Arrival

Arrival

 

Though part of a long tradition of aliens-arriving-on-earth in literature and film, Arrival offers the viewer a different kind of experience.  It’s indebted to The War of the Worlds, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Contact, among other works, but the way it imagines humans interacting with aliens for the first time is uniquely its own.  Neither an action film nor a thriller, though containing elements of both, it’s more like an elegant psychological mystery, unfolding in the languorous and indirect style of a European art film.  Think It Came from Outer Space meets Last Year in Marienbad and you’ll get a sense of how this film looks and feels.

 

Louise Banks (Amy Adams), a professor of languages who has done translations for the U.S. military in the past, is called back into action when her skills are needed to make contact with the inhabitants of a flotilla of mysterious spacecraft that have appeared suddenly in the skies over Earth.  Banks is reluctant at first; she’s a dedicated teacher but lives a reclusive life, haunted by visions of a daughter lost to cancer in early adulthood.  Soon, however, she realizes this is the opportunity of a lifetime, something linguists only dream of, and agrees to join the effort.  She’s whisked away by helicopter to a remote location in Montana where a team of military personnel and language specialists have established a station monitoring one of the spacecraft.  Similar operations have been set up at various points around the globe where other ships are located.  Accompanying Banks is Ian Connelly (Jeremy Renner), a self-assured theoretical physicist who is skeptical of linguistics’ usefulness for the task, and Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker), the grimly determined commander of the team. 

 

Nothing Banks or the others have experienced in their lives could prepare them for the shock of meeting life forms as different as the ones that live on the spacecraft.  Bradford Young’s stunning camera work conveys the physical discomfort, disorientation, astonishment, and ultimate sublimity of the experience in imagery at once gritty and hallucinatory.  Too much for some, the arduous task of communicating with beings who use a language of ornate visual symbols instead of sound is almost intuitive for Banks, who quickly becomes lead translator for the entire project.  In the close confines of the alien ship, separated by a transparent wall, she watches the octopus-like creatures spew out inky swirls from the ends of their limbs into ornate circular patterns suspended before the eyes of their mesmerized audience.  Gradually, Banks begins to learn how to read this unique script.  At night she experiences dreams and visions that lead her from one breakthrough in understanding to another.   The separation between her inner life and the outside world of the aliens begins to dissolve, and insight floods in.  And along with it, empathy.

 

At the same time, Connelly’s initial resistance begins to dissolve as well and he becomes an enthusiastic supporter of Banks’ methods, standing up for her against pushback she receives from Weber and a suspicious intelligence agent (the terrific Michael Stuhlbarg, wasted here in a bloodless role) whose presence reveals the shadowy side of the government’s interest.  As trust and feeling grow between Banks and Connelly, it erodes everywhere else, and mounting tensions between the various countries racing to decipher the aliens’ cryptograms lead to suspicions of their ultimate intentions for Earth.  Over Banks’s protests, the military takes a more aggressive stance, forcing her to choose between the present crisis and the future she has glimpsed in her visions, a reality she has come to fervently believe in.

 

Though philosophically oriented, Arrival is careful not to neglect basic genre thrills.  Director Denis Villeneuve and his team have accomplished something quite remarkable, in fact—they’ve made an exciting movie about translation.  Under Villeneuve’s careful guidance, the exhausting, repetitive process of interpreting symbols crackles with suspense.  The main action of the film occurs in tense conversations between the bewildered, stressed-out characters, which generates plenty of drama by itself.  But the filmmakers have made sure we understand that something bigger is also at stake: communication between different species is simply a more complex version of communication between members of the same species, a process sometimes as fraught and plagued by failure even when using the same language.  

 

It’s also the work of the movie.  Arrival’s iconography--alien creatures, space ships and suits, Army vehicles—translates the abstractions of its thesis (language shapes the way we think and hence our very perception of reality) into the concrete images of a deeply felt and very human story.  In one of the film’s most striking sequences, Banks and Connelly pay their first visit to the alien vessel--which is our first visit, also.  There, through a series of unnerving changes in gravitational direction, the characters are forced to step from floor to wall to ceiling in order to stay upright.  They stand upside down or sideways in the frame from our point-of-view while maintaining the normal up-down orientation of theirs.  Einstein’s law of relativity may never have been so neatly demonstrated on film before.  The visual discontinuities metaphorically deliver Arrival’s central idea that reality is what you perceive it to be and your perception literally depends on where you’re standing.

 

Love can be just as disorienting, and Banks’ commitment to unlocking the secrets of the aliens’ language becomes key to her developing relationship with Connelly.  Adams excels as both committed scholar and vulnerable woman--her sensitive performance makes a cerebral character (and storyline) vibrate with emotion.  As written, the linguist is, ironically, a person of few words, but Adams makes each one count.  It’s with her eyes that she communicates most powerfully, however.  Gazing intently at the aliens and their symbols—Banks seems to be the only one not afraid of their forbidding appearance—Adams reveals the linguist’s deep need to connect with the aliens.  Her unflinching gaze at them is eventually turned inward: solving the external puzzle is also a search for inner truth, the reason behind her visions.  The two mysteries intertwine as plot developments and intimate revelations become indistinguishable.   Eric Heisserer’s admirable screenplay draws no distinction between Banks’ pursuit of professional knowledge and her search for personal meaning.  Her heroic journey is not just out in the world but more critically inside herself, an internal voyage toward self-discovery, where the secret of the aliens’ visit also lies.

All this and a surprise twist the like of which I’ve seen in only one other film, Nicolas Roeg’s supernatural thriller Don’t Look Now (1973).  Though the comparison is inexact, each film ingeniously leads viewers to a conclusion that’s unexpected but wholly logical, as well as deeply moving.  Arrival combines its creative plotting with the genre-bending substitution of a female protagonist’s viewpoint and subjectivity for the standard masculine energy and action of sci-fi.  Organizing itself around the female gaze is unusual enough in commercial cinema, but Arrival is the more transgressive because it belongs to such a traditionally male-dominated genre.   In fact by privileging a woman’s point-of-view—and intellect and experience--over male prerogative, Arrival doesn't simply depict an encounter with “alien” perspective and language, it creates one of its own.  And it’s precisely the difference of this point-of-view that allows it to communicate more authentically its unconventional ideas on the interconnections between time, human subjectivity, and the future of the planet.  The beauty with which these interrelationships are demonstrated infuse each moment of this powerful film with a sense of life’s preciousness and the paramount importance of all lived experience, no matter how disappointing, inconclusive, or painful.  

In that it truly speaks a universal language.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anthropoid

Anthropoid is an absorbing account of an event in WWII less remembered today than it should be—the 1942 assassination by Czech partisans of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, commander of Germany’s occupying force in Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic).  One of Hitler’s chief lieutenants—the primary architect of the “Final Solution”--Heydrich was the highest-ranking Nazi official assassinated during the war.  The film meticulously reconstructs the days leading up to the attack and its horrific aftermath.  Anthropoid does not depict a triumph in any conventional sense of the term, but its portrait of determination and courage in the face of nearly impossible odds is all the more stirring for that. 

 

The film begins literally in medias res, plunging the audience into the story from the point-of-view of a parachutist hitting the ground.  In 1941, the exiled Czech Army, based in England, sends two soldiers, Jan Kubis (Jamie Dornan) and Josef Gabcik (Cillian Murphy), back to Czechoslovakia to kill Heydrich.  They parachute in at night and, barely eluding German patrols,  make their way to Prague where they are given shelter in a “safe” house run by a warm-hearted patriot (Alena Mihulova) and her family.  Soon they make contact with the few members of the Resistance left alive, a demoralized group led by a weary veteran, Uncle Hajsky (Toby Jones).  Fearful of spies and informers, they are initially suspicious of the newcomers.  Even worse, they’re appalled by the boldness of their mission—reprisals for killing Heydrich will be severe, they warn, bringing death to countless civilians and perhaps an end to organized resistance in Prague. 

But the plan moves forward despite these reservations.  The reluctant allies are all patriotic Czechs, differing only in their ideas on how best to fight their Nazi occupiers.  Rather than presenting a monochromatic view of patriotism, director Sean Ellis and co-writer Anthony Frewin’s screenplay explores the many shades of loyalty and levels of commitment among people engaged in a life-and-death struggle against a ruthless enemy. Under constant threat of exposure and death, the conspirators remain mostly indoors, venturing out only under extremely guarded conditions.  Low interior lighting and tightly framed shots of cramped, crowded rooms visually capture this claustrophobic existence.  

Kubis and Gabcik recruit two local women (sensitively portrayed by Charlotte Le Bon and Anna Geislerova) to accompany them on “dates” as they scout possible locations for the ambush.  The presence of the women is calculated to make them less conspicuous but also makes them more vulnerable as each forms an emotional attachment to his partner.  The scenes of growing tenderness between the two pairs are some of the film’s most affecting, and when the day of the attack arrives and all realize they may never see each other again, the heartbreak is powerfully conveyed in glances and halting words.  Murphy and Geislerova are especially effective. 

 

As are many of the other performers in the superb supporting cast. Mihulova and Jones stand out for their sympathetic portrayals of ordinary people rising to the extraordinary demands of their time, as well as Harry Lloyd as an intrepid Resistance fighter and Jiri Simek as a tortured collaborator.  The Prague setting is used effectively as another character in the drama  Doing his own cinematography, Ellis limits the film's palette to mostly grays and browns, suppressing color to convey the bleakness of a city drained of lifeblood.  This visual design pops up in the story, too—when the two decoy women show up to their first date with the assassins in bright dresses and lipstick, the older, battle weary Gabcik lectures them sternly on the importance of not standing out, not calling attention to themselves.  After that, they deliberately dress in drab colors, fading into their sepia-toned surroundings.

 

Coming at film’s midpoint, the explosive assassination scene releases the tension of the first half, removing all restraints from the pace and action thereon.  Constricted compositions and longer takes give way to careening handheld shots and fluid editing.  The finale sees the surviving commandos holed up in the basement of a church, hoping against hope to escape discovery by vengeful Stormtroopers unleashing chaos on the city as they hunt them down.  Brutally staged in what feels like real time, it’s almost too harrowing to watch. (The real siege lasted several hours but is compressed for dramatic purposes.)  

Previous films about Heydrich’s assassination (Hitler’s Madman, Operation: Daybreak) have depicted Heydrich himself, but Anthropoid sticks exclusively to the point-of-view of the assassins.  The mission’s name, Anthropoid, means “in the form of a human being,” an appropriate code name for the man known as the Beast of Prague.  In this film, Heydrich’s in the form of a character only—he’s a target, glimpsed from afar by his stalkers, a presence more motivational and symbolic than personal.  It’s a choice that risks distancing the audience from the emotional urgency of eliminating him, a dim historical figure whose atrocities we hear about but never witness, and reducing the film to a dry exercise in reenactment.  But Anthropoid’s use of cinema verite techniques ensures that a sense of immediacy is never lost. The viewer shares the constrained physical and emotional space of the characters, hiding in tiny rooms with them and later racing at breakneck speed down streets and through backyards, partners in their flight.    

Some viewers will undoubtedly be disappointed that Anthropoid isn’t another Valkyrie, the 2008 thriller about a failed conspiracy to assassinate Hitler that starred Tom Cruise and Kenneth Branagh.  But eschewing star power and glossy production for a lower-key, more indie approach not only serves the story better but is the more honest way to pay tribute to the men and women who died heroically fighting their oppressors in Prague those many years ago. 

 

 

 

Hero v. Hero

It must be an election year.  The latest entries in DC’s and Marvel’s superhero franchises, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Captain America: Civil War, feature heated, campaign-like debates on how to keep the world safe from organized violence.  International terrorism is now the go-to villain in the universe of comic book fantasy films and other action genres, as well as American politics.  Not only are superheroes struggling with personal problems and the uneasy relationship between their humanity and superhuman abilities, they’re also arguing with each other over the strategic and ethical aspects of maintaining security in an increasingly unstable world.  Is that why these movies are becoming so much gloomier?  The responsibilities of power, the tragic consequences of past decisions, the burdens of guilt—such hefty issues weigh the heroes down and load their films with as much angst as action, if not more.  It's an inevitable result of burdening larger-than-life figures from pop mythology with global-size problems. 

Batman’s beef with Superman ostensibly concerns the destruction of downtown Metropolis and the death of innocent bystanders during his fight with General Zod in Man of Steel (2013).  Bruce Wayne witnesses the battle firsthand (he was in Metropolis on business, it’s revealed) and stands by helplessly as one of his employees is seriously maimed by falling debris.  The incident recalls the trauma Wayne experienced as a boy when he watched his parents being gunned down in front of him.  It’s no coincidence that Batman’s suit has been increasing in size with each new installment in the series.  Psychologically, Bruce Wayne needs to wall himself off from more and more pain—he literally needs a thicker skin, heavier emotional armor.  In the Christopher Nolan-directed trilogy (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises), Batman wore an armored suit that was solid but supple enough to accommodate his acrobatics.  In Batman v. Superman, he wears a suit so bulked up and stiff he looks like a Transformer.  Watching him lumber into battle is the antithesis of excitement.   

But the scenario’s attention to psychic pain is eclipsed by the isolationist and nativist strains in Batman’s anti-Superman crusade.  Superman is from an alien world--the late planet Krypton--and his presence on Earth has made it a target for the enemies who have tracked him here.  Many people view him as an interloper doing more harm than good and call for his banishment or death in order to protect Earth’s inhabitants.  Manipulated by megalomaniac Lex Luthor (a scene-chewing Jesse Eisenberg), who wants Superman out of the way for his own Machiavellian ends, Bruce Wayne converts to the cause of defeating Superman.  For him, as for many others, the wars of outer space belong in outer space, far from our world’s borders.  It all sounds very familiar. 

The plot of Captain America: Civil War is similarly charged with current politics.  The central issue is whether the Avengers should continue to operate independently or answer to the world’s nations for their actions.  The superheroes have saved lives, even the whole planet, but at a huge cost.  Smashed cityscapes and mounting civilian deaths are collateral damage the world is no longer comfortable accepting.  Things have gotten way more complicated than when the heroes first came together to save Earth from invasion by Thor’s crazy half-brother Loki in The Avengers (2012). The price of salvation has climbed too high in the intervening years.  Now world leaders want the Avengers to ask them for permission before going into action.  They present the superheroes with an agreement that would exchange their independence for oversight by the U.N.

The group splits into two factions, those in favor of signing the agreement and those against.  The hold-outs are led by—no surprise—Captain America (Chris Evans).  There’s no misreading this perhaps inevitable symbolism, but such predictability is offset by the surprise leader of the opposing side—industrial maverick and perpetual bad boy Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.).  Choosing the irreverent Stark to make the case for cooperation and responsible behavior is a sly move on the part of the writers.  There’s obvious irony at work here but perhaps something insidious as well.  Tony Stark is a corporate tycoon, a privileged scion of Big Money, presumably dependent on cozy relations between industry and government to maintain his wealth and position.  In his person, the plea for diplomacy/international cooperation/One World harmony is merged with the interests of big business.  If Stark advocates collaboration between nations, is it for security and peace alone or also to keep the world economy robust and his profit margin high?  This potential conflict of interest puts Iron Man’s righteousness in an ambivalent light--and, by association, the proposal placing superheroes in the service of international bureaucracy.  By contrast, Captain America’s championing of self-determination and the right to pursue unilateral action regardless of world opinion—problematic in real circumstances–seems a purer form of heroism. 

The tensions caused by the philosophical split explode in the film’s action centerpiece, a rumble between the two teams of Avengers on an airport tarmac.  The sequence is exuberant fun, the kind of cleverly choreographed mayhem that’s become the hallmark of Marvel films, the Avengers franchise in particular.  That it’s all rather silly is beside the point.  This is where movie money is spent and made.  Still, it largely feels like much ado about nothing.  The rivals aren’t trying to kill each other—one side is simply trying to stop the other side from going on an unauthorized mission—and it’s not made why a disagreement like that should lead to an epic blowout.  Why don’t Captain American and his crew simply make a run for it?  It would mean less spectacle but perhaps be more interesting, watching who pursues who, what kinds of pairings/rivalries emerge.  Instead, a fast-moving free-for-all exchanges fight partners so frequently it’s nearly impossible to keep straight who’s on which side.  Perhaps the film’s major flaw is this: its inability to dispel the impression that the sides were chosen arbitrarily in the first place. 

In the long run, though, it’s not that important.  The only rivalry the film is serious about is the one between the leaders, Captain America and Iron Man.  That pays off in a powerful finale deep within a Siberian fortress when the two lock in gladiatorial combat so fierce it surpasses every climactic Avengers duel in the series so far.  (The much longer and louder fight between Batman and Superman possesses only a fraction of the drama.)  The resulting bruises are more than physical: in the course of the battle, Oedipal issues explode like a buried land mine, and Iron Man’s wounds go deep.  His armor survives the beating, but Tony Stark’s doesn’t.   

Downey is superb throughout.  The film is Captain America’s in title only--it belongs to Downey all the way.  After a weak third Iron Man film, and his reduction to trickster antagonist in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Stark/Iron Man is back as the heart and soul of the Marvel universe.  The reason is simple: Iron Man is the one superhero who’s more interesting as a human than as his costumed alter ego.  Iron Man’s armor is cool and his combat skills exceptional, but it’s Tony Stark that rocks the screen.   When he disappears inside the suit, Iron Man’s impact is lessened because we’re deprived of the full range of Downey’s energy as the mercurial, brilliant, exasperating billionaire.  Downey had been refining this character his whole career before first donning the mantle of Tony Stark in 2008, mixing brashness, conceit, and snarky wit with vulnerability and boyish appeal.  In Stark, he found the perfect vehicle for this potent cocktail.  It was, and still is, an inspired match between performer and role.    

Which is good, because some of the other performers are beginning to look tired in theirs.  The icy bravado that distinguished Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow in earlier films is mostly missing from this one, making her presence less compelling.  Supporting superheroes like Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and War Machine (Don Cheadle) aren’t given enough screen time to establish believable motives for their choice of sides.  Renner and Cheadle inject life into their parts with typically deft handling of one-liners, but their characters have been marginalized.  Partly making up for this energy drain, two new figures are introduced into the mix--Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and a new incarnation of Spider-Man (Tom Holland).  Both generate excitement, especially Boseman as the African prince who doubles as a crime fighter with mysterious motives.   Perhaps not coincidentally, most of Batman v. Superman’s best moments also belong to a newcomer, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot).  Wonder Woman’s debut on the big screen is long overdue, but the Israeli actress’s dynamic performance makes it obvious that waiting for Gadot to fill Wonder Woman’s costume was the smart thing to do.  

Captain America: Civil War effectively exploits the paradox of mythical figures grappling with modern day issues.  The contemporary world is a problematic context for risky, self-motivated heroics, and Captain America credibly dramatizes the difficulties those accustomed to unquestioned action in the past encounter when renegotiating their roles in the highly scrutinized, morally complex present.  Batman v. Superman’s attempt to do the same is superficial by comparison, but at least it shares the core themes that make both, and other recent superhero movies, more than escapist fantasy: family, identity, power and responsibility, security vs. civil liberties, collective vs. individual freedom, citizen oversight of the police, collateral damage during wartime, the tragedy of global terror, international cooperation v. unilateral action.   

The contrasting tones of the two endings are instructive.  Batman v. Superman, the visually darker film, ends on a note of reconciliation and hope.  As characters and spectators mourn a fallen hero, the film’s final image hints at rebirth and renewal.  Captain America’s final moments are more pessimistic.  Reconciliation between the estranged Avengers and the return of peace seem a much remoter possibility.  Choosing ambiguity over reassurance once again signals the latter film's greater emotional depth and more sophisticated appreciation of the way reality works.  In this age of acrimonious division and highly polarized politics, easy answers may be offered but are not truly to be found.  

Despite the pervasive rhetoric about Hollywood liberalism, the views of both films are basically conservative.  Each conveys in its own way the message that mistrusting superior authority is ultimately wrong.  The less conflicted, unapologetic good guys, Superman and Captain America, are the ones we will be looking to for salvation in the promised sequels.  Either through sober reflection on human frailty or thrilling anticipation of fulfilled destiny, the final scenes of both movies are united by a shared vision: the ultimate triumph of the superior champions’ will.

 

 

Chi-Raq

Spike Lee is back in form with his latest film, Chi-Raq, a free-wheeling adaptation of ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes’ anti-war comedy Lysistrata.  Recast for the violence-torn streets of modern day Chicago--and spoken in hip modern verse--Chi-Raq is an explosive mash-up of classical comedy, agit-prop theater, and hip-hop music video, and delivers a scorching sermon on the tragic sacrifice of black lives to gun violence in American cities.  As a story, Chi-Raq is something of a mess, but that’s partly intended.  Rather than present audiences with a tidy, logical narrative, Lee mixes it up and blows classical form to smithereens, which symbolizes the way out-of-control killing has shattered contemporary social order.  

The nickname “Chi-Raq” likens Chicago’s rampant street violence to the dangerous living conditions of a Middle Eastern war zone.  Lee and co-writer Kevin Willmott take this controversial notion—excoriated by Chicago officials—and treat it with imagination.  Their version of Chicago is terrorized by two rival gangs, Trojans and Spartans, named for ancient tribes famous for ruinous, long-running wars.  Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris), the sexy girlfriend of Trojan gang leader and rapper Chi-Raq (Nick Cannon), is radicalized after a drive-by shooting accidentally kills a young girl.  She organizes women from both sides of the fray to demand peace by threatening to withhold sex from their gangsta men until they stop fighting.  As the movie’s poster puts it, in impressive economy of phrase: “No Peace, No Piece.”   Aristophanes spun this premise into a raunchy farce filled with dirty jokes and actors appearing onstage with gigantic erections, and Lee doesn’t shy away from this side of the material.  Horny men and flirty women are staples of comedy, in all time periods and places, and some of Chi-Raq’s humor is pure cartoon:  men howling like animals in sexual frustration or ludicrously salivating at the sight of female body parts.  All that’s missing is someone's eyes popping out of his head on springs as a woman sashays by.   

These moments of comic exaggeration evoke groans as well as laughs, but they create an opening for the film’s exploration of sexual politics.  After Lysistrata and her troop of militant women take over the National Guard Armory by seducing the soldiers in charge, a group of angry husbands and boyfriends sneak into the compound to demand their women return home.  In answer, the defiant women stage a tantalizing hip hop dance number in skimpy, cleavage-baring outfits, turning the men on while turning them down, rapping out their denunciation of gang war while unwrapping themselves in a (near) naked display of sexual power.  It’s more soft core porn than Feminism—women appropriating their own sexual objectification for political purposes is always a two-edged sword, especially when the filmmakers are men—but it makes Feminism’s point despite the exploitative imagery.  The men, defeated and shamed, leave the women in peace, their power intact.   

It’s not just p-ssy power, either.  Lysistrata’s sexual revolution comes as much from the library as from the bedroom.  After leaving Chi-Raq, Lysistrata takes up temporary residence with the scholarly Miss Helen (a beautiful performance by Angela Bassett).  Miss Helen reads her passages from books about actual sex strikes in African countries torn apart by years of civil war and sectarian violence (a neat way for Lee to justify his use of an ancient text by showing its influence on recent history).  Miss Helen raises Lysistrata’s consciousness, and when Lysistrata organizes her movement, Miss Helen follows along, convincing a group of older women friends to join the sex strike and demonstrate in front of the Armory.  Acknowledging that the greater source of women’s power is in their minds rather than their bodies is crucial for the film’s credibility.  Without it, Chi-Raq would crumble into a parody of the protest cinema it wants to be, its message overwhelmed by sexist insult. 

Yet despite this effort, Chi-Raq’s attitude toward women remains clouded.  The mentor-student pairing of Helen and Lysistrata has a shadow side in patriarchal culture—the mother/whore dichotomy--which is present despite the film’s serious attempt at depicting female wholeness and solidarity.  This is a career-long problem for Lee.  His star-making debut 30 years ago was She’s Gotta Have It, an ironic comedy about three men struggling to understand a sexually independent woman.  But women have rarely been at the forefront of his movies since then.  Chi-Raq tries to reverse that by spotlighting strong, confident women turning the tables on needy, sex-centric men (he could have easily called the movie He’s Gotta Have It).  But a single film can’t turn it around for Lee all by itself, and it doesn’t help that he relies heavily on Rap and Hip-Hop cultures, neither of which are known for enlightened thinking on gender roles.     

But at least those cultures are on trial, too--everything in Chi-Raq is.  Lee isn’t pointing a laser beam of criticism at a single problem, he’s firing a broadside at a whole range social ills destroying urban culture--violence, sexism, racism, corrupt politics, economic disparity, what have you.  This is reflected in the film’s eclectic style and frequent shifts in tone: a satiric scene followed by a tragic one followed by a Bollywoodish musical number, and so on.  Disparate pieces—songs, skits, speeches, as well as conventional drama—compose the variegated action, which zigzags through a barrage of interruptions from TV news, characters addressing the camera, signage, and occasional screens filled with statistics.  One scene is even suspended for a few moments by a freeze frame.  By turns hip lecture, vaudeville act, melodrama, faux documentary, rom-com, the film is never at rest, never settled into a predictable rhythm or single genre.  From one scene to the next it changes its beat, and its identity. 

This discordant approach is appropriate for a depiction of inner city conditions that have deteriorated beyond what the elegant form of classical theater can accurately portray.  Only a theater that discards the formal unities can do justice to the world’s actual dis-unities--the inequities in a society busted wide open by racial hatred and violence.  Conversely, the film’s total theatricality highlights how grotesque and artificial reality in a world of constant crisis has itself become.  Lee updates Lysistrata in time, place, and subject, but more importantly, he replaces classicism with an aesthetics of conflict.  Abrupt transitions and jarring cuts disrupt conventional narrative flow, and with it passive viewership, demanding an attentive, engaged audience to witness the injustice going on.  The movie gets up in our faces and loudly proclaims its epigraph: Wake Up!   

Chi-Raq is deliberately messy, which means it makes some mistakes.  Two white authority figures—the mayor (D.B. Sweeney) and the buffoonish Armory commander, Gen. King Kong (Daniel Patrick Kelly), are too ridiculous to be taken seriously as threats to Lysistrata or her movement, let alone  symbols of white establishment racism.  With clowns like them in charge, the black community should have nothing to fear from white society, which is certainly not what Lee intends to say.  The scene in which Lysistrata induces Gen. Kong to strip and be tied to a cannon is the low comedy point of the movie.  Kelly‘s performance is so broad it doesn’t mesh the film’s predominantly sharp-tongued, incisive humor.   

As the lovers Lysistrata and Chi-Raq, Teyonah Parris and Nick Cannon have obvious physical chemistry, but their relationship never generates much heat.  Parris is a strong presence but she’s hampered by a script that, despite putting her at the center of the film, pays too little attention to her.  We see Lysistrata loving, dancing, speechifying to other women, and later large crowds, but never alone with her thoughts, never undergoing the change that takes her from arm-candy girlfriend to independent-minded heroine.  She’s a striking figure but not a memorable character.  Chi-Raq, on the other hand, is given a storyline rich with tragic potential, but Cannon can’t take advantage of it.  Lee places the film’s denouement in his hands but his overly introspective performance mimes suffering without projecting any of it onto the screen, and the film’s finale falls somewhat flat as a result.  

Bassett, mentioned earlier, exudes dignity and strength in her pivotal role as the aptly named Miss Helen.  Instead of inspiring a war, this time Helen inspires a social revolution.  The underemployed Jennifer Hudson is sadly wasted as the grieving mother—she’s asked to cry a lot, which she does effectively, but little else.  Samuel L. Jackson shines in his literally show-stopping role as Chorus/Master of Ceremonies/Ringmaster, strutting his way across the screen in a series of riotous costumes and giving audiences the lowdown on plot development, historical background, and what fun it is being Samuel L. Jackson. 

Ironically, it’s a white actor, Chicago alum John Cusack, who delivers the film's most memorable scene.  Cusack plays a priest fighting for social justice in the black community (inspired by real-life Rev. Michael Pfleger of Chicago).  At the funeral of the slain girl, he delivers a blistering sermon that accuses gangs, government inaction on gun control, and the nation’s growing income divide of equal responsibility for the tragedies occurring every day on the streets of American cities.  As cinematographer Matthew Libatique’s camera swoops hypnotically around him, he moves from the pulpit toward his congregation (and the movie audience), entrancing all with the eloquence of his grief and outrage over the damning facts.  Known chiefly for comedies, Cusack lets out all the stops here, making his dramatic monologue a highpoint of both the film and his career to date.  It’s fascinating that Lee gives this scene, the film’s rhetorical focal point, to someone white.  He may be acknowledging that white audiences will take angry words about race more seriously from a popular white actor than from any of the film’s African-American stars (or, by extension, from him), but whatever the reason, the surprise works, and Cusack’s offbeat casting pays huge dividends all around. 

Chi-Raq’s biggest weakness is that the blending of ancient sex comedy and contemporary Black Lives Matter drama, a ballsy idea, is never completely convincing.  Lysistrata is definitely there in the mix, but not always easy to find--sometimes it’s more like Lost-istrata.  Other times it’s too assertive, and the amusing but often creaky devices of a very old play reduce tragic current events to the level of vaudeville.  Some of what we see on the screen should have spent more time with the scriptwriters and editors, too.  

But ultimately, Lee’s film is about making big, bold statements, and Chi-Raq makes them, shouting them from the barricades through a bullhorn.  Lee’s career of documenting America’s racial politics hasn’t produced anything this innovative since Do the Right Thing.  Combining morality play and erotic spectacle, ancient wisdom and hard truths about today’s world, Chi-Raq is assembled in chaotic fashion to mimic chaos, to mirror the madness of a world spinning out of control with murder and hatred.  Lee has never been reluctant to be forward, and we should be grateful.  This film's artistry and relevance are the brilliant result.

White God

White God 

Imagine Lassie Come Home rewritten with Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and the Roman slave epic Spartacus in mind and you’ll get the basic notion behind White God, an ingenious thriller from Hungary about the revolt of mistreated street dogs in contemporary Budapest.  This movie isn’t recommended for the most sensitive dog lovers, as it’s filled with scenes of brutality.  But graphic realism is a necessary part of the film’s power.  Though it definitely pulls at the heartstrings, White God eschews obvious sentiment for subtle commentary, turning a good dog tale into a cunning allegory about societal abuse of “undesirable” populations. 

The action revolves around 13-year-old Lili (Zsofia Psotta), whose devotion to her mixed-breed dog, Hagen, causes trouble between her and her divorced father (Sandor Zsoter).  In a dystopian take on current Hungarian society, only purebred (“Hungarian” bred) dogs are tolerated; mixed breeds are heavily taxed when owned, which means most are left to roam the streets, prey to the city’s army of dog-catchers and unscrupulous hustlers looking to exploit them for a variety of awful purposes.  Lili‘s father abandons Hagen on the street rather than pay the tax, causing a separation between him and his daughter greater than that between her and her lost dog.  The film then moves in parallel story tracks, the lives of the human and canine soul mates mirroring each other as they adjust to their mutual loss and to the newfound cruelties of their decaying and corrupt world.  Hagen searches for Lili and a way home but finds only garbage-strewn streets and foul empty lots where gangs of unwanted mutts gather at night after long days of hunting for food and evading capture.  Eventually he is caught by a trainer for the illegal dog fighting industry; a series of brutal scenes in which he's transformed into a canine gladiator follow.  At her own school, Lili, a trumpeter, is cruelly treated by an authoritarian music teacher.  In a symbolic act of solidarity, she repeatedly runs away from home, skipping school, prowling the streets, hanging out in unsavory parts of town, only to be caught by authorities and returned to the confines of her father’s cramped, cage-like apartment (as well as the overcrowded rehearsal room, a pound of sorts for kids).  Hagen’s introductory fight with another dog in a bloodstained pit is intercut with Lili’s attempts to jumpstart adulthood by accompanying an older classmate to a hellishly lit basement club where alcohol and drugs are exchanged to the apocalyptic beat of a punk band.  Badly bruised from these degrading experiences, both survive relatively intact; nevertheless, we witness innocence being lost.

Hagen’s journey eventually leads to the pound, but only momentarily: rising to hero status (he’s prophetically named for a warrior in Norse mythology), he triggers a mass escape of mixed-breeds.  Under his leadership, they become a marauding force, bringing the city to a standstill (much as Spartacus and his gladiator army challenged Rome).  It is here that the film becomes  more fanciful, and director Kornel Mundruczo and his screenwriters mix moments of sly humor in with the terror.  Trotting out a number of horror film clichés, they have Hagen and his troops hunt down the people who’ve abused them one by one in order to exact a bloody revenge.  One particularly striking scene has the victim enter a darkened room where two dogs hide behind an old-style sofa.  The camera pans at floor level to reveal their paws as they stand quietly waiting to attack—ironically, less conspicuous than human feet would be since their paws are similar in shape to the furniture’s curved legs.  The visual joke contains a philosophical question: when the oppressed turn on their oppressors, does “objectification” suddenly become an advantage?  Whether or not that’s stretching a point, I imagine this scene would have brought a smile to Alfred Hitchcock’s face.

Lili’s stature grows along with Hagen’s, but by rising above rebellion instead of surrendering to it.  Her brush with delinquency behind her, she reconciles with her father, becoming the parent to his tantrum-throwing child (she comforts him when he cries).  His development has been arrested, perhaps, by the frustrations of a failed marriage and career (an ex-professor, he now inspects meat in a slaughterhouse, though no explanation for his fall from grace is ever given).  At the film’s climax, when their intertwined fates bring Hagen and Lili face to face again, she discovers her own destiny as a leader by becoming peacemaker between the human and animal worlds.  In a scene of visual bravado, she pacifies the dog pack with a beautiful solo on her horn; one by one they lie down until she is surrounded by hundreds of submissive dogs in a ragged heart-shaped formation.  When Lili and her father lie down with them, the stunning shot has dogs and humans literally on the same level (and roughly the same size), equalized in their relationship to each other and to the world they share as defined by the space of the screen.  But beyond the screen’s edges, tragedy is still looming—this moment of peace and equality will almost certainly be short-lived.  The frailty, if not absolute impossibility, of humane relations between the species makes for a heartbreaking finale, eloquently stated in this closing image.

Despite some playful use of tropes from the pet adventure, thriller, and horror genres, White God is a serious, occasionally grim, parable about human responsibility toward all species, including our own.  Its cautionary nature exposes the peril society faces from discriminating against weaker, minority populations.  There's clever irony in casting dogs in that role: whatever human-like intelligence or “moral” behavior they display has been taught them by their human masters.  And what the mixed breeds learn from humans is chiefly terror and violence.  Is it any wonder, the film asks its audience, that they respond in kind?  They are what we have made them.

White God establishes this premise in two ways.  First, and most obviously, by presenting an alternative to a relationship based on dominance in the loving, respectful connection between Lili and Hagen that precedes—and ultimately triumphs over—his transformation into a vicious killer.  But, more slyly, it enters through some subtle anthropomorphism in the second half of the film.  Left to survive on their own, the outcast dogs don’t act like we might expect them to, as hardened brutes.  They don’t fight for territory on meeting—in truth, they barely even growl at each other.  Their attempts to find food and shelter are marked less by rivalry than by teamwork between tribe members.  It’s not exactly Disney, but isn’t a nature documentary either.  The dogs descend into savagery only when they begin to display human cunning.  After Hagen takes charge of the escapees, they band together to perform the complex business of targeted revenge, using sophisticated behaviors like decoying and surprise.  Human intelligence is the source of their savagery—it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there only when dogs act like people.

Which raises the question of the provocative title.  White “God”?  Of course it’s a play on words (doG), but more important, it underscores the film’s boldest idea--that there is a moral correlation between discarded animals and marginalized people.  The film’s God is “White,” likening a city that discriminates against mixed-breed dogs to a society whose laws and attitudes discriminate against non-white peoples.  The dogs’ rampage through the corroded back streets of Budapest could be violence that explodes among minority populations in the slums of any modern city.  But “God” also suggests a religious component to this violence—specifically, acts of terror by radical religious groups.  The pound, the brutal dog-catchers, the pervasive criminal element—all the repressive conditions the movie’s “racially” profiled dogs are forced to live under have their corollaries in the real world of the politically excluded and religiously suspect.  Harrassed by authority and exploited by ruthless, self-serving men, this underclass is understandably an easy breeding ground for radicalization and rebellion.  The mayhem committed by the film’s trained-to-be-a-killer dog and his followers mirrors the acts of murder and destruction we’ve become all too familiar with in recent years.  The title White God therefore has a deeply ironic meaning, bringing together the ideas of racial and religious authority with their historical abuse, and the continuing societal violence that is the tragic consequence.

The film’s inventiveness isn’t confined to such bold comparisons, however.  First and last, this movie is about the dogs.  And they are truly amazing.  Remarkably well trained, the dogs make the fantastic events--particularly in the film’s second half--frighteningly real.  Suspension of disbelief is never a problem. The filmmakers worked closely with trainers who rounded up street dogs and rescued others from pounds.  After filming was over, they helped them all get adopted, practicing what their film so movingly preaches.  Hagen is portrayed by two brothers, Luke and Body, and they are both so skillfully directed that their combined performance as the film’s central and most complex character actually seems nuanced.  That may be the ultimate testament to the level of commitment the filmmakers brought to this harrowing and insightful film.

 

 

 

 

 

God's Pocket

God’s Pocket is a small Philadelphia neighborhood suffering from all sorts of urban ailments, but don’t tell that to the people who live there because they don’t like to hear it.  This film adaptation of Pete Dexter’s novel by Mad Men star, and first-time director, John Slattery examines the intersecting lives of several characters stuck in “the Pocket,” as they call the area with defensive, chip-on-the-shoulder pride.  The late Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Mickey Scarpato, an independent meat vendor whose downtrodden existence reflects the depressed area he inhabits.  Married to Jeanie (Christina Hendricks), a divorcee with a troubled teenage son, Mickey spends his days half-heartedly canvassing for customers, but more enthusiastically conspiring with cronies to hijack truckloads of beef.  When not pursuing larceny, he hangs out at the corner tap with a cast of barflies who appear to have stumbled in from Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh by way of Cheers.  But when his step-son Leon is killed at a construction site, Mickey becomes enmeshed in pursuing his grief-stricken wife’s wishes to have her son buried in style.  His plans quickly go awry, with some grimly farcical consequences. 

For her part, Jeanie refuses to accept the official version that Leon’s death was an accident and pushes for an investigation, which catches the attention of jaded columnist Richard Shellburn (Richard Jenkins).  His mild interest in the story changes to ardent pursuit after interviewing the attractive Jeanie—pursuit of her, that is, not of the truth.   Throw in a couple of bumbling underworld figures and a gun-toting flower shop owner and you have the formula for what might have been a sharp, quirky comedy with dark overtones of social commentary.  Unfortunately, the raw slice of blue-collar life atmosphere and the comic plot of mix-ups and mayhem aren’t blended well.  The surprisingly lackadaisical script—by Dexter himself, along with Slattery and Alex Metcalf—is just occasionally amusing, and Slattery’s blase direction does nothing to make up for it.  The results are a rather melancholy mélange--mopey but never moving, dopey instead of truly funny.  

The interesting cast, which could have injected novel energy into the film, instead seems dispirited--none more so than Hoffman.  Mumbling his dialogue and looking like he’d just rolled out of bed and hadn’t had his first cup of coffee yet, Hoffman plays Mickey in a manner so self-effacing he almost detaches from the story.  Hoffman was a gifted actor and could live inside a character like few of his contemporaries could, but in this role he’s emotionally absent and as a result Mickey, a character with lots of rough edges, comes out flat.  You can’t engage the viewer’s sympathy when you refuse to engage the viewer at all.  This late-career stumble is sad to witness.  

As Jeanie, Slattery’s Mad Men cast mate Christina Hendricks gets to emote more than the sultry secretary she plays on that show, but she’s still stuck in sexpot mode.  This is a disservice to both actress and character, since Jeanie’s grief is the emotional heart of the film.  Hendricks gamely tries to convey the suffering and the inner strength of a working class mother at an emotional crossroads but is hampered by an ungenerous script and conflicted direction.  The movie needs her to be alluring since that is an important point in the plot but like so much of American cinema, or cinema in general, it fails to integrate her physical attractiveness into her humanity.  Despite frumpy dresses and a dearth of make-up, she’s simply too glamorous for the part, and the attempts to downgrade her looks while at the same time exploiting them are rather absurd.   

Fortunately, Richard Jenkins has a much better time of it with the star-crossed journalist Shellburn.  It’s chiefly in his scenes that the film finds its tone since he alone of the principle actors taps into the story’s sub-current of irony.  Despite working with similar emotive constraints as Hoffman--like Mickey, Shellburn is sleep-walking through life—he’s not hampered by them but instead uses them to explore the at once comic and sad limitations of his character.  The reawakening of erotic longing brings Shellburn out of his shell just far enough to realize he still has a job to do, and something to write about.  Sadly, he blows the opportunity.  Myopic, self-serving, frequently off-putting, this ill-fated character provides the second half of film with some much-needed focus.  The culmination of his story arc pulls the people of God’s Pocket together for a disturbing, ironic finale, a devastating scene that, despite the futility it depicts, saves the movie itself from feeling futile.  

But God’s Pocket is still a mostly inarticulate film, uncertain of what it’s trying to say about life in its particular part of the world.  On top of that it’s unpleasant to look at.   Lance Acord‘s muddy cinematography gives many of its interiors a yellowish brown tinge, rendering images only partially visible, but without artistic effect as compensation.  There’s no art here, just obscurity, as if we're watching the action through a dirty window.  The grimy look may match the depressed spirits of the surroundings, but it adds no layer of expression to what we’re shown--it just strains our eyesight.  In fact, the muddled visuals reflect the film’s major shortcomings: the inconsistency of tone, the obscurity of motive, the lack of genuine urgency to any of the events.  The poverty of God’s Pocket never seems like a social problem worth solving.  The fumblings of the characters never transform comedy (tepid, at best) into viable satire of society or the human condition.  The desperate characters never seem desperate enough for any of that.  The Lower Depths this is not.  It's not that good a neighborhood. 

Life Itself

Life Itself celebrates the life of influential film critic Roger Ebert, who died of cancer in 2013.  The intellectual half of the famous Siskel & Ebert TV team of the 1980s and 1990s (with rival Chicago film reviewer Gene Siskel), Ebert had an encyclopedic knowledge of movies and the moviemaking industry, and an ability to write reviews that explained complex ideas in simple, elegant, and very entertaining language.   He was a born writer with a natural, effortless style which he infused with his genuine passion for films and prescient grasp of their central place in our culture.  An English major at the University of Illinois, he was editor of the student newspaper and began his long association with the Chicago Sun-Times soon after graduation.  His editor asked him to write movie reviews when the current reviewer quit and he never looked back.  For the next fifty years, he wrote thousands of reviews and articles, now archived on his website, www.rogerebert.com, a major resource for anyone studying movies in the last half century. 

 

For many, he was the voice of film criticism in this country, and this became a source of controversy.  He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975, the first film critic to be so honored, but this didn’t keep his own critics from sniping at his growing profile, which overshadowed nearly everyone else after his hugely successful series of television shows with Siskel began in 1975.  Many academics also regarded him with scorn.  There’s an important difference between academic film scholarship and popular reviewing for the news media, but the fascinating thing about Ebert is that his knowledge was so vast and his writing so good he often straddled that divide.  Scholars can’t easily dismiss him.  This wonderful documentary by Steve James (Hoop Dreams) shows us why, as well as giving us a candid behind-the-scenes look at his horrific battle with throat and jaw cancer and his relationship with his marvelous wife Chaz, which sustained both of them  until the end.  Ebert acted the prima donna in his prime, but when he finally became the star of his own movie, his gratitude for the ways in which his life had been graced by others is genuine and moving.  Two thumbs way, way up.