Here's my dilemma: I really enjoyed watching this film because I love gangster films. The cars, the hats, the tommy guns--I can't get enough of that stuff. But Public Enemies really isn't a very good film. In fact, it's the biggest disappointment of the summer for me (so far), because I had such high hopes for it. A terrific subject, a talented director, one of the most interesting actors on the screen today--how could it miss? It missed. It missed because its aim was off. Its aim was off because...well, see below. Sigh.
PUBLIC ENEMIES
The gangster film is more connected to the American psyche than any other movie genre, with the exception of the western. Together, these two genres explore opposing sides of the myth of America as the land of opportunity. The western celebrates the openness of America as wilderness waiting to be explored, tamed, and settled by law-abiding citizens: opportunity beckons in the spread of civilization west and the suppression of those elements opposed to it (outlaws, Native American tribes). The gangster film examines the consequences of that civilization several generations later, as wide open prairies and equal opportunity have been replaced by cities teeming with poverty, corruption, and a class structure that denies the promise of the American Dream to many. Opportunity exists for the latter chiefly in the form of crime: attacking the social order that has trapped them in the lower depths. One might almost consider the gangster film an inverted form of the western, in this regard.
The great virtue of Public Enemies, director Michael Mann’s new biopic of Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), is that his film is aware of this intersection of mythologies and has the good sense to exploit it. Unfortunately, that is one of its only virtues, for in nearly every other way Enemies is a misfire. There is certainly nothing wrong with the project itself. Dillinger is one of America’s great criminal figures, and a new treatment of his life for a new generation of moviegoers is definitely wanted, especially since previous film biographies (1945, 1973) have seriously missed the mark. But Mann, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman, takes a strangely diffident approach to his colorful subject, with the result that Dillinger once again eludes capture.
The film recounts the familiar highlights of his storied 1933-1934 crime spree, robbing banks throughout the Midwest with astonishing ease. Along the way, he falls in love with Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), a coat check girl he meets in a Chicago nightclub, and catches the attention of the Bureau of Investigations in Washington, D.C. Its young, ambitious director, J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), commits his crime-fighting unit (soon to be the F.B.I.) to hunting down Dillinger by appointing special agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) head of its Chicago office. As a result, Dillinger, named Public Enemy No.1, finds it increasingly difficult to operate. He engineers a daring break from an Indiana jail but is so hot afterward that former allies abandon him, leaving him few places to hide out. After an especially bloody bank job, he holes up at the Little Bohemia resort in Wisconsin with his gang, but Purvis tracks him there and what follows is one of the most famous, and widely imitated, shoot-outs in American criminal history. Despite having his cabin surrounded by G-men, Dillinger shoots his way free and escapes, humiliating Purvis and increasing his determination to catch him. That occurs one night outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago, when Dillinger is gunned down by Purvis’s men after leaving a showing of Manhattan Melodrama, a gangster picture in which Clark Gable portrays a figure loosely based on Dillinger himself. He was betrayed, of course, by the “woman in red,” Anna Sage, a brothel madam facing deportation if she didn’t give him up to the feds.
Some of this stuff is factual, much of it isn’t—gleaned from legend, past movie fictions, or the current screenwriters’ imaginations—but all of it is highly romanticized and bathed in the glow of nostalgia. This tone is very much at odds with the film’s photographic style, which relies heavily on imagery drained of color, giving it a muted, near black-and-white look at times--a touch of Depression bleakness. In addition, Mann shoots many scenes with hand-held cameras that weave around and between the actors, catching them at odd, sometimes uncomfortable angles, and framing the action at very close range, so that the viewer is plunged into the midst of what’s going on rather than allowed to stand back and study it from a safe distance. This approach gives the film an immediacy and an off-guard quality that would work well with gritty, raw story matter--but Enemies is anything but gritty or raw, despite the violence of its subject. From the romantic plotline to the meticulous costuming—the clothes are chic, tailored to perfection, and seemingly unperspired-on—to the gleaming cars and spotless set interiors, Public Enemies is a showcase for a world that exists only in an art director’s imagination, a world every bit as make-believe as those in the Hollywood melodramas Dillinger liked a bit too much.
This clash of styles produces artistic confusion: the film has a strangely detached feeling, despite the camera’s closeness to the people onscreen. The star-crossed love affair between Dillinger and his moll, Billie, is so hopelessly retro, so out of touch with modern sensibility about criminals and their lives, that it renders the naturalistic effects of the documentary-style shooting irrelevant, actually distancing us further from the characters instead of forging the intimate connection desired. It doesn’t help that most of the dialogue is banal, often unintelligible, and so lacking in personality that supporting characters never clearly define themselves. Most of Dillinger’s gang members are interchangeable; when one gets shot we feel little or no loss--they’ve never emerged from the surroundings to become distinct individuals we care about. The film puts us in the odd position of eavesdropping on conversations but never learning anything worth knowing because nothing worth knowing is ever said. The camera gets inside the action but not inside the story; a more traditional, aloof method of filming would have penetrated deeper and uncovered more of its emotional life. I find this rather ironic.
But the main problem with the film is Johnny Depp’s Dillinger. Depp is one of the cleverest, most watchable actors on the screen today, equally adept at carefully nuanced and over-the-top performances, but he is less than arresting as America’s Most Wanted. Dillinger, by most accounts, was a humorous, cocky, charming extrovert—notoriously oversexed as well. Depp’s version is moody, closemouthed, introspective, and seemingly monogamous--a romantic who longs more for time spent with the woman he loves than the excitement of his daring robberies and whorehouse lifestyle. Much of Public Enemies’ chilliness radiates from him, and this miscalculated and inaccurate performance is as much a surprise as it is a disappointment.
Which is not to say he doesn’t have some good moments. A jailhouse confrontation with Purvis late in the film—Depp’s and Bale’s only scene together—crackles with tension and humor, Depp finally showing some of Dillinger’s spark as he baits the strait-laced lawman from behind bars. And he captures the bank robber’s on-camera insolence pretty well, too, smirking cagily for photographers like a rock star who digs the press swooning over him but pretends take it all in stride. Dillinger seemed to attract that kind of attention in his day, which might explain the most interesting side of Depp’s impersonation: there are moments when the soft, slurring drawl he affects sounds a bit like Elvis. It’s been Depp’s modus operandi of late to channel a pop idol for some of his more grandiose characters: Keith Richards for Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and the late Michael Jackson for Willie Wonka in 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Now comes Dillinger as Elvis, which makes sense in a weird kind of way: both were charismatic bad boys, media darlings in life, folk heroes in death—which came early to each--whose statures continue to grow as the years go by. But fascinating as this is to think about afterward, Depp just doesn’t give “Dillvis” enough swagger to make him fun to watch while the film is rolling.
The other principals don’t fare very well, either. Bale, sadly, shoots blanks as Purvis. Who this G-man is or why he’s so driven are mysteries the film makes no effort to solve. The script gives the actor virtually nothing to work with, and he responds by giving nothing back. His terse, monotonic portrayal of Dillinger‘s nemesis is a flat-out bore. Marion Cotillard, fresh off her Oscar-winning role in La Vie en Rose, glows as the ill-fortuned Billie, but is adrift in a script that can’t keep her busy, which proves a sorry waste of her talent. Only Crudup as a feisty, politicking Hoover and Stephen Lang as Charles Winstead, a weathered western lawman recruited by Purvis to help corral Dillinger, give off any heat, but neither commands much screen time.
Lang’s character does provide the point where Public Enemies intersects with the western, however. Purvis and the Bureau represent the future of law enforcement: bureaucratic in organization, scientific in method, urban in setting. But Dillinger’s wildness poses a challenge to their new order because he is a throwback to the days of the rural outlaw, the train robbers and bank robbers of the vanished West. Dillinger is Jesse James in a fedora hat, wielding a tommy gun instead of a revolver. Recognizing that he can’t catch him because he doesn’t understand him, Purvis calls in Winstead and two of his cowboy companions; their arrival is captured in an iconic moment as they step off the train in Chicago, ten gallon hats on their heads, bedrolls and rifles in their hands. The genre that symbolizes the triumph of law over disorder has entered the gangster film‘s sphere of social chaos, announcing an epic clash. What follows soon after is just that, the shootout at Little Bohemia, the movie’s big action set-piece, and the sequence where gangster picture and western most completely overlap. It's the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but in reverse: the bad guy gets away, the sheriff is defeated.
Dillinger’s death makes it obvious that by the end of the film Mann has become more interested in the western’s mythmaking potential than the gangster film’s implied social criticism. It’s an elaborate sequence, prolonged and poeticized by slow motion and intricate cutting between Dillinger strolling down the sidewalk and lawmen stalking him from behind, drawing their guns, taking careful aim… It’s not the violent, ugly depiction of death that awaits the protagonist in most gangster films, but a lyrical restaging of it: an elegy for a romantic figure from America‘s past, and for the era that he's come to represent. A late western such as The Wild Bunch (1969)--a long, slow meditation on the closing of the west and the death of its heroic individualism--is closer to what Mann has in mind here than the stern warning issued to society by James Cagney’s brutal end in The Public Enemy (1931). Though the name of the current film is obviously an homage to that genre-defining classic, their underlying philosophies couldn’t be farther apart.
America’s fascination with violence, and with films that glorify its violent past, seems to be endless. Part of their appeal might be to help us process, even escape, the violence of the present. But because the gangster and western genres are historical in nature, they also provide ways for us to reinvent the past, or to understand it differently over time. The gangster film was once a contemporary social problem film, angry and direct in nature. A film like Public Enemies has left criticism behind and crossed into the mythologizing realm of the western. It’s not the first to do so, of course--Bonnie and Clyde and The Godfather saga broke this ground years ago. But it reminds us how far the gangster film has traveled, and why a bank robber who died 75 years ago is still at large and will never lack pursuers.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Up
This is a delightful film, another triumph for Pixar, but probably its darkest one yet. I can't say enough about the stunning visuals, or the vocal acting, especially by Christopher Plummer as the villain, Charles Muntz, a charming but truly malevolent character. Several people have pointed out to me that the figure of Carl, the hero, looks like a puppet version of Spencer Tracy in his final movie role, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? And it's true--the flat head, short white hair, the oversized black glasses, it's all there. What an obscure and brilliant allusion! Those people at Pixar know their stuff.
UP
Much of Up, the new animated film from Pixar and Disney, is a real downer. Consider these subjects for a “children’s” movie: aging, death, care of the elderly, the loss of parental love, the death of youthful ideals. Ouch. But Up is ultimately what its title claims it to be: an uplifting film that carries one away from all those cares and woes. How it does that just might make the movie more rewarding for viewers in middle life and beyond than for the kids who would seem at first glance to be its audience. But that’s why you can never completely trust the way films are marketed, and why surprise is still such an important part of the movie-going experience.
The opening scenes of the film chronicle the life of Carl Fredricksen (voiced as an adult by the wonderful Ed Asner), from his Depression-era childhood to the present day. A shy, lonely boy who spends his afternoons at the movies, Carl’s world is turned upside down when he meets Ellie, a hyperactive young girl who shares his hero worship of world-renowned explorer and adventurer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer at his suavest) and has started a club in his honor in an old, abandoned house. Carl becomes the club’s second--and only other--member, and a touching montage traces his relationship with Ellie as it moves from friendship into courtship, marriage, and their life growing old together in the clubhouse that's become their home. The couple, unable to have children, are devoted to each other, as well as to the memory of Muntz, who disappeared years earlier while piloting his dirigible over a remote region in South America called Paradise Falls. They put money aside to one day make the trip to Paradise Falls themselves, but one emergency after another drains their savings and the trip never materializes. On her deathbed, Ellie makes Carl promise that he will still try, but her death leaves him lonely and heartbroken, and there seems little chance of his keeping that promise.
So what is this movie up to? So far it does not seem calculated to entertain anyone who can’t already vote. And for awhile things only get worse. In addition to grief and loneliness, Carl must contend with urban renewal, which surrounds his tiny home with modern building developments. He stubbornly refuses to sell his property and leave, but one day he clashes with a construction worker and hits him with his cane. Ordered by the court to be placed in a retirement home, Carl’s life seems at its lowest point—until he comes up with a brilliant solution. During the night, he inflates thousands of balloons with helium and attaches them to his house. The next morning, just as the medical attendants are coming to collect him, he releases the balloons and they pull his house from its foundations and carry it up, up and away, his destination the long-desired Paradise Falls.
The film undergoes an extreme makeover at this point. The fantastic was hinted at earlier in old newsreel footage of a young, reckless Charles Muntz, but now Up literally becomes a flight of fancy. The picturization of the house soaring above and through clouds is simply amazing, real enough to send acrophobes under their seats. In a nod to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Paradise Falls turns out to be a kind of Lost World inhabited by strange creatures, most notably a prehistoric bird that resembles a cross between a giant dodo and a toucan. And then there are those talking dogs….
But despite the outlandish elements, Up never completely loses touch with solid ground. Carl’s emotional connection to Ellie only deepens the closer he gets to their life’s goal, and his journey is complicated by an interesting stowaway: an 8-year-old Wilderness Explorer (i.e. Boy Scout) named Russell (Jordan Nagai), who was on Carl’s porch about to ring the doorbell when he got the surprise of his life. Russell understands nothing of the more serious implications of this flight from reality--he’s simply thrilled by the Boy’s Adventure aspect of it, and is eager to become a crew member of the unusual flight craft. But Russell has a story of his own, which comes out slowly as the film unfolds: only child, divorced parents, a father whose business travels keep him away from home so much he has little time for his son. Russell’s loneliness clearly echoes Carl’s, and though the curmudgeonly senior is initially resistant to Russell’s presence, he softens over time as the two share the hardships of the journey, eventually bonding with the boy over their mutual need for friendship.
As its name suggests, Paradise Falls, once found, is a source of disillusionment. There, Carl and Russell find the aged, but surprisingly spry, Charles Muntz living in splendid exile, like Robinson Crusoe on Charles Foster Kane’s income. The most charismatic and complex character in the film, Muntz dominates the movie’s third act. In person he's something very different from the romantic hero of Carl’s memory. Isolation, and the totalitarian authority he exercises over his corps of trained watchdogs (hilariously fitted with devices that translate their barks into human speech) has turned the idealistic explorer into a shadowy, menacing figure, something along the lines of the renegade Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (their names are even similar). Muntz’s purpose for living in seclusion, allowing the world to think he’s dead, is a dark one: he wants to hunt down a prehistoric bird so that he can prove its existence to a scientific community that doubted and humiliated him years before. Crazed to the point of megalomania, he dispatches anyone who stands in his way—which now includes Carl and Russell, who have found the bird in the jungle and grown attached to it.
Conrad, Paradise lost, megalomania—this is a children’s film, right? The colorful giant bird (which Russell names “Kevin,” before he discovers it’s a mother) and the talking dogs do provide many lighter, kid-friendly moments. Dug, a misfit among Muntz's stormpoochers--he eventually switches sides to help Carl and Russell--is especially funny, the kind of comic relief the film needs to give it ballast (he's voiced by co-writer/director Bob Peterson). But Paradise Falls is a gloomy place overall, befitting the film’s melancholy understanding of aging and the abandonment of dreams. Tots won’t get it, of course, but their parents and grandparents will—which makes the exciting climax much more meaningful than the usual Hollywood action finale. Muntz finally succeeds in capturing Kevin, so Russell dashes off to save him, and Carl—after some initial reluctance and a moving farewell to the life he spent with Ellie—chases after him to fulfill his hero’s destiny. And to begin his life anew.
He pilots the house to intercept Muntz’s dirigible, where both Kevin and Russell are imprisoned; when Muntz catches him on board, the two antiquated warriors face off with “swords” for a classic swashbuckling denouement. If Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone had reunited onscreen in their 80s, their final duel might have looked like this. The sequence is one of the film’s real treats, heightened by the superb vocal work of Asner and Plummer. But after the movie heroics are over--and Russell and Kevin rescued--this Paradise False must be left behind. The story returns home, to its beginnings, where real heroism is displayed in ordinary daily life--accepting reality, shouldering responsibility, engaging with the world. Carl and Russell--friends and fellow adventurers--are now each other’s family as well.
Is the middle section of the movie in actuality a dream? It could be--it functions like one, helping Carl work through his problems (making peace with his disappointments, accepting his losses) and move on with his life. This should sound familiar. When it comes to fantasy adventure films purportedly made for younger audiences, is The Wizard of Oz ever very far away? With regard to Up, it’s no farther than its own front yard. Let’s see, a troubled protagonist running away from his problems escapes to a fantastic world--in a flying house, no less--where he’s helped by unlikely companions to defeat a mysterious oppressor, who is something of a wizard (inventor, flyer) but with the murderous impulses of a wicked witch. Renewed by his victory, he returns home, having gained both a greater appreciation of his life there and a better understanding of how to live it well.
The sudden, sharp changes in the film’s direction and visual style also suggest that something extraordinary is happening in these middle scenes. Carl and Ellie’s sweet, real-life story is displayed in mostly muted tones and two-dimensional compositions within the enclosed spaces of their house. Up’s switch to the fantasy-adventure genre introduces eye-popping visuals and the three-dimensional depth of the world at large, especially the vertigo-inducing shots from the air. The film concludes with a series of photographs of Carl and Russell hanging out back home, enjoying their new friendship--happy images but completely flat ones, emphasizing the return to the two-dimensional space of the beginning.
Carl’s journey to Paradise Falls could therefore be another version of Dorothy’s dream. The lines between reality and fantasy having been blurred by the narrative’s liberties, there is no confirming what actually takes place or doesn’t. Up doesn’t directly make this claim, but it plays with the kind of ambiguity and surreal logic that admits of the possibility. And isn’t that the possibility underlying all fairy tales, in a way? Once Up-on a time, there was a little old man living by himself in a funny-looking house…
UP
Much of Up, the new animated film from Pixar and Disney, is a real downer. Consider these subjects for a “children’s” movie: aging, death, care of the elderly, the loss of parental love, the death of youthful ideals. Ouch. But Up is ultimately what its title claims it to be: an uplifting film that carries one away from all those cares and woes. How it does that just might make the movie more rewarding for viewers in middle life and beyond than for the kids who would seem at first glance to be its audience. But that’s why you can never completely trust the way films are marketed, and why surprise is still such an important part of the movie-going experience.
The opening scenes of the film chronicle the life of Carl Fredricksen (voiced as an adult by the wonderful Ed Asner), from his Depression-era childhood to the present day. A shy, lonely boy who spends his afternoons at the movies, Carl’s world is turned upside down when he meets Ellie, a hyperactive young girl who shares his hero worship of world-renowned explorer and adventurer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer at his suavest) and has started a club in his honor in an old, abandoned house. Carl becomes the club’s second--and only other--member, and a touching montage traces his relationship with Ellie as it moves from friendship into courtship, marriage, and their life growing old together in the clubhouse that's become their home. The couple, unable to have children, are devoted to each other, as well as to the memory of Muntz, who disappeared years earlier while piloting his dirigible over a remote region in South America called Paradise Falls. They put money aside to one day make the trip to Paradise Falls themselves, but one emergency after another drains their savings and the trip never materializes. On her deathbed, Ellie makes Carl promise that he will still try, but her death leaves him lonely and heartbroken, and there seems little chance of his keeping that promise.
So what is this movie up to? So far it does not seem calculated to entertain anyone who can’t already vote. And for awhile things only get worse. In addition to grief and loneliness, Carl must contend with urban renewal, which surrounds his tiny home with modern building developments. He stubbornly refuses to sell his property and leave, but one day he clashes with a construction worker and hits him with his cane. Ordered by the court to be placed in a retirement home, Carl’s life seems at its lowest point—until he comes up with a brilliant solution. During the night, he inflates thousands of balloons with helium and attaches them to his house. The next morning, just as the medical attendants are coming to collect him, he releases the balloons and they pull his house from its foundations and carry it up, up and away, his destination the long-desired Paradise Falls.
The film undergoes an extreme makeover at this point. The fantastic was hinted at earlier in old newsreel footage of a young, reckless Charles Muntz, but now Up literally becomes a flight of fancy. The picturization of the house soaring above and through clouds is simply amazing, real enough to send acrophobes under their seats. In a nod to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Paradise Falls turns out to be a kind of Lost World inhabited by strange creatures, most notably a prehistoric bird that resembles a cross between a giant dodo and a toucan. And then there are those talking dogs….
But despite the outlandish elements, Up never completely loses touch with solid ground. Carl’s emotional connection to Ellie only deepens the closer he gets to their life’s goal, and his journey is complicated by an interesting stowaway: an 8-year-old Wilderness Explorer (i.e. Boy Scout) named Russell (Jordan Nagai), who was on Carl’s porch about to ring the doorbell when he got the surprise of his life. Russell understands nothing of the more serious implications of this flight from reality--he’s simply thrilled by the Boy’s Adventure aspect of it, and is eager to become a crew member of the unusual flight craft. But Russell has a story of his own, which comes out slowly as the film unfolds: only child, divorced parents, a father whose business travels keep him away from home so much he has little time for his son. Russell’s loneliness clearly echoes Carl’s, and though the curmudgeonly senior is initially resistant to Russell’s presence, he softens over time as the two share the hardships of the journey, eventually bonding with the boy over their mutual need for friendship.
As its name suggests, Paradise Falls, once found, is a source of disillusionment. There, Carl and Russell find the aged, but surprisingly spry, Charles Muntz living in splendid exile, like Robinson Crusoe on Charles Foster Kane’s income. The most charismatic and complex character in the film, Muntz dominates the movie’s third act. In person he's something very different from the romantic hero of Carl’s memory. Isolation, and the totalitarian authority he exercises over his corps of trained watchdogs (hilariously fitted with devices that translate their barks into human speech) has turned the idealistic explorer into a shadowy, menacing figure, something along the lines of the renegade Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (their names are even similar). Muntz’s purpose for living in seclusion, allowing the world to think he’s dead, is a dark one: he wants to hunt down a prehistoric bird so that he can prove its existence to a scientific community that doubted and humiliated him years before. Crazed to the point of megalomania, he dispatches anyone who stands in his way—which now includes Carl and Russell, who have found the bird in the jungle and grown attached to it.
Conrad, Paradise lost, megalomania—this is a children’s film, right? The colorful giant bird (which Russell names “Kevin,” before he discovers it’s a mother) and the talking dogs do provide many lighter, kid-friendly moments. Dug, a misfit among Muntz's stormpoochers--he eventually switches sides to help Carl and Russell--is especially funny, the kind of comic relief the film needs to give it ballast (he's voiced by co-writer/director Bob Peterson). But Paradise Falls is a gloomy place overall, befitting the film’s melancholy understanding of aging and the abandonment of dreams. Tots won’t get it, of course, but their parents and grandparents will—which makes the exciting climax much more meaningful than the usual Hollywood action finale. Muntz finally succeeds in capturing Kevin, so Russell dashes off to save him, and Carl—after some initial reluctance and a moving farewell to the life he spent with Ellie—chases after him to fulfill his hero’s destiny. And to begin his life anew.
He pilots the house to intercept Muntz’s dirigible, where both Kevin and Russell are imprisoned; when Muntz catches him on board, the two antiquated warriors face off with “swords” for a classic swashbuckling denouement. If Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone had reunited onscreen in their 80s, their final duel might have looked like this. The sequence is one of the film’s real treats, heightened by the superb vocal work of Asner and Plummer. But after the movie heroics are over--and Russell and Kevin rescued--this Paradise False must be left behind. The story returns home, to its beginnings, where real heroism is displayed in ordinary daily life--accepting reality, shouldering responsibility, engaging with the world. Carl and Russell--friends and fellow adventurers--are now each other’s family as well.
Is the middle section of the movie in actuality a dream? It could be--it functions like one, helping Carl work through his problems (making peace with his disappointments, accepting his losses) and move on with his life. This should sound familiar. When it comes to fantasy adventure films purportedly made for younger audiences, is The Wizard of Oz ever very far away? With regard to Up, it’s no farther than its own front yard. Let’s see, a troubled protagonist running away from his problems escapes to a fantastic world--in a flying house, no less--where he’s helped by unlikely companions to defeat a mysterious oppressor, who is something of a wizard (inventor, flyer) but with the murderous impulses of a wicked witch. Renewed by his victory, he returns home, having gained both a greater appreciation of his life there and a better understanding of how to live it well.
The sudden, sharp changes in the film’s direction and visual style also suggest that something extraordinary is happening in these middle scenes. Carl and Ellie’s sweet, real-life story is displayed in mostly muted tones and two-dimensional compositions within the enclosed spaces of their house. Up’s switch to the fantasy-adventure genre introduces eye-popping visuals and the three-dimensional depth of the world at large, especially the vertigo-inducing shots from the air. The film concludes with a series of photographs of Carl and Russell hanging out back home, enjoying their new friendship--happy images but completely flat ones, emphasizing the return to the two-dimensional space of the beginning.
Carl’s journey to Paradise Falls could therefore be another version of Dorothy’s dream. The lines between reality and fantasy having been blurred by the narrative’s liberties, there is no confirming what actually takes place or doesn’t. Up doesn’t directly make this claim, but it plays with the kind of ambiguity and surreal logic that admits of the possibility. And isn’t that the possibility underlying all fairy tales, in a way? Once Up-on a time, there was a little old man living by himself in a funny-looking house…
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Angels and Demons
Probably many will disagree with the first sentence of my review, but I really disliked the film version of The Da Vinci Code. I enjoyed the book, and I simply couldn't find it anywhere in the movie. Now a confession: I haven't read Angels and Demons, and I have no plans to. Perhaps this influences my assessment of the film; but if so, so what? For whatever reason, I liked it a lot. I enjoyed seeing Hanks in the role of Robert Langdon this time, Ayelet Zurer taught me a new respect for particle physics, and Ewan McGregor (one of my favorite actors) turned in a terrific performance. The Rome locations were well used, and there was an amazing scene toward the end in St. Peter's Square involving a helicopter. For a blockbuster summer picture, this one has some brains to go along with the brawn. I say unto you it's worth seeing. Amen.
ANGELS AND DEMONS
Angels and Demons is about 100 times better than The Da Vinci Code. Director Ron Howard’s puzzling 2006 adaptation of Code, Dan Brown’s monster bestseller about a secret Catholic organization’s attempt to suppress the “true” history of Jesus, turned a superior potboiler into an inferior one with depressing ease. Code still raked in enough money to make the Vatican envious, but fans worldwide felt sinned against. Now comes the expected sequel, drawn from Brown’s other novel about cover-ups in the Catholic Church, and lo, like water turned into wine, it’s a refreshing surprise.
Angels and Demons is, at its best, an expert genre film. Strip away all the arcane church lore and the End-of-Days portents and you find an old-fashioned race-against-time thriller, executed with confidence and skill. Thankfully, it’s more of an action pic than its stultifying predecessor, and a pretty good mystery into the bargain. Red herrings are scattered about like loaves and fishes, so the audience has plenty to chew on while waiting for the plot’s final revelations.
A beloved pope has died and the conclave of cardinals is gathering in Rome to choose his successor. While they are preparing to sequester themselves in the Vatican, however, four of them are kidnapped—the four favorites to become the next pope, or “preferitti”—and an ominous message is sent to Vatican officials, warning of their deaths and the ultimate destruction of the Church. Meanwhile, in a research facility elsewhere in Italy, a team of physicists achieves a scientific breakthrough by creating antimatter in a massive collider. No sooner have they succeeded than a mysterious intruder infiltrates the facility and steals a critical portion of it, killing one of the scientists in the process. When the missing vial of antimatter turns up in Rome as part of the threat against the Church, the Vatican has a problem worthy of Hollywood’s attention.
And Robert Langdon’s. Langdon (portrayed once again by Tom Hanks) is the Harvard professor of religion and “symbology” expert who, despite having embarrassed the Catholic Church in his previous adventure, possesses skills so uniquely suited to helping the Vatican in its current crisis that they have no choice but to turn to him. It’s the kind of antagonistic partnership that thrillers have thrived on since Alfred Hitchcock’s formula-making The 39 Steps (1935), and Howard and his screenwriters (David Koepp, Akiva Goldsman) demonstrate they are attentive students of the Master.
The key to the plot is a secret society known as the “Illuminati,” free-thinking intellectuals from centuries past who questioned Church doctrine and were severely persecuted (think Galileo), many even put to death. It seems some remnants of the Illuminati still exist, and they have regrouped for their long-awaited vengeance. Each of the kidnapped cardinals will be executed in a public place one hour apart, according to their plan, which will culminate in their release of the antimatter, producing an explosion forceful enough to destroy Vatican City and half of Rome. Langdon has his work cut out for him, since he has only a few hours to interpret clues in the kidnappers’ messages that will lead him to the various locations where the cardinals are to die, and eventually to the hiding place of the antimatter. As if this weren’t enough, Langdon has to do it all while contending with a suspicious Vatican security chief (Stellan Skarsgard), who may or may not be undercutting his efforts, and the enigmatic Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor), the Vatican official who temporarily wields the late pope’s authority. Fortunately, the Hitchcock formula provides him with the able assistance of a beautiful woman, Dr. Vittoria Vetra (Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer), the physicist in charge of the antimatter project. She has been called to Rome to help find the missing vial and keep it from detonating. Other duties include looking great in a trim black dress and making flirtatious eye contact with Hanks. I’m assuming he appreciated it.
This is pulpy, improbable stuff, kept alive by faith, I guess, but also by works: a breakneck pace and razor-sharp timing. It doesn’t hurt that Hanks’ Langdon can make deductions so quickly it would put Sherlock Holmes to shame; this ability keeps the audience off balance and willing to accept anything he says just so they don’t get left behind. Well, and why not? What I especially liked about this movie is that at least Hanks and Howard are having fun this time. The dour Da Vinci Code felt joyless, afraid to breathe--the current film exhales noisily, and it’s a blessing. Hanks will probably never be anyone’s ideal Robert Langdon, but he’s settled into the role and seems much more comfortable the second time around. He’s even relaxed enough to flash traces of the wiseass humor that’s been his trademark since he began his illustrious film career two decades ago in Splash (also directed by Howard), and before that on TV in Bosom Buddies.
Angels definitely qualifies as a summer action blockbuster, but it has a spiritual side to it as well. Nestled behind the elaborate rituals of the suspense thriller is a sober study (though I assume a highly fictionalized one) of Vatican politics and protocol surrounding the election of a new pope. The central conflict in this embedded story is between the Camerlengo and Cardinal Strauss (Armin Mueller-Stahl), leader of the conclave. Theirs is a quiet, and one suspects, longstanding duel over control of the papacy, the future of the Church, and even the nature of the God they both serve. While Langdon and company race around Rome trying to protect the body of the Church, these two men struggle to save its soul, speaking feelingly to each other about how it can survive the destruction set to occur. But their views are opposed, the aged cardinal insisting on the necessity of tradition and the young priest arguing for the inevitability of change, and it is this debate that gives a deeper urgency to the film than the kind supplied by narrow escapes and last-minute rescues. A parable of faith woven into a tale of worldly intrigue, Mueller-Stahl’s and McGregor’s soft-spoken but intense exchanges provide the film’s emotional core. Both actors are excellent, giving subtly veiled performances that lend voice to their characters’ convictions while masking the motives behind them. As our perception of those motives changes throughout the course of the film, it becomes apparent that their dialogue has more to do with the events unfolding around them than we first supposed. And it is through the twists and turns of their evolving relationship that the meaning of the film’s title is finally revealed.
Through the plot’s many convolutions, Howard’s direction displays more than its usual serviceability, guiding the activity with enough assurance to make one believe at times the film has style, although it's really just bravado. He’s a successful but rather ordinary filmmaker who has achieved stature in Hollywood by constantly overreaching, tackling subjects complex enough to pull him out of his comfort zone and elevate the level of his achievement. I admire him for it, but only occasionally do I find one of his films truly satisfying--Cocoon comes to mind, and Parenthood, the underrated Cinderella Man, and certainly Apollo 13, his greatest artistic success to date. The angels are on his side with this current choice—let us pray that Da Vinci’s demons are at last safely behind him.
ANGELS AND DEMONS
Angels and Demons is about 100 times better than The Da Vinci Code. Director Ron Howard’s puzzling 2006 adaptation of Code, Dan Brown’s monster bestseller about a secret Catholic organization’s attempt to suppress the “true” history of Jesus, turned a superior potboiler into an inferior one with depressing ease. Code still raked in enough money to make the Vatican envious, but fans worldwide felt sinned against. Now comes the expected sequel, drawn from Brown’s other novel about cover-ups in the Catholic Church, and lo, like water turned into wine, it’s a refreshing surprise.
Angels and Demons is, at its best, an expert genre film. Strip away all the arcane church lore and the End-of-Days portents and you find an old-fashioned race-against-time thriller, executed with confidence and skill. Thankfully, it’s more of an action pic than its stultifying predecessor, and a pretty good mystery into the bargain. Red herrings are scattered about like loaves and fishes, so the audience has plenty to chew on while waiting for the plot’s final revelations.
A beloved pope has died and the conclave of cardinals is gathering in Rome to choose his successor. While they are preparing to sequester themselves in the Vatican, however, four of them are kidnapped—the four favorites to become the next pope, or “preferitti”—and an ominous message is sent to Vatican officials, warning of their deaths and the ultimate destruction of the Church. Meanwhile, in a research facility elsewhere in Italy, a team of physicists achieves a scientific breakthrough by creating antimatter in a massive collider. No sooner have they succeeded than a mysterious intruder infiltrates the facility and steals a critical portion of it, killing one of the scientists in the process. When the missing vial of antimatter turns up in Rome as part of the threat against the Church, the Vatican has a problem worthy of Hollywood’s attention.
And Robert Langdon’s. Langdon (portrayed once again by Tom Hanks) is the Harvard professor of religion and “symbology” expert who, despite having embarrassed the Catholic Church in his previous adventure, possesses skills so uniquely suited to helping the Vatican in its current crisis that they have no choice but to turn to him. It’s the kind of antagonistic partnership that thrillers have thrived on since Alfred Hitchcock’s formula-making The 39 Steps (1935), and Howard and his screenwriters (David Koepp, Akiva Goldsman) demonstrate they are attentive students of the Master.
The key to the plot is a secret society known as the “Illuminati,” free-thinking intellectuals from centuries past who questioned Church doctrine and were severely persecuted (think Galileo), many even put to death. It seems some remnants of the Illuminati still exist, and they have regrouped for their long-awaited vengeance. Each of the kidnapped cardinals will be executed in a public place one hour apart, according to their plan, which will culminate in their release of the antimatter, producing an explosion forceful enough to destroy Vatican City and half of Rome. Langdon has his work cut out for him, since he has only a few hours to interpret clues in the kidnappers’ messages that will lead him to the various locations where the cardinals are to die, and eventually to the hiding place of the antimatter. As if this weren’t enough, Langdon has to do it all while contending with a suspicious Vatican security chief (Stellan Skarsgard), who may or may not be undercutting his efforts, and the enigmatic Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor), the Vatican official who temporarily wields the late pope’s authority. Fortunately, the Hitchcock formula provides him with the able assistance of a beautiful woman, Dr. Vittoria Vetra (Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer), the physicist in charge of the antimatter project. She has been called to Rome to help find the missing vial and keep it from detonating. Other duties include looking great in a trim black dress and making flirtatious eye contact with Hanks. I’m assuming he appreciated it.
This is pulpy, improbable stuff, kept alive by faith, I guess, but also by works: a breakneck pace and razor-sharp timing. It doesn’t hurt that Hanks’ Langdon can make deductions so quickly it would put Sherlock Holmes to shame; this ability keeps the audience off balance and willing to accept anything he says just so they don’t get left behind. Well, and why not? What I especially liked about this movie is that at least Hanks and Howard are having fun this time. The dour Da Vinci Code felt joyless, afraid to breathe--the current film exhales noisily, and it’s a blessing. Hanks will probably never be anyone’s ideal Robert Langdon, but he’s settled into the role and seems much more comfortable the second time around. He’s even relaxed enough to flash traces of the wiseass humor that’s been his trademark since he began his illustrious film career two decades ago in Splash (also directed by Howard), and before that on TV in Bosom Buddies.
Angels definitely qualifies as a summer action blockbuster, but it has a spiritual side to it as well. Nestled behind the elaborate rituals of the suspense thriller is a sober study (though I assume a highly fictionalized one) of Vatican politics and protocol surrounding the election of a new pope. The central conflict in this embedded story is between the Camerlengo and Cardinal Strauss (Armin Mueller-Stahl), leader of the conclave. Theirs is a quiet, and one suspects, longstanding duel over control of the papacy, the future of the Church, and even the nature of the God they both serve. While Langdon and company race around Rome trying to protect the body of the Church, these two men struggle to save its soul, speaking feelingly to each other about how it can survive the destruction set to occur. But their views are opposed, the aged cardinal insisting on the necessity of tradition and the young priest arguing for the inevitability of change, and it is this debate that gives a deeper urgency to the film than the kind supplied by narrow escapes and last-minute rescues. A parable of faith woven into a tale of worldly intrigue, Mueller-Stahl’s and McGregor’s soft-spoken but intense exchanges provide the film’s emotional core. Both actors are excellent, giving subtly veiled performances that lend voice to their characters’ convictions while masking the motives behind them. As our perception of those motives changes throughout the course of the film, it becomes apparent that their dialogue has more to do with the events unfolding around them than we first supposed. And it is through the twists and turns of their evolving relationship that the meaning of the film’s title is finally revealed.
Through the plot’s many convolutions, Howard’s direction displays more than its usual serviceability, guiding the activity with enough assurance to make one believe at times the film has style, although it's really just bravado. He’s a successful but rather ordinary filmmaker who has achieved stature in Hollywood by constantly overreaching, tackling subjects complex enough to pull him out of his comfort zone and elevate the level of his achievement. I admire him for it, but only occasionally do I find one of his films truly satisfying--Cocoon comes to mind, and Parenthood, the underrated Cinderella Man, and certainly Apollo 13, his greatest artistic success to date. The angels are on his side with this current choice—let us pray that Da Vinci’s demons are at last safely behind him.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Sunshine Cleaning
I liked this film a lot, although I recognize its limitations. Never as funny as the oddball premise would lead you to expect, it also seems to pull up a bit short as a drama about two sisters trying to heal their damaged lives and relationship. In a way, it kind of suffers from an identity crisis, but since I do, too, I'm willing to forgive it. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are terrific as the sisters, and that simply may be enough for a strong recommendation. Ditto Alan Arkin, one of my favorite actors. No, it's not Little Miss Sunshine Redux, although it's certainly guilty of swiping a bit of that film's mojo. It stands on its own, however, and I actually like it better. Heresy, I know. It won't be the last time I'm guilty of it.
SUNSHINE CLEANING
What I like most about Sunshine Cleaning is that it’s the kind of story that isn’t immediately obvious. There’s no direct, predictable path from the beginning to the end, and the characters never do quite what you expect them to do. But neither are there any truly big surprises along the way. Outfitted with a genial group of eccentrics and an offbeat premise, Sunshine settles for a sweet, mildly unconventional outcome, rather than pushing the audience toward anything too dark or disturbing. The film could have taken some risks, but instead stays safely within the boundaries of its rather modest goals. This is not entirely a bad thing. But I couldn’t help feeling a slight bit of disappointment at the end, as with a promise left partially unfulfilled.
Unfulfilled promise is the theme with which the story opens. Two sisters, Rose (Amy Adams) and Norah (Emily Blunt), lead lives of quiet desperation in their home town of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rose, the eldest, toils for a maid service and does her best as a single mom to raise her son, Oscar. The mostly out-of-work Norah still lives at home and seems to care for little besides babysitting Oscar, whom she entertains with hilariously awful bedtime stories about serial killers. It’s through Oscar that these two moribund lives are given a chance at revival. A precocious, sweet-tempered boy suffering from ADD, he is expelled from school for constantly disrupting his classroom. In order to send him to a private school where he will receive the special attention he needs, Rose looks around for ways to make more money. She decides to try her hand at cleaning up crime scenes, especially those of murders and suicides, a lucrative field because of the high cost of wiping away blood and other biohazards. With the reluctant Norah in tow, Rose creates “Sunshine Cleaning” and embarks on a seriocomic journey into the messy aftermath of violent death.
A quirky set-up and down-on-their-luck characters generally mean that a movie is going to spend its quality time exploring relationships and character, rather than building plot. Sunshine Cleaning treats these expectations as earnestly as a moral duty. Episodic and deliberate, the film unveils its plan slowly and cautiously, like sunlight advancing across a room. The focus of the story is the relationship between the two sisters, whose lives prior to their business partnership present a study in contrasts, as well as unresolved tensions. Rose, a former high school golden girl--head cheerleader, dated the quarterback--gamely tries to project a positive attitude despite confronting the specter of failure and unfulfilled potential behind every thankless task of her daily life. Self-administered pep talks (“You are strong, you are a winner”) temporarily prop up her hopes for a better future, but her heart isn’t in it when called upon to make a real effort at self-improvement. Instead, she treads water by sleeping with her ex-quarterback boyfriend (Steve Zahn), now married and a cop. Norah, sullen and rebellious, pursues a Loser lifestyle of oversleeping, wearing too much black eyeliner, and getting fired from crappy jobs she never wanted in the first place. “Pursues” might be putting it too aggressively—it’s more like she sits still and waits for failure to catch up with her. But she seems to welcome it when it arrives. Surprisingly sensitive for her tough chick look, Norah is more hurt than angry—her rebellion is half-hearted, literally a mask of make-up behind which crouches a sad, irresolute child.
Rose’s and Norah’s dead-end lives conflict in many ways yet are so closely intertwined they make no sense without each other. The reason is revealed through uneasy flashbacks as the film unfolds: their low self-esteem and lack of ambition are rooted in their mother’s mysterious suicide when they were children (a trauma made worse by their discovery of her body). Although raised by their loving father, a well-meaning but hapless salesman (the always wonderful Alan Arkin), they are stuck on hold, their futures blocked by the confusion and pain of this event. As is their relationship: it’s the different paths this tragedy has sent them down that form the basis of the ongoing, silent quarrel between them. Neither is happy with the other’s choices, or weaknesses, or mistakes.
The main business of the story, then, is to help each woman find her way back to a sense of purpose in her life, and to each other. Adams and Blunt make this business worth investing in: each inhabits her half of the damaged pair with the right proportions of whimsy and soulfulness. Adams, an actress whose nervous intensity sometimes proves distracting, tempers it here with low-key humor and a rueful self-awareness. As a result, she offers a touching portrait of a once-shallow woman, uncomfortable with introspection, who learns to believe in her own resolve. But it’s Blunt who gives the film its edge. While Adams blossoms as Rose, Blunt’s Norah sinks further into the depths of her despair, until she touches bottom. Norah perpetrates the film’s two worst events--deeply hurting a friend and causing a near fatal crisis for the burgeoning business, which almost severs her relationship with Rose completely. Blunt avoids all the possible clichés in portraying this damned soul: Norah has a genius for self-destruction and a taste for self-pity, but Blunt makes her warm, empathetic, and engaging throughout, without ever compromising the volatility or unpredictability that make Norah dangerous. It’s a performance of great skill and subtlety from an actress who needs more exposure.
Sunshine is not completely dark, however. Arkin delivers another comic gem in his turn as the family patriarch, strongly reminiscent of his Oscar-winning role in Little Miss Sunshine (2006). This film has been accused of over-emulating the earlier one, and writer Megan Holley and director Christine Jeffs may indeed have had their eyes on the prize of that unexpected hit--Arkin is once again paired with a winning child actor (Jason Spevack), and a family of mismatched members once more learns to pull together in a crisis--but if it starts out copying the formula for the first Sunshine, it ends by mixing the elements very differently. The current film is not the ensemble piece the earlier one was, since it’s basically a sister act, and its humor is far less raucous, much more attuned to the troubling undercurrents of lives haunted by loss and wounded love.
What Holley and Jeffs have actually created in Sunshine Cleaning is an elaborate metaphor for healing: cleaning up other people’s messes, the bloody remains of others’ broken lives, is the surest way for Rose and Norah to put themselves right at last, and restore the emotional order that finding their mother’s blood-soaked body blasted apart. By running her own business, Rose discovers a mature sense of self-worth that is far more satisfying than what the extrovert life of a high school celebrity provided her. Norah’s fate is more open-ended. She finally leaves home at the film’s conclusion and takes to the road, searching for an identity beyond the limits of the grief that for years has defined her.
Sunshine’s final revelation comes quietly but inevitably, the result, I believe, of Jeffs’ leisurely pacing and understated direction: these two women--whose disappointing, interrupted lives were not the causes of their unhappiness but symptoms of it--are two halves of one person, finally completed and made whole in the film’s climactic scene, a beautifully played moment of reconciliation between Adams and Blunt. If Sunshine Cleaning isn’t the inspired or beguiling film it could have been, neither is it a film which fails to warm and illuminate in many small but important ways.
SUNSHINE CLEANING
What I like most about Sunshine Cleaning is that it’s the kind of story that isn’t immediately obvious. There’s no direct, predictable path from the beginning to the end, and the characters never do quite what you expect them to do. But neither are there any truly big surprises along the way. Outfitted with a genial group of eccentrics and an offbeat premise, Sunshine settles for a sweet, mildly unconventional outcome, rather than pushing the audience toward anything too dark or disturbing. The film could have taken some risks, but instead stays safely within the boundaries of its rather modest goals. This is not entirely a bad thing. But I couldn’t help feeling a slight bit of disappointment at the end, as with a promise left partially unfulfilled.
Unfulfilled promise is the theme with which the story opens. Two sisters, Rose (Amy Adams) and Norah (Emily Blunt), lead lives of quiet desperation in their home town of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rose, the eldest, toils for a maid service and does her best as a single mom to raise her son, Oscar. The mostly out-of-work Norah still lives at home and seems to care for little besides babysitting Oscar, whom she entertains with hilariously awful bedtime stories about serial killers. It’s through Oscar that these two moribund lives are given a chance at revival. A precocious, sweet-tempered boy suffering from ADD, he is expelled from school for constantly disrupting his classroom. In order to send him to a private school where he will receive the special attention he needs, Rose looks around for ways to make more money. She decides to try her hand at cleaning up crime scenes, especially those of murders and suicides, a lucrative field because of the high cost of wiping away blood and other biohazards. With the reluctant Norah in tow, Rose creates “Sunshine Cleaning” and embarks on a seriocomic journey into the messy aftermath of violent death.
A quirky set-up and down-on-their-luck characters generally mean that a movie is going to spend its quality time exploring relationships and character, rather than building plot. Sunshine Cleaning treats these expectations as earnestly as a moral duty. Episodic and deliberate, the film unveils its plan slowly and cautiously, like sunlight advancing across a room. The focus of the story is the relationship between the two sisters, whose lives prior to their business partnership present a study in contrasts, as well as unresolved tensions. Rose, a former high school golden girl--head cheerleader, dated the quarterback--gamely tries to project a positive attitude despite confronting the specter of failure and unfulfilled potential behind every thankless task of her daily life. Self-administered pep talks (“You are strong, you are a winner”) temporarily prop up her hopes for a better future, but her heart isn’t in it when called upon to make a real effort at self-improvement. Instead, she treads water by sleeping with her ex-quarterback boyfriend (Steve Zahn), now married and a cop. Norah, sullen and rebellious, pursues a Loser lifestyle of oversleeping, wearing too much black eyeliner, and getting fired from crappy jobs she never wanted in the first place. “Pursues” might be putting it too aggressively—it’s more like she sits still and waits for failure to catch up with her. But she seems to welcome it when it arrives. Surprisingly sensitive for her tough chick look, Norah is more hurt than angry—her rebellion is half-hearted, literally a mask of make-up behind which crouches a sad, irresolute child.
Rose’s and Norah’s dead-end lives conflict in many ways yet are so closely intertwined they make no sense without each other. The reason is revealed through uneasy flashbacks as the film unfolds: their low self-esteem and lack of ambition are rooted in their mother’s mysterious suicide when they were children (a trauma made worse by their discovery of her body). Although raised by their loving father, a well-meaning but hapless salesman (the always wonderful Alan Arkin), they are stuck on hold, their futures blocked by the confusion and pain of this event. As is their relationship: it’s the different paths this tragedy has sent them down that form the basis of the ongoing, silent quarrel between them. Neither is happy with the other’s choices, or weaknesses, or mistakes.
The main business of the story, then, is to help each woman find her way back to a sense of purpose in her life, and to each other. Adams and Blunt make this business worth investing in: each inhabits her half of the damaged pair with the right proportions of whimsy and soulfulness. Adams, an actress whose nervous intensity sometimes proves distracting, tempers it here with low-key humor and a rueful self-awareness. As a result, she offers a touching portrait of a once-shallow woman, uncomfortable with introspection, who learns to believe in her own resolve. But it’s Blunt who gives the film its edge. While Adams blossoms as Rose, Blunt’s Norah sinks further into the depths of her despair, until she touches bottom. Norah perpetrates the film’s two worst events--deeply hurting a friend and causing a near fatal crisis for the burgeoning business, which almost severs her relationship with Rose completely. Blunt avoids all the possible clichés in portraying this damned soul: Norah has a genius for self-destruction and a taste for self-pity, but Blunt makes her warm, empathetic, and engaging throughout, without ever compromising the volatility or unpredictability that make Norah dangerous. It’s a performance of great skill and subtlety from an actress who needs more exposure.
Sunshine is not completely dark, however. Arkin delivers another comic gem in his turn as the family patriarch, strongly reminiscent of his Oscar-winning role in Little Miss Sunshine (2006). This film has been accused of over-emulating the earlier one, and writer Megan Holley and director Christine Jeffs may indeed have had their eyes on the prize of that unexpected hit--Arkin is once again paired with a winning child actor (Jason Spevack), and a family of mismatched members once more learns to pull together in a crisis--but if it starts out copying the formula for the first Sunshine, it ends by mixing the elements very differently. The current film is not the ensemble piece the earlier one was, since it’s basically a sister act, and its humor is far less raucous, much more attuned to the troubling undercurrents of lives haunted by loss and wounded love.
What Holley and Jeffs have actually created in Sunshine Cleaning is an elaborate metaphor for healing: cleaning up other people’s messes, the bloody remains of others’ broken lives, is the surest way for Rose and Norah to put themselves right at last, and restore the emotional order that finding their mother’s blood-soaked body blasted apart. By running her own business, Rose discovers a mature sense of self-worth that is far more satisfying than what the extrovert life of a high school celebrity provided her. Norah’s fate is more open-ended. She finally leaves home at the film’s conclusion and takes to the road, searching for an identity beyond the limits of the grief that for years has defined her.
Sunshine’s final revelation comes quietly but inevitably, the result, I believe, of Jeffs’ leisurely pacing and understated direction: these two women--whose disappointing, interrupted lives were not the causes of their unhappiness but symptoms of it--are two halves of one person, finally completed and made whole in the film’s climactic scene, a beautifully played moment of reconciliation between Adams and Blunt. If Sunshine Cleaning isn’t the inspired or beguiling film it could have been, neither is it a film which fails to warm and illuminate in many small but important ways.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Duplicity
There isn't much to say about this film. It's enjoyable but almost instantly forgettable. If you like heist or crime caper movies, or movies about elaborate con jobs, with beautiful people in beautiful locations doing dishonest things, then it's worth a couple of hours in the theater. But it won't make you forget the classics it's based on--most particularly, Charade, which I was reminded of several times. I went to it, I watched it, I liked it, next month I won't remember a thing about it. Too bad, because the cast has some heavy hitters--Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Paul Giametti. I especially worry about Owen, one of my favorite actors. He seems intent on making mostly films like this one these days--can't be good for his career. At least it isn't Shoot 'Em Up (shudder).
DUPLICITY
Duplicity is one of those films that knows it doesn’t matter, but it does its not mattering with so much style that it makes you want it to matter more. A throwback to the sophisticated crime caper films of the 1960s (Topkapi, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Italian Job, etc.), Duplicity attempts to get by on charm, pretty locations (Dubai, Rome, Zurich), and charismatic stars, and for the most part pulls it off. This is a film of flourishes rather than substance, of pleasures for the eye and ear that fade so quickly there’s little left to think about once they’re gone.
Like many of its predecessors, Duplicity’s plot is both breezy and cynical. Just ask yourself what might happen when a suave British secret service agent (Clive Owen) meets up with a cool CIA operative who just happens to look like Julia Roberts. They might, say, be attracted to one another. And since they work for different governments, they might be rivals of a sort. Which means love and gamesmanship might be on the agenda. The answers, of course, are yes, yes, and yes--rather predictable, ironically, for a movie whose name means deception. The British agent, Ray Koval (Owen), is on assignment in Dubai for MI-6 when he meets Claire Stenwick (Roberts) at a party, hits on her and enjoys her company for a night, only to discover when he wakes that she’s Mata Hari’d him: slept with him so she can steal some top secret papers in his possession. Some years later, they meet again, and although Ray wants a reckoning for a career that was almost derailed by Claire’s double-cross, he settles for picking up where they left off in bed. The results are presumably more satisfying this time, because they spend a lot of time in bed over the next two hours, where, between bouts of lovemaking, they hatch an ingenious plot to make themselves very, very rich.
It would be unfair to summarize too much of the story that follows. What happens isn’t all that important, but there are surprises in how a lot of it is revealed. The film’s whats and whys take a back seat to its whens and hows. Suffice it to say, the lovers quit their government spying jobs to go undercover in the private sector. Their scheme has them land jobs in the security divisions of two rival skin care corporations locked in a bitter war over a new product. The object: larceny on a grand scale. And so the fun begins, which for the audience means trying to figure out, first, exactly what Ray and Claire are doing, and second, if they are actually doing it together. The lovers spar over commitment issues in between arguing over details of the elaborate con they are working on the two companies—and, perhaps, each other, judging from the little amount of trust between them. The model here is Stanley Donen’s comedy thriller Charade (1963), in which another impossibly handsome couple (Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn) chase each other through gorgeous locations around the globe while trying to decide if they can trust each other enough to fall in love. Duplicity can’t match the Donen classic for chic, but it gamely emulates its mentor’s playfulness, ultra-sophisticated thievery, and travelogue approach to storytelling.
Writer-director Tony Gilroy was responsible for 2007’s superb thriller Michael Clayton, which also took place among the boardrooms of Corporate America. That film was a trenchant indictment of criminality in the upper echelons of the business world, but this time he obviously goes for a lighter mood, combining white-collar mischief with romance instead of murder. His newfound sense of fun finds expression in the use of split screen images and multiple flashbacks, techniques that add to the film’s general air of trickery, in addition to recalling the pop language of 1960s cinema.
The high-end crime genre should be very familiar to contemporary audiences, of course, because of the number of examples, both serious and tongue-in-cheek, still being produced. The genre got a creative shot in the arm a few years ago when George Clooney and his crew revived the heist film in the Ocean’s 11/12/13 series (inspired by the Frank Sinatra original from 1960). Other key films of that era have been remade in recent years as well (The Italian Job, The Thomas Crown Affair). Apparently, America is nostalgic for its swashbuckling crooks of yesteryear. They are certainly more fun to watch than the parade of gray-faced corporate felons on the nightly news.
The actors certainly seem to be enjoying their flashy roles. Roberts, a veteran of the Ocean movies, is right at home. She has carved out quite a niche for herself in this retro genre. Surprisingly restrained, given some of her past performances in light-hearted fare, Roberts invests Claire with more warmth and sensuality than she could have gotten by with. Her reteaming with Closer co-star Owen is pretty successful, as he already knows the right tone to take with her in a battle of wits and sexual wills. The problem is that Claire and Ray are mainly props in the story rather than full-fledged identities. The energy of each performer radiates from deep within, but their characters are too shallow and lacking in fiber to hold it all. Owen, a ferocious actor by nature, is way too powerful at times for the frothy part he is asked to play. Still, the chemistry between the two is there, and it makes the movie what it is, an enjoyable romp with two attractive and well-matched people.
What’s most intriguing about this film, perhaps, is how it slyly introduces a weightier thought into the proceedings: the by now familiar word trust. Not satisfied with merely playing with that issue, Duplicity decides to make it into its theme. Deceit and constant suspicion are endemic to a life of spying, so what changes does one’s personality undergo after long exposure to that kind of lifestyle? What is the impact on human relationships, most particularly on love? These become the film’s central questions, in a way. Beneath the glossy surface of scheming, double-crossing, and intrigue lies a story that wonders aloud how love can survive a life devoted to scheming, double-crossing, and lots and lots of lying. Can it? Will it? It matters, during occasional pauses in the action, to Claire and Ray, but despite the number of times these questions are asked, in the end I’m not convinced the movie makes it completely matter to us—not about these one-dimensional characters, at least. Worth a try, though.
DUPLICITY
Duplicity is one of those films that knows it doesn’t matter, but it does its not mattering with so much style that it makes you want it to matter more. A throwback to the sophisticated crime caper films of the 1960s (Topkapi, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Italian Job, etc.), Duplicity attempts to get by on charm, pretty locations (Dubai, Rome, Zurich), and charismatic stars, and for the most part pulls it off. This is a film of flourishes rather than substance, of pleasures for the eye and ear that fade so quickly there’s little left to think about once they’re gone.
Like many of its predecessors, Duplicity’s plot is both breezy and cynical. Just ask yourself what might happen when a suave British secret service agent (Clive Owen) meets up with a cool CIA operative who just happens to look like Julia Roberts. They might, say, be attracted to one another. And since they work for different governments, they might be rivals of a sort. Which means love and gamesmanship might be on the agenda. The answers, of course, are yes, yes, and yes--rather predictable, ironically, for a movie whose name means deception. The British agent, Ray Koval (Owen), is on assignment in Dubai for MI-6 when he meets Claire Stenwick (Roberts) at a party, hits on her and enjoys her company for a night, only to discover when he wakes that she’s Mata Hari’d him: slept with him so she can steal some top secret papers in his possession. Some years later, they meet again, and although Ray wants a reckoning for a career that was almost derailed by Claire’s double-cross, he settles for picking up where they left off in bed. The results are presumably more satisfying this time, because they spend a lot of time in bed over the next two hours, where, between bouts of lovemaking, they hatch an ingenious plot to make themselves very, very rich.
It would be unfair to summarize too much of the story that follows. What happens isn’t all that important, but there are surprises in how a lot of it is revealed. The film’s whats and whys take a back seat to its whens and hows. Suffice it to say, the lovers quit their government spying jobs to go undercover in the private sector. Their scheme has them land jobs in the security divisions of two rival skin care corporations locked in a bitter war over a new product. The object: larceny on a grand scale. And so the fun begins, which for the audience means trying to figure out, first, exactly what Ray and Claire are doing, and second, if they are actually doing it together. The lovers spar over commitment issues in between arguing over details of the elaborate con they are working on the two companies—and, perhaps, each other, judging from the little amount of trust between them. The model here is Stanley Donen’s comedy thriller Charade (1963), in which another impossibly handsome couple (Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn) chase each other through gorgeous locations around the globe while trying to decide if they can trust each other enough to fall in love. Duplicity can’t match the Donen classic for chic, but it gamely emulates its mentor’s playfulness, ultra-sophisticated thievery, and travelogue approach to storytelling.
Writer-director Tony Gilroy was responsible for 2007’s superb thriller Michael Clayton, which also took place among the boardrooms of Corporate America. That film was a trenchant indictment of criminality in the upper echelons of the business world, but this time he obviously goes for a lighter mood, combining white-collar mischief with romance instead of murder. His newfound sense of fun finds expression in the use of split screen images and multiple flashbacks, techniques that add to the film’s general air of trickery, in addition to recalling the pop language of 1960s cinema.
The high-end crime genre should be very familiar to contemporary audiences, of course, because of the number of examples, both serious and tongue-in-cheek, still being produced. The genre got a creative shot in the arm a few years ago when George Clooney and his crew revived the heist film in the Ocean’s 11/12/13 series (inspired by the Frank Sinatra original from 1960). Other key films of that era have been remade in recent years as well (The Italian Job, The Thomas Crown Affair). Apparently, America is nostalgic for its swashbuckling crooks of yesteryear. They are certainly more fun to watch than the parade of gray-faced corporate felons on the nightly news.
The actors certainly seem to be enjoying their flashy roles. Roberts, a veteran of the Ocean movies, is right at home. She has carved out quite a niche for herself in this retro genre. Surprisingly restrained, given some of her past performances in light-hearted fare, Roberts invests Claire with more warmth and sensuality than she could have gotten by with. Her reteaming with Closer co-star Owen is pretty successful, as he already knows the right tone to take with her in a battle of wits and sexual wills. The problem is that Claire and Ray are mainly props in the story rather than full-fledged identities. The energy of each performer radiates from deep within, but their characters are too shallow and lacking in fiber to hold it all. Owen, a ferocious actor by nature, is way too powerful at times for the frothy part he is asked to play. Still, the chemistry between the two is there, and it makes the movie what it is, an enjoyable romp with two attractive and well-matched people.
What’s most intriguing about this film, perhaps, is how it slyly introduces a weightier thought into the proceedings: the by now familiar word trust. Not satisfied with merely playing with that issue, Duplicity decides to make it into its theme. Deceit and constant suspicion are endemic to a life of spying, so what changes does one’s personality undergo after long exposure to that kind of lifestyle? What is the impact on human relationships, most particularly on love? These become the film’s central questions, in a way. Beneath the glossy surface of scheming, double-crossing, and intrigue lies a story that wonders aloud how love can survive a life devoted to scheming, double-crossing, and lots and lots of lying. Can it? Will it? It matters, during occasional pauses in the action, to Claire and Ray, but despite the number of times these questions are asked, in the end I’m not convinced the movie makes it completely matter to us—not about these one-dimensional characters, at least. Worth a try, though.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Taken
This movie was a pleasant surprise. I wasn't planning on seeing it until a friend recommended it to me. It's not great, but it's certainly entertaining, and there is a surprising amount of heart behind the physical action. But it is thrills that it was made for, and in that category it delivers. Liam Neeson's debut as an action hero (I believe) is pretty successful. He's a gifted, intelligent actor, so his world-weariness looks like wisdom most of the time. And it's just good to watch someone who isn't a muscle-flexing dumbass run, jump, and hit people. Does that sound elitist? So be it. I had some problems with the politics of the film, but that's often the case, so I just tried to sit back, relax, and let the movie take me in. For the most part, it did.
TAKEN
The title of this film describes, in effect, the experience of watching it. Taken takes hold of you and moves you right along for nearly all of its 93 jam-packed minutes. It’s a thriller that depends less on mood, character, or suspense than on sheer speed and relentless forward motion. It’s like a train on an express route: arriving at its destination is its paramount goal, which leaves little time to admire the scenery along the way.
The plot is succinct. A divorced ex-government agent, Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), has retired early so that he can live near his 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and try to build the relationship with her that he had sacrificed to his career while she was growing up. His ex-wife (Famke Janssen) has remarried into serious wealth, which makes this task all the harder. When Kim asks his permission to vacation in France with a friend, he reluctantly gives it; his fatherly worry reawakens all the old fears that went with his spying job. But Bryan’s “paranoia” proves instead to be prescience: no sooner have the two girls landed in Paris than they are abducted by a gang of Albanian thugs who are running an international sex slavery ring. Kim’s heartrending phone call to her father moments before she is dragged out the door of her apartment provides the film’s first real jolt of emotion, as well as the adrenalin needed to start the plot racing. From this point on, Mills is a man with a single mission: to find his daughter and bring her home.
Despite its many improbabilities, I rather liked Taken. Directed with zeal by former cinematographer Pierre Morel, the film concerns itself not with testing the limits of the action thriller genre but with staying safely inside its comfort zone and fulfilling our expectations. For the most part, it does this with enough energy to compensate for its lack of originality. Anyone who has watched the TV series 24 knows roughly what to expect: a headlong race against time, a tightly forged chain of events which are absorbing because of their speed and intensity, but which would never stand up to the scrutiny of logical analysis or exposition. Mills is even given his own time limit. A former associate tells him that after 96 hours, any hope of finding Kim will have vanished. Apparently, it takes that long for women to disappear completely into the sex trade underworld. So Bryan has four days to revive his skills as a spy—or, as he calls himself, someone who “prevented bad things from happening”—and rescue his beloved daughter.
What is most welcome about this film is that beneath the formulaic activity is a deeper layer, a substratum of emotion that is surprisingly powerful. This is entirely due to the presence of Neeson, who brings gravity and credibility to his farfetched role. Ten years ago, this movie would probably have been a routine Steven Seagal vehicle, but Neeson gives the obligatory heroics psychological depth and an urgency of purpose that distracts from the bareness of the mechanics. The anguish his suffering father experiences is not only believable in and of itself, it fuels the pace of the action. His performance is stronger than the thin premise deserves, but it’s what makes this film into something more than just a series of action set pieces. Supporting performers are generally effective--Grace is winning and vulnerable in the thankless part of victim, and Arben Bajraktaraj, as Albanian gang leader Marko, does some admirable snarling--but this is really a one-man show. Without Neeson at the center, the movie would stall in its tracks.
This seems to be the time for movies about rescuing heroines from prostitution. Recent Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire involved a quest of this kind, with references to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, but Taken’s version comes from closer to home. It’s pressed from the mold of John Ford’s classic western The Searchers, in which John Wayne spends years trying to retrieve his niece from a band of Comanches, and two modern equivalents written, as tributes to Ford‘s film, by Paul Schrader: Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (with Robert De Niro’s famous descent into the hell of New York City to bring back teenage prostitute Jodie Foster), and Schrader’s own Hardcore, in which another distraught father (George C. Scott) searches for his runaway daughter, who has become an actress in porn films.
All these films are obsessed with saving a young woman from sexual “defilement’ and cleansing her of that perceived shame, whether or not she's been a willing party to it. In the three earlier versions, rescue comes “too late”: the daughter has been initiated into sexual experience with undesirables (Indians, pimps, johns, pornographers) and the possibility of her redemption/purification and reentry into her former society is left up to the viewer. But in keeping with the times, and the need for contemporary American films to have happier endings, Taken takes no chances with ambivalence: it won’t be giving much away to reveal that Mills is successful, and Kim is spared everything he fears. Taken is the fairy tale version of the virgin/whore paradigm for women in American movies--the heroine’s virginity is preserved, and like a princess she is restored unambiguously to her former place, seemingly untouched by the entire ordeal.
Taken isn’t just a rescue fantasy, however, it’s a revenge fantasy as well, and here the script by Luc Besson (of La Femme Nikita fame) and Robert Mark Kamen takes a darker turn. It’s not just the delight the movie takes in dispatching bad guys--Mills kills a lot of men in a very short time, many of them brutally--it’s also the revenge it wreaks on the mother who opposes his view of parenting. In several early scenes, Mills spars with his former wife, Lenore, about his protectiveness towards Kim. Lenore accuses him of smothering their daughter, of trying to prevent her from growing up and learning about life; Mills insists he just wants to keep her safe, because he knows the world and the dangers that lurk there. He permits Kim’s trip to France at Lenore’s urging, against his better judgment. His judgment proves correct, of course, and his attempts to keep his daughter close by, and forever his little girl--his smothering behavior--is validated by the movie’s turn of events. This is a reactionary view, to say the least, and a solidly conservative take on the world as a dangerous place in need of swift, violent action to keep its evils at bay. The more liberal-minded mother is ineffectual and wrong, and the suffering she endures when she learns of Kim’s disappearance becomes her justified, almost self-willed, punishment.
Taken never presents much of a challenge to the viewer, and of course never aims to. It’s not built on surprises but on predictable solutions to familiar screen problems. Bring a willing suspension of disbelief and a passing familiarity with movie logic and heroics to the theater, and you'll find it’s a pretty easy film to take. But the standard action scenario does have a twist, and the twist is the humanity of its characters—in particular, the unexpected strength behind a movie father’s love.
TAKEN
The title of this film describes, in effect, the experience of watching it. Taken takes hold of you and moves you right along for nearly all of its 93 jam-packed minutes. It’s a thriller that depends less on mood, character, or suspense than on sheer speed and relentless forward motion. It’s like a train on an express route: arriving at its destination is its paramount goal, which leaves little time to admire the scenery along the way.
The plot is succinct. A divorced ex-government agent, Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), has retired early so that he can live near his 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and try to build the relationship with her that he had sacrificed to his career while she was growing up. His ex-wife (Famke Janssen) has remarried into serious wealth, which makes this task all the harder. When Kim asks his permission to vacation in France with a friend, he reluctantly gives it; his fatherly worry reawakens all the old fears that went with his spying job. But Bryan’s “paranoia” proves instead to be prescience: no sooner have the two girls landed in Paris than they are abducted by a gang of Albanian thugs who are running an international sex slavery ring. Kim’s heartrending phone call to her father moments before she is dragged out the door of her apartment provides the film’s first real jolt of emotion, as well as the adrenalin needed to start the plot racing. From this point on, Mills is a man with a single mission: to find his daughter and bring her home.
Despite its many improbabilities, I rather liked Taken. Directed with zeal by former cinematographer Pierre Morel, the film concerns itself not with testing the limits of the action thriller genre but with staying safely inside its comfort zone and fulfilling our expectations. For the most part, it does this with enough energy to compensate for its lack of originality. Anyone who has watched the TV series 24 knows roughly what to expect: a headlong race against time, a tightly forged chain of events which are absorbing because of their speed and intensity, but which would never stand up to the scrutiny of logical analysis or exposition. Mills is even given his own time limit. A former associate tells him that after 96 hours, any hope of finding Kim will have vanished. Apparently, it takes that long for women to disappear completely into the sex trade underworld. So Bryan has four days to revive his skills as a spy—or, as he calls himself, someone who “prevented bad things from happening”—and rescue his beloved daughter.
What is most welcome about this film is that beneath the formulaic activity is a deeper layer, a substratum of emotion that is surprisingly powerful. This is entirely due to the presence of Neeson, who brings gravity and credibility to his farfetched role. Ten years ago, this movie would probably have been a routine Steven Seagal vehicle, but Neeson gives the obligatory heroics psychological depth and an urgency of purpose that distracts from the bareness of the mechanics. The anguish his suffering father experiences is not only believable in and of itself, it fuels the pace of the action. His performance is stronger than the thin premise deserves, but it’s what makes this film into something more than just a series of action set pieces. Supporting performers are generally effective--Grace is winning and vulnerable in the thankless part of victim, and Arben Bajraktaraj, as Albanian gang leader Marko, does some admirable snarling--but this is really a one-man show. Without Neeson at the center, the movie would stall in its tracks.
This seems to be the time for movies about rescuing heroines from prostitution. Recent Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire involved a quest of this kind, with references to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, but Taken’s version comes from closer to home. It’s pressed from the mold of John Ford’s classic western The Searchers, in which John Wayne spends years trying to retrieve his niece from a band of Comanches, and two modern equivalents written, as tributes to Ford‘s film, by Paul Schrader: Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (with Robert De Niro’s famous descent into the hell of New York City to bring back teenage prostitute Jodie Foster), and Schrader’s own Hardcore, in which another distraught father (George C. Scott) searches for his runaway daughter, who has become an actress in porn films.
All these films are obsessed with saving a young woman from sexual “defilement’ and cleansing her of that perceived shame, whether or not she's been a willing party to it. In the three earlier versions, rescue comes “too late”: the daughter has been initiated into sexual experience with undesirables (Indians, pimps, johns, pornographers) and the possibility of her redemption/purification and reentry into her former society is left up to the viewer. But in keeping with the times, and the need for contemporary American films to have happier endings, Taken takes no chances with ambivalence: it won’t be giving much away to reveal that Mills is successful, and Kim is spared everything he fears. Taken is the fairy tale version of the virgin/whore paradigm for women in American movies--the heroine’s virginity is preserved, and like a princess she is restored unambiguously to her former place, seemingly untouched by the entire ordeal.
Taken isn’t just a rescue fantasy, however, it’s a revenge fantasy as well, and here the script by Luc Besson (of La Femme Nikita fame) and Robert Mark Kamen takes a darker turn. It’s not just the delight the movie takes in dispatching bad guys--Mills kills a lot of men in a very short time, many of them brutally--it’s also the revenge it wreaks on the mother who opposes his view of parenting. In several early scenes, Mills spars with his former wife, Lenore, about his protectiveness towards Kim. Lenore accuses him of smothering their daughter, of trying to prevent her from growing up and learning about life; Mills insists he just wants to keep her safe, because he knows the world and the dangers that lurk there. He permits Kim’s trip to France at Lenore’s urging, against his better judgment. His judgment proves correct, of course, and his attempts to keep his daughter close by, and forever his little girl--his smothering behavior--is validated by the movie’s turn of events. This is a reactionary view, to say the least, and a solidly conservative take on the world as a dangerous place in need of swift, violent action to keep its evils at bay. The more liberal-minded mother is ineffectual and wrong, and the suffering she endures when she learns of Kim’s disappearance becomes her justified, almost self-willed, punishment.
Taken never presents much of a challenge to the viewer, and of course never aims to. It’s not built on surprises but on predictable solutions to familiar screen problems. Bring a willing suspension of disbelief and a passing familiarity with movie logic and heroics to the theater, and you'll find it’s a pretty easy film to take. But the standard action scenario does have a twist, and the twist is the humanity of its characters—in particular, the unexpected strength behind a movie father’s love.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Frost/Nixon
I'm a child of Watergate, and I remember spending a summer home from college watching the congressional hearings on TV. I also remember where I was when I heard that Nixon had resigned the presidency. And I've seen a number of movies, and read a couple of books about the events surrounding this sad episode in our history. All that was long ago, however. I do not purport to be any kind of scholar on the subject; in fact, most of the details have grown kind of fuzzy in my memory. Which is why I am glad to see that the subject is being revisited in this film, and the play it's based on, because it needs to be, continuously, so that those details remain fresh and are never forgotten. I only wish this film had done a better job of that. But it's an honest effort, and I agree with its overall point-of-view. I think it has unfortunate, and unintended, consequences, however, which you can read about below.
FROST/NIXON
To the generation that grew up firm in the belief that Richard Nixon=Bogeyman, this film presents something of a dilemma. On the one hand, it purports to dramatize the moment when the disgraced 37th president finally confessed to the American people that he had sinned against them. On the other hand, the characterization delivered by actor Frank Langella, and guided by director Ron Howard (both Oscar-nominated), in no way demonizes him. Good for the project overall, I suppose, but frustrating for those who still need to view Nixon as the devil. Full disclosure: I grew up during the Watergate era (politically as well as biologically), and I have always been of that camp. As a consequence, this movie had me squirming in my theater seat.
Frost/Nixon covers the events leading up to, and key moments from, the famous 1977 television interviews between British talk show host David Frost (Michael Sheen) and former president Richard Nixon (these interviews have recently been released in their entirety on dvd). Frost had made his mark on American television in the early part of the decade with a show devoted mostly to celebrity chitchat. Suave, confidant, cheeky, he combined the fun of swinging London with an earnestness that hinted at erudition. After Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, Frost concocted the idea of sitting down with him and going over his life in a series of interviews. It would be his biggest “get” ever, and the ratings—he was convinced—would go through the roof. A savvy entertainer, he turned out to be more right than even he probably anticipated.
The potential for a fascinating look at the aftermath of Watergate is certainly here. So what exactly is wrong with Frost/Nixon? It probably is terrific theater (the screenplay is by Peter Morgan, based on his well-received play). But adaptations are tricky; it’s a rare film that can successfully capture the singular style and impact of another medium. Not to mention that the play is about a third medium, television. What makes great television, or a compelling play about it, does not guarantee that a great or compelling film will emerge from either. Under Ron Howard’s capable but uninspired direction, this proves true. Frost/Nixon comes off more like a casual backstage tour of its events rather than a gripping backstage drama of how they transpired. It has a loose, gossipy feel to it; if you’re looking for historical insight or revelations about the people involved, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Howard and Morgan are on the trail of smaller game.
They begin by tracking dual story lines which alternately follow Frost and his associates plotting to woo Nixon onto TV and Nixon’s gloomy exile at his seaside home in San Clemente, California, where he dreams of reentry into public life. Eventually, these plots come together as serious negotiations between the two sides begin, terms are agreed to, and Frost assembles his team of researchers to help him “prepare” for the interview. That word was in quotes because Frost’s idea of preparing, according to the film, is to let his researchers (Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell, Matthew Macfadyen) do all the work, while he burnishes his reputation as a party- and premiere-attending man-about-town, in between pitching his show to prospective backers (all the major networks have turned him down, and this is, of course, in the era before cable). As it progresses, the film gradually builds its portrait of each man as they prepare for their history-making contest before the cameras.
These portraits are meant to be the film’s strength, but they are actually its greatest weakness. There is no question that both men are subjects worthy of screen treatment, although it might not be immediately obvious in the case of Frost, who is portrayed as shallow, self-absorbed, and clueless about how unprepared he is for what he’s planning to do. Early in the story, he smoothly picks up a woman (Rebecca Hall) on an airplane, and she becomes his companion for the remainder of the film. It is clear that he views Nixon in the same light: an easy conquest for his charm. Ironically, it is only when things begin to go wrong--one potential sponsor after another turns him down, and his search for money becomes increasingly desperate, and comic--that his character starts to develop into something more interesting than the Lovable TV and Party Guy. As his position weakens, his character deepens, but Sheen’s performance unfortunately does not follow along. It may not be wholly his fault: despite the direction the script maps out for him, Frost’s part is seriously underwritten. But even so, Sheen simply finds no way to suggest what’s happening behind the crumbling façade of Frost’s self-assurance beyond clutching his head and mussing his beautifully coiffed hair. The script wants you to believe that Frost finally grows into the responsibility of his role, but it’s a suggestion in the story outline and not a realized fact on film.
Nixon is a different story, and it’s a story the American public doesn’t seem to tire of. This Foundering Father endlessly fascinates, illustrated by the number of times he’s been portrayed in film or other media. Is there another U.S. President who is the subject of an opera (John Adams’ Nixon in China)? And, of course, his disembodied, living head was a recurring figure in the animated television series Futurama. I have admitted my discomfort with the notion of a repatriated Richard Nixon. Yet I welcome the introduction of a character with enough edges and angles to keep the film from becoming too obvious a civics lesson/morality play. The screenplay gives us this Nixon: a heavily scarred monument to ambition and pride, furious, hurt, his hunger for vindication and approval so palpable it’s like another person in the room. Yet for every diatribe against the liberals that hounded him from office, every crass joke, or lip-licking reference to the fee he will be paid for his TV appearance, there’s an image of an isolated, introspective Nixon, sculpted in shadow, his eyes haunted by what he sees of the past, or of himself, when he dares look inward. It’s the image of a tragic, fallen man, and it might be the most romantic picture of Nixon ever painted.
Serving this end is Langella’s performance, which truly commands the viewer‘s attention, although not always for the best reason. Gone are the weird tics and mannerisms, and that nervous, unconvincing smile, of Tricky Dick; in their place are a reflective, melancholy bow of the head or a poignant stare offscreen—Lear in exile, contemplating his failure. And he does that haunted eyes thing a lot, which is pretty effective. But like so many other actors trying to capture this most mannered of politicians, Langella falls victim to the temptation to impersonate. How does one do Nixon without some approximation of the Voice? Not possible, of course, and Langella’s attempt is often painful to listen to--a lugubrious and weirdly folksy vocal characterization that sounds at times like Jimmy Stewart doing his impression of Dracula. I’m not sure what director Howard could have been hearing that he liked.
The key question, however—and the one that had me squirming in my seat at the beginning of this review—is this: Does Frost/Nixon give Richard Nixon the exoneration he so desperately sought during his lifetime? Of course, the film does not give us the real Nixon; no narrative, even a careful work of “faction,” can do that. It offers us instead a construct of historical hindsight, a wish-fulfillment portrayal of a Nixon tragically aware of his shortcomings, his squandered opportunities, and the uncomfortable place he will occupy in American history. The last image Howard offers us is of Nixon standing alone on his balcony, staring moodily out at the ocean at dusk: the image of a man contemplating the emptiness of his future, perhaps, or the vast expanse of what he's lost. Frost’s chief researcher, James Reston, Jr. (Rockwell) states earlier in the film that he wants the television interview to serve as the trial Nixon never got, the trial America needs to have, in order for the country to find some sort of peace. This film may have set out to give him that trial once again, but it’s hard not to see in it the resurrection of Nixon as a man: lonely, regretful, oddly graceful in the final stance of defeat. It really should be called Nixon/Frost. The former president comes out on top.
FROST/NIXON
To the generation that grew up firm in the belief that Richard Nixon=Bogeyman, this film presents something of a dilemma. On the one hand, it purports to dramatize the moment when the disgraced 37th president finally confessed to the American people that he had sinned against them. On the other hand, the characterization delivered by actor Frank Langella, and guided by director Ron Howard (both Oscar-nominated), in no way demonizes him. Good for the project overall, I suppose, but frustrating for those who still need to view Nixon as the devil. Full disclosure: I grew up during the Watergate era (politically as well as biologically), and I have always been of that camp. As a consequence, this movie had me squirming in my theater seat.
Frost/Nixon covers the events leading up to, and key moments from, the famous 1977 television interviews between British talk show host David Frost (Michael Sheen) and former president Richard Nixon (these interviews have recently been released in their entirety on dvd). Frost had made his mark on American television in the early part of the decade with a show devoted mostly to celebrity chitchat. Suave, confidant, cheeky, he combined the fun of swinging London with an earnestness that hinted at erudition. After Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, Frost concocted the idea of sitting down with him and going over his life in a series of interviews. It would be his biggest “get” ever, and the ratings—he was convinced—would go through the roof. A savvy entertainer, he turned out to be more right than even he probably anticipated.
The potential for a fascinating look at the aftermath of Watergate is certainly here. So what exactly is wrong with Frost/Nixon? It probably is terrific theater (the screenplay is by Peter Morgan, based on his well-received play). But adaptations are tricky; it’s a rare film that can successfully capture the singular style and impact of another medium. Not to mention that the play is about a third medium, television. What makes great television, or a compelling play about it, does not guarantee that a great or compelling film will emerge from either. Under Ron Howard’s capable but uninspired direction, this proves true. Frost/Nixon comes off more like a casual backstage tour of its events rather than a gripping backstage drama of how they transpired. It has a loose, gossipy feel to it; if you’re looking for historical insight or revelations about the people involved, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Howard and Morgan are on the trail of smaller game.
They begin by tracking dual story lines which alternately follow Frost and his associates plotting to woo Nixon onto TV and Nixon’s gloomy exile at his seaside home in San Clemente, California, where he dreams of reentry into public life. Eventually, these plots come together as serious negotiations between the two sides begin, terms are agreed to, and Frost assembles his team of researchers to help him “prepare” for the interview. That word was in quotes because Frost’s idea of preparing, according to the film, is to let his researchers (Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell, Matthew Macfadyen) do all the work, while he burnishes his reputation as a party- and premiere-attending man-about-town, in between pitching his show to prospective backers (all the major networks have turned him down, and this is, of course, in the era before cable). As it progresses, the film gradually builds its portrait of each man as they prepare for their history-making contest before the cameras.
These portraits are meant to be the film’s strength, but they are actually its greatest weakness. There is no question that both men are subjects worthy of screen treatment, although it might not be immediately obvious in the case of Frost, who is portrayed as shallow, self-absorbed, and clueless about how unprepared he is for what he’s planning to do. Early in the story, he smoothly picks up a woman (Rebecca Hall) on an airplane, and she becomes his companion for the remainder of the film. It is clear that he views Nixon in the same light: an easy conquest for his charm. Ironically, it is only when things begin to go wrong--one potential sponsor after another turns him down, and his search for money becomes increasingly desperate, and comic--that his character starts to develop into something more interesting than the Lovable TV and Party Guy. As his position weakens, his character deepens, but Sheen’s performance unfortunately does not follow along. It may not be wholly his fault: despite the direction the script maps out for him, Frost’s part is seriously underwritten. But even so, Sheen simply finds no way to suggest what’s happening behind the crumbling façade of Frost’s self-assurance beyond clutching his head and mussing his beautifully coiffed hair. The script wants you to believe that Frost finally grows into the responsibility of his role, but it’s a suggestion in the story outline and not a realized fact on film.
Nixon is a different story, and it’s a story the American public doesn’t seem to tire of. This Foundering Father endlessly fascinates, illustrated by the number of times he’s been portrayed in film or other media. Is there another U.S. President who is the subject of an opera (John Adams’ Nixon in China)? And, of course, his disembodied, living head was a recurring figure in the animated television series Futurama. I have admitted my discomfort with the notion of a repatriated Richard Nixon. Yet I welcome the introduction of a character with enough edges and angles to keep the film from becoming too obvious a civics lesson/morality play. The screenplay gives us this Nixon: a heavily scarred monument to ambition and pride, furious, hurt, his hunger for vindication and approval so palpable it’s like another person in the room. Yet for every diatribe against the liberals that hounded him from office, every crass joke, or lip-licking reference to the fee he will be paid for his TV appearance, there’s an image of an isolated, introspective Nixon, sculpted in shadow, his eyes haunted by what he sees of the past, or of himself, when he dares look inward. It’s the image of a tragic, fallen man, and it might be the most romantic picture of Nixon ever painted.
Serving this end is Langella’s performance, which truly commands the viewer‘s attention, although not always for the best reason. Gone are the weird tics and mannerisms, and that nervous, unconvincing smile, of Tricky Dick; in their place are a reflective, melancholy bow of the head or a poignant stare offscreen—Lear in exile, contemplating his failure. And he does that haunted eyes thing a lot, which is pretty effective. But like so many other actors trying to capture this most mannered of politicians, Langella falls victim to the temptation to impersonate. How does one do Nixon without some approximation of the Voice? Not possible, of course, and Langella’s attempt is often painful to listen to--a lugubrious and weirdly folksy vocal characterization that sounds at times like Jimmy Stewart doing his impression of Dracula. I’m not sure what director Howard could have been hearing that he liked.
The key question, however—and the one that had me squirming in my seat at the beginning of this review—is this: Does Frost/Nixon give Richard Nixon the exoneration he so desperately sought during his lifetime? Of course, the film does not give us the real Nixon; no narrative, even a careful work of “faction,” can do that. It offers us instead a construct of historical hindsight, a wish-fulfillment portrayal of a Nixon tragically aware of his shortcomings, his squandered opportunities, and the uncomfortable place he will occupy in American history. The last image Howard offers us is of Nixon standing alone on his balcony, staring moodily out at the ocean at dusk: the image of a man contemplating the emptiness of his future, perhaps, or the vast expanse of what he's lost. Frost’s chief researcher, James Reston, Jr. (Rockwell) states earlier in the film that he wants the television interview to serve as the trial Nixon never got, the trial America needs to have, in order for the country to find some sort of peace. This film may have set out to give him that trial once again, but it’s hard not to see in it the resurrection of Nixon as a man: lonely, regretful, oddly graceful in the final stance of defeat. It really should be called Nixon/Frost. The former president comes out on top.
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