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.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
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.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Phil's Picks: The Ten Best Films of 2008
OK, here is the list--not in the order of preference, but in the order in which I saw them. Overall, I saw about 50 movies this year, which isn't bad. But, of course, the list is highly selective for that reason. So I did my best, but I didn't just come up with ten to fill out the places--I had to make choices, leave a few candidates off (they are included at the end as Honorable Mentions). These, then, are really the ten best films I saw this year, in my humble opinion. Go ahead, tell me how wrong I am--please.
PENELOPE (104 min.)
A charming fractured fairy tale with a message for impressionable young adults but humor for their jaded parents. Christina Ricci is Penelope, an heiress born with the nose of a pig, the result of an ancient curse. Her search for love becomes a journey toward self-acceptance, with magical results. The humor is quirky enough to keep the sugar-coating off the obvious moral, and Ricci is wonderful. She is very ably supported by James McAvoy, Catherine O’Hara, and Reese Witherspoon (who also produced). Filmed in 2006, but not released until this year. Don’t ask me why.
IRON MAN (126 min.)
The superhero action film came of age in 2008 with three fine installments drawn from America’s comic book subculture: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and The Dark Knight (Batman). Two have made my list of the year’s best. First released was Iron Man, which has to be the first superhero movie with better dialogue and character development than action sequences. The latter are routine, although that iron suit is way cool. With his swinging, cheeky portrayal of Tony Stark/Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr.’s bizarre start-and-stop career may finally have gained the traction it needs to…well, take off. His on-screen chemistry with Gwyneth Paltrow as Stark’s long-suffering personal assistant/love interest Pepper Potts gives their scenes together real sparkle, and if their tart dialogue exchanges get you thinking of Cary Grant sparring slyly with Rosalind Russell or Irene Dunne in classic romantic comedies--they should.
THE RAPE OF EUROPA (117 min.)
This powerful documentary flew way under the radar. Inspired by the book of the same name by Lynn H. Nicholas, it documents the Nazis’ systematic looting of Europe’s art treasures during World War II. At this late date, you wouldn’t think any film could make the Nazis look worse, but Europa accomplishes just that. Not only were they power-mad mass murderers, they were also reckless thieves who tried to steal everything of value that stood in their path. Europa describes the epic scope of their burglary, the heroic efforts of the Allies to find and restore the stolen art, and the heartbreaking legal battles that continue over ownership claims by descendants of those long dead (many, Jews who died in concentration camps). This excellent film makes sadly clear that World War II is not yet over, and the Nazis’ legacy of cultural destruction is still with us today.
A FRIEND INDEED (90 min.)
As inspiring as a documentary can get, A Friend Indeed tells the amazing story of local legend Bill Sackter, a mentally challenged man improperly institutionalized for 44 years before being released. He was brought to Iowa City in the 1970’s by Barry Morrow, a friend who had become his legal guardian, and here he was given the job of running the coffee shop at the UI School of Social Work (now known as Wild Bill’s Coffee Shop). He made the most of it. Warm, friendly, funny, Bill reached out to people, befriended many, influenced more, won awards, saw his life turned into a TV movie starring Mickey Rooney, and received national recognition, all in a few short years (he died in 1983). This wonderful film by local filmmaker Lane Wyrick recounts Bill’s life in photos, footage, and interviews with Bill himself and with those who knew him best, and loved him much. It’s the best film about getting a second chance you’ll ever see. Not in distribution, it is being shown around the country at festivals and in special showings, after having made its debut this past summer in Hancher Auditorium one week before flooding ravaged the UI arts campus. The dvd is currently in preparation. You can read more about the film and its makers at http://www.billsackter.com/.
THE DARK KNIGHT (152 min.)
What remains to be said about this amazing film? The Dark Knight raises the bar for superhero action films so high, it’s hard to envision what could top it. Nothing like the late Heath Ledger’s Joker has appeared on the screen before. He’s Evil Unbound, Chaos Incarnate, the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse. Christian Bale’s Batman/Bruce Wayne wrestles with moral choices and personal loss so deep that Batman finally attains the status of tragic hero previous films have claimed for him. And the film's vision of Gotham City in the grip of the Joker's crime wave presents a truly frightening image of a world turned irrational by terror. Sound familiar?
THE PERFECT CAPPUCCINO (89 min.)
This documentary is my personal favorite film of 2008, and I don’t even drink cappuccino. But filmmaker Amy Ferraris does--lots of it--and she documents her devotion to the frothy Italian drink by searching the highways and byways of America to find the best that’s available. Oh, you can get it at your local Starbucks, you say? Ferraris has a thing or two to say about Starbucks, neither of them good. Her film charmingly combines personal essay and social commentary as she investigates America’s coffee habit and critiques Starbucks’s business ethics and the quality of the coffee it serves under the guise of espresso and its variants. Then she travels to Italy to show us how real espresso and cappuccino are made. Narrated amusingly by Ferraris herself, her movie is funny, thought-provoking, critical but never angry, and genuinely unique. Unfortunately, it also is available only at festivals and special screenings, until its dvd release early next year (February or March). You can read about it at www.cappuccinomovie.com/index.php, and in my full review elsewhere on this blog.
TRAITOR (114 min.)
Another film that passed by virtually unnoticed, Traitor is both an absorbing thriller and an insightful character study. Don Cheadle is superb as a federal agent who goes deep undercover to infiltrate an Islamic terrorist group and take it down from inside. The problem is he’s a devout Muslim himself and is acting out of conscience. When he begins to question the motives of those he’s serving, he truly becomes a man without a country. Cheadle is one of America’s finest actors, and his subtle performance gives life to his character’s inner torment, even as he masks it in outward stoicism. Guy Pearce offers strong support as the FBI agent relentlessly tracking him down. In addition to being a taut thriller, Traitor powerfully addresses the troubling moral challenges of America’s “war on terror,” challenges much less straightforward than some of our leaders would have us believe.
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (114 min.)
A truly odd but fascinating take on the vampire film, this Swedish import takes its subject matter very seriously and deliberately avoids conventional chills or horror. While there is some blood, the shocks it delivers are mostly psychological. Oskar, a lonely 12-year-old boy habitually picked on by bullies at school, is befriended by a mysterious girl named Eli who lives in his apartment building but whom he sees only at night. The friendship that develops between them leads to the first stirrings of love, and eventually to a bond that is stronger than at least one of them is prepared for. A poignant coming-of-age tale, Let the Right One In captures the loneliness and pain of early adolescence with great sensitivity. It also demonstrates that often the most effective genre films are those that incorporate subject matter and themes typically outside their genres. Slow-moving and detached in tone, the film nevertheless gets under your skin and then concludes with an ingenious plot twist that I found more disturbing than the usual vampire gore. I’m still shuddering at the thought of it.
APPALOOSA (114 min.)
I love westerns, and when one this good rides into town, it’s cause for me to start shooting up the local saloon. The terrific thing about Appaloosa is the way it both honors the rules of the genre and bends them in creative ways (see my full review at http://www.littlevillagemag.com/). Ed Harris--who directs as well as stars--and Viggo Mortensen are itinerant lawmen hired to protect a New Mexico town from a predatory rancher. Their professionalism and long partnership prepare them for this kind of challenge; what they aren’t prepared for is their encounter with a provocative woman (Renee Zellweger) who keeps everyone guessing about her motives. The three leads are all superb--especially Zellweger, who takes possession of the film as commandingly as her character does the man’s world in it. Harris reveals a keen ear for dialogue (he co-wrote the script, too) and a sharp eye for the scenery and iconic imagery that make the western one of the visually richest of all genres. Appaloosa is the best American western since Unforgiven.
QUANTUM OF SOLACE (106 min.)
I will just say this straight out--I liked this film better than Casino Royale, and I liked that film a lot. Daniel Craig and the new-look Bond world of these two movies have me really excited about the franchise again. What Quantum brings to the Bond canon--besides the dynamic Craig appearing even more comfortable in his role than the first time--is a leaner, stripped-down approach to the famous secret agent’s adventures. Casino Royale felt overstuffed at times. Quantum begins in the middle of a car chase, and the action lets up hardly at all for the next 106 minutes. It’s the most exciting, most purely entertaining Bond outing since Tomorrow Is Forever (Pierce Brosnan’s best, which had a similarly relentless approach to the action). But it somehow finds time to explore Bond’s character, deepen his relationship with M, and introduce an unconventional, tragic heroine (Olga Kurylenko), whose bond with Bond is based on mutual respect rather than sex (although, of course, the attraction between them is strong). Mathieu Amalric is the creepiest Bond villain ever, a truly unnerving man, and the plot about exploiting ecological disaster for power is both timely and credible. Whatever your opinion of James Bond movies, this is good stuff. Check it out--you will at least be shaken, if not stirred.
Honorable Mention: Bottle Shock, Pride and Glory, The Incredible Hulk, Changeling, Milk
PENELOPE (104 min.)
A charming fractured fairy tale with a message for impressionable young adults but humor for their jaded parents. Christina Ricci is Penelope, an heiress born with the nose of a pig, the result of an ancient curse. Her search for love becomes a journey toward self-acceptance, with magical results. The humor is quirky enough to keep the sugar-coating off the obvious moral, and Ricci is wonderful. She is very ably supported by James McAvoy, Catherine O’Hara, and Reese Witherspoon (who also produced). Filmed in 2006, but not released until this year. Don’t ask me why.
IRON MAN (126 min.)
The superhero action film came of age in 2008 with three fine installments drawn from America’s comic book subculture: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and The Dark Knight (Batman). Two have made my list of the year’s best. First released was Iron Man, which has to be the first superhero movie with better dialogue and character development than action sequences. The latter are routine, although that iron suit is way cool. With his swinging, cheeky portrayal of Tony Stark/Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr.’s bizarre start-and-stop career may finally have gained the traction it needs to…well, take off. His on-screen chemistry with Gwyneth Paltrow as Stark’s long-suffering personal assistant/love interest Pepper Potts gives their scenes together real sparkle, and if their tart dialogue exchanges get you thinking of Cary Grant sparring slyly with Rosalind Russell or Irene Dunne in classic romantic comedies--they should.
THE RAPE OF EUROPA (117 min.)
This powerful documentary flew way under the radar. Inspired by the book of the same name by Lynn H. Nicholas, it documents the Nazis’ systematic looting of Europe’s art treasures during World War II. At this late date, you wouldn’t think any film could make the Nazis look worse, but Europa accomplishes just that. Not only were they power-mad mass murderers, they were also reckless thieves who tried to steal everything of value that stood in their path. Europa describes the epic scope of their burglary, the heroic efforts of the Allies to find and restore the stolen art, and the heartbreaking legal battles that continue over ownership claims by descendants of those long dead (many, Jews who died in concentration camps). This excellent film makes sadly clear that World War II is not yet over, and the Nazis’ legacy of cultural destruction is still with us today.
A FRIEND INDEED (90 min.)
As inspiring as a documentary can get, A Friend Indeed tells the amazing story of local legend Bill Sackter, a mentally challenged man improperly institutionalized for 44 years before being released. He was brought to Iowa City in the 1970’s by Barry Morrow, a friend who had become his legal guardian, and here he was given the job of running the coffee shop at the UI School of Social Work (now known as Wild Bill’s Coffee Shop). He made the most of it. Warm, friendly, funny, Bill reached out to people, befriended many, influenced more, won awards, saw his life turned into a TV movie starring Mickey Rooney, and received national recognition, all in a few short years (he died in 1983). This wonderful film by local filmmaker Lane Wyrick recounts Bill’s life in photos, footage, and interviews with Bill himself and with those who knew him best, and loved him much. It’s the best film about getting a second chance you’ll ever see. Not in distribution, it is being shown around the country at festivals and in special showings, after having made its debut this past summer in Hancher Auditorium one week before flooding ravaged the UI arts campus. The dvd is currently in preparation. You can read more about the film and its makers at http://www.billsackter.com/.
THE DARK KNIGHT (152 min.)
What remains to be said about this amazing film? The Dark Knight raises the bar for superhero action films so high, it’s hard to envision what could top it. Nothing like the late Heath Ledger’s Joker has appeared on the screen before. He’s Evil Unbound, Chaos Incarnate, the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse. Christian Bale’s Batman/Bruce Wayne wrestles with moral choices and personal loss so deep that Batman finally attains the status of tragic hero previous films have claimed for him. And the film's vision of Gotham City in the grip of the Joker's crime wave presents a truly frightening image of a world turned irrational by terror. Sound familiar?
THE PERFECT CAPPUCCINO (89 min.)
This documentary is my personal favorite film of 2008, and I don’t even drink cappuccino. But filmmaker Amy Ferraris does--lots of it--and she documents her devotion to the frothy Italian drink by searching the highways and byways of America to find the best that’s available. Oh, you can get it at your local Starbucks, you say? Ferraris has a thing or two to say about Starbucks, neither of them good. Her film charmingly combines personal essay and social commentary as she investigates America’s coffee habit and critiques Starbucks’s business ethics and the quality of the coffee it serves under the guise of espresso and its variants. Then she travels to Italy to show us how real espresso and cappuccino are made. Narrated amusingly by Ferraris herself, her movie is funny, thought-provoking, critical but never angry, and genuinely unique. Unfortunately, it also is available only at festivals and special screenings, until its dvd release early next year (February or March). You can read about it at www.cappuccinomovie.com/index.php, and in my full review elsewhere on this blog.
TRAITOR (114 min.)
Another film that passed by virtually unnoticed, Traitor is both an absorbing thriller and an insightful character study. Don Cheadle is superb as a federal agent who goes deep undercover to infiltrate an Islamic terrorist group and take it down from inside. The problem is he’s a devout Muslim himself and is acting out of conscience. When he begins to question the motives of those he’s serving, he truly becomes a man without a country. Cheadle is one of America’s finest actors, and his subtle performance gives life to his character’s inner torment, even as he masks it in outward stoicism. Guy Pearce offers strong support as the FBI agent relentlessly tracking him down. In addition to being a taut thriller, Traitor powerfully addresses the troubling moral challenges of America’s “war on terror,” challenges much less straightforward than some of our leaders would have us believe.
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (114 min.)
A truly odd but fascinating take on the vampire film, this Swedish import takes its subject matter very seriously and deliberately avoids conventional chills or horror. While there is some blood, the shocks it delivers are mostly psychological. Oskar, a lonely 12-year-old boy habitually picked on by bullies at school, is befriended by a mysterious girl named Eli who lives in his apartment building but whom he sees only at night. The friendship that develops between them leads to the first stirrings of love, and eventually to a bond that is stronger than at least one of them is prepared for. A poignant coming-of-age tale, Let the Right One In captures the loneliness and pain of early adolescence with great sensitivity. It also demonstrates that often the most effective genre films are those that incorporate subject matter and themes typically outside their genres. Slow-moving and detached in tone, the film nevertheless gets under your skin and then concludes with an ingenious plot twist that I found more disturbing than the usual vampire gore. I’m still shuddering at the thought of it.
APPALOOSA (114 min.)
I love westerns, and when one this good rides into town, it’s cause for me to start shooting up the local saloon. The terrific thing about Appaloosa is the way it both honors the rules of the genre and bends them in creative ways (see my full review at http://www.littlevillagemag.com/). Ed Harris--who directs as well as stars--and Viggo Mortensen are itinerant lawmen hired to protect a New Mexico town from a predatory rancher. Their professionalism and long partnership prepare them for this kind of challenge; what they aren’t prepared for is their encounter with a provocative woman (Renee Zellweger) who keeps everyone guessing about her motives. The three leads are all superb--especially Zellweger, who takes possession of the film as commandingly as her character does the man’s world in it. Harris reveals a keen ear for dialogue (he co-wrote the script, too) and a sharp eye for the scenery and iconic imagery that make the western one of the visually richest of all genres. Appaloosa is the best American western since Unforgiven.
QUANTUM OF SOLACE (106 min.)
I will just say this straight out--I liked this film better than Casino Royale, and I liked that film a lot. Daniel Craig and the new-look Bond world of these two movies have me really excited about the franchise again. What Quantum brings to the Bond canon--besides the dynamic Craig appearing even more comfortable in his role than the first time--is a leaner, stripped-down approach to the famous secret agent’s adventures. Casino Royale felt overstuffed at times. Quantum begins in the middle of a car chase, and the action lets up hardly at all for the next 106 minutes. It’s the most exciting, most purely entertaining Bond outing since Tomorrow Is Forever (Pierce Brosnan’s best, which had a similarly relentless approach to the action). But it somehow finds time to explore Bond’s character, deepen his relationship with M, and introduce an unconventional, tragic heroine (Olga Kurylenko), whose bond with Bond is based on mutual respect rather than sex (although, of course, the attraction between them is strong). Mathieu Amalric is the creepiest Bond villain ever, a truly unnerving man, and the plot about exploiting ecological disaster for power is both timely and credible. Whatever your opinion of James Bond movies, this is good stuff. Check it out--you will at least be shaken, if not stirred.
Honorable Mention: Bottle Shock, Pride and Glory, The Incredible Hulk, Changeling, Milk
Friday, December 19, 2008
Best Films of 2008
Be sure to check out my picks for Best Films of 2008, coming soon. I'm working on the list right now, checking out which movies were naughty or nice this past year. It will be posted before Christmas. I know you can't wait! But you'll have to--for a few more days.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Australia
This film is still in the theaters; I just saw it a couple of weeks ago. It's a throwback to old adventure-and-romance movies of 1930's and 1940's Hollywood. Not a great film, but a fun one to see at the theater. And, because it has a kind of epic sweep to it, it really deserves to be seen on the big screen. I still prefer seeing films in theaters anyway, because they were made for that kind of viewing environment, and lose something in the home, no matter how good your dvd or blue ray set-up is. I definitely have mixed feelings about the director, Baz Luhrman. I hated Romeo + Juliet, and while I admired many aspects of Moulin Rouge, I found it difficult to watch. Too excessive, which I realize was part of the point. I prefer the more relaxed style of Australia, although I admit it is not the artistic success that Moulin Rouge was. But it has lots of charm, and it covers an important aspect of Australian history that Americans probably know nothing about, the theft of the "Lost Generations." So it has a serious side, too, which is well combined with the lighter parts. (A slightly different version of this review is posted at http://www.littlevillagemag.com/).
AUSTRALIA
One of the great pleasures of the movies is seeing what a purposeful filmmaker can do with an old genre or story by attempting to remake it in her or his own image. Such was the case with Baz Luhrman’s last film, 2001’s Moulin Rouge, his hyperkinetic reinvention of the movie musical. Now, in Australia, he takes on the historical film with similarly ambitious and innovative designs, though somewhat less successful results.
Despite a title that suggests a film as sprawling as an entire continent, Australia actually employs a fairly intimate story, which it attempts to stretch across a wide canvas. Focusing on the short span of 1939-1942, Luhrman showcases his homeland in a time of turmoil, on the brink of World War II. English noblewoman Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) journeys Down Under to join her husband, who is managing a remote cattle station while his finances at home suffer. Determined to sell the station to save the family fortune, she arrives to find her husband recently murdered, perhaps by an Aborigine mystic named King George (David Gulpilil). With the help of a handful of servants and a charismatic Aussie roughneck known simply as Drover (Hugh Jackman), Lady Ashley attempts to save the station by moving her 1500 head of cattle overland to the port of Darwin, where the army is buying beef to feed the troops gathering for war. But opposing her is the appropriately named King Carney (Bryan Brown), a larger-than-life cattle baron in an 11-gallon hat who is trying to corner the market in beef and make a killing. Aiding him in his war profiteering is the duplicitous Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), a former employee of Lord Ashley recently dismissed by his new mistress for his brazen dishonesty.
All the classic elements of a good old-fashioned yarn are in place here, and for much of the film’s first half, the results are engaging enough to deliver just that: an Australian western cross-bred with romantic-comedy adventure ( Red River meets The African Queen). But as the proper English lady melts into the arms of the free-spirit adventurer, the romance turns poignant and Out of Africa comes calling, never to quite go away. Australia has the virtue of not trying to gloss over its plot clichés, stereotyped characters, or obvious borrowings from other films—rather, it embraces them and has fun with them en route to a serious change in tone at midpoint. The image of Australia as untamed and rowdy is played up for all it’s worth in the opening scenes, and the clever meeting between Lady Ashley and Drover occurs during a bar fight that could have been staged by John Ford. But there are more serious intentions underlying the roughhouse, and the film’s second half becomes a grim historical drama centered around the horrific destruction of Darwin by the Japanese a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The attack on Darwin is well staged, if a bit scant on detail, but the film gets bogged down in the standard ploy of positioning lovers against a backdrop of impending doom, which constantly threatens to tear them apart. And so the enjoyable, old-fashioned movie romanticism of part I gives way to the overwrought, will-they-or-won’t-they-survive melodrama of part II.
What rescues Australia from its derivative nature and gives it a more unique identity is the space it creates for Aboriginal culture and magic. The two halves of the film are ingeniously organized around the point-of-view of Australia’s Aborigine population, represented by King George and his grandson, Nullah, a ten-year-old of mixed race under Lady Ashley‘s protection. Their viewpoints are so closely associated with Australia’s wild landscape from the outset that it’s as if the land itself—pictured in stunning views of lush vegetation, sunset-painted rock formations, and shimmering spans of desert—is watching the white settlers’ futile attempts to tame an environment whose spiritual dimension lies, untamable, beyond their comprehension. In an almost supernatural way, King George observes nearly everything that happens from his own special—and sometimes, it seems, invisible—vantage point. Complementing his grandfather’s vision, Nullah provides the movie’s voice. His sometimes song-like narration offers not only wry commentary on the whites he lives with but introduces a second historical theme, the tragic history of the “Lost Generations,” mixed-race children stolen from their families and trained to be servants in European households. The film’s outward events of adventure, romance, and war are molded around the core of this previously hidden story, and Lady Ashley’s ascent to true heroine status comes with her brave defiance of the racist practice.
The two principals, Kidman and Jackman, are an easy-on-the-eye couple, to say the least, and they demonstrate authentic screen chemistry to match. There’s no reason for their characters to meet except to fall in love, and they oblige with conviction. Kidman plays a feisty, liberated woman with the proper panache, and some good comic timing, her brittle, overbearing manner convincingly softened first by grief, then by determination, and finally by love. As she commits to the land that takes her in—it’s Australia we’re all meant to fall for, of course—she commits even more deeply to the orphaned Nullah, whose sweetness, vulnerability, and wisdom are winningly captured by newcomer Brandon Walters in the most emotionally genuine performance of the film. His affecting scenes with Kidman help the actress find the tenderness she needs to transform Lady Ashley into a person of real depth.
The men, on the other hand, offer an amusing clinic on screen machismo, befitting the brawny land they symbolize. Jackman is as comfortable in his role as he is in his skin, which is pretty comfortable, judging by the amount of it on view. He’s got the swagger of his lusty part down pat, but a tragic back story provides that part with some welcome shading, and Jackman is comfortable with that as well. As the senior villain, Brown is full of almost cartoonish bluster, and his screen time is thankfully limited. It’s Wenham that fascinates as the brooding, soft-spoken Fletcher, nemesis of Lady Ashley, a venomous presence who slithers through scenes, never talking directly to, or looking at, those he’s attempting, very effectively, to intimidate.
But the real star of the film is the sumptuous visual style: the bold colors, elegant compositions, and breathtaking natural scenery enhanced by computer graphics that Luhrman and cinematographer Mandy Walker combine to impart a dream-like quality to the imagery, a stylized look that well serves a movie blending romance, history, and native magic. There’s more than a touch of fantasy in all this, and it’s therefore wholly fitting that the Hollywood film most referenced in Australia is The Wizard of Oz, with its parallel tale of a woman journeying to a faraway land and encountering an odd assortment of heroes, villains, and a wizard of sorts.
In Australia, Luhrman has certainly tried to do for the historical film what he did for the musical, recreating it in his fervid imagination. His film is an old-fashioned story told in a new-fashioned way, but despite its genuine flights of inspiration, it’s ultimately too weighed down by its ambitions to fully realize them all. Bold and entertaining, Australia is definitely worth a visit, but to say it will be a rather odd trip at times is something of a down-understatement.
AUSTRALIA
One of the great pleasures of the movies is seeing what a purposeful filmmaker can do with an old genre or story by attempting to remake it in her or his own image. Such was the case with Baz Luhrman’s last film, 2001’s Moulin Rouge, his hyperkinetic reinvention of the movie musical. Now, in Australia, he takes on the historical film with similarly ambitious and innovative designs, though somewhat less successful results.
Despite a title that suggests a film as sprawling as an entire continent, Australia actually employs a fairly intimate story, which it attempts to stretch across a wide canvas. Focusing on the short span of 1939-1942, Luhrman showcases his homeland in a time of turmoil, on the brink of World War II. English noblewoman Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) journeys Down Under to join her husband, who is managing a remote cattle station while his finances at home suffer. Determined to sell the station to save the family fortune, she arrives to find her husband recently murdered, perhaps by an Aborigine mystic named King George (David Gulpilil). With the help of a handful of servants and a charismatic Aussie roughneck known simply as Drover (Hugh Jackman), Lady Ashley attempts to save the station by moving her 1500 head of cattle overland to the port of Darwin, where the army is buying beef to feed the troops gathering for war. But opposing her is the appropriately named King Carney (Bryan Brown), a larger-than-life cattle baron in an 11-gallon hat who is trying to corner the market in beef and make a killing. Aiding him in his war profiteering is the duplicitous Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), a former employee of Lord Ashley recently dismissed by his new mistress for his brazen dishonesty.
All the classic elements of a good old-fashioned yarn are in place here, and for much of the film’s first half, the results are engaging enough to deliver just that: an Australian western cross-bred with romantic-comedy adventure ( Red River meets The African Queen). But as the proper English lady melts into the arms of the free-spirit adventurer, the romance turns poignant and Out of Africa comes calling, never to quite go away. Australia has the virtue of not trying to gloss over its plot clichés, stereotyped characters, or obvious borrowings from other films—rather, it embraces them and has fun with them en route to a serious change in tone at midpoint. The image of Australia as untamed and rowdy is played up for all it’s worth in the opening scenes, and the clever meeting between Lady Ashley and Drover occurs during a bar fight that could have been staged by John Ford. But there are more serious intentions underlying the roughhouse, and the film’s second half becomes a grim historical drama centered around the horrific destruction of Darwin by the Japanese a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The attack on Darwin is well staged, if a bit scant on detail, but the film gets bogged down in the standard ploy of positioning lovers against a backdrop of impending doom, which constantly threatens to tear them apart. And so the enjoyable, old-fashioned movie romanticism of part I gives way to the overwrought, will-they-or-won’t-they-survive melodrama of part II.
What rescues Australia from its derivative nature and gives it a more unique identity is the space it creates for Aboriginal culture and magic. The two halves of the film are ingeniously organized around the point-of-view of Australia’s Aborigine population, represented by King George and his grandson, Nullah, a ten-year-old of mixed race under Lady Ashley‘s protection. Their viewpoints are so closely associated with Australia’s wild landscape from the outset that it’s as if the land itself—pictured in stunning views of lush vegetation, sunset-painted rock formations, and shimmering spans of desert—is watching the white settlers’ futile attempts to tame an environment whose spiritual dimension lies, untamable, beyond their comprehension. In an almost supernatural way, King George observes nearly everything that happens from his own special—and sometimes, it seems, invisible—vantage point. Complementing his grandfather’s vision, Nullah provides the movie’s voice. His sometimes song-like narration offers not only wry commentary on the whites he lives with but introduces a second historical theme, the tragic history of the “Lost Generations,” mixed-race children stolen from their families and trained to be servants in European households. The film’s outward events of adventure, romance, and war are molded around the core of this previously hidden story, and Lady Ashley’s ascent to true heroine status comes with her brave defiance of the racist practice.
The two principals, Kidman and Jackman, are an easy-on-the-eye couple, to say the least, and they demonstrate authentic screen chemistry to match. There’s no reason for their characters to meet except to fall in love, and they oblige with conviction. Kidman plays a feisty, liberated woman with the proper panache, and some good comic timing, her brittle, overbearing manner convincingly softened first by grief, then by determination, and finally by love. As she commits to the land that takes her in—it’s Australia we’re all meant to fall for, of course—she commits even more deeply to the orphaned Nullah, whose sweetness, vulnerability, and wisdom are winningly captured by newcomer Brandon Walters in the most emotionally genuine performance of the film. His affecting scenes with Kidman help the actress find the tenderness she needs to transform Lady Ashley into a person of real depth.
The men, on the other hand, offer an amusing clinic on screen machismo, befitting the brawny land they symbolize. Jackman is as comfortable in his role as he is in his skin, which is pretty comfortable, judging by the amount of it on view. He’s got the swagger of his lusty part down pat, but a tragic back story provides that part with some welcome shading, and Jackman is comfortable with that as well. As the senior villain, Brown is full of almost cartoonish bluster, and his screen time is thankfully limited. It’s Wenham that fascinates as the brooding, soft-spoken Fletcher, nemesis of Lady Ashley, a venomous presence who slithers through scenes, never talking directly to, or looking at, those he’s attempting, very effectively, to intimidate.
But the real star of the film is the sumptuous visual style: the bold colors, elegant compositions, and breathtaking natural scenery enhanced by computer graphics that Luhrman and cinematographer Mandy Walker combine to impart a dream-like quality to the imagery, a stylized look that well serves a movie blending romance, history, and native magic. There’s more than a touch of fantasy in all this, and it’s therefore wholly fitting that the Hollywood film most referenced in Australia is The Wizard of Oz, with its parallel tale of a woman journeying to a faraway land and encountering an odd assortment of heroes, villains, and a wizard of sorts.
In Australia, Luhrman has certainly tried to do for the historical film what he did for the musical, recreating it in his fervid imagination. His film is an old-fashioned story told in a new-fashioned way, but despite its genuine flights of inspiration, it’s ultimately too weighed down by its ambitions to fully realize them all. Bold and entertaining, Australia is definitely worth a visit, but to say it will be a rather odd trip at times is something of a down-understatement.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Pride and Glory
Another surprise from the summer. When I first saw the previews, I thought, "Another cop movie, ho hum." But there was something about it that looked interesting in spite of that, and the cast was intriguing, so I took a chance. I'm really glad I did. This film is violent, intense, and difficult to understand at times (a lot of the dialogue is spoken really fast, with various accents, and in the midst of other conversations and surrounding noise), so you have to pay attention, but it is really worth the effort. Amazingly, it has something new to say about police corruption and its effect on the community. It didn't seem to do much business at the box office, but that's probably because it was too dark for summer, didn't have a big star, and none of the characters wore a cool costume.
PRIDE AND GLORY
The most interesting contemporary police dramas seem to be about corruption on the force, and I would guess that’s not just because breaking the law has always been more interesting to filmmakers than upholding it (it has to storytellers in general), but because of the impact police criminality has had on much of the social unrest in our recent history. Pride and Glory, the grim new cop film co-written and directed by Gavin O’Connor, places itself in this context with no qualms about covering familiar ground—its attack on the subject is direct, unrelenting, and scored with raw, violent images. It is frequently not a comfortable film to watch.
The movie is populated by characters the audience should be used to seeing by now, from the close-knit multi-generational Irish cop family to the wiseguy-like crew of crooked police officers to the chaotically tattooed inner city drug dealers. And the story is not brand new either: an investigation into the killing of four policemen during a drug bust peels away layers of police complicity and deception, pitting officers against each other, and of course brother against brother. Edward Norton takes the lead as Ray Tierney, a once-promising member of New York’s finest scarred literally and figuratively by his past indiscretions, who is given a chance at redemption by leading the investigation into the multiple shootings. What he uncovers is a disturbing trail of crimes and cover-ups that leads back to his brother-in-law, Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell) and Jimmy’s supervisor, Ray’s older brother Francis (Noah Emmerich). Once he begins to tumble to his family’s dark secrets, Ray runs up against his father, Francis Sr. (Jon Voigt), who tries to contain the damage by pressuring Ray into keeping his findings quiet until he can deal with the two men on his own. Against his better judgment, and at great personal sacrifice, he does, until events, spiraling out of control, force him to a decision he’s too long evaded.
What the plot lacks in originality, writer-director O’Connor makes up for with sincerity and street smarts. The film has both a gritty, unkempt look and an urban nightmare quality that fuses police procedural with psychodrama in a powerful format. Opening at nighttime on an inter-departmental football game that looks like a scrimmage in a war zone, Pride plunges the unprepared viewer directly into the action with an intensity that rarely lets up. In scene after scene, hard-charging hand-held camera shots pull us into the frame, where we are forced to eavesdrop on furious conversations conducted at breakneck speed and with awe-inspiring profanity. Even the quiet, domestic scenes are directed with an edgy, noirish quality—the result of natural, often dim lighting and unconventional framing—that keeps our relationship with the characters uncertain, despite the intimacy of the settings.
Because Pride has no major twists or surprises, it is able to focus on the characters, creating tension as the plot coils tightly around each, subtly shifting their positions in relation to each other with every new development. Doing without the megawatt star power of other recent cop dramas (The Departed, Righteous Kill), Pride gives the members of its eclectic cast plenty of room to find their own rhythms within the narrative. Norton is solid if unspectacular as the spiritually wounded Ray. He’s the conscience of the film, and it’s his search for a way out of the moral dilemma he’s inherited that carries the film toward its unhappy resolution. Much better is Voigt, the clan’s tippling patriarch, who espouses his Old School Code--“We take care of our own”-- with the fervor of a man trying to resurrect a world he still passionately believes in, even while he dulls the knowledge that it’s caused only heartbreak with booze. Voigt has mostly been wasted in trivial parts for years, so it’s good to see him again in a role that matters, and even better to see him equal to it. Excellent support is offered by Noah Emmerich, who discovers a quieter register for the elder brother, Francis Jr., a good man caught in a situation he lacks the courage to change. In a moving and unusual subplot, Francis is shown taking care of his cancer-stricken wife, Abby--played with great tenderness by Jennifer Ehle—who manages, despite her own despair, to inspire her husband to at last recognize his greater responsibilities.
But it’s Colin Farrell that gives Pride its glory. Finally giving the performance he’s been promising for years, Farrell tears into Jimmy Egan like a man possessed. The cop-as-thug has become such a familiar figure in cinema lately that he’s practically an urban legend, perhaps most memorably embodied by Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant (1992) and Denzel Washington in Training Day (2001). Farrell meets their challenges head on and creates a character who’s a destructive force of nature, terrorizing criminals, citizens, other cops, perhaps even himself, with equal fury. Both villainous and haunted, Farrell’s Egan is a frightening contradiction, half devoted family man and half demon. Late in the film, when he tells Ray, “I will never apologize for what I‘ve done,” it’s both confession and boast, the tragic declaration of an ego at war with itself, poised precariously between overweening pride and self-condemnation.
Pride and Glory takes its most provocative step in the last act, shifting from family tragedy/crime thriller to the broader perspective of social problem film. The renegade cops are abandoned to the consequences of abusing their public trust, and the final minutes horrifically portray the community’s retribution. The film ends as a cautionary tale about the long-term impact of this abuse on a society that has lost faith in the institutions that are supposed to protect it. There’s a political message in this, and police corruption suddenly is no longer just plot substance but metaphor as well. What Pride and Glory ultimately seems to be about is the culture of corruption that corrodes every level of society, and of course infects the soul of every sufferer, whether perpetrator or victim. As the Tierneys regroup for their attempt to reclaim the trust they had abandoned, the film fades out on a guardedly hopeful note. But it’s an inconclusive one, befitting a movie which documents so fiercely the many opportunities for betrayal.
PRIDE AND GLORY
The most interesting contemporary police dramas seem to be about corruption on the force, and I would guess that’s not just because breaking the law has always been more interesting to filmmakers than upholding it (it has to storytellers in general), but because of the impact police criminality has had on much of the social unrest in our recent history. Pride and Glory, the grim new cop film co-written and directed by Gavin O’Connor, places itself in this context with no qualms about covering familiar ground—its attack on the subject is direct, unrelenting, and scored with raw, violent images. It is frequently not a comfortable film to watch.
The movie is populated by characters the audience should be used to seeing by now, from the close-knit multi-generational Irish cop family to the wiseguy-like crew of crooked police officers to the chaotically tattooed inner city drug dealers. And the story is not brand new either: an investigation into the killing of four policemen during a drug bust peels away layers of police complicity and deception, pitting officers against each other, and of course brother against brother. Edward Norton takes the lead as Ray Tierney, a once-promising member of New York’s finest scarred literally and figuratively by his past indiscretions, who is given a chance at redemption by leading the investigation into the multiple shootings. What he uncovers is a disturbing trail of crimes and cover-ups that leads back to his brother-in-law, Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell) and Jimmy’s supervisor, Ray’s older brother Francis (Noah Emmerich). Once he begins to tumble to his family’s dark secrets, Ray runs up against his father, Francis Sr. (Jon Voigt), who tries to contain the damage by pressuring Ray into keeping his findings quiet until he can deal with the two men on his own. Against his better judgment, and at great personal sacrifice, he does, until events, spiraling out of control, force him to a decision he’s too long evaded.
What the plot lacks in originality, writer-director O’Connor makes up for with sincerity and street smarts. The film has both a gritty, unkempt look and an urban nightmare quality that fuses police procedural with psychodrama in a powerful format. Opening at nighttime on an inter-departmental football game that looks like a scrimmage in a war zone, Pride plunges the unprepared viewer directly into the action with an intensity that rarely lets up. In scene after scene, hard-charging hand-held camera shots pull us into the frame, where we are forced to eavesdrop on furious conversations conducted at breakneck speed and with awe-inspiring profanity. Even the quiet, domestic scenes are directed with an edgy, noirish quality—the result of natural, often dim lighting and unconventional framing—that keeps our relationship with the characters uncertain, despite the intimacy of the settings.
Because Pride has no major twists or surprises, it is able to focus on the characters, creating tension as the plot coils tightly around each, subtly shifting their positions in relation to each other with every new development. Doing without the megawatt star power of other recent cop dramas (The Departed, Righteous Kill), Pride gives the members of its eclectic cast plenty of room to find their own rhythms within the narrative. Norton is solid if unspectacular as the spiritually wounded Ray. He’s the conscience of the film, and it’s his search for a way out of the moral dilemma he’s inherited that carries the film toward its unhappy resolution. Much better is Voigt, the clan’s tippling patriarch, who espouses his Old School Code--“We take care of our own”-- with the fervor of a man trying to resurrect a world he still passionately believes in, even while he dulls the knowledge that it’s caused only heartbreak with booze. Voigt has mostly been wasted in trivial parts for years, so it’s good to see him again in a role that matters, and even better to see him equal to it. Excellent support is offered by Noah Emmerich, who discovers a quieter register for the elder brother, Francis Jr., a good man caught in a situation he lacks the courage to change. In a moving and unusual subplot, Francis is shown taking care of his cancer-stricken wife, Abby--played with great tenderness by Jennifer Ehle—who manages, despite her own despair, to inspire her husband to at last recognize his greater responsibilities.
But it’s Colin Farrell that gives Pride its glory. Finally giving the performance he’s been promising for years, Farrell tears into Jimmy Egan like a man possessed. The cop-as-thug has become such a familiar figure in cinema lately that he’s practically an urban legend, perhaps most memorably embodied by Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant (1992) and Denzel Washington in Training Day (2001). Farrell meets their challenges head on and creates a character who’s a destructive force of nature, terrorizing criminals, citizens, other cops, perhaps even himself, with equal fury. Both villainous and haunted, Farrell’s Egan is a frightening contradiction, half devoted family man and half demon. Late in the film, when he tells Ray, “I will never apologize for what I‘ve done,” it’s both confession and boast, the tragic declaration of an ego at war with itself, poised precariously between overweening pride and self-condemnation.
Pride and Glory takes its most provocative step in the last act, shifting from family tragedy/crime thriller to the broader perspective of social problem film. The renegade cops are abandoned to the consequences of abusing their public trust, and the final minutes horrifically portray the community’s retribution. The film ends as a cautionary tale about the long-term impact of this abuse on a society that has lost faith in the institutions that are supposed to protect it. There’s a political message in this, and police corruption suddenly is no longer just plot substance but metaphor as well. What Pride and Glory ultimately seems to be about is the culture of corruption that corrodes every level of society, and of course infects the soul of every sufferer, whether perpetrator or victim. As the Tierneys regroup for their attempt to reclaim the trust they had abandoned, the film fades out on a guardedly hopeful note. But it’s an inconclusive one, befitting a movie which documents so fiercely the many opportunities for betrayal.
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