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.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Taken
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Frost/Nixon
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Happy-Go-Lucky
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Coraline
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.
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.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Slumdog Millionaire
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.
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.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
The Day the Earth Stood Still
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.
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.
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