Eight Will Be Enough: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I

Seven films into the Harry Potter series – or is it six and a half? – it’s impossible to tell where the epic sprawl ends and the monotony begins. Maybe that’s because we’ve had our fair share of both from the very start. As if trying to justify the overwhelming commercial success of the novels, each cinematic adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s books has felt as overstuffed as one of Hagrid’s shirts. The shortest film in the series, 2007’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, clocks in at a fairly lengthy 138 minutes, and now the latest film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I, brings the total running time of the series to a Quidditch match shy of 18 hours. By the time Deathly Hallows: Part II comes out in July 2011, Harry Potter’s adolescent quest will have gone on as long as the first two seasons of Mad Men combined. But it won’t have taken us as far. Over course of the series, the characters have aged and the themes have matured and the sense of consequence has increased, and yet the journey has remained circular – one long episode after another in which Harry struggles with his responsibility, Hermione provides the answers, Ron wallows, Dumbledore drops clues (even from the grave) and Voldemort looms. I’d had my fill of it several films ago, and after Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince all I could do was throw up my hands. And yet as I watched David Yates’ latest film drift into its second hour, I couldn’t deny the series’ cumulative effect. Simply put, I care.

Not deeply, I admit. And not at all in relation to the narrative, which is as muddled, arbitrary and derivative as ever. But when it comes to the fate of Harry, Hermione and Ron, yeah, I’m emotionally invested. They aren’t terribly interesting characters, and they certainly aren’t multidimensional ones, but after being with them for 1,047 minutes, dammit, they’re family. I’ve watched them grow up. And while I consider it a weakness that the Harry Potter saga has never developed any series-spanning character subplots beyond the milking-it-for-all-its worth romantic tension between Hermione and Ron, the result of watching these three carry the same crosses for so long is that I’m desperate to see them liberated of their burdens – for their sake more than mine. Unless the series is to resemble something from the imagination of Lars von Trier, it’s time for the payoff. Overdue, actually. I have serious doubts whether the climax can possibly live up to our oversized expectations, given that long patches of forgettable foreplay have plagued the series thus far, but I root for it. After often being made to walk backward on the dramatic conveyer belt to avoid the series’ date with destiny while filling Rowling’s pockets, Harry, Hermione and Ron deserve that.

The Conversations: Darren Aronofsky (Part I)

For the third time this month (making up for a late summer lull), there's a new edition of The Conversations at The House Next Door. In this installment, Ed Howard and I discuss the first four films of Darren Aronofsky: Pi (1998), Requiem for a Dream (2000), The Fountain (2006) and The Wrestler (2008). This should get everyone ready for Black Swan, which comes out December 3. Ed and I will be swinging back with a Part II of this discussion in mid-December to provide our reaction to that film.

As I argue in Part I, Aronofsky is at an interesting point of his career, with enough similarity among his first four pictures to be able to note some of his signature techniques and themes, but also with enough diversity to make Black Swan an enticing mystery. (Note: I've avoided the film's trailers.) As I say in the piece, Aronofsky is interesting in that he's made polarizing films without, so far as I can tell, being seen as a polarizing filmmaker. Do people have strong opinions about Aronofsky? Perhaps we'll find out. It's been a while since the comments section on one of these pieces got lively, but maybe Aronofsky will cure that. So, if you have thoughts to share, please head on over to the House and jump in!

It Rocks: 127 Hours

If you’re like me, when you first heard about Aron Ralston’s harrowing ordeal in a Utah canyon in 2003, it struck you as something out of a movie. Thus, there was little doubt that eventually Ralston’s experience would be retold on the big screen. And a few years later, here we are. 127 Hours chronicles the five days and change that Ralston spent with his arm pinned between a rock and, yeah, a hard place, only to escape by leaving his arm behind. But as inevitable as this movie seemed, particularly after Ralston recounted his experiences in a book, as soon as we see Ralston’s right hand and forearm become wedged between a boulder and a canyon wall, 127 Hours starts to feel like a tremendously bad idea. Because at that point we know what’s ahead of us: a lot of waiting, a lot of suffering and, eventually, a lot of sawing with Ralston’s cheap multipurpose tool. 127 Hours isn’t the first movie to lead audiences toward a well-known conclusion or to spend almost its entire running time observing a mostly stationary character, but it might be the first movie to be saddled with both of those dramatic and cinematic restrictions. And once we realize that, it becomes clear that director Danny Boyle is stuck between a rock and a hard place, too. So when I say that 127 Hours is an incredible achievement for a director working with one hand tied behind his back, that’s what I mean.

Boyle directs 127 Hours according to his signature sensibilities, which over the course of his career have proven to be alternately irritating and dazzling. Predictably for a Boyle film, in 127 Hours the cuts are frequent, camera angles are many and the soundtrack is lively. Surprising though, given the subject matter, the tone of the film is warm and optimistic. In a movie about a guy who drinks his own urine and cuts off his arm, healthy doses of pain and suffering are unavoidable, but in telling Ralston’s story Boyle uses those episodes of misery as the marinade that sweetens our big juicy bites of triumph later on. Yes, just like we know that Ralston will eventually amputate his own arm, we also know that he will escape. And so Boyle wisely embraces the narrative’s foregone conclusion and in doing so shifts our focus away from Ralston’s escape – and, more importantly, the means of that escape – in order that we might appreciate Ralston’s entire experience; hence the brilliantly blunt title. In almost any other movie, those 127 hours would refer to the amount of time the hero has until disaster arrives, but here they refer to the amount of time the hero spends in the midst of catastrophe. Instead of being a countdown, it’s a count-up. Boyle implies that before we ask ourselves whether we could lop off our own arm to save ourselves, we should ask whether we could survive the five days that led up to that point. 127 Hours isn’t about desperate measures in desperate times. It’s about perseverance.

The Conversations: An Autumn Afternoon

And just like that, The Conversations is back! In this, the second of three editions of The Conversations this month, Ed Howard and I discuss Yasujiro Ozu's final film, 1962's An Autumn Afternoon, which of course inspires discussion of Ozu in general. After seeing eye to eye more often than not in our previous installment, on rock concert documentaries, this time around Ed and I found quite a bit to debate.

Is Ozu's photographic eye emotionally evocative, or just visually pleasing? Do his meticulous compositions serve the themes of his stories or stand apart from them? And what's the effect of Ozu's meticulousness on the acting? These are the kinds of things we grapple with in what is a relatively short edition of The Conversations. Our third installment this month will publish in less than two weeks, so head on over to The House Next Door and contribute to the discussion of An Autumn Afternoon.

Misdirection: Fair Game

Midway through Fair Game’s Daily Show-esque montage of news-show talking heads disparaging Valerie Plame’s status and performance as an agent for the CIA, the woman sitting behind me gasped in exasperation. Of course she did. By that point of Doug Liman’s film about the 2003 scandal in which the Bush administration intentionally exposed Plame’s identity in order to divert attention from the shaky evidence it used to build a case for war in Iraq, we’ve already watched Plame walking with purpose through CIA headquarters and giving orders to underlings; acting as the voice of reason in tense interrogations; taking on tough and dangerous assignments; working long hours in service of her country while her loving husband and adorable children miss her at home; and, upon having her cover blown, caring less about her torpedoed career than about the safety of several Iraqis who risked their lives to cooperate with the CIA. To question this woman’s service by suggesting she was little more than a secretary, and a poorly performing one at that, is outrageous. But there’s just one problem: The woman being disparaged in those archival news clips and the person being heroically portrayed by Naomi Watts in this dramatization are not one and the same. And whenever Fair Game forgets that, it misses the point it otherwise makes so clearly.

See, the unlawful exposure of Valerie Plame’s CIA career is a story of villainy, not victimization – unless you’re thinking about the American soldiers who lost their lives to a real threat (America’s multifaceted opposition in the Middle East) while responding to an imagined one (Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction). The makers of Fair Game know this. Oh, how they know this. In the film’s flag-waving finale, Plame’s outspoken husband, Joe Wilson (Sean Penn), looks around at a classroom of college students and points out how disgraceful it is that none of them can recall the 13 words from President George W. Bush that sent America to war but that all of them know the name of his wife. Through this little example, Wilson underlines how the Bush administration successfully manufactured a diversion from the faulty logic and/or downright duplicity by which the Iraq War was made to seem unavoidable. Yet Fair Game proves unable to respect its own wisdom. It’s not enough, apparently, to depict Bush’s top strategist, Karl Rove, orchestrating a systematic effort to discredit and intimidate anyone who would speak out against the administration’s war plans. Fair Game must also demonstrate that the Bush administration attacked one of its best and brightest. And in making Plame an outright hero, rather than allowing her to be a canary in the coal mine of dirty politics, the film ignores what it otherwise seeks to prove: that in the big picture Plame’s CIA career is incidental.

Unbreakable: The Best That Never Was

In trying to recount the skill of running back Marcus Dupree, no one minces words. One of his high school teammates says Dupree was “awesome” and could score whenever he wanted, “literally.” A Mississippi newspaper reporter says that watching Dupree running through and around his prep peers was like watching NFL great Jim Brown taking on teenagers. Oklahoma University legend Barry Switzer says that Dupree was the “most gifted player” he ever coached, “bar none.” And Lucious Selmon, who recruited Dupree to Oklahoma, says Dupree was the best athlete he ever saw and had the talent to be the best running back of all time. But of all the effusive assessments we encounter in Jonathan Hock’s documentary The Best That Never Was, the latest edition in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” series, perhaps the most accurate one is provided by one of Dupree’s childhood friends, who matter-of-factly says, “We suspected he could do anything he wanted to do.” Wrapped up in that seemingly simple statement is the measure of Dupree’s enormous abilities and, ironically, the making of his downfall.

Marcus Dupree’s mixed blessing was that everyone who watched him play came away convinced that he was without limits. That’s why Dupree had his pick of any college in the country when he graduated from his high school in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and it’s also why Dupree’s college football career almost immediately became defined by all he didn’t do and everything he didn’t have. When Dupree set a still-standing Fiesta Bowl record by rushing for 239 yards (on just 17 carries!) in Oklahoma’s losing effort to Arizona State, Switzer didn’t praise his freshman running back, he threw him under the bus, reasoning that if Dupree had been in better shape he could have doubled his carries and doubled his yards and, in doing so, led the Sooners to victory. Dupree had been record-setting great and somehow not great enough. Not for Switzer, anyway, who was so determined to avoid giving Dupree anything he hadn’t earned that he went out of his way not to recognize the dominance that came to Depree so naturally. So it was that Dupree began wondering why the program that was so desperate to sign him in the first place withheld not just praise but also the (illegal) perks that other Sooners players were rumored to be enjoying. Influenced by family and friends who assumed that the football player who could do whatever he wanted on the field should get anything he wanted off of it, Dupree, too, started to judge his college experience according to oversized expectations. And so it came to be that instead of winning a Heisman trophy or leading Oklahoma to a national title, Dupree dropped out of Oklahoma before the end of his sophomore season. A lucrative contract with the USFL soon followed and, alas, just as quickly a devastating knee injury followed that. At the age of 20, Dupree’s football career was pronounced over.

Still Running: Marion Jones: Press Pause

“I took performance enhancing drugs, and I lied about it.” How many modern athletes have been too cowardly to utter those 10 simple words, even when confronted with evidence of their sins? Marion Jones says them with poise and confidence, her eyes looking directly into the camera. This clip from a 2010 public service announcement is the opening salvo in a barrage of admission and contrition that opens John Singleton’s documentary about the disgraced sprinter. From here we cut to the steps of a federal courthouse in 2007 where Jones stands before assembled cameras and microphones and says, “I have betrayed your trust,” “I am responsible fully for my actions,” “I have no one to blame but myself” and “I have been dishonest, and you have the right to be angry with me.” Her words sound premeditated but not rehearsed. She speaks not from a page and thus seemingly her heart. She allows a few tears to roll down her face, but she maintains her composure. In that moment and in several others this film, Marion Jones is everything we wish Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa would be: accountable. Too bad she couldn’t be honest, too.

In Marion Jones: Press Pause, Jones is forthcoming about her mistakes in the way that Michael Vick has been forthcoming about dog fighting, and Tiger Woods has been forthcoming about his extramarital sex and Brett Favre has been forthcoming about his extramarital voice messages: only as required. Did Jones lie to federal investigators? Yes. Did she deliberately mislead the public? Yes. Did she use performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs)? Yes. Those are things Jones willingly admits, because at this point she has no other choice than to do so; a federal investigation forced the truth out of her. But when it comes to how, when and why the five-time Olympic medalist took PEDs, Jones is glaringly mum, which makes all of her other admissions incomplete at best and misleading at worst. In this documentary, the latest installment in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” series, Jones carries herself with the air of someone who is holding nothing back, but if you watch carefully you’ll notice that she admits to what she’s been found guilty of and absolutely nothing more. Expecting the whole truth and nothing but the truth from a serial liar, whose repeated public denials were so emphatic that Attitcus Finch would have gladly volunteered to represent her pro bono, is as foolish as expecting Olympic athletes to turn down the opportunity for multi-million-dollar success by just saying no to PEDs. (The system is broken.) But expecting a filmmaker profiling the rise and fall of Marion Jones to at least broach the subject of how she got mixed up in PEDs in the first place? That doesn’t seem unreasonable.

The Conversations: Rock Concert Films

After too long a layoff, The Conversations series is back with the first of what will be three installments over the next few weeks. In this edition, Ed Howard and I discuss a handful of rock concert documentaries: Woodstock (1970), Gimme Shelter (1970), Stop Making Sense (1984), Rattle and Hum (1988) and Instrument (2001). As you'd expect, we analyze the differences between the films (which are obvious) and the similarities (which are more common than I would have expected). We also discuss whether it's possible to admire or enjoy a rock concert documentary if you don't like the music of the artist being profiled. It's a discussion that I hope you'll find is worth the time. The next edition of The Conversations, which is totally unrelated, will post in about two weeks. So bookmark this baby for installment reading and add to the discussion at The House Next Door, if so moved.