Weekly Rant: The Blind Side

Because most sports movies are mediocre, and because most movies starring Sandra Bullock are worse than that and because I have read the book upon which it is based, I had no intention of seeing The Blind Side. That’s why I spent my lunch hour last Friday clicking through Metacritic to read about it: I wasn’t worried that my own experience with the film would be colored by my prior exposure to these reviews, because this wasn’t a film I was planning to experience. But the more reviews I read, most of them negative, the more interested I became. At a time when Precious, a sensationalistic story about a black woman who is used as a dramatic punching bag, is being widely celebrated as worthwhile art, The Blind Side, the true story of a black man who rose from homelessness to a career in the NFL with a lot of help from a white family, has been derided by some as condescending toward black people. That I had to see to understand.

And so I saw The Blind Side, only to leave the theater as confused as when I went in. Is the film offensive? Yes. If Precious takes itself too seriously, The Blind Side doesn’t take itself seriously enough. This is a film with a high school football coach who doesn’t use the headset hanging around his neck but does take a cellphone call on the sideline during a game. It’s a film in which a teenage Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), now a starting tackle for the Baltimore Ravens, gets whipped into shape by an elementary school kid. It’s a film in which Bullock’s saintly yet spicy Leigh Anne Touhy confronts a threatening gang leader by threatening him right back – in his neighborhood, on his porch, in front of his homeboys. More often than not, The Blind Side adopts an air of preposterousness that suggests it’s more comfortable emulating a made-for-Lifetime melodrama than approximating reality. For me, at least, that’s offensive. As for the film’s supposed condescending treatment of its black main character, that’s where things get tricky.

In The Village Voice, Melissa Anderson suggests that The Blind Side “peddles the most insidious kind of racism, one in which whiteys are virtuous saviors, coming to the rescue of African-Americans who become superfluous in narratives that are supposed to be about them.” Scott Tobias of the AV Club argues that The Blind Side “finds a new low” in the sports genre’s “long, troubled history of well-meaning white paternalism, with poor black athletes finding success through white charity.” Both critics support these arguments by citing scenes in which white people must act upon Oher in order for him to act for himself. They also note how the film treats Oher, in Tobias’ words, as a “gentle, oversized puppy in need of adoption.” Frequently, their arguments are compelling. Tobias notes that the Touhy family “literally picks (Oher) up from the streets during a rainstorm, like a stray,” quipping: “All that’s missing are the children pleading, ‘Mom, can we keep him?’” One only needs to read such descriptions to see how neatly The Blind Side rests within the shamefully deep mold created by all the tactless “whiteys”-as-“virtuous saviors” films that have come before it. But I’m not sure that means that The Blind Side is automatically as tactless or shameless as its predecessors.

The thing that struck me about John Lee Hancock’s film is how faithful it is, a few indulgences aside, to Michael Lewis’ nonfiction book. Does that mean the film is capital-T True? Of course not. As I suggested, the film has a wink-wink demeanor about it that manages to undercut even the things that are factually accurate. Nevertheless, if Lewis’ account of the story can be trusted at all, many of the elements that might seem especially condescending toward black people are in fact based on truth. Indeed, Michael Oher was taken in by a rich white family. He did attend an almost all-white school. He was given special treatment by some of his white teachers to help him along. He did have a white tutor who guided him through high school and even college. He was inward and slow to reveal his feelings and history. He had been homeless. He did lose a father he barely knew to a sad death. He did have siblings he hadn’t seen in years, if ever. He didn’t take to football immediately and really was coached to equate offensive line play with protection of one’s family. Perhaps most important of all, the black Oher really did form a bond with the white Touhys, and they became a genuine family in the process – not just during high school, not just for the span of the film, but then and now. Any way you slice it, Oher was in fact “rescued,” in almost every sense of the word, by white people who, through their acts, were both “virtuous” and “saviors.”

None of this is to suggest that the film doesn’t take liberties in the specific depictions of these broader truths. Nor is it to suggest that The Blind Side gives us the “whole truth,” whatever that is. Furthermore, I don’t mean to imply that this is a good film. (When the professional actor playing the high school coach delivers a performance more forced than that of the career college football coaches who make cameos in this film, you’ve got problems.) Yes, it’s true that we leave The Blind Side better understanding Leigh Anne Touhy than Michael Oher. But explain to me why this isn’t her story as much as his? Seems to me that without a Leigh Anne Touhy we'd never have heard of Michael Oher. Sure, it would be condescending to depict Oher as the family pet being taught to sit, stay and play football. But I’m not convinced the film portrays him that way. I’d suggest the film portrays Oher as a young man in need of a mother and a lot of guidance, which by virtue of the formula means that Oher is placed in the role of a child. Is that offensive? If untrue, I suppose. But here’s the thing: What if it's accurate? Has our political correctness gotten so out of hand that stories about whites saving blacks are now taboo? That doesn’t sound like progress.

More than a decade ago, then living in Oregon, I eagerly followed the development of another sports-related film: Robert Towne’s Without Limits, which proved to be the better of the two Steve Prefontaine biopics released almost simultaneously. One thing I remember from the prerelease buzz is that Without Limits, which dedicates quite a bit of time to Prefontaine’s efforts to medal at the 1972 Olympics, didn’t score well with test audiences. Their complaint? Prefontaine didn’t redeem himself by winning gold at the 1976 Olympics. Why? Because he died in 1975. In that instance the real story – one of promise unfulfilled – wasn’t the story that (many) audiences wanted. I have a feeling that something similar is happening here. In this era of heightened sensitivity to political correctness (which is a good thing for the most part, don’t get me wrong), The Blind Side is indeed hampered by Hancock’s sometimes overly simplistic approach to his subject matter. Just as often, though, what hurts The Blind Side isn't the depiction of its subject matter but the realities of it.
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Casualties of War: The Messenger

Enough movies have been made about or around the Iraq War at this point that either we are narrowing in on the specific psychological effects of this military engagement or we are already settling for movie-manufactured stereotypes. I don’t pretend to know the truth. What I do know is that the two soldiers at the center of The Messenger – not to mention other soldiers briefly glimpsed or merely mentioned in this film – have a lot in common with soldiers of The Hurt Locker, Stop-Loss, Battle for Haditha, In the Valley of Elah and, to jump back a war, even Jarhead. On display in Oren Moverman’s film, cowritten with Alessandro Camon, are soldiers who struggle both with the guilt of the horrors they have seen (if they fought and lived to tell about it) and the horrors they haven’t (if they avoided combat). We see men suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and from a general inability to adjust to the casualness of civilian life after months or years of adrenaline-fueled survival. We see men who manage their emotions and release pent up testosterone by abusing alcohol or engaging in promiscuous sex, fistfights or good-natured horseplay. Perhaps this is what we should see. Perhaps this is accurate. For the moment, however, it feels tiresomely familiar, which is why I suspect that The Messenger will play better 15 years from now than it does today. We need time to be able to see this film with fresh eyes. And maybe by then we’ll also have a better sense of what’s real and what’s cliché.

Don’t misunderstand me: The Messenger isn’t all retread. Telling the story of two soldiers assigned the awful task of knocking on doors and extending death notices to fallen soldiers’ next of kin, Moverman’s film provides a perspective that is both unique and universal. In no other film I can think of do we witness the grief and heartache of war from the experiences of those delivering the bad news. Moverman’s film doesn’t shy away from the intense reactions of the next of kin – those learning that their son, husband or daughter was killed in action – but he doesn’t exploit it either because their reactions are only half the story. Cinematographer Bobby Bukowski’s camera often leaves the most significant devastation just out of sight, focusing instead on the faces of Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) and Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) as they recite their dispiriting script: “The Secretary of the Army regrets to inform you …” The Messenger is specifically about the harrowing job of delivering death notices just as The Hurt Locker is about working on an Explosive Ordinance Disposal team. And yet Montgomery and Stone are also surrogates, standing in for the so many of us who feel personally removed from the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan while remaining ever conscious of how many American families are intimately connected. Without clearly understood criteria for victory, the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are, for most of us, as indefinite as the timetable for withdrawal. The only thing that makes these wars tangible is the news of more American deaths or the sight of the walking wounded.

Will Montgomery is one of those wounded warriors. That’s how he drew his assignment. The scar under his left eye is the only visible sign of his trauma, but Foster’s restrained performance hints at damage beneath the surface. Montgomery’s vague but intimate relationship with his ex, played by Jena Malone, reveals a man who wants to emotionally connect but isn’t up to it. Meanwhile, his approach to his new assignment shows his military-bred professionalism and also his compassion; he’s had loved ones die, too. Some people respond to survivor’s guilt by hating themselves. Others try to heal everyone around them. Montgomery does the latter. Though Snow implores him stick to the book (recite the script) and to keep to himself (no physical contact), Montgomery can’t bear it. When others are hurting around him, he puts himself in the line of fire. He dares to engage. Montgomery isn’t trying to be heroic. It’s a reflex. And soon enough, Snow – who has problems of his own, including alcoholism – is benefitting from Montgomery’s compassion, too. Their friendship is brotherly: sometimes antagonistic but respectful and deep. Few others understand what it's like to knock on someone’s door with the knowledge that you are about to permanently alter the worldview of the person on the other side. Montgomery and Snow are out of the war but sharing a foxhole. They need one another, and they know it. Moverman’s film is about their enriching camaraderie as much as it’s about the tragic reality of their jobs.

Harrelson’s performance is solid (he’s still at his best in outsized roles, as in Zombieland), and Foster’s suggests that, along with Ryan Gosling, he’s one of America’s most promising actors under the age of 30 (barely). But the film’s best performance is delivered by the unfailingly engaging Samantha Morton, who plays an Army wife turned into a widow when Montgomery and Snow show up in her front yard. A sexy – or at least sexual – figure in movies like In America, Code 46 and even Synecdoche, New York, here Morton is inward, hesitant and awkward. The last thing she’s looking for is a romantic connection, which is key because it underlines that Montgomery’s developing attraction to Morton’s character isn’t because of what’s on the surface but because of something underneath. He sees her need to connect with someone who understands what it’s like to have a husband killed by a war long before he actually loses his life. Likewise, Montgomery needs to share a commonly understood universe, because the real world is still too abnormally normal for him. Watson and Morton’s scenes together, often shot in long patient takes, are tender and intimate. Like the characters at the center of Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love, what they share brings them together and keeps them apart.

For a movie that is sometimes this rich, it’s a shame that it wanders into such predictable territory, falling back on drunken antics, an inappropriate wedding toast and a tearful confession. The final act feels by-the-numbers, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is. For the moment The Messenger suffers from poor timing, arriving late to a party at which other Iraq War films are dressed in the same antics and emotions. Over time, however, the films we remember will be the ones that wear these characteristics best, not the ones that wear them first, and there’s one scene that convinces me that The Messenger has staying power. In it, a young soldier, just back from his tour, entertains a table of friends with his combat stories. The mood is surprisingly light until the soldier, without even realizing it, punctuates his tale by describing the grisly death of one of the characters of his anecdote. In the confused expressions of the people at the table and in the knowing look of Montgomery, listening in from the bar, the chasm between those who have been engaged in this war and those who haven’t is perfectly articulated. Crossing the gulf one way can happen in one devastating instant, The Messenger makes clear. Getting back takes longer.
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Weekly Rant: The Demonizing (of) Armond White

If you’ve ever found yourself wishing that New York Press critic Armond White would be eviscerated with the kind of predatory viciousness that colors so many of his reviews, his recent interview on The Film Talk’s weekly podcast won’t do anything to satisfy your bloodlust. In fact, it has the potential to increase it. Podcast hosts Jett Loe and Gareth Higgins produce an extremely professional movie debate program on their own dime each week (for now), so it isn’t a terrible surprise that their interviewing style is network-friendly. With White they take an angle of approach that is less Frost-Nixon than Hannity-Palin. (It’s one thing to ask nonconfrontational questions. It’s another thing to also help answer them.) But in a way that’s enough, because White has some Colonel Jessep in him. He wants to talk. (We want him on that wall. We need him on that wall.) And so even without a Lieutenant Kaffee grilling him, White says some incriminating things.

Of greatest interest to me is his response to his reputation as a contrarian. Loe and Higgins seemed ready to let the interview end, but with the contrarian topic on the table White seized the opportunity to set the record straight: “That is garbage,” he said. “That whole phrase is simply, I think, a symptom of a kind of culture that has turned into automatons, where people think they are simply supposed to like whatever Hollywood dangles in front of them and that anyone who thinks for themselves is wrong. You know, in America we’re supposed to be a democracy. There’s supposed to be this thing called freedom of speech that we respect and expect of people. How is it that when someone expresses themselves that has their own opinion, they are demonized as being a contrarian? I have no interest in being contrary. My interest is in writing film criticism that helps me to understand movies better. And that’s why I keep doing it. If I was going to write movie reviews or movie critiques that said the same thing everybody else was saying, there would be no point to it. I wouldn’t do it. The only reason I do it is because I’m trying to express myself. In a civilization that says it values independent thought, that’s supposed to be the ideal. But instead when you speak for yourself about movies people think something is wrong with you. They think you are simply being contrary.”

At issue here, for me, isn’t whether White is or isn’t a contrarian. What’s interesting to me is that White objects to being “demonized” as a contrarian just a few sentences after he suggests that our culture is plagued by “automatons.” The thing that offends me about White’s criticism isn’t his tendency to break from the pack, even when he seems to be doing so out of desperation, indeed to be a contrarian (more on that later). What offends me is his habit of demonization, taking down people and films. You don’t have to do much searching to see what I’m talking about. In his recent review of Precious, White suggests that Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey signed on as producers because the film about a black woman being horribly mistreated by black people “helps contrast and highlight their achievements as black American paradigms.” In his review of The Men Who Stare at Goats, White writes that George Clooney is “among those media stars who presume that having Liberal biases make them radicals.” These observations – severe or not – have little to do with the film he’s reviewing. They are merely drive-by hits. White is a name-caller. He’s a schoolyard bully. He is talented enough and intelligent enough to review films without taking these venomous detours, but he doesn’t. (It isn’t uncommon for White to pause in the middle of a film review to take a one-sentence swipe at some other film that he hasn’t reviewed.) More than being contrary, that’s his thing. He demonizes.

I could rant at length about what I perceive to be desperation and insincerity in White’s reviews. As the above quote implies, he has painted himself into a corner – made it so that any film that gets majority support from fans or critics cannot possibly be worthy of such acclaim. I could rant about the ludicrousness of his “Better Than” lists (which are entirely contrary, by the way), the most recent of which suggests that Happy-Go-Lucky was without critical support. I could rant about how reckless he can be in the name of a takedown – such as when he describes the characters in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days as “abortionhorny.” I could even rant about how uncomfortable it is to listen to White, promoting a new book of essays about Michael Jackson, talking about the difference between “a real film critic” and someone who does it as a “hobby” while being interviewed by two guys running a pledge drive to stay afloat. But I won’t do that. I don’t want to lose sight of the big picture.

In the big picture, White makes a lot of astute arguments. Love or loath his reviews, they are often conversation starters, and I’m always in favor of passionate film discussion, regardless of how it begins. Do I doubt the sincerity of White’s motives? I do. Do I think he’s wasting his talent by using his reviews as the forum for cheap shots? I do. Do I think that White should quit condemning others for being sanctimonious when that word so often describes the tone of his reviews? I do. Do I think he has lost the right to object to his “contrarian” label when he routinely uses harsher words for others? I do. But I don’t think we should demonize White. It only gets us closer to the thing we’re demonizing.
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Sisyphus Had It Easy: Precious

After watching Lars von Trier’s Dogville, I thought I’d never come across another movie that so exhaustively abuses its female character – so long as I avoided Lars von Trier movies, that is. I was wrong. In outline, at least, though not in effect, Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire makes Dogville seem tame. Directed by Lee Daniels, it is the story of a young black woman who is abused in every conceivable way, over and over again, for 110 mostly bleak minutes. Though the film is being marketed as a harrowing but ultimately triumphant experience – this year’s Slumdog Millionaire – only the first part is true. To find redemption here is to find redemption at the end of a dogfight when one of the victims leaves the arena bloody and violated but somehow alive. To journey through Precious and end up at triumph is to arrive not where the film takes you but where you desperately need it to go.

To get an idea of how many tragedies befall the central character, imagine a gritty ghetto version of Wile E. Coyote. If that sounds flip, it isn’t. I’ll prove it. For the most part I try to avoid plot recap in my reviews, but sometimes the recap is the criticism. This is one of those times. How is 16-year-old Precious (Gabby Sidibe) wronged? Let us count the ways (spoilers ahead, obviously): She is raped by her own father resulting in the birth of two children; one of them has Down syndrome and is delivered on the kitchen floor while Precious is being kicked in the head. She is verbally abused by her mother (played by Mo’Nique in a memorably forceful performance that I will try my best to forget) who lives off welfare, smokes and insults Precious unceasingly. She is physically abused by her mother – a book to the back of the head, a frying pan to the skull that just misses, slaps, shoves and even a television set thrown over a railing that thankfully doesn’t hit anyone but could have. Precious is shoved to the ground, while pregnant, by a total stranger on the street. She is made to eat pigs’ feet and to steal a bucket of fried chicken, which she eats crudely, leaving grease marks on her face, before vomiting in a trash can. She contracts HIV – from her father, of course, who began sexually violating her when she was only 3-years-old. She endures her newborn son being thrown to the floor – by her mother, of course, who thinks the child symbolizes a violation of her relationship with Precious’ father, rather than a violation of Precious. She lives in squalor. She is fat. She is illiterate. She is expelled from school. She is dark skinned. That last one shouldn’t be considered a tragedy, I realize, but Precious thinks it is; she likes to imagine herself as a skinny white woman.

Do you get it? Do you grasp that Precious leads a terrible, tragedy-ridden life? Of course you do. How could you not? That much is clear by the 30-minute mark, and yet Precious extends its horrors to the very end. The HIV revelation comes in the final 30 minutes. The graphic description of the first time Precious is molested at 3 is saved for the penultimate scene. At some point it’s only fair to ask: What is the purpose of all this suffering? Some might say that it depicts a grisly reality that most of us don’t want to face, but that’s not quite right. Are there women in the real world who suffer so constantly and so completely? Alas, yes. But telling a story inspired by realism and achieving reality are two entirely different things. Furthermore, defending Precious as true doesn’t say much of anything about Precious as art. Daniels’ film doesn’t feel like a blunt observation of the real world. It feels like what it is: an exhibition and exploitation of gasp-inducing atrocities. There’s nothing artful about garnering our sympathy and moral outrage by treating a character like a human punching bag. Any hack can do that. Audiences may gasp and groan at the numerous ways that Precious is abused by her mother, and yet Daniels is just as unrelenting, just as dehumanizing. By watching we become enablers of Precious’ objectification. If Precious were indeed a harsh truth we didn’t want to face, we wouldn’t. We’d walk out. I wish I had.

Precious is tabloid cinema. It is sensationalism posing as truth. Thematically speaking, the main character is established as an innocent victim and a figure for sympathy halfway through the first act, and yet the atrocities must go on because, dramatically speaking, that’s all that Daniels has to offer. If this film were about triumph, Daniels would dedicate more time to Precious' struggles learning to read and less time on her quickly redundant struggles at home. If this film were about triumph, the quasi-counseling sessions between Precious and a social worker played by a makeup-less Mariah Carey would actually show Precious gaining some self worth. Instead their conversations are a sly way for the film, adapted from the Sapphire book by Geoffrey Fletcher, to get Precious to detail more tragedy, like the fact that her child with Down syndrome is nicknamed Mongo, short for mongoloid. Audiences recoil at that revelation, but Precious is too ignorant to spot the slur. If this film were really about triumph, perhaps Precious’ ever-compassionate teacher at the alternate learning program, Paula Patton’s Ms. Rain, would respond to the news that Precious is HIV positive by actually consoling Precious as she would a peer. Instead, in the tritest moment of a film that has a few, Ms. Rain urges Precious to scribble her feelings out in a journal. “Write!” she commands, as if that’s what the barely literate Precious needs. If Precious had actually gained an ounce of self respect by that point, she’d have punched Ms. Rain in the mouth.

I can understand why people would want to thrust a happy ending on to this story. Anything less is almost unbearable. But if this film is to be praised for its tragic realism, then it’s on us to keep it real. The final shot of Precious walking down the sidewalk with an infant in one hand and a Down syndrome afflicted child in the other is more ominous than the final shot of A Serious Man. Precious is still overweight and undereducated. She has no job, and given that it’s the late 1980s and she is HIV positive, she might not have much of a future. Yes, she has stood up to her mother, who was intentionally abusive in so many ways. But Precious isn’t just in control of her own life, she’s in control of the lives of her children. And save for one moment when Precious is seen breastfeeding her newborn, something she can no longer do now that she’s HIV positive, we’re given no evidence, none, that she can be a competent mother. Precious may mean well, but – if we keep it real – a new cycle of destruction is about to begin. There’s no triumph in that.
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The Goy’s Beef: A Serious Man

I stalled as long as I could in the hopes that wisdom would reach down to me from the heavens like a funnel cloud, but after two trips to the theater and several weeks of pondering it’s time to face the facts: A Serious Man has me seriously befuddled. It’s a clever film, to be sure, effortlessly weaving together Schrödinger’s cat, the Book of Job and Jefferson Airplane as if they are natural companions. It’s an amusing film, too, though I’d stop short of calling it “audaciously funny” or “seriously funny,” as Owen Gleiberman and Peter Travers apparently did, according to the promotional postcard. It’s a remarkably well acted film, even though its biggest star is Richard Kind, a career “that guy.” It’s also beautiful to look at because, well, Roger Deakins shot it. And yet for all the ways I can think to praise this latest effort by Joel and Ethan Coen, I am overwhelmed with the sense that something is missing. And what’s missing, I think, is the sense of being overwhelmed.

A Serious Man deals in some profound concepts, but I can’t say I found it profoundly affecting. I laughed, but I was never struggling to catch my breath. I was engaged throughout, but I wasn’t moved. As the film unfolded I recognized what it was doing, but by the time the credits rolled I didn’t feel any significant impact from what it had done. Perhaps I wasn’t supposed to. I’m not sure. Movies by the Coen brothers have been mysterious, ambiguous and even aimless before, but they’ve never been this paradoxical – and I’m not just referring to Schrödinger’s cat or to the dybbuk who haunts the opening vignette. Or, then again, maybe I am, because with A Serious Man everything is woven together. Within the frame is the story of a man trying to make sense of it all. Outside the frame are movie audiences trying to do the same. The Coens, via the experiences of Larry Gopnik, seem to be telling us to take this film – and presumably others – at face value, to “receive with simplicity everything that happens,” to “accept the mystery” and to dismiss the entertainingly inexplicable by tossing up our hands and saying “who cares!” But is it really that simple? To twist the words of the main character a bit, would the Coens really make us “feel the questions” if they didn’t want us desperately seeking the answers?

To be clear, this isn’t a reaction to the film’s conclusion, which is more abrupt than the finale of No Country for Old Men, though less cryptic. Unlike Larry, I’m not wrestling with the very big question of “What does it all mean?” Not exactly. What I’m trying reconcile is why one of the Coens’ most thoughtful films seems to be so adamant that we accept it for its surface entertainments, as if it isn’t to be taken seriously, even though its construction is anything but frivolous. Is A Serious Man the Coens’ attempt to create the cinematic version of Schrödinger’s cat? Is it a basic mindfuck? Is it an exhibition of false modesty? Is it contemptuous? I don’t know. What I recognize is that Larry’s journey suggests that ignorance is both blissful and poisonous. (Spoilers ahead.) Larry was perfectly happy with his life when he was unaware that his wife was falling in love with another man, his son was sticking him with the bill for a record club membership and the three rabbis in town were useless. Eventually, though, he pays a price for that ignorance, which would seem to suggest that awareness is a good thing, except for the fact that A Serious Man routinely underlines the futility of trying to solve life’s deeper mysteries. When the figures of wisdom that Larry encounters preach about the virtues of a parking lot, or show no interest in a miracle simply because it happens to a goy or spend the entire day “thinking” only to quote Grace Slick, what is wisdom worth? The more you seek to understand, the movie seems to say, the more disappointed you will be by what you learn.

These are conflicting messages, aren’t they? I don’t mean to sound surprised. The Coens have a history of making films that seem at odds with themselves – clever and cold, thoughtful and glib, refined and undefined. Straightforwardness isn’t their style. Thus, maybe Larry’s error isn’t ignorance or disengagement. Maybe his mistake is the belief that all of life’s mysteries can be diagramed and solved like a math problem. Or, heck, maybe life’s mysteries can be solved like an equation and Larry has made a mistake in his calculations; he believes that by not acting upon others that others won’t act upon him. Then again, maybe all of the above is somehow true. A Serious Man is an interesting riddle to puzzle over, but as a result it comes away feeling like a math problem. It reveals that I am Larry Gopnik, less interested in the illustrative story directly in front of me than in the formulas behind it. How do I reconcile a film that asks me to receive it with simplicity while encoding itself with such significance? Is that the film’s biggest joke, that in order to fully appreciate Larry’s mistake of detailed analysis we are forced to repeat it? Could it be that this film is less about Judaism than about the church of cinema and its overzealous followers?

It strikes me that A Serious Man works as the Coens’ response to all those movie fanatics, me included, who spent so much time and energy trying to solve the mystery of Anton Chigurh’s disappearance at the end of No Country for Old Men. It’s true: when film fans go too far down the analytical rabbit hole trying to find deeper meaning, we often lose sight of what’s going on above ground. Sometimes it is best to just “accept the mystery.” But, ironically, this isn’t one of those times. A Serious Man at face value isn’t worth all that much. Oh, sure, it’s finely crafted. It’s a professional film. Stuhlbarg is superb in the lead role. Fred Melamed gives one of the best supporting performances of the year as the passive-aggressive Sy Ableman. Fyvush Finkel shines in a brief role as the source of debate in the opening vignette. The writing is smart and the humor, while laced with some Jewish in-jokes, is universally accessible. Like the Jolly Roger motel to which Larry is banished, the world that the Coens create here – suburban Minnesota circa 1967 – is eminently habitable. But on the surface it’s just that. For A Serious Man to be anything more than a passing entertainment, you’ll have to refuse to accept it with simplicity. This is not nothing. This is something. And you can’t really understand the physics without understanding the math.
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An American Tragedy: The Legend of Jimmy the Greek

When I watched Dan Rather refer to Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder as “an American tragedy” in the first few minutes of the latest documentary in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” series, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Rather’s assessment struck me as the kind of hyperbole that career on-camera interviewers – who know what makes for good TV – have a tendency to spew when they’re answering the questions instead of asking them. But by the end of The Legend of Jimmy the Greek, I was stunned to find myself nodding in agreement. If like me you remember Jimmy the Greek for the manner in which he became infamous, Fritz Mitchell’s film will reawaken you to the days in which “The Greek” was merely famous. Furthermore, it will enlighten you about an even earlier time, when Jimmy the Greek was just Demetrious Synodinos of Steubenville, Ohio. On paper this profile of a gambler turned TV personality turned outcast might appear to be the least compelling of the six “30 for 30” pictures released thus far. On screen, however, it’s the most complete film yet.

That’s fitting, really, because Jimmy the Greek loved an underdog, and underdogs live to surpass expectations. Thirteen years removed from his death, Jimmy the Greek is largely remembered today, if he’s remembered at all, for the insensitive comments about black athletes that got him fired from CBS more than two decades ago – a thick shadow of controversy that “The Greek” shaped with his own hands. Mitchell’s film doesn’t shy away from that controversy, but it also cuts through the fog, and what it finds is fascinating: I knew that Jimmy the Greek was a gambler, but I didn’t know the story of how he became one, at the age of 13. I knew that Jimmy the Greek was a colorful TV personality, but I didn’t know how hard he worked to get on the air in the first place (as with John Madden, his cartoonishness could distract from his legitimate credentials). I knew that Jimmy the Greek’s career ended sadly, but I didn’t know that his life had been touched by catastrophe long before that – as a parent who lost three children and as a child who lost a parent. This won’t be news for everyone, of course, but I suspect that even those familiar with this background will find it feels like new. In Mitchell’s film, Jimmy the Greek’s spirit is tangible.

That’s hardly an accident. Mitchell’s boldest gesture is having Greek-American comic Basile narrate anecdotes from Jimmy the Greek’s life in the first person. The tactic effectively invites us to experience the subject’s story through his eyes, rather than absent-mindedly observing it, but the artistic flourish isn’t without problems. First, rather than relying on the kind of straightforward line readings we’ve come to expect from Ken Burns documentaries, Basile delivers a vocal performance that is at once both overdramatic and flat, bearing little resemblance to the man he’s imitating. Second, Basile’s voice-over sometimes accompanies ill-advised reenactments featuring a Jimmy the Greek stand-in clad in a suit and dark glasses who looks more like an extra from Donnie Brasco than Jimmy the Greek himself. Third, Mitchell never makes it clear if Basile is reading Jimmy the Greek’s actual words, perhaps from his unmentioned autobiography, or if the descriptions and accounts are written expressly for the film. Not that it matters much. These are minor annoyances in a documentary that is routinely compelling even before it reaches its tragic conclusion. And it is tragic.

As Mitchell’s documentary makes clear, Jimmy the Greek was already wearing out his welcome at CBS, after 12 years with the network, even before he told a Washington, DC, newsman that “the black is the better athlete to begin with because he was bred that way.” Jimmy the Greek wasn’t trying to be controversial or derogatory or demeaning when he linked the athletic success of black athletes to the slave trade, but – only months removed from similarly offensive statements by Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis – it sure didn't play that way. It couldn't have helped that, given the impromptu nature of the interview, Jimmy the Greek's remarks had the appearance of being whispered surreptitiously, as if in acknowledgement of their impropriety. In response, CBS fired their analyst and, just as quickly, Jimmy the Greek was shattered. One of the most heartbreaking moments in Mitchell’s film is an all-too-brief clip from a media interview in which a contrite Jimmy the Greek tries to explain his offensive remarks, only to stop, shaking his head, seeming to realize that he’s an inch away from repeating them.

Mitchell covers this controversy and others (a difficult working relationship with Phyllis George, fisticuffs with Brent Musburger, etc.) with a deft touch. The Legend of Jimmy the Greek manages to feel blunt rather than sensational and compassionate rather than absolving. Mitchell’s film is packed with talking heads who are both complementary and critical – including members of Jimmy the Greek’s family. Using a nonlinear approach to cover the ups and downs of its subject’s life, Legend never rushes or lags, and it avoids the usual arc of the tragedy. By the time the documentary ends you might still believe, with good reason, that Jimmy the Greek’s notoriety overshadows his accomplishments. But at least you'll see through the fog. Mitchell’s film makes no attempt to rewrite or reanalyze the final act of Jimmy the Greek’s American tragedy. That would be useless. Instead it simply honors the American dream that came before the fall.


The Legend of Jimmy the Greek premieres tonight on ESPN at 8 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler will be reviewing each film in the “30 for 30” series upon its release. The next "30 for 30" picture won't be released until December 12.
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Weekly Rant: The Black Stallion

It’s November, which means it’s time to start forecasting Academy Awards nominations. I’m not happy about it. In general, I could do without box office reports and awards season horserace analysis. Then again, I’d be lying if I suggested that critical hype hasn’t helped steer me to legitimately great films I might have otherwise overlooked while helping me avoid some bombs. Still, I find it all so uninteresting. I’ve long since outgrown the stage of my life when I got worked up over what is and isn’t nominated and awarded each year. Sure, I root for my favorites to win. Sure, every now and then the overhyping of a film will get under my skin. But the Oscars are a marketing exercise, I know. I try to embrace the good and ignore the bad.

That said, a few weeks ago when I got lost in the (occasional) scenic splendor of Where the Wild Things Are, I found myself thinking of another movie about a boy who washes up on an island and bonds with a friendly beast: The Black Stallion. And that got me thinking about what I consider to be one of the biggest Oscar crimes of the past 30 years: The Black Stallion was nominated for three Academy Awards in 1979, but none of them was Best Cinematography.

This defies explanation. It doesn’t matter whether one thinks Best Cinematography is an award recognizing excellence in cinematic storytelling or excellence in pretty filmmaking, because The Black Stallion, shot by Caleb Deschanel, is marvelous by either standard. The winner of Best Cinematography that year was Apocalypse Now, and that’s fair. But the other four nominees were All That Jazz, The Black Hole, Kramer vs. Kramer and 1941. Kramer vs. Kramer for Best Cinematography? Really?

I could hammer out a few hundred words about the magnificence of the cinematography in The Black Stallion, which goes almost entirely without dialogue for its first 45 minutes. But instead why don’t I just show you. What follows are screenshots from the two moments in which Alec (Kelly Reno) and “The Black” bond through feeding. The images alone tell the story here. And isn't that the point?
















































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