jane likes him anyway. Something about his tousled blond hair, granite jaw, and steely blue eyes, quite possibly. He may be mad, babbling about his powers and saying quaint things like "What realm is this?", but he's different, and brilliant but boyfriend-challenged Jane can't resist wondering if he holds the key to many things in her life, including her understanding of the universe (it involves space-time configurations called wormholes--more about them later). Her research partner and surrogate father, Erik (Stellan Skarsgard), warns her that Thor could be dangerous, but even so he helps him escape the police and find a mysterious crater in the desert that's crawling with operatives of a shadowy government agency called S.H.I.E.L.D. (Fans of the Marvel series have already encountered this agency in Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk.) They are investigating something that fell to earth around the same time Thor did--the great hammer of Odin, Mjollnir, Thor's weapon in his glory days in Asgard. Odin cast it out after him, perhaps to serve as a reminder of all he's lost. Now it lies partially buried in rock, where it resists the efforts of all who try to remove it. Thor is confident that once he holds the weapon in his hand again, he will regain his powers. But he also fails to free the hammer, and the realization that he is now a mere mortal nearly breaks his spirit.

To parallel Thor's suffering, events in Asgard take a serious turn for the worse. Banishing his favored son is too much for Odin's failing strength, and he falls into a coma, leaving a power vacuum around the throne. Filling it is Thor's half-brother Loki, an enigmatic figure whose true nature is only gradually revealed during the course of the film. While it should come as no surprise that Loki covets the kingship once meant for his older brother, the why and the how of it make the film's web of intrigue genuinely intriguing. Loki is no black-hearted villain but a frustrated younger son living in the shadow of a more popular sibling, one whose arrogance and irresponsible nature make him less qualified for the throne than Loki knows himself to be. His ambition grows from a tragic seed of justified grievance, watered with the poison of envy. But this is melodrama, not Shakespeare, and before too much plot goes by, Loki is doing and saying everything a superhero's nemesis ought to--we watch his soul grow dark in front of us. It's a predictable change, of course, but Tom Hiddleston's fine, shaded performance as Loki makes his inevitable transformation into baddie arresting enough to become the movie's most potent dramatic arc. Loki is not the first supervillain to usurp the hero's place in his own film.

The storyline is fleshed out with the expected elements: a love story, heroic sidekicks, a final showdown between hero and villain, and the promise of a sequel. It's the superhero action formula we've grown accustomed to, and obviously like, given the continued success of these movies. Thor doesn't vary it much, but a spirited tone, imaginative imagery, and appealing performances make it seem refreshing despite the familiarity. Hemsworth has the muscle tone of a displaced god, if not quite the awe-inspiring presence, but under Kenneth Branagh's attentive direction, he makes that presence felt when it counts, particularly during the energetic climax. Even better, Hemsworth's Thor, while appropriately humbled by his ordeal, retains just enough pride at the end to suggest that arrogance tempered with wisdom is the quality not just of a god but of a great leader. Portman--still decompressing from Black Swan, perhaps--gets to display her sense of humor as the smitten scientist, a welcome tonic to the implausibility of her character's romance with an ancient deity. "Awkward" and "nerdy" are not adjectives one usually associates with the chic actress, and fortunately Branagh doesn't ask her to push Jane too far in that direction, or the results would be harder to believe than Viking warriors walking down a 21st century street. But she gives Jane enough of those qualities to lend credence to her confusion around a hunky male, as well as a touch of sweetness to the growth of her shy attraction into love.

It must have been tempting for director Branagh to view this film chiefly through the wide angle lens of epic--Homeric, Shakespearian, Wagnerian, George Lucasian. It's filled with themes that epics love: good vs. evil, brother against brother, the intermingling of divine and mortal worlds, love crossing the barriers of space and time. The New Testament contributes a father god sending his son to earth in mortal form (perhaps Odin knows all along Thor will be humanity's salvation). Even Arthurian legend makes a cameo--the hammer in the rock that can't be moved until the Right One tries is a chivalrous nod to the Sword in the Stone.

But these aspirations to epic are wisely kept under control. Branagh's resume is rife with overblown versions of classics such as Hamlet and Frankenstein, so it's something of a marvel he's able to exercise restraint at the helm of this muscular hero tale. Much credit goes to the even-tempered screenplay by Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz, and Don Payne. Despite an angst-ridden background filled with family conflict and betrayal, there's a loose, often playful feel to the script, which packs a lot of material into 115 minutes so economically the film never feels crowded. Branagh's straightforward, uncluttered direction perfectly complements the writers' thrift, guiding the dual storylines at an animated but never hurried pace, and keeping things in sensible perspective: no scene is overdone, no moment overstuffed with emotion. As a consequence, the movement to the movie's climax feels effortless, which gives it a greater impact than a noisier, more deliberate build-up would have. Like the best of the recent spate of superhero flicks, Thor is a comic book made by and for adults.

The movie's knowledge of classical literature is matched by its skill in mixing film genres. Genre and myth are closely related anyway, but superhero movies bring them even closer together by merging the archetypal stoies of myth with the iconography of popular culture. When filmmakers display a command of both the cinematic geneology and the cultural roots of their pop stories, as they do in Thor, the combination strikes sparks. Thor's master plan is ambitious, crossing adventure epic with science fiction and fantasy--the hero's journey takes him across time and space, from 900 A.D. Asgard to the present-day American Southwest. The aforementioned wormholes allow Thor and his friends to travel almost instantly between two epochs and two distant corners of the universe, but this quasi-scientific explanation is given a mythological correlative in the film's most spectacular creation, the dazzling Rainbow Bridge of Asgard, which according to legend connects the gods to the far reaches of the cosmos--as well as ancient religious beliefs to contemporary scientific inquiry.

Just as successfully, Thor bridges the gap between action spectacle and intimate drama. Relationships are central to the dynamics of the story, not incidental, and the care with which the film treats the domestic and romantic entanglements of the characters makes their actions emotionally credible, despite their comic book origins. The warfare between the kingdoms of Asgard and Bifrost has epic scope but is viewed through the prism of family drama, lending it a touch of Greek tragedy. If this association seems a bit high-toned for action fare, the film earns it--it's not forced on us in any self-congratulatory kind of way, but rises unpretentiously from the logic of the story.

Though Thor is clearly not the type of male who enjoys bantering with the opposite sex, the film's romantic angle has enough deft touches to recall classic Hollywood romanti-comedy as well. This lifts the movie's spirits considerably. Portman plays the game nicely, as noted before, and when Thor finally tumbles to Jane's attraction to him, Hemsworth seems to be flexing his muscles a bit more self-consciously. But there's another model behind their mismatched courtship, a more deeply embedded narrative--the romance between two people of unequal class backgrounds, in this case between a wealthy or well-bred lady and an unsophisticated working man. The love-across-class-lines formula pops up everywhere: in classic romanti-comedies such as It Happened One Night (1934), westerns like The Virginian (1931) or My Darling Clementine (1946), even thrillers (Alfred Hitchcock's 1953 masterpiece, Rear Window). Tennessee Williams memorably enshrined it in the lethal flirtation between Blanche Du Bois and Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. And Disney did it with dogs in The Lady and the Tramp (1955).

Thor borrows most heavily from one of the more unlikely tales in this collection: Tarzan. Like the legendary hero of the jungle, Thor is a Natural Man, an unspoiled alpha male from a "less civilized" world, whose unpolished manners and elementary outlook are in stark contrast to those of his more refined and articulate mate--who, interestingly enough, is also named Jane. The cult figure of Tarzan is a potent nexus of popular culture and classical mythology, as well as a movie franchise that is practically its own genre. In a way, nothing better reflects how mythology is created for consumption in America, which absorbs hero tales from all cultures and turns them into easily digestible cine-fables, stamped with the American brand, that are fed continuously to the world's entertainment markets.

We have the industrial and cultural machinery to do this, of course. The "Hollywood" film is a recognized commodity worldwide, and an important part of it right now is the Marvel brand with its successful product line of superhero sagas. Thor is just the latest to make the hero's journey to the heights of popular mythology by way of cinematic fame. And the latest, and of course not the last, to reflect the underlying irony of these resurrected hero tales. No simple throwbacks or odes to nostalgia, they are instead somewhat uneasy explorations of what we're nostalgic for. Good still battles evil, as of old, but now the struggle takes place in the ambiguous moral landscape shaped by our modern sensibility, which renders every outcome--and its meaning--a little less certain than it once seemed to be.

Morning Glory

2011-01-18T17:46:00.000-08:00

It makes me feel a bit guilty to say unkind things about a film that wants to be liked as much as Morning Glory does. Just like its pretty, perky heroine, Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams), this movie really, really wants you to like it. How can the viewer resist me? it seems to ask. I'm so cute, full of energy, and awkward in an adorable kind of way. No question, Morning will brighten your day at times, but ultimately there is little glory to be found in its eager to please but all too familar story.

It's set this time in the competitive world of morning television. Here's the scoop: Fuller is the enthusiastic assistant producer of a morning show in New Jersey, whose lifelong dream is to one day work for the Today Show. Budget cuts at the station force them to let her go, and she begins the frustrating search for a new job. After a stream of rejections, she interviews for the position of head producer at DayBreak, a ratings-starved counterpart to the Today Show and its more successful imitators, on the fictional IBS network. Improbably, she is hired on the spot by the doesn't-really-give-a-damn station manager (Jeff Goldblum), who employs the kind of logic that exists only in movies and decides that the show is so far gone he might as well take a chance on someone as unlikely as Becky (she comes across as both desperate and kooky in her interview). Why, making her head producer is such a crazy idea, it just might work... Oh sure, why not? Every journey down a familar road begins with a first cliche.

In order to begin saving the DayBreak, Becky needs to quickly prove herself to the demoralized crew, especially long-suffering co-anchor Colleen Peck (a good but underused Diane Keaton), whose years of frustration with the substandard working conditions have made her wary both of new producers and hope in general. Becky comes up with a bold idea--pair her with a renowned TV newsman who was recently relieved of his anchor position to make room for younger talent. Embittered by IBS's treatment of him, and contemptuous of morning television (and seemingly everything else, except his award-studded career in hard news), Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) is not exactly the ideal fit for DayBreak. But then, we wouldn't have much of a movie if he were. Egocentric and insulting, Pomeroy joins the morning news team under serious protest, sulking in his dressing room, refusing to banter on air with Keaton, and drinking heavily in his off hours. Becky has her hands full getting the spoiled, grumpy star to appear on camera, let alone do the job she hired him for. He lends the failing show no help, as is his intention, and the ratings fall even faster than before.

Faced with the threat of cancellation, Becky turns to desperate measures. What follows is the most entertaining part of the film, a loose montage of wacky stunts and on-air gaffes that begin to catch the public's attention and edge the ratings upward. Silly programming and the clashing egos of the stars, who begin to trade insults instead of the requested happy talk, finally do what "serious" programming couldn't--get people tuning in to see what's happening on DayBreak each day. A combination of inspired hunch and happy accident having reinvigorated the show, Becky is all at once the toast of the business. And, of course, she's approached by the Today Show, offering her the position she's dreamed of her whole life. Should she stay or should she go? Oh, the hard choices faced by beautiful, talented people in glamorous industries.

The film badly wants us to sympathize with Becky, so it drives home the point that the demands of her job have taken a toll on her love life, which at the start is a mess. An early scene illustrates the challenges she faces--she's forced to meet a blind date for dinner in the middle of the afternoon because she rises so early in the morning for work. But that might not be a problem if she weren't also endearingly odd--a compulsive talker and a hopeless workaholic, she chatters non-stop during the first few minutes of their meeting and tries, but of course fails, to ignore her cell phone, which rings every couple of minutes. The date beats an understandably hasty retreat.

Becky's clutziness and failure to attract a partner, despite her obvious charms, might have added an extra layer and a touch of poignancy to her story, if the film had pursued the theme seriously, but instead it quickly discards this opportunity for a little depth. Soon after joining DayBreak, Becky meets a dreamy ladies' man (Patrick Wilson), who conveniently works in another division of ISB. With only the mildest of courtship difficulties, they fall into bed, the results of which must be happy, although we're not treated to details. He's instantly Mr. Right, which just as instantly drains the romantic subplot of tension, as well as interest. With hardly any struggle, the script hands Becky a cute, sensitive guy--so, what was the problem before anyway? You just can't get a good date in New Jersey? Despite some nice interplay between McAdams and Wilson, their later scenes are for all purposes irrelevant, and after a promising beginning, Wilson is wasted in a dead-end role.

The setting of this film may be television journalism, but little in it is news. Part 70's sitcom (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, That Girl), part Broadcast News (with maybe a dash of Network), Morning Glory relies heavily on story ideas that have been pitched many times before. To a great extent, the movie is Broadcast News lite, following James Brooks's terrific 1989 film in its aim to situate the conflict between a professional woman's career and her personal life within the struggle between serious journalism and entertainment in the television news arena. We've already seen how Woman vs. Career fared. Serious Journalism vs. Entertainment gets better treatment, mainly because this is where the film's interest really lies.

The question of how an unpopular show captures an audience without abandoning all credibility is centered around Ford's character. More than centered--Pomeroy physically embodies it. The whole reason for his presence in the story is to provide a human battleground for the fight between hard news and the soft news format of morning television. Pomeroy, Hard News personified, does not want to give in, regarding everything around him--perhaps even the chair he sits in--with hostility. The work of the narrative is make his square peg fit into DayBreak's round hole without doing too much damage to either. As the film passes midpoint, the tug-of-war between Pomeroy and Becky over these issues takes center stage: screenwriter Aline McKenna reveals it to be the film's real subject, and theirs the story's critical relationship. What do you know? She buried the lead.

Although the relationship between Becky and Pomeroy isn't a romantic one, their story arc follows the prescribed steps of romanticomedy coupling: meeting "cute" (in an elevator, where Becky embarrasses herself by gushing over him), initial antagonism followed by a clumsy "courtship" rife with misunderstandings and setbacks, slowly developing affection and respect, and the critical moment of bonding that leads to a happy ending (the final shot of the movie actually has Becky and Pomeroy walking into the sunrise). The film's emotional climax comes when Pomeroy realizes his behavior may have led to her defection to the Today Show. Although the decision is hers, he's the one who effectively makes it. And Becky's journey is complete when Pomeroy finally understands that there are larger issues at stake than his own principles, or the memories he clings to of his glory years in the business.

McKenna was smart to personalize the debate between entertainment and news in television journalism because it's an old argument, reintroduced here with little reflection of today's climate. Where is an acknowledgment of the influence of politics on news coverage and the issue of bias, or the impact of 24-hour cable news programming? The media landscape has changed tremendously since Broadcast News, which came at the sunset of the Big Three networks' dominance of TV news. You wouldn't know it from watching Morning Glory. It's set in the same world as that earlier film, as if 20 years hadn't changed a thing, or perhaps even gone by. Not surprisingly, the conflict feels more than a little dated, as if drawn from an old script the filmmakers dusted off and were in too much of a hurry to revise. Becky even says to Pomeroy in the middle of one argument, "The debate between news and entertainment is over. We [entertainment] won." She's right, and the audience knows it.

So if there's no point in replaying a match whose outcome is known, what is the point? What is this movie about? Maybe those two words: we won. If Broadcast News showed us how the game ended, Glory is the victor's celebration in the locker room afterward. In Pomeroy, we witness the Old Guard's final holdout bowing to the new reality of TV news and taking his place in its ranks. But it's hardly a grim fate--don't forget that sunrise in the final shot. The filmmakers imagine the sun rising for Pomeroy, not going down. Broadcast News ended on a gray, cloudy day, its disillusioned charcters sheltering themselves from the rain.

Planting the film's central conflict inside a character's psyche may explain Pomeroy's mercurial temper and extreme reactions to his surroundings, but I'm not sure it can explain Ford's truly weird performance as the veteran newsman. He plays Pomeroy as a charmless, humorless, graceless boor, completely lacking in charisma or any semblance of real professional pride. On camera, he's simply awful, betraying no trace of style or hint of personality whatsoever. He doesn't smile, change his tone of voice, or, it seems, even blink his eyes. He reads every story like it's an obituary. With his droning delivery and inflexible mask of a face, he appears only marginally human. In the real world of TV news, there's no way this guy would have lasted as long as he has, let alone become a "legend." Not only would he not have been hired for his first job, his audition tape would have been burned.

There's a scene--ironically meant to establish his character's credibility--in which Ford is seated at a table with three real-life news figures: Chris Matthews, Morley Safer, and Bob Schieffer. Its effect is just the opposite, emphasizing how completely Glory fails to create the illusion that Ford is one of them. I found myself wistfully thinking how each of these men would have performed their DayBreak duties: Matthews with his acerbic wit, Safer with his voice dripping irony, Schieffer with the ever-present twinkle in his eye. Demotion to DayBreak would be a trial for each of them, but unlike Prima Pomeroy, they'd all act like professionals and do it with style. All that can be said for Ford's unbelievable characterization is that at least it keeps the film's treatment of him from being too harsh. Pomeroy is so insufferable that when he finally bends enough to accept his role of morning TV personality, it's not a moment of defeat for him. He doesn't surrender his dignity, rather he discovers it--and finally acts like an adult.

Despite its shortcomings, Morning Glory is enjoyable to watch, and that's chiefly due to McAdams. The picture is designed as a showcase for her, and she makes the most of this star-making opportunity. Candy-coating the nerdy, over-achieving side of her character with wholesome girl-next-door sexiness, she turns Becky Fuller into a goofy but irresistibly sincere charmer. She's way too good at it, in fact, and almost too attractive for the movie's romantic premise. The dating disaster scene at the film's open can't help but ring a false note. Who would really care about her volubility, cell phone addiction, or need to go to bed absurdly early? She's so pretty and appealing that it's hard to believe any guy wouldn't put up with these quirks for the chance of winding up there with her.

McAdams' charm is the film's strength, but also the source of its weakness. The movie is so enamored of her it really wants to do nothing more ambitious than display her cheery disposition and gaze at the effect it has on DayBreak (which turns out to be very simple: the show has no personality, so Becky gives it hers, and it becomes a success). The film's message to everyone, and especially Pomeroy, is lighten up. Stop already with the tortured examination of TV's soul: TV has no soul, and that's OK. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Becky Fuller is indeed the new face of television journalism. The victory of entertainment over information is embodied in her combination of rootless energy and flirty dedication. She is more conventionally attractive and personable than her Broadcast News counterpart, Holly Hunter, but also much less complex and interesting a character--driven but not compulsive, neurotic but not angst-ridden. And as goes the heroine, so goes the film as well--it's much less compelling than that earlier one. Of course, there's not nearly as much at stake in the story this time around: Glory is a diversion, a puff piece about morning TV, not an editorial on the death of television journalism's Golden Age, which Broadcast News memorably made both sad and funny. In contrast to that film, Glory's cynicism about the industry carries as much weight as the petals of a flower. No, the industry is all right, it reassures us throughout, as long as it produces, and is produced by, cuties like Becky Fuller. Her journey--and ours with her--heads straight toward the sunrise.

The only problem is it's a fake movie sunrise. And, I'm sorry to say, there's no happy ending to that story, Morning Glory.

The American

2010-12-28T19:28:00.000-08:00

The American is a thriller with a different look and feel to it. Not flashy or particularly violent--not even very busy, plotwise--it's more interested in character than story, more focused on interaction than action on the screen. The film unfolds slowly and deliberately, relying on thoughtful development of incident and personality, and careful attention to detail, rather than fast pace and fireworks. Most thrillers use the latter to distract their audiences from the implausibilities of their twists and turns. The American is smarter than that, and more respectful of the viewer, and that's a nice surprise in a movie belonging to this overworked genre. As well as a sly irony in one named after a nation historically synonymous with showiness and speed.

The story is simplicity itself. "Jack," a professional assassin (George Clooney), hides out in a small Italian village after an assignment in Sweden ends badly and he becomes a target of killers out for revenge. His only ally is his superior (Johan Leysen), a mysterious figure on the other end of some rather testy phone calls, who arranges a place for him to stay and funds for him to live on until he can safely emerge from hiding. Posing as a photographer, Jack befriends a local priest with an understandable curiousity about the stranger in his village, and pays regular visits to a high-priced brothel in a neighboring town, where he becomes infatuated with a beautiful hooker named Clara (Violante Placido). In order to keep Jack busy while in exile, his superior puts him to work on a rifle for another of his agents, Ingrid (Irina Bjorklund), who needs a weapon with precise specifications for an upcoming job. In between assignations with Clara, who gradually begins to return his affection, and philosophical talks with Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli), Jack meets periodically with Ingrid. Their reltionship remains coolly professional, but her refusal to discuss her assignment arouses his curiousity. And then one night he's followed home by a shadowy figure whom he suspects of being one of the Swedes on his trail. His haven no longer safe, Jack realizes he must act decisively to preserve not only his own life but the lives of those he's come to care for.

What's remarkable about The American is its calculated unremarkability. It's not a film of big moments or gestures but of details and shadings, where a precisely placed look or movement of the hand can communicate more than ten minutes of dialogue in another movie. Much time is spent on watching Clooney simply go about his daily business. He rises early, does difficult-looking pushups, walks through the empty streets of the town, sits in a cafe moodily staring out the window with a glass of wine beside him. There's an existential sparseness to all of this--a film stripped down to its bare essentials, its lines clean and simple, its parts fitted together with the precision of a rifle. In fact, director Anton Corbijn's understated presentation of events effectively mimics Jack's cool, efficient approach to his own work, revealing the seriousness of purpose of one professional in the subtle artistry of another.

What's more, the story's lack of trimmings allows the film to go beneath the surface of events and unpretentiously examine some basic questions of human existence. Clooney's talks with the aged priest touch on matters of guilt and sin, and his relationship with Clara introduces the age-old theme of redemption through love. Jack also reveals his more contemplative side through an interest in butterflies, particularly a rare one that he discovers in the Italian countryside and later reveals to Clara. The butterfly, a recurring motif, grows richer in meaning with each appearance, metamorphosing from elegant image into the film's most important symbol.

Underlying everything is the movie's tragic awareness of the fallible nature of human kind and the inescapable aloneness of every individual. We struggle for connection, for ways to be available to others, to reveal ourselves and allow our vulnerabilities to show. But in Jack's world, vulnerability is the equivalent of death, swift and unforgiving. He not only hides away, he keeps his inner self hidden, locked up tight, along with his true name. It's not a coincidence that the two times he winds up in the sights of a killer's gun, he's with a woman he cares about. He's at his most exposed at those moments, and that puts him in danger of paying the ultimate price for vulnerability in his world.

True to its name, The American rarely strays from its protagonist's side: nearly every scene is from his point-of-view. As Jack grows less trusting of those around him, the film employs silence to convey his increasing sense of unease, and invests even the prettiest shots of the village square and the surrounding countryside with the feeling of imminent danger. What the movie shows is always heavy with the presence of what it doesn't show. Darkened streets and secluded spots in the woods express the usual kind of threat, but busy sidewalks and brightly lit restaurants add to the paranoid atmosphere in less conventional ways. The sparing use of violence artfully enhances this mood. What The American lacks in action, it makes up in tension--the film operates like a coiled spring. You watch it tighten little by little, waiting for it to snap. And when it finally does, it's quick and explosive, over almost before you know it, and shocking despite the fact that you were expecting it to happen.

The star power of George Clooney made this film bigger than it would have been otherwise. Without his presence, The American would have flown under the radar, but he made it a player at the box office. Unlike his character, who is out of place in the tiny community sheltering him, Clooney is perfectly at home in a picture of this modest size and means. The role of Jack is perfectly tailored to his intensity and smoldering good looks. It's essentially a silent part--Clooney does very little talking and rarely even smiles. Though known for his easy charm and gift with dialogue, he surprises by relying mostly on facial expression and posture to convey his character's burden of guilt and wariness of all around him. Grim-faced and brooding, this unusually introspective American gazes reluctantly inward, examining his violent identity with unwanted insight. Jack veils his eyes as a matter of professional caution, but he can't hide their haunted quality--when nothing is happening on the screen, that's when something is happening most profoundly in him. The drama is in Jack's face, a mask of disillusionment with himself and bitter mourning for the corrupt world he cannot leave, or change.

The other actors lend the star strong support. Bonacelli exudes a touching melancholy as the priest--a would-be confessor to Jack, his overtures to the quiet American make little headway and he ends instead by confessing the sins of his own past. Only Clara succeeds in penetrating the protective wall Jack has built around himself. Placido invests what could easily be dismissed as a cliched role--the beautiful prostitute with a heart of gold--with sensitivity and a sensuality that goes beyond conventional movie sexiness. Moreover, she and Clooney have good screen chemistry, enough to make both the charged sexuality and the growing affection between their two characters convincing, and at the film's conclusion, genuinely moving.

One of Corbijn's most impressive achievements with this somber, reticent film is the way it dusts off a number of other movie cliches--the sensitive, lonely gunman (familiar mostly from westerns like Gregory Peck's memorable The Gunfighter), the doomed romance between two social misfits, the irony of fate--and applies its simple, unadorned style to make them look, if not wholly fresh, at least more interesting than they would with fancier, more expensive treatment. The American uses these familiar tropes without apology or hint of irony, but introspectively, in a way that matches Jack's own melancholy musings. The result is a quiet, sober study of human imperfection, guilt, and the elusive nature of redemption, which evades one's uncertain grasp as easily as a butterfly.

Inception

2010-08-30T16:33:00.000-07:00

Inception is a terrific idea for a movie. Actually, it's a terrific idea because it is a movie. It's a film whose story could exist only because cinema exists. If cinema hadn't been invented yet, it's doubtful that a novelist could have come up with the storyline or themes that writer-director Christopher Nolan explores in his latest work. Unfortunately, the idea alone doesn't guarantee a successful outcome. The film falls far short of its goal, which I interpret as the ambitious one of combining the logic of dreams and the logic of cinematic storytelling into a whole--or at least, into an experience in which the two wholly complement one another.

The premise is undeniably intriguing. Dom Cobb (Leonardo di Caprio) is the leader of a team of dream extractors, practitioners of one of those vaguely plausible fringe sciences invented to propel the plots of science fiction/fantasy tales. Extractors invade a person's dreams in order to remove information buried within the dreamer's unconscious mind. They do this for profit, working at the highest level of corporate espionage: one business rival wants to steal another's secrets, so he hires Cobb to hijack the rival and burglarize his/her brain. It's as illegal as actual stealing, which means extractors are essentially just sophisticated crooks. Cobb himself has legal problems apart from his nefarious work; he's an expatriate floating around Europe, unable to return to the U.S., for reasons which are only gradually revealed.

The beginning is ingenious, crafted around an audacious use of in medias res--the film actually opens inside one of the dreams Cobb and his crew have broken into. This opening gambit is quickly exposed as a deception, however. They have been hired by a Japanese magnate, Saito (Ken Watanabe), to ferret out a secret he has taken great pains to secure from discovery (in the world the film imagines, dream theft is a constant threat among the high and mighty). It's a test of his own internal security measures but also an elaborate audition, for the businessman wants to gauge the crew's skill before hiring them for the real job he has in mind--to enter a competitor's unconscious, not to steal an idea but to plant a new one, one which will benefit his own company's interests.

Around this slight premise, Nolan conjures a dark fantasy of revenge, guilt, and an uneasy sort of redemption. At its core, though, the film is a fanciful variation on an old genre--the heist/crime caper film. Cobb and his partner, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are master thieves with the latest technology in their tool kits: they plan virtual robberies and steal imaginary loot. But their break-ins also involve elaborate deceptions and role-playing, so they're master con artists as well. The Sting meets Ocean's Eleven, in the realm of A Nightmare on Elm Street.

In accordance with genre rules, a fair amount of time is spent recruiting new members to the team, experts in different fields who possess special talents needed for the job at hand. Those scenes are often among the most enjoyable in heist films, and Inception proves no exception. Tom Hardy, in particular, is amusing as a wisecracking grifter with the ability to shapeshift into different identities to fit the changing scenarios of his victim's dreams. But most screen time is devoted to Cobb's wooing of the suggestively named Ariadne, a bright young architectural student played winningly, as always, by the wonderful Ellen Page. Page brings her trademark blend of sweetness and sass to what's basically a stock role--she's the neophyte in the group, the one who needs schooling in the ways of dream intervention. Her scenes are therefore padded with exposition as Cobb and others explain to her exactly what dream extractors do and what it all means. This makes her the audience's surrogate, its symbolized presence in the world of the film. As she struggles to make sense of the confusing images and events around her, and later begins to find answers on her own, so do we--though undoubtedly with less authority than Page musters.

Ariadne is not merely a sounding board for plot points, however. She brings a much needed talent to the team--the ability to design a world that, despite being imaginary, is credible enough to fool their mark into believing his dreams are reality. Extraction/inception works only during dreams vivid enough for the dreamers to experience them with the intensity of real life--so-called lucid dreaming. During their incursion into his sleep state, the extraction team brings a carefully scripted and illustrated series of dreams that they share with the victim, and each other, so that they all can interact in the same storyline (the extractors must be asleep as well). Since the setting in which they act out these fantasies needs to look believable for the process to work, the team requires an architect to first build it image by image, then sustain the illusion or change it as needed, while the plot unfolds. Performing this complex creative task makes Ariadne a surrogate for the filmmaker; since she's also the surrogate viewer, Nolan has created in her a character which functions in a complex relationship to the film, both embodying the connection between the artist and his work and providing the thread which binds it to its audience.

The set-up is fascinating, but once the caper finally begins, the film quickly, and quite surprisingly, becomes less so. Getting all the pieces in place for the robbery was good fun, but the robbery itself is a confusing, overlong, turgid affair. Cobb and his cohorts, accompanied by Saito, trap their victim, Fischer (Cillian Murphy), on an overseas flight; once all are asleep, they break into his dreams and go to work. This work occupies the whole second half of the movie, and it takes the picture down the wrong rabbit hole.

The main problem is that Nolan seems to lose interest in the underlying notion of his film: projecting oneself into another's dream suddenly is no longer cool enough for him, so he complicates matters by multiplying the number of dreams his protagonists have to infiltrate. Once inside Fischer's sleeping mind, Nolan's dream team must move to a second level--a dream within a dream--and then to a third dream inside that. And, unfortunately, it doesn't end there... With several different scenarios unfolding at once, the film furiously tracks Cobb and his partners fighting their way through elaborate defense mechanisms consisting of security guards and fortresses in simultaneous but separate dream systems, all to get to the place where they can successfully plant the notion that Saito believes will eliminate Fischer's company as his rival. It's a fairly simple goal--why does it seem like it takes forever to reach? And why couldn't this idea have been dropped somewhere in Fischer's first, or even second, level of dreaming? That's never adequately explained. Or maybe I fell asleep and missed that part.

Nolan likes writing stories that play with structure, and he's usually good at it. Memento (2000) memorably runs backwards, as the hero searches for the origin to his mysterious form of amnesia. The Prestige (2006) takes duality between characters to such an extreme that it passes beyond logic into a kind of dream state of its own. Even the more conventional Batman films (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight) fracture story time and space so thoroughly that they exist in a kind of hyper-real universe--not the safely iconic comic book world of other superhero movies, but a broken, more dangerous version of our own.

Now comes Inception, in which Nolan is once again looking for the edge rather than undermining the middle. He's clearly out to create something unique to movie screens, a film story that composes itself in part from the complex layering logic of dreams: a cine-dream, perhaps. To this end, he discards the usual duality of dream vs. reality for that of dream vs. dream, which in theory is interesting. Unfortunately, execution is another matter. The film expends far too much energy constructing its maze of interlocking story parts--there's little left over to make it meaningful for the viewer. In this case, more is definitely less. With each successive layer of dreamwork it penetrates, the film becomes less interesting, since its tension is diffused over a greater area. The basic lesson of cutting between two different courses of action to create suspense is as old as D.W. Griffith, but jumping back and forth between four dream stories--especially when the connections between them are as tenuous as they are in this film--drastically reduces the dramatic impact of each. Inception suffers from narrational hyperventilation--it aims for a powerful emotional experience but produces mostly dizziness.

Nolan does try to add some gravitas to the proceedings by giving Cobb a back story laced with tragedy. The dreams the conspirators use for their undercover work are shared, and despite their attempts to plan them out beforehand, each individual's thoughts and fears can send them on unexpected detours at any moment during the operation. The one who poses the most danger to the enterprise is its leader, Cobb. His psyche is a mess, haunted by images of his dead wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), easily the film's most arresting figure. Wildly beautiful and completely mad, the appropriately named Mal lives vengefully within Cobb's guilt-burdened mind, popping up at the worst possible times to expose Cobb as an intruder to the dreamer-victim and force him and his team to abort their mission. Sometimes she even tries to kill him. Why Cobb should be harboring murderous visions of Mal in his unconscious is the film's central mystery; its solution gives Inception its provocative, bittersweet climax.

The role of Cobb is perfectly tailored to di Caprio, an actor of such effortless intensity he could probably make ordering from a menu seem like a cathartic experience. But the script actually gives him little to work with, and the character is tame compared to earlier Nolan protagonists--the tormented, tragic Bruce Wayne/Batman and the Apocalyptic visitation of Heath Ledger's Joker. The narrative tries to make up for Cobb's lack of depth by the way it's organized: by inserting one dream inside another, the film mimics a literal descent into Cobb's internal hell, one circle at a time. But it never feels right because Cobb's demons aren't really depth dwellers; they live close to the surface, where--had they been released earlier--they might have generated more heat.

Inception's ultimate undoing, however, is its lack of originality, which is ironic given its aspirations. Behind the cine-dream experimentation and the Matrix-like visuals--the slow motion, suspended-in-air combat ballets, the vaguely futuristic dream settings and cityscapes--is fairly standard action fare (car chases, gun battles), disappointing by Nolan's standards, who raised the bar for summer actioners with his dark, poetic, psychologically dense renderings of violence in the aforementioned Batman Begins and the extraordinary The Dark Knight. There's little here that feels as fresh and inventive as the set pieces in those films. And apart from one sequence in which Ariadne performs the mind-blowing feat of bending an entire city block over on itself--buildings, cars, people, everything--the pictorial style of Inception is not very exceptional.

Nolan's film may also be the victim of bad timing, coming in the wake of last year's blockbuster Avatar, which fashioned its now famous story around a different type of psychic projection. Inception's vision is muddled compared to that film, which worked hard to make the notion of dreaming one's way into an alternate state of being accessible to audiences. The difference between the two pictures runs much deeper, however. Avatar made its imagined technology into a metaphor for cinema itself. In the story, the "dreamer" projects his/her consciousness into the body of another being and lives inside it. In an analogous manner, the movie spectator projects his/her consciousness into the world of the film story, passing through the screen to "live inside" that world for as long as the film runs. One of the things Avatar is about, then, is what it's like to watch a movie, how it feels to experience it fully. In other words, it's about itself.

Inception, on the other hand, is about what it isn't--but could become. The film attempts to turn our experience of watching a movie--watching this particular movie, that is--into something like what our mind experiences while dreaming. By adapting dream logic to film narration, Inception tries to replicate the way the unconscious mind creates the "stories" that live inside us all. It's using cinema to go beyond cinema, into the realm of the greater human mystery.

Avatar is much more successful at what it does, but of course it has the easier task. It's much simpler to make a movie about being a movie than to make one that imitates the unconscious mind. I applaud Nolan for the attempt. What would the cinema be without dreamers like him?

Avatar

2010-02-03T17:37:00.000-08:00

If you haven't heard of this film by now, you might actually live on Pandora instead of Earth. It cost a lot of money to make and it's made a lot, too. It's returned James Cameron, fresh from his now 13-year-old triumph, Titanic, to the headlines. He's king again. Some people think it's great, some people think it's hype, some people ackowledge that it's both. It's both. It also has a serious mediocre streak running down its middle. Let's agree on one thing right now: James Cameron can't write. How else could he have taken one of history's most compelling, haunting tragedies and turned it into an unwatchable potboiler? Yes, I'm talking about Titanic, which for my money was an insult to the victims of that disaster. Avatar's script is a rough draft, but its special effects and visual style are polished beyond anything I've seen before. I recommend watching it in 3-D. It needs all the dimensions the screen can give it in order for it to deliver its full impact. That impact so far has been considerable.

Avatar

James Cameron once famously declared himself King of the World. I imagine this is why, in his latest film, Avatar, he has created an entirely new world so that he could make himself king of it, too. To a large extent, he’s succeeded. His new movie seamlessly blends live action and computer imagery, and employs the most dynamic use of 3-D I’ve ever seen, to create a vision that is breathtaking, bold, and most important, alive. Unfortunately, the epic sweep of its visuals is not matched by its story, which, despite epic pretensions, lacks the requisite scope. It’s also depressingly unoriginal.

The action takes place in the future on a distant planet suggestively named Pandora. There, an occupying force of U.S. marines tries to keep order among the indigenous population, the Na’vi, creatures shaped like elongated humans with pointed ears and blue skin. The marines are there to run interference for an American company that is mining the planet for a rare mineral (“unobtainium”) found in deposits underneath the woodlands where the Na’vi live. The Na’vi are a proud hunter-warrior people, similar to many Native American tribes, and they offer fierce resistance to the military, whose aggression is held in check only by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), director of a project that’s studying the Na’vi in order to negotiate a peaceful way of co-existing with them.

Into this volatile mix comes Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-marine who is recruited to take part in Dr. Augustine’s study. Her program is an ingenious one: she mixes Na’vi DNA with that of a human individual to grow a hybrid in the lab, then projects the human consciousness into the Na’vi body (the “avatar”) to allow him, or her, to walk among the Na’vi as one of their own . Jake is eager to join for personal reasons—it gives him a chance to start his life over, to once again inhabit a body that has all of its motor functions intact. But he quickly finds his position in the project compromised by the marine commander, Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who recruits Sully to spy on the Na’vi and report his findings to him instead of Dr. Augustine. Quaritch is eager to mount a full assault on the Na’vi and conquer them once and for all, and he figures any information he gets that doesn’t go through Augustine will help him accomplish this. Sully goes along because he is still a marine at heart. But his heart is about to undergo a radical change.

The movie has been called Dances with Wolves in outer space because of what happens to Sully once he “becomes” a Na’vi warrior. He likes it, of course—who wouldn’t? Especially when he's being tutored in his adopted people’s ways by the beautiful princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), between whom initial antagonism changes gradually—and predictably--into mutual liking, respect, and finally, love. In the scenes detailing his instruction, we watch Sully slowly transforming himself, finding not just wholeness in a new body but wholeness of a different kind as his soul grows into that body--and into the life he was obviously destined for. When, acting on the information he has provided Col. Quaritch, the troops begin their invasion of the forest to drive out the Na’vi, Sully realizes the terrible consequences of his betrayal and makes a fateful decision—he switches sides and fights for the Na’vi, eventually becoming the leader of their desperate struggle to remain free.

Taking up their cause is not without its consequences, however, and it is here that the narrative’s shortcomings are the most glaring. The film’s morality centers on doing the right and just thing, which in this case is presented as fighting for the oppressed against their oppressors. This is also the only emotionally plausible thing to do, since the story is dominated by Sully’s life among the Na’vi; his growing understanding of, and identification with, their values; and his romantic attachment to Neytiri. He never really has a choice, when it comes right down to it. The narrative relentlessly drives him in that direction from the moment he arrives on Pandora, and his conversion happens quickly and easily, without hesitation or inner turmoil over abandoning his human roots (Quaritch calls him a “traitor to his race”)--and therefore without dramatic effect. What should have been an emotionally wrenching moment in the story, imbued with tragic overtones, is treated matter-of-factly, like the forgone conclusion it is.

This has implications for the film’s politics, although undoubtedly not the kind Cameron intended. Much comment has already been directed at Avatar’s “liberalism,” which is to say it sides with aboriginal culture over industrialized society, with respect for nature over the worship of technology, with living in harmony with all forms of life instead of subjecting the natural world to human domination for purposes of gain. And it’s decidedly anti-military into the bargain. Oh, those Hollywood liberals--why do they hate America so? Actually, it’s hard to take Avatar’s “political stance” seriously, given the one-dimensionality of the conflict at its center and the predictability of its outcome. Even the least attentive member of the audience will have no trouble following the movie’s by-the-numbers scenario of Good vs. Evil: this is Melodrama for Dummies.

But Cameron courts controversy and contemporary relevance for his innocuous tale--he actually puts the phrase “shock and awe” into Quaritch’s mouth when he’s firing up his troops for the attack on the Na’vi. So Pandora is offered up as an analogue for Iraq as well as the American West, with Vietnam lurking in the images of warfare among lush tropical scenery: a roll call of American Imperialism’s greatest sins. Not enough guilt for you? Might as well throw in European Colonialism in Africa, the Middle East, India, etc. Cameron might think his targets are clear in all of this, but his aim is wild. The situation on Pandora is not like any of these historical ones because it has no solid context—the action takes place almost literally in a vacuum--so there is nothing to lend the would-be parallels weight. Pandora is not Iraq or the Great Plains--it’s a galaxy far, far away where a ragtag rebellion is fighting an evil empire that is superior both in numbers and technological sophistication but suffers from arrogance and overconfidence. When this saga unfolded on the screen in the first three Star Wars films, a savior arose from the ranks of the rebels to defy his father and his own past. Much the same happens here, with Sully defying his commanding officer/parental figure Col. Quaritch and turning his back on his marine, and his human, past to reinvent himself as the leader of the Na’vi.

Problematic in its politics, Avatar is far more successful in its introduction of religious themes. The Na’vis’ intimate connection with nature has been ridiculed by some critics as mere pandering to fashionable beliefs on the left, but in fact it’s an integral, and well developed, part of their conception as a race--and it plays the crucial role in determining their fate. The assault on their forest homeland is simply a strategic maneuver from the point-of-view of the culturally blind military: they need to drive the Na’vi out to get at the deposits of unobtainium buried beneath the trees. But in doing so, they unleash powerful forces they don’t understand and have no way to control. Some of the film’s most effective scenes explore the implications of the interconnectedness between the Na’vi people and the animal and plant life of their environment. Sully’s capture of the the Mountain Banshee (a winged, dragon-like creature that Na‘vi warriors tame in order to fly) is a thrilling action sequence but also a moving ceremony, a rite of passage for both as they form the bond that is the soul of all life on their planet. This bond finds its highest expression in the Tree of Souls, a rather banal name for the magnificent vision at the center of the Na’vis’ world, a gigantic tree glowing with the combined energy of all living things. Dr. Augustine discovers that it functions like a giant nervous system, providing a way for communication to flow back and forth between all forms of life on Pandora, and this proves to be Col. Quaritch’s downfall: when he orders his men to destroy the Tree to hasten the Na’vis’ defeat, the besieged natives are sent reinforcements by the planet itself.

Cameron effortlessly blends this animistic theology (shades of Star Wars’ famous “Force”) with some basic Christianity. One of several meanings of “avatar” is the incarnation of a deity, a god manifesting itself in human form. Sully’s consciousness is projected into the world of the Na’vi to inhabit one of their bodies and give it life, evoking Christianity's belief that God took the form of an earthly being in Jesus. Perhaps Cameron considered this allusion too obscure, for he pushes the analogy even further and has Sully make the ultimate sacrifice at film’s end, dying in his earthly (human) body so that his spirit can be reborn in the body of his Na’vi avatar—literally giving his life for the people he has chosen, or was chosen, to save. Deciphering the Christian allegory at play here is not exactly challenging.

But the real religion of the film is cinema itself. At this late date, does anyone doubt James Cameron’s total devotion to moviemaking as technology, art, and popular entertainment? If so, watch Avatar in 3-D in a crowded theater and you’ll see something that can truly be considered a modern spectacle. From the breathtaking vistas of Pandora’s mountains to the lush undergrowth and magnificent trees of the Home Forest, Avatar presents the spectator with a visually stunning and fully realized environment. In addition to these splendors, Cameron and his crew have advanced the technology of motion-capture filmmaking to the point where the animation is more than just smooth and supple--it has an almost tactile quality. The very process itself--recording a human actor’s movements, then transcribing them into the movements of a computer-animated figure--neatly doubles the technology of “avatarism” in the movie’s story, the process by which a person’s consciousness is transported into a Na’vi body and becomes its animating force.

But this “avatarizing” process is a metaphor for cinema also. In the film, the human subject lies down in a cylindrical chamber and goes to sleep, allowing her/his mind to “wander” off and merge with the avatar. In the act of going to the movies, we enter a darkened theater and allow our minds to wander as well, to be absorbed by the story playing out on the screen through the process of identification. That is, if the film is able to provide us with characters that can serve as conduits into its world. Although not a boldly drawn character—Worthington’s wooden performance doesn’t help—Sully is clearly designated such a “conduit” for the audience. A novice to the world of Pandora, as well as to the avatar program, he provides the film with an innocent, inexperienced point-of-view, much like that of the viewer—it is through his eyes that we learn about what is going on, that we are educated, at the same time he is, about the world we have entered. This is yet another version of the avatar relationship, of course: Sully is our avatar for “living in” Pandora. Through him, we are able to penetrate the cinematic realm projected upon--and in front of--the theater screen.

I suppose in a way Avatar is less of a movie than it is a phenomenon. It was designed to be that way, of course: designed to change the way movies are made, experienced, and thought about. But not to bear the weight of a morally complex universe. Cameron’s dedication to giving his audiences a new cinematic experience has all-too-obvious limits. Nothing else could account for why, in a film with seemingly boundless ambitions, the story has none. It stays snugly inside a comfort zone of borrowed plot elements and familiar tropes—a straight-line hero’s journey, a romance without real challenge, villains so wrong-headed they pose no meaningful threat. It’s basically a fairy tale, and while there’s nothing wrong with contemporary fairy tales in the movies (Penelope and Coraline are delightful recent examples), one that pretends to be savvy enough to preach to its viewers about geopolitical matters makes me nervous.

But it isn’t just an uninspired plot that plagues Avatar—there’s a certain laziness in its non-computer graphic details that undermines its overall impact. Cameron spent 300 million dollars on his movie and he couldn’t come up with a better name for the worth-dying-for mineral resource than “unobtainium”? How about “very-rarium”? When you’re dumbing down ideas, why stop halfway? “Na’vi“ is simply an abbreviated anagram of “native,” which is admirably economical but does not, in this case, prove that less is more. And although it’s a very talky film, Avatar’s dialogue is most definitely not in 3-D--it’s flat-out dull, and boasts not a single memorable line, unless you count the Na’vi way of acknowledging their regard for each other, “I see you.” When Sully in Na’vi guise says this to Neytiri during their long-awaited courtship scene, it’s probably a good Date Night moment, but beyond this, no one has anything important to say.

This laziness extends to character, as well. Sully’s blankness as a person may be calculated to make him more accessible to audience identification, but a handicapped ex-Marine who’s fighting against odds to win his life back ought to have a little more edge to him, a little more attitude, a touch of can-do bravado. Worthington gives us a decent guy who takes everything in stride, even his setbacks, like someone seriously into meditation. Col. Quaritch, on the other hand, is just what his name suggests: a hard-ass career soldier itchin’ for a quarrel. Lang delivers pretty much what you’d expect, strutting and snarling on cue, but he’s serving Patton Lite, and even some scripted character quirks can’t make him nearly as interesting as Robert Duvall’s similarly war-happy Col. Kilgore in Apocalypse Now (1979). Only Sigourney Weaver as the cranky, chain-smoking Dr. Augustine gives a performance with some spirit in it. Her presence is a tonic to the “meanwhile-back-at-the-base” scenes, which are mostly lackluster in conception and execution, since Cameron’s attention--along with ours--is elsewhere, caught up in the high-energy world of Pandora. Unfortunately, none of that energy is expended on making the Na’vi more than visually interesting. Zoe Saldana gives a sensitive reading as Neytiri, ensuring that her obligatory journey from suspicion to trust, from hostility to love, is at least believably done, but the character barely emerges from the clichés that make the Na’vi a rather bloodless creation, the latest version of industrial culture’s Noble Savage.

Avatar has been subjected to plenty of critical hits since its release, but it obviously can absorb them. It’s already made a gazillion dollars at the box office, so on some level--OK, several--Cameron knows what he’s doing. But does anyone, including himself, have a clear idea of what he’s done? Avatar is a movie about many things: heroism, love, community certainly, but also cinema and the spectator’s way of watching and experiencing it. The implications of this subject extend much farther, however, because the “avatarizing” process in the story actually gives us an interesting metaphor for the relationship between mind and reality as a whole—that is, for the interaction between mind and world that creates the reality we “know.” Sully’s consciousness enters another space and changes that space because of his presence and actions. It’s how all of us are in the world, of course--it’s just that he’s in it through another’s body instead of his own. The “avatarizing” technology is mirrored by the technology of the filmmaking process, in ways I indicated before—and both are mirrored in turn by the laws of perception that direct how we engage with the world and experience, or in Na'vi terms,"see" it.

Perhaps James Cameron is a master storyteller after all. For all the weaknesses of his movie’s internal tale, maybe the real story he’s telling is what his film represents as a technological achievement and how it relates to the way we experience reality in the first place. As an advance in filmmaking capacity, Avatar could conceivably be pointing the way to cinema's future. In watching a film, the spectator’s consciousness may be absorbed by the world beyond the screen, but the transfer is not a complete one—not yet, at any rate. Could the technologies of cinema and "virtual reality" merge one day into a single medium, making movies a truly interactive experience, and not just reflective of one? In the final analysis, that may be the story Cameron wants us to see while watching his film—see, and just possibly believe.

A Serious Man

2010-01-03T21:35:00.000-08:00

I hope this film gets the recognition it deserves. I have been a fan of the Coen brothers ever since they burst upon the scene with Blood Simple. Several brilliant films, and only a very few duds, later, they have created what I think must be their most personal movie, and their affection for the subject matter shows. This one looks and feels a bit different than past films of theirs. Not always--it's smart-alecky at times, just as you'd want it if you're a Coen-head like me--but it also raises questions that haven't appeared in their previous work. Don't worry, they're not going soft. But they are looking around a little more, beyond the boundaries of genre and into themselves, perhaps.

A SERIOUS MAN

No one makes films quite like the Coen brothers. Since their attention-grabbing debut in 1984 with the neo-noir classic Blood Simple, the Coens have carved themselves a unique niche in American filmmaking. Creators of dark, cynical tales filled with violence and black humor, Joel and Ethan Coen have drawn a map of the American Soul as a morass of greed, misguided passion, and uncomprehending desperation. Though many of their star-crossed characters come to bad ends, they’re usually too dim-brained or foolhardy to be considered victims of tragedy—it might be more accurate to call them victims of a fatal kind of bewilderment.

The Coens’ latest film, A Serious Man, has a different look and feel to it, however, which suggests they’ve got something else in mind this time. Eschewing their stock world of schemers, criminals, and people living on the margins of nowhere, the brothers take aim for once at the middle class--in this case, the Jewish-American middle class of the 1960s. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a professor of mathematics at a small Minnesota college. He has a wife, two teenage children, a tract house in the suburbs, and aspirations to nothing higher than tenure and a modest career as a mid-level academic. But beneath its seemingly calm surface, Larry’s life is on the verge of falling apart. His wife is bored with their marriage and wants a divorce so she can marry another man. His daughter and son barely acknowledge his existence, except of course when they want something. His very odd brother, out of work and living with them over his family’s objections, has gambling problems and perhaps is soliciting sex from local school children. The college is receiving anonymous letters blackening his character, which has placed his tenure status in jeopardy. He has money troubles. And then a student of his offers him a bribe to change a failing grade…

All of this is revealed in the course of a few days in the life of this not particularly heroic hero, a nebbishy Everyman who tries not so much to solve his problems as to figure out why they are happening to him and what they all mean. Despite the increasing desperation he feels, Larry’s role in his own life remains essentially a passive one. He remonstrates with his wife about her decision to leave him, but meekly complies with her demand that he move to a motel, despite the fact that she’s the one having the affair. He helplessly watches his brother’s mysterious and disturbing presence in his home further alienate his wife and undermine his authority with his children. A sexy neighbor who sunbathes in the nude awakens his sleeping libido, but his timidity prevents him from making any headway with her. And although he tries to get tough with the student who’s tried to bribe him, he backs down when the student threatens to sue him for defamation of character, and stashes the money in his desk without ever reporting it to the proper authorities. In short, Larry has trouble taking action of any kind to improve his lot. He seems incapable of helping himself. He’s stuck.

Perhaps if he were in someone else’s movie, he’d have a chance to get unstuck and turn his life around, but the Brothers Coen don’t create characters to show them mercy, they create them to parade their sufferings across the screen in ways both cruel and hilarious. Larry’s life is an updated version of the Old Testatment story of Job, and like that famously tormented patriarch, he desperately wants to understand why, since he’s tried so hard to live his life as a good (i.e.“serious”) man, his once comfortable existence is vanishing before his very eyes. But in his tormentors’ hands--not just God this time, the Coens as well--Larry’s search for understanding becomes an ironic journey toward greater confusion and uncertainty instead of enlightenment. This is for two simple reasons: 1) even if there were someone who could explain his life to him (there isn’t), 2) Larry most likely wouldn’t be able to grasp it anyway. His passivity precludes the kind of imagination necessary to transform the mysteries of existence into spiritual insight. As a mathematician, he’s comfortable with abstractions that lend themselves to numerical representation, not those that lead to transcendent thinking.

Larry’s failure to achieve understanding—his anti-quest, in effect—is neatly summarized by his visits to three rabbis. Job was visited by three friends who counseled him about his troubles and his relationship with God; Larry makes appointments with three spiritual counselors looking for the same kind of guidance—and gets bupkis for his pains. It is in these sequences that the Coens’ flair for satire really makes itself felt. The eccentric, patronizing, and seriously unhelpful advice Larry gets from the rabbis shows just how unprepared organized religion is--any religion, not just Judaism--when called upon to deal with problems that fall outside its limited purview. Whether genuinely obtuse or just so bored from years of listening to complaints they can no longer recognize real distress, the rabbis offer Larry nothing but platitudes and awkward silence. He leaves each meeting more frustrated, more lost than ever.

A Serious Man marks a welcome return to form for the Coens. After the lazy plotting and smug sarcasm of their last film, Burn after Reading, it’s good to see their jaded perspective used to deepen and darken a comedy already rich in the ironies of human existence, instead of merely adding a wiseguy attitude to a pedestrian story. Man is an existential comedy on a par with some of Woody Allen’s most memorable films of the 1980s, such as Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors. The Coens’ philosophical ambitions are announced in their movie’s black-and-white opening, a droll staging of a Yiddish folk tale in which a peasant couple is visited one night by an old man who may or may not be a dybbuk (a troublesome ghost). As disturbing as his appearance in their home is, his abrupt departure is even more so, because it leaves them with a question: have they been cursed by the spirit’s presence or spared his wrath by the mercy of God? As viewers, we are left to decide for ourselves, and our dilemma mirrors not only the couple’s but Larry’s as well. Larry’s life, as it will begin to unfold onscreen moments later, is a series of such “visits” by events beyond his imagining or control—a succession of trials that stretch the shadow of this dark introductory fable across the length of the entire film.

As the hapless Larry, Stuhlbarg turns in a thoughtful, nicely shaded performance, comfortably occupying the focal point of the film’s conflicting emotions without becoming entrapped by any single one. Anger, disbelief, self-pity, indecision, and the mildest hint of rebellion all vie to be uppermost in his portrait of a man under siege, and Stuhlbarg performs the necessary balancing act between these varying responses with aplomb. The Coens do not ask for psychological insight from their cast of largely unknown actors, just that they keep their performances consistent with the mood of the film. If Larry seems to be repeating his confused reactions each time he receives a blow without making progress toward acceptance or a resolution of any kind, it’s because his makers don’t want him to grow or acquire depth as a person but simply to follow his preordained path to its end. This is the Coens’ modus operandi: even in a “philosophical” comedy, they’re more interested in external behavior than the inner life of people.

But there can be exceptions, and the one in this film is pretty remarkable. Richard Kind’s portrayal of Arthur, Larry’s deeply troubled brother, is so angst-ridden and intense it threatens to destabilize the film every time he appears. A bitter, tormented, dysfunctional personality, Arthur seems to exist mainly inside himself, emerging occasionally into the world only to wreak havoc: using his brilliance with numbers (he’s a mathematician also) to concoct elaborate gambling schemes, which gets him into trouble with a local bookie, or projecting his lonely sexual fantasies onto children. A peripheral presence in the story, Arthur accompanies Larry into exile at the motel, inseparable from him, like his doppelganger or darker half. By way of emphasizing this relationship, he is shown only in scenes that include Larry—never by himself or interacting independently with others—and photographed mostly in darkness, his sad figure framed in the background of shots or on the edges of the screen. It’s as if the shadow cast across A Serious Man by the opening sequence comes to rest in him: he is the movie’s actual dybbuk, a disturbing, unpredictable presence whose behavior cannot rationally be explained. Kind’s startling work in this small but crucial role makes the irrational frighteningly real.

And it does something else, too--it hints at the real emotions lying beneath the icy surface of the Coens’ sardonic attitude. It’s not much of a stretch to view this film as unusually personal for them. I read somewhere that Larry is based on the Coens’ father, himself a college professor, and they grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis, much like the setting of this film. Larry’s teenage son, Danny (Aaron Wolf), could be a stand-in for the brothers themselves, in this regard. From Danny’s vantage point, A Serious Man is a coming-of-age story, and this vantage point literally becomes the film’s during the sequence of his bar mitzvah, much of which is shot with the camera taking his point-of-view. The bar mitzvah provides the movie with its emotional climax, bringing together many of the characters and allowing them a quiet interlude of reconciliation and rest as the moving ceremony unfolds (even Larry and his estranged wife, Judith, share an almost tender moment). Danny’s journey toward manhood means he will eventually inherit the world from his father, a melancholy truth the film captures in its haunting final shot: Danny and his fellow students stand outside their Hebrew School, watching the sudden, surprising approach of a tornado. The image of a whirlwind and the turmoil it symbolizes is from The Book of Job; its ingenious inclusion here is from the book of Coen.

Is A Serious Man the Coens’ most “serious” film yet? It’s certainly one of their soberest, and could be their most introspective, given the roots of the story in their family’s experience. Its narrative style subtly underscores this shift in tone and purpose. For once they employ no gimmicks or artful twists in the plot; it’s straightforward story-telling the whole way, at a more relaxed pace than usual and with the volume turned down. The tragicomedy of existence has long been the Coens’ playground, but only with this film do they stop and do some genuine thinking about it—specifically, about the sad injustice of bad things happening to a good man. Despite lacing the movie with their trademark black humor and satire, the Coens are very serious about their protagonist and his life. Larry Gopnik’s downfall comes, unhappily, without insight or redemption, because it comes without his having committed a sin or crime to bring it about. He has done nothing to deserve his fate, except, ironically, not to resist it more--to accede too easily in becoming its victim. Only if timidity is a sin does his punishment make sense. But in the face of A Serious Man, I see only bewilderment.

Men and Women at War: The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds

2009-10-31T14:26:00.000-07:00

I like war films. I might as well admit that right off. I find combat represented on the screen compelling to watch, and I don't suppose I'm alone, which is why the war film has been around so long. I saw two interesting war films this summer, very different from one another, but both fascinating in their own ways. Below I've tried to discuss their similarities and differences, and speculate on what the war film might have to say to us all.

MEN AND WOMEN AT WAR

The war film—what is it good for? The human planet seems to live in a perpetual state of aggression, so if war is around constantly it’s no surprise that stories about it follow closely behind. I won’t speculate on whether war is the natural state of the species or learned social behavior, but the war film, as a product of popular culture, is most definitely learned--learned, preserved, and passed down from one generation to the next by the rules of genre. This past summer saw the release of two war films so different from one another in every way that taken together they provide a course of instruction on how flexible those genre rules are, and how rich a field for character development and narrative invention the war film can be.

Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker was released in June to critical acclaim, most of it deserved. An austere character study set in contemporary Iraq, her film focuses on Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner), leader of an elite bomb disposal squad who likes his job a little too much. James takes over the unit after the well-liked former leader is killed, and he immediately begins to alienate his new crew (Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty) by taking unnecessary risks and acting impulsively instead of doing things by the book. On his first assignment, he rashly removes his protective gear (a concussion suit that makes him look like a deep sea diver), as his two subordinates watch in horror. Though it ultimately serves his purpose--the bulky suit impedes his efforts at disarming a complex car bomb--his actions place not only himself but his teammates at risk, since they do not know how to react to the unorthodox situation he creates. Afterward, they express their displeasure, but James is unimpressed. His entire attitude says, “I do things my way, get used to it.” But how can his men rely on a leader who seems indifferent to danger, theirs as well as his?

This conflict threads its way through Locker, an episodic film held together mainly by Renner’s quiet but forceful characterization of the unpredictable James. As each new threat presents itself, James approaches it in a way that is unexpected and personal, while his confused men try to decide if he knows what he’s doing or he’s crazy. The answer may be a bit of both, although the film gives us only a couple of tantalizing glimpses into James’s psyche. In one of them, he forms a bond with an Iraqi boy who sells bootleg dvds to soldiers. Later, in one of the film’s grisliest sequences, he and his team are called to dismantle a bomb that’s been placed inside the body of a murdered young boy, and James becomes convinced it’s the one he has befriended. Angry and seeking revenge, the normally cool James slips into occupied territory at night to discover the ones responsible. The result of his actions—reckless even by his standards—almost leads to greater tragedy.

Because the film maintains such a restricted focus, its depiction of the war is filtered almost entirely through James’ experience of it; as a consequence, the meaning of what we see depends largely on the emotional impact it has on him. But the detached and enigmatic James is never easy to read, and Renner’s understated performance deliberately keeps the viewer at a distance, guessing at what’s going on behind his squinting eyes. What is clear is that James’ fight is never one about politics or mere survival. For him, unlike the others, the disarming of bombs is a personal challenge that feeds his need for excitement: he’s hooked on the danger, addicted to the feeling of being one false move away from obliteration. Amid the chaos of battle, James pits himself against time and the ingenuity of the saboteurs, and lives for the rush that comes when he overcomes both. The outcome of the combat around him is relevant only insofar as it enables him to play and win this deadly game.

The Hurt Locker is disenchanted about its war, but it’s not exactly an anti-war film. War doesn’t seem to be the problem here; rather, it’s the personality that succumbs to the lure of its violence, the man for whom war is a drug. The reckless devotion to risk-taking is an expression of individuality that threatens the safety of his team, the social unit whose survival depends on each member performing his duty responsibly. Bigelow’s film features many of the horrors of combat, and makes effective use of the aridity and bleakness of the Iraqi war’s setting to comment metaphorically on its purpose, but lurking behind the rubble of the ruined cityscapes and countryside is a somewhat conservative message about military conduct. The war itself is never directly examined.

Every big war is made up of a lot of little wars, and The Hurt Locker takes an unflinching look at a particularly troubling one. The renegade soldier is not a new figure in the war film by any means. One could identify a whole subgenre devoted to his exploits, and certain films have given themselves over entirely to the debate surrounding individual needs vs. group rights in wartime. Because combat involves a social unit under extreme duress, maybe that is the central question of all war films, whether they explicitly address it or not. Films as different as Air Force (1943) and The War Lover (1962) consider it soberly, others like The Dirty Dozen (1967) have guilty fun with it, and still others such as Sylvester Stallone’s cartoonish Rambo films exploit it so irresponsibly they abandon the war film’s moral field of vision altogether. I do not mind violence as self-expression in action movies, but in the context of war I’m troubled by the message such abandonment to unilateral action can send. The Hurt Locker neither condones nor condemns James’ behavior, but clearly observes it with concern: this is why war might exist, it is thinking, because too many men can’t live any other way.

Which brings us to the summer’s other foray into the combat zone, writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s bizarre World War II fantasy, Inglourious Basterds. Tarantino’s films are populated with people who can’t live any other way than through violence—criminals, cops, hitmen/women, martial artists. Now he adds soldiers to their ranks. Basterds is appropriately titled: the film could be the love child of The Dirty Dozen and To Be or Not to Be (1942), Ernst Lubitsch’s famous wartime “Nazi comedy.” If you can imagine such a thing. Fortunately, you don’t have to, because that’s QT’s job, creating films of odd parentage--visually stunning, narratively daring, and frequently exasperating mélanges of differing styles and influences drawn from his favorite movies, genres, pulp novels, comic books, popular music, and maybe even breakfast cereals. His films are eclectic, to say the least. Inglourious Basterds does not break the mold.

But it damn near blows it up. Basterds features a typical Tarantino story filled with multiple plotlines and characters crossing each others’ paths in ways that seem both random and fated. The chaos is carefully orchestrated, however, around two revenge tales taking place in Occupied France. The first concerns the French side of the war. In a grim and moving prologue, a Jewish family is discovered hiding in a farmhouse and brutally executed by SS troops under the command of Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). The lone survivor is a teenage girl who runs away once the shooting starts. She runs all the way to Paris, where the film finds her a few years later operating a cinema. Now an attractive young woman, Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) catches the eye of a German private (Daniel Bruhl) who shares her interest in films. In fact, he has just finished starring in one himself, a propaganda picture based on his own wartime exploits, which have made him the darling of the Third Reich. The Reich badly needs heroes like him because the war is not going well (it is 1944, shortly after D Day), so the German High Command decides to boost morale with a gala premiere of the film in Paris. The lovestruck private insists it be held in Shosanna’s theater as a way to curry favor with her. Shosanna has so far managed to fend off his advances, and he sees this as the final maneuver in his campaign to get her into bed. It is a very big mistake.

Meanwhile, in another part of Occupied France, a group of Americans is fighting a different, but still very personal, kind of war. Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) is in charge of the “Basterds,” a special unit of Jewish-American soldiers trained to fight commando style behind enemy lines. They have been recruited for this task specifically because of their Jewish heritage: Raine is counting on their desire for revenge against the Nazis to make them ruthless killing machines. Nicknamed the “Apache,” he demands that they not only kill as many Nazi soldiers as they can but scalp them as well. His intent is to create a reputation for his band so fearsome that its very name will strike terror into German soldiers’ hearts. To this end, the Basterds always leave one soldier alive to spread the word of their savagery and seeming invincibility. It's safe to say their strategy works: in addition to killing all his comrades, they carve a swastika into the survivor’s forehead so he will carry the mark of his Nazi past the rest of his life.

These two storylines are eventually brought together by a third: British intelligence learns that the film premiere will be attended by all the top members of the Nazi Party-- Goering, Goebbels, Bormann, even der Fuehrer himself. An opportunity to wipe out the upper echelon of Nazi power in one blow is too valuable to pass up, so they send one of their agents to Germany to lead the Basterds in an assault on the cinema. The choice of agent is wholly indicative of Tarantino’s sly sense of humor and adroit manipulation of the absurd. Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) is an erudite gentleman spy, but he’s also a former film critic, and for this reason is considered—by no less than Winston Churchill himself!—the perfect man to lead an attack on a movie theater. Maybe Tarantino has felt so manhandled by critics over the years he imagines they want to destroy the theaters in which his films are showing and assault his audiences. Or maybe he’s mocking the inadequacy of critics to judge the kinds of movies he’s making. Whatever the underlying joke might be, Hicox, though earnest, proves not to be the right man for the job after all. Before their plans are finalized, the Basterds are on their own in the plot to take out Hitler and his inner circle.

But they will get help nonetheless. Unknown to everyone else, Shosanna is planning a reception of her own for the Nazi elite. Consumed by the desire for revenge, she decides to burn the theater down while the audience is engrossed in watching the film. Her plan is to bar the doors from the outside to keep anyone from escaping, then ignite a stack of film reels behind the theater’s screen. The highly combustible nitrate stock will spread the fire quickly, and almost before they know what is happening to them, the Nazi audience will be immolated. But before this happens, her vengeance demands something more. She makes a short film in which she indicts the Nazis for their crimes against her people and her nation, and then informs them of the horrible fate that awaits them at her hands. Splicing this piece of film into the movie’s final reel, it provides the cue for the conflagration to begin. The revenge Shosanna seeks is both historical and personal in nature: seated in the audience alongside Hitler and company is her nemesis, Col. Hans Landa, perpetrator of her family’s murder.

This, then, is the set-up for the cataclysmic and provocative end to Tarantino’s strange and violent daydream about the Second World War. Because Tarantino likes to take risks, the denouement of his film both fulfills our expectations and shocks us by doing so. Set in an Occupied France that could exist only in one of his fever dreams, Basterds provides rather far-fetched Alternative History, taking the “What if?” exploration of its subject to an extreme at once comical and disturbing. But also emotionally fulfilling: the film is, after all, a revenge fantasy for two populations horrifically wronged by the Nazis, Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the conquered French people. These populations come together in Shosanna, the French Jewish girl, who achieves a kind of apotheosis in her final moments, her oversize image staring down from the movie screen engulfed in flames like a fiery Avenging Angel. For the Jews and French who suffered, this is a moment of long overdue, if purely cinematic, triumph.

As war films, The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds are comrades in arms, but stylistically they belong to opposite camps. Locker is a study in understatement, from Renner’s internalized acting to the cinematography’s bland palette of desert tans and grays, and Bigelow’s handheld camera makes frequent forays into the streets to capture the look and feel of the Iraqi conflict with an immediacy that gives the illusion of being unplanned. By contrast, everything in Basterds is designed to show the craft at work. Photographed in rich, vibrant colors to invoke Hollywood’s bygone Technicolor era, each shot is artfully composed and framed for maximum movie effect. The complicated story veers between low black comedy and high melodrama, and the performances follow suit, ranging from the sublimely ridiculous (Pitt, superb as the macabre Raine) to the introspective and tragic (Laurent, unfortunately far too passive as Shosanna). Falling somewhere between these extremes are Fassbender’s elegant but twitty Archie Hicox, and a delightfully droll turn by Diane Kruger as a Marlene Dietrich-like German movie actress who is spying for the Allies. The film belongs, however, to Waltz as the sardonic, manipulative, ultra-polished Col. Landa, the character who bridges the two “halves” of the movie (his encounter with Raine at the doomed premiere leads to the film’s amusing and cynical coda). Landa insinuates himself into every corner of the plot, his presence signifying the fate that links all the players together, and Waltz’s charming, suave portrayal is so convincing it manages to make Landa’s detestable presence welcome.

Despite their considerable differences, the two films do share a core belief: the awareness that our fascination with violence and danger is what makes war addictive and the war film compelling to watch. And herein lies the most interesting contrast of all: whereas Locker views the addiction to violence as a threat to the group, in Basterds it’s what holds it together. The over-indulgence in violent, risk-taking behavior is the bond the Nazi-hunting soldiers share—it gives their band the cohesiveness it needs to carry out its bloody work. Tarantino’s film, like so many of his others, inhabits a mostly absurd world where institutions are faulty and corrupt and human relations destructive--it’s only the violence that makes sense. Basterds revels in its depiction of war as an irresistible opportunity to indulge the urge for destruction--war as the will to chaos. But in this contradictory world, war can also be a purifying agent, like the flames that burn away the evil of Nazi Germany during the film’s climax.

This view of war could have troubling implications, if Tarantino’s film weren’t basically smoke and mirrors. The movie-within-a-movie plot showcases the self-reflexivity Tarantino loves to tease his audiences with. Referencing other films and inventing genre pastiches remind us constantly we are watching a movie, so Tarantino is not seriously advocating war as either beneficial to the human race or a bloody good time. Not even his harshest critics would accuse him of that. But it’s worth taking a moment to consider his portrayal of World War II, which still commands respect as America’s last Good War. So what does it mean that QT has detonated a bomb right in the middle of this perception of it? The savagery and black comedy of his cloak-and-bayonet tale presents an image of the U.S. military that is closer to Dr. Strangelove (1964) than to The Longest Day (1962), Saving Private Ryan (1998), or any number of other serious-minded WWII films. The Basterds’ bloodthirsty behavior, urged on by Raine’s screwy orders, seriously taints their mission, however great the crimes they are avenging. As for the historical villains, Hitler and Goebbels, they are presented as caricatures that would fit right into Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, and are perhaps just one campy gesture away from Mel Brooks’ The Producers (1968). In other words, this is not your grandfather’s Second World War.

There have been other World War II comedies, of course, but I can think of no other film that so radically alters the way the Allies’ fighting of that war is represented. In addition to the basic formula of Good vs. Evil, Tarantino gives us Crazy vs. Crazier, with your choice of which side is which. The movie cheerfully writes its own history as well, as if to say the version of the war you’ve been taught up to now is irrelevant, a fiction to be revised as easily as this film does it, or eradicated, like the make-believe architecture of a cinema palace consigned to the flames. The fire that purges history of evil can also burn away its most cherished truths.

As must be the case in all war films, the central conflicts of The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds are conflicts on the world stage, and it’s the different ways they conceive of and utilize their wars in developing story and character that accounts for their divergent personalities. Locker collapses its world conflict into the psyche of one soldier, who serves as a microcosm for the relation between war and the human race. Basterds is more concerned with the internal tensions that define genre, and rewrites its particular war’s history in order to stretch the war film’s boundaries. But they meet on the common ground of one truth that can’t be rewritten: war helps define us, and for that reason each new one is, inevitably, a continuation of the last.

Appaloosa

2009-10-09T19:46:00.000-07:00

I wrote this review back in 2008, after seeing this film in the theater. I never got around to posting it here, but I just rewatched the film on dvd and so I thought I would add it now. I would probably change a few things if I were to write it now--my second viewing leads me to believe that Allie isn't quite as mysterious to the people around her as I first thought--but for the most part, I stand by what I wrote over year ago. And, as I said in my Best Films of 2008 roundup, I still think it's the best American western since Unforgiven.

APPALOOSA

Once upon a time in the American cinema, the western was king. Between the silent era and the late 1970’s, the U.S. film industry churned out thousands of western movies, most of them toward the end of that time starring Clint Eastwood. Not so today, when fans like me have to content ourselves with maybe one or two a year, if we’re lucky. Why did the western fade away? Perhaps the very historical process that saw the West itself vanish finally caught up with the stories told about it. This may not be entirely bad. Now that the western is a rarer thing, it’s often treated with greater care and purpose. Contemporary filmmakers may be interested in reexamining, if not reinventing, the genre, or perhaps using it to say something that will appear fresh or different when spoken through its familiar form.

For instance, two recent films have pondered the role of women in American society by investigating their place in the western’s traditionally male-dominated world. Kevin Costner’s Open Range (2003) introduced a poignant subplot that examined the dilemma of spinster Annette Bening, trapped in a forlorn fronteir town with few prospects for happiness. The recently released Appaloosa, co-written, directed by, and starring Ed Harris, goes it one better by moving the heroine to the very center of the film and making her the axis around which the main story revolves. This is a remarkable thing to do in a film that looks at first like a standard though taut action movie devoted to the friendship between two lawmen, longtime partners Virgil Cole (Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen). Summoned to the town of Appaloosa in New Mexico Territory to rescue it from an egotistical, power-hungry rancher aptly named Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), Cole and Hitch begin their assignment with an obligatory showdown in a saloon with three of Bragg’s men. A terse exchange between the unsmiling lawmen and the drunken, contemptuous cowpokes, some lightning-fast gunplay, and the three baddies lie dead, the town leaders know they’ve hired the right men for the job, and we know we’re watching a western.

Except it’s not so clear-cut after that. Just when it looks like the film has settled down to an extended battle of bullets and nerves between Bragg’s gunhands and the two cool but seriously outnumbered lawmen, the train pulls into the station and out steps the fetching Allie French (Renee Zellweger). She immediately catches the eye of both Hitch and Cole, but it’s Marshall Cole she sets her cap for, and almost before you can say “Appaloosa,” they’re setting up house together. Hitch doesn’t know what to make of the rough-and-tumble Cole’s newfound domesticity. Neither does Cole, nor do we. Allie doesn’t seem to fit anywhere into the scenario of violence and frontier justice that we thought we were going to witness.

And it’s precisely because she doesn’t fit that Appaloosa becomes a fascinating exercise in genre reconstruction. Allie introduces a strange, troubling element into the men’s world, not simply because she’s a domesticating female in an undomesticated environment but because she’s at heart undomesticated herself, uncertain of who she is or what she wants. Zellweger’s Allie defies the western’s normal duality of Woman–virgin or whore, schoolmistress or saloon gal. Dressed like a lady but with only a dollar to her name when she alights from the train, she is so out of place that a bemused Cole asks her point blank at their first meeting if she is a whore. Her answer is no, and it’s truthful as far as it goes–which is not the same as the truth.

But the disrupting influence Allie brings to town has only begun. The feud with Bragg eventually leads to his arrest, trial, and conviction for murder, but two of his hired guns kidnap Allie and force Cole to set Bragg free in exchange for her life. They flee, with her as hostage, Cole and Hitch following close behind. But as the two friends track Bragg’s small party through the desert, Allie’s status as hostage and her role in the escape become increasingly clouded by doubt in their minds, and the rescuers ultimately turn into the ones needing rescue.

As the protagonists struggle to decide what to do, and how to feel, about Allie, the film mirrors their confusion in its attempts to figure out her place in the narrative. She is the mystery at the core of a film that by all normal expectations should not have a mystery. Harris’s and Robert Knott’s intelligent screenplay bends genre rules around her to accommodate her troubling presence, her peculiar character changing from scene to scene not from inconsistency in writing but from the changing perceptions of the men about her, as well as those of the audience. Nothing is ever seen from her point-of-view, nor is the story of why and how she came to Appaloosa ever revealed—she is seen and defined only by the shifting points-of-view and attitudes of others. Allie—her name parsing into “A lie”–resides defiantly unknown and unknowable at the still center of the film’s male-storm of emotions.

The performances are uniformly excellent. Harris is wonderfully convincing as the tough, sternly professional lawman who crumbles into a giggling schoolboy upon finding unexpected love, and he and Zellweger have great chemistry, ironically, as the mismatched lovers. Zellweger’s Allie is an ingenious composition of conflicting impulses—coquettish, restless, romantic, defiant, fearful, and utterly lonely in her struggle to choose the right man to protect her, and her resentment that the world she lives in makes that choice impossible to avoid. It's an extremely touching performance. On the other side, Jeremy Irons brings an unexpected dash of effeteness to Bragg, which turns out to be appropriate for a character who, though introduced through a cold-blooded act that marks him as properly ruthless, thereafter expresses his villainy less through brutal intimidation than serpentine charm, emitting the aura of an irresistible opportunist. Since male bonding is still very much at the forefront of Appaloosa’s purpose, however, the film stands or falls on the relationship between Harris and Mortensen. Reteamed after their fine work together in 2005’s A History of Violence, they are letter perfect as violence-weary men so used to each others’ ways and moods that they communicate chiefly through looks and nearly invisible gestures. Mortensen hides his boyish looks behind a Buffalo Bill-like goatee and mustache, which only enhance the deceptively lazy manner and the wise half-smile he’s perfected over the years, the latter slyly hinting that he knows a secret both amusing and dangerous not to know.

And the last act belongs to him. Having eluded his pursuers, Bragg returns to Appaloosa to establish himself in the good graces of the townspeople he once terrorized by opening a plush hotel that brings in business. Sadly watching past associations threaten his friend’s happiness, Hitch makes a desperate decision that tests both his courage and the very friendship his act is meant to honor. Harris’s direction, lean and spare throughout, comes the closest to melodrama in these final scenes, but it’s a forgivable lapse since it’s emotionally right and manages not to disturb the delicate tone of the rueful ending.

That this film can be at once so laconic in form and so emotionally convoluted certainly owes much to its source novel’s author, crime novelist Robert B. Parker (best known for the Spenser mysteries), who also contributes the last act’s atmosphere of big-city corruption and the mysterious femme fatale at the center of events. Could Appaloosa be called a feminist western? Most likely not, but it’s a western any feminist should find interesting. Or anyone, for that matter, who appreciates movies that can look at familiar terrain with a fresh understanding of what it means. The western is one of the American cinema’s most ritualistic forms, but Harris and his crew have stretched its horizons–not outward but inward, into the emotional landscapes of its recognizable but mysterious people.

Julie and Julia

2009-10-03T08:57:00.000-07:00

The most delightful film of the summer, Julie and Julia, takes a subject I sadly know little about (cooking) and manages to make it fascinating to me. Inspiring, even. Not that I'm going to rush to the kitchen to try any of this myself, but it's still a delight to see a film that treats cooking with this level of seriousness and passion. Any form of endeavor that becomes a means of self-expression is worthy of such treatment, of course, but American movies generally favor action over character, and cooking-as-creative expression is definitely more for the character-driven kind. This movie is in luck, then, because it has two compelling characters at its center, and two exceptional performers to bring them to life. Following last year's Doubt, in which they went head to head with powerful performances, Meryl Streep and Amy Adams now look like Hollywood's foremost tag-team of actresses. I certainly hope they work together again.

JULIE AND JULIA
　
There aren’t too many films about cooking or enjoying food—go ahead, name one—and certainly not many good ones. Ratatouille, Waitress (pies), the cooking school sequence in Billy Wilder’s Sabrina (1953) are the first that come to my mind. But there’s a new chef in town with the release of Nora Ephron’s Julie and Julia, a marvelously entertaining film about cooking, life, and the enduring legacy of one of TV’s best-loved celebrity chefs, the late Julia Child.

At just a pinch over two hours, this is a remarkably compact film, dishing up two stories side by side and developing each one fully despite cutting their screen times in half. Inspired by Julie Powell’s 2005 bestseller about the year she spent cooking her way through Child’s groundbreaking book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the film ingeniously expands this limited subject by delving into Child’s own past and dramatizing the events which led to her writing the book that changed not only her life but the way America experienced food.

At thirty, Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is deeply dissatisfied with her life, if not exactly convinced she’s a failure. An aspiring writer with an unfinished novel tucked away in her desk drawer, she toils thanklessly for a company that settles insurance claims for the families of 9/11 victims. Numbed by the heartbreak of her job, and envious of her successful friends, Julie escapes each night into the kitchen where she for once has mastery of something. At the suggestion of her slightly bemused husband, Eric (Chris Messina), she outlines a bold project to help her take more control of her life: make all 524 recipes in Child’s cookbook in a year’s time, and write about her experiences in a blog.

Flash back to fifty years earlier, and Julia Child (Meryl Streep) is about to embark on the adventure that will define who she is. Just arrived in Paris with her diplomat husband, Paul Child (Stanley Tucci), she is enthralled by everything she sees and everyone she meets. But sightseeing, shopping, and eating out are not enough to keep the energetic Julia fully engaged, and she longs for something meaningful to do with her life. She decides that because she loves to eat French food so much, she’d like to learn how to cook it herself. So she enrolls in a prestigious cooking class—and finds her calling. Her success there is followed by an offer to join a pair of French society women in their cooking school and eventually to collaborate with them on their dream project--writing a French cookbook for Americans. The ups and downs of this history-making enterprise occupy the remainder of Child’s half of the film.

No dual-narrative movie worth its salt would fold two stories together without making them complement each other in meaningful ways. Julie/a performs this step effortlessly, comparing and contrasting events, images, and emotions from the two heroines’ lives like perfectly blended ingredients. It is Julie, of course, who imagines the deep connections between her and her fantasy mentor, whom she dreams of meeting but sadly never does (Child died in 2004). The film acknowledges these connections through its ambitious cutting scheme: jumping back and forth through time every few minutes, it broadly parallels Child’s search for the identity everyone knows with Powell’s blossoming into the person the film helps us discover. But the side-by-side progress of the two stories also highlights the important differences between the two women, sometimes humorously and sometimes poignantly.

They are definitely a study in contrasts. The zesty and adventurous Julia adores travel and embraces the exciting new world of Paris, while the less secure Julie stresses over moving from Brooklyn to Queens and beginning life in a new apartment. Child also takes her failures in stride—an amusing montage shows her trying and abandoning various pursuits, such as hat-making and bridge—whereas Powell has regular meltdowns when her cooking project does not go according to plan. And their relationships with their spouses are significantly different, too. Julia and her husband Paul adore each other, and experience no onscreen moments of rancor in what seems to be a marriage of unconditional love and support. Julie and Eric, on the other hand, are not nearly as simpatico. Although clearly in love, their union is contentious at times, due to Julie’s obsessive attention to her pursuit and Eric’s growing jealousy of it, since it seems to be replacing him in her affections.

Easily the film’s most appealing characteristic is how comfortable it is with itself. Its breezy but confident approach to storytelling allows each half to develop on its own terms, with (and around) its own personality, and it never insists on linking the two together for some higher purpose or exalted theme. And yet it’s no creampuff either. Child has her own demons--insecurity about her size and looks, hints of deep hurt at not being able to bear children--and neither half of the film ignores the world in which it takes place. The Childs served together in the O.S.S. during World War II, a fact mentioned more than once, and they are ambushed by the anti-Communist witchhunt of the 1950s. And, of course, the shadow of the fallen World Trade towers hangs over Julie Powell’s life, giving it a melancholy tone and connecting her personal edginess to the time’s deep unease.

This is a performance-rich film, but of course the movie belongs heart and soul to Meryl Streep, who has often been as good but never more engaging. Streep’s evocation of the ebullient Child is simply too wonderful for words. The vocal characterization, with its Child-like cadences and intonations, is dead on, and her body movements—the stiff-backed walk, the way she tosses her head impulsively from one side to the other when struck by a new thought--are a constant delight to watch. But more than just an expert impression, Streep captures Child’s infectious joi de vivre, overabundant enthusiasm, and conviction that every moment in the kitchen is one of both discovery and immense fun. Her performance is damn near perfect.

Adams is left with the difficult task of trying to make the less sympathetic Powell equal in dramatic weight, if not likeability. The latter is impossible, so Adams wisely explores the compulsive underside of her character’s drive to succeed, and the self-doubt that fuels her self-absorption. In her attempt to fulfill her life, Powell almost wrecks it by allowing ambition to endanger her marriage, her job, and a key friendship, but Adams’ heartfelt performance turns this often exasperating character into a winning one, and more importantly produces a sensitive portrait of a flawed but sincere woman struggling to find herself. There’s a cautionary tale tucked neatly into the pages of Powell’s cookbook for life: releasing your ego on the world in blog form is fine if you understand its limits and know how to keep it under control. Otherwise, it’s a recipe for disaster.

In support of these two divas, Stanley Tucci is a standout as the quiet, infatuated Paul, and Jane Lynch does an amusing turn as Julia’s flirtatious (and similarly sized) sister Dorothy. The weakest link is probably Messina as Eric, Julie’s underappreciated spouse. Never quite sure of his role in his wife’s blog-o-drama, Eric understandably sends contradictory messages of support and impatience, depending on his changing moods. But what determines those moods is never explained—all we learn about him is that he writes for an archaeology magazine—and Messina is so complacent about his background role that we never wonder for a moment about his character. His reactions to Julie seem based mainly on whether he feels more hungry or horny at any given moment, and it’s a shame Messina didn’t increase his efforts at either, because that at least would have made Eric more interesting.

Screenwriter-director Ephron demonstrates once again that she has mastered the dual-narrative film. In an up-and-down directorial career that has produced only eight films, the ones that stand out are all patterned on dual stories and/or parallel lives that intersect in unconventional ways. Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You’ve Got Mail (1998) are romantic-comedies devoted to the pleasant business of bringing Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan together, either by getting them to meet (Sleepless, where they share only the final scene together) or revealing they secretly love one another (Mail, in which they’re unfriendly business rivals anonymously carrying on an internet romance). Julie/a carries the separate lives idea much further, of course, since the two lives are intertwined only in the mind of one of the characters, although the title cleverly suggests the connection is much closer and that Julie and Julia are two sides of the same personality. Which is what imaginary friends really are.

The real Julia Child learned of Powell’s project and dismissed it as “disrespectful,” but despite the hurt this causes Powell (a nicely played scene between Adams and Messina), her last spoken words in the film are “I love you, Julia.” It is a testament to her sense of connectedness to the Child she imagined as her friend and mentor, rather than the real person, and it is this identification that allows her to accept herself at last: she’s become not only the writer, but also the person, she has always wanted to be. Gazing at a portrait of Julia Child hanging in the Smithsonian as she utters these words, Powell is really looking into a mirror and finally liking what she sees. And so should we, musing perhaps over how easily a film about cooking and the love of food has revealed itself to be about how food can be the way to find love itself.

Sita Sings the Blues

2009-09-07T08:05:00.000-07:00

I've already seen this film twice this year, the second time at the Hardacre Film Festival in Tipton, IA, the first weekend of August. I simply love it. Nina Paley, the film's creator, finds what is universal in an ancient poem, The Ramayana, and relates it effortlessly to her own life--and by extension, our lives. Apparently, it's been criticized for disrespect to Indian culture, but I think that's a pretty narrow view. To me it seems obvious that she found the core of the epic's humanity, connected to it powerfully, and wanted to make it accessible to contemporary audiences. It's a cartoon, so it's fun as well. Humor is not automatically disrespectful--this film enjoys its subject and plays with it, but never mocks it. To draw an old distinction, it isn't solemn, but it is serious--and by that I mean it's a real work of art.

SITA SINGS THE BLUES

　
Sita Sings the Blues is unlike any animated movie you’ve ever seen, or probably ever will see. It is utterly unique, and altogether amazing. Creator Nina Paley—who writes, directs, animates, and provides one of the main voices—has concocted something very special in this sumptuous blend of fantasy, satire, and sex.

The film follows two basic storylines, the breakdown of Paley’s marriage and the tragic tale of the warrior god Ram and his wife Sita (as told in the ancient poem The Ramayana, one of India’s great epics), whose marriage ends badly as well. In the autobiographical half, Paley and her husband Dave live happily in San Francisco until he accepts a job in India, which distances him from her emotionally as well as physically. Although he asks her to visit him, he’s obviously lost interest when she arrives, and when she travels back to the States, he loses no time in sending her an email announcing the marriage is over. Alone and miserable in New York City, Paley begins reading The Ramayana, and is inspired to tell the story of the spurned wife Sita, for whom she feels an understandable sympathy.

Sita, Paley’s heroic counterpart, is the virtuous and faithful wife of Ram, a prince who has been banished from his father’s court because of his stepmother’s jealousy. He and Sita make the most of their exile, however, by enjoying an idyllic life in the forest, living only for each other’s love. Unfortunately, tales of Sita’s renowned beauty reach the ears of the demon king Ravana, who rules a faraway island. Consumed by lust, he kidnaps her and takes her to his palace, where she virtuously resists his advances and professes her undying love for Ram. Meanwhile, Ram searches for her, aided by Hanuman, leader of a band of monkey warriors. When he finally finds her, he attacks the palace with his simian troops, destroys Ravana and his demonic army, and rescues Sita. But Ram is suspicious of Sita’s fidelity during her captivity, and after inheriting his kingdom, he feels he cannot command the respect of his people by allowing Sita to remain his wife. So he banishes her back to the same forest, where she raises their two sons and pines for her hardhearted husband.

Personal, epic, satirical by turns, Sita is both a celebration of unbridled romantic love and a caustic rumination on the cruelty of unequal gender roles in a patriarchal society. But this doesn’t mean it isn’t really, really funny. Judging by this film, Paley’s take on the entire universe is ironic, and neither the excesses of heroic narrative nor the pettiness of modern relationships escape her witty and irreverent point-of-view. To begin with, the two stories are cleverly interwoven, matching similar stages in the decline and fall of each relationship. Nina and Dave in bed in their studio apartment in Frisco mirrors the bliss of Ram and Sita’s early marriage; Dave’s journey to India becomes the exile, with the faithful wife following behind; Dave’s crude dumping of Nina is the moral equivalent of Ram’s unjust suspicion and banishment of his innocent wife, etc. Somewhere Joseph Campbell is applauding.

But it’s the film’s audacious and inventive artistic design that makes it so unique. To watch Paley’s film is to experience the way imagination can take what seems like straightforward narrative elements and turn them into something not only magical but kind of crazy as well. The autobiographical tale is pictured in simple black-and-white line drawings, while the epic explodes across the screen in a riot of brilliant colors and contrasting animation styles, some taken directly from traditional Indian artwork. The cartoon Ramayana’s energy and scope highlights the paucity of excitement and adventure in today’s urban lifestyle; conversely, the contemporary story brings the high-flying passions and exotic atmosphere of the ancient tale down to earth and into the 21st century where anyone can relate to it. Separated by centuries, civilizations, and mythologies, people are still people and some things never change: a troubled marriage still hurts, and a selfish lout of a husband is still a prime source of complaint for a discarded woman.

And what better way to express that complaint than through the blues? By far the most distinctive and entertaining parts of the film are the musical numbers that Paley inserts into Sita’s tale of love gone wrong--numbers which not only provide the film’s highlights but also slyly spoof the Bollywood tradition of elaborate songs and choreography. In these sequences, Sita--drawn like an exotic Betty Boop, all round eyes and long lashes, her hourglass figure with its bared midriff gyrating seductively--sings blues and torch songs from the 1920s (“Mean to Me,” “Moanin’ Low” et al.) to highlight her emotional ups and downs. The voice is that of Annette Hanshaw, a popular jazz singer of the time who retired in the 1930s and unfortunately is little known today (she died in 1985). Paley had to take out a loan to pay the licensing fees for many of the songs, and the movie put her seriously in debt.

The self-reflexive nature of the film--it is, after all, a movie that documents its own origin--is hilariously mirrored by a trio of narrators, two men and a woman (represented onscreen by traditional Indian shadow puppets), who frequently interrupt the telling of Ram’s and Sita's adventures to offer their commentary, which most often ends in disagreement about the meaning of events, or even what events actually took place (like many ancient literary works, The Ramayana exists in more than one version). Their good-natured squabbling exposes the tenuous nature of story-telling in general, as well as the inherent difficulties in interpreting stories across generations and cultures. Despite the obviousness of the device, it never becomes heavy-handed, but instead communicates the charm of a bedtime story interrupted by a child’s innocent questions.

How did Paley do it? Pretty much alone, that’s how. Over the course of six years (2002-2008), she created this amazing work on her home computer. And she’s “distributing” it in a non-traditional way by making it available for anyone to view or download from the internet (it’s also out on dvd). In short, there’s little about this film that isn’t surprising. These days it feels like we’re living in a new golden age of animation, but however inventive, original, and moving many recent animated films have been, they pale when compared to the artistic bravado and emotional resonance of this film. Sita/Nina may both sing the blues, but after watching their tales unfold in such remarkable style, I predict you’ll be singing their praises.
　
　
　
　

Public Enemies

2009-07-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

Here's my dilemma: I really enjoyed watching this film because I love gangster films. The cars, the hats, the tommy guns--I can't get enough of that stuff. But Public Enemies really isn't a very good film. In fact, it's the biggest disappointment of the summer for me (so far), because I had such high hopes for it. A terrific subject, a talented director, one of the most interesting actors on the screen today--how could it miss? It missed. It missed because its aim was off. Its aim was off because...well, see below. Sigh.

PUBLIC ENEMIES

The gangster film is more connected to the American psyche than any other movie genre, with the exception of the western. Together, these two genres explore opposing sides of the myth of America as the land of opportunity. The western celebrates the openness of America as wilderness waiting to be explored, tamed, and settled by law-abiding citizens: opportunity beckons in the spread of civilization west and the suppression of those elements opposed to it (outlaws, Native American tribes). The gangster film examines the consequences of that civilization several generations later, as wide open prairies and equal opportunity have been replaced by cities teeming with poverty, corruption, and a class structure that denies the promise of the American Dream to many. Opportunity exists for the latter chiefly in the form of crime: attacking the social order that has trapped them in the lower depths. One might almost consider the gangster film an inverted form of the western, in this regard.

The great virtue of Public Enemies, director Michael Mann’s new biopic of Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), is that his film is aware of this intersection of mythologies and has the good sense to exploit it. Unfortunately, that is one of its only virtues, for in nearly every other way Enemies is a misfire. There is certainly nothing wrong with the project itself. Dillinger is one of America’s great criminal figures, and a new treatment of his life for a new generation of moviegoers is definitely wanted, especially since previous film biographies (1945, 1973) have seriously missed the mark. But Mann, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman, takes a strangely diffident approach to his colorful subject, with the result that Dillinger once again eludes capture.

The film recounts the familiar highlights of his storied 1933-1934 crime spree, robbing banks throughout the Midwest with astonishing ease. Along the way, he falls in love with Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), a coat check girl he meets in a Chicago nightclub, and catches the attention of the Bureau of Investigations in Washington, D.C. Its young, ambitious director, J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), commits his crime-fighting unit (soon to be the F.B.I.) to hunting down Dillinger by appointing special agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) head of its Chicago office. As a result, Dillinger, named Public Enemy No.1, finds it increasingly difficult to operate. He engineers a daring break from an Indiana jail but is so hot afterward that former allies abandon him, leaving him few places to hide out. After an especially bloody bank job, he holes up at the Little Bohemia resort in Wisconsin with his gang, but Purvis tracks him there and what follows is one of the most famous, and widely imitated, shoot-outs in American criminal history. Despite having his cabin surrounded by G-men, Dillinger shoots his way free and escapes, humiliating Purvis and increasing his determination to catch him. That occurs one night outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago, when Dillinger is gunned down by Purvis’s men after leaving a showing of Manhattan Melodrama, a gangster picture in which Clark Gable portrays a figure loosely based on Dillinger himself. He was betrayed, of course, by the “woman in red,” Anna Sage, a brothel madam facing deportation if she didn’t give him up to the feds.

Some of this stuff is factual, much of it isn’t—gleaned from legend, past movie fictions, or the current screenwriters’ imaginations—but all of it is highly romanticized and bathed in the glow of nostalgia. This tone is very much at odds with the film’s photographic style, which relies heavily on imagery drained of color, giving it a muted, near black-and-white look at times--a touch of Depression bleakness. In addition, Mann shoots many scenes with hand-held cameras that weave around and between the actors, catching them at odd, sometimes uncomfortable angles, and framing the action at very close range, so that the viewer is plunged into the midst of what’s going on rather than allowed to stand back and study it from a safe distance. This approach gives the film an immediacy and an off-guard quality that would work well with gritty, raw story matter--but Enemies is anything but gritty or raw, despite the violence of its subject. From the romantic plotline to the meticulous costuming—the clothes are chic, tailored to perfection, and seemingly unperspired-on—to the gleaming cars and spotless set interiors, Public Enemies is a showcase for a world that exists only in an art director’s imagination, a world every bit as make-believe as those in the Hollywood melodramas Dillinger liked a bit too much.

This clash of styles produces artistic confusion: the film has a strangely detached feeling, despite the camera’s closeness to the people onscreen. The star-crossed love affair between Dillinger and his moll, Billie, is so hopelessly retro, so out of touch with modern sensibility about criminals and their lives, that it renders the naturalistic effects of the documentary-style shooting irrelevant, actually distancing us further from the characters instead of forging the intimate connection desired. It doesn’t help that most of the dialogue is banal, often unintelligible, and so lacking in personality that supporting characters never clearly define themselves. Most of Dillinger’s gang members are interchangeable; when one gets shot we feel little or no loss--they’ve never emerged from the surroundings to become distinct individuals we care about. The film puts us in the odd position of eavesdropping on conversations but never learning anything worth knowing because nothing worth knowing is ever said. The camera gets inside the action but not inside the story; a more traditional, aloof method of filming would have penetrated deeper and uncovered more of its emotional life. I find this rather ironic.

But the main problem with the film is Johnny Depp’s Dillinger. Depp is one of the cleverest, most watchable actors on the screen today, equally adept at carefully nuanced and over-the-top performances, but he is less than arresting as America’s Most Wanted. Dillinger, by most accounts, was a humorous, cocky, charming extrovert—notoriously oversexed as well. Depp’s version is moody, closemouthed, introspective, and seemingly monogamous--a romantic who longs more for time spent with the woman he loves than the excitement of his daring robberies and whorehouse lifestyle. Much of Public Enemies’ chilliness radiates from him, and this miscalculated and inaccurate performance is as much a surprise as it is a disappointment.

Which is not to say he doesn’t have some good moments. A jailhouse confrontation with Purvis late in the film—Depp’s and Bale’s only scene together—crackles with tension and humor, Depp finally showing some of Dillinger’s spark as he baits the strait-laced lawman from behind bars. And he captures the bank robber’s on-camera insolence pretty well, too, smirking cagily for photographers like a rock star who digs the press swooning over him but pretends take it all in stride. Dillinger seemed to attract that kind of attention in his day, which might explain the most interesting side of Depp’s impersonation: there are moments when the soft, slurring drawl he affects sounds a bit like Elvis. It’s been Depp’s modus operandi of late to channel a pop idol for some of his more grandiose characters: Keith Richards for Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and the late Michael Jackson for Willie Wonka in 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Now comes Dillinger as Elvis, which makes sense in a weird kind of way: both were charismatic bad boys, media darlings in life, folk heroes in death—which came early to each--whose statures continue to grow as the years go by. But fascinating as this is to think about afterward, Depp just doesn’t give “Dillvis” enough swagger to make him fun to watch while the film is rolling.

The other principals don’t fare very well, either. Bale, sadly, shoots blanks as Purvis. Who this G-man is or why he’s so driven are mysteries the film makes no effort to solve. The script gives the actor virtually nothing to work with, and he responds by giving nothing back. His terse, monotonic portrayal of Dillinger‘s nemesis is a flat-out bore. Marion Cotillard, fresh off her Oscar-winning role in La Vie en Rose, glows as the ill-fortuned Billie, but is adrift in a script that can’t keep her busy, which proves a sorry waste of her talent. Only Crudup as a feisty, politicking Hoover and Stephen Lang as Charles Winstead, a weathered western lawman recruited by Purvis to help corral Dillinger, give off any heat, but neither commands much screen time.

Lang’s character does provide the point where Public Enemies intersects with the western, however. Purvis and the Bureau represent the future of law enforcement: bureaucratic in organization, scientific in method, urban in setting. But Dillinger’s wildness poses a challenge to their new order because he is a throwback to the days of the rural outlaw, the train robbers and bank robbers of the vanished West. Dillinger is Jesse James in a fedora hat, wielding a tommy gun instead of a revolver. Recognizing that he can’t catch him because he doesn’t understand him, Purvis calls in Winstead and two of his cowboy companions; their arrival is captured in an iconic moment as they step off the train in Chicago, ten gallon hats on their heads, bedrolls and rifles in their hands. The genre that symbolizes the triumph of law over disorder has entered the gangster film‘s sphere of social chaos, announcing an epic clash. What follows soon after is just that, the shootout at Little Bohemia, the movie’s big action set-piece, and the sequence where gangster picture and western most completely overlap. It's the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but in reverse: the bad guy gets away, the sheriff is defeated.

Dillinger’s death makes it obvious that by the end of the film Mann has become more interested in the western’s mythmaking potential than the gangster film’s implied social criticism. It’s an elaborate sequence, prolonged and poeticized by slow motion and intricate cutting between Dillinger strolling down the sidewalk and lawmen stalking him from behind, drawing their guns, taking careful aim… It’s not the violent, ugly depiction of death that awaits the protagonist in most gangster films, but a lyrical restaging of it: an elegy for a romantic figure from America‘s past, and for the era that he's come to represent. A late western such as The Wild Bunch (1969)--a long, slow meditation on the closing of the west and the death of its heroic individualism--is closer to what Mann has in mind here than the stern warning issued to society by James Cagney’s brutal end in The Public Enemy (1931). Though the name of the current film is obviously an homage to that genre-defining classic, their underlying philosophies couldn’t be farther apart.

America’s fascination with violence, and with films that glorify its violent past, seems to be endless. Part of their appeal might be to help us process, even escape, the violence of the present. But because the gangster and western genres are historical in nature, they also provide ways for us to reinvent the past, or to understand it differently over time. The gangster film was once a contemporary social problem film, angry and direct in nature. A film like Public Enemies has left criticism behind and crossed into the mythologizing realm of the western. It’s not the first to do so, of course--Bonnie and Clyde and The Godfather saga broke this ground years ago. But it reminds us how far the gangster film has traveled, and why a bank robber who died 75 years ago is still at large and will never lack pursuers.
　

Up

2009-07-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

This is a delightful film, another triumph for Pixar, but probably its darkest one yet. I can't say enough about the stunning visuals, or the vocal acting, especially by Christopher Plummer as the villain, Charles Muntz, a charming but truly malevolent character. Several people have pointed out to me that the figure of Carl, the hero, looks like a puppet version of Spencer Tracy in his final movie role, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? And it's true--the flat head, short white hair, the oversized black glasses, it's all there. What an obscure and brilliant allusion! Those people at Pixar know their stuff.

UP

Much of Up, the new animated film from Pixar and Disney, is a real downer. Consider these subjects for a “children’s” movie: aging, death, care of the elderly, the loss of parental love, the death of youthful ideals. Ouch. But Up is ultimately what its title claims it to be: an uplifting film that carries one away from all those cares and woes. How it does that just might make the movie more rewarding for viewers in middle life and beyond than for the kids who would seem at first glance to be its audience. But that’s why you can never completely trust the way films are marketed, and why surprise is still such an important part of the movie-going experience.

The opening scenes of the film chronicle the life of Carl Fredricksen (voiced as an adult by the wonderful Ed Asner), from his Depression-era childhood to the present day. A shy, lonely boy who spends his afternoons at the movies, Carl’s world is turned upside down when he meets Ellie, a hyperactive young girl who shares his hero worship of world-renowned explorer and adventurer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer at his suavest) and has started a club in his honor in an old, abandoned house. Carl becomes the club’s second--and only other--member, and a touching montage traces his relationship with Ellie as it moves from friendship into courtship, marriage, and their life growing old together in the clubhouse that's become their home. The couple, unable to have children, are devoted to each other, as well as to the memory of Muntz, who disappeared years earlier while piloting his dirigible over a remote region in South America called Paradise Falls. They put money aside to one day make the trip to Paradise Falls themselves, but one emergency after another drains their savings and the trip never materializes. On her deathbed, Ellie makes Carl promise that he will still try, but her death leaves him lonely and heartbroken, and there seems little chance of his keeping that promise.

So what is this movie up to? So far it does not seem calculated to entertain anyone who can’t already vote. And for awhile things only get worse. In addition to grief and loneliness, Carl must contend with urban renewal, which surrounds his tiny home with modern building developments. He stubbornly refuses to sell his property and leave, but one day he clashes with a construction worker and hits him with his cane. Ordered by the court to be placed in a retirement home, Carl’s life seems at its lowest point—until he comes up with a brilliant solution. During the night, he inflates thousands of balloons with helium and attaches them to his house. The next morning, just as the medical attendants are coming to collect him, he releases the balloons and they pull his house from its foundations and carry it up, up and away, his destination the long-desired Paradise Falls.

The film undergoes an extreme makeover at this point. The fantastic was hinted at earlier in old newsreel footage of a young, reckless Charles Muntz, but now Up literally becomes a flight of fancy. The picturization of the house soaring above and through clouds is simply amazing, real enough to send acrophobes under their seats. In a nod to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Paradise Falls turns out to be a kind of Lost World inhabited by strange creatures, most notably a prehistoric bird that resembles a cross between a giant dodo and a toucan. And then there are those talking dogs….

But despite the outlandish elements, Up never completely loses touch with solid ground. Carl’s emotional connection to Ellie only deepens the closer he gets to their life’s goal, and his journey is complicated by an interesting stowaway: an 8-year-old Wilderness Explorer (i.e. Boy Scout) named Russell (Jordan Nagai), who was on Carl’s porch about to ring the doorbell when he got the surprise of his life. Russell understands nothing of the more serious implications of this flight from reality--he’s simply thrilled by the Boy’s Adventure aspect of it, and is eager to become a crew member of the unusual flight craft. But Russell has a story of his own, which comes out slowly as the film unfolds: only child, divorced parents, a father whose business travels keep him away from home so much he has little time for his son. Russell’s loneliness clearly echoes Carl’s, and though the curmudgeonly senior is initially resistant to Russell’s presence, he softens over time as the two share the hardships of the journey, eventually bonding with the boy over their mutual need for friendship.

As its name suggests, Paradise Falls, once found, is a source of disillusionment. There, Carl and Russell find the aged, but surprisingly spry, Charles Muntz living in splendid exile, like Robinson Crusoe on Charles Foster Kane’s income. The most charismatic and complex character in the film, Muntz dominates the movie’s third act. In person he's something very different from the romantic hero of Carl’s memory. Isolation, and the totalitarian authority he exercises over his corps of trained watchdogs (hilariously fitted with devices that translate their barks into human speech) has turned the idealistic explorer into a shadowy, menacing figure, something along the lines of the renegade Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (their names are even similar). Muntz’s purpose for living in seclusion, allowing the world to think he’s dead, is a dark one: he wants to hunt down a prehistoric bird so that he can prove its existence to a scientific community that doubted and humiliated him years before. Crazed to the point of megalomania, he dispatches anyone who stands in his way—which now includes Carl and Russell, who have found the bird in the jungle and grown attached to it.

Conrad, Paradise lost, megalomania—this is a children’s film, right? The colorful giant bird (which Russell names “Kevin,” before he discovers it’s a mother) and the talking dogs do provide many lighter, kid-friendly moments. Dug, a misfit among Muntz's stormpoochers--he eventually switches sides to help Carl and Russell--is especially funny, the kind of comic relief the film needs to give it ballast (he's voiced by co-writer/director Bob Peterson). But Paradise Falls is a gloomy place overall, befitting the film’s melancholy understanding of aging and the abandonment of dreams. Tots won’t get it, of course, but their parents and grandparents will—which makes the exciting climax much more meaningful than the usual Hollywood action finale. Muntz finally succeeds in capturing Kevin, so Russell dashes off to save him, and Carl—after some initial reluctance and a moving farewell to the life he spent with Ellie—chases after him to fulfill his hero’s destiny. And to begin his life anew.

He pilots the house to intercept Muntz’s dirigible, where both Kevin and Russell are imprisoned; when Muntz catches him on board, the two antiquated warriors face off with “swords” for a classic swashbuckling denouement. If Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone had reunited onscreen in their 80s, their final duel might have looked like this. The sequence is one of the film’s real treats, heightened by the superb vocal work of Asner and Plummer. But after the movie heroics are over--and Russell and Kevin rescued--this Paradise False must be left behind. The story returns home, to its beginnings, where real heroism is displayed in ordinary daily life--accepting reality, shouldering responsibility, engaging with the world. Carl and Russell--friends and fellow adventurers--are now each other’s family as well.

Is the middle section of the movie in actuality a dream? It could be--it functions like one, helping Carl work through his problems (making peace with his disappointments, accepting his losses) and move on with his life. This should sound familiar. When it comes to fantasy adventure films purportedly made for younger audiences, is The Wizard of Oz ever very far away? With regard to Up, it’s no farther than its own front yard. Let’s see, a troubled protagonist running away from his problems escapes to a fantastic world--in a flying house, no less--where he’s helped by unlikely companions to defeat a mysterious oppressor, who is something of a wizard (inventor, flyer) but with the murderous impulses of a wicked witch. Renewed by his victory, he returns home, having gained both a greater appreciation of his life there and a better understanding of how to live it well.

The sudden, sharp changes in the film’s direction and visual style also suggest that something extraordinary is happening in these middle scenes. Carl and Ellie’s sweet, real-life story is displayed in mostly muted tones and two-dimensional compositions within the enclosed spaces of their house. Up’s switch to the fantasy-adventure genre introduces eye-popping visuals and the three-dimensional depth of the world at large, especially the vertigo-inducing shots from the air. The film concludes with a series of photographs of Carl and Russell hanging out back home, enjoying their new friendship--happy images but completely flat ones, emphasizing the return to the two-dimensional space of the beginning.

Carl’s journey to Paradise Falls could therefore be another version of Dorothy’s dream. The lines between reality and fantasy having been blurred by the narrative’s liberties, there is no confirming what actually takes place or doesn’t. Up doesn’t directly make this claim, but it plays with the kind of ambiguity and surreal logic that admits of the possibility. And isn’t that the possibility underlying all fairy tales, in a way? Once Up-on a time, there was a little old man living by himself in a funny-looking house…

　
　
　
　
　
　
　

Angels and Demons

2009-06-03T21:58:00.000-07:00

Probably many will disagree with the first sentence of my review, but I really disliked the film version of The Da Vinci Code. I enjoyed the book, and I simply couldn't find it anywhere in the movie. Now a confession: I haven't read Angels and Demons, and I have no plans to. Perhaps this influences my assessment of the film; but if so, so what? For whatever reason, I liked it a lot. I enjoyed seeing Hanks in the role of Robert Langdon this time, Ayelet Zurer taught me a new respect for particle physics, and Ewan McGregor (one of my favorite actors) turned in a terrific performance. The Rome locations were well used, and there was an amazing scene toward the end in St. Peter's Square involving a helicopter. For a blockbuster summer picture, this one has some brains to go along with the brawn. I say unto you it's worth seeing. Amen.

ANGELS AND DEMONS

Angels and Demons is about 100 times better than The Da Vinci Code. Director Ron Howard’s puzzling 2006 adaptation of Code, Dan Brown’s monster bestseller about a secret Catholic organization’s attempt to suppress the “true” history of Jesus, turned a superior potboiler into an inferior one with depressing ease. Code still raked in enough money to make the Vatican envious, but fans worldwide felt sinned against. Now comes the expected sequel, drawn from Brown’s other novel about cover-ups in the Catholic Church, and lo, like water turned into wine, it’s a refreshing surprise.

Angels and Demons is, at its best, an expert genre film. Strip away all the arcane church lore and the End-of-Days portents and you find an old-fashioned race-against-time thriller, executed with confidence and skill. Thankfully, it’s more of an action pic than its stultifying predecessor, and a pretty good mystery into the bargain. Red herrings are scattered about like loaves and fishes, so the audience has plenty to chew on while waiting for the plot’s final revelations.

A beloved pope has died and the conclave of cardinals is gathering in Rome to choose his successor. While they are preparing to sequester themselves in the Vatican, however, four of them are kidnapped—the four favorites to become the next pope, or “preferitti”—and an ominous message is sent to Vatican officials, warning of their deaths and the ultimate destruction of the Church. Meanwhile, in a research facility elsewhere in Italy, a team of physicists achieves a scientific breakthrough by creating antimatter in a massive collider. No sooner have they succeeded than a mysterious intruder infiltrates the facility and steals a critical portion of it, killing one of the scientists in the process. When the missing vial of antimatter turns up in Rome as part of the threat against the Church, the Vatican has a problem worthy of Hollywood’s attention.

And Robert Langdon’s. Langdon (portrayed once again by Tom Hanks) is the Harvard professor of religion and “symbology” expert who, despite having embarrassed the Catholic Church in his previous adventure, possesses skills so uniquely suited to helping the Vatican in its current crisis that they have no choice but to turn to him. It’s the kind of antagonistic partnership that thrillers have thrived on since Alfred Hitchcock’s formula-making The 39 Steps (1935), and Howard and his screenwriters (David Koepp, Akiva Goldsman) demonstrate they are attentive students of the Master.

The key to the plot is a secret society known as the “Illuminati,” free-thinking intellectuals from centuries past who questioned Church doctrine and were severely persecuted (think Galileo), many even put to death. It seems some remnants of the Illuminati still exist, and they have regrouped for their long-awaited vengeance. Each of the kidnapped cardinals will be executed in a public place one hour apart, according to their plan, which will culminate in their release of the antimatter, producing an explosion forceful enough to destroy Vatican City and half of Rome. Langdon has his work cut out for him, since he has only a few hours to interpret clues in the kidnappers’ messages that will lead him to the various locations where the cardinals are to die, and eventually to the hiding place of the antimatter. As if this weren’t enough, Langdon has to do it all while contending with a suspicious Vatican security chief (Stellan Skarsgard), who may or may not be undercutting his efforts, and the enigmatic Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor), the Vatican official who temporarily wields the late pope’s authority. Fortunately, the Hitchcock formula provides him with the able assistance of a beautiful woman, Dr. Vittoria Vetra (Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer), the physicist in charge of the antimatter project. She has been called to Rome to help find the missing vial and keep it from detonating. Other duties include looking great in a trim black dress and making flirtatious eye contact with Hanks. I’m assuming he appreciated it.

This is pulpy, improbable stuff, kept alive by faith, I guess, but also by works: a breakneck pace and razor-sharp timing. It doesn’t hurt that Hanks’ Langdon can make deductions so quickly it would put Sherlock Holmes to shame; this ability keeps the audience off balance and willing to accept anything he says just so they don’t get left behind. Well, and why not? What I especially liked about this movie is that at least Hanks and Howard are having fun this time. The dour Da Vinci Code felt joyless, afraid to breathe--the current film exhales noisily, and it’s a blessing. Hanks will probably never be anyone’s ideal Robert Langdon, but he’s settled into the role and seems much more comfortable the second time around. He’s even relaxed enough to flash traces of the wiseass humor that’s been his trademark since he began his illustrious film career two decades ago in Splash (also directed by Howard), and before that on TV in Bosom Buddies.

Angels definitely qualifies as a summer action blockbuster, but it has a spiritual side to it as well. Nestled behind the elaborate rituals of the suspense thriller is a sober study (though I assume a highly fictionalized one) of Vatican politics and protocol surrounding the election of a new pope. The central conflict in this embedded story is between the Camerlengo and Cardinal Strauss (Armin Mueller-Stahl), leader of the conclave. Theirs is a quiet, and one suspects, longstanding duel over control of the papacy, the future of the Church, and even the nature of the God they both serve. While Langdon and company race around Rome trying to protect the body of the Church, these two men struggle to save its soul, speaking feelingly to each other about how it can survive the destruction set to occur. But their views are opposed, the aged cardinal insisting on the necessity of tradition and the young priest arguing for the inevitability of change, and it is this debate that gives a deeper urgency to the film than the kind supplied by narrow escapes and last-minute rescues. A parable of faith woven into a tale of worldly intrigue, Mueller-Stahl’s and McGregor’s soft-spoken but intense exchanges provide the film’s emotional core. Both actors are excellent, giving subtly veiled performances that lend voice to their characters’ convictions while masking the motives behind them. As our perception of those motives changes throughout the course of the film, it becomes apparent that their dialogue has more to do with the events unfolding around them than we first supposed. And it is through the twists and turns of their evolving relationship that the meaning of the film’s title is finally revealed.

Through the plot’s many convolutions, Howard’s direction displays more than its usual serviceability, guiding the activity with enough assurance to make one believe at times the film has style, although it's really just bravado. He’s a successful but rather ordinary filmmaker who has achieved stature in Hollywood by constantly overreaching, tackling subjects complex enough to pull him out of his comfort zone and elevate the level of his achievement. I admire him for it, but only occasionally do I find one of his films truly satisfying--Cocoon comes to mind, and Parenthood, the underrated Cinderella Man, and certainly Apollo 13, his greatest artistic success to date. The angels are on his side with this current choice—let us pray that Da Vinci’s demons are at last safely behind him.

Sunshine Cleaning

2009-05-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

I liked this film a lot, although I recognize its limitations. Never as funny as the oddball premise would lead you to expect, it also seems to pull up a bit short as a drama about two sisters trying to heal their damaged lives and relationship. In a way, it kind of suffers from an identity crisis, but since I do, too, I'm willing to forgive it. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are terrific as the sisters, and that simply may be enough for a strong recommendation. Ditto Alan Arkin, one of my favorite actors. No, it's not Little Miss Sunshine Redux, although it's certainly guilty of swiping a bit of that film's mojo. It stands on its own, however, and I actually like it better. Heresy, I know. It won't be the last time I'm guilty of it.

SUNSHINE CLEANING

What I like most about Sunshine Cleaning is that it’s the kind of story that isn’t immediately obvious. There’s no direct, predictable path from the beginning to the end, and the characters never do quite what you expect them to do. But neither are there any truly big surprises along the way. Outfitted with a genial group of eccentrics and an offbeat premise, Sunshine settles for a sweet, mildly unconventional outcome, rather than pushing the audience toward anything too dark or disturbing. The film could have taken some risks, but instead stays safely within the boundaries of its rather modest goals. This is not entirely a bad thing. But I couldn’t help feeling a slight bit of disappointment at the end, as with a promise left partially unfulfilled.

Unfulfilled promise is the theme with which the story opens. Two sisters, Rose (Amy Adams) and Norah (Emily Blunt), lead lives of quiet desperation in their home town of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rose, the eldest, toils for a maid service and does her best as a single mom to raise her son, Oscar. The mostly out-of-work Norah still lives at home and seems to care for little besides babysitting Oscar, whom she entertains with hilariously awful bedtime stories about serial killers. It’s through Oscar that these two moribund lives are given a chance at revival. A precocious, sweet-tempered boy suffering from ADD, he is expelled from school for constantly disrupting his classroom. In order to send him to a private school where he will receive the special attention he needs, Rose looks around for ways to make more money. She decides to try her hand at cleaning up crime scenes, especially those of murders and suicides, a lucrative field because of the high cost of wiping away blood and other biohazards. With the reluctant Norah in tow, Rose creates “Sunshine Cleaning” and embarks on a seriocomic journey into the messy aftermath of violent death.

A quirky set-up and down-on-their-luck characters generally mean that a movie is going to spend its quality time exploring relationships and character, rather than building plot. Sunshine Cleaning treats these expectations as earnestly as a moral duty. Episodic and deliberate, the film unveils its plan slowly and cautiously, like sunlight advancing across a room. The focus of the story is the relationship between the two sisters, whose lives prior to their business partnership present a study in contrasts, as well as unresolved tensions. Rose, a former high school golden girl--head cheerleader, dated the quarterback--gamely tries to project a positive attitude despite confronting the specter of failure and unfulfilled potential behind every thankless task of her daily life. Self-administered pep talks (“You are strong, you are a winner”) temporarily prop up her hopes for a better future, but her heart isn’t in it when called upon to make a real effort at self-improvement. Instead, she treads water by sleeping with her ex-quarterback boyfriend (Steve Zahn), now married and a cop. Norah, sullen and rebellious, pursues a Loser lifestyle of oversleeping, wearing too much black eyeliner, and getting fired from crappy jobs she never wanted in the first place. “Pursues” might be putting it too aggressively—it’s more like she sits still and waits for failure to catch up with her. But she seems to welcome it when it arrives. Surprisingly sensitive for her tough chick look, Norah is more hurt than angry—her rebellion is half-hearted, literally a mask of make-up behind which crouches a sad, irresolute child.

Rose’s and Norah’s dead-end lives conflict in many ways yet are so closely intertwined they make no sense without each other. The reason is revealed through uneasy flashbacks as the film unfolds: their low self-esteem and lack of ambition are rooted in their mother’s mysterious suicide when they were children (a trauma made worse by their discovery of her body). Although raised by their loving father, a well-meaning but hapless salesman (the always wonderful Alan Arkin), they are stuck on hold, their futures blocked by the confusion and pain of this event. As is their relationship: it’s the different paths this tragedy has sent them down that form the basis of the ongoing, silent quarrel between them. Neither is happy with the other’s choices, or weaknesses, or mistakes.

The main business of the story, then, is to help each woman find her way back to a sense of purpose in her life, and to each other. Adams and Blunt make this business worth investing in: each inhabits her half of the damaged pair with the right proportions of whimsy and soulfulness. Adams, an actress whose nervous intensity sometimes proves distracting, tempers it here with low-key humor and a rueful self-awareness. As a result, she offers a touching portrait of a once-shallow woman, uncomfortable with introspection, who learns to believe in her own resolve. But it’s Blunt who gives the film its edge. While Adams blossoms as Rose, Blunt’s Norah sinks further into the depths of her despair, until she touches bottom. Norah perpetrates the film’s two worst events--deeply hurting a friend and causing a near fatal crisis for the burgeoning business, which almost severs her relationship with Rose completely. Blunt avoids all the possible clichés in portraying this damned soul: Norah has a genius for self-destruction and a taste for self-pity, but Blunt makes her warm, empathetic, and engaging throughout, without ever compromising the volatility or unpredictability that make Norah dangerous. It’s a performance of great skill and subtlety from an actress who needs more exposure.

Sunshine is not completely dark, however. Arkin delivers another comic gem in his turn as the family patriarch, strongly reminiscent of his Oscar-winning role in Little Miss Sunshine (2006). This film has been accused of over-emulating the earlier one, and writer Megan Holley and director Christine Jeffs may indeed have had their eyes on the prize of that unexpected hit--Arkin is once again paired with a winning child actor (Jason Spevack), and a family of mismatched members once more learns to pull together in a crisis--but if it starts out copying the formula for the first Sunshine, it ends by mixing the elements very differently. The current film is not the ensemble piece the earlier one was, since it’s basically a sister act, and its humor is far less raucous, much more attuned to the troubling undercurrents of lives haunted by loss and wounded love.

What Holley and Jeffs have actually created in Sunshine Cleaning is an elaborate metaphor for healing: cleaning up other people’s messes, the bloody remains of others’ broken lives, is the surest way for Rose and Norah to put themselves right at last, and restore the emotional order that finding their mother’s blood-soaked body blasted apart. By running her own business, Rose discovers a mature sense of self-worth that is far more satisfying than what the extrovert life of a high school celebrity provided her. Norah’s fate is more open-ended. She finally leaves home at the film’s conclusion and takes to the road, searching for an identity beyond the limits of the grief that for years has defined her.

Sunshine’s final revelation comes quietly but inevitably, the result, I believe, of Jeffs’ leisurely pacing and understated direction: these two women--whose disappointing, interrupted lives were not the causes of their unhappiness but symptoms of it--are two halves of one person, finally completed and made whole in the film’s climactic scene, a beautifully played moment of reconciliation between Adams and Blunt. If Sunshine Cleaning isn’t the inspired or beguiling film it could have been, neither is it a film which fails to warm and illuminate in many small but important ways.

Duplicity

2009-04-11T07:48:00.001-07:00

There isn't much to say about this film. It's enjoyable but almost instantly forgettable. If you like heist or crime caper movies, or movies about elaborate con jobs, with beautiful people in beautiful locations doing dishonest things, then it's worth a couple of hours in the theater. But it won't make you forget the classics it's based on--most particularly, Charade, which I was reminded of several times. I went to it, I watched it, I liked it, next month I won't remember a thing about it. Too bad, because the cast has some heavy hitters--Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Paul Giametti. I especially worry about Owen, one of my favorite actors. He seems intent on making mostly films like this one these days--can't be good for his career. At least it isn't Shoot 'Em Up (shudder).

DUPLICITY
　

Duplicity is one of those films that knows it doesn’t matter, but it does its not mattering with so much style that it makes you want it to matter more. A throwback to the sophisticated crime caper films of the 1960s (Topkapi, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Italian Job, etc.), Duplicity attempts to get by on charm, pretty locations (Dubai, Rome, Zurich), and charismatic stars, and for the most part pulls it off. This is a film of flourishes rather than substance, of pleasures for the eye and ear that fade so quickly there’s little left to think about once they’re gone.

Like many of its predecessors, Duplicity’s plot is both breezy and cynical. Just ask yourself what might happen when a suave British secret service agent (Clive Owen) meets up with a cool CIA operative who just happens to look like Julia Roberts. They might, say, be attracted to one another. And since they work for different governments, they might be rivals of a sort. Which means love and gamesmanship might be on the agenda. The answers, of course, are yes, yes, and yes--rather predictable, ironically, for a movie whose name means deception. The British agent, Ray Koval (Owen), is on assignment in Dubai for MI-6 when he meets Claire Stenwick (Roberts) at a party, hits on her and enjoys her company for a night, only to discover when he wakes that she’s Mata Hari’d him: slept with him so she can steal some top secret papers in his possession. Some years later, they meet again, and although Ray wants a reckoning for a career that was almost derailed by Claire’s double-cross, he settles for picking up where they left off in bed. The results are presumably more satisfying this time, because they spend a lot of time in bed over the next two hours, where, between bouts of lovemaking, they hatch an ingenious plot to make themselves very, very rich.

It would be unfair to summarize too much of the story that follows. What happens isn’t all that important, but there are surprises in how a lot of it is revealed. The film’s whats and whys take a back seat to its whens and hows. Suffice it to say, the lovers quit their government spying jobs to go undercover in the private sector. Their scheme has them land jobs in the security divisions of two rival skin care corporations locked in a bitter war over a new product. The object: larceny on a grand scale. And so the fun begins, which for the audience means trying to figure out, first, exactly what Ray and Claire are doing, and second, if they are actually doing it together. The lovers spar over commitment issues in between arguing over details of the elaborate con they are working on the two companies—and, perhaps, each other, judging from the little amount of trust between them. The model here is Stanley Donen’s comedy thriller Charade (1963), in which another impossibly handsome couple (Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn) chase each other through gorgeous locations around the globe while trying to decide if they can trust each other enough to fall in love. Duplicity can’t match the Donen classic for chic, but it gamely emulates its mentor’s playfulness, ultra-sophisticated thievery, and travelogue approach to storytelling.

Writer-director Tony Gilroy was responsible for 2007’s superb thriller Michael Clayton, which also took place among the boardrooms of Corporate America. That film was a trenchant indictment of criminality in the upper echelons of the business world, but this time he obviously goes for a lighter mood, combining white-collar mischief with romance instead of murder. His newfound sense of fun finds expression in the use of split screen images and multiple flashbacks, techniques that add to the film’s general air of trickery, in addition to recalling the pop language of 1960s cinema.

The high-end crime genre should be very familiar to contemporary audiences, of course, because of the number of examples, both serious and tongue-in-cheek, still being produced. The genre got a creative shot in the arm a few years ago when George Clooney and his crew revived the heist film in the Ocean’s 11/12/13 series (inspired by the Frank Sinatra original from 1960). Other key films of that era have been remade in recent years as well (The Italian Job, The Thomas Crown Affair). Apparently, America is nostalgic for its swashbuckling crooks of yesteryear. They are certainly more fun to watch than the parade of gray-faced corporate felons on the nightly news.

The actors certainly seem to be enjoying their flashy roles. Roberts, a veteran of the Ocean movies, is right at home. She has carved out quite a niche for herself in this retro genre. Surprisingly restrained, given some of her past performances in light-hearted fare, Roberts invests Claire with more warmth and sensuality than she could have gotten by with. Her reteaming with Closer co-star Owen is pretty successful, as he already knows the right tone to take with her in a battle of wits and sexual wills. The problem is that Claire and Ray are mainly props in the story rather than full-fledged identities. The energy of each performer radiates from deep within, but their characters are too shallow and lacking in fiber to hold it all. Owen, a ferocious actor by nature, is way too powerful at times for the frothy part he is asked to play. Still, the chemistry between the two is there, and it makes the movie what it is, an enjoyable romp with two attractive and well-matched people.

What’s most intriguing about this film, perhaps, is how it slyly introduces a weightier thought into the proceedings: the by now familiar word trust. Not satisfied with merely playing with that issue, Duplicity decides to make it into its theme. Deceit and constant suspicion are endemic to a life of spying, so what changes does one’s personality undergo after long exposure to that kind of lifestyle? What is the impact on human relationships, most particularly on love? These become the film’s central questions, in a way. Beneath the glossy surface of scheming, double-crossing, and intrigue lies a story that wonders aloud how love can survive a life devoted to scheming, double-crossing, and lots and lots of lying. Can it? Will it? It matters, during occasional pauses in the action, to Claire and Ray, but despite the number of times these questions are asked, in the end I’m not convinced the movie makes it completely matter to us—not about these one-dimensional characters, at least. Worth a try, though.

Taken

2009-03-18T16:30:00.000-07:00

This movie was a pleasant surprise. I wasn't planning on seeing it until a friend recommended it to me. It's not great, but it's certainly entertaining, and there is a surprising amount of heart behind the physical action. But it is thrills that it was made for, and in that category it delivers. Liam Neeson's debut as an action hero (I believe) is pretty successful. He's a gifted, intelligent actor, so his world-weariness looks like wisdom most of the time. And it's just good to watch someone who isn't a muscle-flexing dumbass run, jump, and hit people. Does that sound elitist? So be it. I had some problems with the politics of the film, but that's often the case, so I just tried to sit back, relax, and let the movie take me in. For the most part, it did.

TAKEN

The title of this film describes, in effect, the experience of watching it. Taken takes hold of you and moves you right along for nearly all of its 93 jam-packed minutes. It’s a thriller that depends less on mood, character, or suspense than on sheer speed and relentless forward motion. It’s like a train on an express route: arriving at its destination is its paramount goal, which leaves little time to admire the scenery along the way.

The plot is succinct. A divorced ex-government agent, Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), has retired early so that he can live near his 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and try to build the relationship with her that he had sacrificed to his career while she was growing up. His ex-wife (Famke Janssen) has remarried into serious wealth, which makes this task all the harder. When Kim asks his permission to vacation in France with a friend, he reluctantly gives it; his fatherly worry reawakens all the old fears that went with his spying job. But Bryan’s “paranoia” proves instead to be prescience: no sooner have the two girls landed in Paris than they are abducted by a gang of Albanian thugs who are running an international sex slavery ring. Kim’s heartrending phone call to her father moments before she is dragged out the door of her apartment provides the film’s first real jolt of emotion, as well as the adrenalin needed to start the plot racing. From this point on, Mills is a man with a single mission: to find his daughter and bring her home.

Despite its many improbabilities, I rather liked Taken. Directed with zeal by former cinematographer Pierre Morel, the film concerns itself not with testing the limits of the action thriller genre but with staying safely inside its comfort zone and fulfilling our expectations. For the most part, it does this with enough energy to compensate for its lack of originality. Anyone who has watched the TV series 24 knows roughly what to expect: a headlong race against time, a tightly forged chain of events which are absorbing because of their speed and intensity, but which would never stand up to the scrutiny of logical analysis or exposition. Mills is even given his own time limit. A former associate tells him that after 96 hours, any hope of finding Kim will have vanished. Apparently, it takes that long for women to disappear completely into the sex trade underworld. So Bryan has four days to revive his skills as a spy—or, as he calls himself, someone who “prevented bad things from happening”—and rescue his beloved daughter.

What is most welcome about this film is that beneath the formulaic activity is a deeper layer, a substratum of emotion that is surprisingly powerful. This is entirely due to the presence of Neeson, who brings gravity and credibility to his farfetched role. Ten years ago, this movie would probably have been a routine Steven Seagal vehicle, but Neeson gives the obligatory heroics psychological depth and an urgency of purpose that distracts from the bareness of the mechanics. The anguish his suffering father experiences is not only believable in and of itself, it fuels the pace of the action. His performance is stronger than the thin premise deserves, but it’s what makes this film into something more than just a series of action set pieces. Supporting performers are generally effective--Grace is winning and vulnerable in the thankless part of victim, and Arben Bajraktaraj, as Albanian gang leader Marko, does some admirable snarling--but this is really a one-man show. Without Neeson at the center, the movie would stall in its tracks.

This seems to be the time for movies about rescuing heroines from prostitution. Recent Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire involved a quest of this kind, with references to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, but Taken’s version comes from closer to home. It’s pressed from the mold of John Ford’s classic western The Searchers, in which John Wayne spends years trying to retrieve his niece from a band of Comanches, and two modern equivalents written, as tributes to Ford‘s film, by Paul Schrader: Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (with Robert De Niro’s famous descent into the hell of New York City to bring back teenage prostitute Jodie Foster), and Schrader’s own Hardcore, in which another distraught father (George C. Scott) searches for his runaway daughter, who has become an actress in porn films.

All these films are obsessed with saving a young woman from sexual “defilement’ and cleansing her of that perceived shame, whether or not she's been a willing party to it. In the three earlier versions, rescue comes “too late”: the daughter has been initiated into sexual experience with undesirables (Indians, pimps, johns, pornographers) and the possibility of her redemption/purification and reentry into her former society is left up to the viewer. But in keeping with the times, and the need for contemporary American films to have happier endings, Taken takes no chances with ambivalence: it won’t be giving much away to reveal that Mills is successful, and Kim is spared everything he fears. Taken is the fairy tale version of the virgin/whore paradigm for women in American movies--the heroine’s virginity is preserved, and like a princess she is restored unambiguously to her former place, seemingly untouched by the entire ordeal.

Taken isn’t just a rescue fantasy, however, it’s a revenge fantasy as well, and here the script by Luc Besson (of La Femme Nikita fame) and Robert Mark Kamen takes a darker turn. It’s not just the delight the movie takes in dispatching bad guys--Mills kills a lot of men in a very short time, many of them brutally--it’s also the revenge it wreaks on the mother who opposes his view of parenting. In several early scenes, Mills spars with his former wife, Lenore, about his protectiveness towards Kim. Lenore accuses him of smothering their daughter, of trying to prevent her from growing up and learning about life; Mills insists he just wants to keep her safe, because he knows the world and the dangers that lurk there. He permits Kim’s trip to France at Lenore’s urging, against his better judgment. His judgment proves correct, of course, and his attempts to keep his daughter close by, and forever his little girl--his smothering behavior--is validated by the movie’s turn of events. This is a reactionary view, to say the least, and a solidly conservative take on the world as a dangerous place in need of swift, violent action to keep its evils at bay. The more liberal-minded mother is ineffectual and wrong, and the suffering she endures when she learns of Kim’s disappearance becomes her justified, almost self-willed, punishment.

Taken never presents much of a challenge to the viewer, and of course never aims to. It’s not built on surprises but on predictable solutions to familiar screen problems. Bring a willing suspension of disbelief and a passing familiarity with movie logic and heroics to the theater, and you'll find it’s a pretty easy film to take. But the standard action scenario does have a twist, and the twist is the humanity of its characters—in particular, the unexpected strength behind a movie father’s love.

Frost/Nixon

2009-03-11T22:20:00.000-07:00

I'm a child of Watergate, and I remember spending a summer home from college watching the congressional hearings on TV. I also remember where I was when I heard that Nixon had resigned the presidency. And I've seen a number of movies, and read a couple of books about the events surrounding this sad episode in our history. All that was long ago, however. I do not purport to be any kind of scholar on the subject; in fact, most of the details have grown kind of fuzzy in my memory. Which is why I am glad to see that the subject is being revisited in this film, and the play it's based on, because it needs to be, continuously, so that those details remain fresh and are never forgotten. I only wish this film had done a better job of that. But it's an honest effort, and I agree with its overall point-of-view. I think it has unfortunate, and unintended, consequences, however, which you can read about below.

FROST/NIXON

To the generation that grew up firm in the belief that Richard Nixon=Bogeyman, this film presents something of a dilemma. On the one hand, it purports to dramatize the moment when the disgraced 37th president finally confessed to the American people that he had sinned against them. On the other hand, the characterization delivered by actor Frank Langella, and guided by director Ron Howard (both Oscar-nominated), in no way demonizes him. Good for the project overall, I suppose, but frustrating for those who still need to view Nixon as the devil. Full disclosure: I grew up during the Watergate era (politically as well as biologically), and I have always been of that camp. As a consequence, this movie had me squirming in my theater seat.

Frost/Nixon covers the events leading up to, and key moments from, the famous 1977 television interviews between British talk show host David Frost (Michael Sheen) and former president Richard Nixon (these interviews have recently been released in their entirety on dvd). Frost had made his mark on American television in the early part of the decade with a show devoted mostly to celebrity chitchat. Suave, confidant, cheeky, he combined the fun of swinging London with an earnestness that hinted at erudition. After Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, Frost concocted the idea of sitting down with him and going over his life in a series of interviews. It would be his biggest “get” ever, and the ratings—he was convinced—would go through the roof. A savvy entertainer, he turned out to be more right than even he probably anticipated.

The potential for a fascinating look at the aftermath of Watergate is certainly here. So what exactly is wrong with Frost/Nixon? It probably is terrific theater (the screenplay is by Peter Morgan, based on his well-received play). But adaptations are tricky; it’s a rare film that can successfully capture the singular style and impact of another medium. Not to mention that the play is about a third medium, television. What makes great television, or a compelling play about it, does not guarantee that a great or compelling film will emerge from either. Under Ron Howard’s capable but uninspired direction, this proves true. Frost/Nixon comes off more like a casual backstage tour of its events rather than a gripping backstage drama of how they transpired. It has a loose, gossipy feel to it; if you’re looking for historical insight or revelations about the people involved, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Howard and Morgan are on the trail of smaller game.

They begin by tracking dual story lines which alternately follow Frost and his associates plotting to woo Nixon onto TV and Nixon’s gloomy exile at his seaside home in San Clemente, California, where he dreams of reentry into public life. Eventually, these plots come together as serious negotiations between the two sides begin, terms are agreed to, and Frost assembles his team of researchers to help him “prepare” for the interview. That word was in quotes because Frost’s idea of preparing, according to the film, is to let his researchers (Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell, Matthew Macfadyen) do all the work, while he burnishes his reputation as a party- and premiere-attending man-about-town, in between pitching his show to prospective backers (all the major networks have turned him down, and this is, of course, in the era before cable). As it progresses, the film gradually builds its portrait of each man as they prepare for their history-making contest before the cameras.

These portraits are meant to be the film’s strength, but they are actually its greatest weakness. There is no question that both men are subjects worthy of screen treatment, although it might not be immediately obvious in the case of Frost, who is portrayed as shallow, self-absorbed, and clueless about how unprepared he is for what he’s planning to do. Early in the story, he smoothly picks up a woman (Rebecca Hall) on an airplane, and she becomes his companion for the remainder of the film. It is clear that he views Nixon in the same light: an easy conquest for his charm. Ironically, it is only when things begin to go wrong--one potential sponsor after another turns him down, and his search for money becomes increasingly desperate, and comic--that his character starts to develop into something more interesting than the Lovable TV and Party Guy. As his position weakens, his character deepens, but Sheen’s performance unfortunately does not follow along. It may not be wholly his fault: despite the direction the script maps out for him, Frost’s part is seriously underwritten. But even so, Sheen simply finds no way to suggest what’s happening behind the crumbling façade of Frost’s self-assurance beyond clutching his head and mussing his beautifully coiffed hair. The script wants you to believe that Frost finally grows into the responsibility of his role, but it’s a suggestion in the story outline and not a realized fact on film.

Nixon is a different story, and it’s a story the American public doesn’t seem to tire of. This Foundering Father endlessly fascinates, illustrated by the number of times he’s been portrayed in film or other media. Is there another U.S. President who is the subject of an opera (John Adams’ Nixon in China)? And, of course, his disembodied, living head was a recurring figure in the animated television series Futurama. I have admitted my discomfort with the notion of a repatriated Richard Nixon. Yet I welcome the introduction of a character with enough edges and angles to keep the film from becoming too obvious a civics lesson/morality play. The screenplay gives us this Nixon: a heavily scarred monument to ambition and pride, furious, hurt, his hunger for vindication and approval so palpable it’s like another person in the room. Yet for every diatribe against the liberals that hounded him from office, every crass joke, or lip-licking reference to the fee he will be paid for his TV appearance, there’s an image of an isolated, introspective Nixon, sculpted in shadow, his eyes haunted by what he sees of the past, or of himself, when he dares look inward. It’s the image of a tragic, fallen man, and it might be the most romantic picture of Nixon ever painted.

Serving this end is Langella’s performance, which truly commands the viewer‘s attention, although not always for the best reason. Gone are the weird tics and mannerisms, and that nervous, unconvincing smile, of Tricky Dick; in their place are a reflective, melancholy bow of the head or a poignant stare offscreen—Lear in exile, contemplating his failure. And he does that haunted eyes thing a lot, which is pretty effective. But like so many other actors trying to capture this most mannered of politicians, Langella falls victim to the temptation to impersonate. How does one do Nixon without some approximation of the Voice? Not possible, of course, and Langella’s attempt is often painful to listen to--a lugubrious and weirdly folksy vocal characterization that sounds at times like Jimmy Stewart doing his impression of Dracula. I’m not sure what director Howard could have been hearing that he liked.

The key question, however—and the one that had me squirming in my seat at the beginning of this review—is this: Does Frost/Nixon give Richard Nixon the exoneration he so desperately sought during his lifetime? Of course, the film does not give us the real Nixon; no narrative, even a careful work of “faction,” can do that. It offers us instead a construct of historical hindsight, a wish-fulfillment portrayal of a Nixon tragically aware of his shortcomings, his squandered opportunities, and the uncomfortable place he will occupy in American history. The last image Howard offers us is of Nixon standing alone on his balcony, staring moodily out at the ocean at dusk: the image of a man contemplating the emptiness of his future, perhaps, or the vast expanse of what he's lost. Frost’s chief researcher, James Reston, Jr. (Rockwell) states earlier in the film that he wants the television interview to serve as the trial Nixon never got, the trial America needs to have, in order for the country to find some sort of peace. This film may have set out to give him that trial once again, but it’s hard not to see in it the resurrection of Nixon as a man: lonely, regretful, oddly graceful in the final stance of defeat. It really should be called Nixon/Frost. The former president comes out on top.

Happy-Go-Lucky

2009-03-03T16:56:00.000-08:00

The main thing to say about this film is that it is pretty much a one-woman show. The movie IS Sally Hawkins. If you're as captivated by her performance as I was, then this movie will delight you to no end. If you find her annoying or uninteresting, then chances are the movie won't affect you much at all. But what kind of emotional armor could you be wearing to resist her? She's simply amazing, and she gives as completely lived a performance as I've ever seen in a movie. How did she not get a nomination for best actress at this year's Academy Awards? How did Happy-Go-Lucky not win the award for best original screenplay? (I mean, Milk was very good, but the screenplay was often unruly, and the film's power came mostly from its performances.) I don't know the answer to these questions. I just know I can't wait to see this film again.

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY

The title of this splendid British film (Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay) is a bit ironic, because Happy-Go-Lucky is often not a very happy film at all. Although essentially a comedy, it delves into some pretty dark corners of the human soul—sexual frustration, anger, bigotry, child abuse, and madness all make their startling appearances in what is otherwise a buoyant celebration of a unique free spirit and her irrepressibly upbeat approach to living.

Poppy is a 30-year-old kindergarten teacher of boundless enthusiasm, for her students, her friends, and seemingly everyone she meets during the course of her day. As portrayed by the wonderful Sally Hawkins, Poppy is also endearingly eccentric—no saccharine Pollyanna, she’s an outrageous (though innocent) flirt, a bawdy drinking companion, and a deliberate but disarming disturber of the peace for those quiet, serious souls she considers to be in need of a good shaking up. In fact, it is her self-described mission in life to raise people’s spirits, to make them see the possibilities for joy around them, and she carries it to great—and sometimes maddening--lengths.

Happy-Go-Lucky certainly begins happily enough. In an opening credits sequence that nearly bursts from the screen, Poppy rides her bicycle through the streets of London, gaily weaving around traffic as the camera sweeps ahead of her, smiling, laughing, observing, drinking in every moment and sight along the way, and making them all as lovely as she is. The film that follows is essentially an exploration of the energy behind this ride, of the effervescent personality and joyous connection to the world that it represents. At heart it’s a character study: what little plot exists is provided by the daily ups and downs of Poppy’s existence, by the various encounters--some random, some routine—with all those lucky enough to cross her path.

This quality gives it something in common with the Italian Neorealist films of the post-World War II era, films whose artful arrangement of the simple incidents of everyday life often emphasize character over the furtherance of story. In fact, Happy-Go-Lucky might be slyly alluding to that famous film movement in a very specific way: after the exuberant opening, Poppy’s bicycle is stolen while she is browsing in a bookstore (and flirting, unsuccessfully but hilariously, with its owner). In Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, probably Neorealism’s best-known film, a bicycle stolen near the beginning of the story starts a man on a downward spiral towards tragedy. No such fate awaits Poppy, however--she quickly shrugs off her loss as one of life’s little annoyances, absorbing the incident into her optimistic worldview, something to be regretted but still laughed at and gotten over. The difference in reactions, and the way this film recovers and begins anew in the very next scene, not only marks an important divergence in purpose between the two films, but also suggests that writer-director Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies) might have inserted the theft as an in-joke for cinema lovers.

Still, Poppy’s life is by no means trouble-free. Several of the film’s episodes describe trials that test her spirit, trials which grow darker as the story progresses. A child in her class is the victim of abuse at home; a tense weekend spent at her married sister’s house uncovers old family wounds; and in the film’s most mysterious and moving sequence, Poppy discovers a disturbed homeless man while walking alone at night, and though his behavior is erratic and potentially a danger to her, she bravely (or foolishly?) tries to befriend him.

And then there’s Scott. Poppy’s penchant for trying to bring out the best in people meets its severest test when she decides to learn to drive (a consequence of the bicycle theft). Her weekly lessons with Scott (Eddie Marsan), a driving instructor with some serious issues, provide the film’s free-flowing story line with its most overt organizing principle. An angry, embittered, bigoted man who resents Poppy’s relentless good cheer, Scott resides at the antipodes of Poppy’s world. They clash over everything, from what she wears to her inability to stop chatting during her lessons--even over her attempts at friendship. And yet slowly, inevitably perhaps, Scott begins to answer her invitation to relate to her as a human being rather than as just another student. In the end, they affect each other in ways neither could foresee, and while the audience might not be completely surprised by the dilemma Scott eventually finds himself in, the explosiveness of his reaction to it is a shock that threatens to rip the delicate fabric of the film apart.

The driving metaphor is brilliant, providing multiple ways to picture the central conflict of Poppy’s life: her struggle not just to enjoy her time on earth but to define it in terms of personal freedom, her own as well as others’. Scott’s dogged determination to remain disengaged is embodied by his profession: keeping one’s eyes on the road, moving straight ahead down predetermined paths is essential to the business of driving. Poppy, of course, is used to the greater freedom of riding a bicycle, and her inability, or unwillingness, to adapt to the more restricted circumstances of an automobile finds expression in her continuous stream of conversation and her continued attempts to notice everything interesting around her. What Scott warns are distractions, Poppy sees as the reasons she’s alive in the first place.

The enclosed space of Scott’s tiny car perfectly depicts this contradiction. Poppy is almost literally trapped, confined by a seat belt and by Scott’s instructions, his attempts to control every movement of her hands, her head, her eyes. Hawkins’ energetic and voluble performance is answered by Marsan’s tight-lipped, glowering turn as Scott in a conflict of personalities that redefines the notion of incompatibility. Despite the fact that they sit in such cramped proximity, they hardly share this space: Leigh depicts them mostly in separate shots, rarely in the two-shots that he employs for Poppy’s encounters with the other people in her life, where entire conversations play out in a single continuous take, using the unbroken frame and real time to capture the ease with which she relates to them.

This tactic is put to especially good use in the scenes devoted to her budding relationship with Tim (Samuel Roukin), a social worker who comes to help the abused boy in her classroom. Poppy’s interest in a man strikes the right chord this time, and the chemistry of their first date leads to what has to be one of the most sweetly erotic love scenes ever filmed. Leigh once again trusts his actors to play the entire scene in a single shot, and the simplicity of the set-up, plus the charm of Poppy’s goofy approach to foreplay, make their transition to lovemaking seem both effortless and real.

It’s a mark of the command Leigh has over his material that he follows this romantic interlude with the fury of the final encounter between Poppy and Scott, and it feels dramatically right. Both terrifying and sad, this final “driving lesson” is about how one navigates through the traffic of other lives, and it leaves the viewer grasping the irony that although Poppy has finally succeeded in breaking down Scott’s reserve, it has made her realize that there are times when she needs to invoke that protection for herself.

Happy or sad, Happy-Go Lucky engages the viewer as completely as it does because of Sally Hawkins’ incredible charm as Poppy. The film marks the harmonic convergence of an amazing actress and a role she seems not so much to perform as to let radiate from her. But more important than its winning portrait of an unforgettable character, Happy-Go-Lucky offers us a reminder of what character is, or can be: the ability, in often unremarkable circumstances, to live one’s life remarkably from within.

Coraline

2009-02-17T17:14:00.001-08:00

I love stop-motion animation, better than any other type. There's something about the original King Kong or one of the classic fantasy films that Ray Harryhausen did the special effects for (Jason and the Argonauts, etc.) that makes them look unlike anything else. They have such a strange, other-wordly quality to them. In recent years, I've become a huge fan of Aardman Studios, particularly their Wallace and Gromit series. And let us not forget Tim Burton, who has experimented in various ways with stop-motion animation in several of his films. Now comes this new movie, Coraline, based on a novel (and graphic novel), neither of which I've yet read. But I think it won't be long. Not only is it an amazing film (I did not see it in 3-D, but it didn't matter), it illustrates one of the most interesting ironies of recent filmmaking--how animated films can somehow seem more expressive and human than most live-action films. If you have an explanation of this phenomenon, please let me know. And if you haven't experienced it yet, I think Coraline will provide you with a pretty good introduction.

CORALINE

Alternate realities are tempting to think about, it’s pretty safe to say. Haven’t we all indulged in fantasies about what our lives would be like if we could change just one thing, or a few things—or maybe everything? The new animated film Coraline poses this question, then answers it with devilish complications. A fractured fairy tale with a deliciously perverse sense of humor, Coraline is nominally about childhood and its discontents but is really about the discontents we all have that merely started in childhood. Parents will want to take their children to see it because it is an animated film, but they’ll most likely be rocking them to sleep for weeks to come if they do. This is one “kid’s” film that Mom and Dad might want to see alone. It’s a tale told through a glass darkly, a triumph of the kind of imagination that animates the grimmest of Grimm’s cautionary tales about being tempted by the wrong choices.

Coraline Jones is the unhappy young daughter of unhappy parents, writers for a gardening publication who despise actual gardening. They move Coraline to a run-down rooming house in the country so they can immerse themselves in the peace and quiet they need to do their work. Of Coraline they have little thought, other than that she distracts them from making their deadlines. Perpetually harried and crabby, Mr. and Mrs. Jones are not bad parents, just overworked and ineffectual ones, unable to find the proper balance between their careers and parenting. Their bored and lonely daughter entertains herself by visiting her eccentric neighbors and exploring the grounds and the interior of the decaying mansion she unwillingly occupies. Until, that is, she finds a mysterious door in the wall of one of the rooms--then the house takes on fascinating possibilities. Bricked up by day, at night the door magically opens onto a parallel world, one in which everything in Coraline’s life seems greatly improved. There her parents are successful, happy, attractive, and interesting. And very, very attentive to her. In short, her entire world is transformed from drab and dysfunctional into an exciting and nurturing environment, where she is loved and amused in exactly the way she yearns for. The kindly couple invite her to stay and live with them permanently, instead of just visiting at night, and it is an offer that it would seem impossible for Coraline to resist.

But this wouldn’t be a fairy tale if there weren’t a catch. There’s a catch. Maybe it has something to do with the buttons sewn over her new mom’s and dad’s eyes…. Repeated nighttime visits to this seemingly ideal family make Coraline begin to suspect that there’s an ulterior motive to their kindness, and that maybe things aren’t quite as wonderful in this alternate world as they appear. No surprise in that--wouldn’t be much of a movie if they were. But from this point on, the intensity with which Coraline explores its kinship to nightmare is surprising, as well as both thrilling and disturbing--giving emotional life to the duality behind the film’s structure and theme.

Fortunately, little Coraline--as voiced by wunderkind Dakota Fanning--is a wise and plucky heroine, completely up to the challenges the story throws her way. It doesn’t take her very long to tumble to the false promise of her wish-fulfillment world; in fact, she seems wary from the start, never completely seduced. And when she finally learns that her charming new home is a deadly trap not just for her but her true parents as well, her adventurous spirit blossoms into the resourcefulness she needs to rescue them all from a terrifying fate. Fanning perfectly captures Coraline’s contrary nature--her combativeness, her stubborn streak--but also her hurt and the essential sweetness carefully hidden behind a protective layer of tomboy cool. More excellent vocal work comes from Teri Hatcher as the two Mrs. Jones. Skillfully negotiating the transformation of her character from the tired, unwittingly neglectful mother in the real world to the scheming, ultimately abusive Other Mother, Hatcher manages to make each distinct and yet obviously related, two manifestations of the same personality. Her Other Mother is not wholly villainous, despite her villainy; Hatcher successfully conveys the vulnerability and desperation the two women share, despite their diametrically opposed deeds.

For years, animated films--the stop-motion kind, like this one, or those with computer-generated imagery--have been among the most sophisticated and inventive movies being made. Coraline continues this trend, and may even have raised the bar somewhat. Adapting Neil Gaiman’s 2002 book and the subsequent graphic novel, writer-director Henry Selick (Tim Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas) draws upon a rich store of imagery from horror films--the Old Dark House, the creepy neighbors, the vaporous line between waking and dream--as well as a Dr. Seuss-like menagerie of mad contraptions to create a stunning, kaleidoscopic universe that’s part Gothic landscape, part circus, part delirium tremens.

But Coraline is not merely a visual tour-de-force; it’s anchored by a strong, archetypal story that speaks to the kinds of fears which unsettle us all: fears of abandonment, of not being loved, of life becoming a disappointment. Like another young, dissatisfied heroine embarking on a perilous journey to find her heart’s desire, Coraline discovers her “dream” world to be a bright illusion masking terrors more real than those she left behind, and must employ wisdom, courage, and a newfound love for those at home to find her way back to them. The parallel to The Wizard of Oz may be obvious, but I was reminded also of George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, and his wish to lead a life completely other than his own. The nightmare that nearly envelops him teaches him to embrace his own world, flawed as it is, and rededicate himself to making it better. In Coraline, a tiny puppet heroine completes this life-changing journey there and back again, as well--probably a journey we all need to make, in our own time, in our individual ways.

Slumdog Millionaire

2009-01-29T18:32:00.000-08:00

I suppose you could call this film a "sleeper," but it sure has woken up a lot of people. Reviews have been enthsiastic, and positive word of mouth is helping out. It just may be the "little film that could" at this year's Oscars. But I still predict The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is poised for Oscar domination. Nevertheless, Slumdog Millionaire is the film to see at the moment, so you should seize the moment and see it. It's got style to burn, and it's one of the most creatively edited films I've seen in a long time. Herewith, my review.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

With the accolades pouring in for Slumdog Millionaire, the million-dollar question is, Does it live up to all the hype? The choices are:

A) Yes, completely
B) No, not at all
C) Yes, most of the time
D) No, most of the time

The answer is C, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Consider, to begin with, its unusual heritage: based on a novel by Indian writer Vikas Swarup, and co-directed by British filmmaker Danny Boyle (Trainspotting), Slumdog brandishes a highly polished style drawn from both Western crime films and Bollywood melodrama—a gritty saga of survival in the Mumbai underworld basted with the extravagant passions of Eastern musical romance. The story follows 18-year-old Jamal (Dev Patel) on his journey from homeless orphan to popular contestant on India’s version of the TV game show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? After improbably winning 10 million rupees on his first night, the show’s creators suspect him of cheating—how could someone of his humble station know the answers to so many questions?—and have him interrogated by the police, who brutally try to beat the truth out of him. But Jamal sticks to his story—he won the money fairly because he knew the answers.

The mystery of his surprising performance ingeniously provides the film’s structure, which unfolds in overlapping flashbacks that both recount Jamal’s harrowing childhood and illustrate how he came by the information for each correct answer. Orphaned when their mother is killed during an attack on a Muslim settlement, Jamal and his older brother Salim begin a horrifying descent into the life of the streets that so many children--the “slumdogs” of the title--are condemned to in their impoverished country. Almost immediately, they pick up a third companion, an orphaned girl named Latika, who in near operatic fashion brings Jamal face to face with his destiny. Narrowly escaping tragedy at the hands of a sinister desperado named Maman, who collects abandoned children and organizes them into an army of beggars (a vicious reworking of Oliver Twist’s Fagin), the brothers leave Mumbai and ride the rails across the picturesque Indian countryside, surviving by stealing food and other necessities. But they are forced to leave Latika behind, and as the years pass and they graduate to small-time hustling (including a highly amusing sequence in which they scam European tourists visiting the Taj Mahal), Jamal never abandons the hope that one day he will return to Mumbai to find his lost love, even though the more hardened, and criminally inclined, Salim urges him to forget her.

The plot, despite its Eastern setting, has its roots firmly planted in Western culture, in particular Greek mythology’s tale of Orpheus and Eurydice (a magical scene has young Jamal entranced by a nighttime staging of Gluck’s opera in front of the Taj Mahal). Banished to the hell of sexual slavery, Latika (Freida Pinto, in the adult role) longs for Jamal to rescue her, and Jamal lets neither the separation of distance nor the threat of death stop his search. But these lofty sentiments are brought back to earth by Slumdog’s borrowing of story elements from a 1930’s Warner Brothers gangster flick, i.e. two brothers grow up in the slums, one goes straight, the other becomes a criminal, and both love the same girl. This kind of cross-breeding between genres gives Slumdog its considerable energy and, ironically, its sense of something new: a deathless tale told in popular jargon against a raw, unfamiliar background.

Boyle uses this background to tremendous effect. His exuberant embrace of the pictorial qualities of society’s lower depths equals his signature work in Trainspotting (1996), a fevered examination of life among young Edinburgh heroin addicts. As in that film, Boyle--here, with co-director Loveleen Tandan--displays a keen eye for the grotesque shapes of poverty, vividly capturing the sights, sounds--and one can almost imagine, the smells--of a putrescent environment. It is somewhat worrisome, at times, that it is all photographed so lovingly, so picturesquely, that much of the misery is drained from the miserable conditions of existence on display. Poverty this “exotic” appears colorful, and the film’s kinetic direction injects movie excitement into the kids’ struggle for survival, as if life on the streets is an endless game of hooky. Enfold all this in a celebration of all-conquering love, and the viewer approaches the psychological detachment of fantasy, which the film cleverly acknowledges in the closing Bollywood-style dance number that precedes the end credits.

If it weren’t for the drama that unfolds on and around the set of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Slumdog might have trouble reconciling its various personalities. The satirical but insightful depiction of the game show, with its fanatically devoted audience and its condescending, manipulative host, both exposes the exploitative nature of television and celebrates the power of mass media to unite a country made volatile by tensions between social classes and factions. In like manner, the disparate influences behind this fascinating film coalesce around the TV show’s ritual of question and answer (it’s based on a novel entitled Q & A). The end result is a portrait of Jamal that has been assembled like a puzzle--not a terribly complex puzzle, but certainly a captivating one. First-time actor Dev Patel’s skillful performance perfectly captures Jamal’s innocence and determination, his growing confidence from question to question and his increasing willingness to risk everything for a greater goal, a development that mirrors the maturation, from one flashback to the next, of this street urchin into a national hero.

As the film comes full circle, so we arrive back at the opening question, which is also the final one. Does Slumdog Millionaire live up to all the hype? C) Yes, most of the time. And that’s my final answer.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

2009-01-01T17:12:00.000-08:00

In the following entry, I compare the recent remake with the original 1951 version, which is one of my all-time favorite movies. As I say below, the new film is a disappointment, but a highly interesting one, and I think definitely worth seeing. I almost can't forgive it for reducing Gort's role to nothing--but forgive it I shall. Its heart is in the right place, even if its head is stuck somewhere in outer space. Still, couldn't they at least have found a way to use the immortal line, "Gort...barata...nicto"? I mean, come on, that's one of the coolest movie lines ever!

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a rather fascinating film, but not a very good one. A remake of the 1951 science fiction classic, this new edition takes the original as a springboard to what it hopes are greater heights, or perhaps more insightful depths. It achieves neither convincingly, but at least does not fail so completely that it causes us to forget why the first version still matters. And, despite its muddled nature, I kind of liked it. I liked it first and foremost for not treating the original movie as either camp or nostalgia, but instead as a worthwhile cultural document in need of a new translation for contemporary audiences. In fact, this is true. Great as the 1951 film is--and I must disclose that it is one of my personal favorite films--its age does show, and I’m not simply referring to the ’50s clothes or cars or hairstyles, but rather to the attitudes that partly block what the film still has to tell us.

The plot, 1951: Klaatu, an emissary from another planet, lands on Earth in a flying saucer, and after being wounded by a soldier’s gunshot, disappears to live for a time among earthlings and learn their ways until he is ready to reveal the purpose of his visit. During his brief stay, he forms bonds with three people--a young war widow, Helen Benson, her son Bobby, and a world-famous scientist, Prof. Barnhardt, who eventually helps him fulfill his mission. This mission, revealed at the film’s end, is to deliver a warning to Earth: settle its differences so that it does not export wars and belligerence between nations into outer space, or it will be destroyed to preserve the peace of the galaxy. With that, Klaatu departs in his space ship, leaving a shaken human populace to ponder its future.

The film is unsettling not just because of this stern allusion to nuclear proliferation and the destruction it threatens--the Cold War was heating up in 1951--but because Klaatu is clearly modeled after Jesus Christ. Eventually tracked down by the army, he is shot and killed and his body “entombed” in a jail cell. The powerful robot that serves him, Gort--the film’s most famous image--rescues him and returns him to the ship, where it revives him with an impressive-looking electromagnetic procedure. Thus risen from the dead, Klaatu delivers his sermon pointing the way to humankind’s salvation, then ascends into the heavens, from which he originally came.

The parallel is audacious and still a major source of the film’s power, but I have always found the Christian allegory a bit jarring because of the nature of the message that Klaatu finally delivers. Instead of counseling humans to treat one another better, with love and understanding, he threatens the earth with annihilation unless it reforms. The figure is New Testament, the message Old, as if Christ used his “Sermon on the Mount” to warn of a second Great Flood. Chalk it up, I suppose, to the urgencies of Cold War thinking--Christ in 1951 would have been considered “soft on sin” if he didn’t take a harder line. So Klaatu uses the arguments of nuclear brinkmanship to checkmate the human race: You don’t dare use your bombs because ours are bigger and more powerful.

But what would Klaatu’s message be today? In what terms would it be couched if he were to visit us now? The new version of this tale attempts to answer those questions, and while the movie fails where the original succeeds--as a coherent story and a neat thriller--it has a lot to say about how America’s outlook has changed over the years. The plot, 2008: Klaatu comes to Earth on an unknown mission, he is wounded and escapes, and once again meets up with Helen Benson (now Dr. Benson, an astrobiologist, and part of the team picked to study him) and her stepson, Jacob, whose father died serving in Iraq. He bonds with Helen, but Jacob is suspicious and resentful, and refuses to befriend him. Eventually, all are on the run from federal agents, and they take shelter with Prof. Barnhardt, who again helps Klaatu, but in a different way. Klaatu’s mission is not the same either. He reveals that he has come to Earth not to warn but to inform its people that the decision has been made to destroy humanity, in order to save the planet. In other words, the Flood is coming. Klaatu says the decision is irreversible, but Prof. Barnhardt argues that the human race can change its ways and live in harmony with the other life on Earth, and thus is deserving of a second chance. Klaatu is therefore faced with a choice, just as humanity, if given the chance, must itself choose between death and a new direction.

The most obvious difference between the two films is that Klaatu is no longer asked to sacrifice his “life” for our sake. Rather, he seems to have come to Earth to learn the nature of our humanity and to listen to the case for our survival. Who, or what, does he represent? Not, as in the first film, an infallible higher authority, or an all-knowing point-of-view, but a judgment that can be swayed--Klaatu is now us, an embodiment of the consciousness we need to create in order to survive. To reinforce this idea, the contours of the story have been changed to place more emphasis on Helen. Her role has been enriched and deepened, reflecting both the improved status of women in American culture since the 1950’s and the new film’s focal shift from doomsday warnings to human response. Helen’s story pivots on her troubled relationship with Jacob. Bitter at the loss of both his natural parents, the boy resists acknowledging Helen as his mother until a critical moment late in the film when the barrier between them comes down and he finally accepts her love. Silently observing this, Klaatu experiences the first stirrings of empathy and the belief that human beings can change their destiny.

Despite the many alterations, Earth in its 2008 incarnation remains a Christian allegory, just with different symbols. Most intriguingly, Christ’s sacrifice of his earthly life has been replaced by his relationship with Mary. Helen is mother to a son without giving birth to him--the closest thing to virgin motherhood the 21st century has to offer--and it is the love that develops between them that may be what will save the human race. The Old Testament is still around, too, in the concept of destroying human life but saving other forms--a modern equivalent of the Ark to rescue Earth’s creatures from the ecological wickedness of humankind.

I find many of these notions provocative and interesting, but how do they translate into a film experience for the average moviegoer, not to mention fans of the original classic? Unfortunately, not as well as they should. Director Scott Derrickson and screenwriter David Scarpa have taken too much on board, mixed their metaphors somewhat, and produced a film that re-imagines the original’s simple, straightforward narrative as if through the skewed logic of a dream. It frequently makes little sense. Why, for instance, if the decision to destroy human life on Earth has already been made, does Klaatu come at all? Why travel all this way just to tell a species it’s going to die, if there’s no thought of negotiations? And exactly why--and how--does the earth “stand still”? In the 1951 film, Klaatu arranges to halt all electromagnetic power on Earth for one full hour, in order to demonstrate the overwhelming force its inhabitants are up against and make them more receptive to his ultimatum. Something vaguely like this happens at the climax of the new film, but without any stated purpose or explanation, so that the moment has little impact. Those unfamiliar with this movie’s predecessor are more likely to be confused than unnerved, and they might not even connect the event with the title.

But most of all, I pity those viewers who came to see Gort. Reviving one of the great icons of ’50s cinema should have been reason enough to remake the film, but if it was, poor Gort wound up on the cutting room floor. Outside of its initial appearance and one later scene, the robot does nothing at all, and seems mostly forgotten by the film. Frustrating as this is for Gort groupies like me, it might actually be for the best. Earth’s special effects are uninspired, even slipshod at times, and Gort almost looks like a cartoon. With the recent advances in computer imaging, and the impressive uses cinema can make of them, there’s no excuse for the second-rate look of this film.

The human cast fares somewhat better. Keanu Reeves at first seems a strange choice for Klaatu--slight of build, unprepossessing in appearance, he’s in marked contrast to the tall, commanding presence of Michael Rennie in the first version. But the difference in appearance between the two men cleverly underscores Klaatu’s altered status in the story. He’s no longer completely in charge, despite initial impressions, and Reeves’s monotonal, slightly puzzled performance expresses this well. Kathy Bates makes the most of her few scenes as the take-no-prisoners U.S. Secretary of Defense, but John Cleese is sadly wasted as Prof. Barnhardt. As the conscience of the film, he plays it completely straight, and this offbeat bit of casting could have been one of the film’s real coups had it made more use of him. Nevertheless, his appearance is welcome.

The film’s best performance comes from Jennifer Connelly as Helen. Still an underappreciated actress, despite her Academy Award a few years ago, Connelly combines cover-of-Cosmopolitan looks with an ability to project the kind of intelligence needed to play a brilliant scientist without appearing ridiculous, as other beautiful women might. In a film that is chilly and detached, despite the urgency of its message, Connelly scores the few genuinely moving moments, giving warmth to the film and proof to Barnhardt’s thesis about humanity‘s worth.

So, does The Day the Earth Stood Still have anything to offer besides curiosity value? I would argue yes, because for all its misfires and wasted opportunities, it also makes some fascinating choices. Shifting moral responsibility from Klaatu to Helen, and the Christian model from Christ’s death and resurrection to the bond of love between Madonna and Child, reinforce the movement from a Cold War version of events--with its forbidding reprimand by distant superiors--to a more contemporary emphasis on shared responsibility and action. Through love and real commitment to change, the film is trying to say, there is hope for our future. We may be on the brink of self-extinction, but we can turn history around and save ourselves. The trust to carry out this task is in us now; no longer do we have to rely on a higher authority to deliver us the possibility of salvation.

It’s an interesting moment into which this film has been released, given recent events, especially a presidential election which evoked many of these same themes. Earth perhaps shows us just how scared we are--or at least how scared Hollywood would have us believe we are. Whichever it is, what this film is trying to convey, in its fumbling way, is just as timely and important as its namesake’s wake-up call nearly sixty years ago.

Phil's Picks: The Ten Best Films of 2008

2008-12-21T14:29:00.000-08:00

OK, here is the list--not in the order of preference, but in the order in which I saw them. Overall, I saw about 50 movies this year, which isn't bad. But, of course, the list is highly selective for that reason. So I did my best, but I didn't just come up with ten to fill out the places--I had to make choices, leave a few candidates off (they are included at the end as Honorable Mentions). These, then, are really the ten best films I saw this year, in my humble opinion. Go ahead, tell me how wrong I am--please.

PENELOPE (104 min.)

A charming fractured fairy tale with a message for impressionable young adults but humor for their jaded parents. Christina Ricci is Penelope, an heiress born with the nose of a pig, the result of an ancient curse. Her search for love becomes a journey toward self-acceptance, with magical results. The humor is quirky enough to keep the sugar-coating off the obvious moral, and Ricci is wonderful. She is very ably supported by James McAvoy, Catherine O’Hara, and Reese Witherspoon (who also produced). Filmed in 2006, but not released until this year. Don’t ask me why.

IRON MAN (126 min.)

The superhero action film came of age in 2008 with three fine installments drawn from America’s comic book subculture: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and The Dark Knight (Batman). Two have made my list of the year’s best. First released was Iron Man, which has to be the first superhero movie with better dialogue and character development than action sequences. The latter are routine, although that iron suit is way cool. With his swinging, cheeky portrayal of Tony Stark/Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr.’s bizarre start-and-stop career may finally have gained the traction it needs to…well, take off. His on-screen chemistry with Gwyneth Paltrow as Stark’s long-suffering personal assistant/love interest Pepper Potts gives their scenes together real sparkle, and if their tart dialogue exchanges get you thinking of Cary Grant sparring slyly with Rosalind Russell or Irene Dunne in classic romantic comedies--they should.

THE RAPE OF EUROPA (117 min.)

This powerful documentary flew way under the radar. Inspired by the book of the same name by Lynn H. Nicholas, it documents the Nazis’ systematic looting of Europe’s art treasures during World War II. At this late date, you wouldn’t think any film could make the Nazis look worse, but Europa accomplishes just that. Not only were they power-mad mass murderers, they were also reckless thieves who tried to steal everything of value that stood in their path. Europa describes the epic scope of their burglary, the heroic efforts of the Allies to find and restore the stolen art, and the heartbreaking legal battles that continue over ownership claims by descendants of those long dead (many, Jews who died in concentration camps). This excellent film makes sadly clear that World War II is not yet over, and the Nazis’ legacy of cultural destruction is still with us today.

A FRIEND INDEED (90 min.)

As inspiring as a documentary can get, A Friend Indeed tells the amazing story of local legend Bill Sackter, a mentally challenged man improperly institutionalized for 44 years before being released. He was brought to Iowa City in the 1970’s by Barry Morrow, a friend who had become his legal guardian, and here he was given the job of running the coffee shop at the UI School of Social Work (now known as Wild Bill’s Coffee Shop). He made the most of it. Warm, friendly, funny, Bill reached out to people, befriended many, influenced more, won awards, saw his life turned into a TV movie starring Mickey Rooney, and received national recognition, all in a few short years (he died in 1983). This wonderful film by local filmmaker Lane Wyrick recounts Bill’s life in photos, footage, and interviews with Bill himself and with those who knew him best, and loved him much. It’s the best film about getting a second chance you’ll ever see. Not in distribution, it is being shown around the country at festivals and in special showings, after having made its debut this past summer in Hancher Auditorium one week before flooding ravaged the UI arts campus. The dvd is currently in preparation. You can read more about the film and its makers at http://www.billsackter.com/.

THE DARK KNIGHT (152 min.)

What remains to be said about this amazing film? The Dark Knight raises the bar for superhero action films so high, it’s hard to envision what could top it. Nothing like the late Heath Ledger’s Joker has appeared on the screen before. He’s Evil Unbound, Chaos Incarnate, the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse. Christian Bale’s Batman/Bruce Wayne wrestles with moral choices and personal loss so deep that Batman finally attains the status of tragic hero previous films have claimed for him. And the film's vision of Gotham City in the grip of the Joker's crime wave presents a truly frightening image of a world turned irrational by terror. Sound familiar?

THE PERFECT CAPPUCCINO (89 min.)

This documentary is my personal favorite film of 2008, and I don’t even drink cappuccino. But filmmaker Amy Ferraris does--lots of it--and she documents her devotion to the frothy Italian drink by searching the highways and byways of America to find the best that’s available. Oh, you can get it at your local Starbucks, you say? Ferraris has a thing or two to say about Starbucks, neither of them good. Her film charmingly combines personal essay and social commentary as she investigates America’s coffee habit and critiques Starbucks’s business ethics and the quality of the coffee it serves under the guise of espresso and its variants. Then she travels to Italy to show us how real espresso and cappuccino are made. Narrated amusingly by Ferraris herself, her movie is funny, thought-provoking, critical but never angry, and genuinely unique. Unfortunately, it also is available only at festivals and special screenings, until its dvd release early next year (February or March). You can read about it at www.cappuccinomovie.com/index.php, and in my full review elsewhere on this blog.

TRAITOR (114 min.)

Another film that passed by virtually unnoticed, Traitor is both an absorbing thriller and an insightful character study. Don Cheadle is superb as a federal agent who goes deep undercover to infiltrate an Islamic terrorist group and take it down from inside. The problem is he’s a devout Muslim himself and is acting out of conscience. When he begins to question the motives of those he’s serving, he truly becomes a man without a country. Cheadle is one of America’s finest actors, and his subtle performance gives life to his character’s inner torment, even as he masks it in outward stoicism. Guy Pearce offers strong support as the FBI agent relentlessly tracking him down. In addition to being a taut thriller, Traitor powerfully addresses the troubling moral challenges of America’s “war on terror,” challenges much less straightforward than some of our leaders would have us believe.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (114 min.)

A truly odd but fascinating take on the vampire film, this Swedish import takes its subject matter very seriously and deliberately avoids conventional chills or horror. While there is some blood, the shocks it delivers are mostly psychological. Oskar, a lonely 12-year-old boy habitually picked on by bullies at school, is befriended by a mysterious girl named Eli who lives in his apartment building but whom he sees only at night. The friendship that develops between them leads to the first stirrings of love, and eventually to a bond that is stronger than at least one of them is prepared for. A poignant coming-of-age tale, Let the Right One In captures the loneliness and pain of early adolescence with great sensitivity. It also demonstrates that often the most effective genre films are those that incorporate subject matter and themes typically outside their genres. Slow-moving and detached in tone, the film nevertheless gets under your skin and then concludes with an ingenious plot twist that I found more disturbing than the usual vampire gore. I’m still shuddering at the thought of it.

APPALOOSA (114 min.)

I love westerns, and when one this good rides into town, it’s cause for me to start shooting up the local saloon. The terrific thing about Appaloosa is the way it both honors the rules of the genre and bends them in creative ways (see my full review at http://www.littlevillagemag.com/). Ed Harris--who directs as well as stars--and Viggo Mortensen are itinerant lawmen hired to protect a New Mexico town from a predatory rancher. Their professionalism and long partnership prepare them for this kind of challenge; what they aren’t prepared for is their encounter with a provocative woman (Renee Zellweger) who keeps everyone guessing about her motives. The three leads are all superb--especially Zellweger, who takes possession of the film as commandingly as her character does the man’s world in it. Harris reveals a keen ear for dialogue (he co-wrote the script, too) and a sharp eye for the scenery and iconic imagery that make the western one of the visually richest of all genres. Appaloosa is the best American western since Unforgiven.

QUANTUM OF SOLACE (106 min.)

I will just say this straight out--I liked this film better than Casino Royale, and I liked that film a lot. Daniel Craig and the new-look Bond world of these two movies have me really excited about the franchise again. What Quantum brings to the Bond canon--besides the dynamic Craig appearing even more comfortable in his role than the first time--is a leaner, stripped-down approach to the famous secret agent’s adventures. Casino Royale felt overstuffed at times. Quantum begins in the middle of a car chase, and the action lets up hardly at all for the next 106 minutes. It’s the most exciting, most purely entertaining Bond outing since Tomorrow Is Forever (Pierce Brosnan’s best, which had a similarly relentless approach to the action). But it somehow finds time to explore Bond’s character, deepen his relationship with M, and introduce an unconventional, tragic heroine (Olga Kurylenko), whose bond with Bond is based on mutual respect rather than sex (although, of course, the attraction between them is strong). Mathieu Amalric is the creepiest Bond villain ever, a truly unnerving man, and the plot about exploiting ecological disaster for power is both timely and credible. Whatever your opinion of James Bond movies, this is good stuff. Check it out--you will at least be shaken, if not stirred.

Honorable Mention: Bottle Shock, Pride and Glory, The Incredible Hulk, Changeling, Milk

Best Films of 2008

2008-12-19T06:39:00.000-08:00

Be sure to check out my picks for Best Films of 2008, coming soon. I'm working on the list right now, checking out which movies were naughty or nice this past year. It will be posted before Christmas. I know you can't wait! But you'll have to--for a few more days.

Australia

2008-12-10T21:08:00.000-08:00

This film is still in the theaters; I just saw it a couple of weeks ago. It's a throwback to old adventure-and-romance movies of 1930's and 1940's Hollywood. Not a great film, but a fun one to see at the theater. And, because it has a kind of epic sweep to it, it really deserves to be seen on the big screen. I still prefer seeing films in theaters anyway, because they were made for that kind of viewing environment, and lose something in the home, no matter how good your dvd or blue ray set-up is. I definitely have mixed feelings about the director, Baz Luhrman. I hated Romeo + Juliet, and while I admired many aspects of Moulin Rouge, I found it difficult to watch. Too excessive, which I realize was part of the point. I prefer the more relaxed style of Australia, although I admit it is not the artistic success that Moulin Rouge was. But it has lots of charm, and it covers an important aspect of Australian history that Americans probably know nothing about, the theft of the "Lost Generations." So it has a serious side, too, which is well combined with the lighter parts. (A slightly different version of this review is posted at http://www.littlevillagemag.com/).

AUSTRALIA

One of the great pleasures of the movies is seeing what a purposeful filmmaker can do with an old genre or story by attempting to remake it in her or his own image. Such was the case with Baz Luhrman’s last film, 2001’s Moulin Rouge, his hyperkinetic reinvention of the movie musical. Now, in Australia, he takes on the historical film with similarly ambitious and innovative designs, though somewhat less successful results.

Despite a title that suggests a film as sprawling as an entire continent, Australia actually employs a fairly intimate story, which it attempts to stretch across a wide canvas. Focusing on the short span of 1939-1942, Luhrman showcases his homeland in a time of turmoil, on the brink of World War II. English noblewoman Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) journeys Down Under to join her husband, who is managing a remote cattle station while his finances at home suffer. Determined to sell the station to save the family fortune, she arrives to find her husband recently murdered, perhaps by an Aborigine mystic named King George (David Gulpilil). With the help of a handful of servants and a charismatic Aussie roughneck known simply as Drover (Hugh Jackman), Lady Ashley attempts to save the station by moving her 1500 head of cattle overland to the port of Darwin, where the army is buying beef to feed the troops gathering for war. But opposing her is the appropriately named King Carney (Bryan Brown), a larger-than-life cattle baron in an 11-gallon hat who is trying to corner the market in beef and make a killing. Aiding him in his war profiteering is the duplicitous Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), a former employee of Lord Ashley recently dismissed by his new mistress for his brazen dishonesty.

All the classic elements of a good old-fashioned yarn are in place here, and for much of the film’s first half, the results are engaging enough to deliver just that: an Australian western cross-bred with romantic-comedy adventure ( Red River meets The African Queen). But as the proper English lady melts into the arms of the free-spirit adventurer, the romance turns poignant and Out of Africa comes calling, never to quite go away. Australia has the virtue of not trying to gloss over its plot clichés, stereotyped characters, or obvious borrowings from other films—rather, it embraces them and has fun with them en route to a serious change in tone at midpoint. The image of Australia as untamed and rowdy is played up for all it’s worth in the opening scenes, and the clever meeting between Lady Ashley and Drover occurs during a bar fight that could have been staged by John Ford. But there are more serious intentions underlying the roughhouse, and the film’s second half becomes a grim historical drama centered around the horrific destruction of Darwin by the Japanese a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The attack on Darwin is well staged, if a bit scant on detail, but the film gets bogged down in the standard ploy of positioning lovers against a backdrop of impending doom, which constantly threatens to tear them apart. And so the enjoyable, old-fashioned movie romanticism of part I gives way to the overwrought, will-they-or-won’t-they-survive melodrama of part II.

What rescues Australia from its derivative nature and gives it a more unique identity is the space it creates for Aboriginal culture and magic. The two halves of the film are ingeniously organized around the point-of-view of Australia’s Aborigine population, represented by King George and his grandson, Nullah, a ten-year-old of mixed race under Lady Ashley‘s protection. Their viewpoints are so closely associated with Australia’s wild landscape from the outset that it’s as if the land itself—pictured in stunning views of lush vegetation, sunset-painted rock formations, and shimmering spans of desert—is watching the white settlers’ futile attempts to tame an environment whose spiritual dimension lies, untamable, beyond their comprehension. In an almost supernatural way, King George observes nearly everything that happens from his own special—and sometimes, it seems, invisible—vantage point. Complementing his grandfather’s vision, Nullah provides the movie’s voice. His sometimes song-like narration offers not only wry commentary on the whites he lives with but introduces a second historical theme, the tragic history of the “Lost Generations,” mixed-race children stolen from their families and trained to be servants in European households. The film’s outward events of adventure, romance, and war are molded around the core of this previously hidden story, and Lady Ashley’s ascent to true heroine status comes with her brave defiance of the racist practice.

The two principals, Kidman and Jackman, are an easy-on-the-eye couple, to say the least, and they demonstrate authentic screen chemistry to match. There’s no reason for their characters to meet except to fall in love, and they oblige with conviction. Kidman plays a feisty, liberated woman with the proper panache, and some good comic timing, her brittle, overbearing manner convincingly softened first by grief, then by determination, and finally by love. As she commits to the land that takes her in—it’s Australia we’re all meant to fall for, of course—she commits even more deeply to the orphaned Nullah, whose sweetness, vulnerability, and wisdom are winningly captured by newcomer Brandon Walters in the most emotionally genuine performance of the film. His affecting scenes with Kidman help the actress find the tenderness she needs to transform Lady Ashley into a person of real depth.

The men, on the other hand, offer an amusing clinic on screen machismo, befitting the brawny land they symbolize. Jackman is as comfortable in his role as he is in his skin, which is pretty comfortable, judging by the amount of it on view. He’s got the swagger of his lusty part down pat, but a tragic back story provides that part with some welcome shading, and Jackman is comfortable with that as well. As the senior villain, Brown is full of almost cartoonish bluster, and his screen time is thankfully limited. It’s Wenham that fascinates as the brooding, soft-spoken Fletcher, nemesis of Lady Ashley, a venomous presence who slithers through scenes, never talking directly to, or looking at, those he’s attempting, very effectively, to intimidate.

But the real star of the film is the sumptuous visual style: the bold colors, elegant compositions, and breathtaking natural scenery enhanced by computer graphics that Luhrman and cinematographer Mandy Walker combine to impart a dream-like quality to the imagery, a stylized look that well serves a movie blending romance, history, and native magic. There’s more than a touch of fantasy in all this, and it’s therefore wholly fitting that the Hollywood film most referenced in Australia is The Wizard of Oz, with its parallel tale of a woman journeying to a faraway land and encountering an odd assortment of heroes, villains, and a wizard of sorts.

In Australia, Luhrman has certainly tried to do for the historical film what he did for the musical, recreating it in his fervid imagination. His film is an old-fashioned story told in a new-fashioned way, but despite its genuine flights of inspiration, it’s ultimately too weighed down by its ambitions to fully realize them all. Bold and entertaining, Australia is definitely worth a visit, but to say it will be a rather odd trip at times is something of a down-understatement.

Pride and Glory

2008-12-09T17:21:00.000-08:00

Another surprise from the summer. When I first saw the previews, I thought, "Another cop movie, ho hum." But there was something about it that looked interesting in spite of that, and the cast was intriguing, so I took a chance. I'm really glad I did. This film is violent, intense, and difficult to understand at times (a lot of the dialogue is spoken really fast, with various accents, and in the midst of other conversations and surrounding noise), so you have to pay attention, but it is really worth the effort. Amazingly, it has something new to say about police corruption and its effect on the community. It didn't seem to do much business at the box office, but that's probably because it was too dark for summer, didn't have a big star, and none of the characters wore a cool costume.

PRIDE AND GLORY

The most interesting contemporary police dramas seem to be about corruption on the force, and I would guess that’s not just because breaking the law has always been more interesting to filmmakers than upholding it (it has to storytellers in general), but because of the impact police criminality has had on much of the social unrest in our recent history. Pride and Glory, the grim new cop film co-written and directed by Gavin O’Connor, places itself in this context with no qualms about covering familiar ground—its attack on the subject is direct, unrelenting, and scored with raw, violent images. It is frequently not a comfortable film to watch.

The movie is populated by characters the audience should be used to seeing by now, from the close-knit multi-generational Irish cop family to the wiseguy-like crew of crooked police officers to the chaotically tattooed inner city drug dealers. And the story is not brand new either: an investigation into the killing of four policemen during a drug bust peels away layers of police complicity and deception, pitting officers against each other, and of course brother against brother. Edward Norton takes the lead as Ray Tierney, a once-promising member of New York’s finest scarred literally and figuratively by his past indiscretions, who is given a chance at redemption by leading the investigation into the multiple shootings. What he uncovers is a disturbing trail of crimes and cover-ups that leads back to his brother-in-law, Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell) and Jimmy’s supervisor, Ray’s older brother Francis (Noah Emmerich). Once he begins to tumble to his family’s dark secrets, Ray runs up against his father, Francis Sr. (Jon Voigt), who tries to contain the damage by pressuring Ray into keeping his findings quiet until he can deal with the two men on his own. Against his better judgment, and at great personal sacrifice, he does, until events, spiraling out of control, force him to a decision he’s too long evaded.

What the plot lacks in originality, writer-director O’Connor makes up for with sincerity and street smarts. The film has both a gritty, unkempt look and an urban nightmare quality that fuses police procedural with psychodrama in a powerful format. Opening at nighttime on an inter-departmental football game that looks like a scrimmage in a war zone, Pride plunges the unprepared viewer directly into the action with an intensity that rarely lets up. In scene after scene, hard-charging hand-held camera shots pull us into the frame, where we are forced to eavesdrop on furious conversations conducted at breakneck speed and with awe-inspiring profanity. Even the quiet, domestic scenes are directed with an edgy, noirish quality—the result of natural, often dim lighting and unconventional framing—that keeps our relationship with the characters uncertain, despite the intimacy of the settings.

Because Pride has no major twists or surprises, it is able to focus on the characters, creating tension as the plot coils tightly around each, subtly shifting their positions in relation to each other with every new development. Doing without the megawatt star power of other recent cop dramas (The Departed, Righteous Kill), Pride gives the members of its eclectic cast plenty of room to find their own rhythms within the narrative. Norton is solid if unspectacular as the spiritually wounded Ray. He’s the conscience of the film, and it’s his search for a way out of the moral dilemma he’s inherited that carries the film toward its unhappy resolution. Much better is Voigt, the clan’s tippling patriarch, who espouses his Old School Code--“We take care of our own”-- with the fervor of a man trying to resurrect a world he still passionately believes in, even while he dulls the knowledge that it’s caused only heartbreak with booze. Voigt has mostly been wasted in trivial parts for years, so it’s good to see him again in a role that matters, and even better to see him equal to it. Excellent support is offered by Noah Emmerich, who discovers a quieter register for the elder brother, Francis Jr., a good man caught in a situation he lacks the courage to change. In a moving and unusual subplot, Francis is shown taking care of his cancer-stricken wife, Abby--played with great tenderness by Jennifer Ehle—who manages, despite her own despair, to inspire her husband to at last recognize his greater responsibilities.

But it’s Colin Farrell that gives Pride its glory. Finally giving the performance he’s been promising for years, Farrell tears into Jimmy Egan like a man possessed. The cop-as-thug has become such a familiar figure in cinema lately that he’s practically an urban legend, perhaps most memorably embodied by Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant (1992) and Denzel Washington in Training Day (2001). Farrell meets their challenges head on and creates a character who’s a destructive force of nature, terrorizing criminals, citizens, other cops, perhaps even himself, with equal fury. Both villainous and haunted, Farrell’s Egan is a frightening contradiction, half devoted family man and half demon. Late in the film, when he tells Ray, “I will never apologize for what I‘ve done,” it’s both confession and boast, the tragic declaration of an ego at war with itself, poised precariously between overweening pride and self-condemnation.

Pride and Glory takes its most provocative step in the last act, shifting from family tragedy/crime thriller to the broader perspective of social problem film. The renegade cops are abandoned to the consequences of abusing their public trust, and the final minutes horrifically portray the community’s retribution. The film ends as a cautionary tale about the long-term impact of this abuse on a society that has lost faith in the institutions that are supposed to protect it. There’s a political message in this, and police corruption suddenly is no longer just plot substance but metaphor as well. What Pride and Glory ultimately seems to be about is the culture of corruption that corrodes every level of society, and of course infects the soul of every sufferer, whether perpetrator or victim. As the Tierneys regroup for their attempt to reclaim the trust they had abandoned, the film fades out on a guardedly hopeful note. But it’s an inconclusive one, befitting a movie which documents so fiercely the many opportunities for betrayal.

Burn after Reading

2008-12-08T21:36:00.000-08:00

Burn after Reading was one of the big disappointments of the summer for me. I've been a fan of the Coen Brothers ever since I saw Blood Simple over twenty years ago. That film pretty much blew me away. Other favorites include Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? Unusual Cruelty is pretty good, too. No Country for Old Men was impressive but disturbed me so much that I have a hard time saying it's a favorite. I want to see it again, but I'm still shaking from my first viewing, so it will have to wait. The film I write about below puzzles me. It is certainly well-crafted, but it didn't do much for me at all. It just seemed like a misfire. But the Coen Brothers will be back, I know it. They're too good to settle for making mediocre movies.

BURN AFTER READING

A new Coen Brothers film is always an event, and their first film after the remarkable No Country for Old Men, winner of last year’s best picture Oscar, should have been the most anticipated of their careers. So it’s pretty surprising that Burn after Reading slipped into the theaters with relatively little fanfare, and even more surprising that it’s such a disappointing effort. I’m not entirely sure why this is. The Coens are certainly in their element here: the plot revolves around mistaken identities and mix-ups, murder, blackmail…and liposuction. Behind it all is the CIA, cheerfully sweeping all the messy details under the rug and covering up anything it can’t explain to its own satisfaction. Should be a romp for them, but instead it’s a labored and harsh comedy that never finds the mischievous joy which usually makes Joel and Ethan’s trademark cynicism so much fun to watch, even as it unsettles.

The story is typically convoluted. Treasury Department employee George Clooney is having an affair with the wife of a CIA operative (John Malkovich), who has just quit his job over a demotion and is writing a tell-all book about his years under cover. The wife (Tilda Swinton), preparing for a divorce, downloads their financial records from his computer and unwittingly copies classified government information onto the disk as well. This disk mysteriously turns up in the locker room of a local gym, Hardbodies, where employees Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt join forces to coax a reward for its return out of the ex-spook. McDormand, 50ish and still looking for Mr. Right, is convinced that only cosmetic surgery will keep her attractive enough to compete in the computer dating scene, but her insurance won’t pay for it so she needs money badly. Yet despite her misgivings, her dating service hooks her up with Clooney, who is not only two-timing his wife but his mistress as well. Hilarious hijinks ensue.

Or they would be hilarious if some of the characters were more appealing or the complications truly amusing. The Coens have nearly always been successful at mining humor from the nastier side of human nature, but the double-dealing in Burn lacks the seductive charm of earlier comedic thrillers such as Blood Simple or Fargo, or even parts of No Country. The new film also lacks the discipline that makes the Coens’ best movies among the most ingeniously constructed and tightly edited you’ll ever see. Bringing together disparate characters in colliding storylines is nothing new to them, but in contrast to their usual deftness, the plots in this one never quite mesh, leaving the viewer with the feeling that, although the connections are dutifully made, the point behind them all is missing. Burn never establishes a consistent tone or point-of-view around which to organize the chaos. It’s a collection of random events that offers no reason to see it otherwise.

Much of the blame for this must go to the brothers’ direction of their actors. Clooney and McDormand are both quite good individually, but there is little chemistry between them, and their scenes together are flat as a result. Pitt excels in his small role, proving once again that although he has the looks and the tabloid credentials for major stardom, he makes his greatest impact in supporting roles and character parts. His goofy exercise instructor, Chad, is the most completely comic performance in the film, and delightful as it is, it throws the film, which otherwise has a rather sinister vibe to it, a bit off balance. The same could be said of J.K. Simmons, who has some great moments as the befuddled CIA chief who needs things explained to him several times before he understands what’s gone down (in that, he’s an obvious stand-in for the audience). But he’s from a different CIA than is otherwise depicted.

Nowhere is the clash in acting styles more harmful than with Malkovich and Swinton, who belong to a different movie altogether, a downbeat domestic drama. Both play unpleasant people unpleasantly, without a single spark of humor to relieve the gloom of their characters. Malkovich is such a pain-in-the-backside that he elicits no sympathy for the raw treatment he gets from his employers or his wife. Since his fate is central to the scheme of things, this delivers a serious blow to the whole enterprise’s attempt to win over its audience. And what Clooney’s good-natured womanizer sees in the dour Swinton is a mystery the film never tries to solve, much to the detriment of its credibility.

Then there is the ominous musical score by Carter Burwell, which expertly creates a feeling of unease and suspense as the film jumps back and forth between simultaneously unfolding stories. It would be perfect in a serious thriller, but it darkens the mood of this film’s comic world too much, undercutting its sardonic take on the foibles of the characters and their blunderings toward an intertwined destiny. A lighter score would have brought out those colors; I can’t remember ever seeing a film in which I thought the music, good in itself, was so wrong for the action it accompanied that it effectively contradicted the meaning of it. Until now. It’s an error in judgment one simply does not expect from these two talented and highly experienced filmmakers.

Burn after Reading has plenty of witty moments, a few good performances, and some nifty visuals—enough to remind us of what the Coen Brothers’ vision is all about. But everything they do in this film they’ve done before, and better, elsewhere. Whether it’s inspiration, or just execution, or both, that Burn is lacking, the outcome is a decidedly minor entry in their body of work. I wouldn’t condemn it to the stake, but I hope they give their next project more serious attention. Maybe first they should watch some of their old movies more closely.

Choke

2008-12-07T21:07:00.000-08:00

Choke came and went pretty quickly this summer, which was a shame, because it is really good. Quirky and frequently tasteless, but always funny, it's based on a novel by cult writer Chuck Palahnuik. I had not read anything by him before, but as I write in the review below, I decided to read this book after seeing the movie. This I did, in fact, and I liked it a lot. I will read more (his most famous novel is Fight Club). The movie actually follows the book pretty closely, and does a great job of transferring its spirit and style to the screen, always a hard thing to do but particularly in this case because the book's impact is largely through prose style.

CHOKE

OK, you’re writing a screenplay, and you want to include all the elements from the following list: sex addiction, dementia, historical reenactment, aging, strip clubs, Jesus, masturbation, con artistry, salvation. Good luck. On the other hand, for a clue on how to proceed, check out Choke, written and directed by actor Clark Gregg from a novel by Portland writer Chuck Palahnuik (Fight Club), and winner of the special jury prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. I haven’t read the book, but if the film adaptation comes anywhere close to doing it justice, then it is probably by turns offensive, darkly funny, and oddly thought-provoking. Chances are you won’t be able to put it down. But as the protagonist, Victor Mancini, is fond of saying, “There’s only one way to find out.”

Actually, there are two. I recommend you start by seeing the film. It’s about this guy, the ironically named Victor, who has a problem--or rather, several. He’s a sex addict who can’t commit to the recovery program of his support group (during meetings he has sex with the teen prostitute he’s sponsoring instead); his mother, whom he’s supporting in an expensive care facility, suffers from dementia and no longer seems, or perhaps wants, to recognize him; and his job as a reenactor in a colonial village for tourists is a little short on career satisfaction. Oh, and there’s his coworker and best friend, Denny, a compulsive masturbator who can’t keep out of trouble in the village (he’s always locked in the stocks) and who has fallen in love with a stripper at the club they frequent, Titillations. Not to mention the pretty young doctor who has taken over his mother’s care and whom he automatically hits on until he realizes he actually likes her more than he wants to have sex with her. Or the scam he runs on prosperous-looking patrons in local restaurants by pretending to choke so they come to his rescue, thereafter feeling so responsible for him that they send him money, which he uses to help pay his mother’s medical bills…

In short, Victor’s life is a mess. In the eyes of most—himself included--Victor is a loser. How he works his way out of the untidy complications of his life is the problem Choke sets itself, and one that accounts for the unusual trajectory of the film. It begins as a slacker comedy, gradually takes on psychological ballast, and finishes as a character study of a deficient man’s search for wholeness and personal salvation. Sex, slackerdom, and salvation--maybe you just have to see this one to believe it.

The irony at the heart of the film is that Victor doesn’t want salvation--he’s a loser by choice, a man who knows how haunted he is by his past but doesn’t let self-awareness stand in the way of enjoying his self-destructive behavior. Flashbacks scattered throughout the film reveal key details of his relationship with his bizarre mother, a delusional predator who repeatedly kidnaps him from foster homes to take him on cross-country journeys to nowhere, all the while haranguing him semi-coherently about how she’s teaching him to realize his special gifts. But Victor never surrenders to self-pity or even sentiment--he acts like a jerk because he genuinely believes he is one. Presented halfway through the film with the prospect of being something more than he is--way more (remember the Jesus element)—he declines, insisting he’s neither worthy of the honor nor interested. The casual sex is a bonus. But his callous, one-night-stand approach to life is clearly also his way of avoiding self-realization until he works through his Oedipal drama. It’s not the most original diagnosis in the world, but for a film that poses as a raunchy slacker comedy, it comes across as pretty heartfelt.

The cast inhabits the scruffy, fringe-of-society characters as if they’ve known them all their lives. Sam Rockwell brings a loopy charm to Victor, in a performance that could be a star-making one if this were a higher profile film. But chances are that too few will see it. Anjelica Huston tackles his mother, Ida, with a ferocity she hasn’t shown in years. She’s carved an interesting career niche for herself playing mothers-from-hell, as in recent Wes Anderson films (especially last year’s The Darjeeling Limited). But her best bad mama is still Lilly in The Grifters (1990), which resonates eerily with this film. In both, her she-wolf mother looses its cub--a commitment-phobic con artist--on an unsuspecting world, and both parent and child suffer the consequences. Here, she splits her screen time between the young femme fatale Ida in the flashbacks, and her aged, bed-ridden counterpart, bringing a poignancy to the latter that is heart-rending to watch. It’s virtually a dual role, and Huston is terrific in each.

Rounding out the major parts is Brad William Henke as Denny, who infuses every line of dialogue with such sweet-natured sincerity that he makes his character seem almost saintly, despite his tendency to grab his crotch at the worst possible times. And Kelly Macdonald makes the doctor into a winsome, innocent figure, the most sympathetic presence in the film. As Victor’s diametric opposite, she is not only the inevitable love interest but the necessary one, since no one else could pull Victor out of his self-exile from life toward salvation with as much authority.

That salvation—albeit of an ironic kind--is what first-time director Gregg and his cast have in mind is apparent in the religious imagery that permeates the film and the transformations of several characters’ lives through romantic love. These are fairly standard devices; unique to this film is the way it works changes on its two central motifs, sex and choking. Both begin as sordid aspects of Victor’s stunted existence, but by the end of the film have grown into the means by which he achieves his victory over himself and the inner traumas that have prevented his self-fulfillment. Heavy stuff for a movie about a guy who can’t keep his pants zipped up, but the details are less important than the goal reached. Director Gregg, despite this being his first feature film, does an expert job of walking a tightrope between the ridiculous and the painful, and of compressing all the disparate elements of the story into a whole so cohesive that its complexity is effectively disguised. In addition, he contributes a nice acting turn as Lord High Charlie, the insufferable master of the colonial village who makes life miserable for Victor and the hapless Denny.

Despite its attempts—usually hilarious—to be outrageous and offensive, Choke ultimately wants to be, and is, a rather sweet film about the importance of human connection, imbued with a wry but forgiving view of the ways that sex both hinders and helps us make the connections we need. To prove my point, it concludes with the single most romantic scene in a public restroom that I’ve ever seen, a nice summation for a movie that is by turns offensive, darkly funny, and oddly thought-provoking. Think I’ll read the book now.

Bottle Shock

2008-12-06T14:51:00.001-08:00

This film came out this past summer. It was never intended to be a blockbuster, but it seemed to get pretty good reviews and has a terrific cast, so I regard it as one of the overlooked gems of 2008. It's based on actual events, but I don't know enough about the history behind it to say how accurate it is. If this isn't how it all really happened, it should be, put it that way.

BOTTLE SHOCK

If you are tired of summer blockbuster action movies and the latest star-vehicle “comedies,” then the cleverly titled Bottle Shock is a late summer treat that will ease your way into the heavier fare of fall. A fictionalization of actual persons and events, Shock is the seriocomic telling of a famous 1976 winetasting contest in France in which California vintners from the Napa Valley did what was then considered the impossible: they beat their French competition by taking first place in two major categories. Proving itself equal to the world’s foremost wine culture was of great significance to the California wine industry, but director Randall Miller and his team of screenwriters choose not to treat this tale of cultural battle lines and Yankee victory over the Old World in grand patriotic manner. Rather than puffing up the event with epochal meaning, they keep their sights closely trained on the human side of the story. There’s an abundance of sweeping aerial shots of California countryside and sun-dappled portraits of sprawling vineyards, but despite the epic imagery, Bottle Shock remains small, personal, and warm. And--good news for many viewers--you don’t have to know anything about wine to enjoy it.

An attractive cast convincingly gives life to an assortment of gently idiosyncratic folk, whose crisscrossing relationships organize the film’s central conflicts along cultural, generational, racial, and romantic lines. Setting events in motion is Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman), a stuffy British wine seller living in Paris, where his shop has failed to catch on, despite his devotion to the French’s own belief in their superior wines. At the urging of a friend, Spurrier organizes a blind tasting competition between French and American vintages, then journeys to California wine country to line up participants. The aim of the contest, however, is to promote himself rather than the American wines he’s convinced are of poor quality. As one of the Napa vintners quickly discerns, in order to ingratiate himself with his French masters, he is setting up the Americans to fail, an unthinkable humiliation in their Bicentennial year. But Spurrier is about to receive a shock… Rickman’s resume overflows with similarly arrogant, supercilious characters, but here, like the film itself, he chooses his colors from a softer palette. Severus Snape may lurk behind every curl of Rickman’s lip, but the actor imbues Spurrier with a sweetness and a strained dignity that is both unexpected and welcome, removing the edge from his snobbery and rescuing him from caricature. It’s a subtle performance, without question one of Rickman’s best in years.

Matching wits with him is Bill Pullman as Jim Barrett, owner of the heavily mortgaged (and ironically French-named) Chateau Montelena winery. Barrett has forsaken his partnership in a prestigious law firm to pursue a fading dream of tending grapes and making great wine, and this obsession has cost him his marriage and put him into constant conflict with his hippie son Bo (Chris Pine), a perpetually stoned college dropout who works--barely--for his father in lieu of making any hard decisions about his life. Pullman has never been better, offering a portrait of a wounded man clinging desperately to his dream that is finely shaded and surprisingly unsentimental. His tight-lipped speech and awkward gait as he shambles about the grounds of his failing vineyard capture the barely contained fury suffused with growing despair that gives the film its melancholy heart.

Chris Pine, on the other hand, strikes a false note or two as the Prodigal Son Bo. His performance is endearing but suggests more 80’s slacker (think Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High) than 60’s counterculture holdover. The conflict between him and his father forms the backbone of Bo’s coming-of-age story, which deftly avoids most of the clichés this type of drama is subject to through sparing use of dialogue and a running gag that has them entering a makeshift boxing ring and pummeling each other whenever one of them feels a blow-up coming on.

Fine support is added by Freddy Rodriguez as Gustavo, an Hispanic field worker in Barrett’s employ, who is secretly making his own wine and dreams of one day owning his own vineyard. Unfortunately, in the film’s major misstep, the force of Gustavo’s challenge to the racial barriers of the 1970’s is blunted by his inclusion in an unnecessary romantic triangle that has him vying with best friend Bo for the affections of Sam, Montelena’s improbably beautiful blonde intern (Rachael Taylor). Taylor’s performance is spirited, but her role is too obviously obligatory, and the film loses focus during these scenes. The important question of whether Gustavo will break into the all-white world of winemaking is supplanted by too-often-seen-before exchanges of hurt feelings and sexual jealousy, and Rodriguez figures little in the last act of the film.

Bottle Shock’s most charming turn comes from Dennis Farina, who sheds his tough-guy image and dons outrageous leisure suits to play Maurice, Spurrier’s friend, the one who originally sells him on the idea of including California wines in the contest. Overall, the film does an admirable job of evoking the 1970’s without too many crowd-indulging sight gags (hair styles, clothes), but Farina’s flashy attire provides the right kind of chuckles, perfectly capturing his character’s exuberance and innocent self-satisfaction, while allowing the audience to laugh at some of the last century’s worst fashion excesses.

Bottle Shock is not a film for the impatient. Fittingly for a movie about savoring wine, it moves at a leisurely pace, carefully exploring each aspect of the story and placing each character in its proper relation to the others and to the whole. Randall Miller’s direction is often prosaic but is sure-handed enough to bring everything together in orderly fashion for the amusing climax, which for all its inevitability is skillfully presented as a surprise. Some of the film’s best comic moments occur here, when the self-assurance of the panel of French experts begins to crack as they argue among themselves over which wines are French and which American. Yet, in keeping with Bottle Shock’s overall lack of combativeness, the French are never offered up as targets. They are merely foils, perhaps even just background. The real target is the snobbery and assumed superiority that Spurrier embodies, an attitude that is both his mechanism of defense and the chink in his armor. Watching him overcome his prejudice against the wines he wants to despise is the film’s main character arc, and perhaps its chief pleasure. Pointed dialogue and a playful Afterword declare Spurrier to be unnerved, even a bit scandalized, by America’s win, but Rickman’s sympathetic portrayal suggests otherwise, perhaps even hinting at some conspiratorial satisfaction at seeing the French who have spurned him finally brought down.

Many will want to compare this film to Sideways, the 2004 comedy about another journey through California’s wine country, but clearly its closest cousins are sports films, those in which the underdog team triumphs over the heavy favorite in the final Big Contest (I couldn’t help thinking of Hoosiers or 2004’s Miracle, which dramatizes the U.S. hockey team’s upset of the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics). Miller and company have steered their film away from the hyperbole and runaway emotionalism of those movies in favor of personal triumphs and the healing of bruised relationships, and it is a good decision, especially because it allows the film room to balance its two views of the insular world of wine connoisseurship, smoothly shifting back and forth between respect and genuine affection, especially for the winemakers, and a wry, lightly tongue-in-cheek take on the business of criticism and contests. The result is a fine, highly entertaining film that takes itself and its understanding of the human condition not too seriously but just seriously enough--well balanced, not too coy, a hint of sarcasm perhaps, but with a mellow, thoughtful aftertaste.

The Perfect Cappuccino

2008-12-05T22:43:00.000-08:00

The first review I wrote is about a terrific documentary which I saw at the Hardacre Film Festival in Tipton, Iowa. This festival is held every year, at the beginning of August, in Tipton's beautifully preserved downtown theater, the Hardacre. It's a real pleasure to watch movies in old stand-alone theaters like this one. The festival features many different types of film--features, documentaries, short narrative, experimental, etc. It's a great event. Check it out at www.tiptoniowa.us/hardacre/. The Perfect Cappuccino is not in distribution, but it is being shown around the country at various festivals and single screenings. Information on it can be found at www.cappuccinomovie.com/index.php. It is due to be released on dvd sometime in Feburary of 2009, I believe. I loved this film, and I have never even tasted cappuccino! I drink coffee, but not the good kind. Here is my review of this very fine film:

THE PERFECT CAPPUCCINO

Of all the films I saw at the 2008 Hardacre Film Festival in Tipton, Iowa, the most delightful surprise was a documentary called The Perfect Cappuccino. The film has what I considered at first an unpromising premise: a woman, filmmaker Amy Ferraris, searches through the coffee shops of America for a cup of cappuccino the equal of those she’s tasted in Italy. But it’s not long before the film reveals that this simple idea is merely the pretext for a highly entertaining and surprisingly complex exploration of weightier themes. Narrated by Ferraris herself, her warm, friendly voice lends a distinctive charm to the film, especially the beginning, which recounts her fateful trip to Italy as a 16-year-old with her high school class, where she discovers cappuccino in the coffee shops that dot the streets of every Italian town and begins her lifelong love affair with the drink.
This is a documentary of the personal essay variety, and Ferraris quickly proves herself someone worth listening to, even on this seemingly most idiosyncratic of subjects. But the film is filled with surprises, and the first is the melancholy turn it takes as she bemoans the impossibility of finding anything close to the experience of drinking well-prepared cappuccino at home in the U.S. Her complaint isn’t because she’s overcritical or a snob, but because she runs headlong into the fact that despite a growing culture of coffee consumption in sidewalk shops and coffee bars over the past two decades, America’s coffee habit has been dominated by a single company, whose mass-produced cappuccino and other espresso-based drinks are a far cry from the personal artistry of the Italian baristas whose creations so captivated Ferraris’s taste buds as a teenager.
This company is, of course, Starbucks, the Seattle-based coffee giant that seemingly has a store on every corner in every American city and at least two in every mall. Much of the film’s second act details Ferraris’s attempts to figure out why Starbucks has become so successful and why the American public is so taken with its bewildering variety of coffee-laced drinks, drinks that she feels have more to do with clever marketing than with any true appreciation of coffee as a beverage with a unique character and a rich and fascinating history.
This is Michael Moore territory, of course, the lone figure taking a stand against the big corporation, a formula Moore introduced brilliantly in his first film, Roger and Me, and has duplicated and refined in many subsequent TV shows and films. But despite her real issues with Starbucks (including a Moore-like inability to interview company representatives, despite her numerous appeals and their repeated promises to talk), Ferraris wisely avoids the confrontational style and absurdist grandstanding that have become Moore’s signature, and which have made his films so polarizing. Instead, she takes a gentler approach, weaving her film subtly back and forth between the attempts to satisfy her personal need for genuine cappuccino and the deeper concerns about corporate America that Starbucks’s rapid growth and near-monopolistic market domination force into the movie’s foreground. The tone of the film grows more troubled as a sadder Ferraris asks questions about the way business is done in America--questions that have been asked often before but never answered--and wearily interviews bemused Starbucks patrons about why they keep going back and what they like about the drinks they consume.
The interviews provide some of the film’s best moments. Clueless Starbucks patrons offer some humorous asides, but the real power of other voices in the film come from the Italian experts--baristas and businessmen both--who have devoted their lives to espresso culture and provide insight, and an objective basis, to Ferraris’s passion. Listening to them talk, one begins to truly sense why the right approach to preparing and drinking coffee is important, and why America’s casual and uninformed acceptance of an inferior version of the experience is yet another example of our arrogant disregard for western cultural tradition.
Not that the U.S. is a complete coffee wasteland. Ferraris covers the recent movement of independent coffee brewers and shop owners that are springing up throughout the country--referred to here as the “Third Wave”--and spends a great deal of time with the owner of DoubleShot Coffee, a small espresso shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Brian, the owner, obsesses over the roasting of his own coffee beans not just out of perfectionism but as a way to establish his independence from the onslaught of chain store coffee shops. And in his case the onslaught is real. He becomes the target of a lawsuit by Starbucks, which believes it owns the copyright to the term “doubleshot” as used in its canned Starbucks Doubleshot drinks. This lawsuit, and its impact on Brian and his regular customers--a Cheers-like cast of characters--provides the film with its most potent drama, and Brian emerges late in the film as its de facto hero for his refusal to submit to the considerable pressure Starbucks brings on him to change the name of his business.
Although Ferraris points out that the lawsuit is just one of hundreds Starbucks files each year as a way to keep its competition at bay, it resonates with the audience because of Brian’s quiet resolve and commitment to principle. His calm demeanor and appealing, low-key personality belie the anger he admits to feeling, and tempers--if only slightly--the almost unnerving stubbornness with which he refuses to bend. He’s a quintessential American Type from fiction and movies: a man of few words but strong convictions and an independent streak who faces down seemingly impossible odds with an almost reluctant dignity, the hero of a thousand westerns. The viewer is forced to watch this part of the film unfold slowly over the course of its last half, and Ferraris, a professional film editor by day, skillfully leads the story of Brian and DoubleShot to a surprising and satisfying conclusion, creating the kind of suspense one rarely finds in fiction films today, but which film buffs will recall fondly from those of years past.
Whether this movie will persuade devotees of Starbucks or other coffee chains that what they’re drinking is unworthy stuff, a debasement of Old World culture and charm, is anyone’s guess, of course. The perfect coffee, or espresso, or cappuccino ultimately--like beauty--is in the eye, or in this case the mouth, of the beholder, because it is a wholly personal aesthetic choice. But Ferraris’s film is so engaging, it should make even the most hardened philistine of coffee slurpers want to explore the world she portrays, a testament not only to her movie’s technical sophistication but to the persuasiveness of her voice. It is a remarkably fresh and appealing voice, self-effacing and funny, but deadly serious in its conviction that big business is committed to stifling the emergence of a genuine coffee culture in America. In the film’s one true Michael Moore moment, she is filming the outside of a Starbucks store when the manager opens the door and yells at her to stop. She replies that she has the right to film anything she wants from a public sidewalk, and he quickly retreats. She says it quietly, however, without anger, stating her rights as matter-of-factly as if she were telling someone the time of day. The moment typifies the ease with which this film is able to move beyond its highly personal subject to the level of universal appeal and import, in addition to capturing its surprising power.
In case you’re wondering, Ferraris’s search for the perfect cappuccino does not end in vain. She finds it in the end, but revealing this will not spoil the film’s conclusion for you because even the way her search is rewarded has its own unexpected twist, one with a particular poignancy to it. Just one more surprise from this utterly charming, unique, and extremely thoughtful film.

Introduction

2008-12-05T22:01:00.000-08:00

My name is Phil Beck, and this is my first entry. I created this blog to feature some of the writing I am currently doing about films. I am a lifelong film buff, having been introduced to classic Hollywood films at a young age by my parents, Pat and Jack Beck. They encouraged me to watch them when they showed up on TV, and we often watched them together. I remember sitting in front of our old black-and-white set in the 1960s, watching It Happened One Night, Little Caesar, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and many more of my early favorites. I loved going to the movies when I was a kid, and we went often as a family (which includes my younger brother, Roger, also a film buff). But at a young age, I especially liked going by myself, or with friends, to the Saturday matinees at the Skokie Theater (in, of course, Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up). The theater would be filled with screaming kids, mostly boys, yelling at the screen, throwing candy at each other, running up and down the aisles. While I did my share of those things, I was more often watching the movies because I was fascinated by everything up on the screen. I saw lots of Japanese monster films, Jerry Lewis comedies, and other typical kid fare, but I also remember one afternoon watching The Bridge on the River Kwai, and practically not blinking the entire time. I discovered foreign films in high school through a Public Television series called Film Odyssey, hosted by Charles Champlin. On that program, I saw films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Seven Samurai, The 39 Steps, The Blue Angel, and many others, all so different from the films I was used to watching. This opened a whole new world for me. When I first went away to college, at the University of Missouri, I would go to see movies shown on campus 3 or 4 nights a week. I wanted to see everything, and I tried to. It was there I discovered, among others, two fascinating filmmakers, Jean-Luc Godard and Yasujiro Ozu, director of two of my favorite films, Tokyo Story and Late Spring.

Later, in graduate school at the University of Iowa (in Iowa City, where I still live), I first majored in English and got an M.A., then switched over to Film and Broadcasting, where I studied film theory, criticism, and history, and got a second M.A. While I was never the most distinguished writer or scholar in the film program, I wrote a few papers I'm still quite proud of, even got one or two of them published in film journals of the time. That was long ago, however, and I did not pursue a career in academia, but took a job in the library at the university's School of Law, where I have been for the past 21 years. I have therefore been through several phases of involvement with films in my life, but the one thing that has remained constant is my interest in watching and thinking about films. This past summer, I began to write reviews of some of the more interesting movies I was seeing, because I missed writing about film and I felt I had something to say that others might find of interest. I have had a couple of reviews posted at the website of a local arts and culture publication, The Little Village, which you can find online at http://www.littlevillagemag.com/. In addition to my reviews, many good articles on films by the paper's staff writers are posted there, and I recommend them all. The other reviews I have written, and will continue to write in the future, I am going to post here. I am inviting comments and criticism, because I would welcome a dialogue with as many people as possible about the films I have chosen to write about. You can add your comments after each entry, or you can email me at goodphilla@aol.com. I hope you find what you are about to read interesting in some way. Thanks for checking out this blogspot.

Phil Beck