Weekly Rant (Sort Of): Speaking in Tongues

The Last Station, based on a semi-fictional novel by Jay Parini, begins with Leo (Lev) Tolstoy in his final months of life. The year is 1910 and Tolstoy is both a famous novelist (War and Peace and Anna Karenina) and a famous spiritual figure, inspiring a religion of sorts that rejects violence, sex, wealth and private property. The film, directed by Michael Hoffman, explores both the man and his movement in a manner that is simultaneously comprehensive and scattered – much like the devotion between the film’s two main characters. Starring a very-bearded Christopher Plummer and a still stunningly beautiful (and sexy) Helen Mirren, The Last Station is at its core an examination of the complex relationship between Leo and Sofya Tolstoy, two people who loved and fought with equal passion. The film’s principal pleasure is Plummer and Mirren’s knack for playing both sides of the relationship convincingly. Screaming at one another in one scene, playfully rolling around in bed in the next, each moment between Leo and Sofya feels true, real, authentic.

What isn’t so authentic, however, is The Last Station’s Russianness. This is a film with characters named Bulgakov, Chertkov and Sergeyenko, and yet the performers speak English with accents that sound like a strange combination of flattened British and whatever accent Paul Giamatti uses in the John Adams miniseries. And that brings us to this week’s rant, which, truth be told, is more of a question (sorry, Kevin J. Olson).

Because in addition to seeing The Last Station, in recent weeks I’ve been preparing for the Steve McQueen Blog-a-thon by rewatching such classics as The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape (as if I needed an excuse), two films in which Mexican and German characters, respectively, speak exclusively in English, even amongst themselves. This use of accented English in portrayals of non-English-speaking characters used to be the norm, but in recent years, as Hollywood has warmed to the idea that subtitles don’t ensure box office ruin, the trend has shifted ever so slightly so that now even vapid popcorn fare like Avatar dabbles in some non-English dialogue. That said, the foreign-tongued speakers in any American-made film are more often than not the story’s villains, suggesting that filmmakers might be more interested in stoking their target audience’s fears of “the other” than in attainting racial, ethnic and linguistic authenticity. Nevertheless, regardless of the motivation, we have reached the point that when an art-house flick like The Last Station doesn’t go so far as to adopt Russian accents for its Russian characters it seems, well, odd.

Is it possible that Harrison Ford ruined the Russian accent for everyone with his performance in K-19: The Widowmaker? No, that’s not the question at the heart of this post. These are the questions I pose to you: (1) In this day and age is it actually inappropriate for non-English-speaking characters to be performed in English, or is it just distracting, or neither? (2) If a movie about non-English-speaking characters settles for using English, would you prefer to have the actors adopt an accent suggesting the language being spoken (like Nazis in an Indiana Jones movie or Mexican mice in a Speedy Gonzales cartoon), or would you prefer that the actors speak in their own “natural” English accents, whatever that might be? If the latter, (3) what if allowing the actors to speak in their natural voices leads to an American actor (say, Giamatti) and an English actor (say, Mirren) speaking with different accents despite playing people who speak the same language? In general, when it comes to non-English-speaking characters being performed in English, what are your thoughts?

Please, discuss …

Identity Crisis: Shutter Island

(Warning: It’s impossible to discuss this film substantively without revealing – early, frequently and explicitly – its secrets. Spoilers abound.)

It takes only one glimpse of Shutter Island to be filled with a sense of doom. An unwelcoming rock with sheer cliff faces around most of its perimeter, the titular setting of Martin Scorsese’s latest film is a grim and foreboding place even before the storm rolls in, even before one lays eyes on the island’s only edifice – a sprawling prison for the criminally insane. Historically, Shutter Island inspires thoughts of Alcatraz. Cinematically, it’s a delightfully twisted romper room of gothic horrors. Practically, it’s the perfect basket in which to hold a few dozen rotten eggs, to protect the world from them and them from the world, and perhaps to conduct some illicit psychological experiments, too. More than all of that, though, Shutter Island is a symbol, a physical depiction of what it means to be insane – to be locked in, removed and incapable of escape.

It’s this kind of visual storytelling that Scorsese does well in his adaptation of a novel by Dennis Lehane. Shutter Island is, at its best, a psychological thriller in the mold of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining – one that’s notable less for the way it plays with our minds than for the way it explores the fragile mental state of its main character. It’s only appropriate then that Scorsese quotes those films with regularity, from its use of twisting vertical stairways that ascend toward madness to its vibrant dream sequences. And yet for all the ways that Shutter Island is cinematically rich, it is also dramatically flawed. It isn’t enough for Scorsese to try to emulate Hitchcock and Kubrick. He tries to emulate M. Night Shyamalan, too. More to the point, Scorsese tries to examine madness and conceal it at the same time, which is close to impossible. The result is a film that is most fascinating in retrospect, except that in retrospect Shutter Island also feels like an uninspiring cliché. There’s the rub.

I suppose I should pause here and mention that I was on to Shutter Island’s twist conclusion the first time Leonardo DiCaprio’s Teddy Daniels pops aspirin in the office of prison administrator Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), some 15-20 minutes into the film. I wasn’t looking for the twist. In fact, I had no reason to doubt the story at face value. But even though I’m unfamiliar with Lehane’s novel, I am of course familiar with Vertigo, The Manchurian Candidate, The Sixth Sense, Mulholland Dr. and so many other films in which things aren’t exactly what they seem. At that early point in the film, I couldn’t possibly have predicted exactly how the story ends, and my Scrabble skills aren’t so fine-tuned that I decoded the names of Rachel Solando and Andrew Laeddis. But from almost the very beginning I presumed the entire story was a hallucination, and, as far as the mystery was concerned, that was that. To Scorsese’s credit, there were moments, even near the conclusion, when I thought – er, hoped – that I’d be proven wrong. But, in the end, the story went almost exactly where I thought it would.

So while I recognize that Shutter Island will provide some with the exhilarating free-fall experience that happens when – wham! – all at once the plot’s core mystery gets flipped upside down (or it is right side up?), I missed out on that rush. And yet Shutter Island doesn’t disappoint because of all that I knew ahead of time but because of all that I didn’t know as the story unfolded. Read that again. Here’s where we return to Vertigo. In the novel upon which that film is based (D’Entre Les Morts), the secret of the female’s dual identity isn’t revealed until the end. In the film, however, Hitchcock resolves the Madeleine/Judy mystery almost as soon as Judy is introduced. By revealing this secret to the audience, Vertigo stops being a rather straightforward mystery about Madeleine/Judy in order that it can become a complex psychological examination of Jimmy Stewart’s Scottie as he tries to turn Judy into Madeleine, unaware (at first) that they are in fact the same person.

Scorsese would have been wise to follow suit. While Shutter Island is littered with clues that point to its ultimate destination, the audience is never given enough information to appreciate the film’s true cinematic depth. Isn’t it more interesting, for example, to watch Teddy scaling the cliffs of Shutter Island if we know, unequivocally, that he’s crawling over the hard edges of his hallucinations, rather than wondering when the U.S. Marshall became such a skilled free-climber? Isn’t it more interesting to know that Teddy constantly encounters water because it directly relates to his psychological trauma, and not because Scorsese is lazily following the J-horror handbook? Isn’t it more interesting to watch Teddy’s patient interrogations and understand why he seems as crazed as those on the other side of the table? As Teddy, DiCaprio gives an intense and committed performance that is somewhat undermined by all that we don’t know. The false story of Teddy, haunted by his past and determined to solve the mystery of the missing patient, is less interesting than the truth: a man so emotionally crippled that he, like Scottie before him, creates an elaborate fantasy in order to find peace. Sure, it’s interesting to watch Teddy teetering on the edge of sanity, but Scorsese never gives us an overpowering moment like the one in Vertigo when Scottie watches Judy emerge from the bathroom, having completed her transformation into Madeleine, and Scottie’s last grasp of reality evaporates before our eyes. Or, rather, Scorsese does give us those moments, but he camouflages them so that we can’t appreciate their deepest meaning as they’re unfolding.

The shame of this approach is that when it comes time for Scorsese’s film to reveal its truths, they require so many words, words, words (including words on an easel) to explain. This not only puts Shutter Island at the opposite end of the twist spectrum from The Sixth Sense, which delivers its revelations quickly, effortlessly and powerfully with a series of images, it also distances the film from its very strength – visual storytelling. Despite some curiously overlong scenes that could have been shortened or altogether removed, Shutter Island is mostly engaging, thanks in large part to strong casting (from Kingsley to Mark Ruffalo to Max von Sydow to Jackie Earle Haley) and Scorsese’s knack for creating the appropriate atmosphere. But it’s telling that DiCaprio’s performance is at its most powerful in the film’s final flashback. Until then, Teddy doesn’t know who he is. And, unfortunately, neither do we.

Not So Mean Streets: The Departed

[With Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island finally hitting theaters tomorrow, after months of waterboarding us with its trailer, The Cooler offers the following review, written upon the film’s release in the author’s pre-blog era.]

It has a superstar cast: Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin. It has one of the most celebrated directors of all time: Martin Scorsese, whose past works of this ilk include GoodFellas and Casino. And, since it’s based on the hit Chinese movie Infernal Affairs, it has a blueprint to follow. Yes, The Departed has everything you’d expect in a heavyweight film, and so, so much less.

What a disappointment. It’s not that The Departed is boring or careless. This cops-and-mobsters flick about moles burrowing into and out of the criminal underworld has double-crosses in bulk. And, per usual in a Marty movie, the film is chockablock with tough guys, violence, accents, street speak, short-tempers, f-bombs and fellatio references. But it all feels fabricated. This isn’t quintessential Scorsese, it’s a movie with a bunch of guys who have grown up watching quintessential Scorsese doing poor impersonations of what they think it means to be in one of his films.

Nicholson hams it up. Baldwin hams it up. Although neither of those is a surprise. Wahlberg really hams it up, and the kicker is that his tough-talking, Baahstaahn-tongued detective Dignam might be the least convincing character in the movie, even though Wahlberg was raised on the boulevards of Bean Town. Go figure. Damon, meanwhile, looks completely star-struck. Playing Colin Sullivan, a double-agent for the mafia working as a Massachusetts police officer, Damon pulls off the well-ironed golden boy part, but all too well. There isn’t a trace of authentic roughneck about him. I had a hard time imagining him doing anything worse than under-tipping, and each time Damon uses profanity he has a kid-in-the-candy-store twinkle in his eye that makes him appear a second away from turning to the camera and yelling, “Mom, I’m in a Martin Scorsese movie! Can you believe this!?”

One thing’s for sure, Will Hunting could kick the crap out of Colin Sullivan any day of the week. So could Billy Costigan. Played by DiCaprio, Costigan is the policeman who goes undercover inside the organized crime web of Frank Costello (Nicholson). To get accepted into the fold, Costigan proves his mettle by smashing a glass over a thug’s head and then beating another guy with a coat rack. Through this act, Costigan is desperate to prove his loyalty to mob, but he really seems to enjoy it. DiCaprio, starring in his third straight Scorsese picture (previously Gangs Of New York and The Aviator), isn’t the guy I’d have chosen to become the director’s new favored actor – the second coming of Robert De Niro – but to his always plentiful intensity DiCaprio is steadily adding depth. His Costigan is one of the few players who doesn’t appear to know that he’s on a film set.

If DiCaprio’s performance isn’t the best in the film, then that honor belongs to Vera Farmiga as Madolyn, a woman inconceivably romanced by both Sullivan and Costigan. One could rightly question how much her character really counts in this male-dominated saga, but there’s no doubting that Farmiga, who looks like a cross between Sarah Jessica Parker and Robin Wright Penn, fully invests herself in the performance. Madolyn’s confusion over her love life has an urgency that Costigan’s unease with his dueling identities lacks, which makes it all the more frustrating when Farmiga’s character disappears from the story without a hint of resolution.

None of this is to imply that every Scorsese movie requires the meticulousness or epic sprawl of The Aviator. At 152 minutes, The Departed is as bloated as a latter day Jake La Motta, yet its upbeat pace and overflowing charm provides the film with levity. Alas, instead of being splashed with flippancy, we’re drowned in it. Whereas in GoodFellas audiences cackled and cringed through Joe Pesci’s famous “How am I funny?” scene, here the threats of Nicholson’s Costello, Wahlberg’s Dignam and Baldwin’s squad captain Ellerby seem as empty as Fenway Park in December. It’s all wink-wink, instead of wink-wince.

Am I being overly harsh? To a degree. I respect that by making another movie from the mean streets that Scorsese is operating under his own immense shadow. But anyone who tabs The Departed as some return to form is missing the central themes of the director’s gangster oeuvre. The Departed isn’t kin to Casino. It’s the foul-mouthed stepbrother of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven. This is a gleaming, star-worshiping crowd-pleaser. It’s Scorsese goes popcorn flick. That’s fine and good, I guess. On the other hand, what’s the point of having a legendary filmmaker with the clout to get studios to bend to his whims if he doesn’t ask the mainstream to so much as tilt their heads?

The Departed is Scorsese on cruise control. For proof, look no further than the soundtrack, which includes tracks from the Beach Boys, John Lennon, Van Morrison and the Rolling Stones, including – for the third time in a Scorsese picture – the song “Gimme Shelter.” I’m not asking for Kanye West here, but could we at least leap into the 1980s? Given the Irish mob connection, some classic or even contemporary U2 would have seemed appropriate. But instead of looking retro, Scorsese comes off as behind the times, or like someone going through the motions. It’s all so safe.

Along those lines, maybe the presence of Nicholson, who is unrestrained in his Jackness, provides too much of a good thing as the mob demigod. His performance may pick up an Oscar nomination, but to me it feels like an empty caricature. Over the course of Scorsese’s career, the director has had a hand in creating some of film’s most unforgettable scoundrels, from Travis Bickle to Bill the Butcher, but Sadistic Nicholson doesn’t belong in their company. He’s truly frightening only if you have courtside tickets to the Lakers. Even when the bullets start flying and bodies start falling, the characters of The Departed never feel as tough and unhinged as their reputations. This is a movie about false identities that, appropriately or not, delivers sheep in wolves’ clothing.

The Conversations: Nashville

I'm pleased to report that a new edition of The Conversations posted today at The House Next Door. In this installment, Ed Howard and I take on Robert Altman's Nashville. Ed and I agree and disagree with about equal measure over the course of the discussion, which touches on topics ranging from the film's timeliness (or lack thereof) to Altman's signature techniques. Whether you love or hate Nashville, there's quite a bit to chew on. As usual, Ed and I hope that our analysis is just the start of the discussion. So, please, head on over to The House Next Door and join the conversation!

Previous Editions of The Conversations:

David Fincher (January 2009)
Mulholland Dr. (February 2009)
Overlooked - Part I: Undertow (March 2009)
Overlooked - Part II: Solaris (March 2009)
Star Trek (May 2009)
Werner Herzog (May 2009)
Errol Morris (July 2009)
Michael Mann (August 2009)
Quentin Tarantino - Part I (August 2009)
Quentin Tarantino - Part II (September 2009)
Pixar (WALL-E) (October 2009)
Trouble Every Day (October 2009)
Lawrence of Arabia (December 2009)
Crash (1996) (January 2010)

Alfred Hitchcock and the Carefully Considered Close-up

Every shot in a film has meaning. That doesn’t mean that every shot has one universally understood meaning. Nor does it mean that every shot’s ultimate meaning matches up with a filmmaker’s intent. It simply means that every shot counts. Every shot “tells” us something. Obviously, some shots tell us more than others, either because in and of themselves they are full of information – think of a Wes Anderson interior – or because of the way they are juxtaposed with other shots – think of what we learn about Daniel Plainview’s determination, self-sufficiency and greed when Paul Thomas Anderson cuts from a shot of the broken-legged Plainview’s desert isolation to one of him lying on the floor of an assayer’s office in There Will Be Blood. You would think that since every shot counts, filmmakers would give every shot careful consideration, but sometimes that doesn’t happen.

As the years go by and the stories I encounter at the cinema begin to feel painfully familiar, I find myself responding most to those directors who give me an overwhelming sensation that every shot has been carefully considered. That’s only half the battle, of course; Tom Ford’s A Single Man is painstakingly considered to the point that it feels over-directed. But I digress. The point is that I get a special rush when I detect that the filmmaker isn’t just using a shot but actually believes in it and has pondered why to present it this way and not another one. Alfred Hitchcock was one of those filmmakers, and the other day, when I was pulling a few quotes from a 1970 interview he gave at the American Film Institute, I stumbled across this bit that I wanted to share. It’s Hitchcock talking about the power of the close-up, using a famous scene from Psycho as an example.

Here’s Professor Hitchcock:

“Sometimes you see films cut such that the close-up comes in early, and by the time you really need it, it has lost effect because you’ve already used it. It’s like music – the brass sounding loud before you need it. Now, I’ll give you an example where a juxtaposition of the image size is very important.

“One of the biggest effects in Psycho was where the detective enters the house and goes up the stairs. The shots were storyboarded to make sure there was enough contrast of sizes within the cuts. ....


“Here is the shot of the detective, a simple shot going up the stairs.


“He reaches the top stairs, the next cut is the camera as high as it can go, it was on the ceiling. …

“You see the figure run out, raised knife ...

"It comes down …

“Bang! – the biggest head you can put on the screen. ...

"But the big head has no impact unless the previous shot had been so far away. So don’t go putting a close-up where you don’t need it, because later on you will need it.”

Hitchcock’s description of that scene can be found in Conversations With The Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute. The book is a collection of interviewers, and it didn’t escape Hitchcock’s interviewer that the above scene isn’t the only time that Psycho’s Milton Arbogast gets a close-up. In fact, Arbogast is introduced with one. Asked why, Hitchcock explained: “You bring him in like that because you are bringing in a new possible menace.”

That’s all Hitchcock says, and I had to review Psycho to be reminded of just how true that is. Let’s look at the scene in detail.

First, to fully appreciate the scene you have to remember what comes directly before it: Norman Bates, captured in a shadowy close-up, smiling as Marion Crane’s car disappears into the bog.


From there the film cuts to a seemingly safe image: Sam writing a letter to Marion. Except …

As the camera pulls back ...

Hitchcock prods the audience with visuals of threatening tools. Like these …

And these …

And these …

Eventually the camera pulls back to reveal a little old lady – a little old lady holding poison.

“They tell you what its ingredients are and how it’s guaranteed to exterminate every insect in the world. But they do not tell you whether or not it’s painless. And I say, insect or man, death should always be painless.” Classic sinister humor from Hitch.

From here, Lila Crane arrives. Notice that her arrival isn’t greeted with a close-up.

She meets with Sam.

As they begin to discuss Marion, they feel as if they are being watched. The little old lady is treated with suspicion as she passes by. She’s not a threat. But someone is. Look at the shadow on Sam's shirt.

When the old lady is gone, the threat seems over.

Ah, close-up! Here is “a new possible menace.”

Sam and Lila are oblivious to the threat.

Then, Sam can feel himself being watched …

But by Bob at the desk.

Bob leaves and Sam and Lila believe they are alone. They are thus vulnerable to the possible menace outside ...

The man steps in. And by "in," I mean all the way in – as tight as the close-up can get and still hold his face.





Sam and Lila are still oblivious to the man in the hat ...

Until he speaks. Classic horror reaction shot!

The man in the hat steps closer.

Uncomfortably close. Out of focus.

Hitchcock cuts to a predatory view over his shoulder. Is he a menace?

Sam is fearful until Arbogast introduces himself as a private investigator.

With that, the man in the hat is eliminated as a menace and the tension is released.

Great scene!

Before we go, let’s look at one more scene from Psycho involving Arbogast in which Hitchcock uses his close-ups carefully. In the scene below, Arbogast shows up at the Bates Motel.

Initially, Norman and Arbogast are shown in a rather distant two-shot, with Arbogast lower than Bates, a subservient position.

Inside the hotel office, as Arbogast begins his questioning, they’re now on equal footing.



Norman is holding his own until Arbogast asks to look at the registry …

Knowing Marion’s name is in the book, now Norman feels threatened and Hitchcock goes to a close-up.



Arbogast smells blood in the water and gets his own close-up. He’s on to something.

Now even the picture of Marion gets a close-up.

And so it goes ...

Until Norman worms his way out of the conversation and Arbogast backs off.


Hitchcock was a firm believer in storyboarding. Then again, so is George Lucas. Careful planning alone can’t make for a great film. Still, there’s something about purposefulness that I’ll always find rewarding.